§ 6
John Gibbs, of Sales Hall, milkman and news carrier, shook his head over the cans that morning. Mrs. Sales was very bad. The master had fetched the doctor in the early morning. He had set out in the same car that brought him from the dance. Cook and Susan looked at each other with a compression of lips and a nodding of heads, implying that misfortune never came singly, but they did not tell John Gibbs of the illness in their own house. They had imbibed something of the Mallett reserve and they did not wish the family affairs to be blabbed at every house in Radstowe. But when the man had gone, Susan reminded Cook of her early disapproval of that ball. It would kill Miss Caroline, it would kill Mrs. Sales.
“She wasn’t there, poor thing,” Cook said.
“But he was, gallivanting. I dare say it upset her.”
Susan was right. Christabel Sales had fretted herself into one of her heart attacks; but the Malletts did not know this until later. At present they were concerned with Caroline, about whom the doctor was reassuring. She was very ill, but she had herself remarked that if they were expecting her to die they would be disappointed, and that was the spirit to help recovery.
A nurse was installed in the sick-room, Sophia fluttered a little less and Rose and Henrietta ignored their emotion of the early morning; they also avoided each other. They were both occupied with the same problem, though Henrietta’s thoughts had taken definite shape; above her dreaming, her practical mind was dealing with concrete details, and Rose was merely speculating on the future, and the more she speculated, the surer she became of the necessity to interfere. Her plan of carrying Henrietta to other lands was frustrated for the present by Caroline’s illness and she dared not allow things to drift. There was a smouldering defiance in Henrietta’s manner: she was absorbed yet wary; she seemed to have a grudge against the aunt who had missed nothing at the dance, who had seen her exits and entrances with Francis Sales and interrupted their farewell glance, the wave of Henrietta’s gloved hand towards the tall figure standing in the porch of the Assembly Rooms to see her depart.
There was a certain humour about the situation, and for Rose an impeding feeling of hypocrisy. Here she was, determined to put obstacles on the primrose path where she herself once had dallied. It looked like the envy of age for youth, it looked like inclining to virtue because the opposite was no longer possible for her, like tardy loyalty to Christabel; but she must not be hampered by appearances.
Her chief fear was of hardening Henrietta’s temper, and she came to the conclusion that she must appeal to Francis Sales himself. It was an unpleasant task and, she dimly felt, she hardly knew why, a dangerous one; and meeting Henrietta that day at meals or in the hushed quiet of the passages, she felt herself a traitor to the girl. After all, what right had she to interfere? She had no right, and her double excuse was her knowledge of Francis Sales’ character and her certainty that Henrietta was chiefly moved by her dramatic instinct. And again Rose wished that the hair of Charles Batty’s head were thicker and that he could supply the counter-attraction needed; but she might at least be able to use him; there was no one else.
That night, after an evening spent in soothing Sophia’s fears which had been roused by the unnatural gentleness of Caroline, and treating Henrietta to all the friendliness she would receive, Rose went out to post a letter to Francis Sales. She had asked him, with an irony she had no doubt he would miss, to meet her in the hollow where the gipsies had encamped and where so many of their interviews had taken place. It was within a few yards of that bank of primroses where he had asked her to marry him.
Caroline was better the next morning and it was easy for Rose to escape. She chose to ride. It was one of those mild January days which already promise the return of spring. Birds chirped in the leafless trees, the earth was damp and seemed to stir with the efforts of innumerable roots to produce a richer life, yet the leaves of autumn were still lying on the ground. How she loved this country, this blue air, this smell of fruit present even before the blossom was on the trees, the sight of wood smoke curling from the cottage chimneys, the very ruts in the road! A little while ago she had told herself she was sickened by it: it was the symbol of failure and young, tender, ruined hopes, but the love of it lay deeply in her heart; all this, the failure and the ruin, were of her life and it could be no more cast off than could the hands which had refused the kissing and clasping of Francis Sales.
This was her own country: the strange, unbridled, stealthy wildness of it was in her blood; it was in Henrietta through her father, it was in Francis, too, and due to it was this tragic muddle in which they found themselves. She had a faint, despairing feeling that she could not fight against it, that her mission would only be another failure, yet she counted on Francis’s easy tenderness of heart. The very weakness which persuaded him to an action could turn him from it, and it was to his tenderness she must appeal.
