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Learning
to teach
Conditions for learning
We have overwhelming evidence to suggest that our current ways of learning, the
places of learning and what is being learnt have been changing and will continue
to change in times of global and technological accessibility and connectedness.
Learners as workers in all facets of life are required to think critically and
strategically to solve problems. These individuals need to be resilient—able to
learn in a variety of environments and equipped to select, evaluate and build
knowledge taken from multiple perspectives. New learners need to be risk-takers,
able to juggle multiple responsibilities and routinely make informed decisions.
They are able to negotiate with others locally and around the globe. They also need
to be deep and lifelong learners. Although we are often aware of current learners’
needs, educators continue to struggle with the means to achieve them.
Wrigley, Thomson and Lingard (2012) present a series of case studies of
schools that are reinventing what schools can become. What is evident in all these
cases is that productive and innovative change occurs when it is directly
responsive to the needs of the individual learning communities, when change is
made with all members of the learning community, and when innovative change
is implemented slowly.
Barrell’s words at the start of the Prologue to the first edition resonate in our
ears. The three fictional preservice teachers you are about to meet—Ashleigh
Shanahan, Nick Manis and Simone Bainbridge—weave their personal and
professional narratives through this third edition. They share their lives out of
school and their experiences in university classes, where they are exposed to new
ways of thinking about young people, teaching, and learning. They also share their
experiences on field placements, where at times they teach as they were taught,
and follow the lead of more experienced yet traditional mentors. And at other
times they take greater risks as they teach, being open to altering their beliefs,
seizing the reins and steering a greater collective course.
Their narratives were created to provide preservice teachers like you with
opportunities to learn ways to transform beliefs and practices for twenty-first-
century learners. We invite you to consider their teaching journeys and yours as a
third hybrid space —an idea initiated by Turner (1967) as ‘betwixt and between’
and popularised by Zeichner (2010). Zeichner argues that:
Third spaces involve a rejection of binaries such as
 practitioner and academic knowledge and theory and
practice and involve the integration of what are often
seen as competing discourses in new ways—an either/or
perspective is transformed into a both/also point of view.
(p. 92)
Third spaces can also help you confront power and oppression. A third space is
a boundary crossing, a rite of passage that can often make you feel uncomfortable
because you are leaving some of the known for the new.
We hope you will come to consider this third space in a range of ways.
Between the world as a complex entangled organism rapidly changing, spinning
unbound, adaptive and evolving alongside the bound, fixed and highly regulated nature
of schools.
How will you navigate this tension?
Between the learning that occurs at home and the learning that occurs in school.
How might you manage, learn more about and consider children’s learning out
of school, and what it might mean for your teaching, and for children’s learning, in
school?
Between your prior experience as a learner and the beliefs you seek to hold.
Hopefully, you will discover more about yourself in the process of becoming a
teacher as you question or strengthen your initial beliefs, and practices in a safe
non-threatening environment.
Between your academic learning at university and your field experience in schools.
This experience will allow you to discover, question and defend new
possibilities so that the theory/practice divide so often present, can begin to
merge.
Between the nature of the knowledge you bring and the knowledge that is silenced.
Your teaching journey will challenge ideas about whose knowledge counts.
What types of knowledge might be ‘biodegradable’—no longer useful, easily
broken down? What knowledge are you required to add?
Between process and product.
You will be afforded opportunity to discover and value the processes in
learning as well as the products, and the skills and knowledge you and your
students acquire that are developed in collaborative as well as solo pursuits.
 We invite you to read the preservice teachers’ stories and the ideas presented
through this text and use them as a space to remain open to new ideas—whether
generated by others or by you, on your own or in discussion with peers. Appearing
out of the walls of Lathner Primary (the school in focus) are dinosaurs. These
represent the grand, larger than life yet extinct beings. They appear from time to
time to remind you of old but no longer relevant teaching and learning practices.

To assist us (the authors), to better understand the people who are currently
going into teaching, we conducted an online survey across four Australian
university Schools of Education: Monash University; the University of Sydney; the
University of the Southern Coast; and RMIT University.

The structure of the book

The third edition of Learning to Teach is organised into five sections: Learning
about Today’s Learners; Learning about Teachers and Professional Practice;
Learning about Learning; Learning about Teaching; and What’s Next?
Following the same organisation as the second edition, each chapter opens
with an overview. The chapters are also filled with new and challenging questions
about teaching and learning. Unique to this edition are university assignments
and tasks that our three preservice teachers undertake, as well as assignments on
field placements. Several chapters also provide additional reading. At the end of
each chapter is a summary and autobiographical authors’ notes.
New to this edition are the three extended preservice teachers’ narratives
woven through the text. These fictional preservice teachers’ journeys into in-
service teaching are explored and interrogated. They tell their journeys through
Ashleigh’s thoughts and professional journal, Nick’s blog and Simone’s thoughts
and visual diary. There are also critical and reflective dialogues from members of
the teaching and learning community helping to frame the content from multiple
perspectives and modes. Images play a larger role in this edition. We present a
university teacher education program where educators are re-imagining their
courses and structure for these changing times. The primary school in focus,
Lathner Primary, is also undergoing transformation. A community teaching and
learning focus is one we advocate throughout the book for productive and
transformative change. We are all part of local, national and global communities.
We have provided your lecturer with extensive online resources.
This additional material extends the chapters’ content and will assist you on
your personal journeys into teaching.
The chapter changes in this edition were made to better reflect current and
emerging trends and policies and also to better reflect teachers’ and students’ lives
beyond school. Rather than devoting a chapter to teaching with technology, its
impact and uses run through all chapters in the text. Teacher identities and
teacher as learner have been combined into one chapter to better reflect their
unity, and there are four new chapters: Experience in Schools, Thinking Critically,
Going Rural (a Community of Practice) and Ready to Teach and Keep on Learning.

