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The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing)

by E. H. Young · English · Gutenberg #8131 · 518,942 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing)

Author: E. H. Young


        
Release date: May 1, 2005 [eBook #8131]
                Most recently updated: January 19, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MISSES MALLETT (THE BRIDGE DIVIDING) ***




The Misses Mallett

(The Bridge Dividing)

by E. H. Young


Contents

 BOOK I ROSE
 BOOK II HENRIETTA
 BOOK III ROSE AND HENRIETTA




Book I: _Rose_


§ 1

On the high land overlooking the distant channel and the hills beyond
it, the spring day, set in azure, was laced with gold and green. Gorse
bushes flaunted their colour, larch trees hung out their tassels and
celandines starred the bright green grass in an air which seemed
palpably blue. It made a mist among the trees and poured itself into
the ground as though to dye the earth from which hyacinths would soon
spring. Far away, the channel might have been a still, blue lake, the
hills wore soft blue veils and, like a giant reservoir, the deeper blue
of the sky promised unlimited supplies. There were sheep and lambs
bleating in the fields, birds sang with a piercing sweetness, and no
human being was in sight until, up on the broad grassy track which
branched off from the main road and had the larch wood on one side and,
on the other, rough descending fields, there appeared a woman on a
horse. The bit jingled gaily, the leather creaked, the horse, smelling
the turf, gave a snort of delight, but his rider restrained him
lightly. On her right hand was the open country sloping slowly to the
water; on her left was the stealthiness of the larch wood; over and
about everything was the blue day. Straight ahead of her the track
dipped to a lane, and beyond that the ground rose again in fields
sprinkled with the drab and white of sheep and lambs and backed by the
elm trees of Sales Hall. She could see the chimneys of the house and
the rooks’ nests in the elm tops and, as though the sight reminded her
of something mildly amusing, the smoothness of her face was ruffled by
a smile, the stillness of her pose by a quick glance about her, but if
she looked for anyone she did not find him. There were small sounds
from the larch wood, little creakings and rustlings, but there was no
human footstep, and the only visible movements were made by the breeze
in the trees and in the grass, the flight of a bird and the distant
gambolling of lambs.

She rode on down the steep, stony slope into the lane, and after
hesitating for a moment she turned to the right where the lane was
broadened by a border of rich grass and a hedge-topped bank. Here
primroses lay snugly in their clumps of crinkled leaves and, wishing to
feel the coolness of their slim, pale stalks between her fingers, Rose
Mallett dismounted, slipped the reins over her arm and allowed her
horse to feed while she stooped to the flowers. Then, in the full
sunshine, with the soft breeze trying to loosen her hair, with the
flowers in her bare hand, she straightened herself, consciously happy
in the beauty of the day, in the freedom and strength of her body, in
the smell of the earth and the sight of the country she had known and
loved all her life. It was long since she had ridden here without
encountering Francis Sales, who was bound up with her knowledge of the
country, and who, quite evidently, wished to annex some of the love she
lavished on it. This was a ridiculous desire which made her smile
again, yet, while she was glad to be alone, she missed the attention of
his presence. He had developed a capacity, which was like another
sense, for finding her when she rode on his domains or in their
neighbourhood, and she was surprised to feel a slight annoyance at his
absence, an annoyance which, illogically, was increased by the sight of
his black spaniel, the sure forerunner of his master, making his way
through the hedge. A moment later the tall figure of Sales himself
appeared above the budding twigs.

He greeted her in the somewhat sulky manner to which she was
accustomed. He was a young man with a grievance, and he looked at her
as though to-day it were personified in her.

She answered him cheerfully: “What a wonderful day!”

“The day’s all right,” he said.

Holding the primroses to her nose, she looked round. Catkins were
swaying lightly on the willows, somewhere out of sight a tiny runnel of
water gurgled, the horse ate noisily, the grass had a vividness of
green like the concentrated thought of spring.

“I don’t see how anything can be wrong this morning,” she said.

“Ah, you’re lucky to think so,” he answered, gazing at her clear, pale
profile.

“Well,” she turned to ask patiently, “what is the matter with you?”

“I’m worried.”

“Has a cow died?” And ignoring his angry gesture, she went on: “I don’t
think you take enough care of your property. Whenever I ride here I
find you strolling about miserably, with a dog.”

“That’s your fault.”

“I don’t quite see why,” she said pleasantly; “but no doubt you are
right. But has a cow died?”

“Of course not. Why should it?”

“They do, I suppose?”

“It’s the old man. He isn’t well, and he’s badgering me to go away, to
Canada, and learn more about farming.”

“So you should.”

“Of course you’d say so.”

“Or do you think you can’t?”

He missed, or ignored, her point. “He’s ill. I don’t want to leave
him”; and in a louder voice he added, almost shouted, “I don’t want to
leave you!”

Her grey eyes were watching the swinging catkins, her hand, lifting the
primroses, hid a smile. Again he had the benefit of her profile, the
knot of her dark, thick hair and the shadowy line of her eyelashes, but
she made no comment on his remark and after a moment of sombre staring
he uttered the one word, “Well?”

“Yes?”

“Well, I’ve told you.”

“Oh, I think you ought to go.”

“Then you don’t love me?”

From under her raised eyebrows she looked at him steadily. “No, I don’t
love you,” she said slowly. There was no need to consider her answer:
she was sure of it. She was fond of him, but she could not romantically
love some one who looked and behaved like a spoilt boy. She glanced
from his handsome, frowning face in which the mouth was opening for
protest to a scene perfectly set for a love affair. There was not so
much as a sheep in sight: there was only the horse who, careless of
these human beings, still ate eagerly, chopping the good grass with his
teeth, and the spaniel who panted self-consciously and with a great
affectation of exhaustion. The place was beautiful and the sunlight had
some quality of enchantment. Faint, delicious smells were offered on
the wind and withdrawn in caprice; the trees were all tipped with green
and interlaced with blue air and blue sky; she wished she could say she
loved him, and she repeated her denial half regretfully.

“Rose,” he pleaded, “I’ve known you all my life!”

“Perhaps that’s why. Perhaps I know you too well.”

“You don’t. You don’t know how—how I love you. And I should be
different with you. I should be happy. I’ve never been happy yet.”

“You can’t,” she said slowly, “get happiness through a person if you
can’t get it through yourself.”

“Yes—if you are the person.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”

He reproached her. “You’ve never thought about it.”

“Well, isn’t that the same thing? And,” she added, “you’re so far
away.”

“I can get through the hedge,” he said practically.

She smiled in the way that always puzzled, irritated and allured him.
His words set him still farther off; he did not even understand her
speech.

“Is it better now?” he asked, close to her.

“No, no better.” She looked at his face, so deeply tanned that his
brown hair and moustache looked pale by contrast and his eyes
extraordinarily blue. His appearance always pleased her. It was almost
a part of the landscape, but the landscape was full of change, of
mystery in spite of its familiarity, and she found him dull,
monotonous, with a sort of stupidity which was not without attraction,
but which would be wearying for a whole life. She had no desire to be
his wife and the mistress of Sales Hall, its fields and woods and
farms. The world was big, the possibilities in life were infinite, and
she felt she was fit, perhaps destined, to play a larger part than this
he offered her, and if she could, as she foresaw, only play a greater
one through the agency of some man, she must have that man colossal,
for she was only twenty-three years old.

“No,” she said firmly, “we are not suited to each other.”

“You are to me.” His angry helplessness seemed to darken the sunlight.
“You are to me. No one else. I’ve known you all my life. Rose, think
about it!”

“I shall—but I shan’t change. I don’t believe you really love me,
Francis, but you want some one you can growl at legitimately. I don’t
think you would find me satisfactory. Another woman might enjoy the
privilege.”

He made a wild movement, startling to the horse. “You don’t understand
me!”

“Well, then, that ought to settle it. And now I’m going.”

“Don’t go,” he pleaded. “And look here, you might have loosened your
girths.”

“I might, but I didn’t expect to be here so long. I didn’t expect to be
so pleasantly entertained.” She put out her hand for his shoulder, and,
bending unwillingly, he received her foot.

“You needn’t have said that,” he muttered, “about being entertained.”

“You’re so ungracious, Francis.”

“I can’t help it when I care so much.”

From her high seat she looked at him with a sort of envy. “It must be
rather nice to feel anything deeply enough to make you rude.”

“You torture me,” he said.

She was hurt by the sight of his suffering, she wished she could give
him what he wanted, she felt as though she were injuring a child, yet
her youth resented his childishness: it claimed a passion capable of
overwhelming her. She hardened a little. “Good-bye,” she said, “and if
I were you, I should certainly go abroad.”

“I shall!” he threatened her.

“Good-bye, then,” she repeated amiably.

“Don’t go,” he begged in a low voice. “Rose, I don’t believe you know
what you are doing, and you’ve always loved the country, you’ve always
loved our place. You like our house. You told me once you envied us our
rookery.”

“Yes, I love the rookery,” she said.

“And you’d have your own stables and as many horses as you wanted—”

“And milk from our own cows! And home-laid eggs!”

“Ah, you’re laughing at me. You always do.”

“So you see,” she said, bending a little towards him, “I shouldn’t make
a very good companion.”

“But I could put up with it from you!” he cried. “I could put up with
anything from you.”

She made a gesture. That was where he chiefly failed. The colossal
gentleman of her imagination was a tyrant.


She rode home, up and along the track, on to the high road with its
grass borders and across the shadows of the elm branches which striped
the road with black. It was a long road accompanied on one side and for
about two miles by a tall, smooth wall, unscalable, guarding the
privacy of a local magnate’s park. It was a pitiless wall, without a
chink, without a roughness that could be seized by hands; it was higher
than Rose Mallett as she sat on her big horse and, but for the open
fields on the other side where lambs jumped and bleated, that road
would have oppressed the spirit, for the wall was a solid witness to
the pride and the power of material possession. Rose Mallett hated it,
not on account of the pride and the power, but because it was ugly,
monstrous, and so inhospitably smooth that not a moss would grow on it.
More vaguely, she disliked it because it set so definite a limit to her
path. She was always glad when she could turn the corner and, leaving
the wall to prolong the side of the right angle it made at this point,
she could take a side road, edging a wooded slope. That slope made one
side of the gorge through which the river ran, and, looking down
through the trees, she caught glimpses of water and a red scar of rock
on the other cliff.

The sound of a steamer’s paddles threshing the water came to her
clearly, and the crying of the gulls was so familiar that she hardly
noticed it. And all the way she was thinking of Francis Sales, his
absurdity, his good looks and his distress; but in the permanence of
his distress, even in its sincerity, she did not much believe, for he
had failed to touch anything but her pity, and that failure seemed an
argument against the vehemence of his love. Yet she liked him, she had
always liked him since, as a little girl, she had been taken by her
stepsisters to a haymaking party at Sales Hall.

They had gone in a hired carriage, but one so smart and well-equipped
that it might have been their own, and she remembered the smell of the
leather seats warmed by the sun, the sound of the horse’s hoofs and the
sight of Caroline and Sophia, extremely gay in their summer muslins and
shady hats, each holding a lace parasol to protect the complexion
already delicately touched up with powder and rouge. She had been very
proud of her stepsisters as she sat facing them and she had decided to
wear just such muslin dresses, just such hats, when she grew up.
Caroline was in pink with coral beads and a pink feather drooping on
her dark hair; and Sophia, very fair, with a freckle here and there
peeping, as though curious, through the powder, wore yellow with a
big-bowed sash. She was always very slim, and the only fair Mallett in
the family; but even in those days Caroline was inclined to stoutness.
She carried it well, however, with a great dignity, fortified by
reassurances from Sophia, and Rose’s recollections of the conversations
of these two was of their constant compliments to each other and the
tireless discussion of clothes. These conversations still went on.

Fifteen years ago she had sat in that carriage in a white frock, with
socks and ankle-strapped black shoes, her long hair flowing down her
back, and she had heard then, as one highly privileged, the words she
would hear again when she arrived home for tea. Under their tilted
parasols they had made their little speeches. No one was more
distinguished than Caroline; no girl of twenty had a prettier figure
than Sophia’s; how well the pink feather looked against Caroline’s
hair. Rose, listening intently, but not staring too hard lest her gaze
should attract their attention to herself, had looked at the fields and
at the high, smooth wall, and wondered whether she would rather reach
Sales Hall and enjoy the party, or drive on for ever in this delightful
company, but the carriage turned up the avenue of elms and Rose saw for
the first time the house which Francis Sales now offered as an
attraction. It was a big, square house with honest, square windows, and
the drive, shadowed by the elms, ran through the fields where the
haymaking was in progress. Only immediately in front of the house were
there any flower-beds and there were no garden trees or shrubs. The
effect was of great freedom and spaciousness, of unaffected homeliness;
and even then the odd delightful mixture of hall and farm, the grandeur
of the elm avenue set in the simplicity of fields, gave pleasure to
Rose Mallett’s beauty-loving eyes. Anything might happen in a garden
that suddenly became a field, in a field that ended in a garden, and
the house had the same capacity for surprise.

There was a matted hall sunk a foot below the threshold, and to Rose,
accustomed to the delicate order of Nelson Lodge with its slim,
shining, old furniture, its polished brass and gleaming silver, the
comfortable carelessness of this place, with a man’s cap on the hall
table, a group of sticks and a pair of slippers in a corner, and an
opened newspaper on a chair, seemed the very home of freedom. It was a
masculine house in which Mrs. Sales, a gentle lady with a fichu of lace
round her soft neck, looked strangely out of place, yet entirely happy
in her strangeness.

On the day of the party Rose had only a glimpse of the interior. The
three Miss Malletts, Caroline sweeping majestically ahead, were led
into the hayfield where Mrs. Sales sat serenely in a wicker chair. It
was evident at once that Mr. Sales, bluff and hearty, with gaitered
legs, was fond of little girls. He realized that this one with the
black hair and the solemn grey eyes would prefer eating strawberries
from the beds to partaking of them with cream from a plate; he knew
without being told that she would not care for gambolling with other
children in the hay; he divined her desire to see the pigs and horses,
and it was near the pigsties that she met Francis Sales. He was tall
for twelve years old and Rose respected him for his age and size; but
she wondered why he was with the pigs instead of with his guests, to
whom his father drove him off with a laugh.

“Says he can’t bear parties,” Mr. Sales remarked genially to Rose.
“What do you think of that?”

“I like pigs, too,” Rose answered, to be surprised by his prolonged
chuckle.

Mr. Sales, in the intervals of his familiar conversation with the pigs,
wanted to know why Rose had not brought her father with her.

“Oh, he’s too old,” Rose said, rather shocked. Her father had always
seemed old to her, as indeed he was, for she was the child of his
second marriage, and her young mother had died when she was born. Her
stepsisters, devoted to the little girl, and perhaps not altogether
sorry to be rid of a stepmother younger than themselves, had tried to
make up for that loss, but they were much occupied with the social
activities of Radstowe and they belonged to an otherwise inactive
generation, so that if Rose had a grievance it was that they never
played games with her, never ran, or played ball or bowled hoops as she
saw the mothers of other children doing. For such sporting she had to
rely upon her nurse who was of rather a solemn nature and liked little
girls to behave demurely out of doors.

General Mallett saw to it that his youngest daughter early learnt to
ride. Her memories of him were of a big man on a big horse, not
talkative, somewhat stern and sad, becoming companionable only when
they rode out together on the high Downs crowning the old city, and
then he was hardly recognizable as the father who heard her prayers
every night. These two duties of teaching her to ride and of hearing
her pray, and his insistence on her going, as Caroline and Sophia had
done, to a convent school in France, made up, as far as she could
remember, the sum of his interest in her, and when she returned home
from school for the last time, it was to attend his funeral.

She was hardly sorry, she was certainly not glad; she envied the
spontaneous tears of her stepsisters, and she found the lugubriousness
of the occasion much alleviated by the presence of her stepbrother
Reginald. She had hardly seen him since her childhood. Sophia always
spoke of him as she might have spoken of the dead. Caroline sometimes
referred to him in good round terms, sometimes with an indulgent laugh;
and for Rose he had the charm of mystery, the fascination of the
scapegrace. He was handsome, but good looks were a prerogative of the
Malletts; he was married to a wife he had never introduced to his
family and he had a little girl. What his profession was, Rose did not
know. Perhaps his face was his fortune, as certainly his sisters had
been his victims.

After the funeral he had several interviews with Caroline and Sophia,
when Rose could hear the mannish voice of Caroline growing gruff with
indignation and the high tones of Sophia rising to a squeak. He emerged
from these encounters with an angry face and a weak mouth stubbornly
set; but for Rose he had always a gay word or a pretty speech. She was
a real Mallett, he told her; she was more his sister than the others,
and she liked to hear him say so because he had a kind of grace and a
caressing voice, yet the cool judgment which was never easily upset
assured her that a man with his mouth must be in the wrong. He was, in
fact, pursuing his old practice of extracting money from his sisters,
and he only returned, presumably, to his wife and child, when James
Batty, the family solicitor, had been called to the ladies’ aid.

But they both cried when he went away.

“He is so lovable,” Sophia sobbed.

“My dear, he’s a rake,” Caroline replied, carefully dabbing her cheeks.
“All the Malletts are rakes—yes, even the General. Oh, he took to
religion in the end, I know, but that’s what they do.” She chuckled.
“When there’s nothing left! I’m afraid I shall take to it myself some
day. I’ve sown my wild oats, too. Oh, no, I’m not going to tell Rose
anything about them, Sophia. You needn’t be afraid, but she’ll hear of
them sooner or later from anybody who remembers Caroline Mallett in her
youth.”

Rose had received this confession gravely, but she had not needed the
reassurance of Sophia; “It isn’t so, dear Rose—a flirt, yes, but never
wicked, never! My dear, of course not!”

“Of course not,” Rose repeated. She had already realized that her
stepsisters must be humoured.


Riding slowly, Rose recalled that haymaking party and her gradual
friendship, as the years went by, with the unsociable young Sales, a
friendship which had been tacitly recognized by them both when, meeting
her soon after his mother’s death, he had laid his arms and head on the
low stone wall by which they were standing, and wept without restraint.
It was a display she could not have given herself and it shocked her in
a young man, but it left her in his debt. She felt she owed something
to a person who had shown such confidence in her and though at the time
she had been dumb and, as it seemed to her, far from helpful, she did
not forget her liability. However, she could not remember it to the
extent of marrying him; she had always shown him more kindness than she
really felt and, in considering these things on her way home, she
decided that she was still doing as much as he could expect.

She had by this time turned another corner and the high bridge, swung
from one side of the gorge to the other, was before her. At the
toll-house was the red-faced man who had not altered in the whiteness
of a single hair since she had been taken across the bridge by her
nurse and allowed to peep fearfully through the railings which had
towered like a forest above her head. And the view from the bridge was
still for her a fairy vision.

Seawards, the river, now full and hiding its muddy banks which,
revealed, had their own opalescent beauty, went its way between the
cliffs, clothed on one hand with trees, save for a big red and yellow
gash where the stone was being quarried, and on the other with bare
rock, topped by the Downs spreading far out of sight. Landwards the
river was trapped into docks, spanned by low bridges and made into the
glistening part of a patchwork of water, brick and iron. Red-roofed old
houses, once the haunts of fashion, were clustered near the water but
divided from it now by tram-lines, companion anachronisms to the
steamers entering and leaving the docks, but by the farther shore, one
small strip of river was allowed to flow in its own way, and it skirted
meadows rising to the horizon and carrying with them more of those
noble elms in which the whole countryside was rich.

Her horse’s hoofs sounding hollow on the bridge, Rose passed across,
and at the other toll-house door she saw the thin, pale man, with
spectacles on the end of his pointed nose, who had first touched his
hat to her when she rode on a tiny pony by the side of her father on
his big horse. That man was part of her life and she, presumably, was
part of his. He had watched many Upper Radstowe children from the
perambulator stage, and to him she remarked on the weather, as she had
done to the red-faced man at the other end. It was a beautiful day;
they were having a wonderful spring; it would soon be summer, she said,
but on repetition these words sounded false and intensely dreary. It
would soon be summer, but what did that mean to her? Festivities suited
to the season would be resumed in Radstowe. There would be lawn tennis
in the big gardens, and young men in flannels and girls in white would
stroll about the roads and gay voices would be heard in the dusk. There
would be garden-parties, and Mrs. Batty, the wife of the lawyer, would
be lavish with tennis for the young, gossip for the middle-aged and
unlimited strawberries and ices for all. Rose would be one of the
guests at this as at all the parties and, for the first time, as though
her refusal of Francis Sales had had some strange effect, as though
that rejected future had created a distaste for the one fronting her,
she was aghast at the prospect of perpetual chatter, tea and pretty
dresses. She was surely meant for something better, harder, demanding
greater powers. She had, by inheritance, good manners, a certain social
gift, but she had here nothing to conquer with these weapons. What was
she to do? The idea of qualifying for the business of earning her bread
did not occur to her. No female Mallett had ever done such a thing, and
not all the male ones. Marriage opened the only door, but not marriage
with Francis Sales, not marriage with anyone she knew in Radstowe, and
her stepsisters had no inclination to leave the home of their youth,
the scene of their past successes, for her sake.

Rose sat very straight on her horse, not frowning, for she never
frowned, but wearing rather a set expression, so that an acquaintance,
passing unrecognized, made the usual reflection on the youngest Miss
Mallett’s pride, and the pity that one so young should sometimes look
so old.

