Ithas been shown that Henrietta had not much power of attracting affection to herself, and she had long ceased to desire it. She was now brought into contact with numbers of different people, and as travelling acquaintances she liked them, but when they parted, she did not want to see them again.
There was, however, an exception to this rule. Henrietta found many companions in misfortune, expatriated either from health, pleasure, or poverty. An intelligent foreigner has inquired whether there are any single elderly ladies left in England, so innumerable are the hosts abroad. Some, like her, had worn their personalities so thin that it seemed likely they would eventually become shadows with no character left; others were nice and cheerful, and made little encampments in the wilderness, so that the unfortunates might gather round them, and almost feel they had got a home.
It was in the room of a nice one that Henrietta met a Colonel. There are fewer occupationless Englishmen abroad, but there is a fair supply—half-pay officers, consumptives, and mysterious creatures, who have no good reason for being there. They were a strange medley for Henrietta to associate with, people whom in her palmy days, as mistress of her father's house, she would have thought unspeakable. She had none of this generation's tolerance and love of new sensations to attract her to unsatisfactory people. She only really liked conventional respectability.
This Colonel was not respectable. He was not a Colonel in the English army, and never would say much about himself. He was very pleasant and polite, and Henrietta, as she walked back to table d'hôte, felt she had spent a livelier afternoon than usual. It was at the beginning of the season, and looking back six weeks later she was astonished to find how often they had met.
Shortly after, the lady in whose room Henrietta had first seen him, asked her to tea. She did not seem quite so easy-going as usual, and at last began: "You know, Miss Symons, my cousin, Colonel Hilton, is rather a peculiarman. I've known him all my life, and I don't think there is any harm in him, but money is his difficulty. He ought to be well off, but it always seems to slip through his fingers."
Henrietta realized that this was a warning.
At the end of the season he proposed and she accepted him. She knew he proposed for her money, and she knew that, besides being mercenary, he was a poor creature in every way. Most people could not have borne long with his society, but she, unaccustomed to companionship, felt that he sufficed her. She did not think much of the future. When she did, she realized that it was hardly possible they could marry. But meanwhile it was something—she would have been ashamed to own how much—to have someone call her "dear." Once he attained to "dearest," but he was evidently frightened at his temerity, and did not repeat the experiment.
She announced the engagement, and a letter from Minna came flying to the Riviera, saying that all sorts of terrible things were known about the Colonel, and imploring Henrietta to desist. She did not desist, but very soon the Colonel did, having discovered that her fortunewas not so large as he had been given to suppose. There was a solid something it is true, but for Henrietta, quite middle-aged and decidedly cross (she imagined she was never cross with him), he felt he must have a very considerable something. He wrote a letter breaking off the engagement, and left the Riviera abruptly, having made a good thing out of his season. Henrietta had lent him,hesaid—given, others said—over three hundred pounds.
"And now we shall have a terrible piece of work," said Minna to Louie. "You know what Henrietta always is—what she was about that other affair with a man years ago, and again when Evelyn's little girl died. She gets so excited and overwrought."
But Henrietta quite upset their expectations. This, which most people might have thought the most serious misfortune which had befallen her, affected her very little. In her heart of hearts she was saying: "Well, when all's said and done, I've had my offer like everyone else." She was grateful for the "dears" too. She did not realize that there had been absolutely nothing behind them. She answered the Colonel's speedy application for more money,and continued to send him supplies from time to time.
Evelyn and Herbert had returned to England, and had settled on the South Coast. Two boys had been born in Canada, and had grown and prospered. Henrietta stayed with Evelyn for a fortnight whenever she was back in England, but somehow the visits were not the pleasure they should have been.
Evelyn was still delicate, and Herbert had begged Henrietta when she saw her to make no allusion to their loss. Evelyn was delighted at showing her boys, and Henrietta was pleased for her that she should have them, but to her they did not in the least take the place of the dead. They were not hers; she was almost indignant with Evelyn for caring for them so much, and accused her in her heart of forgetfulness. This made her irritable, which Herbert resented, and then Evelyn was nervous because Herbert and Henrietta did not get on well together. Evelyn's letters to her were very affectionate, the only real pleasure, in any reasonable sense of the word, in Henrietta's life.
Sometimes Evelyn and her husband and boys came out to stay with Henrietta. Thevisits were not occasions of much happiness, and a certain day remained for years as a mild nightmare in Evelyn's memory. They were all in Milan one spring, when the patron of the hotel announced that his lady cousin, who lived at some out-of-the-way little country town, had heard from her friend, a priest in that same little town, that on Tuesday there was to be a special festa in connection with a local saint. Would the English ladies and gentlemen care to go? The patron himself had the contempt of an enlightened man for saints and festas, but he knew the curious attraction which such childishness possesses for the English tourist.
