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Ebook has 1940 lines and 74752 words, and 39 pages

She admires his treasure, her eyes limpid and sweet with saints and angels, and thinks, 'Why, if I stopped praising the very stones here would cry out,' and so they both take a deep interest in the moulding for quite different reasons.

Uncle Jasper worships the ground she walks on, while for her, 'Jasper' comes just after God.

But although my uncle thinks her so adorable, he can't keep even his compliments quite free of his ruling passion.

And 'Constance' blushed at that because, coming from him, it was a most tremendous compliment, and she was secretly rather glad, I expect, that when ears were doled round she got a pair with the lobes left out. Funny old Uncle Jasper!

But though--

'For him delicious flavours dwell In Books, as in old muscatel,'

he's quite a decent landlord. There are no leaky roofs on his estate. Daddy says it's because of his feudal mind. I don't know if that is why the whole village seems like a family. We are interested in all the cottage folk, and they in us, just as our fathers were before us. Uncle Jasper looks after their material interests and Daddy saves their souls; Ross bosses all the boys, and I cuddle the babies, while Aunt Constance is like that lady in E. B. Browning's poem, whose goodness was that nice, invisible sort. She too

'Never found fault with you, never implied Your wrong by her right, and yet men at her side Grew nobler, girls purer, as through the whole town The children were gladder that pulled at her gown.'

Father is an Evangelical, but my Aunt Constance is what the village people call a little 'high' in her religion. She would like flowers and candles, too, in church, if daddy would have them, which he won't, and she keeps the fast days, but unostentatiously. Yet she and father live in harmony and love, and only laugh a little at each other!

But my cousin Eustace annoys me. He is so good and holy. He is short and thin and pale and vacillating, and wears overcoats and carries an umbrella. In fact, he is everything that his mother and father aren't. Ross doesn't get on with him, and finds him 'tiring.' Daddy says he is a throwback. I asked Eustace once if one of his ancestors could possibly have been a nun as he is so like a monk himself. He said I was simply abominable and wouldn't speak to me all day. In the evening he said he was sorry, as quite obviously I didn't know what I was talking about. Naturally I wouldn't speak to him then. Such a way to apologise!

Nannie was our old nurse, but since mother died she has been housekeeper. She is a comfortable kind of person. Any one who is tired, or cold, or hurt, or hungry, or very small is always Nannie's 'lamb,' though how the radiant six-foot-one and still-growing Ross can come under that category I don't know, unless it's because he's always hungry. But he has ever been, and is, and will remain, her 'lamb.'

Father is Uncle Jasper's brother and not an easy person to explain. He is a handsome, great tall thing, and a mixture of Dante and horses, dogs, humility, sport, and autocracy, but he is most adorable and has a divine sense of humour. Aunt Constance says he is a mystic, but I don't know what she means. I have never been able to understand how he came to be a parson at all, for every inch of him is soldier. He has got a temper, too, only he doesn't lose it when most people lose theirs. He's dreadfully difficult about some things. He is so fastidious about clothes, especially mine. I think his eyes must magnify like a shaving-glass. He sees holes which are perfectly invisible to me. There is in me a certain carelessness about the things that show , but a button off my shoe doesn't really worry me unless the shoe comes off. A jag in my tweeds leaves me cold, and the moral aspect of a hole in my glove doesn't weigh with me at all. Besides, as I said to father one day when I was being rowed,--

My brother Ross is going into the army. He's awfully like father if you leave out Dante and the humility part and shove in a perpetual bullying of his sister. But he's not a mystic. Oh, dear, no! He loves this world with all its pomps and horses, adores its vanities, its coloured socks and handkerchiefs and ties. He is a radiant person with a great capacity for friendship. He is nice to every one until a chap spills things down his clothes, and then my brother slowly freezes and curls up and is 'done with him.'

He and I do not always dwell together in harmony and love. We 'fight' most horribly at times, but I adore him really, though I wouldn't let him know it. It would be frightfully bad for him. I run my male things on the truest form of kindness lines. They always loathe it.

And mother? Oh, I can't write about her at all, even though it's so long since she died; she was half Irish and so pretty and so gay. She fell off a step ladder one day when she was gathering roses, and Ross found her unconscious, and that night she died. I couldn't understand why a broken arm should kill her till daddy explained that the hope of another little son went with her, too. Father's eyes have never looked the same since; there is still a hurt look in them.

