Book I: _Rose_

§ 1

On the high land overlooking the distant channel and the hills beyond

it, the spring day, set in azure, was laced with gold and green. Gorse

bushes flaunted their colour, larch trees hung out their tassels and

celandines starred the bright green grass in an air which seemed

palpably blue. It made a mist among the trees and poured itself into

the ground as though to dye the earth from which hyacinths would soon

spring. Far away, the channel might have been a still, blue lake, the

hills wore soft blue veils and, like a giant reservoir, the deeper blue

of the sky promised unlimited supplies. There were sheep and lambs

bleating in the fields, birds sang with a piercing sweetness, and no

human being was in sight until, up on the broad grassy track which

branched off from the main road and had the larch wood on one side and,

on the other, rough descending fields, there appeared a woman on a

horse. The bit jingled gaily, the leather creaked, the horse, smelling

the turf, gave a snort of delight, but his rider restrained him

lightly. On her right hand was the open country sloping slowly to the

water; on her left was the stealthiness of the larch wood; over and

about everything was the blue day. Straight ahead of her the track

dipped to a lane, and beyond that the ground rose again in fields

sprinkled with the drab and white of sheep and lambs and backed by the

elm trees of Sales Hall. She could see the chimneys of the house and

the rooks’ nests in the elm tops and, as though the sight reminded her

of something mildly amusing, the smoothness of her face was ruffled by

a smile, the stillness of her pose by a quick glance about her, but if

she looked for anyone she did not find him. There were small sounds

from the larch wood, little creakings and rustlings, but there was no

human footstep, and the only visible movements were made by the breeze

in the trees and in the grass, the flight of a bird and the distant

gambolling of lambs.

She rode on down the steep, stony slope into the lane, and after

hesitating for a moment she turned to the right where the lane was

broadened by a border of rich grass and a hedge-topped bank. Here

primroses lay snugly in their clumps of crinkled leaves and, wishing to

feel the coolness of their slim, pale stalks between her fingers, Rose

Mallett dismounted, slipped the reins over her arm and allowed her

horse to feed while she stooped to the flowers. Then, in the full

sunshine, with the soft breeze trying to loosen her hair, with the

flowers in her bare hand, she straightened herself, consciously happy

in the beauty of the day, in the freedom and strength of her body, in

the smell of the earth and the sight of the country she had known and

loved all her life. It was long since she had ridden here without

encountering Francis Sales, who was bound up with her knowledge of the

country, and who, quite evidently, wished to annex some of the love she

lavished on it. This was a ridiculous desire which made her smile

again, yet, while she was glad to be alone, she missed the attention of

his presence. He had developed a capacity, which was like another

sense, for finding her when she rode on his domains or in their

neighbourhood, and she was surprised to feel a slight annoyance at his

absence, an annoyance which, illogically, was increased by the sight of

his black spaniel, the sure forerunner of his master, making his way

through the hedge. A moment later the tall figure of Sales himself

appeared above the budding twigs.

He greeted her in the somewhat sulky manner to which she was

accustomed. He was a young man with a grievance, and he looked at her

as though to-day it were personified in her.

She answered him cheerfully: “What a wonderful day!”

“The day’s all right,” he said.

Holding the primroses to her nose, she looked round. Catkins were

swaying lightly on the willows, somewhere out of sight a tiny runnel of

water gurgled, the horse ate noisily, the grass had a vividness of

green like the concentrated thought of spring.

“I don’t see how anything can be wrong this morning,” she said.

“Ah, you’re lucky to think so,” he answered, gazing at her clear, pale

profile.

“Well,” she turned to ask patiently, “what is the matter with you?”

“I’m worried.”

“Has a cow died?” And ignoring his angry gesture, she went on: “I don’t

think you take enough care of your property. Whenever I ride here I

find you strolling about miserably, with a dog.”

“That’s your fault.”

“I don’t quite see why,” she said pleasantly; “but no doubt you are

right. But has a cow died?”

“Of course not. Why should it?”

“They do, I suppose?”

“It’s the old man. He isn’t well, and he’s badgering me to go away, to

Canada, and learn more about farming.”

“So you should.”

“Of course you’d say so.”

“Or do you think you can’t?”

He missed, or ignored, her point. “He’s ill. I don’t want to leave

him”; and in a louder voice he added, almost shouted, “I don’t want to

leave you!”

Her grey eyes were watching the swinging catkins, her hand, lifting the

primroses, hid a smile. Again he had the benefit of her profile, the

knot of her dark, thick hair and the shadowy line of her eyelashes, but

she made no comment on his remark and after a moment of sombre staring

he uttered the one word, “Well?”

“Yes?”

“Well, I’ve told you.”

“Oh, I think you ought to go.”

“Then you don’t love me?”

From under her raised eyebrows she looked at him steadily. “No, I don’t

love you,” she said slowly. There was no need to consider her answer:

she was sure of it. She was fond of him, but she could not romantically

love some one who looked and behaved like a spoilt boy. She glanced

from his handsome, frowning face in which the mouth was opening for

protest to a scene perfectly set for a love affair. There was not so

much as a sheep in sight: there was only the horse who, careless of

these human beings, still ate eagerly, chopping the good grass with his

teeth, and the spaniel who panted self-consciously and with a great

affectation of exhaustion. The place was beautiful and the sunlight had

some quality of enchantment. Faint, delicious smells were offered on

the wind and withdrawn in caprice; the trees were all tipped with green

and interlaced with blue air and blue sky; she wished she could say she

loved him, and she repeated her denial half regretfully.

“Rose,” he pleaded, “I’ve known you all my life!”

“Perhaps that’s why. Perhaps I know you too well.”

“You don’t. You don’t know how—how I love you. And I should be

different with you. I should be happy. I’ve never been happy yet.”

“You can’t,” she said slowly, “get happiness through a person if you

can’t get it through yourself.”

“Yes—if you are the person.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”

He reproached her. “You’ve never thought about it.”

“Well, isn’t that the same thing? And,” she added, “you’re so far

away.”

“I can get through the hedge,” he said practically.

She smiled in the way that always puzzled, irritated and allured him.

His words set him still farther off; he did not even understand her

speech.

“Is it better now?” he asked, close to her.

“No, no better.” She looked at his face, so deeply tanned that his

brown hair and moustache looked pale by contrast and his eyes

extraordinarily blue. His appearance always pleased her. It was almost

a part of the landscape, but the landscape was full of change, of

mystery in spite of its familiarity, and she found him dull,

monotonous, with a sort of stupidity which was not without attraction,

but which would be wearying for a whole life. She had no desire to be

his wife and the mistress of Sales Hall, its fields and woods and

farms. The world was big, the possibilities in life were infinite, and

she felt she was fit, perhaps destined, to play a larger part than this

he offered her, and if she could, as she foresaw, only play a greater

one through the agency of some man, she must have that man colossal,

for she was only twenty-three years old.

“No,” she said firmly, “we are not suited to each other.”

“You are to me.” His angry helplessness seemed to darken the sunlight.

“You are to me. No one else. I’ve known you all my life. Rose, think

about it!”

“I shall—but I shan’t change. I don’t believe you really love me,

Francis, but you want some one you can growl at legitimately. I don’t

think you would find me satisfactory. Another woman might enjoy the

privilege.”

He made a wild movement, startling to the horse. “You don’t understand

me!”

“Well, then, that ought to settle it. And now I’m going.”

“Don’t go,” he pleaded. “And look here, you might have loosened your

girths.”

“I might, but I didn’t expect to be here so long. I didn’t expect to be

so pleasantly entertained.” She put out her hand for his shoulder, and,

bending unwillingly, he received her foot.

“You needn’t have said that,” he muttered, “about being entertained.”

“You’re so ungracious, Francis.”

“I can’t help it when I care so much.”

From her high seat she looked at him with a sort of envy. “It must be

rather nice to feel anything deeply enough to make you rude.”

“You torture me,” he said.

She was hurt by the sight of his suffering, she wished she could give

him what he wanted, she felt as though she were injuring a child, yet

her youth resented his childishness: it claimed a passion capable of

overwhelming her. She hardened a little. “Good-bye,” she said, “and if

I were you, I should certainly go abroad.”

“I shall!” he threatened her.

“Good-bye, then,” she repeated amiably.

“Don’t go,” he begged in a low voice. “Rose, I don’t believe you know

what you are doing, and you’ve always loved the country, you’ve always

loved our place. You like our house. You told me once you envied us our

rookery.”

“Yes, I love the rookery,” she said.

“And you’d have your own stables and as many horses as you wanted—”

“And milk from our own cows! And home-laid eggs!”

“Ah, you’re laughing at me. You always do.”

“So you see,” she said, bending a little towards him, “I shouldn’t make

a very good companion.”

“But I could put up with it from you!” he cried. “I could put up with

anything from you.”

She made a gesture. That was where he chiefly failed. The colossal

gentleman of her imagination was a tyrant.

She rode home, up and along the track, on to the high road with its

grass borders and across the shadows of the elm branches which striped

the road with black. It was a long road accompanied on one side and for

about two miles by a tall, smooth wall, unscalable, guarding the

privacy of a local magnate’s park. It was a pitiless wall, without a

chink, without a roughness that could be seized by hands; it was higher

than Rose Mallett as she sat on her big horse and, but for the open

fields on the other side where lambs jumped and bleated, that road

would have oppressed the spirit, for the wall was a solid witness to

the pride and the power of material possession. Rose Mallett hated it,

not on account of the pride and the power, but because it was ugly,

monstrous, and so inhospitably smooth that not a moss would grow on it.

More vaguely, she disliked it because it set so definite a limit to her

path. She was always glad when she could turn the corner and, leaving

the wall to prolong the side of the right angle it made at this point,

she could take a side road, edging a wooded slope. That slope made one

side of the gorge through which the river ran, and, looking down

through the trees, she caught glimpses of water and a red scar of rock

on the other cliff.

The sound of a steamer’s paddles threshing the water came to her

clearly, and the crying of the gulls was so familiar that she hardly

noticed it. And all the way she was thinking of Francis Sales, his

absurdity, his good looks and his distress; but in the permanence of

his distress, even in its sincerity, she did not much believe, for he

had failed to touch anything but her pity, and that failure seemed an

argument against the vehemence of his love. Yet she liked him, she had

always liked him since, as a little girl, she had been taken by her

stepsisters to a haymaking party at Sales Hall.

They had gone in a hired carriage, but one so smart and well-equipped

that it might have been their own, and she remembered the smell of the

leather seats warmed by the sun, the sound of the horse’s hoofs and the

sight of Caroline and Sophia, extremely gay in their summer muslins and

shady hats, each holding a lace parasol to protect the complexion

already delicately touched up with powder and rouge. She had been very

proud of her stepsisters as she sat facing them and she had decided to

wear just such muslin dresses, just such hats, when she grew up.

Caroline was in pink with coral beads and a pink feather drooping on

her dark hair; and Sophia, very fair, with a freckle here and there

peeping, as though curious, through the powder, wore yellow with a

big-bowed sash. She was always very slim, and the only fair Mallett in

the family; but even in those days Caroline was inclined to stoutness.

She carried it well, however, with a great dignity, fortified by

reassurances from Sophia, and Rose’s recollections of the conversations

of these two was of their constant compliments to each other and the

tireless discussion of clothes. These conversations still went on.

Fifteen years ago she had sat in that carriage in a white frock, with

socks and ankle-strapped black shoes, her long hair flowing down her

back, and she had heard then, as one highly privileged, the words she

would hear again when she arrived home for tea. Under their tilted

parasols they had made their little speeches. No one was more

distinguished than Caroline; no girl of twenty had a prettier figure

than Sophia’s; how well the pink feather looked against Caroline’s

hair. Rose, listening intently, but not staring too hard lest her gaze

should attract their attention to herself, had looked at the fields and

at the high, smooth wall, and wondered whether she would rather reach

Sales Hall and enjoy the party, or drive on for ever in this delightful

company, but the carriage turned up the avenue of elms and Rose saw for

the first time the house which Francis Sales now offered as an

attraction. It was a big, square house with honest, square windows, and

the drive, shadowed by the elms, ran through the fields where the

haymaking was in progress. Only immediately in front of the house were

there any flower-beds and there were no garden trees or shrubs. The

effect was of great freedom and spaciousness, of unaffected homeliness;

and even then the odd delightful mixture of hall and farm, the grandeur

of the elm avenue set in the simplicity of fields, gave pleasure to

Rose Mallett’s beauty-loving eyes. Anything might happen in a garden

that suddenly became a field, in a field that ended in a garden, and

the house had the same capacity for surprise.

