After Mrs. Davenport had left her, Eva remained in the dining-room for
an hour or more. She had chosen, and the choice was not easy. But it
seemed to her as if the struggle came afterwards rather than before. The
letter she had written to Reggie rose before her, and her heart cried to
her for mercy. But the clear knowledge which she had arrived at, that
his chance of happiness grew in direct relation to remoteness from
herself, remained unclouded, and at no moment of that hour's agony would
she have reconsidered her decision. That she had so decided was a matter
of wonder to her, for it is always a surprise to find that we are
better, not worse, than we think; but her investment in unselfishness
gave her no quick returns, for at present, as she well knew, Reggie was
as miserable as she was. The sacrifice of two victims called down no
immediate answer from the blessed gods in the way of a sudden cessation
of pain.
But when that hour was passed, she went upstairs to her husband, to see
him about the business he had mentioned. She felt strongly the necessity
of being active, of doing something, no matter what, which might
possibly take her a little out of herself. Our moral nature has to go to
bed when it is hurt, and it is well to leave it there, and not fidget at
the bandages to see how it is getting on.
The business resolved itself into affairs connected with the ironworks
at Trelso, and Lord Hayes told her that he was going down that
afternoon, and would stop the night there, returning the following day.
And Eva, longing for distraction, found none there. Her mother and Percy
were in town, and she drove off, and fetched them back to lunch.
The sight of so well-appointed a house, and the thought that, in a
measure, it was part of her environment, as being the mother of its
mistress, always put Mrs. Grampound in an excellent humour, at times
bordering on a sort of mature playfulness.
"And how is my little daughter behaving?" she asked Lord Hayes, as soon
as they were seated at lunch. "I hope she is doing me credit, and you,
too, of course. I don't like the way girls behave now. I'm sure they do
things we should have got dreadfully abused for when we were young, and
now no one takes any notice whatever. Dear Eva, what a lovely piece in
the middle of the table. That is new, is it not?"
"The beauty of it is that it's very old," remarked Eva.
"Really, it looks so bright and fresh. And talking of brightness and
freshness, I met Mr. Davenport the other day. He spoke of you a great
deal, as if he knew you quite well."
"He is a great friend of Eva's," said her husband, watching her. "Why
hasn't he come to see you to-day, Eva?"
"Chiefly because he left by the mail for Aix this morning," said Eva.
"He asked me to say good-bye to you for him."
Lord Hayes had the satisfaction of believing this to be untrue, but that
was small compared with the complete failure on his part to ruffle Eva's
bosom with an uneven breath, or raise the slightest tinge of colour to
her face.
"I'm quite in love with him," she went on slowly, without looking at her
husband. "I feel quite desolate without him. Hayes, you must be
particularly kind to me all day. Though, of course, you mustn't hope to
compete with Reggie in my affections."
Lord Hayes smiled, and took some jelly. Most people know that particular
moment experienced at varying distances from Dover pier, when they are
not quite sure whether they enjoy the motion or not. Lord Hayes was,
metaphorically speaking, being a little tossed about, and if he did not
yet think with longing of _terra firma_, he was not sorry to remember
that he would be alone at Trelso that evening.
"What a beautiful thing it is, is it not," he said, addressing Mrs.
Grampound, "when a wife reposes such confidence in her husband, that she
tells him she is in love with someone else. Truly there can be no
secrets between such."
Mrs. Grampound tittered shrilly. To state the truth, as Eva had done, is
often the surest, sometimes the only, way of producing a complete
misconception. She failed to notice the acidity in Lord Hayes's face and
voice, and thought the scene quite too charming. But Percy noticed and
wondered.
"What shocking things to say to each other," cried she. "Eva, you
naughty child, how can you? And you deserve I should scold you too,"
she said, turning to her son-in-law.
"Reggie has scorned me and my homage altogether," continued Eva gravely,
speaking chiefly in order to produce a sort of counter-irritant to her
own pain, on the same principle as that on which children, suffering
from toothache, may be observed to bite their lips. "He has gone off to
Aix to see his _fiancée_. He gave me her photograph--wasn't that a cruel
thing to do?--and his own. Really, it was most shameless. I was never so
humiliated before. I think, when Hayes goes away to Trelso, I shall take
the train to Aix and sit watching the hotel windows, and serenade him in
the hotel garden. It's quite a new idea for a woman to serenade her
lover. Why did you never serenade me, Hayes? I should like to see you
serenade on a cold night under a silk umbrella. Can you sing, by the
way? You'd have to leave a good deal to the lute, like the man in
Browning who serenaded at a villa during a thunderstorm. Your mother
wouldn't approve of serenading, would she? The evening fever sets in
about that time, I think, from eleven till two--of course, the damp
wouldn't matter if you had Jaeger boots with eight holes in them."
"Eva, you naughty girl," said her mother again.
Yes; there was just a little too much motion. Metaphorically speaking,
Lord Hayes went below.
"I've got to go to Trelso this afternoon," he said. "I hear that the
men are getting more and more discontented. There is an organised body
of Socialists down there, who incite them and refer to me as a brutal
tyrant. What a very odd way to spend your life, you know--going about
the country calling us names. I can't think what they imagine they will
get by it."
"It is rather hard to call you a brutal tyrant," said Eva with some
amusement. "Now, if they had said so of Reggie, or of me, for example--
Yes, Percy, you may smoke here, or let's go up to the top of the porch.
There is a tent there, and it is deliciously cool."
The two gentlemen stayed behind a moment, and Eva and her mother went
on. Lunch made Mrs. Grampound even more effusive than usual.
"I do so love to think of you here in your beautiful house, darling,"
she said to Eva, as they passed up the great marble stairs; "with your
husband devoted to you, and all that. A charming little scene at lunch,
so playful and delicately touched. But you always were clever, dear. It
is such a happiness to me to think of you like this. That yellow collar
you have on your liveries is very becoming. How much do you pay your
_chef_? Ah, what a charming little room this tent makes! I suppose you
and your husband often sit here."
She subsided into a low chair, and looked at Eva affectionately, or, at
any rate, with an air of proud proprietorship.
"I am very rich," murmured Eva. "I have every thing that money can
buy--I have a title--yes, what more can I want?"
Mentally she was far away. The boat got into Calais about two-thirty.
She had looked it out in a Bradshaw that morning. He had just left
Calais, going south to join Gertrude. He would be at Aix next morning
early. She felt if she could only know exactly what effect her letter
had had on him, she would be more content. Her heart ached for the sight
of him, ached with the pang of that self-inflicted wound which had sent
him away irrevocably, she hoped, or feared--which was it? There was
half-an-hour at Calais, she remembered, on her journeys to Algiers;
enough to lunch in, to buy a book in, to be rather bored in. There
was--ah! the curtain that separated the little tent from the
drawing-room was drawn aside, as she had often seen it drawn aside
lately, when she said she was not at home to visitors--and Lord Hayes
entered.
"I have come to say good-bye," he said, "I must be leaving at once for
the station. I shall be back to-morrow, Eva, soon after lunch, I expect;
we are dining with the Davenports."
"Ah, yes, I had forgotten," said she. "Good-bye! I shall see you
to-morrow."
"What are you going to do this afternoon?" inquired her mother, after
she had kissed her hand to Lord Hayes as he drove off.
"I am going to Wimbleton House. There is a garden-party. It is a bore,
but I promised to go." Eva paused to see the sudden alacrity with which
she knew her mother would receive the news, before she added--"Perhaps
you would like to come with me."
"I should enjoy it very much," said her mother. "I am so fond of
garden-parties, and they do them so well there."
"I didn't know that you knew the Duchess," remarked Eva, and let the
subject drop.
She returned home and dined alone, and spent a long evening upstairs in
her room. She reviewed again minutely from the beginning, not because
she wanted to think of it, but because she could not avoid it, the
events of the last weeks. It was as if a sudden light had burst in upon
her soul, showing her what was meant by love, and then, just as she
comprehended it, the exigencies of its very nature, the compulsion she
was under to reveal herself, and that second compulsion which would not
allow her to do for Reggie anything but what her sober reason told her
was best for him, had left her face to face with this horrible
blankness. A spring had broken out which could never, she felt, cease to
flow, but she stood there, with mouth gagged, unable to drink of its
coolness. In her heart she believed that, even now, if she wrote one
word to him--"Come"--in two days he would be with her. But her longing
and her firm renunciation seemed indivisible. She could no more have
apostatised on her renunciation than she could have compelled herself to
be quit of her love. Her nature was of too large and serene a type for
her to feel again that one outburst of jealousy when she had torn
Gertrude's photograph in half. At that moment all the worst side of her
heart had leapt out--the tigress element; the animal within her had
raised that one howl of anguish, but after that it had lain still, cowed
to the deeper pain of that in her which was human and divine. At the
moment of her renunciation a light had shone on her darkness, and though
the darkness comprehended it not, it wondered and was still; and when in
that light she saw and decided what course she must, for all reasons,
take, the animal did not venture even to lift its head and growl.
Reader, are you burning to tell me that all this suffering on the part
of Eva and Reggie--even if you allow that such a very proper chastening
for the lax self-indulgence with which they slid into the mutual
positions they now occupy is a subject fit to be treated of at all
in a moral and Christian country, or whether you hold that I might
as well describe the infliction of the cat o' nine tails on
a righteously-condemned convict for some well-defined and
properly-chastened offence--that this suffering was perfectly well
merited; that, had Eva been a woman of even decent moral principles, or
had Reggie not been subject to the calviest of calf loves, it would
never have happened; that, above all, it was their, particularly her,
fault? I plead guilty to all these indictments, or rather I put in no
defence for my prisoners, which is the same thing. I admit that Eva was
not--according to the best lights, which you, no doubt, are judging her
by--a woman of decent moral principles; that it is a tenable view that
this infatuation of Reggie's was only a calf love; but his last,
remember, for I have told you that he was a boy no longer; and, above
all, I admit that it was their, particularly her, fault.
