The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing)

§ 1

Early one October afternoon, Rose Mallett rode to Sales Hall. She went through a world of brown and gold and blue, but she was hardly conscious of beauty, and the air, which was soft, yet keen, and exciting to her horse, had no inspiriting effect on her. She felt old, incased in a sort of mental weariness which was like armour against emotion. She knew that the spirit of the country, at once gentle and wild, furtive and bold, was trying to reach her in every scent and sound: in the smell of earth, of fruit, of burning wood; in the noise of her horse’s feet as he cantered on the grassy side of the road, in the fall of a leaf, the call of a bird or a human voice become significant in distance; but she remained unmoved.

This was, she thought, like being dead yet conscious of all that happened, but the dead have the excuse of death and she had none; she was merely tired of her mode of life. It seemed to her that in her thirty-one years the sum of her achievement was looking beautiful and being loved by Francis Sales: she put it in that way, but immediately corrected herself unwillingly. Her attitude towards him had not been passive; she had loved him. She had owed him love and she had paid her debt; she had paid enough, yet if to-day he asked for more, she would give it. Her pride hoped for that demand; her weariness shrank from it.

And he had kissed Henrietta. The sharpness of that thought, on which from the first moment on the stairs she had refused to dwell, steeling her mind against it with a determination which perhaps accounted for her fatigue, was like a physical pain running through her whole body, so that the horse, feeling an unaccustomed jerk on his mouth, became alarmed and restive. She steadied him and herself. A kiss was nothing —yet she had always denied it to Francis Sales. She could not blame him, for she saw how her own fastidiousness had endangered his. He needed material evidence of love. She ought, she supposed, to have sacrificed her scruples for his sake; mentally she had already done it, and the physical refusal was perhaps no more than pride which salved her conscience and might ruin his, but it existed firmly like a fortress. She could not surrender it. Her love was not great enough for that; or was it, she asked herself, too great? She could not comfort herself with that illusion, and there came creeping the thought that for some one else, some one too strong to need such a capitulation, she would have given it gladly, but against Francis, who was intrinsically weak, she had held out.

Life seemed to mock at her; it offered the wrong opportunities, it strewed her path with chances of which no human being could judge the value until the choice had been made; it was like walking over ground pitted with hidden holes, it needed luck as well as skill to avoid a fall. But, like other people, she had to pursue her road: the thing was to hide her bruises, even from herself, and shake off the dust.

She had by this time reached the track which was connected with so much of her life, and she drew rein in astonishment. They were felling the trees. Already a space had been cleared and men and horses were busy removing the fallen trunks; piles of branches, still bravely green, lay here and there, and the pine needles of the past were now overlaid by chippings from the parent trees. What had been a still place of shadows, of muffled sounds, of solemn aisles, the scene of a secret life not revealed to men, was now half devastated, trampled, and loud with human noises. It had its own beauty of colour and activity, there was even a new splendour in the unencumbered ground, but Rose had a sense of loss and sacrilege. Something had gone. It struck her that here she was reminded of herself. Something had gone. The larch trees which had flamed in green for her each spring were dead and she had this strange dead feeling in her heart.

She saw the figure of Francis Sales detach itself from a little group and advance towards her. She knew what he would say. He would tell her, in that sulky way of his, how many weeks had passed since he had seen her and, to avoid hearing that remark, she at once waved a hand towards the clearing and said, “Why have you done this?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “To get money.”

“But they were my trees.”

“You never wrote,” he muttered.

She made a gesture, quickly controlled. Long ago when, in the first exultation of their love and their sense of richness, they had marked out the limits of their intercourse, so that they might keep some sort of faith with Christabel and preserve what was precious to themselves, it had been decided that they were not to meet by appointment, they were not to speak of love, no letters were to be exchanged, and though time had bent the first and second rules, the last had been kept with rigour. It was understood, but periodically she had to submit to Francis Sales’s complaint, “You never wrote.”

“So you cut down the trees,” she said half playfully.

“Why didn’t you write?”

“Oh, Francis, you know quite well.”

He was looking at the ground; he had not once looked at her since her greeting. “You go off on a holiday, enjoying yourself, while I—who did you go with?”

“With Henrietta,” Rose said softly.

“Oh, that girl.”

“Yes, that girl. But here I am. I have come back.” She seemed to invite him to be glad. “And,” she went on calmly, feeling that it did not matter what she said, “what a queer world to come back to. I miss the trees. They stood for my childhood and my youth; yes, they stood for it, so straight—I must go on. Christabel is expecting me.”

“She didn’t tell me.”

“No?” Rose questioned without surprise. “I suppose I shall see you at tea?” she said.

He nodded and she touched her horse. Something had happened to him as well as to her and a mass of pain lodged itself in her breast. He was different, and as though he had suspected the weary quality of her love he had met her with the same kind, or perhaps with none at all. A little while ago she was half longing for release from this endless necessity of controlling herself and him; from the shifts, the refusals and the reproaches which had gradually become the chief part of their intercourse; and now he had dared to seem indifferent, though he had not forgotten to reproach! She could almost feel the healthy pallor of her face change to a sickly white; her anger chilled and then stiffened her into a rigidity of body and mind and when she dismounted she slid down heavily, like a figure made of wood.

The man who took her horse looked at her curiously. Miss Mallett always had a pleasant word for him and, conscious of his stare, she forced a smile. She had not ridden for weeks, she told him; she was tired. He was amused at that. She had been born in the saddle; he remembered her as a little girl on a Shetland pony and he did not believe she could ever tire. “Must be something wrong somewhere,” he said, examining girth and pommels.

“It’s old age coming on,” Rose said gravely.

He thought that a great joke. He was twice her age already and considered himself in his prime. He led the horse away and Rose went into the house.

How extraordinarily limited her life had been! It had passed almost entirely in this house and Nelson Lodge and on the road between the two. Of all her experiences the only ones that mattered had been suffered here, and they had all been of one kind. Even Henrietta’s fewer years had been more varied. She had known poverty and been compelled to the practical application of her wits, she had baffled Mr. Jenkins, she had been kissed by Francis Sales.

Rose stood for a moment in the hall and looked for the mirror which was not there. She did not wish to give Christabel Sales the satisfaction of seeing her look distraught, but a peep in the glass of one of the sporting prints reassured her. Her appearance almost made her doubt the reality of the feelings which consisted of a great heat in the head and a deadly cold weight near her heart and which forced these triumphant words from her lips—“At least Henrietta has never felt like this.”

