That evening the Professor of Ignorance sat long with paper spread
before him, and with a pen in his hand, but he wrote nothing.
The window of his study looked out on to the street, which was lit
by many gas-lamps. At length he dipped his pen into the ink, and
wrote this:
"We should judge men by their best, not by their worst; by their
possibilities, not by their limitations."
Next morning he read what he had written the night before, and
smiled to himself.
"I have seen that before," he thought.
He took a book from the little shelf that stood close to his right
hand, and referred to it.
"I am now quite sure that what I have written is true," he said.
THE PROFESSOR OF IGNORANCE.
THE RUBICON
BY
E. F. BENSON
AUTHOR OF DODO
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1894
COPYRIGHT, 1894,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
_BOOK I._
CHAPTER I.
The little red-roofed town of Hayes lies in a furrow of the broad-backed
Wiltshire Downs; it was once an important posting station, and you may
still see there an eighteenth century inn, much too large for the
present requirements of the place, and telling of the days when, three
times a week, the coach from London used to pull up at its hospitable
door, and wait there half-an-hour while its passengers dined. The inn is
called the Grampound Arms, and you will find that inside the church many
marble Grampounds recline on their tombs, or raise hands of prayer,
while outside in the churchyard, weeping cherubs, with reversed torches,
record other pious and later memories of the same family.
But almost opposite the Grampound Arms you will notice a much newer inn,
where commercial gentlemen make merry, called the Aston Arms, and on
reference to monumental evidence, you would also find that cherubs are
shedding similar pious tears for a Sir James Aston, Bart., and his wife,
and, thirty years later, for James Aston, first Lord Hayes, and his
wife. But for the Astons, no marble knights keep watch on Gothic tombs.
The river Kennet, in its green wanderings, has already passed, before it
reaches Hayes, two houses, one close down by the river, the other rather
higher up and on the opposite bank. The smaller and older of the two is
the residence of Mr. Grampound, the larger and newer of Lord Hayes.
These trifling facts, which almost all the inhabitants of Hayes could
tell you, will sufficiently indicate the mutual position of the two
families in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Grampound House was a pretty, ivy-grown old place, with a lawn
stretching southwards almost to the bank of the river, and shaded by a
great cedar tree, redolent of ancestors and as monumental in its way as
the marble, sleeping figures in the church. It was useful, however, as
well as being ancestral, and at this moment Mrs. Grampound and her
brother were having tea under it.
It was a still, hot day at the beginning of August, and through the
broad, fan-like branches, stray sunbeams danced and twinkled, making
little cores of light on the silver. Down one side of the lawn ran a
terrace of grey stone, bordered by a broad gravel walk, and over the
terrace pale monthly roses climbed and blossomed. Most of the windows in
the house were darkened and eclipsed by Venetian blinds, to keep out the
sun which still lingered on the face of it; and Mr. Martin, also--Mrs.
Grampound's brother--was in a state of eclipse for the time being, for
he wore a broad-brimmed Panama hat, which concealed the upper part of
his face, while a large harlequin tea-cup prevented any detailed
examination of his mouth. Mrs. Grampound sat opposite him in a low,
basket chair, and appeared to be thinking. It is a privilege peculiar to
owners of very fine, dark grey eyes, to appear to be thinking whenever
they are not talking.
Mr. Martin finished his tea, and lit a cigarette.
"They've begun cutting the corn," he said; "it's very early."
Mrs. Grampound did not answer, and her brother, considering that he had
made his sacrifice on the altar of conversation, relapsed into silence
again.
Perhaps the obvious inference that the summer had been hot reminded her
that the day was also hot, for in a minute or two she said,--
"Dear Eva! what a stifling journey she will have. She comes back
to-night; she ought to be here by now."
"Where has she been staying?"
"At the Brabizons. Lord Hayes was there. He comes home at the end of
the week; his mother arrived yesterday."
"The old witch," murmured Mr. Martin.
"Yes, but very old," said she, whose mind was apparently performing
obligato variations on the theme of the conversation. "Haven't you
noticed--"
She broke off, and presumably continued the obligato variations.
Mr. Martin showed no indications of having noticed anything at all, and
the faint sounds of the summer evening pursued their whisperings
unchecked until the distant rumble of carriage wheels began to overscore
the dim noises, and came to a long pause, after a big crescendo, before
the front door.
"That will be Eva," said her mother, filling up the teapot; "they will
tell her we are here."
A few minutes afterwards, the drawing-room window was opened from
inside, and a girl began to descend the little flying staircase.
Apparently she was in no hurry, for she stooped to stroke a kitten that
was investigating the nature of blind cord with an almost fanatical
enthusiasm. The kitten was quite as eager to investigate the nature of
the human hand, and flew at Eva's outstretched fingers, all teeth and
claws.
"You little brute!" she remarked, shaking it off. "Your claws want
cutting. Oh! you are rather nice. Come, Kitty."
But the kitten was indignant, and bounced down the stairs in front of
her, sat down on the path at the bottom, and pretended to be unaware of
her existence. Eva stopped to pluck a rose from a standard tree, and
fastened it in her dress. Her foot was noiseless on the soft grass, and
neither her uncle or mother heard her approaching.
"The brute scratched me," she repeated as she neared them; "its claws
want cutting."
Mrs. Grampound was a little startled, and got up quickly.
"Oh, Eva, I didn't hear you coming. I was just saying it was time you
were here. How are you, and have you had a nice time?"
"Yes, quite nice; but the Brabizons are rather stupid people. Still, I
enjoyed myself. I didn't see you, Uncle Tom; anyhow, I can't kiss you
with that hat on."
She touched the top of his Panama hat lightly with the tips of her
fingers, and sat down in her mother's chair, who was pouring her out a
cup of tea.
"We had a tiresome journey," she went on. "Why will people live in
Lancashire? Is this your chair, mother?"
Mr. Martin got up.
"I'm going in," he said; "you can have mine. At least, I'm going for a
ride. Is the tea good, Eva?--it has been made for some time--or shall I
tell them to send you out some more?"
"It seems to me very bad," said Eva, sipping it. "Yes, I should like
some more. Are you going for a ride? Perhaps I'll come."
"Yes, it's cooler now," said he. "Do come with me."
"Will you order my horse, then, if you are going in? Perhaps you'd
better tell them to have it ready only, and not to bring it round. I
won't come just yet, anyhow. If I'm not ready, start without me, and I
daresay I'll follow you, if you tell me where you are going."
"I want to ride up to the Whitestones'--to see him."
"Very well, I daresay I shall follow you."
Mr. Martin stood looking rather like a servant receiving orders. Eva
always managed to make other people assume subordinate positions.
"How long do you think you will be?" he asked.
"Perhaps half-an-hour. But don't wait for me."
Eva threw off her hat impatiently.
"I have been horribly hot and dusty all day," she said, "and there was
nearly an accident; at least, there was a bit of an accident. We were
standing in a siding for the express to pass, and we weren't far enough
back or far enough forward or something, and it crashed through a bit of
the last carriage. That is what made me so late. It is very stupid that
people, whose only business is to see about trains, can't avoid that
sort of thing."
"My darling Eva," said her mother, "were you in the train?"
"Yes; in the next carriage--I and Lord Hayes. He was dreadfully nervous
all the rest of the way. That is so silly. It is inconceivable that two
accidents should happen on the same day to the same train."
"I thought he wasn't coming back till the end of the week."
"Yes, but he changed his mind and came with me," said Eva. "The
Brabizons were furious. I sha'n't go there again. Really, people are
very vulgar. I owe him three-and-sixpence for lunch. He said he would
call for it, if he might--he always asks leave--to-morrow morning."
Mrs. Grampound did not reply, but the obligato variations went on
jubilantly. Eva was lying back in her chair, looking more bored than
ever with this stupid world. Her mother's eyes surveyed the slender
figure with much satisfaction. It really was a great thing to have such
a daughter. And Lord Hayes had changed the day of his departure
obviously in order to travel with Eva, and he was coming to call
to-morrow morning in order to ask for three-and six!
Eva, quite unconscious of this commercial scrutiny, was swinging her
hat to and fro, looking dreamily out over the green distances.
"On the whole, I sha'n't go for a ride," she said at length. "I think
I'll sit here with you, if you've got nothing to do; I rather want to
talk to you."
"Certainly, dear," said her mother; "but hadn't you better send word to
the stables? Then they needn't get Starlight ready. I must go into the
house to get my work, but I sha'n't be a moment. I wonder what you want
to talk to me about."
"No," said Eva, "don't get your work. You can't talk when you are
working. Besides, I daresay I shall go later. Leave it as it is."
"Dear Eva," said Mrs. Grampound, "I am so anxious to hear what you have
to say. Shall I be pleased?"
"I don't know," said Eva, slowly. "Well, the fact is that Lord
Hayes--well--will have something to say to me when he comes for the
three-and-six. He would have said it at the Brabizons, only I didn't
allow him, and he would have said it in the train, only I said I
couldn't bear people who talked in the train. I may be wrong, but I
don't think I am. I like him, you know, very much; he is not so foolish
as most people. But I do not feel sure about it."
"My darling Eva," began her mother with solemn gladness.
"It's all rather sudden," Eva interrupted. "I want to wait a little
first. Do you know, I think I shall be out to-morrow when he comes, or I
might send him the three-and-six by post. He is not stupid; he would
easily understand what I meant."
To say that this was the cherished dream of her mother's heart would
almost be understating the fact, and now the cherished dream was perhaps
going to be transformed into a most cherishable reality. Mrs. Grampound,
if not knowing exactly how to deal with Eva, at least was conscious of
her ignorance and was cautious.
"Yes, darling, it's very sudden," she said. "Don't do anything in a
hurry--of course I know how heavy the responsibilities will seem to you,
as they must to every young girl who goes out from the what's-its-name
of home life, and all that sort of thing, to those very much wider
spheres, but you will do your best, dear, I know. Eva, darling, I must
kiss you."
Mrs. Grampound surged out of her chair, and bent over Eva to kiss her.
Eva received the kiss with absolute passivity, but sorry, perhaps, a
moment afterwards, for her want of responsiveness, bent forward and
kissed her again.
"It wasn't exactly the responsibilities I was thinking of," she said;
"it was"--she got up from her chair quickly, and stood quite still,
looking down over the lawn to the reddening sunset--"it was that I am
not quite sure about myself."
Mrs. Grampound seized hold of anything tangible which Eva's speech
conveyed, and sympathised with it.
"Yes, darling, I know," she said. "Just wait a little, and think about
it. I think your plan about not seeing him to-morrow is very wise. He
will, probably, in any case, write to your father first. It is very
faint praise to say that he is not so foolish as most people. A most
brilliant and well-informed man! He was telling me, the other day, about
a flower he has in his conservatory which ate flies or something of the
sort, which seems to me most extraordinary. Such an admirable landlord,
too. He has just built some new labourers' cottages in Hayes, and I
declare I want to go and live in them myself. I feel sure he will write
to your father, and, no doubt, he will talk to you about it."
"You would like it, then, would you?" said Eva. "Tell me exactly what
you think?"
Mrs. Grampound had a very decided opinion about it, and she expressed
herself fully.
"Darling, that is so sweet of you. Ah, how can I have but one opinion!
It is a girl's duty to marry as well as she can. This is a brilliant
match. I know so many mothers--good, conscientious mothers--who think
only of their children's happiness, who would give anything to have Lord
Hayes as their son-in-law. A mother's happiness lies in the happiness of
her children. They are bone of her bone, and all that sort of thing. How
can they but wish for and pray for their happiness! You see, Eva, you
are quite poor; your father will leave you next to nothing. Riches are a
great blessing, because they enable you to do so much good. Of course
they are not everything, and if you wanted to marry that dreadful Lord
Symonds, whom they tell such horrible stories about, I would fall down
on my knees and beseech you not to mind about poverty, or anything else.
Or if I thought you would not be happy, for it is your duty to be happy.
But this is exceptional in every way. You get position, wealth, title
and a good husband. No one can deny that the aristocracy is the best
class to marry into; indeed, for you it is the only class, and you bring
him nothing but the love he bears you, of course, and your beauty."
"Yes; he pays a long price for my beauty," said Eva, meditatively.
"My dear Eva, we are all given certain natural advantages--or, if they
are withheld, you may be sure that is only a blessing in
disguise--talents, beauty, and so on--and it is our clear duty to make
the most of them. Beauty has been given you in a quite unusual degree,
and it is your duty to let it find its proper use. Don't you remember
the parable of the ten talents? We had it in church only last Sunday,
and I remember at the time that I was thinking of you and Lord Hayes,
which was quite a remarkable coincidence. And then the good you can do
as Lady Hayes is infinitely greater than the good you can do as the wife
of a poor man. You have to look at the practical side of things, too.
Ah, dear me, if life was only love, how simple and delightful it would
all be! This is a work-a-day world, and we are not sent here just to
enjoy ourselves."
Eva did not seem to be listening very closely.
"Tell me about your own engagement," she said at length. "I don't know
what exactly one is supposed to feel. I have many reasons for wanting to
marry Lord Hayes. I like and respect him very much. I believe he is a
very good man; he is always agreeable and considerate."
"That is the best and surest basis for love to rest on," broke in her
mother, who was charmed to find Eva so sensible. "That is just what I
have always said. Love must spring out of these things, darling, just as
the leaves and foliage of a tree spring out of the solid wood. So many
girls have such foolish sentimental notions, just as if they had just
come away from a morning performance at the Adelphi. That is not love;
it is just silly, schoolgirl sentimentality, which silly schoolgirls
feel for tenor singers, and a silky moustache, and slim, weak-eyed young
men. Real love is the flower of respect and admiration, and solid
esteem. _Aimer c'est tout comprendre_; and to do that you must have no
illusions--you must keep the lights dry--you must regard a man as he is,
not as you think he is."
"Yes, I see," said Eva, slowly; "I daresay you are right. I certainly
never felt any schoolgirl sentimentality for anyone. I think I shall go
for a ride, mother; it is nice to get a breath of fresh air after a long
journey."
Mrs. Grampound rose too, and drew her arm through Eva's.
"Yes, darling, it will do you good," she said. "And you can think about
all this quietly. Your father is out still; he went down to the river
just before you came, to see if he could get a trout or two. And Percy
comes this evening. I will ring the bell in the drawing-room for your
horse to come round, if you will go and get your habit on. Give me one
more kiss, dear; it is so nice to have you home again."
Eva put her horse into a steady canter over the springy turf, and soon
caught her uncle up, who was ambling quietly along on a grey pony. He
was staying with his brother-in-law for a week or two, before going back
to America, being a citizen of the United States. He rode for two
reasons--indeed, he never did anything without a reason--both of which
were excellent. Riding was a means of progressing from one place to
another, and it was a sort of watch-key which wound up the mechanism of
the body. He was rather hypochondriacal, and his doctor advised
exercise, so he obeyed his doctor and rode. He did much more good than
harm in this wicked world, but comparatively little of either.