All was arranged. The railway company had never intended that the little town should be reached from Milan, but with an early start and much changing of trains it was possible to accomplish the journey in two hours and a half.
They arrived. There was no surprise among the hotel omnibuses at their appearance, for the Italians have found that the English will turn up everywhere; but to-day they were certainly the only representatives of their nation.
They reached the church where the festa was to take place. It was sleeping peacefully,brooded over by a delicious, sweet smell of dirt and stale incense. Not a soul was to be seen. But as the party marched indignantly up and down the aisles, another smell comes to join the incense—garlic. A merry, good-humoured little priest appears; it is the friend of the lady cousin.
He knew no English but "Yis, Yis"; they little Italian but the essentials for travel: "Troppo, bello, antiquo." At the word "festa" he shook his head very sadly, and he said "Domani" so many times that, with the help of Henrietta's little phrase-book, they found it must mean "To-morrow." They had come the wrong day. He was very much distressed about it. To make up, if possible, for the disappointment, he showed them all over the church and sacristy; he did not miss one memorial tablet, not one disappearing fresco, and knowing the taste of the English, he said, as each new item was displayed: "Molto,moltoantiquo."
He was so much attracted by Evelyn's charming middle-aged beauty and her sweet English voice that when Santa Barbara's was exhausted, he could not resist showing them, what he cared for much more, his own little brand-new mission church, with its brilliant rosy-cheekedimages and artificial wreaths. The boys, fifteen and seventeen, had had enough of churches after two days at Milan, and Evelyn could hear from Herbert's conscientious, stumping tread that he was examining the church because a soldier must always do his duty.
At length it was over; they came out into the sunshine, and the big town clock struck a quarter to eleven. Their train home left at 5.30. The two churches had only used up an hour and a quarter.
"Now, dearest," said Herbert firmly, "I dare say you and Etta will like a little rest. Suppose I and the boys get a walk in the country; and don't wait lunch for us, you know. I dare say we can get something at one of those little wine places one sees about."
They managed to construct a sentence for the priest, who was standing nodding by them: "Are there any pretty walks in the neighbourhood?"
Smiling genially, he pointed to an answer which the phrase-book translated: "The landscape presents a grandiose panorama."
Evelyn gave the priest a contribution to his mission church. He was overwhelmed with surprise and pleasure at this good action on thepart of a heretic, it added to his pleasure that she was such a beautiful heretic, and when, as they said good-bye, Evelyn wished that they might meet again, he replied, with his face all over smiles, "I hope perhaps in Paradise"; he could not speak with absolute certainty. Something in the way he said it brought tears to Evelyn's eyes, and Henrietta, who was looking on and listening, thought with a little envy that none of the many priests or pastors, few even of the laity she had encountered in her wanderings, had ever hoped to meetheragain either in heaven or on earth. After many affectionate bows, he said good-bye.
The sisters were scarcely half an hour buying picture postcards (there had been nothing else to do, so they had bought more picture postcards than it seemed possible could be bought), when rain came on—not gentle English rain, but the fierce cataracts of Italy, let loose for the rest of the day. Back came Herbert and the boys, who had somehow missed the grandiose panorama. It had, in fact, been created entirely out of politeness by the priest.
After lunch, which they prolonged to its farthest limit, there was nothing for it but the salon, a small room, with its window darkenedby the verandah outside. Madame brought in yesterday'sTribuna, and they found an illustrated catalogue of hotels in Dresden. Oh, that three hours and a half! The boys and Herbert would have been content to sit with their shoulders hutched up, staring at their boots, going every quarter of an hour to the front-door to see if it were raining as hard there as it was out of the salon window, and Evelyn only wanted to be left in silence with her headache. But Henrietta would tease the boys. Whatever they did do, or whatever they did not do, seemed an occasion for criticism. Evelyn, to divert attention, burst into long reminiscences of the days at Willstead. Henrietta combated each statement with a kind of sneer, as though whatever Evelyn said was bound to be worthless. Evelyn saw Herbert, who always treated her as if she were a wonderful queen, casting black looks at Henrietta. At last his anger came out:
"I don't know why it seems impossible for you to talk to Evelyn with ordinary civility, Henrietta."
"My dearest boy," said Evelyn, going and patting Herbert's shoulder, "Etty and I don't care about ordinary civility. We love having our little spars together. Sisters don't botherto be as polite as men are to one another; life would be much too much of a burden!"
She gave Henrietta's hand a squeeze, as she went back to her seat, but after this Henrietta would hardly talk at all, and the reminiscences became a monologue from Evelyn.
At last, at long last, the train came, and Henrietta forgot her disappointment in sleep. The happy day she had looked forward to, and planned, and paid for, was over.
