"Then she'll make me miss a great deal that's odious," said the girl.
"You're too young for such extravagances," her aunt declared.
"And yet Edith, who is younger than I, seems to be too old for them:
how do you arrange that? My mother's society will make me older,"Rose replied.
"Don't speak to me of your mother; you HAVE no mother.""Then if I'm an orphan I must settle things for myself.""Do you justify her, do you approve of her?" cried Miss Tramore, who was inferior to her niece in capacity for retort and whose limitations made the girl appear pert.
Rose looked at her a moment in silence; then she said, turning away:
"I think she's charming."
"And do you propose to become charming in the same manner?""Her manner is perfect; it would be an excellent model.But I can't discuss my mother with you.""You'll have to discuss her with some other people!" Miss Tramore proclaimed, going out of the room.
Rose wondered whether this were a general or a particular vaticination.There was something her aunt might have meant by it, but her aunt rarely meant the best thing she might have meant.Miss Tramore had come up from St.Leonard's in response to a telegram from her own parent, for an occasion like the present brought with it, for a few hours, a certain relaxation of their dissent."Do what you can to stop her," the old lady had said; but her daughter found that the most she could do was not much.They both had a baffled sense that Rose had thought the question out a good deal further than they; and this was particularly irritating to Mrs.Tramore, as consciously the cleverer of the two.A question thought out as far as SHE could think it had always appeared to her to have performed its human uses;she had never encountered a ghost emerging from that extinction.
Their great contention was that Rose would cut herself off; and certainly if she wasn't afraid of that she wasn't afraid of anything.
Julia Tramore could only tell her mother how little the girl was afraid.She was already prepared to leave the house, taking with her the possessions, or her share of them, that had accumulated there during her father's illness.There had been a going and coming of her maid, a thumping about of 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 ***es 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.