THE MISSES MALLETT by E. H. YOUNG
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E. H. YOUNG >> THE MISSES MALLETT
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20 E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Anne Reshnyk, cam, Delphine Lettau, and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
THE MISSES MALLETT
(The Bridge Dividing)
by E. H. Young
Contents
BOOK I ROSE
BOOK II HENRIETTA
BOOK III ROSE AND HENRIETTA
Book I: _Rose_
1
On the high land overlooking the distant channel and the hills beyond
it, the spring day, set in azure, was laced with gold and green. Gorse
bushes flaunted their colour, larch trees hung out their tassels and
celandines starred the bright green grass in an air which seemed
palpably blue. It made a mist among the trees and poured itself into
the ground as though to dye the earth from which hyacinths would soon
spring. Far away, the channel might have been a still, blue lake, the
hills wore soft blue veils and, like a giant reservoir, the deeper
blue of the sky promised unlimited supplies. There were sheep and
lambs bleating in the fields, birds sang with a piercing sweetness,
and no human being was in sight until, up on the broad grassy track
which branched off from the main road and had the larch wood on one
side and, on the other, rough descending fields, there appeared a
woman on a horse. The bit jingled gaily, the leather creaked, the
horse, smelling the turf, gave a snort of delight, but his rider
restrained him lightly. On her right hand was the open country sloping
slowly to the water; on her left was the stealthiness of the larch
wood; over and about everything was the blue day. Straight ahead of
her the track dipped to a lane, and beyond that the ground rose again
in fields sprinkled with the drab and white of sheep and lambs and
backed by the elm trees of Sales Hall. She could see the chimneys of
the house and the rooks' nests in the elm tops and, as though the
sight reminded her of something mildly amusing, the smoothness of her
face was ruffled by a smile, the stillness of her pose by a quick
glance about her, but if she looked for anyone she did not find him.
There were small sounds from the larch wood, little creakings and
rustlings, but there was no human footstep, and the only visible
movements were made by the breeze in the trees and in the grass, the
flight of a bird and the distant gambolling of lambs.
She rode on down the steep, stony slope into the lane, and after
hesitating for a moment she turned to the right where the lane was
broadened by a border of rich grass and a hedge-topped bank. Here
primroses lay snugly in their clumps of crinkled leaves and, wishing
to feel the coolness of their slim, pale stalks between her fingers,
Rose Mallett dismounted, slipped the reins over her arm and allowed
her horse to feed while she stooped to the flowers. Then, in the full
sunshine, with the soft breeze trying to loosen her hair, with the
flowers in her bare hand, she straightened herself, consciously happy
in the beauty of the day, in the freedom and strength of her body, in
the smell of the earth and the sight of the country she had known and
loved all her life. It was long since she had ridden here without
encountering Francis Sales, who was bound up with her knowledge of the
country, and who, quite evidently, wished to annex some of the love
she lavished on it. This was a ridiculous desire which made her smile
again, yet, while she was glad to be alone, she missed the attention
of his presence. He had developed a capacity, which was like another
sense, for finding her when she rode on his domains or in their
neighbourhood, and she was surprised to feel a slight annoyance at his
absence, an annoyance which, illogically, was increased by the sight
of his black spaniel, the sure forerunner of his master, making his
way through the hedge. A moment later the tall figure of Sales himself
appeared above the budding twigs.
He greeted her in the somewhat sulky manner to which she was
accustomed. He was a young man with a grievance, and he looked at her
as though to-day it were personified in her.
She answered him cheerfully: 'What a wonderful day!'
'The day's all right,' he said.
Holding the primroses to her nose, she looked round. Catkins were
swaying lightly on the willows, somewhere out of sight a tiny runnel
of water gurgled, the horse ate noisily, the grass had a vividness of
green like the concentrated thought of spring.
'I don't see how anything can be wrong this morning,' she said.
'Ah, you're lucky to think so,' he answered, gazing at her clear, pale
profile.
'Well,' she turned to ask patiently, 'what is the matter with you?'
'I'm worried.'
'Has a cow died?' And ignoring his angry gesture, she went on: 'I
don't think you take enough care of your property. Whenever I ride
here I find you strolling about miserably, with a dog.'
'That's your fault.'
'I don't quite see why,' she said pleasantly; 'but no doubt you are
right. But has a cow died?'
'Of course not. Why should it?'
