Captain Wodehouse did not get admission to the White House that day until the afternoon. He was not to be discouraged, though the messages he got were of a depressing nature enough. “Mrs. Damerel was engaged, and could not see him; would he come later?” “Mrs. Damerel was still engaged—more engaged than ever.”
And while Mary Jane held the door ajar, Edward heard a voice raised high, with an indignant tone, speaking continuously, which was the voice of Mr. Incledon, though he did not identify it. Later still, Mrs. Damerel was still engaged; but, as he turned despairing from the door, Agatha rushed out, with excited looks, and with a message that if he came back at three o’clock her mother would see him.
“Rose has come home, and oh! there has been such a business!” Agatha whispered into his ear before she rushed back again. She knew a lover, and especially a favored lover, by instinct, as some girls do; but Agatha had the advantage of always knowing her own mind, and never would be the centre of any imbroglio, like the unfortunate Rose.
“Are you going back to the White House again?” said Mrs. Wodehouse. “I wonder how you can be so servile, Edward. I would not go, hat in hand, to any girl, if I were you; and when you know that she is engaged to another man, and he a great deal better off than you are! How can you show so little spirit? There are more Roses in the garden than one, and sweeter Roses, and richer, would be glad to have you. If I had thought you had so little proper pride, I should never have wished you to come here.”
“I don’t think I have any proper pride,” said Edward, trying to make a feeble joke of it; “I have to come home now and then to know what it means.”
“You were not always so poor-spirited,” said his mother; “it is that silly girl who has turned your head. And she is not even there; she has gone up to town to get her trousseau and choose her wedding silks, so they say; and you may be sure, if she is engaged like that, she does not want to be reminded of you.”
“I suppose not,” said Edward, drearily; “but as I promised to go back, I think I must. I ought at least to bid them good-by.”
“Oh! if that is all,” said Mrs. Wodehouse, pacified, “go, my dear; and mind you put the very best face upon it. Don’t look as if it were anything to you; congratulate them, and say you are glad to hear that any one so nice as Mr. Incledon is to be the gentleman. Oh! if I were in your place, I should know what to say! I should give Miss Rose something to remember. I should tell her I hoped she would be happy in her grand house, and was glad to hear that the settlements were everything they ought to be. She would feel that, you may be sure; for a girl that sets up for romance and poetry and all that don’t like to be supposed mercenary. She should not soon forget her parting with me.”
“Do you think I wish to hurt and wound her?” said Edward. “Surely not. If she is happy, I will wish her more happiness. She has never harmed me—no, mother. It cannot do a man any harm, even if it makes{101} him unhappy, to think of a woman as I think of Rose.”
“Oh! you have no spirit,” cried Mrs. Wodehouse; “I don’t know how a son of mine can take it so easily. Rose, indeed! Her very name makes my blood boil!”
But Edward’s blood was very far from boiling as he walked across the Green for the third time that day. The current of life ran cold and low in him. The fiery determination of the morning to “have it out” with Mrs. Damerel, and know his fate and Rose’s fate, had fallen into a despairing resolution at least to see her for the last time, to bid her forget everything that had passed, and try himself to forget. If her fate was sealed, and no longer in her own power to alter, that was all a generous man could do; and he felt sure, from the voices he had heard, and from the air of agitation about the house, and from Agatha’s hasty communication, that this day had been a crisis to more than himself. He met Mr. Incledon as he approached the house. His rival looked at him gravely without a smile, and passed him with an abrupt “good morning.” Mr. Incledon had not the air of a triumphant lover, and there was something of impatience and partial offence in his look as his eyes lingered for a moment upon the young sailor; so it appeared to Edward, though I think it was rather regret, and a certain wistful envy that was in Mr. Incledon’s eyes. This young fellow, not half so clever, or so cultivated, or so important as himself, had won the prize which he had tried for and failed. The baffled man was still disturbed by unusual emotion, but he was not ungenerous in his sentiments; but then the other believed that he himself was the failure, and that Mr. Incledon had succeeded, and interpreted his looks, as we all do, according to the commentary in our own minds. Edward went on more depressed than ever after this meeting. Just outside the White House he encountered Mr. Nolan, going out to walk with the children. “Now that the gale is over, the little boats are going out for a row,” said the curate, looking at him with a smile. It was not like Mr. Nolan’s usual good nature, poor Edward thought. He was ushered in at once to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Damerel sat in a great chair, leaning back, with a look of weakness and exhaustion quite out of keeping with her usual energy. She held out her hand to him without rising. Her eyes were red, as if she had been shedding tears, and there was a flush upon her face. Altogether, her appearance bewildered him; no one in the world had ever seen Mrs. Damerel looking like this before.