SUMMARIES
Part 1: LEARNING ABOUT TODAY’S LEARNERS: This part introduces, frames
and anchors the beliefs of the authors about education throughout Learning to
Teach. It describes and critiques a world rapidly changing and the lives of children
who inhabit this fragile world. It posits the myriad issues and challenges teachers
face and reflect on as they negotiate these global and local times. As well, it
narrates the concept of childhood from its inception to the present and into the
future, and how teachers must respond by pushing against and transforming
existing traditional boundaries.
In Chapter 1, Karen Malone discusses the Anthropocene, a new geological era
and its impact on teachers, young people and schools. She explains, ‘This chapter
explores the impacts of some of these changes on the ways we define what is
education, how we come to make sense of our role as educators, the visible and
invisible bodies of children as learners in the Anthropocene (Malone 2018), and
the means for responding to an uncertain future for humans and nonhumans
alike.’
In Chapter 2, Karen takes us into the world of childhood as it has been
constructed in the past and how it is viewed currently. She makes a compelling
argument that children are deeply connected and entangled in the world with
other humans and nonhumans. Out of school they have agency, and are designing
their own futures. The trope of the Climate Strike is used as an anchor in this
chapter and throughout the book in order to demonstrate children’s activism. The
three preservice teachers’ childhoods are also profiled, sharing their unique and
complex identities.
Part 2: LEARNING ABOUT TEACHERS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE:
Gloria Latham takes us into novice teachers’ first field experience, viewed through
the lives (personal and professional) of our three fictional preservice teachers.
Their developing narratives flow through the text. Gloria also takes us into a
university teacher education program and into one school in particular, Lathner
Primary. The educators at this school and those in the teacher education program
are working to transform their practices for these radically changing times. This
section of the text examines current government initiatives and regulations as
well as illuminating a collaborative approach that enables normative and ingrained
practices to be contested and reimagined. Shelley Dole explores the often
uncomfortable and unpredictable journey of one of the preservice teachers, Nick
Manis, on a rural placement. Student and teacher well-being and the assistance
available through communities of practice are explored.
Chapter 3 reports on some of the current and formal regulatory practices
preservice teachers must adhere to in preparation for their first field experience
such as the Australian Curriculum, the Code of Ethics, and Teaching Standards.
Here we argue for non-standard practices that better meet the needs of new
learners.
Chapter 4 takes the reader into Lathner Primary, where all three preservice
teachers have a placement. The reader will gain insight into how these novice
teachers learn to unlearn, to teach, learn to observe the students, the environment
and the site teacher in new ways and in varied classrooms.
Chapter 5: In this chapter, Shelley Dole profiles one of the preservice teachers
Nick Manis as she discusses the concept of communities of practice for learning
and knowledge building as well as the challenges of isolation in teaching in rural
communities and its impact on mental health. We see children and teachers
become increasingly engaged and well-being improve as they learn with and from
one another during a project that is adaptive to the needs of this town.
Part 3: LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING: This part of Learning to Teach has
learning in focus: the learning belonging to teachers as well as young people. The
authors question notions of what it means to learn; deep and critical learning;
where learning resides; what is worth learning; and the beliefs novice teachers
hold about themselves and their learning.
In Chapter 6, Julie Faulkner examines teachers’ professional identity. All
three preservice teachers are brought into focus. She argues that ‘Identity is
discussed here as something not fixed or even stable. It is dependent upon a range
of ever-changing factors which we act upon, and which act on us, to create a range
of ways of being. How we can draw upon what we know and assert ourselves
within the circumstances that influence our teaching lives is the focus of this
chapter.’
In Chapter 7, Mindy Blaise demonstrates the relationship between theory and
practice. She explains, ‘By privileging practice, this chapter is showing that
teachers are theory makers, generating new ideas and practices as they interact
with diverse children, families, technologies and the changing world. Finally, this
chapter illustrates how all teachers enter classrooms with a set of worldviews, or
theories, about young people, learning and teaching, and that this influences what
is done.’
Chapter 8 (also by Mindy Blaise) complements the previous chapter by
introducing readers to the worldviews of teaching and learning from modern and
postmodern perspectives. The chapter shows how a range of theories fit within
dominant worldviews of knowledge and the implications they have for education.
In Chapter 9, Julie Faulkner returns to focus on Nick Manis and his Critical
Literacy course at university. The chapter explores our mediated world and looks
briefly at policy and the ways in which current curriculum documents frame
critical thinking. It examines the twenty-four-hour news cycle, and how learning is
acquired in a post-truth world. Through the chapter, we follow Nick Manis and see
how he is building knowledge and changing his thinking about what information
he consumes. Nick then considers what these implications are for his teaching.
Part 4: PART 4: LEARNING ABOUT TEACHING: This section looks critically at
and troubles many existing teaching practices. It explores how more responsive
practices can meet the needs of all young people. The authors examine, in
particular, classroom dialogue, learning with others and the environment,
planning for learning, and assessment for and of learning. As traditional practices
are contested, teaching and learning are reframed.
In Chapter 10, Gloria Latham focuses on preservice teacher Ashleigh
Shanahan in her last field experience at Lathner Primary and her site teacher Anna
Jones in a Year 4/5 classroom. This is a companion chapter to Chapter 11 also
focusing on the second half of Ashleigh’s final placement. Our mediated lives are
changing the very nature of face-to-face conversations. The chapter will examine
these changes and share ways to reconnect students. It also explores ways in
which the classroom environment can foster dialogue.
In Chapter 11, the companion to Chapter 10, Mindy Blaise repositions the
teacher as learning-with other teachers, learning-with the children and learning-with
the environment rather than learning about. Three learning-with events are
presented and discussed. These critical events make Ashleigh aware of the
complexities of difference and inclusion. Issues of identities, expectations, equity,
labelling, and grouping are explored in order to better understand how difference
is thought of as an asset, rather than a deficit and how it plays a significant role
towards creating an inclusive classroom.
In Chapter 12, Karen Malone explores conventional methods of planning and
then, overtly seeks to problematise and disrupt the whole notion of recipe-book
planning by encouraging an unlearning of these traditional ways. An artist in
residence is brought to Lathner Primary to assist teachers and young people
respond to planning in new ways and respond to the government’s STEM
(Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) agenda. The Lathner
Primary community believe it is essential to include the Arts (STEAM). The artist
they secure, Aviva Reed, describes herself as a visual ecologist and challenges the
very nature of traditional planning. Throughout the planning process, the artist
brings her own practice to the table, by providing a set of propositions that
disrupt the teachers’ ways of thinking about learning.
Assessment of and for learning is the focus of Chapter 13. Gloria Latham
contests old learning notions that assert that one type of assessment can
adequately monitor and/or assess the capabilities of all learners. In order for
learners to prosper in the information age they require skills in new ways of
thinking about and articulating their problem-solving, collaborating and creating.
Simone Bainbridge is the preservice teacher in focus. She confronts the normative
assessment and feedback she received as a student.
Part 5: WHAT’S NEXT? In Chapter 14, we come to the end (and a new
beginning) of the three preservice teachers’ journeys into teaching. As they are
about to graduate, they give their final talks, where they defend the understanding
and deep learning they have acquired over the duration of their teacher education
program. They also create a metaphor that best describes their learning. Their
talks are interrogated by university lecturers. They are asked, ‘What’s next for
their learning and what’s next for schools?’

References
Malone, K. (2018). Children in the Anthropocene. London: Palgrave.
Turner, V. W. (1967). Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage. In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of
Ndembu Ritual, 93−111. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Wrigley, T., Thomson, P. and Lingard, B. (2012). Changing Schools: Alternative Ways to Make a World of Difference. London:
Routledge.
Zeichner, K. (2010). Rethinking the Connections Between Campus Courses and Field Experiences. In College and University-
Based Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1−2), 89–99.
About the Authors
Gloria Latham is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney. She
taught at Coburg Teachers’ College and RMIT University for thirty years. Her most
recent book is Generative Conversations for Creative Learning, which she co-wrote
with Robyn Ewing. Gloria also co-edits the journal Literacy Learning: The Middle
Years.

Karen Malone is Professor of Education and Research Director of the

Department of Education at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.
Professor Malone researches and teaches in childhood studies, teacher education,
science, sustainability and environmental education, geography and the urban
ecologies of childhood. She specifically focuses on children and young people’s
experiences of the everyday, including relationships between human and
nonhuman animals, plants, water, earth, toxins and weather. Most of her research
has been conducted in majority world nations funded by UNICEF under the
umbrella of her global research program Children in the Anthropocene. Professor
Malone is the author of eight books and more than 100 other publications. She is
editor of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education and an editorial
committee member of a number of ecological and educational journals.

Mindy Blaise is a Vice Chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellow at Edith Cowan

University, Western Australia. Her background in the early years and interest in
feminist and ‘post’ theories influences the way she approaches teaching and
research. She is interested in how the more-than-human and feminist speculative
research practices activate new meanings about childhood that sit outside the
narrow confines of developmentalism.

Julie Faulkner is a Senior Lecturer in teacher education at Monash University. As

a former English teacher, she is interested in literacy, literature, and young
people’s out-of-school literacy practices. Her research includes digital literacies,
cultural and professional identity. With Anne Keary, she is currently exploring
student resilience and global risk, and has co-written chapters for the recently
published Narratives of Catholic Mothers and Daughters (Springer).
Shelley Dole is Professor and Head of School of Education at the University of
the Sunshine Coast. Her research interests are focused on mathematics and
numeracy, but she also has a strong interest in initial teacher education and
supporting students in rural and remote placements. Shelley has published
chapters on numeracy in several books and is a co-author of Numeracy across the
Curriculum with Merrilyn Goos, Vince Geiger, Helen Forgasz and Anne Bennison.
Acknowledgments
In our desire to make this a collaborative, multi-voiced and multi-imaged text, we
have invited many people with a wide array of wisdom to contribute.
We would like to thank our families, colleagues, preservice teachers and
students at all levels for their generous support and valuable contributions. In
particular, we would like to thank the following individuals: Jessica Mead for her
playground designs; academics Peter H. Johnston, Gordon Wells, Jill Flack, Jackie
Manuel (critical friend), and Jennifer Clifton; and Nicky Carr for her analysis of
the preservice teachers’ survey.
We also thank visual ecologist Aviva Reed for allowing us to make use of her
work and to teachers at Brunswick South-West Primary for their assistance with
podcasts that are available with the resources that accompany the book.
Special thanks to The Educational Media Group at RMIT University for the
initial creation of the resources website (Kate Ebbott). And our gratitude to artist
and teacher Paula Frost, and to Karen Malone, for their illustrations, which make
our text come alive.