'They do, I suppose?'
'It's the old man. He isn't well, and he's badgering me to go away, to
Canada, and learn more about farming.'
'So you should.'
'Of course you'd say so.'
'Or do you think you can't?'
He missed, or ignored, her point. 'He's ill. I don't want to leave
him'; and in a louder voice he added, almost shouted, 'I don't want to
leave you!'
Her grey eyes were watching the swinging catkins, her hand, lifting
the primroses, hid a smile. Again he had the benefit of her profile,
the knot of her dark, thick hair and the shadowy line of her
eyelashes, but she made no comment on his remark and after a moment of
sombre staring he uttered the one word, 'Well?'
'Yes?'
'Well, I've told you.'
'Oh, I think you ought to go.'
'Then you don't love me?'
From under her raised eyebrows she looked at him steadily. 'No, I
don't love you,' she said slowly. There was no need to consider her
answer: she was sure of it. She was fond of him, but she could not
romantically love some one who looked and behaved like a spoilt boy.
She glanced from his handsome, frowning face in which the mouth was
opening for protest to a scene perfectly set for a love affair. There
was not so much as a sheep in sight: there was only the horse who,
careless of these human beings, still ate eagerly, chopping the good
grass with his teeth, and the spaniel who panted self-consciously and
with a great affectation of exhaustion. The place was beautiful and
the sunlight had some quality of enchantment. Faint, delicious smells
were offered on the wind and withdrawn in caprice; the trees were all
tipped with green and interlaced with blue air and blue sky; she
wished she could say she loved him, and she repeated her denial half
regretfully.
'Rose,' he pleaded, 'I've known you all my life!'
'Perhaps that's why. Perhaps I know you too well.'
'You don't. You don't know how--how I love you. And I should be
different with you. I should be happy. I've never been happy yet.'
'You can't,' she said slowly, 'get happiness through a person if you
can't get it through yourself.'
'Yes--if you are the person.'
She shook her head. 'I'm sorry. I can't help it.'
He reproached her. 'You've never thought about it.'
'Well, isn't that the same thing? And,' she added, 'you're so far
away.'
'I can get through the hedge,' he said practically.
She smiled in the way that always puzzled, irritated and allured him.
His words set him still farther off; he did not even understand her
speech.
'Is it better now?' he asked, close to her.
'No, no better.' She looked at his face, so deeply tanned that his
brown hair and moustache looked pale by contrast and his eyes
extraordinarily blue. His appearance always pleased her. It was almost
a part of the landscape, but the landscape was full of change, of
mystery in spite of its familiarity, and she found him dull,
monotonous, with a sort of stupidity which was not without attraction,
but which would be wearying for a whole life. She had no desire to be
his wife and the mistress of Sales Hall, its fields and woods and
farms. The world was big, the possibilities in life were infinite, and
she felt she was fit, perhaps destined, to play a larger part than
this he offered her, and if she could, as she foresaw, only play a
greater one through the agency of some man, she must have that man
colossal, for she was only twenty-three years old.
'No,' she said firmly, 'we are not suited to each other.'
'You are to me.' His angry helplessness seemed to darken the sunlight.
'You are to me. No one else. I've known you all my life. Rose, think
about it!'
'I shall--but I shan't change. I don't believe you really love me,
Francis, but you want some one you can growl at legitimately. I don't
think you would find me satisfactory. Another woman might enjoy the
privilege.'
He made a wild movement, startling to the horse. 'You don't understand
me!'
'Well, then, that ought to settle it. And now I'm going.'
'Don't go,' he pleaded. 'And look here, you might have loosened your
girths.'
'I might, but I didn't expect to be here so long. I didn't expect to
be so pleasantly entertained.' She put out her hand for his shoulder,
and, bending unwillingly, he received her foot.
'You needn't have said that,' he muttered, 'about being entertained.'
'You're so ungracious, Francis.'
'I can't help it when I care so much.'
From her high seat she looked at him with a sort of envy. 'It must be
rather nice to feel anything deeply enough to make you rude.'
'You torture me,' he said.
She was hurt by the sight of his suffering, she wished she could give
him what he wanted, she felt as though she were injuring a child, yet
her youth resented his childishness: it claimed a passion capable of
overwhelming her. She hardened a little. 'Good-bye,' she said, 'and if
I were you, I should certainly go abroad.'
'I shall!' he threatened her.
