The Lady of the Basement Flat | Page 4

spoiled. They didn't want "a bright young
influence!" They wanted to be free to do as they liked-- sup luxuriously
on cocoa and an egg, turn up black cashmere skirts over wadded
petticoats, and doze before the fire, discuss the servants' failings by 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