And Rose was wishing that the spring would last for ever, the spring
with its promise of excitement and adventure which would not be
fulfilled, though one was willingly deceived into believing that it
would. Yet she had youth’s happy faith in accident: something
breathless and terrific would sweep her, as on the winds of storm, out
of this peaceful, gracious life, this place where feudalism still
survived, where men touched their hats to her as her due. And it was
her due! She raised her head and gave her pale profile to the houses on
one side, the trees and the open spaces of green on the other. And not
because she was a Mallett though it was a name honoured in Radstowe,
but because she was herself. Hats would always be touched to her, and
it was the touchers who would feel themselves complimented in the act.
She knew that, but the knowledge was not much to her; she wished she
could offer homage for a change, and the colossal figure of her
imagination loomed up again; a rough man, perhaps; yes, he might be
rough if he were also great; rough and the scandal of her stepsisters!

As she rode under the flowering trees to the stable where she kept her
horse, she wondered whether she should tell her stepsisters of Francis
Sales’s proposal, but she knew she would not do so. She seldom told
them anything they did not know already. They would think it a
reasonable match; they might urge her acceptance; they were anxious for
her to marry, but Caroline, at least, was proud of the inherent Mallett
distaste for the marriage state. “We’re all flirts,” she would say for
the thousandth time. “We can’t settle down, not one of us,” and holding
up a thumb and forefinger and pinching them together, she would add,
“We like to hold men’s hearts like that—and let them go!” It was great
nonsense, Rose thought, but it had the necessary spice of truth. The
Malletts were not easily pleased, and they were not good givers of
anything except gold, the easiest thing to give. Rose wished she could
give the difficult things—love, devotion, and self-sacrifice; but she
could not, or perhaps she had no opportunity. She was fond of her
stepsisters, but her most conscious affection was the one she felt for
her horse.

She left him at the stable and, fastening up her riding-skirt, she
walked slowly home. She had not far to go. A steep street, where
narrow-fronted old houses informed the public that apartments were to
be let within, brought her to the broad space of grass and trees called
The Green, which she had just passed on her horse. Straight ahead of
her was the wide street flanked by houses of which her home was one—a
low white building hemmed in on each side by another and with a small
walled garden in front of it; not a large house, but one full of
character and of quiet self-assurance. Malletts had lived in it for
several generations, long before the opposite houses were built, long
before the road had, lower down, degenerated into a region of shops.
These houses, all rechristened in a day of enthusiasm, Nelson Lodge,
with Trafalgar House, taller, bigger, but not so white, on one side of
it, and Hardy Cottage, somewhat smaller, on the other, had faced open
meadows in General Mallett’s boyhood. Round the corner, facing The
Green, were a few contemporaries, and they all had a slight look of
disdain for the later comers, yet no single house was flagrantly new.
There was not a villa in sight and on The Green two old stone
monuments, to long-dead and long-forgotten warriors, kept company with
the old trees under which children were now playing, while nurses
wheeled perambulators on the bisecting paths. The Green itself sloped
upwards until it became a flat-topped hill, once a British or a Roman
camp, and thence the river could be seen between its rocky cliffs and
the woods Rose had lately skirted clothing the farther side in every
shade of green.

She lingered for a moment to watch the children playing, the nursemaids
slowly pushing, the elms opening their crumpled leaves like babies’
hands. She had a momentary desire to stay, to wander round the hill and
look with untired eyes at the familiar scene; but she passed on under
the tyranny of tea. The Malletts were always in time for meals and the
meals were exquisite, like the polish on the old brass door-knocker,
like the furniture in the white panelled hall, like the beautiful old
mahogany in the drawing-room, the old china, the glass bowls full of
flowers.

Rose found Caroline and Sophia there on either side of a small wood
fire, while, facing the fire and spread in a chair not too low and not
too narrow for her bulk, sat Mrs. Batty, flushed, costumed for spring,
her hat a flower garden.

“Just in time,” Caroline said. “Touch the bell, please, Sophia.”

“Susan saw me,” Rose said, and the elderly parlourmaid entered at that
moment with the teapot.

“Rose insists on having a latchkey,” Sophia explained. “What would the
General have said?”

“What, indeed!” Caroline echoed. “Young rakes are always old prudes.
Yes, the General was a rake, Sophia; you needn’t look so modest. I
think I understand men.”

“Yes, yes, Caroline, no one better, but we are told to honour our
father and mother.”

“And I do honour him,” Caroline guffawed, “honour him all the more.”
She had a deep voice and a deep laugh; she ought, she always said, to
have been a man, but there was nothing masculine about her appearance.
Her dark hair, carefully tinted where greyness threatened, was piled in
many puffs above a curly fringe: on the bodice of her flounced silk
frock there hung a heavy golden chain and locket; ear-rings dangled
from her large ears; there were rings on her fingers, and powder and a
hint of rouge on her face.

She laughed again. “Mrs. Batty knows I’m right.”

Mrs. Batty’s tightly gloved hand made a movement. She was a little in
awe of the Miss Malletts. With them she was always conscious of her
inferior descent. No General had ever ornamented her family, and her
marriage with James Batty had been a giddy elevation for her, but she
was by no means humble. She had her place in local society: she had a
fine house in that exclusive part of Radstowe called The Slope, and her
husband was a member of the oldest firm of lawyers in the city.

“You are very naughty, Miss Caroline,” she said, knowing that was the
remark looked for. She gave a little nod of her flower-covered head.
“And we’ve just got to put up with them, whatever they are.”

“Yes, yes, poor dears,” Sophia murmured. “They’re different, they can’t
help it.”

“Nonsense,” Caroline retorted, “they’re just the same, there’s nothing
to choose between me and Reginald—nothing except discretion!”

“Oh, Caroline dear!” Sophia entreated.

“Discretion!” Caroline repeated firmly, and Mrs. Batty, bending forward
stiffly because of her constricting clothes, and with a creak and
rustle, ventured to ask in low tones, “Have you any news of Mr. Mallett
lately?” The three elder ladies murmured together; Rose, indifferent,
concerned with her own thoughts, ate a creamy cake. This was one of the
conversations she had heard before and there was no need for her to
listen.

She was roused by the departure of Mrs. Batty.

“Poor thing,” Caroline remarked as the door closed. “It’s a pity she
has no daughter with an eye for colour. The roses in her hat were pale
in comparison with her face. Why doesn’t she use a little powder,
though I suppose that would turn her purple, and after all, she does
very well considering what she is; but why, why did James Batty marry
her? And he was one of our own friends! You remember the sensation at
the time, Sophia?”

Sophia remembered very well. “She was a pretty girl, Caroline, and
good-natured. She has lost her looks, but she still has a kind heart.”

“Personally I would rather keep my looks,” said Caroline, touching her
fringe before the mirror. “And I never had a kind heart to cherish.”

Tenderly Sophia shook her head. “It isn’t true,” she whispered to Rose.
“The kindest in the world. It’s just her way.”

Rose nodded understanding; then she stood up, tall and slim in her
severe clothes, her high boots. The gilt clock on the mantelpiece said
it was only five o’clock. There were five more hours before she could
reasonably go to bed.

“Where did you ride to-day, dear?” Sophia asked.

“Over the bridge.” And to dissipate some of her boredom, she added, “I
met Francis Sales. He thinks of going abroad.”

There was an immediate confusion of little exclamations and a chatter.
“Going abroad? Why?”

“To learn farming.”

“Oh, dear,” Sophia sighed, “and we thought—we hoped—”

“She must do as she likes,” Caroline said, and Rose smiled. “The
Malletts don’t care for marrying. Look at us, free as the air and with
plenty of amusing memories. In this world nobody gets more than that,
and we have been saved much trouble. Don’t marry, my dear Rose.”

“You’re assuming a good deal,” Rose said.

“But Rose is not like us,” Sophia protested. “We have each other, but
we shall die before she does and leave her lonely. She ought to marry,
Caroline; we ought to have more parties. We are not doing our duty.”

“Parties! No!” Rose said. “We have enough of them. If you threaten me
with more I shall go into a convent.”

Caroline laughed, and Sophia sighed again. “That would be beautiful,”
she said.

“Sophia, how dare you?”

Sophia persisted mildly: “So romantic—a young girl giving up all for
God;” and Caroline gave the ribald laugh on which she prided herself— a
shocking sound. “Rose Mallett,” Sophia went on, so lost in her vision
that the jarring laughter was not heard, “such a pretty name—a nun! She
would never be forgotten: people would tell their children. Sister
Rose!” She developed her idea. “Saint Rose! It’s as pretty as Saint
Cecilia—prettier!”

“Sophia, you’re in your dotage,” Caroline cried. “A Mallett and a nun!
Well, she could pray for the rest of us, I suppose.”

“But I would rather you were married, dear,” Sophia said serenely. “And
we have known the Sales all our lives. It would have been so suitable.”

“So dull!” Rose murmured.

“And we need praying for,” Caroline said. “You’d be dull either way,
Rose. Have your fling, as I did. I’ve never regretted it. I was the
talk of Radstowe, wasn’t I, Sophia? There was never a ball where I was
not looked for, and when I entered the ballroom”—she gave a display of
how she did it—“there was a rush of black coats and white shirts— a
mob—I used just to wave them all away—like that. Oh, yes, Sophia, you
were a belle, too—”

“But never as you were, Caroline.”

“You were admired for yourself, Sophia, but with me it was curiosity.
They only wanted to hear what I should say next. I had a tongue like a
lash! They were afraid of it.”

“Yes, yes,” Sophia said hastily, and she glanced at Rose, afraid of
meeting scepticism in her clear young eyes; but though Rose was smiling
it was not in mockery. She was thinking of her childhood when, like a
happier Cinderella, she had seen her stepsisters, in satins and laces,
with pendant fans and glittering jewels, excited, rustling, with little
words of commendation for each other, setting out for the evening
parties of which they never tired. They had always kissed her before
they went, looking, she used to think, as beautiful as princesses.

“And men like what they fear,” Caroline added.

“Yes, dear,” Sophia said. A natural flush appeared round the delicate
dabs of rouge. She hoped she might be forgiven for her tender deceits.
Those young men in the white waistcoats had often laughed at Caroline
rather than at her wit; she was, as Sophia had shrinkingly divined, as
often as not their butt, and dear Caroline had never known it; she must
never know it, never know it. She drew half her happiness from the
past, as, so differently, Sophia did herself, and, drooping a little,
her thoughts went farther back to the last year of her teens when a
pale and penniless young man had been her secret suitor, had gone to
America to make his fortune there—and died. She had told no one;
Caroline would have scorned him because he was shy and timid, and he
had not had time to earn enough to keep her; he had not had time. She
had a faded photograph of him pushed away at the back of a drawer of
the walnut bureau in the bedroom she shared with Caroline, a pale young
man wearing a collar too large for his thin neck, a young man with
kind, honest eyes. It was a grief to her that she could not wear that
photograph in a locket near her heart, but Caroline would have found
out. They had slept in the same bed since they were children, and
nothing could be hidden from her except the love she still cherished in
her heart. Some day she meant to burn that photograph lest
unsympathetic hands should touch it when she died; but death still
seemed far off, and sometimes, even while she was talking to Caroline,
she would pretend to rummage in the drawer, and for a moment she would
close her hand upon the photograph to tell him she had not forgotten.
She loved her little romance, and the gaiety in which she had
persisted, even on the day when she heard of his death and which at
first had seemed a necessary but cruel disloyalty, had become in her
mind the tenderest of concealments, as though she had wrapped her
secret in beauty, laughter, music and shining garments.

“Oh, yes, dear Rose,” she said, lifting her head, “you must be
married.”


§ 2

The outward life of the Mallett household was elegant and ordered.
Footsteps fell quietly on the carpeted stairs and passages; doors were
quietly opened and closed. The cook and the parlourmaid were old and
trusted servants; the house and kitchen maids were respectable young
women fitting themselves for promotion, and their service was given
with the thoroughness and deference to which the Malletts were
accustomed. In the whole house there was hardly an object without
beauty or tradition, the notable exception being the portrait of
General Mallett which hung above the Sheraton sideboard in the
dining-room, a gloomy daub, honoured for the General’s sake.

From the white panelled hall, the staircase with its white banisters
and smooth mahogany rail led to a square landing which branched off
narrowly on two sides, and opening from the square were the bedroom
occupied by Rose, the one shared by her stepsisters and the one which
had been Reginald’s. This room was never used, but it was kept, like
everything else in that house, in a state of cleanliness and polish,
ready for his arrival. He might come: if he needed money badly enough
he would come, and in spite of the already considerable depletion of
their capital, Caroline and Sophia lived in hope of hearing his
impatient assault of the door-knocker, the brass head of a lion holding
a heavy ring in his mouth. Rose, too, wished he would come, but that
last interview with the lawyer Batty had been more successful than
anyone but the lawyer himself had wished, and there was no knock, no
letter, no news.

The usual life of parties, calls and concerts continued without any
excitement but that felt by Caroline and Sophia in the getting of new
clothes, the refurbishing of old ones, the hearing of the latest
gossip, the reading of the latest novel. Sophia sometimes apologized
for the paper-backed books lying about the drawing-room by saying that
she and dear Caroline liked to keep up their French, but Caroline
loudly proclaimed her taste for salacious literature. She had a
reputation to keep up and she liked to shock her friends; but
everything was forgiven to Miss Mallett, the more readily, perhaps,
after Sophia’s reassuring whisper, “They are really charming books,
quite beautiful, nothing anybody could disapprove of. Why, there is
hardly an episode to make one shrink, though, of course, the French are
different,” and the Radstowe ladies would nod over their tea and say,
“Of course, quite different!”

But Caroline, suspecting that murmured explanation, had been known to
call out in her harsh voice, “It’s no good asking Sophia about them.
She simply doesn’t understand the best bits! She is _jeune fille_
still, she always will be!” Sophia, blushing a little, would feel
herself richly complimented, and the ladies laughed, Mrs. Batty
uncertainly, having no acquaintance with the French language.

Rose read steadily through all the books in the house and gained a
various knowledge which left her curiously untouched. She studied
music, and liked it better than anything else because it roused
emotions otherwise unobtainable, yet she did not care much for the
emotional kind. Perhaps her intensest feeling was the desire to feel
intensely, but being half ashamed of this desire she rarely dwelt on
it; she pursued her way, calm and aloof and proud. She was beautiful
and found pleasure in the contemplation of herself, and though she did
not discuss her appearance as her stepsisters discussed theirs, she
spent a good deal of time on it and much money on her plain but perfect
clothes. All three had more money than they needed, but Rose was richer
than the others, having inherited her mother’s little fortune as well
as her share of what the General had left. She was, as Caroline often
told her with a hit at that gentleman’s unnecessary impartiality, a
very desirable match. “But they’re afraid of you, my dear; they were
afraid of me, but I amused them, while you simply look as if they were
not there. Of course, that’s attractive in its way, and one must follow
one’s own line, but it takes a brave man to come up to the scratch.”

“Caroline, what an expression!”

“Well, I want a brave man,” Rose said, “if I want one at all.”

Caroline turned on Sophia. “What’s language for except to express
oneself? You’re out of date, Sophia; you always were, and I’ve always
been ahead of my time. Now, Rose,”—these personalities were dear to
Caroline—“Rose belongs to no time at all. That frightens them. They
don’t understand. You can’t imagine a Radstowe young man making love to
the Sphinx. They were more daring when I was young. Look at Reginald!
Look at the General!”

“It was his profession,” Rose remarked.

“Yes, I suppose that’s what he told himself when he married your
mother, a mere girl, no older than myself, but he was afraid of her and
adored her. I believe men always like their second wives best— they’re
flattered at succeeding in getting two. I know men. Our own mother was
pious and made him go to church, but with your mother he looked as if
he were in a temple all the time. Those big, stern men are always
managed by their women; it’s the thin men with weak legs who really go
their own way.”

“Caroline,” Sophia sighed, “I don’t know how you think of such things.
Is that an epigram?”

“I don’t know,” Caroline said, “but I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Smiling in her mysterious way, Rose left the room, and Sophia, slightly
pink with anxiety, murmured, “Caroline, there’s no one in Radstowe
really fit for her. Don’t you think we ought to go about, perhaps to
London, or abroad?”

“I’m not going to budge,” Caroline said. “I love my home and I don’t
believe in matchmaking, I don’t believe in marriage. It wouldn’t do her
any good, but if you feel like that, why don’t you exploit her
yourself?”

“Oh—exploit! Certainly not! And you know I couldn’t leave you.”

“Then don’t talk nonsense,” Caroline said, and the life at Nelson Lodge
went on as before.

Every day Rose rode out, sometimes early in the morning on the Downs
when nobody was about and she had them to herself, but oftener across
the bridge into the other county where the atmosphere and the look of
things were immediately different, softer, more subtle yet more
exhilarating. She went there now with no fear of meeting Francis Sales.
He had gone to Canada without another word, and his absence made him
interesting for the first time. If she had not been bored in a delicate
way of her own which left no mark but an expression of impassivity she
would not have thought of him at all; but the days went by and summer
passed into autumn and autumn was threatened by winter, with so little
change beyond the coming and going of flowers and leaves and birds,
that her mind began to fix itself on a man who loved her to the point
of disgust and departure; and to her love of the country round about
Sales Hall was added a tender half-ironic sentiment.

Once or twice she rode up to the Hall itself and paid a visit to Mr.
Sales who, crippled by rheumatism and half suffocated by asthma, was
hardly recognizable as the man who had shown her the pigs long ago. In
the little room called the study, where there was not a single book, or
in the big clear drawing-room of pale chintzes and faded, gilt-framed
water-colours, he entertained her with the ceremony due to a very
beautiful and dignified young woman, producing the latest letter from
his son and reading extracts from it. Sometimes there was a photograph
of Francis on a horse, Francis with a dog, or Francis at a steam plough
or other agricultural machine, but these she only pretended to examine.
She had not the least desire to see how he looked, for in these last
months she had made a picture of her own and she would not have it
overlaid by any other. It was a game of pretence; she knew she was
wasting her time; she had her youth and strength and money and
limitless opportunity for wide experience, but her very youth, and the
feeling that it would last for ever, made her careless of it. There was
plenty of time, she could afford to waste it, and gradually that
occupation became a habit, almost an absorption. She warned herself
that she must shake it off, but the effort would leave her very bare,
it would rob her of the fairy cloak which made her inner self
invisible, and she clung to it, secure in her ability to be rid of it
if she chose.

Her intellect made no mistake about Francis Sales, but her imagination,
finding occupation where it could, began to endow him with romance, and
that scene among the primroses, the startlingly green grass, the
pervading blue of the air, the horse so indifferent to the human drama,
the dog trying to understand it, became the salient event of her life
because it had awakened her capacity for dreaming.

She did not love him, she could never love him, but he had loved her,
angrily, and, in retrospect, the absurd manner of his proposal had a
charm. She would have given much to know whether his feeling for her
persisted. From the letters read wheezily by Mr. Sales and sometimes
handed to her to read for herself, she learnt so little that she was
the freer to create a great deal and, riding home, she would break into
astonished inward laughter. Rose Mallett playing a game of sentiment!
And, crossing the bridge and passing through the streets where she was
known to every second person, she had pleasure in the conviction that
no one could have guessed what absurdity went on behind the pale,
impassive face, what secret and unsuspected amusement she enjoyed; a
little comedy of her own! The unsuitability of Francis Sales for the
part of hero supplied most of the humour and saved her from loss of
dignity. The thing was obviously absurd; she had never cared for dolls,
but in her young womanhood she was finding amusement in the
manipulation of a puppet.

The death of Mr. Sales in the cold March of the next year shocked her
from her game. She was sorry he had gone, for she had always liked him,
and he seemed to have taken with him the little girl who was fond of
pigs, and while Caroline and Sophia mourned the loss of an old friend,
Rose was faced with the certainty of his son’s return. She would have
to stop her ridiculous imaginings, she must pretend she had never had
them for, when she saw him as flesh and blood, her game would be ruined
and she would be shamed. The imminence of his arrival reminded her of
his dullness, his handsome, sullen face and, more tenderly, of those
tears which had put her so oddly in his debt. But she had no difficulty
in casting away the false image she had made. She was, she found, glad
to be rid of it; she liked to feel herself delivered of a weakness.

But she need not have been in such a hurry, for it was some months
before the man who brought the milk from Sales Hall also brought the
news that the master was returning. This information was handed to
Caroline and Sophia with their early tea.

Sitting up in bed and looking grotesquely terrible, they discussed the
event. Caroline, like Medusa, but with hair curlers instead of snakes
sprouting from her head, and Sophia with her heavy plait hanging over
her shoulder and defying with its luxuriance the yellowness of her
skin, they sat side by side, propped up with pillows, inured to the
sight of each other in undress.

“He has come back!” Sophia said ecstatically. “Perhaps after all—”

“Oh, nonsense!” Caroline said as usual, “she’s meant for better things.
My dear, she was born for a great affair. She ought to be the mistress
of a king. Yes, something of that kind, with her looks, her phlegm.”

“But there are no kings in Radstowe,” Sophia said, “and I don’t think
you ought to say such things.”

“It’s my way. You ought to know that. And I can’t control my tongue any
more than Reginald can control his body.”

“Caroline!”

