These movements of Evelyn’s were watched, although she did not know it,
and in the strangest way. Rowland left home leaving no address, nor any
other indication of what he meant to do the evening after his return to
Rosmore. He came back on the Wednesday, and on Friday morning he arrived
in London, and followed his wife’s steps to the hotel, where he felt
sure she would go. When he arrived he was told that Mrs. Rowland was
indeed there, but had just gone out. “She cannot be out of sight yet,”
the porter said, pointing the direction she had taken, and Rowland,
without a word, followed his wife. He had no intention when he did so,
no plan but to overtake her, to join her, to ask for an explanation of
her conduct: but he had scarcely caught sight of the well-known figure
walking before him along the thronged pavement before another idea
struck him. He would not make himself known, he would watch what she was
doing, and leave his eventual conduct to the guidance of the moment. One
great motive which induced him to come to this resolution was that the
moment he caught sight of her, James Rowland, who had left home
breathing flame and fire, shrank into himself, and felt that he no more
dared approach his wife with an air of suspicion and demand an
explanation of her conduct, than he dared invade the retirement of the
Queen. The one thing was about as possible as the other. All his old
reverence for his lady-wife, all his conviction of her absolute
superiority to everybody he had ever known came back upon him like a
flood. Who was he to demand an explanation from her? Was it likely that
he could know better what was seemly and becoming than she did? Was it
possible that she, the crowning glory of his life, could do anything
against his honour, could commit or compromise him in any way? A hush
fell upon his troubled tempestuous mind the moment he perceived her
before him, walking along with quiet dignity, unpretending, yet not, he
said to himself in his pride, to be overlooked anywhere, moving among
the common crowd as if she were in a presence chamber. He held his
breath with a sort of horror at the thought that he might have been
capable of going up to her, in his passion, asking her what she did
there, whom she wanted, commanding her to return home at once. The sight
of the sweep of her dark skirt, the carriage of her head, arrested him,
temper and irritation and all, in a moment. He fell back a step or two,
with a vague inclination to turn tail altogether, turn back homewards
and humbly await her coming, which should be in her own time. But his
heart was so sore that he could not do that. He followed her
mechanically till she turned off the great thoroughfare to the smaller
street, where he still followed, taking some precaution to keep himself
out of her sight. He might have saved himself the trouble, for Evelyn
saw nothing save the great object she had in view--the interview which
was before her.
He watched her into Saumarez’s house, divining whose house it was, with
a pang at his heart. There was a convenient doorway opposite in which he
could stand and wait for her return; and there he placed himself, with
the most curious shame of himself and his unwonted unnatural position.
Watching his wife! which was only less intolerable than accusing her,
disclosing to her that he was capable of suspecting her spotless meaning
whatever it might be. No one who has not tried that undignified _métier_
can have any idea how the watcher can divine what is going on inside a
house from the minute signs which show outside. He saw a certain
commotion in the upper storey, a vague vision of her figure at the
window, the blinds quickly drawn up in the next room, enough to make
him, all his senses quickened with anxiety and eagerness, divine, more
or less, what was taking place. He saw a man come to the window, looking
moodily out as if in thought, turning round to speak to some one behind.
Whoever it was, it was not the crippled Saumarez, who, it had been so
intolerable to him to think, was to be consulted on his affairs. Then he
seemed to perceive by other movements below that the visitor was
received in the lower room; and then she came hurriedly out, taking him
by surprise, with no decorous attendance to the door, rushing forth
almost as if escaping. He had to hurry after to keep up with her hasty
excited steps. And then he followed her to the telegraph office, and
then back to the hotel. He had got without difficulty a room close by,
being anxious above measure not to betray to any one that he was not
with her, that there was any separation between them--only not quite so
anxious for that as that she should not see him, or divine that he had
followed her. He sat with his door ajar all the afternoon, in the
greatest excitement, watching her, making sure that she expected some
one, listening to her enquiries at the servants if no telegram had come.
