After this the periodical interview took place in private, in Mrs.
Tramore's beautiful little wasted drawing-room.Rose knew that, rare as these occasions were, her mother would not have kept her "all to herself" had there been anybody she could have shown her to.But in the poor lady's social void there was no one; she had after all her own correctness and she consistently preferred isolation to inferior contacts.So her daughter was subjected only to the maternal; it was not necessary to be definite in qualifying that.The girl had by this time a collection of ideas, gathered by impenetrable processes;she had tasted, in the ostracism of her ambiguous parent, of the acrid fruit of the tree of knowledge.She not only had an approximate vision of what every one had done, but she had a private judgment for each case.She had a particular vision of her father, which did not interfere with his being dear to her, but which was directly concerned in her resolution, after his death, to do the special thing he had expressed the wish she should not do.In the general estimate her grandmother and her grandmother's money had their place, and the strong probability that any enjoyment of the latter commodity would now be withheld from her.It included Edith's marked inclination to receive the law, and doubtless eventually a more substantial memento, from Miss Tramore, and opened the question whether her own course might not contribute to make her sister's appear heartless.The answer to this question however would depend on the success that might attend her own, which would very possibly be small.Eric's attitude was eminently simple; he didn't care to know people who didn't know HIS people.If his mother should ever get back into society perhaps he would take her up.Rose Tramore had decided to do what she could to bring this consummation about; and strangely enough--so mixed were her superstitions and her heresies--a large part of her motive lay in the value she attached to such a consecration.
Of her mother intrinsically she thought very little now, and if her eyes were fixed on a special achievement it was much more for the sake of that achievement and to satisfy a latent energy that was in her than because her heart was wrung by this sufferer.Her heart had not been wrung at all, though she had quite held it out for the experience.Her purpose was a pious game, but it was still essentially a game.Among the ideas I have mentioned she had her idea of triumph.She had caught the inevitable note, the pitch, on her very first visit to Chester Square.She had arrived there in intense excitement, and her excitement was left on her hands in a manner that reminded her of a difficult air she had once heard sung at the opera when no one applauded the performer.That flatness had made her sick, and so did this, in another way.A part of her agitation proceeded from the fact that her aunt Julia had told her, in the manner of a burst of confidence, something she was not to repeat, that she was in appearance the very image of the lady in Chester Square.The motive that prompted this declaration was between aunt Julia and her conscience; but it was a great emotion to the girl to find her entertainer so beautiful.She was tall and exquisitely slim; she had hair more exactly to Rose Tramore's taste than any other she had ever seen, even to every detail in the way it was dressed, and a complexion and a figure of the kind that are always spoken of as "lovely." Her eyes were irresistible, and so were her clothes, though the clothes were perhaps a little more precisely the right thing than the eyes.Her appearance was marked to her daughter's sense by the highest distinction; though it may be mentioned that this had never been the opinion of all the world.It was a revelation to Rose that she herself might look a little like that.She knew however that aunt Julia had not seen her deposed sister-in-law for a long time, and she had a general impression that Mrs.Tramore was to-day a more complete production--for instance as regarded her air of youth--than she had ever been.There was no excitement on her side--that was all her visitor's; there was no emotion--that was excluded by the plan, to say nothing of conditions more primal.Rose had from the first a glimpse of her mother's plan.
It was to mention nothing and imply nothing, neither to acknowledge, to explain nor to extenuate.She would leave everything to her child; with her child she was secure.She only wanted to get back into society; she would leave even that to her child, whom she treated not as a high-strung and heroic daughter, a creature of exaltation, of devotion, but as a new, charming, clever, useful friend, a little younger than herself.Already on that first day she had talked about dressmakers.Of course, poor thing, it was to be remembered that in her circumstances there were not many things she COULD talk about."She wants to go out again; that's the only thing in the wide world she wants," Rose had promptly, compendiously said to herself.There had been a sequel to this observation, uttered, in intense engrossment, in her own room half an hour before she had, on the important evening, made known her decision to her grandmother:
"Then I'll TAKE her out!"
"She'll drag you down, she'll drag you down!" Julia Tramore permitted herself to remark to her niece, the next day, in a tone of feverish prophecy.
As the girl's own theory was that all the dragging there might be would be upward, and moreover administered by herself, she could look at her aunt with a cold and inscrutable eye.
"Very well, then, I shall be out of your sight, from the pinnacle you occupy, and I sha'n't trouble you.""Do you reproach me for my disinterested exertions, for the way I've toiled over you, the way I've lived for you?" Miss Tramore demanded.
"Don't reproach ME for being kind to my mother and I won't reproach you for anything.""She'll keep you out of everything--she'll make you miss everything,"Miss Tramore continued.
