PR 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 

 DATE DUE 
 
 
 crD-^-rT 
 
 170 V 
 
 
 
 >IA-! u 7 
 
 rht r 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTEDINU.S.A. 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 PR 6023.U159R7 
 
 Rose and Rose. 
 
 3 1924 013 642 644 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013642644 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 
 
OTHER WORKS BY E. V. LUCAS 
 
 Vereha in the Midst 
 
 Thb Vermilion Box 
 
 Landmarks 
 
 Listener's Lore 
 
 Mr. Ingleside 
 
 Over Bemerton's 
 
 London Lavender 
 
 Cloud and Silver 
 
 A BoswELL OF Baghdad 
 
 'TwixT Eagle and Dove 
 
 The Phantom Journal 
 
 Loiterer's Harvest 
 
 One Day and Another 
 
 Fireside and Sunshine 
 
 Character and Comedy 
 
 Old Lamps for New 
 
 The Hahbleoon Men 
 
 The Open Road 
 
 The Friendly Town 
 
 Her Infinite Variety 
 
 Good Coupany 
 
 The Gentlest Art 
 
 The Second Post 
 
 London Revisited 
 
 A Wanderer in Venice 
 
 A Wanderer in Paris 
 
 A Wanderer in London 
 
 A Wanderer in Holland 
 
 A Wanderer in Florence 
 
 Roving East and Roving West 
 
 The British School 
 
 Highways and Byways in Sussex 
 
 Anne's Terrible Good Nature 
 
 The Slowcoach 
 
 The Life of Charles Lamb 
 and 
 
 The Pocket Edition of the Works op 
 Charles Lamb : i. Miscellaneous 
 Prose ; n. Elia ; m. Children's 
 Books ; iv. Poems and Plays ; v. and 
 VI. Letters, 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 E. V. LUCAS 
 
 METHUEN & CO. LTD. 
 
 36 ESSEX STREET W.G. 
 
 LONDON 
 
Firtt PMithed in ifn 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 FIFTY years ago, when I was a young 
 medical student, I was in the habit of 
 spending as many week-ends as possible at 
 home with my father, to whose practice I was 
 one day to succeed. 
 
 On a certain Saturday the only other occupants 
 of the railway compartment were an artist and his 
 wife. I knew him to be an artist from certain 
 scraps of his conversation that I overheard, but 
 I should have guessed it also on the evidence of 
 his hands and dress. I don't mean that he wore 
 a black velvet tam-o'-shanter and trousers tight 
 at the ankles, as in plays ; but his hands were 
 eloquent, and there was a general careless ease 
 about his tweeds that suggested the antipodes of 
 any commercial or anxious calling. 
 
 After a while he turned to me and asked if I 
 knew the town of Lowcester. 
 
 I said that I had lived in the nejighbourhood — 
 at Bullingham, five miles away^ — all my life. 
 
 " We are going to spend a few days at the 
 Crown at Lowcester," he said, " looking about to 
 try and find a house." 
 
 1 1 
 
2 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " There's a very good house at BuUingham," I 
 said : " just empty. Jolly garden too. As a 
 matter of fact it adjoins ours. My father's the 
 doctor." 
 
 "Next door to the doctor," said the lady, 
 speaking now for the first time. " That would be 
 a great convenience." 
 
 One resxilt of this chance meeting was that they 
 took the house and we became friends ; another 
 was the general shaping of my life ; and a third 
 is this narrative, the fruit of an old man's egoism 
 and leisure. 
 
 I don't put my own case as an example to the 
 medical profession, but you can't deny there is a 
 kind of fitness in it : it is surely more proper than 
 not that the doctor who presides at the birth of 
 a child should continue to take an interest in 
 that child throughout its life. Being born is, 
 after all, something of an event, and he who assists 
 in that adventure and helps to introduce a new 
 soul (not to mention a new body) to this already 
 overcrowded and over-comphcated planet of ours, 
 ought to be counted as something a little more 
 important than a jobbing gardener, say, or any 
 other useful ally that the householder calls in. 
 For no matter how mechanical his serAdces, he is 
 also an instrument of destiny. 
 
 None the less, if accoucheurs were expected to 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 3 
 
 follow the fortunes of every new arrival from the 
 cradle to the grave one of two things would happen : 
 either the medical profession would disappear 
 for want of recruits, or home life (with the addition 
 of the semi-parental doctor intervening between 
 father and mother) would become more difficult 
 than it already is. Perhaps then it is as well 
 that the man-with-the-black-bag remains the 
 piano-tuner that he more or less appears to be. 
 But I shall continue to believe that so tremendous 
 an affair as a birth should carry more fatefulness 
 with it ; althpugh for the weU-being of patients 
 I can see that it is better that doctors should be 
 machines rather than sympathetic temperaments. 
 Good Heavens ! if we were not so mechanical 
 into what sentimental morasses should we land 
 ourselves ! 
 
 All this, however, is more or less irrelevant and 
 too much concerned with myself. But you will 
 find that preoccupation, I fear, throughout this 
 story, such as it is. I commenced author, you 
 see, at a time of life when it is not easy to keep 
 to the point or exclude garrulity. When one does 
 not take to writing until one is over seventy — 
 I shall be seventy-one this year, 1920 — ^readers 
 must expect a certain want of business-like adroitr 
 ness. Had you known me in the days when I 
 was in practice, before I was established on the 
 shelf, you would have found me, I hope, direct and 
 forcible and relevant enough. The stethoscope 
 was mightier than the pen. 
 
4 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 Still, there is more relevance than perhaps you 
 would think, for I am coming to a case where the 
 doctor and the newly-born established an intimacy 
 that was destined to grow and to endure through 
 life. For, as it chanced, my father died very 
 soon after I was qualified, and when our new neigh- 
 bours, the Allinsons, became parents, it was I who 
 was called in to assist. I was then twenty-seven. 
 Circumstances of personal friendship and contiguity 
 alone might have promoted a closer association 
 than is customary between the babe and the 
 intermediary ; but the controlling factors were 
 the death of the mother, after which many of the 
 decisions which a mother would have to make 
 devolved on me ; and Rose's delicate little body, 
 which caused her during her early years to need 
 fairly constant watching. The result was that 
 until a certain unexpected event happened she 
 moved about almost exclusively between her 
 father's house and mine, and was equally at home 
 in both. But even with such a beginning it never 
 crossed my mind that the strands of our fate were 
 to be so interwoven. 
 
 Rose's father was a landscape painter of rather 
 more than independent means : sufficient at any 
 rate to make it possible for him to seek loveliness 
 in no matter how distant a land. He had sketches 
 which he had made all over Europe, in Morocco, 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 5 
 
 in Egypt, in Japan. But France was his favourite 
 hunting ground, partly, I think, because he liked 
 the comments of the French peasants who stood 
 behind his easel better than those of any other 
 critic. 
 
 Artists, even when they are pooi*, are enviable 
 men. They live by enjoyment — ^their work is 
 fun — ^for even if the unequal struggle to persuade 
 pigments to reproduce nature fills them with despair, 
 they are still occupied with beauty, still seeing 
 only what they want to see, and remote from 
 squalor and sordidness and the ills of life. 
 
 Theodore AUinson took the fullest advantage 
 of his artistic temperament and his private fortune. 
 The one enabled him to ignore whatever was 
 unpleasing, and the other to fulfil every wandering 
 caprice. It was all in keeping with such a man's 
 destiny that he should have as a next-door neigh- 
 bour an ordinary trustworthy fellow like myself, 
 who coiild be depended upon to keep an eye on 
 his motherless infant when he was absent. Or, 
 for that matter, when he was present too. He 
 would have taken it as a very cruel injustice on 
 the part of the gods if I had moved to any other 
 part of the kingdom — as probably any decently 
 ambitious young man in my position would have 
 done. How he would have raised his clenched 
 fists to Heaven and railed against fate I But, 
 luckily for him, I could eat the lotus too. 
 
 My lotus-eating, however, would have been 
 only half as delightful if Allinson were not my 
 
6 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 neighbour and his small daughter my protegee. 
 For he was easy and amusing and full of whimsical 
 fancies, with a very solid foundation of culture 
 beneath all, and his little girl was a continual 
 
 joy. 
 
 She had taken to me at once, or at any rate 
 had taken to my watch — watches having always 
 been useftd links between infantile patients and 
 their medical men. Mine was a gold repeater, 
 very satisfying to immatiire gums and surprising 
 and amusing to the ear. I still have it, and 
 sophisticated though the world has grown, and 
 mechanically melodious with gramophone and 
 piano-player, it still chimes for the yoimg with all 
 its old allurement. 
 
 As Rose developed, the function of the repeater 
 as a mediator decreased in importance, and she 
 and I took to more ordinary means of communicat- 
 ing our sympathy ; but the watch laid the founda- 
 tions and laid them truly. 
 
 It is extraordinary what a small child's tongue 
 can do with an honest English name. Every 
 one has had experience of this fantastic adaptive 
 gift, but none could be more curious than my 
 own. My name is Greville — Julius Greville, M.D., 
 if you please — and if there is a sound less like 
 Greville than " Dombeen " I should like to be 
 told of it ; but Dombeen was Rose's translation 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 7 
 
 of what she so often heard her father call me, 
 and Dombeen I have remained to her. Of all 
 the music in the world none was more sweet to 
 me than her cool clear voice calling " Dombeen ! 
 Dombeen ! " 
 
 Our gardens were separated only by an old 
 fruit wall with a gate in it, both sides of the gate 
 being equally Rose's domain ; and I used to 
 rejoice when on returning from my rounds I 
 saw her dainty proud little head among the fruit 
 bushes. 
 
 Briggs, my gardener and my father's gardener 
 before me, was the happier for her society too, 
 as she circled about him like a robin and never 
 ceased her inquisitorial functions. 
 
 " Lord, but she do flummox me sometimes," 
 he would say. " The things that child wants 
 to know ! It isn't only book-learning that's 
 needed, it's flower-learning too. It makes me 
 feel that ignorant." 
 
 " What sort of things ? " 
 
 " Well, why one flower's blue and another 
 pink. Man and boy I've worked in gardens, 
 and with good head-men over me too when I 
 was learning — Scotchmen and all — but I never 
 heard about that. Never even wondered about 
 it. ' So as to look prettier in nosegays ' was all 
 I coiild say ; but it must go deeper than that. 
 
8 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 I told her to ask you, you being a gentleman 
 of learning, but she says, ' No, no, Briggs, it's 
 what a gardener ought to know,' and she's right. 
 
 " Here's some more nuts of hers to crack — 
 ' Why do some flowers have scent and others 
 don't ? ' ' Who discovered that potatoes are 
 good to eat ? ' ' Who began to put horse-radish 
 with beef ? ' ' Why are butterflies called butter- 
 flies ? ' Really, sir, you ought to take her on, 
 she makes me seem that ignorant. She won't 
 ask me the things I do know. The funny part 
 of it is," Briggs went on, " she doesn't want to 
 have a garden of her own. Some children are mad 
 about that, but she doesn't care. All she wants 
 is to walk about among the flowers, or stand by 
 me, and watch and watch." 
 
 And off he went. 
 
 He came back a moment later. "It would 
 be very good of you," he said, " to try and find 
 out why butterflies are called butterflies. My 
 missis wants to know too." 
 
 I remember another of Briggs' stories of Rose. 
 " The other day," he said — ^this was when Rose 
 was about six — " she brought a tooth — ^the one 
 that you gave her a shilling for if she didn't cry 
 when she went to have it pulled — and what do 
 you think ? She wanted me to plant it for her. 
 Plant it ! And what for ? So as it would grow 
 into a soldier, as it did in some book they'd been 
 reading to her. 
 
 " ' A soldier ! ' I said, wishing to tease her a 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 9 
 
 little, ' why a soldier, I should like to know ? Why 
 «ot a gardener ? ' 
 
 \" ' Pooh, gardeners ! ' she said. ' That wouldn't 
 be \ any fun. Besides, teeth don't grow into 
 gardeners anyway, they grow into soldiers ' ; and 
 she \jomes out every morning and evening to 
 watei^ it." 
 
 Rose's want of interest in work of any kind 
 extended to games. Her boredom when her 
 father and I were at croquet or billiards was abys- 
 mal, and I could never induce her to persevere 
 with a mallet. Her playground was the world, 
 and her play was to be in it, and see it, and, I 
 doubt not, speculate as to its peculiarities. She 
 liked to have stories read to her, but she liked 
 better to invent them for herself and relate them 
 to herself as she walked about, outdoors or in. 
 But when she teould get one's whole attention, 
 which is the too-often-frustrated desire of most 
 children, she was happiest. A walk with me in 
 the garden wheb. I was " ab-so-loot-ly " idle, 
 without scissors or spud or preoccupation, was 
 one of her special treats ; the tendency of grown 
 up people to let their eyes wander towards weeds 
 or suckers or green fly being among her heavy 
 crosses. 
 
 But her crosses were few. She must have 
 been one of the first children for whom those 
 
10 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 in authority made the world primarily a happv 
 place. It is more or less the riole now, but :t 
 was exceptional then. 
 
 Like most little girls, she was interested in 
 young creatures : more than interested, enchanted 
 by them. The finest horse in the world — Irojuois, 
 say, who had just won the Derby— the finest 
 cow, the finest sheep, left her calm; but she trembled 
 with rapture on catching sight of a foal or a calf 
 or a lamb. If the lamb had a black face she 
 screamed with joy. As for puppies and kittens, 
 she lost her head completely over tlem. Again 
 and again I have had to stop, when ^he has been 
 on my rounds with me, while she got down in 
 order to embrace one of these impostors, and the 
 uglier the kitten was the more she loved it. I 
 could never break her of the habit — an extremely 
 insanitary one, I am convinced — of hugging stray 
 kittens. 
 
 It was odd that an ugly one should appeal to 
 her more than a perfect one ; but odder that any 
 injured creature had such an immediate claim 
 on her sympathy. Many children are afraid of 
 animals that are maimed and in pain : or at any 
 rate they avoid them. But Rose collected them. 
 Birds with broken wings, mangy puppies, kittens 
 that had been scalded or lamed — her infirmary 
 always contained one or more specimens of these, 
 and we aU had to help in nursing them back to 
 vigour. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 11 
 
 Such was Rose in those early days when we 
 were still neighbours. And then came one of 
 the crises in the life of both of us. 
 
 I had been on a long day's round and returned 
 tired out, after eight in the evening, with the 
 doctor's dread in my mind that another call 
 would be waiting. There was indeed a telegram, 
 but it was not of the kind that I had feared, but 
 a worse. It was from the British Consul at Mar- 
 seilles stating that Theodore Allinson had died 
 of typhoid fever two days before, and that his 
 effects were being forwarded home. 
 
 Allinson's household consisted at that time of 
 Rose's nurse and several servants under a cook, 
 and I went over after dinner to break the news. 
 It was, however, broken. We had so few tele- 
 grams in those days that their contents always 
 became public, and I found the staff in tears. 
 Rose, however, I was glad to find, had not been 
 told. 
 
 The next thing was to inform the relatives, 
 chief of whom was Mrs. Stratton, Theodore's 
 sister, older by a few years, whose husband was 
 something in the city ; and a telegram, despatched 
 to her the next morning, brought herself and Mr. 
 Stratton quickly on the scene. 
 
 Mts. Stratton was as different from her brother 
 as two members of the same family can be — 
 and often are. Where he was gay and insouciant, 
 she was grave and anxious. He was full of fun 
 and banter ; but to her life was teal, life was 
 
12 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 earnest. Where he let things slide she was all for 
 management and control. ■ She was a' big woman 
 too, with a suggestion always of having her square- 
 sails set and bearing down on you before the wind. 
 
 As for George Stratton, he was the nice quiet 
 somewhat invertebrate husband that such women 
 capture. 
 
 No sooner was Mrs. Stratton in the house than 
 she got to work and explored every room system- 
 atically, sniffing a good deal as she inspected the 
 canvases in the studio. Drawings were turned out, 
 documents read, and Rose was sent oft to Low- 
 cester to be properly fitted out with black. I 
 offered to take the child into my house until the 
 memorial service was over, but Mrs. Stratton 
 declined ; and on this rebuff I disappeared from 
 the scene and was not again in evidence until the 
 ceremony in the church, which most of the neigh- 
 bours and various relations, near and distant, 
 attended. 
 
 I was however called out to a case a few miles 
 away, and was therefore not present at the luncheon 
 that followed; but I returned in time to take 
 my place, at the lawyer's invitation, in the studio 
 to hear the reading of the will, in which, the 
 lawyer informed me, to my great surprise, I was 
 mentioned. 
 
 " As," he announced, " Mr. Allinson died abroad 
 too far away for any of his relatives or friends to 
 attend the funeral, it has been thought well that 
 now, when they are convened together in his house, 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 13 
 
 they may like to hear what his wishes were with 
 regard to the disposition of his estate and the 
 settlement of his affairs. It was fortunate that 
 he was able to put these wishes in order before 
 his illness had made that impossible ; the document 
 is properly signed and attested and bears every 
 indication of cool judgment. With your permis- 
 sion I will now read it." 
 
 I had never been present before at the reading 
 of a will, and I am glad not to have had the experi- 
 ence since. It is too dramatic. Why more 
 plays do not contain a will scene, I cannot under- 
 stand. But the dramatic quality is not all. My 
 objection to such a ceremony is the disappoint- 
 ment that one has to witness, and perhaps even 
 more the triumph. Poor human nature's expres- 
 sions of joy on coming into a few hundred pounds 
 can be an almost tragic spectacle. 
 
 Theodore Allinson had remembered most of 
 his relations and all of his dependents. Such 
 benefactions came first. " ' The remainder of the 
 estate,' the lawyer read on, " ' I leave in trust 
 to my daughter Rose, to be administered as they 
 think best by her trustees George Stratton and 
 Julius Greville, until her twentieth birthday, 
 when it will be hers to do as she wishes with.' " 
 
 The la;wyer paused again and Mrs. Stratton 
 indicated her approval of at any rate one of the 
 trustees by a guarded smile. 
 
 " ' Finally,' " the lawyer went on, " ' I ask my 
 friend and neighbour Julius Greville to become 
 
14 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 my daughter's guardian and foster-father.' 
 
 At these words a rustle of astonishment ran 
 roimd the room, and no one could have been more 
 astonished than myself. Mrs. Stratton did more 
 than rustle : she bridled and shot me a furious 
 glance. " Did you hear that, George ? " she asked 
 her husband in a loud whisper. 
 
 " If you please," said the lawyer, and continued : 
 " * guardian and foster-father, reimbursing himself 
 from her estate for every expense which that 
 duty imposes upon him, from the present time 
 until she shall become, on her twentieth birthday, 
 her own mistress.' " 
 
 He paused again, and again the company sought 
 each other's faces. Mrs. Stratton was scarlet 
 with indignation. 
 
 "Why, that's thirteen years ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " But supposing that Dr. Greville, not unnatur- 
 ally, is unwilling to take so great a responsibility ? " 
 Mr. Stratton asked, after a little whispered coaching 
 from his wife. 
 
 " We are coming to that," said the lawyer, 
 " The will continues : ' I ask Dr. Greville to do 
 this great thing for me, because I have for him 
 both affection and respect, and because such 
 neglect towards our Rose as my own indolence 
 and selfishness have betrayed me into has as 
 far as lay in his power been corrected by him ; 
 also because Rose loves him and has profound 
 confidence in him. I am conscious, however, 
 that it is more than I have the right to ask, and 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 15 
 
 if he declines, which he can do with perfect propriety 
 and not the faintest suggestion of unfriendliness 
 to me, I wish that Rose niay become the ward 
 of my sister Millicent Stratton, who I am sure will 
 be delighted to have her, with the same conditions 
 as to finance." 
 
 " Ah ! " exclaimed Mrs. Stratton. " Then my 
 brother had not entirely taken leave of his senses." 
 
 " My dear Milly ! " said her husband soothingly. 
 
 " Well, and what do you say ? " Mrs. Stratton 
 asked me eagerly. " Of course you will decline ? " 
 
 "Before Dr. Greville comes to any decision," 
 the lawyer interposed, " there is a letter from 
 the testator which he ought to read. It was 
 included among the papers of the deceased, and 
 would have been handed to Dr. Greville earlier had 
 he not been called away." 
 
 " But there is no need for time or consideration 
 to be given to such a simple matter as this," 
 said Mrs. Stratton. " It is obvious on the face 
 of it that a busy country doctor, living alone, 
 can have no fitness for such a delicate task as 
 the bringing up of a girl from seven to twenty. 
 It's preposterous, and any real friend of my brother 
 would agree." 
 
 " In any case," said the lawyer, " I don't 
 think that Dr. Greville shotild, in fairness to 
 himself and to every one concerned, be rushed 
 into a decision. Here, sir, is the letter " ; and he 
 handed me an envelope, which I had the prudence 
 to put in my pocket. 
 
16 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 And so doing, I rose and left. It is one of the 
 rare compensations in a general practitioner's 
 life that he can go when he likes and without 
 ceremony. I don't say that an engagement is 
 always awaiting us ; but it is our privilege first 
 to suggest it and secondly to be exempted from 
 cross-examination. 
 
 As soon as I was alone I read Theodore's letter. 
 I can give its exact words, as it is one of the very 
 few that I have kept. 
 
 " Dear GreviUe," he wrote. " I've been eating 
 oysters and they've got me. There's only a muddler 
 of a doctor here and I have no hope anyway. 
 One knows when one's number is up. The only 
 thing that really worries me is Rose. Be a good 
 fellow and take charge of her and bring her up 
 to beat the band. I can't bear the thought of 
 Milly getting at her and making her just like all 
 the other women in the world. I've made my 
 will, and the Consul here has witnessed it, so you 
 wiU find everything in order. I wish I'd done more 
 with my life, but I haven't had a bad time and, 
 after all, after a certain age one day may as well 
 be one's last as another. I hate not to see you 
 again, and as for Rose ..." 
 
 Here the letter broke off. 
 
 George Stratton and his wife were announced 
 before I had finished dinner, and I went to them 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 17 
 
 not in the best of humour. I was tired, and the 
 day's events had been disturbing, and I had 
 been looking forward to a quiet dispassionate 
 review of the whole matter. It was an evening 
 of unusual charm too, and I am devoted to the 
 garden in the dusk when there is only enough wind 
 to carry the scent of flowers and not enough to 
 disperse it. Such evenings are memorable and 
 precious by their very infrequency and I have 
 always grieved when one has been wasted. 
 
 Doctors, however, being more naturally, and, 
 I suppose, even wilfully, at the mercy of other 
 people than anyone else is, I laid aside my napkin 
 with a sigh of surrender and once again prepared 
 for duty. 
 
 I thought that George looked a little awkward, 
 and I hastened to put him partly at his ease with 
 a cigar. Mrs. George, who was clearly on the 
 warpath, was not to be pacified so simply. Women 
 aren't. Even with the spread of the tobacco 
 habit they cannot be bought, as a man and brother 
 can, by a Corona Corona ; while a whisky-and- 
 soda is powerless, at any rate with the Milly 
 Strattons of this earth. 
 
 She came to the point at once. " You must 
 excuse such an informal and probably inconvenient 
 call," she said, " but we have to leave by an 
 early train and I want to get everything settled. 
 How soon will Rose be ready ? " 
 
 " Ready ? " I said. " For what ? " 
 
 " To come to us," she replied. " You surely 
 
 2 
 
18 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 don't, on consideration, propose to fall in -with 
 my poor brother's very curious idea of keeping 
 his child from her own kith and kin ? " 
 
 " I don't see that I have any way out of it," 
 I said. " The terms of the will were that I was 
 to be Rose's guardian unless I had an insuperable 
 objection ; in which case she was to go to you. 
 But although I am aware that her presence here 
 will cause certain readjustments and that possibly 
 the child might be happier where there were 
 more young companions, I have no objection 
 that for a moment could be called insuperable. 
 Besides, your brother was a friend of mine whom 
 I knew pretty well — possibly, through our con- 
 tiguity, even better than you — and it was his wish." 
 
 " His wish ! " Mrs. Stratton echoed contemp- 
 tuously. " And how capable was he, do you 
 consider, of making a sensible wish ? At any 
 time, but particularly when he was so ill ? " 
 
 " The will sounded sensible enough to me," 
 I said. " It has not been contested. What do 
 you think, Stratton ? " 
 
 But Stratton was not there to talk. It was 
 the grey mare's evening out and he was silenced 
 almost before he had completed the preliminary 
 stages of lip-opening. 
 
 " Even if my brother had not been at the moment 
 so ill as to be mentally unhinged," said Mrs. 
 Stratton, " you must agree that the case is most 
 peculiar. Here am I, his own sister, with children 
 of my own more or less of Rose's age, the pro- 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 19 
 
 perly equipped and natural person to bring up 
 this motherless and fatherless child, and instead 
 she is left to the tender mercies of a young man 
 — and an unmarried man — whose only claim is 
 that he lived next door." 
 
 " Not his only claim," I suggested. " It is 
 something to have known the family for many years 
 and to have brought the child into the world." 
 
 " Mere accidents of adjacency and profession," 
 said Mrs. Stratton. 
 
 I granted that, but added that chance could 
 rarely be separated from destiny. 
 
 Mrs, Stratton hastened to assure me that she 
 had no patience with niystical balderdash. In 
 any case it was absurd that a busy unmarried 
 doctor should be selected to train an orphan — 
 and a female orphan at that — when the orphan's 
 own aunt was not only ready to take over the 
 duty but had been in the dead man's mind. She 
 was convinced that ninety-nine out of every 
 hundred men in my position would have the grace 
 — ^the humanity— to stand aside and give close 
 relationship precedence. She was also con- 
 vinced that'no decently-honest judge, if there were 
 such a person, would hesitate to set the will aside 
 and give her the custody of her own flesh and blood. 
 
 I doubted if the phrase " own flesh and blood " 
 could be applied properly to nieces. 
 
 " It's near enough," said Mrs. Stratton. " There's 
 no need to quibble about it. But to return, to 
 the question of a girl being entrusted to a young 
 
20 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 unmarried man, I consider it unsuitable in every 
 way. It's not nice," she went on, " It's not 
 proper. It's a kind of a scandal. The idea of a 
 bachelor bringing up a girl ! " 
 
 I pointed out that I was a little different from 
 most men in being a doctor. 
 
 " A doctor ! " she exclaimed, as though annihi- 
 lating at one sniff not only every pretension I 
 might have cherished to know anji;hing of the 
 healing art, but every vestige of discretion too, 
 and all my predecessors from Galen onwards. 
 
 " At any rate," I said mildly, " I have been 
 practising in this neighbourhood for a good many 
 years and I succeeded a highly-esteemed father." 
 
 " And not without your reward," she returned. 
 " It was worth having one of your patients, at 
 any rate, if you could induce him to leave you 
 his daughter and a nice little sum to play with." 
 
 " My dear ! " said George from the sofa. " My 
 dear ! " 
 
 " I'm sorry," said Mrs. Stratton. " I didn't 
 mean to say that. You must excuse the feelings 
 of a sister and — and an aunt. But," she continued, 
 wasting no time in the nuances of regret, " at 
 any rate you wouldn't think of accepting this 
 trust if you didn't marry ? You must realize 
 that my poor brother had your marriage in mind 
 when he made this preposterous will." 
 
 This was a new idea to me, and it assorted ill 
 with Allinson's expressed views as to the matri- 
 monial state. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 21 
 
 " Why do you say that ? " I asked. 
 
 " I know," she replied. 
 
 " But," I said, " I saw him more often and 
 knew him more intimately in his latter days than 
 you could have done. He gave me no hint of 
 wishing to see me married. I could even give 
 you a proof to the contrary, only I should not 
 wish to run the risk of offending you." 
 
 Mrs. Stratton intimated that she should like 
 to hear anjrthing that her poor brother had said. 
 
 " Very well then," I replied. " He has often 
 remarked what a relief it was to be able to come 
 over to me in the evening, to a house where there 
 were no women about to have to be polite to." 
 
 " Disgraceful ! " said Mrs. Stratton. " But his 
 own dislike of refinement and the convenances 
 is one thing ; the bringing up of his daughter 
 is another. I repeat that not even he would 
 wish to leave his only child to the mercies of a 
 bachelor. I claim to know something of his 
 character," she went on : " we were girl and boy 
 together. He would have added the clause to 
 the will if he had been more himself. I am 
 convinced of that." 
 
 " But he didn't," I pointed out. " One can 
 take wiUs only as they are framed. Isn't that so, 
 Stratton ? " 
 
 " Except in very exceptional cases, yes," said 
 George, with an heroic effort. 
 
 Mrs. Stratton became tearful and turned on 
 her husband. " You never support me," she 
 
22 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 complained. " You allow any one to override 
 me. As if I didn't know my own brother better 
 than strangers cotdd ! His wish — more, his deci- 
 sion — ^woiild be that Dr. Greville should marry if 
 he accepted the care of Rose. Of course you 
 must marry," she added, to me. " How old are 
 you ? — ^you look about thirty-^every man of 
 thirty should be married. There's always some- 
 thing wrong with bachelors. We can't allow — 
 can we, George ? — our niece to be brought up by 
 a bachelor of thirty." 
 
 " Many good men have been bachelors, " I said. 
 
 " Tell me one," she replied, " and I shall be 
 surprised." 
 
 " Very well then," I rejoined : " our Lord." 
 
 " Don't be blasphemous," she said. 
 
 " I was merely being historical," I explained 
 meekly. 
 
 " You have no right to compare yourself with 
 Him," she said. " It aU helps to confirm my 
 worst fears. I didn't intend to pass on to other 
 matters connected with this deplorable affair ; 
 but that remark of yours has forced me to. Not 
 only are you young and unmarried, but you treat 
 sacred things with levity. I have not been prying, 
 though you may think so— I should scorn the 
 action — I have not been prying or asking ques- 
 tions, but I have learned that you are not a church- 
 goer. And not just because you're a doctor 
 either," she added. 
 
 " It was not an excuse that I was about to 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 23 
 
 make," I replied. " I should not be a chiirch- 
 goer whatever happened. It would involve sug- 
 gestions of belief that I could not make and should 
 not like to be dishonest about." 
 
 " An agnostic ! " she said. " How terrible ! 
 
 my poor Rose ! " She began to be tearful. 
 
 " There are more agnostics than you know of," 
 
 1 said. " In this country, where religious questions 
 are rarely asked and more rarely answered, no 
 census of them could ever be taken. You probably 
 not only know but esteem and trust scores of them." 
 
 To this she made no verbal reply, but settled 
 down steadily to sob. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Stratton," I said. " You are 
 taking the gloomiest view without the faintest 
 reason. You might just as well look on the case 
 brightly." 
 
 " Yes, yes," said George, who had gone to 
 his wife's side and was stroking her with reassuring 
 movements, 
 
 " You ! " she said. " You're always siding 
 against me ! Come away. It is no use staying 
 here or talking any more. Such selfishness I never 
 saw in all my life. But no good will come of it, 
 I feel that. My poor little Rose, my poor little 
 Rose ! " 
 
 She returned to look at me with an intense 
 yearning in her exceedingly damp features. 
 
 " I will not decide to-night," I salid. 
 
 " I shall pray that you may have the best 
 guidance," she assured me. 
 
24 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 I thanked her. 
 
 " You shall know in the morning, early," I said, 
 " how your prayers have been answered " ; and 
 she stumbled away, blind with tears. 
 
 George followed her, pausing only for a moment 
 to inflict upon me one of those grasps in which 
 man assures man of understanding and allegiance, 
 and re-states the solidarity of sex. It hurt horribly, 
 and I nursed my hand for some moments ; but 
 it was comforting too. 
 
 It was late when I went to bed, for there was 
 much to do and plan. I was not too happy about 
 the future and my new responsibilities, but one 
 thought as I turned out the gas gave me the 
 purest joy — and that was that I was not George 
 Stratton. 
 
 Allinson had asked a great deal. It meant 
 a kind of bondage for thirteen years — and the 
 years between thirty-four, my present age, and 
 forty-seven ought to be good ones. Should a 
 young man dedicate them to a child not his own ? 
 Ordinarily a young man would not, but my case 
 was not quite ordinary. A doctor automatically 
 surrenders to his profession much of his youthful- 
 ness. Some one has said that the roystering 
 medical student must be forgiven all when it is 
 remembered how suddenly and completely he 
 has, on qualification, to be changed into a staid. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 25 
 
 sober and punctual servant of the public for the 
 rest of his days — -yes, and his nights. And I had 
 always been a little old-fashioned, as we say, 
 and the circumstance of succeeding to 50 big a 
 practice so early, and being accepted favourably 
 by sq. many of my father's patients, had not 
 impaired this^ characteristic. I was therefore both 
 by nature and by profession more of a predestined 
 guardiaii of another man's child than most men 
 even of ^forty-four are. 
 
 All the same, it was a tremendous responsibility, 
 and it Height result — I came back to this again 
 and again-^ — ^in a tremendous sacrifice. Because 
 if I agreed to be Rose's foster-father, I should 
 have to be thorough and absolute. She might 
 in time go to school, but while she was my child 
 she would be mine and no one else's. I could 
 not share the duty of bringing her up. This 
 means that the marriage upon which Mrs. Stratton 
 had set her mind would not materialize. Whether 
 or not celibacy was going to involve any kind of 
 martyrdom for me I did not know ; certainly 
 up to the present time I had not fallen in love 
 or felt in danger of doing so ; and that is a good 
 deal to say at thirty-four. But there were years 
 ahead famous for their susceptibility. 
 
 And then, as to education, a girl, even when one 
 can give her adequate attention, is a disquieting 
 creature. One never knowis of what she is thinking, 
 as she sits there, knitting, or apparently poring 
 over a book, or arranging flowers without a sound : 
 
26 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 more than thinking, plotting even. A boy is 
 simpler. To begin with, he is rarely being still,- 
 and for the most part he wears his thoughts 
 outside. As for a boy, if I had one to bring up 
 I don't quite know what I should teach him, 
 except that he must not step away from fast bowl- 
 ing, and that it isn't fair to get into a railway 
 compartment where the only other passengers 
 are a pair of lovers. 
 
 During a wakeful night my thoughts traversed 
 the ground again and again, in unprogressive circles; 
 but amid the dubieties that crowded on me this 
 steady question periodically challenged me — 
 Could you let her be brought up by that Stratton 
 woman ? Then, for the moment, I saw my course 
 dear and shining : only however to lose it again 
 when the gigantic difficulties of the task of educa- 
 tion—made infinitely greater and more difficult 
 by the fact that I was considering them in the 
 small hours, when no man's judgment is well- 
 balanced — arose to darken the future. 
 
 Thus pondering and fearing, I fell asleep. 
 
 How long I should have overslept, as the result 
 of this earlier restlessness, had not some gravel 
 rattled on the window, I cannot say. I hastened 
 to it and peered out. The sun was high, the scent 
 of the garden came up warm and fresh, and just 
 below me was Rose herself, all strange and pathetic 
 in her stiff black clothes, lifting her transparent 
 little face upwards and calling " Dombeen, Dom- 
 been. Oh, I do want you so." 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 27 
 
 How could I have disregarded such a sign ? 
 Was it not an answer to Mrs. Stratton's prayer ? 
 
 " I have decided finally to take charge of Rose, 
 as her father wished," I wrote to Mrs. Stratton 
 before she left for her own home. 
 
 My first duty now was to secure Hannah Banks ; 
 because it would be necessary for Rose to have 
 a nurse and steady companion, and I had n6ver 
 cared greatly for the one in Allinson's employ. 
 
 Hannah Banks, who years before had been my 
 own nurse, was now in retirement at liOwestoft, 
 living with a married niece on the annuity that my 
 father had left her ; but she expressed her willing- 
 ness to re-enter service, and a day or so later her 
 motherly old face beamed once inore upon me. 
 
 "To think of you," said Hannah, "bringing 
 up a child — and a little girl at that — without any- 
 one to help ! The idea ! Of course I came. I'm 
 not as strong as I used to be, but thank God, I'm 
 tough." 
 
 Rose took to her instantly, and they established 
 themselves in a wing of the house, which, for too 
 long much too big for me, was now becoming 
 human again. Hannah was vigilant but not fussy : 
 her especial qualities were a kind heart and an 
 unsleeping thoughtfulness. She could hardly write 
 her own name, and her reading was confined to 
 the simplest words ; but what are reading and 
 
28 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 writing compared with the conduct of life ? What 
 I wanted from Hannah was wholesome solicitude 
 and old EngUsh simplicity; I could supply the 
 rest myself, and later on there would be some 
 regular lessons. 
 
 The fact that Hannah had stood in the relation 
 of nurse also to me made her a little contemptuous 
 of my present parental airs. You can't bring up 
 a boy from the cradle to boarding-school without 
 detecting lapses from the god, and these can be 
 remembered even when he is adult and your em- 
 ployer. Nor, after bringing up a boy like that, 
 can you ever quite lose the feeling that he is still 
 something of an infant. Since, to nice women, 
 all men are still something of infants (and, if sensible, 
 willing to be so), this does not ordinarily matter ; 
 but the attitude may lead to embarrassing results 
 when one is endeavouring to cut a figure of authority 
 with a child of one's own or in one's own charge. 
 How can a lecture on hygiene be effective when 
 in the middle of it an officious old lady crosses 
 the lawn with a pair of goloshes in her hands, and 
 says : " Now, Master Julius, put these on directly. 
 The grass is wringing wet ! " For I was stiU Master 
 Julius to Hannah. 
 
