I have said something of Rose’s infirmary for crippled animals. With these creatures and Hannah and Suzanne and the maids and Briggs and myself,she would have had company enough; but there were others always ready to listen to her. There was, for instance, Mr. Wellicum.
In those primitive days I not only prescribed medicines but supplied them, and Mr. Wellicum was my dispenser, as he had been my father’s before me. He had seemed an old man when I was Rose’s age and ventured into his aromatic domain, and to her therefore he must have worn an air of extreme antiquity. There was this difference in his attitude to the two of us: he had disliked, or at any rate discouraged, my visits, but he rejoiced to have Rose about him. He was a short, bow-legged, grizzled man, very hairy and ursine, known to the villagers as “Crusty Bob,” and by playing tricks on him the boys increased his bearishness; but to Rose he was the mildest and most subservient slave. Others, including myself, his timid employer, were allowed in the dispensary itself only with ungracious reluctance—the lobby by the trap-door in the window being the place of the public—but Rose could do as she wished there, always on the one condition that she must not taste. He even permitted her to help in pill rolling, and not a few of the village children have been known to beg her collusion in seeing that their physic was made less nasty.
Those were the days before motor-cars—I didnot see a motor-car until I was well over forty or own one until I was fifty—when a country doctor and his horse were allies and friends. I rode a little, but mostly drove, and Silver and I were on terms of the closest intimacy. She was a chestnut mare with a whitey-grey mane and tail: hence her name.
Speed, no doubt, is a great asset, especially for a busy doctor in a straggling district, but I shall always hold that we lost spiritually more than we gained materially when we substituted machinery for the horse. The horse, the school-book used to tell us, is the friend of man; and man needs friends. Petrol is his servant or his master, even his tyrant; petrol smoothes no difficulties, heals no wounds, restores no vitality, as a horse could do. On the other hand, justice compels me to admit that it has taken me to many a sick-bed at a pace that Silver would have thought unjust and have found impossible. In addition to Silver I had a bay mare named Jenny, as a second string. Both were affectionate and gentle, and Rose adored them and took astonishing and terrifying liberties with them. Some part of the ritual of grooming, in which she was proud to assist, she even carried into her own toilet. The peculiar hissing sound which ostlers make when they are curry-combing, Rose used to imitate (Hannah told me, with tears of mirth) as she brushed her hair.
That part of the ancient Persians’ simple systemof education for their sons which bore upon the management of a horse (to shoot straight, manage a horse, and tell the truth, was the complete curriculum) is being missed to-day. I don’t pretend that Rose could manage one in the full sense of the word, but she had the qualities which such mastery demands—courage and confidence, mental quickness and sympathy, and a steady hand. It is not to a country’s good when the horse disappears and oil and metal take its place, for the management of a car is far less educative. To-day, roughly speaking, only farm-boys and stable-lads are being taught as the wise old Persians would wish.
Then there were the neighbours: the Rector and his family; Colonel Westerley and his wife; the old people at the post office, and the butcher and the baker, and, what is more to the point, the butcher’s and the baker’s errand boys. Rose was on the best of terms with all of these.
Some were too anxious to share in her upbringing. I exempt the butcher’s boy and the baker’s boy from this charge, and the old couple at the post office are honourably acquitted—or as honourably as persons can be who repeat telegrams to the whole village—but the Rector’s wife longed for Rose to join her two daughters in their lessons, and Mrs. Westerley was consumed by a desire totransform her into a pianist. The rectory offer I declined, but Rose sat for a while at Mrs. Westerley’s instrument, until it was decided that whatever genius she might possess lay in some other direction than music.
Mrs. Westerley, whose garden marched with mine on the other side, we could do without; but Colonel Westerley was one of Rose’s special intimates. And when I say Colonel, I mean Colonel. I mean an elderly upright man with a white moustache and courtly manners, who took the chair at meetings, and played a good game of croquet, and acted as sidesman on Sundays; the kind of army aristocrat who, by presenting the plate with a certain military éclat, made it a double privilege for the worshipper to drop in a shilling for God. I have to explain and amplify in this way because now, after the War, when I am writing, the word Colonel means nothing of the kind. Mere youths are colonels. A major called on me yesterday with a smooth-shaven white face and a baggy umbrella, to ask for my signature to some teetotal appeal. If I had trodden on his toe he would very likely have said that it was his fault. The word “Gad” has quitted the language.