“And I don’t want to. We’re all wrapped up in cotton-wool nowadays. I
ought to have lived in another century. I, too, would have adorned a
court, and kept it lively! There’s no wit left in the world, and
there’s no wickedness of the right kind. We might as well be
Nonconformists at once.”

“Certainly not,” Sophia said firmly. “Certainly not that.”

“But as you so cleverly remind me, there are no kings in Radstowe.
There’s not even,” she added with a mocking smile which made her face
gay in a ghastly way, “not even a foreign Count who would turn out an
impostor. Rose would do very well there, too. An imitation foreign
Count with a black moustache and no money! She would be magnificent and
tragic. Imagine them at Monte Carlo, keeping it up! She would hate him,
grandly; she would hate herself for being deceived; she would never
lose her dignity. You can’t picture Rose with a droop or a tear. They’d
trail about the Continent and she would never come back.”

“But we don’t want her to go away at all,” Sophia cried.

“And when she came to the point of being afraid of murdering him, she
would leave him without any fuss and live alone and mysterious
somewhere in the South of France, or Italy, or Spain. Yes, Spain. There
must be real Counts there and she would get her love affair at last.”

“But she would still be married.”

“Of course!” Caroline, looking roguish, was terrible. “That is
necessary for a love affair, _ma chère_.”

“I would much rather she married Francis Sales and came to see us every
week. Or any other nice young man in Radstowe. She would never marry
beneath her.”

“On the contrary,” Caroline remarked, “she’s bound to marry beneath
her—not in class, Sophia, not in class, though in Radstowe that’s
possible, too. Look at the Battys! But certainly in brains and
manners.”

Sophia, clinging to her own idea, repeated plaintively, “I would rather
it were Francis Sales, and he must be lonely in that big house.”

It appeared, however, that he was not to be lonely, for Susan, entering
with hot water, let fall in her discreet, impersonal way, another piece
of gossip. “John Gibbs says they think Mr. Francis must be bringing
home a wife, Miss Caroline. He’s having some of the rooms done up.”

“Ah!” said Caroline, and her plump elbow pressed Sophia’s. “Which
rooms, I wonder?”

“I did not inquire, Miss Caroline.”

“Then kindly inquire this afternoon, and tell him the butter is
deteriorating, but inquire first or you’ll get nothing out of him.” She
turned with malicious triumph to Sophia. “So that dream’s over!”

“We shall have to break it to her gently,” Sophia said; “but it may not
be true.”

In the dining-room over which the General’s portrait tried, and failed,
to preside, as he himself had done in life, and where he was conquered
by an earlier and a later generation, by the shining eloquence of the
old furniture and silver and the living flesh and blood of his
children, Caroline gave Rose the news without, Sophia thought, a spark
of delicacy.

“They say Francis Sales is bringing home a wife.”

“Really?” Rose said, taking toast.

“He has sent orders for part of the house to be done up.”

Rose raised her eyes. “Ah, she’s hurt,” Sophia thought, but Rose merely
said, “If he touches the drawing-room or the study I shall never
forgive him”; and then, thoughtfully, she added, “but he won’t touch
the drawing-room.”

“H’m, he’ll do what his wife tells him, I imagine. No girl will
appreciate Mrs. Sales’s washy paintings.”

“Rose would,” Sophia sighed.

“Yes, I do,” Rose said cheerfully. She was too cheerful for Sophia’s
romantic little theory, but an acuter audience would have found her too
cheerful for herself. She had overdone it by half a tone, but the
exaggeration was too fine for any ears but her own. She was, as a
matter of fact, in the grip of a violent anger. She was not the kind of
woman to resent the new affections of a rejected lover, but she had,
through her own folly, attached herself to Francis Sales, as, less
unreasonably, his tears had once attached him to her, and the
immaterial nature of the bond composed its strength. Consciously
foolish as her thoughts had been, they became at that breakfast table,
with the water bubbling in the spirit kettle and the faint crunch of
Caroline eating toast, intensely real, and she was angry both with
herself and with his unfaithfulness. She did not love him—how could
she?—but he belonged to her; and now, if this piece of gossip turned
out to be true, she must share him with another. Jealousy, in its usual
sense, she had none as yet, but she had forged a chain she was to find
herself unable to break. It was her pride to consider herself a hard
young person, without spirituality, without sentiment, yet all her
personal relationships were to be of the fantastic kind she now
experienced, all her obligations such as others would have ignored.

“We shall know more when John Gibbs brings the afternoon milk,”
Caroline said.

Rose went upstairs and left her stepsisters to their repetitions. Her
window looked out on the little walled front garden and the broad
street. Tradesmen’s carts went by without hurry, ladies walked out with
their dogs, errand-boys loitered in the sun, and presently Caroline and
Sophia went down the garden path, Caroline sailing majestically like a
full-rigged ship, Sophia with her girlish, tripping gait. They put up
their sunshades, and sailed out on what was, in effect, a foraging
expedition. They were going to collect the news.

Outside the gate, they were hidden by the wall, but for a little while
Rose could hear Caroline’s loud voice. Without doubt she was talking of
Francis Sales, unless she were asking Sophia if her hat, a large one
with pink roses, really became her. Rose knew it all so well, and she
closed her eyes for a moment in weariness. Suddenly she felt tired and
old; the flame of her anger had died down, and for that moment she
allowed herself to droop. She found little comfort in the fact that she
alone knew of her folly, and calling it folly no longer justified it.
She, too, had been rejected, more cruelly than had Francis Sales, for
she had given him something of her spirit. And she had liked to imagine
him far away, thinking of her and of her beauty; she had fancied him
remembering the scene among the primroses and continuing to adore her
in his sulky, inarticulate way. Well, he would think of her no more,
but she was subtly bound to him, first by his need, and now, against
all reason, by her thoughts. She had already learnt that time, which
sometimes seems so swift and heartless, is also slow and kind. Her
feelings would lose their intensity; she only had to wait, and she
waited with that outward impassivity which did not spoil her beauty; it
suited the firm modelling of her features, the creamy whiteness of her
skin, the clear grey eyes under the straight dark eyebrows, and the
lips bent into the promise of a smile.

Caroline and Sophia waited differently, first for the afternoon milk
and the information they wanted and, during the next weeks, for the
rumours which slowly developed into acknowledged facts. The housekeeper
at Sales Hall had heard from the young master: he was married and
returning immediately with his wife. Caroline sniffed and hoped the
woman was respectable; Sophia was charitably certain she would be a
charming girl; and Rose, knowing she questioned one of the life
occupations of her stepsisters, said coolly, “Why speculate? We shall
see her soon. We must go and call.”

“Of course,” Caroline said, and Sophia, with her fixed idea, which was
right in the wrong way, said gently, “If you’re sure you want to go,
dear.”

“Me?” asked Caroline.

“No, no, I was thinking of Rose.”

“Nonsense!” Caroline said, “we’re all going”; and Rose reassured Sophia
with perfect truth, “I have been longing to see her for weeks.”


§ 3

So it came about that the three sisters once more sat in a hired
carriage and drove to Sales Hall. On the box was the son of the man who
had driven them years ago, and though the carriage was a new one and
the old horse had long been metamorphosed into food for the wild
animals in the Radstowe Zoo, this expedition was in many ways a
repetition of the other. Caroline and Sophia faced the horses and Rose
sat opposite her stepsisters, but now she did not listen to their talk
with ears stretched, not to miss a word, and she did not think her
companions as beautiful as princesses. It was she who might have been a
princess for another child, but she did not think of that. She looked
with amusement and with misplaced pity at the other two. It was a
September afternoon and they were very gaily dressed, and again
Caroline had a feather drooping over her hair, while Sophia, more
girlish, wore a wide hat with a blue bow, and both their parasols were
tilted as before against the sun. It seemed to Rose that even the cut
of their garments had not changed with time. The two had always the
appearance of fashion plates of twenty years ago, but no doubt of their
correctness ever entered their minds; and so they managed to preserve
their elegance, as though their belief in themselves were strong enough
to impose it on those who saw them. Without this faith, the severity of
Rose’s black dress, filmy enough for the season but daringly plain,
must have rebuked them. The pearls in her ears and on her neck were her
only ornaments; her little hat, wreathed with a cream feather, shaded
her brow. She sat with the repose which was one of her gifts.

“I’m sure we all look very nice,” Caroline said suddenly, the very
remark she had made when they went to the haymaking party, “though you
do look rather like a widow, Rose—a widow, getting over it very
comfortably, as they do—as they do!”

“I’m glad I look so interesting,” Rose murmured.

“Oh, interesting, always. Yes.”

They were jogging along the road bordered by the high smooth wall,
despairingly efficient, guarding treasures bought with gold; and the
tall elm-trees looked over it as though they wanted to escape. The
murmuring in their branches seemed to be of discontent, and the birds
singing in them had a taunting note. The road mounted a little and the
wall went with it, backed by the imprisoned trees. But at last, at the
cross-roads, the wall turned and the road went on without it. There
were open fields now on either hand, the property of Francis Sales, and
another mile brought the carriage to the opening of the grassy track
where Rose liked to think she had left her youth, but the road went
round on the other side of the larch woods, and when these were passed
Sales Hall came into sight.

“I always think,” Caroline said, “it’s a pity this beautiful avenue
hasn’t a better setting. Mere fields, and open to the road! It’s
undignified. It ought to have been a park.”

“With a high wall all round it,” Rose suggested.

“Exactly,” Caroline agreed. She was touching her fringe, giving little
pats and pulls to her dress, preparatory to descent, and Sophia
whispered, “Just see, Caroline, that wisp of hair near my ear—so
tiresome! I can never be sure of it.”

“Not a sign of it,” Caroline assured her. “Now I wonder what we are
going to find.”

They found the drawing-room empty and untouched. On the pale walls the
water-colours were still hanging, the floral carpet still covered the
floor, the faded chintzes had not been removed, and the light came
clearly through the long windows with their pale primrose curtains. In
the middle of the room was the circular settee to seat four persons,
back to back, with a little woolwork stool set for each pair of feet.
There were no flowers in the room, and they were not needed, for the
room itself was like some pale, scentless and old-fashioned bloom.

The three Miss Malletts sat down: Caroline gay and aggressive as a
parrot, and a parrot in a big gilded cage would not have been out of
place; Sophia fitting naturally into the gentle scheme of things; Rose
startlingly modern in her elegance.

“Well,” Caroline said, “she’s a long time. Changing her dress, I
expect,” and she sniffed. But Mrs. Francis Sales entered in a pink
cotton garment, her fair, curling hair a little untidy, for she had,
she said, been in the old walled garden behind the house. There was, in
fact, a rose hanging from her left hand. She was pretty, she seemed
artless and defenceless, but her big blue eyes had a wary look, and in
spite of that look spoiling an otherwise ingenuous countenance, Rose
imagined herself noticeably old and mature. She thought it was no
wonder that Francis was attracted, but at the same time she despised
him for a failure in taste, as though, faced with the choice between a
Heppelwhite chair and an affair of wicker and cretonne, he had chosen
the inferior article, though she had to admit that, for a permanent
seat, it might be more comfortable and certainly more yielding.

But as she watched Mrs. Sales presiding over the teacups, her scared
eyes moving swiftly from the parlourmaid, entering with cakes, to
Caroline, and from Caroline to Sophia, and then with added shyness to
the woman nearest her own age, Rose found her opinion changing. Mrs.
Francis Sales was timid, but she was not weak; the fair fluffiness of
her exterior was deceptive; and while Rose made this discovery and now
and then dropped a quiet word into the chatter of the others, she was
listening for Francis. He had been with his wife in the garden, but he
was some time in following her, and Rose knew that Mrs. Sales was
listening, too. She wondered whose ear first caught the sound of his
feet on the matted passage; she felt an absurd inward tremor and,
looking at Mrs. Sales, she saw that her pretty pink colour had deepened
and her blue eyes were bright, like flowers. She was certainly charming
in her simple frock, but her unsuitable shoes with very high heels and
sparkling buckles hurt Rose’s eye as much as the voice, also high and
slightly grating, hurt her ear, and this voice sharpened nervously as
it said, “Oh, here is Francis coming.”

No, he was not the person of Rose’s dreams, and she felt an immense
relief: she had expected to be disappointed, but she was glad to find
the old Francis, big, bronzed and handsome, smelling of the open air
and tobacco and tweed, and no dangerous, disturbing, heroic figure.

For an instant he looked at Rose before he greeted the elder ladies,
and then, as Rose let her hand touch his and pleasantly said, “How are
you?” she experienced a faint, almost physical shock. He was different
after all, and now she did not know whether to be glad or sorry.
Unchanged, she need not have given him another thought; subtly altered,
she was bound to probe into the how and why. He sat beside her on the
old-fashioned couch with a curled head, and his thirteen stone
descending heavily on the springs sent up her light weight with a
perceptible jerk.

“Clumsy boy!” Mrs. Sales exclaimed playfully.

Rose laughed. “It’s like the old see-saw. I was always in the air and
you on the ground. Is it there still—near the pigsties?”

“Yes, still there.” But this threatened to become too exclusive a
conversation, and Rose tried to do her share in more general topics.

Caroline, talking of the advantage of Radstowe, regretting the greater
gaiety of the past, when Sophia and she were belles, was adding
gratuitous advice on the management of husbands and some information on
the ways of men. Mrs. Sales laughed and glanced now and then at
Francis, but whether he responded Rose could not see, unless she turned
her head. He ought certainly to have been smiling at so pretty a
person, wrinkling his eyes in the way he had and straightening the
mouth which was sullen in repose. Yet she was almost sure he was doing
the minimum demanded of politeness, almost sure he was thinking of
herself and was conscious of her nearness, just as she, for the first
time, was physically conscious of his.

She rose, saying, “May I look out of the window? I always liked this
view of the garden.” And having gazed out and made the necessary
remarks, she sat down, separated from him by the width of the room and
with her back to the light, a strategical position she ought to have
taken up before. But here she was at the disadvantage of facing him and
a scrutiny of which she had not thought him capable. With his legs
stretched out, his hands in his pockets, his eyes apparently half shut
but unquestionably fixed on her, he was really behaving rather badly.
She had never been stared at like this before and she told herself that
under the shelter of his marriage he had grown daring, if not insolent;
but at the same time she knew she was not telling herself the truth: he
was simply in the position of a thirsty man who has at last found a
stream. It appeared, then, that his wife did not sufficiently quench
his thirst.

Rose carefully did not look his way, but she experienced an altogether
new excitement, the very ancient one of desiring to taste forbidden
fruit simply because it was forbidden; this particular fruit, as such,
had no special charm; but she was born a Mallett and the half-sister of
Reginald. She had, however, as he had not, a substantial basis of
personal pride and a love of beauty which was at least as effectual as
a moral principle and she had not Francis’s excuse for his behaviour.
She believed he did not know what he was doing; but she was entirely
clear-sighted as to herself and she refused to encourage the silent
intercourse which had established itself between them.

Caroline was in the midst of a piece of gossip, Sophia was interjecting
exclamations of moderation and reproach, and Mrs. Sales was manifestly
amused. Her chromatic giggle was as punctual as Sophia’s reproof, and
Rose drew closer to the group made by the three, and said, “I’m missing
Caroline’s story. Which one is it?” And now it was Francis who laughed.

“It’s finished,” Caroline said. “Don’t tell your husband, at least till
we have gone—and we ought to go at once.”

But the coachman was not on the box. He had been invited to take tea in
the kitchen.

“We won’t disturb him,” Sophia said. “No, Caroline, let him have his
tea. We ought to encourage teetotal drinking in his class. Perhaps Mrs.
Sales will let us go round the garden. I am so fond of flowers.”

“Come and look at the pigsties,” Francis said to Rose, but, assuring
him she had grown too old for pigs, she followed the rest.

The walled garden had a beautiful disorder. A grey kitten and a white
puppy sat together on the grass, enjoying the sunshine and each other’s
company and pretending to be asleep; and though the kitten displayed no
interest in the visitors, holding its personality of more importance
than anything else, the puppy jumped up, barked, and rushed at each
person in turn. Caroline, picking up her skirts and showing the famous
Mallett ankle, said, “Go away, dog!” in a severe tone, and the puppy
rolled on the grass to show that he did not care and could not by any
possibility be snubbed. Under an apple-tree on which the fruit was
ripening were two cane chairs, a table, a newspaper and a work-basket.

“This is my favourite place,” Mrs. Sales said to Rose. “I hate that
drawing-room, and Francis won’t have it touched. But I’ve got a boudoir
that’s lovely. He sent an order to the best shop and had it ready for a
surprise, so if I’m not out of doors I sit there. Would you like to see
it?”

“I should, very much,” Rose said.

“Then come quickly while the others are eating those plums off the
wall.”

Rose looked back. “I can’t think what Sophia will do with the stone,”
she murmured, smiling her faint smile.

Mrs. Sales was puzzled by this remark. “Oh, she’ll manage, won’t she?
You don’t want to help her, do you?”

“No, I don’t want to help her.”

“Come along, then.”

Rose saw the boudoir, a little room half-way up the stairs. “It’s Louis
something,” said Mrs. Sales, “but all the same, I think it’s sweet, and
pink’s my favourite colour. Francis thought of that. I was wearing pink
when I first met him.”

“I see,” Rose said. “Was that long ago?”

“Only three months. I think we both fell in love at the same minute,
and that’s nice, isn’t it? I know I’m going to be happy, but I do hope
I shan’t be dull. We’re a big family at home. I’m English,” she added a
little anxiously, “but my father settled there.”

“I don’t think you should be dull,” Rose said. “Everybody in Radstowe
will call on you, and there are lots of parties. And then there’s
hunting.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Sales. Her eyes left Rose’s face, to return a little
wider, a little warier. “Do you hunt too?”

“As often as I can. I only have one horse.”

“Francis says I am to have two.”

“And they will be good ones. He likes hunting and horses better than
anything else, I suppose.”

“But he mustn’t neglect the farm,” his wife said firmly, and she added
slowly, “I don’t know that I need two horses, really. I haven’t ridden
much, and there’s a lot to do in the house. I don’t believe in people
being out all day.”

“Well, you can’t hunt all the year round, you know.”

Mrs. Sales let out a sigh so faint that most people would have missed
it. “It will be beginning soon, won’t it?”

“It feels a long way off in weather like this,” Rose said. “But they
are getting into the carriage. I must go.”

Mrs. Sales lingered for an instant. “I do hope we’re going to be
friends.” This was more than a statement, it was a request, and Rose
shrank from it; but she said lightly, “We shall be meeting often. You
will see more of us than you will care for, I’m afraid. The Malletts
are rather ubiquitous in Radstowe. It’s fortunate for us, or Caroline
would die of boredom, but I don’t know how it appears to other people.”

She was going down the shallow stairs and the voice of Mrs. Sales
followed her sadly: “He hasn’t told me anything about any of his
friends.”

“In three months? He hasn’t had time, with you to think about!”  A
laugh, pleased and self-conscious, reached her ears. “No, but it’s
rather lonely in this old house. We’re a big family at home—and so
lively. There was always something going on. I wished we lived nearer
Radstowe.”

“And I envy you here. It’s peaceful.”

“Yes, it’s that,” Mrs. Sales agreed.

“I’m a good deal older than you, you see,” Rose elaborated.

“That’s just it,” said Mrs. Sales.

Rose laughed, and Francis, standing at the door, turned at the sound in
time to catch the end of Rose’s smile.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Mrs. Sales’s candour.”

“Oh, was I rude?”

“No. Good-bye. I liked it.” Yet, as she settled herself in her place,
she was not more than half pleased. She liked her superior age only
because it marked a difference between her and the wife of Francis
Sales.

“H’m!” Caroline said when the carriage had turned into the road and the
figures in the doorway had disappeared. “Pretty, but unformed.”

“They seem very happy,” Sophia said, “but I do think she ought to have
been wearing black. Her father-in-law has only been dead six months,
and even Francis was not wearing a black tie.”

But if Caroline condemned men in general, she supported them in
particular. “Quite right, too. Men don’t think of these things—and a
black tie with those tweeds! Sophia, don’t be silly and sentimental;
but you always were, you always will be.”

“She might have had a white frock with a black ribbon,” Sophia
persisted. “Why, Rose looked more like our old friend’s
daughter-in-law.”

“But hardly like a bride,” Rose said. “And you see, pink is her
colour.”

“So it is, dear. One could see that. Pink and blue, just as they were
mine.” She corrected herself. “_Are_ mine. Our complexions are very
much alike; in fact, she reminded me a little of myself.”

“Nonsense, Sophia! If you had been like that I should have disowned
you. However, she will do well enough for Sales Hall.”

Rose bent forward slightly. “I like her,” she said distinctly. “And
she’s lonely.”

“Well, my dear, she’ll soon have half a dozen children to keep her
lively.”

“Hush, Caroline! The man will hear you.”

Caroline addressed Rose. “Sophia’s modesty is indecent. I’ve done what
I could for her.”

“Please listen to me,” Rose said. “You are not to belittle Mrs. Sales
to people, Caroline. You can be a powerful friend, if you choose, and
if you sing her praises there will be a mighty chorus.”

“That’s true,” Caroline said.

“Yes, that’s true, dear Caroline,” Sophia echoed. “And I think you’re
taking this very sweetly, Rose.”

“Sweetly? Why?”

