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Python Machine
Learning Blueprints
Python Machine Learning
Blueprints
Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, without the prior written permission of the
publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to

ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the
information contained in this book is sold without warranty,
either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt
Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for
any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or
indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark

information about all of the companies and products mentioned
in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt
Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: July 2016

Production reference: 1270716

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place
35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78439-475-2

www.packtpub.com
Credits

Author Copy Editor

Alexander T. Combs Priyanka Ravi

Reviewer Project Coordinator

Kushal Khandelwal Suzanne Coutinho

Commissioning Editor Proofreader

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Indexer
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Content Development Editor Production Coordinator

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Technical Editor Cover Work

Abhishek R. Kotian Melwyn Dsa

About the Author
Alexander T. Combs is an experienced data scientist,
strategist, and developer with a background in financial data
extraction, natural language processing and generation, and
quantitative and statistical modeling. He is currently a full-time
lead instructor for a data science immersive program in New
York City.

Writing a book is truly a massive undertaking that would not be

possible without the support of others. I would like to thank my
family for their love and encouragement and Jocelyn for her
patience and understanding. I owe all of you tremendously.
About the Reviewer
Kushal Khandelwal is a data scientist and a full-stack
developer. His interests include building scalable machine
learning and image processing software applications. He is
adept at coding in Python and contributes actively to various
open source projects. He is currently serving as the Head of
technology at Truce.in, a farmer-centric start-up where he
is building scalable web applications to assist farmers.
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Preface
Machine learning is rapidly becoming a fixture in our data-
driven world. It is relied upon in fields as diverse as robotics
and medicine to retail and publishing. In this book, you will
learn how to build real-world machine learning applications step
by step.

Working through easy-to-understand projects, you will learn

how to process various types of data and how and when to
apply different machine learning techniques such as supervised
or unsupervised learning.

Each of the projects in this book provides educational as well as

practical value. For example, you'll learn how to use clustering
techniques to find bargain airfares and how to use linear
regression to find a cheap apartment. This book will teach you
how to use machine learning to collect, analyze, and act on
massive quantities of data in an approachable, no-nonsense
manner.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, The Python Machine Learning Ecosystem, delves into
Python, which has a deep and active developer community, and
many of these developers come from the scientific community
as well. This has provided Python with a rich array of libraries
for scientific computing. In this chapter, we will discuss the
features of these key libraries and how to prepare your
environment to best utilize them.

Chapter 2, Build an App to Find Underpriced Apartments,

guides us to build our first machine learning application, and we
begin with a minimal but practical example: building an
application to identify underpriced apartments. By the end of
this chapter, we will create an application that will make finding
the right apartment a bit easier.

Chapter 3, Build an App to Find Cheap Airfares, demonstrates

how to build an application that continually monitors fare
pricing. Once an anomalous price appears, our app will
generate an alert that we can quickly act on.

Chapter 4, Forecast the IPO Market using Logistic Regression,

shows how we can use machine learning to decide which IPOs
are worth a closer look and which ones we may want to skip.

Chapter 5, Create a Custom Newsfeed, covers how to build a

system that understands your taste in news and will send you a
personally tailored newsletter each day.

Chapter 6, Predict whether Your Content Will Go Viral, examines

some of the most shared content and attempts to find the
common elements that differentiate it from the content that
people are less willing to share.

Chapter 7, Forecast the Stock Market with Machine Learning,

discusses how to build and test a trading strategy. There are
countless pitfalls to avoid when trying to devise your own
system, and it is quite nearly an impossible task. However, it
can be a lot of fun, and sometimes, it can even be profitable.

Chapter 8, Build an Image Similarity Engine, helps you

construct an advanced, image-based, deep learning application.
We will also cover deep learning algorithms to understand why
they are so important and why there is such a hype
surrounding them.

Chapter 9, Build a Chatbot, demonstrates how to construct a

chatbot from scratch. Along the way, you'll learn more about
the history of the field and its future prospects.

Chapter 10, Build a Recommendation Engine, explores the

different varieties of recommendation systems. We'll see how
they're implemented commercially and how they work. We will
also implement our own recommendation engine to find GitHub
repos.
What you need for this
book
All you need is Python 3.x and a desire to build real-world
machine learning projects. You can refer to the detailed
software list provided along with the code files of this book.
Who this book is for
This book targets Python programmers, data scientists, and
architects with a good knowledge of data science and all those
who want to build complete Python-based machine learning
systems.
Conventions
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</category>

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sp = pd.read_csv(r'/Users/alexcombs/Downloads/spy.csv')

sp.sort_values('Date', inplace=True)

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that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog
boxes, appear in the text like this: "Right-click on the page and
click on Inspect element."
NOTE
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

TIP
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. The Python
Machine Learning
Ecosystem
Machine learning is rapidly changing our world. As the
centerpiece of artificial intelligence, it is difficult to go a day
without reading how it will transform our lives. Some argue it
will lead us into a Singularity-style techno-utopia. Others
suggest we are headed towards a techno-pocalypse marked by
constant battles with job-stealing robots and drone death
squads. But while the pundits may enjoy discussing these
hyperbolic futures, the more mundane reality is that machine
learning is rapidly becoming a fixture of our daily lives. Through
subtle but progressive improvements in how we interact with
computers and the world around us, machine learning is quietly
improving our lives.

If you shop at online retailers such as Amazon.com, use

streaming music or movie services such as Spotify or Netflix, or
even just perform a Google search, you have encountered a
machine learning application. The data generated by the users
of these services is collected, aggregated, and fed into models
that improve the services by creating tailored experiences for
each user.

Now is an ideal time to dive into developing machine learning

applications, and as you will discover, Python is an ideal choice
with which to develop these applications. Python has a deep
and active developer community, and many of these developers
come from the scientific community as well. This has provided
Python with a rich array of libraries for scientific computing. In
this book, we will discuss and use a number of these libraries
from this Python scientific stack.

In the chapters that follow, we'll learn step by step how to build
a wide variety of machine learning applications. But before we
begin in earnest, we'll spend the remainder of this chapter
discussing the features of these key libraries and how to
prepare your environment to best utilize them.

We'll cover the following topics in this chapter:

The data science/machine learning workflow

Libraries for each stage of the workflow

Setting up your environment

The data science/machine

learning workflow
Building machine learning applications, while similar in many
respects to the standard engineering paradigm, differs in one
crucial way: the need to work with data as a raw material. The
success of a data project will, in large part, depend on the
quality of the data that you acquired as well as how it's
handled. And because working with data falls into the domain
of data science, it is helpful to understand the data science
workflow:
The process proceeds through these six steps in the following
order: acquisition, inspection and exploration, cleaning and
preparation, modeling, evaluation, and finally deployment.
There is often the need to circle back to prior steps, such as
when inspecting and preparing the data or when evaluating and
modeling, but the process at a high level can be described as
shown in the preceding diagram.

Let's now discuss each step in detail.

Acquisition
Data for machine learning applications can come from any
number of sources; it may be e-mailed as a CSV file, it may
come from pulling down server logs, or it may require building
a custom web scraper. The data may also come in any number
of formats. In most cases, it will be text-based data, but as
we'll see, machine learning applications may just as easily be
built utilizing images or even video files. Regardless of the
format, once the data is secured, it is crucial to understand
what's in the data—as well as what isn't.

Inspection and exploration

Once the data has been acquired, the next step is to inspect
and explore it. At this stage, the primary goal is to sanity-check
the data, and the best way to accomplish this is to look for
things that are either impossible or highly unlikely. As an
example, if the data has a unique identifier, check to see that
there is indeed only one; if the data is price-based, check
whether it is always positive; and whatever the data type,
check the most extreme cases. Do they make sense? A good
practice is to run some simple statistical tests on the data and
visualize it. Additionally, it is likely that some data is missing or
incomplete. It is critical to take note of this during this stage as
it will need to be addressed it later during the cleaning and
preparation stage. Models are only as good as the data that
goes into them, so it is crucial to get this step right.

Cleaning and preparation

When all the data is in order, the next step is to place it in a
format that is amenable to modeling. This stage encompasses a
number of processes such as filtering, aggregating, imputing,
and transforming. The type of actions that are necessary will be
highly dependent on the type of data as well as the type of
library and algorithm utilized. For example, with natural-
language-based text, the transformations required will be very
different from those required for time series data. We'll see a
number of examples of these types of transformations
throughout the book.

