Chapter XI: Rosalie

“Imagine something purer far,
More free from stain of clay,
Than friendship, love or passion are,
Yet human still as they.
And if thy lip for love like this
No mortal word can frame,
Go ask of angels what it is,
And call it by that name.”—_Moore._

Rosalie Vivian and Robert Bloomfield reached home just as the carriage containing Colonel Ashley rolled into the yard. The old gentleman alighted, greeted the young people with a most cheerful and kindly smile, and with unusual vigour and lightness tripped up stairs into the house. His servant, laden with packets of newspapers and letters, followed.

“You may take my word for it, Rosalie, that the Colonel has received some excellent news by this morning’s mail! And now just observe the power of the soul over the body! Joyful news will so rejuvenate infirm old age, that it will skip about, elastic as youth. Witness Colonel Ashley, who stepped up those stairs more lightly than I ever saw him move in my life; while disappointment and sorrow will so enfeeble youth that it will move about drooping like paralytic age. Witness me ready to drop from my saddle with exhaustion—from your unkindness, Rosalie!”

“I am not unkind, nor do you look very much prostrated, let me say, Robert! But will you not come in?”

“No,” mournfully replied the young man, assisting her to alight.

“You had better—we have strawberries for the first time this spring.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Robert, with an offended air.

“Strawberries from uncle’s premium conservatory, and cream from my own premium dairy; you had better think it over!”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Robert, contemptuously.

“Oh, _then_, there’s no more to be said, of course!”

“Good morning, Rosalie!”

“Good morning, Robert; but won’t you shake hands with me?” she asked, offering her hand. He seized that little hand, and squeezed it and pressed it to his lips, and with an expression of curiously-blended deprecation and reproach, dropped it, mounted his horse, and galloped away.

Mrs. Vivian was standing dawdling with a white rose in the piazza. She came forward, with tender care, to meet Rosalie. “Did you ride far—are you tired, love?”

“Not very.”

“But you look pale and wearied.”

“A moment’s rest will restore me, dear mamma.”

“Come in and sit down, while I take off your things,” said the kind little lady, leading her stepchild into the parlour. She sat her down in a deep-cushioned chair, rang the bell, ordered a cordial, and then removed her hat and riding skirt. When she had made Rosalie take a cracker and a little glass of anise-seed cordial, and when the salver was removed, and they were left alone, Rosalie reclining upon the sofa, Valeria sitting in the easy chair near her, the lady inquired—

“Why did not Robert come in?”

“I do not know, unless it was because he did not wish to do so.”

“Have you quarrelled?”

“Quarrelled! Dear mamma, I never had a quarrel with any one in all my life, and never expect to have one with anybody—least of all with Bob.”

“That is no reason you should not have a lover’s quarrel—_they_ befall the most amiable pair. Is it so?”

“What, mamma?”

“Have you and Robert had a ‘lover’s quarrel?’”

“No, indeed—I assure you.”

“Yet Robert went away offended—‘in dudgeon,’ as uncle would say.”

Rosalie looked distressed. The lady eyed her searchingly.

“Rosalie, will you let me speak to you frankly, and ask you a few questions?”

“Certainly, dear mamma; I would turn my heart inside out, and show you its most hidden secret, if it had any secrets.”

“Well, then, are you and Robert engaged?”

“No, mamma.”

“He has not yet proposed, then?”

“I scarcely know, mamma, whether I ought to reveal poor Robert’s confidences.”

“Well?”

“Well, mamma!”

“You did not reject him?”

“Yes, madam.”

“I’m astonished! How long ago has this been?”

“Dear mamma, twelve months ago Robert first did me the honour of offering his hand, and I gratefully declined it.”

“Yet continued to keep his company! Oh, Rosalie! Well, has he ever renewed his proposals?”

“Yes, mamma, several times.”

“And you have continued to reject them?”

“Of course, mamma.”

“And yet you still accept his attentions! Oh, Rosalie!”

“Was I—am I wrong, mamma?” asked Rosalie, looking up from where she reclined upon the sofa.

The lady sat with her hands clasped upon her knees, in a simple attitude, with her eyes fixed in sorrowful doubt upon her child.