She entered Christabel’s room calmly, smiling and prepared for news, but at the first sight of the invalid, lying very low in her bed and barely turning her head at the sound of the opening door, she thought that perhaps Christabel’s weakness had at last overcome her enmity.

“I’m very ill,” she said faintly.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, don’t say that. You may as well tell the truth—to me.”

“Then I must say again that I am sorry.”

“I wonder why.”

To that Rose made no answer, and before Christabel spoke again she had time to notice that the cat had gone. She breathed more easily. The cat had gone, the trees were going and Francis was going too. Suddenly she felt she did not care. The idea of an empty world was pleasant, but if Francis were really going, the cat might as well have stayed.

“Tell me what you did in Scotland,” Christabel said.

“I showed Henrietta all the sights.”

“Oh, Henrietta—she’s a horrid girl. She has stopped coming to see me.”

“You made yourself so unpleasant.”

“Did she tell you that? Do you think she told Francis?”

“I know she didn’t.”

“But I can’t make out why she should tell you.”

“Henrietta and I are great friends.”

“How did you manage that?”

“I don’t know,” Rose said slowly. “What has happened to the cat?”

“It’s gone. It went out and never came back.”

“How queer.”

“Some one must have killed it.”

“I don’t think so,” Rose said thoughtfully. “I think it decided to go. I’m sure it did.”

“What do you mean? What do you mean?” Christabel cried. “Had you something to do with that, too?”

“Not that I know of.” Rose laughed. She was tired of considering every word before she uttered it.

“With that too!” Christabel repeated a little wildly, and then in a firm voice she said, “You’ve got to tell me.”

“But I don’t know. You must make all inquiries of the cat. It was a wise animal. It knew the time had come.”

“I think you’re mad,” Christabel said.

“Animals are very strange,” Rose went on easily, “and rats leave sinking ships.”

A cry of terror came from Christabel. “You mean I’m going to die!”

“No, no!” Rose became sane and reassuring. “I never thought of that. It might have known it was going to die itself and an animal likes to die decently alone. It had been getting unhealthily fat.”

Christabel kept an exhausted silence, and Rose regretting her cruelty, aware of its futility, said gently, “Shall I get you a kitten?”

“No, no kitten. They jump about. The old cat was so quiet. And I miss him.” A tear rolled down either cheek. “It has been so lonely. Everybody was away.”

“Well, we’ve all come back now,” Rose said.

“Yes, but that Henrietta—she’s deserted me.”

“It was your own fault, Christabel. You horrified her.”

“It should have been you who did that.”

“Things don’t always have the effect we hope for. You said too much.”

“Ah, but not half what I could have said.”

“Too much for Henrietta, anyhow. I don’t think she will come again.”

Christabel smiled oddly and Rose knew that now she was to hear some news. “You can tell her,” Christabel said, “that I shan’t say anything to upset her. I shall say nothing about you—as she loves you so much. Does she love you? I dare say. You make people love you—for a little while.” Her voice lingered on those words. “Yes, for a little while, but you don’t keep love, Rose Mallett. No, you don’t. I’m sorry for you now. Tell Henrietta she needn’t be afraid, because I’m sorry for you. Yes, you and I are in the same boat, in the same deserted boat.

If there were any rats they would run away. You said so yourself.”

“I said the cat had gone.”

“Then you knew?”

Rose shook her head. It was her turn to smile. She was prepared for anything Christabel might say, she was even anxious to hear it, but when Christabel spoke in a mysteriously gleeful manner, she had difficulty in repressing a shudder. It was not, she told herself, that she suffered from the knowledge now imparted by Christabel with detail and with proofs, but her malice, her salacious curiosity were more than Rose could bear. She felt that the whole affair, which at first, so long ago, had possessed a noble sadness, a secret beauty, the quality of a precious substance enclosed in a common vial, was indecent and unclean.

“So you see,” Christabel said, “you haven’t kept him; you won’t keep Henrietta.”

Rose said nothing. She was thinking of what she might have done and she was glad she had not done it.

“You don’t seem to mind,” Christabel said. “Why don’t you ask me why I’m so sure?” She laughed. “I ought to know how to find things out by this time, and I know Francis, yes, better than you do. When I had my accident—it wasn’t worth it, was it?—I said to myself, “Now he won’t be faithful to me.” When I knew I should have to lie here, I told myself that. And now you—” Her voice almost failed her. “I suppose you haven’t been kind enough to him.”

“I think it’s time I went,” Rose said.

“And you’ll never come back?”

“Yes, if you want me.”

“I can say what I like to you.”

“You can, indeed,” Rose murmured.

“And tell Henrietta to come too.”

“No, I can’t ask Henrietta.”

“I promise to be like a maiden aunt. Ah, but she has three already— she knows what they are. That won’t attract her. I’ll be like an invalid in a Sunday School story-book.”

“I’ll tell her of your promise,” Rose said.

There remained the task of having tea with Francis Sales and breaking the bonds of which he had tired. She made it easy for him. That was necessary for her dignity, but beyond the desire for as much seemliness as could be saved from the general ugliness of their mistake, she had no feeling; yet she thought it would be good to be in the open air, on horseback, free. If there had been anything still owing, she had paid her debt with generosity. She gave him the chance he wanted but did not know how to take, and she had to allow him to appear aggrieved. She was cruel: she was tired of him; she was, he sneered, too good for him. The words went on for some time, and if some of them were new, their manner was wearisomely familiar. She was amazed at her own endurance, now and in the past, and at last she said, “No, no, Francis. Say no more. This is too much fuss. Perhaps we have both changed.”

“It was you who began it.”

“Was it? How can one tell?”

“You began it,” he persisted. “There was a time when you went white, like paper, when we met, and your eyes went black. Now I might be a sheep in a field.”

She was standing up, ready to go. “One gets used to things,” she said.

“I have never been used to you,” he muttered, and she knew that, telling this truth, he also explained a good deal. “I never should be. You’re like nobody else—nobody.”

“But it is too much strain,” she murmured slowly.

“Yes—well, it is you who have said it. I had made up my mind—I’m not ungrateful—I never intended to say a word.”

