On garde longtemps son premier amant quand on n'en prend point de
second.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
The two aunts meanwhile were sitting waiting in the drawing-room.
When Mrs. Bellairs died, which event, according to Aunt Aggie, had been
brought about by a persistent refusal to wear on her chest a small
square of flannel, (quite a small square) sprinkled with camphorated
oil, and according to Aunt Mary by a total misconception of the
Bellairs' character; when this event happened, the two aunts became what
they called supports to their brother's motherless children.
They were far from being broken reeds which pierce the hands of those
who lean on them.
No one had ever leaned on Aunt Mary or Aunt Aggie. Aunt Mary might
perhaps be likened to one of those stout beams which have a tendency to
push ruthlessly through the tottering outer wall which they are supposed
to prop, into the inner chamber of the tenement which has the misfortune
to be the object of their good offices.
She had contracted, not in her first youth, a matrimonial alliance--it
could hardly be called a marriage--with a general, distinguished in
India and obscure everywhere else, who had built a villa called "The
Towers" a few miles from Priesthope. The marriage had taken place after
years of half-gratified reluctance on his part and indomitable crude
persistence on hers. In short it was what is generally called "a long
attachment," and proves beyond dispute, what is already proven to the
hilt, that the sterner sex prefer to have their affairs of the heart
arranged for them; that once lost sight of they are mislaid, once let
loose on parole they never return, once captured they endeavour to
escape; that even when finally married nothing short of the amputation
of all external interests will detain them within the sacred precincts
of THE HOME.
Aunt Mary had had trouble with her general, but though she was no
tactician, she was herself a general. His engagement to her had only
been the first of the crushing defeats which she had inflicted upon him.
Now at last at The Towers a deathlike peace reigned. Sir John, severely
tried by rheumatism and advancing years, had, so to speak, given up his
sword.
His wife's magnanimity had provided him with what she considered
suitable amusements and occupations. He was told that he took an
interest in breeding pigs, and he, who had once ruled a province rather
larger than England, might now be seen on fine mornings tottering out,
tilted forward on his stick, making the tour of the farmyard, and
hanging over the low wall of his model pigstyes.
In Magdalen's recollections, Aunt Mary had always looked exactly the
same, the same strong, tall, robust, large-featured, handsome woman,
with black hair, and round, black, unwinking eyes, who invariably
dressed in black and wore a bonnet. Even under the cedar at The Towers
Aunt Mary wore a bonnet. When she employed herself in a majestic
gardening the sun was shaded from her Roman nose by a black satin
parasol.
There are some men and women whom it is monstrous to suppose ever were
children, ever young, ever different from what they are now. Whatever
laws of human nature may rule the birth of others, they, at any rate,
like the phoenix, sprang full grown, middle aged, in a frock coat, or a
bugled silk gown, from some charred heap of unconsenting parental ashes.
Aunt Mary was no doubt one of these.
Near her, on the edge of her chair, perhaps not so entirely on the edge
of it as at first appeared, sat Aunt Aggie. Aunt Aggie looked as if she
had been coloured by some mistake from a palette prepared to depict a
London fog.
Her eyes were greyish yellow, like her eyelashes, like her hair,--at
least her front hair,--like her eyebrows, and her complexion. She was
short and stout. She called slender people skeletons. Her gown, which
was invariably of some greyish, drabbish, neutral-tinted material,
always cocked up a little in front to show two large, flat, soft-looking
feet.
Aunt Aggie began quite narrow at the top. Her forehead was the thin edge
of the wedge, and she widened slowly as she neared the ground; the first
indication of a settlement showing in the lobes of her ears, then in her
cheeks, and then in her drab-apparelled person. Her whole aspect gave
the impression of a great self-importance, early realised and made part
of life, but kept in abeyance by the society of Aunt Mary and by a
religious conviction that others also had their place, a sort of back
seat, in the Divine consciousness.
It would not be fair to Aunt Aggie to omit to mention, especially as she
continually made veiled allusions to the subject herself, that she also
had known the tender passion. There had been an entanglement in her
youth with a High Church archdeacon. But we all know how indefinite, how
inconclusive, how meagre in practical results archidiaconal conferences
are apt to be! After one of them it was discovered that the entanglement
was all on Aunt Aggie's side. The archdeacon remained unenmeshed. Under
severe pressure from Lady Blore, then an indomitable bride of forty,
flushed by recent victory, he even went so far as to say that his only
bride was the Church. It was after this disheartening statement that
Aunt Aggie found herself drawn towards an evangelical and purer form of
religion. The Archdeacon subsequently married, or rather became guilty
of ecclesiastical bigamy. But Aunt Aggie throughout life retained
pessimistic views respecting the celibacy of the clergy.
