CHAPTER II.
Lady Maresfield had given her boy a push in his plump back and had
said to him, "Go and speak to her now; it's your chance." She had
for a long time wanted this scion to make himself audible to Rose
Tramore, but the opportunity was not easy to come by. The case was
complicated. Lady Maresfield had four daughters, of whom only one
was married. It so happened moreover that this one, Mrs. Vaughan-
Vesey, the only person in the world her mother was afraid of, was the
most to be reckoned with. The Honourable Guy was in appearance all
his mother's child, though he was really a simpler soul. He was
large and pink; large, that is, as to everything but the eyes, which
were diminishing points, and pink as to everything but the hair,
which was comparable, faintly, to the hue of the richer rose. He had
also, it must be conceded, very small neat teeth, which made his
smile look like a young lady's. He had no wish to resemble any such
person, but he was perpetually smiling, and he smiled more than ever
as he approached Rose Tramore, who, looking altogether, to his mind,
as a pretty girl should, and wearing a soft white opera-cloak over a
softer black dress, leaned alone against the wall of the vestibule at
Covent Garden while, a few paces off, an old gentleman engaged her
mother in conversation. Madame Patti had been singing, and they were
all waiting for their carriages. To their ears at present came a
vociferation of names and a rattle of wheels. The air, through
banging doors, entered in damp, warm gusts, heavy with the stale,
slightly sweet taste of the London season when the London season is
overripe and spoiling.
Guy Mangler had only three minutes to reestablish an interrupted
acquaintance with our young lady. He reminded her that he had danced
with her the year before, and he mentioned that he knew her brother.
His mother had lately been to see old Mrs. Tramore, but this he did
not mention, not being aware of it. That visit had produced, on Lady
Maresfield's part, a private crisis, engendered ideas. One of them
was that the grandmother in Hill Street had really forgiven the
wilful girl much more than she admitted. Another was that there
would still be some money for Rose when the others should come into
theirs. Still another was that the others would come into theirs at
no distant date; the old lady was so visibly going to pieces. There
were several more besides, as for instance that Rose had already
fifteen hundred a year from her father. The figure had been betrayed
in Hill Street; it was part of the proof of Mrs. Tramore's
decrepitude. Then there was an equal amount that her mother had to
dispose of and on which the girl could absolutely count, though of
course it might involve much waiting, as the mother, a person of
gross insensibility, evidently wouldn't die of cold-shouldering.
Equally definite, to do it justice, was the conception that Rose was
in truth remarkably good looking, and that what she had undertaken to
do showed, and would show even should it fail, cleverness of the
right sort. Cleverness of the right sort was exactly the quality
that Lady Maresfield prefigured as indispensable in a young lady to
whom she should marry her second son, over whose own deficiencies she
flung the veil of a maternal theory that HIS cleverness was of a sort
that was wrong. Those who knew him less well were content to wish
that he might not conceal it for such a scruple. This enumeration of
his mother's views does not exhaust the list, and it was in obedience
to one too profound to be uttered even by the historian that, after a
very brief delay, she decided to move across the crowded lobby. Her
daughter Bessie was the only one with her; Maggie was dining with the
Vaughan-Veseys, and Fanny was not of an age. Mrs. Tramore the
younger showed only an admirable back--her face was to her old
gentleman--and Bessie had drifted to some other people; so that it
was comparatively easy for Lady Maresfield to say to Rose, in a
moment: "My dear child, are you never coming to see us?"
"We shall be delighted to come if you'll ask us," Rose smiled.
Lady Maresfield had been prepared for the plural number, and she was
a woman whom it took many plurals to disconcert. "I'm sure Guy is
longing for another dance with you," she rejoined, with the most
unblinking irrelevance.
"I'm afraid we're not dancing again quite yet," said Rose, glancing
at her mother's exposed shoulders, but speaking as if they were
muffled in crape.
Lady Maresfield leaned her head on one side and seemed almost
wistful. "Not even at my sister's ball? She's to have something
next week. She'll write to you."
Rose Tramore, on the spot, looking bright but vague, turned three or
four things over in her mind. She remembered that the sister of her
interlocutress was the proverbially rich Mrs. Bray, a bankeress or a
breweress or a builderess, who had so big a house that she couldn't
fill it unless she opened her doors, or her mouth, very wide. Rose
had learnt more about London society during these lonely months with
her mother than she had ever picked up in Hill Street. The younger
Mrs. Tramore was a mine of commerages, and she had no need to go out
to bring home the latest intelligence. At any rate Mrs. Bray might
serve as the end of a wedge. "Oh, I dare say we might think of
that," Rose said. "It would be very kind of your sister."
"Guy'll think of it, won't you, Guy?" asked Lady Maresfield.
"Rather!" Guy responded, with an intonation as fine as if he had
learnt it at a music hall; while at the same moment the name of his
mother's carriage was bawled through the place. Mrs. Tramore had
parted with her old gentleman; she turned again to her daughter.
Nothing occurred but what always occurred, which was exactly this
absence of everything--a universal lapse. She didn't exist, even for
a second, to any recognising eye. The people who looked at her--of
course there were plenty of those--were only the people who didn't
exist for hers. Lady Maresfield surged away on her son's arm.
It was this noble matron herself who wrote, the next day, inclosing a
card of invitation from Mrs. Bray and expressing the hope that Rose
would come and dine and let her ladyship take her. She should have
only one of her own girls; Gwendolen Vesey was to take the other.
