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THE MISSES MALLETT

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




She was always sure of her welcome at Prospect House, and though she
often assured herself that she could love no one but Francis Sales,
that was no reason why others should not love her. From that point of
view John Batty was a failure. He took her to a cricket match, but
finding that she did not know the alphabet of the game, and was more
interested in the spectators than in the players, he gave her up. He
admired her appearance, but it did not make amends for ignorance of
such a grossness; and, equally displeased with him, she returned home
alone while he watched out the match.

The next day when she paid her usual Sunday visit, she ignored him
pointedly and mentally crossed him off her list. Charles, ugly and
odd, was infinitely more responsive, though he greeted her on this
occasion with reproach.

'You went to a cricket match yesterday with John.'

'It was very boring and I got a headache. I shall never go again.'

'He said he wouldn't take you.'

Henrietta smiled subtly, implying a good deal.

'I shouldn't have thought,' Charles went on mournfully, 'of suggesting
such a thing.'

'My aunts were rather shocked. I went on the top of a tramcar with
him.'

'But if you can go out with him, why shouldn't you go out with me?'

'But where?' Henrietta questioned practically.

'Well, to a concert.'

'When?'

'When there is one. I don't know. They won't have one in this
God-forsaken place until the autumn.'

'That's a long time ahead.'

He spread his hands. 'You see, I never have any luck. I just want you
to promise.'

'Oh, I'll promise,' Henrietta said.

'It will be the first time I've been anywhere with a girl,' he said.
'I don't get on.'

'Have you wanted to?'

He sighed. 'Yes, but not much.' Her laughter, which was so pretty,
startled him; it also delighted him with its music, and his sad eyes
grew wider and more vague. He had an inspiration. 'I'll take you home
now.'

'I'm not going home. I've promised to go to Sales Hall.'

'Sales Hall--oh, yes, he's the man who talks at concerts--when he
goes. I know him. Have you ever wanted to murder anyone? I've wanted
to murder him. I might some day. You'd better warn him.'

Was this another strand in the web of her drama, she wondered. Was
Aunt Rose involved in this too? She breathed quickly. 'Why, what has
he done to you?'

He ground his teeth, looking terrible but ineffectual. 'Stolen beauty.
That's what his sort does. He kills lovely things that fly and run,
for sport, and he steals beauty, spoils it.'

'Who?' she whispered.

'That man Sales.'

'No, no. Who has he stolen and spoilt?'

'Heavenly music--and my happiness. I lost a bar--a whole bar, I tell
you. I'll never forgive him. I can't get it back.'

'If that's all--' Henrietta gestured.

'And there are others,' Charles went on. 'I never forget them. I meet
them in the streets and they look horrible--like beetles.' 'I believe
you're mad,' Henrietta said earnestly. 'It's not sense.'

'What is sense?' Henrietta could not tell him. She looked at him, a
little afraid, but excited by this proximity to danger. And I thought
you would understand.'

'Of course I do.' She could not bear to let go of anything which might
do her credit. 'I do. But you exaggerate. And Mr. Sales--' She
hesitated, and in doing so she remembered to be angry with Charles
Batty for maligning him. 'How can you judge Mr. Sales?' she asked with
scorn. 'He is a man.' 'And what am I?' Charles demanded.

'You're--queer,' she said.

'Yes'--his face twisted curiously--'I suppose if I shot things and
chased them, you'd like me better. But I can't--not even for that, but
perhaps, some day--' He seemed to lose himself in the vagueness of his
thoughts.

She finished his sentence gaily, for after all, it was absurd to
quarrel with him. 'Some day we'll go to a concert.'

He recovered himself. 'More than that,' he said. He nodded his head
with unexpected vigour. 'You'll see.'

She gazed at him. It was wonderful to think of all the things that
might happen to a person who was only twenty-one, but she hastily
corrected her thoughts. What could happen to her? In a few short days
events had rushed together and exhausted themselves at their source!
There was nothing left. She said good-bye to Charles and thought him
foolish not to offer to accompany her. She said, 'It's a very long way
to Sales Hall,' and he answered, 'Oh, you'll meet that man somewhere,
potting at rabbits.'

'Do you think so? I hope he won't shoot me.' And she saw herself
stretched on the ground, wounded, dying, with just enough force to
utter words he could never forget--words that would change his whole
life. She was willing to sacrifice herself and she said good-bye to
Charles again, and sorrowfully, as though she were already dead. She
tried to plan her dying words, but as she could not hit on
satisfactory ones, she contented herself with deciding that whether
she were wounded or not, she would try to introduce the subject of
Aunt Rose; and as she went she looked out hopefully for a tall figure
with a gun under its arm.