'Good-bye, then,' she repeated amiably.
'Don't go,' he begged in a low voice. 'Rose, I don't believe you know
what you are doing, and you've always loved the country, you've always
loved our place. You like our house. You told me once you envied us
our rookery.'
'Yes, I love the rookery,' she said.
'And you'd have your own stables and as many horses as you wanted--'
'And milk from our own cows! And home-laid eggs!'
'Ah, you're laughing at me. You always do.'
'So you see,' she said, bending a little towards him, 'I shouldn't
make a very good companion.'
'But I could put up with it from you!' he cried. 'I could put up with
anything from you.'
She made a gesture. That was where he chiefly failed. The colossal
gentleman of her imagination was a tyrant.
* * * * *
She rode home, up and along the track, on to the high road with its
grass borders and across the shadows of the elm branches which striped
the road with black. It was a long road accompanied on one side and
for about two miles by a tall, smooth wall, unscalable, guarding the
privacy of a local magnate's park. It was a pitiless wall, without a
chink, without a roughness that could be seized by hands; it was
higher than Rose Mallett as she sat on her big horse and, but for the
open fields on the other side where lambs jumped and bleated, that
road would have oppressed the spirit, for the wall was a solid witness
to the pride and the power of material possession. Rose Mallett hated
it, not on account of the pride and the power, but because it was
ugly, monstrous, and so inhospitably smooth that not a moss would grow
on it. More vaguely, she disliked it because it set so definite a
limit to her path. She was always glad when she could turn the corner
and, leaving the wall to prolong the side of the right angle it made
at this point, she could take a side road, edging a wooded slope. That
slope made one side of the gorge through which the river ran, and,
looking down through the trees, she caught glimpses of water and a red
scar of rock on the other cliff.
The sound of a steamer's paddles threshing the water came to her
clearly, and the crying of the gulls was so familiar that she hardly
noticed it. And all the way she was thinking of Francis Sales, his
absurdity, his good looks and his distress; but in the permanence of
his distress, even in its sincerity, she did not much believe, for he
had failed to touch anything but her pity, and that failure seemed an
argument against the vehemence of his love. Yet she liked him, she had
always liked him since, as a little girl, she had been taken by her
stepsisters to a haymaking party at Sales Hall.
They had gone in a hired carriage, but one so smart and well-equipped
that it might have been their own, and she remembered the smell of the
leather seats warmed by the sun, the sound of the horse's hoofs and
the sight of Caroline and Sophia, extremely gay in their summer
muslins and shady hats, each holding a lace parasol to protect the
complexion already delicately touched up with powder and rouge. She
had been very proud of her stepsisters as she sat facing them and she
had decided to wear just such muslin dresses, just such hats, when she
grew up. Caroline was in pink with coral beads and a pink feather
drooping on her dark hair; and Sophia, very fair, with a freckle here
and there peeping, as though curious, through the powder, wore yellow
with a big-bowed sash. She was always very slim, and the only fair
Mallett in the family; but even in those days Caroline was inclined to
stoutness. She carried it well, however, with a great dignity,
fortified by reassurances from Sophia, and Rose's recollections of the
conversations of these two was of their constant compliments to each
other and the tireless discussion of clothes. These conversations
still went on.
Fifteen years ago she had sat in that carriage in a white frock, with
socks and ankle-strapped black shoes, her long hair flowing down her
back, and she had heard then, as one highly privileged, the words she
would hear again when she arrived home for tea. Under their tilted
parasols they had made their little speeches. No one was more
distinguished than Caroline; no girl of twenty had a prettier figure
than Sophia's; how well the pink feather looked against Caroline's
hair. Rose, listening intently, but not staring too hard lest her gaze
should attract their attention to herself, had looked at the fields
and at the high, smooth wall, and wondered whether she would rather
reach Sales Hall and enjoy the party, or drive on for ever in this
delightful company, but the carriage turned up the avenue of elms and
Rose saw for the first time the house which Francis Sales now offered
as an attraction. It was a big, square house with honest, square
windows, and the drive, shadowed by the elms, ran through the fields
where the haymaking was in progress. Only immediately in front of the
house were there any flower-beds and there were no garden trees or
shrubs. The effect was of great freedom and spaciousness, of
unaffected homeliness; and even then the odd delightful mixture of
hall and farm, the grandeur of the elm avenue set in the simplicity of
fields, gave pleasure to Rose Mallett's beauty-loving eyes. Anything
might happen in a garden that suddenly became a field, in a field that
ended in a garden, and the house had the same capacity for surprise.
