THE THIRD EARL OF MELBOURNE
There is hardly a pleasanter room in all England than the old Chamber
of the Tapestries they use as a breakfast room at Melbourne Hall.
Situated in the west wing of the great quadrangle, and giving off
immediately from the famous long gallery, its tiny latticed casements
permit a view which reveals at once all the cultivated beauty of the
gardens and the wild woodland scenery of the park beyond, in a vista
which never fails to win the admiration of the stranger, as it has won
the love of many generations who have inhabited that historic mansion.
It is not a large room, but it tells much of the story of the house,
its triumphs, its misfortunes, and its glories. Here you have the
time-stained arms of John, the first baron, whose cinquefoil azure upon
a crimson banner had been carried high at Agincourt; here were the
crosslets fitchee of the House of Mar, whose feminine representative
had come south to wed the third baron in the days of good King Hal.
Fair fingers had worked these tapestries long ago, waiting, perchance,
for news of husband or lover whom the wars had claimed, or fighting for
a King whose son would laugh at their story of fidelity. It had been
my lady's bower then, and knights and squires had doffed their caps as
they passed its doors. To-day they gave it no nobler name than
breakfast room, and therein, at half-past eight every morning, the Earl
of Melbourne, more punctual than the clock itself, sat down to
breakfast.
Now, here was a man who had been an adventurer all his life, a man of
the field, the forest, and the sea; a bluff bearded man, not unrefined
in face and feature, but utterly unsuited by the disposition of his
will to the dignity which accident had thrust upon him, and resenting
it every hour that he lived.
"What are we but slaves of our birth?" he would ask his daughter
passionately. "Why am I cooped up in this old house when I might be on
the deck of a good ship or under canvas in the Alleghany Mountains?
You say that nothing forbids my doing it. You know it isn't true. The
world would cry out on me if I cut myself adrift. And you yourself
would be the first to complain of it. We owe it to society, Evelyn, to
make ourselves miserable for the rest of our lives. They call it
'station' in the prayer-book, but the man who wrote that had never shot
big game on the Zambesi or he'd have sung to a different tune."
Sometimes when Evelyn protested that society would really remain
indifferent whatever they did, he would reply, a little brutally, that
when she had found a husband it would be another matter.
"There will be two of you then to stand for the cinquefoil," he
observed cynically. "I shall shake the handcuffs off and get back to
the East. A man lives in the sunshine. Here he scarcely vegetates.
When they inquire, in ten years' time, where the Earl of Melbourne is,
you'll send them to the Himalayas to begin with, and there they can ask
again. Don't lose time about it, Evelyn. You know that young John
Hall is head over ears in love with you."
Evelyn's face would flush at this; and there had been an occasion when
she answered him with the amazing intimation that she would sooner
marry Williams, the groom, than the young baronet he spoke of. This
frightened the old Earl exceedingly.
"Her mother's blood runs in her veins," he said to himself. "By
heaven, she'd marry a stable-boy if I thwarted her."
Here was the spectre which haunted him continually. He feared to read
the story of his own youth and marriage in the youth and marriage of
his daughter. Notwithstanding his jests, his love for her was
passionate and dominated every other instinct of his life. "You are
all that I have in the world, my little Evelyn," he would confess in
gentler moods. He desired her affection in like measure, but had never
wholly won it. Perhaps instinctively she understood that some barrier
of the past interposed itself between them. Her father's defects of
character could not be absolutely hidden from her. She feared she knew
not what.
And if this were her normal mood, what of the Evelyn who had gone to
London at the bidding of a mad desire; who had become Etta Romney
there; who had returned at the dead of night and awaited her father's
home-coming with that tremulous expectation which at once could dread
exposure and yet delight in the peril of it? When her first alarm had
passed and quiet days had led her to believe that she dreamed the story
of espionage, Evelyn could await the issue with no little confidence.
After all, why should Count Odin betray her, even if he had her secret?
