long, straight, and formal; it had been a cart-track across a meadow
when the old home was a farm. At the end of the drive stood the grey
stone house. A purple clematis muffled the porch, and a white cat lay
asleep in a bed of nasturtiums. The blinds were drawn down in respect to
the dead. Laura looked at it. Since her earliest childhood it had been a
familiar sight, a familiar thought. But now she saw it with different
eyes: a prescience of exile came over her and, forgetting Lady Place,
she looked with the yearning of an outcast at the dwelling so long ago
discarded. The house was like an old blind nurse sitting in the sun and
ruminating past events. It seemed an act of the most horrible
ingratitude to leave it all and go away without one word of love. But
the gates were shut, the time of welcome was gone by.
For a while they stood in the road, none making a move, each waiting for
the other’s lead. A tall poplar grew on the left hand of the churchyard
gate. Its scant shadow scarcely indented the white surface of the road.
A quantity of wasps were buzzing about its trunk, and presently one of
the wasps stung Henry. This seemed to be the spur that they were all
waiting for; they turned and walked to the corner of the road where the
carriages stood that were to drive them back to the station.
Every one was sorry for Laura, for they knew how much she had loved her
father. They agreed that it was a good thing that Henry and Caroline
were taking her to London. They hoped that this change would distract
her from her grief. Meanwhile, there was a good deal to do, and that
also was a distraction. Clothes and belongings had to be sorted out,
friends and family pensioners visited, and letters of condolence
answered. Beside this she had her own personal accumulation of vagrant
odds and ends to dispose of. She had lived for twenty-eight years in a
house where there was no lack of cupboard room, and a tradition of
hoarding, so the accumulation was considerable. There were old toys,
letters, stones of strange shapes or bright colours, lesson-books,
water-colour sketches of the dogs and the garden; a bunch of dance
programmes kept for the sake of their little pencils, and all the little
pencils tangled into an inextricable knot; pieces of unfinished
needlework, jeweller’s boxes, scraps cut out of the newspaper, and
unexplainable objects that could only be remembrancers of things she had
forgotten. To go over these hoards amused the surface of her mind. But
with everything thrown away she seemed to be denying the significance of
her youth.
Thus busied, she was withheld all day from her proper care. But at dusk
she would go out of the house and pace up and down the nut alley at the
foot of the garden. The cold airs that rose up from the ground spoke
sadly to her of burial, the mossy paths were hushed and humble under her
tread, and the smells of autumn condoled with her. Brewer the gardener,
stamping out the ashes of his bonfire, saw her pass to and fro, a
slender figure moving sedately between the unmoving boughs. He alone of
all the household had taken his master’s death without exclamation.
Death coming to the old was a harmless thought to him, but looking at
Laura he sighed deeply, as though he had planted her and now saw her
dashed and broken by bad weather.
Ten days after Everard’s death Henry and Caroline left Lady Place,
taking Laura with them. She found the leave-taking less painful than
she had expected, and Caroline put her to bed as soon as they arrived in
Apsley Terrace, which simplified her unhappiness by making her feel like
an unhappy child.
Laura had heard the others agreeing that the move to London would make
her feel very differently. She had thought them stupid to suppose that
any outward change could alter her mood. She now found that they had
judged better than she. In Somerset she had grieved over her father’s
death. In London her grief was retracted into sudden realisations of her
loss. She had thought that sorrow would be her companion for many years,
and had planned for its entertainment. Now it visited her like sudden
snow-storms, a hastening darkness across the sky, a transient whiteness
and rigour cast upon her. She tried to recover the sentiment of
renunciation which she had worn like a veil. It was gone, and gone with
it was her sense of the dignity of bereavement.
Henry and Caroline did all they could to prevent her feeling unhappy. If
they had been overlooking some shame of hers they could not have been
more tactful, more modulatory.
The first winter passed by like a half-frozen stream. At the turn of
the year it grew extremely cold. Red cotton sandbags were laid along the
window-sashes, and Fancy and Marion skated on the Round Pond with small
astrakhan muffs. Laura did not skate, but she walked briskly along the
path with Caroline, listening to the rock and jar of the skates grinding
upon the ice and to the cries of the gulls overhead. She found London
much colder than the country, though Henry assured her that this was
impossible. She developed chilblains, and this annoyed her, for she had
not had chilblains since she was a child. Then Nannie Quantrell would
send her out in the early morning to run barefoot over the rimy lawn.
