The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing) Part 26

Charles waked up. 'I want a white one,' he repeated, 'with crimson ribbon. No pictures.' The a.s.sistant went away and he turned to Henrietta. 'It's for you,' he said.

'Charles, don't speak so loud.'

'I don't care. But I suppose you're ashamed of me. Yes, of course, that's it.'

'Don't be silly,' Henrietta said, 'and do be quick, because I want some chocolates myself.'

With the large box, white and crimson-ribboned and wrapped in paper, under his arm, he waited until she was served, and then they walked together down the street, made brilliant with the lights of many little shops.

'This is for you,' he said, 'but I'll carry it.'

'But this isn't the way home.'

'No.' They turned back into the dimmer road bordering The Green.

'I suppose you wouldn't walk round the hill?'

'I don't mind.' She felt as she might have done in the company of some large, protective dog. He was there, saving her from the fear of molestation, but there was no need to speak to him, it was almost impossible to think consecutively of him, yet she did remind herself that a very long time ago, when she was young, he had said wonderful things to her. She had forgotten that fact in the stir of these last days.

'I got these chocolates for you,' he said again. 'I thought perhaps that was the kind of thing I ought to do. I don't know, and you can't ask people because they'd laugh. Why didn't you come to tea on Sunday?'

'I can't come every Sunday.'

'Of course you can. Considering I'm engaged to you, it's only proper.'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Yes,' he said, 'you may not be engaged to me, but I'm engaged to you.

That's what I've decided.'

She laughed. 'You'll find it rather dull, I'm afraid.'

'No,' he said. 'I can do things for you.' She was struck by that simple statement, spoilt by his next words: 'Like these chocolates.'

He was very insistent about the chocolates and proud of his idea. She thanked him. 'But I don't want you to give me things.'

'You can't stop me. I'm doing it all the time.'

They had reached the highest point of the hill and they halted at the railing on the cliff's edge. Below them, the blackness of earth gave way to the blackness of air and the s.h.i.+ning blackness of water, and slowly the opposing cliff cleared itself from a formless ma.s.s into the hardly seen shapes of rock and tree. Here was beauty, here was something permanent in the midst of change, and it seemed as though the hand of peace were laid on Henrietta. For a moment the episode on the other side of the water and the problem it involved took their tiny places in the universe instead of the large ones in her life and, strangely enough, it was Charles Batty who loomed up big, as though he had some odd fellows.h.i.+p with immensity and beauty.

'What do you give me?' she asked. 'I don't want it, you know, but tell me.'

'I told you that night when you listened and took it all. I don't think I can say it again.'

'No, but you're not to misunderstand me, and you mustn't go on giving and getting nothing back.'

'That's just what I can do. Not many people could, but I can. Perhaps it's the only way I can be great, like an artist giving his work to a world that doesn't care.'

The quick sense she had to serve her instead of knowledge and to make her unconsciously subtle, detected his danger in the words and some lack of homage to herself. 'Ah, you're pretending, and you're enjoying it,' she said. 'It's consoling you for not being able to do anything else.'

'Who said I couldn't do anything else?'

'Well, you nearly did, and I don't suppose you can. If you could, you wouldn't bother about me.'

He was silent and though she did not look at him she was very keenly aware of his tall figure wrapped in an overcoat reaching almost to his heels and with the big parcel under his left arm. He was always slightly absurd and now, when he struck the top bar of the railing with his left hand and uttered a mournful, 'Yes, it's true!' the tragedy in his tone could not repress her smile. Yet if he had been less funny he might have been less truly tragic.

'So, you see, I'm only a kind of makes.h.i.+ft,' she remarked.

'No,' he said, 'but I may have been mistaken in myself. I'm not mistaken about you. Never!' he cried, striking the rail again.

They were alone on the hill, but suddenly, with a clatter of wings, a bird left his nest in the rocks and swept out of sight, leaving a memory of swiftness and life, of an intenser blackness in the gulf.