Modeling
Once the data preparation is complete, the next phase is
modeling. In this phase, an appropriate algorithm is selected
and a model is trained on the data. There are a number of best
practices to adhere to during this stage, and we will discuss
them in detail, but the basic steps involve splitting the data into
training, testing, and validation sets. This splitting up of the
data may seem illogical—especially when more data typically
yields better models—but as we'll see, doing this allows us to
get better feedback on how the model will perform in the real
world, and prevents us from the cardinal sin of modeling:
overfitting.
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
consciousness that his leave was only for a fortnight, a period too short for
anything to be decided on. No hurried settlement of the extraordinary
imbroglio of affairs which he perceived dimly—no license, however
special, would make it possible to secure Rose in a fortnight’s time; and he
was bound to China for three years! This reflection, you may well suppose,
gave the young man enough to think of, and made his first day at home
anything but the ecstatic holiday which a first day at home ought to be.
As for Mrs. Damerel, when she went into her own house, after seeing
this dangerous intruder to the door, the sense of relief which had been her
only conscious feeling up to this moment gave place to the irritation and
repressed wrath which, I think, was very natural. She said to herself,
bitterly, that as the father had been so the daughter was. They consulted
their own happiness, their own feelings, and left her to make everything
straight behind them. What did it matter what she felt? What was the good
of her but to bear the burden of their self-indulgence?—to make up for the
wrongs they did, and conceal the scandal? I am aware that in such a case, as
in almost all others, the general sympathy goes with the young; but yet I
think poor Mrs. Damerel had much justification for the bitterness in her
heart. She wept a few hot tears by herself which nobody even knew of or
suspected, and then she returned to the children’s lessons and her daily
business, her head swimming a little, and with a weakness born of past
agitation, but subdued into a composure not feigned but real. For after all,
everything can be remedied except exposure, she thought to herself; and
going to Miss Margetts’ showed at least a glimmering of common-sense on
the part of the runaway, and saved all public discussion of the “difficulty”
between Rose and her mother. Mrs. Damerel was a clergyman’s wife—nay,
one might say a clergywoman in her own person, accustomed to all the
special decorums and exactitudes which those who take the duties of the
caste to heart consider incumbent upon that section of humanity; but she set
about inventing a series of fibs on the spot with an ease which I fear long
practice and custom had given. How many fibs had she been compelled to
tell on her husband’s behalf?—exquisite little romances about his health
and his close study, and the mental occupations which kept him from little
necessary duties; although she knew perfectly well that his study was mere
desultory reading, and his delicate health, self-indulgence. She had shielded
him so with that delicate network of falsehood that the rector had gone out
of the world with the highest reputation. She had all her life been subject to
remark as rather a commonplace wife for such a man, but no one had
dreamt of criticising him. Now she had the same thing to begin over again;
and she carried her system to such perfection that she began upon her own
family, as indeed in her husband’s case she had always done, imbuing the
children with a belief in his abstruse studies and sensitive organization, as
well as the outer world.
“Rose has gone to pay Miss Margetts a visit,” she said, at the early
dinner. “I think a little change will do her good. I shall run up to town in a
few days and see after her things.”
“Gone to Miss Margetts’! I wonder why no one ever said so,” cried
Agatha, who was always full of curiosity. “What a funny thing, to go off on
a visit without even saying a word!”
“It was settled quite suddenly,” said the mother, with perfect composure.
“I don’t think she has been looking well for some days; and I always
intended to go to town about her things.”
“What a very funny thing,” repeated Agatha, “to go off at five o’clock;
never to say a word to any one—not even to take a box with her clothes,
only that little black bag. I never heard of anything so funny; and to be so
excited about it that she never went to bed.”
“Do not talk nonsense,” said Mrs. Damerel, sharply; “it was not decided
till the evening before, after you were all asleep.”
“But, mamma”—
“I think you might take some of this pudding down to poor Mary
Simpson,” said Mrs. Damerel, calmly; “she has no appetite, poor girl; and,
Agatha, you can call at the postoffice, and ask Mrs. Brown if her niece has
got a place yet. I think she might suit me as housemaid, if she has not got a
place.”
“Then, thank Heaven,” said Agatha, diverted entirely into a new channel,
“we shall get rid of Mary Jane!”
Having thus, as it were, made her experiment upon the subject nearest
her heart, Mrs. Damerel had her little romance perfectly ready for Mr.
Incledon when he came. “You must not blame me for a little disappointment
to-day,” she said, “though indeed I ought to have sent you word had I not
been so busy. You must have seen that Rose was not herself yesterday. She
has her father’s fine organization, poor child, and all our troubles have told
upon her. I have sent her to her old school, to Miss Margetts, whose care I
can rely upon, for a little change. It will be handy in many ways, for I must
go to town for shopping, and it will be less fatiguing to Rose to meet me
there than to go up and down on the same day.”
“Then she was not well yesterday?” said Mr. Incledon, over whose face
various changes had passed of disappointment, annoyance, and relief.
“Could you not see that?” said the mother, smiling with gentle reproof.
“When did Rose show temper before? She has her faults, but that is not one
of them; but she has her father’s fine organization. I don’t hesitate to say
now, when it is all over, that poverty brought us many annoyances and some
privations, as it does to everybody, I suppose. Rose has borne up bravely,
but of course she felt them; and it is a specialty with such highly-strung
natures,” said this elaborate deceiver, “that they never break down till the
pressure is removed.”
“Ah! I ought to have known it,” said Mr. Incledon; “and, indeed,” he
added, after a pause, “what you say is a great relief, for I had begun to fear
that so young a creature might have found out that she had been too hasty—
that she did not know her own mind.”
“It is not her mind, but her nerves and temperament,” said the mother. “I
shall leave her quite quiet for a few days.”
“And must I leave her quiet too?”
“I think so, if you don’t mind. I could not tell you at the time,” said Mrs.
Damerel, with absolute truth and candor such as gave the best possible
effect when used as accompaniments to the pious fib, “for I knew you
would have wished to help us, and I could not have allowed it; but there
have been a great many things to put up with. You don’t know what it is to
be left to the tender mercies of a maid-of-all-work, and Rose has had to soil
her poor little fingers, as I never thought to see a child of mine do; it is no
disgrace, especially when it is all over,” she added, with a little laugh.
“Disgrace! it is nothing but honor,” said the lover, with some moisture
starting into his eyes. He would have liked to kiss the poor little fingers of
which her mother spoke with playful tenderness, and went away
comparatively happy, wondering whether there was not something more to
do than he had originally thought of by which he could show his pride and
delight and loving homage to his Rose.
Poor Mrs. Damerel! I am afraid it was very wicked of her, as a
clergywoman who ought to show a good example to the world in general;
and she could have whipped Rose all the same for thus leaving her in the
lurch; but still it was clever, and a gift which most women have to exercise,
more or less.
But oh! the terrors which overwhelmed her soul when, after having
dismissed Mr. Incledon, thus wrapped over again in a false security, she
bethought herself that Rose had travelled to town in company with young
Wodehouse; that they had been shut up for more than an hour together; that
he had told his love-tale, and she had confided enough to him to leave him
not hopeless, at least. Other things might be made to arrange themselves;
but what was to be done with the always rebellious girl when the man she
preferred—a young lover, impassioned and urgent—had come into the
field?
 CHAPTER XVI.
When Rose found herself, after so strange and exciting a journey, within
the tranquil shades of Miss Margetts’ establishment for young ladies, it
would be difficult to tell the strange hush which fell upon her. Almost
before the door had closed upon Wodehouse, while still the rumble of the
hansom in which he had brought her to her destination, and in which he
now drove away, was in her ears, the hush, the chill, the tranquillity had
begun to influence her. Miss Margetts, of course, was not up at half-past six
on the summer morning, and it was an early housemaid, curious but drowsy,
who admitted Rose, and took her, having some suspicion of so unusually
early a visitor, with so little luggage, to the bare and forbidding apartment in
which Miss Margetts generally received her “parents.” The window looked
out upon the little garden in front of the house, and the high wall which
inclosed it; and there Rose seated herself to wait, all the energy and passion
which had sustained, beginning to fail her, and dreary doubts of what her
old school-mistress would say, and how she would receive her, filling her
