 Section 26 of Lovecraft's Influences and Favourites This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rafe Bore Seatons Aunt by Walter Delamere Part 2 When I awoke, roused by a long continued tapping at my door, sunlight was raying in on cornice and bedpost, and birds were singing in the garden. I got up, ashamed of the night's folly, dressed quickly, and went downstairs. The breakfast room was sweet with flowers and fruit and honey. Seatons Aunt was standing in the garden beside the open French window, feeding a great flutter of birds. I watched her for a moment, unseen. Her face was set in a deep reverie beneath the shadow of a big loose sun-hat. It was deeply lined, crooked, and, in a way I can't describe, fixedly vacant and strange. I coughed, and she turned at once with a prodigious smile to inquire how I had slept. And, in that mysterious way by which we learn each other's secret thoughts without a sentence spoken, I knew that she had followed every word and movement of the night before, and was triumphing over my affected innocence and ridiculing my friendly and too easy advances. We returned to school, Seaton and I, lavishly laden and by rail all the way. I made no reference to the obscure talk we had had, and resolutely refused to meet his eyes or to take up the hints he let fall. I was relieved, and yet I was sorry to be going back, and strode on as fast as I could from the station, with Seaton almost trotting at my heels. But he insisted on buying more fruit and sweets, my share of which I accepted with a very bad grace. It was uncomfortably like a bribe, and, after all, I had no quarrel with his rum-old aunt, and hadn't really believed half the stuff he had told me. I saw as little of him as I could after that. He never referred to our visit, or resumed his confidences, though in class I would sometimes catch his eye fixed on mine, full of a mute understanding which I easily affected not to understand. He left gummages, as I have said, rather abruptly, though I never heard of anything to his discredit, and I did not see him or have any news of him again till by chance we met one summer's afternoon in the Strand. He was dressed rather oddly in a coat too large for him and a bright silky tie, but we instantly recognised one another under the awning of a cheap jeweler's shop. He immediately attached himself to me and dragged me off, not too cheerfully, to lunch with him at an Italian restaurant nearby. He chatted about our old school, which he remembered only with dislike and disgust, told me cold bloodedly of the disastrous fate of one or two of the old fellows who had been among his chief tormentors, insisted on an expensive wine and the whole gamut of the rich menu, and finally informed me, with a good deal of niggling, that he had come up to town to buy an engagement ring. And of course, how is your aunt? I inquired at last. He seemed to have been awaiting the question. It fell like a stone into a deep pool. So many expressions flitted across his long, un-English face. She's aged a good deal, he said softly, and broke off. She's been very decent, he continued presently after, and paused again. In a way. He eyed me fleetingly. I dare say you heard that she—that is, that we—had lost a good deal of money. No, I said. Oh, yes! said Seaton, and paused again. And somehow, poor fellow, I knew in the clink and clatter of glass and voices that he had lied to me, that he did not possess, and never had possessed, a penny beyond what his aunt had squandered on his two ample allowance of pocket money. And the ghosts I inquired quizzically. He grew instantly solemn, and, though it may have been my fancy, slightly yellowed. But you're making a game of me withers, was all he said. He asked for my address, and I rather reluctantly gave him my card. Look here withers, he said, as we stood in the sunlight on the thronging curb, saying good-bye. Here I am, and it's all very well. I'm not perhaps as fanciful as I was. But you are practically the only friend I have on earth, except Alice. And there, to make a clean rest of it, I'm not sure that my aunt cares much about my getting married. She doesn't say so, of course. You know her well enough for that. He looked side-long at the rattling, gaudy traffic. What I was going to say is this. Would you mind coming down? You needn't stay the night, unless you please. Though, of course, you know that you will be awfully welcome. But I should like you to meet my—to meet Alice. And then, perhaps, you might tell me your honest opinion of—of the other, too. I vaguely demurred. He pressed me. And we parted with a half promise that I would come. He waved his ball-topped cane at me and ran off in his long jacket after a bus. A letter arrived soon after, in his small, weak handwriting, giving me full particulars regarding route and trains, and without the least curiosity, even perhaps with some little annoyance that chance should have thrown us together again. I accepted his invitation, and arrived one hazy midday at his out-of-the-way station to find him sitting on a low seat under a comp of double hollyhocks awaiting me. His face looked