“Do you ever mean to review your decision, and accept him, Rosalie?”

“Never, mamma, I assure you!”

“Are you very certain, Rosalie?”

“Certain, dear mamma, beyond all possibility of doubt.”

“If I could believe it”——

“Dear mamma, you may rest assured of it! Why, if I thought it was to be my fate to marry Robert Bloomfield, well as I like him, I think I should die of grief!”

“And yet you keep his company! Oh! Rosalie, I am surprised.”

“Is it not right, mamma?”

“What a simple question! Oh, child! if it were not you, I should say it is unprincipled!”

“Mamma, you distress and alarm me! Why must I not keep poor Robert’s company, when he takes so much comfort in my society?”

“Comfort! Does he take comfort—do you call it comfort? No, Rosalie, it is a feverish, consuming hope that keeps him at your side; a wasting, baleful hope, which, since you do not intend to realize to him, it is your bounden duty to extinguish forever!”

“Mamma! I do not quite understand you. I am sorry, very sorry, that I cannot return Robert’s regard”——

“Oh!” exclaimed the lady, interrupting her, “I am not sorry for _that_: as to _that_, I am very glad you are not engaged to him, nor ever likely to be; but”——

“But why add to the grief of rejection the bitterness of ingratitude and coldness?”

“To refuse his attentions, to deny him your company, would not be either the one or the other, and it is your duty.”

“When poor Robert has no consolation in the world but my company”——

“To say he has no other intoxication, would be nearer the truth. Rosalie, you are so young, so delicate, so _spirituelle_, so inexperienced. Rosalie, there is a kindness that is cruel, and that is what you have been showing ‘poor Robert’ all this time. And there is a cruelty that is kind, and that is what you must show him now.”

“Mamma, if you think it wrong, I will never ride with him again.”

“And avoid him as much as possible, Rosalie.”

“Indeed I will, mamma. Poor Robert!”

“Fudge! It will not hurt him. The flame without fuel will soon expire harmlessly.”

By this time the young girl had quite recovered from her fatigue, and she arose and left the room, to prepare her strawberries, she said.

She passed into a pleasant back room, connected with the pantry and dining-room, but opening upon the garden, and devoted to certain light dessert preparations; such as the shelling of peas, stoning of cherries, &c. It was a cool apartment, with a bare, white oak floor, and many doors and windows open, and looking out upon the pleasant garden, with its budding spring flowers—its roses, hyacinths, and daffodils—and upon the orchard, with its peach trees and cherry trees, covered with pink and with white blossoms, and further off, upon the green and dewy wheat field, lying in fertile dales between gray and mossy rocks and mountains. It was indeed a pleasant apartment, looking out upon a fresh, verdant, rural scene. Rosalie sat down in the midst of the room, with a basket of fresh strawberries on her right hand, an empty basket to receive the caps on her left, and a cut-glass dish on her lap. She chose to do this. She had a decided attraction to these little graceful domestic avocations; and as her nimble fingers capped the strawberries, and dropped berries in the dish, and threw caps in the basket, she began to sing some lively rural glee; and while she was busily engaged, singing and capping, she chanced to look up, and saw Mark Sutherland approaching the house from the garden. He met her glance, and smiled. She was in a merry mood, or she would not have felt free to say to him what she did.

“Come in, Mr. Sutherland; I have got something for you, very nice!”

Mark came in, and she said, “Make a bowl of your joined hands, now, and here!”

She poured into his hands some fine large strawberries, adding,

“These are the first fruits of the season, Mr. Sutherland, and we offer them to you.”

“Let me first merit them, by helping you,” said Mark.

“Will you help me?”

“Certainly; that is, if I am not intruding on some housekeeping sanctuary.”

“Oh, no! this room is open and common to the whole family; why, it is the pleasantest room in the house, only as it is near the pantry and dining-room, and opens upon the kitchen garden, we prepare our fruit, and sometimes pick over our vegetables here.”

