of his grateful countrymen surrounding him whenever he stirred abroad in his state carriage, preceded by a glittering escort of cavalry, brought tears to his eyes. It was tremendous.… Diodate exclaimed: “Quentin, stop mooning! … He’s a strange boy, Penuel. Half the time he does not seem to hear what you say.” The boy was like his mother, Diodate thought, lovable but not well-balanced . Emotional, not solid.… He had the Thatcher conscience, though.
But the very pith of the Thatchers was the old lady who sat on a horsehair sofa beside the pianola. There might be fewer Thatchers than Burnets present, but at no assemblage attended by Great-Aunt Joanna could the family be held inadequately represented. The repository of Thatcher lore, no baptism, marriage, or funeral could have taken place without her cognizance. She sat stiffly with her hands folded like talons over her ear trumpet, which she was holding in the lap of a formless dress of some black stuff that made little Joanna, who could not take her eyes from her godmother-to-be , think of “my Jewish gaberdine.” It was because of little Joanna that she had stirred from the old Thatcher house on the Connecticut river where, the last of her generation, she passed her days alone, utterly determined to die as she had lived without being “looked after” by a companion or even a servant.
Euphemia Burnet, thinking that the old lady, because of her tranquil attitude, would be a suitable subject for her own histrionics, set sail for the pianola and dropped anchor with the air of having at last reached port after a long voyage. Composing her features to an air of mysticism, she addressed Great-Aunt Joanna in the brassy voice of one summoning spirits from the vasty deep or addressing the very deaf.
“I am so glad to speak with one of the same generation as my dear father, Sir Rae Burnet,” she announced, carefully articulating each syllable. “I am strongly of the opinion, dear Miss Thatcher,” she went on, “that we do not have time really to live nowadays. No time to ‘loaf and invite the soul’ as your great poet Walt Whitman puts it. I think that is so important. Do you not agree? Now baptism, for example. I have vainly urged my brother-in-law to hold the service in the open air where the great words of the ritual could come to one reinforced by the beauty of nature and where one could linger over those magnificent phrases and savour them. Children’s little minds are so open to nature’s beauty, don’t you think?” With a studied wave of her hand Euphemia indicated Dan and Alastair who were lingering on the lawn till the last possible moment because of a conviction that the Thatcher aunts and uncles were hearty kissers.
No longer hearing a buzzing in her ear, Great-Aunt Joanna perceived that she had been asked a question and smiled blandly. Sensitive of her deafness, she had a disconcerting habit of not using her ear trumpet when she thought the conversation would not interest her.
But a smile was all Euphemia needed and she plunged into her latest religiosity (she was always titillating her imagination with new cults). The children, she said, ought to be christened amid nature’s foison and under heaven’s sun — an influence so favourable to young and impressionable spirits. Within an old house like this, haunted by who knew what malign effluences of people who formerly dwelt there.
“Whutt?” asked the old lady. “Whutt did you say?”
“Malign effluences ,” shouted Euphemia. “I am referring, Miss Thatcher, to the malign animal magnetism of an old house! In an old house who knows what malign effluences —”
Great-Aunt Joanna had caught the single word “animal,” and fixing Euphemia with a look of uncomprehending benevolence, she began to tell of an experience she had had downtown in Wellington. For several moments both spoke together, but the old lady had the placid self-sufficiency of a natural phenomenon, of a river or a waterfall, whereas Euphemia, an artist, needed an audience. Charles and Murdo Burnet, attracted by Euphemia’s struggle to be heard, came up in time to witness her discomfiture. One of those horseless wagons — those contraptions ! said the old lady, had spattered her with mud. She had marched out into the traffic and seized a policeman by the sleeve and made him blow his whistle.
Charles seized the ear trumpet, and putting it to Aunt Joanna’s ear, shouted: “What did you tell him, Miss Thatcher?”
“Whutt? I said to him, ‘Young man, in my country we respect old folks!’”
“Good for you!” said Charles.
“Don’t shout!” rebuked Aunt Joanna, “the trumpet isn’t deaf.”
“My sister Euphemia,” said Charles mischievously, “thinks christenings should be held out of doors. That’s how the Druids did it. Euphemia is a piercer of the veil. It’s her latest religion. What do you think, Miss Thatcher?”
“Hold your tongue, Charles!” exclaimed Euphemia. But Murdo interposed irritably:
“Euphemia, you’ve been talking nonsense. Charles, you’re a scatterbrain.”
“On the contrary,” said Charles, “I think Euphemia has hit on a charming idea — really, Euphemia, I must look into the Druids. I say I like beauty, Miss Thatcher. Yes — beauty. Beauty in nature, you know. Fauns and satyrs and so on. Pan ready to twitch the nymph’s last garment off, you know. I quote from Browning, of course, Miss Thatcher.… Don’t you?”
“Whutt? You’re a mischievous young man! And you’re trying to tease an old lady. But you can’t. I understand young folks. Like ’em, too!”
“I bet you do!” said Charles enthusiastically.
“Nobody,” asserted Murdo crisply, “pays the slightest attention to Charles. He is a rattle.”
“Charming to have you home again, my dear Murdo,” said Charles.
Murdo turned his back on Charles and stumped away. Piercers of the veil. Bosh! Nymphs and satyrs. Rubbish! That made him think of the children. Little pagans! he thought. Bound to be.… “I suppose I’d better see them.”
He spoke to Maud and she called the children into the room.
Joanna came first and curtsyed to him. Murdo humphed — “Sort of thing Maud would teach a child!” — but he was pleased; the girl was graceful, a Burnet.
“Well, goddaughter?” he said. He did not smile, but the grimness melted from his face.
Alastair marched up with a confident grin, his hand outstretched, looking the image of Charles; he was followed by Dan, hanging back unwillingly. “This is the mischievous one,” said Maud smiling at Alastair, “very annoying sometimes, and very lovable.” The high spirits shining in the boy’s face moved her so that she could not help hugging him. Who could resist Alastair when he smiled at you? She turned to Daniel who was standing awkwardly, waiting to be noticed: he did not go out to people like Alastair. Maud put her arm about him, too, and gave him a special hug because she had noticed Alastair first. “My two dear boys!” she said. Dan was undemonstrative and often he gave her such a queer feeling: as if she were a stranger to her own son. Even now he was stiff and resisting beneath her arm. “Dan is the silent one,” she said, “he runs deep. Alastair is like his mother, Dan like his father.”
Murdo looked at Dan. The boy was hostile to him. “Are you afraid of me, my boy?” he said.
“No, sir!” said Dan promptly.
“I see. Well, sullen he may be, hangdog he is not!” Nothing ever prevented Murdo from saying what he thought; he believed that character, like water, should find its own level, especially within a family. He addressed Maud over Dan.
“Is this the one who —”