absent and singularly listless. But he seemed, nonetheless, pleased to see me. We walked up the village street, past the little dingy apothecaries and the empty forge, and, as on my first visit, skirted the house together, and, instead of entering by the front door, made our way down the green path into the garden at the back. A pale haze of cloud muffled the sun. The garden lay in a grey shimmer. Its old trees, its snap-dragon faintly glittering walls. But there seemed now an air of neglect where before all had been neat and methodical. There was a patch of shallowly dug soil and a worn-down spade leaning against a tree. There was an old broken wheel-barrow. The goddess of neglect was there. He ain't much of a gardener, Seaton, I said, with a sigh of ease. I think, do you know, I like it best like this, said Seaton. We haven't had any gardener now, of course. Can't afford it. He stood staring at his little dark square of freshly turned earth. And it always seems to me, he went on ruminatingly, that after all we are nothing better than interlopers on the earth, disfiguring and staining wherever we go. I know it's shocking blasphemy to say so, but then it's different here, you see. We are farther away. To tell you the truth, Seaton, I don't quite see, I said, but it isn't a new philosophy, is it? Anyhow, it's a precious beastly one. It's only what I think, he replied, with all his odd, old, stubborn meekness. We wandered on together, talking little, and still with that expression of uneasy vigilance on Seaton's face. He pulled out his watch as we stood gazing idly over the green meadow and the dark, motionless bulrushes. I think, perhaps, it's nearly time for lunch, he said. Would you like to come in? We turned and walked slowly towards the house, across whose windows I confess my own eyes, too, went restlessly wandering in search of its rather disconcerting inmate. There was a pathetic look of draggledness, of want of means and care, rust and overgrowth and faded paint. Seaton's aunt, a little to my relief, did not share our meal. Seaton carved the cold meat and dispatched a heat-up plate by the elderly servant for his aunt's private consumption. We talked little and in half-suppressed tones, and sipped a bottle of Madeira, which Seaton had rather heedfully fetched out of the great mahogany sideboard. I played him a dull and effortless game of chess, yawning between the moves he generally made almost at haphazard and with attention elsewhere engaged. About five o'clock came the sound of a distant ring, and Seaton jumped up, overturning the board, and so ending a game that else might have faturously continued to this day. He effusively excused himself, and after some little while returned with a slim, dark, rather sallow girl of about nineteen in a white gown and hat to whom I was presented with some little nervousness as his dear old friend and school-fellow. We talked on in the pale afternoon light, still, as it seemed to me, and even in spite of real effort to be clear and gay, in a half-suppressed, lackluster fashion. We all seemed, if it were not my fancy, to be expectant, to be rather anxiously awaiting an arrival, the appearance of someone who all but filled our collective consciousness. Seaton talked least of all, and in a restless, interjectory way, as he continually fidgeted from chair to chair. At last he proposed a stroll in the garden before the sun should have quite gone down. Alice walked between us. Her hair and eyes were conspicuously dark against the whiteness of her gown. She carried herself not ungracefully and yet without the least movement of her arms or body, and answered us both without turning her head. There was a curious, provocative reserve in that impassive and rather long face, a half-unconscious strength of character. And yet somehow I knew. I believe we all knew that this walk, this discussion of their future plans, was a futility. I had nothing to base such a cynicism on, except only a vague sense of oppression, the foreboding remembrance of the inert, invincible power in the background to whom optimistic plans and love-making and youth are as chaff and thistle down. We came back silent in the last light. Seaton's aunt was there, under an old brass lamp. Her hair was as barbarously mast and curled as ever. Her eyelids, I think, hung even a little heavier in age over their slow-moving, inscrutable pupils. We filed in softly out of the evening and I made my bow. In this short interval, Mr. Withers, she remarked amiably, you have put off youth, put on the man. Dear me, how sad it is to see the young days vanishing. Sit down. My nephew tells me you met my chance, or act of providence, shall we call it, and in my beloved strand. You, I understand, are to be best man? Yes, best man, or am I divulging secrets? She surveyed Arthur and Alice with overwhelming graciousness. They set apart on two low chairs and smiled in return. And Arthur, how do you think Arthur is looking? I think he looks very much in need of a change, I said deliberately. A change? Indeed. She all but shut her eyes at me and with an exaggerated sentimentality shook her head. My dear