Rose handed both the note and the card in silence to her mother; the
latter exhibited only the name of Miss Tramore. "You had much better
go, dear," her mother said; in answer to which Miss Tramore slowly
tore up the documents, looking with clear, meditative eyes out of the
window. Her mother always said "You had better go"--there had been
other incidents--and Rose had never even once taken account of the
observation. She would make no first advances, only plenty of second
ones, and, condoning no discrimination, would treat no omission as
venial. She would keep all concessions till afterwards; then she
would make them one by one. Fighting society was quite as hard as
her grandmother had said it would be; but there was a tension in it
which made the dreariness vibrate--the dreariness of such a winter as
she had just passed. Her companion had cried at the end of it, and
she had cried all through; only her tears had been private, while her
mother's had fallen once for all, at luncheon on the bleak Easter
Monday--produced by the way a silent survey of the deadly square
brought home to her that every creature but themselves was out of
town and having tremendous fun. Rose felt that it was useless to
attempt to explain simply by her mourning this severity of solitude;
for if people didn't go to parties (at least a few didn't) for six
months after their father died, this was the very time other people
took for coming to see them. It was not too much to say that during
this first winter of Rose's period with her mother she had no
communication whatever with the world. It had the effect of making
her take to reading the new American books: she wanted to see how
girls got on by themselves. She had never read so much before, and
there was a legitimate indifference in it when topics failed with her
mother. They often failed after the first days, and then, while she
bent over instructive volumes, this lady, dressed as if for an
impending function, sat on the sofa and watched her. Rose was not
embarrassed by such an appearance, for she could reflect that, a
little before, her companion had not even a girl who had taken refuge
in queer researches to look at. She was moreover used to her
mother's attitude by this time. She had her own description of it:
it was the attitude of waiting for the carriage. If they didn't go
out it was not that Mrs. Tramore was not ready in time, and Rose had
even an alarmed prevision of their some day always arriving first.
Mrs. Tramore's conversation at such moments was abrupt, inconsequent
and personal. She sat on the edge of sofas and chairs and glanced
occasionally at the fit of her gloves (she was perpetually gloved,
and the fit was a thing it was melancholy to see wasted), as people
do who are expecting guests to dinner. Rose used almost to fancy
herself at times a perfunctory husband on the other side of the fire.
What she was not yet used to--there was still a charm in it--was her
mother's extraordinary tact. During the years they lived together
they never had a discussion; a circumstance all the more remarkable
since if the girl had a reason for sparing her companion (that of
being sorry for her) Mrs. Tramore had none for sparing her child.
She only showed in doing so a happy instinct--the happiest thing
about her. She took in perfection a course which represented
everything and covered everything; she utterly abjured all authority.
She testified to her abjuration in hourly ingenious, touching ways.
In this manner nothing had to be talked over, which was a mercy all
round. The tears on Easter Monday were merely a nervous gust, to
help show she was not a Christmas doll from the Burlington Arcade;
and there was no lifting up of the repentant Magdalen, no uttered
remorse for the former abandonment of children. Of the way she could
treat her children her demeanour to this one was an example; it was
an uninterrupted appeal to her eldest daughter for direction. She
took the law from Rose in every circumstance, and if you had noticed
these ladies without knowing their history you would have wondered
what tie was fine enough to make maturity so respectful to youth. No
mother was ever so filial as Mrs. Tramore, and there had never been
such a difference of position between sisters. Not that the elder
one fawned, which would have been fearful; she only renounced--
whatever she had to renounce. If the amount was not much she at any
rate made no scene over it. Her hand was so light that Rose said of
her secretly, in vague glances at the past, "No wonder people liked
her!" She never characterised the old element of interference with
her mother's respectability more definitely than as "people." They
were people, it was true, for whom gentleness must have been
everything and who didn't demand a variety of interests. The desire
to "go out" was the one passion that even a closer acquaintance with
her parent revealed to Rose Tramore. She marvelled at its strength,
in the light of the poor lady's history: there was comedy enough in
this unquenchable flame on the part of a woman who had known such
misery. She had drunk deep of every dishonour, but the bitter cup
had left her with a taste for lighted candles, for squeezing up
staircases and hooking herself to the human elbow. Rose had a vision
of the future years in which this taste would grow with restored
exercise--of her mother, in a long-tailed dress, jogging on and on
and on, jogging further and further from her sins, through a century
of the "Morning Post" and down the fashionable avenue of time. She
herself would then be very old--she herself would be dead. Mrs.
Tramore would cover a span of life for which such an allowance of sin
was small. The girl could laugh indeed now at that theory of her
being dragged down. If one thing were more present to her than
another it was the very desolation of their propriety. As she
glanced at her companion, it sometimes seemed to her that if she had
been a bad woman she would have been worse than that. There were
compensations for being "cut" which Mrs. Tramore too much neglected.
The lonely old lady in Hill Street--Rose thought of her that way now-
-was the one person to whom she was ready to say that she would come
to her on any terms. She wrote this to her three times over, and she
knocked still oftener at her door. But the old lady answered no
letters; if Rose had remained in Hill Street it would have been her
own function to answer them; and at the door, the butler, whom the
girl had known for ten years, considered her, when he told her his
mistress was not at home, quite as he might have considered a young
person who had come about a place and of whose eligibility he took a
negative view. That was Rose's one pang, that she probably appeared
rather heartless. Her aunt Julia had gone to Florence with Edith for
the winter, on purpose to make her appear more so; for Miss Tramore
was still the person most scandalised by her secession. Edith and
she, doubtless, often talked over in Florence the destitution of the
aged victim in Hill Street. Eric never came to see his sister,
because, being full both of family and of personal feeling, he
thought she really ought to have stayed with his grandmother. If she
had had such an appurtenance all to herself she might have done what
she liked with it; but he couldn't forgive such a want of
consideration for anything of his. There were moments when Rose
would have been ready to take her hand from the plough and insist
upon reintegration, if only the fierce voice of the old house had
allowed people to look her up. But she read, ever so clearly, that
her grandmother had made this a question of loyalty to seventy years
of virtue. Mrs. Tramore's forlornness didn't prevent her drawing-
room from being a very public place, in which Rose could hear certain
words reverberate: "Leave her alone; it's the only way to see how
long she'll hold out." The old woman's visitors were people who
didn't wish to quarrel, and the girl was conscious that if they had
not let her alone--that is if they had come to her from her
grandmother--she might perhaps not have held out. She had no friends
quite of her own; she had not been brought up to have them, and it
would not have been easy in a house which two such persons as her
father and his mother divided between them. Her father disapproved
of crude intimacies, and all the intimacies of youth were crude. He
had married at five-and-twenty and could testify to such a truth.