His sister had married Mr. Grampound early in life. She had a
considerable fortune left her by her father, by aid of which, as with a
golden spade, she hope to bury her American extraction. This she had
succeeded in doing, with very decent success, but her golden spade had,
so to speak, been broken in the act of interment, for her husband had
speculated rather wildly with her money, and had lost it. Mrs. Grampound
cared very little for this; her golden spade had done its work. She had
married into the English aristocracy, for the Grampounds, though their
accounts at banks did not at all correspond to the magnificence of their
origin, and though the family estates had been sold to the last possible
acre, held, in the estimation of the world, that position which, though
it takes only a generation or two of great wealth to raise, requires an
infinite number of generations of poverty to demolish.
Eva found the society of her uncle very soothing on this particular
afternoon. He very seldom disagreed with anybody, chiefly because he
hated argument as a method of conversation, but his assent was not of
that distressing order which is more irritating than a divergent view,
for he always took the trouble to let it appear that he had devoted
considerable thought to the question at issue, and had arrived at the
same conclusions as his interlocutor.
It was nearly eight when they reached home, and the dusk was thickening
into night. Mr. Grampound had just got in, when they dismounted at the
door, and he greeted Eva in his usual dignified and slightly interested
manner. The extreme finish of his face suggested that the number of
Grampounds who had been turned out of the same mediæval mould, was very
considerable.
Eva's father held the door open for her to pass into the inner hall, and
Eva, going to the table to take a bedroom candle, noticed that there was
a note lying there for him. She turned it over quickly, and saw a
coronet and "Aston House" on the back. She handed it to her father, who
took it and said,--
"From Lord Hayes. I thought he had not come home yet."
Eva was standing on the lowest step of the flight of stairs.
"Yes; he came home with me to-day," she said.
"Was he with you at the Brabizons?"
"Yes; we travelled together."
Eva went up to her room, not wishing to see the note opened in her
presence. What it would contain she knew, or, at least, guessed. Five
minutes later, Mr. Grampound also came upstairs and tapped at the door
of his wife's room. She had not begun to dress, and he came in with the
note in his hand. His cold, clean-shaven face showed a good deal of
gentlemanly and quiet satisfaction.
"Of course there is only one answer," he said when she had finished
reading it. "It is a splendid match for her."
"Eva spoke to me about it this afternoon," said his wife.
"Well?"
"She does not want to be hurried. She wants to have time to decide."
"There is no time like the present," observed Mr. Grampound.
"I hope you won't press her, Charles. You will get nothing by that. She
wants to marry, I know; and I said a great many very sensible things to
her this afternoon. She wants more than a quiet home-life can give her,
and she likes Hayes."
"I must send some answer to him; and I certainly shall not tell him to
keep away."
"Give her time. Say he may come in a week. There is no harm in waiting a
little. Eva will not be forced into anything against her will."
"I shall speak to her to-night."
"Yes, do; but be careful. I must send you away now; it is time to dress.
Percy has come."
Eva, meanwhile, was thinking over the talk she had had with her mother.
Mrs. Grampound's affectionate consideration for her daughter's feelings,
Eva knew quite well, might only be the velvet glove to an iron hand. But
she was distinctly conscious that there was a great deal in what her
mother had said. She had decided for herself that she was not going to
fall in love with anyone; men seemed to her to be very little loveable.
At the same time, she knew that, in her heart of hearts, she longed for
the possibilities which a great marriage would give her. Perhaps then
the world would open out; perhaps it was interesting after all. Her
home-life bored her considerably. They were in the country nine months
out of the twelve, living in a somewhat sparsely-populated district, and
Eva was totally unable to make for herself active or engrossing
occupation in the direction of district-visiting or Sunday schools, or
those hundred and one ways in which "nice girls" are supposed to employ
themselves. Her vitality was of that still, strong sort which can only
be reached through the emotions, and is too indolent or too uninitiative
to stir the emotions into creating interests for themselves. The vague
imperative _need_ of doing something never wound its horn to her. She
could not throw herself into the first pursuit that offered, simply
because she had to be doing something, and her emotional record was a
blank. The pencil and paper were there, for she was two-and-twenty, but
she had nothing to write. She was quite unable to transform her
diversions into aims, a faculty which accounts completely for the busy
lives some women lead.
Dinner was not till half-past eight, and, when Eva came down, the
drawing-room was untenanted. The shaded lamp left the room in
comparative dimness, but through the windows, which were open to let in
the cool, evening air, the last glow of the sunset cast a red light on
to the opposite wall. She stood at the window a moment and looked at the
river, which lay like a string of crimson pools stretching west; and
then, turning away impatiently, walked up and down the room, wondering
where everyone was. That peaceful, sleeping landscape outside seemed to
her an emblem of the quiet, deadly days that were to come. The slow
to-morrow and to-morrow seemed suddenly impossible. The door was open to
her--the door leading on all that the world had to offer. Perhaps it was
all as uninteresting as this, but it would be something, at any rate, to
know that--to be quite certain that life was dull to the core. Then she
thought she could rest quiet, and, perhaps, would not mind so much. What
vexed and irritated her, was to suspect that the world was interesting
and not to find it so, and she was disposed to lay the blame of that on
her own particular station in life. Yet--yet--she could hardly say she
had an ideal, but there was that shrouded image called love, of which
she only saw the dim outline. It would be a pity to smash it up before
the coverings came off. It might be worth having, after all.
Her eye caught sight of a book on the table with a white vellum cover.
Eva took it up. It was called _The Crown of Womanhood_, and something
like a frown gathered on her face.
It was almost a relief when her mother entered rustling elaborately
across the room, and snapping a bracelet on to her comely wrist.
"Ah! Eva, you are before me. Percy has come. I didn't expect him till
to-morrow."
"I'm glad," said Eva listlessly.
"Such a lovely evening," continued Mrs. Grampound with a strong
determination to be particularly neutral, and entirely unconscious of
her talk with Eva before dinner. "Look at those exquisite tints, dear.
The blue so tender as to be green," she quoted with a fine disregard of
accuracy.
"Yes, it's beautiful," said Eva, not turning her head. "Ah! Percy, it's
good to see you."
Eva got up and walked across to meet the newcomer. Percy was a favourite
of hers, from the time he had teased her about her dolls onward.
"How long are you going to stop?" she continued. "Percy, stop here a
long time; I want you."
"I can't," he said. "I'm going off to Scotland on the 12th, to the
Davenports. I promised Reggie."
"Who's Reggie?"
"Reggie? Reggie Davenport. He's a friend of mine. I'm very fond of him.
Haven't you ever seen him. He falls in love about once a fortnight. He's
very amusing."
"He must be rather a fool," said Eva.
"Oh, but he's a nice fool. Really, he is very nice. He's so dreadfully
young."
"Well, you're not very old, my lord," said Eva.
"But Reggie is much the youngest person I ever saw. He'll never grow
old."
"Ah! well," said Eva. "I expect he's very happy."
The gong had sounded some minutes, when Mr. Martin shuffled in. He wore
a somewhat irregular white tie and grey socks, and was followed almost
immediately by Mr. Grampound.
Eva had already written a little note to Lord Hayes, and told her maid
to enclose a three-and-six-penny postal order. She had also expressed a
vague hope, so as not to block her avenues, that they would meet again
soon. Her chief desire was to obtain a respite; the whole thing had been
too sudden and she wished to think it over. Meantime, it was nice to see
Percy again.
"What have you been doing with yourself?" she asked. "I notice that
whenever young men go away in novels, they always fall in love before
they get back, or get married, or make their fortunes or lose them. How
many of these things have you done?"
"None of them," said Percy; "though I've been to Monte Carlo, I did not
play there. It doesn't seem to me at all amusing."
"I suppose you haven't got the gambling instinct," said Eva; "that's a
great defect. You know none of the joy of telling your cabman that you
will give him a shilling extra if he catches a train. It's equivalent to
saying, 'I bet you a shilling you don't;' only he doesn't pay if he
loses, and you do. But that's immaterial. The joy lies in the struggle
with time and space."
"Do you mean that you like to keep things in uncertainty as long as
possible?" asked her father, looking at her.
Their eyes met, and they understood each other. Eva looked at him a
moment, and then dropped her eyes.
"Yes; I'm sure I do."
"Even when you have all the data ready, do you like not deciding?"
"Oh! one never knows if one has all the data; something fresh may always
turn up. For instance--"
"Well?"
"I was thinking just before dinner that I didn't know what in the world
I should do with myself all the autumn, and now you see Percy's arrived.
I shall play about with him."
"I go away in two days," said Percy.
"Oh! well, I daresay something else will turn up. I am like Mr.
Micawber."
"No, not all," said Mr. Grampound; "he was always doing his best to make
things turn up."
Mrs. Grampound remarked that things were always turning up when you
expected them least, and Percy hoped that his gun would turn up, because
no one could remember where it was.
The evening was so warm that Eva and her mother sat outside on the
terrace after dinner, waiting for the others to join them. Mr. Grampound
never sat long over his wine, and in a few minutes the gentlemen
followed them. Eva was rather restless, and strolled a little way down
the gravel path, and, on turning, found that her father had left the
others and was walking toward her.
"Come as far as the bottom of the lawn, Eva," he said; "I should like a
little talk with you."
They went on in silence for some steps, and then her father said,--
"I heard from Lord Hayes to-day. Your mother told me that you could
guess what it was about."
She picked up a tennis-ball that was lying on the edge of the grass.
"How wet it is!" she said. "Yes, I suppose I know what he wrote about."
"Your mother and I, naturally, have your happiness very much at heart,"
said he, "and we both agree that this is a very sure and clear chance of
happiness for you. It is a great match, Eva."
Eva as a child had always rather feared her father and at this moment
she found her childish fear rising again in her mind. Tall, silent,
rather scornful-looking men may not always command affection, but they
usually inspire respect. Her old fear for her father had grown into very
strong respect, but she felt now that the converse transformation was
very possible.
"You would wish me to marry him?" she asked.
"I wish you to consider it very carefully. I have seen a good deal of
the world, so I also wish you to consider what I say to you about it. I
have thought about it, and I have arrived at the very definite
conclusion I have told you. I shall write to him to-night, and, with
your consent, will tell him that he may come and ask you in person in a
few days' time. You know my wishes on the subject, and your mother's.
Meanwhile, dear Eva, I must congratulate you on the very good fortune
which has come in your way."
He bent from his great height and kissed her.
"I don't wish to force you in any way," he said, "and I don't wish you
to say anything to me to-night about it. Think it over by yourself. I
needn't speak of his position and wealth, because, though, of course,
they are advantages, you will rate them at their proper value. But I may
tell you that I am a very poor man, and that I know what these things
mean."
"I should not marry him for those reasons," said Eva.
"There is no need for you to tell me that," said he. "But it is right to
tell you that I can leave you nothing. In the same way I hope that any
foolish notions you may have got about love, from the trash you may have
read in novels, will not stand in your way either. I will leave the
matter in the hands of your own good sense."
His words had an unreasonable mastery over Eva, for her father never
spoke idly. He was quite aware of the value of speech, but knew that it
is enhanced by its rarity. "No one pays any attention to a jabbering
fool," he had said once to his wife, _à propos_ of a somewhat voluble
woman who had been staying in the house, and of whose abilities he and
his wife entertained very contrary opinions. Eva had seldom heard him
express his philosophy of life at such length, and she fully appreciated
the weight it was intended to convey.
CHAPTER II.
Lord Hayes found Eva's note waiting for him when he came down to
breakfast next morning, but its contents did not take away his appetite
at all. He was quite as willing that she should think it over as her
father or mother, and he had no desire to force her to refuse. He was
fairly certain that at his time of life, for he was over forty, he was
not going to fall in love in the ordinary sense of the word; that sense,
in fact, which Eva had herself confessed she never felt likely to
experience. He had had a succession of eligible helpmeets hurled at his
head by ambitious mothers for many years, and in sufficient numbers to
enable him to draw the conclusion that the majority of eligible
helpmeets were very much like one another.
They had ready for him smiles of welcome, slightly diverting small-talk,
pretty faces, and any number of disengaged waltzes; and after having
basked in their welcoming smiles, submitted to their small-talk, looked
at their pretty faces, and hopped decorously round in their disengaged
waltzes, he always finished by stifling a yawn and making his exit. It
would convey an entirely wrong impression to describe him as either a
misanthrope or a cynic; the charms of marriageable maidenhood simply did
not appeal to him. But though he was neither misanthrope nor cynic, a
little vein of malevolence ran through his system, and he had more than
half made up his mind that he would have none of these. He was quite
rich enough to afford a wife who would bring him nothing but unpaid
bills; and provided that wife brought him something which he had not yet
found, he was willing to pay them all.
That he was going to marry some time had long been a commonplace to him,
but the sight of his forty-fifth milestone had lent it a loud insistence
which was becoming quite distracting. The thought had begun to haunt
him; he saw it in the withered flowers of his orchid house, it stuck in
the corners of his coat pockets, his garden syringe gurgled it at him
with its expiring efforts to emit the last drop of water; even the toad
which he kept in his greenhouse had the knowledge of it lurking in its
sickly eye.
He was very seldom at Aston; but in one of his visits there, he had met
Eva and had been considerably struck by her. She was introduced to him,
and bowed without smiling. He had asked her whether she played
lawn-tennis, and she said, without simpering, that she did. He asked her
whether she enjoyed the season, and she replied, without affectation,
that she had got so tired of it by the middle of June that she had gone
down into the country. He remarked that London was the loser, and she
reminded him that, therefore, by exactly the same amount, the country
was the gainer. Her eyes wandered vaguely over the green distance, and
once met his, without shrinking from or replying to his gaze. She was
astonishingly beautiful, and appeared quite unconscious of her charms.
She looked so radically indifferent to all that was going on round her,
that he had said, "These country parties are rather a bore!" and she
replied candidly that she quite agreed with him. In a word, he felt that
he might go farther and fare worse, and that he was forty-five years
old.
During the next few months, he had come across her not infrequently,
both in the country and in London, and at the end of the season they
had both met at the Brabizons, where two Miss Brabizons were alternately
launched at his hand and heart--_via_ brilliant execution on the piano
and district-visiting--by their devoted mother, and Eva's calm
neutrality was rendered particularly conspicuous by the contrast. His
attentions to her grew more and more marked, and Mrs. Brabizon
metaphorically threw up the sponge when he changed the day of his
departure without ceremony, in order to travel with Eva, and declared
that she couldn't conceive what he found in that girl.