Caroline pricked up her ears. “What’s this? I’m out of this. Oh, that
old rubbish! She will have it you and Francis should have married. My
dear Sophia, Rose could have married anybody if she’d wanted to. You’ll
admit that? Yes? Then can’t you see”—she tapped Sophia’s knee—“then
can’t you see that Rose didn’t want him? That’s logic—and something you
lack.”

“Yes, dear,” Sophia said with the meekness of the unconvinced. “And of
course it’s wrong to think of it now that he’s married to another.”

Caroline guffawed her loudest, and the astonished horse quickened his
pace. The driver cast a look over his shoulder to see that all was
well, for he had a sister who made strange noises in her fits; and
Sophia, sitting in her drooping fashion, as though her head with its
great knob of fair hair, in which the silver was just beginning to
show, were too heavy for her body, had to listen to the old gibes which
had never made and never would make any impression on her, though she
would have felt forlorn without them. She was the only puritanical
Mallett in history, Caroline said. Oh, yes, the General had been great
at family prayers, but he was trying to make up for lost time. It was
difficult to believe that Sophia and Reginald were the same flesh and
blood.

Sophia interrupted. She was fond of Reginald, but she had no desire to
be like him, and Caroline knew he was a disgrace. They argued for some
time, and Rose closed her eyes until the talk, never really
acrimonious, drifted into reminiscences of their childhood and
Reginald’s.

It was strange that they should have chosen that day to speak so much
of him, for when they reached home they found a letter addressed in an
unfamiliar hand.

“What’s this?” Caroline said.

It was a thin, cheap envelope bearing a London postmark, and Caroline
drew out a flimsy sheet of paper.

“I must get my glasses,” she said. Her voice was agitated. “No, no, I
can manage without them. The writing is immense, but faint. It’s from
that woman.” She looked up, showing a face drawn and blotched with ugly
colour. “It’s to say that Reginald is dead.”

Mrs. Reginald Mallett had written the letter on the day of her
husband’s funeral, and Caroline’s tears for her brother were stemmed by
her indignation with his wife. She had purposely made it impossible for
his relatives to attend the ceremony.

“No,” Sophia said, “the poor thing was distressed. We mustn’t blame
her.”

“And such a letter!” Caroline flicked it with a disdainful finger.

Rose picked up the sheet. “I don’t see what else she could have said. I
think it’s dignified—a plain statement. Why should you expect more? You
have never taken any notice of her.”

“Certainly not! And Reginald never suggested it. Of course he was
ashamed, poor boy. However, I am now going to write to her, asking if
she is in need, and enclosing a cheque. I feel some responsibility for
the child. She is half a Mallett, and the Malletts have always been
loyal to the family.”

“Yes, dear, we’ll send a cheque, and—shouldn’t we?—a few kind words.
She will value them.”

“She’ll value the money more,” Caroline said grimly.

Here she was wrong, for the cheque was immediately returned. Mrs.
Mallett and her daughter were able to support themselves without help.

“Then we need think no more about them,” Caroline said, concealing her
annoyance, “and I shall be able to afford a new dinner dress. Black
sequins, I thought, Sophia—and we must give a dinner for the Sales.”

“Caroline, no, you forget. We mustn’t entertain for a little while.”

“Upon my word, I did forget. But it’s no use pretending. It really
isn’t quite like a death in the family, is it? Poor dear Reginald! I
was very fond of him, but half our friends believe he has been dead for
years. I shall wear black for three months, of course, but a little
dinner to the Sales would not be out of place. We have a duty to the
living as well as to the dead.”

Leaving her stepsisters to argue this point, Rose went upstairs and
looked into Reginald’s old room. She had known very little of him, but
she was sorry he was dead, sorry there was no longer a chance of his
presence in the house, of meeting him on the stairs, very late for
breakfast and quite oblivious of the inconvenience he was causing, and
on his lips some remark which no one else would have made.

His room had not been occupied for some time, but it seemed emptier
than before; the mirror gave back a reflection of polished furniture
and vacancy; the bed looked smooth and cold enough for a corpse. No
personal possessions were strewn about, and the room itself felt
chilly.

She was glad to enter her own, where beauty and luxury lived together.
The carpet was soft to her feet, a small wood fire burned in the grate,
for the evening promised to be cold, and the severe lines of the
furniture were clean and exquisite against the white walls. A pale soft
dressing-gown hung across a chair, a little handkerchief, as fine as
lace, lay crumpled on a table, there was a discreet gleam of silver and
tortoiseshell. This, at least, was the room of a living person. Yet, as
she stood before the cheval-glass, studying herself after the habit of
the Malletts, she thought perhaps she was less truly living than
Reginald in his grave. He left a memory of animation, of sin, of charm;
he had injured other people all his life, but they regretted him and,
presumably, he had had his pleasure out of their pain. And what was
she, standing there? A negatively virtuous young woman, without enough
desire of any kind to impel her to trample over feelings, creeds and
codes. If she died that moment, it would be said of her that she was
beautiful, and that was all. Reginald, with his greed, his
heartlessness, his indifference to all that did not serve him, would
not be forgotten: people would sigh and smile at the mention of his
name, hate him and wish him back. She envied him; she wished she could
feel in swift, passionate gusts as he had done, with the force and the
forgetfulness of a passing wind. His life, flecked with disgrace, must
also have been rich with temporary but memorable beauty. The exterior
of her own was all beauty, of person and surroundings, but within there
seemed to be only a cold waste.

She had been tempted the other afternoon, and she had resisted with
what seemed to her a despicable ease: she had not really cared, and she
felt that the necessity to struggle, even the collapse of her
resistance, would have argued better for her than her self-possession.
And for a moment she wished she had married Francis Sales. She would at
least have had some definite work in the world; she could have kept him
to his farming, as Mrs. Sales had set herself to do; she would have had
a home to see to and daily interviews with the cook! She laughed at
this decline in her ambition; she no longer expected the advent of the
colossal figure of her young dreams; and she knew this was the hour
when she ought to strike out a new way for herself, to leave this place
which offered her nothing but ease and a continuous, foredoomed effort
after enjoyment; but she also knew that she would not go. She had not
the energy nor the desire. She would drift on, never submerged by any
passion, keeping her head calmly above water, looking coldly at the
interminable sea. This was her conviction, but she was not without a
secret hope that she might at last be carried to some unknown island,
odorous, surprising and her own, where she would, for the first time,
experience some kind of excess.


§ 4

The little dinner was duly given to the Sales. The Sales returned the
compliment; and Mrs. Batty, not to be outdone, offered what could only
adequately be described as a banquet in honour of the bride; there was
a general revival of hospitality, and the Malletts were at every
function. This was Caroline’s reward for her instructed enthusiasm for
Christabel Sales, and before long the black sequin dress gave way to a
grey brocade and a purple satin, and the period of mourning was at an
end. For Rose, these entertainments were only interesting because the
Sales were there, and she hardly knew at what moment annoyance began to
mingle definitely with her pity for the little lady with the wary eyes,
or when the annoyance almost overcame the pity.

It might have been at a dinner-party when Christabel, seated at the
right hand of a particularly facetious host, let out her high chromatic
laughter incessantly, and the hostess, leaning towards Francis, told
him with the tenderness of an elderly woman whose own romance lies far
behind her, that it was a pleasure to see Mrs. Sales so happy. He
murmured something in response and, as he looked up and met the gaze of
Rose, she smiled at him and saw his eyes darken with feeling, or with
thought.

After dinner he sought her out. She had known that would happen: she
had been avoiding it for weeks, but it was useless to play at
hide-and-seek with the inevitable, and she calmly watched him approach.

“Why did you laugh?” he asked at once, in his old, angry fashion. “You
were laughing at me.”

“No, I smiled.”

“Ah, you’re not so free with your smiles that they have no meaning.”

“Perhaps not, but I don’t know what the meaning was.”

“I believe you’ve been laughing at me ever since I came back.”

“Indeed, I haven’t. Why should I?”

“God knows,” he answered with a shrug; “I never do understand what
people laugh at.”

“You’re too self-conscious, Francis.”

“Only with you,” he said.

“Somebody is going to sing,” she warned him as a gaunt girl went
towards the piano; and sinking on to a convenient and sheltered couch,
they resigned themselves to listen—or to endure. From that corner Rose
had a view of the long room, mediocre in its decoration, mediocre in
its occupants. She could see her host standing before the fire,
swinging his eyeglasses on a cord and gazing at the cornice as the song
proceeded. She could see Christabel’s neck and shoulders and the back
of her fair head. Beside her a plump matron had her face suitably
composed; three bored young men were leaning against a wall.

The music jangled, the voice shrieked a false emotion, and Rose’s
eyebrows rose with the voice. It was dull, it was dreary, it was a
waste of time, yet what else, Rose questioned, could she do with time,
of which there was so much? She could not find an answer, and there
rose at that moment a chorus of thanks and a gentle clapping of hands.
The gaunt girl had finished her song and, poking her chin, returned to
her seat. The room buzzed with chatter; it seemed that only Francis and
Rose were silent. She turned to look at him.

“This is awful,” he said.

“No worse than usual.”

“When do you think we shall have exhausted Radstowe hospitality? And
the worst of it is we have to give dinners ourselves, and the same
things happen every time.”

“I find it soporific,” said Rose.

“I’d rather be soporific in an arm-chair with a pipe.”

“This is one of the penalties of marriage,” Rose said lightly.

“Look here, I’m giving Christabel another jumping lesson to-morrow.
I’ve put some hurdles up. Will you come? She’s getting on very well.
I’ll take her hunting before long.”

“Does she like it?”

“Oh, rather! My word, it would have been a catastrophe if she hadn’t
taken to it.” He paused, considering the terrible situation from which
he had been saved. “Can’t imagine what I should have done. But she’s
never satisfied. She’s beginning to jeer at the old brown horse. I’ve
seen a grey mare that might do for her,” and he went on to enumerate
the animal’s points.

Rose said, “Why don’t you let her have her first season with the old
horse? He knows his business. He’ll take care of her.”

“She wouldn’t approve of that. I tell you, she’s ambitious. I’ll go and
fetch her and you’ll hear for yourself.”

She watched him bending over his wife, and saw Christabel rise and slip
a hand under his arm. The action was a little like that of a young
woman taking a walk with her young man, but it betokened a confidence
which roused a slight feeling of envy and sadness in Rose’s heart.

“We have been talking about hunting,” she began at once.

“Oh, yes,” Christabel said. She looked warily from one to the other.

“I’m recommending you to stick to the old brown horse, but Francis says
you laugh at him.”

“Would you ride him yourself?” Christabel asked.

“Not if I could get something better.”

“Well, then—” Christabel’s tone was final.

But Rose persisted, saying, “But, you see, this isn’t my first season.
Stick to the old horse for a little while.”

“No,” Christabel said firmly. “If Francis thinks I can ride the mare, I
should like to have her.”

Rose laughed, but she felt uneasy, and Francis said, “I told you so.
She has any amount of pluck. You come and watch.”

“No, I can’t come to-morrow. I think I’ll see her first in all her
glory on the grey mare.”

“All the same,” Christabel added, “if she’s very expensive, I don’t
want her. Francis is extravagant over horses, and we have to be
careful.”

“We’ll economize somewhere else,” he said. “The mare is yours.”

She suppressed a sigh. Rose was sure of it, and in after days she was
to ask herself many times if she had been to blame in not interpreting
that sigh to Francis. But she had to give Christabel, and Christabel
especially, the loyalty of one woman to another. She would not wrench
from her in a few words the pride Francis took in her, to which she
sacrificed her fears. Rose had the astuteness of a jealousy she would
not own, of a sense of possession she could not discard, and she had
known, from the first moment, that Christabel was afraid of horses and
dreaded the very name of hunting. And Rose divined, too, that if she
herself had not been a horsewoman of some repute, Christabel would have
been less ambitious; she would have been contented with the old brown
horse; but Christabel, too, had an astuteness. No, she could not have
interfered; yet when she first saw Christabel on the mare she was
alarmed to the point of saying:

“Are you sure she’s all right? You’d better keep beside her, Francis.”

The mare was fidgety and hot-headed. Christabel’s hands were unsteady,
her face was pale, her lips were tight; but she was gay, and Francis
was proud to have her and her mount admired.

Rose looked round in despair. Could no one else see what was so plain
to her? She was tempted to go home. She felt she could not bear the
strain of watching that little figure perched on the grey beast that
looked like a wraith, like a warning. But she did not go, and she
learnt to be glad to have shared with Francis the horror of the moment
when the mare, out of control and mad with excitement, tried a fence
topping a bank, failed, and fell with Christabel beneath her.

On the ground there was a flurry of white and black, and then
stillness, while over the fields the hounds and the foremost riders
went like things seen in a dream, with the same callousness, the same
speed.

Rose saw men dismount and run towards the queer, ugly muddle on the
grass. She dismounted, too, and gave her horse to somebody to hold, but
she did nothing. Other, more capable people were before her, and it
struck her at that moment, while a bird in a bare hedge set up a short
chirrup of surprise, how little used she was to action. She seemed to
be standing alone in the big field: the rest was a picture with which
she had nothing to do. There was a busy group near the fence, some men
came running with a door, and then the sound of a shot broke through
her numbness. The mare had been put out of her pain; but what of
Christabel?

She hurried forward; she heard some one say, “Ah, here’s Miss Mallett,”
and she answered vaguely, “Men are gentler.” But as they lifted
Christabel, Rose held one of her hands. It felt lifeless; she looked
small and broken; she made no sound.

“She’s not conscious,” a man said, and at that she opened her eyes.

“My God, she’s got some pluck!” Francis said. “My God—”

She smiled at him, and he dropped behind with a gesture of despair.

“You were right,” he said to Rose, “she wasn’t equal to that brute.” He
turned angrily. “Why didn’t you make me see?”

She made no answer then, or afterwards, to him, but over and over
again, with the awful reiteration of the conscience-smitten, she set
out her reasons for her silence. She might have told him that of these
he was the chief. If he had looked at her less persistently on her
visits to Sales Hall, if he had married another kind of woman, she
would not have been afraid to speak, but she had tried not to
extinguish what little flame of love still flickered in his heart for
Christabel and she had succeeded in almost extinguishing her life, in
reducing her to permanent helplessness.

This was Rose’s first experience of how evil comes out of good. What
would happen to that love, Rose did not know. For a time it burned more
brightly, fanned by Christabel’s heroism and Francis’s remorse, but
heroism can become monotonous to the spectator and poignant remorse
cannot be endured for ever. Christabel’s plight was pitiful, but Rose
was sorrier for Francis. He had, as it were, engaged her compassion
years ago, he had a prior claim, and as time went on, her pity for
Christabel changed at moments to annoyance. It was cruel, but Rose had
no fund of patience. She disliked illness as she did deformity, and
though Christabel never complained of her constant pain, she developed
the exactions of an invalid, and the suspicions. In those blue eyes,
bluer, and more than ever wary, Rose saw the questions which were never
asked.

In the bedroom which, with the boudoir, had been furnished and
decorated by the best shop in Radstowe, for a surprise, Christabel lay
on a couch near the window, with a nurse in attendance, the puppy and
the kitten, both growing staid, for company. It tired her to use her
hands, she had never cared for reading and she lay there with little
for consolation but her pride in stoically bearing pain.

Often, and with many interruptions, she made Rose repeat the details of
the accident.

“I was riding well, wasn’t I?” she would ask. “Francis was pleased with
me. He said so. It wasn’t my fault, was it? And then, when they were
carrying me home did you hear what he said? Tell me what he said.”

And Rose told her: “He said, ‘My God, she has got pluck!’ Oh,
Christabel, don’t talk about it.”

“I like to,” she replied, but the day came when she insisted on this
subject for the last time.

“Tell me what you thought when you saw me on the mare,” she said, and
Rose, careless for once, answered immediately, “I thought she wasn’t
fit for you to ride.”

“Ah,” Christabel said slowly, “did you? Did you? But you didn’t say
anything. That was—queer.”

Rose said nothing. She was frozen dumb and there was no possible reply
to such an implication; but she rose and drew on her gloves. She looked
tall and straight in her habit, and formidable.

“Are you going? But you must have tea with Francis. He’s expecting
you.”

“I won’t stay to-day,” Rose said. She was shaking with the anger she
suppressed.

“But if you don’t,” Christabel cried, “he’ll want to know why. He’ll
ask me!”

“I can’t help that,” Rose said.

Tears came into Christabel’s eyes. “You might at least do that for me.”

“Very well. Because you ask me.”

“And you’ll come again soon?”

The sternness of Rose’s face was broken by an ironic smile. “Of course!
If you are sure you want me!”

She went downstairs and, as usual, Francis was waiting for her in the
matted hall. He did not greet her with a word or a smile. He watched
her descend the shallow flight, and together they went down the passage
to the clear drawing-room, where the faded water-colours looked unreal
and innocent and ignorant of tragedy.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She looked into the oval mirror which had so often reflected
his mother’s placid face. “My hat’s a little crooked,” she said.

He laughed without mirth. “Never in its life. Has Christabel been
worrying you?”

“Worrying me? Poor child—”

“Yes, it’s damnable, but she does worry one—and you look odd.”

“I’m getting old,” she murmured, not seeking reassurance but stating a
fact plain to her.

“You’re exactly the same!” he said. “Exactly the same!” He swept his
face with his hands, and at that sight a new sensation seized her
delicately, delightfully, as though a firm hand held her for an instant
above the earth, high in the air, free from care, from restrictions,
from the necessity for thought—but only for an instant. She was set
down again, inwardly swaying, apparently unmoved, but conscious of the
carpet under her feet, the chairs with twisted legs, the primrose
curtains, the spring afternoon outside.

“Let us have tea,” she said. She handled the pretty flowered cups and
under her astonished eyes the painted flowers were like a little
garden, gay and sweet and gilded. She seemed to smell them and the hiss
of the kettle was like a song. Then, as she handed him his cup and
looked into his wretched face and remembered the bitter reality of
things, she still could not lose all sense of sweetness.

“Don’t say any more!” she said quickly. “Don’t say another word.”

“I won’t, if you’re sure you know everything. Do you?”

“Every single thing.”

“And you care?”

“Yes.” She drew a breath. “I care—beyond speaking of it. Francis, not a
word!”

It was extraordinary, it was inexplicable, but it was true and happily
beyond the region of regrets, for if she had married him years ago she
would never have loved him in this miraculous, sudden way, with this
passion of tenderness, this desire to make him happy, this terrible
conviction that she could not do it, this promise of suffering for
herself. And the wonder of it was that he had no likeness to that
absurd Francis of whom she had dreamed and whom she had not loved; no
likeness, either, to the colossal tyrant. The man she loved was in some
ways weak, he was petulant, he was a baby, but he needed her and, for a
romantic and sentimental moment, she saw herself as his refuge, his
strength. She could not, must not communicate those thoughts. She began
to talk happily and serenely about ordinary things until she remembered
that she had lingered past her usual hour and that upstairs Christabel
must be listening for the sound of her horse’s hoofs. She started up.

“Will you fetch Peter for me?”

“If you will tell me when you are coming again.”

“One day next week.”

He kissed her hand, and held it.

“Francis, don’t. You mustn’t spoil things.”

“I haven’t said a word.”

“Silence is good,” she said.


§ 5

And she knew she could be silent for ever. Restraint and a love of
danger lived together in her nature and these two qualities were fed by
the position in which she found herself, nor would she have had the
position changed. It supplied her with the emotion she had wanted. She
had the privilege of feeling deeply and dangerously and yet of
preserving her pride.

There was irony in the fact that Christabel, hinting at suspicions for
which, in Rose’s mind, there was at first no cause, had at last
actually brought about what she feared, and if Rose had looked for
justification, she might have found it there. But she did not look for
it any more than Reginald would have done; she was like him there, but
where she differed was in loyalty to an idea. She saw love as something
noble and inspiring, worthy of sacrifice and, more concretely, she was
determined not to increase the disaster which had befallen Christabel.
Sooner or later, in normal conditions, her marriage must have been
recognized as a failure, but in these abnormal ones it had to be
sustained as a success, and it seemed to Rose that civilized beings
could love, and live in the knowledge of their love, without injuring
some one already cruelly unfortunate.

But, as the months went by, she found she had to reckon with two
difficult people, or rather with two people, ordinary in themselves,
cast by fate into a difficult situation. There was Christabel, with her
countless idle hours in which to formulate theories, to lay traps, to
realize that the devotion of Francis became less obvious; and there was
Francis, breaking the spirit of their contract with his looks, and
sometimes the letter, with his complaints and pleadings.

He could not go on like this for ever, he said. He saw her once a week
for a few minutes, if he was lucky: how could she expect him to be
satisfied with that? It was little enough, she owned, but more than it
might have been. She could never make him admit, perhaps because he did
not feel, how greatly they were blessed; but she saw herself as the
guardian of a temple: she stood in the doorway forbidding him to enter
less the place should be defiled, yet forbidding him in such a way that
he should not love her less. Yet constantly saying “No,” constantly
shaking the head and smiling propitiatingly the while is not to
appease; and those short hours of companionship in which they had once
managed to be happy became times of strain, of disappointment, of
barely kept control.

“I wish I could stop loving you,” he broke out one day, “but I can’t.
You’re the kind one doesn’t forget. I thought I’d done it once, for a
few months, but you came back—you, came back.”