Mr. Withers, are we not all in need of a change in this fleeting, fleeting world? She mused over the remark, like a connoisseur, and you, she continued turning abruptly to Alice, I hope you pointed out to Mr. Withers all my pretty bits. We walked round the garden, said Alice, looking out of the window. It's a very beautiful evening. Is it, said the old lady, starting up violently, then on this very beautiful evening we will go into supper. Mr. Withers, your arm. Arthur, bring your bride. I can scarcely describe with what curious ruminations I led the way into the faded, heavy-air dining-room with this indefinable old creature leaning weightily on my arm, the large, flat bracelet on the yellow-laced wrist. She fumed a little, breathed rather heavily, as if with an effort of mind, rather than of body, for she had grown much stouter and yet little more proportionate. And to talk into that great white face so close to mine was a queer experience in the dim light of the corridor and even in the twinkling crystal of the candles. She was naive, appallingly naive. She was sudden and superficial. She was even arch, and all these in the brief rather puffy passage from one room to the other with these two tongue-tied children bringing up the rear. The meal was tremendous. I've never seen such a monstrous salad. But the dishes were greasy and overspiced and were indifferently cooked. One thing only was quite unchanged. My hostess's appetite was as gargantuan as ever. The old solid candelabra that lighted us stood before her high-backed chair. Seaton sat a little removed with his plate almost in darkness. And throughout this prodigious meal his aunt talked, mainly to me, mainly at Seaton with an occasional satirical courtesy to Alice and muttered explosions of directions to the servant. She had aged and yet, if it be not nonsense to say so, seemed no older. I suppose to the pyramids a decade is but as the rustling down of a handful of dust. And she reminded me of some such unshakable prehistoricism. She certainly was an amazing talker, racy, extravagant with a delivery that was perfectly overwhelming. As for Seaton, her flashes of silence were for him. On her enormous volubility would suddenly fall a hush. Acid sarcasm would be left implied. And she would sit softly moving her great head with eyes fixed fully in a dreamy smile. But with her whole attention one could see, slowly joyously absorbing his mute discomforture. She confided in us her views on a theme vaguely occupying at the moment, I suppose, all our minds. We have barbarous institutions and so must put up, I suppose, with a never ending procession of fools. Of fools had a roofing item. Marriage, Mr. Withers, was instituted in the privacy of a garden. Subrosa, as it were. Civilisation flaunts it in the glare of day. The dull marry the poor. The rich, the effete. And so our new Jerusalem is peopled with naturals plain and coloured at either end. I detest folly. I detest still more if I must be frank, dear Arthur, mere cleverness. Mankind has simply become a tailless host of uninstinctive animals. We should never have taken to evolution, Mr. Withers. Natural selection. Little gods and fishes. The death for the dumb. We should have used our brains. Intellectual pride, the ecclesiastics call it. And by brains I mean what do I mean, Alice? I mean my dear child. And she laid two gross fingers on Alice's narrow sleeve. I mean courage. Consider it, Arthur. I read that the scientific world is once more beginning to be afraid of spiritual agencies. Spiritual agencies that tap and actually float bless their hearts. I think just one more of those mulberries. Thank you. They talk about blind love. She ran inconsequently on as she helped herself with eyes fixed on the dish. But why blind? I think do you know from weeping over its rickets? After all, it is we plain women that triumph Mr. Withers beyond the mockery of time. Alice, now. Fleeting, fleeting is youth, my child. What's that you are confiding to your plate, Arthur? Satirical boy. He laughs at his old aunt. Nay, but thou didst laugh. He detests all sentiment. He whispers the most acid asides. Come, my love. We will leave these cynics. We will go and commiserate with each other on our sex. The choice of two evils, Mr. Withers. I opened the door and she swept out as if born on a torrent of unintelligible indignation, and Arthur and I were left in the clear, four-flamed light alone. For a while we sat in silence. He shook his head at my cigarette case and I lit a cigarette. Presently he fidgeted in his chair and poked his head forward into the light. He paused to rise and shut the door. How long will he be? He said, standing by the table. I laughed. Oh, it's not that, he said in some confusion. Of course, I like to be with her, but it's not that only. The truth is, Withers, I don't care about leaving her too long with my aunt. I hesitated. He looked at me, questioning thee. Yes, Eden, I said. You know well enough that I don't want to interfere in your affairs, or to offer advice where it is not wanted. But don't you think perhaps you may not treat your aunt quite in the right way? As