Front matter (continued 4)

Anyway, I had taken an immense interest in Rose’s sketches, and often sat with her while she made them, and marvelled—being a hopeless duffer at such work—as the swift deft touches transferred the landscape to the paper: sky and earth and water. She may not have been remarkable, but to my eyes she was as clever as anyone sketching nature need be. Her portraits were good too: at any rate, lifelike enough to provoke cries of delight from the villagers as they recognized their neighbours. She was a straightforward performer: she cubed nothing and abhorred a vortex; but artists are curiously impressionable people, visitors to this planet rather than dwellers upon it, and at any moment she might become as wild as the wildest. And I am not surprised: the power to splash colour about must naturally lead to experimentalism.

In those days, however, Rose was in the old and sober tradition, and the desire to paint filled her soul.

At last the go-fever broke out. She had been to London—that promoter of restlessness—to stay with a girl artist friend and show her work to some experts and see the exhibitions, and she came back glowing with excitement and plans. She returned with her hair intact too, to my great joy. I had nursed a terror that she might bob it.

“How much money have I got?” was one of the first things she said to me after dinner.

During the meal I had heard the story of her adventures. How she had stayed with her friend Vera Gray in her studio at Chelsea. It was on the Embankment, looking out on the river.

“And O!” she exclaimed, “the river is exactly what Whistler made it. I mean—exactly how he painted it.”

I interrupted her to say that no studied compliment could ever have pleased that painter so much as her hurried slip; but she didn’t want to hear me; she wanted to talk and tell.

They had slept in the studio, in a little gallery up a ladder, where there was also a bathroom. They had cooked their own breakfast, but had gone out for other meals. I had no idea what Vera’s coffee was like! And her cups and saucers and plates: all blue and white, from Portugal: it cost—well, I’d never guess how cheap it was.

I asked her if she had called on her father.

“No”

“Oughtn’t you to have done so?”

“I suppose I ought,” she answered, “but—well, as a maffact, he would probably have disapproved of Chelsea and made me stay with him. For another reason, I didn’t really think he wanted to see me. We’ve very little in common, you know, Dombeen.”

“It’s a wise child who knows when she doesn’t want her father to know she’s in town,” I said. “I’m afraid you’re right,” I added: “you haven’t much in common. But you oughtn’t to presume on that, ought you?”

“Why not?” she asked, and upon my word, I couldn’t reply. Why should children be dutiful any more than their parents?

If Eustace took no interest in Rose, why should Rose take interest in him? Logically, it is the older who should set the example: the more mature, the person who is responsible for the child’s existence. I doubt very much if there is any natural affinity between parents and children: pride of ownership on the one side and dependence on the other leads to the creation of a bond. Remove babies at birth and do not let them meet their mothers again until they are grown up, and (in spite of the romantic and sentimental novelists) I doubt if there would be any natural recognition, any calling of the deeps.

Vera, Rose went on, had done a little work—not much—and then they had gone out to visit other studios, where Vera’s friends lived. I could have no idea how jolly they all were. People talked about the jealousy of artists, but for her part she didn’t believe a word of it. There they were, all so keen and simple, wearing the most delightful old clothes, pleased to see each other, pleased to praise each other’s work—genuinely, too—absolutely genuinely—and then directly it was too dark to go on, or they didn’t feel in the mood, off they went to dinner at one of the Soho places, and then they either talked about painting, ever so interestingly, or danced or sang. It was the most wonderful life.

But I mustn’t think for a moment that they were slackers. Not a bit of it. As a maffact, they worked frightfully hard. But artists, I must remember, don’t divide up their lives into work and play as other people do—clerks and merchants and lawyers and so on: they mix the two together. That’s what makes them so delightful.

“They all have such charming things,” she said, looking round at my furniture—Victorian mostly, not old enough to be beautiful—with a kind of disdain. “No matter how poor they are, they always seem to have money for ‘bits.’ They’re always on the look-out for them, and they have such wonderful eyes. They can see things under inches of dust. Going about among the old furniture and old curiosity shops with Vera and her friends was an education, and such a lark too! You and I must go over to Lowcester, Dombeen, and rout about in the old shops there. I know so much more about things than I did a month ago. I know the difference between Heppelwhite and Chippendale and Spode and Crown Derby. And I mean to learn it all.”

