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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Misses Mallett, by E. H. Young
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Misses Mallett
+
+Author: E. H. Young
+
+Release Date: June 17, 2003 [eBook #8131]
+[Most recently updated: January 19, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Suzanne Shell, Anne Reshnyk, cam, Delphine Lettau, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MISSES MALLETT ***
+
+
+
+
+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 on the way home she told herself that her
+silence was not that of anger but of dedication.
+
+
+§ 5
+
+She thought Aunt Rose looked at her rather curiously, though there was
+no expression so definite in that glance. Her aunts did not ask
+questions, they never interfered, and if Henrietta chose to be silent
+it was her own affair. She was, as a matter of fact, swimming in a warm
+bath of emotion and she experienced the usual chill when she descended
+from the carriage and felt the pavement under her feet. She had
+dedicated herself to a high purpose, but for the moment it was
+impossible to get on with the noble work. The mere business of life had
+to be proceeded with, and though the situation was absorbing it receded
+now and then until, looking at her Aunt Rose, she was reminded of it
+with a shock.
+
+She looked often at her aunt, finding her more than ever fascinating.
+She tried to see her with the eyes of Francis Sales, she tried to
+imagine how Rose’s clear grey eyes, so dark sometimes that they seemed
+black, answered the appeal of his, yet, as the days passed, Henrietta
+found it difficult to remember her resignation and her wrongs in this
+new life of luxury and pleasure.
+
+She woke each morning to the thought of gaiety and to the realization
+of comfort and the blessed absence of anxiety. Her occupation was the
+getting of enjoyment and she took it all eagerly yet without greed, and
+as she was enriched she became generous with her own offerings of
+laughter, sympathy and affection. She liked and looked for the
+brightening of Caroline and Sophia at her approach, she became
+pleasantly aware of her own ability to charm and she rejoiced in an
+exterior world no longer limited to streets. Each morning she went to
+her window and looked over and beyond the roofs, so beautiful and
+varied in themselves, to the trees screening the open country across
+the river and if the sight reminded her to sigh for her own sorrows and
+to think bitterly of Aunt Rose, she had not time to linger on her
+emotions. Summer was gay in Upper Radstowe. There were tea-parties and
+picnics, she paid calls with her aunts and learnt to play lawn tennis
+with her contemporaries. Her friendship with the Battys ripened.
+
+She was always sure of her welcome at Prospect House, and though she
+often assured herself that she could love no one but Francis Sales,
+that was no reason why others should not love her. From that point of
+view John Batty was a failure. He took her to a cricket match, but
+finding that she did not know the alphabet of the game, and was more
+interested in the spectators than in the players, he gave her up. He
+admired her appearance, but it did not make amends for ignorance of
+such a grossness; and, equally displeased with him, she returned home
+alone while he watched out the match.
+
+The next day when she paid her usual Sunday visit, she ignored him
+pointedly and mentally crossed him off her list. Charles, ugly and odd,
+was infinitely more responsive, though he greeted her on this occasion
+with reproach.
+
+“You went to a cricket match yesterday with John.”
+
+“It was very boring and I got a headache. I shall never go again.”
+
+“He said he wouldn’t take you.”
+
+Henrietta smiled subtly, implying a good deal.
+
+“I shouldn’t have thought,” Charles went on mournfully, “of suggesting
+such a thing.”
+
+“My aunts were rather shocked. I went on the top of a tramcar with
+him.”
+
+“But if you can go out with him, why shouldn’t you go out with me?”
+
+“But where?” Henrietta questioned practically.
+
+“Well, to a concert.”
+
+“When?”
+
+“When there is one. I don’t know. They won’t have one in this
+God-forsaken place until the autumn.”
+
+“That’s a long time ahead.”
+
+He spread his hands. “You see, I never have any luck. I just want you
+to promise.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll promise,” Henrietta said.
+
+“It will be the first time I’ve been anywhere with a girl,” he said. “I
+don’t get on.”
+
+“Have you wanted to?”
+
+He sighed. “Yes, but not much.” Her laughter, which was so pretty,
+startled him; it also delighted him with its music, and his sad eyes
+grew wider and more vague. He had an inspiration. “I’ll take you home
+now.”
+
+“I’m not going home. I’ve promised to go to Sales Hall.”
+
+“Sales Hall—oh, yes, he’s the man who talks at concerts—when he goes. I
+know him. Have you ever wanted to murder anyone? I’ve wanted to murder
+him. I might some day. You’d better warn him.”
+
+Was this another strand in the web of her drama, she wondered. Was Aunt
+Rose involved in this too? She breathed quickly. “Why, what has he done
+to you?”
+
+He ground his teeth, looking terrible but ineffectual. “Stolen beauty.
+That’s what his sort does. He kills lovely things that fly and run, for
+sport, and he steals beauty, spoils it.”
+
+“Who?” she whispered.
+
+“That man Sales.”
+
+“No, no. Who has he stolen and spoilt?”
+
+“Heavenly music—and my happiness. I lost a bar—a whole bar, I tell you.
+I’ll never forgive him. I can’t get it back.”
+
+“If that’s all—” Henrietta gestured.
+
+“And there are others,” Charles went on. “I never forget them. I meet
+them in the streets and they look horrible—like beetles.” “I believe
+you’re mad,” Henrietta said earnestly. “It’s not sense.”
+
+“What is sense?” Henrietta could not tell him. She looked at him, a
+little afraid, but excited by this proximity to danger. And I thought
+you would understand.”
+
+“Of course I do.” She could not bear to let go of anything which might
+do her credit. “I do. But you exaggerate. And Mr. Sales—” She
+hesitated, and in doing so she remembered to be angry with Charles
+Batty for maligning him. “How can you judge Mr. Sales?” she asked with
+scorn. “He is a man.”  “And what am I?” Charles demanded.
+
+“You’re—queer,” she said.
+
+“Yes”—his face twisted curiously—“I suppose if I shot things and chased
+them, you’d like me better. But I can’t—not even for that, but perhaps,
+some day—” He seemed to lose himself in the vagueness of his thoughts.
+
+She finished his sentence gaily, for after all, it was absurd to
+quarrel with him. “Some day we’ll go to a concert.”
+
+He recovered himself. “More than that,” he said. He nodded his head
+with unexpected vigour. “You’ll see.”
+
+She gazed at him. It was wonderful to think of all the things that
+might happen to a person who was only twenty-one, but she hastily
+corrected her thoughts. What could happen to her? In a few short days
+events had rushed together and exhausted themselves at their source!
+There was nothing left. She said good-bye to Charles and thought him
+foolish not to offer to accompany her. She said, “It’s a very long way
+to Sales Hall,” and he answered, “Oh, you’ll meet that man somewhere,
+potting at rabbits.”
+
+“Do you think so? I hope he won’t shoot me.” And she saw herself
+stretched on the ground, wounded, dying, with just enough force to
+utter words he could never forget—words that would change his whole
+life. She was willing to sacrifice herself and she said good-bye to
+Charles again, and sorrowfully, as though she were already dead. She
+tried to plan her dying words, but as she could not hit on satisfactory
+ones, she contented herself with deciding that whether she were wounded
+or not, she would try to introduce the subject of Aunt Rose; and as she
+went she looked out hopefully for a tall figure with a gun under its
+arm.
+
+She met it, but without a gun, on the track where, on one side, the
+trees stood in fresh green, like banners, and on the other the meadows
+sloped roughly to the distant water. He had been watching for her, he
+said, and suddenly over her assurance there swept a wave of
+embarrassment, of shyness. She was alone with him and he was not like
+Charles Batty. He looked down at her with amusement in his blue,
+thick-lashed eyes, and it was difficult to believe that here was the
+hero, or the villain, of the piece. She felt the sensation she had
+known when he handed her the orchid, and she blushed absurdly when he
+actually said, as though he read her thoughts, “No orchids to-day?”
+
+“No.” She laughed up at him. “That was a special treat. I didn’t see
+Mr. Batty this afternoon, and he couldn’t afford to give them away
+every Sunday.”
+
+“Do you go there every Sunday?”  “Yes; they’re very kind.”
+
+“They would be.”
+
+This reminded her a little of Mr. Jenkins, though she cast the idea
+from her quickly. Mr. Jenkins was not worthy of sharing a moment’s
+thought with Francis Sales; his collar was made of rubber, his accent
+was grotesque; but the influence of the boarding-house was still on her
+when she asked very innocently, “Why?”
+
+“Oh, I needn’t tell you that.”
+
+It was Mr. Jenkins again, but in a voice that was soft, almost
+caressing. Did Mr. Sales talk like this to Aunt Rose? She could not
+believe it and she was both flattered and distressed. She must assert
+her dignity and she had no way of doing it but by an expression of
+firmness, a slight tightening of lips that wanted to twitch into a
+smile.
+
+“Mr. Charles Batty,” the voice went on, “seems to have missed his
+opportunities, but I have always suspected him of idiocy.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean,” she said untruthfully, and then, loyally,
+she protested. “But he’s not an idiot. He’s very clever, too clever,
+not like other people.”
+
+“Well, there are different names for that sort of thing,” he said
+easily, and she was aware of an immense distance between her and him—
+he seemed to have put her from him with a light push—and at the same
+time she was oppressively conscious of his nearness. She felt angry,
+and she burst out, “I won’t have you speaking like that about Charles.”
+
+“Certainly not, if he’s a friend of yours.”
+
+“And I won’t have you laughing at me.”
+
+He stopped in his long stride. “Don’t you laugh yourself at the things
+that please you very much?”
+
+“Oh, don’t!” she begged. He was too much for her; she was helpless, as
+though she had been drugged to a point when she could move and think,
+but only through a mist, and she felt that his ease, approaching
+impudence, was as indecent as Aunt Rose’s calm. It was both irritating
+and pleasing to know that she could have shattered both with the word
+she was incapable of saying, but her nearest approach to that was an
+inquiry after the health of Mrs. Sales. He replied that she was looking
+forward to Henrietta’s visit. She had very few pleasures and was always
+glad to see people.
+
+“Aunt Rose”—here was an opportunity—“comes, doesn’t she, every week?”
+
+He said he believed so.
+
+“Did you know her when she was a little girl?”
+
+He gave a discouraging affirmative.
+
+“What was she like?”
+
+“I don’t know.” He had, indeed, forgotten.
+
+“Well, you must remember her when she was young.”
+
+“Young?”
+
+Henrietta nodded bravely though he seemed to smoulder. “As young as I
+am.”
+
+“She was exactly the same as she is now. No, not quite.”
+
+“Nicer?”
+
+“Nicer? What a word! Nice!” He looked all round him and made a flourish
+with his stick. He could not express himself, yet he seemed unable to
+be silent. “Do you call the sky nice?”
+
+“Yes, very, when it’s blue.”
+
+He gave, to her great satisfaction, the kind of laugh she had expected.
+“Let us talk about something a little smaller than the sky,” he said.
+He looked down at her, and she was relieved to see the anger fading
+from his face; but she was glad to have learnt something of what he
+felt for Aunt Rose. To him she was like the sky whence came the rain
+and the sunshine, where the stars shone and the moon, and she wondered
+to what he would have compared herself. “You said we might be sisters.”
+
+He looked again. She wore a broad white hat in honour of the season,
+her black dress was dotted with white; from one capable white hand she
+swung her gloves; she tilted her chin, a trick she had inherited from
+her father, in a sort of challenge.
+
+“You like the idea?” he asked.
+
+“I don’t believe it. I’m really the image of my father. Did you know
+him?”
+
+“No. Heard of him, of course.”
+
+“It’s him I’m like,” Henrietta repeated firmly.
+
+“Then the story of his good looks must be true.”
+
+Mixed with her pleasure, she had a return of disappointment. Here was
+Mr. Jenkins once more, and while it was sad to discover his
+re-incarnation in her ideal, it was thrilling to resume the kind of
+fencing she thought she had resigned. She forgot her virtuous resolves,
+and the remainder of the walk was enlivened by the hope of a thrust
+which she would have to parry, but none came. Francis Sales seemed to
+have exhausted his efforts, and at the door he said with a sort of
+sulkiness, “I think you had better go up alone. You must let me see you
+home.”
+
+This was not her first solitary visit to Christabel Sales, and she half
+dreaded, half enjoyed meeting the glances of those wide blue eyes,
+which were searching behind their innocence and hearing remarks which,
+though dropped carelessly, always gave her the impression of being
+tipped with steel. She was bewildered, troubled by her sense that she
+and Christabel were allies and yet antagonists, and her jealousy of her
+Aunt Rose fought with her unwilling loyalty to one of her own blood.
+There were moments when she acquiesced in the suggestions offered in
+the form of admiration, and others when she stiffened with distaste,
+with a realization that she herself was liable to attack, with horror
+for the beautiful luxurious room, the crippled woman, the listening
+cat. Henrietta sometimes saw herself as a mouse, in mortal danger of a
+feline spring, and then pity for Christabel would overcome this
+weariness; she would talk to her with what skill she had for
+entertainment, and she emerged exhausted, as though from a fight.
+
+This evening she was amazed to be received without any greeting, but a
+question: “Has Rose Mallett told you why I am here?” Christabel was
+lying very low on her couch. Her lips hardly moved; these might have
+been the last words she would ever utter.
+
+“Yes, a hunting accident. And you told me about it yourself.”
+
+There was a silence, and then the voice, its sharpness dulled, said
+slowly, “Yes, I told you what I remembered and what I heard afterwards.
+A hunting accident! It sounds so simple. That’s what they call it.
+Names are useful. We couldn’t get on without them. I get such queer
+ideas, lying here, with nothing to do. Before I was married I never
+thought at all. I was too happy.” She seemed to be lost in memory of
+that time. Henrietta sat very still; she breathed carefully as though a
+brusqueness would be fatal, and the voice began again. “They call you
+Henrietta. It’s only a name, but it doesn’t describe you; nobody knows
+what it means except you, but it’s convenient. It’s the same with my
+hunting accident. Do you see?”
+
+Henrietta said nothing. She had that familiar feeling of being in the
+dark, and now the evening shadows augmented it. She was conscious of
+the cat behind her, on the hearthrug.
+
+“Do you see?” Christabel persisted.
+
+“Things have to be called something,” Henrietta said.
+
+“That’s just what I have been telling you. And so Rose Mallett calls it
+a hunting accident.” A high-pitched and thin laugh came from the
+pillows. “She was terribly distressed about it. And she actually told
+me she had suspected that mare from the first. She told me! It’s
+funny—don’t you think so?”
+
+“No,” Henrietta said stoutly, “not funny at all.” She spoke in a very
+firm and reasonable voice, as though only her common sense could combat
+what seemed like insanity in the other. “I think it’s very sad.”
+
+“For me? Oh, yes, but I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking of your
+charming aunt, the most beautiful woman in Radstowe. That’s what I have
+heard her called. Yet why hasn’t she married? Can’t she find
+anybody”—the voice was gentle—“to love her? She suspected that mare but
+she warned nobody. Funny—”
+
+Henrietta had a physical inward trembling. She felt a dreadful rage
+against the woman on the couch, a sickening disgust, such as she would
+have felt at looking down a dark, deep well and seeing slime and blind
+ugliness at the bottom. She felt as though her ears were dirty; she
+tried to move, but she sat perfectly still and, dreading what would
+come next, she listened, fascinated.
+
+“Perhaps she is in love with somebody. Does she get many letters,
+Henrietta? She is very reserved, she doesn’t tell me much; but, of
+course, I’m interested in her.” She laughed again. “I am very anxious
+for her happiness. It would comfort me to know anything you can tell
+me.”
+
+Henrietta managed to stand up. “I know nothing,” she said in a slightly
+broken voice. “I don’t want to know anything.”
+
+Christabel interrupted smoothly. “Perhaps you are wise or you couldn’t
+stay happily in that house. They’re all like witches, those women. They
+frighten me. You must be very brave, Henrietta.”
+
+“I’m very grateful,” Henrietta said; “and I shan’t come here again, no,
+never. I don’t know what you have been trying to tell me, but I don’t
+believe it. It’s no good crying. I shall never come back. They’re not
+witches.” She had a vision of them at the dinner table, Rose like a
+white flower, Caroline and Sophia jewelled, gaily dressed, a little
+absurd, oddly distinguished. “Witches! They are my father’s sisters,
+and I love them.”
+
+“Ah, but you don’t know Rose,” Christabel sobbed. “And don’t say you
+will never come again. And don’t tell Francis. He would be angry.”
+
+“How could I tell him?” Henrietta asked indignantly. “No, no, I don’t
+want to see either of you again. I shall go away—go away—” She left the
+room to the sound of a horrible, faint weeping.
+
+She meant what she had said. She thought she would go away from
+Radstowe and forget Christabel Sales, forget Francis Sales, whom she
+would no longer pretend to love; forget those insinuations that Aunt
+Rose was guilty of a crime. This place and these people were abhorrent
+to her, she felt she had been poisoned and she rushed down the long
+avenue where, overhead, the rooks were calling, as though she could
+only be saved by the clean night air beyond the house. She was shocked;
+she believed that Christabel was mad; the thought of that warm room
+where the cat listened, made her gasp, and her horror extended to
+Francis Sales himself. The place felt wicked, but the clear road
+stretching before her, the pale evening sky and the sound of her own
+feet tapping the road restored her.
+
+She was glad to be alone and, avoiding the short cut, she enjoyed the
+sanity of the highway used by ordinary men and women in the decent
+pursuit of their lives. But now the road was empty and though at
+another time she would have been afraid of the lonely country, to-night
+she had a sense of escape from greater perils than any lurking here.
+And before long it all seemed like a dream, but it was a dream that
+might recur if she ran the risk.
+
+No, she would never go there again, she would never envy Aunt Rose a
+lover from that house, she would never believe that the worst of
+Christabel’s implications were true. They were the fabrications of a
+suspicious woman, and though her jealousy might be justified, it seemed
+to Henrietta that she deserved her fate. She was hateful, she was
+poisonous, and Henrietta felt a sudden tenderness for Aunt Rose and
+Francis Sales. They could not help themselves, for they were
+unfortunate, she longed to show them sympathy and she saw herself
+taking them by the hand and saying gently, “Confide in me. I
+understand.” She imagined Aunt Rose melting at that touch and those
+words into tears, perhaps of repentance, certainly of gratitude, but at
+this point Henrietta’s fancies were interrupted by the sound of
+footsteps behind her. She quickened her pace, then began to run, and
+the steps followed, gaining on her. She could not outrun them and she
+stopped, turning to see who came.
+
+“Miss Mallett!” It was the voice of Francis Sales. She sank down on a
+heap of stones, panting and laughing. He sat beside her. “What’s the
+matter?”
+
+“I don’t know. I hate to hear anybody coming behind me. It might have
+been a tramp. I’m very much afraid of tramps.”
+
+“I said I would see you home.”
+
+“Yes, I forgot. Let us go on.”
+
+“You didn’t stay long.”
+
+“I don’t think Mrs. Sales is very well.”
+
+“She isn’t. She gets hysterical and that affects her heart. I thought
+you would do her good.” He seemed to blame Henrietta. “And I thought a
+walk with you would do me good, too. I have a pretty dull life.”
+
+“Aren’t you interested in your cows and things?”
+
+“A man can’t live on cows.”
+
+“But you have other things and you live in the country. People can’t
+have everything. I don’t suppose you’d change with anybody really, if
+you could. People are like that. They grumble, but they like being
+themselves. Suppose you were a young man in a shop, measuring cloth or
+selling bacon. You’d find that much duller, I should think.”
+
+He laughed a little. “Where did you learn this wisdom?”
+
+“I’ve had experience,” she said staidly. “Yes, you’d find it duller.”
+
+“Perhaps you’re right. But then, you might come to buy the bacon. I
+should look forward to that.”
+
+In the darkness, these playful words frightened her a little; they hurt
+her sense of what was fitting from him to her and at the same time they
+pleased her with their hint of danger.
+
+“Would you?” she asked slowly.
+
+He paused, saying, “May I light a pipe?” and by the flame of the match
+he examined her face quite openly for a moment. “You know I would,” he
+said.
+
+She met his look, her eyes wavered and neither spoke for a long time.
+She was oppressed by his nearness, the smell of his tobacco, her own
+inexplicable delight. From the trees by the roadside birds gave out
+happy chirrups, country people in their Sunday clothes and creaking
+boots passed or overtook the silent pair; a man on a horse rode out
+from a gate and cantered with very little noise on the rough grass
+edging the road. Henrietta watched him until he disappeared and then it
+seemed as if he had never been there at all. A sheep in a field uttered
+a sad cry and every sight and sound seemed a little unreal, like things
+happening on a stage.
+
+And gradually Henrietta’s excitement left her. The world seemed a sad
+and lonely place; she remembered that she herself was lonely; there was
+no one now to whom she was the first, and she had a longing for her
+mother. She wished that instead of returning to Nelson Lodge with its
+cleanliness and richness and comfort, she might turn the key of the
+boarding-house door and find herself in the narrow passage with the
+smell of cooking and the gas turned low; she wished she could run up
+the stairs and rush into the drawing-room and find her mother sitting
+there, sewing by the fire, and see her look up and hear her say, “Well,
+Henry dear, what have you been doing?” After all, that old life was
+better than this new one. The troubles of her mother, her own young
+struggles for food and warmth, the woes of Mrs. Banks, had in them
+something nobler than she could find in the distresses of Christabel
+and Aunt Rose and Francis Sales, something redeeming them from the
+sordidness in which they were set. She checked a sob.
+
+“It’s a long way,” she sighed.
+
+“Are you tired?” His voice was gentle.
+
+“Yes, dreadfully.”
+
+“Then let us sit down again.”
+
+“No, I must go on. I must get back.”
+
+“If you would talk to me, you wouldn’t notice the distance.”
+
+“I don’t want to talk. I’m thinking. When we get to the bridge you can
+go back, can’t you? There will be lights and I shall be quite safe.”
+
+“Very well, but I wish you’d tell me what’s the matter.”
+
+“I’m very unhappy,” Henrietta said with a sob.
+
+“What on earth for? Look here,”—he touched her arm—“did Christabel say
+anything?”
+
+“I don’t know why it is.”
+
+“Are you going to cry?”
+
+“It’s no good crying.”
+
+He held the arm now quite firmly and they faced each other. “You’d
+better tell me the whole story.”
+
+Her lips quivered. She wished he would loosen his grip and hoped he
+would go on holding her for ever. It was a moment of mingled ecstasy
+and sadness. “Oh,” she almost wailed, “can’t I be unhappy if I want
+to?”
+
+He gave a short laugh, saying, “Poor little girl,” and stooping, kissed
+her on the mouth. She endured that kiss willingly for a moment and
+then, very lightly, struck him in the face.
+
+
+§ 6
+
+Afterwards there was some satisfaction in thinking that she had done
+the dramatic thing—what the pure-minded heroine always did to the
+villain; but at the time the action was spontaneous and unconsidered.
+Henrietta was not really avenging an insult: she was simply expressing
+her annoyance at her pleasure in it. Being, when she chose, a clear-
+sighted young woman, she realized this, but she also knew that Francis
+Sales would find the obvious meaning in the blow. For herself, she
+sanely determined to blot that episode from her mind: it was maddening
+to think of it as an insult and dangerous to remember its delight, and
+she was able calmly to tell her aunts that Mr. Sales had seen her home.
+
+“Then why didn’t he come in?” Caroline asked with a grunt. “Leaving you
+on the doorstep like a housemaid!”
+
+“He only came as far as the bridge.”
+
+“My dear child! What was he thinking of? Men are not what they were, or
+is it the women who are different? They haven’t the charm! They haven’t
+the old charm! My difficulty was always to get rid of the creatures.
+I’m disappointed in you, Henrietta.”
+
+“But he’s married,” Henrietta said gravely. “I only needed him on the
+dark roads and I should think he wanted to go back to Mrs. Sales.”
+
+“It would be the first time, then,” Caroline said.
+
+“Why, isn’t he fond of her?”
+
+“Don’t ask dangerous questions, child—and would you be fond of her
+yourself?”
+
+“She’s very pretty.”
+
+“Now, Caroline, don’t,” Sophia begged.
+
+Caroline chuckled. “Don’t what?”
+
+“Say what you were going to say.”
+
+Caroline chuckled again. “I can’t help it. My tongue won’t be tied. I’m
+like all the Malletts—”
+
+“But not before the child.”
+
+“You’re a prude, Sophia, and if Henrietta imagines that a man like
+Francis Sales, any man worth his salt—besides, Henrietta has knocked
+about the world. She is no more innocent than she looks.”
+
+“She doesn’t mean half she says,” Sophia whispered.
+
+“And neither is Francis Sales,” Caroline persisted. “Ridiculous! Dark
+roads, indeed! I don’t think I care for your wandering about at night,
+Henrietta.”
+
+“I won’t do it again,” Henrietta said meekly.
+
+“Sophia and I—” Caroline began one of her reminiscences, to which
+neither Sophia nor Henrietta listened. To the one, they were familiar
+in their exaggeration, and the other had her own thoughts, which were
+bewilderingly confused.
+
+She had meant to stand between Francis Sales and Aunt Rose; later she
+had wished to help them, now she did not know whether she wanted to
+help or hinder. The thing was too much for her, but she wondered if
+Aunt Rose had ever experienced such a kiss. Meeting her a few minutes
+later on the stairs, with her slim hand on the polished rail, a
+beautiful satin-shod foot gleaming below the lace of her dress, she
+seemed a being too ethereal for a salute so earthly, and because she
+looked so lovely, because Christabel had been unjust, Henrietta forgot
+to feel unfriendly.
+
+Rose said unexpectedly, “Oh, Henrietta, I am glad you have come back.
+You seem to have been away for a long time.”
+
+“I went to the Battys’ to tea and then to Sales Hall. I promised Mrs.
+Sales. Do you mind?”
+
+“Of course not; but I missed you.”
+
+“Oh! Oh! I never thought of that.”
+
+“I always miss you,” Rose said gravely. “You have made a great
+difference to us all.”
+
+Henrietta’s mouth opened with astonishment. “I had no idea. And I do
+nothing but enjoy myself.”
+
+Rose laughed. “That’s what we want you to do. You must be as happy as
+you can.”
+
+This, from Aunt Rose, was the most wonderful thing that had happened
+yet. Henrietta was overcome by astonishment and gratitude. “I had no
+idea. I never dreamt of your liking me. I thought you just put up with
+me.”
+
+“You haven’t given me much chance,” Rose said in a low voice, “of doing
+anything else.”
+
+It was true: Henrietta could not flourish when she thought herself
+unappreciated, but now she expanded like a flower blossoming in a
+night.
+
+“Oh, if we could be friends! There’s nobody to talk to except Charles
+Batty, and I hated, I simply hated being at Sales Hall to-night.” She
+tightened her lips and opened them to say, “I shan’t go there again. I
+said so. She is a terrible woman.”
+
+“She has a great deal to bear.”
+
+“Yes, and she counts on your remembering that,” Henrietta said acutely.
+
+“What was the matter to-night?”
+
+“Hints,” Henrietta whispered. “Hints,” and she added nervously, “about
+you.”
+
+Rose made a slight movement. “Don’t tell me.”
+
+“And the cat. I ran away. She was crying, but I didn’t care. I ran all
+down the avenue on to the road. Mr. Sales had said he would take me
+home, but I didn’t wait. It was much better under the sky. Then I heard
+footsteps, and it was Mr. Sales running after me.” She paused. Two
+stairs above her, Aunt Rose stood, listening with attention. She was,
+as usual, all black and white; her neck, rising from the black lace,
+looked like a bowl of cream laid out of doors to cool in the night.
+
+“He kissed me,” Henrietta said abruptly.
+
+Rose did not move, and before she spoke Henrietta had time to wonder
+what had prompted her to that confession. She had not thought about it,
+the words had simply issued of themselves.
+
+“Kissed you?”
+
+“Yes,” Henrietta said, and suddenly she wanted to make it easier for
+Aunt Rose. “I think he was sorry for me. I told him I was unhappy, but
+I couldn’t tell him why, I couldn’t say it was his wife. I think he
+meant it kindly.”
+
+“I am sure he did,” Rose said with admirable self-possession. “You look
+very young in that big hat, you are very young, and perhaps he guessed
+what you had been through. Don’t think about it any more.”
+
+“No.” Henrietta seemed to have no control over her tongue. “But then,
+you see, I hit him.”
+
+Rose managed a laugh. “Oh, Henrietta, how primitive!”
+
+“Yes,” Henrietta agreed, but she knew she had betrayed Francis Sales.
+She knew and Rose knew that she would not have struck him if the kiss
+had been paternal. “I suppose it was vulgar,” she murmured sadly, yet
+not without some skill.
+
+Rose descended the two stairs without a word and went to the bottom of
+the flight, but there she paused, saying, “Take off your things and let
+us have some music.”
+
+Henrietta was learning to sing, and in defiance of Charles Batty’s
+prophecy, she neither squeaked nor gurgled. She piped with a pretty
+simplicity and with an enjoyment which made her forget herself. Yet she
+looked charming, standing in the candle-light beside the shining grand
+piano on which Aunt Rose accompanied her, and to-night she felt they
+were united in more than the music: they were friends, they were
+fellow-sufferers, and long after Henrietta had tired of singing, Rose
+went on playing, mournfully, as it seemed to Henrietta, consoling
+herself with sweet sounds. Sophia sat before her embroidery frame,
+slowly pushing her needle in and out; Caroline read a novel with
+avidity and an occasional pause for chuckles, and when Rose at length
+dropped her hands on her knees and remained motionless, staring at the
+keys, Henrietta startled her aunts by saying firmly, “I am just going
+to enjoy life.”
+
+Rose raised her head and her enigmatic smile widened a little. Caroline
+exclaimed, “Good gracious! Why not?” Sophia said gently, “That is what
+we wish.”
+
+Henrietta stiffened herself for questions which did not come. Nobody
+expressed a desire to know what had caused this solemn declaration:
+Caroline went on reading, Sophia embroidering; Rose retired to bed.
+
+Henrietta was not daunted by this indifference. She persisted in her
+determination; she cast off all thoughts of ministering like an angel,
+or revenging like a demon; she enjoyed the gaieties with which the
+youth of Radstowe amused itself during the summer months; she
+accompanied her aunts to garden parties, ate ices, had her fortune told
+in tents, flirted mildly and endured Charles Batty’s peculiar
+half-apprehensive tyranny.
+
+Nothing went amiss with Charles but what he seemed to blame her for it,
+and while she resented this strange form of attention, she had a
+compensating conviction that he was really paying tribute and she knew
+that the absence of his complaints would have left a blank. Fixing her
+with his pale eyes, he described the bitterness of life in his father’s
+office, his mismanagement of clients, his father’s sneers, his mother’s
+sighs; his sufferings in not being allowed to go to Germany and study
+music.
+
+“If I were a man,” Henrietta said, voicing a pathetic faith in
+masculine ability to break bonds, “I would do what I liked. I’d go to
+Germany and starve and be happy. A man can do and get anything he
+really wants.”
+
+“Ah, I shall remember that,” he said. “But I can’t go to Germany now,”
+he added darkly, and when she asked him for a reason, he groaned. “Even
+you—even you don’t understand me.”
+
+In this respect she understood him perfectly well, but she did not wish
+to clear the mysterious gloom, not devoid of excitement, in which they
+moved together; and they parted for the summer holidays, miserably on
+his part, cheerfully on hers. She was going to Scotland with Aunt Rose
+and the prospect was so delightful that she did not trouble to inquire
+about his movements.
+
+She was surprised and almost disappointed that he did not reproach her
+for this thoughtlessness when, on her return, she went to call on Mrs.
+Batty and hear about her annual holiday at Bournemouth. Mrs. Batty had
+suffered very much from the heat, Mr. Batty had suffered from
+dyspepsia, and they were glad to be at home again, though it was to
+find that John, without a hint to his parents, had engaged himself to a
+girl with tastes like his own.
+
+“But it’s bull-dogs with her, instead of terriers,” Mrs. Batty sighed.
+“She brings them here and they slobber on the carpets—dirty things. And
+golf. But she’s a nice girl, and they go out before breakfast with the
+dogs and have a game—but I did hope he would look elsewhere, dear.” She
+gazed sentimentally at Henrietta. “I don’t feel she will ever be a
+daughter to me. Of course, I kissed her and all that when I heard the
+news, but now she just comes in and says, ‘Hullo, Mrs. Batty! Where’s
+John?’ And that’s all. I do like affection. She’ll kiss the bull-dogs,
+though,” Mrs. Batty added grimly; “but whether she ever kisses John, I
+can’t say. And as for Charles, he never looks at a girl, so I’m as
+badly off as ever. Worse, for Charles, really Charles hasn’t a word to
+throw at me. He comes down to breakfast and you’d think the bacon had
+upset him, and it’s the best I can get. And his father sits reading the
+paper and lifting his eyebrows over the edge at Charles. He’s very
+cool, Mr. Batty is. Half the time, John comes in late for breakfast,
+after his game, you know, and then he’s in too much of a hurry to talk.
+They might all be dumb. With Charles it’s all that piano business. I
+tell him I wish he’d go to Germany and be done with it, though I never
+think musicians are respectable, with all that hair. Anyhow, Charles is
+getting bald, and he says he’s too old to start afresh. And then he
+glares at his father. It’s all very unpleasant. Still, he’s a good boy
+really. They’re both good boys. I’ve a lot to be thankful for; and, my
+dear,”—her voice sank, and she laid a plump hand on Henrietta’s—“Mr.
+Batty says we may give a ball after Christmas. Everybody in Radstowe.
+We shall take the Assembly Rooms. The date isn’t fixed, and now and
+then, if he isn’t feeling well, Mr. Batty says he can’t afford it. But
+that’s nonsense, we shall have it; but don’t say a word. I’ve told
+nobody else, but somehow, Henrietta, I always want to tell you
+everything, as if you were my daughter.” Mrs. Batty sighed heavily. “If
+only Charles were different!”
+
+However, Charles surprised his mother that evening by walking to the
+gate with Henrietta. Arrived there, he announced firmly that he would
+take her home.
+
+“I’m going for a walk,” Henrietta said.
+
+“Oh, a walk. Well, all right. Where shall we go? I know, I will take
+you where you’ve never been before.”
+
+It was October and already the lamps were lighted in the streets; they
+studded the bridge like fairy lanterns for a fairy path to that world
+of woods and stealthy lanes and open country where the wind rustled the
+gorse bushes on the other side. Below, at the water’s edge, more lamps
+stood like sentinels, here and there, straight and lonely, fulfilling
+their task, and as Charles and Henrietta watched, the terraces of
+Radstowe became illuminated by an unseen hand. Over everything there
+was a suggestion of enchantment: lovers, strolling by, were romantic in
+their silence; a faint hoot from some steamer was like a laugh.
+
+“It will be dark over there, won’t it?” Henrietta asked.
+
+“Frightfully. We’ll cut across the fields.”
+
+“Not to Sales Hall?”
