But the tea, when poured, brought with it no clue to the cause of Miss Upwell's visit. It had furnished a certain amount of relief, during its negotiation, by postponing discussion of the point, and by the claim it made for a chapter to itself. For a short chapter of your life-story begins when you get your tea, and ends when you've done your tea. When Madeline had ceased to be able to pretend that this chapter had not ended, her suspended sense of incomprehensibility cropped up again, and she grew painfully aware that her hostesses would soon begin waiting visibly for enlightenment, which she was no nearer being able to give than at first. How could she have guessed it would be so difficult? She was even conscious of gratitude to Miss Priscilla for her persistency in Atavism, and at heart hoped that the good lady would not stop just yet.
No fear of that! The Brocks were not nearly over, and they had to be disposed of before the Baxes could be taken in hand. Their exponent picked them up where she had dropped them. "My Mother's family," she resumed, "were well known during the Middle Ages. There were Brocks in Sampford Pagnell as early as fourteen hundred and four. They are even said to have been connected with John of Gaunt. Unhappily all the family documents, including an autograph letter of Alice Piers to Edward the Black Prince, were destroyed in the Great Fire of London." On lines like these, as we all know, a topic may be pursued for a very long time without the pursuer's hobby breaking down. It went on long enough in this case for Madeline to wish she could get a chance of utilising some courage she had been slowly mustering during the chase. This being hardly mature yet, she took another cup of tea, thank you! and sat on, supplying little notes of exclamation and pleased surprise whenever the manner of the narrator seemed to call for them.
"It seems only the other day," Aunt Priscilla continued, with her eyes half-closed to express memory at work upon the past, "that I was taken as a little girl of six, to see my great-grandmother, then in her hundredth year. She was a friend of Horace Walpole. Her mother could remember John Bunyan."
"Is it possible!" said Madeline, very shaky about dates, but ready with any amount of wonderment. She added idiotically, "Of course my father must have known all your people, quite well." Which did not follow from the apparent premisses.
Mrs. Aiken muttered in a warning voice, for her visitor's ear only, "When Aunt gets on her grandmother she never gets off. You'll see!" She took advantage of the old lady's deafness to keep up a running comment.
Miss Priscilla then approached a subject which required to be handled with the extremest delicacy. "I think, Euphemia," she said, "that after so long a time there can be no objection ... You know what I am referring to?"
"Objection?—why should there be? Oh yes, I know. Horace Walpole and your great-grandmother. No—none!" To Madeline Mrs. Aiken said in an undertone, "I told you how it would be." That young lady affected a lively interest in scandal against Queen Elizabeth, which was what she anticipated.
"I myself," said Aunt Priscilla, in the leisurely way of a lecturer who has secured an audience, "have always held to the opinion that there was a marriage, but what the motives may have been for concealing it can only be conjectured...."
This was too leisurely for her niece's patience. It provoked a species of sotto voce abstract of her Aunt's coming statement thus, "Oh yes—do get on! You cannot otherwise understand how so rigid an observer of moral law as your great-grandfather, however lamentable his religious tenets may have been, could have brought himself to marry the widow. Do get on!" Which proved to be the substance of the original, as soon as the latter was published. But it certainly got over the ground quicker, and made a spurt at the winning-post, arriving almost before the other horse started.
"This," resumed Aunt Priscilla, after a small blank for the congregation to sniff and cough, if so disposed, "was some considerable time before his accession to the Earldom. The only clue that has been suggested as a motive for concealment of the marriage was his unaccountable aversion to the title, which he could scarcely have indulged if ... There's a knock. Do see if it's the Tapleys, and don't let them go." Mrs. Aiken rose and went out, reciting rapidly another forecast, "He-never-took- his-seat-in-the-House-of-Lords-and-signed-his- letters-'the-Uncle-of-the-late-Earl-of-Orford.' She'll have done that by the time I'm back," as she left the room. Miss Upwell felt a little resentment at this lady's treatment of her Aunt. After all, is not man an Atavistic animal? Is not ancestor-worship the oldest of religions?