(From _The London Mercury_)
1922
I had heard rumours of Seaton's Aunt long before I actually encountered
her. Seaton, in the hush of confidence, or at any little show of
toleration on our part, would remark, "My aunt," or "My old aunt, you
know," as if his relative might be a kind of cement to an _entente
cordiale_.
He had an unusual quantity of pocket-money; or, at any rate, it was
bestowed on him in unusually large amounts; and he spent it freely,
though none of us would have described him as an "awfully generous
chap." "Hullo, Seaton," he would say, "the old Begum?" At the beginning
of term, too, he used to bring back surprising and exotic dainties in a
box with a trick padlock that accompanied him from his first appearance
at Gummidge's in a billycock hat to the rather abrupt conclusion of his
school-days.
From a boy's point of view he looked distastefully foreign, with his
yellow skin, and slow chocolate-coloured eyes, and lean weak figure.
Merely for his looks he was treated by most of us true-blue Englishmen
with condescension, hostility, or contempt. We used to call him
"Pongo," but without any better excuse for the nickname than his skin.
He was, that is, in one sense of the term what he assuredly was not in
the other sense, a sport.
Seaton and I were never in any sense intimate at school, our orbits
only intersected in class. I kept instinctively aloof from him. I felt
vaguely he was a sneak, and remained quite unmollified by advances on
his side, which, in a boy's barbarous fashion, unless it suited me to
be magnanimous, I haughtily ignored.
We were both of us quick-footed, and at Prisoner's Base used
occasionally to hide together. And so I best remember Seaton--his
narrow watchful face in the dusk of summer evening; his peculiar
crouch, and his inarticulate whisperings and mumblings. Otherwise he
played all games slackly and limply; used to stand and feed at his
locker with a crony or two until his "tuck" gave out; or waste his
money on some outlandish fancy or other. He bought, for instance, a
silver bangle, which he wore above his left elbow, until some of the
fellows showed their masterly contempt of the practice by dropping it
nearly red-hot down his neck.
It needed, therefore, a rather peculiar taste, a rather rare kind of
schoolboy courage and indifference to criticism, to be much associated
with him. And I had neither the taste nor the courage. None the less,
he did make advances, and on one memorable occasion went to the length
of bestowing on me a whole pot of some outlandish mulberry-coloured
jelly that had been duplicated in his term's supplies. In the
exuberance of my gratitude I promised to spend the next half-term
holiday with him at his aunt's house.
I had clean forgotten my promise when, two or three days before the
holiday, he came up and triumphantly reminded me of it.
"Well, to tell you the honest truth, Seaton, old chap----" I began
graciously; but he cut me short.
"My aunt expects you," he said; "she is very glad you are coming. She's
sure to be quite decent to _you_, Withers."
I looked at him in some astonishment; the emphasis was unexpected. It
seemed to suggest an aunt not hitherto hinted at, and a friendly
feeling on Seaton's side that was more disconcerting than welcome.
* * * * *
We reached his home partly by train, partly by a lift in an empty
farm-cart, and partly by walking. It was a whole-day holiday, and we
were to sleep the night; he lent me extraordinary night-gear, I
remember. The village street was unusually wide, and was fed from a
green by two converging roads, with an inn, and a high green sign at
the corner. About a hundred yards down the street was a chemist's
shop--Mr. Tanner's. We descended the two steps into his dusky and
odorous interior to buy, I remember, some rat poison. A little beyond
the chemist's was the forge. You then walked along a very narrow path,
under a fairly high wall, nodding here and there with weeds and tufts
of grass, and so came to the iron garden-gates, and saw the high flat
house behind its huge sycamore. A coach-house stood on the left of the
house, and on the right a gate led into a kind of rambling orchard. The
lawn lay away over to the left again, and at the bottom (for the whole
garden sloped gently to a sluggish and rushy pond-like stream) was a
meadow.
We arrived at noon, and entered the gates out of the hot dust beneath
the glitter of the dark-curtained windows. Seaton led me at once
through the little garden-gate to show me his tadpole pond, swarming
with what, being myself not the least bit of a naturalist, I considered
the most horrible creatures--of all shapes, consistencies, and sizes,
but with whom Seaton seemed to be on the most intimate of terms. I can
see his absorbed face now as he sat on his heels and fished the slimy
things out in his sallow palms. Wearying at last of his pets, we
loitered about awhile in an aimless fashion. Seaton seemed to be
listening, or at any rate waiting, for something to happen or for some
one to come. But nothing did happen and no one came.
