§ 8
The place was dimly lighted. Two candles, like stars, twinkled on the distant altar; a few people sat in the darkness with an extraordinary effect of personal sorrow. This was not where happy people came to offer thanks; it was a refuge for the afflicted, a temporary harbour for the weary. They did not seem to pray; they sat relaxed, wrapped in the antique peace, the warm, musty smell of the building, sitting with the stillness of their desire to preserve this safety which was theirs only for a little while. Their dull clothes mixed with the shadows, the old oak, the worn stone, and the voice of the organ was like the voice of multitudes of sad souls. Very soon the music ceased with a kind of sob and the verger, with his skirts flapping round his feet, came to warn those isolated human creatures that they must face the world again.
They rose obediently, but Henrietta did not move, as though she alone of that company had not learnt the lesson of necessity. But the altar lights were now extinguished, the skirted verger was approaching her, and Charles forestalled him. He murmured, “Henrietta!”
She looked up without surprise. “What time is it?” she asked.
“Seven o’clock.”
She rose, picking up her bag.
“Let me have that,” he said.
“No, no,” she answered absently, and then, “Is it really seven?”
“Yes, there’s the clock striking now.” The sound of the seven notes whirred and then clanged above their heads. “We must go,” he said. “They’re locking up.” The air was cold and damp after the warmth of the church and Henrietta stood, shivering a little and looking round her.
“I’m hungry,” Charles Batty said. “Will you come and have dinner with me?”
“No,” she replied, “I shall stay here.”
“How long for?”
“I don’t know.” And sharply she turned on him and asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I come here sometimes. There are concerts.”
“You’ll be late, then, if you are going to dine.”
“I know, but I’m hungry. You can’t listen to music if you’re hungry. Let’s have dinner first.”
The square was deserted, the lights in the little shops, where old furniture and lace and jewels were sold, were all put out and the large policeman who had been standing at the corner had moved away.
“I don’t want anything to eat,” she said. She dropped the bag and covered her face with both her hands. She was going to cry, but he was not afraid; he was rather glad and, not without pleasure at his own daring, he removed a hand, tucked it under his arm, and said, “Come along.”
She struggled. “I can’t. I must go to London. If you want to help me you’ll find out about the trains. I can go to Mrs. Banks. I can’t go back to Radstowe.”
“Henrietta,” he said firmly, “come and have dinner and we’ll talk about it.”
“If you’ll promise to help me.”
“There’s nothing I want to do so much,” he said. “We mustn’t forget the bag.”
“Somewhere quiet, Charles,” she murmured.
“Somewhere good,” he emended.
She looked down, “Such old clothes.”
“It doesn’t matter what you wear,” he told her. “You always look different from anybody else.”
“Do I? And I am! I am! I’m much worse, and nobody,” she almost sobbed, “is so unhappy! Charles, will you wait here for a minute? I must just—just walk round the square.”
“You’ll come back?”
She nodded, and he kept the bag as hostage.
The large policeman had strolled back. He saw the tall young man standing over the bag and thought it would be well to keep an eye on him, but Charles did not notice the policeman. His whole attention was for Henrietta’s reappearance. She would come back because she had said she would, but if she did not come alone there would be trouble. He did not, however, expect to see Francis Sales: he gathered that Sales had failed her, and he was sorry. He would have beaten him, somehow; he would have conquered for the first time in his life, and now he felt that his task was going to be too easy. He wished he could have sweated and panted in the doing of it; and when Henrietta returned alone, walking with an angry swiftness, he felt a genuine regret.
“Come along, Charles,” she said briskly. “Let us have dinner.”
He could see the brightness of her eyes, looking past him; her lips had a fixed smile and he wished she would cry again. “She is crying inside,” he told himself. He moved forward beside her vaguely. The tenderness of his love for her was like a powerful, warm wave, sweeping over him and making him helpless for the time. He could do nothing against it, he had to be carried with it, but suddenly it receded, leaving him high and dry and unromantically in contact with a lamp-post. His hat had fallen off.
“What are you doing?” Henrietta asked irritably.
He rubbed his head. “Bumped it. I was thinking about you.”
“What were you thinking?” she asked defiantly.
“Oh, well—” he said.
She laughed. “Charles, you’re hopeless.”