There was a small garden at Apsley Terrace, but it had been gravelled
over because Henry disliked the quality of London grass; and in any case
it was not the sort of garden in which she could run barefoot.
She was also annoyed by the hardness of the London water. Her hands were
so thin that they were always a little red; now they were rough also. If
they could have remained idle, she would not have minded this so much.
But Caroline never sat with idle hands; she would knit, or darn, or do
useful needlework. Laura could not sit opposite her and do nothing.
There was no useful needlework for her to do, Caroline did it all, so
Laura was driven to embroidery. Each time that a strand of silk rasped
against her fingers she shuddered inwardly.
Time went faster than the embroidery did. She had actually a sensation
that she was stitching herself into a piece of embroidery with a good
deal of background. But, as Caroline said, it was not possible to feel
dull when there was so much to do. Indeed, it was surprising how much
there was to do, and for everybody in the house. Even Laura, introduced
as a sort of extra wheel, soon found herself part of the mechanism, and,
interworking with the other wheels, went round as busily as they.
When she awoke, the day was already begun. She could hear iron noises
from the kitchen, the sound of yesterday’s ashes being probed out. Then
came a smell of wood smoke--the kitchen fire had been laid anew and
kindled in the cleansed grate. This was followed by the automatic noise
of the carpet-sweeper and, breaking in upon it, the irregular knocking
of the staircase brush against the banisters. The maid who brought her
morning tea and laid the folded towel across the hot-water can had an
experienced look; when she drew back the curtains she looked out upon
the day with no curiosity. She had seen it already.
By the time the Willowes family met at breakfast all this activity had
disappeared like the tide from the smooth, garnished beach. For the rest
of the day it functioned unnoticed. Bells were answered, meals were
served, all that appeared was completion. Yet unseen and underground the
preparation and demolition of every day went on, like the inward
persistent workings of heart and entrails. Sometimes a crash, a banging
door, a voice upraised, would rend the veil of impersonality. And
sometimes a sound of running water at unusual hours and a faint
steaminess in the upper parts of the house betokened that one of the
servants was having a bath.
After breakfast, and after Henry had been seen off, Caroline descended
to the kitchen and Laura read the relinquished _Times_. Then came
shopping, letter-writing, arranging the flowers, cleaning the
canary-cage, and the girls’ walk. Such things as arranging flowers or
cleaning the canary-cage were done with a kind of precautious routine
which made them seem alike solemn and illicit. The flowers were always
arranged in the ground-floor lavatory, where there was a small sink;
vases and wire frames were kept in a cupboard, and a pair of scissors
was strung to a nail. Then the completed affair was carried carefully
past the coats that hung in the lobby outside and set down upon some
established site.
Every Tuesday the books were changed at the library.
After lunch there was a spell of embroidery and more _Times_. If it was
fine, Caroline paid calls; if wet, she sat at home on the chance of
receiving them. On Saturday afternoons there was the girls’
dancing-class. Laura accompanied her nieces thither, carrying their
slippers in a bag. She sat among the other parents and guardians upon a
dais which shook to the primary accents of the pianist, watching lancers
and polkas and waltzes being performed, and hearing Miss Parley say:
‘Now we will recommence.’ After the dancing was over there was a March
of Grace, and when Fancy and Marion had miscarried of their curtseys she
would envelop their muslin dresses and their red elbows in the grey
ulsters, and walk them briskly home again.
They were dull children, though their dullness did not prevent them
having a penetrating flow of conversation. Their ways and thoughts were
governed by a sort of zodiacal procession of other little girls, and
when they came down to the drawing-room after tea it seemed to Laura
that they brought the Wardours, or the Wilkinsons, or the de la Bottes
with them.