The author and the publisher wish to thank the following copyright holders for
reproduction of their material.
Shutterstock, cover and chapter openers; Alamy/ Christoph Sator/dpa, figure
9.3; Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development; National
Education Association of the United States for the quote from Nieto, S. (2009),
‘From surviving to thriving’ Educational Leadership, 65(5), 8–13; Extracts from
Australian Curriculum, © Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting
Authority (ACARA) 2009 to present, unless otherwise indicated. This material was
downloaded from the ACARA website (www.acara.edu.au). The material is licensed
under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ACARA does
not endorse any product that uses ACARA material or make any representations
as to the quality of such products. Any product that uses material published on
this website should not be taken to be affiliated with ACARA or have the
sponsorship or approval of ACARA. It is up to each person to make their own
assessment of the product; The Australian Department of Education and Training,
for the quote from The Centre for Adolescent Health, Murdoch Children’s
Research Institute (2018), Student wellbeing, engagement, and learning across the
middle years, Canberra, Australian Government Department of Education and
Training, pp. 4–5, The material is licensed under CC BY 3.0
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/); Kinoshita and Wolley 2015,
figure 2.6, used with permission; Gloria Latham, figure 2.11; Karen Malone,
figures 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 2.10, 2.12, 2.13, 2.14; The Opte Project,
figure 1.1, This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
Generic license, (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/deed.en); Avia
Reed, figure 12.1, 12.5; RMIT © 2006 RMIT University, pp. ix, figures 3.1, 7.2.
Every effort has been made to trace the original source of copyright material
contained in this book. The publisher will be pleased to hear from copyright
holders to rectify any errors or omissions.
Guided Tour
Introduction
Dear Preservice Teachers,
Congratulations! You are about to begin the first leg of a long and challenging
journey towards becoming a teacher. As you travel, we will ask you to unpack the
large bag of thinking and learning and experiencing you have accumulated over
your educational lives in order to repack it. You will be redefining that learning for
dramatically different learners from the ones you were, and for very different
times.
Sadly, many children are still being prepared for a world that no longer exists
(Dintersmith 2018). In all facets of their lives, children will be required to work in
teams as they think critically and strategically to solve problems. New learners will
need to be resilient—able to learn in a wide variety of environments and equipped
to select, evaluate, adapt and build knowledge taken from multiple perspectives.
New learners also need to be risk-takers, able to juggle multiple responsibilities
and routinely make informed decisions. They will be able to negotiate with others
locally, nationally and around the globe. They also need to be deep and lifelong
learners who belong to the world. With these needs in mind, you will need to
think about what you will take with you on your travels, and what you will leave
behind in order to make room for other contents, other ideas, other ways of being.
On any return journey, the contents of your bag will have shifted. The time
spent unpacking and repacking will allow you to critically reflect on the content
and consider why you continue to carry each item. We ask that you keep an open,
critical and inquiring mind and keep your transforming thoughts stored safely as
you reflect upon the ideas you bring to teaching and the interrelated ideas you are
acquiring as you embark on your journey towards new discoveries. Your trip will
require courage and an ability to examine old practices in new ways.
Tradition plays such a strong role in how you will teach. You enter the
teaching profession with childhood memories and experiences and at least twelve
years of having been a student. Even if you have been critical of the ways in which
you were taught, you may well feel fated to repeat these practices. Novice teachers
tend not to see what is visible to the eye but, rather, what is expected. One way to
curb this habitual cycle is to engage in critical reflection. Reflective teachers learn
to identify and question their assumptions and regularly scrutinise their teaching.
Reflection allows you to see that teaching is far less about knowledge and far more
about knowing. The way you know has a profound effect on what knowledge you
believe is of most worth. Throughout this text you will be offered multiple ways of
knowing. We want you to know far more about yourself by knowing historically,
morally, ethically and culturally what you believe and how you learn. We want you
to engage in ongoing dialogues that will enable and foster your connectedness to
communities of practice, and to the world. We also want you to know the young
people you teach and discover what kind of knowing this entails.
There is currently such an abundance of research about how the brain learns
that new academic disciplines such as ‘educational neuroscience’ or ‘mind, brain,
and education science’ have been added. Some of the brain research has revealed
the plasticity of our brains. Experience sculpts the brain, and as Wolfe and Flewitt
(2010) explain, all modalities are involved in that experience. They are hooked
together by neurons. The more modalities we use, the more pathways we use to
retrieve the experience.
Although we are aware of current children’s needs, educators continue to
struggle with the means to achieve them. Perhaps, as Biesta (2015a) suggests, it is
because of the risks involved.
The risk is there because education is not an interaction
between robots but an encounter between human beings.
The risk is there because students are not to be seen as
objects to be moulded and disciplined, but as subjects of
action and responsibility. (p. 2)
And yet, Biesta (2015a) goes on to argue that the invested policy makers and
politicians want education to be ‘risk-free’.
The desire to make education strong, secure, predictable,
and risk-free is an attempt to forget that at the end of the
day education should aim at making itself dispensable—
no teacher wants their students to remain eternal
students—which means that education necessarily needs
to have an orientation toward the freedom and
independence of those being educated. (p. 2)
 Education is about transforming the individual.

Learning to teach
The first two chapters of this text frame its overall intention. Karen Malone
describes a world in motion: organic, constantly changing, evolving and adapting
to forces around us. It is a sympoietic (collectively producing) world that does not
have self-defined spatial or temporal boundaries. In this world, Malone describes
children out of school, naturally moving, exploring and learning in these
sympoietic relationships.
The author then contrasts this collectively producing world with a snapshot of
current schooling; controlling, fixed carved-up systems that tinker around the
edges of change. In the main, we argue throughout this text that schools continue
to remain autopoietic: a tight, centrally controlled (self-producing) system that
exists in autonomous units with self-defined boundaries that tend to be
homeostatic and predictable.
We argue that preservice teachers with a sympoietic mindset and renewed
orientations can, in small, manageable actions, start to shift schooling to best
relate to the adaptive, evolving world we live in and further develop children’s
strategies and skills to continue to adapt and belong to the world.
The question to ask is not, ‘How can I fit into school?’
Rather, ask, ‘What must school become and how can I help make this happen?’

The critically reflective teacher

With a renewed orientation to school and to teaching to assist you in your travels,
you will come to realise that reflection is an essential skill to develop.
Reorientation is a means of turning back on experience in the moments of
teaching (in action) or after them (upon action) (Schön 1991) in order to better
the choices that are made and to further or abandon the direction of that
experience. Almost a century ago, John Dewey (1933) suggested that people only
truly think when they are confronted with a problem. Without some kind of
dilemma to stimulate thought, it is easy (and dangerous) for behaviour to become
routine rather than thoughtful. Therefore, it is essential to guard against these
routines. It is often out of confusion and surprise that new awareness is fostered.
 You will also recognise the importance of your teacher judgment in relation to
what works. As Biesta (2015b) reminds us, we can only examine what works in
relation to our purpose for that undertaking.
During your teaching program you will have many opportunities to observe a
range of people teach, including your university lecturers and tutors, peers,
parents and teachers on field placement. How you cast your eyes as preservice
teachers and what you see are highly conditional. Therefore, throughout your
teaching program it will be necessary to revisit and re-examine your sociocultural
and educational past in order to consciously consider how your past experiences
are framing your current ones.
Stephen Brookfield (2015) warns us to be wary of assumptions, which are our
guides to truth embedded in our mental outlooks. Prescriptive assumptions can be
the most dangerous, as they are those where we think what ought to be happening
in a particular situation. ‘They are the assumptions that are surfaced as we
examine how we think teachers should behave, what good learning and educational
processes should look like, and what obligations students and teachers owe to each
other. Inevitably they are grounded in, and extensions of, our paradigmatic
assumptions’ (p. 49). All our assumptions need to be challenged using critical
thinking.
Brookfield (1995) offers four interconnecting lenses you might use to examine
your assumptions about learning and teaching:

• our autobiographical past

• our students’ eyes
• our colleagues’ (peers’) experiences
• the theoretical literature relating to education.