very soul. How strange is the stillness of the morning within such a
populated house! nothing stirring but the faint, far-off noises in the kitchen
—and she alone, with the big blank walls about her, feeling like a prisoner,
as if she had been shut in to undergo some sentence. To be sure, in other
circumstances this was just the moment which Rose would have chosen to
be alone, and in which the recollection of the scene just ended, the words
which she had heard, the looks that had been bent upon her, ought to have
been enough to light up the dreariest place, and make her unconscious of
external pallor and vacancy. But although the warmest sense of personal
happiness which she had ever known in her life had come upon the girl all
unawares ere she came here, yet the circumstances were so strange, and the
complication of feeling so great, that all the light seemed to die out of the
landscape when Edward left her. This very joy which had come to her so
unexpectedly gave a different aspect to all the rest of her story. To fly from
a marriage which was disagreeable to her, with no warmer wish than that of
simply escaping from it, was one thing; but to fly with the aid of a lover,
who made the flight an occasion of declaring himself, was another and very
different matter. Her heart sank while she thought of the story she had to
tell. Should she dare tell Miss Margetts about Edward? About Mr. Incledon
it seemed now simple enough.
Miss Margetts was a kind woman, or one of her “young ladies” would
not have thought of flying back to her for shelter in trouble; but she was
always a little rigid and “particular,” and when she heard Rose’s story (with
the careful exclusion of Edward) her mind was very much disturbed. She
was sorry for the girl, but felt sure that her mother must be in the right, and
trembled a little in the midst of her decorum, to consider what the world
would think if she was found to receive girls who set themselves in
opposition to their lawful guardians. “Was the gentleman not nice?” she
asked, doubtfully; “was he very old? were his morals not what they ought to
be? or has he any personal peculiarity which made him unpleasant? Except
in the latter case, when indeed one must judge for one’s self, I think you
might have put full confidence in your excellent mother’s judgment.”
“Oh, it was not that; he is very good and nice,” said Rose, confused and
troubled. “It is not that I object to him; it is because I do not love him. How
could I marry him when I don’t care for him? But he is not a man to whom
anybody could object.”
“And he is rich, and fond of you, and not too old? I fear—I fear, my dear
child, you have been very inconsiderate. You would soon have learned to
love so good a man.”
“Oh, Miss Anne,” said Rose (for there were two sisters, and this was the
youngest), “don’t say so, please! I never could if I should live a hundred
years.”
“You will not live a hundred years; but you might have tried. Girls are
pliable; or at least people think so; perhaps my particular position in respect
to them makes me less sure of this than most people are. But still, that is the
common idea. You would have learned to be fond of him if he were fond of
you; unless, indeed”—
“Unless what?” cried Rose, intent upon suggestion of excuse.
“Unless,” said Miss Margetts, solemnly, fixing her with the penetrating
glance of an eye accustomed to command—“unless there is another
gentleman in the case—unless you have allowed another image to enter
your heart?”
Rose was unprepared for such an appeal. She answered it only by a
scared look, and hid her face in her hands.
 “Perhaps it will be best to have some breakfast,” said Miss Margetts.
“You must have been up very early to be here so soon; and I dare say you
did not take anything before you started, not even a cup of tea?”
Rose had to avow this lack of common prudence, and try to eat docilely
to please her protector; but the attempt was not very successful. A single
night’s watching is often enough to upset a youthful frame not accustomed
to anything of the kind, and Rose was glad beyond description to be taken
to one of the little white-curtained chambers which were so familiar to her,
and left there to rest. How inconceivable it was that she should be there
again! Her very familiarity with everything made the wonder greater. Had
she never left that still, well-ordered place at all? or what strange current
had drifted her back again? She lay down on the little white dimity bed,
much too deeply affected with her strange position, she thought, to rest; but
ere long had fallen fast asleep, poor child, with her hands clasped across her
breast, and tears trembling upon her eyelashes. Miss Margetts, being a kind
soul, was deeply touched when she looked into the room and found her so,
and immediately went back to her private parlor and scored an adjective or
two out of the letter she had written—a letter to Rose’s mother, telling how
startled she had been to find herself made unawares the confidant of the
runaway, and begging Mrs. Damerel to believe that it was no fault of hers,
though she assured her in the same breath that every attention should be
paid to Rose’s health and comfort. Mrs. Damerel would thus have been very
soon relieved from her suspense, even if she had not received the despairing
little epistle sent to her by Rose. Of Rose’s note, however, her mother took
no immediate notice. She wrote to Miss Margetts, thanking her, and
assuring her that she was only too glad to think that her child was in such
good hands. But she did not write to Rose. No one wrote to Rose; she was
left for three whole days without a word, for even Wodehouse did not
venture to send the glowing epistles which he wrote by the score, having an
idea that an establishment for young ladies is a kind of Castle Dangerous, in
which such letters as his would never be suffered to reach their proper
owner, and might prejudice her with her jailers. These dreary days were
dreary enough for all of them: for the mother, who was not so perfectly
assured of being right in her mode of treatment as to be quite at ease on the
subject; for the young lover, burning with impatience, and feeling every day
to be a year; and for Rose herself, thus dropped into the stillness away from
all that had excited and driven her desperate. To be delivered all at once out
of even trouble which is of an exciting and stimulating character, and buried
in absolute quiet, is a doubtful advantage in any case, at least to youth. Mr.
Incledon bore the interval, not knowing all that was involved in it, with
more calm than any of the others. He was quite amenable to Mrs. Damerel’s
advice not to disturb the girl with letters. After all, what was a week to a
man secure of Rose’s company for the rest of his life? He smiled a little at
the refuge which her mother’s care (he thought) had chosen for her—her
former school! and wondered how his poor little Rose liked it; but
otherwise was perfectly tranquil on the subject. As for poor young
Wodehouse, he was to be seen about the railway station, every train that
arrived from London, and haunted the precincts of the White House for
news, and was as miserable as a young man in love and terrible uncertainty
—with only ten days in which to satisfy himself about his future life and
happiness—could be. What wild thoughts went through his mind as he
answered “yes” and “no” to his mother’s talk, and dutifully took walks with
her, and called with her upon her friends, hearing Rose’s approaching
marriage everywhere talked of, and the “good luck” of the rector’s family
remarked upon! His heart was tormented by all these conversations, yet it
was better to hear them, than to be out of the way of hearing altogether.
Gretna Green, if Gretna Green should be feasible, was the only way he
could think of, to get delivered from this terrible complication; and then it
haunted him that Gretna Green had been “done away with,” though he
could not quite remember how. Ten days! and then the China seas for three
long years; though Rose had not been able to conceal from him that he it
was whom she loved, and not Mr. Incledon. Poor fellow! in his despair he
thought of deserting, of throwing up his appointment and losing all his
chances in life; and all these wild thoughts swayed upwards to a climax in
the three days. He determined on the last of these that he would bear it no
longer. He put a passionate letter in the post, and resolved to beard Mrs.
Damerel in the morning and have it out.
More curious still, and scarcely less bewildering, was the strange trance
of suspended existence in which Rose spent these three days. It was but two
years since she had left Miss Margetts’, and some of her friends were there
still. She was glad to meet them, as much as she could be glad of anything
in her preoccupied state, but felt the strangest difference—a difference
which she was totally incapable of putting into words—between them and
herself. Rose, without knowing it, had made a huge stride in life since she
had left their bare school-room. I dare say her education might with much
advantage have been carried on a great deal longer than it was, and that her
power of thinking might have increased, and her mind been much
improved, had she been sent to college afterwards, as boys are, and as some
people think girls ought to be; but though she had not been to college,
education of a totally different kind had been going on for Rose. She had
made a step in life which carried her altogether beyond the placid region in
which the other girls lived and worked. She was in the midst of problems
which Euclid cannot touch, nor logic solve. She had to exercise choice in a
matter concerning other lives as well as her own. She had to decide unaided
between a true and a false moral duty, and to make up her mind which was
true and which was false. She had to discriminate in what point Inclination
ought to be considered a rule of conduct, and in what points it ought to be
