Aunt Sarah had never been so angry before in her life. She was an
extraordinarily disagreeable old woman--disagreeable in a masterly,
cold-blooded, incisive way, partly because disagreeable speech was a
genuine expression of her nature, partly because she had discovered in
the course of years that she gained more by being disagreeable, which
came easy to her, than by being pleasant, which did not. One of the
weapons of her armoury was the feigning of anger, and few could stand
upright before her wrath. But for this very reason she had seldom been
opposed in such a way as to make her really angry, and now that this had
happened to her she was almost beside herself with rage.
When she reached the cosy little sitting-room which had been devoted to
her special use, having closed the door with a bang which re-echoed
along the corridors, she found herself surrounded by just that
atmosphere of personal comfort in which her sybaritic old soul
delighted. A cheerful fire burned in the grate. Before it was drawn up
the easiest of easy chairs. At the side of the chair stood a table upon
which was a tray containing those refreshments, solid and liquid, with
which Aunt Sarah loved best to fortify herself for the hours of
darkness, a collection of papers and magazines, and half-a-dozen new
books. The gay chintz curtains were close-drawn, and the electric lights
behind their rosy shades threw just the right amount of light upon this
pleasant interior.
Aunt Sarah had often before left a company of people in displeasure and
retired to her own apartment with a bang of the door behind her. But
once shut in by herself the expression of her face had usually changed,
and with a grim chuckle at her own astuteness, and the remembrance of
her effective departure, she had settled herself down with a mind wiped
clean of emotion to the enjoyment of her own society.
But to-night Aunt Sarah took no delight in her own society, nor did her
angry old face change as she closed the door on the cosy warmth of her
room. It is true that she sat down in the easy chair in front of the
fire. Women do not pace the room in their rage as is the custom with
men. All the same, a consuming rage held her. It had in it a tinge of
helplessness, and it shook her wiry old frame like an ague. Aunt Sarah
was beaten, and she had the sense to recognise it.
By-and-by she began to feel rather alarmed at her state of mind.
Helpless anger is not a soothing emotion, and Aunt Sarah, in spite of
her well-nourished vigour, was an old woman. It was very uncomfortable
to be so angry, and it was still more uncomfortable to realize that her
power of keeping her own personality in the ascendant had been wrested
from her by "a chit of a low-born foreigner," as she expressed it to
herself.
When her anger had tired her sufficiently the feeling of helplessness
increased, and sorely against her will Aunt Sarah began to pity herself.
She fought against the feeling of self-pity for some time--she was made
of sterner stuff than those who cherish it as a mild luxury--but it
overpowered her at last. She suddenly saw herself old and, for all her
many relations and acquaintances, friendless--worse than friendless,
feared and disliked. She was also, for the time being, homeless. She had
let her little box of a house in London for the winter, and had intended
to stay at Castle Gide for at least a month. If she carried out her
threat of leaving the next morning she had nowhere to go to, and she was
accustomed to run things so close that she actually had not the money to
take her to some place suitable to her exalted station and to keep
herself there for four weeks.
Then she suddenly realized that in the depths of her queer, twisted
heart she was fond of her nephew; also that her nephew's American bride
had brought her both deference and entertainment as long as she had
treated her with ordinary courtesy. She also discovered that she had a
sentiment for Castle Gide, which had been her own home for thirty-five
years, that was not wholly dependent upon its capabilities of affording
her the degree of luxurious living which she most appreciated. At this
point something happened which had not happened for fully half a
century. Two large tears trickled down Aunt Sarah's face. She knew
herself for a lonely, disagreeable old woman, very, very poor.
[Illustration: "SHE KNEW HERSELF FOR A LONELY, DISAGREEABLE OLD WOMAN."]
When Otterburn came out of the dining-room with the rest of the men he
drew his wife a little aside and said to her: "Look here, old lady, I
don't think we can carry this on. I am afraid Aunt Sarah will have a fit
if we bait her much more. Her eyes rolled most unpleasantly at dinner.
Where is she, by-the-bye?"
"She has gone upstairs looking mighty ugly," replied her ladyship. "She
is going to express her baggage home to-morrow."