These lenses allow you to observe and reflect upon educational thought and
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whole world had become confined to her within these oppressive walls,
within this sorrowful house. The people on the Green looked at her with a
kind of wondering reverence, saying how she must have loved her father,
and how she looked as if she would never get over it. But grief was not all
of the weight which crushed her. She was for the moment bound as by some
frost, paralyzed in all the springs of her interrupted being. She had no
natural force of activity in her to neutralize the chill her soul had taken. She
did all that she was told to do, and took every suggestion gratefully; but she
had not yet learned to see for herself with her own eyes what had to be
done, nor did she realize all the changes that were involved in the one great
change which had come upon them. Misfortune had fallen upon her while
she was still in the dreamy vagueness of her youth, when the within is more
important than the without, and the real and imaginary are so intermingled
that it is hard to tell where one ends and another begins. Necessity laid no
wholesome, vigor-giving hand upon her, because she was preoccupied with
fancies which seemed more important than the reality. Agatha, all alert and
alive in her practical matter-of-fact girlhood, was of more value in the
house than poor Rose, who was like a creature in a dream, not seeing
anything till it was pointed out to her; obeying always and humbly, but
never doing or originating anything from her own mind. Nobody
understood her, not even herself; and sometimes she would sit down and
cry for her father, thinking he would have known what it meant, without
any recollection of the share her father had in thus paralyzing her young
life. This strange condition of affairs was unknown, however, to any one
out-of-doors except Mr. Nolan, who, good fellow, took it upon him once to
say a few coaxing, admonishing words to her.
“You’ll ease the mother when you can, Miss Rose, dear,” he said, taking
her soft, passive hands between his own. “You don’t mind me saying so—
an old fellow and an old friend like me, that loves every one of you, one
better than another? I’ll hang on if I can, if the new man will have me, and
be of use—what’s the good of me else?—and you’ll put your shoulder to
the wheel with a good heart, like the darling girl that you are?”
“My shoulder to the wheel,” said Rose, with a half-smile, “and with a
good heart! when I feel as if I had no heart at all?” and the girl began to cry,
as she did now for any reason, if she was startled, or any one spoke to her
suddenly. What could poor Mr. Nolan do but soothe and comfort her? Poor
child! they had taken away all the inner strength from her before the time of
trial came, and no better influence had yet roused her from the shock, or
made her feel that she had something in her which was not to be crushed by
any storm. Mr. Nolan knew as little what to make of her as her mother did,
who was slowly coming to her old use and wont, and beginning to feel the
sharpness of hardship, and to realize once more how it was and why it was
that this hardship came.
 CHAPTER IX.
The White House did not stand on the Green, but on one of the roads
leading out of it, at a short distance from that centre of the world. It looked
large from outside—something between a mansion and a cottage—and
within was full of useless passages, confused little rooms, and bits of
staircases on which the unaccustomed passenger might break his neck with
ease, and a general waste of space and disorder of arrangement which
pleased the antiquary as quaint, but was much less desirable practically than
artistically. There were two sitting-rooms, which were large and low, with
raftered roofs, and small, deep-set windows overgrown with creepers; and
there was a garden, almost as rambling as the house itself, and surrounded
by old walls and hedges which effectually shut out every view, except into
its own grassy, mossy depths. Some former enterprising inhabitant had
introduced into the drawing-room one long French window, by which there
was a practicable exit into the garden; and this was the only modern point in
the house. Some people said it spoilt the room, which otherwise would have
been perfect; but it was a great convenience and comfort to the Damerels in
summer, at least. The house was somewhat damp, somewhat weedy, rather
dark; but it was roomy, and more like a house in which gentlefolks could
melt away into penury than a pert little new brick house in a street. It was
very cheap; for it had various disadvantages, into which I am not called
upon to enter. Mrs. Damerel, whose house had always been the perfection
of houses, with every new sanitary invention, was glad to put up with these
drawbacks for the sake of the low rent—so vast and so many are the
changes which absence of money makes. Before Christmas Day they had
all the old furniture—save some special pieces of virtu, graceful old
cabinets, mirrors, and ornamental things, which were sold—arranged and
adapted, and settled down in tolerable comfort. The boys, when they came
from school, looked with doubtful faces at the change, especially Reginald,
who was humiliated by it, and found fault with the room allotted to him,
and with the deficiencies of service. “Poor! why are we poor? It must be
some one’s fault,” said this boy to his sister Agatha, who cried, and declared
passionately that she wished he had not come back, but had gone to his fine
godfather, whom he was always talking of. When an invitation arrived for
him from his godfather, some days later, I think they were all glad; for
Reginald was very like his father, and could not bear anything mean or
poor. The number of servants had dwindled to one, who made believe to be
of all work, and did a little of everything. Except in the case of those lucky
families who abound in fiction, and now and then, par exception, are to be
found in ordinary life, who possess a faithful and devoted and all-
accomplished woman, who, for love of them, forsakes all hopes of bettering
herself, and applies at once genius and knowledge to the multifarious duties
of maid-of-all-work—this class of functionary is as great a trouble to her
employers as to herself; and to fall back upon attendance so uninstructed
and indifferent is one of the hardest consequences of social downfall. The
girls had to make up Mary Jane’s deficiencies in the White House; and at
first, as they were not used to it, the results were but little consolatory. Even
Bertie, perhaps, though a good son and a good boy, was not sorry to get
back to school, and to the society of his friends, after these first holidays,
which had not been happy ones. Poor children! none of them had ever
known before what it was to do without what they wanted, and to be
content with the bare necessaries of life.
All the same, a shower of cards from all the best people about came
pouring down upon the new dwellers in the White House, and were taken in
by Mary Jane between a grimy finger and thumb to the drawing-room,
where the rumble of the departing carriages excited Agatha and Patty, at
least, if no one else. And all the people on the Green made haste to call to
express their sympathy and friendliness. Mrs. Wodehouse was the only one
who did not ask to see Mrs. Damerel; but even she did not lose a day in
calling; and, indeed, it was while on her way from the White House that for
the first time she met Rose, who had been out about some business for her
mother, and who, with her black veil over her face, was straying slowly
home. Mrs. Wodehouse said “Good morning,” with a determination to hold
by her formula and not be tempted into kindness; but when the girl put back
her veil and showed her pale face, the good woman’s heart melted in spite
of herself.
 They were interrupted by a third person who had come along the road.

“How pale you are!” she said. “Oh, Rose! and how is your mother?” she
added hastily, trying to save herself from the overflowing of tenderness
which came upon her unawares.
“Are you going to see her?” said Rose.
“I have been to call; I did not, of course, expect she would see me. And
how do you like the White House? I hope you have not been ill; you do not
look so fresh as when I saw you last.”
“It is very nice,” said Rose, answering the first question; “though it feels
damp just at first; we all think we shall soon get used to it. It is a long time
since I saw you last.”
This was said with a little piteous smile which made Mrs. Wodehouse’s
resolution “never to forgive” become more and more hard to keep.
“I could not think I was wanted,” she said with an effort to appear short
and stern, “or I should have gone to your mother before now.”
“Why?” asked Rose, with a wondering glance; and then, as there was a
dead pause, which was awkward, she said, softly: “I hope you have news
from—your son?”
“Oh, yes; I have news from him. He is always very good in writing.
There never was a kinder boy to his mother. He never forgets me; though
there are many people who would fain get his attention. Edward is always
finding friends wherever he goes.”
“I am glad,” said poor Rose.
“Plenty of friends! I have nothing but good news of him. He writes in the
best of spirits. Oh, Rose!” cried Mrs. Wodehouse, hurriedly running one
subject into another with breathless precipitancy, “how could you be so
heartless—so unkind—as not to come down-stairs when I asked you to bid
my poor boy good-by?”
A flush of color came upon Rose’s pale face; it made her look like
herself again. “I could not,” she said; “do not be angry. I have so wanted to
tell you. There was nobody there but me, and he held my hand, and would
not let me leave him. I could not. Oh! how glad I am that you have asked
me! It was not my fault.” Her father’s name brought the big tears to her
eyes. “Poor papa!” she added, softly, with an instinctive sense that he
needed defence.
Whether Mrs. Wodehouse would have taken her to her arms forthwith on
the open Green in the wintry afternoon light, if no one had disturbed them, I
cannot tell; but, just as she was putting out her hands to the girl, they were
interrupted by a third person, who had been coming along the road
unnoticed, and who now came forward, with his hat in his hand, and with
the usual inquiry about her mother to which Rose was accustomed. The
sound of his voice made Mrs. Wodehouse start with suppressed anger and
dismay; and Rose looked out from the heavy shadow of the crape veil,
which showed the paleness of her young face, as if under a penthouse or
heavy-shaded cavern. But she was not pale at that moment; a light of
emotion was in her face. The tears were hanging on her eyelashes; her soft
lip was quivering. Mr. Incledon thought that grief and downfall had done all
that the severest critic could have desired for her young beauty. It had given
tenderness, expression, feeling to the blooming rose face, such as is almost
incompatible with the first radiance of youth.
“Would Mrs. Damerel see me, do you think?” he asked; “or is it too
early to intrude upon her? It is about business I want to speak.”
“I will ask,” said Rose. “But if it is about business she will be sure to see
you. She says she is always able for that.”
“Then I will say good-by,” said Mrs. Wodehouse, unreasonably excited
and angry, she could scarcely tell why. She made a step forward, and then
came back again with a little compunction, to add, in an undertone: “I am
glad we have had this little explanation. I will tell him when I write, and it
will please him, too.”
“You have not been quarrelling with Mrs. Wodehouse, that you should
have little explanations?” said Mr. Incledon, as he walked along to the
White House by Rose’s side.
“Oh, no! it was nothing;” but he saw the old rose flush sweep over the
cheeks which had half relapsed into paleness. What was it? and who did
Mrs. Wodehouse mean to write to? and what was she glad about? These
foolish questions got into the man’s head, though they were too frivolous to
be thought of. She took him into the drawing-room at the White House,
which was almost dark by this time, it was so low; and where the cheery
glimmer of the fire made the room look much more cheerful than it ever
was in the short daylight, through the many branches that surrounded the
house. Mrs. Damerel was sitting alone there over the fire; and Rose left him
with her mother, and went away, bidding Agatha watch over the children
that no one might disturb mamma. “She is talking to Mr. Incledon about
business,” said Rose, passing on to her own room; and Agatha, who was
sharp of wit, could not help wondering what pleasant thing had happened to
her sister to make her voice so soft and thrilling. “I almost expected to hear
her sing,” Agatha said afterwards; though indeed a voice breaking forth in a
song, as all their voices used to do, six months ago, would have seemed
something impious at this moment, in the shadow that lay over the house.
Mr. Incledon was nearly an hour “talking business” with Mrs. Damerel,
during which time they sat in the firelight and had no candles, being too
much interested in their conversation to note how time passed. Mrs.
Damerel said nothing about the business when the children came in to tea—
the homely and inexpensive meal which had replaced dinner in the White
House. Her eyes showed signs of tears, and she was very quiet, and let the
younger ones do and say almost what they pleased. But if the mother was
quiescent, Rose, too, had changed in a different way. Instead of sitting
passive, as she usually did, it was she who directed Agatha and Patty about
their lessons, and helped Dick, and sent the little ones off at their proper
hour to bed. There was a little glimmer of light in her eyes, a little dawn of
color in her cheek. The reason was nothing that could have been put into
words—a something perfectly baseless, visionary, and unreasonable. It was
not the hope of being reconciled to Edward Wodehouse, for she had never
quarrelled with him; nor the hope of seeing him again, for he was gone for
years. It was merely that she had recovered her future, her imagination, her
land of promise. The visionary barrier which had shut her out from that
country of dreams had been removed—it would be hard to say how; for
good Mrs. Wodehouse certainly was not the door-keeper of Rose’s
imagination, nor had it in her power to shut and open at her pleasure. But
what does how and why matter in that visionary region? It was so, which is
all that need be said. She was not less sorrowful, but she had recovered
herself. She was not less lonely, nor did she feel less the change in her
position; but she was once more Rose, an individual creature, feeling the
blood run in her veins, and the light lighten upon her, and the world spread
open before her.

