The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing) Part 31

'No.' Rose smiled. 'Don't go and get it. Fortunately you are here. I want to talk to you, Henrietta, please--' Her voice was gentle, she leaned forward in the saddle with a charming gesture of request, but Henrietta shook her head. She was antagonized by that charm which was holding Francis's eyes. A loosened curl had fallen over her forehead, giving to the severity of her dress, copied from that portrait of her father, a dishevelling touch, as though a young lady were suddenly discovered to be a gipsy in an evil frame of mind.

'If it's anything to do with me, I'm going to stay,' she said. 'If it hasn't, I'll go.' She looked at Francis and added, between her teeth, 'But it must have.' Those words and that look claimed him for her own.

Rose lifted her chin and looked over the two heads, the uncovered one of Francis Sales and Henrietta's, with her hat a little askew, and, absurdly, Rose remembered that the child had washed her hair the night before: that was why the hat was crooked and the curl loose, making the scene undignified and funny above the pain of it. Rose spoke in a voice heightened by a tone. 'It concerns you both,' she said.

'Ah, then, you needn't say it, need she, Francis?'

'Francis,' she repeated the name with a grave humour, 'this is not fair to Henrietta.'

'I know that,' he muttered, and Rose saw Henrietta shoot at him a thin look of scorn.

Henrietta said, 'But I don't care about that, and anyhow, we're not going to do it any more. We're tired of these meetings'--she faced him--'aren't we? We had just made up our minds to have no more of them.'

'I'm glad of that,' said Rose, and she fancied that the hurried beating of her heart must be plain through the thick stuff of her coat.

Henrietta laughed, showing little teeth, and Rose thought, 'Her teeth are too small. They spoil her.'

'No, you need not spy on us any more,' Henrietta said.

Francis made a movement of distaste. He said, as though the words cost him much labour, 'Henrietta, don't.'

But there seemed to be no limit to what Rose could bear. She stooped forward suddenly and put her cheek against the horse's neck in an impulsive need to express affection, perhaps to get it.

'You think I don't understand,' she said quietly, 'but I do, too well.' She paused, and in her overpowering sense of helplessness, of distrust, she found herself making, without a quiver, the confession of her own foolishness.

'I don't know whether Francis has told you that he and I were once in love with one another. At least that is what we called it.' Very pale, appearing to have grown thinner in that moment, she looked at the horse's ears and spoke as though she and Henrietta were alone. 'Until quite lately. Then he realized, we both realized, our mistake. But it seems that Francis must have somebody to--to meet, to kiss. Between me and you there has been some one else.' With a wave of her hand, she put aside that thought. 'We used to meet here often. This place must be full of memories for him. For me, the whole countryside is scattered with little broken bits of love. It breaks so easily, or it may be only the counterfeit that breaks. Anyhow, it broke, it chipped.

I thought you ought to know that.' She touched her horse with her heel and turned down the lane. She went slowly, sitting very straight, but she had the constant expectation of being shot in the back. She had to remind herself that Henrietta had no weapon but her eyes.

It was those eyes Francis Sales chiefly remembered when he had parted from Henrietta and turned homewards. There had been scorn in them, anger, grief, jealousy and expectation. If she had not been so small, if they had not been raised to his, if he could have looked levelly into them as he did into the clear grey eyes of Rose, things might have been different. But she was little and she had clung to him, looking up. She had told him she could never see her Aunt Rose again.

How could she? Was he sure he did not love Rose still? Was he sure? He ought to be, for it was he who had made Henrietta love him. He had liked that tribute too much to contradict it, but Rose Mallett was right: whoever had been the promoter of this business, it was not fair to Henrietta, and the thought of Rose, so white and straight, was like wind after a sultry day. She was like a church, he thought; a dim church with tall pillars losing themselves in the loftiness of the roof; yes, that was what was the matter with her: she was cold, but there was no one like her, you could not forget her even in the warmth of Henrietta's presence. One way and another, these Malletts tortured him.

He walked home, trying to find some way out of this maze of promises to Henrietta and of self-reproach, and his mental wanderings were interrupted by an unwelcome request from the nurse that he should go at once to Mrs. Sales. She seemed, the woman warned him, to be very much excited: would he please be careful? She must not have another heart attack.

As he entered the room, it seemed to him that he had been treading on egg-sh.e.l.ls all his life, but a sudden pity swept him at the sight of his wife, very weak from the pain of the night before last, yet intensely, almost viciously alive. He wished he had not gone to the Battys' ball; it had upset her and done him no good. If it had not been for that walk on the terrace--

He shut the door gently and stood by her. 'Are you in pain?' he asked.

He felt remorsefully that he did not know how to treat her; he had not love enough, yet with all his heart he wanted to be kind.

'You haven't kissed me to-day,' she said. 'No, don't do it. You don't want to, do you?'