She smiled. This was the first remark which had really touched her. She found it so offensive that a smile was the only weapon with which to meet it. “I know that.”

“But mind,” he almost shouted, “there’s nobody like you.”

“Yes, yes, I know that too.” She turned to him with a silencing sternness. “I tell you I know everything.”

§ 2

The old groom who held her horse nodded with satisfaction when he helped her into the saddle. She had not lost her spring and he tightened her girths in a leisurely manner and arranged her skirt with the care due to a fine rider and a lady who understood a horse, yet one who was always ready to ask an old man’s advice. He had a great admiration for Miss Mallett and, conscious of it and rather pathetically glad of it, she lingered for the pleasure of talking to some one who seemed simple and untroubled. He had spent all his life on the Sales estate, and she wondered whether, though, like herself, of a limited outward experience, he also had known the passions of love and disgust and shame. He was sixty-five, he told her, but as strong as ever, and she envied him: to be sixty-five with the turmoil of life behind him, yet to be strong enough to enjoy the peace before him, was a good finale to existence. She was only thirty-one, but she was strong too, and she felt as though she had come through a storm, battered and exhausted but whole and ready for the calm which already hovered over her. She said, “The young are always sorry for the old, but that is one of the many mistakes they make. I think it must be the best time of all.”

“If you have them that cares for you,” he answered.

That was where her own happiness would break down.

There were her stepsisters, who would probably die before herself; there was Henrietta, who would form ties of her own; and there was no one else. If she had had less faith in Francis Sales’s love and, at the same time, had been capable of pandering to it, she might have had his devotion for her old age, the devotion of a somewhat querulous and dull old man. Now she had not even that to hope for, and she was glad. She had always wanted the best of everything, and always, except in the one fatal instance, refused what fell below her standard. She had not realized until now that Francis Sales had always been below it. She had at least tried to wrap their love in beauty, but that sort of beauty was not enough for him. It was her scruples, he said, which had been his undoing, and there was truth in that, but she had to remember that when originally she had disappointed him, he had found comfort quickly in Christabel; when Christabel failed him he had returned to her; and now he had found consolation, if only of a temporary kind, in some one else. When would he seek yet another victim of his affection and his griefs? He was, she thought scornfully, a man who needed women, yet she knew that if he had pleaded with her to-day, saying that in spite of everything he needed her, she would have listened.

She admitted her responsibility, it would always be present to her, for she had that kind of conscientiousness, and having once helped him, she must always hold herself ready to do it again. The chain binding them was not altogether broken, but she no longer felt its weight. She had a lightness of spirit unknown for years; the anger, the jealous rage and the disgust had vanished with a completeness which made her doubt their short existence, and she began to make plans for a new life. There was no reason now why she should not wander all over the world, yet, on the very doorstep of Nelson Lodge, she found a reason in the person of Henrietta—flushed and gay and just returned from a tea party. She had enjoyed herself immensely, but her head ached a little. It had been all she could do to understand the brilliant conversation. There had been present a budding poet and a woman painter and she had never heard people talk like that before.

“I didn’t speak at all, except to Charles,” she said.

“Oh, Charles was there?”

“Yes. I thought it safer not to talk but I looked as bright as I could, and of course I asked for cakes and things. They all ate a lot. I was glad of that. But most of them still looked hungry at the end. And Charles has taken tickets for me for the concerts, next to him, in a special corner where you can sometimes hear the music through the whispering of the audience. That’s what he says!”

“But, Henrietta, I have taken tickets for you too.”

“Thank you, but perhaps they will take them back.”

“Henrietta, you really can’t sit in a corner with Charles when I’m in another part of the hall.”

“Can’t I? Well, Charles will be very angry, but he’ll have to put up with it. If you explained to him, Aunt Rose, he’d understand. And I’d really rather sit with you. I shall be able to look at people and if I crackle my programme you won’t glare. Of course, I shall try not to. Will you explain to him? And I did promise to go to a concert with him some day.”

“Then you must. I’ll tell him that, too. Are you afraid of him, Henrietta?”

“He shouts,” Henrietta said, “and I’m sorry for him. And I do like him very much. I feel inclined to do things just to please him.”

“Don’t let that carry you too far.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Not him, exactly, but me.”

“I didn’t suspect you of such tenderness. I shall have to look after you.”

“I wish you would.”

“And if you are feeling very kind some day, perhaps you will go and see Christabel Sales. She has promised to behave herself.”

Henrietta’s expression tightened. “I don’t want to go. It’s a dreadful place.”

“I know,” Rose said, and she added encouragingly, “but the cat has gone.”

They were standing together in the hall and against the white panelled walls, the figure of Rose, in the austere riding habit, one gauntletted hand holding her crop, the other resting lightly on her hip, had an heroic aspect, like a statue in dark marble; but her eyes did not offer the blank gaze, the calm effrontery of stone: they looked at Henrietta with something like appeal against this obsession of the cat.

“Oh, I’m glad the cat’s gone,” Henrietta murmured. “What happened to it?”

Rose shook her head. “It disappeared.”

They stared at each other until Henrietta said, “But all the same, I don’t want to go.” And then, because Rose would not help her out, she was obliged to say, “It’s Mr. Sales.” Her voice dropped. “I haven’t seen him since I hit him.”

Rose turned to go upstairs. “I shouldn’t think too much of that.”

“You don’t think it matters?”

“No.”

Henrietta looked after her and followed her for a step. “You think I may go?” Her voice was dull under her effort to control it. She felt that the stately figure moving up the stairs was deliberately leaving her to face a danger, sanctioning her desire to meet it. She felt her fate was in the answer made by Rose.

“I think you can take care of yourself perfectly well, Henrietta,” and like a sigh, another sentence floated from the landing where Rose stood, out of sight: “You are not like me.”

This was a mysterious and astonishing remark. Henrietta did not understand it and in her excited realization that the door so carefully locked by her own hand had been opened. Aunt Rose, she did not try to understand it. Aunt Rose had said she was able to take care of herself, and it was true, but honesty and a weak clinging to safety urged her to answer, “But you see, you see I don’t want to do it!”

