Rosa Mundi and Other Stories Part 2

She drew a little nearer to him. "Mr. Courteney," she said, "doesn't 'Thank you' sound a silly thing to say?"

He drew back. "Don't! Please don't!" he said, and flushed uneasily as he opened his tobacco-pouch. "I would infinitely rather you said nothing at all to any one. Don't do it again, that's all."

"Mustn't I even tell Rosa Mundi?" she said.

His flush deepened as he remembered that she would probably know him by name. She must have known in those far-off Australian days that he was working with all his might to free young Baron from her toils.

He sat in silence till, "Will you tell me something?" whispered Rosemary, leaning nearer.

He stiffened involuntarily. "I don't know."

"Please try!" she urged softly. "I feel sure you can. Why--why don't you like Rosa Mundi?"

He looked at her, and his eyes were steely; but they softened by imperceptible degrees as they met the earnest sweetness of her answering look. "No, I can't tell you that," he said with decision.

But her look held him. "Is it because you don't think she is very good?"

"I can't tell you," he said again.

Still she looked at him, and again there seemed to be in her eyes that expression of a child who has seen life without understanding it.

"Perhaps you think I am too young to know good from evil," she said after a moment. "I am not. I have told you I am older than I look, and in some things I am older even than my years. Then, too, I belong to Rosa Mundi. I told you, didn't I? I am her familiar spirit. She has even called me her angel, or her better self. I know a great many things about her, and some of them are very sad. May I tell you some of the things I know?"

He turned his eyes away from her abruptly, with the feeling that he was resisting some curious magnetism. What was there about this child that attracted him? He was not a lover of children. Moreover, she was verging upon womanhood approaching what he grimly termed "the dangerous age."

He filled his pipe deliberately while she waited for his answer, turning his gaze upon the dazzling line of the horizon.

"You can do as you like," he said at last, and added formally, "May I smoke?"

She nodded. "Yes, I would like you to. It will keep you from being bored. I want to tell you about Rosa Mundi, because you do not judge her fairly. You only know her by repute, and I--I know her heart to heart."

Her voice deepened suddenly, and the man glanced downwards for an instant, but immediately looked away again. She should tell him what she would, but by no faintest sign should she imagine that she had succeeded in arousing his interest. The magnetism was drawing him. He was aware of the attraction, and with firmness he resisted it. Let her strive as she would, she would never persuade him to think kindly of Rosa Mundi.

"You think her--bad," said Rosemary, her voice pitched very low. "I know--oh, I know. Men--some men--are very hard on women like her, women who have had to hew their own way in the world, and meet temptation almost before"--her voice quivered a little--"they knew what temptation meant."

He looked down at her again suddenly and searchingly; but her clear eyes never flinched from his. They were pleading and a little troubled, but wholly unafraid.

"Perhaps you won't believe me," she said. "You'll think you know best.

But Rosa Mundi wasn't bad always--not at the beginning. Her dancing began when she was young--oh, younger than I am. It was a dreadful uphill fight. She had a mother then--a mother she adored. Did you ever have a mother like that, I wonder? Perhaps it isn't the same with men, but there are some women who would gladly die for their mothers.

And--and Rosa Mundi felt like that. A time came when her mother was dying of a slow disease, and she needed things--many things. Rosa Mundi wasn't a success then. She hadn't had her chance. But there was a man--a man with money and influence--who was willing to offer it to her--at--at--a price. She was dancing for chance coppers outside a San Francisco saloon when first he made his offer. She--refused."

Rosemary's soft eyes were suddenly lowered. She did not look like a child any longer, but a being s.e.xless, yet very pitiful--an angel about to weep.

Courteney watched her, for he could not turn away.