She smiled, seeming aloof and full of some wisdom unknown to him. She
knew he could not do without her, still more she knew he must not do
without her, and these certainties became the main fabric of her love.
She had to keep him, less for her own sake than for that of her idea,
but gradually the severe rules she had made became relaxed.

They were not to meet except on that one day a week demanded by
Christabel, who also had to keep Francis happy and who would have
welcomed the powers of darkness to relieve the monotony of her own
life; but Rose could hardly take a ride without meeting Francis, also
riding; or he would appear, on foot, out of a wood, out of a side road,
and waylay her. He seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of her presence,
and they would have a few minutes of conversation, or of a silence
which was no longer beautiful, but terrible with effort, with
possibilities and with dread.

She ought, she knew, to have kept to her own side of the bridge, to
have ridden on the high Downs inviting to a rider, but she loved the
farther country where the air was blue and soft, where little orchards
broke oddly into great fields, where brooks ran across the lanes and
pink-washed cottages were fronted by little gardens full of homely
flowers and clothes drying on the bushes. There was a smell of fruit
and wood fires and damp earth; there was a veil of magic over the whole
landscape and, far off, the shining line of the channel seemed to be
washing the feet of the blue hills. The country had the charm of home
with the allurement of the unknown and, within sound of the steamers
hooting in the river, almost within sight of the city lying, red-roofed
and smoky with factories, round the docks and mounting in terraces to
the heights of Upper Radstowe, there was an expectation of mystery, of
secrets kept for countless centuries by the earth which was rich and
fecund and alive. She could not deny herself the sight of this country.
It had become dearer to her since her awakened feelings had brought
with them the complexities of new thoughts. It soothed her though it
solved nothing. It did not wish to solve anything. It lay before her
with its fields, its woods, its patches of heathy land, its bones of
grey limestone showing where the flesh of the red earth had fallen
away, its dips and hollows, its steep lanes, like the wide eye of a
being too full of understanding to attempt elucidations; it would not
explain; it knew but it would not impart the knowledge which must be
gained through the experience of years, of storms, of sunshine, of
calamity and joy.

And sometimes the presence of Francis with his personal claims and his
complaints was an intrusion, almost an anachronism. He was of his own
time, and the end of that was almost within sight, while the earth,
immensely old, had a youth of its own, something which Francis would
never have again. But perhaps, because he was essentially simple, he
would have fitted in well enough if he had been less ready to voice his
grievances and ruffle the calm which she so carefully preserved, which
he called coldness and for which he reproached her often.

“I have no peace,” he grumbled.

“You would get it if you would accept things as they are. You have to,
in the end, so why not now?”

She longed to give peace to him, but her tenderness was sane and she
found a strange pleasure in the pain of knowing him to be irritable and
childish. It made of her love a better thing, without the hope of any
reward but the continuance of service.

“It’s easier for you,” he said, and she answered, “Is it?” in the way
that angered him and yet held him, and she thought, without bitterness,
that he had never suffered anything without physical or mental tears.
“Yes, you have peace at home, but I go back to misery.”

“It’s her misery.”

“That doesn’t make it any better,” he retorted justly.

“I know.” She touched his sleeve and, feeling his arm stiffen, removed
her hand.

“And I feel a brute because I can’t care enough. If it were you now—”

Almost imperceptibly Rose shook her head. She had no illusions, but she
said, “Then why not pretend it’s me. Tell her all you do. Ask her
advice—you needn’t take it.”

“And it’s all a lie,” he growled.

She said serenely, “It has to be, but there are good lies.”

She wished, with an intensity she rarely allowed herself, that he would
be quiet and controlled. Though half her occupation would be gone, she
would feel for him a respect which would rebound on her and make her
admirable to herself, but she knew that life cannot be too lavish of
its gifts or death would always have the victory. This was not what she
had looked for, but it was good enough; she was necessary to him and
always would be; she was sure of that, yet she constantly repeated it;
moreover, she loved his bigness and his physical strength and the way
the lines round his eyes wrinkled when he smiled; she knew how to make
him smile and now and then they had happy interludes when they talked
about crops and horses, profit and loss, the buying and selling of
stock, and felt their friendship for each other like a mantle shared.

At the worst, she consoled herself, after a time of strain, it was like
riding a restive horse. There was danger which she loved: there was
need of skill and a light hand, of sympathy and tact, and she never
regretted the superman who was to have ruled her with a fatiguing rod
of iron. Here there was give and take; she had to let him have his head
and pull him up at the right moment and reward docility with kindness;
she even found a kind of pleasure, streaked with disgust, in dealing
with Christabel’s suspicions, half expressed, but present like shadowy
people in her room.

Of these she never spoke to Francis, but she had a malicious affection
for them; they had, as it were, done her a good turn, and though they
hid like secret enemies in the corners, she recognized them as allies.
And they looked so much worse than they were. She imagined them showing
very ugly faces to Christabel, who could only judge them by their
looks, and though it was cruel that she should be frightened by them,
it was impossible to drive them away. Rose could only sit calmly in
their presence and try to create an atmosphere of safety. She knew she
ought to feel hypocritical in this attendance on her lover’s wife, but
it was not of her choosing. She did not like Christabel, she would have
been glad never to see her again and, terrible as her situation was, it
appealed to Rose less then it would have done if she had not herself
come of people whose tradition was one of stoicism in trouble, of pride
which refused to reveal its distress. Physically, Christabel had those
qualities, but mentally she lacked them; it was chiefly to Rose that
she betrayed herself, and at each farewell she exacted the promise of
another visit soon. Was she fascinated by the sight of the woman
Francis loved? And when had that love been discovered? And was she sure
of it even now? She certainly had her sole excitement in her search for
evidence.

In that bedroom, gaily decorated for a bride, she lay heroically
bearing pain, lacking the devotion she should have had, finding her
reward in the memory of her husband’s appreciation of her courage, and
her occupation, perhaps her pleasure, in a refinement of self-torture.

As soon as Rose entered the room she was aware of the scrutiny of those
wary eyes, very wide open, as blue as flowers, and she knew that her
own face was like a mask. The little dog wagged his tail, the cat made
no sign, the nurse, after a cheerful greeting, went out of the room and
Rose took her accustomed place beside the window. It had a view of the
garden, the avenue of elms in which the rooks cawed continuously, the
hedge separating the fields from the high-road where two-wheeled carts,
laden with farm produce, jogged into Radstowe, driven by an old man or
a stout woman, and returned some hours later with the day’s
shopping—kitchen utensils inadequately wrapped up and glistening in the
sunshine, a flimsy parcel of drapery, a box of groceries. The old man
smoked his pipe, the stout woman shook the reins on the pony’s back;
the pony, regardless, went at his own pace. Heavy farm carts creaked
past, motor-cars whizzed by, the Sales Hall dairy cows were driven in
for milking, and then for a whole half hour there might be nothing on
the road. The country slept in the sunshine or patiently endured the
rain.

For a member of a large and lively family this prospect, seen from a
permanent couch, was not exhilarating, but Christabel did not complain:
she took advantage of every incident and made the most of it, but she
never expressed a desire for more. She had, for so frail and shattered
a body, an amazing capacity for endurance, as though she were upheld by
some spiritual force. It might have been religion or love, or the
desire to perpetuate Francis’s admiration, but Rose believed, and hated
herself for believing, that it was partly antagonism and a feverish
curiosity. She had been cheated of her youth and strength, and here,
with a beautiful, impassive face, was the woman who might have saved
her, a woman with a body strongly slim in her dark habit, and firm
white hands skilled in managing a horse. She had read the grey mare’s
mind, and now Christabel, delicately blue and pink and white, in a
wrapper of silk and lace, her hands fidgeting each other as they had
fidgeted the mare’s mouth, thought she was reading the mind of Rose.
She stared at her, fascinated but not afraid. There were things she
must find out.

She asked one day, and it was nearly two years since the accident, “Did
they kill the mare?” And Rose, aware that Christabel had known all the
time, answered, “Yes, at once. Her leg was broken.”

“What a pity!”

Waiting for what would come next, Rose smiled and looked out of the
window at the swaying elm tops.

“Such a useful animal!” Christabel said.

“Very dangerous,” Rose remarked, slipping deliberately into the trap.

“That’s what I mean. But not quite dangerous enough. Poor Francis! He
didn’t know. He doesn’t know now, does he? But of course not.”

Rose had a great horror of a debt and she owed something to Christabel,
but now she felt she had paid it off, with interest. She breathed
deeply, without a sound. Her tone was light.

“He knows all that is good for him.”

“You mean that is good for you.”

Rose stood up, pulled on her washleather gloves, sat down again. The
hands on the silk coverlet were shaking.

“You are making yourself ill,” Rose said. She was tempted to take those
poor fluttering hands into her own and steady them, but her flesh
shrank from the contact. She was tempted, too, to tell Christabel the
truth, but pride forbade her, and in a moment the impulse was gone, and
with its departure came the belief that the truth would be
annihilating. It would rob her of her glorious uncertainty, she would
be destroyed by the knowledge that Rose had seen her fear, seen and
tried to strengthen the slender hold she had on her husband’s love. It
was better to play the part of the wicked woman, the murderess, the
stealer of hearts: and perhaps she was wicked; she had not thought of
that before; the Malletts did not criticize their actions or analyse
their minds and she had no intention of breaking their habits. She
stood up again and said:

“Shall I call the nurse?”

“You’re not going yet? You’ve only been here a few minutes.”

“Long enough,” Rose said cheerfully.

Tears came into Christabel’s eyes. “And Francis is out. If he doesn’t
see you he’ll be angry, he’ll ask me why.”

“You can tell him.”

“But,” the tone changed, “perhaps you’ll see him on your way home.”

“Yes, and then I can tell him instead.”

The tears overflowed, she was helplessly angry, she sobbed.

“Be quiet,” Rose said sternly. “I shall tell him nothing. You know
that. You are quite safe, whatever you choose to say to me. Perfectly
safe.”

“I know. I can’t help it. I lie here and think. What would you do in my
place?”

“The same thing, I suppose,” Rose said.

“And you won’t go?”

“Yes, I’m going. You can tell Francis I was obliged to get home early.”

“But you’ll come again?”

“Oh, yes, I’ll come again.”

“You don’t want to.”

“No, I don’t want to.”

“But you’re always riding over here, aren’t you?”

“Nearly every day.”

“Oh, then—” The words lingered meaningly until Rose reached the door
and then Christabel said, “I wish you’d ask your sisters to come and
see me. They would tell me all the news.”

Rose went downstairs laughing at Christabel’s capacity for mingling
tragedy with the commonplace and sordid accusations with social
desires, but though she laughed she was strangely tired and, stretching
before her, she saw more weariness, more struggling, more effort
without result.

She stood in the masculine, matted hall, with the usual worn pair of
slippers in the corner, a stick lying across a chair, a collection of
coats and hats on the pegs, and she felt she would be glad if she were
never to see all this again, and for the first time she thought
seriously of desertion. She wished she could go to some unfamiliar
country where the people would all have new faces, where the language
would be strange, the sights different, the smells unlike those which
were wafted through the open door. She wanted a fresh body and a new
world, but she knew that she would not get them, for leaving Francis
would be like leaving a child. So she told herself, but at the back of
her mind was the certainty that if she went he would soon attach
himself to another’s strength—or weakness: yes, to another’s weakness,
and she found she could not contemplate that event, less because she
clung to him than because her pride could not tolerate a substitution
which would be an admission of her likeness to other women. Yet in that
very lack of toleration her pride was lowered, and if she was not
clinging to him for her own sake, she was holding on to her place, her
uniqueness, refusing the possibility that another woman could serve
him, as she had served him with pain, with suffering. She was like a
queen who does not love her throne supremely but will not abdicate, who
would rather fail in her appointed place than see another succeed in
it.

For a minute Rose Mallett sat down on the edge of the chair already
occupied by the stick and she pressed both hands against her forehead,
driving back her thoughts. Thinking was dangerous and a folly: it was a
concession to circumstances, and she would concede nothing. She stood
up, looked round for a mirror, remembered there was not one in the
hall, and with little, meticulous touches to her hat, her hair and the
white stock round her neck, she left the house.

She returned to a drawing-room occupied by Caroline and Sophia, yet
strangely silent. There was not a sound but what came from the birds in
the garden. Caroline’s spectacles were on her nose and, though she was
not reading the letter on her knee, she had forgotten to take them off,
an ominous sign. Sophia’s face was flushed with agitation, her head
drooped more than usual, but she lifted it with a sigh of relief at
Rose’s entrance.

“We’re in such trouble, dear,” she said.

“Trouble! Nonsense! No trouble at all! Look here, Rose, that woman has
died now.” She shook the letter threateningly. “Read this! Reginald’s
wife! I suppose she was his wife. I dare say he had dozens.”

“Caroline!” Sophia remonstrated.

Rose took the letter and read what Mrs. Reginald Mallett, believing
herself about to die, had written in her big, sprawling hand. The
letter was only to be posted after her death and she made no apology
for asking the Malletts to see that her daughter had the chance of
earning her living suitably. “She is a good girl,” she wrote, “but when
I am gone her only friend will be the landlady of this house and there
are young men about the place who are not the right kind. I am telling
my dear girl that I wish her to accept any offer of help she gets from
you, and she will do what I ask.”

“So, you see,” Caroline said as Rose looked up, “we’re not done with
Reginald yet, and what I propose is that we send Susan for the girl
to-morrow.”

“Yes, to-morrow,” Sophia echoed.

“Shall I go?” Rose asked. Sophia murmured gratitude, Caroline snorted
doubt, and Rose added, “No, I think not. She wouldn’t like it. Susan
would be better—but not to-morrow. You must write to the child— what’s
her name? Henrietta—”

“Yes, Henrietta, after our grandmother—the idea! I don’t know how
Reginald dared.”

“Is she a sacred character?” Rose asked dryly. “Write to her, Caroline,
and say Susan will come on the day that suits her best. You can’t drag
her away without warning. Let’s treat her courteously, please.”

“Oh, Rose, dear, I think we are always courteous,” Sophia protested.

Caroline merely said, “Bah!” and added, “And what are we going to do
with her when we get her? She’ll giggle, she’ll have a dreadful accent,
Sophia will blush for her. I shan’t. I never blush for anybody, even
myself, but I shall be bored. That’s worse, and if you think I’m going
to edit my stories for her benefit, Sophia, you’re mistaken. I never
managed to do that, even for the General, and I’m too old to begin.”
She removed her spectacles hastily. “Too old for that, anyhow.”

Rose smiled. She thought that probably the child of Reginald Mallett,
living from hand to mouth in boarding houses, the sharer of his sinking
fortunes, the witness of his passions and despairs and infidelities,
would find Caroline’s stories innocent enough. Her hope was that
Henrietta would not try to cap them, but the chances were that she
would be a terrible young person, that she would find herself adrift in
the respectability of Radstowe where she was unlikely to meet those
young men, not of the right kind, to whom she was accustomed.

“She must have her father’s room,” Sophia said. She was trying to
conceal her excitement. “We must put some flowers there. I think I’ll
just go upstairs and see if there’s any little improvement we could
make.”

They all went upstairs and stood in that room devoted to the memory of
the scapegrace, but they made no alterations, Sophia expressing the
belief that Henrietta would prefer it as it was; and Caroline, as she
wiped away two slow tears, saying that Reginald was a wretch and she
could not see why they should put themselves to any trouble for his
daughter.




Book II: _Henrietta_


§ 1

After luncheon Henrietta went to her room to unpack the brown tin trunk
which contained all her possessions, and as she ascended the stairs
with her hand on the polished mahogany rail, she heard Sophia saying,
“She’s a true Mallett. She has the Mallett ankle. Did you notice it,
Caroline?” And Caroline answered harshly, “Yes, the Mallett ankle, but
not the foot. Her foot is square, like a block of wood. What could you
expect?” Then the drawing-room door was closed softly on this
indiscretion.

Henrietta continued steadily up the stairs and across the landing to
her father’s room, and before the long mirror on the wall she halted to
survey her reflected feet. Aunt Caroline had but exaggerated the truth;
they were square, but they were small, and she controlled her trembling
lips.

She pushed back from her forehead the black, curling hair. She was
tired; the luncheon had been a strain, and the carelessly loud words of
Caroline reminded her that she was undergoing an examination which,
veiled by courtesy, would be severe. Already they were blaming her
mother for her feet; and all three of them, the blunt Caroline, the
tender Sophia, the mysteriously silent Rose, were on the watch for the
maternal traits.

Well, she was not ashamed of them. Her mother had been good, brave,
honest, loving, patient, and her father had been none of these things;
but no doubt these aunts of hers put manners before morals, as he had
done; and she remembered how, when she was quite a little girl, and the
witness of one of the unpleasant domestic scenes which happened often
in those days, before Reginald Mallett’s wife had learnt forbearance,
she had noticed her father’s face twitch as though in pain. Glad of a
diversion, she had asked him with eager sympathy, “Is it toothache?”
and he had answered acidly, “No, child, only the mutilation of our
language.” She remembered the words, and later she understood their
meaning and the flushing of her mother’s face, the compression of her
lips, and she was indignant for her sake.

Yet she could feel for her father, in spite of the fact that whatever
her accent or grammatical mistakes, her mother’s conduct was always
right and her father, with his charming air, a little blurred by what
he called misfortune, his clear speech to which Henrietta loved to
listen, was fundamentally unsound. He could not be trusted. That was
understood between the mother and daughter: it was one of the facts on
which their existence rested, it entered into all their calculations,
it was the text of all her mother’s little homilies. Henrietta must
always pay her debts, she must tell the truth, she must do nothing of
which she was ashamed, and so far Henrietta had succeeded in obeying
these commands.

When Reginald Mallett died in the shabby boarding-house kept by Mrs.
Banks, he left his family without a penny but with a feeling of
extraordinary peace. They were destitute, but they were no longer
overshadowed by the fear of disgrace, the misery of subterfuge, the
bewildering oscillations between pity for the man who could not have
what he wanted and shame for his ceaseless striving after pleasure, his
shifts to get it, his reproaches and complaints.

In the gloomy back bedroom on the third story of the boarding-house he
lay on a bed hung with dingy curtains, but in the dignity which was one
of his inheritances. Under the dark, close-cut moustache, his lips
seemed to smile faintly, perhaps in amusement at the folly of his life,
perhaps in surprise at finding himself so still; the narrow beard of a
foreign cut was slightly tilted towards the dirty ceiling, his
beautiful hands were folded as though in a mockery of prayer. He was,
as Mrs. Banks remarked when she was allowed to see him, a lovely
corpse. But to Henrietta and her mother, standing on either side of the
bed, guarding him now, as they had always tried to do, he had subtly
become the husband and father he should have been.

“We must remember him like this,” Mrs. Mallett said, raising her soft
blue eyes, and Henrietta saw that the small sharp lines which Reginald
Mallett had helped to carve in her face seemed to have disappeared. It
was extraordinary how placid her face became after his death, but as
the days passed it was also noticeable that much of her vitality had
gone too. She left herself in Henrietta’s young hands and she, casting
about for a way of earning her living, found good fortune in the
terrible basement kitchen where Mrs. Banks moved mournfully and had her
disconsolate being. The gas was always lighted in that cavernous
kitchen, but it remained dark, mercifully leaving the dirt half unseen.
A joint of mutton, cold and mangled, was discernible, however, when
Henrietta descended to put her impecunious case before the landlady
and, gazing at it, the girl saw also her opportunity. Mrs. Banks had no
culinary imagination, but Henrietta found it rising in herself to an
inspired degree and there and then she offered herself as cook in
return for board and lodging for her mother and herself.

“I’m sure I’ll be glad to keep you,” Mrs. Banks said: “you give the
place a tone, you do really, you and your dear Ma sitting in the
drawing-room sewing of an evening; but it isn’t only the cooking,
though I do get to hate the sight of food. I get a regular grudge
against it. But it’s that butcher! Ready money or no meat’s his motto,
and how to make this mutton last—” She picked it up by the bone and
cast it down again.

“Oh, I can manage butchers,” Henrietta said. “Besides, we’ll pay our
way. You’ll see. Leave the cooking to me.”

“I will, gladly,” Mrs. Banks said, wiping away a tear. “Ever since
Banks took it into his head to jump into the river, it seems like as if
I hadn’t any spirit, and that Jenkins turns up his ugly nose every time
I put the mutton on the table—when he doesn’t begin talking to it like
an old friend. I can’t bear Jenkins, but he does pay regular, and
that’s something. Well, I’ll get on with the upstairs and leave you to
it.”

And so Henrietta began the work which kept her amazingly happy, fed and
sheltered her mother, who sat all day slowly making beautiful baby
linen for one of the big shops, and cemented Henrietta’s friendship
with the lachrymose Mrs. Banks. To be faced with a mutton bone and a
few vegetables, to have to wrest from these poor materials an
appetizing meal, was like an exciting game, and she played it with zest
and with success. She had the dubious pleasure of hearing Mr. Jenkins
smack his lips and seeing him distend his nostrils with anticipation;
the unalloyed one of watching the pale face of little Miss Stubb, the
typist, grow delicately pink and less dangerously thin, under the
stimulus of good food; the amusement of congratulating Mrs. Banks, in
public, on her new cook, and seeing Mrs. Banks, at the head of the
supper table, nod her head with important secrecy.