His mother always breakfasted alone, and spent the morning by herself,
usually out of doors. Lord Hayes was vaguely grateful for this
arrangement. Mr. Martin, as we know, had described her as an old witch,
and even to her own son she seemed rather a terrific person. She was
tall, very well preserved, and a rigid Puritan. Her hobby--for the most
unbending of our race have their hobby--was Jaeger clothing. She wore
large grey boots with eight holes in them, a drab-coloured dress, and a
head-gear that reminded the observer of a volunteer forage cap. This
hobby she varied by a spasmodic interest in homoeopathy, and she used
to walk about the lanes like a mature Medea, gathering simples from the
hedges, which she used to administer with appalling firmness to the
village people; but, to do her justice, she always experimented with
them first _in propriâ personâ_, and declared she felt a great deal
better afterwards. For the practice of medicine-taking generally, she
claimed that it fortified the constitution, and it must be confessed
that her own constitution, at the age of sixty-five, appeared simply
impregnable.
But in the morning her son was conscious of an agreeable relaxation. He
was a neat, timid man, with a careful little manner, and he inherited
from his mother a certain shrewdness that led him to grasp the practical
issues of things with rapidity. For instance, on this present occasion,
when he had finished his breakfast, he again read over Eva's letter, put
it carefully away, and was quite content to wait.
Outside one of the dining-room windows opened a glass-covered passage
leading into an orchid house, and he went down this passage with the
heels of his patent leather shoes tapping on the tiles, and a large pair
of scissors in his hand. Every morning he attended personally to the
requirements of this orchid house; he snipped off dead sprays, he
industriously blew tobacco smoke on small parasitic animals, and
squirted them with soapy water, and this morning, being in a
particularly good humour, he went so far as to tickle, with a wisp of
hay, the back of the useful toad. That animal received his attentions
with silent affability; it closed its eyes, and opened and shut its
mouth like an old gentleman awaking from his after-dinner nap.
It was a warm morning, and when he had finished attending to the
orchids he strolled round outside the house, back to the front door. The
house stood high above the river, and commanded a good view of the green
valley; and, in the distance, two miles away, the red-roofed village
slanted upwards from the stream towards the downs. He stood looking out
over the broad, pleasant fields for some moments, and his eyes wandered
across the river to where the red front of Mr. Grampound's house, half
hidden by the large cedar, stood, as if looking up to his. The
flower-beds gleamed like jewels in the sunshine, and he could see two
figures strolling quietly down the gravel path toward the river. One of
them was a girl, tall, almost as tall as the man who walked by her side,
and to whom she was apparently talking. Just as Lord Hayes looked, they
stopped suddenly, and he saw her spread out her hands, which had been
clasped in front of her, with a quick dramatic movement. The action
struck him as slightly symbolical.
He was roused by the sound of crunched gravel, and, turning round, saw
his mother walking towards him. She was in her hygienic dress, and had a
small, tin botanical case slung over her shoulders. In her hand she held
a pair of eminently useful scissors, the sort of scissors with which
Atropos might sever the thread of life. Lord Hayes wore a slightly
exotic look by her side.
"The under housemaid has fallen into a refreshing sleep," she
announced, "and the action of the skin has set in. In fact, she will do
very well now. And how are you, dear James, this morning?"
"I am very well," said he; "very well indeed, thank you, mother."
His mother looked at him with interest.
"You've got a touch of liver," she remarked truculently.
"No, I think not. I feel very well, thanks."
Lady Hayes snapped her scissors.
"I'm afraid the harvest will be very bad this year," she said. "There's
been no rain, and no rain means no straw."
"Yes, the farmers are in a bad way," said Lord Hayes. "I shall have to
make a reduction again."
"Well, dear," said his mother, "all I can say is that we shall probably
be beggars. But porridge is wonderfully sustaining."
"We've still got a few acres in London," he remarked. "Really, in these
depressed times, I don't know how a man could live without an acre or
two there."
Old Lady Hayes laughed a hoarse, masculine laugh, and strode off,
snapping her scissors again. Half-way across the lawn she stopped.
"The Grampounds are at home, I suppose," she said. "I want to see Mrs.
Grampound some time."
"Oh, yes; I travelled with Miss Grampound yesterday. She said they were
all at home."
"Ha! She is very handsome. But a modern young woman, I should think."
"She's not very ancient. She was staying with the Brabizons."
His mother frowned and continued her walk.
Lord Hayes always felt rather like a naughty child under his mother's
eye. He did not at present feel quite equal to telling her what his
relations with Eva were. Modernity was the one failing for which she had
no sympathy, for it was a characteristic of which she did not possess
the most rudimentary traces. To her it meant loss of dignity,
Americanisms, contempt for orthodoxy, and general relaxation of all that
is worthy in man. She preferred the vices of her own generation to the
virtues of newer developments, and almost regretted the gradual
extinction of the old three-bottle school, for they were, in her
opinion, replaced by men who smoked while they were talking to women,
while the corresponding women had given way to women who smoked
themselves. For a man to drink port wine in company with other men was
better, as being a more solid and respectable failing, than for him to
talk to a woman with a cigarette between his lips.
Eva, as Lord Hayes had guessed from his point of vantage by the front
door of his house, had strolled out into the garden after breakfast
with Percy. She had not told him of Lord Hayes's offer, but she could
not help talking to him with it in her mind. It was like a bracket
preceded by a minus sign, which affected all that was within the
bracket.
"I wish you weren't going away, Percy," she said. "When I woke up this
morning, I thought with horror of all the slow days that were coming. I
don't care a bit for doing all those things which 'nice girls' are
supposed to do. I have no enthusiasms, and the enthusiasms of the people
I see here are unintelligible to me. The sight of a dozen little boys in
a Sunday school, with pomatum on their heads, inspires me with slight
disgust--so do bedridden old women. I suppose I have no soul. That is
quite possible. But, but--"
"Yes, I'm luckier than you," said Percy; "I like little quiet things. I
like fishing, and reading the paper, and doing nothing."
"Yes, you're luckier than I am just now," said Eva, "but when I do get
interested in things, I shall be in a better position than you. I'm sure
there are lots of interests in the world, but I don't realise it."
"Well, I daresay you will discover them sometime," said Percy,
consolingly.
"Who can tell? There are lots of women who do not feel any interest in
anything--though, perhaps, fewer women than men. But why does London
interest you so? It seems to me just as stupid in its way as this
place."
"I like the sense of there being loads of people about," said Percy. "A
lot of people together are not at all the same as a number of units."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, it's just the same as with gunpowder. One grain of powder only
spits if you set light to it, but if you were to throw a pound of
gunpowder into the fire the result would be quite different from the
effect of a thousand spits."
It was at this point that Lord Hayes was watching the two from his front
door. Eva stopped suddenly in her walk, and spread out her hands,
stretching her arms out.
"That's what I want," she said. "I want to develop and open. I fully
believe the world is very interesting, but I am like a blind man being
told about a sunset. It conveys nothing to me. And I don't believe that
fifty million Sunday schools and mothers' meetings would do it for me.
It must touch me somehow else. Religion and philanthropy are not the
keys. I long to find out what the keys are."
"It's a pity you don't want to marry," said Percy.
"How do you know I don't want to marry?"
"You've told me so yourself, plenty of times. You said only a few weeks
ago that you thought all men most uninteresting."
"Yes, I know. But I'm not so egotistical as not to suspect that the
fault is mine. I don't know any men well, except you, and I don't think
that you are at all uninteresting. If only I could be certain--"
Eva broke off suddenly, but Percy asked her what she wished to be
certain about.
"If I could be certain that I was right--right for me, that is--certain
that for me life and men and women were quite uninteresting, I don't
think I should mind so much. I would cease thinking about it altogether.
I might even teach in the Sunday school. If all things are
uninteresting, I may as well do that, and cease to expect interest in
anything."
"But aren't you conscious of any change in yourself?" asked Percy; "and
doesn't the very fact that you are getting more and more conscious that
everything is very dull go to prove it?"
"I don't quite understand."
Percy looked vaguely about, mentally speaking, for a parallel, and his
eyes, sympathetically following his mind, lighted on an autumn-flowering
bulb, which was just beginning to push its juicy, green spike above the
ground.
"There," he said, "are you not, perhaps, like what that bulb was three
days ago? If it were conscious it would have felt, not that it was
growing, but that the earth round it was pressing it more closely.
Perhaps you are on the point of sprouting. It couldn't have known it
was sprouting."
Eva stood thinking for a moment or two.
"What an excitement it must be, after having seen nothing but brown
earth and an occasional worm all your life, suddenly to come out into
the open air and see other plants and trees and sky. If I am sprouting,
I hope the sky will be blue when I see it first."
"I expect grey sky and rain makes the bulb grow quicker."
"Oh! but I don't care what is good for me," said Eva; "I only care for
what is interesting. Otherwise, I should have done all sorts of salutary
things, all my life--certainly a great number of unpleasant things; one
is always told that unpleasant things are salutary."
"I don't believe that," said Percy; "I think it's one's duty to be
happy."
"Oh! but, according to the same idea, the salutary and unpleasant things
produce ineffable joy, if you give them time," said Eva.
They walked back to the house in silence, but on the steps Eva stopped.
"Perhaps you're right, Percy," she said; "perhaps I am sprouting, though
I don't know it. Certainly I feel more and more confined by all these
dull days than I used to. I wonder what the world will look like when I
get above ground. I hope you are right, Percy; I want to sprout."
"It is such a comfort to think that no crisis ever fails to keep its
appointment," said he. "When one's nature is prepared for the crisis,
the crisis comes. Anything will do for a crisis. It is not the incident
itself that makes the difference, but the change that has been going on
in oneself."
"Yes, that's quite true. It is no use wanting a crisis to come, or
thinking that one is ready for it, if one only had a chance. If one
really is ready for it, anything is a crisis. People who get converted,
as they think, by hearing a hymn sung, think it is the hymn that has
done it, and they don't realise that it is what has been going on in
themselves first. Anything else would do as well."
For the next few days all Eva's surroundings combined to strengthen her
already existing bias. Percy went away; her father was more stern and
exacting than usual; her mother, Eva felt, was watching her, as one
watches a barometer the day before a picnic, and tapping her to see
whether she was inclining to fine weather or stormy. Moreover, the
little talk she had had with Percy strengthened her desire to see and
judge the world. Perhaps she would always find it uninteresting. If that
was so, the sooner she knew it the better; but the probability was
strongly against it, and if it was not uninteresting to the core, she
was simply wasting time. These August days were more tedious than ever;
she read novels, but they bored her; she tried to paint, but got tired
of her picture almost before she had drawn it in; all the
neighbours--and there were not many of them--seemed to be away. Lord
Hayes's apparently was the only house open, and of him she naturally saw
nothing.
It was four days after Percy's departure that Lord Hayes came to call.
Eva was sitting on the lawn behind the house when he arrived; she saw
him coming out through the open French window in the drawing-room, and
down the little iron staircase. She rose to meet him, and told the
footman to bring tea out. Her choice, she knew, was imminent, and she
had one momentary impulse to stop him, to give herself more time, but
the instant afterwards the other picture rose before her--that flat
perspective of level days, a country without hill or stream, her own
life at home, and, on the other hand, the possibilities of her new
sphere--the world and all it contained. Was this man, perhaps, the owner
of the key which would unlock it all to her? Among other men she ranked
him high, perhaps the highest; he had never pestered her, or stared at
her as if she was a picture; he had never bored her; perhaps he
understood her need; perhaps he could supply it.
They shook hands, and stood there for a moment silent. Then he said,
"You promised to show me your beautiful garden. I can see it like a
jewel among the trees from Aston."
"Yes; the flowers are very bright just now," she said, speaking
naturally. "Let us go down the terrace."
At the bottom of the terrace he stopped. The cedar hid them from the
house, and they were alone.
"Your father told me I might call here," he said, "and tell you why I
have come."
Eva was standing about three feet off him, with her hands clasped behind
her. He made a step forward.
"Eva, you know--"
Still she made no sign.
"I have come to ask you whether you care for me at all--whether you will
be my wife?"
"I will be your wife," she said, without smiling, but letting her hands
drop down by her side.
He took one of her disengaged hands in his, and bent forward to kiss it.
She looked at him steadily, as if questioning him--and the long
perspective of level days had passed from her life for ever.
CHAPTER III.
The account of Eva's wedding, the description of her dress, the dramatic
tears which Mrs. Grampound shed as her daughter was led to the altar,
the size of the celebrated family diamonds, are not these things written
in the _Morning Post_? And as they are recorded there, by pens better
fitted than mine to do honour to the glories of the old embroidery on
Eva's train, the Valenciennes lace on her dress, the tulle, the pearls,
the white velvet and all the unfading splendours of the matrimonial
rite, I will merely say that everything was performed on a scale of the
utmost magnificence, that two princes were there, and several dukes, one
of whom was heard remark out loud in church, "By gad! she's exquisite,"
that another exalted personage replied, "Lucky fellow, Hayes," that the
wife of the exalted personage fixed her lord with a stony stare and said
"Sh-sh-sh-sh," and that he, in spite of his strawberry leaves and his
pedigree and his frock coat, trembled in his patent leather shoes, and
in his confusion was vividly impressed with the idea that his
prayer-book consisted entirely of the service for the visitation of
those of riper years, to be used at sea on the occasion of the Queen's
accession. As these portentous facts are not recorded in the _Morning
Post_, I have thought fit to mention them here, with one other little
detail that escaped the vigilance of the newspaper reporters. It was
merely that the bride smiled when she was asked whether she would love,
honour and obey her husband. But she promised to do so in a firm, clear
voice; so, of course, it was all right.
And now two months had passed, and the newly-married pair had emerged
from those blissful weeks of solitude, which are designed to make them
more used to their happiness, to help them to realise that nothing can
come between them but death, that they have awoke from what seemed a
dream and found that it was true, that a new life has begun for them,
and that the gates of Paradise are henceforward going to stand
permanently open.
They had been to the Riviera, where Lord Hayes had bought a large, white
umbrella, under which he used to smoke innumerable cigarettes and go
little strolls along the beach, sometimes with Eva, but oftener alone.
Eva quite fulfilled all the requisites he had wished for in a wife; she
was dignified, rather silent, more than presentable. It pleased him that
crowds should stand and stare at his wife as she walked up and down the
fashionable promenades at Monte Carlo, in her still scornful beauty,
with her deep, unregarding eyes wearily unconscious of their scrutiny;
that the magnates of the earth should stand by her chair, as she lounged
the southern afternoons away, indolently indifferent to the gay chatter
round her. She used to play sometimes at the Casino, with the same air
of utter _ennui_; though, at times, when the luck went heavily in her
favour or against her, her eye would brighten. She played by no system
whatever. "If I had a system," she said, "the game would cease to
interest me; by the doctrine of probabilities, my losses or gains would
be slight if I stuck to the same number; in fact, in the long run, it
would diminish the element of chance almost to nothing. But to me the
whole point of the game lies in the utter uncertainty of it; just the
blind rolling of that ball, the momentum of which no one knows, not even
the man who sets it rolling."