There was a matted hall sunk a foot below the threshold, and to Rose,

accustomed to the delicate order of Nelson Lodge with its slim,

shining, old furniture, its polished brass and gleaming silver, the

comfortable carelessness of this place, with a man’s cap on the hall

table, a group of sticks and a pair of slippers in a corner, and an

opened newspaper on a chair, seemed the very home of freedom. It was a

masculine house in which Mrs. Sales, a gentle lady with a fichu of lace

round her soft neck, looked strangely out of place, yet entirely happy

in her strangeness.

On the day of the party Rose had only a glimpse of the interior. The

three Miss Malletts, Caroline sweeping majestically ahead, were led

into the hayfield where Mrs. Sales sat serenely in a wicker chair. It

was evident at once that Mr. Sales, bluff and hearty, with gaitered

legs, was fond of little girls. He realized that this one with the

black hair and the solemn grey eyes would prefer eating strawberries

from the beds to partaking of them with cream from a plate; he knew

without being told that she would not care for gambolling with other

children in the hay; he divined her desire to see the pigs and horses,

and it was near the pigsties that she met Francis Sales. He was tall

for twelve years old and Rose respected him for his age and size; but

she wondered why he was with the pigs instead of with his guests, to

whom his father drove him off with a laugh.

“Says he can’t bear parties,” Mr. Sales remarked genially to Rose.

“What do you think of that?”

“I like pigs, too,” Rose answered, to be surprised by his prolonged

chuckle.

Mr. Sales, in the intervals of his familiar conversation with the pigs,

wanted to know why Rose had not brought her father with her.

“Oh, he’s too old,” Rose said, rather shocked. Her father had always

seemed old to her, as indeed he was, for she was the child of his

second marriage, and her young mother had died when she was born. Her

stepsisters, devoted to the little girl, and perhaps not altogether

sorry to be rid of a stepmother younger than themselves, had tried to

make up for that loss, but they were much occupied with the social

activities of Radstowe and they belonged to an otherwise inactive

generation, so that if Rose had a grievance it was that they never

played games with her, never ran, or played ball or bowled hoops as she

saw the mothers of other children doing. For such sporting she had to

rely upon her nurse who was of rather a solemn nature and liked little

girls to behave demurely out of doors.

General Mallett saw to it that his youngest daughter early learnt to

ride. Her memories of him were of a big man on a big horse, not

talkative, somewhat stern and sad, becoming companionable only when

they rode out together on the high Downs crowning the old city, and

then he was hardly recognizable as the father who heard her prayers

every night. These two duties of teaching her to ride and of hearing

her pray, and his insistence on her going, as Caroline and Sophia had

done, to a convent school in France, made up, as far as she could

remember, the sum of his interest in her, and when she returned home

from school for the last time, it was to attend his funeral.

She was hardly sorry, she was certainly not glad; she envied the

spontaneous tears of her stepsisters, and she found the lugubriousness

of the occasion much alleviated by the presence of her stepbrother

Reginald. She had hardly seen him since her childhood. Sophia always

spoke of him as she might have spoken of the dead. Caroline sometimes

referred to him in good round terms, sometimes with an indulgent laugh;

and for Rose he had the charm of mystery, the fascination of the

scapegrace. He was handsome, but good looks were a prerogative of the

Malletts; he was married to a wife he had never introduced to his

family and he had a little girl. What his profession was, Rose did not

know. Perhaps his face was his fortune, as certainly his sisters had

been his victims.

After the funeral he had several interviews with Caroline and Sophia,

when Rose could hear the mannish voice of Caroline growing gruff with

indignation and the high tones of Sophia rising to a squeak. He emerged

from these encounters with an angry face and a weak mouth stubbornly

set; but for Rose he had always a gay word or a pretty speech. She was

a real Mallett, he told her; she was more his sister than the others,

and she liked to hear him say so because he had a kind of grace and a

caressing voice, yet the cool judgment which was never easily upset

assured her that a man with his mouth must be in the wrong. He was, in

fact, pursuing his old practice of extracting money from his sisters,

and he only returned, presumably, to his wife and child, when James

Batty, the family solicitor, had been called to the ladies’ aid.

But they both cried when he went away.

“He is so lovable,” Sophia sobbed.

“My dear, he’s a rake,” Caroline replied, carefully dabbing her cheeks.

“All the Malletts are rakes—yes, even the General. Oh, he took to

religion in the end, I know, but that’s what they do.” She chuckled.

“When there’s nothing left! I’m afraid I shall take to it myself some

day. I’ve sown my wild oats, too. Oh, no, I’m not going to tell Rose

anything about them, Sophia. You needn’t be afraid, but she’ll hear of

them sooner or later from anybody who remembers Caroline Mallett in her

youth.”

Rose had received this confession gravely, but she had not needed the

reassurance of Sophia; “It isn’t so, dear Rose—a flirt, yes, but never

wicked, never! My dear, of course not!”

“Of course not,” Rose repeated. She had already realized that her

stepsisters must be humoured.

Riding slowly, Rose recalled that haymaking party and her gradual

friendship, as the years went by, with the unsociable young Sales, a

friendship which had been tacitly recognized by them both when, meeting

her soon after his mother’s death, he had laid his arms and head on the

low stone wall by which they were standing, and wept without restraint.

It was a display she could not have given herself and it shocked her in

a young man, but it left her in his debt. She felt she owed something

to a person who had shown such confidence in her and though at the time

she had been dumb and, as it seemed to her, far from helpful, she did

not forget her liability. However, she could not remember it to the

extent of marrying him; she had always shown him more kindness than she

really felt and, in considering these things on her way home, she

decided that she was still doing as much as he could expect.

She had by this time turned another corner and the high bridge, swung

from one side of the gorge to the other, was before her. At the

toll-house was the red-faced man who had not altered in the whiteness

of a single hair since she had been taken across the bridge by her

nurse and allowed to peep fearfully through the railings which had

towered like a forest above her head. And the view from the bridge was

still for her a fairy vision.

Seawards, the river, now full and hiding its muddy banks which,

revealed, had their own opalescent beauty, went its way between the

cliffs, clothed on one hand with trees, save for a big red and yellow

gash where the stone was being quarried, and on the other with bare

rock, topped by the Downs spreading far out of sight. Landwards the

river was trapped into docks, spanned by low bridges and made into the

glistening part of a patchwork of water, brick and iron. Red-roofed old

houses, once the haunts of fashion, were clustered near the water but

divided from it now by tram-lines, companion anachronisms to the

steamers entering and leaving the docks, but by the farther shore, one

small strip of river was allowed to flow in its own way, and it skirted

meadows rising to the horizon and carrying with them more of those

noble elms in which the whole countryside was rich.

Her horse’s hoofs sounding hollow on the bridge, Rose passed across,

and at the other toll-house door she saw the thin, pale man, with

spectacles on the end of his pointed nose, who had first touched his

hat to her when she rode on a tiny pony by the side of her father on

his big horse. That man was part of her life and she, presumably, was

part of his. He had watched many Upper Radstowe children from the

perambulator stage, and to him she remarked on the weather, as she had

done to the red-faced man at the other end. It was a beautiful day;

they were having a wonderful spring; it would soon be summer, she said,

but on repetition these words sounded false and intensely dreary. It

would soon be summer, but what did that mean to her? Festivities suited

to the season would be resumed in Radstowe. There would be lawn tennis

in the big gardens, and young men in flannels and girls in white would

stroll about the roads and gay voices would be heard in the dusk. There

would be garden-parties, and Mrs. Batty, the wife of the lawyer, would

be lavish with tennis for the young, gossip for the middle-aged and

unlimited strawberries and ices for all. Rose would be one of the

guests at this as at all the parties and, for the first time, as though

her refusal of Francis Sales had had some strange effect, as though

that rejected future had created a distaste for the one fronting her,

she was aghast at the prospect of perpetual chatter, tea and pretty

dresses. She was surely meant for something better, harder, demanding

greater powers. She had, by inheritance, good manners, a certain social

gift, but she had here nothing to conquer with these weapons. What was

she to do? The idea of qualifying for the business of earning her bread

did not occur to her. No female Mallett had ever done such a thing, and

not all the male ones. Marriage opened the only door, but not marriage

with Francis Sales, not marriage with anyone she knew in Radstowe, and

her stepsisters had no inclination to leave the home of their youth,

the scene of their past successes, for her sake.

Rose sat very straight on her horse, not frowning, for she never

frowned, but wearing rather a set expression, so that an acquaintance,

passing unrecognized, made the usual reflection on the youngest Miss

Mallett’s pride, and the pity that one so young should sometimes look

so old.

And Rose was wishing that the spring would last for ever, the spring

with its promise of excitement and adventure which would not be

fulfilled, though one was willingly deceived into believing that it

would. Yet she had youth’s happy faith in accident: something

breathless and terrific would sweep her, as on the winds of storm, out

of this peaceful, gracious life, this place where feudalism still

survived, where men touched their hats to her as her due. And it was

her due! She raised her head and gave her pale profile to the houses on

one side, the trees and the open spaces of green on the other. And not

because she was a Mallett though it was a name honoured in Radstowe,

but because she was herself. Hats would always be touched to her, and

it was the touchers who would feel themselves complimented in the act.

She knew that, but the knowledge was not much to her; she wished she

could offer homage for a change, and the colossal figure of her

imagination loomed up again; a rough man, perhaps; yes, he might be

rough if he were also great; rough and the scandal of her stepsisters!

As she rode under the flowering trees to the stable where she kept her

horse, she wondered whether she should tell her stepsisters of Francis

Sales’s proposal, but she knew she would not do so. She seldom told

them anything they did not know already. They would think it a

reasonable match; they might urge her acceptance; they were anxious for

her to marry, but Caroline, at least, was proud of the inherent Mallett

distaste for the marriage state. “We’re all flirts,” she would say for

the thousandth time. “We can’t settle down, not one of us,” and holding

up a thumb and forefinger and pinching them together, she would add,

“We like to hold men’s hearts like that—and let them go!” It was great

nonsense, Rose thought, but it had the necessary spice of truth. The

Malletts were not easily pleased, and they were not good givers of

anything except gold, the easiest thing to give. Rose wished she could

give the difficult things—love, devotion, and self-sacrifice; but she

could not, or perhaps she had no opportunity. She was fond of her

stepsisters, but her most conscious affection was the one she felt for

her horse.

She left him at the stable and, fastening up her riding-skirt, she

walked slowly home. She had not far to go. A steep street, where

narrow-fronted old houses informed the public that apartments were to

be let within, brought her to the broad space of grass and trees called

The Green, which she had just passed on her horse. Straight ahead of

her was the wide street flanked by houses of which her home was one—a

low white building hemmed in on each side by another and with a small

walled garden in front of it; not a large house, but one full of

character and of quiet self-assurance. Malletts had lived in it for

several generations, long before the opposite houses were built, long

before the road had, lower down, degenerated into a region of shops.

These houses, all rechristened in a day of enthusiasm, Nelson Lodge,

with Trafalgar House, taller, bigger, but not so white, on one side of

it, and Hardy Cottage, somewhat smaller, on the other, had faced open

meadows in General Mallett’s boyhood. Round the corner, facing The

Green, were a few contemporaries, and they all had a slight look of

disdain for the later comers, yet no single house was flagrantly new.

There was not a villa in sight and on The Green two old stone

monuments, to long-dead and long-forgotten warriors, kept company with

the old trees under which children were now playing, while nurses

wheeled perambulators on the bisecting paths. The Green itself sloped

upwards until it became a flat-topped hill, once a British or a Roman

camp, and thence the river could be seen between its rocky cliffs and

the woods Rose had lately skirted clothing the farther side in every

shade of green.

She lingered for a moment to watch the children playing, the nursemaids

slowly pushing, the elms opening their crumpled leaves like babies’

hands. She had a momentary desire to stay, to wander round the hill and

look with untired eyes at the familiar scene; but she passed on under

the tyranny of tea. The Malletts were always in time for meals and the

meals were exquisite, like the polish on the old brass door-knocker,

like the furniture in the white panelled hall, like the beautiful old

mahogany in the drawing-room, the old china, the glass bowls full of

flowers.

Rose found Caroline and Sophia there on either side of a small wood

fire, while, facing the fire and spread in a chair not too low and not

too narrow for her bulk, sat Mrs. Batty, flushed, costumed for spring,

her hat a flower garden.

“Just in time,” Caroline said. “Touch the bell, please, Sophia.”