“I’ve made out,” she told Henrietta, “that I’ve a daily girl, without a
character, that’s how I can afford her, in the basement, but I must say
it’s made that Jenkins mighty keen on fetching his own boots of a
morning, but no lodgers below-stairs is my rule. You look out for
Jenkins, my dear. He’s no good. I know his sort.”

“Oh, I can manage Mr. Jenkins, too,” Henrietta said, and indeed she
made a point of bringing him to the hardly manageable state for the
amusement of proving her capacity. She despised him, but not for
nothing was she Reginald Mallett’s daughter; and Mr. Jenkins and the
butcher and a gloomy old gentleman who emerged from his bedroom to eat,
and locked himself up between meals, were the only men she knew. No
doubt Mrs. Mallett, placidly sewing, was alive to the attentions and
frustrations of Mr. Jenkins and had planned her letter to her
sisters-in-law some time before she wrote it, but the idea of parting
from her mother never occurred to Henrietta until Miss Stubb alarmed
her.

“Your mother,” she said poetically, “makes me think of snow melting
before the sun. In fact, I can’t look at her without thinking of snow
and snowdrops and—and graves. Last spring I said to Mrs. Banks, ‘She
won’t see the leaves fall,’ I said, and Mrs. Banks agreed. She has been
spared, but take care of her in these cold winds, Miss Henrietta,
dear.”

“She has a cold, only a cold,” Henrietta said in a dead voice, and she
went upstairs. Her mother was in bed, and Henrietta looked down at the
thin, pretty face. “How ill are you?” she asked in a threatening
manner. “Tell me how ill you are.”

“I’ve only got a cold, Henry dear. I shall be up to-morrow.”

“Promise you won’t be really ill.”

“Why should I be?”

“It’s Miss Stubb—saying things.”

“Women chatter,” Mrs. Mallett said. “If it’s not scandal, it’s an
illness. You ought to know that.”

“They might leave you alone, anyway.”

“Yes, I wish they would,” Mrs. Mallett said faintly, and dropped back
on her pillow.

Now, sitting in her father’s room, with her mother only a few weeks
dead, she reproached herself for her readiness to be deceived, for her
preoccupation with her own affairs and the odious Mr. Jenkins, for the
exuberance of life which hid from her the dwindling of her mother’s,
and the fact, now so plain, that when Reginald Mallett died his wife’s
capacity for struggling was at an end. She had suffered bitterly from
the sight of his deterioration and from her failure to prevent it. In
his sulky, torturing presence she had desired his absence, but this
permanent absence was more than she could bear. And all Henrietta could
do was to obey her mother’s injunction to accept help from her aunts,
but she had refused the offer of an escort to Radstowe and Nelson
Lodge; she would have no highly respectable servant sniffing at the
boarding-house—and she would have been bound to sniff in that
permanently scented atmosphere—which was, after all, her home. She left
with genuine regret, with tears.

“You mustn’t cry, dearie,” Mrs. Banks said, holding Henrietta to the
bosom of her greasy dress. “It’s a lucky thing for you.”

“Perhaps,” Henrietta said, “but I’d rather be with you, and I can’t
bear to think of the cooking going to pieces. I’ll send you some
recipes for nice dishes.”

“Too many eggs,” Mrs. Banks said prophetically.

“I dare say, but you can manage if you think about it. And remember, if
Miss Stubb has too much cold mutton, she’ll lose her job, and then
you’ll lose her money. It will pay you to feed her. You haven’t had a
debt since I began to help you.”

“I know, I know; but I’ll have them now, for certain. I’ve told you
before that Banks took all my ideas with him when he dropped into the
river,” Mrs. Banks said hopelessly, and on Henrietta’s journey to
Radstowe it was of Mrs. Banks that she chiefly thought. It seemed as
though she were deserting a friend.

She was surprised by the smallness of Nelson Lodge as she walked up the
garden path; she had pictured something more imposing than this low
white building, walled off from the wide street; but within she
discovered an inconsistent spaciousness. The hall was panelled in white
wood, the drawing-room, sparsely but beautifully furnished, was white
too, and she immediately felt, as indeed she looked, thoroughly out of
harmony with her surroundings. She waited there, in her cheap black
clothes, like some little servant seeking a situation; but her welcome,
when it came, after a rustling of silken skirts on the stairs, assured
her that she was acknowledged as a member of the family. Sophia took
her tenderly to her heart and murmured, “Oh, my dear, how like your
father!” Caroline patted her cheek and said, “Yes, yes, Reginald’s
daughter, so she is!” And a moment later, Rose entered, faintly
smiling, extending a cool hand.

Henrietta’s acutely feminine eye saw immediately that her Aunt Rose was
supremely well-dressed, and all her past ideas of grandeur, of plumed
hats and feather boas and ornamental walking shoes, left her for ever.
She knew, too, that clothes like these were very costly, beyond her
dreams, but she decided, in a moment, to rearrange and subdue the black
trimming of her hat.

On the other hand, the appearance of the elder aunts almost shocked
her. At the first glance they seemed bedizened and indecent in their
mixture of rouge and more than middle age; but at the second and the
third they became attractive, oddly distinguished. She felt sure of
them, of their sympathy, of her ability to please them. It was Aunt
Rose who made her feel ill at ease, and it was Aunt Rose of whom she
thought as she sat by her bedroom window and looked down at the back
garden, bright with the flowers of spring.

Yet it was Aunt Caroline who had been unkind about her feet. They were
like that, these grand people; they had beautiful manners but nothing
superficial escaped them; they made no allowances, they went in for no
deceptions, and though it was Caroline who had actually condemned the
small, strong feet which now rested, slipperless, on the soft carpet,
Henrietta was sure that Rose had seen them too. She had seen
everything, though apparently she saw nothing, and Henrietta had to
acknowledge her fear of Rose’s criticism. It was formidable, for it
would be unflinching in its standards.

“Well,” Henrietta thought, “I can only be myself, and if I’m common—
but I’m not really common—it’s better than pretending; and of course I
am rather upset by the house and the servants and all the forks and
spoons. I hope there won’t be anything funny to eat for dinner. I
wish—” To her own amazement, she burst into a brief storm of tears. “I
wish I had stayed with Mrs. Banks.”

She had her place in the boarding-house, she was a power there, and she
missed already her subtle, unrecognized belief in her superiority over
Mrs. Banks and Miss Stubb and Mr. Jenkins and the rest. She was also
honestly troubled about the welfare of the landlady, who was her only
friend. It was strange to sit in her father’s room and look at a
portrait of him as a youth hanging on the wall, and remember that Mrs.
Banks, who made him shudder, was her only friend.

She left her seat by the window to look more closely at that portrait,
and after a brief examination she turned to the dressing-table to see
in the mirror a feminine replica of the face on the wall. She had never
noticed the likeness before. She had only to push back her hair and she
saw her father. Where his nose was straight, hers was slightly tilted,
but there was the same darkness of hair and eyes, the same modelling of
the forehead, the same incipient petulance of the lips.

She was astonished, she was unreasonably pleased, and with the energy
of her inspiration she swept back the curls of which her mother had
been so proud, and pinned them into obscurity. The resemblance was
extraordinary: even the low white collar of her blouse, fastened with a
black bow, repeated the somewhat Byronic appearance of the young man;
and as there came a knock at the door, she turned, a little
shame-faced, but excited in the certainty of her success.

But it was only Susan, who gave no sign of astonishment at the change.
She had come to see if she could help Miss Henrietta to unpack, but
Henrietta had already laid away her meagre outfit in the walnut tallboy
with the curved legs. Susan, however, would remove the trunk, and if
Miss Henrietta would tell her what dress she wished to wear this
evening, Susan would be able to lay out her things. The tin trunk
clanked noisily though Susan lifted it with tactful care, and Henrietta
blushed for it, but the aged portmanteau, bearing the initials _R. M._,
became in the discreet presence of Susan a priceless possession.

“It’s full of books,” Henrietta said; “I won’t unpack them. I thought
my aunts would let me keep them somewhere. They are my father’s books.”

“There’s an old bookcase belonging to Mr. Reginald in the box-room,”
Susan said; “I’ll speak to Miss Caroline about it.”

“Did you know my father?” Henrietta asked at once.

“Yes, Miss Henrietta,” Susan said.

“Do you think I’m like him?”

“It’s a striking likeness, Miss Henrietta,” and warming a little, Susan
added, “I was just saying so to Cook.”

“Did Cook know him, too?”

“Oh, yes, Miss Henrietta. Cook and I have been with the family for
years. If you’ll tell me which dress you wish to wear—”

“There’s only one in the wardrobe,” Henrietta said serenely, for
suddenly her shabbiness and poverty mattered no longer. She was stamped
with the impress of Reginald Mallett, whom she had despised yet of whom
she was proud, and that impress was like a guarantee, a sort of
passport. She had a great lightness of heart; she was glad she had left
Mrs. Banks, glad she was in her father’s home, and learning from Susan
that the ladies rested in their own rooms after luncheon, she decided
to go out and look on the scenes of her father’s youth.


§ 2

This was not, she told herself, disloyalty to her mother, for had not
that mother, whom she loved and painfully missed, sent her to this
place? Her mother was generous and sweet; she would grudge no
late-found allegiance to Reginald Mallett. Had she not said they must
remember him at his best, and would she not be glad if Henrietta could
find bits of that best in this old house, in the streets where he had
walked, in the sights which had fed his eyes?

Henrietta started out, gently closing the front door behind her. The
wide street was almost empty; a milkcart bearing the legend, “Sales
Hall Dairy,” was being drawn at an easy pace by a demure pony, his
harness adorned with jingling bells. The milkman whistled and, as the
cart stopped here and there, she missed the London milkman’s harsh cry,
and missed it pleasurably. This man was in no hurry, there was no
impatience in his knock; the whole place seemed to be half asleep,
except where children played on The Green under the old trees. This
comparatively small space, mounting in the distance to a little hill
backed by the sky, was more wonderful to Henrietta than Hyde Park when
the flowers were at their best. There were no flowers here; she saw
grass, two old stone monuments, tall trees, a miniature cliff of grey
rock, and sky. On three sides of The Green there were old houses and
there were seats on the grass, but houses and seats had the air of
being mere accidents to which the rest had grown accustomed, and it
seemed to Henrietta that here, in spite of bricks, she was in the
country. The trees, the grass, the rocks and sky were in possession.

She followed one of the small paths round the hill and found herself in
a place so wonderful, so unexpected, that she caught back her breath
and let it out again in low exclamations of delight. She was now on the
other side of the hill and, though she did not know it, she was on the
site of an ancient camp. The hill was flat-topped; there were still
signs of the ramparts, but it was not on these she gazed. Far below her
was the river, flowing sluggishly in a deep ravine, formed on her right
hand and as far as she could see by high grey cliffs. These for the
most part were bare and sheer, but they gave way now and then to a
gentler slope with a rich burden of trees, while, on the other side of
the river, it was the rocks that seemed to encroach on the trees, for
the wall of the gorge, almost to the water’s edge, was thick with
woods. Here and there, on either cliff, a sudden red splash of rock
showed like an unhealed wound, amid the healthier grey. And all around
her there seemed to be limitless sky, huge fluffy clouds and gulls as
white.

At the edge of the cliff where she stood, gorse bushes bloomed and,
looking to the left, she saw the slender line of a bridge swung high
across the abyss. Beyond it the cliffs lessened into banks, then into
meadows studded with big elms and, on the city side, there were houses
red and grey, as though the rocks had simply changed their shapes. The
houses were clustered close to the water, they rose in terraces and
trees mingled with their chimneys. Below there were intricate
waterways, little bridges, warehouses and ships and, high up, the fairy
bridge, delicate and poised, was like a barrier between that place of
business and activity and this, where Henrietta stood with the trees,
the cliffs, the swooping gulls. It was low tide and the river was
bordered by banks of mud, grey too, yet opalescent. It almost reflected
the startling white of the gulls’ wings and, as she looked at it, she
saw that its colour was made up of many; there was pink in it and blue
and, as a big cloud passed over the sun, it became subtly purple; it
was a palette of subdued and tender shades.

Henrietta heaved a sigh. This was too much. She could look at it but
she could not see it all. Yet this marvellous place belonged to her,
and she knew now whence had come the glamour in the stories her father
had told her when she was a child. It had come from here, where an aged
city had tried to conquer the country and had failed, for the spirit of
woods and open spaces, of water and trees and wind, survived among the
very roofs. The conventions of the centuries, the convention of
puritanism, of worldliness, of impiety, of materialism and of charity
had all assailed and all fallen back before the strength of the
apparently peaceful country in which the city stood. The air was soft
with a peculiar, undermining softness; it carried with it a smell of
flowers and fruit and earth, and if all the many miles on the farther
side of the bridge should be ravished by men’s hands, covered with
buildings and strewn with the ugly luxuries they thought they needed,
the spirit would remain in the tainted air and the imprisoned earth. It
would whisper at night at the windows, it would smile invisibly under
the sun, it would steal into men’s minds and work its will upon them.
And already Henrietta felt its power. She was in a new world, dull but
magical, torpid yet alert.

She turned away and, walking down another little path threaded through
the rocks, she stood at the entrance to the bridge and watched people
on foot, people on bicycles, people in carts coming and going over it.
She could not cross herself for she had not a penny in her pocket, but
she stood there gazing and sometimes looking down at the road two
hundred feet below. This made her slightly giddy and the people down
there had too much the appearance of pigmies with legs growing from
their necks, going about perfectly unimportant business with a great
deal of fuss. It was pleasanter to see these country people in their
carts, school-girls with plaits down their backs, rosy children in
perambulators and an exceedingly handsome man on a fine black horse, a
fair man, bronzed like a soldier, riding as though he had done it all
his life.

She looked at him with admiration for his looks and envy for his
possessions, for that horse, that somewhat sulky ease. And it was quite
possible that he was an acquaintance of her aunts! She laughed away her
awed astonishment. Why, her own father had been such as he, though she
had never seen him on a horse. She had, after all, to adjust her views
a little, to remember that she was a Mallett, a member of an honoured
Radstowe family, the granddaughter of a General, the daughter of a
gentleman, though a scamp. She was ashamed of the something approaching
reverence with which she had looked at the man on the horse, but she
was also ashamed of her shame; in fact, to be ashamed at all was, she
felt, a degradation, and she cast the feeling from her.

Here was not only a new world but a new life, a new starting point; she
must be equal to the place, the opportunity and the occasion; she was,
she told herself, equal to them all.

In this self-confident mood she returned to Nelson Lodge and found
Caroline, in a different frock, seated behind the tea-table and in the
act of putting the tea into the pot.

“Just in time,” she remarked, and added with intense interest, “You
have brushed back your hair. Excellent! Look, Sophia, what an
improvement! And more like Reginald than ever. Take off your hat,
child, and let us see. My dear, I was going to tell you, when I knew
you better, that those curls made you look like an organ-grinder. Don’t
hush me, Sophia; I always say what I think.”

Henrietta was hurt; this, though Caroline did not know it, was a rebuff
to the mother who loved the curls; but the daughter would not betray
her sensibility, and as Rose was not present she dared to say, “An
organ-grinder with square feet.”

“Oh, you heard that, did you? Sophia said you would. Well, you must be
careful about your shoes. Men always look at a woman’s feet.” She
displayed her own, elegantly arched, in lustrous stockings and very
high-heeled slippers. “Sophia and I—Sophia’s are nearly, but not quite
as good as mine—are they Sophia?—Sophia and I have always been
particular about our feet. I remember a ball, when I was a girl, where
one of my partners—he ended by marrying a ridiculously fat woman with
feet like cannon balls—insisted on calling me Cinderella because he
said nobody else could have worn my shoes. Delightful creature! Do you
remember, Sophia?”

Sophia remembered very well. He had called her Cinderella, too, for the
same reason, but as Caroline had been the first to report the remark,
Sophia had never cared to spoil her pleasure in it. And now Caroline
did not wait for a reply, Rose entering at that moment, and her
attention having to be called to the change in Henrietta’s method of
doing her hair. Henrietta stiffened at once, but Rose threw, as it
were, a smile in her direction, and said, “Yes, charming,” and helped
herself to cake.

“And now,” said Caroline, settling herself for the most interesting
subject in the world, “your clothes, Henrietta.”

“I haven’t any,” Henrietta said at once; “but I think they’ll do until
I go away. I thought I should like to be a nurse, Aunt Caroline.”

“Nurse! Nonsense! What kind? Babies? Rubbish! You’re going to stay here
if you like us well enough, and we’ve made a little plan”—she nodded
vigorously—“a little plan for you.”

“We ought to say at once,” Sophia interrupted with painful honesty,
“that it was Rose’s idea.”

“Rose? Was it? I don’t know. Anyhow, we’re all agreed. You are to have
a sum of money, child; yes, for your father’s sake, and perhaps for
your own too, a sum of money to bring you in a little income for your
clothes and pleasures, so that you shall be independent like the rest
of us. Yes, it’s settled. I’ve written to our lawyer, James Batty. Did
your father ever mention James Batty? But, of course, he wouldn’t. He
married a fat woman, too, but a good soul, with a high colour, poor
thing. Don’t say a word, child. You must be independent. Nursing! Bah!
And if we don’t take care we shall have you marrying for a home.”

“This is your home,” Sophia said gently.

“No sentiment, Sophia, please. You’re making the child cry. The
Malletts don’t marry, Henrietta. Look at us, as happy as the day is
long, with all the fun and none of the trouble. We’ve been terrible
flirts, Sophia and I. Rose is different, but at least she hasn’t
married. The three Miss Malletts of Nelson Lodge! Now there are four of
us, and you must keep up our reputation.”

Overwhelmed by this generosity, by this kindness, Henrietta did not
know what to say. She murmured something about her mother’s wish that
she should earn her living, but Caroline scouted the idea, and Sophia,
putting her white hand on one of Henrietta’s, assured her that her dear
mother would be glad for her child to have the comforts of a home.

“I’m not used to them,” Henrietta said. “I’ve always taken care of
people. I shan’t know what to do.”

They would find plenty for her to do; there were many gaieties in
Radstowe and she would be welcomed everywhere. “And now about your
clothes,” Caroline repeated. “You are wearing black, of course. Well,
black can be very pretty, very French. Look at Rose. She rarely wears
anything else, but when Sophia and I were about your age, she used to
wear blue and I wore pink, or the other way round.”

“You do so still,” Rose remarked.

“A pink muslin,” Caroline went on in a sort of ecstasy, “a Leghorn hat
wreathed with pink roses—when was I wearing that, Sophia?”

“Last summer,” Rose said dryly.

“So I was,” Caroline agreed in a matter-of-fact voice. “Now, Henrietta.
Get a piece of paper and a pencil, Sophia, and we’ll make a list.”

The discussion went on endlessly, long after Henrietta herself had
tired of it. It was lengthened by the insertion of anecdotes of
Caroline’s and Sophia’s youth, and hardly a colour or a material was
mentioned which did not recall an incident which Henrietta found more
interesting than her own sartorial affairs.

Rose had disappeared, and the dressing-bell was rung before the subject
languished. It would never be exhausted, for Caroline, and even Sophia,
less vivid than her sister in all but her affections, grew pink and
bright-eyed in considering Henrietta’s points. And all the time
Henrietta had her own opinions, her own plans. She intended as far as
possible to preserve her likeness to her father, which was, as it were,
her stock-in-trade. She pictured herself, youthfully slim, gravely
petulant, her round neck rising from a Byronic collar fastened with a
broad, loose bow, and she fancied the society of Radstowe exclaiming
with one voice, “That must be Reginald Mallett’s daughter!”

She was to learn, however, that in Radstowe the memories of Reginald
Mallett were somewhat dim, and where they were clear they were
neglected. It was generally assumed that his daughter would not care to
have him mentioned, while praises of her aunts were constant and
enthusiastic and people were kind to Henrietta, she discovered, for
their sakes.

The stout and highly-coloured Mrs. Batty was an early caller. She
arrived, rather wheezy, compressed by her tailor into an expensive
gown, a basket of spring flowers on her head. She and Henrietta took to
each other, as Mrs. Batty said, at once. Here was a motherly person,
and Henrietta knew that if she could have Mrs. Batty to herself she
would be able to talk more freely than she had done since her arrival
in Radstowe. There would be no criticism from her, but unlimited good
nature, a readiness to listen and to confide and a love for the details
of operations and illnesses in which she had a kinship with Mrs. Banks.
Indeed, though Mrs. Batty was fat where Mrs. Banks was thin, cheerful
where she was gloomy, and in possession of a flourishing husband where
Mrs. Banks irritably mourned the loss of a suicide, they had
characteristics in common and the chief of these was the way in which
they took to Henrietta.

“You must come to tea on Sunday,” Mrs. Batty said. “We are always at
home on Sunday afternoons after four o’clock. I have two big boys,” she
sighed, “and all their friends are welcome then.” She lowered her
voice. “We don’t allow tennis—the neighbours, you know, and James has
clients looking out of every window—but there’s no harm, as the boys
say, in knocking the billiard balls about. I must say the click carries
a good way, so I tell the parlourmaid to shut the windows. And music—my
boy Charles,” she sighed again, “is mad on music. I like a tune myself,
but he never plays any. You’ll hear for yourself if you come on Sunday.
Now you will come, won’t you, Miss Henrietta?”