He was a man of the world and had nothing to gain by dealing
treacherously with a woman. Her father went to London so rarely that
she might well deride the danger of his visits. Nothing but a clumsy
accident could write that story so that the Earl might read it, she
thought. And so she welcomed him home with all her habitual composure,
and upon the morning of the second day of July she found herself seated
opposite to him in my lady's bower, listening to his stories of Italy
and his plans for the summer and the autumn months to come.
"We ought to give some parties, I suppose," he said; "the servants
expect it, and we must not disappoint them. Ask all the people who
don't want to come and get rid of them as quickly as you can. I have
written to Colchester about the yacht and we ought to get her in
commission in August. You always loved the sea, Evelyn, and this will
be a change for you. We can put into Trouville and Etretat and see
what the Frenchwomen are wearing. I shall steam down to the
Mediterranean later on; but that won't be until December. We have the
birds to kill first and plenty of them. Of course, I know you wanted
to be in London this Spring, and it is not my fault if you did not go.
This copper mine in Tuscany is going to make me as rich as Vanderbilt.
I could not neglect it just because a lot of fools were driving mail
phaetons in Bond Street."
Evelyn smiled a little coldly.
"Men do not drive mail phaetons nowadays," she said, "they drive
motor-cars. Of course, it is very necessary for us to keep the wolf
from the door--we are so poor, father."
The Earl had grown accustomed to remarks such as these, and had become
skilful in evading them. He understood perfectly well that Evelyn
expressed her own disappointment and that she meant to remind him of
his broken promises to take a house in Mayfair for the season and to
sacrifice his own pleasures at least for a few brief weeks.
"I am poor enough," he said, "to want all the money I can get. This
old place costs a fortune to keep up. I mean to do big things here by
and by, and twenty thousand won't be too much when they are done.
Besides, it is not money that we men run after, but the gratification
of our own vanity in getting it. The claims on this estate are heavy
and they have to be met quickly if it is to be cleared. I backed my
own opinion about this mine against the biggest house in Germany and I
am coming out top all the time. If it put fifty thousand a year into
my pocket, who'll benefit by it but you? Think of that when you talk
about the little crowd of paupers you want to see in London. Money's
money. And precious glad some of them would be to see the color of it."
Evelyn did not contradict him. She was too weary of the subject to
wish to revive it. Imitating others, whose youth had been one of far
from splendid poverty, the Earl permitted money to become the guiding
principle of his life in the exact ratio of its acquisition. An
exceedingly rich man when he inherited the bankrupt estates of the
Melbournes, each year found a waning of his natural generosity, a
growth of unaccustomed meanness, and a diligence in the quest of
fortune which the circumstances made almost pathetic. On her part,
Evelyn was perfectly well aware that he would give no parties at the
Hall this year, would not take her to Trouville, nor visit the
Mediterranean in the winter. Each season found its own excuses for
delay. The wretched mine in Tuscany was a very godsend when
postponements of any kind troubled the Earl for a good excuse.
"I am glad you are going to do something to the Hall," she said
evasively; "at least there will be the painters' society to enjoy.
After that I suppose I may go to Dieppe, as Aunt Anne wishes. It will
be quite a dissipation--under the circumstances."
He looked at her rather sharply.
"So you went to London after all?" he said. "I thought you meant to
put it off?"
"To put it off! That would have been a familiar task. I live to put
things off. There is no one in all Derbyshire who has so many excuses
to make as I have."
"My dear Evelyn, you know perfectly well why I dislike all this kind of
thing."
"Indeed, I know nothing, except that you dislike it. This is the third
year that you promised to take me to London and have disappointed me.
If there is any reason that keeps us prisoners when others are free,
would you not wish me to know of it? I am your daughter, and surely,
father, you can speak to me of this."
"My dear little Evelyn," he said, hiding his embarrassment as well as
might be, "you are talking the greatest nonsense in the world. If you
want to go to London, you shall go to-morrow. Take a house, a flat, an
hotel, anything you like--only don't ask me to go with you. I am past
all that sort of thing. A city stifles me; the fools I find in it make
me angry. If you like them, go and see them. I have been alone enough
in my life not to mind very much being alone again."