+
+“Sales Hall? What for? To see that miserable fellow? We’re not going
+near Sales Hall.”
+
+She breathed a word.
+
+“What did you say?” he asked.
+
+“Cows,” she breathed again.
+
+“Perhaps.”
+
+“But in the winter,” she said hopefully, “I should think they shut them
+up at night, poor things.”
+
+“Not cold enough yet for that.”
+
+“I’m afraid of them, you know.”
+
+“Domestic animals,” he said calmly.
+
+“Horns,” she whispered.
+
+They said no more. Their path edged those woods which in their turn
+edged the gorge; but here and there the trees spread themselves more
+freely and, through the darkness, Henrietta had glimpses of furtive
+little paths, of dips and hollows. A small pool, thick with early
+fallen leaves, had hardly a foot of gleaming surface with which to gaze
+like an unwinking eye at the emerging stars. But this skirting of the
+wood came to an end and there stretched before their feet, which made
+the only sound in the quiet night, a broad white road where the arched
+gateway of a distant house looked like the fragment of a temple.
+
+“I like this,” Henrietta said; “I feel safe.”
+
+“Not for long,” Charles replied sternly. He opened a gate and through a
+little coppice they reached a fence. “You’ll have to climb it.” The
+broad fields on the other side were as dark as water and as still. It
+was surprising, when she jumped down, to find she did not sink, to find
+that she and Charles could walk steadily on this blackness, cut here
+and there by the deeper blackness of a hedge. There were no cows, but
+sheep stumbled up and bleated at their approach, and for some time the
+tinkling of the bell-wether’s bell accompanied them like music.
+
+“There’s a stile here,” Charles said, and from this they plunged into
+another wood where birds fluttered and twittered and, in the
+undergrowth, there were small stealthy sounds.
+
+“I wouldn’t come here alone,” Henrietta said, “for all the world.”
+
+Charles said nothing. Mrs. Batty was right: it was like walking with a
+dumb man. They left the wood and walked downhill beside a ploughed
+field, and in the shelter of a high wall. An open lane brought them to
+a gate, the gate opened on a rough road through yet another wood of
+larch and spruce and fir. The road was deeply rutted and they walked in
+single file until Charles turned, saying, “This is what I’ve brought
+you to see. This is ‘The Monks’ Pool.’”
+
+A large pond, almost round and strewn with dead leaves about its edge,
+lay sombrely on their right hand, without a movement, without a gleam.
+It was like a pall covering something secret, something which must
+never be revealed, and opposite, where the ground rose steeply, tall
+firs stood up, guardians of the unknown. Faint quackings came from some
+unseen ducks among the willows and water gurgled at the invisible
+outlet of the pond; there were little stirrings and sighings among the
+trees. The protruding roots of an oak offered a seat to Henrietta, and
+behind her Charles leaned against the trunk.
+
+It was comfortable to have him there, to be able to look at this dark
+beauty without fear, and as she sat there she heard an ever-increasing
+number of little sounds; they were caused by she knew not what: small
+creatures moving among the pine needles, night birds on the watch for
+prey, water rats, the flop of fish, the fall of some leaf over-ripe on
+the tree, her own slow breathing, the muffled ticking of her heart; and
+into this orchestra of tiny instruments there came slowly, and as if it
+grew out of all these, another sound.
+
+It was the voice of Charles, and it was so much a part of this rare
+experience, it seemed so right a complement, that at first she did not
+listen to the sense of what he said. The words had no clearer meaning
+than had the other voices of the night; the whole thing was wonderful
+—the tall, immobile trees, the small, secret sounds, the black lake
+like an immense, mysterious pall, the steady booming of the voice, had
+the effect of magic.
+
+This was essential beauty revealed to her ears and eyes, but gradually
+the words formed themselves into sentences and were carried to her
+brain. She understood that Charles was talking of himself, of her, with
+an eloquence born of long-considered thoughts. He was telling her how
+she appeared to him as a being of light and sweetness and necessity; he
+was telling her how he loved her; he was asking for nothing, but he was
+saying amazing things in language worthy of his thoughts of her.
+
+That muffled ticking of her heart went on like distant drum beats, the
+symphony of tiny instruments did not pause, the dominant sound of
+Charles’s voice continued, and now, as she listened, she heard nothing
+but his voice. He was not pathetic, he did not plead, he did not claim:
+he spoke of very old and lasting things, and it was like hearing some
+one read a tale. She did not stir. She forgot that this was Charles; it
+was a simple heart become articulate. And then suddenly the voice
+stopped and the orchestra, as though in relief, in triumph, seemed to
+play more loudly. A water rat dived again, a duck quacked sleepily and
+a branch of a tree creaked mournfully under a lost puff of wind.
+
+Henrietta turned her head and saw Charles Batty standing motionless
+against the tree. His hat was tilted a little to one side and his eyes
+were staring straight before him. Even the darkness was not entirely
+kind to him, but that did not matter. She wondered if he knew what he
+had been saying; she could not remember it all, but it would come back.
+As they went home over the dark fields, she would remember it. It
+seemed to have everything and yet nothing to do with her; it was like
+poetry that, without embarrassment, profoundly moves the hearer, and
+his very voice had developed the dignity of his theme.
+
+He did not speak again. In complete silence they retraced their steps
+and at the gate of Nelson Lodge he left her. In the little high-walled
+garden she stood still. This had been a wonderful experience. She felt
+uplifted, better than herself, yet she could not resist speculating on
+her probable feelings if another than Charles Batty, if, for instance,
+Francis Sales, had poured that rhapsody into the night.
+
+
+
+
+Book III: Rose and Henrietta
+
+
+§ 1
+
+Early one October afternoon, Rose Mallett rode to Sales Hall. She went
+through a world of brown and gold and blue, but she was hardly
+conscious of beauty, and the air, which was soft, yet keen, and
+exciting to her horse, had no inspiriting effect on her. She felt old,
+incased in a sort of mental weariness which was like armour against
+emotion. She knew that the spirit of the country, at once gentle and
+wild, furtive and bold, was trying to reach her in every scent and
+sound: in the smell of earth, of fruit, of burning wood; in the noise
+of her horse’s feet as he cantered on the grassy side of the road, in
+the fall of a leaf, the call of a bird or a human voice become
+significant in distance; but she remained unmoved.
+
+This was, she thought, like being dead yet conscious of all that
+happened, but the dead have the excuse of death and she had none; she
+was merely tired of her mode of life. It seemed to her that in her
+thirty-one years the sum of her achievement was looking beautiful and
+being loved by Francis Sales: she put it in that way, but immediately
+corrected herself unwillingly. Her attitude towards him had not been
+passive; she had loved him. She had owed him love and she had paid her
+debt; she had paid enough, yet if to-day he asked for more, she would
+give it. Her pride hoped for that demand; her weariness shrank from it.
+
+And he had kissed Henrietta. The sharpness of that thought, on which
+from the first moment on the stairs she had refused to dwell, steeling
+her mind against it with a determination which perhaps accounted for
+her fatigue, was like a physical pain running through her whole body,
+so that the horse, feeling an unaccustomed jerk on his mouth, became
+alarmed and restive. She steadied him and herself. A kiss was nothing
+—yet she had always denied it to Francis Sales. She could not blame
+him, for she saw how her own fastidiousness had endangered his. He
+needed material evidence of love. She ought, she supposed, to have
+sacrificed her scruples for his sake; mentally she had already done it,
+and the physical refusal was perhaps no more than pride which salved
+her conscience and might ruin his, but it existed firmly like a
+fortress. She could not surrender it. Her love was not great enough for
+that; or was it, she asked herself, too great? She could not comfort
+herself with that illusion, and there came creeping the thought that
+for some one else, some one too strong to need such a capitulation, she
+would have given it gladly, but against Francis, who was intrinsically
+weak, she had held out.
+
+Life seemed to mock at her; it offered the wrong opportunities, it
+strewed her path with chances of which no human being could judge the
+value until the choice had been made; it was like walking over ground
+pitted with hidden holes, it needed luck as well as skill to avoid a
+fall. But, like other people, she had to pursue her road: the thing was
+to hide her bruises, even from herself, and shake off the dust.
+
+She had by this time reached the track which was connected with so much
+of her life, and she drew rein in astonishment. They were felling the
+trees. Already a space had been cleared and men and horses were busy
+removing the fallen trunks; piles of branches, still bravely green, lay
+here and there, and the pine needles of the past were now overlaid by
+chippings from the parent trees. What had been a still place of
+shadows, of muffled sounds, of solemn aisles, the scene of a secret
+life not revealed to men, was now half devastated, trampled, and loud
+with human noises. It had its own beauty of colour and activity, there
+was even a new splendour in the unencumbered ground, but Rose had a
+sense of loss and sacrilege. Something had gone. It struck her that
+here she was reminded of herself. Something had gone. The larch trees
+which had flamed in green for her each spring were dead and she had
+this strange dead feeling in her heart.
+
+She saw the figure of Francis Sales detach itself from a little group
+and advance towards her. She knew what he would say. He would tell her,
+in that sulky way of his, how many weeks had passed since he had seen
+her and, to avoid hearing that remark, she at once waved a hand towards
+the clearing and said, “Why have you done this?”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. “To get money.”
+
+“But they were my trees.”
+
+“You never wrote,” he muttered.
+
+She made a gesture, quickly controlled. Long ago when, in the first
+exultation of their love and their sense of richness, they had marked
+out the limits of their intercourse, so that they might keep some sort
+of faith with Christabel and preserve what was precious to themselves,
+it had been decided that they were not to meet by appointment, they
+were not to speak of love, no letters were to be exchanged, and though
+time had bent the first and second rules, the last had been kept with
+rigour. It was understood, but periodically she had to submit to
+Francis Sales’s complaint, “You never wrote.”
+
+“So you cut down the trees,” she said half playfully.
+
+“Why didn’t you write?”
+
+“Oh, Francis, you know quite well.”
+
+He was looking at the ground; he had not once looked at her since her
+greeting. “You go off on a holiday, enjoying yourself, while I—who did
+you go with?”
+
+“With Henrietta,” Rose said softly.
+
+“Oh, that girl.”
+
+“Yes, that girl. But here I am. I have come back.” She seemed to invite
+him to be glad. “And,” she went on calmly, feeling that it did not
+matter what she said, “what a queer world to come back to. I miss the
+trees. They stood for my childhood and my youth; yes, they stood for
+it, so straight—I must go on. Christabel is expecting me.”
+
+“She didn’t tell me.”
+
+“No?” Rose questioned without surprise. “I suppose I shall see you at
+tea?” she said.
+
+He nodded and she touched her horse. Something had happened to him as
+well as to her and a mass of pain lodged itself in her breast. He was
+different, and as though he had suspected the weary quality of her love
+he had met her with the same kind, or perhaps with none at all. A
+little while ago she was half longing for release from this endless
+necessity of controlling herself and him; from the shifts, the refusals
+and the reproaches which had gradually become the chief part of their
+intercourse; and now he had dared to seem indifferent, though he had
+not forgotten to reproach! She could almost feel the healthy pallor of
+her face change to a sickly white; her anger chilled and then stiffened
+her into a rigidity of body and mind and when she dismounted she slid
+down heavily, like a figure made of wood.
+
+The man who took her horse looked at her curiously. Miss Mallett always
+had a pleasant word for him and, conscious of his stare, she forced a
+smile. She had not ridden for weeks, she told him; she was tired. He
+was amused at that. She had been born in the saddle; he remembered her
+as a little girl on a Shetland pony and he did not believe she could
+ever tire. “Must be something wrong somewhere,” he said, examining
+girth and pommels.
+
+“It’s old age coming on,” Rose said gravely.
+
+He thought that a great joke. He was twice her age already and
+considered himself in his prime. He led the horse away and Rose went
+into the house.
+
+How extraordinarily limited her life had been! It had passed almost
+entirely in this house and Nelson Lodge and on the road between the
+two. Of all her experiences the only ones that mattered had been
+suffered here, and they had all been of one kind. Even Henrietta’s
+fewer years had been more varied. She had known poverty and been
+compelled to the practical application of her wits, she had baffled Mr.
+Jenkins, she had been kissed by Francis Sales.
+
+Rose stood for a moment in the hall and looked for the mirror which was
+not there. She did not wish to give Christabel Sales the satisfaction
+of seeing her look distraught, but a peep in the glass of one of the
+sporting prints reassured her. Her appearance almost made her doubt the
+reality of the feelings which consisted of a great heat in the head and
+a deadly cold weight near her heart and which forced these triumphant
+words from her lips—“At least Henrietta has never felt like this.”
+
+She entered Christabel’s room calmly, smiling and prepared for news,
+but at the first sight of the invalid, lying very low in her bed and
+barely turning her head at the sound of the opening door, she thought
+that perhaps Christabel’s weakness had at last overcome her enmity.
+
+“I’m very ill,” she said faintly.
+
+“I’m sorry.”
+
+“Oh, don’t say that. You may as well tell the truth—to me.”
+
+“Then I must say again that I am sorry.”
+
+“I wonder why.”
+
+To that Rose made no answer, and before Christabel spoke again she had
+time to notice that the cat had gone. She breathed more easily. The cat
+had gone, the trees were going and Francis was going too. Suddenly she
+felt she did not care. The idea of an empty world was pleasant, but if
+Francis were really going, the cat might as well have stayed.
+
+“Tell me what you did in Scotland,” Christabel said.
+
+“I showed Henrietta all the sights.”
+
+“Oh, Henrietta—she’s a horrid girl. She has stopped coming to see me.”
+
+“You made yourself so unpleasant.”
+
+“Did she tell you that? Do you think she told Francis?”
+
+“I know she didn’t.”
+
+“But I can’t make out why she should tell you.”
+
+“Henrietta and I are great friends.”
+
+“How did you manage that?”
+
+“I don’t know,” Rose said slowly. “What has happened to the cat?”
+
+“It’s gone. It went out and never came back.”
+
+“How queer.”
+
+“Some one must have killed it.”
+
+“I don’t think so,” Rose said thoughtfully. “I think it decided to go.
+I’m sure it did.”
+
+“What do you mean? What do you mean?” Christabel cried. “Had you
+something to do with that, too?”
+
+“Not that I know of.” Rose laughed. She was tired of considering every
+word before she uttered it.
+
+“With that too!” Christabel repeated a little wildly, and then in a
+firm voice she said, “You’ve got to tell me.”
+
+“But I don’t know. You must make all inquiries of the cat. It was a
+wise animal. It knew the time had come.”
+
+“I think you’re mad,” Christabel said.
+
+“Animals are very strange,” Rose went on easily, “and rats leave
+sinking ships.”
+
+A cry of terror came from Christabel. “You mean I’m going to die!”
+
+“No, no!” Rose became sane and reassuring. “I never thought of that. It
+might have known it was going to die itself and an animal likes to die
+decently alone. It had been getting unhealthily fat.”
+
+Christabel kept an exhausted silence, and Rose regretting her cruelty,
+aware of its futility, said gently, “Shall I get you a kitten?”
+
+“No, no kitten. They jump about. The old cat was so quiet. And I miss
+him.” A tear rolled down either cheek. “It has been so lonely.
+Everybody was away.”
+
+“Well, we’ve all come back now,” Rose said.
+
+“Yes, but that Henrietta—she’s deserted me.”
+
+“It was your own fault, Christabel. You horrified her.”
+
+“It should have been you who did that.”
+
+“Things don’t always have the effect we hope for. You said too much.”
+
+“Ah, but not half what I could have said.”
+
+“Too much for Henrietta, anyhow. I don’t think she will come again.”
+
+Christabel smiled oddly and Rose knew that now she was to hear some
+news. “You can tell her,” Christabel said, “that I shan’t say anything
+to upset her. I shall say nothing about you—as she loves you so much.
+Does she love you? I dare say. You make people love you—for a little
+while.” Her voice lingered on those words. “Yes, for a little while,
+but you don’t keep love, Rose Mallett. No, you don’t. I’m sorry for you
+now. Tell Henrietta she needn’t be afraid, because I’m sorry for you.
+Yes, you and I are in the same boat, in the same deserted boat.
+
+If there were any rats they would run away. You said so yourself.”
+
+“I said the cat had gone.”
+
+“Then you knew?”
+
+Rose shook her head. It was her turn to smile. She was prepared for
+anything Christabel might say, she was even anxious to hear it, but
+when Christabel spoke in a mysteriously gleeful manner, she had
+difficulty in repressing a shudder. It was not, she told herself, that
+she suffered from the knowledge now imparted by Christabel with detail
+and with proofs, but her malice, her salacious curiosity were more than
+Rose could bear. She felt that the whole affair, which at first, so
+long ago, had possessed a noble sadness, a secret beauty, the quality
+of a precious substance enclosed in a common vial, was indecent and
+unclean.
+
+“So you see,” Christabel said, “you haven’t kept him; you won’t keep
+Henrietta.”
+
+Rose said nothing. She was thinking of what she might have done and she
+was glad she had not done it.
+
+“You don’t seem to mind,” Christabel said. “Why don’t you ask me why
+I’m so sure?” She laughed. “I ought to know how to find things out by
+this time, and I know Francis, yes, better than you do. When I had my
+accident—it wasn’t worth it, was it?—I said to myself, “Now he won’t be
+faithful to me.” When I knew I should have to lie here, I told myself
+that. And now you—” Her voice almost failed her. “I suppose you haven’t
+been kind enough to him.”
+
+“I think it’s time I went,” Rose said.
+
+“And you’ll never come back?”
+
+“Yes, if you want me.”
+
+“I can say what I like to you.”
+
+“You can, indeed,” Rose murmured.
+
+“And tell Henrietta to come too.”
+
+“No, I can’t ask Henrietta.”
+
+“I promise to be like a maiden aunt. Ah, but she has three already— she
+knows what they are. That won’t attract her. I’ll be like an invalid in
+a Sunday School story-book.”
+
+“I’ll tell her of your promise,” Rose said.
+
+There remained the task of having tea with Francis Sales and breaking
+the bonds of which he had tired. She made it easy for him. That was
+necessary for her dignity, but beyond the desire for as much seemliness
+as could be saved from the general ugliness of their mistake, she had
+no feeling; yet she thought it would be good to be in the open air, on
+horseback, free. If there had been anything still owing, she had paid
+her debt with generosity. She gave him the chance he wanted but did not
+know how to take, and she had to allow him to appear aggrieved. She was
+cruel: she was tired of him; she was, he sneered, too good for him. The
+words went on for some time, and if some of them were new, their manner
+was wearisomely familiar. She was amazed at her own endurance, now and
+in the past, and at last she said, “No, no, Francis. Say no more. This
+is too much fuss. Perhaps we have both changed.”
+
+“It was you who began it.”
+
+“Was it? How can one tell?”
+
+“You began it,” he persisted. “There was a time when you went white,
+like paper, when we met, and your eyes went black. Now I might be a
+sheep in a field.”
+
+She was standing up, ready to go. “One gets used to things,” she said.
+
+“I have never been used to you,” he muttered, and she knew that,
+telling this truth, he also explained a good deal. “I never should be.
+You’re like nobody else—nobody.”
+
+“But it is too much strain,” she murmured slowly.
+
+“Yes—well, it is you who have said it. I had made up my mind—I’m not
+ungrateful—I never intended to say a word.”
+
+She smiled. This was the first remark which had really touched her. She
+found it so offensive that a smile was the only weapon with which to
+meet it. “I know that.”
+
+“But mind,” he almost shouted, “there’s nobody like you.”
+
+“Yes, yes, I know that too.” She turned to him with a silencing
+sternness. “I tell you I know everything.”
+
+
+§ 2
+
+The old groom who held her horse nodded with satisfaction when he
+helped her into the saddle. She had not lost her spring and he
+tightened her girths in a leisurely manner and arranged her skirt with
+the care due to a fine rider and a lady who understood a horse, yet one
+who was always ready to ask an old man’s advice. He had a great
+admiration for Miss Mallett and, conscious of it and rather
+pathetically glad of it, she lingered for the pleasure of talking to
+some one who seemed simple and untroubled. He had spent all his life on
+the Sales estate, and she wondered whether, though, like herself, of a
+limited outward experience, he also had known the passions of love and
+disgust and shame. He was sixty-five, he told her, but as strong as
+ever, and she envied him: to be sixty-five with the turmoil of life
+behind him, yet to be strong enough to enjoy the peace before him, was
+a good finale to existence. She was only thirty-one, but she was strong
+too, and she felt as though she had come through a storm, battered and
+exhausted but whole and ready for the calm which already hovered over
+her. She said, “The young are always sorry for the old, but that is one
+of the many mistakes they make. I think it must be the best time of
+all.”
+
+“If you have them that cares for you,” he answered.
+
+That was where her own happiness would break down.
+
+There were her stepsisters, who would probably die before herself;
+there was Henrietta, who would form ties of her own; and there was no
+one else. If she had had less faith in Francis Sales’s love and, at the
+same time, had been capable of pandering to it, she might have had his
+devotion for her old age, the devotion of a somewhat querulous and dull
+old man. Now she had not even that to hope for, and she was glad. She
+had always wanted the best of everything, and always, except in the one
+fatal instance, refused what fell below her standard. She had not
+realized until now that Francis Sales had always been below it. She had
+at least tried to wrap their love in beauty, but that sort of beauty
+was not enough for him. It was her scruples, he said, which had been
+his undoing, and there was truth in that, but she had to remember that
+when originally she had disappointed him, he had found comfort quickly
+in Christabel; when Christabel failed him he had returned to her; and
+now he had found consolation, if only of a temporary kind, in some one
+else. When would he seek yet another victim of his affection and his
+griefs? He was, she thought scornfully, a man who needed women, yet she
+knew that if he had pleaded with her to-day, saying that in spite of
+everything he needed her, she would have listened.
+
+She admitted her responsibility, it would always be present to her, for
+she had that kind of conscientiousness, and having once helped him, she
+must always hold herself ready to do it again. The chain binding them
+was not altogether broken, but she no longer felt its weight. She had a
+lightness of spirit unknown for years; the anger, the jealous rage and
+the disgust had vanished with a completeness which made her doubt their
+short existence, and she began to make plans for a new life. There was
+no reason now why she should not wander all over the world, yet, on the
+very doorstep of Nelson Lodge, she found a reason in the person of
+Henrietta—flushed and gay and just returned from a tea party. She had
+enjoyed herself immensely, but her head ached a little. It had been all
+she could do to understand the brilliant conversation. There had been
+present a budding poet and a woman painter and she had never heard
+people talk like that before.
+
+“I didn’t speak at all, except to Charles,” she said.
+
+“Oh, Charles was there?”
+
+“Yes. I thought it safer not to talk but I looked as bright as I could,
+and of course I asked for cakes and things. They all ate a lot. I was
+glad of that. But most of them still looked hungry at the end. And
+Charles has taken tickets for me for the concerts, next to him, in a
+special corner where you can sometimes hear the music through the
+whispering of the audience. That’s what he says!”
+
+“But, Henrietta, I have taken tickets for you too.”
+
+“Thank you, but perhaps they will take them back.”
+
+“Henrietta, you really can’t sit in a corner with Charles when I’m in
+another part of the hall.”
+
+“Can’t I? Well, Charles will be very angry, but he’ll have to put up
+with it. If you explained to him, Aunt Rose, he’d understand. And I’d
+really rather sit with you. I shall be able to look at people and if I
+crackle my programme you won’t glare. Of course, I shall try not to.
+Will you explain to him? And I did promise to go to a concert with him
+some day.”
+
+“Then you must. I’ll tell him that, too. Are you afraid of him,
+Henrietta?”
+
+“He shouts,” Henrietta said, “and I’m sorry for him. And I do like him
+very much. I feel inclined to do things just to please him.”
+
+“Don’t let that carry you too far.”
+
+“That’s what I’m afraid of. Not him, exactly, but me.”
+
+“I didn’t suspect you of such tenderness. I shall have to look after
+you.”
+
+“I wish you would.”
+
+“And if you are feeling very kind some day, perhaps you will go and see
+Christabel Sales. She has promised to behave herself.”
+
+Henrietta’s expression tightened. “I don’t want to go. It’s a dreadful
+place.”
+
+“I know,” Rose said, and she added encouragingly, “but the cat has
+gone.”
+
+They were standing together in the hall and against the white panelled
+walls, the figure of Rose, in the austere riding habit, one gauntletted
+hand holding her crop, the other resting lightly on her hip, had an
+heroic aspect, like a statue in dark marble; but her eyes did not offer
+the blank gaze, the calm effrontery of stone: they looked at Henrietta
+with something like appeal against this obsession of the cat.
+
+“Oh, I’m glad the cat’s gone,” Henrietta murmured. “What happened to
+it?”
+
+Rose shook her head. “It disappeared.”
+
+They stared at each other until Henrietta said, “But all the same, I
+don’t want to go.” And then, because Rose would not help her out, she
+was obliged to say, “It’s Mr. Sales.” Her voice dropped. “I haven’t
+seen him since I hit him.”
+
+Rose turned to go upstairs. “I shouldn’t think too much of that.”
+
+“You don’t think it matters?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Henrietta looked after her and followed her for a step. “You think I
+may go?” Her voice was dull under her effort to control it. She felt
+that the stately figure moving up the stairs was deliberately leaving
+her to face a danger, sanctioning her desire to meet it. She felt her
+fate was in the answer made by Rose.
+
+“I think you can take care of yourself perfectly well, Henrietta,” and
+like a sigh, another sentence floated from the landing where Rose
+stood, out of sight: “You are not like me.”
+
+This was a mysterious and astonishing remark. Henrietta did not
+understand it and in her excited realization that the door so carefully
+locked by her own hand had been opened. Aunt Rose, she did not try to
+understand it. Aunt Rose had said she was able to take care of herself,
+and it was true, but honesty and a weak clinging to safety urged her to
+answer, “But you see, you see I don’t want to do it!”
+
+These words were not uttered. She stood, looking up towards the empty
+landing with a hand pressed against her heart. It was beating fast. The
+spirit of Reginald Mallett, subdued in his daughter for some months,
+seemed to be fluttering in her breast and it was Aunt Rose who had
+waked it up. It was not Henrietta’s fault, she was not responsible; and
+suddenly, the ordinary happiness she had been enjoying was transferred
+into an irrational joy. She went singing up the stairs, and Rose,
+sitting in her room in a state of limpness she would never have allowed
+anybody to see, heard a sound as innocent as if a bird had waked to a
+sunny dawn.
+
+Henrietta sang, but now and then she paused and became grave when the
+spirit of that mother who lived in her memory more and more dimly, as
+though she had died when Henrietta was a child, overcame the spirit of
+her father. Her mission was to be one of kindness to Christabel Sales,
+and if—the song burst out again—if adventure came in her way, could she
+refuse it? She would refuse nothing—the song ceased—short of sin. She
+looked at herself and saw a solemn feminine edition of the portrait
+hanging behind her on the wall. She was like her father, but she took
+pride in her greater conscientiousness; her vocabulary was larger than
+his by at least one word.
+
+A few days later she set out on that road and past those trees which
+had been the safe witnesses of so much of Rose Mallett’s life, but
+their safeness lay in their constant muteness, and they had no message
+for Henrietta. Walking quickly, she rehearsed her coming meeting with
+Francis Sales, but when she actually met him on the green track, on the
+very spot where Rose had pulled up her horse in amazement at the scene
+of transformation, Henrietta, like Rose, had no formal greeting for
+him.
+
+She said, “The trees! What are you doing with them?”
+
+“Turning them into gold.”
+
+“But they were beautiful.”
+
+“So are lots of things they will buy.” She moved a little under his
+look, but when he said, “I’m hard up,” she became interested.
+
+“Really? I thought you were frightfully rich. You ought to be with all
+these belongings.” She looked round at the fields dotted with sheep and
+cattle, the distant chimneys of Sales Hall, the fallen trees and the
+team of horses dragging logs under the guidance of workmen in their
+shirt sleeves. “I know all about being poor,” she said, “but I don’t
+suppose we mean the same thing by the word. I’ve been so poor—” She
+stopped. “But there’s a lot of excitement about it. I used to hope I
+should find a shilling in my purse that I’d forgotten. A shilling! You
+can do a lot with a shilling. At least I can.”
+
+“I wish you’d tell me how.”
+
+“Pretend you haven’t got it. That’s the beginning. You haven’t got it,
+so you can’t have what you want.”
+
+“I never have what I want.”
+
+“Then you mustn’t want anything.”
+
+“Oh, yes, that’s so easy.”
+
+“Well”—she descended to details with an air of kindness—“what do you
+want? Let’s work it out. We’d better sit on the wall. After all, it’s
+rather lovely without the trees. It’s so clear and the air’s so blue,
+as if it’s trying to make up. Now tell me what you want.”
+
+“Something money can’t buy.”
+
+“Then you needn’t have cut down the trees.”
+
+“I shouldn’t have if I’d thought you’d care.”
+
+She said softly but sharply, “I don’t believe that for a moment. Why
+don’t you tell the truth?”
+
+“Do you want to hear it?”
+
+“I’m not sure.”
+
+“Then I’ll wait while you make up your mind.”
+
+Sitting on the wall, his feet rested easily on the ground while hers
+swung free, and while he seemed to loll in complete indifference, she
+was conscious of a tenseness she could not prevent. She hated her
+enjoyment of his manner, which was impudent, but it had the spice of
+danger that she liked and it was in defiance of the one and
+encouragement of the other that she said, “I’m sure you would never
+talk to Aunt Rose like that.”
+
+“I should never give your Aunt Rose my confidence,” he said severely.
+
+It was impossible not to feel a warmth of satisfaction, and she asked
+shortly, “Why not?”  “She wouldn’t understand. You’re human. I’m
+devilish lonely. Well, you know my circumstances.” A shadow which
+seemed to affect the brightness of the autumn day, even deadening the
+clear shouting of the men and the jingling of the chains attached to
+the horses, passed over Francis Sales’s face. “One wants a friend.”
+
+A cry of genuine bewilderment came from Henrietta. “But I thought you
+were so fond of Aunt Rose!”
+
+From sulky contemplation of his brown boots and leggings, he looked at
+her. His eyes, of a light yet dense blue, were widely opened. “What
+makes you think that? Did she tell you?”
+
+Henrietta’s lip curled derisively. “No, it was you, when you looked at
+her. And now you have told me again.” She had a moment of thoughtful
+contempt for the blundering of men. There was Charles, who always
+seemed to wander in a mist, and now this Francis Sales, who revealed
+what he wished to hide. He was mentally inferior to Mr. Jenkins, who
+had a quickness of wit, a vulgar sharpness of tongue which kept the
+mind on the alert; but physically she had shrunk from Mr. Jenkins’s
+proximity, while that of Francis Sales, in his well-cut tweeds and his
+shining boots, who seemed as clean as the air surrounding him, had an
+attraction actually enhanced by his heaviness of spirit. He was like a
+child possessed, consciously or unconsciously, of a weapon, and her
+sense of her own superiority was corrected by fear of his strength and
+of the subtle weakness in her own blood.
+
+She heard a murmur. “She has treated me very badly. I’ve known her all
+my life. Well—”
+
+Henrietta, with a gentleness he appreciated and a cleverness he missed,
+said commiseratingly, “She wouldn’t let you take her hand in the wood.”
+
+“What on earth are you talking about? Look here, Henrietta, what do you
+mean?” There had been so many occasions of the kind that it was
+impossible to know to which one she referred, and, looking back, his
+past seemed to be blocked with frustrations and petty torments. “What
+do you mean?” he repeated.
+
+“Never mind.”
+
+“This is some gossip,” he muttered.
+
+“Yes, among the squirrels and the rabbits. Woods are full of eyes and
+ears.”
+
+“Well,” he said, “the eyes and ears will have to find another home.
+There will soon be no wood left.”
+
+So he had tried to take Aunt Rose’s hand in this wood too! She laughed
+with the pretty trill which made her laughter a new thing every time.
+
+“I don’t see the joke,” he grumbled.
+
+She turned to him. “I don’t think you’ve laughed very much in your
+life. You’re always being sorry for yourself.”
+
+“I have been very unfortunate,” he replied.
+
+“There you are again! Why don’t you tell yourself you’re lucky not to
+squint or turn in your toes? You’d be much more miserable then—much.
+But thinking yourself unfortunate, when you’re not, is a pleasant
+occupation.”
+
+“How do you know?”
+
+“I know a lot,” Henrietta said. “But I never thought myself
+unfortunate, so I wasn’t.”
+
+“Very noble,” Sales said sourly.
+
+“No. I told you it was exciting to be poor. You’re not poor enough. A
+new dress,” she went on, clasping her hands; “first of all, I had to
+save up—in pennies.” She turned accusingly. “You don’t believe it.”
+
+“It must have taken a long time.”
+
+“It did, but not so long as you would think, because it cost so little
+in the end. I saved up, and then I looked in the shop windows, and then
+I talked about it for days, and then I bought the stuff. Mother cut out
+the dress, and then I made it.”
+
+“And the result was charming.”
+
+“I thought so then. Now I know it wasn’t, but at the time I was happy.”
+
+“Well,” he said, “that’s very interesting, but it doesn’t help me.”
+
+“But I could help you if you told me your troubles. I should know how.”
+
+“Telling my troubles would be a help.”
+
+“Here I am, then.”
+
+“What’s the good?” he said. “You’ll desert me, too.”
+
+“Not if you’re good.”
+
+“Oh, if that’s the stipulation—” He stood up. His tone, which might
+have been provocative, was simply bored. She knew she had been dull,
+and her lip trembled with mortification.
+
+“Why, of course!” she cried gaily, when she had mastered that weakness.
+“Aunt Caroline warned me against you this very afternoon. She said—but,
+never mind. I’m not going to repeat her remarks. And anyhow, Aunt
+Sophia said they were not true. Aunt Rose,” Henrietta said
+thoughtfully, “was not there. I don’t suppose either of them is right.
+And now I’m going to see Mrs. Sales.”
+
+He ran after her. “Henrietta, I shouldn’t tell her you’ve seen me.”
+
+She frowned. “I don’t like that.”
+
+“It’s for her sake.”
+
+Henrietta turned away without a word, but she pondered, as she went, on
+the dangerous likeness between right and wrong and the horrible
+facility with which they could be, with which they had to be,
+interchanged. One became bewildered, one became lost; she felt herself
+being forced into a false position: she might not be able to get out.
+Aunt Rose had sent her, Francis Sales was conspiring with her—she made
+her father’s gesture of helplessness, it was not her fault. But she
+made up her mind she would never allow Francis Sales to find her dull
+again, for that was unfair to herself.