She met it, but without a gun, on the track where, on one side, the
trees stood in fresh green, like banners, and on the other the meadows
sloped roughly to the distant water. He had been watching for her, he
said, and suddenly over her assurance there swept a wave of
embarrassment, of shyness. She was alone with him and he was not like
Charles Batty. He looked down at her with amusement in his blue,
thick-lashed eyes, and it was difficult to believe that here was the
hero, or the villain, of the piece. She felt the sensation she had
known when he handed her the orchid, and she blushed absurdly when he
actually said, as though he read her thoughts, 'No orchids to-day?'

'No.' She laughed up at him. 'That was a special treat. I didn't see
Mr. Batty this afternoon, and he couldn't afford to give them away
every Sunday.'

'Do you go there every Sunday?' 'Yes; they're very kind.'

'They would be.'

This reminded her a little of Mr. Jenkins, though she cast the idea
from her quickly. Mr. Jenkins was not worthy of sharing a moment's
thought with Francis Sales; his collar was made of rubber, his accent
was grotesque; but the influence of the boarding-house was still on
her when she asked very innocently, 'Why?'

'Oh, I needn't tell you that.'

It was Mr. Jenkins again, but in a voice that was soft, almost
caressing. Did Mr. Sales talk like this to Aunt Rose? She could not
believe it and she was both flattered and distressed. She must assert
her dignity and she had no way of doing it but by an expression of
firmness, a slight tightening of lips that wanted to twitch into a
smile.

'Mr. Charles Batty,' the voice went on, 'seems to have missed his
opportunities, but I have always suspected him of idiocy.'

'I don't know what you mean,' she said untruthfully, and then,
loyally, she protested. 'But he's not an idiot. He's very clever, too
clever, not like other people.'

'Well, there are different names for that sort of thing,' he said
easily, and she was aware of an immense distance between her and him--
he seemed to have put her from him with a light push--and at the same
time she was oppressively conscious of his nearness. She felt angry,
and she burst out, 'I won't have you speaking like that about
Charles.'

'Certainly not, if he's a friend of yours.'

'And I won't have you laughing at me.'

He stopped in his long stride. 'Don't you laugh yourself at the things
that please you very much?'

'Oh, don't!' she begged. He was too much for her; she was helpless, as
though she had been drugged to a point when she could move and think,
but only through a mist, and she felt that his ease, approaching
impudence, was as indecent as Aunt Rose's calm. It was both irritating
and pleasing to know that she could have shattered both with the word
she was incapable of saying, but her nearest approach to that was an
inquiry after the health of Mrs. Sales. He replied that she was
looking forward to Henrietta's visit. She had very few pleasures and
was always glad to see people.

'Aunt Rose'--here was an opportunity--'comes, doesn't she, every
week?'

He said he believed so.

'Did you know her when she was a little girl?'

He gave a discouraging affirmative.

'What was she like?'

'I don't know.' He had, indeed, forgotten.

'Well, you must remember her when she was young.'

'Young?'

Henrietta nodded bravely though he seemed to smoulder. 'As young as I
am.'

'She was exactly the same as she is now. No, not quite.'

'Nicer?'

'Nicer? What a word! Nice!' He looked all round him and made a
flourish with his stick. He could not express himself, yet he seemed
unable to be silent. 'Do you call the sky nice?'

'Yes, very, when it's blue.'

He gave, to her great satisfaction, the kind of laugh she had
expected. 'Let us talk about something a little smaller than the sky,'
he said. He looked down at her, and she was relieved to see the anger
fading from his face; but she was glad to have learnt something of
what he felt for Aunt Rose. To him she was like the sky whence came
the rain and the sunshine, where the stars shone and the moon, and she
wondered to what he would have compared herself. 'You said we might be
sisters.'

He looked again. She wore a broad white hat in honour of the season,
her black dress was dotted with white; from one capable white hand she
swung her gloves; she tilted her chin, a trick she had inherited from
her father, in a sort of challenge.

'You like the idea?' he asked.

'I don't believe it. I'm really the image of my father. Did you know
him?'

'No. Heard of him, of course.'

'It's him I'm like,' Henrietta repeated firmly.

'Then the story of his good looks must be true.'