She reached the track and, raised high on her horse, she could see the fields with the rough grass and gorse bushes sloping to the channel; the pale strip of water like silver melted in the heart of the hills and falling slowly to the sea; the blue hills themselves like gates keeping a fair country. The place where the wood had been was like a brown and purple rug, but before long the pattern would be complicated by creeping green. Where the trees had murmured and whispered or stood silent, listening, there was now no sound, no secrecy; the place lay candidly under the wide sky, but, from a field out of sight, a sheep bleated disconsolately, with a sound of infinite, uncomprehending woe, and a steamer in the river sent out a distant hoot of answering derision.
The gipsies had departed; the ashes of their fire made a black patch on the ground and a few rags fluttered in the wind. There was no human being in sight and she rode down the slope to wait in the hollow. She was beginning to wonder if Francis had received her letter when, with a dreary sense of watching a familiar scene reacted, she saw him in the lane with Henrietta by his side. Here was an unexpected difficulty, and she could do nothing but ride towards them, raising her whip in greeting.
She said at once to Francis, “Did you get my letter?” She saw Henrietta’s face flush angrily, but she knew that the time had come for her to speak. “I asked you to meet me here.”
He was staring at her and his mouth moved mechanically. “No, I didn’t get it by the first post. Perhaps it’s there now.” With his eyes still fixed on her, he moved back a step.
“No.” Rose smiled. “Don’t go and get it. Fortunately you are here. I want to talk to you, Henrietta, please—” Her voice was gentle, she leaned forward in the saddle with a charming gesture of request, but Henrietta shook her head. She was antagonized by that charm which was holding Francis’s eyes. A loosened curl had fallen over her forehead, giving to the severity of her dress, copied from that portrait of her father, a dishevelling touch, as though a young lady were suddenly discovered to be a gipsy in an evil frame of mind.
“If it’s anything to do with me, I’m going to stay,” she said. “If it hasn’t, I’ll go.” She looked at Francis and added, between her teeth, “But it must have.” Those words and that look claimed him for her own.
Rose lifted her chin and looked over the two heads, the uncovered one of Francis Sales and Henrietta’s, with her hat a little askew, and, absurdly, Rose remembered that the child had washed her hair the night before: that was why the hat was crooked and the curl loose, making the scene undignified and funny above the pain of it. Rose spoke in a voice heightened by a tone. “It concerns you both,” she said.
“Ah, then, you needn’t say it, need she, Francis?”
“Francis,” she repeated the name with a grave humour, “this is not fair to Henrietta.”
“I know that,” he muttered, and Rose saw Henrietta shoot at him a thin look of scorn.
Henrietta said, “But I don’t care about that, and anyhow, we’re not going to do it any more. We’re tired of these meetings”—she faced him—“aren’t we? We had just made up our minds to have no more of them.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Rose, and she fancied that the hurried beating of her heart must be plain through the thick stuff of her coat.
Henrietta laughed, showing little teeth, and Rose thought, “Her teeth are too small. They spoil her.”
“No, you need not spy on us any more,” Henrietta said.
Francis made a movement of distaste. He said, as though the words cost him much labour, “Henrietta, don’t.”
But there seemed to be no limit to what Rose could bear. She stooped forward suddenly and put her cheek against the horse’s neck in an impulsive need to express affection, perhaps to get it.
“You think I don’t understand,” she said quietly, “but I do, too well.” She paused, and in her overpowering sense of helplessness, of distrust, she found herself making, without a quiver, the confession of her own foolishness.
“I don’t know whether Francis has told you that he and I were once in love with one another. At least that is what we called it.” Very pale, appearing to have grown thinner in that moment, she looked at the horse’s ears and spoke as though she and Henrietta were alone. “Until quite lately. Then he realized, we both realized, our mistake. But it seems that Francis must have somebody to—to meet, to kiss. Between me and you there has been some one else.” With a wave of her hand, she put aside that thought. “We used to meet here often. This place must be full of memories for him. For me, the whole countryside is scattered with little broken bits of love. It breaks so easily, or it may be only the counterfeit that breaks. Anyhow, it broke, it chipped. I thought you ought to know that.” She touched her horse with her heel and turned down the lane. She went slowly, sitting very straight, but she had the constant expectation of being shot in the back. She had to remind herself that Henrietta had no weapon but her eyes.
It was those eyes Francis Sales chiefly remembered when he had parted from Henrietta and turned homewards. There had been scorn in them, anger, grief, jealousy and expectation. If she had not been so small, if they had not been raised to his, if he could have looked levelly into them as he did into the clear grey eyes of Rose, things might have been different. But she was little and she had clung to him, looking up. She had told him she could never see her Aunt Rose again. How could she? Was he sure he did not love Rose still? Was he sure? He ought to be, for it was he who had made Henrietta love him. He had liked that tribute too much to contradict it, but Rose Mallett was right: whoever had been the promoter of this business, it was not fair to Henrietta, and the thought of Rose, so white and straight, was like wind after a sultry day. She was like a church, he thought; a dim church with tall pillars losing themselves in the loftiness of the roof; yes, that was what was the matter with her: she was cold, but there was no one like her, you could not forget her even in the warmth of Henrietta’s presence. One way and another, these Malletts tortured him.
