Great Possessions | Page 6

high motives had been assigned to Lord
Charlton's most ordinary actions, and happily he had been so ordinary a
person that no impossible shock had been given to the ideal built up
about him. And it had not been difficult or insincere to carry on
something of the same illusion with regard to the man who had won the
Victoria Cross and had been very popular with Tommy Atkins. David
Bright's very reserves, the closed doors in his domestic life, did not
prevent, and indeed in some ways helped, the process. The mother had
known in the depth of her heart that Rose was lonely, but then she was
childless. Rose had never, even in moments when the nameless mystery
that was in her home oppressed her most in its dull, voiceless way, tried
to tell her mother what she did not herself understand. Sir David had
been courteous, gentle, attentive, but never happy. Rose knew now that
he had always been guiltily afraid.
Lady Charlton had had a few moments' warning of disaster, for she was
horrified at the change in Rose's face when she met her at the door of
the church after Evensong. She herself had been utterly soothed and
rested by the beauty of the service. There was so much that fitted in
with all her ideals in mourning the great soldier. Little phrases about
him and about Rose flitted through her mind. Widows were widows
indeed to Lady Charlton. Rose would live now chiefly for Heaven and
to soothe the sorrows of earth. She did not say to herself that Rose
would not be broken-hearted and crushed, nor did she take long views.
If years hence Rose were to marry again her mother could make
another picture in which Sir David would recede into the background.
Now he was her hero whom Rose mourned, and whose loss had
consecrated her more entirely to Heaven; then he would unconsciously

become in her mother's eyes a much older man whom Rose had
married almost as a child. There would be nothing necessarily to mar
the new picture if all else were fitting.
But the peace of gentle sorrow had left Rose's face, and it wore a look
her mother had never seen on it before. The breath of evil was close
upon her; it had penetrated very near, so near that she seemed evil to
herself as it embraced her. She was too dazed, too confused to
remember that Divine purity had been enclosed in that embrace. What
terrified her most was the thought that had suddenly come that possibly
the unknown woman in Florence had been the real lawful wife, and that
her own marriage had been a sin, a vile pretence and horror. For the
first time in her life the grandest words of confidence that have
expressed and interpreted the clinging faith of humanity seemed an
unreality. Rose had never known the faintest temptation to doubt
Providence before this miserable evening. She resented with her whole
being the idea that possibly she had been the cause of the grossest
wrong to an injured wife. And there was ground in reason for such a
fear, for it seemed difficult to believe that any claim short of that of a
wife could have frightened Sir David into such a course. The other and
more common view, that it was because he had loved his mistress
throughout, did not appeal to her. Vice had for her few recognisable
features; she had no map for the country of passion, no precedents to
refer to. It seemed to Rose most probable that Sir David had believed
his first wife to be dead when he married her; that, on finding he was
mistaken, his courage had failed, and that he had carried on a gigantic
scheme of bribery to prevent her coming forward. This view was in one
sense a degree less painful, as it would make him innocent of the first
great deception, the huge lie of making love to her as if he were a free
man. The depths and extent of her misery could be measured by the
strange sense of a bitter gladness invading the very recesses of her
maternal instinct, and replacing what had been the heartfelt sorrow of
six years. "It is a mercy I have no child!" she cried, and the cry seemed
to herself almost blasphemous.
When she came out of the church it was raining, and the wind blowing.
It was only a short walk to her own house, and she and her mother had

made a rule not to take out servants and the carriage for their devotions.
She would have walked on in total silence, but her mother could not
bear the suspense.
"Rose, what is it?" she cried, in a