Mr. Sutherland drew a chair on the other side of the strawberry basket, and went to work—nobody could tell why—actuated by some whim, no doubt. After a little desultory conversation, Mr. Sutherland said,

“I believe, dear Rosalie, that I owe this situation to your friendly remembrance, and I have been waiting some hours for an opportunity of expressing my thanks.”

Rosalie’s face flushed to the temples.

“I am deeply obliged and grateful to my fair patroness.”

The blush deepened, crimsoning her face. She waved her hand deprecatingly, impatiently; she began—“Mr. Sutherland”—and stopped, as it were, choked.

“Miss Vivian, are you so unwilling to receive my acknowledgments? Then must my gratitude be silent, but not the less deep.”

Again she essayed to speak, and the words came vehemently, impetuously.

“I had no agency in procuring this situation for you, Mr. Sutherland. How could you think for a moment that _I_, or any one else, could presume to ‘patronize’ _you_ in such a manner? How could you suppose, for an instant, that I, or any one else that knew you, could deem this position a fit and proper one for you? No! could I have dared to interfere, it would have been to prevent your coming here.”

There was a tone of honest, earnest indignation in her voice, looks, and manner, that utterly astounded Mark Sutherland. Could it be that she thought him unworthy of the position? No; he dismissed that surmise at once, and answered, quietly,

“I confess you surprise me, Rosalie! Is not the vocation of a teacher really honourable, if conventionally humble?”

“It is greater, higher, more difficult, more responsible, than any other, except that of the preacher of the Gospel!” answered the girl, earnestly.

“What is the matter, then—am I unfit for it?”

“Yes, you are totally unfit for it.”

“Why?” smiled Mark; “has my education been neglected?”

“I know that you are a distinguished classical and mathematical scholar, Mr. Sutherland; and for any other branch of knowledge quite fitted to take a professor’s chair; but to be a teacher of youth requires other and rarer qualifications, which you have not.”

“To wit?” inquired Mark, much amused with his young mentor.

“First, then, you should have a natural vocation for teaching, and consequently the love of it, which you have not; a great deal of affection for children, which you have not; much patience, perseverance, firmness, social humility, some of which qualities you have, and others you have not.”

“I am tempted to ask you to specify which I have and which I have not, but I will not.”

“I thought you were going to open a glorious career for yourself, and achieve a great name.”

“In what manner?”

“I thought you were going to be a statesman.”

“A _lawyer_, child.”

“Why are you here, then, Mr. Sutherland? Why are you not a lawyer?”

“Rosalie, I made an effort, many an effort, to get admitted to practice, at the bar of S——. I had thought myself well qualified, for I had studied legal science with what you call an attraction—a vocation for the profession. For several years past I had read law _con amore_; yet, through the want of familiarity with the technicalities of practice, I failed to get admitted as a practitioner before the court.”

“Then I would have gone into some lawyer’s office, and assisted him as a copyist for nothing, until I had acquired an intimacy with those crabbed technicalities. It seems to me such a very trivial matter for an impediment. Why, there is your uncle, who is no lawyer, but who can draw up a right legal and binding document, with as many ‘whereases’ and ‘aforesaids’ as ever made a composition unintelligible.”

“My dear Rosalie, that would have been a very small beginning.”

“‘Despise not the day of small things,’ said the wise man. And at least the lawyer’s office would have been in the way of your genius; and to have entered it in the capacity of copyist would have been much better than to have turned into this by-path, which is utterly apart from it.”

“There were difficulties in the way of even that, Rosalie.”

“And even if there _were_ difficulties, what then? We have no royal road to distinction in our country. We have no ready-made great men. None are ‘born great;’ none have ‘greatness thrust upon them.’ If any would be great, he must ‘achieve greatness.’ Nearly _all_ of our heroes and statesmen have struggled up from the humblest places in society—have struggled up, alone and unaided, until they have proved their mettle; and the struggle has been wholesome for them, and has turned them out sound and healthful natures.”

“You speak wisely and truly, dear Rosalie; yet each of all these men to whom you have alluded, had near and dear friends—mother, sisters, a wife, perhaps—to watch his career, and rejoice in it—to soothe him in moments of exasperation, from injustice, from opposition, from persecution, and to encourage him in hours of depression and despondency, when all his hopes and energies seemed palsied, and the wheels of life and action seemed clogged and stopped; and, finally, to share and enjoy his success, and to glory in his triumph. Oh, believe me, Rosalie, man cannot work for himself alone! It were a low and selfish aim!”

