§ 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.