one gets old, you know, a little give and take. I have an old godmother or something. She talks too. A little allowance. It does no harm. But hang it all, I'm no talker. He sat down with his hands in his pockets, and still with his eyes fixed almost incredulously on mine. How? He said. Well, my dear fellow, if I am any judge, mind that I don't say that I am, but I can't help thinking she thinks you don't care for her, and perhaps takes your silence for bad temper. She has been very decent to you, hasn't she? Decent? Oh, God! said Seaton. I smoked on in silence, but he still continued to look at me with that peculiar concentration I remember of old. I don't think, perhaps with us, he began presently. I don't think you quite understand. Perhaps you are not quite our kind. You always did, just like the other fellows guy me at school. You laughed at me that night you came to stay here. About the voices and all that. But I don't mind being laughed at, because I know. Know what? It was the same old system of dull question and evasive answer. I mean, I know that what we see and hear is only the smallest fraction of what is. I know she lives quite out of this. She talks to you, but it's all my belief. It's all a parlor game. She's not really with you, only pitting her outside wits against yours and enjoying the falling. She's living on inside on what you're rotten without. That's what it is. A cannibal feast. She's a spider. It doesn't much matter what you call it. It means the same kind of thing. I tell you withers. She hates me. And you can scarcely dream what that hatred means. I used to think I had an inkling of the reason. It's oceans deeper than that. It just lies behind herself against myself. Why, after all, how much do we really understand of anything? We don't even know our own histories and not a tenth, not a tenth of the reasons. What has life been to me? Nothing but a trap. And when one is set free it only begins again. I thought you might understand, but you're on a different level. That's all. What on earth are you talking about? I said half-contemptuously in spite of myself. I mean what I say. He said gutturally. All this outsides only make believe. But there. What's the good of talking? So far as this is concerned I'm as good as done. You wait. Seton blew out three of the candles and, leaving the vacant room in semi-darkness, we groped our way along the corridor to the drawing-room. We were shining in at the long garden windows. Alice sat stooping at the door with her hands clasped, looking out alone. Where is she? Seton asked, in a low tone. Alice looked up. Their eyes met in a kind of instantaneous understanding and the door immediately afterwards opened behind us. Such a moon! Said a voice that, once heard, remained deeply on the ear. A night for lovers, Mr. Withers, if ever there was one. Get ashore, my dear Arthur, and take Alice for a little promenade. I dare say we old cronies will manage to keep awake. Hasten, hasten, Romeo! My poor, poor Alice! How laggard a lover! Seton returned with ashore. They drifted out into the moonlight. My companion gazed after them till they were out of hearing. Turned to me gravely, and suddenly twisted her white face into such a convulsion of contemptuous amusement that I could only stare blankly in reply. Dear innocent children! She said with inimitable unctuousness. Well, well, Mr. Withers, we poor seasoned old creatures must move with the times. Do you sing? I scouted the idea. I must listen to my playing. Chess! She clasped her forehead with both cramped hands. Chess is now completely beyond my poor wits. She sat down at the piano and ran her fingers in a flourish over the keys. What shall it be? How shall we capture them? Those passionate hearts! That first fine, careless rapture! Poetry itself! She gazed softly into the garden a moment, and presently, with a shake of her body, began to play the opening bars of Beethoven's moonlight sonata. The piano was old and woolly. She played without music. The lamp-light was rather dim. The moon-beams from the window lay across the keys. Her head was in shadow. And whether it was simply due to her personality or to some really occult skill in her playing, I cannot say. I only know that she gravely and deliberately set herself to satirise the beautiful music. It brooded on the air, disillusioned, charged with mockery and bitterness. I stood at the window. Far down the path I could see the white figure glimmering in that pool of colourless light. A few faint stars shone, and still that amazing woman behind me dragged out of the unwilling keys her wonderful grotesquery of youth and love and beauty. It came to an end. I knew the player was watching me. Please, please go on, I murmured without turning. Please go on playing, Miss Seaton. No answer was returned to my rather fluttering sarcasm, but I knew in some indefinite way that I was being acutely scrutinised when suddenly there followed a procession of quiet, plaintive chords which broke at last softly into the hymn a few more years shall roll. I confess it held me spellbound. There is a wistful, strained, plangent pathos in the