Chapter 2

§ 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.”

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.

She passed big houses with their flowery gardens and then, suddenly timorous, she decided not to go too far afield. She might get lost, she might meet nasty people or horned beasts. A little path on her right hand had an inviting look; it might lead her down through the trees to the water’s edge. It was all strewn and richly brown with last autumn’s leaves and on a tree a few yards ahead she saw a brilliant object—tiny, long-tailed, extraordinarily swift. It was out of sight before she had time to tell herself that this was a squirrel; and again she had a consciousness of development. She had seen a squirrel in its native haunts! This was wonderful, and she approached the tree. The squirrel had vanished, but these woods, within sound of a city, yet harbouring squirrels, seemed to have become one of her possessions. She was enriched, she was a different person, and she, whose familiar fauna had been stray cats and the black beetles in Mrs. Banks’ kitchen, was actually in touch with nature. She now felt equal to meeting unattended cows, but the woods offered enough excitement for to-day.

She found that her path did not immediately descend. It led her levelly to an almost circular green space; then it became enclosed again and soft to the feet with grass; and just ahead of her, blocking her way, she saw two figures, those of a woman and a man. Their backs were towards her, but there was no mistaking Aunt Rose’s back. It was straight without being stiff, her dress fell with a unique perfection and the little hat and grey floating veil were hers alone.

For an instant Henrietta stood still, and the man, turning to look at his companion, showed the profile of her stranger. At the same moment he touched Aunt Rose’s hand and before Henrietta swerved and sped back whence she had come, she saw that hand removed gently, as though reluctantly, and the head, mistily veiled, shaken slowly.

Her first desire was for flight and, safely on the road again, she found her heart beating to suffocation; she was filled with an indignation that almost brought her to tears; it was as though Aunt Rose had deliberately robbed her of treasure—Aunt Rose, who was almost middle-aged! For a moment she despised that fair, handsome man whose image had filled her mind for what seemed a long, long time; then she felt pity for him who had no eyes for youth, yet she remembered his look of arrested interest.

But steadying her thoughts and enjoying her dramatic bitterness, she laughed. He had merely surprised her likeness to Aunt Rose and that was all. Her dream was over. She had known it was a dream, but the awakening was cruel; it was also intensely exciting. She did not regret it; she had at least discovered something about Aunt Rose. She had a lover. That look of his, that pleading movement of his hand, were unmistakable; he was a lover, and perhaps she, Henrietta Mallett, alone knew the truth. She had suspected a secret, now she knew it; and she had a sense of power, she had a weapon. She imagined herself standing over Aunt Rose, armed with knowledge, no longer afraid; she was involved in a romantic, perhaps a shameful, situation. Aunt Rose was meeting a lover clandestinely in the woods while Aunt Caroline and Aunt Sophia sat innocently at home, marvelling at Rose’s indifference to men, yet rejoicing in her spinsterhood; and Henrietta felt that Rose had wronged her stepsisters almost as much as she had wronged her niece. She was deceitful; that, in plain terms, accounted for what had seemed a mysterious and conquered sorrow. It was Henrietta who was to suffer, through the shattering of a dream.

She went home, walking quickly, but feeling that she groped in a fog, broken here and there by lurid lights, the lights of knowledge and determination. She was younger than Aunt Rose, she was as pretty, and she was the daughter of Reginald Mallett who, though she did not know it, had always wanted the things desired by other people. She could continue to love her stranger and at the back of her mind was the unacknowledged conviction that Aunt Rose’s choice must be well worth loving. And again how strangely events seemed to serve her: first the dropping of an orchid and now the leaping of a squirrel! She felt herself in the hands of higher powers.

She had a feverish longing to see Rose again, to see her plainly for the first time and dressing for dinner was like preparing for a great event. Yet when dinner-time came everything was surprisingly the same. The deceived Caroline and Sophia ate with the usual appetite, Susan hovered with the same quiet attention, and Rose showed no sign of a recent interview with a lover. Across the candlelight she looked at Henrietta kindly and Henrietta remembered the three thousand pounds. She did not want to remember them. They constituted an obligation towards this woman who did not sufficiently appreciate her, who met that man secretly, in a wood, who was beautiful with a far-off kind of beauty, like that of the stars. And while these angry thoughts passed through Henrietta’s mind, Rose’s tender expression had developed into a smile, and she asked, “Did you have a nice walk?”

