Mrs. Rossiter

“ Rossiter stared. "Good Lord! Well, because she's got a girl of her own, for one thing. Because she's married to a Desmond herself, for another. She knows the breed, poor Jane!"
Light was breaking on Joan. "You mean—she objected for my sake?"
"Of course!" said Mrs. Rossiter rather impatiently. "Ned's all right as a brother-in-law, useful to have about, to run errands, etc. One has to have a man in the house, and she's really rather fond of him. But to marry him off to a fresh young girl like you!—No, no, Jane's not that sort." ”

“ Letitia smiled, shaking her head.
“No; but they think they do.”
No two women of the same age and country could have been more utterly different than the two mothers. Mrs. Rossiter, who must have been rather pretty once, was still ruffled and jeweled like a young beauty; and her diction, though not exactly baby talk, had in it a lisp somewhat reminiscent of the nursery. There was a lot of gentle fussing about her wrap and gloves and lorgnette and purse—and a photograph of Roger she had been having framed for Letty, and a basket of fruit she had brought from town. ”

“ It would be just like Patsy to grow another inch while I'm on the train tonight."
"I know just how you feel," assured Mrs. Rossiter. "But perhaps, when you are on your way back, you'll be able to stay longer."
"If she doesn't get back by the time she's twenty," laughed Allen, "I'm going after her. Just remember, Jeanne, I want to be on hand when you're ready to decide about that husband. I should hate to have that iceman get ahead of me." ”

“ Rossiter's mother had been a Miss Brew, and that the Brews were a great family in Boston. She was the mother of all Mr. Brokenshire's children. By looks and hints and sighs I gathered from Mrs. Rossiter that her father's second marriage had been a trial to his family. Not that there had been any social descent. On the contrary, the present Mrs. Brokenshire had been Editha Billing, of Philadelphia, and there could be nothing better than that. It was a question of fitness, of necessity, of age. "There was no need for him to marry again at all," Mrs. Rossiter complained. ”

“ Billing she snapped at me, with the enigmatic words:
"You're a puss!"
When I drew near to the group by the fireplace, Mrs. Rossiter was saying to Hugh:
"And as for her marrying you for your money—well, you're crazy! I suppose she likes money as well as anybody else; but she would have married you to be loyal. She would have married you two months ago if father had been willing; and if you'd been willing you could now have been in England or France together, trying to do some good. If a woman marries one man when she's in love with another the right or the wrong depends on her motives. ”

“ Rossiter's word—of being produced. Now we Canadians are not produced. We just come—but we come the right way—without any hooting or tooting or beating of tin pans or self-advertisement. We just are—and we say nothing about it. Let me make an example of what Mrs. Rossiter was discussing this morning. There are lots of pretty girls in my country—as many to the hundred as you have here—but we don't make a fuss about them or talk as if we'd ordered a special brand from the Creator. We grow them as you grow flowers in a garden, at the mercy of the air and sunshine. ”

“ He went to bed thanking God for this change in her. “I'll make her love me just as she used to, those days on our honeymoon. God bless her.”
Yes, Mrs. Rossiter was strangely altered. It all shows what one can do with a woman when one tries. Her hostile placidity had given place to something almost pathetic. One would have thought, had one not known that lady's invariable assurance of movement, that she was perplexed, almost distressed.
Peter was conscious that Clare was now as silent with her mother as she was with him. ”

“ What they have said is this, and it's what Mrs. Rossiter says—she said it to-day—that I'm only attractive to one man in five hundred—"
"But very attractive to him?"
"No; she didn't say that. She merely admitted that her brother Hugh was that man—"
He interrupted with something I wished at the time he hadn't said, and which I tried to ignore:
"He's the man in that five hundred—and I know another in another five hundred, which makes two in a thousand. You'd soon get up to a high percentage, when you think of all the men there are in the world." ”

