The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing) Part 23

'I shouldn't have if I'd thought you'd care.'

She said softly but sharply, 'I don't believe that for a moment. Why don't you tell the truth?'

'Do you want to hear it?'

'I'm not sure.'

'Then I'll wait while you make up your mind.'

Sitting on the wall, his feet rested easily on the ground while hers swung free, and while he seemed to loll in complete indifference, she was conscious of a tenseness she could not prevent. She hated her enjoyment of his manner, which was impudent, but it had the spice of danger that she liked and it was in defiance of the one and encouragement of the other that she said, 'I'm sure you would never talk to Aunt Rose like that.'

'I should never give your Aunt Rose my confidence,' he said severely.

It was impossible not to feel a warmth of satisfaction, and she asked shortly, 'Why not?' 'She wouldn't understand. You're human. I'm devilish lonely. Well, you know my circ.u.mstances.' A shadow which seemed to affect the brightness of the autumn day, even deadening the clear shouting of the men and the jingling of the chains attached to the horses, pa.s.sed over Francis Sales's face. 'One wants a friend.'

A cry of genuine bewilderment came from Henrietta. 'But I thought you were so fond of Aunt Rose!'

From sulky contemplation of his brown boots and leggings, he looked at her. His eyes, of a light yet dense blue, were widely opened. 'What makes you think that? Did she tell you?'

Henrietta's lip curled derisively. 'No, it was you, when you looked at her. And now you have told me again.' She had a moment of thoughtful contempt for the blundering of men. There was Charles, who always seemed to wander in a mist, and now this Francis Sales, who revealed what he wished to hide. He was mentally inferior to Mr. Jenkins, who had a quickness of wit, a vulgar sharpness of tongue which kept the mind on the alert; but physically she had shrunk from Mr. Jenkins's proximity, while that of Francis Sales, in his well-cut tweeds and his s.h.i.+ning boots, who seemed as clean as the air surrounding him, had an attraction actually enhanced by his heaviness of spirit. He was like a child possessed, consciously or unconsciously, of a weapon, and her sense of her own superiority was corrected by fear of his strength and of the subtle weakness in her own blood.

She heard a murmur. 'She has treated me very badly. I've known her all my life. Well--'

Henrietta, with a gentleness he appreciated and a cleverness he missed, said commiseratingly, 'She wouldn't let you take her hand in the wood.'

'What on earth are you talking about? Look here, Henrietta, what do you mean?' There had been so many occasions of the kind that it was impossible to know to which one she referred, and, looking back, his past seemed to be blocked with frustrations and petty torments. 'What do you mean?' he repeated.

'Never mind.'

'This is some gossip,' he muttered.

'Yes, among the squirrels and the rabbits. Woods are full of eyes and ears.'

'Well,' he said, 'the eyes and ears will have to find another home.

There will soon be no wood left.'

So he had tried to take Aunt Rose's hand in this wood too! She laughed with the pretty trill which made her laughter a new thing every time.

'I don't see the joke,' he grumbled.

She turned to him. 'I don't think you've laughed very much in your life. You're always being sorry for yourself.'

'I have been very unfortunate,' he replied.

'There you are again! Why don't you tell yourself you're lucky not to squint or turn in your toes? You'd be much more miserable then--much.

But thinking yourself unfortunate, when you're not, is a pleasant occupation.'

'How do you know?'

'I know a lot,' Henrietta said. 'But I never thought myself unfortunate, so I wasn't.'

'Very n.o.ble,' Sales said sourly.

'No. I told you it was exciting to be poor. You're not poor enough. A new dress,' she went on, clasping her hands; 'first of all, I had to save up--in pennies.' She turned accusingly. 'You don't believe it.'

'It must have taken a long time.'

'It did, but not so long as you would think, because it cost so little in the end. I saved up, and then I looked in the shop windows, and then I talked about it for days, and then I bought the stuff. Mother cut out the dress, and then I made it.'

'And the result was charming.'

'I thought so then. Now I know it wasn't, but at the time I was happy.'

'Well,' he said, 'that's very interesting, but it doesn't help me.'

'But I could help you if you told me your troubles. I should know how.'

'Telling my troubles would be a help.'

'Here I am, then.'

'What's the good?' he said. 'You'll desert me, too.'

'Not if you're good.'

'Oh, if that's the stipulation--' He stood up. His tone, which might have been provocative, was simply bored. She knew she had been dull, and her lip trembled with mortification.

'Why, of course!' she cried gaily, when she had mastered that weakness. 'Aunt Caroline warned me against you this very afternoon.

She said--but, never mind. I'm not going to repeat her remarks. And anyhow, Aunt Sophia said they were not true. Aunt Rose,' Henrietta said thoughtfully, 'was not there. I don't suppose either of them is right. And now I'm going to see Mrs. Sales.'

He ran after her. 'Henrietta, I shouldn't tell her you've seen me.'

She frowned. 'I don't like that.'

'It's for her sake.'

Henrietta turned away without a word, but she pondered, as she went, on the dangerous likeness between right and wrong and the horrible facility with which they could be, with which they had to be, interchanged. One became bewildered, one became lost; she felt herself being forced into a false position: she might not be able to get out.

Aunt Rose had sent her, Francis Sales was conspiring with her--she made her father's gesture of helplessness, it was not her fault. But she made up her mind she would never allow Francis Sales to find her dull again, for that was unfair to herself.

-- 3

Rose Mallett, who had always accepted conditions and not criticized them, found herself in those days forced to a puzzled consideration of life. It seemed an unnecessary invention on the part of a creator, a freak which, on contemplation, he must surely regret. She was not tired of her own existence, but she wondered what it was for and what, possessing it, she could do with it. Her one attempt at usefulness had been foiled, and though she had never consciously wanted anything to do, she felt the need now that she was deprived of it. She pa.s.sed her days in the order and elegance of Nelson Lodge, in a monotonous satisfaction of the eye, listening to the familiar chatter of Caroline and Sophia, dressing herself with tireless care and refusing to regret her past. Nevertheless, it had been wasted, and the only occupation of her present was her anxiety for Francis Sales. She could not rid herself of that claim, begun so long ago. She had to accept the inactive responsibility which in another would have resolved itself into earnest prayer but which in her was a stoical endurance of possibilities.

What was he doing? What would he do? She knew he could not stand alone, she knew she must continue to hold herself ready for his service, but a prisoner fastened to a chain does not find much solace in counting the links, and that was all she had to do. It seemed to her that she moved, rather like a ghost, up and down the stairs, about the landing, in the delicate silence of her bedroom; that she sat ghost-like at the dining-table and heard the strangely aimless talk of human beings. She supposed there were countless women like herself, unoccupied and lonely, yet her pride resented the idea. There was only one Rose Mallett; there was no one else with just her past, with the same mental pictures and her peculiar isolation, and if she had been a vainer woman she would have added that no other woman offered the same kind of beauty to a world in need of it. Her obvious consolation was in the presence of Henrietta, though she had little companions.h.i.+p to give her aunt, and no suspicion that Rose, almost unawares, began to transfer her interests to the girl, to set her mind on Henrietta's happiness. She would take her abroad and let her see the world.

Caroline sniffed at the suggestion, Sophia sighed.