“No, I’m not.” He stooped for his hat and picked it up. “Not,” he repeated strongly. “Here’s the place.” They had turned into a busy street. “I hope there won’t be a band.”
“I hope there will be. I want noises, hideous noises.”
“You’re going to get them,” he sighed as he pushed open the swing-door and received in his ears the fierce banging, braying and shrieking of various instruments played in a frenzy by a group of musicians confined, as if for the public safety, in a small gallery at the end of the room. Large and encumbered by the bag, he stood obstructing the waiters in the passage between the tables.
“They’re like wild beasts in a cage,” he said in the loud voice of his anger. “Can you stand it?”
“Oh, yes—yes. Let us sit here, in this corner.” He was ridiculous, she thought, yet to-night, unconscious of any absurdity himself, he had a dignity; he was not so ugly as she had thought; his somewhat protruding eyes had less vacancy, and though his tie was crooked, she was not ashamed of him. Nevertheless, she said as he sat down, “Charles, I’m going to London to-night. Get a time-table.”
“Soup first,” he said.
“I must go to-night. I can’t go back to Radstowe.”
“Did you,” he asked unexpectedly, “leave a note on your dressing-table?”
“What?” She frowned. “No, of course not.”
“Oh, well, you can go back. We’re going to a concert together. It’s quite easy. I told you you were different from everybody else.” And then, remembering Rose’s words, he leaned across the table towards her. “The most beautiful and the best,” he said severely.
“Me?”
“Yes. Here’s the soup.”
She drank it, looking at him between the spoonfuls. This was the man who had talked to her by the Monks’ Pool. Here was the same detachment he had shown then, and though the act of taking soup was not poetical, though the band blared and the place shone with many lights, she was taken back to that night among the trees, with the water lying darkly at her feet, keeping its own secrets; with the ducks quacking sleepily and unseen, and the water rats diving with a silken splash.
She seemed to be recovering something she had lost because she had disregarded it, something she wanted, not for use but for the sake of possessing and sometimes looking at it.
Sternly she tried not to think of Francis Sales, who had deserted her. She might have known he would desert her. He had looked at Aunt Rose and she had seen him weaken, yet he had promised. He was that kind of man: he could not say no to her face, but he left her in this city, all alone.
Her lips trembled; she steadied them with difficulty. She was determined not to honour him with so much as a memory or a regret, but there came forbidden recollections of the dance, of the terrace, and of her hands in his. She closed her eyes and a tremor, delicious, horrible, ran through her body. She felt the strength of those brown, muscular hands and she was assailed by the odour of wind and tobacco that clung to him. He had never said anything worth remembering, but there had been danger and excitement in his presence. There was neither in the neighbourhood of Charles, yet she could not forget his words.
She opened her eyes. “What was it you said just now?”
“You’re the best and most beautiful woman in the world. Your fish is getting cold.”
She ate it without appetite or distaste. “But, Charles—”
“I know.”
“What?”
“Everything,” he said.
“How?”
He tapped himself, “Here.”
“I expect you’ve got it all wrong.”
“Yesterday, perhaps, but not to-day. To-day I know everything.”
“How does it feel?”
“Wonderful,” he replied. They laughed together but, as though with that laughter the door to emotion had been opened, he saw tears start into her eyes. “No,” he begged, “there’s no need to cry.”
She laughed again. “I’ve got to cry some time.”
“When we’re going home, then. We’re going home in a car.”
“Are we?” she said, pleased as a child. “But what about London, Charles? I have to go.”
“Not to-night. Here’s some chicken.”
“I can’t go back.”
“But you haven’t left a note.”
“No.”
“Then it’s easy. You and I have just been to a concert. You promised me that long ago.”
She uttered no more protests. She ate and drank obediently, glad to be cared for, and when the meal was over she told him gratefully, “You have been good. You never said another word about the band and it has made even my head ache.”
“And I forgot about it!” He stared at her in amazement. “I forgot about it! I didn’t hear it! Good heavens! But come away quickly before I begin remembering.”
That they might be able to tell the truth, they went to the concert and, standing at the back of the hall stayed there for a little while. Even for Charles, the music was only a covering for his thoughts. Henrietta, strangely gentle, was beside him, but he dwelt less on that than on the greater marvel of the new power he felt within himself. She might laugh at him, she might mock him in the future, but she could not daunt him, and though she might never love him, he had done her service. No one could take that from him. He turned his head and looked down at her, to find her looking up at him, a little puzzled but entirely friendly.