“ Rossiter—as many a public man does and has to do—shoves his vain regrets, remorse, anxiety, weary longing for the unattainable—somewhere to the back of his brain, where these feelings will not revive till he lies awake at three in the morning; and prepares to entertain half-a-dozen hearty men and buxom women who are easily impressed by a little spoon-fed science. Linda is soon distracted from the scrap of paper in her bosom and gives all her attention to her cousins and grown-up school friends from Bradford and Northallerton who are delighted to see the New Year in amid the gaieties of London. ”

“ Hugh Brokenshire, but never with any violent restriction on the part of Mrs. Rossiter. I say violent with intention, for she did intervene when she could do so. Only once did I hear that she knew he was kind to me, and that was from Larry Strangways. It was an observation he had overheard as it passed from Mrs. Rossiter to her husband, and which, in the spirit of our silent camaraderie, he thought it right to hand along.
"I can't be responsible for Hugh!" Mrs. Rossiter had said. "He's old enough to look after himself. If he wants a row with father he must have it ”

“ Rossiter's standpoint he looked back upon his life and found it all one ignoble, selfish muddle. Dear Clare!—so eager to be happy and he had made her miserable.
“Will she forgive me?”
“Dear Clare,” said Mrs. Rossiter, rising brightly and with a general air of benevolence towards all the sinners in existence, “is the most forgiving creature in the world.”
He went down to her bedroom and found her lying on a sofa and reading a novel.
He fell on his knees at her side—“Clare—darling—I'm a beast, a brute—”
She suddenly turned her face into the cushions and burst into passionate crying. “Oh! ”

“ Moreover it followed from this that a man who murdered his only child would most assuredly take to beating his wife before very long. After that, anything might happen. Peter was on a swift road to being a “Perfect Devil.”
Indeed, allow Mrs. Rossiter two consecutive hours of peace and quiet, she, sitting like the personification of the English climate, alone before her fire, and she could make any one into anything—once made so they remained. ”

“ He spoke sharply. "I wish you to understand that you're inducing a young man to act in a way he is going to find contrary to his interests."
I could barely nerve myself to look up at him. "If by the 'young man' you mean Mr. Hugh Brokenshire, then I'm inducing him to do nothing whatever; unless," I added, "you call it an inducement that I—I"—I was bound to force the word out—"unless you call it an inducement that I love him."
"But that's it," Mrs. Rossiter broke in. "That's what my father means. If you'd stop caring anything about him you wouldn't give him encouragement." ”

“ I should have been more of a man among men. I see it now, and must take the first chance offered me. A year is not very long, and I shall write to you every week.”
So Mrs. Rossiter gave it up, and busied herself with various preparations for his comfort, and said she should 227go to New York to see him off, and tried to seem cheerful and happy, and tried, with his sisters, to fathom the cloud which overshadowed his face, and made him so unlike himself. What had happened to him, and was Reinette in any way connected with it? ”

“ Clare must, at all costs, be happy and, in spite of her odious husband, happy she should be.
Peter discerned Mrs. Rossiter's state of mind on the whole clearly enough, but with regard to Clare he was entirely in the dark. He devoted his days now to her service. He studied her every want, was ready to abandon his work at any moment to be with her, and was careful also to avoid too great a pestering of her with attentions.
“I know women hate that,” he said to himself, “if you go down on your knees to them and hang around them they simply can't stand it. ”

“ Rossiter."
He took his time to think another question out.
"How did your employer come to know about you?"
I explained, as though he had had no knowledge of the fact, that Mrs. Rossiter had employed for her boy, Brokenshire, a tutor named Strangways. This Mr. Strangways had attracted Mr. Grainger's attention by some articles he had written for the financial press. An introduction had followed, after which Mr. Grainger had engaged the young man as his secretary. Hearing that Mr. Grainger had need of a librarian, Mr. Strangways had suggested me. ”

“ Her name is Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, and her daughter married an Irish lord who lives near Dublin. I have met so few Americans that I must really see this one. Jack says it is better than a play to hear her talk. So, good-by. From your loving FLOSSIE."
"P.S.—I have seen Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, who knows you, and Grey, and all his relations back to the flood. Is she a fair specimen of Americans? But of course not; even I know better than that. Mr. Jerrold is not at all like her—neither, I fancy, are his people. Mrs. Browne has recently arrived, and is to spend the summer with her daughter. ”