On two occasions she laughed out loud at the tables. The first of these
occasions was when she had been staking wildly on any number that
happened to occur to her, and she had won, by almost miraculous luck,
six times in succession. The other occasion was when she had lost ten
times that sum, in a few minutes, by always betting on the same number.
She liked the sensation of measuring herself with infinite and
immeasurable forces, as exhibited in the laws of gravity and momentum.
But Lord Hayes had made, as the reader will have perceived, one grand
mistake. He had wanted a presentable, dignified and reserved wife, a
wife who was not silly, who did not simper or smirk, and he had got her.
But what he had not recognised was that such characteristics do not make
up a woman's soul, but are only one expression of it under certain
circumstances, and that the soul that expressed itself in such a way was
capable of expressing itself differently under other circumstances; that
all these may only be the natural and legitimate signs of a want of
development, and that they give no hint whatever as to what form that
development will take, or what the developed soul will be. In the month
of June you may see everywhere, on chestnut trees, certain compact
pyramids of folded buds, slightly glutinous to the touch. If you take
one of these off a hundred chestnut trees, you will be unable to detect
the least difference between them. But two months later, three-quarters
of those chestnut trees are covered with spires of white blossoms, and
one quarter with spires of red--_Fabula narratur_. But the presumption
was that any given one would be white? Certainly; but it is well to
remember that a certain number will be red.
Once or twice, then, Eva had shown, as it were, the first hint of a
coming blossom, which, somehow, was strangely disconcerting to her lord;
it was not quite the fair white blossom he had led himself to expect.
Certain of these little episodes will be worth recording.
They had spent ten days at Mentone, among other places, and had met
there a certain Mr. Armine, a young man of about thirty-two, of charming
appearance and manner, who was amusing himself abroad for a month or
two, while an army of contractors, builders and decorators were making
his father's country house, to which he had succeeded by that
gentleman's death, into a place more fitting for a fashionable young man
to spend half the year in. He knew Lord Hayes rather well, and was quite
willing to advance to the same degree of intimacy with his wife.
Everyone called him Jim, for no better reason apparently than that his
name was Plantagenet, but that, after all, was reason enough.
Eva had received this heavily-gilded youth with some cordiality, and he
was clever enough to take advantage of it without subjecting the silver
cord to too severe a strain. The silence and apathy of a Grecian-browed,
velvet-eyed divinity is construed in quite a different manner to the
interpretation put on the identical phenomena when exhibited by podgy
though admirable members of the same sex. It is quite impossible to
imagine that behind the Grecian brow, lurk thoughts that are not
distinguished by the same magnificence as their frontlet.
In other words, Eva's silences, her long glances over the weary, blue
horizon, her indifference to those round her, challenged conjecture, and
roused eager interests, which the vivacity and attractiveness of other
women might quite have failed to awaken.
Jim Armine began by finding immense pleasure in watching her beauty, as
he might have watched a Greek statue, but in a few days his mere
æsthetic pleasure in looking at her had dwindled to insignificance
beside the fascination of something apart from her mere beauty. In those
few weeks of married life, an essential change had come over her; her
soul had awakened with throbs of surprised indignation, and it found
its expression in a gathered intensity of indifference in her husband's
presence.
She had no need to ask him why he had married her; the sense of his
possession of her made itself felt as an insult and an outrage. She felt
she had been duped, deceived, hoodwinked. The consciousness that she was
his was like an open wound. She had sacrificed all her undeveloped
possibilities to a loveless owner; all she had was no longer hers. Truly
the red flowers were very different from the white.
To another man who was something of an observer, the signs of this which
appeared on the surface, as the surface of dark water heaves and is
stirred mysteriously and massively when the depths are moved, were
profoundly interesting. The full import of this stirring, of course, he
did not, could not guess. All he knew was, that this admirably beautiful
woman had moods as profound as they were mysterious; he was pre-occupied
with her, interested, fascinated.
They were sitting together on the verandah of the Beau Site one
afternoon, in the enjoyment of the bright, winter sun. Lord Hayes had
departed with his white umbrella, to see about the purchase of a small
villa which was for sale, and which stood high and pleasantly among the
olive woods.
They had been for a sail in the morning, and Eva said to herself that
she was tired and would stop at home. She did not trouble to make any
excuse at all to her husband. He had mentioned to her that he was going
to see about the villa which she had admired.
"It will be a pleasant drive up there," he had said, "if you care to
come. You said you wanted to see the villa."
Eva had rather wanted to see the villa, but the prospect appeared
suddenly distasteful to her.
"I think I shall stop at home," she said, and left him standing on the
hotel steps.
Jim Armine, it appeared, was going to stop at home, too, and the natural
consequence of this was that, half an hour later, they met on the great
verandah facing south.
"This place gets stupid," she said, seating herself in a low, basket
chair. "I think we shall have to go away."
"Where are you going to?" he asked.
"I had thought of Algiers; we can't go north yet. They are having
blizzards in England. Besides, February in England is always
intolerable."
"I have never been to Algiers," said Jim, pregnantly.
Eva looked at him a moment.
"Well, I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't come with us. We
haven't got a monopoly of the line."
"I shouldn't come if you didn't want me," he said, rather sulkily.
"Fancy asking a bride on her honeymoon whether she wanted another man
with her!" she said. "There is only one man in the moon, I've always
heard."
Poor Jim found it rather hard to keep his temper, more especially as he
knew that he had nothing to complain of. He shifted his position in his
chair, and fixed his eye on a sail on the horizon, so that he could see
Eva without looking at her.
"Algiers is quite a model place for a honeymoon, I should think," he
said. "Of course, the object is to get out of the world. There is too
large a piece of the world at Mentone. Don't you find it so?"
Eva raised her eyebrows. This last speech seemed to her to savour of
impertinence, and needed no reply. Jim was clever enough to see that he
had made a mistake, and his tone altered.
"Where are you going to stay in Algiers? I believe it is pleasanter out
of the town, on the hills."
"Oh! Hayes has got a villa somewhere in Mustapha Supérieure. He has a
passion for villas. He has a strong sense of possession. We have been
making a sort of triumphal progress. He has a villa at Biarritz, which
we stayed in, and now he has bought one here. Personally, I prefer a
hotel, but, of course, villas are more suitable to honeymoons. You are
more alone there. But they are rather spidery affairs if they are never
lived in."
"Oh! spiders belong to the class of idyllic insects," said Armine.
"They swarm in hayfields on Sunday evenings, which is one of the most
recognised idyllic settings."
"I don't think I can be idyllic," remarked Eva. "I never want to sit in
hayfields. They make one feel creepy, and all sorts of strange things
crawl down your back. It may be idyllic, but the consciousness of the
creepy things makes one want to go for the idylls with a broom. Besides,
spiders are so like a certain class of odious men."
Jim recalled at that moment a little thing that had struck his attention
the same morning. Lord Hayes had been breakfasting in the verandah on
the usual continental breakfast--a couple of rolls, two pieces of creamy
butter, coffee, and a saucer of honey. A fly had found its way into the
honey, and Hayes had extracted it with the butt end of his teaspoon.
There was a methodical eagerness about this action that had made Jim
think at that moment of a spider disentangling a fly from its web, and
at Eva's words the scene flashed up before him again.
"I think I know what you mean," he said, feeling his way.
Eva, too, had noticed the scene in the morning, and Jim's remark made
her wonder whether he also had it in his mind. When she had compared
spiders to an odious class of men, she had not in the least thought of
her husband. The possible impertinence of his first remark received
some confirmation. She was willing to be like a spider, too, if
necessary.
"I daresay you do," she said. "There is nothing very subtle about it. I
remember thinking this morning that you looked so like a spider when you
were helping that fly out of your honey. Not that you belong to the
odious class of men."
Jim flushed. The whip tingled unpleasantly on his shoulders.
"It was your husband who rescued the fly out of his honey," he said.
"Was it?" asked Eva, negligently. "I thought it was you."
She did not feel angry with him. He had made a mistake and had been
punished for it. Justice had been done.
"It's getting rather cold," she went on. "Take me for a stroll, and give
me your arm if you care for convention as little as you say you do. I am
a little tired."
They walked up and down the gay street in front of the hotel for
half-an-hour or so. Eva felt a vague stimulus in the homage of this
presentable young man, in spite of his slight awkwardnesses. She felt he
was not a man whom it was easy to make a fool of, but she was making a
somewhat complete fool of him, and it pleased her. For the first time,
perhaps, she caught a glimpse of her own power as a beautiful and
attractive woman. That glimpse roused no vanity in her, but
considerable interest. The sense of personal power is always pleasant;
no man or woman who is alive, in any sense of the word, will acquiesce
in being a unit among units, or will fail to feel a delicate growing
love of power. We brought nothing into the world, and we shall assuredly
take nothing out; but while we are in the world, how we cling, with a
persistence that no creed will shake, to the passionate desire for more
and more and more. Eva was, in fact, on the threshold of the house
called "Know Thyself." It is a house of varying size. To her it appeared
large and well furnished.
They walked along the sea-wall westwards, and Eva sat down on the low
balustrade. The air was still and windless, and forty feet below lay the
smooth, grey backs of the rocks still shining with the salt water.
"What a frightful coward one is," she said, "not to throw oneself down
and see what happens next. I always flatter myself that I'm brave; but I
am not brave enough to risk anything, really. I think a year ago I might
have thrown myself down if it had occurred very strongly to me, because
I had nothing to risk. But now things are beginning to be interesting. I
should risk a certain amount of amusement and pleasure if I just stepped
over that wall. I wish you would step over and see, Mr. Armine; only
that would be no good, you couldn't come and tell me about it
afterwards."
"Of course, lots of things are a bore," said he, "but I can't imagine
any existence where that wouldn't be the case. I couldn't frame a life
in my mind where one wouldn't be bored."
"Well, I sympathise with you. I probably am incapable--in fact, I know I
am incapable--of many emotions, but I feel bored no longer. I used to
feel nothing else."
Armine was sitting near her, looking the other way.
"What emotions can't you feel?" he asked suddenly.
Eva laughed.
"Oh! plenty, and perhaps the most important of all. That is why I fully
expect not to feel all the emotions that Algiers should inspire in me."
Armine thought this remark much less inconsequent than it sounded, but
he kept his reflections to himself.
Two days afterwards, Eva and her husband left Mentone for Marseilles.
Jim walked down with them to the station, accounting for his action by
saying that he expected a box from England, and it had not arrived,
though it was two days overdue. To Eva this appeared the most shallow
and unnecessary of subterfuges. There was some slight delay in starting,
and he stood by their carriage window with his arms on the sill until
the train moved.
Eva was leaning back in her corner, talking slowly but somewhat
continuously.
"I hope your box will have come," she was saying with fine cruelty. "You
must have been very eager about it to come down through these dusty
streets, when you might be having a sail. I really thought you were
coming to see us off till you explained about the box. I think I should
have been rude enough to ask you to stop at home if it had been so. I
hate being seen off. There is never anything to say; you feel as if you
ought to make pretty little farewell speeches, but the farewell speeches
always hang fire, I notice. And no one can continue an ordinary,
rational, desultory conversation with fifty engines screaming at him. It
is much better for everyone to pretend they are not going till the last
moment, and then jump up quickly, say good-bye, and bundle into the cab.
But at a railway station it is impossible to pretend you are not going.
The apparatus of going is too obvious. Everyone is fussy and stupid at a
station. Ah! we are really off, are we? Good-bye! I wish you were coming
with us."
Eva smiled rather maliciously. The first impertinent remark had been
settled with now, and they were quits again.
Jim Armine stood on the platform watching the smoke of the receding
train. He made a monosyllabic remark which is not worth setting down,
and went back to the hotel. The box which he was expecting might
languish alone in the parcel office for all that he cared.
The bridal pair crossed in one of the French Trans-atlantique steamers,
which are built long and narrow for the sake of speed, and the accurate
observation of the effect of a cross sea. Eva, with her serene immunity
from human weaknesses, was sitting near the bows of the vessel, enjoying
the warm, winter sun, and watched the great heaving masses of water,
rushing up against the side of the vessel, with a sympathetic gladness
in their glorious unrestraint. The position presented itself in a
somewhat different light to her husband, who retired, under the
influence of the same glorious unrestraint, with anything but
sympathetic gladness in his heart. Eva felt a little contemptuous pity
for him, but enjoyed being alone. It was drawing near that supreme hour
when the sun just touches the horizon of water, and the depth of colour
in southern sea and sky grows almost unbearable in its cruel fulness, in
its air of knowing something, of being able to tell one, if one could
only hear its message, some mystery that would make things plain. Eva
was sitting on the windward side of the vessel, looking west, and her
eyes were filled with a still, questioning wonder. She had arrived at
that most agonising stage of feeling sure that a mystery was there,
without grasping what it was to which she wanted any answer. Her mind
was full of a vague wonder and expectancy--the wonder and expectancy of
a mind just awakened from its dreamless sleep of indifference. One arm
was thrown back, and her hand grasped the taffrail to steady herself.
She had taken off her hat, and her hair was blown about in the singing
breeze. The human interest which had begun to dawn in her, which had
stirred and woke from its sleep with a sudden, startled cry, a few weeks
ago, would not let the other wonder slumber. The sense of the eternal
mystery of things watched side by side with the sense of the eternal
mystery of men. But for this half-hour she was alone with it; she was
unconscious of the heaving and tossing of the vessel; all she knew was
that she questioned, with something like passionate eagerness, the great
walls of wine-dark water with their heraldry of foam, the hissing
monsters that rose and fell round her, the luminous miracle that was
sinking in the west.
In the meantime, Lord Hayes had got, so to speak, his second wind, had
emerged from the privacy of his cabin, and was walking along the deck
towards her with a battered, dishevelled air. The punctuation of his
steps was rigidly but irregularly determined by the laws of gravity as
exhibited by a vessel pitching heavily in a fluid medium. Eva had not
seen him coming, and he stood by her a few moments in silence.
"I feel a little better," he remarked at length, in precise,
well-modulated tones.
Eva started and frowned as if she had been struck. She turned on him
with angry impatience.
"Ah, you have spoiled it all," she cried.
She looked at him a moment, and then broke out into a mirthless laugh.
He had wrapped a grey shawl round his shoulders, and on his head was a
brown, deerstalker cap.
"My dear Hayes," she said, "you are in vivid contrast with the sunset,
and you startled me. I was thinking about the sunset. However, it is
nearly over now. You look like a sea-sick picture of twilight. That grey
shawl is very twilighty. Come into the saloon and get me some tea."
