‘Auntie Lolly, Auntie Lolly,’ repeated Fancy, rhythmically banging the monkey against the table-leg.
The name hit upon by Fancy was accepted by Marion and Titus; before long their parents made use of it also. Everard never spoke of his daughter but as Laura, even when he spoke of her to his grandchildren. He was too old to change his ways, and he had, in any case, a prejudice against nicknames and abbreviations. But when Laura went to London she left Laura behind, and entered into a state of Aunt Lolly. She had quitted so much of herself in quitting Somerset that it seemed natural to relinquish her name also. Divested of her easily-worn honours as mistress of the household, shorn of her long meandering country days, sleeping in a smart brass bedstead instead of her old and rather pompous four-poster, wearing unaccustomed clothes and performing unaccustomed duties, she seemed to herself to have become a different person. Or rather, she had become two persons, each different. One was Aunt Lolly, a middle-aging lady, light-footed upon stairs, and indispensable for Christmas Eve and birthday preparations. The other was Miss Willowes, ‘my sister-in-law Miss Willowes,’ whom Caroline would introduce, and abandon to a feeling of being neither light-footed nor indispensable. But Laura was put away. When Henry asked her to witness some document for him her Laura Erminia Willowes seemed as much a thing out of common speech as the Spinster that followed it. She would look, and be surprised that such a dignified name should belong to her.
Twice a year, in spring and in summer, the Willowes family went into the country for a holiday. For the first three years of Laura’s London life they went as a matter of course to Lady Place. There once more arose the problem of how two children of one sex can play nicely with a much younger child of the other. Fancy and Marion played at tea-parties under the weeping ash, and Titus was the butler with a tin tray. Titus would presently run off and play by himself at soldiers, beating martial tattoos upon the tray. But now there was no danger of the youngest member of the party falling into the pond, for Aunt Lolly was always on guard.
Laura enjoyed the visits to Lady Place, but her enjoyment did not go very deep. The knowledge that she was now a visitor where she had formerly been at home seemed to place a clear sheet of glass between her and her surroundings. She felt none of the grudge of the dispossessed; she scarcely gave a thought to the old days. It was as if in the agony of leaving Lady Place after her father’s death she had said good-bye so irremediably that she could never really come there again.
But the visits to Lady Place came to a sad end, for in 1905 James died suddenly of heartfailure. Sibyl decided that she could not go on living alone in the country. A manager was found for the brewery, Lady Place was let unfurnished upon a long lease, and Sibyl and the four-years-old heir of the Willowes name and traditions moved to a small house in Hampstead. Sibyl had proposed to sell some of the furniture, for there was a great deal more of it than she needed, and most of it was too large to fit into her new dwelling. This project was opposed by Henry, and with considerable heat. The family establishment must, he admitted, be broken up, but he would allow no part of it to be alienated. All the furniture that could not be found room for at Hampstead or at Apsley Terrace must be stored till Titus should be of an age to resume the tenure of Lady Place.
To Laura it seemed as though some familiar murmuring brook had suddenly gone underground. There it flowed, silenced and obscured, until the moment when it should reappear and murmur again between green banks. She thought of Titus as a grown man and herself as an old woman meeting among the familiar belongings. She believed that when she was old the ghost-like feeling that distressed her would matter less. She hoped that she might not die before that day, if it were only that she would remember so well, as Titus could not, how the furniture stood in the rooms and the pictures hung on the walls.
But by then, she said to herself, Titus would have a wife with tastes of her own. Sibyl would have liked to alter several things, but tradition had been too strong for her. It would be a very different matter in twenty years’ time. The chairs and tables and cabinets would come out blinking and forgetful from their long storage in darkness. They would have lost the individuality by which they had made certain corners so surely their own. The Lady Place she had known was over. She could remember it if she pleased; but she must not think of it.
Meanwhile Emma’s harp trailed its strings in her bedroom. Ratafee was removed to Hampstead. Titus had insisted upon this.
She wondered if Henry felt as she did. He had shown a great deal of Willowes spirit over the furniture, but otherwise he had not expressed himself. In person Henry, so it was said, resembled his grandfather who had made the move from Dorset to Somerset—the sacrilegious move which the home-loving of the Willoweses had so soon sanctified that in the third generation she was feeling like this about Lady Place. Henry seemed to resemble his grandfather in spirit also. He could house all the family traditions in his practical mind, and for the rest talk about bricks and mortar. He concerned himself with the terms of Sibyl’s lease, the agreement with the manager of the brewery, and the question of finding a satisfactory place to carry his family to for the holidays.
After some experiments they settled down to a routine that with a few modifications for the sake of variety or convenience served them for the next fifteen years. In spring they went to some moderately popular health resort and stayed in a hotel, for it was found that the uncertainty of an English spring, let alone the uncertainty of a Christian Easter, made lodgings unsatisfactory at that time of year. In summer they went into lodgings, or took a furnished house in some seaside village without any attractions. They did this, not to be economical—there was no need for economy—but because they found rather plain dull holidays the most refreshing. Henry was content with a little unsophisticated golf and float-fishing. The children bathed and played on the beach and went on bicycling expeditions; and Caroline and Laura watched the children bathe and play, and replenished their stock of underclothes, and rested from the strain of London housekeeping. Sometimes Caroline did a little reading. Sometimes Sibyl and Titus stayed with them, or Titus stayed with them alone while his mother paid visits.