§ 1
After luncheon Henrietta went to her room to unpack the brown tin trunk
which contained all her possessions, and as she ascended the stairs
with her hand on the polished mahogany rail, she heard Sophia saying,
“She’s a true Mallett. She has the Mallett ankle. Did you notice it,
Caroline?” And Caroline answered harshly, “Yes, the Mallett ankle, but
not the foot. Her foot is square, like a block of wood. What could you
expect?” Then the drawing-room door was closed softly on this
indiscretion.
Henrietta continued steadily up the stairs and across the landing to
her father’s room, and before the long mirror on the wall she halted to
survey her reflected feet. Aunt Caroline had but exaggerated the truth;
they were square, but they were small, and she controlled her trembling
lips.
She pushed back from her forehead the black, curling hair. She was
tired; the luncheon had been a strain, and the carelessly loud words of
Caroline reminded her that she was undergoing an examination which,
veiled by courtesy, would be severe. Already they were blaming her
mother for her feet; and all three of them, the blunt Caroline, the
tender Sophia, the mysteriously silent Rose, were on the watch for the
maternal traits.
Well, she was not ashamed of them. Her mother had been good, brave,
honest, loving, patient, and her father had been none of these things;
but no doubt these aunts of hers put manners before morals, as he had
done; and she remembered how, when she was quite a little girl, and the
witness of one of the unpleasant domestic scenes which happened often
in those days, before Reginald Mallett’s wife had learnt forbearance,
she had noticed her father’s face twitch as though in pain. Glad of a
diversion, she had asked him with eager sympathy, “Is it toothache?”
and he had answered acidly, “No, child, only the mutilation of our
language.” She remembered the words, and later she understood their
meaning and the flushing of her mother’s face, the compression of her
lips, and she was indignant for her sake.
Yet she could feel for her father, in spite of the fact that whatever
her accent or grammatical mistakes, her mother’s conduct was always
right and her father, with his charming air, a little blurred by what
he called misfortune, his clear speech to which Henrietta loved to
listen, was fundamentally unsound. He could not be trusted. That was
understood between the mother and daughter: it was one of the facts on
which their existence rested, it entered into all their calculations,
it was the text of all her mother’s little homilies. Henrietta must
always pay her debts, she must tell the truth, she must do nothing of
which she was ashamed, and so far Henrietta had succeeded in obeying
these commands.
When Reginald Mallett died in the shabby boarding-house kept by Mrs.
Banks, he left his family without a penny but with a feeling of
extraordinary peace. They were destitute, but they were no longer
overshadowed by the fear of disgrace, the misery of subterfuge, the
bewildering oscillations between pity for the man who could not have
what he wanted and shame for his ceaseless striving after pleasure, his
shifts to get it, his reproaches and complaints.
In the gloomy back bedroom on the third story of the boarding-house he
lay on a bed hung with dingy curtains, but in the dignity which was one
of his inheritances. Under the dark, close-cut moustache, his lips
seemed to smile faintly, perhaps in amusement at the folly of his life,
perhaps in surprise at finding himself so still; the narrow beard of a
foreign cut was slightly tilted towards the dirty ceiling, his
beautiful hands were folded as though in a mockery of prayer. He was,
as Mrs. Banks remarked when she was allowed to see him, a lovely
corpse. But to Henrietta and her mother, standing on either side of the
bed, guarding him now, as they had always tried to do, he had subtly
become the husband and father he should have been.
“We must remember him like this,” Mrs. Mallett said, raising her soft
blue eyes, and Henrietta saw that the small sharp lines which Reginald
Mallett had helped to carve in her face seemed to have disappeared. It
was extraordinary how placid her face became after his death, but as
the days passed it was also noticeable that much of her vitality had
gone too. She left herself in Henrietta’s young hands and she, casting
about for a way of earning her living, found good fortune in the
terrible basement kitchen where Mrs. Banks moved mournfully and had her
disconsolate being. The gas was always lighted in that cavernous
kitchen, but it remained dark, mercifully leaving the dirt half unseen.
A joint of mutton, cold and mangled, was discernible, however, when
Henrietta descended to put her impecunious case before the landlady
and, gazing at it, the girl saw also her opportunity. Mrs. Banks had no
culinary imagination, but Henrietta found it rising in herself to an
inspired degree and there and then she offered herself as cook in
return for board and lodging for her mother and herself.
“I’m sure I’ll be glad to keep you,” Mrs. Banks said: “you give the
place a tone, you do really, you and your dear Ma sitting in the
drawing-room sewing of an evening; but it isn’t only the cooking,
though I do get to hate the sight of food. I get a regular grudge
against it. But it’s that butcher! Ready money or no meat’s his motto,
and how to make this mutton last—” She picked it up by the bone and
cast it down again.
“Oh, I can manage butchers,” Henrietta said. “Besides, we’ll pay our
way. You’ll see. Leave the cooking to me.”
“I will, gladly,” Mrs. Banks said, wiping away a tear. “Ever since
Banks took it into his head to jump into the river, it seems like as if
I hadn’t any spirit, and that Jenkins turns up his ugly nose every time
I put the mutton on the table—when he doesn’t begin talking to it like
an old friend. I can’t bear Jenkins, but he does pay regular, and
that’s something. Well, I’ll get on with the upstairs and leave you to
it.”
And so Henrietta began the work which kept her amazingly happy, fed and
sheltered her mother, who sat all day slowly making beautiful baby
linen for one of the big shops, and cemented Henrietta’s friendship
with the lachrymose Mrs. Banks. To be faced with a mutton bone and a
few vegetables, to have to wrest from these poor materials an
appetizing meal, was like an exciting game, and she played it with zest
and with success. She had the dubious pleasure of hearing Mr. Jenkins
smack his lips and seeing him distend his nostrils with anticipation;
the unalloyed one of watching the pale face of little Miss Stubb, the
typist, grow delicately pink and less dangerously thin, under the
stimulus of good food; the amusement of congratulating Mrs. Banks, in
public, on her new cook, and seeing Mrs. Banks, at the head of the
supper table, nod her head with important secrecy.
“I’ve made out,” she told Henrietta, “that I’ve a daily girl, without a
character, that’s how I can afford her, in the basement, but I must say
it’s made that Jenkins mighty keen on fetching his own boots of a
morning, but no lodgers below-stairs is my rule. You look out for
Jenkins, my dear. He’s no good. I know his sort.”
“Oh, I can manage Mr. Jenkins, too,” Henrietta said, and indeed she
made a point of bringing him to the hardly manageable state for the
amusement of proving her capacity. She despised him, but not for
nothing was she Reginald Mallett’s daughter; and Mr. Jenkins and the
butcher and a gloomy old gentleman who emerged from his bedroom to eat,
and locked himself up between meals, were the only men she knew. No
doubt Mrs. Mallett, placidly sewing, was alive to the attentions and
frustrations of Mr. Jenkins and had planned her letter to her
sisters-in-law some time before she wrote it, but the idea of parting
from her mother never occurred to Henrietta until Miss Stubb alarmed
her.
“Your mother,” she said poetically, “makes me think of snow melting
before the sun. In fact, I can’t look at her without thinking of snow
and snowdrops and—and graves. Last spring I said to Mrs. Banks, ‘She
won’t see the leaves fall,’ I said, and Mrs. Banks agreed. She has been
spared, but take care of her in these cold winds, Miss Henrietta,
dear.”
