Roselawn

“ Everybody was astir early about the Norwood and Drew places in Roselawn that next morning. At the former house Jessie and Henrietta aroused everybody. At the Drew place “two old salts,” as Amy sleepily called them from her bedroom window, came rambling in from a taxi-cab and disturbed the repose of the family.
“Where did you leave that Marigold?” the sister demanded from her window. “You boys go off on that yacht, supposedly to stay a year, and get back in forty-eight hours. You turn up like a couple of bad pennies. You––”
“Chop it, Sis,” Darry advised. ”

“ Dry-eyed, but with aching heart, Elise stood with an overwhelming remorse that she had never really known her elder brother. And Lady Durwent, free of all theatricalism, was dumb with the mother's pain of losing her first-born.
And as the heir to Roselawn went to war, so did the sons of every old family in the Island Kingdom. In something of the spirit of sport, yet carrying beneath their cheeriness the high purpose of ageless chivalry, the blue-eyed youth of Britain went out with a smile upon their lips to play their little parts in the great jest of the gods. ”

“ No one sent a present, except Miss Waters; no one came to call upon Rosaleen.
Lawrence had been just emerging from Bohemianism to the respectability of success. He had lived with order and comfort; he had been invited about, flattered, more or less “lionized.” But he was not yet really established; he had no solid footing in that upper world, that “society” he so worshipped. He had no prestige to give Rosaleen, even if he had wished to do so. As a matter of fact, he carefully concealed the fact of his marriage from all these people.
The first invitation he got after the wedding was to a tea. ”

“ Rosewarne's expression turned swiftly to complacency.
"No," she said, "leave him to me, Freddy. I shall see him this afternoon at the Charters's. You must see Maclagan to-day, and we'll meet and talk the matter over at dinner."
She smiled upon him with a tolerant air of patronage. Rosewarne stood by the window, restlessly twitching his fingers.
"You will not be in to lunch?" he asked, dully.
"No; I'm going to the Charters's. We have each a long day before us. It's a sort of crisis in our lives. I'm tired of this undistinguished competence. Any one can be the partner in a bank. ”

“ Tush, desire hath no respect of persons: Cupid is blind and shooteth at random, as soon hitting a rag as a robe, and piercing as soon the bosom of a captive as the breast of a libertine. Thou speakest it, poor Rosalynde, by experience; for being every way distressed, surcharged with cares, and overgrown with sorrows, yet amidst the heap of all these mishaps, love hath lodged in thy heart the perfection of young Rosader, a man every way absolute as well for his inward life, as for his outward lineaments, able to content the eye with beauty, and the ear with the report of his virtue. ”

“ I asked.
"Your business methods."
"My what?"
Your scheme for drawing Chu-Chu off into the forest of Marly and having it out with your guns—or knives, or whatever comes handy. That doesn't match up with the local colour. What's your State? Arizona?"
"I've been there," I answered; "but never mind about me. I wish you'd tell me how it happens that a Wichita girl should be driving a Paris taxicab and speaking French like a Parisienne de Paris. Then you are titled, too."
Rosalie gave a little mock sigh. "Such is fame," says she. ”

“ Follow thou her steps, Rosalynde, and the rather, for that thou art an exile, and banished from the court; whose distress, and it is appeased with patience, so it would be renewed with amorous passions. Have mind on thy forepassed fortunes; fear the worst, and entangle not thyself with present fancies, lest loving in haste, thou repent thee at leisure. Ah, but yet, Rosalynde, it is Rosader that courts thee; one who as he is beautiful, so he is virtuous, and harboreth in his mind as many good qualities as his face is shadowed with gracious favors ”

“ The next day Roswall was sent to school with the dame’s son. He gave his name as Dissawar again to the master; the master said he should want neither meat nor teaching. Roswall had been a remarkable scholar at home. Without doubt he astonished the master, but this is not said, for the story has been abridged here and elsewhere. In about a month, the steward of the king of Bealm, who had observed his beauty, courtesy, and good parts, carried him to the court of Bealm, where Roswall made himself a general favorite. ”

