Roseborough

“ Old head and young head pondered in silence.
“If they could come together in some wholly unexpected way, without personalities, and not as Roseborough and Jack Falcon, who shook the dust of Roseborough from his feet sixteen years ago! If only they could meet under other identities and, having no memories, each immediately find the other’s true self!”
“Like a fairy prince and a fairy kingdom. Oh, yes, that would be lovely. But,” the gay, mocking light danced within her eyes again, “even if life is ‘beautifully arranged,’ it is not so beautifully arranged as all that!” ”

“ In Roseborough, persons of his and Miss Crewe’s birth and kindred could not marry on nothing but love. Their families, and Roseborough, demanded of them that they settle themselves properly in life, to keep up appearances. ”

“ Nothing else gives one quite the same feeling of completeness.” She nodded. “By the way, you can probably tell me if this is the only little hillside town like this in the neighbourhood with houses like this. Even a tramp sometimes likes to know where he is—on a dark night.”
“There are the two towns, Roseborough and Poplars Vale. Roseborough is the older. Poplars Vale used to be just a farm and a corner store. Now, you see, it is quite a place. Almost like Roseborough.” ”

“ Why pry into the affairs of others? Whose business is it but their own? That is what I say. All Roseborough knows what I think about busybodying and gossip.”
“Yes; that is very true. All Roseborough knows.... By the way, Roseborough has behaved beautifully to my mourning, never resenting that it shadowed the pleasure of teas and little gatherings, when—er—joy should have been unconfined. I am showing Roseborough how well I understand it, and how grateful I am for its forbearance, by180 returning to colours—the brightest and cheeriest I can select.” ”

“ Lee,’ she said to me, ‘when Jenny Hackensee sews a bow on even a child’s hat, or a bone button on the band of a genteel woman’s flannel petticoat, my conscience is satisfied that it will never come off!’ Poor Miss Jenny. She fears that the Roseborough ladies may forget her worth and run after follies. My dear husband used to say that that trait was one of the charms of Roseborough—namely, the loving regard each person in the community has for the general morale. ”

“ Life must be very different in the vast cities, where people are strangers instead of neighbours. Think of that! Strangers instead of neighbours! How fortunate I am to live in Roseborough, where everybody is so interested in everybody else. Dear Mrs. Witherby, in particular,200 takes such an interest.” She patted that lady’s arm. Mrs. Witherby, having lost the last round, had left the table. “Ah, well, that is the spirit of Roseborough.”
“Some might call it a meddlesome spirit,” Miss Crewe suggested.
“Oh, my dear child,” Mrs. Lee reproved her, affectionately. ”

“ Dear Mrs. Lee! I always know exactly how to manage her. In fact, my dear Mrs. Mearely, I sometimes say that that is my one great gift; (Will you be quiet, Central?) —er—my one great gift is managing people, especially in emergencies.”
“All Roseborough admits that, Mrs. Witherby. It is a wonderful gift; but not your only one, I’m sure. So we can rely on you this afternoon to carry the breakfast invitation to those of our dear friends who have no telephones? That means, chiefly, the Gleasons, the Montereys, and the Pelham-Hews.” ”

“ But it is hard to live here, so close to earth, without love. Roseborough was made for love. That is what ails us all—Palametta, and The Kilties and the Pelham-Hews and—and—Rosamond Mearely! Well, I hope the old bald thing will marry Anabeth and then she’ll stop that crying every time a man is mentioned. ”

“ He had made himself equally free of the house and grounds of Villa Rose. Though, before others, his manner to the Villa’s lady was formal, he expressed, in private, the intimate affection of a brother. Her widowhood appealed to his chivalry; and her black ribbons, he said, put out the sun for him; how had the anomaly of grief entered Roseborough and how had it attached itself to her?
“In me you have always a brother, a friend, a protector,” he would say. “What privilege of manhood is more to be envied than the right to shelter women?” ”

“ Witherby so that dear Mrs. Lee can continue to believe in the beneficent spirit of Roseborough. Roseborough will open its arms to her Jack Falcon instead of tearing off his hair—that is, if he still has hair. B’r’r’r, but I am a-weary of old men!”
She gathered up her breakfast dishes, and took them into the kitchen. The kitchen closet yielded a blue-checked all-over apron of Amanda’s. Rosamond literally dropped herself into it at the neck. ”