Now, with regard to Eva's morals, you are judging her, I imagine, by
your own standards, which, after all, are the only standards by which
one man can judge another. No one can judge by other men's standards,
whether they be lower than their own or higher--the result is a loss of
moral perspective. You cannot take observations, except by applying your
eye straight to the telescope; if you stand above it and squint, you
will obtain an incorrect idea of what you wish to see. And in addition
to venturing to assume that you judge her by your own standards, I will
go further and assume, broadly, what those standards are. I have noticed
that when people--as I, for the sake of argument, have made you
do--refer to moral principles, they refer to a code which may vary in
magnitude and comprehensiveness, but which is based on one
principle--the avoidance, even in thought, of certain things which they
regard instinctively, almost hysterically, as being impossible, because
they are wrong. But the moral principles very seldom go so far as to say
they are wrong; they stop short at impossible--they are contrary to its
nature--and that is enough. Eva, I am afraid, had no morals at all of
this kind. To take an exaggerated instance, I am afraid, if the truth
were known, vitally and essentially, she kept her hands from picking or
stealing not because it was wrong, but because she did not want the
things she might have stolen. It is a very shocking confession, and it
is driving a principle home to admit it, but it serves to illustrate
under a distorting, or, at any rate, a very high-power lens, the
difference between her and you. But--and this, I again assume, is
the purport of the whole matter in your mind--it was her own fault.
Ah, if I could only tell you how freely I grant you that. And what
is there, in Heaven's name, of all the sufferings we ordinary people
undergo, that is not our fault? From the slippers which the
labourer's wife has omitted to put down to warm for her lord,
and which give rise to recriminations and perhaps a few silent
tears, to the pangs of remorse for some wrong done which we can
never undo, what is there of which we are wholly guiltless? The
supremely-suffering-babe-unborn-innocent-utterly-milk-and-water heroine
of the severely classic romance is not common in this dingy, work-a-day
world. It would be presumptuous in me to say she does not exist, but I
have never seen her yet. She is a very beautiful and ennobling
conception, and she always gets a full reward in the last chapter, where
she is joined to her only love and lives happily ever afterwards, and
sometimes is seen again in the epilogue, surrounded by a group of
golden-haired, clean-limbed children, with their father's pensive eyes,
who utter sentiments which must fill her maternal heart with pride and
joy ineffable. But have you never, even in those beautiful epilogues,
been faced by a grey, shadowy doubt that life is not quite like this,
that even villains have good points, and heroines bad ones; that virtue
does not always bring so full a reward, and that vice is not discomfited
with that sublime completeness; in a word, that human nature is much
more complex, more subtlely compounded than the epilogue would indicate,
that a nature capable of a sublime action is also capable of one or of
many that do not fall in with your moral principles, and that something
is to be said even for the villain? But Eva, I maintain, though not a
heroine, and though the bank of ineffable joy had not given her a blank
cheque to be filled up at her pleasure, was not a villain. She had done
something which no right-minded person would approve in allowing herself
to fall in love with Reggie, and in allowing him to fall in love with
her; and what is more, she had done something short-sighted. Not
knowing the nature of love, she had tried to play with that perplexing
emotion, and was finding now that it was not merely playing with her,
but ordering her about in a most autocratic manner. She had committed a
folly, and in this world we pay more heavily for a folly than a sin. She
was bewildered, unstrung, unhappy, by her own fault, no doubt; but if we
never pity those on whom justice makes its pitiless claims, whom shall
we pity? Are we to class her with the villain, since we cannot class her
with the heroine? After all, do not most of us belong to a class which
it would be unjust or impossible to class with either the one or the
other? There are more gradations between the noon-day sun and the
starless night than the epilogues allow for. At any rate, all you
Rhadamanthine judges, she was paying for it, and surely that is all you
demand. Come a little further with me; your desire for justice, justice
to the uttermost farthing, will not be disappointed.
* * * * *
Eva woke next morning from that dreamless sleep which only quickens our
capabilities for suffering, woke with a start of pain into the full
consciousness of her unimaginable future. But the absence of her husband
was at least a mitigation; she felt she could not stand any extra burden
just then. But would this horrible emptiness never cease--would there
come no assuaging of her agony? It is hard, directly after some severe
shock has been sustained, to believe in the possibly healing powers of
time--all we feel is that the impossible to-morrows and to-morrows will
stretch away until death, and none will be less impossible than the
last. And when one is young, strong, serenely healthy, that is a serious
thought. Surely Eva was paying for her folly. And still she never
reconsidered her decision; she still saw with undoubted clearness that
Reggie, leaving herself out of the question, would eventually be happier
with Gertrude; that, for him, there were pleasant places open on this
weary earth, into which he would, in all probability, soon pass and
leave her for ever. His best chance of happiness lay there, and herself
she did leave out of the question utterly and fearlessly. There is
something to pity, and perhaps, after all, there is something to praise.
There is nothing so unbearable as this consciousness of force that
cannot be converted into effort, or reach fruition. It strikes with an
unavailing hand at the gateways of our soul, but it cannot pass out and
fulfil itself. And to Eva the sensation was wholly new. The coldest,
least human of our species are just those who throw themselves with the
most irresistible singleness into the force which has thawed them, when
that unthawing comes. When their long winter is passed, the sap streams
more fully into its channels, than in those who live, as it were, in
most temperate climates, where the sap never wholly quits the trees. And
Eva had none on whom to spend the force of her late waking love. The
one who woke it was gone--gone by her own will--and the stream had no
other outlet.
The hours passed wearily on till noon. After lunch she had calls to
make, and about five o'clock she returned home to dress for a ride. Lord
Hayes had not yet come back, and she left word that she would be in
before seven. But the exercise, the sun, the meeting of half a hundred
people she knew had its due effect, and made the horror of that empty
house the greater. To her it was a house full of ghosts, of dead
possibilities and living horrors, and it was not till much before eight
that she dismounted again at her door. The gloaming was rapidly
deepening into night, the lamps had already been lit, and the white star
on her horse's forehead glimmered strangely through the dusk. She asked
the man whether Lord Hayes had returned, and learned that he had come
back soon after she had gone out. They were to dine at the Davenport's
at a quarter to nine, and Eva went straight to her room to dress. Lord
Hayes, the man said, had already dressed and was sitting in his room,
writing. He had given orders that he was not to be disturbed. Eva had
two minds as to whether she should go to the Davenports that night or
not, but the desire to see Mrs. Davenport, to learn whether Reggie had
really gone, and how he had received her note, were too strong. She
would be wiser, she knew, to say nothing about him, but the craving of
her nature took no account of wisdom.
Half an hour later, she came out from her room, dressed for the party,
faultlessly beautiful. She had put on the diamonds she had worn two
nights ago at the opera, and they lay on her breast like a living
embodiment of light. Just as she came out on to the landing, a man came
upstairs to say the carriage was round, and she turned aside to go to
her husband's room to tell him.
She opened the door, and to her surprise found the room was dark. Then
she called him, but got no answer. The man who had announced the
carriage was still standing on the landing, and she turned to him.
"Where is Lord Hayes?"
"His Lordship went into the room an hour ago, my lady," he said. "I have
not seen him come out. He is not in his dressing-room."
Eva stood for a moment with her hand still grasping the door, for the
space in which a new thought may strike the mind. Her eyebrows
contracted, and the diamonds on her breast were suddenly stirred by a
quick-drawn breath.
"There is no light in there," she said. "Bring me a lamp quickly."
She waited in the same position while the man fetched a lamp.
"Take it in there," she said; "no, give it me."
The man followed her in.
By the writing-table, with his face fallen forward on the paper, sat her
husband. His arms sprawled on each side, and every joint was relaxed.
Eva looked at him for a moment, and then touched him.
"Hayes!"
There was no answer.
"Hayes, Hayes!" she said, raising her voice.
She set the lamp down on the table, close to the thing that sprawled
there, and, taking him round the shoulders, dragged him up off the
table. But the head fell back over one shoulder, and the two hands
rattled against the wood-work of the chair, as his arms slipped off his
knees.
"Quick, quick!" she cried to the man. "What are you standing there for?
Don't you see he is ill? Let the carriage go off to the doctor's and
bring him back. You fool, run! Send a man here at once!"
Eva ran to the bell and rang it furiously. There was a sound of hurried
footsteps on the stairs, and two men came running up.
"Lord Hayes is ill," said Eva. "Take him to his room, and lay him on the
bed."
She could not bear to stop in the room to see that nerveless thing being
moved, and went out to the passage, where her maid met her. The
atmosphere of terror had spread through the whole house, and servants
were running up.
"Oh! my lady, what is the matter--is he dead?" asked that somewhat
hysterical young woman, clasping her hands.
Eva turned fiercely on her.
"Nothing is the matter. What do you mean by saying that? Run downstairs
and get some brandy. Quick! do you hear?"
The two men passed out close to Eva with their grim burden. She
shuddered as they moved slowly along to the bedroom door. Then, after a
moment she followed them. They had laid him on the bed, but, even in
that attitude, the limpness was not that of a living man.
"Leave me, wait till the doctor comes, and bring him up," said she.
When she was alone, she lit the candles and brought them near his face.
She took up one of the open hands, and felt for the pulse, but found it
not. Then, looking up suddenly, she saw her own face in the glass, set
in a half circle of light from the diamonds on her neck. For a long
moment she gazed, and then, setting the candles down, she unclasped the
necklace, and dashed it on to the ground.
_BOOK III._
CHAPTER I.
Mrs. Carston was a widow, with only one daughter. She was a woman to
whom querulousness had, by habit, become a second nature, but she had,
as she often remarked, cause enough for complaint. Her husband, of whom
she had been very fond, died suddenly, leaving her with one girl, a
younger son, and less income than she could comfortably manage on. Then,
two months later, her son died, leaving her alone with Gertrude. Her
health, never very good, was much weakened by the double shock, and of
late years she had become a _habituée_ at Aix for four or five weeks
every May, when there were plenty of English people there, with whom she
used to talk gossip, and bemoan her unfortunate health.
Gertrude managed to be very happy during the earlier part of that month.
