CHAPTER IVROSEMARY IS STARTLED
Strange to say, that while Abel Force seemed in danger of becoming a confirmed invalid, the condition of his delicate brother-in-law improved every day.
He no longer required the arm of his valet to lean on, or even the help of a cane to walk with.
One day his sister said to him:
“Francis, I do believe that you have been more of a hypochondriac than of a real invalid, after all.”
“Elf,” he answered, “I am inclined to suspect that you are right. Certainly most of my ailments, real or imaginary, have vanished under the influence of change, motion and society.”
As the earl continued to improve in health and strength, his sister watched him with a new interest.
On another day she said to him:
“Francis, why don’t you marry?”
Lord Enderby started, and then he laughed.
“What has put that into your head?” he inquired.
“My anxious interest in your future—now that you have a future, brother.”
“Would you, who are my heir presumptive, wish me to marry?”
“Indeed, I would! You would be so much better and happier! Think of it, Francis!”
“My dearest, I am both too old and too young to fall in love!” laughed the earl.
“What rubbish! ‘Too old and too young!’ What do you mean by such absurdity?”
“I have passed my first youth of sentiment, and I have not yet reached my second childhood of senility! Therefore, I am both too old and too young to fall in love.”
“Nonsense! That is not true; and, even if it were, you are neither too young nor too old to marry. It is not necessary that you should ‘fall in love.’ You might meet some lady, however, whom you could love, and esteem, and marry.”
“Where should I be likely to find such a lady? My dear, I have never gone into society at all. Since my return from India I have led a secluded life, on account of my health.”
“On account of your hypochondria, you mean! Now, Francis, you must change all that. In the beginning of the next London season you must open your house on Westbourne Terrace, and entertain company.”
“Will you do the honors, Elfrida?”
“Of course I will,” replied the lady.
“And you can bring out your two daughters, and present them at court.”
“Yes, I might do that.”
“Very well.”
Had the earl felt disposed to look about him for awife, he might have found a suitable one in Baden-Baden.
There were many of the English nobility and gentry staying there for the benefit of the baths. Many very attractive young ladies of rank were in the matrimonial market. But, to tell the truth, the invalid earl, either from real ill health or from hypochondria, was very shy of strangers, and better liked to stroll, or ride, or drive with “the children,” as he called his nieces and their young friend, than to linger in the parlors of the hotel or the pavilions of the place.
In their rambles Odalite seldom joined them. She preferred to stay with her suffering father, and share the labors of her mother in the sick room. The earl and the three younger girls usually set out together.
Wynnette and Elva walking on before; the earl, with little Rosemary’s hand clasped in his own, followed behind.
Ever since that day, now more than a year ago, when the reunited members of the Force family met at Baden-Baden, and paired off—Mr. and Mrs. Force on one sofa, Odalite and Le on another, and Wynnette and Elva on the window seat, leaving the earl, as it were, “out in the cold,” and quite forgotten, and little Rosemary, also temporarily forgotten, had drawn a hassock to the side of his easy chair and sat down and laid her little curly black head on his knee, in silent sympathy—ever since that day the earl and the child had been fast friends. In her tender little heart she pitied him for his weakness and illness, just as she might have pitied any poor man in any rank of life, and she had fallen into a habit of silent sympathy with him, and of drawing her hassock to the side of his chair, when they were all indoors, and of taking his hand when they were out walking. Even now, when the invalid had recovered health, strength and spirits, these habits of the child, once formed, werenot easily to be broken. She no longer pitied him, because she saw that he was no longer an object of pity; but she drew her hassock to his side indoors, and took his hand and walked with him outside. She seemed to think that he belonged to her, or she to him, or they to each other.
One day they were sauntering slowly through the grounds of the Conversation-Haus. Wynnette and Elva were flitting on before them.
Rosemary’s hand was—not on the earl’s arm—but in his hand. He was so very much taller than the girl that he led her like a child.
There had been a pause in their talk, when the earl gently closed his fingers over hers, and said:
“My little one, I love you very much.”
