Chapter IV: Book II: Henrietta (1)

§ 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.

Henrietta continued steadily up the stairs and across the landing to her father’s room, and before the long mirror on the wall she halted to survey her reflected feet. Aunt Caroline had but exaggerated the truth; they were square, but they were small, and she controlled her trembling lips.

She pushed back from her forehead the black, curling hair. She was tired; the luncheon had been a strain, and the carelessly loud words of Caroline reminded her that she was undergoing an examination which, veiled by courtesy, would be severe. Already they were blaming her mother for her feet; and all three of them, the blunt Caroline, the tender Sophia, the mysteriously silent Rose, were on the watch for the maternal traits.

Well, she was not ashamed of them. Her mother had been good, brave, honest, loving, patient, and her father had been none of these things; but no doubt these aunts of hers put manners before morals, as he had done; and she remembered how, when she was quite a little girl, and the witness of one of the unpleasant domestic scenes which happened often in those days, before Reginald Mallett’s wife had learnt forbearance, she had noticed her father’s face twitch as though in pain. Glad of a diversion, she had asked him with eager sympathy, “Is it toothache?” and he had answered acidly, “No, child, only the mutilation of our language.” She remembered the words, and later she understood their meaning and the flushing of her mother’s face, the compression of her lips, and she was indignant for her sake.

Yet she could feel for her father, in spite of the fact that whatever her accent or grammatical mistakes, her mother’s conduct was always right and her father, with his charming air, a little blurred by what he called misfortune, his clear speech to which Henrietta loved to listen, was fundamentally unsound. He could not be trusted. That was understood between the mother and daughter: it was one of the facts on which their existence rested, it entered into all their calculations, it was the text of all her mother’s little homilies. Henrietta must always pay her debts, she must tell the truth, she must do nothing of which she was ashamed, and so far Henrietta had succeeded in obeying these commands.

When Reginald Mallett died in the shabby boarding-house kept by Mrs. Banks, he left his family without a penny but with a feeling of extraordinary peace. They were destitute, but they were no longer overshadowed by the fear of disgrace, the misery of subterfuge, the bewildering oscillations between pity for the man who could not have what he wanted and shame for his ceaseless striving after pleasure, his shifts to get it, his reproaches and complaints.

In the gloomy back bedroom on the third story of the boarding-house he lay on a bed hung with dingy curtains, but in the dignity which was one of his inheritances. Under the dark, close-cut moustache, his lips seemed to smile faintly, perhaps in amusement at the folly of his life, perhaps in surprise at finding himself so still; the narrow beard of a foreign cut was slightly tilted towards the dirty ceiling, his beautiful hands were folded as though in a mockery of prayer. He was, as Mrs. Banks remarked when she was allowed to see him, a lovely corpse. But to Henrietta and her mother, standing on either side of the bed, guarding him now, as they had always tried to do, he had subtly become the husband and father he should have been.

“We must remember him like this,” Mrs. Mallett said, raising her soft blue eyes, and Henrietta saw that the small sharp lines which Reginald Mallett had helped to carve in her face seemed to have disappeared. It was extraordinary how placid her face became after his death, but as the days passed it was also noticeable that much of her vitality had gone too. She left herself in Henrietta’s young hands and she, casting about for a way of earning her living, found good fortune in the terrible basement kitchen where Mrs. Banks moved mournfully and had her disconsolate being. The gas was always lighted in that cavernous kitchen, but it remained dark, mercifully leaving the dirt half unseen. A joint of mutton, cold and mangled, was discernible, however, when Henrietta descended to put her impecunious case before the landlady and, gazing at it, the girl saw also her opportunity. Mrs. Banks had no culinary imagination, but Henrietta found it rising in herself to an inspired degree and there and then she offered herself as cook in return for board and lodging for her mother and herself.

“I’m sure I’ll be glad to keep you,” Mrs. Banks said: “you give the place a tone, you do really, you and your dear Ma sitting in the drawing-room sewing of an evening; but it isn’t only the cooking, though I do get to hate the sight of food. I get a regular grudge against it. But it’s that butcher! Ready money or no meat’s his motto, and how to make this mutton last—” She picked it up by the bone and cast it down again.

“Oh, I can manage butchers,” Henrietta said. “Besides, we’ll pay our way. You’ll see. Leave the cooking to me.”

“I will, gladly,” Mrs. Banks said, wiping away a tear. “Ever since Banks took it into his head to jump into the river, it seems like as if I hadn’t any spirit, and that Jenkins turns up his ugly nose every time I put the mutton on the table—when he doesn’t begin talking to it like an old friend. I can’t bear Jenkins, but he does pay regular, and that’s something. Well, I’ll get on with the upstairs and leave you to it.”

And so Henrietta began the work which kept her amazingly happy, fed and sheltered her mother, who sat all day slowly making beautiful baby linen for one of the big shops, and cemented Henrietta’s friendship with the lachrymose Mrs. Banks. To be faced with a mutton bone and a few vegetables, to have to wrest from these poor materials an appetizing meal, was like an exciting game, and she played it with zest and with success. She had the dubious pleasure of hearing Mr. Jenkins smack his lips and seeing him distend his nostrils with anticipation; the unalloyed one of watching the pale face of little Miss Stubb, the typist, grow delicately pink and less dangerously thin, under the stimulus of good food; the amusement of congratulating Mrs. Banks, in public, on her new cook, and seeing Mrs. Banks, at the head of the supper table, nod her head with important secrecy.