Henrietta gulped. She looked steadily at Rose, and on her lips certain words began to form themselves, but she did not utter them, and instead of saying as she intended, “Yes, I went across the bridge and into those woods on the other side,” she merely said, “Yes, yes, thank you,” and smiled back. It had been impossible not to smile and she was angry with Aunt Rose for making her a hypocrite. Perhaps she had smiled like that in the wood and she did not look so very old. Even the flames of the candles, throwing her face into strong relief as she leaned forward, did not reveal any lines.

“Don’t walk too much, child,” Caroline said. “It enlarges the feet. Girls nowadays can wear their brothers’ shoes and men don’t like that. Have I ever told you”—Caroline was given to repetition of her stories—“how one of my partners, ridiculous creature, insisted on calling me Cinderella for a whole evening? Do you remember, Sophia?”

“Yes, dear,” Sophia said, and she determined that some day, when she was alone with Henrietta, she would tell her that she, too, had been called Cinderella that night. It was hard, but, since she loved her sister, not so very hard, to ignore her own little triumphs, yet she would like Henrietta to know of them. “Dear child,” she murmured vaguely.

“We have our shoes made for us,” Caroline went on. “It’s necessary.” She snorted scorn for a large-footed generation.

Rose laughed. She said, “Walk as much as you like, Henrietta. Health is better than tiny feet.”

Henrietta had no response for this remark. For the first time she felt out of sympathy with her surroundings, and her resentment against Rose spread to her other aunts. They were foolish in their talk of men and little feet; they knew, for all their worldliness, nothing about life. They had never known what it was to be insufficiently fed or clothed; they had never battled with black beetles and mutton bones, their white hands had never been soiled by greasy water and potato skins and she felt a bitterness against them all. “Nonsense, Rose, what do you know about it?” Caroline asked. “You’re a nun, that’s what you are.”

“Ah, lovely!” Sophia sighed, but Henrietta, thinking of that man in the wood, raised her dark eyebrows sceptically.

“Lovely! Rubbish! A nun, and the first in the family. All our women,” Caroline turned to Henrietta, “have broken hearts. They can’t help it. It’s in the blood. You’ll do it yourself. All except Rose. And our men—” she guffawed; “yes, even the General—but if I tell you about our men Sophia will be shocked.”

“The men!” Henrietta straightened herself and looked round the table. Her dark eyes shone, and the anger she was powerless to display against Aunt Rose, the remembrance of her own and her mother’s struggles, found an outlet. “You can’t tell me anything I don’t know. I don’t think it is funny. Haven’t I suffered through one of them? My father, he wasn’t anything to boast about.”

“Henrietta,” Sophia said gently, and Caroline uttered a stern, “What are you saying?”

“I don’t care,” Henrietta said. “Perhaps you’re proud of all the harm he did, but my mother and I had to bear it. He was weak and selfish; we nearly starved, but he didn’t. Oh, no, he didn’t!” With her hands clasped tightly on her knee she bent over the table and her head was lowered with the effect of some small animal prepared for a spring. “Do you know,” she said, “he wore silk shirts? Silk shirts! and I had only one set of underclothing in the world! I had to wash them overnight. That was my father—a Mallett! Were they all like that?”

There was silence until Caroline, peeling an apple with trembling fingers, said severely, “I don’t think we need continue this conversation.” Her indignation was beyond mere words; she was outraged; her brother had been insulted by this child who owed his sisters gratitude; the family had been held up to scorn, and Henrietta, aware of what she had done and of her obligations, was overwhelmed with regret, with confusion, with the sense that, after all, it was she who really loved and understood her father.

“We will excuse you, Henrietta, if you have finished your dessert,” Caroline said. She had a great dignity.

This was a dismissal and Henrietta stood up. She could not take back her words, for they were true: she did not know how to apologize for their manner; she felt she would have to leave the house to-morrow and she had a sudden pride in Aunt Caroline and in her own name. But there was nothing she could do.

Most unexpectedly, Rose intervened. “You must forgive Henrietta’s bitterness,” she said quietly. “It is natural.”

“But her own father!” Sophia remonstrated tearfully, and added tenderly, “Ah, poor child!”

Henrietta dropped into her chair. She wept without concealment. “It isn’t that I didn’t love him,” she sobbed.

“Ah, yes, you loved him,” Sophia said. “So did we.” She dabbed her face with her lace handkerchief. “It is Rose who knows nothing about him,” she said, with something approaching anger. “Nothing!”

