Henrietta would have liked to confide her troubles, but as she grew older she had become a great deal more reserved, and also these troubles she was ashamed to speak of. To think that she had made her own sister, ill and miserable as she was, more ill and more miserable, she could not forgive herself; she was even harder on herself than Herbert had been.

As Mr. Wharton had said, it was useless engaging in this arduous work when her heart was elsewhere. When her six months of trial came to an end, it was clear that the only thing for her was to go. No one could pretend they were sorry, and as everyone imagined she was glad, there seemed no reason to disguise their feelings. They would have been surprised if they had known her thoughts as she sat at the evening service on her last Sunday. "Whatever I do, I fail; what is the use of my living? Why was I born?"

She said to Mr. Wharton in her farewell interview: "I know I have been very stupid at learning what was to be done, and I have not been willing to take advice. Now I look back, I see the mistakes I have made, and I have done harm instead of good. I want to give you"—she named a large sum considering the size of her income—"to spend as you think right, I hope that may help to make amends. I am very sorry."

He heard a quiver in her voice, and the dislike and irritation he had felt all the six months faded away.

"This is much too generous of you," he stammered. "It is my fault, all my fault. I have been so irritable, I haven't made allowances. My wife tells me of it constantly. I wish you would forgive me and give us another chance. Stay six months longer."

His awkwardness and distress almost disarmed her, but she had felt his snubs, and at nearly forty she was not going to be encouraged like a child. So that though for many reasons she longed to stay, she answered: "Thank you, it was a purely temporary arrangement; I have other plans."

As she walked home she wondered what the other plans were.

When in doubt, go abroad. She went abroad again for three months. Her companion was picked up from nowhere in particular, an odd woman like herself.

They went to Italy. Neither of them cared in the smallest degree for sculpture, architecture, painting, archaeology, poetry, history, politics, scenery, languages, or foreigners. These last Henrietta regarded as inferior Anglo-Indians regard natives, referring to them always as "those wretches."

Like most women she loved certain aspects in her garden at home, which were connected with incidents in her life. There was a path bordered by roses, along which they had walked when Evelyn announced her engagement, and a special old apple-tree reminded her of the night her mother died. But to go and admire what Baedeker called a magnificent coup d'oeil was no sort of pleasure to her.

However, she and Miss Gurney had one unending amusement, which Italy is peculiarly able to supply. They could make short visits to different towns, and fit sights into their days, as one fits pieces into a puzzle. Henrietta found this sport most satisfying.



CHAPTER VIII

Just as they were getting tired of tables d'hote dinners, there came to their hotel an enthusiast for learning. It was before the days of women's colleges; they were established, but frequented only by pioneers, in whose ranks no Henriettas are to be found. But courses of lectures were so ordinary that not even the most timid could look askance at them. As philanthropy had failed, and no one could pretend that art could be a resource for Henrietta,—her career of sketches and two part-songs had been phenomenally short (invaluable as it has proved itself for many Englishwomen suffering from her complaint)—everything pointed to study as the next solution on the list.

Study. Henrietta had not read a book which required any mental exertion since her dozen chapters of "I Promessi Sposi," fifteen years ago. Still, the lectures sounded pleasant to her; they were a novelty, they were—she could not think of anything else they were—a novelty must be their claim to distinction.

She and the travelling friend found a boarding-house near the lecture-room. London and the lodgings both looked dismal after the brightness of abroad, but they were excited at the prospect of establishing themselves on their own account. It was enterprising, but not too enterprising.

Henrietta found a band of enthusiasts at the lecture; it seemed her fate to run up against enthusiasm she could not share. Young ladies, middle-aged ladies, even old ladies, all listening spellbound—at least if not absolutely spellbound, spellbound compared to Henrietta—to an elderly gentleman discoursing on Aristotle. For most of them Aristotle, and the satisfaction of using their minds were sufficient, but a little knot of middle-aged women in the front, with hair inclined to be short, and eyes bursting with intelligence, used learning as a symbol of emancipation. Lectures were their vote. Now they would be in prison.