+
+
+§ 3
+
+Rose Mallett, who had always accepted conditions and not criticized
+them, found herself in those days forced to a puzzled consideration of
+life. It seemed an unnecessary invention on the part of a creator, a
+freak which, on contemplation, he must surely regret. She was not tired
+of her own existence, but she wondered what it was for and what,
+possessing it, she could do with it. Her one attempt at usefulness had
+been foiled, and though she had never consciously wanted anything to
+do, she felt the need now that she was deprived of it. She passed her
+days in the order and elegance of Nelson Lodge, in a monotonous
+satisfaction of the eye, listening to the familiar chatter of Caroline
+and Sophia, dressing herself with tireless care and refusing to regret
+her past. Nevertheless, it had been wasted, and the only occupation of
+her present was her anxiety for Francis Sales. She could not rid
+herself of that claim, begun so long ago. She had to accept the
+inactive responsibility which in another would have resolved itself
+into earnest prayer but which in her was a stoical endurance of
+possibilities.
+
+What was he doing? What would he do? She knew he could not stand alone,
+she knew she must continue to hold herself ready for his service, but a
+prisoner fastened to a chain does not find much solace in counting the
+links, and that was all she had to do. It seemed to her that she moved,
+rather like a ghost, up and down the stairs, about the landing, in the
+delicate silence of her bedroom; that she sat ghost-like at the
+dining-table and heard the strangely aimless talk of human beings. She
+supposed there were countless women like herself, unoccupied and
+lonely, yet her pride resented the idea. There was only one Rose
+Mallett; there was no one else with just her past, with the same mental
+pictures and her peculiar isolation, and if she had been a vainer woman
+she would have added that no other woman offered the same kind of
+beauty to a world in need of it. Her obvious consolation was in the
+presence of Henrietta, though she had little companionship to give her
+aunt, and no suspicion that Rose, almost unawares, began to transfer
+her interests to the girl, to set her mind on Henrietta’s happiness.
+She would take her abroad and let her see the world.
+
+Caroline sniffed at the suggestion, Sophia sighed.
+
+“The world’s the same everywhere,” Caroline said. “If you know one man
+you know them all.”
+
+“But if you know a great many, you will know one all the better.
+However,” she smiled in the way of which her stepsisters were afraid,
+“I wasn’t thinking of men.”
+
+“That’s where you’re so unnatural.”
+
+“I was thinking of places—cities and mountains and plains.”
+
+“You’ll get the plague or be run away with by brigands.”
+
+“I think Henrietta and I would rather like the brigands. We must avoid
+the plague.”
+
+“Smallpox,” Caroline went on, “and your complexions ruined.”
+
+“I wish you would stay at home,” Sophia said. “Caroline and I are
+getting old.”
+
+“Nonsense, Sophia! I’d go myself for twopence. But I’d better wait here
+and get the ransom money ready, and then James Batty and I can start
+out together with a bag of it.” She laughed loudly at the prospect of
+setting forth with the respectable James. “And it wouldn’t be the first
+elopement I’d planned either. When I was eighteen I set my mind on
+getting out of my bedroom window with a bundle—no, of course I never
+told you, Sophia. You would have run in hysterics to the General. But
+there was never one among them all who was worth the inconvenience, so
+I gave it up. I always had more sense than sentiment.” She sighed with
+regret for the legions of disappointed and fictitious lovers waiting
+under windows, with which her mind was peopled. “Not one,” she
+repeated.
+
+No one took any notice. Sophia, drooping her heavy head, was thinking
+of brigands in a far country and of Caroline and herself left in Nelson
+Lodge without Rose and without Henrietta. If they really went away she
+determined to tell Henrietta the story of her lover, lest she should
+die and the tale be unrecorded. She wanted somebody to know; she would
+tell Henrietta on the eve of her departure, among the bags and boxes.
+He had gone to America and died there, and that continent was both
+sacred to her and abhorrent.
+
+“Don’t go to America,” she murmured.
+
+“Why not?” Caroline demanded. “Just the place they ought to go to. Lots
+of millionaires.”
+
+Rose reassured Sophia. “And it is only an idea. I haven’t said a word
+to Henrietta.”
+
+Henrietta showed no enthusiasm for the suggestion. She liked Radstowe.
+And there was the Battys’ ball. It would be a pity to miss that. She
+must certainly not miss that, said Caroline and Sophia. And what was
+she going to wear? They had better go upstairs at once, to the elder
+ladies’ room, and see what could be done with Caroline’s pink satin.
+She had only worn it once, years ago. Nobody would remember it, and
+trimmed with some of her mother’s lace, the big flounce and the fichu,
+it would be a different thing. Sophia could wear her apricot.
+
+“Come along, Henrietta. Come along, Rose. We must really get this
+settled.”
+
+They went upstairs, Caroline moving with heavy dignity, but keeping up
+her head as she had been taught in her youth. Nothing was more
+unbecoming than ducking the head and sticking out the back. Sophia went
+slowly, holding to the balustrade, so very slowly that Henrietta did
+not attempt to start. She said softly to Rose, “How slowly she goes.
+I’ve never noticed it before.”
+
+“She always goes upstairs like that,” Rose said. “It is not natural to
+her to hurry.”
+
+Henrietta followed and found Sophia panting a little on the landing.
+She laid hold of her niece’s arm. “A little out of breath,” she
+whispered. “Don’t say anything, dear child, to Caroline. She doesn’t
+like to be reminded of our age.”
+
+They went into the bedroom and Rose, drifting into her own room, heard
+the opening of the great wardrobe doors. She would be called in
+presently for her advice, but there would be a lot of talk and many
+reminiscences before she was needed. She stood by the fire, which,
+giving the only light to the room, threw golden patches on the white
+dressing-gown lying across a chair, and made the buckles on her shoes
+sparkle like diamonds.
+
+She was wondering why Henrietta’s eyes had darkened as though with fear
+at the idea of going away. She had been very quick in veiling them, and
+her voice, too, had been quick, a little tremulous. There was more than
+the Battys’ ball in her desire to stay in Radstowe. Was it Charles whom
+she was loth to leave? Afterwards, perhaps in the spring, she had said
+it would be nice to go. It was kind of Aunt Rose, and Aunt Rose, gazing
+down at the fire, controlled her longing to escape from this place too
+full of memories. She would not leave Henrietta who had to be cared
+for, perhaps protected; she would not persuade her who had to be happy,
+but she felt a sinking of the heart which was almost physical. She
+rested both hands on the mantelshelf and on them her weight. She felt
+as though she could not go on like this for ever. She, who apparently
+had no ties, was never free; she had the duties without the joys, and
+for these few minutes, before a knock came at the door, she allowed
+herself the relief of melancholy. She was incapable of tears, but she
+wished she could cry bitterly and for a long time.
+
+The knock was Henrietta’s. She entered a little timidly. Aunt Rose was
+not free with invitations to her room and to Henrietta it was a
+beautiful and mysterious place. She had a childlike pleasure in the
+silver and glass on the dressing-table, in glimpses of exquisite
+garments and slippers worn to the shape of Aunt Rose’s slim foot, and
+Aunt Rose herself was like some fairy princess growing old and no less
+lovely in captivity, but to-night, that dark straight figure splashed
+by the firelight reminded her of words uttered by Christabel. She had
+said that all Henrietta’s aunts were witches, and for the first time
+the girl agreed. In the other room, brilliantly lighted, Caroline and
+Sophia were bending somewhat greedily over a mass of silks and satins
+and laces, their cheeks flushed round the dabs of rouge, their fingers
+active yet inept, fumbling in what might have been a brew for the
+working of spells; and here, straight as a tree, Aunt Rose looked into
+the fire as though she could see the future in its red heart, but her
+voice, very clear, had a reassuring quality. It was not, Henrietta
+thought, a witch’s voice. Witches mumbled and screeched, and Aunt Rose
+spoke like water falling from a height.
+
+“Come in, Henrietta. Is the consultation over?”
+
+“It has hardly begun. What a lot of clothes they have, and boxes of
+lace, boxes! I think you will have to decide for them. And Aunt
+Caroline snubs Aunt Sophia, all the time.”
+
+“Did they send you to fetch me?”
+
+“Yes, but we needn’t go back yet, need we? Aunt Caroline wants to wear
+her emeralds, but she says they will look vulgar with pink satin.
+There’s some lovely grey stuff like a cobweb. She says it was in her
+mother’s trousseau and I think she ought to wear that, but she says she
+is going to keep it until she’s old!”
+
+“Then she’ll never wear it. She will never make such an admission.”
+
+“And she won’t let Aunt Sophia have it because she says it would make
+her look like a dusty broom. And it would, you know! She’s really very
+funny sometimes.”
+
+“Very funny. We’re queer people, Henrietta.”
+
+“Are we? And I’m more theirs than yours.”
+
+“As far as blood goes, yes.” She spoke very quietly, but she felt a
+great desire to assert, for once, her own claims, instead of accepting
+those of others. She wanted to tell Henrietta that in return for the
+secret care, the growing affection she was giving, she demanded
+confidence and love; but she had never asked for anything in her life.
+She had taken coolly much she could easily have done without,
+admiration and respect and the material advantages to which she had
+been born, but she had asked for nothing. Cruelly conscious of all that
+lay in the gift of Henrietta, who sat in a low chair, her chin on the
+joined fingers of her hands, Rose continued to look at the fire.
+
+“You mean I’m really more like you?” Henrietta said. “Am I? I’m like my
+father,” and she added softly, “terribly.”
+
+“Why terribly?”
+
+Henrietta moved her feet. “Oh, I don’t know.”
+
+“I wish you’d tell me.”
+
+“He was queer. You said we all were, and I’m a Mallett, too, that’s
+all. Don’t you think we ought to go and see about the dresses now? Aunt
+Rose, they’re bothering me to wear white, the only thing for a young
+girl, but I want to wear yellow. Don’t you think I might?”
+
+Rose, who had felt herself on the brink of confidences, as though she
+peered over a cliff, and watched the mists clear to show the secret
+valley underneath, now saw the clouds thicken hopelessly, and retreated
+from her position with an effort.
+
+“Yellow? Yes, certainly. You will look like a marigold. Henrietta—” She
+did not know what she was going to say, but she wanted to detain the
+girl for a little longer, she hoped for another chance of drawing
+nearer. “Henrietta, wait a minute.” She moved to her dressing-table,
+smiling at what she was about to do. It seemed as though she were going
+to bribe the girl to love her, but she was only yielding to the
+pathetic human desire to give something tangible since the intangible
+was ignored. “When I was twenty-one,” she said, “your father gave me a
+present.”
+
+“Only when you were twenty-one?”
+
+“Well,” Rose excused him, “we didn’t know each other very well. He was
+a great deal from home, but he remembered my twenty-first birthday and
+he gave me this necklace. I think it’s beautiful, but I never wear it
+now, and I think you may like to have it. Here it is, in its own box
+and with the card he wrote—‘A jewel for a rose.’”
+
+Holding it in her cupped hands, Henrietta murmured with delight: “May I
+have it really? How lovely! And may I have the card, too? He did say
+nice things. Are you sure you can spare the card? I expect he admired
+you very much. He liked beautiful women. My mother was pretty, too; but
+I don’t believe he ever gave her anything except a wedding-ring, and he
+had to give her that.”
+
+“Oh, Henrietta—well, his daughter shall have all he gave me.”
+
+“If you’re sure you don’t want it. What are the stones?”
+
+“Topaz and diamonds; but so small that you can wear them.”
+
+“Topaz and diamonds! Oh!” And Henrietta, clasping it round her neck and
+surveying herself by the candles Rose had lighted, said earnestly, “Oh,
+I do hope he paid for it!” This was the first thought of Reginald
+Mallett’s daughter.
+
+Rose was horrified into laughter, which seemed hysterically continuous
+to Henrietta, and through it Rose cried tenderly, “Oh, you poor child!
+You poor child!”
+
+Henrietta did not laugh. She said gravely, “All the same, I’m glad I
+had him for a father. Nobody but he would have chosen a thing like
+this. He had such taste.” She looked at her aunt. “I do hope I have
+some taste, too.”
+
+“I hope you have,” Rose said with equal gravity. She laughed no longer.
+“There are many kinds, and though he knew how to choose an ornament, he
+made mistakes in other ways.”
+
+Henrietta unclasped the necklace and laid it down. She looked, indeed,
+remarkably like her father. Her eyes flashed above her angry mouth.
+“You mean my mother!”
+
+“No, Henrietta. How could I? I did not know your mother, and from the
+little you have told us I believe she was too good for him.”
+
+“How can I tell you more,” Henrietta protested, “when I know what you
+would be thinking? You would be thinking she was common. Aunt Caroline
+does. She does! I don’t know how she dare! No, I won’t have the
+necklace.”
+
+“You must believe what I say, Henrietta. Your mother was not the only
+woman in your father’s life, and I was referring to the others.”
+
+“You need not speak of them to me,” Henrietta said with dignity.
+
+“I won’t do so again. That, perhaps, is where my own taste failed.” She
+decided to put out no more feelers for Henrietta’s thoughts. It was
+what she would have resented bitterly herself, and it did no good. She
+was not clever at this unpractised art, and she told herself that if
+her own affection could not tell her what she wished to know, the
+information would be useless. Moreover, she had Henrietta’s word for it
+that she was terribly like her father.
+
+“So put on the necklace again. It suits you better than it does me, so
+well that we can pretend he really chose it for you.”
+
+“Yes,” Henrietta said, fingering it again, “if you promise you never
+think anything horrid about my mother.”
+
+“The worst I have ever thought of her,” Rose said lightly, “is envying
+her for her daughter.”
+
+She saw Henrietta’s mouth open inelegantly. “Me? Oh, but you’re not old
+enough.”
+
+“I feel very old sometimes.”
+
+“I thought you were when I first saw you,” Henrietta said, looking in
+the glass and swaying her body to make the diamonds glitter, “but now I
+know you never will be, because it’s only ugly people who get old. When
+your hair is white you’ll be like a queen. Now you’re a princess,
+though Mrs. Sales says you’re a witch. Oh, I didn’t mean to tell you
+that. It was a long time ago. She is never disagreeable now. I’m going
+to see her again to-morrow.”
+
+“I wish you would go in the morning, Henrietta. The afternoons get dark
+so soon and the road is lonely.”
+
+“She doesn’t like visitors in the morning,” Henrietta said. “I love
+this necklace. Could I wear it to the dance?”
+
+“It depends on the dress. If you are really to look like a marigold you
+must wear no ornaments. If you had yellow tulle—” And Rose took pencil
+and paper and made a rough design, talking with enthusiasm meanwhile,
+for like all the Malletts, she loved clothes.
+
+The next day Caroline had to stay in bed. She had been feverish all
+night and Sophia appeared in Rose’s bedroom early in the morning, her
+great plait of hair swinging free, her face yellow with anxiety and
+sleeplessness and lack of powder, to inform her stepsister that dear
+Caroline was very ill: they must have the doctor directly after
+breakfast. Sophia was afraid Caroline was going to die. She had groaned
+in the night when she thought Sophia was asleep. “I deceived her,”
+Sophia said. “I hope it wasn’t wrong, but I knew she would be easier if
+she thought I slept. Now she says there is nothing the matter with her
+and she wants to get up, but that’s her courage.”
+
+Caroline was not allowed to rise and after breakfast and an hour with
+Sophia behind the locked door she announced her readiness to see the
+doctor, who diagnosed nothing more serious than a chill. She was very
+much disgusted with his order to stay in bed. She had not had a day in
+bed for years; she believed people were only ill when they wanted to be
+and, as she did not wish to be, she was not ill. She had no resource
+but to be unpleasant to Sophia, to the silently devoted Susan and to
+Rose who had intended to go to Sales Hall with Henrietta.
+
+She was not able to do that, but later in the afternoon she set out to
+meet her so that she might have company for part of the dark way home.
+
+Afterwards, she could never make up her mind whether she was glad or
+sorry she had gone. She had expected to meet Henrietta within a mile or
+two of the bridge, and the further she went without a sight of the
+small figure walking towards her, the more necessary it became to
+proceed, but she felt a deadly sickness of this road. She loved each
+individual tree, each bush and field and the view from every point, but
+the whole thing she hated. It was the personification of mistake,
+disappointment and slow disillusion, but now it was all shrouded in
+darkness and she seemed to be walking on nothing, through nothing and
+towards nothing. She herself was nothing and she thought of nothing,
+though now and then a little wave of anxiety washed over her. Where was
+Henrietta?
+
+She became genuinely alarmed when, in the hollow between the track and
+the rising fields, she saw a fire and discovered by its light a
+caravan, a cart, a huddle of dark figures, a tethered pony, and heard
+the barking of dogs. There were gipsies camping in the sheltered dip.
+If Henrietta had walked into their midst, she might have been robbed,
+she would certainly have been frightened; and Rose stood still,
+listening intently.
+
+The cleared space, where the wood had been, stretched away to a line of
+trees edging the main road and above it there was a greenish colour in
+the sky. There was not a sound but what came from the encampment. Down
+there the fire glowed like some enormous and mysterious jewel and
+before it figures which had become poetical and endowed with some
+haggard kind of beauty passed and vanished. They might have been
+employed in the rites of some weird worship and the movements which
+were in reality connected with the cooking of some snared bird or
+rabbit seemed to have a processional quality. The fire was replenished,
+the stew was stirred, there was a faint clatter of tin plates and a
+sharp cracking of twigs: a figure passed before the fire with
+extraordinary gestures and slid into the night: another figure appeared
+and followed its predecessor: smoke rose and a savoury smell floated on
+the air.
+
+Suddenly a child wailed and Rose had the ghastly impression that it was
+the child who was in the pot.
+
+Cautiously she stepped into the clearing; the dogs barked again and she
+ran swiftly, as silently as possible, leaping over the small hummocks
+of heath, dodging the brushwood and finding a certain pleasure in her
+own speed and in her fear that the dogs would soon be snapping at her
+heels. If she did not find Henrietta on the road, she would go on to
+Sales Hall. Very high up, clouds floated as though patrolling the sky;
+they found in her fleeting figure something which must be watched.
+
+She was breathless and strangely happy when she reached the road. She
+was pleased at her capacity for running and her dull trouble seemed to
+have lifted, to have risen from her mind and gone off to join the
+clouds. She laughed a little and dropped down on a stone, and above the
+hurried beating of her heart she heard fainter, more despairing, the
+cry of the gipsy child. “It isn’t cooked yet,” she thought. There was a
+deeper silence, and she imagined a horrible dipping into the pot, a
+loud and ravenous eating.
+
+For a few minutes she forgot her quest, conscious of a happy loss of
+personality in this solitary place, feeling herself merged into the
+night, looking up at the patrolling clouds which, having lost her, had
+moved on. She sat in the darkness until she heard, very far off, the
+beat of a horse’s hoofs, the rumble of wheels. She remembered then that
+she had to find Henrietta. The road towards Sales Hall was nowhere
+blurred by a figure, there was no sound of footsteps, and the noise of
+the approaching horse and cart was distantly symbolic of human activity
+and home-faring; it made her think of lights and food.
+
+She looked back, and not many yards away two figures stepped from the
+sheltering trees by the roadside. On the whiteness of the road they
+were clear and unmistakable. Their arms were outstretched and their
+hands were joined and, as she looked, the two forms became one,
+separated and parted. The feet of Henrietta went tapping down the road
+and for a moment Francis stood and watched her. Then he turned. He
+struck a match, and Rose saw his face and hands illuminated like a
+paper lantern. The match made a short, brilliant journey in the air and
+fell extinguished. He had lighted his pipe and was advancing towards
+her. She, too, advanced and stopped a few feet from him and at once she
+said calmly, “Was that Henrietta? I came to find her.”
+
+He stammered something; she was afraid he was going to lie, yet at the
+same time she knew that to hear him lie would give her pleasure; it
+would be like the final shattering and trampling of her love: but he
+did not lie.
+
+“Yes, Henrietta,” he said sullenly. “There are gipsies in the hollow. I
+shall turn them out to-morrow.”
+
+“Let them stay there,” she said, she knew not why.
+
+“They’re all thieves,” he muttered.
+
+Neither spoke. It was like a dream to be standing there with him and
+hearing Henrietta’s footsteps tapping into silence. Then Rose asked in
+genuine bewilderment, “Why did you let her go home alone? Why did you
+leave her here?”
+
+“She wouldn’t have me. She’s safe now”; and raising his voice, he
+almost cried, “You shouldn’t let her come here!” It was a cry for help,
+he was appealing to her again, he was the victim of his habit. She
+smiled and wondered if her pale face was as clear to him as his was to
+her.
+
+“No, I should not,” she said slowly. “I should not. One does nothing
+all one’s life but make mistakes.” Her chief feeling at that moment was
+one of self-disgust. She moved away without another word, going slowly
+so that she should not overtake Henrietta.
+
+
+§ 4
+
+Henrietta was going very fast, impelled by the fury of her thoughts,
+and she forgot to be afraid of the lonely country, for she felt herself
+still wrapped in the dangerous safety of that man’s embrace, and the
+darkness through which she went was still the palpitating darkness
+which had fallen over her at his touch. The thing had been bound to
+happen. She had been watching its approach and pretending it was not
+there, and now it had arrived and she was giddy with excitement,
+inspired with a sense of triumph, tremulous with apprehension.
+
+Her thoughts were not of her lover as an individual, but of the
+situation as a whole. Here she was, Henrietta Mallett, from Mrs.
+Banks’s boarding-house, the chief figure in a drama and an unrepentant
+sinner. She could not help it: she loved him; he needed her. Since that
+day when she had offered him friendship and help, he had been depending
+on her more and more, a big man like a neglected baby. She had
+strenuously fixed her mind on the babyish side of him, but all the time
+her senses had been attracted by the man, and now, by the mere physical
+experience of the force of his arms, she could never see him as a child
+again. She clung to the idea of helping him, to the thought of his
+misfortunes, for that was imperative, but she was now conscious of her
+fewer years, her infinitely smaller bodily strength, the limitations of
+her sex.
+
+And suddenly, as she moved swiftly, hardly feeling the ground under her
+feet, she began to cry, with emotion, with fear and joy. What was going
+to happen to her? She loved him. She could still feel the violence of
+his clasp, the roughness of his coat on her cheeks, the iron of his
+hands, so distinctly that it seemed to have happened only a moment ago,
+yet she was nearly home. She could see the lights of the bridge as
+though swung on a cord across the gulf, and she dried her eyes. She was
+exhausted and hungry and when she had passed over the river she made
+her way to a shop where chocolates could be bought. She knew their
+comforting and sustaining properties. It was unromantic, but hunger
+asserts itself in spite of love.
+
+It was getting late and the shop was empty but for one assistant and a
+tall young man. This was Charles Batty, taking a great deal of trouble
+over his purchase, for spread before him on the counter was an
+assortment of large chocolate boxes adorned with bows of ribbon and
+pictures of lovers leaning over stiles and red-lipped maidens caressing
+dogs.
+
+“I don’t like these pictures,” Henrietta heard him mutter bashfully.
+
+“Here’s one with roses. Roses are always suitable.” “No,” he said, “I
+want a big white box with crimson ribbon.” Henrietta stepped up to his
+side. “I’ll help you choose,” she said.
+
+He started, stared, forgot to take off his hat. He gazed at her with
+the absorption of some connoisseur looking at the perfect thing he has
+dreamed of: he looked without greed and with a sort of ecstasy which
+left his face expressionless and embarrassed Henrietta in the presence
+of the arch girl behind the counter.
+
+Charles waked up. “I want a white one,” he repeated, “with crimson
+ribbon. No pictures.” The assistant went away and he turned to
+Henrietta. “It’s for you,” he said.
+
+“Charles, don’t speak so loud.”
+
+“I don’t care. But I suppose you’re ashamed of me. Yes, of course,
+that’s it.”
+
+“Don’t be silly,” Henrietta said, “and do be quick, because I want some
+chocolates myself.”
+
+With the large box, white and crimson-ribboned and wrapped in paper,
+under his arm, he waited until she was served, and then they walked
+together down the street, made brilliant with the lights of many little
+shops.
+
+“This is for you,” he said, “but I’ll carry it.”
+
+“But this isn’t the way home.”
+
+“No.” They turned back into the dimmer road bordering The Green.
+
+“I suppose you wouldn’t walk round the hill?”
+
+“I don’t mind.” She felt as she might have done in the company of some
+large, protective dog. He was there, saving her from the fear of
+molestation, but there was no need to speak to him, it was almost
+impossible to think consecutively of him, yet she did remind herself
+that a very long time ago, when she was young, he had said wonderful
+things to her. She had forgotten that fact in the stir of these last
+days.
+
+“I got these chocolates for you,” he said again. “I thought perhaps
+that was the kind of thing I ought to do. I don’t know, and you can’t
+ask people because they’d laugh. Why didn’t you come to tea on Sunday?”
+
+“I can’t come every Sunday.”
+
+“Of course you can. Considering I’m engaged to you, it’s only proper.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean.”
+
+“Yes,” he said, “you may not be engaged to me, but I’m engaged to you.
+That’s what I’ve decided.”
+
+She laughed. “You’ll find it rather dull, I’m afraid.”
+
+“No,” he said. “I can do things for you.” She was struck by that simple
+statement, spoilt by his next words: “Like these chocolates.”
+
+He was very insistent about the chocolates and proud of his idea. She
+thanked him. “But I don’t want you to give me things.”
+
+“You can’t stop me. I’m doing it all the time.”
+
+They had reached the highest point of the hill and they halted at the
+railing on the cliff’s edge. Below them, the blackness of earth gave
+way to the blackness of air and the shining blackness of water, and
+slowly the opposing cliff cleared itself from a formless mass into the
+hardly seen shapes of rock and tree. Here was beauty, here was
+something permanent in the midst of change, and it seemed as though the
+hand of peace were laid on Henrietta. For a moment the episode on the
+other side of the water and the problem it involved took their tiny
+places in the universe instead of the large ones in her life and,
+strangely enough, it was Charles Batty who loomed up big, as though he
+had some odd fellowship with immensity and beauty.
+
+“What do you give me?” she asked. “I don’t want it, you know, but tell
+me.”
+
+“I told you that night when you listened and took it all. I don’t think
+I can say it again.”
+
+“No, but you’re not to misunderstand me, and you mustn’t go on giving
+and getting nothing back.”
+
+“That’s just what I can do. Not many people could, but I can. Perhaps
+it’s the only way I can be great, like an artist giving his work to a
+world that doesn’t care.”
+
+The quick sense she had to serve her instead of knowledge and to make
+her unconsciously subtle, detected his danger in the words and some
+lack of homage to herself. “Ah, you’re pretending, and you’re enjoying
+it,” she said. “It’s consoling you for not being able to do anything
+else.”
+
+“Who said I couldn’t do anything else?”
+
+“Well, you nearly did, and I don’t suppose you can. If you could, you
+wouldn’t bother about me.”
+
+He was silent and though she did not look at him she was very keenly
+aware of his tall figure wrapped in an overcoat reaching almost to his
+heels and with the big parcel under his left arm. He was always
+slightly absurd and now, when he struck the top bar of the railing with
+his left hand and uttered a mournful, “Yes, it’s true!” the tragedy in
+his tone could not repress her smile. Yet if he had been less funny he
+might have been less truly tragic.
+
+“So, you see, I’m only a kind of makeshift,” she remarked.
+
+“No,” he said, “but I may have been mistaken in myself. I’m not
+mistaken about you. Never!” he cried, striking the rail again.
+
+They were alone on the hill, but suddenly, with a clatter of wings, a
+bird left his nest in the rocks and swept out of sight, leaving a
+memory of swiftness and life, of an intenser blackness in the gulf. Far
+below them, to the left, there were lights, stationary and moving, and
+sometimes the clang of a tramcar bell reached them with its harsh
+music: the slim line of the bridge, with here and there a dimly burning
+light, was like a spangled thread. The sound of footsteps and voices
+came to them from the road behind the hill.
+
+“But after all,” Charles said more clearly, “it doesn’t matter about
+being acclaimed. It’s just like making music for deaf people: the
+music’s there; the music’s there. And so it doesn’t matter very much
+whether you love me. It’s one’s weakness that wants that, one’s
+loneliness. I can love you just the same, perhaps better; it’s the
+audience that spoils things. I should think it does!”
+
+“So you’re quite happy.”
+
+“Not quite,” he answered, “but I have something to do, something I can
+do, too. Music—no, I’m not good enough. I’m no more than an amateur,
+but in this I can be supreme.”
+
+“You can’t be sure of that,” she said acutely. “If you wrote a poem you
+might think it was perfect, but you wouldn’t absolutely know till you’d
+tried it on other people. So you can’t be sure about love.”
+
+“You mightn’t be,” he said with a touch of scorn. “You may depend on
+other people, but I don’t.”
+
+She made a small sound of scorn. “No, you’ll never know whether you’re
+doing this wonderful work of yours well or not because,” she said,
+cruelly exultant, “it won’t be tested.”
+
+“Ah, but it might be. You’ve got to do things as though they will be.”
+
+“I suppose so,” she said indifferently. “And now I must go back.”
+
+He turned obediently and thrust the parcel at her.
+
+“But aren’t you going to take me home?” she asked.
+
+“No, I don’t think I need do that. I shall stay here.”
+
+“Then I won’t have your chocolates. I didn’t want them, anyhow, but now
+I won’t take them.”
+
+“I don’t understand you,” he said miserably.
+
+“Doesn’t the painter understand his paints or the musician his
+instruments? No, you’ll have to begin at the beginning, Charles Batty,
+and work very hard before you’re a success.”
+
+She ran from him fleetly, hardly knowing why she was so angry, but it
+seemed to her that he had no right to be content without her love; she
+felt he must be emasculate, and the guilty passion of Francis Sales
+was, by contrast, splendid. But for that passion, Charles Batty might
+have persuaded her she was incapable of rousing men’s desire and not to
+rouse it was not to be a woman. Accordingly, she valued Francis and
+despised the other, yet when she had reached home and run upstairs and
+was standing in the dim room where the firelight cast big, uncertain
+shadows, like vague threats, on walls and ceiling, she suffered a
+reaction.
+
+The scene on the road became sinister: she remembered the strange
+silence of the trees and the clangorous barking of the dogs, the hoarse
+voices from the encampment in the hollow. It had been very dark there
+and an extraordinary blackness had buried her when she was in that
+man’s arms. It had been dark, too, on the hill, but with a feeling of
+space and height and freedom. If Charles had been a little
+different—but then, he did not really want her; he was making a study
+of his sorrow, he was gazing at it, turning it round and over, growing
+familiar with all its aspects. He was an artist frustrated of any power
+but this of feeling and to have given him herself would simply have
+been to rob him of what he found more precious. But she and Francis
+Sales were kin; she understood him: he was not better than herself,
+perhaps he was not so good and he, too, was unhappy, but he did not
+love her for those qualities of which Charles Batty had talked by the
+Monks’ Pool, he wove no poetry about her: he loved her because she was
+pretty; because her mouth was red and her eyes bright and her body
+young: he loved her because, being her father’s daughter, her youth
+answered his desire with enough shame to season appetite, but not to
+spoil it. And she thought of Christabel as of some sick doll.
+
+Dinner was a strange meal that night. Caroline’s chair was empty, and
+the sighs of Sophia were like gentle zephyrs in the room. Henrietta’s
+silence might have been interpreted as anxiety about her aunt and Susan
+informed the cook, truly enough, that Miss Henrietta had a feeling
+heart.
+
+It was only Rose who could have explained the nature of the feeling.
+She was fascinated by the sight of Henrietta, her rival, her fellow
+dupe. Rose looked at her without envy or malice or covetousness, but
+with an extraordinary interest, trying to find what likeness to herself
+and what differences had attracted Francis Sales.
+
+There was the dark hair, curly where hers was straight, dark eyes
+instead of grey ones, the same warm pallor of the skin, in Henrietta’s
+case slightly overlaid with pink; but the mouth, ah! it must be the
+mouth and what it meant that made the alluring difference. Henrietta’s
+mouth was soft, red and mutinous; in her father it had been a blemish,
+half hidden by the foreign cut of moustache and beard, but in Henrietta
+it was a beauty and a warning. Rose had never properly studied that
+mouth before and under the fixity of her gaze Henrietta’s eyelids
+fluttered upwards. There were shadows under her eyes and it seemed to
+Rose that she had changed a little. She must have changed. Rose had
+never been in the arms of Francis Sales; she shuddered now at the
+thought, but she knew that she, too, would have been different after
+that experience.
+
+She looked at Henrietta with the sadness of her desire to help her, the
+fear of her inability to do it; and Henrietta looked back with a hint
+of defiance, the symbol of her attitude to the cruel world in which
+fond lovers were despised and love had a hard road. Rose restrained an
+impulse to lean across the table and say quietly, “I saw you to-night
+with Francis Sales and I am sorry for you. He told me I should not let
+you meet him. He said that himself, so you see he does not want you,”
+and she wondered how much that cry of his had been uttered in despair
+of his passion and how much in weariness of Henrietta and himself.
+
+Rose leaned back in her chair and immediately straightened. She was
+intolerably tired but she refused to droop. It seemed as though she
+were never to be free from secrecy: after her release there had been a
+short time of dreary peace and now she had Henrietta’s fight to wage in
+secret, her burden to carry without a word. And this was worse, more
+difficult, for she had less power with which to meet more danger.
+Between the candle lights she sent a smile to Henrietta, but the girl’s
+mouth was petulantly set and it was a relief when Sophia quavered out,
+“She won’t be able to go to the Battys’ ball! She will be
+heart-broken.”
+
+Rose and Henrietta were momentarily united in their common amazement at
+the genuineness of this sorrow and to both there was something comic in
+the picture of the elderly Caroline, suffering from a chill and
+bemoaning the loss of an evening’s pleasure. Henrietta cast a look of
+scornful surprise at her Aunt Sophia. Was the Battys’ ball a matter for
+a broken heart? Rose said consolingly, “It isn’t till after Christmas.
+Perhaps she will be well enough.”
+
+“And Christmas,” Sophia wailed. “Henrietta’s first Christmas here! With
+Caroline upstairs!”
+
+“I don’t like Christmas,” Henrietta said. “It makes me miserable.”
+
+“But you will like the ball,” Rose said. “Why, if it hadn’t been for
+the ball we might have been in Algiers now.”
+
+“With Caroline ill! I should have sent for you.”
+
+“Shall we start, Henrietta, in a few weeks’ time?” She ignored
+Henrietta’s vague murmur. “Oh, not until Caroline is quite well,
+Sophia. We could go to the south of France, Henrietta. Yes, I think we
+had better arrange that.” Rose felt a slightly malicious pleasure in
+this proposal which became a serious one as she spoke. “You must learn
+to speak French, and it is a long time since I have been abroad. It
+will be a kindness to me. I don’t care to go alone. We have no
+engagements after the middle of January, so shall we settle to go
+then?” There was authority in her tone. “We shall avoid brigands,
+Sophia, but I think we ought to go. It is not fair that Henrietta’s
+experiences should be confined to Radstowe.”
+
+“Quite right, dear.” Sophia was unwillingly but nobly truthful. “We
+have a duty to her father, but say nothing to Caroline until she is
+stronger.”
+
+Henrietta was silent but she had a hot rage in her heart. She felt
+herself in a trap and she looked with sudden hatred and suspicion at
+her Aunt Rose. It was impossible to defy that calm authority. She would
+have to go, in merest gratitude she must consent; she would be carried
+off, but she looked round wildly for some means of escape.
