Chapter II: Book I: Rose (2)

“But there are no kings in Radstowe,” Sophia said, “and I don’t think you ought to say such things.”

“It’s my way. You ought to know that. And I can’t control my tongue any more than Reginald can control his body.”

“Caroline!”

“And I don’t want to. We’re all wrapped up in cotton-wool nowadays. I ought to have lived in another century. I, too, would have adorned a court, and kept it lively! There’s no wit left in the world, and there’s no wickedness of the right kind. We might as well be Nonconformists at once.”

“Certainly not,” Sophia said firmly. “Certainly not that.”

“But as you so cleverly remind me, there are no kings in Radstowe. There’s not even,” she added with a mocking smile which made her face gay in a ghastly way, “not even a foreign Count who would turn out an impostor. Rose would do very well there, too. An imitation foreign Count with a black moustache and no money! She would be magnificent and tragic. Imagine them at Monte Carlo, keeping it up! She would hate him, grandly; she would hate herself for being deceived; she would never lose her dignity. You can’t picture Rose with a droop or a tear. They’d trail about the Continent and she would never come back.”

“But we don’t want her to go away at all,” Sophia cried.

“And when she came to the point of being afraid of murdering him, she would leave him without any fuss and live alone and mysterious somewhere in the South of France, or Italy, or Spain. Yes, Spain. There must be real Counts there and she would get her love affair at last.”

“But she would still be married.”

“Of course!” Caroline, looking roguish, was terrible. “That is necessary for a love affair, _ma chère_.”

“I would much rather she married Francis Sales and came to see us every week. Or any other nice young man in Radstowe. She would never marry beneath her.”

“On the contrary,” Caroline remarked, “she’s bound to marry beneath her—not in class, Sophia, not in class, though in Radstowe that’s possible, too. Look at the Battys! But certainly in brains and manners.”

Sophia, clinging to her own idea, repeated plaintively, “I would rather it were Francis Sales, and he must be lonely in that big house.”

It appeared, however, that he was not to be lonely, for Susan, entering with hot water, let fall in her discreet, impersonal way, another piece of gossip. “John Gibbs says they think Mr. Francis must be bringing home a wife, Miss Caroline. He’s having some of the rooms done up.”

“Ah!” said Caroline, and her plump elbow pressed Sophia’s. “Which rooms, I wonder?”

“I did not inquire, Miss Caroline.”

“Then kindly inquire this afternoon, and tell him the butter is deteriorating, but inquire first or you’ll get nothing out of him.” She turned with malicious triumph to Sophia. “So that dream’s over!”

“We shall have to break it to her gently,” Sophia said; “but it may not be true.”

In the dining-room over which the General’s portrait tried, and failed, to preside, as he himself had done in life, and where he was conquered by an earlier and a later generation, by the shining eloquence of the old furniture and silver and the living flesh and blood of his children, Caroline gave Rose the news without, Sophia thought, a spark of delicacy.

“They say Francis Sales is bringing home a wife.”

“Really?” Rose said, taking toast.

“He has sent orders for part of the house to be done up.”

Rose raised her eyes. “Ah, she’s hurt,” Sophia thought, but Rose merely said, “If he touches the drawing-room or the study I shall never forgive him”; and then, thoughtfully, she added, “but he won’t touch the drawing-room.”

“H’m, he’ll do what his wife tells him, I imagine. No girl will appreciate Mrs. Sales’s washy paintings.”

“Rose would,” Sophia sighed.

“Yes, I do,” Rose said cheerfully. She was too cheerful for Sophia’s romantic little theory, but an acuter audience would have found her too cheerful for herself. She had overdone it by half a tone, but the exaggeration was too fine for any ears but her own. She was, as a matter of fact, in the grip of a violent anger. She was not the kind of woman to resent the new affections of a rejected lover, but she had, through her own folly, attached herself to Francis Sales, as, less unreasonably, his tears had once attached him to her, and the immaterial nature of the bond composed its strength. Consciously foolish as her thoughts had been, they became at that breakfast table, with the water bubbling in the spirit kettle and the faint crunch of Caroline eating toast, intensely real, and she was angry both with herself and with his unfaithfulness. She did not love him—how could she?—but he belonged to her; and now, if this piece of gossip turned out to be true, she must share him with another. Jealousy, in its usual sense, she had none as yet, but she had forged a chain she was to find herself unable to break. It was her pride to consider herself a hard young person, without spirituality, without sentiment, yet all her personal relationships were to be of the fantastic kind she now experienced, all her obligations such as others would have ignored.

“We shall know more when John Gibbs brings the afternoon milk,” Caroline said.

Rose went upstairs and left her stepsisters to their repetitions. Her window looked out on the little walled front garden and the broad street. Tradesmen’s carts went by without hurry, ladies walked out with their dogs, errand-boys loitered in the sun, and presently Caroline and Sophia went down the garden path, Caroline sailing majestically like a full-rigged ship, Sophia with her girlish, tripping gait. They put up their sunshades, and sailed out on what was, in effect, a foraging expedition. They were going to collect the news.

