And she had a limitless fortitude. She was not a fighter; she was not one to struggle for what she desired; her strength was in her terrible resignation,her fatalistic endurance. She would weep—she was weeping now—for this probable lover whom she had lost, but there was no rebellion in her grief. From her very early days she had learned to look upon life as a sad and ironic affair, from which one could expect little.
“Ah, that’s the way of the world!” her mother would say, but always of some disaster.
And it was no doubt the way of the world that this had happened.
WhenFriday came she didn’t go to Miss Waters’. She had not intended to tell Miss Amy she wasn’t going, but to her dismay Miss Amy suddenly returned at noon, and found her playing on the piano, one of the babyish pieces of her small repertory, taught her by Miss Julie: “The Brownies’ Ball.” Small consolation in that sprightly little tune for a suffering heart, but it was all the music she could make, and she needed music.
“What are you doing at home?” asked Miss Amy. “Isn’t it your day for going to Miss Waters’?”
“I don’t feel well,” said Rosaleen. “I have a headache.”
“Then you’d better lie down, instead of sitting drumming on the piano.”
“I feel better when I’m sitting up, Miss Amy.”
“I dare say you’re bilious. Put on your things and go take a good brisk walk.”
“I don’t feel a bit like taking a walk!” Rosaleen protested, but in vain.
“All the more reason for going!” said Miss Amy. “That sluggishness is a symptom. Run along now!”
She stood by grimly while the miserable and reluctant girl got ready and went out. Then she went into the kitchen for a glass of water, and she saw hanging up on a rack one of her blouses, beautifully laundered that morning by the child who said she had a headache. It hung before her, soft, lustrous, every little gather in place, the collar so crisp and smooth, the embroidery standing out in fine relief. It looked like.... Did it look like a reproach?
Saturdayfollowed, a busy day, devoted to house-cleaning. Rosaleen swept and dusted and cleaned, took down curtains, beat rugs and sofa cushions, and baked a cake, all according to custom. And Sunday, too, passed as it always did. They all went to church in the morning, and spent the afternoon in dignified drowsiness. Even Rosaleen was affected; she sat in the front room with them, reading a book, but near the window, so that from timeto time, when there was an interesting sound of footsteps or voices, she could look out into the street. So many couples going by, arm in arm....
On Monday she was quite ready to go to Miss Waters’ again. Art had lost its charm, to be sure, but it was something after all. Very little compared to Love, but a great deal when compared to solitary confinement.
She went into the studio and sat down before her still unfinished landscape, opened her paint box, and tried to begin her work.
“Is that you, Rosaleen?” called a cheerful voice from the bedroom.
“Yes, Miss Waters.”
“You naughty girl!”
“I know it.... I’m sorry I didn’t come down on Friday. But....”
“My dear! I was young once myself! I don’t blame you, not the least bit in the world. I don’t blame you for forgetting all about work! He’sperfectly charming!”
“Who!” cried Rosaleen.
“Oh, I know all about it!” said Miss Waters archly. “That nice young man of yours. You know that day we went to the library together? Well.... He came tearing after me as I was walking down Fifth Avenue, and he asked me if you’d gone home.... The most beautiful manners, my dear!... A real Southern gentleman!... He was so disappointed when he found you’d gone. He said he’d seen us goin, and he was waiting for us to comeout. And he walked all the way down here with me, talking about you all the time. And I said why didn’t he go to call on you? And he said he would—that very evening.”
“Oh!... Miss Waters!”
The desperation in her voice startled the European Art Teacher. She came out of her bedroom, still fastening the crooked little “vestee” of her brown dress.
“Did you miss him?” she asked, anxiously.
“He never came!”
“That’s queer! He said he would.... He sat down and talked—the longest time.... No one could have been nicer.... He asked all sorts of questions about you.”
“Well, what did youtellhim?” cried Rosaleen. “He never came!”
Miss Waters sat down and thought, with a deep frown.
“My dear, it couldn’t have been anything I said. Not possibly. I didn’t speak of you except as an artist. I said how talented you were. And what a lovely disposition you had. Nothing else at all.”
No one could have better appreciated the situation than Miss Waters, no one could have better understood the need for the most extreme care and caution in dealing with men. The poor defrauded creature was convinced that at least three of the sentimental “disappointments” of her past had come from trifling mistakes she had made, minute errors of judgment which had frightened away the elusive and fastidious male. Her eyes filled with tears.
“My dear!” she said. “I hope there’s no misunderstanding! So many young people have had their lives absolutely wrecked and ruined by misunderstandings.”
Rosaleen shook her head.
“No,” she said. “There isn’t any misunderstanding. There couldn’t be.... But I don’t understand it.”
She picked up her brushes and began to paint, and Miss Waters, to keep her company, sat down before her easel, to put the finishing touches to a copy she was making of one of her earlier works—“The School,” she had called it, five puppies and five kittens, some in dunces’ caps, some wearing spectacles. She was aware that she could no longer conceive and execute such paintings now, she had to be satisfied with imitations of her past virtuosity.