 There was, besides Hannah, Suzanne. It was 
 one of my peculiarities — and how the countryside 
 came to forgive it I never understood — ^to employ 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 29 
 
 a French cook. I had found her on a walking 
 tour with Theodore Allinson in Normandy in 1880 ; 
 she was keeping a wayside inn near Lillebonne, 
 and her husband having just died, and there being 
 no children, she longed to get away to a totally 
 new environment. She was then about thirty- 
 two. Since she made wonderful soups out of 
 nothing and could set a perfect omelette before 
 you almost before the order was given, I suggested 
 that she might like to try England and take service 
 with me ; and she jumped at the idea ; and with 
 me she remained, capable, quick and amusing. 
 
 Her French was far from the French of Paris, 
 but she had the rapid Parisian gift of commen- 
 tary, with a homely provincial sagacity added. 
 The acquirement of English she disdained, but 
 just as sailors go round the world on the one word 
 " savvy," so did she, with a similar economy, 
 contrive to make herself understood in the house 
 and the village. Indeed, she went farther than to 
 refuse to acquire English, she forced French on us, 
 so that, for example, we entirely gave up " going 
 to bed " : we used instead to " alley coshy." 
 
 Rose was devoted to Suzanne and she assimilated 
 a large number of her phrases — all of which, I 
 knew only too well, would have to be unlearned 
 when she came under the control of a real Made- 
 moiselle. But for the present it was more impor- 
 tant that the child should be happy with this 
 broad-bosomed kindly Norman, and whatever 
 bad pronunciation she was getting was more than 
 
30 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 compensated for by the attainment of certain 
 secrets of the cuisine. Suzanne could not read 
 a word, but the last atom of flavour was conserved 
 in every dish that she sent to table ; and what 
 is literature compared with cooking? One is 
 shadow and the other is substance. She had no 
 culture. In vain for her had her fellow Norman, 
 Gustave Flaubert (whose statue she had no doubt 
 seen in Rouen), toiled all his life after the elusive 
 epithet ; but her apple-jelly was more than novels 
 and her salads were works of art. I used to look 
 at her, serene among her pots and pans or gathering 
 lettuces in the garden, and reflect again how 
 little education has to do with the real progress 
 of the world or the happiness of mankind. 
 
 Naturally enough, Hannah did not appreciate 
 Suzanne. Like a good rural Englishwoman, she 
 mistrusted all foreigners in general, and in the 
 present case the feeling was aggravated by jealousy, 
 and by pique that her own darling Rose could 
 understand the foreigner's gibberish where she 
 herself could not. But the house was so managed 
 that the two women seldom met. Hannah ate 
 in her and Rose's own rooms, while Suzanne rarely 
 left the kitchen. 
 
 I have said something of Rose's infirmary for 
 crippled animals. With these creatures and Hannah 
 and Suzanne and the maids and Briggs and myself, 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 31 
 
 she would, have had company enough ; but there 
 were others always ready to listen to her. There 
 was, for instance, Mr. Wellicum. 
 
 In those primitive days I not only prescribed 
 medicines but supplied them, and Mr. Wellicum 
 was my dispenser, as he had been my father's 
 before me. He had seemed an old man when I 
 was Rose's age and ventured into his aromatic 
 domain, and to her therefore he must have worn 
 an air of extreme antiquity. There was this 
 difference in his attitude to the two of us : he had 
 disliked, or at any rate discouraged, my visits, 
 but he rejoiced to have Rose about him. He was 
 a short, bow-legged, grizzled man, very hairy and 
 ursine, known to the villagers as " Crusty Bob," 
 and by playing tricks on him the boys increased 
 his bearishness ; but to Rose he was the mildest 
 and most subservient slave. Others, including 
 myself, his timid employer, were allowed in the 
 dispensary itself only with ungracious reluctance 
 — ^the lobby by the trap-door in the window being 
 the place of the public — ^but Rose could do as 
 she wished there, always on the one condition 
 that she must not taste. He even permitted her 
 to help in pill rolling, and not a few of the village 
 children have been known to beg her collusion 
 in seeing that their physic was made less nasty. 
 
 Those were the days before motor-cars — I did 
 
32 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 not see a motor-car until I was well over forty or 
 own one until I was fifty — ^when a country doctor 
 and his horse were allies and friends. I rode a 
 little, but mostly drove, and Silver and I were 
 onterms of the closest intimacy. She was a chest- 
 nut mare with a whitey-grey mane and tail : hence 
 her name. 
 
 Speed, no doubt, is a great asset, especially for 
 a busy doctor in a straggling district, but I shall 
 always hold that we lost spiritually more than we 
 gained materially when we substituted machinery 
 for the horse. The horse, the school-book used 
 to tell us, is the friend of man ; and man needs 
 friends. Petrol is his servant or his master, 
 even his tyrant ; petrol smoothes no difiSciilties, 
 heals no wounds, restores no vitality, as a horse 
 cotdd do. On the other hand, justice compels 
 me to admit that it has taken me to many a 
 sick-bed at a pace that Silver would have thought 
 unjust and have found impossible. In addition 
 to Silver I had a bay mare named Jenny, as a 
 second string. Both were affectionate and gentle, 
 and Rose adored them and took astonishing and 
 terrifying liberties with them. Some part of 
 the ritual of grooming, in which she was proud 
 to assist, she even carried into her own toilet. 
 The peculiar hissing sound which ostlers make 
 when they are curry-combing. Rose used to 
 imitate (Hannah told me, with tears of mirth) as 
 she brushed her hair. 
 
 That part of the ancient Persians' simple system 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 33 
 
 of education for their sons which bore upon the 
 management of a horse (to shoot straight, manage 
 a horse, and tell the truth, was the complete 
 curriculum) is being missed to-day. I don't 
 pretend that Rose could manage one in the full 
 sense of the word, but she had the qualities which 
 such mastery demands — courage and confidence, 
 mental quickness and sympathy, and a steady 
 hand. It is not to a country's good when the 
 horse disappears and oil and metal take its place, 
 for the management of a car is far less educative. 
 To-day, roughly speaking, only farm-boys and 
 stable-lads are being taught as the wise old Persians 
 would wish. 
 
 Then there were the neighbours : the Rector 
 and his family ; Colonel Westerley and his wife ; 
 the old people at the post office, and the butcher 
 and the baker, and, what is more to the point, 
 the butcher's and the baker's errand boys. Rose 
 was on the best of terms with all of these. 
 
 Some were too anxious to share in her up- 
 bringing. I exempt the butcher's boy and the 
 baker's boy from this charge, and the old couple 
 at the post office are honourably acquitted — or as 
 honourably as persons can be who repeat telegrams 
 to the whole village — but, the Rector's wife longed 
 for Rose to join her two daughters in their lessons, 
 and Mrs. Westerley was consumed by a desire to 
 
 3 
 
34 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 transform her into a pianist. The rectory offer I 
 declined, but Rose sat for a while at Mrs. Wester- 
 ley's instrument, until it was decided that whatever 
 genius she might possess lay in some other direction 
 than music. 
 
 Mrs. Westerley, whose garden marched with 
 mine on the other side, we could do without ; but 
 Colonel Westerley was one of Rose's special in- 
 timates. And when I say Colonel, I mean Colonel. 
 I mean an elderly upright man with a white mous- 
 tache and courtly manners, who took the chair at 
 meetings, and played a good game of croquet, and 
 acted as sidesman on Sundays ; the kind of army 
 aristocrat who, by presenting the plate with a 
 certain military eclat, made it a double privilege 
 for the worshipper to drop in a shilling for God. 
 I have to explain and amplify in this way because 
 now, after the War, when I am writing, the word 
 Colonel means nothing of the kind. Mere youths 
 are colonels. A major called on me yesterday 
 with a smooth-shaven white face and a baggy 
 umbrella, to ask for my signature to some tee- 
 total appeal. If I had trodden on his toe he would 
 very likely have said that it was his fault. The 
 word " Gad " has quitted the language. 
 
 Colonel Westerley had all the mildness and 
 Christianity that, in some odd way, can seed in 
 the composition of a certain kind of army man, 
 to blossom forth in his retirement. One does not 
 notice the seeding, but the flowers are very visible. 
 He had been in India most of his life : had quelled 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 85 
 
 border insurgencies and killed his country's foes 
 ^thout a tremor ; but now, among the croquet 
 hoops and William Allen Richardsons, he was the 
 soul of gentle courtesy and the Rector's right-hand 
 layman. The Colonel took over my " Times " at 
 half-price at three o'clock every afternoon, and we 
 shared a library subscription. Mrs. Westerley 
 knitted continually for bazaars, and read aloud 
 every evening until it was time for Patience and 
 then bed. 
 
 Rose and the Colonel were great friends. I used 
 to see her watching him as he pruned and grafted, 
 and asking him searching questions as to the perils 
 of life in India. When he corroborated her sus- 
 picions and stated that it was really true that 
 snakes got into the bath through the hole that lets 
 the water out, she instituted a hostility to enter 
 that receptacle and be washed aU over that was 
 very distressing to her nurse. The Colonel's stories 
 of man-eating tigers had less serious results. The 
 very good case which he made for himself as an 
 intrepid fighting man and terror of the jungle 
 deteriorated, however, when Rose discovered one 
 day that he had not a single Indian coin to display 
 to her. To see a rupee in the flesh, so to speak, 
 had suddenly become a necessity, second only to 
 that of beholding a real live anna, which she 
 associated in some cturious way with Hannah 
 Banks ; and the incompetent old warrior had 
 neither. How one could leave India and not bring 
 any such souvenirs away. Rose could not com- 
 
36 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 prehend. An ivory model of the Taj Mahal, 
 proffered in lieu of coinage, had no effect whatever, 
 not even when fortified by the Colonel's word- 
 picture of the original by moonlight. 
 
 I hardly need say that many of my patients, 
 even the serious ones, took the liveliest interest 
 in Rose, and since nothing is so vexing to the 
 matron and even the spinster as the spectacle of a 
 single man bringing up a young girl, I was natu- 
 rally well supplied -with advice. All my patients 
 asked about her, but as for the hypochondriacs, 
 they made Rose a staple of conversation — conver- 
 sation being their principal requirement from a 
 doctor. Having reported on the progress of their 
 hypothetical maladies, they got to work at once 
 on Rose's progress. What was she doing ? What 
 was she reading ? Had I any new amusing 
 remarks of hers to repeat ? 
 
 I must not give the impression that I was wil- 
 fully taking fees from these people for nothing. 
 They had just enough discomfort or fear of illness 
 to warrant the request that I should add them to 
 my visiting list, and I was never an Abernethy, 
 to call them humbugs and refuse to waste my time 
 under their roofs ; but with less money or more to 
 do they would have forgotten my existence. In- 
 dolence and riches, in others, are the medical 
 profession's best friends. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 37 
 
 A country doctor in those days was valued for 
 his sociability as much almost as for his skill, 
 and there are cases when a pleasantry or two can 
 do more good than the whole pharmacopoeia. If 
 he can see the opportunity of being useful as a 
 mind-doctor as well as the ordinary repairer of dis- 
 ordered bodies, I think that the practitioner shotild 
 embrace it and take a fee for it without a blush. 
 
 My own circle of semi-friendly patients was 
 large. There was Mrs. O'Gorman, for instance. 
 Mrs. O'Gorman was the widow of an Irish landlord, 
 a little lady, then between fifty and sixty, with a 
 great gift of shrewdness and no belief in mincing 
 her words, who was just sufficiently rheumatic 
 to get three half-hoiu-s a week of my society, and 
 perhaps an extra one if I chanced to be passing 
 that way on an irregular day. She lived in luxury 
 in a big house, with a companion called Julia, 
 and read everything that was published both in 
 books and periodicals ; and everything that she 
 read reminded her of something. You know the 
 elusive Irish mind leaping from branch to branch ; 
 well, she had that, and a marvellous memory at 
 the back of it. But whatever might be her theme, 
 she always came back to Rose, who now and then 
 was deposited at her house by me in the morning 
 and picked up on my return from my rounds, 
 replete with exotic food and biirdened with gifts. 
 
 " And how's the colleen to-day ? " Mrs. O'Gor- 
 man would say, after the latest ravages wrought 
 by uric acid on her system had been carefully 
 
38 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 described. "Damn the stuff! What's it for, 
 anyway ? Just to keep doctors in affluence, I 
 suppose. If the good God had asked me to help 
 Him in making the worid, which I'd take shame to 
 put my signature to as it is, I'd have left uric acid 
 out of it. Yes, and doctors too ! Every doctor 
 is a confession of failure on the Creator's part. 
 
 " Have you read the article in the ' Nineteenth 
 Century ' on Genesis ? Is it the ' Nineteenth 
 Century,' Julia, or the ' Contemporary ' ? It 
 doesn't matter which, they're both half a crown 
 and not worth it. The man sweeps away the 
 Garden of Eden like dust on a piano. And that 
 reminds me, we're going to London to hear Ar- 
 peggio. They say he's better than Liszt, although 
 he has short hair. But he's a devil among the 
 ladies, just the same. 
 
 " It's odd, isn't it, how these musicians — Julia, . 
 go and get the Doctor a glass of sherry and some 
 cake — it's odd, isn't it, that no woman can resist 
 them ? Now, a fiddler I can understand. He 
 stands up to it and makes those fine movements 
 with his delicate hands ; but a pianist, all bent over 
 the box, banging away — what can they see in him ? 
 
 " And tell me, what are you doing about Rose's 
 music ? She ought to be taking lessons. A girl's 
 out of it if she can't play some instrument, and it's 
 useful too if a dance should be improvised. Let's 
 see — ^has she good arms ? If she has, she ought 
 to play the fiddle, or the harp, only the harp's so 
 clumsy to take about. You want a cab every 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 39 
 
 time. But it's a lovely instrument. I heard 
 Jenny Lind sing to a harp — ^the sweetest voice. 
 There's some fellow in the ' Saturday Review ' this 
 week says that Patti has never been approached ; 
 but Jenny Lind was worth a thousand of her, 
 Patti has too much art : you notice it ; Jenny 
 Lind made you forget ever3rthing but the music. 
 Has Rose any voice ? I must get her to sing to 
 me when you bring her over nejct. But you bring 
 her so seldom. 
 
 " There's no need to be jealous of me, you know, 
 I'm only an old woman. But you'll be getting 
 jealous of aU the men directly ; you won't be able 
 to help it. Every day she's growing up, you know, 
 and every day some boy you've probably never 
 heard of is growing up too — you don't know where 
 he is, and Rose doesn't know, and he's never heard 
 of Rose. There he is, somewhere, in his little Eton 
 jacket, with big ears and a snub nose as likely as 
 not, and every minute he's drawing nearer to Rose 
 and she's drawing nearer to him. And neither of 
 them knowing a thing about it ! Isn't that 
 terrible ? Just Fate arranging everything and we 
 all out in the cold ; and no one so out in the cold 
 as the parents and guardians ! 
 
 " And what about yourself," she went on, for 
 she was remorseless where the relations of the sexes 
 were concerned. " How old are you ? Thirty- 
 five, shall we say ? And Rose is seven. Ah ! 
 Then when she's twenty you'll be forty-eight^ — 
 the dangerous age ! That's the time for you to 
 
40 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 look out, Doctor. You'll want all your strength 
 of mind then, because we mustn't marry our 
 wards, you know." 
 
 " Mrs. O'Gorman ! " I protested. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " she went on. " What's the matter 
 with facing the facts ? If every one would do it 
 this world would be a sweeter place. But why 
 don't you marry, any way ? What's the matter 
 with us ? Do you hate us ? " 
 
 " I'm too busy," I said. " Life is too full." 
 
 " Wait till you lose your pretty Rosy, and then 
 you'll be feeling the draught," she retorted. " Ah, 
 Doctor, Doctor, it's a sad old age you're building up 
 for yourself ; and you don't play cards either. A 
 sad old age ! " 
 
 " Doctors shouldn't have wives any more than 
 actors should," I would say. " No one should 
 marry unless he is going to keep some kind of 
 hours ; and doctors can't. Not at least until 
 they're specialists and receive patients in Harley 
 Street from ten to one ; and by that time they're 
 crystallized fossils. Parsons should marry — and, 
 as a nuatter of fact, conspicuously do so — and 
 stockbrokers and lawyers and country squires 
 and most other people ; but not doctors." 
 
 " Well, it's just as well for my rheumatism that 
 your father had different views," was the reply. 
 " Not that you do me any good," she hastened to 
 add, " but it's comforting to have a doctor about 
 the place, and you're something to talk to. You 
 listen well." 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 41 
 
 So shesjwould run on. 
 
 But she did not talk like this when Rose was with 
 her. She drew then on her memory and fancy 
 for all that, was gay and amusing ; brought out 
 old scrap-books ; disinterred a musical-box from 
 the lumber-room ; and had an amazing ancient 
 dolls'-house put into thorough repair both inside 
 and out. Rose was happier with Mrs. O'Gorman 
 than with anyone but, I hope, me. 
 
 I had, of course, patients in whose houses I 
 should not care for Rose to be intimate ; and 
 it was not easy for me to repel their friendly 
 advances. But Rose was capable, if she met them 
 when out walking, of replying to overtures with 
 the firmest refusals. Child as she was, she knew 
 her own mind, and she was not old enough or weak 
 enough to have any preoccupation with the 
 feelings of others. It was not callousness : not 
 at all ; but it was not in her nature to adapt her- 
 self — ^not yet, nor would it ever be to any great 
 extent, except for the most serious reasons. She 
 was in a playground, and her play had so far 
 always been with congenial spirits : why should 
 it be otherwise ? So she felt. 
 
 I had been brought up differently. I had been 
 brought up to think of others ; to spare sensibilities 
 even to the extent of prevarication ; to say " No " 
 where I would rather have said " Yes " if I thought 
 
42 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 that " No " would be more agreeable to the other 
 person involved : to pass the salt ; to be self- 
 denying. Rose's father had no such attitude 
 towards others, nor did he impose it on his daughter. 
 He had considered the world his orange, and Rose 
 was disposed to do the same. She had no tendency 
 to be grasping or greedy ; she had that sense of hos- 
 pitality to which politeness is a corollary ; while 
 her good humour and sense of fun and laughter 
 also made her naturally a dispenser of happiness. 
 But nothing prevented her from telling the truth, 
 neither fear nor favour. How I used to envy 
 her this ! 
 
 Every teacher must learn something from the 
 taught, I suppose, though it be only an idea of his 
 own ignoraftce. And I found myself learning from 
 Rose all the time. Her simplicities rebuked my 
 complexities ; her innocence disturbed my sophisti- 
 cation. But most I learned from her not only the 
 importance of truth-telling in the social system, 
 but the superior excellence of it in the difficult 
 scheme of civilized life. By always telling the 
 truth one saves oneself from a multitude of 
 fatiguing cares. I don't say that Rose knew this, 
 even subconsciously ; she told the truth because 
 it was in her natiire. But it might also have been 
 her privilege. Of all people, a pretty woman has 
 least reason to put herself to the trouble of inven- 
 tions ; because she would always be forgiven. 
 
 It was of course too late for me to become 
 truthful spontaneously, as Rose could be ; but 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 43 
 
 under hter influence, child as she was and fully- 
 grown man (if any man is ever fully grown) as I 
 was, I learned to think twice and be truthful on 
 the second thought. I learned, too, through her 
 unconscious tuition, that other people's feelings 
 are rarely as delicate as we fancy them, and often 
 never worth serious consideration ; at any rate, 
 that the health of one's own soul is more important 
 than the comfort of anyone else. 
 
 I speak of myself as a teacher, but I had dis- 
 pensed no formal instruction. Whatever Rose 
 got from me was in the ordinary course of conver- 
 sation, at breakfast and in the garden and at odd 
 timps, and perhaps particularly at night, when she 
 had gone to bed and I sat with her for half an hour 
 and, according to Hannah, excited her little brain. 
 I am siu-e that I have advised thousands of parents 
 not to overdo the good-night gossip ; but doctors 
 rarely practise what they preach. 
 
 I used to read to her too ; and if she had not 
 wanted the same stories so often we might have 
 consumed hundreds of books together. Ruskin's 
 " King of the Golden River " (does anyone read 
 that now ?) was one of her favoiirites, and I coiild 
 not substitute a word in it without being detected. 
 That legend is, of course, a lesson too. 
 
 All that I had to offer was a gradus to life. The 
 real instructors would come later, with their 
 geography and history and mathematics and lan- 
 guages and so forth. The most that I hoped for 
 was that, indirectly, the effect of my general atti- 
 
44 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 tude to things might be that Rose some day would 
 be able to avoid a few pitfalls. To get positive 
 qualities into another is more difficult than to 
 implant a certain caution. " Oh, you men are all 
 alike ! " I felt that if I could make it impossible 
 for Rose ever to say that, I should have done 
 something far better than to fill her mind with 
 facts and figures. 
 
 Among all the triviaUties of our life together in 
 those early days it is difficult to make a selection 
 of saliences. Rose was not a remarkable child in 
 any way, except perhaps in the lack of special 
 qualities. She was quiet and self-contained and, 
 I used to think, very sensible : perhaps her general 
 good sense was her strongest point. She was not 
 a universal sympathizer, but where her affections 
 were set she was very tenacious in her kindnesses 
 and even tendernesses. I remember an incident 
 which illustrates this characteristic. 
 
 We had at that time a dog named Rex, a Clumber 
 spaniel, which all too seldom I took out shooting. 
 He was called mine, but in reality was Rose's, 
 fixing himself to her like a shadow, and being 
 miserable when she was out and he had not been 
 allowed to go too. 
 
 Well, one evening at the time when Rose took 
 out his great dish of broken victuals, Rex was no- 
 where to be found. He had never strayed before, 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 45 
 
 and we had no cheering theory to propound to 
 the child to account for his conduct. Other 
 theories we kept to ourselves, such as the possibility 
 of a thief having enticed Rex away, or that he 
 had followed a hare into preserved ground and had 
 got into a trap, or even had been shot. A new 
 keeper on one of the neighbouring estates had been 
 heard to vow extermination to any dog that he 
 caught trespassing. 
 
 No one allowed Rose to hear conjectures of this 
 kind, but we aU rather obviously shared her anxiety, 
 and she was able to see through our forced airs of 
 assurance. 
 
 The hours went on, and still no Rex. Rose's 
 bed-time came and was long passed, but she would 
 not consent to leave the hall door. There she stood, 
 now and then calling, with the dish of food beside 
 her. 
 
 Hannah was furious, but to no purpose. Dogs 
 to her were just dogs — ^four-footed creatures, useful 
 to bark at night and protect the house, but given 
 to importing mud into houses and not blameless 
 as to the encouragement of fleas. Many a conflict 
 have we had, she and I, over Rex's charter to roam 
 where he would, upstairs or down. On this occa- 
 sion we came to a wider cleavage than ever, for 
 Hannah (and, from her point of view, very rightly) 
 wished Rose to go to bed, whereas I, although con- 
 scious that as a habit such vigils would be very bad 
 for her, was inclined to accede to her tearful wishes 
 and allow her on this occasion to wait up. Such 
 
46 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 evidences of solicitude for her dog were very 
 gratifying. 
 
 " I can't go to bed, Dombeen, until I know," 
 she said, and she had my sympathy. 
 
 "You shall stay up," I assured her, "till— 
 tiU " 
 
 " Till he comes back ? " she supplied eagerly. 
 
 " No, I couldn't promise that," I said. " You 
 see, he may have been found wandering by some 
 one who has tied him up till the morning and wiU 
 then bring him home. And you coiildn't wait up 
 till then, could you ? " 
 
 " Yes I could," said Rose. 
 
 " Well even if you could, I couldn't let you," I 
 said. " But you shall stay up tiU — ^till midnight, 
 say. TiU the clock strikes twelve." 
 
 " Oh no, later than that," said Rose. " Mayn't 
 I wait till three ? " 
 
 We compromised upon half-past one, and 
 Hannah's opinion of me sank still lower. 
 
 " Calls himself a doctor ! " I fancy I heard her 
 muttering. 
 
 Meanwhile, in his devotion, old Wellicum was 
 scouring the neighbourhood in one direction, and 
 Briggs in another, and the stable-boy in a third. 
 
 They straggled back at about midnight, and at 
 half -past one I moved the closure and we all went 
 to bed, fearing the worst. 
 
 It was just three when I was awakened by a 
 furious knocking at the door and a joyous voice 
 crying, " Dombeen, Dombeen, he's come back ! " 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 47 
 
 And so he had, the rascal, after what we dis- 
 covered later to have been simply a distant amatory 
 expedition. 
 
 Rose, it seems, although she had consented to 
 go to bed, had got up again and had been sitting 
 by the window until she had seen love's pilgrim 
 creep in. 
 
 Downstairs we went, in our dressing-gowns, and 
 fed him and petted him as though he were a hero 
 instead of a mere voluptuary. What kind of a 
 welcome Rex had expected, and what he thought of 
 the surprising turn that things had taken and 
 our manifestations of delight, I can only guess, 
 but being a Clumber he probably laughed long 
 when at last he regained his kennel. 
 
 It was when Rose was ten or eleven that the Hall, 
 the big house of the place, with a park around it, 
 was bought by Sir Edmund Fergusson, and local 
 society was enriched by the addition of his family, 
 which consisted of Lady Fergusson and their only 
 child, Ronald, or Ronnie, who was about Rose's 
 own age. 
 
 The Fergussons naturally became my patients. 
 Sir Edmund's trouble was gout, which, like most 
 gouty people, he did nothing consistently to check. 
 Sporadically he was careful in his diet, but then 
 would arrive a temptation that he could not resist. 
 A large part of all doctors' lives is taken up in 
 
48 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 scolding gouty patients for their imprudences and 
 patching them up into a condition to commit more. 
 
 Ronnie Fergusson had a tutor at that time, and 
 Rose a governess ; and neither instructor was 
 inclined to extend the working hours unreasonably. 
 During the playing hours the two children were 
 much together. They had a crow's nest in one of 
 the Fergussons' trees, and an empty furnace-pit 
 under a disused greenhouse of mine served them 
 as a robbers' cave, 
 
 Ronnie's parents having married late, he was 
 more like their grandson than son, and therefore 
 a little lonely, and Rose's companionship was 
 exactly what his nature needed. 
 
 Until Rose was thirteen I knew nothing but 
 serenity in my foster-fatherhood. But then she 
 gave me a shock. It turned out to be a false 
 alarm in that it set up no precedent, but for a 
 while I was nervous. 
 
 I had decided to send her to school. Were my 
 own pleasure the only consideration I should have 
 kept her at home, but a girl ought to be among 
 others, to learn give-and-take, adjustment, and so 
 forth. Thirteen was late, of course, but she was 
 not quite like other girls — an only child is always 
 a little different — and the lateness did not matter. 
 
 In practical matters she already knew more than 
 any of her teachers could tell her. She knew a 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 49 
 
 good deal about medicine and the care of invalids, 
 derived principally from Hannah, but a little from 
 me ; she had presided at the tea-table for years 
 and prepared the infusion like a Chinese philoso- 
 pher ; she could make an omelette. She had a 
 considerable store of Norman patois. She had 
 countless books, many of them far beyond her 
 years. It would probably have been better if she 
 continued to remain at home ; but she was too 
 normal to be denied ordinary procedure, or I was 
 too normal to have the courage to deny it her. 
 
 After many fruitless inquiries and inconvenient 
 visits, I had allowed Mrs. Stratton to find Rose a 
 school. It was at Brighton, where more young 
 people seem to be taught than, judging by the 
 passivity of the fishermen on the railings, fish are 
 drawn from the sea ; and I was assured that there 
 was no more admirable establishment, and that 
 Miss Saltoun was the last word in sympathetic 
 and culttired head-mistress-ship. I went to see 
 her and was more or less satisfied. Not wholly ; 
 but having had no experience as a selector of 
 educationalists, I let it go, especially as I was more 
 than pleased with the material conditions of the 
 building — flight, air, and so forth. 
 
 Rose and I had a silent breakfast on the fatal 
 day. She had been looking forward to it with 
 mixed feelings, sometimes glad to be joining such 
 a company of girls after so much isolation, some- 
 times forlorn indeed at the thought of leaving her 
 home. On the last evening she had broken down 
 4 
 
50 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 completdy ; but in the morning she wore an 
 expression of grim resolution, which I admired too 
 much to run the risk of dissolving it by talking 
 about any unsafe subject ; and no subject seeming 
 to be safe, I said nothing. 
 
 Her farewell to the household was tearful ; but 
 she pulled herself together to part bravely from 
 me, and then she and Hannah drove off. It was 
 a double breaking up of tradition ; for Hannah, 
 after taking her to Paddington and putting her 
 into the hands of Mrs. Stratton, who would convoy 
 her to Victoria, where there were reserved com- 
 partments for the school, was to go on to her 
 home at Lowestoft, alas ! for ever. She had been 
 growing more infirm and could no longer manage 
 the stairs, and when Rose came back for the 
 holidays there was to be a new maid for her, instead 
 of our old friend. It was part of the new programme 
 that Rose was to be generally more self-reliant. 
 
 More self-reliant ! 
 
 It was on a Tuesday that Rose departed. Just 
 as I was finishing my soup on the following Thurs- 
 day evening, who should walk in but Rose and 
 fling herself on her knees beside me and shake 
 with sobs ? 
 
 There she knelt, with my hand on her head 
 trjdng to allay the storm, for minutes. 
 
 " O Dombeen ! " she managed at last to say. 
 " I couldn't stay there. It's — it's — ^horrid. You 
 wouldn't like me to stay there. Really you 
 wouldn't." 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 51 
 
 The fact that I didn't ask her to explain, that 
 I took it for granted that she was right, will indi- 
 cate at once the kind of fatalist that I was, and our 
 sub-conscious terms of understanding. 
 
 Rose was tired out — ^too tired to eat — ^and I 
 am afraid that in the absence of Hannah, whose 
 loss was a terrible disappointment — for although 
 Rose had known of it she had not fully realized it 
 — she cried herself to sleep. 
 
 I don't pretend to have had much of a night's 
 rest myself, for such a false start as this was no part 
 ofthe educational programme. Theodore's phrase, 
 " bring her up to beat the band " — rang in my ears. 
 
 Was this beating the band ? On the face of it, 
 no. We must not run away. And yet (I argued) 
 to run away often implies more character than to 
 endure, and surely that was Rose's case. She was 
 not a coward, she was not self-indulgent ; that I 
 knew. Nor did she imagine things. Child as 
 she was, I trusted her judgment and accepted 
 the position. The school was horrid, and she 
 couldn't stay there ; that was enough. I knew 
 her sufficiently well to be sure that she would have 
 put up with it if she had believed that any good 
 covdd result ; but she knew the reverse and she 
 had acted accordingly. She had walked out of 
 the house, found her way to the station, and 
 the pocket-money I had given her and her own 
 resourcefulness had done the rest. 
 
 The next morning I had a very pale and demure 
 companion at breakfast. She also had evidently 
 
52 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 been thinking, and had seen that thus to take 
 the law into her own hands was a proceeding of 
 considerable magnitude — such magnitude that she 
 looked dwarfed under it. But although subdued 
 and pianissimo, there was no sign of weakness on 
 her features. It may have been a gigantic effort 
 of independence, but she did not regret it. 
 
 I had sent to Brighton a reassuring telegram 
 (crossing one from Osborne House) on the previous 
 evening, and on the arrival of a second telegram 
 from Miss Saltoun saying that she was on her way 
 to see me, I dispatched Rose to Mrs. O'Gorman's 
 for the day, with an explanatory note. 
 
 Not long afterwards a very indignant Miss Sal- 
 toun arrived for an interview. Her idea no doubt 
 was to take Rose back with her ; but I had no 
 intention of permitting that. I did not even let 
 them meet, to Miss Saltoun's intense surprise. 
 Should she be stiU alive,I doubt if her eyebrows have 
 yet resumed their normal level, to such an altitude 
 did she lift them when I announced my decision. 
 
 " But it is fatal to let a child behave like this." 
 she said. " It is the end of all discipline. What 
 would come to the world if no one were punished ? " 
 
 I said that Rose would not lack punishment. 
 Her shame in not being able to remain at Brighton 
 was punishment. She was not proud of herself 
 at aU, I said, even though she couldn't do any- 
 thing else but run away. 
 
 " But suppose every child ran away ! " said 
 Miss Saltoun. " What would the world come to ! " 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 53 
 
 " It would probably be very good for the world," 
 I said. " Because only children with character 
 have the pluck to take such a step." 
 
 " No one has ever run away from Osborne House 
 before," said Miss Saltoun. 
 
 " And probably no one ever will again," I said. 
 
 " It will be very damaging to me," she pro- 
 tested, " if it gets to be known, as of course it must 
 do. Of what did Rose complain ? " 
 
 I said that I hadn't asked her. 
 
 " Not asked her ! " Miss Saltoun exclaimed. 
 And I could see her swiftly putting two and two 
 together and realizing that it was my deplorable 
 indulgence that was at the back of everything. 
 
 " No," I said. " She merely said that she could 
 not stay and had therefore come home." 
 
 " And you allow that ? Condone that ? It's 
 too amazing ! Is every caprice of a child like this 
 to satisfy you ? " 
 
 " I don't think she is capricious," I said. " I 
 agree with you that the occurrence is unfortunate. 
 I wish it had never been. I wish Rose had not gone 
 to school at all, anywhere. But I would much 
 rather — even at the risk of being unfair to you — 
 that she were not interrogated." 
 
 Miss Saltoun kept her temper under fair control, 
 but she could not help indicating that she was glad 
 that all her pupils had not such impossible parents 
 or foster-parents, and that on the whole she was 
 of the opinion that she was well out of it. 
 
 Nor did I feel particularly pleased with the 
 
54 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 position I had been forced to take up. It was 
 not too civil, and I doubt if it was just to the 
 schoolmistress. But Rose was my first considera- 
 tion, and I knew with crystal clearness that no 
 possible good to either could come out of a cross- 
 examination of her by Miss Saltoun. Miss Saltoun 
 would have been hostile and suspicious, utterly 
 incapable of understanding the child's fundamental 
 honesty and courage, nor would she have had any 
 belief that a child's antipathies, a child's dislike of 
 Dr. Fell, need not be less sincere or important than 
 an adult's. To her, children were immature 
 beings to be taught deportment and the length of 
 rivers ; to me, Rose was an individual, separate 
 and complete, with private sensitivenesses and 
 loyalties that must not be harmed. 
 
 Miss Saltoun caught her train, and I drove over 
 to Mrs. O'Gorman to fetch Rose back. I had 
 sent her there for the day, to be out of the way 
 and also to be in the company of the most sensible 
 woman I knew. 
 
 I found them turning over old volumes of 
 " Punch," and having sent Rose off to help Julia 
 in some capacity or other, Mrs. O'Gorman turned 
 to me with a smile on her mischievous old face. 
 
 " This is a pretty kettle of fish," I remarked. 
 
 " You ought to be proud of yourself," she said. 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " To have brought her up so well. I don't 
 mean what you've taught her, but to have left so 
 much resolution in her. Most people knock it out." 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 55 
 
 " More chance than design," I said. 
 
 "Anyway, she's got it," said Mrs. O'Gorman, 
 " and if she always obeys impulse and cuts her 
 losses so promptly she won't go far wrong. Her 
 heart's true." 
 
 " Meanwhile ? " I asked. 
 
 " Meanwhile," she said, " she wants to go to 
 school. When I say ' wants ' I mean something 
 very different ; I mean she's willing to go to school 
 and she knows she ought to go to school. She 
 doesn't think, and she won't admit (you see I've 
 been testing her) she did wrong to run away fronx 
 this one — and I agree with her — but she knows that 
 if she stayed at home now it would be a victory 
 wrongly won. And she doesn't want to do any- 
 thing unfair, bless her ! although, of course, she'll 
 have to before she's through. The world will see 
 to that ! " 
 
 " What school ? " I asked. 
 
 " Well, that's your affair," said Mrs. O'Gorman, 
 "but, this time, for the love of God find it your- 
 self. How you came to let that Stratton woman 
 pick out the other for you I shall never understand. 
 And you more or less a sensible fellow too ! But 
 there, we've all got our blind spots. Even I can't 
 bring myself to change my medical adviser." 
 
 At her next school Rose was happy and did well. 
 While she was away, I gave more time to an 
 
56 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 old toy of mine — ^the microscope — and was gradu- 
 ally, I doubt not, becoming a fossil. I was 
 beginning also to supplement the collection of 
 prints which my father had left, and buying ex- 
 perience rather dearly. Between the holidays 
 these were my indoor hobbies, while there was al- 
 ways the garden for such daylight hours as my 
 patients left me. Now and then I dined out, at 
 the Hall or the Rectory or with Mrs. O'Gorman ; 
 and so the time wore on. To be creatures of 
 habit seems to be our destiny, and if we are to 
 escape we must continually fight. Personally, I 
 did not fight. I was counting on Rose to be my 
 deliverer when, at the end of her last school term, 
 she returned to galvanize her old foster-father 
 and keep him gay once more. 
 