“Susan saw me,” Rose said, and the elderly parlourmaid entered at that

moment with the teapot.

“Rose insists on having a latchkey,” Sophia explained. “What would the

General have said?”

“What, indeed!” Caroline echoed. “Young rakes are always old prudes.

Yes, the General was a rake, Sophia; you needn’t look so modest. I

think I understand men.”

“Yes, yes, Caroline, no one better, but we are told to honour our

father and mother.”

“And I do honour him,” Caroline guffawed, “honour him all the more.”

She had a deep voice and a deep laugh; she ought, she always said, to

have been a man, but there was nothing masculine about her appearance.

Her dark hair, carefully tinted where greyness threatened, was piled in

many puffs above a curly fringe: on the bodice of her flounced silk

frock there hung a heavy golden chain and locket; ear-rings dangled

from her large ears; there were rings on her fingers, and powder and a

hint of rouge on her face.

She laughed again. “Mrs. Batty knows I’m right.”

Mrs. Batty’s tightly gloved hand made a movement. She was a little in

awe of the Miss Malletts. With them she was always conscious of her

inferior descent. No General had ever ornamented her family, and her

marriage with James Batty had been a giddy elevation for her, but she

was by no means humble. She had her place in local society: she had a

fine house in that exclusive part of Radstowe called The Slope, and her

husband was a member of the oldest firm of lawyers in the city.

“You are very naughty, Miss Caroline,” she said, knowing that was the

remark looked for. She gave a little nod of her flower-covered head.

“And we’ve just got to put up with them, whatever they are.”

“Yes, yes, poor dears,” Sophia murmured. “They’re different, they can’t

help it.”

“Nonsense,” Caroline retorted, “they’re just the same, there’s nothing

to choose between me and Reginald—nothing except discretion!”

“Oh, Caroline dear!” Sophia entreated.

“Discretion!” Caroline repeated firmly, and Mrs. Batty, bending forward

stiffly because of her constricting clothes, and with a creak and

rustle, ventured to ask in low tones, “Have you any news of Mr. Mallett

lately?” The three elder ladies murmured together; Rose, indifferent,

concerned with her own thoughts, ate a creamy cake. This was one of the

conversations she had heard before and there was no need for her to

listen.

She was roused by the departure of Mrs. Batty.

“Poor thing,” Caroline remarked as the door closed. “It’s a pity she

has no daughter with an eye for colour. The roses in her hat were pale

in comparison with her face. Why doesn’t she use a little powder,

though I suppose that would turn her purple, and after all, she does

very well considering what she is; but why, why did James Batty marry

her? And he was one of our own friends! You remember the sensation at

the time, Sophia?”

Sophia remembered very well. “She was a pretty girl, Caroline, and

good-natured. She has lost her looks, but she still has a kind heart.”

“Personally I would rather keep my looks,” said Caroline, touching her

fringe before the mirror. “And I never had a kind heart to cherish.”

Tenderly Sophia shook her head. “It isn’t true,” she whispered to Rose.

“The kindest in the world. It’s just her way.”

Rose nodded understanding; then she stood up, tall and slim in her

severe clothes, her high boots. The gilt clock on the mantelpiece said

it was only five o’clock. There were five more hours before she could

reasonably go to bed.

“Where did you ride to-day, dear?” Sophia asked.

“Over the bridge.” And to dissipate some of her boredom, she added, “I

met Francis Sales. He thinks of going abroad.”

There was an immediate confusion of little exclamations and a chatter.

“Going abroad? Why?”

“To learn farming.”

“Oh, dear,” Sophia sighed, “and we thought—we hoped—”

“She must do as she likes,” Caroline said, and Rose smiled. “The

Malletts don’t care for marrying. Look at us, free as the air and with

plenty of amusing memories. In this world nobody gets more than that,

and we have been saved much trouble. Don’t marry, my dear Rose.”

“You’re assuming a good deal,” Rose said.

“But Rose is not like us,” Sophia protested. “We have each other, but

we shall die before she does and leave her lonely. She ought to marry,

Caroline; we ought to have more parties. We are not doing our duty.”

“Parties! No!” Rose said. “We have enough of them. If you threaten me

with more I shall go into a convent.”

Caroline laughed, and Sophia sighed again. “That would be beautiful,”

she said.

“Sophia, how dare you?”

Sophia persisted mildly: “So romantic—a young girl giving up all for

God;” and Caroline gave the ribald laugh on which she prided herself— a

shocking sound. “Rose Mallett,” Sophia went on, so lost in her vision

that the jarring laughter was not heard, “such a pretty name—a nun! She

would never be forgotten: people would tell their children. Sister

Rose!” She developed her idea. “Saint Rose! It’s as pretty as Saint

Cecilia—prettier!”

“Sophia, you’re in your dotage,” Caroline cried. “A Mallett and a nun!

Well, she could pray for the rest of us, I suppose.”

“But I would rather you were married, dear,” Sophia said serenely. “And

we have known the Sales all our lives. It would have been so suitable.”

“So dull!” Rose murmured.

“And we need praying for,” Caroline said. “You’d be dull either way,

Rose. Have your fling, as I did. I’ve never regretted it. I was the

talk of Radstowe, wasn’t I, Sophia? There was never a ball where I was

not looked for, and when I entered the ballroom”—she gave a display of

how she did it—“there was a rush of black coats and white shirts— a

mob—I used just to wave them all away—like that. Oh, yes, Sophia, you

were a belle, too—”

“But never as you were, Caroline.”

“You were admired for yourself, Sophia, but with me it was curiosity.

They only wanted to hear what I should say next. I had a tongue like a

lash! They were afraid of it.”

“Yes, yes,” Sophia said hastily, and she glanced at Rose, afraid of

meeting scepticism in her clear young eyes; but though Rose was smiling

it was not in mockery. She was thinking of her childhood when, like a

happier Cinderella, she had seen her stepsisters, in satins and laces,

with pendant fans and glittering jewels, excited, rustling, with little

words of commendation for each other, setting out for the evening

parties of which they never tired. They had always kissed her before

they went, looking, she used to think, as beautiful as princesses.

“And men like what they fear,” Caroline added.

“Yes, dear,” Sophia said. A natural flush appeared round the delicate

dabs of rouge. She hoped she might be forgiven for her tender deceits.

Those young men in the white waistcoats had often laughed at Caroline

rather than at her wit; she was, as Sophia had shrinkingly divined, as

often as not their butt, and dear Caroline had never known it; she must

never know it, never know it. She drew half her happiness from the

past, as, so differently, Sophia did herself, and, drooping a little,

her thoughts went farther back to the last year of her teens when a

pale and penniless young man had been her secret suitor, had gone to

America to make his fortune there—and died. She had told no one;

Caroline would have scorned him because he was shy and timid, and he

had not had time to earn enough to keep her; he had not had time. She

had a faded photograph of him pushed away at the back of a drawer of

the walnut bureau in the bedroom she shared with Caroline, a pale young

man wearing a collar too large for his thin neck, a young man with

kind, honest eyes. It was a grief to her that she could not wear that

photograph in a locket near her heart, but Caroline would have found

out. They had slept in the same bed since they were children, and

nothing could be hidden from her except the love she still cherished in

her heart. Some day she meant to burn that photograph lest

unsympathetic hands should touch it when she died; but death still

seemed far off, and sometimes, even while she was talking to Caroline,

she would pretend to rummage in the drawer, and for a moment she would

close her hand upon the photograph to tell him she had not forgotten.

She loved her little romance, and the gaiety in which she had

persisted, even on the day when she heard of his death and which at

first had seemed a necessary but cruel disloyalty, had become in her

mind the tenderest of concealments, as though she had wrapped her

secret in beauty, laughter, music and shining garments.

“Oh, yes, dear Rose,” she said, lifting her head, “you must be

married.”

§ 2

The outward life of the Mallett household was elegant and ordered.

Footsteps fell quietly on the carpeted stairs and passages; doors were

quietly opened and closed. The cook and the parlourmaid were old and

trusted servants; the house and kitchen maids were respectable young

women fitting themselves for promotion, and their service was given

with the thoroughness and deference to which the Malletts were

accustomed. In the whole house there was hardly an object without

beauty or tradition, the notable exception being the portrait of

General Mallett which hung above the Sheraton sideboard in the

dining-room, a gloomy daub, honoured for the General’s sake.

From the white panelled hall, the staircase with its white banisters

and smooth mahogany rail led to a square landing which branched off

narrowly on two sides, and opening from the square were the bedroom

occupied by Rose, the one shared by her stepsisters and the one which

had been Reginald’s. This room was never used, but it was kept, like

everything else in that house, in a state of cleanliness and polish,

ready for his arrival. He might come: if he needed money badly enough

he would come, and in spite of the already considerable depletion of

their capital, Caroline and Sophia lived in hope of hearing his

impatient assault of the door-knocker, the brass head of a lion holding

a heavy ring in his mouth. Rose, too, wished he would come, but that

last interview with the lawyer Batty had been more successful than

anyone but the lawyer himself had wished, and there was no knock, no

letter, no news.

The usual life of parties, calls and concerts continued without any

excitement but that felt by Caroline and Sophia in the getting of new

clothes, the refurbishing of old ones, the hearing of the latest

gossip, the reading of the latest novel. Sophia sometimes apologized

for the paper-backed books lying about the drawing-room by saying that

she and dear Caroline liked to keep up their French, but Caroline

loudly proclaimed her taste for salacious literature. She had a

reputation to keep up and she liked to shock her friends; but

everything was forgiven to Miss Mallett, the more readily, perhaps,

after Sophia’s reassuring whisper, “They are really charming books,

quite beautiful, nothing anybody could disapprove of. Why, there is

hardly an episode to make one shrink, though, of course, the French are

different,” and the Radstowe ladies would nod over their tea and say,

“Of course, quite different!”

But Caroline, suspecting that murmured explanation, had been known to

call out in her harsh voice, “It’s no good asking Sophia about them.

She simply doesn’t understand the best bits! She is _jeune fille_

still, she always will be!” Sophia, blushing a little, would feel

herself richly complimented, and the ladies laughed, Mrs. Batty

uncertainly, having no acquaintance with the French language.

Rose read steadily through all the books in the house and gained a

various knowledge which left her curiously untouched. She studied

music, and liked it better than anything else because it roused

emotions otherwise unobtainable, yet she did not care much for the

emotional kind. Perhaps her intensest feeling was the desire to feel

intensely, but being half ashamed of this desire she rarely dwelt on

it; she pursued her way, calm and aloof and proud. She was beautiful

and found pleasure in the contemplation of herself, and though she did

not discuss her appearance as her stepsisters discussed theirs, she

spent a good deal of time on it and much money on her plain but perfect

clothes. All three had more money than they needed, but Rose was richer

than the others, having inherited her mother’s little fortune as well

as her share of what the General had left. She was, as Caroline often

told her with a hit at that gentleman’s unnecessary impartiality, a

very desirable match. “But they’re afraid of you, my dear; they were

afraid of me, but I amused them, while you simply look as if they were

not there. Of course, that’s attractive in its way, and one must follow

one’s own line, but it takes a brave man to come up to the scratch.”

“Caroline, what an expression!”

“Well, I want a brave man,” Rose said, “if I want one at all.”

Caroline turned on Sophia. “What’s language for except to express

oneself? You’re out of date, Sophia; you always were, and I’ve always

been ahead of my time. Now, Rose,”—these personalities were dear to

Caroline—“Rose belongs to no time at all. That frightens them. They

don’t understand. You can’t imagine a Radstowe young man making love to

the Sphinx. They were more daring when I was young. Look at Reginald!

Look at the General!”

“It was his profession,” Rose remarked.

“Yes, I suppose that’s what he told himself when he married your

mother, a mere girl, no older than myself, but he was afraid of her and

adored her. I believe men always like their second wives best— they’re

flattered at succeeding in getting two. I know men. Our own mother was

pious and made him go to church, but with your mother he looked as if

he were in a temple all the time. Those big, stern men are always

managed by their women; it’s the thin men with weak legs who really go

their own way.”

“Caroline,” Sophia sighed, “I don’t know how you think of such things.

Is that an epigram?”

“I don’t know,” Caroline said, “but I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Smiling in her mysterious way, Rose left the room, and Sophia, slightly

pink with anxiety, murmured, “Caroline, there’s no one in Radstowe

really fit for her. Don’t you think we ought to go about, perhaps to

London, or abroad?”

