by Edith Nesbit
“I wish you wouldn’t. Couldn’t the aunt be suddenly ill? Not able to see anyone?”
“Then Mrs. Rochester would keep on coming till the aunt was better. And bring flowers. And grapes. And leave cards. And pump the servants. No, we’ve got to go through with it.”
“What shall we say to Mr. Hugo?”
“Tell him the truth — say we’re doing it for a lark. So we are.”
“Yes,” said Jane, and the third-class railway carriage rang to the music of young laughter.
“That’s what it means in books when it says ‘hollow mirth,’” said Jane.
“Or the laughter of despair,” suggested Lucilla; “ but I call it a jolt-head jest myself.”
“There aren’t,” said Jane, “ any polite words for what I call it. And yet it’s a sort of lark too, after all, isn’t it?” she ended appealingly.
“Very sort-of,” said Lucilla.
CHAPTER XXVI
“You may be sure that Miss Antrobus’s sheets will be well aired, Mrs. Rochester. I may be old-fashioned, but I believe in airing everything: sheets, pillow-cases, cushion-covers, towels — all are aired here, and aired thoroughly, you may rely upon it.”
Thus spoke very gently and seriously, in a sweet, faded voice, a delicious old lady in brown satin. Her grey hair was crowned with a cap of soft lace, and her chin — rather too rounded for age, if one could have seen it properly — was buried in a lace fichu. Mr. Hugo had given the invaluable hint that convex shoulders suggest a concave chest — and the old lady stooped a good deal. Her hands, where the mittens let them show, were made up with consummate art and the tiniest grey wrinkles. Her forehead was very wrinkled, and these wrinkles were not painted — they were actual corrugations, fine and deep. Even in the soft light of the drawing-room lamp, which Jane had hastily veiled with a blue chiffon scarf, the wrinkles showed plainly. The old lady sat in a big chair, her feet on a footstool, and on her satin lap knitting lay.
Mrs. Rochester sat quite near her — trusting, talkative. You may wonder that she did not recall that her buffeting at the hands of Jane had been due to Jane’s having mistaken her for her cousin “dressed up,” and hence made the short, irresistible deduction. But then you must remember that her own son had endorsed the fiction of Aunt Harriet’s existence, and, above all, you must allow for the indiarubber forehead, complete with eyebrows and ear coverings, supplied by the genius of Mr. Hugo.
Mrs. Rochester was, obviously, wholly without suspicion, and Jane had to go out of the room expressly to laugh at the success of the play. Perhaps, too, she wanted to shift the whole burden of the interview on to Lucilla’s shoulders for a little while. Her own felt stiff with the weight of the afternoon. At any rate, she got away and crept round and sat down behind the library door to listen unashamed. This is what rewarded her:
“Now we have a moment alone, dear Miss Lucas,” Mrs. Rochester was saying, in the high, clear voice of one who wishes to be understood by the rather deaf, “I should like to make a little confidence. These delightful nieces of yours — so light-hearted and free from care! Yes, but you will understand. I am sure Miss Antrobus will have a real home with you. And I have a rather special reason for having the dear girl’s welfare very much at heart. I must confess to you that I look upon Miss Antrobus as a daughter already.”
“Indeed,” said Aunt Harriet, almost too calmly; “one of your sons is engaged to the lady then?”
“My only son,” said Mrs. Rochester. “It’s an old attachment — they were little lovers as children — but it’s not announced yet, so, of course, not a word to either of them. You, who know my dear boy so well, will feel with me that Hilda Antrobus is a lucky girl, and when you know her you will feel that he’s lucky too. Yes?”
“I cannot say that I know Mr. Rochester very well,” said the spurious aunt. “He has called two or three times, I believe. But I daresay now Miss Antrobus is to be with us we shall see more of him.”
“Well played, Lucy!” said Jane, behind the library door.
“I feel sure I may trust to your kind feeling to — to — well, to give the young people opportunities of being together — you understand? A little tact — a helpful blindness — a not too efficient chaperonage — a sort of je ne seis quoi; not exactly the making of opportunities, but the smoothing away of obstacles, if obstacles are likely to occur. But I am sure you understand. Yes?”