That was just like Seaton. Anyhow, the first view I got of his aunt was
when, at the summons of a distant gong, we turned from the garden, very
hungry and thirsty, to go into luncheon. We were approaching the house
when Seaton suddenly came to a standstill. Indeed, I have always had
the impression that he plucked at my sleeve. Something, at least,
seemed to catch me back, as it were, as he cried, "Look out, there she
is!"
She was standing in an upper window which opened wide on a hinge, and
at first sight she looked an excessively tall and overwhelming figure.
This, however, was mainly because the window reached all but to the
floor of her bedroom. She was in reality rather an under-sized woman,
in spite of her long face and big head. She must have stood, I think,
unusually still, with eyes fixed on us, though this impression may be
due to Seaton's sudden warning and to my consciousness of the cautious
and subdued air that had fallen on him at sight of her. I know that
without the least reason in the world I felt a kind of guiltiness, as
if I had been "caught." There was a silvery star pattern sprinkled on
her black silk dress, and even from the ground I could see the immense
coils of her hair and the rings on her left hand which was held
fingering the small jet buttons of her bodice. She watched our united
advance without stirring, until, imperceptibly, her eyes raised and
lost themselves in the distance, so that it was out of an assumed
reverie that she appeared suddenly to awaken to our presence beneath
her when we drew close to the house.
"So this is your friend, Mr. Smithers, I suppose?" she said, bobbing to
me.
"Withers, aunt," said Seaton.
"It's much the same," she said, with eyes fixed on me. "Come in, Mr.
Withers, and bring him along with you."
She continued to gaze at me--at least, I think she did so. I know that
the fixity of her scrutiny and her ironical "Mr." made me feel
peculiarly uncomfortable. But she was extremely kind and attentive to
me, though perhaps her kindness and attention showed up more vividly
against her complete neglect of Seaton. Only one remark that I have any
recollection of she made to him: "When I look on my nephew, Mr.
Smithers, I realise that dust we are, and dust shall become. You are
hot, dirty, and incorrigible, Arthur."
She sat at the head of the table, Seaton at the foot, and I, before a
wide waste of damask tablecloth, between them. It was an old and rather
close dining-room, with windows thrown wide to the green garden and a
wonderful cascade of fading roses. Miss Seaton's great chair faced this
window, so that its rose-reflected light shone full on her yellowish
face, and on just such chocolate eyes as my schoolfellow's, except that
hers were more than half-covered by unusually long and heavy lids.
There she sat, eating, with those sluggish eyes fixed for the most part
on my face; above them stood the deep-lined fork between her eyebrows;
and above that the wide expanse of a remarkable brow beneath its
strange steep bank of hair. The lunch was copious, and consisted, I
remember, of all such dishes as are generally considered mischievous
and too good for the schoolboy digestion--lobster mayonnaise, cold game
sausages, an immense veal and ham pie farced with eggs and numberless
delicious flavours; besides sauces, kickshaws, creams, and sweetmeats.
We even had wine, a half-glass of old darkish sherry each.
Miss Seaton enjoyed and indulged an enormous appetite. Her example and
a natural schoolboy voracity soon overcame my nervousness of her, even
to the extent of allowing me to enjoy to the best of my bent so rare a
"spread." Seaton was singularly modest; the greater part of his meal
consisted of almonds and raisins, which he nibbled surreptitiously and
as if he found difficulty in swallowing them.
I don't mean that Miss Seaton "conversed" with me. She merely scattered
trenchant remarks and now and then twinkled a baited question over my
head. But her face was like a dense and involved accompaniment to her
talk. She presently dropped the "Mr.," to my intense relief, and called
me now Withers, or Wither, now Smithers, and even once towards the
close of the meal distinctly Johnson, though how on earth my name
suggested it, or whose face mine had reanimated in memory, I cannot
conceive.
"And is Arthur a good boy at school, Mr. Wither?" was one of her many
questions. "Does he please his masters? Is he first in his class? What
does the reverend Dr. Gummidge think of him, eh?"
I knew she was jeering at him, but her face was adamant against the
least flicker of sarcasm or facetiousness. I gazed fixedly at a
blushing crescent of lobster.
"I think you're eighth, aren't you, Seaton?"
Seaton moved his small pupils towards his aunt. But she continued to
gaze with a kind of concentrated detachment at me.
"Arthur will never make a brilliant scholar, I fear," she said, lifting
a dexterously-burdened fork to her wide mouth....
