The household changed now; two new elements were introduced: William
came from London to be a partner in his father's firm, and lived at
home, and Harold, who had been employed by an engineer in the North,
found work in the neighbourhood and came back too. So that Henrietta's
life became at once much fuller of interest and importance than it had
been for years. As the only lady of the house, she was bound to be
considered, to make decisions, to have much authority in her own hands,
and at twenty-seven she greatly appreciated authority. If she was not to
have love, she would at any rate have position, and the servants found
her an exacting mistress. Mrs. Symons, though she had given over certain
duties to Henrietta, had kept herself head of the house to the time of
her death. She had a way with servants: they always liked her, and
stayed with her; but latterly she had let things slide, and when
Henrietta took her place she found much to criticize. Most of the
servants left, but some stayed, and agreed with Ellen that it was "just
Miss Henrietta's way; she was funny sometimes." However, they got used
to her, and things jogged along pretty quietly.
When Ellen left to be married, and there was no one in the kitchen to
make allowances for her, she had much more difficulty, and Mr. Symons
was occasionally disturbed in his comfortable library by an indignant
apparition, which declared amid gulps that it had "no wish whatever to
make complaints, but really Miss Henrietta----!"
Mr. Symons thought this very hard. "Can't you manage to make them
decently contented? We never used to have this sort of thing," he would
say. Henrietta would defend herself by counter-charges, and on the whole
felt the incident was creditable to her, as showing that she was a
power, and a rather dreaded power, in the house.
The men thought also that they were under a needlessly harsh yoke.
Henrietta grumbled when they were late for meals, or creased the
chintzes, or let the dog in with muddy paws. From a combination of
kindness, weakness, and letting things slide, they made no complaints.
Mr. Symons always remembered and felt sorry for the episode which
Henrietta herself had almost forgotten, and he was determined to make up
to her by letting her be as unpleasant as she liked at home.
If only they had spoken strongly while there was yet time. They did not
realize, it is difficult for those in the same house to realize, where
things were tending. Henrietta's temper became less violent; there are
fewer occasions for losing a temper when one is grown up, but she took
to nagging like a duck to water.
But if they made no complaints, the men left her to herself. Mr. Symons
spent many hours at his club, and her brothers entertained their friends
in the smoking-room. She was vaguely disappointed; she had an idea,
gleaned from novels and magazines, that as the home daughter to a
widowed father, the home sister to two brothers, she would be consulted,
leant on, confided in. Mr. Symons missed his wife at every turn, but he
never felt Henrietta could take her place. Her nagging shut up his heart
against her. He thought it silly, rather unfairly, perhaps, for she
inherited the habit from her mother, and he had never thought _her_
nagging silly.
As to William and Harold, they had come to the ages of thirty-five and
twenty-six without any wish for confidence, and why should they wish to
confide in Henrietta? She was not wise and she was not sympathetic. The
mere fact that they lived in the same house with her caused no automatic
opening of the heart. Well on in middle life, William became engaged,
and suddenly poured out everything to his love, but for the present he
and Harold were content to go through life never saying anything about
themselves to anybody. In fact, they hardly ever thought of Henrietta.
She would have been astonished if she had known what an infinitesimal
difference she made in their lives.
As mistress of the house, Henrietta was promoted to the circle of the
married ladies, and the happiest hours of her life were spent in visits
she and they interchanged, when they talked about servants,
arrangements, prices, and health.
They were not intimate friends. Perhaps the women of fifty years ago did
not have the faculty of staunch and close friend-making possessed by
our generation. And now Henrietta did not very much want to make
friends. She would have thought intimacy a little schoolgirlish, a
little beneath a middle-aged lady's dignity.
Her parents had been a very ordinary couple in a country town. They and
the society they frequented were uncultivated, and uninterested in
everything that was going on in the world outside. The men, of course,
were occupied with their professions, and almost all the ladies had
large growing families, which gave full scope for their energies.
Henrietta had not their duties, and was better off than the majority of
them, but she did not find time hang heavy on her hands. Long ere this
she had learnt the art of getting through the day with the minimum of
employment. Now, of course, her various duties gave her a certain amount
to do, but not enough to occupy her mind profitably. She often said, "I
am so busy I really haven't a moment to spare," and quite sincerely
declined the charge of a district, because she had no time. If any
visitors were coming to stay, she spoke of the preparations and the work
they entailed, as if all was performed by her single pair of hands.
"What with Louie and Edward coming to-morrow, and Harold going to the
Tyrol on Wednesday, I cannot think how I shall manage, but I suppose,"
with a resigned smile, "I shall get through somehow." She was persuaded
into visiting a small hospital once a fortnight for an hour, and the day
and hour were much dreaded by her entourage, so vastly did they loom on
the horizon, and so submissively must every other event wait on their
convenience.
