Edward Wodehouse reached Dinglefield about eleven o’clock, coming back from that strange visit to town. He felt it necessary to go to the White House before even he went to his mother, but he was so cowardly as to go round a long way so as to avoid crossing the Green, or exhibiting himself to public gaze. He felt that his mother would never forgive him did she know that he had gone anywhere else before going to her, and, indeed, I think Mrs. Wodehouse’s feeling was very natural. He put his hat well over his eyes, but he did not, as may be supposed, escape recognition—and went on with a conviction that the news of his arrival would reach his mother before he did, and that he would have something far from delightful to meet with when he went home.
As for Mrs. Damerel, when she woke up in the morning to the fact that Rose was gone, her first feelings, I think, were more those of anger than of alarm. She was not afraid that her daughter had committed suicide, or run away permanently; for she was very reasonable, and her mind fixed upon the probabilities of a situation rather than on the violent catastrophes which might be possible. It was Agatha who first brought her the news, open-mouthed, and shouting the information, “Oh, mamma, come here, come here, Rose has run away!” so that every one in the house could hear.
“Nonsense, child! she has gone—to do something for me,” said the mother on the spur of the moment, prompt to save exposure even at the instant when she received the shock.
“But, mamma,” cried Agatha, “her bed has not been slept in, her things are gone—her”—
Here Mrs. Damerel put her hand over the girl’s mouth, and with a look she never forgot went with her into the empty nest, from which the bird had flown. All Mrs. Damerel’s wits rallied to her on the moment to save the scandal which was inevitable if this were known. “Shut the door,” she said in a low quiet voice. “Rose is very foolish: because she thinks she has quarrelled with me, to make such a show of her undutifulness! She has gone up to town by the early train.”
“Then you knew!” cried Agatha, with eyes as wide open as just now her mouth had been.
“Do you think it likely she would go without my knowing?” said her mother; an unanswerable question, for which Agatha, though her reason discovered the imposture, could find no ready response. She looked on with wonder while her mother, with her own hands, tossed the coverings off the little white bed, and gave it the air of having been slept in. It was Agatha’s first lesson in the art of making things appear as they are not.
“Rose has been foolish; but I don’t choose that Mary Jane should make a talk about it, and tell everybody that she did not go to bed last night like a Christian—and do you hold your tongue,” said Mrs. Damerel.
Agatha followed her mother’s directions with awe, and was subdued all day by a sense of the mystery; for why, if mamma knew all about it, and it was quite an ordinary proceeding, should Rose have gone to town by the early train?
Mrs. Damerel, however, had no easy task to get calmly through the breakfast, and arrange her household matters for the day, with this question perpetually recurring to her, with sharp thrills and shoots of pain—Where was Rose? She had been angry at first, deeply annoyed and vexed,{85} but now other feelings struck in. An anxiety, which did not suggest any definite danger, but was dully and persistently present in her mind, like something hanging over her, took possession of her whole being. Where had she gone? What could she be doing at that moment? What steps could her mother take to find out, without exposing her foolishness to public gaze? How should she satisfy Mr. Incledon? how conceal this strange disappearance from her neighbors? They all took what people are pleased to call “a deep interest” in Rose, and, indeed, in all the late rector’s family; and Mrs. Damerel knew the world well enough to be aware that the things which one wishes to be kept secret, are just those which everybody manages to hear. She forgot even to be angry with Rose in the deep necessity of concealing the extraordinary step she had taken; a step enough to lay a young girl under an enduring stigma all her life; and what could she do to find her without betraying her? She could not even make an inquiry without risking this betrayal. She could not ask a passenger on the road, or a porter at the station, if they had seen her, lest she should thereby make it known that Rose’s departure had been clandestine. All through the early morning, while she was busy with the children and the affairs of the house, this problem was working in her mind. Of all things this was the most important, not to compromise Rose, or to let any one know what a cruel and unkind step she had taken. Mrs. Damerel knew well how such a stigma clings to a girl, and how ready the world is to impute other motives than the real one. Perhaps she had been hard upon the child, and pressed a hateful sacrifice upon her unduly, but now Rose’s credit was the first thing she thought of. She would not even attempt to get relief to her own anxiety at the cost of any animadversion upon Rose; or suffer anybody to suspect her daughter in order to ease herself. This necessity made her position doubly difficult and painful, for, without compromising Rose, she did not know how to inquire into her disappearance or what to do; and, as the moments passed over with this perpetual undercurrent going on in her mind, the sense of painful anxiety grew stronger and stronger. Where could she have gone? She had left no note, no letter behind her, as runaways are generally supposed to do. She had, her mother knew, only a few shillings in her purse; she had no relations at hand with whom she could find refuge. Where had she gone? Every minute this question pressed more heavily upon her, and sounded louder and louder. Could she go on shutting it up in her mind, taking counsel of no one? Mrs. Damerel felt this to be impossible, and after breakfast sent a telegram to Mr. Nolan, begging him to come to her “on urgent business.” She felt sure that Rose had confided some of her troubles at least to him; and he was a friend upon whose help and secrecy she could fully rely.