Outside the gate, they were hidden by the wall, but for a little while Rose could hear Caroline’s loud voice. Without doubt she was talking of Francis Sales, unless she were asking Sophia if her hat, a large one with pink roses, really became her. Rose knew it all so well, and she closed her eyes for a moment in weariness. Suddenly she felt tired and old; the flame of her anger had died down, and for that moment she allowed herself to droop. She found little comfort in the fact that she alone knew of her folly, and calling it folly no longer justified it. She, too, had been rejected, more cruelly than had Francis Sales, for she had given him something of her spirit. And she had liked to imagine him far away, thinking of her and of her beauty; she had fancied him remembering the scene among the primroses and continuing to adore her in his sulky, inarticulate way. Well, he would think of her no more, but she was subtly bound to him, first by his need, and now, against all reason, by her thoughts. She had already learnt that time, which sometimes seems so swift and heartless, is also slow and kind. Her feelings would lose their intensity; she only had to wait, and she waited with that outward impassivity which did not spoil her beauty; it suited the firm modelling of her features, the creamy whiteness of her skin, the clear grey eyes under the straight dark eyebrows, and the lips bent into the promise of a smile.

Caroline and Sophia waited differently, first for the afternoon milk and the information they wanted and, during the next weeks, for the rumours which slowly developed into acknowledged facts. The housekeeper at Sales Hall had heard from the young master: he was married and returning immediately with his wife. Caroline sniffed and hoped the woman was respectable; Sophia was charitably certain she would be a charming girl; and Rose, knowing she questioned one of the life occupations of her stepsisters, said coolly, “Why speculate? We shall see her soon. We must go and call.”

“Of course,” Caroline said, and Sophia, with her fixed idea, which was right in the wrong way, said gently, “If you’re sure you want to go, dear.”

“Me?” asked Caroline.

“No, no, I was thinking of Rose.”

“Nonsense!” Caroline said, “we’re all going”; and Rose reassured Sophia with perfect truth, “I have been longing to see her for weeks.”

§ 3

So it came about that the three sisters once more sat in a hired carriage and drove to Sales Hall. On the box was the son of the man who had driven them years ago, and though the carriage was a new one and the old horse had long been metamorphosed into food for the wild animals in the Radstowe Zoo, this expedition was in many ways a repetition of the other. Caroline and Sophia faced the horses and Rose sat opposite her stepsisters, but now she did not listen to their talk with ears stretched, not to miss a word, and she did not think her companions as beautiful as princesses. It was she who might have been a princess for another child, but she did not think of that. She looked with amusement and with misplaced pity at the other two. It was a September afternoon and they were very gaily dressed, and again Caroline had a feather drooping over her hair, while Sophia, more girlish, wore a wide hat with a blue bow, and both their parasols were tilted as before against the sun. It seemed to Rose that even the cut of their garments had not changed with time. The two had always the appearance of fashion plates of twenty years ago, but no doubt of their correctness ever entered their minds; and so they managed to preserve their elegance, as though their belief in themselves were strong enough to impose it on those who saw them. Without this faith, the severity of Rose’s black dress, filmy enough for the season but daringly plain, must have rebuked them. The pearls in her ears and on her neck were her only ornaments; her little hat, wreathed with a cream feather, shaded her brow. She sat with the repose which was one of her gifts.

“I’m sure we all look very nice,” Caroline said suddenly, the very remark she had made when they went to the haymaking party, “though you do look rather like a widow, Rose—a widow, getting over it very comfortably, as they do—as they do!”

“I’m glad I look so interesting,” Rose murmured.

“Oh, interesting, always. Yes.”

They were jogging along the road bordered by the high smooth wall, despairingly efficient, guarding treasures bought with gold; and the tall elm-trees looked over it as though they wanted to escape. The murmuring in their branches seemed to be of discontent, and the birds singing in them had a taunting note. The road mounted a little and the wall went with it, backed by the imprisoned trees. But at last, at the cross-roads, the wall turned and the road went on without it. There were open fields now on either hand, the property of Francis Sales, and another mile brought the carriage to the opening of the grassy track where Rose liked to think she had left her youth, but the road went round on the other side of the larch woods, and when these were passed Sales Hall came into sight.

“I always think,” Caroline said, “it’s a pity this beautiful avenue hasn’t a better setting. Mere fields, and open to the road! It’s undignified. It ought to have been a park.”

“With a high wall all round it,” Rose suggested.

“Exactly,” Caroline agreed. She was touching her fringe, giving little pats and pulls to her dress, preparatory to descent, and Sophia whispered, “Just see, Caroline, that wisp of hair near my ear—so tiresome! I can never be sure of it.”

“Not a sign of it,” Caroline assured her. “Now I wonder what we are going to find.”

They found the drawing-room empty and untouched. On the pale walls the water-colours were still hanging, the floral carpet still covered the floor, the faded chintzes had not been removed, and the light came clearly through the long windows with their pale primrose curtains. In the middle of the room was the circular settee to seat four persons, back to back, with a little woolwork stool set for each pair of feet. There were no flowers in the room, and they were not needed, for the room itself was like some pale, scentless and old-fashioned bloom.

The three Miss Malletts sat down: Caroline gay and aggressive as a parrot, and a parrot in a big gilded cage would not have been out of place; Sophia fitting naturally into the gentle scheme of things; Rose startlingly modern in her elegance.