The enchanted valley, in which there falls not hail nor rain nor any
snow, had a great charm for her, and she used to avail herself of the
early morning hours, when her mother was undergoing her baths and
douches and treatment, to wander far among the thick, dewy meadows, over
which the mountains keep watch. She would pick great bunches of the
early gentians and meadow sweet, and tall, tasselled grasses, and make
their sitting-room bright with their wild, free beauty. The flowers sold
in the market place had less attraction for her; they reminded her of
towns, and she found it sweeter in the country. She had, too, at first,
a very happy background to this pure joy of living, in the thought of
Reggie. Ever since the winter, her love for him had been undergoing a
slow, steady change; it had deepened and widened imperceptibly from day
to day, and, looking back on the early days of their courting, the hours
now seemed to her to have been unmomentous and shallow, save that they
held the germ which had ripened into this. And he was going to join
them, as he had said, in a few weeks, and she felt she particularly
wished to be with him again, in the way that she would be at
Lucerne--away from his world and her world. Those quiet hours had for
her in anticipation a glorious possibility. She would make Reggie feel
all that he was to her, make him understand the new depths which she
knew had been opened by her love in her nature.
She did not usually see her mother till the twelve o'clock _déjeuner_,
and one morning, about five days after their arrival, she had got up
earlier than usual and walked down to the lake. The day before,
Reggie's letter, announcing Lady Hayes's sudden desire to have her
photograph, had arrived, and for an hour or two she had been filled with
perplexing doubts, of which she felt ashamed. But her true and deep
loyalty had soon reasserted itself, and she had chased them from her
mind. She told herself that she was absolutely unjustified in ever
letting the vaguest uneasiness rise into her thoughts. Whatever her
feeling was, it had sprung from that irrational pique with which she had
received Reggie's remarks concerning Eva six months ago. She had then
conceived in her mind a dislike and distrust for a woman she had never
seen, and that weed she had allowed to grow until, just before she left
London, she had refused to go to lunch with her for no reason at all.
Decidedly it was time to pull the weed up.
So she went out next morning feeling a wider happiness than ever. That
act of loyalty was finding a full reward, and the meadows had never
looked so green, nor the water so lovely, nor the background of her
thoughts so satisfying. The post had not come in when she left the
hotel, and the certainty of a letter from Reggie awaiting her return
added its solid contribution to her happiness.
The tall, graceful figure, walking swiftly along the poplar avenue out
of the town, was very characteristically English. Several French women,
as she passed through the streets, turned to look at her, wondering who
was that English demoiselle, who walked so fast; why she was at Aix at
all, and, above all, for what conceivable reason she should want to
walk. But none of them failed to smile pleasantly when Gertrude gave
them a "_bon jour_"; her face was so irresistibly happy and handsome,
and they went back to their work smiling, and forgetting for the moment
to scold Jean or Pierre for putting their dirty little fingers in the
washtub.
Gertrude got down to the lake while the sun was still behind the big
range of hills to the east, though, looking back, she could see the tops
of the mountains behind, and even the lower pastures beneath them
touched by the new gold. She sat down on the landing-stage and watched
the glory spreading downwards, till it reached the clear, white town she
had left, and finally the sun itself swung into sight over the serrated
outline of the eastern hills. The small, blue ripples tapped an
invitation on the sides of the pleasure boats lying at anchor, and
Gertrude determined to have a short row before going back. The
boat-keeper expressed astonishment and dismay when he heard that
mademoiselle proposed to row herself, but Gertrude stripped off the
light jacket she was wearing and told him to get two light sculls, and,
with a laugh, disdaining his outstretched hand, she jumped into the boat
and pushed off.
Life was very sweet that morning. She was going to write to Reggie and
tell him to come very soon, before they left Aix, for it was a nice
place, and he could row as much as he liked, and go for long walks, and
there were horses to be had. As she paddled quietly along, she pictured
herself here again with him in a week or two. He would be sure to come.
Had he not said he did not care for London, and he did happen to care
for her? She wanted her mother to know him too, for she had only seen
him at present on fugitive visits, and her "ideas" about him were vaguer
than Gertrude wished.
The sun was already high when she landed again, but the dusty mile of
road up to Aix was short in her anticipations. There would be a letter
for her from someone she cared about, infinitely dear to her, but, as
the advertisements often say, "of no value but to the owner." So she
walked up not feeling the sun, only conscious of an inward glow of
happiness which nothing could touch.
Yes--the post had come in, and the polite porter looked through the
letters. Miss Carston? No; none had come this morning. "Was he quite
sure?" Yes; but perhaps mademoiselle would like to look through them for
herself. Mademoiselle did like to do so, and she went upstairs to see
her mother, feeling that the doubts, which she had buried the day
before, had celebrated a private resurrection on their own account.
"Summer had stopped." There are no words for it but those. Was the sky
still as blue? Possibly, but not for her. And when the sky is not blue
for us, it is noticeable that we do not care very much, even the most
unselfish of us, whether it is blue for others or not.
Gertrude, in fact, passed on the stairs a colonial bishop and his wife,
whom she had been accustomed to make the sharers of her intense joy in
its blue spring; but when the lady recorded her opinion that it was a
lovely day, Gertrude felt that the remark was singularly ill-chosen.
She found her mother upstairs, preparing to come down. It was one of her
bad days, and Gertrude knew that even greater attention than usual would
be required of her.
"I have been wanting you ever so long--these two hours at least," said
her mother, as she entered. "I wish you could manage to think about me
sometimes. But that is always the way. Invalids never matter. They can
look after themselves."
Gertrude kissed her mother and took off her hat.
"I am so sorry," she said, "I went a longer walk than usual, right down
to the lake, and had a short row. Did you have your massage earlier this
morning? You are not usually ready till twelve, and it is not twelve
yet."
"No, I had it at ten, as usual. Why should I have it earlier?"
"I thought you said you had been waiting for me so long. However, here I
am now. I won't be out so late another morning. What did you want me to
do?"
"Mrs. Rivière met me at the bath," said her mother, "and wanted me to go
for a picnic this afternoon, and you. I think I shall go. I want a
breath of fresh air; they are going up to the Monastery, on the far side
of the lake. We shall have to dress up, I suppose. Princess Villari is
going, and the Prince too, I think."
Gertrude frowned slightly. She detested Mrs. Rivière with all the power
with which a healthy, honest mind can detest _mondaines_ of a certain
description.
"Did you say we would come?" she asked.
"Why, of course I did. I suppose you don't want to go now. Really,
considering what I have to go through, it might be expected that my only
daughter would not object to coming with me for a picnic, where perhaps
I may get a little distraction. And the doctor particularly told me to
get up in the hills now and then."
"Mother, why do you judge me so hastily?" said Gertrude. "Of course I
will come; I only asked you whether you had accepted. What time shall we
start? It will be delicious up there. Must I put on my very best
frock?"
"Gracious me, yes," said Mrs. Carston. "I wish you had a better. And
you're getting dreadfully brown. Gertrude, I wish you would take a
little more care of your complexion. You won't be fit to be seen in a
low dress when we get back to England. Ah, there's the bell. Give me
your arm, dear, I am a mass of aches to-day. Have you heard from Reggie
this morning?"
"No, there were no letters for me to-day," said Gertrude, cheerfully. "I
shall have to blow Reggie up when I write again. Or shall I not write
until he writes to me?"
"I forget whether you know Princess Villari," asked her mother. "You've
seen the Prince, haven't you?"
"I never spoke to her," said Gertrude. "But I saw her last night at the
Cercle; she was going into the baccarat room, talking at the top of her
voice, and smoking."
"It's becoming quite the thing to smoke," remarked Mrs. Carston. "I
should smoke, if I were you, this afternoon, if everybody else does. It
is no use making an obvious exception of oneself. It looks so odd."
"Oh! I think it's horrid for women to smoke," said Gertrude. "It's
unfeminine. Don't you think it is?"
"Nonsense; I wish you would, if others do," said her mother; "but you
are always so determined. If you don't wish to do a thing, you won't do
it. Take me to that seat at the small table. I can't talk to Mrs.
Mumford any more."
The rest of the party were all coming from the "Splendide," the great
hotel at the top of the hill overlooking Aix, and as the road from there
went by the Beau Site, where Gertrude and her mother were staying, it
had been arranged that the party from the upper hotel should call for
them as they passed, and pick them up. Mrs. Carston told Gertrude that
they were going to drive down to the lake in the Prince's four-in-hand,
take boats there, and walk up to the Monastery, where they would have
tea.
Gertrude and her mother were sitting in the verandah, facing the road,
after lunch, when the brake drew up at the entrance to the hotel. A
woman, brilliantly beautiful and marvellously dressed, was driving, whom
Gertrude recognised as the Princess. She was smoking a cigarette, and
held her whip and reins in the most professional manner. By her side sat
Mrs. Rivière, and, in the centre of the seat just behind, a handsome,
foreign-looking man, who, when they stopped, and he saw Gertrude and her
mother coming down the steps, leaned forward to the Princess, and
said,--
"Who is that very handsome girl there, Mimi? Is she coming with us?"
The Princess turned to look, and gave a shrill, voluble greeting to Mrs.
Carston.
"Charmed to see you! Get up and sit next my husband. Villari, you know
Mrs. Carston, don't you? And is that your daughter with you? I am so
glad you were able to come, too. Steady, you brutes! Bring the steps,
quick! These animals won't stand quiet. Villari, get down and help them
up."
"It's Miss Carston," she said to him, as he passed her; "isn't she
handsome? Very _ingénue_, I imagine. Do you know her, Mrs. Rivière?"
"I met her the other day," she replied. "I don't think they've been here
very long. How beautifully you drive!"
"That's one of my English accomplishments," said the Princess; "and I
haven't forgotten it, you see. Dear me! it's more than a year since I've
been to England. We're going in November. Villari's bought a country
place there, you know. Are you right behind there? Go on, you brutes,
then! Ah! you would, would you?"
The Princess gave a savage cut with her whip at one of the leaders, who
appeared to want to go home, and they started off at a hand-gallop.
"For God's sake, take care, Mimi!" said the Prince, leaning forward, as
they swung round a corner with about three-quarters of an inch to spare;
"the streets will be full to-day--it's Saturday."
"Blow the horn, old boy!" remarked the Princess. "Tell them we're
coming. I must go fast through here, you know, because I've got the
reputation of driving like the son of Nimshi. Do you know who the son of
Nimshi was, Mrs. Rivière? He comes in the Bible."
By about an equal mixture of the favour of Providence and the dexterity
of the Princess, they got through the town in safety, without impairing
the reputation of the latter as being a furious driver, and the horses
settled down to a steady pace on the road to the lake.
The Prince had managed to seat himself next Gertrude, leaving Mrs.