“Yes, she’ll come,” Caroline said. “Do her good to meet young people.
We’re getting old in this house, Mrs. Batty,” and she guffawed in
anticipation of the usual denial, but for once Mrs. Batty failed. Her
thoughts were at home, at Prospect House, that commodious family
mansion situate in its own grounds, and in one of the most favourable
positions in Upper Radstowe. So the advertisement had read before Mr.
Batty bought the property, and it was all true.

“John,” Mrs. Batty went on, “is more for sport, though he’s in the
sugar business, with an uncle. Not my brother—Mr. Batty’s.” She was
anxious to give her husband all the credit. “They are both good boys,”
she added, “but Charles—well, you’ll see on Sunday. You promise to
come.”

Henrietta promised, and with Mrs. Batty’s departure Caroline spoke her
mind. She was convinced that the lawyer and his wife were determined to
secure Henrietta as a daughter-in-law.

“He knows all our affairs, my dear, and James Batty never misses a
chance of improving his position. Good as it is, it would be all the
better for an alliance with our family, but I shall disown you at once
if you marry one of those hobbledehoys. The Batty’s, indeed! Why, Mrs.
Batty herself—”

“Caroline, don’t!” Sophia pleaded. “And I’m sure the young men are very
nice young men, and if Henrietta should fall in love—”

“She won’t get any of my money!” Caroline said.

“But Henrietta won’t be in a hurry,” Sophia announced; and so, over her
head, the two discussed her possible marriage as they had discussed her
clothes, but with less interest and at less length and, as before,
Henrietta had her own ideas. A rich man, a handsome one, a gay life; no
more basement kitchens, no more mutton bones! Already the influence of
Nelson Lodge was making itself felt.


§ 3

It was at dinner that the charm of the house was most apparent To
Henrietta. Even on these spring evenings the curtains were Drawn and
the candles lighted, for Caroline said she could not Dine comfortably
in daylight. The pale flames were repeated in The mahogany of the
table; the tall candlesticks, the silver appointments, were reflected
also in a blur, like a grey mist; the furniture against the walls
became merged into the shadows and Susan, hovering there, was no more
than an attentive spirit.

There was little talking at this meal, for Caroline and Sophia loved
good food and it was very good. Occasionally Caroline murmured, “Too
much pepper,” or “One more pinch of salt and this would have been
perfect,” and bending over her plate, the diamonds in her ears sparkled
to her movements, the rings on her fingers glittered; and opposite to
her Sophia drooped, her pale hair looking almost white, the big
sapphire cross on her breast gleaming richly, her resigned attitude
oddly at variance with the busy handling of her knife and fork.

The gold frame round General Mallett’s portrait dimly shone, the
flowers on the table seemed to give out their beauty and their scent
with conscious desire to please, to add their offerings, and for
Henrietta the grotesqueness of the elder aunts, their gay attire, their
rouge and wrinkles, gave a touch of fantasy to what would otherwise
have been too orderly and too respectable a scene.

In this room of beautiful inherited things, where tradition had built
strong walls about the Malletts, the sight of Caroline was like a gate
leading into the wide, uncertain world and the sight of Rose, all cream
and black, was like a secret portal leading to a winding stair. At this
hour, romance was in the house, beckoning Henrietta to follow through
that gate or down that stair, but chiefly hovering about the figure of
Rose who sat so straight and kept so silent, her white hands moving
slowly, the pearls glistening on her neck, her face a pale oval against
the darkness. She was never more mysterious or more remote; with her
even the common acts of eating and drinking seemed, to Henrietta, to be
made poetical; she was different from everybody else, but the girl felt
vaguely that the wildness of which Caroline made a boast and which
never developed into more than that, the wildness which had ruined her
father’s life, lay numbed and checked somewhere behind the amazing
stillness and control of Rose. And she was like a woman who had
suffered a great sorrow or who kept a profound secret.

It was at this hour, when Henrietta was half awed, half soothed, yet
very much alive, feeling that tremendous excitements lay in wait for
her just outside, when she was wrapped in beauty, fed by delicate food,
sensitive to the slim old silver under her hands, that she sometimes
felt herself actually carried back to the boarding-house, and she saw
the grimy tablecloth, the flaring gas jets, the tired worn faces, the
dusty hair of Mrs. Banks and the rubber collar of Mr. Jenkins, and she
heard little Miss Stubb uttering platitudes in her attempt to raise the
mental atmosphere. There was a great clatter of knives and forks, a
confusion of voices and, in a pause, the sound of the exclusive old
gentleman masticating his food.

Then Henrietta would close her eyes and, after an instant, she would
open them on this candle-lighted room, the lovely figure of Aunt Rose,
the silks and laces and ornaments of Aunt Caroline and Aunt Sophia; and
between the courses one of these two would repeat the gossip of a
caller or criticize the cut of her dress.

No, the conversation was not much better than that of the boarding-
house, but the accents were different. Caroline would throw out a
French phrase, and Henrietta, loving the present, wondering how she had
borne the past, could yet feel fiercely that life was not fair. She
herself was not fair: she was giving her allegiance to the outside of
things and finding in them more pleasure than in heroism, endurance and
compassion, and she said to herself, “Yes, I’m just like my father. I
see too much with my eyes.” A little fear, which had its own delight,
took hold of her. How far would that likeness carry her? What dangerous
qualities had he passed on to her with his looks?

She sat there, vividly conscious of herself, and sometimes she saw the
whole room as a picture and she was part of it; sometimes she saw only
those three whose lives, she felt, were practically over, for even Aunt
Rose was comparatively old. She pitied them because their romance was
past, while hers waited for her outside; she wondered at their
happiness, their interest in their appearance, their pleasure in
parties; but she felt most sorry for Aunt Rose, midway between what
should have been the resignation of her stepsisters and the glowing
anticipation of her niece. Yet Aunt Rose hardly invited sympathy of any
kind and the smile always lurking near her lips gave Henrietta a
feeling of discomfort, a suspicion that Aunt Rose was not only
ironically aware of what Henrietta wished to conceal, but endowed with
a fund of wisdom and a supply of worldly knowledge.

She continued to feel uncertain about Aunt Rose. She was always
charming to Henrietta, but it was impossible to be quite at ease with a
being who seemed to make an art of being delicately reserved; and
because Henrietta liked to establish relationships in which she was
sure of herself and her power to please, she was conscious of a faint
feeling of antagonism towards this person who made her doubt herself.

Aunt Caroline and Aunt Sophia were evidently delighted with their
niece’s presence in the house. They liked the sound of her laughter and
her gay voice and though Sophia once gently reproached her for her
habit of whistling, which was not that of a young lady, Caroline
scoffed at her old-fashioned sister.

“Let the girl whistle, if she wants to,” she said. “It’s better than
having a canary in a cage.”

“But don’t do it too much, Henrietta, dear,” Sophia compromised. “You
mustn’t get wrinkles round your mouth.”

“No.” This was a consideration which appealed to Caroline. “No, child,
you mustn’t do that.”

They admitted her to a familiarity which they would not have allowed
her, and which she never attempted, to exceed, but she was Reginald’s
daughter, she was a member of the family, and her offence in being also
the daughter of her mother was forgotten. Caroline and Sophia were
deeply interested in Henrietta. Henrietta was grateful and
affectionate. The three were naturally congenial, and the happiness and
sympathy of the trio accentuated the pleasant aloofness of Rose. Aunt
Rose did not care for her, Henrietta told herself; there was something
odd about Aunt Rose, yet she remembered that it was Aunt Rose who had
thought of giving her the money.

Three thousand pounds! It was a fortune, and on that Sunday when
Henrietta was to pay her first visit to Mrs. Batty, Aunt Caroline,
turning the girl about to see that nothing was amiss, said warningly,
“You are walking into the lion’s den, Henrietta. Don’t let one of those
young cubs gobble you up. I know James Batty, an attractive man, but he
loves money, and he knows our affairs. He married his own wife because
she was a butcher’s daughter.”

“A wholesale butcher,” Sophia murmured in extenuation, “and I am sure
he loved her.”

“And butchers,” Caroline went on, “always amass money. It positively
inclines one to vegetarianism, though I’m sure nuts are bad for the
complexion.”

“I don’t intend to be eaten yet,” Henrietta said gaily. She was very
much excited and she hardly heeded Sophia’s whisper at the door:

“It’s not true, dear—the kindest people in the world, but Caroline has
such a sense of humour.”

Henrietta found that the Batty lions were luxuriously housed. The
bright yellow gravel crunched under her feet as she walked up the
drive; the porch was bright with flowering plants arranged in tiers; a
parlourmaid opened the door as though she conferred a privilege and, as
Henrietta passed through the hall, she had glimpses of a statue holding
a large fern and another bearing a lamp aloft.

She was impressed by this magnificence; she wished she could pause to
examine this decently draped and useful statuary but she was ushered
into a large drawing-room, somewhat over-heated, scented with hot-house
flowers, softly carpeted, much-becushioned, and she immediately found
herself in the embrace of Mrs. Batty, who smelt of eau-de-cologne. Mrs.
Batty felt soft, too, and if she were a lioness there were no signs of
claws or fangs; and her husband, a tall, spare man with grey hair and a
clean-shaven face, bowed over Henrietta’s hand in a courtly manner,
hardly to be expected of the best-trained of wild beasts.

But for these two the room seemed to be empty, until Mrs. Batty said
“Charles!” in a tone of timid authority and Henrietta discovered that a
fair young man, already showing a tendency to baldness, was sitting at
the piano, apparently studying a sheet of music. This, then, was one of
the cubs, and Henrietta, feeling herself marvellously at ease in this
house, awaited his approach with some amusement and a little irritation
at his obvious lack of interest. Aunt Caroline need have no fear. He
was a plain young man with pale, vague eyes, and he did not know
whether to offer one of his nervous hands at the end of over-long arms,
or to make shift with an awkward bow. She settled the matter for him,
feeling very much a woman of the world.

“Now, where’s John?” Mrs. Batty asked, and Charles answered, “Ratting,
in the stable.”

Mrs. Batty clucked with vexation. “It’s the first Sunday for weeks that
I haven’t had the room full of people. Now you won’t want to come
again. Very dull for a young girl, I’m sure.”

“Well, well, you can have a chat with Miss Henrietta,” Mr. Batty said,
“and afterwards perhaps she would like to see my flowers.” He
disappeared with extraordinary skill, with the strange effect of not
having left the room, yet Mrs. Batty sighed. Charles had wandered back
to the piano, and his mother, after compressing her lips and
whispering, “It’s a mania,” drew Henrietta into the depths of a settee.

“Will he play to us?” she asked.

“No, no,” Mrs. Batty answered hastily. “He’s so particular. Why, if I
asked you to have another cup of tea, he’d shut the piano, and that
makes things very uncomfortable indeed. You can imagine. And John has
this new dog—really I don’t think it’s right on a Sunday. It’s all dogs
and cricket with him. Well, cricket’s better than football, for really,
on a Saturday in the winter I never know whether I shall see him dead
or alive. I do wish I’d had a girl.” She took Henrietta’s hand. “And
you, poor dear child, without a mother—what was it she died of, my
dear? Ah you’ll miss her, you’ll miss her! My own dear mother died the
day after I was married, and I said to Mr. Batty, ‘This can bode no
good.’ We had to come straight back from Bournemouth, where we’d gone
For our honeymoon, and by the time I was out of black my trousseau was
out of fashion. I must say Mr. Batty was very good about it. It was her
heart, what with excitement and all that. She was a stout woman. All my
side runs to stoutness, but Mr. Batty’s family are like hop-poles.
Well, I believe it’s healthier, and I must say the boys take after him.
Now I fancy you’re rather like Miss Rose.”

“They say I am just like my father.”

Mrs. Batty said “Ah!” with meaning, and Henrietta tried to sit
straighter on the seductive settee. She could not allow Mrs. Batty to
utter insinuating ejaculations and, raising her voice, she said:

“Mr. Batty, do play something.”

Charles Batty gazed at her over the shining surface of the grand piano
and looked remarkably like an owl, an owl that had lost its feathers.

“Something? What?”

“Charles!” exclaimed Mrs. Batty.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Henrietta murmured. She could think of nothing but
a pictorial piece of music her mother had sometimes played on the
lodging-house piano, with the growling of thunder-storms, the
twittering of birds after rain and a suggestion of church bells, but
she was determined not to betray herself.

“Whatever you like.”

He broke into a popular waltz, playing it derisively, yet with passion,
so that Mrs. Batty’s ponderous head began to sway and Henrietta’s feet
to tap. He played as though his heart were in the dance, and to
Henrietta there came delightful visions, thrilling sensations,
unaccountable yearnings. It was like the music she had heard at the
theatre, but more beautiful. Her eyes widened, but she kept them
lowered, her mouth softened and she caught her lip.

“Now I call that lovely,” Mrs. Batty said, with the last chord. His
look questioned Henrietta and she, cautious, simply smiled at him, with
a tilt of the lips, a little raising of the eyebrows, meant to assure
him that she felt as he did.

“If you’d play a pretty tune like that now and then, people would be
glad to listen,” Mrs. Batty went on. “I’m sure I quite enjoyed it.”

Henrietta’s suspicions were confirmed by these eulogies: she knew
already that what Mrs. Batty appreciated, her son would despise, and
she kept her little smile, saying tactfully, “It certainly made one
want to dance.”

“Can you sing?” he asked.

“Oh, a little.” She became timid. “I’m going to learn.” With those
vague eyes staring at her, she felt the need of justification. “Aunt
Caroline says every girl ought to sing. She and Aunt Sophia used to
sing duets.”

“Good heavens!” The exclamation came from the depths of Charles Batty’s
being. “They don’t do it now, do they?”

Henrietta’s pretty laughter rang out. “No, not now.” But though she
laughed there came to her a rather charming picture of her aunts in
full skirts and bustles, their white shoulders bare, with sashes round
their waists and a sheet of music shared, their mouths open, their eyes
cast upwards.

“Every girl ought to sing,” Charles quoted, and suddenly darted at
Henrietta the word, “Why?”

“Oh, well—” It was ridiculous to be discomposed by this young man, to
whom, she was sure, she was naturally superior; but sitting behind that
piano as though it were a pulpit, he had an air of authority and she
was anxious to propitiate him. “Well—” Henrietta repeated, hanging on
the word.

“For your own glorification, that’s all,” Charles told her. “That’s
all.” He caught his head in his hands. “It drives me mad.”

“Charles!” Mrs. Batty said again. That word seemed to be the whole
extent of her intercourse with him.

“Mad! Music—divine! And people get up and squeak. How they dare! A
violation of the temple!”

“Oh, dear me!” Mrs. Batty groaned.

“You play the piano yourself,” Henrietta said.

“Because I can. I’d show you if you cared about it.”

“I think I would rather go and see Mr. Batty’s flowers.”

“Yes, dear, do. Charles, take her to your father.” Mrs. Batty was very
hot; it would be a relief to her to heave and sigh alone.

Charles rose and advanced, stooping a little, carrying his arms as
though they did not belong to him and, in the hall, beside one of the
gleaming statues, he paused.

“I’ve offended you,” he said miserably. “I make mistakes—somehow.
Nobody explains. I shall do it again.”

“You were rather rude,” Henrietta said. “Why should you assume that I
squeak?”

“Sure to,” Charles said hopelessly, “or gurgle. Look here, I’ll teach
you myself, if you like.”

“I won’t be bullied.”

“Then you’ll never learn anything. Women are funny,” he said; “but then
everybody is. Do you know, I haven’t a single friend in the world?”

“Why not?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t get on.”

“If it comes to that, I haven’t a friend of my own age, either. And you
have a brother.”

“Ratting!” Charles said eloquently. “You’ll hear the noise.” He handed
her over to his father’s care.

She was more than satisfied with her afternoon. She did not see John
Batty but she heard the noise; she was aware that Mr. Batty considered
her a delightful young person; she had sufficiently admired his flowers
and he presented her with a bunch of orchids. For Mrs. Batty she felt
an amused affection; she was interested in the unfortunate Charles. She
felt her life widening pleasantly and, as she crunched again down the
gravel drive, the orchids in her hand, she felt a disinclination to go
home. She wanted to walk under the great trees which, spread with
brilliant green, made a long avenue on the other side of the road; to
wander beyond them, where a belt of grass led to a wild shrubbery
overlooking the gorge at its lowest point.

Here there were unexpected little paths running out to promontories of
the cliff and, at a sudden turn, she would find herself in what looked
almost like danger. Below her the rock was at an angle to harbour
hawthorn trees all in bud, blazing gorse bushes, bracken stiffly
uncurling itself and many kinds of grasses, but there were nearly two
hundred feet between her and the river, now at flood, and she felt that
this was something of an adventure. She followed each little path in
turn, half fearfully, for she was used to a policeman at every corner;
but she met no tramp, saw no suspicious-looking character and, finding
a seat under a hawthorn tree at a little distance from the cliff’s
edge, she sat down and put the orchids beside her.

It was part of the strange change in her fortune that she should
actually be handling such rare flowers. She had seen them in florists’
windows insolently putting out their tongues at people like herself who
rudely stared, and now she was touching them and they looked quite
polite, and she thought, with the bitterness which, bred of her
experiences, constantly rose up in the midst of pleasures, “It’s
because they know I have three thousand pounds and six pairs of silk
stockings.”

Then she noticed that one of the flowers was missing, a little one of a
fairy pink and shape, and almost immediately she heard footsteps on the
grass and saw a man approaching with the orchid in his hand. She
recognized the man she had seen riding the black horse on the day she
arrived in Radstowe and her heart fluttered. This was romance, this,
she had time to think excitedly, must be preordained. But when he
handed her the flower with a polite, “I think you dropped this,” she
wished he had chosen to keep the trophy. If she had had the happiness
of seeing him conceal it!

She said nervously, “Oh, yes, thank you very much. I’d just missed it,”
and as he turned away she had at least the minor joy of seeing a look
of arrested interest in his eyes.

She sat there holding the frail and almost sacred branch. She supposed
she was in love; there was no other explanation of her feelings; and
what a marvellous sequence of events! If Mr. Batty had not given her
the orchids this romantic episode could not have happened. And she was
glad that the eyes of the stranger had not rested on her that first day
when she was wearing her shabby, her atrociously cut clothes. Fate had
been kind in allowing him to see her thus, in a black dress with a
broad white collar, a carefully careless bow, silk stockings covering
her matchless ankles and—she glanced down—shoes that did their best to
conceal the squareness of her feet.

She recognized her own absurdity, but she liked it: she Had leisure in
which to be absurd, she had nothing else to do, And romance, which had
seemed to be waiting for her outside Nelson Lodge, had now met her in
the open! She was not going to pass it by. This was, she knew, no more
than a precious secret, a little game she could play all by herself,
but it had suddenly coloured vividly a life which was already opening
wider; and she would have been astonished and perhaps disgusted, to
learn that Aunt Rose had once occupied herself with similar dreamings.
But She was spared that knowledge and she was tempted to wait in her
place on the chance that the stranger would return, but, deciding that
it was hardly what a Mallett would do, she rose reluctantly, carrying
the pink orchid in one hand, the less favoured ones in the other.

The evening was exquisite: she saw a pale-blue sky fretted with green
leaves, striped with tree trunks astonishingly black; she heard
steamers threshing through the water and giving out warning whistles,
sounds to stir the heart with the thoughts of voyage, of danger, and of
unknown lands; and as she walked up the long avenue of elms she found
that all the people strolling out after tea for an evening walk had
happy, pleasant faces.

She met fathers and mothers in loitering advance of children, shy
lovers with no words for each other, an old lady in a bath chair
propelled by a man as old, young men in check caps, with flowers in
their coats, earnest people carrying prayer-books and umbrellas, girls
with linked arms and shrill laughter; and she envied none of them: not
the children, finding interest in everything they saw; not the parents,
proud in possession; not the old lady whose work was done, not the
young men and women eyeing each other and letting out their enticing
laughter; she envied no one in the world. She had found an occupation,
and that night, sitting at the dinner-table, she was conscious of the
difference in herself and of a new kinship with these women, the two
who could look back on adventures, rosy and poetic, the one who seemed
shrouded in some delicate mystery. It was as though she, too, had been
initiated; she was surer of herself, even in the presence of Aunt Rose,
with her beauty like that of a white flower, the faint irony of her
smile.


§ 4

A few days later Rose said, “I want to take you to see a friend of
mine, a Mrs. Sales.”

“Do the milkcarts belong to them?” Henrietta asked at once.

“Yes.” Rose was amused. “Mrs. Sales is an invalid and she would like to
see you. Shall we go on Saturday?” She added as she left the room,
“Mrs. Sales was hurt in a hunting accident, but you need not avoid the
subject. She likes to talk about it.”

“What a good thing,” Henrietta said, practically.

Aunt Rose was dressed for walking and Henrietta was afraid of being
asked to go with her, but Aunt Rose made no such suggestion. Since
Sunday Henrietta had been exploring Radstowe and its suburbs with an
enthusiasm surprising to the elder aunts, who did not care for
exercise; but Henrietta was as much inspired by the hope of seeing that
man again as by interest in the old streets, the unexpected alleys, the
flights of worn steps leading from Upper to Lower Radstowe, the slums,
cheek by jowl with the garden of some old house, the big houses
deteriorated into tenements. All these had their own charm and the
added one of having been familiar to her father, but she never forgot
to watch for the hero on the horse, the restorer of her orchid. If she
met him, should she bow to him, or pretend not to see him? She had
practised various expressions before the glass, and had almost decided
to look up as he passed and flash a glance of puzzled recognition from
her eyes. She thought she could do it satisfactorily and to-day she
meant to cross the bridge for the first time. He had been riding over
the bridge that afternoon and what had happened once might happen
again. Moreover, she had a feeling that across the water there was
something waiting for her. Certainly behind the trees clothing the
gorge there was the real country, with cows and sheep and horses in the
meadows, with the possibility of rabbits in the lanes, and she had
never yet seen a rabbit running wild. There were innumerable
possibilities on that farther side.

