“Rose! is it possible?” he cried. She was standing in the midst of that
great, luxurious, beautiful drawing-room, of which he hoped she was to
be the queen and mistress, her black dress breaking harshly upon all the
soft harmony of neutral tints around. Her face, which he saw in the
glass as he entered the room, was framed in the large veil which she had
thrown back over her hat, and which drooped down on her shoulders on
either side. She was quite pale--her cheeks blanched out of all trace of
color, with something of that chilled and spiritual light which
sometimes appears in the colorless clearness of the sky after a storm.
Her eyes were larger than usual, and had a dilated, exhausted look. Her
face was full of a speechless, silent eagerness--eagerness which could
wait, yet was almost beyond the common artifices of concealment. Her
hands were softly clasped together, with a certain eloquence in their
close pressure, supporting each other. All this Mr. Incledon saw in the
glass before he could see her; and, though he went in with lively and
joyful animation, the sight startled him a little. He came forward,
however, quite cheerfully, though his heart failed him, and took the
clasped hands into his own.
“I did not look for such a bright interruption to a dull morning,” he
said; “but what a double pleasure it is to see you here! How good of you
to come to bring me the happy news of your return!”
“Mr. Incledon,” she said hastily, “oh! do not be glad--don’t say I am
good. I have come to you first without seeing mamma. I have come to say
a great deal--a very great deal--to you; and to ask--your advice--and if
you will tell me--what to do.”
Her voice sank quite low before these final words were said.
“My darling,” he said, “you are very serious and solemn. What can you
want advice about? But whatever it is, you have a right to the very best
I can give you. Let me hear what the difficulty is. Here is a chair for
you--one of your own choice, the new ones. Tell me if you think it
comfortable; and then tell me what this terrible difficulty is.”
“Oh, don’t take it so lightly,” said Rose, “please don’t. I am very,
very unhappy, and I have determined to tell everything and to let you
judge me. You have the best right.”
“Thanks for saying so,” he said, with a smile, kissing her hand. He
thought she meant that as she was so surely his, it was naturally his
part to think for her and help her in everything. What so natural? And
then he awaited her disclosure, still smiling, expecting some innocent
dilemma, such as would be in keeping with her innocent looks. He could
not understand her, nor the gravity of the appeal to him which she had
come to make.
“Oh, Mr. Incledon!” cried Rose, “if you knew what I meant, you would not
smile--you would not take it so easily. I have come to tell you
everything--how I have lied to you and been a cheat and a deceiver. Oh!
don’t laugh! you don’t know--you don’t know how serious it is!”
“Nay, dear child,” he said, “do you want to frighten me? for if you do,
you must think of something more likely than that you are a cheat and
deceiver. Come now, I will be serious--as serious as a judge. Tell me
what it is, Rose.”
“It is about you and me,” she said suddenly, after a little pause.
“Ah!”--this startled him for the first time. His grasp tightened upon
her hand; but he used no more endearing words. “Go on,” he said, softly.
“May I begin at the beginning? I should like to tell you everything.
When you first spoke to me, Mr. Incledon, I told you there was some
one”--
“Ah!” cried Mr. Incledon again, still more sharply, “he is here now. You
have seen him since he came back?”
“It is not that,” said Rose. “Oh! let me tell you from the beginning. I
said then that he had never said anything to me. I could not tell you
his name because I did not know what his feelings were--only my own, of
which I was ashamed. Mr. Incledon, have patience with me a little. Just
before he went away he came to the rectory to say good-by. He sent up a
message to ask me to come down, but mamma went down instead. Then his
mother sent me a little note, begging me to go to bid him good-by. It
was while papa was ill; he held my hand, and would not let me. I begged
him, only for a minute; but he held my hand and would not let me go. I
had to sit there and listen, and hear the door open and shut, and then
steps in the hall and on the gravel, and then mamma coming slowly back
again, as if nothing had happened, up-stairs and along the corridor. Oh!
I thought she was walking on my heart!”
Rose’s eyes were so full that she did not see how her listener looked.
He held her hand still, but with his disengaged hand he partially
covered his face.