“She has a cold, only a cold,” Henrietta said in a dead voice, and she
went upstairs. Her mother was in bed, and Henrietta looked down at the
thin, pretty face. “How ill are you?” she asked in a threatening
manner. “Tell me how ill you are.”
“I’ve only got a cold, Henry dear. I shall be up to-morrow.”
“Promise you won’t be really ill.”
“Why should I be?”
“It’s Miss Stubb—saying things.”
“Women chatter,” Mrs. Mallett said. “If it’s not scandal, it’s an
illness. You ought to know that.”
“They might leave you alone, anyway.”
“Yes, I wish they would,” Mrs. Mallett said faintly, and dropped back
on her pillow.
Now, sitting in her father’s room, with her mother only a few weeks
dead, she reproached herself for her readiness to be deceived, for her
preoccupation with her own affairs and the odious Mr. Jenkins, for the
exuberance of life which hid from her the dwindling of her mother’s,
and the fact, now so plain, that when Reginald Mallett died his wife’s
capacity for struggling was at an end. She had suffered bitterly from
the sight of his deterioration and from her failure to prevent it. In
his sulky, torturing presence she had desired his absence, but this
permanent absence was more than she could bear. And all Henrietta could
do was to obey her mother’s injunction to accept help from her aunts,
but she had refused the offer of an escort to Radstowe and Nelson
Lodge; she would have no highly respectable servant sniffing at the
boarding-house—and she would have been bound to sniff in that
permanently scented atmosphere—which was, after all, her home. She left
with genuine regret, with tears.
“You mustn’t cry, dearie,” Mrs. Banks said, holding Henrietta to the
bosom of her greasy dress. “It’s a lucky thing for you.”
“Perhaps,” Henrietta said, “but I’d rather be with you, and I can’t
bear to think of the cooking going to pieces. I’ll send you some
recipes for nice dishes.”
“Too many eggs,” Mrs. Banks said prophetically.
“I dare say, but you can manage if you think about it. And remember, if
Miss Stubb has too much cold mutton, she’ll lose her job, and then
you’ll lose her money. It will pay you to feed her. You haven’t had a
debt since I began to help you.”
“I know, I know; but I’ll have them now, for certain. I’ve told you
before that Banks took all my ideas with him when he dropped into the
river,” Mrs. Banks said hopelessly, and on Henrietta’s journey to
Radstowe it was of Mrs. Banks that she chiefly thought. It seemed as
though she were deserting a friend.
She was surprised by the smallness of Nelson Lodge as she walked up the
garden path; she had pictured something more imposing than this low
white building, walled off from the wide street; but within she
discovered an inconsistent spaciousness. The hall was panelled in white
wood, the drawing-room, sparsely but beautifully furnished, was white
too, and she immediately felt, as indeed she looked, thoroughly out of
harmony with her surroundings. She waited there, in her cheap black
clothes, like some little servant seeking a situation; but her welcome,
when it came, after a rustling of silken skirts on the stairs, assured
her that she was acknowledged as a member of the family. Sophia took
her tenderly to her heart and murmured, “Oh, my dear, how like your
father!” Caroline patted her cheek and said, “Yes, yes, Reginald’s
daughter, so she is!” And a moment later, Rose entered, faintly
smiling, extending a cool hand.
Henrietta’s acutely feminine eye saw immediately that her Aunt Rose was
supremely well-dressed, and all her past ideas of grandeur, of plumed
hats and feather boas and ornamental walking shoes, left her for ever.
She knew, too, that clothes like these were very costly, beyond her
dreams, but she decided, in a moment, to rearrange and subdue the black
trimming of her hat.
On the other hand, the appearance of the elder aunts almost shocked
her. At the first glance they seemed bedizened and indecent in their
mixture of rouge and more than middle age; but at the second and the
third they became attractive, oddly distinguished. She felt sure of
them, of their sympathy, of her ability to please them. It was Aunt
Rose who made her feel ill at ease, and it was Aunt Rose of whom she
thought as she sat by her bedroom window and looked down at the back
garden, bright with the flowers of spring.
Yet it was Aunt Caroline who had been unkind about her feet. They were
like that, these grand people; they had beautiful manners but nothing
superficial escaped them; they made no allowances, they went in for no
deceptions, and though it was Caroline who had actually condemned the
small, strong feet which now rested, slipperless, on the soft carpet,
Henrietta was sure that Rose had seen them too. She had seen
everything, though apparently she saw nothing, and Henrietta had to
acknowledge her fear of Rose’s criticism. It was formidable, for it
would be unflinching in its standards.
“Well,” Henrietta thought, “I can only be myself, and if I’m common—
but I’m not really common—it’s better than pretending; and of course I
am rather upset by the house and the servants and all the forks and
spoons. I hope there won’t be anything funny to eat for dinner. I
wish—” To her own amazement, she burst into a brief storm of tears. “I
wish I had stayed with Mrs. Banks.”
She had her place in the boarding-house, she was a power there, and she
missed already her subtle, unrecognized belief in her superiority over
Mrs. Banks and Miss Stubb and Mr. Jenkins and the rest. She was also
honestly troubled about the welfare of the landlady, who was her only
friend. It was strange to sit in her father’s room and look at a
portrait of him as a youth hanging on the wall, and remember that Mrs.
Banks, who made him shudder, was her only friend.
She left her seat by the window to look more closely at that portrait,
and after a brief examination she turned to the dressing-table to see
in the mirror a feminine replica of the face on the wall. She had never
noticed the likeness before. She had only to push back her hair and she
saw her father. Where his nose was straight, hers was slightly tilted,
but there was the same darkness of hair and eyes, the same modelling of
the forehead, the same incipient petulance of the lips.
She was astonished, she was unreasonably pleased, and with the energy
of her inspiration she swept back the curls of which her mother had
been so proud, and pinned them into obscurity. The resemblance was
extraordinary: even the low white collar of her blouse, fastened with a
black bow, repeated the somewhat Byronic appearance of the young man;
and as there came a knock at the door, she turned, a little
shame-faced, but excited in the certainty of her success.
But it was only Susan, who gave no sign of astonishment at the change.
She had come to see if she could help Miss Henrietta to unpack, but
Henrietta had already laid away her meagre outfit in the walnut tallboy
with the curved legs. Susan, however, would remove the trunk, and if
Miss Henrietta would tell her what dress she wished to wear this
evening, Susan would be able to lay out her things. The tin trunk
clanked noisily though Susan lifted it with tactful care, and Henrietta
blushed for it, but the aged portmanteau, bearing the initials _R. M._,
became in the discreet presence of Susan a priceless possession.
“It’s full of books,” Henrietta said; “I won’t unpack them. I thought
my aunts would let me keep them somewhere. They are my father’s books.”
“There’s an old bookcase belonging to Mr. Reginald in the box-room,”
Susan said; “I’ll speak to Miss Caroline about it.”
“Did you know my father?” Henrietta asked at once.
“Yes, Miss Henrietta,” Susan said.
“Do you think I’m like him?”
“It’s a striking likeness, Miss Henrietta,” and warming a little, Susan
added, “I was just saying so to Cook.”
“Did Cook know him, too?”
