Evelyn arrived in London on a dark morning of early November, having
travelled all night; but she scarcely so much as thought of her fatigue,
and still less of the heavy yellow atmosphere, as she drove to the hotel
where she had lived with her husband on their first arrival in England,
when she knew nothing of the difficulties that were to rise like lions
in her way. It had been June then, and everything was fresh and fair.
And though even then she had thought with apprehension of the children,
wondering whether they would receive her with prejudice, or what she
could do to disarm opposition, no thought of anything more serious than
the little contrarieties of household intercourse had ever come into her
mind. What floods of experience, unthought of, unexpected, had come upon
her since that time. Now she had learned to know herself and others, to
realize a hundred dangers and difficulties which never had appeared upon
her horizon before. Nothing that had happened in her previous life could
have made it seem possible to her that she should come back again alone
to London, on a sort of detective enterprise in the interests of her
husband’s son--who did not love, but distrusted and feared her, though
she had thus dared the very real dangers of her husband’s displeasure
and her own uneasy sense of unfitness and incapacity, on his behalf. She
had thought and thought during the long sleepless night, turning the
matter over in every possible view; sometimes appalled at her own
hardihood in making such a venture; sometimes feeling that it was the
only course she could have pursued; sometimes with a cold shade of
self-distrust, asking herself how she could have undertaken it at all,
how she could hope to carry it out. And, unfortunately, the more Evelyn
thought, the stronger became this latter sentiment: how she was to find
Eddy; how she was to begin such an inquiry; how she could put it to him
in so many words that it was he who was guilty and not Archie. She had
not entered with herself into these details until she had committed
herself to this attempt. The question before had been, should she do it?
should she take this chance of enlightenment? should she try at least
what seemed the only way of attaining any certainty? It had seemed to
her before she started, that she had but to be brought face to face with
Eddy, to appeal to him and his better impulses in order to know. “If you
can throw any light upon it,” she had meant to say; “if you know
anything!” And it did not occur to her that he would hesitate to reply.
He was lazy, light, unsettled, uncertain--badly trained, poor boy,
without much moral sense, not careful to discriminate between right and
wrong; but yet at the bottom of all a gentleman, with an instinctive
sense of loyalty and truth. The difficulty at first was merely that of
going, finding him, venturing upon the solitary journey, acting in her
husband’s absence, without his knowledge: all of them very appalling
things--for she had never been accustomed to act for herself in any
practical emergency, although well enough accustomed to passive
endurance of things she could not mend. The sudden sense that here was a
thing which perhaps she could mend by sudden action had at first taken
away her breath. It had seemed to her inexperience a mighty thing to do,
to start off to London all by herself in James’s absence, as if she were
running away. It looked like waiting till he was gone, and then taking
advantage! She laughed at the suggestion, yet held her breath at the
strange risk. He might think--and yet more, the servants might think,
who were so apt to find out everything, and a great deal more than there
was to find out. These conflicting thoughts had kept her mind in a
ferment of anxiety, until she had actually taken that great step and
started. And then they had dropped suddenly and given place to a new
kind of trouble.
How was she to bring Eddy Saumarez to the bar, to put him to the
question, to ask him to incriminate himself or his friends, to
demand--What do you know? This new side of the matter rose up as soon as
she had fairly begun her journey and caught her by the throat. The face
of Eddy rose before her in the partial darkness behind the veiled lamp
of the compartment in which she travelled alone. Oh not an easy face to
confront, to over-awe, to reach the meaning of! A face that could pucker
into humorous lines, that could put on veils of assumed incomprehension,
that could look satirically amused, or innocently unconscious, or
wildly merry, as it pleased! “What could make you think, dear Mrs.
Rowland, that I knew anything?” he would say; or, “It is too delightful
that you should have such an opinion of my insight;” or, perhaps, “You
know I never learned the very alphabet of Archie, and how can I tell
what he would do.” Such expressions she had heard from him often on
other subjects, upon which he could baffle her smilingly, looking in her
face all the time. And how could she hope to keep him to the point now,
to bring him to a serious answer, to convince him of the importance of
the position and the need there was that he should speak? In the middle
of the journey her courage had so evaporated that she had almost
determined to return again without making this unhopeful attempt. But
there are always as many, or perhaps more, difficulties in the way of
going back than there are in going forward, and Evelyn felt that she had
committed herself too much to make it possible that she should go back.
She drove to the hotel, and had her bath and changed her dress, and
swallowed hurriedly that cup of tea which is the only sustenance
possible in a moment of anxiety to so many women. And then she walked
from the hotel to the insignificant fashionable street in which the
house of Mr. Saumarez was. It was a small house, though the locality was
irreproachable, and the blinds of the first floor were all carefully
drawn down, though there were indications of life in the other parts.