Minna and Louie often came on visits with their children. The three
sisters got on much better than formerly, though Minna and Louie were
both too much absorbed in their own interests to give Henrietta a large
place in their thoughts. Minna's husband failed early in health, before
he had had time to fulfil his promising early prospects, while Louie's
Colonel, when he retired from the army, occupied his leisure in
speculation, and greatly diminished that attractive fortune of his. All
three sisters had a certain amount of money left to them by their
mother, but in spite of this Minna and Louie were now both,
comparatively speaking, poor, while Henrietta, with no one dependent on
her, and a large allowance from her father, was comfortably off. Louie
and Minna quite gave up talking of "poor Henrietta," and "Really
Henrietta has done very well for herself," was a remark frequently
exchanged.
Henrietta had always been generous, and her sisters soon came to expect
as a right that she should rescue them in times of domestic need: pay
for a nephew's schooling, send a delicate niece to the sea, and give
very substantial presents at birthdays and Christmas. Their point of
view seemed to be that if anyone had been so lucky as to keep out of the
bothers of marriage, the least she could do was to help her unfortunate
sisters. Still, they disliked being beholden to Henrietta, and, half
intentionally, set their children against her to relieve their feelings.
The children were not bad children, but Henrietta found their visits
burdensome. She was becoming a little set and unwilling to be disturbed,
and she said the children were spoilt. Minna and Louie had determined
they would not be the strict parents of the elder generation, whereas
Henrietta, who remembered all the snubbing of her youth, wanted to have
her turn of giving snubs, and this did not make her popular. She never
grew very fond of these children, but kept her affection for something
else.
For it is not to be supposed that a heart with such peculiar longing for
love was to be satisfied with a life in which feeling played so little
part. She had put aside the desire for a lover now. She was not one of
the women whom nothing will satisfy but marriage; on the whole she did
not care very much for men. She wanted what she had always wanted,
something to love and something to love her. And she had good reason to
hope that at last that wish might be realized, for it was agreed between
her and Evelyn that if there were any children, she was to bring them up
while Evelyn was abroad. Round this hope she built many happy schemes.
Henrietta had seen very little of Evelyn all this time--the regiment
went from one foreign station to another--but very affectionate letters
passed between the two.
For some years no children were born. Then came a little girl. "She is
to be called Etta," said Evelyn's letter, "and you know she is your baby
as well as ours. Do you remember what you did for me in old days? I
think of how you will do the same for baby, and I could not bear for
anyone else to do it but you." The baby died in the first year. Then
came a little boy, who lived an even shorter time; then another little
girl. The parents and Henrietta hardly dared to hope this time. But the
perilous first year passed, then, although she was always very delicate,
a second, third, and fourth. Then, when the plans were maturing for her
coming home, she died too. It seems sometimes as if Death cannot leave a
certain family alone, but comes back to it again and again.
"Evelyn is broken-hearted," her husband wrote, "and if she stays in this
horrible India I believe I shall lose her too. I am going to exchange if
I can to a home regiment, or I shall leave the army. I do not care what
we do as long as I get her away. In the midst of it all she keeps
thinking of how you will feel it. I believe a good cry with you is the
one thing that might comfort her."
Henrietta took this letter to her father, and implored him to let her go
out to India at once. But this Mr. Symons, though kind and sympathetic
and truly sorry for Evelyn, could not bring himself to allow. He was
getting to the age when he shrank from violent upheavals. Herbert said
they were leaving India. By the time she arrived they would probably be
gone, and then what a wild goose chase it would be. Then, of course, she
could not go alone, and who was to go with her? Her brothers could not
spare the time, and he did not feel up to going, and she must have a man
with her. Edward? No, certainly not. Since his speculations, Edward was
in bad odour. No, it would be much better to write a kind letter--he
would write too--and drop this really foolish scheme, which would, among
other things, be very costly, more costly than he felt prepared to face
just then.
She said she would go alone.
"Then you would go entirely without my sanction. It is a perfectly
impossible thing for a young lady to contemplate. You have never even
been on the Continent, and you think of travelling to India unattended."
She had never acted in opposition to her parents, though she had often
been domineering to her father in small matters, when he had not
resisted. She was always weak, she could only fight when the other side
would not fight back. She said, "Oh, father, I must go," and when he
said, "Nonsense, I couldn't think of it," she collapsed, partly from
cowardice, partly from duty, though her father was not in the least
strong-willed either, and with a little serious resistance would have
been made to yield. She felt bitterly the reproach in Evelyn's letter,
"If only you could have come."
She did not feel as wildly wretched as fifteen years ago, because now in
middle age what she passed through at the moment was not of the same
desperate importance; but then she had a small corner of hope hidden
away that perhaps something might happen, whereas now she realized
clearly that the prospect which had given her her chief interest and
delight was destroyed for ever.
The trouble told on her, she caught a chill, which developed into
pneumonia. She was dangerously ill for some weeks, and when she was
better, she was long in getting up her strength, because she had no wish
to get well.
Minna and Louie thought it odd that Henrietta should "fret so much about
Evelyn's children whom she had never seen. She has always seemed to make
so much more fuss over them than over her own nephews and nieces in
England. Of course, it was natural that dear Evelyn herself should be
distracted, but for Henrietta it almost seemed a little exaggerated."