“Oh, yes, Miss Henrietta. Cook and I have been with the family for
years. If you’ll tell me which dress you wish to wear—”
“There’s only one in the wardrobe,” Henrietta said serenely, for
suddenly her shabbiness and poverty mattered no longer. She was stamped
with the impress of Reginald Mallett, whom she had despised yet of whom
she was proud, and that impress was like a guarantee, a sort of
passport. She had a great lightness of heart; she was glad she had left
Mrs. Banks, glad she was in her father’s home, and learning from Susan
that the ladies rested in their own rooms after luncheon, she decided
to go out and look on the scenes of her father’s youth.
§ 2
This was not, she told herself, disloyalty to her mother, for had not
that mother, whom she loved and painfully missed, sent her to this
place? Her mother was generous and sweet; she would grudge no
late-found allegiance to Reginald Mallett. Had she not said they must
remember him at his best, and would she not be glad if Henrietta could
find bits of that best in this old house, in the streets where he had
walked, in the sights which had fed his eyes?
Henrietta started out, gently closing the front door behind her. The
wide street was almost empty; a milkcart bearing the legend, “Sales
Hall Dairy,” was being drawn at an easy pace by a demure pony, his
harness adorned with jingling bells. The milkman whistled and, as the
cart stopped here and there, she missed the London milkman’s harsh cry,
and missed it pleasurably. This man was in no hurry, there was no
impatience in his knock; the whole place seemed to be half asleep,
except where children played on The Green under the old trees. This
comparatively small space, mounting in the distance to a little hill
backed by the sky, was more wonderful to Henrietta than Hyde Park when
the flowers were at their best. There were no flowers here; she saw
grass, two old stone monuments, tall trees, a miniature cliff of grey
rock, and sky. On three sides of The Green there were old houses and
there were seats on the grass, but houses and seats had the air of
being mere accidents to which the rest had grown accustomed, and it
seemed to Henrietta that here, in spite of bricks, she was in the
country. The trees, the grass, the rocks and sky were in possession.
She followed one of the small paths round the hill and found herself in
a place so wonderful, so unexpected, that she caught back her breath
and let it out again in low exclamations of delight. She was now on the
other side of the hill and, though she did not know it, she was on the
site of an ancient camp. The hill was flat-topped; there were still
signs of the ramparts, but it was not on these she gazed. Far below her
was the river, flowing sluggishly in a deep ravine, formed on her right
hand and as far as she could see by high grey cliffs. These for the
most part were bare and sheer, but they gave way now and then to a
gentler slope with a rich burden of trees, while, on the other side of
the river, it was the rocks that seemed to encroach on the trees, for
the wall of the gorge, almost to the water’s edge, was thick with
woods. Here and there, on either cliff, a sudden red splash of rock
showed like an unhealed wound, amid the healthier grey. And all around
her there seemed to be limitless sky, huge fluffy clouds and gulls as
white.
At the edge of the cliff where she stood, gorse bushes bloomed and,
looking to the left, she saw the slender line of a bridge swung high
across the abyss. Beyond it the cliffs lessened into banks, then into
meadows studded with big elms and, on the city side, there were houses
red and grey, as though the rocks had simply changed their shapes. The
houses were clustered close to the water, they rose in terraces and
trees mingled with their chimneys. Below there were intricate
waterways, little bridges, warehouses and ships and, high up, the fairy
bridge, delicate and poised, was like a barrier between that place of
business and activity and this, where Henrietta stood with the trees,
the cliffs, the swooping gulls. It was low tide and the river was
bordered by banks of mud, grey too, yet opalescent. It almost reflected
the startling white of the gulls’ wings and, as she looked at it, she
saw that its colour was made up of many; there was pink in it and blue
and, as a big cloud passed over the sun, it became subtly purple; it
was a palette of subdued and tender shades.
Henrietta heaved a sigh. This was too much. She could look at it but
she could not see it all. Yet this marvellous place belonged to her,
and she knew now whence had come the glamour in the stories her father
had told her when she was a child. It had come from here, where an aged
city had tried to conquer the country and had failed, for the spirit of
woods and open spaces, of water and trees and wind, survived among the
very roofs. The conventions of the centuries, the convention of
puritanism, of worldliness, of impiety, of materialism and of charity
had all assailed and all fallen back before the strength of the
apparently peaceful country in which the city stood. The air was soft
with a peculiar, undermining softness; it carried with it a smell of
flowers and fruit and earth, and if all the many miles on the farther
side of the bridge should be ravished by men’s hands, covered with
buildings and strewn with the ugly luxuries they thought they needed,
the spirit would remain in the tainted air and the imprisoned earth. It
would whisper at night at the windows, it would smile invisibly under
the sun, it would steal into men’s minds and work its will upon them.
And already Henrietta felt its power. She was in a new world, dull but
magical, torpid yet alert.
She turned away and, walking down another little path threaded through
the rocks, she stood at the entrance to the bridge and watched people
on foot, people on bicycles, people in carts coming and going over it.
She could not cross herself for she had not a penny in her pocket, but
she stood there gazing and sometimes looking down at the road two
hundred feet below. This made her slightly giddy and the people down
there had too much the appearance of pigmies with legs growing from
their necks, going about perfectly unimportant business with a great
deal of fuss. It was pleasanter to see these country people in their
carts, school-girls with plaits down their backs, rosy children in
perambulators and an exceedingly handsome man on a fine black horse, a
fair man, bronzed like a soldier, riding as though he had done it all
his life.
She looked at him with admiration for his looks and envy for his
possessions, for that horse, that somewhat sulky ease. And it was quite
possible that he was an acquaintance of her aunts! She laughed away her
awed astonishment. Why, her own father had been such as he, though she
had never seen him on a horse. She had, after all, to adjust her views
a little, to remember that she was a Mallett, a member of an honoured
Radstowe family, the granddaughter of a General, the daughter of a
gentleman, though a scamp. She was ashamed of the something approaching
reverence with which she had looked at the man on the horse, but she
was also ashamed of her shame; in fact, to be ashamed at all was, she
felt, a degradation, and she cast the feeling from her.
Here was not only a new world but a new life, a new starting point; she
must be equal to the place, the opportunity and the occasion; she was,
she told herself, equal to them all.
In this self-confident mood she returned to Nelson Lodge and found
Caroline, in a different frock, seated behind the tea-table and in the
act of putting the tea into the pot.
“Just in time,” she remarked, and added with intense interest, “You
have brushed back your hair. Excellent! Look, Sophia, what an
improvement! And more like Reginald than ever. Take off your hat,
child, and let us see. My dear, I was going to tell you, when I knew
you better, that those curls made you look like an organ-grinder. Don’t
hush me, Sophia; I always say what I think.”
Henrietta was hurt; this, though Caroline did not know it, was a rebuff
to the mother who loved the curls; but the daughter would not betray
her sensibility, and as Rose was not present she dared to say, “An
organ-grinder with square feet.”
“Oh, you heard that, did you? Sophia said you would. Well, you must be
careful about your shoes. Men always look at a woman’s feet.” She
displayed her own, elegantly arched, in lustrous stockings and very
high-heeled slippers. “Sophia and I—Sophia’s are nearly, but not quite
as good as mine—are they Sophia?—Sophia and I have always been
particular about our feet. I remember a ball, when I was a girl, where
one of my partners—he ended by marrying a ridiculously fat woman with
feet like cannon balls—insisted on calling me Cinderella because he
said nobody else could have worn my shoes. Delightful creature! Do you
remember, Sophia?”
