The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing) Part 22

'If you have them that cares for you,' he answered.

That was where her own happiness would break down.

There were her stepsisters, who would probably die before herself; there was Henrietta, who would form ties of her own; and there was no one else. If she had had less faith in Francis Sales's love and, at the same time, had been capable of pandering to it, she might have had his devotion for her old age, the devotion of a somewhat querulous and dull old man. Now she had not even that to hope for, and she was glad.

She had always wanted the best of everything, and always, except in the one fatal instance, refused what fell below her standard. She had not realized until now that Francis Sales had always been below it.

She had at least tried to wrap their love in beauty, but that sort of beauty was not enough for him. It was her scruples, he said, which had been his undoing, and there was truth in that, but she had to remember that when originally she had disappointed him, he had found comfort quickly in Christabel; when Christabel failed him he had returned to her; and now he had found consolation, if only of a temporary kind, in some one else. When would he seek yet another victim of his affection and his griefs? He was, she thought scornfully, a man who needed women, yet she knew that if he had pleaded with her to-day, saying that in spite of everything he needed her, she would have listened.

She admitted her responsibility, it would always be present to her, for she had that kind of conscientiousness, and having once helped him, she must always hold herself ready to do it again. The chain binding them was not altogether broken, but she no longer felt its weight. She had a lightness of spirit unknown for years; the anger, the jealous rage and the disgust had vanished with a completeness which made her doubt their short existence, and she began to make plans for a new life. There was no reason now why she should not wander all over the world, yet, on the very doorstep of Nelson Lodge, she found a reason in the person of Henrietta--flushed and gay and just returned from a tea party. She had enjoyed herself immensely, but her head ached a little. It had been all she could do to understand the brilliant conversation. There had been present a budding poet and a woman painter and she had never heard people talk like that before.

'I didn't speak at all, except to Charles,' she said.

'Oh, Charles was there?'

'Yes. I thought it safer not to talk but I looked as bright as I could, and of course I asked for cakes and things. They all ate a lot.

I was glad of that. But most of them still looked hungry at the end.

And Charles has taken tickets for me for the concerts, next to him, in a special corner where you can sometimes hear the music through the whispering of the audience. That's what he says!'

'But, Henrietta, I have taken tickets for you too.'

'Thank you, but perhaps they will take them back.'

'Henrietta, you really can't sit in a corner with Charles when I'm in another part of the hall.'

'Can't I? Well, Charles will be very angry, but he'll have to put up with it. If you explained to him, Aunt Rose, he'd understand. And I'd really rather sit with you. I shall be able to look at people and if I crackle my programme you won't glare. Of course, I shall try not to.

Will you explain to him? And I did promise to go to a concert with him some day.'

'Then you must. I'll tell him that, too. Are you afraid of him, Henrietta?'

'He shouts,' Henrietta said, 'and I'm sorry for him. And I do like him very much. I feel inclined to do things just to please him.'

'Don't let that carry you too far.'

'That's what I'm afraid of. Not him, exactly, but me.'

'I didn't suspect you of such tenderness. I shall have to look after you.'

'I wish you would.'

'And if you are feeling very kind some day, perhaps you will go and see Christabel Sales. She has promised to behave herself.'

Henrietta's expression tightened. 'I don't want to go. It's a dreadful place.'

'I know,' Rose said, and she added encouragingly, 'but the cat has gone.'

They were standing together in the hall and against the white panelled walls, the figure of Rose, in the austere riding habit, one gauntletted hand holding her crop, the other resting lightly on her hip, had an heroic aspect, like a statue in dark marble; but her eyes did not offer the blank gaze, the calm effrontery of stone: they looked at Henrietta with something like appeal against this obsession of the cat.

'Oh, I'm glad the cat's gone,' Henrietta murmured. 'What happened to it?'

Rose shook her head. 'It disappeared.'