This quasi-appeal to her pity was his invariable argument. He would
have been embarrassed had she accepted his proposals; but he knew full
well that she would not accept them. And so he made them with a
generosity which cost him nothing but a momentary tremor of doubt lest
her answer should disappoint him.
"Oh," she said, rising from the table and going to the window to look
across the park, "I am satiated with gayety--and Aunt Anne is a very
paragon of giddiness. We went to bed every night at half-past nine and
got up at six; and, of course, Richmond is quite Mayfair when you learn
to know it."
The Earl, rising also, would have laughed it off, despite the
ridiculous nature of the effort.
"Poor old Anne is not as young as she was," he exclaimed lightly. "I
dare say you found her a little tiresome. Well, I suppose you came
home when you were tired of it?"
"Yes," said Evelyn, without turning round, "I came home when I was
tired of it."
He could not see the deep blush upon her cheeks, nor would he have
understood it had he done so. Indeed, she was truthful so far as the
letter of the truth went. A visit to Richmond had been the excuse
which carried her from Melbourne Hall. Three dreary days she had spent
in a prim house overlooking the Thames. The home of the skittish Aunt
Anne, whose sixty years did not forbid her still to look out, like
Sister Mary, for an heroic "Him" upon her horizon. From Richmond,
Evelyn had gone to the Carlton Theatre; and now, for an instant, even
here in her own home, the Etta Romney could return to delight in her
adventure.
What a sensation had attended her disappearance from London? Safely
guarded in her jewel-case upstairs were cuttings from the newspapers of
the days succeeding that mad flight. Be sure that the great Charles
Izard made the most of his misfortune. He had believed that Etta
Romney left him at the bidding of caprice and at the voice of caprice
would return to him again. His shrewd mind instantly perceived that
the truth would best serve him on this occasion; and though he was not
on very good terms with truth, the quarrel was soon patched up. To all
the reporters he told the full story of this captivating romance.
"The girl came to me from nowhere," he said frankly, "and where she has
gone God knows. I gave her a hearing because she wrote me the
cleverest letter I have read for many a long day. Her home was in
Derbyshire, and this was a Derbyshire play. I saw her act one scene in
my theatre and said that she was 'bully.' She had the best send off I
can remember. Then comes the night when I am strung up on my own hook.
She expresses her trunks and quits. About that I know as much as you
do. Her traps were left at St. Pancras station, and a letter says that
she has given up the theatre. Well, I don't believe it. A girl who
can act like that will never give up the theatre. In one month or six
she'll be starring in my plays. She cannot help herself; she's got to
do it."
Nothing whets the public's appetite so surely as curiosity; and all
London had grown curious about Etta Romney. Discerning men, who had
but half-praised her when she first appeared, hastened to declare that
her loss was irreparable. Less responsible journals gave coherent
accounts of the whole business, written in the back office by gentlemen
who knew nothing whatever about it. The affair, at first but a nine
days' wonder, became a standing headline when the editor of a popular
newspaper boldly offered a hundred guineas for the discovery of Etta
Romney's whereabouts.
Etta read all about this in the brief days that intervened between her
own return and her father's. While the woman in her rejoiced at the
success they spoke of, the child failed to perceive the danger of this
undue publicity or to guard in any way against it. It is true that she
had been very much alarmed upon the night she fled from London; but as
the weeks went by and neither word nor message reached her from Count
Odin, or indeed from any of the friends she had made at the theatre, a
new sense of security came to her and compelled her to delight in what
appeared to be the final success of her escapade. Surely now her
father would remain in ignorance of it to the end, she argued. She
believed that it would be so, though whether the Etta Romney within her
were really dead, she did not dare to say.
The spirit of her mad desire; the passionate longing for liberty and
triumph before the world; the knowledge of the rare gifts she possessed
and of the future they might win for her, were these to be forever shut
behind the gates of her silent house, however beautiful that house
might be? She knew not. The future alone could tell her whither the
voice of her destiny would call her.