Sophia remembered very well. He had called her Cinderella, too, for the
same reason, but as Caroline had been the first to report the remark,
Sophia had never cared to spoil her pleasure in it. And now Caroline
did not wait for a reply, Rose entering at that moment, and her
attention having to be called to the change in Henrietta’s method of
doing her hair. Henrietta stiffened at once, but Rose threw, as it
were, a smile in her direction, and said, “Yes, charming,” and helped
herself to cake.
“And now,” said Caroline, settling herself for the most interesting
subject in the world, “your clothes, Henrietta.”
“I haven’t any,” Henrietta said at once; “but I think they’ll do until
I go away. I thought I should like to be a nurse, Aunt Caroline.”
“Nurse! Nonsense! What kind? Babies? Rubbish! You’re going to stay here
if you like us well enough, and we’ve made a little plan”—she nodded
vigorously—“a little plan for you.”
“We ought to say at once,” Sophia interrupted with painful honesty,
“that it was Rose’s idea.”
“Rose? Was it? I don’t know. Anyhow, we’re all agreed. You are to have
a sum of money, child; yes, for your father’s sake, and perhaps for
your own too, a sum of money to bring you in a little income for your
clothes and pleasures, so that you shall be independent like the rest
of us. Yes, it’s settled. I’ve written to our lawyer, James Batty. Did
your father ever mention James Batty? But, of course, he wouldn’t. He
married a fat woman, too, but a good soul, with a high colour, poor
thing. Don’t say a word, child. You must be independent. Nursing! Bah!
And if we don’t take care we shall have you marrying for a home.”
“This is your home,” Sophia said gently.
“No sentiment, Sophia, please. You’re making the child cry. The
Malletts don’t marry, Henrietta. Look at us, as happy as the day is
long, with all the fun and none of the trouble. We’ve been terrible
flirts, Sophia and I. Rose is different, but at least she hasn’t
married. The three Miss Malletts of Nelson Lodge! Now there are four of
us, and you must keep up our reputation.”
Overwhelmed by this generosity, by this kindness, Henrietta did not
know what to say. She murmured something about her mother’s wish that
she should earn her living, but Caroline scouted the idea, and Sophia,
putting her white hand on one of Henrietta’s, assured her that her dear
mother would be glad for her child to have the comforts of a home.
“I’m not used to them,” Henrietta said. “I’ve always taken care of
people. I shan’t know what to do.”
They would find plenty for her to do; there were many gaieties in
Radstowe and she would be welcomed everywhere. “And now about your
clothes,” Caroline repeated. “You are wearing black, of course. Well,
black can be very pretty, very French. Look at Rose. She rarely wears
anything else, but when Sophia and I were about your age, she used to
wear blue and I wore pink, or the other way round.”
“You do so still,” Rose remarked.
“A pink muslin,” Caroline went on in a sort of ecstasy, “a Leghorn hat
wreathed with pink roses—when was I wearing that, Sophia?”
“Last summer,” Rose said dryly.
“So I was,” Caroline agreed in a matter-of-fact voice. “Now, Henrietta.
Get a piece of paper and a pencil, Sophia, and we’ll make a list.”
The discussion went on endlessly, long after Henrietta herself had
tired of it. It was lengthened by the insertion of anecdotes of
Caroline’s and Sophia’s youth, and hardly a colour or a material was
mentioned which did not recall an incident which Henrietta found more
interesting than her own sartorial affairs.
Rose had disappeared, and the dressing-bell was rung before the subject
languished. It would never be exhausted, for Caroline, and even Sophia,
less vivid than her sister in all but her affections, grew pink and
bright-eyed in considering Henrietta’s points. And all the time
Henrietta had her own opinions, her own plans. She intended as far as
possible to preserve her likeness to her father, which was, as it were,
her stock-in-trade. She pictured herself, youthfully slim, gravely
petulant, her round neck rising from a Byronic collar fastened with a
broad, loose bow, and she fancied the society of Radstowe exclaiming
with one voice, “That must be Reginald Mallett’s daughter!”
She was to learn, however, that in Radstowe the memories of Reginald
Mallett were somewhat dim, and where they were clear they were
neglected. It was generally assumed that his daughter would not care to
have him mentioned, while praises of her aunts were constant and
enthusiastic and people were kind to Henrietta, she discovered, for
their sakes.
The stout and highly-coloured Mrs. Batty was an early caller. She
arrived, rather wheezy, compressed by her tailor into an expensive
gown, a basket of spring flowers on her head. She and Henrietta took to
each other, as Mrs. Batty said, at once. Here was a motherly person,
and Henrietta knew that if she could have Mrs. Batty to herself she
would be able to talk more freely than she had done since her arrival
in Radstowe. There would be no criticism from her, but unlimited good
nature, a readiness to listen and to confide and a love for the details
of operations and illnesses in which she had a kinship with Mrs. Banks.
Indeed, though Mrs. Batty was fat where Mrs. Banks was thin, cheerful
where she was gloomy, and in possession of a flourishing husband where
Mrs. Banks irritably mourned the loss of a suicide, they had
characteristics in common and the chief of these was the way in which
they took to Henrietta.
“You must come to tea on Sunday,” Mrs. Batty said. “We are always at
home on Sunday afternoons after four o’clock. I have two big boys,” she
sighed, “and all their friends are welcome then.” She lowered her
voice. “We don’t allow tennis—the neighbours, you know, and James has
clients looking out of every window—but there’s no harm, as the boys
say, in knocking the billiard balls about. I must say the click carries
a good way, so I tell the parlourmaid to shut the windows. And music—my
boy Charles,” she sighed again, “is mad on music. I like a tune myself,
but he never plays any. You’ll hear for yourself if you come on Sunday.
Now you will come, won’t you, Miss Henrietta?”
“Yes, she’ll come,” Caroline said. “Do her good to meet young people.
We’re getting old in this house, Mrs. Batty,” and she guffawed in
anticipation of the usual denial, but for once Mrs. Batty failed. Her
thoughts were at home, at Prospect House, that commodious family
mansion situate in its own grounds, and in one of the most favourable
positions in Upper Radstowe. So the advertisement had read before Mr.
Batty bought the property, and it was all true.
“John,” Mrs. Batty went on, “is more for sport, though he’s in the
sugar business, with an uncle. Not my brother—Mr. Batty’s.” She was
anxious to give her husband all the credit. “They are both good boys,”
she added, “but Charles—well, you’ll see on Sunday. You promise to
come.”
Henrietta promised, and with Mrs. Batty’s departure Caroline spoke her
mind. She was convinced that the lawyer and his wife were determined to
secure Henrietta as a daughter-in-law.
“He knows all our affairs, my dear, and James Batty never misses a
chance of improving his position. Good as it is, it would be all the
better for an alliance with our family, but I shall disown you at once
if you marry one of those hobbledehoys. The Batty’s, indeed! Why, Mrs.
Batty herself—”
“Caroline, don’t!” Sophia pleaded. “And I’m sure the young men are very
nice young men, and if Henrietta should fall in love—”
“She won’t get any of my money!” Caroline said.
