Possession: A Peep-Show in Paradise Part 2

Just a little on, please, Hannah--only a little.

LAURA. This isn't China tea: it's Indian, three and sixpenny.

JULIA. Mine is ten s.h.i.+lling China.

LAURA. Lor', Julia! How are you able to afford it?

JULIA. A little imagination goes a long way here, you'll find. Once I tasted it. So now I can always taste it.

LAURA. Well! I wish I'd known.

JULIA. Now you _do_.

LAURA. But I never tasted tea at more than three-and-six. Had I known, I could have got two ounces of the very best, and had it when----

JULIA. A lost opportunity. Life is full of them.

LAURA. Then you mean to tell me that if I had indulged more then, I could indulge more now?

JULIA. Undoubtedly. As I never knew what it was to wear sables, I have to be content with ermine.

LAURA. Lor', Julia, how paltry!

(_While this conversation has been going on, a gentle old lady has appeared upon the scene, unnoticed and unannounced. One perceives, that is to say, that the high-backed arm-chair beside the fire, sheltered by a screen from all possibility of draughts, has an occupant. Dress and appearance show a doubly septuagenarian character: at the age of seventy, which in this place she retains as the hall-mark of her earthly pilgrimage, she belongs also to the 'seventies' of the last century, wears watered silk, and retains under her cap a shortened and stiffer version of the side-curls with which she and all 'the s.e.x' captivated the hearts of Charles d.i.c.kens and other novelists in their early youth. She has soft and indeterminate features, and when she speaks her voice, a little shaken by the quaver of age, is soft and indeterminate also.

Gentle and lovable, you will be surprised to discover that she, also, has a will of her own; but for the present this does not show. From the dimly illumined corner behind the lamp her voice comes soothingly to break the discussion._)

OLD LADY. My dear, would you move the light a little nearer? I've dropped a st.i.tch.

LAURA (_starting up_). Why, Mother dear, when did you come in?

JULIA (_interposing with arresting hand_). Don't! You mustn't try to touch her, or she goes.

LAURA. Goes?

JULIA. I can't explain. She is not quite herself. She doesn't always hear what one says.

LAURA (_a.s.sertively_). She can hear me. (_To prove it, she raises her voice defiantly._) Can't you, Mother?

MRS. R. (_the voice perhaps reminding her_). Jane, dear, I wonder what's become of Laura, little Laura: she was always so naughty and difficult to manage, so different from Martha--and the rest.

LAURA. Lor', Julia! Is it as bad as that? Mother, 'little Laura' is here, sitting in front of you. Don't you know me?

MRS. R. Do you remember, Jane, one day when we'd all started for a walk, Laura had forgotten to bring her gloves, and I sent her back for them?

And on the way she met little Dorothy Jones, and she took her gloves off her, and came back with them just as if they were her own.

LAURA. What a good memory you have, Mother! I remember it too. She was an odious little thing, that Dorothy--always so whiney-piney.

JULIA. More tea, Laura?

(_Laura pushes her cup at her without remark,_ _for she has been kept waiting; then, in loud tones, to suit the one whom she presumes to be rather deaf:_)

LAURA. Mother! Where are you living now?

MRS. R. I'm living, my dear.

LAURA. I said 'where?'

JULIA. We live where it suits us, Laura.

LAURA. Julia, I wasn't addressing myself to you. Mother, where _are_ you living? . . . Why, _where_ has she gone to?

(_For now we perceive that this gentle Old Lady so devious in her conversation has a power of self-possession, of which, very retiringly, she avails herself._)

JULIA (_improving the occasion, as she hands back the cup, with that touch of superiority so exasperating to a near relative_). Now you see!

If you press her too much, she goes. . . . You'll have to accommodate yourself, Laura.

LAURA (_imposing her own explanation_). I think you gave me _green_ tea, Julia . . . or have had it yourself.

JULIA (_knowing better_). The dear Mother seldom stays long, except when she finds me alone.

(_Having insinuated this barb into the flesh of her 'dear sister,' she takes up her crochet with an air of great contentment. Mrs._ _James, meanwhile, to make herself more at home, now that tea is finished, undoes her bonnet-strings with a tug, and lets them hang. She is not in the best of tempers._)

LAURA. I don't believe she recognised me. Why did she keep on calling me 'Jane'?

JULIA. She took you for poor Aunt Jane, I fancy.

LAURA (_infuriated at being taken for anyone 'poor'_). Why should she do that, pray?

JULIA. Well, there always was a likeness, you know; and you are older than you were, Laura.

LAURA (_crus.h.i.+ngly_). Does 'poor Aunt Jane' wear widow's weeds? (_This reminds her not only of her own condition, but of other things as well.

She sits up and takes a stiller bigger bite into her new world._) Julia!

. . . Where's William?

JULIA. I haven't inquired.

LAURA (_self-importance and a sense of duty consuming her_). I wish to see him.

JULIA. Better not, as it didn't occur to you before.

LAURA. Am I not to see my own husband, pray?

JULIA. He didn't ever live _here_, you know.

LAURA. He can come, I suppose. He has got legs like the rest of us.

JULIA. Yes, but one can't force people: at least, not here. You should remember that--before he married you--he had other ties.