Henrietta listened for five minutes, then suddenly her thoughts darted to her portmanteau: she had lost the key at Dieppe. They went on to the incivility at the Custom-house, the incivility of the waiter at Bale, the incivility of the gardener at her old home, the geranium bed in the garden—would her stepmother attend to it?—her father, was his eyesight really failing? She came back with a jump to find that the lecture had moved on several pages. She listened with fair success for another five minutes, then her mind wandered to her landlady at the lodgings; was she perfectly honest, did her expression inspire confidence? There was that pearl brooch Louie had given her; it was Louie's birthday to-morrow, she must write, and hear also how Tom was getting on in this his second term at school, she must send him a hamper. She had settled the contents of the hamper when she found that someone was speaking to her. The lecturer was asking whether she felt she would care to write a paper. He hoped as many ladies as possible would make an attempt at the papers; it would be a great pleasure and interest to him to look through them, etc.

On the way back she found Miss Gurney entranced with everything; she seemed to have picked up a great deal more than Henrietta. They went at once to a library and a bookshop to get what they had been advised to read, and Miss Gurney bought reams of paper. She was hard at work the whole evening. Henrietta had one of the books open before her, but she found the same difficulty in concentrating herself that she had done at the lecture. Miss Gurney was rapidly filling an exercise book with an abstract, and was keeping up a conversation as well.

"Ah that was the piece I couldn't quite understand this morning. Yes I see, now it is quite clear. Look, Miss Symons. Oh, I shall learn Greek, I certainly shall, as he said, it will make it twenty times more interesting."

What were they all so excited about? Henrietta had never cared about abstract questions, and she could not see that there was any object in discovering what the ancient Greeks thought about them more than two thousand years ago. The evening before, she and Miss Gurney had had an interesting conversation on the weekly averages of house-books. Then she felt comfortable and on the solid earth. Why then, was she attending lectures on Aristotle? Well, because Miss Gurney had a friend whose cousin had married the lecturer, Professor Amery, and in the difficult problem of choosing a subject, when there was nothing she really cared to know about, this was as good a reason as any other.

Then Henrietta remembered how she and Emily Mence years ago at school, had argued the whole of Saturday afternoon about Mary Queen of Scots, and had not been on speaking terms the following day, because Emily had called Mary frivolous. Had she ever really been that queer little girl? Still she was anxious to give the lecturer a chance, most anxious, for she had already had to suffer from Minna and Louie's sympathy that the parish work was a failure. She read three chapters and fell asleep in the middle of the fourth, and went to bed half an hour earlier than usual. Next morning she could not remember a word of what she had read, but for two dates and one sentence, which remained in her head. "Even now, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, in spite of an unparalleled advance in our knowledge of the natural sciences, the world has not yet produced a mind, which can equal that of Aristotle in its astounding versatility and profundity of learning." She determined to persevere, but was it her subconscious self which discovered a vast arrear of letters which it was incumbent on her to answer before she thought of anything else?

After the lecture there was a class at which everyone talked. Even the dear old lady next to Henrietta was asking a quavering question. Yes, a little delicate old lady had energy to keep the current of the lecture in her head. She said that Aristotle's problem whether it was possible for slaves to have ordinary virtues, made her think of the difference in the Christian teaching of St. Paul's epistles. Had any of the other Greek philosophers been more humane in their views on slavery? Then another voice struck in, and compared the ancient idea of slavery with the slave code of the United States. The voice was rather strident, but not unpleasant. It had a great deal to say, and for some minutes seemed likely to take the lecture altogether from the mouth of the lecturer. Henrietta looked in its direction, and saw a small apple-cheeked elderly lady. The voice and the face both set her thinking, and by the end of the lecture she was certain that the elderly lady was Miss Arundel. She spoke, and when Miss Arundel had recollected who she was (it took a little time), Henrietta received a most cordial invitation to tea.

Miss Arundel lived with a niece in a couple of rooms quite close to Henrietta. Mrs. Marston was dead, and Miss Arundel had retired from the school with just enough to live in decent comfort.

"So now, after teaching all my life, I am giving myself the treat of learning, and I can't tell you how I am enjoying it, Miss Symons. Ada and I both like Professor Amery so much." And she prosed on about the lecture and the books she was reading, and did not much care to talk over the old times, which were still very dear to Henrietta. It amazed Henrietta to think that she had once blushed and trembled at the look of this fussy, garrulous little governess.