She expected, then, a reply; was it from himself at home? Finally,
Rowland saw Eddy, to his infinite surprise, arrive in the evening, and
heard from where he watched the sound of a conversation, not without
audible risings and fallings of tone, which marked some gamut of
emotion in it. Eddy! what could his wife have to do with Eddy? Was it on
that boy’s business, in answer to any appeal from him, that she had
come? Was it perhaps to ask help for Eddy that she had sent that useless
telegram? James Rowland had been deeply offended by the idea that his
wife had come to consult another man upon his affairs; but it stung him
again into even hotter momentary passion now, when the conviction came
upon him that it was not his affairs, but something altogether
unconnected with him that had brought her so suddenly to London away
from her home. The first would have been an error of judgment almost
unpardonable. The second was--it was a thing that could not bear
thinking of. His wife consecrated to the sharing of all his sorrows, and
who had shown every appearance of taking them up as her own, to leave
her home and her husband in his trouble, and come here all this way in
so strange and clandestine a manner at the call of Eddy--Eddy! He had
himself been very favourable to Eddy, better than the boy deserved, who,
however, had been generous about Archie, seeking an opportunity of
making his obligations known: but that she, who had pretended to such
interest in Archie, should suddenly be found to be thinking not of him
but of another boy!
Rowland had scarcely gone through such a time of self-contention in all
his life as during the hour or two that elapsed between Eddy’s departure
and the time of the train. Eddy went away with a sort of _faux air_ of
satisfaction, which imposed upon the unaccustomed, inexperienced
detective. He at least seemed to be satisfied, whoever was distressed.
He had his hat over his brows, but he swung his stick lightly in his
hand, and began to hum an opera air as he went down the stairs. She must
have liberated him from some scrape, settled his affairs for him
somehow--the young reprobate, who was always in trouble! Rowland would
not have refused to help the boy himself: he would have treated Eddy
very gently had he appealed to him; but that his wife should put herself
so much out of the way for Eddy, was intolerable to him. He sat there
within his half-open door, angry, miserable, and heard her give her
orders about her departure. She was going by the night train, and wanted
some tea, and her bill and a cab got for her in time. “It is only six
now,” he heard her say with a sigh, as the waiter stood at the open
door. She was longing to get home, was she? glad to be done with it,
though she had come all this way to do it, whatever it was. He went
downstairs then and got some dinner for himself, and arranged his own
departure at the same hour. It was the strangest journey. She in one
carriage, altogether unconscious of his vicinity, he in another, so
deeply conscious of her’s. He sprang out of his compartment at every
station, to steal past the window of the other, to catch a passing
glimpse of her. There was another lady in the corner nearest the door,
but in the depths of the carriage he could see her profile, pale against
the dark cushions, her eyes sometimes shut, and weariness and lassitude
in every line of her figure and attitude as she lay back in her corner.
He did not think she was asleep. She would be thinking over what she
had done for Eddy; thinking not of her husband and his trouble, but of
that other--the other man’s boy. And bitter and sore were Rowland’s
thoughts. The fury with which he had started was not so heavy as this;
for then he had thought that she was fully occupied with his troubles,
though so unwise, so little judicious as to confide them to the last man
in the world whose sympathy he could have desired. But now to think that
it was not his trouble at all that had occupied his wife, nothing about
him, though, heaven knew, he had enough to bear--but the well-deserved
discomfort of another, the needs of the trifling boy, ill-behaved and
untrustworthy, for whom his own father had little to say. Less and less
did James Rowland feel himself able to make himself known to his wife,
to upbraid or reproach her. Why should he? he had no reason. She was
spotless, if ever woman was. She had not even offended against him in
the way he had feared. She had left home only to do a good action; to be
kind. He was well aware of this; and to assail her, to take her to task,
to accuse her even of carelessness towards him, was more than he could
permit himself to do: it was impossible. But still it seemed to Rowland,
as he travelled home, with unspeakable, suppressed anger and pain, that
this was the most unsupportable of all, and that Eddy’s shuffling,
inconsiderable figure would stand between them now for ever and ever.
Not that he was jealous of Eddy: it was disappointment, disenchantment,
the failure of his trust in her. To leave the boy, in whom she had
professed so much interest, and whose well-being, greatly as he had
sinned, involved his father’s, without lifting a hand to help him,
though she led her husband to believe that she would do something, work
a miracle, bring him back; and go off to the end of the earth, secretly,
without telling anybody, to the succour of Eddy! It was intolerable,
though there might not be a word to say.