Evelyn’s knock was answered after a considerable interval by the old
woman, caretaker or charwoman, who was left in charge when “the family”
were absent. “Mr. Edward?” she said; “Mr. Eddy?--yes’m, he’s at ‘ome;
but he’s not up yet, and won’t be this three or four hours.”
“Oh!” Evelyn was so startled in her breathless expectancy that she could
scarcely answer this, which was half a disappointment and more than half
a relief. There are moments when a brief postponement, even of the thing
we most desire, is a certain ease to the strained faculties. She asked
at what time Eddy would be visible and went away, turning towards
Kensington Gardens, where she thought she might be able to spend the
time until she must return. The park, of course, was empty, and though
Kensington Gardens had still that cheerful number of comers and goers,
which marks the vicinity of a district in which people live the whole
year round, it was not otherwise than a place of “retired leisure” as it
generally is. She walked up and down under the tall, bare trees, which
stood about like ghosts in the yellow atmosphere, and sat down here and
there and waited, looking at her watch from time to time, looking at the
groups of children, and the old people and young girls who were taking
their morning walk, and who looked at her with not much less curiosity
than a stranger unknown calls forth in a village. She was not one of the
_habitués_, and perhaps, she thought, some sense of the tumult in her
soul might have stolen into the calm foggy air around her, and startled
the quiet promenaders with a consciousness of an uneasy spirit in their
midst. She would not have been remarked in the adjoining park, where
uneasy spirits abound, and all kinds of strange meetings, interviews,
and revolutions take place. When she had waited as she thought long
enough, she went back again to Blank Street. “Oh, it’s you again, Miss,”
said the old woman. “Master Edward’s gone--I forgot to tell him as some
one had been here; and he went out in a hurry, for he was going out to
‘is breakfast. I’m sure, Miss, I’m very sorry I forgot; but he wouldn’t
have paid no attention, he was in such a hurry to get away.”
Evelyn pressed her hands tightly together, as if she had been pressing
her heart between them. She ceased to feel the relief: the sickening
suspense and delay made the light for a moment swim in her eyes.
“I am very anxious to see him,” she said. “At what time will he return?”
“Oh, Miss, I can’t tell,” said the old woman. “Sometimes he’ll come in
to dress for dinner, sometimes not. I does for them in other ways, but
not cooking, except just a cup of tea.”
“At what time,” said Evelyn; “six or seven? tell me! I am very anxious
to see him.”
“Well, Miss, it’s just a chance,” the caretaker said.
And with this she was dismissed to wait the live-long day, with nothing
to do, in that forced inaction which is the most miserable of all
things. I do not know a more dreadful ordeal to go through than to go to
a strange place upon one special mission, which is your only errand
there, and not to be able to accomplish it, and to have a whole dreary
day to get over in forced patience, until you can try again. Mrs.
Rowland went back to the hotel, and spent the greater part of the day
staring through the window, with some sort of hope that she might see
Eddy’s face, and be able to rush after him, and stop him in the midst of
the crowd. At six o’clock she went back, and at seven, and at eight,
walking about and about in the intervals, so as to keep the door in
sight: but nobody came. It was not any attempt on Eddy’s part to elude
her, for he did not know anything about her. He did not come home on
that evening to dine, that was all. The next day she waited until a
later hour before she went. Alas! he had gone out earlier on that
particular morning! The old woman had said that a lady from Scotland had
been inquiring for him; but he had flung away with a contemptuous outcry
“Confound all ladies from Scotland!” which Mrs. Jones was too polite to
repeat. In the evening Evelyn had no better luck; but she left her card
with an entreaty pencilled upon it that he would come to see her in her
hotel, and sat through the evening watching for every step. But no one
came. The third day was the day on which she ought to have gone home;
but it was impossible to go away now leaving this quest unaccomplished,
whatever might happen. She wrote a hurried letter to her husband
explaining something, though not all, and with a determined resolve that
this day should not pass in the same inactivity, went out again. The old
woman received her like an old acquaintance. “He’s in, Miss, but he’s in
bed,” she said. Evelyn stepped quickly into the house. “I must see him,”
she said. “Lawks, Miss!” said the woman, “you won’t go up to a young
gentleman in his bedroom.” Evelyn only repeated “I must must see him.”
She did not perceive an air of greater bustle and movement about the
house. What was it to her who was there, if she could but see Eddy?
“My good woman,” she said, “my business is very important. Mr. Saumarez
has just left my house in the country, and something has happened that
may hurt him--that may most seriously hurt him. Show me where his room
is: I will take the responsibility on myself.”
