acquaintance with official etiquette. Uncle Eneas cherished the
memories of former grandeur, and he was never tired of counting over for
Jasmine the number of guns to which a consul was entitled when he paid a
visit of ceremony to any warship that visited the port to which he was
accredited. The echoes of their booming still rumbled among the files
and dockets of his brain. He had preserved even more vividly the memory
of one or two occasions on which these grandeurs had been denied him by
mistake, for like most consuls of the Levant service, whether they be or
be not teetotallers and non-smokers, Eneas Grant was an aggrieved and
disappointed man who had retired with that disease of the mental outlook
which is known as consulitis. Yet Eneas Grant had less to complain of
than most of his colleagues. The bitterness of finding himself in a post
where he must come into direct competition with embassies or legations
had not often fallen to his lot. He had indeed spent two galling years
as Chief Dragoman at Constantinople, where he was responsible for all
the practical work of the Embassy and considered that he was treated
with less respect than an honorary attache. But he had had Salonika; he
had taken an important part in the Aden demarkation; he had reported a
massacre of Christians in Southern Asia Minor and had been commended by
the Foreign Office for his diligence; his name had been blessed by the
fig merchants of Smyrna. He had eaten rich food in quantity for a number
of years, and he possessed a rich wife, who had never given him a moment
of uneasiness, neither when the bulbuls were singing to the roses of
Constantinople nor amid the murmurous gardens of Damascus.
Aunt Cuckoo was a daughter of the wealthy old Levantine family of
Hewitson, who brought her husband such a handsome dowry that he was able
ever afterward to claim by some obscure process of logic that he had
really served his country for nothing.
"The point is," he used to argue, "the point is that I can give up my
consular career when I choose." And the student-interpreters,
vice-consuls, and consuls of the Levant service, some of whom had rashly
married lovely but penniless Greeks, wondered why the deuce he didn't
hurry up and do so and thus give them a lift all round.
Aunt Cuckoo, being without children, had devoted herself to cats--Angora
cats, a breed to which she became attached during the time that her
husband was consul in that city. Angora cats lack even as much humanity
as Persian cats; compared with Siamese or Javanese cats they are not
human at all. Indeed, as a substitute for the emotions and cravings of
womanhood they are not much more effective than bundles of cotton-wool
would be. In the eyes of the world Aunt Cuckoo's childlessness was
atoned for by the purity and perfection of her Angora breed; but she
herself had to satisfy her own maternal instincts more profoundly by
coddling, almost by cuddling for twenty years a bad arm. And really what
better substitute for a baby could a childless woman find than a bad
arm? Sometimes, of course, it really does hurt; but then sometimes a
baby cuts its teeth, has convulsions or croup, is prone to flatulence
and breaks out into spots. An arm exhibits the phenomena of growth and
decay, and if a baby becomes an inky little boy, and an inky little boy
becomes an exigent young man, an arm gets older and becomes as exigent
as its owner will allow it to be. A bad arm can be shown to people even
by an elderly lady without blushing, whereas children after a certain
age cannot be exhibited in their nudity. Aunt Cuckoo's bad arm was the
chief consolation of her loneliness, and it was only natural that the
morning after Jasmine's arrival she should take her niece aside and
enquire in a whisper if she should like to see her bad arm. Jasmine
welcomed the introduction with an unspoken hope that there was nothing
nasty to see. Nor was there. It was apparently the perfectly normal arm
that any woman over fifty might possess. Age had blunted the contours;
twenty years of testing the efficiency of various lotions and liniments
had gradually stained its pristine alabaster; but there was nothing
whatever to see, no tumour malignant or benign, no ulcer indolent or
irritable.
"I am going to try a new system of massage," Aunt Cuckoo confided. "And
I can't help thinking how nice it would be if you could have a few
lessons."
And as Uncle Eneas for his part was convinced that a more valuable
lesson would be the art of jiu-jitsu, in whatever direction she looked
Jasmine could see nothing before her but muscular development.
"The point about jiu-jitsu," Uncle Eneas explained, "is the independence
it gives you. My own feeling is that women should be as far as possible
independent."
Aunt Cuckoo looked up at this. It had never struck her before that such
was her husband's opinion.
"Now don't _you_ suggest learning jiu-jitsu," he said quickly.
"I don't think my arm would let me," his wife replied.