Rose felt that she shared even Captain Jay with her grandmother; she
had seen what HE was worth. Moreover, she had spoken to him at that
last moment in Hill Street in a way which, taken with her former
refusal, made it impossible that he should come near her again. She
hoped he went to see his protectress: he could be a kind of
substitute and administer comfort.
It so happened, however, that the day after she threw Lady
Maresfield's invitation into the wastepaper basket she received a
visit from a certain Mrs. Donovan, whom she had occasionally seen in
Hill Street. She vaguely knew this lady for a busybody, but she was
in a situation which even busybodies might alleviate. Mrs. Donovan
was poor, but honest--so scrupulously honest that she was perpetually
returning visits she had never received. She was always clad in
weather-beaten sealskin, and had an odd air of being prepared for the
worst, which was borne out by her denying that she was Irish. She
was of the English Donovans.
"Dear child, won't you go out with me?" she asked.
Rose looked at her a moment and then rang the bell. She spoke of
something else, without answering the question, and when the servant
came she said: "Please tell Mrs. Tramore that Mrs. Donovan has come
to see her."
"Oh, that'll be delightful; only you mustn't tell your grandmother!"
the visitor exclaimed.
"Tell her what?"
"That I come to see your mamma."
"You don't," said Rose.
"Sure I hoped you'd introduce me!" cried Mrs. Donovan, compromising
herself in her embarrassment.
"It's not necessary; you knew her once."
"Indeed and I've known every one once," the visitor confessed.
Mrs. Tramore, when she came in, was charming and exactly right; she
greeted Mrs. Donovan as if she had met her the week before last,
giving her daughter such a new illustration of her tact that Rose
again had the idea that it was no wonder "people" had liked her. The
girl grudged Mrs. Donovan so fresh a morsel as a description of her
mother at home, rejoicing that she would be inconvenienced by having
to keep the story out of Hill Street. Her mother went away before
Mrs. Donovan departed, and Rose was touched by guessing her reason--
the thought that since even this circuitous personage had been moved
to come, the two might, if left together, invent some remedy. Rose
waited to see what Mrs. Donovan had in fact invented.
"You won't come out with me then?"
"Come out with you?"
"My daughters are married. You know I'm a lone woman. It would be
an immense pleasure to me to have so charming a creature as yourself
to present to the world."
"I go out with my mother," said Rose, after a moment.
"Yes, but sometimes when she's not inclined?"
"She goes everywhere she wants to go," Rose continued, uttering the
biggest fib of her life and only regretting it should be wasted on
Mrs. Donovan.
"Ah, but do you go everywhere YOU want?" the lady asked sociably.
"One goes even to places one hates. Every one does that."
"Oh, what I go through!" this social martyr cried. Then she laid a
persuasive hand on the girl's arm. "Let me show you at a few places
first, and then we'll see. I'll bring them all here."
"I don't think I understand you," replied Rose, though in Mrs.
Donovan's words she perfectly saw her own theory of the case
reflected. For a quarter of a minute she asked herself whether she
might not, after all, do so much evil that good might come. Mrs.
Donovan would take her out the next day, and be thankful enough to
annex such an attraction as a pretty girl. Various consequences
would ensue and the long delay would be shortened; her mother's
drawing-room would resound with the clatter of teacups.
"Mrs. Bray's having some big thing next week; come with me there and
I'll show you what I mane," Mrs. Donovan pleaded.
"I see what you mane," Rose answered, brushing away her temptation
and getting up. "I'm much obliged to you."
"You know you're wrong, my dear," said her interlocutress, with angry
little eyes.
"I'm not going to Mrs. Bray's."
"I'll get you a kyard; it'll only cost me a penny stamp."
"I've got one," said the girl, smiling.
"Do you mean a penny stamp?" Mrs. Donovan, especially at departure,
always observed all the forms of amity. "You can't do it alone, my
darling," she declared.
"Shall they call you a cab?" Rose asked.
"I'll pick one up. I choose my horse. You know you require your
start," her visitor went on.
"Excuse my mother," was Rose's only reply.
"Don't mention it. Come to me when you need me. You'll find me in
the Red Book."
"It's awfully kind of you."
Mrs. Donovan lingered a moment on the threshold. "Who will you HAVE
now, my child?" she appealed.
"I won't have any one!" Rose turned away, blushing for her. "She
came on speculation," she said afterwards to Mrs. Tramore.
Her mother looked at her a moment in silence. "You can do it if you
like, you know."
Rose made no direct answer to this observation; she remarked instead:
"See what our quiet life allows us to escape."
"We don't escape it. She has been here an hour."
"Once in twenty years! We might meet her three times a day."