crushed as mere self-seeking; or whether it should not always be crushed,
which was her mother’s code; or if it ought to have supreme weight, which
was her father’s practice. This is not the kind of training which youth can
get from schools, whether in Miss Margetts’ establishment for young ladies,
or even in learned Balliol. Rose, who had been subjected to it, felt, but
could not tell why, as if she were years and worlds removed from the school
and its duties. She could scarcely help smiling at the elder girls with their
“deep” studies and their books, which were far more advanced intellectually
than Rose. Oh, how easy the hardest grammar was, the difficulties of
Goethe, or of Dante (or even of Thucydides or Perseus, but these she did
not know), in comparison with this difficulty which tore her asunder! Even
the moral and religious truths in which she had been trained from her cradle
scarcely helped her. The question was one to be decided for herself and by
herself, and by her for her alone.
And here is the question, dear reader, as the girl had to decide it. Self-
denial is the rule of Christianity. It is the highest and noblest of duties when
exercised for a true end. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay
down his life for his friend.” Thus it has the highest sanction which any
duty can have, and it is the very life and breath and essence of Christianity.
This being the rule, is there one special case excepted in which you ought
not to deny yourself? and is this case the individual one of Marriage?
Allowing that in all other matters it is right to sacrifice your own wishes,
where by doing so you benefit others, is it right to sacrifice your love and
happiness in order to please your friends, and make a man happy who loves
you, but whom you do not love? According to Mrs. Damerel this was so,
and the sacrifice of a girl who made a loveless marriage for a good purpose
was as noble as any other martyrdom for the benefit of country or family or
race. Gentle reader, if you do not skip the statement of the question
altogether, you will probably decide it summarily and wonder at Rose’s
indecision. But hers was no such easy way of dealing with the problem,
which I agree with her in thinking is much harder than anything in Euclid.
She was not by any means sure that this amount of self-sacrifice was not a
duty. Her heart divined, her very intellect felt, without penetrating, a fallacy
somewhere in the argument; but still the argument was very potent and not
to be got over. She was not sure that to listen to Edward Wodehouse, and to
suffer even an unguarded reply to drop from her lips, was not a sin. She was
far from being sure that in any case it is safe or right to do what you like;
and to do what you like in contradiction to your mother, to your
engagement, to your plighted word—what could that be but a sin? She
employed all her simple logic on the subject with little effect, for in strict
logic she was bound over to marry Mr. Incledon, and now more than ever
her heart resolved against marrying Mr. Incledon.
This question worked in her mind, presenting itself in every possible
phase—now one side, now the other. And she dared not consult any one
near, and none of those who were interested in its solution took any notice
of her. She was left alone in unbroken stillness to judge for herself, to make
her own conclusion. The first day she was still occupied with the novelty of
her position—the fatigue and excitement of leaving home, and of all that
had occurred since. The second day she was still strangely moved by the
difference between herself and her old friends, and the sense of having
passed beyond them into regions unknown to their philosophy, and from
which she never could come back to the unbroken tranquillity of a girl’s
life. But on the third day the weight of her strange position weighed her
down utterly. She watched the distribution of the letters with eyes growing
twice their natural size, and a pang indescribable at her heart. Did they
mean to leave her alone then? to take no further trouble about her? to let her
do as she liked, that melancholy privilege which is prized only by those
who do not possess it? Had Edward forgotten her, though he had said so
much two days ago? had her mother cast her off, despising her, as a rebel?
Even Mr. Incledon, was he going to let her be lost to him without an effort?
Rose had fled hoping (she believed) for nothing so much as to lose herself
and be heard of no more; but oh! the heaviness which drooped over her
very soul when for three days she was let alone! Wonder, consternation,
indignation, arose one after another in her heart. They had all abandoned
her. The lover whom she loved, and the lover whom she did not love, alike.
What was love then? a mere fable, a thing which perished when the object
of it was out of sight? When she had time to think, indeed, she found this
theory untenable, for had not Edward been faithful to her at the other end of
the world? and yet what did he mean now?
On the third night Rose threw herself on her bed in despair, and sobbed
till midnight. Then a mighty resolution arose in her mind. She would relieve
herself of the burden. She would go to the fountain-head, to Mr. Incledon
himself, and lay the whole long tale before him. He was good, he was just,
he had always been kind to her; she would abide by what he said. If he
insisted that she should marry him, she must do so; better that than to be
thrown off by everybody, to be left for days or perhaps for years alone in
Miss Margetts’. And if he were generous, and decided otherwise! In that
case neither Mrs. Damerel nor any one else could have anything to say—
she would put it into his hands.
She had her hat on when she came down to breakfast next morning, and
her face, though pale, had a little resolution in it, better than the
despondency of the first three days. “I am going home,” she said, as the
school-mistress looked at her, surprised.
“It is the very best thing you can do, my dear,” said Miss Margetts,
giving her a more cordial kiss than usual. “I did not like to advise it; but it is
the very best thing you can do.”
Rose took her breakfast meekly, not so much comforted as Miss
Margetts had intended by this approval. Somehow she felt as if it must be
against her own interest since Miss Margetts approved of it, and she was in
twenty minds then not to go. When the letters came in she said to herself
that there could be none for her, and went and stood at the window, turning
her back that she might not see; and it was while she was standing thus,
pretending to gaze out upon the high wall covered with ivy, that, in the
usual contradiction of human affairs, Edward Wodehouse’s impassioned
letter was put into her hands. There she read how he too had made up his
mind not to bear it longer; how he was going to her mother to have an
explanation with her. Should she wait for the result of this explanation, or
should she carry out her own determination and go?
“Come, Rose, I will see you safely to the station: there is a cab at the
door,” said Miss Margetts.
Rose turned round, her eyes dewy and moist with those tears of love and
consolation which refresh and do not scorch as they come. She looked up
timidly to see whether she might ask leave to stay; but the cab was waiting,
and Miss Margetts was ready, and her own hat on and intention declared;
she was ashamed to turn back when she had gone so far. She said good-by
accordingly to the elder sister, and meekly followed Miss Anne into the cab.
Had it been worth while winding herself up to the resolution of flight for so
little? Was her first experiment of resistance really over, and the rebel going
home, with arms grounded and banners trailing? It was ignominious beyond
all expression—but what was she to do?
“My dear,” said Miss Margetts, in the cab, which jolted very much, and
now and then took away her breath, “I hope you are going with your mind
in a better frame, and disposed to pay attention to what your good mother
says. She must know best. Try and remember this, whatever happens. You
ought to say it to yourself all the way down as a penance, ‘My mother
knows best.’ ”
“But how can she know best what I am feeling?” said Rose. “It must be
myself who must judge of that.”
“You may be sure she knows a great deal more, and has given more
thought to it than you suppose,” said the school-mistress; “dear child, make
me happy by promising that you will follow her advice.”
Rose made no promise, but her heart sank as she thus set out upon her
return journey. It was less terrible when she found herself alone in the
railway carriage, and yet it was more terrible as she realized what
desperation had driven her to. She was going back as she went away, with
no question decided, no resolution come to, with only new complications to
encounter, without the expedient of flight, which could not be repeated.
Ought she not to have been more patient, to have tried to put up with
silence? That could not have lasted forever. But now she was going to put
herself back in the very heart of the danger, with no ground gained, but
something lost. Well! she said to herself, at least it would be over. She
would know the worst, and there would be no further appeal against it. If
happiness was over too, she would have nothing to do in all the life before
her—nothing to do but to mourn over the loss of it, and teach herself to do
without it; and suspense would be over. She got out of the carriage, pulling
her veil over her face, and took an unfrequented path which led away across
the fields to the road near Whitton, quite out of reach of the Green and all
its inhabitants. It was a long walk, but the air and the movement did her
good. She went on swiftly and quietly, her whole mind bent upon the
interview she was going to seek. All beyond was a blank to her. This one
thing, evident and definite, seemed to fix and to clear her dazzled eyesight.
She met one or two acquaintances, but they did not recognize her through
