The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing) Part 36

'Yes, she's dying,' Rose said quietly.

'Oh, but she can't,' Henrietta protested. 'She doesn't want to. She'll hate it so.' It was impossible to imagine Aunt Caroline without her parties, without her clothes, she would find it intolerably dull to be dead. 'Perhaps she will get better.'

Rose said nothing. They crossed the landing and entered the dim room.

Caroline lay in the middle of the big bed: with her hair lank and uncurled she was hardly recognizable and strangely ugly. Her body seemed to have dwindled, but her features were strong and harsh, and Henrietta said to herself, 'This is the real Aunt Caroline, not what I thought, not what I thought. I've never seen her before.' She wondered how she had ever dared to joke with her: she had been a funny, vain old woman without much sensibility, immune from much that others suffered, and now she was a mere human creature, breathing with difficulty and in pain.

Henrietta stood by the bed, saying and doing nothing: Rose had slipped away; the nurse was quietly busy at a table and Aunt Sophia was kneeling before a high-backed chair with her elbows on the cus.h.i.+oned seat, her face in her hands. She was praying; it was as bad as that.

Her back, the sash-encircled waist, the thick hair, looked like those of a young girl. She was praying. Henrietta looked again at Aunt Caroline's grey face and saw that the eyes had opened, the lips were smiling a little. 'Good child,' she said, with immense difficulty, as though she had been seeking those words for a long time and had at last fitted them to her thought.

Sophia stirred, dropped her hands and looked round: the nurse came forward with a little crackle of starched clothes. 'Say good night to her and go.'

Henrietta leaned over the empty s.p.a.ce of bed and kissed Caroline on the temple. 'Good night, dear Aunt Caroline,' she said softly.

There was no answer. The eyes were closed again and the harsh breathing went on cruelly, like waves falling back from a pebbled sh.o.r.e, and Henrietta felt the dampness of death on her lips. No, Aunt Caroline would not get better.

She died in the early morning while Henrietta slept. Susan, entering as usual with Henrietta's tea, did not say a word. She knew her place; it was not for her to give the news to a member of the family; moreover, she blamed Henrietta for Miss Caroline's death. It was the Battys' ball that had killed Miss Caroline, and Susan stuck to her belief that if it had not been for Miss Henrietta, there would not have been a ball.

Sleepily, Henrietta watched Susan draw the blinds, but something in the woman's slow, languid movements startled her into wakefulness. Her dreams dropped back into their place. She had been sleeping warmly, forgetfully, while death hovered over the house, looking for a way in.

She sat up in bed. 'Aunt Caroline?'

Susan began to cry, but in spite of her tears and her distress she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed dutifully, 'Miss Henrietta, your dressing-gown, your slippers!' but Henrietta had rushed forth and bounded into Rose's room.

'You might have told me! You might have waked me!'

Rose was writing at her desk. She turned. 'Put on your dressing-gown, Henrietta. You will get cold. I came into your room but you were fast asleep, and in that minute it was all over. The big things happen so quickly.'

Yes, that was true. Quickly one fell in and out of love, ran away from home, returned and slept and waked to find that people had quickly died. The big things happened quickly, but the little ones of every day went on slow feet, as though they were tired of themselves.

'It was somehow a comfort,' Rose went on, 'to know that you were fast asleep, but living. You never moved when I kissed you.'

'Kissed me? What did you do that for?' Henrietta asked in a loud voice. She had been taken unawares by the woman who had wronged her, yet she was touched and pleased.

'I couldn't help it. I was so glad to have you there, and you looked so young. I don't know what we should do without you, poor Sophia and I. Oh, do put on my dressing-gown!'

'Yes, dear, yes, put on the dressing-gown.' It was Sophia who spoke.

Her face was very calm; she actually looked younger, as though the greatness of her sorrow had removed all other signs, like a fall of snow hiding the scars of a hillside.

'Oh, Aunt Sophia!' Henrietta went forward and pressed her cheek against the other's.

'Yes, dear, but you must go and dress. Breakfast is ready.'

