“FROM THE EVIL TO COME.”
Vansittart and his wife never went to the village in the mountains,
where all things had been made ready for their coming. Eve spent
that afternoon which should have been her last at Cannes in the
burial-ground on the hill, now in its glory of May flowers, a paradise
of roses and white marble, a place full of tenderest memorials to the
early dead, a spot which seemed especially dedicated to those whom the
gods love best, the holy ones and pure of spirit, removed from the evil
to come for hard middle-life and selfish old age. Eve gave herself up
to the luxury of grief on that last day, taking her fond farewell of
that quiet bed where, under a coverlet of pale roses, the happy child
slept the everlasting sleep. She lingered, and lingered, as the sun
sloped towards the dark ridge of hills; lingered when the great flaming
disc touched the rugged line, until there was only the afterglow to
light her back to Californie. Vansittart had trusted her alone with the
steady Benson, now promoted from Peggy’s nurse to be Eve’s own maid.
He had cheques to write and final arrangements to make; and he thought
that there would be greater tranquillity for Eve in solitude, with only
an attendant. It was better there should be no one to whom she could
expatiate on her grief, for her talk with him had always tended to
hysteria. Thus convenience and prudence had both counselled his leaving
her to herself; and it was only when the clock on the mantelpiece
chimed the quarter before eight and the shadows deepened in the corners
of the room that he felt he had been imprudent. He went hurriedly out
to the terrace in front of the villa, and felt that creeping chillness
in the air which follows quickly upon sundown on this southern shore.
The carriage stopped at the gate as he went out, and Eve was in his
arms, to be welcomed first and scolded afterwards.
“It is with you I am most angry, Benson,” he said to his wife’s
attendant; “you ought to have been wiser.”
“I won’t have you scold Benson,” remonstrated Eve; “it is my fault. She
teased me to come home ever so long ago, and I wouldn’t. I wanted to
stay with Peggy till the last moment. It was like bidding her good-bye
again. And now I have left her lying in her quiet grave, near the poor
mother whom she hardly knew. I didn’t know how late it was till we were
in the carriage coming home, and I began to feel rather chilly.”
“You are shivering now, Eve. You should have remembered what Dr. Bright
said about sunset.”
“Ah, that was on Peggy’s account. It is different for me.”
“Well, I won’t try to frighten you into a cold. Run to your
mistress’s-room, Benson, and make a good fire. I ordered tea to be
ready.”
He almost carried Eve upstairs, and with his own hands manipulated
the olive logs, and set the merry pine cones blazing and crackling,
while she lay on the sofa in front of the fireplace and watched the
flames; but the shivering continued in spite of the cheery wood
fire, and eiderdown coverlet, and hot tea; so Dr. Bright was sent
for hurriedly, and came to find his patient with a temperature that
indicated grave disturbance. He came, and left only to come back again,
with another English doctor, who did not leave his patient all night;
and between midnight and morning the young wife’s existence trembled
in the balance, and the husband, pacing to and fro and in and out on
the lower floor, ground his teeth and beat his head in a passion of
self-reproach, hating himself for having allowed that perilous visit to
the cemetery, cursing himself for his folly in not having gone with her
if she must needs go.
“There is a blight upon us and upon our love,” he told himself in his
despair. “Nemesis will have her due.”
* * * * *
His fondest hope was blighted--the hope of a living link which should
bind him closer to his wife and make severance impossible--a child,
whose innocent eyes should turn from father to mother, and plead to the
mother for the father’s sin--the child who, in direct contingency, was
to be his champion and his saviour. He passed through an ordeal of such
agony and apprehension on his wife’s account as to make him for the
time being comparatively indifferent to the loss of his son, who came
upon this mortal scene only to vanish from it for ever; but when at
last, in mid-June, while Californie and her fir woods were baking under
a tropical sun, his wife was restored to him, strong enough to travel
to cooler regions in the shadow of the great Alps, there fell upon him
the sense of an irreparable loss.
They went by easy stages to Courmayeur, and established themselves
there for the rest of the summer, in a reposeful solitude, keeping
aloof from the climbers and explorers and the race of tourists
generally. They had their own rooms, in a Dépendance of the hotel,
rooms whose windows commanded valley and mountain. Here Eve first felt
the tranquillizing influence of Alpine scenery, and her quiet rambles
with Vansittart soon brought back the bloom of her girlish beauty, and
restored something of the frank gladness of those younger years when
she and her sisters used to ramble over the undulating ridge of Bexley
Hill, and think it a mountain.
“Dear old Bexley,” sighed Eve, with her eyes dreamily contemplating
Mont Chetif; “I hope I shall never begin to despise you, even though
you are a hill to put in one’s pocket as compared with these white
giants.”
