ROSE ARRIVES
The surprises of life are sometimes to be counted amongst its
blessings. I daresay Reuben Goodenough, who is one of the most
religious men I have met--though I am puzzled to know where his
religion comes from, seeing that he rarely visits church or
chapel--would affirm that all life's incidents are to be regarded as
blessings. "All things work together for good," as "t' Owd Book" says.
He argued this point with me at considerable length one day, and though
he did not convince my head he secured the approval of my heart. He is
distinctly a philosopher after his kind, with the important advantage
that his philosophy is not too ethereal and transcendent, but designed
for everyday use. He professes to believe that there are no such
things as "misfortunes," and so takes each day's events calmly. For
the life of me I cannot see it, but I rather cling to the thought when
the untoward happens.
Be that as it may, the surprise which "struck me all of a heap," to use
a common expression of my neighbours, in the last week of June was a
blessing that one could count at the time.
It was evening, and I was standing in the garden among the roses and
pinks, engaged in removing the few weeds which had escaped Mother
Hubbard's observant eye, and pausing occasionally to wonder which I
admired the more--the stately irises in their magnificent and varied
robes, or the great crimson peonies which made a glorious show in one
corner--when the gate was pushed open, and an elegant young lady, in a
smart, tailor-made costume and a becoming toque, glided towards me. I
took another look and gasped for breath.
"Well, Grace," said the apparition, holding out a neatly gloved hand,
"one would say that you were astonished to see me."
"Rose, you darling!" I ejaculated, "come and kiss me this minute, and
show me which particular cloud has dropped you at my feet! My dear
girl, you have stunned me, and I feel that I must pinch you to see if
you are really flesh and blood."
"If there is to be any pinching, my dear Grace, _I_ prefer to do it.
It will prove my corporeal existence just as conclusively, and be less
painful--to me. So this is Windyridge?"
"Rose!" I exclaimed, "for goodness' sake don't be so absurdly practical
and commonplace, but tell me why you have come, and where you are
staying, and how everybody is at old Rusty's, and how long you are
going to be in the north, and all about yourself, and--and--everything."
"All that will take time," replied Rose calmly, as she removed her
gloves; "but I will answer the more important parts of your questions.
I am staying here, with you. If you are very nice and kind to me you
will press me to remain ten days with you, and I shall yield to
pressure, after the customary formal and insincere protests. Then you
will put on your hat and walk with me down to Fawkshill station, and as
there are no cabs to be had there we will bring up my bag between us."
"_That_ we need not do," I said. "There are half a dozen strong boys
in the village, any one of whom would fetch your belongings for love of
me and threepence of your money."
"Happy Grace!" she sighed; "'love rules the court, the camp, the
grove,' as saith the poet. Be it even so. Summon the favoured swain,
discharge his debt, and I will be in thine."
"Rose! Rose! you are the same incorrigible, pert, saucy girl as of
yore, but you have filled my heart with joy. I am treading on air and
giddy with delight. We will have ten days of undiluted rapture. Come
inside and look round my home. Mother Hubbard is 'meeting for tickets'
to-night, and will not be back for a good half-hour."
"Meeting for what?" inquired Rose blankly.
"Meeting for tickets," I repeated. "My dear old lady is a Methodist
class leader, and to 'meet for tickets' is a shibboleth beyond your
untutored comprehension. But the occasion is one of vast importance to
her, and you are not to make fun of her."
She was pleased with everything and expressed her pleasure readily. In
spite of her composed manner she is a very dear girl indeed, and though
she is years younger than I am she and I always hit it exactly. When
she saw the tiny bed and realised that we should have to share it she
laughed merrily.
"_I_ will sleep next to the wall to-night," she said, "because I am
very tired, and it would be annoying to be always falling out. I shall
sleep so soundly that your bumping the floor will not disturb me, so
you will have nothing to worry about. Then to-morrow night I will take
the post of danger, and so alternately."
"We might rope ourselves together," I suggested, "and fasten the ends
to a stake outside the window. I don't think the bumping idea appeals
to me."
But Mother Hubbard planned a better way on her return, and contrived a
simple and ingenious addition to the width of the bed by means of
chairs and pillows, which served our purpose admirably.
Over the supper table Rose told us all about her visit. "You see, I
have not been quite the thing lately: nervy and irritable and that sort
of nonsense, which the chief charitably construed into an indication of
ill-health. He was awfully decent about it and suggested that I should
see a doctor. I told him I was all right, but he insisted, so I saw
Dr. Needham, and he told me I was run down and required bracing air.
