Rose-Ann

“ A marriage, let us say, in name only—for upon Rose-Ann I set my faith, believing that not even a wedding can turn her into a wife!” Rose-Ann looked up at him and smiled. “To Rose-Ann,” he concluded, “and her adventure!”
128They drank. Felix looked at the others. He had a sense of something having been outraged by this speech—something which, if only a tradition, was somehow real to all of them except Clive. But Rose-Ann merely looked amused, and Phyllis’s expression told him nothing. He reflected, “She’s used to him by this time.” ”

“ I’ll be a little sad when I get home, and tell them that I’m afraid Rose-Ann will never be really happy with you—that you are too practical to appreciate the poetic side of her nature. Then they’ll be convinced that it’s all right.... I suppose it sounds odd to you, my speaking this way of my own sons?”
“Well—yes,” said Felix, “it does rather! But it’s refreshing.”
“I haven’t a scrap of family sentiment,” said Rose-Ann’s father. “I am interested in people only as individuals. ”

“ Rose-Ann said, when they were aboard the train. “To tell the truth, I’m a little afraid of your friend Clive.”
“Afraid of him?”
“I mean—I’m in awe of him, a little.”
“Nothing awe-ful about Clive. He’s a nice fellow. I’ve always wanted you to meet him.”
“I wondered why you kept us so carefully apart,” said 110Rose-Ann. “I thought perhaps you felt that I didn’t measure up to his specifications. Do you think I will?”
He laughed tenderly, and looked at her. She was very sweet, and, it seemed, very tired despite the buoyant vivacity that always made her lovely. “You are wonderful,” he said. ”

“ Did human life go to that pattern, Felix wondered. And if so, what was the use of all his speculations and emotions? He wished he could go after Rose-Ann in the mood of Granny Perk’s husband, to whom it had been the most inevitable thing in the world. As it was, he had to brace himself against intellectual doubts for two days and nights with an intellectual theory: the theory that he was Rose-Ann’s husband after all. ”

“ Felix exclaimed to Rose-Ann, after an evening spent in the company of the two others, “doesn’t Phyllis make up her mind about Clive, one way or the other. Why should she keep on tormenting him this way?”
“Why doesn’t Clive make up his own mind?” Rose-Ann retorted. “It’s he that’s torturing her. I understand Phyllis’s attitude perfectly.” ”

“ They figure that a young man who has married and settled down will be a more faithful slave. Usually they’re right. Only in this case, taking Rose-Ann into consideration, I would say that ‘settling down’ wasn’t the correct term.”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“I mean that Rose-Ann is much more likely to keep you in mischief than to keep you out of it. You know that.”
“You’ve got a funny idea of Rose-Ann,” said Felix.
“Oh, not at all. You know yourself she’s not the ordinary girl by any means. And she won’t make an ordinary wife—for which you can be thankful.” ”

“ No, Rose-Ann would not like it, but—
“Your wife? Then, good-night! No Christian female would live in these diggings for a week—unless she was an artist’s wife and couldn’t help herself.”
“Why not?” Felix demanded. Though this was just what he himself had been conjecturing about Rose-Ann’s feelings, he found himself resenting this girl’s scornful imputation to her of those same feelings.
“Well, you’ve seen the place,” she said. “Have you noticed any bath-tub? No—the people who live in these places take their baths standing up in that iron sink there in the back. ”

“ She did not want to do anything that Felix’s folks would not like, and was seriously concerned to secure their approval.... And she secured it—for who could resist Rose-Ann in her most buoyant mood?
The visit had not been as disturbing as he had expected; and yet he was glad to go.
“Felix,” said Rose-Ann, as they took the train back to Chicago, “I think I understand why we feel this way. It’s because all our lives—and this is the truth—we’ve scorned the older generation. And we are ashamed, coming back to face them, because we’ve nothing better—really—to show for our lives than they have.” ”

