Christmas Roses and Other Stories

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“They go together, don’t they?” said Pamela. “Every sort of fulness. But I needn’t try to get it clear. You understand. I always thought that perhaps people who had fulness couldn’t; now I see that I was mistaken.”

“Have you been very unhappy, dear child?”

"Until now? While he was here? Oh, no, I have been lonely. Even before he came, even though my life was so crowded, it was rather lonely. I never had any one of my own, for myself. But afterwards, even if I felt lonely, I was happy. At least, after just at first. Because, just at first, it was miserable, for I couldn’t help longing to see him more and to have him like me more, and that made me understand that I was in love with him, and I was frightened. I can’t explain clearly about it, even to myself. But I was very, very unhappy. Perhaps you remember the time when I was twenty, and got so run down, and they sent me to Germany to my old governess—the only time I ever went away from home, out of England. It was a miserable time. I tried not to think of him and not to care. But I had to come back, and he was there, and I knew I couldn’t stop caring, and that all I could do about it was to try to be better because of him,—you know,—and make people happier, and not think of myself, but of him and them. And everything changed after that. I was never frightened any more, and though perhaps it wasn’t exactly happiness, it was, sometimes, I believe, almost better. I can’t explain it, but what I mean is in some poetry. I never cared much about poetry till he came. Then I seemed to understand things I’d never understood before, and to feel everything that was beautiful. “You remember how dear he was to us all—to the boys and me. I always shared in everything they did. Every bit of this country is full of him; I could never bear to go away and leave it. I want always to stay here till I die.—Flowers and birds—wasn’t he wonderful about them? And our walks in the woods! He saw everything, and made us see it. I never woke in the morning without thinking, Will he come to-day? What will he say and do? I was never tired of watching him and listening to him. All his little ways—you know. When I pleased him,—sometimes I saw the bird we were watching for first, or caught my trout well,—it was a red-letter day. And in big things—to feel I should have pleased him if he’d known. It was he who helped me in every way, without knowing it. And I took more and more joy in you. At first I had felt dreadfully shy with you—and afraid of you. You were so clever, with all your books and music and friends, and you didn’t seem to need anything. But afterwards you were so kind, that, though I was always shy, I was not frightened any longer. I used to think about you so much, and imagine what he felt about you—and you about him.—You won’t mind my saying it, I know. Perhaps you remember the way I used so often, in the evenings, to walk past with the children, and say good-night over the wall. That was to see you and him walking together. You were so beautiful! You are far and far away the most beautiful person I’ve ever known. I always noticed everything you wore, and how your hair was done. I was glad when you took it down from the knot and had it all at the back, as you do now. And the lovely pale blue dress, with the little flounces—do you remember?—a summer dress of lawn. I did love that. And the white linen coats and skirts, and the big white hat with the lemon-coloured bow. Your very shoes—those grey ones you always had, with the low heels and little silver buckles. No one had such lovely clothes. And the way you poured out tea and looked across the table at one. Always like a beautiful muse—you don’t mind my saying it?—a little above everything, and apart, and quietly looking on.—How I understood what he felt for you! I felt it, too, I think, with him.”

Yes, dear flower and child, she had: offering to Charlie that last tribute of a woman’s worship, the imaginative love of the woman he loves; cherishing the cruelly sweet closeness of that piercing community. How she had idealized them both. How she had idealized Charlie’s love. Charlie had never seen her like this. Charlie had never dreamed of her as a muse, above, apart, and quietly watching. Why, with Pamela’s Charlie she herself could almost have been in love!

“What did you talk about, you and he,” she asked, “when you were together?” Their sylvan life, Pamela’s and Charlie’s, was almost as unknown to her as that of the birds they watched. She had almost a soft small hope that perhaps Pamela could show her something she had missed. “Did you ever talk about poetry, for instance?”

“No; never about things like that,” Pamela answered. “He talked more to the boys than to me; he talked to us all together—about what we were doing. But I used to love listening to him when he came and talked to father. Politics, you know; and the way things ought to be done. He was a great deal discouraged, you remember, by the way they were being done. All those unjust taxes, you know. He wanted, he used always to say, to give to the poor himself; he loved taking care of them. But he hated that his money should be taken from him like that, against his will. And he always, always foresaw the war; always knew that Germany was plotting, and how England swarmed with spies. He thought we ought to have declared war upon her long ago and struck first.—I’m rather glad we didn’t, aren’t you? because then, in a way, we should have been in the wrong rather than they; but of course he felt it as a statesman, not like an ignorant woman.—You think Germany plotted, too?”

“Yes, oh, yes.” How glad Rosamund was to be able to think it, to be able, here, with a clear conscience, to remember that, on the theme of Germany’s craft and crime, she and Charlie had thought quite sufficiently alike. “But I am with you about not striking first.”

“Are you really?” There was surprise in Pamela’s voice. She did not dwell on the slight perplexity. “Of course, he always worsted father if he disagreed. It was rather wicked of me, but I couldn’t help enjoying seeing father worsted. He’d never thought things out, as Mr. Hayward had. But that’s what he talked about—things like that—and you.”

“Me?” Rosamund’s voice was gentle, meditative—her old voice of the encounters with Charlie. How she could hear him through all Pamela’s candid recitative!

"He was always thinking about you. ‘My wife says so and so. My wife agrees with me about it. I brought my wife last night to see it as I do.’ Oh, you were with him in everything! It was so beautiful to see and hear! I used to imagine that the Brownings were like that—after I read their lives. He was a sort of poet, wasn’t he? Any one so loving and so happy is a sort of poet—even if they don’t write poetry. Down in the meadows one day, when we were watching lapwings, he and I and the boys,—he wanted to show us a nest; you know how difficult they are to find,—you passed up on the hillside, with Philip and Giles. We could see you against the larchwood, they in their holland smocks and you in white, with the white-and-yellow hat. I shall never forget the way he stood up and smiled, his eyes following you. 'There’s Rosamund and the progeny,' he said.—You know the dear, funny way he had of saying things."