tune, but beneath those masterly old hands it cried softly and bitterly the solitude and desperate estrangement of the world. Arthur and his lady love vanished from my thoughts. No one could put into a rather hackneyed old hymn tune such an appeal who had never known the meaning of the words. Their meaning, anyhow, isn't commonplace. I turned very cautiously and glanced at the musician. She was leaning forward a little over the keys, so that at the approach of my cautious glance she had but to turn her face into the thin flood of moonlight for every feature to become distinctly visible. And so, with the tune abruptly terminated, we steadfastly regarded one another, and she broke into a chuckle of laughter. Not quite so seasoned as I supposed, Mr. Withers. I see you are a real lover of music. To me it is too painful. It evokes too much thought. I could scarcely see her little glittering eyes under their penthouse lids. And now, she broke off crisply, tell me, as a man of the world, what do you think of my new niece? I was not a man of the world nor was I much flattered in my stiff and dullish way of looking at things by being called one, and I could answer her without the least hesitation. I don't think, Miss Seaton, I'm much of a judge of character. She's very charming. A brunette. I think I prefer dark women. And why? Consider, Mr. Withers. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark cloud, dark nights, dark vision, dark death, dark grave, dark, dark! Perhaps the climax would have rather thrilled Seaton, but I was too thick-skinned. I don't know much about all that, I answered rather pompously. Brought daylight's difficult enough for most of us. Ah! She said, with a slight inward burst of satirical laughter. And I suppose, I went on, perhaps a little nettle. It isn't the actual darkness one admires. It is the contrast of the skin and the colour of the eyes and their shining. Just as I went blundering on too late to turn back just as you only see the stars in the dark, it would be a long day without any evening. As for death and the grave, I don't suppose we shall much notice that. Arthur and his sweetheart were slowly returning along the dewy path. I believe in making the best of things. How very interesting! came the smooth answer. I see you are a philosopher, Mr Withers. Hmm! As for death and the grave, I don't suppose we shall much notice that. Very interesting. And I'm sure, she added in that particularly suave voice, I profoundly hope so. She rose slowly from her stall. He will take pity on me again, I hope. You and I would get on famously. Kindred spirits. Elective affinities. And, of course, now that my nephew is going to leave me, now that his affections are centred on another, I shall be a very lonely old woman. Shall I not, Arthur? Seaton blinked stupidly. I didn't hear what you said, aunt. I was telling our old friend, Arthur, that when you are gone, I shall be a very lonely old woman. Oh! I don't think so. He said in a strange voice. He means, Mr Withers. He means my dear child. She said, sweeping her eyes over Alice. He means that I shall have memory for company. Heavenly memory. The ghosts of other days. Sentimental, boy. And did you enjoy our music, Alice? Did I really stir that youthful heart? Oh, oh, oh. Continued the horrible old creature. You billers and coupers. I have been listening to such flatteries. Such confessions. Beware, beware, Arthur. There's many a slip. She rolled her little eyes at me. She shrugged her shoulders at Alice and gazed an instant stonely into her nephew's face. I held out my hand. Good night. She cried. He that fights and runs away. Ah! good night, Mr Withers. Come again soon. She thrust out her cheek and Alice and we all three filed slowly out of the room. Black shadow darkened the porch and half the spreading sycamore. We walked without speaking up the dusty village street. Here and there a crimson window glowed. At the fork of the high road I said good-bye. But I had hardly taken more than a dozen paces when a sudden impulse seized me. Seaton, I called. He turned in the moonlight. You have my address. If by any chance, you know, you should care to spend a week or two in town between this and the... the day, we should be delighted to see you. Thank you, Withers. Thank you. He said in a low voice. I daresay I waved my stick gallantly to Alice. I daresay you will be doing some shopping. We could all meet. I added, laughing. Thank you. Thank you, Withers. Immensely, he repeated. And so we parted. But they were out of the jog-trot of my prosaic life. And being of a stolid and incurious nature, I left Seaton and his marriage and even his aunt to themselves in my memory and scarcely gave a thought to them until one day I was walking up the strand again and passed the flashing gloaming of the covered-in-jewels shop where I had accidentally encountered my old school-fellow in the summer. It was one of those still-close autumnal days after a rainy night. I cannot say why, but a vivid recollection returned to my mind of our meeting and how suppressed Seaton had seemed and of how vainly he had endeavoured to appear assured and