The Chaperon | Page 8

happened--nothing worse, that is, than her father's death; but no one had spoken of anything that any one else was thinking of.
Before she left the house a servant brought her a message from her grandmother--the old lady desired to see her in the drawing-room. She had on her bonnet, and she went down as if she were about to step into her cab. Mrs. Tramore sat there with her eternal knitting, from which she forebore even to raise her eyes as, after a silence that seemed to express the fulness of her reprobation, while Rose stood motionless, she began: "I wonder if you really understand what you're doing."
"I think so. I'm not so stupid."
"I never thought you were; but I don't know what to make of you now. You're giving up everything."
The girl was tempted to inquire whether her grandmother called herself "everything"; but she checked this question, answering instead that she knew she was giving up much.
"You're taking a step of which you will feel the effect to the end of your days," Mrs. Tramore went on.
"In a good conscience, I heartily hope," said Rose.
"Your father's conscience was good enough for his mother; it ought to be good enough for his daughter."
Rose sat down--she could afford to--as if she wished to be very attentive and were still accessible to argument. But this demonstration only ushered in, after a moment, the surprising words "I don't think papa had any conscience."
"What in the name of all that's unnatural do you mean?" Mrs. Tramore cried, over her glasses. "The dearest and best creature that ever lived!"
"He was kind, he had charming impulses, he was delightful. But he never reflected."
Mrs. Tramore stared, as if at a language she had never heard, a farrago, a galimatias. Her life was made up of items, but she had never had to deal, intellectually, with a fine shade. Then while her needles, which had paused an instant, began to fly again, she rejoined: "Do you know what you are, my dear? You're a dreadful little prig. Where do you pick up such talk?"
"Of course I don't mean to judge between them," Rose pursued. "I can only judge between my mother and myself. Papa couldn't judge for me." And with this she got up.
"One would think you were horrid. I never thought so before."
"Thank you for that."
"You're embarking on a struggle with society," continued Mrs. Tramore, indulging in an unusual flight of oratory. "Society will put you in your place."
"Hasn't it too many other things to do?" asked the girl.
This question had an ingenuity which led her grandmother to meet it with a merely provisional and somewhat sketchy answer. "Your ignorance would be melancholy if your behaviour were not so insane."
"Oh, no; I know perfectly what she'll do!" Rose replied, almost gaily. "She'll drag me down."
"She won't even do that," the old lady declared contradictiously. "She'll keep you forever in the same dull hole."
"I shall come and see YOU, granny, when I want something more lively."
"You may come if you like, but you'll come no further than the door. If you leave this house now you don't enter it again."
Rose hesitated a moment. "Do you really mean that?"
"You may judge whether I choose such a time to joke."
"Good-bye, then," said the girl.
"Good-bye."
Rose quitted the room successfully enough; but on the other side of the door, on the landing, she sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands. She had burst into tears, and she sobbed there for a moment, trying hard to recover herself, so as to go downstairs without showing any traces of emotion, passing before the servants and again perhaps before aunt Julia. Mrs. Tramore was too old to cry; she could only drop her knitting and, for a long time, sit with her head bowed and her eyes closed.
Rose had reckoned justly with her aunt Julia; there were no footmen, but this vigilant virgin was posted at the foot of the stairs. She offered no challenge however; she only said: "There's some one in the parlour who wants to see you." The girl demanded a name, but Miss Tramore only mouthed inaudibly and winked and waved. Rose instantly reflected that there was only one man in the world her aunt would look such deep things about. "Captain Jay?" her own eyes asked, while Miss Tramore's were those of a conspirator: they were, for a moment, the only embarrassed eyes Rose had encountered that day. They contributed to make aunt Julia's further response evasive, after her niece inquired if she had communicated in advance with this visitor. Miss Tramore merely said that he had been upstairs with her mother--hadn't she mentioned it?--and had been waiting for her. She thought herself acute in not putting the question of the girl's seeing him before her