Louie and her Colonel did not thrive better as the years went on. Money never seemed able to stay with them. Henrietta helped them long after everyone else had become tired of them. She did not expect gratitude, nor did she get it. In spite of her dependence, Louie managed to convey the impression of Henrietta's inferiority, and the children spoke of her as a butt.
"Oh, it's Aunt Etta's year; it really is rather a fag to think we shall have her for three weeks. Ethel, it's your turn to take her in tow; I had her all last time."
"Poor Etta!" said Minna; "she is such an interminable talker, it does worry Arthur so. She means very well; we all know that."
Minna's children were very much of thetwentieth century, and were not going to bear with a dull old maid, merely because she was their aunt and had been kind to them. As one of them expressed it, "Never put yourself out for a relation, however distant. That's an axiom."
Little as the younger generation thought of her, she thought something of them, and the second week in December, when she chose her Christmas presents for all her nieces and nephews, was the pleasantest week in the year to her.
Henriettahad been fourteen years abroad, when she came to pay her biennial visit to Evelyn.
"Who do you think has come to live here, Henrietta?" said Evelyn, as they sat talking the first evening. "Ellen."
"Ellen?"
"Yes, our dear old Ellen—Mrs. Plumtree. She's a widow now. Her eldest son is working here, and she is living with him and his wife. I went to see her last week, and she was so delighted to talk over old times, and when she heard you were coming, she was so excited. You were always her favourite."
A few days afterwards they went, to find Ellen a very hale old lady. In spite of having brought up a large family of her own, she had the clearest remembrance of apparently every incident of the childhood of "you two young ladies" (so she still called them) as though she had never had any other interest in life.
"Oh, and, Miss Etta," she said, "what a sight you did think of Miss Evie! I never knew a child take so to anyone before. 'She's quite a little mother,' I often used to say to Sarah. Do you remember Sarah? She died only last year; she suffered dreadful with her heart. Do you remember how you always would go to put your hand into the water before I gave Miss Evie her bath, because you wanted to be sure it wasn't too hot? Every evening you did it; and one day you were out late, and Miss Evie was in bed before you came in, and you cried because you hadn't been able to do it."
Neither sister found it easy to speak, but Ellen wanted very little encouragement.
"Sometimes as a great treat, when you was a little older, Miss Evie, I let you sleep in Miss Etty's bed, and she used to lay and cuddle you so pretty. And the canary, Miss Etta—do you remember that? When Miss Evie's dickie died, you went all the way to Willstead by yourself and bought a new canary, so that she might never know her dickie died. Your mamma was very angry with you, I remember; but there was nothing you wouldn't do for Miss Evie."
The sisters walked back in silence; their hearts were too full for speech. There was no time for private conversation till night, when Evelyn came into Henrietta's room, and flung her arms round her.
"Darling, darling Etta," she said, "I could hardly bear it, when Ellen was talking. To think of all that you were to me, all that you did for me, and that I should have forgotten it. Oh, how is it that we've got apart?"
"I don't know," said Henrietta; "I don't think there is anything much to like in me. No one does care for me. I think if no one likes one, one doesn't deserve to be liked."
"Oh, nothing in this life goes by deserts."
"People love you, and they're quite right; you ought to be loved. You did care for me once, though. Herbert wrote—you know, when we lost—'A good cry with you will be more comfort to Evelyn than anything else.' Even then, in the middle of it all, it made me happy."
"Oh, Etta, what you were to me then!"
Henrietta took Evelyn's hand and squeezed it convulsively. When she could speak, she said: "Evelyn, do you ever think of our children?"
"Think of them—of course I do. Do you, Etta?"
"I used to, but I tried not to—it was too bitter. The children were what I lived for, and I don't think of them often now. It's past and gone."
"Oh, I couldn't live if I didn't. I don't think it is bitter now. These dear boys, they're not quite the same to me as the ones that were taken."
"I thought you'd forgotten them."
"I thought you had, Etta, and I couldn't help feeling it."
"Herbert asked me never to speak about them to you."
"Dear Herbert, he is so good—I can't tell you how good he is to me—but he never will mention them. First of all I was so ill, I couldn't stand talking of them, but now I can, and I do long for it. He doesn't forget them, I know, but I think men live more in the present than we do; and he has his work, which absorbs him very much, and it isn't quite the same for a man. And then they were so delicate, particularly Madeline, that I was wrapped up in them all their lives; and they were so small, he couldn't see much of them."
"Do you feel that you could tell me about them?"
"Yes, I should like to."
They talked far into the night. Herbert was away, so that there was no one to stop them, and when at last the dawn drove them to bed, Evelyn said: "I can't tell you how much good you've done me. I seem to have been living for this for fifteen years."