Carston to the attentions of Mr. Rivière. The rest of the party were
composed of English visitors staying at the "Splendide," and the whole
party numbered ten or twelve. A second glance assured him that she was
even handsomer than he supposed, and, as it was one of the Princess's
maxims that husband and wife were, both of them, perfectly free to
receive or administer any attentions they pleased, without injuring
their mutual relations, it followed, naturally, that he made himself
agreeable.
"I hope you and your mother are not given to nervousness," he asked,
when it was plain that the Princess intended to keep her reputation up,
"for my wife is a perfectly reckless driver. However, she is also the
best driver I ever saw, and she has never had an accident yet."
Gertrude shrank from his somewhat familiar scrutiny of her face, and she
answered him coldly--
"Oh no, thanks. I am never nervous, and my mother is not either. Are
you, mother?" she asked, leaning back, and addressing her directly.
"Not when the Princess is driving," said Mrs. Carston, graciously,
smiling at the Prince.
"I was just telling Miss Carston there was no need to be when my wife is
driving. I acknowledge it doesn't look the safest form of amusement.
Mimi, you'll have a wheel off presently."
"Then we'll go like a fox terrier when it wants to show off," remarked
Mimi. "It would look rather nice, I think."
"I saw you two nights ago at the Cercle," continued the Prince to
Gertrude. "I wanted my wife to introduce me, but she didn't know you,
she said. I suppose you haven't been here very long."
"No; only a week," she said, again feeling a little uneasy.
"Then, of course, we may hope that you will still remain here a
considerable time."
"I shall be here about a fortnight or three weeks more."
"Ah! you stop here about as long as we shall," he said; "personally, I
would stop longer, but we have to go back to Vienna for a time, and we
go to England in November."
"You hunt, I suppose," said Gertrude, carelessly.
"My wife is very fond of it, and that is reason enough for our going.
She is half English, you know," said the Prince, making concessions to
ingenuousness. "Here we are at the lake; let me help you down; the boats
are waiting, I see. Let me give you my hand."
"Thanks, I can manage for myself," said Gertrude, preparing to dismount.
She turned round to catch hold of the rail, and in doing so, somehow,
her foot slipped off the step. The Prince had already dismounted, and
was standing below. He made a sudden, quick movement towards her, and
just saved her a rather nasty fall, by catching her strongly round the
waist and lowering her to the ground. Poor Gertrude was furious with
herself, and flushed deeply.
"I hope you are not hurt," he said, bending towards her. "I was very
fortunate in being able to save you."
Mrs. Carston saw what had happened from the top of the drag.
"Dear Gertrude," she cried, "you are always so precipitous--why don't
you thank the Prince?"
"As long as Miss Carston was not precipitated, her precipitousness is
harmless," said the Prince. "I am afraid you are shaken," he said to
Gertrude.
"Villari, you must not try to make puns in English," screamed Mimi; "go
and hold the horses a minute till they've taken out the baskets. There's
no such word as precipitousness."
Meanwhile Gertrude had recovered her equanimity, and confessed to
herself that the Prince had merely chosen between letting herself be
hurt or not hurt, and that it was hard to say why she was angry with
him. She walked to where he was standing at the horses' heads.
"I am so grateful to you," she said; "you saved me a very bad fall."
"Please don't thank me for the privilege I have had. It is for me to
thank you."
Gertrude made a great effort to conquer her increasing aversion to him,
which was quite inexplicable, even to herself, and smiled.
"You are very unselfish. Do you always find it a privilege to help other
people?"
"Decidedly not," said he, looking straight at her.
Gertrude turned away, and he followed her to join the others, who were
standing at a little distance.
"There are the boats," explained the Princess, "and as there are ten of
us and three of them, we'll divide ourselves between them. We'd better
take a man each to do the rowing, and if any of us like we can take an
oar. I love rowing, and I know you row, Miss Carston. Your mother was
telling me you were out this morning. Shall you and I go in a little
boat by ourselves, and row across? Let's do that."
The Prince remonstrated.
"Mimi, you mustn't take Miss Carston off all by yourself like that. It
isn't fair on the rest of us."
Mimi looked at him with malicious amusement in her eyes.
"Miss Carston shall decide for herself," she said. "Will you offend me
or offend the Prince?"
Poor Gertrude was not used to a world where chaff and seriousness seemed
so muddled up together, and where nobody cared whether you were serious
or not. She was accustomed to mean what she said, and not to say a good
many things she meant, whereas these people seemed to say all they
meant, and only half to mean a good many things they said.
"I'm very fond of rowing," she said simply. "I should like to go with
you."
Princess Mimi looked mischievously at her husband, and Gertrude, not
knowing exactly what to do with her eyes, glanced at him too. He was
waiting for that, and as their eyes met he said,--
"You are very cruel; your thanks to me do not go beyond words."
The Princess came to her rescue.
"Come, Miss Carston, you and I will set off. There's a sweet little
boat there, which will suit us beautifully."
The Princess's method of rowing was to dip her oar into the water like a
spoon very rapidly, for spasms which lasted about half a minute. In the
intervals she talked to Gertrude.
"I am so glad to be coming to England again," she said. "Villari has had
a lot of tiresome business which has kept him at Vienna during this last
year, and we haven't set foot in it for sixteen months. I am
tremendously patriotic; nothing in the world gives me so much pleasure
as the sight of those hop-fields of Kent, with the little sheds up for
hop-pickers, and the red petticoats hanging out to dry. I think I shall
go and live in one. Do you suppose it would be very full of fleas? I
shall build it of Keating's powder, solidified by the Mimi process, and
then it will be all right. Do come and live with me, Miss Carston. Do
you know, we've taken a tremendous fancy to you. May I call you
Gertrude? Thanks, how sweet of you. Of course you must call me Mimi."
It was quite true that she had taken a great fancy to Gertrude, and
Gertrude, in turn, felt attracted by her. She, like others, began to
discount the fact that she smoked and screamed and drove four-in-hand,
in the presence of the vitality to which such things were natural and
unpremeditated. There was certainly no affectation in them; she did not
do them because she wished to be fast, or wished to be thought fast,
but because she was fast. Between her and Mrs. Rivière, Gertrude could
already see, there was a great gulf fixed.
Later on in the afternoon the two strolled up higher than the others on
the green slopes that rise above the Monastery, and sat down by a spring
that gushed out of a rock, making a shallow, sparkling channel for
itself down to the lake. The Princess had what she called a "fit of
rusticity," which expressed itself at tea in a rapid, depreciatory
sketch of all town life, in removing flies from the cream with
consideration for their wings, and watching them clean themselves with
sympathetic attention, and, more than all, in her taking a walk with
Gertrude up the mountain side, instead of smoking cigarettes. Prince
Villari had asked if he might come too, but Mimi gave him an emphatic
"No." Nobody had ever accused Prince Villari of having the least touch,
much less a fit, of rusticity.
The Princess had the gift of prompting people so delicately, that it
could hardly be called forcing, to confide in her, and so it came about
that before very long she knew of the existence of our Reginald
Davenport, and his relation to her companion.
Then Gertrude said suddenly,--
"Do you know Lady Hayes?"
Mimi was startled. The question had been very irrelevant. But she
answered with a laugh,--
"No; but I am told I should not like her. They say she is too like me.
But why do you ask?"
"Reggie wrote to me about her this morning. He says she is delightful."
"Oh! I don't say she isn't," said the other, "but you see there isn't
room or time for two people like me in one place. I never have time to
say all I want, and if there was somebody else like that, we shouldn't
get on at all."
"Oh! but Lady Hayes is usually very silent, I believe," said Gertrude.
"Yes; but you have to listen to the silence of some people, just as you
have to listen to the talk of others. It takes just as much time. I
expect she is one of those."
The Princess looked at the figure beside her.
"How happy you must be," she said with something like envy; "and I think
you will continue to be happy. And Mr. Davenport is coming here, is he?
You must introduce me at once, and I will give you both my blessing.
That's something to look forward to. Come, we must go down, the others
will be waiting."
Mimi was rather less noisy on the way home than usual. Prince Villari
remarked it, and supposed that the fit of rusticity was not yet over.
She bid a very affectionate good-night to Gertrude at the door of her
hotel, and asked her to come and see her in the morning, and then
altered the terms of the visit, and said she would come down to their
hotel herself, and hoped to find Gertrude ready for a stroll before
lunch.
She remained silent at dinner, and afterwards, when she and her husband
were sitting in their room by the window, to let in the cool evening
breeze, he felt enough curiosity to ask,--
"What is the matter with my charming wife that she is so silent?"
"I was thinking about Gertrude Carston," said Mimi. "She is engaged to
be married."
Prince Villari puffed his cigar in silence for a few moments.
"Ah! that is interesting," he said at length. "I shall come with you
to-morrow to offer my felicitations. How very handsome she is."
"I wish you would do nothing of the sort, Villari," said his wife.
"Flirt with somebody else, if you must flirt with somebody. Flirt with
me, if you like."
"That is a most original idea," he said. "I never heard of a husband
flirting with his wife before."
"It's no manner of use trying to flirt with Gertrude Carston, my dear
boy; so I warn you solemnly. She is awfully in love with her intended,
and, in any case, she wouldn't flirt. She will only get angry with you."
"She would look splendid when she was angry," said the Prince
meditatively.
Mimi got up from her seat.
"Look here, Villari," she said, "I don't often ask a favour of you, and
I am not particular in general as to how you conduct yourself. I am
never jealous, you know, and we have ceased to be lovers--we are
excellent friends, which I think is better. As a friend, I ask you to
leave her alone."
"I never suspected you of jealousy," he said; "but you ought to explain
to me exactly why you wish this, if you want me to do as you ask."
"Benevolent motives, pure and simple," said Mimi at once. "You won't get
any amusement out of it."
"Never mind me," murmured he.
"Very good," continued Mimi. "I cancel that--and she will hate it. Just
leave her alone. Flirt with Mrs. Rivière. She would enjoy it. You were
rude to her to-day; you never spoke a word to her--good, bad or
indifferent."
"Mimi, you are inimitable," said the Prince, looking at her with
satisfaction. "Really, you never disappoint one. I expected to find all
sorts of surprises in you; but it seems I haven't got to the end of them
yet. To discover such a spring of benevolence in you now is charming. Do
you know I feel like your lover still."