“Perhaps that is why I understand,” Rose said.

“No, no, you don’t!” Henrietta cried. She could not admit that. She would not allow Aunt Rose to make such a claim. She looked from Caroline to Sophia. “It’s we who know,” she said. Yes, it was they three who were banded together in love for Reginald Mallett, in their sympathy for each other, in the greater nearness of their relationship to the person in dispute. She looked up, and she saw through her tears a slight quiver pass over the face of Rose and she knew she had hurt her and she was glad of it. “You must forgive me,” she said to Caroline.

“Well, well; he was a wretch—a great wretch—a great dear. Let us say no more about it.”

It was Rose, now, who was in disgrace, and it was Henrietta, Caroline and Sophia who passed an evening of excessive amiability in the drawing-room.

Henrietta felt heroically that she had thrown down her glove and it was annoying, the next morning, to find Rose would not pick it up. She remained charming; she was inimitably calm: she seemed to have forgotten her offence of the night before and Henrietta delighted in the thought that, though Rose did not know it, she and Henrietta were rivals in love, and she told herself that her own time would come.

She had only to wait. She was a great believer in her own luck, and had not Aunt Caroline assured her that all the Mallett women were born to break hearts—all but Aunt Rose? Some day she was bound to meet that man again and, looking in the glass after the Mallett manner, she was pleased with what she saw there. She was her father’s daughter. Her father had never denied himself anything he wanted, and since her outbreak against him she felt closer to him; she was prepared to condone his sins, even to emulate them and find in him her excuse. She looked at the portrait on the wall, she kissed her hand to it. Somehow he seemed to be helping her.

But with all her carefully nurtured enmity, she could not deny her admiration for Aunt Rose. She was proud to sit beside her in the carriage which took them to Sales Hall, and on that occasion Rose talked more than usual, telling Henrietta little stories of the people living in the houses they passed and little anecdotes of her own childhood connected with the fields and lanes.

Henrietta sighed suddenly. “It must be nice,” she said, “to be part of a place. You can’t be part of London, in lodging-houses, with no friends. I should love to have had a tree for a friend, all my life. It sounds silly, but it would make me feel different.” She was angry with herself for saying this to Aunt Rose, but again she could not help it. She saw too much with her eyes and Aunt Rose pleased them and she assured herself that though these softened her heart and loosened her tongue, she could resume her reserve at her leisure. “There was a tree, a cherry, in one of the gardens once, but we didn’t stay there long. We had to go.” She added quickly, “It was too expensive for us. I suppose they charged for the tree, but I did long to see it blossom; and this spring,” she waved a hand, “I’ve seen hundreds—I’ve seen a squirrel—” She stopped.

“Dear little things,” Rose said. They were jogging alongside the high, bare wall she hated, and the big trees, casting their high, wide branches far above and beyond it, seemed to be stretching out to the sea and the hills.

“Have you seen one lately?” Henrietta asked.

“What? A squirrel? No, not lately. They’re shy. One doesn’t see them often.”

“Oh, then I was lucky,” Henrietta said. “I saw one in those woods we’ve just passed, the other day.” She looked at her Aunt Rose’s creamy cheek. There was no flush on it, her profile was serene, the dark lashes did not stir.

“Soon,” Rose said, “you will see hills and the channel.”

“And when shall we come to Mrs. Sales’ house? Is she an old lady?”

“I don’t think you would call her very old. She is younger than I am.”

“Oh, that’s not old,” Henrietta said kindly. “Has she any children?”

“No, there’s a cat and a dog—especially a cat.”

“And a husband, I suppose?”

“Yes, a husband. Do you like cats, Henrietta?”

“They catch mice,” Henrietta said informatively.

“I don’t think this one has ever caught a mouse, but it lies in wait— for something. Cats are horrible; they listen.” And she added, as though to herself, “They frighten me.”

“I’m more afraid of dogs,” Henrietta said.

“Oh, but you mustn’t be.”

“Well,” Henrietta dared, “you’re afraid of cats.”

“I know, but dogs, they seem to be part of one’s inheritance—dogs and horses.”

“All the horses I’ve known,” Henrietta said with her odd bitterness, “have been in cabs, and even then I never knew them well.”

“Francis Sales must show you his,” Rose said. “There are the hills. Now we turn to the left, but down that track and across the fields is the short cut to Sales Hall. One can ride that way.”

“I should like to see the dairy,” Henrietta remarked, “or do they pretend they haven’t one?”