"And you ought to get plenty of walking," Uncle Eneas added, turning to
Jasmine. "At your age I always walked for an hour and a half before
breakfast. I remember once at Broussa...." and he was off on one of his
entirely topographical stories, dragging his listeners through
landscapes that for them were as shifting, as uncertain, as nebulous and
confused as the landscapes of other people's dreams.
Perhaps Aunt Cuckoo yielded less to her husband than superficially she
appeared. Certainly nothing more was said about jiu-jitsu, whereas the
massage scheme made considerable progress. Two days later a gaunt
blonde, with that look professional nurses sometimes have of being nuns
who have succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, invested The Cedars.
She advanced upon poor Aunt Cuckoo with such a grim air that Jasmine
began to think that it was rather a pity that she had not learnt
jiu-jitsu in order to defend herself against this barbarian.
"This is Miss Hellner," said Aunt Cuckoo, timorously offering the
introduction in the manner of a propitiatory sacrifice. "Miss Hellner,"
she went on imploringly, "who has made such a wonderful improvement in
my bad arm. I want my niece to get a few hints from you, Miss Hellner.
She is anxious to take up massage professionally."
Miss Hellner's cold blue eye, as cold and blue as one of her
Scandinavian fjords, was fixed upon the victim; no amount of talk about
Jasmine's future was going to deter her from her duty.
"Will you please unbutton the sleeve?" she requested in a guttural
voice, which Aunt Cuckoo prepared to obey.
"The arm has been rather better the last few days," the patient
suggested. "So perhaps it won't be necessary to repeat last week's
treatment."
"Three times that treatment is repeated," said Miss Hellner inexorably.
"That is the rule."
"Oh dear," Aunt Cuckoo murmured with a dolorous little giggle. "I'm
afraid I'm going to have rather a painful time. But don't go away,
Jasmine. It's going to hurt me very much, but it will be very
interesting for you to watch. Miss Hellner is so expert."
But flattery was impotent against Miss Hellner, who by now had seized
the arm and was kneading it, pinching it, digging her knuckles into
it--and bony knuckles they were too--trying to tear it in half
apparently with her thumbs, burrowing and boring, while all the time
Aunt Cuckoo ejaculated "Ouch!" or "Ah!" and to one viciously penetrating
use of the forefinger as a gimlet "Yi! Yi!"
At last Miss Hellner stopped, and Aunt Cuckoo lay back on the sofa with
a sigh, occasionally giving a glance of ineffable tenderness to where
her bad arm, as red as a new-born baby, lay upon her breast.
"If your arm is not well after one more treatment...."
"One more treatment," echoed Aunt Cuckoo dutifully, "Yes?"
"You will have to take the oil cure."
"The oil cure?" asked the patient, pleasantly excited at the prospect of
a new treatment. "What does that consist of?"
"First you take an ice bath."
"Yes," said Aunt Cuckoo, "our bathroom is _very_ nice."
"Ice bath," repeated the nurse severely.
"Oh, I see," said Aunt Cuckoo with less enthusiasm. "You mean a cold
bath."
"Ice bath," Miss Hellner almost shouted. "With lumps of ice to float.
Then I rub you with oil of olives."
Aunt Cuckoo nodded gratefully; after the ice such a proceeding sounded
luxurious.
"Then with nothing on you will do the gymnastic. Up and down the room.
Backwards and forwards. So."
"Dear me, with nothing on? Absolutely nothing? Couldn't I keep a small
towel?"
"Nothing on," repeated the masseuse obstinately. "Then you sit for ten
minutes in the window with the fan."
"But surely not with nothing on except a fan?"
"With nothing on," the masseuse insisted. "Then----" She paused
impressively, while Aunt Cuckoo looked excessively agitated, and Jasmine
wondered what ultimate ordeal she was going to prescribe. Surely she
could not intend to make the patient sit in the garden or drive in the
brougham with nothing on?
"Then you will drink a large glass of lemonade and absorb the oil," Miss
Hellner announced.
"Good gracious! Not a very large glass of oil?"
"It is the lemons who drink the oil. It was not you yourself," Miss
Hellner explained scornfully.
"Jasmine," said Aunt Cuckoo with one finger lifted in solemn admonition,
"don't let me forget to order the lemons in good time."
The lemonade was such a simple and peaceable climax that Aunt Cuckoo was
evidently anxious to try it; she did not ask her niece to remind her
about the ice, and in order to prevent Miss Hellner's reminding her she
suggested that Jasmine should have a short lesson in the art of massage.
