True to a Type Volume Ii Part 9

"You outraged my feelings. Was I to accept your insinuations of improper conduct as a polite compliment, or an everyday commonplace of domestic conversation?... You did not strike me, I admit--the man in you would restrain you from that; but you did worse!--the things you said."

"Could I see people taking away your character by a shrug without giving you warning? Could I tell you about it, as something amusing and to your credit?"

"It was yourself who goaded me on to do whatever I did. And then to insult and desert me!"

"I did not desert you. I merely took rooms down town, leaving you in sole possession of the house until you should come to your senses....

You did not believe that I had deserted you; but you wanted to make me beg pardon and come back as if I had been to blame."

"And so you _were_ to blame! The Court has decided that, and granted me my divorce."

"And has your divorce, then, made you happy? Would you have filed your pet.i.tion, if you had expected to have it granted? You thought I would have come and prayed you to withdraw it. I let you take your course.

Was I wrong?"

"You knew you had no defence--had no case to plead--that I was right.

You let judgment go by default."

"Did you imagine that I would plead?--have all our little altercations, which would have sounded so pitiful in Court, raked out and exposed before a crew of newspaper reporters, to be read and chuckled over by the people going home in the tram-cars? Did you imagine that I would attempt to keep you bound, if you wanted to break loose from the marriage tie? I would not have you, if I could, against your will."

"You are very magnanimous, and I--of course I am the opposite--everything bad, and frivolous, and foolish. I wonder you should have troubled yourself to address against her will so poor a creature."

"I have been waiting here all these days, Rose, in hopes of getting speech of you. You are not bad, or frivolous, or foolish. You are the only woman I have ever cared for, or ever shall. We have been--not very wise, shall I call it?--headstrong and obstinate, and neither would give in; and both, if I may venture to say it, have been miserable in consequence. Forget and forgive, Rose. Let's try again, begin the game anew, and profit by sad experience. It is for that I have been waiting here--to prevent this marriage of yours, if the people say true, which will make both you and me miserable for ever."

"You are kind; but do you not exaggerate? My marriage at least will not leave you inconsolable. You have secured the consoler already.

I wish you joy of her. May she make you as happy as you deserve, and----" But here, to her own astonishment--for Rose had felt proud of her bravery and calmness throughout the interview--there came a spasm in her throat, which choked her utterance. The corners of her mouth began to droop, and her eyes sought the ground.

"Do you mean Maida Springer? This is worse than Horatia Simpkins! I am sure I have not flirted with Maida. Come, if you like, and ask her; she is sitting under that tree. She is an acquaintance of very old standing; that is all. She taught my uncle's children long ago, when I was a lad. We saw each other constantly when I was home from Harvard at the vacation. But there is nothing between us--never was. Come, ask her yourself. She is sitting behind this nearest tree: she will be the first to wish us joy."

He took Rose's hand to lead her to the spot, and Rose had moved a step or two before she had recovered self-command enough to resist. The tree was very close. Whoever sat behind it must have overheard the conversation, for both had been too intent to keep their voices low.

Rose shrank from meeting the listener. She stopped short, and looked timidly where the eavesdropper was said to be.

There seemed little which need make her feel uneasy. A woman's figure--or was it only a bundle of summer clothing? so limp and collapsed it seemed--lay crouched and huddled together against the bole. The hat was pushed aside, the head bowed between the knees, and two slender hands spread out before it to exclude the light. The hair had come unfastened, and fell in wisps down to the ground, swaying and quivering in the sobbing tremor which shook the woman's frame.

Rose drew away her hand. "It is too late to talk, Bertie. We have chosen our roads in life, and we must keep them. But we will think more kindly of one another now. I am engaged, as you know. I did it freely, and I must keep my word. I will not spoil the life of another--of a man who is as fond of me as this one, and so good and true. We will forgive one another--will we not?--and learn from sad experience more forbearance in our future lots. There he is coming. I shall go and meet him. Goodbye. We must not meet again."

She went, leaving Gilbert elated at his success, but dissatisfied with its incompleteness, and a little doubtful how he ought to return to Maida Springer. They had been reclining rather aimlessly behind the tree, when he looked up and saw Rose almost upon them, and alone. It seemed to be now or never, if he was to have speech with her. He bounded to his feet without a word to his companion, and her own ears must soon have told her why. It felt decidedly awkward to return to Maida; yet what was he to do? He could not follow Rose without imperilling such way as he had made back to her favour, by inducing perhaps an ugly scene with Naylor; and having brought Maida there, he must fetch her back to her friends. It was an uncomfortable task, but it had to be performed. He hardened his soul, expecting to hear something unpleasant, composed his features, and turned round to the tree.

