I do not remember the details of my mother’s reception of grandaunt; but I do remember that I was handed over to her by my formidable relative with the warning that I needed a spanking. And presently mother took me up to her room to find out what it was all about; and when I had told her, as well as I could, she kissed me and cried over me, murmuring that she, also, would love to run away, if she only could; for the beautiful Prince had vanished from her fairy kingdom, too, and was never, never coming back. But, after all, she said, it was only cowards who ran away; brave people did not run away, but faced their trials and made the best of them.
“And oh, Cecil,” she added, smiling at me, though the smile was a little tremulous, “We will be brave, won’t we, and never, never run away?”
I promised, with my head against her shoulder, but I must confess that, at the moment, I felt anything but brave.
There was soon, no doubt, another reason why she should wish to run away, and why she needed all her courage and forbearance to keep from doing so; for not only was her Prince vanished, but she was a queen dethroned.
From the moment of her arrival, grandaunt assumed charge of things; the house and everything therein contained were completely under her iron sway, and we bowed to her as humbly as did the serfs of the Middle Ages to their feudal lord, who held the right of justice high and low.
Dick and I were both too young, of course, to understand fully the great blow which had befallen us in father’s death. Dick was eight and I was six, and we had both grown up from babyhood with that blind reliance upon a benevolent and protecting Providence, characteristic of birds and children. We had no thought of danger—no knowledge of it. Now that the bolt had fallen, we were absorbed in a sense of personal loss; we knew that we should no longer find father in that long room under the eaves, with its great north light, and its queer costumes hanging against the walls, and its tall easel and its pleasant, pungent smell of paint. Once or twice we had tiptoed up the stairs in the hope that, after all, he might be there—but he never was—only mother, sitting in the old, armless chair before the easel, the tears streaming down her cheeks, as she gazed at the half-finished painting upon it. I shall never forget how she caught us up and strained us to her—but there. The Prince had left his Kingdom, and the place was fairyland no longer—only a bleak and lonely attic which gave one the shivers to enter. Its dear spirit had fled, and its sweetness.
I have only to close my eyes to see Grandaunt Nelson sitting at the table-head, with mother at the foot, and Dick and me opposite each other midway on either side. Mother had been crushed by the suddenness of her loss, and drooped for a time like a blighted flower; but grandaunt was erect and virile—uncrushable, I verily believe, by any bolt which Fate could hurl against her. Her face was dark and very wrinkled, crowned by an aureole of white hair—a sort of three-arched aureole, one arch over each ear, and one above her forehead. Her lips were thin and firmly set in a straight line, moving no more than was absolutely necessary to give form to her words, so that sometimes her speech had an uncanny ventriloquial effect very startling. Her eyes were ambushed behind her glasses, which I never saw her without, and was sure she wore to bed with her. Her figure was tall and angular, and was clothed habitually in black, cut in the most uncompromising fashion. I must concede grandaunt the virtue—if it be a virtue in woman—that she never made the slightest effort to disguise her angles or to soften them.
These external characteristics were evident enough, even to my childish eyes; of her internal ones, a few made an indelible impression upon me. I saw that she pursued a policy of stern repression toward herself, and toward all who came in contact with her. If she had emotions, she never betrayed them, and she was intolerant of those who did. She thought it weakness. If she had affections, she mercilessly stifled them. Duty was her watchword. Again, one of the great aims of her existence seemed to be to keep the sunlight and fresh air out of the house—I believe she thought them vulgar—just as her mother and grandmother and greatgrandmother, I suppose, had done before her.
She converted our bright and sunny parlour into a gloomy, penitential place, that sent a chill down my back every time I peeped into it, which was not often. The only thing in the world she seemed afraid of was night air, and this she dreaded with a mighty dread, believing it laden with some insidious and deadly poison. To breathe night air was to commit suicide—though I have never been quite clear as to what other kind of air one can breathe at night.