Suddenly her whole body quivered as if his had touched it. And when she
looked at him she had the queer feeling that she saw him for the first
time. Never before like that. Never before.
But to him she was the same Anne. He knew her face as he knew his
mother's face or Colin's. He knew, he remembered all her ways.
And this was not what he wanted. He wanted some strange wonder and
excitement; he wanted to find it in Anne and in nobody but Anne, and he
couldn't find it. He wanted to be in love with Anne and he wasn't. She
was too near him, too much a part of him, too well-known, too
well-remembered. She made him restless and impatient, looking, looking
for the strangeness, the mystery he wanted and couldn't find.
If only he could have seen her suddenly for the first time.
Extraordinary, because this inactivity did violence to Anne's nature;
besides, Auntie Adeline behaved as if you were uninteresting and
unimportant, not attending to a word you said. Yet her strength lay in
her inconsistency. One minute her arrogance ignored you and the next she
came humbly and begged for your caresses; she was dependent, like a
child, on your affection. Anne thought that pathetic. And there was
always her fascination. That was absolute; above logic and morality,
irrefutable as the sweetness of a flower. Everybody felt it, even the
servants whom she tormented with her incalculable wants. Jerrold and
Colin, even Eliot, now that he was grown-up, felt it. As for Uncle
Robert he was like a young man in the beginning of first love.
Adeline judged people by their attitude to her. Anne, whether she
listened to her or not, was her own darling. Her husband and John Severn
were adorable, Major Markham of Wyck Wold and Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicote,
who admired her, were perfect dears, Sir John Corbett of Underwoods, who
didn't, was that silly old thing. Resist her and she felt no mean
resentment; you simply dropped out of her scene. Thus her world was
peopled with her adorers.
Anne couldn't have told you whether she felt the charm on its own
account, or whether the pleasure of being with her was simply part of
the blessed state of being at Wyck-on-the-Hill. Enough that Auntie
Adeline was there where Uncle Robert and Eliot and Colin and Jerrold
were; she belonged to them; she belonged to the house and garden; she
stood with the flowers.