"Oh, I'd take her with the rest!" sighed Mrs. Tramore; while her
daughter recognised that what her companion wanted to do was just
what Mrs. Donovan was doing. Mrs. Donovan's life was her ideal.
On a Sunday, ten days later, Rose went to see one of her old
governesses, of whom she had lost sight for some time and who had
written to her that she was in London, unoccupied and ill. This was
just the sort of relation into which she could throw herself now with
inordinate zeal; the idea of it, however, not preventing a foretaste
of the queer expression in the excellent lady's face when she should
mention with whom she was living. While she smiled at this picture
she threw in another joke, asking herself if Miss Hack could be held
in any degree to constitute the nucleus of a circle. She would come
to see her, in any event--come the more the further she was dragged
down. Sunday was always a difficult day with the two ladies--the
afternoons made it so apparent that they were not frequented. Her
mother, it is true, was comprised in the habits of two or three old
gentlemen--she had for a long time avoided male friends of less than
seventy--who disliked each other enough to make the room, when they
were there at once, crack with pressure. Rose sat for a long time
with Miss Hack, doing conscientious justice to the conception that
there could be troubles in the world worse than her own; and when she
came back her mother was alone, but with a story to tell of a long
visit from Mr. Guy Mangler, who had waited and waited for her return.
"He's in love with you; he's coming again on Tuesday," Mrs. Tramore
announced.
"Did he say so?"
"That he's coming back on Tuesday?"
"No, that he's in love with me."
"He didn't need, when he stayed two hours."
"With you? It's you he's in love with, mamma!"
"That will do as well," laughed Mrs. Tramore. "For all the use we
shall make of him!" she added in a moment.
"We shall make great use of him. His mother sent him."
"Oh, she'll never come!"
"Then HE sha'n't," said Rose. Yet he was admitted on the Tuesday,
and after she had given him his tea Mrs. Tramore left the young
people alone. Rose wished she hadn't--she herself had another view.
At any rate she disliked her mother's view, which she had easily
guessed. Mr. Mangler did nothing but say how charming he thought his
hostess of the Sunday, and what a tremendously jolly visit he had
had. He didn't remark in so many words "I had no idea your mother
was such a good sort"; but this was the spirit of his simple
discourse. Rose liked it at first--a little of it gratified her;
then she thought there was too much of it for good taste. She had to
reflect that one does what one can and that Mr. Mangler probably
thought he was delicate. He wished to convey that he desired to make
up to her for the injustice of society. Why shouldn't her mother
receive gracefully, she asked (not audibly) and who had ever said she
didn't? Mr. Mangler had a great deal to say about the disappointment
of his own parent over Miss Tramore's not having come to dine with
them the night of his aunt's ball.
"Lady Maresfield knows why I didn't come," Rose answered at last.
"Ah, now, but _I_ don't, you know; can't you tell ME?" asked the
young man.
"It doesn't matter, if your mother's clear about it."
"Oh, but why make such an awful mystery of it, when I'm dying to
know?"
He talked about this, he chaffed her about it for the rest of his
visit: he had at last found a topic after his own heart. If her
mother considered that he might be the emblem of their redemption he
was an engine of the most primitive construction. He stayed and
stayed; he struck Rose as on the point of bringing out something for
which he had not quite, as he would have said, the cheek. Sometimes
she thought he was going to begin: "By the way, my mother told me to
propose to you." At other moments he seemed charged with the
admission: "I say, of course I really know what you're trying to do
for her," nodding at the door: "therefore hadn't we better speak of
it frankly, so that I can help you with my mother, and more
particularly with my sister Gwendolen, who's the difficult one? The
fact is, you see, they won't do anything for nothing. If you'll
accept me they'll call, but they won't call without something
'down.'" Mr. Mangler departed without their speaking frankly, and
Rose Tramore had a hot hour during which she almost entertained,
vindictively, the project of "accepting" the limpid youth until after
she should have got her mother into circulation. The cream of the
vision was that she might break with him later. She could read that
this was what her mother would have liked, but the next time he came
the door was closed to him, and the next and the next.
In August there was nothing to do but to go abroad, with the sense on
Rose's part that the battle was still all to fight; for a round of
country visits was not in prospect, and English watering-places
constituted one of the few subjects on which the girl had heard her
mother express herself with disgust. Continental autumns had been
indeed for years, one of the various forms of Mrs. Tramore's
atonement, but Rose could only infer that such fruit as they had
borne was bitter. The stony stare of Belgravia could be practised at
Homburg; and somehow it was inveterately only gentlemen who sat next
to her at the table d'hote at Cadenabbia. Gentlemen had never been
of any use to Mrs. Tramore for getting back into society; they had
only helped her effectually to get out of it. She once dropped, to
her daughter, in a moralising mood, the remark that it was
astonishing how many of them one could know without its doing one any
good. Fifty of them--even very clever ones--represented a value
inferior to that of one stupid woman. Rose wondered at the offhand
way in which her mother could talk of fifty clever men; it seemed to
her that the whole world couldn't contain such a number. She had a
sombre sense that mankind must be dull and mean. These cogitations
took place in a cold hotel, in an eternal Swiss rain, and they had a
flat echo in the transalpine valleys, as the lonely ladies went
vaguely down to the Italian lakes and cities. Rose guided their
course, at moments, with a kind of aimless ferocity; she moved
abruptly, feeling vulgar and hating their life, though destitute of
any definite vision of another life that would have been open to her.
She had set herself a task and she clung to it; but she appeared to
herself despicably idle. She had succeeded in not going to Homburg
waters, where London was trying to wash away some of its stains; that
would be too staring an advertisement of their situation. The main
difference in situations to her now was the difference of being more
or less pitied, at the best an intolerable danger; so that the places
she preferred were the unsuspicious ones. She wanted to triumph with
contempt, not with submission.
