The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing) Part 14

'Lovely! Rubbis.h.!.+ 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?'

'I don't care,' Henrietta said. 'Perhaps you're proud of all the harm he did, but my mother and I had to bear it. He was weak and selfish; we nearly starved, but he didn't. Oh, no, he didn't!' With her hands clasped tightly on her knee she bent over the table and her head was lowered with the effect of some small animal prepared for a spring.

'Do you know,' she said, 'he wore silk s.h.i.+rts? Silk s.h.i.+rts! and I had only one set of underclothing in the world! I had to wash them overnight. That was my father--a Mallett! Were they all like that?'

There was silence until Caroline, peeling an apple with trembling fingers, said severely, 'I don't think we need continue this conversation.' Her indignation was beyond mere words; she was outraged; her brother had been insulted by this child who owed his sisters grat.i.tude; the family had been held up to scorn, and Henrietta, aware of what she had done and of her obligations, was overwhelmed with regret, with confusion, with the sense that, after all, it was she who really loved and understood her father.

'We will excuse you, Henrietta, if you have finished your dessert,'

Caroline said. She had a great dignity.

This was a dismissal and Henrietta stood up. She could not take back her words, for they were true: she did not know how to apologize for their manner; she felt she would have to leave the house to-morrow and she had a sudden pride in Aunt Caroline and in her own name. But there was nothing she could do.

Most unexpectedly, Rose intervened. 'You must forgive Henrietta's bitterness,' she said quietly. 'It is natural.'

'But her own father!' Sophia remonstrated tearfully, and added tenderly, 'Ah, poor child!'

Henrietta dropped into her chair. She wept without concealment. 'It isn't that I didn't love him,' she sobbed.

'Ah, yes, you loved him,' Sophia said. 'So did we.' She dabbed her face with her lace handkerchief. 'It is Rose who knows nothing about him,' she said, with something approaching anger. 'Nothing!'

'Perhaps that is why I understand,' Rose said.

'No, no, you don't!' Henrietta cried. She could not admit that. She would not allow Aunt Rose to make such a claim. She looked from Caroline to Sophia. 'It's we who know,' she said. Yes, it was they three who were banded together in love for Reginald Mallett, in their sympathy for each other, in the greater nearness of their relations.h.i.+p to the person in dispute. She looked up, and she saw through her tears a slight quiver pa.s.s over the face of Rose and she knew she had hurt her and she was glad of it. 'You must forgive me,' she said to Caroline.

'Well, well; he was a wretch--a great wretch--a great dear. Let us say no more about it.'

It was Rose, now, who was in disgrace, and it was Henrietta, Caroline and Sophia who pa.s.sed an evening of excessive amiability in the drawing-room.

Henrietta felt heroically that she had thrown down her glove and it was annoying, the next morning, to find Rose would not pick it up. She remained charming; she was inimitably calm: she seemed to have forgotten her offence of the night before and Henrietta delighted in the thought that, though Rose did not know it, she and Henrietta were rivals in love, and she told herself that her own time would come.

She had only to wait. She was a great believer in her own luck, and had not Aunt Caroline a.s.sured her that all the Mallett women were born to break hearts--all but Aunt Rose? Some day she was bound to meet that man again and, looking in the gla.s.s after the Mallett manner, she was pleased with what she saw there. She was her father's daughter.

Her father had never denied himself anything he wanted, and since her outbreak against him she felt closer to him; she was prepared to condone his sins, even to emulate them and find in him her excuse. She looked at the portrait on the wall, she kissed her hand to it. Somehow he seemed to be helping her.

But with all her carefully nurtured enmity, she could not deny her admiration for Aunt Rose. She was proud to sit beside her in the carriage which took them to Sales Hall, and on that occasion Rose talked more than usual, telling Henrietta little stories of the people living in the houses they pa.s.sed and little anecdotes of her own childhood connected with the fields and lanes.

Henrietta sighed suddenly. 'It must be nice,' she said, 'to be part of a place. You can't be part of London, in lodging-houses, with no friends. I should love to have had a tree for a friend, all my life.

It sounds silly, but it would make me feel different.' She was angry with herself for saying this to Aunt Rose, but again she could not help it. She saw too much with her eyes and Aunt Rose pleased them and she a.s.sured herself that though these softened her heart and loosened her tongue, she could resume her reserve at her leisure. 'There was a tree, a cherry, in one of the gardens once, but we didn't stay there long. We had to go.' She added quickly, 'It was too expensive for us.

