CHAPTER XXIX.
["IT IS ALL A MESS!"]
It fell hard upon Rose to have to meet Joseph again so immediately after the passage she had gone through with Gilbert Roe--to pass, with scarce a pause in which to brace herself together, from the lover of her youth into the presence of the man to whom she had chosen to transfer her regard. She had fooled herself in her pique into the belief that she had trodden down and stamped out the last spark of kindness for the husband who had been, as she told herself, so hard and cruel and insulting--the man who could let her untie their marriage bond, without showing a sign or offering a word of remonstrance. He was nothing to her now--she had been saying it within herself ever since their separation--or if anything, only her aversion. She had been persuading herself that she was an injured woman, and that it was righteous resentment which she had been nursing against the unfeeling tyrant who had blighted her early wifehood. She had resolved that she would never speak to him again, nor even name him; that she would pluck out the very memory of her first and foolish love--have done with him for ever, and begin anew. (As if our past, the foundation of our present, could ever be obliterated!)
When he forced himself upon her so unexpectedly, the anger smouldering through her year of unmolested separation, the regret and disappointment grown sour in concealment and suppression, and turned by silence and defeated pride into what had seemed an inextinguishable hatred, had burst into a flame of fiercest indignation. It had burst into flame, but how pitifully soon it had burnt low! It had been but a fire of straw, blazing up for a moment and sinking as quickly as it rose; leaving nothing behind, nothing but the emptiness of separation. The grievances and wrongs and barriers piled up so high between them, where were they gone to? Vanished utterly away. There had been a leaping flame and a whirling puff of smoke, and the ground was clear between them--clear save for the ashes of happiness destroyed for ever! And there she stood, naked and exposed before her own eyes and his, stripped of her false pretexts, a vain and headstrong fool, who in very wantonness had made bonfire of their wedded happiness!
And yet her indignation had seemed so just, her wrongs so deep and unforgivable! How speedily her wrath had oozed away before a few words! words not of contrition, scarce even of reproach, but only common-sense, and spoken by the old dear voice! Where were the bitter memories now? How could she be so false to herself? Where was her pride?--that stanch support against which she had been wont to set her back, ready to outface the world? It had bent and broken, like a worthless reed, before a few words of the man against whom she had invoked its aid. "Bertie!" She had resolved to obliterate the memory of that name; and yet it had passed her lips, and the old caressing sweetness of the sound was in her ears, and would not go away.
It was not half an hour since the mere sight of him had hardened her with hate, and made her feel strong, if yet unhappy. Now, she was weak as water. If she had stayed, she would have given way and yielded--she could not tell to what--but to anything the old sweet strong influence in that voice had chosen to command her. But she had escaped, and she was still free, and she would keep her liberty, whatever it might cost her peace. At least she thought so.
What would they say, those sympathising friends who had come to her in her conflict, with their well-meant phrases of support, and told her she had done so wisely, and shown so brave a spirit? What would they say to see her lower the lance and go back again to the bondage of her tyrant? How could she face their pity at her weakness? And then there were the others, who had disapproved of her conduct--had advised her to submit, yield something, and make it up; and when she would not, had turned away from knowing her. They would call her repentant, and perhaps would turn again to countenance her reformation! That would be more intolerable even than the pitying surprise of her stancher friends. No; she must follow out the road she had entered on. There could be no returning upon the lost steps. And she had so nearly yielded. It startled her to find she was so weak. She must build a barrier between the old life and the new, which could neither be surmounted nor thrown down.
Joseph was close upon her now. He had not been very long away, but he did not seem in her eyes exactly as he had seemed before. It was not half an hour that he had been gone, yet he looked more ordinary than she had supposed him. The redundancy of waistcoat, or rather of waist, offended her sense of symmetry as it had not done before; and if he had been just a little taller! Bertie was six-feet-one, and gracefully slim, and chestnut-haired, while the other's locks were darkening, as the leaves grow dark before the autumn tints begin to light them up with the rustiness that comes before decay. It was the difference between thirty and forty-seven. What a fool she was to notice such things, and at such a time, when the very contrary was what she would have wished to notice! She told herself so with vehemence, and bit her lip, as if that would make her mind it better; but she went on noticing all the same. When the eye has been turned for a little on the sun, what a poor, dim, purblind thing does the light of a candle afterwards appear!
