Aunt Sarah

“ Aunt Sarah laughing! Aunt Sarah allowing someone else to monopolize the conversation! He had known her all his life, but such a spectacle had hitherto been denied him.
"My dear, you're a marvel," he said to his American countess when luncheon was over and Aunt Sarah had retired to her own apartments, still in high good-humour. "You bowled me over the first time we met. That was nothing. But Aunt Sarah! I couldn't have believed it possible. I wish I had asked all my uncles and aunts and cousins to see it."
"You don't know enough to run when you're in a hurry," replied Lady Otterburn. ”

“ The youth looked upon her for a moment with his bright, gleeful eyes, then, throwing off his hat and sweeping back the damp chestnut curls from his forehead, he sat down by her side, and cast a glance of laughing defiance at his relative.
"Come out here and get the kisses, Aunt Sarah, I have made up my mind to stay among the flowers!" ”

“ Aunt Sarah was a very courteous old dame, and those who broke bread at her table were sacred, at all events while they remained her guests. But Stephen was miserably telepathic, and before the déjeuner was half-way through, she was conscious of the deep antagonism that she had aroused in Martin’s Aunt Sarah. Not by so much as a word or a look did the Comtesse de Mirac betray her feelings; she was gravely polite, she discussed literature as being a supposedly congenial subject, she praised Stephen’s books, and asked no questions as to why she was living apart from her mother. ”

“ Ere the recital was concluded, the child was impatient for the hour of departure, and indignant when she heard that Aunt Sarah must be heard from before they could venture to present themselves, bag and baggage, at her door. There was nothing feigned in Sarah's satisfaction; her preparations were made with far more pleasure than if she were to accompany Lucy. The seclusion that would have been slow death to the latter was full of charms for the book-loving sister. Aunt Sarah would be kind; the novel phases of human nature she would meet would amuse and interest her ”

“ But most of Aunt Sarah’s gift had. Who cared? Not Darcy. She had won her heritage of womanhood. Where, a few brief months before—and she could laugh now at the pangs and hardships of those months which were so small a price to pay for the results!—she had looked a worn thirty years old and felt like a sapless leaf, she now looked a budding twenty and felt like a baby with a drum.
Life was her drum.
All its stirring rataplan, however, could not quite drown out the grim voice of reckoning, which spoke with the accent of Sir Montrose Veyze, Bart., of Veyze Holdings, Hampshire, England. ”

“ Aunt Sarah had never been so angry before in her life. She was an extraordinarily disagreeable old woman—disagreeable in a masterly, cold-blooded, incisive way, partly because disagreeable speech was a genuine expression of her nature, partly because she had discovered in the course of years that she gained more by being disagreeable, which came easy to her, than by being pleasant, which did not. ”

“ At dinner-time my uncle was late, and Aunt Sarah said, with a little less than her usual dignity, "I never did see such a man as Mr. Norton, when he takes a notion in his head. He's been all the morning rummaging in clouds of dust in the garret, to find more of those old letters." ”

“ Huh!” sniffed Aunt Sarah. “He might. But that wouldn’t bring you anything. If he put the old man out once, he would again. No heart nor soul in a lawyer. I always did hate the whole tribe!”
Aunt Sarah had taken a great dislike to Mr. Howbridge, because the legal gentleman had brought the news of the girls’ legacy, instead of telling her she was the heir of Uncle Peter. On the days when there chanced to be an east wind and Aunt Sarah felt a twinge of rheumatism, she was inclined to rail against Fate for making her a dependent upon the “gals’ charity,” as she called it. ”

“ When the illumination came the weird ingenuity of the electric magicians struck Aunt Sarah with a sublimity almost more than she could endure. As the flashes of light struck out about the pillar and the ball of fire fell as if dropped from some creating hand she screamed, "O my God, what blasphemy is this that men have achieved. Can they snatch the fire from heaven and make the lightening a plaything?" ”

