The Misses Mallett | Page 7

Miss
Mallett's pride, and the pity that one so young should sometimes look
so old.
And Rose was wishing that the spring would last for ever, the spring
with its promise of excitement and adventure which would not be
fulfilled, though one was willingly deceived into believing that it would.
Yet she had youth's happy faith in accident: something breathless and
terrific would sweep her, as on the winds of storm, out of this peaceful,
gracious life, this place where feudalism still survived, where men
touched their hats to her as her due. And it was her due! She raised her
head and gave her pale profile to the houses on one side, the trees and
the open spaces of green on the other. And not because she was a
Mallett though it was a name honoured in Radstowe, but because she
was herself. Hats would always be touched to her, and it was the
touchers who would feel themselves complimented in the act. She
knew that, but the knowledge was not much to her; she wished she
could offer homage for a change, and the colossal figure of her
imagination loomed up again; a rough man, perhaps; yes, he might be
rough if he were also great; rough and the scandal of her stepsisters!
As she rode under the flowering trees to the stable where she kept her

horse, she wondered whether she should tell her stepsisters of Francis
Sales's proposal, but she knew she would not do so. She seldom told
them anything they did not know already. They would think it a
reasonable match; they might urge her acceptance; they were anxious
for her to marry, but Caroline, at least, was proud of the inherent
Mallett distaste for the marriage state. 'We're all flirts,' she would say
for the thousandth time. 'We can't settle down, not one of us,' and
holding up a thumb and forefinger and pinching them together, she
would add, 'We like to hold men's hearts like that--and let them go!' It
was great nonsense, Rose thought, but it had the necessary spice of
truth. The Malletts were not easily pleased, and they were not good
givers of anything except gold, the easiest thing to give. Rose wished
she could give the difficult things--love, devotion, and self-sacrifice;
but she could not, or perhaps she had no opportunity. She was fond of
her stepsisters, but her most conscious affection was the one she felt for
her horse.
She left him at the stable and, fastening up her riding-skirt, she walked
slowly home. She had not far to go. A steep street, where
narrow-fronted old houses informed the public that apartments were to
be let within, brought her to the broad space of grass and trees called
The Green, which she had just passed on her horse. Straight ahead of
her was the wide street flanked by houses of which her home was
one--a low white building hemmed in on each side by another and with
a small walled garden in front of it; not a large house, but one full of
character and of quiet self-assurance. Malletts had lived in it for several
generations, long before the opposite houses were built, long before the
road had, lower down, degenerated into a region of shops. These
houses, all rechristened in a day of enthusiasm, Nelson Lodge, with
Trafalgar House, taller, bigger, but not so white, on one side of it, and
Hardy Cottage, somewhat smaller, on the other, had faced open
meadows in General Mallett's boyhood. Round the corner, facing The
Green, were a few contemporaries, and they all had a slight look of
disdain for the later comers, yet no single house was flagrantly new.
There was not a villa in sight and on The Green two old stone
monuments, to long-dead and long-forgotten warriors, kept company
with the old trees under which children were now playing, while nurses
wheeled perambulators on the bisecting paths. The Green itself sloped

upwards until it became a flat-topped hill, once a British or a Roman
camp, and thence the river could be seen between its rocky cliffs and
the woods Rose had lately skirted clothing the farther side in every
shade of green.
She lingered for a moment to watch the children playing, the
nursemaids slowly pushing, the elms opening their crumpled leaves
like babies' hands. She had a momentary desire to stay, to wander
round the hill and look with untired eyes at the familiar scene; but she
passed on under the tyranny of tea. The Malletts were always in time
for meals and the meals were exquisite, like the polish on the old brass
door-knocker, like the furniture in the white panelled hall, like the
beautiful old mahogany in the drawing-room, the old china, the glass
bowls full