“Oh, Henrietta!” he whispered loudly, transgressing his own law of silence and evoking an indignant hiss from an enthusiastic neighbour. He blushed with shame, then decided that to-night he could not really care, and signing to Henrietta to follow him, he tiptoed from the hall.
“Did you hear? Did you hear?” he asked her. “I spoke! I—at a concert! I’ve never done that in my life before. I’ll never do it again! But, then, it was the first time you’d ever looked at me like that, Henrietta! And, oh Lord, we’ve forgotten the bag. I dare not go back for it.”
“We’ll leave it, then,” she said indifferently. “I don’t want to see it again.”
“But I like it. It’s an old friend. I’ve watched it—” He checked himself. “I’ll go. Wait here.”
“Why aren’t we going home by train?” she asked, when he returned.
“The angry man didn’t see me,” he said triumphantly. “Oh, because— well, you wanted somewhere to cry, didn’t you?”
In the closed car she sat, for a time very straight, looking out of the window at the streets and the people, but when they had drawn away from the old city and left its grey stone houses behind and taken to the roads where slowly moving carts were creaking and snatches of talk from slow-tongued country people were heard and lost in the same moment, she sank back. The roads were dark. They were lined by tall, bare trees which seemed to challenge this swift passage and then decide to permit what they could not prevent, and for a mile or so the river gleamed darkly like an unsheathed sword in the night.
“We shall soon be there, shan’t we?” she asked, in a small voice.
“Yes, pretty soon.”
“I wish we wouldn’t. I wish we could go on like this for ever, to the edge of the world and then drop over and forget.”
He sighed. He could not arrange that for her but he told the man to drive more slowly. Against the dark upholstery of the car, her face was like a young moon, wan and too weary for its work. He slipped his arm under her back and drew her to him. Pulling off her hat, she found a place for her head against his shoulder and he shut his eyes. She breathed regularly and lightly, as though she were asleep, but presently she said, “Charles, I don’t mean anything by this, but you are the only friend I have. You won’t think I mean anything, will you?”
He shook his head and it came to rest on hers. He, too, wished they might go on like this for ever, to the world’s edge.
The car was stopped at a little distance from the house and Henrietta had to rouse herself from the state between waking and sleeping, thought and imagery, in which she had passed the journey. The jarring of the brake shocked her into a recognition of facts and the gentle humming of the engine reminded her that life had to go on as before. The persistent sound, regular, not loud, controlled, was like existence in Nelson Lodge; one wearied of it, yet one would weary more of accidents breaking the healthy beating of the engine: to-night had been one of the accidents and she was terribly tired. No wonder! She had been trying to run away with a man who did not want her, a man who had a lonely, miserable invalid for a wife, the old lover of Aunt Rose. A little blaze of anger flared up at the thought of Rose; nevertheless, she continued her self-accusations. She had been willing to leave her aunts without a word and they had been good to her and one of them was ill, and the very money in her pocket was not her own. She was shocked by her behaviour. She was like her father, who took what belonged to other people and used it badly.
She sat, flaccid, her hands loose on her lap. She felt incapable of movement, but Charles was speaking to her, telling her to get out and run home quickly. She looked at him. She was holding his friendly hand. What would she have done without him? She saw herself in the train, speeding through the lonely darkness; she saw herself knocking at Mrs. Banks’s door, felt herself clasped to the doubtful blackness of that bosom, and she shuddered.
“You must go,” Charles said, but he still held her hand.
He had brought her back to cleanliness and comfort, he had saved her from behaviour of gross ingratitude, he had been marvellously kind and wise.
“Charles,” she said, “it’s awful.”
“No, it’s all right. We’ve been to a concert.”
“Yes”—her voice sank—“I’ve kept that promise. But the whole thing— and Aunt Caroline so ill. She may have died.”
“There hasn’t been time,” he said.
“Oh, Charles, it only takes a minute.”
“Well, run home quickly. This bag’s a nuisance,” he said, but he looked at it tenderly. How he had dogged that bag! How heavy it had seemed for her! “Look here, I’ll take it home and get it to you to-morrow somehow.”