These words were not uttered. She stood, looking up towards the empty landing with a hand pressed against her heart. It was beating fast. The spirit of Reginald Mallett, subdued in his daughter for some months, seemed to be fluttering in her breast and it was Aunt Rose who had waked it up. It was not Henrietta’s fault, she was not responsible; and suddenly, the ordinary happiness she had been enjoying was transferred into an irrational joy. She went singing up the stairs, and Rose, sitting in her room in a state of limpness she would never have allowed anybody to see, heard a sound as innocent as if a bird had waked to a sunny dawn.

Henrietta sang, but now and then she paused and became grave when the spirit of that mother who lived in her memory more and more dimly, as though she had died when Henrietta was a child, overcame the spirit of her father. Her mission was to be one of kindness to Christabel Sales, and if—the song burst out again—if adventure came in her way, could she refuse it? She would refuse nothing—the song ceased—short of sin. She looked at herself and saw a solemn feminine edition of the portrait hanging behind her on the wall. She was like her father, but she took pride in her greater conscientiousness; her vocabulary was larger than his by at least one word.

A few days later she set out on that road and past those trees which had been the safe witnesses of so much of Rose Mallett’s life, but their safeness lay in their constant muteness, and they had no message for Henrietta. Walking quickly, she rehearsed her coming meeting with Francis Sales, but when she actually met him on the green track, on the very spot where Rose had pulled up her horse in amazement at the scene of transformation, Henrietta, like Rose, had no formal greeting for him.

She said, “The trees! What are you doing with them?”

“Turning them into gold.”

“But they were beautiful.”

“So are lots of things they will buy.” She moved a little under his look, but when he said, “I’m hard up,” she became interested.

“Really? I thought you were frightfully rich. You ought to be with all these belongings.” She looked round at the fields dotted with sheep and cattle, the distant chimneys of Sales Hall, the fallen trees and the team of horses dragging logs under the guidance of workmen in their shirt sleeves. “I know all about being poor,” she said, “but I don’t suppose we mean the same thing by the word. I’ve been so poor—” She stopped. “But there’s a lot of excitement about it. I used to hope I should find a shilling in my purse that I’d forgotten. A shilling! You can do a lot with a shilling. At least I can.”

“I wish you’d tell me how.”

“Pretend you haven’t got it. That’s the beginning. You haven’t got it, so you can’t have what you want.”

“I never have what I want.”

“Then you mustn’t want anything.”

“Oh, yes, that’s so easy.”

“Well”—she descended to details with an air of kindness—“what do you want? Let’s work it out. We’d better sit on the wall. After all, it’s rather lovely without the trees. It’s so clear and the air’s so blue, as if it’s trying to make up. Now tell me what you want.”

“Something money can’t buy.”

“Then you needn’t have cut down the trees.”

“I shouldn’t have if I’d thought you’d care.”

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

“Do you want to hear it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Then I’ll wait while you make up your mind.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

She heard a murmur. “She has treated me very badly. I’ve known her all my life. Well—”

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

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

“Never mind.”

“This is some gossip,” he muttered.

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

“Well,” he said, “the eyes and ears will have to find another home. There will soon be no wood left.”

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

“I don’t see the joke,” he grumbled.

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

“I have been very unfortunate,” he replied.

“There you are again! Why don’t you tell yourself you’re lucky not to squint or turn in your toes? You’d be much more miserable then—much. But thinking yourself unfortunate, when you’re not, is a pleasant occupation.”

“How do you know?”

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

“Very noble,” Sales said sourly.

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

“It must have taken a long time.”

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

“And the result was charming.”

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

“Well,” he said, “that’s very interesting, but it doesn’t help me.”

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

“Telling my troubles would be a help.”

“Here I am, then.”

“What’s the good?” he said. “You’ll desert me, too.”

“Not if you’re good.”

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

“Why, of course!” she cried gaily, when she had mastered that weakness. “Aunt Caroline warned me against you this very afternoon. She said—but, never mind. I’m not going to repeat her remarks. And anyhow, Aunt Sophia said they were not true. Aunt Rose,” Henrietta said thoughtfully, “was not there. I don’t suppose either of them is right. And now I’m going to see Mrs. Sales.”

He ran after her. “Henrietta, I shouldn’t tell her you’ve seen me.”

She frowned. “I don’t like that.”

“It’s for her sake.”

Henrietta turned away without a word, but she pondered, as she went, on the dangerous likeness between right and wrong and the horrible facility with which they could be, with which they had to be, interchanged. One became bewildered, one became lost; she felt herself being forced into a false position: she might not be able to get out. Aunt Rose had sent her, Francis Sales was conspiring with her—she made her father’s gesture of helplessness, it was not her fault. But she made up her mind she would never allow Francis Sales to find her dull again, for that was unfair to herself.

§ 3

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

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

Caroline sniffed at the suggestion, Sophia sighed.

“The world’s the same everywhere,” Caroline said. “If you know one man you know them all.”

“But if you know a great many, you will know one all the better. However,” she smiled in the way of which her stepsisters were afraid, “I wasn’t thinking of men.”

“That’s where you’re so unnatural.”

“I was thinking of places—cities and mountains and plains.”

“You’ll get the plague or be run away with by brigands.”

“I think Henrietta and I would rather like the brigands. We must avoid the plague.”

“Smallpox,” Caroline went on, “and your complexions ruined.”

“I wish you would stay at home,” Sophia said. “Caroline and I are getting old.”

“Nonsense, Sophia! I’d go myself for twopence. But I’d better wait here and get the ransom money ready, and then James Batty and I can start out together with a bag of it.” She laughed loudly at the prospect of setting forth with the respectable James. “And it wouldn’t be the first elopement I’d planned either. When I was eighteen I set my mind on getting out of my bedroom window with a bundle—no, of course I never told you, Sophia. You would have run in hysterics to the General. But there was never one among them all who was worth the inconvenience, so I gave it up. I always had more sense than sentiment.” She sighed with regret for the legions of disappointed and fictitious lovers waiting under windows, with which her mind was peopled. “Not one,” she repeated.

No one took any notice. Sophia, drooping her heavy head, was thinking of brigands in a far country and of Caroline and herself left in Nelson Lodge without Rose and without Henrietta. If they really went away she determined to tell Henrietta the story of her lover, lest she should die and the tale be unrecorded. She wanted somebody to know; she would tell Henrietta on the eve of her departure, among the bags and boxes. He had gone to America and died there, and that continent was both sacred to her and abhorrent.

“Don’t go to America,” she murmured.