That gentleman was in too enfeebled a condition to feel resentment, even
if he had been by nature resentful. It is notorious that certain
emotions of the mind cannot exist under certain conditions of the body.
No normal man feels a tendency to anger after a good dinner, or a
tendency to patience in the ten minutes preceding that function. No one
feels spiritually exalted in the middle of the morning, or heroic when
suffering from slight neuralgia, and I venture to add that no one has
spirit enough to feel resentful after an hour or two of sea-sickness.
The villa at Algiers was a charming, Moorish house, with a predominance
of twisted pilasters and shining tiles, and bold, purple-belled
creepers flaunting it over the white walls. It stood on the hills of
Mustapha Supérieure, above the Eastern-looking town, surrounded by a
rich, melodious garden, where the winter nightingales sang in the boughs
of orange groves, which were bright with flower and fruit together, and
where tall, listless eucalyptus trees shed their rough, odorous fruits
thick on the path. But this soft beauty suited Eva's mind not so well as
the bold, golden sun dropping into a wine-dark sea; in fact, she
cordially detested the place. How much of her hatred was due to the fact
that she was alone with her husband she did not care to ask herself.
Certainly, the even monotony of one face, one low, well-modulated voice,
was displeasing to her.
She found a malicious pleasure in giving him surprises. Her
freshly-awakened interest in the human race sometimes took the bit in
its teeth and ran riot, and, when it ran riot in his presence, she took
no care to check it, but talked in a voluble, rather vicious vein, that
startled him. For instance, at dinner one day, she had discussed certain
books which he did not know women even read, and announced, somewhat
vividly, views on life and being which were scarcely conventional. After
dinner, they had sat out in the little passage that ran round the open
square in the centre of the house, supported on twisted pillars, and Eva
continued her newly-found confession of faith.
"Men seem to expect that women should be sexless replicas of
themselves," she said. "All they would allow them is the inestimable
privilege of being good. Virtue is its own reward, they say--so they
cultivate their own pleasure with a fine disregard of virtue, and a
curious pride in performing actions which certainly will lay up for them
no store of virtuous and ineffable joy, while to the women they say, 'Be
good; here is a blank cheque on the bank of Providence. The bigger the
better. _Au revoir._' A delightfully simple arrangement."
Lord Hayes gave a little cough, and added sugar to his coffee.
"I should always wish," he said, with the air of an after-dinner
speaker; "I should always wish women to fulfil to the uttermost their
own duties, which none but women can do."
"The duty of being good," said Eva. "Exactly so."
"I fail to see the justice of your remarks about the tendencies of men
to regard women as sexless replicas of themselves," he said. "The
province of women is quite different from that of men."
"Ah! let me explain," said Eva. "Men are bad and good mixed. Whether the
bad or the good predominates is beside the point. Leave out the bad, and
introduce no vivid good, and you get the sexlessness, and what remains
is a sexless goodness, which is, as I say, the sexless replica of the
man. That is a man's woman."
"No doubt it is my own stupidity," said Lord Hayes politely, "but I
still fail to agree with you. You do not take into account what I
ventured to call the province of women, which, I say again, is quite
different from the province of men."
"_Da capo_," murmured Eva. "Let us agree to differ, Hayes. I am rather
sleepy; I think I shall go to bed."
Lord Hayes lighted a candle for her, and waited till it had burned up.
"Good-night," said Eva, nodding at him.
He bent forward to kiss her, and, as before, she surrendered her face to
be kissed.
The length of these episodes calls for an apology, but there is just
this to be said. Life, for most of us, consists of episodes, of
interruptions, of parentheses. We can few of us keep up the epic vein
and go sublimely on, building up from great harmonious scenes a great
harmonious whole. The scene-shifter perspires and tugs at his mighty
cardboard trees and impossible castles in the forest; they are stiff,
they will not turn round. And he sits down--does this irresponsible and
wholly unbusinesslike scene-shifter--and meditates. After all, is life
really surrounded by these giants of the theatrical forest? Do we go
into remote and virgin woods and chant our love in irreproachable
epics? When we have made our great scene, when we stand in the pure,
unselfish, heroic, villain-massacreing, devoted climax of our existence,
are we quite sure that some one will throw the ethereal oxy-hydrogen
light on to us at the right moment? Will the audience recognise how
great we are: and, even if they do, will not the slightest accident with
the oxy-hydrogen light turn our climax into an ante-climax? The
irresponsible scene-shifter begins to see a more excellent way. Roll off
your forest trees; send the manager of the oxy-hydrogen light home, give
him eighteenpence to get drunk on--he will like it better than your
heroic vein--let us have no scenery even. Just a few chairs and tables,
a plain, grey sky, and no herpics. A few little episodes dealing of men
who are not saints or silver kings, a few women who are not abbesses or
Portias, who are in no epic mood, but in the mood of the majority of
weak, unsatisfactory, careless, human beings, who can be unselfish and
pure, but who are at times a little uncertain about the big riddle,
unscrupulous, unkind, worldly. Besides, we are only in the first act at
present. Perhaps the gigantic forest trees and the white light will come
on later, but we do not promise. The irresponsible scene-shifter is
right. So much, then, in praise of episode.
To return from the point at which we started before these unconscionable
episodes found their way into the text, the honeymoon was over, the
month was April, and Lord and Lady Hayes had returned to England. They
were to spend a few days at Aston, and, after Easter, to go straight up
to London. Old Lady Hayes was staying with her niece, who had married a
certain Mr. Davenport, and had one son. Reggie Davenport was a favourite
with the dowager, who bullied him incessantly, and who sometimes got
furious, because he never lost his temper with her. She was to spend a
fortnight in London with the Hayes, as a great concession, in order to
make Eva's acquaintance, and would join them as soon as they had
settled. It may be stated at once, that she regarded her son's marriage
as a most unprincipled and selfish act, and as an insult levelled
directly at herself.
Mrs. Grampound came up to see her daughter on the first day after their
arrival.
"Your father would have come with me," she explained, "but he and Percy
are away. I am quite alone at home. You are looking wonderfully well,
dear, and I'm sure I needn't ask you whether you are happy?"
"Of course," said Eva, "those are the things that are taken for
granted."
"I've come to have a little cosy talk with you," said Mrs. Grampound,
settling herself in a chair and taking off her gloves.
A cosy little soliloquy would perhaps have been a more accurate
description. She wandered on in a sort of pious intoxication at the
contemplation of her daughter.
"The mistress of a great house like this has very great
responsibilities, my darling," she said. "If dear James were not such a
thoroughly able and upright man, I confess I should feel a wee bit
nervous at seeing my darling whirled away into such a circle. Be very
sure exactly how you are going to behave. There seems to me something
very beautiful in the life of all those dear last-century, great ladies,
whose husbands used to treat them with such charming old-fashioned
courtesy, and lock them up whenever they went away, which must have been
most tedious. Yes, and send a servant to tell the groom of the chambers
to ask my lady if she would receive him. Dear me, yes."
"I don't think Hayes means to lock me up whenever he goes away," said
Eva. "We haven't got a groom of the chambers, either."
"No, dear," said Mrs. Grampound; "I was just saying, wasn't I, that all
that was changed. Husbands lounge in their wives' boudoirs now, and
smoke cigarettes there. So much more human and natural. You don't mind
the smell of smoke, do you, dear?"
"On the contrary," said Eva; "I smoke myself."
"Gracious, how shocking! What a wicked child. Of course, there's no harm
in it, dear; lots of nice women smoke. I should not let Hayes know that.
When a difficult time comes--there will be difficult times, of course,
my Eva--there is no rose without its thorns--Let me see, what was I
saying--ah! yes, those little indulgences, like letting a husband have a
cigarette in the drawing-room every now and then, are very much
appreciated. A little womanly tenderness," continued Mrs. Grampound,
getting rather breathless, and volubly eloquent, "a little tact, a
little wifely sympathy, just a look, the 'I know, I know,' which women
can put into one little look, is all that is required to make those
difficulties real advantages--concealed facilities, one might really
call them; real renewals of the marriage vow; the rough places shall be
plain, in fact, if we may use those words."
"We get on admirably together," said Eva; "he is most considerate for
me, and most kind."
"I declare I positively love him," cried her mother. "Of course, in any
case, I should teach myself--should compel myself--to love the man of
your choice, but the first time I saw him, I said to myself, that is the
husband for my Eva. It was one June evening," continued Mrs. Grampound
with an impressional vagueness, "and we were dining somewhere, I can't
remember where, and he was there too; dear me, I recollect it all as
clearly as if it was yesterday. I remember old Lady Hayes telling us all
that brown sherry was rank poison, and that she would as soon think of
drinking a glass of laudanum. We all laughed a great deal, because our
host had very famous brown sherry."
"It must have been very pleasant," said Eva.
"Dear old Lady Hayes," said Mrs. Grampound; "such a wonderful woman,
such strong, shrewd common sense; I wonder if she will go on living with
you, Eva? I don't think it's a very good plan myself--there is sure to
be some little unpleasantness now and then."
"In spite of her strong, shrewd common sense?" asked Eva.
"Dear child, how you catch one's words up! Of course, her presence would
be invaluable to you, if she stopped, and with such a guest constantly
by you, of course you would learn a great deal. But I should make it
quite plain what your relative positions must be. You are the mistress
of the house, Eva; she is your husband's pensioner. Be very kind, very
courteous, but very firm. Your rights are your rights. I daresay she
will go to live at Brighton or Bournemouth or Bath, all those
watering-places begin with a B; no doubt she has money of her own. You
didn't think of asking Lord Hayes what would be done about that, did
you, Eva? You might suggest it very gently and feelingly some time soon.
Of course, you needn't express any opinion till you see what she is
likely to do. Then, if it appears that she is proposing to live with
you, just say very quietly that you will be very glad to have her. That
will show, I think, that you know and are ready to insist on her
occupying her proper position in the house. And you went to Algiers,
did you not?" continued her mother; "that dear, white town set like a
pearl and all that on the sapphire sea. I forget who said that about it,
but it seems to me a very poetical description. I could almost find it
in my heart to envy you, dearest."
"Yes, it's a very pretty place," assented Eva.
"Darling, why do you tell me so little," said Mrs. Grampound, more
soberly. "I have been thinking so continuously about you all the time
you have been away; you have lived in all my thoughts. I have said to
myself, 'Eva will be at home in four weeks, three weeks, two days, one
day; to-day I shall see my dearest again.'"
"What is there to tell you?" said Eva, slowly. "You assume I am happy,
and I don't deny it. I am also amused and interested. I find things very
entertaining. If you like I will show you some photographs of Mentone
and Algiers. I lost two thousand francs at Monte Carlo. Hayes is very
generous about money matters, and he has the further requirement of
being very rich. He is bent on my being magnificent, and so, for that
matter, am I. You shall see some fine things. I have, as you told me
before my marriage, great natural advantages in the way of beauty.
Diamonds suit me very well, and I have quantities of diamonds."
Poor Mrs. Grampound's mental intoxication was passing away rapidly,
leaving behind a feeling of depression. At no time did her thoughts
present themselves to her with distinctness; they were like seaweeds
waving about close to the surface of the water. Sometimes, after a big
wave had passed, sundry little ends of them appeared above the sea for a
second or two, and Mrs. Grampound made anxious little grabs at these
before they disappeared again. Consequently, her descriptions of them,
as reflected in her conversation, were somewhat scrappy and inorganic.
She appeared, in the short silence that followed Eva's remarks, to have
got hold of a new sort of sea-weed--a bitter, prickly fragment. At any
rate she said, somewhat piteously,--
"Eva, Eva, tell me you are satisfied. You don't blame me, do you, for
urging it on you?"
Eva could be very cruel. The foam-born Aphrodite, when she came "from
barren deeps to conquer all with love," had, we may be sure, many
undesirable suitors, and to these, I expect, she did not show any
particular kindness or sympathy. She was, to judge by her face, too
divine to be cruel in petty, irritating ways, but she was too divine not
to be very human.
Eva raised her eyebrows.
"Why should I blame you? I am amused and interested. After all, that is
more important than anything else. Surely I ought to be grateful to you.
But to speak quite frankly, I did not marry to please you; I married to
please myself, and Hayes, of course," she added.
Mrs. Grampound was very nearly shedding a few vague tears, but the
appearance of Lord Hayes made her decide to postpone them.
"My charming mother-in-law," he said, "I am delighted to see you. Very
much delighted, in fact. And am I not to see my father-in-law? How do
you think Eva is looking?"
"Eva is looking wonderfully well," said she briskening herself up a
little. "She has been giving me the most delightful accounts of your
honeymoon. Mentone, Algiers, all those charming, romantic places. But
Monte Carlo! Really, I was shocked. And Eva tells me she lost two
hundred thousand francs--or was it two thousand, Eva? In any case, it is
quite shocking, and I feel I ought to scold you for leading my child
into bad ways."
"He didn't lead me," said Eva. "I went by myself. I think you
remonstrated, didn't you, Hayes? You didn't play yourself, I know.
However, I got a good deal of fun out of it. It was really exciting
sometimes. After all, that is the chief thing. Two thousand francs was
cheap. Tell mother about the new villa. I must go--I've got a hundred
things to do."
Old Lady Hayes also made inquiries of her son as to what was to happen
to her. She was a direct old lady, and she said,--
"And what is to become of me?"
Lord Hayes quailed under these unmasked batteries and felt most thankful
that he would not have to meet them alone any longer. He had great
confidence in Eva's courage, and felt that she would be quite up to the
mark on such occasions. But he had, for the present, to trust to his own
forces, and, with the idea of making the scene as little unpleasant as
possible, he replied,--
"Of course, dear mother, you will do whatever suits you best. Your
position in the house will necessarily be somewhat changed."
"Necessarily," said Lady Hayes.
Her son found no pertinent reply ready.
CHAPTER IV.
There is something peculiarly substantial and English about those houses
which our aristocracy brighten with their presence, in the more
fashionable parts of London, during several months of the year. Those
lords of the earth, who cannot manage to breathe unless they have a
thousand or more acres round their houses in the country, being sensible
folk, are content to live, shoulder by shoulder, in rows of magnificent
barracks, when they are in London. A porch supported by Ionic pillars,
with a line of Renaissance balustrade along the top, a sprinkling of
Japanese awnings, a couple of dozen large, square windows looking out on
to what is technically known as "the square garden," partly because it
is round, and partly because it is sparsely planted with sooty, stunted
bushes, scattered about on what courtesy interprets to be grass, and
surrounded by large, forbidding railings, are the characteristics of the
best London houses. They may not be distinguished by any striking,
artistic beauty, but they are eminently habitable.