“But Henrietta won’t be in a hurry,” Sophia announced; and so, over her
head, the two discussed her possible marriage as they had discussed her
clothes, but with less interest and at less length and, as before,
Henrietta had her own ideas. A rich man, a handsome one, a gay life; no
more basement kitchens, no more mutton bones! Already the influence of
Nelson Lodge was making itself felt.
§ 3
It was at dinner that the charm of the house was most apparent To
Henrietta. Even on these spring evenings the curtains were Drawn and
the candles lighted, for Caroline said she could not Dine comfortably
in daylight. The pale flames were repeated in The mahogany of the
table; the tall candlesticks, the silver appointments, were reflected
also in a blur, like a grey mist; the furniture against the walls
became merged into the shadows and Susan, hovering there, was no more
than an attentive spirit.
There was little talking at this meal, for Caroline and Sophia loved
good food and it was very good. Occasionally Caroline murmured, “Too
much pepper,” or “One more pinch of salt and this would have been
perfect,” and bending over her plate, the diamonds in her ears sparkled
to her movements, the rings on her fingers glittered; and opposite to
her Sophia drooped, her pale hair looking almost white, the big
sapphire cross on her breast gleaming richly, her resigned attitude
oddly at variance with the busy handling of her knife and fork.
The gold frame round General Mallett’s portrait dimly shone, the
flowers on the table seemed to give out their beauty and their scent
with conscious desire to please, to add their offerings, and for
Henrietta the grotesqueness of the elder aunts, their gay attire, their
rouge and wrinkles, gave a touch of fantasy to what would otherwise
have been too orderly and too respectable a scene.
In this room of beautiful inherited things, where tradition had built
strong walls about the Malletts, the sight of Caroline was like a gate
leading into the wide, uncertain world and the sight of Rose, all cream
and black, was like a secret portal leading to a winding stair. At this
hour, romance was in the house, beckoning Henrietta to follow through
that gate or down that stair, but chiefly hovering about the figure of
Rose who sat so straight and kept so silent, her white hands moving
slowly, the pearls glistening on her neck, her face a pale oval against
the darkness. She was never more mysterious or more remote; with her
even the common acts of eating and drinking seemed, to Henrietta, to be
made poetical; she was different from everybody else, but the girl felt
vaguely that the wildness of which Caroline made a boast and which
never developed into more than that, the wildness which had ruined her
father’s life, lay numbed and checked somewhere behind the amazing
stillness and control of Rose. And she was like a woman who had
suffered a great sorrow or who kept a profound secret.
It was at this hour, when Henrietta was half awed, half soothed, yet
very much alive, feeling that tremendous excitements lay in wait for
her just outside, when she was wrapped in beauty, fed by delicate food,
sensitive to the slim old silver under her hands, that she sometimes
felt herself actually carried back to the boarding-house, and she saw
the grimy tablecloth, the flaring gas jets, the tired worn faces, the
dusty hair of Mrs. Banks and the rubber collar of Mr. Jenkins, and she
heard little Miss Stubb uttering platitudes in her attempt to raise the
mental atmosphere. There was a great clatter of knives and forks, a
confusion of voices and, in a pause, the sound of the exclusive old
gentleman masticating his food.
Then Henrietta would close her eyes and, after an instant, she would
open them on this candle-lighted room, the lovely figure of Aunt Rose,
the silks and laces and ornaments of Aunt Caroline and Aunt Sophia; and
between the courses one of these two would repeat the gossip of a
caller or criticize the cut of her dress.
No, the conversation was not much better than that of the boarding-
house, but the accents were different. Caroline would throw out a
French phrase, and Henrietta, loving the present, wondering how she had
borne the past, could yet feel fiercely that life was not fair. She
herself was not fair: she was giving her allegiance to the outside of
things and finding in them more pleasure than in heroism, endurance and
compassion, and she said to herself, “Yes, I’m just like my father. I
see too much with my eyes.” A little fear, which had its own delight,
took hold of her. How far would that likeness carry her? What dangerous
qualities had he passed on to her with his looks?
She sat there, vividly conscious of herself, and sometimes she saw the
whole room as a picture and she was part of it; sometimes she saw only
those three whose lives, she felt, were practically over, for even Aunt
Rose was comparatively old. She pitied them because their romance was
past, while hers waited for her outside; she wondered at their
happiness, their interest in their appearance, their pleasure in
parties; but she felt most sorry for Aunt Rose, midway between what
should have been the resignation of her stepsisters and the glowing
anticipation of her niece. Yet Aunt Rose hardly invited sympathy of any
kind and the smile always lurking near her lips gave Henrietta a
feeling of discomfort, a suspicion that Aunt Rose was not only
ironically aware of what Henrietta wished to conceal, but endowed with
a fund of wisdom and a supply of worldly knowledge.
She continued to feel uncertain about Aunt Rose. She was always
charming to Henrietta, but it was impossible to be quite at ease with a
being who seemed to make an art of being delicately reserved; and
because Henrietta liked to establish relationships in which she was
sure of herself and her power to please, she was conscious of a faint
feeling of antagonism towards this person who made her doubt herself.
Aunt Caroline and Aunt Sophia were evidently delighted with their
niece’s presence in the house. They liked the sound of her laughter and
her gay voice and though Sophia once gently reproached her for her
habit of whistling, which was not that of a young lady, Caroline
scoffed at her old-fashioned sister.
“Let the girl whistle, if she wants to,” she said. “It’s better than
having a canary in a cage.”
“But don’t do it too much, Henrietta, dear,” Sophia compromised. “You
mustn’t get wrinkles round your mouth.”
“No.” This was a consideration which appealed to Caroline. “No, child,
you mustn’t do that.”
They admitted her to a familiarity which they would not have allowed
her, and which she never attempted, to exceed, but she was Reginald’s
daughter, she was a member of the family, and her offence in being also
the daughter of her mother was forgotten. Caroline and Sophia were
deeply interested in Henrietta. Henrietta was grateful and
affectionate. The three were naturally congenial, and the happiness and
sympathy of the trio accentuated the pleasant aloofness of Rose. Aunt
Rose did not care for her, Henrietta told herself; there was something
odd about Aunt Rose, yet she remembered that it was Aunt Rose who had
thought of giving her the money.
Three thousand pounds! It was a fortune, and on that Sunday when
Henrietta was to pay her first visit to Mrs. Batty, Aunt Caroline,
turning the girl about to see that nothing was amiss, said warningly,
“You are walking into the lion’s den, Henrietta. Don’t let one of those
young cubs gobble you up. I know James Batty, an attractive man, but he
loves money, and he knows our affairs. He married his own wife because
she was a butcher’s daughter.”
“A wholesale butcher,” Sophia murmured in extenuation, “and I am sure
he loved her.”
“And butchers,” Caroline went on, “always amass money. It positively
inclines one to vegetarianism, though I’m sure nuts are bad for the
complexion.”
“I don’t intend to be eaten yet,” Henrietta said gaily. She was very
much excited and she hardly heeded Sophia’s whisper at the door:
“It’s not true, dear—the kindest people in the world, but Caroline has
such a sense of humour.”