"Then will you do what I ask?"
"Yes; I think I will," said he. "After all, I shall flirt with my wife a
little longer."
He rose up from his chair, and took her hand in his, and raised it,
lover-like, to his lips.
"You're a very good old boy, Villari," she said. "We've never yet come
near the edge of a quarrel, and we've been married, oh! ever so long.
How wise we are, aren't we? Let me go, please. I want to write some
letters. You told Mrs. Rivière you'd go to the Casino with her. It's
time you were off. Be awfully charming to her, will you?"
"I'll let her show me to all her acquaintances, and be introduced to
them all, if that will do," said the Prince.
"That's a dear," remarked Mimi. "That'll do beautifully. Trot along!"
CHAPTER II.
Gertrude's pleasure at receiving the telegram announcing Reggie's
immediate arrival was not untouched by surprise. The vague thoughts,
which for very loyalty she would not allow to take shape in her mind, in
connection with Lady Hayes, formed themselves into a dark cloud on the
horizon, distant but potentially formidable. But when she came
downstairs on the morning of his arrival, and saw him standing in the
hall, with the early morning sunlight falling on his tall, well-made
form and towering, sunny head, there was no room in her mind for more
than one feeling, and she was content. He had not seen her coming
downstairs, and on the bottom step she paused, held out her hands, and
said,--
"Reggie!"
That moment was one of pure and simple happiness to them both. He turned
and saw her, the girl to whom he had given his heart and his young love,
and for him, as for her, at that moment none but the other existed.
Gertrude felt that the thoughts of that golden future, which had so
filled her mind one morning, as she walked down to the lake, were now
beginning to be fulfilled. As for him, the chief feeling in his mind was
one of passionate, unutterable relief; the long nightmare was over, for
the moment he felt that childish, pure happiness of waking from a bad
dream and finding morning come, and the sun shining into a dear,
familiar room.
He had not had a very pleasant journey. The anger which Mrs. Davenport
had seen in his face, and from which she had taken comfort, burned
itself out and left him face to face with blankness. His passionate
desire to see Eva rekindled itself, but that was impossible, and the
sight of Gertrude he felt, in another sense, was impossible too. Several
times he had been on the point of turning back, but the essential
weakness of his character forbade so determined a step. But certainly,
at that first moment of meeting her, he felt, with that unquestioning
irresponsibility, that in natures not so sweet creates egoism, that the
solution was here, and the relief was great.
"Ah, it is good to see you, Gerty," he said, when the first silent
greeting was over. "I didn't know how much I wanted to get to you, until
I saw you standing there."
"It was nice of you to come so soon," she said, drawing her arm through
his, and leading him out on to the verandah; "but why did you come so
suddenly? Nothing is wrong, I hope?"
Reggie had foreseen and dreaded this question, and he had devoted some
thought to it. But Gertrude had given it a form more easy of reply than
that he had anticipated.
He looked at her affectionately.
"Nothing is wrong," he said with emphasis, and, to do him justice, he
believed at that moment with truth.
"Everything is as right as it can be now," he went on; "now I am here
with you, and oh, Gerty, nothing else matters."
"No," she said softly; "nothing else matters."
They stood there looking at each other, silent, almost grave--for
happiness is no laughing matter--until a waiter came out with a tray on
which was Gertrude's breakfast. Reggie went upstairs to his room to get
rid of his travel stains, and Gertrude ordered breakfast for him to be
served at the table on the verandah where she had her own. But it was
not to be expected that the change in Reggie which Mrs. Davenport had
noticed would escape her, and though, in the grave, silent joy of that
first meeting, she had not consciously noticed it, she remembered it
now, and it struck her exactly as it had struck Mrs. Davenport.
"He has become a man," she said to herself, and the thought flooded her
mind with a new joy. He had said that nothing was wrong; their meeting
had been all and more than she had expected, for she felt he fulfilled
his part of that union of soul which she had thought of as the germ
which lurked in their first months of courtship, and which she felt she
had become capable of by degrees only. But, lo! he had changed too.
Truly, the golden future was dawning.
Such moments are rare. We cannot live always at the full compass of our
possibilities, any more than a horse can gallop at full speed for ever.
That great characteristic of the human race, limitation, forbid us to
walk for ever on the circumference of our circle. That most
disappointing of phenomena called reaction will not be denied, and the
hearts which are capable of the highest emotions in the highest degree,
are not only capable, but necessarily liable to their corresponding
depths. But at present, disconsolate reflections of this kind had no
footing in Gertrude's mind. She knew her emotions were expanded for the
present sweet moment, even to the limits of her imagination, and room
for further thought there was none.
All that day and all the next day the joy grew no less deep. On the
afternoon of the third day an invitation came from Princess Villari for
Mrs. and Miss Carston to come to tea, also to bring Mr. Davenport if he
was there. Gertrude wanted to go, and so _sans dire_ did her mother, and
she soon convinced Reggie--who was of opinion that tea-parties were
bores--that he wanted to go too. It is always flattering to the male
mind to know that a lady particularly wants to see you, especially when
that lady is described in so promising a way as that in which Gertrude
alluded to the Princess.
The Princess had a genius for doing things in the best possible way. If
she had given a soap-bubble party, the pipes would have been amber
tipped, the soap, "Pears' scented," and even in an informal affair of
this sort, her arrangements were indubitably perfect. Her sitting-room
opened on to the verandah of the hotel, which in turn communicated with
the garden. Tea and light refreshments were provided in all these three
charming places, on a quantity of small tables, giving unlimited
opportunities for any number of _tête-à-têtes_. The steps and the
verandah were bright with sweet-smelling flowers, and in the room, where
their fragrance would have been overpowering, were large, cool branches
of laburnum and acacia. Needless to say, she had advertised the
hotel-keeper that she would be using the verandah and hotel gardens that
afternoon, and that, with her compliments, those places would be
"_interdite_" to any one but her guests.
The Princess was extremely glad to see Reggie, and she couldn't help
congratulating him, if he wouldn't think it very interfering of her, but
she had made great friends with dear Gertrude, and Gertrude had told her
all about it. And here was Mrs. Rivière coming, and did Reggie know her;
she was a great friend of Lady Hayes, whom she was sure he must have met
in London.
Gertrude was standing some little way off, but she heard the name
mentioned, and she could not help turning half round and looking at
Reggie. Reggie's back, however, was towards her, and he was making his
bow to Mrs. Rivière.
Mrs. Rivière was very busy about this time on modelling herself after
the Princess, but having nothing in her composition that could be
construed into tact or ability, the result was that the imitation was
limited to talking in a loud voice, and saying anything that came into
her head.
"Charmed to meet you," she was telling Reggie in shrill tones, "and all
the men here are going to be dreadfully jealous of you at once. Your
reputation has preceded you; it came to me by the last mail; how nobody
could get in a word edgeways with Lady Hayes, because she was always
talking to you, and how your photograph stood on the mantelpiece in her
room, and she would never allow the housemaids to dust it, but she
dusted it herself every morning with a pink silk handkerchief, also
belonging, or belonging once, to you. Oh, don't deny it, Mr.
Davenport--and how she sat out four, or was it forty--I think
forty--forty dances with you at some ball one night."
Mrs. Rivière paused for breath, well satisfied with herself. Her
monologue had been quite as rapid as the Princess's and, she flattered
herself, quite as fascinating. Mimi had moved away when Mrs. Rivière
came up, and was talking to Gertrude, a few yards off. But Gertrude did
not hear what she was saying, for the shrill tones of Mrs. Rivière's
voice rose high above the surrounding babble of conversation, and seemed
as if they were spoken to her alone. Reggie's back was still turned
towards her; his face she could not see.
Reggie was conscious that Gertrude was within hearing, conscious also
that Mrs. Rivière did not know his relations to her. Eva's name had
caused the blood to rush up into his face, and Mrs. Rivière had been
delighted with the success of her speech. The Princess had caught a few
of her last words, and, looking up at Gertrude, she saw that she had
heard too. She wheeled suddenly about, and approached Mrs. Rivière.
"There are simply twenty thousand people whom I don't know here," she
said; "you really must come and introduce me to them. Who is that there
in a green hat with little purple, bubbly things on it? I want to know
anyone who wears purple and green. They must be so very brave; I respect
brave people enormously. Come and introduce me. Villari has asked a lot
of people I never saw before. I shall talk to him about the woman with
purple bobbles!"
She drew Mrs. Rivière away, and Reggie turned round and found himself
with Gertrude.
"I heard what that woman said to you," said Gertrude, simply. "It is
only fair to tell you that."
She waited, looking at him expectantly, but he remained silent.
"Reggie," she said, touching his arm.
He raised his eyes and looked at her.
"Come and walk round the garden, Gerty," he said, "I have something to
say to you."
Gerty's loyalty struggled again and again conquered.
"What you have to say to me can be said here, surely," she said gently
and trustfully. "I do not even want you to deny the truth or any of the
truth of what that woman said. I am ashamed of having told you that I
heard. Forgive me instantly, please, Reggie, and then we'll have a
stroll."
Reggie paused, and it was a cruel moment for Gertrude.
"Yes, I will say it here," he went on at length. "Do you remember my
telling you, three days ago, on the morning I came, that everything was
right now I was with you? That was true."
"And it is true, and you have forgiven me?" asked Gertrude.
Was the ghost of Venusberg not laid yet? Else what was that murmur which
Reggie had heard again, when Mrs. Rivière spoke of Eva, like the burden
of a remembered song?--"She is not gone really, she has only gone
elsewhere?" Was that the smell of red geraniums borne along from the
flower-beds by the warm wind, faint, acrid, as you smell them in the
dusty window-boxes of the great squares and streets in London? There
should be no geraniums here, only wild flowers--meadow-sweet, dog-rose,
violet--
The sound of Gertrude's voice had long died away, but Reggie stood
silent. An overpowering feeling of anxiety swept over her; the trust
that she had felt in his assurance that all was right was suddenly
covered by a rolling breaker of doubt. And that silence cost her more
than any speech.
At last it became unbearable.
"Speak, Reggie," she cried, "whatever you have to tell me."
"Come, let us go round the garden, where we can be quiet," he said, and
together, in silence, they followed a path leading down between dark
evergreen bushes to the garden gate.
