E. V. Lucas

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rose’s father had no such attitude towards others, nor did he impose it on his daughter. He had considered the world his orange, and Rose was disposed to do the same. She had no tendency to be grasping or greedy; she had that sense of hospitality to which politeness is a corollary; while her good humour and sense of fun and laughter also made her naturally a dispenser of happiness. But nothing prevented her from telling the truth, neither fear nor favour. How I used to envy her this!
Every teacher must learn something from the taught, I suppose, though it be only an idea of his own ignorance. ”

“ It was humiliating, for example, to one who would wish every one to be dependent and honest, to see the embarrassment into which some of my neighbours could be plunged when I had come suddenly upon them while they were talking with Sir Edmund or Lady Fergusson. They had to decide in a moment which side to be on, whether to acknowledge me or not. I was, of course, in the long run, of infinitely more use to them than the Hall people could be: but wealth is wealth, and position is position, and poor human nature is poor human nature and ever will be. ”

“ The real breaking-point too, for every day Rose, as she ripened and matured and became more conscious of adult things, would be growing towards her own life, her own mate, and consequently away from my life and me. Once again I realized how like ashes in the mouth the fruits of parenthood can be. The new generation is always receding from the old; the old pathetically trying to catch up and understand. ”

“ I could be sorry for Eustace, but never could I like him, and supposing that some of his least admirable characteristics manifested themselves now and then in his offspring, might I not become actively antipathetic? Human nature can be so unreasonable, so unjust, and I pretended to no immunity from illogical aversions.
Nor was I in any need of a constant companion. Since Rose’s marriage I had tended more and more to eremitical consolations—to my prints and gardening—whenever my patients permitted me. ”

“ The mystery is how they can go on digging that horrid black stuff at all, in the pitch dark too, no matter how much you pay them.”
It was one afternoon when Rose was eighteen that I realized that she was no longer merely a girl. Suddenly the peace of the garden was invaded by a series of snorts and explosions, and a motor-car rushed up the drive—one of those absurd little cars, very small and low, like an important roller skate, with just room for two, and a naked nymph in silver and without shame poised over the bonnet by way of mascot. ”

“ Rose in the watches of the night taking stock of her marriage and its disenchantments, and Ronnie in a foreign land sick of a fever.
Both were older too—not so much older in years, but older through what had happened: the passage of time being often almost negligible in influence compared with certain experiences. A woman grows mature so swiftly: a three weeks’ honeymoon can do it, a night can do it; the birth of her first child always does it. ”

“ I explained her difficulties with the word Greville.
“May I call you Dombeen too?” she asked.
I said that I should like nothing better.
Rose—my own Rose—I found older and graver. She could laugh still, and as her visit was prolonged she laughed oftener and gradually gave up the new habit of thinking visibly before she spoke. Her impulses being always gay or cordial or merrily mischievous, she need never have become cautious. But I could see that she had. It is melancholy indeed when a natural self-unconsciousness is destroyed: and that is what had happened. ”

“ Every time Rose came home, three times a year, I saw a change in her, but it was not until the winter holidays when she was nearly sixteen that I suddenly realized that she had grown into a beautiful creature, capable of setting men’s hearts beating, and of disturbing lives and affecting destinies. Not, of course, that one has to be beautiful to affect destiny: we can all do that, and all are doing it continually. But pretty women appear to be busier than other persons, even if they are not. ”

“ Suzanne was my sheet-anchor. It is true that I could not consider her attitude to the elopement very sound: it was indeed far too lenient; but I seemed to be surrounded by old women with advanced sympathies (perhaps all old women at heart side with love’s rebels?) , and Suzanne’s profound affection for Rose’s mother could not but make her careful over the little girl.
But as we get older we become more self-protective; so I gave no promise, but shook hands with Eustace and said that I would think it all over and let him know in the morning what I decided. ”

“ Jealousy runs through life. It’s elemental. Listen to your spaniel growling when you’re patting my Peek. It’s no use being ashamed of jealousy, and it’s no use believing people when they say they are superior to the feeling.”
“All right,” I said. “Let us leave it at that: if Rose became engaged I should be jealous. Horribly jealous. I admit it. Disappointed, frustrated, too. I’ve hardly seen her yet, and some fellow carries her off just when she’s of age to be a companion. It’s too absurd.”
“But that’s life,” said Mrs. O’Gorman. ”

“ And I had always been a little old-fashioned, as we say, and the circumstance of succeeding to so big a practice so early, and being accepted favourably by so many of my father’s patients, had not impaired this characteristic. I was therefore both by nature and by profession more of a predestined guardian of another man’s child than most men even of forty-four are.
All the same, it was a tremendous responsibility, and it might result—I came back to this again and again—in a tremendous sacrifice. Because if I agreed to be Rose’s foster-father, I should have to be thorough and absolute. ”

“ O’Gorman had been declining for some time, and in the early spring she also left us.
I have been at many death-beds, and at most the grief was that of the living rather than the dying. Nature has mercifully arranged that most people are ready for the end—even look forward to it. Suffering or weakness has broken down their resistance: the goal they desire is peace. ”

“ Rose studied him gravely, too, but merely answered his questions and volunteered nothing. I have had all my life only one rule of conduct with regard to children, and that is to treat them as if they were grown up; I ask their advice, consult with them, even conspire; and great has been my reward in consequence. But Eustace was one of those men who too consciously come down a peg or two with the young, and Rose was made uneasy. She disappointed him by her ignorance of the Argentine and expressed no interest when her father told her that in sailors’ language Buenos Aires became Bows and Arrows. ”

