It has been shown that Henrietta had not much power of attracting
affection to herself, and she had long ceased to desire it. She was now
brought into contact with numbers of different people, and as travelling
acquaintances she liked them, but when they parted, she did not want to
see them again.
There was, however, an exception to this rule. Henrietta found many
companions in misfortune, expatriated either from health, pleasure, or
poverty. An intelligent foreigner has inquired whether there are any
single elderly ladies left in England, so innumerable are the hosts
abroad. Some, like her, had worn their personalities so thin that it
seemed likely they would eventually become shadows with no character
left; others were nice and cheerful, and made little encampments in the
wilderness, so that the unfortunates might gather round them, and almost
feel they had got a home.
It was in the room of a nice one that Henrietta met a Colonel. There are
fewer occupationless Englishmen abroad, but there is a fair
supply--half-pay officers, consumptives, and mysterious creatures, who
have no good reason for being there. They were a strange medley for
Henrietta to associate with, people whom in her palmy days, as mistress
of her father's house, she would have thought unspeakable. She had none
of this generation's tolerance and love of new sensations to attract her
to unsatisfactory people. She only really liked conventional
respectability.
This Colonel was not respectable. He was not a Colonel in the English
army, and never would say much about himself. He was very pleasant and
polite, and Henrietta, as she walked back to table d'hote, felt she had
spent a livelier afternoon than usual. It was at the beginning of the
season, and looking back six weeks later she was astonished to find how
often they had met.
Shortly after, the lady in whose room Henrietta had first seen him,
asked her to tea. She did not seem quite so easy-going as usual, and at
last began: "You know, Miss Symons, my cousin, Colonel Hilton, is rather
a peculiar man. I've known him all my life, and I don't think there is
any harm in him, but money is his difficulty. He ought to be well off,
but it always seems to slip through his fingers."
Henrietta realized that this was a warning.
At the end of the season he proposed and she accepted him. She knew he
proposed for her money, and she knew that, besides being mercenary, he
was a poor creature in every way. Most people could not have borne long
with his society, but she, unaccustomed to companionship, felt that he
sufficed her. She did not think much of the future. When she did, she
realized that it was hardly possible they could marry. But meanwhile it
was something--she would have been ashamed to own how much--to have
someone call her "dear." Once he attained to "dearest," but he was
evidently frightened at his temerity, and did not repeat the experiment.
She announced the engagement, and a letter from Minna came flying to the
Riviera, saying that all sorts of terrible things were known about the
Colonel, and imploring Henrietta to desist. She did not desist, but very
soon the Colonel did, having discovered that her fortune was not so
large as he had been given to suppose. There was a solid something it is
true, but for Henrietta, quite middle-aged and decidedly cross (she
imagined she was never cross with him), he felt he must have a very
considerable something. He wrote a letter breaking off the engagement,
and left the Riviera abruptly, having made a good thing out of his
season. Henrietta had lent him, _he_ said--given, others said--over
three hundred pounds.
"And now we shall have a terrible piece of work," said Minna to Louie.
"You know what Henrietta always is--what she was about that other affair
with a man years ago, and again when Evelyn's little girl died. She gets
so excited and overwrought."
But Henrietta quite upset their expectations. This, which most people
might have thought the most serious misfortune which had befallen her,
affected her very little. In her heart of hearts she was saying: "Well,
when all's said and done, I've had my offer like everyone else." She was
grateful for the "dears" too. She did not realize that there had been
absolutely nothing behind them. She answered the Colonel's speedy
application for more money, and continued to send him supplies from
time to time.
Evelyn and Herbert had returned to England, and had settled on the South
Coast. Two boys had been born in Canada, and had grown and prospered.
Henrietta stayed with Evelyn for a fortnight whenever she was back in
England, but somehow the visits were not the pleasure they should have
been.
Evelyn was still delicate, and Herbert had begged Henrietta when she saw
her to make no allusion to their loss. Evelyn was delighted at showing
her boys, and Henrietta was pleased for her that she should have them,
but to her they did not in the least take the place of the dead. They
were not hers; she was almost indignant with Evelyn for caring for them
so much, and accused her in her heart of forgetfulness. This made her
irritable, which Herbert resented, and then Evelyn was nervous because
Herbert and Henrietta did not get on well together. Evelyn's letters to
her were very affectionate, the only real pleasure, in any reasonable
sense of the word, in Henrietta's life.
Sometimes Evelyn and her husband and boys came out to stay with
Henrietta. The visits were not occasions of much happiness, and a
certain day remained for years as a mild nightmare in Evelyn's memory.
They were all in Milan one spring, when the patron of the hotel
announced that his lady cousin, who lived at some out-of-the-way little
country town, had heard from her friend, a priest in that same little
town, that on Tuesday there was to be a special festa in connection with
a local saint. Would the English ladies and gentlemen care to go? The
patron himself had the contempt of an enlightened man for saints and
festas, but he knew the curious attraction which such childishness
possesses for the English tourist.
All was arranged. The railway company had never intended that the little
town should be reached from Milan, but with an early start and much
changing of trains it was possible to accomplish the journey in two
hours and a half.
They arrived. There was no surprise among the hotel omnibuses at their
appearance, for the Italians have found that the English will turn up
everywhere; but to-day they were certainly the only representatives of
their nation.