One morning in September, coming with her mother out of the marble
church at Milan, she perceived that a gentleman who had just passed
her on his way into the cathedral and whose face she had not noticed,
had quickly raised his hat, with a suppressed ejaculation. She
involuntarily glanced back; the gentleman had paused, again
uncovering, and Captain Jay stood saluting her in the Italian
sunshine. "Oh, good-morning!" she said, and walked on, pursuing her
course; her mother was a little in front. She overtook her in a
moment, with an unreasonable sense, like a gust of cold air, that men
were worse than ever, for Captain Jay had apparently moved into the
church. Her mother turned as they met, and suddenly, as she looked
back, an expression of peculiar sweetness came into this lady's eyes.
It made Rose's take the same direction and rest a second time on
Captain Jay, who was planted just where he had stood a minute before.
He immediately came forward, asking Rose with great gravity if he
might speak to her a moment, while Mrs. Tramore went her way again.
He had the expression of a man who wished to say something very
important; yet his next words were simple enough and consisted of the
remark that he had not seen her for a year.
"Is it really so much as that?" asked Rose.
"Very nearly. I would have looked you up, but in the first place I
have been very little in London, and in the second I believed it
wouldn't have done any good."
"You should have put that first," said the girl. "It wouldn't have
done any good."
He was silent over this a moment, in his customary deciphering way;
but the view he took of it did not prevent him from inquiring, as she
slowly followed her mother, if he mightn't walk with her now. She
answered with a laugh that it wouldn't do any good but that he might
do as he liked. He replied without the slightest manifestation of
levity that it would do more good than if he didn't, and they
strolled together, with Mrs. Tramore well before them, across the
big, amusing piazza, where the front of the cathedral makes a sort of
builded light. He asked a question or two and he explained his own
presence: having a month's holiday, the first clear time for several
years, he had just popped over the Alps. He inquired if Rose had
recent news of the old lady in Hill Street, and it was the only
tortuous thing she had ever heard him say.
"I have had no communication of any kind from her since I parted with
you under her roof. Hasn't she mentioned that?" said Rose.
"I haven't seen her."
"I thought you were such great friends."
Bertram Jay hesitated a moment. "Well, not so much now."
"What has she done to you?" Rose demanded.
He fidgeted a little, as if he were thinking of something that made
him unconscious of her question; then, with mild violence, he brought
out the inquiry: "Miss Tramore, are you happy?"
She was startled by the words, for she on her side had been
reflecting--reflecting that he had broken with her grandmother and
that this pointed to a reason. It suggested at least that he
wouldn't now be so much like a mouthpiece for that cold ancestral
tone. She turned off his question--said it never was a fair one, as
you gave yourself away however you answered it. When he repeated
"You give yourself away?" as if he didn't understand, she remembered
that he had not read the funny American books. This brought them to
a silence, for she had enlightened him only by another laugh, and he
was evidently preparing another question, which he wished carefully
to disconnect from the former. Presently, just as they were coming
near Mrs. Tramore, it arrived in the words "Is this lady your
mother?" On Rose's assenting, with the addition that she was
travelling with her, he said: "Will you be so kind as to introduce
me to her?" They were so close to Mrs. Tramore that she probably
heard, but she floated away with a single stroke of her paddle and an
inattentive poise of her head. It was a striking exhibition of the
famous tact, for Rose delayed to answer, which was exactly what might
have made her mother wish to turn; and indeed when at last the girl
spoke she only said to her companion: "Why do you ask me that?"
"Because I desire the pleasure of making her acquaintance."
Rose had stopped, and in the middle of the square they stood looking
at each other. "Do you remember what you said to me the last time I
saw you?"
"Oh, don't speak of that!"
"It's better to speak of it now than to speak of it later."
Bertram Jay looked round him, as if to see whether any one would
hear; but the bright foreignness gave him a sense of safety, and he
unexpectedly exclaimed: "Miss Tramore, I love you more than ever!"
"Then you ought to have come to see us," declared the girl, quickly
walking on.
"You treated me the last time as if I were positively offensive to
you."
"So I did, but you know my reason."
"Because I protested against the course you were taking? I did, I
did!" the young man rang out, as if he still, a little, stuck to
that.
His tone made Rose say gaily: "Perhaps you do so yet?"
"I can't tell till I've seen more of your circumstances," he replied
with eminent honesty.
The girl stared; her light laugh filled the air. "And it's in order
to see more of them and judge that you wish to make my mother's
acquaintance?"
He coloured at this and he evaded; then he broke out with a confused
"Miss Tramore, let me stay with you a little!" which made her stop
again.
"Your company will do us great honour, but there must be a rigid
condition attached to our acceptance of it."
"Kindly mention it," said Captain Jay, staring at the facade of the
cathedral.
"You don't take us on trial."
"On trial?"
"You don't make an observation to me--not a single one, ever, ever!--
on the matter that, in Hill Street, we had our last words about."
Captain Jay appeared to be counting the thousand pinnacles of the
church. "I think you really must be right," he remarked at last.
"There you are!" cried Rose Tramore, and walked rapidly away.
He caught up with her, he laid his hand upon her arm to stay her.
"If you're going to Venice, let me go to Venice with you!"
"You don't even understand my condition."
"I'm sure you're right, then: you must be right about everything."
"That's not in the least true, and I don't care a fig whether you're
sure or not. Please let me go."
He had barred her way, he kept her longer. "I'll go and speak to
your mother myself!"
