Aunt Maud

“ Aunt Maud's intervention was all sharp now, and the other point, the great one, was that it was to be, in this light, either all put up with or all declined. Yet at the winter's end, nevertheless, she could scarce have said what stand she conceived she had taken. It wouldn't be the first time she had seen herself obliged to accept with smothered irony other people's interpretation of her conduct. She often ended by giving up to them—it seemed really the way to live—the version that met their convenience. ”

“ Aunt Maud's line is to keep all reality out of our relation—that is out of my being in danger from you—by not having so much as suspected or heard of it. She'll get rid of it, as she believes, by ignoring it and sinking it—if she only does so hard enough. Therefore she in her manner 'denies' it, if you will. That's how she knows you otherwise than as part and parcel of me. She won't for a moment have allowed either to Mrs. Stringham or to Milly that I've in any way, as they say, distinguished you."
"And you don't suppose," said Densher, "that they must have made it out for themselves?" ”

“ Aunt Maud's free-moving shuttle took a length of him at rhythmic intervals; and one of the intermixed truths that flickered across to Milly was that he ever so consentingly knew he was being worked in. This was almost like an understanding with her at Mrs. Lowder's expense, which she would have none of; she wouldn't for the world have had him make any such point as that he wouldn't have launched them at Matcham—or whatever it was he had done—only for Aunt Maud's beaux yeux. What he had done, it would have been guessable, was something he had for some time been desired in vain to do ”

“ Densher had declared his horror of bringing to a premature end her happy relation with her aunt; and they had worked round together to a high level of wisdom and patience. Kate's free profession was that she wished not to deprive him of Mrs. Lowder's countenance, which, in the long run, she was convinced he would continue to enjoy; and as, by a blessed turn, Aunt Maud had demanded of him no promise that would tie his hands, they should be able to cultivate their destiny in their own way and yet remain loyal. ”

“ Even Aunt Maud frequently admitted that there was a good deal, for her view of him, to come up in the rear. And he wasn't meanwhile himself indifferent—indifferent to himself—for he was working Lancaster Gate for all it was worth: just as it was, no doubt, working him, and just as the working and the worked were in London, as one might explain, the parties to every relation.
Kate did explain, for her listening friend: every one who had anything to give—it was true they were the fewest—made the sharpest possible bargain for it, got at least its value in return. ”

“ Doesn't the young man object?"
"She hasn't given him the right to object," sighed Aunt Maud, "and I don't think she will; at least, I should have said so a couple of days ago, but she told me yesterday that she is going out with him—that is, with his family—the day after to-morrow." ”

“ That was one of the reflections made in our young woman's high retreat; she smiled from her lookout, in the silence that was only the fact of hearing irrelevant sounds, as she caught the truth that you could easily accept people when you wanted them so to be delivered to you. When Aunt Maud wished them despatched, it was not to be done by deputy; it was clearly always a matter reserved for her own hand. But what made the girl wonder most was the implications of so much diplomacy in respect to her own value. ”

“ There had been, for ten minutes, with the directness of her welcome to him and the way this clearly pleased him, something of the grace of amends made, even though he couldn't know it—amends for her not having been originally sure, for instance at that first dinner of Aunt Maud's, that he was adequately human. That first dinner of Aunt Maud's added itself to the hour at Matcham, added itself to other things, to consolidate, for her present benevolence, the ease of their relation, making it suddenly delightful that he had thus turned up. ”

“ Lowder, "is spending her Christmas in the bosom of her more immediate family."
He was afraid, even while he spoke, of what his face might show. "You mean she has left you?"
Aunt Maud's own face, for that matter, met the inquiry with a consciousness in which he saw a reflection of events. He perceived from it, even at the moment and as he had never done before, that, since he had known these two women, no confessed nor commented tension, no crisis of the cruder sort, would really have taken form between them: which was precisely a high proof of how Kate had steered her boat. ”

