I knew that interior well. There was a haunting sense of pathos in those old rooms, and the ancient furniture was arranged in unyielding precision.
When Ann ushered me into the musty-smelling drawing-room, I glanced round and shuddered. Aunt Henrietta’s rules were the household rules of her mother before her, and she severely reprobated the domestic slackness and craving for mere comfort and luxury of the present generation. Her lace curtains, carefully dressed, were hung up, and fires banished from all her fireplaces, on the first of May. Untimely frost and snow had no power to move the prim old wool-work screen, glazed and framed, that hid the steel bars of the grate; the simpering ladies, in their faded blue and scarlet dresses, looked unsympathetically at the light carpet, the white curtains, the anti-macassared armchairs, the round table with books, miniatures, and a flowering plant, whatever the state of the thermometer.
Through the windows a pleasant vista was presented across a well-kept lawn with broad pasture-lands beyond, and the spire of Testerton church rising in the distance behind the belt of trees. While I sat there awaiting Edith, who was no doubt amazed at the announcement of my presence, and was now rearranging her hair, as women will, I glanced up at the feeble watercolours and chalk drawings traced by the hand of “dear Aunt Fanny, who had a wonderful talent for drawing.” It occurred to me that Fanny’s great-nieces, with perhaps less artistic excuse, now studied at the Slade, copied at the National Gallery, and lived in flats with some feminine friend on tea and pickles. Such girls give lunches and teas to stray bachelors, and own a latchkey. But such doings could hardly be thought of among Fanny’s muddled trees and impossible sunsets, with Fanny’s pictured eyes smiling sweetly, if a trifle inanely, from behind her bunches of fair, hanging curls, at grandmother’s mild face and folded hands on the opposite wall.
Notwithstanding the inartistic character of the place, there was everywhere a tranquillity and an old-world charm. Through the open window came the scent of the flowers, the hum of insects in the noonday sun, and the call of the birds. How different was the life there from my own turbulent existence in the glare and glitter of the gayest circle in Paris! I sighed, and longed for quiet and rest at home in dear old rural England.
Suddenly the door opened, and Aunt Henrietta, a prim, shrunken, thin-faced old lady in stiff black silk, and wearing a cap of cream lace, came forward to greet me.
“Why, you have taken us entirely by surprise, Mr Ingram!” she said in her high-pitched voice. “When Ann told me that it was you, I would scarcely believe her. We thought you were in Paris.”
“I had to come to London on business, so I thought I would run down to see how you all are,” I answered. “I hope my visit is not inconvenient?”
“Oh no,” answered the old lady. “I’ve told Edith, and she will be down in a moment. She’s been worrying for the past week because she has received no letter from you.”
“Well, I’ve come personally, Miss Foskett,” I laughed. “I hope my presence will partly make up for my failure as a correspondent.”
Her grey, wizened face puckered into a smile. I knew that she had not altogether approved of Edith becoming engaged to me. But her niece was of age, mistress of her fortune, and, I shrewdly suspected, contributed handsomely towards the expenses of that small, prim household.