Henrietta found that the Batty lions were luxuriously housed. The
bright yellow gravel crunched under her feet as she walked up the
drive; the porch was bright with flowering plants arranged in tiers; a
parlourmaid opened the door as though she conferred a privilege and, as
Henrietta passed through the hall, she had glimpses of a statue holding
a large fern and another bearing a lamp aloft.
She was impressed by this magnificence; she wished she could pause to
examine this decently draped and useful statuary but she was ushered
into a large drawing-room, somewhat over-heated, scented with hot-house
flowers, softly carpeted, much-becushioned, and she immediately found
herself in the embrace of Mrs. Batty, who smelt of eau-de-cologne. Mrs.
Batty felt soft, too, and if she were a lioness there were no signs of
claws or fangs; and her husband, a tall, spare man with grey hair and a
clean-shaven face, bowed over Henrietta’s hand in a courtly manner,
hardly to be expected of the best-trained of wild beasts.
But for these two the room seemed to be empty, until Mrs. Batty said
“Charles!” in a tone of timid authority and Henrietta discovered that a
fair young man, already showing a tendency to baldness, was sitting at
the piano, apparently studying a sheet of music. This, then, was one of
the cubs, and Henrietta, feeling herself marvellously at ease in this
house, awaited his approach with some amusement and a little irritation
at his obvious lack of interest. Aunt Caroline need have no fear. He
was a plain young man with pale, vague eyes, and he did not know
whether to offer one of his nervous hands at the end of over-long arms,
or to make shift with an awkward bow. She settled the matter for him,
feeling very much a woman of the world.
“Now, where’s John?” Mrs. Batty asked, and Charles answered, “Ratting,
in the stable.”
Mrs. Batty clucked with vexation. “It’s the first Sunday for weeks that
I haven’t had the room full of people. Now you won’t want to come
again. Very dull for a young girl, I’m sure.”
“Well, well, you can have a chat with Miss Henrietta,” Mr. Batty said,
“and afterwards perhaps she would like to see my flowers.” He
disappeared with extraordinary skill, with the strange effect of not
having left the room, yet Mrs. Batty sighed. Charles had wandered back
to the piano, and his mother, after compressing her lips and
whispering, “It’s a mania,” drew Henrietta into the depths of a settee.
“Will he play to us?” she asked.
“No, no,” Mrs. Batty answered hastily. “He’s so particular. Why, if I
asked you to have another cup of tea, he’d shut the piano, and that
makes things very uncomfortable indeed. You can imagine. And John has
this new dog—really I don’t think it’s right on a Sunday. It’s all dogs
and cricket with him. Well, cricket’s better than football, for really,
on a Saturday in the winter I never know whether I shall see him dead
or alive. I do wish I’d had a girl.” She took Henrietta’s hand. “And
you, poor dear child, without a mother—what was it she died of, my
dear? Ah you’ll miss her, you’ll miss her! My own dear mother died the
day after I was married, and I said to Mr. Batty, ‘This can bode no
good.’ We had to come straight back from Bournemouth, where we’d gone
For our honeymoon, and by the time I was out of black my trousseau was
out of fashion. I must say Mr. Batty was very good about it. It was her
heart, what with excitement and all that. She was a stout woman. All my
side runs to stoutness, but Mr. Batty’s family are like hop-poles.
Well, I believe it’s healthier, and I must say the boys take after him.
Now I fancy you’re rather like Miss Rose.”
“They say I am just like my father.”
Mrs. Batty said “Ah!” with meaning, and Henrietta tried to sit
straighter on the seductive settee. She could not allow Mrs. Batty to
utter insinuating ejaculations and, raising her voice, she said:
“Mr. Batty, do play something.”
Charles Batty gazed at her over the shining surface of the grand piano
and looked remarkably like an owl, an owl that had lost its feathers.
“Something? What?”
“Charles!” exclaimed Mrs. Batty.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Henrietta murmured. She could think of nothing but
a pictorial piece of music her mother had sometimes played on the
lodging-house piano, with the growling of thunder-storms, the
twittering of birds after rain and a suggestion of church bells, but
she was determined not to betray herself.
“Whatever you like.”
He broke into a popular waltz, playing it derisively, yet with passion,
so that Mrs. Batty’s ponderous head began to sway and Henrietta’s feet
to tap. He played as though his heart were in the dance, and to
Henrietta there came delightful visions, thrilling sensations,
unaccountable yearnings. It was like the music she had heard at the
theatre, but more beautiful. Her eyes widened, but she kept them
lowered, her mouth softened and she caught her lip.
“Now I call that lovely,” Mrs. Batty said, with the last chord. His
look questioned Henrietta and she, cautious, simply smiled at him, with
a tilt of the lips, a little raising of the eyebrows, meant to assure
him that she felt as he did.
“If you’d play a pretty tune like that now and then, people would be
glad to listen,” Mrs. Batty went on. “I’m sure I quite enjoyed it.”
Henrietta’s suspicions were confirmed by these eulogies: she knew
already that what Mrs. Batty appreciated, her son would despise, and
she kept her little smile, saying tactfully, “It certainly made one
want to dance.”
“Can you sing?” he asked.
“Oh, a little.” She became timid. “I’m going to learn.” With those
vague eyes staring at her, she felt the need of justification. “Aunt
Caroline says every girl ought to sing. She and Aunt Sophia used to
sing duets.”
“Good heavens!” The exclamation came from the depths of Charles Batty’s
being. “They don’t do it now, do they?”
Henrietta’s pretty laughter rang out. “No, not now.” But though she
laughed there came to her a rather charming picture of her aunts in
full skirts and bustles, their white shoulders bare, with sashes round
their waists and a sheet of music shared, their mouths open, their eyes
cast upwards.
“Every girl ought to sing,” Charles quoted, and suddenly darted at
Henrietta the word, “Why?”
“Oh, well—” It was ridiculous to be discomposed by this young man, to
whom, she was sure, she was naturally superior; but sitting behind that
piano as though it were a pulpit, he had an air of authority and she
was anxious to propitiate him. “Well—” Henrietta repeated, hanging on
the word.
“For your own glorification, that’s all,” Charles told her. “That’s
all.” He caught his head in his hands. “It drives me mad.”
“Charles!” Mrs. Batty said again. That word seemed to be the whole
extent of her intercourse with him.
“Mad! Music—divine! And people get up and squeak. How they dare! A
violation of the temple!”
“Oh, dear me!” Mrs. Batty groaned.
“You play the piano yourself,” Henrietta said.
“Because I can. I’d show you if you cared about it.”
“I think I would rather go and see Mr. Batty’s flowers.”
“Yes, dear, do. Charles, take her to your father.” Mrs. Batty was very
hot; it would be a relief to her to heave and sigh alone.
Charles rose and advanced, stooping a little, carrying his arms as
though they did not belong to him and, in the hall, beside one of the
gleaming statues, he paused.
“I’ve offended you,” he said miserably. “I make mistakes—somehow.
Nobody explains. I shall do it again.”
“You were rather rude,” Henrietta said. “Why should you assume that I
squeak?”
“Sure to,” Charles said hopelessly, “or gurgle. Look here, I’ll teach
you myself, if you like.”
“I won’t be bullied.”
“Then you’ll never learn anything. Women are funny,” he said; “but then
everybody is. Do you know, I haven’t a single friend in the world?”
