t said nothing. Slowly and painfully
she learnt to realise that it was for what she had had to bestow, and
not for what she was, that people used to care; they had served her as
they served their God, in the hope of reaping a rich reward. Like many
other people with certain fine qualities of their own, Aunt Victoria
knew that there was wickedness in the outside world, but never
suspected that her own immediate circle, the nice people with whom she
talked pleasantly every day, could be tainted; and the awakening to
find that her friends cared less disinterestedly for her than she did
for them was a cruel disillusion. Her first inclination was to fly far
from them all, and spend the rest of her days amongst strangers who
could not disappoint her because she would have nothing to expect of
them, and who might perhaps come to care for her really. Long hours
she sat and suffered, shut up in her room, considering the matter,
yearning to go, but restrained by the fear that, as an old woman, she
would be unwelcome everywhere. In Aunt Victoria's day old people were
only too apt to be selfish, tyrannical, narrow, and ignorant, a terror
to their friends; and they were nearly always ill, the old men from
lives of self-indulgence, and the old women from unwholesome restraint
of every kind. Now we are beginning to ask what becomes of the
decrepit old women, there are so few to be seen. This is the age of
youthful grandmothers, capable of enjoying a week of their lives more
than their own grandmothers were able to enjoy the whole of their
declining years; their vitality is so much greater, their appearance
so much better preserved; their knowledge so much more extensive,
their interests so much more varied, and their hearts so much larger.
Aunt Victoria nowadays would have struck out for herself in a new
direction. She would have gone to London, joined a progressive
women's club, made acquaintance with work of some kind or another, and
never known a dull moment; for she would have been a capable woman had
any one of her faculties been cultivated to some useful purpose; but
as it was, she had nothing to fall back upon. She was just like a
domestic animal, like a dog that has become a member of the family,
and is tolerated from habit even after it grows old, and because
remarks would be made if it were put out of the way before its time;
and she had been content with the position so long as much was made of
her. Now, however, all too lat