her veil, though she saw them, and recollected them ever after, as having
had something to do with that climax and agony of her youth; and thus
Rose reached Whitton, with its soft, abundant summer woods, and, her
heart beating louder and louder, hastened her steps as she drew near her
destination, almost running across the park to Mr. Incledon’s door.
 CHAPTER XVII.
“Rose! is it possible?” he cried. She was standing in the midst of that
great, luxurious, beautiful drawing-room, of which he hoped she was to be
the queen and mistress, her black dress breaking harshly upon all the soft
harmony of neutral tints around. Her face, which he saw in the glass as he
entered the room, was framed in the large veil which she had thrown back
over her hat, and which drooped down on her shoulders on either side. She
was quite pale—her cheeks blanched out of all trace of color, with
something of that chilled and spiritual light which sometimes appears in the
colorless clearness of the sky after a storm. Her eyes were larger than usual,
and had a dilated, exhausted look. Her face was full of a speechless, silent
eagerness—eagerness which could wait, yet was almost beyond the
common artifices of concealment. Her hands were softly clasped together,
with a certain eloquence in their close pressure, supporting each other. All
this Mr. Incledon saw in the glass before he could see her; and, though he
went in with lively and joyful animation, the sight startled him a little. He
came forward, however, quite cheerfully, though his heart failed him, and
took the clasped hands into his own.
“I did not look for such a bright interruption to a dull morning,” he said;
“but what a double pleasure it is to see you here! How good of you to come
to bring me the happy news of your return!”
“Mr. Incledon,” she said hastily, “oh! do not be glad—don’t say I am
good. I have come to you first without seeing mamma. I have come to say a
great deal—a very great deal—to you; and to ask—your advice—and if you
will tell me—what to do.”
Her voice sank quite low before these final words were said.
“My darling,” he said, “you are very serious and solemn. What can you
want advice about? But whatever it is, you have a right to the very best I
can give you. Let me hear what the difficulty is. Here is a chair for you—
one of your own choice, the new ones. Tell me if you think it comfortable;
and then tell me what this terrible difficulty is.”
“Oh, don’t take it so lightly,” said Rose, “please don’t. I am very, very
unhappy, and I have determined to tell everything and to let you judge me.
You have the best right.”
 “Thanks for saying so,” he said, with a smile, kissing her hand. He
thought she meant that as she was so surely his, it was naturally his part to
think for her and help her in everything. What so natural? And then he
awaited her disclosure, still smiling, expecting some innocent dilemma,
such as would be in keeping with her innocent looks. He could not
understand her, nor the gravity of the appeal to him which she had come to
make.
“Oh, Mr. Incledon!” cried Rose, “if you knew what I meant, you would
not smile—you would not take it so easily. I have come to tell you
everything—how I have lied to you and been a cheat and a deceiver. Oh!
don’t laugh! you don’t know—you don’t know how serious it is!”
“Nay, dear child,” he said, “do you want to frighten me? for if you do,
you must think of something more likely than that you are a cheat and
deceiver. Come now, I will be serious—as serious as a judge. Tell me what
it is, Rose.”
“It is about you and me,” she said suddenly, after a little pause.
“Ah!”—this startled him for the first time. His grasp tightened upon her
hand; but he used no more endearing words. “Go on,” he said, softly.
“May I begin at the beginning? I should like to tell you everything.
When you first spoke to me, Mr. Incledon, I told you there was some
one”—
“Ah!” cried Mr. Incledon again, still more sharply, “he is here now. You
have seen him since he came back?”
“It is not that,” said Rose. “Oh! let me tell you from the beginning. I said
then that he had never said anything to me. I could not tell you his name
because I did not know what his feelings were—only my own, of which I
was ashamed. Mr. Incledon, have patience with me a little. Just before he
went away he came to the rectory to say good-by. He sent up a message to
ask me to come down, but mamma went down instead. Then his mother
sent me a little note, begging me to go to bid him good-by. It was while
papa was ill; he held my hand, and would not let me. I begged him, only for
a minute; but he held my hand and would not let me go. I had to sit there
and listen, and hear the door open and shut, and then steps in the hall and on
the gravel, and then mamma coming slowly back again, as if nothing had
happened, up-stairs and along the corridor. Oh! I thought she was walking
on my heart!”
 Rose’s eyes were so full that she did not see how her listener looked. He
held her hand still, but with his disengaged hand he partially covered his
face.
“Then after that,” she resumed, pausing for breath, “all our trouble came.
I did not seem to care for anything. It is dreadful to say it—and I never did
say it till now—but I don’t think I felt so unhappy as I ought about poor
papa; I was so unhappy before. It did not break my heart as grief ought to
do. I was only dull—dull—miserable, and did not care for anything; but
then everybody was unhappy; and there was good reason for it, and no one
thought of me. It went on like that till you came.”
Here he stirred a little and grasped her hand more tightly. What she had
said hitherto had not been pleasant to him; but yet it was all before he had
made his appearance as her suitor—all innocent, visionary—the very
romance of youthful liking. Such an early dream of the dawning any man,
even the most rigid, might forgive to his bride.
“You came—oh! Mr. Incledon, do not be angry—I want to tell you
everything. If it vexes you and hurts you, will you mind? You came; and
mamma told me that same night. Oh, how frightened I was and miserable!
Everything seemed to turn round with me. She said you loved me, and that
you were very good and very kind,—but that I knew,—and would do so
much for the boys, and be a comfort and help to her in our great poverty.”
At these words he stirred again and loosened, but did not quite let go, his
grasp of her hand. Rose was, without knowing it, acting like a skilful
surgeon, cutting deep and sharp, that the pain might be over the sooner. He
leaned his head on his other hand, turning it away from her, and from time
to time stirred unconsciously when the sting was too much for him, but did
not speak. “And she said more than this. Oh, Mr. Incledon! I must tell you
everything, as if you were my own heart. She told me that papa had not
been—considerate for us, as he should have been; that he liked his own way
and his own pleasure best; and that I was following him—that I was doing
the same—ruining the boys’ prospects and prolonging our great poverty,
because I did not want to marry you, though you had promised to help them
and set everything right.”
Mr. Incledon dropped Rose’s hand; he turned half away from her,
supporting his head upon both of his hands, so that she did not see his face.
She did not know how cruel she was, nor did she mean to be cruel, but
simply historical, telling him everything, as if she had been speaking to her
own heart.
“Then I saw you,” said Rose, “and told you—or else I thought I told you
—and you did not mind, but would not, though I begged you, give up. And
everything went on for a long, long time. Sometimes I was very wretched;
sometimes my heart felt quite dull, and I did not seem to mind what
happened. Sometimes I forgot for a little while—and oh! Mr. Incledon, now
and then, though I tried very hard, I could not help thinking of—him. I
never did when I could help it; but sometimes when I saw the lights on
Ankermead, or remembered something he had said—And all this time
mamma would talk to me of people who prefer their own will to the
happiness of others; of all the distress and misery it brought when we
indulged ourselves and our whims and fancies; of how much better it was to
do what was right than what we liked. My head got confused sometimes,
and I felt as if she was wrong, but I could not put it into words; for how
could it be right to deceive a good man like you—to let you give your love
for nothing, and marry you without caring for you? But I am not clever
enough to argue with mamma. Once, I think, for a minute, I got the better of
her; but when she told me that I was preferring my own will to everybody’s
happiness, it went to my heart, and what could I say? Do you remember the
day when it was all settled at last and made up?”
This was more than the poor man could bear. He put up one hand with a
wild gesture to stop her, and uttered a hoarse exclamation; but Rose was too
much absorbed in her story to stop.
“The night before I had gone down into the rectory garden, where he and
I used to talk, and there I said good-by to him in my heart, and made a kind
of grave over him, and gave him up for ever and ever—oh! don’t you know
how?” said Rose, the tears dropping on her black dress. “Then I was willing
that it should be settled how you pleased; and I never, never allowed myself
to think of him any more. When he came into my head, I went to the
school-room, or I took a hard bit of music, or I talked to mamma, or heard
Patty her lessons. I would not, because I thought it would be wicked to you,
and you so good to me, Mr. Incledon. Oh! if you had only been my brother,
or my—cousin (she had almost said, father or uncle, but by good luck
forbore), how fond I should have been of you!—and I am fond of you,” said
Rose, softly, proffering the hand which he had put away, and laying it
gently upon his arm.
 He shook his head, and made a little gesture as if to put it off, but yet the