 Every time Rose came home, three times a year, 
 I saw a change in her, but it was not until the 
 winter holidays when she was nearly sixteen that 
 I suddenly reaMzed that she had grown into a 
 beautiful creature, capable of setting men's hearts 
 beating, and of disturbing lives and affecting 
 destinies. Not, of course, that one has to be 
 beautiful to affect destiny : we can all do that, 
 and all are doing it continually. But pretty 
 women appear to be busier than other persons, 
 even if they are not. 
 
 There had been a week of clear skies and pure 
 sunshine, and an east wind blowing with sufficient 
 nippiness to keep the ice hard. Rose had been 
 skating every day with various neighbours, and 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 57 
 
 she and two or three young fellows were now 
 walking up the drive jangling their skates and 
 laughing. Her high gaiters made her look unusu- 
 ally tall, and she came along with her easy long 
 stride like a conqueror, her face glowing under 
 the frost and her eyes alight with merriment. She 
 wore a fur cap and a fur jacket with a high collar, 
 and you know what furs can do for even a plain 
 woman. Rose's vivid animation was almost fire ; 
 but what struck me most was a new confidence, 
 unconscious but visible, and the deference and 
 competitive eagerness which were expressed in 
 her companions. When I had seen her last, at 
 lunch, she had been a girl ; now, only three hours 
 later, she was an influence. 
 
 I don't suggest that from that moment her life 
 was more mature ; I don't think that with any 
 steadiness it was ; but the dominant woman had 
 flashed out for a moment, and I never forgot the 
 apparition. 
 
 In those days, although Rose had several boy 
 satellites, who seemed to me, with not too numerous 
 opp(»tunities of observing them closely, to be on 
 terms of a very simple natural intimacy with her, 
 chief of them was still Ronnie Fergusson. He 
 was her most constant companion, dropping in 
 oftener than the others, and taking her on longer 
 expeditions or more frequently joining in our 
 games at home, whether indoors or out. Although 
 I was in the forties I was active on the tennis lawn, 
 and at billiards I could beat anyone in the neigh- 
 
58 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 bourhood. I had been coaching Rose and finding 
 her a much better pupil than I ever expected : 
 perhaps the vanity in her stimulated her to try 
 the harder, for there were mirrors at each end of 
 the room in which she could see herself, and there 
 is hardly a stroke in the game which does not 
 emphasize the beauty of arms and hands. Ronnie 
 was a billiard enthusiast too, but I kept Rose ahead 
 of him, and they became very keen combatants. 
 He was at my house after dinner on most evenings 
 during the holidays. 
 
 Ronnie's parents we did not much care for. 
 Sir Edmund Fergusson, who was now retired, had 
 been a northern manufacturer and mayor : a 
 roughish nouveau-riehe, with a great desire to 
 assimilate county manners and play as naturally 
 as possible his new rSle of squire. Lady Fergusson 
 was an ordinary motherly woman, with a good deal 
 of pride in her husband and a touch of the snob. 
 Both adored their son, but whereas Lady Fergusson 
 showed her feelings, Sir Edmund disguised his. 
 
 Ronnie, although not to that status born, had 
 become a typical English public-school boy with 
 an easy manner, a delight in fun and a merry 
 hair-trigger laugh. Good to look at too, with his 
 fair hair and lightly-tanned skin and very white 
 teeth. He did not suggest any great force of 
 character : his blunt little nose was against that ; 
 but he seemed to be an epitome of affection and 
 good humour, and was likely to succeed in the 
 world by reason of an inherent popula^rity. Thfe 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 59 
 
 kind of boy and man that others who might reason- 
 ably be envious would go out of their way to serve, 
 just to have a smile of gratitude and to enjoy the 
 sensation of having benefited a persuasive creature. 
 However rich Ronnie might become he would 
 receive more ; because of those who have, and to 
 whom therefore is given, he was among the most 
 attractive. 
 
 The world is a strange place ; and why some of 
 us are born so that we may not look over a hedge, 
 while others may steal a whole remoimt camp and 
 escape censure, no one will ever understand. But 
 Ronnie was high among the immune horse-thieves. 
 
 He did things well, too. He played games well 
 and looked his best in flannels. Our village 
 cricket team, which langi^shed through the early 
 weeks of the season and was too often beaten, 
 rallied when Ronnie came home for the holidays 
 and had its sweet revenge in the return matches. 
 If Rose was still defeating him at billiards it was 
 because her tactics were better. She had more 
 strategy. 
 
 The Ronnies of the world usually marry young 
 and go fairly happily through their wedded life. 
 This perhaps is because their attraction is neither 
 for very dever women nor for decadents, but for 
 the joUy. The sporting, adventurous — I might 
 almost say picnic — element in young people's 
 marriages lasts with these longer than with more 
 serious or more brilliant or more passionate couples. 
 
 There was, however, no outward sign of any- 
 
60 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 thing deeper than the best good-fellowship between 
 Ronnie and Rose. They liked and laughed, and 
 handed each other the half-butt, and there it 
 remained. 
 
 But a year later there were developments. 
 
 England is no country for the skating enthusiast, 
 and Rose continually mentioned her desire to 
 spend the following Christmas holidays — her last 
 — at one of the winter-sport centres in Switzerland. 
 To be away at that time of year, when maladies 
 are most flourishing, was no easy or prudent 
 coiurse for me ; but Rose was set upon it, and 
 one can always get a locum tenens if one really 
 wants to, and I had not played truant for a long 
 while, and might be all the better for it after ; 
 and so I agreed. 
 
 The next thing was — ^Ronnie must come too. 
 Ronnie, who was now at Sandhurst, was far more 
 eager to spend his holidays with us than at the 
 Hall ; and the dream of his life was to be in some 
 place where you could count on the frost lasting 
 tiU to-morrow. It is always a mystery to me how 
 in our island, with the Gulf Stream persistently 
 paying attentions to it, anyone learns to skate 
 at all. Ronnie, however, had had the chance to 
 become a good skater, and he longed to be better 
 and to do some ski-ing and bob-sleighing too. Rose 
 shared his enthusiasm. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 61 
 
 I must admit to feeling doubtful as to whether 
 it was the wisest thing to take a boy of eighteen 
 and a girl of seventeen to Switzerland in this way ; 
 but the fact that their minds were so exclusively 
 set on open-air activities reassured me. And the 
 Fergussons made no objections, beyond express- 
 ing the regret that their only son should wish to 
 be away for Christmas. 
 
 None the less I carried the matter to Mrs. 
 O' Gorman's tribunal ; for when in doubt I invari- 
 ably adopted that procedure. 
 
 " Take them ? Of coiu-se you'll take them," 
 she said. " Or rather, they'll take you. And 
 it's high time you got away from this mouldy 
 corner and allowed some mountain air to get into 
 your fusty old brain ! " 
 
 " Is it so fusty ? " I asked. 
 
 " Of coiurse it is. How can it be anything 
 else, considering the life you lead ? Sitting by 
 the bedsides of bores ; prescribing physic ; talking 
 weather ; pottering about within a radius of five 
 miles when there's the whole big world waiting 
 for you. I've no great opinion of you, as you 
 know, but you've got the best brains in the place 
 — ^London brains, in short — and you do nothing 
 with them. Perhaps when you see Mont Blanc 
 you'U get a little ambition. I don't want you to 
 leave us, but I want you to do something besides 
 patching up our twopenny-halfpenny bodies. 
 Write a book." 
 
 I laughed aloud at this. How little did I foresee J 
 
62 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " Very well, then ; luake some scientific investiga- 
 tions ; anything to justify your gifts." 
 
 " The point is," I said, " is it wise for Rose 
 and Ronnie to be thrown together as they will 
 be on this trip ? " 
 
 " Wise ? " 
 
 " Yes, is it wise ? " 
 
 "I don't know what you mean by wise. Do 
 you mean, will it increase their inclination to fall 
 in love ? " 
 
 " Well — ^yes, I suppose I do." 
 
 " Would that be so unwise ? " she asked. 
 
 " I don't know that it would," I said. " But 
 I'd rather it didn't happen yet." 
 
 " Well," she said. " If it's going to happen, 
 it's going to happen, no matter what you do. And 
 if it isn't, your taking them to Switzerland won't 
 make any difference. Both of them are rapidly 
 reaching an age when no one can protect them. 
 Nature will be in charge ; not parents or Dr. 
 GreviUes. Switzerland, wherever you go, will 
 be full of young people, and they'll both make 
 friends, and very likely they'll lose their hearts 
 too. It's out of your hands. Supposing you don't 
 go, it will be just the same." 
 
 I acquiesced. 
 
 ^ All went well for a few days. And then Ronnie, 
 against my counsel, and also against Rose's, 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 63 
 
 which usually prevailed, joined a party on a bob- 
 sleigh, and was carried into the hotel, an hour 
 later, with a fractured leg and a vast variety of 
 bruises. I let the Fergussons know, assuring them 
 that there was no danger, and together Rose 
 nad I, with the assistance of a nurse, got him 
 through. He was fairly patient, but his dis- 
 appointment was acute, and now and then under 
 his weakness he broke down. More than once 
 I went into the room to find Rose soothing him 
 as though he were a baby. AU his dependence 
 came out, to be met by all her tenderness.. I 
 had not thought she pbssessed such hidden stores 
 of it. 
 
 I must confess to feeling miserably out in the 
 cold most of the time, for Ronnie, though he 
 was as gay as possible with me, and brave enough 
 under the pain that his dressings inflicted, was 
 happy only with Rose, and I could not fail to see 
 it. And he exacted far too much attention from 
 her. I hardly had any of her company. She 
 could not do this or that because Ronnie might 
 want her ; Ronnie would be lonely ; she had 
 promised Ronnie to read to him ; she had sworn 
 that when he woke up, no matter at what time, 
 he shotdd find her beside him. I admired her 
 sense of duty — and resented it too ! 
 
 After a fortnight the Fergussons joined us, to 
 supervise their son's recovery, and Rose and I 
 went home, for she had her school and I my 
 practice ; but I was conscious that not aU of her 
 
64 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 was with me in the train ; and Ronnie's parting 
 from her, I realised, had been too emotional. Sud- 
 denly he had kissed her as though his heart was 
 breaking, and she had almost to be torn away. 
 
 I have seen so many sick men under the influence 
 of gratitude to their nurses that I did not lay 
 very much stress on this incident ; but I could not 
 forget it. I wished, however, that Rose should, 
 and during the journey back I did all that I 
 could to distract her. She was very quiet at first, 
 but gradually became more like herself, and by the 
 time we reached home and she began to prepare 
 for school she seemed usually, at any rate when 
 with me, natural again and free from care. But 
 away from me ? And when she was day-dreaming ? 
 It was at these times that I reahzed again and 
 bitterly how finite is our understanding of each 
 other. We live alone ! I would have given 
 anything to be able to penetrate her thoughts, 
 and help. But I could not. 
 
 Was she in love or merely reflective ? Was 
 she looking back or forward ? I longed to know, 
 but could not ask. 
 
 Mrs. O'Gorman cheered me up. " It's likely 
 it's nothing at all," she said. " Just a passing 
 storm, even if that. Very few of the romances of 
 seventeen persist. I was like that myself : my 
 heart was broken a dozen times before I was 
 Rose's age, and at eighteen I seriously meditated 
 suicide because my vioUn teacher was married. 
 It was in DubUn. I remember to this hour the 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 65 
 
 smell of the Liffey that came up to me as I leaned 
 over O'Connell Bridge one evening coming back 
 from a lesson, and pretended I wanted to drown 
 myself and aU my grief. No one could have 
 entered such water as that ! And ten days later 
 I had forgotten all about the fiddler, and was 
 inventing a novel with me the heroine and the 
 hero an actor at the theatre that week, who didn't 
 even know of my existence. Maybe Rose will 
 be like that. Don't worry." 
 
 Rose had only two more terms, and as she 
 spent most of the Easter holidays with a school- 
 fellow, she did not meet Ronnie. During the few 
 days she was with me she seemed to be heart- 
 whole ; certainly there was no suggestion of 
 blighted affection, for her spirits were of the highest. 
 So Mrs. O'Gorman, I assumed, was right again. 
 
 It was just before Rose's return from school 
 for ever, in the summer, that I had an unexpected 
 visit from Mrs. Stratton, in the character of the 
 solicitous aunt. She arrived in the forenoon, and 
 while doing justice to lunch unfolded her purpose. 
 Briefly it was to renew the attack begun eleven 
 years earlier, only now with perhaps more 
 reasonableness. 
 
 My unpardonable offence was still the same — 
 celibacy, but it had assumed an increased gravity. 
 To be a bachelor of thirty-four in charge of a 
 
66 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 child of seven was deplorable enough ; but to 
 be a bachelor of forty-five in charge of a girl of 
 eighteen was heinous. It was thus that her nasty 
 mind worked. And not only hers but, she assured 
 me, countless other persons'. In fact, I gathered 
 from her remarks that the unsuitability of my 
 household was the only theme with which, in a 
 few days' time, the world woxild be occupied. 
 
 " This morbid interest in my affairs is very 
 disgusting," I said. 
 
 Mrs. Stratton admitted it ; but how could I 
 deny that some handle was being given ? " You 
 two alone here." 
 
 " Well, I do deny it, absolutely," I said. " Don't 
 you all know the conditions of the -ndll ? Don't 
 you know that Rose is in my care until she is 
 twenty — ^that is to say, for two more years — 
 entrusted to me by her father, to act as a father 
 in his place ? It is monstrous to suggest that 
 I am not worthy of that confidence." 
 
 " But I am not suggesting^ that," Mrs. Stratton 
 replied indignantly. 
 
 " Of course you are," I said. " The mere fact 
 that you come here and put these ideas into my 
 head is tantamount to a charge, an indictment." 
 
 " I don't mean that," she protested. 
 
 " It doesn't matter whether you mean it or 
 not : the effect is the same. By bringing your 
 indecent suspicions here you are hoping to make 
 it impossible for me any more to be natural with 
 this g^rl." 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 67 
 
 " No, no ! " 
 
 " Yes, yes," I replied. " Excuse me if I speak 
 •with plainness, but I feel strongly about it. It 
 is abominable. Don't you believe that decent 
 living and pure affection are possible in this 
 world ' " 
 
 " I am sure they are, but I am troubled about 
 my niece's — my brother's only child's — good 
 name." 
 
 I thanked her sarcastically for the compliment. 
 I was conscious that I was being rude, but I could 
 not control myself. There are some persons who 
 always draw out our inferior qualities, just as the 
 companionship of others can increase the Value 
 of our character by fifty per cent. Mrs. Stratton 
 invariably evoked my worst side. Any fine edge 
 that I possessed was blunted when we were 
 together. 
 
 " It is what people may think and say that 
 is so disturbing to me," she explained. " You 
 know how they talk." 
 
 " I am learning," I said. " But anyone over 
 thirty-five should have acquired an indifference 
 to public opinion." 
 
 " That is a counsel of perfection," she replied; 
 " In ordinary life we are all governed by it, or 
 at any rate we are largely influenced. It would 
 be heart-breaking to me if I thought that people 
 were saying horrid things about Rose and you. 
 Mind, I don't say that they are talking already," 
 she conceded. " But they'll begin very soon." 
 
68 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " How soon ? " I asked. 
 
 " I can't say with any definiteness. How 
 could I ? " 
 
 " Well," I said, " I want to know. It is your 
 business to tell me. Rose comes back on Wednes- 
 day. Will they begin on Thursday ? " 
 
 "But you're being absurd." 
 
 " Not at all," I said. " I want to know. I 
 must arrange things. WiU they begin on Friday ? 
 Remember — a girl of eighteen ! — eighteen is just 
 the age for these people to gloat over : eighteen 
 and forty-five, what a titbit for you all ! " 
 
 " Please don't mix me up in this," said Mrs. 
 Stratton indignantly. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," I said. " What a titbit 
 for every one else ! But, anyhow, remember that 
 this girl of eighteen will have been alone in her 
 guardian's house two whole days by Friday, with 
 nothing but the maids and whatever good character 
 he may have built up for himself to protect her. 
 May I safely take no steps till Friday ? " 
 
 Mrs. Stratton was becoming very cross. " You're 
 being ridiculous," she snapped. 
 
 " Not at all," I said. " Logical merely. Very 
 well then," I went on. " If we may have two days, 
 why not three ? And if three days and there is 
 no public clamour, and the windows are not broken 
 by the Association for Getting Morality into 
 Others or the Society for Suspecting Every One 
 Else, perhaps we could have a week of innocent 
 companionship. Rose and I ? I have not unnatur- 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 69 
 
 ally been looking forward to it. And if one week, 
 why not two ? Surely you must see that I am 
 entitled to know this ? " 
 
 " I can't think why you never married," was 
 her reply. " Don't you see how much wiser that 
 would have been ? Everything would have been 
 amphfied." 
 
 " Rose and I have got on very well alone," I said. 
 
 " But how much nicer for Rose to have had a 
 woman's guidance ? " 
 
 " Why ? " I retorted. " On all questions touch- 
 ing life, worldly education and so forth, a man 
 can be as instructive ; and in so far as protectiveness 
 goes he can be as tender and as thorough. What 
 remains girls get by instinct. And Rose likes 
 me : that's another great asset. Supposing that 
 she did not like my wife ? " 
 
 " But that's being too fantastic." 
 
 " Very well, then. Supposing that my wife 
 didn't like Rose ? Women can be very disapprov- 
 ing of each other — ^very jealous." 
 
 "All this doesn't affect the main thing," said 
 Mrs. Stratton. " I am stiU worried by the extreme 
 impropriety of you and my niece living here alone." 
 
 " Then teU me," I said, " what you propose — 
 for you must have some proposition in your mind." 
 
 " Rose could come to us," said Mrs. Stratton. 
 " We are planning to go to the Italian Riviera 
 for the winter — ^to Nervi." 
 
 " But on returning," I said, " there would be 
 the same opportunities for calumny." 
 
70 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " Might it not be possible to have a companion 
 for her ? " Mrs. Stratton asked. " Some nice 
 woman to live here ? I know of one I could 
 recommend." 
 
 " No," I said, not without emphasis, " it might 
 not, I will not have any nice woman here. Besides, 
 if I did, what would be the result ? Simply more 
 suspicions ! I should be thought bigamous instead 
 of merely monogamous." 
 
 " Oh no ! " said Mrs. Stratton. " I meant an 
 elderly woman." 
 
 " Good Heavens ! " I exclaimed. 
 
 Mrs. Stratton's visit was disttu:bing. I had 
 been looking forward to two years of Rose's com- 
 pany before the time arrived when she was twenty 
 and would probably want to be independent, 
 and I thought I was entitled to it. These two 
 years were to be very precious— a kind of reward, 
 if you like, for my foster-parental solicitude; 
 and now they were threatened. 
 
 It was not public opinion that I was fearing, 
 but the self-conscious restrictions that were being 
 forced on me to the ruin of easy natural famiUarity. 
 I should always now be wondering if this or that 
 excursion were wise, or what constructions the 
 beastly world would be putting on this or that 
 occurrence. Nothing could be simple and unself- 
 conscious any more ! 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 71 
 
 I took the problem to Mrs. O'Gorman. 
 
 " But you don't mean to say that this comes 
 as a surprise to you ? " she asked, when I had 
 finished the story. 
 
 "Yes, it did," I said. 
 
 " O the poor innocent ! " she exclaimed. " And 
 for a doctor too 1 And haven't I been telling you 
 about it, for years, hefe in this very room where 
 we're sitting ? " 
 
 "Well," I said, "I hadn't thought. I was 
 thinking of Rose as a schoolgirl still, not a woman." 
 
 " All girls are women," said Mrs. O'Gorman. 
 " That's the difference between girls and boys. 
 Boys go on being boys long after they're men ; 
 girls can be women from birth. Let's be practical 
 now. What are the alternatives, do you say — 
 Rose to visit about, or a duenna to be imported ? " 
 
 " There seems to be no other," I said. 
 
 Mrs. O'Gorman laughed her triumphant knowing 
 Irish laugh. " There is at least one more," she 
 said. " Supposing Rose should become engaged — 
 then no one would have anything to say. Many 
 girls are married and mothers when they're no 
 older than she is now." She paused. 
 
 "You're frowning. Doctor," said Mrs. O'Gor- 
 man. " You don't like it." 
 
 " It's not what I was wanting," I said. 
 
 " I've made you jealous," she went on mali- 
 ciously. 
 
 " How can I be jealous when I'm not in love 
 with her ? " I asked. 
 
72 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " Listen to the man ! " she mocked. " As if 
 jealousy had any logic, any rules or reason 1 
 Every one's jealous — not only lovers. It's one 
 of the imptilses of life ; it's a part of all kinds 
 of honourable respectable emotions that every 
 one praises, such as ambition. Possessiveness 
 always leads to it — and that is why you'd hate 
 Rose's lover so, because he'd be taking her away 
 from you : first her thoughts, and then herself. 
 So should I be jealous if you spent more time 
 talking with that nincompoop, Mrs. Galloway, 
 than with me. Jealousy runs through life. It's 
 elemental. Listen to your spaniel growling when 
 you're patting my Peek. It's no use being ashamed 
 of jealousy, and it's no use believing people when 
 they say they are superior to the feeling." 
 
 " All right," I said. " Let us leave it at that : 
 if Rose became engaged I should be jealous. 
 Horribly jealous. I admit it. Disappointed, 
 frustrated, too. I've hardly seen her yet, and 
 some fellow carries her off just when she's of age 
 to be a companion. It's too absurd." 
 
 " But that's life," said Mrs. O'Gorman. " No 
 sense in it whatever. Just a stupid hurrying along 
 to the tomb. No time to do anjrthing, except 
 to say, at intervals, ' Good Heavens ! what have 
 I been doing with my time ! ' " 
 
 " No, no ! " I said. " It's better than that." 
 
 " Very little," she replied. " But anyway, let 
 you and me be practical at the moment. There 
 are three possible courses : One — ^that Rose may 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 73 
 
 become engaged and then Mrs. Stratton and all 
 her friends would cease to think of you as an 
 inunoral man. Two — ^that you should invite 
 some elderly spinster or widow to live in your 
 
 house as a perpetual chaperon. And three " 
 
 she paused again. 
 
 " Well, what is three ? " 
 
 " Three," she resumed : " that you should go 
 on as you are and tell them all to go to the devil. 
 All my votes are for number three." 
 
 " Mine too," I said. 
 
 " But of course the first may happen — don't 
 forget that," she warned me. 
 
 "I'll wait till it does," I said. "Thank you 
 for your sympathy and counsel." 
 
 " ' Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,' " she 
 called after me, with a rather sinister chuckle. 
 
 The warning brought back all my misgivings, 
 and as I walked home I knew perfectly well that 
 the happiest years were behind me and that, to a 
 large extent, my Rose was no more. I had lost 
 her. Even if Mrs. Stratton proved to be wrong 
 and the world did not talk, I had lost her. For 
 the reason that we should be living an unnatural 
 life. A lonely girl of eighteen has too little in 
 common with a man of forty-five whose attitude 
 to her is parental. It is not such as he that she 
 would choose for a companion. Being normal, 
 she woiild choose a younger man, nearer her both 
 in age and aspirations : some one to commit, if 
 necessary, follies with ; not an old buJEfer. 
 
74 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 This point of division comes in every family, 
 but it can be less poignant with real parents. 
 At any rate, a real father would have no such 
 temptation as could assail me, and might have 
 Elssailed me had I not always thought so naturally 
 of myself as Theodore's deputy, his chosen nominee 
 to bring his daughter up and cherish her ; to make 
 her (his phrase was always coming back to me) 
 " beat the band." Would Rose beat the band ? 
 Had I been worthy ? Can any child be depended 
 upon to react to tuition ? Impossible to couiit 
 on it : the guardian at most can do his best and 
 hope for the best. 
 
 Hitherto I had not much to reproach myself 
 with ; but I now saw that the real testing-time 
 was on us. The real breaking-point too, for every 
 day Rose, as she ripened and matured and became 
 more conscious of adult things, would 'be growing 
 towards her own life, her own mate, and conse- 
 quently away from my life and me. Once again 
 I realized how like ashes in the mouth the fruits 
 of parenthood can be. The new generation is 
 always receding from the old ; the old pathetically 
 trying to catch up and understand. The metaphor 
 of a stream rushing between the two occurred to 
 me : almost none able to swim and so few bridges I 
 
 Once again I realized how pitiless life is, in 
 its unresting urgency : moving ever on and on, 
 no matter from what contentment, from what 
 joy : the next moment always more important 
 than this one ! 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 75 
 
 Rose came back a woman gtown. Not short, 
 not tall — ^the right height — and to my eyes so 
 sweet, so desirable, that I could not understand 
 how any young man could fail to succumb, and I 
 dreaded the time when Ronnie and she would meet. 
 
 But I need not have done so, for when that 
 moment arrived it was not fraught with passion ; 
 indeed, they seemed a little constrained, Ronnie 
 in particular, and it was not until two or three 
 days had passed that the i^yness wore off. What- 
 ever Ronnie may have fdt, he did not seek Rose's 
 society imduly. 
 
 1 had proof that, so far as Rose was concerned, 
 there was nothing serioud, a little while after, 
 when, regardless of Mrs. Stratton's nastiness, we 
 had settled down to a very delightful routine <i 
 deux. During one of our talks Rose was frank 
 about her plan of life. 
 
 " Of course, Dombeen," she said, " I don't 
 want to leave you before I must, but I want to 
 marry some day ; I think every girl who is healthy 
 ought to, and have children." 
 
 She stopped and looked into an unfathomable 
 distance. 
 
 "Boys," she said. "I don't want girls. I 
 should love to have a boy in the Navy, and see him 
 in his bright buttons, with sun-burned hair, and 
 freckles. But it would have to be the right man, 
 of course." 
 
 " What kind of a man would that be ? " I 
 asked, a little wistfully, I fear. 
 
76 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " Don't be unhappy," Rose said, with one of 
 her gay smiles and a touch on my arm. " It 
 won't be yet, anyway. We'll have lots more good 
 times together before then." 
 
 " You never can tell," I said. " He may be 
 just round the corner at this moment. In any case 
 I should like to know what kind of man you are 
 thinking of. I might " — here I made an effort to 
 laugh lightly — "I might be able to find him for you." 
 
 " It's difficult," she said. 
 
 " How old ? " I asked. " Do you want him to 
 be yoiur own age ? " 
 
 " Pretty nearly," she said. " I want to have 
 fun as well. Older men are rather nice, I know, 
 but they're rather grave too. I should hate to 
 be tied to a stodge. Some one who could go long 
 walks, and cUmb a tree if necessary, and ride, 
 and be siUy at parties. But not really silly under- 
 neath, of course ; and yet," she added, " older 
 men are very attractive, aren't they ? " 
 
 " I hope so," I said : " now and then." 
 
 " Oh, you vain thing ! " she replied. " No," she 
 went on, " he should be older than I am, anyway." 
 
 " A fellow like young Fort^scue ? " I hazarded. 
 
 " Oh no. He thinks too much about his clothes." 
 
 " But he's very good-looking." 
 
 " Yes, in a way. And I should want him to 
 be handsome. I want my boys to be handsome, 
 you see. But not like Harry Fortescue : he's 
 too pretty." 
 
 " Very well then. Yoimg Somers-Flint ? " 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 77 
 
 "No, he's too noisy. He has that terrible 
 laugh. I should want him to be amusing, of 
 course, and see all the funny things in life, but 
 more quietly. Besides, I can't stand men with 
 thin noses. His nose is absurd." 
 
 " If you want big noses," I said, " what about 
 Harold Swain ? " 
 
 "Oh, but that's just the other extreme," she 
 said. " The man's a — ^what do you call those birds 
 at the Zoo, all colours with little eyes set like 
 jewels and enormous beaks ? I know — ^toucans. 
 The man's a toucan." 
 
 " But he's over six feet and a first-class cricketer," 
 I said. 
 
 " Yes, I like that," she said. " J should like him 
 to be good at games. But he mustirt be grotesque." 
 
 " Surely you can mention some one who comes 
 at any rate nearer your ideal ? What about " — 
 I did my best to make my voice sound natural — 
 " what about Ronnie ? " 
 
 I did not look at her, so I cannot say whether 
 Rose blushed or not. 
 
 " Ronnie," she said meditatively. " Yes, I like 
 Ronnie. Ronnie is a dear. But " 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 " Ronnie is to play with," she said. " He's 
 not for a husband. I should want my husband 
 to be stronger than that." 
 
 " And then," I said, quite normal again,, " there 
 are other things besides looks and character. 
 There's employment, for example. Do you want 
 
78 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 him to be rich and idle or do you want him to 
 be busy ? And if busy, what do you want him 
 to do ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Rose, " I want him to be busy. 
 I want him to be away all the day, so that his 
 return wiU be an event to both of us. I don't 
 beUeve in husbands muddling about at home 
 between breakfast and dinner. I'm sure father 
 would have been happier if his studio had been 
 somewhere else and he had to go away to it and 
 remain away. He got tired of the house — ^I can 
 see now, although I didn't know then — instead 
 of looking on it as a harboiu: of refuge after his 
 work was done. That's what made him so rest- 
 less and forced him to go away so much : that 
 and his love of seeing new and beautiful things. 
 
 " It must be dreadful," she mused, " to be an 
 artist and have such a keen eye for lovely effects 
 and know that they can never be really reproduced 
 in paint. I wish we knew more about Turner and 
 what he felt. He came nearer getting it than 
 anyone, I suppose; but he must have suffered 
 agonies of disappointment and failure. The worst 
 of it is, he seemed never to let anyone know him, 
 so we have no evidence." 
 
 " Well, don't go to the opposite extreme," I 
 said, " and marry a sailor, for you'd hardly see 
 him at all." 
 
 " Oh no," she said, " I shouldn't do that. I 
 should want him to come back every evening, and 
 stay back." 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 79 
 
 " Then no doctor need apply," I said. 
 
 " No, I'm afraid not," said Rose, " I want 
 all his attention when he has finished with business. 
 That's an essential. And a steady home that I 
 can make like a home, and go on improving. 
 With a big nursery." 
 
 " In the country, or London ? " I asked. 
 
 " In the country," said Rose. " But not too 
 far out. A place where you can hear the train 
 come in, and go a little way across the fields to 
 meet him and take away the fish basket." 
 
 " Ah ! " I said, " now I know. He's something 
 in the city," 
 
 " I don't mind if he is," said Rose, " so long 
 as he comes back every evening, and loves me, 
 and makes enough money for me to have a hansom 
 everjrwhere when I go to town, and to take the 
 children to the sea in the summer. That's my 
 idea of a husband." 
 
 " I hope you may find him," I said, " and having 
 found him, keep him simple and deeply rooted. 
 And you must make me a promise. Will you ? " 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 " Let no one but me supply that big nursery 
 with its rocking-horse." 
 
 So we talked ; not once but many times. And 
 this Prince Charming in the guise of a business- 
 man with a tall hat, catching the 9,15 up and the 
 5.46 down, became a joke with us : one of us at 
 any rate, in the English way, which avoids facing 
 facts, making haste to joke for fear ofhaving to cry. 
 
80 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 For a while it seemed as though the alarms about 
 the censorious world were false ; but I could rid 
 myself very rarely, and then only for a few moments, 
 of my fool's paradise convictions. During the 
 moments that were free from this haunting, our 
 new united hfe went along happily. Rose had 
 taken over the housekeeping by way of experience ; 
 we entertained ; a school-fellow came on a visit ; 
 we walked over to Mrs. O'Gorman's fairly often ; 
 there were parties here and there ; and no serpent 
 in the form of a successful lover entered Eden. 
 
 I was more than ever struck by Rose's quiet 
 detachment. She had no absorbing interests : 
 most things found her ready to scrutinize them, 
 but nothing captured her. Most young Britons 
 of both sexes have their hobbies and overwork 
 them, but Rose moved serenely through the days, 
 getting everji;hing done and apparently having 
 time to turn aside if occasion called. I admired 
 this gift immensely. My own tendency is to 
 concentrate almost too exclusively. If she had 
 a hobby it was the arranging of flowers, and I 
 think that her skiU and taste in this charming and 
 neglected branch of domestic art amounted to genius. 
 
 And then, further refusals being no longer 
 possible. Rose accepted an invitation to her Aunt 
 Stratton's, and nothing was ever the same again. 
 O that woman 1 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 81 
 
 I could see that something was wrong directly 
 Rose came back. We were sufficiently on terms 
 of intimacy for wireless to be established between 
 us : at any rate from her to me. She did not 
 exactly exhibit constraint, but there was something, 
 as we say, on her mind. I was conscious of that. 
 She talked freely enough ; gathered up the strings 
 of local life in her absence ; told me something 
 of the Strattons, the only one of whom that she 
 really cared for being Angelica, the youngest, a 
 girl of about twelve. Her Uncle George she liked, 
 in a negative way ; perhaps, more accurately, 
 was sorry for. The others we didn't discuss. 
 
 " That's over anyway," she said ; " and nothing 
 
 would get me to go abroad with them. But ' ' 
 
 and then she stopped, 
 
 I waited for the rest of the sentence, but it 
 never came. Instead, she asked some question 
 about our own neighbourhood and we passed on 
 to other interests. 
 
 But I guessed then what she was meaning to 
 say and later discovered that I was right. 
 
 " But " — she was thinking — " although the 
 visit to the Strattons is over, I shall have to be 
 away a good deal, if not altogether, because it's 
 not suitable for Dombeen and me to be alone in 
 this house. People are going to talk — and I 
 couldn't allow Dombeen to have to suffer from 
 that." Such were her thoughts — ^the fruit of 
 MiUy Stratton's insinuations. That she herself 
 would suffer did not matter. Eighteen can lodk 
 
82 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 after itself, but forty-five must be carefully guarded 
 — ^that is how she would have argued. Eighteen 
 is too immatiu-e, but forty-five, although, of course, 
 an incredibly advanced age, lends itself to scandal, 
 and doctors must have sound reputations. 
 
 Then set in a broken period which I look back 
 upon without pleasure. All parents, I suppose, 
 have to go through similar seasons, when mis- 
 understandings or a want of sympathy aUenate 
 them from their children, or their children from 
 them. During the time of dependence things 
 can be all right, and again after independence 
 is attained ; but when the wings are beginning 
 to sprout, sons and daughters have it in them: 
 to be more than difficult. How much of it have 
 I seen I I was no parent myself, and Rose was 
 not pining for independence ; but she was restless 
 and disturbed because of me : she did not want 
 to go away, but thought that she ought to, 
 knowing that I could not. 
 
 At last I could stand it no longer. " Look 
 here, Rose," I said, " what's the matter ? You're 
 not happy. Tell me why." 
 
 " It's difficult to explain," she said. 
 
 " Then I will," I said. " You are persuaded 
 that it is unsuitable for us to be together here 
 alone. Your dear Aunt Milly suggested the idea, 
 and you can't forget it. You think people will talk." 
 
 " Oh ! Dombeen," she said, " when did you 
 take to clairvoyance ? " 
 
 " When your pretty head became transparent," 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 83 
 
 I replied. " Well, what is to be done ? If you 
 feel like that you must go away — or " 
 
 " Yes— or what ? " 
 
 " Well, if you were to become engaged I suppose 
 that everybody would be satisfied and we could 
 go on as we are. Our only saviour is that punctual 
 husband, with the tall hat and the fish-basket. 
 And he's not yet on the horizon." 
 
 " No," she said. 
 
 I soon began to have proofs of the accuracy 
 of the Stratton prediction. It is extraordinary — 
 especially in a country district where no one in 
 easy circumstances has enough to do — how 
 intensely interesting the affairs of other people, 
 neighbours chiefly, can be, and how difiicult it is 
 not to be inquisitive and censorious. I don't 
 suggest that in a city there are no meddlesome 
 onlookers, with fingers sharpened for pies that 
 do not belong to them; but in a city there are 
 more distractions and there are also certain impedi- 
 ments to familiarity. In the coimtry you are 
 bound, unless there has been a feud, to know 
 your neighbours ; but one may live at No. 5 in a 
 London terrace for half a century and never meet 
 the occupants of No. 4 and No. 6. 
 
 Hitherto I had been on terms of pleasant and 
 easy intimacy with most of my patients ; and 
 where there was less cordiahty it was probably 
 
84 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 not my fault. A certain interest in my affairs 
 had been shown — ^there had been questions as 
 to my biggest break recently, as to what I was 
 sending to the Flower Show, the size of marrows, 
 the chance of the Isle of Wight disease among the 
 hives, and, of course, inquiries after Rose. But 
 no more. No one had ventured to give advice. 
 But now I began to detect admonitory symptoms, 
 fumblings towards counsel as to conduct. 
 
