there was sunshine enough without to have tempted the most obstinate recluse into the fields. but as little as she had heeded november rain did rosamond now heed the brightness of this opening december. while the old attic room held her bodily presence, her soul was once again back in the past. the past ... where, after all, she had not lived, and which (strange poignant lesson of fate!) was now to become to her more living than the present.
those letters, those early memorials, the very thought of which had once inspired dread, now drew her like a magnet. scarcely could she give herself to the necessary facts of life, so impatiently did she long for those solitary hours in his room, with him!
every trifling note of his was pored over, dreamt upon in its turn. she had it in her to have lingered days upon a single line. yet there was the sweetness of a tender surprise in every fresh sheet she took into her hands. and now it was her first "love letter" that she held.
it had come to her in the morning after their meeting in the salt wind, amid the gorse; had been brought to her—in the ugly top bedroom—on a basket brimming over with flowers. she could see them again, breathe them again: hot-house roses, languid-white and heavy-headed yellow, a huge clump of heliotrope, lily of the valley bound by its pale green sheaths, sharp-scented, waxen ... then the narcissus, the jonquil, the darling commoner herd of spring things that had pushed their way in the open gardens! all this to rosamond, starved of beauty, rosamond who was wont to fill her vases with the budding boughs that the hedges give the gardenless! she had buried her face in the velvet coolness, drawn in the perfume as if she was drawing in the loveliness to her soul. through the waste of those ten years she could again feel the touch of the petals on her cheek—she was back again, back again in her maidenhood and held her first love letter between her hands. was it possible that the faded nondescript leaf that fell from between its pages had once been part of that exquisite basketful that could still bloom for her?
darling (wrote harry english)—these are all i can send you. i wanted to send you roses, love, worthy of my rose, the only rose, of rosamond, rose of the world! i half dreamed of them last night, red, red, glowing, deep-scented like my love for you. i can find nothing but these pale mawkish things, far though i have hunted this morning! ...
this morning—and it was now but nine o'clock. how early he must have risen! it was not the rosamond, the hard young untouched rosamond of those old days, who thought thus with a mist before the eyes; it was the new rosamond whose heart was beginning to teach her so many things.
early had the lover risen indeed!
i could not sleep (went on the letter) for sheer tumult of happiness. i saw the dawn break over the water out on the sea bastion of this old fort. the sea was quite wrapt in mist, and i and my heart seemed first alone high up in the air, with the wash of the invisible waters below and the restless tapping of the flag line on the staff over my head. and then the dawn came. it seemed to me the first dawn i had ever beheld, i, who have marched through many an indian night and seen such fires as england never dreams of. but i look upon the world with new eyes. the meaning of things has become clear to me. i never saw beauty before i saw you; and through you, all other beauty is fulfilled to me. grey and dove-coloured and pearl, faint roses and yellows and opals—the mists first became impregnated with all lovely tints and then rolled away. then there was a straight ray of sun across the sea at my feet, and the water was gold and green. glorious! why do i write all this to you? i have never even thought of such things before. will you laugh at me? i, who have known you for such a little while? but i have waited for you all the years of my manhood—this much i know at least. and you, who are the meaning of everything to me now, you will know the meaning of my heart.
all the meaning of her lover to rosamond tempest, in the top room over the straggling back garden, had been that he was her deliverer from an existence of utter negation. she had read his words with the same pleasure with which she had gazed upon his flowers, inhaled their fragrance: it had represented a new atmosphere of colour and beauty!
but now, as she bent over that faded leaf and read those vivid words from a hand long dust, her whole being gave itself responsive to the love that still spoke.
* * * * *
in the garden below, under the nipped frost-bitten leaves, aspasia poked about for hidden violets. from its bare brown stalks she had already culled the last dwindled chrysanthemum. when rosamond and she, in the marshalled palace of sir arthur, had planned this homely occupation, it had seemed an almost deliriously joyful prospect of freedom. now, such is the futility of the granted wish, aspasia, as she flicked with impatient fingers among the wet foliage, was a prey to that abandonment of melancholy which is rarely known in its perfection after twenty. indeed, poor baby's outlook upon the world that december noon was a pitiable one. the only man she could have loved was dead before she had even known him! another man, whom she was certain she could never have cared for, displayed the most reprehensible indifference as to whether he were as much as remembered. and those wonderful piano recitals of the gifted young genius, miss aspasia cuningham, seemed hopelessly remote.
she could not even muster a smile for the kitten as it suddenly cantered across the path, every individual hair bristling, body contorted, and legs stiffened, to box a hanging leaf and fall prone on its back with four paws wildly beating the air. the very kitten was part of the general unsatisfactoriness of things. when she did have the heart to play with it, it was never to be found: but it had a puck-like knowledge of the ripe moment when to mock her misery.
indeed, the claims of the eager young life were somewhat neglected in this old home of dreams.
aspasia walked, in royal dignity of dolour, back to the house, set the violets in two shallow vases, and the chrysanthemum in a high narrow one. she placed the portable easel upon the open leaf of the grand piano; she detached from its panel the portrait of captain english with the sad stern face, propped it on the easel, arranged her flowers round it, all with the solemn air of one going through a religious rite. then she sat down, heaved a noisy sigh from the depth of her little round chest, and began to play those throbbing strains of passion, yearning disappointment, and sorrow that, the legend says, came to chopin one day, through the beat of raindrops against his window panes, as he waited for her who failed him.
baby had begun to find out that even in so serious an art as music those paltry things, the emotions, will insist on finding expression. she was in a very pretty state of artistic woe when, with a sudden discord, the love notes fell mute. from the shadowy window-seat a tall figure had risen and come forward: eyes, ablaze with anger, were fixed upon her from a white and threatening face.
"aunt rosamond! ..." stammered the girl, too much startled to do anything but sit and stare.
"how dare you?" said lady gerardine, in a low voice, hardly above a whisper indeed, but charged with intense anger. she walked up to the piano and stood looking a second at the altar-like arrangement; then her eyes returned to aspasia, who now blushed violently, guiltily, in spite of an irrepressible childish desire to giggle.
"you shameless girl!" said rosamond. "how dare you! what have you to do with him?" she took up the picture. "he is mine," she said, "mine only!" then, holding it clasped to her breast, she swept from the room.
"upon my word!" said miss aspasia. "good gracious goodness me!" resentment got the better of amusement; her cheeks were flaming scarlet, she struck a series of defiant chords, as a sort of war cry in pursuit of the retreating figure. "shameless girl, indeed; i've as much right to him, by this time, as anybody else, i should think. in heaven there's no marriage or giving in marriage ... and, if it comes to that, what about runkle then?"
she plunged into the noisiest, most dishevelled wagner-liszt piece of her repertory; crashed, banged, and pounded till the staid old manor-house seemed to ring with amazement, and the exasperated player, with flying hands, loosened hair, empurpled countenance, and panting breath, could hardly keep her seat in the midst of her own gymnastics.
henceforth there was one room in the manor-house without its presiding picture. and, opposite rosamond's bed, where the tender child's face had once watched the mother's slumbers, the soldier now looked down sternly and sadly upon the wife.
