Rosni Harvey. A novel

Front matter

NEW NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES. SECOND EDITION NOW READY. A HUMAN DOCUMENT, MALLOCK. BY W. H. 3 Vols., Crown 8vo. The National Review says : " From chapter to chapter, without a break in the climax of unconventional ' sensation,' we are led through a narrative of wonders, experiences ' not of the dirt of life, but of the depths,' which we can never call overstrained, . . . The plot is extraordinarily ingenious and exciting. . . . Whatever subject Mr. Mallock touches he illuminates. . . . ' A Human Document,' in so far as it is an essay on sexual morality, will command the utmost respect. It exhausts the subject. Its con clusions, most of us will be relieved to find, are fraught with no menace to the institution of marriage. ... It must not, however, be supposed that the work is a mere philosophical essay.

Despite the disagreeableness of its subject matter, it is a bright tale, ex ceedingly pretty in parts. Mr. Mallock's knack of touching pitch without being defiled is unrivalled. One of the chapters deals in detail with an event more horrible than any we have met with in fiction, yet we pass through it quite unshocked. On the other hand, Mr. Mallock's philosophical subtlety is curiously blent with quite elemental affections and admirations ; and, in their smiling, candid happiness, many passages are full of an innocent delight of life which a child of ten might envy. . . . Even as a story, 'A Human Document ' is beautifully written .... and the pages glitter with epigrams which, instead of being mere play upon words by mechanical wit, help the reader to a perception of serious truths whilst they seem to be merely decorating the narrative."

CHAPMAN & HALL, Ld., LONDON. MABEL E. WOTTON. A GIRL DIPLOMATIST, By Mabel E. Wotton. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. The Daily Telegraph says: "Agreeably free from far-fetched contrivance, and narrated with charming simplicity of style in ' English pure and undefiled. ' It is that rarest of latter-day fictional productions, a story without a villain ; all its men and women are amiable, well-bred persons, moving in the higher circles of society ; its heroine and hero, in particular, are eminently sympathetic. . . . Miss Wotton may justly be congratulated upon having written a thoroughly readable tale, healthy in tone, graceful in form, and replete with genuine human interest." The Morning Post says : "It is a relief to meet with a tale so original and so gracefully written. At a time when freshness of incident appears beyoud the reach of many practised novelists, a relatively inexperienced writer has, in this case, imagined an effective situation, which greatly aids her in working out an interesting plot. . . . .

Book I. First Love

" Shall I not one day remember thy bower, One day, when all days are one day to me 1 Thinking, I stirred not, and yet had the power, Yearning, ah God ! if again it might be ! Peace, peace, such a small lamp illumines on this highway, So dimly, so few steps in front of my feet, Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way . . Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?" Dante Gabriel Rossetti. VOL. I, B

Chapter I

All provincial towns do not possess Swan ton's long fine quay ; its tall-masted ships resting in admirable contrast on the broad bosom of the Somer, and the lovely stretch of country on the other side, fronting the quays, past which the mighty tide hurries on to the sea between wharves and soft-wooded hillsides rising above the river-bank with wide rich pastures and hedgerows through which the patches of old grass gleam like pale gold, and the different feathery foliages, even the delicate powdered green of the tree-trunks, are distinctly visible. These are Swanton's beauties ; its one exquisite centre of indi viduality which makes the rest endurable. Of other towns it possesses the tone ; the dull streets ; the lifeless provincial aspect, the general impressions — monotonous, pharisaical, slow, with the fixed belief conveyed in the atmosphere, outward movements, figures and expressions, that " fair-and-easy goes far in a day."

The very flagstones breathe silent reproach and station to the hardy and original traveller disposed to any mild eccentricities in the matter of gait — a visible hurry, perhaps a city afternoon-lounge, hands in side-pockets and cigar between lips (an attitude of indo lence not resembling the repose in selected door-jambs), with a devil-may-care indifference to straight lines, or the very slightest tendency to divergence from pre-conceived provincial principles. The Town-hall, the Cathedral, and the Post-office, its three queer efforts in architecture, are all stonily eloquent of dull ness, and, except in the case of the cathe dral (a burst of originality), an immovable contempt of innovation, especially of exterior beauty. Many things in life present them selves to us in the shape of an unsolvable problem.