Along one of these rows, one June afternoon, a smart victoria was being
driven rapidly. It was hung on the best possible springs, and the wheels
were circumscribed with the best possible india-rubber tires. A
water-cart had just passed up the street, and the air was full of that
indescribable freshness which we associate in the country with summer
rain, and which, in London, makes us feel that art is really doing a
great deal to rival Nature. The progress of the well-appointed victoria
was therefore as free from noise, jolts, and dust as locomotion is
permitted to be in this imperfect world. There was only one occupant of
this piece of perfection--for, of course, the coachman and footman are
part of the carriage--and she was as perfect as her equipment. In other
words, Lady Hayes was going home to tea.
The carriage drew up with noiseless precision at the curb-stone, and
Lady Hayes remained apparently unconscious of the stoppage till the
powdered footman had rung the bell, and turned back the light crimson
rug that covered her knees. Then she rose languidly and trailed her
skirts across the pavement to the house. Above the porch was a square,
canvas tent, with one side, away from the sun, open to admit the breeze,
and Eva, as she passed upstairs, said to the man standing in the hall,
"Tea upstairs, above the porch." This tent opened out of a low window in
the drawing-room, through which Eva passed, and in which was sitting, as
gaunt and forbidding as ever, her respected mother-in-law. That lady had
grudgingly complied with the popular but misguided prejudices of London
with regard to the skins wherewith the human animal clothes itself, but
her stiff, black silk gown was as awe-inspiring as her grey, Jaeger
dress and the boots with eight holes a-piece in them.
They had all been in London nearly a month, and the excellent old lady
was living in a permanent equipment of heavy armour, with which to
repel, assault, and batter her daughter-in-law. Eva, on the contrary,
despised the old methods of warfare, and met these attacks, or led them,
with no further implements than her own unruffled scorn, and a somewhat
choice selection of small daggers and arrows, in the shape of a studied
delicacy of sarcasm and polite impertinences. She resembled, in fact, an
active and accomplished pea-shooter, who successfully pelted the joints
of a mature and slowly-moving Goliath. The dowager glanced up as she
entered. One of her laborious mottoes was "Punctuality is the root of
virtue," and Eva, in consequence, held the view that punctuality is the
last infirmity of possibly noble minds. She was quite willing to believe
that her mother-in-law had an incomparably noble mind; she did not
underrate her antagonist's strong points; in fact, her whole system was
to emphasize them.
"Ah, you've come at last," said old Lady Hayes. "And pray, when are we
to have tea?"
"I am late," said Eva. "I always am late, you know. Why didn't you have
tea without me? Is Hayes in?"
"The servants have quite enough to do with the dance to-night without
bringing up tea twice."
"Ah, that is so thoughtful and charming of you," said Eva, drawing off
her long gloves. "The merciful man considers his beast. That is so good
of you."
"And he considers his servants as well," said the dowager.
"Oh! I think servants are meant to be classed as a sort of beast. The
good ones are machines, with volition; and if they are bad servants, of
course they are beasts."
The dowager turned over the leaves of the current number of the _Lancet_
with elaborate unconsciousness.
Eva finished taking off her gloves, and whistled a few bars of a popular
tune.
"I don't know if it's customary for women to whistle now-a-days," said
the old lady, for whistling, as Eva knew, was a safe draw, "but in my
time it was thought most improper."
"Isn't there a French proverb--I daren't pronounce French before
you--about 'we have changed all that?' That is a very silly proverb. It
is the older generation who changed it themselves. They made their own
system of life impossible. They reduced it to an absurdity."
The dowager, who spoke French with a fine Scotch accent, and knew it,
finished buckling on, as it were, her greaves and cuirass, and presented
arms.
"I confess I don't understand you. No doubt I am very stupid--I should
like very much to know how we have reduced our life to an absurdity."
"I don't say the modern generation are not quite as absurd," said Eva,
"but the difference is that they have not yet learned their absurdity.
You see, the whole race of men, since B. C. 4004--that is the correct
date, is it not?--have been devoting themselves to the construction of
any theory of life which would hold water, and one by one they have been
abandoned. The new theory, that nothing matters at all, has not yet been
disproved, and considering that no theory hitherto has ever been
permanent, it would be absurd to abandon this one till it is disproved
in as convincing a manner as all its predecessors."
"I imagine that no previous age has ever sunk so deep in mere sensuous
gratifications," said the dowager, lunging heavily.
"Ah, do you think so?" said Eva. "Of course, it is impertinent in me to
try to argue the matter with you, as experience is the only safe guide
in such matters, and you have experience of at least one more generation
than I. But that seems to me altogether untrue. As we know from the
Bible, desire shall fail, because it has been gratified to the utmost
that human desire can conceive, I imagine. Well, I think desire has
failed to a great extent. The men of your generation, for instance, and
the generation before, drank so much port wine that this generation
drink none. The daily three bottles that our grandfathers and
great-grandfathers indulged in, has fulfilled the desire of port to the
uttermost. No one gets drunk now. I don't think I ever saw a man drunk.
They used to fall under the table, did they not? What a charming state
of things! But it has at least produced a fastidiousness in us, which
considers heavy drinking coarse and low.
"My father was a teetotaler, and so was my husband," said the old lady,
rather wildly.
"I think that the habit of drinking in men," continued Eva, "is really
the fault of the women; you, of course, are an instance in point. Your
husband was a teetotaler--surely, through your influence. If the men of
the last generation were vile, the women, I think, were viler still.
What is the word? Oh! yes, vicarious. The men sinned vicariously for the
women."
"It is easy to speak lightly of the virtues of your forefathers,"
remarked the dowager; "much easier than to practice them yourself."
"Ah! you misunderstand me," said Eva. "Heaven forbid that I should speak
lightly of them! Their virtues were as gigantic and as loathsome to
them, as their vices are to me. They used to go to church with the most
appalling regularity, and eat salt fish in Lent, and have their
clergyman to dinner on Sunday, which meant no port wine to speak of. Of
course, they made up for it by having a little quiet cock-fighting on
Sunday afternoon, but you cannot expect perfection."
"Cock-fighting seems to me no more brutal than butchering hand-reared
pheasants," said the dowager.
"Ah! that is the war-cry of people who don't know anything about
shooting," said Eva. "The hand-reared pheasant comes over the guns at
the height of about sixty feet, at forty miles an hour. I watched them
shooting last year at home. There was a big wind, and Hayes missed
seventeen birds in succession. Take a gun and try for yourself. Of
course, you say the same thing about partridge-driving. You say the
manly thing is to walk your partridges up instead of having them driven
to you. The truth is that one of the reasons why men go
partridge-driving now is because it is so much more difficult than
walking them up. Certainly Hayes's butchery of hand-reared pheasants was
a most humane proceeding. Did you ever see a cock-fight?"
"Cock-fighting improved the breed," said the other, "though I disapprove
of it entirely."
"Well," said Eva, "it killed off the weak ones. The survival of the
fittest, of course. And we reap the benefits by having particularly
large eggs to eat; at least, I suppose a stalwart chicken begins life in
a stalwart egg."
Old Lady Hayes rose with dignity.
"I think tea must be ready," she said. "In fact, it is probably cold by
this time."
"Time does pass so in conversation," said Eva, languidly. "Ah! they have
sent some orchids. How nice and cool they look." She snapped off a spray
of the delicate, cultured blossoms, and fastened them, in her dress. "I
think tea is put in the room above the porch. I rather expect Jim
Armine," she said, as she settled herself in a low, basket chair. "I
wonder when the absurd custom of women pouring out tea will go out; why
a woman should have that abominable trouble I cannot think. Of course,
when tea was rather a rarity, a sort of up-to-date luxury, it was
natural. The hostess gave her guests a smart little present."
Old Lady Hayes accepted the challenge. She said:
"It used to be held to be the province of women to be matronly and
womanly and domestic. They were in their places at the fireside, at the
tea-table, not in the smoking-room and in grand stands."
"I am referring to the manual labour of pouring out tea," said Eva; "but
whatever the province of women may be, they seem to me to fill it very
inadequately when their husbands go to bed drunk every night. It is such
a comfort to know that your father and husband were teetotalers, for I
can say these things without being personal. Your father was a
Presbyterian minister, was he not? How do you call it in the dear Scotch
language--meenister, isn't it?"
"He was a learned, upright man."
"How nice!" said? Eva. "I can add a meenister to my ancestry. Do you
know who my great-grandfather was? He was a crossing-sweeper,
originally, in New York. Then he went West, you know, and, being 'cute,
made a pile."
"You have very distinct traces of your American origin," said the old
lady with asperity.
"And you of the dear Scotch talk," said Eva. "I always like the Scotch
so much. They are so honest and sterling and serious. Hoots, mon!" she
added meditatively.
The dowager took a second cup of tea. She had been accustomed to
consider tea as a destructive agent in the days of seven o'clock
dinner, but as Eva refused personally to dine till half-past eight, she
found that, though perhaps destructive, it was less unpleasant than pure
inanition. She had enunciated some startling warnings as to what would
happen to people who dined at half-past eight earlier in her sojourn in
London, and Eva had told her, with great courtesy, that she was quite at
liberty to dine at seven or half-past six, or six if she liked, but she
was afraid that her daughter-in-law would be unable to share the meal
with her. Whether her mother-in-law's constitution had become so
strongly fortified by the use of drugs that she could now afford to play
tricks with it, we are not called upon to say; at any rate, the
half-past eight dinner had, at present, made no perceptible inroads on
her digestive or vital powers.
Eva had finished tea, and proceeded to light a cigarette.
"After our dreadfully keen encounter," she explained, "I want soothing.
Argument is very trying to the nerves. Tobacco, on the other hand, is
eminently soothing. Permit me to soothe myself."
Old Lady Hayes watched these proceedings through eyelids drooped over
vigilant, irritated eyes.
Eva's whole personality was radically abhorrent to her. Her complete
modernity seemed to her an epitome of all that is unsuitable to woman.
Even her best points--her extreme tolerance, her cold purity--were
repugnant, because they were the outcome of what she considered a wrong
principle. Tolerance, according to the old lady's code, was the fruit of
charity--Eva's tolerance was the fruit of indifferences. In the same
way, the purity, the utter stainlessness of Eva's mind was the result of
fastidiousness, which, according to the other, was the sinful opposite
of charity. Purity _via_ fastidiousness, not morality, was to her the
fig on the thistle, the grape on the thorn, which, however excellent in
itself, could not be good because it must partake of the nature of its
parent stem.
"Of course, I know how utterly you must disapprove of me," continued Eva
with sincerity; "my whole system, or rather want of system, of life,
must seem to you to be utterly inexcusable. Life is a complicated
business and rather tiresome at the best. It is continually fractious
and annoying and irritating. Its whole object seems to be to make one
angry. But my plan is to bear with it; to treat it as a tiresome child,
not to let it irritate and annoy me, to avoid all possible collisions
with it--and, to do all this, you mustn't be serious or too particular."
"I was brought up to believe in moral responsibilities," said the old
lady, "in some idea of duty, in a notion that it was not our mission
simply to amuse ourselves and disregard others."
"Just so," said Eva; "that illustrates very well what I mean by
reducing things to an absurdity. Duty dominated everything, and the port
wine affairs were merely regarded as interludes. Of course, if men are
brought up to believe in these ponderous responsibilities, they must
have interludes. We have done away, or rather you made it inevitable
that we should do away, with responsibilities and interludes alike."
"And not unnaturally you have nothing left."
"Quite so. We are human beings who find themselves in a state of
consciousness, and a state of consciousness demands that you should do
something or think something. We fulfil those demands to a certain
extent, but we do not make a mumbo-jumbo of them. You see there have
always been a certain number of people with a desire to do certain
things--to be kind, to be respectable and reasonable; and a certain
number of these have a tendency--we all have tendencies--to construct a
theory about what they do. They have, to begin with, a genius for doing
their duty, and doing your duty is an unremunerative occupation in this
wicked world. Then there comes in their inexorable need of making a
theory. Duty is unremunerative here, but amusing oneself is
remunerative. Therefore there must be a place and a time when the
balance is struck, when to have done your duty is remunerative, and not
to have done your duty is unremunerative; and the Paradiso and the
Inferno are already made."
The blood of all the clans was up.
"Do you mean to say," gasped the dowager, "that you deny the existence
of--'
"Ah, my dear lady," said Eva, "do not let us say things we shall be
sorry for afterwards. I deny nothing, and I affirm nothing. I am only
pointing out that many people do deny and affirm a great many things.
The fault lies with them. If they had affirmed nothing, and denied
nothing, would the fact that I did the same seem so horrible to you?
Would you have evolved all your system of denials and affirmations out
of your own inner consciousness?"
This was a little too much. Old Lady Hayes surged up out of her chair
and confronted her.
"You believe nothing--you fear nothing--you love nothing. All you care
for, are your wretched little hair-splittings about tendencies, and the
modern view of life. When you call my beliefs superstitions and
inventions, you think you have annihilated them."
"Excuse me," said Eva, "I have no wish to annihilate them, nor do I
pretend to do so. I wish I shared them. It must make everything so very
easy if it is labelled right or wrong; if every choice is like a cross
road with a sign-post, 'Heaven and Hell.' It must be so like those
little allegories about children with bare feet walking along a dusty
road, with flowers by the side, and lions and tigers hiding among the
flowers. Having read the allegories, of course, you know that if you
only keep to the road, it will soon become flowery, and beautiful boots
will mysteriously grow on to your feet. And you have the inestimable
satisfaction of seeing the lions and tigers gnawing at the bones of the
people who go to pick flowers, and of reflecting that not only do they
have no beautiful boots, but that the lions and tigers have eaten them
up, so that the beautiful boots would be no use to them even if they had
them. No doubt you expect me to be seized upon soon, and eaten. It must
be very unpleasant. I notice that you never go to help them; you are too
much occupied in walking along your tight-rope road."
"This is mere burlesque."
"And who is the author of this burlesque?" asked Eva.
"Perhaps it is another characteristic of your generation to ridicule the
most sacred beliefs of others," she replied. "I should have thought any
code of good manners would have forbade that. Jews take off their hats
when they come into a Christian church."
Eva rose without any show of haste or impatience.
"_Au revoir_," she said. "You will excuse me, I know. I have
half-a-hundred things to do."
She went through the open window into the drawing-room. As she passed
the head of the stairs, she saw a well-known figure coming up, preceded
by a footman.
"Ah, Jim," she cried, "how late you are. Come to my room. I have been
discussing religious questions with my mother-in-law, and, well--and so
we parted in more senses than one. Have you had tea? No? Bring Mr.
Armine some tea to my room."
"She's rather a powerful old lady, isn't she?" asked Jim, who, since the
Hayes' return from abroad, had managed to establish himself on a fairly
intimate footing.
"She has been abusing me with immense power and vigour," said Eva. "I am
the incarnation of all that is horrible in her eyes. The one
incomprehensible thing to that generation is this generation."