Rose smiled. “No, they’re very proud of it. It’s a model dairy. I’ve no doubt Francis will be glad to show you that, too. And here we are.”

The masculine hall, with its smell of tobacco, leather and tweed, the low winding staircase covered with matting, its walls adorned with sporting prints, was a strange introduction to the room in which Henrietta found herself. She had an impression of richness and colour; the carpet was very soft, the hangings were of silk, a fire burned in the grate though the day was warm and before the fire lay the cat. The dog was on the window-sill looking out at the glorious world, full of smells and rabbits which he loved and which he denied himself for the greater part of each day because he loved his mistress more, but he jumped down to greet Rose with a great wagging of his tail.

She stooped to him, saying, “Here is Henrietta, Christabel. Henrietta, this is Mrs. Sales.”

The woman on the couch looked to Henrietta like a doll animated by some diabolically clever mechanism, she was so pink and blue and fair. She was, in fact, a child’s idea of feminine beauty and Henrietta felt a rush of sorrow that she should have to lie there, day after day, watching the seasons come and go. It was marvellous that she had courage enough to smile, and she said at once, “Rose Mallett is always trying to give me pleasure,” and her tone, her glance at Rose, startled Henrietta as much as if the little thin hand outside the coverlet had suddenly produced a glittering toy which had its uses as a dagger. She, too, looked at Rose, but Rose was talking to the dog and it was then that Henrietta became really aware of the cat. It was certainly listening; it had stretched out its fore-paws and revealed shining, nail-like claws, and those polished instruments seemed to match the words which still floated on the warm air of the room.

“And now she has brought you,” Christabel went on. “It was kind of you to come. Do sit here beside me. Tell me what you think of Rose. Tell me what you think,” she laughed, “of your aunt. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Yes, very,” Henrietta said, and she spoke coldly, because she, too, was a Mallett, and she suspected this praise uttered in Rose’s hearing and still with that sharpness as of knives. She had never been in a room in which she felt less at ease: perhaps she had been prejudiced by Aunt Rose’s words about the cat, but that seemed absurd and she was confused by her vague feelings of anger and pity and suspicion.

However, she did her best to be a pleasant guest. She had somehow to break the tenseness in the room and she called on her reserve of anecdote. She told the story of Mr. Jenkins trying to fetch his boots and catch a glimpse of Mrs. Banks’s daily help who could cook but had no character; she described the stickiness of his collar; and because she was always readily responsive to her surroundings, she found it natural to be humorous in a somewhat spiteful way; and at a casual mention of the Battys, she became amusing at the expense of Charles and felt a slight regret when she had roused Christabel’s laughter. It seemed unkind; he had confided in her; she had betrayed him; and Rose completed her discomfiture by saying, “Ah, don’t laugh at poor Charles. He feels too much.”

Christabel nodded her head. “Your aunt is very sympathetic. She understands men.” She added quickly, “Have you met my husband?”

“No,” Henrietta said, “I’ve only seen your carts.”

The two women laughed and it was strange to hear them united in that mirth. Henrietta looked puzzled. “Well,” she explained, “it was one of the first things I noticed. It stuck in my head.” Naturally the impressions of that day had been unusually vivid and she saw with painful clearness the figure of the man on the horse, as enduring as though it had been executed in bronze yet animated by ardent life.

“Well,” Christabel said, “you are to have tea with the owner of the carts. Rose has tea with him every time she comes. It’s part of the ceremony.” She sighed wearily; the cat moved an ear; the nurse entered as a signal that the visitors must depart. “You’ll come again, won’t you?” Christabel asked, holding Henrietta’s hand and, as Rose said a few words to the nurse, she whispered, “Come alone”; and surprisingly, from the hearthrug, there was a loud purring from the cat.

It was like release to be in the matted corridor again and it was in silence that Rose led the way downstairs. Henrietta followed slowly, looking at the pictures of hounds in full cry, top-hatted ladies taking fences airily, red-coated gentlemen immersed in brooks, but at the turn of the stairs she stood stock-still. She had the physical sensation of her heart leaving its place and lodging in her throat. Her stranger was standing in the hall; he was looking at Aunt Rose, and she knew now what expression he was wearing in the wood; he was looking at her half-angrily and as though he were suffering from hunger. She could not see her aunt’s face, but when Henrietta stood beside her, Rose turned, saying, “Henrietta, let me introduce Mr. Sales.”

