§ 5
And she knew she could be silent for ever. Restraint and a love of danger lived together in her nature and these two qualities were fed by the position in which she found herself, nor would she have had the position changed. It supplied her with the emotion she had wanted. She had the privilege of feeling deeply and dangerously and yet of preserving her pride.
There was irony in the fact that Christabel, hinting at suspicions for which, in Rose’s mind, there was at first no cause, had at last actually brought about what she feared, and if Rose had looked for justification, she might have found it there. But she did not look for it any more than Reginald would have done; she was like him there, but where she differed was in loyalty to an idea. She saw love as something noble and inspiring, worthy of sacrifice and, more concretely, she was determined not to increase the disaster which had befallen Christabel. Sooner or later, in normal conditions, her marriage must have been recognized as a failure, but in these abnormal ones it had to be sustained as a success, and it seemed to Rose that civilized beings could love, and live in the knowledge of their love, without injuring some one already cruelly unfortunate.
But, as the months went by, she found she had to reckon with two difficult people, or rather with two people, ordinary in themselves, cast by fate into a difficult situation. There was Christabel, with her countless idle hours in which to formulate theories, to lay traps, to realize that the devotion of Francis became less obvious; and there was Francis, breaking the spirit of their contract with his looks, and sometimes the letter, with his complaints and pleadings.
He could not go on like this for ever, he said. He saw her once a week for a few minutes, if he was lucky: how could she expect him to be satisfied with that? It was little enough, she owned, but more than it might have been. She could never make him admit, perhaps because he did not feel, how greatly they were blessed; but she saw herself as the guardian of a temple: she stood in the doorway forbidding him to enter less the place should be defiled, yet forbidding him in such a way that he should not love her less. Yet constantly saying “No,” constantly shaking the head and smiling propitiatingly the while is not to appease; and those short hours of companionship in which they had once managed to be happy became times of strain, of disappointment, of barely kept control.
“I wish I could stop loving you,” he broke out one day, “but I can’t. You’re the kind one doesn’t forget. I thought I’d done it once, for a few months, but you came back—you, came back.”
She smiled, seeming aloof and full of some wisdom unknown to him. She knew he could not do without her, still more she knew he must not do without her, and these certainties became the main fabric of her love. She had to keep him, less for her own sake than for that of her idea, but gradually the severe rules she had made became relaxed.
They were not to meet except on that one day a week demanded by Christabel, who also had to keep Francis happy and who would have welcomed the powers of darkness to relieve the monotony of her own life; but Rose could hardly take a ride without meeting Francis, also riding; or he would appear, on foot, out of a wood, out of a side road, and waylay her. He seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of her presence, and they would have a few minutes of conversation, or of a silence which was no longer beautiful, but terrible with effort, with possibilities and with dread.
She ought, she knew, to have kept to her own side of the bridge, to have ridden on the high Downs inviting to a rider, but she loved the farther country where the air was blue and soft, where little orchards broke oddly into great fields, where brooks ran across the lanes and pink-washed cottages were fronted by little gardens full of homely flowers and clothes drying on the bushes. There was a smell of fruit and wood fires and damp earth; there was a veil of magic over the whole landscape and, far off, the shining line of the channel seemed to be washing the feet of the blue hills. The country had the charm of home with the allurement of the unknown and, within sound of the steamers hooting in the river, almost within sight of the city lying, red-roofed and smoky with factories, round the docks and mounting in terraces to the heights of Upper Radstowe, there was an expectation of mystery, of secrets kept for countless centuries by the earth which was rich and fecund and alive. She could not deny herself the sight of this country. It had become dearer to her since her awakened feelings had brought with them the complexities of new thoughts. It soothed her though it solved nothing. It did not wish to solve anything. It lay before her with its fields, its woods, its patches of heathy land, its bones of grey limestone showing where the flesh of the red earth had fallen away, its dips and hollows, its steep lanes, like the wide eye of a being too full of understanding to attempt elucidations; it would not explain; it knew but it would not impart the knowledge which must be gained through the experience of years, of storms, of sunshine, of calamity and joy.
And sometimes the presence of Francis with his personal claims and his complaints was an intrusion, almost an anachronism. He was of his own time, and the end of that was almost within sight, while the earth, immensely old, had a youth of its own, something which Francis would never have again. But perhaps, because he was essentially simple, he would have fitted in well enough if he had been less ready to voice his grievances and ruffle the calm which she so carefully preserved, which he called coldness and for which he reproached her often.