“I think so,” said Aunt Harriet. “I am not myself an experienced match-maker, but—”
“Oh, but,” said Mrs. Rochester, clasping her little grey suede-covered hands, “the match is already made! I tell you this in confidence, though of course I can have no objection to your telling your nieces — so long as they understand that it is a confidence. No congratulations, of course — no allusions even.”
Here the front-door bell reverberated through the house. “But I am detaining you,” said Mrs. Rochester. “You are expecting visitors?”
“Not at all,” said the wonderful aunt. “That is probably one of the maids. My housekeeper allows them to come in by the front door on their evenings out; she tells me it obviates those undesirable lingering partings in the shrubbery leading to the back premises.”
Here the drawing-room door opened and Stanley announced “Mr. Tombs.” Stanley was one of those admirable servants who seem made of wood and wire; she never glanced towards the ladies, but shut the door softly and retired as Mr. Tombs advanced.
“Oh, poor Lucy!” said Jane, and managed to get round to the drawing-room before Mr. Tombs had had time to do more than seek to excuse the lateness of his call.
“Very late, I know, for a business call, but I thought it would save correspondence if I came personally to enquire...”
“If Mr. Tombs will wait in the library, my dear,” said the aunt to Jane, “I shall be disengaged presently.”
“Oh, but I mustn’t detain you.” Mrs. Rochester spoke at once on this hint. “Our little talk is quite over. I have so enjoyed it, Miss Lucas. Good evening. Oh no — I am not at all nervous; besides, my son is waiting for me.”
Under cover of the lady’s withdrawal Mr. Tombs said, “I didn’t know there was an aunt.”
“Well, there is, as you see,” said Jane, resenting what she took to be a certain cavalierness of tone.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, turning his thin face and dark glasses towards her. “I have a detestable habit of thinking aloud. I was only wondering whether I ought to have addressed myself at first to the elder lady — as a matter of courtesy — instead of to Miss Craye.”
“Oh, not at all,” said Jane, mollified. “Auntie, this is Mr. Tombs, who is coming to stay with us to-morrow.” Auntie greeted him with delicate, gentle cordiality.
“I hope you will be happy with us, Mr. Tombs,” she said; “we will do our best to make your visit a pleasant one. Or have you come to notify us of some alteration in your arrangements?”
“Only in so far as to ask whether I may bring my traps in the afternoon instead of the morning. Because I find—”
“Certainly,” said Jane, forgetting for a moment her part of subservient niece; “the rooms are ready.”
“Dear Jane,” said the aunt gently, “Mr. Tombs was speaking. You were saying?...”
He said it again, and Jane remained tongue-tied while the untrue aunt answered with suave propriety. He replied suitably, and the interview ended by Jane’s offering to show him out — an office which at all times appealed to her. “The maids are at supper,” she said.
In the hall he said:
“I really am most awfully sorry I said I didn’t know there was an aunt. I can’t think how I could.”
“You won’t see very much of her,” said Jane.
“Oh, the more the merrier, with such a delicious old lady.... There I go again! Do, please, forgive me. I’m like Cheviot Hill: I’m a plain man — I speak as I think.” Jane felt wonderfully cheered.
“Oh, do you know ‘Engaged’?” she asked. “Isn’t it lovely? Wou
ldn’t it be jolly to act it?”
“Very. May I ask whether you have enough guests to make up the caste?”
“We shall be six altogether, as well as our gardener, and — but you’ll see us all to-morrow. Good-night.”
Jane returned to Lucilla, who had torn off her wig, displaying her little red ears and crushed hair, and was huddling her elderly draperies together in preparation for flight.
“Your Mr. Tombs is rather a lamb,” said Jane, “and I do really think you’re right about his having a nice face.”
“Oh, go away!” said Lucilla. “You’ve got me into this, and now I shall never get out.”
“Why, it’s only for once!”
“Is it? Miss Antrobus will ask for Miss Lucas directly she gets here, and I shall have to go on acting and acting and acting, and I can’t and won’t do it. You’ll have to tell them Miss Lucas is dead. I can’t bear it and I won’t. Why didn’t you be an aunt yourself, if you wanted one?”
“I can’t act like you,” said Jane.
“And Mr. Tombs seeing me looking like a bald-faced stag.”
“He didn’t know it was you.”
“No — that’s just it. You don’t know what it feels like to be an old woman and have people look at you as if you weren’t there.”