“Then after that,” she resumed, pausing for breath, “all our trouble
came. I did not seem to care for anything. It is dreadful to say it--and
I never did say it till now--but I don’t think I felt so unhappy as I
ought about poor papa; I was so unhappy before. It did not break my
heart as grief ought to do. I was only dull--dull--miserable, and did
not care for anything; but then everybody was unhappy; and there was
good reason for it, and no one thought of me. It went on like that till
you came.”
Here he stirred a little and grasped her hand more tightly. What she had
said hitherto had not been pleasant to him; but yet it was all before he
had made his appearance as her suitor--all innocent, visionary--the very
romance of youthful liking. Such an early dream of the dawning any man,
even the most rigid, might forgive to his bride.
“You came--oh! Mr. Incledon, do not be angry--I want to tell you
everything. If it vexes you and hurts you, will you mind? You came; and
mamma told me that same night. Oh, how frightened I was and miserable!
Everything seemed to turn round with me. She said you loved me, and that
you were very good and very kind,--but that I knew,--and would do so
much for the boys, and be a comfort and help to her in our great
poverty.” At these words he stirred again and loosened, but did not
quite let go, his grasp of her hand. Rose was, without knowing it,
acting like a skilful surgeon, cutting deep and sharp, that the pain
might be over the sooner. He leaned his head on his other hand, turning
it away from her, and from time to time stirred unconsciously when the
sting was too much for him, but did not speak. “And she said more than
this. Oh, Mr. Incledon! I must tell you everything, as if you were my
own heart. She told me that papa had not been--considerate for us, as
he should have been; that he liked his own way and his own pleasure
best; and that I was following him--that I was doing the same--ruining
the boys’ prospects and prolonging our great poverty, because I did not
want to marry you, though you had promised to help them and set
everything right.”
Mr. Incledon dropped Rose’s hand; he turned half away from her,
supporting his head upon both of his hands, so that she did not see his
face. She did not know how cruel she was, nor did she mean to be cruel,
but simply historical, telling him everything, as if she had been
speaking to her own heart.
“Then I saw you,” said Rose, “and told you--or else I thought I told
you--and you did not mind, but would not, though I begged you, give up.
And everything went on for a long, long time. Sometimes I was very
wretched; sometimes my heart felt quite dull, and I did not seem to mind
what happened. Sometimes I forgot for a little while--and oh! Mr.
Incledon, now and then, though I tried very hard, I could not help
thinking of--him. I never did when I could help it; but sometimes when I
saw the lights on Ankermead, or remembered something he had said--And
all this time mamma would talk to me of people who prefer their own will
to the happiness of others; of all the distress and misery it brought
when we indulged ourselves and our whims and fancies; of how much better
it was to do what was right than what we liked. My head got confused
sometimes, and I felt as if she was wrong, but I could not put it into
words; for how could it be right to deceive a good man like you--to let
you give your love for nothing, and marry you without caring for you?
But I am not clever enough to argue with mamma. Once, I think, for a
minute, I got the better of her; but when she told me that I was
preferring my own will to everybody’s happiness, it went to my heart,
and what could I say? Do you remember the day when it was all settled at
last and made up?”
This was more than the poor man could bear. He put up one hand with a
wild gesture to stop her, and uttered a hoarse exclamation; but Rose was
too much absorbed in her story to stop.
“The night before I had gone down into the rectory garden, where he and
I used to talk, and there I said good-by to him in my heart, and made a
kind of grave over him, and gave him up for ever and ever--oh! don’t you
know how?” said Rose, the tears dropping on her black dress. “Then I was
willing that it should be settled how you pleased; and I never, never
allowed myself to think of him any more. When he came into my head, I
went to the school-room, or I took a hard bit of music, or I talked to
mamma, or heard Patty her lessons. I would not, because I thought it
would be wicked to you, and you so good to me, Mr. Incledon. Oh! if you
had only been my brother, or my--cousin (she had almost said, father or
uncle, but by good luck forbore), how fond I should have been of
you!--and I am fond of you,” said Rose, softly, proffering the hand
which he had put away, and laying it gently upon his arm.
He shook his head, and made a little gesture as if to put it off, but
yet the touch and the words went to his heart.
