The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing) Part 9

'Very dangerous,' Rose remarked, slipping deliberately into the trap.

'That's what I mean. But not quite dangerous enough. Poor Francis! He didn't know. He doesn't know now, does he? But of course not.'

Rose had a great horror of a debt and she owed something to Christabel, but now she felt she had paid it off, with interest. She breathed deeply, without a sound. Her tone was light.

'He knows all that is good for him.'

'You mean that is good for you.'

Rose stood up, pulled on her washleather gloves, sat down again. The hands on the silk coverlet were shaking.

'You are making yourself ill,' Rose said. She was tempted to take those poor fluttering hands into her own and steady them, but her flesh shrank from the contact. She was tempted, too, to tell Christabel the truth, but pride forbade her, and in a moment the impulse was gone, and with its departure came the belief that the truth would be annihilating. It would rob her of her glorious uncertainty, she would be destroyed by the knowledge that Rose had seen her fear, seen and tried to strengthen the slender hold she had on her husband's love. It was better to play the part of the wicked woman, the murderess, the stealer of hearts: and perhaps she was wicked; she had not thought of that before; the Malletts did not criticize their actions or a.n.a.lyse their minds and she had no intention of breaking their habits. She stood up again and said:

'Shall I call the nurse?'

'You're not going yet? You've only been here a few minutes.'

'Long enough,' Rose said cheerfully.

Tears came into Christabel's eyes. 'And Francis is out. If he doesn't see you he'll be angry, he'll ask me why.'

'You can tell him.'

'But,' the tone changed, 'perhaps you'll see him on your way home.'

'Yes, and then I can tell him instead.'

The tears overflowed, she was helplessly angry, she sobbed.

'Be quiet,' Rose said sternly. 'I shall tell him nothing. You know that. You are quite safe, whatever you choose to say to me. Perfectly safe.'

'I know. I can't help it. I lie here and think. What would you do in my place?'

'The same thing, I suppose,' Rose said.

'And you won't go?'

'Yes, I'm going. You can tell Francis I was obliged to get home early.'

'But you'll come again?'

'Oh, yes, I'll come again.'

'You don't want to.'

'No, I don't want to.'

'But you're always riding over here, aren't you?'

'Nearly every day.'

'Oh, then--' The words lingered meaningly until Rose reached the door and then Christabel said, 'I wish you'd ask your sisters to come and see me. They would tell me all the news.'

Rose went downstairs laughing at Christabel's capacity for mingling tragedy with the commonplace and sordid accusations with social desires, but though she laughed she was strangely tired and, stretching before her, she saw more weariness, more struggling, more effort without result.

She stood in the masculine, matted hall, with the usual worn pair of slippers in the corner, a stick lying across a chair, a collection of coats and hats on the pegs, and she felt she would be glad if she were never to see all this again, and for the first time she thought seriously of desertion. She wished she could go to some unfamiliar country where the people would all have new faces, where the language would be strange, the sights different, the smells unlike those which were wafted through the open door. She wanted a fresh body and a new world, but she knew that she would not get them, for leaving Francis would be like leaving a child. So she told herself, but at the back of her mind was the certainty that if she went he would soon attach himself to another's strength--or weakness: yes, to another's weakness, and she found she could not contemplate that event, less because she clung to him than because her pride could not tolerate a subst.i.tution which would be an admission of her likeness to other women. Yet in that very lack of toleration her pride was lowered, and if she was not clinging to him for her own sake, she was holding on to her place, her uniqueness, refusing the possibility that another woman could serve him, as she had served him with pain, with suffering. She was like a queen who does not love her throne supremely but will not abdicate, who would rather fail in her appointed place than see another succeed in it.

For a minute Rose Mallett sat down on the edge of the chair already occupied by the stick and she pressed both hands against her forehead, driving back her thoughts. Thinking was dangerous and a folly: it was a concession to circ.u.mstances, and she would concede nothing. She stood up, looked round for a mirror, remembered there was not one in the hall, and with little, meticulous touches to her hat, her hair and the white stock round her neck, she left the house.