“I have no peace,” he grumbled.
“You would get it if you would accept things as they are. You have to, in the end, so why not now?”
She longed to give peace to him, but her tenderness was sane and she found a strange pleasure in the pain of knowing him to be irritable and childish. It made of her love a better thing, without the hope of any reward but the continuance of service.
“It’s easier for you,” he said, and she answered, “Is it?” in the way that angered him and yet held him, and she thought, without bitterness, that he had never suffered anything without physical or mental tears. “Yes, you have peace at home, but I go back to misery.”
“It’s her misery.”
“That doesn’t make it any better,” he retorted justly.
“I know.” She touched his sleeve and, feeling his arm stiffen, removed her hand.
“And I feel a brute because I can’t care enough. If it were you now—”
Almost imperceptibly Rose shook her head. She had no illusions, but she said, “Then why not pretend it’s me. Tell her all you do. Ask her advice—you needn’t take it.”
“And it’s all a lie,” he growled.
She said serenely, “It has to be, but there are good lies.”
She wished, with an intensity she rarely allowed herself, that he would be quiet and controlled. Though half her occupation would be gone, she would feel for him a respect which would rebound on her and make her admirable to herself, but she knew that life cannot be too lavish of its gifts or death would always have the victory. This was not what she had looked for, but it was good enough; she was necessary to him and always would be; she was sure of that, yet she constantly repeated it; moreover, she loved his bigness and his physical strength and the way the lines round his eyes wrinkled when he smiled; she knew how to make him smile and now and then they had happy interludes when they talked about crops and horses, profit and loss, the buying and selling of stock, and felt their friendship for each other like a mantle shared.
At the worst, she consoled herself, after a time of strain, it was like riding a restive horse. There was danger which she loved: there was need of skill and a light hand, of sympathy and tact, and she never regretted the superman who was to have ruled her with a fatiguing rod of iron. Here there was give and take; she had to let him have his head and pull him up at the right moment and reward docility with kindness; she even found a kind of pleasure, streaked with disgust, in dealing with Christabel’s suspicions, half expressed, but present like shadowy people in her room.
Of these she never spoke to Francis, but she had a malicious affection for them; they had, as it were, done her a good turn, and though they hid like secret enemies in the corners, she recognized them as allies. And they looked so much worse than they were. She imagined them showing very ugly faces to Christabel, who could only judge them by their looks, and though it was cruel that she should be frightened by them, it was impossible to drive them away. Rose could only sit calmly in their presence and try to create an atmosphere of safety. She knew she ought to feel hypocritical in this attendance on her lover’s wife, but it was not of her choosing. She did not like Christabel, she would have been glad never to see her again and, terrible as her situation was, it appealed to Rose less then it would have done if she had not herself come of people whose tradition was one of stoicism in trouble, of pride which refused to reveal its distress. Physically, Christabel had those qualities, but mentally she lacked them; it was chiefly to Rose that she betrayed herself, and at each farewell she exacted the promise of another visit soon. Was she fascinated by the sight of the woman Francis loved? And when had that love been discovered? And was she sure of it even now? She certainly had her sole excitement in her search for evidence.
In that bedroom, gaily decorated for a bride, she lay heroically bearing pain, lacking the devotion she should have had, finding her reward in the memory of her husband’s appreciation of her courage, and her occupation, perhaps her pleasure, in a refinement of self-torture.
As soon as Rose entered the room she was aware of the scrutiny of those wary eyes, very wide open, as blue as flowers, and she knew that her own face was like a mask. The little dog wagged his tail, the cat made no sign, the nurse, after a cheerful greeting, went out of the room and Rose took her accustomed place beside the window. It had a view of the garden, the avenue of elms in which the rooks cawed continuously, the hedge separating the fields from the high-road where two-wheeled carts, laden with farm produce, jogged into Radstowe, driven by an old man or a stout woman, and returned some hours later with the day’s shopping—kitchen utensils inadequately wrapped up and glistening in the sunshine, a flimsy parcel of drapery, a box of groceries. The old man smoked his pipe, the stout woman shook the reins on the pony’s back; the pony, regardless, went at his own pace. Heavy farm carts creaked past, motor-cars whizzed by, the Sales Hall dairy cows were driven in for milking, and then for a whole half hour there might be nothing on the road. The country slept in the sunshine or patiently endured the rain.