“Why not?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t get on.”
“If it comes to that, I haven’t a friend of my own age, either. And you
have a brother.”
“Ratting!” Charles said eloquently. “You’ll hear the noise.” He handed
her over to his father’s care.
She was more than satisfied with her afternoon. She did not see John
Batty but she heard the noise; she was aware that Mr. Batty considered
her a delightful young person; she had sufficiently admired his flowers
and he presented her with a bunch of orchids. For Mrs. Batty she felt
an amused affection; she was interested in the unfortunate Charles. She
felt her life widening pleasantly and, as she crunched again down the
gravel drive, the orchids in her hand, she felt a disinclination to go
home. She wanted to walk under the great trees which, spread with
brilliant green, made a long avenue on the other side of the road; to
wander beyond them, where a belt of grass led to a wild shrubbery
overlooking the gorge at its lowest point.
Here there were unexpected little paths running out to promontories of
the cliff and, at a sudden turn, she would find herself in what looked
almost like danger. Below her the rock was at an angle to harbour
hawthorn trees all in bud, blazing gorse bushes, bracken stiffly
uncurling itself and many kinds of grasses, but there were nearly two
hundred feet between her and the river, now at flood, and she felt that
this was something of an adventure. She followed each little path in
turn, half fearfully, for she was used to a policeman at every corner;
but she met no tramp, saw no suspicious-looking character and, finding
a seat under a hawthorn tree at a little distance from the cliff’s
edge, she sat down and put the orchids beside her.
It was part of the strange change in her fortune that she should
actually be handling such rare flowers. She had seen them in florists’
windows insolently putting out their tongues at people like herself who
rudely stared, and now she was touching them and they looked quite
polite, and she thought, with the bitterness which, bred of her
experiences, constantly rose up in the midst of pleasures, “It’s
because they know I have three thousand pounds and six pairs of silk
stockings.”
Then she noticed that one of the flowers was missing, a little one of a
fairy pink and shape, and almost immediately she heard footsteps on the
grass and saw a man approaching with the orchid in his hand. She
recognized the man she had seen riding the black horse on the day she
arrived in Radstowe and her heart fluttered. This was romance, this,
she had time to think excitedly, must be preordained. But when he
handed her the flower with a polite, “I think you dropped this,” she
wished he had chosen to keep the trophy. If she had had the happiness
of seeing him conceal it!
She said nervously, “Oh, yes, thank you very much. I’d just missed it,”
and as he turned away she had at least the minor joy of seeing a look
of arrested interest in his eyes.
She sat there holding the frail and almost sacred branch. She supposed
she was in love; there was no other explanation of her feelings; and
what a marvellous sequence of events! If Mr. Batty had not given her
the orchids this romantic episode could not have happened. And she was
glad that the eyes of the stranger had not rested on her that first day
when she was wearing her shabby, her atrociously cut clothes. Fate had
been kind in allowing him to see her thus, in a black dress with a
broad white collar, a carefully careless bow, silk stockings covering
her matchless ankles and—she glanced down—shoes that did their best to
conceal the squareness of her feet.
She recognized her own absurdity, but she liked it: she Had leisure in
which to be absurd, she had nothing else to do, And romance, which had
seemed to be waiting for her outside Nelson Lodge, had now met her in
the open! She was not going to pass it by. This was, she knew, no more
than a precious secret, a little game she could play all by herself,
but it had suddenly coloured vividly a life which was already opening
wider; and she would have been astonished and perhaps disgusted, to
learn that Aunt Rose had once occupied herself with similar dreamings.
But She was spared that knowledge and she was tempted to wait in her
place on the chance that the stranger would return, but, deciding that
it was hardly what a Mallett would do, she rose reluctantly, carrying
the pink orchid in one hand, the less favoured ones in the other.
The evening was exquisite: she saw a pale-blue sky fretted with green
leaves, striped with tree trunks astonishingly black; she heard
steamers threshing through the water and giving out warning whistles,
sounds to stir the heart with the thoughts of voyage, of danger, and of
unknown lands; and as she walked up the long avenue of elms she found
that all the people strolling out after tea for an evening walk had
happy, pleasant faces.
She met fathers and mothers in loitering advance of children, shy
lovers with no words for each other, an old lady in a bath chair
propelled by a man as old, young men in check caps, with flowers in
their coats, earnest people carrying prayer-books and umbrellas, girls
with linked arms and shrill laughter; and she envied none of them: not
the children, finding interest in everything they saw; not the parents,
proud in possession; not the old lady whose work was done, not the
young men and women eyeing each other and letting out their enticing
laughter; she envied no one in the world. She had found an occupation,
and that night, sitting at the dinner-table, she was conscious of the
difference in herself and of a new kinship with these women, the two
who could look back on adventures, rosy and poetic, the one who seemed
shrouded in some delicate mystery. It was as though she, too, had been
initiated; she was surer of herself, even in the presence of Aunt Rose,
with her beauty like that of a white flower, the faint irony of her
smile.
§ 4
A few days later Rose said, “I want to take you to see a friend of
mine, a Mrs. Sales.”
“Do the milkcarts belong to them?” Henrietta asked at once.
“Yes.” Rose was amused. “Mrs. Sales is an invalid and she would like to
see you. Shall we go on Saturday?” She added as she left the room,
“Mrs. Sales was hurt in a hunting accident, but you need not avoid the
subject. She likes to talk about it.”
“What a good thing,” Henrietta said, practically.
Aunt Rose was dressed for walking and Henrietta was afraid of being
asked to go with her, but Aunt Rose made no such suggestion. Since
Sunday Henrietta had been exploring Radstowe and its suburbs with an
enthusiasm surprising to the elder aunts, who did not care for
exercise; but Henrietta was as much inspired by the hope of seeing that
man again as by interest in the old streets, the unexpected alleys, the
flights of worn steps leading from Upper to Lower Radstowe, the slums,
cheek by jowl with the garden of some old house, the big houses
deteriorated into tenements. All these had their own charm and the
added one of having been familiar to her father, but she never forgot
to watch for the hero on the horse, the restorer of her orchid. If she
met him, should she bow to him, or pretend not to see him? She had
practised various expressions before the glass, and had almost decided
to look up as he passed and flash a glance of puzzled recognition from
her eyes. She thought she could do it satisfactorily and to-day she
meant to cross the bridge for the first time. He had been riding over
the bridge that afternoon and what had happened once might happen
again. Moreover, she had a feeling that across the water there was
something waiting for her. Certainly behind the trees clothing the
gorge there was the real country, with cows and sheep and horses in the
meadows, with the possibility of rabbits in the lanes, and she had
never yet seen a rabbit running wild. There were innumerable
possibilities on that farther side.
She crossed the bridge, stood to look up and down the river, to watch
the gulls, white against the green, to consider the ant-like hurrying
of the people on the road below and the clustered houses on the city
side, a medley of shapes and colours, rising in terraces, the whole
like some immense castle guarding the entrance to the town. And as
before, carriages and carts went and came over, schoolgirls on
bicycles, babies in perambulators, but this time there was no man on a
horse. She knew that this mattered very little; her stimulated
excitement was hardly more than salt and pepper to a dish already
appetizing enough, and now and then as she went along the road on a
level with the tree-tops in the gorge and had glimpses of water and of
rock, she had to remind herself of her preoccupation.