 Lady Fergusson, for example, Ronnie's mother, 
 after a long talk about pelargoniums, wondered 
 if it were true that dear Rose was going to the 
 Riviera with the Strattons. So nice for her to 
 be with young people. So nice to be able to go 
 away. It was much to be hoped that nothing 
 would interfere. How fortunate some girls were ! 
 In her youth there had been no such gadding 
 about. And so forth. 
 
 Then the rector's wife, Mrs. Cumnor, a good 
 enough woman in her way but overburdened 
 with family cares — not however so overburdened 
 that she had no time or strength left to take on 
 the cares of others as well : mine and Rose's, 
 for instance ; she too began to cut in. 
 
 Rose, she said one morning, after I had finished 
 with her second daughter's pulse, chest and tem- 
 perature, was, she knew, never iU. How enviable 
 a state ! And so active and clever too. Now 
 that she had finished with school she would, of 
 coiurse, with such a constitution, go out into the 
 world. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 85 
 
 " Might not her vocation be at home ? " I asked. 
 
 " Of course it would be hard for you to have 
 to lose her," Mrs. Cumnor conceded, " terribly 
 hard ; but — — " and then she changed the subject. 
 
 Her husband, who had clearly been put up by 
 his wife to contribute something to the campaign, 
 was more jovial about it : wondering if any young 
 men would dare to propose to a girl who was 
 always in thecompany of sucha handsome guardian. 
 Was it fair to Rose to have a resident spoil- 
 sport ? And so on — ^with plenty of hearty laughter 
 as an ameliorative. 
 
 Mrs. O'Gorman confirmed my fears as to the 
 neighbourhood's determination. 
 
 " The whole pack's in full cry after you," she 
 said. " You're too happy for them : they can't 
 bear the sight of it. You're free too — and so 
 many of them are shackled for life and full of 
 nasty envy. It's not the best possible world! 
 And yet," she went on, " it's the only one I want. 
 Perfection would be very boring." 
 
 "What shall we do ? " I asked. "We are 
 beaten." 
 
 " Yes, I'm afraid you're beaten. The pack 
 has won. But it's only anticipating your fate 
 by a few months. All parents have to lose their 
 children, and you've been luckier than most. Rose 
 is certain sure to marry, and marry young too, 
 so you'd have lost her at twenty any way, if not 
 before. She's on the road to nineteen now, and 
 you mustn't grumble." 
 
86 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " And what is there left for me ? " I asked. 
 
 " You ? — ^why that doesn't matter, because 
 you don't matter. You're a sterile old stick. 
 Sterility has no vote. You'll just rub along, 
 getting through the days, till the end. You've 
 had your chance and lost it." 
 
 " You don't give me much encouragement," I 
 complained. 
 
 "Why should I?" she replied. "The truth 
 is the only thing worth having, and, in a civilized 
 Ufe, like ours, where so many risks are removed, 
 facing it is almost the only courageous thing left 
 to do. But you might marry yet ? " 
 
 " Never," I said. 
 
 " Very well then, you must rust and hear it." 
 
 Cold comfort indeed I 
 
 If ever there were two people on this planet 
 who might have been let alone, and wanted to 
 be let alone, and deserved to be let alone, they 
 were Rose and I. But it was not to be. 
 
 While with the Strattons, at some " At Home," 
 Rose had met a Mrs. Lovell, who was about to 
 go into business as a florist, and she had offered 
 Rose a post. It was to be a florist's of a new kind, 
 for not only were flowers to be sold but they were 
 to be arranged too. The staff was to include flower- 
 arrangers who on the evenings of dinner-parties 
 would go out to decorate the tables. Premises 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 87 
 
 had been taken, just off the Brompton Road, and 
 aheady a connection was being formed. If Mrs. 
 Lovell still had room for her, said Rose, she would 
 go. It was not what she had dreamed of, but 
 it was something definite, a start. 
 
 " There is so little for an untrained girl to do," 
 she said. " It isn't as if I was brought up to 
 have to earn my own living. I'm going to be 
 fairly well off, aren't I ? " 
 
 " Fairly," I said, " when you're twenty." 
 
 " There you are ! " she said. " But at the 
 moment, if I have to go, I should like to try to 
 be independent. And of course, I have to go," 
 she added : " it was cowardly to say ' if.' I 
 can't teach : I don't know anything. I can't 
 type or do shorthand. I don't want to be a com- 
 panion to an old lady — ^unless it were to Mrs. 
 O'Gorman ; but she's got Julia. But I like being 
 among flowers, even though they're cut, and I 
 like Mrs. Lovell, and I think that's a Heaven-sent 
 opening. Almost no one arranges flowers as a 
 profession now. The only one I've heard of is a 
 httle Japanese man. So we shall have the field to 
 ourselves. It's fun to be doing something original." 
 
 And soon afterwards she went. 
 
 Of this part of Rose's hfe I have little t& say. 
 I can tell only what I know at first hand. When- 
 ever I was in London — ^but that was very seldom 
 — I called at the florist's ; and Rose came down 
 for Sundays now and then. She seemed to be 
 happy and uncomplicated. Whether her associa- 
 
88 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 tion with me — whether my general tutelary 
 influence in her earlier years — ^was being of any 
 use to her I had no means of judging. She might 
 have been equally capable without it. Educa- 
 tionalists never know. 
 
 The flower scheme failed to prosper, but Rose 
 did not give up London. Even if there were not 
 the same objection to returning to Uve with me, 
 she had probably lost the wish to do so. I am 
 sure that she was fond of me, but she had made 
 new friends. London was full of variety and 
 attraction, and she had contracted the habit of 
 employment and liked it. I don't know anything 
 about the economics of a florist's business, except 
 that to me the thought of having to pay money 
 for flowers is repellent : flowers, one feels, should 
 be free to all ; but Mrs. Lovell had not enough 
 experience and Rose was quite capable of giving 
 a bunch of daffodils away rather than haggle 
 over the price. Moreover, the time was not ripe 
 for the professional arranger. I do not know 
 that it is even yet. 
 
 To Mrs. Lovell, however. Rose remained true, 
 and therefore continued with her as an ally in 
 her next scheme, which was an old curiosity shop. 
 Not an old curiosity shop where oddity was the 
 prevaihng note, but an old curiosity shop where 
 everything had some beauty, either of shape 
 or colour, or was picturesquely obsolete. Such 
 shops, I have observed on my London expeditions, 
 are now very numerous, but Mrs. Lovell's was 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 89 
 
 one of the first. They are usually directed by 
 women. Just as a man may sell wine or be secre- 
 tarj^ to a golf club and lose no caste, so may what 
 we call ladies keep these shops. Blue and green 
 and purple glass ; old stuff for patchwork quilts ; 
 spinning wheels ; Stafford and Leeds jugs ; lace ; 
 amber necklaces ; beads ; brass pestles and 
 mortars ; painted roUing-pins ; early Victorian 
 dolls — ^the place was full of things of that kind, 
 and Rose, in a charming smock, was standing 
 in the midst of it on the day that I unexpectedly 
 looked in, smilingly engaged in the task — an easy 
 one — of seUing a very young and obviously adoring 
 curate a warming-pan : not, as he was explaining, 
 for use, but for decoration. On seeing me she 
 blushed v^ry becomingly and nearly broke the 
 httle divinlp's heart by her too apparent eagerness 
 to turn to the new customer. 
 
 Rose beggdd the afternoon off — and it was the kind 
 of shop that did itself very little harm by shutting 
 up for the Whole day now and then — and we met 
 for lunch and then loitered about in Kew Gardens. 
 
 " Has that httle curate proposed to you yet ? " 
 I asked. , 
 
 " Not yet," said Rose. 
 
 " Any one else ? " 
 
 " One or two," she replied. 
 
 " I suppose a great many men come to that 
 shop ? " I said. 
 
 " Oh yes. They're very jolly too, some of them, 
 until they fall in love ; and then they're so dull. 
 
90 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 Isn't it funny what a difference it makes ? And 
 then they propose and I lose them." 
 
 And I, I thought to myself, have lost Rose ! 
 Is loss the rule of life ? It seems to be. 
 
 It was on one of Rose's week-end visits just 
 before she was twenty that she took out a photo- 
 graph and handed it to me. The photograph 
 was an amateur snapshot of a group on a lawn, 
 among whom was Rose. 
 
 " Quite good of you," I said. 
 
 " No," she said. " It wasn't me that I wanted 
 you to look at, but the man behind me." 
 
 It is strange what effect the most ordinary 
 words can sometimes have ! Rose's were casual 
 enough, but my heart absolutely stopped for a 
 moment and a mist crossed my brain. God knows 
 I did not want to keep this child from marriage ; 
 her engagement would even be a blessing in 
 disguise, for it would bring her back to her home ; 
 but her remark none the less was like a knell. 
 
 And yet she had told me nothing 1 Nothing — 
 and to the fearful swift apprehension of a jealous 
 foster-father, everything I 
 
 I pulled myseK together and examined the man : 
 tall, regular-featured, with a high forehead due 
 more to thinning hair than to formation of skuU. 
 Eyeglasses. His general expression suggested a 
 somewhat condescending benignity, with assmrance. 
 I didn't like him. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 91 
 
 " Who is it ? » I asked. 
 
 " His name is Eustace Holt," Rose said. " He 
 wants me to marry him." 
 
 " Yes ? " I heard my voice say. 
 
 " I rather think I shall." 
 
 I had no more words. I drew her to me and 
 kissed her hair. The action, I suppose, implied 
 a kind of possessive protectiveness. I had won- 
 dered vaguely howl should behave when the.news 
 broke : and this was the way ! 
 
 After a long silence Rose went on to say that 
 he was a barrister ; had been a private tutor for 
 a while after leaving Oxford, but was now at the 
 Bar and beginning to do well in chamber practice. 
 Not an advocate. 
 
 I looked at the photograph again. Probably 
 I should have been cool about any young man 
 who had captured Rose's heart, knowing so well 
 that none could be worthy ; but to this one I felt 
 positive hostility. He had the effect of filling me 
 with a sudden warm rush of affection for Ronnie. 
 
 " Well ? " Rose said. 
 
 She knew me sufficiently to discern a want of 
 sympathy ; but I hope that I succeeded in conceal- 
 ing the greater part of my antagonism. You see, 
 I was still a liar. Not all my intimacy with Rose 
 and admiration for her candour had cured me. 
 Perhaps had I said, " ily dear, I hate the sight 
 of the man : he looks priggish : do promise me 
 to do nothing about it for six months," it might 
 have changed her life. At any rate it could have 
 
92 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 done no harm, and it would have had the addi- 
 tional merit of expressing a truth. But I couldn't. 
 For one thing, I had not the courage to be destruc- 
 tive about her own choice, when the romance 
 was stiU so young ; for another, I had not the 
 right. She had seen the man and loved the man, 
 or thought she did ; and all the ground for my 
 sudden prejudice was a tiny snapshot. 
 
 " Well ? » said Rose. 
 
 " He's not what I was expecting for you or 
 hoping for you," I replied. " At any rate, not 
 in appearance. He's — ^well, he's too — ^too mrban. 
 Too prim. In spite of what I said about the fish- 
 basket, I have always thought of your husband 
 as more careless, easy-going, gayer than this. 
 I had thought of him as having something of 
 Nature — ^more of the open air or the sea — ^but 
 this man's from the Squares. He travels in the 
 Tube. He carries an umbrella." 
 
 " My dear Dombeen," said Rose, " how can 
 you know things Uke that ? I'm sure I don't, 
 and I've seen quite a lot of him. He may be a 
 Londoner, but that's nothing. Barristers must 
 live in London. I wish I hadn't shown you that 
 foolish picture. He's reaUy very distinguished 
 looking, he has a most delightful voice, he does 
 everything well. He's a plus man at golf." 
 
 " I can believe it," I said. " But that isn't 
 the point. The point is not, is he a remarkable 
 man, but is he fitted to be Rose's husband ? I've 
 known you for as many years as you have been 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 93 
 
 on this earth, and I've watched you grow up in 
 body and mind, and perhaps I've been able to 
 help you in both — and when we help people we 
 learn about them — and I've thought often of the 
 best kind of man to carry you away from me 
 when the time came, but never was it a polished 
 Londoner marked out for professional eminence. 
 Where — just to mention one trifling matter — 
 where are his jokes ? " 
 
 " Jokes aren't everything. But any way he 
 can be quite amusing." 
 
 " Jokes go a long way," I said ; " and you 
 especially would be very duU without them. As 
 for his golf, that's nothing. Golf isn't really a 
 game, nor does it really carry any open-air love 
 with it. How old is he ? " 
 
 " He's thirty-four," said Rose. 
 
 " Thirty-four, thinning at the top, once a tutor, 
 now a barrister, and going to marry this uncalcu- 
 lating child ! O my dear ! " I said. 
 
 It was of course absurd of me to be shocked 
 by Rose's choice of a husband. I suppose that 
 there never was a girl yet whose selection did not 
 cause surprise. The strange thing to male ob- 
 servers of these matches is the want of fastidious- 
 ness that even the nicest women can display. 
 Rose had not erred in that respect, but it is notori- 
 ous among men that most women do. 
 
94 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 I took my disappointment to Mrs. O'Gorman, 
 but she had no sympathy for me. All that she 
 did was to laugh. 
 
 " I told you so," she said. 
 
 " How can you be so elementary as to make 
 use of that paltry phrase ? " I replied. 
 
 She laughed again. 
 
 " Didn't I tell you so ? " she asked. " Years 
 ago. And often since." 
 
 " I suppose you did," I conceded. 
 
 " Very well then, let a poor lonely old woman 
 full of uric acid, with an extremely incompetent 
 medical adviser, enjoy her Uttle triumph ! If 
 poor human nature couldn't say ' I told you so ' 
 now and then, we'd hardly have the courage to 
 keep on at all at all." 
 
 " Very well then," I said. " You are one of 
 the most remarkable of far-sighted women. De- 
 borah the prophetess was a blind mute compared 
 with you ; Mother Shipton was an Aunt Sally. 
 I give you all the praise and glory. But meanwhile, 
 what is to be done ? I'm siire that Rose is making 
 a mistake." 
 
 " Most people who marry do," said this mon- 
 strous old woman. 
 
 " Then can't it be stopped ? " I asked. 
 
 *' I don't see how. Surely you've heard the 
 remark — ^I'm not very original this afternoon, 
 I'm afraid — ' Marriage is a lottery ' ? " 
 
 " WeU ? " 
 
 " Well, then there's nothing for you to do. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 95 
 
 It may be all right. You say that he's respectable, 
 a barrister, not poor, not deformed. How then 
 can you stop it ? You've got nothing to go on, 
 no valid excuse. If he were a dwarf you might 
 do something ; or a tenor with long hair. But 
 I don't see how you could stop her even then, 
 because in marriage the promising matches often 
 go wrong and the apparently ill-assorted have a 
 very good time. Besides, she's only a few months 
 from being her own mistress. You can grumble, 
 but you can't prevent." 
 
 And that's all the comfort that I got from 
 Mrs. O'Gorman. 
 
 But there was one drop of sweetness in this 
 bitter dra.ught. Rose's engagement meant that 
 she returned to me ; she gave up her Work almost 
 at once. 
 
 Nothing, however, was as it had been. (Nothing, 
 says the cynic, ever is.) Our old frank intimacy 
 was over. We had ottr talks and our walks and 
 our fun still ; but there was a skeleton at the feast, 
 and he was a rising barrister. Rose didn't mention 
 him much, nor did I. But she wrote long letters, 
 and received long letters, and I had no doubt 
 that Eustace Holt received those that she wrote 
 and signed those that she received. And then 
 one evening she suggested that he should be 
 asked down. 
 
96 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 "You'll have to see him sooner or later," she 
 added. 
 
 " Then it's still on ? " I inquired. 
 
 " Of course," said Rose. " I should have 
 told you if it hadn't been. When you meet him 
 you'll Uke him. Or you would if you hadn't 
 made up your mind not to, and haven't got the 
 pluck to eat humble pie." 
 
 I never liked him, but it would have been 
 difficult to say why. He was tall, comely, well- 
 mannered, deferential, thoughtful about details, 
 protective of Rose (perhaps that was his real 
 offence), uniformly quiet and easy. What he 
 lacked most conspicuously was any exaggerated 
 characteristic. He conversed fluently and with 
 some knowledge upon all the cultured topics — ■ 
 he knew about pictures and music, as a frequenter 
 of the National Gallery and the Crystal Palace 
 concerts ; he belonged to the London Library ; 
 he played golf at the Old Deer Park ; he had good 
 nails. He dressed well. His suit case was of 
 the solidest leather. In fact, he was all that he 
 should have been and — alas ! — ^nothing that he 
 should not. He reminded me of a weU-bound book 
 in a gentleman's Ubrary — ^the kind of book that 
 no gentleman's library should be without, but 
 which makes no appeal to be read. 
 
 I am not one of those who fling up their hands 
 in despair and wonder what on earth a sensible 
 girl like So-and-So can see in that feUow she's 
 going to marry. But even when one admits that 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 97 
 
 the deeps that call to deeps in engaged people 
 are and should be invisible to the rest of the world, 
 it is permissible to parents and guardians to deplore 
 the reciprocity. The deeps are not all : in fact 
 the attraction of the deeps can be the least per- 
 manent and admirable element in marriage. 
 
 I knew enough of Rose's spirit, her vividness, 
 her dependence upon impulse, her love of hfe, 
 to reaUze that she was doomed to spend far too 
 much time alone. Eustace had all the virtues, 
 but he had no imagination. He was also fixed 
 where Rose was fluid. He had his eye on the 
 goal success ; whereas all that Rose asked from 
 life was a gay serenity. She was in the habit of 
 watching faces light up at her approach : " People," 
 you might have written on her tombstone as 
 sufficient epitaph, " were pleased to see her " ; 
 and all of that was doomed to pass, not because 
 she would be less liked but because she would 
 not be free : she was to be reincarnated as the 
 property of another, as Mrs. Eustace Holt. 
 
 Still, there is more than one kind of happiness ; 
 there is even, I have observed, a happiness to be 
 derived from misery : all doctors would testify 
 to this ; and Rose might find, in her home duties 
 and the practice of wifeUness, a complacency that 
 would take the place of the old radiating freedom. 
 I use the word " might " with emphasis : it is 
 all that is possible to parents and guardians who 
 are threatened with the loss of their treasure and 
 have gloomy prevision. 
 
 7 
 
98 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 In my case I was truly hoping against hope, 
 because I had had a shock. On one of Eustace's 
 visits I made a dis^covery about him which filled 
 me with the darkest forebodings. I had found 
 him one afternoon just before post time seated 
 in the Ubrary steaming a stamp off a postcard; 
 Rose, it appeai^s, had had occasion to write a 
 rapid order to some shop and, having no half- 
 penny stamp (for those were the days before the 
 blessings of peace had sent up the postcard rate), 
 she had characteristically stuck on a twopenny- 
 halfpenny one from a store which I kept for 
 foreign correspondence ; and Eustace had been 
 entrusted with the card for the post. But his 
 careful eye had detected the extravagance, and 
 when I came upon him he was removing the 
 twopenny-halfpenny stamp and substituting a 
 halfpenny one from his own pocket. Knowing 
 Rose as I did, I would rather have found him 
 burgling my safe or even kissing one of the maids ; 
 for the action argued a passion for thrift which 
 would lead in time to the sternest censmre of the 
 unthinking carelessness in money matters and 
 the constant generosities which were among her 
 most striking characteristics. 
 
 The worst of it was that he did riot pale or start 
 when I caught him : he merely expressed his satis- 
 faction at having been able to correct Rose's 
 folly in time. He then dried the foreign stamp, 
 handed it gravely to me for future use ('Mt 
 will need a Uttle gum," he said) and hastened to 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 99 
 
 the post. If ever a home-wrecker was saturated 
 with innocence it was he. 
 
 I was in hopes that Rose's formal visit to 
 Eustace's people might have the effect of implant- 
 ing some misgivings in her. Such expeditions 
 have had that effect in the past, when the impact 
 of the " people " has been so startling as to cause 
 a complete revisioii of the affections. But not so 
 in Rose's case, and she came back still an engaged 
 woman. (By the way, I did not approve of the 
 ring which Eustace had given her : it was not 
 the superlatively beautiful thing that she ought 
 to have had. Rose should have had some great 
 noble stone in an invisible setting — a ruby or an 
 emerald — but Eustace had chosen and sent her 
 a muddle of little pearls and diamonds.) 
 
 Eustace's father was a clergyman in Berkshire, 
 a rather querulous man, Rose said, but hospitable 
 and kindly to her. Mrs. Holt was more difficult- 
 " But then," Rose added, " mothers always 
 must be critical of their future daughters-in-law. 
 No girl can be good enough for their darling sons ! " 
 
 Eustace being the only son, the mother was, 
 of coiwse, additionally hard to please. 
 
 " How did you leave her ? " I asked. 
 
 " Resigned rather than rapturous," said Rose. 
 " I did nothing very terrible, but I fancy that 
 she suspects you as a trainer of youth." 
 
100 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " Not so much as I suspect her," I said, " as 
 a judge of brides." 
 
 The whole thing infuriated me. 
 
 Another cause of vexation at this time was Mrs. 
 O'Gorman, 
 
 We are annoyed when our old friends like our 
 new friends too much ; but we are even more 
 annoyed when oiir old friends refuse to share our 
 antipathies to new acquaintances. Mrs. O'Gorman 
 disappointed me deeply by not finding Eustace 
 as unsuitable as I did. Perhaps she was only 
 being wilfully provocative, but the effect on me 
 was the same. 
 
 " A very inteUigent old lady," Eustace called 
 her, to me. Perhaps a little too outspoken, 
 a little lacking in taste. But very refreshing. 
 A character, in fact. No one enjoyed studying 
 a character more than he. And there were so 
 few of them ! 
 
 I have just said that few things are more annojdng 
 than an old friend's approval of a new acquaint- 
 ance that we disUke. But I think that to hear 
 an old friend patronizingly appraised by an 
 incompetent critic is almost worse. Mrs. O'Gor- 
 man was a character : there was no doubt about 
 that ; but Eustace had only a glimmering of that 
 fact. 
 
 My peace of mind was further impaired by Rose's 
 tendency to play with the joke that I also must 
 marry. It was not a new idea ; but hitherto she 
 had been very light with me. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 101 
 
 " What we must do, Dombeen," she had said 
 to me one day not long after her decision to go 
 to London to Mrs. Lovell, " is to get you settled." 
 
 " What on earth do you mean ? " I had asked. 
 
 " A wife," she said, laughing. " You mustn't 
 be left all alone." 
 
 " I like being alone," I said : " that is, when 
 you're not here." 
 
 " But you ought to marry," Rose said. " Every 
 one says so." 
 
 " Who says so ? " 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Cumnor says so." 
 
 " I don't pay any attention to the wives of 
 the clergy," I repUed. 
 
 " Aunt MiUy says so." 
 
 " Oh, Aunt MiUy ! Of course. She has never 
 wished me anything but ill." 
 
 " I should feel much happier in London if I 
 thought you were not alone," Rose said. 
 
 " That's absurd," I rephed. " You were not 
 unhappy at school, and I was alone then." 
 
 But now Rose went on to select actual wives ! 
 I used to wonder what she really thought about 
 it all, but never discovered. It was not like her 
 to be so persistent with a theme. She usually 
 touched and passed on. Could it be that we were 
 out of harmony in graver matters, and she jested 
 to keep free of them ? 
 
 She would come back to lunch, after being in 
 the village, with new and fantastic plans for my 
 marriage. Every spinster and widow within a 
 
102 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 five mile radius was weighed as a possible Mrs. 
 Greville. Rose dismissed Mrs. O'Gorman as too 
 old, but her faithful Julia came under the lens. 
 
 " But nOj" she was kind enough to say, " I 
 couldn't let you marry her. A woman must have 
 some spirit." 
 
 Three unmarried sisters — ^the Misses Sturgis — 
 had recently taken the Allinsons' old house — 
 after one or two fleeting and unattractive tenants. 
 Rose saw a good deal of them just now, and I was 
 on more or less familiar terms both as a doctor 
 and a neighbour. 
 
 The sisters, who were refined and affluent, 
 had been brought up as Quakers, but they quaked no 
 more nor did they harbour any resentment against 
 our " steeple-house " ; they had become indeed 
 useful members of the congregation, receiving 
 from the rector the preferential treatment meted 
 out to this particular sect even when it retains 
 its nonconformity. 
 
 Rose was never tired of analysing each — Miss 
 Sturgis, Miss Hester and Miss Honor — as a possible 
 wife for me. 
 
 " I was looking at Hester Sturgis again this 
 morning," she said. " Really she's very nice. 
 She has very pretty hair, don't you think ? She 
 is writing an essay on Walter Pater for the next 
 meeting of the Lowcester Literary Society. She 
 particularly hoped that you wouldn't be there, 
 Dombeen. She says yoii're so critical, she'd be 
 terrified." I 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 103 
 
 I gave Rose the assurance that I should not be 
 there. 
 
 " I wonder if tvives ought to be afraid of their 
 husbands," the. minx went on. " I mean, of their 
 intellects ? " 
 
 I made no sign of comprehension. 
 
 "Honor Sturgis is extraordinarily nice too, 
 isn't she ? " Rose continued. " Don't you like 
 the way she talks ? She has the kind of voice 
 that reminds you of that speech in King Lear. 
 Don't you love gentle voices, Dombeen ? She 
 is tall, too. I believe she's only an inch shorter 
 than you. It's absurd when husbands are immense 
 and their wives little, isn't it ? " 
 
 You see what an imp she co\ild be ! 
 
 " Honor is writing a description of a visit to 
 Chamounix," Rose went on. " I don't know 
 what the Lowcester Literary Society would do if 
 the Sturgises hadn't come to liven it up." 
 
 " We got on very well before they arrived," 
 I replied. 
 
 " Miss Sturgis was in the garden," Rose con- 
 tinued. " She's wonderful with flowers, they 
 say. If she just put a walkin#stick into the ground 
 it would grow. I expect that you and she together 
 would have the most stunning garden in the 
 world. And she's not really old, not more than 
 thirty-eight. Don't you think that married people 
 should be nearly of an age ? Some day, when I 
 have enough courage, I shall ask Honor — she's 
 the easiest, I think — why tliey've never married. 
 
104 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 With all their money, too! But Quaker girls 
 often don't, I believe. It's funny, because I 
 should think they'd make wonderful wives, so 
 placid and sensible, don't you know. What do 
 you think, Dombeen ? " 
 
 " I'm sick of the whole subject," I rephed. 
 
 Eustace was exhibited not only to me — and, 
 I am aware that, to ordinary prospective bride- 
 grooms, these probationary visits (probationary, 
 but too late for remedy) must be a very trjdng 
 ordeal and we ought not to be too hard — ^but to 
 the Strattons. What Rose's cousins thought of 
 him I have no means of knowing, but I suppose 
 that girls are as critical of other girls' fiancds 
 as we can be of the young women whom our 
 friends so mistakenly believe to be Minervas or 
 Venuses. But Mrs. Stratton, even if she may 
 have had a touch of envious regret that Eustace 
 had not first seen her daughters and fallen to one 
 of them, was pleased with her new nephew. Or 
 so I gathered from a letter to me in which she 
 congratulated me upon Rose's alliance with so 
 promising a counsel and so worthy and seemly 
 a man, and went on to refer with satisfaction to 
 the cessation of unfortunate rumours which the 
 engagement would bring about. 
 
 Eustace, I found, hked her, and had remon- 
 strated with Rose, but with infinite patience, 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 105 
 
 about her antipathy to the lady. It was her first 
 disappointment in him. 
 
 Mrs. Stratton had expressed herself as eager 
 that Rose should be married from her house, 
 and Rose was willing. I was glad that she was, 
 for many reasons : I did not, for instance, want 
 the wedding in our church, or the reception in our 
 house, with Eustace's people all about ; I did not 
 want to see Rose's husband driving away with 
 her into a new life, alien, to me, from my door, 
 her door. I could not bear the idea of continuing 
 to entertain the crowd after their departm^e, 
 when any decent man would wish to be alone. 
 These were selfish enough reasons, but also nat\u:al. 
 I deny that they lay me open to any very severe 
 censure. 
 
 At the same time I shotdd have liked it had 
 Rose said that only from her true home would 
 she be married. But she did not. Not improbably 
 she had that desire, but was anxious to spare my 
 feelings. She knew that Eustace could never 
 be congenial to me, and least of all as her captor. 
 
 I went to the wedding, of course ; and I have 
 never been more miserable. It was enough that 
 my Rose was standing there at the chancel steps ; 
 but there was more. This was my first wedding 
 for many years, and I was startled by the service. 
 The gravity and solemnity of the promises exacted 
 
106 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 from each — such promises as not even angels 
 are asked to make and keep, for there is notoriously 
 no marriage or giving in marriage among them — 
 filled me with gloom and foreboding and a sense 
 of injustice. It seemed wrong to ask any human 
 beings — and particularly boys and girls — ^to commit 
 themselves in this way. I vrondered if barristers 
 when being married have thoughts of the Divorce 
 Court in their minds — ^that overworked depart- 
 ment of the profession where the morbid and 
 inquisitive assemble day after day to gloat over 
 the fragments that remain when all these sacred 
 bonds and assurances have been broken. " With 
 all my worldly goods I thee endow," I heard Eus- 
 tace repeat after the clergyman. But did he ? 
 Does any husband ? What would be a husband's 
 attitude if the next morning his wife said that 
 she wanted his property — all the worldly good^ 
 with which he had pubUcly endowed her — at once ? 
 The commonest cause of married unhappiness that 
 I know of is the refusal of husbands to give their 
 wives even a requisite fraction of their worldly 
 goods for current household expenses. But the 
 words will go on being repeated at the chancel 
 steps for many a year yet. 
 
 "In sickness and in health" — doctors know 
 something about the value of that undertaking, 
 too, and how it is honoured. 
 
 And so Rose Alhnson became Rose Holt, and 
 those of us who were nearest the young couple 
 in kin or intimacy followed them into the vestry 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 107 
 
 to wish them joy and sigh the register. Having 
 kissed my darling and written my name, I 
 slipped away. I could not endm-e more. The vestry 
 had a back door and I slipped through it, pocketed 
 my button-hole carnation, and, after lunch, went 
 to a sale of mezzotints at Christie's, where I 
 endeavoured to soothe my feelings by buying two 
 Valentine Greens which (unless I was to die next 
 weekj when one can afford anything) I couldn't 
 afford. And so far as I could see then, there was 
 no particular reason why I should not die next 
 week — nothing, I mean, important enough to call 
 for my continued escistence. 
 
 Mrs. Eustace Holt was, I think, fairly happy in 
 her early married Ufe. J saw her now and then, 
 and was not conscious of anything very wrong. 
 She seemed to have lost tone : that was all ; but 
 I put that down largely to living in London, 
 cooped up by bricks and mortar instead of her 
 old free garden life. Also Eustace was not exciting. 
 But I think she was fond of him, and I know that 
 he was very proud of her, perhaps even to tiring 
 her by exhibiting her too much to his friends. 
 She was too candid to be a very easy diner-out» 
 and too courteous not to make the effort. 
 
 And then came the tragedy. Rose's first child 
 died at the end of only three weeks of life. You 
 remember what she said about wanting boys. 
 
108 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 Well, this was a boy, and Rose was in the seventh 
 heaven of delight. She squandered herself on 
 it. No other young mother, the niu:se told me 
 on that sad day when we buried the poor little 
 creature, had, in her experience, been so happy. 
 " And that, as you know," she added to me, " is 
 a big thing to say." 
 
 I found my poor child inconsolable ; in a kind 
 of stupor of bewilderment and revolt against the 
 blind stupidities of fate. To let this perfect little 
 being fade into nothingness and allow the ugly, 
 blundering world to go on ! 
 
 She was long in recovering and longer stiU 
 before she was herself again. I did all I could 
 to get Eustace to let her come to me to convalesce, 
 but he would not let her out of his sight, and took 
 her to this and that health resort, and even for 
 one winter to the Riviera. 
 
 It was nearly two years before I saw her again, 
 and then I went up to dine and spend the night 
 by way of celebrating my fiftieth birthday. That 
 was in 1900. 
 
 Every doctor is asked for advice in matrimonial 
 differences, or at any rate is made a confidant. 
 One can have too many of such confidences ; but 
 I defy any general practitioner, however brusque 
 and cm-mudgeonly, to escape them altogether. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 109 
 
 Most of us have seen so many couples that we 
 can tell at a glance what is wrong — ^which brand 
 of incompatibility is in use. For there are so 
 many. Temper is supposed to have a monopoly 
 in this matter, but that is far from the case. 
 There can be incompatibility in other matters, 
 apparently trifling, and trifling in fact unless life- 
 long fetters are involved. Incompatibility of 
 temperature, for example, where the lute is rifted 
 because the wife wants all the fresh air that windows 
 and doors can let in, and the husband rejoices 
 only in a vacuum. A doctor sees so many of 
 such antipodal house-mates — ^I don't say that 
 all are married people — ^that he comes to divide 
 the world into those who are healthily disposed and 
 those whose only idea of a window is a thing to shut. 
 It is a truism that wedded felicity is a very 
 fragile craft, liable to be swamped by any unfore- 
 seen wave, and it requires the most delicate sea- 
 manship, both at the helm and at the sail. I 
 have seen marriages ruined by so pleasant a spice 
 to ordinary intercourse as irony. Irony in a 
 husband, and a tendency in a wife to depreciate 
 her husband or make him a butt in public — 
 these have much misery to answer for. Absence 
 of mind in a husband can be fatal : an inability 
 to look ahead, to reserve seats, to order a cab, 
 to remember theatre tickets. And then, again, 
 over-much presence of mind can be fatal too : 
 an insistence on punctuality and too much officious- 
 ness about the house. 
 
110 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 I could not tell which was the cause of the want 
 of sympathy between Rose and Eustace, but I 
 felt something was wrong almost directly I entered 
 their door. Outwardly they were pleasant enough 
 together ; but there was no warmth in the air, 
 no electricity. Rose Holt was not Rose Allinson 
 — very far from it. But she was sweeter than 
 ever to me ; almost I could bring myself to be 
 glad that all was not well, for it made her so tender, 
 so thoughtfully attentive, to her old friend. It 
 was the Rose of the middle teens over again, 
 but with a richness and maturity added. Eustace 
 was courteous, a solicitous] host, and I felt spoilt 
 between them. But there was something wrong. 
 When their eyes met across the table no light 
 kindled. 
 
 It was a comfortable, distinguished house. The 
 furniture was good. The right books were scat- 
 tered about, some in French ; the right periodicals. 
 Photographs after the Old Masters. In Rose's 
 little boudoir were water colours. 
 
 After dinner Eustace left us. He had some 
 difficult papers to go through and master, and 
 we were left alone. 
 
 Rose established me by the fire and sat beside 
 me on a cushion. 
 
 " Is aU well with my child ? " I asked. 
 
 She did not reply. 
 
 For a long while we were silent. I could not 
 ask her to tell me more ; and she would not 
 volunteer because only half the secret was hers. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE ill 
 
 " When are you coming to stay with me ? " 
 I asked at last. 
 
 " Oh, Dombeen, I should love to," she said. 
 " But it's impossible. Eustace doesn't like me to 
 be away, ever. He counts so on my presence here."^ 
 
 " But he could come too," I said. 
 
 " Oh, no," she replied. " No. He doesn't like 
 the house to be left. No, it can't be done." 
 
 I had no right to press the case. But I could 
 not refrain from saying — " Then you are never 
 to visit me at all ? " 
 
 " Of course : some day," she said. " But not 
 yet. It couldn't be for a long while. You see. . ." 
 
 And then I learned that she was again to become 
 a mother. 
 
 How the world rushes on! A child grows to 
 be a girl, and a girl a wife, before one can turn 
 round. And then there is another child and the 
 same restless urgency sets in once more. I 
 thought of some lines I had read years and 
 years ago that had stuck in my mind : 
 
 There is so much we ne'er can know — 
 
 No time, no time 1 
 We seem to only come — to go. 
 
 I went back feehng all out of time and dis- 
 satisfied. This may be a common experience 
 with parents after their first Visit to their married 
 daughters ; but I had not even thought of it 
 before. True, I had set out with some vague 
 
112 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 misgivings, but so often — ^it is almost the rule — 
 the realization is better than our fears for it, that 
 I had discoimted the premonition. And now 
 I knew that my girl had made a mistake. It 
 was not so much that she was unhappy as that 
 she had lost her old habit of happiness. She had 
 become passive where she had been vividly active. 
 Instead of joy she had foimd resignation. I don't 
 mean that she was broken-spirited in any way: 
 but she was too quiet. If I were God I should 
 be very much ashamed of having added resignation 
 to young wives' armouries. 
 
 Rose's second baby was a girl. Eustace sent 
 me a telegram to that effect, and I wondered 
 much on her feelings toward it. There had been no 
 joy in her voice when she had told me of its coming. 
 
