The Third Miss Symons Part 7

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 ill.u.s.trated 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 grat.i.tude, 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 b.u.t.t.

"Oh, it's Aunt Etta's year; it really is rather a f.a.g 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 d.i.c.kie died, you went all the way to Willstead by yourself and bought a new canary, so that she might never know her d.i.c.kie 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.