“I don’t want it. I hate it.”
He thought, “I’ll keep it, then,” and aloud he said, “I’ll wrap the things up in a parcel and let you have them. Nothing you don’t want me to see, is there?”
“No, nothing.”
“All right. Do get out, dear. No, I shall drive on.”
She lingered on the pavement. She had not said a word of thanks. She jumped on to the step and put her head through the window. “Thank you, kind Charles,” she said.
“Henrietta,” he began in a loud voice, filling the dark interior with sound, “Henrietta—”
“What is it?”
“No, no. Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“No. Not fair,” he said. “Just weakness. Good night. Be quick.”
She ran along the street and gave the front-door bell a gentle push. To her relief it was the housemaid and not Susan who opened to her. Susan would have looked at her severely, but the housemaid had a welcoming smile, an offer of food if Miss Henrietta had not dined.
Henrietta shook her head. She was going to bed at once. She did not want anything to eat. How was Miss Caroline?
“Not so well to-night, Miss Henrietta. The doctor’s been again and there’s a night-nurse come.”
Henrietta pressed her hands against her heart. Oh, good Charles, wonderful Charles! She did not know how to be grateful enough. She moved meekly, humbly through the hall and up the stairs. All was terribly, portentously still, but in her bedroom there were no signs of the trouble in the house. The fire was lighted, her evening gown had been laid out on the bed, her silk stockings and slippers were in their usual places. Nobody had suspected, nobody had been alarmed; she had stolen back by a miracle into her place.
Yes, Charles Batty was a miracle, there was no other word for him and, by contrast, the image of Francis Sales appeared mean, contemptible. Why had he failed her? His desertion was a blessing, but it was also a slight and perhaps a tribute to the power of Rose. Yes, that was it. She set her little teeth. He had stared at Aunt Rose as though he could not look at her enough, not with the starved expression she had first intercepted long ago, but with a look of wonder, almost of awe. She was nearly middle-aged, yet she could force that from him. Well, she was welcome to anything he could give her, his offerings were no compliment. Henrietta was done with him; she would not think of him again; she had been foolish, she had been wicked, but she was the richer and the wiser for her experience.
She had always been taught that sin brought suffering, yet here she was, warm and comfortable, in possession of a salutary lesson and with the good Charles for a secure friend. It was odd, unnatural, and this variation in her case gave her a pleasant feeling of being a special person for whom the operation of natural laws could be diverted. By the weakness of Francis Sales and the strength of Aunt Rose whom, nevertheless, she could never forgive, she was saved from much unhappiness, and if her mother knew everything in that heaven to which she had surely gone, she must now be weeping tears of thankfulness. Yet Henrietta’s future lay before her rather drearily. She stretched out her arms and legs; she yawned. What was she to do? Being good, as she meant to be, and realizing her sin, as indeed she did, was hardly occupation enough for all her energies.
Her immediate business was to answer a knock at the door. It was Rose who entered. Her natural pallor was overlaid by the whiteness of distress. “Oh, Henrietta, I am glad you have come in.”
“I’ve been to a concert with Charles Batty,” Henrietta said quickly.
Rose showed no interest or surprise. “Caroline is so much worse.” Henrietta felt a pang at her forgetfulness. “She is very ill. I was afraid you might not be back in time. She has been asking for you.”
“I’ve been to Wellsborough, to a concert,” Henrietta insisted. “Is she as bad as that, Aunt Rose? But she’ll get better, won’t she?”
“Come with me and say good night to her. “Rose took Henrietta’s hand. “How warm you are,” she said, in wonder that anything could be less cold than Caroline soon would be.
Henrietta’s fingers tightened round the living hand. “She’s not going to die, is she?”
“Yes, she’s dying,” Rose said quietly.
“Oh, but she can’t,” Henrietta protested. “She doesn’t want to. She’ll hate it so.” It was impossible to imagine Aunt Caroline without her parties, without her clothes, she would find it intolerably dull to be dead. “Perhaps she will get better.”
Rose said nothing. They crossed the landing and entered the dim room. Caroline lay in the middle of the big bed: with her hair lank and uncurled she was hardly recognizable and strangely ugly. Her body seemed to have dwindled, but her features were strong and harsh, and Henrietta said to herself, “This is the real Aunt Caroline, not what I thought, not what I thought. I’ve never seen her before.” She wondered how she had ever dared to joke with her: she had been a funny, vain old woman without much sensibility, immune from much that others suffered, and now she was a mere human creature, breathing with difficulty and in pain.