Mixed with her pleasure, she had a return of disappointment. Here
was Mr. Jenkins once more, and while it was sad to discover his
re-incarnation in her ideal, it was thrilling to resume the kind of
fencing she thought she had resigned. She forgot her virtuous
resolves, and the remainder of the walk was enlivened by the hope of a
thrust which she would have to parry, but none came. Francis Sales
seemed to have exhausted his efforts, and at the door he said with a
sort of sulkiness, 'I think you had better go up alone. You must let
me see you home.'

This was not her first solitary visit to Christabel Sales, and she
half dreaded, half enjoyed meeting the glances of those wide blue
eyes, which were searching behind their innocence and hearing remarks
which, though dropped carelessly, always gave her the impression of
being tipped with steel. She was bewildered, troubled by her sense
that she and Christabel were allies and yet antagonists, and her
jealousy of her Aunt Rose fought with her unwilling loyalty to one of
her own blood. There were moments when she acquiesced in the
suggestions offered in the form of admiration, and others when she
stiffened with distaste, with a realization that she herself was
liable to attack, with horror for the beautiful luxurious room, the
crippled woman, the listening cat. Henrietta sometimes saw herself as
a mouse, in mortal danger of a feline spring, and then pity for
Christabel would overcome this weariness; she would talk to her with
what skill she had for entertainment, and she emerged exhausted, as
though from a fight.

This evening she was amazed to be received without any greeting, but a
question: 'Has Rose Mallett told you why I am here?' Christabel was
lying very low on her couch. Her lips hardly moved; these might have
been the last words she would ever utter.

'Yes, a hunting accident. And you told me about it yourself.'

There was a silence, and then the voice, its sharpness dulled, said
slowly, 'Yes, I told you what I remembered and what I heard
afterwards. A hunting accident! It sounds so simple. That's what they
call it. Names are useful. We couldn't get on without them. I get such
queer ideas, lying here, with nothing to do. Before I was married I
never thought at all. I was too happy.' She seemed to be lost in
memory of that time. Henrietta sat very still; she breathed carefully
as though a brusqueness would be fatal, and the voice began again.
'They call you Henrietta. It's only a name, but it doesn't describe
you; nobody knows what it means except you, but it's convenient. It's
the same with my hunting accident. Do you see?'

Henrietta said nothing. She had that familiar feeling of being in the
dark, and now the evening shadows augmented it. She was conscious of
the cat behind her, on the hearthrug.

'Do you see?' Christabel persisted.

'Things have to be called something,' Henrietta said.

'That's just what I have been telling you. And so Rose Mallett calls
it a hunting accident.' A high-pitched and thin laugh came from the
pillows. 'She was terribly distressed about it. And she actually told
me she had suspected that mare from the first. She told me! It's
funny--don't you think so?'

'No,' Henrietta said stoutly, 'not funny at all.' She spoke in a very
firm and reasonable voice, as though only her common sense could
combat what seemed like insanity in the other. 'I think it's very
sad.'

'For me? Oh, yes, but I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking of
your charming aunt, the most beautiful woman in Radstowe. That's what
I have heard her called. Yet why hasn't she married? Can't she find
anybody'--the voice was gentle--'to love her? She suspected that mare
but she warned nobody. Funny--'

Henrietta had a physical inward trembling. She felt a dreadful rage
against the woman on the couch, a sickening disgust, such as she would
have felt at looking down a dark, deep well and seeing slime and blind
ugliness at the bottom. She felt as though her ears were dirty; she
tried to move, but she sat perfectly still and, dreading what would
come next, she listened, fascinated.

'Perhaps she is in love with somebody. Does she get many letters,
Henrietta? She is very reserved, she doesn't tell me much; but, of
course, I'm interested in her.' She laughed again. 'I am very anxious
for her happiness. It would comfort me to know anything you can tell
me.'

Henrietta managed to stand up. 'I know nothing,' she said in a
slightly broken voice. 'I don't want to know anything.'

Christabel interrupted smoothly. 'Perhaps you are wise or you couldn't
stay happily in that house. They're all like witches, those women.
They frighten me. You must be very brave, Henrietta.'

'I'm very grateful,' Henrietta said; 'and I shan't come here again,
no, never. I don't know what you have been trying to tell me, but I
don't believe it. It's no good crying. I shall never come back.
They're not witches.' She had a vision of them at the dinner table,
Rose like a white flower, Caroline and Sophia jewelled, gaily dressed,
a little absurd, oddly distinguished. 'Witches! They are my father's
sisters, and I love them.'

'Ah, but you don't know Rose,' Christabel sobbed. 'And don't say you
will never come again. And don't tell Francis. He would be angry.'