“Oh, Miss, it isn’t my place to show in a lady. I couldn’t do it; I
daren’t do it: and you’re too nice and too respectable for such a
thing--oh, lady!” cried the old woman, as the visitor went on passing
her. Evelyn met a man-servant on the stairs with a cup of soup in his
hand. Except that he was a servant, and in a dark livery, she made no
other note in respect to him. She said in the calm of the excitement
which had now taken hold of her like a giant, “Tell me which is Mr.
Edward’s room?”
“Mr. Edward’s room?--he is not up, madam,” said the man.
“It does not matter; I must see him--which is his room?”
She was so determined that she pushed past him, quite pale, and with a
desperation which the man, more experienced than the old charwoman,
recognised. He followed her upstairs, and opened a door. “If you will go
in there, I will send him to you.” It was a small sitting-room, Eddy’s
no doubt, from the pipes and foils and riding-whips and other mannish
boyish articles that hung on the walls. Evelyn would have turned back
when she saw that he was not there. “I am not to be foiled,” she said;
“I must see him; take me to his room, or else I will find it for
myself!”
“Ma’am,” said the man, “I know you’re a lady and a friend of the family.
I have seen you before. I give you my word I’ll bring him to you, if
you’ll wait here.”
She sat down and waited close by the open door. She was determined that
he should not escape her, whatever his desire might be. The man, after a
vain attempt to close the door upon her, opened the next door and went
in. She heard the blinds drawn up, something said softly, then an
astonished cry. At all events, whatever might come of it, she had at
least secured her opportunity at last.
It was half-an-hour, however, before, after many movements and commotion
in the next room, Eddy came forth hurried and breathless, with a face
that looked old and wan in the light of the morning, a light he was not
much accustomed to face. Poor little pale, old-young face, something
between the shrivelled countenance of an old man and that of a pinched,
unwholesome child! to think that he should not yet be of age, and yet
wear that look: but Mrs. Rowland had no time for such reflections. She
rose up quickly, just within the open door, and put out an eager hand.
He might even now have escaped her, she felt, had she not been standing
there, where he was obliged to pass; and his tremor and anxiety at the
sight of her were evident. He cried, “Mrs. Rowland!” letting fall a book
which was in his hand.
“Yes; I have come down direct from Scotland to speak to you. I have been
three days trying to see you.” She had scarcely breath enough to say so
many words.
“The old woman,” said Eddy, “told me something about a lady from
Scotland; but I thought it bosh; she is such an old fool. I did not
flatter myself there was any lady in Scotland who would take the trouble
to come after me; and you, Mrs. Rowland----”
“You did not think of seeing me? Can you imagine no reason why I should
come?” she said.
To Evelyn’s astonishment--for her enigmatical question had really been
put at pure hazard--Eddy’s sallow and careworn face flushed over with a
violent red, and then became more than sallow, cadaverous, and a cold
moisture came out upon his forehead.
“Let me shut the door,” he said, “it’s cold; and can I order you
anything: a cup of tea--breakfast? Ah!” he said with a laugh, “of course
you’ve breakfasted hours ago; but I’m sure you will not mind if I order
my tea: one wants it in a morning when one has been late overnight.”
“You look--as if you had been very late overnight, Eddy.”
“Oh, I acknowledge I was; who denies it?” said Eddy, with again an
attempt at a laugh. “It’s the nature of the beast: one minds one’s
manners, at a place like Rosmore; but in town one can’t help one’s self,
not even when town’s out of town, and it’s only the _debris_ that are
left.”
“You would have done better to stay at Rosmore,” she said gently; “you
do not look the same person.”
“I am not the same person. Who would not be better there?” he said. And
here he burst into an uneasy laugh. “You have not come at this hour in
the morning, and dragged an unlucky wretch out of bed, only that we
should exchange compliments about Rosmore?”
“No, indeed. I have a little history to give you, Eddy, and an appeal to
make. You know, or you divined, I cannot tell which, something of what
happened before you left?”
“The night of the ball?--oh I divined: that is to say, I saw. A man does
not arrive in hot haste at nearly midnight, when a ball is going on, and
demand the master of the house; and the master of the house does not
send in equal haste for his son, who is closeted with him for a long
time, then comes out looking conscious and distracted, and finally
disappears, without the instructed spectator forming an idea that
something must have happened. I am a very instructed spectator, Mrs.
Rowland. I have seen various things of the kind. The sons have
disappeared for shorter or longer times, and the fathers have remained
masters of the field. Here, Rogers, put it on this little table, and
take away those things to eat. I want nothing but some tea.”
