When Rose found herself, after so strange and exciting a journey, within
the tranquil shades of Miss Margetts’ establishment for young ladies, it
would be difficult to tell the strange hush which fell upon her. Almost
before the door had closed upon Wodehouse, while still the rumble of the
hansom in which he had brought her to her destination, and in which he
now drove away, was in her ears, the hush, the chill, the tranquillity
had begun to influence her. Miss Margetts, of course, was not up at
half-past six on the summer morning, and it was an early housemaid,
curious but drowsy, who admitted Rose, and took her, having some
suspicion of so unusually early a visitor, with so little luggage, to
the bare and forbidding apartment in which Miss Margetts generally
received her “parents.” The window looked out upon the little garden in
front of the house, and the high wall which inclosed it; and there Rose
seated herself to wait, all the energy and passion which had sustained,
beginning to fail her, and dreary doubts of what her old school-mistress
would say, and how she would receive her, filling her very soul. How
strange is the stillness of the morning within such a populated house!
nothing stirring but the faint, far-off noises in the kitchen--and she
alone, with the big blank walls about her, feeling like a prisoner, as
if she had been shut in to undergo some sentence. To be sure, in other
circumstances this was just the moment which Rose would have chosen to
be alone, and in which the recollection of the scene just ended, the
words which she had heard, the looks that had been bent upon her, ought
to have been enough to light up the dreariest place, and make her
unconscious of external pallor and vacancy. But although the warmest
sense of personal happiness which she had ever known in her life had
come upon the girl all unawares ere she came here, yet the circumstances
were so strange, and the complication of feeling so great, that all the
light seemed to die out of the landscape when Edward left her. This very
joy which had come to her so unexpectedly gave a different aspect to all
the rest of her story. To fly from a marriage which was disagreeable to
her, with no warmer wish than that of simply escaping from it, was one
thing; but to fly with the aid of a lover, who made the flight an
occasion of declaring himself, was another and very different matter.
Her heart sank while she thought of the story she had to tell. Should
she dare tell Miss Margetts about Edward? About Mr. Incledon it seemed
now simple enough.
Miss Margetts was a kind woman, or one of her “young ladies” would not
have thought of flying back to her for shelter in trouble; but she was
always a little rigid and “particular,” and when she heard Rose’s story
(with the careful exclusion of Edward) her mind was very much disturbed.
She was sorry for the girl, but felt sure that her mother must be in the
right, and trembled a little in the midst of her decorum, to consider
what the world would think if she was found to receive girls who set
themselves in opposition to their lawful guardians. “Was the gentleman
not nice?” she asked, doubtfully; “was he very old? were his morals not
what they ought to be? or has he any personal peculiarity which made him
unpleasant? Except in the latter case, when indeed one must judge for
one’s self, I think you might have put full confidence in your excellent
mother’s judgment.”
“Oh, it was not that; he is very good and nice,” said Rose, confused and
troubled. “It is not that I object to him; it is because I do not love
him. How could I marry him when I don’t care for him? But he is not a
man to whom anybody could object.”
“And he is rich, and fond of you, and not too old? I fear--I fear, my
dear child, you have been very inconsiderate. You would soon have
learned to love so good a man.”
“Oh, Miss Anne,” said Rose (for there were two sisters, and this was the
youngest), “don’t say so, please! I never could if I should live a
hundred years.”
“You will not live a hundred years; but you might have tried. Girls are
pliable; or at least people think so; perhaps my particular position in
respect to them makes me less sure of this than most people are. But
still, that is the common idea. You would have learned to be fond of him
if he were fond of you; unless, indeed”--
“Unless what?” cried Rose, intent upon suggestion of excuse.
“Unless,” said Miss Margetts, solemnly, fixing her with the penetrating
glance of an eye accustomed to command--“unless there is another
gentleman in the case--unless you have allowed another image to enter
your heart?”
Rose was unprepared for such an appeal. She answered it only by a scared
look, and hid her face in her hands.
“Perhaps it will be best to have some breakfast,” said Miss Margetts.
“You must have been up very early to be here so soon; and I dare say you
did not take anything before you started, not even a cup of tea?”