“I am afraid you will think me importunate, coming back so often,” he said, “but I felt that I must see you. Not that I come with much hope; but still it is better to know the very worst, if there is no good to hear.”
“It depends on what you think worst or best,” she said. “Mr. Wodehouse, you told me you were promoted—are captain now, and you have a ship?”
“Commander: and alas! under orders for China, with ten days’ more leave,” he said, with a faint smile; “though perhaps, on the whole, that may be best. Mrs. Damerel, may I not ask—for Rose? Pardon me for calling her so—I can’t think of her otherwise. If it is all settled and made up, and my poor chance over, may I not see her, only for a few minutes? If you think what a dismal little story mine has been—sent away without seeing her a year ago, then raised into sudden hope by our chance meeting the other morning, and now, I suppose, sentenced to banishment forever”—
“Stay a little,” she said; “I have had a very exciting day, and I am much worn out. Must you go in ten days?”
“Alas!” said Wodehouse, “and even my poor fortnight got with such difficulty—though perhaps on the whole it is better, Mrs. Damerel.”
“Yes,” she said, “have patience a moment; things have turned out very differently from what I wished. I cannot pretend to be pleased, scarcely resigned to what you have all done between you. You have nothing to offer my daughter, nothing! and she has nothing to contribute on her side. It is all selfish inclination, what you liked, not what was best, that has swayed you. You had not self-denial enough to keep silent; she had not self-denial enough to consider that this is not a thing for a day but for life; and the consequences, I suppose, as usual, will{102} fall upon me. All my life I have had nothing to do but toil to make up for the misfortunes caused by self-indulgence. Others have had their will and pleasure, and I have paid the penalty. I thought for once it might have been different, but I have been mistaken, as you see.”
“You forget that I have no clue to your meaning—that you are speaking riddles,” said Wodehouse, whose depressed heart had begun to rise and flutter and thump against his young breast.
“Ah; that is true,” said Mrs. Damerel, rising with a sigh. “Well, I wash my hands of it; and for the rest you will prefer to hear it from Rose rather than from me.”
He stood in the middle of the room speechless when she closed the door behind her, and heard her soft steps going in regular measure through the still house, as Rose had heard them once. How still it was! the leaves fluttering at the open window, the birds singing, Mrs. Damerel’s footsteps sounding fainter, his heart beating louder. But he had not very long to wait.
Mr. Nolan and the children went out on the river, and rowed up that long, lovely reach past Alfredsbury, skirting the bank, which was pink with branches of the wild rose and sweet with the feathery flowers of the Queen of the Meadows. Dick flattered himself that he pulled an excellent bow, and the curate, who loved the children’s chatter, and themselves, humored the boy to the top of his bent. Agatha steered, and felt it an important duty, and Patty, who had nothing else to do, leaned her weight over the side of the boat, and did her best to capsize it, clutching at the wild roses and the meadow-queen. They shipped their oars and floated down with the stream when they had gone as far as they cared to go, and went up the hill again to the White House in a perfect bower of wild flowers, though the delicate rose blossoms began to droop in the warm grasp of the children before they got home. When they rushed in, ............