“Well, come and get the rags off,” said Jane, “ and we’ll see if there’s any way out of it. I suppose it would be a bit thick to have two aunts and have them appear on alternate evenings? Come on; Forbes will catch us if you don’t look out. Suppose Aunt Harriet just receives Miss Antrobus tomorrow, and then she could have an illness.”
“And drive twenty guineas a week away for fear of infection? I’d rather go through with it than that,” said Lucilla, stumbling up the stairs in her long skirt.
“It needn’t be anything catching. She might have bronchitis or asthma — something that lasts for months and doesn’t kill you. Or fits...”
“I won’t have fits,” said Lucilla decidedly. “Whatever else I have, I won’t have fits. And, whatever we do, the servants will give us away.”
“Perhaps they won’t.
‘ Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive.’
Don’t look at me in that wild way, Luce. Wash your face for goodness’ sake, and comb your hair out — it looks as if you hadn’t any. Make yourself look pretty again whatever happens.”
“Oh, flattery’s no good,” said Lucilla bitterly. “I feel as if I were caught in a trap.”
“Look here,” said Jane, “shall we say our Aunt Harriet is subject to fits — not kicking and screaming ones, mild aberrations — and generally keeps in her room? And lock one of the rooms and chance the servants?”
“And have people think I was a howling animal like the woman in ‘Jane Eyre’ — yes, her name was Rochester, too — not much!”
“They wouldn’t all think so. Mr. Rochester knows. Don’t kill me — I had to tell him.”
But Lucilla seemed somehow calmer. Jane pursued her advantage.
“I could tell Mr. Dix too, if you liked.”
“Bother Mr. Dix.”
“He likes you very much. He’s always asking where’s Miss Craye.”
“I’m interested in gardening, and he knows it. Don’t try to hint things, Jane. You are only trying to make me angry on another side to distract my attention from that.” She pointed to the wig. “But it won’t do. There will Miss Quested be, all smiles and charms in her pretty frock. And Miss Craye? Oh, she’s not at home this evening. And all the time she’ll be here under these hot wigs and eyebrows, having no fun at all.”
This was indeed what happened. Think as they would, nothing better occurred to them than that Lucilla, as Aunt Harriet, should welcome her guests, and should be found placidly knitting when they came into the drawing-room after dinner.
The guests all arrived during the afternoon and were received by the elaborated aunt, Mr and Mrs. Thornton and the brother first. They came in taxi-cabs, with a great deal of leathery new luggage — some trunks and some packing-cases. The two men were pleasant and cheerful, with dark, smiling faces. Mrs. Thornton was also pleasant. They were all nice to Jane and very nice to Miss Lucas.
“I do think they’ll do,” Lucilla said, when they had been shown to their rooms. “They’re new brooms, of course, but they seem jolly, and they talk as if they’d read books and seen people and done things.”
“Whereas our last P.G.’s had perhaps seen things and certainly had done people — us for one.”
“Never mind grammar,” said Lucilla. “Are my eyebrows straight? They feel as crooked as a ram’s horn.”
“They’re as straight as — as I wish we were,” said Jane. “The life of an adventuress is a terrible one. We are adventuresses, Lucilla — deceitful adventuresses. And here comes another cab or two. What a day! What a life!” This time it was Miss Antrobus, with worn luggage and not very much of it. She seemed to Jane to be a very grave, reserved sort of girl; hardly smiled when she shook hands. But when Lucilla smiled on her the quiet smile of kindly age, and hoped in that soft voice that trembled a little, as old voices do, that Miss Antrobus would be happy here, she smiled, herself, quite nicely, and said:
“I think it is very good of you to take me in. I hardly thought you would. But Lady Hesketh and Mrs. Rochester seemed quite sure.”
Jane did not quite like that, though she could not have told you why.
“You are studying domestic economy?” the untrue aunt went on.
“Not domestic — political,” said Miss Antrobus gently.
“But I have some other business to see to first. I shan’t settle down to my economic studies very seriously just yet. I’m working for the Help for Heroes Society.”
“You did hospital work through the war, Mrs. Rochester said,” Jane put in. “I do think it must have been splendid! We couldn’t do anything; we were at school.”
“Yes — I was in France three years,” said Miss Antrobus, and immediately turned from Jane to speak again to Miss Lucas.
“I’m not going to like her,” said Jane, when Miss Antrobus had followed her luggage into retirement.