Absorbed in their dismal reflections, they scarcelynoticed the flight of time. Miss Waters looked up startled when the clock struck one.
“One o’clock!” she observed. “I never imagined! Rosaleen, you must stay and have lunch with me!”
Rosaleen had nothing on earth to go home for, so she agreed, and the hospitable Miss Waters rushed out to the French delicatessen nearby, where she could buy curious and economical things.
And whom should she see on the corner but that young man, standing there patiently! She came up behind him, cautiously as a hunter stalking a deer, and touched him on the arm.
“Well!” she cried, in pretended surprise. “Mr. Landry!”
She knew that he was waiting for Rosaleen, but she knew also that he wouldn’t like her to know that. Oh, she did understand something of men! She knew that his pride must be saved at any cost. So, when she saw a bus drawing near, she pretended to believe that he was about to get into it, and entreated him not to.
“Oh, don’t get in!” she cried. “I wish you’d just stop in at my studio and have a little lunch with Rosaleen and me. You’re not in too much of a hurry, are you?”
He smiled down at the dishevelled and anxious creature with streaming white hair—like a witch, hethought. He was pleased that she thought he had been waiting for the bus, and he was very glad that neither she nor anyone else knew that he had waited there on that corner on Friday as well, remembering what he had been told were the days and hours of Rosaleen’s lessons. And he was delighted that he could see Rosaleen and pretend that it was accidental. He was surprised and a little ashamed at his own longing to see her, by this feeling which he could not deny or resist, for a girl of whom he knew nothing.
“I’d be very pleased,” he said. And turned and walked down the street, with Miss Waters hanging on his arm, both pockets of her famous fur coat bulging with delicatessen.
“How is your work coming on?” he asked Miss Waters. “‘The School?’ The one you showed me?”
“Oh!” she cried, archly, delighted at his remembering. “The idea! I haven’t done much more on it since then. However, I’ll show you.”
She led him down the hall, and at the door of her flat turned, with a finger at her lips.
“Surprise her!” she whispered.
Landry followed her to the studio and stood obediently quiet on the threshold, to contemplate his unconscious Rosaleen. And became lost, absorbed in looking at her.
She seemed so much younger, like a school girl, in her sailor blouse, with her fair, untidy hair and her serious preoccupation with her work. How dear she was! How innocent and fine and lovely!
“Rosaleen!” called Miss Waters, in a voice trembling with excitement.
Rosaleen glanced up, to meet the serious and unsmiling regard of her hero.
They were both confused, embarrassed, almost alarmed; their eyes met in a glance singularly bold and significant, belying their formal smiles, their casual words.
“I missed you the other day,” said Landry.
“I know ... I was sorry ... I had to hurry home....”
He crossed the room and stood beside her, looking down at her drawing.
“It’s very pretty,” he said, with constraint. “What is it for?”
“Oh!... Just a picture!”
Miss Waters had been watching them like a stage director.
“Sit down, Mr. Landry!” she said.
“I don’t like to interrupt Miss Humbert’s work....”
“Nonsense! She’s a very good pupil, you know, and she can afford to take a little holiday, now andthen. And you’re going to stay and have a little lunch with us, aren’t you?”
He yielded, because he hadn’t the heart to do as he wished—to ask Rosaleen out to lunch and leave the poor old creature behind.
“I’ll have something nice and tasty ready in a jiffy!” she cried. “Rosaleen, you entertain Mr. Landry!”
They were left alone, Landry standing beside Rosaleen, both of them speechless. He looked stealthily down at her, at her light hair, at the soft colour in her cheeks, at her pretty childish throat rising from the open neck of her sailor blouse. And he bent down and kissed her cheek.
She didn’t look up; she bent lower over her work.
“Rosaleen!” he said. “You darling!”
“I’m awfully glad to see you!” she murmured. “I thought....”
“What did you think?”
“I thought—perhaps I shouldn’t ever see you again.”
“I had to come,” he said, truthfully, “I couldn’t help it.”
And fell silent, startled by his own words, by his own course of conduct, so altogether different from what he had planned. He had particularly wished to avoid seeing Rosaleen alone. He had certainlynot expected to kiss her, or to want to kiss her. He walked across the room and pretended to be looking at Miss Waters’ picture. He was ashamed of himself; he had no business to kiss her; it was dishonourable and unkind. He stole a glance at her, and saw her, still bending over her work, but with flaming cheeks and a hand that trembled. He couldn’t bear that! He strode over to her.
“I’m sorry!” he cried.
Of course she didn’t answer; he didn’t expect her to.
“Please let me come to see you!” he went on. “I want to know you better.... I’ll tell you all about myself....”
“Oh, no!” she cried. “I can’t! Really I can’t! I can’t have anyone! I’m sorry, but—I can’t!”
“But—can’t I see you again, then? Don’t you—won’t you let me...?”
“Yes, I do want to see you,” she answered candidly. “Only—not at home. Can’t we meet somewhere?”
