Aunt Anne (Complete)
Sophia Lucy Clifford
9781465530134
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Mr. and Mrs. Walter Hibbert had been married just four months when Aunt Anne first appeared on the scene. They were at Brighton, whither they had gone from Friday to Tuesday, so that Mr. Hibbert might get braced up after a hard spell of work. Besides doing his usual journalism, he had been helping a friend with a popular educational weekly, and altogether “had slaved quite wickedly,” so his wife said. But he had declared that, though he found matrimony, as far as he had gone, very delightful, it had to be paid for, especially at the beginning of its career, when it ran into furniture, linen, plate, and expensive presents to a dear little wife, though the expensiveness of the last he generously kept to himself. So it resulted in the visit to Brighton. They spent the happiest four days in the world there, and felt quite sad when Tuesday morning arrived. But they wisely did their best to forget that the evening train would take them back to London, and resolved that their last day should pass merrily. “Suppose we have a long drowsy morning on the pier,” she suggested; “nothing is nicer or more restful than to listen to the band and look down into the water. We needn’t see the horrid people—indeed, if we sit on one of the end seats and keep our faces turned seawards, we can forget that they even exist.” Mr. Hibbert solemnly considered the proposal. “The only drawback is the music, it makes so much noise—that’s the worst of music, it always does,” he said sadly. “Another thing is, that I cannot lie full length on the pier as I can on the beach.” “Very well, then we’ll go to the beach. The worst of the beach is, that we can’t look down into the water, as we can from the end of the pier.” “That’s true; and then there are lots of pretty girls on the pier, and I like to see them, for then I know that there are some left—for the other fellows,” he added nobly. So they went to the pier, and sat on one of the side seats at the far end and looked down into the water, and blinked their happy eyes at the sunshine. And they felt as if all the beautiful world belonged to them, as if they two together were being drawn dreamily on and on into the sky, and sea, and light, to make one glorious whole with happy nature; but a whole in which they would be for ever conscious of being together, and never less sleepy or blissful than now. This was Walter’s idea, and he said it all in his dear romantic way that generally ended up with a laugh. “It would never do, you know, because we should get nothing to eat.” “Don’t,” she said. “That is so like you; you always spoil a beautiful idea, you provoking thing,” and she rubbed her chin against the back of the seat and looked down more intently at the water. Without any one in the least suspecting it, he managed to stoop and kiss her hand, while he pretended to be trying to see something, that of course was not there, at the top of a wave. They were having a delightful morning, they lived in every moment of it, and wished it would never come to an end; still, when it did, there would be a delicious luncheon to go back to—very large prawns, roast chicken and green peas, and an enormous dish of ripe figs, which both their souls loved. After all, Walter thought, the world was not a bad place, especially when you had a wife who adored you and thought that everything you did bore the stamp of genius. The band was playing a waltz, though to this day they do not know it. All manner of people were passing to and fro, but they did not notice them.
