‘Can I be so happy as to believe, then, that you had thought of me with some confidence, with some faith?’
‘If you didn’t suppose so, what is the sense of this visit?’ Rose asked.
‘One can be faithful without reciprocity,’ said the young man. ‘I regard you in a light which makes me want to protect you even if I have nothing to gain by it.’
‘Yet you speak as if you thought you might keep me for yourself.’
‘For yourself. I don’t want you to suffer.’
‘Nor to suffer yourself by my doing so,’ said Rose, looking down.
‘Ah, if you would only marry me next month!’ he broke out inconsequently.
‘And give up going to mamma?’ Rose waited to see if he would say ‘What need that matter? Can’t your mother come to us?’ But he said nothing of the sort; he only answered –
‘She surely would be sorry to interfere with the exercise of any other affection which I might have the bliss of believing that you are now free, in however small a degree, to entertain.’
Rose knew that her mother wouldn’t be sorry at all; but she contented herself with rejoining, her hand on the door: ‘Good-bye. I sha’n’t suffer. I’m not afraid.’
‘You don’t know how terrible, how cruel, the world can be.’
‘Yes, I do know. I know everything!’
The declaration sprang from her lips in a tone which made him look at her as he had never looked before, as if he saw something new in her face, as if he had never yet known her. He hadn’t displeased her so much but that she would like to give him that impression, and since she felt that she was doing so she lingered an instant for the purpose. It enabled her to see, further, that he turned red; then to become aware that a carriage had stopped at the door. Captain Jay’s eyes, from where he stood, fell upon this arrival, and the nature of their glance made Rose step forward to look. Her mother sat there, brilliant, conspicuous, in the eternal victoria, and the footman was already sounding the knocker. It had been no part of the arrangement that she should come to fetch her; it had been out of the question – a stroke in such bad taste as would have put Rose in the wrong. The girl had never dreamed of it, but somehow, suddenly, perversely, she was glad of it now; she even hoped that her grandmother and her aunt were looking out upstairs.
‘My mother has come for me. Good-bye,’ she repeated; but this time her visitor had got between her and the door.
‘Listen to me before you go. I will give you a life’s devotion,’ the young man pleaded. He really barred the way.
She wondered whether her grandmother had told him that if her flight were not prevented she would forfeit money. Then, vividly, it came over her that this would be what he was occupied with. ‘I shall never think of you – let me go!’ she cried, with passion.
Captain Jay opened the door, but Rose didn’t see his face, and in a moment she was out of the house. Aunt Julia, who was sure to have been hovering, had taken flight before the profanity of the knock.
‘Heavens, dear, where did you get your mourning?’ the lady in the victoria asked of her daughter as they drove away.
II
LADY MARESFIELD had given her boy a push in his plump back and had said to him, ‘Go and speak to her now; it’s your chance.’ She had for a long time wanted this scion to make himself audible to Rose Tramore, but the opportunity was not easy to come by. The case was complicated. Lady Maresfield had four daughters, of whom only one was married. It so happened moreover that this one, Mrs Vaughan-Vesey, the only person in the world her mother was afraid of, was the most to be reckoned with. The Honourable Guy was in appearance all his mother’s child, though he was really a simpler soul. He was large and pink; large, that is, as to everything but the eyes, which were diminishing points, and pink as to everything but the hair, which was comparable, faintly, to the hue of the richer rose. He had also, it must be conceded, very small neat teeth, which made his smile look like a young lady’s. He had no wish to resemble any such person, but he was perpetually smiling, and he smiled more than ever as he approached Rose Tramore, who, looking altogether, to his mind, as a pretty girl should, and wearing a soft white opera-cloak over a softer black dress, leaned alone against the wall of the vestibule at Covent Garden while, a few paces off, an old gentleman engaged her mother in conversation. Madame Patti had been singing, and they were all waiting for their carriages. To their ears at present came a vociferation of names and a rattle of wheels. The air, through banging doors, entered in damp, warm gusts, heavy with the stale, slightly sweet taste of the London season when the London season is overripe and spoiling.