+
+The prospect of that exile spoilt a Christmas which otherwise would not
+have been a miserable one, for the Malletts made it a charming festival
+with inspired ideas for gifts and a delightful party on Christmas Day,
+when Caroline was allowed to appear. She refused to say that she was
+better; she had never been ill; it was a mere fad of the doctor and her
+sisters; she supposed they were tired of her and wanted a little peace.
+However, she continued to absorb large quantities of strengthening
+food, beef tea, meat jelly and heady tonic, for she loved food, and she
+was determined to go to the ball.
+
+This was on New Year’s Eve, and all that day, from the moment when
+Susan drew the curtains and brought the early tea, there was an
+atmosphere of excitement in Nelson Lodge and Henrietta permitted
+herself to enjoy it. Francis Sales was to be at the ball. She forgot
+the threatened exile, she ignored Charles Batty’s tiresome insistence
+that she must dance with him twice as many times as with anybody else,
+because he was engaged to her.
+
+“I don’t believe you can dance a bit,” she cried.
+
+“I can get round,” he said. “It’s the noise of the band that upsets
+me—jingle, jingle, bang, bang! But we can sit out when we can’t bear it
+any longer.”
+
+“That would be very amusing,” Henrietta said.
+
+Susan, drawing Henrietta’s curtains, remarked that it was a nice day
+for the ball and then, looking severely at Henrietta and arranging a
+wrap round her shoulders, she said, “I suppose Miss Caroline is going.”
+
+“Oh, I hope so,” Henrietta said. “She’s not worse, is she?”
+
+“Not that I know of, Miss Henrietta, but I’m afraid it will be the
+death of her.” She seemed to think it would be Henrietta’s fault and,
+in the kitchen, she told Cook that, but for Miss Henrietta, the Battys,
+who were close-fisted people—you had only to look at Mr. Batty’s
+mouth—would not be giving a ball at all, but they had their eyes on
+Miss Henrietta for that half-witted son of theirs. She was sure of it.
+And Miss Caroline was not fit to go, it would be the death of her. Cook
+was optimistic. It would do Miss Caroline good; she was always the
+better for a little fun.
+
+The elder ladies breakfasted in bed to save themselves all unnecessary
+fatigue, and throughout the day they moved behind half-lowered blinds.
+Henrietta was warned not to walk out. There was a cold wind, her face
+would be roughened; and when she insisted on air and exercise she was
+advised to wear a thick veil. Both ladies offered her a shawl-like
+covering for the face, but Henrietta shook her head. “Feel,” she said,
+lifting a hand of each to either cheek.
+
+“Like a flower,” Sophia said.
+
+“The wind doesn’t hurt flowers. It won’t hurt me.”
+
+Fires were lighted in the bedroom earlier than usual. Caroline and
+Sophia again retired to their room, leaving orders that they were not
+to be disturbed until four o’clock, and a solemn hush fell on the
+house.
+
+While the ladies were having tea, Susan was busy in their bedroom
+laying out their gowns and Henrietta, chancing to pass the open door,
+peeped in. The bed was spread with the rose-pink and apricot dresses of
+their choice, with petticoats of corresponding hues, with silken
+stockings and long gloves and fans; and on the mound made by the
+pillows two pairs of very high-heeled slippers pointed their narrow
+toes. It might have been the room of two young girls and, before she
+fluttered down to tea, Henrietta took another glance at the mass of
+yellow tulle on her own bed. She wished Mrs. Banks and Miss Stubb could
+see her in that dress. Mrs. Banks would cry and Miss Stubb would grow
+poetical. She would have to write and tell them all about it. At eight
+o’clock the four Miss Malletts assembled in the drawing-room. Caroline
+was magnificent. Old lace veiled the shimmering satin of her gown and
+made it possible to wear the family emeralds: these, heavily set, were
+on her neck and in her ears; a pair of bracelets adorned her arms. Seen
+from behind, she might have been the stout and prosperous mother of a
+family in her prime and only when she turned and displayed the pink
+patches on yellow skin, was her age discernible. She was magnificent,
+and terrible, and Henrietta had a moment of recoil before she gasped,
+“Oh, Aunt Caroline, how lovely!”
+
+Sophia advanced more modestly for inspection. “She looks about
+twenty-one!” Caroline exclaimed. “What a figure! Like a girl’s!”
+
+“You’re prejudiced, dear Caroline. I never had your air. You’re
+wonderful.”
+
+“We’re all wonderful!” Henrietta cried.
+
+They had all managed to express themselves: Caroline in the superb
+attempt at overcoming her age, and Sophia in the softness of her
+apparel; Rose, in filmy black and pearls round her firm throat, gently
+proud and distant; and Henrietta was like some delicately gaudy insect,
+dancing hither and thither, approaching and withdrawing.
+
+“Yes, we’re all wonderful,” Henrietta said again. “Don’t you think we
+ought to start? It’s a pity for other people not to see us!”
+
+With Susan’s help they began the business of packing themselves into
+the cab. Caroline lifted her skirts and showed remarkably thin legs,
+but she stood on the doorstep to quarrel with Sophia about the taking
+of a shawl. She ought to have a lace one round her shoulders, Sophia
+said, for the Assembly Rooms were always cold and it was a frosty
+night.
+
+“Sophia, you’re an idiot,” Caroline said. “Do you think I’m going to
+sit in a ball-room in a shawl? Why not take a hot-water bottle and a
+muff?”
+
+“At least we must have the smelling salts. Susan, fetch the salts. Miss
+Caroline might need them.”
+
+Miss Caroline said she would rather die than display such weakness and
+she stepped into the cab which groaned under her weight. Another
+fainter groan accompanied Sophia’s entrance and Rose and Henrietta,
+tapping their satin shoes on the pavement, heard sounds of bickering.
+Sophia had forgotten her handkerchief and Susan fled once more into the
+house.
+
+The cabman growled his disapproval from the box. “I’ve another party to
+fetch,” he said. “And how many of you’s going?”
+
+“Only four,” Henrietta said sweetly, “and we shan’t be a minute.”
+
+“I’ve been waiting ten already,” said the man.
+
+The handkerchief was handed into the darkness of the cab and Rose and
+Henrietta followed. “Mind my toes,” Caroline said. “Susan, tell that
+disagreeable fellow to drive on.”
+
+They had not far to go, but the man did not hurry his horse. Other cabs
+passed them on the road, motor-cars whizzed by.
+
+“We shall be dreadfully late,” Henrietta sighed.
+
+“I am always late for balls,” Caroline said calmly.
+
+Rose, leaning back in her corner, could see Henrietta’s profile against
+the window-pane. Her lips were parted, she leaned forward eagerly. “We
+shall miss a dance,” she murmured.
+
+Caroline coughed. “Oh, dear,” Sophia moaned. “Caroline, you should be
+in bed.”
+
+“You’re a silly old woman,” Caroline retorted.
+
+“But you’ll promise not to sit in a draught; Henrietta, see that your
+Aunt Caroline doesn’t sit in a draught.” But Henrietta was letting down
+the window, for the cab had drawn up before the portals of the Assembly
+Rooms.
+
+In the cloak-room, Rose and Henrietta slipped off their wraps, glanced
+in the mirror, and were ready, but there were anxious little
+whisperings and consultations on the part of the elder ladies and
+Henrietta cast a despairing glance at Rose. Would they never be ready?
+But at last Caroline uttered a majestic “Now” and led the way like a
+plump duck swimming across a pond with a fleet of smaller ducks behind
+her.
+
+No expense and no trouble had been spared to justify the expectations
+of Radstowe. The antechamber was luxuriously carpeted, arm-chaired,
+cushioned, palmed and screened, and the hired flunkey at the ballroom
+door had a presence and a voice fitted for the occasion.
+
+“Miss Mallett!” he bawled. “Miss Sophia Mallett! Miss Rose Mallett!
+Miss Henrietta Mallett!”
+
+The moment had come. Henrietta lifted her head, settled her shoulders
+and prepared to meet the eyes of Francis Sales. The Malletts had
+arrived between the first and second dances and the guests sitting
+round the walls had an uninterrupted view of the stately entrance. Mrs.
+Batty, in diamonds and purple satin, greeted the late-comers with
+enthusiasm and James Batty escorted Caroline and Sophia to arm-chairs
+that had all the appearance of thrones. Mrs. Batty patted Henrietta on
+the shoulder.
+
+“Pretty dear,” she said. “Here you are at last. There are a lot of boys
+with their programmes half empty till you come, and my Charles, too.
+Not that he’s much for dancing. I’ve told him he must look after the
+ugly ones. We’re going to have a quadrille for your aunts’ sake!” And
+then, whispering, she asked, “What do you think of it? I said if we had
+it at all, we’d have it good.”
+
+“It’s gorgeous!” Henrietta said, and off the stage she had never seen a
+grander spectacle. The platform at the end of the room was banked with
+flowers and behind them uniformed and much-moustached musicians played
+with ardour, with rapture, their eyes closing sentimentally in the
+choicest passages. Baskets of flowers hung from the chandeliers, the
+floor was polished to the slipperiness of ice and Mrs. Batty, on her
+hospitable journeys to and fro, was in constant danger of a fall.
+
+The society of Radstowe, all in new garments, appeared to Henrietta of
+a dazzling brilliance, but she stood easily, holding her head high, as
+though she were well used to this kind of glory. Looking round, she saw
+Francis Sales leaning against a wall, talking to his partner and
+smiling with unnecessary amiability. A flame of jealousy flickered
+hotly through her body. How could he smile like that? Why did he not
+come to her? And then, in the pride of her secret love, she remembered
+that he dare not show his eagerness. They belonged to each other, they
+were alone in their love, and all these people, talking, laughing,
+fluttering fans, thinking themselves of immense importance, had no real
+existence. He and she alone of all that company existed with a
+fierceness that changed the sensuous dance-music into the cry of
+essential passion.
+
+Young men approached her and wrote their initials on her programme
+which was already marked with little crosses against the numbers she
+had promised to Francis Sales. Charles Batty, rather hot, anxious and
+glowering, arrived too late. His angry disgust, his sense of desertion,
+were beyond words. He stared at her. “And my flowers,” he demanded.
+
+“Charles, don’t shout.”
+
+“Where are my flowers? I sent some—roses and lilies and maidenhair.
+Where are they?”
+
+“I haven’t seen them.”
+
+“Ah, I suppose you didn’t like them, but the girl in the shop told me
+they would be all right. How should I know?”
+
+“I haven’t seen them,” she repeated. Over his shoulder she saw the
+figure of Francis Sales coming towards her.
+
+“I ordered them yesterday,” Charles continued loudly. “I’ll kill that
+girl. I’ll go at once.”
+
+“The shop will be shut,” Henrietta reminded him. “Oh, do be quiet,
+Charles.” She turned with a smile for Francis.
+
+“She hasn’t a dance left,” Charles said.
+
+“Mr. Sales took the precaution of booking them in advance,” Henrietta
+said lightly, and with a miserable gesture Charles went off, muttering,
+“I hadn’t thought of that. Why didn’t some one tell me?”
+
+
+§ 5
+
+That ball was to be known in Nelson Lodge as the one that killed Miss
+Caroline, but Miss Caroline had her full share of pleasure out of it.
+It was the custom in Radstowe to make much of Caroline and Sophia: they
+were respected and playfully loved and it was not only the middle-aged
+gentlemen who asked them to dance, and John and Charles Batty were not
+the only young ones who had the honour of leading them into the middle
+of the room, taking a few turns in a waltz and returning, in good
+order, to the throne-like arm-chairs. Francis Sales had their names on
+his programme, but with him they used the privilege of old friends and
+preferred to talk.
+
+“You can keep your dancing for Rose and Henrietta,” Caroline said.
+
+“He comes too late for me,” Rose said pleasantly. He gave her something
+remarkably like one of his old looks and she answered it with a grave
+one. There was gnawing trouble at her heart. She had watched his
+meeting with Henrietta. It had been wordless; everything was
+understood. She had also seen the unhappiness of Charles Batty, and, on
+an inspiration, she said to him, “Charles, you must take pity on an old
+maid. I have all these dances to give away.”
+
+For him this dance was to be remembered as the beginning of his
+friendship with Rose Mallett; but at the moment he was merely annoyed
+at being prevented from watching Henrietta’s dark head appearing and
+disappearing among the other dancers like that of a bather in a rough
+sea. He said, “Oh, thank you very much. Are you sure there’s nobody
+else? But I suppose there can’t be”; and holding her at arm’s length,
+he ambled round her, treading occasionally on her toes. He apologized:
+he was no good at dancing: he hoped he had not hurt her slippers, or
+her feet.
+
+She paused and looked down at them. “You mustn’t do that to Henrietta.
+Her slippers are yellow and you would spoil them.”
+
+“She isn’t giving me a single dance!” he burst out. “I asked her to,
+but I never thought I ought to get a promise. Nobody told me. Nobody
+tells me anything.”
+
+An icily angry gentleman remonstrated with him for standing in the
+fairway and Rose suggested that they should sit down.
+
+“You see, I’m no good. I can’t dance. I can’t please her.”
+
+“Charles, you’re still in the way. Let us go somewhere quiet and then
+you can tell me all about it.”
+
+He took her to a small room leading from the big one. “I’ll shut the
+door,” he said, “and then we shan’t hear that hideous din.”
+
+“It is a very good band.”
+
+“It’s profane,” Charles said wearily. “Music—they call it music!” He
+was off at a great pace and she did not try to hold him in. She lay
+back in the big chair and seemed to study the toes on which Charles
+Batty had trampled. His voice rolled on like the sound of water,
+companionable and unanswerable. Suddenly his tone changed. “Henrietta
+is very unkind to me.”
+
+“Is there any reason why she shouldn’t be?”
+
+“I do everything I can think of. I’ve told her all about myself.”
+
+“She would rather hear about herself.”
+
+“I’ve done that, too. Perhaps I haven’t done it enough. I’ve given her
+chocolates and flowers. What else ought I to do?”
+
+Her voice, very calm and clear after his spluttering, said, “Not too
+much.”
+
+“Oh!” This was a new idea. “Oh! I never thought of that. Why—”
+
+She interrupted his usual cry. “Women are naturally cruel.”
+
+“Are they? I didn’t know that either.” He swallowed the information
+visibly. She could almost see the process of digestion. “Oh!” he said
+again.
+
+“They don’t mean to be. They are simply untouched by a love they don’t
+return.” She added thoughtfully: “And inclined to despise the lover.”
+
+“That’s it,” he mourned. “She despises me.” And in a louder voice he
+demanded, not of Rose Mallett, but of the mysterious world in which he
+gropingly existed, “Why should she?”
+
+“She shouldn’t, but perhaps you yourself are making a mistake.”
+
+She heard indistinctly the word, “Impossible.”
+
+“You can’t be sure.”
+
+“I’m quite certain about that—about nothing else.” His big hands moved.
+“I cling to that.”
+
+“Then you must be ready to serve her. Charles, if I ever needed you—”
+
+“I’d do anything for you because you’re her aunt. And besides,” he said
+simply, “you’re rather like her in the face.”
+
+“Thank you, but it’s her you may have to serve—and not me. I want her
+to be happy. I don’t know where her happiness is, but I know where it
+is not. Some day I may tell you.” She looked at him. He might be useful
+as an ally; she was sure he could be trusted. “Promise you will do
+anything I ask for her sake.”
+
+He turned the head which had been sunk on his crumpled shirt. “Is
+anything the matter?” he asked, concerned, and more alert than she had
+ever seen him.
+
+She said, “Hush!” for the door behind was opening and it let in a
+murmur of voices and a rush of cold, fresh air. Rose shivered and,
+looking round, she saw Henrietta and Francis Sales. Her cloak was half
+on and half off her shoulders, her colour was very high and her eyes
+were not so dazzled by the light that she did not immediately recognize
+her aunt. It was Francis Sales who hesitated and Rose said quickly,
+“Oh, please shut the door.”
+
+He obeyed and stood by Henrietta’s side, a pleasing figure, looking
+taller and more finely made in his black clothes.
+
+“Have you been on the terrace?”
+
+“Yes, it’s a glorious night.”
+
+“You’ll get cold,” Charles said severely. She had been out there with
+the man who murdered music and who, therefore, was a scoundrel, and
+Charles’s objection was based on that fact and not on Francis Sales’s
+married state. He had not the pleasure of feeling a pious indignation
+that a man with an invalid wife walked on the terrace with Henrietta.
+He would have said, “Why not?” and he would have found an excuse for
+any man in the beauty, the wonder, the enchantment of that girl, though
+he could not forgive Henrietta for her friendship with the slaughterer
+of music and of birds.
+
+He glared and repeated, “You’ll be ill.”
+
+Henrietta pretended not to hear him, and Rose said thoughtfully and
+slowly, “Oh, no, Charles, people don’t get cold when they are happy.”
+
+“I suppose not.” He felt in a vague way that he and Rose, sitting
+there, for he had forgotten to stand up, were united against the other
+two who stood, very clear, against the gold-embossed wall of the room,
+and that those two were conscious of the antagonism. They also were
+united and he felt an increase of his dull pain at the sight of their
+comeliness, the suspicion of their likeness to each other. “I suppose
+not,” Charles said, and after that no one spoke, as though it were
+impossible to find a light word, and unnecessary.
+
+Each one was aware of conflict, of something fierce and silent going
+on, but it was Rose who understood the situation best and Charles who
+understood it least. His feelings were torturing but simple. He wanted
+Henrietta and he could not get her: he did not please her, and that
+Sales, that Philistine, that handsome, well-made, sulky-looking beggar
+knew how to do it.
+
+But Rose was conscious of the working of four minds: there was her own,
+sore with the past and troubled by a present in which her lover
+concealed his discomfiture under the easy sullenness of his pose. He,
+too, had the past shared with her to haunt him, but he had also a
+present bright with Henrietta’s allurements yet darkly streaked with
+prohibitions, struggles and surrenders, and Rose saw that the worst
+tragedy was his and hers. It must not be Henrietta’s. In their youth
+she and Francis had misunderstood, and in their maturity they had
+failed, each other; it was the fault of neither and Henrietta must not
+be the victim of their folly. Looking at the big fan of black feathers
+spread on her knee, Rose smiled a little, with a maternal tenderness.
+Henrietta was her father’s daughter, wilful and lovable, but she was
+also the daughter of that mother who had been good and loving.
+Henrietta had her father’s passion for excitement but, being a woman,
+she had the greater need of being loved, and Rose raised her eyes and
+looked at Charles with an ironical appreciation of his worthiness, of
+his comicality. She saw him with Henrietta’s eyes, and her white
+shoulders lifted and dropped in resignation. Then she looked at
+Henrietta and smiled frankly. “Another dance has begun,” she said.
+“Somebody must be looking for you.”
+
+“No,” Henrietta said, “it’s with Mr. Sales,” and turning to him with
+the effect of ignoring Rose, she said in a clear voice which became
+slightly harsh as she saw him gazing at her aunt oddly, almost as
+though he were astonished by a new sight, “Shall we go back to the
+terrace or shall we dance?”
+
+“You’ll get cold,” Charles said again angrily.
+
+“Let us dance,” Sales said.
+
+The door to the ball-room closed behind them and Charles let out a
+groan. “You see!” he said.
+
+Rose hoped he did not see too much and she was reassured when he added,
+“She takes no notice of me.”
+
+“Poor Charles, but you know you treat her a little like a child. You
+shouldn’t talk of catching cold. You’re too material.”
+
+She was surprised to hear him say with a sort of humble pride, “Only
+before other people. She’s heard me different.” Then, dropping into the
+despair of his own thoughts, and with the rage of one feeling himself
+sinking hopelessly, he cried out, “It’s like pouring water through a
+sieve.”
+
+The voice of Rose, very calm and wise, said gently, “Continue to pour.”
+
+“It’s all very fine,” he muttered.
+
+“Continue to pour. It may be all you can do, but it is worth while.”
+
+“I told her I would do that, one night, on the hill. She said she
+didn’t want it.”
+
+“She doesn’t know,” Rose said in the same voice, comforting in its
+quietness. She stood up. “We had better go back now, and remember, you
+promise to do for her anything I ask of you.”
+
+“Of course,” he said, “but I shall do it wrong.”
+
+She laid her hand on his arm. “It must be done rightly. It must. It
+will be. Now take me back.”
+
+He resigned her unwillingly, for he felt that she was his strength, to
+the partner who claimed her, but as she prepared to dance, Charles
+returned hurriedly and, ignoring the affronted gentleman who had
+already clasped her, he said anxiously, “This service—what is it? Is
+there something wrong?”
+
+She looked deeply into his eyes. “There must not be.”
+
+And now, for him in the sea of dancers, there were two dark heads
+bobbing among the waves.
+
+The hours sped by; the lavish supper was consumed; dresses and flowers
+lost their freshness; the musicians lost their energetic ardour; the
+man at the piano was seen to yawn cavernously above the keys. The
+guests began to depart, leaving an exhausted but happy Mrs. Batty. She
+had been complimented by Miss Mallett on the perfection of her
+arrangements, on the brilliance of the assembly, on the music and even
+on the refreshments, and Mrs. Batty had blessed her own perseverance
+against Mr. Batty’s obstinacy in the matter of the supper. He had
+wanted light refreshments and she had insisted on a knife-and-fork
+affair, and Miss Caroline had actually remarked on the wisdom of a
+solid meal. She had no patience with snacks. Mrs. Batty intended to
+lull Mr. Batty to slumber with that quotation.
+
+In the cab, as the Malletts jolted home in the care of the same surly
+driver, Caroline complaisantly spoke of her congratulations. She would
+not have said so much to anybody else, but she knew Mrs. Batty would be
+pleased.
+
+“So she was, dear,” Sophia said, but her more delicate social sense was
+troubled. “Though I do think one ought to treat everybody as one would
+treat the greatest lady in the land. I think we ought to have taken for
+granted that everything would be correct.”
+
+“Rubbish! You must treat people as they want to be treated. She was
+panting for praise, and she got it, and anyhow it’s too late to argue.”
+
+They had stayed to the end so that Henrietta’s pleasure should not be
+curtailed, and now she was leaning back, very white and still.
+
+“I believe the child’s asleep,” Sophia whispered.
+
+“No, I’m not. I’m wide awake.”
+
+“Did you enjoy it, dear?”
+
+“Very much,” said Henrietta.
+
+“I kept my eye on you, child,” Caroline said.
+
+Henrietta made an effort. “I kept my eye on you, Aunt Caroline. I saw
+you flirting with Mr. Batty.”
+
+“Impudence! Sophia, do you hear her? I only danced with him twice,
+though I admit he hovered round my chair. They always did. I can’t help
+it. We’re all like that. You should have seen your father at a ball!
+There was no one like him. Such an air! Ah, here we are. I suppose this
+disagreeable cabman must be tipped.”
+
+“I’ll see to that,” Rose said. It was the first time she had spoken.
+“Be quick, Caroline. Don’t stand in the cold.”
+
+“The dancing has done me good,” Caroline said, and she lingered on the
+pavement to look at the stars, holding her skirts high in the happy
+knowledge of her unrivalled legs and feet. “No, Sophia, I am not cold,
+or tired; but yes, I’ll take a little soup.”
+
+They sat round the roaring fire prepared for them and drank the soup
+out of fine old cups. Caroline chattered; she was gay; she believed she
+had been a great success; young men had paid court to her; she had
+rapped at least one of them with her fan; a grey-haired man had talked
+to her of her lively past. But Sophia had much ado to prevent her heavy
+head from nodding. Henrietta was silent, very busy with her thoughts
+and careful to avoid the eyes of Rose.
+
+“I think,” Caroline said, “we ought to give a little dance. We could
+have this carpet up. Just a little dance—”
+
+“But Henrietta and I,” Rose said distinctly, “are going away.”
+
+“Oh, nonsense! You must put it off. We ought to give a dance for the
+child. Now, how many couples? Ten, at least. Sophia, you’re asleep.”
+
+“No, dear. A party. I heard. But if you’re ready now, I think I’ll go
+to bed.”
+
+“Go along. I’ll follow.”
+
+“Oh, no, Caroline, we always go together.”
+
+“Well, well, I’ll come, but I could stay here and talk for hours. I
+could always sit you out and dance you out, couldn’t I?”
+
+“Yes, dear. You’re wonderful. Such spirit!”
+
+They kissed Rose; they both kissed Henrietta on each cheek.
+
+“A little dance,” Caroline repeated, and patted Henrietta’s arm. “Good
+child,” she murmured.
+
+Henrietta went upstairs behind them, slowly, not to overtake Sophia.
+She did not want to be left down there with Aunt Rose. She wanted
+solitude, and she knew now what people meant when they talked of being
+in a dream. Under her hand the slim mahogany rail felt like the cold,
+firm hand of Francis Sales when, after their last dance together, he
+had led her on to the terrace again. They were alone there, for the
+wind was very cold, but for Henrietta it was part of the exquisite
+mantle in which she was wrapped. She was wrapped in the glamour of the
+night and the stars and the excitement of the dance, yet suddenly,
+looking down at the dark river, she was chilled. She said, and her
+voice seemed to be carried off by the wind, “Aunt Rose is going to take
+me away.”
+
+He bent down to her. “What did you say?”
+
+She put her lips close to his ear. “Aunt Rose is going to take me
+away.”
+
+He dropped her hand. “She can’t do that.”
+
+“But she will. I shall have to go,” and he said gloomily, “I knew you
+would leave me, too.” She felt helpless and lonely: her happiness had
+gone; the wind had risen. She said loudly, “It’s not my fault. What can
+I do? I shall come back.”
+
+He stood quite still and did not look at her. “You don’t think of me.”
+
+“I think of nothing else. How can I tell her I can’t leave you? She has
+been good to me.”
+
+“She was once good to me, too. That won’t last long.”
+
+“Ah, that’s not true!” she cried.
+
+“Go, then, if she’s more to you than I am. I’m used to that.”
+
+She moved away from him. Why did he not help her? He was a man; he
+loved her, but he was cruel. Ah, the thought warmed her, it was his
+love that made him cruel: he needed her; he was lonely. Under her
+cloak, she clasped her gloved hands in a helplessness which must be
+conquered. What shall I do? she asked the stars. Across the river the
+cliff was sombre; it seemed to listen and to disapprove. The stars were
+kinder: they twinkled, they laughed, they understood, and the lights on
+the bridge glowed steadily with reassurance. She turned back to Francis
+Sales. “You must trust me,” she said firmly. He put his hands heavily
+on her shoulders. “I won’t let you go.”
+
+A murmur, inarticulate and delighted, escaped her lips. This was what
+she wanted. Very small and willing to be commanded, she leaned against
+him. “What will you do with me?” she whispered, secure in his strength.
+She laughed. “You will have to take me away yourself!”
+
+“You wouldn’t come,” he said with unexpected seriousness.
+
+So close to him that the wind could not steal the words, she answered,
+“I would do anything for one I loved.”
+
+The memory of her own voice, its tenderness and seduction, startled her
+in the solitude of her room. She had not known she could speak like
+that. She dropped her face into her hands, and in the rapture of her
+own daring and in the recollection of the excitement which had frozen
+them into a stillness through which the beating of their hearts sounded
+like a faint tap of drums, there came the doubt of her sincerity.
+
+Had she really meant what she said? Yet she could have said nothing
+else. The words had left her lips involuntarily, her voice, as though
+of itself, had taken on that tender tone. She could not have failed in
+that dramatic moment, but now she was half afraid of her undertaking.
+Well, her hands dropped to her sides, she had given her word; she had
+promised herself in an heroic surrender and her very doubts seemed to
+sanctify the act.
+
+For a long time she sat by the fire, half undressed, her immature thin
+arms hanging loosely, her sombre eyes staring at the fire. She wished
+this night might go on for ever, this time of ecstasy between a promise
+and its fulfilment. She had seen disillusionment in another and did not
+laugh at its possibility for herself; it would come to her, she
+thought, as it had come to her mother, who had hoped her daughter would
+find happiness in love; and Henrietta wondered if that gentle spirit
+was aware of what was happening.
+
+The thought troubled her a little, and from her mother, who had been a
+neglected wife, it was no more than a step to that other, lying on her
+back, tortured and lonely. If Christabel Sales had a daughter, what
+would be her fierce young thoughts about this thief, sitting by the
+fire in a joy which was half misery? Yet she was no thief: she was only
+picking up what would otherwise be wasted. It seemed to her that life
+was hardly more than a perpetual and painful choice. Some one had to be
+hurt, and why should it not be Christabel? Or was she hurt enough
+already? And again, what good would she get from Henrietta’s sacrifice?
+No one would gain except Henrietta herself, she could see that plainly,
+and she was prepared to suffer; she was anxious to suffer and be
+justified.
+
+The coals in the grate began to fade, the room was cold and she was
+tired. Slowly she continued her undressing, throwing down her dainty
+garments with the indifference of her fatigue. She feared her thoughts
+would stand between her and sleep, but, when she lay down, warmth
+gradually stole over her and soothed her into forgetfulness. She slept,
+but she waked to unusual sounds in the house: a door opened, there were
+footsteps on the landing and then a voice, shrill and frightened. She
+jumped out of bed. Sophia was on the landing; Rose was just opening her
+door; Susan, decently covered by a puritanical dressing-gown, had been
+roused by the noise. Caroline was in pain, Sophia said. She was
+breathing with great difficulty. “I told her she ought to take a
+shawl,” Sophia sobbed.
+
+Fires had to be lighted, water boiled and flannels warmed, and the
+voice of Caroline was heard in gasping expostulation. Henrietta dressed
+quickly. “I’m going for the doctor,” she told Rose, who was already
+putting on her coat, and Henrietta noticed that she still wore her
+evening gown. She had not been to bed, and for a moment Henrietta
+forgot her Aunt Caroline and stared at her Aunt Rose.
+
+“I am going,” Rose said quietly.  “Oh, hadn’t you better stay here?
+Aunt Sophia is in such a fuss.”
+
+“We’ll go together,” Rose said. “I can’t let you go alone.”
+
+Henrietta laughed a little. This care was so unnecessary for one who
+had given herself to a future full of peril.
+
+They went out in the cold darkness of the morning, walking very fast
+and now and then breaking into a run, and with them there walked a
+shadowy third person, keeping them apart. It was strange to be yoked
+together by Caroline’s danger and securely separated by this shadow.
+They did not speak, they had nothing to say, yet both thought, What
+difference is this going to make? But on their way back, when the
+doctor had been roused and they had his promise to come quickly,
+Henrietta’s fear burst the bonds of her reserve. “You don’t think she
+is going to die, do you?”
+
+Rose put her arm through Henrietta’s. “Oh, Henrietta, I hope not. No,
+no, I’m not going to believe that, “and, temporarily united, the third
+person left behind though following closely, they returned to the
+lighted house. As they stood in the hall they could hear the rasping
+sound of Caroline’s breathing.
+
+
+§ 6
+
+John Gibbs, of Sales Hall, milkman and news carrier, shook his head
+over the cans that morning. Mrs. Sales was very bad. The master had
+fetched the doctor in the early morning. He had set out in the same car
+that brought him from the dance. Cook and Susan looked at each other
+with a compression of lips and a nodding of heads, implying that
+misfortune never came singly, but they did not tell John Gibbs of the
+illness in their own house. They had imbibed something of the Mallett
+reserve and they did not wish the family affairs to be blabbed at every
+house in Radstowe. But when the man had gone, Susan reminded Cook of
+her early disapproval of that ball. It would kill Miss Caroline, it
+would kill Mrs. Sales.
+
+“She wasn’t there, poor thing,” Cook said.
+
+“But he was, gallivanting. I dare say it upset her.”
+
+Susan was right. Christabel Sales had fretted herself into one of her
+heart attacks; but the Malletts did not know this until later. At
+present they were concerned with Caroline, about whom the doctor was
+reassuring. She was very ill, but she had herself remarked that if they
+were expecting her to die they would be disappointed, and that was the
+spirit to help recovery.
+
+A nurse was installed in the sick-room, Sophia fluttered a little less
+and Rose and Henrietta ignored their emotion of the early morning; they
+also avoided each other. They were both occupied with the same problem,
+though Henrietta’s thoughts had taken definite shape; above her
+dreaming, her practical mind was dealing with concrete details, and
+Rose was merely speculating on the future, and the more she speculated,
+the surer she became of the necessity to interfere. Her plan of
+carrying Henrietta to other lands was frustrated for the present by
+Caroline’s illness and she dared not allow things to drift. There was a
+smouldering defiance in Henrietta’s manner: she was absorbed yet wary;
+she seemed to have a grudge against the aunt who had missed nothing at
+the dance, who had seen her exits and entrances with Francis Sales and
+interrupted their farewell glance, the wave of Henrietta’s gloved hand
+towards the tall figure standing in the porch of the Assembly Rooms to
+see her depart.
+
+There was a certain humour about the situation, and for Rose an
+impeding feeling of hypocrisy. Here she was, determined to put
+obstacles on the primrose path where she herself once had dallied. It
+looked like the envy of age for youth, it looked like inclining to
+virtue because the opposite was no longer possible for her, like tardy
+loyalty to Christabel; but she must not be hampered by appearances.
+
+Her chief fear was of hardening Henrietta’s temper, and she came to the
+conclusion that she must appeal to Francis Sales himself. It was an
+unpleasant task and, she dimly felt, she hardly knew why, a dangerous
+one; and meeting Henrietta that day at meals or in the hushed quiet of
+the passages, she felt herself a traitor to the girl. After all, what
+right had she to interfere? She had no right, and her double excuse was
+her knowledge of Francis Sales’ character and her certainty that
+Henrietta was chiefly moved by her dramatic instinct. And again Rose
+wished that the hair of Charles Batty’s head were thicker and that he
+could supply the counter-attraction needed; but she might at least be
+able to use him; there was no one else.
+
+That night, after an evening spent in soothing Sophia’s fears which had
+been roused by the unnatural gentleness of Caroline, and treating
+Henrietta to all the friendliness she would receive, Rose went out to
+post a letter to Francis Sales. She had asked him, with an irony she
+had no doubt he would miss, to meet her in the hollow where the gipsies
+had encamped and where so many of their interviews had taken place. It
+was within a few yards of that bank of primroses where he had asked her
+to marry him.
+
+Caroline was better the next morning and it was easy for Rose to
+escape. She chose to ride. It was one of those mild January days which
+already promise the return of spring. Birds chirped in the leafless
+trees, the earth was damp and seemed to stir with the efforts of
+innumerable roots to produce a richer life, yet the leaves of autumn
+were still lying on the ground. How she loved this country, this blue
+air, this smell of fruit present even before the blossom was on the
+trees, the sight of wood smoke curling from the cottage chimneys, the
+very ruts in the road! A little while ago she had told herself she was
+sickened by it: it was the symbol of failure and young, tender, ruined
+hopes, but the love of it lay deeply in her heart; all this, the
+failure and the ruin, were of her life and it could be no more cast off
+than could the hands which had refused the kissing and clasping of
+Francis Sales.