Rose had to avow this lack of common prudence, and try to eat docilely
to please her protector; but the attempt was not very successful. A
single night’s watching is often enough to upset a youthful frame not
accustomed to anything of the kind, and Rose was glad beyond description
to be taken to one of the little white-curtained chambers which were so
familiar to her, and left there to rest. How inconceivable it was that
she should be there again! Her very familiarity with everything made the
wonder greater. Had she never left that still, well-ordered place at
all? or what strange current had drifted her back again? She lay down on
the little white dimity bed, much too deeply affected with her strange
position, she thought, to rest; but ere long had fallen fast asleep,
poor child, with her hands clasped across her breast, and tears
trembling upon her eyelashes. Miss Margetts, being a kind soul, was
deeply touched when she looked into the room and found her so, and
immediately went back to her private parlor and scored an adjective or
two out of the letter she had written--a letter to Rose’s mother,
telling how startled she had been to find herself made unawares the
confidant of the runaway, and begging Mrs. Damerel to believe that it
was no fault of hers, though she assured her in the same breath that
every attention should be paid to Rose’s health and comfort. Mrs.
Damerel would thus have been very soon relieved from her suspense, even
if she had not received the despairing little epistle sent to her by
Rose. Of Rose’s note, however, her mother took no immediate notice. She
wrote to Miss Margetts, thanking her, and assuring her that she was only
too glad to think that her child was in such good hands. But she did not
write to Rose. No one wrote to Rose; she was left for three whole days
without a word, for even Wodehouse did not venture to send the glowing
epistles which he wrote by the score, having an idea that an
establishment for young ladies is a kind of Castle Dangerous, in which
such letters as his would never be suffered to reach their proper owner,
and might prejudice her with her jailers. These dreary days were dreary
enough for all of them: for the mother, who was not so perfectly assured
of being right in her mode of treatment as to be quite at ease on the
subject; for the young lover, burning with impatience, and feeling every
day to be a year; and for Rose herself, thus dropped into the stillness
away from all that had excited and driven her desperate. To be delivered
all at once out of even trouble which is of an exciting and stimulating
character, and buried in absolute quiet, is a doubtful advantage in any
case, at least to youth. Mr. Incledon bore the interval, not knowing all
that was involved in it, with more calm than any of the others. He was
quite amenable to Mrs. Damerel’s advice not to disturb the girl with
letters. After all, what was a week to a man secure of Rose’s company
for the rest of his life? He smiled a little at the refuge which her
mother’s care (he thought) had chosen for her--her former school! and
wondered how his poor little Rose liked it; but otherwise was perfectly
tranquil on the subject. As for poor young Wodehouse, he was to be seen
about the railway station, every train that arrived from London, and
haunted the precincts of the White House for news, and was as miserable
as a young man in love and terrible uncertainty--with only ten days in
which to satisfy himself about his future life and happiness--could be.
What wild thoughts went through his mind as he answered “yes” and “no”
to his mother’s talk, and dutifully took walks with her, and called with
her upon her friends, hearing Rose’s approaching marriage everywhere
talked of, and the “good luck” of the rector’s family remarked upon! His
heart was tormented by all these conversations, yet it was better to
hear them, than to be out of the way of hearing altogether. Gretna
Green, if Gretna Green should be feasible, was the only way he could
think of, to get delivered from this terrible complication; and then it
haunted him that Gretna Green had been “done away with,” though he could
not quite remember how. Ten days! and then the China seas for three long
years; though Rose had not been able to conceal from him that he it was
whom she loved, and not Mr. Incledon. Poor fellow! in his despair he
thought of deserting, of throwing up his appointment and losing all his
chances in life; and all these wild thoughts swayed upwards to a climax
in the three days. He determined on the last of these that he would bear
it no longer. He put a passionate letter in the post, and resolved to
beard Mrs. Damerel in the morning and have it out.
More curious still, and scarcely less bewildering, was the strange
trance of suspended existence in which Rose spent these three days. It
was but two years since she had left Miss Margetts’, and some of her
friends were there still. She was glad to meet them, as much as she
could be glad of anything in her preoccupied state, but felt the
strangest difference--a difference which she was totally incapable of
putting into words--between them and herself. Rose, without knowing it,
had made a huge stride in life since she had left their bare
school-room. I dare say her education might with much advantage have
been carried on a great deal longer than it was, and that her power of
thinking might have increased, and her mind been much improved, had she
been sent to college afterwards, as boys are, and as some people think
girls ought to be; but though she had not been to college, education of
a totally different kind had been going on for Rose. She had made a step
in life which carried her altogether beyond the placid region in which
the other girls lived and worked. She was in the midst of problems
which Euclid cannot touch, nor logic solve. She had to exercise choice
in a matter concerning other lives as well as her own. She had to decide
unaided between a true and a false moral duty, and to make up her mind
which was true and which was false. She had to discriminate in what
point Inclination ought to be considered a rule of conduct, and in what
points it ought to be crushed as mere self-seeking; or whether it should
not always be crushed, which was her mother’s code; or if it ought to
have supreme weight, which was her father’s practice. This is not the
kind of training which youth can get from schools, whether in Miss
Margetts’ establishment for young ladies, or even in learned Balliol.