'Mountain air would be better than the seaside,' he said. 'You haven't
friends in Scotland or Yorkshire, I suppose?' Then I thought of you.
'I have a friend who went wrong in her head about twelve months ago,' I
said (or words to that effect), 'and she ran away to the Yorkshire
moors. She might take me in if I could get off.' 'The very thing,' he
said. 'Will you have any difficulty with your employer?'
"'I don't think so,' I replied; 'not if it is really necessary. The
chief is a discriminating man, and I believe realises that my services
are invaluable, and he will put up with a little temporary
inconvenience in order to retain them permanently, I imagine.' You are
accustomed to my modesty, Grace, and will not be surprised that I spoke
with humility.
"Well, he smiled and said he would give me a certificate, so I took the
certificate and my departure and interviewed the chief in his den! It
was as I had anticipated. I was to get away at once. Ten days on the
moors would put the wine of life into my blood. That was theory. The
practical assumed the form of a five-pound note, which enables me to
play the part of the grand lady--a role for which I was designed by
nature, but which providence spitefully denied me. I stated my
intentions to the Rusty one, who coldly sent you her regards, but I
determined to take you by surprise, hoping to catch you unprepared and
unadorned, whereas you are neither the one nor the other. Then I
boarded the two o'clock Scotch express at St. Pancras, changed trains
at Airlee, and _me voila_! By the way, what about my bag?"
The bag came all right in due course, and in the days that followed
Rose and I gave ourselves up to enjoyment. It was like living one's
life twice over to share the delight she showed in her surroundings.
Fortunately I had got abreast of my work, and we ordinarily devoted our
afternoons to business and spent the mornings and evenings in Nature's
wonderland.
During those ten glorious days the sun worked overtime for our special
benefit, and put in seventeen hours with unfailing regularity. He
smiled so fiercely on Rose's cheeks that she would have justified her
godmother's choice if she had not preferred the hue of the berry, and
turned a rich chestnut.
Mowing was in full swing in the meadows, and we took our forks and
tossed the hay about and drank barley-water with the rest. We followed
the men whose heads were lost in the loads of hay which they carried on
their backs, and saw how they dropped their burden in the haymow. We
stood like children, open-mouthed, admiring the skill and industry of
the man who there gathered it up and scattered it evenly round and
round the mow.
We went into Reuben Goodenough's farmyard, and I showed her the barn
owls which have taken up their abode in his pigeon loft, and which live
amicably with their hosts and feed on mice. We descended the fields to
the woods, which the recent felling has thinned considerably, but which
have all the rank luxuriance of summer, and revelled amid the bracken
and trailing roses. We stood by the streamlet where the green
dragon-flies flitted in the sunshine, and where millions of midges
hovered in the air to become the prey of the swallows which rushed
through with widely open mouths and took their fill without effort.
We spent hours on the moor, where the heather, alas! had not yet
appeared, but which was a perfect storehouse of novelties and marvels.
Who would have thought, for instance, that the little golden bundles
which cling to the furze, and which we thought were moss, were just so
many colonies of baby spiders? We watched the merlins, the fierce
cannibals of the moors, which dash upon the smaller birds and are even
bold enough to attack the young grouse at times. What did we not do!
Where did we not go! And neither of us suffered from surfeit.
"Grace," said Rose, as we lay on our backs in my paddock, and gazed
upon the white cumulus clouds which floated above, "I withdraw all I
have said about your madness, and I now declare you to be particularly
sane. If ever I go back to town, which is doubtful, I will describe
your sanity in terms which will relieve the fears of all at No. 8. My
personal appearance will give colour to my statements, and I shall
probably observe, with the originality which is a mark of genius, that
God made the country and man made the town. But I have not yet decided
to return, although I took a ten days' ticket. Your studio seems to
have served its purpose: is there any opening in Windyridge for a
talented stenographer and typist?"
"The prospects would not appear to be exactly dazzling," I replied,
"but I'm willing to keep you here on the off-chance that something may
turn up."
"Some_body_'s turning up," said Rose, hurriedly assuming a sitting
posture, "and we had better get up."
I imitated her example, and saw that the Cynic had leaped the wall and
was coming towards us.
I did the necessary introductions and we sat down again. "I called,"
said the Cynic, "in the hope that there might be a clock to regulate or
a creeper to nail up, in which case I might earn a cup of tea. Also,
to make arrangements for my photograph."
