III.
The little thin, sallow old man, coming towards her on the platform at
Paddington, turned out to be Uncle Victor. She had not seen him since
Christmas, for at Easter he had been away somewhere on business.
He came slowly, showing a smile of jerked muscles, under cold fixed eyes. He was not really glad to see her. That was because he disapproved of her. They all believed she had been expelled from the Dover school, and they didn't seem able to forget it. Going down from Liverpool Street to Ilford he sat bowed and dejected in his corner, not looking at her unless he could help it.
"How's Aunt Charlotte?" She thought he would be pleased to think that she had remembered Aunt Charlotte; but he winced as if she had hit him.
"She is—not so well." And then: "How have you been getting on?"
"Oh, all right. I've got the Literature prize again, and the French prize and the German prize; and I might have got the Good Conduct prize too."
"And why didn't you get it?"
"Because I gave it up. Somebody else had to have a prize, and Miss Wray said she knew it was the one I could best bear to part with."
Uncle Victor frowned as if he were displeased.
"You don't seem to consider that I gave it up," she said. But he had turned his eyes away. He wasn't listening any more, as he used to listen.
The train was passing the City of London Cemetery. She thought: "I must go and see Jenny's grave before I leave. I wish I hadn't teased her so to love me." She thought: "If I die I shall be put in the grass plot beside Grandpapa and Grandmamma Olivier. Papa will bring me in a coffin all the way from Morfe in the train." Little birch bushes were beginning to grow among the graves. She wondered how she could ever have been afraid of those graves and of their dead.
Uncle Victor was looking at the graves too; queerly, with a sombre, passionate interest. When the train had passed them he sighed and shut his eyes, as if he wanted to keep on seeing them—to keep on.
As Mr. Parish's wagonette drove up Ley Street he pointed to a field where a street of little houses had begun.
"Some day they'll run a street over Five Elms. But I shan't know anything about it," he said.
"No. It won't be for ages."
He smiled queerly.
They drew up at the gate. "You must be prepared for more changes," he said.
Aunt Lavvy was at the gate. She was sweet as if she loved you, and sad as if she still remembered your disgrace.
"No. Not that door," she said.
The dining-room and drawing-room had changed places, and both were filled with the large mahogany furniture that had belonged to Grandpapa.
"Why, you've turned it back to front."
Strips of Mamma's garden shone between the dull maroon red curtains.
Inside the happy light was dead.
There seemed to her something sinister about this change. Only the two spare rooms still looked to the front. They had put her in one of them instead of her old room on the top floor; Dan had the other instead of his. It was very queer.
Aunt Lavvy sat in Mamma's place at the head of the tea-table. A tall, iron-grey woman in an iron-grey gown stood at her elbow holding a little tray. She looked curiously at Mary, as if her appearance there surprised and interested her. Aunt Lavvy put a cup of tea on the tray.
"Where's Aunt Charlotte?"
"Aunt Charlotte is upstairs. She isn't very well."
The maid was saying, "Miss Charlotte asked for a large piece of plum cake, ma'am," and Aunt Lavvy added a large piece of plum cake to the plate of thin bread and butter.
Mary thought: "There can't be much the matter with her if she can eat all that."
"Can I see her?" she said.
She heard the woman whisper, "Better not." She was glad when she left the room.
"Has old Louisa gone, then?"
"No," Aunt Lavvy said. She added presently, "That is Aunt Charlotte's maid."