‘Where is Rose Wilcox?’ was the universal query.
‘She’s give up religion, and gone off to the Church, I suppose,’ said the senior deacon, who was president on the occasion.
‘I fear it is worse than that,’ whispered a young female teacher, who, as the neighbour of the missing Rose, was supposed to know more of her movements than anyone else.
‘I can’t say I am surprised; indeed, I may say it is only what I expected,’ continued the senior deacon, ‘considering how frivolous she was, and how little her family availed themselves of the means of grace.’
The senior deacon’s words commended themselves to all. Rose Wilcox was volatile. She was at that critical age when most pretty girls are so—a time of life always severely criticised by those who have passed it, or who have been preserved by kindly circumstances from its many dangers, and who ignore the godly and humane advice of Burns:
‘Then gently scan your brother Man,
Still gentler sister Woman.’
The Rose thus criticised was, perhaps, the prettiest girl in all the town. Her father had been an officer in the navy, who had married for love a wife who had nothing to give him but a pretty face and a loving heart. For a time they lived humbly but comfortably on his half-pay. They had two children, a son and a daughter. The former grew up wild and wayward, and was a sad trouble to the family on the occasion of his visits on shore; for he was a sailor, like his father. Rose was her father’s companion. He taught her all that he knew himself: to read Shakespeare; to get a smattering of French; to play a little on the piano. But he became involved in debt through becoming a surety for an old friend who had no one else to stand between him and impending ruin, and that friend, alas! left him in the lurch, or, in other words, handed him over to his creditors, and he died broken-hearted, leaving his wife and daughter almost penniless and friendless. The mother then moved to Sloville, where she managed, with the assistance of her daughter, to secure a scanty living as milliner and dressmaker—a calling which she had followed before she became a wife, and where, almost to her alarm and at the same time much to her pride, she beheld her daughter grow handsomer and lovelier every day.
The Sloville people said Rose was the prettiest girl in the town, and they were right. The landlord of the leading hotel would have given anything to have secured her services at the bar. The snobs of the place were much given to pester her with their impertinence, while lads of a lower grade inundated her with valentines and poetical effusions, as amorous as they were ill-spelt and badly written; and gay Lotharios in the shape of commercials, far removed from the chastening influences of their own lawful spouses, said to her all sorts of silly things on their occasional visits to the town and her mother’s shop.
As the world goes, this was not much to be wondered at. Even in the good houses round the Park, where all the best families lived, and where carriage company was kept, it was to be questioned whether any more attractive young lady could be found than Rose, in spite of the plainness of her dress and the humble drudgery of her daily life. In no conservatory in that part of the world were to be seen fairer roses than those which adorned her cheeks. Her profile was exquisitely classical; her every action graceful. No lady in the town had such a head of rich brown hair, none so downy a cheek of loveliest pink, none a blue eye so lustrous or sparkling, none a more melodious voice. Many a Belgravian maiden would have given a fortune to have had a hand as delicately formed, a waist as tempting, a step as elastic, a figure as fair, a carriage as superb, a smile as irresistible.
Personal advantages, declaim against them as we will—though why we should do so I know not, since they are the gift of God, and not to be bought with hard cash—are of inestimable value to a woman. It is no use arguing with a jury, Serjeant Ballantine tells us, when the plaintiff or defendant, as the case may be, is a pretty woman, and that it was the same in the time of the Athenians the case of Phryne is an illustration. Is it not Balzac who tells us that the faintest whisper of a pretty woman is louder than the trumpet-call of duty? Nevertheless, a poor girl whose only dower is her beauty finds it often a perilous gift. Indeed, it was owing to this very possession that poor Rose had the world at a disadvantage. She had been spoilt by an indulgent father, and her fond mother was little fitted to act the part of a guide, philosopher, and friend in the perplexities and temptations of real life. Her brother was of no avail, as when at sea he was too far away, and when on shore he had shown a thoughtlessness and heedlessness which made him a burden rather than a help.