touch and the words went to his heart.
“Now comes the worst of all,” said Rose. “I know it will hurt you, and
yet I must tell you. After that there came the news of uncle Ernest’s death;
and that he had left his money to us, and that we were well off again—
better than we had ever been. Oh, forgive me! forgive me!” she said,
clasping his arm with both her hands, “when I heard it, it seemed to me all
in a moment that I was free. Mamma said that all the sacrifices we had been
making would be unnecessary henceforward; what she meant was the
things we had been doing—dusting the rooms, putting the table straight,
helping in the house—oh! as if these could be called sacrifices! But I
thought she meant me. You are angry—you are angry!” said Rose. “I could
not expect anything else. But it was not you, Mr. Incledon; it was that I
hated to be married. I could not—could not make up my mind to it. I turned
into a different creature when I thought that I was free.”
The simplicity of the story disarmed the man, sharp and bitter as was the
sting and mortification of listening to this too artless tale. “Poor child! poor
child!” he murmured, in a softer tone, unclasping the delicate fingers from
his arm; and then, with an effort, “I am not angry. Go on; let me hear it to
the end.”
“When mamma saw how glad I was, she stopped it all at once,” said
Rose, controlling herself. “She said I was just the same as ever—always
self-indulgent, thinking of myself, not of others—and that I was as much
bound as ever by honor. There was no longer any question of the boys, or of
help to the family; but she said honor was just as much to be considered,
and that I had pledged my word”—
“Rose,” quietly said Mr. Incledon, “spare me what you can of these
discussions—you had pledged your word?”
She drew away half frightened, not expecting the harsher tone in his
voice, though she had expected him to “be angry,” as she said. “Forgive
me,” she went on, subdued, “I was so disappointed that it made me wild. I
did not know what to do. I could not see any reason for it now—any good
in it; and, at last, when I was almost crazy with thinking, I—ran away.”
“You ran away?”—Mr. Incledon raised his head, indignant. “Your
mother has lied all round,” he said, fiercely; then, bethinking himself, “I
beg your pardon. Mrs. Damerel no doubt had her reasons for what she
said.”
“There was only one place I could go to,” said Rose, timidly, “Miss
Margetts’, where I was at school. I went up to the station for the early train
that nobody might see me. I was very much frightened. Some one was
standing there; I did not know who he was—he came by the train, I think;
but after I had got into the carriage he came in after me. Mr. Incledon! it
was not his fault, neither his nor mine. I had not been thinking of him. It
was not for him, but only not to be married—to be free”—
“Of me,” he said, with a bitter smile; “but in short, you met, whether by
intention or not—and Mr. Wodehouse took advantage of his opportunities?”
“He told me,” said Rose, not looking at Mr. Incledon, “what I had known
ever so long without being told; but I said nothing to him; what could I say?
I told him all that had happened. He took me to Miss Margetts’, and there
we parted,” said Rose, with a momentary pause and a deep sigh.
“Since then I have done nothing but think and think. No one has come
near me—no one has written to me. I have been left alone to go over and
over it all in my own mind. I have done so till I was nearly mad, or at least,
everything seemed going round with me and everything confused, and I
could not tell what was right and what was wrong. Oh!” cried Rose, lifting
her head in natural eloquence, with eyes which looked beyond him, and a
certain elevation and abstraction in her face, “I don’t think it is a thing in
which only right and wrong are to be considered. When you love one and
do not love another, it must mean something; and to marry unwillingly, that
is nothing to content a man. It is a wrong to him; it is not doing right; it is
treating him unkindly, cruelly! It is as if he wanted you, anyhow, like a cat
or a dog; not as if he wanted you worthily, as his companion.” Rose’s
courage failed her after this little outburst; her high looks came down, her
voice sank and faltered, her head drooped. She rose up, and clasping her
hands together, went on in low tones: “Mr. Incledon, I am engaged to you; I
belong to you. I trust your justice and your kindness more than anything
else. If you say I am to marry you, I will do it. Take it now into your own
hands. If I think of it any more I will go mad; but I will do whatever you
say.”
He was walking up and down the room, with his face averted, and with
pain and anger and humiliation in his heart. All this time he had believed he
was leading Rose towards the reasonable love for him which was all he
hoped for. He had supposed himself in almost a lofty position, offering to
this young, fresh, simple creature more in every way than she could ever
have had but for him—a higher position, a love more noble than any foolish
boy-and-girl attachment. To find out in a moment how very different the
real state of the case had been, and to have conjured up before him the
picture of a martyr-girl, weeping and struggling, and a mother “with a host
of petty maxims preaching down her daughter’s heart,” was intolerable to
him. He had never been so mortified, so humbled in all his life. He walked
up and down the room in a ferment, with that sense of the unbearable which
is so bitter. Unbearable!—yet to be borne somehow; a something not to be
ignored or cast off. It said much for Rose’s concluding appeal that he heard
it at all, and took in the meaning of it in his agitation and hot, indignant
rage; but he did hear it, and it touched him. “If you say I am to marry you, I
will do it.” He stopped short in his impatient walk. Should he say it—in
mingled despite and love—and keep her to her word? He came up to her
and took her clasped hands within his, half in anger, half in tenderness, and
looked her in the face.
“If I say you are to marry me, you will do it? You pledge yourself to
that? You will marry me if I please?”
“Yes,” said Rose, very pale, looking up at him steadfastly. She neither
trembled nor hesitated. She had gone beyond any superficial emotion.
Then he stooped and kissed her with a passion which was rough—almost
brutal. Rose’s pale face flushed, and her slight figure wavered like a reed;
but she neither shrank nor complained. He had a right to dictate to her—she
had put it into his hands. The look of those large, innocent eyes, from which
all conflict had departed, which had grown abstract in their wistfulness,
holding fast at least by one clear duty, went to his heart. He kept looking at
her, but she did not quail. She had no thought but her word, and to do what
she had said.
“Rose,” he said, “you are a cheat, like all women. You come to me with
this face, and insult me and stab me, and say then you will do what I tell
you, and stand there, looking at me with innocent eyes like an angel. How
could you find it in your heart—if you have a heart—to tell me all this?
How dare you put that dainty little cruel foot of yours upon my neck, and
scorn and torture me—how dare you, how dare you!” There came a
glimmer into his eyes, as if it might have been some moisture forced up by
means beyond his control, and he held her hands with such force that it
seemed to Rose he shook her, whether willingly or not. But she did not
shrink. She looked up at him, her eyes growing more and more wistful, and
though he hurt her, did not complain.
“It was that you might know all the truth,” she said, almost under her
breath. “Now you know everything and can judge—and I will do as you
say.”
He held her so for a minute longer, which seemed eternity to Rose; then
he let her hands drop, and turned away.
“It is not you who are to blame,” he said, “not you, but your mother, who
would have sold you. Good God! do all women traffic in their own flesh
and blood?”
“Do not say so!” cried Rose, with sudden tears; “you shall not! I will not
hear it! She has been wrong; but that was not what she meant.”
Mr. Incledon laughed—his mood seemed to have changed all in a
moment. “Come Rose,” he said, “perhaps it is not quite decorous for you, a
young lady, to be here alone. Come! I will take you to your mother, and
then you shall hear what I have got to say.”
She walked out of the great house by his side as if she were in a dream.
What did he mean? The suspense became terrible to her; for she could not
guess what he would say. Her poor little feet twisted over each other and
she stumbled and staggered with weakness as she went along beside him—
stumbled so much that he made her take his arm, and led her carefully
along, with now and then a kind but meaningless word. Before they entered
the White House, Rose was leaning almost her whole weight upon his
supporting arm. The world was swimming and floating around, the trees
going in circles, now above, now below her, she thought. She was but half
conscious when she went in, stumbling across the threshold, to the little
hall, all bright with Mr. Incledon’s flowers. Was she to be his, too, like one
of them—a flower to carry about wherever he went, passive and helpless as
one of the plants—past resistance, almost past suffering? “I am afraid she is
ill; take care of her, Agatha,” said Mr. Incledon to her sister, who came
rushing open-mouthed and open-eyed; and, leaving her there, he strode
unannounced into the drawing-room to meet the real author of his
discomfiture, an antagonist more worthy of his steel and against whom he
could use his weapons with less compunction than against the submissive
Rose.
Mrs. Damerel had been occupied all the morning with Mr. Nolan, who
had obeyed her summons on the first day of Rose’s flight, but whom she
had dismissed when she ascertained where her daughter was, assuring him
that to do nothing was the best policy, as indeed it had proved to be. The