“I’m not going to budge,” Caroline said. “I love my home and I don’t

believe in matchmaking, I don’t believe in marriage. It wouldn’t do her

any good, but if you feel like that, why don’t you exploit her

yourself?”

“Oh—exploit! Certainly not! And you know I couldn’t leave you.”

“Then don’t talk nonsense,” Caroline said, and the life at Nelson Lodge

went on as before.

Every day Rose rode out, sometimes early in the morning on the Downs

when nobody was about and she had them to herself, but oftener across

the bridge into the other county where the atmosphere and the look of

things were immediately different, softer, more subtle yet more

exhilarating. She went there now with no fear of meeting Francis Sales.

He had gone to Canada without another word, and his absence made him

interesting for the first time. If she had not been bored in a delicate

way of her own which left no mark but an expression of impassivity she

would not have thought of him at all; but the days went by and summer

passed into autumn and autumn was threatened by winter, with so little

change beyond the coming and going of flowers and leaves and birds,

that her mind began to fix itself on a man who loved her to the point

of disgust and departure; and to her love of the country round about

Sales Hall was added a tender half-ironic sentiment.

Once or twice she rode up to the Hall itself and paid a visit to Mr.

Sales who, crippled by rheumatism and half suffocated by asthma, was

hardly recognizable as the man who had shown her the pigs long ago. In

the little room called the study, where there was not a single book, or

in the big clear drawing-room of pale chintzes and faded, gilt-framed

water-colours, he entertained her with the ceremony due to a very

beautiful and dignified young woman, producing the latest letter from

his son and reading extracts from it. Sometimes there was a photograph

of Francis on a horse, Francis with a dog, or Francis at a steam plough

or other agricultural machine, but these she only pretended to examine.

She had not the least desire to see how he looked, for in these last

months she had made a picture of her own and she would not have it

overlaid by any other. It was a game of pretence; she knew she was

wasting her time; she had her youth and strength and money and

limitless opportunity for wide experience, but her very youth, and the

feeling that it would last for ever, made her careless of it. There was

plenty of time, she could afford to waste it, and gradually that

occupation became a habit, almost an absorption. She warned herself

that she must shake it off, but the effort would leave her very bare,

it would rob her of the fairy cloak which made her inner self

invisible, and she clung to it, secure in her ability to be rid of it

if she chose.

Her intellect made no mistake about Francis Sales, but her imagination,

finding occupation where it could, began to endow him with romance, and

that scene among the primroses, the startlingly green grass, the

pervading blue of the air, the horse so indifferent to the human drama,

the dog trying to understand it, became the salient event of her life

because it had awakened her capacity for dreaming.

She did not love him, she could never love him, but he had loved her,

angrily, and, in retrospect, the absurd manner of his proposal had a

charm. She would have given much to know whether his feeling for her

persisted. From the letters read wheezily by Mr. Sales and sometimes

handed to her to read for herself, she learnt so little that she was

the freer to create a great deal and, riding home, she would break into

astonished inward laughter. Rose Mallett playing a game of sentiment!

And, crossing the bridge and passing through the streets where she was

known to every second person, she had pleasure in the conviction that

no one could have guessed what absurdity went on behind the pale,

impassive face, what secret and unsuspected amusement she enjoyed; a

little comedy of her own! The unsuitability of Francis Sales for the

part of hero supplied most of the humour and saved her from loss of

dignity. The thing was obviously absurd; she had never cared for dolls,

but in her young womanhood she was finding amusement in the

manipulation of a puppet.

The death of Mr. Sales in the cold March of the next year shocked her

from her game. She was sorry he had gone, for she had always liked him,

and he seemed to have taken with him the little girl who was fond of

pigs, and while Caroline and Sophia mourned the loss of an old friend,

Rose was faced with the certainty of his son’s return. She would have

to stop her ridiculous imaginings, she must pretend she had never had

them for, when she saw him as flesh and blood, her game would be ruined

and she would be shamed. The imminence of his arrival reminded her of

his dullness, his handsome, sullen face and, more tenderly, of those

tears which had put her so oddly in his debt. But she had no difficulty

in casting away the false image she had made. She was, she found, glad

to be rid of it; she liked to feel herself delivered of a weakness.

But she need not have been in such a hurry, for it was some months

before the man who brought the milk from Sales Hall also brought the

news that the master was returning. This information was handed to

Caroline and Sophia with their early tea.

Sitting up in bed and looking grotesquely terrible, they discussed the

event. Caroline, like Medusa, but with hair curlers instead of snakes

sprouting from her head, and Sophia with her heavy plait hanging over

her shoulder and defying with its luxuriance the yellowness of her

skin, they sat side by side, propped up with pillows, inured to the

sight of each other in undress.

“He has come back!” Sophia said ecstatically. “Perhaps after all—”

“Oh, nonsense!” Caroline said as usual, “she’s meant for better things.

My dear, she was born for a great affair. She ought to be the mistress

of a king. Yes, something of that kind, with her looks, her phlegm.”

“But there are no kings in Radstowe,” Sophia said, “and I don’t think

you ought to say such things.”

“It’s my way. You ought to know that. And I can’t control my tongue any

more than Reginald can control his body.”

“Caroline!”

“And I don’t want to. We’re all wrapped up in cotton-wool nowadays. I

ought to have lived in another century. I, too, would have adorned a

court, and kept it lively! There’s no wit left in the world, and

there’s no wickedness of the right kind. We might as well be

Nonconformists at once.”

“Certainly not,” Sophia said firmly. “Certainly not that.”

“But as you so cleverly remind me, there are no kings in Radstowe.

There’s not even,” she added with a mocking smile which made her face

gay in a ghastly way, “not even a foreign Count who would turn out an

impostor. Rose would do very well there, too. An imitation foreign

Count with a black moustache and no money! She would be magnificent and

tragic. Imagine them at Monte Carlo, keeping it up! She would hate him,

grandly; she would hate herself for being deceived; she would never

lose her dignity. You can’t picture Rose with a droop or a tear. They’d

trail about the Continent and she would never come back.”

“But we don’t want her to go away at all,” Sophia cried.

“And when she came to the point of being afraid of murdering him, she

would leave him without any fuss and live alone and mysterious

somewhere in the South of France, or Italy, or Spain. Yes, Spain. There

must be real Counts there and she would get her love affair at last.”

“But she would still be married.”

“Of course!” Caroline, looking roguish, was terrible. “That is

necessary for a love affair, _ma chère_.”

“I would much rather she married Francis Sales and came to see us every

week. Or any other nice young man in Radstowe. She would never marry

beneath her.”

“On the contrary,” Caroline remarked, “she’s bound to marry beneath

her—not in class, Sophia, not in class, though in Radstowe that’s

possible, too. Look at the Battys! But certainly in brains and

manners.”

Sophia, clinging to her own idea, repeated plaintively, “I would rather

it were Francis Sales, and he must be lonely in that big house.”

It appeared, however, that he was not to be lonely, for Susan, entering

with hot water, let fall in her discreet, impersonal way, another piece

of gossip. “John Gibbs says they think Mr. Francis must be bringing

home a wife, Miss Caroline. He’s having some of the rooms done up.”

“Ah!” said Caroline, and her plump elbow pressed Sophia’s. “Which

rooms, I wonder?”

“I did not inquire, Miss Caroline.”

“Then kindly inquire this afternoon, and tell him the butter is

deteriorating, but inquire first or you’ll get nothing out of him.” She

turned with malicious triumph to Sophia. “So that dream’s over!”

“We shall have to break it to her gently,” Sophia said; “but it may not

be true.”

In the dining-room over which the General’s portrait tried, and failed,

to preside, as he himself had done in life, and where he was conquered

by an earlier and a later generation, by the shining eloquence of the

old furniture and silver and the living flesh and blood of his

children, Caroline gave Rose the news without, Sophia thought, a spark

of delicacy.

“They say Francis Sales is bringing home a wife.”

“Really?” Rose said, taking toast.

“He has sent orders for part of the house to be done up.”

Rose raised her eyes. “Ah, she’s hurt,” Sophia thought, but Rose merely

said, “If he touches the drawing-room or the study I shall never

forgive him”; and then, thoughtfully, she added, “but he won’t touch

the drawing-room.”

“H’m, he’ll do what his wife tells him, I imagine. No girl will

appreciate Mrs. Sales’s washy paintings.”

“Rose would,” Sophia sighed.

“Yes, I do,” Rose said cheerfully. She was too cheerful for Sophia’s

romantic little theory, but an acuter audience would have found her too

cheerful for herself. She had overdone it by half a tone, but the

exaggeration was too fine for any ears but her own. She was, as a

matter of fact, in the grip of a violent anger. She was not the kind of

woman to resent the new affections of a rejected lover, but she had,

through her own folly, attached herself to Francis Sales, as, less

unreasonably, his tears had once attached him to her, and the

immaterial nature of the bond composed its strength. Consciously

foolish as her thoughts had been, they became at that breakfast table,

with the water bubbling in the spirit kettle and the faint crunch of

Caroline eating toast, intensely real, and she was angry both with

herself and with his unfaithfulness. She did not love him—how could

she?—but he belonged to her; and now, if this piece of gossip turned

out to be true, she must share him with another. Jealousy, in its usual

sense, she had none as yet, but she had forged a chain she was to find

herself unable to break. It was her pride to consider herself a hard

young person, without spirituality, without sentiment, yet all her

personal relationships were to be of the fantastic kind she now

experienced, all her obligations such as others would have ignored.

“We shall know more when John Gibbs brings the afternoon milk,”

Caroline said.

Rose went upstairs and left her stepsisters to their repetitions. Her

window looked out on the little walled front garden and the broad

street. Tradesmen’s carts went by without hurry, ladies walked out with

their dogs, errand-boys loitered in the sun, and presently Caroline and

Sophia went down the garden path, Caroline sailing majestically like a

full-rigged ship, Sophia with her girlish, tripping gait. They put up

their sunshades, and sailed out on what was, in effect, a foraging

expedition. They were going to collect the news.

Outside the gate, they were hidden by the wall, but for a little while

Rose could hear Caroline’s loud voice. Without doubt she was talking of

Francis Sales, unless she were asking Sophia if her hat, a large one

with pink roses, really became her. Rose knew it all so well, and she

closed her eyes for a moment in weariness. Suddenly she felt tired and

old; the flame of her anger had died down, and for that moment she

allowed herself to droop. She found little comfort in the fact that she

alone knew of her folly, and calling it folly no longer justified it.

She, too, had been rejected, more cruelly than had Francis Sales, for

she had given him something of her spirit. And she had liked to imagine

him far away, thinking of her and of her beauty; she had fancied him

remembering the scene among the primroses and continuing to adore her

in his sulky, inarticulate way. Well, he would think of her no more,

but she was subtly bound to him, first by his need, and now, against

all reason, by her thoughts. She had already learnt that time, which

sometimes seems so swift and heartless, is also slow and kind. Her

feelings would lose their intensity; she only had to wait, and she

waited with that outward impassivity which did not spoil her beauty; it

suited the firm modelling of her features, the creamy whiteness of her

skin, the clear grey eyes under the straight dark eyebrows, and the

lips bent into the promise of a smile.

Caroline and Sophia waited differently, first for the afternoon milk

and the information they wanted and, during the next weeks, for the

rumours which slowly developed into acknowledged facts. The housekeeper

at Sales Hall had heard from the young master: he was married and

returning immediately with his wife. Caroline sniffed and hoped the

woman was respectable; Sophia was charitably certain she would be a

charming girl; and Rose, knowing she questioned one of the life

occupations of her stepsisters, said coolly, “Why speculate? We shall

see her soon. We must go and call.”

“Of course,” Caroline said, and Sophia, with her fixed idea, which was

right in the wrong way, said gently, “If you’re sure you want to go,

dear.”

“Me?” asked Caroline.

“No, no, I was thinking of Rose.”

“Nonsense!” Caroline said, “we’re all going”; and Rose reassured Sophia

with perfect truth, “I have been longing to see her for weeks.”