“I’ve made out,” she told Henrietta, “that I’ve a daily girl, without a character, that’s how I can afford her, in the basement, but I must say it’s made that Jenkins mighty keen on fetching his own boots of a morning, but no lodgers below-stairs is my rule. You look out for Jenkins, my dear. He’s no good. I know his sort.”

“Oh, I can manage Mr. Jenkins, too,” Henrietta said, and indeed she made a point of bringing him to the hardly manageable state for the amusement of proving her capacity. She despised him, but not for nothing was she Reginald Mallett’s daughter; and Mr. Jenkins and the butcher and a gloomy old gentleman who emerged from his bedroom to eat, and locked himself up between meals, were the only men she knew. No doubt Mrs. Mallett, placidly sewing, was alive to the attentions and frustrations of Mr. Jenkins and had planned her letter to her sisters-in-law some time before she wrote it, but the idea of parting from her mother never occurred to Henrietta until Miss Stubb alarmed her.

“Your mother,” she said poetically, “makes me think of snow melting before the sun. In fact, I can’t look at her without thinking of snow and snowdrops and—and graves. Last spring I said to Mrs. Banks, ‘She won’t see the leaves fall,’ I said, and Mrs. Banks agreed. She has been spared, but take care of her in these cold winds, Miss Henrietta, dear.”

“She has a cold, only a cold,” Henrietta said in a dead voice, and she went upstairs. Her mother was in bed, and Henrietta looked down at the thin, pretty face. “How ill are you?” she asked in a threatening manner. “Tell me how ill you are.”

“I’ve only got a cold, Henry dear. I shall be up to-morrow.”

“Promise you won’t be really ill.”

“Why should I be?”

“It’s Miss Stubb—saying things.”

“Women chatter,” Mrs. Mallett said. “If it’s not scandal, it’s an illness. You ought to know that.”

“They might leave you alone, anyway.”

“Yes, I wish they would,” Mrs. Mallett said faintly, and dropped back on her pillow.

Now, sitting in her father’s room, with her mother only a few weeks dead, she reproached herself for her readiness to be deceived, for her preoccupation with her own affairs and the odious Mr. Jenkins, for the exuberance of life which hid from her the dwindling of her mother’s, and the fact, now so plain, that when Reginald Mallett died his wife’s capacity for struggling was at an end. She had suffered bitterly from the sight of his deterioration and from her failure to prevent it. In his sulky, torturing presence she had desired his absence, but this permanent absence was more than she could bear. And all Henrietta could do was to obey her mother’s injunction to accept help from her aunts, but she had refused the offer of an escort to Radstowe and Nelson Lodge; she would have no highly respectable servant sniffing at the boarding-house—and she would have been bound to sniff in that permanently scented atmosphere—which was, after all, her home. She left with genuine regret, with tears.

“You mustn’t cry, dearie,” Mrs. Banks said, holding Henrietta to the bosom of her greasy dress. “It’s a lucky thing for you.”

“Perhaps,” Henrietta said, “but I’d rather be with you, and I can’t bear to think of the cooking going to pieces. I’ll send you some recipes for nice dishes.”

“Too many eggs,” Mrs. Banks said prophetically.

“I dare say, but you can manage if you think about it. And remember, if Miss Stubb has too much cold mutton, she’ll lose her job, and then you’ll lose her money. It will pay you to feed her. You haven’t had a debt since I began to help you.”

“I know, I know; but I’ll have them now, for certain. I’ve told you before that Banks took all my ideas with him when he dropped into the river,” Mrs. Banks said hopelessly, and on Henrietta’s journey to Radstowe it was of Mrs. Banks that she chiefly thought. It seemed as though she were deserting a friend.

She was surprised by the smallness of Nelson Lodge as she walked up the garden path; she had pictured something more imposing than this low white building, walled off from the wide street; but within she discovered an inconsistent spaciousness. The hall was panelled in white wood, the drawing-room, sparsely but beautifully furnished, was white too, and she immediately felt, as indeed she looked, thoroughly out of harmony with her surroundings. She waited there, in her cheap black clothes, like some little servant seeking a situation; but her welcome, when it came, after a rustling of silken skirts on the stairs, assured her that she was acknowledged as a member of the family. Sophia took her tenderly to her heart and murmured, “Oh, my dear, how like your father!” Caroline patted her cheek and said, “Yes, yes, Reginald’s daughter, so she is!” And a moment later, Rose entered, faintly smiling, extending a cool hand.

Henrietta’s acutely feminine eye saw immediately that her Aunt Rose was supremely well-dressed, and all her past ideas of grandeur, of plumed hats and feather boas and ornamental walking shoes, left her for ever. She knew, too, that clothes like these were very costly, beyond her dreams, but she decided, in a moment, to rearrange and subdue the black trimming of her hat.

On the other hand, the appearance of the elder aunts almost shocked her. At the first glance they seemed bedizened and indecent in their mixture of rouge and more than middle age; but at the second and the third they became attractive, oddly distinguished. She felt sure of them, of their sympathy, of her ability to please them. It was Aunt Rose who made her feel ill at ease, and it was Aunt Rose of whom she thought as she sat by her bedroom window and looked down at the back garden, bright with the flowers of spring.

Yet it was Aunt Caroline who had been unkind about her feet. They were like that, these grand people; they had beautiful manners but nothing superficial escaped them; they made no allowances, they went in for no deceptions, and though it was Caroline who had actually condemned the small, strong feet which now rested, slipperless, on the soft carpet, Henrietta was sure that Rose had seen them too. She had seen everything, though apparently she saw nothing, and Henrietta had to acknowledge her fear of Rose’s criticism. It was formidable, for it would be unflinching in its standards.