Even in the midst of another emotion she was amused at the air of
audacity accompanying this declaration. Poor Captain Jay might have
been on the point of marching up to a battery. She looked at him a
moment; then she said: "You'll be disappointed!"
"Disappointed?"
"She's much more proper than grandmamma, because she's much more
amiable."
"Dear Miss Tramore--dear Miss Tramore!" the young man murmured
helplessly.
"You'll see for yourself. Only there's another condition," Rose went
on.
"Another?" he cried, with discouragement and alarm.
"You must understand thoroughly, before you throw in your lot with us
even for a few days, what our position really is."
"Is it very bad?" asked Bertram Jay artlessly.
"No one has anything to do with us, no one speaks to us, no one looks
at us."
"Really?" stared the young man.
"We've no social existence, we're utterly despised."
"Oh, Miss Tramore!" Captain Jay interposed. He added quickly,
vaguely, and with a want of presence of mind of which he as quickly
felt ashamed: "Do none of your family--?" The question collapsed;
the brilliant girl was looking at him.
"We're extraordinarily happy," she threw out.
"Now that's all I wanted to know!" he exclaimed, with a kind of
exaggerated cheery reproach, walking on with her briskly to overtake
her mother.
He was not dining at their inn, but he insisted on coming that
evening to their table d'hote. He sat next Mrs. Tramore, and in the
evening he accompanied them gallantly to the opera, at a third-rate
theatre where they were almost the only ladies in the boxes. The
next day they went together by rail to the Charterhouse of Pavia, and
while he strolled with the girl, as they waited for the homeward
train, he said to her candidly: "Your mother's remarkably pretty."
She remembered the words and the feeling they gave her: they were
the first note of new era. The feeling was somewhat that of an
anxious, gratified matron who has "presented" her child and is
thinking of the matrimonial market. Men might be of no use, as Mrs.
Tramore said, yet it was from this moment Rose dated the rosy dawn of
her confidence that her protegee would go off; and when later, in
crowded assemblies, the phrase, or something like it behind a hat or
a fan, fell repeatedly on her anxious ear, "Your mother IS in
beauty!" or "I've never seen her look better!" she had a faint vision
of the yellow sunshine and the afternoon shadows on the dusty Italian
platform.
Mrs. Tramore's behaviour at this period was a revelation of her
native understanding of delicate situations. She needed no account
of this one from her daughter--it was one of the things for which she
had a scent; and there was a kind of loyalty to the rules of a game
in the silent sweetness with which she smoothed the path of Bertram
Jay. It was clear that she was in her element in fostering the
exercise of the affections, and if she ever spoke without thinking
twice it is probable that she would have exclaimed, with some gaiety,
"Oh, I know all about LOVE!" Rose could see that she thought their
companion would be a help, in spite of his being no dispenser of
patronage. The key to the gates of fashion had not been placed in
his hand, and no one had ever heard of the ladies of his family, who
lived in some vague hollow of the Yorkshire moors; but none the less
he might administer a muscular push. Yes indeed, men in general were
broken reeds, but Captain Jay was peculiarly representative.
Respectability was the woman's maximum, as honour was the man's, but
this distinguished young soldier inspired more than one kind of
confidence. Rose had a great deal of attention for the use to which
his respectability was put; and there mingled with this attention
some amusement and much compassion. She saw that after a couple of
days he decidedly liked her mother, and that he was yet not in the
least aware of it. He took for granted that he believed in her but
little; notwithstanding which he would have trusted her with anything
except Rose herself. His trusting her with Rose would come very
soon. He never spoke to her daughter about her qualities of
character, but two or three of them (and indeed these were all the
poor lady had, and they made the best show) were what he had in mind
in praising her appearance. When he remarked: "What attention Mrs.
Tramore seems to attract everywhere!" he meant: "What a beautifully
simple nature it is!" and when he said: "There's something
extraordinarily harmonious in the colours she wears," it signified:
"Upon my word, I never saw such a sweet temper in my life!" She lost
one of her boxes at Verona, and made the prettiest joke of it to
Captain Jay. When Rose saw this she said to herself, "Next season we
shall have only to choose." Rose knew what was in the box.
By the time they reached Venice (they had stopped at half a dozen
little old romantic cities in the most frolicsome aesthetic way) she
liked their companion better than she had ever liked him before. She
did him the justice to recognise that if he was not quite honest with
himself he was at least wholly honest with HER. She reckoned up
everything he had been since he joined them, and put upon it all an
interpretation so favourable to his devotion that, catching herself
in the act of glossing over one or two episodes that had not struck
her at the time as disinterested she exclaimed, beneath her breath,
"Look out--you're falling in love!" But if he liked correctness
wasn't he quite right? Could any one possibly like it more than SHE
did? And if he had protested against her throwing in her lot with
her mother, this was not because of the benefit conferred but because
of the injury received. He exaggerated that injury, but this was the
privilege of a lover perfectly willing to be selfish on behalf of his
mistress. He might have wanted her grandmother's money for her, but
if he had given her up on first discovering that she was throwing
away her chance of it (oh, this was HER doing too!) he had given up
her grandmother as much: not keeping well with the old woman, as
some men would have done; not waiting to see how the perverse
experiment would turn out and appeasing her, if it should promise
tolerably, with a view to future operations. He had had a simple-
minded, evangelical, lurid view of what the girl he loved would find
herself in for. She could see this now--she could see it from his
present bewilderment and mystification, and she liked him and pitied
him, with the kindest smile, for the original naivete as well as for
the actual meekness. No wonder he hadn't known what she was in for,
since he now didn't even know what he was in for himself. Were there
not moments when he thought his companions almost unnaturally good,
almost suspiciously safe? He had lost all power to verify that
sketch of their isolation and declassement to which she had treated
him on the great square at Milan. The last thing he noticed was that
they were neglected, and he had never, for himself, had such an
impression of society.