“ But if I could compose it I would call it ‘Rosamond.’”
“And dedicate it to me as if I were a royal highness.”
He frowned.
“Not at all!” he asserted almost with violence. “I compose no masterpieces for royal highnesses. Royal highnesses are ugly and artificial. But you! Fair Rosamond, they tell me—Miss Watts, I think it was, told me last—that you were born on the farm. ‘Farm product,’ she called you. Your mother....”
“Made and sold butter! I am sure all Roseborough has informed you of that!” ”

“ The word “incognito” is an unusual one to hear bandied about in a peaceful village like Roseborough, and would be sure to produce its effect at any time; but hardly such an effect as was produced by Dr. Frei’s use of it now. Everyone stared at him, then at one another and back at him; that is, everyone but Mrs. Mearely, who had long ago convinced herself that Dr. Frei was some noted violin virtuoso who had come to peaceful Roseborough to recover his health. ”

“ The aged pensioner, who collected the tow-path tolls, rang the strokes of the hour on this bell from six A.M. until six P.M., and, so closely did the low, curving hills advance to smile upon each other from both sides of the running water that they made a channel for the sound—like a great, twisted, golden horn—so that the bell-tones, rung out at the crossroads, were heard at Roseborough and at Poplars Vale and even rolled their echoes, when the wind was kind, upon the town of Trenton Waters. ”

“ It was to him wholly natural that Rosamond Mearely—being, for all her beauty and wealth, only a woman after all and therefore an inferior—should have decided to entrain him; because, forsooth, he was a man. He did not see how she could have chosen better in all Roseborough. ”

“ She is quite free! It may be difficult for Roseborough to believe that its Hibbert Mearely has really passed away from it to a better place—for, of course, it seems almost disloyal to suggest that even heaven is a better place than Roseborough—but the truth remains that Hibbert Mearely has gone. ”

“ But will you not consider the place you hold in our hearts? Can any gallant man in Roseborough think of your unprotected loveliness in danger and keep his pulses steady?”
Inwardly Rosamond registered another plaintive and helpless protest against the misuse of her bright gown which circumstance was making that day. “They’ll drive me back to crape,” she said to herself, “in order to have my adventures free from persecution.” ”

“ Look at the chairs; when you sit down, you feel you are settled there for life—and will not move again till some one carries you to the churchyard. I came here so proudly—to be the wife of such a fine, distinguished gentleman. I thought it would be a wonderful life—with all this,” she waved her hands to indicate the furnishings of Mr. Mearely’s museum. “But it wasn’t. It was dreadful. In its heart, Roseborough still regards me as an alien and an upstart. My mother once sold butter. They remember that. They are waiting for a chance to rub it in. ”

“ First from Herr Ruggle, of the telegraph, when together we reach for our milk pails on the back of the porch. Then from Dr. Wells. Finally from everybody! I have heard how this beautiful Rosamond, of Roseborough, has been suspected, maligned; her reputation slandered, ruined—criticized—criticized”—he hissed out the word with uncontrollable fury—“by you—and you—and you,” snapping his fingers right and left. “Yes, criticized! and why? why?” Glaring, he paused for emphasis. “Because a gentleman calls upon her, at his convenience! What is more natural?” ”

“ Taite, a gentlewoman fallen into adverse circumstances, who was willing to take in and care for a paying guest in order to eke out. He lived in an economical and dignified style, and kept two horses, on the means which could very much better have been applied to the purchase of a neat cottage to shelter a wife. At least such was the opinion of Roseborough’s spinsters.
Perhaps the Judge did not treat the Roseborough spinsters quite fairly. The legal mind, by reason of its professional habits, becomes versed in subtleties, evasions, and the like—“technicalities” as they are called. ”

“ Rosamond vowed inwardly. An inspiration came to her, from the springs of her naturally impulsive generosity, which went far to restore her to her former position in the hearts of Roseborough’s spinsters.
“Wait, wait,” she called. “I’ll give you some bottles of Amanda’s parsnip wine. That will be better than Dollop’s syrup. And a basket full of glasses and some ginger cookies, and you can picnic down by the tower in that little nook of the slough.”
Not delaying for more than the first “hooray,” she caught up her flower basket from the porch and ran into the kitchen. ”