Colonel Westerley had all the mildness and Christianity that, in some odd way, can seed in the composition of a certain kind of army man, to blossom forth in his retirement. One does not notice the seeding, but the flowers are very visible. He had been in India most of his life: had quelledborder insurgencies and killed his country’s foes without a tremor; but now, among the croquet hoops and William Allen Richardsons, he was the soul of gentle courtesy and the Rector’s right-hand layman. The Colonel took over my “Times” at half-price at three o’clock every afternoon, and we shared a library subscription. Mrs. Westerley knitted continually for bazaars, and read aloud every evening until it was time for Patience and then bed.
Rose and the Colonel were great friends. I used to see her watching him as he pruned and grafted, and asking him searching questions as to the perils of life in India. When he corroborated her suspicions and stated that it was really true that snakes got into the bath through the hole that lets the water out, she instituted a hostility to enter that receptacle and be washed all over that was very distressing to her nurse. The Colonel’s stories of man-eating tigers had less serious results. The very good case which he made for himself as an intrepid fighting man and terror of the jungle deteriorated, however, when Rose discovered one day that he had not a single Indian coin to display to her. To see a rupee in the flesh, so to speak, had suddenly become a necessity, second only to that of beholding a real live anna, which she associated in some curious way with Hannah Banks; and the incompetent old warrior had neither. How one could leave India and not bring any such souvenirs away, Rose could notcomprehend. An ivory model of the Taj Mahal, proffered in lieu of coinage, had no effect whatever, not even when fortified by the Colonel’s word-picture of the original by moonlight.
I hardly need say that many of my patients, even the serious ones, took the liveliest interest in Rose, and since nothing is so vexing to the matron and even the spinster as the spectacle of a single man bringing up a young girl, I was naturally well supplied with advice. All my patients asked about her, but as for the hypochondriacs, they made Rose a staple of conversation—conversation being their principal requirement from a doctor. Having reported on the progress of their hypothetical maladies, they got to work at once on Rose’s progress. What was she doing? What was she reading? Had I any new amusing remarks of hers to repeat?
I must not give the impression that I was wilfully taking fees from these people for nothing. They had just enough discomfort or fear of illness to warrant the request that I should add them to my visiting list, and I was never an Abernethy, to call them humbugs and refuse to waste my time under their roofs; but with less money or more to do they would have forgotten my existence. Indolence and riches, in others, are the medical profession’s best friends.
A country doctor in those days was valued for his sociability as much almost as for his skill, and there are cases when a pleasantry or two can do more good than the whole pharmacopoeia. If he can see the opportunity of being useful as a mind-doctor as well as the ordinary repairer of disordered bodies, I think that the practitioner should embrace it and take a fee for it without a blush.
My own circle of semi-friendly patients was large. There was Mrs. O’Gorman, for instance. Mrs. O’Gorman was the widow of an Irish landlord, a little lady, then between fifty and sixty, with a great gift of shrewdness and no belief in mincing her words, who was just sufficiently rheumatic to get three half-hours a week of my society, and perhaps an extra one if I chanced to be passing that way on an irregular day. She lived in luxury in a big house, with a companion called Julia, and read everything that was published both in books and periodicals; and everything that she read reminded her of something. You know the elusive Irish mind leaping from branch to branch; well, she had that, and a marvellous memory at the back of it. But whatever might be her theme, she always came back to Rose, who now and then was deposited at her house by me in the morning and picked up on my return from my rounds, replete with exotic food and burdened with gifts.
“And how’s the colleen to-day?” Mrs. O’Gorman would say, after the latest ravages wrought by uric acid on her system had been carefullydescribed. “Damn the stuff! What’s it for, anyway? Just to keep doctors in affluence, I suppose. If the good God had asked me to help Him in making the world, which I’d take shame to put my signature to as it is, I’d have left uric acid out of it. Yes, and doctors too! Every doctor is a confession of failure on the Creator’s part.
“Have you read the article in the ‘Nineteenth Century’ on Genesis? Is it the ‘Nineteenth Century,’ Julia, or the ‘Contemporary’? It doesn’t matter which, they’re both half a crown and not worth it. The man sweeps away the Garden of Eden like dust on a piano. And that reminds me, we’re going to London to hear Arpeggio. They say he’s better than Liszt, although he has short hair. But he’s a devil among the ladies, just the same.
