This Freedom

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

Mrs. Sturgiss returned brightly, “Oh, I know it. I know it well.” She paused and her voice had a thoughtful note. “But even then.... Use the long mirror, my dear; the light is better. Even then, there can be few as,—as much in it as you. You know, my husband has an immense idea of your abilities. He has spoken of you so much. Do you know, you are a great surprise to me, now I see you. I could only imagine from all John’s idea of you a rather terrible looking blue-stocking, as we used to call the clever women.” She came and stood by Rosalie, regarding the image in the glass that Rosalie regarded. She said simply, “But you are beautiful.”

A very odd feeling, akin to tears—but for what on earth tears?—quickened in Rosalie. She turned sharply from the mirror. “I am quite ready now.” She pretended she had not heard.

Mrs. Sturgiss said, “My dear, do you like it, being what you are?”

It was a great rescue for Rosalie to be able to spring away from that odd feeling (in her bosom and in her throat) by swift animation. “Oh, I love it. I simply love it. It is everything to me, everything in the world!”

Mrs. Sturgiss opened the door. “No, you go first, my dear. But if I had had a dear girl, such as you, I would have wished her to stay with me at home.”

She had made with her hand the gesture of her wish that Rosalie should precede her from the room. Rosalie impulsively touched the extended fingers. “But, Mrs. Sturgiss, don’t you see, that’s just it, the idea there is now. If you had had a daughter and she had stayed at home—well, let that go, while you were with her. But when you died and left her, what would there be—don’t you see it?—what would there be for her then?”

Mrs. Sturgiss pressed the warm young hand. “But I would have left her married, a dear wife and a dear mother.”

“Oh, that!” cried Rosalie and her stronger personality carried off the exchanges in a laugh. Mrs. Sturgiss thought the expression and the tone meant, happily, that marriage might happen to any one, in the market as much as in the home. Rosalie, with all the fierce contempt that her “Oh, that!” conveyed to her secret self, was ridden strongly away from emotionalism in the conversation. Her thought as they went downstairs was, “If I were to instruct her in the cat-men! Her horror!”

There was downstairs a surprise that was very annoying, but that was made to produce compensations. An unexpected fourth person, presuming—so Rosalie was given to understand—on a long standing, indefinite invitation, had dropped in to dinner. She recognised him directly they entered the drawing-room and could not stop the emblem of a swift vexation about her mouth and in her eyes. He caught it, she was sure; and she hoped he did. It was Harry Occleve—Laetitia’s futile slave! He had already informed his host that he knew her. She greeted him with a mere touch of her hand, a touch made cold by intent, and with “With a free evening off one would have expected you would spend it with Laetitia,” said disdainfully. It was a rude and inept thing to say (in the tone she said it) for the feeble creature, as she stigmatised him, had not yet screwed his fatuous idolatry to the point of proposal of marriage. But she intended it to be rude and to discomfort him and she was glad to see some twinge at the flick pass across his face. She hated his presence there. The presence of any man, in the capacity of a monkey to entertain and to be entertained, was always, not to put too fine a point upon it, repulsive to her. This man was of all men obnoxious to her. When he approached her for their brief greeting (she turned instantly away at its conclusion) she savoured immediately that odd, nice smell there was about him, of mingled soap and peat and fresh tobacco smoke and tweed; and that annoyed her. It was a reminder, emanated from him and therefore not to be escaped, of a distinction he had different from, and above common men. She always granted him his distinction of looks, of air, of talent. It was why she so much disdained him. To be dowered so well and so fatuously to betray his dowry! Tame cat!

But she made him, through the meal, pay compensations for his presence. At the table of Aunt Belle, in his presence she was accustomed to sit largely silent. Beautiful Laetitia was there the star; and while he mouthed and languished in that star’s rays Aunt Belle and Uncle Pyke, (stealing about him to capture him as a farmer and his wife with mincing steps and tempting morsel towards a fatted calf) fawned, flattered and deferred to him, he returning it. There was no place for her, and she would have shuddered to have held a place, in that society for mutual admiration. She sat apart. She was very much the poor relation (Aunt Belle could not comprehend her business success and Uncle Pyke would not admit it) and especially odious to her was the Occleve’s polite interest in her direction when Aunt Belle, poor-relationing her, would turn to her from coquettish raillery of him with, “Dear child, you’re eating nothing.” He would smile towards her and, fatuously anxious to please, offer some remark that might draw her into the conversation. She never would be so drawn. She scarcely ever exchanged words with him. She made herself to be unconscious of his presence. He was so occupied with his adoration of Laetitia that to be insensible of his presence was easy. When sometimes she glanced towards him it was with the thought, “Fancy being one of the rising young men at the Bar, being the rising young man—the Bar, with silk and ermine and, why not? the Woolsack before you—and being that, doing that! Fatted calf; dilly, dilly, come and be killed, goose; tame cat!”