She had been to the National Gallery three times, and to the Tate, and to several little exhibitions, and to the Café Royal one evening, and to two plays. But the most terrific thing of all was this—she had seen John.

“John who?” I asked.

“Not John anything,” she replied, shocked at my ignorance. “It’s his last name, but no one ever calls him anything else—John the artist: much the strongest painter we’ve got. Vera asked him to come and see my things, and he came and he likes them. He says I ought to make a real name if I study properly and go to a life class and devote myself to drawing for a while. It’s my drawing that’s weak, he says.”

It was then that Rose suddenly asked, after a brief silence, “How much money have I got?”

I told her that she had no money at all, unless her father chose to give her any. He reimbursed me more or less for what she cost me, and her school accounts and so forth had gone to him. It was all very irregular; of course she ought to have an allowance by this time. She was eighteen.

Her face lost its radiance. “Must I ask him?” she said.

“It depends on what you want it for,” I answered.

“I want to live in Chelsea,” she said, “and really learn to paint.”

“O!” I said. “If it had been for anything else I might have been able to contribute, but I can’t for that. That is too drastic. You must ask your father. Besides,” I said, “I could hardly bring myself to finance a scheme which leaves me so high and dry.”

“Poor Dombeen!” she said. “But you’d soon get used to being alone. And I’d come down often for the week-end. As a maffact, you’d hardly miss me.”

“Train up a child and away she goes,” I quoted.

“But you wouldn’t have me not be independent?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Everything is all right: just as it should be. An old man must expect to lose a young girl just when she is most companionable. But you must concede him a little melancholy. After all, it is a compliment to you, so concede it purely in that light. It’s as proper for me to regret your going as for you to want to go.”

“You dear old thing!” she said. “I hate to leave you, but what should one do? If you absolutely needed me, of course . . . but you don’t. You’re strong, you go about, you have your prints and your gardening.”

“And even if I hadn’t,” I said, “I should not allow you to stay. If I am to collapse, it shall not be an artist on the threshold of life with a passion to express herself in oils who shall bring my beef-tea. That would be too unfair. But you must understand that nothing can be done until your father consents.”

“I’ll write to him to-night,” she said. “Unless you will?”

“No,” I replied firmly. “I’ll go a long way to help you, but I won’t sign my own death warrant. No seaman beseeches to be marooned.”

Eustace replied that he thought he might be willing, but it would be well to discuss the matter properly. Would she stay with him for a few days and bring some of her work with her.

“How can I show it to him?” she asked.

“You must,” I said. “After all, he is your father.”

“But it’s so—so—personal,” she said.

“Well?” I asked, when she came back a few days later.

“I’ve bored him terribly,” she said.

“What makes you think so?”

“He never knew what to say. Besides, his habits are fixed. I ruined his breakfast because he couldn’t read the paper. I would much rather he had read it, but he was trying to behave so beautifully and he made conversation instead. This means that he never caught up with the news all day, and that’s a very serious thing. I made the awful mistake too of opening the paper before he did, before he came in—this was on the first morning—and no woman, it seems, must do that.

“O dear, I’m not right at all. As a maffact, Dombeen, you’ve spoilt me. And I’m too impulsive. You mustn’t be impulsive with men, except perhaps just one or two, and those only for a little while and when they’re very pleased with themselves.

“I did other terrible things too. I used the telephone frivolously. I even rang up the exchange once just to ask the time, and he heard me. I had done it often enough when he was out, because my watch had stopped and his clock was away being mended; but he came in just as I was ringing and I never saw anyone so pained.

“And O! I left the electric light burning in the hall all one night. He was perfectly nice and kind and polite, but I could see that every day something new was being inscribed on his heart, like Queen Mary’s. I don’t mean our Queen Mary. I mean the Queen Mary who lost Calais—the bloody one.

