The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing) Part 7

'We have been talking about hunting,' she began at once.

'Oh, yes,' Christabel said. She looked warily from one to the other.

'I'm recommending you to stick to the old brown horse, but Francis says you laugh at him.'

'Would you ride him yourself?' Christabel asked.

'Not if I could get something better.'

'Well, then--' Christabel's tone was final.

But Rose persisted, saying, 'But, you see, this isn't my first season.

Stick to the old horse for a little while.'

'No,' Christabel said firmly. 'If Francis thinks I can ride the mare, I should like to have her.'

Rose laughed, but she felt uneasy, and Francis said, 'I told you so.

She has any amount of pluck. You come and watch.'

'No, I can't come to-morrow. I think I'll see her first in all her glory on the grey mare.'

'All the same,' Christabel added, 'if she's very expensive, I don't want her. Francis is extravagant over horses, and we have to be careful.'

'We'll economize somewhere else,' he said. 'The mare is yours.'

She suppressed a sigh. Rose was sure of it, and in after days she was to ask herself many times if she had been to blame in not interpreting that sigh to Francis. But she had to give Christabel, and Christabel especially, the loyalty of one woman to another. She would not wrench from her in a few words the pride Francis took in her, to which she sacrificed her fears. Rose had the astuteness of a jealousy she would not own, of a sense of possession she could not discard, and she had known, from the first moment, that Christabel was afraid of horses and dreaded the very name of hunting. And Rose divined, too, that if she herself had not been a horsewoman of some repute, Christabel would have been less ambitious; she would have been contented with the old brown horse; but Christabel, too, had an astuteness. No, she could not have interfered; yet when she first saw Christabel on the mare she was alarmed to the point of saying:

'Are you sure she's all right? You'd better keep beside her, Francis.'

The mare was fidgety and hot-headed. Christabel's hands were unsteady, her face was pale, her lips were tight; but she was gay, and Francis was proud to have her and her mount admired.

Rose looked round in despair. Could no one else see what was so plain to her? She was tempted to go home. She felt she could not bear the strain of watching that little figure perched on the grey beast that looked like a wraith, like a warning. But she did not go, and she learnt to be glad to have shared with Francis the horror of the moment when the mare, out of control and mad with excitement, tried a fence topping a bank, failed, and fell with Christabel beneath her.

On the ground there was a flurry of white and black, and then stillness, while over the fields the hounds and the foremost riders went like things seen in a dream, with the same callousness, the same speed.

Rose saw men dismount and run towards the queer, ugly muddle on the gra.s.s. She dismounted, too, and gave her horse to somebody to hold, but she did nothing. Other, more capable people were before her, and it struck her at that moment, while a bird in a bare hedge set up a short chirrup of surprise, how little used she was to action. She seemed to be standing alone in the big field: the rest was a picture with which she had nothing to do. There was a busy group near the fence, some men came running with a door, and then the sound of a shot broke through her numbness. The mare had been put out of her pain; but what of Christabel?

She hurried forward; she heard some one say, 'Ah, here's Miss Mallett,' and she answered vaguely, 'Men are gentler.' But as they lifted Christabel, Rose held one of her hands. It felt lifeless; she looked small and broken; she made no sound.

'She's not conscious,' a man said, and at that she opened her eyes.

'My G.o.d, she's got some pluck!' Francis said. 'My G.o.d--'

She smiled at him, and he dropped behind with a gesture of despair.

'You were right,' he said to Rose, 'she wasn't equal to that brute.'

He turned angrily. 'Why didn't you make me see?'

She made no answer then, or afterwards, to him, but over and over again, with the awful reiteration of the conscience-smitten, she set out her reasons for her silence. She might have told him that of these he was the chief. If he had looked at her less persistently on her visits to Sales Hall, if he had married another kind of woman, she would not have been afraid to speak, but she had tried not to extinguish what little flame of love still flickered in his heart for Christabel and she had succeeded in almost extinguis.h.i.+ng her life, in reducing her to permanent helplessness.

This was Rose's first experience of how evil comes out of good. What would happen to that love, Rose did not know. For a time it burned more brightly, fanned by Christabel's heroism and Francis's remorse, but heroism can become monotonous to the spectator and poignant remorse cannot be endured for ever. Christabel's plight was pitiful, but Rose was sorrier for Francis. He had, as it were, engaged her compa.s.sion years ago, he had a prior claim, and as time went on, her pity for Christabel changed at moments to annoyance. It was cruel, but Rose had no fund of patience. She disliked illness as she did deformity, and though Christabel never complained of her constant pain, she developed the exactions of an invalid, and the suspicions.

In those blue eyes, bluer, and more than ever wary, Rose saw the questions which were never asked.

In the bedroom which, with the boudoir, had been furnished and decorated by the best shop in Radstowe, for a surprise, Christabel lay on a couch near the window, with a nurse in attendance, the puppy and the kitten, both growing staid, for company. It tired her to use her hands, she had never cared for reading and she lay there with little for consolation but her pride in stoically bearing pain.

Often, and with many interruptions, she made Rose repeat the details of the accident.

'I was riding well, wasn't I?' she would ask. 'Francis was pleased with me. He said so. It wasn't my fault, was it? And then, when they were carrying me home did you hear what he said? Tell me what he said.'

And Rose told her: 'He said, "My G.o.d, she has got pluck!" Oh, Christabel, don't talk about it.'

'I like to,' she replied, but the day came when she insisted on this subject for the last time.

'Tell me what you thought when you saw me on the mare,' she said, and Rose, careless for once, answered immediately, 'I thought she wasn't fit for you to ride.'

'Ah,' Christabel said slowly, 'did you? Did you? But you didn't say anything. That was--queer.'

Rose said nothing. She was frozen dumb and there was no possible reply to such an implication; but she rose and drew on her gloves. She looked tall and straight in her habit, and formidable.

'Are you going? But you must have tea with Francis. He's expecting you.'

'I won't stay to-day,' Rose said. She was shaking with the anger she suppressed.

'But if you don't,' Christabel cried, 'he'll want to know why. He'll ask me!'

'I can't help that,' Rose said.

Tears came into Christabel's eyes. 'You might at least do that for me.'

'Very well. Because you ask me.'

'And you'll come again soon?'

The sternness of Rose's face was broken by an ironic smile. 'Of course! If you are sure you want me!'

She went downstairs and, as usual, Francis was waiting for her in the matted hall. He did not greet her with a word or a smile. He watched her descend the shallow flight, and together they went down the pa.s.sage to the clear drawing-room, where the faded water-colours looked unreal and innocent and ignorant of tragedy.

'What's the matter?' he asked.

'Nothing.' She looked into the oval mirror which had so often reflected his mother's placid face. 'My hat's a little crooked,' she said.

He laughed without mirth. 'Never in its life. Has Christabel been worrying you?'

'Worrying me? Poor child--'

'Yes, it's d.a.m.nable, but she does worry one--and you look odd.'

'I'm getting old,' she murmured, not seeking rea.s.surance but stating a fact plain to her.