"The converse holds, too," said he.
"No; I understand them perfectly. Their nature is the basis of ours; we
are the heirs of all previous ages, just as they were. The later
development has incorporated the earlier, but it is contrary to the
nature of the earlier to understand the later. Just in the same way, I
understand what I was a year ago, though, if I saw now what I should be
in another year, it would probably be incomprehensible to me."
"I shouldn't have thought you would change much."
Eva took a book from a small table near her, and opened it with a quick,
dramatic movement.
"It is like that," she said. "Whether I have changed, or only
discovered, I don't know. But a year ago the book was shut, and now I
have read the first chapter."
"At any rate, you have some ideas about the last chapter, then; I
suppose all the characters have come on the stage?"
"Ah! but who can tell what will happen to them? No character can be
uninfluenced by circumstances. If it is a book worth reading, they will
have altered by the end. Circumstances have led me to open the book,
they will determine my subsequent career; and circumstances, in the
shape of gout or cancer or something, will make me close it."
"Is it interesting reading?"
Eva looked at him, with a smile gathering on her mouth.
"Particularly interesting," she said. "I am sure you are interested
too."
In the silence that followed, a tap came at the door, which was
repeated, and Lord Hayes entered. He was irreproachably dressed in a
black frock coat, with a fine gardenia in his button-hole. He was rather
short-sighted, and blinked in the manner of a small, tame owl.
"I am sure I beg your pardon," he said; "but I tapped, and there was no
answer, and so I came in."
Eva turned to him.
"It is of no consequence. Have you had tea?"
"I found some tea in the drawing-room, thank you. I am bound to say it
was rather cold?"
"Have you seen your mother?"
"Yes; she was not cordial. Her manner implied that she had been a little
upset about something. She is going to stay with the Davenports for a
week, in Hyde Park Gardens, she said, before she goes down into the
country. She has, in fact, determined to leave us on the day after
to-morrow, instead of stopping till next week."
Eva pointed to a box of cigarettes.
"You may smoke," she said; "Jim, the matches are by you."
"A cigarette would be very refreshing," said Lord Hayes. "The heat and
the noise have made me a little fatigued. And, I suppose, we shall be up
very late to-night. My mother informed me she would not be present at
our little dance."
"Not even at the cotillion?" asked Eva.
"The cotillion ought to be very pretty," said he. "I am satisfied with
the appearance of the room. I sent word to Aston not to spare the
choicest orchids. Have you seen the staircase since they put the flowers
in?"
"Yes," said Eva; "it looks charming. I am much obliged to you for taking
all that trouble."
Lord Hayes bowed.
"I am delighted," he said. "I am very glad you are satisfied. Princess
Frederick is coming, is she not?"
"Yes," said Eva; "I met her this afternoon. I did not know she was in
London. Of course I asked her."
"It will be very brilliant," said her husband, solemnly.
Jim Armine rose to go.
"You will be here to-night?" asked Eva. "We don't begin till eleven."
"The heat is getting very oppressive," said Lord Hayes, politely, as he
opened the door for him. "The thermometer was standing at eighty-two
degrees in the Window of White's."
Eva was sitting back in her chair, in an attitude that was common with
her, with her two hands clasped over one knee. She had developed a great
power of doing nothing; whether it was a survival of the days of the
blank white page, or an effect of the change that had given her so much
to think about, is doubtful; probably the habit of the first was adapted
to the needs of the second. Life was interesting and amusing--a new book
in a new language. She had found herself suddenly transplanted from a
silent, pleasant garden to a crowded reception-hall. Her tastes did not
lie in the direction of gardens; they seemed to her very monotonous. The
beautiful but silent and weary-looking girl, who had been looked at and
passed by, found London a different place when she learned that the
rows of eyes in the reception-room looked to her as a sort of center.
There is nothing so inexplicable as the phenomenon called "the rage."
The opera screamed and starved unheard for years in London, when
suddenly the whole of London became aware that it was the most delicious
thing in the world. It had been there all the time; it was advertised in
the morning papers, but nobody cared. In the same way with Eva--she was
living before, and she was living after; she had been advertised at
balls and concerts, but the advertisement had been entirely
unremunerative. Then a middle-aged peer had remarked that Miss Grampound
seemed to him worthy of the highest compliment that a man can pay a
woman, with the consequence that all London was of one mind that she was
exactly what they had been looking for so long. Eva's head was not
turned, nor was her heart touched, but the effect was that she became
conscious of herself, and conscious of other people. Pygmalion had
touched Galatea and Galatea sprang to life.
Pygmalion inevitably has the worst of it. When a whole race of men
bursts almost simultaneously on one woman, it is not to be expected that
she will single out one. They are all queer and interesting, some are
attractive. Poor little Pygmalion may beat his breast in the corner and
say, "It is mine, it is all mine," but no one will listen to him; least
of all Galatea. His best course is to keep on good terms with his
handiwork, and be very polite and obliging. He is compelled to act as
bear-leader to this incarnated stone, but he had better not allude to
the time when he called her off her pedestal; and unless he is a fool,
he will not try to put any finishing stroke to his handiwork. He let her
have a soul, let him remember that he did not let her have it. The
material is his, her flesh and blood, for he paid for it when it came
from the quarries, but his possession ends there. The rest is hers and
all the world's.
Lord Hayes sat down again on the chair he had just left, and repeated
his remark about the thermometer at White's. Eva stifled a yawn.
"I suppose that was in the shade, was it not?"
"Oh, yes," he said; "in the sun the temperature would have been much
higher."
"Your mother and I had a somewhat plain-spoken conversation this
afternoon," she said; "I came in for a good deal of abuse."
"I imagined her sudden departure was owing to something of the kind," he
said. "I am sorry it has occurred; personally, I always avoid
quarrelling with anyone."
"It is a mistake," said she; "but if two people disagree, they must
quarrel some time. Besides, I didn't quarrel with her. I was even
amused, I am sorry to say."
"That is--if you will pardon my saying so--the surest method of
quarrelling."
Eva looked at him gravely.
"You have admirable good sense," she said; "I always thought you had.
But, after all, it is a good thing to be amused."
_BOOK II._
CHAPTER I.
There are certain hours of the day which seem to exist only in England,
and one of these is the hour before dinner in winter. We are quite
certain that there is a certain time in all countries which is
identical, according to the statements made by clocks and other clumsy
contrivances, with this sacred time, but it is not the same thing. Where
else in the world may we look for that sense of domestic comfort, that
hour thought away before the fire, after a long day's tramp in the snow,
or an afternoon on black, patient ice, that lends itself to be drawn and
scribbled on by the ringing, clear-cutting skates? The hour is there,
the pitiful, unmeaning sixty minutes, from half-past six to half-past
seven, but it is a mockery, a delusion, with no more soul about it than
a photograph or a bust. Let us look at the real thing.
Firelight--no candles, but bright firelight--enough to think by. A chair
drawn up on to the hearth-rug, and two large feet resting on the fender.
If you look about, you will see two evening shoes lying near, and, if
you are human, you will sympathize with the impulse that led to their
temporary want of employment.
The proprietor of these large feet is proportionately large. He has
half-dressed for dinner; that is to say, a rough, Norfolk jacket takes
the place of a dress coat and he has no shoes on. He has been out
shooting all day, and got a very fair bag, with twelve woodcock among
it, which is truth, not grammar. When he came in, after a bitterly cold
and entirely satisfactory day, he drank no less than three cups of tea
and ate an alarming quantity of muffins. Then, being still very cold and
extremely dirty, he wallowed for a quarter-of-an-hour in a bath about as
large as a small pond, and became warm and clean. Then he dressed for
dinner, barring the dress-coat, came into the smoking-room, where he
kicked off his shoes, lit a briar-wood pipe, and proceeded to spend the
next half-hour in looking at the fire, enjoying the particular peace of
mind which is inseparable from a sane mind and a sane body.
While he looks into the fire and finds entertainment there, we may as
well take a look at the room and then at him. It is always a good plan
to look well at anyone's room, for everyone leaves on a room they
frequent a personal impress which is almost always infallible. An
aquiline nose or a deep, dreamy eye are often the legitimate outcome of
an ancestry with certain tendencies, which may have dropped out of
existence in any particular case, though their corporeal stamp remains,
but no Crusader or king of Vikings will be able to touch with their
ghostly fingers the particular sanctum of any man or woman in the
nineteenth century. Their portraits may frown down from the walls of the
dining-hall, but the clank of their swords, the rhythm of their oars, is
not heard in the smoking-room.
A table-cloth, betwixt and between the table and the floor, and
half-a-dozen cartridges, which act as a drag on its slipping further,
may be of too ephemeral a nature to lay much stress on, but they are
indications which will be useful if borne out by confirmatory evidence.
A book-case--that is better. Badminton on shooting, Badminton on
hunting, Badminton on coursing, Badminton on racing, Badminton on
fishing; let us not forget the six cartridges. A book upside down on the
top shelf, with not more than forty pages cut--_Robert Elsmere_.
Remember that. Four volumes of Dickens, bearing the mark of a well-spent
and battered existence. _Tess of the D'Urbevilles_--not more than half
cut, but the last six pages also cut. That also, in conjunction with the
state of _Robert Elsmere_, is distinctly important. _Ravenshoe_--signs
of wear--in much the same state as Pickwick. _Demosthenes' de
Corona_--dog-eared and filthy, with the meanings of many unpardonably
irregular Greek words, I am sorry to say, written down in the margin in
a minute hand. The utterly abandoned, dishevelled appearance of the rest
of the book suggested that the extreme care with which these were
written was not wholly owing to any reverential adoration of that
immortal author. A small Greek Lexicon, from [Greek: g] to
[Greek: ps] inclusive, also filthy, with several crude but vivid
illustrations in red ink. A volume of Browning. Certain lyrical poems,
with pencil marks by the side--a difficult factor, but not inexplicable.
Such were the habits, so to speak, of this room, to which we confidently
hope to find a key in the habits of the six feet something of flesh and
bone warming itself in front of the fire. Making all possible allowance
for the deceptive character of appearances, we may at once hazard two
epithets on him--well-bred and English. In spite of the thorough tanning
his skin had undergone, you would be right in concluding that he was a
pure Englishman, who had been subjected lately to a tropical sun; in
fact, he had only been a fortnight in England. His name, to descend to
less metaphysical matters, was Reginald Davenport, the son of a Mr.
Davenport, who has been mentioned incidentally in this history as being
the nephew, by marriage, of old Lady Hayes, and whose house the dowager
had selected to be her ark of refuge, after she had been driven out,
with loss, by Eva's criticisms on religion and the last generation. Eva
had never seen her handsome young connection, for he had been
travelling for the last year, and only came back to England, as I have
said, two weeks before we discovered him in the smoking-room--some five
months after Eva had left London. He was a friend of Percy, Eva's
brother; in fact, that gentleman was expected here this evening, to do
murder and sudden death among the woodcock. And some one else was
coming, who, to tell the truth, interested Reggie far more than any
number of his other friends. Percy had intimated that he was in the
habit of falling in love once a fortnight, and he had just done so to
such good purpose that he was definitely and irrevocably engaged. These
periodic fallings in love were slightly embarrassing, because the
charming girls with whom he fell in love--he never fell in love with
anyone who was not charming--sometimes fell in love with him; and the
emotional atmosphere of his neighbourhood became extremely electrical
and exciting.
On the whole, I feel inclined to risk another epithet in this
preliminary skirmishing round Reggie. Yes--indubitably boyish. By
boyish, I mean the power of enjoying life without thinking about it.
Such a gift--the gift of serene receptiveness, of complete
irresponsibility--is rare, fascinating and, at times, intensely
irritating. The majority of ordinary work-a-day folk have, as Eva said,
a certain capacity for doing their duty, and forming theories about it.
Reggie knew no obscure idol called Duty, to which he owed obedience,
but he was ruled by a quantity of cleanly, wholesome instincts, that
made him honest, good-natured, lovable and affectionate. The worst of
drawing your morality from the springs of your nature is that, if a
mischievous hand gets to meddling with those springs, to diverting the
course of the water, or, perhaps, putting a little piece of something
not entirely wholesome in that clear fountain, your moral digestion is
considerably disorganised. At the same time, an innate morality is
productive of a more lively faith than a collection of dried plants from
the gardens of other men's experience. They may be the same plants, but
they are alive, not pressed and sapless.
Reggie never hazarded any guesses as to the answer of that Gordian
riddle called life. The how, why and wherefore of existence cannot even
be said to have been uninteresting to him--such questions did not exist
for him at all. But, by virtue of an innate sweetness of disposition, he
had an undoubted capacity for being content to live, and be nice to
those in the same predicament of living as himself. Such natures are
not often saddled with great mental gifts; but very often hold a great
capacity for loving and being loved, with the restful love one feels for
shady places on dusty roads, for the "times of refreshing" that are so
divinely human. This gift is one which many children possess, and which
few retain beyond childhood. It is dangerous, fascinating, dazzling,
seductive and very unsettling, but it is very sweet.
This fathom of well-bred, boyish, English life was nearly asleep, but
not quite. In fact, a very slight sound made him particularly wakeful,
for it was a sound for which he had been listening--the sound of
carriage wheels outside. He went quickly out of the room, and was in the
hall before the front door was opened. Ah! well, the meeting of two
young lovers is very pretty, but it has happened before.
Percy arrived in time for dinner, and when Mr. Davenport retired from
the smoking-room soon after eleven, he left there the two young men, who
did not seem inclined to go to bed. Reggie, in fact, had an alarming
number of things to say, and he proceeded to say them with guileless
straightforwardness.
"I am awfully glad you were able to come," he began; "I wanted you to
see Gertrude very much. You must be my best man, you know. We're not
going to be married yet; not for a year. You see, I was half-engaged
when I went to India, and we settled to wait then for two years. Well,
one year's gone, that's something."
"You're a detestably lucky fellow," said Percy, on whom a charmingly
pretty and thoroughly nice girl had made her legitimate impression.
"Oh! I know I am; detestably lucky, as you say. Doesn't she sing
beautifully, too? Hang it all, I won't talk about it, or else I shall
go on for ever, and it's rather dull for you."
Percy laughed.
"Oh, don't mind me. I'm very happy. Pour out your joyful soul, but pass
me a cigar first."
"Cigars!" said Reggie. "I really had quite forgotten about smoking.
That's what comes of being in love. Really, old fellow, you had better
fall in love as soon as you possibly can. Depend upon it, there's
nothing like it. Here, catch!"
Reggie chucked a cigar case across to him.
"Have you seen your new cousin yet?" asked Percy.
"Who? Oh, Lady Hayes. No, I haven't. She's perfectly lovely, isn't she?"