+
+This was her own country: the strange, unbridled, stealthy wildness of
+it was in her blood; it was in Henrietta through her father, it was in
+Francis, too, and due to it was this tragic muddle in which they found
+themselves. She had a faint, despairing feeling that she could not
+fight against it, that her mission would only be another failure, yet
+she counted on Francis’s easy tenderness of heart. The very weakness
+which persuaded him to an action could turn him from it, and it was to
+his tenderness she must appeal.
+
+She reached the track and, raised high on her horse, she could see the
+fields with the rough grass and gorse bushes sloping to the channel;
+the pale strip of water like silver melted in the heart of the hills
+and falling slowly to the sea; the blue hills themselves like gates
+keeping a fair country. The place where the wood had been was like a
+brown and purple rug, but before long the pattern would be complicated
+by creeping green. Where the trees had murmured and whispered or stood
+silent, listening, there was now no sound, no secrecy; the place lay
+candidly under the wide sky, but, from a field out of sight, a sheep
+bleated disconsolately, with a sound of infinite, uncomprehending woe,
+and a steamer in the river sent out a distant hoot of answering
+derision.
+
+The gipsies had departed; the ashes of their fire made a black patch on
+the ground and a few rags fluttered in the wind. There was no human
+being in sight and she rode down the slope to wait in the hollow. She
+was beginning to wonder if Francis had received her letter when, with a
+dreary sense of watching a familiar scene reacted, she saw him in the
+lane with Henrietta by his side. Here was an unexpected difficulty, and
+she could do nothing but ride towards them, raising her whip in
+greeting.
+
+She said at once to Francis, “Did you get my letter?” She saw
+Henrietta’s face flush angrily, but she knew that the time had come for
+her to speak. “I asked you to meet me here.”
+
+He was staring at her and his mouth moved mechanically. “No, I didn’t
+get it by the first post. Perhaps it’s there now.” With his eyes still
+fixed on her, he moved back a step.
+
+“No.” Rose smiled. “Don’t go and get it. Fortunately you are here. I
+want to talk to you, Henrietta, please—” Her voice was gentle, she
+leaned forward in the saddle with a charming gesture of request, but
+Henrietta shook her head. She was antagonized by that charm which was
+holding Francis’s eyes. A loosened curl had fallen over her forehead,
+giving to the severity of her dress, copied from that portrait of her
+father, a dishevelling touch, as though a young lady were suddenly
+discovered to be a gipsy in an evil frame of mind.
+
+“If it’s anything to do with me, I’m going to stay,” she said. “If it
+hasn’t, I’ll go.” She looked at Francis and added, between her teeth,
+“But it must have.” Those words and that look claimed him for her own.
+
+Rose lifted her chin and looked over the two heads, the uncovered one
+of Francis Sales and Henrietta’s, with her hat a little askew, and,
+absurdly, Rose remembered that the child had washed her hair the night
+before: that was why the hat was crooked and the curl loose, making the
+scene undignified and funny above the pain of it. Rose spoke in a voice
+heightened by a tone. “It concerns you both,” she said.
+
+“Ah, then, you needn’t say it, need she, Francis?”
+
+“Francis,” she repeated the name with a grave humour, “this is not fair
+to Henrietta.”
+
+“I know that,” he muttered, and Rose saw Henrietta shoot at him a thin
+look of scorn.
+
+Henrietta said, “But I don’t care about that, and anyhow, we’re not
+going to do it any more. We’re tired of these meetings”—she faced
+him—“aren’t we? We had just made up our minds to have no more of them.”
+
+“I’m glad of that,” said Rose, and she fancied that the hurried beating
+of her heart must be plain through the thick stuff of her coat.
+
+Henrietta laughed, showing little teeth, and Rose thought, “Her teeth
+are too small. They spoil her.”
+
+“No, you need not spy on us any more,” Henrietta said.
+
+Francis made a movement of distaste. He said, as though the words cost
+him much labour, “Henrietta, don’t.”
+
+But there seemed to be no limit to what Rose could bear. She stooped
+forward suddenly and put her cheek against the horse’s neck in an
+impulsive need to express affection, perhaps to get it.
+
+“You think I don’t understand,” she said quietly, “but I do, too well.”
+She paused, and in her overpowering sense of helplessness, of distrust,
+she found herself making, without a quiver, the confession of her own
+foolishness.
+
+“I don’t know whether Francis has told you that he and I were once in
+love with one another. At least that is what we called it.” Very pale,
+appearing to have grown thinner in that moment, she looked at the
+horse’s ears and spoke as though she and Henrietta were alone. “Until
+quite lately. Then he realized, we both realized, our mistake. But it
+seems that Francis must have somebody to—to meet, to kiss. Between me
+and you there has been some one else.” With a wave of her hand, she put
+aside that thought. “We used to meet here often. This place must be
+full of memories for him. For me, the whole countryside is scattered
+with little broken bits of love. It breaks so easily, or it may be only
+the counterfeit that breaks. Anyhow, it broke, it chipped. I thought
+you ought to know that.” She touched her horse with her heel and turned
+down the lane. She went slowly, sitting very straight, but she had the
+constant expectation of being shot in the back. She had to remind
+herself that Henrietta had no weapon but her eyes.
+
+It was those eyes Francis Sales chiefly remembered when he had parted
+from Henrietta and turned homewards. There had been scorn in them,
+anger, grief, jealousy and expectation. If she had not been so small,
+if they had not been raised to his, if he could have looked levelly
+into them as he did into the clear grey eyes of Rose, things might have
+been different. But she was little and she had clung to him, looking
+up. She had told him she could never see her Aunt Rose again. How could
+she? Was he sure he did not love Rose still? Was he sure? He ought to
+be, for it was he who had made Henrietta love him. He had liked that
+tribute too much to contradict it, but Rose Mallett was right: whoever
+had been the promoter of this business, it was not fair to Henrietta,
+and the thought of Rose, so white and straight, was like wind after a
+sultry day. She was like a church, he thought; a dim church with tall
+pillars losing themselves in the loftiness of the roof; yes, that was
+what was the matter with her: she was cold, but there was no one like
+her, you could not forget her even in the warmth of Henrietta’s
+presence. One way and another, these Malletts tortured him.
+
+He walked home, trying to find some way out of this maze of promises to
+Henrietta and of self-reproach, and his mental wanderings were
+interrupted by an unwelcome request from the nurse that he should go at
+once to Mrs. Sales. She seemed, the woman warned him, to be very much
+excited: would he please be careful? She must not have another heart
+attack.
+
+As he entered the room, it seemed to him that he had been treading on
+egg-shells all his life, but a sudden pity swept him at the sight of
+his wife, very weak from the pain of the night before last, yet
+intensely, almost viciously alive. He wished he had not gone to the
+Battys’ ball; it had upset her and done him no good. If it had not been
+for that walk on the terrace—
+
+He shut the door gently and stood by her. “Are you in pain?” he asked.
+He felt remorsefully that he did not know how to treat her; he had not
+love enough, yet with all his heart he wanted to be kind.
+
+“You haven’t kissed me to-day,” she said. “No, don’t do it. You don’t
+want to, do you?”
+
+“Yes, I do,” he said, and as he bent over her he was touched by the
+contented sigh she gave. If he could begin over again, he told himself,
+with the virtue of the man who has committed himself fatally, things
+would be different. If he hadn’t brought Henrietta to such a pass, they
+should be different now.
+
+“I’ve never stopped being fond of you, Christabel.”
+
+She laughed and disconcerted him. “Or of your horses, or your dogs,”
+she said. “No one could expect you to care much for a useless log like
+me. No one could have expected you not to go to that dance.” Tears
+filled her eyes. “But I was lonely. And I imagined you there—”
+
+“I wish I hadn’t gone,” he said truthfully.
+
+She seemed to consider that remark, but presently she asked, “Have you
+lost something?”
+
+He had lost a great deal, for Rose despised him; that had been plain in
+the face which once had been so soft for him.
+
+“I asked you,” Christabel said, “if you had lost something.”
+
+“Yes—no, nothing.”
+
+She let out a small piercing shriek. “You’re lying, lying! But why
+should I care? You’ve done that for years. And Rose has been so kind,
+hasn’t she, coming to see me every week? Take your letter, Francis.
+Yes, I’ve read it! I don’t care. I’m helpless. Take it!” From its
+hiding-place under the coverlet she drew the letter and threw it at
+him. It fluttered feebly to the ground. She had made a tremendous
+effort, trying to fling it in his face, and it had fallen as mildly as
+a snowflake. She began to sob. This was the climax of her suffering,
+that it should fall like that.
+
+He picked it up and read it. It was no good trying to explain, for one
+explanation would only necessitate another. He was deeply in the mire,
+they were both, they were all in it, and he did not know how to get
+anybody out, but he had to stop that sobbing somehow. His pity for
+Christabel swelled into his biggest feeling. He crumpled the letter
+angrily and, at the sound, she held her breathing for a moment. Of
+course, she should have crumpled the letter and then she might have hit
+him with it.
+
+“I wish to God I’d never seen her,” she heard him say with despairing
+anger. And then, more gently, “Don’t cry, Christabel. I can’t bear to
+hear you. The letter’s nothing. I shall never meet her again. I must
+take more care of you.” He took her hand and stroked it. He would never
+meet Rose again, but he had an appointment with Henrietta.
+
+“You promise? But no, it doesn’t matter if you love her.”
+
+“I don’t love her.”
+
+“But you did.”
+
+He passed his free hand across his forehead. No, he would not keep that
+appointment with Henrietta, or he would only keep it to tell her it was
+impossible. He could not go with this wailing in his ears and he knew
+that piteous sound was his salvation. It gave him the strength to
+appear weak. “Don’t cry. It’s all right, Christabel. Look, I’ll burn
+the confounded letter and I swear it’s the only one I’ve ever had from
+her. “It was to Rose, he admitted miserably, that he owed the
+possibility of telling that truth.
+
+Her weeping became quieter. “Tell her,” she articulated, “I never want
+to see her again.”
+
+“But,” he said petulantly, “haven’t I just told you I never want to
+meet her?”
+
+“Then write—write—I don’t mind Henrietta.”
+
+“No!” he almost shouted, “not Henrietta either!”
+
+She turned to him a face ravaged with tears and misery. “Why not
+Henrietta?” she whispered.
+
+“I hate the lot of them,” he muttered. “They’re all witches.”
+
+She laughed joyously. “That’s what I’ve said myself!” She gave him both
+her thin, hot hands to hold. “But it’s worth while, all this, if you
+are going to be good to me.”
+
+He kissed her then as the sinner kisses the saint who has wrought a
+miracle of salvation for him. “We’ve had bad luck,” he murmured.
+“You’ve had the worst of it.” He stroked her cheek. “Poor little
+thing.”
+
+
+§ 7
+
+Once out of sight of the two standing in the lane, Rose rode home
+quickly. She felt she had a great deal to do, but she did not know what
+it was. Her head was hot with the turmoil of her thoughts. There was no
+order in them; the past was mixed with the present, the done with the
+undone: she was assailed by the awful conviction that right was
+prolific in producing wrong. If she had not preserved her own physical
+integrity, these two, who were almost like her children—yes, that was
+how she felt towards them—would not have been tempted to such folly.
+For it was folly: they did not love each other, and she remembered,
+with a sickening pang, the expression with which Francis had looked at
+her. She told herself he loved her still; he had never loved anybody
+else and she had only pity and protection and a deep-rooted fondness to
+give him in return. She cared more passionately for Henrietta, who was
+now the victim of the superficial chastity on which Rose had insisted.
+
+If she had known that Henrietta was to suffer, she would have subdued
+her niceness, for if Francis had been in physical possession of her
+body, she would have had no difficulty in possessing his mind. Holding
+nothing back, she could also have held him securely. She did not want
+him, but Henrietta would have been saved. But then Rose had not known:
+how could she? And Henrietta might be saved yet, she must be saved. The
+obvious method was to lay siege to the facile heart of Francis, but
+there was no time for that. Rose was not deceived by Henrietta’s
+enigmatic words. They were tired of meeting stealthily, she had said.
+What did that mean? Her head grew hotter. She had to force herself into
+calm, and the old man at the toll-house on the bridge received her
+visual greeting as she passed, but, as she went slowly to the stables,
+there was added to her anxiety the thrilling knowledge that at last,
+and for the first time, she was going to take definite action. Her
+whole life had been a long and dull preparation for this day. She began
+to take a pleasure in her excitement: she had something to do; she was
+delivered from the monotony of thought.
+
+On her way from the stables she met Charles Batty going home for his
+midday meal, and she stopped him. “Charles!” she said. She presented to
+his appreciative eyes a very elegant figure in the habit looped up to
+show her high slim boots, with her thick plait of hair under the hard
+hat, her complexion defying the whiteness of her stock; while to her he
+appeared with something of the aspect of an angel in a long top coat
+and a hat at the back of his head. “Charles,” she said again, tapping
+her boot with her whip, “I’m in trouble. Would you mind walking home by
+the hill? I want you to help me, but I can’t tell you how. Not yet.”
+
+He walked beside her without speaking and they came to the place where
+he had stood with Henrietta and she had flouted him; whither she had
+wandered on her first day in Radstowe, that high point overlooking the
+gorge, the rocks, the trees, the river; that scene of which not
+Charles, nor Rose, nor Henrietta could ever tire.
+
+“Not, yet,” she repeated. “Will you meet me this afternoon?”
+
+“Look here,” he remonstrated, “if Henrietta found out—”
+
+She had not time to smile. “It’s for her sake.”
+
+“I’ll do anything,” he said.
+
+“Then will you meet me this afternoon at five o’clock? Not here. I may
+not be able to get so far. Where can we meet?”
+
+“Well, there’s the post-office. Can’t mistake that.”
+
+“No, no, I may have something important, very important, Charles, to
+say to you. At five o’clock, will you be on The Green? There’s a seat
+by the old monument. It won’t take a minute to get there. Are you
+listening? On The Green at five o’clock. Come towards me as soon as you
+see me and at once we’ll walk together towards the avenue. Wait till
+six, and if I don’t come, will you still hold yourself in readiness at
+home? Don’t forget. Don’t be absent-minded and forget what you are
+there for, and even if there’s a barrel-organ playing dreadful tunes,
+you’ll wait there? For Henrietta.”
+
+“I don’t understand this about Henrietta.”
+
+“That doesn’t matter, not in the least. Now what are your
+instructions?”
+
+He repeated them.
+
+“Very well. I trust you.”
+
+They separated and she went home, a little amused by her melodramatic
+conduct, but much comforted by the fact that Charles, though ignorant
+of his part, was with her in this conspiracy. She was met by reproaches
+from Sophia.
+
+“Oh, Rose, riding on such a day! And Henrietta out, too! Suppose we’d
+wanted something from the chemist!”
+
+“But you didn’t, did you? And there are four servants in the house. How
+is Caroline now?”
+
+“Very quiet. Oh, Rose, she’s very ill. She lets me do anything I like.
+She hasn’t a fault to find with me.”
+
+“Let Henrietta sit with her this afternoon while Nurse is out.”
+
+“No, no, Rose, I must do what I can for her.”
+
+“I should like Henrietta to feel she is needed.”
+
+“I don’t think Caroline would be pleased. I’ll see what she says.”
+
+Caroline was distressingly indifferent but, as Henrietta went to her
+room on her return and sent a message that she had a headache and did
+not want any food, she was left undisturbed. Sophia became still more
+agitated. What was the matter with the child? It would be terrible if
+she were ill, too. Would Rose go and take her temperature? No, Rose was
+sure Henrietta would not care for that. She had better be left to
+sleep. If only she could be put to sleep for a few days!
+
+Now that she was in the house and locked into her room, Rose was
+alarmed. She was afraid she had done wrong in making that confession;
+she had played what seemed to be her strongest card but she had played
+it in the wrong way, at the wrong moment. She had surely roused the
+girl’s antagonism and rivalry, and there came to Rose’s memory many
+little scenes in which Reginald Mallett, crossed in his desires, or
+irritated by reproaches, had suddenly stopped his storming, set his
+stubborn mouth and left the house, only to return when need drove him
+home.
+
+But if Henrietta went, and Rose had no doubt of her intention, she
+would not come back. She had the unbending pride of her mother’s class,
+and Rose’s fear was changed into a sense of approaching desolation. The
+house would be unbearable without Henrietta. Rose stood on the landing
+listening to the small sounds from Caroline’s room and the unbroken
+silence from Henrietta’s. If that room became empty, the house would be
+empty too. There would be no swift footsteps up and down the stairs, no
+bursts of singing, no laughter: she must not go; she could not be
+spared. For a moment Rose forgot Francis Sales’s share in the
+adventure: she could only think of her own impending loneliness.
+
+She went quickly down the stairs and sat in the drawing-room, leaving
+the door open, and after an hour or so she heard stealthy sounds from
+the room above; drawers were opened carefully and Henrietta, in
+slipperless feet, padded across the floor. Rose looked at her watch and
+rang the bell.
+
+“Please take a tray to Miss Henrietta’s room,” she told Susan, “with
+tea, and sandwiches and, yes, an egg. She had no luncheon. A good,
+substantial tea, please, Susan.” If the child were anticipating a
+journey, she must be fed.
+
+A little later she heard Susan knock at Henrietta’s door. It was not
+opened, but the tray was deposited outside with a slight rattle of
+china, and Susan’s voice, mildly reproachful, exhorted Miss Henrietta
+to eat and drink.
+
+At half-past four the tray was still lying there untouched. This meant
+that Henrietta was in no hurry, or that she was too indignant to eat:
+but it might also mean that she had no time. Only half-past four and
+Charles Batty was not due till five! He might be there already; in his
+place, she would have been there, but men were painfully exact, and
+five was the hour she had named. But again, Charles Batty was not an
+ordinary man. Trusting to that fact, she went to her room and provided
+herself with money, and, having listened without a qualm at Henrietta’s
+door, she ran out of the house.
+
+The church facing The Green sounded the three-quarters and there, on
+the seat by the old stone, sat Charles, his hands in his pockets, his
+hat pulled over his eyes in a manner likely to rouse suspicions in the
+mildest of policemen.
+
+He rose. “Where’s your hat?”
+
+“No time,” she said.
+
+He repeated his lesson. “We were to walk towards the avenue.”
+
+“Yes, but I daren’t. I want to keep in sight of the house. Come with
+me. Here’s money. Don’t lose it.”
+
+He held it loosely. “Some one’s been playing ‘The Merry Peasant’ for
+half an hour,” he said. “I’ll never sit here again.”
+
+“Charles, take care of the money. You may need it. There’s ten
+pounds—all I had—but perhaps it will be enough. I want you to watch our
+gate, and if Henrietta goes out, please follow her, but don’t let her
+see you.”
+
+“Oh, I say!” he murmured.
+
+“I know. It’s hateful, it’s abominable, but you must do it.”
+
+“She won’t be pleased.”
+
+“You must do it,” Rose repeated.
+
+“She’s sure to see me. Eyes like needles.”
+
+“She mustn’t. She’ll probably go by train. If she goes to London, to
+this address—I’ve written it down for you—you may leave her there for
+the night and let me know at once. If she goes anywhere else, you must
+go with her. Take care of her. I can’t tell you exactly what to do
+because I don’t know what’s going to happen. She may meet somebody, and
+then, Charles, you must go with them both. But bring her home if you
+can. Don’t go to sleep. Don’t compose music in your head. Oh, Charles,
+this is your chance!”
+
+“Is it? I shall miss it. I always do the wrong thing.”
+
+“Not to-night.” She smiled at him eagerly, imperiously, trying to endue
+him with her own spirit. “Stay here in the shadow. I don’t think you
+will have long to wait, and if you get your chance, if you have to talk
+to her, don’t scold.”
+
+“Scold! It’s she that scolds. She bullies me.”
+
+“Ah, not to-night!” she repeated gaily.
+
+He peered down at her. “Yes, you are rather like her in the face,
+specially when you laugh. Better looking, though,” he added mournfully.
+
+“Don’t tell her that.”
+
+“Mustn’t I? Well, I don’t suppose I shall think of it again.”
+
+“Remember that for you she is the best and most beautiful woman in the
+world. You can tell her that.”
+
+“The best and most beautiful—yes,” he said. “All right. But you’ll
+see—I’ll lose her. Bound to,” he muttered.
+
+She put her hand on his arm. “You’ll bring her home,” she said firmly,
+and she left him standing monumentally, with his hat awry.
+
+Charles stood obediently in the place assigned to him, where the
+shelter of the Malletts’ garden wall made his own bulk less conspicuous
+and whence he could see the gate. The night was mild, but a little wind
+had risen, gently rocking the branches of the trees which, in the
+neighbourhood of the street lamps, cast their shadows monstrously on
+the pavements. Their movements gradually resolved themselves into
+melody in Charles Batty’s mind: the beauty of the reflected and
+exaggerated twigs and branches was not consciously realized by his
+eyes, but the swaying, the sudden ceasing, and the resumption of that
+delicate agitation became music in his ears. He, too, swayed slightly
+on his big feet and forgot his business, to remember it with a jerk and
+a fear that Henrietta had escaped him. Rose had told him he must not
+make music in his head. How had she known he would want to do that? She
+must have some faculty denied to him, the same faculty which warned her
+that Henrietta was going to do something strange to-night.
+
+He felt in his pocket to assure himself of the money’s safety. He
+rearranged his hat and determined to concentrate on watching. The pain
+which, varying in degrees, always lived in his bosom, the pain of
+misunderstanding and being misunderstood, of doing the wrong thing, of
+meaning well and acting ill, became acute. He was bound to make a
+mistake; he would lose Henrietta or incense her, though now he was more
+earnest to do wisely than he had ever been. He had told her he was
+going to make an art of love, but he knew that art was far from
+perfected, and she was incapable of appreciating mere endeavour. He was
+afraid of her, but to-night he was more afraid of failing.
+
+The music tripped in his head but he would not listen to it. He
+strained his ears for the opening of the Malletts’ door, and just as
+the sound of the clock striking two steady notes for half-past five was
+fading, as though it were being carried on the light wings of the wind
+over the big trees, over the green, across the gorge, across the woods
+to the essential country, he heard a faint thud, a patter of feet and
+the turning of the handle of the gate. He stepped back lest she should
+be going to pass him, but she turned the other way, walking quickly,
+with a small bag in her hand.
+
+“She’s going away,” Charles said to himself with perspicacity, and now
+for the first time he knew what her absence would mean to him. She did
+not love him, she mocked and despised him, but the Malletts’ house had
+held her, and several times a day he had been able to pass and tell
+himself she was there. Now, with the sad little bag in her hand, she
+was not only in personal danger, she threatened his whole life.
+
+He followed, not too close. Her haste did not destroy the beauty of her
+carriage, her body did not hang over her feet, teaching them the way to
+go; it was straight, like a young tree. He had never really looked at
+her before, he had never had a mind empty of everything except the
+consideration of her, and now he was puzzled by some difference. In his
+desire to discover what it was, he drew indiscreetly close to her, and
+though a quick turn of her head reminded him of his duty to see and not
+to be seen, he had made his discovery. Her clothes were different: they
+were shabby and, searching for an explanation, he found the right one.
+She was wearing the clothes in which she had arrived at Nelson Lodge.
+He remembered. In books it was what fugitives always did: they
+discarded their rich clothes and they left a note on the pin-cushion.
+It was her way of shaking the dust from her feet and, with a rush of
+feeling in which he forgot himself, he experienced a new, protective
+tenderness for her. He realized that she, too, might be unhappy, and it
+seemed that it was he who ought to comfort her, he who could do it.
+
+He had to put a drag on his steps as they tried to hurry after her,
+through the main street of Upper Radstowe, through another darker one
+where there were fewer people and he had to exercise more care, and so
+past the big square where tall old houses looked at each other across
+an enclosure of trees, down to a broad street where tramcars rushed and
+rattled. She boarded one of these and went inside. Pulling his hat
+farther over his face in the erroneous belief that he would be the less
+noticeable, he ascended to the top, to crane his head over the side at
+every stopping-place lest Henrietta should get off; but there was no
+sign of her until they reached that strange place in the middle of the
+city where the harbour ran into the streets and the funnels and masts
+of ships mingled with the roofs of houses. This was the spot where,
+round a big triangle of paving, tramcars came and went in every
+direction, and here everybody must alight.
+
+The streets were brilliant with electricity; electric signs popped
+magically with many-coloured lights on the front of a music hall where
+an audience was already gathering for the first performance, on
+public-houses, on the big red warehouses on the quay. The lighted
+tramcars with passengers inside looked like magic-lantern slides, and
+amid all the people using the triangle as a promenade or hurrying here
+and there on business, the newsboys shouting and the general bustle,
+Charles did not know whether to be more afraid of losing Henrietta or
+colliding with her. But now his faculties were alert and he used more
+discretion than was necessary, for Henrietta, under the influence of
+that instinct which persuades that not seeing is a precaution against
+being seen, was scrupulous in avoiding the encounter of any eye.
+
+He followed her to another tramcar which would take her to the station;
+he followed her when she alighted once more and, seeing her change that
+bag from one hand to another, as though she found it heavy, he let out
+a groan so loud and heartfelt that it aroused the pity of a passer-by,
+but he was really luxuriating in his sorrow for her. It was an immense
+relief after much sorrowing for himself and it induced a forgetfulness
+of everything but his determination to help her.
+
+It was easy to keep her in sight while she went up the broad approach
+to the dull, crowded, badly lighted and dirty station: it was harder to
+get near enough to hear what ticket she demanded. He did not hear, but
+again he followed the little, shabby, yet somehow elegant figure, and
+he took a place in the compartment next to the one she chose. It was
+the London train, and he found himself hoping she was not going so far;
+he felt that to see her disappearing into that house of which he had
+the address in his pocket would be like seeing her disappear for ever.
+He would lose his chance of helping her, or rather, she would lose her
+chance of being helped, a slightly different aspect of the affair and
+the one on which he had set his mind.
+
+He had taken a ticket for the first stop, and when the train slowed
+down for the station of that neighbouring city, he had his head out of
+the window. An old gentleman with a noisy cold protested. Could he not
+wait until the train actually stopped? Charles was afraid he could not
+be so obliging. He assured the old gentleman that the night was mild.
+“And I’m keeping a good deal of the draught out,” he said pleasantly.
+
+He saw a small hand on the door of the next compartment, then the
+sleeve of a black coat as Henrietta stretched for the handle, and he
+said to himself, “She was in mourning for her mother.” He was proud of
+remembering that; he had a sense of nearness and a slow suspicion that
+hitherto he had not sufficiently considered her. In their past
+intercourse he had been trying to stamp his own thoughts on her mind,
+but now it seemed that something of her, more real than her physical
+beauty, was being impressed on him. He wanted to know what she was
+feeling, not in regard to him, but in regard, for instance, to that
+dead mother, and why she ran away like this, in her old clothes and
+with the little bag.
+
+She was out of the train: she had descended the steps to the roadway
+and there she looked about her, hesitating. Cabmen hailed her but,
+ignoring them and crossing the tramlines, she began to walk slowly up a
+dull street where cards in the house windows told of lodgings to be
+let. If she knocked at one of these doors, what was he to do? But she
+did not look at the houses: her head was drooping a little, her feet
+moved reluctantly, she was no longer eager and her bag was heavy again,
+she had changed it from the right to the left hand, and then,
+unexpectedly, she quickened her pace. The naturally unobservant Charles
+divined a cause and, looking for it, he saw with a shock of surprise
+and horror the tall figure of a man at the end of the street. She was
+hastening towards him.
+
+Charles stood stock-still. A man! He had not thought of that, he had
+positively never thought of it! Nor had he guessed at his capacity for
+jealousy and anger. Then this was why Rose Mallett had sent him on this
+mission: it was a man’s work, and in the confusion of his feelings he
+still had time to wish he had spent more of his youth in the exercise
+of his muscles. He braced himself for an encounter, but already
+Henrietta had swerved aside. This was not the man she was to meet; her
+expectation had misled her; but the acute Charles surmised that the man
+she looked for would also be tall and slim.
+
+Tall and slim; he repeated the words so that he should make no mistake,
+but subconsciously they had roused memories and instead of that little
+black figure hurrying on in front of him, he saw a young woman clothed
+in yellow, entering from the frosty night, with brilliant half veiled
+eyes, and by the side of her was Francis Sales.
+
+Again he stood still, as much in amazement at his own folly as in any
+other feeling. Francis Sales, the fellow who could dance, who murdered
+music and little birds! And he had a wife! Charles was not shocked. If
+Henrietta had wished to elope with a great musician, wived though he
+might be, Charles could have let her go, subduing his own pangs, not
+for her own sake but for that of a man more important than himself, but
+he would not yield the claims of his devotion to Francis Sales. He
+should not have her.
+
+He walked on quickly, taking no precautions. He had lost sight of
+Henrietta and he could not even hear the sound of her steps, yet he had
+no doubt but he would find her, and she was not far to seek. A turn of
+the road brought him under the shadow of the cathedral and, in the
+paved square surrounded by old houses in which it stood, he saw her.
+Apparently at that moment she also saw him, for with an incredibly
+swift movement and a furtiveness which wrung his heart, she slipped
+into the porch and disappeared. He followed. The door was unlocked and
+she had passed through it, but he lingered there, fancying he could
+smell the faint sweetness of her presence. Within, the organ was
+booming softly and in that sound he forgot, for a moment, the necessity
+for action. The music seemed to be wonderfully complicated with the
+waft of Henrietta’s passage, with his love for her, with all he
+imagined her to be, but the forgetfulness was only for that moment, and
+he pushed open the door.
+
+
+§ 8
+
+The place was dimly lighted. Two candles, like stars, twinkled on the
+distant altar; a few people sat in the darkness with an extraordinary
+effect of personal sorrow. This was not where happy people came to
+offer thanks; it was a refuge for the afflicted, a temporary harbour
+for the weary. They did not seem to pray; they sat relaxed, wrapped in
+the antique peace, the warm, musty smell of the building, sitting with
+the stillness of their desire to preserve this safety which was theirs
+only for a little while. Their dull clothes mixed with the shadows, the
+old oak, the worn stone, and the voice of the organ was like the voice
+of multitudes of sad souls. Very soon the music ceased with a kind of
+sob and the verger, with his skirts flapping round his feet, came to
+warn those isolated human creatures that they must face the world
+again.
+
+They rose obediently, but Henrietta did not move, as though she alone
+of that company had not learnt the lesson of necessity. But the altar
+lights were now extinguished, the skirted verger was approaching her,
+and Charles forestalled him. He murmured, “Henrietta!”
+
+She looked up without surprise. “What time is it?” she asked.
+
+“Seven o’clock.”
+
+She rose, picking up her bag.
+
+“Let me have that,” he said.
+
+“No, no,” she answered absently, and then, “Is it really seven?”
+
+“Yes, there’s the clock striking now.” The sound of the seven notes
+whirred and then clanged above their heads. “We must go,” he said.
+“They’re locking up.”  The air was cold and damp after the warmth of
+the church and Henrietta stood, shivering a little and looking round
+her.
+
+“I’m hungry,” Charles Batty said. “Will you come and have dinner with
+me?”
+
+“No,” she replied, “I shall stay here.”
+
+“How long for?”
+
+“I don’t know.” And sharply she turned on him and asked, “What are you
+doing here?”
+
+“I come here sometimes. There are concerts.”
+
+“You’ll be late, then, if you are going to dine.”
+
+“I know, but I’m hungry. You can’t listen to music if you’re hungry.
+Let’s have dinner first.”
+
+The square was deserted, the lights in the little shops, where old
+furniture and lace and jewels were sold, were all put out and the large
+policeman who had been standing at the corner had moved away.
+
+“I don’t want anything to eat,” she said. She dropped the bag and
+covered her face with both her hands. She was going to cry, but he was
+not afraid; he was rather glad and, not without pleasure at his own
+daring, he removed a hand, tucked it under his arm, and said, “Come
+along.”
+
+She struggled. “I can’t. I must go to London. If you want to help me
+you’ll find out about the trains. I can go to Mrs. Banks. I can’t go
+back to Radstowe.”
+
+“Henrietta,” he said firmly, “come and have dinner and we’ll talk about
+it.”
+
+“If you’ll promise to help me.”
+
+“There’s nothing I want to do so much,” he said. “We mustn’t forget the
+bag.”
+
+“Somewhere quiet, Charles,” she murmured.
+
+“Somewhere good,” he emended.
+
+She looked down, “Such old clothes.”
+
+“It doesn’t matter what you wear,” he told her. “You always look
+different from anybody else.”
+
+“Do I? And I am! I am! I’m much worse, and nobody,” she almost sobbed,
+“is so unhappy! Charles, will you wait here for a minute? I must
+just—just walk round the square.”
+
+“You’ll come back?”
+
+She nodded, and he kept the bag as hostage.
+
+The large policeman had strolled back. He saw the tall young man
+standing over the bag and thought it would be well to keep an eye on
+him, but Charles did not notice the policeman. His whole attention was
+for Henrietta’s reappearance. She would come back because she had said
+she would, but if she did not come alone there would be trouble. He did
+not, however, expect to see Francis Sales: he gathered that Sales had
+failed her, and he was sorry. He would have beaten him, somehow; he
+would have conquered for the first time in his life, and now he felt
+that his task was going to be too easy. He wished he could have sweated
+and panted in the doing of it; and when Henrietta returned alone,
+walking with an angry swiftness, he felt a genuine regret.
+
+“Come along, Charles,” she said briskly. “Let us have dinner.”
+
+He could see the brightness of her eyes, looking past him; her lips had
+a fixed smile and he wished she would cry again. “She is crying
+inside,” he told himself. He moved forward beside her vaguely. The
+tenderness of his love for her was like a powerful, warm wave, sweeping
+over him and making him helpless for the time. He could do nothing
+against it, he had to be carried with it, but suddenly it receded,
+leaving him high and dry and unromantically in contact with a
+lamp-post. His hat had fallen off.
+
+“What are you doing?” Henrietta asked irritably.
+
+He rubbed his head. “Bumped it. I was thinking about you.”
+
+“What were you thinking?” she asked defiantly.
+
+“Oh, well—” he said.
+
+She laughed. “Charles, you’re hopeless.”
+
+“No, I’m not.” He stooped for his hat and picked it up. “Not,” he
+repeated strongly. “Here’s the place.” They had turned into a busy
+street. “I hope there won’t be a band.”
+
+“I hope there will be. I want noises, hideous noises.”
+
+“You’re going to get them,” he sighed as he pushed open the swing-door
+and received in his ears the fierce banging, braying and shrieking of
+various instruments played in a frenzy by a group of musicians
+confined, as if for the public safety, in a small gallery at the end of
+the room. Large and encumbered by the bag, he stood obstructing the
+waiters in the passage between the tables.
+
+“They’re like wild beasts in a cage,” he said in the loud voice of his
+anger. “Can you stand it?”