He might have spared his anxiety. The tree was deserted. No one was near. Far up the slope the flutter of a white gown and streaming blue veil might be discerned between the trees, in swift retreat, and Gilbert found that Maida had saved him the unpleasantness of an explanation.

CHAPTER XXIX.

"IT IS ALL A MESS!"

It fell hard upon Rose to have to meet Joseph again so immediately after the pa.s.sage she had gone through with Gilbert Roe--to pa.s.s, with scarce a pause in which to brace herself together, from the lover of her youth into the presence of the man to whom she had chosen to transfer her regard. She had fooled herself in her pique into the belief that she had trodden down and stamped out the last spark of kindness for the husband who had been, as she told herself, so hard and cruel and insulting--the man who could let her untie their marriage bond, without showing a sign or offering a word of remonstrance. He was nothing to her now--she had been saying it within herself ever since their separation--or if anything, only her aversion. She had been persuading herself that she was an injured woman, and that it was righteous resentment which she had been nursing against the unfeeling tyrant who had blighted her early wifehood. She had resolved that she would never speak to him again, nor even name him; that she would pluck out the very memory of her first and foolish love--have done with him for ever, and begin anew. (As if our past, the foundation of our present, could ever be obliterated!)

When he forced himself upon her so unexpectedly, the anger smouldering through her year of unmolested separation, the regret and disappointment grown sour in concealment and suppression, and turned by silence and defeated pride into what had seemed an inextinguishable hatred, had burst into a flame of fiercest indignation. It had burst into flame, but how pitifully soon it had burnt low! It had been but a fire of straw, blazing up for a moment and sinking as quickly as it rose; leaving nothing behind, nothing but the emptiness of separation.

The grievances and wrongs and barriers piled up so high between them, where were they gone to? Vanished utterly away. There had been a leaping flame and a whirling puff of smoke, and the ground was clear between them--clear save for the ashes of happiness destroyed for ever! And there she stood, naked and exposed before her own eyes and his, stripped of her false pretexts, a vain and headstrong fool, who in very wantonness had made bonfire of their wedded happiness!

And yet her indignation had seemed so just, her wrongs so deep and unforgivable! How speedily her wrath had oozed away before a few words! words not of contrition, scarce even of reproach, but only common-sense, and spoken by the old dear voice! Where were the bitter memories now? How could she be so false to herself? Where was her pride?--that stanch support against which she had been wont to set her back, ready to outface the world? It had bent and broken, like a worthless reed, before a few words of the man against whom she had invoked its aid. "Bertie!" She had resolved to obliterate the memory of that name; and yet it had pa.s.sed her lips, and the old caressing sweetness of the sound was in her ears, and would not go away.

It was not half an hour since the mere sight of him had hardened her with hate, and made her feel strong, if yet unhappy. Now, she was weak as water. If she had stayed, she would have given way and yielded--she could not tell to what--but to anything the old sweet strong influence in that voice had chosen to command her. But she had escaped, and she was still free, and she would keep her liberty, whatever it might cost her peace. At least she thought so.

What would they say, those sympathising friends who had come to her in her conflict, with their well-meant phrases of support, and told her she had done so wisely, and shown so brave a spirit? What would they say to see her lower the lance and go back again to the bondage of her tyrant? How could she face their pity at her weakness? And then there were the others, who had disapproved of her conduct--had advised her to submit, yield something, and make it up; and when she would not, had turned away from knowing her. They would call her repentant, and perhaps would turn again to countenance her reformation! That would be more intolerable even than the pitying surprise of her stancher friends. No; she must follow out the road she had entered on. There could be no returning upon the lost steps. And she had so nearly yielded. It startled her to find she was so weak. She must build a barrier between the old life and the new, which could neither be surmounted nor thrown down.

