Spinster of This Parish

by W. B. Maxwell

One after another the years glided past. In 1904 Anthony Dyke, the explorer, was about to do his third Antarctic cruise in command of an expedition that had been organized for purely scientific purposes, and with no intention of pushing far south. But newspapers said that it would be strange if Dyke did not make some sort of dash and attempt to lower the record that he himself still held.

Long before this year of 1904 the number of people who condescended to be aware of Miss Verinder’s existence had largely increased. After the tea-sellers there had come in due course clergymen or church lay-helpers; for, however much you may disapprove of a lady’s former way of life, you cannot be so uncharitable as to preclude her from herself exercising the virtue of charity; and, moreover, the acceptance of a donation or subscription commits you to no real friendliness. Then came a chance acquaintance who had been warned against her but could not bother about the warning, or thought that in regard to scandal there ought to be a statute of limitations; and, adopting this broad-minded view, they even asked her to dine with them quietly and at short notice—more especially when they were at their wit’s ends to find a fourth for bridge. Then she began to be “taken up again,” as they termed it, by a few of her old friends—the few still remaining in the locality. Staggered by the countenance given to her by Mrs. Bell, or moved to pity by their own reflections on her lonely blameless life, they essayed a smile and nod when they passed her in the street, and, encouraged by her unresentful courtesy, a little later attacked Louisa with a packet of their visiting cards.

So the legend of Miss Verinder’s wickedness slowly tended, if not yet to fade and die, at least to lose its strength and high colour. Young people yawned and refused to learn when elderly people narrated the legend for their benefit. “Hot stuff,” was she, when she was young? But all that must have been a mighty long time ago. It was as if the house walls absorbed whispers concerning her past, instead of echoing them as they used to do. It was as if the varnished front doors and plate glass windows of the straight, correct roads, conspiring with iron rails and neat rectangles of grass and gravel in the gardens of the squares, had now determined, if they could, slowly to obliterate all vivid recollection of a glaring irregularity. It was as if the whole monotonously respectable neighbourhood had said to its parasitic inhabitants, “We never experienced anything of the sort till then. Let us now try to forget that it ever happened.”

At last her family forgave her, and for form’s sake insisted that there should be some slight intercourse, although Miss Verinder herself declined or evaded any resumption of real intimacy. To her relatives it had become so very awkward to go on cutting her, and with all the children growing up, to have an aunt that mustn’t be mentioned. It was far more convenient to know her and name her again. Margaret Pratt was now the mother of five and putting on flesh rapidly. But, because of her shortness, she could never hope to be as big round as Mrs. Verinder. Eustace had married with the utmost propriety, and his wife in an equally becoming manner had given him first a female and then a male infant. It was Eustace who advised a reconciliation with his erring sister, and Mr. Verinder at once agreed.

Mr. Verinder had been badly shaken by the South African War—a rebellion, a defiance of authority, that should not have been called a war at all; during the early reverses he could not sleep at night, although he doggedly declared at the breakfast table that he was not anxious and that everything would could right in the end. He sincerely mourned the death of Queen Victoria, that august lady who had been as fond of the Albert Hall as he was himself. He described this great loss as “the breaking of a link.”

Already, in Mr. Verinder’s opinion, his beloved neighbourhood was changing. He could not disguise from himself that it was not all that it used to be. That old closely-bound society was breaking up. The war had shaken things as well as people. New ideas were creeping in, with a new monarch on the throne; that grand old British institution, the dinner-party, was threatened by the new fashion of entertaining at restaurants.

Then soon he began to suffer in health, and submitting to the most terrific of all possible upheavals, he consented to sell his house and go to live with Mrs. Verinder at Brighton. Mrs. Verinder had fallen in love with Brighton, having there found a row of houses almost exactly like Prince’s Gate—same colour, same porches, cornice, everything; only smaller, and therefore requiring a less ample and more easily managed style of household.

From Brighton Mr. Verinder wrote to Emmeline inviting her to spend Easter with them, saying that Eustace, Margaret, and the little people would be there, and all of them glad to see her. He underlined that word all; but Emmeline could not accept the invitation.

It was a comfort to the kindly feeble old man to be able to write to Emmeline now and then, or to talk about her once in a way at dinner; and it was an immensely greater comfort, a comfort always with him, to know that the ancient dreadful affair was so completely over and done with. To his mind, Emmeline had finally lived it down. He knew that Dyke had been in England during these years at least twice, and—again without the aid of detectives—he had ascertained that Emmeline had not renewed relations with the man; indeed, had not even attempted to see him. All the time Dyke was in London the last time, Emmeline had been away somewhere in the country. She did not return to that little flat of hers until the man had gone once more. All this Mr. Verinder had learned from Mrs. Bell, who vouched for the truth; and he admired his daughter’s fortitude and strength of mind in thus running away to avoid any possibility of temptation.

A closed chapter. Yes, thank goodness, over and done with.