§ 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.