There was a matted hall sunk a foot below the threshold, and to Rose,
accustomed to the delicate order of Nelson Lodge with its slim,
shining, old furniture, its polished brass and gleaming silver, the
comfortable carelessness of this place, with a man's cap on the hall
table, a group of sticks and a pair of slippers in a corner, and an
opened newspaper on a chair, seemed the very home of freedom. It was a
masculine house in which Mrs. Sales, a gentle lady with a fichu of
lace round her soft neck, looked strangely out of place, yet entirely
happy in her strangeness.
On the day of the party Rose had only a glimpse of the interior. The
three Miss Malletts, Caroline sweeping majestically ahead, were led
into the hayfield where Mrs. Sales sat serenely in a wicker chair. It
was evident at once that Mr. Sales, bluff and hearty, with gaitered
legs, was fond of little girls. He realized that this one with the
black hair and the solemn grey eyes would prefer eating strawberries
from the beds to partaking of them with cream from a plate; he knew
without being told that she would not care for gambolling with other
children in the hay; he divined her desire to see the pigs and horses,
and it was near the pigsties that she met Francis Sales. He was tall
for twelve years old and Rose respected him for his age and size; but
she wondered why he was with the pigs instead of with his guests, to
whom his father drove him off with a laugh.
'Says he can't bear parties,' Mr. Sales remarked genially to Rose.
'What do you think of that?'
'I like pigs, too,' Rose answered, to be surprised by his prolonged
chuckle.
Mr. Sales, in the intervals of his familiar conversation with the
pigs, wanted to know why Rose had not brought her father with her.
'Oh, he's too old,' Rose said, rather shocked. Her father had always
seemed old to her, as indeed he was, for she was the child of his
second marriage, and her young mother had died when she was born. Her
stepsisters, devoted to the little girl, and perhaps not altogether
sorry to be rid of a stepmother younger than themselves, had tried to
make up for that loss, but they were much occupied with the social
activities of Radstowe and they belonged to an otherwise inactive
generation, so that if Rose had a grievance it was that they never
played games with her, never ran, or played ball or bowled hoops as
she saw the mothers of other children doing. For such sporting she had
to rely upon her nurse who was of rather a solemn nature and liked
little girls to behave demurely out of doors.
General Mallett saw to it that his youngest daughter early learnt to
ride. Her memories of him were of a big man on a big horse, not
talkative, somewhat stern and sad, becoming companionable only when
they rode out together on the high Downs crowning the old city, and
then he was hardly recognizable as the father who heard her prayers
every night. These two duties of teaching her to ride and of hearing
her pray, and his insistence on her going, as Caroline and Sophia had
done, to a convent school in France, made up, as far as she could
remember, the sum of his interest in her, and when she returned home
from school for the last time, it was to attend his funeral.
She was hardly sorry, she was certainly not glad; she envied the
spontaneous tears of her stepsisters, and she found the lugubriousness
of the occasion much alleviated by the presence of her stepbrother
Reginald. She had hardly seen him since her childhood. Sophia always
spoke of him as she might have spoken of the dead. Caroline sometimes
referred to him in good round terms, sometimes with an indulgent
laugh; and for Rose he had the charm of mystery, the fascination of
the scapegrace. He was handsome, but good looks were a prerogative of
the Malletts; he was married to a wife he had never introduced to his
family and he had a little girl. What his profession was, Rose did not
know. Perhaps his face was his fortune, as certainly his sisters had
been his victims.
After the funeral he had several interviews with Caroline and Sophia,
when Rose could hear the mannish voice of Caroline growing gruff with
indignation and the high tones of Sophia rising to a squeak. He
emerged from these encounters with an angry face and a weak mouth
stubbornly set; but for Rose he had always a gay word or a pretty
speech. She was a real Mallett, he told her; she was more his sister
than the others, and she liked to hear him say so because he had a
kind of grace and a caressing voice, yet the cool judgment which was
never easily upset assured her that a man with his mouth must be in
the wrong. He was, in fact, pursuing his old practice of extracting
money from his sisters, and he only returned, presumably, to his wife
and child, when James Batty, the family solicitor, had been called to
the ladies' aid.