“Why not?” Caroline demanded. “Just the place they ought to go to. Lots of millionaires.”

Rose reassured Sophia. “And it is only an idea. I haven’t said a word to Henrietta.”

Henrietta showed no enthusiasm for the suggestion. She liked Radstowe. And there was the Battys’ ball. It would be a pity to miss that. She must certainly not miss that, said Caroline and Sophia. And what was she going to wear? They had better go upstairs at once, to the elder ladies’ room, and see what could be done with Caroline’s pink satin. She had only worn it once, years ago. Nobody would remember it, and trimmed with some of her mother’s lace, the big flounce and the fichu, it would be a different thing. Sophia could wear her apricot.

“Come along, Henrietta. Come along, Rose. We must really get this settled.”

They went upstairs, Caroline moving with heavy dignity, but keeping up her head as she had been taught in her youth. Nothing was more unbecoming than ducking the head and sticking out the back. Sophia went slowly, holding to the balustrade, so very slowly that Henrietta did not attempt to start. She said softly to Rose, “How slowly she goes. I’ve never noticed it before.”

“She always goes upstairs like that,” Rose said. “It is not natural to her to hurry.”

Henrietta followed and found Sophia panting a little on the landing. She laid hold of her niece’s arm. “A little out of breath,” she whispered. “Don’t say anything, dear child, to Caroline. She doesn’t like to be reminded of our age.”

They went into the bedroom and Rose, drifting into her own room, heard the opening of the great wardrobe doors. She would be called in presently for her advice, but there would be a lot of talk and many reminiscences before she was needed. She stood by the fire, which, giving the only light to the room, threw golden patches on the white dressing-gown lying across a chair, and made the buckles on her shoes sparkle like diamonds.

She was wondering why Henrietta’s eyes had darkened as though with fear at the idea of going away. She had been very quick in veiling them, and her voice, too, had been quick, a little tremulous. There was more than the Battys’ ball in her desire to stay in Radstowe. Was it Charles whom she was loth to leave? Afterwards, perhaps in the spring, she had said it would be nice to go. It was kind of Aunt Rose, and Aunt Rose, gazing down at the fire, controlled her longing to escape from this place too full of memories. She would not leave Henrietta who had to be cared for, perhaps protected; she would not persuade her who had to be happy, but she felt a sinking of the heart which was almost physical. She rested both hands on the mantelshelf and on them her weight. She felt as though she could not go on like this for ever. She, who apparently had no ties, was never free; she had the duties without the joys, and for these few minutes, before a knock came at the door, she allowed herself the relief of melancholy. She was incapable of tears, but she wished she could cry bitterly and for a long time.

The knock was Henrietta’s. She entered a little timidly. Aunt Rose was not free with invitations to her room and to Henrietta it was a beautiful and mysterious place. She had a childlike pleasure in the silver and glass on the dressing-table, in glimpses of exquisite garments and slippers worn to the shape of Aunt Rose’s slim foot, and Aunt Rose herself was like some fairy princess growing old and no less lovely in captivity, but to-night, that dark straight figure splashed by the firelight reminded her of words uttered by Christabel. She had said that all Henrietta’s aunts were witches, and for the first time the girl agreed. In the other room, brilliantly lighted, Caroline and Sophia were bending somewhat greedily over a mass of silks and satins and laces, their cheeks flushed round the dabs of rouge, their fingers active yet inept, fumbling in what might have been a brew for the working of spells; and here, straight as a tree, Aunt Rose looked into the fire as though she could see the future in its red heart, but her voice, very clear, had a reassuring quality. It was not, Henrietta thought, a witch’s voice. Witches mumbled and screeched, and Aunt Rose spoke like water falling from a height.

“Come in, Henrietta. Is the consultation over?”

“It has hardly begun. What a lot of clothes they have, and boxes of lace, boxes! I think you will have to decide for them. And Aunt Caroline snubs Aunt Sophia, all the time.”

“Did they send you to fetch me?”

“Yes, but we needn’t go back yet, need we? Aunt Caroline wants to wear her emeralds, but she says they will look vulgar with pink satin. There’s some lovely grey stuff like a cobweb. She says it was in her mother’s trousseau and I think she ought to wear that, but she says she is going to keep it until she’s old!”

“Then she’ll never wear it. She will never make such an admission.”

“And she won’t let Aunt Sophia have it because she says it would make her look like a dusty broom. And it would, you know! She’s really very funny sometimes.”

“Very funny. We’re queer people, Henrietta.”

“Are we? And I’m more theirs than yours.”

“As far as blood goes, yes.” She spoke very quietly, but she felt a great desire to assert, for once, her own claims, instead of accepting those of others. She wanted to tell Henrietta that in return for the secret care, the growing affection she was giving, she demanded confidence and love; but she had never asked for anything in her life. She had taken coolly much she could easily have done without, admiration and respect and the material advantages to which she had been born, but she had asked for nothing. Cruelly conscious of all that lay in the gift of Henrietta, who sat in a low chair, her chin on the joined fingers of her hands, Rose continued to look at the fire.

“You mean I’m really more like you?” Henrietta said. “Am I? I’m like my father,” and she added softly, “terribly.”

“Why terribly?”

Henrietta moved her feet. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“I wish you’d tell me.”

“He was queer. You said we all were, and I’m a Mallett, too, that’s all. Don’t you think we ought to go and see about the dresses now? Aunt Rose, they’re bothering me to wear white, the only thing for a young girl, but I want to wear yellow. Don’t you think I might?”

Rose, who had felt herself on the brink of confidences, as though she peered over a cliff, and watched the mists clear to show the secret valley underneath, now saw the clouds thicken hopelessly, and retreated from her position with an effort.

“Yellow? Yes, certainly. You will look like a marigold. Henrietta—” She did not know what she was going to say, but she wanted to detain the girl for a little longer, she hoped for another chance of drawing nearer. “Henrietta, wait a minute.” She moved to her dressing-table, smiling at what she was about to do. It seemed as though she were going to bribe the girl to love her, but she was only yielding to the pathetic human desire to give something tangible since the intangible was ignored. “When I was twenty-one,” she said, “your father gave me a present.”

“Only when you were twenty-one?”

“Well,” Rose excused him, “we didn’t know each other very well. He was a great deal from home, but he remembered my twenty-first birthday and he gave me this necklace. I think it’s beautiful, but I never wear it now, and I think you may like to have it. Here it is, in its own box and with the card he wrote—‘A jewel for a rose.’”