She might be something of a bore, but there was no question of her happiness, her interest in life. She had been getting up at six the last three mornings that she might finish a book, a large book in two volumes with close print, that had to be returned to the library. Henrietta could imagine nothing in the world for which she would get up at six o'clock. Then her thoughts went like lightning to the morning when the telegram had come telling of little Madeline's death. The wound she had thought healed burst out afresh; for a few seconds she felt as if she could hardly breathe. Get up at six o'clock, of course she would have forfeited her sleep with joy, night after night. In the midst of envy, she felt something like contempt for Miss Arundel as a child running after shadows.

On her way home, she compared her past with Miss Arundel's. Miss Arundel could look back on busy, successful, happy years. Her room was filled with tributes from old pupils, they were continually writing to her and coming to see her, that Henrietta knew; she did not know how often they had thanked her, and told her what they owed her.

Then she envied Miss Arundel's powers of mind. After forty years of unceasing and exhausting work she seemed as fresh as a schoolgirl, and far more capable of learning, while Henrietta after twenty years of rest, had not merely lost all the qualities she had had as a child, but had gained none from age and experience to take their place. The realization of this fact startled and humiliated her. If her powers had already declined at forty, what was to happen in the twenty years of life that she might reasonably count upon as still before her?

She thought of Miss Arundel's words: "Etta Symons is a girl with possibilities; I shall be interested to see how she will turn out." Miss Arundel had long forgotten them, and now looked on Henrietta simply as a co-member of the lectures, but she said to her niece after Henrietta had been to tea, "What a very no-how person Miss Symons is; I should like to shake her."

Henrietta tried her hardest to work at the lectures, to recover if possible what she had lost, but it was no use. A person of more character and determination might have succeeded, in spite of the long years of mental self-indulgence, so might a person more ready to take advice. But at forty, as I have said, she felt she was beyond advice, so she would not notice Miss Gurney's hints. She chose to despise her numberings and brackets, though she was half-envious of them. And, however contemptible these aids may be to a real student, they were evidently the one hope for Henrietta's foggy mind.

She began a paper on the sly, and with much sweat of brow the following sentence emerged: "There are a number of celebrated writers in ancient Greece, and among the number we may notice Aristotle, who wrote a number of celebrated books, among which two called the 'Ethics' and 'Republic' are very celebrated. He also wrote many other works, but none are so celebrated as the two above mentioned." She had not written a paper for twenty-three years, and she felt as helpless as if she were trying to express herself in French. Her essays had been well thought of at school.

As she was floundering along, up came Miss Gurney and looked over her shoulder. "Oh Miss Symons, I should have a margin if I were you; I know Professor Amery likes a margin for the corrections, he said so himself. Oh, and you don't mind my saying so, but Aristotle did not write a republic. Shall I just scratch that out? That was Plato. And I should have a new paragraph there; and I always find, I don't know if you will, that it makes it easier to underline some of the words."

"I am not at all certain that I am going to write a paper," said Henrietta. "I just wrote a few notes down to amuse myself."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear. Well, if you should think of doing the paper, you must read this article, it's such a help, it really puts all one wants to say."

"Oh no, I shouldn't care to read that at all."

"Oh do. Let me put it here, and then you can look at it."

"No, thank you."

Miss Gurney went out, and Henrietta sat at her paper for two hours and a half. It was so bad, so unintelligible, that she actually cried over it, and when she heard Miss Gurney's step, she carried it off to her bedroom and locked the door. Miss Gurney was after her in an instant.

"How are you getting on with your paper, dear? Can I be of any help?"

She did finish it at last, and gave it to Mr. Amery. She knew it was bad, but she was too ignorant to know quite how bad. Professor Amery, with the extreme courtesy of elderly gentlemen, wrote: "I think there are one or two points which I have not made quite clear. Would you care to talk them over with me after the class?" But this offer was so alarming that Henrietta "cut" her lectures for two weeks.

There would have been more chance for her, if only she could have become in the least interested. She tried the French Revolution next term for a change, but liked it no better than Aristotle. Intellectual life was dead and buried in her long ago. What would have really suited her best in the present circumstances would have been shorthand and type-writing, but at that time no such occupation was open to her.

She would perhaps have jogged on indefinitely at the lectures, if Miss Gurney, whose great interest was novelty and change, and whose abstracts of learned books had lately become much less voluminous, had not jumped at a suggestion to take a delicate niece abroad, and proposed that Henrietta should come too. So Henrietta consented, and with little regret they gave up the lodgings, and said good-bye to learning.