It could scarcely be enhanced even by the apparition of a large,
fair, hot, red-haired young man, carrying a lady's fan in his hand,
who suddenly stood before their little party as, on the third evening
after their arrival in Venice, it partook of ices at one of the
tables before the celebrated Cafe Florian. The lamplit Venetian dusk
appeared to have revealed them to this gentleman as he sat with other
friends at a neighbouring table, and he had sprung up, with
unsophisticated glee, to shake hands with Mrs. Tramore and her
daughter. Rose recalled him to her mother, who looked at first as
though she didn't remember him but presently bestowed a sufficiently
gracious smile on Mr. Guy Mangler. He gave with youthful candour the
history of his movements and indicated the whereabouts of his family:
he was with his mother and sisters; they had met the Bob Veseys, who
had taken Lord Whiteroy's yacht and were going to Constantinople.
His mother and the girls, poor things, were at the Grand Hotel, but
he was on the yacht with the Veseys, where they had Lord Whiteroy's
cook. Wasn't the food in Venice filthy, and wouldn't they come and
look at the yacht? She wasn't very fast, but she was awfully jolly.
His mother might have come if she would, but she wouldn't at first,
and now, when she wanted to, there were other people, who naturally
wouldn't turn out for her. Mr. Mangler sat down; he alluded with
artless resentment to the way, in July, the door of his friends had
been closed to him. He was going to Constantinople, but he didn't
care--if THEY were going anywhere; meanwhile his mother hoped awfully
they would look her up.
Lady Maresfield, if she had given her son any such message, which
Rose disbelieved, entertained her hope in a manner compatible with
her sitting for half an hour, surrounded by her little retinue,
without glancing in the direction of Mrs. Tramore. The girl,
however, was aware that this was not a good enough instance of their
humiliation; inasmuch as it was rather she who, on the occasion of
their last contact, had held off from Lady Maresfield. She was a
little ashamed now of not having answered the note in which this
affable personage ignored her mother. She couldn't help perceiving
indeed a dim movement on the part of some of the other members of the
group; she made out an attitude of observation in the high-plumed
head of Mrs. Vaughan-Vesey. Mrs. Vesey, perhaps, might have been
looking at Captain Jay, for as this gentleman walked back to the
hotel with our young lady (they were at the "Britannia," and young
Mangler, who clung to them, went in front with Mrs. Tramore) he
revealed to Rose that he had some acquaintance with Lady Maresfield's
eldest daughter, though he didn't know and didn't particularly want
to know, her ladyship. He expressed himself with more acerbity than
she had ever heard him use (Christian charity so generally governed
his speech) about the young donkey who had been prattling to them.
They separated at the door of the hotel. Mrs. Tramore had got rid of
Mr. Mangler, and Bertram Jay was in other quarters.
"If you know Mrs. Vesey, why didn't you go and speak to her? I'm
sure she saw you," Rose said.
Captain Jay replied even more circumspectly than usual. "Because I
didn't want to leave you."
"Well, you can go now; you're free," Rose rejoined.
"Thank you. I shall never go again."
"That won't be civil," said Rose.
"I don't care to be civil. I don't like her."
"Why don't you like her?"
"You ask too many questions."
"I know I do," the girl acknowledged.
Captain Jay had already shaken hands with her, but at this he put out
his hand again. "She's too worldly," he murmured, while he held Rose
Tramore's a moment.
"Ah, you dear!" Rose exclaimed almost audibly as, with her mother,
she turned away.
The next morning, upon the Grand Canal, the gondola of our three
friends encountered a stately barge which, though it contained
several persons, seemed pervaded mainly by one majestic presence.
During the instant the gondolas were passing each other it was
impossible either for Rose Tramore or for her companions not to
become conscious that this distinguished identity had markedly
inclined itself--a circumstance commemorated the next moment, almost
within earshot of the other boat, by the most spontaneous cry that
had issued for many a day from the lips of Mrs. Tramore. "Fancy, my
dear, Lady Maresfield has bowed to us!"
"We ought to have returned it," Rose answered; but she looked at
Bertram Jay, who was opposite to her. He blushed, and she blushed,
and during this moment was born a deeper understanding than had yet
existed between these associated spirits. It had something to do
with their going together that afternoon, without her mother, to look
at certain out-of-the-way pictures as to which Ruskin had inspired
her with a desire to see sincerely. Mrs. Tramore expressed the wish
to stay at home, and the motive of this wish--a finer shade than any
that even Ruskin had ever found a phrase for--was not translated into
misrepresenting words by either the mother or the daughter. At San
Giovanni in Bragora the girl and her companion came upon Mrs.
Vaughan-Vesey, who, with one of her sisters, was also endeavouring to
do the earnest thing. She did it to Rose, she did it to Captain Jay,
as well as to Gianbellini; she was a handsome, long-necked, aquiline
person, of a different type from the rest of her family, and she did
it remarkably well. She secured our friends--it was her own
expression--for luncheon, on the morrow, on the yacht, and she made
it public to Rose that she would come that afternoon to invite her
mother. When the girl returned to the hotel, Mrs. Tramore mentioned,
before Captain Jay, who had come up to their sitting-room, that Lady
Maresfield had called. "She stayed a long time--at least it seemed
long!" laughed Mrs. Tramore.