* * * * *
Aunt Mary bestowed a strong businesslike peck, emphasized by contact
with the point of a stone-cold nose, on Magdalen's cheek. Aunt Aggie
greeted her niece with small inarticulate cluckings of affection. Have
you ever kissed a tepid poached egg? Then you know what it is to salute
Aunt Aggie's cheek.
"Where are Fay and Bessie?" enquired Aunt Mary instantly. When the aunts
announced their coming, which was invariably at an hour's notice, they
always expected to find the whole family, including Colonel Bellairs,
waiting indoors to receive them. This expectation was never realised,
but the annoyance that invariably followed had retained through many
years the dew of its youth.
"Bessie and Fay are out. I am expecting them back every moment."
"They will probably be later than usual to-day," said Aunt Mary grimly,
with the half-conscious intuition of those whom others avoid. Did she
know that with the exception of Sir John, whose vanity had led him to
take refuge in a _cul-de-sac_, her fellow creatures rushed out by back
doors, threw themselves out of windows, hid behind haystacks, had
letters to write, were ordered by their doctors to rest, whenever she
appeared? Did she know? One thing was certain. Magdalen was one of the
very few persons who had never avoided her, who at times openly sought
her society. And Aunt Mary, though she would have been ashamed to own
it, loved Magdalen. She intended that Magdalen should live with her some
day at the Towers, as an unpaid companion, when Sir John and Aunt Aggie
had entered into peace.
"And your father," continued Aunt Mary. "Did he get my letter? I intend
to have a serious conversation with him after tea."
"Father has this moment come in, and he asked me to tell you that he had
business letters which he is obliged to write."
"I know what _that_ means."
"Oh! Mary!" interpolated Aunt Aggie eagerly. "You forget that Algernon
always, from the time he was a young man, left his letters to the last
moment. All the Bellairs do."
The Bellairs had other unique family characteristics, as peculiar to
themselves as their choice of time for grappling with their
correspondence, which Aunt Aggie was never tired of quoting. "Bellairs
are always late for breakfast. It is no kind of use finding fault with
Bessie about it. I was just the same at her age."
Aunt Aggie went through life under the belief that she was a peacemaker,
which delicate task she fulfilled by making in an impassioned manner
small statements which seldom contained a new or healing view of
existing difficulties. She often spoke of herself as a "buffer" between
contending forces. Sir John Blore had been known to remark that he could
not fathom what Aggie meant by that expression, as it certainly was not
appropriate to the domestic circle at The Towers, consisting, as it did,
of one rheumatic Anglo-Indian worm, and one able-bodied blackbird.
"I intend to see your father after tea," repeated Aunt Mary, taking no
notice of her sister's remark.
"Father is much worried about the right of way," continued Magdalen. "He
showed me your most kind letter about myself, and----"
"Showed it to _you_!" said Aunt Mary, becoming purple. "It was not
intended for any eye except your father's."
"Confidence between a father and his child," began Aunt Aggie, clasping
her stout little hands, and looking eagerly from her sister to her
niece.
Magdalen went on tranquilly. "It only told me what I knew before, Aunt
Mary, that you have my welfare at heart. Father said that he thought it
would be best if you and I talked the matter over. I agreed with him.
It would be easier for me to discuss it with you. It would not be for
the first time."
It would not indeed!
"Aggie," said Aunt Mary instantly, "you expressed a wish on your way
here to see Bessie's fossils. You will go to the schoolroom and
investigate them."
"I think they are kept locked," said Aunt Aggie faintly. She longed to
stay. She had guessed the subject of the letter. She took in a love
affair the fevered interest with which the unmarried approach the
subject.
"They are unlocked," said Aunt Mary with decision.
Aunt Aggie swallowed the remains of her tea, and holding a little bitten
bun in her hand slid out of the room. She never openly opposed her
sister, with whom she lived part of the year when she let her cottage at
Saundersfoot to relations in need of sea air.
An unmistakable aspect of concentration deepened in Aunt Mary's fine
countenance.
"Magdalen," she said at once, "in the presence of that weak
sentimentalist my lips are closed. But now that we are alone, and as it
is your wish to reopen the subject, it is my duty to inform myself
whether anything has transpired about Everard Constable--Lord
Lossiemouth, as I suppose he now is."