Then came the arrival, jaded and chilled, at Glasgow, in the cold gray
of the morning, scarcely light. He kept about and watched what she would
do, nothing doubting that her next step would be to the other railway
which would take her to the banks of the loch, in time for the early
boat to Rosmore. But Evelyn did not carry out this part of the
programme, to his great surprise. She lingered at the station,
performing such a toilet as was possible; waiting, it appeared, until
the morning was a little more advanced. It was more and more difficult
to keep out of her sight, yet keep her in sight in this familiar place
where everybody knew him. He pulled up his greatcoat to his ears, his
travelling cap down upon his forehead. He could not even copy her and
add to his comfort by a wash, lest in that moment she should disappear.
He could not even get a cup of coffee, and his outer man stood more in
need of restoratives and support than hers, and could ill bear the want
of them. But at length the morning became sufficiently advanced, as it
seemed, for her purpose, and she got into a cab with her small bag,
which was all her baggage. He could not tell what orders she gave to the
driver, but he ordered the man, into whose cab he jumped without more
delay than he could help, to follow that in which Evelyn was. At this
moment all the excitement of those bewildering twenty-four hours
culminated. He felt as though he could scarcely breathe: he could not
bear his travelling-cap on his head, though it was light enough, or his
coat across his chest, though it was a cold morning to ordinary persons,
people who felt cold and heat, and had no fiery furnace within them. He
kept his uncovered head out of the window of his cab, watching the slow
progress of the one before him. How slow it was, creeping along the dark
streets as if she had told the man to go slowly to postpone some crisis,
some climax of excitement to which she was bound! Rowland’s heart
thumped like a steam-engine against his labouring breast. Where was she
going? Who could there be in Glasgow to whom it was of the slightest
consequence what happened to Eddy Saumarez, who would even know of his
existence? She must be deep in the boy’s secrets indeed, he said to
himself, with scornful wrath, to know in all this strange town who could
have anything to do with him. He seemed to recognise the turns she was
taking with a bewildered perception of the unsuspected, of something
that might be coming quite different to anything he had thought. Where
was she going? The dingy streets are like each other everywhere, few
features of difference to distinguish them, and yet he seemed to be
going over ground he knew. That shop at the corner he had surely seen
before--of course he must have seen it before! Where could a stranger go
in Glasgow that he had not been before, he who was to the manner born,
who had spent his childhood in Glasgow, and gone to his daily work by
these very ways? Yes, of course, he knew it all very well, every turn,
not only from the old times of his youth, but--Where was she going? His
heart beat louder than ever, the veins on his temples set up independent
pulses, something fluttered in his bosom like a bird, making him sick
with wonder and expectancy. Where was she going? What, what could she
mean? What did she want here?
The Sauchiehall Road--full of the greyness of the November morning:
children playing on the pavement, women going about with their baskets
to get their provisions, a lumbering costermonger’s cart trundling along
noisily over the stones, with a man crying “caller codfish prime; caller
haddies!” all incised into this man’s beating brain as if done with a
knife. He stopped his cab hurriedly, jumped out, dismissed it, and
walked slowly along, with his eyes upon the other lumbering vehicle in
front. The buzzing in his brain was so wild that everything was
confused, both sound and sights, and he stumbled over the children on
the pavement as he went along, not seeing where he went. At last it
stopped, and his heart stopped too with one sudden great thump like a
sledge-hammer. A flash of sudden light seemed to come from something, he
knew not what, whether in his eyes or outside of them, showing like a
gleam from a lantern the well-known house, the big elderberry bush, with
its dusty, black clusters of fruit. And she came out of her cab and went
quickly up to the door.
Rowland stood quite still in the midst of the passengers on the
pavement, the children knocking against him as they hopped about on one
foot, propelling the round piece of marble, with which they were
playing, from one chalked compartment to another. It hit him on the
shin, but did not startle him from his amazement, from his pause of
wonder, and the blank of incapacity to understand. What was she doing
here of all places in the world? What did she want there? What had that
house to do with Eddy Saumarez? Eddy Saumarez--Eddy! It got into a sort
of rhyme in his brain. What had that house to do with it? What did she
want there? What--what was the meaning of it all?