But they both cried when he went away.
'He is so lovable,' Sophia sobbed.
'My dear, he's a rake,' Caroline replied, carefully dabbing her
cheeks. 'All the Malletts are rakes--yes, even the General. Oh, he
took to religion in the end, I know, but that's what they do.' She
chuckled. 'When there's nothing left! I'm afraid I shall take to it
myself some day. I've sown my wild oats, too. Oh, no, I'm not going to
tell Rose anything about them, Sophia. You needn't be afraid, but
she'll hear of them sooner or later from anybody who remembers
Caroline Mallett in her youth.'
Rose had received this confession gravely, but she had not needed the
reassurance of Sophia; 'It isn't so, dear Rose--a flirt, yes, but
never wicked, never! My dear, of course not!'
'Of course not,' Rose repeated. She had already realized that her
stepsisters must be humoured.
* * * * *
Riding slowly, Rose recalled that haymaking party and her gradual
friendship, as the years went by, with the unsociable young Sales, a
friendship which had been tacitly recognized by them both when,
meeting her soon after his mother's death, he had laid his arms and
head on the low stone wall by which they were standing, and wept
without restraint. It was a display she could not have given herself
and it shocked her in a young man, but it left her in his debt. She
felt she owed something to a person who had shown such confidence in
her and though at the time she had been dumb and, as it seemed to her,
far from helpful, she did not forget her liability. However, she could
not remember it to the extent of marrying him; she had always shown
him more kindness than she really felt and, in considering these
things on her way home, she decided that she was still doing as much
as he could expect.
She had by this time turned another corner and the high bridge, swung
from one side of the gorge to the other, was before her. At the toll-house
was the red-faced man who had not altered in the whiteness of a
single hair since she had been taken across the bridge by her nurse
and allowed to peep fearfully through the railings which had towered
like a forest above her head. And the view from the bridge was still
for her a fairy vision.
Seawards, the river, now full and hiding its muddy banks which,
revealed, had their own opalescent beauty, went its way between the
cliffs, clothed on one hand with trees, save for a big red and yellow
gash where the stone was being quarried, and on the other with bare
rock, topped by the Downs spreading far out of sight. Landwards the
river was trapped into docks, spanned by low bridges and made into the
glistening part of a patchwork of water, brick and iron. Red-roofed
old houses, once the haunts of fashion, were clustered near the water
but divided from it now by tram-lines, companion anachronisms to the
steamers entering and leaving the docks, but by the farther shore, one
small strip of river was allowed to flow in its own way, and it
skirted meadows rising to the horizon and carrying with them more of
those noble elms in which the whole countryside was rich.
Her horse's hoofs sounding hollow on the bridge, Rose passed across,
and at the other toll-house door she saw the thin, pale man, with
spectacles on the end of his pointed nose, who had first touched his
hat to her when she rode on a tiny pony by the side of her father on
his big horse. That man was part of her life and she, presumably, was
part of his. He had watched many Upper Radstowe children from the
perambulator stage, and to him she remarked on the weather, as she had
done to the red-faced man at the other end. It was a beautiful day;
they were having a wonderful spring; it would soon be summer, she
said, but on repetition these words sounded false and intensely
dreary. It would soon be summer, but what did that mean to her?
Festivities suited to the season would be resumed in Radstowe. There
would be lawn tennis in the big gardens, and young men in flannels and
girls in white would stroll about the roads and gay voices would be
heard in the dusk. There would be garden-parties, and Mrs. Batty, the
wife of the lawyer, would be lavish with tennis for the young, gossip
for the middle-aged and unlimited strawberries and ices for all. Rose
would be one of the guests at this as at all the parties and, for the
first time, as though her refusal of Francis Sales had had some
strange effect, as though that rejected future had created a distaste
for the one fronting her, she was aghast at the prospect of perpetual
chatter, tea and pretty dresses. She was surely meant for something
better, harder, demanding greater powers. She had, by inheritance,
good manners, a certain social gift, but she had here nothing to
conquer with these weapons. What was she to do? The idea of qualifying
for the business of earning her bread did not occur to her. No female
Mallett had ever done such a thing, and not all the male ones.
Marriage opened the only door, but not marriage with Francis Sales,
not marriage with anyone she knew in Radstowe, and her stepsisters had
no inclination to leave the home of their youth, the scene of their
past successes, for her sake.
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