It happened so spontaneously, both of them were taken by surprise. She did not know whether or not to scream. She did not struggle. She simply stared at him.
And then, while they remained in this attitude, the door opened behind them suddenly, and Aunt Carrie entered the room. The unusual noise so late at night had caused her to come down, but at the spectacle upon the settee she paused as though turned suddenly to stone. Her eyes dilated with horror. She went absolutely grey. It was the most awful moment of her life. For one dreadful instant she felt she was going to faint, but with a supreme effort she recovered herself, and swinging round she almost fell out of the room. Then, like a haunted spirit, she fled and went stumbling upstairs.
Neither Barras nor Hetty had observed the incident. Barras was blind to all but Hetty, her nearness, her perfume, the pressure of her thin hip bones upon his thighs.
“Hetty,” he said thickly, “you know that I’m fond of you.”
His words brought her out of that queer, trance-like state.
“Don’t,” she said, “please don’t hold me like that.”
He relaxed his hold and put his palm upon her knee.
“Oh no,” she cried, resisting vigorously. “You mustn’t do that. I don’t like it.”
“But, Hetty—” he panted.
“No, no,” she cut him short. “I’m not that kind of girl, not that kind of girl at all.”
She hated him suddenly for putting her in this position, for spoiling everything, ending his protection and his presents by this horrible anti-climax. She hated his heavy, congested face, the lines under his eyes, his fleshy nose. She thought, with sudden contrast, of Purves’ clear-cut, youthful features, and she cried:
“Let me go, will you. Let me go, or I’ll scream.”
He answered by pressing her to him and burying his mouth into her neck. She did not scream, but she tore herself free, like a little cat, and banged her hand against his cheek. Then she jumped up, adjusting her dress and her hair, and spat out the words:
“You’re a horrid, beastly old man. You’re worse than your wretched son. I hate you. Don’t you know I’m a good girl. I’m a good girl, I tell you, a good girl. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I’ll never look at you again as long as I live.”
He rose up excitedly, trying to speak, but before he had time she dashed out of the room and left him there. He stood for a moment, with his hand outstretched, as if still trying to detain her. His heart was hammering in his side, his brain dazed, his ears buzzing. He had a crushed sense of prostration, of his age, which had defeated his attempt to ravish her. He remained upon his feet, swaying slightly in the empty, softly lighted room, almost overcome by an attack of vertigo. He thought for a second that he was going to have a stroke. Then he raised his hand to his bursting head and sank down limply upon the settee.
SIXTEEN
Meanwhile, seated in the darkness of her own room Aunt Carrie heard the sound of the car setting out for Tynecastle with Hetty. She saw the two soft beams of the headlights slide terrifyingly round the room and in the darkness and the silence which succeeded she trembled wretchedly. What Aunt Carrie had seen in the drawing-room tore at the very roots of her most sacred belief. To think that Richard—Richard! Aunt Carrie’s trembling increased; she shook in all her limbs with a simply pitiful agitation and the two huge tears which had formed in her eyes were shaken from her eyes by the palsied shaking of her inclined head. Oh dear, of dear, thought Aunt Carrie in a paroxysm of grief.
Aunt Carrie’s belief was Richard. For fifteen years she had served Richard with hand and foot and soul. She had served Richard at a distance but that had not prevented her from adoring Richard and locking her adoration jealously in the centre of her being. No other man existed for Aunt Carrie. True, she had at one time entertained an affection for the memory of the late Prince Albert whom she rightly regarded as a good man, but it was a pale moon beside the sun of her adoration for Richard. Aunt Carrie existed for that sun, basked in it, warmed her whole cramped life at it. And now after fifteen years of sunshine, after fifteen years of putting out his slippers, arranging his meals, sorting his laundry, cutting his asparagus, filling his hot-water bottle, religiously keeping the moth out of his woollen underwear, knitting his socks, stockings and scarves — after fifteen years of slavish heavenly servitude Aunt Carrie had seen Richard fondling Hetty Todd upon his knee. In an access of pity and pain Aunt Carrie buried her shaking head in her shaking hands and sobbed bitterly.
Suddenly, while she sat weeping and overcome, she heard Harriet’s stick. Whenever Harriet wanted attention she lifted the walking-stick which lay beside her bed and thumped on the wall for Aunt Carrie to come in. It was the recognised procedure and Aunt Carrie knew at this moment that Harriet was thumping for her medicine. But she had not the heart to go in. She could not move for the thought of Richard, this new Richard, this poor Richard, both terrifying and terrible.
Aunt Carrie did not understand that the new Richard was an exfoliation of the old Richard; she did not dream that these new propensities which shocked her were sprouting from the old propensities. She fancied Richard, poor Richard, the victim of some strange calamity. She had no knowledge of what the calamity might be. She simply saw a god turned clown, an archangel become a satyr, and her heart was broken. She cried and cried. Richard with Hetty Todd upon his knee. She cried and cried and could not bear it.
Then with a start she was once again aware of Harriet’s knocking. Harriet had been knocking for a full five minutes now and though dimly conscious of that knocking Aunt Carrie had not moved to answer the summons. She could not go in to Harriet with blind and swollen eyes and trembling hands and this insufferable choking in her breast revealing the obvious fact that something was seriously wrong. And yet she must go. Harriet must have her medicine. If Harriet did not have her medicine she would go on knocking louder and louder and bring the house down and there might be some fresh and terrible development which would finish Aunt Carrie for good and all.
Mastering her sobbing as best she could Aunt Carrie wiped her blind and swollen eyes and went fumbling along the corridor to Harriet’s room. It was dark in the corridor for it was a dark night and Aunt Carrie in her agitation had not switched on the electric light at the head of the stairs. Harriet’s room was dark too, a dim darkness which the green glow of the bedside lamp did little to dispel. Because of her headaches Harriet was averse to a glare and now Aunt Carrie was tremblingly glad of that fact because the dim darkness hid her tear-stained face. She did not offer to switch on the light.
Upon Aunt Carrie’s entry Harriet quivered upon the bed where her pale, cow-like outlines were obscurely visible. She was trembling with temper and she bared her false teeth at Aunt Carrie with a click.
“Why didn’t you come, Caroline?” she cried. “I’ve been knocking for a good half-hour.”
Aunt Carrie stifled a big sob. Controlling her voice the best way she could she said:
“I’m sorry, Harriet dear, I can’t think what came over me. Shall I — shall I give you your medicine now?”
But Harriet was not going to let it go so easily as that. She lay there on her back in the bed in the dim darkness of the room surrounded by her bottles and her flat moon face was pale with passion and self-pity.
“It’s becoming a disgrace,” she said, “the way I’m neglected. I’m lying here with a splitting headache. I’m dying for my medicine and not a soul looks near me!”