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free—

I suppose this was how she felt. She had got back that consciousness
which is sometimes bitter and sometimes sad, but without which we cannot
live—the consciousness that she was no shadow in the world, but herself;
no reflection of another’s will and feelings, but possessor of her own.
When her mother and she were left alone, Rose got up from where she
was sitting and drew a low chair, which belonged to one of the children, to
her mother’s knee. Mrs. Damerel, too, had watched Agatha’s lingering exit
with some signs of impatience, as if she, too, had something to say; but
Rose had not noticed this, any more than her mother had noticed the new
impulse which was visible in her child. The girl was so full of it that she
began to speak instantly, without waiting for any question.
“Mamma,” she said, softly, “I have not been a good daughter to you; I
have left you to take all the trouble, and I have not tried to be of use. I want
to tell you that I have found it out, and that I will try with all my heart to be
different from to-day.”
“Rose, my dear child!”—Mrs. Damerel was surprised and troubled. The
tears, which rose so easily now, came with a sudden rush to her eyes. She
put her arms around the girl, and drew her close, and kissed her. “I have
never found fault with you, my darling,” she said.
“No, mamma; and that makes me feel it more. But it shall be different; I
am sorry, more sorry than I can tell you; but it shall be different from to-
day.”
“But, Rose, what has put this into your head to-day?”
A wavering blush came and went upon Rose’s face. She had it almost in
her heart to tell her mother; but yet there was nothing to tell, and what could
she say?
“I—can’t tell, mamma. It is mild and like spring. I think it was being out,
and hearing people speak—kindly”—
Here Rose paused, and, in her turn, let fall a few soft tears. She had gone
out very little, scarcely stirring beyond the garden, since her father’s death,
and Mrs. Damerel thought it was the mere impulse of reviving life; unless
indeed—
“My dear, did Mr. Incledon say anything to you!” she asked, with a
vague hope.
“Mr. Incledon? Oh, no! except to ask me if you would see him—on
business. What was his business?” said innocent Rose, looking up into her
mother’s face.
“Rose,” said Mrs. Damerel, “I was just about to speak to you on a very
important matter when you began. My dear, I must tell you at once what
Mr. Incledon’s business was. It was about you.”
“About me?” All the color went out of Rose’s face in a moment; she
recollected the visit to Whitton, and the sudden light that had flashed upon
her as he and she looked at the picture together. She had forgotten all about
it months ago, and indeed had never again thought of Mr. Incledon. But
now in a moment her nerves began to thrill and her heart to beat; yet she
herself, in whom the nerves vibrated and the heart throbbed, to turn to
stone.
“Rose, you are not nervous or silly like many girls, and you know now
what life is—not all a happy dream, as it sometimes seems at the beginning.
My dear, I have in my hand a brighter future than you ever could have
hoped for, if you will have it. Mr. Incledon has asked my leave to ask you to
be his wife. Rose”—
“Me! his wife!” Rose clutched at her mother’s hand and repeated these
words with a pant of fright; though it seemed to her the moment they were
said as if she had all her life known they were coming, and had heard them
a hundred times before.
 “That is what he wants, Rose. Don’t tremble so, nor look at me so
wildly. It is a wonderful thing to happen to so young a girl as you. He is
very good and very kind, and he would be, oh! of so much help to all your
family; and he could give you everything that heart can desire, and restore
you to far more than you have lost; and he is very fond of you, and would
make you an excellent husband. I promised to speak to you, dear. You must
think it over. He does not wish you to give him an answer at once.”
“Mamma,” said Rose, hoarsely, with a sudden trembling which seemed
to reach into her very heart, “is it not better to give an answer at once?
Mamma, I am not fond of him. I think it would be best to say so now.”
“You are not fond of him? Is that all the consideration you give such a
question? You do not intend that for an answer, Rose?”
“Oh, mamma, is it not enough? What more answer could I give? I am
not fond of him at all. I could not pretend to be. When it is an answer like
that, surely it is best to give it now.”
“And so,” said her mother, “you throw aside one of the best offers that
ever a girl received, with less thought on the subject than you would give to
a cat or a dog! You decide your whole future without one thought. Rose, is
this the helpfulness you have just promised me? Is this the thoughtfulness
for yourself and all of us that I have a right to expect?”
Rose did not know what to reply. She looked at her mother with eyes
suddenly hollowed out by fear and anxiety and trouble, and watched every
movement of her lips and hands with a growing alarm which she could not
control.
“You do not speak? Rose, Rose, you must see how wrong you would be
to act so hastily. If it were a question of keeping or sending away a servant,
nay, even a dog, you would give more thought to it; and this is a man who
loves, who would make you happy. Oh, do not shake your head! How can a
child of your age know? A man who, I am sure, would make you happy; a
man who could give you everything and more than everything, Rose. I
cannot let you decide without thought.”
“Does one need to think?” said Rose, slowly, after a pause. “I do not care
for him, I cannot care for him. You would not have me tell a lie?”
“I would have you deny yourself,” cried her mother; “I would have you
think of some higher rule than your own pleasure. Is that the best thing in
the world, to please yourself? Oh, I could tell you stories of that! Why are
we in this poor little house with nothing? why is my poor Bertie dependent
upon my brother, and you girls forced to work like maid-servants, and our
life all changed? Through self-indulgence, Rose. Oh! God forgive me for
saying it, but I must tell the truth. Through choosing the pleasure of the
moment rather than the duties that we cannot shake off; through deciding
always to do what one liked rather than to do what was right. Here are eight
of you children with your lives blighted, all that one might be pleasant and
unburdened. I have suffered under it all my life. Not anything wrong, not
anything wicked, but only, and always and before everything, what one
liked one’s self.”
Mrs. Damerel spoke with a passion which was very unlike her usual
calm. The lines came into her brow which Rose remembered of old, but
which the tranquillity of grief had smoothed out. A hot color mounted to her
cheeks, making a line beneath her eyes. The girl was struck dumb by this
sudden vehemence. Her reason was confused by the mingled truth and
sophistry, which she felt without knowing how to disentangle them, and she
was shocked and wounded by the implied blame thus cast upon him who
had been of late the idol of her thoughts, and whom, if she had once timidly
begun to form a judgment on him, she had long ceased to think of as
anything but perfect.
“Oh! stop, stop! don’t say any more!” she cried, clasping her hands.
“I cannot stop,” said Mrs. Damerel; “not now, when I have begun. I
never thought to say as much to one of his children, and to no other could I
ever speak, Rose. I see the same thing in Reginald, and it makes my heart
sick; must I find it in you too? There are people who are so happy as to like
what they have to do, what it is their duty to do; and these are the blessed
ones. But it is not always, it is not often so in this life. Dear, listen to what I
say. Here is a way by which you may make up for much of the harm that
has been done; you may help all that belong to you; you may put yourself in
a position to be useful to many; you may gain what men only gain by the
labor of their lives; and all this by marrying a good man whom you will
make happy. Will you throw it away because at the first glance it is not what
your fancy chooses? Will you set your own taste against everybody’s
advantage? Oh, my darling, think, think! Do not let your first motive, in the
first great thing you are called upon to do, be mere self!”
 Mrs. Damerel stopped short, with a dry glitter in her eyes and a voice
which was choked and broken. She was moved to the extent of passion—
she who in general was so self-restrained. A combination of many emotions
worked within her. To her mind, every good thing for her child was
contained in this proposal; and in Rose’s opposition to it she saw the rising
of the poisonous monster which had embittered her whole life. She did not
pause to ask herself what there was in the nature of this sacrifice she
demanded, which made it less lawful, less noble, than the other sacrifices
which are the Christian’s highest ideal of duty. It was enough that by this
step, which did not seem to Mrs. Damerel so very hard, Rose would do
everything for herself and much for her family, and that she hesitated,
declined to take it, because it was not pleasant, because she did not like it.
Like it! The words raised a perfect storm in the breast of the woman who
had been made wretched all her life by her ineffectual struggle against the
habitual decision of her husband for what he liked. She was too much
excited to hear what Rose had to say; if, indeed, poor Rose had anything to
say after this sudden storm which had broken upon her.
“We will speak of it to-morrow, when you have had time to think,” she