Chief among these is the fact that there are people found willing to spend their lives in a place like Swanton, and, more wonderful still, that they actually remain sane upon those hopeless conditions. The country lying outside Swanton is very lovely. The roads travel through a varied and undulating landscape, curving round sharp wild hills, cool and green, with the exhilarating airs from the further mountains blowing across them, which, along the plains and delicately sloping valleys, gather a soothing softness and just linger wooingly among the thick foliage branches. The smoke of hill-shaded Swanton is soon lost, but the river seems loth to hide its dreamy beauty. A little below you fancied you had looked your last at it, and here, where the hills break suddenly in keen relief with each dark valley, you find it winding round silverly, broadly, defiantly.

There is no monotony in foliage-tint, in hill-shape, in river-curve, in hedgerow ; all are rich in variation and in detail. Light and shade blend unconsciously ; green meadow with brown turf patch ; water dark in shadow and silver in lio-kt ; high banks with their vivid touch of red beeches, firs, and ash trees broken by fence and gate, by country seats ROSNI HARVEY. and farmsteads, and those unimaginable thatched sheds for human beings and animals. The Glade lay ten miles from Swanton, resting half-way between vale and hill, and gathering to its heart all the best charms of both. It looked over the sea and a long line of coast on one side ; on the other stretched a line of hills running down to the Very edge of the sea in a narrow, gently-sloping fringe of deep and pale purple heather. Behind, the eyes rested on a marvellous mingling of colour on ground.

Beyond, a border of trees, a line of brilliant green darkened by the mosses and shrubs and plants, then beside a stretch of faded grass a line of deeper green contrasting with the luminous hues on either side, and the purple of heather and grasses of the hill-tops on the edge of the sky. Eastward there was a lawn trimmed to resemble green plush, with white railings toward the sea that cut off the plantation curving down to the road ; here the cows grazed and appeared to enjoy themselves, railed in again below from the probabilities of an excursive fancy should their curious gaze wander to the pond off the carriage drive, with its miniature island ROSNI HARVEY. and rich assortment of shrubs and greens. By the side of the lawn a finely-gravelled path led round to a narrow by-way, wending serpent-like down to the glade whence the house derived its name.

This glade was in describably lovely at all seasons of the year. The paths wound through soft mounds of layered laurels clear as emerald above the edges of moss and grass and fern-fronds. The green of the glen below was shadowed by the foliage encircling it, and here the blue gray wood -pigeons were gay to dissipation. Towards the end of the valley the marshy ground and rushes lent new depth of colour to the scene, the birds sang sweetest, the very trees seemed weighted with their branches, except the larches afar, which lifted themselves until they made a border along the horizon. A completer little Eden could not well be imagined, and there were the trout stream and musical waterfall belted by spruce and beech close at hand. It had been raining hard all day, and just at sunset the sullen gray clouds broke and the air became filled with a pale-rose hue which brought Miss Harvey outside for a glimpse down the valley.

Blue and golden and red were the prevailing sky tinges, and so strong was the red that a soft pink mist seemed to suffuse and blend itself with Rosni's white throat and clear fair face, just as it did with the mountain paths. Through the misty confusion of clouds the laurels and leaves looked tangled in light and shade, and the shadow-making rocks of the coast-line, against which the white and yellow clouds were banked, were reflected in the sea, not now gray and still, but beating in black and foam fringed waves on the yellow shingles, made brighter here and there by a shimmer of gold from above. She looked musingly at the velvet mosses, the shining leaves and plants and ivies gleaming as if they were tipped with drop ping silver, and then across the stretch of wet fields and the brown roadway that broke over the fold of the nearest hill, and asked herself could anything be to her like that moist, still landscape, to which her eyes were accustomed from earliest vision ?