He said, “How do you do?” and then she saw again that look of interest with which she seemed to have been familiar for so long. “I think I have seen you before,” he said.

“It was you who picked up my orchid.”

“Of course.” He looked from her to Rose. “I couldn’t think who you reminded me of, but now I know.”

“I don’t think we are very much alike,” Henrietta said.

Rose laughed. “Oh, don’t say that. I have been glad to think we are.”

“You might be sisters,” said Francis Sales.

This little scene, being played so easily and lightly by this man and woman, had a nightmare quality for Henrietta. It had the confusion, the exaggerated horror of an evil dream, without the far-away consciousness of its unreality. Here she was, in the presence of the man she loved and it was wicked to love him. She had longed to meet him and now she wished she might have kept his memory only, the figure on the horse, the man with the pink orchid in his hand. She had suspected her Aunt Rose of a secret love affair, she had now discovered her guilty of sin. The evidence was slight, but Henrietta’s conviction was tremendous. She was horrified, but she was also elated. This was drama, this was life. She was herself a romantic figure; she was robbed of her happiness, her youth was blighted; the woman upstairs was wronged and Henrietta understood why there were knives on her tongue: she understood the watchfulness of the cat.

Yet, as they sat in the cool drawing-room with its pale flowery chintz, its primrose curtains, the faded water-colours on the walls and Aunt Rose pouring tea into the flowered cups, she might, if she had wished, have been persuaded that she was wrong. Perhaps she had mistaken that angry, starving look in the man’s eyes; it had gone; nothing could have been more ordinary than his expression and his conversation. But she knew she was not wrong and she sat there, on the alert, losing not a glance, not a tone. Her limbs were trembling, she could not eat and she was astonished that Aunt Rose could nibble biscuits with such nonchalance, that Francis Sales could eat plum cake.

He was, without doubt, the most attractive man she had ever seen; his long brown fingers fascinated her. And again she wondered at the odd sequence of events. She had seen his name on the carts, she had seen him on the horse, he had picked up her pink orchid, she had been led by Fate and a squirrel into the wood and now she found him here. It was like a play and it would be still more like a play if she snatched him from Aunt Rose. In that idea there was the prompting of her father, but her mother’s part in her was a reminder that she must not snatch him for herself. No, only out of danger; men were helpless, they were like babies in the hands of women, and hands could differ; they could hurt or soothe, and she imagined her own performing the latter task. She saw it as her mission, and on the way home she told herself that her silence was not that of anger but of dedication.

§ 5

She thought Aunt Rose looked at her rather curiously, though there was no expression so definite in that glance. Her aunts did not ask questions, they never interfered, and if Henrietta chose to be silent it was her own affair. She was, as a matter of fact, swimming in a warm bath of emotion and she experienced the usual chill when she descended from the carriage and felt the pavement under her feet. She had dedicated herself to a high purpose, but for the moment it was impossible to get on with the noble work. The mere business of life had to be proceeded with, and though the situation was absorbing it receded now and then until, looking at her Aunt Rose, she was reminded of it with a shock.

She looked often at her aunt, finding her more than ever fascinating. She tried to see her with the eyes of Francis Sales, she tried to imagine how Rose’s clear grey eyes, so dark sometimes that they seemed black, answered the appeal of his, yet, as the days passed, Henrietta found it difficult to remember her resignation and her wrongs in this new life of luxury and pleasure.

She woke each morning to the thought of gaiety and to the realization of comfort and the blessed absence of anxiety. Her occupation was the getting of enjoyment and she took it all eagerly yet without greed, and as she was enriched she became generous with her own offerings of laughter, sympathy and affection. She liked and looked for the brightening of Caroline and Sophia at her approach, she became pleasantly aware of her own ability to charm and she rejoiced in an exterior world no longer limited to streets. Each morning she went to her window and looked over and beyond the roofs, so beautiful and varied in themselves, to the trees screening the open country across the river and if the sight reminded her to sigh for her own sorrows and to think bitterly of Aunt Rose, she had not time to linger on her emotions. Summer was gay in Upper Radstowe. There were tea-parties and picnics, she paid calls with her aunts and learnt to play lawn tennis with her contemporaries. Her friendship with the Battys ripened.

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.”

Henrietta’s mouth opened with astonishment. “I had no idea. And I do nothing but enjoy myself.”

Rose laughed. “That’s what we want you to do. You must be as happy as you can.”