“ Kate showed, however, that she was to be more literally taken when she spoke of the relief Aunt Maud would draw from the prospect of his absence.
"Yet one can scarcely see why," he replied, "when she fears me so little."
His friend weighed his objection. "Your idea is that she likes you so much that she'll even go so far as to regret losing you?"
Well, he saw it in their constant comprehensive way. "Since what she builds on is the gradual process of your alienation, she may take the view that the process constantly requires me. ”

“ But what strikes me as most probable—and it's really, I'm bound to say, quite amiable of him—is that he has declined to leave Aunt Maud, as I've been so ready to do, to spend her Christmas alone. If moreover he has given up Matcham for her it's a procédé that won't please her less. It's small wonder therefore that she insists, on a dull day, in driving him about. ”

“ Yet she seems fairly steady, you say?"
"She is the best girl in the world," put in Aunt Maud fervently. "Week after week she hands over nearly half her earnings to Ada and me; and she gives every satisfaction at the bank. You know Mrs. Barnes only took her post there because she was left a widow on very small means. She is a friend of the Otleys, and she told them that Ollie is highly thought of at the Palatine." ”

“ It helped Milly for the moment to the convenience of a puzzled pause. "Do you mean he's an acquaintance of whom you disapprove for her?"
Aunt Maud, as well, just hung fire. "I disapprove of her for the poor young man. She doesn't care for him." ”

“ In spite, say, of his being scarcely supposed to do that sort of thing."
"To try to get money?"
"To try, at any rate, in little thrifty ways. Apparently, however, he has had, for some reason, to do what he can. He turned, at a couple of days' notice, out of his place, making it over to his tenant; and Aunt Maud, who is deeply in his confidence about all such matters, said: 'Come then to Lancaster Gate—to sleep at least—till, like all the world, you go to the country.' He was to have gone to the country—I think to Matcham—yesterday afternoon: Aunt Maud, that is, told me he was." ”

“ Mrs. Lowder had improvised a "rush" for them, but out of elements, as Milly was now a little more freely aware, somewhat roughly combined. Therefore if at this very instant she had her reasons for thinking of the parenthesis as about to close—reasons completely personal—she had on behalf of her companion a divination almost as deep. The parenthesis would close with this admirable picture, but the admirable picture still would show Aunt Maud as not absolutely sure either if she herself were destined to remain in it. ”

“ The girl had a moment, at this, of thinking it natural that her interlocutress herself should so fail of subtlety. "It will make the difference that he will have written to her in answer that he knows me. And that, in turn," our young woman explained, "will give an oddity to my own silence."
"How so, if she's perfectly aware of having given you no opening? The only oddity," Aunt Maud lucidly professed, "is for yourself. It's in her not having spoken."
"Ah, there we are!" said Milly. ”

“ Why not speak of her as Marian, my dear?" said Mr. Creswell.
"She has always been Miss Ashurst to me hitherto, and you know I'm not going to marry her, uncle!" said Maud, almost brusquely.
"What do you think of Miss A. now?" said Gertrude, when the girls were back in their room. "I used to laugh about her being superior! But she has shown herself superior to us with a vengeance! Fancy having her for an aunt, and having to ask her permission to do this and that, and go here and there! Oh my! Why don't you speak, Maud—why don't you say something about all this?" ”

“ All I mean is—and it's all I've meant from the day I came—that we at least get more than Aunt Maud."
"Ah but you see," Kate replied, "you don't understand what Aunt Maud gets."
"Exactly so—and it's what I don't understand that keeps me so fascinated with the question. She gives me no light; she's prodigious. She takes everything as of a natural—!"
"She takes it as 'of a natural' that at this rate I shall be making my reflexions about you. There's every appearance for her," Kate went on, "that what she had made her mind up to as possible is possible ”