Hers was a fair face to look upon — not beautiful, but strong and tender and good. Its chief attraction lay in its colouring, and in the depth and largeness of the eyes ; golden brown, rather brown than golden, sad and soft, more expressive of tears than smiles, with thick dark lashes and eyebrows cutting finely and strikingly through the pale cheeks and forehead. The brow was low and broad and smooth, and the rich auburn hair made its lovely frame. The rest of the face was perhaps somewhat marked and strong, only the complexion was so fair and the texture of skin so delicate, that the impression of strength was rendered an agreeable prophecy. She was of medium height, and carried her self with much unconscious grace, a grace peculiarly noticeable in her way of listening, with head slightly bent and eyes upraised, in the frank full gaze, with a still smile upon the edge of her lips and illuminating her eyes.

It was a recognized fact in and around Swanton by the paupers that no one could listen to them like Miss Harvey of the Glade. Her manner might be best described as " ex quisitely sympathetic," and its charm sank deep into the mind, and caught you in memory long after you had left her. Analysis was elusive. Perhaps it lay in the fact that, though a girl in years, Miss Harvey was un consciously a woman, and yet her warm and tender nature, in escaping the charm of girl hood, remained wedded to childhood. She was clear-eyed and innocent as a child ; sad and deep-hearted as a woman. Everything around her had tended to repress and stunt the growth of sweet and human impulses of joy. There were no points of sympathy be tween her and her parents ; she had no sister to develop her girlhood. She was nineteen, and she had never known what it was to possess a friend or a companion, except the old servant who died many years before, and who had helped to make life pleasant for her when she was a child.

But that companion ship had ended with the days of fairy tales, and had not since been replaced by any other. A more absolutely lonely girl could not well be conceived, and her one great pleasure lay in study. Her studies were all sombre and serious. She read Spinoza's Ethica and Kant's Kritic in the original ; she was pro foundly versed in German literature, and held her own views on German metaphysics ; secretly inclined to Positivism, but "was not very clear upon the matter. Her attitude to wards Rousseau was that of disciple to master ; poetry ranked with her lighter studies, where she showed herself original, when ~we remember that her ideas were not helped by exterior influences, as no one but the priest occasionally, and the doctor still more rarely, visited at the Glade ; Browning and Words worth she admired ; Tennyson she did not greatly care about.

Even in her choice of fiction she had no sympathy, no chance of developing her impressions by conversation. Her mother was an immoderate consumer of the very lightest of intellectual nourishment, and her father never read anything. Once she hazarded a timid request that he should try Middlemarch. He tried it, and fell asleep over the second chapter. On awakening he glanced at his daughter in humble and piteous appeal, and proffered a pathetic request that she should not ask him to finish the book. The girl smiled in a tender benignant way of hers, and stifled a little sigh as she put the book away. She selected The Mill on the Floss, as a lighter effort for her mother. The good woman opened the book with a sneer, and put it down without the excuse of having fallen asleep over the second chapter, remarking that she was not fond of being made the subject of a joke, and that she was not given to interest herself in novels that dealt with children.

With another sigh and a fainter smile the book was placed beside Middlemarch, and Rosni was folded more closely, more inextricably, in her mantle of intellectual solitude than before. She was a very silent girl, first because of the nature of her studies and reflections, and then there was little in the daily conversation of the Glade to arouse her dormant sensibilities and powers. There was another draw back to conversational abilities. She read laboriously and conscientiously, pondered each word, reflected upon each proposition and suggestion until she understood it thoroughly, and her ideas only gathered themselves slowly into shape. This knowledge made her diffident and shy ; the undeveloped con dition of her mind kept her very humble and anxious, and her complete separation from all other girls and women left her undisturbed in the conviction that she was rather more backward and uncultured than she should be at her age.