They reached the church where the festa was to take place. It was
sleeping peacefully, brooded over by a delicious, sweet smell of dirt
and stale incense. Not a soul was to be seen. But as the party marched
indignantly up and down the aisles, another smell comes to join the
incense--garlic. A merry, good-humoured little priest appears; it is the
friend of the lady cousin.
He knew no English but "Yis, Yis"; they little Italian but the
essentials for travel: "Troppo, bello, antiquo." At the word "festa" he
shook his head very sadly, and he said "Domani" so many times that, with
the help of Henrietta's little phrase-book, they found it must mean
"To-morrow." They had come the wrong day. He was very much distressed
about it. To make up, if possible, for the disappointment, he showed
them all over the church and sacristy; he did not miss one memorial
tablet, not one disappearing fresco, and knowing the taste of the
English, he said, as each new item was displayed: "Molto, _molto_
antiquo."
He was so much attracted by Evelyn's charming middle-aged beauty and her
sweet English voice that when Santa Barbara's was exhausted, he could
not resist showing them, what he cared for much more, his own little
brand-new mission church, with its brilliant rosy-cheeked images and
artificial wreaths. The boys, fifteen and seventeen, had had enough of
churches after two days at Milan, and Evelyn could hear from Herbert's
conscientious, stumping tread that he was examining the church because a
soldier must always do his duty.
At length it was over; they came out into the sunshine, and the big town
clock struck a quarter to eleven. Their train home left at 5.30. The two
churches had only used up an hour and a quarter.
"Now, dearest," said Herbert firmly, "I dare say you and Etta will like
a little rest. Suppose I and the boys get a walk in the country; and
don't wait lunch for us, you know. I dare say we can get something at
one of those little wine places one sees about."
They managed to construct a sentence for the priest, who was standing
nodding by them: "Are there any pretty walks in the neighbourhood?"
Smiling genially, he pointed to an answer which the phrase-book
translated: "The landscape presents a grandiose panorama."
Evelyn gave the priest a contribution to his mission church. He was
overwhelmed with surprise and pleasure at this good action on the part
of a heretic, it added to his pleasure that she was such a beautiful
heretic, and when, as they said good-bye, Evelyn wished that they might
meet again, he replied, with his face all over smiles, "I hope perhaps
in Paradise"; he could not speak with absolute certainty. Something in
the way he said it brought tears to Evelyn's eyes, and Henrietta, who
was looking on and listening, thought with a little envy that none of
the many priests or pastors, few even of the laity she had encountered
in her wanderings, had ever hoped to meet _her_ again either in heaven
or on earth. After many affectionate bows, he said good-bye.
The sisters were scarcely half an hour buying picture postcards (there
had been nothing else to do, so they had bought more picture postcards
than it seemed possible could be bought), when rain came on--not gentle
English rain, but the fierce cataracts of Italy, let loose for the rest
of the day. Back came Herbert and the boys, who had somehow missed the
grandiose panorama. It had, in fact, been created entirely out of
politeness by the priest.
After lunch, which they prolonged to its farthest limit, there was
nothing for it but the salon, a small room, with its window darkened by
the verandah outside. Madame brought in yesterday's _Tribuna_, and they
found an illustrated catalogue of hotels in Dresden. Oh, that three
hours and a half! The boys and Herbert would have been content to sit
with their shoulders hutched up, staring at their boots, going every
quarter of an hour to the front-door to see if it were raining as hard
there as it was out of the salon window, and Evelyn only wanted to be
left in silence with her headache. But Henrietta would tease the boys.
Whatever they did do, or whatever they did not do, seemed an occasion
for criticism. Evelyn, to divert attention, burst into long
reminiscences of the days at Willstead. Henrietta combated each
statement with a kind of sneer, as though whatever Evelyn said was bound
to be worthless. Evelyn saw Herbert, who always treated her as if she
were a wonderful queen, casting black looks at Henrietta. At last his
anger came out:
"I don't know why it seems impossible for you to talk to Evelyn with
ordinary civility, Henrietta."
"My dearest boy," said Evelyn, going and patting Herbert's shoulder,
"Etty and I don't care about ordinary civility. We love having our
little spars together. Sisters don't bother to be as polite as men are
to one another; life would be much too much of a burden!"
She gave Henrietta's hand a squeeze, as she went back to her seat, but
after this Henrietta would hardly talk at all, and the reminiscences
became a monologue from Evelyn.
At last, at long last, the train came, and Henrietta forgot her
disappointment in sleep. The happy day she had looked forward to, and
planned, and paid for, was over.
Louie and her Colonel did not thrive better as the years went on. Money
never seemed able to stay with them. Henrietta helped them long after
everyone else had become tired of them. She did not expect gratitude,
nor did she get it. In spite of her dependence, Louie managed to convey
the impression of Henrietta's inferiority, and the children spoke of her
as a butt.
"Oh, it's Aunt Etta's year; it really is rather a fag to think we shall
have her for three weeks. Ethel, it's your turn to take her in tow; I
had her all last time."
"Poor Etta!" said Minna; "she is such an interminable talker, it does
worry Arthur so. She means very well; we all know that."
Minna's children were very much of the twentieth century, and were not
going to bear with a dull old maid, merely because she was their aunt
and had been kind to them. As one of them expressed it, "Never put
yourself out for a relation, however distant. That's an axiom."
Little as the younger generation thought of her, she thought something
of them, and the second week in December, when she chose her Christmas
presents for all her nieces and nephews, was the pleasantest week in the
year to her.