Henrietta stood by the bed, saying and doing nothing: Rose had slipped away; the nurse was quietly busy at a table and Aunt Sophia was kneeling before a high-backed chair with her elbows on the cushioned seat, her face in her hands. She was praying; it was as bad as that. Her back, the sash-encircled waist, the thick hair, looked like those of a young girl. She was praying. Henrietta looked again at Aunt Caroline’s grey face and saw that the eyes had opened, the lips were smiling a little. “Good child,” she said, with immense difficulty, as though she had been seeking those words for a long time and had at last fitted them to her thought.
Sophia stirred, dropped her hands and looked round: the nurse came forward with a little crackle of starched clothes. “Say good night to her and go.”
Henrietta leaned over the empty space of bed and kissed Caroline on the temple. “Good night, dear Aunt Caroline,” she said softly.
There was no answer. The eyes were closed again and the harsh breathing went on cruelly, like waves falling back from a pebbled shore, and Henrietta felt the dampness of death on her lips. No, Aunt Caroline would not get better.
She died in the early morning while Henrietta slept. Susan, entering as usual with Henrietta’s tea, did not say a word. She knew her place; it was not for her to give the news to a member of the family; moreover, she blamed Henrietta for Miss Caroline’s death. It was the Battys’ ball that had killed Miss Caroline, and Susan stuck to her belief that if it had not been for Miss Henrietta, there would not have been a ball.
Sleepily, Henrietta watched Susan draw the blinds, but something in the woman’s slow, languid movements startled her into wakefulness. Her dreams dropped back into their place. She had been sleeping warmly, forgetfully, while death hovered over the house, looking for a way in. She sat up in bed. “Aunt Caroline?”
Susan began to cry, but in spite of her tears and her distress she ejaculated dutifully, “Miss Henrietta, your dressing-gown, your slippers!” but Henrietta had rushed forth and bounded into Rose’s room.
“You might have told me! You might have waked me!”
Rose was writing at her desk. She turned. “Put on your dressing-gown, Henrietta. You will get cold. I came into your room but you were fast asleep, and in that minute it was all over. The big things happen so quickly.”
Yes, that was true. Quickly one fell in and out of love, ran away from home, returned and slept and waked to find that people had quickly died. The big things happened quickly, but the little ones of every day went on slow feet, as though they were tired of themselves.
“It was somehow a comfort,” Rose went on, “to know that you were fast asleep, but living. You never moved when I kissed you.”
“Kissed me? What did you do that for?” Henrietta asked in a loud voice. She had been taken unawares by the woman who had wronged her, yet she was touched and pleased.
“I couldn’t help it. I was so glad to have you there, and you looked so young. I don’t know what we should do without you, poor Sophia and I. Oh, do put on my dressing-gown!”
“Yes, dear, yes, put on the dressing-gown.” It was Sophia who spoke. Her face was very calm; she actually looked younger, as though the greatness of her sorrow had removed all other signs, like a fall of snow hiding the scars of a hillside.
“Oh, Aunt Sophia!” Henrietta went forward and pressed her cheek against the other’s.
“Yes, dear, but you must go and dress. Breakfast is ready.”
Henrietta was a little shocked that Aunt Sophia, who was naturally sentimental, should be less emotional on this occasion than Aunt Rose, but she was also awed by this control. She remembered how, when her own mother died, Mrs. Banks had refused to take solid food for a whole day, and the recollection braced her for her cold bath, for fresh linen, for emulation of Aunt Sophia, for everything unlike the slovenly weeping of Mrs. Banks, sitting in the neglected kitchen with a grimy pocket-handkerchief on her lap and the teapot at her elbow; but she knew that the Banksian manner was really natural to her, and the Mallett control, the acceptance, the same eating of breakfast, were a pose, a falseness oddly better than her sincerity.
At table no one referred to Caroline; they were practical and composed and afterwards, when Sophia and Rose were closeted together, making arrangements, writing letters to relatives of whom Henrietta had never heard, interviewing Mr. Batty and a husky personage in black, Henrietta stole upstairs past Caroline’s death chamber and into her own room.