The peaceful days, the perfect union between husband and wife, revived
Eve’s spirits and did much to restore her health, sorely shaken by the
ordeal through which she had passed. Fever had raged fiercely in the
battle between life and death, and the long bright hair, which had made
so fair a diadem in the days of her poverty, had been shorn from the
burning head. She looked quaintly pretty now, with her boyish crop,
framing the broad white forehead with crisp short curls. She laughed
when Vansittart talked of next season, when his mother was to lend them
the house in Charles Street.
“You can never appear in society with a cropped head for your
companion,” she said. “People will say you have married a lady doctor,
or some other learned monstrosity from Girton. I shall be tabooed in
the smart world where ignorance is _de rigueur_, and to know anything
about books is a sign of inferiority.”
“What care I if they think my sweet love a senior wrangler disguised as
a fine lady? You are pretty enough to set the fashion of cropped heads.”
* * * * *
They moved slowly homeward in the late autumn, loitering beside
the great Swiss lakes till the October mists began to make Pilatus
invisible and to hang low over the steep gables of Lucerne. They
lingered under Mr. Hauser’s hospitable roof so long that the great
black St. Bernard lifted his head and howled an agonizing farewell
when the carriage drove off to the station with Eve and her husband.
That leonine beast was sagacious enough to know that the trunks and
travelling-bags and bustle of departure meant something more than the
daily drive, and that he was to see these kind friends no more, and eat
no more sweet biscuits out of Eve’s soft white hands.
It was late in October when they found themselves among the pine woods
and hillocks of Hampshire, and insignificant as the hills were there
was pleasure in feeling one’s self at home. Eve’s mother-in-law was
at Merewood to receive them, and to make much of her son’s wife, whom
she found thinner and more fragile-looking than when she left for the
Riviera, but with all the beauty and brightness which had captivated
her lover. Mrs. Vansittart’s welcome had in it more of affection than
she had ever given her son’s wife in the past.
“I think you are beginning to love me,” Eve said, too sensitive not to
feel the change.
“My dear child, I always loved you.”
“Only a very little,” argued Eve. “You liked me pretty well in the
abstract, I dare say, but you did not care for me as Mrs. John
Vansittart. It was very natural. You had your own favourites, any one
of whom you would have liked Jack to marry; dear, nice girls who always
wear tidy frocks, play the ‘Lieder ohne Worte,’ and visit the poor. I
was altogether a detrimental.”
“It was not you, Eve--only your people.”
“My people--meaning my father. Yes, he was a stumbling-block, no
doubt--a man who had gone down in the world, and about whom malevolent
people said cruel things. Well, he has not been obtrusive, has he? He
has kept himself in the background.”
“My dear, he has been admirable, and your sisters, when I came to know
them and understand them, proved altogether unobjectionable. We saw a
good deal of each other while you were away.”
“Sophy told me how kind you had been. Yes, they are good girls. Their
faults are all on the surface. But the flower of the flock is gone--the
brightest and the most loving. She was all love.”
“Take comfort, dear; there is deep sorrow, but there can be no
bitterness in the thought of a child’s death.”
“Ah, that is what you religious people say,” cried Eve, rebelliously,
“but I have not faith enough to feel that. Why should she be taken?
Life was all before her, full of happiness, of beautiful sights and
sounds, and joys untasted. She was taken from the evil to come, you
will say--but there might be no evil. There has been no evil in your
life! See how peacefully it has glided by.”
“You forget, Eve, that I have had to sorrow for a beloved husband.”
“Oh, forgive me. Yes, you have felt the burden--the shadow has fallen
upon you too--the shadow, and the burden of death. Why did the Creator
make a beautiful world, and then spoil it?”
“Eve, this is blasphemy.”
“The heart must rebel sometimes; one must ask these questions. ‘The
fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.’ Is it only the fool who
says that? Is it not the bitter cry of all humanity at some time or
other?”
“Eve, you are writhing under your first sorrow. Let it turn your heart
to God, not away from Him. Do you think the unbeliever’s creed will
give you any comfort?”
“Comfort? No. There is no comfort in religion, or in unbelief. Religion
only means obedience, and public worship, and kindness to the poor, and
a good orderly life. It doesn’t mean the certainty of getting back our
dead--somewhere, somehow, and being happy again as we have been.”
“We can rest in the hope of that, Eve, knowing that we are immortal.”
“Knowing? But we don’t know. Nobody has ever come back to tell us. Oh,
if but once, only once, for one moment in a year, our dead could come
back and look at us, and speak to us, death would not be death.”
Mrs. Vansittart spoke no more of comfort. It was better perhaps to let
the troubled heart tire itself out with grieving. Tranquillity would
come afterwards.