"Oh, but I think watching you has been enough lesson for to-day"
objected Jasmine, who feared the example that is better than the
precept. "I don't think I could take in any more at first."
"She must come to the school of Swedish culture," Miss Hellner decided.
Thus it was that Jasmine found herself engaged on Mondays, Wednesdays,
and Fridays to travel from Hampstead to Baker Street, with every
prospect, unless fate should intervene to save her, of becoming by
profession a masseuse, the last profession she would ever have chosen
for herself.
On the days when she did not go to Baker Street she had to comb the
cats. To comb seven Angora cats was almost as tiring as massage.
"I suppose this is the way your arm got bad?" she once suggested to her
aunt.
"Oh, no, dear," said Aunt Cuckoo. "When I was young I used to write a
great deal. I wrote six novels about life in the Levant, and then I had
writer's cramp."
That evening when she went up to her bedroom Jasmine found her aunt's
novels waiting to be read--eighteen volumes published in the style of
the early 'nineties and the late 'eighties, with titles like _The
Sultan's Shadow_ and _The Rose of Sharon_. She read bits of each one in
turn, and then abruptly felt that she had had enough, just as one feels
that one has had enough Turkish-delight. Unfortunately Aunt Cuckoo said
there was nothing she liked better than really intelligent criticism. So
between reading the novels, learning massage, and combing the cats there
was not much leisure for Jasmine, and what leisure she had was more than
filled by rapid walks with Uncle Eneas over the Heath. Sirene is not a
place that predisposes people to walk fast, and Uncle Eneas was
continually being amazed that a niece thirty-five years younger than
himself should be unable to quicken her pace to suit his own. Sometimes
he said this in such a severe tone that Jasmine was half afraid that he
would buy a lead and compel her to keep up with him. Luckily she was not
expected to talk, and she soon discovered that she was only expected to
say once in every ten minutes 'What an extraordinary life you have had,
Uncle Eneas,' to maintain him in a perfectly good temper.
Aunt May had written Jasmine a long letter from Spaborough expressing
her delight at the news that she was treating Uncle Eneas and Aunt
Cuckoo with more consideration than she had shown towards Uncle Hector
and herself, announcing the imminent return of the family to Harley
Street and magnanimously offering to give Jasmine lunch on her 'massage
days,' inasmuch as Harley Street was, as no doubt she knew, quite close
to Baker Street. Cousin Edith also wrote warmly and effusively; but the
paleness of the ink, the thinness of the pen, and the flimsiness of the
paper made the letter seem like an old letter found in a secret drawer
and addressed to somebody who had been dead a century. She did not hear
from Harry Vibart, and she wondered if he had written to her at
Strathspey House and if her relatives there had kept back the letter.
She supposed that she should never see him again, and she began to fear
that she, like so many other girls, should drift into a profession to
which she was not particularly attracted, or into a marriage for which
she was not particularly anxious, or perhaps, worst of all, that she
should merely shrink and shrink and shrink into a desiccated old maid
like Cousin Edith. It was not an exhilarating prospect; Mustapha, the
patriarch of the Angora cats, had his fur combed out less gently than
usual that morning.
Life was seeming unutterably dreary when Aunt Cuckoo came into the room,
her eyes flashing with anticipation, her being rejuvenated by
excitement, to say that one of the maids had a stiff neck, and to ask if
Jasmine would immediately go to her room and operate on it.
Jasmine followed her aunt upstairs, and expressed her sense of life's
disillusionment by the vigour with which she manipulated, man-handled
indeed, the neck and shoulders of the young woman, who after numerous
vain protests burst into hysterical tears and gave a month's notice.
"Funny, isn't it," said Aunt Cuckoo when they left the room, "what
little gratitude you find among the lower classes nowadays?"
"I think I did rather hurt her," said Jasmine, who was by now feeling
rather penitent.
"_I_ think you did it very well," said Aunt Cuckoo, "and _I_ am very
pleased with you. And of course her shoulders are so much harder than my
poor arm."
