Part 21 (1/2)
”We shall return to Bellevue next week,” she wrote, ”though what possible benefit can accrue from our returning I cannot pretend to say. Either home is distasteful to me; so is the rest of the world; so are the people in it. Enviable condition, is it not? I seem to be afflicted with a sort of dreadful mental indigestion. Everything I see and hear and read disagrees with me, so I suppose it is only a natural consequence that I should be disagreeable. Oh, dear, dear! What is the good of living, Rose? What is the use or beauty of anything? The Rev.
the Archdeacon of York half-playfully says I need to be regenerated.
Dr. Widmer says my circulation is weak. Poor mamma says nothing; but she looks a world of reproach. I wish she would take the scriptural rod to me. That would improve the circulation, I fancy; and if it didn't produce a state of regeneration it might at least be a practical step towards it. But I don't know why I should make a jest of my own misery, when I want nothing on earth except to be a little child again, so I could creep off into the long gra.s.s somewhere, and cry all my sick heart away. I used to be able to cry when I was five or six years old, but now it is a lost art.
”By the way, speaking of tears reminds me that your friend, Mr.
Dunlop, was here last evening, and, while shewing him some views of foreign scenes, we suddenly came across that old, little painting of yourself, in which the artist represented you as a stiff-jointed child, with a row of curls the colour and shape of shavings neatly glued to a little wooden head. You remember how we used to make fun of it. I always said that picture was bad enough to bring tears, and there was actually quite a perceptible moisture in his eyes as he looked at it. Who would have supposed that he possessed so much aesthetic sensibility?
”Well, I am only wearying you, so I will close. Don't be troubled about me, dear. Sometimes I am violently interested in my own unreasonable sufferings, and at other times I am wholly indifferent to them; but nothing can befall my perverse nature that shall alter the tenderness always existing for you in the heart of your loving
HELENE.”
Rose read all but the concluding paragraphs aloud to her brother, who, standing at the open door, was looking idly out upon the leaf and blossom of a lovely garden. ”What a stream of unalloyed egotism!” he said. ”In a woman it's a detestable quality.”
”Oh, you should say a rare quality,” amended Rose, with a smile that ended in a sigh.
”Well, it's something that can't be too rare.” A fading spring lily dropped on the doorstep by one of the children received an impatient kick, as though he would dismiss the present conversation in a similar manner. ”Rose,” he said, ”I wish you would ask Wanda to our sailing-party to-morrow.”
”Why, Edward, I might as well ask a blue-bird. She will come if it happens to suit her inclination at the moment, otherwise not.”
”Don't you think a regular invitation would please her?”
”Oh, dear, no; it isn't as though she were a civilized creature. You don't seem to grasp the fact that she's only a wild thing of the woods.”
A pause ensued. ”There are other facts,” resumed Edward a little unsteadily, ”that I _have_ grasped. One is that she is the most beautiful woman I ever saw; another--that I love her.”
Rose put up her hands as though to save her eyes from some hideous sight, ”It can't be true!” she exclaimed.
”My dear little sister, it is true; and your inability to accept it is not a very flattering tribute to my good taste.”
”It _can't_ be true,” repeated Rose. ”You must mean that you have merely taken a fancy to her.”
”Well, it is a fancy that has grown to enormous proportions. I cannot live without her. If that is fancy it has all the strength of conviction.”
”Oh, Edward, you can't really love her. It is only her beauty that you care for.”
”You might as well say that the sunflower doesn't really love the sun; it is only the suns.h.i.+ne that it cares for. Wanda's beauty is part of herself.”
”And it will remain so a dozen, or perhaps a score, of years. After that you will have for your wife a coa.r.s.e ignorant woman, forever chafing at the restrictions of civilized life; angering, annoying and humiliating you in a thousand ways, a woman whom you cannot admire, whom it will be impossible for you to respect.”
Edward's eyes blazed. Not until that moment did his sister realize how complete was his infatuation for Wanda.
”It is you who are ignorant and coa.r.s.e,” he cried, ”in your remarks upon the girl who is my promised wife. No matter what befalls her, she will always be clothed in the unfading beauty of my love.”
Rose was deeply grieved. She stood with clasped hands looking despairingly at her brother. ”You poor boy,” she breathed, ”you poor motherless boy! What can I say to you?”
”Well, there are a good many things that you can say; but what I should prefer you to say would be to the effect that you will break it as gently as possible to Papa.”
”I shall not break it at all,” declared the girl warmly. ”It would nearly kill poor father. Haven't you any consideration for him?”
”Yes; sufficient to make me wish that the truth should be clothed in your own sweet persuasive accents, when it is conveyed to him. I don't wish to jar him any more than is necessary.”
”Edward, you are perfectly heartless!”