 I went up to see them when Rose the second 
 — ^for the child was named after her mother — was 
 two weeks old, and was led into the room by Eustace. 
 
 Much could be written on the different demean- 
 ovL£ of husbands on such occasions, for some behave 
 like impresarios and some like trespassers, some 
 are boisterous and some are perplexed, but none, 
 however much they want to disguise it, are totally 
 without pride. Even those husbands who are 
 as much embarrassed and hampered by their 
 wives presenting them with a son or a daughter 
 as they would be if their valets were to lose an 
 arm, cannot wholly conceal their triumph. Eustace, 
 although with cool reserve, belonged to the im- 
 presario class. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 113 
 
 How often does one hear well-meaning people 
 say, when discussing the marriages of others 
 (and of course discussion is superfluous and insipid 
 when marriages are satisfactory), "Ah, if only 
 they had had a child, what a difference it would 
 have made ! " But in my experience children 
 can divide parents quite as much as they can 
 unite them. I may have entertained some hope 
 that the Uttle pink creature with the dark silky 
 hair in Rose's arms was to bring Rose and Eustace 
 closer ; but there was no indication of it. Again 
 when their eyes met no Ught was kindled. How 
 that other child, that boy of her desire, would 
 have affected the love of husband and wife it 
 was not now possible to say ; but this Uttle helpless 
 mite in its mother's arms obviously was without 
 any federating gift. 
 
 Eustace said a few nice things to Rose, and some- 
 thing about new-born infants being no novelties 
 to me, and left us. 
 
 " I suppose she's perfect ! " I said. 
 
 " Poor Uttle pet, she's so warm and dependent," 
 said her mother. 
 
 " A nice doctor ? " I asked. 
 
 " Quite," she said, " and the kindest nurse 
 possible." 
 
 " Then you're happy," I said, but I knew that 
 she wasn't. 
 
 The unwanted children — are they not tragic 
 figures ? And their name is legion. Every doctor 
 can give you a list ! 
 
 8 
 
114 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 I don't say that this minute Rose was exactly 
 unwanted. Rose — ^my Rose — was incapable of 
 coldness to anything young and soft and helpless, 
 least of all a baby ; and Eustace, I could see, 
 hked being a father. But the Rose who had given 
 birth to that little boy, and Rose ihe mother of 
 this little girl, were worlds asunder. This Rose 
 was affectionate, thoughtful, dutiful, protective ; 
 that other had been transfigured by maternal 
 ecstasy and pride. 
 
 Eustace and I lunched alone, and I did my best 
 to penetrate his armour, but in vain. How did 
 he think of his wife ? What kind of need of her 
 had he ? Was he disappointed or was all going 
 as he had expected and wished ? Why on earth 
 had she found him attractive and how had he lost 
 his hold on her ? A hint of the possible reason 
 of his own attitude was offered when, to my 
 question. Didn't he find himself a Uttle at sea 
 domestically when Rose was upstairs like this ? 
 he replied. No. It seemed that the direction of 
 the household was his hobby. He arranged the 
 meals in advance, scrutinized and paid the books, 
 interviewed the servants. He had done this as 
 a bachelor and hked to know how his money was 
 being spent. 
 
 " With aU my worldly goods I thee endow " — 
 the words came back to me as he talked. 
 
 So Rose was not even mistress of her house, 
 had no realm to queen it in. " What women 
 want is a home " is an old-fashioned saying in 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 115 
 
 which I am a believer ; and Rose was without one. 
 All that she had was a footing in Mr. Holt's. 
 
 How I longed for some of Mrs. O'Gorman's 
 trenchancy and candour to tell him of his mistake ! 
 But I had none. I could observe and deduce, but 
 I had not the courage, or arrogance, to censure. 
 
 I went back to my great empty house with 
 a grudge against the universe. The grudge passed, 
 for I do not dwell on injustice, but the emptiness 
 remained. And so the next few years went on, 
 and I grew older and probably more mannered 
 and narrow. I also took an assistant, who was 
 in time to be a successor. Meanwhile Eustace 
 prospered and Rose brought up her little girl 
 in Wilton Place, and I saw them only on rare 
 occasions. One of the strangest things in life 
 is the ease with which people who are fond of 
 each other do not meet. Our tendency is to run 
 in grooves and find it difficult to leave them. Or 
 to change the metaphor, no matter how big the 
 world is, most of us are at heart villagers. 
 
 Rose's letters were regular and, up to a point, 
 informative; and I wrote with equal regularity. 
 But the written word, no less than the spoken, 
 often merely conceals the truth ; and I got very 
 Uttle inner information as to the Holt menage. 
 My deduction was that routine had completely 
 taken the place of romance (if ever there had been 
 any worth the name). Rose never complained. 
 
116 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 but also she never rejoiced. Her truth-telling 
 Impulses were checked by the fact that only half 
 the story belonged to her. To teU more was 
 to tell Eustace's share too ; and that was not 
 playing the game. 
 
 One afternoon, when Rose the second was five, 
 a message arrived from the Hall to ask me to 
 come at once to see Master Ronnie. 
 
 " Master Ronnie ! What is he doing here ? " 
 I asked in surprise. When last I had heard of 
 him he was a soldier in a responsible post in India. 
 I think it was at Poona ; his mother had read 
 me from time to time Uttle bits in his letters. 
 How old would he be now ? Let me see, he was 
 a year older than Rose, and Rose was twenty-eight. 
 Twenty-nine. So far as I could recollect, he had 
 never married. His mother had regretted this, 
 but was always counting on some nice girl attracting 
 him during his next leave. She did not want 
 him to be caught by any of those Anglo-Indians I 
 
 And now here he was, and ill. Ronnie and 
 illness were contradictions in terms, and I asked 
 the messenger what was wrong. An accident, 
 I presumed. But it was worse than that. He 
 had had bad fever and could not get it out of his 
 bones. Ordered home for a long rest and treat- 
 ment. Was very thin and white and didn't seem 
 to relish anything. 
 
 When had he arrived ? 
 
ROSE AND ROSE lir 
 
 Three days ago, but he wouldn't let them send 
 for me before ; hated to be coddled. 
 
 I found him in a very poor state. Some malarial 
 poison in his system and his spirits low. Poor 
 boy, he was only the shadow of his old self. But, 
 in a way, more attractive still, for his illness had 
 given delicacy to his candid, merry face, and his 
 eharm of manner was unimpaired ; while one's 
 pity for his condition increased one's affection 
 for him. When the admired strong become 
 suddenly the dependent weak there can be a 
 strengthening of their adherents. 
 
 It was while Ronnie was slowly mending, but 
 still only the shadow of his normal self, that 
 Rose and her little daughter came to stay with 
 me. Rose had proposed the visit and I was only 
 too glad to have them. Eustace, she said, was 
 in Paris, on some commission of inquiry. 
 
 I had seen Rose-the-less occasionally, but only 
 in London and on her best behaviour. Playing 
 on my lawn she was more natural, and I delighted 
 in her straight little body, her quick movements 
 and her eager ways. She was like her mother, 
 but unlike too — she had a hint of elfishness, 
 which her mother lacked : she was less essentially 
 womanly ; and she had an imperious touch. She 
 knew what she wanted and her enjoyment came 
 largely through getting it, whereas her mother 
 as a child had found things delectable as they 
 came and had not chosen and demanded. But 
 there was nothing unattractive in the child's 
 
118 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 selective impulses : they did not suggest any kind 
 of rapacity. For the rest, she was very like that 
 earlier Rose. She made friends as quickly, she asked 
 as many questions and she was happy all the time. 
 
 " Why does mother call you Dombeen ? " was 
 one of the first things she wanted to know. 
 
 I explained her difficulties with the word Greville. 
 
 " May I call you Dombeen too ? " she asked. 
 
 I said that I should like nothing better. 
 
 Rose — my own Rose — ^I found older and graver. 
 She could laugh still, and as her visit was prolonged 
 she laughed oftener and gradually gave up the 
 new habit of thinking visibly before she spoke. 
 Her impulses being always gay or cordial or merrily 
 mischievous, she need never have become cautious. 
 But I could see that she had. It is melancholy 
 indeed when a natural self-unconsciousness is 
 destroyed : and that is what had happened. 
 And how often I have seen it happen elsewhere ! 
 One of the prevailing superstitions of English 
 husbands is that wives are better for being de- 
 individualized. 
 
 One thing that a little perplexed me was Rose's 
 attitude to her daughter, which appeared to me 
 curiously detached. I wondered sometimes if 
 there were not some defective sympathy between 
 them, as between Rose and the child's father. 
 Rose was kind and gentle and a deUghtful com- 
 panion to the little girl ; but no fierce maternal 
 flame was discernible. I coTold have wished for 
 a glimpse of such a fire : but there was none. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 119 
 
 It seemed to me a trifle hard on the mite that she 
 should be at all out in the cold on account of 
 other people's affairs ; but on the other hand she 
 never seemed unhappy, or less happy than might 
 be ; and Rose had no intention of unfairness. 
 Besides, human nature can't be logical. 
 
 As Ronnie got better he came oftener and oftener 
 to us, to lie in a deck-chair in the garden. Rose 
 used to sit by him there and sometimes read to 
 hipi, or he told little Rose about India, very much 
 as the old Colonel had talked to her mother, 
 but with additional modern piquancies. Now 
 and then Rose and Ronnie returned to their 
 battleground in the bilUard-room ; but he was 
 not strong enough for a long game. Sir Edmund 
 and Lady Fergusson would now and then walk over 
 to accompany him back or push his wheeled chair. 
 
 Remembering the episode at St. Moritz, I was 
 a httle uneasy to see Ronnie and Rose so much 
 together. But I did not feel strongly enough 
 about it to interfere, even if interference had 
 ever been my long suit. Besides, I was so glad 
 to see Rose happy again. Moreover, Rose was 
 grown up and a mother ; Ronnie was grown up and 
 ill. Not that being grown up adds anything to power 
 of resistance when emotional temptations offer. 
 
 Perhaps to say that I was uneasy is too strong. 
 Rather was I not unconscious that that popular 
 plaything, fire, was adjacent, and yet not con- 
 scious enough to be really apprehensive. It was 
 always possible that Ronnie's state of dependence 
 
120 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 and fragility was the only cause of Rose's solicitude ; 
 while it was natural enough for a convalescing 
 soldier, such as he was, to sun himself in the 
 company of an old playmate. 
 
 I forget how long Rose and Rose stayed with 
 me on that occasion. But after Ronnie had been 
 taken off to some seaside resort they returned 
 to London and I was more alone than ever. That 
 must have been the early summer of 1906. 
 
 The next period of importance in this rambling 
 narrative is October of the same year, and I can 
 place the day exactly, because on my way toward 
 home I was stopped by some one running out of 
 the " Crown Inn " to say that old Pritchard, the 
 host, had had some kind of a stroke. I found 
 him pretty bad, the result of some extra convivi- 
 ality on a life of excessive and chronic alcoholism, 
 the occasion for which — and this is how I remember 
 the date so distinctly — ^was his good fortune over 
 the Cambridgeshire, which that year was won by 
 Polymelus. 
 
 Having done what I could to patch him up, 
 I returned home. While I had been in the 
 •' Crown " a tempest of cold rain had set in, bringing 
 with it a dreary consciousness of the end of fine 
 weather. One had the feeling that the year could 
 never recover : winter was our fate and winter 
 to a coimtry doctor means too much to do and 
 a great deal of discomfort, with too few of the 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 121 
 
 roadside compensations which he gathers as he 
 drives about in the summer and the spring. 
 
 My thoughts went naturally to Rose, whose 
 susceptibility to weather had always been so 
 acute ; in whose worid, could she plan it, rain 
 wotdd fall only at night. I was still thinking of 
 her as I left the car at the garage door and walked 
 into the house. 
 
 On the hall table was an envelope addressed 
 to me in Rose's writing, but it had not passed 
 through the post. I took it up with misgivings 
 which all too soon were to be justified. 
 
 " Dearest Dombeen " (it ran), " I have gone 
 away with Ronnie. He needs me more than 
 anyone else does, or at least I believe so. Eustace 
 will understand why I have gone when he begins 
 to think." So far it was written clearly and 
 directly. But then came some broken sentences. 
 " As for Rose," she had begun, and then had 
 stopped. " Rose is my only " she had begun 
 again and again had stopped. " Will you " was 
 another false start and was also scored through. 
 The letter finished merely Uke this. ' ' Dearest Dom- 
 been, think your kindUest of me. Good-bye. Rose." 
 
 How long I held the paper in my hand I cannot 
 say; but I then rang to know how it had got 
 there at all. 
 
 Suzanne answered the summons. 
 
 I asked her what she knew. 
 
 She was crying softly as she told me. Made- 
 moiselle Rose — Madame Holt, she should say — 
 
122 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 had rushed in "toute ^motionn^e." She could 
 not wait for me. She had come in a car. She 
 had -written the note and was gone again. 
 
 Did Suzanne know what the note was about ? 
 
 Ah, yes. Quel dommage ! But la vie cannot 
 be kept within fixed bounds. Pots boil over. 
 All this in her hard Norman speech. She was 
 fataHstic, but still she wiped her eyes. 
 
 Monsieur would not think less of Madame 
 Holt because of this, would he ? 
 
 I assured her that I was not a judge. 
 
 " La pauvre petite ! " Suzanne exclaimed, with 
 a sob. 
 
 She had been so assiduous in spoiling Rose's 
 daughter when they were with me that I naturally 
 thought these words referred to the younger of 
 them. But I was wrong. It was of the older 
 Rose that she was still thinking, for she went on 
 more brightly : " Mais, c'est bon. Maintenant 
 elle sera heureuse." 
 
 " WiU she ? " I asked. 
 
 Mais oui. Suzanne was certain of it. Madame 
 Holt would not have taken so great a step if she 
 were not to be happier for it. 
 
 I was astounded at her confidence. 
 
 My first impulse was to hasten after the fugitives 
 and try to bring them to reason. But reflection 
 showed me that this was impracticable. I had 
 no notion where they had gone or even when ; 
 probably not by train, but all the way in the motor, 
 and there has never been such an ally of runaways 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 128 
 
 as petrol. In the old days there was some chance, 
 even though faint, of tracking and overtaking a 
 pair of horses ; but motor-cars vanish into thin 
 air, leaving rainbow splashes in the roadway to 
 mock the pursuer in every hue. 
 
 Then I wondered if Sir Edmund and Lady 
 Fergusson knew. For Rose to tell me at once 
 was natural ; but would not Ronnie wish to let 
 a little time elapse before breaking the news ? 
 I guessed so. At any rate, it was not for me to 
 be the bearer of such iU tidings. If it was for 
 anyone to storm the citadel, that person was 
 the wronged Eustace. 
 
 Eustace ? Yes. And what of him ? He had 
 been told as well as I, I supposed. Rose had 
 never done anything underhand or secretive in 
 her life, and she would have made it a point of 
 honour to let her husband know that she had 
 cut the knot. At this moment he was probably 
 sitting, stunned, in his library, or perhaps with 
 his little Rose in her misery, and most likely 
 harbouring evil thoughts of me. 
 
 In my dismay and distress I put off dinner 
 for an hour or so, and walked out into the rain 
 to Mrs. O' Gorman's. It seemed an occasion for 
 the old Irish lady's pitiless candour. The equally 
 pitiless downpour would, I felt, help too. There 
 are times when one welcomes a storm to fight 
 one's way through. 
 
124 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 My thoughts were not idle as I stumbled against 
 the torrents. No aspect of the case did they 
 neglect. I can tell only of what I know, and I 
 have no information as to Ronnie's hold on Rose 
 after his return and what steps preceded her decision 
 to run off with him. But it is not difficult to 
 reahze, at any rate, the temptation. Here was 
 the old friend of her happiest days once more 
 — ^free and I don't doubt more than rejoiced to 
 see her again. He had been in strange countries, 
 and probably had carried her image with him 
 through aU his wanderings and loneUness. He had 
 never been articulately in love with her when they 
 were youthful together ; he had not proposed 
 after that accident — ^I am sure she would have 
 told me if he had, because she knew that I liked 
 him. When she used to talk to me about her 
 marriage and all those nice boys who were to gallop 
 about the nursery, I had thought naturally of 
 Ronnie as their father. One visuaUzes a figure 
 on such occasions, and Ronnie sprang into being. 
 But, as it happened, I was wrong. Rose had 
 not thought of Ronnie like this : she had merely 
 liked him, automatically so to speak, and when 
 Eustace came along there was no earUer occupant 
 of her heart to eject. Eustace found it aU too easy. 
 
 But after her marriage so much had happened. 
 And it must never be forgotten that Ronnie 
 compelled interest, all unconsciously maybe, by 
 the force of personaUty. He was quite ordinary 
 in everything but personaUty, which in his case 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 125 
 
 was physical more than spiritual. His ready 
 smile, his white teeth, his gaiety, his good humotir, 
 his general friendliness and out-for-funnishness 
 won him an easy way into the good graces of the 
 world. He was popular almost universally. Rose, 
 as I have said, had never to my knowledge, or 
 even to my suspicion, been in love with him ; nor 
 he with her in any but a superficial degree, even 
 if that ; but there was always that intimate 
 experience in Switzerland in the background ; 
 and each had since had too much time to think 
 about the past and to speculate upon the might- 
 have-been : Rose in the watches of the night taking 
 stock of her marriage and its disenchantments, 
 and Ronnie in a foreign land sick of a fever. 
 
 Both were older too — not so much older in 
 years, but older through what had happened : 
 the passage of time being often almost negligible 
 in influence compared with certain experiences. 
 A woman grows mature so swiftly : a three weeks' 
 honeymoon can do it, a night can do it ; the birth 
 of her first child always does it. It may be only 
 in compartments, but maturity is there somewhere. 
 And Rose's child was five years of age. As for 
 Ronnie, I suspect that such adventures among 
 women as had fallen to him — and a handsome 
 young officer in India has many admirers — ^had 
 chiefly thrown his thoughts back, in comparison, 
 to Rose. When he might have won her he had 
 not ; after, when he wished he had, she was another's. 
 I don't say that he had brooded on this, but he prob- 
 
126 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 ably recurred to it when least happy ; and regret, like 
 love, never stands still : it increases or it diminishes. 
 
 And her disenchantment, her starvation ! Eus- 
 tace's frigid decorum, his supervision of the 
 housekeeping books, his morbid interest in her 
 minutest personal expenditure, his tendency to 
 relapse into the tutor and shape her mind wholly 
 by his, so that instead of the home containing a 
 rising barrister and an impulsive, warm-hearted, 
 generous woman it should contain merely a rising 
 barrister and his female derivative — all this had 
 surprised her and depressed her. Marriage, she 
 had known — being a normal creature, full of the 
 instinct of her sex, and not only the instinct but 
 her sex's capacity to endure — ^was necessarily a 
 matter of adjustments. Any two persons agreeing 
 to Uve together have to learn each other's ways and 
 make allowances : even two men and two women. 
 How much more so then when the two persons 
 suddenly thus beginning a new and intimate 
 co-habitation are a man and a woman, natural 
 enemies — or, at any rate, natural censors of each 
 other, naturally jealous of each other, naturally 
 misunderstanding each other ! Perhaps the word 
 enemies may stand. 
 
 In the case of her own marriage Rose quickly 
 learned that the adjustments were all to be hers. 
 The only change that Eustace made was to add 
 a wife to his house : he kept the same habits : 
 he played his golf at the Old Deer Park just as he 
 had always done ; he read the books from the 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 127 
 
 London Library ; he took her, regardless of her 
 taste in music, to concerts. But he had never 
 really loved ; he had been attracted by Rose's 
 gaiety and vividness, even if he had neglected to 
 cherish those quaHties after they had passed into 
 his keeping ; he had known that rising barristers 
 are usually furnished with wives, and that they 
 do not rise the less because those wives are beauti- 
 ful. He had known also that marriage is a natural 
 state ; that the duty of a good citizen is to have 
 children ; that wives can be more comfortable 
 than housekeepers ; and so on. I don't say that 
 he had put any of these thoughts into words : 
 they were merely the outcome of common know- 
 ledge. Nor do I want to be unfair to him or to 
 suggest that he was not proud and affectionate. 
 I think that he was. But again I say that he 
 had no imagination : he took things for granted, 
 and directly a husband does that he is doomed. 
 Eustace's refined and comfortable home in 
 Wilton Place was never disgraced by anything 
 so unseemly as passion or even eagerness. Return- 
 ing from his chambers he had never upset furniture 
 in his desire to get to her. When he brought flowers 
 to her and she crushed them to her bosom in 
 an ecstasy of enjoyment, a spasmodic return to 
 hatxae, he warned her that she was in danger of 
 breaking the stalks. He had brought the flowers 
 though. That is the trouble : he was always 
 nice and handsome and courteous. But there it 
 stopped. Having no imagination, no instinctive 
 
128 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 knowledge of women, no sexual shorthand, he 
 was unaware that nice men are negligible. What 
 women want is not niceness but devotion, not 
 courtesy but worship. 
 
 And then — ^I was stiU fumbling towards an 
 explanation of Rose's desperate act — ^then there 
 was the disappointment about the boys. Rose, 
 as I have said, had set her heart on being a mother, 
 and the mother of sons, and there was only one 
 surviving child and that was a girl. I have brought 
 enough children into the world to know something 
 about the part that they play in married hfe, 
 and I can set it down firmlyas a fact that it is all 
 to the bad when the sex of the child is not that 
 which the parents had desired. The girl who 
 ought to have been a boy has to suffer for it ; 
 and so, though in a less degree, does the boy 
 who ought to have been a girl, but he is not a 
 common figure. Has it ever been suggested, I 
 wonder, that some of the traditional alleged untrust- 
 worthiness of women is due to the fact that they 
 were not wanted. I don't say that I agree as 
 to this inferiority of the sex, but proverbial lore, 
 which is the wisdom of many and the wit of one, 
 has decided that they are false and fickle, unstable, 
 coy and hard to please, and so forth : and that 
 may be a cause. Certain it is that the nurse 
 who announces that the little pet is a girl is rarely 
 treated as a bringer of good news ; whereas if 
 she can say it's the finest boy she ever had in 
 her arms she is, for the moment, an angel. Why 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 129 
 
 should an unwanted child trouble to be constant 
 and true and without caprice ? Some revenge it 
 is entitled to. 
 
 Rose, however, does not come within the category 
 of the unwanted, for her sex had been determined 
 by her father and mother months before I assisted 
 at her debut, and her name had long been chosen. 
 Why they should have desired a girl instead of 
 another of the lords of creation, I cannot say : 
 probably because the father was an artist, and 
 artists are notoriously eccentric. But there it 
 was : they wanted a girl and they had one, whereas 
 that girl, when her own time of fulfilment came, 
 wanted not only a boy but many boys, and could 
 not bring up one. Rose, I am sure, had a feeling 
 of resentment for the girl who had lived where 
 the boy had died. With that tiny boy baby much 
 of her joy in life was buried. He had Uved long 
 enough in the actual world for her to make a 
 little god of him ; and before that life had been 
 there was the hfe he had lived under her heart. 
 
 To say that she was not fond of Rose would 
 be to tell an absolute falsehood — she took a grave 
 pleasure in her, although treating her perhaps 
 more as a toy than a daughter, as a wonderful 
 doU whose capacities she never tired of studying 
 — ^but she was steeped in a deeper raptiire when 
 her breast nurtured a son. That is all. 
 
 To put it in another way, I don't beUeve that 
 when Ronnie arrived and opened the door upon 
 whatever fair prospect he displayed to her or 
 9 
 
130 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 she imagined she saw — whatever avenue of escape 
 — ^Rose would have stepped through had the child 
 she was to leave behind her been a little boy of 
 five instead of a little girl. 
 
 Who knows what women feel ? We may guess, 
 but they wiU never tell us. They won't even tell 
 each other. As regards Rose and Ronnie, my 
 guess is that his pathetic collapse attracted more 
 than his radiant vigour would have done. Had 
 she found him triumphant, as of old, she would 
 have remained unscathed. Strong and masterful 
 he might have called to her in vain, for she was 
 never a sensualist. It was his dependence that 
 swayed her and decided her. It was the boy 
 Ronnie needing tenderness and care. 
 
 Involved and fantastic as it may sound, I have 
 the belief that it was the mother instinct that 
 took Rose off with Ronnie more than love. What 
 I mean is that she did not go with him as most 
 women go with men, through ordinary passion, 
 but because he was fragile and in need of protection 
 and she thought of him as her own, or — subcon- 
 sciously of coiu"se — even as one of those unborn 
 sons which he himself would have begotten. So 
 mystical can women be ! 
 
 But of course the wild hope of escape was 
 present too : the wish to live a little more fully 
 while there was yet time : the feeling that to 
 endure another moment with Eustace was im- 
 possible and wrong. 
 
 And again Theodore's wish came back to me. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 131 
 
 Was this " beating the band " ? Could anything 
 be farther from the ordinary conception of that 
 successful and honourable act than running off 
 with another man and leaving husband and 
 child ? And yet, it had required courage, devotion, 
 disregard of the world's censure — all the things 
 that properly-brqught-up and even universally 
 rei^ected people need not possess. What a 
 muddle is our civiUzation ! 
 
 " You must forgive this untimely and unpro- 
 fessional visit," I said, as I was shown into Mrs. 
 O'Gorman's over-furnished sitting-room. 
 
 " Don't lae foolish. Doctor," she replied. " Have 
 done with your politeness. Don't I know why 
 you're here ? " 
 
 " You do ? " I exclaimed. 
 
 " Of course I do," she said. " It's about Rose. 
 She's bolted." 
 
 "But surely the villagers aren't talking?" I 
 s^d in a panic of alarm. " You don't mean to 
 say it's not a secret ! " 
 " No one knows but you and me,"said the old lady. 
 
 " And Suzannfe," I corrected. 
 
 " Oy Suzanne I She doesn't matter. She's an 
 aUy. But no one else knows. I know because I 
 had a letter to-day. Rose took me some way into 
 her confidence when she was staying with you. 
 Old people often get told things. But don't worry ; 
 it's all right." 
 
132 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " All right ? " I echoed. " What do you mean ? 
 Do you want young wives to behave Uke this ? " 
 
 " When they're hke Rose — yes," she said. 
 " The poor lamb was miserable. That iceberg 
 of hers was no good except to freeze her. She 
 wants Ufe, love, human emotions, and she'll get 
 them with the young Captain." 
 
 " But " I exclaimed, aghast at this Bol- 
 shevism. " You talk as if people had the right 
 to do as they please — ^break laws — anything." 
 
 " Not all of them by any means, the idiots," 
 she replied. " But Rose — ^yes. Rose ought to 
 have all she wants. I advised her to. It's — no 
 don't interrupt me — ^it's your own doing very 
 largely. You brought her up to be happy and 
 true to herself. She saw you always at work 
 ministering to other people — Oh ! I know you were 
 paid for it — I've paid you myself — ^money thrown 
 .away too, for I only get worse — but that doesn't 
 matter : you're a soft old thing at heart. Anyway, 
 there was Rose, the apple of yoiu" eye, with a 
 natural sweet disposition, and the centre of your 
 circle of friends, and the mistress of your easy- 
 going prosperous house, and she gets into kindly 
 humane habits. Then she marries this refriger- 
 ator K.C., or whatever he is, and begins to miss 
 everything that she had been used to. He's a 
 stupid fellow — he hasn't even the sense to be ill 
 and touch her heart that way — he can't lose his 
 temper — can't swear — only be poUtely rasping 
 now and then — and he gradually wore her down, 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 133 
 
 diluted her sweetness, crushed her nice impulses, 
 made her live according to Cocker." 
 
 Wonderful, I thought, what a lot the old lady had 
 divined, for I'm sure Rose never told her in words. 
 
 " There was no doubt about his selfishness," 
 I said. 
 
 " As for selfishness," said Mrs. O'Gorman, " I 
 don't mind that. That hasn't necessarily anything 
 to do with it. All the most attractive men are 
 selfish, even if the most selfish men are not the 
 most attractive." 
 
 "I wonder if that's true," I said. 
 
 " Think about the unselfish men you know 
 and you'll soon realize its truth," she rephed. 
 " Unselfish men don't give us any fun at all — ^I'm 
 talking as a woman, remember — ^they make it 
 too easy. The selfish ones keep us thinking, and 
 when they forget themselves it's dehcious : ^ I 
 mean, it used to be." She sighed and laughed. 
 " But it's about Rose we're talking," she continued. 
 " Having got rid for a while of her husband, she 
 comes down here and finds that poor boy, her 
 old friend, ill and miserable, and aU the love she 
 ought to have felt for him years ago suddenly 
 materialized, but a milhon times stronger, and 
 there you are. ' Bolt, my lamb,' that's what I said 
 to her, although she never asked for my advice. 
 ' Bolt, my lamb, and be happy while you can.' " 
 
 " Well, I'm " I began. 
 
 " Say it," she said. " Say you're damned. 
 Nobody minds. But you're not so damned as 
 
134 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 that poor child would have been if she'd gone back 
 to the Arctic Zone. I'm old enough to believe 
 that the whole purpose of unhappy people's lives 
 is not endurance. I've seen too much of it. And 
 so has every one, especially you docto~rs. Endur- 
 ance ? No. Let revolt and escape have a chance 
 too. That is, if people really want them. The 
 trouble is that really wanting things is so rare. 
 It's a lukewarm world ! " 
 
 " Anyway," I said, " I'm amazed that you could 
 dare to advise anything so revolutionary to Rose. 
 It's a terrible responsibihty." 
 
 " We look at it differently," she replied. 
 " I'm twenty years older than you, and, being 
 a woman, perhaps I feel more bitterly for Rose. 
 Besides, I'm a rebel and you're not, I'm a believet 
 in cutting knots, and you — although you're 
 more sympathetic than most — are still in favour 
 of ' endurance vile.' Let those endure that enjoy 
 it, say I, but let the others try for a second innings 
 and a happier. If Rose had remained it would 
 have been for what purpose ? To pander to her 
 husband's respectabiUty. Do you defend that ? 
 Is that your idea of a sound motive ? " 
 
 " Everything can be put up with," I said feebly. 
 " Ever since I began to practise I have been watch- 
 iilg couples putting up with bad jobs." 
 
 " And admiring them ? " 
 
 " In a way — ^yes," I said. 
 
 " And wanting the same kind of death-in-life 
 for your own girl ? " 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 135 
 
 " Well " I began. 
 
 " You must answer that question, yes or no," 
 she insisted. 
 " No," I said. 
 
 " And then," I began again, " there's the 
 child. What about her ? Left motherless." 
 
 "Well, and what about Rose herself?," Mrs. 
 O'Gorman retorted. " She was motherless and 
 fatherless too, and she grew into happiness 
 and became a beautiful woman, thanks in some 
 degree to some one who shall be namelessj' 
 
 " But who," I said, " might possibly be feeling 
 not a httle guilty over the way that things are 
 turning out." 
 
 " But who, if he did so," Mrs. O'Gorman added, 
 " would be a very silly old boy." 
 
 " Do you hold me absolutely innocent then ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " Innocent of harm — yes," she said. " Because 
 there's not the harm you seem to think. There's 
 social shipwreck, of course, but that's- nothing, 
 because they'll Uve abroad. There's the Iceberg's 
 gritef, but that doesn't matter because he was 
 never really in love. There's little Rose — but 
 she's only five and will adjust herself. No, the 
 only real sufferers will be the Captain's father and 
 mother, who, Uke aXLnouveaux riches, were thinking 
 of a grand match for him. They'll be very sore, 
 and not unnaturally. But the world isn't for 
 
136 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 fathers and mothers : it's for sons and daughters." 
 
 " You are a cynical old woman," I said, " and 
 I'm ashamed of you. I'm almost sorry I've kept 
 you aUve so long." 
 
 " You didn't," she said. " U I've survived 
 it's been in spite of you." 
 
 " But what of Rose herself ? " I asked. " How 
 can this be any but harm to her ? " 
 
 " Because she's happy," she said. " She's happy 
 now — ^to-day — and she's going to be happier once 
 she's on the sea, saihng away with her boy to 
 make a new home together. She's got something 
 to squander herself on, and that's happiness, even 
 when the something isn't worth it." 
 
 " But her child ? " I returned to the point. 
 
 " Her child will be all right, too. You — or 
 some one else — ^wUl bring her up." 
 
 " I don't say that it is so in Rose's case," the 
 ruthless old commentator added, " but lots of 
 girls are better away firom their mothers than 
 with them, and lots of mothers better away from 
 their girls. Children often enough would be the 
 better if they were brought up by other people and 
 not their parents. I'm sure I should have been. 
 My mother and I were Uke Kilkenny cats most of 
 the time." 
 
 To my intense siu-prise, who should arrive the 
 next day but Eustace, leading his little girl by 
 the hand. I had expected to hear from him; 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 137 
 
 but I had never thought to have him again under 
 my roof. Vaguely I had guessed that he might 
 associate I'qie in some way with his wife's action ; 
 unjustly, ox course, but people are oftener unjust 
 than not, asd he was wounded to the quick and 
 in no position to be too fair and reasonable. 
 Besides, it was while Rose was visiting me'that she 
 had m.et Ronnie again, and it was the news of 
 his retiirn and illness in one of my letters to her 
 that (I now saw| had determined her to come just 
 at that time on a, visit to her early home. I had 
 touched an old chord and set it vibrating. All 
 this Eustace, I tkought, knew, and I was taking 
 his resentfulness, however ill-founded, for granted. 
 
 But how often we are in error in our notion of 
 what other people are feeling ! And how difficult 
 it is to learn not to continue to make such mis- 
 takes ! Eustace was harbouring no such grudge ; 
 he held me innocent ; he even went so far as to 
 wonder, when we were alone, if he himself might 
 not somehow have been to blame. He could lay 
 nothing specific to his charge ; and yet. . . . But 
 no, it could not be through fault of his own. Try 
 as he might — and he had passed sleepless nights 
 in rcAdewing the past — ^he could not recall ever 
 having failed in any direction whatever in his 
 duty as an affectionate and solicitous husband. 
 
 The letter that Rose had left for him, he averred, 
 when it came* to essentials, said nothing. He 
 did not show it to me but gave me the sense. It 
 expressed sorrow at her failure to make him a 
 
138 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 •worthy wife, regret at the collapse of thfeir dream, 
 and theft said that she was sure that when he 
 thought it all over he would understand, and, 
 understanding, forgive. But if he could not forgive 
 he would forget. 
 
 " Forget ! " Eustace exclaimed. How could he 
 forget ? How could he ever forget ? The shame 
 of it too. 
 
 But he must not inflict his misery on me. That 
 would be unfair, and I naturally had my own 
 disappointment and grief to dispel. 
 
 We were sitting over our tobacco, late — ^too 
 late for me, for I was very tired and the contem- 
 plation of spilt milk has never much attracted 
 me. Would I tell him, he asked, of my own 
 affairs ? What was the health of the neighbour- 
 hood ? Good ? All the same, I must agree that 
 it was extraordinary, incredible even, that his 
 wife, the mother of his child, should find it possible 
 to do this — ^this — he hated to be hard on her — 
 but he was bound to call it, this scandalous thing ? 
 To leave her home in Wilton Place, one of the 
 most charming and convenient houses in London, 
 every one said : to leave her circle of friends, hers 
 and his — was not that all amazing and beyond 
 credence ? As for himself, he would say nothing, 
 except that barristers, by the very nattire of their 
 caUing, are peculiarly in a position to be protected 
 by their wives rather than made by them to 
 look foolish if not despicable. How thankful 
 he was that when he was called to the Bar he had 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 139 
 
 decided to specialize and not take up advocacy. 
 The spectacle of a leading divorce court counsel 
 himself unable to retain his wife's affections would 
 be too ludicrous ; his career woulii be finished. 
 As it was — ^but his mind was in a whirl on the 
 whole question of his future. 
 
 That I felt sorry for him as he laid bare his 
 wounded ego, I need not say. No one could have 
 failed to pity him. But to see him so blind to 
 any but his own misfortune, so incapable of putting 
 himself for an instant into Rose's place, or to 
 reiUze that such a ^oman must have suffered 
 much and long before she could take such a step, 
 was to withhold a certain measure of sympathy. 
 
 He would not, he beg^ again, inflict any more 
 of his perplexities on me. It was not that that 
 he had come for. Would I mind if he took the 
 key and went for a walk ? He had no desire for 
 bed and I must be weary. 
 
 I was rising to comply with this exceedingly 
 welcome suggestion ^hen he began again. What 
 was not the least extraordinary part of the whole 
 mystery, he said, was the circumstance — mark 
 this ! — ^that Rose had never given thte faintest 
 indication of unrest, dissatisfaction. How could 
 one account for it ? It was not as if he had been 
 cool or careless or in the slightest respect neglectful. 
 He taxed his ihemory in vain in the attempt to 
 collect a siftgle instance. As to his haying giveh 
 any of the ordinary causes for jealousy — ^that 
 was liaughably out of the question. 
 
140 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 He laughed now, to illustrate the impossibility, 
 and his hollow travesty of mirth gave me deeper 
 knowledge of the poor fellow than all his words. 
 If he had only known that such complete failure 
 to provide a wife with cause for jealousy is no 
 surety of married bhss. 
 