“He didn’t like my painting at all,” she went on, “but he was very gentle about it. He was always gentle—gentle and cool—and that is so depressing after a while. Disturbing, too. He took me to the Tate Gallery on Saturday afternoon, and to the National on Sunday, and showed me the pictures he likes best. He has two photogravures after Leader in his bedroom.”

“But have you decided anything?” I asked. It was all I wanted to know and she was postponing and postponing the moment of the verdict.

“Yes,” she said, but without much enthusiasm.

“Well?”

“Well, he won’t hear of independent rooms in Chelsea. He doesn’t like Chelsea. It’s too irresponsible, he says. But he agrees to a Hostel—he’s inquiring about them now—and the Slade, I may go to the Slade and live in a Hostel, for three years. It isn’t what I wanted, of course, but it’s the thin end of the wedge. I’ll be able to go to Chelsea to see Vera and the others pretty nearly whenever I like, and the Slade isn’t so bad. Orpen was there and John was there. What do you think?”

“When do you want to begin?” I asked dully.

“Well, the next term,” she said. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

It was our last evening. To-morrow the little mawf was to fly away towards those great flames, London, Art, and Independence, all capable of scorching very acutely. To Rose the hours were all a prelude to adventure; to me a promise of loneliness. For so long this graceful, gay enthusiast had been lighting up my house; and now I was to be forsaken. At seventy that is no particular joke.

To what extent Rose had pondered on what might lightly be called the selfishness of her programme, I cannot say. Perhaps not at all, but I think that very unlikely. My own attitude to her desertion, although I did my best to make it whimsical, must have turned her thoughts that way. But having pondered, might she not very properly have decided that such selfishness was her only course? Our duty is not always to others. Comparatively lost as I was going to be, I certainly did not want her to make the sacrifice of remaining. Why should she? What right has seventy to cramp the style of twenty? Too many young people are harnessed—more than harnessed, shackled—to the old, for me to be willing to add to their number. I have watched youthful lives being sapped and thwarted in this way ever since I have been in practice, and I had always vowed that never would I be guilty of a similar tyranny. And now here I was with the temptation!

But it was not the temptation that it might have been had Rose come to me and said, “Look here, Dombeen, I can’t leave you all alone. It isn’t fair. I’ll give up this London scheme and we’ll go on being happy together.” Even then, however, I hope I should have been strong enough to say No. In fact, I know I should; for what is the use of binding a girl of eighteen, or letting her bind herself? Art she might relinquish; but what would happen when Love appeared? How could I keep her to her promise then? Better face the music, take the fence, cut the knot now, and be brave about it.

We sat long after dinner on that last evening. Rose’s boxes were packed, her room at the Hostel and her easel at the Slade awaited her. She had said all her good-byes in the neighbourhood, and no doubt more than one of her dancing friends had her address in his pocket-book. In short, practically every boat was burnt. All our talk, therefore, was of the future. If Eustace was not too unwilling, she said, she should go to Paris after a while. As a maffact, Paris was, of course, the place. London was only a makeshift. She would probably go on to Paris anyway—father or no father. Because one must be thorough. London was looking up—everybody said so—Chelsea had produced some wonderful things—but for an artist Paris was the true Alma Mater. Even Chelsea had had to go to Paris first.

It was all a question of money. Surely when she was twenty-one her father would allow her something reasonable?

“Not for the purpose of doing anything of which he might disapprove,” I said.

O well, she would see. She would begin at the Slade, anyway, and make up her mind gradually. “But of course,” she repeated, “Paris is the place. Sooner or later I must be there. I can hear it calling all the while.”

Having said those words, Rose left the window where she had been standing and walked into the garden, whither no doubt she expected me to follow her.

I was about to do so when there was a knock at the door and Suzanne entered, with a curious excited flush on her face.

She stood there a moment, as though trying to speak, and then, stepping aside, made room for some one in a black dress and veil, and was gone.

“Dombeen!” cried the stranger, and buried her thin, tired face on my shoulder.

Of what I said I have no memory. I can remember only stroking her head and hushing her like a child.

“Don’t cry, don’t cry,” I may have murmured; but it was foolish, for tears were her best friends.