“Well,” Caroline said, “she’s a long time. Changing her dress, I expect,” and she sniffed. But Mrs. Francis Sales entered in a pink cotton garment, her fair, curling hair a little untidy, for she had, she said, been in the old walled garden behind the house. There was, in fact, a rose hanging from her left hand. She was pretty, she seemed artless and defenceless, but her big blue eyes had a wary look, and in spite of that look spoiling an otherwise ingenuous countenance, Rose imagined herself noticeably old and mature. She thought it was no wonder that Francis was attracted, but at the same time she despised him for a failure in taste, as though, faced with the choice between a Heppelwhite chair and an affair of wicker and cretonne, he had chosen the inferior article, though she had to admit that, for a permanent seat, it might be more comfortable and certainly more yielding.

But as she watched Mrs. Sales presiding over the teacups, her scared eyes moving swiftly from the parlourmaid, entering with cakes, to Caroline, and from Caroline to Sophia, and then with added shyness to the woman nearest her own age, Rose found her opinion changing. Mrs. Francis Sales was timid, but she was not weak; the fair fluffiness of her exterior was deceptive; and while Rose made this discovery and now and then dropped a quiet word into the chatter of the others, she was listening for Francis. He had been with his wife in the garden, but he was some time in following her, and Rose knew that Mrs. Sales was listening, too. She wondered whose ear first caught the sound of his feet on the matted passage; she felt an absurd inward tremor and, looking at Mrs. Sales, she saw that her pretty pink colour had deepened and her blue eyes were bright, like flowers. She was certainly charming in her simple frock, but her unsuitable shoes with very high heels and sparkling buckles hurt Rose’s eye as much as the voice, also high and slightly grating, hurt her ear, and this voice sharpened nervously as it said, “Oh, here is Francis coming.”

No, he was not the person of Rose’s dreams, and she felt an immense relief: she had expected to be disappointed, but she was glad to find the old Francis, big, bronzed and handsome, smelling of the open air and tobacco and tweed, and no dangerous, disturbing, heroic figure.

For an instant he looked at Rose before he greeted the elder ladies, and then, as Rose let her hand touch his and pleasantly said, “How are you?” she experienced a faint, almost physical shock. He was different after all, and now she did not know whether to be glad or sorry. Unchanged, she need not have given him another thought; subtly altered, she was bound to probe into the how and why. He sat beside her on the old-fashioned couch with a curled head, and his thirteen stone descending heavily on the springs sent up her light weight with a perceptible jerk.

“Clumsy boy!” Mrs. Sales exclaimed playfully.

Rose laughed. “It’s like the old see-saw. I was always in the air and you on the ground. Is it there still—near the pigsties?”

“Yes, still there.” But this threatened to become too exclusive a conversation, and Rose tried to do her share in more general topics.

Caroline, talking of the advantage of Radstowe, regretting the greater gaiety of the past, when Sophia and she were belles, was adding gratuitous advice on the management of husbands and some information on the ways of men. Mrs. Sales laughed and glanced now and then at Francis, but whether he responded Rose could not see, unless she turned her head. He ought certainly to have been smiling at so pretty a person, wrinkling his eyes in the way he had and straightening the mouth which was sullen in repose. Yet she was almost sure he was doing the minimum demanded of politeness, almost sure he was thinking of herself and was conscious of her nearness, just as she, for the first time, was physically conscious of his.

She rose, saying, “May I look out of the window? I always liked this view of the garden.” And having gazed out and made the necessary remarks, she sat down, separated from him by the width of the room and with her back to the light, a strategical position she ought to have taken up before. But here she was at the disadvantage of facing him and a scrutiny of which she had not thought him capable. With his legs stretched out, his hands in his pockets, his eyes apparently half shut but unquestionably fixed on her, he was really behaving rather badly. She had never been stared at like this before and she told herself that under the shelter of his marriage he had grown daring, if not insolent; but at the same time she knew she was not telling herself the truth: he was simply in the position of a thirsty man who has at last found a stream. It appeared, then, that his wife did not sufficiently quench his thirst.

Rose carefully did not look his way, but she experienced an altogether new excitement, the very ancient one of desiring to taste forbidden fruit simply because it was forbidden; this particular fruit, as such, had no special charm; but she was born a Mallett and the half-sister of Reginald. She had, however, as he had not, a substantial basis of personal pride and a love of beauty which was at least as effectual as a moral principle and she had not Francis’s excuse for his behaviour. She believed he did not know what he was doing; but she was entirely clear-sighted as to herself and she refused to encourage the silent intercourse which had established itself between them.

Caroline was in the midst of a piece of gossip, Sophia was interjecting exclamations of moderation and reproach, and Mrs. Sales was manifestly amused. Her chromatic giggle was as punctual as Sophia’s reproof, and Rose drew closer to the group made by the three, and said, “I’m missing Caroline’s story. Which one is it?” And now it was Francis who laughed.

“It’s finished,” Caroline said. “Don’t tell your husband, at least till we have gone—and we ought to go at once.”

But the coachman was not on the box. He had been invited to take tea in the kitchen.

“We won’t disturb him,” Sophia said. “No, Caroline, let him have his tea. We ought to encourage teetotal drinking in his class. Perhaps Mrs. Sales will let us go round the garden. I am so fond of flowers.”

“Come and look at the pigsties,” Francis said to Rose, but, assuring him she had grown too old for pigs, she followed the rest.