They sat down on a garden seat where they were hidden from the crowd
gathering on the lawn.
"Let us sit here, Reggie," she said. "Just tell me, and when you have
said 'yes,' forgive me for asking that it is true that everything is
right."
"Ah! God knows whether it is true or false," he cried.
For him again, the army of Venus laughed and rioted as it had rioted
once before in the crowded opera house. Again a woman, pale, wonderful,
with dark eyes, sat beside him, beating time listlessly to the music
with her feathered fan. She had worn that night her great diamond
necklace, and the jewels had flashed and glittered in the bright light,
till he could scarcely believe they were not living things. And he had
thought it was all over, past and dead. Oh no! "she is not gone really;
she has only gone elsewhere ... she often turns up again."
Gertrude felt her heart give one great leap of strained suspense, and
then stand still for fear.
"I don't understand," she cried. "Tell me all about it, and tell me
quickly. Yet, yet, you said it was all right, didn't you, Reggie, and
you wouldn't tell me a lie? Ah! say it is all right again, say it now. I
cannot bear it. I should like to kill that woman for what she said. It
was not true, was it? Tell me it was not true."
The ghost of Venusberg loomed large before Reggie's eyes, blotting out
the green bank of trees in front, the pure sky overhead, the mountains
sleeping in the still afternoon, blotting out even the tall, English
figure by him, leaning forward towards him in an agony of fear, hope,
despair; he saw the gleam of electric light, the gleam of jewels, the
gleam of another woman's eyes.
"I will tell you all," he said. "I saw Lady Hayes for the first time
after you had left London, and from that time till four days ago I have
seen her constantly. Then one night she showed me she was like all those
women she moved among, and from whom I thought her so different. She was
like Mrs. Rivière, Princess Villari--all is one after that. It was at
the opera, at Tannhäuser--"
The intensity of Gertrude's suspense relaxed a little. It was all over,
then--
"Ah! we heard the overture together. Do you remember? You said you did
not like wicked people."
"Yes, I know. When I saw that, at that moment I loathed her. She had
said to me things no woman should say, and when I heard the overture I
understood, and told her she was a wicked woman. And not till then--you
_must_ believe me when I tell you this--not till I had vowed never to
see her again, did I know--my God! that I should say these things to
you--did I know I loved her. I have been through heaven and hell, and
they are both hell."
Reggie paused.
"That is not all," said Gertrude.
The suspense was over, and despair is as calm or calmer than joy.
"I couldn't leave her like that," he went on. "I could not hate her
utterly at the first moment that I knew I loved her, and I wrote to her
asking her forgiveness, and she told me--she wrote to me, that she never
would see me again, that I had behaved unpardonably. She made me angry.
And I came straight off here the same day."
"And now?" asked Gertrude.
"God only knows what now," said he, leaning his head on his hands.
There was a long silence, and the babble of laughter and talk came to
them from the lawn, which was filling fast. Then Reggie heard Gertrude's
voice, very low and very tender, speaking to him,--
"Poor Reggie, poor dear boy. I am very sorry for you."
She laid her hand on his knee, and then, drawing closer to him, as he
sat with down-bent head, leaned forward to kiss him. But in a moment she
recollected herself, and by an effort of supremest delicacy, before he
was conscious what she had intended, drew back with one long look at
him, in which her soul said "Farewell."
She had something more to say, but it was not easy for her to say it.
The uprootal of all one loves best makes it difficult to talk just
then. But easy or not, it had to be said, and it was better to say it
now.
"I am sure you told me the truth," she began, "when I met you three days
ago, and you said everything was right. We know nothing for certain, do
we; we can only say what we think, and I am sure you thought that.
Anyhow, these last three days have been very sweet. And now, Reggie,
there is only one thing more to say ... you are free, absolutely
free.... I am not so selfish as to wish to bind you to me.... I love you
... surely I may tell you once more what I have told you so often ... I
love you with all my heart and soul, and I do not think I shall change.
But we must wait. If that day comes when you say to me, 'Will you have
me?' I shall say 'Yes.' But, you must say it in the same spirit in which
I shall say 'Yes.' You know what that means, don't you? Ah, Reggie, I
don't blame you. How could I do that?"
"Gerty, Gerty," cried he, "I would give all the world to be able to say
that to you. I know what you mean. But I am helpless, dumb, blind, deaf.
I can do nothing. I am tossed about. I don't know what is happening to
me. And that you should suffer too."
Gertrude smiled, ever so faintly.
"It's a difficult world, isn't it," she said, "but it has its ups and
downs. I have been very happy almost all my life."
"Forgive me, forgive me," he cried. "Gerty, say you don't hate me."
A deep tremor ran through her. When she met his imploring gaze, the
desire of her young, strong love to gather him into her arms, to comfort
him, to _make_ him feel the depths of her yearning for him, to lose all
for one moment in one last, clasping embrace was very hard to resist.
"What harm is done?" whispered one voice within her, but another said,
"He is not yours; he belongs to the woman he loves." For one moment she
hesitated: tenderness, love, memory, wrestled with that other voice, but
prevailed not. There was that within her stronger than them all.
"I love you more than all the world," she said, "and there is nothing to
forgive."
For one moment she stood looking at him, treasuring the seconds that
passed too quickly, knowing that before a short minute had passed that
last look would be over. Such a pause is purely instinctive, and when
instinct tells us that it is time to take up one's life again, it is
impossible to stay longer.
That moment came all too soon, and Gertrude spoke again.
"Come, we must be going back. They will wonder where we are. Ah! there
is the Princess. Reggie, pick me that tea-rose."
The Princess felt vaguely reassured. The look in Gertrude's face when
she heard what Mrs. Rivière was saying was not pleasant, and it
remained in her mind with some vividness. But the last remark which she
had overheard was distinctly encouraging.
"Really, you two people are too bad," she said. "You are here to amuse
me and my guests, and show these little French people how magnificent,
clean, nice, English boys and girls are. I've been entertaining a lot of
stupid people, whom I didn't want to see, and who wouldn't have wanted
to see me if I hadn't been a Highness. But I've got a great notion of my
duty as a hostess. Didn't somebody write an "Ode to Duty"? You might as
well write an "Ode to Dentistry." They are both very unpleasant, but
they both keep you straight."
She led the way back to the lawn, and Gertrude and Reggie followed.
Society may be a farce, but it is a very grim farce. The devout but
rejected lover, who has proposed to the lady of his love beneath an
idyllic moon, goes to bed that night as usual, and if, in the agony of
his mind, he has forgotten, to take the links out of his shirt in the
evening, he will have to do it in the morning. The bows of his evening
shoes will want untying just as much that night as on any other, and
next morning he will find himself at the breakfast-table just as usual,
having washed and brushed his teeth and combed his hair. The unkempt,
haggard lovers of fiction have no existence in real life. Edwin does not
refuse to shave because Angelina will have none of him, nor does he use
his razor, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, for
any more anatomical process than that of removing his superfluous hair.
And Gertrude did not go home in floods of tears and refuse to be
comforted, but she talked to several old acquaintances, and made several
new ones, and quite a number of people said, "What a delightful girl
Miss Carston is." But her grief was none the less deep for that.
Among the old acquaintances, Prince Villari chose to number himself.
"I hear Mr. Davenport, whom my wife says you were expecting, has
arrived," said he. "Would you do me the pleasure to introduce him to
me?"
Reggie was standing near Gertrude at the time, and she said,--
"Reggie, Prince Villari desires me to do you the honour to introduce you
to him."
"Mrs. Carston has been so good as to accept a most informal invitation
to dinner from my wife for to-night," continued the Prince. "She said we
might hope that you and Mr. Davenport would join us too."
Gertrude did not flinch.
"I should be charmed," she said. "Reggie, you are not engaged, are you?"
The Prince smiled in anticipation of a "sweet, secret speech," but he
was disappointed. Reggie considered it an honour, and ventured to
inquire at what time they should come.
"My wife has refused to allow Mrs. Carston to go home. She says it would
be too cruel to entail that double journey over the most dusty mile of
road in Europe twice in one day. May I add," he said, turning to
Gertrude, "that it would also be too cruel if you went. It is already
half-past six, and we dine in an hour. I see the people are all going.
Let me show you the garden. Ah! I see Mr. Davenport has found an
acquaintance. Won't you come with me down as far as the gate? There is a
seat there commanding a lovely view."
Ah! but how Gertrude's heart knew that seat and that lovely view! Had
she not looked on it once already this afternoon?
The Prince was disposed to be particularly amiable.
"I am sure you must love this view," he said. "I know it's a great bore
having views shown you, and that sort of thing, but I must say I think
this view really is enchanting! Those mountains there look so fine in
this evening light! They always remind me of the English lake scenery.
My wife raves about English scenery; she says it is part of the only
satisfactory system of life in the world, and belongs to the same order
of things as roast beef and five o'clock tea, and daisies and large
cart-horses. Ah! here is Mrs. Rivière; I suppose she has been looking
at the scenery, too."
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Rivière had been doing nothing of the sort.
She had come to a secluded corner, in order to smoke a cigarette and
carry on a promising flirtation with a somewhat mature French count. But
the mature French count had gone his way, and she was finishing her
cigarette alone.
"I have been looking for that fascinating and wicked Englishman," she
said. "Yes; isn't the view charming? You really don't know, Miss
Carston, how dreadfully you are compromising yourself by going about
with him. Take my word for it, as a married woman, that it endangers
your reputation. Really, I don't know what young people are coming to.
It's perfectly frightful. I heard all about him from a very dear friend
of mine in London."
Gertrude felt an overwhelming desire to stop this sort of thing. Mrs.
Rivière had run herself out by this time, and stood taking little puffs
from her cigarette, and thinking how very Mimi-ish she was becoming.
Gertrude stood by her a moment in silence, and Prince Villari thought
the contrast between them very striking indeed. There was an expression
in Gertrude's face which puzzled him somewhat and he waited in patience
for an explanation which he felt sure was forthcoming.
"You mean Reggie Davenport?" she said at length.
"Reggie!" screamed Mrs. Rivière, "really you are getting on at a
tremendous pace. I honestly tremble for you."
"Your fears are misplaced," said Gertrude, looking down at her. "I have
been engaged to him for eighteen months."