“Rose?” she asked at last. “Is she here?”

I nodded.

“If only I could see her without her seeing me!”

“Wait a moment,” I said, and went to the garden to look for Rose, but she had disappeared.

I returned to her mother and began to be practical. She had come in a car, and the first thing to do was to take her bag out and send it back. Then she consented to eat something, and while it was being prepared I had the story.

Ronnie and she had been on their way back to England. He had wanted to see his mother again, and his father’s executors too. But at Marseilles Ronnie had died. It was where her father had died thirty-six years before—how strange a coincidence!

Ronnie’s death followed up a chill, which he had taken, she feared, on a visit to Theodore’s grave. They had gone to see it directly after landing, and Ronnie now lay in the same cemetery, close by. Was not that remarkable?

Since then she had been travelling steadily towards her daughter and me. No one knew of her presence in England but Ronnie’s mother, living now permanently at Torquay, who had been written to.

It was at this point that Rose the other Rose—came back. I saw her across the lawn—her dress shone among the shadows—but her mother’s back being to the window, she could not see her too.

Making some excuse, I slipped out.

“Who is it?” Rose asked, with a startled look, and a voice almost of fear. “Is it—?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What has happened? Is—is he dead?”

“Yes,” I said.

She gave a little wailing cry and was gone.

“Rose! Rose!” I called, but she did not reply.

I went back to her mother and urged her to go to bed.

“Not yet,” she said, adding that she would not be able to sleep. “There is so much to say, so much to know.”

As she talked, dry-eyed now, for she had conquered her emotion—her tears were because she was at home at last, among old and happy associations once more—I was able to see how she had aged. But she did not look as though her life with Ronnie had been a failure. There was no careworn anxious suggestion; there was merely sadness in her loss, and fatigue. She was still beautiful.

I did not want to ask any questions, and the principal one was answered by her general demeanour with regard to Ronnie: they had been happy.

“I regret nothing,” her eyes seemed to say.

She had no plans. She did not know what she would do after leaving me. How was every one? Was Mrs. O’Gorman still living? No. She was sorry. She had been hoping to talk with her. How splendid, though, to find Suzanne!

She seemed to be shy of referring to Rose again. I could not help noticing it. Every silence seemed to be filled intensely with consideration of her relations with her child and her child’s attitude to her. She must have given endless thought to this matter, but to be so near brought it all back more vividly and critically.

“I suppose—” she began once and stopped, and I knew that the rest of the sentence would have been—“she knows”: meaning “she knows about me and Ronnie?” Did daughters, she must often have asked herself, forgive mothers who run away from them with other men?

Perhaps it was because her mind had travelled thus far that she suddenly said again, “Dombeen, remember this. No matter how sad I may seem to be, now and then, remember this: I regret nothing. Ronnie needed me more than anyone.”

Then she became gayer and smiled her old smile.

“And you?” she said. “How are you? What beautiful white hair!”

“I am seventy,” I said. “Nothing else is the matter. But I always maintain that white hair is beautiful only on the heads of others.”

She came at last to Rose again by a more direct route. “Those pictures”—looking at the walls—“are they hers?”

I said that they were. I had told her in my letters of Rose’s painting.

“Oh, but they’re very good,” she said. “I’m so glad. There should always be an artist in our family.”

Should I tell her of Rose’s career, due to begin to-morrow? My natural instinct, as always, was, at the moment, for fear of giving pain, to conceal it; but I remembered my lesson, learned both from Rose and Rose, and told her.

She was silent for some time. “But where is she?” she then asked.

“She has gone to bed,” I said, “most probably.”

“Without coming to say good night to you? Isn’t that strange?” She looked at me searchingly.

“She knew you were here,” I said.

“She knew! How?”

“She saw you with me, from the garden.”

“Oh!” said Rose. “Yes.” She was silent again. “I’ll go to bed now, I think,” she said, and I led her upstairs.

“To-morrow your old room will be ready for you,” I said. “It couldn’t be to-night.”

“I like this one,” she said. “It’s where you get the view between the two copper beeches. But Rose?” she went on. “I must just peep at her before I sleep.”

