The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing)

by E. H. Young

§ 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?”