“Well,” Henrietta thought, “I can only be myself, and if I’m common— but I’m not really common—it’s better than pretending; and of course I am rather upset by the house and the servants and all the forks and spoons. I hope there won’t be anything funny to eat for dinner. I wish—” To her own amazement, she burst into a brief storm of tears. “I wish I had stayed with Mrs. Banks.”

She had her place in the boarding-house, she was a power there, and she missed already her subtle, unrecognized belief in her superiority over Mrs. Banks and Miss Stubb and Mr. Jenkins and the rest. She was also honestly troubled about the welfare of the landlady, who was her only friend. It was strange to sit in her father’s room and look at a portrait of him as a youth hanging on the wall, and remember that Mrs. Banks, who made him shudder, was her only friend.

She left her seat by the window to look more closely at that portrait, and after a brief examination she turned to the dressing-table to see in the mirror a feminine replica of the face on the wall. She had never noticed the likeness before. She had only to push back her hair and she saw her father. Where his nose was straight, hers was slightly tilted, but there was the same darkness of hair and eyes, the same modelling of the forehead, the same incipient petulance of the lips.

She was astonished, she was unreasonably pleased, and with the energy of her inspiration she swept back the curls of which her mother had been so proud, and pinned them into obscurity. The resemblance was extraordinary: even the low white collar of her blouse, fastened with a black bow, repeated the somewhat Byronic appearance of the young man; and as there came a knock at the door, she turned, a little shame-faced, but excited in the certainty of her success.

But it was only Susan, who gave no sign of astonishment at the change. She had come to see if she could help Miss Henrietta to unpack, but Henrietta had already laid away her meagre outfit in the walnut tallboy with the curved legs. Susan, however, would remove the trunk, and if Miss Henrietta would tell her what dress she wished to wear this evening, Susan would be able to lay out her things. The tin trunk clanked noisily though Susan lifted it with tactful care, and Henrietta blushed for it, but the aged portmanteau, bearing the initials _R. M._, became in the discreet presence of Susan a priceless possession.

“It’s full of books,” Henrietta said; “I won’t unpack them. I thought my aunts would let me keep them somewhere. They are my father’s books.”

“There’s an old bookcase belonging to Mr. Reginald in the box-room,” Susan said; “I’ll speak to Miss Caroline about it.”

“Did you know my father?” Henrietta asked at once.

“Yes, Miss Henrietta,” Susan said.

“Do you think I’m like him?”

“It’s a striking likeness, Miss Henrietta,” and warming a little, Susan added, “I was just saying so to Cook.”

“Did Cook know him, too?”

“Oh, yes, Miss Henrietta. Cook and I have been with the family for years. If you’ll tell me which dress you wish to wear—”

“There’s only one in the wardrobe,” Henrietta said serenely, for suddenly her shabbiness and poverty mattered no longer. She was stamped with the impress of Reginald Mallett, whom she had despised yet of whom she was proud, and that impress was like a guarantee, a sort of passport. She had a great lightness of heart; she was glad she had left Mrs. Banks, glad she was in her father’s home, and learning from Susan that the ladies rested in their own rooms after luncheon, she decided to go out and look on the scenes of her father’s youth.

§ 2

This was not, she told herself, disloyalty to her mother, for had not that mother, whom she loved and painfully missed, sent her to this place? Her mother was generous and sweet; she would grudge no late-found allegiance to Reginald Mallett. Had she not said they must remember him at his best, and would she not be glad if Henrietta could find bits of that best in this old house, in the streets where he had walked, in the sights which had fed his eyes?

Henrietta started out, gently closing the front door behind her. The wide street was almost empty; a milkcart bearing the legend, “Sales Hall Dairy,” was being drawn at an easy pace by a demure pony, his harness adorned with jingling bells. The milkman whistled and, as the cart stopped here and there, she missed the London milkman’s harsh cry, and missed it pleasurably. This man was in no hurry, there was no impatience in his knock; the whole place seemed to be half asleep, except where children played on The Green under the old trees. This comparatively small space, mounting in the distance to a little hill backed by the sky, was more wonderful to Henrietta than Hyde Park when the flowers were at their best. There were no flowers here; she saw grass, two old stone monuments, tall trees, a miniature cliff of grey rock, and sky. On three sides of The Green there were old houses and there were seats on the grass, but houses and seats had the air of being mere accidents to which the rest had grown accustomed, and it seemed to Henrietta that here, in spite of bricks, she was in the country. The trees, the grass, the rocks and sky were in possession.

She followed one of the small paths round the hill and found herself in a place so wonderful, so unexpected, that she caught back her breath and let it out again in low exclamations of delight. She was now on the other side of the hill and, though she did not know it, she was on the site of an ancient camp. The hill was flat-topped; there were still signs of the ramparts, but it was not on these she gazed. Far below her was the river, flowing sluggishly in a deep ravine, formed on her right hand and as far as she could see by high grey cliffs. These for the most part were bare and sheer, but they gave way now and then to a gentler slope with a rich burden of trees, while, on the other side of the river, it was the rocks that seemed to encroach on the trees, for the wall of the gorge, almost to the water’s edge, was thick with woods. Here and there, on either cliff, a sudden red splash of rock showed like an unhealed wound, amid the healthier grey. And all around her there seemed to be limitless sky, huge fluffy clouds and gulls as white.