“ One of the strangest things in life is the ease with which people who are fond of each other do not meet. Our tendency is to run in grooves and find it difficult to leave them. Or to change the metaphor, no matter how big the world is, most of us are at heart villagers.
Rose’s letters were regular and, up to a point, informative; and I wrote with equal regularity. But the written word, no less than the spoken, often merely conceals the truth; and I got very little inner information as to the Holt ménage. ”

“ And then I learned that she was again to become a mother.
How the world rushes on! A child grows to be a girl, and a girl a wife, before one can turn round. And then there is another child and the same restless urgency sets in once more. ”

“ But his careful eye had detected the extravagance, and when I came upon him he was removing the twopenny-halfpenny stamp and substituting a halfpenny one from his own pocket. Knowing Rose as I did, I would rather have found him burgling my safe or even kissing one of the maids; for the action argued a passion for thrift which would lead in time to the sternest censure of the unthinking carelessness in money matters and the constant generosities which were among her most striking characteristics. ”

“ Rose, as I have said, had set her heart on being a mother, and the mother of sons, and there was only one surviving child and that was a girl. I have brought enough children into the world to know something about the part that they play in married life, and I can set it down firmly as a fact that it is all to the bad when the sex of the child is not that which the parents had desired. The girl who ought to have been a boy has to suffer for it; and so, though in a less degree, does the boy who ought to have been a girl, but he is not a common figure. ”

“ It was his dependence that swayed her and decided her. It was the boy Ronnie needing tenderness and care.
Involved and fantastic as it may sound, I have the belief that it was the mother instinct that took Rose off with Ronnie more than love. What I mean is that she did not go with him as most women go with men, through ordinary passion, but because he was fragile and in need of protection and she thought of him as her own, or—subconsciously of course—even as one of those unborn sons which he himself would have begotten. So mystical can women be! ”

“ 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. ”

“ O’Gorman, “I don’t mind that. That hasn’t necessarily anything to do with it. All the most attractive men are selfish, even if the most selfish men are not the most attractive.”
“I wonder if that’s true,” I said.
“Think about the unselfish men you know and you’ll soon realize its truth,” she replied. “Unselfish men don’t give us any fun at all—I’m talking as a woman, remember—they make it too easy. The selfish ones keep us thinking, and when they forget themselves it’s delicious: I mean, it used to be.” She sighed and laughed. “But it’s about Rose we’re talking,” she continued. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The horse, the school-book used to tell us, is the friend of man; and man needs friends. Petrol is his servant or his master, even his tyrant; petrol smoothes no difficulties, heals no wounds, restores no vitality, as a horse could do. On the other hand, justice compels me to admit that it has taken me to many a sick-bed at a pace that Silver would have thought unjust and have found impossible. In addition to Silver I had a bay mare named Jenny, as a second string. Both were affectionate and gentle, and Rose adored them and took astonishing and terrifying liberties with them. ”

“ The warning brought back all my misgivings, and as I walked home I knew perfectly well that the happiest years were behind me and that, to a large extent, my Rose was no more. I had lost her. Even if Mrs. Stratton proved to be wrong and the world did not talk, I had lost her. For the reason that we should be living an unnatural life. A lonely girl of eighteen has too little in common with a man of forty-five whose attitude to her is parental. It is not such as he that she would choose for a companion. ”

“ It’s odd, isn’t it, how these musicians—Julia, go and get the Doctor a glass of sherry and some cake—it’s odd, isn’t it, that no woman can resist them? Now, a fiddler I can understand. He stands up to it and makes those fine movements with his delicate hands; but a pianist, all bent over the box, banging away—what can they see in him?
“And tell me, what are you doing about Rose’s music? She ought to be taking lessons. A girl’s out of it if she can’t play some instrument, and it’s useful too if a dance should be improvised. ”

“ I was not too happy about the future and my new responsibilities, but one thought as I turned out the gas gave me the purest joy—and that was that I was not George Stratton.
Allinson had asked a great deal. It meant a kind of bondage for thirteen years—and the years between thirty-four, my present age, and forty-seven ought to be good ones. Should a young man dedicate them to a child not his own? Ordinarily a young man would not, but my case was not quite ordinary. A doctor automatically surrenders to his profession much of his youthfulness. ”

“ Whatever Ronnie may have felt, he did not seek Rose’s society unduly.
I had proof that, so far as Rose was concerned, there was nothing serious, a little while after, when, regardless of Mrs. Stratton’s nastiness, we had settled down to a very delightful routine à deux. During one of our talks Rose was frank about her plan of life.
“Of course, Dombeen,” she said, “I don’t want to leave you before I must, but I want to marry some day; I think every girl who is healthy ought to, and have children.” ”

“ There’s no need to be jealous of me, you know, I’m only an old woman. But you’ll be getting jealous of all the men directly; you won’t be able to help it. Every day she’s growing up, you know, and every day some boy you’ve probably never heard of is growing up too—you don’t know where he is, and Rose doesn’t know, and he’s never heard of Rose. There he is, somewhere, in his little Eton jacket, with big ears and a snub nose as likely as not, and every minute he’s drawing nearer to Rose and she’s drawing nearer to him. ”