“ And then she kissed them both, and with "good-night" they left her.
"Won't Ma be pleased!" remarked May, with great satisfaction, as they drove along the Parade. "I shan't mind a bit her being vexed that Flossie wasn't asked. Really, Sarah, I never saw Aunt George so excited before. She's generally so die-away and all that."
But Sarah was hardly listening, and not heeding at all. With her precious Amati on her knee, she was looking away over the moonlit sea, thinking of what her aunt had said to her. "If you go on--if you work--your violin will be your fortune. You will be a great woman." ”

“ There were no big diamonds among them—scarcely any diamonds at all, in fact; but the garnets and cats' eyes strove to make good in size and ugliness of setting what they lacked in mere market worth. Chief of all the "jewels," and most precious of Aunt Sarah's possessions, was a big amethyst brooch, with a pane of glass let in behind, inclosing a lock of the reddest hair I have ever seen. It was the hair of Aunt Sarah's own uncle Joseph, the most distinguished member of the family, who had written three five-act tragedies, and dedicated them all, one after another, to George the Fourth. ”

“ I shall enjoy myself far better at home"; and Flossie caught hold of Minnie's arm, and stalked along the Parade as if she cared so little that she did not want to hear any more about that great lady, her Aunt George.
"What did you think of her?" May asked of Sarah.
"Is she very ill?" Sarah asked, thinking of the bath-chair and her aunt's languid wrists and tones.
"Ill?--no! Ma says she's a hy-po-chon-driac," returned May, pronouncing the long word in syllables. "That's fancying yourself ill when you ain't. See? But all the same, Aunt George is very stylish." ”

“ There, resting among the pillows of the lounge, Aunt Sarah beside her, with the ubiquitous knitting-work in hand, lest too close observation should confuse her niece, the stricken one unfolded the whole of her sad history.
No more affecting proof could have been given of her prostrated mind and will than this unreserved recital. The secret she had sold conscience and liberty to preserve, she communicated now without a blush. Here—where she had formed the intimacy that had shadowed so darkly her after days—she detailed every step of the wrong course to which this weakness was a key ”

“ There is folks that believes in wearing yourself to the bone for other people's advantage, and letting your own flesh and blood starve in the gutter, so to speak. Ah, well, I ain't one of that sort, and I'm thankful for it, Sarah."
Poor little desolate Sarah, with her suddenly empty life and great aching void in her heart, crept a shade closer to her new-found aunt, and rested her tired head against her substantial arm.
"And I have seven cousins of my own?" she said, the shadows in her eyes clearing away for a moment.
"Seven cousins of your own!" cried Mrs. Stubbs, in an ecstasy of enjoyment. ”

“ She often looked curiously at Aunt Sarah, however, when she sat with the old lady, tempted to ask her point-blank what she knew about Uncle Peter’s secrets.
When a person is as silent as Aunt Sarah habitually was, it is only natural to surmise that the silent one may have much to tell. Ruth had not the courage, however, to advance the subject. She, like her younger sisters, stood in no little awe of grim Aunt Sarah.
Mr. Howbridge remained away and Miss Titus completed such work as Ruth dared have done, and removed her machine and cutting table from the old Corner House. ”

“ High-spirited as Sarah was, she was not angered by this plain-speaking. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend;" and she felt that she had but this one. Aunt Sarah studied her thoughtful countenance before she renewed the argument.
"I am an old-fashioned woman, dear—born and bred in the country, where, thank God! I have spent all my life. But I've been thinking about your story of the way people act and feel up there in York, and maybe in all other great, fine, money-making cities, and my notion is just this. ”

“ Aunt Sarah hastened to say, seeing the wild stare and the cloud return to her countenance. "Wait until you are stronger. I will bring up your breakfast, and when you have eaten it, you may try to dress, if you like. There will be time enough for your story, by-and-by. Charley is in a great fidget to see you." ”

“ At the drug store they would buy the usual nickel’s worth of peppermint drops for Aunt Sarah.
Every Saturday since Dot could remember—and since Tess could remember—and since Agnes could remember—even every Saturday since Ruth could remember, there had been five cents’ worth of peppermint drops bought for Aunt Sarah.
The larder might be very nearly bare; shoes might be out at toe and stockings out at heel; there might be a dearth of food on the table; but Aunt Sarah must not be disappointed in her weekly treat.
“It is the only pleasure the poor creature has,” their mother was wont to say. ”

