“What are you talking about?” said Mrs. Aldwinkle in a furious voice, and she turned round on her niece a face expressive of such passionate anger that Irene drew back, not merely astonished, but positively afraid. “You don’t mean to tell me,” Mrs. Aldwinkle began; but she could not find the words to continue. “What have you two young fools been thinking about?” she got out at last.
… old, getting old; the remorseless ticking made itself heard in every silence.
From being merry and excited in its childishness Irene’s face had become astonished and miserable. She was pale, her lips trembled a little as she spoke. “But I thought you’d be glad, Aunt Lilian,” she said. “I thought you’d be glad.”
“Glad because you’re making fools of yourselves?” asked Mrs. Aldwinkle, savagely snorting.
“But it was you who first suggested,” Irene began.
Mrs. Aldwinkle cut her short, before she could say any more, with a brusqueness that might have revealed to a more practised psychologist than Irene her consciousness of being in the wrong. “Absurd,” she said. “I suppose you’re going to tell me,” she went on sarcastically, “that it was I who told you to marry him.”
“I know you didn’t,” said Irene.
“There!” Mrs. Aldwinkle’s tone was triumphant.
“But you did say you wondered why I wasn’t in love …”
“Bah,” said Aunt Lilian, “I was just making fun. Calf loves …”
“But why shouldn’t I marry him?” asked Irene. “If I love him and he loves me. Why shouldn’t I?”
Why shouldn’t she? Yes, that was an awkward question. Getting old, getting old, muttered the clock in the brief ensuing silence. Perhaps that was half the answer. Getting old! they were all going; first Chelifer, then Calamy, now Irene. Getting old, getting old; soon she’d be quite alone. And it wasn’t only that. It was also her pride that was hurt, her love of dominion that suffered. Irene had been her slave; had worshipped her, taken her word as law, her opinions as gospel truth. Now she was transferring her allegiance. Mrs. Aldwinkle was losing a subject—losing her to a more powerful rival. It was intolerable. “Why shouldn’t you marry him?” Mrs. Aldwinkle repeated the phrase ironically two or three times, while she hunted for the answer. “Why shouldn’t you marry him?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Irene asked again. There were tears in her eyes; but however unhappy she might look, there was something determined and indomitable in her attitude, something obstinate in her expression and her tone of voice. Mrs. Aldwinkle had reason to fear her rival.
“Because you’re too young,” she said at last. It was a very feeble answer; but she had been unable to think of a better one.
“But, Aunt Lilian, don’t you remember? You always said that people ought to marry young. I remember so well, one time, when we talked about Juliet being only fourteen when she first saw Romeo, that you said …”
“That has nothing to do with it,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle, cutting short her niece’s mnemonic display. Irene’s memory, Mrs. Aldwinkle had often had reason to complain, was really too good.
“But if you said …” Irene began again.
“Romeo and Juliet have nothing to do with you and Hovenden,” retorted Mrs. Aldwinkle. “I repeat: you’re too young.”
“I’m nineteen.”
“Eighteen.”
“Practically nineteen,” Irene insisted. “My birthday’s in December.”
“Marry in haste and repent at leisure,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle, making use of any missile, even a proverb, that came ready to hand. “At the end of six months you’ll come back howling and complaining and asking me to get you out of the mess.”
“But why should I?” asked Irene. “We love one another.”
“They all say that. You don’t know your own minds.”
“But we do.”
Mrs. Aldwinkle suddenly changed her tactics. “And what makes you so anxious all at once to run away from me?” she asked. “Can’t you bear to stay with me a moment longer? Am I so intolerable and odious and … and … brutal and …” She clawed at the air. “Do you hate me so much that …”
“Aunt Lilian!” protested Irene, who had begun to cry in earnest.
Mrs. Aldwinkle, with that tactlessness, that lack of measure that were characteristic of her, went on piling question upon rhetorical question, until in the end she completely spoiled the effect she had meant to achieve, exaggerating into ludicrousness what might otherwise have been touching. “Can’t you bear me? Have I ill-treated you? Tell me. Have I bullied you, or scolded you, or … or not given you enough to eat? Tell me.”
“How can you talk like that, Aunt Lilian?” Irene dabbed her eyes with a corner of her dressing-gown. “How can you say that I don’t love you? And you were always telling me that I ought to get married,” she added, breaking out into fresh tears.
“How can I say that you don’t love me?” echoed Mrs. Aldwinkle. “But is it true that you’re longing to leave me as soon as possible? Is that true or not? I merely ask what the reason is, that’s all.”
“But the reason is that we want to get married; we love each other.”
“Or that you hate me,” Mrs. Aldwinkle persisted.
“But I don’t hate you, Aunt Lilian. How can you say such a thing? You know I love you.”
“And yet you’re anxious to run away from me as fast as you possibly can,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle. “And I shall be left all alone, all alone.” Her voice trembled; she shut her eyes, she contorted her face in an effort to keep it closed and rigid. Between her eyelids the tears came welling out. “All alone,” she repeated brokenly. Getting old, said the little clock on the mantelpiece, getting old, getting old.
Irene knelt down beside her, took her hands between her own and kissed them, pressed them against her tear-wet face. “Aunt Lilian,” she begged, “Aunt Lilian.”
Mrs. Aldwinkle went on sobbing.
“Don’t cry,” said Irene, crying herself. She imagined that she alone was the cause of Aunt Lilian’s unhappiness. In reality,