“But don’t you see?” he said with an earnest scowl. “It—it isn’t the thing. If you’ll let me come to your house, and—more or less explain myself, it makes everything quite different. If I could see your parents....”
“I—they aren’t my parents. It’s—an uncle.... But—what could I tell them, anyway? If I said I’d met you like that, on the bus——”
“I quite understand that. But you could say that you’d met me here at Miss Waters’. You have, you know. It would be true.”
“No!” she protested, with such vehemence that he was startled. “I can’t let you come. I’ll meet you somewhere——”
“Look here!” he said, severely. “You can’t—it’s not the thing for a girl like you to be meeting a man on street corners, like a servant girl.”
Her face grew scarlet.
“Very well!” she cried. “You needn’t see me at all then!”
He retreated instantly before her wrath.
“All right!” he said, hastily. “Iwillmeet you—anywhere you like.”
“Oh, no you won’t!... I’m not going to....” A sudden loud sob interrupted her. “ ... not—like—a servant girl....”
He was horrified at the sight of tears in her eyes.
“I didn’t mean that!” he cried. “Please don’t! Please don’t! I think you—you’re perfect!”
And before he knew it, his arm was about her shoulder, and her head pressed against his chest, a clumsy, a boyish embrace.
“Don’t cry, darling!” he entreated.
She remained motionless. And with a respectful hand he touched her hair.
“Please meet me!” he said.
“In the library—on Wednesday—at four.”
She didn’t ask; she commanded. And he submitted.
Miss Watersentered with the lunch on a tray, and young Landry sprang to assist her. He was, Rosaleen observed, remarkably nice and tactful with Miss Waters. He ate what she had provided and praised it. Afterward she brought out a white china flower pot half filled with moist, bent cigarettes, and offered him one; took one herself, too, though it caused her to cough horribly and would very likely make her sick. However, it gave a European touch. She was enchanted with the atmosphere, to find herself nonchalantly smoking cigarettes in a studio in the company of a young and attractive man.
She had a rhapsody of praise for him after he had gone, and Rosaleen listened to it with delight. Then she too went home. She was proud, triumphant, exultant. But it was a most perilous joy; she dared not examine it. Those words hauntedher. She mustn’t meet him on street corners—like a servant girl.
She was dusting the top of Mr. Humbert’s desk.
“What else am I?” she asked herself, with terrible bitterness. “They talk about my ‘advantages,’ and my being a ‘member of the household’.... But what am I really?”
She flung down the cloth.
“Oh, what’s the use!” she cried. “It might just as well end now, better end now—than after he finds out.”
Rosaleen’sgreat mistake lay in not telling himthen. Because at this time he wouldn’t have cared. At this moment she was still a romantic and thrilling figure, not yet quite flesh and blood, still without flaw or fault. Her pitiful history would only have enslaved him more completely. And as he grew to know her better, he would have known her with this fact, this history in his mind. Whereas, on the contrary, he was beginning to love a girl who did not exist.
He saw her transcendent kindness, her absolute lack of egoism, her rare and lovely spirit, but he called it and he thought of it as ladylike delicacy. It was her soul; he thought it was her manners.
He walked all the way home, reflecting upon her, lost in a revery half troubled, half delightful. A sweet, a wonderful girl—but obstinate. And obstinacy he did not like. He was the most outrageous young tyrant who ever lived. He ruled everyone, he always had ruled everyone. His mother had never thwarted him, his sister had never rebelled;whatever friends he had selected in school and college had followed his lead with satisfactory submissiveness. He had the qualities of a leader; the immense self-assurance, the severe determination to get his own way, and he had that magic idea in his mind, which subtly communicates itself and changes the very atmosphere, which enthralls all minds more sensitive and therefore less positive—that idea of his own superiority. He came of an old Carolina family, and he believed himself to be better born than anyone about him; he had been successful in his studies, and he believed himself to be cleverer than anyone about him. Appearance didn’t trouble him; he didn’t think himself handsome, and he didn’t care. He knew very well that he was attractive, and that people liked him. Even the fact of being poor didn’t bother him. He wouldn’t stay so.
So, lordly and thoughtful, in his shabby overcoat and his worn shoes, he mounted the steps of the imposing house in which he was living—his aunt’s house. She had begged him to live there until he was “settled.” He had consented; he didn’t feel under obligations; he thought it was nice of her, but her duty. He would have been glad, in her place, to help a young Landry to get on his feet.
A respectful Negro butler opened the door, and he entered and went up to his own room—a handsome and well-furnished room, with bureaus and wardrobe and chest of drawers all lamentably empty. In the huge closet hung only a decent suit of evening clothes and some white flannel trousers, and in two of the bureau drawers lay piles of shirts and underwear which his aunt herself mended and mended. She wouldn’t have so much as suggested replenishing his stock; he would have felt himself grossly insulted.
He had left his beloved mother and sister in Charleston, where they were living with difficulty on a very small pension, and he took from them only an incredibly small sum, enough for carfares and that sort of thing, until he could be earning something. But though waiting was hard for them and hard for him, he would not be hurried. Until he could find a place which seemed to him advantageous, he would take nothing. He knew what he was about. Now was his chance, and perhaps his only chance, to look about him. He intended to make a good start, to go into a business in which he could stop. Let him only see an opportunity; he asked no more.