Then there's Sam. He is not a relative, but always seems like one; he is the jolly boy who lives at Uncle Jasper's lodge and is Ross's greatest friend and most devoted slave. Why, when Ross first went to Harrow Sam ran away from home and turned up as the school boot-boy , and now as Ross is at Sandhurst he has got taken on there, too. He will do anything to be within a hundred miles of Ross. I come in for a share of his devotion because I am his idol's sister. What that boy doesn't know about fishing, birds' eggs, and the Hickley woods isn't worth knowing. But Sam has been known to turn and rend Ross for his good , just as Brown, Sam's father, who is head gardener at the Manor House, turns and rends Uncle Jasper once every ten years or so, when his ideas have become too archaic to be borne by any man who wants to make some alterations to improve the gardens.

We have a family skeleton. It is my Aunt Amelia. She isn't illegitimate or anything like that. This book is quite respectable. Nor is she thin. She has a high stomach and is as proud as it is high. She always wears black broch? dresses, even the first thing in the morning. Nannie says they are most beautiful quality and would stand alone. She adorns herself with cameo brooches and rings with hair inside, and she wears square-toed boots and stuff gloves that pull on without buttons. Daddy says all Evangelicals do, except his daughter.

She has been a widow for many years. Indeed she only lived with her husband six months from her virginity, and then he died of the 'Ammonia,' as the village children call it. My aunt never goes out without her maid, Keziah, and she carries a disgusting 'fydo' everywhere. She talks religion all day long, and quotes texts at people. She brings out my prickles.

Father says that no one will know what a 'fydo' is, and that I am not to be disrespectful, because she is a really good woman and has the missionary spirit. Father is like that, he has a kind of humility that won't let him say beastly things about any one. My brother is not so particular. He used to say that he wouldn't let the chaps at school know he had an aunt who talked about his soul like a little Bethel for anything this world could offer him. Besides, I should have thought that any one would know that a 'fydo' is any bloated dog of uncertain ancestry that stinks and pants.

Our only other relative is daddy's cousin Emily. She lives in Hampstead, next door but five to Aunt Amelia. Her parrot can say the collect for the seventeenth Sunday after Trinity.

Cousin Emily is a spinster, but she has a grand passion in her life, and it is animals. She will have nothing killed, with the result that her house is overrun with mice and the garden's full of snails. She visits the poor in the East End and gives away flannel petticoats at Christmas large enough to fit the dome of St Paul's. The last time father stayed there she caught a flea in the slums, but of course she couldn't destroy it. She was greatly agitated and went about the house with the wretched creature clasped in her arms, as it were, waiting for an inspiration as to what to do with it. Finally she decided to put it on the cat's back, and was quite happy till father wickedly said he did not think that arrangement was fair on the cat.

Then she wished she had thrown it down the cellar stairs, but daddy teased her and said, 'the poor thing might have broken its leg and lain amid the wine bottles in anguish, unable even to help itself to brandy or anything.' The poor old dear thereupon said, 'But, dear cousin, what shall I do if I find another?' and her dear cousin advised her strongly to let the house furnished.

But I like her awfully. So does Ross. He says she is a ripping old bird. She gives us topping presents. She sent me two of the darlingest white and fawn rabbits, exactly alike, when I was a kiddie. One was called 'Nada the Lily' and the other 'dear Buckiebuckie,' but I found the mental strain of life too great when I found ten little rabbits in dear Buckiebuckie's cage. He seemed so pleased with them, too; that's what worried me so. He didn't seem to know how wrong it was, and neither did Nada the Lily, for she sat in placid indifference by her empty nest box.

Aunt Amelia was staying with us at the time, so I asked her about it, but she said it was not a nice thing for any little girl to talk about, especially a clergyman's daughter. I shed tears then and ran out in the woods, but Nannie followed me,--

'Oh, what an old fool the woman is; how much longer is she going to stay? Don't you worry, dearie, 'tisn't the first time that a buck and doe's got mixed, and won't be the last neither. I expect you got 'em muddled when you cleaned them out.'