“It’s odd, isn’t it, how these musicians—Julia, go and get the Doctor a glass of sherry and some cake—it’s odd, isn’t it, that no woman can resist them? Now, a fiddler I can understand. He stands up to it and makes those fine movements with his delicate hands; but a pianist, all bent over the box, banging away—what can they see in him?
“And tell me, what are you doing about Rose’s music? She ought to be taking lessons. A girl’s out of it if she can’t play some instrument, and it’s useful too if a dance should be improvised. Let’s see—has she good arms? If she has, she ought to play the fiddle, or the harp, only the harp’s so clumsy to take about. You want a cab everytime. But it’s a lovely instrument. I heard Jenny Lind sing to a harp—the sweetest voice. There’s some fellow in the ‘Saturday Review’ this week says that Patti has never been approached: but Jenny Lind was worth a thousand of her. Patti has too much art: you notice it; Jenny Lind made you forget everything but the music. Has Rose any voice? I must get her to sing to me when you bring her over next. But you bring her so seldom.
“There’s no need to be jealous of me, you know, I’m only an old woman. But you’ll be getting jealous of all the men directly; you won’t be able to help it. Every day she’s growing up, you know, and every day some boy you’ve probably never heard of is growing up too—you don’t know where he is, and Rose doesn’t know, and he’s never heard of Rose. There he is, somewhere, in his little Eton jacket, with big ears and a snub nose as likely as not, and every minute he’s drawing nearer to Rose and she’s drawing nearer to him. And neither of them knowing a thing about it! Isn’t that terrible? Just Fate arranging everything and we all out in the cold; and no one so out in the cold as the parents and guardians!
“And what about yourself,” she went on, for she was remorseless where the relations of the sexes were concerned. “How old are you? Thirty-five, shall we say? And Rose is seven. Ah! Then when she’s twenty you’ll be forty-eight—the dangerous age! That’s the time for you tolook out, Doctor. You’ll want all your strength of mind then, because we mustn’t marry our wards, you know.”
“Mrs. O’Gorman!” I protested.
“Nonsense!” she went on. “What’s the matter with facing the facts? If every one would do it this world would be a sweeter place. But why don’t you marry, anyway? What’s the matter with us? Do you hate us?”
“I’m too busy,” I said. “Life is too full.”
“Wait till you lose your pretty Rosy, and then you’ll be feeling the draught,” she retorted. “Ah, Doctor, Doctor, it’s a sad old age you’re building up for yourself; and you don’t play cards either. A sad old age!”
“Doctors shouldn’t have wives any more than actors should,” I would say. “No one should marry unless he is going to keep some kind of hours; and doctors can’t. Not at least until they’re specialists and receive patients in Harley Street from ten to one; and by that time they’re crystallized fossils. Parsons should marry—and, as a matter of fact, conspicuously do so—and stockbrokers and lawyers and country squires and most other people; but not doctors.”
“Well, it’s just as well for my rheumatism that your father had different views,” was the reply. “Not that you do me any good,” she hastened to add, “but it’s comforting to have a doctor about the place, and you’re something to talk to. You listen well.”
So she would run on.
But she did not talk like this when Rose was with her. She drew then on her memory and fancy for all that was gay and amusing; brought out old scrap-books; disinterred a musical-box from the lumber-room; and had an amazing ancient dolls’-house put into thorough repair both inside and out. Rose was happier with Mrs. O’Gorman than with anyone but, I hope, me.
I had, of course, patients in whose houses I should not care for Rose to be intimate; and it was not easy for me to repel their friendly advances. But Rose was capable, if she met them when out walking, of replying to overtures with the firmest refusals. Child as she was, she knew her own mind, and she was not old enough or weak enough to have any preoccupation with the feelings of others. It was not callousness: not at all; but it was not in her nature to adapt herself—not yet, nor would it ever be to any great extent, except for the most serious reasons. She was in a playground, and her play had so far always been with congenial spirits: why should it be otherwise? So she felt.
I had been brought up differently. I had been brought up to think of others; to spare sensibilities even to the extent of prevarication; to say “No” where I would rather have said “Yes” if I thoughtthat “No” would be more agreeable to the other person involved: to pass the salt; to be self-denying. Rose’s father had no such attitude towards others, nor did he impose it on his daughter. He had considered the world his orange, and Rose was disposed to do the same. She had no tendency to be grasping or greedy; she had that sense of hospitality to which politeness is a corollary; while her good humour and sense of fun and laughter also made her naturally a dispenser of happiness. But nothing prevented her from telling the truth, neither fear nor favour. How I used to envy her this!