This evening his plan for the future was changed and enlarged. It contained, as always, lavish provision for his mother and sister, but it includedRosaleen. In the course of the next few years he was going to marry her.
He had, however, too much sense to mention anything of this, to hint at the existence of a Rosaleen, in that household. It wouldn’t be gallant. He was supposed to admire his cousin Caroline; not to the point of compromising himself; everyone knew he wasn’t in love with her. But while living there and seeing her every day, it wouldn’t, he felt, be polite to fall openly in love with someone else.
His aunt was a woman whom he thoroughly admired. Possessed of a gracious and charming worldliness, she had nevertheless the most severe morals, the most rigid code. She didn’t like New York or its people; she was shocked at almost everything; she said the women weren’t ladies and the men weren’t chivalrous; that the people altogether were vulgar and “fast.” But, she said, she was obliged to live there for the sake of Caroline’s studies. It wasn’t really quite that; however, her intention was natural and praiseworthy, and she did her best to accomplish her unspoken ambition for her child.
Nick Landry enjoyed living there. It was a well-appointed and well-managed home, with an air of perpetual festivity. There were always young men about, and theatre parties and dinner parties and little dances—all the charmed atmosphere of ahome with a young girl in it. Mrs. Allanby had known how to make the place agreeable, even fascinating for young men. That was her part; to provide Caroline with a matchless setting. To see Caroline sitting at the piano, under a lamp with a shade of artfully selected tint, charmingly dressed, and singing in a voice a bit colourless but so well bred; to know that there would be punch—not too much of it, for Mrs. Allanby was vigilant,—sandwiches and cakes such as no one else ever had; and an air of flattering attention, an enveloping hospitality—wasn’t that a deadly snare? And Nick was the privileged guest, the man of the house. Of course he liked it!
So that evening while he sat there listening to Caroline sing, and thinking all the time of Rosaleen, he felt almost treacherous. And just a little proud of his well-concealed secret. He felt that his dark face was inscrutable....
Perhaps, he thought, at that very instant, Rosaleen too was sitting at the piano in her home.
Itwas one of Nick’s old-fashioned ideas—that a man must always be the first to appear at a tryst, must unfailingly be found waiting by the belovedwoman when she arrived. He had made a point of being at least fifteen minutes in advance of the appointed time, so that Rosaleen should see him there, in chivalrous if somewhat irritable patience. He was always ready to wait for a woman, to defer to her, to serve her; he believed it to be his duty as a gentleman; and yet so fierce and haughty was his spirit that he was never without an inward resentment.
He was waiting for her now in the corridor of the Fifth Avenue library. It was a wet October afternoon; he sat on a stone bench with his coat collar still turned up, the brim of his hat still turned down, just as he had come in from the street. He hadn’t even taken off his tan gloves, soaked black by the rain; he didn’t care how he looked, and he knew Rosaleen wouldn’t care either. He had certainly not the look of an expectant lover, this lean and shabby young man with his haughty glance, his ready-made overcoat too large for him, his big rubber overshoes over old and shapeless boots. And yet more than one girl stole a glance at him.
Quarter of an hour late! He only wished that he could smoke. He was beginning to feel chilly, too, and terribly depressed. Wet people going past him and past him, some alone, some in couples, treading and talking quietly. He regarded themwith morose interest. All of them after books!... Hadn’t he too tried to live that way, vicariously, through books? All very well as a substitute; but there came back to him now, very vividly, the bitter restlessness, the torment that would seize him when he read of some enchanting foreign land, of fierce and desperate adventures. Of course he knew that his life wouldn’t be, and couldn’t be, at all like any other life ever lived in this world; and yet, in spite of his faith in his own destiny, he fretted so, he chafed so at these slow years, these hours so wasted. What was the matter? Why didn’t life begin?
He was pleased enough with this romance with Rosaleen. This was quite as good as anything in books. Only, to be really perfect, love should have been mixed up with peril, with terror, with gallant rescues. It should have been a drama, and it was nothing but an emotion. He was still so young that he could not imagine death; it seemed to him inevitable that he should live and that Rosaleen should live, until they were old—granted, of course, the absurd premise that young people reallydobecome old. He saw no shadow over life, no fear of change or loss.
He stirred uneasily. Twenty minutes late! This was abusing her feminine privilege! Doubly unfortunate, too, because he had come prepared to remonstrate with Rosaleen, and the longer she kept him waiting, the chillier and damper he grew, the more severe would the remonstrance be.
At last he saw her coming, and her sweetness almost disarmed him. And then made him even more severe. A girl like that, to be meeting a man about in public places! A girl so pretty, so charming, that people stared at her.... The damp air and her haste had given her a lovely colour, and as she hurried toward him, he found for her a pitifully time-worn simile which nevertheless struck him as startlingly novel and true—she was like a wild rose.
