I had a sense of walking very fast--almost of taking flight--down a long
dim corridor, and of a door that opened into an immense room. All that I
remember of it, as I saw it then, was a number of pastel portraits of
weak, vacuous individuals, in dulled, gilt, oval frames. The heads stood
out from the panelling and stared at me from between ringlets, from
under powdered hair, simpering, or contemptuous with the expression that
must have prevailed in the _monde_ of the time before the Revolution. At
a great distance, bent over account--books and pink cheques on the flap
of an escritoire, sat my aunt, very small, very grey, very intent on her
work.
The people who built these rooms must have had some property of the
presence to make them bulk large--if they ever really did so--in the
eyes of dependents, of lackeys. Perhaps it was their sense of ownership
that gave them the necessary prestige. My aunt, who was only a temporary
occupant, certainly had none of it. Bent intently over her accounts,
peering through her spectacles at columns of figures, she was nothing
but a little old woman alone in an immense room. It seemed impossible
that she could really have any family pride, any pride of any sort. She
looked round at me over her spectacles, across her shoulder.
"Ah ... Etchingham," she said. She seemed to be trying to carry herself
back to England, to the England of her land-agent and her select
visiting list. Here she was no more superior than if we had been on a
desert island. I wanted to enlighten her as to the woman she was
sheltering--wanted to very badly; but a necessity for introducing the
matter seemed to arise as she gradually stiffened into assertiveness.
"My dear aunt," I said, "the woman...." The alien nature of the theme
grew suddenly formidable. She looked at me arousedly.
"You got my note then," she said. "But I don't think a woman _can_ have
brought it. I have given such strict orders. They have such strange
ideas here, though. And Madame--the _portière_--is an old retainer of M.
de Luynes, I haven't much influence over her. It is absurd, but...." It
seems that the old lady in the lodge made a point of carrying letters
that went by hand. She had an eye for gratuities--and the police, I
should say, were concerned. They make a good deal of use of that sort of
person in that neighbourhood of infinitesimal and unceasing plotting.
"I didn't mean that," I said, "but the woman who calls herself my
sister...."
"My dear nephew," she interrupted, with tranquil force, as if she were
taking an arranged line, "I cannot--I absolutely cannot be worried with
your quarrels with your sister. As I said to you in my note of this
morning, when you are in this town you must consider this house your
home. It is almost insulting of you to go to an inn. I am told it is
even ... quite an unfit place that you are stopping at--for a member of
our family."