“Now comes the worst of all,” said Rose. “I know it will hurt you, and
yet I must tell you. After that there came the news of uncle Ernest’s
death; and that he had left his money to us, and that we were well off
again--better than we had ever been. Oh, forgive me! forgive me!” she
said, clasping his arm with both her hands, “when I heard it, it seemed
to me all in a moment that I was free. Mamma said that all the
sacrifices we had been making would be unnecessary henceforward; what
she meant was the things we had been doing--dusting the rooms, putting
the table straight, helping in the house--oh! as if these could be
called sacrifices! But I thought she meant me. You are angry--you are
angry!” said Rose. “I could not expect anything else. But it was not
you, Mr. Incledon; it was that I hated to be married. I could not--could
not make up my mind to it. I turned into a different creature when I
thought that I was free.”
The simplicity of the story disarmed the man, sharp and bitter as was
the sting and mortification of listening to this too artless tale. “Poor
child! poor child!” he murmured, in a softer tone, unclasping the
delicate fingers from his arm; and then, with an effort, “I am not
angry. Go on; let me hear it to the end.”
“When mamma saw how glad I was, she stopped it all at once,” said Rose,
controlling herself. “She said I was just the same as ever--always
self-indulgent, thinking of myself, not of others--and that I was as
much bound as ever by honor. There was no longer any question of the
boys, or of help to the family; but she said honor was just as much to
be considered, and that I had pledged my word”--
“Rose,” quietly said Mr. Incledon, “spare me what you can of these
discussions--you had pledged your word?”
She drew away half frightened, not expecting the harsher tone in his
voice, though she had expected him to “be angry,” as she said. “Forgive
me,” she went on, subdued, “I was so disappointed that it made me wild.
I did not know what to do. I could not see any reason for it now--any
good in it; and, at last, when I was almost crazy with thinking, I--ran
away.”
“You ran away?”--Mr. Incledon raised his head, indignant. “Your mother
has lied all round,” he said, fiercely; then, bethinking himself, “I beg
your pardon. Mrs. Damerel no doubt had her reasons for what she said.”
“There was only one place I could go to,” said Rose, timidly, “Miss
Margetts’, where I was at school. I went up to the station for the early
train that nobody might see me. I was very much frightened. Some one was
standing there; I did not know who he was--he came by the train, I
think; but after I had got into the carriage he came in after me. Mr.
Incledon! it was not his fault, neither his nor mine. I had not been
thinking of him. It was not for him, but only not to be married--to be
free”--
“Of me,” he said, with a bitter smile; “but in short, you met, whether
by intention or not--and Mr. Wodehouse took advantage of his
opportunities?”
“He told me,” said Rose, not looking at Mr. Incledon, “what I had known
ever so long without being told; but I said nothing to him; what could I
say? I told him all that had happened. He took me to Miss Margetts’, and
there we parted,” said Rose, with a momentary pause and a deep sigh.
“Since then I have done nothing but think and think. No one has come
near me--no one has written to me. I have been left alone to go over and
over it all in my own mind. I have done so till I was nearly mad, or at
least, everything seemed going round with me and everything confused,
and I could not tell what was right and what was wrong. Oh!” cried Rose,
lifting her head in natural eloquence, with eyes which looked beyond
him, and a certain elevation and abstraction in her face, “I don’t think
it is a thing in which only right and wrong are to be considered. When
you love one and do not love another, it must mean something; and to
marry unwillingly, that is nothing to content a man. It is a wrong to
him; it is not doing right; it is treating him unkindly, cruelly! It is
as if he wanted you, anyhow, like a cat or a dog; not as if he wanted
you worthily, as his companion.” Rose’s courage failed her after this
little outburst; her high looks came down, her voice sank and faltered,
her head drooped. She rose up, and clasping her hands together, went on
in low tones: “Mr. Incledon, I am engaged to you; I belong to you. I
trust your justice and your kindness more than anything else. If you say
I am to marry you, I will do it. Take it now into your own hands. If I
think of it any more I will go mad; but I will do whatever you say.”
He was walking up and down the room, with his face averted, and with
pain and anger and humiliation in his heart. All this time he had
believed he was leading Rose towards the reasonable love for him which
was all he hoped for. He had supposed himself in almost a lofty
position, offering to this young, fresh, simple creature more in every
way than she could ever have had but for him--a higher position, a love
more noble than any foolish boy-and-girl attachment. To find out in a
moment how very different the real state of the case had been, and to
have conjured up before him the picture of a martyr-girl, weeping and
struggling, and a mother “with a host of petty maxims preaching down her
daughter’s heart,” was intolerable to him. He had never been so
mortified, so humbled in all his life. He walked up and down the room in
a ferment, with that sense of the unbearable which is so bitter.
