"IT IS ALL A MESS!"
It fell hard upon Rose to have to meet Joseph again so immediately
after the passage she had gone through with Gilbert Roe--to pass, with
scarce a pause in which to brace herself together, from the lover of
her youth into the presence of the man to whom she had chosen to
transfer her regard. She had fooled herself in her pique into the
belief that she had trodden down and stamped out the last spark of
kindness for the husband who had been, as she told herself, so hard
and cruel and insulting--the man who could let her untie their
marriage bond, without showing a sign or offering a word of
remonstrance. He was nothing to her now--she had been saying it within
herself ever since their separation--or if anything, only her
aversion. She had been persuading herself that she was an injured
woman, and that it was righteous resentment which she had been nursing
against the unfeeling tyrant who had blighted her early wifehood. She
had resolved that she would never speak to him again, nor even name
him; that she would pluck out the very memory of her first and foolish
love--have done with him for ever, and begin anew. (As if our past,
the foundation of our present, could ever be obliterated!)
When he forced himself upon her so unexpectedly, the anger smouldering
through her year of unmolested separation, the regret and
disappointment grown sour in concealment and suppression, and turned
by silence and defeated pride into what had seemed an inextinguishable
hatred, had burst into a flame of fiercest indignation. It had burst
into flame, but how pitifully soon it had burnt low! It had been but a
fire of straw, blazing up for a moment and sinking as quickly as it
rose; leaving nothing behind, nothing but the emptiness of separation.
The grievances and wrongs and barriers piled up so high between them,
where were they gone to? Vanished utterly away. There had been a
leaping flame and a whirling puff of smoke, and the ground was clear
between them--clear save for the ashes of happiness destroyed for
ever! And there she stood, naked and exposed before her own eyes and
his, stripped of her false pretexts, a vain and headstrong fool, who
in very wantonness had made bonfire of their wedded happiness!
And yet her indignation had seemed so just, her wrongs so deep and
unforgivable! How speedily her wrath had oozed away before a few
words! words not of contrition, scarce even of reproach, but only
common-sense, and spoken by the old dear voice! Where were the bitter
memories now? How could she be so false to herself? Where was her
pride?--that stanch support against which she had been wont to set her
back, ready to outface the world? It had bent and broken, like a
worthless reed, before a few words of the man against whom she had
invoked its aid. "Bertie!" She had resolved to obliterate the memory
of that name; and yet it had passed her lips, and the old caressing
sweetness of the sound was in her ears, and would not go away.
It was not half an hour since the mere sight of him had hardened her
with hate, and made her feel strong, if yet unhappy. Now, she was weak
as water. If she had stayed, she would have given way and yielded--she
could not tell to what--but to anything the old sweet strong influence
in that voice had chosen to command her. But she had escaped, and she
was still free, and she would keep her liberty, whatever it might cost
her peace. At least she thought so.
What would they say, those sympathising friends who had come to her in
her conflict, with their well-meant phrases of support, and told her
she had done so wisely, and shown so brave a spirit? What would they
say to see her lower the lance and go back again to the bondage of her
tyrant? How could she face their pity at her weakness? And then there
were the others, who had disapproved of her conduct--had advised her
to submit, yield something, and make it up; and when she would not,
had turned away from knowing her. They would call her repentant, and
perhaps would turn again to countenance her reformation! That would be
more intolerable even than the pitying surprise of her stancher
friends. No; she must follow out the road she had entered on. There
could be no returning upon the lost steps. And she had so nearly
yielded. It startled her to find she was so weak. She must build a
barrier between the old life and the new, which could neither be
surmounted nor thrown down.
Joseph was close upon her now. He had not been very long away, but he
did not seem in her eyes exactly as he had seemed before. It was not
half an hour that he had been gone, yet he looked more ordinary than
she had supposed him. The redundancy of waistcoat, or rather of waist,
offended her sense of symmetry as it had not done before; and if he
had been just a little taller! Bertie was six-feet-one, and gracefully
slim, and chestnut-haired, while the other's locks were darkening, as
the leaves grow dark before the autumn tints begin to light them up
with the rustiness that comes before decay. It was the difference
between thirty and forty-seven. What a fool she was to notice such
things, and at such a time, when the very contrary was what she would
have wished to notice! She told herself so with vehemence, and bit her
lip, as if that would make her mind it better; but she went on
noticing all the same. When the eye has been turned for a little on
the sun, what a poor, dim, purblind thing does the light of a candle
afterwards appear!