+
+“Oh, yes—yes. Let us sit here, in this corner.” He was ridiculous, she
+thought, yet to-night, unconscious of any absurdity himself, he had a
+dignity; he was not so ugly as she had thought; his somewhat protruding
+eyes had less vacancy, and though his tie was crooked, she was not
+ashamed of him. Nevertheless, she said as he sat down, “Charles, I’m
+going to London to-night. Get a time-table.”
+
+“Soup first,” he said.
+
+“I must go to-night. I can’t go back to Radstowe.”
+
+“Did you,” he asked unexpectedly, “leave a note on your
+dressing-table?”
+
+“What?” She frowned. “No, of course not.”
+
+“Oh, well, you can go back. We’re going to a concert together. It’s
+quite easy. I told you you were different from everybody else.” And
+then, remembering Rose’s words, he leaned across the table towards her.
+“The most beautiful and the best,” he said severely.
+
+“Me?”
+
+“Yes. Here’s the soup.”
+
+She drank it, looking at him between the spoonfuls. This was the man
+who had talked to her by the Monks’ Pool. Here was the same detachment
+he had shown then, and though the act of taking soup was not poetical,
+though the band blared and the place shone with many lights, she was
+taken back to that night among the trees, with the water lying darkly
+at her feet, keeping its own secrets; with the ducks quacking sleepily
+and unseen, and the water rats diving with a silken splash.
+
+She seemed to be recovering something she had lost because she had
+disregarded it, something she wanted, not for use but for the sake of
+possessing and sometimes looking at it.
+
+Sternly she tried not to think of Francis Sales, who had deserted her.
+She might have known he would desert her. He had looked at Aunt Rose
+and she had seen him weaken, yet he had promised. He was that kind of
+man: he could not say no to her face, but he left her in this city, all
+alone.
+
+Her lips trembled; she steadied them with difficulty. She was
+determined not to honour him with so much as a memory or a regret, but
+there came forbidden recollections of the dance, of the terrace, and of
+her hands in his. She closed her eyes and a tremor, delicious,
+horrible, ran through her body. She felt the strength of those brown,
+muscular hands and she was assailed by the odour of wind and tobacco
+that clung to him. He had never said anything worth remembering, but
+there had been danger and excitement in his presence. There was neither
+in the neighbourhood of Charles, yet she could not forget his words.
+
+She opened her eyes. “What was it you said just now?”
+
+“You’re the best and most beautiful woman in the world. Your fish is
+getting cold.”
+
+She ate it without appetite or distaste. “But, Charles—”
+
+“I know.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Everything,” he said.
+
+“How?”
+
+He tapped himself, “Here.”
+
+“I expect you’ve got it all wrong.”
+
+“Yesterday, perhaps, but not to-day. To-day I know everything.”
+
+“How does it feel?”
+
+“Wonderful,” he replied. They laughed together but, as though with that
+laughter the door to emotion had been opened, he saw tears start into
+her eyes. “No,” he begged, “there’s no need to cry.”
+
+She laughed again. “I’ve got to cry some time.”
+
+“When we’re going home, then. We’re going home in a car.”
+
+“Are we?” she said, pleased as a child. “But what about London,
+Charles? I have to go.”
+
+“Not to-night. Here’s some chicken.”
+
+“I can’t go back.”
+
+“But you haven’t left a note.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then it’s easy. You and I have just been to a concert. You promised me
+that long ago.”
+
+She uttered no more protests. She ate and drank obediently, glad to be
+cared for, and when the meal was over she told him gratefully, “You
+have been good. You never said another word about the band and it has
+made even my head ache.”
+
+“And I forgot about it!” He stared at her in amazement. “I forgot about
+it! I didn’t hear it! Good heavens! But come away quickly before I
+begin remembering.”
+
+That they might be able to tell the truth, they went to the concert
+and, standing at the back of the hall stayed there for a little while.
+Even for Charles, the music was only a covering for his thoughts.
+Henrietta, strangely gentle, was beside him, but he dwelt less on that
+than on the greater marvel of the new power he felt within himself. She
+might laugh at him, she might mock him in the future, but she could not
+daunt him, and though she might never love him, he had done her
+service. No one could take that from him. He turned his head and looked
+down at her, to find her looking up at him, a little puzzled but
+entirely friendly.
+
+“Oh, Henrietta!” he whispered loudly, transgressing his own law of
+silence and evoking an indignant hiss from an enthusiastic neighbour.
+He blushed with shame, then decided that to-night he could not really
+care, and signing to Henrietta to follow him, he tiptoed from the hall.
+
+“Did you hear? Did you hear?” he asked her. “I spoke! I—at a concert!
+I’ve never done that in my life before. I’ll never do it again! But,
+then, it was the first time you’d ever looked at me like that,
+Henrietta! And, oh Lord, we’ve forgotten the bag. I dare not go back
+for it.”
+
+“We’ll leave it, then,” she said indifferently. “I don’t want to see it
+again.”
+
+“But I like it. It’s an old friend. I’ve watched it—” He checked
+himself. “I’ll go. Wait here.”
+
+“Why aren’t we going home by train?” she asked, when he returned.
+
+“The angry man didn’t see me,” he said triumphantly. “Oh, because—
+well, you wanted somewhere to cry, didn’t you?”
+
+In the closed car she sat, for a time very straight, looking out of the
+window at the streets and the people, but when they had drawn away from
+the old city and left its grey stone houses behind and taken to the
+roads where slowly moving carts were creaking and snatches of talk from
+slow-tongued country people were heard and lost in the same moment, she
+sank back. The roads were dark. They were lined by tall, bare trees
+which seemed to challenge this swift passage and then decide to permit
+what they could not prevent, and for a mile or so the river gleamed
+darkly like an unsheathed sword in the night.
+
+“We shall soon be there, shan’t we?” she asked, in a small voice.
+
+“Yes, pretty soon.”
+
+“I wish we wouldn’t. I wish we could go on like this for ever, to the
+edge of the world and then drop over and forget.”
+
+He sighed. He could not arrange that for her but he told the man to
+drive more slowly. Against the dark upholstery of the car, her face was
+like a young moon, wan and too weary for its work. He slipped his arm
+under her back and drew her to him. Pulling off her hat, she found a
+place for her head against his shoulder and he shut his eyes. She
+breathed regularly and lightly, as though she were asleep, but
+presently she said, “Charles, I don’t mean anything by this, but you
+are the only friend I have. You won’t think I mean anything, will you?”
+
+He shook his head and it came to rest on hers. He, too, wished they
+might go on like this for ever, to the world’s edge.
+
+
+The car was stopped at a little distance from the house and Henrietta
+had to rouse herself from the state between waking and sleeping,
+thought and imagery, in which she had passed the journey. The jarring
+of the brake shocked her into a recognition of facts and the gentle
+humming of the engine reminded her that life had to go on as before.
+The persistent sound, regular, not loud, controlled, was like existence
+in Nelson Lodge; one wearied of it, yet one would weary more of
+accidents breaking the healthy beating of the engine: to-night had been
+one of the accidents and she was terribly tired. No wonder! She had
+been trying to run away with a man who did not want her, a man who had
+a lonely, miserable invalid for a wife, the old lover of Aunt Rose. A
+little blaze of anger flared up at the thought of Rose; nevertheless,
+she continued her self-accusations. She had been willing to leave her
+aunts without a word and they had been good to her and one of them was
+ill, and the very money in her pocket was not her own. She was shocked
+by her behaviour. She was like her father, who took what belonged to
+other people and used it badly.
+
+She sat, flaccid, her hands loose on her lap. She felt incapable of
+movement, but Charles was speaking to her, telling her to get out and
+run home quickly. She looked at him. She was holding his friendly hand.
+What would she have done without him? She saw herself in the train,
+speeding through the lonely darkness; she saw herself knocking at Mrs.
+Banks’s door, felt herself clasped to the doubtful blackness of that
+bosom, and she shuddered.
+
+“You must go,” Charles said, but he still held her hand.
+
+He had brought her back to cleanliness and comfort, he had saved her
+from behaviour of gross ingratitude, he had been marvellously kind and
+wise.
+
+“Charles,” she said, “it’s awful.”
+
+“No, it’s all right. We’ve been to a concert.”
+
+“Yes”—her voice sank—“I’ve kept that promise. But the whole thing— and
+Aunt Caroline so ill. She may have died.”
+
+“There hasn’t been time,” he said.
+
+“Oh, Charles, it only takes a minute.”
+
+“Well, run home quickly. This bag’s a nuisance,” he said, but he looked
+at it tenderly. How he had dogged that bag! How heavy it had seemed for
+her! “Look here, I’ll take it home and get it to you to-morrow
+somehow.”
+
+“I don’t want it. I hate it.”
+
+He thought, “I’ll keep it, then,” and aloud he said, “I’ll wrap the
+things up in a parcel and let you have them. Nothing you don’t want me
+to see, is there?”
+
+“No, nothing.”
+
+“All right. Do get out, dear. No, I shall drive on.”
+
+She lingered on the pavement. She had not said a word of thanks. She
+jumped on to the step and put her head through the window. “Thank you,
+kind Charles,” she said.
+
+“Henrietta,” he began in a loud voice, filling the dark interior with
+sound, “Henrietta—”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“No, no. Nothing.”
+
+“Tell me.”
+
+“No. Not fair,” he said. “Just weakness. Good night. Be quick.”
+
+She ran along the street and gave the front-door bell a gentle push. To
+her relief it was the housemaid and not Susan who opened to her. Susan
+would have looked at her severely, but the housemaid had a welcoming
+smile, an offer of food if Miss Henrietta had not dined.
+
+Henrietta shook her head. She was going to bed at once. She did not
+want anything to eat. How was Miss Caroline?
+
+“Not so well to-night, Miss Henrietta. The doctor’s been again and
+there’s a night-nurse come.”
+
+Henrietta pressed her hands against her heart. Oh, good Charles,
+wonderful Charles! She did not know how to be grateful enough. She
+moved meekly, humbly through the hall and up the stairs. All was
+terribly, portentously still, but in her bedroom there were no signs of
+the trouble in the house. The fire was lighted, her evening gown had
+been laid out on the bed, her silk stockings and slippers were in their
+usual places. Nobody had suspected, nobody had been alarmed; she had
+stolen back by a miracle into her place.
+
+Yes, Charles Batty was a miracle, there was no other word for him and,
+by contrast, the image of Francis Sales appeared mean, contemptible.
+Why had he failed her? His desertion was a blessing, but it was also a
+slight and perhaps a tribute to the power of Rose. Yes, that was it.
+She set her little teeth. He had stared at Aunt Rose as though he could
+not look at her enough, not with the starved expression she had first
+intercepted long ago, but with a look of wonder, almost of awe. She was
+nearly middle-aged, yet she could force that from him. Well, she was
+welcome to anything he could give her, his offerings were no
+compliment. Henrietta was done with him; she would not think of him
+again; she had been foolish, she had been wicked, but she was the
+richer and the wiser for her experience.
+
+She had always been taught that sin brought suffering, yet here she
+was, warm and comfortable, in possession of a salutary lesson and with
+the good Charles for a secure friend. It was odd, unnatural, and this
+variation in her case gave her a pleasant feeling of being a special
+person for whom the operation of natural laws could be diverted. By the
+weakness of Francis Sales and the strength of Aunt Rose whom,
+nevertheless, she could never forgive, she was saved from much
+unhappiness, and if her mother knew everything in that heaven to which
+she had surely gone, she must now be weeping tears of thankfulness. Yet
+Henrietta’s future lay before her rather drearily. She stretched out
+her arms and legs; she yawned. What was she to do? Being good, as she
+meant to be, and realizing her sin, as indeed she did, was hardly
+occupation enough for all her energies.
+
+Her immediate business was to answer a knock at the door. It was Rose
+who entered. Her natural pallor was overlaid by the whiteness of
+distress. “Oh, Henrietta, I am glad you have come in.”
+
+“I’ve been to a concert with Charles Batty,” Henrietta said quickly.
+
+Rose showed no interest or surprise. “Caroline is so much worse.”
+Henrietta felt a pang at her forgetfulness. “She is very ill. I was
+afraid you might not be back in time. She has been asking for you.”
+
+“I’ve been to Wellsborough, to a concert,” Henrietta insisted. “Is she
+as bad as that, Aunt Rose? But she’ll get better, won’t she?”
+
+“Come with me and say good night to her. “Rose took Henrietta’s hand.
+“How warm you are,” she said, in wonder that anything could be less
+cold than Caroline soon would be.
+
+Henrietta’s fingers tightened round the living hand. “She’s not going
+to die, is she?”
+
+“Yes, she’s dying,” Rose said quietly.
+
+“Oh, but she can’t,” Henrietta protested. “She doesn’t want to. She’ll
+hate it so.” It was impossible to imagine Aunt Caroline without her
+parties, without her clothes, she would find it intolerably dull to be
+dead. “Perhaps she will get better.”
+
+Rose said nothing. They crossed the landing and entered the dim room.
+Caroline lay in the middle of the big bed: with her hair lank and
+uncurled she was hardly recognizable and strangely ugly. Her body
+seemed to have dwindled, but her features were strong and harsh, and
+Henrietta said to herself, “This is the real Aunt Caroline, not what I
+thought, not what I thought. I’ve never seen her before.” She wondered
+how she had ever dared to joke with her: she had been a funny, vain old
+woman without much sensibility, immune from much that others suffered,
+and now she was a mere human creature, breathing with difficulty and in
+pain.
+
+Henrietta stood by the bed, saying and doing nothing: Rose had slipped
+away; the nurse was quietly busy at a table and Aunt Sophia was
+kneeling before a high-backed chair with her elbows on the cushioned
+seat, her face in her hands. She was praying; it was as bad as that.
+Her back, the sash-encircled waist, the thick hair, looked like those
+of a young girl. She was praying. Henrietta looked again at Aunt
+Caroline’s grey face and saw that the eyes had opened, the lips were
+smiling a little. “Good child,” she said, with immense difficulty, as
+though she had been seeking those words for a long time and had at last
+fitted them to her thought.
+
+Sophia stirred, dropped her hands and looked round: the nurse came
+forward with a little crackle of starched clothes. “Say good night to
+her and go.”
+
+Henrietta leaned over the empty space of bed and kissed Caroline on the
+temple. “Good night, dear Aunt Caroline,” she said softly.
+
+There was no answer. The eyes were closed again and the harsh breathing
+went on cruelly, like waves falling back from a pebbled shore, and
+Henrietta felt the dampness of death on her lips. No, Aunt Caroline
+would not get better.
+
+She died in the early morning while Henrietta slept. Susan, entering as
+usual with Henrietta’s tea, did not say a word. She knew her place; it
+was not for her to give the news to a member of the family; moreover,
+she blamed Henrietta for Miss Caroline’s death. It was the Battys’ ball
+that had killed Miss Caroline, and Susan stuck to her belief that if it
+had not been for Miss Henrietta, there would not have been a ball.
+
+Sleepily, Henrietta watched Susan draw the blinds, but something in the
+woman’s slow, languid movements startled her into wakefulness. Her
+dreams dropped back into their place. She had been sleeping warmly,
+forgetfully, while death hovered over the house, looking for a way in.
+She sat up in bed. “Aunt Caroline?”
+
+Susan began to cry, but in spite of her tears and her distress she
+ejaculated dutifully, “Miss Henrietta, your dressing-gown, your
+slippers!” but Henrietta had rushed forth and bounded into Rose’s room.
+
+“You might have told me! You might have waked me!”
+
+Rose was writing at her desk. She turned. “Put on your dressing-gown,
+Henrietta. You will get cold. I came into your room but you were fast
+asleep, and in that minute it was all over. The big things happen so
+quickly.”
+
+Yes, that was true. Quickly one fell in and out of love, ran away from
+home, returned and slept and waked to find that people had quickly
+died. The big things happened quickly, but the little ones of every day
+went on slow feet, as though they were tired of themselves.
+
+“It was somehow a comfort,” Rose went on, “to know that you were fast
+asleep, but living. You never moved when I kissed you.”
+
+“Kissed me? What did you do that for?” Henrietta asked in a loud voice.
+She had been taken unawares by the woman who had wronged her, yet she
+was touched and pleased.
+
+“I couldn’t help it. I was so glad to have you there, and you looked so
+young. I don’t know what we should do without you, poor Sophia and I.
+Oh, do put on my dressing-gown!”
+
+“Yes, dear, yes, put on the dressing-gown.” It was Sophia who spoke.
+Her face was very calm; she actually looked younger, as though the
+greatness of her sorrow had removed all other signs, like a fall of
+snow hiding the scars of a hillside.
+
+“Oh, Aunt Sophia!” Henrietta went forward and pressed her cheek against
+the other’s.
+
+“Yes, dear, but you must go and dress. Breakfast is ready.”
+
+Henrietta was a little shocked that Aunt Sophia, who was naturally
+sentimental, should be less emotional on this occasion than Aunt Rose,
+but she was also awed by this control. She remembered how, when her own
+mother died, Mrs. Banks had refused to take solid food for a whole day,
+and the recollection braced her for her cold bath, for fresh linen, for
+emulation of Aunt Sophia, for everything unlike the slovenly weeping of
+Mrs. Banks, sitting in the neglected kitchen with a grimy
+pocket-handkerchief on her lap and the teapot at her elbow; but she
+knew that the Banksian manner was really natural to her, and the
+Mallett control, the acceptance, the same eating of breakfast, were a
+pose, a falseness oddly better than her sincerity.
+
+At table no one referred to Caroline; they were practical and composed
+and afterwards, when Sophia and Rose were closeted together, making
+arrangements, writing letters to relatives of whom Henrietta had never
+heard, interviewing Mr. Batty and a husky personage in black, Henrietta
+stole upstairs past Caroline’s death chamber and into her own room.
+
+She was glad to find the pretty housemaid there, tidying the hearth and
+dusting the furniture. She wanted to talk to somebody and the pretty
+housemaid was sympathetic and discreet. She told Henrietta, inevitably,
+of deaths in her own family, and Henrietta was interested to hear how
+the housemaid’s grandmother had died, actually while she was saying her
+prayers.
+
+“And you couldn’t have a better end than that, could you, Miss
+Henrietta?”
+
+“I suppose not,” Henrietta said, “but it might depend on what you were
+praying for.”
+
+“Oh, she would be saying the usual things, Miss Henrietta, just daily
+bread and forgive our trespasses. There was no harm in my grandmother.
+It was her husband who broke his neck picking apples. His own apples,”
+she said hastily, “And now poor Mrs. Sales has gone.”
+
+“Mrs. Sales?”
+
+“Yes, Miss Henrietta, I thought you’d know—last night. Her and Miss
+Caroline together.” She implied that in this journey they would be
+company for each other.
+
+Henrietta found nothing to say, but above the shock of pity she felt
+for the woman she had disliked and the awe induced by the name of
+death, she was conscious of a load lifted from her mind: she had not
+been deserted, her charm had not failed; it was the approach of death
+that had held him back. She put the thought away lest it should lead to
+others of which she would be ashamed, yet she felt a malicious
+pleasure, lasting only for a second, at remembering that downstairs sat
+Aunt Rose calmly full of affairs, Aunt Rose for whom the love of
+Francis Sales had ceased too soon! And, suppressed but fermenting, was
+the idea that in these late events, including the failure of her
+escape, there was the kind hand of fate.
+
+At that very moment Charles Batty chose to call.
+
+“With a parcel, Miss Henrietta, and he would like to see you.”
+
+“I can’t see him,” Henrietta said. “Tell him—tell him about Miss
+Caroline.” She had already drifted away from Charles. He had been so
+near last night, so almost dear in the troubled fog of her distress,
+but this morning she had drifted and between them there was a shining
+space of water sparkling hardly. But she spared him an instant of
+gratitude and softness. His part in her life was like that, to a
+sailor, of some lightship eagerly looked for in the darkness, of
+strangely diminished consequence in the clear day, still there, safely
+anchored, but with half its significance gone.
+
+“I can’t see him,” she repeated.
+
+She wanted, suddenly, to see Aunt Rose. Voices no longer came from the
+drawing-room. Mr. Batty, genuinely sad in the loss of an old friend,
+had gone; the undertaker had tiptoed off to his gloomy lair, and
+Henrietta went downstairs, but when she saw her aunt she dared not ask
+her if she knew about Christabel Sales. Rose had a look of
+invulnerability; perhaps she knew, but it was impossible to ask, and if
+she knew, it had made no difference. It seemed as though she had gone
+beyond the reach of feeling: she and Sophia both wore white masks, but
+Sophia’s was only a few hours old and Rose’s had been gradually
+assumed. It was not only Caroline’s death which had given her that
+strange, calm face: the expression had grown slowly, as though
+something had been a long time dying, yet she hardly had a look of
+loss. She seemed to be in possession of something, but Henrietta could
+not understand what it was and she was vaguely afraid.
+
+It was Aunt Sophia who, in spite of her amazing courage, had an air of
+desolation. And there was no rouge on her cheeks: its absence made
+Henrietta want to cry. She did cry at intervals throughout that day and
+the ones that followed. It was terrible without Aunt Caroline and
+pitiful to see Aunt Sophia keeping up her dignity among black-clothed,
+black-beaded relatives who seemed to appear out of the ground like
+snails after rain and who might have been part of the undertaker’s
+permanent stock-in-trade. Henrietta hated the mournful looks of these
+ancient cousins, the shaking of their black beads, their sibilant
+whisperings, and in their presence she was dry-eyed and rather rude.
+Aunt Caroline would have laughed at them and their dowdy clothes that
+smelt of camphor, but it seemed as though no one would ever laugh again
+in Nelson Lodge.
+
+And over the river, in the unsubdued country, where death was only the
+repayment of a loan, there was another house with lowered blinds and
+voices hushed. She was irritated by the thought of it, of the
+consolatory letters Francis would receive, of the emotions he would
+display, or conceal, but at the same time she was sorry that in death,
+as in life, Christabel should be lonely. Her large and lively family
+was far away, even the cat had gone, and there were only the nurse and
+Francis and the little dog to miss her. In a sense Henrietta missed her
+too, and that fair region of fields and woods which had been as though
+blocked by that helpless body now lay open, vast, full of
+possibilities, inviting exploration; and when Henrietta looked at her
+Aunt Rose, it was with the jealous eye of a rival adventurer. But that
+was absurd: there could be no rivalry between them. Henrietta was sure
+of that and she tried to avoid these speculations.
+
+And meanwhile necessary things were done and Christabel Sales and
+Caroline Mallett were buried on the same day. The beaded relatives
+departed, not to reappear until the next death in the family, and Rose
+and Henrietta, both perhaps thinking of Francis Sales returning to his
+big empty house, returned with Sophia to a Nelson Lodge oppressive in
+its desolation. It seemed now that the whole business of life there,
+the servants, the fires, the delicate meals, had proceeded solely for
+Caroline’s benefit; yet everything continued as before: the machinery
+went on running smoothly; the dinner-table still reflected in its rich
+surface the lights of candles, the sheen of silver, the pallor of
+flowers. Nothing was neglected, everything was beautiful and exact, and
+Susan had carefully arranged the chairs so that the vacant space should
+not be emphasized.
+
+The three black-robed women slipped into their seats without a word.
+The soup was very hot, according to Caroline’s instructions, but the
+cook, inspired more by the desire to give pleasant nutriment than by
+tact, had chosen to make the creamy variety which was Caroline’s
+favourite and, as each Mallett took up her spoon, she had a vision of
+Caroline tasting the soup with the thoughtfulness of a connoisseur and
+proclaiming it perfect to the last grain of salt.
+
+“I can’t eat it,” Sophia said faintly. In this almost comic realization
+of her loss she showed the first sign of weakness. She rose, trembling
+visibly, and Susan, anxious for the preservation of the decencies,
+opened the door and closed it on her faltering figure before the first
+sob shook her body. The others, without exchanging a single glance,
+proceeded with the meal, eating little, each eager for solitude and
+each finding it unbearable to picture Sophia up there in the bedroom
+alone.
+
+“But she doesn’t want us,” Rose said.
+
+“She might want me,” Henrietta replied provocatively, and for answer
+Rose’s smile flickered disconcertingly across the candle-light, and her
+voice, a little worn, said quietly, “Then go and see.”
+
+The bedroom had a dreadful neatness; it smelt of disinfectant,
+furniture polish and soap, and Sophia, from the big armchair, said
+mournfully, “They might have left it as it was. It feels like
+lodgings.” And as the very feebleness of her outcry smote her sense and
+waked echoes of all she left unsaid, her mouth fell shapeless, and she
+cried, “She’s gone!” in a tone of astonishment and horror.
+
+Henrietta, sitting on a little stool before the fire, listened to the
+weeping which was too violent for Sophia’s strength, and the harsh
+sound reminded her of Aunt Caroline’s difficult breathing. It seemed as
+though the noise would go on for ever: she counted each separate sob,
+and when they had gradually lessened and died away the relief was like
+the ceasing of physical pain.
+
+“Aunt Sophia,” Henrietta said, “everybody has to die.”
+
+Sophia heard. Tears glistened on her cheeks, her hair was disordered,
+she looked like a large flaxen doll that had been left out in the rain
+for a long time. “But each person only once,” she whispered. “One
+doesn’t get used to it, and Caroline—” She struggled to sit up.
+“Caroline would be ashamed of me for this.”
+
+“She might pretend to be, but she’d like it really.”
+
+“I don’t know,” Sophia murmured. “She had such character. You never
+believed her, did you, Henrietta, when she made out she had been—had
+been indiscreet?”
+
+“No, I never believed it.”
+
+“I’m glad of that. It was a fancy of hers. I encouraged her in it, I’m
+afraid; but it made her happy, it pleased her and it did no harm. I
+suppose nobody believed her, but she didn’t know. I don’t think I’ll
+sit here doing nothing, Henrietta. I suppose I ought to go through her
+papers. She never destroyed a letter. I might begin on them.”
+
+“Oh, do you think you’d better? Don’t you like just to sit here and
+talk to me?”
+
+“No, no, I must not give way. I’m not the only one. There’s poor
+Francis Sales. If he’d married Rose—I always planned that he should
+marry Rose—and of course, we ought not to think of such things so soon,
+but the thought has come to me that they may marry after all.”
+
+Henrietta tightened the clasp of the hands on her knee and said, “Why
+do you think that?”
+
+“It would be suitable,” Sophia said.
+
+“But she’s so old. Haven’t you noticed how old she has looked lately?”
+
+“Old? Rose old?” Sophia’s manner became almost haughty. “Rose has
+nothing to do with age. My only doubt is whether Francis Sales is
+worthy of her. Dear Caroline used to say she ought to—to marry a king.”
+
+“And she hasn’t married anybody,” Henrietta remarked bitingly.
+
+“Nobody,” Sophia said serenely. “The Malletts don’t marry,” she sighed;
+“but I hope you will, Henrietta.”
+
+“No,” Henrietta said sharply. “I shan’t. I don’t want to. Men are
+hateful.”
+
+“No, dear child, not all of them. Perhaps none of them. When I was
+eighteen—” She hesitated. “I must get on with her papers.” She stood up
+and moved towards the bureau. “They’re here. We shared the drawers. We
+shared everything.” She stretched out her hands and they fell heavily,
+taking the weight of her body with them, against the shining slope of
+wood.
+
+Henrietta, who had been gazing moodily at the fire, was astonished to
+hear the thud, to see her Aunt Sophia leaning drunkenly over the desk.
+Sophia’s lips were blue, her eyes were glazed, and Henrietta thought,
+“She’s dying, too. Shall I let her die?” but at the same moment she
+leapt up and lowered her aunt into a chair.
+
+“It’s my heart,” Sophia said after a few minutes, and Henrietta
+understood why poor Aunt Sophia always went upstairs so slowly. “Don’t
+tell anybody. No one knows. I ought not to have cried like that.
+There’s a little bottle—” She told Henrietta to fetch it from a secret
+place. “I never let Caroline know. It would have worried her, and,
+after all, she was the first to go. I’m glad to think I saved her that
+anxiety. You remember how she teased me about getting tired? Well, it
+didn’t matter and she liked to think she was so young. Wherever she is
+now, I do hope she isn’t feeling angry with herself. She thought
+illness was so vulgar.”
+
+“But not death,” Henrietta said.
+
+“No, not death,” and Henrietta fancied her aunt lingered lovingly on
+the word. “This must be a secret between us.” She lay back exhausted.
+“I only had two secrets from Caroline. This about my heart was one.
+Henrietta, in that little drawer, at the very back, you’ll find a
+photograph wrapped in tissue-paper. Find it for me, dear child. Thank
+you.” She held it tenderly between her palms. “This was the other. It’s
+the picture of my lover, Henrietta. Yes, I wanted you to know that some
+one once loved me very dearly.”
+
+“Oh, Aunt Sophia, we all love you. I love you dearly now.”
+
+“Yes, dear, yes, I know; I’m grateful, but I wanted somebody to know
+that I had had my romance, and have it still—all these years. But I was
+loved, Henrietta, till he died, and I was very young then, younger than
+you are now. Yes, I wanted somebody to know that poor Sophia had a real
+lover once. He went away to America to make a fortune for me, but he
+died. I have been wondering, since Caroline went, if she and he have
+met. If so, perhaps she knows, perhaps she blames me, but I don’t think
+she will laugh—not now. I hope she laughs still, but not at that. And
+now, Henrietta, we’ll put the photograph into the fire.”
+
+“Ah, no, Aunt Sophia, keep it still!”
+
+“Dear child, I may die at any moment, and I have his dear face by
+heart. I shouldn’t like any other eyes to look at it, not even yours.
+Stir the fire, Henrietta. Now help me up. No, dear, I would rather do
+it myself.”
+
+She knelt, her faded face lighted by the flames which consumed her
+greatest treasure, her back still girlish, her slim waist girdled with
+a black ribbon, her thick knot of hair resting on her neck.
+
+Henrietta went quietly out of the room, but on the landing she wrung
+her hands together. She felt herself surrounded by death, decay, lost
+love, sad memories. She was too young for this house. She had a longing
+to escape into sunshine, gaiety and pleasure. It was Caroline who had
+laughed and planned, it was she who had made the place a home. Rose was
+too remote, Sophia was living in the past, and Henrietta felt herself
+alone. Even her father’s portrait looked down at her with eyes too much
+like her own, and out there, beyond the high-walled garden, the roofs
+and the river, there was only Francis Sales and he was not a friend. He
+was, perhaps, a lover; he was a sensation, an accident; but he was not
+a companion or a refuge.
+
+And the thought of Charles rose up, at that moment, like the thought of
+a fireside. She wished he would come now and sit with her, asking for
+nothing, but assuring her of service. That was what he was for, she
+decided. You could not love Charles, but you could trust him for ever,
+and the more trust he was given, the more he grew to it. She needed
+him: she must not lose him. Deep in her heart she supposed she was
+going to marry Francis Sales, yes, in spite of what Aunt Sophia said,
+and it was a prospect towards which she tiptoed, holding her breath,
+not daring to look; but she, like Rose, had no illusions. She was the
+daughter of her mother’s union with her father, and she was prepared
+for trouble, for the need of Charles. Besides, she liked him: he was
+companionable even when he scolded. One forgot about him, but he
+returned; he was there. She went to bed in that comfortable assurance.
+
+
+§ 9
+
+There could be no more parties for Henrietta that winter, but Mrs.
+Batty’s house was always open to her, and Mrs. Batty, like her son
+Charles, could be relied upon for welcome and for relaxation. In her
+presence Henrietta had a pleasant sense of superiority; she was
+applauded and not criticized and she knew she could give comfort as
+well as get it. Mrs. Batty liked to talk to her and Henrietta could
+sink into one of the superlatively cushioned arm-chairs and listen or
+not as she chose. There she was relieved of the slight but persistent
+strain she was under in Nelson Lodge, for Sophia and Rose had standards
+of manner, conduct and speech beyond her own, while Mrs. Batty’s,
+though they existed, were on another plane. Henrietta was sure of
+herself in that luxurious, overcrowded drawing-room, decorated and
+scented with the least precious of Mr. Batty’s hothouse flowers, and
+somewhat overheated.
+
+On her first visit after Caroline’s death, Mrs. Batty received the
+bereaved niece with unction. “Ah, poor dear,” she murmured, and whether
+her sympathy was for Caroline or Henrietta, perhaps she did not know
+herself. “Poor dear! I can’t get your aunt out of my head, Henrietta,
+love. There she was at the party, looking like a queen— well, you know
+what I mean—and Mr. Batty said she was the belle of the ball. It was
+just his joke; but Mr. Batty never makes a joke that hasn’t something
+in it. I could see it myself. And then for her to die like that—it
+seems as if it was our fault. It was a beautiful ball, wasn’t it, dear?
+I do think it was, but it’s spoilt for me. I can only be thankful it
+wasn’t her stomach or I should have blamed the supper. As it is, there
+must have been a draught. It was a cold night.”
+
+“It was a lovely night,” Henrietta said, thinking of the terrace and
+the dark river and the stars. She could remember it all without shame,
+for he had not failed her and her personality had not failed. He had
+not deserted her, and when they met there would be no need for
+explanations. He would look at her, she would look at him—she had to
+rouse herself. “Yes, it was a splendid ball, Mrs. Batty.”
+
+“And what did you think of my dress, dear?” Mrs. Batty asked, and
+checked herself. “But we ought not to talk about such things with your
+dear aunt just dead. You must miss her sadly. Did you—were you with her
+at the end?”
+
+But this was a region in which Henrietta could not wander with Mrs.
+Batty. “Don’t let us talk of it,” she said.
+
+Mrs. Batty gurgled a rich sympathy and after a due pause she was glad
+to resume the topic of the dance. This was her first real opportunity
+for discussing it; under Mr. Batty’s slightly ironical smile and his
+references to expense, she had controlled herself; among her
+acquaintances it was necessary to treat the affair as a mere bagatelle;
+but with Henrietta she could expand unlimitedly. What she thought, what
+she felt, what she said, what other people said to her, and what her
+guests were reported to have said to other people, was repeated and
+enlarged upon to Henrietta who, leaning back, occasionally nodding her
+head or uttering a sound of encouragement, lived through that night
+again.
+
+Yes, out on the terrace he had been the real Francis Sales and that man
+in the hollow looking at Aunt Rose and then turning to Henrietta in
+uncertainty was the one evoked by that witch on horseback, the modern
+substitute for a broomstick. Christabel Sales was right: Aunt Rose was
+a witch with her calm, white face, riding swiftly and fearlessly on her
+messages of evil. He was never himself in her presence: how could he
+be? He was under her spell and he must be cleared of it and kept
+immune. But how? Through these thoughts, which were both exciting and
+alarming, Henrietta heard Mrs. Batty uttering the name of Charles.
+
+“He seems to have taken a turn for the better, my dear.”
+
+“Has he been ill?” Henrietta asked.
+
+“Ill? No. Bad-tempered, what you might call melancholy. Not lately.
