Part 13

As she talked, dry-eyed now, for she had conquered her emotion—her tears were because she was at home at last, among old and happy associations 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 careworn anxious suggestion; there was merely sadness 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 demeanour with regard to Ronnie: they had been happy.

“I regret 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!

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 knows”: 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 anyone.”

Then she became gayer and smiled her old smile.

“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! 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 your old room will be ready for you,” I said. “It couldn’t be to-night.”

“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!” she exclaimed. “The bed is untouched.”

I tried to reassure her.

“But where is she? This is terrible,” she repeated. “We must find her.”

I told her not to be alarmed. Rose was probably 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 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 wondering 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 all 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.”

“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 hostility, not unconnected with rivalry, is only too common, if not inevitable. For a mother, be she ever so sweet-natured 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 lists, 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 course. The girl was at the threshold and had youth and enthusiasm and 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! Somewhere 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!

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 weigh upon me.

All day long as I moved about London, and even as I turned over the portfolios, I was picturing the drama in my house, a house that possibly I 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 life. 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! Perhaps 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-first, later that evening when we were all cosy, “have had a great talk, haven’t we?”

“Tremendous,” said Rose, laying her hand on her mother’s and stroking it.

“And we’ve decided that nothing must interfere 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 little gratitude? Won’t you?”

“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 saying she’s coming by the 5.5, and she can stay a week.”

“Splendid!” I reply.

* * * * *

_Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner_, _Frome and London_