There was a moment’s pause, during which the little table was covered
with a shining white polished cloth, which reflected the fire in a
surface made semi-transparent by starch and borax and a glittering
silver tea-pot placed upon it; which made a still warmer reflection in
the foggy yellow of the morning air. Eddy poured himself out his tea
with his usual air of easy composure, a little overdone. But this Mrs.
Rowland was not herself of a sufficiently easy mind to see.
“Eddy,” she said, “I have been told--I don’t know how to say it to you.”
It had never till this moment occurred to her how difficult it would be
to say, nor did she even know what she meant to imply, or how he could
be connected with the matter. “I have been told,” she repeated rather
breathlessly, “that you, perhaps, might know something of--that in the
dreadful position of affairs I might ask--you--”
“Ask me--what?” he said with a smile. The corners of his mouth trembled
a little. He spilt the cream which he was pouring into his tea, but she
did not observe these incidents, and indeed what could they have had to
do with the question--but it was no question--which she asked? “Of
course, if I can tell you anything, Mrs. Rowland, or throw any
light--But tell me first. Ask me--what?”
She gazed at him a moment, and then poor Evelyn acknowledged her own
impotence by a sudden burst of tears. “I have come down from Scotland,”
she said, “without my husband’s knowledge. I have wandered to and
fro--this is now the third day--trying to see you, Eddy. I am worn out,
and my nerves have gone all wrong. I can’t be sure of the step I am
taking, if I am mistaken or not. The only thing I can do is to ask you
simply--do you know anything about it? I don’t know what. I have nothing
clear in my head, only a sort of despair of making anything of it, ever.
I was told that you might know something--that you might help me. If
you can, for God’s sake do it Eddy! I will be grateful to you all my
life.”
He spilt a little of his tea as he carried it to his lips. After all,
though nothing can be so hardened as youth, nothing is at the same time
so soft. Eddy was not invulnerable as some people of his age, as Marion,
for instance, appeared to be. He had never in his life been subjected to
this sort of appeal. A young man who has a mother and other anxious
friends is, perhaps, subjected to it over much, and at last comes to
regard the appeal to his emotional nature--the argument against going
wrong, that it will break some one else’s heart--as a bore rather than a
touching plea. But Eddy, who had never had any mother, and to whom no
one had ever appealed thus, was moved--more than he could have imagined
it possible that he should be moved. He put down his tea-cup with a
trembling hand. He could not look in the face of the woman who had been
so kind to him, and who looked at him with the utmost eloquence of which
eyes were capable, eyes full of emotion and of tears, to back up her
words. He did not know what reply to make to her. He had been already
mightily shaken by the success of that great _coup_ of his. When an
error or crime is a failure, the conscience is quiet: we do not take
upon ourselves the guilt of a thing by which we have gained nothing; but
when, as in the present case, it succeeds perfectly, then the
inexperienced spirit trembles. Eddy was only at this stage. He had
received his proportion of the money, and he had still the remains of
the hundred-and-fifty pounds which Archie had given him. Never had he
known what it was to have so much in his pockets. He had been throwing
it away in handfuls, as was natural, and as the excitement lessened, the
compunction grew. It was not so much compunction, as it was a horrible
sense of the insignificant value of a thing for which he had risked so
much. He had, indeed, freed himself from the money-lender’s hands, and
was no longer in his power; yet never in his life would he be sure that
he was not in somebody’s power. And presently the money, the curse, and
the payment of his act, would be exhausted, and he no better, how much
worse than before! These thoughts had been in Eddy’s mind before this
appeal was made to him. He had banished them, but they were ever waiting
at his door, ready to catch him at an unguarded moment. And now here was
this lady, this dear woman who had been kind to him! He could not
swallow that tea, much as he wanted it or some restorative. He set it
down again with a trembling hand. That had happened to Eddy, which some
of the old Puritans meant when they described Satan as flinging so big a
stone at the head of his victim, that it recoiled upon himself.
“Mrs. Rowland,” he said, “we are speaking parables, and though we both
know something, we don’t understand what we each know. Will you tell me
simply what has happened to Archie, and why? I guessed at it. I might
not be right in my guess. Tell me as if I had never heard anything of
it, and did not know.”
Evelyn dried her eyes, and recovered her calm. She obeyed him literally
without a word of preface. “On the night of the ball a messenger
arrived from the bank, bringing with him a cheque, purporting to be my
husband’s, for a thousand pounds. It was a forged cheque.”
Eddy, in spite of himself, shivered as if with a sudden chill. He put
his hands up to his eyes. It might have been merely a gesture of wonder
and dismay.