She turned round after saying these words, and walked slowly back, the
Prince by her side, without troubling herself to see the effect produced
on Mrs. Rivière. They walked in silence for some yards, and then the
Prince said,--
"May I offer you my congratulations on the double event--on your
engagement, and your defeat of Mrs. Rivière? It was really very fine."
"Thanks," said she, without tremor or raised colour. "I don't like Mrs.
Rivière. I think she is insupportable. Ah! there is Reggie. May I go and
speak to him?"
The Prince walked gracefully off in another direction. He never made
himself _de trop_.
"Reggie," said she, "it was necessary, I found just now, to let Mrs.
Rivière believe we were engaged, and I think, perhaps, we had better not
let it be known what has happened just yet. I have good reason for it.
But tell your mother. I am tired. I think I shall go indoors. Stop and
talk to the Prince."
By a merciful arrangement of Nature's, a great shock is never entirely
comprehended by the victim all at once. A numbness always succeeds it
first, and the torn and bleeding tissues recover not altogether, but one
by one. At present Gertrude was conscious that she did not wholly take
in all that had happened. Volition and action in small things went on
still with mechanical regularity, and it is doubtful whether any of
those about her saw any difference. She wandered into the Princess's
room which opened on to the verandah, and was pleased to find it
untenanted. She threw herself down in a chair, and took up the paper,
which had just come in by the mail. There was a famine somewhere, and a
war somewhere else, Mr. Gladstone had gone to Biarritz, the Prince of
Wales had opened a Working-Man's Institute and Lord Hayes was dead. His
death, it appeared, was sudden.
The paper slipped from Gertrude's knees and fell crackling to the
ground. So he was dead, and his wife a widow, like herself, she felt.
She sat there for some time without stirring. So Lady Hayes, then, was
free, and Reggie, as she had told him herself that afternoon, was free
too. How very simple, after all, are the big problems of life, and how
very cruel. Surely Eva could not help loving him. Anyone who knew him
must love him; who could tell that half so well as herself, who loved
him best? Was he not lovable? Surely, for she loved him. And what would
Mrs. Rivière say? Her thoughts wandered blindly on, touching a hundred
different points with accuracy, but without feeling, till they all
centred round the main event.
Ah! the cruelty of it, the diabolical chance which placed these things
on the devil's chessboard, for the devil to move and manoeuvre with.
She was to be the victim, it seemed; she was to give up the object of
her long tender love to another woman, more beautiful, less scrupulous
than herself, and her jealousy sprang to birth, full armed, terrible.
Did the irony of fate go so far as this, that that woman, for whom she
had herself declared Reggie free, should be free also? Her rejection of
him--that was nothing, a wile to bring him back more humbly to her feet.
Ah, yes, they would be married in St. Peter's, Eaton Square, probably,
and Gertrude would go there, and sing "The Voice that breathed o'er
Eden," and eat their--his--wedding cake, and be introduced to the bride,
and throw a slipper after them for luck. Yes that was all extremely
likely, one might almost say imminent. At this point Gertrude began to
perceive that she was getting hysterical, and with a violent effort of
self-control, she got up and walked to the window. The sun was just
setting, and over the lawn strolled a tall figure, preceded by a still
taller shadow. Reggie's eyes were bent to the ground, and he walked up
close to the verandah without seeing her. The sight of that familiar,
best-loved figure produced another mood in Gertrude; she watched it
silently for a time, and then said to herself under her breath,--
"Pray, God, let her love him very much;" and then aloud, "Reggie."
At the sound of his name he looked up and saw her.
"Come in here a minute," she said. "I have something to tell you."
Reggie nodded assent, and came along the verandah, until he reached the
low, French window opening on to it.
"Come in," said Gertrude, "it's the Princess's room, but she isn't here.
Sit down there."
Gertrude paused.
"The paper has just come," she said at length. "There is something I
have read which I wish to tell you, Reggie. It affects you very
deeply--I have just read it. Lord Hayes is dead."
"Ah, God!--"
The exclamation burst from him involuntarily. He could have checked it
no more than a man can help wincing at a sudden, unexpected blow, or
starting at a sudden noise. But into those two words he had cast all the
cargo of his soul--hope, longing, love. Gertrude had heard them, had
comprehended them, had swallowed the bitter draught.
A moment afterwards he saw that he had told her all, more convincingly
than he had done even this afternoon, for he saw she realized it to the
full.
"Ah, Gerty, what can I do?" he said, when the silence had become
unbearable. "You know how it is with me. How can I help it? I wish I
were dead, though the gates of hell were yawning to receive me."
"You did not wish you were dead two months ago," she said with a flash
of scorn, "not even though the gates of heaven were open to receive you.
You are not so easily contented now."
Reggie looked piteously at her.
"I know. I deserve all you could say of me. Much more than you ever
would. I am a brute, a villain--I deserve to be shot. Yet you did not
speak like that this afternoon; I am glad you have said it, though; I
don't feel less guilty, God knows! but I am not so bad as not to feel
thankful for any punishment."
"Let us say good-bye now," said Gertrude. "We shall not meet again like
this."
She held out her hand to him, but volunteered no more intimate embrace.
He grasped it, held it for a moment, and let it drop. Even the touch of
hand had been something sacred before to him and her, he felt, but there
was something dead between them; her hand was as another's. But to
Gertrude that rush of memories was too great. Her strength had been too
severely taxed already.
"Ah, Reggie," she cried, "do you leave me like this?"
"God help you!" he said, "and me too."
"Reggie, my darling," she cried suddenly, "shall that woman stand
between you and me? Did you not promise me your love? Where are those
promises? This is all a dream. Come to me again as you were once. You
did not love anyone but me, you said--and once you told me you disliked
wicked people. What has happened to those words of yours? Were they not
true? It is a pity if they were not, for I have written them on my
heart. Ah, my darling, my darling--" She threw her arms round him in a
last embrace. "Reggie, dear," she whispered, "this is good-bye. I did
not mean what I said just now. I did not know what I was saying. That
was the best of me that spoke this afternoon when I said you were free.
You are quite free. I hope she will love you as much ... as much as I
have done--as I do. That will be enough. And now go. Leave me by myself.
Good-bye, dear; good-bye."
She went with him on to the verandah, where the dusk was already
falling, and as soon as he was outside the room, she turned quickly from
him and went back, closing the glass door after her.
CHAPTER III.
Lord Hayes was buried with his fathers and forefathers in the little
churchyard at Hayes, and after the funeral Eva came back again to her
London house. Mrs. Grampound came to see her occasionally, was tearful
and voluble, and could hardly conceal her satisfaction at the handsome
settlements Lord Hayes had made on his widow.
"So thoughtful of him," she would say, wiping her eyes, "to leave you
the London house for life. He knew that you could not do without a few
months in London every year; and the villa at Algiers, too, for the
winter, in memory of the honeymoon. So unselfish!"
Mrs. Grampound seemed to think that his lordship's disembodied spirit
might have preferred to keep the villa at Algiers to itself, and that
the fact that he had left it to his widow seemed to imply that he
renounced all rights of visiting these particular glimpses of the moon.
But Eva assented, with the ghost of a smile, as the impossible
interpretation occurred to her.
Reggie's letter to Mrs. Davenport, telling her that his engagement with
Gertrude had been broken off, had arrived, and it was not very pleasant
reading. He mentioned that this was prior to the news of Lord Hayes's
death, and that he was coming back to England; and with all his old
frankness, he said that he had written to Eva a letter of sympathy on
her husband's death.
But if Reggie's letter gave pain to Mrs. Davenport, not to mention that
Gertrude was not altogether happy just now, surely there was the
corresponding balance somewhere. Eva, for instance--things were taking a
fresh turn, were they not, for her? Her husband was just dead--that was
true; but though the loss of a husband is not, in the general way, a
matter for congratulation, her case was a little exceptional. And this
morning a letter had come for her from someone she was very fond of,
saying a few words for the sake of decency, and a few other words which,
for the sake of decency, had better have been left unsaid. Reggie had
told Eva that all was over between himself and Gertrude, and that he was
coming back to London. The letter ended almost imperiously, "I shall
come to see you--you _shall_ see me."
Yet Eva was not the owner of the balance of happiness to make all
square. How was that? But Eva was very conscious herself, as she sat
with Reggie's letter in her hand, why she was not happy. Reggie was
coming to offer himself, body and soul, to her, and there was nothing in
the world that she desired but to give herself, body and soul, to him.
It seemed very simple. Unfortunately it was only more impossible.
She had decided only a week ago that he was happier, or would be happier
with another than with her. She knew it, she knew it; she was convinced
of it by instinct and reasoning alike. It seemed to her that there was
nothing she knew except that--that, and a certain dull remorse when she
thought of that moment, when she had found the thing, which had been her
husband, lying like a broken doll in the dark room. She wished she had
made more of that bad job; he was so weak, so inadequate, surely it had
not been worth while to spar with one so immeasurably her inferior. And
he had been very kind to her, as kind as she would let him. He had been
like a little dog, which had been purely amiable at first, but had got
to snap instinctively when it was approached, from the certainty that it
was going to be teased. She recalled that shrinking, hunted look that
she had seen so often on his face when he had snapped at her and she had
turned on him with a whip. To do her justice, the provocations, or, at
any rate, the challenge had usually been on his side, but after all,
would it not have been better so many times to have let it pass--not to
have slashed so savagely? Ah, well, he was dead; Eva envied him now.
For the road to her happiness was as impassable as ever; her husband's
death had made no difference to that. She knew that Reggie's best chance
of happiness was not with her, but with another, and, unfortunately for
Eva, she found that this fact could not be overlooked. And that
necessity of securing his happiness came first; it was the most
essential part of her love for him; the impossibility she had felt on
that morning after they had seen Tannhäuser, or rather heard the
overture together, of doing anything that was not for the best of his
happiness, as far as in her and in her sober judgment lay, remained as
impossible as ever. The existence of her husband, she felt then, was
altogether a smaller matter. If she had felt it good that she and Reggie
should love one another, she would have been content to go on living as
they had lived before, seeing each other in ball-rooms, in crowded
dining-rooms, in any publicity, just touching his hand, just reading
that secret knowledge in his eyes, and she knew that he would have
waited indefinitely as blissfully as herself. But her knowledge of
herself and him rendered that impossible, and it was impossible still.