Guy Mangler had only three minutes to re-establish an interrupted acquaintance with our young lady. He reminded her that he had danced with her the year before, and he mentioned that he knew her brother. His mother had lately been to see old Mrs Tramore, but this he did not mention, not being aware of it. That visit had produced, on Lady Maresfield’s part, a private crisis, engendered ideas. One of them was that the grandmother in Hill Street had really forgiven the wilful girl much more than she admitted. Another was that there would still be some money for Rose when the others should come into theirs. Still another was that the others would come into theirs at no distant date; the old lady was so visibly going to pieces. There were several more besides, as for instance that Rose had already fifteen hundred a year from her father. The figure had been betrayed in Hill Street; it was part of the proof of Mrs Tramore’s decrepitude. Then there was an equal amount that her mother had to dispose of and on which the girl could absolutely count, though of course it might involve much waiting, as the mother, a person of gross insensibility, evidently wouldn’t die of cold-shouldering. Equally definite, to do it justice, was the conception that Rose was in truth remarkably good-looking, and that what she had undertaken to do showed, and would show even should it fail, cleverness of the right sort. Cleverness of the right sort was exactly the quality that Lady Maresfield prefigured as indispensable in a young lady to whom she should marry her second son, over whose own deficiencies she flung the veil of a maternal theory that his cleverness was of a sort that was wrong. Those who knew him less well were content to wish that he might not conceal it for such a scruple. This enumeration of his mother’s views does not exhaust the list, and it was in obedience to one too profound to be uttered even by the historian that, after a very brief delay, she decided to move across the crowded lobby. Her daughter Bessie was the only one with her; Maggie was dining with the Vaughan-Veseys, and Fanny was not of an age. Mrs Tramore the younger showed only an admirable back – her face was to her old gentleman – and Bessie had drifted to some other people; so that it was comparatively easy for Lady Maresfield to say to Rose, in a moment: ‘My dear child, are you never coming to see us?’
‘We shall be delighted to come if you’ll ask us,’ Rose smiled.
Lady Maresfield had been prepared for the plural number, and she was a woman whom it took many plurals to disconcert. ‘I’m sure Guy is longing for another dance with you,’ she rejoined, with the most unblinking irrelevance.
‘I’m afraid we’re not dancing again quite yet,’ said Rose, glancing at her mother’s exposed shoulders, but speaking as if they were muffled in crape.
Lady Maresfïeld leaned her head on one side and seemed almost wistful. ‘Not even at my sister’s ball? She’s to have something next week. She’ll write to you.’
Rose Tramore, on the spot, looking bright but vague, turned three or four things over in her mind. She remembered that the sister of her interlocutress was the proverbially rich Mrs Bray, a bankeress or a breweress or a builderess, who had so big a house that she couldn’t fill it unless she opened her doors, or her mouth, very wide. Rose had learnt more about London society during these lonely months with her mother than she had ever picked up in Hill Street. The younger Mrs Tramore was a mine of commérages, and she had no need to go out to bring home the latest intelligence. At any rate Mrs Bray might serve as the end of a wedge. ‘Oh, I
daresay we might think of that,’ Rose said. ‘It would be very kind of your sister.’
‘Guy’ll think of it, won’t you, Guy?’ asked Lady Maresfïeld.
‘Rather!’ Guy responded, with an intonation as fine as if he had learnt it at a music hall; while at the same moment the name of his mother’s carriage was bawled through the place. Mrs Tramore had parted with her old gentleman; she turned again to her daughter. Nothing occurred but what always occurred, which was exactly this absence of everything – a universal lapse. She didn’t exist, even for a second, to any recognising eye. The people who looked at her – of course there were plenty of those – were only the people who didn’t exist for hers. Lady Maresfield surged away on her son’s arm.
It was this noble matron herself who wrote, the next day, enclosing a card of invitation from Mrs Bray and expressing the hope that Rose would come and dine and let her ladyship take her. She should have only one of her own girls; Gwendolen Vesey was to take the other. Rose handed both the note and the card in silence to her mother; the latter exhibited only the name of Miss Tramore. ‘You had much better go, dear,’ her mother said; in answer to which Miss Tramore slowly tore up the documents, looking with clear, meditative eyes out of the window. Her mother always said ‘You had better go’ – there had been other incidents – and Rose had never even once taken account of the observation. She would make no first advances, only plenty of second ones, and, condoning no discrimination, would treat no omission as venial. She would keep all concessions till afterwards; then she would make them one by one. Fighting society was quite as hard as her grandmother had said it would be; but there was a tension in it which made the dreariness vibrate – the dreariness of such a winter as she had just passed. Her companion had cried at the end of it, and she had cried all through; only her tears had been private, while her mother’s had fallen once for all, at luncheon on the bleak Easter Monday – produced by the way a silent survey of the deadly square brought home to her that every creature but themselves was out of town and having tremendous fun. Rose felt that it was useless to attempt to explain simply by her mourning this severity of solitude; for if people didn’t go to parties (at least a few didn’t) for six months after their father died, this was the very time other people took for coming to see them. It was not too much to say that during this first winter of Rose’s period with her mother she had no communication whatever with the world. It had the effect of making her take to reading the new American books: she wanted to see how girls got on by themselves. She had never read so much before, and there was a legitimate indifference in it when topics failed with her mother. They often failed after the first days, and then, while she bent over instructive volumes, this lady, dressed as if for an impending function, sat on the sofa and watched her. Rose was not embarrassed by such an appearance, for she could reflect that, a little before, her companion had not even a girl who had taken refuge in queer researches to look at. She was moreover used to her mother’s attitude by this time. She had her own description of it: it was the attitude of waiting for the carriage. If they didn’t go out it was not that Mrs Tramore was not ready in time, and Rose had even an alarmed prevision of their some day always arriving first. Mrs Tramore’s conversation at such moments was abrupt, inconsequent and personal. She sat on the edge of sofas and chairs and glanced occasionally at the fit of her gloves (she was perpetually gloved, and the fit was a thing it was melancholy to see wasted), as people do who are expecting guests to dinner. Rose used almost to fancy herself at times a perfunctory husband on the other side of the fire.