I advised against it. “To-morrow,” I said. “When you’re not so tired.”

No, now, or she could not rest.

I pointed out Rose’s door and she tiptoed in. In a moment she was on the landing again.

“It’s empty!” she exclaimed. “The bed is untouched.”

I tried to reassure her.

“But where is she? This is terrible,” she repeated. “We must find her.”

I told her not to be alarmed. Rose was probably walking off her disturbance of mind. The sudden appearance of her mother must, I know, have given her too much to think of, and she was doing what she often did in moments of high tension—she was fighting her perplexities under the open sky.

“Ah!” said Rose. “It would have been better for me not to have come back.”

“Don’t say so,” I replied. “Go to your room now. I’ll wait for Rose—perhaps I’ll go and look for her, but I don’t think that is necessary; these are safe parts. She is probably in the garden.”

“She hasn’t—you don’t think—she hasn’t gone away altogether?” her mother faltered.

“Good Heavens, no! She often does this, and with far less reason. I’ll knock and reassure you very soon now”; and thus I got her to retire. Rose came back some anxious hours later, at dawn. She was worn out.

It was as I had guessed. The poor child’s castle in the air having collapsed, she had been collecting energy for the rebuilding. But this time there was to be a less alluring site: the castle must be on the prosaic earth and the foundations dug by the dull spade, duty.

All this her tired face told me.

“O Dombeen!” she said as she seized my arm and clung to it.

“I know,” I said.

“Where is she?”

“In the Red Room.”

“I’ll go to her.”

“To-night? So late?” I said. “I was wondering if it would not be better in the morning.”

“No, now. For a moment only.”

I left her at her mother’s door.

I was up early the next day, but Rose—the younger Rose—for all her late hours, was before me.

I found her at the breakfast table dressed in her ordinary morning blue overall. She was wan.

“But what’s this?” I asked. “Why aren’t you ready for the train?”

“I’m not going,” she said. “I’ve sent some telegrams.”

“But—” I began.

“Please don’t make it more difficult,” Rose replied, and her eyes filled with tears.

“I hope you haven’t countermanded the car,” I said, after a few moments of swift thought; for I could see that something must be done.

“No—there was no hurry for that,” she mumbled brokenly.

“Because I’ve got to go to London anyway,” I said. “I was going with you,” I added, as a mendacious but brilliant afterthought, “but I was keeping it as a surprise. I’ll be back to-night.”

And it was thus that I got away. I had realized directly I heard Rose’s decision that this was no place for me. I was an interloper. Mother and daughter must solve their own problems, and solve them alone; they would be glad to be unobserved as they reconnoitred to ascertain each other’s position. I have stumbled upon that military phrase, but on second thoughts I recognize its fitness; for in a sense they were foes, as most women can be, and mother and daughter too often actually are. How they would have adjusted their relations had these fourteen estranging years not intervened, no one could say. They might have been happy; certainly they would often have been merry and care-free, for that was the natural tendency of both. Moreover, there might have been an extra bond—I have seen it often—in mutual refuge from the Master of the House. But between mothers and daughters a certain hostility, not unconnected with rivalry, is only too common, if not inevitable. For a mother, be she ever so sweet-natured and generous and proud of her daughter, is also a woman, and women love love, and hate the thought of the shelf, and resent the younger generation’s vista of triumphs. Not until they are much older than Rose do they consent to retire from the lists, forgive their successors, and take with serenity to gardening and cards.

Whether or no Rose knew I was lying, I had no notion; but she acquiesced naturally enough and waved me a wistful good-bye.

I too had plenty to think of as the train bore me Londonwards. For everything had changed—Rose’s return was a bomb-shell. Had she come back a day later when her daughter was established in her Hostel and the London machinery had begun, all would have been simpler. But now? I knew them both so well—the mother and the daughter equally determined on any course they undertook: the daughter, after her vigil, so bent upon sacrifice and capable even of extracting some pleasurable gall from it, and the mother so unwilling to cool young ardencies and spoil young hopes.