Holding it in her cupped hands, Henrietta murmured with delight: “May I have it really? How lovely! And may I have the card, too? He did say nice things. Are you sure you can spare the card? I expect he admired you very much. He liked beautiful women. My mother was pretty, too; but I don’t believe he ever gave her anything except a wedding-ring, and he had to give her that.”

“Oh, Henrietta—well, his daughter shall have all he gave me.”

“If you’re sure you don’t want it. What are the stones?”

“Topaz and diamonds; but so small that you can wear them.”

“Topaz and diamonds! Oh!” And Henrietta, clasping it round her neck and surveying herself by the candles Rose had lighted, said earnestly, “Oh, I do hope he paid for it!” This was the first thought of Reginald Mallett’s daughter.

Rose was horrified into laughter, which seemed hysterically continuous to Henrietta, and through it Rose cried tenderly, “Oh, you poor child! You poor child!”

Henrietta did not laugh. She said gravely, “All the same, I’m glad I had him for a father. Nobody but he would have chosen a thing like this. He had such taste.” She looked at her aunt. “I do hope I have some taste, too.”

“I hope you have,” Rose said with equal gravity. She laughed no longer. “There are many kinds, and though he knew how to choose an ornament, he made mistakes in other ways.”

Henrietta unclasped the necklace and laid it down. She looked, indeed, remarkably like her father. Her eyes flashed above her angry mouth. “You mean my mother!”

“No, Henrietta. How could I? I did not know your mother, and from the little you have told us I believe she was too good for him.”

“How can I tell you more,” Henrietta protested, “when I know what you would be thinking? You would be thinking she was common. Aunt Caroline does. She does! I don’t know how she dare! No, I won’t have the necklace.”

“You must believe what I say, Henrietta. Your mother was not the only woman in your father’s life, and I was referring to the others.”

“You need not speak of them to me,” Henrietta said with dignity.

“I won’t do so again. That, perhaps, is where my own taste failed.” She decided to put out no more feelers for Henrietta’s thoughts. It was what she would have resented bitterly herself, and it did no good. She was not clever at this unpractised art, and she told herself that if her own affection could not tell her what she wished to know, the information would be useless. Moreover, she had Henrietta’s word for it that she was terribly like her father.

“So put on the necklace again. It suits you better than it does me, so well that we can pretend he really chose it for you.”

“Yes,” Henrietta said, fingering it again, “if you promise you never think anything horrid about my mother.”

“The worst I have ever thought of her,” Rose said lightly, “is envying her for her daughter.”

She saw Henrietta’s mouth open inelegantly. “Me? Oh, but you’re not old enough.”

“I feel very old sometimes.”

“I thought you were when I first saw you,” Henrietta said, looking in the glass and swaying her body to make the diamonds glitter, “but now I know you never will be, because it’s only ugly people who get old. When your hair is white you’ll be like a queen. Now you’re a princess, though Mrs. Sales says you’re a witch. Oh, I didn’t mean to tell you that. It was a long time ago. She is never disagreeable now. I’m going to see her again to-morrow.”

“I wish you would go in the morning, Henrietta. The afternoons get dark so soon and the road is lonely.”

“She doesn’t like visitors in the morning,” Henrietta said. “I love this necklace. Could I wear it to the dance?”

“It depends on the dress. If you are really to look like a marigold you must wear no ornaments. If you had yellow tulle—” And Rose took pencil and paper and made a rough design, talking with enthusiasm meanwhile, for like all the Malletts, she loved clothes.

The next day Caroline had to stay in bed. She had been feverish all night and Sophia appeared in Rose’s bedroom early in the morning, her great plait of hair swinging free, her face yellow with anxiety and sleeplessness and lack of powder, to inform her stepsister that dear Caroline was very ill: they must have the doctor directly after breakfast. Sophia was afraid Caroline was going to die. She had groaned in the night when she thought Sophia was asleep. “I deceived her,” Sophia said. “I hope it wasn’t wrong, but I knew she would be easier if she thought I slept. Now she says there is nothing the matter with her and she wants to get up, but that’s her courage.”

Caroline was not allowed to rise and after breakfast and an hour with Sophia behind the locked door she announced her readiness to see the doctor, who diagnosed nothing more serious than a chill. She was very much disgusted with his order to stay in bed. She had not had a day in bed for years; she believed people were only ill when they wanted to be and, as she did not wish to be, she was not ill. She had no resource but to be unpleasant to Sophia, to the silently devoted Susan and to Rose who had intended to go to Sales Hall with Henrietta.

She was not able to do that, but later in the afternoon she set out to meet her so that she might have company for part of the dark way home.

Afterwards, she could never make up her mind whether she was glad or sorry she had gone. She had expected to meet Henrietta within a mile or two of the bridge, and the further she went without a sight of the small figure walking towards her, the more necessary it became to proceed, but she felt a deadly sickness of this road. She loved each individual tree, each bush and field and the view from every point, but the whole thing she hated. It was the personification of mistake, disappointment and slow disillusion, but now it was all shrouded in darkness and she seemed to be walking on nothing, through nothing and towards nothing. She herself was nothing and she thought of nothing, though now and then a little wave of anxiety washed over her. Where was Henrietta?

She became genuinely alarmed when, in the hollow between the track and the rising fields, she saw a fire and discovered by its light a caravan, a cart, a huddle of dark figures, a tethered pony, and heard the barking of dogs. There were gipsies camping in the sheltered dip. If Henrietta had walked into their midst, she might have been robbed, she would certainly have been frightened; and Rose stood still, listening intently.

The cleared space, where the wood had been, stretched away to a line of trees edging the main road and above it there was a greenish colour in the sky. There was not a sound but what came from the encampment. Down there the fire glowed like some enormous and mysterious jewel and before it figures which had become poetical and endowed with some haggard kind of beauty passed and vanished. They might have been employed in the rites of some weird worship and the movements which were in reality connected with the cooking of some snared bird or rabbit seemed to have a processional quality. The fire was replenished, the stew was stirred, there was a faint clatter of tin plates and a sharp cracking of twigs: a figure passed before the fire with extraordinary gestures and slid into the night: another figure appeared and followed its predecessor: smoke rose and a savoury smell floated on the air.

