“I am sure!” panted Aunt Judith triumphantly.
“I am sure!” echoed Aunt Hester.
They allowed their nephew's remorse full scope, and then proceeded laboriously to extract the missing articles from the side of Aunt Judith's arm-chair. This farce was rehearsed every night, nearly word for word. A pleasant recreation for an intellectual man, assuredly. The only relief to the monotony was the occasional loss of a spoon in the crevice between the arm and the seat of Aunt Judith's chair. Then followed such a fumbling and a “dear me-ing” until the worthless nephew was perforce called to the rescue, to fish and probe with a paper-knife till the lost treasure was recovered.
“We only wished, Nephew Vellacott, to show you what might have happened during your unconscionable absence. Servants are only too ready to talk to the first comer of their mistresses' wealth and position. They have no discrimination.” said Aunt Judith in a reproving tone. The old ladies were very fond of boasting of their wealth and position, whereas, in reality, their nephew was the only barrier between them and the workhouse.
“Well, Aunt Judith,” replied Christian patiently, “I will try and stay at home more in future. But you know it is time I was doing something to earn my own livelihood now. I cannot exist on your kindness all my life!”
He had learnt to humour these two silly old women. During the two years which had just passed he had gradually recognised the utter futility of endeavouring to make them realise the true state of their affairs. They spoke grandiloquently of the family solicitor: a man who had been in his grave for nearly a quarter of a century. It was simply impossible to instil into their minds any fact whatever, and such facts as had established themselves there were permanent. They belonged to another generation, and their mode of thought was a remnant of a forgotten and unsatisfactory period. To them Napoleon the First was a living man, Queen Victoria unheard of. The decay of their minds had been slow, and it had been Christian Vellacott's painful task to watch its steady progress. Day by day he had followed the gradual failing of each sense and power.
There is something pathetic about the decay of a mind which has been driven to death by constant work, but there is a compensating thought to alleviate the sadness. It may rattle and grow loose, like some worn-out engine, where the friction presses; but it will work till it collapses totally, and some of the work achieved is good and permanent. It is bound to be so. Infinitely sadder is the sight of a mind which is falling to pieces by reason of the rust that has eaten into its very core. For rust must needs mean idleness—and no human intellect need be idle. So it had been with these two old ladies. Born in a wofully unintellectual age, they had never left a certain groove in life. When their brother married Christian Vellacott's grandmother, they had left his house in Honiton to go and live in Bodmin upon a limited but sufficient income. These “sufficient incomes” are a curse; they do not allow of charity and make no call for labour.
When Christian Vellacott arrived in England, an orphan with no great wealth, he made it his first duty to visit the only living relations he possessed. He was just in time to save them, literally, from starvation. It was obvious that he could not make a literary livelihood in Bodmin, so he made a home for the two old wrecks of humanity in London. Their means, like their minds, were simply exhausted. Aunt Judith was ninety-three; Aunt Hester ninety-one. During that vast blank (for blank it was, so far as their lives were concerned) stretching away back into a perspective of time which few around them could gauge—they had never been separated for one day. Like two apples they had grown side by side, until their very contact had engendered disease—a slow, deadly, creeping rot, finding its source at the point of contact, reaching its goal at the heart of each. They had existed thus with terrible longevity—lived a mere animal life of sleeping and eating, such as hundreds of women are living around us now.
“Of course, you must learn to make your daily bread, Nephew Vellacott!” answered Aunt Hester. “The desire does you credit; but you should be careful into what society you go without us. Girls are very designing, and many a one would like to marry a nephew of mine—eh, Judith?”
“Yes, that they would,” replied the old lady. “The minxes know that they might do worse than catch the nephew of Judith and Hester Vellacott!”