They neither of them slept at all that night. Both were full of remorse, but Henrietta's was the bitterest. The life which had seemed to do quite well enough all these years, suddenly appeared to her as it was. She contrasted her present self with the little girl Ellen had known. Like Jane Eyre, she "drew her own picture faithfully without softening one defect. She omitted no hard line, smoothed away no displeasing irregularity." She had squabbled, that very afternoon, if it is possible to squabble when only one party does the squabbling, all the way down to Ellen's about various quite unimportant dates in William's life. The incident was almost as much a part of her day's routine as eating her breakfast. Now it seemed to her a manifestation of the degradation into which she had fallen.
The power and vividness of her memory, magnified ten times by the mysterious agency of midnight, brought back the words of advice of Emily Mence, of Minna, and of her aunt, just as if they had been spoken last week. She had entirely forgotten them for years. Now they kept rushing through her head hour after hour.
Before breakfast Evelyn came into her room, her eyes shining with agitation, and looking so flushed that Henrietta saw what need there had been for Herbert's caution.
"Etty," she said, "I've been thinking all night; I can't bear your living in this horrible way: no home, away by yourself, so that we see nothing of you. Come and live here, live with us. We shan't interfere with you; you shall come and go as you like. Or live in the village, there is a dear little house just made for you. Only come and be near us."
Henrietta was sorely tempted, it was a great sacrifice to say no. But she knew that Herbert only tolerated her for Evelyn's sake, and that the boys, rather spoilt and self-important, found her a nuisance. She knew also that she could not trust herself to be pleasant and good-tempered. If she came, it would not be for Evelyn's happiness.So she refused, and even in her fervour of love for Henrietta, Evelyn could not help realizing it was best that she should.
At the same time that talk was a turning-point in Henrietta's life. She never felt after it that she was completely unwanted. Although she would not live with Evelyn, she thought she might justifiably come and be much nearer her, and she gave up the roving life and returned to England. It had in fact satisfied her, only because she had felt so uncared-for that she became insignificant even to herself.
Where should she live? She knew that every place where she had relations would not do, but this only ruled out four of the towns of the United Kingdom. It must be a town; on that point she was clear. As she cared for none of the special advantages of a town, its more lively society, its greater opportunities for entertainment and intellectual interests, she was particularly insistent that she could not do without them. What she wanted was a house with room for herself, two maids, and a couple of visitors. Such a house is to be found in tens and hundreds everywhere. She went round and round England in a fruitless search.
As apension habituéethe whole arrangementof her life had been taken out of her hands; even her clothes had been settled for her by one of those octopus London firms which like to reduce their customers to dummies; and her transit from hotel to hotel, and from English visits back to hotels, had become a mere automatic process. She had not made a decision for so many years that though her nieces and nephews were witty over her vacillation, and declared that she enjoyed being a nuisance, it was a fact that she was trying her best to be sensible and competent. She, with no go-between, no protector, must determine which was most important—gravel soil or southern aspect. She felt as she had felt years ago, when she wrote her paper for Professor Amery, only ten times more bewildered, almost delirious.
Of course, her nieces constantly talked her over, shaking their heads and saying: "If only Aunt Etta would let us." But however weak she was, she was firm in this: she wouldnotbe helped. The outward sign of her bewilderment was extreme crossness, particularly to Evelyn, who was allowed to accompany her in her search, and to hear her remarks without making any suggestions. "I will thank youto let me decide about my own house by myself." They had examined nine houses that day, and were both almost weeping with exhaustion.
Evelyn could not help feeling exasperated, but when Etta stumbled the moment after from sheer nervousness, and Evelyn caught hold of her hand, she realized from its hot trembling grasp how hard it is to come back to life again.
Henrietta would probably never have found the right spot, if a timely attack of rheumatism had not persuaded her to fix on Bath. When she had settled into her house at last, she hated it. She dismissed five servants in two months. She was so dull, no one called; Bath was so cold. If only she could let her house and go abroad for the winter. Happily no suitable tenant appeared, and gradually Bath grew into a habit and she became resigned. But it was long, very long, before she would own that she liked it.
Andnow a happier and more useful course of life began. Henrietta had just enough rheumatism to take a course of waters sometimes. She found a doctor who had a greatflairfor elderly ladies; he knew when to bully them, when to flatter them, and when to neglect them. He and the waters made a centre round which the rest of her interests might group themselves. Church. She found a vicar with nothing of Mr. Wharton's enthusiasm and loftiness of aim, but with a greater realization of people's capacities. He too had made a study of elderly ladies, who are always such an important branch of congregations. He could see that what Miss Symons was in his drawing-room, touchy, incompetent, and snappish she would be in any work she did in the parish. But he was also made to see her extreme generosity, of which she herself was entirely unconscious. He liked and was touched by her humility. "Oh no,don't trouble about asking me, Mr. Vaughan, nobody will want to talk to a dull person like me. Get some nice young men for the girls, if you can." "No, I can't have that pretty Miss Allan helping at my stall, I can get along very well by myself. I shall bring Annie; we can manage together."