The walled garden had a beautiful disorder. A grey kitten and a white puppy sat together on the grass, enjoying the sunshine and each other’s company and pretending to be asleep; and though the kitten displayed no interest in the visitors, holding its personality of more importance than anything else, the puppy jumped up, barked, and rushed at each person in turn. Caroline, picking up her skirts and showing the famous Mallett ankle, said, “Go away, dog!” in a severe tone, and the puppy rolled on the grass to show that he did not care and could not by any possibility be snubbed. Under an apple-tree on which the fruit was ripening were two cane chairs, a table, a newspaper and a work-basket.

“This is my favourite place,” Mrs. Sales said to Rose. “I hate that drawing-room, and Francis won’t have it touched. But I’ve got a boudoir that’s lovely. He sent an order to the best shop and had it ready for a surprise, so if I’m not out of doors I sit there. Would you like to see it?”

“I should, very much,” Rose said.

“Then come quickly while the others are eating those plums off the wall.”

Rose looked back. “I can’t think what Sophia will do with the stone,” she murmured, smiling her faint smile.

Mrs. Sales was puzzled by this remark. “Oh, she’ll manage, won’t she? You don’t want to help her, do you?”

“No, I don’t want to help her.”

“Come along, then.”

Rose saw the boudoir, a little room half-way up the stairs. “It’s Louis something,” said Mrs. Sales, “but all the same, I think it’s sweet, and pink’s my favourite colour. Francis thought of that. I was wearing pink when I first met him.”

“I see,” Rose said. “Was that long ago?”

“Only three months. I think we both fell in love at the same minute, and that’s nice, isn’t it? I know I’m going to be happy, but I do hope I shan’t be dull. We’re a big family at home. I’m English,” she added a little anxiously, “but my father settled there.”

“I don’t think you should be dull,” Rose said. “Everybody in Radstowe will call on you, and there are lots of parties. And then there’s hunting.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Sales. Her eyes left Rose’s face, to return a little wider, a little warier. “Do you hunt too?”

“As often as I can. I only have one horse.”

“Francis says I am to have two.”

“And they will be good ones. He likes hunting and horses better than anything else, I suppose.”

“But he mustn’t neglect the farm,” his wife said firmly, and she added slowly, “I don’t know that I need two horses, really. I haven’t ridden much, and there’s a lot to do in the house. I don’t believe in people being out all day.”

“Well, you can’t hunt all the year round, you know.”

Mrs. Sales let out a sigh so faint that most people would have missed it. “It will be beginning soon, won’t it?”

“It feels a long way off in weather like this,” Rose said. “But they are getting into the carriage. I must go.”

Mrs. Sales lingered for an instant. “I do hope we’re going to be friends.” This was more than a statement, it was a request, and Rose shrank from it; but she said lightly, “We shall be meeting often. You will see more of us than you will care for, I’m afraid. The Malletts are rather ubiquitous in Radstowe. It’s fortunate for us, or Caroline would die of boredom, but I don’t know how it appears to other people.”

She was going down the shallow stairs and the voice of Mrs. Sales followed her sadly: “He hasn’t told me anything about any of his friends.”

“In three months? He hasn’t had time, with you to think about!” A laugh, pleased and self-conscious, reached her ears. “No, but it’s rather lonely in this old house. We’re a big family at home—and so lively. There was always something going on. I wished we lived nearer Radstowe.”

“And I envy you here. It’s peaceful.”

“Yes, it’s that,” Mrs. Sales agreed.

“I’m a good deal older than you, you see,” Rose elaborated.

“That’s just it,” said Mrs. Sales.

Rose laughed, and Francis, standing at the door, turned at the sound in time to catch the end of Rose’s smile.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Mrs. Sales’s candour.”

“Oh, was I rude?”

“No. Good-bye. I liked it.” Yet, as she settled herself in her place, she was not more than half pleased. She liked her superior age only because it marked a difference between her and the wife of Francis Sales.

“H’m!” Caroline said when the carriage had turned into the road and the figures in the doorway had disappeared. “Pretty, but unformed.”

“They seem very happy,” Sophia said, “but I do think she ought to have been wearing black. Her father-in-law has only been dead six months, and even Francis was not wearing a black tie.”

But if Caroline condemned men in general, she supported them in particular. “Quite right, too. Men don’t think of these things—and a black tie with those tweeds! Sophia, don’t be silly and sentimental; but you always were, you always will be.”

“She might have had a white frock with a black ribbon,” Sophia persisted. “Why, Rose looked more like our old friend’s daughter-in-law.”

“But hardly like a bride,” Rose said. “And you see, pink is her colour.”

“So it is, dear. One could see that. Pink and blue, just as they were mine.” She corrected herself. “_Are_ mine. Our complexions are very much alike; in fact, she reminded me a little of myself.”

“Nonsense, Sophia! If you had been like that I should have disowned you. However, she will do well enough for Sales Hall.”

Rose bent forward slightly. “I like her,” she said distinctly. “And she’s lonely.”

“Well, my dear, she’ll soon have half a dozen children to keep her lively.”

“Hush, Caroline! The man will hear you.”

Caroline addressed Rose. “Sophia’s modesty is indecent. I’ve done what I could for her.”

“Please listen to me,” Rose said. “You are not to belittle Mrs. Sales to people, Caroline. You can be a powerful friend, if you choose, and if you sing her praises there will be a mighty chorus.”

“That’s true,” Caroline said.

“Yes, that’s true, dear Caroline,” Sophia echoed. “And I think you’re taking this very sweetly, Rose.”

“Sweetly? Why?”