Almost under her breath, she went on: "A few days later her mother began to suffer--oh, terribly. There was no money, no one to help. She went again and danced at the saloon entrance. He--the man--was there. She danced till she was tired out. And then--and then--she was hungry, too--she fainted." The low voice sank a little lower. "When she came to herself, she was in his keeping. He was very kind to her--too kind. Her strength was gone, and--and temptation is harder to resist when one is physically weak too. When she went back to her mother she had accepted--his--offer. From that night her fortune was made."

Two tears gathered on the dark lashes and hung there till she put up a quick hand and brushed them away.

The man's face was curiously softened; he looked as if he desired to dry those tears himself.

Without looking up she continued. "The mother died--very, very soon.

Life is like that. Often one pays--in vain. There is no bargaining with death. But at least she never knew. That was Rosa Mundi's only comfort.

There was no turning back for her then. And she was so desolate, so lonely, nothing seemed to matter.

"She went from triumph to triumph. She carried all before her. He took her to New York, and she conquered there. They strewed her path with roses. They almost wors.h.i.+pped her. She tried to think she was happy, but she was not--even then. They came around her in crowds. They made love to her. She was young, and their homage was like a coloured ball to her. She tossed it to and fro, and played with it. But she made game of it all. They were nothing to her--nothing, till one day there came to her a boy--no, he was past his boyhood--a young man--rich, well-born, and honourable. And he--he loved her, and offered her--marriage. No one had ever offered her that before. Can you realize--but no, you are a man!--what it meant to her? It meant shelter and peace and freedom. It meant honour and kindness, and the chance to be good. Perhaps you think she would not care for that. But you do not know her. Rosa Mundi was meant to be good. She hungered for goodness. She was tired--so tired of the gaudy vanities of life, so--so--what is the word--so nauseated with the cheap and the bad. Are you sorry for her, I wonder? Can you picture her, longing--oh, longing--for what she calls respectability? And then--this chance, this offer of deliverance! It meant giving up her career, of course. It meant changing her whole life. It meant sacrifice--the sort of sacrifice that you ought to be able to understand--for she loved her dancing and her triumphs, just as you love your public--the people who read your books and love you for their sake.

That is different, isn't it, from the people who follow you about and want to stare at you just because you are prosperous and popular? The people who really appreciate your art--those are the people you would not disappoint for all the world. They make up a vast friends.h.i.+p that is very precious, and it would be a sacrifice--a big--sacrifice--to give it up. That is the sort of sacrifice that marriage meant to Rosa Mundi.

And though she wanted marriage--and she wanted to be good--she hesitated."

There was a little pause. Randal Courteney was no longer dissembling his interest. He had laid his pipe aside, and was watching with unvarying intentness the downcast childish face. He asked no questions. There was something in the low-spoken words that held him silent. Perhaps he feared to probe too deep.

In a few moments she went on, gathering up a little handful of the s.h.i.+ning s.h.i.+ngle, and slowly sifting it through her fingers as though in search of something precious.

"I think if she had really loved the man, it wouldn't have mattered.

Nothing counts like love, does it? But--you see--she didn't. She wanted to. She knew that he was clean and honourable, worthy of a good woman.

He loved her, too, loved her so that he was willing to put away all her past. For she did not deceive him about that. He was willing to give her all--all she wanted. But she did not love him. She honoured him, and she felt for a time at least that love might come. He guessed that, and he did his best--all that he could think of--to get her to consent. In the end--in the end"--Rosemary paused, a tiny stone in her hand that shone like polished crystal--"she was very near to the verge of yielding, the young man had almost won, when--when something happened that altered--everything. The young man had a friend, a writer, a great man even then; he is greater now. The friend came, and he threw his whole weight into the scale against her. She felt him--the force of him--before she so much as saw him. She had broken with her lover some time before. She was free. And she determined to marry the young man who loved her--in spite of his friend. That very day it happened. The young man sent her a book written by his friend. She had begun to hate the writer, but out of curiosity she opened it and read. First a bit here, then a bit there, and at last she sat down and read it--all through."