Every teacher must learn something from the taught, I suppose, though it be only an idea of his own ignorance. And I found myself learning from Rose all the time. Her simplicities rebuked my complexities; her innocence disturbed my sophistication. But most I learned from her not only the importance of truth-telling in the social system, but the superior excellence of it in the difficult scheme of civilized life. By always telling the truth one saves oneself from a multitude of fatiguing cares. I don’t say that Rose knew this, even subconsciously; she told the truth because it was in her nature. But it might also have been her privilege. Of all people, a pretty woman has least reason to put herself to the trouble of inventions; because she would always be forgiven.
It was of course too late for me to become truthful spontaneously, as Rose could be; butunder her influence, child as she was and fully grown man (if any man is ever fully grown) as I was, I learned to think twice and be truthful on the second thought. I learned, too, through her unconscious tuition, that other people’s feelings are rarely as delicate as we fancy them, and often never worth serious consideration; at any rate, that the health of one’s own soul is more important than the comfort of anyone else.
I speak of myself as a teacher, but I had dispensed no formal instruction. Whatever Rose got from me was in the ordinary course of conversation, at breakfast and in the garden and at odd times, and perhaps particularly at night, when she had gone to bed and I sat with her for half an hour and, according to Hannah, excited her little brain. I am sure that I have advised thousands of parents not to overdo the good-night gossip; but doctors rarely practise what they preach.
I used to read to her too; and if she had not wanted the same stories so often we might have consumed hundreds of books together. Ruskin’s “King of the Golden River” (does anyone read that now?) was one of her favourites, and I could not substitute a word in it without being detected. That legend is, of course, a lesson too.
All that I had to offer was agradusto life. The real instructors would come later, with their geography and history and mathematics and languages and so forth. The most that I hoped for was that, indirectly, the effect of my generalattitude to things might be that Rose some day would be able to avoid a few pitfalls. To get positive qualities into another is more difficult than to implant a certain caution. “Oh, you men are all alike!” I felt that if I could make it impossible for Rose ever to say that, I should have done something far better than to fill her mind with facts and figures.
Among all the trivialities of our life together in those early days it is difficult to make a selection of saliences. Rose was not a remarkable child in any way, except perhaps in the lack of special qualities. She was quiet and self-contained and, I used to think, very sensible: perhaps her general good sense was her strongest point. She was not a universal sympathizer, but where her affections were set she was very tenacious in her kindnesses and even tendernesses. I remember an incident which illustrates this characteristic.
We had at that time a dog named Rex, a Clumber spaniel, which all too seldom I took out shooting. He was called mine, but in reality was Rose’s, fixing himself to her like a shadow, and being miserable when she was out and he had not been allowed to go too.
Well, one evening at the time when Rose took out his great dish of broken victuals, Rex was nowhere to be found. He had never strayed before,and we had no cheering theory to propound to the child to account for his conduct. Other theories we kept to ourselves, such as the possibility of a thief having enticed Rex away, or that he had followed a hare into preserved ground and had got into a trap, or even had been shot. A new keeper on one of the neighbouring estates had been heard to vow extermination to any dog that he caught trespassing.
No one allowed Rose to hear conjectures of this kind, but we all rather obviously shared her anxiety, and she was able to see through our forced airs of assurance.
The hours went on, and still no Rex. Rose’s bed-time came and was long passed, but she would not consent to leave the hall door. There she stood, now and then calling, with the dish of food beside her.
Hannah was furious, but to no purpose. Dogs to her were just dogs—four-footed creatures, useful to bark at night and protect the house, but given to importing mud into houses and not blameless as to the encouragement of fleas. Many a conflict have we had, she and I, over Rex’s charter to roam where he would, upstairs or down. On this occasion we came to a wider cleavage than ever, for Hannah (and, from her point of view, very rightly) wished Rose to go to bed, whereas I, although conscious that as a habit such vigils would be very bad for her, was inclined to accede to her tearful wishes and allow her on this occasion to wait up. Suchevidences of solicitude for her dog were very gratifying.
“I can’t go to bed, Dombeen, until I know,” she said, and she had my sympathy.
“You shall stay up,” I assured her, “till—till—”
“Till he comes back?” she supplied eagerly.
“No, I couldn’t promise that,” I said. “You see, he may have been found wandering by some one who has tied him up till the morning and will then bring him home. And you couldn’t wait up till then, could you?”
