Part 4

“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 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 consideration, 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.”

“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 from 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 anything 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 yourself. 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 old toy of mine—the microscope—and was gradually, I doubt not, becoming a fossil. I was beginning also to supplement the collection of prints which my father had left, and buying experience rather dearly. Between the holidays these were my indoor hobbies, while there was always 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 realized 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 she and two or three young fellows were now walking up the drive jangling their skates and laughing. Her high gaiters made her look unusually 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 opportunities 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 neighbourhood. 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-riche_, with a great desire to assimilate county manners and play as naturally as possible his new role 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 popularity. The kind of boy and man that others who might reasonably 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 remount 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 languished 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 clever women nor for decadents, but for the jolly. 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 anything 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 course 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 till 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 skiing and bob-sleighing too. Rose shared his enthusiasm.

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 expressing 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 invariably adopted that procedure.

“Take them? Of course 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 course 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’ll 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!

“Very well, then; make some scientific investigations; 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. Grevilles. 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, which usually prevailed, joined a party on a bobsleigh, 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 and I, with the assistance of a nurse, got him through. He was fairly patient, but his disappointment 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. All his dependence came out, to be met by all her tenderness. I had not thought she possessed 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 should 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 all of her was with me in the train; and Ronnie’s parting from her, I realised, had been too emotional. Suddenly 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 realized 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 violin teacher was married. It was in Dublin. I remember to this hour the smell of the Liffey that came up to me as I leaned over Carlisle Bridge one evening coming back from a lesson, and pretended I wanted to drown myself and all 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 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 would 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 will? 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 girl.”

“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.”

“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 Wednesday. Will they begin on Thursday?”

“But you’re being absurd.”

“Not at all,” I said. “I want to know. I must arrange things. Will 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 unnaturally 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 simplified.”

“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 touching 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 disapproving of each other—very jealous.”

“All this doesn’t affect the main thing,” said Mrs. Stratton. “I am still worried by the extreme impropriety of you and my niece living here alone.”

“Then tell 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.”

“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 disturbing. I had been looking forward to two years of Rose’s company 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 familiarity. 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 unselfconscious any more!

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! And haven’t I been telling you about it, for years, here 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.”