Dinner was at half-past seven. It was a sensible rule of Caroline’s that
at dinner only general topics should be discussed. The difficulties of
the day (if the day had presented difficulties) were laid aside. To this
rule Caroline attributed the excellence of Henry’s digestion. Henry’s
digestion was further safe-guarded by being left to itself in the
smoking-room for an hour after dinner. If he was busy, this hour of
meditation would be followed by some law-work. If not, he would join
them in the drawing-room, or go to his club. When they were thus left by
themselves Laura and Caroline went off to bed early, for they were
pleasantly fatigued by their regular days and regular meals. Later on
Laura, half asleep, would hear Henry’s return from his club. The thud of
the front door pulled to after him drove through the silent house, and
this was followed by the noise of bolts and chains. Then the house,
emptied of another day, creaked once or twice, and fell into repose,
its silence and security barred up within it like a kind of moral family
plate. The remainder of the night was left at the disposal of the
grandfather’s clock in the hall, equitably dealing out minutes and
quarters and hours.
On Sunday mornings Henry would wind the clock. First one and then the
other the quivering chains were wound up, till only the snouts of the
leaden weights were visible, drooping sullenly over the abyss of time
wherein they were to make their descent during the seven days following.
After that the family went to church, and there were wound up for the
week in much the same manner. They went to evening service too, but
evening service was less austere. The vindictive sentiments sounded less
vindictive; if an umbrella fell down with a crash the ensuing silence
was less affronted; the sermon was shorter, or seemed so, and swung more
robustly into ‘And now to God the Father.’
After evening service came cold supper. Fancy and Marion sat up for
this, and it was rather a cheerful meal, with extra trivialities such as
sardines and celery. The leaden weights had already started upon their
downward course.
Caroline was a religious woman. Resolute, orderly and unromantic, she
would have made an admirable Mother Superior. In her housekeeping and
her scrupulous account-books she expressed an almost mystical sense of
the validity of small things. But like most true mystics, she was
unsympathetic and difficult of approach. Once only did she speak her
spiritual mind to Laura. Laura was nursing her when she had influenza;
Caroline wished to put on a clean nightdress, and Laura, opening the
third drawer of the large mahogany wardrobe, had commented upon the
beautiful orderliness with which Caroline’s body linen was arranged
therein. ‘We have our example,’ said Caroline. ‘The graveclothes were
folded in the tomb.’
Looking into the large shadowy drawer, where nightgowns and chemises lay
folded exactly upon each other in a purity that disdained even lavender,
Laura shuddered a little at this revelation of her sister-in-law’s
private thoughts. She made no answer, and never again did Caroline open
her mind to her upon such matters.
Laura never forgot this. Caroline seemed affectionately disposed towards
her; she was full of practical good sense, her advice was excellent,
and pleasantly bestowed. Laura saw her a good wife, a fond and discreet
mother, a kind mistress, a most conscientious sister-in-law. She was
also rather gluttonous. But for none of these qualities could Laura feel
at ease with her. Compared to Caroline she knew herself to be
unpractical, unmethodical, lacking in initiative. The tasks that
Caroline delegated to her she performed eagerly and carefully, but she
performed them with the hampering consciousness that Caroline could do
them better than she, and in less time. Even in so simple a matter as
holding a skein of wool for Caroline to wind off into a ball, Caroline’s
large white fingers worked so swiftly that it was she who twitched the
next length off Laura’s thumb before Laura, watching the diminishing
thread, remembered to dip her hand. But all this--for Laura was humble
and Caroline kind--could have been overcome. It was in the things that
never appeared that Laura felt her inadequacy.
Laura was not in any way religious. She was not even religious enough to
speculate towards irreligion. She went with Caroline to early service
whenever Caroline’s inquiries suggested it, and to morning service and
evening service every Sunday; she knelt beside her and heard her pray
in a small, stilled version of the voice which she knew so well in its
clear everyday ordinances. Religion was great-great-aunt Salome’s
prayer-book which Caroline held in her gloved hands. Religion was a
strand in the Willowes’ life, and the prayer-book was the outward sign
of it. But it was also the outward sign of the puff pastry which had
been praised by King George III. Religion was something to be preserved:
it was part of the Willowes life and so was the prayer-book, preserved
from generation to generation.
Laura was bored by the church which they attended. She would have liked,
now that she was come to London, to see the world, to adventure in
churches. She was darkly, adventurously drawn to see what services were
like amongst Roman Catholics, amongst Huguenots, amongst Unitarians and
Swedenborgians, feeling about this rather as she felt about the East
End. She expressed her wish to Caroline, and Caroline, rather
unexpectedly, had been inclined to further it. But Henry banned the
project. It would not do for Laura to go elsewhere than to the family
place of worship, he said. For Henry, the family place of worship was
the pew upon whose ledge rested great-great-aunt Salome’s prayer-book.