eager. He must be married by now and had doubtless returned from his honeymoon. And I had clean-forgotten my manners had sent not a word of congratulation, nor, as I might very well have done and as I knew he would have been immensely pleased at my doing, the ghost of a wedding present. On the other hand, I pleaded with myself, I had had no invitation. I paused at the corner of Trafalgar Square and at the bidding of one of those caprices that sees occasionally on even an unimaginative mind. I suddenly ran after a green bus that was passing and found myself bound on a visit I had not in the least foreseen. All the colours of autumn were over the village when I arrived. A beautiful late-afternoon sunlight, bathed, thatched and meadow. But it was close and hot. A child, two dogs, a very young man, a very young man, a child, two dogs, a very old woman with a heavy basket I encountered. One or two incurious tradesmen looked idly up as I passed by. It was all so rural and so still. My whimsical impulse had so much flagged that for a while I hesitated to venture under the shadow of the sycamore tree to inquire after the happy pair. I deliberately passed by the faint blue gates and continued my walk under the high green and tufted wall. Holly-hawks had attained their topmost bud and seeded in the little cottage gardens beyond. The Mickelmas days were in flower. A sweet, warm, aromatic smell of fading leaves was in the air. Beyond the cottages lay a field where cattle were grazing, and beyond that I came to a little churchyard. Then the road wound on, pathless and houseless, among gorse and bracken. I turned impatiently and walked quickly back to the house and rang the bell. The rather colourless, elderly woman who answered my inquiry informed me that Miss Seaton was at home as if only taciturnity forbade her adding, but she doesn't want to see you. Might I, do you think, have Mr Arthur's address? I said. She looked at me with quiet astonishment as if waiting for an explanation. Not the faintest of smiles came into her thin face. I will tell Miss Seaton. She said after a pause. Please walk in. She showed me into the dingy, undusted drawing-room, filled with evening sunshine and the green-dyed light that penetrated the leaves overhanging the long French windows. I sat down and waited on and on, occasionally aware of a creaking footfall overhead. At last the door opened a little and the great face I had once known peered round at me. For it was enormously changed. Mainly, I think, because the old eyes had rather suddenly failed and so a kind of stillness and darkness lay over its calm and wrinkled pallor. Who is it? She asked. I explained myself and told her the occasion of my visit. She came in and shut the door carefully after her and, though the fumbling was scarcely perceptible, groped into a chair. She had on an old dressing-gown like a cassock of a patterned cinnamon colour. What is it you want? She said, seating herself and lifting her blank face to mine. Might I just have Arthur's address? I said deferentially. I am so sorry to have disturbed you. Hmm! You have come to see my nephew. Not necessarily to see him, only to hear how he is. And, of course, Mrs. Seaton too. I am afraid my silence must have appeared. He hasn't noticed your silence, croaked the old voice out of the great mask. Besides, there isn't any Mrs. Seaton. Ah, then I answered after a momentary pause. I have not seemed so black as I painted myself. And how is Miss Outram? She's gone into Yorkshire, answered Seaton's aunt. And Arthur too? She did not reply, but simply sat blinking at me with lifted chin, as if listening, but certainly not for what I might have to say. I began to feel rather at a loss. You and no close friend of my nephew's, Mr. Smithers? She said presently. No, I answered, welcoming the queue. And yet, do you know Miss Seaton? There are very few of my old school fellows I have come across in the last few years, and I suppose as one gets older, one begins to value old associations. My voice seemed to trail off into a vacuum. I thought Miss Outram, I hastily began again, a particularly charming girl. I hope they are both quite well. Still, the old face solemnly blinked at me in silence. You must find it very lonely Miss Seaton, with Arthur away. I was never lonely in my life, she said sourly. I don't look to flesh and blood for my company. When you've got to be my age, Mr. Smithers, which God forbid, you'll find life a very different affair from what you seem to think it is now. You won't seek company then, I'll be bound. It's thrust on you. My face edged round into the clear green light, and her eyes, as it were, groped over my vacant, disconcerted face. I dare say now, she said, composing her mouth, I dare say my nephew told you a good many taradiddles in his time. Oh yes, a good many, eh? He was always a liar. What now did he say of me? Tell me now. She lent forward as far as she could, trembling with an ingratiating smile. I think he is rather superstitious, I said coldly, but honestly, I have a very poor memory, Miss Seton. Why, she said, I haven't. The engagement hasn't been broken off, I