The Lady of the Basement Flat | Page 2

be swallowed at intervals, as medicine is swallowed of necessity.
Aunt Emmeline helped herself systematically from each of the plates in turn, working steadily through courses of bread and butter, sandwiches, scone, petits fours, and wedding cake. She was a scraggy woman, with the appetite of a giant. Kathie and I used to wonder where the food went! Probably to her tongue!
"Of course," said Aunt Emmeline, continuing her thoughts aloud, as was her disconcerting habit, "Kathleen has money, and that gives a wife a whip hand. I begged her only yesterday to stand up for herself. Those little fair women are so apt to be bullied. I knew a case. Well, mind, we'll hope it mayn't come to that! If she is sensible and doesn't expect too much, things may work out all right. Especially for the first years. If anything does go wrong, it will be your fault, Evelyn, for spoiling her as you have done."
"Thanks very much for the cheering thought," I said snappily. Aunt Emmeline helped herself to a sandwich, and blinked with exasperating forbearance.
"Not cheerful, perhaps, but it may be useful! If you'd taken my advice. It's never too late to mend, Evelyn."
"Even at twenty-six?"
Aunt Emmeline surveyed me critically. She was taking stock, and considering just how young, how old, how fresh, how damaged those lengthy years had left my physical charms. I looked in a long glass opposite, and took stock at the same time. A smart young woman--oh, very smart indeed, for as Kathie had argued, if you can't "blow" expense for your only sister's wedding, when on earth are you going to do it? Light brown hair, "still untouched by grey," hazel eyes with very long, very finely marked eyebrows (secretly they are the joy of my life!) good features, and a sulky expression. The old Evelyn used to be very good-looking--(she's dead now, so I can say so, as much as I like)--this new one is good-looking too, in a disagreeable, unattractive kind of way. If you saw her dining at the next table in an hotel you would say, "Rather a fine-looking girl!" And the man with you would reply, "Think so! Too much of a temper for my fancy. Glad she don't belong to me." I realised as much as I looked in the glass, and that made me crosser than ever. If I had been alone, able to cry, or storm, or grizzle, or go to bed just as I liked, I could have borne it better; but fancy losing your home, and your occupation, and the only person in all the world you really loved, all in one day, and coming straight from the wreck to have tea with Aunt Emmeline!
The sandwich was finished before the inspection. A piece of scone followed.
"Of course," said Aunt Emmeline, "you are not in your first bloom. That we can't expect. Your colour is a little harder and more fixed" (the figure in the glass gave a spasmodic jerk. The sulky expression was pierced by a gleam of fear. "Fixed!" Good gracious! She might be talking of those old people who have little red lines over their cheek-bones in the place of "bloom". It's ridiculous to say I am "fixed". It is a matter of indifference to me how I look, but I do insist on truth!) "and your air of pride and independence is unbecoming in an unmarried girl. Men like to see a girl sweet, clinging, pliant."
"What men?"
"All men!"
"Oh! And in my case, for instance, to whom would you suggest I should proceed to cling?"
"That," said Aunt Emmeline briskly, "is precisely what I wish to discuss." She lifted the last morsel of scone from the plate, stared at it, and popped it into her mouth. "My dear, has it ever occurred to you to think what you are going to do?"
"Aunt Emmeline, for the last months it has rarely occurred to me to think of anything else!"
"Very well then, that's all to the good. As I said to Aunt Eliza, let us leave her alone till Kathleen has gone. Evelyn is obstinate, and if you interfere she will only grow more pig-headed. Let her find things out for herself. Experience, Eliza, will do more than either you or I. Sooner or later, even Evelyn must realise that you can't run a house, and garden, and stable, in the same way on half the ordinary income. Now that Kathleen is married, she naturally takes with her her own fortune."
She looked at me expectantly, and I smiled, another stiff, marionette smile--and said:--
"How true! Curiously enough, that fact has already penetrated to my dull brain!"
"Now I do hope and pray, Evelyn, that you are not going to argue with me," cried Aunt Emmeline, with a sudden access of energy which was positively startling. "It's