Far below them, to the left, there were lights, stationary and moving, and sometimes the clang of a tramcar bell reached them with its harsh music: the slim line of the bridge, with here and there a dimly burning light, was like a spangled thread. The sound of footsteps and voices came to them from the road behind the hill.

'But after all,' Charles said more clearly, 'it doesn't matter about being acclaimed. It's just like making music for deaf people: the music's there; the music's there. And so it doesn't matter very much whether you love me. It's one's weakness that wants that, one's loneliness. I can love you just the same, perhaps better; it's the audience that spoils things. I should think it does!'

'So you're quite happy.'

'Not quite,' he answered, 'but I have something to do, something I can do, too. Music--no, I'm not good enough. I'm no more than an amateur, but in this I can be supreme.'

'You can't be sure of that,' she said acutely. 'If you wrote a poem you might think it was perfect, but you wouldn't absolutely know till you'd tried it on other people. So you can't be sure about love.'

'You mightn't be,' he said with a touch of scorn. 'You may depend on other people, but I don't.'

She made a small sound of scorn. 'No, you'll never know whether you're doing this wonderful work of yours well or not because,' she said, cruelly exultant, 'it won't be tested.'

'Ah, but it might be. You've got to do things as though they will be.'

'I suppose so,' she said indifferently. 'And now I must go back.'

He turned obediently and thrust the parcel at her.

'But aren't you going to take me home?' she asked.

'No, I don't think I need do that. I shall stay here.'

'Then I won't have your chocolates. I didn't want them, anyhow, but now I won't take them.'

'I don't understand you,' he said miserably.

'Doesn't the painter understand his paints or the musician his instruments? No, you'll have to begin at the beginning, Charles Batty, and work very hard before you're a success.'

She ran from him fleetly, hardly knowing why she was so angry, but it seemed to her that he had no right to be content without her love; she felt he must be emasculate, and the guilty pa.s.sion of Francis Sales was, by contrast, splendid. But for that pa.s.sion, Charles Batty might have persuaded her she was incapable of rousing men's desire and not to rouse it was not to be a woman. Accordingly, she valued Francis and despised the other, yet when she had reached home and run upstairs and was standing in the dim room where the firelight cast big, uncertain shadows, like vague threats, on walls and ceiling, she suffered a reaction.

The scene on the road became sinister: she remembered the strange silence of the trees and the clangorous barking of the dogs, the hoa.r.s.e voices from the encampment in the hollow. It had been very dark there and an extraordinary blackness had buried her when she was in that man's arms. It had been dark, too, on the hill, but with a feeling of s.p.a.ce and height and freedom. If Charles had been a little different--but then, he did not really want her; he was making a study of his sorrow, he was gazing at it, turning it round and over, growing familiar with all its aspects. He was an artist frustrated of any power but this of feeling and to have given him herself would simply have been to rob him of what he found more precious. But she and Francis Sales were kin; she understood him: he was not better than herself, perhaps he was not so good and he, too, was unhappy, but he did not love her for those qualities of which Charles Batty had talked by the Monks' Pool, he wove no poetry about her: he loved her because she was pretty; because her mouth was red and her eyes bright and her body young: he loved her because, being her father's daughter, her youth answered his desire with enough shame to season appet.i.te, but not to spoil it. And she thought of Christabel as of some sick doll.

Dinner was a strange meal that night. Caroline's chair was empty, and the sighs of Sophia were like gentle zephyrs in the room. Henrietta's silence might have been interpreted as anxiety about her aunt and Susan informed the cook, truly enough, that Miss Henrietta had a feeling heart.

It was only Rose who could have explained the nature of the feeling.

She was fascinated by the sight of Henrietta, her rival, her fellow dupe. Rose looked at her without envy or malice or covetousness, but with an extraordinary interest, trying to find what likeness to herself and what differences had attracted Francis Sales.