She was like a child in her simplicity and in the absence of all intellectual vanity, not knowing that it is rare to find a girl of nineteen able to read philosophy and metaphysics in Latin and German. This grave kind of reading may have helped to develop a natural sadness of temperament and a very strong sense of duty upon which her life was exclusively fashioned. She would have enjoyed fun and laughter as well as any girl strong in mind and body and with plenty of warm human blood in her veins, but since it did not come in her way she forbid herself the indulgence in discontent. She did not love her mother ; she knew far down in her heart that it was only a supreme effort of conscientiousness that kept her from the candid self-admission that she positively disliked her. She made many efforts at affectionate behaviour towards Mrs. Harvey, but one look at that cold, unloving and disagreeable face chilled her impulse, froze up all feeling of the religion of their relationship.

There were times that she felt, with all the strength of her nature, that she could not bear to look at her mother, or listen to her voice. This feeling was perfectly accountable. Mrs. Harvey's voice was harsh and loud ; she rarely had anything to say that a girl of exquisite sensibilities could listen to with pleasure, and her conversation was more often than not an absolute torture to Rosni. The girl had no reason to feel indulgent. Her mother had never used her kindly, and the ill-usage of childhood had not diminished with girlhood. Mrs. Harvey never accepted her daughter's growth, but continued to shriek at her, to abuse her after the approved fashion of unrestrained motherhood. Why parents should hold this terrible power of blasting the happiness of their children, and of making the relationship a slavery whose conditions exceed in sadness that of the worst serfdom in history, remains yet unexplained. While Miss Harvey stood upon the moist gravel, the sound of approaching wheels caught her ear.

Chapter II

She knew it was her father, for the coachman had been sent to town to meet him. Mr. Harvey descended in his careful, leisurely fashion, held out his hand to Rosni, and kissed her forehead. "Well, my little girl, have you gone out regularly every day while I was away ? " he asked, as usual anxious because nothing would make her face less pale, though in his heart he knew that the girl was as strong as need be. " Of course, papa. You know that is my one dissipation after study. I had a brilliant ride yesterday to Fairbrook. But you are tired and cold after your drive. Mamma is expecting you. Jack, poor Queenie must be overworked after to-day and yesterday ; I am afraid 1 have been merciless to her, papa," she said, gently patting the arched neck of a handsome mare. " You know she has been quite lame recently."

" Oh, don't you fear, Miss Rosni ; a good day's rest will have her all right. Bless your heart, she's never happier than when you're in the saddle," cried Jack, shaking his head and grinning delightedly, as he always did when Miss Harvey spoke to him. " She's them soft sort of ways with her," he was fond of explaining in reference to this manifest weakness of his, "that a man 'ud be more than stone as wouldn't be real glad to let her walk over him." " We took her quietly," said Mr. Harvey, turning towards the side entrance. " But where's Freddy, that he hasn't come to meet me?" " I think I heard him down in the valley. He is deeply interested at present in the wood-pigeons, and has some idea of coaxing one to let itself be caught by him and fastened to his boat." Mr. Harvey laughed. Little Freddy, who had come to him in his old age, was his one great joy.

He adored the child; lived in and for him. " But the valley must be very damp this evening. Run round, Rosni, and bring him in." Rosni turned towards the valley in search of the child. She was too used to this ex cessive straining of paternal anxiety to be amused or irritated by it. She found the boy lying full length on the wet grass, whistling excitedly to a fluttering cluster of wood pigeons, and wondering much at their ap parent timidity and distrust in the face of the extreme cordiality and courtesy of his advances. He looked up as his sister approached, and frowned angrily. " Can't you keep away, Rosni ! You'll frighten the pigeons," he roared. " No wonder every one says girls are stupid." Rosni laughed, and lifted up the resisting child in her strong firm arms. " Papa has come back, and wants to see you, Fred.