At the edge of the cliff where she stood, gorse bushes bloomed and, looking to the left, she saw the slender line of a bridge swung high across the abyss. Beyond it the cliffs lessened into banks, then into meadows studded with big elms and, on the city side, there were houses red and grey, as though the rocks had simply changed their shapes. The houses were clustered close to the water, they rose in terraces and trees mingled with their chimneys. Below there were intricate waterways, little bridges, warehouses and ships and, high up, the fairy bridge, delicate and poised, was like a barrier between that place of business and activity and this, where Henrietta stood with the trees, the cliffs, the swooping gulls. It was low tide and the river was bordered by banks of mud, grey too, yet opalescent. It almost reflected the startling white of the gulls’ wings and, as she looked at it, she saw that its colour was made up of many; there was pink in it and blue and, as a big cloud passed over the sun, it became subtly purple; it was a palette of subdued and tender shades.

Henrietta heaved a sigh. This was too much. She could look at it but she could not see it all. Yet this marvellous place belonged to her, and she knew now whence had come the glamour in the stories her father had told her when she was a child. It had come from here, where an aged city had tried to conquer the country and had failed, for the spirit of woods and open spaces, of water and trees and wind, survived among the very roofs. The conventions of the centuries, the convention of puritanism, of worldliness, of impiety, of materialism and of charity had all assailed and all fallen back before the strength of the apparently peaceful country in which the city stood. The air was soft with a peculiar, undermining softness; it carried with it a smell of flowers and fruit and earth, and if all the many miles on the farther side of the bridge should be ravished by men’s hands, covered with buildings and strewn with the ugly luxuries they thought they needed, the spirit would remain in the tainted air and the imprisoned earth. It would whisper at night at the windows, it would smile invisibly under the sun, it would steal into men’s minds and work its will upon them. And already Henrietta felt its power. She was in a new world, dull but magical, torpid yet alert.

She turned away and, walking down another little path threaded through the rocks, she stood at the entrance to the bridge and watched people on foot, people on bicycles, people in carts coming and going over it. She could not cross herself for she had not a penny in her pocket, but she stood there gazing and sometimes looking down at the road two hundred feet below. This made her slightly giddy and the people down there had too much the appearance of pigmies with legs growing from their necks, going about perfectly unimportant business with a great deal of fuss. It was pleasanter to see these country people in their carts, school-girls with plaits down their backs, rosy children in perambulators and an exceedingly handsome man on a fine black horse, a fair man, bronzed like a soldier, riding as though he had done it all his life.

She looked at him with admiration for his looks and envy for his possessions, for that horse, that somewhat sulky ease. And it was quite possible that he was an acquaintance of her aunts! She laughed away her awed astonishment. Why, her own father had been such as he, though she had never seen him on a horse. She had, after all, to adjust her views a little, to remember that she was a Mallett, a member of an honoured Radstowe family, the granddaughter of a General, the daughter of a gentleman, though a scamp. She was ashamed of the something approaching reverence with which she had looked at the man on the horse, but she was also ashamed of her shame; in fact, to be ashamed at all was, she felt, a degradation, and she cast the feeling from her.

Here was not only a new world but a new life, a new starting point; she must be equal to the place, the opportunity and the occasion; she was, she told herself, equal to them all.

In this self-confident mood she returned to Nelson Lodge and found Caroline, in a different frock, seated behind the tea-table and in the act of putting the tea into the pot.

“Just in time,” she remarked, and added with intense interest, “You have brushed back your hair. Excellent! Look, Sophia, what an improvement! And more like Reginald than ever. Take off your hat, child, and let us see. My dear, I was going to tell you, when I knew you better, that those curls made you look like an organ-grinder. Don’t hush me, Sophia; I always say what I think.”

Henrietta was hurt; this, though Caroline did not know it, was a rebuff to the mother who loved the curls; but the daughter would not betray her sensibility, and as Rose was not present she dared to say, “An organ-grinder with square feet.”

“Oh, you heard that, did you? Sophia said you would. Well, you must be careful about your shoes. Men always look at a woman’s feet.” She displayed her own, elegantly arched, in lustrous stockings and very high-heeled slippers. “Sophia and I—Sophia’s are nearly, but not quite as good as mine—are they Sophia?—Sophia and I have always been particular about our feet. I remember a ball, when I was a girl, where one of my partners—he ended by marrying a ridiculously fat woman with feet like cannon balls—insisted on calling me Cinderella because he said nobody else could have worn my shoes. Delightful creature! Do you remember, Sophia?”

Sophia remembered very well. He had called her Cinderella, too, for the same reason, but as Caroline had been the first to report the remark, Sophia had never cared to spoil her pleasure in it. And now Caroline did not wait for a reply, Rose entering at that moment, and her attention having to be called to the change in Henrietta’s method of doing her hair. Henrietta stiffened at once, but Rose threw, as it were, a smile in her direction, and said, “Yes, charming,” and helped herself to cake.

“And now,” said Caroline, settling herself for the most interesting subject in the world, “your clothes, Henrietta.”

“I haven’t any,” Henrietta said at once; “but I think they’ll do until I go away. I thought I should like to be a nurse, Aunt Caroline.”

“Nurse! Nonsense! What kind? Babies? Rubbish! You’re going to stay here if you like us well enough, and we’ve made a little plan”—she nodded vigorously—“a little plan for you.”

