LITMIR.BIZ

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664655172

Table of Contents

       Chapter Two.

       Chapter Three.

       Chapter Four.

       Chapter Five.

       Chapter Six.

       Chapter Seven.

       Chapter Eight.

       Chapter Nine.

       Chapter Ten.

       Chapter Eleven.

       Chapter Twelve.

       Chapter Thirteen.

       Chapter Fourteen.

       Chapter Fifteen.

       Chapter Sixteen.

       Chapter Seventeen.

       Chapter Eighteen.

       Chapter Nineteen.

       Chapter Twenty.

       Chapter Twenty One.

       Chapter Twenty Two.

       Chapter Twenty Three.

       Chapter Twenty Four.

       Chapter Twenty Five.

       Chapter Twenty Six.

Chapter Two.

       Table of Contents

      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 successor. Then Kathie met Basil Anderson, and no one was cruel enough to grudge us our last months together.

      Now I am alone, with no one in the world to consider beside myself, with my own home to make, my own work to find, my own happiness to discover. Does it make it better or worse, I wonder, that I am rich, and the question of money does not enter in? Ninety-nine people out of a hundred would answer at once that it is better, but I’m not so sure. If I had a tiny income, just enough to ensure me from absolute want, hard regular work would be necessary, and might be good for body and brain. I want work! I must have it if I am to keep going, but the mischief is, I have never been taught to be useful, and I have no idea what I could do! I can drive a car. I can ride anything that goes on four legs. I can dance, and skate, and arrange flowers with taste. I can re-trim a hat, and at a pinch make a whole blouse. I can order a nice meal, and grumble when it is spoiled. I can strum on the piano and paint Christmas cards. I can entertain a house-party of big-wigs.

      I have also (it seems a queer thing to say!) a kind of genius for simply—being kind! The poor people in the village call me “the kind one,” to distinguish me from Kathie, who, poor lamb! never did an unkind thing in her life. But she didn’t always understand, that was the difference. When they did wrong she was shocked and estranged, while I felt dreadfully, dreadfully sorry, and more anxious than ever to help them again. Kathie used to think me too mild, but I don’t know! The consequences

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