She was glad to find the pretty housemaid there, tidying the hearth and dusting the furniture. She wanted to talk to somebody and the pretty housemaid was sympathetic and discreet. She told Henrietta, inevitably, of deaths in her own family, and Henrietta was interested to hear how the housemaid’s grandmother had died, actually while she was saying her prayers.
“And you couldn’t have a better end than that, could you, Miss Henrietta?”
“I suppose not,” Henrietta said, “but it might depend on what you were praying for.”
“Oh, she would be saying the usual things, Miss Henrietta, just daily bread and forgive our trespasses. There was no harm in my grandmother. It was her husband who broke his neck picking apples. His own apples,” she said hastily, “And now poor Mrs. Sales has gone.”
“Mrs. Sales?”
“Yes, Miss Henrietta, I thought you’d know—last night. Her and Miss Caroline together.” She implied that in this journey they would be company for each other.
Henrietta found nothing to say, but above the shock of pity she felt for the woman she had disliked and the awe induced by the name of death, she was conscious of a load lifted from her mind: she had not been deserted, her charm had not failed; it was the approach of death that had held him back. She put the thought away lest it should lead to others of which she would be ashamed, yet she felt a malicious pleasure, lasting only for a second, at remembering that downstairs sat Aunt Rose calmly full of affairs, Aunt Rose for whom the love of Francis Sales had ceased too soon! And, suppressed but fermenting, was the idea that in these late events, including the failure of her escape, there was the kind hand of fate.
At that very moment Charles Batty chose to call.
“With a parcel, Miss Henrietta, and he would like to see you.”
“I can’t see him,” Henrietta said. “Tell him—tell him about Miss Caroline.” She had already drifted away from Charles. He had been so near last night, so almost dear in the troubled fog of her distress, but this morning she had drifted and between them there was a shining space of water sparkling hardly. But she spared him an instant of gratitude and softness. His part in her life was like that, to a sailor, of some lightship eagerly looked for in the darkness, of strangely diminished consequence in the clear day, still there, safely anchored, but with half its significance gone.
“I can’t see him,” she repeated.
She wanted, suddenly, to see Aunt Rose. Voices no longer came from the drawing-room. Mr. Batty, genuinely sad in the loss of an old friend, had gone; the undertaker had tiptoed off to his gloomy lair, and Henrietta went downstairs, but when she saw her aunt she dared not ask her if she knew about Christabel Sales. Rose had a look of invulnerability; perhaps she knew, but it was impossible to ask, and if she knew, it had made no difference. It seemed as though she had gone beyond the reach of feeling: she and Sophia both wore white masks, but Sophia’s was only a few hours old and Rose’s had been gradually assumed. It was not only Caroline’s death which had given her that strange, calm face: the expression had grown slowly, as though something had been a long time dying, yet she hardly had a look of loss. She seemed to be in possession of something, but Henrietta could not understand what it was and she was vaguely afraid.
It was Aunt Sophia who, in spite of her amazing courage, had an air of desolation. And there was no rouge on her cheeks: its absence made Henrietta want to cry. She did cry at intervals throughout that day and the ones that followed. It was terrible without Aunt Caroline and pitiful to see Aunt Sophia keeping up her dignity among black-clothed, black-beaded relatives who seemed to appear out of the ground like snails after rain and who might have been part of the undertaker’s permanent stock-in-trade. Henrietta hated the mournful looks of these ancient cousins, the shaking of their black beads, their sibilant whisperings, and in their presence she was dry-eyed and rather rude. Aunt Caroline would have laughed at them and their dowdy clothes that smelt of camphor, but it seemed as though no one would ever laugh again in Nelson Lodge.
And over the river, in the unsubdued country, where death was only the repayment of a loan, there was another house with lowered blinds and voices hushed. She was irritated by the thought of it, of the consolatory letters Francis would receive, of the emotions he would display, or conceal, but at the same time she was sorry that in death, as in life, Christabel should be lonely. Her large and lively family was far away, even the cat had gone, and there were only the nurse and Francis and the little dog to miss her. In a sense Henrietta missed her too, and that fair region of fields and woods which had been as though blocked by that helpless body now lay open, vast, full of possibilities, inviting exploration; and when Henrietta looked at her Aunt Rose, it was with the jealous eye of a rival adventurer. But that was absurd: there could be no rivalry between them. Henrietta was sure of that and she tried to avoid these speculations.
