Two Maiden Aunts

by Mary H. Debenham

And then she stopped and looked from one to the other with a questioning look in her eyes.

'You know, don't you?' she said at last; 'you've heard about the sad thing that's happened?'

For once in a way Nancy left her brother to answer.

'We haven't heard nothing for certain, Miss Betty,' he said, 'only people talked, and we knew Penny had gone to fetch you home; but father said we weren't to say nothing till we knew for certain.'

'It's quite true,' said Miss Betty gravely,' quite dreadfully true, Pete. Our brother, Mr. Bernard, has been killed in the West Indies, and we are very poor now; we have left school and come home to live.'

I fear that the last piece of news so much did away with the sadness of the first that Nancy's face broadened into a delighted smile, and she only just cut short an exclamation of joy. Luckily Miss Betty was not looking at her, and she saw Peter's frown and felt a little ashamed of herself.

'I want to tell you everything,' Miss Betty went on; 'it was very nice of your father not to want people to talk, but now we should like every one to know because we are very proud of my brother, and we want our friends to be. Will you come into the arbour and I'll tell you?' and she led the way across the garden while Peter and Nancy followed willingly enough. The arbour was that sort of bower which we see in old-fashioned pictures and sing about in old songs. There had been roses climbing over it all the summer, and a few blossoms hung there still, pale and fragrant, among a tangle of clematis and everlasting peas. On the little grass plot just outside the arbour there was a stone figure, not like the nymphs and Cupids and water-carriers which we find in trim old-fashioned gardens and stately pleasure grounds, but the chipped worn figure of a lady, lying with folded hands and a quaint head-dress and straight falling hair. No one quite knew where that statue came from, except that it must have lain once upon a tomb in some church or monastery chapel, and in evil days, when men had forgotten their reverence for holy ground and the quiet dead, the tomb must have been destroyed, and the figure defaced and thrown out as rubbish. Then some one later on had brought her to the cottage and set her up as an ornament to the garden, leaning against a tree, and looking very strange and uncomfortable. When Betty and her sister were little children they were half afraid of the tall grim figure, which looked queer and uncanny among the bushes in the twilight, but as they grew older and knew more about her, they lost their fear of her and began to be sorry for her, and they got Peter and some of the village boys to move her out of her unnatural position and lay her down on the grass as she had once lain on her tomb in the church, and planted flowers beside her. And the great purple convolvulus, or, as I love to call it by its sweet old name, the Morning Glory, seeded itself every year, and twined its soft tendrils and opened its lovely flowers all about the poor lady, as if it wanted to hide all the marks of hard usage, and the grass made her a soft pillow, and the pink rose petals dropped all about her, and she looked as if she were happily asleep among the flowers. And when she was being moved the boys came upon some other pieces of stone among the bushes, which might have been part of the same tomb. There was one bit with part of a coat-of-arms on it which no one could make out, and another bit with some letters, many of them quite defaced, but after a lot of puzzling and rubbing the moss off, the little girls managed to read the two words, 'Demoiselle Jehanne.' Miss Angelica felt sure it was French, and she copied it out and took it back to school to ask her schoolmistress what it meant. And the mistress said she was right, it was most likely old Norman-French such as was talked in England five or six hundred years ago, and that 'demoiselle' was the title of a young lady, and 'Jehanne' was the old way of writing Jeanne or Jane. So Angelica and Betty decided directly that it must be the name of their stone lady, and called her 'Demoiselle Jehanne,' or, to make it clearer to Peter and their other village friends, 'Miss Jane.' And it was wonderful what a companion Miss Jane had become to them: they never felt really alone when they were sitting beside her. Betty made up stories about her, and Angelica wondered about her and about the days when she was alive, and how old she was when she died, and whether she ever saw Edward the Black Prince, and whether she had a father and a mother who were very sad when they put that figure over her grave. And often when anything had gone wrong with the sisters, they would come and sit down on the grass by the arbour and tell it to Miss Jane, and feel as if she sympathized with them and comforted them. And if more lucky little girls are inclined to laugh at them, I would ask them to be thankful that they are happier than my two little sisters, and have a mother to whom they can go and tell their troubles instead of whispering them into the broken stone ear of Miss Jane.

And perhaps it was partly that old custom of theirs that made Betty at this moment, when she wanted to tell about the great change that was coming into her life, lead the way to the arbour and sit down on the bench close to the silent figure among the trailing creepers. Peter and Nancy stood in front of her and waited for her to speak, both a little embarrassed, as we are when we aren't quite sure how we ought to feel and what we ought to say. It was very sad, of course, about Mr. Bernard Wyndham being dead, but, as they had neither of them ever seen him in their lives, it was rather difficult to mind very much. But then they knew they ought to think about what Miss Betty was feeling. Nancy looked at Pete and felt that it would be dreadful to have one's brother killed, even if he did scold one and keep one in order rather too much. But then a brother who had been in the West Indies for twelve out of the thirteen years of one's life was different from a brother who was always there to get one blackberries and lift one over hedges, and even box one's ears when one required it. And besides, as I have said, Miss Betty did not look exactly very sad, only grave and just the least little bit important. So they waited to hear what she had to say.

'It is quite true, Pete and Nancy,' she began; 'Mr. Bernard has been killed in a dreadful rising of the natives in the West Indian Islands. He was very, very brave—of course we knew he would be that—and he has died as an Englishman ought to die, so we shall never be able to show him all the things we wanted to show him, and to introduce him to all of you here, as we always thought we should.' Miss Betty's voice began to shake a little for the first time, and Pete and Nancy waited in respectful silence. After a minute she went on:

'But Angel says we must try to be very proud to think of him dying so bravely, for she says that women all over England are giving up so much, that we ought to be glad to think that we have given something too. And now I am coming to the part that is the most surprising. Only think—our brother was married, married out there eight years ago, and he never told us! I suppose he wanted to give us a beautiful surprise when he brought us a new sister home.'