He felt this less explicitly than the straying Laura did, for he was a
man and had less time to think of such things. But he felt it strongly.
Laura believed that she would like Caroline if she could only understand
her. She had no difficulty in understanding Henry, but for no amount of
understanding could she much like him. After some years in his house she
came to the conclusion that Caroline had been very bad for his
character. Caroline was a good woman and a good wife. She was slightly
self-righteous, and fairly rightly so, but she yielded to Henry’s
judgment in every dispute, she bowed her good sense to his will and
blinkered her wider views in obedience to his prejudices. Henry had a
high opinion of her merits, but thinking her to be so admirable and
finding her to be so acquiescent had encouraged him to have an even
higher opinion of his own. However good a wife Caroline might choose to
be, she could not quite make Henry a bad husband or a bad man--he was
too much of a Willowes for that: but she fed his vanity, and ministered
to his imperiousness.
Laura also thought that the law had done a great deal to spoil Henry. It
had changed his natural sturdy stupidity into a browbeating
indifference to other people’s point of view. He seemed to consider
himself briefed by his Creator to turn into ridicule the opinions of
those who disagreed with him, and to attribute dishonesty, idiocy, or a
base motive to every one who supported a better case than he. This did
not often appear in his private life, Henry was kindly disposed to those
who did not thwart him by word or deed. His household had been well
schooled by Caroline in yielding gracefully, and she was careful not to
invite guests who were not of her husband’s way of thinking.
Most of their acquaintance were people connected with the law. Laura
grew familiar with the legal manner, but she did not grow fond of it.
She felt that these clean-shaven men with bristling eyebrows were
suavely concealing their doubts of her intelligence and her probity.
Their jaws were like so many mouse-traps, baited with commonplaces. They
made her feel shy and behave stiffly.
This was unfortunate, as Henry and Caroline had hoped that some one of
them would fall sufficiently in love with Laura to marry her. Mr.
Fortescue, Mr. Parker, Mr. Jermyn, Mr. Danby, Mr. Thrush, were in turn
selected as suitable and likely undertakers. Every decent effort was
made by Henry and Caroline, and a certain number of efforts were made by
the chosen. But Laura would make no efforts at all. Henry and Caroline
had lost heart when they invited Mr. Arbuthnot to tea on Sunday. They
invited him for pity’s sake, and but to tea at that, for he was very shy
and stammered. To their surprise they saw Laura taking special pains to
be nice to him. Equally to their surprise they saw Mr. Arbuthnot laying
aside his special pains to observe a legal manner and stammering away
quite enthusiastically about climbing Welsh mountains and gathering
parsley fern. They scarcely dared to hope, for they felt the time for
hope was gone by. However, they invited him to dinner, and did their
best to be on friendly terms with him.
Mr. Arbuthnot received their advances without surprise, for he had a
very good opinion of himself. He felt that being thirty-five he owed
himself a wife, and he also felt that Laura would do very nicely. His
aunt, Lady Ross-Price, always tried to get servants from the Willowes
establishment, for Mrs. Willowes trained them so well. Mr. Arbuthnot
supposed that Mrs. Willowes would be equally good at training wives. He
began to think of Laura quite tenderly, and Caroline began to read the
Stores’ catalogue quite seriously. This was the moment when Laura, who
had been behaving nicely for years, chose to indulge her fantasy, and to
wreck in five minutes the good intentions of as many months.
She had come more and more to look on Mr. Arbuthnot as an indulgence.
His stammer had endeared him to her; it seemed, after so much legal
manner, quite sympathetic. Though nothing would have induced her to
marry him, she was very ready to talk to him, and even to talk naturally
of what came uppermost in her thoughts. Laura’s thoughts ranged over a
wide field, even now. Sometimes she said rather amusing things, and
displayed unexpected stores (General Stores) of knowledge. But her
remarks were as a rule so disconnected from the conversation that no one
paid much attention to them. Mr. Arbuthnot certainly was not prepared
for her response to his statement that February was a dangerous month.
‘It is,’ answered Laura with almost violent agreement. ‘If you are a
were-wolf, and very likely you may be, for lots of people are without
knowing, February, of all months, is the month when you are most likely
to go out on a dark windy night and worry sheep.’
