The foregoing chapter, apart from the way in which it emphasizes Mr. Aiken's loneliness and discontent as a bachelor, would be just as well left out of the story, but for the seemingly insignificant incident of the echo, or whatever it was, which might have been unintelligible if referred to hereafter, without its surroundings.
CHAPTER VI
Follows Mrs. Euphemia Aiken to Coombe and Maiden. Proper pride. You cannot go back on a railway ticket, however small its price. One's Aunts. How Miss Priscilla Bax was not surprised when she heard it was Reginald. Of the Upas Tree of reputations—the Pure Mind. How Aunt Prissy worked her niece up. Of the late Prince Regent, and Tiberius. Never write a letter, if you want the wind to lull. Ellen Jane Dudbury and her mamma. Of Ju-jutsu as an antidote to tattle. Of the relative advantages of Immorality to the two Sexes. Of good souls and busy bodies, and of the Groobs. How that odious little Dolly was the Modern Zurbaran. But he had never so much as called. Colossians three-eighteen. Miss Jessie Bax and her puppy. Miss Volumnia Bax. The delicacy of the female character. Of the Radio-Activity of Space and how Mr. Adolphus Groob sat next to Mrs. Aiken. The Godfrey Pybuses. But they have nothing to do with the story. How Time slipped by, and how Mr. Aiken employed him till the year drew to an end.
Euphemia Aiken, be it understood, had not brought definition to bear on her motives for running away to her Aunt Priscilla at Coombe. It seemed the nearest handy way of expressing her indignation at her profligate husband's conduct—that was all.
By the time she had got to Clapham Junction her indignation had begun to cool. But no ruction would hold out for five minutes if it depended on legitimate indignation. Unfortunately, when that emotion gets up, it always awakens pride, with whom—or which—it has been sleeping. And pride, once roused—and she or it is not a sound sleeper—won't go to bed again on any terms, not even when indignation is quite tired out, and ready for another snooze. So when Euphemia got to Clapham Junction, it was not her drowsy indignation that made up its mind she should take a third-class single ticket, but her proper pride, which said peremptorily that even a weekly return would be absurd. Besides, there weren't any weekly returns. Besides, it was only threepence difference. Anyhow, she wasn't going to come back till she had given Reginald a severe lesson. Her condition of mind was no doubt the one her husband described by an expression obscure in itself, but too widely accepted to be refused a place in the language. He said that her monkey was up.
There is a sense of the irrevocable about the taking of a railway ticket. Even when it is only ninepence-halfpenny—the sum Euphemia paid to go third to Coombe and Maiden—one's soul says, as the punch bites a piece viciously out of it, that the die is cast. If you were to hear suddenly that bubonic plague had broken out at, for instance, Pegwell Bay, you having booked to Ramsgate, would not you feel committed to your visit, plague or no? Would not your wife say, "But we have taken our tickets"? Ours would. Was it any wonder that, with Pride at her elbow and her ticket inside her glove. Mrs. Reginald Aiken resisted a faint temptation to get out at Wimbledon and go back by the next up-train that would promise to stop at Clapham Junction? The story cannot pretend it is sorry she did not, because it would have lost much interest for the general reader by her doing so.
We ourselves believe that if it had not been for Miss Priscilla Bax, she might have returned to her husband next day. The human race has, however, to stand or fall by its Aunts, as it finds them, they being almost always faits accomplis when its component individuals are born. Miss Bax had been one some forty years when her niece Euphemia came on the scene, and one of the good lady's strong points was the low opinion she had of persons who married into her family. She was, however, a kind-hearted old lady, in spite of her disapproval of her niece's choice of a husband, and his choice of a profession; and had not only countenanced the marriage, but had allowed the couple, as above related, a hundred a year. Being the only well-off member of her family, she was expected to do this sort of thing. Like the well-off members of other families, she was only permitted to have property on condition that she did not keep it for herself.
When Euphemia's cab from the station drove her up to Athabasca Villa, her aunt's residence, this lady had got through her seven o'clock dinner, and couldn't imagine who that could possibly be. It was such a queer time for visitors. It must be a mistake. She was so satisfied of this that she inaugurated a doze, listening through its preamble for something to explain the mistake. She was betrayed by the doze, which might have had a minute's patience, and was roused from what it insidiously became by a voice saying groundedly: "Oh dear, I'm afraid I waked you up!"
"I was not asleep," said Miss Priscilla, with dignity, kissing the owner of the voice. "I was listening." However, it took time to wake quite up, and until that happened the old lady did not fully grasp the surprising character of so late a visit; and indeed, until she became aware that a box was being carried upstairs, had but dreamy impressions of the event. In time reality dawned, and she showed it by saying: "I suppose, Euphemia, you will want your bed made up."