CHAPTER IX

Henrietta paid her father a visit before they started abroad. The promise of the first days was amply fulfilled; the whole house was happy, and Henrietta was touched by the warmth of her welcome. After the squalor of lodgings home was pleasant, and her father's invitation was cordial: "Henrietta, why don't you stay with us? Mildred," with a fond look at his wife, "never will allow your room to be used; it's always ready waiting for you."

It was a temptation to Henrietta, but she refused partly from pride, from a feeling that she ought not to disturb the present comfort, but also because it was getting a principle with her, as apparently with many middle-aged Englishwoman, that she must always be going abroad. Yet she knew that Miss Gurney did not particularly want to have her, and had invited her more from laziness than from anything else.

They went abroad—it was to the Italian Lakes—and a life of sitting in the sun, walking up and down promenades, short drives, and making and unmaking of desultory friendships began. They grumbled a good deal to third parties, but still they were happy enough, according to their low standard of happiness.

As they were abroad for an indefinite period, there was none of the feeling of rush, which they had enjoyed so much before, but sometimes they played the Italian game, and had packed-in days; called, 6.45; coffee, 7.30; train, 8.21; arrive at destination, 11.23; go to Croce d'Oro for coffee, visit churches of Santa Maria and San Giovanni, and museum: table d'hote luncheon, 1.30; drive to Roman remains, back to Croce d'Oro for tea; separate for shopping and meet at station, 5.20, for train, 5.30; back for special table d'hote kept for them in the salle a manger. Henrietta would settle it all with Baedeker and the railway guide the night before, and if she had felt apprehension at her failing powers in history, her grasp of this kind of day could not have been bettered. Everything was seen and everything was timed, and the only person who might have something to complain of, was the delicate niece, who went through her treat too exhausted to open her mouth, counting the hours when she might go to her bed in peace.

At last Miss Gurney and the niece decided to return to England. Henrietta found some Americans who wanted to stay at Montreux, and they asked her to join them. After Montreux came Chamounix, and in the autumn Miss Gurney's niece came out again, and she and Henrietta stayed at Como, and then at Mentone till April. Then came Switzerland again. Then Henrietta went to England for a round of visits, and by the end of them she was longing to be back abroad. She said that England was depressing, and gave her rheumatism, and that she (in the best of health and prime of life) could not face an English winter. The fact was she did not care for the sharing of other people's lives which is expected from a visitor, and her long sojourn in hotels with no one but herself to consider, had made her less easy to live with. So without exactly knowing how, she drifted into spending almost all her time abroad. Every other year she came back for visits in the summer, but in the spring, autumn, and winter she wandered from one cheap pension to another in Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, or Switzerland.

If she had led a half-occupied life as keeper of her father's house, she now learnt the art of getting through a day in which she did absolutely nothing. When she became accustomed to it, the very smallest service required of her was regarded as a cross. Sometimes a relation would commission her to buy something abroad, and then the salle a manger would resound with wails, because she must go round the corner, select an article, and give orders to the shopman to despatch it to England. The friends who asked her to engage rooms for them at an hotel, had cause to rue their request; they never heard the end of it.

Many lonely women receive great solace from their church, and give solace in return. Where would the church and the poor be without them? But Henrietta was never long enough in her caravanserais to become attached to the services of the chaplains in the salle a manger, and she soon gave up churchgoing. At first she spent a great deal of time inventing reasons to keep her conscience quiet, such as that it had rained in the night and therefore might rain again, or that she did not approve of chanting Amen, but later she did not see why there should be a reason, and left her conscious to its remorse.

Bad health is another resource for unoccupied women, and it certainly occurred to her as an occupation, but she realized that it and roving cannot be combined, and of the two she preferred roving.

Her chief pastime was to skim through novels, any novels that could be found, costume novels of English history by preference. This was how her bent for learning satisfied itself. She never remembered the author, or title, or anything of what she read, but at the same time she was obsessed with the idea that she must always have something new, and would constantly accuse her friends, or the library, of deceiving her with books she had read before. "If you can't remember, what does it matter?" her dreadfully reasonable nieces would exclaim, not realizing that her sole interest in the novels was the collector's interest of seeing how many new ones she could find.