The poor lady could laugh freely now; yet there was some grimness in
a colloquy that she had with her daughter after Bertram Jay had
departed. Before this happened Mrs. Vesey's card, scrawled over in
pencil and referring to the morrow's luncheon, was brought up to Mrs.
Tramore.
"They mean it all as a bribe," said the principal recipient of these
civilities.
"As a bribe?" Rose repeated.
"She wants to marry you to that boy; they've seen Captain Jay and
they're frightened."
"Well, dear mamma, I can't take Mr. Mangler for a husband."
"Of course not. But oughtn't we to go to the luncheon?"
"Certainly we'll go to the luncheon," Rose said; and when the affair
took place, on the morrow, she could feel for the first time that she
was taking her mother out. This appearance was somehow brought home
to every one else, and it was really the agent of her success. For
it is of the essence of this simple history that, in the first place,
that success dated from Mrs. Vesey's Venetian dejeuner, and in the
second reposed, by a subtle social logic, on the very anomaly that
had made it dubious. There is always a chance in things, and Rose
Tramore's chance was in the fact that Gwendolen Vesey was, as some
one had said, awfully modern, an immense improvement on the exploded
science of her mother, and capable of seeing what a "draw" there
would be in the comedy, if properly brought out, of the reversed
positions of Mrs. Tramore and Mrs. Tramore's diplomatic daughter.
With a first-rate managerial eye she perceived that people would
flock into any room--and all the more into one of hers--to see Rose
bring in her dreadful mother. She treated the cream of English
society to this thrilling spectacle later in the autumn, when she
once more "secured" both the performers for a week at Brimble. It
made a hit on the spot, the very first evening--the girl was felt to
play her part so well. The rumour of the performance spread; every
one wanted to see it. It was an entertainment of which, that winter
in the country, and the next season in town, persons of taste desired
to give their friends the freshness. The thing was to make the
Tramores come late, after every one had arrived. They were engaged
for a fixed hour, like the American imitator and the Patagonian
contralto. Mrs. Vesey had been the first to say the girl was awfully
original, but that became the general view.
Gwendolen Vesey had with her mother one of the few quarrels in which
Lady Maresfield had really stood up to such an antagonist (the elder
woman had to recognise in general in whose veins it was that the
blood of the Manglers flowed) on account of this very circumstance of
her attaching more importance to Miss Tramore's originality ("Her
originality be hanged!" her ladyship had gone so far as
unintelligently to exclaim) than to the prospects of the unfortunate
Guy. Mrs. Vesey actually lost sight of these pressing problems in
her admiration of the way the mother and the daughter, or rather the
daughter and the mother (it was slightly confusing) "drew." It was
Lady Maresfield's version of the case that the brazen girl (she was
shockingly coarse) had treated poor Guy abominably. At any rate it
was made known, just after Easter, that Miss Tramore was to be
married to Captain Jay. The marriage was not to take place till the
summer; but Rose felt that before this the field would practically be
won. There had been some bad moments, there had been several warm
corners and a certain number of cold shoulders and closed doors and
stony stares; but the breach was effectually made--the rest was only
a question of time. Mrs. Tramore could be trusted to keep what she
had gained, and it was the dowagers, the old dragons with prominent
fangs and glittering scales, whom the trick had already mainly
caught. By this time there were several houses into which the
liberated lady had crept alone. Her daughter had been expected with
her, but they couldn't turn her out because the girl had stayed
behind, and she was fast acquiring a new identity, that of a parental
connection with the heroine of such a romantic story. She was at
least the next best thing to her daughter, and Rose foresaw the day
when she would be valued principally as a memento of one of the
prettiest episodes in the annals of London. At a big official party,
in June, Rose had the joy of introducing Eric to his mother. She was
a little sorry it was an official party--there were some other such
queer people there; but Eric called, observing the shade, the next
day but one.
No observer, probably, would have been acute enough to fix exactly
the moment at which the girl ceased to take out her mother and began
to be taken out by her. A later phase was more distinguishable--that
at which Rose forbore to inflict on her companion a duality that
might become oppressive. She began to economise her force, she went
only when the particular effect was required. Her marriage was
delayed by the period of mourning consequent upon the death of her
grandmother, who, the younger Mrs. Tramore averred, was killed by the
rumour of her own new birth. She was the only one of the dragons who
had not been tamed. Julia Tramore knew the truth about this--she was
determined such things should not kill HER. She would live to do
something--she hardly knew what. The provisions of her mother's will
were published in the "Illustrated News"; from which it appeared that
everything that was not to go to Eric and to Julia was to go to the
fortunate Edith. Miss Tramore makes no secret of her own intentions
as regards this favourite.
Edith is not pretty, but Lady Maresfield is waiting for her; she is
determined Gwendolen Vesey shall not get hold of her. Mrs. Vesey
however takes no interest in her at all. She is whimsical, as befits
a woman of her fashion; but there are two persons she is still very
fond of, the delightful Bertram Jays. The fondness of this pair, it
must be added, is not wholly expended in return. They are extremely
united, but their life is more domestic than might have been expected
from the preliminary signs. It owes a portion of its concentration
to the fact that Mrs. Tramore has now so many places to go to that
she has almost no time to come to her daughter's. She is, under her
son-in-law's roof, a brilliant but a rare apparition, and the other
day he remarked upon the circumstance to his wife.
"If it hadn't been for you," she replied, smiling, "she might have
had her regular place at our fireside."
"Good heavens, how did I prevent it?" cried Captain Jay, with all the
consciousness of virtue.
"You ordered it otherwise, you goose!" And she says, in the same
spirit, whenever her husband commends her (which he does, sometimes,
extravagantly) for the way she launched her mother: "Nonsense, my
dear--practically it was YOU!"