This, from Aunt Rose, was the most wonderful thing that had happened yet. Henrietta was overcome by astonishment and gratitude. “I had no idea. I never dreamt of your liking me. I thought you just put up with me.”

“You haven’t given me much chance,” Rose said in a low voice, “of doing anything else.”

It was true: Henrietta could not flourish when she thought herself unappreciated, but now she expanded like a flower blossoming in a night.

“Oh, if we could be friends! There’s nobody to talk to except Charles Batty, and I hated, I simply hated being at Sales Hall to-night.” She tightened her lips and opened them to say, “I shan’t go there again. I said so. She is a terrible woman.”

“She has a great deal to bear.”

“Yes, and she counts on your remembering that,” Henrietta said acutely.

“What was the matter to-night?”

“Hints,” Henrietta whispered. “Hints,” and she added nervously, “about you.”

Rose made a slight movement. “Don’t tell me.”

“And the cat. I ran away. She was crying, but I didn’t care. I ran all down the avenue on to the road. Mr. Sales had said he would take me home, but I didn’t wait. It was much better under the sky. Then I heard footsteps, and it was Mr. Sales running after me.” She paused. Two stairs above her, Aunt Rose stood, listening with attention. She was, as usual, all black and white; her neck, rising from the black lace, looked like a bowl of cream laid out of doors to cool in the night.

“He kissed me,” Henrietta said abruptly.

Rose did not move, and before she spoke Henrietta had time to wonder what had prompted her to that confession. She had not thought about it, the words had simply issued of themselves.

“Kissed you?”

“Yes,” Henrietta said, and suddenly she wanted to make it easier for Aunt Rose. “I think he was sorry for me. I told him I was unhappy, but I couldn’t tell him why, I couldn’t say it was his wife. I think he meant it kindly.”

“I am sure he did,” Rose said with admirable self-possession. “You look very young in that big hat, you are very young, and perhaps he guessed what you had been through. Don’t think about it any more.”

“No.” Henrietta seemed to have no control over her tongue. “But then, you see, I hit him.”

Rose managed a laugh. “Oh, Henrietta, how primitive!”

“Yes,” Henrietta agreed, but she knew she had betrayed Francis Sales. She knew and Rose knew that she would not have struck him if the kiss had been paternal. “I suppose it was vulgar,” she murmured sadly, yet not without some skill.

Rose descended the two stairs without a word and went to the bottom of the flight, but there she paused, saying, “Take off your things and let us have some music.”

Henrietta was learning to sing, and in defiance of Charles Batty’s prophecy, she neither squeaked nor gurgled. She piped with a pretty simplicity and with an enjoyment which made her forget herself. Yet she looked charming, standing in the candle-light beside the shining grand piano on which Aunt Rose accompanied her, and to-night she felt they were united in more than the music: they were friends, they were fellow-sufferers, and long after Henrietta had tired of singing, Rose went on playing, mournfully, as it seemed to Henrietta, consoling herself with sweet sounds. Sophia sat before her embroidery frame, slowly pushing her needle in and out; Caroline read a novel with avidity and an occasional pause for chuckles, and when Rose at length dropped her hands on her knees and remained motionless, staring at the keys, Henrietta startled her aunts by saying firmly, “I am just going to enjoy life.”

Rose raised her head and her enigmatic smile widened a little. Caroline exclaimed, “Good gracious! Why not?” Sophia said gently, “That is what we wish.”

Henrietta stiffened herself for questions which did not come. Nobody expressed a desire to know what had caused this solemn declaration: Caroline went on reading, Sophia embroidering; Rose retired to bed.

Henrietta was not daunted by this indifference. She persisted in her determination; she cast off all thoughts of ministering like an angel, or revenging like a demon; she enjoyed the gaieties with which the youth of Radstowe amused itself during the summer months; she accompanied her aunts to garden parties, ate ices, had her fortune told in tents, flirted mildly and endured Charles Batty’s peculiar half-apprehensive tyranny.

Nothing went amiss with Charles but what he seemed to blame her for it, and while she resented this strange form of attention, she had a compensating conviction that he was really paying tribute and she knew that the absence of his complaints would have left a blank. Fixing her with his pale eyes, he described the bitterness of life in his father’s office, his mismanagement of clients, his father’s sneers, his mother’s sighs; his sufferings in not being allowed to go to Germany and study music.

“If I were a man,” Henrietta said, voicing a pathetic faith in masculine ability to break bonds, “I would do what I liked. I’d go to Germany and starve and be happy. A man can do and get anything he really wants.”