Suddenly a child wailed and Rose had the ghastly impression that it was the child who was in the pot.

Cautiously she stepped into the clearing; the dogs barked again and she ran swiftly, as silently as possible, leaping over the small hummocks of heath, dodging the brushwood and finding a certain pleasure in her own speed and in her fear that the dogs would soon be snapping at her heels. If she did not find Henrietta on the road, she would go on to Sales Hall. Very high up, clouds floated as though patrolling the sky; they found in her fleeting figure something which must be watched.

She was breathless and strangely happy when she reached the road. She was pleased at her capacity for running and her dull trouble seemed to have lifted, to have risen from her mind and gone off to join the clouds. She laughed a little and dropped down on a stone, and above the hurried beating of her heart she heard fainter, more despairing, the cry of the gipsy child. “It isn’t cooked yet,” she thought. There was a deeper silence, and she imagined a horrible dipping into the pot, a loud and ravenous eating.

For a few minutes she forgot her quest, conscious of a happy loss of personality in this solitary place, feeling herself merged into the night, looking up at the patrolling clouds which, having lost her, had moved on. She sat in the darkness until she heard, very far off, the beat of a horse’s hoofs, the rumble of wheels. She remembered then that she had to find Henrietta. The road towards Sales Hall was nowhere blurred by a figure, there was no sound of footsteps, and the noise of the approaching horse and cart was distantly symbolic of human activity and home-faring; it made her think of lights and food.

She looked back, and not many yards away two figures stepped from the sheltering trees by the roadside. On the whiteness of the road they were clear and unmistakable. Their arms were outstretched and their hands were joined and, as she looked, the two forms became one, separated and parted. The feet of Henrietta went tapping down the road and for a moment Francis stood and watched her. Then he turned. He struck a match, and Rose saw his face and hands illuminated like a paper lantern. The match made a short, brilliant journey in the air and fell extinguished. He had lighted his pipe and was advancing towards her. She, too, advanced and stopped a few feet from him and at once she said calmly, “Was that Henrietta? I came to find her.”

He stammered something; she was afraid he was going to lie, yet at the same time she knew that to hear him lie would give her pleasure; it would be like the final shattering and trampling of her love: but he did not lie.

“Yes, Henrietta,” he said sullenly. “There are gipsies in the hollow. I shall turn them out to-morrow.”

“Let them stay there,” she said, she knew not why.

“They’re all thieves,” he muttered.

Neither spoke. It was like a dream to be standing there with him and hearing Henrietta’s footsteps tapping into silence. Then Rose asked in genuine bewilderment, “Why did you let her go home alone? Why did you leave her here?”

“She wouldn’t have me. She’s safe now”; and raising his voice, he almost cried, “You shouldn’t let her come here!” It was a cry for help, he was appealing to her again, he was the victim of his habit. She smiled and wondered if her pale face was as clear to him as his was to her.

“No, I should not,” she said slowly. “I should not. One does nothing all one’s life but make mistakes.” Her chief feeling at that moment was one of self-disgust. She moved away without another word, going slowly so that she should not overtake Henrietta.

§ 4

Henrietta was going very fast, impelled by the fury of her thoughts, and she forgot to be afraid of the lonely country, for she felt herself still wrapped in the dangerous safety of that man’s embrace, and the darkness through which she went was still the palpitating darkness which had fallen over her at his touch. The thing had been bound to happen. She had been watching its approach and pretending it was not there, and now it had arrived and she was giddy with excitement, inspired with a sense of triumph, tremulous with apprehension.

Her thoughts were not of her lover as an individual, but of the situation as a whole. Here she was, Henrietta Mallett, from Mrs. Banks’s boarding-house, the chief figure in a drama and an unrepentant sinner. She could not help it: she loved him; he needed her. Since that day when she had offered him friendship and help, he had been depending on her more and more, a big man like a neglected baby. She had strenuously fixed her mind on the babyish side of him, but all the time her senses had been attracted by the man, and now, by the mere physical experience of the force of his arms, she could never see him as a child again. She clung to the idea of helping him, to the thought of his misfortunes, for that was imperative, but she was now conscious of her fewer years, her infinitely smaller bodily strength, the limitations of her sex.

And suddenly, as she moved swiftly, hardly feeling the ground under her feet, she began to cry, with emotion, with fear and joy. What was going to happen to her? She loved him. She could still feel the violence of his clasp, the roughness of his coat on her cheeks, the iron of his hands, so distinctly that it seemed to have happened only a moment ago, yet she was nearly home. She could see the lights of the bridge as though swung on a cord across the gulf, and she dried her eyes. She was exhausted and hungry and when she had passed over the river she made her way to a shop where chocolates could be bought. She knew their comforting and sustaining properties. It was unromantic, but hunger asserts itself in spite of love.

It was getting late and the shop was empty but for one assistant and a tall young man. This was Charles Batty, taking a great deal of trouble over his purchase, for spread before him on the counter was an assortment of large chocolate boxes adorned with bows of ribbon and pictures of lovers leaning over stiles and red-lipped maidens caressing dogs.

“I don’t like these pictures,” Henrietta heard him mutter bashfully.

“Here’s one with roses. Roses are always suitable.” “No,” he said, “I want a big white box with crimson ribbon.” Henrietta stepped up to his side. “I’ll help you choose,” she said.

He started, stared, forgot to take off his hat. He gazed at her with the absorption of some connoisseur looking at the perfect thing he has dreamed of: he looked without greed and with a sort of ecstasy which left his face expressionless and embarrassed Henrietta in the presence of the arch girl behind the counter.

Charles waked up. “I want a white one,” he repeated, “with crimson ribbon. No pictures.” The assistant went away and he turned to Henrietta. “It’s for you,” he said.

“Charles, don’t speak so loud.”

“I don’t care. But I suppose you’re ashamed of me. Yes, of course, that’s it.”

“Don’t be silly,” Henrietta said, “and do be quick, because I want some chocolates myself.”

With the large box, white and crimson-ribboned and wrapped in paper, under his arm, he waited until she was served, and then they walked together down the street, made brilliant with the lights of many little shops.

“This is for you,” he said, “but I’ll carry it.”

“But this isn’t the way home.”

“No.” They turned back into the dimmer road bordering The Green.

“I suppose you wouldn’t walk round the hill?”