Her mind was in this state of intense inward perturbation and outward calm, when, standing at her bedroom window, which commanded the road and a corner of the Green, upon which the road opened, she saw Edward Wodehouse coming towards the house. I suppose there was never any one yet in great anxiety and suspense, who did not go to the window with some sort of forlorn hope of seeing something to relieve them. She recognized the young man at once, though she did not know of his arrival, or even that he was looked for; and the moment she saw him instantly gave him a place—though she could not tell what place—in the maze of her thoughts. Her heart leaped up at sight of him, though he might be but walking past, he might be but coming to pay an ordinary call on his return, for anything she knew. Instinctively, her heart associated him with her child. She watched him come in through the little shrubbery, scarcely knowing where she stood, so intense was her suspense; then went down to meet him, looking calm and cold, as if no anxiety had ever clouded her firmament. “How do you do, Mr. Wodehouse? I did not know you had come back,” she said, with perfect composure, as if he had been the most every-day acquaintance, and she had parted from him last night.
He looked at her with a countenance much paler and more agitated than her own, and, with that uneasy air of deprecation natural to a man who has a confession to make. “No{86} one did; or, indeed, does,” he said, “not even my mother. I got my promotion quite suddenly, and insisted upon a few days’ leave to see my friends before I joined my ship.”
“I congratulate you,” said Mrs. Damerel, putting heroic force upon herself. “I suppose, then, I should have said Captain Wodehouse? How pleased your mother will be!”
“Yes,” he said, abstractedly. “I should not, as you may suppose, have taken the liberty to come here so early merely to tell you a piece of news concerning myself. I came up from Portsmouth during the night, and when the train stopped at this station—by accident—Miss Damerel got into the same carriage in which I was. She charged me with this note to give to you.”
There was a sensation in Mrs. Damerel’s ears as if some sluice had given way in the secrecy of her heart, and the blood was surging and swelling upwards. But she managed to smile a ghastly smile at him, and to take the note without further display of her feelings. It was a little twisted note written in pencil, which Wodehouse, indeed, had with much trouble persuaded Rose to write. Her mother opened it with fingers trembling so much that the undoing of the scrap of paper was a positive labor to her. She dropped softly into a chair, however, with a great and instantaneous sense of relief, the moment she had read these few pencilled words:—
“Mamma, I have gone to Miss Margetts’. I am very wretched, and don’t know what to do. I could not stay at home any longer. Do not be angry. I think my heart will break.”
Mrs. Damerel did not notice these pathetic words. She saw “Miss Margetts,” and that was enough for her. Her blood resumed its usual current, her heart began to beat less violently. She felt, as she leant back in her chair, exhausted and weak with the agitation of the morning; weak as one only feels when the immediate pressure is over. Miss Margetts was the school-mistress with whom Rose had received her education. No harm to Rose, nor her reputation, could come did all the world know she was there. She was so much and instantaneously relieved, that her watchfulness over herself intermitted, and she did not speak for a minute or two. She roused herself up with a little start when she caught Wodehouse’s eye gravely fixed upon her.
“Thanks,” she said; “I am glad to have this little note, telling me of Rose’s safe arrival with her friends in London. It was very good of you to bring it. I do not know what put it into the child’s head to go by that early train.”
“Whatever it was, it was very fortunate for me,” said Edward. “As we had met by such a strange chance I took the liberty of seeing her safe to Miss Margetts’ house.”
“You are very good,” said Mrs. Damerel; “I am much obliged to you;” and then the two were silent for a moment, eying each other like wrestlers before they close.
“Mrs. Damerel,” said young Wodehouse, faltering, and brave sailor as he was, feeling more frightened than he could have said, “there is something more which I ought to tell you. Meeting her so suddenly, and remembering how I had been balked in seeing her before I left Dinglefield, I was overcome by my feelings, and ventured to tell Miss Damerel”—
“Mr. Wodehouse, my daughter is engaged to be married!” cried Mrs. Damerel, with sharp and sudden alarm.
“But not altogether—with her own will,” he said.
“You must be mistaken,” said the mother, with a gasp for breath. “Rose is foolish, and changes with every wind that blows. She cannot have intended to leave any such impression on your mind. It is the result, I suppose of some lovers’ quarrel. As this is the case, I need not say that though under any circumstances, I should deeply have felt the honor you do her yet, in the present, the only thing I can do is to say good mornin............