Rose and Rose

by E. V. Lucas

“Would that be so unwise?” she asked.

“I don’t know that it would,” I said. “But I’d rather it didn’t happen yet.”

“Well,” she said. “If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen, no matter what you do. And if it isn’t, your taking them to Switzerland won’t make any difference. Both of them are rapidly reaching an age when no one can protect them. Nature will be in charge; not parents or Dr. Grevilles. Switzerland, wherever you go, will be full of young people, and they’ll both make friends, and very likely they’ll lose their hearts too. It’s out of your hands. Supposing you don’t go, it will be just the same.”

I acquiesced.

All went well for a few days. And then Ronnie, against my counsel, and also against Rose’s, which usually prevailed, joined a party on a bobsleigh, and was carried into the hotel, an hour later, with a fractured leg and a vast variety of bruises. I let the Fergussons know, assuring them that there was no danger, and together Rose and I, with the assistance of a nurse, got him through. He was fairly patient, but his disappointment was acute, and now and then under his weakness he broke down. More than once I went into the room to find Rose soothing him as though he were a baby. All his dependence came out, to be met by all her tenderness. I had not thought she possessed such hidden stores of it.

I must confess to feeling miserably out in the cold most of the time, for Ronnie, though he was as gay as possible with me, and brave enough under the pain that his dressings inflicted, was happy only with Rose, and I could not fail to see it. And he exacted far too much attention from her. I hardly had any of her company. She could not do this or that because Ronnie might want her; Ronnie would be lonely; she had promised Ronnie to read to him; she had sworn that when he woke up, no matter at what time, he should find her beside him. I admired her sense of duty—and resented it too!

After a fortnight the Fergussons joined us, to supervise their son’s recovery, and Rose and I went home, for she had her school and I my practice; but I was conscious that not all of her was with me in the train; and Ronnie’s parting from her, I realised, had been too emotional. Suddenly he had kissed her as though his heart was breaking, and she had almost to be torn away.

I have seen so many sick men under the influence of gratitude to their nurses that I did not lay very much stress on this incident; but I could not forget it. I wished, however, that Rose should, and during the journey back I did all that I could to distract her. She was very quiet at first, but gradually became more like herself, and by the time we reached home and she began to prepare for school she seemed usually, at any rate when with me, natural again and free from care. But away from me? And when she was day-dreaming? It was at these times that I realized again and bitterly how finite is our understanding of each other. We live alone! I would have given anything to be able to penetrate her thoughts, and help. But I could not.

Was she in love or merely reflective? Was she looking back or forward? I longed to know, but could not ask.

Mrs. O’Gorman cheered me up. “It’s likely it’s nothing at all,” she said. “Just a passing storm, even if that. Very few of the romances of seventeen persist. I was like that myself: my heart was broken a dozen times before I was Rose’s age, and at eighteen I seriously meditated suicide because my violin teacher was married. It was in Dublin. I remember to this hour the smell of the Liffey that came up to me as I leaned over Carlisle Bridge one evening coming back from a lesson, and pretended I wanted to drown myself and all my grief. No one could have entered such water as that! And ten days later I had forgotten all about the fiddler, and was inventing a novel with me the heroine and the hero an actor at the theatre that week, who didn’t even know of my existence. Maybe Rose will be like that. Don’t worry.”