She had very little “style”; her clothes were rather cheap, he observed. But she was superlatively ladylike, refined, modest. He wouldn’t have had anything changed, from her sturdy little boots to her plain dark hat.
He rose and came toward her, hat in hand, and for a moment they looked at each other, speechlessly.
“Suppose we have tea?” he said, at last. “There’s a nice place near here where they have very good waffles.”
“I’m not a bit hungry,” said Rosaleen.
Nick was. He had gone without lunch in order to have enough money for tea.
“You ought to be, at your age,” he said.
“It isn’t age that makes you hungry,” said Rosaleen. “It’s what you’ve had for lunch.”
Nick said no more, but took her by the arm. And was surprised and shocked to feel how fragile an arm it was. He determined that she should eat a great deal.
He stopped near the door to reclaim their umbrellas, and they went out together into the chilly and misty twilight. The crowds on Fifth Avenue jostled them, but Nick, tall and grim, held his umbrella high over Rosaleen’s head, and led her to the quiet little tea room he had selected.
“Now, then!” he said, when they were seated opposite each other at a small table, and tea and waffles and honey had been ordered. And he began.
He told her first of all what was expected of a young girl:
By the world in general.
By men.
By himself.
He told her how easy it was to be misjudged.
And how serious.
Then he told her how he particularly didn’t wantherto be misjudged.
“Youmustlet me come to see you in your own home!” he said. “You’re so young that you don’t realize how indiscreet and—how dangerous it is to be meeting a strange man this way. You don’t know anything about me. And you ought to. I want you to. There isn’t anything I want to—to conceal. I want you to know me and all about me. And I want to know all about you.”
Once more he was horribly disturbed at seeing her eyes fill with tears. He leaned across the table.
“Look here!” he assured her. “Please! Don’tcare! Don’t imagine that—if there’s anything you think I might....”
He didn’t know how to proceed. He stopped a moment, frowning, to arrange his ideas.
“I don’t carewhereyou live, orhowyou live, orwhatyour people are,” he said. “It can’t make any difference to me. It’s only for your sake. I wish you’d believe me. It’s only because it’s not fair to you to go on meeting you like this. Because I mean to go on. I’mgoingto see you. And I want it to be in your home. Please let me, Rosaleen.”
It was the first time he had used her name.
“Please let me!” he entreated.
She gave up. She told him yes, to-morrow evening; for Miss Amy would not be home then.
Itwas a nice, respectable house in a quiet street below Morningside Park. He was agreeably surprised at its respectability, for he had scented a mystery in Rosaleen’s reluctance to have him come—great poverty, perhaps, or a disreputable relative. He went into the vestibule, and looked for the bell. There it was—Humbert—; he rang; the door clicked, and he entered. An old-fashioned house, the carpeted halls were dark and stuffy; he climbed up and up, and on the fourth landing there stood Rosaleen.
She was very pale, and the hand she held out to him was cold as ice. An altogether unfamiliar Rosaleen, silent, even, it struck him, adesperategirl. She led him into the dining room.
“Excuse me just a moment!” she said. “I’ll tell—my uncle—you’re here.”
And vanished, leaving him alone. He looked about him with interest, because it was Rosaleen’s home. And he was sorry that it was such a stuffy and unlovely one. He was used to large rooms and fine old furniture, to a sort of dignity and fineness in living. This dining room, with its swarm of decorations, the crowded pictures, the scrawny plants, the flimsy and ugly varnished furniture, the sewing machine, the dark red paper on the walls, distressed him. He sat down on one of the straight chairs against the wall to wait, trying to imagine his fair Rosaleen in this setting.
In the meantime Rosaleen had hurried to knock at the door of Mr. Humbert’s room.
“Mr. Morton!” she murmured. “Here’s a young man—a—a friend of Miss Waters.... Would you like to come out and see him?”
“Presently,” the dignified voice replied, and Rosaleen hastened back.
“He’ll be in presently,” she repeated to Nick, as she returned. He had risen when she entered, and once more he took her hand. Her nervousness, her distress, filled him with pity.
“Isn’t there anyone else? Do you live all alone with your uncle?”
“Oh, no! There’s ... there’s—a—cousin.... But she’s out.... Won’t you sit down?”
When he had done so, she fetched him a book from a little table.
“Would you like to look at some views?” she asked.
“No,” said Nick, smiling. “I wouldn’t.”
“Would you like to play cards?”
“No! I’d rather talk to you!”
She sat down on the edge of the couch—thatcouch covered with green corduroy, withninesofa cushions of the most frightful sort.
Now Nick unconsciously expected a girl to do the talking, and the pleasing and the entertaining. Gallant responses were his part. So he waited, but quite in vain, for Rosaleen had no tradition of entertaining, and no experience. Never before had she sat in that room with a young man.
“Have you any of your work here?” he asked, at last, in despair.
“Just those!” she answered, pointing to the transparencies. “There isn’t any place for me to draw here.”
“Very pretty!” said Nick. “Are you going to be a professional artist?”
“I hope so. It takes years, though.”
