After Louie's wedding Henrietta went to stay with an aunt, her father's
eldest sister, almost a generation older than he was. She lived in a
little white house in the country, with a green verandah and French
windows. She was a kind, nice old lady, not well off, a humble
great-aunt to the whole village. Children continually came to eat her
mulberries; girls were found places; sick people were sent jelly, and
there was always a great deal of sewing and knitting for poor friends.
She did her best to make the visit pass cheerfully; she had some little
scheme of pleasure for each day, and so many people came and went that,
though not exciting, the life could not possibly be called dull.
Henrietta did not know whether Mrs. Symons had mentioned her trouble to
her aunt; she hoped not. Now that the first shock was over, she had
become sensitive on the subject, and did not wish to speak about it.
From a little speech her aunt made, it is possible that Mrs. Symons had
said something.
One day as they sat talking comfortably and confidentially over the
fire, the conversation turned on her aunt's past days. She had been left
motherless, the eldest of a large family, when she was nineteen or
twenty. It was evidently her duty to devote herself to the younger ones,
and when a man presented himself whom she loved and by whom she was
loved, she felt that she could not be spared from home.
Henrietta saw that she was bracing herself to say something. At last out
it came:
"You know, my dear, I think in spite of--I mean that there are many
things besides--though when one has hoped--still life can be very happy,
very peaceful, without. Why, there is this garden, and there are those
three darling little children next door."
Henrietta knew that this unanalysable sentence was meant to comfort her.
She felt grateful, but she was not comforted. Her aunt's life was the
sweetest and happiest possible for old age, but could she at twenty
settle down to devising treats for other people's children, or sewing
garments for the poor? It made her feel sick and dismal to think of it.
Besides, their circumstances were not similar. Her aunt, fortified by
the spirit of self-sacrifice, had resigned what she loved, but she had
the reward of being the most necessary member of her circle. Henrietta
had had no scope for self-sacrifice, for she had never had anything to
give up. In fact she envied her aunt, for she realized now that Mr.
Dockerell could never have cared for her. And far from being the most
necessary member of her family, her difficulty was to squeeze into a
place at all.
The visit came to an end. She went home, and regular life began again.
Since one ordinary young man had been attracted to her when she was
twenty, there seemed no reason why other ordinary men should not
continue to be attracted. As he had been in love with marrying rather
than with her, so she had been in love with being loved rather than with
him. She would have accepted almost any pleasant young man, provided he
had had the supreme merit of caring for her. But the inscrutable fate
which rules these matters, decreed that it was not to be. No other
suitor presented himself.
For one thing, she went to fewer parties now. After Louie's marriage,
Mrs. Symons, who had worked hard in the good cause of finding husbands,
began to flag. Henrietta was not so gratifying to take out as Louie had
been, particularly as her complexion went off early, and without her
complexion she had nothing to fall back on. So Mrs. Symons gave herself
up to the luxury of bad health, and said she could not stand late hours.
When Henrietta did go out, her experience made her feel that she was
unlikely to please; and though no one can define what produces
attractiveness, it is safe to say that one of the most necessary
elements is to believe oneself attractive.
Mr. Symons had not hitherto taken great interest in his daughters, but
when Minna and Louie were married, he became fonder of them. He was one
of those men whose good opinion of a woman is much strengthened if
confirmed by another man. His daughters' husbands had confirmed his
opinion in the most satisfactory way by marrying them, whereas his good
opinion of Henrietta, far from being confirmed, had been rather
weakened. Minna and Louie's virtues, husbands, and houses were often
extolled now, and there was nothing to extol in her. Henrietta felt this
continually. Her parents did not speak to her of her misfortunes; she
was left alone, which is perhaps what most girls would have liked best.
Not so Henrietta.
The three years after Louie's marriage were the most miserable of
Henrietta's life. If she did not go out to parties, what was she to do?