The poor people, of course, did not like her, for as she grew older she was more convinced than ever that the lower orders must be constantly reproved. But poor people are very magnanimous, and they were sure of a good many presents. She was also for ever bickering with her servants, but "poor old lady" as they said, "she's getting on now, it makes her worry," and she found in Annie one who knew how to give at least as good as she got. Horror of being defrauded by servants and tradespeople was a great resource, and though she continually deplored the pleasure of life abroad, these years of muddling in and out of her house, her garden, and her shops, were probably the happiest in her life.
A certain conversation contributed not a little to this new happiness. She was at a tea-party, for once she had been admitted into the circle of tea-parties, she became much absorbedin them, and she and a neighbour were tracing an attack of influenza from its source to its decline, when Henrietta's hostess came up to her.
"I want to introduce you to Mrs. Manson," said she. "Mrs. Manson is a cousin of that Mr. Dockerell you told me you knew, Miss Symons."
There had been no sentiment in Henrietta's telling, she had quoted Mr. Dockerell as an authority on Portugal laurels.
"Ah, my cousin, Mr. Dockerell," said Mrs. Manson, "you knew him, did you? He's dead, poor man, had you heard? He died last year."
And once started upon Mr. Dockerell, she rambled away with his life's history, being one without much feeling, who could say everything to anybody.
"Poor Fred, his marriage was such a mistake. She was older than him, and a mass of nerves. She caught him. I always said it was that; anybody on earth could have caught him. It was at Worthing; those seaside places in the summer are very dangerous. My mother used to say: 'We must be thankful it isn't worse.' No, he wasn't happy. There was a story thathe really liked somebody else: a Miss Simon her name was—Simon, or something like that. Where did she come from? Oh yes, Willstead; he had some work there at one time. 'The beautiful dark Miss Simon.' At least, she wasn't beautiful, that was our joke; there was a pretty sister, but she was fair. My sister always insisted he was pining after her, but that wasn't like Fred. We used to be hard-hearted, and declare it was indigestion."
Mr. Dockerell's death was not very much to Henrietta, he had passed so entirely out of her life. But "a dark Miss Simon living at Willstead, not beautiful"; she thought much of that. She could not but believe it must be herself. "So perhaps after all he did care," she said to herself, as she sat over the fire that evening, she had reached the age when she liked a good deal of twilight thinking undisturbed by the gas. But the news had come so late; if only she had known before. Those months and years of unhappiness rose before her. Granted that Providence had decreed they were not to marry, and looking back she did not feel as if she wished they had married, it was all so far behind her, she thought that she might have been given the happiness of a farewell letterfrom him, telling her that she really was first in his heart. "I should never have seen him or heard from him again; of course I should not have wanted it, but it would have been so comfortable to have known." She fell into her childhood's habit of daydreams, if one can have daydreams of the past, and sat such a long time absorbed that Annie came in at last with her matchbox. "Don't you want the gas lit, 'm? You never rang, I was gettin' quite fidgettin' about you, your heart's not very strong."
Henrietta was composing his last letter, each moment making it more and more tender. She came back with a start to ordinary life, and the magazine article on "Beauties of George II.'s Court," which lay open before her. She dismissed her picture of what might have been with "Of course it was impossible, it's ridiculous wondering about it. How can one be so foolish at nearly sixty?" But she did wonder, and there is no doubt she was very much pleased. And after all the good news was false, he had never thought of her again.
She confided the little incident to Evelyn. Evelyn, adoring her husband and adored by him, had been so much accustomed to men'sadmiration that she did not attach great value to it. She had seen long ago her old lovers pairing happily with somebody else: that side of life had been over for herself many years since. Her interest now was in her sons' possible marriages, and it was a little painful to her that Henrietta should be so much excited about what had never after all been more than a potential love affair. To tell the truth, she thought it a trifle petty and not worthy the dignity of one on the verge of old age. She wanted to be sympathetic, and she was too kind to say anything that would wound, but Henrietta could see that Evelyn did not enter into her feelings.
