Rose and Rose

by E. V. Lucas

“I’m glad of it,” she said. “I was hoping you might.”

“Other critics won’t be so well satisfied,” I said.

“Don’t mind them,” said Mrs. O’Gorman. “But what an adoptive fellow you are! You’re a regular creche! No children of your own, O dear no!—nothing so vulgar as marrying and begetting—but if anyone has a daughter going begging you’re the boy to bring it up! It’s amazing. How old are you?”

I told her. And I may as well tell every one: when Rose the second came to me for good I was fifty-six.

“Fifty-six!” she said. “The prime of life. Uphill till you’re fifty; then the top of the hill till you’re sixty; then the steady decline. It’s a foolish world, Doctor; there’s no steadiness in it. We’re always hurrying to the churchyard: some of us unassisted, others being pushed by our medical men.”

I told her that that was too old a joke for her to crack. We looked to her for something original.

“Old jokes are best,” she said. “At any rate, there’s something very sound in that old one about the advantage of adopting a child rather than having one of your own. Those, it says, who adopt choose, whereas those who have a child in the ordinary manner must put up with what they get. You’re one of the clever ones, Doctor; you choose. And may Rose the second turn out as pretty and as sweet as that other one! Bring her to me quickly. There’s no time to waste; when one is nearly eighty one can’t postpone.”

Little Rose quickly became a comfort, and she was like enough to her mother for me to feel that a benign miracle had been performed and the clock set back twenty years. It is given to few persons to enjoy a second time on earth, and I think of myself as peculiarly fortunate in having twice been the most intimate companion of a child. For my first Rose, I shall always have, I imagine, the tenderer spot; but the second Rose did perhaps more to cheer me, for I was much older when Eustace left her in my charge, and she helped to keep me young. It is possible that but for her mother I might have made more of a life of my own, and even, it is possible, have been the father of Roses. No one can tell—nor am I suggesting resentment or even disappointment. I am probably better qualified to bring up other people’s children than my own, and the world is over- rather than under-populated. But the Devil’s advocate, who thought of this possible count against the first Rose, would be hopelessly dumb when called upon to indict the second.

The second Rose was a more active child than her mother had been—not restless but alert—and there was little that did not interest her. Her mother had made her own entertainment, but this Rose found most of hers in the visible world. Nothing escaped her notice.

In the excitement of her new life she did not miss her mother with any poignancy, and seemed to be satisfied with the explanation of her absence that she had gone across the sea. This was true. Ronnie had left the army and he and Rose were on their way to the Malay States, where he was to grow rubber. As for Eustace, the child never mentioned him at all. He had been one of those fathers who are seen only at breakfast and on Sundays.