Aunt Cuckoo, for all her folly, had for Jasmine a certain pathos, and
during the late autumn and winter while she stayed at The Cedars she to
some extent grew accustomed to the atmosphere of cold storage which
prevailed there; she began to contemplate the slow freezing of herself
during the years to come into an Aunt Cuckoo; she preferred the notion
of a frozen self, which after all would always be liable to melt, to the
notion of a withered self like Cousin Edith's, which would indubitably
never bourgeon again. She did sometimes lunch with the Hector Grants at
Harley Street, and she found them more insufferable every time she went
there. Aunt Cuckoo could not help feeling gratified by this, because for
many years now she had been jealous of Lady Grant.
"Of course I should not like to appear as if I was criticizing her," she
would say to Jasmine. "But I understand what you mean about Lettice and
Pamela, and I can't help feeling that they have been spoilt. It's the
same with cats," she murmured, in a vague effort to elucidate the moral
atmosphere.
When Aunt Cuckoo talked like this, Jasmine began to wonder if she could
confide in her about Harry Vibart; but when she had to frame the words,
her account of the affair began to seem so pretentious and exaggerated
that she could not bring herself to the point, would blush in
embarrassment, and hide her confusion by an energetic combing of
Mustapha.
In the middle of the winter Aunt Cuckoo began to throw out hints of what
Jasmine might expect from herself and Uncle Eneas in the future. She
never went so far as a definite statement that they intended to make her
their heiress; the prospect of future wealth was merely hinted at like
the landscape under a false dawn. Yet even this glimmer over something
beyond was enough to alarm Jasmine with the idea that her uncle and aunt
would suppose that she was aiming at an inheritance. She tried by
diligent combing of cats, by concentration upon the massage of Aunt
Cuckoo's arm, and by the rapidity of her walking pace, to show that she
appreciated what was being done for her in the present; but the moment
Aunt Cuckoo began to talk of the future she was discouragingly rude.
Nevertheless these hints, notwithstanding Jasmine's reception of them,
would probably have taken a more definite shape if on the anniversary of
the conversion of Saint Paul Aunt Cuckoo had not taken shelter from a
sudden storm of rain in a small Catholic mission church at Golders
Green. Here she felt vague aspirations at the sight of half a dozen poor
people praying in the rich twilight of imitation glass windows; but she
was more particularly and more deeply impressed by the behaviour of a
woman in rusty mourning in bringing a pallid little boy to the feet of a
saintly image that was attracting Aunt Cuckoo's attention and
everybody's attention by lifting his habit and pointing to a sore on his
leg. After praying to an accompaniment of maternal prods the child was
bidden to deposit at the base of the image a bandage of lint, after
which he stuck six candles on the pricket, lighted them, and followed
his mother out of the church with many a backward glance to observe the
effect of his illumination. Aunt Cuckoo was puzzled by all this, and
overtaking the woman in the porch asked what it meant. She was told that
the saint's name was Roch and that he had miraculously cured her little
boy of an ulcerous leg. Aunt Cuckoo's arm immediately began to pain her
acutely. On feeling this pain she went back into the church and prayed
shyly, for she was not a Catholic and she had only heard the saint's
name for the first time. The pain vanished as abruptly as it came, and
Aunt Cuckoo, thrilled by the miracle, hurried home to tell Jasmine all
about it. As soon as her mind had turned its attention to miracles Aunt
Cuckoo began to fancy that she was being specially favoured by Heavenly
manifestations.
"Of course one has said 'How miraculous!' before," she assured her
niece. "But one employs terms so loosely. I learned that when I used to
write." Aunt Cuckoo's voice, from many years of tonelessness, was, now
that she was able to feel a genuine excitement, full of astonishing
little squeaks and tremolos which had she been a clock would have led
the listener to oil the works at once. "And the healing of my bad arm
wasn't the only miracle," she hurried on. "Oh no, dear. I assure you it
stopped raining the moment I came out of church, and you know how
difficult it is to find a taxi when one requires one. Well, would you
believe it, lo and behold, one pulled up just outside the church, and
the moment I was inside it started to pour again. I'm so glad that
you're a Catholic, dear. There, you see I'm already learning not to say
Roman Catholic...."
It was at this point that Jasmine became discouraging. Her religion had
always been such a matter-of-fact business in Sirene and the existence
of Protestants so natural in a world divided into rich touring English
folk and poor dear predatory Italians that her aunt's intentions shocked
her.
"You're not thinking of becoming a Christian--I mean a Catholic," she
gasped.
"Who knows?" said Aunt Cuckoo in the vague and awful tones of a Sibyl.
"And I should have thought, Jasmine, that you would have been the first
to rejoice."