Unbearable!--yet to be borne somehow; a something not to be ignored or
cast off. It said much for Rose’s concluding appeal that he heard it at
all, and took in the meaning of it in his agitation and hot, indignant
rage; but he did hear it, and it touched him. “If you say I am to marry
you, I will do it.” He stopped short in his impatient walk. Should he
say it--in mingled despite and love--and keep her to her word? He came
up to her and took her clasped hands within his, half in anger, half in
tenderness, and looked her in the face.
“If I say you are to marry me, you will do it? You pledge yourself to
that? You will marry me if I please?”
“Yes,” said Rose, very pale, looking up at him steadfastly. She neither
trembled nor hesitated. She had gone beyond any superficial emotion.
Then he stooped and kissed her with a passion which was rough--almost
brutal. Rose’s pale face flushed, and her slight figure wavered like a
reed; but she neither shrank nor complained. He had a right to dictate
to her--she had put it into his hands. The look of those large, innocent
eyes, from which all conflict had departed, which had grown abstract in
their wistfulness, holding fast at least by one clear duty, went to his
heart. He kept looking at her, but she did not quail. She had no thought
but her word, and to do what she had said.
“Rose,” he said, “you are a cheat, like all women. You come to me with
this face, and insult me and stab me, and say then you will do what I
tell you, and stand there, looking at me with innocent eyes like an
angel. How could you find it in your heart--if you have a heart--to tell
me all this? How dare you put that dainty little cruel foot of yours
upon my neck, and scorn and torture me--how dare you, how dare you!”
There came a glimmer into his eyes, as if it might have been some
moisture forced up by means beyond his control, and he held her hands
with such force that it seemed to Rose he shook her, whether willingly
or not. But she did not shrink. She looked up at him, her eyes growing
more and more wistful, and though he hurt her, did not complain.
“It was that you might know all the truth,” she said, almost under her
breath. “Now you know everything and can judge--and I will do as you
say.”
He held her so for a minute longer, which seemed eternity to Rose; then
he let her hands drop, and turned away.
“It is not you who are to blame,” he said, “not you, but your mother,
who would have sold you. Good God! do all women traffic in their own
flesh and blood?”
“Do not say so!” cried Rose, with sudden tears; “you shall not! I will
not hear it! She has been wrong; but that was not what she meant.”
Mr. Incledon laughed--his mood seemed to have changed all in a moment.
“Come Rose,” he said, “perhaps it is not quite decorous for you, a young
lady, to be here alone. Come! I will take you to your mother, and then
you shall hear what I have got to say.”
She walked out of the great house by his side as if she were in a dream.
What did he mean? The suspense became terrible to her; for she could not
guess what he would say. Her poor little feet twisted over each other
and she stumbled and staggered with weakness as she went along beside
him--stumbled so much that he made her take his arm, and led her
carefully along, with now and then a kind but meaningless word. Before
they entered the White House, Rose was leaning almost her whole weight
upon his supporting arm. The world was swimming and floating around, the
trees going in circles, now above, now below her, she thought. She was
but half conscious when she went in, stumbling across the threshold, to
the little hall, all bright with Mr. Incledon’s flowers. Was she to be
his, too, like one of them--a flower to carry about wherever he went,
passive and helpless as one of the plants--past resistance, almost past
suffering? “I am afraid she is ill; take care of her, Agatha,” said Mr.
Incledon to her sister, who came rushing open-mouthed and open-eyed;
and, leaving her there, he strode unannounced into the drawing-room to
meet the real author of his discomfiture, an antagonist more worthy of
his steel and against whom he could use his weapons with less
compunction than against the submissive Rose.
