Rose and Rose

by E. V. Lucas

The fact that I didn’t ask her to explain, that I took it for granted that she was right, will indicate at once the kind of fatalist that I was, and our sub-conscious terms of understanding.

Rose was tired out—too tired to eat—and I am afraid that in the absence of Hannah, whose loss was a terrible disappointment—for although Rose had known of it she had not fully realized it—she cried herself to sleep.

I don’t pretend to have had much of a night’s rest myself, for such a false start as this was no part of the educational programme. Theodore’s phrase “bring her up to beat the band”—rang in my ears.

Was this beating the band? On the face of it, no. We must not run away. And yet (I argued) to run away often implies more character than to endure, and surely that was Rose’s case. She was not a coward, she was not self-indulgent; that I knew. Nor did she imagine things. Child as she was, I trusted her judgment and accepted the position. The school was horrid, and she couldn’t stay there; that was enough. I knew her sufficiently well to be sure that she would have put up with it if she had believed that any good could result; but she knew the reverse and she had acted accordingly. She had walked out of the house, found her way to the station, and the pocket-money I had given her and her own resourcefulness had done the rest.

The next morning I had a very pale and demure companion at breakfast. She also had evidently been thinking, and had seen that thus to take the law into her own hands was a proceeding of considerable magnitude—such magnitude that she looked dwarfed under it. But although subdued and pianissimo, there was no sign of weakness on her features. It may have been a gigantic effort of independence, but she did not regret it.

I had sent to Brighton a reassuring telegram (crossing one from Osborne House) on the previous evening, and on the arrival of a second telegram from Miss Saltoun saying that she was on her way to see me, I dispatched Rose to Mrs. O’Gorman’s for the day, with an explanatory note.

Not long afterwards a very indignant Miss Saltoun arrived for an interview. Her idea no doubt was to take Rose back with her; but I had no intention of permitting that. I did not even let them meet, to Miss Saltoun’s intense surprise. Should she be still alive, I doubt if her eyebrows have yet resumed their normal level, to such an altitude did she lift them when I announced my decision.

“But it is fatal to let a child behave like this,” she said. “It is the end of all discipline. What would come to the world if no one were punished?”

I said that Rose would not lack punishment. Her shame in not being able to remain at Brighton was punishment. She was not proud of herself at all, I said, even though she couldn’t do anything else but run away.

“But suppose every child ran away!” said Miss Saltoun. “What would the world come to!”