I was ridiculously excited when we arrived at St. Mary’s Plains and drove up Desmoisnes Avenue, and then as our taxi stopped and I looked across the grass to that modest old house I had a feeling of immense relief. This was my home.
The Grey House welcomed me kindly. It had shrunk in size. It had grown shabby and ugly, but it had the charm of an old glove or shoe, much worn. I loved it with gratitude and pity and an ache of regret.
Standing in the front hall I knew that its spirit was unchanged. My mind reached out comfortably to its furthest corners, to the cupboards on the back stairs and the pantry sink that I knew as I knew my own hand. I remembered the smell of the carpet on the dark stairs and the way the Welsbach burner sizzled on the landing, spreading a round of light on the stained wall. My room was just as I had left it twelve years before. The white counterpane on the narrow bed, the flat pillow, the rag rug on the waxed floor that my Aunt Beth had made for me when I broke my arm falling off the stepladder.
Patience changed for dinner into a black silk blouse and serge skirt. Her high collar was fastened with an oval brooch of gold, the only ornament I ever saw her wear. There were two servants in the house, a cook and a housemaid. I suspected that one had been got in for my visit. It was clear to me that she was poor, even poorer than she had been. The house was not too clean and very shabby. Patience Forbes was no housekeeper. She never cared what she had to eat or poked into corners to find dust. The drawing-room looked forlorn in the pale gas light. I gathered that she never sat there but spent all her time in the museum among her precious specimens. The drawing-room made me feel dismal. In the days when my Aunt Beth kept house it had been a cosy room. Now the old mahogany sofas and chairs, covered in frayed black horsehair, were pushed back against the wall in ungainly attitudes. They seemed to watch me reproachfully. I loved their austere, proud forlornness, but I felt uncomfortable. The place did not disappoint me, but I felt that I disappointed it. The blurred and misty mirrors that held mysteriously behind their marred surfaces the invisible reflection of my little grandmother’s sweet face and prim figure showed me myself, large, bright and vulgar, a great outlandish creature in an exaggerated dress, glittering, hard and horrible. I was profoundly disturbed. If I looked like that to myself, how must I look to my Aunt Patience? I soon found out. She was not a person to mince matters. She told me plainly that I looked wicked.
“Wicked, Aunt?”
“Yes, Jane, that’s just about it.”
“But, Aunt, this is terrible. What is it? What shall I do about it?”
She stared at me grimly. “I don’t know. I guess it’s everything—your clothes, that thick bang across your eyes, those ear-rings, that red stuff on your lips. It looks bad. It makes you look like an ungodly woman.”
I rubbed off the lip salve and took off the ear-rings. “Is that better?”
“Humph. A little.” Suddenly I saw her face quiver, her mouth twist. I crossed to her and knelt on the floor beside her, put my arms round her and looked into her working face.