I suppose they charged for the tree, but I did long to see it blossom; and this spring,' she waved a hand, 'I've seen hundreds--I've seen a squirrel--' She stopped.

'Dear little things,' Rose said. They were jogging alongside the high, bare wall she hated, and the big trees, casting their high, wide branches far above and beyond it, seemed to be stretching out to the sea and the hills.

'Have you seen one lately?' Henrietta asked.

'What? A squirrel? No, not lately. They're shy. One doesn't see them often.'

'Oh, then I was lucky,' Henrietta said. 'I saw one in those woods we've just pa.s.sed, the other day.' She looked at her Aunt Rose's creamy cheek. There was no flush on it, her profile was serene, the dark lashes did not stir.

'Soon,' Rose said, 'you will see hills and the channel.'

'And when shall we come to Mrs. Sales' house? Is she an old lady?'

'I don't think you would call her very old. She is younger than I am.'

'Oh, that's not old,' Henrietta said kindly. 'Has she any children?'

'No, there's a cat and a dog--especially a cat.'

'And a husband, I suppose?'

'Yes, a husband. Do you like cats, Henrietta?'

'They catch mice,' Henrietta said informatively.

'I don't think this one has ever caught a mouse, but it lies in wait-- for something. Cats are horrible; they listen.' And she added, as though to herself, 'They frighten me.'

'I'm more afraid of dogs,' Henrietta said.

'Oh, but you mustn't be.'

'Well,' Henrietta dared, 'you're afraid of cats.'

'I know, but dogs, they seem to be part of one's inheritance--dogs and horses.'

'All the horses I've known,' Henrietta said with her odd bitterness, 'have been in cabs, and even then I never knew them well.'

'Francis Sales must show you his,' Rose said. 'There are the hills.

Now we turn to the left, but down that track and across the fields is the short cut to Sales Hall. One can ride that way.'

'I should like to see the dairy,' Henrietta remarked, 'or do they pretend they haven't one?'

Rose smiled. 'No, they're very proud of it. It's a model dairy. I've no doubt Francis will be glad to show you that, too. And here we are.'

The masculine hall, with its smell of tobacco, leather and tweed, the low winding staircase covered with matting, its walls adorned with sporting prints, was a strange introduction to the room in which Henrietta found herself. She had an impression of richness and colour; the carpet was very soft, the hangings were of silk, a fire burned in the grate though the day was warm and before the fire lay the cat. The dog was on the window-sill looking out at the glorious world, full of smells and rabbits which he loved and which he denied himself for the greater part of each day because he loved his mistress more, but he jumped down to greet Rose with a great wagging of his tail.

She stooped to him, saying, 'Here is Henrietta, Christabel. Henrietta, this is Mrs. Sales.'

The woman on the couch looked to Henrietta like a doll animated by some diabolically clever mechanism, she was so pink and blue and fair.

She was, in fact, a child's idea of feminine beauty and Henrietta felt a rush of sorrow that she should have to lie there, day after day, watching the seasons come and go. It was marvellous that she had courage enough to smile, and she said at once, 'Rose Mallett is always trying to give me pleasure,' and her tone, her glance at Rose, startled Henrietta as much as if the little thin hand outside the coverlet had suddenly produced a glittering toy which had its uses as a dagger. She, too, looked at Rose, but Rose was talking to the dog and it was then that Henrietta became really aware of the cat. It was certainly listening; it had stretched out its fore-paws and revealed s.h.i.+ning, nail-like claws, and those polished instruments seemed to match the words which still floated on the warm air of the room.

'And now she has brought you,' Christabel went on. 'It was kind of you to come. Do sit here beside me. Tell me what you think of Rose. Tell me what you think,' she laughed, 'of your aunt. She's beautiful, isn't she?'

'Yes, very,' Henrietta said, and she spoke coldly, because she, too, was a Mallett, and she suspected this praise uttered in Rose's hearing and still with that sharpness as of knives. She had never been in a room in which she felt less at ease: perhaps she had been prejudiced by Aunt Rose's words about the cat, but that seemed absurd and she was confused by her vague feelings of anger and pity and suspicion.