FullReads

An electric bell in a little box over the door rang in a furious manner.

Aunt Emmy was on her feet in a second, smoothing her fair hair at the Venetian mirror.

“Your Uncle Thomas is awake,” she said, “and is ready to be read to. He never likes being kept waiting.”

This seemed to be the case, for as she left the room the electric bell rang again more furiously than before, and I shook my fist at it.

PART II

If some star of heaven
Led him by at even,
If some magic fate
Brought him, should I wait,
Or fly within and bid them close the gate?

MARGARET L. WOODS.

The following year I suddenly married a soldier, the only young man I knew, and I knew him very slightly, and went out to India with him. I did not forget Aunt Emmy, we corresponded regularly; but I was young and my life was a very full one. I had seen nothing of the world till I married. I had a child. The years rushed past, joyful, miserable, vivid, surprising, happy years, in spite of the fact that my husband was not remarkably like Lord K—-in appearance, and not in the least like the “plaister saint” with whom I had hurried to the altar on such slight provocation.

During these years Uncle Thomas died, and Uncle Tom married, and Aunt Emmy wrote to me that she had taken a little cottage in Abinger Forest against her brother’s advice, and how, in spite of his opposition–how much it must have cost her to oppose him–he had forgiven her and presented her with the most expensive mahogany bedstead and bedding that Maple could supply–“so like him.”

I wondered vaguely once or twice whether there had been any question of her marrying Mr. Kingston, but there was no mention of him in her letters, and I did not like to ask. I knew that she was very poor, but presently my heart was gladdened by hearing from her that a distant relation had left her a legacy, and that she was now comfortably off.

Then suddenly our life was darkened. Our child died. I struggled with my grief, became ill, and was sent home. Aunt Emmy urged me to go straight to her. She and Uncle Tom were my only near relations in England. He also offered to take me in for a time. He wrote with real kindness. He had a child himself. And his wife wrote too. But I need hardly say that I took my sore heart and my broken health straight to Aunt Emmy.

It was late in August when I arrived. The honeysuckle was still in bloom on Aunt Emmy’s white cottage, standing in its little orchard in a clearing in the forest. She was waiting for me in the porch, and I ran feebly to her up the narrow brick path between the tall clumps of hollyhocks and Michaelmas daisies; and she drew me into the little parlour and held me closely to her. And the years rolled away, and I was a child again, and she was comforting me for my broken doll.

With the egotism of youth I fear I had not given a thought to Aunt Emmy’s new home until I entered it. I knew that she was happy in it, and that it had once been a gamekeeper’s cottage, but that was about all. Nowadays every one has a cottage–it is the fashion; and literary men and women, tired of adulatory crowds, weary of their own greatness, flee from the metropolis, and write exquisite articles about their gardens, and the peace that lurks under a thatched roof, and the simple life, lived far from shrilling crowds but near to nature, and very near to the Deity. Fortunate Deity!

But in the days of which I am writing cottages and their floral and spiritual appurtenances were not the rage.