curate had gone home that evening obedient; but moved by the electrical
impulse which seemed to have set all minds interested in Rose in motion on
that special day, had come back this morning to urge her mother to go to her
or to allow him to go to her. Mr. Nolan’s presence had furnished an excuse
to Mrs. Damerel for declining to receive poor young Wodehouse, who had
asked to see her immediately after breakfast. She was discussing even then
with the curate how to get rid of him, what to say to him, and what it was
best to do to bring Rose back to her duty. “I can’t see so clear as you that
it’s her duty, in all the circumstances,” the curate had said doubtfully. “What
have circumstances to do with a matter of right and wrong—of truth and
honor?” cried Mrs. Damerel. “She must keep her word.” It was at this
precise moment of the conversation that Mr. Incledon appeared; and I
suppose she must have seen something in his aspect and the expression of
his face that showed some strange event had happened. Mrs. Damerel gave
a low cry, and the muscles of Mr. Incledon’s mouth were moved by one of
those strange contortions which in such cases are supposed to do duty for a
smile. He bowed low, with a mock reverence, to Mr. Nolan, but did not put
out his hand.
“I presume,” he said, “that this gentleman is in the secret of my
humiliation, as well as the rest of the family, and that I need not hesitate to
say what I have to say before him. It is pleasant to think that so large a
circle of friends interest themselves in my affairs.”
“What do you mean?” said Mrs. Damerel. “Your humiliation! Have you
sustained any humiliation? I do not know what you mean.”
“Oh! I can make it very clear,” he said, with the same smile. “Your
daughter has been with me; I have just brought her home.”
“What! Rose?” said Mrs. Damerel, starting to her feet; but he stopped
her before she could make a step.
“Do not go,” he said; “It is more important that you should stay here.
What have I done to you that you should have thus humbled me to the dust?
Did I ask you to sell her to me? Did I want a wife for hire? Should I have
authorized any one to persecute an innocent girl, and drive her almost mad
for me? Good heavens, for me! Think of it, if you can. Am I the sort of man
to be forced on a girl—to be married as a matter of duty? How dared you—
how dared any one insult me so!”
Mrs. Damerel, who had risen to her feet, sank into a chair, and covered
her face with her hands. I do not think she had ever once taken into
consideration this side of the question.
“Mr. Incledon,” she stammered, “you have been misinformed; you are
mistaken. Indeed, indeed, it is; not so.”
“Misinformed!” he cried; “mistaken! I have my information from the
very fountain-head—from the poor child who has been all but sacrificed to
this supposed commercial transaction between you and me, which I disown
altogether for my part. I never made such a bargain, nor thought of it. I
never asked to buy your Rose. I might have won her, perhaps,” he added,
calming himself with an effort, “if you had let us alone, or I should have
discovered at once that it was labor lost. Look here. We have been friends,
and I never thought of you till to-day but with respect and kindness. How
could you put such an affront on me?”
“Gently, gently,” said Mr. Nolan, growing red; “you go too far, sir. If
Mrs. Damerel has done wrong, it was a mistake of the judgment, not of the
heart.”
“The heart!” he cried, contemptuously; “how much heart was there in it?
On poor Rose’s side, a broken one; on mine, a heart deceived and deluded.
Pah! do not speak to me of hearts or mistakes; I am too deeply mortified—
too much wronged for that.”
“Mr. Incledon,” said Mrs. Damerel, rising, pale yet self-possessed, “I
may have done wrong, as you say; but what I have done, I did for my
child’s advantage and for yours. You were told she did not love you, but you
persevered; and I believed, and believe still, that when she knew you better
—when she was your wife—she would love you. I may have pressed her
too far; but it was no more a commercial transaction—no more a sale of my
daughter”—she said, with a burning flush coming over her face—“no more
than I tell you. You do me as much wrong as you say I have done you—
Rose! Rose!”
 Rose came in followed by Agatha, with her hat off, which showed more
clearly the waste which emotion and fatigue, weary anxiety, waiting,
abstinence, and mental suffering had worked upon her face. She had her
hands clasped loosely yet firmly, in the attitude which had become habitual
to her, and a pale smile like the wannest of winter sunshine on her face. She
came up very quietly, and stood between the two like a ghost. Agatha said,
who stood trembling behind her.
“Mamma, do not be angry,” she said, softly; “I have told him everything,
and I am quite ready to do whatever he decides. In any case, he ought to
know everything, for it is he who is most concerned—he and I.”
 CHAPTER XVIII.
Captain Wodehouse did not get admission to the White House that day
until the afternoon. He was not to be discouraged, though the messages he
got were of a depressing nature enough. “Mrs. Damerel was engaged, and
could not see him; would he come later?” “Mrs. Damerel was still engaged
—more engaged than ever.”
And while Mary Jane held the door ajar, Edward heard a voice raised
high, with an indignant tone, speaking continuously, which was the voice of
Mr. Incledon, though he did not identify it. Later still, Mrs. Damerel was
still engaged; but, as he turned despairing from the door, Agatha rushed out,
with excited looks, and with a message that if he came back at three o’clock
her mother would see him.
“Rose has come home, and oh! there has been such a business!” Agatha
whispered into his ear before she rushed back again. She knew a lover, and
especially a favored lover, by instinct, as some girls do; but Agatha had the
advantage of always knowing her own mind, and never would be the centre
of any imbroglio, like the unfortunate Rose.
“Are you going back to the White House again?” said Mrs. Wodehouse.
“I wonder how you can be so servile, Edward. I would not go, hat in hand,
to any girl, if I were you; and when you know that she is engaged to another
man, and he a great deal better off than you are! How can you show so little
spirit? There are more Roses in the garden than one, and sweeter Roses, and
richer, would be glad to have you. If I had thought you had so little proper
pride, I should never have wished you to come here.”
“I don’t think I have any proper pride,” said Edward, trying to make a
feeble joke of it; “I have to come home now and then to know what it
means.”
“You were not always so poor-spirited,” said his mother; “it is that silly
girl who has turned your head. And she is not even there; she has gone up to
town to get her trousseau and choose her wedding silks, so they say; and
you may be sure, if she is engaged like that, she does not want to be
reminded of you.”
“I suppose not,” said Edward, drearily; “but as I promised to go back, I
think I must. I ought at least to bid them good-by.”
 “Oh! if that is all,” said Mrs. Wodehouse, pacified, “go, my dear; and
mind you put the very best face upon it. Don’t look as if it were anything to
you; congratulate them, and say you are glad to hear that any one so nice as
Mr. Incledon is to be the gentleman. Oh! if I were in your place, I should
know what to say! I should give Miss Rose something to remember. I
should tell her I hoped she would be happy in her grand house, and was
glad to hear that the settlements were everything they ought to be. She
would feel that, you may be sure; for a girl that sets up for romance and
poetry and all that don’t like to be supposed mercenary. She should not soon
forget her parting with me.”
“Do you think I wish to hurt and wound her?” said Edward. “Surely not.
If she is happy, I will wish her more happiness. She has never harmed me—
no, mother. It cannot do a man any harm, even if it makes him unhappy, to
think of a woman as I think of Rose.”
“Oh! you have no spirit,” cried Mrs. Wodehouse; “I don’t know how a
son of mine can take it so easily. Rose, indeed! Her very name makes my
blood boil!”
But Edward’s blood was very far from boiling as he walked across the
Green for the third time that day. The current of life ran cold and low in
him. The fiery determination of the morning to “have it out” with Mrs.
Damerel, and know his fate and Rose’s fate, had fallen into a despairing
resolution at least to see her for the last time, to bid her forget everything
that had passed, and try himself to forget. If her fate was sealed, and no
longer in her own power to alter, that was all a generous man could do; and
he felt sure, from the voices he had heard, and from the air of agitation
about the house, and from Agatha’s hasty communication, that this day had
been a crisis to more than himself. He met Mr. Incledon as he approached
the house. His rival looked at him gravely without a smile, and passed him
with an abrupt “good morning.” Mr. Incledon had not the air of a
triumphant lover, and there was something of impatience and partial offence
in his look as his eyes lingered for a moment upon the young sailor; so it
appeared to Edward, though I think it was rather regret, and a certain
wistful envy that was in Mr. Incledon’s eyes. This young fellow, not half so
clever, or so cultivated, or so important as himself, had won the prize which
he had tried for and failed. The baffled man was still disturbed by unusual
emotion, but he was not ungenerous in his sentiments; but then the other
believed that he himself was the failure, and that Mr. Incledon had
succeeded, and interpreted his looks, as we all do, according to the
commentary in our own minds. Edward went on more depressed than ever
after this meeting. Just outside the White House he encountered Mr. Nolan,
going out to walk with the children. “Now that the gale is over, the little