'How could I tell him?' Henrietta asked indignantly. 'No, no, I don't
want to see either of you again. I shall go away--go away--' She left
the room to the sound of a horrible, faint weeping.

She meant what she had said. She thought she would go away from
Radstowe and forget Christabel Sales, forget Francis Sales, whom she
would no longer pretend to love; forget those insinuations that Aunt
Rose was guilty of a crime. This place and these people were abhorrent
to her, she felt she had been poisoned and she rushed down the long
avenue where, overhead, the rooks were calling, as though she could
only be saved by the clean night air beyond the house. She was
shocked; she believed that Christabel was mad; the thought of that
warm room where the cat listened, made her gasp, and her horror
extended to Francis Sales himself. The place felt wicked, but the
clear road stretching before her, the pale evening sky and the sound
of her own feet tapping the road restored her.

She was glad to be alone and, avoiding the short cut, she enjoyed the
sanity of the highway used by ordinary men and women in the decent
pursuit of their lives. But now the road was empty and though at
another time she would have been afraid of the lonely country, to-night
she had a sense of escape from greater perils than any lurking here.
And before long it all seemed like a dream, but it was a dream that
might recur if she ran the risk.

No, she would never go there again, she would never envy Aunt Rose a
lover from that house, she would never believe that the worst of
Christabel's implications were true. They were the fabrications of a
suspicious woman, and though her jealousy might be justified, it
seemed to Henrietta that she deserved her fate. She was hateful, she
was poisonous, and Henrietta felt a sudden tenderness for Aunt Rose
and Francis Sales. They could not help themselves, for they were
unfortunate, she longed to show them sympathy and she saw herself
taking them by the hand and saying gently, 'Confide in me. I
understand.' She imagined Aunt Rose melting at that touch and those
words into tears, perhaps of repentance, certainly of gratitude, but
at this point Henrietta's fancies were interrupted by the sound of
footsteps behind her. She quickened her pace, then began to run, and
the steps followed, gaining on her. She could not outrun them and she
stopped, turning to see who came.

'Miss Mallett!' It was the voice of Francis Sales. She sank down on a
heap of stones, panting and laughing. He sat beside her. 'What's the
matter?'

'I don't know. I hate to hear anybody coming behind me. It might have
been a tramp. I'm very much afraid of tramps.'

'I said I would see you home.'

'Yes, I forgot. Let us go on.'

'You didn't stay long.'

'I don't think Mrs. Sales is very well.'

'She isn't. She gets hysterical and that affects her heart. I thought
you would do her good.' He seemed to blame Henrietta. 'And I thought a
walk with you would do me good, too. I have a pretty dull life.'

'Aren't you interested in your cows and things?'

'A man can't live on cows.'

'But you have other things and you live in the country. People can't
have everything. I don't suppose you'd change with anybody really, if
you could. People are like that. They grumble, but they like being
themselves. Suppose you were a young man in a shop, measuring cloth or
selling bacon. You'd find that much duller, I should think.'

He laughed a little. 'Where did you learn this wisdom?'

'I've had experience,' she said staidly. 'Yes, you'd find it duller.'

'Perhaps you're right. But then, you might come to buy the bacon. I
should look forward to that.'

In the darkness, these playful words frightened her a little; they
hurt her sense of what was fitting from him to her and at the same
time they pleased her with their hint of danger.

'Would you?' she asked slowly.

He paused, saying, 'May I light a pipe?' and by the flame of the match
he examined her face quite openly for a moment. 'You know I would,' he
said.

She met his look, her eyes wavered and neither spoke for a long time.
She was oppressed by his nearness, the smell of his tobacco, her own
inexplicable delight. From the trees by the roadside birds gave out
happy chirrups, country people in their Sunday clothes and creaking
boots passed or overtook the silent pair; a man on a horse rode out
from a gate and cantered with very little noise on the rough grass
edging the road. Henrietta watched him until he disappeared and then
it seemed as if he had never been there at all. A sheep in a field
uttered a sad cry and every sight and sound seemed a little unreal,
like things happening on a stage.

And gradually Henrietta's excitement left her. The world seemed a sad
and lonely place; she remembered that she herself was lonely; there
was no one now to whom she was the first, and she had a longing for
her mother. She wished that instead of returning to Nelson Lodge with
its cleanliness and richness and comfort, she might turn the key of
the boarding-house door and find herself in the narrow passage with
the smell of cooking and the gas turned low; she wished she could run
up the stairs and rush into the drawing-room and find her mother
sitting there, sewing by the fire, and see her look up and hear her
say, 'Well, Henry dear, what have you been doing?' After all, that old
life was better than this new one. The troubles of her mother, her own
young struggles for food and warmth, the woes of Mrs. Banks, had in
them something nobler than she could find in the distresses of
Christabel and Aunt Rose and Francis Sales, something redeeming them
from the sordidness in which they were set. She checked a sob.