“We ought to say at once,” Sophia interrupted with painful honesty, “that it was Rose’s idea.”

“Rose? Was it? I don’t know. Anyhow, we’re all agreed. You are to have a sum of money, child; yes, for your father’s sake, and perhaps for your own too, a sum of money to bring you in a little income for your clothes and pleasures, so that you shall be independent like the rest of us. Yes, it’s settled. I’ve written to our lawyer, James Batty. Did your father ever mention James Batty? But, of course, he wouldn’t. He married a fat woman, too, but a good soul, with a high colour, poor thing. Don’t say a word, child. You must be independent. Nursing! Bah! And if we don’t take care we shall have you marrying for a home.”

“This is your home,” Sophia said gently.

“No sentiment, Sophia, please. You’re making the child cry. The Malletts don’t marry, Henrietta. Look at us, as happy as the day is long, with all the fun and none of the trouble. We’ve been terrible flirts, Sophia and I. Rose is different, but at least she hasn’t married. The three Miss Malletts of Nelson Lodge! Now there are four of us, and you must keep up our reputation.”

Overwhelmed by this generosity, by this kindness, Henrietta did not know what to say. She murmured something about her mother’s wish that she should earn her living, but Caroline scouted the idea, and Sophia, putting her white hand on one of Henrietta’s, assured her that her dear mother would be glad for her child to have the comforts of a home.

“I’m not used to them,” Henrietta said. “I’ve always taken care of people. I shan’t know what to do.”

They would find plenty for her to do; there were many gaieties in Radstowe and she would be welcomed everywhere. “And now about your clothes,” Caroline repeated. “You are wearing black, of course. Well, black can be very pretty, very French. Look at Rose. She rarely wears anything else, but when Sophia and I were about your age, she used to wear blue and I wore pink, or the other way round.”

“You do so still,” Rose remarked.

“A pink muslin,” Caroline went on in a sort of ecstasy, “a Leghorn hat wreathed with pink roses—when was I wearing that, Sophia?”

“Last summer,” Rose said dryly.

“So I was,” Caroline agreed in a matter-of-fact voice. “Now, Henrietta. Get a piece of paper and a pencil, Sophia, and we’ll make a list.”

The discussion went on endlessly, long after Henrietta herself had tired of it. It was lengthened by the insertion of anecdotes of Caroline’s and Sophia’s youth, and hardly a colour or a material was mentioned which did not recall an incident which Henrietta found more interesting than her own sartorial affairs.

Rose had disappeared, and the dressing-bell was rung before the subject languished. It would never be exhausted, for Caroline, and even Sophia, less vivid than her sister in all but her affections, grew pink and bright-eyed in considering Henrietta’s points. And all the time Henrietta had her own opinions, her own plans. She intended as far as possible to preserve her likeness to her father, which was, as it were, her stock-in-trade. She pictured herself, youthfully slim, gravely petulant, her round neck rising from a Byronic collar fastened with a broad, loose bow, and she fancied the society of Radstowe exclaiming with one voice, “That must be Reginald Mallett’s daughter!”

She was to learn, however, that in Radstowe the memories of Reginald Mallett were somewhat dim, and where they were clear they were neglected. It was generally assumed that his daughter would not care to have him mentioned, while praises of her aunts were constant and enthusiastic and people were kind to Henrietta, she discovered, for their sakes.

The stout and highly-coloured Mrs. Batty was an early caller. She arrived, rather wheezy, compressed by her tailor into an expensive gown, a basket of spring flowers on her head. She and Henrietta took to each other, as Mrs. Batty said, at once. Here was a motherly person, and Henrietta knew that if she could have Mrs. Batty to herself she would be able to talk more freely than she had done since her arrival in Radstowe. There would be no criticism from her, but unlimited good nature, a readiness to listen and to confide and a love for the details of operations and illnesses in which she had a kinship with Mrs. Banks. Indeed, though Mrs. Batty was fat where Mrs. Banks was thin, cheerful where she was gloomy, and in possession of a flourishing husband where Mrs. Banks irritably mourned the loss of a suicide, they had characteristics in common and the chief of these was the way in which they took to Henrietta.

“You must come to tea on Sunday,” Mrs. Batty said. “We are always at home on Sunday afternoons after four o’clock. I have two big boys,” she sighed, “and all their friends are welcome then.” She lowered her voice. “We don’t allow tennis—the neighbours, you know, and James has clients looking out of every window—but there’s no harm, as the boys say, in knocking the billiard balls about. I must say the click carries a good way, so I tell the parlourmaid to shut the windows. And music—my boy Charles,” she sighed again, “is mad on music. I like a tune myself, but he never plays any. You’ll hear for yourself if you come on Sunday. Now you will come, won’t you, Miss Henrietta?”

“Yes, she’ll come,” Caroline said. “Do her good to meet young people. We’re getting old in this house, Mrs. Batty,” and she guffawed in anticipation of the usual denial, but for once Mrs. Batty failed. Her thoughts were at home, at Prospect House, that commodious family mansion situate in its own grounds, and in one of the most favourable positions in Upper Radstowe. So the advertisement had read before Mr. Batty bought the property, and it was all true.

“John,” Mrs. Batty went on, “is more for sport, though he’s in the sugar business, with an uncle. Not my brother—Mr. Batty’s.” She was anxious to give her husband all the credit. “They are both good boys,” she added, “but Charles—well, you’ll see on Sunday. You promise to come.”

