Great Possessions | Page 8

be suppressed--to be prayed for; but it was not necessary to try to take a falsely charitable view of her, or invent unlikely circumstances in her defence. It was a relief to the darkest of all dark thoughts in Rose's mind, the doubt of the validity of her own marriage, to hear her mother settling this question as she had settled so many questions years ago, by the weight of personal authority.
At last the clock on the stairs below told them that it was two in the morning, and Lady Charlton had to leave London by an early train. She was torn between the claim of her youngest married daughter, who was laid up in a lonely country house in Scotland, and that of Rose in this new and miserable trouble.
"I could telegraph to Bertha that I can't come," she said suddenly. "But I am afraid she would miss me."
"No, no," murmured Rose firmly, "Bertha needs you most now; you must go," and then, fearing her mother might think she did not want her quite, quite enough, "I shall look forward to your coming back soon, very soon."
"Could you--could you come and sleep in my room, Rose?" They were standing up by the fireplace now.
"If you like mother, only it will be worse for me to-morrow night." They both looked away from the fire round the room--the room that had been hers since the first days after the honeymoon.
Then at the same moment Lady Charlton opened her arms and Rose drew within them, and leant her fair head on her mother's shoulder. So they stood for a few moments in absolute stillness.
"God bless you, my child," and Rose was left, as she wished, alone.
CHAPTER III
"AS YOU HOPE TO BE FORGIVEN"
Two months passed, and at last the War Office received a parcel for Lady Rose Bright. It had been sent to headquarters by the next officer in command under Sir David, who had met his own fate a few weeks later. Rose received the parcel at tea-time, brought to her by a mounted messenger from the War Office.
A great calm had settled in Rose's soul during these weeks. She had met her trouble alone and standing. At first, all had been utter darkness and bitter questioning. Then the questioning had ceased. Even the wish to have things clear to her mind and to know why she should have this particular trial was silenced, and in the completeness of submission she had come back to life and to peace. Nothing was solved, nothing made clear, but she was again in the daylight. But when she received the little parcel in its thick envelope she trembled excessively. It was addressed in a handwriting she had never seen before. She could not for some moments force herself to open it. When she did she drew out a faded photograph, a diamond ring, and a sheet of paper with writing in ink. The photograph was of Sir David as quite a young man--she had never seen it before; the ring had one very fine diamond, and that she had never seen before. On the paper was written in his own hand.--
"This will be brought to you if I die in battle. Forgive me, as you too hope to be forgiven. Justice had to be done. I have tried to make it as little painful as I could."
That was all. There was nothing else in the envelope. She took up the photograph, she took up the ring, and examined them in turn. It was so strange, this very remarkable diamond, which she had never seen before, sent to her as if it were a matter of course. He had never worn much jewellery, and he had left in her care the few seals and rings he possessed. Then the photograph of her husband as a young man, so much younger than when she had known him. Why send it to her now? What had she to do with this remote past? But the paper was the most astonishing of all. She had been standing when she undid the things; she left the ring and the photograph on the table, and she sank into a chair near the fire holding the bit of paper. The tone of it astonished and confused her. It was more the stern moralist asking to be forgiven for doing right than the guilty husband asking for mercy in her thoughts of him.
"Yes," thought Rose at length, "that is because she was his wife, and when he came to face death it was the great wrong of infidelity to her that haunted him. I must have seemed almost a partner in the wrong."
Again the confused sense of guilt seized her, the horrible possibility of having been a wife only in name. She did