The Misses Mallett

A Bridge Dividing

E. H. Young

• Publisher: Read & Co. Classics
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781406794847
• eBook ISBN: 9781447488132
• Subtopic: Women in Fiction

"The Misses Mallett - A Bridge Dividing" is a 1922 novel by E. H. Young. Set in Bristol, England, the story revolves around Rose Mallett and her half sisters Sophia and Caroline, who live ostensibly unremarkable lives in Upper Radstowe. However, Rose is engaged in a secret love affair with an unavailable man, and the unexpected entrance of an orphaned niece into their lives threatens to upset the balance she has so deftly tried to maintain. Emily Hilda Daniell (1880–1949) was an English children's writer, novelist, mountaineer, and advocate for female suffrage who wrote under the pen name E. H. Young. Despite being almost completely unheard of now, Daniell was a celebrated author who produced numerous best sellers during her time. Other works by this author include: "Corn of Wheat" (1910) and "Moor Fires" (1916). Read & Co. Books is republishing this classic novel now in a new edition complete with a new specially-commissioned biography of the author.

BOOK III

ROSE AND HENRIETTA

§ 1

Early one October afternoon, Rose Mallett rode to Sales Hall. She went through a world of brown and gold and blue, but she was hardly conscious of beauty, and the air, which was soft, yet keen, and exciting to her horse, had no inspiriting effect on her. She felt old, incased in a sort of mental weariness which was like armour against emotion. She knew that the spirit of the country, at once gentle and wild, furtive and bold, was trying to reach her in every scent and sound: in the smell of earth, of fruit, of burning wood; in the noise of her horse's feet as he cantered on the grassy side of the road, in the fall of a leaf, the call of a bird or a human voice become significant in distance; but she remained unmoved.

This was, she thought, like being dead yet conscious of all that happened, but the dead have the excuse of death and she had none; she was merely tired of her mode of life. It seemed to her that in her thirty-one years the sum of her achievement was looking beautiful and being loved by Francis Sales: she put it in that way, but immediately corrected herself unwillingly. Her attitude towards him had not been passive; she had loved him. She had owed him love and she had paid her debt; she had paid enough, yet if to-day he asked for more, she would give it. Her pride hoped for that demand; her weariness shrank from it.

And he had kissed Henrietta. The sharpness of that thought, on which from the first moment on the stairs she had refused to dwell, steeling her mind against it with a determination which perhaps accounted for her fatigue, was like a physical pain running through her whole body, so that the horse, feeling an unaccustomed jerk on his mouth, became alarmed and restive. She steadied him and herself. A kiss was nothing—yet she had always denied it to Francis Sales. She could not blame him, for she saw how her own fastidiousness had endangered his. He needed material evidence of love. She ought, she supposed, to have sacrificed her scruples for his sake; mentally she had already done it, and the physical refusal was perhaps no more than pride which salved her conscience and might ruin his, but it existed firmly like a fortress. She could not surrender it. Her love was not great enough for that; or was it, she asked herself, too great? She could not comfort herself with that illusion, and there came creeping the thought that for some one else, some one too strong to need such a capitulation, she would have given it gladly, but against Francis, who was intrinsically weak, she had held out.

Life seemed to mock at her; it offered the wrong opportunities, it strewed her path with chances of which no human being could judge the value until the choice had been made; it was like walking over ground pitted with hidden holes, it needed luck as well as skill to avoid a fall. But, like other people, she had to pursue her road: the thing was to hide her bruises, even from herself, and shake off the dust.

She had by this time reached the track which was connected with so much of her life, and she drew rein in astonishment. They were felling the trees. Already a space had been cleared and men and horses were busy removing the fallen trunks; piles of branches, still bravely green, lay here and there, and the pine needles of the past were now overlaid by chippings from the parent trees. What had been a still place of shadows, of muffled sounds, of solemn aisles, the scene of a secret life not revealed to men, was now half devastated, trampled, and loud with human noises. It had its own beauty of colour and activity, there was even a new splendour in the unencumbered ground, but Rose had a sense of loss and sacrilege. Something had gone. It struck her that here she was reminded of herself. Something had gone. The larch trees which had flamed in green for her each spring were dead and she had this strange dead feeling in her heart.

She saw the figure of Francis Sales detach itself from a little group and advance towards her. She knew what he would say. He would tell her, in that sulky way of his, how many weeks had passed since he had seen her and, to avoid hearing that remark, she at once waved a hand towards the clearing and said, 'Why have you done this?'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'To get money.'

'But they were my trees.'

'You never wrote,' he muttered.

She made a gesture, quickly controlled. Long ago when, in the first exultation of their love and their sense of richness, they had marked out the limits of their intercourse, so that they might keep some sort of faith with Christabel and preserve what was precious to themselves, it had been decided that they were not to meet by appointment, they were not to speak of love, no letters were to be exchanged, and though time had bent the first and second rules, the last had been kept with rigour. It was understood, but periodically she had to submit to Francis Sales's complaint, 'You never wrote.'

'So you cut down the trees,' she said half playfully.

'Why didn't you write?'

'Oh, Francis, you know quite well.'

He was looking at the ground; he had not once looked at her since her greeting. 'You go off on a holiday, enjoying yourself, while I—who did you go with?'

'With Henrietta,' Rose said softly.

'Oh, that girl.'

'Yes, that girl. But here I am. I have come back.' She seemed to invite him to be glad. 'And,' she went on calmly, feeling that it did not matter what she said, 'what a queer world to come back to. I miss the trees. They stood for my childhood and my youth; yes, they stood for it,...

Table of contents

• E. H. Young
• BOOK I
• BOOK II
• BOOK III