In the Rectory there was a splendid library, full of books in all kinds of languages, treating of all countries, religions and philosophies; yet neither of the elder girls had opened one of them. They hardly realised that any other religion than the Christian existed, barely knew whether the world was round or square, knew no language but their own, had no conception of what was conveyed by the words Roman Empire, and had never heard of Troy. They played a very little on the piano and sung a little less, badly and out of time. They went to church regularly and visited the poor, because their parents insisted on their doing it, in their quality of the Rector's daughters, and Regina often wondered what the "poor" thought of them. The rest of the time they spent reading some novel that dealt exclusively with English life, for they could not understand any other; fashioning and refashioning their costumes, and hoping vaguely for the wealthy individuals they thought they deserved to come to the Rectory and insist on marrying them!
To Regina, who was up with the light of the dawn to read and study and work, who had absorbed already the learning of a quarter of the library, who had mastered Greek and Latin and read in five modern languages besides, though she had no opportunity of speaking them, who played really well and was endued with a natural gift for painting, the ignorance and apathy of her sisters were beyond understanding.
She did not know that her own splendid health and energy, her capacity for hard work and concentration, her quick and eager mind, all came from that golden source: the passionate love that had formed her being. Had she known the heavy handicap laid upon her sisters at their birth she would have pitied them even more than she did now, and wondered at them less.
By the time she reached the garden the sun was low in the sky and great bars of yellow light fell all across the vivid green amongst the standing roses. She opened and closed the gate very softly, for the birds were singing, and the white doves that belonged to the Chalet were cooing, and she did not want to jar upon the concert. She entered silently, and slowly walked round the winding paths, her whole being lifted up and expanding in the peace and fragrance and beauty of this radiant solitude.
How many afternoons and evenings had she not walked there alone! And now, to-morrow perhaps, she would bring the stranger there to see it. Would he feel the enchantment of it as she did, she wondered, or would he say, as her father had done: "Those roses, you know, Regina, ought to be in beds; it's absurd having them all over the place like this."
That should be the test, she thought: if he said anything like that, or if he suggested that the wild tamarisks should be cut down or thinned out, she would not care about him.
It was a curious fact that, in all her reverie concerning him, it never once occurred to her to picture what his feelings might be for her: she was wholly absorbed in wondering what her feelings might be towards him. So far in her experience with men, and it had not been very wide or deep, she had found them uniformly fall in love with her, and she had grown to accept this, without paying much attention to it, as a common habit of theirs, like smoking.
The doctor had wanted her to marry him and preside over the village dispensary; the curate had wanted her to marry him and manage coal clubs and write his sermons for him all the rest of her life; the Latin master had wanted her to marry him and take his boys' class in Greek verse, and the same master's assistant had wanted her to marry him and run away to London with him; but to all of these Regina had said a very gentle No, though her heart had beat at their words and her colour had come and gone uncertainly, for she unconsciously responded to all love as the bell responds to the vibration of the note to which it is attuned.
Regina, naturally, never spoke to anyone of these offers and refusals, but they gradually became known in the village, as everything is always known in an English village. When the grumpy doctor became more surly and grumpy than ever; when the Latin master took to caning his boys every day instead of every week; when the curate came to church whiter than his surplice, with dark rings under his eyes, and the assistant master went away to town and shot himself in his lodgings there, it was all put down to Regina, and her conduct in having had four proposals was called "disgraceful" by the ladies in the village who had not had one, and were twice and three times her age.
The curate asked her if it was not very miserable for a woman to feel she was making a man unhappy, and Regina had answered very truly: "Yes; but she gets accustomed to it." She could not marry them all, and had she married one the other three would still have been unconsoled. So, when she was being abused and reproached for her heartlessness, she simply went away to the enchanted garden and tried to forget about all of them. Her sisters' strange conceit in themselves prevented them from owing her any ill-will for these events.