Thus Nannie brought a situation, electric with insuperable difficulties, down to the level of homely everydayness, where I felt I could cope with it. She is always like that. I changed dear Buckiebuckie's name then to 'Adam and Eve,' because he was the mother of all living and he'd 'ad em! Somehow, when we were children there always seemed to be trouble when Aunt Amelia was in the house. We always said dreadful things in front of her, or else the things we usually said were noticed more.

The very first time she came to stay, when we were six years old, there were two ructions in as many minutes.

We had a hen at that time called 'The Old Maid,' because she was of uncertain age and used to peck the others, and as she hadn't earned her board and keep we had her boiled for luncheon. It was some one's birthday and we kids were allowed to lunch downstairs. Father carved and in great disgust said,--

'Whatever bird is this?'

'"The Old Maid," daddy,' said Ross.

'Well, it doesn't seem to have much breast.'

'But then,' as my small brother remarked, 'you wouldn't expect an old maid to have much, would you?'

'Mother, couldn't we search the parish for a young virgin for Aunt Amelia like King David had when he was old and gat no heat?'

'Anthony!' said mother.

And father said 'Sorry, Biddy,' and asked Aunt Amelia if she'd have some more bread sauce.

After lunch we all went down to the lake, and going through the woods I said something was 'infernal,' and there was a horrid silence. Daddy is like that, he so seldom says anything. It's what he doesn't say that's so beastly if he's displeased with one, so I said, 'Mustn't I, daddy?' and he replied, 'I think you know quite well, darling.'

'But,' I expostulated, 'surely one might sometimes.' I looked round that wood. 'Why, daddy, I might say we were in fernal regions now, look at them all up that bank.'

Daddy looked amused and his eyes all curled up at the corners,--

'Well, darling, perhaps you're right, but you must always think of Devonshire if you do.'

Aunt Amelia said she didn't know what his dear, dead mother would say, after the Christian upbringing he had had, too. Daddy seemed inclined to lose his temper again and remarked that a certain kind of Christian upbringing was only another name for spiritual slavery. Aunt Amelia threw up her hands and said 'Shocking.' Then father whispered to mother that if Aunt Amelia didn't return to Hampstead soon he'd have to go into lodgings! He always says that if he's worried.

I remember once daddy, gently teasing, said,--

'But, dear Amelia, I thought it was your friends Ridley and Latimer who lighted a candle in England which should never be put out. If I were asked to celebrate at a church where they had lights what do you think I ought to do?'

And Amelia answered, 'I should hope you'd blow 'em out.' Then daddy said,--

'What a pearl you are, Amelia!' and laughed and kissed the stern old Calvinist. Somehow daddy could live with an Anabaptist or the Pope, and both would say, 'He's one of the right sort,' even though they'd disagreed with every single thing he'd said. Darling daddy!

Well, I have got in the 'background' now, and the dramatis personae too, but do they 'tone' with one another and how can I make them when they are all different? Is my Aunt Amelia in the least like Devonshire? Does her fydo remind one of its sweet scents? How can I reconcile my prehistoric uncle with the twentieth century?

So I said to Uncle Jasper, 'What would you say was the atmosphere of this century?'

'You have raised a point of particular perspicacity, Meg,' he replied. 'The atmosphere of this century is becoming increasingly materialistic, as is manifested in its deplorable lack of spirituality and intellectual originality. The universal diminution of intelligent ratiocination, the vacuous verbosity of a vacillating press; the decadent and open opportunism of our public men, the upward movement of the proletariat, inspired by the renegade and socialistic vampires that suck the national blood--all these are symptomatic of the recrudescence of materialism.'

He stopped to breathe here, and I felt I must say gehabt gehaben geworden sein. He doesn't always talk like that. Sometimes I think he does it to aggravate me, but I know anything modern upsets him. I offered to go with him to look at the Saxon work in the church, as it usually has a calming influence on him, but he said he was better and he hoped he had made himself clear!

When I got home I asked Nannie.

'The atmosphere of this century, dearie,' she said. 'Oh, the same as it's always been, I should think--three white frosts and a wet day, or three fine days and a thunderstorm.'

I observed that she had made a remark of particular perspicacity, and she asked me if I felt feverish. It is trying when I am trying to increase my vocabulary. Still, on the whole she was helpful, for she said why didn't I do what I said I was going to and write of the things I know about. 'Tell about the Hickley woods and how you fell in the water, dearie.'

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