Rose, who had been subjected to it, felt, but could not tell why, as if
she were years and worlds removed from the school and its duties. She
could scarcely help smiling at the elder girls with their “deep” studies
and their books, which were far more advanced intellectually than Rose.
Oh, how easy the hardest grammar was, the difficulties of Goethe, or of
Dante (or even of Thucydides or Perseus, but these she did not know), in
comparison with this difficulty which tore her asunder! Even the moral
and religious truths in which she had been trained from her cradle
scarcely helped her. The question was one to be decided for herself and
by herself, and by her for her alone.
And here is the question, dear reader, as the girl had to decide it.
Self-denial is the rule of Christianity. It is the highest and noblest
of duties when exercised for a true end. “Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.” Thus it has the
highest sanction which any duty can have, and it is the very life and
breath and essence of Christianity. This being the rule, is there one
special case excepted in which you ought not to deny yourself? and is
this case the individual one of Marriage? Allowing that in all other
matters it is right to sacrifice your own wishes, where by doing so you
benefit others, is it right to sacrifice your love and happiness in
order to please your friends, and make a man happy who loves you, but
whom you do not love? According to Mrs. Damerel this was so, and the
sacrifice of a girl who made a loveless marriage for a good purpose was
as noble as any other martyrdom for the benefit of country or family or
race. Gentle reader, if you do not skip the statement of the question
altogether, you will probably decide it summarily and wonder at Rose’s
indecision. But hers was no such easy way of dealing with the problem,
which I agree with her in thinking is much harder than anything in
Euclid. She was not by any means sure that this amount of self-sacrifice
was not a duty. Her heart divined, her very intellect felt, without
penetrating, a fallacy somewhere in the argument; but still the argument
was very potent and not to be got over. She was not sure that to listen
to Edward Wodehouse, and to suffer even an unguarded reply to drop from
her lips, was not a sin. She was far from being sure that in any case it
is safe or right to do what you like; and to do what you like in
contradiction to your mother, to your engagement, to your plighted
word--what could that be but a sin? She employed all her simple logic on
the subject with little effect, for in strict logic she was bound over
to marry Mr. Incledon, and now more than ever her heart resolved against
marrying Mr. Incledon.
This question worked in her mind, presenting itself in every possible
phase--now one side, now the other. And she dared not consult any one
near, and none of those who were interested in its solution took any
notice of her. She was left alone in unbroken stillness to judge for
herself, to make her own conclusion. The first day she was still
occupied with the novelty of her position--the fatigue and excitement of
leaving home, and of all that had occurred since. The second day she was
still strangely moved by the difference between herself and her old
friends, and the sense of having passed beyond them into regions unknown
to their philosophy, and from which she never could come back to the
unbroken tranquillity of a girl’s life. But on the third day the weight
of her strange position weighed her down utterly. She watched the
distribution of the letters with eyes growing twice their natural size,
and a pang indescribable at her heart. Did they mean to leave her alone
then? to take no further trouble about her? to let her do as she liked,
that melancholy privilege which is prized only by those who do not
possess it? Had Edward forgotten her, though he had said so much two
days ago? had her mother cast her off, despising her, as a rebel? Even
Mr. Incledon, was he going to let her be lost to him without an effort?
Rose had fled hoping (she believed) for nothing so much as to lose
herself and be heard of no more; but oh! the heaviness which drooped
over her very soul when for three days she was let alone! Wonder,
consternation, indignation, arose one after another in her heart. They
had all abandoned her. The lover whom she loved, and the lover whom she
did not love, alike. What was love then? a mere fable, a thing which
perished when the object of it was out of sight? When she had time to
think, indeed, she found this theory untenable, for had not Edward been
faithful to her at the other end of the world? and yet what did he mean
now?