§ 3

So it came about that the three sisters once more sat in a hired

carriage and drove to Sales Hall. On the box was the son of the man who

had driven them years ago, and though the carriage was a new one and

the old horse had long been metamorphosed into food for the wild

animals in the Radstowe Zoo, this expedition was in many ways a

repetition of the other. Caroline and Sophia faced the horses and Rose

sat opposite her stepsisters, but now she did not listen to their talk

with ears stretched, not to miss a word, and she did not think her

companions as beautiful as princesses. It was she who might have been a

princess for another child, but she did not think of that. She looked

with amusement and with misplaced pity at the other two. It was a

September afternoon and they were very gaily dressed, and again

Caroline had a feather drooping over her hair, while Sophia, more

girlish, wore a wide hat with a blue bow, and both their parasols were

tilted as before against the sun. It seemed to Rose that even the cut

of their garments had not changed with time. The two had always the

appearance of fashion plates of twenty years ago, but no doubt of their

correctness ever entered their minds; and so they managed to preserve

their elegance, as though their belief in themselves were strong enough

to impose it on those who saw them. Without this faith, the severity of

Rose’s black dress, filmy enough for the season but daringly plain,

must have rebuked them. The pearls in her ears and on her neck were her

only ornaments; her little hat, wreathed with a cream feather, shaded

her brow. She sat with the repose which was one of her gifts.

“I’m sure we all look very nice,” Caroline said suddenly, the very

remark she had made when they went to the haymaking party, “though you

do look rather like a widow, Rose—a widow, getting over it very

comfortably, as they do—as they do!”

“I’m glad I look so interesting,” Rose murmured.

“Oh, interesting, always. Yes.”

They were jogging along the road bordered by the high smooth wall,

despairingly efficient, guarding treasures bought with gold; and the

tall elm-trees looked over it as though they wanted to escape. The

murmuring in their branches seemed to be of discontent, and the birds

singing in them had a taunting note. The road mounted a little and the

wall went with it, backed by the imprisoned trees. But at last, at the

cross-roads, the wall turned and the road went on without it. There

were open fields now on either hand, the property of Francis Sales, and

another mile brought the carriage to the opening of the grassy track

where Rose liked to think she had left her youth, but the road went

round on the other side of the larch woods, and when these were passed

Sales Hall came into sight.

“I always think,” Caroline said, “it’s a pity this beautiful avenue

hasn’t a better setting. Mere fields, and open to the road! It’s

undignified. It ought to have been a park.”

“With a high wall all round it,” Rose suggested.

“Exactly,” Caroline agreed. She was touching her fringe, giving little

pats and pulls to her dress, preparatory to descent, and Sophia

whispered, “Just see, Caroline, that wisp of hair near my ear—so

tiresome! I can never be sure of it.”

“Not a sign of it,” Caroline assured her. “Now I wonder what we are

going to find.”

They found the drawing-room empty and untouched. On the pale walls the

water-colours were still hanging, the floral carpet still covered the

floor, the faded chintzes had not been removed, and the light came

clearly through the long windows with their pale primrose curtains. In

the middle of the room was the circular settee to seat four persons,

back to back, with a little woolwork stool set for each pair of feet.

There were no flowers in the room, and they were not needed, for the

room itself was like some pale, scentless and old-fashioned bloom.

The three Miss Malletts sat down: Caroline gay and aggressive as a

parrot, and a parrot in a big gilded cage would not have been out of

place; Sophia fitting naturally into the gentle scheme of things; Rose

startlingly modern in her elegance.

“Well,” Caroline said, “she’s a long time. Changing her dress, I

expect,” and she sniffed. But Mrs. Francis Sales entered in a pink

cotton garment, her fair, curling hair a little untidy, for she had,

she said, been in the old walled garden behind the house. There was, in

fact, a rose hanging from her left hand. She was pretty, she seemed

artless and defenceless, but her big blue eyes had a wary look, and in

spite of that look spoiling an otherwise ingenuous countenance, Rose

imagined herself noticeably old and mature. She thought it was no

wonder that Francis was attracted, but at the same time she despised

him for a failure in taste, as though, faced with the choice between a

Heppelwhite chair and an affair of wicker and cretonne, he had chosen

the inferior article, though she had to admit that, for a permanent

seat, it might be more comfortable and certainly more yielding.

But as she watched Mrs. Sales presiding over the teacups, her scared

eyes moving swiftly from the parlourmaid, entering with cakes, to

Caroline, and from Caroline to Sophia, and then with added shyness to

the woman nearest her own age, Rose found her opinion changing. Mrs.

Francis Sales was timid, but she was not weak; the fair fluffiness of

her exterior was deceptive; and while Rose made this discovery and now

and then dropped a quiet word into the chatter of the others, she was

listening for Francis. He had been with his wife in the garden, but he

was some time in following her, and Rose knew that Mrs. Sales was

listening, too. She wondered whose ear first caught the sound of his

feet on the matted passage; she felt an absurd inward tremor and,

looking at Mrs. Sales, she saw that her pretty pink colour had deepened

and her blue eyes were bright, like flowers. She was certainly charming

in her simple frock, but her unsuitable shoes with very high heels and

sparkling buckles hurt Rose’s eye as much as the voice, also high and

slightly grating, hurt her ear, and this voice sharpened nervously as

it said, “Oh, here is Francis coming.”

No, he was not the person of Rose’s dreams, and she felt an immense

relief: she had expected to be disappointed, but she was glad to find

the old Francis, big, bronzed and handsome, smelling of the open air

and tobacco and tweed, and no dangerous, disturbing, heroic figure.

For an instant he looked at Rose before he greeted the elder ladies,

and then, as Rose let her hand touch his and pleasantly said, “How are

you?” she experienced a faint, almost physical shock. He was different

after all, and now she did not know whether to be glad or sorry.

Unchanged, she need not have given him another thought; subtly altered,

she was bound to probe into the how and why. He sat beside her on the

old-fashioned couch with a curled head, and his thirteen stone

descending heavily on the springs sent up her light weight with a

perceptible jerk.

“Clumsy boy!” Mrs. Sales exclaimed playfully.

Rose laughed. “It’s like the old see-saw. I was always in the air and

you on the ground. Is it there still—near the pigsties?”

“Yes, still there.” But this threatened to become too exclusive a

conversation, and Rose tried to do her share in more general topics.

Caroline, talking of the advantage of Radstowe, regretting the greater

gaiety of the past, when Sophia and she were belles, was adding

gratuitous advice on the management of husbands and some information on

the ways of men. Mrs. Sales laughed and glanced now and then at

Francis, but whether he responded Rose could not see, unless she turned

her head. He ought certainly to have been smiling at so pretty a

person, wrinkling his eyes in the way he had and straightening the

mouth which was sullen in repose. Yet she was almost sure he was doing

the minimum demanded of politeness, almost sure he was thinking of

herself and was conscious of her nearness, just as she, for the first

time, was physically conscious of his.

She rose, saying, “May I look out of the window? I always liked this

view of the garden.” And having gazed out and made the necessary

remarks, she sat down, separated from him by the width of the room and

with her back to the light, a strategical position she ought to have

taken up before. But here she was at the disadvantage of facing him and

a scrutiny of which she had not thought him capable. With his legs

stretched out, his hands in his pockets, his eyes apparently half shut

but unquestionably fixed on her, he was really behaving rather badly.

She had never been stared at like this before and she told herself that

under the shelter of his marriage he had grown daring, if not insolent;

but at the same time she knew she was not telling herself the truth: he

was simply in the position of a thirsty man who has at last found a

stream. It appeared, then, that his wife did not sufficiently quench

his thirst.

Rose carefully did not look his way, but she experienced an altogether

new excitement, the very ancient one of desiring to taste forbidden

fruit simply because it was forbidden; this particular fruit, as such,

had no special charm; but she was born a Mallett and the half-sister of

Reginald. She had, however, as he had not, a substantial basis of

personal pride and a love of beauty which was at least as effectual as

a moral principle and she had not Francis’s excuse for his behaviour.

She believed he did not know what he was doing; but she was entirely

clear-sighted as to herself and she refused to encourage the silent

intercourse which had established itself between them.

Caroline was in the midst of a piece of gossip, Sophia was interjecting

exclamations of moderation and reproach, and Mrs. Sales was manifestly

amused. Her chromatic giggle was as punctual as Sophia’s reproof, and

Rose drew closer to the group made by the three, and said, “I’m missing

Caroline’s story. Which one is it?” And now it was Francis who laughed.

“It’s finished,” Caroline said. “Don’t tell your husband, at least till

we have gone—and we ought to go at once.”

But the coachman was not on the box. He had been invited to take tea in

the kitchen.

“We won’t disturb him,” Sophia said. “No, Caroline, let him have his

tea. We ought to encourage teetotal drinking in his class. Perhaps Mrs.

Sales will let us go round the garden. I am so fond of flowers.”

“Come and look at the pigsties,” Francis said to Rose, but, assuring

him she had grown too old for pigs, she followed the rest.

The walled garden had a beautiful disorder. A grey kitten and a white

puppy sat together on the grass, enjoying the sunshine and each other’s

company and pretending to be asleep; and though the kitten displayed no

interest in the visitors, holding its personality of more importance

than anything else, the puppy jumped up, barked, and rushed at each

person in turn. Caroline, picking up her skirts and showing the famous

Mallett ankle, said, “Go away, dog!” in a severe tone, and the puppy

rolled on the grass to show that he did not care and could not by any

possibility be snubbed. Under an apple-tree on which the fruit was

ripening were two cane chairs, a table, a newspaper and a work-basket.

“This is my favourite place,” Mrs. Sales said to Rose. “I hate that

drawing-room, and Francis won’t have it touched. But I’ve got a boudoir

that’s lovely. He sent an order to the best shop and had it ready for a

surprise, so if I’m not out of doors I sit there. Would you like to see

it?”

“I should, very much,” Rose said.

“Then come quickly while the others are eating those plums off the

wall.”

Rose looked back. “I can’t think what Sophia will do with the stone,”

she murmured, smiling her faint smile.

Mrs. Sales was puzzled by this remark. “Oh, she’ll manage, won’t she?

You don’t want to help her, do you?”

“No, I don’t want to help her.”

“Come along, then.”

Rose saw the boudoir, a little room half-way up the stairs. “It’s Louis

something,” said Mrs. Sales, “but all the same, I think it’s sweet, and

pink’s my favourite colour. Francis thought of that. I was wearing pink

when I first met him.”

“I see,” Rose said. “Was that long ago?”

“Only three months. I think we both fell in love at the same minute,

and that’s nice, isn’t it? I know I’m going to be happy, but I do hope

I shan’t be dull. We’re a big family at home. I’m English,” she added a

little anxiously, “but my father settled there.”

“I don’t think you should be dull,” Rose said. “Everybody in Radstowe

will call on you, and there are lots of parties. And then there’s

hunting.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Sales. Her eyes left Rose’s face, to return a little

wider, a little warier. “Do you hunt too?”

“As often as I can. I only have one horse.”

“Francis says I am to have two.”

“And they will be good ones. He likes hunting and horses better than

anything else, I suppose.”

“But he mustn’t neglect the farm,” his wife said firmly, and she added

slowly, “I don’t know that I need two horses, really. I haven’t ridden

much, and there’s a lot to do in the house. I don’t believe in people

being out all day.”

“Well, you can’t hunt all the year round, you know.”

Mrs. Sales let out a sigh so faint that most people would have missed

it. “It will be beginning soon, won’t it?”

“It feels a long way off in weather like this,” Rose said. “But they

are getting into the carriage. I must go.”

Mrs. Sales lingered for an instant. “I do hope we’re going to be

friends.” This was more than a statement, it was a request, and Rose

shrank from it; but she said lightly, “We shall be meeting often. You

will see more of us than you will care for, I’m afraid. The Malletts

are rather ubiquitous in Radstowe. It’s fortunate for us, or Caroline

would die of boredom, but I don’t know how it appears to other people.”

She was going down the shallow stairs and the voice of Mrs. Sales

followed her sadly: “He hasn’t told me anything about any of his

friends.”

“In three months? He hasn’t had time, with you to think about!” A

laugh, pleased and self-conscious, reached her ears. “No, but it’s

rather lonely in this old house. We’re a big family at home—and so

lively. There was always something going on. I wished we lived nearer

Radstowe.”

“And I envy you here. It’s peaceful.”

“Yes, it’s that,” Mrs. Sales agreed.

“I’m a good deal older than you, you see,” Rose elaborated.

“That’s just it,” said Mrs. Sales.

Rose laughed, and Francis, standing at the door, turned at the sound in

time to catch the end of Rose’s smile.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Mrs. Sales’s candour.”

“Oh, was I rude?”

“No. Good-bye. I liked it.” Yet, as she settled herself in her place,

she was not more than half pleased. She liked her superior age only

because it marked a difference between her and the wife of Francis

Sales.

“H’m!” Caroline said when the carriage had turned into the road and the

figures in the doorway had disappeared. “Pretty, but unformed.”

“They seem very happy,” Sophia said, “but I do think she ought to have

been wearing black. Her father-in-law has only been dead six months,

and even Francis was not wearing a black tie.”