Joseph came on with swinging elastic strides, impatient to be with
her, irradiated with a joyful pride, and beaming on her with smiles of
confidence irrepressible.
"If he would only have been tranquil!" she thought. This exuberance
seemed so utterly out of place. It was a discord in the bland and
half-parental warmth which, she told herself, would have been correct
in view of their disparity of age. "It was bad taste. There was even
an element of ridicule in a venerable Cupid of forty-seven exerting
himself to gambol before her like one of those boy Loves with wings
the artists picture. She had not thought so half an hour ago, but we
live and change so quickly at times. He was too solid for that sort of
thing, and she felt sorry to see him attempt it, for she really
respected and liked him."
"You grew tired of waiting, Rose?"
"Why would he call her by her name just then?" she asked herself,
forgetting that he had been doing so habitually for a week past, and
that she had encouraged him to do it.
"And came to meet me? Forgive me, dearest. I could not help it. Your
own disinclination to be kept waiting, must plead for my impatience to
get my little parcel, that I might present it. I made the hotel people
promise to send it after us, if it should arrive this forenoon. It has
come, but the express man would not part with it till I had signed the
receipt. Then the rascal went to refresh himself, and I had quite a
hunt to find him. However, it is all right now. Shall we turn back and
get under the shadow of the trees?"
"As you like," Rose answered, a little dully.
Joseph tore off the wrappings of his parcel as they walked along,
laying bare the little ring-case. He opened it, and the merry little
stones within, catching the sunbeams, cast them back in a dazzling
gleam beyond his expectation.
Rose saw and shuddered. The glancing ray seemed to pierce her with a
cold sharp pang, like the thrust of steel. It was the token of her
engagement; and that, of a sudden, and without her being aware of an
alteration in her mind, had grown distasteful.
"And now, my dearest, will you let me fit it in its place. It is not
worthy your acceptance; but then, what is? Still it is pretty, is it
not? And seeing that you were kind enough to accept myself, you will
let me slip on my ring. It is an earnest of the other you have
promised to let me give you."
"Not now, Mr----dear Joseph, I mean." How unreadily his name came to
her lips! and half an hour since she had used it freely--had even
liked to use it in a very friendly way, as leading up to the more
intimate connection which was to be established between them. What a
rift between the now and then!
"Do you not like it, dear?" Joseph asked, in a disappointed tone. "I
said it was not worthy either of your acceptance or of my love; but
still, I confess I thought it pretty, and I hoped you would have worn
it."
"Oh, as to that--yes, by all means. It is a lovely ring, the very
handsomest I ever saw. Any one might feel proud to wear it on its own
merits; but you know how whimsical we women are. It is a whim which I
have taken, that I will not put on a ring to-day."
"Let me persuade you out of it, dearest. Let me overbear the whim." He
took her hand in his, drew off the glove, and reverently pressed his
lips upon the fingers, while she stood looking listlessly and sadly in
his face. He took the engagement-finger and attempted to slip on the
ring without more ado; but at the touch of it Rose started and drew
away her hand with a shrinking cry, while Joseph strove to retain it,
and still attempted to slip on the ring.
"It must not be, at least not yet a while, Joseph. I have something
which I must tell you, that will make a difference between us. It
would be unfair to you not to tell you in time, what may influence
your feelings with regard to an engagement between us. And meanwhile,
I give you back your promise, that you may be free to do as you will,
after you have heard me."
"You shall not give it back, Rose. I will not accept it. And more, I
hold _you_ to your promise still. Nothing which you can tell me will
induce me to give you back yours."
"Not if you heard dreadful things against me?"
"I would not believe them. I know you too well for that. What do you
take me for?"