“ And then: “What kind of place does Rose-Ann want? One with elevators, a man in brass buttons to answer the door, and a garbage incinerator?”
At lunch, which started in with a curious lack of amicability, Felix repeated this latter pleasantry to Rose-Ann. It occurred to him that what she wanted might very easily be something beyond his income, even with that possible raise.
Rose-Ann smiled at Clive. “Not exactly that,” she said. “Perhaps more preposterous still! The truth is, I don’t know, exactly. All I do know is that I don’t like any of the things I’ve seen this morning. ”

“ I know that love ought not to be too—too possessive. I don’t want you to feel that I own you!...”
“But you do own me,” Rose-Ann whispered, pressing his hand against her bosom, “I am yours, all of me. Do 152you know it? Do you realize how much I am yours, Felix? I—it isn’t enough, what I give you. I want to suffer for you, for us. Do you understand that, Felix?”
No, Felix did not really understand that cry from the depths below Rose-Ann’s conscious thoughts of life and love; but then, neither did Rose-Ann. ”

“ Women are—they drive you to it.”
Felix looked at him in surprise.
Rose-Ann’s father turned around to face him. “I’m an old man,” he said apologetically, “and a priest. You can’t expect me to take things like that as seriously as you young folks do. I hear about the sins of the flesh too often to be very much impressed with them.”
“I just thought you ought to know,” murmured Felix.
“Well, now, to get to the point,” said Mr. Prentiss, “what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” said Felix. “I’m trying to consider Rose-Ann’s happiness.... She seems to be able to get along without me....” ”

“ Perk had been brought from Community House to sew the tall orange silk window-curtains.... “It’s like painting the scenery and setting the stage for a play,” said Rose-Ann. “Only this play is to run for—for as long as we like.”
When it was all finished, “Now let’s ask Clive out to see it!” she said.
“Oh—all right,” said Felix.
“You haven’t liked Clive ever since the wedding, have you?” observed Rose-Ann.
“He behaved so queerly!” said Felix. “But he does seem to have become rather human again.”
“People do behave queerly at weddings,” said Rose-Ann. “Always. If it isn’t one way, it’s another. ”

“ He wanted her to be a ‘free-woman.’ And now that she’s ready to be, he insists on ‘protecting’ her with a marriage. Can’t you see? he wants her to admit that she’s not in earnest, that she’s afraid.... And she won’t. I quite agree with her!”
“But what a fuss over nothing,” said Felix.
“Over nothing? Aren’t ideas anything? Isn’t pride anything?”
“Not in comparison with happiness. They’ve been making each other miserable for two years with their ideas, and their silly pride. The important thing is to get them—yes, damn it!—into the same bed together!”
Rose-Ann laughed. ”

“ How many of them can really talk to one another about what is going on in their inmost minds—as we do!”
“Yes, we do, don’t we,” said Rose-Ann, comforted to find in this complete candour of theirs an authentic superiority to the common destiny of tragic and ridiculous mutual misunderstanding.
“We shall always be finding out new things about one another,” Felix went on bravely. “That is what our marriage means—a knitting together of our whole lives, a marrying of our memories.”
“And our hopes, too, Felix,” said Rose-Ann. “And a creating of something new and beautiful—books, plays, poems.... ”

“ Rose-Ann was saying. “You told me in that letter that there was something in you that rebelled against reality. Irresponsible—unstable—you used those words. ‘Too unstable for ordinary domestic happiness,’ I think you said. Well ... who wants ordinary domestic happiness?”
“But,” Felix said earnestly, raising himself up on one elbow, “a girl wants—more than an interesting lover. She wants ... some certainties in her life. A home, children, and the promise of security for them. ”

“ If Aspasia 195had been born in Springfield, Illinois, she might have taken a class in a Chicago settlement!” Rose-Ann said defiantly—and then, doubtfully, “What do you think of it all?”
“I don’t know,” he said—“it leaves me bewildered—except that I think you’re a wonderful child.”
“It’s you who are wonderful,” she said, “to understand. I am a child, I suppose—and I want to stay one always. I don’t want to grow up. That’s very foolish, isn’t it? Do you know that horrible habit some married people have of addressing each other as ‘Pa’ and ‘Ma’—as soon as they have a baby, I mean? ”