“Yes I could,” said Rose.
“Well even if you could, I couldn’t let you,” I said. “But you shall stay up till—till midnight, say. Till the clock strikes twelve.”
“Oh no, later than that,” said Rose. “Mayn’t I wait till three?”
We compromised upon half-past one, and Hannah’s opinion of me sank still lower.
“Calls himself a doctor!” I fancy I heard her muttering.
Meanwhile, in his devotion, old Wellicum was scouring the neighbourhood in one direction, and Briggs in another, and the stable-boy in a third.
They straggled back at about midnight, and at half-past one I moved the closure and we all went to bed, fearing the worst.
It was just three when I was awakened by a furious knocking at the door and a joyous voice crying, “Dombeen, Dombeen, he’s come back!”
And so he had, the rascal, after what we discovered later to have been simply a distant amatory expedition.
Rose, it seems, although she had consented to go to bed, had got up again and had been sitting by the window until she had seen love’s pilgrim creep in.
Downstairs we went, in our dressing-gowns, and fed him and petted him as though he were a hero instead of a mere voluptuary. What kind of a welcome Rex had expected, and what he thought of the surprising turn that things had taken and our manifestations of delight, I can only guess, but being a Clumber he probably laughed long when at last he regained his kennel.
It was when Rose was ten or eleven that the Hall, the big house of the place, with a park around it, was bought by Sir Edmund Fergusson, and local society was enriched by the addition of his family, which consisted of Lady Fergusson and their only child, Ronald, or Ronnie, who was about Rose’s own age.
The Fergussons naturally became my patients. Sir Edmund’s trouble was gout, which, like most gouty people, he did nothing consistently to check. Sporadically he was careful in his diet, but then would arrive a temptation that he could not resist. A large part of all doctors’ lives is taken up inscolding gouty patients for their imprudences and patching them up into a condition to commit more.
Ronnie Fergusson had a tutor at that time, and Rose a governess; and neither instructor was inclined to extend the working hours unreasonably. During the playing hours the two children were much together. They had a crow’s nest in one of the Fergussons’ trees, and an empty furnace-pit under a disused greenhouse of mine served them as a robbers’ cave.
Ronnie’s parents having married late, he was more like their grandson than son, and therefore a little lonely, and Rose’s companionship was exactly what his nature needed.
Until Rose was thirteen I knew nothing but serenity in my foster-fatherhood. But then she gave me a shock. It turned out to be a false alarm in that it set up no precedent, but for a while I was nervous.
I had decided to send her to school. Were my own pleasure the only consideration I should have kept her at home, but a girl ought to be among others, to learn give-and-take, adjustment, and so forth. Thirteen was late, of course, but she was not quite like other girls—an only child is always a little different—and the lateness did not matter.
In practical matters she already knew more than any of her teachers could tell her. She knew agood deal about medicine and the care of invalids, derived principally from Hannah, but a little from me; she had presided at the tea-table for years and prepared the infusion like a Chinese philosopher; she could make an omelette. She had a considerable store of Norman patois. She had countless books, many of them far beyond her years. It would probably have been better if she continued to remain at home; but she was too normal to be denied ordinary procedure, or I was too normal to have the courage to deny it her.
After many fruitless inquiries and inconvenient visits, I had allowed Mrs. Stratton to find Rose a school. It was at Brighton, where more young people seem to be taught than, judging by the passivity of the fishermen on the railings, fish are drawn from the sea; and I was assured that there was no more admirable establishment, and that Miss Saltoun was the last word in sympathetic and cultured head-mistress-ship. I went to see her and was more or less satisfied. Not wholly; but having had no experience as a selector of educationalists, I let it go, especially as I was more than pleased with the material conditions of the building—light, air, and so forth.
Rose and I had a silent breakfast on the fatal day. She had been looking forward to it with mixed feelings, sometimes glad to be joining such a company of girls after so much isolation, sometimes forlorn indeed at the thought of leaving her home. On the last evening she had broken downcompletely; but in the morning she wore an expression of grim resolution, which I admired too much to run the risk of dissolving it by talking about any unsafe subject; and no subject seeming to be safe, I said nothing.