The little s.h.i.+ning crystal lay alone in the soft pink palm. Rosemary dwelt upon it, faintly smiling.

"She read far into the night," she said, speaking almost dreamily, as if recounting a vision conjured up in the glittering surface of the stone.

"It was a free night for her. And she read on and on and on. The book gripped her; it fascinated her. It was--a great book. It was called--_Remembrance_." She drew a quick breath and went on somewhat hurriedly. "It moved her in a fas.h.i.+on that perhaps you would hardly realize. I have read it, and I--understand. The writing was wonderful.

It brought home to her--vividly, oh, vividly--how the past may be atoned for, but never, never effaced. It hurt her--oh, it hurt her. But it did her good. It showed her how she was on the verge of taking a wrong turning, of perhaps--no, almost certainly--dragging down the man who loved her. She saw suddenly the wickedness of marrying him just to escape her own prison. She understood clearly that only love could have justified her--no other motive than that. She saw the evil of fastening her past to an honourable man whose good name and family demanded of him something better. She felt as if the writer had torn aside a veil and shown her her naked soul. And--and--though the book was a good book, and did not condemn sinners--she was shocked, she was horrified, at what it made her see."

Rosemary suddenly closed her hand upon the s.h.i.+ning stone, and turned fully and resolutely to the man beside her.

"That night changed Rosa Mundi," she said; "changed her completely.

Before it was over she wrote to the young man who loved her and told him that she could not marry him. The letter did not go till the following evening. She kept it back for a few hours--in case she repented.

But--though she suffered--she did not repent. In the evening she had an engagement to dance. The young man was there--in the front row. And he brought his friend. She danced. Her dancing was superb that night. She had a pa.s.sionate desire to bewitch the man who had waked her soul--as she had bewitched so many others. She had never met a man she could not conquer. She was determined to conquer him. Was it wrong? Anyway, it was human. She danced till her very heart was on fire, danced till she trod the clouds. Her audience went mad with the delight of it. They raved as if they were intoxicated. All but one man! All but one man! And he--at the end--he looked her just once in the eyes, stonily, piercingly, and went away." She uttered a sharp, choking breath. "I have nearly done,"

she said. "Can you guess what happened then? Perhaps you know. The man who loved her received her letter when he got back that night.

And--and--she had bewitched him, remember; he--shot himself. The friend--the writer--she never saw again. But--but--Rosa Mundi has never forgotten him. She carries him in her heart--the man who taught her the meaning of life."

She ceased to speak, and suddenly, like a boy, sprang to her feet, tossing away the stone that she had treasured in her hand.

But the man was almost as quick as she. He caught her by the shoulder as he rose. "Wait!" he said. "Wait!" His voice rang hard, but there was no hardness in his eyes. "Tell me--who you are!"

She lifted her eyes to his fearlessly, without shame. "What does it matter who I am?" she said. "What does it matter? I have told you I am Rosemary. That is her name for me, and it was your book called _Remembrance_ that made her give it me."

He held her still, looking at her with a growing compa.s.sion in his eyes. "You are her child," he said.

She smiled. "Perhaps--spiritually. Yes, I think I am her child, such a child as she might have been if--Fate--had been kind to her--- or if she had read your book before--and not after."

He let her go slowly, almost with reluctance. "I think I should like to meet your--Rosa Mundi," he said.

Her eyes suddenly shone. "Not really? You are in earnest? But--but--- you would hurt her. You despise her."

"I am sorry for her," he said, and there was a hint of doggedness in his voice, as though he spoke against his better judgment.

The child's face had an eager look, but she seemed to be restraining herself. "I ought to tell you one thing about her first," she said.

"Perhaps you will disapprove. I don't know. But it is because of you--and your revelation--that she is doing it. Rosa Mundi is going to be married. No, she is not giving up her career or anything--except her freedom. Her old lover has come back to her. She is going to marry him now. He wants her for his wife."