Part 7

And so Rose Allinson became Rose Holt, and those of us who were nearest the young couple in kin or intimacy followed them into the vestry to wish them joy and sign the register. Having kissed my darling and written my name, I slipped away. I could not endure 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 week, 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 existence.

* * * * *

Mrs. Eustace Holt was, I think, fairly happy in her early married life. I 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. Well, this was a boy, and Rose was in the seventh heaven of delight. She squandered herself on it. No other young mother, the nurse 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 still 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 curmudgeonly, to escape them altogether. 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 lifelong 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 unforeseen wave, and it requires the most delicate seamanship, 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 officiousness about the house.

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 scattered 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 all 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.

“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! We seem to only come—to go.

* * * * *

I went back feeling all out of tune and dissatisfied. 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 misgivings, but so often—it is almost the rule—the realization is better than our fears for it, that I had discounted 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 found 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 demeanour 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 impresario class.

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 little 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 light 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 little helpless mite in its mother’s arms obviously was without any federating gift.

Eustace said a few nice things to Rose, and something about new-born infants being no novelties to me, and left us.

“I suppose she’s perfect!” I said.

“Poor little 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!

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, liked being a father. But the Rose who had given birth to that little boy, and Rose the 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 little 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 liked to know how his money was being spent.

“With all 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 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 little inner information as to the Holt ménage. My deduction was that routine had completely taken the place of romance (if ever there had been any worth the name). Rose never complained, but also she never rejoiced. Her truth-telling impulses were checked by the fact that only half the story belonged to her. To tell 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 little 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!

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 treatment. Was very thin and white and didn’t seem to relish anything.

When had he arrived?

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 charm 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 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 delightful companion to the little girl; but no fierce maternal flame was discernible. I could have wished for a glimpse of such a fire: but there was none. 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 him, 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 billiard-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 little 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 conscious enough to be really apprehensive. It was always possible that Ronnie’s state of dependence 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 conviviality 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 country doctor means too much to do and a great deal of discomfort, with too few of the 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 world, could she plan it, rain would 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 like this. “Dearest Dombeen, think your kindliest 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. Mademoiselle Rose—Madame Holt, she should say--had rushed in “toute émotionnée.” 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 fatalistic, 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.”

“Will 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 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 ill 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 nursery, 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.