'It's a long way,' she sighed.

'Are you tired?' His voice was gentle.

'Yes, dreadfully.'

'Then let us sit down again.'

'No, I must go on. I must get back.'

'If you would talk to me, you wouldn't notice the distance.'

'I don't want to talk. I'm thinking. When we get to the bridge you can
go back, can't you? There will be lights and I shall be quite safe.'

'Very well, but I wish you'd tell me what's the matter.'

'I'm very unhappy,' Henrietta said with a sob.

'What on earth for? Look here,'--he touched her arm--'did Christabel
say anything?'

'I don't know why it is.'

'Are you going to cry?'

'It's no good crying.'

He held the arm now quite firmly and they faced each other. 'You'd
better tell me the whole story.'

Her lips quivered. She wished he would loosen his grip and hoped he
would go on holding her for ever. It was a moment of mingled ecstasy
and sadness. 'Oh,' she almost wailed, 'can't I be unhappy if I want
to?'

He gave a short laugh, saying, 'Poor little girl,' and stooping,
kissed her on the mouth. She endured that kiss willingly for a moment
and then, very lightly, struck him in the face.



§ 6

Afterwards there was some satisfaction in thinking that she had done
the dramatic thing--what the pure-minded heroine always did to the
villain; but at the time the action was spontaneous and unconsidered.
Henrietta was not really avenging an insult: she was simply expressing
her annoyance at her pleasure in it. Being, when she chose, a clear-
sighted young woman, she realized this, but she also knew that Francis
Sales would find the obvious meaning in the blow. For herself, she
sanely determined to blot that episode from her mind: it was maddening
to think of it as an insult and dangerous to remember its delight, and
she was able calmly to tell her aunts that Mr. Sales had seen her
home.

'Then why didn't he come in?' Caroline asked with a grunt. 'Leaving
you on the doorstep like a housemaid!'

'He only came as far as the bridge.'

'My dear child! What was he thinking of? Men are not what they were,
or is it the women who are different? They haven't the charm! They
haven't the old charm! My difficulty was always to get rid of the
creatures. I'm disappointed in you, Henrietta.'

'But he's married,' Henrietta said gravely. 'I only needed him on the
dark roads and I should think he wanted to go back to Mrs. Sales.'

'It would be the first time, then,' Caroline said.

'Why, isn't he fond of her?'

'Don't ask dangerous questions, child--and would you be fond of her
yourself?'

'She's very pretty.'

'Now, Caroline, don't,' Sophia begged.

Caroline chuckled. 'Don't what?'

'Say what you were going to say.'

Caroline chuckled again. 'I can't help it. My tongue won't be tied.
I'm like all the Malletts--'

'But not before the child.'

'You're a prude, Sophia, and if Henrietta imagines that a man like
Francis Sales, any man worth his salt--besides, Henrietta has knocked
about the world. She is no more innocent than she looks.'

'She doesn't mean half she says,' Sophia whispered.

'And neither is Francis Sales,' Caroline persisted. 'Ridiculous! Dark
roads, indeed! I don't think I care for your wandering about at night,
Henrietta.'

'I won't do it again,' Henrietta said meekly.

'Sophia and I--' Caroline began one of her reminiscences, to which
neither Sophia nor Henrietta listened. To the one, they were familiar
in their exaggeration, and the other had her own thoughts, which were
bewilderingly confused.

She had meant to stand between Francis Sales and Aunt Rose; later she
had wished to help them, now she did not know whether she wanted to
help or hinder. The thing was too much for her, but she wondered if
Aunt Rose had ever experienced such a kiss. Meeting her a few minutes
later on the stairs, with her slim hand on the polished rail, a
beautiful satin-shod foot gleaming below the lace of her dress, she
seemed a being too ethereal for a salute so earthly, and because she
looked so lovely, because Christabel had been unjust, Henrietta forgot
to feel unfriendly.

Rose said unexpectedly, 'Oh, Henrietta, I am glad you have come back.
You seem to have been away for a long time.'

'I went to the Battys' to tea and then to Sales Hall. I promised Mrs.
Sales. Do you mind?'

'Of course not; but I missed you.'

'Oh! Oh! I never thought of that.'

'I always miss you,' Rose said gravely. 'You have made a great
difference to us all.'

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