“I don’t mind.” She felt as she might have done in the company of some large, protective dog. He was there, saving her from the fear of molestation, but there was no need to speak to him, it was almost impossible to think consecutively of him, yet she did remind herself that a very long time ago, when she was young, he had said wonderful things to her. She had forgotten that fact in the stir of these last days.

“I got these chocolates for you,” he said again. “I thought perhaps that was the kind of thing I ought to do. I don’t know, and you can’t ask people because they’d laugh. Why didn’t you come to tea on Sunday?”

“I can’t come every Sunday.”

“Of course you can. Considering I’m engaged to you, it’s only proper.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes,” he said, “you may not be engaged to me, but I’m engaged to you. That’s what I’ve decided.”

She laughed. “You’ll find it rather dull, I’m afraid.”

“No,” he said. “I can do things for you.” She was struck by that simple statement, spoilt by his next words: “Like these chocolates.”

He was very insistent about the chocolates and proud of his idea. She thanked him. “But I don’t want you to give me things.”

“You can’t stop me. I’m doing it all the time.”

They had reached the highest point of the hill and they halted at the railing on the cliff’s edge. Below them, the blackness of earth gave way to the blackness of air and the shining blackness of water, and slowly the opposing cliff cleared itself from a formless mass into the hardly seen shapes of rock and tree. Here was beauty, here was something permanent in the midst of change, and it seemed as though the hand of peace were laid on Henrietta. For a moment the episode on the other side of the water and the problem it involved took their tiny places in the universe instead of the large ones in her life and, strangely enough, it was Charles Batty who loomed up big, as though he had some odd fellowship with immensity and beauty.

“What do you give me?” she asked. “I don’t want it, you know, but tell me.”

“I told you that night when you listened and took it all. I don’t think I can say it again.”

“No, but you’re not to misunderstand me, and you mustn’t go on giving and getting nothing back.”

“That’s just what I can do. Not many people could, but I can. Perhaps it’s the only way I can be great, like an artist giving his work to a world that doesn’t care.”

The quick sense she had to serve her instead of knowledge and to make her unconsciously subtle, detected his danger in the words and some lack of homage to herself. “Ah, you’re pretending, and you’re enjoying it,” she said. “It’s consoling you for not being able to do anything else.”

“Who said I couldn’t do anything else?”

“Well, you nearly did, and I don’t suppose you can. If you could, you wouldn’t bother about me.”

He was silent and though she did not look at him she was very keenly aware of his tall figure wrapped in an overcoat reaching almost to his heels and with the big parcel under his left arm. He was always slightly absurd and now, when he struck the top bar of the railing with his left hand and uttered a mournful, “Yes, it’s true!” the tragedy in his tone could not repress her smile. Yet if he had been less funny he might have been less truly tragic.

“So, you see, I’m only a kind of makeshift,” she remarked.

“No,” he said, “but I may have been mistaken in myself. I’m not mistaken about you. Never!” he cried, striking the rail again.

They were alone on the hill, but suddenly, with a clatter of wings, a bird left his nest in the rocks and swept out of sight, leaving a memory of swiftness and life, of an intenser blackness in the gulf. Far below them, to the left, there were lights, stationary and moving, and sometimes the clang of a tramcar bell reached them with its harsh music: the slim line of the bridge, with here and there a dimly burning light, was like a spangled thread. The sound of footsteps and voices came to them from the road behind the hill.

“But after all,” Charles said more clearly, “it doesn’t matter about being acclaimed. It’s just like making music for deaf people: the music’s there; the music’s there. And so it doesn’t matter very much whether you love me. It’s one’s weakness that wants that, one’s loneliness. I can love you just the same, perhaps better; it’s the audience that spoils things. I should think it does!”

“So you’re quite happy.”

“Not quite,” he answered, “but I have something to do, something I can do, too. Music—no, I’m not good enough. I’m no more than an amateur, but in this I can be supreme.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” she said acutely. “If you wrote a poem you might think it was perfect, but you wouldn’t absolutely know till you’d tried it on other people. So you can’t be sure about love.”

“You mightn’t be,” he said with a touch of scorn. “You may depend on other people, but I don’t.”

She made a small sound of scorn. “No, you’ll never know whether you’re doing this wonderful work of yours well or not because,” she said, cruelly exultant, “it won’t be tested.”

“Ah, but it might be. You’ve got to do things as though they will be.”

“I suppose so,” she said indifferently. “And now I must go back.”

He turned obediently and thrust the parcel at her.

“But aren’t you going to take me home?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think I need do that. I shall stay here.”

“Then I won’t have your chocolates. I didn’t want them, anyhow, but now I won’t take them.”

“I don’t understand you,” he said miserably.

“Doesn’t the painter understand his paints or the musician his instruments? No, you’ll have to begin at the beginning, Charles Batty, and work very hard before you’re a success.”

She ran from him fleetly, hardly knowing why she was so angry, but it seemed to her that he had no right to be content without her love; she felt he must be emasculate, and the guilty passion of Francis Sales was, by contrast, splendid. But for that passion, Charles Batty might have persuaded her she was incapable of rousing men’s desire and not to rouse it was not to be a woman. Accordingly, she valued Francis and despised the other, yet when she had reached home and run upstairs and was standing in the dim room where the firelight cast big, uncertain shadows, like vague threats, on walls and ceiling, she suffered a reaction.

The scene on the road became sinister: she remembered the strange silence of the trees and the clangorous barking of the dogs, the hoarse voices from the encampment in the hollow. It had been very dark there and an extraordinary blackness had buried her when she was in that man’s arms. It had been dark, too, on the hill, but with a feeling of space and height and freedom. If Charles had been a little different—but then, he did not really want her; he was making a study of his sorrow, he was gazing at it, turning it round and over, growing familiar with all its aspects. He was an artist frustrated of any power but this of feeling and to have given him herself would simply have been to rob him of what he found more precious. But she and Francis Sales were kin; she understood him: he was not better than herself, perhaps he was not so good and he, too, was unhappy, but he did not love her for those qualities of which Charles Batty had talked by the Monks’ Pool, he wove no poetry about her: he loved her because she was pretty; because her mouth was red and her eyes bright and her body young: he loved her because, being her father’s daughter, her youth answered his desire with enough shame to season appetite, but not to spoil it. And she thought of Christabel as of some sick doll.