said, kissing her daughter, and dismissing her hastily. When Rose had gone,
she fell back into her chair by the waning firelight, and thought over the
many times in her own life when she had battled and had been worsted on
this eternal point of difference between the two classes of humanity. She
had struggled for self-denial against self-indulgence in a hundred different
ways on a hundred fields of battle, and here was the end of it: a poor old
house, tumbling to pieces about her ears, a poor little pittance, just enough
to give her children bread; and for those children no prospect but toil for
which they had not been trained, and which changed their whole conception
of life. Bertie, her bright boy, for whom everything had been hoped, if her
brother’s precarious bounty should fail, what was there before him but a
poor little clerkship in some office from which he never could rise, and
which, indeed, his uncle had suggested at first as a way of making him
helpful to his family. God help her! This was what a virtuous and natural
preference for the things one liked had brought Mrs. Damerel to; and if her
mind took a confused and over-strained view of the subject, and of the
lengths to which self-denial ought to be carried, was it any wonder? I think
there is a great deal to be said on her side of the case.
 Rose, for her part, lit her candle and went up the old stairs—which
creaked under her light foot—with her head bent down, and her heart stifled
under a weight that was too much for her. A cold, cold January night, the
chill air coming in at the old casements, the dark skies without lending no
cheering influence, and no warmth of cheery fires within to neutralize
Nature’s heaviness; an accusation thrown upon her under which her whole
being ached and revolted; a duty set before her which was terrible to think
of; and no one to advise, or comfort, or help. What was she to do?
 CHAPTER X.
Mr. Incledon was a man of whom people said that any girl might be
glad to marry him; and considering marriage from an abstract point of view,
as one naturally does when it does not concern one’s self, this was entirely
true. In position, in character, in appearance, and in principles, he was
everything that could be desired: a good man, just, and never consciously
unkind; nay, capable of generosity when it was worth his while and he had
sufficient inducement to be generous. A man well educated, who had been
much about the world, and had learned the toleration which comes by
experience; whose opinions were worth hearing on almost every subject;
who had read a great deal, and thought a little, and was as much superior to
the ordinary young man of society in mind and judgment as he was in
wealth. That this kind of man often fails to captivate a foolish girl, when her
partner in a valse, brainless, beardless, and penniless, succeeds without any
trouble in doing so, is one of those mysteries of nature which nobody can
penetrate, but which happens too often to be doubted. Even in this
particular, however, Mr. Incledon had his advantages. He was not one of
those who, either by contempt for the occupations of youth or by the gravity
natural to maturer years, allow themselves to be pushed aside from the
lighter part of life—he still danced, though not with the absolute devotion
of twenty, and retained his place on the side of youth, not permitting
himself to be shelved. More than once, indeed, the young officers from the
garrison near, and the young scions of the county families, had looked on
with puzzled non-comprehension, when they found themselves altogether
distanced in effect and popularity by a mature personage whom they would
gladly have called an old fogy had they dared. These young gentlemen of
course consoled their vanity by railing against the mercenary character of
women who preferred wealth to everything. But it was not only his wealth
upon which Mr. Incledon stood. No girl who had married him need have
felt herself withdrawn to the grave circle in which her elders had their
place. He was able to hold his own in every pursuit with men ten years his
juniors, and did so. Then, too, he had almost a romantic side to his
character; for a man so well off does not put off marrying for so long
without a reason, and though nobody knew of any previous story, any
“entanglement,” which would have restrained him, various picturesque
suggestions were afloat; and even failing these, the object of his choice
might have laid the flattering unction to her soul that his long waiting had
been for the realization of some perfect ideal, which he found only in her.
This model of a marriageable man took his way from the White House in
a state of mind less easily described than most of his mental processes. He
was not excited to speak of, for an interview between a lover of thirty-five
and the mother of the lady is not generally exciting; but he was a little
doubtful of his own perfect judiciousness in the step he had just taken. I can
no more tell you why he had set his heart on Rose than I can say why she
felt no answering inclination towards him—for there were many other girls
in the neighborhood who would in many ways have been more suitable to a
man of his tastes and position. But Rose was the one woman in the world
for him, by sheer caprice of nature; just as reasonable, and no more so, as
that other caprice which made him, with all his advantages and
recommendations, not the man for her. If ever a man was in a position to
make a deliberate choice, such as men are commonly supposed to make in
matrimony, Mr. Incledon was the man; yet he chose just as much and as
little as the rest of us do. He saw Rose, and some power which he knew
nothing of decided the question at once for him. He had not been thinking
of marriage, but then he made up his mind to marry; and whereas he had on
various occasions weighed the qualities and the charms of this one and the
other, he never asked himself a question about her, nor compared her with
any other woman, nor considered whether she was suited for him, or
anything else about her. This was how he exercised that inestimable
privilege of choice which women sometimes envy. But, having once
received this conviction into his mind, he had never wavered in his
determination to win her. The question in his mind now was, not whether
his selection was the best he could have made, but whether it was wise of
him to have entrusted his cause to the mother rather than to have spoken to
Rose herself. He had remained in the background during those dreary
months of sorrow. He had sent flowers and game and messages of inquiry;
but he had not thrust himself upon the notice of the women, till their change
of residence gave token that they must have begun to rouse themselves for
fresh encounter with the world. When he was on his way to the White
House he had fully persuaded himself that to speak to the mother first was
the most delicate and the most wise thing he could do. For one thing, he
could say so much more to her than he could to Rose; he could assure her of
his good-will and of his desire to be of use to the family, should he become
a member of it. Mr. Incledon did not wish to bribe Mrs. Damerel to be on
his side. He had indeed a reasonable assurance that no such bribe was
necessary, and that a man like himself must always have a reasonable
mother on his side. This he was perfectly aware of, as indeed any one in his
senses would have been. But as soon as he had made his declaration to Mrs.
Damerel, and had left the White House behind, his thoughts began to
torment him with doubts of the wisdom of this proceeding. He saw very
well that there was no clinging of enthusiastic love, no absolute
devotedness of union, between this mother and daughter, and he began to
wonder whether he might not have done better had he run all the risks and
broached the subject to Rose herself, shy and liable to be startled as she
was. It was perhaps possible that his own avowal, which must have had a
certain degree of emotion in it, would have found better acceptation with
her than the passionless statement of his attentions which Mrs. Damerel
would probably make. For it never dawned upon Mr. Incledon’s
imagination that Mrs. Damerel would support his suit not with calmness,
but passionately—more passionately, perhaps, than would have been
possible to himself. He could not have divined any reason why she should
do so, and naturally he had not the least idea of the tremendous weapons
she was about to employ in his favor. I don’t think, for very pride and
shame, that he would have sanctioned the use of them, had he known.
It happened, however, by chance, that as he walked home in the wintry
twilight he met Mrs. Wodehouse and her friend Mrs. Musgrove, who were
going the same way as he was, on their way to see the Northcotes, who had
lately come to the neighborhood. He could not but join them so far in their
walk, nor could he avoid the conversation which was inevitable. Mrs.
Wodehouse indeed was very eager for it, and began almost before he could
draw breath.
“Did you see Mrs. Damerel after all?” she asked. “You remember I met
you when you were on your way?”
“Yes; she was good enough to see me,” said Mr. Incledon.
“And how do you think she is looking? I hear such different accounts;
some people say very ill, some just as usual. I have not seen her, myself,”
said Mrs. Wodehouse, slightly drawing herself up, “except in church.”
 “How was that?” he said, half amused. “I thought you had always been
great friends.”
Upon this he saw Mrs. Musgrove give a little jerk to her friend’s cloak,
in warning, and perceived that Mrs. Wodehouse wavered between a desire