What she was not yet used to – there was still a charm in it – was her mother’s extraordinary tact. During the years they lived together they never had a discussion; a circumstance all the more remarkable since if the girl had a reason for sparing her companion (that of being sorry for her) Mrs Tramore had none for sparing her child. She only showed in doing so a happy instinct – the happiest thing about her. She took in perfection a course which represented everything and covered everything; she utterly abjured all authority. She testified to her abjuration in hourly ingenious, touching ways. In this manner nothing had to be talked over, which was a mercy all round. The tears on Easter Monday were merely a nervous gust, to help show she was not a Christmas doll from the Burlington Arcade; and there was no lifting up of the repentant Magdalen, no uttered remorse for the former abandonment of children. Of the way she could treat her children her demeanour to this one was an example; it was an uninterrupted appeal to her eldest daughter for direction. She took the law from Rose in every circumstance, and if you had noticed these ladies without knowing their history you would have wondered what tie was fine enough to make maturity so respectful to youth. No mother was ever so filial as Mrs Tramore, and there had never been such a difference of position between sisters. Not that the elder one fawned, which would have been fearful; she only renounced – whatever she had to renounce. If the amount was not much she at any rate made no scene over it. Her hand was so light that Rose said of her secretly, in vague glances at the past, ‘No wonder people liked her!’ She never characterised the old element of interference with her mother’s respectability more definitely than as ‘people’. They were people, it was true, for whom gentleness must have been everything and who didn’t demand a variety of interests. The desire to ‘go out’ was the one passion that even a closer acquaintance with her parent revealed to Rose Tramore. She marvelled at its strength, in the light of the poor lady’s history: there was comedy enough in this unquenchable flame on the part of a woman who had known such misery. She had drunk deep of every dishonour, but the bitter cup had left her with a taste for lighted candles, for squeezing up staircases and hooking herself to the human elbow. Rose had a vision of the future years in which this taste would grow with restored exercise – of her mother, in a long-tailed dress, jogging on and on and on, jogging further and further from her sins, through a century of the ‘Morning Post’ and down the fashionable avenue of time. She herself would then be very old – she herself would be dead. Mrs Tramore would cover a span of life for which such an allowance of sin was small. The girl could laugh indeed now at that theory of her being dragged down. If one thing were more present to her than another it was the very desolation of their propriety. As she glanced at her companion, it sometimes seemed to her that if she had been a bad woman she would have been worse than that. There were compensations for being ‘cut’ which Mrs Tramore too much neglected.
The lonely old lady in Hill Street – Rose thought of her that way now – was the one person to whom she was ready to say that she would come to her on any terms. She wrote this to her three times over, and she knocked still oftener at her door. But the old lady answered no letters; if Rose had remained in Hill Street it would have been her own function to answer them; and at the door, the butler, whom the girl had known for ten years, considered her, when he told her his mistress was not at home, quite as he might have considered a young person who had come about a place and of whose eligibility he took a negative view. That was Rose’s one pang, that she probably appeared rather heartless. Her aunt Julia had gone to Florence with Edith for the winter, on purpose to make her appear more so; for Miss Tramore was still the person most scandalised by her secession. Edith and she, doubtless, often talked over in Florence the destitution of the aged victim in Hill Street. Eric never came to see his sister, because, being full both of family and of personal feeling, he thought she really ought to have stayed with his grandmother. If she had had such an appurtenance all to herself she might have done what she liked with it; but he couldn’t forgive such a want of consideration for anything of his. There were moments when Rose would have been ready to take her hand from the plough and insist upon reintegration, if only the fierce voice of the old house had allowed people to look her up. But she read, ever so clearly, that her grandmother had made this a question of loyalty to seventy years of virtue. Mrs Tramore’s forlornness didn’t prevent her drawing-room from being a
very public place, in which Rose could hear certain words reverberate: ‘Leave her alone; it’s the only way to see how long she’ll hold out.’ The old woman’s visitors were people who didn’t wish to quarrel, and the girl was conscious that if they had not let her alone – that is if they had come to her from her grandmother – she might perhaps not have held out. She had no friends quite of her own; she had not been brought up to have them, and it would not have been easy in a house which two such persons as her father and his mother divided between them. Her father disapproved of crude intimacies, and all the intimacies of youth were crude. He had married at five-and-twenty and could testify to such a truth. Rose felt that she shared even Captain Jay with her grandmother; she had seen what he was worth. Moreover, she had spoken to him at that last moment in Hill Street in a way which, taken with her former refusal, made it impossible that he should come near her again. She hoped he went to see his protectress: he could be a kind of substitute and administer comfort.