They stared at each other until Henrietta said, 'But all the same, I don't want to go.' And then, because Rose would not help her out, she was obliged to say, 'It's Mr. Sales.' Her voice dropped. 'I haven't seen him since I hit him.'

Rose turned to go upstairs. 'I shouldn't think too much of that.'

'You don't think it matters?'

'No.'

Henrietta looked after her and followed her for a step. 'You think I may go?' Her voice was dull under her effort to control it. She felt that the stately figure moving up the stairs was deliberately leaving her to face a danger, sanctioning her desire to meet it. She felt her fate was in the answer made by Rose.

'I think you can take care of yourself perfectly well, Henrietta,' and like a sigh, another sentence floated from the landing where Rose stood, out of sight: 'You are not like me.'

This was a mysterious and astonis.h.i.+ng remark. Henrietta did not understand it and in her excited realization that the door so carefully locked by her own hand had been opened. Aunt Rose, she did not try to understand it. Aunt Rose had said she was able to take care of herself, and it was true, but honesty and a weak clinging to safety urged her to answer, 'But you see, you see I don't want to do it!'

These words were not uttered. She stood, looking up towards the empty landing with a hand pressed against her heart. It was beating fast.

The spirit of Reginald Mallett, subdued in his daughter for some months, seemed to be fluttering in her breast and it was Aunt Rose who had waked it up. It was not Henrietta's fault, she was not responsible; and suddenly, the ordinary happiness she had been enjoying was transferred into an irrational joy. She went singing up the stairs, and Rose, sitting in her room in a state of limpness she would never have allowed anybody to see, heard a sound as innocent as if a bird had waked to a sunny dawn.

Henrietta sang, but now and then she paused and became grave when the spirit of that mother who lived in her memory more and more dimly, as though she had died when Henrietta was a child, overcame the spirit of her father. Her mission was to be one of kindness to Christabel Sales, and if--the song burst out again--if adventure came in her way, could she refuse it? She would refuse nothing--the song ceased--short of sin. She looked at herself and saw a solemn feminine edition of the portrait hanging behind her on the wall. She was like her father, but she took pride in her greater conscientiousness; her vocabulary was larger than his by at least one word.

A few days later she set out on that road and past those trees which had been the safe witnesses of so much of Rose Mallett's life, but their safeness lay in their constant muteness, and they had no message for Henrietta. Walking quickly, she rehea.r.s.ed her coming meeting with Francis Sales, but when she actually met him on the green track, on the very spot where Rose had pulled up her horse in amazement at the scene of transformation, Henrietta, like Rose, had no formal greeting for him.

She said, 'The trees! What are you doing with them?'

'Turning them into gold.'

'But they were beautiful.'

'So are lots of things they will buy.' She moved a little under his look, but when he said, 'I'm hard up,' she became interested.

'Really? I thought you were frightfully rich. You ought to be with all these belongings.' She looked round at the fields dotted with sheep and cattle, the distant chimneys of Sales Hall, the fallen trees and the team of horses dragging logs under the guidance of workmen in their s.h.i.+rt sleeves. 'I know all about being poor,' she said, 'but I don't suppose we mean the same thing by the word. I've been so poor--'

She stopped. 'But there's a lot of excitement about it. I used to hope I should find a s.h.i.+lling in my purse that I'd forgotten. A s.h.i.+lling!

You can do a lot with a s.h.i.+lling. At least I can.'

'I wish you'd tell me how.'

'Pretend you haven't got it. That's the beginning. You haven't got it, so you can't have what you want.'

'I never have what I want.'

'Then you mustn't want anything.'

'Oh, yes, that's so easy.'

'Well'--she descended to details with an air of kindness--'what do you want? Let's work it out. We'd better sit on the wall. After all, it's rather lovely without the trees. It's so clear and the air's so blue, as if it's trying to make up. Now tell me what you want.'

'Something money can't buy.'

'Then you needn't have cut down the trees.'