Caroline pricked up her ears. “What’s this? I’m out of this. Oh, that old rubbish! She will have it you and Francis should have married. My dear Sophia, Rose could have married anybody if she’d wanted to. You’ll admit that? Yes? Then can’t you see”—she tapped Sophia’s knee—“then can’t you see that Rose didn’t want him? That’s logic—and something you lack.”

“Yes, dear,” Sophia said with the meekness of the unconvinced. “And of course it’s wrong to think of it now that he’s married to another.”

Caroline guffawed her loudest, and the astonished horse quickened his pace. The driver cast a look over his shoulder to see that all was well, for he had a sister who made strange noises in her fits; and Sophia, sitting in her drooping fashion, as though her head with its great knob of fair hair, in which the silver was just beginning to show, were too heavy for her body, had to listen to the old gibes which had never made and never would make any impression on her, though she would have felt forlorn without them. She was the only puritanical Mallett in history, Caroline said. Oh, yes, the General had been great at family prayers, but he was trying to make up for lost time. It was difficult to believe that Sophia and Reginald were the same flesh and blood.

Sophia interrupted. She was fond of Reginald, but she had no desire to be like him, and Caroline knew he was a disgrace. They argued for some time, and Rose closed her eyes until the talk, never really acrimonious, drifted into reminiscences of their childhood and Reginald’s.

It was strange that they should have chosen that day to speak so much of him, for when they reached home they found a letter addressed in an unfamiliar hand.

“What’s this?” Caroline said.

It was a thin, cheap envelope bearing a London postmark, and Caroline drew out a flimsy sheet of paper.

“I must get my glasses,” she said. Her voice was agitated. “No, no, I can manage without them. The writing is immense, but faint. It’s from that woman.” She looked up, showing a face drawn and blotched with ugly colour. “It’s to say that Reginald is dead.”

Mrs. Reginald Mallett had written the letter on the day of her husband’s funeral, and Caroline’s tears for her brother were stemmed by her indignation with his wife. She had purposely made it impossible for his relatives to attend the ceremony.

“No,” Sophia said, “the poor thing was distressed. We mustn’t blame her.”

“And such a letter!” Caroline flicked it with a disdainful finger.

Rose picked up the sheet. “I don’t see what else she could have said. I think it’s dignified—a plain statement. Why should you expect more? You have never taken any notice of her.”

“Certainly not! And Reginald never suggested it. Of course he was ashamed, poor boy. However, I am now going to write to her, asking if she is in need, and enclosing a cheque. I feel some responsibility for the child. She is half a Mallett, and the Malletts have always been loyal to the family.”

“Yes, dear, we’ll send a cheque, and—shouldn’t we?—a few kind words. She will value them.”

“She’ll value the money more,” Caroline said grimly.

Here she was wrong, for the cheque was immediately returned. Mrs. Mallett and her daughter were able to support themselves without help.

“Then we need think no more about them,” Caroline said, concealing her annoyance, “and I shall be able to afford a new dinner dress. Black sequins, I thought, Sophia—and we must give a dinner for the Sales.”

“Caroline, no, you forget. We mustn’t entertain for a little while.”

“Upon my word, I did forget. But it’s no use pretending. It really isn’t quite like a death in the family, is it? Poor dear Reginald! I was very fond of him, but half our friends believe he has been dead for years. I shall wear black for three months, of course, but a little dinner to the Sales would not be out of place. We have a duty to the living as well as to the dead.”

Leaving her stepsisters to argue this point, Rose went upstairs and looked into Reginald’s old room. She had known very little of him, but she was sorry he was dead, sorry there was no longer a chance of his presence in the house, of meeting him on the stairs, very late for breakfast and quite oblivious of the inconvenience he was causing, and on his lips some remark which no one else would have made.

His room had not been occupied for some time, but it seemed emptier than before; the mirror gave back a reflection of polished furniture and vacancy; the bed looked smooth and cold enough for a corpse. No personal possessions were strewn about, and the room itself felt chilly.

She was glad to enter her own, where beauty and luxury lived together. The carpet was soft to her feet, a small wood fire burned in the grate, for the evening promised to be cold, and the severe lines of the furniture were clean and exquisite against the white walls. A pale soft dressing-gown hung across a chair, a little handkerchief, as fine as lace, lay crumpled on a table, there was a discreet gleam of silver and tortoiseshell. This, at least, was the room of a living person. Yet, as she stood before the cheval-glass, studying herself after the habit of the Malletts, she thought perhaps she was less truly living than Reginald in his grave. He left a memory of animation, of sin, of charm; he had injured other people all his life, but they regretted him and, presumably, he had had his pleasure out of their pain. And what was she, standing there? A negatively virtuous young woman, without enough desire of any kind to impel her to trample over feelings, creeds and codes. If she died that moment, it would be said of her that she was beautiful, and that was all. Reginald, with his greed, his heartlessness, his indifference to all that did not serve him, would not be forgotten: people would sigh and smile at the mention of his name, hate him and wish him back. She envied him; she wished she could feel in swift, passionate gusts as he had done, with the force and the forgetfulness of a passing wind. His life, flecked with disgrace, must also have been rich with temporary but memorable beauty. The exterior of her own was all beauty, of person and surroundings, but within there seemed to be only a cold waste.

