But Diana! That is another story. Open the windows wide, let in the
fresh air, the whispering of trees, the song of the birds, and all that
is good and beautiful in nature. The very thought of Diana is sunshine.
She is as God meant us to be, happy and good, believing in the goodness
of others, slow to find evil in them, quick to forgive it, infinitely
pitiful of the sorrows of the suffering. This is Diana, and she has
three children, Betty, Hugh, and Sara. Allah be praised!
You do not imagine that I dislike Zerlina, do you? I should be sorry to
give that impression. But a professional aunt must be above all things
absolutely straightforward and truthful.
I had been engaged for weeks to go to Hames for the first shoot, and an
urgent telegram from Zerlina, followed by a feverish letter, failed to
move me from my purpose. The telegram, by the way, ran as follows: "Can
you Tuesday for fortnight. Do. Urgent. ZERLINA." I wondered why Zerlina
elected to leave out "come." If I had been strictly economizing, I
should have saved on the "do." The letter followed in due course of
time:--
Dear Betty, I have just sent a wire in frantic haste asking you to come
[that was exactly what she had not done] on Tuesday for a fortnight.
I should so much like you to see something of the children, and Baby
really is very fascinating. She is such a fat child, much fatter than
Muriel's baby, who is six months older. The fact is, Jim is rather run
down; nothing much, of course, but I think a change would do him good,
and the Staveleys have asked us to go to them, and I don't like to
refuse, and we thought it would be such a good opportunity to have my
bedroom re-papered and painted. I don't believe you would smell the
paint, and in any case I believe there is some new kind of paint which
smells delicious, like stephanotis, I am told, so I will order that. I
would not ask you to come just as we are going away, because I should
like to be at home to see you, but I could go away so happily if you
were with the children; I often think for a woman without children,
you are so wonderfully understanding, about children, I mean. You could
manage nurse, too, I am sure. She is in one of her moods just now, and I
feel I must get away from all worries for a little.
Yours,
ZERLINA
P. S.--Jim is so well, and would send his love if he were here.
I telegraphed back, of course, directly I got Zerlina's telegram,
saying I could not come, and answered the letter at leisure. It is as
a sister-in-law in relation to the aunt that Diana particularly shines.
This aunt she looks upon as something more than useful, and asks her
to stay at other times than when the children have measles, and
whooping-cough, or the bedroom is to be re-papered. Zerlina perhaps is
unfortunate. She says, "Have you ever noticed how the children always
have something when you come to stay?" Zerlina is quite pretty when she
puts her head on one side. I answer, "Yes, Zerlina, I have noticed it
curiously enough," but I do not say that I suspect that at the very
first sound of a cough, at the very first appearance of a rash, this
aunt is urged to come and stay.
Diana accepts such services; the mother of such creatures as Betty,
Hugh, and Sara is forced to do so by very reason of their existence. But
those services she accepts with generous appreciation; not that an aunt
wants thanks, but being human, pitifully so, even the most professional
of them, she is conscious where they are not expressed, in some form or
other. A smile is enough.
So to Hames I went, in spite of Zerlina's appeal, with treasures deep
down in my box for Betty, Hugh, and Sara. Sara is of all babes in the
world the most fascinating, say sisters-in-law other than Diana what
they will. As a tribute to this fascination, the largest white rabbit,
woolly to a degree undreamed of--at least I hoped so--in Sara's world,
was carefully packed in my box, wrapped cunningly in tissue-paper, and
guarded on all sides by clothing of a soft description. I have known a
chiffon skirt put to strange uses in the interests of Sara.
I found the carriage waiting for me, and was touched to see that Croft,
the old coachman, had come to meet me himself. It is an honor he does
the family with perhaps two or three exceptions. When he comes to meet
me, there is a regular program to be gone through. It varies only in a
very slight degree and begins like this:--
I say, "Well, Croft, it is very nice to see you," and he says, "The same
to you, miss, and many of them." He then begins to "riminize"; the word
is his own. He begins with the auspicious day on which I was born, and
describes how he himself went to fetch the doctor in the dead of the
night. He describes minutely his costume and the part the elements
played on the occasion; they were evidently very much upset. He then
goes on to say how he held me on my first pony, and taught me to ride
and drive. Having finally certificated me as competent to drive a pair
of horses under any circumstances, I ask how the children are, Sara in
particular. Here Croft looks heavenward, and says she looks a picture,
and adds that she looks very like me. The footman knows that here the
program is at an end, Croft having no greater praise to bestow on mortal
woman, and he opens the carriage door and I get in.
Diana knows what it is to travel t he distance of three miles in the
suffocating embraces of Hugh and Betty; otherwise she would probably
have sent the children to meet me.
The smell of the brougham brought my childhood vividly back to me. I
shut my eyes and instinctively put out my hand; and that hand that was
always held out to us as children took mine in its loving clasp, and I
was a child again, home from a visit, so glad to feel that hand again
and to see that mother from whom it was agony to be parted, for even a
short space of time.