Great Possessions | Page 2

be done for soldiers' wives and of a meeting the mother was to attend
that afternoon. Lady Charlton was the mother one would expect Rose
to have--indeed, such complete grace of courtliness and kindness points
to an education. Afterwards, while they were alone, Lady Charlton, in

broken sentences, sketched the future. She supposed Rose would stay
on although the house was too big. Much good might be done in it.
There could be no doubt as to how money must be spent this winter;
and there were the services they both loved in the Church of the Fathers
of St. Paul near at hand. Lady Charlton saw life in pictures and so did
Rose. Neither of them broke through any reserve; neither of them was
curious. It did not occur to Rose to wonder how her mother had lived
and felt in her first days as a widow. Lady Charlton did not wonder
how Rose felt now. Rose, she thought, was wonderful; life was full of
mercies; there was so much to be thankful for; and could not those who
had suffered be of great consolation to others in sorrow?
They arranged to meet at Evensong in St. Paul's Chapel, and then Lady
Charlton would come back and stay the night. On the next day she was
due at the house of her youngest married daughter.
Rose was presently left alone, and she cried quite simply. For a
moment she thought of Edmund Grosse and the sadness in his eyes.
Why had he not volunteered for the war? What a contrast!
A large photograph of Sir David in his general's uniform stood on the
writing-table in the study downstairs. There were also a picture and a
miniature in the drawing-room, but Rose thought she would like to look
at the photograph again. It was the last that had been taken. Then too
she would look over some of his things. She wanted little presents for
his special friends; nothing for its own value, but because the hero had
used them. And she would like to bring the big photograph upstairs.
The study, usually cold and deserted since the master had gone away,
was bright with a large fire. Rose did not know that it was an
expression of sympathy from the under-housemaid, whose lover was at
the war. But when she stood opposite the big photograph of the fine
manly face and figure, and the large open eyes looked so straight into
hers, she shrank a little. Something in the room made her shrink into
herself. Her eyes rested on the Victoria Cross in the photograph, on the
medals that had covered his breast. "I shall have them all," she said,
and then she faltered a little. She had faltered in that room before now;
she had often shrunk into herself when the intensely courteous voice

had asked her as she came into his study what she wanted. She blamed
herself gently now, and for two opposite reasons: she blamed herself
because she had wanted what she had not got, and she blamed herself
because she had not done more to get it. "He was always so gentle, so
courteous. I ought to have been quite, quite happy. And why didn't I
break through our reserve, and then we might----" Dimly she felt, but
she did not want to own it to herself, that she had married him as a
hero-worshipper. She had reverenced him more than she loved him. "I
ought not to have done it," she thought, "but I meant what was right,
and I could have loved him---- Oh, I did love him afterwards--only I
never could tell him, and----" Further thoughts led the way to
irreverence, even to something worse. They were wrong thoughts,
thoughts against faith and truth and right; there was no place for such
thoughts in Rose's heart. She moved now, and opened drawers and
dusted and put together a few things--paper-knives, match-boxes, a
writing-case, a silver sealing-wax holder, and so on; the occupation
interested and soothed her. She had the born mystic's love of little kind
actions, little presents, things treasured as symbols of the union of
spirits, all the more because of their slight material value. Then, too, the
child element, which is in every good woman, gave a zest to the
occupation and made it restful.
Lady Rose had put several small relics in a row on the edge of the
lower part of the big mahogany bookcase, and was counting on her
fingers the names of the friends for whom they were intended. Her grief
was sufficiently real to make her, perhaps, overestimate the number of
those to whom such relics would be precious. A tender smile was on
her lips at the recollection of an old soldier servant of Sir