She had been tempted the other afternoon, and she had resisted with what seemed to her a despicable ease: she had not really cared, and she felt that the necessity to struggle, even the collapse of her resistance, would have argued better for her than her self-possession. And for a moment she wished she had married Francis Sales. She would at least have had some definite work in the world; she could have kept him to his farming, as Mrs. Sales had set herself to do; she would have had a home to see to and daily interviews with the cook! She laughed at this decline in her ambition; she no longer expected the advent of the colossal figure of her young dreams; and she knew this was the hour when she ought to strike out a new way for herself, to leave this place which offered her nothing but ease and a continuous, foredoomed effort after enjoyment; but she also knew that she would not go. She had not the energy nor the desire. She would drift on, never submerged by any passion, keeping her head calmly above water, looking coldly at the interminable sea. This was her conviction, but she was not without a secret hope that she might at last be carried to some unknown island, odorous, surprising and her own, where she would, for the first time, experience some kind of excess.

§ 4

The little dinner was duly given to the Sales. The Sales returned the compliment; and Mrs. Batty, not to be outdone, offered what could only adequately be described as a banquet in honour of the bride; there was a general revival of hospitality, and the Malletts were at every function. This was Caroline’s reward for her instructed enthusiasm for Christabel Sales, and before long the black sequin dress gave way to a grey brocade and a purple satin, and the period of mourning was at an end. For Rose, these entertainments were only interesting because the Sales were there, and she hardly knew at what moment annoyance began to mingle definitely with her pity for the little lady with the wary eyes, or when the annoyance almost overcame the pity.

It might have been at a dinner-party when Christabel, seated at the right hand of a particularly facetious host, let out her high chromatic laughter incessantly, and the hostess, leaning towards Francis, told him with the tenderness of an elderly woman whose own romance lies far behind her, that it was a pleasure to see Mrs. Sales so happy. He murmured something in response and, as he looked up and met the gaze of Rose, she smiled at him and saw his eyes darken with feeling, or with thought.

After dinner he sought her out. She had known that would happen: she had been avoiding it for weeks, but it was useless to play at hide-and-seek with the inevitable, and she calmly watched him approach.

“Why did you laugh?” he asked at once, in his old, angry fashion. “You were laughing at me.”

“No, I smiled.”

“Ah, you’re not so free with your smiles that they have no meaning.”

“Perhaps not, but I don’t know what the meaning was.”

“I believe you’ve been laughing at me ever since I came back.”

“Indeed, I haven’t. Why should I?”

“God knows,” he answered with a shrug; “I never do understand what people laugh at.”

“You’re too self-conscious, Francis.”

“Only with you,” he said.

“Somebody is going to sing,” she warned him as a gaunt girl went towards the piano; and sinking on to a convenient and sheltered couch, they resigned themselves to listen—or to endure. From that corner Rose had a view of the long room, mediocre in its decoration, mediocre in its occupants. She could see her host standing before the fire, swinging his eyeglasses on a cord and gazing at the cornice as the song proceeded. She could see Christabel’s neck and shoulders and the back of her fair head. Beside her a plump matron had her face suitably composed; three bored young men were leaning against a wall.

The music jangled, the voice shrieked a false emotion, and Rose’s eyebrows rose with the voice. It was dull, it was dreary, it was a waste of time, yet what else, Rose questioned, could she do with time, of which there was so much? She could not find an answer, and there rose at that moment a chorus of thanks and a gentle clapping of hands. The gaunt girl had finished her song and, poking her chin, returned to her seat. The room buzzed with chatter; it seemed that only Francis and Rose were silent. She turned to look at him.

“This is awful,” he said.

“No worse than usual.”

“When do you think we shall have exhausted Radstowe hospitality? And the worst of it is we have to give dinners ourselves, and the same things happen every time.”

“I find it soporific,” said Rose.

“I’d rather be soporific in an arm-chair with a pipe.”

“This is one of the penalties of marriage,” Rose said lightly.

“Look here, I’m giving Christabel another jumping lesson to-morrow. I’ve put some hurdles up. Will you come? She’s getting on very well. I’ll take her hunting before long.”

“Does she like it?”

“Oh, rather! My word, it would have been a catastrophe if she hadn’t taken to it.” He paused, considering the terrible situation from which he had been saved. “Can’t imagine what I should have done. But she’s never satisfied. She’s beginning to jeer at the old brown horse. I’ve seen a grey mare that might do for her,” and he went on to enumerate the animal’s points.

Rose said, “Why don’t you let her have her first season with the old horse? He knows his business. He’ll take care of her.”

“She wouldn’t approve of that. I tell you, she’s ambitious. I’ll go and fetch her and you’ll hear for yourself.”

She watched him bending over his wife, and saw Christabel rise and slip a hand under his arm. The action was a little like that of a young woman taking a walk with her young man, but it betokened a confidence which roused a slight feeling of envy and sadness in Rose’s heart.

“We have been talking about hunting,” she began at once.

“Oh, yes,” Christabel said. She looked warily from one to the other.

“I’m recommending you to stick to the old brown horse, but Francis says you laugh at him.”

“Would you ride him yourself?” Christabel asked.

“Not if I could get something better.”

“Well, then—” Christabel’s tone was final.

But Rose persisted, saying, “But, you see, this isn’t my first season. Stick to the old horse for a little while.”

“No,” Christabel said firmly. “If Francis thinks I can ride the mare, I should like to have her.”

