“Good morning, Aunt Charlotte,” said Marjorie coolly, taking up her own cue. She surveyed the other occupants of the table with a quietly ironical eye. And then as she seated herself at her leisure, as far as she could get from the object of her remarks, she proceeded in the peculiar but remarkably agreeable voice which she had in common with her father and sisters: “Odd we should run into you coming out of the Park.”
“Why odd?” said Aunt Charlotte, an elderly, large-featured blonde, whose theory of life was as far as possible not to cherish illusions on any subject. “I always go in at twelve, you always come out at twelve. Nothing odd about it. Thank you!”
“Thank you,” meant, “Yes, I will take claret.” It also meant, “Get on with your luncheon, Marjorie, and don’t be absurd. Life is too complicated nowadays for such small talk as yours to interest an intelligent person.”
Aunt Charlotte, if not consciously rude, was by nature exceedingly dominant. For twenty-five years, in one way or another, Bridport House had known her yoke. She was the Duke’s only surviving sister, and she lived in Hill Street, among the dowagers. Her status was nil, but her love of power was so great that she had gained an uncomfortable ascendancy in the family councils. While free to admire Aunt Charlotte’s wisdom, which was supposed to be boundless, the Dinneford ladies dislike her in the marrow of their bones. But Fate had played against them. Their father had been left a widower with a young family, and from the hour of his loss his sister had taken upon herself to mother it. She had done so to her own satisfaction, but the objects of her regard bore her no gratitude. From Sarah, who was thirty-nine, to Marjorie, who was twenty-eight, they were ever ready to try a fall with Aunt Charlotte.
As for their father, he had an active dislike of her. He had cause, no doubt. More than once he had tried to break the spell of her dominion, but somehow it had always proved too strong for him. It was not that he was a weak man altogether, but there is a type born to female tyranny, an affair of the stars, of human destiny. Charlotte despised her brother. In her view he was a lath painted to look like iron, but insight into character was not her strength. She owed her position in the family to dynamic power, to force of will; but in her own mind it was always ascribed to the fact that she acted invariably from the highest motives.
“Muriel not here,” said the conversational Marjorie, looking across the table to Sarah.
“Gone to the East End, I believe, to one of her committees.”
It would have been nearer the truth for the eldest flower, who was dealing with a recalcitrant fragment of lobster in a masterful manner, to have said that Muriel had gone to luncheon at Hayes with the Penarths. But Sarah, who did not approve of Muriel, and still less of the Penarths, was content with a general statement whose flagrant inaccuracy somehow crystallized her attitude towards them both. Muriel had become frankly impossible. The higher expediency could no longer take her seriously.
But there are degrees of wisdom, even among the elect. Sarah’s place was assured at Minerva’s Court, but Marjorie and Blanche were wiser perhaps in matters equine than in other things. Where angels feared to tread Blanche, at any rate, for reasons of her own, had sometimes been known to butt in. A classical instance was about to be furnished.
“Do tell me.” Blanche suddenly looked Sarah straight in the eyes. “Has Sir Dugald been to see father?”