The Lady of the Basement Flat | Page 4

the hour, drink glasses of hot water, and go to bed at ten o'clock.--As she hacked at the sugar crust, the corners of Aunt Emmeline's lips turned more and more downward. My silence had been taken for consent, and in the recesses of her heart she was saying to herself, "Farewell! a long farewell to all our frowstings!" I felt sorry for the poor old soul, and hastened to put her out of her misery.
"It's very good of you, Aunt Emmeline. And Aunt Eliza. Thank you very much, but I have quite decided to have a home of my own, even though I can't afford to keep on The Clough. I am going to live in London."
Just for one second, uncontrollable relief and joy gleamed from the watching eyes, then the mask fell, and she valiantly tried to look distressed.
"Ah, Evelyn! Obstinate again! Setting yourself up to know better than your elders. There'll be a bitter awakening for you some day, my dear, and when it comes you will be glad enough of your old aunties' help. Well! the door will never be closed against you. However hard and ungrateful you may be, we shall remember our duty to our sister's child. Whenever you choose to return--"
"I shall see the candle burning in the casement window!"
She looked so pained, so shocked, that if I had had any heart left I should have put my arms round her neck, and begged her pardon with a kiss; but I had no heart, only something cold, and hard, and tight, which made it impossible to be loving or kind, so I said hastily:--
"I shall certainly want to pay you a visit some day. It is very kind of you to promise to have me. After living in London, Ferbay will seem quite a haven of rest."
Aunt Emmeline accepted the olive branch with a sniff.
"But why London?" she inquired.
"Why not?" I replied. It was the only answer it seemed possible to make!
CHAPTER TWO.
AUNT ELIZA SPEAKS.
It is two days after the wedding. Kathie has been Mrs Basil Anderson for forty-eight hours, and no doubt looks back upon her spinster existence as a vague, unsatisfactory dream. She is reclining on a deck-chair on board the great ship which is bearing her to her new home, and her devoted husband is hovering by her side. I can just imagine how she looks, in her white blanket coat, and the blue hood--just the right shade to go with her eyes--an artful little curl, which has taken her quite three minutes to arrange, falling over one temple, and her spandy little shoes stretched out at full length. I know those shoes! By special request I rubbed the soles on the gravel paths, so that they might not look too newly married. Quite certainly Kathie will be throwing an occasional thought to the girl she left behind her, a "poor old Evelyn!" with a dim, pitiful little ache at the thought of my barren lot. Quite certainly, too, for one moment when she remembers, there will be twenty when she forgets. Quite right, of course! Quite natural, and wife-like, and just as it should be, and only a selfish, ungenerous wretch could wish it to be otherwise. All the same--
I wrenched myself out of the aunts' clutches yesterday morning on the plea of going home to tidy up. Though the wedding took place from their house, all the preparatory muddle happened here, and it will take days and days to go through Kathie's rooms alone, and decide what to keep, what to give away, and what to burn outright.
The drawers were littered with pretty rubbish--oddments of ribbon, old gloves, crumpled flowers, and the like. It goes against the principles of any right-minded female to give away tawdry fineries, and yet--and yet--Could I bear to destroy them? To see those little white gloves shrivel up in the flames, the high heeled little slippers crumple and split? It would seem like making a bonfire of Kathie herself.
I tidied, and arranged, and packed into fresh parcels, working at fever heat with my hands, while all the time the voice in my brain kept repeating, "Now, Evelyn, what are you going to do? What are you going to do, my dear, with your blank new life?"
To leave the old home and start afresh--that is as far as I have got so far--but I must make up my mind, and quickly too, for this house is too full of memories to be a healthy shelter. Kathie and I have lived here ever since we left school, first with father, then after his death with an old governess-companion. Since her marriage a year ago we have been alone, luxuriating in our freedom, and soothing the protestations of aunts by constant promises to look out for a