<h2><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></SPAN></span><SPAN name="ix" id="ix"></SPAN>CHAPTER IX</h2>
<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">Henrietta</span> 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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></SPAN></span>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.</p>
<p>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: <em>table d'hôte</em> 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 <em>table d'hôte</em> kept for them in the
<em>salle à manger</em>. 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></SPAN></span> 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.</p>
<p>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 <em>pension</em><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></SPAN></span> to another in
Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, or Switzerland.</p>
<p>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 <em>salle à manger</em>
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.</p>
<p>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 <em>salle à manger</em>, 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></SPAN></span> chanting Amen, but later she did not see why there should be
a reason, and left her conscious to its remorse.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></SPAN></span> 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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></SPAN></span> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></SPAN></span> 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></SPAN></span> 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.</p>
<p>"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!"</p>
<hr />
<h2><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></SPAN></span><SPAN name="x" id="x"></SPAN>CHAPTER X</h2>
<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">It</span> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></SPAN></span>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></SPAN></span> 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."</p>
<p>Henrietta realized that this was a warning.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></SPAN></span> 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, <em>he</em> said—given, others said—over
three hundred pounds.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></SPAN></span> and continued to send him supplies from
time to time.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Sometimes Evelyn and her husband and boys came out to stay with
Henrietta. The<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></SPAN></span> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>They reached the church where the festa was to take place. It was
sleeping peacefully,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></SPAN></span> 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.</p>
<p>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, <em>molto</em>
antiquo."</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></SPAN></span> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>They managed to construct a sentence for the priest, who was standing
nodding by them: "Are there any pretty walks in the neighbourhood?"</p>
<p>Smiling genially, he pointed to an answer which the phrase-book
translated: "The landscape presents a grandiose panorama."</p>
<p>Evelyn gave the priest a contribution to his mission church. He was
overwhelmed with surprise and pleasure at this good action on the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></SPAN></span> 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 <em>her</em> again either in heaven
or on earth. After many affectionate bows, he said good-bye.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>After lunch, which they prolonged to its farthest limit, there was
nothing for it but the salon, a small room, with its window darkened<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></SPAN></span> by
the verandah outside. Madame brought in yesterday's <em>Tribuna</em>, 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:</p>
<p>"I don't know why it seems impossible for you to talk to Evelyn with
ordinary civility, Henrietta."</p>
<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></SPAN></span> to be as polite as men are
to one another; life would be much too much of a burden!"</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"Poor Etta!" said Minna; "she is such an interminable talker, it does
worry Arthur so. She means very well; we all know that."</p>
<p>Minna's children were very much of the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></SPAN></span> 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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr />
<h2><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></SPAN></span><SPAN name="xi" id="xi"></SPAN>CHAPTER XI</h2>
<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">Henrietta</span> had been fourteen years abroad, when she came to pay her
biennial visit to Evelyn.</p>
<p>"Who do you think has come to live here, Henrietta?" said Evelyn, as
they sat talking the first evening. "Ellen."</p>
<p>"Ellen?"</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></SPAN></span>"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."</p>
<p>Neither sister found it easy to speak, but Ellen wanted very little
encouragement.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></SPAN></span>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.</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"Oh, nothing in this life goes by deserts."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"Oh, Etta, what you were to me then!"</p>
<p>Henrietta took Evelyn's hand and squeezed it convulsively. When she
could speak, she said: "Evelyn, do you ever think of our children?"</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></SPAN></span>"Think of them—of course I do. Do you, Etta?"</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"I thought you'd forgotten them."</p>
<p>"I thought you had, Etta, and I couldn't help feeling it."</p>
<p>"Herbert asked me never to speak about them to you."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></SPAN></span>"Do you feel that you could tell me about them?"</p>
<p>"Yes, I should like to."</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></SPAN></span>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></SPAN></span> So she refused,
and even in her fervour of love for Henrietta, Evelyn could not help
realizing it was best that she should.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>As a <em>pension habituée</em> the whole arrangement<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></SPAN></span> 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.</p>
<p>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 <em>not</em> 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></SPAN></span> to let me decide about my own
house by myself." They had examined nine houses that day, and were both
almost weeping with exhaustion.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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