 None the less, he went on, guiltless as he held 
 himself to be, he could not keep at bay the sus- 
 picion, the reflection, that a man is not deserted 
 by his wife without some reason. What it coiild 
 be passed his comprehension, but he had the 
 gnawing fear that it existed. Could I offer any 
 suggestion ? I had known Rose longer than any- 
 one else, even though she was an immature girl 
 when she left me. 
 
 I said that there must of coiurse be some reason. 
 Was it not possible — women are strange creatures 
 — ^that Rose needed something more than a good 
 home, a circle of London friends none of whom 
 had she known before marriage, unintermittent 
 coiutesy from her husband ? 
 
 " Women are not like us," I went on : " women 
 are capricious — it is a commonplace of the drama- 
 tists and novehsts, who are supposed to know 
 — ^look at Shakespeare, Browning, Hardy, every 
 one — ^they are capricious, incalculable, they have 
 odd whimsies, desires — every doctor can teU you 
 about them — ^they take sudden dislikes. In short," 
 I said, " they are women." 
 
 He agreed heartily. 
 
 Some women, I continued, even actually appre- 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 141 
 
 ciate a little bullying, a little roughness; some 
 must be continually re-wooed, taken on new 
 honeymoons. The greatest mistake in marriage 
 can be the limitation of honeymoons to one. As 
 for Rose — he must remember that she was born 
 and bred in the country : her early days had been 
 spent in gardens ; perhaps she was spoiling for 
 the open air again. Oh, yes, I knew that Wilton 
 Place was near the Park ; but I meant something 
 more open than that. She had a touch of the 
 woods in her : something of the dryad, even the 
 naiad. Surely he had noticed that ? 
 
 No, he had not. I was thinking of her, doubtless, 
 as a child, and he had known her as a woman and 
 a mother. I must remember that. Nor could 
 he quite agree that I had in the least accounted 
 for anything more than a sudden wish for a holiday 
 in the country. I had said nothing yet to explain 
 her physical treachery — her infidelity. 
 
 " There," said I, " I have no theory to propound." 
 Nor had I. I would not have propounded it for 
 the world. 
 
 In that case, he said, he must fall back on what 
 was at once the kindest and the most plausible 
 theory — ^that Rose had lost her reason. Yes, 
 that was it. Her mental balance was disturbed, 
 and in her derangement he had become antipathetic 
 to her, the author even of some imagined incon- 
 stancy ; and in her nervous, unhinged condition 
 she reverted, perhaps subconsciously, to her 
 youthful days, and, thinking herself again the 
 
142 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 playmate of this boy, this soldier, she had auto- 
 matically, as it were, resumed friendship with 
 him, and he had been base enough to take advantage 
 of her distraught state and had carried her off. That, 
 he felt sure, was the explanation ; yes, that was it. 
 
 He fell into a long silence, but I had no hope. 
 He had now, I could see, given up aU idea of his 
 nocturnal walk. Nor could any movement of 
 my own — adjusting the shutters, moving ash- 
 trays, and so forth — deflect his thoughts. 
 
 What steps he intended to take, he went on, he 
 could not say. He had not decided. All that 
 he had decided was not to make the case public, 
 and to go away. London had become unbearable ; 
 he shrank equally from the spoken condolence of 
 his friends and from their tactful avoidance of 
 the subject. He had long wanted to visit the 
 Argentine, where his services were, as it chanced, 
 in demand At the moment in connexion with some 
 big dispute^ and in the future of which he was 
 a firm believer, and he should take this oppor- 
 tunity of throwing some of his care on to the 
 bosom of the sea, the great simplifier. 
 
 But in order to do that with a comparatively 
 assured mind Rose must be left in good hands. 
 
 This brought him to the purpose of his visit, 
 which he could assure me had not been to force 
 me to Usten to his tale of woe at all. Would I, 
 to put it briefly, would I let him leave Rose with 
 me ? He should feel absolutely at peace if I would. 
 There was no one else whom he could trust in 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 143 
 
 the same way. He had many relations, it is 
 tn^e, but — ^well, there it was. And somehow there 
 was a kind of fitness in it. I had brought up his 
 own Rose, who was the most beautiful creature 
 he should ever meet — here he almost broke down 
 and I admired him for it — and, well, and — here 
 he broke down completely. 
 
 I confess to being deeply touched by the confi- 
 dence implied in his request ; and I shivered as I 
 remembered my unfounded suspicion that he was 
 likely to hold me to blame, at any rate in part, for 
 his tragedy. It seemed to me as high a compliment 
 as could be paid, that he, with his poor totn 
 feelings and his pride all in rags, should be willing 
 to place his daughter under the care of the man 
 whose possible laxity had been responsible for 
 her mother's defection. 
 
 But the question would have to be considered 
 very thoroughly. The responsibility would be 
 very great, nor was I in some ways as well fitted 
 to become a little girl's foster-father as I had been, 
 twenty years ago, when the other RoSe had come 
 to me. I was then young enough to be an active 
 playmate and I was flexible. I had now become 
 not only' older but a man of fixed habits, many of 
 which would have to be broken. Could I break 
 them, and did I want to break them ? For Rose's 
 child (could she have engineered so complicated 
 a business as having one without the assistance 
 of anyone else) I would do anjrthing, but this 
 was Rose's-And-Eustace's child, and that made 
 
144 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 so much difference. I could be sorry for Eustace, 
 but never could I like him, and supposing that 
 some of his least admirable characteristics mani- 
 fested themselves now and then in his offspring, 
 might I not beco me actively antipathetic ? Human 
 nature can be so unreasonable, so unjust, and I 
 pretended to no immunity from illogical aversions. 
 Nor was I in any need of a constant companion. 
 Since Rose's marriage I had tended more and more 
 to eremitical consolations — ^to my prints and 
 gardening — ^whenever my patients permitted me. 
 Nor was the personnel of the place of the kind 
 that it had been when Rose's mother had come 
 " for good." In those days, as I have told — 
 and very Ukely told twice — I had old Hannah to 
 help me. But Hannah was now a rheumatically 
 crippled pajring-guest at Lowestoft who could 
 do nothing for me even if I again lured her forth. 
 And the march of progress had established a cash 
 chemist near enough to my rounds to lead me to 
 give up dispensing, and so there was no longer 
 WeUicum for the new Rose to help and hinder 
 and besiege with questions. The same march, 
 in another department of its attack upon the 
 goodness and oldness of the days that are gone, 
 had substituted a motor-car for my horses and 
 traps, and so there was also no groom for Rose 
 to help and hinder and besiege with questions. 
 There was a chauffeur, it is true, but a man who 
 has to do with machinery does not compare, as 
 guide, philosopher and friend of small inquiring 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 145 
 
 persons, with a man who has the care of horses. 
 
 A gardener I still had, though Briggs was dead ; 
 and neighbours, among them Mrs. O'Gorman, 
 now getting on in years, but with all her faculties ; 
 and some kind of a spurious, inferior Hannah 
 could be obtained ; and if Rose liked animals 
 she could be provided both with a pony and a boy 
 to look after it. None the less, it was a great pro- 
 blem and I had very serious doubts ; yet I knew 
 I should say yes. And I should say it with the 
 more confidence because of Suzanne. Suzanne 
 was my sheet-anchor. It is true that I could 
 not consider her attitude to the elopement very 
 sound : it was indeed far too lenient ; but I seemed 
 to be surrounded by old women with advanced 
 sympathies (perhaps all old women at heart side 
 with ■ love's rebels ?), and' Suzanne's profound 
 affection for Rose's mother could not but make her 
 careful over the little girl. 
 
 But as we get older we become more self-pro- 
 tective ; so I gave no promise, but shook hands 
 with Eustace and said that I would think it all 
 over and let him know in the morning what I 
 decided. Upon this promise he permitted me, 
 to my great joy, to go, at a very late hour to 
 bed. My last waking thought was one of satis- 
 faction that he had not, at any rate, said any- 
 thing about band-beating. 
 
 If we are all to be arraigned at the Judgment 
 
 10 
 
146 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 Seat and put finally in our places, why not wait 
 till then ? Let God dispense favour and dis- 
 favour, rewards and punishments, that being His 
 mStier, and meanwhile let me be unjudicial and 
 kind. That had been for so long my creed that 
 I was staggered when, not long after, Ronnie's 
 father, with whom I had been on amicable, neigh- 
 bourly terms for years, and with whose interior 
 I was too intimately acquainted, cut me dead in 
 the post office. 
 
 The next afternoon her ladyship, Ronnie's 
 mother, failed to acknowledge my salutation, and 
 I knew that my disgrace was complete. Obviously 
 it was I who was to blame for Rose's wickedness. 
 
 That evening I received by hand a letter from 
 Sir Edmund stating that after what had happened 
 it was the wish of himself and his wife that I should 
 never darken his door again. I remember the 
 phrase distinctly — never darken his door : he 
 must have carried it in his mind from a melodrama 
 witnessed in his youth. Much as they had esteemed 
 me in the past, the letter continued, and much 
 even as they were indebted to me in my capacity 
 as a doctor, they could never forget that their poor 
 son's affections had been basely stolen — aU ill 
 and weakened as he was — ^by a woman whom I had 
 brought up. They did not say that it was the 
 direct effect of toy loose training, but that was 
 the suggestion. Their hearts were broken, their 
 heads were abashed, and they had lost their 
 only child, the prop of their old age and decUning 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 147 
 
 years, and it could never have happened had not 
 Rose been my ward and grown up in my house, 
 in that village, as a neighbour of their own. Under 
 the circumstances I must see that further inter- 
 course between them and me was an impossibility. 
 And the remark applied also to my assistant. 
 The letter ended with a request for my account. 
 My answer was chiefly an acknowledgment, 
 but I could not refrain from suggesting that while 
 I had been bringing up the girl who had run away 
 with their Ronnie, they had been bringing up the 
 boy who had run away with my Rose. Were we 
 not equally bereaved and distressed and even 
 ashamed, they and I ? But nothing but a cheque 
 came in reply to this. 
 
 In due time I wrote to Eustace to say that I 
 would take Rose while he was away and do my 
 best to preserve her sweetness. And then I paid 
 a visit to the wing of the house where Hannah 
 had reigned, to see what was needed. 
 
 To my surprise, I found Suzanne busy with a 
 polishing-cloth. 
 
 I asked her what she was doing there, so far 
 from her own domain. 
 
 It amused her, she said, to keep it bright and 
 make it toute prgte. 
 
 Toute prete for what ? I asked. 
 
 For la petite, she said. 
 
 But why should she do that ? I asked, con- 
 
148 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 cealing my astonishment. How could so young a 
 child be coming to live here, with all us old folks ? 
 
 Suzanne resumed her poUshing. It was in 
 her heart, she said, that the Httle Rose was to 
 make her home here. It was what her mother 
 would have wished. 
 
 I never saw more pleasure written on the human 
 countenance than lighted up Suzanne's when I 
 told her that she was right. 
 
 Mrs. O'Gorman was naturally the first person 
 whom I officially told. 
 
 " I'm glad of it," she said. " I was hoping you 
 might," 
 
 " Other critics won't be so well satisfied," I said. 
 
 " Don't mind them," said Mrs. O'Gorman. 
 " But what an adoptive fellow you are ! You're 
 a regular creche ! No children of your own, O 
 dear no ! — nothing so vulgar as marrying and 
 begetting — ^but if anyone has a daughter going 
 begging you're the boy to bring it up ! It's 
 amazing. How old are you ? " 
 
 I told her. And I may as well tell every one : 
 when Rose the second came to me for good I was 
 fifty-six. 
 
 "Fifty-six!" she said. "The prime of life. 
 UphiU till you're fifty ; then the top of the hill 
 till you're sixty ; then the steady decline. It's 
 a foolish world. Doctor ; there's no steadiness in 
 it. We're always hurrying to the churchyard : 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 149 
 
 some of us unassisted, others being pushed by our 
 medical men." 
 
 I told her that that was too old a joke for her 
 to crack. We looked to her for something original. 
 
 " Old jokes are best," she said. " At any rate, 
 there's something very sound in that old one about 
 the advantage of adopting a child rather than having 
 one of your own. Those, it says, who adopt choose, 
 whereas those who have a child in the ordinary 
 manner must put up with what they get. You're 
 one of the clever ones, Doctor ; you choose. And 
 may Rose the second turn out as pretty and as 
 sweet as that other one ! Bring her to me quickly. 
 There's no time to waste ; when one is nearly 
 eighty one can't postpone." 
 
 Little Rose quickly became a comfort, and she 
 was like enough to her mother for me to feel 
 that a benign miracle had been performed and the 
 clock set back twenty years. It is given to few 
 persons to enjoy a second time on earth, and I 
 think of myself as peculiarly fortunate in having 
 twice been the most intimate companion of a 
 child. For my first Rose, I shall always have, I 
 imagine, the tenderer spot ; but the second Rose 
 did perhaps more to cheer me, for I was much 
 older when Eustace left her in my charge, and 
 she helped to keep me young. It is possible that 
 but for her mother I might have made more of 
 a Ufe of my own, and even, it is possible, have 
 
150 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 been the father of Roses. No one can tell — nor 
 am I suggesting resentment or even disappoint- 
 ment. I am probably better qualij&ed to bring 
 up other people's children than my own, and the 
 world is over- rather than under-populated. But 
 the Devil's advocate, who thought of this possible 
 count against the first Rose, would be hopelessly 
 dumb when called upon to indict the second. 
 
 The second Rose was a more active child than 
 her mother had been — not restless but alert — 
 and there was little that did not interest her. Her 
 mother had made her own entertainment, but this 
 Rose found most of hers in the visible world. 
 Nothing escaped her notice. 
 
 In the excitement of her new life shp did not 
 miss her mother with any poignancy, and seemed 
 to be satisfied with the explanation of her absence 
 that she had gone across the sea. This was true. 
 Ronnie had left the army and he and Rose were 
 on their way to the Malay States, where he was to 
 grow rubber. As for Eustace, the child never men- 
 tioned him at all. He had been one of those fathers 
 who are seen only at breakfast and on Sundays. 
 
 Until a niurse was found — ^the Wilton Place nurse 
 having refused to live in the country so far from 
 the Knightsbridge barracks — Rose had a bed in 
 my dressing-room. 
 
 One of her timidities was concerned with moths. 
 For some odd reason those foohsh gentle insects, 
 who have never been known to harm anyone but 
 themselves, terrified her, and often and often she 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 151 
 
 would wake me in the night with the cry, " Dombeen, 
 there's a mawf in the room ! " or " Come quick, 
 Dombeen, there's a little mawf somewhere." 
 
 She grew out of her fears, of course, and in time 
 occupied a more distant apartment ; but for a 
 long while I rarely got through the night without 
 some such call — ^the little naonkey even employing 
 it as an appeal when there was no danger, as the 
 boy caUed "Wolf! Wolfi" in the fable. But 
 no matter how suspicious I may have been, I 
 always went. " Dombeen, Dombeen, there's a 
 mawf in the room " — ^how I wish I could hear that 
 now ! '^ Little Mawf " became one of my 
 names for her. 
 
 It was with the new Rose as with the old : my 
 patients were intensely interested in her. Not 
 many, however, were the same as those who had 
 been so solicitous about her mother. Some had 
 left the neighbourhood ; some preferred my assis- 
 tant ; some were dead. Mrs. O'Gorman was, I 
 think, Rose's favourite, in spite of the years be- 
 tween them — the old lady now nearing the eighties 
 and the child not yet six. Seventy years is a big divi- 
 ding gulf, and yet when they were together there was 
 Uttle sign of it, such was the adaptability of both. 
 
 The first time that I took Rose to tea, Mrs. 
 O'Gorman gave her two presents — a fearsome 
 agate brooch (she had an early Victorian taste in 
 ornaments) and a paint-box that had been her 
 
152 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 companion on sketching rambles when she was 
 active. It was one of the old-fashioned boxes, 
 with the colours in cakes and a drawer underneath 
 with a porcelain palette in it and many fascinating 
 accessories. The agate might as well have been 
 thrown into the river, but the paint-box was a 
 treasure beyond price, and it played a great part in 
 Rose's destiny, for it turned her thoughts to art, 
 and some of her grandfather's skill soon began to 
 nianifest itself. 
 
 Having this resource. Rose needed less enter- 
 taining than any child I ever knew. Give her a 
 pencil and a piece of paper and she would be happy 
 until the paper was covered on both sides. It is 
 odd that her mother had no desire to draw and no 
 aptitude : that the talent should skip a generation 
 and manifest itself again in Theodore's grandchild ; 
 but so it was. Rose the elder had beguiled her 
 loneliness by telling herself stories ; Rose the 
 younger scribbled men and women and little girls 
 and little boys and dogs and huntsmen and 
 princesses and cats on the blank spaces of letters 
 and the insides of envelopes or whatever scraps 
 of paper could be found, from morn till dewy eve. 
 
 Ronnie's people took too much delight in illness 
 to be happy in their aloofness from me. Disre- 
 garding a certain solidarity in the medical profes- 
 sion, they had assumed that Dr. Vaughan in the 
 next town would be only too willing to obey their 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 153 
 
 capricious summonses whenever the slightest 
 pain made itself felt in either of their systems. 
 But Vaughan was a friend of mine by no means 
 desirous of supplanting me anywhere or of getting 
 9, footing in the Hall. He therefore refused to go. 
 Doctors, it is notorious, must obey calls of distress 
 or bear the consequences, but not when other 
 doctors are nearer, and, as he knew why I was not 
 called and knew also that Sir Edmund and Lady 
 Fergusson knew that he knew why I was not 
 called, he was in a very strong position — strength- 
 ened by the alliance of the telephone, which enabled 
 him to make quite sure of his ground. Most 
 telephone wires, could they be induced to repeat 
 all that they have ever transmitted, would have 
 some odd things to tell, and the conversations 
 between Vaughan and myself while this feud 
 was flourishing would not be least amusing. We 
 had the great advantage of having been con- 
 temporaries at the same hospital, and it is, at 
 bottom, only contemporaries who really under- 
 stand each other. Old and young may meet, 
 but contemporaries mingle. 
 
 In the face of the confederacy between Vaughan 
 and myself the unhappy Fergussons, racked with 
 gout, were forced to send for Vaughan's rival, a 
 young bumptious and climbing practitioner who 
 had just set up in the place and was pulling every 
 wire for social advancement, but who, for all his 
 latest learning and diplomas, was wanting in the 
 naost important quality that a medical attendant 
 
154 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 can possess, the power to suggest confidence. 
 There are patients who would languish under the 
 care of the most briUiant physician in the world 
 lacking the gift, and who would recover quickly 
 though only a farrier, possessing it, should stand 
 beside their bed. Sir Edmund and Lady Fer- 
 gusson were therefore very awkwardly placed. 
 
 Their next step was really rather Napoleonic 
 and made Sir Edmund's rise to wealth clear to me. 
 They determined to bring down a new doctor who 
 should be both agreeable to them and capable as 
 a healer and establish him in our very village, not 
 only as a iofastant attendant upon themselves, but 
 as a menace and source of annoyance, aud even 
 loss, to me. But here they were baulked by the 
 goodness of my friends. One cannot be a doctor 
 in the same rural neighbourhood all one's hfe, and 
 succeed a father who also had been there for years 
 and years, without setting up certain relation- 
 ships that are thicker than water. I had made no 
 effort to do so, but simply through being one's 
 more or less amiable self, and Hking my work 
 rather than not, I had done so. If I had con- 
 sciously toiled to be popular, I might have failed ; 
 but I had just gone on my way, neglected no one, 
 at any rate not scandalously, spoken my mind 
 when it was asked for, and hurried, I hope and 
 beUeve, very few of my neighbours under the turf. 
 To have built up this structure of friendliness was 
 my part in the frustration of Sir Edmund's master- 
 ful campaign. His own contribution to his failure 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 155 
 
 was his neglect to have become the owner of any 
 property in the district except the Hall and its 
 satellite cottages. The result was that when his 
 nominee tried to rent a house in which to set up 
 his rival practice, he could not get one. Anybody 
 else could have had one — an avowed burglar even, 
 with all his tools about him — ^but not a doctor ! 
 
 The situation was not made any easier for the 
 Fergussons by the palpitations of their cook — a 
 very excellent cook — who, on being forbidden to 
 visit me about her malady, at once gave notice. 
 If she might not have the doctor she wished, she 
 explained, she should certainly leave. Nor would 
 she stay out the month eitjier, she added, but would 
 cheerfully forfeit her wages in order that she might 
 the sooner submit her agitated heart to my 
 examination. Good cooks having never grown on 
 blackberry bushes, and this one being especially 
 clever with chicken's livers (one of Sir Edmund's 
 many culinary weaknesses), her departure was a 
 very serious blow to him, in a very sensitive part. 
 
 To say that Sir Edmund and Lady Fergussoij's 
 aches and twinges multiplied under their dis- 
 appointments is to state the case with parsimony. 
 They increased to such an extent that the two 
 old coddlers saw graves yawning for them on every 
 hand, and longed with a consuming longing — • 
 which was not the less because each had to hide it 
 from the other for pride's sake — ^for the solicitude 
 and knowledge of the only man who knew them 
 through and through — a longing so constantly 
 
156 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 consuming that there was nothing for it but to go 
 to London or to fly the flag of truce. They hated 
 London, but to capitulate was too undignified ; 
 and so for a while the Hall was empty. 
 
 By what chance the news of Rose's flight reached 
 Mrs. Stratton I have no notion. But in course of 
 time she heard it, and I hardly need say did not 
 deprive me of an opportunity of learning what her 
 feelings were. I cannot give the exact words of 
 her letter, because I tore it up quickly, but its 
 spirit remains with me. 
 
 It was largely a fantasia of triumph on the 
 motif " I told you so." What could be expected, 
 it asked scornfully, of such a bringing-up as the 
 poor girl had had ? When children are handed 
 over to cynical and irreverent bachelors we must 
 look for trouble. What chance had Rose of living 
 a sound life after so much careless familiarity with 
 me and my friends ? And so on. It all pointed 
 to the importance of steady self-sacrificing home- 
 training. We might sneer at the old-fashioned 
 ways as much as we Uked, but they were the best, 
 after all. Her own girls, Mrs. Stratton was thank- 
 ful to say, had been brought up to respect religion 
 and do their duty, but their training had made no 
 difference to their natural brightness and joy. It 
 was not necessary to be superior to conventionality 
 in order to be gay ! 
 
 Poor MiUy Stratton ! What a Benjamin's por- 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 157 
 
 tion of humble-pie was hers not long after, and 
 how careful we should be to discourage tendencies 
 to self-righteousness ! If there is a good little 
 cherub that sits up aloft filled with benevolent 
 protectiveness for the simple sailor-man, there is 
 no less surely a mischievous little imp, infinitely 
 more watchful, whose mission in life is to detect 
 the complacently virtuous and make things hot 
 for them. Milly Stratton came very quickly 
 within his sphere of action, poor woman. 
 
 Driving up the road just before lunch I saw a 
 strange figure in the garden and was instantane- 
 ously conscious that she was unhappy. Why the 
 set of the shoulders, the movement of the arms, 
 of an unknown visitor seen among rose bushes at 
 a considerable distance, should convey an impres- 
 sion of mental disorder, I cannot explain ; nor am 
 I a particularly good observer. All I can say is 
 that in a flash I received the suggestion ; and, as it 
 happened, it was right. 
 
 On reaching the house I found that the stranger 
 was Mrs. Stratton, who turned a distraught face 
 to me as I approached her. 
 
 " Dr. GreviUe," she said, " I am come both to 
 ask your forgiveness and your advice." 
 
 " Forgiveness ? " I exclaimed. 
 
 " Yes, forgiveness. I was very hard on you 
 many years ago, in that room there, on the night 
 of the reading of poor Theodore's will, and I was 
 very hard on you the other day in a letter which 
 I wrote about Rose." 
 
158 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " That's all right," I assured her, adding that 
 she certainly had had provocation on the first 
 occasion, and no doubt also I was not very nice 
 to her. I was younger then and perhaps too 
 assertive : perhaps rather offensively proud of being 
 selected by Theodore as his daughter's guardian. 
 
 " No you weren't," she said. " No one was 
 horrid but myself. I was proud and self-righteous. 
 But," she added brokenly, " I have been punished." 
 
 She began to cry and I led her into the house. 
 
 " Tell me after we have had lunch," I said. 
 " You must be tired and hungry." 
 
 She said that she could eat nothing, and was as 
 good as her word. 
 
 Throughout the meal she looked miserably, and 
 yet with a kind of fierce wistfulness, at little Rose, 
 who did not know in the least what to make of it 
 — ^why this stranger should be here at all, why the 
 tears rolled down her cheeks with no accompanying 
 uproar, why she refused such deUcious cheese-cakes. 
 
 A more uncomfortable meal I never ate, and 
 all the while I was speculating as to what had 
 happened. Could the placid George have revolted at 
 last and left her ? But that was impossible. Had he 
 been speculating and come to disaster ? More likely. 
 
 When we were left alone the story burst forth. 
 It was not George. In a way it was worse, more 
 damaging to her pride : it was her youngest 
 daughter Angehca. Angehca, aged only twenty, 
 and not even engaged, was going to have a baby. 
 
 O these babies ! AH the troubles and complica- 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 159 
 
 tions of the world come from them. If only they 
 could be eliminated the globe would gradually 
 fall back into a permanent peaceful wilderness. 
 That was perhaps my thought during the silence that 
 followed her announcement. But" Good Heavens ! " 
 was aU that I could think to say : said, I hope, 
 with a note of sympathy to balance the surprise- 
 
 " I came to you," Mrs. Stratton resumed, " be- 
 cause poor George is so helpless, and you are a 
 doctor and, I trust, in spite of my behaviour to 
 you, a friend of the family — almost, in a way, 
 one of the family." 
 
 It was no time to repudiate the second suggestion. 
 
 " So carefully brought up as she has been ! " 
 the mother went on. " But that's all over," she 
 added quickly, probably recalling her letter to me. 
 " The thing now is to see what can be done ? 
 You will help, won't you ? You must know of 
 some place in Paris where she could go ? " 
 
 Odd how all doctors are supposed to know this, 
 and odder, perhaps, how naturally even the most 
 insular and irreconcilable of the censors of France 
 turn in these times of despair to that deplorable 
 country ! 
 
 " Surely you need not exile the girl ? " I said. 
 
 " The scandal would be bound to leak out at 
 home," she replied. " Besides, there are her 
 sisters to think of. They inust not be contamin- 
 ated." 
 
 "They don't know, then?" 
 
 " Not yet. Certainly not." 
 
160 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " Where is Angelica now ? " 
 
 " She is still with us." 
 
 " Then," I said, " I should imagine that her 
 sisters do know. And in any case, why con- 
 tamination ? They need not be corrupted by 
 the knowledge. It might make them the more 
 understanding, the more merciful." 
 
 " Don't you blame her ? " Mrs. Stratton asked, 
 as a kind of challenge. 
 
 " I blame her — ^yes," I said. " I think she has 
 been foolish : she has wronged herself and you ; 
 she has flung away treasures of pride. But you 
 must remember that I don't know her ; I have 
 no idea of the strength of her temptation ; and in 
 any case I cannot consider everything lost. The 
 error is not irreparable. It is according to Nature. 
 At its worst, apart from a criminal want of pru- 
 dence, it is but an anticipation of a ceremony." 
 
 " Then you think we should condone it ? Keep 
 her among us ? " 
 
 " Within touch, most certainly," I said. " Don't 
 exile her. This is when she wants kindness more 
 than at any time in her life — ^this is when you have 
 your first real opportunity to be her mother. You 
 ought to jump at it instead of suddenly freezing 
 into a judge." 
 
 " But the disgrace ? " 
 
 " Well, you must exercise a little discretion, of 
 course, and do all you can to preserve her good 
 name. Many a family has been confronted with 
 the same problem and carried it off with success." 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 161 
 
 I had it in my mind to add that if no cupboard 
 held a worse skeleton than an unlegalized baby 
 there would not be much wrong with the world ; 
 but I refrained. I refrained also from reminding 
 her of the line in " Lear ", " The gods stand up for 
 bastards." Mrs. Stratton could not have under- 
 stood, nor was she in the mood for any levity. 
 Indeed, I was perplexing her sufficiently, all 
 unready as she was for such noviel ideas as I had 
 been unfolding. 
 
 " What does Stratton say ? " I was moved to 
 ask, to break her silence. 
 
 " George ? — Oh, he doesn't know about it. I 
 wanted to see you first." 
 
 "You must tell him," I said. "You'll find 
 that he will agree with me." 
 
 " Won't you come back with me ? " she asked. 
 " It would all be so much easier if you would. 
 Angelica might tell you things that she won't tell 
 me. I don't mean the man's name — ^no one could 
 get that from her. I am stire you could help. It 
 would be such a load off my mind if you would 
 come." 
 
 And I had of course to comply. 
 
 I could not leave instantly, and while I was 
 making the preparations I was amused to see, out 
 of the window, Mrs. Stratton stealthily approach- 
 ing the kitchen door. She knew that Suzanne 
 ruled there, and her mind had by no means relin- 
 qtiished France as an ally ! 
 
 I discovered afterwards that my guess had been 
 H 
 
16 2 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 right. But Suzanne had as Uttle practical sym- 
 pathy as Mrs. Stratton had colloquial French, and 
 the interview was a complete failure. There are 
 delicacies of situation beyond Ollendorff's range. 
 
 If Mrs. Stratton assured me once on the journey, 
 she assured me thirty times, that she would never 
 be able to hold up her head again. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " I replied ; and I was right. She 
 is holding it fairly high still, but with far less self- 
 righteous aloofness. Angelica's iUicit bantUng, 
 whose existence we were able to conceal from the 
 world, did more to humanize its grandmother 
 than anji;hing else could have done. As for 
 Angelica, she is now married and a respected 
 matron, with sons and daughters born in as lawful 
 a form of wedlock as Church and State can provide. 
 
 But that has nothing to do with my story, and 
 I apologize for the digression. My reconciliation 
 with the Fergussons also is not precisely in the 
 direct line of this narrative, but having described 
 the earUer stages of the coolness, I must be per- 
 mitted to record the later. 
 
 Coming back along the Lowcester road one 
 afternoon, I found a big car at such an angle across 
 it that it could not be passed ; and on approaching 
 closer I discovered it to be the Fergussons', 
 with Lady Fergusson inside. So they had re- 
 turned ! I had become accustomed to looking 
 fixedly in front of me when we had chanced to 
 meet before they took refuge in town ; but the 
 present situation would have rendered such a 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 163 
 
 manoeuvre impossible, even if, directly I pulled 
 up, the Fergussons' chauffeur had not come to ask 
 if I would do her Ladyship the kindness of speaking 
 to her for a moment. 
 
 I went to the door and she extended her hand. 
 
 " Do come in for a few moments," she said. 
 "I want very much to speak to you." Here she 
 groaned. 
 
 " But " I began. There was something 
 
 very offensive, after being cast oft as I had been, 
 in the assumption that I should be ready to be 
 taken on again whenever the relenting mood 
 occurred to them. Nor had I shaken her hand. 
 
 She burst forthwith into tears and I entered the 
 car. I could not (as she knew) allow her to make 
 an exhibition of herself at the window, with the 
 chauffeur looking on. 
 
 " Dr. Greville," she said, " I am a very miserable 
 woman. Don't be hard on me. I have been pun- 
 ished enough." She groaned again, among the sobs. 
 
 " Tell me as quickly as possible," I said. " I 
 want to get on. My rounds are not finished yet." 
 
 " I knew you would come ]back this way," she 
 said, " and I intercepted you. It is so little that 
 I am able to do alone. That letter, now — it was not 
 my letter, I did not wish it, it was Sir Edmund's. 
 Sir Edmund was implacable, but I — I knew that 
 blame cannot be cast like that, just on one, and 
 Ronnie was so fascinating, how could a girl help 
 falling in love with him ? But Sir Edmund could 
 not see it. All he could see was Rose as a temptress 
 
164 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 and the ruin of his son and his name. You know 
 how I have to give way to him ? BeUeve me, I 
 have regretted it ever since, and nothing but very 
 wicked pride — ^we were always so proud, we An- 
 casters — ^has kept me from trying to see you 
 sooner. But now my pride is humbled. Poor 
 Sir Edmund — ^I don't know what he would" say 
 if he knew I was talking to you Uke this — poor Sir 
 Edmund is iU, and you must forgive us for his 
 sake. Say you wiU. No doctor but you inspires 
 any confidence. We have tried so many." 
 
 " I forgave you long ago," I said. 
 
 " Then you will come to the Hall again ? 
 Quickly? Will you ? Sir Edmund is ill. I don't 
 know what it is, but something grave, something 
 new and mysterious. Never mind about me " — 
 she groaned again — " but he, poor darling ! he 
 must be looked after, he must be healed. You will 
 do this for my sake ? You will come to us again ? " 
 
 " I must think about it," I said. " It is not 
 quite as simple as you seem to suppose. I have 
 been very oddly treated in a very pubUc manner." 
 
 " I know you'll come," she cried, as I returned 
 to my car. " You have such a good heart and I 
 am so penitent." 
 
 That evening I was sitting over my cigar after 
 dinner — Rose having gone to bed — ^when the 
 servant announced a gentleman to see me. 
 
 " What name ? " I asked, for I was enjoying 
 some well-earned repose, and indiscriminate callers 
 had to be guarded against ; but before she could 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 165 
 
 reply a muffled-up figure was in the room. Re- 
 moving his scarf, cap and goggles, he revealed 
 himself as Sir Edmund Fergusson. 
 
 " You must excuse this visit," he began ner- 
 vously, " after what has happened, but it has been 
 on my mind for a long while to explain." 
 
 " Won't you sit down ? " I said. 
 
 " You are very kind," he replied, taking a seat, 
 while a spasm of pain crossed his heavy features. 
 " The fact is — ^but that has nothing to do with 
 it. What I want to do is to explain. This un- 
 happy business of Ronnie has broken us up, 
 
 but I want you to know " He broke off and 
 
 again a twinge took him. 
 
 " Would you mind if I were to light my pipe ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 I offered him cigars, 
 
 " You are too kind," he said, taking one. 
 " More than I deserve really. But " — he lit it — 
 " you, well, the best way I can put it is perhaps 
 to say you are not a married man." 
 
 I agreed. 
 
 " And not being married, you, well — ^in point of 
 fact, you can't know. A man, especially as he 
 gets on in years, has to make concessions to his 
 wife. All life is compromise, as you know, and 
 married life in particular. A certain happiness, 
 or, at any rate, peace, must be secured, and com- 
 promise is the highroad to it — ^in fact, the only 
 road. But it is absurd for me to be saying all 
 this, because of course you know Lady Fergusson." 
 
166 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 I knew her well, but I knew also that in that 
 mSnage the grey mare was not the better animal ; 
 it was Sir Edmund who ruled, and any compromise 
 that was made came from his wife's side. 
 
 He may suddenly have been aware that some such 
 thoughts were passing in my mind, for he added, 
 not without a slight flush, " Of course, you have 
 not seen her lately " — as though during the few 
 months of our estrangement both her character 
 and his own had undergone one of those changes 
 that happen only in tracts and fairy tales. He even 
 had the hardihood to add, " You'll notice a great 
 difference when, "but stumbled over it and went on 
 quickly — " that is, if you ever honour us by your 
 company again, as I most cordially hope you will. 
 
 " For," he continued more fluently, " it is about 
 that that I have come ; about that, and our 
 letter to you, which I have been regretting ever 
 since it was sent. What I want to make clear — 
 without any disloyalty, mind, to Lady Fergusson 
 ^-is that that letter was written when we were in 
 a highly nervous state and was written almost 
 wholly at her Ladyship's wish. You recall what 
 I said about compromise ? 
 
 " Well, my dear doctor," he said, " my dear 
 GrcAdlle, if you wiU permit me to call you that once 
 more — ^for the sake of harmony, for the sake of 
 that peace which must dominate a home, I con- 
 sented to write that letter and to do many other 
 things which were a natural consequence of it. 
 When your reply came, I recognized the good 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 167 
 
 sense of it at once ; I knew, as any man of the 
 world must know, that ray poor boy cannot be 
 wholly absolved, that it takes two to make an 
 elopement no less than a marriage. I knew — 
 but women have not oiir penetration and common 
 reasonableness, our. sagacity, shall I say ? 
 
 " Lady Fergusson," he continued, " could not 
 take that view, and comproniise made me, in 
 that moment of stress and disaster, when the Hall 
 and all itistopd for seemed to be toppling about 
 us like a house of cards, compromise made me as 
 wax in her hands. 
 
 " I have come now, in humility and shame, to 
 apologize for my share of this most lamentable 
 quarrel, and to ask you, for the sake of my poor 
 wife, to overlook it, to forget it, and once more 
 to show your magnanimity by coming to the 
 Hall and doing something to relieve that poor 
 distraught creature's pain. 
 