But if Caroline condemned men in general, she supported them in

particular. “Quite right, too. Men don’t think of these things—and a

black tie with those tweeds! Sophia, don’t be silly and sentimental;

but you always were, you always will be.”

“She might have had a white frock with a black ribbon,” Sophia

persisted. “Why, Rose looked more like our old friend’s

daughter-in-law.”

“But hardly like a bride,” Rose said. “And you see, pink is her

colour.”

“So it is, dear. One could see that. Pink and blue, just as they were

mine.” She corrected herself. “_Are_ mine. Our complexions are very

much alike; in fact, she reminded me a little of myself.”

“Nonsense, Sophia! If you had been like that I should have disowned

you. However, she will do well enough for Sales Hall.”

Rose bent forward slightly. “I like her,” she said distinctly. “And

she’s lonely.”

“Well, my dear, she’ll soon have half a dozen children to keep her

lively.”

“Hush, Caroline! The man will hear you.”

Caroline addressed Rose. “Sophia’s modesty is indecent. I’ve done what

I could for her.”

“Please listen to me,” Rose said. “You are not to belittle Mrs. Sales

to people, Caroline. You can be a powerful friend, if you choose, and

if you sing her praises there will be a mighty chorus.”

“That’s true,” Caroline said.

“Yes, that’s true, dear Caroline,” Sophia echoed. “And I think you’re

taking this very sweetly, Rose.”

“Sweetly? Why?”

Caroline pricked up her ears. “What’s this? I’m out of this. Oh, that

old rubbish! She will have it you and Francis should have married. My

dear Sophia, Rose could have married anybody if she’d wanted to. You’ll

admit that? Yes? Then can’t you see”—she tapped Sophia’s knee—“then

can’t you see that Rose didn’t want him? That’s logic—and something you

lack.”

“Yes, dear,” Sophia said with the meekness of the unconvinced. “And of

course it’s wrong to think of it now that he’s married to another.”

Caroline guffawed her loudest, and the astonished horse quickened his

pace. The driver cast a look over his shoulder to see that all was

well, for he had a sister who made strange noises in her fits; and

Sophia, sitting in her drooping fashion, as though her head with its

great knob of fair hair, in which the silver was just beginning to

show, were too heavy for her body, had to listen to the old gibes which

had never made and never would make any impression on her, though she

would have felt forlorn without them. She was the only puritanical

Mallett in history, Caroline said. Oh, yes, the General had been great

at family prayers, but he was trying to make up for lost time. It was

difficult to believe that Sophia and Reginald were the same flesh and

blood.

Sophia interrupted. She was fond of Reginald, but she had no desire to

be like him, and Caroline knew he was a disgrace. They argued for some

time, and Rose closed her eyes until the talk, never really

acrimonious, drifted into reminiscences of their childhood and

Reginald’s.

It was strange that they should have chosen that day to speak so much

of him, for when they reached home they found a letter addressed in an

unfamiliar hand.

“What’s this?” Caroline said.

It was a thin, cheap envelope bearing a London postmark, and Caroline

drew out a flimsy sheet of paper.

“I must get my glasses,” she said. Her voice was agitated. “No, no, I

can manage without them. The writing is immense, but faint. It’s from

that woman.” She looked up, showing a face drawn and blotched with ugly

colour. “It’s to say that Reginald is dead.”

Mrs. Reginald Mallett had written the letter on the day of her

husband’s funeral, and Caroline’s tears for her brother were stemmed by

her indignation with his wife. She had purposely made it impossible for

his relatives to attend the ceremony.

“No,” Sophia said, “the poor thing was distressed. We mustn’t blame

her.”

“And such a letter!” Caroline flicked it with a disdainful finger.

Rose picked up the sheet. “I don’t see what else she could have said. I

think it’s dignified—a plain statement. Why should you expect more? You

have never taken any notice of her.”

“Certainly not! And Reginald never suggested it. Of course he was

ashamed, poor boy. However, I am now going to write to her, asking if

she is in need, and enclosing a cheque. I feel some responsibility for

the child. She is half a Mallett, and the Malletts have always been

loyal to the family.”

“Yes, dear, we’ll send a cheque, and—shouldn’t we?—a few kind words.

She will value them.”

“She’ll value the money more,” Caroline said grimly.

Here she was wrong, for the cheque was immediately returned. Mrs.

Mallett and her daughter were able to support themselves without help.

“Then we need think no more about them,” Caroline said, concealing her

annoyance, “and I shall be able to afford a new dinner dress. Black

sequins, I thought, Sophia—and we must give a dinner for the Sales.”

“Caroline, no, you forget. We mustn’t entertain for a little while.”

“Upon my word, I did forget. But it’s no use pretending. It really

isn’t quite like a death in the family, is it? Poor dear Reginald! I

was very fond of him, but half our friends believe he has been dead for

years. I shall wear black for three months, of course, but a little

dinner to the Sales would not be out of place. We have a duty to the

living as well as to the dead.”

Leaving her stepsisters to argue this point, Rose went upstairs and

looked into Reginald’s old room. She had known very little of him, but

she was sorry he was dead, sorry there was no longer a chance of his

presence in the house, of meeting him on the stairs, very late for

breakfast and quite oblivious of the inconvenience he was causing, and

on his lips some remark which no one else would have made.

His room had not been occupied for some time, but it seemed emptier

than before; the mirror gave back a reflection of polished furniture

and vacancy; the bed looked smooth and cold enough for a corpse. No

personal possessions were strewn about, and the room itself felt

chilly.

She was glad to enter her own, where beauty and luxury lived together.

The carpet was soft to her feet, a small wood fire burned in the grate,

for the evening promised to be cold, and the severe lines of the

furniture were clean and exquisite against the white walls. A pale soft

dressing-gown hung across a chair, a little handkerchief, as fine as

lace, lay crumpled on a table, there was a discreet gleam of silver and

tortoiseshell. This, at least, was the room of a living person. Yet, as

she stood before the cheval-glass, studying herself after the habit of

the Malletts, she thought perhaps she was less truly living than

Reginald in his grave. He left a memory of animation, of sin, of charm;

he had injured other people all his life, but they regretted him and,

presumably, he had had his pleasure out of their pain. And what was

she, standing there? A negatively virtuous young woman, without enough

desire of any kind to impel her to trample over feelings, creeds and

codes. If she died that moment, it would be said of her that she was

beautiful, and that was all. Reginald, with his greed, his

heartlessness, his indifference to all that did not serve him, would

not be forgotten: people would sigh and smile at the mention of his

name, hate him and wish him back. She envied him; she wished she could

feel in swift, passionate gusts as he had done, with the force and the

forgetfulness of a passing wind. His life, flecked with disgrace, must

also have been rich with temporary but memorable beauty. The exterior

of her own was all beauty, of person and surroundings, but within there

seemed to be only a cold waste.

She had been tempted the other afternoon, and she had resisted with

what seemed to her a despicable ease: she had not really cared, and she

felt that the necessity to struggle, even the collapse of her

resistance, would have argued better for her than her self-possession.

And for a moment she wished she had married Francis Sales. She would at

least have had some definite work in the world; she could have kept him

to his farming, as Mrs. Sales had set herself to do; she would have had

a home to see to and daily interviews with the cook! She laughed at

this decline in her ambition; she no longer expected the advent of the

colossal figure of her young dreams; and she knew this was the hour

when she ought to strike out a new way for herself, to leave this place

which offered her nothing but ease and a continuous, foredoomed effort

after enjoyment; but she also knew that she would not go. She had not

the energy nor the desire. She would drift on, never submerged by any

passion, keeping her head calmly above water, looking coldly at the

interminable sea. This was her conviction, but she was not without a

secret hope that she might at last be carried to some unknown island,

odorous, surprising and her own, where she would, for the first time,

experience some kind of excess.

§ 4

The little dinner was duly given to the Sales. The Sales returned the

compliment; and Mrs. Batty, not to be outdone, offered what could only

adequately be described as a banquet in honour of the bride; there was

a general revival of hospitality, and the Malletts were at every

function. This was Caroline’s reward for her instructed enthusiasm for

Christabel Sales, and before long the black sequin dress gave way to a

grey brocade and a purple satin, and the period of mourning was at an

end. For Rose, these entertainments were only interesting because the

Sales were there, and she hardly knew at what moment annoyance began to

mingle definitely with her pity for the little lady with the wary eyes,

or when the annoyance almost overcame the pity.

It might have been at a dinner-party when Christabel, seated at the

right hand of a particularly facetious host, let out her high chromatic

laughter incessantly, and the hostess, leaning towards Francis, told

him with the tenderness of an elderly woman whose own romance lies far

behind her, that it was a pleasure to see Mrs. Sales so happy. He

murmured something in response and, as he looked up and met the gaze of

Rose, she smiled at him and saw his eyes darken with feeling, or with

thought.

After dinner he sought her out. She had known that would happen: she

had been avoiding it for weeks, but it was useless to play at

hide-and-seek with the inevitable, and she calmly watched him approach.

“Why did you laugh?” he asked at once, in his old, angry fashion. “You

were laughing at me.”

“No, I smiled.”

“Ah, you’re not so free with your smiles that they have no meaning.”

“Perhaps not, but I don’t know what the meaning was.”

“I believe you’ve been laughing at me ever since I came back.”

“Indeed, I haven’t. Why should I?”

“God knows,” he answered with a shrug; “I never do understand what

people laugh at.”

“You’re too self-conscious, Francis.”

“Only with you,” he said.

“Somebody is going to sing,” she warned him as a gaunt girl went

towards the piano; and sinking on to a convenient and sheltered couch,

they resigned themselves to listen—or to endure. From that corner Rose

had a view of the long room, mediocre in its decoration, mediocre in

its occupants. She could see her host standing before the fire,

swinging his eyeglasses on a cord and gazing at the cornice as the song

proceeded. She could see Christabel’s neck and shoulders and the back

of her fair head. Beside her a plump matron had her face suitably

composed; three bored young men were leaning against a wall.

The music jangled, the voice shrieked a false emotion, and Rose’s

eyebrows rose with the voice. It was dull, it was dreary, it was a

waste of time, yet what else, Rose questioned, could she do with time,

of which there was so much? She could not find an answer, and there

rose at that moment a chorus of thanks and a gentle clapping of hands.

The gaunt girl had finished her song and, poking her chin, returned to

her seat. The room buzzed with chatter; it seemed that only Francis and

Rose were silent. She turned to look at him.

“This is awful,” he said.

“No worse than usual.”

“When do you think we shall have exhausted Radstowe hospitality? And

the worst of it is we have to give dinners ourselves, and the same

things happen every time.”

“I find it soporific,” said Rose.

“I’d rather be soporific in an arm-chair with a pipe.”

“This is one of the penalties of marriage,” Rose said lightly.

“Look here, I’m giving Christabel another jumping lesson to-morrow.

I’ve put some hurdles up. Will you come? She’s getting on very well.

I’ll take her hunting before long.”

“Does she like it?”

“Oh, rather! My word, it would have been a catastrophe if she hadn’t

taken to it.” He paused, considering the terrible situation from which

he had been saved. “Can’t imagine what I should have done. But she’s

never satisfied. She’s beginning to jeer at the old brown horse. I’ve

seen a grey mare that might do for her,” and he went on to enumerate

the animal’s points.

Rose said, “Why don’t you let her have her first season with the old

horse? He knows his business. He’ll take care of her.”

“She wouldn’t approve of that. I tell you, she’s ambitious. I’ll go and

fetch her and you’ll hear for yourself.”

She watched him bending over his wife, and saw Christabel rise and slip

a hand under his arm. The action was a little like that of a young

woman taking a walk with her young man, but it betokened a confidence

which roused a slight feeling of envy and sadness in Rose’s heart.

“We have been talking about hunting,” she began at once.

“Oh, yes,” Christabel said. She looked warily from one to the other.

“I’m recommending you to stick to the old brown horse, but Francis says

you laugh at him.”

“Would you ride him yourself?” Christabel asked.

“Not if I could get something better.”

“Well, then—” Christabel’s tone was final.

But Rose persisted, saying, “But, you see, this isn’t my first season.

Stick to the old horse for a little while.”

“No,” Christabel said firmly. “If Francis thinks I can ride the mare, I

should like to have her.”

Rose laughed, but she felt uneasy, and Francis said, “I told you so.

She has any amount of pluck. You come and watch.”

“No, I can’t come to-morrow. I think I’ll see her first in all her

glory on the grey mare.”