"Eva has always been considered good-looking," remarked the other
solemnly.
"I don't particularly care for Hayes himself," said Reggie. "He's so
awfully polite and dried up. But I expect your sister's made him wake up
a bit. I want to know her. Where is she?"
"They're abroad again, at present. Jim Armine's with them."
"Jim Armine?" said Reggie, doubtfully. "That pale chap with a big place
in Somersetshire?"
"Probably the same. I don't know why Eva likes him so. I can't bear
him."
"He's an oily sort of fellow," remarked Reggie, frankly. "But lots of
women like him. He's too clever for me. I'm awfully stupid, you know."
"They met him abroad on their honeymoon," said Percy, "and he hung about
a good deal, I fancy."
"I'm blowed if I'll have another man hanging about on my honeymoon,"
said Reggie.
"No; I don't suppose you will. It does seem one too many to the
unbiassed mind. Rather like the serpent in paradise, who was certainly
_de trop_."
"What serpent?" said Reggie, who was obviously thinking of something
else. "Oh, I see, the devil, you mean."
"No, I didn't mean the devil exactly; I meant any third person."
"We're going shooting to-morrow over the High Croft," said Reggie, after
a pause, in which he had determined, by a rapid mental process, that he
was unable to initiate any more statements on the subject of the
serpent, "and Gertrude and mother are going to bring us lunch. You and
father will have to shoot alone after lunch; I'm going to drive on with
Gertrude, just round about and home again."
Gertrude Carston certainly seemed a most desirable partner for Reggie;
they were really both of them detestably lucky people. She had
considerable beauty, of a large, breezy order; she was quite as adorably
child-like as he, and showed quite as few signs of any tendency to grow
up. She was fond of hunting, lawn-tennis, animals, loud hymns,
anything, in fact, of a pronounced and intelligible stamp; she was quite
ridiculously fond of Reggie, and they both behaved in the foolish,
delightful manner in which people in such a predicament do behave. They
had both settled to get up early the next morning and have a short walk
before breakfast, which was not till a quarter to ten, but in the
morning they both felt it quite impossible to do so, and came down
feebly a few minutes after the gong had sounded, and pretended that they
had been up an immense time waiting for the other, till that
particularly flimsy falsehood broke down, and they both laughed
prodigiously. It was obviously a good, honest love-match; for each of
them only the other existed, in no ethereal, mysterious form, but simply
as a capital, honest human being, lovable in every part. There were no
regrets, no unsatisfied longings, no sentimental, half-morbid affection
that was exacting or jealous. Love, like Janus of old, is a two-headed
god. On some he smiles, to others his eyes are full of strange,
bewildering doubts; on his lips there is a smile that is half a sigh,
that wakes at times a tumultuous happiness, a bitter aching at others,
and never brings content. That love may be more complex, more worthy of
the agonised questionings with which men and women have worshipped him,
more deserving of the reproach, the longing, the dread, the reviling,
that has found its expression in bitter verses and heart-broken
epigrams, but the simple, smiling face is there for some to see, and
those are blest who see it. Their love may be on a lower level, but it
is very sweet, and lies among pleasant gardens and by melodious streams;
for such there is no mountain top, compassed about by heaven; earth lies
about them, not beneath them, and for them there is no painful climbing,
no bleeding hands or panting breasts, and perhaps, at the top, nothing
but clouds and cold, palpable mist.
Such, at any rate, was their love at present, yet nothing is safe in
this uncertain world. An earthquake may rend the pleasant garden, an
east wind may wither its flowers, drought may drink up its melodious
stream. But now it was the June of love, and the garden was very fair.
It was nearly luncheon time, and Reggie, in spite of the woodcock,
looked on to the cottage, where a thin, blue smoke rose, on a hill above
the trees, wondering whether Gertrude had come yet. The beat lay over
uneven ground, with some thick cover, interspersed with heathery, open
places, on the edges of which many woodcock rose in silent and ghostly
flight for the last time. Reggie was an excellent shot, and was having a
match with Percy--a shilling a woodcock--which promised to be an
investment with good security, and quick returns. He was just arguing a
disputed point, in which Percy stoutly upheld that a certain bird, at
which they had fired simultaneously, was his own, not Reggie's, and
that Reggie ought never to have shot at it, as it did not rise to him,
when Gertrude appeared on the scene.
She had seen the party approaching from the cottage, and, as it was
cold, she had walked on to meet them.
Percy felt much evil satisfaction at her appearance. The ways of women
at shooting parties were known to him. Reggie was looking about in a
bush, with the keepers, for a bird he had killed, and Gertrude stopped
with him. She fully justified Percy's expectations.
"Oh! Reggie, what a pretty bird. It's an awful shame to shoot them. Poor
dear! Oh! I am sure I saw it flap its wings. It can't be dead. Oh! do
kill it quick. I think you're perfectly brutal. Now, you've killed it,"
she added with reproach, as if the object of shooting woodcock was to
render them immortal.
They soon caught up the others, and Percy's wicked wish was fulfilled.
No man in the world can shoot when his affianced is walking by him,
making remarks on the weather, and on his homespun stockings, and
telling him that she was sure he didn't hold his gun straight that time.
But Reggie did not feel as if he had lost very much, when he handed
Percy one-and-ninepence at lunch, which was the nearest equivalent he
had for two shillings.
Mrs. Davenport was sitting by the fire when they came in, preferring to
get warm passively, rather than actively.
"Well, boys," she said, "have you had good sport? Fifteen woodcock? How
jolly!"
"And we should have got four more if Gertrude hadn't joined us," said
Reggie. "Why did you let her come, mother?"
Gertrude looked at him in genuine, wide-eyed astonishment.
"What _have_ I done, you stupid boy?" she exclaimed. "I only told you to
hold your gun straighter; you were aiming at least five feet from the
bird. Besides, it's horrid to kill woodcock; they're such jolly little
beasts--birds, I mean."
"Then why did you tell me to aim straighter?" asked Reggie, with reason.
"Oh, I thought it would please you to kill them, my lord," she said. "At
least, that's why you went out, wasn't it?"
Reggie was emptying his pockets of cartridges in the porch, and Gertrude
was standing in the doorway, so that they were in comparative privacy.
"Would you rather please me than save the woodcock?" he asked softly.
"Reggie, I know those cartridges will go off if you drop them about so.
Yes, oh the whole, I would. How dirty your hands are. Oh! is that blood
on them?"
"No, dear, it's red paint, like what the Indians put on when they go out
hunting."
"You extremely silly boy. Go and wash them, and then come to lunch. I'll
come with you to the little pump round the corner. You can't be trusted
alone."
"You'll catch cold standing about," said Reggie, not without a purpose.
"No more than you will. Besides, I want to talk to you."
"Talk away, I'm listening."
"Oh, well, it's nothing, really. I only meant to chat."
"Let's chat, then."
"Well, stoop down, while I pump on your hands. Do you know, I'm rather
happy."
"What a funny coincidence; so am I."
And they went back to the house, feeling that they had had quite a
successful conversation. But that was all they said.
Mr. Davenport was to join them after lunch, and go on shooting with
Percy, and they had nearly finished when he entered. He was a stout,
hearty-looking man of fifty, and inexpressible satisfaction was his
normal expression.
"Well, you people look pretty comfortable," he said. "What sport,
Reggie?"
"Oh! rabbits, lots of them, a few hares, ditto pheasants, and fifteen
woodcock," said Reggie, with his month full of bread and cheese, whose
naturally healthy appetite had not been spoiled by love.
"Reggie's going to take Gertrude a drive after lunch," said Mrs.
Davenport; "and I shall walk home; I want a walk."
Gertrude and Reggie looked at each other, but acquiesced.
"Reggie, dear, give Gertrude my furs. She will be cold driving, and I
sha'n't want them walking," said Mrs. Davenport, as the two started to
go.
Reggie took them, and with those little attentions that a woman loves so
much when they are offered by somebody, wrapped them closely round her.
"Well, I'm sure I ought to be warm enough," she said, as they left the
door.
"Reggie will take off his coat if you're not, I daresay," murmured Mrs.
Davenport, as she watched them start. "Dear boy, how happy he is."
"He hasn't got much to complain of," said his father. "How old it makes
one feel."
He stretched out his hand to his wife, and she took it silently. Parents
feel old and young when they see the young birds mate.
"Reggie was recommending me to fall in love as quickly as possible, last
night," remarked Percy. "He said there was nothing like it."
Mr. Davenport laughed.
"Cheeky young brute," he said. "He gives himself the airs of an old
married man. He quite patronised his uncle the other day, because he was
a bachelor. He and Gertrude together don't make up more than forty-five
years between them."
"Reggie's only just twenty-four," said Mrs. Davenport, "and she's barely
twenty. How dreadfully funny their first attempt at housekeeping will
be. Reggie never knows what he's eating, as long as there's plenty of
it, and I don't think she does either."
"Ah! well, shoulder of mutton and love is a very good diet," said his
father. "Are you ready, Percy? If so, we'll be off."
Mrs. Davenport sat a little longer over the fire before she set out on
her homeward walk, and observed, with some annoyance, that it had begun
to snow heavily, and half wished she had driven home with Reggie. The
keeper's wife wanted to send a boy with her, as the short cut across
country, which she meant to take, was hardly more than a sheep-track,
running across a flat stretch of bleak moorland.
There is, perhaps, nothing so bewildering as a snow-storm. The thick
net-work of falling flakes conceals all but the nearest objects; and the
small, familiar landmarks of the path are soon lost under the white
trouble. The consequence was that, half-an-hour after Mrs. Davenport had
started, she was entirely at sea as to her position, and, after trying
in vain to retrace her steps, she found herself, at the end of an hour's
tedious tramp, at a little cottage some six miles from home. She was
known to the labourer who lived there, but, as she was too tired to
continue walking through the snow that was already beginning to lie
somewhat thickly on the path, he sent out a lad to the neighbouring
village to procure any sort of conveyance. All this took time, and Mrs.
Davenport was impatient, for the sake of those at home, to get off as
soon as possible. Her husband, she knew, would be very anxious; and
there were people coming to dinner.
Meanwhile, Reggie and Gertrude had got safely home after a most
satisfactory drive. In fact, they rather liked the snow, which compelled
them to go slower, for the sake of that sense of extreme privacy--a sort
of cutting off from the rest of the world--which it lent them. He had
said once, "I am afraid mother will have a horrid walk," and Gertrude
was filled with an evanescent compunction for having taken her furs, but
no more allusion was made to it.
They reached home about half-past four, and, half-an-hour later, were
joined by the shooters, who had given up when the snow began in earnest.
They were sitting at tea in the dark, oak-panelled hall, by a splendid
fire of logs when Mr. Davenport suddenly said--
"I suppose your mother is changing her things upstairs, Reggie?"
Reggie was sitting on the floor, with his long legs drawn up, and a
tea-cup balanced somewhat precariously on his knees. His back was
supported against the head of the sofa, on which Gertrude was sitting.
She had put on an amazing tea-gown, of some dark, mazarine stuff,
trimmed with large bunches of lace, and was feeling intensely happy and
rather languid after the day in the cold air. She had just asked Reggie
some question, and he did not hear, or, at any rate, did not fully take
in his father's remark.
Ten minutes passed, and Mr. Davenport rose to go.
"You'd better ring the bell, Reggie," he said, "and get your mother's
maid to take her some tea upstairs, or it will be getting cold. I am
afraid she must have got very wet."
"I don't think mother's come in yet," said Reggie, placidly.
"Not in yet," he said quickly. "Why didn't you tell me? She must have
lost her way over the High Croft."
The irrepressible satisfaction had died out of his face. He rang the
bell sharply.
"Tell two men to go at once, with lanterns, over the High Croft. Mrs.
Davenport must have lost her way."
Gertrude got up.
"You're not anxious about her, are you?"
"No, no, dear," said he, "but it's a horrid night. The snow may be
lying very thick, and perhaps she has lost her path. There's no
anxiety."
Gertrude looked down with a little impatience at her long-limbed lover.
"Reggie, you goose, why didn't you remember she hadn't come in?"
Reggie looked up.
"I thought nothing about it. There are lots of cottages about. It was
stupid of me to forget. Can I do anything, father? Shall I go out with
the men?"
He was perfectly willing to do quite cheerfully all that was required of
him, and he would have got back into his damp shooting clothes, and left
this comfortable hall and Gertrude without a murmur.
"No, never mind," said he. "I think I shall go with them, because I
couldn't keep quiet at home. But I wish you'd remembered sooner."
Reggie had risen and was standing by the fireplace.
"I wish you'd let me go, instead of you," he said.
"No; there's no need whatever. I only go for my own sake."
Reggie was quite content. If he was not wanted to go, he was quite happy
to stop. He was extremely fond of his mother, and the thought of her
possible discomfort was most unpleasant to him, but what was the good of
worrying? There was absolutely no danger. Mrs. Davenport was an
eminently sensible person, and he could not lessen her discomfort by
thinking about it. Let us be sensible by all means; let us take things
as they come, without thinking about them when there is nothing to be
done. Truly these boyish natures are a little irritating at times!
Mr. Davenport left the hall, and Reggie resumed his place on the floor,
and had another cup of tea.
"Poor mother!" he said with sincerity; "how dreadfully wet and cold she
will be."
Percy had retired to the smoking-room, and the two were alone.
"Your father was rather vexed," she said.
"I'm afraid he was," said Reggie. "I wish he'd let me go instead of
him."
"Why don't you go with him?"
"That would do no good," said Reggie. "He's only going because he is
anxious. I'm not the least anxious. Mother is sure to have turned in at
some cottage to wait till the snow was over, or until she could get a
carriage. If I could save her anything by going out, of course I'd go."
Gertrude was frowning at the fire.
"I think I'll ask him whether I may come with him," she said.
Reggie raised his eyebrows.
"Oh, nonsense," he said. "He wouldn't let you, anyhow. Sit down, Gerty,
and talk."
"Oh, well," she said, "I suppose it's all right."
There was no need, however, for Mr. Davenport to go out, for before he
came down again with thick boots, and rough clothes on, his wife had
arrived.
Reggie sprang up and welcomed her with great eagerness and affection.
"Dear mother," he cried, "I am so glad you have come. Oh! how wet you
are."
He led her to the fire, and poured out a cup of tea with almost feminine
tenderness.
"I hope you and Gerty weren't anxious," she said.
"Oh, no," said Reggie, frankly, "not a bit. I knew it would be all
right. But I'll run to tell father. He was going out with two men to
look for you."
"Reggie wanted to go instead of him," said Gertrude, feeling that her
lover's conduct was capable of some slight justification.
"Dear Reggie is never anxious," said Mrs. Davenport, warming her hands.
"It is a great comfort for him."
Gertrude was rather relieved. There was no need for her, apparently, to
turn advocate.