Joseph came on with swinging elastic strides, impatient to be with her, irradiated with a joyful pride, and beaming on her with smiles of confidence irrepressible.
"If he would only have been tranquil!" she thought. This exuberance seemed so utterly out of place. It was a discord in the bland and half-parental warmth which, she told herself, would have been correct in view of their disparity of age. "It was bad taste. There was even an element of ridicule in a venerable Cupid of forty-seven exerting himself to gambol before her like one of those boy Loves with wings the artists picture. She had not thought so half an hour ago, but we live and change so quickly at times. He was too solid for that sort of thing, and she felt sorry to see him attempt it, for she really respected and liked him."
"You grew tired of waiting, Rose?"
"Why would he call her by her name just then?" she asked herself, forgetting that he had been doing so habitually for a week past, and that she had encouraged him to do it.
"And came to meet me? Forgive me, dearest. I could not help it. Your own disinclination to be kept waiting, must plead for my impatience to get my little parcel, that I might present it. I made the hotel people promise to send it after us, if it should arrive this forenoon. It has come, but the express man would not part with it till I had signed the receipt. Then the rascal went to refresh himself, and I had quite a hunt to find him. However, it is all right now. Shall we turn back and get under the shadow of the trees?"
"As you like," Rose answered, a little dully.
Joseph tore off the wrappings of his parcel as they walked along, laying bare the little ring-case. He opened it, and the merry little stones within, catching the sunbeams, cast them back in a dazzling gleam beyond his expectation.
Rose saw and shuddered. The glancing ray seemed to pierce her with a cold sharp pang, like the thrust of steel. It was the token of her engagement; and that, of a sudden, and without her being aware of an alteration in her mind, had grown distasteful.
"And now, my dearest, will you let me fit it in its place. It is not worthy your acceptance; but then, what is? Still it is pretty, is it not? And seeing that you were kind enough to accept myself, you will let me slip on my ring. It is an earnest of the other you have promised to let me give you."
"Not now, Mr----dear Joseph, I mean." How unreadily his name came to her lips! and half an hour since she had used it freely--had even liked to use it in a very friendly way, as leading up to the more intimate connection which was to be established between them. What a rift between the now and then!
"Do you not like it, dear?" Joseph asked, in a disappointed tone. "I said it was not worthy either of your acceptance or of my love; but still, I confess I thought it pretty, and I hoped you would have worn it."
"Oh, as to that--yes, by all means. It is a lovely ring, the very handsomest I ever saw. Any one might feel proud to wear it on its own merits; but you know how whimsical we women are. It is a whim which I have taken, that I will not put on a ring to-day."
"Let me persuade you out of it, dearest. Let me overbear the whim." He took her hand in his, drew off the glove, and reverently pressed his lips upon the fingers, while she stood looking listlessly and sadly in his face. He took the engagement-finger and attempted to slip on the ring without more ado; but at the touch of it Rose started and drew away her hand with a shrinking cry, while Joseph strove to retain it, and still attempted to slip on the ring.
"It must not be, at least not yet a while, Joseph. I have something which I must tell you, that will make a difference between us. It would be unfair to you not to tell you in time, what may influence your feelings with regard to an engagement between us. And meanwhile, I give you back your promise, that you may be free to do as you will, after you have heard me."
"You shall not give it back, Rose. I will not accept it. And more, I hold you to your promise still. Nothing which you can tell me will induce me to give you back yours."
"Not if you heard dreadful things against me?"
"I would not believe them. I know you too well for that. What do you take me for?"