“ Lee back to the immediate present and its problems.
“Oh, my dear, how good of you! I shall send for Bella Greenup to cook other things. But there is something even more important than food.” She paused and patted her lips with her forefinger, evidently cogitating deeply.
“What?”
“Roseborough—dear, sensitive Roseborough. How shall I present my Jack to Roseborough so that61 everyone will feel his homecoming—and the book, and all of it—to be a communal event and not merely a selfish, personal pleasure of mine? That will require some planning. Yes, it will need some quite subtle planning.” ”

“ He turned his attention once more to Roseborough and the present. “Farewell,” he said—his expression was grieved and disdainful—“I go—without regrets. Here, where I thought was my journey’s end, I have heard most cruel criticism. It is the world. Everywhere the same. I go back to my own country, where I can put the critics in the prison!”
The vagabond asked meekly:
“If Your Highness will be so kind as to introduce me and vouch for my respectability—for Mrs. Mearely’s sake....”
Prince Adam bent upon him imperious looks of intense dislike.
“For Mrs. Mearely, nothing is needed. ”

“ Oh, Roseborough, couldn’t you make a milady of the little butter girl from Poplars without making her—Milady Prevaricator? What is it—you, there, Mr. Golden Sun, who sees everything; you, shining old heart-searcher, tell me—what is it makes so many poor humans twist and trick when it is their80 blessed privilege to speak the plain truth? ”

“ Let her remain quietly at home and continue to carry out my artistic scheme, as the one rustic and indigenous object of beauty in the midst of my priceless antiques and objets d’art.’ That was his idea. A very superior man—was my dear friend, Mearely.”
“So Mrs. Mearely has control of her fortune and is obliged to live in Roseborough? Then she is compelled to choose a man from these parts.”
“Yes. If she leaves Villa Rose and Roseborough, she loses everything. Yes, it was I who drew up that will, Mrs. Taite. ”

“ It was her fashion to request favours with this little flirt and smile which suggested, with guileless conceit, that to serve any one so beautiful and so young was payment enough and to spare for any man in Roseborough. Little did she remember at this moment, however, the results of that same perking from her father’s farm gate, when Hibbert Mearely had asked her to tell him if he had, or had not, taken the wrong turning at the bridge.
“Mrs. Mearely!” (He would dare to believe it blue. He would act as if it were blue!)
“What on earth is the matter with the poor man? ”

“ A new man is coming to Roseborough! Though I suppose he’s pretty old,” she added, after Mrs. Lee and her two escorts had disappeared. “Mrs. Lee calls men of fifty ‘dear boys,’ if they ever went to Charleroy.”
Mrs. Witherby, Wells, and Andrews seated themselves at the card table. For the moment, Mrs. Witherby’s mind was occupied with something more important than cards. Assuring herself that her niece could not hear her, she said:
“Mrs. Barton is not coming from Poplars Vale till next week, so I shall try to persuade Mrs. Mearely to let me leave our Thomas to sleep in the house here, to-night. ”

“ They would cook, when the spirit moved them. They were proud of their cooking; and they argued that what was uneaten could always be given to the clergyman, whose stipend was meagre, and what he did not devour he could pass on to the thirteen McGuires, who embodied Roseborough’s poor. It must be confessed not only that the vicar was tempted from spiritual yearnings, by the tasty abundance of His Friggets’ art, but that the thirteen McGuires were fattening like pigs. ”

“ Miss Jenny’s millinery and dressmaking establishment; George Dollop’s drugs, stationery and lending library, with John Dollop, plumber, and James Dollop, undertaker, adjoining, and Horace Ruggle of the telegraph office next door; and Brandon’s stables and feed store.
In going over the hill’s brow and on to the vague unknown, the road led past Charleroy College whither the lads within twenty miles came to acquire knowledge. The residential portion of Roseborough, comprising about sixty houses and gardens, spread about the hillsides between the village and Charleroy. ”

“ If you think Maria Potts is the only person that’s going to be rung up and pestered you’re badly mistook.332 ’Twas Villa Rose’s line that started the ructions that’s got all Roseborough on the jig, and I figger on keepin’ you jest as busy as subscribers keeps me. At that, you’re fixed a lot more comfortable than I be. I’ll bet you’ve got more on to you than a crazy quilt. ”