The housekeeping? The housekeeping, as in many cases, was not nearly
enough to provide her mother with occupation. It certainly could not be
divided into occupation for two. Nursing her mother? Her mother much
preferred that Ellen, on whom she had become very dependent, should do
what was necessary, and for companionship she had all she wanted in her
husband. He was away for several hours in the day however, and during
his absence Henrietta did drive out with her mother, read to her, and
sit with her, and as they were so much together and shared the small
events of the country town, they were to a certain extent drawn
together. But Mrs. Symons always treated Henrietta _de haut en bas_,
and snubbed her when she thought necessary, as if she had been a child
of ten, so that Henrietta was constrained and a little timid with her.
There was the suggestion of a feeling that Mrs. Symons was to be pitied
for having Henrietta still on her hands. If Henrietta had refused to be
snubbed, there would have been none of that suggestion. Evelyn was still
away at school. There were a certain number of girls of Henrietta's age
whom she saw from time to time, but as her mother did not wish to be
disturbed by entertaining, they were not asked to the house, and
therefore did not ask Henrietta to theirs. Besides, she was sensitive,
thinking, truly, that they were discussing her misfortune, and did not
want to see them.
In addition to the poignancy of disappointment, of present dulness and
aimlessness, Henrietta realized forcibly, though perhaps not forcibly
enough for the truth, that the years between eighteen and thirty were
her marrying years, which, slowly as they passed from the point of view
of her happiness, went only too fast, when she considered that once gone
they could never come back, and that as they fled, they took her chances
with them.
Fifty years ago the large majority of the girls of her class married
early, and the years of home life after school were arranged on the
supposition that they were a short period of preparation for marriage.
It did not matter to Minna and Louie that they had no interests to fill
their days, that their life had been nothing but parties and intervals
of waiting for parties, because it had only lasted four or five years.
It had done what it was intended to do, it had settled them very
comfortably with husbands. But with Henrietta, the condition which was
meant to be temporary, seemed spreading itself out to be permanent, and
with the parties taken away, she was hard put to it to fill up her days.
She longed inexpressibly for school, for its restrictions, its monotony
and variety. And to think that when she had the luck to be there, she
had counted the days to being a young lady. When she remembered how she
had almost wept at Miss Arundel's description of Joan of Arc, her mouth
watered for lessons. As for Miss Arundel herself, she hungered and
thirsted after her.
At last she had a happy thought; she decided that she would read
Italian, read Dante. Miss Arundel had taught her Italian, and she would
write to Miss Arundel, and ask her to recommend a good translation. She
remembered that Miss Arundel and Mrs. Marston had occasionally had
favourite old pupils to stay with them. She imagined how one letter
might lead to another, and how at last Miss Arundel might invite her to
stay too. She wrote her letter with great care and great delight,
constantly changing her words, for none seemed good enough for Miss
Arundel, and making a fair copy, as if it were an exercise to be sent up
for correction.
Miss Arundel received the letter, read it through, came to the
signature, and could not for the life of her remember who Henrietta
Symons was. So many girls had passed through her hands, and she lived in
the present rather than the past. A teacher was ill, she was very busy,
the letter slipped her memory. One evening it came into her head, and
she asked her sister, "By the by, who was Henrietta Symons?"
"I recollect the name perfectly," said Mrs. Marston. "Let me see; yes,
now I know. There were three of them, one was Minnie, I believe, and I
think Etta had a bad headache at the picnic. It was a blazing day that
year, the hottest I ever remember, and I had to come back early with
her."
"Of course; I remember now," said Miss Arundel. "A girl with very marked
eyebrows." And she wrote back a postcard, "Tr. of D.'s D. C. Carey, 2
vols., Ward and Linsell. M. Arundel."
The postcard made Henrietta inclined to back out of Dante. But by this
time she had arranged to read with a neighbour, Carrie Bostock, so she
had to make a start. They did start, but as they neither understood the
Italian, nor the translation, nor the notes, they found continual
excuses for not reading, till Carrie boldly suggested "I Promessi
Sposi," which went much better. They did not read for long, however, for
Carrie became engaged, it seemed to Henrietta that everybody she knew
was becoming engaged, and Carrie considered her engagement an occupation
which gave her no time for anything else, certainly no time for Italian.
