“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.”{95}
“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{96} 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{97} 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,............