She crossed the bridge, stood to look up and down the river, to watch
the gulls, white against the green, to consider the ant-like hurrying
of the people on the road below and the clustered houses on the city
side, a medley of shapes and colours, rising in terraces, the whole
like some immense castle guarding the entrance to the town. And as
before, carriages and carts went and came over, schoolgirls on
bicycles, babies in perambulators, but this time there was no man on a
horse. She knew that this mattered very little; her stimulated
excitement was hardly more than salt and pepper to a dish already
appetizing enough, and now and then as she went along the road on a
level with the tree-tops in the gorge and had glimpses of water and of
rock, she had to remind herself of her preoccupation.

She passed big houses with their flowery gardens and then, suddenly
timorous, she decided not to go too far afield. She might get lost, she
might meet nasty people or horned beasts. A little path on her right
hand had an inviting look; it might lead her down through the trees to
the water’s edge. It was all strewn and richly brown with last autumn’s
leaves and on a tree a few yards ahead she saw a brilliant object—tiny,
long-tailed, extraordinarily swift. It was out of sight before she had
time to tell herself that this was a squirrel; and again she had a
consciousness of development. She had seen a squirrel in its native
haunts! This was wonderful, and she approached the tree. The squirrel
had vanished, but these woods, within sound of a city, yet harbouring
squirrels, seemed to have become one of her possessions. She was
enriched, she was a different person, and she, whose familiar fauna had
been stray cats and the black beetles in Mrs. Banks’ kitchen, was
actually in touch with nature. She now felt equal to meeting unattended
cows, but the woods offered enough excitement for to-day.

She found that her path did not immediately descend. It led her levelly
to an almost circular green space; then it became enclosed again and
soft to the feet with grass; and just ahead of her, blocking her way,
she saw two figures, those of a woman and a man. Their backs were
towards her, but there was no mistaking Aunt Rose’s back. It was
straight without being stiff, her dress fell with a unique perfection
and the little hat and grey floating veil were hers alone.

For an instant Henrietta stood still, and the man, turning to look at
his companion, showed the profile of her stranger. At the same moment
he touched Aunt Rose’s hand and before Henrietta swerved and sped back
whence she had come, she saw that hand removed gently, as though
reluctantly, and the head, mistily veiled, shaken slowly.

Her first desire was for flight and, safely on the road again, she
found her heart beating to suffocation; she was filled with an
indignation that almost brought her to tears; it was as though Aunt
Rose had deliberately robbed her of treasure—Aunt Rose, who was almost
middle-aged! For a moment she despised that fair, handsome man whose
image had filled her mind for what seemed a long, long time; then she
felt pity for him who had no eyes for youth, yet she remembered his
look of arrested interest.

But steadying her thoughts and enjoying her dramatic bitterness, she
laughed. He had merely surprised her likeness to Aunt Rose and that was
all. Her dream was over. She had known it was a dream, but the
awakening was cruel; it was also intensely exciting. She did not regret
it; she had at least discovered something about Aunt Rose. She had a
lover. That look of his, that pleading movement of his hand, were
unmistakable; he was a lover, and perhaps she, Henrietta Mallett, alone
knew the truth. She had suspected a secret, now she knew it; and she
had a sense of power, she had a weapon. She imagined herself standing
over Aunt Rose, armed with knowledge, no longer afraid; she was
involved in a romantic, perhaps a shameful, situation. Aunt Rose was
meeting a lover clandestinely in the woods while Aunt Caroline and Aunt
Sophia sat innocently at home, marvelling at Rose’s indifference to
men, yet rejoicing in her spinsterhood; and Henrietta felt that Rose
had wronged her stepsisters almost as much as she had wronged her
niece. She was deceitful; that, in plain terms, accounted for what had
seemed a mysterious and conquered sorrow. It was Henrietta who was to
suffer, through the shattering of a dream.

She went home, walking quickly, but feeling that she groped in a fog,
broken here and there by lurid lights, the lights of knowledge and
determination. She was younger than Aunt Rose, she was as pretty, and
she was the daughter of Reginald Mallett who, though she did not know
it, had always wanted the things desired by other people. She could
continue to love her stranger and at the back of her mind was the
unacknowledged conviction that Aunt Rose’s choice must be well worth
loving. And again how strangely events seemed to serve her: first the
dropping of an orchid and now the leaping of a squirrel! She felt
herself in the hands of higher powers.

She had a feverish longing to see Rose again, to see her plainly for
the first time and dressing for dinner was like preparing for a great
event. Yet when dinner-time came everything was surprisingly the same.
The deceived Caroline and Sophia ate with the usual appetite, Susan
hovered with the same quiet attention, and Rose showed no sign of a
recent interview with a lover. Across the candlelight she looked at
Henrietta kindly and Henrietta remembered the three thousand pounds.
She did not want to remember them. They constituted an obligation
towards this woman who did not sufficiently appreciate her, who met
that man secretly, in a wood, who was beautiful with a far-off kind of
beauty, like that of the stars. And while these angry thoughts passed
through Henrietta’s mind, Rose’s tender expression had developed into a
smile, and she asked, “Did you have a nice walk?”

Henrietta gulped. She looked steadily at Rose, and on her lips certain
words began to form themselves, but she did not utter them, and instead
of saying as she intended, “Yes, I went across the bridge and into
those woods on the other side,” she merely said, “Yes, yes, thank you,”
and smiled back. It had been impossible not to smile and she was angry
with Aunt Rose for making her a hypocrite. Perhaps she had smiled like
that in the wood and she did not look so very old. Even the flames of
the candles, throwing her face into strong relief as she leaned
forward, did not reveal any lines.

“Don’t walk too much, child,” Caroline said. “It enlarges the feet.
Girls nowadays can wear their brothers’ shoes and men don’t like that.
Have I ever told you”—Caroline was given to repetition of her
stories—“how one of my partners, ridiculous creature, insisted on
calling me Cinderella for a whole evening? Do you remember, Sophia?”

“Yes, dear,” Sophia said, and she determined that some day, when she
was alone with Henrietta, she would tell her that she, too, had been
called Cinderella that night. It was hard, but, since she loved her
sister, not so very hard, to ignore her own little triumphs, yet she
would like Henrietta to know of them. “Dear child,” she murmured
vaguely.

“We have our shoes made for us,” Caroline went on. “It’s necessary.”
She snorted scorn for a large-footed generation.

Rose laughed. She said, “Walk as much as you like, Henrietta. Health is
better than tiny feet.”

Henrietta had no response for this remark. For the first time she felt
out of sympathy with her surroundings, and her resentment against Rose
spread to her other aunts. They were foolish in their talk of men and
little feet; they knew, for all their worldliness, nothing about life.
They had never known what it was to be insufficiently fed or clothed;
they had never battled with black beetles and mutton bones, their white
hands had never been soiled by greasy water and potato skins and she
felt a bitterness against them all.  “Nonsense, Rose, what do you know
about it?” Caroline asked. “You’re a nun, that’s what you are.”

“Ah, lovely!” Sophia sighed, but Henrietta, thinking of that man in the
wood, raised her dark eyebrows sceptically.

“Lovely! Rubbish! A nun, and the first in the family. All our women,”
Caroline turned to Henrietta, “have broken hearts. They can’t help it.
It’s in the blood. You’ll do it yourself. All except Rose. And our
men—” she guffawed; “yes, even the General—but if I tell you about our
men Sophia will be shocked.”

“The men!” Henrietta straightened herself and looked round the table.
Her dark eyes shone, and the anger she was powerless to display against
Aunt Rose, the remembrance of her own and her mother’s struggles, found
an outlet. “You can’t tell me anything I don’t know. I don’t think it
is funny. Haven’t I suffered through one of them? My father, he wasn’t
anything to boast about.”

“Henrietta,” Sophia said gently, and Caroline uttered a stern, “What
are you saying?”

“I don’t care,” Henrietta said. “Perhaps you’re proud of all the harm
he did, but my mother and I had to bear it. He was weak and selfish; we
nearly starved, but he didn’t. Oh, no, he didn’t!” With her hands
clasped tightly on her knee she bent over the table and her head was
lowered with the effect of some small animal prepared for a spring. “Do
you know,” she said, “he wore silk shirts? Silk shirts! and I had only
one set of underclothing in the world! I had to wash them overnight.
That was my father—a Mallett! Were they all like that?”

There was silence until Caroline, peeling an apple with trembling
fingers, said severely, “I don’t think we need continue this
conversation.” Her indignation was beyond mere words; she was outraged;
her brother had been insulted by this child who owed his sisters
gratitude; the family had been held up to scorn, and Henrietta, aware
of what she had done and of her obligations, was overwhelmed with
regret, with confusion, with the sense that, after all, it was she who
really loved and understood her father.

“We will excuse you, Henrietta, if you have finished your dessert,”
Caroline said. She had a great dignity.

This was a dismissal and Henrietta stood up. She could not take back
her words, for they were true: she did not know how to apologize for
their manner; she felt she would have to leave the house to-morrow and
she had a sudden pride in Aunt Caroline and in her own name. But there
was nothing she could do.

Most unexpectedly, Rose intervened. “You must forgive Henrietta’s
bitterness,” she said quietly. “It is natural.”

“But her own father!” Sophia remonstrated tearfully, and added
tenderly, “Ah, poor child!”

Henrietta dropped into her chair. She wept without concealment. “It
isn’t that I didn’t love him,” she sobbed.

“Ah, yes, you loved him,” Sophia said. “So did we.” She dabbed her face
with her lace handkerchief. “It is Rose who knows nothing about him,”
she said, with something approaching anger. “Nothing!”

“Perhaps that is why I understand,” Rose said.

“No, no, you don’t!” Henrietta cried. She could not admit that. She
would not allow Aunt Rose to make such a claim. She looked from
Caroline to Sophia. “It’s we who know,” she said. Yes, it was they
three who were banded together in love for Reginald Mallett, in their
sympathy for each other, in the greater nearness of their relationship
to the person in dispute. She looked up, and she saw through her tears
a slight quiver pass over the face of Rose and she knew she had hurt
her and she was glad of it. “You must forgive me,” she said to
Caroline.

“Well, well; he was a wretch—a great wretch—a great dear. Let us say no
more about it.”

It was Rose, now, who was in disgrace, and it was Henrietta, Caroline
and Sophia who passed an evening of excessive amiability in the
drawing-room.

Henrietta felt heroically that she had thrown down her glove and it was
annoying, the next morning, to find Rose would not pick it up. She
remained charming; she was inimitably calm: she seemed to have
forgotten her offence of the night before and Henrietta delighted in
the thought that, though Rose did not know it, she and Henrietta were
rivals in love, and she told herself that her own time would come.

She had only to wait. She was a great believer in her own luck, and had
not Aunt Caroline assured her that all the Mallett women were born to
break hearts—all but Aunt Rose? Some day she was bound to meet that man
again and, looking in the glass after the Mallett manner, she was
pleased with what she saw there. She was her father’s daughter. Her
father had never denied himself anything he wanted, and since her
outbreak against him she felt closer to him; she was prepared to
condone his sins, even to emulate them and find in him her excuse. She
looked at the portrait on the wall, she kissed her hand to it. Somehow
he seemed to be helping her.

But with all her carefully nurtured enmity, she could not deny her
admiration for Aunt Rose. She was proud to sit beside her in the
carriage which took them to Sales Hall, and on that occasion Rose
talked more than usual, telling Henrietta little stories of the people
living in the houses they passed and little anecdotes of her own
childhood connected with the fields and lanes.

Henrietta sighed suddenly. “It must be nice,” she said, “to be part of
a place. You can’t be part of London, in lodging-houses, with no
friends. I should love to have had a tree for a friend, all my life. It
sounds silly, but it would make me feel different.” She was angry with
herself for saying this to Aunt Rose, but again she could not help it.
She saw too much with her eyes and Aunt Rose pleased them and she
assured herself that though these softened her heart and loosened her
tongue, she could resume her reserve at her leisure. “There was a tree,
a cherry, in one of the gardens once, but we didn’t stay there long. We
had to go.” She added quickly, “It was too expensive for us. I suppose
they charged for the tree, but I did long to see it blossom; and this
spring,” she waved a hand, “I’ve seen hundreds—I’ve seen a squirrel—”
She stopped.

“Dear little things,” Rose said. They were jogging alongside the high,
bare wall she hated, and the big trees, casting their high, wide
branches far above and beyond it, seemed to be stretching out to the
sea and the hills.

“Have you seen one lately?” Henrietta asked.

“What? A squirrel? No, not lately. They’re shy. One doesn’t see them
often.”

“Oh, then I was lucky,” Henrietta said. “I saw one in those woods we’ve
just passed, the other day.” She looked at her Aunt Rose’s creamy
cheek. There was no flush on it, her profile was serene, the dark
lashes did not stir.

“Soon,” Rose said, “you will see hills and the channel.”

“And when shall we come to Mrs. Sales’ house? Is she an old lady?”

“I don’t think you would call her very old. She is younger than I am.”

“Oh, that’s not old,” Henrietta said kindly. “Has she any children?”

“No, there’s a cat and a dog—especially a cat.”

“And a husband, I suppose?”

“Yes, a husband. Do you like cats, Henrietta?”

“They catch mice,” Henrietta said informatively.

“I don’t think this one has ever caught a mouse, but it lies in wait—
for something. Cats are horrible; they listen.” And she added, as
though to herself, “They frighten me.”

“I’m more afraid of dogs,” Henrietta said.

“Oh, but you mustn’t be.”

“Well,” Henrietta dared, “you’re afraid of cats.”

“I know, but dogs, they seem to be part of one’s inheritance—dogs and
horses.”

“All the horses I’ve known,” Henrietta said with her odd bitterness,
“have been in cabs, and even then I never knew them well.”

“Francis Sales must show you his,” Rose said. “There are the hills. Now
we turn to the left, but down that track and across the fields is the
short cut to Sales Hall. One can ride that way.”

“I should like to see the dairy,” Henrietta remarked, “or do they
pretend they haven’t one?”

Rose smiled. “No, they’re very proud of it. It’s a model dairy. I’ve no
doubt Francis will be glad to show you that, too. And here we are.”

The masculine hall, with its smell of tobacco, leather and tweed, the
low winding staircase covered with matting, its walls adorned with
sporting prints, was a strange introduction to the room in which
Henrietta found herself. She had an impression of richness and colour;
the carpet was very soft, the hangings were of silk, a fire burned in
the grate though the day was warm and before the fire lay the cat. The
dog was on the window-sill looking out at the glorious world, full of
smells and rabbits which he loved and which he denied himself for the
greater part of each day because he loved his mistress more, but he
jumped down to greet Rose with a great wagging of his tail.

She stooped to him, saying, “Here is Henrietta, Christabel. Henrietta,
this is Mrs. Sales.”

The woman on the couch looked to Henrietta like a doll animated by some
diabolically clever mechanism, she was so pink and blue and fair. She
was, in fact, a child’s idea of feminine beauty and Henrietta felt a
rush of sorrow that she should have to lie there, day after day,
watching the seasons come and go. It was marvellous that she had
courage enough to smile, and she said at once, “Rose Mallett is always
trying to give me pleasure,” and her tone, her glance at Rose, startled
Henrietta as much as if the little thin hand outside the coverlet had
suddenly produced a glittering toy which had its uses as a dagger. She,
too, looked at Rose, but Rose was talking to the dog and it was then
that Henrietta became really aware of the cat. It was certainly
listening; it had stretched out its fore-paws and revealed shining,
nail-like claws, and those polished instruments seemed to match the
words which still floated on the warm air of the room.

“And now she has brought you,” Christabel went on. “It was kind of you
to come. Do sit here beside me. Tell me what you think of Rose. Tell me
what you think,” she laughed, “of your aunt. She’s beautiful, isn’t
she?”

“Yes, very,” Henrietta said, and she spoke coldly, because she, too,
was a Mallett, and she suspected this praise uttered in Rose’s hearing
and still with that sharpness as of knives. She had never been in a
room in which she felt less at ease: perhaps she had been prejudiced by
Aunt Rose’s words about the cat, but that seemed absurd and she was
confused by her vague feelings of anger and pity and suspicion.

However, she did her best to be a pleasant guest. She had somehow to
break the tenseness in the room and she called on her reserve of
anecdote. She told the story of Mr. Jenkins trying to fetch his boots
and catch a glimpse of Mrs. Banks’s daily help who could cook but had
no character; she described the stickiness of his collar; and because
she was always readily responsive to her surroundings, she found it
natural to be humorous in a somewhat spiteful way; and at a casual
mention of the Battys, she became amusing at the expense of Charles and
felt a slight regret when she had roused Christabel’s laughter. It
seemed unkind; he had confided in her; she had betrayed him; and Rose
completed her discomfiture by saying, “Ah, don’t laugh at poor Charles.
He feels too much.”

Christabel nodded her head. “Your aunt is very sympathetic. She
understands men.” She added quickly, “Have you met my husband?”

“No,” Henrietta said, “I’ve only seen your carts.”

The two women laughed and it was strange to hear them united in that
mirth. Henrietta looked puzzled. “Well,” she explained, “it was one of
the first things I noticed. It stuck in my head.” Naturally the
impressions of that day had been unusually vivid and she saw with
painful clearness the figure of the man on the horse, as enduring as
though it had been executed in bronze yet animated by ardent life.

“Well,” Christabel said, “you are to have tea with the owner of the
carts. Rose has tea with him every time she comes. It’s part of the
ceremony.” She sighed wearily; the cat moved an ear; the nurse entered
as a signal that the visitors must depart. “You’ll come again, won’t
you?” Christabel asked, holding Henrietta’s hand and, as Rose said a
few words to the nurse, she whispered, “Come alone”; and surprisingly,
from the hearthrug, there was a loud purring from the cat.

It was like release to be in the matted corridor again and it was in
silence that Rose led the way downstairs. Henrietta followed slowly,
looking at the pictures of hounds in full cry, top-hatted ladies taking
fences airily, red-coated gentlemen immersed in brooks, but at the turn
of the stairs she stood stock-still. She had the physical sensation of
her heart leaving its place and lodging in her throat. Her stranger was
standing in the hall; he was looking at Aunt Rose, and she knew now
what expression he was wearing in the wood; he was looking at her
half-angrily and as though he were suffering from hunger. She could not
see her aunt’s face, but when Henrietta stood beside her, Rose turned,
saying, “Henrietta, let me introduce Mr. Sales.”

He said, “How do you do?” and then she saw again that look of interest
with which she seemed to have been familiar for so long. “I think I
have seen you before,” he said.

“It was you who picked up my orchid.”

“Of course.” He looked from her to Rose. “I couldn’t think who you
reminded me of, but now I know.”

“I don’t think we are very much alike,” Henrietta said.

Rose laughed. “Oh, don’t say that. I have been glad to think we are.”

“You might be sisters,” said Francis Sales.

This little scene, being played so easily and lightly by this man and
woman, had a nightmare quality for Henrietta. It had the confusion, the
exaggerated horror of an evil dream, without the far-away consciousness
of its unreality. Here she was, in the presence of the man she loved
and it was wicked to love him. She had longed to meet him and now she
wished she might have kept his memory only, the figure on the horse,
the man with the pink orchid in his hand. She had suspected her Aunt
Rose of a secret love affair, she had now discovered her guilty of sin.
The evidence was slight, but Henrietta’s conviction was tremendous. She
was horrified, but she was also elated. This was drama, this was life.
She was herself a romantic figure; she was robbed of her happiness, her
youth was blighted; the woman upstairs was wronged and Henrietta
understood why there were knives on her tongue: she understood the
watchfulness of the cat.

Yet, as they sat in the cool drawing-room with its pale flowery chintz,
its primrose curtains, the faded water-colours on the walls and Aunt
Rose pouring tea into the flowered cups, she might, if she had wished,
have been persuaded that she was wrong. Perhaps she had mistaken that
angry, starving look in the man’s eyes; it had gone; nothing could have
been more ordinary than his expression and his conversation. But she
knew she was not wrong and she sat there, on the alert, losing not a
glance, not a tone. Her limbs were trembling, she could not eat and she
was astonished that Aunt Rose could nibble biscuits with such
nonchalance, that Francis Sales could eat plum cake.

He was, without doubt, the most attractive man she had ever seen; his
long brown fingers fascinated her. And again she wondered at the odd
sequence of events. She had seen his name on the carts, she had seen
him on the horse, he had picked up her pink orchid, she had been led by
Fate and a squirrel into the wood and now she found him here. It was
like a play and it would be still more like a play if she snatched him
from Aunt Rose. In that idea there was the prompting of her father, but
her mother’s part in her was a reminder that she must not snatch him
for herself. No, only out of danger; men were helpless, they were like
babies in the hands of women, and hands could differ; they could hurt
or soothe, and she imagined her own performing the latter task. She saw
it as her mission, and o

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