After luncheon she preceded me up to my bedroom. It was a jolly little
bedroom, with a brass fender and rugs and a polished floor, on which it
was possible, I afterwards found, to play "snow-shoes." Over the
washstand was a little black-framed water-colour drawing, depicting a
large eye with an extremely fishlike intensity in the spark of light on
the dark pupil; and in "illuminated" lettering beneath was printed very
minutely, "Thou God Seest ME," followed by a long looped monogram,
"S.S.," in the corner. The other pictures were all of the sea: brigs on
blue water; a schooner overtopping chalk cliffs; a rocky island of
prodigious steepness, with two tiny sailors dragging a monstrous boat
up a shelf of beach.
"This is the room, Withers, my brother William died in when a boy.
Admire the view!"
I looked out of the window across the tree-tops. It was a day hot with
sunshine over the green fields, and the cattle were standing swishing
their tails in the shallow water. But the view at the moment was only
exaggeratedly vivid because I was horribly dreading that she would
presently enquire after my luggage, and I had not brought even a
toothbrush. I need have had no fear. Hers was not that highly-civilised
type of mind that is stuffed with sharp material details. Nor could her
ample presence be described as in the least motherly.
"I would never consent to question a schoolfellow behind my nephew's
back," she said, standing in the middle of the room, "but tell me,
Smithers, why is Arthur so unpopular? You, I understand, are his only
close friend." She stood in a dazzle of sun, and out of it her eyes
regarded me with such leaden penetration beneath their thick lids that
I doubt if my face concealed the least thought from her. "But there,
there," she added very suavely, stooping her head a little, "don't
trouble to answer me. I never extort an answer. Boys are queer fish.
Brains might perhaps have suggested his washing his hands before
luncheon; but--not my choice, Smithers. God forbid! And now, perhaps,
you would like to go into the garden again. I cannot actually see from
here, but I should not be surprised if Arthur is now skulking behind
that hedge."
He was. I saw his head come out and take a rapid glance at the windows.
"Join him, Mr. Smithers; we shall meet again, I hope, at the tea-table.
The afternoon I spend in retirement."
Whether or not, Seaton and I had not been long engaged with the aid of
two green switches in riding round and round a lumbering old gray horse
we found in the meadow, before a rather bunched-up figure appeared,
walking along the field-path on the other side of the water, with a
magenta parasol studiously lowered in our direction throughout her slow
progress, as if that were the magnetic needle and we the fixed pole.
Seaton at once lost all nerve in his riding. At the next lurch of the
old mare's heels he toppled over into the grass, and I slid off the
sleek broad back to join him where he stood, rubbing his shoulder and
sourly watching the rather pompous figure till it was out of sight.
"Was that your aunt, Seaton?" I enquired; but not till then.
He nodded.
"Why didn't she take any notice of us, then?"
"She never does."
"Why not?"
"Oh, she knows all right, without; that's the dam awful part of it."
Seaton was about the only fellow at Gummidge's who ever had the
ostentation to use bad language. He had suffered for it, too. But it
wasn't, I think, bravado. I believe he really felt certain things more
intensely than most of the other fellows, and they were generally
things that fortunate and average people do not feel at all--the
peculiar quality, for instance, of the British schoolboy's imagination.
"I tell you, Withers," he went on moodily, slinking across the meadow
with his hands covered up in his pockets, "she sees everything. And
what she doesn't see she knows without."
"But how?" I said, not because I was much interested, but because the
afternoon was so hot and tiresome and purposeless, and it seemed more
of a bore to remain silent. Seaton turned gloomily and spoke in a very
low voice.
"Don't appear to be talking of her, if you wouldn't mind. It's--because
she's in league with the devil." He nodded his head and stooped to pick
up a round flat pebble. "I tell you," he said, still stooping, "you
fellows don't realise what it is. I know I'm a bit close and all that.
But so would you be if you had that old hag listening to every thought
you think."
I looked at him, then turned and surveyed one by one the windows of the
house.
"Where's your _pater_?" I said awkwardly.
"Dead, ages and ages ago, and my mother too. She's not my aunt by
rights."
"What is she, then?"
"I mean she's not my mother's sister, because my grandmother married
twice; and she's one of the first lot. I don't know what you call her,
but anyhow she's not my real aunt."
"She gives you plenty of pocket-money."
Seaton looked steadfastly at me out of his flat eyes. "She can't give
me what's mine. When I come of age half of the whole lot will be mine;
and what's more"--he turned his back on the house--"I'll make her hand
over every blessed shilling of it."