He led the way into a dark cabin. Everything in it was dark, partly, perhaps, because the windows were full of flower-pots; partly because all the furniture was darkened with age or smoke or grime. The only bright colours in its brownness were a number of shining copper utensils and a fine show of geraniums in the window. Isaac followed Mr. Ingleby’s eyes towards these flowers.
“Purty, ban’t they?” he said with pride. “Your brother Will sent mother they.”
In the gloom of the fireplace, where a pile of turves smouldered, mother began to dissociate herself from the surrounding brownness. She was a very old woman. Edwin had never seen any one so old—sitting bolt upright in a straight-backed oaken chair. Her face seemed to Edwin very beautiful, for extreme age had taken from it all the extraneous charm that smoothness and colour give, leaving only the sheer chiselled beauty of feature. It was a noble face, finely modelled, with a straight nose, a tender mouth, and level brows beneath which burned the darkest and clearest eyes that Edwin had ever seen. Her hair was white and scanty, but little of it was seen beneath the white bonnet that she wore. Edwin felt her eyes go through him in the gloom.
“Here’s cousin John come to see ’ee, mother,” said Isaac, bending over her.
“John? What John?” said the old lady.
It struck Edwin at once that her speech was purer and more delicate than that of her son.
“John Ingleby, Aunt Lydia,” said Edwin’s father.
“You need not raise your voice, my dear,” she said. “My sight and my hearing are wonderful, thank God.”
“Then you remember me, Aunt Lydia?”
“Of course I remember you, John. Though it’s many and many years since my eyes saw you. And how are you, my dear? They tell me that you have done great things in the world. You’re a doctor, like poor Dr. Marshall.”