The Wheel of Life | Page 8

want to talk to you awhile. Do you
know, Aunt Rosa was here again to-day and she still tries to persuade
us to sell the house and move uptown. It is so far for her to come from
Seventieth Street, she says, but as for me I'd positively hate the change
and Aunt Angela can't even stand the mention of it." She leaned
forward and stroked his arm with one of her earnest gestures. "What
would you do uptown, dear Uncle Percival?" she inquired gently.
The old man laid the flute on his knees, where his shrunken little hands
still caressed it. "Do? why I'd die if you dragged me away from my
roots," he answered.
Laura smiled, still smoothing him down as if he were an amiable dog.

"Well, the Park is very pleasant, you know," she returned, "and it is full
of walks, too. You wouldn't lack space for exercise."
"The Park? Pooh!" piped Uncle Percival, raising his voice; "I wouldn't
give these streets for the whole of Central Park together. Why, I've seen
these pavements laid and relaid for seventy years and I remember all
the men who walked over them. Did I ever tell you of the time I
strolled through Irving Place with Thackeray? As for Central Park, it
hasn't an ounce--not an ounce of atmosphere."
"Oh, well, that settles it," laughed Laura. "We'll keep to our own roots.
We are all of one mind, you and Aunt Angela and I."
"I'm sure Angela would never hear of it," pursued Uncle Percival, "and
in her affliction how could one expect it?"
For a moment Laura looked at him in a compassionate pause before she
made her spring. "There's nothing in the world the matter with Aunt
Angela," she said; "she's perfectly well."
Blank wonder crept into the old gentleman's little blue eyes and he
shook his head several times in solemn if voiceless protest. Forty years
ago Angela Wilde, as a girl of twenty, had in the accustomed family
phrase "brought lasting disgrace upon them," and she had dwelt, as it
were, in the shadow of the pillory ever since. Unmarried she had
yielded herself to a lover, and afterward when the full scandal had burst
upon her head, though she had not then reached the fulfilment of a
singularly charming beauty, she had condemned herself to the life of a
solitary prisoner within four walls. She had never since the day of her
awakening mentioned the name of her faithless or unfortunate lover,
but her silent magnanimity had become the expression of a reproach
too deep for words, and her bitter scorn of men had so grown upon her
in her cloistral existence that there were hours together when she could
not endure even the inoffensive Percival. Cold, white, and spectral as
one of the long slim candles on an altar, still beautiful with an indignant
and wounded loveliness, she had become in the end at once the shame
and the romance of her family.

"There is no reason under the sun why Aunt Angela shouldn't come
down to dinner with us to-night," persisted Laura. "Don't you see that
by encouraging her as you did in her foolish attitude, you have given
her past power over her for life and death. It is wrong--it is ignoble to
bow down and worship anything--man, woman, child, or event, as she
bows down and worships her trouble."
The flute shook on Uncle Percival's knees. "Ah, Laura, would you have
her face the world again?" he asked.
"The world? Nonsense! The world doesn't know there's such a person
in it. She was forgotten forty years ago, only she has grown so selfish
in her grief that she can never believe it."
The old man sighed and shook his head. "The women of this generation
have had the dew brushed off them," he lamented, "but your mother
understood. She felt for Angela."
"And yet it was an old story when my mother came here."
"Some things never grow old, my dear, and shame is one of them."
Laura dismissed the assertion with a shrug of scornful protest, and
turned the conversation at once into another channel. "Am I anything
like my mother, Uncle Percival?" she asked abruptly.
For a moment the old man pondered the question in silence, his little
red hands fingering the mouth of his flute.
"You have the Creole hair and the Creole voice," he replied; "but for
the rest you are your father's child, every inch of you."
"My mother was beautiful, I suppose?"
"Your father thought so, but as for me she was too little and passionate.
I can see her now when she would fly into one of her spasms because
somebody had crossed her or been impolite without knowing it."
"They got on badly