Henrietta was a little shocked that Aunt Sophia, who was naturally sentimental, should be less emotional on this occasion than Aunt Rose, but she was also awed by this control. She remembered how, when her own mother died, Mrs. Banks had refused to take solid food for a whole day, and the recollection braced her for her cold bath, for fresh linen, for emulation of Aunt Sophia, for everything unlike the slovenly weeping of Mrs. Banks, sitting in the neglected kitchen with a grimy pocket-handkerchief on her lap and the teapot at her elbow; but she knew that the Banksian manner was really natural to her, and the Mallett control, the acceptance, the same eating of breakfast, were a pose, a falseness oddly better than her sincerity.

At table no one referred to Caroline; they were practical and composed and afterwards, when Sophia and Rose were closeted together, making arrangements, writing letters to relatives of whom Henrietta had never heard, interviewing Mr. Batty and a husky personage in black, Henrietta stole upstairs past Caroline's death chamber and into her own room.

She was glad to find the pretty housemaid there, tidying the hearth and dusting the furniture. She wanted to talk to somebody and the pretty housemaid was sympathetic and discreet. She told Henrietta, inevitably, of deaths in her own family, and Henrietta was interested to hear how the housemaid's grandmother had died, actually while she was saying her prayers.

'And you couldn't have a better end than that, could you, Miss Henrietta?'

'I suppose not,' Henrietta said, 'but it might depend on what you were praying for.'

'Oh, she would be saying the usual things, Miss Henrietta, just daily bread and forgive our trespa.s.ses. There was no harm in my grandmother.

It was her husband who broke his neck picking apples. His own apples,'

she said hastily, 'And now poor Mrs. Sales has gone.'

'Mrs. Sales?'

'Yes, Miss Henrietta, I thought you'd know--last night. Her and Miss Caroline together.' She implied that in this journey they would be company for each other.

Henrietta found nothing to say, but above the shock of pity she felt for the woman she had disliked and the awe induced by the name of death, she was conscious of a load lifted from her mind: she had not been deserted, her charm had not failed; it was the approach of death that had held him back. She put the thought away lest it should lead to others of which she would be ashamed, yet she felt a malicious pleasure, lasting only for a second, at remembering that downstairs sat Aunt Rose calmly full of affairs, Aunt Rose for whom the love of Francis Sales had ceased too soon! And, suppressed but fermenting, was the idea that in these late events, including the failure of her escape, there was the kind hand of fate.

At that very moment Charles Batty chose to call.

'With a parcel, Miss Henrietta, and he would like to see you.'

'I can't see him,' Henrietta said. 'Tell him--tell him about Miss Caroline.' She had already drifted away from Charles. He had been so near last night, so almost dear in the troubled fog of her distress, but this morning she had drifted and between them there was a s.h.i.+ning s.p.a.ce of water sparkling hardly. But she spared him an instant of grat.i.tude and softness. His part in her life was like that, to a sailor, of some lights.h.i.+p eagerly looked for in the darkness, of strangely diminished consequence in the clear day, still there, safely anch.o.r.ed, but with half its significance gone.

'I can't see him,' she repeated.

She wanted, suddenly, to see Aunt Rose. Voices no longer came from the drawing-room. Mr. Batty, genuinely sad in the loss of an old friend, had gone; the undertaker had tiptoed off to his gloomy lair, and Henrietta went downstairs, but when she saw her aunt she dared not ask her if she knew about Christabel Sales. Rose had a look of invulnerability; perhaps she knew, but it was impossible to ask, and if she knew, it had made no difference. It seemed as though she had gone beyond the reach of feeling: she and Sophia both wore white masks, but Sophia's was only a few hours old and Rose's had been gradually a.s.sumed. It was not only Caroline's death which had given her that strange, calm face: the expression had grown slowly, as though something had been a long time dying, yet she hardly had a look of loss. She seemed to be in possession of something, but Henrietta could not understand what it was and she was vaguely afraid.

