[CHAPTER VIII
THE HOUSE IN THE CLOSE]
TO say that the Miss Robertsons were much respected in Kaims was to give a poor notion of the truth. The last survivors of a family which had lived—and, for the most part, died—in the house they still occupied, they had spent the whole of their existence in the town.
It was nearly a hundred years since a cousin of the Speid family, eldest and plainest of half a dozen sisters, had, on finding herself the sole unmarried member of the band, accepted the addresses and fortune of a wealthy East India merchant whose aspiring eye was turned in her direction.
The family outcry was loud at his presumption, for his birth was as undistinguished as his person, and the married sisters raised a chorus of derision from the calm heights of their own superiority. Mr. Robertson’s figure, which was homely; his character, which was ineffective; his manners, which were rather absurd, all came in for their share of ridicule. The only thing at which they did not make a mock was his money.
But Isabella was a woman of resolute nature, and, having once put her hand to the plough, she would not look back. She not only married Mr. Robertson in the face of her family, but had the good sense to demean herself as though she were conquering the earth; then she settled down into a sober but high-handed matrimony, and proceeded to rule the merchant and all belonging to him with a rod of iron. The only mistake she made was that of having thirteen children.
And now the tall tombstone, which rose, with its draped urn, from a forest of memorials in the churchyard of Kaims, held records of the eleven who lay under it beside their parents. The women had never left their own place; two or three of the men had gone far afield, but each one of the number had died unmarried, and each had been buried at home. The two living would look in at it, on the rare occasions on which they passed, with a certain sense of repose.
After his marriage, Mr. Robertson had met with reverses, and the increase of his family did not mend his purse. At his death, which took place before that of his wife, he was no more than comfortably off; and the ample means possessed by Miss Hersey and Miss Caroline were mainly due to their own economical habits, and the accumulated legacies of their brothers and sisters.
In the town of Kaims the houses of the bettermost classes were completely hidden from the eye, for they stood behind those fronting on the street, and were approached by ‘closes,’ or narrow covered ways, running back between the buildings. The dark doorways opening upon the pavement gave no suggestion of the respectable haunts to which they led. The Robertson house stood at the end of one of these. Having dived into the passage, one emerged again on a paved path, flanked by deep borders of sooty turf, under the windows of the tall, dead-looking tenements frowning squalidly down on either side, and giving a strange feeling of the presence of unseen eyes, though no sign of humanity was visible behind the panes. From the upper stories the drying underwear of the poorer inhabitants waved, particoloured, from long poles. The house was detached. It was comfortable and spacious, with a wide staircase painted in imitation of marble, and red baize inner doors; very silent, very light, looking on its further side into a garden.
It was Sunday; the two old ladies, who were strict Episcopalians, had returned from church, and were sitting dressed in the clothes held sacred to the day, in their drawing-room. June was well forward and the window was open beside Miss Hersey, as she sat, handkerchief in hand, on the red chintz sofa. The strong scent of lilies of the valley came up from outside, and pervaded that part of the room. At her elbow stood a little round table of black lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl pagodas. Miss Caroline moved about rather aimlessly among the furniture, patting a table-cover here and shifting a chair there, but making no appreciable difference in anything she touched. Near the other window was set out a tray covered with a napkin, holding some wineglasses, a decanter, and two plates of sponge-cakes.