Mrs. Damerel had been occupied all the morning with Mr. Nolan, who had
obeyed her summons on the first day of Rose’s flight, but whom she had
dismissed when she ascertained where her daughter was, assuring him that
to do nothing was the best policy, as indeed it had proved to be. The
curate had gone home that evening obedient; but moved by the electrical
impulse which seemed to have set all minds interested in Rose in motion
on that special day, had come back this morning to urge her mother to go
to her or to allow him to go to her. Mr. Nolan’s presence had furnished
an excuse to Mrs. Damerel for declining to receive poor young Wodehouse,
who had asked to see her immediately after breakfast. She was discussing
even then with the curate how to get rid of him, what to say to him, and
what it was best to do to bring Rose back to her duty. “I can’t see so
clear as you that it’s her duty, in all the circumstances,” the curate
had said doubtfully. “What have circumstances to do with a matter of
right and wrong--of truth and honor?” cried Mrs. Damerel. “She must keep
her word.” It was at this precise moment of the conversation that Mr.
Incledon appeared; and I suppose she must have seen something in his
aspect and the expression of his face that showed some strange event had
happened. Mrs. Damerel gave a low cry, and the muscles of Mr. Incledon’s
mouth were moved by one of those strange contortions which in such cases
are supposed to do duty for a smile. He bowed low, with a mock
reverence, to Mr. Nolan, but did not put out his hand.
“I presume,” he said, “that this gentleman is in the secret of my
humiliation, as well as the rest of the family, and that I need not
hesitate to say what I have to say before him. It is pleasant to think
that so large a circle of friends interest themselves in my affairs.”
“What do you mean?” said Mrs. Damerel. “Your humiliation! Have you
sustained any humiliation? I do not know what you mean.”
“Oh! I can make it very clear,” he said, with the same smile. “Your
daughter has been with me; I have just brought her home.”
“What! Rose?” said Mrs. Damerel, starting to her feet; but he stopped
her before she could make a step.
“Do not go,” he said; “It is more important that you should stay here.
What have I done to you that you should have thus humbled me to the
dust? Did I ask you to sell her to me? Did I want a wife for hire?
Should I have authorized any one to persecute an innocent girl, and
drive her almost mad for me? Good heavens, for me! Think of it, if you
can. Am I the sort of man to be forced on a girl--to be married as a
matter of duty? How dared you--how dared any one insult me so!”
Mrs. Damerel, who had risen to her feet, sank into a chair, and covered
her face with her hands. I do not think she had ever once taken into
consideration this side of the question.
“Mr. Incledon,” she stammered, “you have been misinformed; you are
mistaken. Indeed, indeed, it is; not so.”
“Misinformed!” he cried; “mistaken! I have my information from the very
fountain-head--from the poor child who has been all but sacrificed to
this supposed commercial transaction between you and me, which I disown
altogether for my part. I never made such a bargain, nor thought of it.
I never asked to buy your Rose. I might have won her, perhaps,” he
added, calming himself with an effort, “if you had let us alone, or I
should have discovered at once that it was labor lost. Look here. We
have been friends, and I never thought of you till to-day but with
respect and kindness. How could you put such an affront on me?”
“Gently, gently,” said Mr. Nolan, growing red; “you go too far, sir. If
Mrs. Damerel has done wrong, it was a mistake of the judgment, not of
the heart.”
“The heart!” he cried, contemptuously; “how much heart was there in it?
On poor Rose’s side, a broken one; on mine, a heart deceived and
deluded. Pah! do not speak to me of hearts or mistakes; I am too deeply
mortified--too much wronged for that.”
“Mr. Incledon,” said Mrs. Damerel, rising, pale yet self-possessed, “I
may have done wrong, as you say; but what I have done, I did for my
child’s advantage and for yours. You were told she did not love you, but
you persevered; and I believed, and believe still, that when she knew
you better--when she was your wife--she would love you. I may have
pressed her too far; but it was no more a commercial transaction--no
more a sale of my daughter”--she said, with a burning flush coming over
her face--“no more than I tell you. You do me as much wrong as you say I
have done you--Rose! Rose!”
Rose came in followed by Agatha, with her hat off, which showed more
clearly the waste which emotion and fatigue, weary anxiety, waiting,
abstinence, and mental suffering had worked upon her face. She had her
hands clasped loosely yet firmly, in the attitude which had become
habitual to her, and a pale smile like the wannest of winter sunshine on
her face. She came up very quietly, and stood between the two like a
ghost. Agatha said, who stood trembling behind her.
“Mamma, do not be angry,” she said, softly; “I have told him everything,
and I am quite ready to do whatever he decides. In any case, he ought to
know everything, for it is he who is most concerned--he and I.”