The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing) Part 21

'Not that I know of.' Rose laughed. She was tired of considering every word before she uttered it.

'With that too!' Christabel repeated a little wildly, and then in a firm voice she said, 'You've got to tell me.'

'But I don't know. You must make all inquiries of the cat. It was a wise animal. It knew the time had come.'

'I think you're mad,' Christabel said.

'Animals are very strange,' Rose went on easily, 'and rats leave sinking s.h.i.+ps.'

A cry of terror came from Christabel. 'You mean I'm going to die!'

'No, no!' Rose became sane and rea.s.suring. 'I never thought of that.

It might have known it was going to die itself and an animal likes to die decently alone. It had been getting unhealthily fat.'

Christabel kept an exhausted silence, and Rose regretting her cruelty, aware of its futility, said gently, 'Shall I get you a kitten?'

'No, no kitten. They jump about. The old cat was so quiet. And I miss him.' A tear rolled down either cheek. 'It has been so lonely.

Everybody was away.'

'Well, we've all come back now,' Rose said.

'Yes, but that Henrietta--she's deserted me.'

'It was your own fault, Christabel. You horrified her.'

'It should have been you who did that.'

'Things don't always have the effect we hope for. You said too much.'

'Ah, but not half what I could have said.'

'Too much for Henrietta, anyhow. I don't think she will come again.'

Christabel smiled oddly and Rose knew that now she was to hear some news. 'You can tell her,' Christabel said, 'that I shan't say anything to upset her. I shall say nothing about you--as she loves you so much.

Does she love you? I dare say. You make people love you--for a little while.' Her voice lingered on those words. 'Yes, for a little while, but you don't keep love, Rose Mallett. No, you don't. I'm sorry for you now. Tell Henrietta she needn't be afraid, because I'm sorry for you. Yes, you and I are in the same boat, in the same deserted boat.

If there were any rats they would run away. You said so yourself.'

'I said the cat had gone.'

'Then you knew?'

Rose shook her head. It was her turn to smile. She was prepared for anything Christabel might say, she was even anxious to hear it, but when Christabel spoke in a mysteriously gleeful manner, she had difficulty in repressing a shudder. It was not, she told herself, that she suffered from the knowledge now imparted by Christabel with detail and with proofs, but her malice, her salacious curiosity were more than Rose could bear. She felt that the whole affair, which at first, so long ago, had possessed a n.o.ble sadness, a secret beauty, the quality of a precious substance enclosed in a common vial, was indecent and unclean.

'So you see,' Christabel said, 'you haven't kept him; you won't keep Henrietta.'

Rose said nothing. She was thinking of what she might have done and she was glad she had not done it.

'You don't seem to mind,' Christabel said. 'Why don't you ask me why I'm so sure?' She laughed. 'I ought to know how to find things out by this time, and I know Francis, yes, better than you do. When I had my accident--it wasn't worth it, was it?--I said to myself, 'Now he won't be faithful to me.' When I knew I should have to lie here, I told myself that. And now you--' Her voice almost failed her. 'I suppose you haven't been kind enough to him.'

'I think it's time I went,' Rose said.

'And you'll never come back?'

'Yes, if you want me.'

'I can say what I like to you.'

'You can, indeed,' Rose murmured.

'And tell Henrietta to come too.'

'No, I can't ask Henrietta.'

'I promise to be like a maiden aunt. Ah, but she has three already-- she knows what they are. That won't attract her. I'll be like an invalid in a Sunday School story-book.'

'I'll tell her of your promise,' Rose said.

There remained the task of having tea with Francis Sales and breaking the bonds of which he had tired. She made it easy for him. That was necessary for her dignity, but beyond the desire for as much seemliness as could be saved from the general ugliness of their mistake, she had no feeling; yet she thought it would be good to be in the open air, on horseback, free. If there had been anything still owing, she had paid her debt with generosity. She gave him the chance he wanted but did not know how to take, and she had to allow him to appear aggrieved. She was cruel: she was tired of him; she was, he sneered, too good for him. The words went on for some time, and if some of them were new, their manner was wearisomely familiar. She was amazed at her own endurance, now and in the past, and at last she said, 'No, no, Francis. Say no more. This is too much fuss. Perhaps we have both changed.'

'It was you who began it.'

'Was it? How can one tell?'

'You began it,' he persisted. 'There was a time when you went white, like paper, when we met, and your eyes went black. Now I might be a sheep in a field.'

She was standing up, ready to go. 'One gets used to things,' she said.

'I have never been used to you,' he muttered, and she knew that, telling this truth, he also explained a good deal. 'I never should be.

You're like n.o.body else--n.o.body.'

'But it is too much strain,' she murmured slowly.

'Yes--well, it is you who have said it. I had made up my mind--I'm not ungrateful--I never intended to say a word.'

She smiled. This was the first remark which had really touched her.

She found it so offensive that a smile was the only weapon with which to meet it. 'I know that.'

'But mind,' he almost shouted, 'there's n.o.body like you.'

'Yes, yes, I know that too.' She turned to him with a silencing sternness. 'I tell you I know everything.'

-- 2

The old groom who held her horse nodded with satisfaction when he helped her into the saddle. She had not lost her spring and he tightened her girths in a leisurely manner and arranged her skirt with the care due to a fine rider and a lady who understood a horse, yet one who was always ready to ask an old man's advice. He had a great admiration for Miss Mallett and, conscious of it and rather pathetically glad of it, she lingered for the pleasure of talking to some one who seemed simple and untroubled. He had spent all his life on the Sales estate, and she wondered whether, though, like herself, of a limited outward experience, he also had known the pa.s.sions of love and disgust and shame. He was sixty-five, he told her, but as strong as ever, and she envied him: to be sixty-five with the turmoil of life behind him, yet to be strong enough to enjoy the peace before him, was a good finale to existence. She was only thirty-one, but she was strong too, and she felt as though she had come through a storm, battered and exhausted but whole and ready for the calm which already hovered over her. She said, 'The young are always sorry for the old, but that is one of the many mistakes they make. I think it must be the best time of all.'