“Ah, I shall remember that,” he said. “But I can’t go to Germany now,” he added darkly, and when she asked him for a reason, he groaned. “Even you—even you don’t understand me.”

In this respect she understood him perfectly well, but she did not wish to clear the mysterious gloom, not devoid of excitement, in which they moved together; and they parted for the summer holidays, miserably on his part, cheerfully on hers. She was going to Scotland with Aunt Rose and the prospect was so delightful that she did not trouble to inquire about his movements.

She was surprised and almost disappointed that he did not reproach her for this thoughtlessness when, on her return, she went to call on Mrs. Batty and hear about her annual holiday at Bournemouth. Mrs. Batty had suffered very much from the heat, Mr. Batty had suffered from dyspepsia, and they were glad to be at home again, though it was to find that John, without a hint to his parents, had engaged himself to a girl with tastes like his own.

“But it’s bull-dogs with her, instead of terriers,” Mrs. Batty sighed. “She brings them here and they slobber on the carpets—dirty things. And golf. But she’s a nice girl, and they go out before breakfast with the dogs and have a game—but I did hope he would look elsewhere, dear.” She gazed sentimentally at Henrietta. “I don’t feel she will ever be a daughter to me. Of course, I kissed her and all that when I heard the news, but now she just comes in and says, ‘Hullo, Mrs. Batty! Where’s John?’ And that’s all. I do like affection. She’ll kiss the bull-dogs, though,” Mrs. Batty added grimly; “but whether she ever kisses John, I can’t say. And as for Charles, he never looks at a girl, so I’m as badly off as ever. Worse, for Charles, really Charles hasn’t a word to throw at me. He comes down to breakfast and you’d think the bacon had upset him, and it’s the best I can get. And his father sits reading the paper and lifting his eyebrows over the edge at Charles. He’s very cool, Mr. Batty is. Half the time, John comes in late for breakfast, after his game, you know, and then he’s in too much of a hurry to talk. They might all be dumb. With Charles it’s all that piano business. I tell him I wish he’d go to Germany and be done with it, though I never think musicians are respectable, with all that hair. Anyhow, Charles is getting bald, and he says he’s too old to start afresh. And then he glares at his father. It’s all very unpleasant. Still, he’s a good boy really. They’re both good boys. I’ve a lot to be thankful for; and, my dear,”—her voice sank, and she laid a plump hand on Henrietta’s—“Mr. Batty says we may give a ball after Christmas. Everybody in Radstowe. We shall take the Assembly Rooms. The date isn’t fixed, and now and then, if he isn’t feeling well, Mr. Batty says he can’t afford it. But that’s nonsense, we shall have it; but don’t say a word. I’ve told nobody else, but somehow, Henrietta, I always want to tell you everything, as if you were my daughter.” Mrs. Batty sighed heavily. “If only Charles were different!”

However, Charles surprised his mother that evening by walking to the gate with Henrietta. Arrived there, he announced firmly that he would take her home.

“I’m going for a walk,” Henrietta said.

“Oh, a walk. Well, all right. Where shall we go? I know, I will take you where you’ve never been before.”

It was October and already the lamps were lighted in the streets; they studded the bridge like fairy lanterns for a fairy path to that world of woods and stealthy lanes and open country where the wind rustled the gorse bushes on the other side. Below, at the water’s edge, more lamps stood like sentinels, here and there, straight and lonely, fulfilling their task, and as Charles and Henrietta watched, the terraces of Radstowe became illuminated by an unseen hand. Over everything there was a suggestion of enchantment: lovers, strolling by, were romantic in their silence; a faint hoot from some steamer was like a laugh.

“It will be dark over there, won’t it?” Henrietta asked.

“Frightfully. We’ll cut across the fields.”

“Not to Sales Hall?”

“Sales Hall? What for? To see that miserable fellow? We’re not going near Sales Hall.”

She breathed a word.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“Cows,” she breathed again.

“Perhaps.”

“But in the winter,” she said hopefully, “I should think they shut them up at night, poor things.”

“Not cold enough yet for that.”

“I’m afraid of them, you know.”

“Domestic animals,” he said calmly.

“Horns,” she whispered.