Henrietta promised, and with Mrs. Batty’s departure Caroline spoke her mind. She was convinced that the lawyer and his wife were determined to secure Henrietta as a daughter-in-law.

“He knows all our affairs, my dear, and James Batty never misses a chance of improving his position. Good as it is, it would be all the better for an alliance with our family, but I shall disown you at once if you marry one of those hobbledehoys. The Batty’s, indeed! Why, Mrs. Batty herself—”

“Caroline, don’t!” Sophia pleaded. “And I’m sure the young men are very nice young men, and if Henrietta should fall in love—”

“She won’t get any of my money!” Caroline said.

“But Henrietta won’t be in a hurry,” Sophia announced; and so, over her head, the two discussed her possible marriage as they had discussed her clothes, but with less interest and at less length and, as before, Henrietta had her own ideas. A rich man, a handsome one, a gay life; no more basement kitchens, no more mutton bones! Already the influence of Nelson Lodge was making itself felt.

§ 3

It was at dinner that the charm of the house was most apparent To Henrietta. Even on these spring evenings the curtains were Drawn and the candles lighted, for Caroline said she could not Dine comfortably in daylight. The pale flames were repeated in The mahogany of the table; the tall candlesticks, the silver appointments, were reflected also in a blur, like a grey mist; the furniture against the walls became merged into the shadows and Susan, hovering there, was no more than an attentive spirit.

There was little talking at this meal, for Caroline and Sophia loved good food and it was very good. Occasionally Caroline murmured, “Too much pepper,” or “One more pinch of salt and this would have been perfect,” and bending over her plate, the diamonds in her ears sparkled to her movements, the rings on her fingers glittered; and opposite to her Sophia drooped, her pale hair looking almost white, the big sapphire cross on her breast gleaming richly, her resigned attitude oddly at variance with the busy handling of her knife and fork.

The gold frame round General Mallett’s portrait dimly shone, the flowers on the table seemed to give out their beauty and their scent with conscious desire to please, to add their offerings, and for Henrietta the grotesqueness of the elder aunts, their gay attire, their rouge and wrinkles, gave a touch of fantasy to what would otherwise have been too orderly and too respectable a scene.

In this room of beautiful inherited things, where tradition had built strong walls about the Malletts, the sight of Caroline was like a gate leading into the wide, uncertain world and the sight of Rose, all cream and black, was like a secret portal leading to a winding stair. At this hour, romance was in the house, beckoning Henrietta to follow through that gate or down that stair, but chiefly hovering about the figure of Rose who sat so straight and kept so silent, her white hands moving slowly, the pearls glistening on her neck, her face a pale oval against the darkness. She was never more mysterious or more remote; with her even the common acts of eating and drinking seemed, to Henrietta, to be made poetical; she was different from everybody else, but the girl felt vaguely that the wildness of which Caroline made a boast and which never developed into more than that, the wildness which had ruined her father’s life, lay numbed and checked somewhere behind the amazing stillness and control of Rose. And she was like a woman who had suffered a great sorrow or who kept a profound secret.

It was at this hour, when Henrietta was half awed, half soothed, yet very much alive, feeling that tremendous excitements lay in wait for her just outside, when she was wrapped in beauty, fed by delicate food, sensitive to the slim old silver under her hands, that she sometimes felt herself actually carried back to the boarding-house, and she saw the grimy tablecloth, the flaring gas jets, the tired worn faces, the dusty hair of Mrs. Banks and the rubber collar of Mr. Jenkins, and she heard little Miss Stubb uttering platitudes in her attempt to raise the mental atmosphere. There was a great clatter of knives and forks, a confusion of voices and, in a pause, the sound of the exclusive old gentleman masticating his food.

Then Henrietta would close her eyes and, after an instant, she would open them on this candle-lighted room, the lovely figure of Aunt Rose, the silks and laces and ornaments of Aunt Caroline and Aunt Sophia; and between the courses one of these two would repeat the gossip of a caller or criticize the cut of her dress.

No, the conversation was not much better than that of the boarding- house, but the accents were different. Caroline would throw out a French phrase, and Henrietta, loving the present, wondering how she had borne the past, could yet feel fiercely that life was not fair. She herself was not fair: she was giving her allegiance to the outside of things and finding in them more pleasure than in heroism, endurance and compassion, and she said to herself, “Yes, I’m just like my father. I see too much with my eyes.” A little fear, which had its own delight, took hold of her. How far would that likeness carry her? What dangerous qualities had he passed on to her with his looks?

She sat there, vividly conscious of herself, and sometimes she saw the whole room as a picture and she was part of it; sometimes she saw only those three whose lives, she felt, were practically over, for even Aunt Rose was comparatively old. She pitied them because their romance was past, while hers waited for her outside; she wondered at their happiness, their interest in their appearance, their pleasure in parties; but she felt most sorry for Aunt Rose, midway between what should have been the resignation of her stepsisters and the glowing anticipation of her niece. Yet Aunt Rose hardly invited sympathy of any kind and the smile always lurking near her lips gave Henrietta a feeling of discomfort, a suspicion that Aunt Rose was not only ironically aware of what Henrietta wished to conceal, but endowed with a fund of wisdom and a supply of worldly knowledge.

She continued to feel uncertain about Aunt Rose. She was always charming to Henrietta, but it was impossible to be quite at ease with a being who seemed to make an art of being delicately reserved; and because Henrietta liked to establish relationships in which she was sure of herself and her power to please, she was conscious of a faint feeling of antagonism towards this person who made her doubt herself.

