THE room seemed crowded with aunts and uncles, though, to be accurate, there was but one of each: but then there were also Cousin Jane Claringbold and Cousin Henrietta Simshall who, though cousins, were just like aunts to look at. They were second cousins, and Cousin Henrietta was only a second cousin by marriage, but then she was well off and thus took the full rank of an aunt in any social gathering. Cousin Claringbold was not well off. She was sometimes introduced to visitors as a distant relative of poor mamma’s. More often she was not introduced at all.
A big fire blazed in the grate; the air was heavy with the scent of old leather bindings and the more insistent odour of roasting crape.
The windows were all shut. The green Venetian blinds were lowered, and the room was a green twilight shot with red and yellow gleams from the fire. Outside it was April, and somewhere daffodils were dancing to the wind and primroses bathing their little yellow faces in the sunshine that came to them through the budding branches of hazel and hornbeam. Somewhere gardens were scented with wall-flowers, and alight with the dazzle of white rock-cress.
In the front garden that lay on the other side of those Venetian blinds, however, there were no flowers, only a dejected monkey-puzzle tree on a blackened lawn, a few dingy spotted laurels and a hearse. On the stairs in the house were heavy, trampling feet. A banister creaked and groaned as some weight pressed against it.
Uncle Harold left the fire, to stand by the bow-window and peep through the narrow chink between two Venetian blind slats.
“They’re bringing it out now,” he said.
“Are they?” said Cousin Henrietta, with brisk interest. “Do you remember, Emily, when poor Mr. Pettigrew died they had to lower the coffin from the first floor window. He was such a fine-built man, they couldn’t get him round the turn of the stairs. Those old-fashioned houses were so inconvenient.”
“Just so,” said Uncle Harold. “They’ve got it in now. I always think those glass hearses a bit showy. I don’t see your wreath, Emily. Oh, yes—there it is; some of the flowers have got knocked off against the hearse door.”
“You remember,” said Cousin Henrietta, “that cottage where Batts lived—he got the shaking palsy and they took him to the Union—there was a panel made to slip out of the staircase to let the coffin through, a coffin hole, they called it. You remember it, Jane?”
“Yes,” said Cousin Jane, slowly, “it used to make me afraid to go to bed when I was a little girl.”
“I daresay,” said Aunt Emily, briskly; “you were always weak-minded. These new houses are built so conveniently. I noticed there was hardly a jar as they brought it down. Ah—they’re moving off.”
Outside, wheels ground the gravel. Cousin Jane’s hand clenched the black folds of her skirt.
“Uncle Hamley is getting in,” said Uncle Harold, fidgeting interestedly at the watch-tower; “he’s aged very much, I think.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Cousin Simpshall; “he hasn’t even got a muffler.”
“I think I was wise to decide not to go to the cemetery, don’t you, Emily?—with the wind the way it is, and my chest with that nasty raw feeling coming on again?”
“I should think so indeed,” Aunt Emily snorted. “You coming out at all on a day like this is more than poor James had any right to expect, considering.” Uncle Harold had an annuity. He paid a share of it to Aunt Emily for board and lodging. And for sisterly care and nursing in his often infirmities.
“The carriage is clear of the gate-post,” he said, and pulled up the blind with a rattle. The flood of new light revealed his sparse hair, his small sloping shoulders and pink mouse-like face. “I think I could do with a glass more sherry, Emily, and a tiddy morsel of seed cake. Perhaps,” he added as an after-thought, “Cousin Simpshall will join me.”
“We’ll all join you,” said Mrs. Simpshall heartily: and they filled their glasses from the decanters on the green leather-covered writing table—Aunt Emily, expert in funeral etiquette, had seen to all such details—and drew their chairs around the fire. Cousin Simpshall folded back her crape-trimmed skirt, exposing a grey and brown striped petticoat.
“The fire does turn the colour so,” she said, apologetically.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” Uncle Harold giggled, and tasted sherry in little sips.
“They’re about there by now,” said Aunt Emily, “it’s only just up the road.”
“They go very slow, you know,” said Cousin Simpshall.
“Poor James,” said Uncle Harold. “I sometimes think he wasn’t quite right in the top story—to act the way he did.”
“What was it exactly?” Mrs. Simpshall asked, spreading her handkerchief on her black silk lap and laying her bitten slice of seed cake on it. “Being so long in India I forget these old family quarrels.”
She spoke with an air of indolent condescension.
“Oh, he just treated his relations like so much dirt under his feet. That was all—wouldn’t listen to advice. We were none of us good enough for him after he wheedled poor mother into sending him to college. Father left us share and share alike, and Harold had the business. Then, before poor father was cold in his grave, what does James do but actually takes all his share out of dear Harold’s business, so that Harold had to sell it and buy an annuity.”