A second pastime was her patience, that bond which knits together our occidental civilization. She was always learning new patiences, and always mixing them up with one another. This was another source of annoyance to efficient nieces. "But that is not demon, Aunt Etta," they would explain, playing patience severely from a sense of duty. She cheated so persistently that there was no room for skill. "I can't conceive why you play," they said crossly. But the reason was perfectly clear. It stared one in the face. During the patience the clock had moved from ten minutes past eight to twenty-five minutes to ten.

Henrietta also killed time now and then with sights; not churches or old pictures, of course she never went near masterpieces now she had ample leisure for seeing them, but Easter services, royal birthday processions, or battles of flowers. As she seldom broke her routine of idleness, these occasions excited her, not with pleasurable anticipation, but with a nervous fluster that she might somehow miss something; and the concierge, the porter, Madame, and the head-waiter, would all be flying about the hotel half an hour before it was necessary for her to start, sent on some perfectly useless errand connected with her outing. If it rained, if something went wrong, how she grumbled. And when she did see her show, it gave her very little pleasure. She had not in the least a child's mind; she was not pleased by small events, yet she grasped desperately after them, with an absurd, hazy idea that she was defrauded of her rights, if she did not see them.

Another interest was an enormous collection of photographs of places, which she had not cared for at the time, and could not in the least remember; another her address-book of pensions and hotels, to which she was always adding new volumes; above all, grumbling. Favourite subjects were her kettle and her methylated spirits, whether the hotel would allow her to take up milk and sugar from breakfast, whether the chambermaid abstracted the biscuits she brought from dessert overnight. Everyone who came in contact with Miss Symons found they were made to listen to an endless story of a certain Elise who had stolen the biscuits and substituted other ones that were quite four days old, and of Elise's brazen behaviour when charged with the offence.

Her standard of comfort at a hotel was so impossible that she became an object of terror and dislike to the waiters and chambermaids. She was punctual in payment, but very grasping, and wrung many concessions from the hotels by a persistence which no men and few women would have had the courage to display. She was always seeking the ideal hotel, and for this reason she was always wandering, and never was long enough in one place to strike any roots and create a feeling of home. This life corroded her character. She became more bad-tempered and nagging, always up in arms, scenting out liberties, and thinking she was taken advantage of. She was not a character which does well by itself, and under a domineering manner she concealed her weakness, vacillation, and timidity. She was divorced from every duty, every responsibility, every natural tie, with no outlet for her interest or her sympathy. It seems inconceivable that she should willingly have led such an existence. She was however, much more satisfied with herself and with things in general, than she had formerly been. She did not have stormy repentances or outbursts against her lot; she no longer desired what was unattainable. If she did not have a particularly high standard of happiness or of character, neither, in her opinion, had the rest of the world. Not that she thought much of these things. Over-thinking and over-longing had caused her much misery in early life, and she shrank from opening all those wounds again. She faced facts as little as she could. She lived from day to day, and her inner self was really very much what her outer self seemed, absorbed in the very small round of events which concerned her. The days passed, the months passed, the years passed. She saw them go unregretted, and when they were gone, she did not remember them. Nothing had happened in them, bad or good, to mark their course.

"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form, in moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!"



CHAPTER X

It has 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'hote, 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 peculiar man. 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 fortune was 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, he said—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. The visits 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, molto antiquo."

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-cheeked images 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 the part 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 meet her again 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 darkened by the verandah outside. Madame brought in yesterday's Tribuna, 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 bother to 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 the twentieth 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.



CHAPTER XI

Henrietta had 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 a pension habituee the whole arrangement of 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 would not be 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 you to 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.



CHAPTER XII

And now 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 great flair for 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 absorbed in 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 that he 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 letter from 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's admiration 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 a danger 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 know there 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. She would go 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 piece out 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 am so anxious 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 ladies with 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 quoting her, 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 mother cared 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.



CHAPTER XIII

Henrietta died 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 the wind 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 a Pall 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's holidays 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. She did want 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 be sure to 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 of Henrietta, 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 to temptation 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 it stayed 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: Page 42 accumalation of years changed to accumulation Page 48 teazing of a kind changed to teasing Page 60 two much absorbed changed to too Page 64 then he felt prepared changed to than Page 70 inacessible foreign place changed to inaccessible

THE END