“ Her big eyes seemed to dare Aunt Sarah's for just the tenth of a second. Aunt Sarah noted that look.
“She is clever,” she observed, when she had gone.
“To me,” objected Aunt Elizabeth, “she seems a tongue-tied fool!”
“It doesn't matter,” said Aunt Jane, with a sound almost like a sob, “whether she is clever or foolish. She does not care for our Teddie, only his money; our money. I know the way a girl looks at the man she loves.”
Who should know if Aunt Jane did not? Aunt Jane, who had been the beauty of her time, and who had refused twenty offers, it was said, because one man had died. ”

“ Aunt Sarah asked the matron.
"Yes indeed," the other replied. "But the doctor will soon cure her, I think."
"The child is too young to work so hard," Aunt Sarah declared. "It is no wonder her health breaks down at the slightest cause, when she has no strength laid away to fight sickness."
By this time a big girl had washed and dressed Sandy, and now what a pretty boy he was! He wore a blue-and-white-striped linen suit and had a jaunty little white cap just like Freddie's.
He was so anxious to go that he jumped in the wagon before the others were ready to start. ”

“ That dream of midsummer madness had from the first, he realized, from the nature of the circumstances, been doomed to a rude awakening, in spite of Aunt Sarah's generosity. The shattering of his ill-starred love idyll might be borne manfully, as an adequate punishment for his iniquity, and when time had healed his wound he might even rejoice in his expiation. ”

“ It is well to submit humbly to the caprice of a rich elderly aunt, and it has always been my own practice. It was because of Aunt Sarah's autocratic reign in the family that Honoria Prescott and I refrained from telling her of our engagement; for Aunt Sarah had conceived vast matrimonial ambitions on behalf of each of us. We were each to make an exceedingly good marriage ”

“ All the life that I looked back upon seemed muddled and mixed up, like a dream; and I could only think of the little sister I'd said good-bye to, aboard the Ventur'some forty years before. I got round by little and little, and I was able half an hour afterwards to listen to aunt Sarah's talk. She was nigh upon seventy, poor old soul, and she'd always been a good one to talk. She asked me if it wasn't a great thing for the family that Eliza had made such a match; and if I wasn't proud to think that my niece was a young heiress, that spoke all manner of languages, and rode in her own carriage? ”

“ Aunt Sarah, however, had already begun to think whether it might not be prudent to tell cousin Walter the story of the half-formed engagement. Mary had expressed so much sympathy with her cousin's wrongs, that aunt Sarah had begun to fear that that sympathy might lead to a tenderer feeling, and aunt Sarah was by no means anxious that her niece should fall in love with a gentleman whose chief attraction was the fact that he had been ruined by his own father, even though that gentleman was a Marrable himself. ”

“ I said to her: ‘Wouldn’t they be a thorn in our flesh?’ She tried not to smile, and said quite sternly: ‘Ellen, you must never think of your dear aunt and uncle in that way.’ If it is so, why shouldn’t I think so, I wonder? As soon as I saw them I knew what mother meant. They are very nice and I love them, but they have never leaned over the gate to talk to peddlers. A lost dog wouldn’t be happy in their home. We have never had any [Pg 7] dogs but lost ones. And Aunt Sarah didn’t like Faro’s name or his ways. I like Aunt Sarah. She says just what she feels like saying. Mother doesn’t. ”

“ Uncle Daniel's voice shook. He had had a hard day. He was desperately frightened about Albert, and Aunt 'Liza had not made him more comfortable by insisting that it was a punishment for wanting his sister's farm.
"He will know me," answered Sarah with conviction. Then she began to run up the lane toward the house. She could see a light in an upstairs room, and Aunt Eliza's face was already peering anxiously out of the kitchen door.
"Albert is worse," she called. "He is talking all the time." ”