The Chaperon | Page 8

boxes, an ordering of

four-wheelers; it appeared to old Mrs. Tramore that something of the
objectionableness, the indecency, of her granddaughter's prospective
connection had already gathered about the place. It was a violation of
the decorum of bereavement which was still fresh there, and from the
indignant gloom of the mistress of the house you might have inferred
not so much that the daughter was about to depart as that the mother
was about to arrive. There had been no conversation on the dreadful
subject at luncheon; for at luncheon at Mrs. Tramore's (her son never
came to it) there were always, even after funerals and other miseries,
stray guests of both sexes whose policy it was to be cheerful and
superficial. Rose had sat down as if nothing had 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