If you leave off teasing those unfortunate pigeons, and come with me at once, I will promise not to mention that I found you lying on the wet grass. Come, like a good boy." " Oh, bother your good boy, Rosni ; but vol. I. c it's very unfair that papa won't ever let me alone. Other boys can play about just as they like, and I don't see why I shouldn't." "Now, Fred, you must not be naughty, and you know very well that it is wicked and ungrateful to speak in that way of papa. He loves you, and is very good to you." " Well, I know that ; but isn't he fond of mamma too ? and she isn't good to him, not half so good as I am. She always laughs at him, and doesn't like him at all." Fred, a very sharp boy, was quick to read the domestic picture. Recognizing sovereign power in his mother, all his efforts of civility and coaxing wTere directed to insure her patronage, knowing well that his liberty, his pleasures, his indulgences, depended alto gether upon her will ; an evidence of dis crimination poor Rosni had not shown in early years — not indeed that such an evidence of discrimination would have greatly, or even tolerably, softened the hard condition of those years.

" Freddy, I shall have to punish you if you say such things again. Remember, when you have a tutor, I'll see that he scolds and punishes you if you are not good." The only person the spoiled child really respected and feared when she spoke firmly to him was Rosni. Although he solaced himself, when smarting under her influence and con scious of the impotence of his own rebellion, by the reflection that she was only a girl, whereas he was going to grow up a man able to do lots of things girls could not do, he was never able to control a feeling of awe and dread when he looked anxiously into her severe young face, so resolute and so firm. His mother often got angry with him, but she, in trying to quell him into submission by her angry orders or expostulations, only developed his natural obstinacy, while Rosni deprived him of speech or resistance, without making him feel an unconquerable desire to strike out frantically.

He took her offered hand in silence, and walked up the pathway beside her. When they were near the house she stooped and kissed the headstrong boy. " You mustn't think I love you less, Fred, because you sometimes force me to speak as if I were cross with you. I only want to make you good," she said, resting her hand on his head. The boy's impulses were strongly affec tionate. His little mud-stained hands clung for a moment round her delicate throat, and a penitent sob caught his utterance as he re turned her kiss, and broke out impetuously — " I'm always saying I'll not make you cross any more, Rosni, and then I forget ; but I'm fonder of you than anybody. 'Pon my word I am, Rosni." " There's a good boy ; and try to be fond of papa too, because, Fred, it would make him very, very sad if he thought you didn't love him as much as he loves you."

" Yes, but he teases me so. You never tease me," he expostulated with wide eyes. Rosni smiled, and they went indoors to gether. Mr. Harvey was seated before a glowing fire, whose light considerably enriched his deep complexion. When he entered the dining room where his amiable wife awaited him, he found her reading a novel near the fire. "Well, Emily," he ventured, glancing ap prehensively at her dark, sullen face. "Is that you, Frederick?" she returned, scarcely looking up from her book as she turned over a leaf. " Have you engaged a tutor ? " "Don't you think you might shake hands with me ? Some husbands would be un reasonable enough to expect a kiss after a week's absence." He smiled good-humouredly, but there was a hint of a pain and disappointment which had long since grown habitual in his eyes as he stood beside her, holding his warm gloves in one hand and unbuttoning his great coat with the other, looking on his wife the while.

"Really, Frederick, if you could bring yourself to think less of sentiment and more of my wishes it would be far better," she cried, with an angry gaze at his muddy boots. " Just look at my new crumb-cloth. It is really too bad, Frederick. Please go outside, and put on your slippers at once." " Gently, gently, Emily. I confess I have sinned against domestic law, but as the crime is now committed, I think, with your per mission, I'll stay where I am until I've got a little of the chill out of my blood. Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell the girl to get me some whisky and water." "I think, Frederick, as I have to keep the house clean you ought not to add to my trouble," she cried severely, and reached to touch the bell with an eye upon her book. " In heaven's name can't you get another servant, and then the expense will devolve on me," cried Mr. Harvey, still in good-humour, " only, don't worry yourself and me in this needless fashion.