When she was well enough to travel, the doctor recommended the South of
France for the winter, and she went away with a married friend, the
Carrie Bostock of the Italian readings.
It was all very pleasant and entertaining to Henrietta, who had never
been abroad, never even away from her own family. In the Riviera she
could to a certain extent drown thought, but she counted the days with
consternation, as each one in its flight brought her nearer to taking up
life again at home.
One afternoon she received a letter from her father.
"MY DEAR HENRIETTA," it ran,
"I do not know if you will be surprised to hear that I am engaged to be
married to Mrs. Waters. We have not known one another very long, but I
must say I very soon felt that she would be one who could take your dear
mother's place. I think it is very possible that you may have observed
whither matters were tending. I feel certain that we shall all be very
happy together, and I hope you will write her a warm letter of welcome
to our family. She will, I am sure, be both mother and sister to you,
etc."
The news was staggering to Henrietta. She had been so engrossed in her
own trouble that she had observed nothing of what was going on around
her. Mrs. Waters, a widow, who had lately settled in the neighbourhood,
had been several times to their house and had entertained them at hers,
but that she should be anything more than a friendly acquaintance had
never entered Henrietta's head. She was to be ousted, her mother was to
be ousted, and she was to give a warm welcome to the interloper. Her
forgotten temper burst forth. She wrote a violent letter to her father,
hurling at him all the ridiculous exaggerated things that most people
feel at the beginning of a rage, but which few are so mad as to commit
to paper. She refused altogether to write to Mrs. Waters.
She also relieved herself by contradicting everything Carrie said, thus
giving her a good excuse for those long talks to a third party, which
frequently take place when friends have been abroad together, beginning,
"I really had no idea she _could_."
After she had written the letter, as usual she was very much ashamed.
She wrote again unsaying all she had said, but her father had been too
much wounded to reply.
She came back just a little before the wedding to see him in quite a new
light--a lover, for he at sixty-five and Mrs. Waters at forty-seven had
fallen in love.
When Henrietta saw more of her stepmother to be, she had in honesty to
own that she liked her. She was not only very attractive, but she was so
thoroughly nice and kind, so intent on making people happy, so entirely
without airs of patronage, and Henrietta could see how everybody warmed
under her smile.
Henrietta had settled that she would not live at home after the
marriage. Neither she nor her father could forget the letter, it was
better that they should part. She had again asked his forgiveness, but
neither felt at ease with the other.
She stayed for a few weeks after Mr. and Mrs. Symons came back from the
honeymoon, and saw almost with consternation, how the spirit of the
house changed. It became peaceful, cordial, harmonious; it would not
have been known for the same house. The whole household liked Mrs.
Symons; even her own dog deserted Henrietta. It was not that she was
ousted from her place, it was that Mrs. Symons created a place, which
never had been hers. She had had no idea in all these twelve years how
little she had made herself liked. She had had her chance, her one great
chance, in life, and she had missed it.
When she went away, there were kind good wishes for her prosperity,
interest in her plans, many hopes that she would visit them, but no
regret; with a clearness and honesty of sight she unfortunately
possessed she realized that--no regret.
What was the use of twelve years in which she had sincerely tried to do
her best, if she had not built up some little memorial of affection? It
was the old complaint of all her life, "I am not wanted." The anguish
she had shared with Evelyn and her husband had been much sharper, but in
the midst of it there had been consolation in the exquisite union they
had felt with the children and with one another. Here there was nothing
to cheer her; there is not much consolation when one fails where it
seems quite easy for others to succeed.
Now that it became evident that she would be so little missed, she was
in haste to get the parting over and be gone. But her unadventurous
spirit shrank from going out in the world to manage by itself. She was
very doubtful what she should do. She would not have been welcomed by
Minna or Louie, even if she had wished to live with them. Her second
brother was in some inaccessible foreign place. Evelyn and Herbert were
also far out of reach. He had exchanged into a regiment which was
quartered at Halifax, in Canada.
But the distance, however great, might have been faced, if she had
not had a miserable quarrel with Herbert. It began with some
misunderstanding about the tombstone on the youngest little girl's
grave, to which Henrietta had wished to contribute. She had written to
Evelyn from the Riviera in all the soreness of worn-out nerves and grief
from which the sublimity has gone. The very fact that they had been
drawn so close to one another made her specially irritable to Evelyn.
After one or two of her letters, an answer came from Herbert:
"Evelyn is very ill from all she has been through, and the doctor says
it is most important that she should be kept from every sort of worry.
She was so much distressed at your last letter, and answering you took
so much out of her, that I have taken the liberty of keeping this one
from her. You have no right to write to her in this way, and I must ask
you to drop all correspondence for the present if your letters are to be
in the same strain."
Henrietta declared that he was trying to come between her and her
sister, and that if that was the case she should never trouble them
again. She did not write at all for several weeks, then she felt
remorseful, but Herbert could not forgive her. He wrote coldly that
Evelyn was still so unhinged as to be incapable of receiving letters
without undue excitement.