"Oh, she mustn't do that," said Otterburn. "She has always gone on like
that, and her bark is worse than her bite. You go and calm her down, and
we'll stop this game."
"We've won," said Lady Otterburn. "But I don't feel very spry over the
victory. She is an old lady, and I guess we'll just have to let her play
by herself as long as she camps here. I'll go up to her right now."
So Lady Otterburn entered Aunt Sarah's room just in time to catch her
drying the two tears aforesaid and a few more that had followed them. A
wave of compunction passed over her, and she felt that she and her
husband and their guests had all behaved with the most unmannerly
brutality.
"Dear Aunt Sarah," she said, "I hate that you should be all alone up
here while we are enjoying ourselves downstairs. Won't you come down and
hear Mrs. Vanhooten sing? They call her the nightingale of Cincinnati in
the States."
Now, if Lady Otterburn had followed the impulse that came to her to
kneel by the side of the old woman and mix tears, she would almost
certainly have been repulsed and would have found Aunt Sarah once more
encased in a full suit of prickles; for, however much in a moment of
weakness that redoubtable old lady may have pitied herself, she
certainly would have permitted no one else to pity her. But Lady
Otterburn was a young woman of considerable tact as well as generosity
of feeling, and her method of approach proved to be the best she could
have chosen.
"Not to-night," replied Aunt Sarah. "I confess to being slightly upset
at what has occurred, and I do not feel equal to mixing with your guests
at present."
"I guess we must have offended you with our little game," said Lady
Otterburn. "But we didn't mean any harm, and we have left off playing it
now."
"It has served its purpose," said Aunt Sarah, slowly. "I have been
thinking matters over since I came upstairs. It is not easy for a woman
of my age and character to confess herself in the wrong, but as far as
you are concerned, my dear, I--I--really think that by showing mutual
respect and consideration we may, perhaps, get on very well together."
The speech had not ended quite in the manner Aunt Sarah had intended
when she began it, but the habits of a lifetime are not changed in a
moment, and its underlying meaning was, at any rate, clear. Aunt Sarah
had come as near as she had ever done in her life to an unreserved
apology for her behaviour.
Lady Otterburn was prepared to meet her a good deal more than half-way.
"Of course, you feel seeing me here in your place," she said. "I don't
wonder. But both Edward and I want you to look upon Castle Gide as your
home just the same as before." (This was not strictly true so far as
Edward was concerned, but it must be admitted to have been generous.)
"And I'm new to this country and to a position to which you were born.
There are so many ways in which you could help, Aunt Sarah."
"My dear," said the old woman, "any help I can give you you shall have.
But I think you are quite capable of holding your own anywhere, and--and
of adorning any position."
So the treaty of peace was concluded, and the Countess and the Dowager
Countess of Otterburn spent a pleasant hour together talking amicably of
many things.
When Aunt Sarah came downstairs the next morning she found everybody
very anxious to please her. The general attitude of the party was that
of people who had committed a breach of courtesy and were ashamed of
themselves. Probably this attitude drove compunction into Aunt Sarah's
soul more completely than any other could have done. She met advances
with amiability, and exercised her fearless tongue and her undoubtedly
sharp intellect to the general amusement rather than to the general
terrifying of the company. By the time that the house-party broke up she
had discovered, possibly to her amazement, that ascendency could be
maintained as completely and far more pleasantly by force of character
combined with wit and good-humour than by force of character supported
by aggressive arrogance alone.
And thus, fortified by experience of its efficacy, Aunt Sarah's
conversion was permanent. This is not to say that from a most
objectionable old woman she changed at a bound into an exceedingly
attractive one. The simile of the leopard and the Ethiopian still holds
good. But there was an all-round improvement in her attitude towards the
world at large which, whenever she found herself at Castle Gide, was an
improvement which seemed to approach the miraculous.
[Illustration: "THE TWO LADIES OTTERBURN WORSHIPPING TOGETHER AT A
CRADLE SHRINE."]
A year after the events of this story, when the two Ladies Otterburn had
been worshipping together for an hour at a cradle shrine plentifully
bedecked with lace, the younger of them said to her husband:--
"Dear Aunt Sarah! She has a real loving heart. I guess it was warped by
her never having a baby of her own."
_How a Chromo-Lithograph is Printed._