“What business?” Cousin Simpshall asked languidly.
“Father’s business, you know—leather. It wasn’t doing very well at the time, owing to father having been ill so long, and Harold coming to it fresh from the wholesale mantles. It was just like James’s meanness to draw his money out at a time like that. He went to live in the country—married Lord knows who—and there was a pretty scandal. But he got rid of her all right. Then he married a perfect stranger none of us had ever seen—he met her at Oxford or some out of the way place, I believe, a finicking, silly fool of a woman, always making jokes or else poetry. Imogen her name was. Well, even when she died, he wasn’t contented. Shut himself up with his books and wouldn’t see any of his family, nor yet answer our letters.”
“But why?” asked Cousin Henrietta from India, who remembered every detail of the quarrel accurately.
“Because they hadn’t been nice to Imogen,” said Cousin Jane, quickly. “I mean he thought they hadn’t.”
“We did our duty by the second Mrs. James, the same as we’ve tried to do it by you,” snapped Aunt Emily, “but I never do look for gratitude in this world.”
“I’m sure I’m grateful enough, Emily,” said Cousin Claringbold, putting her seed cake on the edge of the table and beginning to sniff, “but dear James”
“Yes,” interrupted Aunt Emily, with a fierce snigger, “dear James. We know all about dear James, Jane.”
“Quite an old story now, isn’t it?” was Uncle Harold’s feminine rider.
“Have some more port, Jane,” said Cousin Simpshall generously.
“It’ll only go to her head,” said Aunt Emily. “Well, as I was saying when she interrupted, I wrote and offered to adopt the girl. No notice taken—the child was sent to some godless popish school abroad. Sending money out of the country like that!”
“You’d have done better for her,” said Uncle Harold, “but that’s the way with relations. They don’t stand by each other as they did in my young days.”
“James didn’t, anyway. He mewed himself up writing books nobody wanted to read, and paying for people to print them. But he must have made a bit somehow, to keep on doing nothing. Imogen brought him something, I know; but I expect it died with her.”
“He didn’t seem to have any luck with his wives,” sniggered Uncle Harold.
“Her little girl’s gone to the same school as her stepsister.”
“Half sister,” ventured Cousin Claringbold. She was an accurate woman, and not even the five years she had lived on the charity of Mrs. Veale had been able to teach her not to correct the inaccuracies of her patron.
“It’s all the same,” said Aunt Emily, impatiently. “And now we’d better decide before they come back and the will’s read whether we shall send them back to school or have them to live with us.”
“Daphne’s eighteen,” said Cousin Jane, “you can’t”
“She could go as a governess, I suppose,” snapped Aunt Emily. Her face was like a horse’s face, and she had large, gaunt, yellow hands and wrists like the legs of hens.
“It all depends whether she’s got a nincome,” said Uncle Harold, swallowing the last mouthful of seed cake, and pulling down his waistcoat with a jerk so that the crumbs which had lodged in its creases leaped suddenly out at the company, “if she’s got a nincome—” “The question is whether we could do with them living with us.”
“The child could go to school, surely,” said Cousin Simpshall, who had some thoughts of herself living with Aunt Emily.
“Two pounds a week—I mean guineas; I mean guineas each—you wouldn’t take less than that, Emily”
“Not living as you do,” said Cousin Simpshall, suddenly pleasant with port.
“We could have that pony and trap, Harold,” said Aunt Emily, with an eye to Cousin Simpshall.
“And the double windows,” said Uncle Harold, with an eye to himself. “I’d as good as ordered them when James withdrew his money.”
“Ah!” whispered Aunt Emily behind her hand, “he’s never really got over that. After all these years, too. Dear Harold was always so sensitive.”
“I shouldn’t go out of my way about it, if I were you,” said the widow from India “or she won’t appreciate it. Seem to make a favour of it as it were.”
“Oh,” said the poor cousin, in a voice a semi-tone above her normal key, “Emily is sure to do that.” Fortunately no one noticed her. People had a way of not noticing Cousin Jane.
“What’s the girl like?” asked Cousin Simpshall.
“Oh, I forgot you’d not seen her. A bold hard nature I should say. And flighty. Never shed a tear when I told her her poor father had passed away. Just pushed past me on the stairs and said she’d put the child to bed first and talk to me afterward.”
“I don’t think she’d be a nice girl to have in the house,” Uncle Harold said; “never cried at all, Emily tells me.”
“Oh, you’ll soon teach her better,” said Cousin Jane, and again nobody noticed her.
“And today she wouldn’t go to the funeral even; said she’d stop and keep the child company. As if we weren’t company enough for any child. No manners. No sense of what’s due to her relations. She will be a trial, Harold.”
“She’ll sober down with us,” he said, thinking of the double windows.