"I take you for a noble-minded man. It is that which troubles me. I am not worth your caring for."
"You are my own, a part of my very self."
"You would not say so if you knew--that I have been married before!--if you were told that I am a divorced woman!"
"I would not believe them."
"But it is true."
"What a villain the man must have been!--what a fool!--to cast away the flower he was unworthy to have worn! But, my poor darling, if this is so, you have the deeper need of my protecting care."
"But it was I who divorced--him!"
"You have been cruelly used, then. Ah, what you must have suffered! It shall be all the more my care to make you forget your unhappiness. Forget it you shall. Let's say no more about it."
"But I must. You do not know how poor a thing you have anchored your heart to--how fickle and headstrong and vain a creature I have been! I petitioned for a divorce from my husband."
"And you got it. Is not that a proof that you were in the right?--when the law granted your demand? What you must have come through! But it shall be mine to make you forget."
"He--filed no rejoinder, as they call it He let the law take its course."
"He did not, because he could not. The law has relieved you from an unworthy mate. Forget it, my poor darling. Forget him. We have the future before us. Forget all the past."
"He refused to plead; but I am not so sure that he could not have pleaded successfully if he had chosen to do it. My petition was an outrage to him."
"Do not think it. A woman is not driven to take such a step without sufficient grounds."
"That is what the judge said; but--ah me!--I do not know."
"What has called up these morbid fancies in your mind, Rose? You were cheerful an hour ago."
"He--has spoken to me. When you were gone he came to me--and things seem different now. I am not so sure that I was right, as I used to be."
"The sneaking villain! Who is he? Where is he? To come molesting the woman he has wronged, so soon as my back was turned! Kicking is too good for such a hound. Where is he?"
"You must not ask. What would people say of me, if you and he were to meet?... But I am upset; my head is splitting. I do not know what I am saying, or what I do. I will go back to the village inn and lie down."
"We can drive back to Clam Beach. No one will miss us. Come."
"I want to be alone, and think. Do not come with me. Yonder is Lettice Deane; bring me to her, and then let me leave you."
Lettice was following her own amusement in her own way. She was holding a kind of auction of her smiles as she walked upon the sands between Mr Sefton and Peter Wilkie, who vied with each other to engross her attention, flashing speeches across her, to her infinite diversion, in their efforts to extinguish one another. It was amusing, but she cared nothing for either, and was mischievously ready to disgust them both alike, by yielding to Rose's petition for her company back to the village.
"Is your head very bad, Rose, dear?" she asked, full of sympathy, as soon as they were alone. "It must be, to take you away from him so soon after his present. Or is it a sort of necessary discipline?--in case of his growing too confident on the head of it? Let me see it. Everybody knows that the express man was sent after you here. What! you have not put it on yet? I declare, I think you are rigorous. You owed him the satisfaction of seeing you wear it, I think, seeing how much it cost."
"I have not got it. I could not accept it to-day. I have been trying to have an explanation and tell him everything. He--the other--dropped upon me suddenly when I was alone and not expecting him, and we talked--and, oh Lettice! I am in a maze. What am I to do? It seems to be I won't and I will with me, all the time. I can't do both, and I won't do either. I am distracted, Lettice. I must go to bed and try to think."
"Who-o-o----!" Lettice could not whistle as some girls can; but that long-drawn masculine expression of--of everything at once--of the fat having fallen in the fire, with general loss, trouble, and confusion, seemed the only adequate and appropriate one for the occasion, and she framed her lips and voice to the nearest equivalent.
"And what will you do, dear?" she said, after a considerable pause.
"Don't bother me with questions, Lettie. I do not know in the very least. I shall go to bed, and try to sleep, and to forget everything. If one could only forget for always! How good it would be! I am in a mess. And all from having my way, and getting everything I thought I wanted. It is all a mess! an irretrievable muddle. Whatever I may do, it will be sure to be wrong. Oh Lettie! take warning in time; and don't let your little tempers run away with you, as mine have done with me."