This Real Night by Rebecca West

Author:Rebecca West
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2010-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

Part Two

VI

AFTER CORDELIA SUFFERED such cruel disappointment over her failure to become a violinist we felt she ought to be exempt from distress for ever. But we had so little in common with her that she seemed almost abstract: an inorganic burden like a knapsack.

It was not to be believed how suddenly that burden fell from our shoulders.

The news of our enfranchisement came at the end of a summer’s day. We should have been practising hard for the end of term concerts which were given by both our musical schools, but we did not go near our pianos - and I can remember no other day in our youth when this was true - because so much was happening. First of all, Aunt Lily had been staying the night with us, because next morning Mr Morpurgo was taking her to see her sister Queenie in the prison to which she had been sent when she had left Aylesbury Jail, and this made an unrestful beginning to the day. She always meant to obey my mother’s advice not to wear her best clothes on such journeys, for fear that their elegance would make her sister discontented and the wardresses envious. Nevertheless her appearance always needed some chastening touches, not for the reason Mamma had given, but for poor Mr Morpurgo’s sake. This time she had restrained herself sufficiently not to wear her best clothes, which consisted of a navy blue coat and skirt with many brass buttons and an Admiral’s tricorn hat, the whole thing inspired by a romantic dream of how the ladies who went yachting with King Edward the Seventh might have been attired. The dress she wore was plain and dark, but it was then the fashion for women to wear at their throats a thing called a jabot, a gentle version of a hunting stock, made of white lawn or fine linen, with two ends hanging loose for three or four inches in front. Aunt Lily’s attempt to follow this fashion was not successful but was arresting. Her jabot was made of starched linen and it stuck out at right angles to her flat chest. She might have been a signal rigged up by a company of mariners shipwrecked on a reef, to catch the attention of passing craft. There was an air of gallantry about the composition, but that would not have stopped little boys from laughing at her in the street. So we had to praise the effect in the evening, and in the morning Mamma had to sigh and remind her of the probable effect of such elegance on poor Queenie in her prison dress and the wardresses in their uniforms; and then Aunt Constance, who lived with us now, ran upstairs and came down with her workbox and perhaps a collar from an old dress which she changed for the unfortunate jabot, while we all stood round and said such things as, ‘It seems a shame’, and ‘Of course it doesn’t look nearly as nice,’ at which Aunt Lily sighed, ‘Yes, I know, but of course your Mamma’s right.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.