§ 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.