On the third night Rose threw herself on her bed in despair, and sobbed
till midnight. Then a mighty resolution arose in her mind. She would
relieve herself of the burden. She would go to the fountain-head, to Mr.
Incledon himself, and lay the whole long tale before him. He was good,
he was just, he had always been kind to her; she would abide by what he
said. If he insisted that she should marry him, she must do so; better
that than to be thrown off by everybody, to be left for days or perhaps
for years alone in Miss Margetts’. And if he were generous, and decided
otherwise! In that case neither Mrs. Damerel nor any one else could have
anything to say--she would put it into his hands.
She had her hat on when she came down to breakfast next morning, and her
face, though pale, had a little resolution in it, better than the
despondency of the first three days. “I am going home,” she said, as the
school-mistress looked at her, surprised.
“It is the very best thing you can do, my dear,” said Miss Margetts,
giving her a more cordial kiss than usual. “I did not like to advise it;
but it is the very best thing you can do.”
Rose took her breakfast meekly, not so much comforted as Miss Margetts
had intended by this approval. Somehow she felt as if it must be against
her own interest since Miss Margetts approved of it, and she was in
twenty minds then not to go. When the letters came in she said to
herself that there could be none for her, and went and stood at the
window, turning her back that she might not see; and it was while she
was standing thus, pretending to gaze out upon the high wall covered
with ivy, that, in the usual contradiction of human affairs, Edward
Wodehouse’s impassioned letter was put into her hands. There she read
how he too had made up his mind not to bear it longer; how he was going
to her mother to have an explanation with her. Should she wait for the
result of this explanation, or should she carry out her own
determination and go?
“Come, Rose, I will see you safely to the station: there is a cab at the
door,” said Miss Margetts.
Rose turned round, her eyes dewy and moist with those tears of love and
consolation which refresh and do not scorch as they come. She looked up
timidly to see whether she might ask leave to stay; but the cab was
waiting, and Miss Margetts was ready, and her own hat on and intention
declared; she was ashamed to turn back when she had gone so far. She
said good-by accordingly to the elder sister, and meekly followed Miss
Anne into the cab. Had it been worth while winding herself up to the
resolution of flight for so little? Was her first experiment of
resistance really over, and the rebel going home, with arms grounded and
banners trailing? It was ignominious beyond all expression--but what was
she to do?
“My dear,” said Miss Margetts, in the cab, which jolted very much, and
now and then took away her breath, “I hope you are going with your mind
in a better frame, and disposed to pay attention to what your good
mother says. _She_ must know best. Try and remember this, whatever
happens. You ought to say it to yourself all the way down as a penance,
‘My mother knows best.’”
“But how can she know best what I am feeling?” said Rose. “It must be
myself who must judge of that.”
“You may be sure she knows a great deal more, and has given more thought
to it than you suppose,” said the school-mistress; “dear child, make me
happy by promising that you will follow her advice.”
Rose made no promise, but her heart sank as she thus set out upon her
return journey. It was less terrible when she found herself alone in the
railway carriage, and yet it was more terrible as she realized what
desperation had driven her to. She was going back as she went away, with
no question decided, no resolution come to, with only new complications
to encounter, without the expedient of flight, which could not be
repeated. Ought she not to have been more patient, to have tried to put
up with silence? That could not have lasted forever. But now she was
going to put herself back in the very heart of the danger, with no
ground gained, but something lost. Well! she said to herself, at least
it would be over. She would know the worst, and there would be no
further appeal against it. If happiness was over too, she would have
nothing to do in all the life before her--nothing to do but to mourn
over the loss of it, and teach herself to do without it; and suspense
would be over. She got out of the carriage, pulling her veil over her
face, and took an unfrequented path which led away across the fields to
the road near Whitton, quite out of reach of the Green and all its
inhabitants. It was a long walk, but the air and the movement did her
good. She went on swiftly and quietly, her whole mind bent upon the
interview she was going to seek. All beyond was a blank to her. This one
thing, evident and definite, seemed to fix and to clear her dazzled
eyesight. She met one or two acquaintances, but they did not recognize
her through her veil, though she saw them, and recollected them ever
after, as having had something to do with that climax and agony of her
youth; and thus Rose reached Whitton, with its soft, abundant summer
woods, and, her heart beating louder and louder, hastened her steps as
she drew near her destination, almost running across the park to Mr.
Incledon’s door.