“All the same,” Christabel added, “if she’s very expensive, I don’t

want her. Francis is extravagant over horses, and we have to be

careful.”

“We’ll economize somewhere else,” he said. “The mare is yours.”

She suppressed a sigh. Rose was sure of it, and in after days she was

to ask herself many times if she had been to blame in not interpreting

that sigh to Francis. But she had to give Christabel, and Christabel

especially, the loyalty of one woman to another. She would not wrench

from her in a few words the pride Francis took in her, to which she

sacrificed her fears. Rose had the astuteness of a jealousy she would

not own, of a sense of possession she could not discard, and she had

known, from the first moment, that Christabel was afraid of horses and

dreaded the very name of hunting. And Rose divined, too, that if she

herself had not been a horsewoman of some repute, Christabel would have

been less ambitious; she would have been contented with the old brown

horse; but Christabel, too, had an astuteness. No, she could not have

interfered; yet when she first saw Christabel on the mare she was

alarmed to the point of saying:

“Are you sure she’s all right? You’d better keep beside her, Francis.”

The mare was fidgety and hot-headed. Christabel’s hands were unsteady,

her face was pale, her lips were tight; but she was gay, and Francis

was proud to have her and her mount admired.

Rose looked round in despair. Could no one else see what was so plain

to her? She was tempted to go home. She felt she could not bear the

strain of watching that little figure perched on the grey beast that

looked like a wraith, like a warning. But she did not go, and she

learnt to be glad to have shared with Francis the horror of the moment

when the mare, out of control and mad with excitement, tried a fence

topping a bank, failed, and fell with Christabel beneath her.

On the ground there was a flurry of white and black, and then

stillness, while over the fields the hounds and the foremost riders

went like things seen in a dream, with the same callousness, the same

speed.

Rose saw men dismount and run towards the queer, ugly muddle on the

grass. She dismounted, too, and gave her horse to somebody to hold, but

she did nothing. Other, more capable people were before her, and it

struck her at that moment, while a bird in a bare hedge set up a short

chirrup of surprise, how little used she was to action. She seemed to

be standing alone in the big field: the rest was a picture with which

she had nothing to do. There was a busy group near the fence, some men

came running with a door, and then the sound of a shot broke through

her numbness. The mare had been put out of her pain; but what of

Christabel?

She hurried forward; she heard some one say, “Ah, here’s Miss Mallett,”

and she answered vaguely, “Men are gentler.” But as they lifted

Christabel, Rose held one of her hands. It felt lifeless; she looked

small and broken; she made no sound.

“She’s not conscious,” a man said, and at that she opened her eyes.

“My God, she’s got some pluck!” Francis said. “My God—”

She smiled at him, and he dropped behind with a gesture of despair.

“You were right,” he said to Rose, “she wasn’t equal to that brute.” He

turned angrily. “Why didn’t you make me see?”

She made no answer then, or afterwards, to him, but over and over

again, with the awful reiteration of the conscience-smitten, she set

out her reasons for her silence. She might have told him that of these

he was the chief. If he had looked at her less persistently on her

visits to Sales Hall, if he had married another kind of woman, she

would not have been afraid to speak, but she had tried not to

extinguish what little flame of love still flickered in his heart for

Christabel and she had succeeded in almost extinguishing her life, in

reducing her to permanent helplessness.

This was Rose’s first experience of how evil comes out of good. What

would happen to that love, Rose did not know. For a time it burned more

brightly, fanned by Christabel’s heroism and Francis’s remorse, but

heroism can become monotonous to the spectator and poignant remorse

cannot be endured for ever. Christabel’s plight was pitiful, but Rose

was sorrier for Francis. He had, as it were, engaged her compassion

years ago, he had a prior claim, and as time went on, her pity for

Christabel changed at moments to annoyance. It was cruel, but Rose had

no fund of patience. She disliked illness as she did deformity, and

though Christabel never complained of her constant pain, she developed

the exactions of an invalid, and the suspicions. In those blue eyes,

bluer, and more than ever wary, Rose saw the questions which were never

asked.

In the bedroom which, with the boudoir, had been furnished and

decorated by the best shop in Radstowe, for a surprise, Christabel lay

on a couch near the window, with a nurse in attendance, the puppy and

the kitten, both growing staid, for company. It tired her to use her

hands, she had never cared for reading and she lay there with little

for consolation but her pride in stoically bearing pain.

Often, and with many interruptions, she made Rose repeat the details of

the accident.

“I was riding well, wasn’t I?” she would ask. “Francis was pleased with

me. He said so. It wasn’t my fault, was it? And then, when they were

carrying me home did you hear what he said? Tell me what he said.”

And Rose told her: “He said, ‘My God, she has got pluck!’ Oh,

Christabel, don’t talk about it.”

“I like to,” she replied, but the day came when she insisted on this

subject for the last time.

“Tell me what you thought when you saw me on the mare,” she said, and

Rose, careless for once, answered immediately, “I thought she wasn’t

fit for you to ride.”

“Ah,” Christabel said slowly, “did you? Did you? But you didn’t say

anything. That was—queer.”

Rose said nothing. She was frozen dumb and there was no possible reply

to such an implication; but she rose and drew on her gloves. She looked

tall and straight in her habit, and formidable.

“Are you going? But you must have tea with Francis. He’s expecting

you.”

“I won’t stay to-day,” Rose said. She was shaking with the anger she

suppressed.

“But if you don’t,” Christabel cried, “he’ll want to know why. He’ll

ask me!”

“I can’t help that,” Rose said.

Tears came into Christabel’s eyes. “You might at least do that for me.”

“Very well. Because you ask me.”

“And you’ll come again soon?”

The sternness of Rose’s face was broken by an ironic smile. “Of course!

If you are sure you want me!”

She went downstairs and, as usual, Francis was waiting for her in the

matted hall. He did not greet her with a word or a smile. He watched

her descend the shallow flight, and together they went down the passage

to the clear drawing-room, where the faded water-colours looked unreal

and innocent and ignorant of tragedy.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She looked into the oval mirror which had so often reflected

his mother’s placid face. “My hat’s a little crooked,” she said.

He laughed without mirth. “Never in its life. Has Christabel been

worrying you?”

“Worrying me? Poor child—”

“Yes, it’s damnable, but she does worry one—and you look odd.”

“I’m getting old,” she murmured, not seeking reassurance but stating a

fact plain to her.

“You’re exactly the same!” he said. “Exactly the same!” He swept his

face with his hands, and at that sight a new sensation seized her

delicately, delightfully, as though a firm hand held her for an instant

above the earth, high in the air, free from care, from restrictions,

from the necessity for thought—but only for an instant. She was set

down again, inwardly swaying, apparently unmoved, but conscious of the

carpet under her feet, the chairs with twisted legs, the primrose

curtains, the spring afternoon outside.

“Let us have tea,” she said. She handled the pretty flowered cups and

under her astonished eyes the painted flowers were like a little

garden, gay and sweet and gilded. She seemed to smell them and the hiss

of the kettle was like a song. Then, as she handed him his cup and

looked into his wretched face and remembered the bitter reality of

things, she still could not lose all sense of sweetness.

“Don’t say any more!” she said quickly. “Don’t say another word.”

“I won’t, if you’re sure you know everything. Do you?”

“Every single thing.”

“And you care?”

“Yes.” She drew a breath. “I care—beyond speaking of it. Francis, not a

word!”

It was extraordinary, it was inexplicable, but it was true and happily

beyond the region of regrets, for if she had married him years ago she

would never have loved him in this miraculous, sudden way, with this

passion of tenderness, this desire to make him happy, this terrible

conviction that she could not do it, this promise of suffering for

herself. And the wonder of it was that he had no likeness to that

absurd Francis of whom she had dreamed and whom she had not loved; no

likeness, either, to the colossal tyrant. The man she loved was in some

ways weak, he was petulant, he was a baby, but he needed her and, for a

romantic and sentimental moment, she saw herself as his refuge, his

strength. She could not, must not communicate those thoughts. She began

to talk happily and serenely about ordinary things until she remembered

that she had lingered past her usual hour and that upstairs Christabel

must be listening for the sound of her horse’s hoofs. She started up.

“Will you fetch Peter for me?”

“If you will tell me when you are coming again.”

“One day next week.”

He kissed her hand, and held it.

“Francis, don’t. You mustn’t spoil things.”

“I haven’t said a word.”

“Silence is good,” she said.

§ 5

And she knew she could be silent for ever. Restraint and a love of

danger lived together in her nature and these two qualities were fed by

the position in which she found herself, nor would she have had the

position changed. It supplied her with the emotion she had wanted. She

had the privilege of feeling deeply and dangerously and yet of

preserving her pride.

There was irony in the fact that Christabel, hinting at suspicions for

which, in Rose’s mind, there was at first no cause, had at last

actually brought about what she feared, and if Rose had looked for

justification, she might have found it there. But she did not look for

it any more than Reginald would have done; she was like him there, but

where she differed was in loyalty to an idea. She saw love as something

noble and inspiring, worthy of sacrifice and, more concretely, she was

determined not to increase the disaster which had befallen Christabel.

Sooner or later, in normal conditions, her marriage must have been

recognized as a failure, but in these abnormal ones it had to be

sustained as a success, and it seemed to Rose that civilized beings

could love, and live in the knowledge of their love, without injuring

some one already cruelly unfortunate.

But, as the months went by, she found she had to reckon with two

difficult people, or rather with two people, ordinary in themselves,

cast by fate into a difficult situation. There was Christabel, with her

countless idle hours in which to formulate theories, to lay traps, to

realize that the devotion of Francis became less obvious; and there was

Francis, breaking the spirit of their contract with his looks, and

sometimes the letter, with his complaints and pleadings.

He could not go on like this for ever, he said. He saw her once a week

for a few minutes, if he was lucky: how could she expect him to be

satisfied with that? It was little enough, she owned, but more than it

might have been. She could never make him admit, perhaps because he did

not feel, how greatly they were blessed; but she saw herself as the

guardian of a temple: she stood in the doorway forbidding him to enter

less the place should be defiled, yet forbidding him in such a way that

he should not love her less. Yet constantly saying “No,” constantly

shaking the head and smiling propitiatingly the while is not to

appease; and those short hours of companionship in which they had once

managed to be happy became times of strain, of disappointment, of

barely kept control.

“I wish I could stop loving you,” he broke out one day, “but I can’t.

You’re the kind one doesn’t forget. I thought I’d done it once, for a

few months, but you came back—you, came back.”

She smiled, seeming aloof and full of some wisdom unknown to him. She

knew he could not do without her, still more she knew he must not do

without her, and these certainties became the main fabric of her love.

She had to keep him, less for her own sake than for that of her idea,

but gradually the severe rules she had made became relaxed.

They were not to meet except on that one day a week demanded by

Christabel, who also had to keep Francis happy and who would have

welcomed the powers of darkness to relieve the monotony of her own

life; but Rose could hardly take a ride without meeting Francis, also

riding; or he would appear, on foot, out of a wood, out of a side road,

and waylay her. He seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of her presence,

and they would have a few minutes of conversation, or of a silence

which was no longer beautiful, but terrible with effort, with

possibilities and with dread.

She ought, she knew, to have kept to her own side of the bridge, to

have ridden on the high Downs inviting to a rider, but she loved the

farther country where the air was blue and soft, where little orchards

broke oddly into great fields, where brooks ran across the lanes and

pink-washed cottages were fronted by little gardens full of homely

flowers and clothes drying on the bushes. There was a smell of fruit

and wood fires and damp earth; there was a veil of magic over the whole

landscape and, far off, the shining line of the channel seemed to be

washing the feet of the blue hills. The country had the charm of home

with the allurement of the unknown and, within sound of the steamers

hooting in the river, almost within sight of the city lying, red-roofed

and smoky with factories, round the docks and mounting in terraces to

the heights of Upper Radstowe, there was an expectation of mystery, of

secrets kept for countless centuries by the earth which was rich and

fecund and alive. She could not deny herself the sight of this country.

It had become dearer to her since her awakened feelings had brought

with them the complexities of new thoughts. It soothed her though it

solved nothing. It did not wish to solve anything. It lay before her

with its fields, its woods, its patches of heathy land, its bones of

grey limestone showing where the flesh of the red earth had fallen

away, its dips and hollows, its steep lanes, like the wide eye of a

being too full of understanding to attempt elucidations; it would not

explain; it knew but it would not impart the knowledge which must be

gained through the experience of years, of storms, of sunshine, of

calamity and joy.