"I couldn't expect you to do any work in those clothes," I replied.
"Is this a visit of ceremony, or have you come in your Sunday best in
order to have your portrait taken? All my local sitters insist upon
putting on the clothes in which they feel and look the least
comfortable."
"No," he said, with a glance at his black trousers--the rest of him was
hidden by a light dust-coat--"the fact is, I am dining with the vicar
and spending the night at the vicarage. I must go to town on Saturday,
but to-day and to-morrow are free. I propose, with your gracious
permission, to spend an hour here, walk on to Fawkshill, and return
to-morrow for the dread operation to which I have referred."
"I am afraid it will not be convenient to-morrow," I said; "really I am
very sorry to upset your plans, but Miss Fleming returns to town on
Saturday, and we have promised ourselves a full day on the moors. Of
course, if you could come very early----"
Rose interrupted. "Don't let me hinder business, my dear Grace, or I
shall have you on my conscience, and that will be no light burden. We
can modify our arrangements, of course."
"What about my conscience, in that case?" said the Cynic. "I am not
really very particular about the photograph, especially in my 'Sunday
best,' and I can easily come up some other day. But--who is going to
carry the luncheon basket?"
"There is no basket," I returned; "our arrangements are much more
primitive, and the burden grows lighter as the day proceeds. Moreover,
I don't think it is very nice of you to suggest that the photograph is
of slight importance. Don't you realise that it is my living?"
"I realise the truth of the poet's assertion that woman is 'uncertain,
coy, and hard to please.' A moment ago you were declining
business--declining it with an air of polite regret, it is true, but
quite emphatically. Now, when I not only refuse to disturb your
arrangements, but actually hint an offer of assistance, you scent a
grievance."
Rose was looking very hard at me, and I felt vexed with the man for
placing me in such an awkward position. And to make matters worse the
consciousness of Rose's stare upset my self-possession, and it was she
who spoke first.
"If Mr. Derwent would join us I think it would be very nice," she said,
so demurely that I stared at her in my turn, "and it would be
an--education for him. And he certainly could carry the sandwiches and
our wraps, which are a bit of a nuisance."
What could I say? I was annoyed, but I could only mutter something
incoherent which my companions construed into an assent, and Rose
instructed the Cynic to be at the cottage at ten o'clock in the morning.
To add to my confusion, Mother Hubbard was manifestly excited when we
went in to tea, and she telegraphed all sorts of meaning messages to
Rose when the Cynic's back was turned. I was cross with myself for
becoming embarrassed, but I hate to be placed in a false position.
What on earth is the Cynic to me?
I thought he was rather subdued and not quite as satirical as usual,
but he was obviously very much taken with Rose, who was quite brilliant
in her cuts and thrusts. She soon took the Cynic's measure, and I saw
how keenly he enjoyed the encounter. I left them to it very largely,
much to the disappointment of Mother Hubbard, who developed a series of
short, admonitory coughs, and pressed my foot beneath the table a score
of times in a vain effort to induce me to shine. It was not my "night
out," and her laudable endeavours simply resulted in a sore foot--the
injured member being mine!
We accompanied him a little way along the road, and when we left him
Rose turned upon me:
"Now 'fess!" she said.
"Rose, don't be a goose!" I replied, whilst the stupid colour flooded
my face; "there is nothing to confess. I have seen Mr. Derwent only
twice before in my life. He is little more than a stranger to me."
"A remarkable circumstance, however, my dear Grace, is that you have
never mentioned his name in your rather voluminous correspondence, and
yet you seem to be on familiar and even friendly terms; and our good
friend Mother Hubbard----"
"Mother Hubbard, Rose, is romantic. The moment the man turned up at
Easter she designated him as my lover. Let me be quite candid with
you. If I was not so constituted that blushing comes as naturally to
me as to a ripe cherry you would have had no reason to suspect
anything. It is the innocent, I would remind you, who blush and look
guilty. Mr. Derwent is a barrister--a friend of the vicar and of the
squire--and he amuses himself by calling here when he is in the
village--that is all. And if you are going to be as silly as Mother
Hubbard it is too bad of you."
I felt this was frightfully weak and unconvincing, as the truth so
often is.
"U-m!" said Rose, spreading the ejaculation over ten seconds; "I see.
Then there's nothing more to be said about it. He isn't a bad sort, is
he? Why in the world you never mentioned him in your letters I cannot
conceive."
It was too bad of Rose.