Surely it was very hard; she did not ask for much, and that little was
infinitely impossible.
Meanwhile, the hours were bringing Reggie closer to London, and closer
to her. "I shall come and see you--you _shall_ see me!" The words rang
in her head, till it seemed the whole air held nothing but them. That
imperious note, the first she had heard from him, was terribly dear to
her, as it is to all men and women, when the one they love commands that
which they long to do. He was changed, Mrs. Davenport had said; he had
become a man. Eva felt in his words that the change had come--he spoke
to her as a man to a woman. He pleaded no longer, he demanded, he
announced his claims. She pictured him coming to her, bold in the
assurance of his love. "You are mine," he would say, "you are mine, and
I am yours. Let us come away together. Ah! but you shall come; you dare
not say 'no.'"
Against the sight of him, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand,
Eva knew she would be powerless. The impossibilities on which she dwelt
would sink, she well knew, into nothing by the side of that one great
impossibility--that of resisting his claims when he came to seek and
have her. Surely nothing on earth, not duty, nor unselfishness, nor
wisdom, was so strong as Love, the soft, delicate-winged Love, which
neither strove nor wept, but only smiled and smiled, until its claims,
its claims in full, were willingly poured into its outstretched hand.
Eva rose from where she had been sitting, and walked upland down the
room. Dressed in black from head to foot, she looked like an image of
despair. She looked round the room, not hers, she felt, but his. That
was the chair where he used to sit; the last day he had been there, he
had pushed it back into the window and had sat in the sun, because he
said he had a cold. He had been smoking a cigarette and had put it down
on the window sill, where it had made the paint blister and burn. She
had brought him a little Benares ware ash-tray, to put it in after
that. Ah! there was the ash-tray, with the stump of a cigarette still in
it. The servants ought to have cleared it away--and yet--well, perhaps
it was too small to notice. In any case, she would not speak about it.
No, on the whole she would speak about it, and she rang the bell. They
should dust the room more carefully, she said to the man; that cigarette
end had been there a week. After all, it did not matter, she added, as
she took the ash-tray up. "No, leave it where it is; but let the room be
dusted more carefully another time." Poor, momentous little
cigarette-end!
He will see her, will he? Ah! but he shall not. Eva, who had always felt
herself so strong, was suddenly weak. If she knew that he was there, was
waiting to know if he could see her, how could she say she would not see
him, and if she saw him, how could she not yield? It was impossible,
impossible. Meanwhile, she had a day and a night in which to decide what
to do. He would not be in London till to-morrow morning. Many things may
happen in a day or a night. She might go away, away somewhere where he
would never know and could never follow her. And where in the world was
that? Where would not she follow him? Perhaps nowhere in the world, out
of the world somewhere--perhaps--perhaps....
There was a piece of green, unturned grass next the grave where her
husband lay, in that peaceful churchyard where the trees sang low
together in the wind. How would it do to go there, to be quite quiet at
last? "Perchance to dream?" Yes; but surely if she dreamed at all, she
would dream of Reggie. One might do worse, she thought, than dream of
him.
How odd that she had not thought of this before! It was so very simple,
so very satisfactory. She only cared for one thing in this world, and
that she could not have. So why wait here?
But he must never know--that would spoil it all. He must never even
suspect. Eva had an intense horror of anything like melodrama, and she
wished everything to be as natural as possible. If only she could hire a
madman from a lunatic asylum to shoot her--no, shooting would not do--it
was noisy, messy, a hundred things it should not be. Surely doctors knew
plenty of ways by which one could glide quietly out of the world without
suspicion--they knew so many ingenious devices by which they can keep us
in the world, that they must know some to let us out. Some clean,
soothing drug which presented no traces at a _post-mortem_
diagnosis--that was the word, was it not? Eva smiled when she pictured
herself going to a doctor and asking for a drug of this description. A
suspicious mind might perhaps attach undue importance to such a visit,
if made a few hours before her death. What fools people were!
Eva pondered, till after a moment a sudden thought struck her. Was not
suicide, of a kind, more misleading to those--to him to whom she wished
it to be misleading, than death from apparently natural causes? Her
husband had died four days before, and, nominally, she was a more or
less broken-hearted widow; to Reggie, at least, broken-hearted enough,
for it was part of the concealment which she had practised to him, to
hide her relations with her husband, and when she decided to let him
know the rest of her, that was a side issue which she had not shown him.
Would not the self-sought death of a heart-broken widow be the most
complete disguise to her action, far more complete than the clumsy death
by pistols or overdoses? "It is always a good thing to add details,"
thought Eva to herself. The worst of it was that such a death was
somewhat melodramatic; but when the actor quits the boards for ever, it
may be excusable that he makes one concession, in spite of his own
distaste, to set the audience in a roar. Yes, she would have it so.
Lord Hayes used to dabble in chemistry in an amateur way, and Eva
remembered his showing her, in his laboratory at Aston, a little bottle
full of a harmless-looking liquid, the smell of which reminded her at
first of soft cool peaches, but afterwards of the almond icing on the
top of wedding cakes. He had told her that it was prussic acid, and that
one drop of it on the tongue would kill a man. She remembered the
incident clearly, because when she smelled it she had shuddered, and
had thought of her own wedding cake. The bottle was sure to be there
still--it stood on the second shelf to the right as you opened the door
of the laboratory, and it had a large, red label on it. It was curious
how accurately the whole thing came back to her.
The bottle was at Aston, and he was buried in the churchyard there. She
regretted the necessity of melodrama, but she would not be alive to
regret it afterwards. Eva had no fear, only a longing to get it over--to
be quite sure that nothing would stop her carrying out her intention of
putting herself out of the reach of him she loved. She would go down to
Aston that afternoon; meanwhile, there were three or four hours to be
spent in London. Well, there were very few preparations to make. When we
take that longest journey of all, there is no packing to be done, no
arrangements to be made, as when we go away for a three days' visit. All
arrangements are made for us; death provides us with an excellent
courier who will forget nothing.
There were just two notes she wished to write--one to Mrs. Davenport,
saying that she had heard from Reggie, to say he was coming back to
London, and that he wished to see her; that she had given him his
_congé_ once for all and had no intention of seeing him, and that it
would save her trouble if Mrs. Davenport would communicate this to him.
It was not a very easy note to write for many reasons, but the other
was even harder; it was to Gertrude Carston, and ran as follows:--
"You will wonder what I, of all women in the world, can have to say
to you. Do not resent my writing till you have read. I have done
you a cruel wrong and I am sorry for it. I allowed Reggie Davenport
to fall in love with me, when I might have stopped it. If I had
cared for him it would have been different, for my husband is dead,
and he would have married me. In that case I should not have been
sorry as I am now. But I never cared for him at all; I did it
thoughtlessly, and, as far as I had any motive at all, because it
amused me. My husband was the only man I ever cared for; he is dead
and I wish I were dead too. It is but poor amends that I can make,
but this I promise you, that I will never see Reggie Davenport
again. Be very patient with him; he will love you as well as you
love him, and that I know is not a little. He will come back to you
and you will not hate me then.
"I wish I could have seen you to tell you these things. I think you
would have believed me; and I must ask you to believe me now. You
will have heard of my husband's death. May you never know what that
means. If you like, show Mr. Davenport what I have written to you;
it will be good that he should know that I never cared for him.
"I am not so bad as you think; I did my best to stop him caring for
me when we saw Tannhäuser together; he went away to you, I know,
next morning, and I hoped that that would have been the end.
Perhaps, if you saw me, you would be sorry for me now. Above all,
remember he will come back to you; it will be with you as if I had
never come between you. The fault was mine, do not cast it up to
him."
This letter took some time in the writing. It was not easy to write, but
when it was done, Eva closed it for fear of drawing back, and sent both
off at once to the post. She longed to finish some one of those things
that lay before her to do, so that she could not go back from finishing
them all. She was afraid of being weak, but not from fear of death. It
was far easier to die than to live with that impassable barrier between
her and happiness.
She arrived at Aston about four o'clock. She had sent a telegram to the
house saying that she was coming for a few nights, and a carriage was at
the station to meet her. She went first of all to the little laboratory
opening off what had been her husband's study, and found that she had
remembered the place where the bottle stood, with its red label. She
uncorked it to make sure it was right. Yes, the almond on the top of
wedding-cakes--her wedding-cake--it was exactly that smell. Then she
drew her black veil over her face and went out again. There were
certain grimly comic details which she had determined to go through, in
order to lend probability to her act, and, with this purpose, she went
into the hothouses, and the gardeners who were working saw her pick an
armful of delicate orchids and white lilies. She tore the plants up like
one possessed, and with her load of sweet-smelling whiteness, they saw
her go down the path that led to the churchyard.
There were several loiterers there, among them the old sexton, who
remembered afterwards that a lady, dressed in black, scattered a mass of
flowers over Lord Hayes's grave, and then threw herself down on the
fresh-turned earth, and lay there for half an hour or it might have been
more. He knew her to be Lady Hayes, and when he went away, for the dusk
was falling, he left her still there.
But when the sexton had gone, Eva got up. "One scene more of this weary
farce," she said half aloud. "Ah, Reggie, Reggie, may you never know!"
In the gloaming she went back to the tall house, standing stately among
its terraces and garden beds. The sun had sunk; only in the west was a
great splash of crimson, the nightingales were singing in the elm trees,
and white-winged moths fluttered about over the flower-beds. As she
entered, she turned once more to look over the peaceful, unconscious
earth. The river lay like a chain of crimson pools among the trees
below the meadow; on the far bank was a brown-faced country lad
fishing, and nearer, in the hayfields, were a few belated labourers
returning from their work. Across the river she could see the red walls
of her old home and the flower-beds gleaming in the light of the sunken
sun. Then, for the first moment, a sudden spasm of regret, of longing,
and of horror for what she was going to do came over her. It would have
been better to have finished that last act at the grave itself, but an
unaccountable repugnance to being found by the first passer-by had
prevented her.
Next moment she had swept it away. Surely she was not going to turn
coward now. She turned, and passed through the study, with step as firm
as ever, and with all her indolent, unrivalled grace of movement, into
the laboratory beyond.
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