To which did I owe the greater allegiance? To the mother, of course. The girl was at the threshold and had youth and enthusiasm and purpose; the mother was broken and without a star. If the mother would come to me, how gladly would I open my arms once more! But would she? No. How could she, knowing what people would say, having to meet the cold eyes of the rector and his wife, and seeing children withdrawn from her presence? Wherever she made her home it could not be in my house.

But—the thought came later, in a flash—it could still be with me: if somewhere else! Somewhere where her story was not known. Why should I live all my days in one spot? It is true that I was devoted to it; but ought one to be so local, so parochial? It was a not too admirable line of least resistance. Here was the great world open to me, and I had cowered all my days in one corner. Mrs. O’Gorman had twitted me about it; and she was a wise woman. How helpful she would be to-day! I had a few years left, I hoped—why should I not move to London or—or anywhere? Then Rose and I could be happy together, once more, and the other Rose could have a room always ready for her. How gay we might all yet be!

But probably to join me again would not be the mother’s wish. She might prefer to be alone; she might fear that her melancholy would weigh upon me.

All day long as I moved about London, and even as I turned over the portfolios, I was picturing the drama in my house, a house that possibly I was to leave for ever. Rose-the-less, white and tense, passionately, bitterly determined to be her mother’s companion; her mother gently but firmly refusing to come into her life. And how would these scenes end? Would the girl lose all control, and accepting the repudiation rush angrily off? Might she not indeed be even now in London? Or would the mother acquiesce? Which was the weaker? I could not tell.

And what did they say of me? They might even fall out over me, each claiming a bigger share of their poor old foster-father. And, in the absence of Mrs. O’Gorman, no Solomon to consult! Perhaps I ought not to have come away after all?

The journey back was an agony, even with some purchases to gloat over, and my nervousness increased as I approached the house. What should I find? Would both be there? Would either?

I should have been more trustful of the kindly gods. For Rose and Rose were waiting for me at the door, smiling at me and at each other. Whatever solution they had reached satisfied both. I could see that in a flash, and seeing that, I was happy.

“Rose and I,” said Rose-the-first, later that evening when we were all cosy, “have had a great talk, haven’t we?”

“Tremendous,” said Rose, laying her hand on her mother’s and stroking it.

“And we’ve decided that nothing must interfere with Rose’s plans to become an artist.”

“You decided, you mean,” said Rose-the-second.

“We’ve decided,” her mother repeated, “and so Rose is going off almost directly to her Hostel, just as if no ghost had frightened her.”

“O mother!” said Rose reproachfully.

“And I’m going too,” Rose-the-first continued.

“Both going?” I exclaimed in alarm.

“Only to find a house,” she went on.

“A house?”

“Yes, I’ve only one desire in the world, and that is to have a house, and the reason I want a house is to be able to invite a guest.”

She paused a moment.

“Dearest Dombeen,” she said, “I want one guest only. You. My greatest wish is to find a house in some place that pleased you, where you would come, whenever you cared, to stay with me for a little, or,” she added with one of her radiant smiles, “if you liked, altogether.”

She placed her other hand on mine.

“Because, you know,” she went on, “I am quite a rich woman now. And we have been your guests so long, Rose and I. I was your guest for fourteen years; won’t you be mine in return? Rose has been your guest for fourteen years; won’t you let her mother put you up now and then just to show a little gratitude? Won’t you?”

“Yes, Dombeen, won’t you?” said Rose-the-second. “You oughtn’t to refuse us now. Because although you’re the youngest man in the world you’re not a boy any more, you know. You’re seventy, and you must be looked after. You had a horrid, frightening cold last winter.”

“But—” I began. I had no objections to urge, but I wanted to be pressed.

“No ‘buts,’” said Rose. “There’s only one thing that you can be permitted to say to stop the whole plan. Nothing else will serve.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“That you’re tired of Roses.”

“Never!” I said.

And that is how it happens that I have left my old home for ever and am finishing this story in a house overlooking the sea.

But I hear Rose calling.

“Dombeen,” she says, “there’s a telegram from Rose saying she’s coming by the 5.5, and she can stay a week.”

“Splendid!” I reply.

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