Aunt Caroline and Aunt Sophia were evidently delighted with their niece’s presence in the house. They liked the sound of her laughter and her gay voice and though Sophia once gently reproached her for her habit of whistling, which was not that of a young lady, Caroline scoffed at her old-fashioned sister.

“Let the girl whistle, if she wants to,” she said. “It’s better than having a canary in a cage.”

“But don’t do it too much, Henrietta, dear,” Sophia compromised. “You mustn’t get wrinkles round your mouth.”

“No.” This was a consideration which appealed to Caroline. “No, child, you mustn’t do that.”

They admitted her to a familiarity which they would not have allowed her, and which she never attempted, to exceed, but she was Reginald’s daughter, she was a member of the family, and her offence in being also the daughter of her mother was forgotten. Caroline and Sophia were deeply interested in Henrietta. Henrietta was grateful and affectionate. The three were naturally congenial, and the happiness and sympathy of the trio accentuated the pleasant aloofness of Rose. Aunt Rose did not care for her, Henrietta told herself; there was something odd about Aunt Rose, yet she remembered that it was Aunt Rose who had thought of giving her the money.

Three thousand pounds! It was a fortune, and on that Sunday when Henrietta was to pay her first visit to Mrs. Batty, Aunt Caroline, turning the girl about to see that nothing was amiss, said warningly, “You are walking into the lion’s den, Henrietta. Don’t let one of those young cubs gobble you up. I know James Batty, an attractive man, but he loves money, and he knows our affairs. He married his own wife because she was a butcher’s daughter.”

“A wholesale butcher,” Sophia murmured in extenuation, “and I am sure he loved her.”

“And butchers,” Caroline went on, “always amass money. It positively inclines one to vegetarianism, though I’m sure nuts are bad for the complexion.”

“I don’t intend to be eaten yet,” Henrietta said gaily. She was very much excited and she hardly heeded Sophia’s whisper at the door:

“It’s not true, dear—the kindest people in the world, but Caroline has such a sense of humour.”

Henrietta found that the Batty lions were luxuriously housed. The bright yellow gravel crunched under her feet as she walked up the drive; the porch was bright with flowering plants arranged in tiers; a parlourmaid opened the door as though she conferred a privilege and, as Henrietta passed through the hall, she had glimpses of a statue holding a large fern and another bearing a lamp aloft.

She was impressed by this magnificence; she wished she could pause to examine this decently draped and useful statuary but she was ushered into a large drawing-room, somewhat over-heated, scented with hot-house flowers, softly carpeted, much-becushioned, and she immediately found herself in the embrace of Mrs. Batty, who smelt of eau-de-cologne. Mrs. Batty felt soft, too, and if she were a lioness there were no signs of claws or fangs; and her husband, a tall, spare man with grey hair and a clean-shaven face, bowed over Henrietta’s hand in a courtly manner, hardly to be expected of the best-trained of wild beasts.

But for these two the room seemed to be empty, until Mrs. Batty said “Charles!” in a tone of timid authority and Henrietta discovered that a fair young man, already showing a tendency to baldness, was sitting at the piano, apparently studying a sheet of music. This, then, was one of the cubs, and Henrietta, feeling herself marvellously at ease in this house, awaited his approach with some amusement and a little irritation at his obvious lack of interest. Aunt Caroline need have no fear. He was a plain young man with pale, vague eyes, and he did not know whether to offer one of his nervous hands at the end of over-long arms, or to make shift with an awkward bow. She settled the matter for him, feeling very much a woman of the world.

“Now, where’s John?” Mrs. Batty asked, and Charles answered, “Ratting, in the stable.”

Mrs. Batty clucked with vexation. “It’s the first Sunday for weeks that I haven’t had the room full of people. Now you won’t want to come again. Very dull for a young girl, I’m sure.”

“Well, well, you can have a chat with Miss Henrietta,” Mr. Batty said, “and afterwards perhaps she would like to see my flowers.” He disappeared with extraordinary skill, with the strange effect of not having left the room, yet Mrs. Batty sighed. Charles had wandered back to the piano, and his mother, after compressing her lips and whispering, “It’s a mania,” drew Henrietta into the depths of a settee.

“Will he play to us?” she asked.

“No, no,” Mrs. Batty answered hastily. “He’s so particular. Why, if I asked you to have another cup of tea, he’d shut the piano, and that makes things very uncomfortable indeed. You can imagine. And John has this new dog—really I don’t think it’s right on a Sunday. It’s all dogs and cricket with him. Well, cricket’s better than football, for really, on a Saturday in the winter I never know whether I shall see him dead or alive. I do wish I’d had a girl.” She took Henrietta’s hand. “And you, poor dear child, without a mother—what was it she died of, my dear? Ah you’ll miss her, you’ll miss her! My own dear mother died the day after I was married, and I said to Mr. Batty, ‘This can bode no good.’ We had to come straight back from Bournemouth, where we’d gone For our honeymoon, and by the time I was out of black my trousseau was out of fashion. I must say Mr. Batty was very good about it. It was her heart, what with excitement and all that. She was a stout woman. All my side runs to stoutness, but Mr. Batty’s family are like hop-poles. Well, I believe it’s healthier, and I must say the boys take after him. Now I fancy you’re rather like Miss Rose.”

“They say I am just like my father.”

Mrs. Batty said “Ah!” with meaning, and Henrietta tried to sit straighter on the seductive settee. She could not allow Mrs. Batty to utter insinuating ejaculations and, raising her voice, she said:

“Mr. Batty, do play something.”

