The hands she held clasped in her lap gripped each other tight. Her mouth was set.
"I"m asking you now, Rose. To be my wife. My wife," he repeated fiercely, as if he repelled with violence a contrary suggestion.
"I can"t be your wife, sir," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because," she said simply, "I"m not a lady."
At that Tanqueray cried, "Ah," as if she had hurt him.
"No, sir, I"m not, and you mustn"t think of it."
"I shall think of nothing else, and talk of nothing else, until you say yes."
She shook her little head; and from the set of her chin he was aware of the extreme decision of her character.
He refrained from any speech. His hand sought hers, for he remembered how, just now, she had unbent at the holding of her hand.
But she drew it gently away.
"No," said she. "I look at it sensible. I can see how it is. You"ve been ill, and you"re upset, and you don"t know what you"re doin"--sir."
"I do--madam."
She smiled and drew back her smile as she had drawn back her head. She was all for withdrawal.
Tanqueray in his attempt had let go the parcel that he held. She seized it in a practical, business-like manner which had the perfect touch of finality. Then she rose and went back to the house, and he followed her, still pleading, still protesting. But Rose made herself more than ever deaf and dumb. When he held the gate open for her she saw her advantage, darted in, and vanished (his divinity!) down the area steps.
She went up-stairs to her little garret, and there, first of all, she looked at herself in the gla.s.s. Her face was strange to her under the black hat with its sweeping feather. She shook her head severely at the person in the gla.s.s. She made her take off the hat with the feather and put it by with that veneration which attends the disposal of a best hat.
The other one, the one with the roses, she patted and pulled and caressed affectionately, till she had got it back into something of the shape it had been, to serve for second best. Then she wished she had left it as it was.
She loved them both, the new one because he had given it her, and the old one because he had sat on it.
Finally she smoothed her hair to an extreme sleekness, put on a clean ap.r.o.n and went down-stairs.
In the evening she appeared to Tanqueray, punctual and subservient, wearing the same air of reticence and distance with which she had waited on him first. He was to see, it seemed to say, that she was only little Rose Eldred, his servant, to whom it was not proper that he should speak.
But he did speak. He put his back to the door she would have escaped by, and kept her prisoned there, utterly in his power.
Rose, thus besieged, delivered her ultimatum.
"Well," she said, "you take a year to think it over sensible."
"A year?"
"A year. And if you"re in the same mind then as you are now, p"raps I won"t say no."
"A year? But in a year I may be dead."
"You come to me," said Rose, "if you"re dyin"."
"And you"ll have me then?" he said savagely.
"Yes. I"ll "ave you then."
But, though all night Tanqueray by turns raged and languished, it was Rose who, in the morning, looked about to die. Not that he saw her. He never saw her all that day. And at evening he listened in vain for her call at the gate, her salutation to the night: "Min--Min--Minny!
Puss--Puss--Puss!"
For in the afternoon Rose left the house, attended by her uncle, who carried by its cord her little trunk.
In her going forth she wore a clean white linen gown. She wore, not the Hat, nor yet the sad thing that Tanqueray had sat on, but a little black bonnet, close as a cap, with a black velvet bow in the front, and black velvet strings tied beneath her chin.
It was the dress she had worn when she was nurse in a gentleman"s family.
V
Late in the evening of that day, Tanqueray, as he sat in miserable meditation, was surprised by the appearance of Mrs. Eldred. She held in her hand Rose"s hat, the hat he had given her, which she placed before him on the table.
"You"ll be good enough, sir," said Mrs. Eldred, "to take that back."
"Why should I take it back?" he replied, with that artificial gaiety which had been his habitual defence against the approaches of Mrs.
Eldred.
"Because, it was all very well for you to offer Rose wot you did, sir, and she"d no call to refuse it. But a "at"s different. There"s meanin","
said Mrs. Eldred, "in a "at."
Tanqueray looked at the hat.
"Meaning? If you knew all the meaning there is in that hat, Mrs. Eldred, you"d feel, as I do, that you knew _something_. Half the poetry that"s been written has less meaning in it than that hat. That hat fulfills all the requirements of poetry. It is simple--extremely simple--and sensuous and pa.s.sionate. Yes, pa.s.sionate. It would be impossible to conceive a hat less afflicted with the literary taint. It stands, as I see it, for emotion reduced to its last and purest expression. In short, Mrs.
Eldred, what that hat doesn"t mean isn"t worth meaning."
"If you"d explain _your_ meaning, sir, I should be obliged."
"I am explaining it. My meaning, Mrs. Eldred, is that Rose wore that hat."
"I know she did, sir, and she "adn"t ought to "ave wore it. I"m only askin" _you_, sir, to be good enough to take it back."
"Take it back? But whatever should I do with it? I can"t wear it. I might fall down and worship it, but--No, I couldn"t wear it. It would be sacrilege."
That took Mrs. Eldred"s breath away, so that she sat down and wheezed.
"Does Rose not know what that hat means?" he asked.
"No, sir. I"ll say that for her. She didn"t think till I arst her."