 " I ask nothing for myself," he concluded. " I 
 merely grovel. But for her sake you will come» 
 won't you ? No one knows her symptoms as you 
 do. In no one has she such confidence." 
 
 I had hstened to the harangue without a word, 
 but not without many thoughts. Chiefly had I 
 been wondering if husband and wife were in 
 collusion, or if they were really acting indepen- 
 dently. To this day I don't know. 
 
 As he came to an end, he advanced to me with 
 an extended hand, which I took. 
 
 " I wiU come to the Hall to-morrow," I said. 
 
168 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " But I should like as much publicity to be given 
 to your new friendly attitude as to the hostile 
 one now terminating. I count on you to let others 
 know, as well as myself, that you have reason to 
 be ashamed of your conduct towards me." 
 
 " How ? " he asked blankly. 
 
 " I must leave that to you," I said. 
 
 I was reheved that the hatchet was buried, not 
 because I had been incommoded, by the feud to 
 any great extent, but quarrels are not in my hne, 
 and this one was uncomfortable to the village. 
 More than uncomfortable : degrading. 
 
 It was humiliating, for example, to one who 
 would wish every one to be dependent and honest, 
 to see the embarrassment into which some of my 
 neighbours could be plunged when I had come 
 suddenly upon them while they were talking with 
 Sir Edmund or Lady Fergusson. They had to 
 decide in a moment which side to be on, whether 
 to acknowledge me or not. I was, of course, in 
 the long run, of infinitely more use to them than 
 the Hall people could be : but wealth is wealth, 
 and position is position, and poor human nature 
 is poor human nature and ever will be. I don't 
 expect it to change, but I cannot bear to be a cause 
 of plunging it into its less admirable moods. 
 
 Our conmiunity was too smaU for the Hall 
 people and the doctor to be at enmity ; and a 
 large part of a country doctor's duty is to act as 
 cement, a fuser of classes, and while the vendetta 
 held how could I be this ? 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 169 
 
 !^t if a sigh of relief went up when it was known 
 that\I had been seen to drive into the Hall gates 
 again! no one emitted it with more genuine 
 heartiness than the rector, who had been put in 
 a pecuiarly awkward position. For although my 
 friend o^ many years' standing, he had not, poor 
 fellow, e^iough courage to take any stand in the 
 matter, I am not blaming him. The church 
 does not train men to take a very strong stand 
 on such Occasions, nor indeed require recruits 
 from the ra:^s of the independent and outspoken. 
 Clerics, it is true, can become approximately 
 courageous ai^d frank, but preferment usually 
 precedes the operation. Your country rector or 
 vicar keeps hiniself as free from trouble as possible 
 — very wisely — and listens to all sides even if he is 
 not a partisan of all sides. 
 
 The Fergussons were too important for our 
 rector even to ccjntemplate the risk of losing them. 
 So far as his church was concerned, he was safe, 
 as I was not an attendant ; but I was on this 
 committee and that with both Sir Edmund and 
 himself ; we were all three of us governors of the 
 almshouses, I had brought the rector's numerous 
 children into the world ; I was even godfather to 
 one of them. The rector was continually coming 
 to me for advice. My usefulness was as necessary 
 to him, or at any rate as comforting, as the Hall's 
 prestige, patronage and port. 
 
 Both of us he had, of course, held reprehensible 
 in a very high degree for the effect on his parish- 
 
170 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 ioners of the defiance of morality involved in 
 Ronnie and Rose's escapade. He blamed the 
 Fergussons for providing a Ronnie, and me lor my 
 association, although so vicarious, with Rose. 
 How could he expect his simple flock to keep in 
 the straight path, he asked, if the seventh com- 
 mandment was treated with such contempt by 
 the sons and daughters of the rich and exalted ? 
 He felt that his stewardship was under a cloud, 
 even though Ronnie was merely a visitor among us 
 from India and Rose from Wilton Place. Both had 
 been children under him, when he was young and far 
 more energetic than now. If they had weakened 
 and fallen, was it not a reflection on his own zeal ? 
 
 Mrs. O'Gorman told me something of the good 
 man's line of self-torturing argument when I 
 called on her one day, for he did not himself dare 
 to present the case to me. 
 
 " What do you think the old fellow's saying 
 now ? " she said. " He's saying that if any of 
 the husbands and wives in his congregation — Joe 
 Smithers, for example,and Alice Ldth — were to bolt 
 together for the bad motive, he'd have not a word to 
 reply to them if they were to say they did it because 
 Captain Fergusson and Mrs. Holt had made a break. 
 
 " ' Rubbish ! my dear sir,' I said to him.. 
 ' People don't argue like that ; at least not honestly : 
 only for effect. And people don't wait for exam- 
 ples ; they do what they want if they have the 
 courage, but for the most part they do nothing 
 at aU, because they're cowards.' 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 171 
 
 " It takes more courage, I told him, to do what 
 Captain Fergusson and Mrs. Holt have done than 
 to resist temptations ; and my own belief is that 
 no temptation worth the name ever is resisted. 
 It's only resisted when it's pretending to be strong. 
 Passion isn't resisted ; but mercifully there's very 
 little of it in England. What we call passion is 
 usually a mixture of a certain amount of loneli- 
 ness and a certain amount of curiosity and a certain 
 amount of appetite and a tremendous desire to 
 escape from what one is doing and have an adven- 
 ture. But passion, burning hot and self-sacrificing 
 — ^there's very Uttle ! 
 
 " The rector," she went on, " actually had the 
 nerve to congratulate himself on the good conduct 
 of the parish. He seemed to think it's due to 
 his sermons. I put him right. ' My dear man,' 
 I said, ' it's not your sermons ; it's the want of 
 opportunity.' " 
 
 " You're so uncompromising, Mrs. O'Gorman," 
 I said. " And you put into speech what other 
 people only dare to think, and sometimes not even 
 that. It's a great privilege to be Irish." 
 
 " Well," she said, " all I hope is that that poor 
 child of yours is happier with her soldier than she 
 ever was with her solicitor." 
 
 " Barrister," I corrected. 
 
 " Barrister," she said. " I knew he was a 
 barrister but I wanted to be alUterative. Don't 
 forget that my father was a scholar and a poet, 
 and he taught us to make phrases." 
 
172 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 Rose — ^the older Rose — ^used to write regularly. 
 They were living at Kwala Lumpur, in the Straits 
 Settlements, and Ronnie was doing well with 
 rubber. He would never be really strong again, 
 but they seemed to be happy. I wrote regularly 
 in reply and sent news of Rose the less, whose per- 
 plexity about her mother's disappearance and 
 the change of home was no longer acute. In the 
 first instance Eustace had told her that her mother 
 had gone away across the sea, and left it vaguely 
 there. To a child of five such voyages may seem 
 natural. 
 
 " What message shall I give to your mother ? " 
 I wanted to ask, but I never did ; nor did Rose 
 send any message to her daughter. It seemed 
 better to let the tie relax and gradually cease to 
 be. Rose was never one to ask for things " both 
 ways." 
 
 Eustace meanwhile was still in the Argentine, 
 and it was three years before he returned to Eng- 
 land. His work at Buenos Aires had led to 
 various profitable ventures into which he had been 
 glad to throw himself as he shrank more and more 
 from the idea of resuming Ufe in London. The 
 house in Wilton Place being let furnished at a high 
 rent, and Rose being safe with me, why should 
 he return ? The hynmist may ask, with an out- 
 raged wonderment in his voice, " Can a mother's 
 tender care cease towards the child she bare ? " 
 but my experience is that it can do so quite easily. 
 I have watched it in the process. As for a father's 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 178 
 
 tender care for the child he engendered, that often 
 never begins to exist at all. Eustace, at any rate, 
 endured separation from his daughter with exem- 
 plary fortitude. 
 
 At the end of three years he was ready, however, 
 to face the music again, and a letter arrived saying 
 that he would come down for the week-end to see 
 Rose and talk things over. 
 
 He duly arrived, very grey, but looking strong 
 and hard and handsome. He watched Rose very 
 carefully at lunch, but seemed to have no wish to 
 be alone with her — almost a fear that he might 
 have to be. Rose studied him gravely, too, but 
 merely answered his questions and volunteered 
 nothing. I have had all my hfe only one rule of 
 conduct with regard to children, and that is to treat 
 them as if they were grown up ; I ask their advice, 
 consult with them, even conspire ; and great has 
 been my reward in consequence. But Eustace 
 was one of those men who too consciously come 
 down a peg or two with the young, and Rose was 
 made uneasy. She disappointed him by her ignor- 
 ance of the Argentine and expressed no interest 
 when her father told her that in sailors' language 
 Buenos Aires became Bows and Arrows. 
 
 I had been troubled by the fear that he would 
 want to take Rose away and try the experiment 
 of being a father to her : but it was a false alarm. 
 Once again I had been guilty of the folly of antici- 
 patijjg disaster — a foible to which human nature 
 is ever too prone. 
 
174 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 Eustace had many plans, but they did not em- 
 brace any intimate association with his flesh and 
 blood. Having satisfied himself of my genuine 
 desire to keep Rose, he told me some of them. 
 He was selling most of the Wilton Place furniture, 
 keeping only enough for a small service flat. He 
 would spend most of his week-ends in the Dormy 
 House at BelHngdon (what golf and tobacco can 
 do for bachelors, widowers and the separated, no 
 pen can ever compute !), but would like to come 
 down to me occasionally, if I had no objection. 
 
 " I don't think I am the best companion for a 
 child of Rose's age," he said. " When she is older 
 I hope that she may come and Uve with me, but 
 just now I am both unsettled and unhappy and 
 I should not be able to give her sufiicient atten- 
 tion. She should go to school, I think, and then 
 part at least of the hoUdays — the summer holidays 
 — she and I could spend together by the sea. I 
 might do a little sailing." 
 
 Of the other Rose he said nothing. Nor did I 
 mention her. But Rose the less was like enough 
 to her mother (her double in expression, in certain 
 moods) for him inevitably to have her in his 
 thoughts whenever the child was present. Except 
 at meals, however, she was careful to be absent. 
 
 Meanwhile Rose was growing up. When Eus- 
 tace returned she was eight and I did not want 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 175 
 
 better company. In herself she was interesting, 
 and it was interesting also to compare her with her 
 mother at the same age : I almost felt sometimes 
 as if both were present. She was more with me 
 than the other Rose ha^ been, for I was now less 
 often out and away, having a younger man to take 
 the h9.rder work : and when 1 was away it was 
 for shorter periods because the car was so much 
 swifter than poor old Silver. Another reason was 
 that this Rose was less friendly with the neigh- 
 bours : not because of any natural shyness, but 
 because she did not receive the same quality of 
 welcome. The Uttle Rose of twenty years earlier, 
 whose father had died suddenly, was more accept- 
 able than the little Rose of to-day, whose mother 
 had run away from husband and child with another 
 man — and that man the heir to the Hall. We are 
 often not logical in our censorious moods ; and 
 one of the last things to go, in the decay of feudal- 
 ism, will be respect for the Great House. No one 
 was so mean or courageous as to refuse Rose's 
 acquaintance ; but she must have felt instinctively 
 that she was a Uttle under a cloud and therefore 
 have been the more prepared to keep within the 
 home borders. 
 
 She was, however, as welcome as sunshine in 
 both adjoining territories — 'the Westerleys' and 
 the Sturgis's. Colonel Westerley, who was getting 
 very blind, found her inyaluable as a guide. Again 
 and again I have listened to them on their tours 
 round the beds, Rose's clear little Voice raised 
 
176 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 (for he was getting deaf too) to keep him in touch 
 with the progress of every plant. 
 
 " This is where the fritillaries are " — she had 
 great difficulty with some of the names. " There 
 are two new purple speckled ones and three white." 
 
 " Now we're opposite the auriculas. The yellow 
 ones are terrific." 
 
 " Oh dear, how the rain has broken down the 
 tulips ! " 
 
 " Now we're opposite the hedge-sparrow's nest. 
 Wait a minute while I see if there are any more 
 eggs. No, only three still." 
 
 So she would mark the changes of each morning, 
 meanwhile leading the gentle old warrior by the 
 hand. 
 
 The three Sturgis sisters — though none of them 
 was destined to soar to the realms of bliss as Mrs. 
 Julius Greville — fulfilled part of the destiny that 
 the other Rose, aU unconsciously, had planned 
 for them, by becoming the most solicitous foster- 
 mothers to her daughter. Out of their unselfishness 
 and their leisure they suggested that Rose should 
 go to them for lessons : a proposal that I was 
 very glad to accept ; and so it came about that 
 the eldest gave Rose an hour a day with pencil 
 and paint brushes in the studio (Rose's grand- 
 father's studio), and the other two each an hour 
 in more general instruction. Having a full measure 
 of the Quaker placidity to keep them contented 
 with their lot, they had no wish to roam, and were 
 thus ever to be depended upon. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 177 
 
 Not that their lot was to be despised, for they 
 had turned Theodore's house into a very beautiful 
 serene place. It was a Georgian house, panelled 
 in white, with many recesses ; and the three sisters 
 had filled these with blue china. The gods dis- 
 pense their gifts capriciously, and upon these 
 descendants of a sect vowed to hostility to the 
 arts and graces they had conferred the most 
 exquisite taste. A series of provident ancestors 
 had put them into a position to gratify most of 
 their wishes, and their home kept pace with modern 
 culture in all its quieter aspects. 
 
 Rose, you see, if she had not many friends, 
 had very good ones. Her chief lack was the chief 
 lack of many only children — contemporaries. How 
 much happier she would have been had she play- 
 mates of her own age, I cannot say ; but it is a.bsurd 
 to pretend that without them she was unhappy. 
 
 And this I can say with certainty : she kept me 
 young. She did not actually transform me into 
 a contemporary, but she so arranged it that there 
 was very httle awkwardness or fear between us. 
 I am not pretending to have been in her com- 
 plete confidence, I am merely stating the fact 
 that we were under very little constraint together. 
 
 Even had we been real contemporaries, how 
 
 coidd we really have known each other ! A man 
 
 may guess at a man's thoughts, may fairly safely 
 
 meastire him by himself; but how can a man 
 
 12 
 
178 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 guess at a girl's thoughts ? Speech reveals so 
 few of them. If while one is speaking twenty 
 words one can be thinking of a hundred different 
 things, what of the silent pauses ? How they 
 must teem I Where was my Rose when her blue 
 eyes looked through their black lashes into space ? 
 How could I follow her unaided ? Or would she 
 have aided me ? Not would, but could. Could 
 she have told me ? Could any of us tell all our 
 thoughts in any given hour ? Even if ships that 
 passed in the night signalled to each other the 
 whole passenger list there would always be a few 
 of the steerage and some of the crew unnamed. 
 And if .those were revealed, there would still be a 
 stowaway ! 
 
 One matter never mentioned between Rose and 
 me was her mother's faux pas. What the child 
 knew about this I did not discover, or wish to. 
 I am old-fashioned enough to prefer to talk of 
 grown-up matters only with grown-up people. The 
 longer the gaiety and happiness of children can 
 be unclouded by knowledge of the difficulties 
 and disasters which can proceed from our emotional 
 instincts, the better. So far as I was concerned 
 Rose was ignorant of her mother's rebellion. We 
 talked about her as a child, but we did not touch 
 on recent history. English famihes are mar- 
 vellous in their capacity to regulate conversational 
 reservations. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 179 
 
 One funny little pet turn of speech to which 
 Rose was addicted comes back to me very vividly 
 as I write. Every one has favourite locutions, 
 and Rose had the habit of prefacing many of her 
 remarks with the phrase " As a matter of fact " ; 
 only, being mostly in a hurry to express herself, 
 she used to contract the last three words to one : 
 " As a maffact." Very few minutes could pass, 
 when we were together and she was unburdening 
 herself on this or that question, without her begin- 
 ning a sentence : " As a maffact, Dombeen," 
 
 When the War came Rose was thirteen and I 
 was sixty-five ; and we were therefore both non- 
 combatants. But it did not leave us — any more 
 than anyone else — untouched ; for I was old 
 enough to be saddened and shocked by the calami- 
 ties that it bred ; and Rose was young enough to 
 be ripe for the new Hedonism which the peace 
 inaugurated and which is still in full swing. Ronnie, 
 the other Rose told me, longed to be in it, but 
 was too delicate, and they remained on their 
 estate throughout its lengthy course. 
 
 The War found the old Colonel still living, but 
 he did not long survive. He was not of the kind 
 that spends its breath in lamenting the decadence 
 of the Army in present times — I never heard him 
 couple the Service and the dogs — ^but he had had 
 his little autobiographical weaknesses, in which 
 border skirmishes played no inconspicuous part, 
 
180 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 and in the presence of the gigantic drama in 
 Belgium and France he found his occupation gone. 
 No one wanted to listen to him any more ; and 
 he was too aged and infirm to be of any use. The 
 War must have hit countless other retired oflBcers 
 in this way and in a moment have dried up their 
 streams of reminiscence and emptied all their 
 boasts. The Colonel was, however, a rural gentle- 
 man and not a frequenter of clubs, and his lot 
 was comparatively easy ; but I saw a steady de- 
 chnein his strength, and he did not long survive the 
 death of two of his grandsons in the Battle of Mons. 
 
 The Colonel was not our only loss. Mrs. 
 O'Gorman had been dechning for some time, and 
 in the early spring she also left us. 
 
 I have been at many death-beds, and at most 
 the grief was that of the hving rather than the 
 dying. Natm-e has mercifully arranged that most 
 people are ready for the end — even look forward 
 to it. Suffering or weakness has broken down 
 their resistance : the goal they desire is peace. 
 Others, with more fight in them, morphia luUs 
 into acquiescence. But Mrs. O'Gorman needed 
 no drugs, nor were there tears to distress her. 
 Being the last of her clan her house was uninvested 
 by relations. Only the faithful Julia, her servants 
 and I were about. Steadily and quietly her 
 flame lowered and was extinguished. 
 
 " I'm ready to die," she said, " but it wouldn't 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 181 
 
 be true to say I should want to if I had strength. 
 It's a muddUng old world, but one hates the dark. 
 And I like to know what's going on. I should 
 have liked to see your new Rose growing up. 
 And that other Rose, poor darUng, I don't Uke 
 leaving her. And my Uttle Peek, it will be 
 horrid not to be able to pat him and give him 
 his sugar. 
 
 " Perhaps when we're dead," she went on, 
 " we can still watch our friends. If so, you can 
 be very sure I shall be watching you. But don't 
 worry. I won't move the furniture or bother 
 you with manifestations. I'll simply be looking 
 on, and if there's any means by which a spirit 
 can add to the content of a living friend, you can 
 be sure I shall apply it. But there can't be," 
 she added, " or we should all be happier. 
 
 " It's a sin," she said another time, " that all 
 we can leave are our twopenny-halfpenny posses- 
 sions. Why can't we leave our brains ? I don't 
 pretend that mine are particularly desirable, but 
 they would be a godsend to that stupid woolly 
 Mrs. Stansted, for example. It's a pity I can't 
 hand them on to her." 
 
 To the end she kept up her spirit and to the 
 end she teased poor Julia. 
 
 " Have you ordered your mourning yet ? " 
 she asked her once. 
 
 Julia's reply was a sound of protest and a sob. 
 
 " But I want you to, I told you to. All this 
 fuss about a simple httle matter like dying is so 
 
182 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 ridiculous. Don't you want me to be happy in 
 heaven^ Julia ? " 
 
 More sobs. 
 
 " Now listen. I command you to get your 
 mourning. I want to see if it becomes you. Why 
 shouldn't I ? A young bride is allowed to see 
 the bridesmaids who are to follow her to the church ; 
 why should an old widow woman be prevented from 
 seeing what her chief mourner will look like ? " 
 
 Nothing, however, could get Julia to consider 
 death a subject matter for discussion, or as any- 
 thing but a gaunt, grisly, abnormal happening. 
 
 " I hope they don't insist on one's entering 
 heaven the very instant one dies," Mrs. O'Gorman 
 said at another time. " That won't suit me at all. 
 What I want is a really long sleep first — ^weeks 
 and weeks of it. What do you think, Julia, will 
 they be in such a hurry ? " 
 
 Poor Juha, all this was hard to bear ; but 
 when the old lady's soul and body did at last 
 part company and her will was made public, it 
 was found that the legacy to her faithful companion 
 was ten times larger than she had foreshadowed 
 in conversations. The poor of the village were 
 remembered also, and both the Roses had little 
 mementoes. 
 
 We lost the Fergussons too, although not by 
 death. They had not long remained at the Hall 
 after the burial of the hatchet, even though my 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 183 
 
 invaluable attendance was theirs once more. They 
 had become restless and discontented. The Hall 
 estate had been bought for Ronnie to succeed to ; 
 and of what use was it now ? Sir Edmund had 
 nothing to do — his interest in tree-planting and 
 general improvements disappeared, and he gradually 
 took a disUke to the place. The result was that 
 they left for one of the Continental health resorts 
 — Aix-les-Bains, I think it was. When they 
 went I decided to take no new patients, and 
 gradually allowed my practice to pass to others, 
 and when Mrs. O'Gorman died I retired altogether. 
 
 I said sontiething a little while back about Rose 
 and her ignorance of hfr mother's flight — or, at 
 any rate, silence regarding it. That was when 
 she was a child. But later, when she had reached 
 the teens, references to her mother gradually 
 came naturally into her conversation, and she 
 would even ask me about her. 
 
 " Tell me about mother, Dombeen," she would 
 say. '* Was she like me ? Mrs. O'Gorman says 
 that our voices are just the same." 
 
 '" Did you like her better than me ? " She 
 wanted to know this very badly. 
 
 I have no doubt that she had collected other 
 views as well as mine and had a fairly sound idea 
 of the situation. 
 
 " Of course it was naughty to run away from 
 father," she began oi^ce, after one of Eustace's 
 
184 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 visits, " but- " Here she broke off with a 
 
 suspicion of a chuckle. 
 
 I was careful not to ask her to finish the sentence. 
 
 Sometimes she propounded terrible posers, which 
 were not made any simpler by being dropped from 
 clear skies in the midst of talk on the most 
 innocent of themes. I remember one evening I 
 was pointing out the constellations. 
 
 I had just said, " That's Orion's Belt," when 
 she inquired, " Do you think, Dombeen, that 
 husbands and wives, when they love other people, 
 ought to go on living together ? " 
 
 " But that has nothing to do with astronomy," 
 was my feeble reply. 
 
 Another time, after another of Eustace's visits : 
 " What do men look like when their hearts are 
 broken ? " 
 
 " If I found I had married the wrong man I 
 should leave him," was another announcement. 
 (This was when she was sixteen.) " As a maffact, 
 Dombeen, I expect I shall make a mistake Uke 
 that. I don't see how one can help it. I've always 
 got tired of everything up to now, so why should 
 it be different with a husband ? " 
 
 This was the War virus working with a ven- 
 geance ! We all had to adjust ourselves to that, 
 we old people. 
 
 I don't know how it is with my contemporaries, 
 but the truth about me is that at thirty I was much 
 surer of myself and of accepted dogma than I 
 am at seventy. At thirty, if I had heard a yoxmg 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 185 
 
 gu remark that chastity is absurdly overrated, 
 I should have been shocked ; to-day I find myself 
 capaKle of wondering if it may not be true : if 
 we doVot, in protecting that shadow, aUow much 
 sound Vibstance to deteriorate ? Doctors see 
 more than most spectators, and with these eyes 
 I have watched many and many an open-natured 
 girl shrivel \nto an old maid and her finer juices 
 turn to gall-^-all because she was not wooed and 
 had not the cWirage to defy convention and woo 
 for herself. Ths older one grows, the smaller 
 is the number of sins. I can emunerate very few 
 now, and if I live much longer there will be only 
 one, and that is meanness. 
 
 " Aren't our bodies our own, to do as we like 
 with ? " is a question that may be said to be in 
 the air in these days. And how explain to any 
 young person, girl or boy, that the answer is No ? 
 
 Rose was not, so far as I could tell, as modern 
 as this. But of course I could not hope for com- 
 plete knowledge of her, even if I had probed for 
 it. December and April are not , confidants : at 
 most they can be sympathetic. Such insight as 
 I had into her philosophy and creed of living 
 had to be gathered from generalities : from her 
 comments on the day's news, from her selective 
 readings aloud from the papers, from her attitude 
 to local misdemeanour : whether lenient or cen- 
 sorious. Lenience was certainly her tendency. 
 In the idiom of to-day she was " for " all insurrec- 
 tionists ; she could even find it in her heart to 
 
186 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 be sorry for miners, " I don't wonder they stride, 
 poor things. The mystery is how they caj: go 
 on digging that horrid black stuff at all, ia the 
 pitch dark too, no matter how much you pay them." 
 
 It was one afternoon when Rose wts eighteen 
 that I reaUzed that she was no longer merely a 
 girl. Suddenly the peace of the garden was 
 invaded by a series of sports and explosions, and a 
 motor-car rushed up the driven— one of those 
 absurd httle cars, very small and low, like an 
 important roller skate, with just room for two, 
 and a naked nymph in silver and without shame 
 poised over the bonnet by way of mascot. The 
 kind of vehicle brought into existence to meet 
 the demands of second-Ueutenants. Immediately 
 afterwards I was told that a gentleman wished 
 to see me, and behold there he was, in the sitting- 
 room — a tall young man with a tiny moustache 
 exactly the same width as his nose, and purple 
 socks. Although obviously not lacking in self- 
 assurance, he advanced rather nervously. 
 
 " What can I do for you ? " I asked. " You 
 know I have retired from practice." 
 
 " O, it isn't about any old malady," he explained. 
 " Thank Heaven I'm as fit as a fiddle. The fact 
 is, I wanted to ask your advice. It's about — 
 Miss, Miss Holt." 
 
 " Yes ? " I said. I knew instinctively what 
 was coming, but it was no business of mine to 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 187 
 
 make it any easier for the young bandits who 
 proposed to carry oft this treasure. 
 
 " Well," he said, " the fact is, you know, she's- 
 — ^there's no one so topping ; or perhaps you don't 
 know ? " 
 
 " Why should I be ignorant ? " I asked. 
 " Because I'm so old ? " 
 
 " Well, I don't mean that," he re;^lied, " But 
 you're her gua,rdian, aren't you ? And living 
 here as she does ..." 
 
 "Oh I see," I said. "You mean that only 
 strangers can discover how delightful peoplecanbe ?" 
 
 " No, not exactly that," he stammered," although, 
 as a matter of fact,, you know, one does rather 
 take one's own people for granted. My sister 
 Belle now — ^to m6 she's the stodgiest kind of old 
 thing, but you should see the fellows after her. 
 Like flies. They're not as keen as I am about 
 Miss Holt, though." 
 
 " Then I must suppose;" I said, " that Rose- 
 Miss Holt — is much nicer away from home than 
 she is when she is there." 
 
 " Oh no ! " he replied, " I didn't mean that. 
 I'm sure she's always charming." 
 
 " Well, if neither of these is the reason, I am 
 boimd," I said, " to fall back on the theory that 
 I am too old to recognize sweetness when I see it." 
 
 He was iu a hole now and showed it. I liked 
 him for his confusion. I liked to think that any 
 young man, particularly one who had been through 
 a war so niuch more destructive of good manners 
 
188 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 and good morals and honest standards of living 
 than of militarism, should still be capable of 
 embarrassment. 
 
 " Do you mind," he asked, " if I smoke ? " 
 
 " Not at all," I said. " Every one smokes 
 now. Tobacco is the next thing to mother's milk.' ' 
 
 He took a cigarette from a gold case and tapped 
 it. " I'm afraid it's only a gasper," he explained. 
 
 " I'd rather it was a pipe," I said. 
 
 " Pipes don't appeal to me any more," he replied. 
 " I took to cigarettes in France and I've never 
 gone back." 
 
 A few whiffs seemed to give him cotu-age. "I 
 came to see you," he said at last, " because I 
 want to marry Miss Holt." 
 
 I was silent for a minute, during which I was 
 taking him all in, and reviewing Rose's hfe, and 
 seeing them together, and speculating on the 
 future, and realizing how different this happy- 
 go-lucky youth, with a touch of effrontery and few 
 thoughts for anything but motoring and dancing, 
 was from the husband I had been wishing for her. 
 It is extraordinary what a lot can be thought 
 about in sixty seconds. Meanwhile he puffed his 
 gasper and nursed his Uttle moustache and swung 
 a leg with so much purple sock now exposed that 
 a suspender was visible too. 
 
 " Do you live about here ? " I asked at last. 
 " I don't seem to remember your face." 
 
 " I'm staying with my imcle. Major Wilkinson," 
 he said. " My name's Sibthorp." 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 189 
 
 " And what do you do ? " 
 
 " Well, I'm not doing anything at the moment. 
 I've only just been demobbed. I may possibly go 
 back to Oxford. But I'd rather make some money. 
 There's talk of the mater setting me up as a chicken- 
 farmer. There's a devil of a lot of eggs wanted " 
 
 " And what did you do in the war ? " 
 
 " I was in the Air Force. Jolly lucky too. I 
 never had a scratch." 
 
 " But you scratched a Hun or two, I hope ? " 
 
 " I fancy I did," he said. 
 
 " Any medals ? " I said. 
 
 " I got the D.S.O.," he replied simply. 
 
 " You must let me shake your hand," I said, 
 " but remember that it is entirely without prejudice 
 to the other matter. Do you happen to know 
 how Miss Holt feels about it ? " 
 
 "01 think she thinks I'm a pretty decent sort," 
 he said. 
 
 "Why do you Uke her?" I asked. "She 
 doesn't rouge." 
 
 " I loathe rouge," he said warmly. 
 
 I shook him by the hand again — again warning 
 him that it was without prejudice. 
 
 " Does she hke you at all ? " I asked. 
 
 " She likes jazzing with me,I know," he assured me. 
 
 " Life isn't a dance," I replied. 
 
 " No, of coiwse not," he said. " I know that. 
 I know it's a jolly serious affair." 
 
 " And you are proposing that Miss Holt should 
 help you with the poultry ? " I suggested. 
 
190 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " She'd love it," he said. " It's a great lark." 
 
 " This means," I said, " that you would have 
 to Uve in the country, and give constant attention 
 to the work. No more jazzing, and very little 
 motoring except to the market ? Do you think 
 that's an existence for a girl of brains and ambition 
 and high spirits, who happens to be an artist too ? " 
 
 His face took on an expression of perplexity. 
 
 " But — ^but — she'd be married," he said. 
 
 " So you think that love in an isolated cottage 
 surrounded by roosters and incubators, with only 
 one human companion, is a sufficient paradise 
 to offer her ? Upon my word, you seem to me 
 to be imcomjnonly sure of your fascination. She 
 would have to be very fond of you to give up 
 her present home and pursuits, even with the 
 society of a very aged man occasionally thrust 
 upon her, and take to chicken-farming. Doesn't 
 it occur to you that that would be a big sacrifice ? " 
 
 " But — but one must begin," he said, " The 
 poultry business would only be a start. We might 
 go on to much bigger things." 
 
 " It wiU be time to talk about marriage," I 
 said, " when you have made some of that progress." 
 
 " Then you refuse to consider me ? " he asked 
 ruefully. 
 
 " Not at all," I said. " It is not for me to 
 decide anji;hing. Rose has a father. But I should 
 certainly put what obstacles I could in your way, 
 im^til you had something better to propose as a 
 means of livehhood than a chicken-farm in the air." 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 191 
 
 " But you don't forbid me to see her, or any- 
 thing like that ? " he asked eagerly. 
 
 " Of course not. And I couldn't if I Wanted 
 to. See as much of her as she wants." 
 
 " And if she told you that I — ^if she ever said 
 anything about marr3dng me — you wouldn't put a 
 spoke in the wheel, would you ? " 
 
 " I should do nothing to discourage her," I 
 said^ — " not from any desire to see her marry you, 
 but for the opposite reason. Old though I am, 
 I have not forgotten that forbidden fruit is the 
 most attractive. So I shouldn't forbid you." 
 
 " I say, that's brainyy" he said, with genuine 
 admiration. " I should never have thought of that." 
 
 *' May I ask," I said, " if you have put your 
 case to Miss Holt ? " 
 
 " Not in so many words," he replied. " I thought 
 I would see you first." 
 
 " That's raither an unusual course nowadays, 
 isn't it ? " 
 
 " Well, that's how the mater felt, anyway. It 
 was her idea." 
 
 " You talked it over with your mother ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " So Rose is all ignorant of this visit ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said. 
 
 I shook hands with him again. 
 
 " You are a very remarkable young man," I 
 said. " You respect your mother's wishes and 
 you don't hke rouged girls. I most cordially hope 
 you win succeed in the egg market. But as for 
 
192 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 Rose, I can tell you something. Rose is in love 
 with nobody." 
 
 " How can you teU ? " he asked. 
 
 " I happen to know her fairly well," I replied, 
 " and to have kept her under a certain amount 
 of observation." 
 
 " But— but " 
 
 " You mean, once more, that I am too old ? 
 Maybe ; but I guess that on this particular subject 
 I am right. I'll tell her that you called. Good 
 afternoon." 
 
 " Oh, sir," he said, " will you ? Wouldn't 
 it be better to say nothing about it and let me see 
 her first ? " 
 
 " It might be," I replied ; " but that isn't the 
 way that Miss Holt and I do things. We put the 
 cards on the table. Good afternoon." 
 
 He walked moodily to his little runabout, 
 cranked it, hghted another cigarette (although 
 what use a cigarette can be in a thirty-mile gale 
 such as he was about to create for himself, I have 
 no notion) and was off. 
 
 He left me thinking that the chances are that 
 if I live on another twenty years, to be ninety 
 — ^which I trust may not happen, even with the 
 assistance of the new monkey-gland treatment 
 — and I still retain a few faculties of hearing and 
 speech and the simulacrum of a sympathetic heart, 
 some young spark of the future will endeavour 
 to engage my interest to help him in his court- 
 ship of Rpse's daughter — some young spark not 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 193 
 
 yet born, desiring a bride not yet born. That 
 would seem to be my destiny. But perhaps by 
 1940 there will be no such tedious preliminaries : 
 nothing but capture and possession — and awaken- 
 ing. Or will the rhythm of life have reasserted 
 itself and old-fashioned prejudices have returned ? 
 We move in circles. 
 
 During dinner that evening I said to Rose: 
 " There was a young fellow here this afternoon 
 asking after you." 
 
 " Archie Sebright, I suppose," she said. 
 
 " No," I said. " Some one who dances with 
 you, and " 
 
 "Reggie Saunderson, of course." 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Who was it, then ? " 
 
 " He had a very small moustache," I said, " and 
 he came in an even smaller car." 
 
 " Oh, Jack Nimmo." 
 
 " No," I said. " He had purple socks, with 
 clocks, and showed too much of them." 
 
 " That must have been Claude Musters." 
 
 " No," I said. 
 
 " You must tell me," she insisted. " Why are 
 you such a tease ? " 
 
 " His name was Sibthorp," I said. 
 
 " Oh ! " Rose replied, " he's staying with the 
 Wilkinsons. He's rather a nuisance, but he did 
 well in the War, every one says. It's terrible, the 
 
 13 
 
194 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 bores that did well in the War I What did he want ? " 
 
 '* Nothing much," I said. " Only to marry you." 
 
 Rose laughed. " Like his cheek," she said. 
 
 " None the less," I said, during our dessert 
 — ^and I have some rather good Taylor 1880 which 
 deserves to be sipped slowly — " this question of 
 marriage is bound to crop up now and then." 
 
 " Why ? " Rose asked. 
 
 " Because you're a not repellent young woman, 
 and the neighbourhood appears to be infested by 
 Claudes and Reggies, and Nature is always urgent." 
 
 " But I don't want to marry any of them," she 
 said, " or in fact anyone at all. Why can't we 
 go on as we are ? Why is Ufe always changing ? " 
 
 " I wish it wasn't," I said ; " but the law of 
 life is change. We either go forward — or back- 
 ward. Every quiet Uttle time such as this that 
 I spend with you, alone, talking and not (which 
 is the true curse of Adam) getting ready to do 
 anything else, I am full of fearfulness, just because 
 I know that there is no standing still. They are 
 all stolen. To you they may be dull ; to me 
 these moments are beautiful." 
 
 Rose put her hand on mine. " They're not 
 dull," she said. " I love them too." 
 
 She glanced at the clock. 
 
 " There ! " I said. " You're spoiling it ! It is ex- 
 actly as I said. What do you look at the time for ? " 
 
 "Well," she repUed, "I promised Claude I'd 
 show him a new step to-night ; but he's not coming 
 till half-past nine. We've got nearly a whole hour." 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 195 
 
 I sighed. But what's the use ? 
 
 " Let's go on talking about marriage," she said, 
 drawing her chair closer, " Why should I marry ? 
 Every girl doesn't. Why should I ? Some one 
 in the paper said only the other day that there 
 are many more women than men and therefore lots 
 of them must be single. Why shouldn't I be one ? " 
 
 " If you want to, there's no earthly reason why 
 you shouldn't," I said. " But we can't arrange these 
 things. At any moment you may fall in love, and 
 what then ? Marriage has a way of following love." 
 
