The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing) Part 38

Henrietta sighed. 'It isn't fair,' she murmured, yet she liked the notion. Francis Sales was a baby. He would have to be managed, to be amused; he would tire of his toys. She knew that, and she saw herself constantly dressing up the old ones and deceiving him into believing they were new.

'I suppose they're worth it,' she half questioned.

'Men?'

'No, babies,' Henrietta answered, meaning the same thing, but Mrs.

Batty took her up with fervour. She was reminiscent, and tears came into her eyes; she was prophetic, she was embarra.s.sing and faintly disgusting to Henrietta, and when the door opened to let in Charles, she welcomed him with a pleasure which was really the measure of her relief.

She had not seen him since she had parted from him in the car. He did not return her smile and it struck her that he never smiled. It was a good thing: it would have made him look odder than ever, and somehow he contrived to show his happiness without the display of teeth. His eyes, she decided, bulged most when he was miserable, and now they hardly bulged at all.

'You're back early to-day, dear,' Mrs. Batty said. 'I'll have some fresh tea made.' But Charles, without averting his gaze from Henrietta, said, 'I don't want any tea,' and to Henrietta he said quietly, 'I haven't seen you for weeks.'

To her annoyance, she felt the colour creeping over her cheeks. No doubt he would account for that in his own way, and to disconcert him she added casually, 'It's not long really.'

'It seems long,' he said.

No one but Charles Batty would have said that in the presence of his mother; it was ridiculous, and she looked at him with revengeful criticism. He was plain; he was getting bald; his trousers bagged; his socks were wrinkled like concertinas; his comparative self-a.s.surance was quite unjustified. He had looked at her consistently since he entered the room, and Henrietta was angrily aware that Mrs. Batty was trying to make herself insignificant in her corner of the sofa.

Henrietta could hear the careful control of her breathing. She was hoping to make the young people forget she was there. Henrietta frowned warningly at Charles.

'What's the matter?' he asked at once.

'Nothing.' She might have known it was useless to make signs.

'But you frowned.'

'Well, don't you ever get a twinge?' she prevaricated.

'Toothache, dear?' Mrs. Batty clucked her distress. 'I'll get some laudanum. You just rub it on the gum--' She rose. 'I have some in my medicine cupboard. I'll go and get it.' She went out, and across her broad back she seemed to carry the legend, 'This is the consummation of tact.'

Charles stood up and planted himself on the hearthrug and Henrietta wished Mrs. Batty had not gone. 'I'm sorry you've got toothache,' he said.

'I haven't. I didn't say I had. My teeth are perfect.' With a vicious opening of her mouth, she let him see them.

'Then why did you frown?'

'I had to do something to stop your glaring at me.'

'Was I glaring? I didn't know. I suppose I can't help looking at you.'

Henrietta appreciated this remark. 'I don't mind so much when we are alone.' From anybody else she would have expected a reminder that she had once allowed more than that, but she was safe with Charles and half annoyed by her safety. Her instinct was to run and dodge, but it was a poor game to play at hide-and-seek with this roughly executed statue of a young man. 'Your mother must have noticed,' she explained.

'Well, why not? She'll have to know.'

'Know what?' she cried indignantly.

'That we're engaged.'

She brightened angrily. After all, he was thinking of that night and she felt a new, exasperated respect for him. 'But I told you--I told you I didn't mean anything when I let you--when we were alone in that car.'

'I wasn't thinking of that,' he said, and she felt a drop. He had no business not to think of it.

'Then what do you mean?' she asked coldly.

'I've been engaged to you,' he said, 'for a long time. I told you. But I've been thinking that it really doesn't work.'

'Of course it doesn't. Anybody would have known that except you, Charles Batty.'

'Yes, but n.o.body tells me things. I have to find them out.' He sighed.

'It takes time. But now I know.'

'Very well. You're released from the engagement you made all by yourself. I had nothing to do with it.'

'No,' he said mildly, 'but I can't be released, so the only way out of it is for you to be engaged too.' He fumbled in a pocket. 'I've bought a ring.'

She sneered. 'Who told you about that?'

'I remembered it. John got one. It's always done and I think this one is pretty.'

She had a great curiosity to see his choice. She guessed it would be gaudy, like a child's, but she said, 'It has nothing to do with me. I don't want to see it.'

'Do look.'

'Charles, you're hopeless.' 'The man said he would change it if you didn't like it.' Into her hand he put the little box, attractively small, no doubt lined with soft white velvet, and she longed to open it. She had always wanted one of those little boxes and she remembered how often she had gazed at them, holding glittering rings, in the windows of jewellers' shops. She looked up at Charles, her eyes bright, her lips a little parted, so young and helpless in that moment that she drew from him his first cry of pa.s.sion. 'Henrietta!' His hands trembled.

'It's only,' she faltered, 'because I like looking at pretty things.'

'I know.' He dropped to the sofa beside her. 'It couldn't be anything else.'

She turned to him, her face close to his, and she asked plaintively, 'But why shouldn't it be?' She seemed to blame him; she did blame him.

There was something in his presence seductively secure; there was peace: she almost loved him; she loved her power to make him tremble, and if only he could make her tremble too, she would be his. 'But it isn't anything else,' she said below her breath.

'No, it isn't,' he echoed in the loud voice of his trouble. He got up and moved away. 'So just look at the ring and tell me if you like it.'

He heard the box unwrapped and a voice saying, 'I do like it.'

'Then keep it.'

'But I can't.'

'Yes, you can. It's for you. It's pretty, isn't it? And you like pretty things.'

'I could just look at it now and then, couldn't I? But no, it isn't fair.'

'I don't mind about that.

'I mean fair to me.'

He turned at that. 'I don't understand.'