It was Aunt Sophia who, in spite of her amazing courage, had an air of desolation. And there was no rouge on her cheeks: its absence made Henrietta want to cry. She did cry at intervals throughout that day and the ones that followed. It was terrible without Aunt Caroline and pitiful to see Aunt Sophia keeping up her dignity among black-clothed, black-beaded relatives who seemed to appear out of the ground like snails after rain and who might have been part of the undertaker's permanent stock-in-trade. Henrietta hated the mournful looks of these ancient cousins, the shaking of their black beads, their sibilant whisperings, and in their presence she was dry-eyed and rather rude.

Aunt Caroline would have laughed at them and their dowdy clothes that smelt of camphor, but it seemed as though no one would ever laugh again in Nelson Lodge.

And over the river, in the unsubdued country, where death was only the repayment of a loan, there was another house with lowered blinds and voices hushed. She was irritated by the thought of it, of the consolatory letters Francis would receive, of the emotions he would display, or conceal, but at the same time she was sorry that in death, as in life, Christabel should be lonely. Her large and lively family was far away, even the cat had gone, and there were only the nurse and Francis and the little dog to miss her. In a sense Henrietta missed her too, and that fair region of fields and woods which had been as though blocked by that helpless body now lay open, vast, full of possibilities, inviting exploration; and when Henrietta looked at her Aunt Rose, it was with the jealous eye of a rival adventurer. But that was absurd: there could be no rivalry between them. Henrietta was sure of that and she tried to avoid these speculations.

And meanwhile necessary things were done and Christabel Sales and Caroline Mallett were buried on the same day. The beaded relatives departed, not to reappear until the next death in the family, and Rose and Henrietta, both perhaps thinking of Francis Sales returning to his big empty house, returned with Sophia to a Nelson Lodge oppressive in its desolation. It seemed now that the whole business of life there, the servants, the fires, the delicate meals, had proceeded solely for Caroline's benefit; yet everything continued as before: the machinery went on running smoothly; the dinner-table still reflected in its rich surface the lights of candles, the sheen of silver, the pallor of flowers. Nothing was neglected, everything was beautiful and exact, and Susan had carefully arranged the chairs so that the vacant s.p.a.ce should not be emphasized.

The three black-robed women slipped into their seats without a word.

The soup was very hot, according to Caroline's instructions, but the cook, inspired more by the desire to give pleasant nutriment than by tact, had chosen to make the creamy variety which was Caroline's favourite and, as each Mallett took up her spoon, she had a vision of Caroline tasting the soup with the thoughtfulness of a connoisseur and proclaiming it perfect to the last grain of salt.

'I can't eat it,' Sophia said faintly. In this almost comic realization of her loss she showed the first sign of weakness. She rose, trembling visibly, and Susan, anxious for the preservation of the decencies, opened the door and closed it on her faltering figure before the first sob shook her body. The others, without exchanging a single glance, proceeded with the meal, eating little, each eager for solitude and each finding it unbearable to picture Sophia up there in the bedroom alone.

'But she doesn't want us,' Rose said.

'She might want me,' Henrietta replied provocatively, and for answer Rose's smile flickered disconcertingly across the candle-light, and her voice, a little worn, said quietly, 'Then go and see.'

The bedroom had a dreadful neatness; it smelt of disinfectant, furniture polish and soap, and Sophia, from the big armchair, said mournfully, 'They might have left it as it was. It feels like lodgings.' And as the very feebleness of her outcry smote her sense and waked echoes of all she left unsaid, her mouth fell shapeless, and she cried, 'She's gone!' in a tone of astonishment and horror.

Henrietta, sitting on a little stool before the fire, listened to the weeping which was too violent for Sophia's strength, and the harsh sound reminded her of Aunt Caroline's difficult breathing. It seemed as though the noise would go on for ever: she counted each separate sob, and when they had gradually lessened and died away the relief was like the ceasing of physical pain.

'Aunt Sophia,' Henrietta said, 'everybody has to die.'

Sophia heard. Tears glistened on her cheeks, her hair was disordered, she looked like a large flaxen doll that had been left out in the rain for a long time. 'But each person only once,' she whispered. 'One doesn't get used to it, and Caroline--' She struggled to sit up.

'Caroline would be ashamed of me for this.'

'She might pretend to be, but she'd like it really.'