"Nothing," said Magdalen with a calmness that was almost cheerful. If
she was as sensitive as she looked she had a marvellous power of
concealing it. She never shrank. She was apparently never wounded. She
seldom showed that any subject jarred on her. It is affirmed that
animals develop certain organs to meet the exigencies of their
environment. A sole's eye (or is it a sand-dab's?) travels up round its
head regardless of appearances when it finds it is more wanted there
than on the lower side. We often see a similar distortion in the mental
features of the wives of literary men. So perhaps also Magdalen had
adapted herself to the Bellairs' environment, with which it was obvious
that she had almost nothing in common except her name.
Aunt Mary loved Magdalen in a way, yet she never spared her the
discussion of that long-ago attachment of her youth, violently
mismanaged by Colonel Bellairs. The rose of Aunt Mary's real affection
had a little scent, but it was set round with thorns.
"He has behaved disgracefully," she said, looking with anger and
disappointment at her niece's faded face.
"We have discussed that before," said Magdalen tranquilly. "I, as you
know, do not blame him. But it is all a hundred years ago, and better
forgotten."
"He was poor then. No one ever thought he would succeed with two lives
between. But it is different now that he is wealthy and in a position to
marry."
"He has never been in a position to marry me," said Magdalen, "because
he never cared enough for me to make an effort on my behalf. That was
not his fault. He mistook a romantic admiration for love, and naturally
found it would not work. How could it? It was not necessary to turn
heaven and earth to gain me. But it _was_ necessary to turn a few small
stones. He could not turn them."
"Well, at any rate, he asked you, and you accepted him."
"A hundred years ago."
"And you have waited for him ever since."
"Not at all. I am not waiting for him or for anyone."
"You would have married Mr. Grenfell if it had not been for Everard."
"Perhaps I should have married Everard if it had not been for Everard,"
said Magdalen.
It seemed as if nothing could shake her dispassionate view of the
matter.
"Your feelings were certainly engaged, Magdalen. There is no use in
denying that."
"Have I ever denied it?"
Aunt Mary was silent for a moment, but her under lip was ominously
thrust out. She was not thinking of what Magdalen had said. If she had
ever listened to the remarks of others when they differed from her, she
would not have become Lady Blore. She was only silent because she was
rallying her forces.
"A woman's hands become talons when they try to hold on to a man when he
wants to get away," said Magdalen gently.
Aunt Mary turned on her niece an opaque eye that saw nothing beyond the
owner's views.
"Something ought to be done," she said with emphasis. "After all, your
father dismissed him. I shall advise your father to write to him, and if
he does not--I shall write to him myself."
"I hope you will not do that," said Magdalen. "Do you remember what a
subject for gossip it was at the time? When father became angry with
Everard he told everyone, and it became a sort of loud turmoil. The
servants knew, the parish knew, the whole county knew that I had had a
disappointment. I have remained ever since in the eyes of the neighbours
a sort of blighted creature, a victim of the heartlessness of man. A new
edition of that old story now that my hair is grey would be, I think, a
little out of place. I had hoped----"
The door was suddenly thrown open, and Bessie marched into the room with
Aunt Aggie hanging nervously at her heels.
"I came back as quickly as I could from the Carters' in order not to
miss you," said Bessie to Aunt Mary in her stentorian voice, and she
presented a glowing rose cheek to be kissed.
Magdalen shot a grateful glance at her sister, and the conversation
became general.
After the aunts had departed, Bessie said to Magdalen on their way
upstairs to dress, "I found when I reached the Carters' that they had
gone out with Professor Ridgway to see the Roman camp. Only old Mrs.
Carter was at home, and she was rather chilly, and said they had
expected me to luncheon. They had had a little party to meet the
Professor. I saw that my conduct called for an apology. I made one."
"I am glad of that."
"I see now that it would have been wiser to have gone over for luncheon
as arranged. I also thought how selfish it was of Fay not to help you
with the aunts. And then I perceived that there were not two pins to
choose between us, as I had been just as bad myself, so I hurried back
as quickly as I could."
"I was most grateful to you when I saw you come in. And Aunt Mary was
pleased too. She never shows it much; but she was."
"It is of secondary importance whether she was pleased or not. My object
in returning was twofold: to help you, and also for the sake of my own
character. I begin to see that unless I am careful I shall become as
selfish as father."
Magdalen did not answer.
"The aunts never do things like other people," continued Bessie. "I
found Aunt Aggie standing, eating a bun, just outside the drawing-room
door. She was quite flurried when I came up, and said she wanted to see
my fossils, but would rather look at them another day."