He was absent for full three weeks, and arrived with his friends at the
Gare de Lyon early one morning of September. Narramore and the
architect delayed only for a meal, and pursued their journey homeward;
Hilliard returned to his old quarters despatched a post-card asking Eve
and Patty to dine with him that evening, and thereupon went to bed,
where for some eight hours he slept the sleep of healthy fatigue.
The place he had appointed for meeting with the girls was at the foot
of the Boulevard St. Michel. Eve came alone.
"And where's Patty?" he asked, grasping her hand heartily in return for
the smile of unfeigned pleasure with which she welcomed him.
"Ah, where indeed? Getting near to Charing Cross by now, I think."
"She has gone back?"
"Went this very morning, before I had your card--let us get out of the
way of people. She has been dreadfully home-sick. About a fortnight ago
a mysterious letter came for her she hid it away from me. A few days
after another came, and she shut herself up for a long time, and when
she came out again I saw she had been crying. Then we talked it over.
She had written to Mr. Dally and got an answer that made her miserable;
that was the _first_ letter. She wrote again, and had a reply that made
her still more wretched; and that was the _second_. Two or three more
came, and yesterday she could bear it no longer."
"Then she has gone home to make it up with him?"
"Of course. He declared that she has utterly lost her character and
that no honest man could have anything more to say to her! I shouldn't
wonder if they are married in a few weeks' time."
Hilliard laughed light-heartedly.
"I was to beg you on my knees to forgive her," pursued Eve. "But I
can't very well do that in the middle of the street, can I? Really, she
thinks she has behaved disgracefully to you. She wouldn't write a
letter--she was ashamed. 'Tell him to forget all about me!' she kept
saying."
"Good little girl! And what sort of a husband will this fellow Dally
make her?"
"No worse than husbands in general, I dare say--but how well you look!
How you must have been enjoying yourself!"
"I can say exactly the same about you!"
"Oh, but you are sunburnt, and look quite a different man!"
"And you have an exquisite colour in your cheeks, and eyes twice as
bright as they used to be; and one would think you had never known a
care."
"I feel almost like that," said Eve, laughing.
He tried to meet her eyes; she eluded him.
"I have an Alpine hunger; where shall we dine?"
The point called for no long discussion, and presently they were seated
in the cool restaurant. Whilst he nibbled an olive, Hilliard ran over
the story of his Swiss tour.
"If only _you_ had been there! It was the one thing lacking."
"You wouldn't have enjoyed yourself half so much. You amused me by your
description of Mr. Narramore, in the letter from Geneva."
"The laziest rascal born! But the best-tempered, the easiest to live
with. A thoroughly good fellow; I like him better than ever. Of course
he is improved by coming in for money--who wouldn't be, that has any
good in him at all? But it amazes me that he can be content to go back
to Birmingham and his brass bedsteads. Sheer lack of energy, I suppose.
He'll grow dreadfully fat, I fear, and by when he becomes really a rich
man--it's awful to think of."
Eve asked many questions about Narramore; his image gave mirthful
occupation to her fancy. The dinner went merrily on, and when the black
coffee was set before them:
"Why not have it outside?" said Eve. "You would like to smoke, I know."
Hilliard assented, and they seated themselves under the awning. The
boulevard glowed in a golden light of sunset; the sound of its traffic
was subdued to a lulling rhythm.
"There's a month yet before the leaves will begin to fall," murmured
the young man, when he had smoked awhile in silence.
"Yes," was the answer. "I shall be glad to have a little summer still
in Birmingham."
"Do you wish to go?"
"I shall go to-morrow, or the day after," Eve replied quietly.
Then again there came silence.
"Something has been proposed to me," said Hilliard, at length, leaning
forward with his elbows upon the table. "I mentioned that our friend
Birching is an architect. He's in partnership with his brother, a much
older man. Well, they nave offered to take me into their office if I
pay a premium of fifty guineas. As soon as I can qualify myself to be
of use to them, they'll give me a salary. And I shall have the chance
of eventually doing much better than I ever could at the old grind,
where, in fact, I had no prospect whatever."