“I think I am,” said Lucilla. “She was jolly decent to me.”
“Well, so were the others. And now there’s only Mr. Tombs.”
“I shan’t wait for him,” said Lucilla. “He can come when he likes. He can see the precious aunt in the evening; that’s enough for him. I’m going to be myself till dinner and go round the garden with the Thorntons and help you to introduce Mr. Dix and Mr. Rochester to them, and tell them Aunt Harriet is resting and will be in the drawing-room after dinner. It isn’t four yet. I’m not going to stay like this for four or five hours, so don’t you think it!”
The Thorntons were really very nice. Mrs. Thornton was young and very well dressed and very gay and friendly. The male Thorntons seemed to become instantly at home with Dix and Rochester, and the party had tea by the fountain, as much at ease as though they had known each other for years. The men had, of course, all been in the army, and that is a bond that makes itself felt at once. Miss Antrobus talked little, mostly to Mr. Dix, and when she spoke to Lucilla it was to ask whether they were not to have the pleasure of seeing Miss Lucas at tea.
“No,” said Lucilla unblushingly. “My aunt is not very strong. She rests a good deal. She cannot stand much society.”
“I hope we shall see her at dinner.”
“She dines in her own room, but she comes into the drawing-room after dinner.”
After this nothing seemed important to Jane except getting Mr. Dix away from Miss Antrobus. She did it by suggesting that they should all go and see the sundial, and then very hastily among the currant-bushes she said to Dix: “You’ll see my aunt to-night. Don’t let anyone know you haven’t seen her before.”
“I understand,” he said. “ Rochester told me.”
“Oh, did he?” said Jane. “All right, that’s all I wanted to say. That’s why I cut you off from Miss
Antrobus. It would be kind of you to edge back to her now. You seem to be the only one of us that she’s taken to.”
“She’s rather wonderful, isn’t she?” said Dix. “There’s a sort of radiant goodness in her face.”
Jane, a little humbled, had not seen it, but could not gainsay it.
“It’s a strong face, and yet — I don’t know. It looks to me as though she had been transplanted.”
“Transplanted?”
“You know how different plants are in different environments. Look at those tall, splendid, gipsy roses there — on the Sussex Downs in a dry season they’re sometimes not an inch high. Lots of people got transplanted in the war.”
“Yes,” said Jane, adding, for the second time that day, “ Lucy and I didn’t do anything. We were at school. No transplanting for us.”
“Some flowers don’t need it,” said Mr. Dix.
CHAPTER XXVII
A VERY curious experience this, of Lucilla’s: to sit in an armchair, with the weight of old age on her bowed shoulders and on her brow the wrinkled indiarubber brand of seventy years; to be with these young people and not of them; to feel their glances meet hers — not with the hopeful give-and-take of youth and youth, but with the impersonal, distant, half-pitying tribute of youth to age. Curious, very.
Not that the young people were neglectful of Miss Lucas. Far from it. They were kind, they were attentive, they were deferent and courteous, they were everything that young people should be to old ladies. A really old lady would have found these manners charming, but to Lucilla these manners were intolerable. Her only comfort was the reflection that Dix and Rochester knew that under the wig and the wrinkles was hidden the real Lucilla, whose acting they must be secretly admiring. But the Thorntons did not know, and, though they were kind, they were not interested. Yes, that was it. Lucilla was accustomed to being found interesting — and no amount of kindness or courtesy can make up in our fellow-creatures for lack of interest. Mr. Tombs did not know — and he certainly had a nice face. Also he was the one to ask whether they were not to have the pleasure of seeing Miss Craye. It was just after Mrs. Thornton had sung. She did not sing at all badly, but Lucilla sang really well. And instead of succeeding Mrs. Thornton at the piano and showing the company what singing really was, as she felt quite competent to do, she had to sit on in that wretched armchair, holding that dull knitting, and talking platitudes to people who did not care twopence whether she talked or not, and only listened and spoke to her out of politeness. Miss Antrobus was the only exception: she really did seem to like the old lady and to take a pleasure in talking to her. Lucilla could have hugged her for it, but even her interest could not really charm. And when the clock struck nine, just after Mr. Tombs in that pleasant, languid, Oxfordish voice had asked about Miss Craye, Lucilla could bear it no longer.