Bring me some whisky and water, Kate, also my slippers, which you'll find in my dressing-room. Well, Emily, I suppose you'd like to hear about this young tutor." Mrs. Harvey condescended to close her book, and became alert at once. "I thought I told you, Frederick, that I didn't want a young man." " You certainly conveyed something like it to me," said her husband, drily. " Then why have you engaged a youno man ? " she demanded, with asperity. "Because he seemed to suit me, my dear." Mrs. Harvey sat up straight in her chair, and stared. As her husband continued to look quite sane and on the whole remarkably satisfied with himself, she pouted and trifled with her book. "I did not know, Mr. Harvey, that my wishes would be totally disregarded by you. I shall in future understand," she ended, darkly.

" My dear, this is all waste of effect," laughed her husband. Had any congenial spirit been at hand he would in all probability have winked. "The young man was the only one who answered my advertisement in a gentlemanly style. If you waded through some of the letters I received — Here is a specimen of one. The fellow actually quotes Latin, and signs himself my obedient servant. I had interviews with a few before Mr. Lismore wrote, and their address was even worse than their epistolary style." " Lismore ! And what is he like ? " she asked, handing him back the letter. "Oh, he's fair enough; seems a cultivated, gentlemanly young man, who has seen better days evidently." " A tutor is an expensive commodity, Frederick. Just fancy, we might have a governess for half that, not to mention that it would cost less to keep a woman ; I really think it an extravagance," she sighed.

" Come now, Emily, you know it would never do to put a headstrong boy like Freddy under a woman's control. He wouldn't like it himself, and, by heavens, my little son shall have the very best education," he cried, determinedly. " Look at all the money that has been spent on Rosni's education, and she surely ought to be able to teach Freddy for some years," his wife persisted. " No, she ought not. Money was spent on Rosni's education because she was fond of study and exceptionally clever, not to make a governess of her, as long as I can afford to keep her from that sort of thing. Besides, you forget, Emily, the girl is growing up to womanhood, and it will soon be time to think of marrying her. Ton my conscience, she is growing up a remarkably fine and handsome young woman. I saw nobody in Dublin her match, and you must dress her better, Mrs. Harvey, you must indeed."

Mr, Harvey sat back in his armchair, refreshed himself with a little whisky and water, and surveyed his comely wife with much satisfaction. " Do you know, Emily, she's nearly as good looking as yourself when I first fell in love with you, and, 'Gad, there's not a better-looking woman of your age to be met with any where." Mrs. Harvey would be something more than human if her face did not light up with a pleased smile at this marital effusiveness. " How absurd you are, Frederick ! " she cried. " But I don't see the use of dressing Rosni extravagantly under present circum stances. We must look about us first and get some society round us. There are the—" "Papa, papa, Jack shot me a lovely sea gull. You come and see it, do, it's awful big, and I'm going to catch a wood-pigeon too," shouted Freddy, breathlessly, as he burst into the room.

" Come, little Freddy, and tell papa all about it," cried Mr. Harvey, opening his arms with a warm smile for his adored son. Freddy just condescended to accept his father's kiss, scarcely repressing an impatient protest as he shook himself free and poured out his childish eloquence. " Oh, and my boat goes ever so well on the lake now, and Jack is going to teach me how to shoot sea-gulls. I watched him, and wasn't a bit afraid. He stood like this," shoulder ing an imaginary gun, " and then ' pop,' and clown comes a sea-gull. It was awful fun, but mother wouldn't come ; she was too lazy. Rosni says it's cruel, but girls are such fools." " Well, Freddy, my little boy, how do you like the idea of a new tutor who'll teach you lessons instead of to shoot sea-gulls ? " asked his father. " I shan't like him at all," said Fred, resolutely.

" I'd rather shoot him than the sea-gulls. What's his name, father, and when is he coming ? " " His name is Mr. Lismore, and he is coming next Monday," said the father, for once united with his wife in their mutual delight at the boy's bloodthirsty expres sion. The child looked apprehensive and doubtful, and Rosni encircled his curly head. " Come, Fred, Monday is still a long way off, and Mr. Lismore may not turn out very cross," she said.