Rose Maylie

“ I have loved Rose May all my life—I must marry her; the maiden in the village can find another bridegroom.”
“Thou art not worthy to wed one like Rose May, but there is one worthy of her whom thou hast triumphed over many a time, and even this very night, because thou hast been more successful than he—beware, thou may’st go too far.”
“Too far! She will be mine to-morrow—what power in heaven or earth can separate us? She is mine—mine—mine!”
“Thou mayest deceive thyself. I ask thee, wilt thou not give up Rose May and betake thee to the pale and sorrowing maid who has awaited thy coming so long?” ”

“ The reason, however, of his invariable return was, that up in the old eagle’s eyry (that is in Grant May’s cottage) there was the little bird whose wild, free-gushing songs was the attractive power which always called him back.
And among the fairer faced damsels who lived in cities, were there none whom Rob thought comparable with the unfettered-by-fashion Rose May? Was there none whose smile made his heart thrill with rapture? Was there not one whose voice was sweeter than an angel’s to his ear, whose words were dearly remembered, and treasured long after they were uttered? Let us see. ”

“ Thou art all fair, my love;
And there is no spot in thee."
When Matilda started up, suddenly saying she had heard the voice of her grandmother calling, the heavy folio slipped unheeded from his knee, and he gazed steadily at Rose with eyes that bore [169] a look as if a thick veil had suddenly fallen from them. There was a world of pathos in his face, for he realized, even as he gazed on her, that nothing again could ever look to him as it had looked before this moment had come. Rose had watched him furtively while he read, surprised to find him so handsome. ”

“ She lies here, this girl o'mine, but her soul, the noblest and purest thing I ever knew, lives on in me. It was she, my Mamie Rose, who taught me that within me was a mind and a God-given heart. She made of my life a changed thing and never can it be the same again! ”

“ A “rare and radiant maiden” was she, albeit unaccomplished and unlearned.
Kind, generous and affectionate was Rose May, having withal such a reasonable amount of spirited independence in her nature, as a child born and bred among the mountain wilds would be like to have.
It was a glorious dwelling-place, that of my heroine! Grant May, her father, was a shepherd, a rugged man of middle age, whose furrowed face bore testimony to the fact, that he had encountered and weathered many a hard storm in the course of his life. A true son of the mountains was he ”

“ We were both human. Sometimes, perhaps, in the hour when the homing of the sun had come and when the golden wings were folded for the rest of one more night, we, Mamie Rose and I, in field or rural quiet, felt the intoned, unison song of our hearts, which sung to us that we were one, a unit, and not two different personalities, and then we often came very near to throwing aside all previous sagacious resolves and felt ourselves fired by the desire to end to-morrow this two-fold existence. ”

“ True, Rose herself felt that she would knife a man before she would mate with one of those great hulks of men who were little above the oxen they drove or the sheep they tended. But she had the right to shudder; gentle blood flowed in her veins just as truly as it did in the proud Baron yonder. Just as much as he, she had a right to [148] feel her heart leap within her at the sight of luxury and daintiness and beauty. How her hands longed to feel the touch of soft furs and velvets and rich stuffs! Oh, again and again she wished that her mother had flung her babe also on the moat. ”

“ Esock Mayall no longer seemed to notice the flashes of lightning, the roaring of the thunder, nor the pelting of the storm, but kept his eye upon the departing form of that beautiful angel amid the rushing of the tempest. Could this be the chief's daughter, her face as white as a pond lily with the rose's blush upon her cheek and her eyes as blue as the violets of May, with her flaxen hair flowing in unbound ringlets upon her shoulders? No, never. No Indian blood ever flowed in the veins of a being so white and fair. ”

“ The other youth who visited so frequently Grant May’s cottage was Rob Horn. To say Rob was handsome as a picture would be rather a doubtful compliment; but handsome he was, tall and straight as an Indian, with a bright, smiling face—which (but for a treacherous expression sometimes seen lurking about the mouth) seemed to hail every man a brother and friend; then his hair was black as a raven’s wing, eyes ditto—a becoming bloom on his brown cheeks, graceful, light-hearted, cheerful and companionable—there, you have Rob Horn—is he one you would suppose Rose May might love? ”