And meanwhile necessary things were done and Christabel Sales and Caroline Mallett were buried on the same day. The beaded relatives departed, not to reappear until the next death in the family, and Rose and Henrietta, both perhaps thinking of Francis Sales returning to his big empty house, returned with Sophia to a Nelson Lodge oppressive in its desolation. It seemed now that the whole business of life there, the servants, the fires, the delicate meals, had proceeded solely for Caroline’s benefit; yet everything continued as before: the machinery went on running smoothly; the dinner-table still reflected in its rich surface the lights of candles, the sheen of silver, the pallor of flowers. Nothing was neglected, everything was beautiful and exact, and Susan had carefully arranged the chairs so that the vacant space should not be emphasized.
The three black-robed women slipped into their seats without a word. The soup was very hot, according to Caroline’s instructions, but the cook, inspired more by the desire to give pleasant nutriment than by tact, had chosen to make the creamy variety which was Caroline’s favourite and, as each Mallett took up her spoon, she had a vision of Caroline tasting the soup with the thoughtfulness of a connoisseur and proclaiming it perfect to the last grain of salt.
“I can’t eat it,” Sophia said faintly. In this almost comic realization of her loss she showed the first sign of weakness. She rose, trembling visibly, and Susan, anxious for the preservation of the decencies, opened the door and closed it on her faltering figure before the first sob shook her body. The others, without exchanging a single glance, proceeded with the meal, eating little, each eager for solitude and each finding it unbearable to picture Sophia up there in the bedroom alone.
“But she doesn’t want us,” Rose said.
“She might want me,” Henrietta replied provocatively, and for answer Rose’s smile flickered disconcertingly across the candle-light, and her voice, a little worn, said quietly, “Then go and see.”
The bedroom had a dreadful neatness; it smelt of disinfectant, furniture polish and soap, and Sophia, from the big armchair, said mournfully, “They might have left it as it was. It feels like lodgings.” And as the very feebleness of her outcry smote her sense and waked echoes of all she left unsaid, her mouth fell shapeless, and she cried, “She’s gone!” in a tone of astonishment and horror.
Henrietta, sitting on a little stool before the fire, listened to the weeping which was too violent for Sophia’s strength, and the harsh sound reminded her of Aunt Caroline’s difficult breathing. It seemed as though the noise would go on for ever: she counted each separate sob, and when they had gradually lessened and died away the relief was like the ceasing of physical pain.
“Aunt Sophia,” Henrietta said, “everybody has to die.”
Sophia heard. Tears glistened on her cheeks, her hair was disordered, she looked like a large flaxen doll that had been left out in the rain for a long time. “But each person only once,” she whispered. “One doesn’t get used to it, and Caroline—” She struggled to sit up. “Caroline would be ashamed of me for this.”
“She might pretend to be, but she’d like it really.”
“I don’t know,” Sophia murmured. “She had such character. You never believed her, did you, Henrietta, when she made out she had been—had been indiscreet?”
“No, I never believed it.”
“I’m glad of that. It was a fancy of hers. I encouraged her in it, I’m afraid; but it made her happy, it pleased her and it did no harm. I suppose nobody believed her, but she didn’t know. I don’t think I’ll sit here doing nothing, Henrietta. I suppose I ought to go through her papers. She never destroyed a letter. I might begin on them.”
“Oh, do you think you’d better? Don’t you like just to sit here and talk to me?”
“No, no, I must not give way. I’m not the only one. There’s poor Francis Sales. If he’d married Rose—I always planned that he should marry Rose—and of course, we ought not to think of such things so soon, but the thought has come to me that they may marry after all.”
Henrietta tightened the clasp of the hands on her knee and said, “Why do you think that?”
“It would be suitable,” Sophia said.
“But she’s so old. Haven’t you noticed how old she has looked lately?”
“Old? Rose old?” Sophia’s manner became almost haughty. “Rose has nothing to do with age. My only doubt is whether Francis Sales is worthy of her. Dear Caroline used to say she ought to—to marry a king.”
“And she hasn’t married anybody,” Henrietta remarked bitingly.