“ Every one's surprise was great on perceiving the faithful butler with a napkin like a child's immense bib tied beneath his chin, he in his anxiety having forgotten to remove it and no one venturing to remind him of its existence as neither my aunt, on account of her short sightedness, nor my uncle, owing to his usual state of oblivion, had noticed the grotesque appearance of the poor man, as he trotted and scrambled round the table balancing the huge dish and threatening everybody with a douche of its contents. ”

“ My dear little aunt—Aunt Maka, as I called her—seemed to be in love, so much in love with her husband that morning and night, especially when at Petrograd, she rushed off as fast as she could cover the ground to the telephone to converse with the object of her adoration, who was always in waiting on his Imperial Mistress wherever she happened to be—Gatchina, Peterhof, Tsarskoe-Celo or Petrograd, at the Anitschkoff Palace. ”

“ I do not think he was better, or wiser, or cleverer than many men that we see round us. But then we loved each other. Until you love, you cannot understand what that is; but it just makes all the happiness in life.’
Maud’s face expressed much sympathy, yet not an entire acquiescence. She hesitated a little before she asked her next question.
‘But—but—I mean, Aunt Olive, it must be heavenly to love like that, if—if—you both love and both live; but suppose—well, you know, Uncle Lorraine died. Many people lose their husbands or wives. It must be so dreadful when that happens. ”

“ Oh, life! Oh the forces of life—and the world—and human destiny!
“I just have to blush right to his face every time he looks at me, he is so handsome!” was one of Aunt Alice’s voluble confidences shared by Maud out in the kitchen. “I’ve got a psychic feeling he’s just the one for our little Stella, and yet don’t it beat all! My gracious, Maud, you’d think he’d never look at any one less than a countess! And his side view makes me think of a picture I saw once in the paper of a man who was going to marry a duchess!”
Oh, life! Oh the forces of life—and the world—and human destiny! ”

“ Besides, just now, he didn't care for Aunt Maud except in so far as he was immediately to show. "How can Mrs. Lowder think me disposed of, with any finality, if I'm disposed of only to a girl who's dying? ”

“ That was how Aunt Martha had been brought up, seventy years ago, and that was how she meant to bring them up.
"Haven't you got a pair you can lend me, Una?" said poor Faith piteously.
Una shook her head. "No, you know I only have the one black pair. And they're so tight I can hardly get them on. They wouldn't go on you. Neither would my gray ones. Besides, the legs of them are all darned and darned."
"I won't wear those striped stockings," said Faith stubbornly. "The feel of them is even worse than the looks. They make me feel as if my legs were as big as barrels and they're so scratchy." ”

“ The elder sister paused long enough for the younger's face to show, in spite of superiority, an apprehension. "I'm not talking of any man but Aunt Maud's man, nor of any money, even, if you like, but Aunt Maud's money. I'm not talking of anything but your doing what she wants. You're wrong if you speak of anything that I want of you; I want nothing but what she does. That's good enough for me!"—and Marian's tone struck her companion as dreadful. "If I don't believe in Merton Densher, I do at least in Mrs. ”

“ Maud is always a lady, even on the stage, and that woman was not."
I ventured to suggest that she was perhaps not supposed to be a lady in the part. Aunt Anna said, "Perhaps not, but that does not matter; Maud would be a lady under any circumstances, whatever character she impersonated, laundress or lady. Claud says she will never act till she learns to forget herself I trust one of my daughters will never do that!"
I strove to pacify Aunt Anna, but her tender heart was wounded and she was hard to comfort.
"Claud must admire Edith's violin playing," I ventured. ”

“ It is nice to think He can hear me if nobody else can. O God—Father’s God—please work a miracle and save my life, because I don’t think I’m fit to die yet. Excuse my not being on my knees—You can see I can’t move. And if I die please don’t let Aunt Elizabeth find my letter-bills ever. Please let Aunt Laura find them. And please don’t let Caroline move out the wardrobe when she house-cleans because then she would find my Jimmy-book and read what I wrote about her. Please forgive all my sins, especially not being grateful enough and cutting a bang, and please don’t let Father be very far away. ”