“ MacLeod took off his hat and wiped his forehead beaded with a moisture come on it, he knew, at that moment.
"I should like to ask," he said peevishly, "what in the devil you mean. Have you—heard anything?"
"No," said Rose, entirely amazed. "What is there to hear?"
They had reached the station, and she led him to the bench under a tree where lovers and their lasses assembled at dusk to see the train come in. She sat down, dispirited and still wondering, and he stood before her, all strength, now, and candor, as if he had thrown off his dubious mood and resolved to be himself. ”

“ For once the pleading in the eye of my Mamie Rose was of no avail, and I started to give my impressions in "my own language," which proved sufficient, and did not oblige me to borrow the language of anybody else. My heart was soured. I did not care a snap of my fingers for the opinion of these people. To them I was a freak. ”

“ Rose's life had been a very busy and quiet one for the four years following the May day when she made her choice. Study, exercise, housework, and many wholesome pleasures kept her a happy, hearty creature, yearly growing in womanly graces, yet always preserving the innocent freshness girls lose so soon when too early set upon the world's stage and given a part to play.
Not a remarkably gifted girl in any way, and far from perfect; full of all manner of youthful whims and fancies; a little spoiled by much love; rather apt to think all lives as safe and sweet as her own ”

“ Rose was an artist and an optimist. In her youth she had been an eager and exquisite musician; in her middle life she was a loving and a happy woman, though she too had known a tragic moment in her first youth. Catharine, her elder by some years, still maintained, beneath an exquisite refinement, the strong north-country characteristics of the Westmoreland family to which the sisters belonged. Her father had been an Evangelical scholar and headmaster; the one slip of learning in a rude and primitive race. ”

“ He also soon after left the table, hoping to find an opportunity to express his regret that he had been so harsh by prejudice; but Miss Mayhew was not to be found.
"Can it be," he thought, as he strode off into the shrubbery, "that I have been blind to the very effects that I hoped to cause? Can it be that she has been made to feel her imperfection so keenly, and in such a way as to create only utter discouragement? She evidently understands the worm-eaten rose-bud I tossed away to be the emblem of herself. Oh, the curse of Phariseeism—the 'holier than thou' business, whatever form it takes. ”

“ Rose said it gently, as if she wondered at him. "Of course I shall keep faith with you."
She heard him rising from his place.
"Now," he said, "you must go home."
"Why must I? The little side door is never locked."
"No, but you have been through a good deal. We must take care of you."
"I feel as if I had all the strength in the world. I could waste it and waste it, and then have enough to waste again."
"It isn't altogether strength. It's fire—the fire of youth. Bank it up and let it smoulder, or it will burn you up."
"How are you so wise, playmate? You are as wise as dear grannie." ”

“ Certainly Rosie Brine acted like a boy—Maida proved that to herself in the next few days when she watched Rose-Red again and again. But if she were a tom-boy, she was also, Maida decided, the most beautiful and [Pg 86] the most wonderful little girl in the world. And, indeed, Rosie was so full of energy that it seemed to spurt out in the continual sparkle of her face and the continual movement of her body. She never walked. She always crossed the street in a series of flying jumps. She never went through a gate if she could go over the fence, never climbed the fence if she could vault it. ”

“ We get sick of conduct, good or bad. They don't, the good ones. They go on clambering, one step after another, up that pyramid, and peering over the edge to see us playing in the sand, and occasionally, if they can get a brick, they heave it at us."
"Who are the good ones?" Rose asked languidly. "Electra?"
"Electra? She's neither hot nor cold. But she's of the kind that made the system in the first place."
"Grannie is good," said Rose absently.
"Bessie Grant? Yes, she's God's anointed, if there is a God. My dear, I love to talk with you, almost as much as with Billy Stark. ”

“ Rose had thought of that a hundred times, but it wasn't what she was thinking of now.
The thing that caught her as she stood looking down on them, was the wave of sudden pity. She saw them suddenly as persons with the long road all ahead of them, as a boy and a girl, a youth and a maid, a man and a woman. They were destined to have their hopes and loves, fears, triumphs, tragedies perhaps. The boy there, Rodney, might have to face, some day, the situation his father confronted now; might have to come back into an empty home, and turn a stiff inexpressive face on a coolly curious world. ”