He walked home, trying to find some way out of this maze of promises to Henrietta and of self-reproach, and his mental wanderings were interrupted by an unwelcome request from the nurse that he should go at once to Mrs. Sales. She seemed, the woman warned him, to be very much excited: would he please be careful? She must not have another heart attack.
As he entered the room, it seemed to him that he had been treading on egg-shells all his life, but a sudden pity swept him at the sight of his wife, very weak from the pain of the night before last, yet intensely, almost viciously alive. He wished he had not gone to the Battys’ ball; it had upset her and done him no good. If it had not been for that walk on the terrace—
He shut the door gently and stood by her. “Are you in pain?” he asked. He felt remorsefully that he did not know how to treat her; he had not love enough, yet with all his heart he wanted to be kind.
“You haven’t kissed me to-day,” she said. “No, don’t do it. You don’t want to, do you?”
“Yes, I do,” he said, and as he bent over her he was touched by the contented sigh she gave. If he could begin over again, he told himself, with the virtue of the man who has committed himself fatally, things would be different. If he hadn’t brought Henrietta to such a pass, they should be different now.
“I’ve never stopped being fond of you, Christabel.”
She laughed and disconcerted him. “Or of your horses, or your dogs,” she said. “No one could expect you to care much for a useless log like me. No one could have expected you not to go to that dance.” Tears filled her eyes. “But I was lonely. And I imagined you there—”
“I wish I hadn’t gone,” he said truthfully.
She seemed to consider that remark, but presently she asked, “Have you lost something?”
He had lost a great deal, for Rose despised him; that had been plain in the face which once had been so soft for him.
“I asked you,” Christabel said, “if you had lost something.”
“Yes—no, nothing.”
She let out a small piercing shriek. “You’re lying, lying! But why should I care? You’ve done that for years. And Rose has been so kind, hasn’t she, coming to see me every week? Take your letter, Francis. Yes, I’ve read it! I don’t care. I’m helpless. Take it!” From its hiding-place under the coverlet she drew the letter and threw it at him. It fluttered feebly to the ground. She had made a tremendous effort, trying to fling it in his face, and it had fallen as mildly as a snowflake. She began to sob. This was the climax of her suffering, that it should fall like that.
He picked it up and read it. It was no good trying to explain, for one explanation would only necessitate another. He was deeply in the mire, they were both, they were all in it, and he did not know how to get anybody out, but he had to stop that sobbing somehow. His pity for Christabel swelled into his biggest feeling. He crumpled the letter angrily and, at the sound, she held her breathing for a moment. Of course, she should have crumpled the letter and then she might have hit him with it.
“I wish to God I’d never seen her,” she heard him say with despairing anger. And then, more gently, “Don’t cry, Christabel. I can’t bear to hear you. The letter’s nothing. I shall never meet her again. I must take more care of you.” He took her hand and stroked it. He would never meet Rose again, but he had an appointment with Henrietta.
“You promise? But no, it doesn’t matter if you love her.”
“I don’t love her.”
“But you did.”
He passed his free hand across his forehead. No, he would not keep that appointment with Henrietta, or he would only keep it to tell her it was impossible. He could not go with this wailing in his ears and he knew that piteous sound was his salvation. It gave him the strength to appear weak. “Don’t cry. It’s all right, Christabel. Look, I’ll burn the confounded letter and I swear it’s the only one I’ve ever had from her. “It was to Rose, he admitted miserably, that he owed the possibility of telling that truth.
Her weeping became quieter. “Tell her,” she articulated, “I never want to see her again.”
“But,” he said petulantly, “haven’t I just told you I never want to meet her?”
“Then write—write—I don’t mind Henrietta.”
“No!” he almost shouted, “not Henrietta either!”
She turned to him a face ravaged with tears and misery. “Why not Henrietta?” she whispered.
“I hate the lot of them,” he muttered. “They’re all witches.”
She laughed joyously. “That’s what I’ve said myself!” She gave him both her thin, hot hands to hold. “But it’s worth while, all this, if you are going to be good to me.”
He kissed her then as the sinner kisses the saint who has wrought a miracle of salvation for him. “We’ve had bad luck,” he murmured. “You’ve had the worst of it.” He stroked her cheek. “Poor little thing.”