Henrietta found she did not read by herself. The two years away from
school made it difficult to start. Perhaps it may seem strange that a
girl who had been so eager at school, should not care to work by herself
at home. But when there are no competitors and no Miss Arundel, work
loses much of its zest for everyone except the real student, who is
rarely to be found among men, still more rarely among women. And the
last thing Henrietta would ever be was unusual.
Clever, interesting schoolgirls are not at all uncommon, though not so
general as clever, interesting children. But there are few who remain
clever and interesting when they grow up. Uninspiring surroundings, and
contact with life, or mere accumulation of years, take something away.
Or perhaps it simply is that when they are grown up they are judged by a
more severe standard. Miss Arundel had been disappointed again and
again. But she would not have been surprised that Henrietta let
everything go, for she had always observed in her an unfortunate strain
of weakness.
Besides being weak, Henrietta was always affected by the people she was
with, and the atmosphere of home life was not encouraging to study.
"Reading Italian, my dear?" her mother would say. "Oh, can't you find
anything better to do than that? Surely there must be some mending;"
while her father advised her, through her mother, "not to become too
clever; it was a great pity for a girl to get too clever."
After all, there seemed no earthly reason why she should read Italian;
it gave no pleasure to herself or to anyone else. So she spent most of
the long leisure hours sitting by the window and thinking. She often
said to herself the verse of a poem then just published by Christina
Rossetti. She had seen it on a visit, copied it out, and learned it:
"Downstairs I laugh and sport and jest with all,
But in my solitary room above
I turn my face in silence to the wall:
My heart is breaking for a little love."
It did not quite apply to Henrietta, for she was not sporting and
jesting downstairs with anyone, but that verse was the greatest comfort
to her of those dreary years. The writer _must_ have been through it
all, she thought; she knows what it is. Not to be alone, to have
someone, though an unknown one, who could share it, lightened her
burden, when she was in a mood that it should be lightened.
She made up verses too, and wrote them in a pretty album she bought for
the purpose. They relieved her heart a little--at any rate it was a
distraction to think of the rhymes. She would have shown them to Carrie,
if she had had the slightest encouragement, but as Carrie gave no
encouragement, there was no one to see them.
"While Nature op'ed her lavish hand
And fairest flowers displayed,
'Twas his to taste of sunny joys,
'Twas mine to sit in shade.
"Oh, talk not to me of a lasting devotion!
It shrivels, it ceases, it fades and it dies.
In the heart of a man 'tis a fleeting emotion;
Alas, in a woman eternal it lies!"
A poet would have said that anyone capable of writing that was incapable
of feeling, but he would have been wrong.
Sometimes Henrietta used to have a phantom lover like the phantom friend
of her childhood, but now--had she more or less imagination as a
child?--she could not bear it. She imagined the phantom, and then she
wanted him so intensely that she had to forget him. The aspect of
certain days would be connected with some peculiarly mournful moments.
She wondered which was the most depressing, the dark setting in at four
o'clock and leaving her seven hours of drawing-room fancy work (for it
disturbed her mother if she went to bed before eleven), or the summer
sun that would not go down.
If only some kind stroke of misfortune had taken away all Mr. Symons'
money. Disagreeable poverty would have been a great comfort to her. She
would have been forced to make an effort; not to brood and concentrate
herself on her misery. But Mr. Symons, on the contrary, continued to get
richer, and throughout her fairly long, dull life, Henrietta was always
cursed with her tidy little income.
But interminable as the time seemed, it passed. It passed, so that
reading her old journal with the record of her happy month, she found
that it had all happened five years ago, and was beginning to be
forgotten. She felt as if it had not happened to her, but to some
ordinary girl who had ordinary prosperity. At the same time her lot did
not seem so bitter as it had done; she had become used to it. Though she
herself hardly realized it, and certainly could not have said when the
change had come, she was not now particularly unhappy. It was an
alleviation that her mother was more of an invalid, so that some of the
responsibilities of the household devolved on her, and her mother
leaned on her a little. She was certainly not the prop of the house, or
the lodestar to which they all turned for guidance, none of the
satisfactory things women are called in poetry, but she was not such an
odd-man-out as she had been.