At last, however, she went up and rang the bell. An extremely grand parlor maid received her almost scornfully, and led her across a slippery but superb entrance hall which was disconcertingly magnificent. It was hard to grasp at that moment that such an interior was the creation of her commonplace parents, harder still to believe that this servant whose clothes and manners were superior to her own was at their beck and call.
However, she would go through the ordeal now she had got so far. But this afternoon luck was heavily against her. The ordeal proved to be more severe than even her gloomiest moments had foreshadowed. She was ushered just as she was, in her shabby hat and much mended gloves, straight into the drawing-room into the midst of company. And the company was of the kind she would have given much to avoid.
She had hoped that she might find her mother alone, or at the worst, drinking tea with her father. Instead, the first person she saw was the insufferable Gertrude Preston, that mass of airs and graces which always enabled their wearer to stand out in Melia’s mind as all that a woman ought not to be. And as if the sight of Gertrude was not sufficiently chilling and embarrassing, the second person she realized as being present was her own stuck-up sister Ethel, invariably known in the family as Mrs. Doctor Cockburn. She was accompanied, however, by her two children, little peacocks of six and seven, spoiled fluffy masses of pink ribbons and conceit.
Last of all was her mother. She was always last in any assembly. Somehow she never seemed to count. In the old days even in her own home she could always be talked down, or put out of countenance or elbowed to the wall; and now, after the flight of years, in these grand surroundings, she had not altered in the least. She still had the eyes of a rabbit and a fat hand that wobbled; and on Melia’s entrance into the room Gerty and Ethel at once took the lead of her in the way they had always taken it.
“Why, I do declare!” Gerty rose at once with cleverly simulated surprise tempered by a certain stock brand of archness, kept always on tap, and unfailingly effective in moments of sudden crisis or emotional tension. “How are you, Amelia?” She would have liked to offer her cheek, but the look in Amelia’s eyes forbade her risking it. Therefore, a hand had to suffice, an elegant hand, but a wary one which met with scant ceremony.
Ethel, Mrs. Doctor Cockburn, also rose, but not immediately. “Glad to see you, Amelia.”
Melia knew it was a lie on Ethel’s part, and had she had a little more self-possession might have been moved to say so.
The three daughters of Mr. Josiah Munt marked three stages in his meteoric career. Melia, the eldest, was the child of the primitive era. Compared with her sisters she was almost a savage. Between her and Ethel had been a boy, Josiah, whose birth had nearly killed Maria and who had died untimely in his babyhood. She was not allowed in consequence to bear any more children for ten years, and Ethel was the natural fruit of the interregnum. Ethel was generally allowed to be the masterpiece of the family. Five years after her had come Sally who perhaps in point of time and opportunity should have put out the light even of Ethel; but in her case it seemed the blessed word progress had moved a little too fast. Sally, as the world knew only too well, was over-educated; from the uplands of high intellectual development Sally had slipped over the precipice into a mental and moral abyss.
From the social and even the physical standpoint Ethel was indubitably the pick of Mr. Josiah Munt’s three daughters. And Mrs. Doctor’s rather frigid reception of her eldest sister showed a nice perception of the fact. Amelia had thrown her back to a prehistoric phase. She had something of the air and manner of a charwoman. When she entered the room, little shivers had crept down Ethel’s sensitive spine. She could hardly bear to look at her.
Melia also felt very uncomfortable. She couldn’t find a word to say and the children stared at her. But she sat on the edge of a chair that Gerty provided; tea, bread and butter and cake were given her; she began to eat and drink mechanically, but still she felt strangely hostile and unhappy. She resented the bright plumage, the amazing prosperity of those among whom she had been born; above all, she resented Ethel’s superciliousness and Gerty’s patronage. Ethel, of course, had a right to be supercilious, and that fact was an added barb. Her light shone. SHE was the only one who had shed any luster on the family; her marriage with a doctor rising to eminence in the town was a model of judicious ambition. Ethel “had done very well for herself,” and even the set of her hat, black tulle and white feathers and the opulent lines of her spotted muslin dress, seemed to proclaim it. Her bearing completed the picture. She had not been in the same room with Amelia for many years, although she had passed her once or twice in the street without speaking; and at the moment her judicious mind was fully engaged with the problem as to whether Gwenneth and Gwladys could or could not call her “Auntie.” Finally, but not at once, the answer was in the negative.