+Well, since the dance he has been different. Not so irritable at
+breakfast. I told you once before, love, how I dreaded breakfast, with
+John late half the time, going out with the dogs, and Mr. Batty behind
+the paper with his eyebrows up, and Charles looking as if he’d been dug
+up, like Lazarus, if it isn’t wrong to say so, pale and pasty and sorry
+he was alive—sort of damp, dear. Well, you know what I mean. But as I
+tell you, he’s been more cheerful. That dance must have done him good,
+or something has. And Mr. Batty tells me he takes more interest in his
+work. Still,” Mrs. Batty admitted, “he does catch me up at times.”
+
+“Yes, I know. About music. I know. He’s queer. I hate it when he gets
+angry and shouts, but he’s good really, in his heart.”
+
+“Oh, of course he is,” Mrs. Batty murmured, and, looking at the plump
+hands on her silken lap, she added, “I wish he’d marry. Now, John, he’s
+engaged; but he didn’t need to be. You know what I mean. He was happy
+enough before, but Charles, if he could marry a nice girl—”
+
+“He won’t,” Henrietta said at once, and Mrs. Batty, suddenly alert,
+asked sharply, “Why not?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know. Men are so easily deceived.”
+
+“We can’t help it. You wouldn’t neglect a baby. Well, then, it’s the
+same thing. They never get out of their short frocks. Even Mr. Batty,”
+his wife chuckled, “he’s very clever and all that, but he’s like all
+the rest. The very minute you marry, you’ve got a baby on your hands.”
+
+Henrietta sighed. “It isn’t fair,” she murmured, yet she liked the
+notion. Francis Sales was a baby. He would have to be managed, to be
+amused; he would tire of his toys. She knew that, and she saw herself
+constantly dressing up the old ones and deceiving him into believing
+they were new.
+
+“I suppose they’re worth it,” she half questioned.
+
+“Men?”
+
+“No, babies,” Henrietta answered, meaning the same thing, but Mrs.
+Batty took her up with fervour. She was reminiscent, and tears came
+into her eyes; she was prophetic, she was embarrassing and faintly
+disgusting to Henrietta, and when the door opened to let in Charles,
+she welcomed him with a pleasure which was really the measure of her
+relief.
+
+She had not seen him since she had parted from him in the car. He did
+not return her smile and it struck her that he never smiled. It was a
+good thing: it would have made him look odder than ever, and somehow he
+contrived to show his happiness without the display of teeth. His eyes,
+she decided, bulged most when he was miserable, and now they hardly
+bulged at all.
+
+“You’re back early to-day, dear,” Mrs. Batty said. “I’ll have some
+fresh tea made.” But Charles, without averting his gaze from Henrietta,
+said, “I don’t want any tea,” and to Henrietta he said quietly, “I
+haven’t seen you for weeks.”
+
+To her annoyance, she felt the colour creeping over her cheeks. No
+doubt he would account for that in his own way, and to disconcert him
+she added casually, “It’s not long really.”
+
+“It seems long,” he said.
+
+No one but Charles Batty would have said that in the presence of his
+mother; it was ridiculous, and she looked at him with revengeful
+criticism. He was plain; he was getting bald; his trousers bagged; his
+socks were wrinkled like concertinas; his comparative self-assurance
+was quite unjustified. He had looked at her consistently since he
+entered the room, and Henrietta was angrily aware that Mrs. Batty was
+trying to make herself insignificant in her corner of the sofa.
+Henrietta could hear the careful control of her breathing. She was
+hoping to make the young people forget she was there. Henrietta frowned
+warningly at Charles.
+
+“What’s the matter?” he asked at once.
+
+“Nothing.” She might have known it was useless to make signs.
+
+“But you frowned.”
+
+“Well, don’t you ever get a twinge?” she prevaricated.
+
+“Toothache, dear?” Mrs. Batty clucked her distress. “I’ll get some
+laudanum. You just rub it on the gum—” She rose. “I have some in my
+medicine cupboard. I’ll go and get it.” She went out, and across her
+broad back she seemed to carry the legend, “This is the consummation of
+tact.”
+
+Charles stood up and planted himself on the hearthrug and Henrietta
+wished Mrs. Batty had not gone. “I’m sorry you’ve got toothache,” he
+said.
+
+“I haven’t. I didn’t say I had. My teeth are perfect.” With a vicious
+opening of her mouth, she let him see them.
+
+“Then why did you frown?”
+
+“I had to do something to stop your glaring at me.”
+
+“Was I glaring? I didn’t know. I suppose I can’t help looking at you.”
+
+Henrietta appreciated this remark. “I don’t mind so much when we are
+alone.” From anybody else she would have expected a reminder that she
+had once allowed more than that, but she was safe with Charles and half
+annoyed by her safety. Her instinct was to run and dodge, but it was a
+poor game to play at hide-and-seek with this roughly executed statue of
+a young man. “Your mother must have noticed,” she explained.
+
+“Well, why not? She’ll have to know.”
+
+“Know what?” she cried indignantly.
+
+“That we’re engaged.”
+
+She brightened angrily. After all, he was thinking of that night and
+she felt a new, exasperated respect for him. “But I told you—I told you
+I didn’t mean anything when I let you—when we were alone in that car.”
+
+“I wasn’t thinking of that,” he said, and she felt a drop. He had no
+business not to think of it.
+
+“Then what do you mean?” she asked coldly.
+
+“I’ve been engaged to you,” he said, “for a long time. I told you. But
+I’ve been thinking that it really doesn’t work.”
+
+“Of course it doesn’t. Anybody would have known that except you,
+Charles Batty.”
+
+“Yes, but nobody tells me things. I have to find them out.” He sighed.
+“It takes time. But now I know.”
+
+“Very well. You’re released from the engagement you made all by
+yourself. I had nothing to do with it.”
+
+“No,” he said mildly, “but I can’t be released, so the only way out of
+it is for you to be engaged too.” He fumbled in a pocket. “I’ve bought
+a ring.”
+
+She sneered. “Who told you about that?”
+
+“I remembered it. John got one. It’s always done and I think this one
+is pretty.”
+
+She had a great curiosity to see his choice. She guessed it would be
+gaudy, like a child’s, but she said, “It has nothing to do with me. I
+don’t want to see it.”
+
+“Do look.”
+
+“Charles, you’re hopeless.”  “The man said he would change it if you
+didn’t like it.” Into her hand he put the little box, attractively
+small, no doubt lined with soft white velvet, and she longed to open
+it. She had always wanted one of those little boxes and she remembered
+how often she had gazed at them, holding glittering rings, in the
+windows of jewellers’ shops. She looked up at Charles, her eyes bright,
+her lips a little parted, so young and helpless in that moment that she
+drew from him his first cry of passion. “Henrietta!” His hands
+trembled.
+
+“It’s only,” she faltered, “because I like looking at pretty things.”
+
+“I know.” He dropped to the sofa beside her. “It couldn’t be anything
+else.”
+
+She turned to him, her face close to his, and she asked plaintively,
+“But why shouldn’t it be?” She seemed to blame him; she did blame him.
+There was something in his presence seductively secure; there was
+peace: she almost loved him; she loved her power to make him tremble,
+and if only he could make her tremble too, she would be his. “But it
+isn’t anything else,” she said below her breath.
+
+“No, it isn’t,” he echoed in the loud voice of his trouble. He got up
+and moved away. “So just look at the ring and tell me if you like it.”
+
+He heard the box unwrapped and a voice saying, “I do like it.”
+
+“Then keep it.”
+
+“But I can’t.”
+
+“Yes, you can. It’s for you. It’s pretty, isn’t it? And you like pretty
+things.”
+
+“I could just look at it now and then, couldn’t I? But no, it isn’t
+fair.”
+
+“I don’t mind about that.
+
+“I mean fair to me.”
+
+He turned at that. “I don’t understand.”
+
+“A kind of hold,” she explained.
+
+“How could it be? I wasn’t trying to tempt you, but we’re engaged and
+you must have a ring.”
+
+She shook her small, clenched fists. “We’re not, we’re not! Oh, yes,
+you can be, if you like; but I didn’t mean it would hold me in that
+way. I meant it would be like a sign—of you. I shouldn’t be able to
+forget you; you would be there in the ring, in the box, in the drawer,
+like the portrait of Aunt Sophia’s—” She stopped herself. “And I can’t
+burn you.”
+
+“I don’t know what you are talking about. I suppose I ought to.”
+
+“No, you oughtn’t.” She sprang up, delivered from her weakness. “This
+is nonsense. Of course, I can’t keep your ring. Take it back, Charles.
+It’s beautiful. I thought it would be all red and blue like a flag, but
+it’s lovely. It makes my mouth water. It’s like white fire.”
+
+“It’s like you,” he said. “You’re just as bright and just as hard, and
+if only you were as small, I could put you in my pocket and never let
+you go.”
+
+She opened her eyes very wide. “Then why do you let me go?” she asked
+on an ascending note, and she did not mean to taunt him. It would be so
+easy for him to keep her, if he knew how. She expected a despairing
+groan, she half hoped for a violent embrace, but he answered quietly,
+“I don’t really let you go. It’s you I love, not just your hair and
+your face and the way your nose turns up, and your hands and feet, and
+your straight neck. I have to let them go, but you don’t go. You stay
+with me all the time: you always will. You’re like music, always in my
+head, but you’re more than that. You go deeper: I suppose into my
+heart. Sometimes I think I’m carrying you in my arms. I can’t see you
+but I can feel you’re there, and sometimes I laugh because I think
+you’re laughing.”
+
+She listened, charmed into stillness. Here was an echo of his
+outpouring in the darkness of that hour by the Monks’ Pool, but these
+words were closer, dearer. She felt for that moment that he did indeed
+carry her in his arms and that she was glad to be there. He spoke so
+quietly, he was so certain of his love that she was exalted and
+abashed. She did not deserve all this, yet he knew she was hard as well
+as bright, he knew her nose turned up. Perhaps there was nothing he did
+not know.
+
+He went on simply, without effort. “And though I’m ugly and a fool, I
+can’t be hurt whatever you choose to do. What you do isn’t you.” He
+touched himself. “The you is here. So it doesn’t matter about the ring.
+It doesn’t matter about Francis Sales.”
+
+She said on a caught breath and in a whisper, “What about him?”
+
+He looked at her and made a slight movement with the hands hanging at
+his sides, a little flicking movement, as though he brushed something
+away. “I think perhaps you are going to marry him,” he said deeply.
+
+Her head went up. “Who told you that?” she demanded.
+
+“Nobody. Nobody tells me anything.”
+
+“Because nobody knows,” she said scornfully. “I haven’t seen him
+since—” She hesitated. This Charles knew everything, and he said for
+her, rather wearily, very quietly, “Since his wife died. No. But you
+will.”
+
+“Yes,” she said defiantly, “I expect I shall. I hope I shall.”
+
+A shudder passed through Charles Batty’s big frame and the words,
+“Don’t marry him,” reached her ears like a distant muttering of a
+storm. “You would not be happy.”
+
+“What has happiness to do with it?” she asked with an astonishing young
+bitterness.
+
+“Ah, if you feel like that,” he said, “if you feel as I do about you,
+if nothing he does and nothing he says—”
+
+“He says very little,” Henrietta interrupted gloomily, but Charles
+seemed not to hear.
+
+“If his actions are only like the wind in the trees, fluttering the
+leaves—yes, I suppose that’s love. The tree remains.”
+
+She dropped her face into her hands. “You’re making me miserable,” she
+cried.
+
+He removed her hands and held them firmly. “But why?”
+
+“I don’t know,” she swayed towards him, but he kept her arms rigid,
+like a bar between them, “but I don’t want to lose you.”
+
+“You can’t,” he assured her.
+
+“And though you think you have me in your heart, the me that doesn’t
+change, you’d like the other one too, wouldn’t you? I mean, you’d
+really like to hold me? Not just the thought of me? Tell me you love me
+in that way too.”
+
+“Yes,” he said, “I love you in that way too, but I tell you it doesn’t
+matter.” He dropped her hands as though he had no more strength. “Marry
+your Francis Sales. You still belong to me.”
+
+“But will you belong to me?” she asked softly. She could not lose him,
+she wanted to have them both, and Charles, perhaps unwisely, perhaps
+from the depth of his wisdom, which was truth, answered quietly, “I
+belonged to you since the first day I saw you.”
+
+She let out a sigh of inexpressible relief.
+
+
+§ 10
+
+To Rose, the time between the death of Caroline and the coming of
+spring was like an invalid’s convalescence. She felt a languor as
+though she had been ill, and a kind of content as though she were
+temporarily free from cares. She knew that Henrietta and Charles Batty
+often met, but she did not wish to know how Charles had succeeded in
+preventing her escape: she did not try to connect Christabel’s illness
+with Henrietta’s return; she enjoyed unquestioningly her rich feeling
+of possession in the presence of the girl, who was much on her dignity,
+very well behaved, but undeniably aloof. She had not yet forgiven her
+aunt for that episode in the gipsies’ hollow, but it did not matter.
+Rose could tell herself without any affectation of virtue that she had
+hoped for no benefit for herself; looking back she saw that even what
+might be called her sin had been committed chiefly for Francis’s sake,
+only she had not sinned enough.
+
+But for the present she need not think of him. He had gone away, she
+heard, and she could ride over the bridge without the fear of meeting
+him and with the feeling that the place was more than ever hers. It was
+gloriously empty of any claim but its own. To gallop across the fields,
+to ride more slowly on some height with nothing between her and great
+massy clouds of unbelievable whiteness, to feel herself relieved of an
+immense responsibility, was like finding the new world she had longed
+for. She wished sincerely that Francis would not come back; she wished
+that, riding one day, she might find Sales Hall blotted out, leaving no
+sign, no trace, nothing but earth and fresh spikes of green.
+
+Day by day she watched the advance of spring. The larches put out their
+little tassels, celandines opened their yellow eyes, the smell of the
+gorse was her youth wafted back to her and she shook her head and said
+she did not want it. This maturity was better: she had reached the age
+when she could almost dissociate things from herself and she found them
+better and more beautiful. She needed this consolation, for it seemed
+that her personal relationships were to be few and shadowy; conscious
+in herself of a capacity for crystallizing them enduringly, they yet
+managed to evade her; it was some fault, some failure in herself, but
+not knowing the cause she could not cure it and she accepted it with
+the apparent impassivity which was, perhaps, the origin of the
+difficulty.
+
+And capable as she was of love, she was incapable of struggling for it.
+She wanted Henrietta’s affection; she wanted to give every happiness to
+that girl, but she could not be different from herself, she could not
+bait the trap. And it seemed that Henrietta might be finding happiness
+without her help, or at least without realizing that it was she who had
+given Charles his chance. She had rejected her plan of taking Henrietta
+away: it was better to leave her in the neighbourhood of Charles, for
+he was not a Francis Sales, and if Henrietta could once see below his
+queer exterior, she would never see it again except to laugh at it with
+an understanding beyond the power of irritation; and she was made to
+have a home, to be busy about small, important things, to play with
+children and tyrannize over a man in the matter of socks and collars,
+to be tyrannized over by him in the bigger affairs of life.
+
+And with Henrietta settled, Rose would at last be free to take that
+journey which, like everything else, had eluded her so far. She would
+be free but for Sophia who seemed in these days pathetically subdued
+and frail; but Sophia, Rose decided, could stay with Henrietta for a
+time, or one of the elderly cousins would be glad to take up a
+temporary residence in Nelson Lodge.
+
+She was excited by the prospect of her freedom and sometimes, as though
+she were doing something wrong, she secretly carried the big atlas to
+her bedroom and pored over the maps. There were places with names like
+poetry and she meant to see them all. She moved already in a world of
+greater space and fresher air; her body was rejuvenated, her mind
+recovered from its weariness and when, on an April day, she came across
+Francis Sales in one of his own fields, it was a sign of her condition
+that her first thought was of Henrietta and not of herself. He had
+returned and Henrietta was again in danger, though one of another kind.
+
+She stopped her horse, thinking firmly, Whatever happens, she shall not
+marry him: he is not good enough. She said: “Good morning,” in that
+cool voice which made him think of churches, and he stood, stroking the
+horse’s nose, looking down and making no reply.
+
+“I’ve been away,” he said at last.
+
+“I know. When did you come back?”
+
+“Last night. I’ve been to Canada to see her people. I thought they’d
+like to know about her and she would have liked it, too.”
+
+A small smile threatened Rose’s mouth. It seemed rather late to be
+trying to please Christabel.
+
+“I didn’t hope,” he went on quietly, “to have this luck so soon. I’ve
+been wanting to see you, to tell you something. I wanted to get things
+cleared up.”
+
+“What things?”
+
+He looked up. “About Henrietta.”
+
+“There’s no need for that.”
+
+“Not for you, perhaps, but there is for me. You were quite right that
+day. I went home and I made up my mind to break my word to her. I’d
+made it up before Christabel became so ill. I wanted you to know that.
+I couldn’t have left her that night—perhaps you hadn’t realized I’d
+meant to—but anyhow I couldn’t have left her, and I wouldn’t have done
+it if I could. You were perfectly right.”
+
+Rose moved a little in her saddle. “And yet I had no right to be,” she
+said. “You and I—”
+
+“Ah,” he said quickly, “you and I were different. I don’t blame myself
+for that, but with Henrietta it was just devilry, sickness, misery.
+Don’t,” he commanded, “dare to compare our—our love with that.”
+
+“No,” she said, “no, I don’t think of it at all. It has dropped back
+where it came from and I don’t know where that is. I don’t think of it
+any more, but thank you for telling me about Henrietta. Good-bye.”
+
+She moved on, but his voice followed her. “I never loved her.”
+
+She stopped but did not turn. “I know that.”
+
+“Yes, but I wanted to tell you.” He was at the horse’s head again. “I
+don’t think much of the way those people are keeping your bridle.
+There’s rust on the curb chain. Look at it. It’s disgraceful! And I’d
+like to tell you that I tried to make it up to Christabel at the last.
+Too late—but she was happy. Good-bye. Tell those people they ought to
+be ashamed of themselves.”
+
+“I suppose we all ought to be,” Rose said wearily.
+
+“Some of us are,” he replied. “And,” he hesitated, “you won’t stop
+riding here now I’ve come back?”
+
+“Of course not. It’s the habit of a lifetime.”
+
+“I shan’t worry you.”
+
+She laughed frankly. “I’m not afraid of that.”
+
+She was immune, she told herself, she could not be touched, yet she
+knew she had been touched already: she was obliged to think of him. For
+the first time in her knowledge of him he had not grumbled, he was like
+a repentant child, and she realized that he had suffered an experience
+unknown to her, a sense of sin, and the fact gave him a certain
+superiority and interest in her eyes.
+
+She went home but not as she had set forth, for she seemed to hear the
+jingle of her chains.
+
+At luncheon Henrietta appeared in a new hat and an amiable mood. She
+was going, she said casually, to a concert with Charles Batty.
+
+“I didn’t know there was one,” Rose said. “Where is it?”
+
+“Oh, not in Radstowe. We’re going,” Henrietta said reluctantly, “to
+Wellsborough.”
+
+But that name seemed to have no association for Aunt Rose. She said,
+“Oh, yes, they have very good concerts there, and I hope Charles will
+like your hat.”
+
+“I don’t suppose he will notice it,” Henrietta murmured. She felt
+grateful for her aunt’s forgetfulness, and she said, with an enthusiasm
+she had not shown for a long time, “You look lovely to-day, Aunt Rose,
+as if something nice had happened.”
+
+Rose laughed and said, “Nonsense, Henrietta,” in a manner faintly
+reminiscent of Caroline. And she added quickly, against the invasion of
+her own thoughts, “And as for Charles, he notices much more than one
+would think.”
+
+“Oh, I’ve found that out,” Henrietta grieved. “I don’t think people
+ought to notice—well, that one’s nose turns up.”
+
+“It depends how it does it. Yours is very satisfactory.”
+
+They sparkled at each other, pleased at the ease of their intercourse
+and quite unaware that these personalities also were reminiscent of the
+Caroline and Sophia tradition of compliment.
+
+Sophia, drooping over the table, said vaguely, “Yes, very
+satisfactory,” but she hardly knew to what Rose had referred. She lived
+in her own memories, but she tried to disguise her distraction and it
+was always safe to agree with Rose: she had good judgment, unfailing
+taste. “Rose,” she said more brightly, “I’d forgotten. Susan tells me
+that Francis Sales has come home.”
+
+Rose said “Yes,” and after the slightest pause, she added, “I saw him
+this morning.” She did not look at Henrietta. She felt with something
+like despair that this had occurred at the very moment when they seemed
+to be re-establishing their friendship, and now Henrietta would be
+reminded of the unhappy past. She did not look across the table, but,
+to her astonishment, she heard the girl’s voice with trouble, enmity
+and anger concentrated in its control, saying quickly, “So that’s the
+nice thing that’s happened!”
+
+“Very nice,” Sophia murmured. “Poor Francis! He must have been glad to
+see you.”
+
+Rose’s eyes glanced over Henrietta’s face with a look too proud to be
+called disdain: she was doubly shocked, first by the girl’s effrontery
+and then by the truth in her words. She had indeed been feeling
+indefinitely happy and ignoring the cause. She was, even now, not sure
+of the cause. She did not know whether it was the change in Francis or
+the jingling of the chains still sounding in her ears, but there had
+been a lightness in her heart which had nothing to do with the sense of
+that approaching freedom on which she had been counting.
+
+She turned to Sophia as though Henrietta had not spoken. “Yes, I think
+he was glad to see a friend. He has been to Canada to see Christabel’s
+family. No, he didn’t say how he was, but I thought he looked rather
+old.”
+
+“Ah, poor boy,” Sophia said. “I think, Rose dear, it would be kind to
+ask him here.”
+
+“Oh, he knows he can come when he likes,” Rose said.
+
+On the other side of the table Henrietta was shaking delicately. She
+could only have got relief by inarticulate noises and insanely violent
+movements. She hated Francis Sales, she  hated Rose and Sophia and
+Charles Batty. She would not go  to the concert—yes, she would go and
+make Charles miserable.  She was enraged at the folly of her own
+remark, at Rose’s  self-possession, and at her possible possession of
+Francis Sales.  She could not unsay what she had said and, having said
+it, she  did not know how to go on living with Aunt Rose; but she was
+going to Wellsborough again and this time she need not come back: yet
+she must come back to see Francis Sales. And though there was no one in
+the world to whom she could express the torment of her mind she could,
+at least, make Charles unhappy.
+
+Rose and Sophia were chatting pleasantly, and Henrietta pushed back her
+chair. “Will you excuse me? I have to catch a train.”
+
+Rose inclined her head: Sophia said, “Yes, dear, go. Where did you say
+you were going?”
+
+“To Wellsborough.”
+
+“Ah, yes. Caroline and I—Be careful to get into a ladies’ carriage,
+Henrietta.”
+
+“I’m going with Charles Batty,” she said dully.
+
+“Ah, then, you will be safe.”
+
+Safe! Yes, she was perfectly safe with Charles. He would sit with his
+hands hanging between his knees and stare. She was sick of him and, if
+she dared, she would whisper during the music; at any rate, she would
+shuffle her feet and make a noise with the programme. And to-morrow she
+would emulate her aunt and waylay Francis Sales. There would be no harm
+in copying Aunt Rose, a pattern of conduct! She had done it before, she
+would do it again and they would see which one of them was to be
+victorious at the last.
+
+She fulfilled her intentions. Charles, who had been flourishing under
+the kindness of her friendship, was puzzled by her capriciousness, but
+he did not question her. He was learning to accept mysteries calmly and
+to work at them in his head. She shuffled her feet and he pretended not
+to hear: she crackled her programme and he smiled down at her. This was
+maddening, yet it was a tribute to her power. She could do what she
+liked and Charles would love her; he was a great possession; she did
+not know what she would do without him.
+
+As they ate their rich cakes in a famous teashop, Charles talked
+incessantly about the music, and when at last he paused, she said
+indifferently, “I didn’t hear a note.”
+
+Mildly he advised her not to wear such tight shoes.
+
+“Tight!” She looked down at them. “I had them made for me!”
+
+“You seemed to be uncomfortable,” he said.
+
+“I was thinking, thinking, thinking.”
+
+“What about?”
+
+“Things you wouldn’t understand, Charles. You’re too good.”
+
+“I dare say,” he murmured.
+
+“You’ve never wanted to murder anyone.”
+
+“Yes, I have.”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“That Sales fellow.”
+
+Her eyelids quivered, but she said boldly, “Because of me?”
+
+“No, of course not. Making noises at concerts. Shooting birds. I’ve
+told you so before.”
+
+“He’s been to Canada.”
+
+“I know.”
+
+“But he has come back.”
+
+“Well, I suppose he had to come back some day.”
+
+“And I hate Aunt Rose.”
+
+“What a pity,” Charles said, taking another cake.
+
+“Why a pity?”
+
+“Beautiful woman.”
+
+“Oh, yes, everybody thinks so, till they know her.”
+
+“I know her and I think she’s adorable.”
+
+The word was startling from his lips. Charles, too, she exclaimed
+inwardly. Was Aunt Rose even to come between her and Charles?
+
+“But of course”—he remembered his lesson—“you’re the most beautiful and
+the best woman in the world.”
+
+“I’m not a woman at all,” she said angrily: “I’m a fiend.”
+
+“Yes, to-day; but you won’t be to-morrow. You’ll feel different
+to-morrow.”
+
+He had, she reflected, a gift of prophecy. “Yes, I shall,” she said
+softly, “I’m stupid. It will be all right to-morrow. I shan’t even be
+angry with Aunt Rose and you’ve been an angel to me. I shall never
+forget you.”
+
+He said nothing. He seemed very much interested in his cake.
+
+And because she foresaw that her anger towards Aunt Rose would soon be
+changed to pity, she apologized to her that night. “I’m afraid I was
+rude to you at luncheon.”
+
+“Were you? Oh, not rude, Henrietta. Perhaps rather foolish and
+indiscreet. You should think before you speak.”
+
+This admonition was not what Henrietta expected, and she said, “That’s
+just what I was doing. You mean I ought to be quiet when I’m thinking.”
+
+“Well, yes, that would be even better.”
+
+“Then, Aunt Rose, I should never speak at all when I’m with you.”
+
+“You haven’t talked to me for a long time.”
+
+She made a gesture like her father’s—impatient, hopeless. “How can I?”
+she demanded. There was too much between them: the figure of Francis
+Sales was too solid.
+
+She set out as she had intended the next afternoon. It was full
+spring-time now and Radstowe was gay and sweet with flowering trees.
+The delicate rose of the almond blossom had already faded to a fainting
+pink and fallen to the ground, and the laburnum was weeping golden
+tears which would soon drop to the pavements and blacken there; the red
+and white hawthorns were all out, and Henrietta’s daily walks had been
+punctuated by ecstatic halts when she stood under a canopy of flower
+and leaf and drenched herself in scent and colour, or peeped over
+garden fences to see tall tulips springing up out of the grass; but
+to-day she did not linger.
+
+It seemed a long time since she had crossed the river, yet the only
+change was in the new green of the trees splashing the side of the
+gorge. The gulls were still quarrelling for food on the muddy banks,
+children and perambulators, horses and carts, were passing over the
+bridge as on her first day in Radstowe, but there was now no Francis
+Sales on his fine horse. The sun was bright but clouds were being blown
+by a wind with a sharp breath, and she went quickly lest it should rain
+before her business was accomplished. She had no fear of not finding
+Francis Sales: in such things her luck never failed her, and she came
+upon him even sooner than she had expected in the outermost of his
+fields.
+
+He stood beside the gate, scrutinizing a flock of sheep and lambs and
+talking to the shepherd, and he turned at the sound of her footsteps on
+the road. She smiled sweetly: rather stiffly he raised his hand to his
+hat and in that moment she recognized that he had no welcome for her.
+He had changed; he was grave though he was not sullen, and she said to
+herself with her ready bitterness, “Ah, he has reformed, now that
+there’s no need. That’s what they all do.”
+
+But her smile did not fade. She leaned over the gate in a friendly
+manner and asked him about the lambs. How old were they? She hoped he
+would not have them killed: they were too sweet. She had never touched
+one in her life. Why did they get so ugly afterwards? It was hard to
+believe those little things with faces like kittens, or like flowers,
+were the children of their lumpy mothers. “Do you think I could catch
+one if I came inside?” she asked.
+
+“Come inside,” he said, “but the shepherd shall catch one for you.”
+
+She stroked the curly wool, she pulled the apprehensive ears, she
+uttered absurdities and, glancing up to see if Sales were laughing at
+her charming folly, she saw that he was examining his flock with the
+practical interest of a farmer. He was apparently considering some
+technical point; he had not been listening to her at all. She hated
+that lamb, she hoped he would kill it and all the rest, and she decided
+to eat mutton in future with voracity.
+
+“I was going to pick primroses,” she said. “Are there any in these
+fields?”  “I don’t know. Can you spare me a few minutes? I want to
+speak to you.”
+
+Her heart, which had been thumping with a sickening slowness, quickened
+its beats. Perhaps she had been mistaken, perhaps his serious manner
+was that of a great occasion, and she saw herself returning to Nelson
+Lodge and treating her Aunt Rose with gentle tact.
+
+“Shall we sit on the gate?” she asked.
+
+“I’d rather walk across the field. I’ve been wanting to see you—since
+that night. I owe you an apology.”
+
+She dared not speak for fear of making a mistake, and she waited,
+walking slowly beside him, her eyes downcast.
+
+“An apology—for the whole thing,” he said.
+
+She looked up. “What whole thing?”
+
+“The way I behaved with you.”
+
+“Oh, that! I don’t see why you should apologize,” she said.
+
+“It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t even decent.”
+
+“But it was a sort of habit with you, wasn’t it?” she said
+commiseratingly, and had the happiness of seeing his face flush. “I
+quite understand. And we were both amused.”
+
+“I wasn’t amused,” he said, “not a bit, and I’m sorry I behaved as I
+did. You were so young—and so pretty. Well, it’s no good making
+excuses, but I couldn’t rest until I’d seen you and—humbled myself.”
+
+“Did Aunt Rose tell you to say this?” she asked.
+
+“Rose? Of course not. Why should she?”
+
+“She seems to have an extraordinary power.”
+
+“Yes, she has,” he said simply.
+
+“And have you humbled yourself to her, too?”
+
+“No. With her,” he said slowly, “there was no need.”
+
+“I see.” She laughed up at him frankly. “You know, I never took it very
+seriously. I’m sorry the thought of it has troubled you.”
+
+He went on, ignoring her lightness, and determined to say everything.
+“I meant to meet you that night and tell you what I’m telling you now;
+but Christabel was very ill and I couldn’t leave her. I hope”—this was
+difficult—“I hope you didn’t get into any sort of mess.”
+
+“That night?” She seemed to be thinking back to it. “That night—no—I
+went to a concert with Charles Batty.”
+
+“Oh—” He was bewildered. “Then it was all right?”
+
+“Perfectly, of course.”
+
+“I didn’t know,” he muttered. “And you forgive me?”
+
+She was generous. “I was just as bad as you. The Malletts are all
+flirts. Haven’t you heard Aunt Caroline say so? We can’t help doing
+silly things, but we never take them seriously. Why, you must have
+noticed that with Aunt Rose!”
+
+“No,” he said with dignity, “your Aunt Rose is like nobody else in the
+world. I think I told you that once. She—” He hesitated and was silent.
+
+“Well, I must be going back,” Henrietta said easily. “I shan’t bother
+about the primroses. I think it’s going to rain. And you won’t think
+about this any more, will you? You know, Aunt Caroline says she nearly
+eloped several times, and I know my father did it once, with my own
+mother, probably with other people beside. It’s in the blood. I must
+try to settle down. We did behave rather badly, I suppose, but so much
+has happened since. That was my first ball and I felt I wanted to do
+something daring.”
+
+“You were not to blame,” he said; “but I’m nearly old enough to be your
+father. I can’t forgive myself. I can’t forget it.”
+
+“Oh, dear! And I never took it seriously at all. There was a train back
+to Radstowe at ten o’clock. I looked it up. I was going to get that,
+but as it happened I went to a concert with Charles Batty. You seem to
+have no idea how to play a game. You have to pretend to yourself it’s a
+matter of life and death; but you haven’t to let it be. That would
+spoil it.”
+
+“I see,” he said. “I’m afraid I didn’t look at it like that. I wish I
+had, and I’m glad you did. It makes it easier—and harder—for me.”
+
+“We ought,” she said, “to have laid the rules down first. Yes, we ought
+to have done that.” She laughed again. “I shall do that another time.
+Good-bye.”
+
+“Good-bye. You’ve been awfully good to me, Henrietta. Thank you.”
+
+“Not a bit,” she cried. “If I’d known you were bothering about it, I
+would have reassured you.” She could not withhold a parting shot. “I
+would have sent you a message by Aunt Rose.”
+
+She waved a hand and ran back to the road. She did not trouble to ask
+herself whether or not he believed her. She was shaken by sobs without
+tears. She did not love him, she had never loved him, but she could not
+bear the knowledge that he did not love her. It was quite plain; she
+was not going to deceive herself any more; his manner had been
+unmistakable and it was Aunt Rose he loved. She had been beaten by Aunt
+Rose, and even Charles called her adorable. She did not want Francis
+Sales; he was rather stupid, and as a legitimate lover he would be
+dull, duller than Charles, who at least knew how to say things; but
+something coloured and exciting and dramatic had been ravished from
+her—by Aunt Rose. That was the sting, and she was humiliated, though
+she would not own it. She had been good enough for an episode, but her
+charm had not endured.
+
+Her little, rather inhuman teeth ground against each other. But she had
+been clever, she had carried it off well; she had not given a sign, and
+she determined to be equally clever with Aunt Rose. Some day she would
+refer lightly to her folly and laugh at the susceptibility of Francis
+Sales. It would hurt Aunt Rose to have her faithful lover disparaged!
+But, ah! if only she and Aunt Rose were friends, what a conspiracy they
+could enjoy together! They had both suffered, they might both laugh.
+How they might play into each other’s hands with Francis Sales for the
+bewildered ball! It would be the finest sport in the world; but they
+were not friends, and it was impossible to imagine Aunt Rose at that
+game. No, she was alone in the world, and as she felt the first drop of
+rain on her face she became aware of the aching of her heart.
+
+She stood for a moment on the bridge. A grey mist was being driven up
+the river, blotting out the gorge and the trees. A gull, shrieking
+dismally, cleaved the greyness with a white flash. It was cold and
+Henrietta shivered, and once again she wished she could sit by a
+fireside with some one who was kind and tender; but to-night there
+would only be Aunt Sophia and Aunt Rose sitting with her in that
+drawing-room, where everything was too elegant and too clear, where now
+no one ever laughed.
+
+
+§ 11
+
+They sat by the fire as she had foreseen, Sophia pretending to be busy
+with her embroidery, Rose, in a straight-backed chair, reading a book.
