Aunt Jael, I reflected, had been denied even the pleasures of sorrow, the regret for good things gone away; neither love, nor husband, nor children. Should I have been better in her case? Perhaps there were excuses for Aunt Jael.
I had to say this to myself very hard and very often in these days. As my Great-Aunt grew older she grew noisier, more evil-tempered, more shrewish; her evil and domineering nature was having a final bout before the ebb tide of a maudlin dotage. As I remember her during my sixteenth and seventeenth years she well nigh baffles description. A hooked-nose wicked old witch, scolding, snarling, imprecating, hurling texts and threats about her. She would sit back in her old armchair and nag and shout from morn till eve, cursing my Grandmother for an idle selfish ingrate if not always at her beck and call to button or unbutton her boots, to dress or undress her, to help her up- or downstairs. "Why shouldn't she do a bit for me, that's what I want to know? Hannah is younger, Hannah is sprightlier, not an old woman like me!": you would have thought the eighteen months were eighteen centuries. Mrs. Cheese stood up to the old bully, and giving what she got, got rather less. I came in for the most consistent cursing, and the worst outbreaks. She would stand up with eyes blazing and howl at me at the top of her voice (that bass shout impossible to convey in print which I called her "yell-growl"): "Ugh, yer father's child, every inch of 'ee; you feature him and yer character's as evil. Vicious little slut, pert wench, vile little sinner, adulterer's daughter, spawn of Beelzebub!" She would lash out as of old with her stick; more than once after I had passed sixteen she flogged me till I was black with bruises.
By training and by character—and following my Grandmother's example and for her sake—I could take it all with apparent meekness. But some outlet for the Beast in me was provided by her increasing deafness. Given Grandmother's absence from the room and a suitable modulation of mouth and voice, I could give her all that she gave in the way of abuse. As she sat back exhausted, with her eyes half closed in some passing lull, I would look up from my sewing, and with lips barely moving give her my views. "Oh, you wicked old woman; you cruel selfish beastly hag; you shrew; you enemy of all righteousness! How I loathe you, hate you, spit at you!"
Often Conscience smote me. "Where is your 'do unto others'?" So I would make allowances; she had been lonely, always unloved. She was old, unhappy. I could not help feeling that these were not excuses so much as explanations: she was just what an old maid who had domineered and been deferred to all her life would naturally be. She was herself carried to her logical conclusion.
Her habits changed. She only went to the morning Meeting, and that not always. On weekdays she got up late.
Our mornings would have appeared to outsiders a roaring and improbable farce.
At eight o'clock Grandmother and I would sit down to the breakfast table. No Aunt Jael.
"Is Miss Vickary coming down this morning, do you know, Mrs. Cheese?"
The latter grunted.