§ 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.”