“ They are all used to me now, and don't mind,” said Mac, roving about the room as if rather ashamed of his whim after all.
“No, I won't, but you mustn't mind if I'm not as sociable as usual for a while. I never can be with strangers, and you really do seem like one. That will be a punishment for your want of taste and love of originality,” returned Rose, resolved to punish him for the slight put upon her beloved uncle. ”

“ It was a double breaking up of tradition; for Hannah, after taking her to Paddington and putting her into the hands of Mrs. Stratton, who would convoy her to Victoria, where there were reserved compartments for the school, was to go on to her home at Lowestoft, alas! for ever. She had been growing more infirm and could no longer manage the stairs, and when Rose came back for the holidays there was to be a new maid for her, instead of our old friend. It was part of the new programme that Rose was to be generally more self-reliant.
More self-reliant! ”

“ Rose was so amazed by all this that she sat down trembling a little, not with fear or anger, but a feeling half pleasure, half pain, and a sense of some new power subtle, strong, and sweet that had come into her life. It seemed as if another Mac had taken the place of the one she had known so long an ardent, ambitious man, ready for any work now that the magical moment had come when everything seems possible to love. If hope could work such a marvelous change for a moment, could not happiness do it for a lifetime? ”

“ You, gentle reader, may learn to know them—to own them—but, alas! you cannot own my Bill. Perhaps you would not care for him. He never was handsome, and now he is getting old and might not be to you a pleasant companion. But he has traveled with me along life's highway; he has never told a lie; he has been loyal and true, and there's not in all this world another dog like my good old pal.
For some time after the going-home of my Mamie Rose I was ill, but found my position still open for me after regaining my health. ”

“ But Rose had heard that reason. She was tired of it.
"It's a pity they make it so hard for other people," she said wearily. "Because they are great, must they be greedy, too? But that was my father. He may have been a great man, but he was not the man you think him. If you saw him as he was,—he was a big, dominating animal, that's all."
Electra sat staring at her, condemning, Rose knew, not Markham MacLeod, but his daughter. The charm of his mastery was still upon her. Rose and Peter, more mobile than she, had escaped with the cutting of his cord of life. ”

“ Nor did Sarah Beauclerc want a "shape to the mind." The day after St. John's departure, they were looking over the last year's "Book of Beauty," when Rose suddenly exclaimed, as she came to one, "This is very like Sarah Beauclerc!"
"It was great nonsense, Rose, that tale you were telling us!" cried Adeline, with a desperate struggle to speak calmly.
"It was sober sense, and sober truth," retorted Rose.
"Not it," said Mary Carr. "It was but a flirtation, Rose."
"Very likely," assented Rose, volatile as usual. "Being an attractive man, Mr. Frederick St. ”

“ MacLeod spoke with what seemed to the other man an insulting emphasis. Yet Osmond had not time to calm himself by the reminder that he was not used to hearing Rose spoken of at all as mortal woman. In his dreams she was something more than that.
"My daughter," MacLeod was saying, "has an intemperate habit of speech. If she has talked me over with you, she has inevitably made your opinions. For Rose is a very beautiful woman. ”

“ Aloud he said non-committally, "Yes, of course it is wonderful and I know that you would do it if you were able."
"I shall do it," was the confident answer. "I can't give money but I can give myself." There was a moment of silence; then Rose added softly, "I guess she loves you a lot, too, you are so good to ... to people, and do such wonderful things. When do you calculate to get married to her, Doctor Mac?" ”

“ But the elves replied, as they pointed to a cluster of heart's-ease, dying for want of sun and air in the shadow of Lily's broad leaves: "In your white bosom lies a haughty heart, careless of all things but itself. We cannot crown you till you have learned the beauty of humility."
Blushing with anger, the Rose demanded, as they passed her by: "Do you not see me? Am I not the queen of flowers, royal and sweet? Give me the crown: it is my right."
But soft hands put the thorny branches back, and the elfin voices whispered: "Passion makes no flower fair, however royal be its birth. ”