“Mr. Rowland, I think wrongly, had been suspicious and uneasy about
Archie before. He sent for him, and he was the more angry that Archie
could not come till all the guests were gone. He held out the cheque to
his son, and accused him of having done it.”
Eddy withdrew his hands from his face and looked up. “Which he did not,
which he never did, which he was not capable of,” he cried quickly.
“Oh Eddy, God bless you! I knew you would say so. And so did I--from the
bottom of my heart.”
“He was not,” cried Eddy, with a sort of hysterical laugh, “clever
enough--not half! he had not got it in him--nor bold enough--a fellow
like that! He could not have done it if he had tried.”
“Oh Eddy! but that was not my husband’s view. Archie was so astonished
at first that he thought it something to laugh at. And then he was
angry, furious, as passionate as his father. And then--he shook the dust
from off his feet, as the Bible says, and left the house. And God knows
if he will ever come back. Never, I think, till his innocence is proved.
And his father--he is inexorable, he thinks, but he is very unhappy.
Eddy!”
The tone of appeal in that last word was indescribable. She raised her
voice a little and her eyes, and looked at him. And Eddy, unaccustomed,
could not bear the look in those eyes.
“You speak of proving his innocence,” he said; “was there any proof of
his guilt?”
“Nothing: but that his handwriting is like his father’s.”
“And do you know,” said Eddy looking away, “have you found out to whom,
for instance, it was paid?”
“My husband,” said Evelyn, “is a very proud man. His honour is his life.
He accepted the cheque, though he knew at once what it was. He would
allow no questions. Therefore, it is impossible to inquire, to get any
particulars. And the plan he devised to serve Archie will be his ruin.
Imagine such a thing! We dare not ask lest he should be suspected; and
so he must lie under suspicion all his life!”
“Oh, not so bad as that--fathers are not so bad as that: he will forgive
him.”
“But he will never ask to be forgiven--nor accept forgiveness; how
should he, being innocent?” said Evelyn.
“I should not be so particular,” said Eddy, with a momentary gleam of
humour in his eyes. He could not be serious for long together without
some such relief. “And so Mr. Rowland has got the cheque,” he said;
then, after a pause, “And may I ask, dear Mrs. Rowland, who was so kind
as to suggest that you should ask me?”
“Marion for one: I can’t tell why,” Evelyn said.
(“Oh,” Eddy said within himself, with another twinkle in his eyes, “I
owe you one for that, my little May.”)
“And a very different person--a man whom perhaps you scarcely know, who
suggested that your friend Johnson----”
“Oh, my friend Johnson! the beast--to call that fellow my friend!” cried
Eddy in a more audible parenthesis.
“Eddy,” said Evelyn gravely, “in that respect you were very much to
blame.”
“Oh, in every respect I am much to blame!” cried the young man,
springing from his chair. The vehemence of his motion was such that
Evelyn had to put up her hand to save the table against which he kicked
in his rapid movement. He went across the room, and stood with his back
to her, his shoulders up to his ears, his hands in his pockets, absorbed
in his thoughts. And they were not pleasant thoughts: and they ranged
over the widest space, the whole course of the future through which that
cloud might ever be ready to fall: the horror of the consequences should
they overtake him, the ruin of name and fame, the scandal and the
catastrophe. It was not a thing which could be lived down, or which
people could forget. All those arguments which are of so little use in
the face of temptation, are of tremendous force when the deed is done,
and nothing remains but the penalty to pay. His lively, quick
intelligence, roused to rapid action, made its calculations with
lightning speed: not unmoved by the thought of Archie in the strange
jumble of selfish and unselfish motives--not untouched by the misery
which had been produced on all sides.
He turned round again at the end of a few minutes, which seemed to
Evelyn like so many years.
“Mr. Rowland has the cheque?” he said. “Would he give it to you, and
could you burn it?”
“Eddy?”
“Do you think I am going out of my senses? But I am not. If he will give
you the cheque and let you burn it, I will--clear it all up,” said Eddy
with a gasp; “and make Archie’s innocence as clear as the day.”
“Eddy! Eddy!”
“Ah, you speak to me in a different tone now: your voice sounds like a
blessing. But wait till you know, Mrs. Rowland; perhaps it will change
again. I will not take your kind hand till after. I am not going to
cheat you out of your sympathy. Look here,” he said, standing by her,
“this is what you must do. Telegraph at once, ‘If you will give me
cheque to destroy, full information will be given from quite different
quarter.’ There,” he said, “that’s as concise as it can be made. I will
come to your hotel at five, when you will have your answer, and
bring--all that you want.”
“The proof,” she said, “that it was not Archie?”
“The proof,” he replied, with a long-drawn breath, “who it was.”