to tell a grievance and the more prudent habit of self-restraint.
“Oh!” she said, with a little hesitation; “yes, of course we were always
good friends. I had a great admiration for our late good rector, Mr. Incledon.
What a man he was! Not to say a word against the new one, who is very
nice, he will never be equal to Mr. Damerel. What a fine mind he had, and a
style, I am told, equal to the very finest preachers! We must never hope to
hear such sermons in our little parish again. Mrs. Damerel is a very good
woman, and I feel for her deeply; but the attraction in that house, as I am
sure you must have felt, was not her, but him.”
“I have always had a great regard for Mrs. Damerel,” said Mr. Incledon.
“Oh, yes, yes! I am sure—a good wife and an excellent mother and all
that; but not the fine mind, not the intellectual conversation, one used to
have with the dear rector,” said good Mrs. Wodehouse, who had about as
much intellect as would lie on a sixpence; and then she added, “perhaps I
am prejudiced; I never can get over a slight which I am sure she showed to
my son.”
“Ah! what was that?”
Mrs. Musgrove once more pulled her friend’s cloak, and there was a
great deal more eagerness and interest than the occasion deserved in Mr.
Incledon’s tone.
“Oh, nothing of any consequence! What do you say, dear?—a mistake?
Well, I don’t think it was a mistake. They thought Edward was going to—
yes, that was a mistake, if you please. I am sure he had many other things in
his mind a great deal more important. But they thought—and though
common civility demanded something different, and I took the trouble to
write a note and ask it, I do think—but, however, after the words I had with
her to-day, I no longer blame Rose. Poor child! I am always very sorry for
poor Rose.”
“Why should you be sorry for Miss Damerel? Was she one of those who,
slighted your son? I hope Mr. Edward Wodehouse is quite well.”
“He is very well, I thank you, and getting on so satisfactorily; nothing
could be more pleasant. Oh, you must not think Edward cared! He has seen
a great deal of the world, and he did not come home to let himself be put
down by the family of a country clergyman. That is not at all what I meant;
I am sorry for Rose, however, because of a great many things. She ought to
go out as a governess or companion, or something of that sort, poor child!
Mrs. Damerel may try, but I am sure they never can get on as they are
doing. I hear that all they have to depend on is about a hundred and fifty a
year. A family can never live upon that, not with their habits, Mr. Incledon;
and therefore I think I may well say poor Rose!”
“I don’t think Miss Damerel will ever require to make such a sacrifice,”
he said, hurriedly.
“Well, I only hope you are right,” said Mrs. Wodehouse. “Of course you
know a great deal more about business matters than I do, and perhaps their
money is at higher interest than we think for; but if I were Rose I almost
think I should see it to be my duty. Here we are at Mrs. Northcote’s, dear.
Mr. Incledon, I am afraid we must say good-by.”
Mr. Incledon went home very hot and fast after this conversation. It
warmed him in the misty, cold evening, and seemed to put so many
weapons into his hand. Rose, his Rose, go out as a governess or companion!
He looked at the shadow of his own great house standing out against the
frosty sky, and laughed to himself as he crossed the park. She a dependent,
who might to-morrow if she pleased be virtual mistress of Whitton and all
its wealth! He would have liked to say to these women, “In three months
Rose will be the great lady of the parish, and lay down the law to you and
the Green, and all your gossiping society.” He would even in a rare fit of
generosity have liked to tell them, on the spot, that this blessedness was in
Rose’s power, to give her honor in their eyes, whether she accepted him or
not; which was a very generous impulse indeed, and one which few men
would have been equal to—though indeed as a matter of fact Mr. Incledon
did not carry it out. But he went into the lonely house where everything
pleasant and luxurious, except the one crowning luxury of some one to
share it with, awaited him, in a glow of energy and eagerness, resolved to
go back again to-morrow and plead his cause with Rose herself, and win
her, not prudentially through her mother, but by his own warmth of love and
eloquence. Poor Rose in June! In the wintry setting of the White House she
was not much like the rector’s flower-maiden, in all her delicate perfection
of bloom, “queen rose of the rosebud garden,” impersonation of all the
warmth, and sweetness, and fragrance, and exquisite simple profusion of
summer and nature. Mr. Incledon’s heart swelled full of love and pity as he
thought of the contrast—not with passion, but soft tenderness, and a
delicious sense of what it was in his power to do for her, and to restore her
to. He strayed over the rooms which he had once shown to her, with a
natural pride in their beauty, and in all the delicate treasures he had
accumulated there, until he came to the little inner room with its gray-green
hangings, in which hung the Perugino, which, since Rose had seen it, he
had always called his Raphael. He seemed to see her too, standing there
looking at it, a creature partaking something of that soft divinity, an
enthusiast with sweet soul and looks congenial to that heavenly art. I do not
know that his mind was of a poetical turn by nature, but there are moments
when life makes a poet of the dullest; and on this evening the lonely, quiet
house within the parks and woods of Whitton, where there had been neither
love, nor anything worth calling life, for years, except in the cheery
company of the servants’ hall, suddenly got itself lighted up with ethereal
lights of tender imagination and feeling. The illumination did not show
outwardly, or it might have alarmed the Green, which was still unaware that
the queen of the house had passed by there, and the place lighted itself up in
prospect of her coming.
After dinner, however, Mr. Incledon descended from these regions of
fancy and took a step which seemed to himself a very clever as well as
prudent, and at the same time a very friendly, one. He had not forgotten, any
more than the others had, that summer evening on the lawn at the rectory,
when young Wodehouse had strayed down the hill with Rose, out of sight
of the seniors of the party, and though all his active apprehensions on that
score had been calmed down by Edward’s departure, yet he was too wise
not to perceive that there was something in Mrs. Wodehouse’s disjointed
talk more than met the eye at the first glance.
Mr. Incledon had a friend who was one of the Lords of the Admiralty,
and upon whom he could rely to do him a service; a friend whom he had
never asked for anything—for what was official patronage to the master of
Whitton? He wrote him a long and charming letter, which, if I had only
room for it, or if it had anything to do except incidentally with this simple
history, would give the reader a much better idea of his abilities and social
charms than anything I can show of him here. In it he discussed the politics
of the moment, and that gossip on a dignified scale about ministers and high
officials of state which is half history—and he touched upon social events
in a light and amusing strain, with that half cynicism which lends salt to
correspondence; and he told his friend half gayly, half seriously, that he was
beginning to feel somewhat solitary, and that dreams of marrying, and
marrying soon, were stealing into his mind. And he told him about his
Perugino (“which I fondly hope may turn out an early Raphael”), and which
it would delight him to show to a brother connoisseur. “And, by the bye,”
he added, after all this, “I have a favor to ask of you which I have kept to
the end like a lady’s postscript. I want you to extend the ægis of your
protection over a fine young fellow in whom I am considerably interested.
His name is Wodehouse, and his ship is at present on that detestable slave
trade service which costs us so much money and does so little good. He has
been a long time in the service, and I hear he is a very promising young
officer. I should consider it a personal favor if you could do something for
him; and (N. B.) it would be a still greater service to combine promotion
with as distant a post as possible. His friends are anxious to keep him out of
the way for private reasons—the old ‘entanglement’ business, which, of
course, you will understand; but I think it hard that this sentence of
banishment should be conjoined with such a disagreeable service. Give him
a gunboat, and send him to look for the Northwest passage, or anywhere
else where my lords have a whim for exploring! I never thought to have
paid such a tribute to your official dignity as to come, hat in hand, for a
place, like the rest of the world. But no man, I suppose, can always resist
the common impulse of his kind; and I am happy in the persuasion that to
you I will not plead in vain.”
I am afraid that nothing could have been more disingenuous than this
letter. How it worked, the reader will see hereafter; but, in the mean time, I
cannot defend Mr. Incledon. He acted, I suppose, on the old and time-
honored sentiment that any stratagem is allowable in love and war, and
consoled himself for the possible wrong he might be doing (only a possible
wrong, for Wodehouse might be kept for years cruising after slaves, for
anything Mr. Incledon knew) by the unquestionable benefit which would
accompany it. “A young fellow living by his wits will find a gunboat of
infinitely more service to him than a foolish love affair which never could