She was silent for a moment; then she went on, dejectedly:
“Sometimes I think I never will succeed. I don’t seem to improve. And I love it so——”
“Don’t take it so seriously.”
“I have to. I’ve got to earn a living by it.”
“I don’t believe you’ll ever have to earn your living,” said Nick. “Not a girl as—lovely as you.”
She blushed painfully, even her neck grew scarlet. And he felt his own face grow hot.
“I...” he began. “There are sure to be plenty of men who’ll want to do that for you.”
There was a distressing silence. He found it very hard to keep from saying:
“Iwill!I’mgoing to work for you, and get you everything in the world you want, darling wild rose!”
And to divert his mind from this dangerous thought, he rose and picked up the book she had had in her hand.
“Are these the ‘views’?” he asked. “Looks very interesting.... Won’t you show them to me?”
And he sat down beside her on the couch. He really didn’t think it a particularly significant or daring thing to do; he had sat beside a great many other girls; he was neither impudent nor presumptuous, and no one ever had objected or seemed at all disturbed. So that he was surprised at Rosaleen’s agitation. He didn’t know how formidable he was to her; how mysterious, how irresistible. Her hands shook as she took the book of views and opened it.
But, before she had spoken a single word, the sound of a footstep in the hall made her jump up and seat herself in a nearby chair with her book, and none too soon, for the curtains parted and a venerable, grey-bearded old gentleman looked in.
“Won’t you come in?” said Rosaleen, while Nick got up.
The old gentleman advanced and held out his hand to Nick with a scholarly sort of smile.
“Goodevening, sir!” he said. “I was sorry not to have welcomed you with somewhat greater cordiality when you first came in, but I was hard at my work.”
“Not at all!” Nick murmured.
“And that sort of work makes its demands, I can tell you! They who know not speak lightly of ‘writing,’ as of a pleasant diversion; but we initiated ones...! The evening is the only time that I can confidently claim as my own, so you will understand that I dare not waste a moment of the Muse’s presence.”
Which, considering that the poor old chap had acquired all his scholarship alone and unaided, and after he was more or less mature, was a creditable speech. But young Landry,notknowing the circumstances, was not impressed. He said, “Certainly!”
“I suppose Rosaleen has told you something of my literary labours?” he enquired, “A romance of the time of Nero. A poor thing, I dare say, but mine own. And, whether or not it takes the publicfancy, it has at least served to beguile many weary hours for its creator.”
This was out of his preface; a bit he was very fond of.
“I don’t know whether you are a student of history, sir,” the old gentleman went on. “But if the subject interests you at all, I have some exceedingly interesting pictures—views of the Holy Land, which I should be very pleased to show you.”
“Thank you very much,” said Nick. “I should like to see them—some time. But I’m afraid I can’t wait now....”
The scholar shook his head.
“My dear sir,” he said, smiling. “I certainly did not propose to begin so extensive an undertaking at the present hour. It would take you half a day to assimilate the material I have on hand. I thought only to introduce you to the subject, to give you—as one might say—a glimpse of the glories to come.”
He crossed the room and picked up the very book Rosaleen had laid down.
“This is our starting point,” he said. “It is from this quaint little old world village that my very dear friend, the Reverend Nathan Peters, set out on his remarkable trip. The record of that trip may be found in his book ‘Following the Old Trail.’ The written record, that is. The pictorial record—which I think I may venture to call the most uniquely interesting and fascinating thing of its sort now in existence—he entrusted to me, and it forms the basis of this collection of photographs, original drawings, and paintings.”
Nick could not get away. He was obliged once more to seat himself on the sofa, this time beside a bearded old gentleman, and to look and listen for an interminable time. He had to watch desperately for a moment to escape, and he had to go without a word to Rosaleen, except a formal “good-evening.” The uncle accompanied him to the front door, even to the top of the stairs, to invite him cordially to come again.
Outsidein the street he stopped to light a cigarette. And to sigh with relief. What an evening!
And still was happy, very happy, because Rosaleen was so respectable.
Fromthe midst of entrancing dreams Rosaleen was awakened the next morning by a most unwelcome voice, and she opened her eyes to find Miss Amy sitting on the edge of her bed. She had been asleep when Miss Amy came in the night before, but she had never expected, never even hoped that she would be able to avoid a dreadful cross-examination. And here it was beginning.
“Mr. Morton tells me you had a young man in here last evening,” she was saying. “I should like you to explain it. Who was he?”
Rosaleen, terribly at a disadvantage, thus lying flat in bed, dishevelled and surprised, answered that he was a friend of Miss Waters.
“Why did he come here?”
“I—he said he wanted to call....”
“And you gave him this permission without consulting me?”
“I didn’t think you’d mind——”
“Idomind, Rosaleen. I mind very much. It was something you had no right to do.”
“I won’t again,” said Rosaleen.
“I should hope not. Who was he?”
“A friend of Miss Waters.”
“What was his name?”
“Mr. Landry.”
“What is he? What does he do? Where does he live?”
“I don’t know.”
