At the end of the beech avenue she saw the house; the three big,
sharp-pointed gables of the front: the little gable underneath in the
middle, jutting out over the porch. That was the bay of Aunt Adeline's
bed-room. She used to lean out of the lattice windows and call to the
children in the garden. The house was the same.
So were the green terraces and the wide, flat-topped yew walls, and the
great peacocks carved out of the yew; and beyond them the lawn, flowing
out under banks of clipped yew down to the goldfish pond. They were
things that she had seen again and again in sleep and memory; things
that had made her heart ache thinking of them; that took her back and
back, and wouldn't let her be. She had only to leave off what she was
doing and she saw them; they swam before her eyes, covering the Swiss
mountains, the flat Essex fields, the high white London houses. They
waited for her at the waking end of dreams.
She had found them again.
A gap in the green walls led into the flower garden, and there, down the
path between tall rows of phlox and larkspurs and anchusa, of blue
heaped on blue, Aunt Adeline came holding up a tall bunch of flowers,
blue on her white gown, blue on her own milk-white and blue. She came,
looking like a beautiful girl; the same, the same; Anne had seen her in
dreams, walking like that, tall among the tall flowers.
She never hurried to meet you; hurrying would have spoiled the beauty of
her movement; she came slowly, absent-mindedly, stopping now and then to
pluck yet another of the blue spires. Robert stood still in the path to
watch her. She was smiling a long way off, intensely aware of him.
"Is _that_ Anne?" she said.
"Yes, Auntie, _really_ Anne."
"Well, you _are_ a big girl, aren't you?"
She kissed her three times and smiled, looking away again over her
flower-beds. That was the difference between Aunt Adeline and Uncle
Robert. His eyes made you important; they held you all the time he
talked to you; when he smiled, it was for you altogether and not for
himself at all. Her eyes never looked at you long; her smile wandered,
it was half for you and half for herself, for something she was thinking
of that wasn't you.
"What have you done with your father?" she said.
"I was to tell you. Daddy's ever so sorry; but he can't come till
to-morrow. A horrid man kept him on business."
"Oh?" A little crisping wave went over Aunt Adeline's face, a wave of
vexation. Anne saw it.
"He is _really_ sorry. You should have heard him damning and cursing."