They said no more. Their path edged those woods which in their turn edged the gorge; but here and there the trees spread themselves more freely and, through the darkness, Henrietta had glimpses of furtive little paths, of dips and hollows. A small pool, thick with early fallen leaves, had hardly a foot of gleaming surface with which to gaze like an unwinking eye at the emerging stars. But this skirting of the wood came to an end and there stretched before their feet, which made the only sound in the quiet night, a broad white road where the arched gateway of a distant house looked like the fragment of a temple.

“I like this,” Henrietta said; “I feel safe.”

“Not for long,” Charles replied sternly. He opened a gate and through a little coppice they reached a fence. “You’ll have to climb it.” The broad fields on the other side were as dark as water and as still. It was surprising, when she jumped down, to find she did not sink, to find that she and Charles could walk steadily on this blackness, cut here and there by the deeper blackness of a hedge. There were no cows, but sheep stumbled up and bleated at their approach, and for some time the tinkling of the bell-wether’s bell accompanied them like music.

“There’s a stile here,” Charles said, and from this they plunged into another wood where birds fluttered and twittered and, in the undergrowth, there were small stealthy sounds.

“I wouldn’t come here alone,” Henrietta said, “for all the world.”

Charles said nothing. Mrs. Batty was right: it was like walking with a dumb man. They left the wood and walked downhill beside a ploughed field, and in the shelter of a high wall. An open lane brought them to a gate, the gate opened on a rough road through yet another wood of larch and spruce and fir. The road was deeply rutted and they walked in single file until Charles turned, saying, “This is what I’ve brought you to see. This is ‘The Monks’ Pool.’”

A large pond, almost round and strewn with dead leaves about its edge, lay sombrely on their right hand, without a movement, without a gleam. It was like a pall covering something secret, something which must never be revealed, and opposite, where the ground rose steeply, tall firs stood up, guardians of the unknown. Faint quackings came from some unseen ducks among the willows and water gurgled at the invisible outlet of the pond; there were little stirrings and sighings among the trees. The protruding roots of an oak offered a seat to Henrietta, and behind her Charles leaned against the trunk.

It was comfortable to have him there, to be able to look at this dark beauty without fear, and as she sat there she heard an ever-increasing number of little sounds; they were caused by she knew not what: small creatures moving among the pine needles, night birds on the watch for prey, water rats, the flop of fish, the fall of some leaf over-ripe on the tree, her own slow breathing, the muffled ticking of her heart; and into this orchestra of tiny instruments there came slowly, and as if it grew out of all these, another sound.

It was the voice of Charles, and it was so much a part of this rare experience, it seemed so right a complement, that at first she did not listen to the sense of what he said. The words had no clearer meaning than had the other voices of the night; the whole thing was wonderful —the tall, immobile trees, the small, secret sounds, the black lake like an immense, mysterious pall, the steady booming of the voice, had the effect of magic.

This was essential beauty revealed to her ears and eyes, but gradually the words formed themselves into sentences and were carried to her brain. She understood that Charles was talking of himself, of her, with an eloquence born of long-considered thoughts. He was telling her how she appeared to him as a being of light and sweetness and necessity; he was telling her how he loved her; he was asking for nothing, but he was saying amazing things in language worthy of his thoughts of her.

That muffled ticking of her heart went on like distant drum beats, the symphony of tiny instruments did not pause, the dominant sound of Charles’s voice continued, and now, as she listened, she heard nothing but his voice. He was not pathetic, he did not plead, he did not claim: he spoke of very old and lasting things, and it was like hearing some one read a tale. She did not stir. She forgot that this was Charles; it was a simple heart become articulate. And then suddenly the voice stopped and the orchestra, as though in relief, in triumph, seemed to play more loudly. A water rat dived again, a duck quacked sleepily and a branch of a tree creaked mournfully under a lost puff of wind.

Henrietta turned her head and saw Charles Batty standing motionless against the tree. His hat was tilted a little to one side and his eyes were staring straight before him. Even the darkness was not entirely kind to him, but that did not matter. She wondered if he knew what he had been saying; she could not remember it all, but it would come back. As they went home over the dark fields, she would remember it. It seemed to have everything and yet nothing to do with her; it was like poetry that, without embarrassment, profoundly moves the hearer, and his very voice had developed the dignity of his theme.

He did not speak again. In complete silence they retraced their steps and at the gate of Nelson Lodge he left her. In the little high-walled garden she stood still. This had been a wonderful experience. She felt uplifted, better than herself, yet she could not resist speculating on her probable feelings if another than Charles Batty, if, for instance, Francis Sales, had poured that rhapsody into the night.