Miss Amy got up.
“I shall telephone to Miss Waters and ask her.”
“No!” said Rosaleen. “Don’t! Please!... I’ll never let him come again....”
“That makes no difference. It’s my duty to know what sort of young men you’re asking into this house. I shall certainly ask Miss Waters for a little further information.”
“She won’t know!” cried Rosaleen. “He—she doesn’t know him very well.... He just happened to drop in at her studio one day....”
“Why?”
“To see about a picture....”
“Is he an artist?”
“I—don’t think so.”
“How often have you seen him?”
“Oh!... I don’t know—exactly....”
She sat up suddenly.
“Won’t it satisfy you if I never have him here again?” she cried. “Or anybody else, ever?”
“No. I want you to have him here again. I want to see him.”
Rosaleen looked at that impassive wolfish face, at those black eyes scrutinizing her behind their eyeglasses, and a profound distrust came over her. In that instant, for the first time, she questioned the motives of her benefactress; she doubted her goodness. Instead of duty in her glance, she saw malice. Never, never, if she could possibly help it, should Miss Amy and Nick Landry come face to face.
She relapsed into what Miss Amy called a “sullen silence,” but which was in reality only a desperate silence. There sat that woman on her bed, formulating God knows what plans against her. She was so helpless! She lay back on her pillow, as if she were bound hand and foot, her soft hair spread about her, her face stony with despair, the very picture of a maiden victim.
“I am sorry you forgot yourself to such an extent,” observed Miss Amy, and rose. “Get up now and dress; it’s late.”
Rosaleen sprang out of bed.
“WhatcanIpossiblytell him?” she cried to herself. “He’ll want to come again, of course.... What can I tell him?”
She looked for him at Miss Waters’ studio the next afternoon, looked for him with vehement longing. She was in such terror that he would go to the flat again and be met there by Miss Amy. If she had known where he lived, she would have written to him, to entreat him not to do so. But that course blocked, she could do nothing but hope and hope that he would instead come to the studio, where she could tell him.... She didn’t carewhatshe told him, what monstrous thing she invented, if only she kept him away.
He didn’t come. She flagrantly neglected her work. Leaning back against the wall, arms clasped behind her head, she gossiped with Miss Waters. And Miss Waters, stifling a feeling of guilt at thus not earning her money, gave herself without restraint to this illicit, this joyful chatter. For Rosaleen was joyful, in spite of her great anxiety, her dread of losing her Nicholas. Even if she lost him now, she would have the happiness of knowing that one man at least had looked upon her with tenderness and delight.
Miss Waters talked about Brussels and Paris, of course, and to-day, with new boldness, began to speak of Love. Hitherto she had never mentioned this topic, but now that Rosaleen had a young man, she felt she might consider her altogether mature,initiated, so to speak. So she told a long and thrilling story of an artist—a very poor young artist—who had fallen in love with a wealthy young girl of good family. And how cruel she was to him. It was difficult to understand why they had so eagerly desired these meetings which Miss Waters feelingly described, for apparently she had come to the rendezvous only to be cruel, and he only to weep and to suffer. By and by she had married a distinguished man, and the young artist began, with true French propriety, to die of consumption. Then the lady, not to be outdone, began to suffer too; the anguish of remorse. She compromised her name by visiting his studio as he lay dying, and her life was ruined. It was awfully long, but to Miss Waters intensely interesting, because she had actually seen the people with her own eyes.
A little earlier than usual Rosaleen went home, to find Miss Amy there, reading, and coldly suspicious.
“She thinks I’ve met him,” she thought. “Don’t I wish I had!”
A joyful sense of her own freedom came over her; no one could really stop her, no one could restrain her. Shewouldsee him! All the suspicious, middle-aged spinsters on earth couldn’t stop her! She was more subtle, more daring, she was stronger than Miss Amy!
And yet she passed the evening in dread—terrified that she might hear the door bell ring, and that it might be Nick.
Itwas the custom in their household for Mr. Humbert when he went down stairs every morning, to look in the mail box, and if there were anything of interest there, to ring the bell three times, as a signal for Rosaleen to come running down. If there were nothing but cards from laundries and carpet cleaners, and so on, he didn’t ring.
But on the next morning, to the astonishment of Rosaleen, he came back, up the four flights of stairs again, with the mail in his hand. And without a word, gave it to his sister. She showed no surprise; it was evidently prearranged between them.
Rosaleen stood by, waiting. But Mr. Humbert turned away and the door was closed after him. And Miss Amy walked off to her own room with the letters.
Rosaleen, left alone in the dark passage, clenched her hands. She knew, she was certain that one of those letters was for her. But dared not ask. She thought that she might be able to steal it; she waited for a chance to enter Miss Amy’s room, and there in the waste paper basket she saw the torn fragmentsof an envelope. With her meek air she went about her work; Miss Amy really fancied that she suspected nothing. But the moment Miss Amy had gone out to market, she ran into the room and emptied the waste paper basket on to the floor, and, on her hands and knees, began to piece the envelope together. It was! Miss Rosaleen Humbert! But there was not a trace of the letter which must have been in it.