“Oh, I hope you do, and it is so kind of you!” warmly answered the child, returning the pressure of his hand and acting toward him as she would have acted toward her uncle.
“Then, you do care for me a little?” he said.
“Oh, yes, indeed, I care for you a great deal. I am very fond of you,” said Rosemary, warmly, squeezing his fingers.
“How old are you, Rosemary?” he gravely inquired.
“I shall soon be seventeen.”
“Indeed!” he exclaimed, turning and looking down on her.
“Yes, indeed!” she answered, positively.
“Well, you are such a quaint, little old lady, that I am not surprised, after all. You might have been fifteen, or you might have been twenty. But seventeen! That is a sweet age—the age at which the Princess Royal of England was married!”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Rosemary, in her turn.
“Yes, indeed!” he replied, with a smile.
And then there was silence between the two for a few minutes.
The earl was meditating. The child was uneasy, and wondering why she was so.
“Little friend,” he said, at last, “you and I seem very good friends.”
“Oh, we are! And it is so very good of you to be friends with me!” she answered, warmly, squeezing his fingers in her small hand.
“And we are really fond of each other.”
“Oh, very, very fond of one another, and it is so kind of you!”
“But why should you say it is kind of me, little sweet herb?”
“Oh, why, because you are so old and so grand; and I am so little every way!” she said, with another squeeze of his fingers.
The earl winced; but whether at her words or her action, who could say?
“Am I so old, so very old, then, Rosemary?” he gravely inquired.
“Oh, no, no; I did not mean that! Of course, I didn’t mean that you are as old as Mr. Force, who is forty-five; but I meant—I meant—I meant—you are so very much grown up, to be so kind as to walk and talk with a girl like me as much as you do.”
“Well, my dear, do you not like to have me walk and talk with you?”
“Oh, yes! indeed, indeed I do! Oh, you know I do!” she answered, fervently.
Again the earl was silent for a few moments, and then, drawing her small hand into the bend of his arm, he asked:
“Rosemary, would you like that you and I should walk and talk together every day for the rest of our lives?”
She turned and looked up into his face, as if she wished to read his meaning.
He smiled into her upraised eyes.
“Are you in earnest?” she inquired.
“Perfectly, Rosemary. Do you think I would jest with you on such a subject?”
“No! but I thought you knew me so well that you would know without asking that I would love dearly to walk and talk with you every day all our lives long, if we could! But how could we? Some of these days I shall go back to Maryland, and then we shall part and never meet again! Oh! I hate to think that we shall never meet again. You do seem so near to me! So very near to me! As if you were my own, my very own! Oh, sir! I beg your pardon! that was very presumptuous! I ought to have said—I ought to have said——” She stopped and reddened.
“What, my child? You have said nothing wrong or untrue. What do you think you ought to have said?” the earl inquired, in a caressing tone.
“I think I should have said, that I feel so near to you—that I feel as if I were your own, your very own! It was too, too arrogant in me to say that I feel as you belonged to me. I should have said, as if I belonged to you,” she explained. And then she laughed a little, as in ridicule of her own little ridiculous self.
His hand tightened on hers as he replied:
“Suppose we compromise the question and say that we belong to each other?”
“Yes, that is it! And you are so good.”
“And you really wish that we two should walk and talk together every day for the rest of our lives?”
“Oh, yes; if it could be so!”
“Rosemary,” he said, very gravely, as he still held and pressed her hand, “there is but one way in which it could be so.”
He paused, and she looked up.
How long he paused before he could venture to startle the child by his next words:
“By marriage. Rosemary, dear, will you marry me?”
She turned pale, but did not withdraw her astonished eyes from his face.
“What do you say, little friend?” inquired the suitor.
“Oh, oh, oh!” was what she said.
“Does that mean yes or no, Rosemary?”
She did not answer.
“You do not like me well enough to marry me, then, Rosemary?”
“Oh, yes, I do! Indeed, indeed I do; I would marry you in a minute, but—but—but——”
“But—what?”
“I am engaged!”