She passed big houses with their flowery gardens and then, suddenly
timorous, she decided not to go too far afield. She might get lost, she
might meet nasty people or horned beasts. A little path on her right
hand had an inviting look; it might lead her down through the trees to
the water’s edge. It was all strewn and richly brown with last autumn’s
leaves and on a tree a few yards ahead she saw a brilliant object—tiny,
long-tailed, extraordinarily swift. It was out of sight before she had
time to tell herself that this was a squirrel; and again she had a
consciousness of development. She had seen a squirrel in its native
haunts! This was wonderful, and she approached the tree. The squirrel
had vanished, but these woods, within sound of a city, yet harbouring
squirrels, seemed to have become one of her possessions. She was
enriched, she was a different person, and she, whose familiar fauna had
been stray cats and the black beetles in Mrs. Banks’ kitchen, was
actually in touch with nature. She now felt equal to meeting unattended
cows, but the woods offered enough excitement for to-day.
She found that her path did not immediately descend. It led her levelly
to an almost circular green space; then it became enclosed again and
soft to the feet with grass; and just ahead of her, blocking her way,
she saw two figures, those of a woman and a man. Their backs were
towards her, but there was no mistaking Aunt Rose’s back. It was
straight without being stiff, her dress fell with a unique perfection
and the little hat and grey floating veil were hers alone.
For an instant Henrietta stood still, and the man, turning to look at
his companion, showed the profile of her stranger. At the same moment
he touched Aunt Rose’s hand and before Henrietta swerved and sped back
whence she had come, she saw that hand removed gently, as though
reluctantly, and the head, mistily veiled, shaken slowly.
Her first desire was for flight and, safely on the road again, she
found her heart beating to suffocation; she was filled with an
indignation that almost brought her to tears; it was as though Aunt
Rose had deliberately robbed her of treasure—Aunt Rose, who was almost
middle-aged! For a moment she despised that fair, handsome man whose
image had filled her mind for what seemed a long, long time; then she
felt pity for him who had no eyes for youth, yet she remembered his
look of arrested interest.
But steadying her thoughts and enjoying her dramatic bitterness, she
laughed. He had merely surprised her likeness to Aunt Rose and that was
all. Her dream was over. She had known it was a dream, but the
awakening was cruel; it was also intensely exciting. She did not regret
it; she had at least discovered something about Aunt Rose. She had a
lover. That look of his, that pleading movement of his hand, were
unmistakable; he was a lover, and perhaps she, Henrietta Mallett, alone
knew the truth. She had suspected a secret, now she knew it; and she
had a sense of power, she had a weapon. She imagined herself standing
over Aunt Rose, armed with knowledge, no longer afraid; she was
involved in a romantic, perhaps a shameful, situation. Aunt Rose was
meeting a lover clandestinely in the woods while Aunt Caroline and Aunt
Sophia sat innocently at home, marvelling at Rose’s indifference to
men, yet rejoicing in her spinsterhood; and Henrietta felt that Rose
had wronged her stepsisters almost as much as she had wronged her
niece. She was deceitful; that, in plain terms, accounted for what had
seemed a mysterious and conquered sorrow. It was Henrietta who was to
suffer, through the shattering of a dream.
She went home, walking quickly, but feeling that she groped in a fog,
broken here and there by lurid lights, the lights of knowledge and
determination. She was younger than Aunt Rose, she was as pretty, and
she was the daughter of Reginald Mallett who, though she did not know
it, had always wanted the things desired by other people. She could
continue to love her stranger and at the back of her mind was the
unacknowledged conviction that Aunt Rose’s choice must be well worth
loving. And again how strangely events seemed to serve her: first the
dropping of an orchid and now the leaping of a squirrel! She felt
herself in the hands of higher powers.
She had a feverish longing to see Rose again, to see her plainly for
the first time and dressing for dinner was like preparing for a great
event. Yet when dinner-time came everything was surprisingly the same.
The deceived Caroline and Sophia ate with the usual appetite, Susan
hovered with the same quiet attention, and Rose showed no sign of a
recent interview with a lover. Across the candlelight she looked at
Henrietta kindly and Henrietta remembered the three thousand pounds.
She did not want to remember them. They constituted an obligation
towards this woman who did not sufficiently appreciate her, who met
that man secretly, in a wood, who was beautiful with a far-off kind of
beauty, like that of the stars. And while these angry thoughts passed
through Henrietta’s mind, Rose’s tender expression had developed into a
smile, and she asked, “Did you have a nice walk?”
Henrietta gulped. She looked steadily at Rose, and on her lips certain
words began to form themselves, but she did not utter them, and instead
of saying as she intended, “Yes, I went across the bridge and into
those woods on the other side,” she merely said, “Yes, yes, thank you,”
and smiled back. It had been impossible not to smile and she was angry
with Aunt Rose for making her a hypocrite. Perhaps she had smiled like
that in the wood and she did not look so very old. Even the flames of
the candles, throwing her face into strong relief as she leaned
forward, did not reveal any lines.
“Don’t walk too much, child,” Caroline said. “It enlarges the feet.
Girls nowadays can wear their brothers’ shoes and men don’t like that.
Have I ever told you”—Caroline was given to repetition of her
stories—“how one of my partners, ridiculous creature, insisted on
calling me Cinderella for a whole evening? Do you remember, Sophia?”
“Yes, dear,” Sophia said, and she determined that some day, when she
was alone with Henrietta, she would tell her that she, too, had been
called Cinderella that night. It was hard, but, since she loved her
sister, not so very hard, to ignore her own little triumphs, yet she
would like Henrietta to know of them. “Dear child,” she murmured
vaguely.
“We have our shoes made for us,” Caroline went on. “It’s necessary.”
She snorted scorn for a large-footed generation.
Rose laughed. She said, “Walk as much as you like, Henrietta. Health is
better than tiny feet.”
Henrietta had no response for this remark. For the first time she felt
out of sympathy with her surroundings, and her resentment against Rose
spread to her other aunts. They were foolish in their talk of men and
little feet; they knew, for all their worldliness, nothing about life.
They had never known what it was to be insufficiently fed or clothed;
they had never battled with black beetles and mutton bones, their white
hands had never been soiled by greasy water and potato skins and she
felt a bitterness against them all. “Nonsense, Rose, what do you know
about it?” Caroline asked. “You’re a nun, that’s what you are.”
“Ah, lovely!” Sophia sighed, but Henrietta, thinking of that man in the
wood, raised her dark eyebrows sceptically.
“Lovely! Rubbish! A nun, and the first in the family. All our women,”
Caroline turned to Henrietta, “have broken hearts. They can’t help it.
It’s in the blood. You’ll do it yourself. All except Rose. And our
men—” she guffawed; “yes, even the General—but if I tell you about our
men Sophia will be shocked.”
“The men!” Henrietta straightened herself and looked round the table.
Her dark eyes shone, and the anger she was powerless to display against
Aunt Rose, the remembrance of her own and her mother’s struggles, found
an outlet. “You can’t tell me anything I don’t know. I don’t think it
is funny. Haven’t I suffered through one of them? My father, he wasn’t
anything to boast about.”
“Henrietta,” Sophia said gently, and Caroline uttered a stern, “What
are you saying?”