For a member of a large and lively family this prospect, seen from a permanent couch, was not exhilarating, but Christabel did not complain: she took advantage of every incident and made the most of it, but she never expressed a desire for more. She had, for so frail and shattered a body, an amazing capacity for endurance, as though she were upheld by some spiritual force. It might have been religion or love, or the desire to perpetuate Francis’s admiration, but Rose believed, and hated herself for believing, that it was partly antagonism and a feverish curiosity. She had been cheated of her youth and strength, and here, with a beautiful, impassive face, was the woman who might have saved her, a woman with a body strongly slim in her dark habit, and firm white hands skilled in managing a horse. She had read the grey mare’s mind, and now Christabel, delicately blue and pink and white, in a wrapper of silk and lace, her hands fidgeting each other as they had fidgeted the mare’s mouth, thought she was reading the mind of Rose. She stared at her, fascinated but not afraid. There were things she must find out.
She asked one day, and it was nearly two years since the accident, “Did they kill the mare?” And Rose, aware that Christabel had known all the time, answered, “Yes, at once. Her leg was broken.”
“What a pity!”
Waiting for what would come next, Rose smiled and looked out of the window at the swaying elm tops.
“Such a useful animal!” Christabel said.
“Very dangerous,” Rose remarked, slipping deliberately into the trap.
“That’s what I mean. But not quite dangerous enough. Poor Francis! He didn’t know. He doesn’t know now, does he? But of course not.”
Rose had a great horror of a debt and she owed something to Christabel, but now she felt she had paid it off, with interest. She breathed deeply, without a sound. Her tone was light.
“He knows all that is good for him.”
“You mean that is good for you.”
Rose stood up, pulled on her washleather gloves, sat down again. The hands on the silk coverlet were shaking.
“You are making yourself ill,” Rose said. She was tempted to take those poor fluttering hands into her own and steady them, but her flesh shrank from the contact. She was tempted, too, to tell Christabel the truth, but pride forbade her, and in a moment the impulse was gone, and with its departure came the belief that the truth would be annihilating. It would rob her of her glorious uncertainty, she would be destroyed by the knowledge that Rose had seen her fear, seen and tried to strengthen the slender hold she had on her husband’s love. It was better to play the part of the wicked woman, the murderess, the stealer of hearts: and perhaps she was wicked; she had not thought of that before; the Malletts did not criticize their actions or analyse their minds and she had no intention of breaking their habits. She stood up again and said:
“Shall I call the nurse?”
“You’re not going yet? You’ve only been here a few minutes.”
“Long enough,” Rose said cheerfully.
Tears came into Christabel’s eyes. “And Francis is out. If he doesn’t see you he’ll be angry, he’ll ask me why.”
“You can tell him.”
“But,” the tone changed, “perhaps you’ll see him on your way home.”
“Yes, and then I can tell him instead.”
The tears overflowed, she was helplessly angry, she sobbed.
“Be quiet,” Rose said sternly. “I shall tell him nothing. You know that. You are quite safe, whatever you choose to say to me. Perfectly safe.”
“I know. I can’t help it. I lie here and think. What would you do in my place?”
“The same thing, I suppose,” Rose said.
“And you won’t go?”
“Yes, I’m going. You can tell Francis I was obliged to get home early.”
“But you’ll come again?”
“Oh, yes, I’ll come again.”
“You don’t want to.”
“No, I don’t want to.”
“But you’re always riding over here, aren’t you?”
“Nearly every day.”
“Oh, then—” The words lingered meaningly until Rose reached the door and then Christabel said, “I wish you’d ask your sisters to come and see me. They would tell me all the news.”
Rose went downstairs laughing at Christabel’s capacity for mingling tragedy with the commonplace and sordid accusations with social desires, but though she laughed she was strangely tired and, stretching before her, she saw more weariness, more struggling, more effort without result.
