Rose and Rose

by E. V. Lucas

It was while Ronnie was slowly mending, but still only the shadow of his normal self, that Rose and her little daughter came to stay with me. Rose had proposed the visit and I was only too glad to have them. Eustace, she said, was in Paris, on some commission of inquiry.

I had seen Rose-the-less occasionally, but only in London and on her best behaviour. Playing on my lawn she was more natural, and I delighted in her straight little body, her quick movements and her eager ways. She was like her mother, but unlike too—she had a hint of elfishness, which her mother lacked: she was less essentially womanly; and she had an imperious touch. She knew what she wanted and her enjoyment came largely through getting it, whereas her mother as a child had found things delectable as they came and had not chosen and demanded. But there was nothing unattractive in the child’s selective impulses: they did not suggest any kind of rapacity. For the rest, she was very like that earlier Rose. She made friends as quickly, she asked as many questions and she was happy all the time.

“Why does mother call you Dombeen?” was one of the first things she wanted to know.

I explained her difficulties with the word Greville.

“May I call you Dombeen too?” she asked.

I said that I should like nothing better.

Rose—my own Rose—I found older and graver. She could laugh still, and as her visit was prolonged she laughed oftener and gradually gave up the new habit of thinking visibly before she spoke. Her impulses being always gay or cordial or merrily mischievous, she need never have become cautious. But I could see that she had. It is melancholy indeed when a natural self-unconsciousness is destroyed: and that is what had happened. And how often I have seen it happen elsewhere! One of the prevailing superstitions of English husbands is that wives are better for being de-individualized.

One thing that a little perplexed me was Rose’s attitude to her daughter, which appeared to me curiously detached. I wondered sometimes if there were not some defective sympathy between them, as between Rose and the child’s father. Rose was kind and gentle and a delightful companion to the little girl; but no fierce maternal flame was discernible. I could have wished for a glimpse of such a fire: but there was none. It seemed to me a trifle hard on the mite that she should be at all out in the cold on account of other people’s affairs; but on the other hand she never seemed unhappy, or less happy than might be; and Rose had no intention of unfairness. Besides, human nature can’t be logical.

As Ronnie got better he came oftener and oftener to us, to lie in a deck-chair in the garden. Rose used to sit by him there and sometimes read to him, or he told little Rose about India, very much as the old Colonel had talked to her mother, but with additional modern piquancies. Now and then Rose and Ronnie returned to their battleground in the billiard-room; but he was not strong enough for a long game. Sir Edmund and Lady Fergusson would now and then walk over to accompany him back or push his wheeled chair.

Remembering the episode at St. Moritz, I was a little uneasy to see Ronnie and Rose so much together. But I did not feel strongly enough about it to interfere, even if interference had ever been my long suit. Besides, I was so glad to see Rose happy again. Moreover, Rose was grown up and a mother; Ronnie was grown up and ill. Not that being grown up adds anything to power of resistance when emotional temptations offer.