Charles Batty gazed at her over the shining surface of the grand piano and looked remarkably like an owl, an owl that had lost its feathers.

“Something? What?”

“Charles!” exclaimed Mrs. Batty.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Henrietta murmured. She could think of nothing but a pictorial piece of music her mother had sometimes played on the lodging-house piano, with the growling of thunder-storms, the twittering of birds after rain and a suggestion of church bells, but she was determined not to betray herself.

“Whatever you like.”

He broke into a popular waltz, playing it derisively, yet with passion, so that Mrs. Batty’s ponderous head began to sway and Henrietta’s feet to tap. He played as though his heart were in the dance, and to Henrietta there came delightful visions, thrilling sensations, unaccountable yearnings. It was like the music she had heard at the theatre, but more beautiful. Her eyes widened, but she kept them lowered, her mouth softened and she caught her lip.

“Now I call that lovely,” Mrs. Batty said, with the last chord. His look questioned Henrietta and she, cautious, simply smiled at him, with a tilt of the lips, a little raising of the eyebrows, meant to assure him that she felt as he did.

“If you’d play a pretty tune like that now and then, people would be glad to listen,” Mrs. Batty went on. “I’m sure I quite enjoyed it.”

Henrietta’s suspicions were confirmed by these eulogies: she knew already that what Mrs. Batty appreciated, her son would despise, and she kept her little smile, saying tactfully, “It certainly made one want to dance.”

“Can you sing?” he asked.

“Oh, a little.” She became timid. “I’m going to learn.” With those vague eyes staring at her, she felt the need of justification. “Aunt Caroline says every girl ought to sing. She and Aunt Sophia used to sing duets.”

“Good heavens!” The exclamation came from the depths of Charles Batty’s being. “They don’t do it now, do they?”

Henrietta’s pretty laughter rang out. “No, not now.” But though she laughed there came to her a rather charming picture of her aunts in full skirts and bustles, their white shoulders bare, with sashes round their waists and a sheet of music shared, their mouths open, their eyes cast upwards.

“Every girl ought to sing,” Charles quoted, and suddenly darted at Henrietta the word, “Why?”

“Oh, well—” It was ridiculous to be discomposed by this young man, to whom, she was sure, she was naturally superior; but sitting behind that piano as though it were a pulpit, he had an air of authority and she was anxious to propitiate him. “Well—” Henrietta repeated, hanging on the word.

“For your own glorification, that’s all,” Charles told her. “That’s all.” He caught his head in his hands. “It drives me mad.”

“Charles!” Mrs. Batty said again. That word seemed to be the whole extent of her intercourse with him.

“Mad! Music—divine! And people get up and squeak. How they dare! A violation of the temple!”

“Oh, dear me!” Mrs. Batty groaned.

“You play the piano yourself,” Henrietta said.

“Because I can. I’d show you if you cared about it.”

“I think I would rather go and see Mr. Batty’s flowers.”

“Yes, dear, do. Charles, take her to your father.” Mrs. Batty was very hot; it would be a relief to her to heave and sigh alone.

Charles rose and advanced, stooping a little, carrying his arms as though they did not belong to him and, in the hall, beside one of the gleaming statues, he paused.

“I’ve offended you,” he said miserably. “I make mistakes—somehow. Nobody explains. I shall do it again.”

“You were rather rude,” Henrietta said. “Why should you assume that I squeak?”

“Sure to,” Charles said hopelessly, “or gurgle. Look here, I’ll teach you myself, if you like.”

“I won’t be bullied.”

“Then you’ll never learn anything. Women are funny,” he said; “but then everybody is. Do you know, I haven’t a single friend in the world?”

“Why not?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t get on.”

“If it comes to that, I haven’t a friend of my own age, either. And you have a brother.”

“Ratting!” Charles said eloquently. “You’ll hear the noise.” He handed her over to his father’s care.

She was more than satisfied with her afternoon. She did not see John Batty but she heard the noise; she was aware that Mr. Batty considered her a delightful young person; she had sufficiently admired his flowers and he presented her with a bunch of orchids. For Mrs. Batty she felt an amused affection; she was interested in the unfortunate Charles. She felt her life widening pleasantly and, as she crunched again down the gravel drive, the orchids in her hand, she felt a disinclination to go home. She wanted to walk under the great trees which, spread with brilliant green, made a long avenue on the other side of the road; to wander beyond them, where a belt of grass led to a wild shrubbery overlooking the gorge at its lowest point.

Here there were unexpected little paths running out to promontories of the cliff and, at a sudden turn, she would find herself in what looked almost like danger. Below her the rock was at an angle to harbour hawthorn trees all in bud, blazing gorse bushes, bracken stiffly uncurling itself and many kinds of grasses, but there were nearly two hundred feet between her and the river, now at flood, and she felt that this was something of an adventure. She followed each little path in turn, half fearfully, for she was used to a policeman at every corner; but she met no tramp, saw no suspicious-looking character and, finding a seat under a hawthorn tree at a little distance from the cliff’s edge, she sat down and put the orchids beside her.

It was part of the strange change in her fortune that she should actually be handling such rare flowers. She had seen them in florists’ windows insolently putting out their tongues at people like herself who rudely stared, and now she was touching them and they looked quite polite, and she thought, with the bitterness which, bred of her experiences, constantly rose up in the midst of pleasures, “It’s because they know I have three thousand pounds and six pairs of silk stockings.”