And sometimes the presence of Francis with his personal claims and his

complaints was an intrusion, almost an anachronism. He was of his own

time, and the end of that was almost within sight, while the earth,

immensely old, had a youth of its own, something which Francis would

never have again. But perhaps, because he was essentially simple, he

would have fitted in well enough if he had been less ready to voice his

grievances and ruffle the calm which she so carefully preserved, which

he called coldness and for which he reproached her often.

“I have no peace,” he grumbled.

“You would get it if you would accept things as they are. You have to,

in the end, so why not now?”

She longed to give peace to him, but her tenderness was sane and she

found a strange pleasure in the pain of knowing him to be irritable and

childish. It made of her love a better thing, without the hope of any

reward but the continuance of service.

“It’s easier for you,” he said, and she answered, “Is it?” in the way

that angered him and yet held him, and she thought, without bitterness,

that he had never suffered anything without physical or mental tears.

“Yes, you have peace at home, but I go back to misery.”

“It’s her misery.”

“That doesn’t make it any better,” he retorted justly.

“I know.” She touched his sleeve and, feeling his arm stiffen, removed

her hand.

“And I feel a brute because I can’t care enough. If it were you now—”

Almost imperceptibly Rose shook her head. She had no illusions, but she

said, “Then why not pretend it’s me. Tell her all you do. Ask her

advice—you needn’t take it.”

“And it’s all a lie,” he growled.

She said serenely, “It has to be, but there are good lies.”

She wished, with an intensity she rarely allowed herself, that he would

be quiet and controlled. Though half her occupation would be gone, she

would feel for him a respect which would rebound on her and make her

admirable to herself, but she knew that life cannot be too lavish of

its gifts or death would always have the victory. This was not what she

had looked for, but it was good enough; she was necessary to him and

always would be; she was sure of that, yet she constantly repeated it;

moreover, she loved his bigness and his physical strength and the way

the lines round his eyes wrinkled when he smiled; she knew how to make

him smile and now and then they had happy interludes when they talked

about crops and horses, profit and loss, the buying and selling of

stock, and felt their friendship for each other like a mantle shared.

At the worst, she consoled herself, after a time of strain, it was like

riding a restive horse. There was danger which she loved: there was

need of skill and a light hand, of sympathy and tact, and she never

regretted the superman who was to have ruled her with a fatiguing rod

of iron. Here there was give and take; she had to let him have his head

and pull him up at the right moment and reward docility with kindness;

she even found a kind of pleasure, streaked with disgust, in dealing

with Christabel’s suspicions, half expressed, but present like shadowy

people in her room.

Of these she never spoke to Francis, but she had a malicious affection

for them; they had, as it were, done her a good turn, and though they

hid like secret enemies in the corners, she recognized them as allies.

And they looked so much worse than they were. She imagined them showing

very ugly faces to Christabel, who could only judge them by their

looks, and though it was cruel that she should be frightened by them,

it was impossible to drive them away. Rose could only sit calmly in

their presence and try to create an atmosphere of safety. She knew she

ought to feel hypocritical in this attendance on her lover’s wife, but

it was not of her choosing. She did not like Christabel, she would have

been glad never to see her again and, terrible as her situation was, it

appealed to Rose less then it would have done if she had not herself

come of people whose tradition was one of stoicism in trouble, of pride

which refused to reveal its distress. Physically, Christabel had those

qualities, but mentally she lacked them; it was chiefly to Rose that

she betrayed herself, and at each farewell she exacted the promise of

another visit soon. Was she fascinated by the sight of the woman

Francis loved? And when had that love been discovered? And was she sure

of it even now? She certainly had her sole excitement in her search for

evidence.

In that bedroom, gaily decorated for a bride, she lay heroically

bearing pain, lacking the devotion she should have had, finding her

reward in the memory of her husband’s appreciation of her courage, and

her occupation, perhaps her pleasure, in a refinement of self-torture.

As soon as Rose entered the room she was aware of the scrutiny of those

wary eyes, very wide open, as blue as flowers, and she knew that her

own face was like a mask. The little dog wagged his tail, the cat made

no sign, the nurse, after a cheerful greeting, went out of the room and

Rose took her accustomed place beside the window. It had a view of the

garden, the avenue of elms in which the rooks cawed continuously, the

hedge separating the fields from the high-road where two-wheeled carts,

laden with farm produce, jogged into Radstowe, driven by an old man or

a stout woman, and returned some hours later with the day’s

shopping—kitchen utensils inadequately wrapped up and glistening in the

sunshine, a flimsy parcel of drapery, a box of groceries. The old man

smoked his pipe, the stout woman shook the reins on the pony’s back;

the pony, regardless, went at his own pace. Heavy farm carts creaked

past, motor-cars whizzed by, the Sales Hall dairy cows were driven in

for milking, and then for a whole half hour there might be nothing on

the road. The country slept in the sunshine or patiently endured the

rain.

For a member of a large and lively family this prospect, seen from a

permanent couch, was not exhilarating, but Christabel did not complain:

she took advantage of every incident and made the most of it, but she

never expressed a desire for more. She had, for so frail and shattered

a body, an amazing capacity for endurance, as though she were upheld by

some spiritual force. It might have been religion or love, or the

desire to perpetuate Francis’s admiration, but Rose believed, and hated

herself for believing, that it was partly antagonism and a feverish

curiosity. She had been cheated of her youth and strength, and here,

with a beautiful, impassive face, was the woman who might have saved

her, a woman with a body strongly slim in her dark habit, and firm

white hands skilled in managing a horse. She had read the grey mare’s

mind, and now Christabel, delicately blue and pink and white, in a

wrapper of silk and lace, her hands fidgeting each other as they had

fidgeted the mare’s mouth, thought she was reading the mind of Rose.

She stared at her, fascinated but not afraid. There were things she

must find out.

She asked one day, and it was nearly two years since the accident, “Did

they kill the mare?” And Rose, aware that Christabel had known all the

time, answered, “Yes, at once. Her leg was broken.”

“What a pity!”

Waiting for what would come next, Rose smiled and looked out of the

window at the swaying elm tops.

“Such a useful animal!” Christabel said.

“Very dangerous,” Rose remarked, slipping deliberately into the trap.

“That’s what I mean. But not quite dangerous enough. Poor Francis! He

didn’t know. He doesn’t know now, does he? But of course not.”

Rose had a great horror of a debt and she owed something to Christabel,

but now she felt she had paid it off, with interest. She breathed

deeply, without a sound. Her tone was light.

“He knows all that is good for him.”

“You mean that is good for you.”

Rose stood up, pulled on her washleather gloves, sat down again. The

hands on the silk coverlet were shaking.

“You are making yourself ill,” Rose said. She was tempted to take those

poor fluttering hands into her own and steady them, but her flesh

shrank from the contact. She was tempted, too, to tell Christabel the

truth, but pride forbade her, and in a moment the impulse was gone, and

with its departure came the belief that the truth would be

annihilating. It would rob her of her glorious uncertainty, she would

be destroyed by the knowledge that Rose had seen her fear, seen and

tried to strengthen the slender hold she had on her husband’s love. It

was better to play the part of the wicked woman, the murderess, the

stealer of hearts: and perhaps she was wicked; she had not thought of

that before; the Malletts did not criticize their actions or analyse

their minds and she had no intention of breaking their habits. She

stood up again and said:

“Shall I call the nurse?”

“You’re not going yet? You’ve only been here a few minutes.”

“Long enough,” Rose said cheerfully.

Tears came into Christabel’s eyes. “And Francis is out. If he doesn’t

see you he’ll be angry, he’ll ask me why.”

“You can tell him.”

“But,” the tone changed, “perhaps you’ll see him on your way home.”

“Yes, and then I can tell him instead.”

The tears overflowed, she was helplessly angry, she sobbed.

“Be quiet,” Rose said sternly. “I shall tell him nothing. You know

that. You are quite safe, whatever you choose to say to me. Perfectly

safe.”

“I know. I can’t help it. I lie here and think. What would you do in my

place?”

“The same thing, I suppose,” Rose said.

“And you won’t go?”

“Yes, I’m going. You can tell Francis I was obliged to get home early.”

“But you’ll come again?”

“Oh, yes, I’ll come again.”

“You don’t want to.”

“No, I don’t want to.”

“But you’re always riding over here, aren’t you?”

“Nearly every day.”

“Oh, then—” The words lingered meaningly until Rose reached the door

and then Christabel said, “I wish you’d ask your sisters to come and

see me. They would tell me all the news.”

Rose went downstairs laughing at Christabel’s capacity for mingling

tragedy with the commonplace and sordid accusations with social

desires, but though she laughed she was strangely tired and, stretching

before her, she saw more weariness, more struggling, more effort

without result.

She stood in the masculine, matted hall, with the usual worn pair of

slippers in the corner, a stick lying across a chair, a collection of

coats and hats on the pegs, and she felt she would be glad if she were

never to see all this again, and for the first time she thought

seriously of desertion. She wished she could go to some unfamiliar

country where the people would all have new faces, where the language

would be strange, the sights different, the smells unlike those which

were wafted through the open door. She wanted a fresh body and a new

world, but she knew that she would not get them, for leaving Francis

would be like leaving a child. So she told herself, but at the back of

her mind was the certainty that if she went he would soon attach

himself to another’s strength—or weakness: yes, to another’s weakness,

and she found she could not contemplate that event, less because she

clung to him than because her pride could not tolerate a substitution

which would be an admission of her likeness to other women. Yet in that

very lack of toleration her pride was lowered, and if she was not

clinging to him for her own sake, she was holding on to her place, her

uniqueness, refusing the possibility that another woman could serve

him, as she had served him with pain, with suffering. She was like a

queen who does not love her throne supremely but will not abdicate, who

would rather fail in her appointed place than see another succeed in

it.

For a minute Rose Mallett sat down on the edge of the chair already

occupied by the stick and she pressed both hands against her forehead,

driving back her thoughts. Thinking was dangerous and a folly: it was a

concession to circumstances, and she would concede nothing. She stood

up, looked round for a mirror, remembered there was not one in the

hall, and with little, meticulous touches to her hat, her hair and the

white stock round her neck, she left the house.

She returned to a drawing-room occupied by Caroline and Sophia, yet

strangely silent. There was not a sound but what came from the birds in

the garden. Caroline’s spectacles were on her nose and, though she was

not reading the letter on her knee, she had forgotten to take them off,

an ominous sign. Sophia’s face was flushed with agitation, her head

drooped more than usual, but she lifted it with a sigh of relief at

Rose’s entrance.

“We’re in such trouble, dear,” she said.

“Trouble! Nonsense! No trouble at all! Look here, Rose, that woman has

died now.” She shook the letter threateningly. “Read this! Reginald’s

wife! I suppose she was his wife. I dare say he had dozens.”

“Caroline!” Sophia remonstrated.

Rose took the letter and read what Mrs. Reginald Mallett, believing

herself about to die, had written in her big, sprawling hand. The

letter was only to be posted after her death and she made no apology

for asking the Malletts to see that her daughter had the chance of

earning her living suitably. “She is a good girl,” she wrote, “but when

I am gone her only friend will be the landlady of this house and there

are young men about the place who are not the right kind. I am telling

my dear girl that I wish her to accept any offer of help she gets from

you, and she will do what I ask.”

“So, you see,” Caroline said as Rose looked up, “we’re not done with

Reginald yet, and what I propose is that we send Susan for the girl

to-morrow.”

“Yes, to-morrow,” Sophia echoed.

“Shall I go?” Rose asked. Sophia murmured gratitude, Caroline snorted

doubt, and Rose added, “No, I think not. She wouldn’t like it. Susan

would be better—but not to-morrow. You must write to the child— what’s

her name? Henrietta—”

“Yes, Henrietta, after our grandmother—the idea! I don’t know how

Reginald dared.”

“Is she a sacred character?” Rose asked dryly. “Write to her, Caroline,

and say Susan will come on the day that suits her best. You can’t drag

her away without warning. Let’s treat her courteously, please.”

“Oh, Rose, dear, I think we are always courteous,” Sophia protested.

Caroline merely said, “Bah!” and added, “And what are we going to do

with her when we get her? She’ll giggle, she’ll have a dreadful accent,

Sophia will blush for her. I shan’t. I never blush for anybody, even

myself, but I shall be bored. That’s worse, and if you think I’m going

to edit my stories for her benefit, Sophia, you’re mistaken. I never

managed to do that, even for the General, and I’m too old to begin.”

She removed her spectacles hastily. “Too old for that, anyhow.”

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.