“ He punishes himself for all his vagaries. Rose-Ann is not a Puritan, but she too has instincts that will not surrender, any more than Felix's, to the doctrines which they both profess: jealousy sleeps within her, and potential motherhood. ”

“ Here—” to the moving man—“leave that stove alone and take a rest for about five minutes.”
2 Felix had felt in the attitude of this girl artist a challenge to Rose-Ann which he was somehow anxious for her to meet. She might not like this place—but it would not be because she was a bourgeois doll, afraid to bathe standing up in an iron sink. Rose-Ann would see in this place what he saw in it, even if she did want something different....
“I’ve been to one place already,” said Rose-Ann, rising 174from the steps and coming down to meet him. “It’s—just like all the others.” ”

“ Ann in her pretty petticoat of rose-colored stuff, stepping daintily over the young grass and the flowers, looked and felt like a part of it all. Her dark cheeks had a beautiful red glow on them; her black eyes shone. She was as straight and graceful and stately as an Indian.
"She's as handsome as a picture," thought Mrs. Polly in her secret heart. A good many people said that Ann resembled Mrs. Polly in her youth, and that may have added force to her admiration. ”

“ Lady Rose was in the woods, rushing forward blindly, but jealous distrust had taught her the way to the cottage, and she went in that direction straight as an arrow from the bow, and wild as the bird it strikes. Coming out from the shadow of some great spreading cedar trees, she saw lying there in the path a man—a white, still face—his face. ”

“ This pass, which led into the heart of the Apennine, at length opened to day, and a scene of mountains stretched in long perspective, as wild as any the travellers had yet passed. Still vast pine-forests hung upon their base, and crowned the ridgy precipice, that rose perpendicularly from the vale, while, above, the rolling mists caught the sun-beams, and touched their cliffs with all the magical colouring of light and shade. ”

“ My heart is full of tranquillity, and, like that white rose which lies motionless in the sunshine burdened with the wealth of its own sweetness, it unfolds itself day by day to a more pure and subdued state of enjoyment. This feeling may not be the love which men talk so freely of, but it can not change—never—not even in death, unless William Danforth should prove utterly unworthy! ”

“ Little Mary Fuller sat upon the grass, singing, while the rest formed a ring, darting, with their garlands and bouquets, like a chain of flowers, through an arch made by the uplifted hands of Isabel Chester and a little lame girl who could not run. Nothing on earth could be more beautiful than Isabel was just then, with the white spray dancing in her hair, a pleasant smile in her dark eyes, and the faintest rose-tint breaking over her cheek.
"She is delicate as a flower, beautiful as a star!" ”

“ The cry of young infants rose upon the air, and mingled dismally with the roar and crackle of the flames not a hundred yards distant—flames which licked up it their devouring fury the last remaining property of hundreds, and gave in return only a thick, but sickening smoke, and a blood-red glare streaming up against the clear sky. ”

“ Aubert had sometimes declared that he believed he should have been weak enough to have wept at their fall. In addition to these larches he planted a little grove of beech, pine, and mountain-ash. On a lofty terrace, formed by the swelling bank of the river, rose a plantation of orange, lemon, and palm-trees, whose fruit, in the coolness of evening, breathed delicious fragrance. ”

“ Was Lady Rose chosen to guard her Paradise, because of the sin through which she had entered it? How like a glorious angel she looked in the soft whiteness and tender [326] blue of garments that floated around her like a cloud. How bright and rich were the waves and curls of her hair! Surely no angel ever could be more beautiful!
This passion of feeling, which combined so many elements of unrest, was thrown into abeyance when Ruth got home; for, looking up, with her hand on the gate, she saw her father sitting at the chamber-window waiting for her. ”

“ Broken hills and lovely green valleys rose and sunk along their rapid progress. Never on earth was scenery more varied and lovely. Little emerald hollows shaded with hemlock, overhanging brooklets that came stealing like broken diamond threads down the mountain sides to hide beneath their shadows, were constantly appearing and disappearing along the road.
It was impossible for little Mary to sit still when these heavenly glimpses presented themselves. ”