“Oh, yes,” said Cousin Jane, eagerly. “I should think she’s certain to sober down with you. There’s someone at the door.”
“Come in,” said Aunt Emily. It was not Cousin Jane’s place to say “Come in” when people knocked at doors.
The lodging-house servant came in. She held an envelope in her hand’of the floridly decorated stationery that school girls give to each other, in boxes on birthdays. Her hand was superficially clean, but seamed with black just below its surface, as quartz is seamed with gold. And her eyes were red.
“Miss Daphne said to give you this at four,” she said.
“Well I never,” Aunt Emily almost snatched the letter. “As if I was a tradesman called and wait for an answer.”
The letter ran:
Dear Aunt: I am taking Doris to Greenwich Park—Ada says it is near here—to try and cheer her. If we are not back in time to hear father’s will read, please don’t wait for us. We’ll be back to tea.
“What did you tell her there was a park for?” asked Aunt Emily.
“I’m not paid to tell lies about parks nor nothing else,” said Ada, “and anyway, I’m not paid to tell lies for you, miss!”
The door banged behind her.
“Miss,” gasped Aunt Emily. Some sure instinct had taught Ada to use the sharpest arrow in any possible quiver. For Aunt Emily’s respectable and childless marriage had left her looking more a spinster than even Cousin Jane. And Daphne! The coolness of it. “Don’t wait for me.” That girl must be taught her place.
“I’m not sure,” fussed Uncle Harold, “that I shall consent to act as trustee for a flouncing, bouncing young woman like that. And my health in the poor state it is, too.”
“Upon my word and honour,” said Aunt Emily, “did you ever?”
The rest asked each other the same searching question.
The will had been read. The lawyer had gone after handshakes given with a cordiality that was as much part of his stock in trade as his parchments and pink tape. Uncle Hamley had given the tips of cold formal fingers, and gone. The landlady, to whom the dead man had left a hundred pounds, had gone. Once more the parlour seemed to be full merely of aunts and uncles.
“A hundred pounds to the person under whose roof I die,” said Mrs. Simpshall, as Ada, chin-tilted, came in, with rattling tea-things on a black iron tray. “What a pity nobody knew that!”
“Good gracious,” she almost screamed as the rusty gate creaked, “who’s this?”
“It’s them,” said Cousin Jane, bringing her merino nearer to the window.
“Them?” echoed Cousin Simpshall, “why the child’s all in white, and the girl’s in green!”
“She would do it. Said it would make the child dismal to wear black. She’s got no common decency.”
“She’s got poor James’s money, though,” said Cousin Simpshall.
Daphne and Doris stood in the doorway. Daphne’s hat was very much on one side. The child’s pink, bare hands were covered with dirt and filled with daisies.
“Here we are,” said the girl, pleasantly. “Are we late for tea? I hope not. What’s the matter?”
“We were a little surprised,” said Aunt Emily, “at your going out on pleasure excursions on a day of mourning. However, everything went off quite nicely without you, I believe. The only thing was they hadn’t shored up the grave properly and your poor father’s coffin—”
“Run, Dormouse!” interrupted Daphne, with extreme vivacity, “run and take off its things and wash its paws.” The child ran.
“Your manner—” Aunt Emily was beginning, when Daphne interrupted her again:
“I beg your pardon,” she said, smiling brilliantly. “I’m so sorry, but you see it doesn’t do to talk to a child about graves and all that. She’s quite jolly now. I’ve been telling her all about father being in heaven.”
“I trust so, I’m sure,” said Uncle Harold, politely.
“I hope I know the proper treatment of children,” said Aunt Emily, and entered into an offended silence.
“Your father’s left everything to you,” said Cousin Simpshall, affably.
“I suppose so.” Daphne was distraite but polite. “Will you pour the tea out, please, aunt? I must just wash my hands. They’re all over daisy juice.”
“Don’t stop to change into your black,” said Aunt Emily, with intention.
“Of course not,” said Daphne. “Do you know, really, aunt, I think it will be better for us not to wear black. The things you bought for us don’t fit us in the least. Doris’s frock is down to her heels, and the band of my skirt would go round me twice and a bit over. And you see we neither of us knew father. It feels to me as if he’d died thirteen years ago, when I saw him last. And I don’t think he ever liked me.”
“I should think not,” said Aunt Emily, as the girl’s feet patted the oilcloth of the stairs.
“So that’s the heiress,” said Cousin Simpshall.
“No heart, you see!” said Aunt Emily.
“Not a natom,” said Uncle Horace, carefully lifting the remains of the seed cake from the mantelpiece to the tea-table. “Not a natom!”
“Daffy, dear,” said the Dormouse, curling itself comfortably in its white nest, “what’s a coffin, and what was the matter with the unsure grave? And why did father go and have such funny things?”