Leonora | Page 3

to taste it, all new, you know. I'm simply stodged.'
'Don't say "stodged."'
'Oh, mother! You won't let us say anything,' Ethel dismally protested;
and Leonora secretly sympathised with the grown woman in revolt.
'Oh! And Aunt Hannah wishes you many happy returns. Uncle
Meshach came back from the Isle of Man last night. He gave me a note
for you. Here it is.'
'I can't take it now, my dear. Give it me afterwards.'
'I think Uncle Meshach's a horrid old thing!' said Ethel.
'My dear girl! Why?'
'Oh! I do. I'm glad he's only father's uncle and not ours. I do hate that
name. Fancy being called Meshach!'
'That isn't uncle's fault, anyhow,' said Leonora.
'You always stick up for him, mother. I believe it's because he flatters
you, and says you look younger than any of us.' Ethel's tone was half
roguish, half resentful.
Leonora gave a short unsteady laugh. She knew well that her age was
plainly written beneath her eyes, at the corners of her mouth, under her
chin, at the roots of the hair above her ears, and in her cold, confident
gaze. Youth! She would have forfeited all her experience, her
knowledge, and the charm of her maturity, to recover the irrecoverable!
She envied the woman by her side, and envied her because she was
lightsome, thoughtless, kittenish, simple, unripe. For a brief moment,
vainly coveting the ineffable charm of Ethel's immaturity, she had a
sharp perception of the obscure mutual antipathy which separates one
generation from the next. As the cob rattled into Hillport, that
aristocratic and plutocratic suburb of the town, that haunt of
exclusiveness, that retreat of high life and good tone, she thought how

commonplace, vulgar, and petty was the opulent existence within those
tree-shaded villas, and that she was doomed to droop and die there,
while her girls, still unfledged, might, if they had the sense to use their
wings, fly away.... Yet at the same time it gratified her to reflect that
she and hers were in the picture, and conformed to the standards; she
enjoyed the admiration which the sight of herself and Ethel and the
expensive cob and cart and accoutrements must arouse in the
punctilious and stupid breast of Hillport.
She was picking flowers for the table from the vivid borders of the
lawn, when Ethel ran into the garden from the drawing-room. Bran, the
St. Bernard, was loose and investigating the turf.
'Mother, the letter from Uncle Meshach.'
Leonora took the soiled envelope, and handing over the flowers to
Ethel, crossed the lawn and sat down on the rustic seat, facing the
house. The dog followed her, and with his great paw demanded her
attention, but she abruptly dismissed him. She thought it curiously
characteristic of Uncle Meshach that he should write her a letter on her
fortieth birthday; she could imagine the uncouth mixture of wit, rude
candour, and wisdom with which he would greet her; his was a strange
and sinister personality, but she knew that he admired her. The note
was written in Meshach's scraggy and irregular hand, in three lines
starting close to the top of half a sheet of note paper. It ran: 'Dear Nora,
I hear young Twemlow is come back from America. You had better see
as your John looks out for himself.' There was nothing else, no
signature.
As she read it, she experienced precisely the physical discomfort which
those feel who travel for the first time in a descending lift. Fifteen quiet
years had elapsed since the death of her husband's partner William
Twemlow, and a quarter of a century since William's wild son, Arthur,
had run away to America. Yet Uncle Meshach's letter seemed to invest
these far-off things with a mysterious and disconcerting actuality. The
misgivings about her husband which long practice and continual effort
had taught her how to keep at bay, suddenly overleapt their artificial
barriers and swarmed upon her.

The long garden front of the dignified eighteenth-century house, nearly
the last villa in Hillport on the road to Oldcastle, was extended before
her. She had played in that house as a child, and as a woman had
watched, from its windows, the years go by like a procession. That
house was her domain. Hers was the supreme intelligence brooding
creatively over it. Out of walls and floors and ceilings, out of stairs and
passages, out of furniture and woven stuffs, out of metal and
earthenware, she had made a home. From the lawn, in the beautiful
sadness of the autumn evening, any one might have seen and enjoyed
the sight of its high French windows, its glowing sun-blinds, its
faintly-tinted and beribboned curtains, its creepers, its glimpses of
occasional tables, tall vases, and dressing-mirrors. But Leonora, as she
sat holding the