Joseph was close upon her now. He had not been very long away, but he did not seem in her eyes exactly as he had seemed before. It was not half an hour that he had been gone, yet he looked more ordinary than she had supposed him. The redundancy of waistcoat, or rather of waist, offended her sense of symmetry as it had not done before; and if he had been just a little taller! Bertie was six-feet-one, and gracefully slim, and chestnut-haired, while the other's locks were darkening, as the leaves grow dark before the autumn tints begin to light them up with the rustiness that comes before decay. It was the difference between thirty and forty-seven. What a fool she was to notice such things, and at such a time, when the very contrary was what she would have wished to notice! She told herself so with vehemence, and bit her lip, as if that would make her mind it better; but she went on noticing all the same. When the eye has been turned for a little on the sun, what a poor, dim, purblind thing does the light of a candle afterwards appear!

Joseph came on with swinging elastic strides, impatient to be with her, irradiated with a joyful pride, and beaming on her with smiles of confidence irrepressible.

"If he would only have been tranquil!" she thought. This exuberance seemed so utterly out of place. It was a discord in the bland and half-parental warmth which, she told herself, would have been correct in view of their disparity of age. "It was bad taste. There was even an element of ridicule in a venerable Cupid of forty-seven exerting himself to gambol before her like one of those boy Loves with wings the artists picture. She had not thought so half an hour ago, but we live and change so quickly at times. He was too solid for that sort of thing, and she felt sorry to see him attempt it, for she really respected and liked him."

"You grew tired of waiting, Rose?"

"Why would he call her by her name just then?" she asked herself, forgetting that he had been doing so habitually for a week past, and that she had encouraged him to do it.

"And came to meet me? Forgive me, dearest. I could not help it. Your own disinclination to be kept waiting, must plead for my impatience to get my little parcel, that I might present it. I made the hotel people promise to send it after us, if it should arrive this forenoon. It has come, but the express man would not part with it till I had signed the receipt. Then the rascal went to refresh himself, and I had quite a hunt to find him. However, it is all right now. Shall we turn back and get under the shadow of the trees?"

"As you like," Rose answered, a little dully.

Joseph tore off the wrappings of his parcel as they walked along, laying bare the little ring-case. He opened it, and the merry little stones within, catching the sunbeams, cast them back in a dazzling gleam beyond his expectation.

Rose saw and shuddered. The glancing ray seemed to pierce her with a cold sharp pang, like the thrust of steel. It was the token of her engagement; and that, of a sudden, and without her being aware of an alteration in her mind, had grown distasteful.

"And now, my dearest, will you let me fit it in its place. It is not worthy your acceptance; but then, what is? Still it is pretty, is it not? And seeing that you were kind enough to accept myself, you will let me slip on my ring. It is an earnest of the other you have promised to let me give you."

"Not now, Mr----dear Joseph, I mean." How unreadily his name came to her lips! and half an hour since she had used it freely--had even liked to use it in a very friendly way, as leading up to the more intimate connection which was to be established between them. What a rift between the now and then!

"Do you not like it, dear?" Joseph asked, in a disappointed tone. "I said it was not worthy either of your acceptance or of my love; but still, I confess I thought it pretty, and I hoped you would have worn it."

"Oh, as to that--yes, by all means. It is a lovely ring, the very handsomest I ever saw. Any one might feel proud to wear it on its own merits; but you know how whimsical we women are. It is a whim which I have taken, that I will not put on a ring to-day."

"Let me persuade you out of it, dearest. Let me overbear the whim." He took her hand in his, drew off the glove, and reverently pressed his lips upon the fingers, while she stood looking listlessly and sadly in his face. He took the engagement-finger and attempted to slip on the ring without more ado; but at the touch of it Rose started and drew away her hand with a shrinking cry, while Joseph strove to retain it, and still attempted to slip on the ring.

"It must not be, at least not yet a while, Joseph. I have something which I must tell you, that will make a difference between us. It would be unfair to you not to tell you in time, what may influence your feelings with regard to an engagement between us. And meanwhile, I give you back your promise, that you may be free to do as you will, after you have heard me."

"You shall not give it back, Rose. I will not accept it. And more, I hold _you_ to your promise still. Nothing which you can tell me will induce me to give you back yours."

"Not if you heard dreadful things against me?"

"I would not believe them. I know you too well for that. What do you take me for?"

"I take you for a n.o.ble-minded man. It is that which troubles me. I am not worth your caring for."

"You are my own, a part of my very self."

"You would not say so if you knew--that I have been married before!--if you were told that I am a divorced woman!"