LITMIR.BIZ

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Charming whose mission it would be to keep me young, then I asked tentatively:—

      “What shall I look like, Bridget, when I am old?”

      Bridget folded her arms and regarded me with a critical stare.

      “Your hair will turn grey, and them fine straight brows of yours will grow thin, or maybe fall out altogether, and leave you with none. An’ you’ll wear spectacles, and have lines round your eyes. But it’s neither the grey hairs nor the specs that spoils the looks. It’s not them that’s the worst!”

      I stared at her open-mouthed, trembling between shrinking and curiosity.

      “It’s the shape of the cheeks!” said Bridget darkly. “Yourself now, and the ladies of your age, it’s pretty, slim bits of faces you have, going to a peak at the chin. When you’re old, it runs to squares and doubles. Look to your cheeks, miss, if you wants to keep young!” She unfolded her arms, stretched them at full length, and comfortably folded them again. Her broad chest heaved in a cackle of amused reminiscence.

      “Sure, d’ye reminder Miss Kathleen when she play-acted the ould lady, the last Christmas party?”

      Poor old Bridget! She got the surprise of her life in my reception of that simple question. Jumping out of my chair, dancing round, whooping and hurraying “like a daft thing,” as she afterwards described my movements. Then to find herself at one moment enthusiastically patted on the back, and at the next to be pushed towards the door, and exhorted to hurry!—hurry!—to mount to the attic, and bring down the old tin box—well, it was disconcerting, to say the least of it, and Bridget’s dignity was visibly upset. She had forgotten that all the “make ups” which we had used for various Christmas festivals were stored away in that old tin box, and consequently could not guess that I was fired with an ambition to try on Kathie’s disguise forthwith.

      Ten minutes later I was standing before the glass and enthusiastically acclaiming the truth of Bridget’s statement, as I stared at the reflection of a spectacled dame with grizzled eyebrows, grey hair banded smoothly over the ears, and a bulging fullness at the base of each cheek! It was the cheeks that made the disguise! Spectacles and hair still left the personality of the face untouched; even the bushy eyebrows were but a partial disguise, but with the insertion of those small india-rubber pads came an utter and radical change. That chubby, square-faced woman was not Evelyn Wastneys. Never by any possibility could she see forty again. So far as propriety went, she might roam alone from one end of the world to the other. If she lived in the largest block of flats that was ever erected, her neighbours would regard her comings and goings with serene indifference. Admirable woman! She did not “take the eye”. I met her spectacled glance with a beam of approval.

      “I have it!—I have it! I must dress for the part! In London I’ll be a middle-aged aunt; in Surrey, a niece—my own niece and namesake, who, of her charity, consents to receive some of her auntie’s protégées and give them a good time!” The wildness, the audacity of the project made to me its chief appeal. My life interest had been so sheltered, so hedged round by convention, that at times it had seemed as though there was a wall of division between me and every other human creature. It was so difficult to show oneself in one’s real colours, to see and know other people as they really were. But now!—oh, what a unique and exhilarating experience it would be to taste at the same time the romance of youth and the freedom of age, to witness the different sides of other characters as exhibited in their treatment of aunt and niece.

      That one illuminating suggestion of Bridget’s has cleared the way. From the moment of hearing there had been no real hesitation; before night fell my plans were made, and a telegram to Charmion was speeding on its way. A new life lay before me—a dual life, teeming with interest and possibility. On one hand, my fate must be to some extent bound up with that of Charmion Fane, the most interesting and, in a sense, mysterious woman I had ever met; on the other, I was plunging into the unknown, and transforming myself into a new personality, to meet the new circumstances. I stared at myself in the glass and solemnly shook my grey head.

      “Evelyn, my dear, be prepared! You are going to have an adventurous time!”

Chapter Four.

       Table of Contents

      A Talk in London.

      The aunts expressed a mitigated approval of Charmion’s proposal. Mrs. Fane came of a good family, and was “very well left”. Her married estate, moreover, gave her the privilege of chaperonage, so that the dual establishment might be quite a good arrangement, all things considered, “until—”

      “Until!” echoed Aunt Eliza eloquently, nodding coyly at me, while I stared into space with basilisk calm. I object to references to my problematical marriage—especially by aunts. The great “until” never arrived for them, yet they feel quite annoyed because twenty-six has found me still a spinster!

      I made my journey to London with a sense of great adventure, Bridget going with me in the dual rôle of maid and mentor. She was the only person who was to accompany me into the new life, and experience had proved that her sound common sense might be trusted to act as a brake on the wheels of my own impetuosity. We stayed the morning in town, when I interviewed a house agent, and set him on the search for suitable flats, and then we adjourned to the West End to buy a becoming new hat. It always soothes me to buy hats. In times of doubt and depression it is an admirable tonic to the feminine mind. At three o’clock we left Waterloo for our two hours’ journey, and arrived at the old-fashioned inn, which was to act as rendezvous, before half-past five.

      Charmion was awaiting us in a private sitting-room, long, oak-beamed, spotlessly clean, and a trifle musty, with that faint but unmistakable mustiness which hangs about old rooms and old furniture. Tea was set out on one half of the oak dining-table. The china was of the old-fashioned white and gold order, the cups very wide at the brim and cramped at the handle, and possessing a dear little surprise rose at the base, which peeped out through a hoar frost of sugar as you drained the last gulp. Charmion laughed at my delight over that rose, but I was in the mood to be pleased, to see happy auguries in trivial happenings. I hailed that rose as a type of unexpected joys.

      Charmion was dressed in business-like grey tweeds, with a soft grey felt hat slouched over her head. She looked very pale, very frail, intensely, vibratingly alive. This extraordinary contradiction between body and mind made a charm and mystery which it is difficult to express in words. One longed to protect and shield her, to tuck her up on a sofa, and tend her like a fragile child, at the very same moment that mentally one was sitting at her feet, domineered by the influence of a master mind!

      I ate an enormous tea, and Charmion crumbled a piece of cake upon her plate; then we had the things taken away, and drew up to the fire, and toasted our toes, and looked into each other’s eyes, and exclaimed simultaneously—“Well?”

      Hitherto we had talked on general subjects, Kathleen’s marriage, the break-up of the old home, my own journey, etcetera, but now we were free from interruption for an hour at least, and the great subject could be safely tackled.

      “Evelyn! Do you realise that nothing is settled, and that nothing need be, unless you are absolutely, whole-heartedly sure?”

      “I am absolutely whole-hearted about several things already. What sort of things were you thinking about?”

      “Well, take the house first. It meets my ideal, but it mayn’t be yours. You must promise to give an unvarnished opinion.”

      “Make your mind easy! If there is one thing that I may claim to be above all others, it is ‘unvarnished’. I have a brutal frankness in expressing my own opinion. If, through nice feeling, I try to disguise it, my manner shrieks it aloud!”

      “That’s all right then. I’m glad to hear it. Next comes the question of time. We should have to take a

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