Rose laughed, but she felt uneasy, and Francis said, “I told you so. She has any amount of pluck. You come and watch.”

“No, I can’t come to-morrow. I think I’ll see her first in all her glory on the grey mare.”

“All the same,” Christabel added, “if she’s very expensive, I don’t want her. Francis is extravagant over horses, and we have to be careful.”

“We’ll economize somewhere else,” he said. “The mare is yours.”

She suppressed a sigh. Rose was sure of it, and in after days she was to ask herself many times if she had been to blame in not interpreting that sigh to Francis. But she had to give Christabel, and Christabel especially, the loyalty of one woman to another. She would not wrench from her in a few words the pride Francis took in her, to which she sacrificed her fears. Rose had the astuteness of a jealousy she would not own, of a sense of possession she could not discard, and she had known, from the first moment, that Christabel was afraid of horses and dreaded the very name of hunting. And Rose divined, too, that if she herself had not been a horsewoman of some repute, Christabel would have been less ambitious; she would have been contented with the old brown horse; but Christabel, too, had an astuteness. No, she could not have interfered; yet when she first saw Christabel on the mare she was alarmed to the point of saying:

“Are you sure she’s all right? You’d better keep beside her, Francis.”

The mare was fidgety and hot-headed. Christabel’s hands were unsteady, her face was pale, her lips were tight; but she was gay, and Francis was proud to have her and her mount admired.

Rose looked round in despair. Could no one else see what was so plain to her? She was tempted to go home. She felt she could not bear the strain of watching that little figure perched on the grey beast that looked like a wraith, like a warning. But she did not go, and she learnt to be glad to have shared with Francis the horror of the moment when the mare, out of control and mad with excitement, tried a fence topping a bank, failed, and fell with Christabel beneath her.

On the ground there was a flurry of white and black, and then stillness, while over the fields the hounds and the foremost riders went like things seen in a dream, with the same callousness, the same speed.

Rose saw men dismount and run towards the queer, ugly muddle on the grass. She dismounted, too, and gave her horse to somebody to hold, but she did nothing. Other, more capable people were before her, and it struck her at that moment, while a bird in a bare hedge set up a short chirrup of surprise, how little used she was to action. She seemed to be standing alone in the big field: the rest was a picture with which she had nothing to do. There was a busy group near the fence, some men came running with a door, and then the sound of a shot broke through her numbness. The mare had been put out of her pain; but what of Christabel?

She hurried forward; she heard some one say, “Ah, here’s Miss Mallett,” and she answered vaguely, “Men are gentler.” But as they lifted Christabel, Rose held one of her hands. It felt lifeless; she looked small and broken; she made no sound.

“She’s not conscious,” a man said, and at that she opened her eyes.

“My God, she’s got some pluck!” Francis said. “My God—”

She smiled at him, and he dropped behind with a gesture of despair.

“You were right,” he said to Rose, “she wasn’t equal to that brute.” He turned angrily. “Why didn’t you make me see?”

She made no answer then, or afterwards, to him, but over and over again, with the awful reiteration of the conscience-smitten, she set out her reasons for her silence. She might have told him that of these he was the chief. If he had looked at her less persistently on her visits to Sales Hall, if he had married another kind of woman, she would not have been afraid to speak, but she had tried not to extinguish what little flame of love still flickered in his heart for Christabel and she had succeeded in almost extinguishing her life, in reducing her to permanent helplessness.

This was Rose’s first experience of how evil comes out of good. What would happen to that love, Rose did not know. For a time it burned more brightly, fanned by Christabel’s heroism and Francis’s remorse, but heroism can become monotonous to the spectator and poignant remorse cannot be endured for ever. Christabel’s plight was pitiful, but Rose was sorrier for Francis. He had, as it were, engaged her compassion years ago, he had a prior claim, and as time went on, her pity for Christabel changed at moments to annoyance. It was cruel, but Rose had no fund of patience. She disliked illness as she did deformity, and though Christabel never complained of her constant pain, she developed the exactions of an invalid, and the suspicions. In those blue eyes, bluer, and more than ever wary, Rose saw the questions which were never asked.

In the bedroom which, with the boudoir, had been furnished and decorated by the best shop in Radstowe, for a surprise, Christabel lay on a couch near the window, with a nurse in attendance, the puppy and the kitten, both growing staid, for company. It tired her to use her hands, she had never cared for reading and she lay there with little for consolation but her pride in stoically bearing pain.

Often, and with many interruptions, she made Rose repeat the details of the accident.

“I was riding well, wasn’t I?” she would ask. “Francis was pleased with me. He said so. It wasn’t my fault, was it? And then, when they were carrying me home did you hear what he said? Tell me what he said.”

And Rose told her: “He said, ‘My God, she has got pluck!’ Oh, Christabel, don’t talk about it.”

“I like to,” she replied, but the day came when she insisted on this subject for the last time.

“Tell me what you thought when you saw me on the mare,” she said, and Rose, careless for once, answered immediately, “I thought she wasn’t fit for you to ride.”

“Ah,” Christabel said slowly, “did you? Did you? But you didn’t say anything. That was—queer.”

Rose said nothing. She was frozen dumb and there was no possible reply to such an implication; but she rose and drew on her gloves. She looked tall and straight in her habit, and formidable.

“Are you going? But you must have tea with Francis. He’s expecting you.”

“I won’t stay to-day,” Rose said. She was shaking with the anger she suppressed.