“ I reached in my pocket, drew out the packet which contained his gems, unfolded the paper and held out to him in the hollow of my hand his two great rubies and the emerald.
“Here you are,” said I, “Don't ever say again that a kind act does not meet with its reward—not but what I'd given them to you, anyway,” said I.
Rosenthal froze into a colossus in stone. The rosy, after-eating glow faded from his face, leaving it an ivory yellow. The big, bushy eyebrows went up at least three inches and he cocked his head to one side, while the staring, mottled eyes bulged at the gems. ”

“ Choose not a fair face with an empty purse, but say as most women use to say:
Si nihil attuleris, ibis Homere foras.
Why, Rosalynde! can such base thoughts harbor in such high beauties? can the degree of a princess, the daughter of Gerismond harbor such servile conceits, as to prize gold more than honor, or to measure a gentleman by his wealth, not by his virtues? No, Rosalynde, blush at thy base resolution, and say, if thou lovest, 'either Rosader or none!' And why? because Rosader is both beautiful and virtuous. ”

“ With utter earnestness, sincerity, with justice and compassion for Lawrence, Rosaleen tried to give Landry the story of her marriage. She had only one motive—that this man should not think her worse than she was. She felt that if he could be brought to see why she had done this and that, he would no longer blame her. She wished to make him see how inevitable it had all been.
She began with the day that Lawrence had come to her room to kill himself. She and Miss Waters had tended him with frightened assiduity all the afternoon, but in vain. ”

“ Rosewarne: you've a right to be angry and all that—perhaps you are—but what good will it do you to see Wenna left to marry Roscorla?"
[pg 738]
"What good will it do me?" said George Rosewarne pettishly. "I don't care which of you she marries."
"Then you'll let us go on, dada?" Mabyn cried. "Will you come with us? Oh, do come with us! We're only going to Plymouth."
Even the angry father could not withstand the absurdity of this appeal. He burst into a roar of ill-tempered laughter. "I like that!" he cried. "Asking a man to help his daughter to run away from his own house! ”

“ Rosewarne lifted his head sharply and turned to her. Athwart the pallor of his face gleamed for an instant a soft flush of pleasure, and his dull eyes lit up with affection.
"I was doing some work, Dorothy," said he, "and I was tired."
Mrs. Rosewarne took a step nearer. Her fine grey eyes regarded him with wonder and with inquiry, and in her voice a little impatience mingled with a certain kindliness.
"It's very absurd your working like this," she said, "and in this cold room without a fire! Aren't you coming to breakfast? "
Rosewarne got up from his chair. "Why, yes," he laughed. ”

“ So thy Rosalynde may be most amiable and yet unkind; full of favor and yet froward, coy without wit, and disdainful without reason."
"O Shepherd," quoth Rosader, "knewest thou her personage, graced with the excellence of all perfection, being a harbor wherein the graces shroud their virtues, thou wouldest not breathe out such blasphemy against the beauteous Rosalynde. She is a diamond, bright but not hard, yet of most chaste operation; a pearl so orient, [1] that it can be stained with no blemish; a rose without prickles, and a princess absolute as well in beauty as in virtue. ”

“ There was only one whom she knew at all; Miss Mell, a stout girl in spectacles, who had been Miss Waters’ first pupil, years ago. She came with commendable regularity to visit her old teacher every two or three weeks, and Rosaleen had more than once seen her in the studio, sitting quite still and listening to Miss Waters’ talking, a kindly and amused smile on her face. Then there was a desperately lively girl who ran a tea room, and two agreeable young English women, and a disagreeable, sneering old gentleman with a goatee, whose name she never learned, nor whose business there. ”

“ She had quite forgiven him his unique outburst, both because he was an artist and outside the pale, and because she liked him. She had more indulgence for him, in fact, than she would have had for her hero, Nick Landry. No doubt because she didn’t expect very much from{153} Lawrence. She went ahead, enjoying his companionship without the least distrust.
He couldn’t have been nicer. To please her he even went so far as to go with her to Miss Waters’ studio. He had met Rosaleen in the street, on her way there.
“She’d be so awfully pleased!” Rosaleen told him. “She admires your work so much.” ”