A dreadful resentment possessed her. ShehatedMiss Amy. As she sat sewing through the interminable evening, her anger almost stifled her. This woman had cheated and defrauded her. She had stolen her very life! And she was absolutely at her mercy, absolutely helpless. She couldn’t even explain to Nick. He would think of course that she had got his letter; he would see that she didn’t answer it. Perhaps he had suggested another meeting, perhaps he would go to wait for her somewhere, wait and wait, in vain....
That thought made her desperate. She thought for a moment of boldly confronting Miss Amy, but she very soon relinquished the idea. It couldn’t do any good, and it might do harm. No! She would have to try some other way.
The lamplight shone on her smooth head, bent over her work, her profile turned to Miss Amy hadthe guileless sweetness and carelessness of a child.... And Miss Amy was consumed with anger—an anger a hundred times fiercer than Rosaleen’s. She pretended to be reading, but the hands that held the magazine trembled, and she never turned a page. Rage, scorn, a hatred which she could not comprehend, filled her at the sight of this false maiden, this treacherous creature who dared stretch out her hand after the thing which life had withheld from the older woman. And suddenly, with shocking coldness, she burst forth:
“Did you tell that manIwas yourcousin?”
Rosaleen looked up, pale with fright. She waited a moment.
“I said—I only said—a sort of cousin....”
“You let him think that you—were something that you arenot?”
She was silent.
“When he came here, did he know your position in this household?”
“Not exactly....”
Miss Amy smiled.
“I thought not. Now, Rosaleen, I want you to listen to me. I knew this would happen. I warned poor dear Miss Julie of it. Itoldher that when you were grown, these—complications were sure to occur. I could see that you were going to be that sortof a girl, frivolous and silly—misled by flattery.” She had to stop for a moment, to choke down the words on the tip of her tongue, terms of contempt for Rosaleen which common sense told her had not yet been deserved. Then she went on:
“I shan’t try to prevent you from seeing—young men. It’s none of my business. But I won’t have any deceit about it. Anyone who’s interested in you has a right to know who you are and what you are.”
With a mighty effort Rosaleen concealed every trace of emotion. She looked up with an impatient sigh.
“But, Miss Amy, I can’t be telling all about myself to everyone I meet. I don’t expect to see him—that man—again. I just didn’t bother.”
“That’s not true!” said Miss Amy. “I may as well tell you that a letter came from him this morning, in which he mentioned that you ‘unfortunately had no chance to arrange another meeting.’ Now I want you to tell me all about this affair.”
“Nothing to tell!” said Rosaleen, airily. “I met him, and he asked if he could come to see me, and I said yes. I’m sorry I did it. I never will again.”
Miss Amy took up the magazine again. Intolerable to sit in the room with this girl! She wished she had the courage to send her to the kitchen where she belonged.
The clock struck nine and Rosaleen got up.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” she said. “Good-night, Miss Amy!”
Miss Amy answered without looking up.
But when Rosaleen had got into bed and turned out the light, she entered her room without knocking, with that calm authority that at once intimidated and enraged the young girl. And sat down heavily on the cot, making it creak.
“Rosaleen,” she said. “As long as you can’t be trusted to act honourably of your own accord, I shall have to do so for you. I am going to write to the young man and tell him your history.”
Rosaleen gave a little shriek.
“Oh, no!” she cried. “Oh no! Youcouldn’tbe so cruel and horrible!”
Miss Amy was a little alarmed at the emotion she had aroused. She hesitated.
“Then will you tell him yourself?”
“Yes!” Rosaleen said. “Yes! I will!”
Miss Amy sat there, a dim bulk in the darkness.
“I shall write to him,” she said slowly, “and ask him to come here, and you can tell him. Tell him what you should have told him in the beginning.”
The next morning when Rosaleen was dressed and ready to go out, Miss Amy handed her a letter.
“You may see it, if you like,” she said.
But what Rosaleen looked at was the address; one glance stamped it on her mind.
WhenLandry came down to breakfast the next morning there were two letters lying by his plate. He concealed his great anxiety to open them; he sat down and asked his aunt how she had passed the night. She made a point of coming down to take breakfast with him, although it was rather hard for her to be about so early. But she adored the boy, and his affectionate politeness more than compensated her.
She said thank you, she had slept very well.
“Do you mind?” said Nicholas, picking up his letters.
“Of cou’se not!” she answered, and he opened the first.
Miss Amy Humbert would be pleased to see him on Wednesday evening between eight and nine. The old fashioned formality made him smile, but it pleased him, it pleased him very much. It was one step nearer to his Rosaleen. Then he opened the other.
His aunt noticed that he had stopped eating. Hesat staring at his plate, lost in thought, frowning. Then he looked up stealthily at her, and she endured his critical regard with calmness. And he evidently decided at last that she was to be trusted, for he got up and brought his two letters to her.
She read the invitation with a smile; then she looked at the other, scratched, scrawled on a piece of cheap paper in a stamped envelope.