Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 90, June, 1875

AN ANGRY INTERVIEW

Next morning George Rosewarne was seated on the old oak bench in front of the inn reading a newspaper. Happening to look up, he saw Mr. Roscorla hurrying toward him over the bridge with no very pleasant expression on his face. As he came nearer he saw that the man was strangely excited. "I want to see your daughter alone," he said.

"You needn't speak as if I had tried to run away with her," Rosewarne answered, with more good-nature than was his wont. "Well, go in-doors: ask for her mother."

As Roscorla passed him there was a look in his eyes which rather startled George Rosewarne.

"Is it possible," he asked himself, "that this elderly chap is really badly in love with our Wenna?"

But another thought struck him. He suddenly jumped up, followed Roscorla into the passage, where the latter was standing, and said to him, "Don't you be too harsh with Wenna: she's only a girl, and they are all alike." This hint, however discourteous in its terms, had some significance as coming from a man who was six inches taller than Mr. Roscorla.

Mr. Roscorla was shown into an empty room. He marched up and down, looking at nothing. He was simply in an ungovernable rage. Wenna came and shut the door behind her, and for a second or so he stared at her as if expecting her to burst into passionate professions of remorse. On the contrary, there was something more than calmness in her appearance: there was the desperation of a hunted animal that is driven to turn upon its pursuer in the mere agony of helplessness.

"Well," said he—for indeed his passion almost deprived him of his power of speech—"what have you to say? Perhaps nothing. It is nothing, perhaps, to a woman to be treacherous—to tell smooth lies to your face and to go plotting against you behind your back. You have nothing to say? You have nothing to say?"

"I have nothing to say," she said with some little sadness in her voice, "that would excuse me, either to you or to myself: yes, I know that. But—but I did not intentionally deceive you."

He turned away with an angry gesture.

"Indeed, indeed I did not," she said piteously. "I had mistaken my own feelings—the temptation was too great. Oh, Mr. Roscorla, you need not say harsh things of me, for indeed I think worse of myself than you can do."

"And I suppose you want forgiveness now?" he added bitterly. "But I have had enough of that. A woman pledges you her affection, promises to marry you, professes to have no doubts as to the future; and all the while she is secretly encouraging the attentions of a young jackanapes who is playing with her and making a fool of her."

Wenna Rosewarne's cheeks began to burn red: a less angry man would have taken warning.

"Yes, playing with her and making a fool of her. And for what? To pass an idle time and make her the by-word of her neighbors."

"It is not true, it is not true," she said indignantly; and there was a dangerous light in her eyes. "If he were here, you would not dare to say such things to me—no, you would not dare."

"Perhaps you expect him to call after the pretty exploit of last night?" asked Roscorla with a sneer.

"I do not," she said. "I hope I shall never see him again. It is—it is only misery to every one." And here she broke down, in spite of herself. Her anger gave way to a burst of tears.

"But what madness is this?" Roscorla cried. "You wish never to meet him again, yet you are ready at a moment's notice to run away with him, disgracing yourself and your family. You make promises about never seeing him: you break them the instant you get the opportunity. You profess that your girlish fancy for a barber's block of a fellow has been got over; and then, as soon as one's back is turned, you reveal your hypocrisy."

"Indeed I did not mean to deceive you," she said imploringly. "I did believe that all that was over and gone. I thought it was a foolish fancy."

"And now?" said he hotly.

"Oh, Mr. Roscorla, you ought to pity me instead of being angry with me. I do love him: I cannot help it. You will not ask me to marry you? See, I will undertake not to marry him—I will undertake never to see him again—if only you will not ask me to keep my promise to you. How can I? How can I?"

"Pity you! and these are the confessions you make!" he exclaimed. "Why, are you not ashamed of yourself to say such things to me? And so you would undertake not to marry him? I know what your undertakings are worth."

He had struck her hard—his very hardest indeed—but she would not suffer herself to reply, for she believed she deserved far more punishment than he could inflict. All that she could hope for, all that her whole nature cried out for, was that he should not think her treacherous. She had not intentionally deceived him. She had not planned that effort at escape. But when, in a hurried and pathetic fashion, she endeavored to explain all this to him, he would not listen. He angrily told her he knew well how women could gloss over such matters. He was no schoolboy to be hoodwinked. It was not as if she had had no warning: her conduct before had been bad enough, when it was possible to overlook it on the score of carelessness, but now it was such as would disgrace any woman who knew her honor was concerned in holding to the word she had spoken.

"And what is he?" he cried, mad with wrath and jealousy. "An ignorant booby! a ploughboy! a lout who has neither the manners of a gentleman nor the education of a day-laborer."

"Yes, you may well say such things of him now," said she with her eyes flashing, "when his back is turned. You would not say so if he were here. But he—yes, if he were here—he would tell you what he thinks of you, for he is a gentleman, and not a coward."

Angry as he was, Mr. Roscorla was astounded. The fire in her eyes, the flush in her cheeks, the impetuosity of her voice—were these the patient Wenna of old? But a girl betrays herself sometimes if she happens to have to defend her lover.