Louie's children were now started in life, and the sons were getting on so well that even Henrietta owned they might be expected to take the burden of their parents upon themselves. She had her nieces and nephews to stay; Minna and Louie also came to take the waters. One or two of the nieces were of course collecting second-hand furniture, and used Bath as a centre for expeditions to the little country towns. The visits were very pleasant, if they did not last more than two nights; after two nights there would be adanger of friction, and sometimes friction itself. Her nieces and nephews were all what she called "modern," the harshest word but one she knew. A certain nephew and niece, alas, were more than modern—they were the harshest word of all, "Radical." The nephew had too profound a contempt for old ladies to talk about anything more controversial than the local train service, but even that he discovered was a topic beyond Henrietta's capacity. For it turned out, after she had appeared to be talking very sensibly about the afternoon trains, that she was referring to one marked with an "N.," a Thursday excursion, which destroyed all the point of her remarks. Her nephew explained this to her, but she would stick to her train, and declare that the "N." was a misprint. A misprint in Bradshaw. What a mind! He had not realized that even an aunt could be so childish. Of course she knew she was wrong, but she tried to persuade herself that she was right, because she was so much disappointed. She had wanted to make a good impression on her nephew, even if he were a Radical. She thought men superior to women, though throughout her life her affection and veneration had been given to women—Miranda,Miss Arundel, Evelyn. She had an innocent conviction that men knew more about everything, except perhaps the youngest babies, and she was anxious for masculine good opinion. Alas, to contradict her nephew several times running was not the way to win him over.
He felt that contradiction amply justified him in wrapping himself up in his paper for the rest of the evening, vouchsafing "um" and "ah" occasionally after imploring pressure from his aunt. He left first thing next morning.
Then his Radical sister came. She inspected something under Government, and with a burning faith in womanhood hoped against hope that with time her aunt must be converted "to think the right things." With a mere niece Henrietta felt at liberty, and very competent, to correct. But she little knew with whom she was reckoning.
"Servants belong to a Trade Union, Annie and Emma" (the cook) "join a Union. How perfectly ridiculous!"
"But why ridiculous, Aunt Etta?"
"Because it is."
"No, but do tell me, Aunt Etta. I knowthere must be some solid reason, and I should be so much interested to hear it."
"You should have seen Annie's hat last Sunday: enormous pink roses in it."
"Yes," answered her niece, catching her aunt out very easily, "but as far as that goes some ladies have enormous pink roses."
"Yes, indeed. Why, when I was young we should never——"
"And you don't object to their joining Trade Unions?"
"Yes, I do."
"But, after all, what is that Teachers' Society that Hilda belongs to" (Hilda was another niece) "but a Trade Union? And you went on their excursion, Hilda told me."
"That has nothing to do with it" (a favourite refuge with old ladies when they are getting the worst of a discussion). "Of course, if Hilda——"
"So I mean Annie's wearing garish hats is not really a reason against her joining a Trade Union. You see my point, don't you?"
"I particularly dislike being interrupted. I hadn't finished what I was going to say."
"I beg your pardon, Aunt Etta, I am so sorry. What was it you were going to say?"
Henrietta could not remember, and branched off to something else. "Wearing all this jewellery in the day is so common. That girl at the post office had two brooches and a locket, and she kept me waiting so long; she always does."
"Yes, but I think we must leave them to judge what they like to wear; it is not our business really, is it? But I did just want to speak to you about this Servants' Union, Aunt Etta. I wonder if I might give Annie a little pamphlet I have written about it. Of course, we don't want them to be always striking or anything of that sort. The aim of my Society is simply to try and rouse servants to a sense of what it is they're missing—this great power of organization and solidarity which they ought to have. I think Annie looks such a nice intelligent girl, who would be sure to have an influence with her friends."
"No, she's most tiresome and inconsiderate. Shewouldgo out this evening just when you were coming, because she wanted to take her mother to the hospital, so that I had to have Mrs. Spring, and it is all very well for Annie to say——"
"I wonder if I might read you a little pieceout of my pamphlet, Aunt Etta, just to make a few points clear. You see, I want to get you in favour of our Union so much, because we feel that mistresses ought to be co-operating with the servants, helping them to help themselves, and then we shall get a really influential body of public opinion, which will do valuable work in improving servants' conditions."
Henrietta writhed and struggled, and went off on frivolous pretexts, but she could not escape the pamphlet, which was extremely able; so was the author extremely able, but for a complete ignorance of human nature. Henrietta heard all about Socialism, Land Taxes, and Adult Suffrage too, and the more cross she became the more kindly and patiently Agatha shouted, greeting any specially absurd ebullition with imperturbable pleasantness, and "how interesting, I amsoanxious to get exactly at your point of view." That niece was not invited again.
Henrietta often thought with affection and gratitude of the little old aunt, who had died many years back; but, as she would have been the first to own, her old age was not nearly so successful. Her house was not a centre for everybody. She had some elderly ladieswith whom she exchanged visits, but young people disliked her, and children were afraid of her.