'Yes, I do,' he said, and as he bent over her he was touched by the contented sigh she gave. If he could begin over again, he told himself, with the virtue of the man who has committed himself fatally, things would be different. If he hadn't brought Henrietta to such a pa.s.s, they should be different now.

'I've never stopped being fond of you, Christabel.'

She laughed and disconcerted him. 'Or of your horses, or your dogs,'

she said. 'No one could expect you to care much for a useless log like me. No one could have expected you not to go to that dance.' Tears filled her eyes. 'But I was lonely. And I imagined you there--'

'I wish I hadn't gone,' he said truthfully.

She seemed to consider that remark, but presently she asked, 'Have you lost something?'

He had lost a great deal, for Rose despised him; that had been plain in the face which once had been so soft for him.

'I asked you,' Christabel said, 'if you had lost something.'

'Yes--no, nothing.'

She let out a small piercing shriek. 'You're lying, lying! But why should I care? You've done that for years. And Rose has been so kind, hasn't she, coming to see me every week? Take your letter, Francis.

Yes, I've read it! I don't care. I'm helpless. Take it!' From its hiding-place under the coverlet she drew the letter and threw it at him. It fluttered feebly to the ground. She had made a tremendous effort, trying to fling it in his face, and it had fallen as mildly as a snowflake. She began to sob. This was the climax of her suffering, that it should fall like that.

He picked it up and read it. It was no good trying to explain, for one explanation would only necessitate another. He was deeply in the mire, they were both, they were all in it, and he did not know how to get anybody out, but he had to stop that sobbing somehow. His pity for Christabel swelled into his biggest feeling. He crumpled the letter angrily and, at the sound, she held her breathing for a moment. Of course, she should have crumpled the letter and then she might have hit him with it.

'I wish to G.o.d I'd never seen her,' she heard him say with despairing anger. And then, more gently, 'Don't cry, Christabel. I can't bear to hear you. The letter's nothing. I shall never meet her again. I must take more care of you.' He took her hand and stroked it. He would never meet Rose again, but he had an appointment with Henrietta.

'You promise? But no, it doesn't matter if you love her.'

'I don't love her.'

'But you did.'

He pa.s.sed his free hand across his forehead. No, he would not keep that appointment with Henrietta, or he would only keep it to tell her it was impossible. He could not go with this wailing in his ears and he knew that piteous sound was his salvation. It gave him the strength to appear weak. 'Don't cry. It's all right, Christabel. Look, I'll burn the confounded letter and I swear it's the only one I've ever had from her. 'It was to Rose, he admitted miserably, that he owed the possibility of telling that truth.

Her weeping became quieter. 'Tell her,' she articulated, 'I never want to see her again.'

'But,' he said petulantly, 'haven't I just told you I never want to meet her?'

'Then write--write--I don't mind Henrietta.'

'No!' he almost shouted, 'not Henrietta either!'

She turned to him a face ravaged with tears and misery. 'Why not Henrietta?' she whispered.

'I hate the lot of them,' he muttered. 'They're all witches.'

She laughed joyously. 'That's what I've said myself!' She gave him both her thin, hot hands to hold. 'But it's worth while, all this, if you are going to be good to me.'

He kissed her then as the sinner kisses the saint who has wrought a miracle of salvation for him. 'We've had bad luck,' he murmured.

'You've had the worst of it.' He stroked her cheek. 'Poor little thing.'

-- 7

Once out of sight of the two standing in the lane, Rose rode home quickly. She felt she had a great deal to do, but she did not know what it was. Her head was hot with the turmoil of her thoughts. There was no order in them; the past was mixed with the present, the done with the undone: she was a.s.sailed by the awful conviction that right was prolific in producing wrong. If she had not preserved her own physical integrity, these two, who were almost like her children--yes, that was how she felt towards them--would not have been tempted to such folly. For it was folly: they did not love each other, and she remembered, with a sickening pang, the expression with which Francis had looked at her. She told herself he loved her still; he had never loved anybody else and she had only pity and protection and a deep-rooted fondness to give him in return. She cared more pa.s.sionately for Henrietta, who was now the victim of the superficial chast.i.ty on which Rose had insisted.

If she had known that Henrietta was to suffer, she would have subdued her niceness, for if Francis had been in physical possession of her body, she would have had no difficulty in possessing his mind. Holding nothing back, she could also have held him securely. She did not want him, but Henrietta would have been saved. But then Rose had not known: how could she? And Henrietta might be saved yet, she must be saved.

The obvious method was to lay siege to the facile heart of Francis, but there was no time for that. Rose was not deceived by Henrietta's enigmatic words. They were tired of meeting stealthily, she had said.

What did that mean? Her head grew hotter. She had to force herself into calm, and the old man at the toll-house on the bridge received her visual greeting as she pa.s.sed, but, as she went slowly to the stables, there was added to her anxiety the thrilling knowledge that at last, and for the first time, she was going to take definite action. Her whole life had been a long and dull preparation for this day. She began to take a pleasure in her excitement: she had something to do; she was delivered from the monotony of thought.