boats are going out for a row,” said the curate, looking at him with a smile.
It was not like Mr. Nolan’s usual good nature, poor Edward thought. He
was ushered in at once to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Damerel sat in a
great chair, leaning back, with a look of weakness and exhaustion quite out
of keeping with her usual energy. She held out her hand to him without
rising. Her eyes were red, as if she had been shedding tears, and there was a
flush upon her face. Altogether, her appearance bewildered him; no one in
the world had ever seen Mrs. Damerel looking like this before.
“I am afraid you will think me importunate, coming back so often,” he
said, “but I felt that I must see you. Not that I come with much hope; but
still it is better to know the very worst, if there is no good to hear.”
“It depends on what you think worst or best,” she said. “Mr. Wodehouse,
you told me you were promoted—are captain now, and you have a ship?”
“Commander: and alas! under orders for China, with ten days’ more
leave,” he said, with a faint smile; “though perhaps, on the whole, that may
be best. Mrs. Damerel, may I not ask—for Rose? Pardon me for calling her
so—I can’t think of her otherwise. If it is all settled and made up, and my
poor chance over, may I not see her, only for a few minutes? If you think
what a dismal little story mine has been—sent away without seeing her a
year ago, then raised into sudden hope by our chance meeting the other
morning, and now, I suppose, sentenced to banishment forever”—
“Stay a little,” she said; “I have had a very exciting day, and I am much
worn out. Must you go in ten days?”
“Alas!” said Wodehouse, “and even my poor fortnight got with such
difficulty—though perhaps on the whole it is better, Mrs. Damerel.”
“Yes,” she said, “have patience a moment; things have turned out very
differently from what I wished. I cannot pretend to be pleased, scarcely
resigned to what you have all done between you. You have nothing to offer
my daughter, nothing! and she has nothing to contribute on her side. It is all
selfish inclination, what you liked, not what was best, that has swayed you.
You had not self-denial enough to keep silent; she had not self-denial
enough to consider that this is not a thing for a day but for life; and the
consequences, I suppose, as usual, will fall upon me. All my life I have had
nothing to do but toil to make up for the misfortunes caused by self-
indulgence. Others have had their will and pleasure, and I have paid the
penalty. I thought for once it might have been different, but I have been
mistaken, as you see.”
“You forget that I have no clue to your meaning—that you are speaking
riddles,” said Wodehouse, whose depressed heart had begun to rise and
flutter and thump against his young breast.
“Ah; that is true,” said Mrs. Damerel, rising with a sigh. “Well, I wash
my hands of it; and for the rest you will prefer to hear it from Rose rather
than from me.”
He stood in the middle of the room speechless when she closed the door
behind her, and heard her soft steps going in regular measure through the
still house, as Rose had heard them once. How still it was! the leaves
fluttering at the open window, the birds singing, Mrs. Damerel’s footsteps
sounding fainter, his heart beating louder. But he had not very long to wait.
Mr. Nolan and the children went out on the river, and rowed up that long,
lovely reach past Alfredsbury, skirting the bank, which was pink with
branches of the wild rose and sweet with the feathery flowers of the Queen
of the Meadows. Dick flattered himself that he pulled an excellent bow, and
the curate, who loved the children’s chatter, and themselves, humored the
boy to the top of his bent. Agatha steered, and felt it an important duty, and
Patty, who had nothing else to do, leaned her weight over the side of the
boat, and did her best to capsize it, clutching at the wild roses and the
meadow-queen. They shipped their oars and floated down with the stream
when they had gone as far as they cared to go, and went up the hill again to
the White House in a perfect bower of wild flowers, though the delicate
rose blossoms began to droop in the warm grasp of the children before they
got home. When they rushed in, flooding the house all through and through
with their voices and their joyous breath and their flowers, they found all
the rooms empty, the drawing-room silent, in a green repose, and not a
creature visible. But while Agatha rushed up-stairs, calling upon her mother
and Rose, Mr. Nolan saw a sight from the window which set his mind at
rest. Two young figures together, one leaning on the other—two heads bent
close, talking too low for any hearing but their own. The curate looked at
them with a smile and a sigh. They had attained the height of blessedness.
What better could the world give them? and yet the good curate’s sigh was
not all for the disappointed, nor his smile for their happiness alone.
The lovers were happy; but there are drawbacks to every mortal felicity.
The fact that Edward had but nine days left, and that their fate must after
that be left in obscurity, was, as may be supposed, a very serious drawback
to their happiness. But their good fortune did not forsake them; or rather, to
speak more truly, the disappointed lover did not forsake the girl who had
appealed to him, who had mortified and tortured him, and promised with all
the unconscious cruelty of candor to marry him if he told her to do so. Mr.
Incledon went straight to town from the White House, intent on finishing
the work he had begun. He had imposed on Mrs. Damerel as a duty to him,
as a recompense for all that he had suffered at her hands, the task of
receiving Wodehouse, and sanctioning the love which her daughter had
given; and he went up to town to the Admiralty, to his friend whose
unfortunate leniency had permitted the young sailor to return home. Mr.
Incledon treated the matter lightly, making a joke of it. “I told you he was
not to come home, but to be sent off as far as possible,” he said.
“Why, what harm could the poor young fellow do in a fortnight?” said
my lord. “I find I knew his father—a fine fellow and a good officer. The son
shall be kept in mind, both for his sake and yours.”
“He has done all the harm that was apprehended in his fortnight,” said
Mr. Incledon, “and now you must give him an extension of leave—enough
to be married in. There’s nothing else for it. You ought to do your best for
him, for it is your fault.”
Upon which my lord, who was of a genial nature, laughed and inquired
into the story, which Mr. Incledon related to him after a fashion, in a way
which, amused him hugely. The consequence was that Commander
Wodehouse got his leave extended to three months, and was transferred
from the China station to the Mediterranean. Mr. Incledon never told them
who was the author of this benefit, though I think they had little difficulty in
guessing. He sent Rose a parure of pearls and turquoises, simple enough for
her youth and the position she had preferred to his, and sent the diamonds
which had been reset for her back to his bankers; and then he went abroad.
He did not go back to Whitton, even for necessary arrangements, but sent
for all he wanted; and after that morning’s work in the White House,
returned to Dinglefield no more for years.
 After this there was no possible reason for delay, and Rose was married
to her sailor in the parish church by good Mr. Nolan, and instead of any
other wedding tour went off to cruise with him in the Mediterranean. She
had regained her bloom, and merited her old name again before the day of
the simple wedding. Happiness brought back color and fragrance to the
Rose in June; but traces of the storm that had almost crushed her never
altogether disappeared, from her heart at least, if they did from her face.
She cried over Mr. Incledon’s letter the day before she became Edward
Wodehouse’s wife. She kissed the turquoises when she fastened them about
her pretty neck. Love is the best, no doubt; but it would be hard if to other
sentiments, less intense, even a bride might not spare a tear.
As for the mothers on either side, they were both indifferently satisfied.
Mrs. Wodehouse would not unbend so much for months after as to say
anything but “Good morning” to Mrs. Damerel, who had done her best to
make her boy unhappy; and as for the marriage, now that it was
accomplished after so much fuss and bother, it was after all nothing of a
match for Edward. Mrs. Damerel, on her side, was a great deal too proud to
offer any explanations except such as were absolutely necessary to those
few influential friends who must be taken into every one’s confidence who
desires to keep a place in society. She told those confidants frankly enough
that Edward and Rose had met accidentally, and that a youthful love,
supposed to be over long ago, had burst forth again so warmly that nothing
could be done but to tell Mr. Incledon; and that he had behaved like a hero.
The Green for a little while was very angry at Rose; the ladies shook their
heads at her, and said how very, very hard it was on poor Mr. Incledon. But
Mr. Incledon was gone, and Whitton shut up, while Rose still remained with
all the excitement of a pretty wedding in prospect, and “a perfect romance”
in the shape of a love-story. Gradually, therefore, the girl was forgiven; the
richer neighbors went up to town and bought their presents, the poorer ones
looked over their stores to see what they could give, and the girls made
pieces of lace for her, and pin-cushions, and antimacassars; and thus her
offence was condoned by all the world. Though Mrs. Damerel asked but a
few people to the breakfast, the church was crowded to see the wedding,
and all the gardens, in the parish cut their best roses for its decoration; for
this event occurred in July, the end of the rose season. Dinglefield church
overflowed with roses, and the bridesmaids’ dresses were trimmed with
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