“Do you mean you have heard some harm of him?” said Rose, opening her eyes with a sudden start.
“Well, perhaps not any harm; I cannot quite tell what it was; but something which made your papa decide—in short, I don’t want to take too much notice of the Wodehouses as a family. They do not suit your papa.”
Rose walked on with her mother to the rectory gate, silent, with her heart swelling full. She did not believe that her father had anything to do with it. It was not he who was to blame, whatever Mrs. Damerel might say.
CHAPTER VI.
Nature took sides against Love on that evening, and made Mrs. Damerel’s warning unnecessary, and all the anticipations of the young persons of no avail. Instead of the evening stroll about the darkling garden which Wodehouse at least had proposed to himself, the party were shut up in the drawing-room by the sudden outbreak of that expected thunderstorm on which Mrs. Wodehouse and Mrs. Damerel had discussed so earnestly. The ladies had both felt that it must come, and the young sailor, I suppose, ought to have been more clearly aware of what was impending; but there are, no doubt, states of the mind which make a man totally indifferent to, and unobservant of, the changes of the atmosphere. Anyhow, though he arrived in the sweet beginning of the twilight, when all was still, poor Edward had not only to stay in-doors, but to take a seat next to Mrs. Damerel in the drawing-room; while Rose, who was somewhat nervous about the thunder, retired into a dark corner to which he dared not follow her boldly under the very eyes of her father and her mother. He did what he could, poor fellow: he tried very hard to persuade her to come to the other end of the room and watch the storm which was raging gloriously on the plain below, lighting up the whole landscape in sudden, brilliant gleams; for one of the windows had been left uncurtained and Mr. Damerel himself placed his chair within reach of it to enjoy the wonderful spectacle. Rose at one time longed so much to venture that her desire overmastered her fears; but the rector, who was somewhat fretful that evening, presumably on account of the storm, which affected his fine sensibilities, sent her away hurriedly. “No, no, Rose—what have you to do with storms?” he said; “go back to your mother.” When she obeyed, there was silence in the room; and though the elders did not care very much for it, I think the sharp disappointment of these two—a pang, perhaps, more keen and delicate than anything we can feel when the first freshness of youth is over—made itself spiritually felt somehow in the atmosphere of the place.
“Roses have nothing to do out of the rose garden,” said Mr. Damerel, with an attempt to overcome his own fretfulness, and perhaps a compunction over the suffering he caused. He was not in a humor for talking, and when this was the case he seldom gave himself the trouble to talk; but some covert feeling or other made him willing to attempt a diversion, for the moment at least. “I wish people had a more general conception of the fitness of things. Your namesakes out-of-doors take no pleasure in the storm. Poor roses, how it will batter and beat them down, and strew their poor helpless petals about!”
“I do not find fault with Rose for being timid,” said her mother; “but your craze about her name is fantastic, Herbert. She will have a good many storms to brave which she cannot escape from if she is to do her duty in life.”
“Then I hope she will not do her duty,” said the rector; “don’t, my Rose in June. I had rather see you sweet and fresh, with your rose heart unruffled, than draggled and battered with the rain. I’ll take the moral risk upon my own head.”
Mrs. Damerel uttered an impatient little exclamation under her breath. She turned to Wodehouse with an arbitrary and sudden change of the subject. “Do you expect to be long away?” she said.
“Two years at the very least,” said the young man, piteously, looking at her with such imploring eyes that she felt his look, though her own eyes were fixed upon her work, and neither could nor would see. She felt it; and as she was but a woman, though stern in purpose, she winced a little and was sorry for him, though she would not help him. Her voice softened as she replied,—