“But he can work for humanity—he can work for God!” said Rosalie, in a low and reverent voice.

Mark Sutherland sat with his eyes fixed upon the ground, in deep thought. Rosalie continued—

“Attain a position, Mr. Sutherland—such a position as the prophetic voice in your heart foretells. Win fame! not for yourself, but for men and God! not for your own aggrandizement, but for the POWER to right the wronged, to raise the fallen, to deliver the oppressed, to redeem the evil, to speak with AUTHORITY the truth to men and before God! Labour, wait, struggle, for such a position, and, though no mother, sister, wife, or love, smile on your career, men and women will know it! God will bless it!”

Mark Sutherland still remained buried in deep and silent thought upon her words. Oh, if _India_ had so spoken to him, so sympathized with his aspirations, so encouraged his flagging hopes and energies, what might he not have accomplished, even before this! But this child Rosalie was nothing, and yet she spoke words of high moment, and spoke them “as one having authority.”

“You astonish me, Rosalie; you talk far beyond your years and sex; you really astound me.”

“I wish I could convince you.”

“You do, you do, my child. But, Rosalie, how is this? You must have reflected very much, for one of your tender years.”

“I am not so young; I am seventeen.”

“A venerable age, indeed. But, Rosalie, how is it that you have thought so much beyond girls of your age?”

“Have I done so?”

“Why, assuredly—do you not know that you have? Now tell me how it is.”

“Well, if it is so as you say—for _I_ do not know and cannot judge of young people, having never had any young companions—I suppose it is because I have been always sickly, and have always led an isolated, meditative life; hearing in my secluded retreat only the loudest thunders of the distant great world of society, I have naturally thought most about its great successes, and how they were accomplished. I have watched from afar the career of living great men, and have secretly made unto myself idols like them. I have read with deep interest the lives of distinguished statesmen and heroes, particularly those who have struggled up from poverty and obscurity; that is the reason.”

“Yet that is very unusual in so young and beautiful a girl. I cannot yet comprehend it—I can scarcely believe in it.”

“The pleasures of childhood and girlhood were not for me—there was nothing left but books, and much thought over needlework, in solitary hours. Please do not give me undue credit; it is more mortifying than blame. I must tell you how it was I thought so much of your life. Nearly two years ago, after you made such a vast sacrifice to principle—giving up wealth, station, popularity, family, friends, love, esteem, _all_ for your ideas of duty—hero-worshipper that I was, I recognized in you the elements of which heroes are made, and”——

She blushed, and suddenly stopped, conscious of the indelicacy of praising him to his face.

“Go on, dear Rosalie.”

Still she remained silent and embarrassed.

“Well, Rosalie, you saw, or rather you _thought_ you saw, in me the elements of heroism?”

“It was very impertinent in me to presume to say so—forgive it!”

“Nay, dear child, I beg you won’t take it back! If you do not hope for me, who will?”

“Indeed, I do hope for your success very strongly—and more than that, I count upon it very confidently”——

“But finish what you were going to say; you saw in some one ‘the elements of which heroes are made, and’”——

“Oh, nothing, only I dived more deeply than ever before into my lives of great men, and reflected more than ever upon the causes that made them great, if you do not think it presumption in a girl like me to talk of reflection upon such a subject. But my mind ever had an attraction to it, and you gave that attraction a new and strong interest. I thought of you, and hoped that you were on the road to an honourable and beneficent distinction. I was grieved to hear that you were coming here; I would have opposed it, had I dared. Do not stay here, Mr. Sutherland.”

“I must fulfil my engagement with your uncle!”

“My uncle will release you from it.”

“Yet, dear Rosalie, I cannot leave now.”

“Do not think me importunate, impertinent; I wish you would go even now to-day.”

Mark Sutherland looked up at her in surprise, but checked the answer that rose to his lips, when he saw her troubled face. Her work being now completed, she arose, and left the room.