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THE MISSES MALLETT

E >> E. H. YOUNG >> THE MISSES MALLETT




'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.'

Then she noticed that one of the flowers was missing, a little one of
a fairy pink and shape, and almost immediately she heard footsteps on
the grass and saw a man approaching with the orchid in his hand. She
recognized the man she had seen riding the black horse on the day she
arrived in Radstowe and her heart fluttered. This was romance, this,
she had time to think excitedly, must be preordained. But when he
handed her the flower with a polite, 'I think you dropped this,' she
wished he had chosen to keep the trophy. If she had had the happiness
of seeing him conceal it!

She said nervously, 'Oh, yes, thank you very much. I'd just missed
it,' and as he turned away she had at least the minor joy of seeing a
look of arrested interest in his eyes.

She sat there holding the frail and almost sacred branch. She supposed
she was in love; there was no other explanation of her feelings; and
what a marvellous sequence of events! If Mr. Batty had not given her
the orchids this romantic episode could not have happened. And she was
glad that the eyes of the stranger had not rested on her that first
day when she was wearing her shabby, her atrociously cut clothes. Fate
had been kind in allowing him to see her thus, in a black dress with a
broad white collar, a carefully careless bow, silk stockings covering
her matchless ankles and--she glanced down--shoes that did their best
to conceal the squareness of her feet.

She recognized her own absurdity, but she liked it: she Had leisure in
which to be absurd, she had nothing else to do, And romance, which had
seemed to be waiting for her outside Nelson Lodge, had now met her in
the open! She was not going to pass it by. This was, she knew, no more
than a precious secret, a little game she could play all by herself,
but it had suddenly coloured vividly a life which was already opening
wider; and she would have been astonished and perhaps disgusted, to
learn that Aunt Rose had once occupied herself with similar dreamings.
But She was spared that knowledge and she was tempted to wait in her
place on the chance that the stranger would return, but, deciding that
it was hardly what a Mallett would do, she rose reluctantly, carrying
the pink orchid in one hand, the less favoured ones in the other.

The evening was exquisite: she saw a pale-blue sky fretted with green
leaves, striped with tree trunks astonishingly black; she heard
steamers threshing through the water and giving out warning whistles,
sounds to stir the heart with the thoughts of voyage, of danger, and
of unknown lands; and as she walked up the long avenue of elms she
found that all the people strolling out after tea for an evening walk
had happy, pleasant faces.

She met fathers and mothers in loitering advance of children, shy
lovers with no words for each other, an old lady in a bath chair
propelled by a man as old, young men in check caps, with flowers in
their coats, earnest people carrying prayer-books and umbrellas, girls
with linked arms and shrill laughter; and she envied none of them: not
the children, finding interest in everything they saw; not the
parents, proud in possession; not the old lady whose work was done,
not the young men and women eyeing each other and letting out their
enticing laughter; she envied no one in the world. She had found an
occupation, and that night, sitting at the dinner-table, she was
conscious of the difference in herself and of a new kinship with these
women, the two who could look back on adventures, rosy and poetic, the
one who seemed shrouded in some delicate mystery. It was as though
she, too, had been initiated; she was surer of herself, even in the
presence of Aunt Rose, with her beauty like that of a white flower,
the faint irony of her smile.



§ 4

A few days later Rose said, 'I want to take you to see a friend of
mine, a Mrs. Sales.'

'Do the milkcarts belong to them?' Henrietta asked at once.

'Yes.' Rose was amused. 'Mrs. Sales is an invalid and she would like
to see you. Shall we go on Saturday?' She added as she left the room,
'Mrs. Sales was hurt in a hunting accident, but you need not avoid the
subject. She likes to talk about it.'

'What a good thing,' Henrietta said, practically.

Aunt Rose was dressed for walking and Henrietta was afraid of being
asked to go with her, but Aunt Rose made no such suggestion. Since
Sunday Henrietta had been exploring Radstowe and its suburbs with an
enthusiasm surprising to the elder aunts, who did not care for
exercise; but Henrietta was as much inspired by the hope of seeing
that man again as by interest in the old streets, the unexpected
alleys, the flights of worn steps leading from Upper to Lower
Radstowe, the slums, cheek by jowl with the garden of some old house,
the big houses deteriorated into tenements. All these had their own
charm and the added one of having been familiar to her father, but she
never forgot to watch for the hero on the horse, the restorer of her
orchid. If she met him, should she bow to him, or pretend not to see
him? She had practised various expressions before the glass, and had
almost decided to look up as he passed and flash a glance of puzzled
recognition from her eyes. She thought she could do it satisfactorily
and to-day she meant to cross the bridge for the first time. He had
been riding over the bridge that afternoon and what had happened once
might happen again. Moreover, she had a feeling that across the water
there was something waiting for her. Certainly behind the trees
clothing the gorge there was the real country, with cows and sheep and
horses in the meadows, with the possibility of rabbits in the lanes,
and she had never yet seen a rabbit running wild. There were
innumerable possibilities on that farther side.

She crossed the bridge, stood to look up and down the river, to watch
the gulls, white against the green, to consider the ant-like hurrying
of the people on the road below and the clustered houses on the city
side, a medley of shapes and colours, rising in terraces, the whole
like some immense castle guarding the entrance to the town. And as
before, carriages and carts went and came over, schoolgirls on
bicycles, babies in perambulators, but this time there was no man on a
horse. She knew that this mattered very little; her stimulated
excitement was hardly more than salt and pepper to a dish already
appetizing enough, and now and then as she went along the road on a
level with the tree-tops in the gorge and had glimpses of water and of
rock, she had to remind herself of her preoccupation.

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