"That's very good news," Eve remarked, gazing across the street.
"You think I ought to accept?"
"I suppose you can pay the fifty guineas, and still leave yourself
enough to live upon?"
"Enough till I earn something," Hilliard answered with a smile.
"Then I should think there's no doubt."
"The question is this--are you perfectly willing to go back to
Birmingham?"
"I'm _anxious_ to go."
"You feel quite restored to health?"
"I was never so well in my life."
Hilliard looked into her face, and could easily believe that she spoke
the truth. His memory would no longer recall the photograph in Mrs.
Brewer's album; the living Eve, with her progressive changes of
countenance, had obliterated that pale image of her bygone self. He saw
her now as a beautiful woman, mysterious to him still in many respects,
yet familiar as though they had been friends for years.
"Then, whatever life is before me," he said. "I shall have done _one_
thing that is worth doing."
"Perhaps--if everyone's life is worth saving," Eve answered in a voice
just audible.
"Everyone's is not; but yours was."
Two men who had been sitting not far from them rose and walked away. As
if more at her ease for this secession, Eve looked at her companion,
and said in a tone of intimacy:
"How I must have puzzled you when you first saw me in London!"
He answered softly:
"To be sure you did. And the thought of it puzzles me still."
"Oh, but can't you understand? No; of course you can't--I have told you
so little. Just give me an idea of what sort of person you expected to
find."
"Yes, I will. Judging from your portrait, and from what I was told of
you, I looked for a sad, solitary, hard-working girl--rather poorly
dressed--taking no pleasure--going much to chapel--shrinking from the
ordinary world."
"And you felt disappointed?"
"At first, yes; or, rather, bewildered--utterly unable to understand
you."
"You are disappointed still?" she asked.
"I wouldn't have you anything but what you are."
"Still, that other girl was the one you _wished_ to meet."
"Yes, before I had seen you. It was the sort of resemblance between her
life and my own. I thought of sympathy between us. And the face of the
portrait--but I see better things in the face that is looking at me
now."
"Don't be quite sure of that--yes, perhaps. It's better to be healthy,
and enjoy life, than broken-spirited and hopeless. The strange thing is
that you were right--you fancied me just the kind of a girl I was: sad
and solitary, and shrinking from people--true enough. And I went to
chapel, and got comfort from it--as I hope to do again. Don't think
that I have no religion. But I was so unhealthy, and suffered so in
every way. Work and anxiety without cease, from when I was twelve years
old. You know all about my father? If I hadn't been clever at figures,
what would have become of me? I should have drudged at some wretched
occupation until the work and the misery of everything killed me."
Hilliard listened intently, his eyes never stirring from her face.
"The change in me began when father came back to us, and I began to
feel my freedom. Then I wanted to get away, and to live by myself. I
thought of London--I've told you how much I always thought of
London--but I hadn't the courage to go there. In Birmingham I began to
change my old habits; but more in what I thought than what I did. I
wished to enjoy myself like other girls, but I couldn't. For one thing,
I thought it wicked; and then I was so afraid of spending a penny--I
had so often known what it was to be in want of a copper to buy food.
So I lived quite alone; sat in my room every evening and read books.
You could hardly believe what a number of books I read in that year.
Sometimes I didn't go to bed till two or three o'clock."
"What sort of books?"
"I got them from the Free Library--books of all kinds; not only novels.
I've never been particularly fond of novels; they always made me feel
my own lot all the harder. I never could understand what people mean
when they say that reading novels takes them 'out of themselves.' It
was never so with me. I liked travels and lives of people, and books
about the stars. Why do you laugh?"
"You escaped from yourself _there_, at all events."
"At last I saw an advertisement in a newspaper--a London paper in the
reading-room--which I was tempted to answer; and I got an engagement in
London. When the time came for starting I was so afraid and
low-spirited that I all but gave it up. I should have done, if I could
have known what was before me. The first year in London was all
loneliness and ill-health. I didn't make a friend, and I starved
myself, all to save money. Out of my pound a week I saved several
shillings--just because it was the habit of my whole life to pinch and
pare and deny myself. I was obliged to dress decently, and that came
out of my food. It's certain I must have a very good constitution to
have gone through all that and be as well as I am to-day."