"I take you for a noble-minded man. It is that which troubles me. I am
not worth your caring for."
"You are my own, a part of my very self."
"You would not say so if you knew--that I have been married
before!--if you were told that I am a divorced woman!"
"I would not believe them."
"But it is true."
"What a villain the man must have been!--what a fool!--to cast away
the flower he was unworthy to have worn! But, my poor darling, if this
is so, you have the deeper need of my protecting care."
"But it was I who divorced--him!"
"You have been cruelly used, then. Ah, what you must have suffered! It
shall be all the more my care to make you forget your unhappiness.
Forget it you shall. Let's say no more about it."
"But I must. You do not know how poor a thing you have anchored your
heart to--how fickle and headstrong and vain a creature I have been! I
petitioned for a divorce from my husband."
"And you got it. Is not that a proof that you were in the right?--when
the law granted your demand? What you must have come through! But it
shall be mine to make you forget."
"He--filed no rejoinder, as they call it He let the law take its
course."
"He did not, because he could not. The law has relieved you from an
unworthy mate. Forget it, my poor darling. Forget _him_. We have the
future before us. Forget all the past."
"He refused to plead; but I am not so sure that he could not have
pleaded successfully if he had chosen to do it. My petition was an
outrage to him."
"Do not think it. A woman is not driven to take such a step without
sufficient grounds."
"That is what the judge said; but--ah me!--I do not know."
"What has called up these morbid fancies in your mind, Rose? You were
cheerful an hour ago."
"He--has spoken to me. When you were gone he came to me--and things
seem different now. I am not so sure that I was right, as I used to
be."
"The sneaking villain! Who is he? Where is he? To come molesting the
woman he has wronged, so soon as my back was turned! Kicking is too
good for such a hound. Where is he?"
"You must not ask. What would people say of me, if you and he were to
meet?... But I am upset; my head is splitting. I do not know what I am
saying, or what I do. I will go back to the village inn and lie down."
"We can drive back to Clam Beach. No one will miss us. Come."
"I want to be alone, and think. Do not come with me. Yonder is Lettice
Deane; bring me to her, and then let me leave you."
Lettice was following her own amusement in her own way. She was
holding a kind of auction of her smiles as she walked upon the sands
between Mr Sefton and Peter Wilkie, who vied with each other to
engross her attention, flashing speeches across her, to her infinite
diversion, in their efforts to extinguish one another. It was amusing,
but she cared nothing for either, and was mischievously ready to
disgust them both alike, by yielding to Rose's petition for her
company back to the village.
"Is your head _very_ bad, Rose, dear?" she asked, full of sympathy, as
soon as they were alone. "It must be, to take you away from him so
soon after his present. Or is it a sort of necessary discipline?--in
case of his growing too confident on the head of it? Let me see it.
Everybody knows that the express man was sent after you here. What!
you have not put it on yet? I declare, I think you are rigorous. You
owed him the satisfaction of seeing you wear it, I think, seeing how
much it cost."
"I have not got it. I could not accept it to-day. I have been trying
to have an explanation and tell him everything. He--the other--dropped
upon me suddenly when I was alone and not expecting him, and we
talked--and, oh Lettice! I am in a maze. What am I to do? It seems to
be I won't and I will with me, all the time. I can't do both, and I
won't do either. I am distracted, Lettice. I must go to bed and try to
think."
"Who-o-o----!" Lettice could not whistle as some girls can; but that
long-drawn masculine expression of--of everything at once--of the fat
having fallen in the fire, with general loss, trouble, and confusion,
seemed the only adequate and appropriate one for the occasion, and she
framed her lips and voice to the nearest equivalent.
"And what will you do, dear?" she said, after a considerable pause.
"Don't bother me with questions, Lettie. I do not know in the very
least. I shall go to bed, and try to sleep, and to forget everything.
If one could only forget for always! How good it would be! I am in a
mess. And all from having my way, and getting everything I thought I
wanted. It is all a mess! an irretrievable muddle. Whatever I may do,
it will be sure to be wrong. Oh Lettie! take warning in time; and
don't let your little tempers run away with you, as mine have done
with me."