She returned to a drawing-room occupied by Caroline and Sophia, yet strangely silent. There was not a sound but what came from the birds in the garden. Caroline's spectacles were on her nose and, though she was not reading the letter on her knee, she had forgotten to take them off, an ominous sign. Sophia's face was flushed with agitation, her head drooped more than usual, but she lifted it with a sigh of relief at Rose's entrance.

'We're in such trouble, dear,' she said.

'Trouble! Nonsense! No trouble at all! Look here, Rose, that woman has died now.' She shook the letter threateningly. 'Read this! Reginald's wife! I suppose she was his wife. I dare say he had dozens.'

'Caroline!' Sophia remonstrated.

Rose took the letter and read what Mrs. Reginald Mallett, believing herself about to die, had written in her big, sprawling hand. The letter was only to be posted after her death and she made no apology for asking the Malletts to see that her daughter had the chance of earning her living suitably. 'She is a good girl,' she wrote, 'but when I am gone her only friend will be the landlady of this house and there are young men about the place who are not the right kind. I am telling my dear girl that I wish her to accept any offer of help she gets from you, and she will do what I ask.'

'So, you see,' Caroline said as Rose looked up, 'we're not done with Reginald yet, and what I propose is that we send Susan for the girl to-morrow.'

'Yes, to-morrow,' Sophia echoed.

'Shall I go?' Rose asked. Sophia murmured grat.i.tude, Caroline snorted doubt, and Rose added, 'No, I think not. She wouldn't like it. Susan would be better--but not to-morrow. You must write to the child-- what's her name? Henrietta--'

'Yes, Henrietta, after our grandmother--the idea! I don't know how Reginald dared.'

'Is she a sacred character?' Rose asked dryly. 'Write to her, Caroline, and say Susan will come on the day that suits her best. You can't drag her away without warning. Let's treat her courteously, please.'

'Oh, Rose, dear, I think we are always courteous,' Sophia protested.

Caroline merely said, 'Bah!' and added, 'And what are we going to do with her when we get her? She'll giggle, she'll have a dreadful accent, Sophia will blush for her. I shan't. I never blush for anybody, even myself, but I shall be bored. That's worse, and if you think I'm going to edit my stories for her benefit, Sophia, you're mistaken. I never managed to do that, even for the General, and I'm too old to begin.' She removed her spectacles hastily. 'Too old for that, anyhow.'

Rose smiled. She thought that probably the child of Reginald Mallett, living from hand to mouth in boarding houses, the sharer of his sinking fortunes, the witness of his pa.s.sions and despairs and infidelities, would find Caroline's stories innocent enough. Her hope was that Henrietta would not try to cap them, but the chances were that she would be a terrible young person, that she would find herself adrift in the respectability of Radstowe where she was unlikely to meet those young men, not of the right kind, to whom she was accustomed.

'She must have her father's room,' Sophia said. She was trying to conceal her excitement. 'We must put some flowers there. I think I'll just go upstairs and see if there's any little improvement we could make.'

They all went upstairs and stood in that room devoted to the memory of the scapegrace, but they made no alterations, Sophia expressing the belief that Henrietta would prefer it as it was; and Caroline, as she wiped away two slow tears, saying that Reginald was a wretch and she could not see why they should put themselves to any trouble for his daughter.

Book II: _Henrietta_

-- 1

After luncheon Henrietta went to her room to unpack the brown tin trunk which contained all her possessions, and as she ascended the stairs with her hand on the polished mahogany rail, she heard Sophia saying, 'She's a true Mallett. She has the Mallett ankle. Did you notice it, Caroline?' And Caroline answered harshly, 'Yes, the Mallett ankle, but not the foot. Her foot is square, like a block of wood.

What could you expect?' Then the drawing-room door was closed softly on this indiscretion.