“But if you don’t,” Christabel cried, “he’ll want to know why. He’ll ask me!”

“I can’t help that,” Rose said.

Tears came into Christabel’s eyes. “You might at least do that for me.”

“Very well. Because you ask me.”

“And you’ll come again soon?”

The sternness of Rose’s face was broken by an ironic smile. “Of course! If you are sure you want me!”

She went downstairs and, as usual, Francis was waiting for her in the matted hall. He did not greet her with a word or a smile. He watched her descend the shallow flight, and together they went down the passage to the clear drawing-room, where the faded water-colours looked unreal and innocent and ignorant of tragedy.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She looked into the oval mirror which had so often reflected his mother’s placid face. “My hat’s a little crooked,” she said.

He laughed without mirth. “Never in its life. Has Christabel been worrying you?”

“Worrying me? Poor child—”

“Yes, it’s damnable, but she does worry one—and you look odd.”

“I’m getting old,” she murmured, not seeking reassurance but stating a fact plain to her.

“You’re exactly the same!” he said. “Exactly the same!” He swept his face with his hands, and at that sight a new sensation seized her delicately, delightfully, as though a firm hand held her for an instant above the earth, high in the air, free from care, from restrictions, from the necessity for thought—but only for an instant. She was set down again, inwardly swaying, apparently unmoved, but conscious of the carpet under her feet, the chairs with twisted legs, the primrose curtains, the spring afternoon outside.

“Let us have tea,” she said. She handled the pretty flowered cups and under her astonished eyes the painted flowers were like a little garden, gay and sweet and gilded. She seemed to smell them and the hiss of the kettle was like a song. Then, as she handed him his cup and looked into his wretched face and remembered the bitter reality of things, she still could not lose all sense of sweetness.

“Don’t say any more!” she said quickly. “Don’t say another word.”

“I won’t, if you’re sure you know everything. Do you?”

“Every single thing.”

“And you care?”

“Yes.” She drew a breath. “I care—beyond speaking of it. Francis, not a word!”

It was extraordinary, it was inexplicable, but it was true and happily beyond the region of regrets, for if she had married him years ago she would never have loved him in this miraculous, sudden way, with this passion of tenderness, this desire to make him happy, this terrible conviction that she could not do it, this promise of suffering for herself. And the wonder of it was that he had no likeness to that absurd Francis of whom she had dreamed and whom she had not loved; no likeness, either, to the colossal tyrant. The man she loved was in some ways weak, he was petulant, he was a baby, but he needed her and, for a romantic and sentimental moment, she saw herself as his refuge, his strength. She could not, must not communicate those thoughts. She began to talk happily and serenely about ordinary things until she remembered that she had lingered past her usual hour and that upstairs Christabel must be listening for the sound of her horse’s hoofs. She started up.

“Will you fetch Peter for me?”

“If you will tell me when you are coming again.”

“One day next week.”

He kissed her hand, and held it.

“Francis, don’t. You mustn’t spoil things.”

“I haven’t said a word.”

“Silence is good,” she said.

§ 5

And she knew she could be silent for ever. Restraint and a love of danger lived together in her nature and these two qualities were fed by the position in which she found herself, nor would she have had the position changed. It supplied her with the emotion she had wanted. She had the privilege of feeling deeply and dangerously and yet of preserving her pride.

There was irony in the fact that Christabel, hinting at suspicions for which, in Rose’s mind, there was at first no cause, had at last actually brought about what she feared, and if Rose had looked for justification, she might have found it there. But she did not look for it any more than Reginald would have done; she was like him there, but where she differed was in loyalty to an idea. She saw love as something noble and inspiring, worthy of sacrifice and, more concretely, she was determined not to increase the disaster which had befallen Christabel. Sooner or later, in normal conditions, her marriage must have been recognized as a failure, but in these abnormal ones it had to be sustained as a success, and it seemed to Rose that civilized beings could love, and live in the knowledge of their love, without injuring some one already cruelly unfortunate.

But, as the months went by, she found she had to reckon with two difficult people, or rather with two people, ordinary in themselves, cast by fate into a difficult situation. There was Christabel, with her countless idle hours in which to formulate theories, to lay traps, to realize that the devotion of Francis became less obvious; and there was Francis, breaking the spirit of their contract with his looks, and sometimes the letter, with his complaints and pleadings.

He could not go on like this for ever, he said. He saw her once a week for a few minutes, if he was lucky: how could she expect him to be satisfied with that? It was little enough, she owned, but more than it might have been. She could never make him admit, perhaps because he did not feel, how greatly they were blessed; but she saw herself as the guardian of a temple: she stood in the doorway forbidding him to enter less the place should be defiled, yet forbidding him in such a way that he should not love her less. Yet constantly saying “No,” constantly shaking the head and smiling propitiatingly the while is not to appease; and those short hours of companionship in which they had once managed to be happy became times of strain, of disappointment, of barely kept control.

“I wish I could stop loving you,” he broke out one day, “but I can’t. You’re the kind one doesn’t forget. I thought I’d done it once, for a few months, but you came back—you, came back.”

She smiled, seeming aloof and full of some wisdom unknown to him. She knew he could not do without her, still more she knew he must not do without her, and these certainties became the main fabric of her love. She had to keep him, less for her own sake than for that of her idea, but gradually the severe rules she had made became relaxed.