“ Rossiter?"
"I don't exactly remember," said Rossiter, basely. He felt Mrs. Russel's approval warm upon him, but was sorry to have failed Aunt Willoughby, who, disconcerted, relapsed into irrelevancy.
Miss Emily harked back.
"Oh, Hilary, you are awful—why shouldn't he?"
"Well, I didn't say he shouldn't, I simply said it was one. They'll be jealous of you at the office, won't they, Mr. Rossiter?"
Mr. Rossiter, eyeing her contemplatively, supposed that Miss Bevel was a "merry" girl.
"It may mean an occasion for Mr. Rossiter," said Mrs. Russel from her Olympia behind the urn. ”

“ At furthest it might be about the time when Mrs. Rossiter removed to New York, which would make it October or November. I could then slip quietly back to Halifax, be quietly married, and quietly settle with Hugh in Boston. In the mean time I was glad not to be disturbed.
I spent, therefore, a pleasant morning with my pupil, and ate a pleasant lunch, watching from the gable window of the school-room the great people assemble in the breakfast loggia in honor of the Marquise de Pompadour's mother. I am not sure that old Madame Poisson ever went to court ”

“ Everything's going wrong—everything. The ground's crumbling from under my feet. First it's young Stephen, then it's Clare, then my book fails (don't let's humbug—you know it's an utter failure) then I quarrel with Cards, then that damned woman—” he stopped at the thought of Mrs. Rossiter and drove his hands together. Then he went on more quietly. “It's like fighting in a fog, Bobby. ”

“ When Gertie wound her arms around Miss Rossiter’s neck and kissed her so lovingly, she touched a chord in the woman’s heart which had never been touched before,—a chord which, under favorable circumstances, would have vibrated with a mother’s love, and which now brought to life so strong a liking for the helpless girl, that had there been no Edith in the way, Miss Rossiter would have adopted her at once as her own petted daughter. ”

“ Still, a Southern girl—"
"Can be just as decent as any other kind!" cried angry Joan. "Anyway, I'm only part a Southern girl. But I know! Lots of them are just as nice about such things as Betty, for instance."
"Nice, of course," agreed Mrs. Rossiter. "And tremendously attractive. But just for that reason a little more—well, experienced, don't you think? We get our experience later, perhaps.... And you seemed particularly well-seasoned, able to take care of yourself, playing them off against each other like a little veteran. I've told Jane Desmond so more than once. ”

“ I was poor Jenny Wren in contrast to a splendid bird-of-paradise. So be it! I could at least be a foil to this healthy, vigorous young beauty who was two inches taller than I, and might have my share of the advantages which go with all antithesis.
The talk was desultory, and in it the English girl took no part. Mrs. Rossiter asked me where I was going, what I was going for, and whether or not she couldn't take me to my destination in her car. I declined this offer, explained that my errands were trivial, and examined Lady Cissie through the corner of my eye. ”

“ Within the last ten years, all the forbearance which she was capable of displaying being apparently without any effect upon Sir Julian, Lady Rossiter had rather disgustedly transferred her allegiance from the Almighty, in propria persona, to God as He is found in Nature.
Nature, primarily, meant out-of-doors generally, in warm weather, and the sound of the sea two miles off, audible from beside the boudoir fire, in the colder seasons.
Lately, however, Nature had also embraced such of humanity as had its place rather lower than that of the Rossiters in the social scale. ”

“ And that the fear was childish, made it none the less real. Nineteen, not ninety, is the age of tragedy. There are few suicides among the old....
She did not hear a rap twice repeated, nor the opening of the door. Somebody peeped in, saw the sobbing figure on the bed, the scattered bon-bons, the crumpled note on the floor. Then came a louder knock.
Joan sat up, and cried in a panic, "Don't come in!"
But Mrs. Rossiter chose to misunderstand her. "Did you say come in?" she inquired cheerfully. "I hope so, because nobody else seems to be at home, and I'm pining for company." ”