She stood in the masculine, matted hall, with the usual worn pair of slippers in the corner, a stick lying across a chair, a collection of coats and hats on the pegs, and she felt she would be glad if she were never to see all this again, and for the first time she thought seriously of desertion. She wished she could go to some unfamiliar country where the people would all have new faces, where the language would be strange, the sights different, the smells unlike those which were wafted through the open door. She wanted a fresh body and a new world, but she knew that she would not get them, for leaving Francis would be like leaving a child. So she told herself, but at the back of her mind was the certainty that if she went he would soon attach himself to another’s strength—or weakness: yes, to another’s weakness, and she found she could not contemplate that event, less because she clung to him than because her pride could not tolerate a substitution which would be an admission of her likeness to other women. Yet in that very lack of toleration her pride was lowered, and if she was not clinging to him for her own sake, she was holding on to her place, her uniqueness, refusing the possibility that another woman could serve him, as she had served him with pain, with suffering. She was like a queen who does not love her throne supremely but will not abdicate, who would rather fail in her appointed place than see another succeed in it.
For a minute Rose Mallett sat down on the edge of the chair already occupied by the stick and she pressed both hands against her forehead, driving back her thoughts. Thinking was dangerous and a folly: it was a concession to circumstances, and she would concede nothing. She stood up, looked round for a mirror, remembered there was not one in the hall, and with little, meticulous touches to her hat, her hair and the white stock round her neck, she left the house.
She returned to a drawing-room occupied by Caroline and Sophia, yet strangely silent. There was not a sound but what came from the birds in the garden. Caroline’s spectacles were on her nose and, though she was not reading the letter on her knee, she had forgotten to take them off, an ominous sign. Sophia’s face was flushed with agitation, her head drooped more than usual, but she lifted it with a sigh of relief at Rose’s entrance.
“We’re in such trouble, dear,” she said.
“Trouble! Nonsense! No trouble at all! Look here, Rose, that woman has died now.” She shook the letter threateningly. “Read this! Reginald’s wife! I suppose she was his wife. I dare say he had dozens.”
“Caroline!” Sophia remonstrated.
Rose took the letter and read what Mrs. Reginald Mallett, believing herself about to die, had written in her big, sprawling hand. The letter was only to be posted after her death and she made no apology for asking the Malletts to see that her daughter had the chance of earning her living suitably. “She is a good girl,” she wrote, “but when I am gone her only friend will be the landlady of this house and there are young men about the place who are not the right kind. I am telling my dear girl that I wish her to accept any offer of help she gets from you, and she will do what I ask.”
“So, you see,” Caroline said as Rose looked up, “we’re not done with Reginald yet, and what I propose is that we send Susan for the girl to-morrow.”
“Yes, to-morrow,” Sophia echoed.
“Shall I go?” Rose asked. Sophia murmured gratitude, Caroline snorted doubt, and Rose added, “No, I think not. She wouldn’t like it. Susan would be better—but not to-morrow. You must write to the child— what’s her name? Henrietta—”
“Yes, Henrietta, after our grandmother—the idea! I don’t know how Reginald dared.”
“Is she a sacred character?” Rose asked dryly. “Write to her, Caroline, and say Susan will come on the day that suits her best. You can’t drag her away without warning. Let’s treat her courteously, please.”
“Oh, Rose, dear, I think we are always courteous,” Sophia protested.
Caroline merely said, “Bah!” and added, “And what are we going to do with her when we get her? She’ll giggle, she’ll have a dreadful accent, Sophia will blush for her. I shan’t. I never blush for anybody, even myself, but I shall be bored. That’s worse, and if you think I’m going to edit my stories for her benefit, Sophia, you’re mistaken. I never managed to do that, even for the General, and I’m too old to begin.” She removed her spectacles hastily. “Too old for that, anyhow.”
Rose smiled. She thought that probably the child of Reginald Mallett, living from hand to mouth in boarding houses, the sharer of his sinking fortunes, the witness of his passions and despairs and infidelities, would find Caroline’s stories innocent enough. Her hope was that Henrietta would not try to cap them, but the chances were that she would be a terrible young person, that she would find herself adrift in the respectability of Radstowe where she was unlikely to meet those young men, not of the right kind, to whom she was accustomed.
“She must have her father’s room,” Sophia said. She was trying to conceal her excitement. “We must put some flowers there. I think I’ll just go upstairs and see if there’s any little improvement we could make.”
They all went upstairs and stood in that room devoted to the memory of the scapegrace, but they made no alterations, Sophia expressing the belief that Henrietta would prefer it as it was; and Caroline, as she wiped away two slow tears, saying that Reginald was a wretch and she could not see why they should put themselves to any trouble for his daughter.