Henry and Caroline glanced at each other in horror. Mr. Arbuthnot said:
‘How very interesting! But I really don’t think I am likely to do such a
thing.’ Laura made no answer. She did not think so either. But she was
amusing herself with a surprisingly vivid and terrible picture of Mr.
Arbuthnot cloaked in a shaggy hide and going with heavy devouring
swiftness upon all-fours with a lamb dangling from his mouth.
This settled it. Henry and Caroline made no more attempts to marry off
Laura. Trying to do so had been a nuisance and an expense, and Laura had
never shown the smallest appreciation of their trouble. Before long they
would have the girls to think of. Fancy was sixteen, and Marion nearly
as tall as Fancy. In two years they would have to begin again. They were
glad of a respite, and made the most of it. Laura also was glad of a
respite. She bought second-hand copies of Herodotus and Johnson’s
Dictionary to read in the evenings. Caroline, still sewing on buttons,
would look at her sister-in-law’s composed profile. Laura’s hair was
black as ever, but it was not so thick. She had grown paler from living
in London. Her forehead had not a wrinkle, but two downward lines
prolonged the drooping corners of her mouth. Her face was beginning to
stiffen. It had lost its power of expressiveness, and was more and more
dominated by the hook nose and the sharp chin. When Laura was ten years
older she would be nut-crackerish.
Caroline resigned herself to spending the rest of her evenings with
Laura beside her. The perpetual company of a sister-in-law was rather
more than she had bargained for. Still, there she was, and Henry was
right--they had been the proper people to make a home for Laura when her
father died, and she was too old now to begin living by herself. It was
not as if she had had any experience of life; she had passed from one
guardianship to another: it was impossible to imagine Laura fending for
herself. A kind of pity for the unused virgin beside her spread through
Caroline’s thoughts. She did not attach an inordinate value to her
wifehood and maternity; they were her duties, rather than her glories.
But for all that she felt emotionally plumper than Laura. It was well to
be loved, to be necessary to other people. But Laura too was loved, and
Laura was necessary. Caroline did not know what the children would do
without their Aunt Lolly.
Every one spoke of her as Aunt Lolly, till in the course of time she had
almost forgotten her baptismal name.
‘Say How-do to Auntie Laura,’ said Caroline to Fancy. This was long ago
in the re-furbished nursery at Lady Place where Laura knelt timidly
before her first niece, while the London nurse bustled round them
unpacking soft hairbrushes and pots of cold cream, and hanging linen to
air upon the tall nursery fender.
‘How-do, Auntie Lolly,’ said Fancy, graciously thrusting forward a fur
monkey.
‘She’s taken to you at once, Laura,’ said Caroline. ‘I was afraid this
journey would upset her, but she’s borne it better than any of us.’
‘Journeys are nothing to them at that age, ma’am,’ said the nurse. ‘Now
suppose you tell your new auntie what you call Monkey.’
‘Auntie Lolly, Auntie Lolly,’ repeated Fancy, rhythmically banging the
monkey against the table-leg.
The name hit upon by Fancy was accepted by Marion and Titus; before long
their parents made use of it also. Everard never spoke of his daughter
but as Laura, even when he spoke of her to his grandchildren. He was too
old to change his ways, and he had, in any case, a prejudice against
nicknames and abbreviations. But when Laura went to London she left
Laura behind, and entered into a state of Aunt Lolly. She had quitted so
much of herself in quitting Somerset that it seemed natural to
relinquish her name also. Divested of her easily-worn honours as
mistress of the household, shorn of her long meandering country days,
sleeping in a smart brass bedstead instead of her old and rather pompous
four-poster, wearing unaccustomed clothes and performing unaccustomed
duties, she seemed to herself to have become a different person. Or
rather, she had become two persons, each different. One was Aunt Lolly,
a middle-aging lady, light-footed upon stairs, and indispensable for
Christmas Eve and birthday preparations. The other was Miss Willowes,
‘my sister-in-law Miss Willowes,’ whom Caroline would introduce, and
abandon to a feeling of being neither light-footed nor indispensable.
But Laura was put away. When Henry asked her to witness some document
for him her _Laura Erminia Willowes_ seemed as much a thing out of
common speech as the _Spinster_ that followed it. She would look, and
be surprised that such a dignified name should belong to her.