“Nobody,” Sophia said serenely. “The Malletts don’t marry,” she sighed; “but I hope you will, Henrietta.”
“No,” Henrietta said sharply. “I shan’t. I don’t want to. Men are hateful.”
“No, dear child, not all of them. Perhaps none of them. When I was eighteen—” She hesitated. “I must get on with her papers.” She stood up and moved towards the bureau. “They’re here. We shared the drawers. We shared everything.” She stretched out her hands and they fell heavily, taking the weight of her body with them, against the shining slope of wood.
Henrietta, who had been gazing moodily at the fire, was astonished to hear the thud, to see her Aunt Sophia leaning drunkenly over the desk. Sophia’s lips were blue, her eyes were glazed, and Henrietta thought, “She’s dying, too. Shall I let her die?” but at the same moment she leapt up and lowered her aunt into a chair.
“It’s my heart,” Sophia said after a few minutes, and Henrietta understood why poor Aunt Sophia always went upstairs so slowly. “Don’t tell anybody. No one knows. I ought not to have cried like that. There’s a little bottle—” She told Henrietta to fetch it from a secret place. “I never let Caroline know. It would have worried her, and, after all, she was the first to go. I’m glad to think I saved her that anxiety. You remember how she teased me about getting tired? Well, it didn’t matter and she liked to think she was so young. Wherever she is now, I do hope she isn’t feeling angry with herself. She thought illness was so vulgar.”
“But not death,” Henrietta said.
“No, not death,” and Henrietta fancied her aunt lingered lovingly on the word. “This must be a secret between us.” She lay back exhausted. “I only had two secrets from Caroline. This about my heart was one. Henrietta, in that little drawer, at the very back, you’ll find a photograph wrapped in tissue-paper. Find it for me, dear child. Thank you.” She held it tenderly between her palms. “This was the other. It’s the picture of my lover, Henrietta. Yes, I wanted you to know that some one once loved me very dearly.”
“Oh, Aunt Sophia, we all love you. I love you dearly now.”
“Yes, dear, yes, I know; I’m grateful, but I wanted somebody to know that I had had my romance, and have it still—all these years. But I was loved, Henrietta, till he died, and I was very young then, younger than you are now. Yes, I wanted somebody to know that poor Sophia had a real lover once. He went away to America to make a fortune for me, but he died. I have been wondering, since Caroline went, if she and he have met. If so, perhaps she knows, perhaps she blames me, but I don’t think she will laugh—not now. I hope she laughs still, but not at that. And now, Henrietta, we’ll put the photograph into the fire.”
“Ah, no, Aunt Sophia, keep it still!”
“Dear child, I may die at any moment, and I have his dear face by heart. I shouldn’t like any other eyes to look at it, not even yours. Stir the fire, Henrietta. Now help me up. No, dear, I would rather do it myself.”
She knelt, her faded face lighted by the flames which consumed her greatest treasure, her back still girlish, her slim waist girdled with a black ribbon, her thick knot of hair resting on her neck.
Henrietta went quietly out of the room, but on the landing she wrung her hands together. She felt herself surrounded by death, decay, lost love, sad memories. She was too young for this house. She had a longing to escape into sunshine, gaiety and pleasure. It was Caroline who had laughed and planned, it was she who had made the place a home. Rose was too remote, Sophia was living in the past, and Henrietta felt herself alone. Even her father’s portrait looked down at her with eyes too much like her own, and out there, beyond the high-walled garden, the roofs and the river, there was only Francis Sales and he was not a friend. He was, perhaps, a lover; he was a sensation, an accident; but he was not a companion or a refuge.
And the thought of Charles rose up, at that moment, like the thought of a fireside. She wished he would come now and sit with her, asking for nothing, but assuring her of service. That was what he was for, she decided. You could not love Charles, but you could trust him for ever, and the more trust he was given, the more he grew to it. She needed him: she must not lose him. Deep in her heart she supposed she was going to marry Francis Sales, yes, in spite of what Aunt Sophia said, and it was a prospect towards which she tiptoed, holding her breath, not daring to look; but she, like Rose, had no illusions. She was the daughter of her mother’s union with her father, and she was prepared for trouble, for the need of Charles. Besides, she liked him: he was companionable even when he scolded. One forgot about him, but he returned; he was there. She went to bed in that comfortable assurance.