The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing) Part 12

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 plat.i.tudes 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 compa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sed 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 relations.h.i.+ps 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 ama.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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-becus.h.i.+oned, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and, raising her voice, she said:

'Mr. Batty, do play something.'

Charles Batty gazed at her over the s.h.i.+ning 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 pa.s.sion, 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 a.s.sure 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.