"It will never come again," said Hilliard.
"How can I be sure of that? I told you once before that I'm often in
dread of the future. It would be ever so much worse, after knowing what
it means to enjoy one's life. How do people feel who are quite sure
they can never want as long as they live? I have tried to imagine it,
but I can't; it would be too wonderful."
"You may know it some day."
Eve reflected.
"It was Patty Ringrose," she continued, "who taught me to take life
more easily. I was astonished to find how much enjoyment she could get
out of an hour or two of liberty, with sixpence to spend. She did me
good by laughing at me, and in the end I astonished _her_. Wasn't it
natural that I should be reckless as soon as I got the chance?"
"I begin to understand."
"The chance came in this way. One Sunday morning I went by myself to
Hampstead, and as I was wandering about on the Heath I kicked against
something. It was a cash-box, which I saw couldn't have been lying
there very long. I found it had been broken open, and inside it were a
lot of letters--old letters in envelopes; nothing else. The addresses
on the envelopes were all the same--to a gentleman living at Hampstead.
I thought the best I could do was to go and inquire for this address;
and I found it, and rang the door-bell. When I told the servant what I
wanted--it was a large house--she asked me to come in, and after I had
waited a little she took me into a library, where a gentleman was
sitting. I had to answer a good many questions, and the man talked
rather gruffly to me. When he had made a note of my name and where I
lived, he said that I should hear from him, and so I went away. Of
course I hoped to have a reward, but for two or three days I heard
nothing; then, when I was at business, someone asked to see me--a man I
didn't know. He said he had come from Mr. So and So, the gentleman at
Hampstead, and had brought something for me--four five-pound notes. The
cash-box had been stolen by someone, with other things, the night
before I found it, and the letters in it, which disappointed the thief,
had a great value for their owner. All sorts of inquiries had been made
about me and no doubt I very nearly got into the hands of the police,
but it was all right, and I had twenty pounds reward. Think! twenty
pounds!"
Hilliard nodded.
"I told no one about it--not even Patty. And I put the money into the
Post Office savings bank. I meant it to stay there till I might be in
need; but I thought of it day and night. And only a fortnight after, my
employers shut up their place of business, and I had nothing to do. All
one night I lay awake, and when I got up in the morning I felt as if I
was no longer my old self. I saw everything in a different way--felt
altogether changed. I had made up my mind not to look for a new place,
but to take my money out of the Post Office--I had more than
twenty-five pounds there altogether--and spend it for my pleasure. It
was just as if something had enraged me, and I was bent on avenging
myself. All that day I walked about the town, looking at shops, and
thinking what I should like to buy: but I only spent a shilling or two,
for meals. The next day I bought some new clothing. The day after that
I took Patty to the theatre, and astonished her by my extravagance; but
I gave her no explanation, and to this day she doesn't understand how I
got my money. In a sort of way, I _did_ enjoy myself. For one thing, I
took a subscription at Mudie's, and began to read once more. You can't
think how it pleased me to get my books--new books--where rich people
do. I changed a volume about every other day--I had so many hours I
didn't know what to do with. Patty was the only friend I had made, so I
took her about with me whenever she could get away in the evening."
"Yet never once dined at a restaurant," remarked Hilliard, laughing.
"There's the difference between man and woman."
"My ideas of extravagance were very modest, after all."
Hilliard, fingering his coffee-cup, said in a lower voice:
"Yet you haven't told me everything."
Eve looked away, and kept silence.
"By the time I met you"--he spoke in his ordinary tone--"you had begun
to grow tired of it."
"Yes--and----" She rose. "We won't sit here any longer."
When they had walked for a few minutes:
"How long shall you stay in Paris?" she asked.
"Won't you let me travel with you?"
"I do whatever you wish," Eve answered simply.