Ever since she settled in England, she had made earnest attempts to curb her temper. But the companion of a lifetime is not easily shaken off at fifty-five, and more often than not she was quite unaware of crossness, from which all around were suffering severely. On the very rare occasions that she did realize it, she went back to the self she had been as a child, descended from the pedestal of her age and generation, and said she was sorry.
One day she and Annie had a long serious battle. The question in the first instance was whether Annie had chipped off the nose of the china pug-dog on the mantelpiece, a relic of the old house at Willstead; Henrietta always had a tender feeling for relics. The arguments marshalled by Annie were against Henrietta, but arguments never had much weight with her. Besides, the battle passed on from the definite point of the nose to vague but bitter attacks on character. Henrietta always had in her mind an ideal servant, who accepted scolding not merely with meekness but with gratitude, and was fond of quotingher, to the exasperation of the real servants. After half an hour Annie began to cry noisily, so that Henrietta's words were drowned. The interview came to an end. Annie went downstairs and told Cook, but she wasted few tears or thoughts on the matter, and almost at once they were laughing cheerfully over their young men, as they sat at needlework.
Henrietta did think, fidgeting about the room while she thought, taking things out of their places and putting them where they ought not to be, in a fuss of discomfort. At last she rang the bell.
"The lamp, please, Annie."
"The lamp 'm," said Annie; "but you don't want it for half an hour yet, do you, 'm, it's such a beautiful evening?"
It was impossible ever to quell Annie.
"The lamp, please," repeated Henrietta, "and I should like to—I think you ought to—I feel that in a—what I want you to realize is that you should keep a great watch over your temper. When one comes to my age one sees that there is—and you should not put it off till too late as people sometimes—as I have done."
Annie's sharp ears heard the last little murmur. Henrietta rather hoped they would not, though it was for the sake of the murmur that she had rung the bell.
Annie said "Yes 'm," very pleasantly, and yielded about the lamp. She told cook afterwards, with some amusement, "She's funny, I've always said that, but," she added, "I've known some I should say was funnier."
This opinion may be worth recording, as it was one of the highest tributes to her character Henrietta ever received.
On the whole during those latter years she improved, and in the general reformation of her character she raised the standard of her reading. She confined herself in the mornings and afternoon to mildly scandalous memoirs of Frenchwomen and biographies of Church dignitaries, keeping her costume novels for the evening.
She often saw Evelyn, and they talked of the past, but they never regained the almost heavenly intimacy of that night. They seldom met without some disagreeableness from Henrietta, and she did not like the boys, there was nothing of Evelyn in them, while they for their part could not imagine why their mothercared for their aunt Henrietta. It was a continual struggle for Evelyn not to be impatient with her; much as she longed to, she could not keep on the high plane of devotion, which had brought such happiness to both.
Henriettadied when she was sixty-three. Her father and stepmother were long dead, also her second brother, whom none of the family had seen for years. When her relations were sent for, it was very cold weather in January, and Louie and Minna did not obey the summons. They deplored it continually afterwards, and explained to one another how appalling the wind had been, and what care they had to take for their children's sake, and how Henrietta had frightened them so much the year before by sending for them when there was no need, that they naturally could not be expected to realize that this time it really was important.
William came, looking more benevolent than ever with his very becoming white hair. Henrietta said that she thought it was the last time she should see him, but he assured her it was just the cold which had pulled her down a little, and she would be all right again as soon as thewind changed. "It's wretched, knocks everybody up." He looked so hearty and mundane that it almost seemed, when he was in the room, as if there could not be such a thing as death.
They talked about the drought last summer, and William's son, who was a planter in Ceylon, and the noise of the motor-buses in London, until William said he must go for his train. He was allowing a quarter of an hour too much time, for he was able to stay and talk a little while with the doctor, who called when he was there.
"There isn't any chance, you say."
"No, I am afraid not. Miss Symons' heart has been delicate for some years; it gives her very little strength to stand against this attack."
"Um! I was afraid so," said William, and he was glad to get out of the house, and buy aPall Mall.
The inspector niece came down (uninvited), very energetic, and very kind in using the last few days of her holidays in nursing a disagreeable reactionary relation. She dominated the nurse, who was much meeker than nurses usually are, and quite quelled her poor aunt, too weak to protest even at attacks on the monarchy. But Henrietta was much happier when the niece'sholidays came to an end, and she was left to die quietly and dully with the nurse.
Evelyn was away in Egypt with Herbert for her health, and by a most unfortunate accident she did not get the first telegram announcing Henrietta's dangerous illness. Poor Henrietta asked constantly if there was nothing from her, and as she got weaker, and a little wandering, she kept on crying like a child: "I want Evelyn." They cabled again, and when the answer came, "Starting home at once," it was too late, and Henrietta was not sufficiently herself to understand it.
