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.
Book II: Henrietta
§ 1
After luncheon Henrietta went to her room to unpack the brown tin trunk which contained all her possessions, and as she ascended the stairs with her hand on the polished mahogany rail, she heard Sophia saying, “She’s a true Mallett. She has the Mallett ankle. Did you notice it, Caroline?” And Caroline answered harshly, “Yes, the Mallett ankle, but not the foot. Her foot is square, like a block of wood. What could you expect?” Then the drawing-room door was closed softly on this indiscretion.
Henrietta continued steadily up the stairs and across the landing to her father’s room, and before the long mirror on the wall she halted to survey her reflected feet. Aunt Caroline had but exaggerated the truth; they were square, but they were small, and she controlled her trembling lips.
She pushed back from her forehead the black, curling hair. She was tired; the luncheon had been a strain, and the carelessly loud words of Caroline reminded her that she was undergoing an examination which, veiled by courtesy, would be severe. Already they were blaming her mother for her feet; and all three of them, the blunt Caroline, the tender Sophia, the mysteriously silent Rose, were on the watch for the maternal traits.
Well, she was not ashamed of them. Her mother had been good, brave, honest, loving, patient, and her father had been none of these things; but no doubt these aunts of hers put manners before morals, as he had done; and she remembered how, when she was quite a little girl, and the witness of one of the unpleasant domestic scenes which happened often in those days, before Reginald Mallett’s wife had learnt forbearance, she had noticed her father’s face twitch as though in pain. Glad of a diversion, she had asked him with eager sympathy, “Is it toothache?” and he had answered acidly, “No, child, only the mutilation of our language.” She remembered the words, and later she understood their meaning and the flushing of her mother’s face, the compression of her lips, and she was indignant for her sake.
Yet she could feel for her father, in spite of the fact that whatever her accent or grammatical mistakes, her mother’s conduct was always right and her father, with his charming air, a little blurred by what he called misfortune, his clear speech to which Henrietta loved to listen, was fundamentally unsound. He could not be trusted. That was understood between the mother and daughter: it was one of the facts on which their existence rested, it entered into all their calculations, it was the text of all her mother’s little homilies. Henrietta must always pay her debts, she must tell the truth, she must do nothing of which she was ashamed, and so far Henrietta had succeeded in obeying these commands.