+Henrietta sat on a low stool with a book open on her knee, but she did
+not read it. The fire talked to itself, said silly things and chuckled,
+or murmured sentimentally. That chatter, vaguely insane, and the
+turning of Rose’s pages, the drawing of Sophia’s silks through the
+stuff and the click of her scissors, were the only sounds until,
+suddenly, Sophia gave a groan and fell back in her chair. Rose, very
+much startled, glanced at Henrietta and jumped up.
+
+“It’s her heart,” Henrietta said with the superiority of her knowledge.
+“I’ll get her medicine.” She came back with it. “She was like this when
+Aunt Caroline died, but I promised not to tell. If she has this she
+will be better.”
+
+It was Henrietta who poured the liquid into the glass and applied it to
+Sophia’s lips. She was, she felt, the practical person, and it was she,
+and not Aunt Rose, who had been trusted by Aunt Sophia.  “She told me
+where she kept the stuff,” Henrietta continued calmly. “There, that’s
+better.”
+
+Sophia recovered with apologies: a little faintness; it was nothing. In
+a few minutes she would go to bed. They helped her there.
+
+“You ought to have told me, Henrietta,” Rose said on the landing.
+
+“I couldn’t. She wished it to be our secret.” It was pleasant to feel
+that Aunt Rose was out of this affair.
+
+“We must have the doctor and she ought not to be alone to-night.”
+
+I’ll sleep on the sofa in her room.”
+
+“No, Henrietta, you need more sleep than I do.”
+
+“Oh, but I’m young enough to sleep anywhere—on the floor! But let Aunt
+Sophia choose.”
+
+Henrietta went back to the drawing-room, and the housemaid was sent for
+the doctor. Shortly afterwards there came a ring at the bell; no doubt
+it was the doctor, and Henrietta wished she could go upstairs with him,
+for Aunt Rose, she told herself again, was not a practical person and
+Henrietta was experienced in illness. She had nursed her mother and she
+liked looking after people. She knew how to arrange pillows; she was
+not afraid of sickness. However, she would have to wait until Aunt
+Sophia sent for her; but it was not the doctor: it was Charles Batty
+who appeared in the doorway.
+
+“Oh,” Henrietta said, “what have you come for?”
+
+He put down the hat and stick he had forgotten to leave in the hall. “I
+don’t know,” he said. “I had a kind of feeling you might like to see
+me. It’s the first time I’ve had it,” he added solemnly.
+
+He really had an extraordinary way of knowing things, but she said,
+“Well, Aunt Sophia’s ill, so I don’t think you can stay.”
+
+He looked round for her. “She’s not here. I shan’t do any harm, shall
+I? We can whisper.”
+
+“She wouldn’t hear us anyhow. It’s my room above this one.”
+
+“Is it?” He gazed at the ceiling with interest. “Oh, up there!”
+
+“I should have thought you knew by instinct,” she said bitingly.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Come and sit down, Charles, and don’t be disagreeable. I shall have to
+go to Aunt Sophia soon, but then you will be able to talk to Aunt Rose.
+That will do just as well.”
+
+“Not quite,” he said. “I really came to tell you—”
+
+“You said you came because you thought I wanted you.”
+
+“So I did, but there were several reasons. You said you were going to
+be happy to-day, not murderous, do you remember? And I thought I’d like
+to see how you looked. You don’t look happy a bit. What’s the matter?”
+
+“I’ve told you Aunt Sophia’s ill. And would you be happy if you had to
+sit in this prim room with two old women?”
+
+“Two? But your Aunt Caroline is dead.”
+
+“But my Aunt Rose is very much alive.”
+
+He wagged his head. “I see.”
+
+“But she isn’t lively. She sits like this—reading a book, and Aunt
+Sophia, poor Aunt Sophia, sews like this, and I sit on this horrid
+little stool, like this. That’s how we spend the evening.”
+
+“How would you like to spend it?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know.” She dropped her black head to her knees. “It’s so
+lonely.”
+
+“Well,” he began again, “I really came to tell you that there’s a house
+to let on The Green: that little one with the red roof like a cap and
+windows that squint; a little old house; but—” he paused—“it has every
+modern convenience. Henrietta, there’s a curl at the back of your
+neck.”
+
+“I know. It’s always there.”
+
+“I can’t go on about the house unless you sit up.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because of that curl.”
+
+“And I’m not interested in the house.” She did not move. “Whose is it?”
+
+“It belongs to a client of ours, but that doesn’t matter. The point is
+that it’s to let. I’ve got an order to view. Look!—‘_Please admit Mr.
+Charles Batty._’ I went this evening and we can both go to-morrow. It’s
+really a very cosy little house. There’s a drawing-room opening on the
+garden at the back, with plenty of room for a grand piano, and the
+dining-room—I liked the dining-room very much. There was a fire in it.”
+
+“Is that unusual?”
+
+“It looked so cosy, with a red carpet and everything.”
+
+“Is the carpet to let, too?”
+
+“I don’t know. I dare say we could buy it. And mind you, Henrietta, the
+kitchen is on the ground floor. That’s unusual, if you like, in an old
+house. I made sure of that before I went any further.”
+
+“How far are you going?”
+
+“We’ll go everywhere to-morrow, even into the coal cellar. To-day I
+just peeped.”
+
+“I can imagine you. But what do you want a house for, Charles?”
+
+“For you,” he said. “You say you don’t like spending the evenings
+here—well, let’s spend them in the little house. We can’t go on being
+engaged indefinitely.”
+
+“Certainly not,” she said firmly, “and I should adore a little house of
+my own. I believe that’s just what I want.”
+
+“Then that’s settled.”
+
+“But not with you, Charles.”
+
+He said nothing for a time. She was sitting up, her hands clasped on
+her lap, and as she looked at him she half regretted her last words.
+This was how they would sit in the little house, by the fire,
+surrounded by their own possessions, with everything clean and bright
+and, as he had said, very cosy. She had never had a home.
+
+Suddenly she leaned towards him and put her head on his knee. His hand
+fell on her hair. “This doesn’t mean anything,” she murmured; “but I
+was just thinking. You’re tempting me again. First with the ring
+because it was so pretty, and now with a house.”
+
+“How else am I to get you?” he cried out. “And you know you were
+feeling lonely. That’s why I came.”
+
+“You thought it was your chance?”
+
+“Yes,” he said. “I don’t know the ordinary things, but I know the
+others.”
+
+“I wonder how,” she said, and he answered with the one word, “Love,” in
+a voice so deep and solemn that she laughed.
+
+“Do you know,” she said, “I have never had a home. I’ve lived in other
+people’s houses, with their ugly furniture, their horrid sticky
+curtains—”
+
+“I shall take that house to-morrow.”
+
+“But you can’t go on collecting things like this. Houses and rings—”
+
+“The ring’s in my pocket now.”
+
+“It must stay there, Charles. I ought not to keep my head on your knee;
+but it’s comfortable and I have no conscience. None.” She sat up,
+brushing his chin with her hair. “None!” she said emphatically. “And
+here’s Aunt Rose coming to fetch me for Aunt Sophia. Mind, I’ve
+promised nothing. Besides, you haven’t asked me to promise anything.”
+
+“Oh!” He blinked. “Well, there’s no time now. Good evening, Miss
+Mallett.” He pulled himself out of his chair.
+
+“Good evening, Charles. I’m glad you’re here to keep Henrietta company.
+The doctor has been, Henrietta—”
+
+“Oh, has he? I didn’t hear him.”
+
+“Sophia is settled for the night, and I’m going to her now.”
+
+“But she’ll want me!” Henrietta cried.
+
+“No, she asked me to stay with her. Good night. Good night, Charles.”
+
+“But did you say I wanted to be with her?”
+
+Rose, smiling but a little pitiful, said gently, “I gave her the choice
+and she chose me.”
+
+She disappeared, and Henrietta turned to Charles. “You see, she gets
+everything. She gets everything I ever wanted and she doesn’t try—” Her
+hands dropped to her side. “She just gets it.”
+
+“But what have you wanted?”
+
+She turned away. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
+
+“Is she going to marry Francis Sales?”
+
+“What makes you ask that?” she cried.
+
+“I don’t know. I just thought of it.”
+
+“Oh, your thoughts! Why, you suggested the same thing, for me! As if I
+would look at him!”
+
+Charles blinked, his sign of agitation, but Henrietta did not see.
+“He’s good to look at,” Charles muttered. “He knows how to wear his
+clothes.”
+
+“That doesn’t matter.”
+
+Charles heaved a sigh. “One never knows what matters.”
+
+“And the Malletts don’t marry,” Henrietta said. “Aunt Caroline and Aunt
+Sophia and Aunt Rose, and now me. There’s something in us that can’t be
+satisfied. It was the same with my father, only it took him the other
+way.”
+
+“I didn’t know he was married more than once. Nobody tells me things.”
+
+“Charles, dear, you’re very stupid. He was only married once in a
+church.”
+
+“Oh, I see.”
+
+“And if I did marry, I should be like him.” She turned to him and put
+her face close to his. “Unfaithful,” she pronounced clearly.
+
+“Oh, well, Henrietta, you would still be you.”
+
+She stepped backwards, shocked. “Charles, wouldn’t you mind?”
+
+“Not so much,” he said stolidly, “as doing without you altogether.”
+
+“And the other day you said you need never do that because”—she tapped
+his waistcoat—“because I’m here!”
+
+He showed a face she had never seen before. “You seem to think I’m not
+made of flesh and blood!” he cried. “You’re wanton, Henrietta, simply
+wanton!” And he rushed out of the room.
+
+She heard the front door bang; she saw his hat and stick, lying where
+he had put them; she smiled at them politely and then, sinking to the
+floor beside the fender, she let out a little moan of despair and
+delight. The fire chuckled and chattered and she leaned forward, her
+face near the bars.
+
+“Stop talking for a minute! I want to tell you something. There’s
+nobody else to tell. Listen! I’m in love with him now.” She nodded her
+head. “Yes, with him. I know it’s ridiculous; but it’s true. Did you
+hear? You can laugh if you like. I don’t care. I’m in love with him.
+Oh, dear!”
+
+She circled her neck with her hands as though she must clasp something,
+and it would have been too silly to fondle his ugly hat. And he would
+remember he had forgotten it; he would come back. She dared not see
+him. “I love him,” she cried out, “too much to want to see him!” She
+paused, astonished. “I suppose that’s how he feels about me. How
+wonderful!” She looked round at the furniture, so still and unmoved by
+the happy bewilderment in which she found herself. The piano was mute;
+the lamps burned steadily; the chair in which Charles had sat was
+unconscious of its privilege; even the fire’s flames had subsided; and
+she was intensely, madly, joyously alive.  “It’s too much,” she said,
+“too much!” And for the first time she was ashamed of her episode with
+Francis Sales. “Playing at love,” she whispered.
+
+But Charles would be coming back and, tiptoeing as though he might hear
+her from the street, she picked up his hat and stick and laid them
+neatly on the step outside the front door.
+
+She slept with the profundity of her happiness and descended to
+breakfast in a dream. Only the sight of Rose’s tired face reminded her
+that Aunt Sophia was ill. She had had a bad night, but she was better.
+
+“She’s not going to die, too, is she?” Henrietta asked, and she had a
+sad vision of Aunt Rose living all alone in Nelson Lodge.
+
+“She may live for a long time, but the doctor says she may die at any
+moment.”
+
+“I don’t suppose she wants to live.”
+
+“What makes you think that?”
+
+“Because of Aunt Caroline—and—other people. But if she dies, whatever
+will you do?”
+
+The question amused Rose. “Go and see the world at last,” she said.
+“Perhaps you will come, too.”
+
+Henrietta laughed and flushed and became serious. “She mustn’t die.”
+
+For, after all, Aunt Sophia was not a true Mallett, according to Aunt
+Caroline’s test; she believed in marriage, she would like to see
+Henrietta in the little house; one of them would be able to call on the
+other every day. It was wonderful of Charles to have known she would
+like that house: she knew it well, with its red cap and its squinting
+eyes; but, then, he was altogether wonderful.
+
+She supposed he would call for her that afternoon and they would
+present the order to view together, but he did not come. With her hat
+and gloves lying ready on the bed, she waited for his knock in vain. He
+must have been kept by business; he would come later to explain. And
+then, when still he did not come, she decided that he must be ill. If
+so, her place was by his side, and she saw herself moving like an angel
+about his bed; and yet the thought of Charles in bed was comic.
+
+At dinner she ate nothing and when Rose remarked on this, Henrietta
+murmured that she had a headache; she thought she would go for a walk.
+
+“Then, if you are really going out, will you take a note to Mrs. Batty?
+She sent some fruit and flowers to Sophia. I suppose Charles told her
+she was ill.”
+
+Henrietta looked sharply at her aunt: she was suspicious of what seemed
+like tact, but Rose wore an ordinary expression.
+
+“Is the note ready?” Henrietta asked.
+
+“Yes, I meant to post it, but I’d rather she had it to-night, and there
+is the basket to return.”
+
+“Very well, I’ll take them both, and if I’m a little late, you’ll know
+I have just gone for a walk or something.”
+
+“I shan’t worry about you,” Rose said.
+
+Henrietta walked up the yellow drive, trembling a little. She had
+decided to ask for Mrs. Batty who was always pleased to see her, but
+when the door was opened her ears were assailed by a blast of
+triumphant sound. It was Charles, playing the piano; he was not ill, he
+was not busy, he was merely playing the piano as though there were no
+Henrietta in the world, and her trembling changed to the stiffness of
+great anger.
+
+She handed in the basket and the note without a word or a smile for the
+friendly parlourmaid. She walked home in the awful realization that she
+had worn Charles out. He had called her wanton; he must have meant it.
+It was that word which had really made her love him, yet it was also
+the sign of his exhaustion. Life was tragic: no, it was comic, it was
+playful. She had had happiness in her hands, and it had slipped through
+them. She felt sick with disappointment under her rage; but she was not
+without hope. It stirred in her gently. Charles would come back. But
+would he? And she suddenly felt a terrible distrust of that love of
+which he had boasted. It was too complete; he could do without her. He
+would go on loving, but, she repeated it, she had worn him out, and she
+could not love like that. She wanted tangible things. But he had said
+that he, too, was flesh and blood, and that comforted her. He would
+come back, but she could do nothing to invite him.
+
+This, she said firmly, was the real thing. It had been different with
+Francis Sales: with him there had been no necessity for pride, but her
+love for Charles must be wrapped round with reserve and kept holy; and
+at once, with her unfailing dramatic sense, she saw herself moving
+quietly through life, tending the sacred flame. And then, irritably,
+she told herself she could not spend her days doing that: she did not
+know what to do! She hated him; she would go away; yes, she would go
+away with Aunt Rose.
+
+In the meantime she wept with a passion of disappointment, humiliation
+and pain, but on each successive morning, for some weeks, she woke to
+hope, for here was a new day with many possibilities in its hours; and
+each evening she dropped on to her bed, disheartened. Nothing happened.
+Aunt Sophia was better, Rose rode out every day, the little house on
+The Green stood empty, squinting disconsolately, resignedly surprised
+at its own loneliness. It was strange that nobody wanted a house like
+that; it was neglected and so was she: nobody noticed the one or the
+other.
+
+Every morning Henrietta took Aunt Sophia for a stately walk; every
+afternoon she went to a tea- or tennis-party, for the summer
+festivities were beginning once more; and often, as she returned, she
+would meet Aunt Rose coming back from her ride, always cool in her
+linen coat, however hot the day. Where did she go? How often did she
+meet Francis Sales? Why should she be enjoying adventures while
+Henrietta, at the only age worth having, was desperately fulfilling the
+tedious round of her engagements? It was absurd, and Aunt Rose would
+ask serenely, “Did you have a good game, Henrietta?” as though there
+was nothing wrong.
+
+Henrietta did not care for games. It was the big sport of life itself
+she craved for, and she could not get it. All these young men, handsome
+and healthy in their flannels and ready to be pleasant, she found dull,
+while the figure of the loose-jointed Charles, his vague gestures, his
+unseeing eyes screening the activity of his brain, became heroic in
+their difference. She never saw him; she did not visit Mrs. Batty; she
+was afraid of falling tearfully on that homely, sympathetic breast, but
+Mrs. Batty, as usual, issued invitations for a garden-party.
+
+“We shall have to go,” Sophia sighed. “Such an old and so kind a
+friend! But without Caroline—for the first tune!”
+
+“There is no need for you to go,” Rose said at once. “Mrs. Batty will
+understand, and Henrietta and I will represent the family.”
+
+“No, I must not give way. Caroline never gave way.”
+
+There was no excitement in dressing for this party. Without Caroline
+things lost their zest, and they set out demurely, walking very slowly
+for Sophia’s sake.
+
+It was a hot day and Mrs. Batty, standing at the garden door to greet
+her guests, was obliged to wipe her face surreptitiously now and then,
+while the statues in the hall, with their burdens of ferns and lamps,
+showed their cool limbs beneath their scanty but still decent drapery.
+
+Mrs. Batty took Sophia to a seat under a tree and Henrietta stood for a
+moment in the blazing sunlight alone. Where was Aunt Rose? Henrietta
+looked round and had a glimpse of that slim black form moving among the
+rose-trees with Francis Sales. He had simply carried her off! It was
+disgraceful, and things seemed to repeat themselves for ever. Aunt
+Rose, with her look of having lost everything, still succeeded in
+possessing, while Henrietta was alone. She had no place in the world.
+John’s affianced bride was busy among the guests, like a daughter of
+the house, a slobbering bulldog at her heels; and Henrietta, isolated
+on the lawn, was overcome by her own forlornness. It had been very
+different at the ball. And how queer life was! It was just a succession
+of days, that was all: little things happened and the days went on; big
+things happened and seemed to change the world, but nothing was really
+changed, and a whole life could be spent with a moment’s happiness or
+despair for its only marks.
+
+Henrietta, rather impressed by the depths of her own thoughts, moved
+through the garden. Where was Charles? She wanted to see him and get
+their meeting over, but there was not a sign of him and, avoiding the
+croquet players and that shady corner where elderly ladies were
+clustered near the band, the same band which had played at the ball,
+Henrietta found herself in the kitchen garden. She examined the
+gooseberry bushes and strawberry beds with apparent interest, unwilling
+to join the guests and still more unwilling to be found alone in this
+deserted state. It was very hot. The open door of a little shed showed
+her a dim and cool interior; she peeped in and stepped back with an
+exclamation. Something had moved in there. It might be a rat or one of
+John’s ferocious terriers, but a voice said quietly, “It’s only me.”
+
+She stepped forward. “What are you doing in there?”
+
+“Getting cool,” Charles said. “I thought nobody would find me. Won’t
+you come in? It’s rather dirty in here, but it’s cool, and you can’t
+hear the band. I’ve been sitting on the handle of the wheelbarrow, so
+that’s clean, anyhow. I’ll wipe it with my handkerchief to make sure.”
+
+“But where are you going to sit?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know.”
+
+“There’s room on the other handle.”
+
+Henrietta sat with her knees between the shafts, and he sat on the
+other handle with his back to her.
+
+“We can’t stay here long,” she said.
+
+“No,” Charles agreed.
+
+The place smelt musty, but of heaven. It was draped with cobwebs like
+celestial clouds; it was dark, but gradually the forms of rakes, hoes,
+spades and a watering-pot cleared themselves from the gloom and
+Charles’s head bloomed above his coat like a great pale flower.
+
+She put out her hand and drew it back again. She found nothing to say.
+Outside the sun poured down its rays like fire. Henrietta’s head
+drooped under her big hat. She was content to stay here for ever if
+Charles would stay, too. Her body felt as though it were imponderable,
+she had no feet, she could not feel the hard handle of the wheelbarrow;
+she seemed to be floating blissfully, aware of nothing but that
+floating, yet a threat of laughter began to tickle her. It was absurd
+to sit like this, like strangers in an omnibus. The laughter rose to
+her throat and escaped: she floated no longer, but she was no less
+happy.
+
+“What’s the matter?” asked the voice of Charles.
+
+“So funny, sitting like this.”
+
+“What else can we do?”
+
+“You could turn round.”
+
+“There’s not room for all our knees.”
+
+She stood up with a little rustle and walked to the door. “No, it’s too
+hot out there,” she said, and returned to face him. “Charles,” she said
+in rather a high voice, “did you find your hat and stick that night?”
+
+“What? Oh, yes,” and then irrelevantly he added, “I’ve just been made a
+partner.”
+
+“Really?” She was always interested in practical things. “In Mr.
+Batty’s firm? How splendid! I didn’t know you were any good at
+business.”
+
+“I’ve been improving, and you don’t know anything about me.”
+
+“I do, Charles,” she said earnestly.
+
+“No, nothing. You haven’t time to think of anybody but yourself. And
+now I must go and look after all these people. You’d better come and
+have an ice.”
+
+There was ice at her heart and she realized now that her past
+unhappiness had been half false; she had been waiting for him all the
+time and trusting to his next sight of her to put things right, but she
+had failed with him, too.
+
+In that dim tool-house she had stood before him in her pretty dress,
+smiling down at him, surely irresistible, and he had resisted. Well,
+she could resist, too, and she walked calmly by his side, holding her
+head very high, and when he parted from her with a grave bow, she felt
+a great, an awed respect for him.
+
+She went to find her Aunt Sophia, who was still sitting under the tree,
+surrounded by a chattering group. She looked tired, and, signalling for
+Henrietta to approach, she said, “I’m afraid this is too much for me,
+dear child. Can you find Rose and ask her to take me home? But I don’t
+want to spoil your pleasure, Henrietta. There is no need for you to
+come.”
+
+Henrietta’s lip twisted with dramatic bitterness. There was no pleasure
+left for her. “I would rather go back with you, Aunt Sophia. Let us go
+now.”
+
+“No, no. Find Rose.”
+
+There was another buffet in the face. It was Rose who was wanted and
+Henrietta, walking swiftly, crossed the lawn again, casting quick
+glances right and left. Rose was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps, for their
+ways had an odd habit of following the same path, she was in the
+tool-house with Francis Sales, but as she turned to go there, the voice
+of Mrs. Batty, husky with exhaustion and heat, said in her ear, “Is it
+your Aunt Rose you are looking for, love? I think I saw her go into the
+house, and I wish I could go myself. It’s so hot that I really feel I
+may have a fit.”
+
+Henrietta went into the cool, shaded drawing-room on light feet, and
+there, against the window, she saw her Aunt Rose in an attitude
+startlingly unfamiliar. She was standing with her hands clasped before
+her, and she gazed down at them lost in thought—or prayer. Her body, so
+upright and strong, seemed limp and broken, and her face, which was
+calm, yet had the look of having composed itself after pain.
+
+There was no one else in the room, but Henrietta had the strong
+impression that someone had lately passed through the door. She was
+afraid to disturb that moment in which an escaped soul seemed to be
+fluttering back into its place, but Rose looked up and saw her and
+Henrietta, advancing softly as though towards a person who was dead,
+stopped within a foot of her. Then, without thought and obeying an
+uncontrollable impulse, she stepped forward and laid her cheek against
+her aunt’s. Rose’s hands dropped apart and, one arm encircling
+Henrietta’s waist, she held her close, but only for a minute. It was
+Henrietta who broke away, saying, “Aunt Sophia sent me to look for you.
+She doesn’t feel well.”
+
+
+§ 12
+
+Mrs. Batty was cured of giving parties. It was after her ball that Miss
+Caroline died, and it was after her garden-party that Miss Sophia
+finally collapsed. The heat, the emotion of her memories and the effort
+of disguising it had been too much for her. She died the following day
+and Mrs. Batty felt that the largest and most expensive wreath
+procurable could not approach the expression of her grief. It was no
+good talking to Mr. Batty about it; he would only say he had been
+against the ball and garden-party from the first, but Mrs. Batty found
+Charles unexpectedly soothing. He was certainly much improved of late,
+and when she heard that he was to go to Nelson Lodge on business
+connected with the estate, she burdened him with a number of incoherent
+messages for Rose.
+
+Perhaps he delivered them; he certainly stayed in the drawing-room for
+some time, and Henrietta, sitting sorrowfully in her bedroom, could
+hear his voice “rolling on monotonously. Then there was a laugh and
+Henrietta was indignant. Nobody ought to laugh with Aunt Sophia lying
+dead, and she did not know how to stay in her room while those two,
+Aunt Rose and her Charles, talked and laughed together. She thought of
+pretending not to know he was there and of entering the drawing-room in
+a careless manner, but she could not allow Aunt Rose to witness
+Charles’s indifference. All she could do was to steal on to the landing
+and lean over the banisters to watch him depart. She had the painful
+consolation of seeing the top of his head and of hearing him say, “The
+day after to-morrow?”
+
+Rose answered, “Yes, it’s most important.”
+
+Henrietta waited until the front door had closed behind him and then,
+seeing Rose at the foot of the stairs, she said, “What’s important,
+Aunt Rose?”
+
+“Oh, are you there, Henrietta? What a pity you didn’t come down. That
+was Charles Batty.”
+
+“I know. What’s important?”
+
+“There is a lot of complicated business to get through.”
+
+“You might let me help.”
+
+“I wish you would. When Charles comes again—his father isn’t very
+well—you had better be present.”
+
+“No, not with Charles,” Henrietta said firmly. “Does he understand
+wills and things?”
+
+“Perfectly, I think. He’s very clever and quite interesting.”
+
+“Oh!” Henrietta said.
+
+“I’m glad he’s coming again. And now, Henrietta,” she sighed, “we must
+get ready for the cousins.”
+
+The female relatives returned in dingy cabs. They had not yet laid
+aside their black and beads for Caroline, and, as though they thought
+Sophia had been unfairly cheated of new mourning, they had adorned
+themselves with a fresh black ribbon here and there, or a larger brooch
+of jet, and these additions gave to the older garments a rusty look, a
+sort of blush.
+
+Across these half-animated heaps of woe and dye, the glances of Rose
+and Henrietta met in an understanding pleasing to both. This mourning
+had a professional, almost a rapacious quality, and if these women had
+no hope of material pickings, they were getting all possible
+nourishment from emotional ones. Their eyes, very sharp, but veiled by
+seemly gloom, criticized the slim, upright figures of these young women
+who could wear black gracefully, sorrow with dignity, and who had, as
+they insisted, so much the look of sisters.
+
+The air seemed freer for their departure, but the house was very empty,
+and though Sophia had never made much noise the place was heavy with a
+final silence.
+
+“I don’t know why we’re here!” Henrietta cried passionately across the
+dinner-table when Susan had left the ladies to their dessert.
+
+“Why were we ever here?” Rose asked. “If one could answer that
+question—”
+
+They faced each other in their old places. The curved ends of the
+shining table were vacant, the Chippendale armchairs were pushed back
+against the wall, yet the ghosts of Caroline and Sophia, gaily dressed,
+with dangling earrings, the sparkle of jewels, the movements of their
+beringed fingers, seemed to be in the room.
+
+“But we shall never forget them,” Henrietta said. “They were persons.
+Aunt Rose, do you think you and I will go on as they did, until just
+one of us is left?”
+
+“We could never be like them.”
+
+“No, they were happy.”
+
+“You will be happy again, Henrietta. We shall get used to this
+silence.”
+
+“But I don’t think either of us is meant to be happy. No, we’re not
+like them. We’re tragic. But all the same, we might get really fond of
+one another, mightn’t we?”
+
+“I am fond of you.”
+
+“I don’t see how you can be”—Henrietta looked down at the fruit on her
+plate—“considering what has happened,” she almost whispered.
+
+Rose made no answer. The steady, pale flames of the candles stood up
+like golden fingers, the shadows behind the table seemed to listen.
+
+“But how fond are you?” Henrietta asked in a loud voice, and Rose,
+peeling her apple delicately, said vaguely, “I don’t know how you
+measure.”
+
+“By what you would do for a person.”
+
+“Ah, well, I think I have stood that test.”
+
+Henrietta leaned over the table, and a candle flame, as though startled
+by her gesture, gave a leap, and the shadows behind were stirred.
+
+“Yes,” Henrietta said, “I hated you for a long time, but now I don’t.
+You’ve been unhappy, too. And you were right about—that man. I didn’t
+love him. How could I? How could I? How could anybody? If you hadn’t
+come that day—”
+
+Rose closed her eyes for a moment and then said wearily, “It wouldn’t
+have made any difference. I never made any difference. You didn’t love
+him; but he never loved you either, child. You were quite safe.”
+
+Henrietta’s face flushed hotly. This might be true, but it was not for
+Aunt Rose to say it. Once more she leaned across the table and said
+clearly, “Then you’re still jealous.”
+
+Rose smiled. It seemed impossible to move her. “No, Henrietta. I left
+jealousy behind years ago. We won’t discuss this any further. It
+doesn’t bear discussion. It’s beyond it.”
+
+“I know it’s very unpleasant,” Henrietta said politely, “but if we are
+to go on living together, we ought to clear things up.”
+
+“We are not going on living together,” Rose said. She left the table
+and stood before the fire, one hand on the mantelshelf and one foot on
+the fender. The long, soft lines of her dark dress were merged into the
+shadows, and the white arm, the white face and neck seemed to be
+disembodied. Henrietta, struck dumb by that announcement, and feeling
+the situation wrested from the control of her young hands, stared at
+the slight figure which had typified beauty for her since she first saw
+it.
+
+“Then you don’t like me,” she faltered.
+
+Rose did not move, but she began to speak. “Henrietta, I have loved you
+very dearly, almost as if you were my daughter, but you didn’t seem to
+want my love. I couldn’t force it on you, but it has been here: it is
+still here. I think you have the power of making people love you, yet
+you do nothing for it except, perhaps, exist. One ought not to ask any
+more; I don’t ask it, but you ought to learn to give. You’ll find it’s
+the only thing worth doing. Taking—taking—one becomes atrophied. No, it
+isn’t that I don’t care for you, it isn’t that. I am going to be
+married.”
+
+Very carefully, Henrietta put her plate aside, and, supporting her face
+in her hands, she pressed her elbows into the table; she pressed hard
+until they hurt. So Aunt Rose was going to be married while Henrietta
+was deserved. “Not to Francis Sales?” she whispered.
+
+“Yes, to Francis Sales.”
+
+She had a wild moment of anger, succeeded by horror for Aunt Rose. Was
+she stupid? Was she insensible? And Henrietta said, “But you can’t,
+Aunt Rose, you can’t.” Her distress and a kind of envy gave her
+courage. “He isn’t good enough. He played with you and then with me and
+you said there was some one else.” The figure by the mantelpiece was so
+still that Henrietta became convinced of the potency of her own words,
+and she went on: “You know everything about him and you can’t marry
+him. How can you marry him?”
+
+A sound, like the faint and distant wailing of the wind, came out of
+the shadows into which Rose had retreated: “Ah, how?”
+
+“And you’re going to leave me—for him!”
+
+“Yes—for him.”
+
+“Aunt Rose, you would be happier with me.”
+
+Again there came that faint sound. “Perhaps.”
+
+“I’d try to be kinder to you. I don’t understand you.”
+
+“No, you don’t understand me. Do you understand yourself?” She left her
+place and put her hands on Henrietta’s shoulders. “Say no more,” she
+said with unmistakable authority. “Say no more, neither to me nor to
+anybody else. This is beyond you. And now come into the drawing-room.
+Don’t cry, Henrietta. I’m not going to be married for some time.”
+
+“I wish I’d known you loved me,” Henrietta sobbed.
+
+“I tried to show you.”
+
+“If I’d known, everything might have been different.”
+
+Rose laughed. “But we don’t want it to be different.”
+
+“You won’t be happy,” Henrietta wailed.
+
+“You, at least,” Rose said sternly, “have done nothing to make me so.”
+
+Henrietta stilled her sobbing. It was quite true. She had taken
+everything—Aunt Rose’s money, Aunt Rose’s love, her wonderful
+forbearance and the love of Charles.
+
+“I don’t know what to do,” she cried.
+
+“Come into the drawing-room and we’ll talk about it.”
+
+But they did not talk. Rose played the piano in the candlelight for a
+little while before she slipped out of the room. Henrietta sat on the
+little stool without even the fire to keep her company. She was too
+dazed to think. She did not understand why Aunt Rose should choose to
+marry Francis Sales and she gave it up, but loneliness stretched before
+her like a long, hard road.
+
+If only Charles would come! He always came when he was wanted. A memory
+reached her weary mind. This was “the day after to-morrow,” and Aunt
+Rose expected him. She leapt up and examined herself in the mirror. She
+was one of those lucky people who can cry and leave no trace; colour
+had sprung into her cheeks, but it faded quickly. She had waited for
+him before and he had not come, and she was tired of waiting. She sank
+into Aunt Caroline’s chair and shut her eyes; she almost slept. She was
+on the verge of dreams when the bell jangled harshly. She did not move.
+She sat in an agony of fear that this would not be Charles; but the
+door opened and he entered. Susan pronounced his name, and he stood on
+the threshold, thinking the room was empty.
+
+A very small voice pierced the stillness. “Charles, I’m here.”
+
+“I won’t come a step farther,” Charles said severely, “until you tell
+me if you love me.”
+
+“I thought you’d come to see Aunt Rose.”
+
+“Henrietta—”
+
+“Yes, I love you, I love you,” she said hurriedly. “I’m nodding my head
+hard. No, stay where you are, stay where you are. I’ve been loving you
+for weeks and you’ve treated me shamefully. No, no, I’ve got to be
+different, I’ve got to give. You didn’t treat me shamefully.”
+
+“No,” he said stolidly, “I didn’t. Here’s the ring, and I took that
+house. I’ve been renting it ever since I knew we were going to live in
+it. Here’s the ring.” He dropped it into her lap.
+
+She looked down at the stones, hard and bright like herself. “Aunt Rose
+will be very much surprised,” she said, and she was too happy to wonder
+why he laughed.
+
+Standing on the stair, Rose heard that laughter and went on very slowly
+to her room. She had, at least, done something for Henrietta. She had
+given Charles his chance, and now she was to go on doing things for
+Francis Sales. She owed him something: she owed him the romance of her
+youth, she owed him the care which was all she had left to give him.
+Things had come to her too late, her eyes were too wide open, yet
+perhaps it was better so. She had no illusions and she wanted to
+justify her early faith and Christabel’s sufferings and her own. There
+was nothing else to do. Besides, he needed her, and with him she would
+not be more unhappy; he would be happier, he said. She had to protect
+him against himself, yet even there she was frustrated, for he had, in
+a measure, found himself, and now that she was ready and able to serve
+him there would be less for her to do. But she had no choice: there was
+the old debt, there were the old chains, and as she faced the future
+she was stirred by hope. She could tell herself that something of her
+dead love had waked to life, yet when she tried to get back the old
+rapture, she knew it had gone for ever.
+
+She entered her room and did not turn on the light. There seemed to be
+a strange weight in her body, pressing her down, but, as she looked
+through her open window at the summer sky deepening to night and
+letting out the stars, which seemed to be much amused, there was a
+lightness in her mind and, smiling back at them, she was able to share
+their appreciation of the joke.
+
+
+
+
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