“Perhaps,” Henrietta said, “but I’d rather be with you, and I can’t bear to think of the cooking going to pieces. I’ll send you some recipes for nice dishes.”
“Too many eggs,” Mrs. Banks said prophetically.
“I dare say, but you can manage if you think about it. And remember, if Miss Stubb has too much cold mutton, she’ll lose her job, and then you’ll lose her money. It will pay you to feed her. You haven’t had a debt since I began to help you.”
“I know, I know; but I’ll have them now, for certain. I’ve told you before that Banks took all my ideas with him when he dropped into the river,” Mrs. Banks said hopelessly, and on Henrietta’s journey to Radstowe it was of Mrs. Banks that she chiefly thought. It seemed as though she were deserting a friend.
She was surprised by the smallness of Nelson Lodge as she walked up the garden path; she had pictured something more imposing than this low white building, walled off from the wide street; but within she discovered an inconsistent spaciousness. The hall was panelled in white wood, the drawing-room, sparsely but beautifully furnished, was white too, and she immediately felt, as indeed she looked, thoroughly out of harmony with her surroundings. She waited there, in her cheap black clothes, like some little servant seeking a situation; but her welcome, when it came, after a rustling of silken skirts on the stairs, assured her that she was acknowledged as a member of the family. Sophia took her tenderly to her heart and murmured, “Oh, my dear, how like your father!” Caroline patted her cheek and said, “Yes, yes, Reginald’s daughter, so she is!” And a moment later, Rose entered, faintly smiling, extending a cool hand.
Henrietta’s acutely feminine eye saw immediately that her Aunt Rose was supremely well-dressed, and all her past ideas of grandeur, of plumed hats and feather boas and ornamental walking shoes, left her for ever. She knew, too, that clothes like these were very costly, beyond her dreams, but she decided, in a moment, to rearrange and subdue the black trimming of her hat.
On the other hand, the appearance of the elder aunts almost shocked her. At the first glance they seemed bedizened and indecent in their mixture of rouge and more than middle age; but at the second and the third they became attractive, oddly distinguished. She felt sure of them, of their sympathy, of her ability to please them. It was Aunt Rose who made her feel ill at ease, and it was Aunt Rose of whom she thought as she sat by her bedroom window and looked down at the back garden, bright with the flowers of spring.
Yet it was Aunt Caroline who had been unkind about her feet. They were like that, these grand people; they had beautiful manners but nothing superficial escaped them; they made no allowances, they went in for no deceptions, and though it was Caroline who had actually condemned the small, strong feet which now rested, slipperless, on the soft carpet, Henrietta was sure that Rose had seen them too. She had seen everything, though apparently she saw nothing, and Henrietta had to acknowledge her fear of Rose’s criticism. It was formidable, for it would be unflinching in its standards.
“Well,” Henrietta thought, “I can only be myself, and if I’m common— but I’m not really common—it’s better than pretending; and of course I am rather upset by the house and the servants and all the forks and spoons. I hope there won’t be anything funny to eat for dinner. I wish—” To her own amazement, she burst into a brief storm of tears. “I wish I had stayed with Mrs. Banks.”
She had her place in the boarding-house, she was a power there, and she missed already her subtle, unrecognized belief in her superiority over Mrs. Banks and Miss Stubb and Mr. Jenkins and the rest. She was also honestly troubled about the welfare of the landlady, who was her only friend. It was strange to sit in her father’s room and look at a portrait of him as a youth hanging on the wall, and remember that Mrs. Banks, who made him shudder, was her only friend.