Jasmine felt that her aunt was presenting her out of a profusion of
miracles with one all for herself; but realizing what everybody would
say she was so ungracious that Aunt Cuckoo went and offered it to the
parish priest instead.
Father Maloney was at first inclined to resent Aunt Cuckoo's suggestion
that St. Roch should have healed a Protestant; but when her ardour and
humility had been sufficiently tried, he agreed to receive her into the
Church, and though he did not encourage her to believe in any more
miracles, he was privately inclined to hold the pious opinion that a
well-to-do convert's arrival in the unfinished condition of the new
sacristy was as nearly miraculous as anything in his career.
A month later, notwithstanding Uncle Eneas' severe indictment of the
crimes of the papacy, Aunt Cuckoo became a Catholic. Miss Hellner was
dismissed; Jasmine was bidden to consider massage an invention of the
devil; the Angora cats were sold; Aunt Cuckoo was confirmed. Her husband
who in the course of their married life had successfully cured her of
singing after dinner, of writing novels, of spiritualism, of Christian
science, of a dread of premature burial, of a belief in the immortality
conferred by sour milk, and of eating nuts the last thing at night and
the first thing in the morning, was defeated by this craze; her ability
to resist her husband's disapproval convinced Aunt Cuckoo more firmly
than ever that she was the recipient of a special dose of grace. Yet
although Catholicism supplied most of Aunt Cuckoo's emotional needs, it
could not entirely stifle her unsatisfied maternal instinct, so that
sometimes, when St. Roch was busy with other patients, she looked back
regretfully to the days when her arm really hurt, and her faith was
exposed to the insinuations of the Evil One. She turned her attention to
juvenile saints and became much wrapped up in St. Aloysius Gonzaga until
she found that he objected to his mother's seeing him undress when he
was eight years old and that he had fainted because a footman saw him
with one sock off at the age of four. St. Aloysius evidently did not
require her maternal love, and she lavished it on St. Stanislas Kostka
instead; but even with him she felt awkward, until at last St. Teresa,
most practical of women, came to her rescue in the middle of the Sursum
Corda. Three months after her conversion Aunt Cuckoo arrived home from
mass on Lady Day with an expression in her pale blue eyes that would
have required the cobalt of Fra Angelico to represent.
"Eneas," she announced, "I have decided to adopt a baby."
To the consular mind of Mr. Grant such a procedure evoked endless
complications in the future. His mind leaped forward twenty years to the
time when this baby would require a passport, and he wondered if there
were a special form for adopted babies. He seemed to fancy vaguely that
there was, and he asked what the nationality of the baby would be.
"A Catholic baby," Aunt Cuckoo proclaimed.
Her husband explained to her that she must not confuse religion with
nationality, and then suddenly with a grimace of real ferocity he said:
"I hope you don't intend to adopt an Irish baby?"
"A Catholic baby," Aunt Cuckoo repeated obstinately.
"This kipper is rather strong," said Eneas.
But it was not strong enough to divert Aunt Cuckoo from her own trail.
"I spoke to Father Maloney about it this morning after mass," she
persisted.
"Damn Father Maloney!" said Eneas.
Jasmine was wondering to herself what part she would be called upon to
play with regard to the baby. But whatever she had to do would be less
tiring than combing Angora cats or trying to keep up with Uncle Eneas on
the slopes of Hampstead Heath. Uncle Eneas protested all day for a week
against the baby; Aunt Cuckoo appealed to St. Teresa, secured her
support by a novena, and defeated him once more. Father Maloney
discovered a Catholic bank-clerk, the victim of chronic alcoholism, who
with the help of a tuberculous wife had brought into the world twelve
children, the youngest of which, now ten months old, he secured for Aunt
Cuckoo. At the formal conveyance of the baby Uncle Eneas asked whether
it were a boy or a girl, and when Aunt Cuckoo replied that she did not
know, he, apostrophizing heaven, wondered if ever since the world began
a vaguer woman had walked the earth.
"It's a boy," said Father Maloney soothingly.
"What's his name?" asked Aunt Cuckoo.
"Michael Francis Joseph Mary Aloysius," said Father Maloney.
"Good God!" exclaimed Uncle Eneas.
"We'll call him Frank," Aunt Cuckoo decided, and her husband was almost
appeased. He had not realized that anything so ordinary could be
extracted from that highly coloured mosaic of names.