 " Ye-e-s," said Rose. " But one needn't fall 
 in love. Lots of people don't. You never did — 
 at any rate, if you did, marriage didn't follow it." 
 
 " No," I said, " I didn't. Nature marked me 
 for a bachelor, and destiny made me a vicarious 
 father. I have been more' or less of a vicarious 
 father, Rose, ever since I was twenty-seven, and 
 now I'm sixty-eight : forty-one years of it ! I've 
 had no time to fall in love, yoxir mother and you 
 have kept me so busy. But tell me about this 
 young warrior. Why should he want to marry 
 you ? Have you given him any encouragement ? " 
 
 " No," said Rose. " Except to listen to him 
 and show him steps. They all want to talk and 
 be Shown steps." 
 
 "It's a country fit for heroes to dance in," I 
 said. " And what about the poultry farm ? " 
 
 " O he told you that, did he ? " Rose asked. 
 
 " Yes, he told me that. The demand for eggs 
 is sohiething priceless, what ? " 
 
196 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " Let's forget him," said Rose. " Anyway," 
 she resumed a moment later, " why must there 
 always be marriage ? Marriages so often go wrong. 
 Look at Dulcie Lenox — she's left her husband 
 already. Look at the divorce cases ! Why can't 
 two people love and get the best of life and then 
 go their own way again ? " 
 
 " It's for the sake of society," I said, " the 
 human family. We've all got to help to keep 
 that together." 
 
 " Why should we ? " Rose asked. " We didn't 
 ask to be born." 
 
 " No, but being bom, we must play the game. 
 It's part of the contract. It's our payment for 
 the privilege of existing at all." 
 
 " Just chivaky ? " 
 
 " If you like to put it like that. But most of 
 us are rather proud of the obligation." 
 
 " And if we say no ; that we don't care a pin 
 about the human family ; all we care about is 
 our own happiness, what then ? " 
 
 " Well, then we're traitors, that's aU. We've 
 been found wanting." 
 
 " It's rather a shame, isn't it, to force so much 
 responsibility on people who never asked for it ? " 
 
 " Yes, I think it is. But life without responsi- 
 bility wouldn't be worth anything. That's a con- 
 clusion I've reached after sixty-eight years." 
 
 " Oh, don't coimt up ! You're much too proud 
 of those figures. But when did you discover it ? 
 When you were eighteen, like me ? " 
 
Fcap. 8vo. 6s. net. Postage 6d. 
 
 AN ANTHOLOGY 
 
 OF 
 MODERN VERSE 
 
 Chosen by A. M. 
 
 With an Introduction 
 by ROBERT LYND 
 
 SECOND EDITION NOW READY 
 
 npHIS Anthology, which Mr. L3md calls a fine and 
 catholic collection of modem verse, is by far the 
 most complete that has yet appeared. It contains repre- 
 sentative poems from aU the most notable poets of the 
 present day, young and old. Hilaire Belloc, Laurence 
 Binyon, Robert Bridges, Rupert Brooke, T. E. Brown, 
 G. K. Chesterton, W. H. Davies, Walter de la Mare, 
 John Drinkwater, J. E. Flecker, John Freeman, Thomas 
 Hardy, W. E. Henley, Ralph Hodgson, F. M. Hueffer, 
 Rudyard Kipling, John Masefield, G. Meredith, Alice 
 Meynell, Henry Newbolt, R, Nichols, J. C. Squire, 
 James Stephens, R. L. Stevenson, Francis Thompson, 
 William Watson, W. B. Yeats are here, as well as 
 Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Wilfred Owen, 
 and C. H. Sorley. There is a very attractive intro- 
 duction by Mr. Lynd, in which he describes the use 
 and delight of poetry and gives a critical estimate of 
 many of the poets represented in the book. 
 
 METHUEN & CO., LTD., 36 Essex St., LONDON, W.C.2 
 
 [f.t.o. 
 
METHUEN'S 
 ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 Fcap. 8vo. Limp Cloth 
 
 Edited by G. H. Cowling, M.A. 
 The Merchant of Venice. Is. 6d. 
 
 Julius Caesar. Is. 6d. 
 
 As You Like It. Is. 6d. 
 
 Twelfth Night. Is. 6d. [In the Press. 
 
 Macbeth. Is. 6d. [in the Press. 
 
 The Duchess of Malii, by John Webster. Edited by 
 
 F. Allen, M.V. 2s. [In the Press. 
 
 Elizabethan Lyrics. Selected from the Miscellanies. 
 
 Edited by Dorothea Mayor, B.A., Oxon. Is. 9d. 
 
 Letters from Constantinople. By I^dy Mary Wortley 
 
 Montagu. Edited by Hilda Chatwin. Is. 9d. 
 
 Selections from Daniel Defoe. By H. K. Hawkins. 
 
 [In Preparation. 
 Pearl. A i4th-centuTy poem, rendered into Modern 
 
 English by G. G. Coulton, M. A. 1 s . 9d . 
 
 An Anthology of Modem Verse. Chosen by A. M. 
 
 With an Introduction by Robert Lynd. School Edition. 
 
 xlv + 240'pp. 2s. 6d. 
 
 A very comprehensive and representative selection from the worls of poets 
 who are now living or were living twenty years ago. 
 
 The Best of Lamb. Selected and Edited by E. V. Lucas. 
 
 Is. 6d. [In the Press. 
 The finest and most characteristic things of Charles Lamh. 
 A Little of Everything. By E. V. Lucas. 2s. 
 
 [In the Press. 
 A selection made by Mr. Lucas of characteristic passages from his own 
 writings. 
 
 The following form a series of selections, mainly from 
 modem writers, each volume representing a special phase of 
 literature. 
 
 Selected by George Sampson, Hon. M.A., Cambridge. 
 Pages of History. 2s. [In the Press. 
 
 Modem Essays. 2s. [In the Press. 
 
 At Home and Abroad. 2s. [In the Press. 
 
 Scenes and Sketches by Modem Writers. 28. 
 
 [In the Press. 
 The Literature of Science. 2s. [In the Press. 
 
 Lighter Moments. 2s. [In the Press. 
 
 METHUEN & CO., LTD., 36 Essex St., LONDON, W.C.2 
 
 [P.T.O. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 197 
 
 *' No, when I was eighteen I thought more or 
 less as you do ; only not quite so freely, because 
 there had been no great war to break down our 
 ideals and set up materialism and belief in the 
 divine right of every individual to be selfish and 
 anti-social." 
 
 " Do you think that's what we are ? " 
 
 " Too many people are. But I'm quite conscious 
 that they may be right and the others wrong. In 
 fact, the older I grow, the more convinced I am 
 that everyone, however wrong, has some right in 
 him, and every one, however right, some wrong." 
 
 " Well I'm not going to marry for years and 
 years," said Rose. " I'm going to paint first. 
 Art will be my husband." 
 
 " With a little dancing with human partners 
 thrown in ? " I suggested. 
 
 " Yes, of com-se." 
 
 At this moment the bell rang, indicating that 
 the pupil had arrived, and for the next hour my 
 would-be Rosa Bonheur was showing steps. 
 
 How few things we should do if we had time to 
 examine carefully every action and its possible 
 consequences before we committed ourselves to 
 it ! I for one, probably — ^but one never knows — 
 instead of encouraging Rose in her drawing and 
 painting should have discoiuraged her ; for it 
 led straight to London, and when your children, 
 your own or your foster-children, get to London, 
 
198 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 they are lost. New lives begin, with new parents 
 — ^for London is father and mother too. Careers 
 have to be, I suppose, and leading strings must be 
 cut — ^but O ! the severance of heart-strings that 
 that operation involves as well I 
 
 Anyway, I had taken an immense interest in 
 Rose's sketches, and often sat with her while she 
 made them, and marvelled — being a hopeless 
 duffer at such work — as the swift deft touches 
 transferred the landscape to the paper : sky and 
 earth and water. She may not have been remark- 
 able, but to my eyes she was as clever as anyone 
 sketching nature need be. Her portraits were 
 good too : at any rate, lifelike enough to provoke 
 cries of delight from the villagers as they recognized 
 their neighbours. She was a straightforward 
 performer : she cubed nothing and abhorred a 
 vortex ; but artists are curiously impressionable 
 people, visitors to this planet rather than dwellers 
 upon it, and at any moment she might become 
 as wild as the wildest. And I am not surprised : 
 the power to splash colour about must naturally 
 lead to experimentaUsm. 
 
 In those days, however, Rose was in the old and 
 sober tradition, and the desire to paint filled her 
 soul. 
 
 At last the go-fever broke out. She had been 
 to London — ^that promoter of restlessness — ^to 
 stay with a girl artist friend and show her work 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 199 
 
 to some experts and see the exhibitions, and she 
 came back glowing with excitement and plans. 
 She returned with her hair intact too, to my great 
 joy. I had nursed a terror that she might bob it. 
 
 " How much money have I got ? " was one 
 of the first things she said to me after dinner. 
 
 During the meal I had heard the story of her 
 adventures. How she had stayed with her friend 
 Vera Gray in her studio at Chelsea, It was on 
 the Embankment, looking out on the river. 
 
 " And O ! " she exclaimed, " the river is exactly 
 what Whistler made it. I mean — exactly how he 
 painted it." 
 
 I interrupted her to say that no studied compli- 
 ment could ever have pleased that painter so much 
 as her hurried shp ; but she didn't want to hear 
 me ; she wanted to talk and tell. 
 
 They had slept in the studio, in a little gallery 
 up a ladder, where there was also a bathroom; 
 They had cooked their own breakfast, but had 
 gone out for other meals. I had no idea what 
 Vera's coffee was like 1 And her cups and saucers 
 and plates : all blue and white, from Portugal : 
 it cost — well, I'd never guess how cheap it was. 
 
 I asked her if she had called on her father. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Oughtn't you to have done so ? " 
 
 " I suppose I ought,^' she answered, " but — 
 well, as a maffact, he would probably have dis- 
 approved of Chelsea and made me stay with him. 
 For another reason, I didn't really think he 
 
200 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 wanted to see me. We've very little in common, 
 you know, Dombeen." 
 
 " It's a wise child who knows When she doesn't 
 want her father to know she's in town," I said. 
 " I'm afraid you're right," I added : " you haven't 
 much in common. But you oughtn't to presume 
 on that, ought you ? " 
 
 " Why not ? " she asked, and upon my word, 
 I couldn't reply. Why should children be dutiful 
 any more than their parents ? 
 
 If Eustace took no interest in Rose, why should 
 Rose take interest in him ? Logically, it is the 
 older who should set the example : the more 
 mature, the person who is responsible for the 
 child's existence. I doubt very much if there 
 is any natural affinity between parents and chil- 
 dren : pride of ownership on the one side and 
 dependence on the other leads to the creation of a 
 bond. Remove babies at birth and do not let 
 them meet their mothers again until they are 
 grown up, and (in spite of the romantic and senti- 
 mental novelists) I doubt if there would be any 
 natural recognition, any calUng of the deeps. 
 
 Vera, Rose went on, had done a little work — 
 not much — and then they had gone out to visit 
 other studios, where Vera's friends Uved. I could 
 have no idea how jolly they all were. People 
 talked about the jealousy of artists, but for her 
 part she didn't believe a word of it. There they 
 were, all so keen and simple, wearing the most 
 dehghtful old clothes, pleased to see each other, 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 201 
 
 pleased to praise each other's work — genuinely, 
 too — absolutely genuinely — and then directly it 
 was too dark to go on, or they didn't feel in the 
 mood, off they went to dinner at one of the Soho 
 places, and then they either talked about painting, 
 ever so interestingly, or danced or sang. It was 
 the most wonderful life. 
 
 But I mustn't think for a moment that they 
 were slackers. Not a bit of it. As a maffact, 
 they worked frightfully hard. But artists, I 
 must remember, don't divide up their lives into 
 work and play as other people do — clerks and mer- 
 chants and lawyers and so on : they mix the two 
 together. That's what makes them so delightful. 
 
 " They all have such charming things," she 
 said, looking round at my furniture — Victorian 
 mostly, not old enough to be beautiful — with a 
 kind of disdain. " No matter how poor they are, 
 they always seem to have money for ' bits.' They're 
 always on the look-out for them, and they have 
 such wonderful eyes. They can see things under 
 inches of dust. Going about among the old 
 furniture and old curiosity shops with Vera and 
 her friends was an education, and such a lark 
 too I You and I must go over to Lowcester, 
 Dombeen, and rout about in the old shops there. 
 I know so much more about things than I did a 
 month ago. I know the difference between Hep- 
 pelwhite and Chippendale and Spode and Crown 
 Derby. And I mean to learn it all." 
 
 She had been to the National Gallery three times, 
 
202 ROSE AND HOSE 
 
 and to the Tate, and to several little exhibitions, 
 and to the Cai6 Royal one evening, and to two 
 plays. But the most terrific thing of aU was 
 this — she had seen John. 
 
 " John who ? " I asked. 
 
 " Not John anything," she replied, shocked at 
 my ignorance. " It's his last name, but no one 
 ever calls him anything else — John the artist : 
 much the strongest painter we've got. Vera 
 asked him to come and see my things, and he came 
 and he likes them. He says I ought to make a 
 real name if I study properly and go to a life class 
 and devote myself to drawing for a while. It's 
 my drawing that's weak, he says." 
 
 It was then that Rose suddenly asked, after a 
 brief silence, " How much money have I got ? " 
 
 I told her that she had no money at all, unless 
 her father chose to give her any^ He reimbursed 
 me more or less for what she cost me, and her 
 school accounts and so forth had gone to him. 
 It was all very irregular ; of course she ought to 
 have an allowance by this time. She was eighteen. 
 
 Her face lost its radiance. " Must I ask him ? " 
 she said. 
 
 " It depends on what you want it for," I answered. 
 
 " I want to live in Chelsea," she said, " and 
 really learn to paint." 
 
 " O ! " I said. " If it had been for anything 
 else I might have been able to contribute, but 
 I can't for that. That is too drastic. You must 
 ask your father. Besides," I said, " I coiild hardly 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 203 
 
 bring myself to finance a scheme which leaves me 
 so high and dry." 
 
 " Poor Dombeen I " she said. " But you'd 
 soon get used to being alone. And I'd come down 
 often for the week-end. As a maffact, you'd hardly 
 miss me." 
 
 " Train up a child and away she goes," I quoted. 
 
 " But you wouldn't have me not be indepen- 
 dent ? " she asked. 
 
 " No," I said. " Everything is aU right : just 
 as it shoidd be. An old man must expect to lose 
 a young girl just when she is most companionable. 
 But you must concede him a little melancholy. 
 After all, it is a compliment to you, so concede 
 it purely in that light. It's as proper for me to 
 regret your going as for yoii to want to go." 
 
 " You dear old thing 1 " she said. " I hate to 
 leave you, but what should one do ? If you 
 absolutely needed me, of course . . . but you 
 don't. You're sttong, you go about, you have 
 your prints and your gardening." 
 
 " And even if I hadn't," I said, " I should not 
 allow you to stay* If I am to collapse, it shall 
 not be an artist on the threshold of life with a 
 passion to express herself in oils who shall bring 
 my beef-tea. That would be too unfair. But 
 you must understand that nothing can be done 
 until your father consents." 
 
 " I'll write to him to-night," she said. " Unless 
 you will ? " 
 
 " No," I replied firmly. " I'll go a long way 
 
204 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 to help you, but I won't sign my own death warrant- 
 No seaman beseeches to be marooned." 
 
 Eustace replied that he thought he might be 
 willing, but it would be well to discuss the matter 
 properly. Would she stay with him for a few 
 days and bring some of her work with her. 
 
 " How can I show it to him ? " she asked. 
 
 " You must," I said. " After all, he is your 
 father." 
 
 " But it's so — so — ^personal," she said. 
 
 " Well ? " I asked, when she came back a few 
 days later. 
 
 " I've bored him terribly," she said. 
 
 " What makes you think so ? " 
 
 " He never knew what to say. Besides, his 
 habits are fixed. I ruined his breakfast because 
 he couldn't read the paper. I would much rather 
 he had read it, but he was trying to behave so 
 beautifully and he made conversation instead. 
 This means that he never caught up with the 
 news all day, and that's a very serious thing. I 
 made the awful mistake too of opening the paper 
 before he did, before he came in — ^this was on the 
 first morning — and no woman, it seems, must 
 do that. 
 
 " O dear, I'm not right at all. As a maffact, 
 Dombeen, you've spoilt me. And I'm too impul- 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 205 
 
 sive. You mustn't be impulsive with men, except 
 perhaps just one or two, and those only for a little 
 while and when they're verypleased with themselves. 
 
 " I did other terrible things too. I used the 
 telephone frivolously. I even rang up the exchange 
 once just to ask the time, and he heard me. I 
 had done it often enough when he was out, because 
 my watch had stopped and his clock was away 
 being mended ; but he came in just as I was ringing 
 and I never saw anyone so pained. 
 
 " And O ! I left the electric light burning in 
 the haU all one night. He was perfectly nice and 
 kind and polite, but I could see that every day some- 
 thing new was being inscribed on his heart, like Queen 
 Mary's. I don't mean our Queen Mary. I mean 
 the Queen Mary who lost Calais — ^the bloody one. 
 
 " He didn't like my painting at all," she went 
 on, " but he was very gentle about it. He was 
 always gentle — gentle and cool — and that is so 
 depressing after a while. Disturbing, too. He 
 took me to the Tate Gallery on Saturday after- 
 noon, and to the National on Sunday, and showed 
 me the pictiores he likes best. He has two photo- 
 gravures after Leader in his bedroom." 
 
 " But have you decided anything ? " I asked. 
 It was all I wanted to know and she was post- 
 poning and postponing the moment of the verdict. 
 
 " Yes," she said, but without much enthusiasm. 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Well, he won't hear of independent rooms 
 in Chelsea. He doesn't like Chelsea. It's too 
 
206 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 irresponsible, he says. But he agrees to a Hostel 
 — ^he's inquiring about them now — and the Slade. 
 I may go to the Slade and Uve in a Hostel, for 
 three years. It isn't what I wanted, of course, 
 but it's the thin end of the wedge. I'll be able 
 to go to Chelsea to see Vera and the others pretty 
 nearly whenever I Uke, and the Slade isn't so bad. 
 Orpen was there and John was there. What 
 do you think ? " 
 
 " When do you want to begin ? " I asked dully. 
 
 " Well, the next term," she said. " Isn't it 
 wonderful ? " 
 
 It was our last evening. To-morrow the little 
 mawf was to fly away towards those great flames, 
 London, Art, and Independence, all capable of 
 scorching very acutely. To Rose the hours were 
 all a prelude to adventure ; to me a promise of 
 loneUness. For so long this graceful, gay enthu- 
 siast had been lighting up my house ; and now 
 I was to be forsaken. At seventy that is no 
 particular joke. 
 
 To what extent Rose had pondered on what 
 might Ughtly be called the selfishness of her 
 programme, I cannot say. Perhaps not at aU, 
 but I think that very imUkely. My own attitude 
 to her desertion, although I did my best to make 
 it whimsical, must have tm-ned her thoughts that 
 way. But having pondered, might she not very 
 properly have decided that such selfishness was 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 207 
 
 her only course ? Our duty is not always to 
 others. Comparatively lost as I was going to 
 be, I certainly did not want her to make the 
 sacrifice of remaining. Why should she ? What 
 right has seventy to cramp the style of twenty ? 
 Too many young people are harnessed — more 
 than harnessed, shackled — ^to the old, for me 
 to be wilhng to add to their number. I have 
 watched youthful Hves being sapped and thwarted 
 in this way ever since I have been in practice", 
 and I had always vowed that never would I be 
 guilty of a similar tyranny. And now here I was 
 with the temptation ! 
 
 But it was not the temptation that it might 
 have been had Rose come to me and said, " Look 
 here, Dombeen, I can't leave you all alone. It 
 isn't fair. I'll give up this London scheme and 
 we'll go on being happy together." Even then, 
 however, I hope I should have been strong enough 
 to say No. In fact, I know I should ; for what 
 is the use of binding a girl of eighteen, or letting 
 her bind herself ? Art she might relinquish ; 
 but what would happen when Love appeared ? 
 How could I keep her to her promise then ? 
 • Better face the music, take the fence, cut the knot 
 now, and be brave about it. 
 
 We sat long after dinner on that last evening. 
 Rose's boxes were packed, her room at the Hostel 
 and her easel at the Slade awaited her. She had 
 
208 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 said all her good-byes in the neighbourhood, and 
 no doubt more than one of her dancing friends 
 had her address in his pocket-book. In short, 
 practically every boat was burnt. All oiu- talk, 
 therefore, was of the future. If Eustace was 
 not too unwilling, she said, she should go to Paris 
 after a while. As a maffact, Paris was, of course, 
 the place. London was only a makeshift. She 
 would probably go on to Paris anyway — ^father 
 or no father. Because one must be thorough. 
 London was looking up — everybody said so — 
 Chelsea had produced some wonderful things — 
 but for an artist Paris was the true Alma Mater, 
 Even Chelsea had had to go to Paris first. 
 
 It was all a question of money. Surely when 
 she was twenty-one her father would allow her 
 something reasonable ? 
 
 " Not for the purpose of doing anything of which 
 he might disapprove," I said. 
 
 well, she would see. She would begin at the 
 Slade, anyway, and make up her mind gradually. 
 " But of course," she repeated, " Paris is the place. 
 Sooner or later I must be there. I can hear it 
 calling all the while." 
 
 Having said those words. Rose left the window 
 where she had been standing and walked into the 
 garden, whither no doubt she expected me to 
 follow her. 
 
 1 was about to do so when there was a knock 
 at the door and Suzanne entered, with a curious 
 excited flush on her face. 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 209 
 
 She stood there a moment, as though trying 
 to speak, and then, stepping aside, made room for 
 some one in a black dress and veil, and was gone. 
 
 " Dombeen ! " cried the stranger, and buried 
 her thin, tired face on my shoulder. 
 
 Of what I said I have no memory. I can remem- 
 ber only stroking her head and hushing her Uke 
 a child. 
 
 " Don't cry, don't cry," I may have murmured ; 
 but it was foolish, for tears were her best friends. 
 
 " Rose ? " she asked at last. " Is she here ? " 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " If only I could see her without her seeing me ! " 
 
 " Wait a moment," I said, and went to the 
 garden to look for Rose, but she had disappeared. 
 
 I returned to her mother and began to be prac- 
 tical. She had come in a car, and the first thing 
 to do was to take her bag out and send it back. 
 Then she consented to eat something, and while 
 it was being prepared I had the story. 
 
 Ronnie and she had been on their way back 
 to England. He had wanted to see his mother 
 again, and his father's executors too. But at 
 Marseilles Ronnie had died. It was where her 
 father had died thirty-six years before — how 
 strange a coincidence ! 
 
 Ronnie's death followed up a chiU, which he 
 had taken, she feared, on a visit to Theodore's 
 grave. They had gone to see it directly after 
 
 14 
 
210 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 landing, and Ronnie now lay in the same cemetery, 
 close by. Was not that remarkable ? 
 
 Since then she had been travelling sljeadily 
 towards her daughter and me. No one knew 
 of her presence in England but Ronnie's mother, 
 Uving now permanently at Torquay, who had been 
 written to. 
 
 It was at this point that Rose — the other Rose 
 — came back. I saw her across the lawn — her 
 dress shone among the shadows — ^but her mother's 
 back being to the window, she could not see her too. 
 
 Making some excuse, I slipped out. 
 
 " Who is it ? " Rose asked, with a startled 
 look, and a voice almost of fear. " Is it ? " 
 
 " Yes," I said. 
 
 " What has happened ? Is — ^is he dead ? " 
 
 "Yes," I said. 
 
 She gave a Uttle wailing cry and was gone. 
 
 " Rose ! Rose ! " I called, but she did not reply. 
 
 I went back to her mother and urged her to 
 go to bed. 
 
 " Not yet," she said, adding that she would 
 not be able to sleep. " There is so much to say, 
 so much to know." 
 
 As she talked, dry-eyed now, for she had con- 
 quered her emotion — ^her tears were because she 
 was at home at last, among old and happy associa- 
 tions once more — I was able to see how she had 
 aged. But she did not look as though her life 
 with Ronnie had been a failure. There was no care- 
 worn anxious suggestion ; there was merely sad- 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 211 
 
 ness in her loss, and fatigue. She was still beautiful. 
 
 I did not want to ask any questions, and the 
 principal one was answered by her general de- 
 meanour with regard to Ronnie : they had been 
 happy. 
 
 " I regtet nothing," her eyes seemed to say. 
 
 She had no plans. She did not know what she 
 would do after leaving me. How was every one ? 
 Was Mrs. O'Gorman still living ? No. She was 
 sorry. She had been hoping to talk with her. 
 How splendid, though, to find Suzanne t 
 
 She seemed to be shy of referring to Rose again. 
 I could not help noticing it. Every silence seemed 
 to be filled intensely with consideration of her 
 relations with her child and her child's attitude 
 to her. She must have given endless thought to 
 this matter, but to be so near brought it all back 
 more vividly and critically. 
 
 " I suppose " she began once and stopped, 
 
 and I knew that the rest of the sentence would 
 have been — " she kn(^ws " : meaning " she knows 
 about me and Ronnie ? " Did daughters, she 
 must often have asked herself, forgive mothers 
 who run away from them with other men ? 
 
 Perhaps it was because her mind had travelled 
 thus far that she suddenly said again, " Dombeen, 
 remember this. No matter how sad I may seem 
 to be, now and then, remember this : I regret 
 nothing. Ronnie needed me more than any- 
 one." 
 
 Then she became gayer 9.nd smiled her old smile. 
 
 14* 
 
212 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " And you ? " she said. " How are you ? 
 What beautiful white hair ! " 
 
 " I am seventy," I said. " Nothing else is the 
 matter. But I always maintain that white hair 
 is beautiful only on the heads of others." 
 
 She came at last to Rose again by a more direct 
 route. " Those pictures " — ^looking at the walls 
 — " are they hers ? " 
 
 I said that they were. I had told her in my 
 letters of Rose's painting. 
 
 " Oh, but they're very good," she said. " I'm 
 so glad. There should always be an artist in our 
 family." 
 
 Should I tell her of Rose's career, due to begin 
 to-morrow ? My natural instinct, as always, was, 
 at the moment, for fear of giving pain, to conceal 
 it; but I remembered my lesson, learned both 
 from Rose and Rose, and told her. 
 
 She was silent for some time. " But where is 
 she ? " she then asked. 
 
 " She has gone to bed," I said, " most probably." 
 
 " Without coming to say good night to you ? 
 Isn't that strange ? " She looked at me searchingly. 
 
 " She knew you were here," I said. 
 
 " She knew 1 How ? " 
 
 " She saw you with me, from the garden." 
 
 "Oh!" said Rose. "Yes." She was silent 
 again. " I'll go to bed now, I think," she said, 
 and I led her upstairs. 
 
 " To-morrow yom- old room will be ready for 
 you," I said. " It couldn't be to-night." 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 213 
 
 " I like this one," she said. " It's where you get 
 the view between the two copper beeches. But 
 Rose ? " she went on. " I must just peep at 
 her before I sleep." 
 
 I advised against it. " To-morrow," I said. 
 " When you're not so tired." 
 
 No, now, or she could not rest. 
 
 I pointed out Rose's door and she tiptoed in. 
 
 In a moment she was on the landing again. 
 
 " It's empty I " she exclaimed. " The bed is 
 untouched." 
 
 I tried to reassure her. 
 
 " But where is she ? This is terrible," she re- 
 peated. " We must find her." 
 
 I told her not to be alarmed. Rose was pro- 
 bably walking off her disturbance of mind. The 
 sudden appearance of her mother must, I know, 
 have given her too much to think of, and she was 
 doing what she often did in moments of high 
 tension — she was fighting her perplexities under 
 the open sky. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Rose. " It would have been 
 better for me not to have come back." 
 
 " Don't say so," I replied. " Go to your room 
 now. I'll wait for Rose — perhaps I'll go and look 
 for her, but I don't think that is necessary ; these 
 are safe parts. She is probably in the garden." 
 
 " She hasn't — you don't think — she hasn't gone 
 away altogether ? " her mother faltered. 
 
 " Good Heavens, no ! She often does this, 
 and with far less reason. I'll knock and reassure 
 
214 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 you very soon now " ; and thus I got her to retire. 
 
 Rose came back some anxious hours later, at 
 dawn. She was worn out. 
 
 It was as I had guessed. The poor child's 
 castle in the air having collapsed, she had been 
 collecting energy for the rebuilding. But this 
 time there was to be a less alluring site : the castle 
 must be on the prosaic earth and the foundations 
 dug by the dull spade, duty. 
 
 All this her tired face told me. 
 
 " O Dombeen ! " she said as she seized my arm 
 and clung to it. 
 
 " I know," I said. 
 
 " Where is she ? " 
 
 " In the Red Room." 
 
 " I'll go to her." 
 
 " To-night ? So late ? " I said. " I was wonder- 
 ing if it would not be better in the morning." 
 
 " No, now. For a moment only." 
 
 I left her at her mother's door. 
 
 I was up early the next day, but Rose — ^the 
 younger Rose-^for aU her late hours, was before 
 me. 
 
 I found her at the breakfast table dressed in 
 her ordinary morning blue overall. She was wan. 
 
 "But what's this?" I asked. "Why aren't 
 you ready for the train ? " 
 
 " I'm not going," she said. " I've sent some 
 telegrams." 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 215 
 
 "But " I began. 
 
 " Please don't make it more difficult," Rose 
 replied, and her eyes filled -with tears. 
 
 " I hope you haven't countermanded the car," 
 I said, after a few moments of swift thought; 
 for I could see that something must be done. 
 
 " No — ^there was no hurry for that," she mumbled 
 brokenly. 
 
 " Because I've got to go to London anyway," 
 I said. " I was going with you," I added, as a 
 mendacious but brilliant afterthought, " but I 
 was keeping it as a surprise. I'll be back to-night." 
 
 And it was thus that I got away. I had realized 
 directly I heard Rose's decision that this was no 
 place for me. I was an interloper. Mother 
 and daughter must solve their own problems, and 
 solve them alone; they would be glad to be 
 unobserved as they reconnoitred to ascertain each 
 other's position. I have stumbled upon that 
 military phrase, but on second thoughts I recognize 
 its fitness ; for in a sense they were foes, as most 
 women can be, and mother and daughter too 
 often actually are. How they would have adjusted 
 their relations had these fourteen estranging years 
 not intervened, no one could say. They might 
 have been happy; certainly they would often 
 have been merry and care-free, for that was the 
 natural tendency of both. Moreover, there might 
 have been an extra bond — I have seen it often 
 — ^in mutual refuge from the Master of the House. 
 But between mothers and daughters a certain 
 
216 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 hostility, not unconnected with rivahry, is only too 
 common, if not inevitable. For a mother, be 
 she ever so sweet-natnred and generous and proud 
 of her daughter, is also a woman, and women love 
 love, and hate the thought of the shelf, and resent 
 the younger generation's vista of triumphs. Not 
 until they are much older than Rose do they 
 consent to retire from the Usts, forgive their 
 successors, and take with serenity to gardening 
 and cards. 
 
 Whether or no Rose knew I was lying, I had no 
 notion ; but she acquiesced naturally enough 
 and waved me a wistful good-bye. 
 
 I too had plenty to think of as the train bore 
 me Londonwards. For everything had changed 
 — Rose's return was a bomb-shell. Had she come 
 back a day later when her daughter was established 
 in her Hostel and the London machinery had 
 begun, all would have been simpler. But now ? 
 I knew them both so well — ^the mother and the 
 daughter equally determined on any course they 
 undertook : the daughter, after her vigil, so bent 
 upon sacrifice and capable even of extracting 
 some pleasurable gall from it, and the mother 
 so unwilling to cool young ardencies and spoil 
 young hopes. 
 
 To which did I owe the greater allegiance ? 
 To the mother, of com-se. The girl was at the 
 threshold and had youth and enthusiasm and 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 217 
 
 purpose ; the mother was broken and without 
 a star. If the mother would come to me, how 
 gladly would I open my arms once more ! But 
 would she ? No. How could she, knowing what 
 people would say, having to meet the cold eyes 
 of the rector and his wife, and seeing children 
 withdrawn from her presence ? Wherever she 
 made her home it could not be in my house. 
 
 But — ^the thought came later, in a flash — ^it 
 could still be with me : if somewhere else ! Some- 
 where where her story was not known. Why 
 should I live all my days in one spot ? It is true 
 that I was devoted to it ; but ought one to be so 
 local, so parochial ? It was a not too admirable 
 line of least resistance. Here was the great 
 world open to me, and I had cowered all my days 
 in one corner. Mrs. O'Gorman had twitted me 
 about it ; and she was a wise woman. How 
 helpful she would be to-day ! I had a few years 
 left, I hoped — why should I not move to London 
 or — or anywhere ? Then Rose and I could be 
 happy together, once more, and the other Rose 
 could have a room always ready for her. How gay 
 we might all yet be I 
 
 But probably to join me again would not be 
 the mother's wish. She might prefer to be alone ; 
 she might fear that her melancholy would wei^h 
 upon me. 
 
 All day long as I moved about London, and 
 even as I turned over the portfolios, I was pictiu-ing 
 the drama in my house, a house that possibly I 
 
218 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 was to leave for ever. Rose-the-less, white and 
 tense, passionately, bitterly determined to be 
 her mother's companion ; her mother gently but 
 firmly refusing to come into her Ufa. And 
 how would these scenes end ? Would the girl 
 lose all control, and accepting the repudiation rush 
 angrily off ? Might she not indeed be even now 
 in London ? Or would the mother acquiesce ? 
 Which was the weaker ? I could not tell. 
 
 And what did they say of me ? They might 
 even fall out over me, each claiming a bigger share 
 of their poor old foster-father. And, in the absence 
 of Mrs. O'Gorman, no Solomon to consult ! Per- 
 haps I ought not to have come away after all ? 
 
 The journey back was an agony, even with some 
 purchases to gloat over, and my nervousness 
 increased as I approached the house. What should 
 I find ? Would both be there ? Would either ? 
 
 I should have been more trustful of the kindly 
 gods. For Rose and Rose were waiting for me 
 at the door, smiling at me and at each other. 
 Whatever solution they had reached satisfied 
 both. I could see that in a flash, and seeing that, 
 I was happy. 
 
 " Rose and I," said Rose-the-flrst, later that 
 evening when we were all cosy, " have had a 
 great talk, haven't we ? " 
 
ROSE AND ROSE 219 
 
 " Tremendous," said Rose, laying her hand on 
 her mother's and stroking it. 
 
 " And we've decided that nothing must inter- 
 fere with Rose's plans to become an artist." 
 
 " You decided, you mean," said Rose-the-second. 
 
 " We've decided," her mother repeated, " and 
 so Rose is going off almost directly to her Hostel, 
 just as if no ghost had frightened her," 
 
 " O mother ! " said Rose reproachfully. 
 
 " And I'm going too," Rose-the-first continued. 
 
 " Both going ? " I exclaimed in alarm. 
 
 " Only to find a house," she went on. 
 
 " A house ? " 
 
 " Yes, I've only one desire in the world, and 
 that is to have a house, and the reason I want a 
 house is to be able to invite a guest." 
 
 She paused a moment. 
 
 " Dearest Dombeen," she said, " I want one 
 guest only. You. My greatest wish is to find 
 a house in some place that pleased you, where 
 you would come, whenever you cared, to stay with 
 me for a little, or," she added with one of her 
 radiant smiles, " if you liked, altogether." 
 
 She placed her other hand on mine. 
 
 " Because, you know," she went on, " I am quite 
 a rich woman now. And we have been your guests 
 so long. Rose and I. I was your guest for fourteen 
 years ; won't you be mine in return ? Rose has 
 been your guest for fourteen years ; won't you 
 let her mother put you up now and then just to 
 show a httle gra,titude ? Won't you ? " 
 
220 ROSE AND ROSE 
 
 " Yes, Dombeen, won't you ? " said Rose-the- 
 second. " You oughtn't to refuse us now. Because 
 although you're the youngest man in the world 
 you're not a boy any more, you know. You're 
 seventy, and you must be looked after. You had 
 a horrid, frightening cold last winter." 
 
 " But " I began. I had no objections to 
 
 urge, but I wanted to be pressed. 
 
 " No ' buts,' " said Rose. " There's only one 
 thing that you can be permitted to say to stop 
 the whole plan. Nothing else will serve." 
 
 " And what is that ? " I asked. 
 
 " That you're tired of Roses." 
 
 " Never ! " I said. 
 
 And that is how it happens that I have left my 
 old home for ever and am finishing this story in 
 a house overlooking the sea. 
 
 But I hear Rose calling. 
 
 " Dombeen," she says, " there's a telegram 
 from Rose sajdng she's coming by the 5.5, and she 
 can stay a week." 
 
 " Splendid 1 " I reply. 
 
 Printed in Griai Britain iy Butler & Tanner, Frame and London