I had no remorse for any unkindness to my baby brother; for I had always loved him much, even from the time when he had newly arrived; a helpless, unseeing, unthinking bit of life. I like to dwell on this, for it is at least one instance where humanly I did my whole duty. My duty to him was such a simple uncomplicated thing—just to love him and be kind. As I grew up I found duty rather a difficult and complicated thing to see and do.
Other deaths happened as they must in a large family. In quick succession several of our older relatives died. In those young days I never felt very keenly the loss of old people. It seemed so natural for the aged to die that I took it as a matter of course. I do not know that I have changed much in this respect even now, especially when people are both old and useless.
I lost my paternal grandparents, and my great-grandfather about this time. I felt a genuine sorrow about grandfather’s death because he was a dear old chap—hale, hearty, and jovial. He was suddenly, and it may seem ruthlessly, killed by having his head crushed by a runaway horse; but sudden death is not, despite the Prayer Book, the worst kind of exit. He was a most cheerful old optimist, caring nothing for the day after to-morrow, or any other day but the one he was living; and his end was in keeping with his life. He was a third husband of my grandmother, who had been a very beautiful Quakeress, and my father was their only son.
CHAPTER III
Both my grandmothers were very religious, one more ostentatiously than the other. When a young child I distinguished them by calling one the grandmother who said prayers, and the other the grandmother who made cakes. I had a strong preference for the one who made cakes. Her plain fruit cake, undefiled by messy icing of chocolate or sugar, was a production worthy of remembrance.
My great-grandfather was to me just an old man, very old and blind, who sat by the fire all day long, and spoke little, and then in a harsh cold voice, with a strong Scotch accent. He lived in a large house on a dingy, but a highly respectable street, with four old daughters and one son, who I discovered did not love him very much.
Visiting my great-grandfather’s house was like passing suddenly into old-fashioned long-passed times. My ancient great-aunts were very prim and very properly made-up ladies, looking as much alike and as smooth and shiny as four silk hats just out of bandboxes.
“Here’s Jack,” Aunt Elizabeth would say when I arrived, and I would be gently pushed towards my great-grandfather who sat in the hall in a big high-backed arm-chair, combing his long white beard with his fingers. “Weel, laddie?” the old fellow would growl, and he would reach out to feel me and pat my head with his large hand.
My great-aunts were very proud of their descent, which they claimed from the Duke of Argyle. I never was interested enough to ask how far they had descended from the noble duke. They helped out a meagre fortune by keeping a genteel dressmaking establishment patronised by a few select people. In their house I played Blind Man’s Buff, Puss in the Corner, and other dead and gone games; drank raspberry vinegar and ate plum cake.
My great-uncle was a curiosity. He did not drink, smoke nor work. He was a little wizened, dried-up fellow with a much wrinkled face the colour of a potato. He lived on his sisters, who made everything he wore but his hat and boots, and his clothes were certainly remarkable.