Abduction -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Prostitution -- Fiction; Sisters -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Her manner was more decisive than I had expected from a dreamer. Very
commanding and important, she stood there with her liveried servant
behind her. Bettina had known her instantly by the grey hair rolled high
and the pear-shaped earrings.
She kissed us, and said I was more like my mother. And were our boxes
labelled?
She hardly waited for us to answer. She did not wait at all for our
little trunk.
"A footman will attend to the luggage," she said. As she led us down the
platform, her eyes kept darting about in a way that made me think she
must be expecting someone else by that train. I looked round, too. But
nobody else seemed to be expecting Aunt Josephine, though a woman
towards the end of the platform looked very searchingly at our party as
we passed. Aunt Josephine did not seem to notice. She was busy putting
on a thick motor-veil over the lace one that was tied round her hat--her
lovely hat, that, as Betty said afterwards, was "boiling over with black
ostrich-feathers."
A wonderful scent had come towards us with Aunt Josephine--nothing the
least like that faint garden-smell that clung to our linen, from the
sprays of lavender and dried verbena our mother put newly each year
under the white paper of our wardrobe-shelves. Such a ghost of fragrance
could never have survived here. This perfume of Aunt Josephine's--not so
much strong as dominant--routed the sooty, acrid smell of the station.
When she lifted her arms to put the chiffon over her face, fresh waves
of the rich, mysterious scent came towards us.
She seemed in haste to leave so mean a place as Victoria. She spoke a
little sharply to the footman. He explained--and, indeed, we could
see--that a great, shining motor-car was threading its way as well as it
could through a tangle of taxi-cabs and inferior cars. Aunt Josephine
stood frowning under her double veil, and once I saw her eyes go towards
the woman who had noticed us. The woman was speaking to one of the
porters. The porter, too, looked at Aunt Josephine and nodded. The dowdy
woman gave the porter a tip, and sent him on an errand. I was far too
excited to notice such uninteresting people, but for the curious
personal kind of detestation in the look the dowdy woman fixed upon Aunt
Josephine.
"We won't wait," said our aunt. "We'll take this taxi."
But just then the beautiful shining car swerved free, and we were
hurried in. The footman spread a rug over our knees. As we glided out of
the station I noticed the dowdy woman asking her way of a policeman.
And the policeman didn't know the way. He shook his head. And both of
them looked after us.
As we whirled through the crowded streets I felt how everyone must be
envying Bettina and me.
Presently we came to a quiet corner. The houses stood back from the
street, in gardens. Our aunt's was one of these.
I was too excited to notice much about the outside. But the inside!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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