As soon as Evelyn got home, she went to Bath. The little house was still as it was, but for some legacies which a careful nephew had already abstracted. But the place of the dead seemed to have been filled even more quickly than usual. Annie, as she said, had only waited "till the pore old lady was taken" to marry comfortably with a saddler, and the parlourmaid was already established in a very smart town situation. There was an unknown caretaker to look after the house, which was to let. Evelyn saw the doctor and the clergyman, who both spoke kindly of Miss Symons. "We shall miss your sister very much," said Mr.Vaughan, "she was always doing kind things,"—and he did miss her to a certain extent, but there is a ceaseless supply of generous, touchy incapable old ladies in England, and he could not be expected to miss her very much. Evelyn went to see the nurse, and could hear from her more of what she wanted. The nurse was a kind, sweet girl, the centre of an affectionate family, and engaged to a devoted young clerk.
"Oh, Mrs. Ferrers, if only you could have come back in time," she said, sobbing, "or if you could have written. Shedidwant you so; every time there was a ring it was, 'Is that from her?' and I heard her say to herself: 'I thought she would besureto come.' I simply had to go out in the passage, I couldn't keep back my tears, and of course one must always be bright before a patient; it is so bad for them if one isn't. Some nieces and nephews came, and one of them stayed several days, and two brothers, I think; and there were several members of the family there for the funeral, and she had some simply lovely wreaths, and the church was nice and full, numbers of her poor people were there," brought there, as surely the kind nurse knew, not from love ofHenrietta, but from love of funerals, "but when your wire did come I cried for joy, though we couldn't make her take it in, poor dear; still it seemed as if someone really cared for her. Oh, she looked so lovely and peaceful at the end, all the trouble gone."
This was a comforting deception, which the nurse thought it justifiable to practise on relations, for in fact death had not changed Henrietta; there had been no transfiguration to beauty and nobility, she looked what she had been in life—insignificant, feeble, and unhappy.
"Miss Symons asked me to give you this box," said the nurse. "She made me promise I would give it you over and over again."
Evelyn found it was an inlaid sandalwood box, which she had sent from India as a present from the first baby. In it she found Herbert's letter announcing the death of little Madeline, hers and the other two babies' photographs, and a sheet of notepaper, tied with blue ribbon. On it was written, "I can't tell you how much good you have done me, I seem to have been living for this for fifteen years.Evelyn, September 23, 1890." As she read it, Evelyn remembered, what she had long forgotten, that this was what she had once said to Henrietta.
When she walked to the hotel, it was a bright, sunny afternoon, and snow was on the ground. She went to her room to take off her things, but she stood instead at the window, too intent on what she had heard to be capable of anything. Her heart was almost bursting to think that Henrietta should have treasured all these years the little love she had given her, crumbs, which she had as it were left over from her husband and boys, love not even for Henrietta's own sake, but for the sake of the dead children. She with all the riches of love poured on her, and Henrietta with so little. "I was cold, selfish, self-absorbed, I didn't think of her, I forgot her, I criticized her; it was all my fault."
But even at this moment of exaltation Evelyn realized that it was not her fault, but Henrietta's own; that it was because she was so unlovable that she was so little loved.
"But if she had had the chance she wouldn't have been unlovable. She was capable of greater love than any of us, and she never had the chance. If there is any justice and mercy in the world how can they allow a poor, weak human creature to have so few opportunities, such hard temptations, and when it yields totemptation to suffer so cruelly? And now I am to go back, and be happy with Herbert and the boys, and to feel quite truly that I did everything I could,I can't bear it."
She was so much filled with her thoughts that she had not observed the flight of time. She looked up, and was suddenly aware that the night had come, and that the sky was shining with innumerable stars. At the same moment she felt inextricably mingled with the stars, a rush of the most exquisite sensation, emotion, replenishment she had ever known. She felt through every fibre of her being that it was all perfectly well with Henrietta, and that the bitterness, aimlessness, and emptiness of her life was made up to her. This conviction was a thousand times more real to her than the room in which she was standing, more real than the stars, more real than herself. Tears of delight came raining down her cheeks, and she found that she was saying over and over again, "Darling, I am so glad"; poor childish words, but no more inadequate than the noblest in the language to express her unspeakable comfort, beyond all utterance, even beyond thought. How often she said these words, or how long this bliss lasted she could not tell.
A strange dream-like remembrance of itstayed with her for some days. She told her husband, and he said, "I am very glad of anything that can be a comfort to you, dearest;" but he looked at her anxiously, and thought it was a sign that she was to be ill again. However, she continued well and strong. She told no one else, but from henceforth she was perfectly happy about Henrietta.
Transcriber's Note:
Changes to the original have been made as follows: