'They say Francis Sales is bringing home a wife.'

'Really?' Rose said, taking toast.

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

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

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

'Rose would,' Sophia sighed.

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

'We shall know more when John Gibbs brings the afternoon milk,'

Caroline said.

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

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

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

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

'Me?' asked Caroline.

'No, no, I was thinking of Rose.'

'Nonsense!' Caroline said, 'we're all going'; and Rose rea.s.sured Sophia with perfect truth, 'I have been longing to see her for weeks.'

-- 3

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

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

'I'm glad I look so interesting,' Rose murmured.

'Oh, interesting, always. Yes.'

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

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

'With a high wall all round it,' Rose suggested.

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

'Not a sign of it,' Caroline a.s.sured her. 'Now I wonder what we are going to find.'

They found the drawing-room empty and untouched. On the pale walls the water-colours were still hanging, the floral carpet still covered the floor, the faded chintzes had not been removed, and the light came clearly through the long windows with their pale primrose curtains. In the middle of the room was the circular settee to seat four persons, back to back, with a little woolwork stool set for each pair of feet.

There were no flowers in the room, and they were not needed, for the room itself was like some pale, scentless and old-fashioned bloom.

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

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

But as she watched Mrs. Sales presiding over the teacups, her scared eyes moving swiftly from the parlourmaid, entering with cakes, to Caroline, and from Caroline to Sophia, and then with added shyness to the woman nearest her own age, Rose found her opinion changing. Mrs.

Francis Sales was timid, but she was not weak; the fair fluffiness of her exterior was deceptive; and while Rose made this discovery and now and then dropped a quiet word into the chatter of the others, she was listening for Francis. He had been with his wife in the garden, but he was some time in following her, and Rose knew that Mrs. Sales was listening, too. She wondered whose ear first caught the sound of his feet on the matted pa.s.sage; she felt an absurd inward tremor and, looking at Mrs. Sales, she saw that her pretty pink colour had deepened and her blue eyes were bright, like flowers. She was certainly charming in her simple frock, but her unsuitable shoes with very high heels and sparkling buckles hurt Rose's eye as much as the voice, also high and slightly grating, hurt her ear, and this voice sharpened nervously as it said, 'Oh, here is Francis coming.'

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

For an instant he looked at Rose before he greeted the elder ladies, and then, as Rose let her hand touch his and pleasantly said, 'How are you?' she experienced a faint, almost physical shock. He was different after all, and now she did not know whether to be glad or sorry.

Unchanged, she need not have given him another thought; subtly altered, she was bound to probe into the how and why. He sat beside her on the old-fashioned couch with a curled head, and his thirteen stone descending heavily on the springs sent up her light weight with a perceptible jerk.

'Clumsy boy!' Mrs. Sales exclaimed playfully.

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

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

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

She rose, saying, 'May I look out of the window? I always liked this view of the garden.' And having gazed out and made the necessary remarks, she sat down, separated from him by the width of the room and with her back to the light, a strategical position she ought to have taken up before. But here she was at the disadvantage of facing him and a scrutiny of which she had not thought him capable. With his legs stretched out, his hands in his pockets, his eyes apparently half shut but unquestionably fixed on her, he was really behaving rather badly.

She had never been stared at like this before and she told herself that under the shelter of his marriage he had grown daring, if not insolent; but at the same time she knew she was not telling herself the truth: he was simply in the position of a thirsty man who has at last found a stream. It appeared, then, that his wife did not sufficiently quench his thirst.

Rose carefully did not look his way, but she experienced an altogether new excitement, the very ancient one of desiring to taste forbidden fruit simply because it was forbidden; this particular fruit, as such, had no special charm; but she was born a Mallett and the half-sister of Reginald. She had, however, as he had not, a substantial basis of personal pride and a love of beauty which was at least as effectual as a moral principle and she had not Francis's excuse for his behaviour.

She believed he did not know what he was doing; but she was entirely clear-sighted as to herself and she refused to encourage the silent intercourse which had established itself between them.

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

'It's finished,' Caroline said. 'Don't tell your husband, at least till we have gone--and we ought to go at once.'

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

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

'Come and look at the pigsties,' Francis said to Rose, but, a.s.suring him she had grown too old for pigs, she followed the rest.

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

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

'I should, very much,' Rose said.

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