come to anything,” his rival said to himself.
And after having sealed this letter, he returned into his fairy land. He left
the library where he had written it, and went to the drawing-room which he
rarely used, but which was warm with a cheerful fire and lighted with soft
wax-lights for his pleasure, should he care to enter. He paused at the door a
moment and looked at it. The wonders of upholstery in this carefully
decorated room, every scrap of furniture in which had cost its master
thought, would afford pages of description to a fashionable American
novelist, or to the refined chronicles of the “Family Herald;” but I am not
sufficiently learned to do them justice. The master of the house, however,
looked at the vacant room with its softly burning lights, its luxurious vacant
seats, its closely drawn curtains, the books on the tables which no one ever
opened, the pictures on the walls which nobody looked at (except on great
occasions), with a curious sense at once of desolation and of happiness.
How dismal its silence was! not a sound but the dropping of the ashes from
the fire, or the movement of the burning fuel; and he himself a ghost
looking into a room which might be inhabited by ghosts for aught he knew.
Here and there, indeed, a group of chairs had been arranged by accident so
as to look as if they were occupied, as if one unseen being might be
whispering to another, noiselessly smiling, and pointing at the solitary. But
no, there was a pleasanter interpretation to be given to that soft, luxurious,
brightly-colored vacancy; it was all prepared and waiting, ready for the
gentle mistress who was to come.
How different from the low-roofed drawing-room at the White House,
with the fireplace at one end of the long room, with the damp of ages in the
old walls, with draughts from every door and window, and an indifferent
lamp giving all the light they could afford! Mr. Incledon, perhaps, thought
of that, too, with an increased sense of the advantages he had to offer; but
lightly, not knowing all the discomforts of it. He went back to his library
after this inspection, and the lights burned on, and the ghosts, if there were
any, had the full enjoyment of it till the servants came to extinguish the
candles and shut up everything for the night.
 CHAPTER XI.
When Rose went up the creaking stairs to bed on that memorable night
her feelings were like those of some one who has just been overtaken by
one of the great catastrophes of nature—a hurricane or an earthquake—and
who, though escaped for the moment, hears the tempest gathering in
another quarter, and knows that this is but the first flash of its wrath, and
that he has yet worse encounters to meet. I am of Mr. Incledon’s opinion—
or rather of the doubt fast ripening into an opinion in his mind—that he had
made a mistake, and that possibly if he had taken Rose herself “with the
tear in her eye,” and pressed his suit at first hand, he might have succeeded
better; but such might-be’s are always doubtful to affirm and impossible to
prove. She sat down for a while in her cold room, where the draughts were
playing freely about, and where there was no fire—to think; but as for
thinking, that was an impossible operation in face of the continued gleams
of fancy which kept showing now one scene to her, now another; and of the
ringing echo of her mother’s words which kept sounding through and
through the stillness. Self-indulgence—choosing her own pleasure rather
than her duty—what she liked instead of what was right. Rose was far too
much confused to make out how it was that these reproaches seemed to her
instinct so inappropriate to the question; she only felt it vaguely, and cried a
little at the thought of the selfishness attributed to her; for there is no
opprobrious word that cuts so deeply into the breast of a romantic, innocent
girl. She sat there pensive till all her faculties got absorbed in the dreary
sense of cold and bodily discomfort, and then she rose and said her prayers,
and untwisted her pretty hair and brushed it out, and went to bed, feeling as
if she would have to watch through the long, dark hours till morning,
though the darkness and loneliness frightened her, and she dreaded the
night. But Rose was asleep in half an hour, though the tears were not dry on
her eyelashes, and I think slept all the long night through which she had
been afraid of, and woke only when the first gray of daylight revealed the
cold room and a cold morning dimly to her sight—slept longer than usual,
for emotion tires the young. Poor child! she was a little ashamed of herself
when she found how soundly she had slept.
 “Mamma would not let me call you,” said Agatha, coming into her
room; “she said you were very tired last night; but do please come down
now, and make haste. There is such a basket of flowers in the hall from
Whitton, the man says. Where’s Whitton? Isn’t it Mr. Incledon’s place? But
make haste, Rose, for breakfast, now that you are awake.”
So she had no time to think just then, but had to hurry down-stairs,
where her mother met her with something of a wistful look, and kissed her
with a kind of murmured half apology. “I am afraid I frightened you last
night, Rose.”
“Oh, no, not frightened,” the girl said, taking refuge among the children,
before whom certainly nothing could be said; and then Agatha and Patty
surged into the conversation, and all gravity or deeper meaning was taken
out of it. Indeed, her mother was so cheerful that Rose would almost have
hoped she was to hear no more of it, had it not been for the cluster of
flowers which stood on the table and the heaped-up bunches of beautiful
purple grapes which filled a pretty Tuscan basket, and gave dignity to the
bread and butter. This was a sign of the times which was very alarming; and
I do not know why it was, unless it might be by reason of her youth, that
those delicate and lovely things—fit offerings for a lover—never moved her
to any thought of what it was she was rejecting, or tempted her to consider
Mr. Incledon’s proposal as one which involved many delightful things along
with himself, who was not delightful. This idea, oddly enough, did not find
any place in her mind, though she was as much subject to the influence of
all that was lovely and pleasant as any girl could be.
The morning passed, however, without any further words on the subject,
and her heart had begun to beat easier and her excitement to calm down,
when Mrs. Damerel suddenly came to her, after the children’s lessons,
which was now their mother’s chief occupation. She came upon her quite
unexpectedly, when Rose, moved by their noiseless presence in the room,
and unable to keep her hands off them any longer, had just commenced, in
the course of her other arrangements (for Rose had to be a kind of upper
housemaid, and make the drawing-room habitable after the rough and ready
operation which Mary Jane called “tidying”), to make a pretty group upon a
table in the window of Mr. Incledon’s flowers. Certainly they made the
place look prettier and pleasanter than it had ever done yet, especially as
one stray gleam of sunshine, somewhat pale, like the girl herself, but
cheery, had come glancing in to light up the long, low, quaint room and
caress the flowers. “Ah, Rose, they have done you good already!” said her
mother; “you look more like yourself than I have seen you for many a day.”
Rose took her hands from the last flower-pot as if it had burned her, and
stood aside, so angry and vexed to have been found at this occupation that
she could have cried.
“My dear,” said her mother, going up to her, “I do not know that Mr.
Incledon will be here to-day; but if he comes I must give him an answer.
Have you reflected upon what I said to you? I need not tell you again how
important it is, or how much you have in your power.”
Rose clasped her hands together in self-support, one hand held fast by
the other, as if that slender grasp had been something worth clinging to.
“Oh! what can I say?” she cried; “I—told you; what more can I say?”
“You told me! Then, Rose, everything that I said to you last night goes
for nothing, though you must know the truth of it far, far better than my
words could say. Is it to be the same thing over again—always over again?
Self, first and last, the only consideration? Everything to please yourself;
nothing from higher motives? God forgive you, Rose!”
“Oh, hush, hush! it is unkind—it is cruel. I would die for you if that
would do any good!” cried Rose.
“These are easy words to say; for dying would do no good, neither
would it be asked of you,” said Mrs. Damerel impatiently. “Rose, I do not
ask this in ordinary obedience, as a mother may command a child. It is not a
child but a woman who must make such a decision; but it is my duty to
show you your duty, and what is best for yourself as well as for others. No
one—neither man nor woman, nor girl nor boy—can escape from duty to
others; and when it is neglected some one must pay the penalty. But you—
you are happier than most. You can, if you please, save your family.”
“We are not starving, mamma,” said Rose, with trembling lips; “we have
enough to live upon—and I could work—I would do anything”—
“What would your work do, Rose? If you could teach—and I don’t think
you could teach—you might earn enough for your own dress; that would be
all. Oh, my dear! listen to me. The little work a girl can do is nothing. She
can make a sacrifice of her own inclination—of her fancy but as for work,
she has nothing in her power.”
“Then I wish there were no girls!” cried Rose, as many a poor girl has
done before her, “if we can do nothing but be a burden—if there is no work
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