hope. Well, between you and me, she said, shrinking up with an immensely confidential grimace, it has. I'm sure I'm very sorry to hear it. And where is Arthur? Eh? Where is Arthur? We faced each other mutely among the dead, old, bygone furniture. Past all my scrutiny was that large, flat, grey, cryptic countenance. And then, suddenly, our eyes for the first time really met, in some indescribable way out of that thick-lidded obscurity, a far small something stooped and looked out at me, for a mere instant of time, that seemed of almost intolerable protraction. Involuntarily, I blinked and shook my head. She muttered something with great rapidity, but quite inarticulately, rose to the door. I thought I heard, mingled in broken mutterings, something about tea. Please, please, don't trouble, I began, but could say no more, for the door was already shut between us. I stood and looked out on the long neglected garden. I could just see the bright greenness of Seaton's old tadpole pond. I wondered about the room. The last birds in that dense shadowiness of trees had ceased to sing, and not a sound was to be heard in the house. I waited on and on, vainly speculating. I even attempted to ring the bell, but the wire was broken, and only jangled loosely at my efforts. I hesitated, unwilling to call or to venture out, and yet more unwilling to linger on, waiting for a tea that promised to be an exceedingly comfortless supper. And as darkness drew down, a feeling of the utmost unease and disquietude came over me. All my talks with Seaton returned on me with a suddenly enriched meaning. I recalled again his face as we had stood hanging over the staircase, listening in the small hours to the inexplicable stirrings of the night. There were no handles in the room. Every minute the autumnal darkness deepened. I cautiously opened the door and listened, and with some little dismay withdrew, for I was uncertain of my way out. I even tried the garden, but was confronted under a veritable thicket of foliage by a padlocked gate. It would be a little too ignomious to be caught scaling a friend's garden fence. I took out my watch, and gave the incredible old woman ten minutes in which to reappear. And when that tedious ten minutes had ticked by, I could scarcely distinguish its hands. I determined to wait no longer, drew open the door, and, trusting to my sense of direction, groped my way through the corridor that I vaguely remembered led to the front of the house. I mounted three or four stairs and, using a heavy curtain, found myself facing the starry fan-light of the porch. Hence I glanced into the gloom of the dining-room. My fingers were on the latch of the outer door when I heard a faint stirring in the darkness above the hall. I looked up and became conscious of, rather than saw, the huddled old figure looking down on me. There was an immense hushed pause. Arthur! Arthur! whispered an inexpressively peevish, rasping voice. Is that you? Is that you, Arthur? I can scarcely say why, but the question horribly startled me. No conceivable answer occurred to me. With head craned back, hand clenched on my umbrella, I continued to stare up into the gloom in this fatuous confrontation. Oh! Oh! The voice croaked. It is you, is it? That disgusting man! Go away out! Go away out! Hesitating no longer, I caught open the door and, slamming it behind me, ran out into the garden under the gigantic old sycamore and so out at the open gate. I found myself half up the village street before I stopped running. The local butcher was sitting in his shop reading a piece of newspaper by the light of a small oil lamp. I crossed the road and inquired the way to the station. And after he had with my newt and needless care directed me, I asked casually if Mr Arthur Seaton still lived with his aunt at the big house just beyond the village. He poked his head in at the little parlour door. He is a gentleman inquiring after young Mr Seaton, Millie. He said, He's dead, ain't he? Why, yes, bless you, replied a cheerful voice from within, dead and buried these three months or more. Young Mr Seaton. And just before he was to be married, don't you remember, Bob? I saw a fair young woman's face peer over the muslin of the little door at me. Thank you, I replied. Then I go straight on. That's it, sir. Pass the pond, bear up the hill a bit to the left and then there's the station lights before your eyes. We looked intelligently into each other's faces in the beam of the smoky lamp. But not one of the many questions in my mind could I put into words. And again I paused irresolutely a few paces further on. See, merely a foolish apprehension of what the raw-boned butcher might think that prevented my going back to see if I could find Seaton's grave in the benighted churchyard. There was precious little use in pottering about in the muddy dark merely to find where he was buried. And yet I felt a little uneasy. My rather horrible thought was that, so far as I was concerned, one of his esteemed few friends, he had never been much better than buried in my mind. End of Seaton's Aunt Recording by Rafe Ball End of Lovecraft's Influences and Favorites