Her farewell to the household was tearful; but she pulled herself together to part bravely from me, and then she and Hannah drove off. It was a double breaking up of tradition; for Hannah, after taking her to Paddington and putting her into the hands of Mrs. Stratton, who would convoy her to Victoria, where there were reserved compartments for the school, was to go on to her home at Lowestoft, alas! for ever. She had been growing more infirm and could no longer manage the stairs, and when Rose came back for the holidays there was to be a new maid for her, instead of our old friend. It was part of the new programme that Rose was to be generally more self-reliant.
More self-reliant!
It was on a Tuesday that Rose departed. Just as I was finishing my soup on the following Thursday evening, who should walk in but Rose and fling herself on her knees beside me and shake with sobs?
There she knelt, with my hand on her head trying to allay the storm, for minutes.
“O Dombeen!” she managed at last to say. “I couldn’t stay there. It’s—it’s—horrid. You wouldn’t like me to stay there. Really you wouldn’t.”
The fact that I didn’t ask her to explain, that I took it for granted that she was right, will indicate at once the kind of fatalist that I was, and our sub-conscious terms of understanding.
Rose was tired out—too tired to eat—and I am afraid that in the absence of Hannah, whose loss was a terrible disappointment—for although Rose had known of it she had not fully realized it—she cried herself to sleep.
I don’t pretend to have had much of a night’s rest myself, for such a false start as this was no part of the educational programme. Theodore’s phrase “bring her up to beat the band”—rang in my ears.
Was this beating the band? On the face of it, no. We must not run away. And yet (I argued) to run away often implies more character than to endure, and surely that was Rose’s case. She was not a coward, she was not self-indulgent; that I knew. Nor did she imagine things. Child as she was, I trusted her judgment and accepted the position. The school was horrid, and she couldn’t stay there; that was enough. I knew her sufficiently well to be sure that she would have put up with it if she had believed that any good could result; but she knew the reverse and she had acted accordingly. She had walked out of the house, found her way to the station, and the pocket-money I had given her and her own resourcefulness had done the rest.
The next morning I had a very pale and demure companion at breakfast. She also had evidentlybeen thinking, and had seen that thus to take the law into her own hands was a proceeding of considerable magnitude—such magnitude that she looked dwarfed under it. But although subdued andpianissimo, there was no sign of weakness on her features. It may have been a gigantic effort of independence, but she did not regret it.
I had sent to Brighton a reassuring telegram (crossing one from Osborne House) on the previous evening, and on the arrival of a second telegram from Miss Saltoun saying that she was on her way to see me, I dispatched Rose to Mrs. O’Gorman’s for the day, with an explanatory note.
Not long afterwards a very indignant Miss Saltoun arrived for an interview. Her idea no doubt was to take Rose back with her; but I had no intention of permitting that. I did not even let them meet, to Miss Saltoun’s intense surprise. Should she be still alive, I doubt if her eyebrows have yet resumed their normal level, to such an altitude did she lift them when I announced my decision.
“But it is fatal to let a child behave like this,” she said. “It is the end of all discipline. What would come to the world if no one were punished?”
I said that Rose would not lack punishment. Her shame in not being able to remain at Brighton was punishment. She was not proud of herself at all, I said, even though she couldn’t do anything else but run away.
“But suppose every child ran away!” said Miss Saltoun. “What would the world come to!”
“It would probably be very good for the world,” I said. “Because only children with character have the pluck to take such a step.”
“No one has ever run away from Osborne House before,” said Miss Saltoun.
“And probably no one ever will again,” I said.
“It will be very damaging to me,” she protested, “if it gets to be known, as of course it must do. Of what did Rose complain?”
I said that I hadn’t asked her.
“Not asked her!” Miss Saltoun exclaimed. And I could see her swiftly putting two and two together and realizing that it was my deplorable indulgence that was at the back of everything.
“No,” I said. “She merely said that she could not stay and had therefore come home.”
“And you allow that? Condone that? It’s too amazing! Is every caprice of a child like this to satisfy you?”
“I don’t think she is capricious,” I said. “I agree with you that the occurrence is unfortunate. I wish it had never been. I wish Rose had not gone to school at all, anywhere. But I would much rather—even at the risk of being unfair to you—that she were not interrogated.”
Miss Saltoun kept her temper under fair control, but she could not help indicating that she was glad that all her pupils had not such impossible parents or foster-parents, and that on the whole she was of the opinion that she was well out of it.
Nor did I feel particularly pleased with theposition 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 anold 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, andshe 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 theneighbourhood. 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 roughishnouveau-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. Thekind 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 ofanything 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.