(From _The Cornhill Magazine_)
1921, 1922
This was the first communication that had come from her aunt in
Rachel's lifetime.
"I think your aunt has forgiven me, at last," her father said as he
passed the letter across the table.
Rachel looked first at the signature. It seemed strange to see her own
name there. It was as if her individuality, her very identity, was
impugned by the fact that there should be two Rachel Deanes. Moreover
there was a likeness between her aunt's autograph and her own, a
characteristic turn in the looping of the letters, a hint of the same
decisiveness and precision. If Rachel had been educated fifty years
earlier, she might have written her name in just that manner.
"You're very like her in some ways," her father said, as she still
stared at the signature.
Rachel's eyelids drooped and her expression indicated a faint,
suppressed intolerance of her father's remark. He said the same things
so often, and in so precisely the same tone, that she had formed a
habit of automatically rejecting the truth of certain of his
statements. He had always appeared to her as senile. He had been over
fifty when she was born, and ever since she could remember she had
doubted the correctness of his information. She was, she had often told
herself, "a born sceptic; an ultra-modern." She had a certain
veneration for the more distant past, but none for her father's period.
"Victorianism" was to her a term of abuse. She had long since condemned
alike the ethic and the aesthetic of the nineteenth century as
represented by her father's opinions; so, that, even now, when his
familiar comment coincided so queerly with her own thought, she
instinctively disbelieved him. Yet, as always, she was gentle in her
answer. She condescended from the heights of her youth and vigour to
pity him.
"I should think you must almost have forgotten what Aunt Rachel was
like, dear," she said. "How many years is it since you've seen her?"
"More than forty; more than forty," her father said, ruminating
profoundly. "We disagreed, we invariably disagreed. Rachel always
prided herself on being so modern. She read Huxley and Darwin and
things like that. Altogether beyond me, I admit. Still, it seems to me
that the old truths have endured, and will--in spite of all--in spite
of all."
Rachel straightened her shoulders and lifted her head; there was
disdain in her face, but none in her voice as she replied:
"And so it seems that she wants to see me."
She was excited at the thought of meeting this traditional, this almost
mythical aunt whom she had so often heard about. Sometimes she had
wondered if the personality of this remarkable relative had not been a
figment of her father's imagination, long pondered, and reconstructed
out of half-forgotten material. But this letter of hers that now lay on
the breakfast table was admirable in character. There was something of
condescension and intolerance expressed in the very restraint of its
tone. She had written a kindly letter, but the kindliness had an air of
pity. It was all consistent enough with what her father had told her.
Mr. Deane came out of his reminiscences with a sigh.
"Yes, yes; she wants to see you, my dear," he said. "I think you had
better accept this invitation to stay with her. She--she is rich,
almost wealthy; and I, as you know, have practically nothing to leave
you--practically nothing. If she took a fancy to you...."
He sighed again, and Rachel knew that for the hundredth time he was
regretting his own past weakness. He had been so foolish in money
matters, frittering away his once considerable capital in aimless
speculations. He and his sister had shared equally under their father's
will, but while he had been at last compelled to sink the greater part
of what was left to him in an annuity, she had probably increased her
original inheritance.
"I'll certainly go, if you can spare me for a whole fortnight," Rachel
said. "I'm all curiosity to see this remarkable aunt. By the way, how
old is she?"
"There were only fifteen months between us," Mr. Deane said, "so she
must be,--dear me, yes;--she must be seventy-three. Dear, dear. Fancy
Rachel being seventy-three! I always think of her as being about your
age. It seems so absurd to think of her as _old_...."
He continued his reflections, but Rachel was not listening. He was
asking for the understanding of the young; quite unaware of his
senility, reaching out over half a century to try to touch the
comprehension and sympathy of his daughter. But she was already bent on
her own adventure, looking forward eagerly to a visit to London that
promised delights other than the inspection of the mysterious,
traditional aunt whom she had so long known by report.
For this invitation had come very aptly. Rachel pondered that, later in
the morning, with a glow of ecstatic resignation to her charming fate.
She found the guiding hand of a romantic inevitability in the fact that
she and Adrian Flemming were to meet so soon. It had seemed so unlikely
that they would see each other again for many months. They had only met
three times; but they _knew_, although their friendship had been too
green for either of them to admit the knowledge before he had gone back
to town. He had, indeed, hinted far more in his two letters than he had
ever dared to say. He was sensitive, he lacked self-confidence; but
Rachel adored him for just those failings she criticised so hardly in
her father. She took out her letters and re-read them, thrilling with
the realisation that in her answer she would have such a perfectly
amazing surprise for him. She would refer to it quite casually,
somewhere near the end. She would write: "By the way, it's just
possible that we may meet again before long as I am going to stay with
my aunt, Miss Deane, in Tavistock Square." He would understand all that
lay behind such an apparently careless reference, for she had told him
that she "never went to London," had only once in her life ever been
there.
She was in her own room, and she stood, now, before the cheval glass
and studied herself; raising her chin and slightly pursing her lips,
staring superciliously at her own image under half-lowered eyelids.
Candidly, she admired herself; but she could not help that assumption
of a disdainful criticism. It seemed to give her confidence in her own
integrity; hiding that annoying shadow of doubt which sometimes fell
upon her when she caught sight of her reflection by chance and
unexpectedly.
But no thought of doubt flawed her satisfaction this morning. A sense
of power came to her, a tranquil realisation that she could charm
Adrian as she would. With a graceful, habitual gesture she put up her
hand and lightly touched her cheek with a soft, caressing movement of
her finger-tips.