IV
It had gone on for five years, a life of boredom, of loneliness, mitigated only by the unfailing kindness of Miss Julie. A flat, insipid existence. She found the Humberts’ conversation unfailingly dull, their routine almost intolerably stupid. She longed beyond measure for the comfort and freedom of her old home.
All this had astounded Miss Julie. She was never able really to see how impossible was her task, never realised that she could not mould this fragile and wistful child into a Humbert. Or reach her. Material pleasures made no appeal to that simple soul; she cared next to nothing for good food, good clothes, a soft bed. She was always docile, thoroughly a good child, ready, obedient, sweet-tempered. She didn’t give the least trouble, and never asked for anything. But she nevertheless disappointed Miss Julie. She didn’t seem to change as she should have changed. Their cultured atmosphere didn’t transform her. She sat at their table night after night, meek and clean, with downcast eyes, never speaking unless spoken to, always and forever the poor widow’s child in the stranger’s house.
Miss Julie did her best. She sent her to school; she gave her kind and tactful information about baths and toothbrushes; she saw that she was well fed and nicely dressed. She took her to the circus every spring, and now and then to an entertainment considered suitable. Also she taught her to play a few babyish pieces on the piano, and, what most pleased the little girl, she had begun to teach her to draw. When all those activities were cut short by her death.
Even now, after five years, Rosaleen couldn’t bear to look back upon that. She had been desperate with grief, a little mad thing. She had been brought in to look for the last time at her friend, she had seen her lying there, much the same as usual, a stout, sallow woman with blunt, good-humoured features. And for the first time that face did not smile at her, that voice did not speak to console and to reassure her.
Miss Amy had no comfort to give. She had never liked the child. She consented now to keep her, because “dear Julie would have wished it,” but she kept her as a servant, an unpaid servant, with “privileges.” She sat at the table with them, she was still nicely dressed, she was given a little—a very little—pocket money. And she was permitted to go every Sunday afternoon to see her mother. Miss Amy had no inclination for continuing Miss Julie’s battle. She did not wish to improve Rosaleen. Miss Julie had tried with all her tact, all her ability, to divorce the child from her family, but Miss Amy encouraged intercourse. It helped to keep Rosaleen in her place.
CHAPTER THREE
I
Those days were gone now. There were no more of those Sunday afternoons in her mother’s kitchen. A sister had married well, and the whole family had migrated to Boston, where the unwilling and resentful son-in-law could “keep an eye” on them. Rosaleen had written two or three times to her mother, but had never had an answer. And with her sorrowful resignation, had given her up as lost.
But whenever a dark hour came, her memory flew back to that spot, recalled to her that time spent in the dreadful dirty old kitchen with her mother, a little bit intoxicated, seated before the table covered with oilcloth, and usually a neighbor or two, widow women, or married as it might be, all drinking tea and complaining. There was always a baby sister or brother crawling about the floor, and a cat; it was always warm, steamy, indescribably friendly. The depth of it, the vitality, the kind, consoling human flavour of it, of those slovenly women who were forever bearing children, whose talk was of life and death, of pain, sorrow and earthly joys! Compared with it, the hurried artificial conversation of Miss Amy and Mr. Humbert was like the talk of shadows....