"Oh it is shameful of you to say such things!" she said. "And you know they are not true. There is not any one I have ever seen who is so manly and frank and unselfish as Mr. Trelyon—not any one; and if I have seen that, if I have admired it too much, well, that is a great misfortune, and I have to suffer for it."

"To suffer? yes," said he bitterly. "That is a pretty form of suffering that makes you plan a runaway marriage—a marriage that would bring into your possession the largest estates in the north of Cornwall. A very pretty form of suffering! May I ask when the experiment is to be repeated?"

"You may insult me as you like—I am only a woman," she said.

"Insult you?" he cried with fresh vehemence. "Is it insult to speak the truth? Yesterday forenoon, when I saw you, you were all smiles and smoothness. When I spoke of our marriage you made no objection. But all the same you knew that at night—"

"I did not know—I did not know," she said. "You ought to believe me when I tell you I knew no more about it than you did. When I met him there at night, it was all so sudden, so unexpected, I scarcely knew what I said; but now—but now I have time to think. Oh, Mr. Roscorla, don't think that I do not regret it. I will do anything you ask me—I will promise what you please—indeed, I will undertake never to see him again as long as I live in this world; only, you won't ask me to keep my promise to you?"

He made no reply to this offer, for a step outside the door caused him to mutter something very like an oath between his teeth. The door was thrown open. Mabyn marched in, a little pale, but very erect.

"Mabyn, leave us alone for a moment or two," said Wenna, turning away so as to hide the tears on her face.

"I will not. I want to speak a word or two to Mr. Roscorla."

"Mabyn, I want you to go away just now."

Mabyn went over to her sister and took her by the hand: "Wenna, dear, go away to your own room. You've had quite enough—you are trembling all over. I suppose he'll make me tremble next."

"Really, I think your interference is lather extraordinary, Miss Mabyn," said Mr. Roscorla, striving to contain his rage.

"I beg your pardon," said Mabyn meekly. "I only want to say a word or two. Wouldn't it be better here than before the servants?" With that she led Wenna away. In a minute or two she returned.

Mr. Roscorla would rather have been shut up in a den with a hungry tigress. "I am quite at your service," he said with a bitter irony. "I suppose you have some very important communication to make, considering the way in which you—"

"Interfered? Yes, it is time that I interfered," Mabyn said, still quite calm and a trifle pale. "Mr. Roscorla, to be frank, I don't like you, and perhaps I am not quite fair to you. I am only a young girl, and don't know what the world would say about your relations with Wenna. But Wenna is my sister, and I see she is wretched; and her wretchedness—Well, that comes of her engagement to you."

She was standing before him with her eyes cast down, apparently determined to be very moderate in her speech. But there was a cruel frankness in her words which hurt Mr. Roscorla a good deal more than any tempest of passion into which she might have worked herself. "Is that all?" said he. "You have not startled me with any revelations."

"I was going to say," continued Mabyn, "that a gentleman who has really a regard for a girl would not insist on her keeping a promise which only rendered her unhappy. I don't see what you are to gain by it. I suppose you—you expect Wenna to marry you? Well, I dare say if you called on her to punish herself that way, she might do it. But what good would that do you? Would you like to have a wife who was in love with another man?"

"You have become quite logical, Miss Mabyn," said he, "and argument suits you better than getting into a rage. And much of what you say is quite true. You are a very young girl. You don't know much of what the world would say about anything. But being furnished with these admirable convictions, did it never occur to you that you might not be acting wisely in blundering into an affair of which you know nothing?"

The coldly sarcastic fashion in which he spoke threatened to disturb Mabyn's forced equanimity. "Know nothing?" she said. "I know everything about it, and I can see that my sister is miserable: that is sufficient reason for my interference. Mr. Roscorla, you won't ask her to marry you?"

Had the proud and passionate Mabyn condescended to make an appeal to her ancient enemy? At last she raised her eyes, and they seemed to plead for mercy.

"Come, come," he said, roughly: "I've had enough of all this sham beseeching. I know what it means. Trelyon is a richer man than I am: she has let her idle girlish notions go dreaming day-dreams, and so I am expected to stand aside. There has been enough of this nonsense. She is not a child; she knows what she undertook of her own free will; and she knows she can get rid of this school-girl fancy directly if she chooses. I, for one, won't help her to disgrace herself."

Mabyn began to breathe a little more quickly. She had tried to be reasonable; she had even humbled herself and begged from him; now there was a sensation in her chest as of some rising emotion that demanded expression in quick words. "You will try to make her marry you?" said she, looking him in the face.

"I will try to do nothing of the sort," said he. "She can do as she likes. But she knows what an honorable woman would do."

"And I," said Mabyn, her temper at length quite getting the better of her, "I know what an honorable man would do. He would refuse to bind a girl to a promise which she fears. He would consider her happiness to be of more importance than his comfort. Why, I don't believe you care at all whether Wenna marries you or not: it is only you can't bear her being married to the man she really does love. It is only envy, that's what it is. Oh, I am ashamed to think there is a man alive who would force a girl into becoming his wife on such terms!"

"There is certainly one considerable objection to my marrying your sister," said he with great politeness. "The manners of some of her relatives might prove embarrassing."