“ When she had gone, when she had called a quavering and gay “Au revoir!” from the foot of the stairs, Rosaleen had turned and resolutely faced the arrogant Miss Bainbridge.
“I——” she began. “I’ll ask you please—not to talk like that to Miss Waters.”
Her mouth was set grimly; she looked at that moment rather like her mother.
“Why?” asked Miss Bainbridge, coolly.
“She’s—she’s old, for one thing.”
“Old enough to die. No, Miss-What’s-Your-Name, I can’t be sentimental about your rather awful old friend. And we don’t want her bothering us here. The sooner she finds it out, the better. ”

“ He was still fairly nice to Rosaleen in those days, although he was beginning to grow exasperated with her. She insisted upon being always his servant; never his friend, his comrade. She was always constrained; she never talked freely about what interested her; instead she was forever anxious to hearten and encourage Lawrence, to “draw him out” ”

“ But they didn’t mention it to Rosaleen, and she, in despair of ever being able to explain that extraordinary evening, never brought up the subject. But they all missed him. Once in a while Miss Mell would say, “There goes Lawrence!” and they would run to the window, to see him, in his great fur-lined coat and silk hat, getting into a taxi, off to one of those teas where he{172} so shone. He was inordinately fond of “society”: they read his name in the papers in connection with all sorts of pageants, charity balls, amateur theatricals, costume dances. ”

“ Rosalind scarcely sensed the pounding of the hail. She and the boatman had almost clasped hands with death, and the memory of it drove other thoughts from her mind.
The trivial parts of the affair occupied a curiously exaggerated importance in her reflections. She realized that it was absurdly insignificant, yet she found herself considering chiefly, not the fact that by any effort truly astonishing he had flung her to a refuge far above the boiling river, but the mere incident that while she lay in his arms his scrawny beard, cold and wet, had brushed her cheek—yes, even his mustache. ”

“ There was too much clashing of the elements, too much of the restless spirit of enquiry for the meek, sustaining eye of Faith, calmly to steer her course in such a complicated organization as Rosalind's.
It was not thus with Walter who resembled his mother. Nature seemed to have cast him in an even mould and bestowed on him her rarest gifts. Rosalind excelled in intellectual capacity; he, in intuitive knowledge. The truths others gained by reasoning, he knew by intuition. The triumphs others won by continued effort and stern self-denial, were but the natural unfolding of his own character. ”

“ Rosewarne said in private about his being so delightful and cheerful a companion. As for him, he was determined to profit by this last opportunity. If the Strict rules of honor demanded that Mr. Roscorla should have fair play, or if Wenna wished him to absent himself—which was of more consequence than Mr. Roscorla's interest—he would make his visits few and formal, but in the mean time, at least, they would have this one pleasant afternoon together. Sometimes, it is true, he rebelled against the uncertain pledge he had given her. Why should he not seek to win her? ”

“ Rosenberg—whom I met last week in the street, and who told me he had been to Perley Hatch, and had seen you—has been taking mother and me for drives in the evening. His people are out of town, and he has the car to himself. We have been to Windsor and Burnham Beeches, to Virginia Water, and all sorts of places. The air does me a great deal of good. I am really quite well now.
Gaunt read it grimly. He told himself that he might have expected it. Was it likely that Rosenberg would leave her alone, having learned that she was in London without him? ”

“ Why then doth my Rosalynde grieve at the frown of Torismond, who by offering her a prejudice proffers her a greater pleasure? and more, mad lass, to be melancholy, when thou hast with thee Alinda, a friend who will be a faithful copartner of all thy misfortunes, who hath left her father to follow thee, and chooseth rather to brook all extremities than to forsake thy presence. What, Rosalynde,
Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.
Cheerly, woman: as we have been bed-fellows in royalty, we will be fellow-mates in poverty: I will ever be thy Alinda, and thou shalt ever rest to me Rosalynde ”

“ Rosaleen too was working, but neither contentedly nor successfully. The more she saw of the others, the less she thought of herself. They worked with such industry, hour after hour. They didn’t seem to have the slightest trace of her fatal desire for distraction. After she had been drawing for an hour or so, she always became intolerably restless, so that even washing dishes was a relief.... By the side of Enid Bainbridge she felt as some poor little clergyman, struggling incessantly to feed and clothe his family, sick with cares and worries of this world, might feel by the side of Saint Paul. ”