“And our son, our son who breathed only to die. He did not live even
long enough for baptism. He was dead when the Bishop came hurriedly
from his house on the hill. You think perhaps--you who are a strict
Anglican--that his soul is in limbo--that he will never see the throne
of God. We were going to be so fond of him, Jack and I--and Peggy
wanted to live long enough to see him--but she was gone before he
came, and he didn’t care about living. If she had been well and happy
all things would have been different. They would have been running
about together in a year or two from now. And now she would have
been carrying him about in her arms. He would have been beginning to
notice people, and to laugh and coo like that cottager’s child we saw
yesterday, just about as old as my baby would have been now.”
“My dearest, do you suppose I am not sorry for your loss and for your
husband’s? But God never meant us to rebel, even in our grief. That
must not be.”
“I know I am wicked,” said Eve, with a long-drawn sigh. “I have my fits
of wickedness. In church yesterday, on my knees at the altar, I thought
that I was resigned, I almost believed in the heaven where we shall see
and know our friends again.”
The dark hour passed, and at sunset, when Vansittart came home from a
long day in the plantations, his wife received him with her brightest
smile. His coming back after a few hours’ absence meant the fulness of
joy.
She had spent a day at Fernhurst, and the sight of her three sisters
in their somewhat ostentatious mourning had renewed her grief. She
had sent them money for mourning, which largesse they had spent
conscientiously, and so were swathed in crape and distinctly funereal
of aspect.
There were Peggy’s sisters, whose very existence recalled her image
too vividly; and there was Peggy’s room, the room which she had shared
with Hetty; and the little bed where she had slept so peacefully, with
her nose almost touching the sloping roof, before the cruel cough took
hold of her, and disturbed those happy, childish slumbers, with their
visions of fairyland, or of castles in the air which seemed solid and
real to the dreamer. Everything in that cottage chamber suggested her
who slept in a far lovelier spot.
The room remained just as the child had left it. Peggy’s things were
sacred. There was her workbox, the substantial, old-fashioned rosewood
box, inlaid with mother-o’-pearl, and lined with blue silk, the old,
old blue, a colour such as modern taste holds up to scorn--for the box
was nearly half a century old, and had belonged to Peggy’s grandmother
first and to her mother afterwards. It had been given to Peggy because
she was the youngest, and the little stock of trinkets was exhausted by
the time her four sisters had each received a souvenir. The amethyst
earrings, utterly unwearable, for Eve; the watch which had not gone for
years, to Sophy; and a couple of poor little brooches for Jenny and
Hetty. After these jewels had been dealt out there remained only the
workbox for Peggy. It had been to her a source of infinite delight.
What treasures of doll’s clothing, what varieties of fancy-work;
kettle-holders, never to be polluted by a kettle; mats, never finished;
Berlin-wool cuffs, and point-lace handkerchiefs. Peggy had seldom
finished anything; but the rapture of beginning things had been
intense, a fever of enjoyment.
There were her books upon a little carved Swiss shelf, by her bed. Her
lesson-books, thumbed and dog’s-eared, everybody else’s lesson-books
before they descended to her; that “Grammaire des Grammaires” over
which the whole family had toiled, and the Primers which make learning
easy and people the world with smatterers. There were gift-books,
birthday presents from governess or sisters; the immortal Family
Robinson, Grimm, Hans Andersen, Bluebeard, Cinderella. How many
a summer dawn Peggy had lain upon that pillow, reading the old
fairy-tales before a foot was stirring in the house. Her bed was there,
with the prettiest of Bellagio rugs laid over it, sacred as a shrine.
The little room would have been far more convenient for Hetty if that
bed had been taken down and put away; but no one dreamed of removing
it. There would have been unlovingness in the mere suggestion.
Well, they had all to do without Peggy henceforward. There was one
link gone from the chain of love. Vansittart looked round at his
sisters-in-law’s faces with an agonized dread. Who would be the next?
Which among that tainted flock would be the first to show the inherited
poison, the first to feel the cold hand of the destroyer?
They all looked bright and healthy. They had all the fair complexion
and fine roseate bloom which mark the typical English beauty, a
loveliness of colour which can almost afford to dispense with
perfection of form. They were slenderly made. In a doctor’s parlance,
there was not much of them to fall back upon--not much in hand at
the beginning of a long illness. They were tall and willowy, rather
narrow-chested, Vansittart noted with a pang. Yes, assuredly Eve was
the flower of the flock. Her chest was broader, her throat fuller and
more firmly moulded than the chests and throats of her sisters. The
poise of her head was more decided, her whole bearing argued a stronger
constitution. She was the offspring of her mother’s youth, before
any indication of disease had darkened the young life. She was the
offspring of her father’s early manhood. The doctors had augured well
for her on this account.
* * * * *
The winter was spent very quietly at Merewood. Vansittart hunted and
shot, and he often went home earlier in the winter dusk than became
him as a sportsman, in order to take tea with Eve beside the fire. His
mother lingered at Merewood, so that Eve should not be alone, the link
between the two women strengthening day by day. The sisters came over
from Haslemere, and enjoyed all the luxuries of a well-appointed house.
Eve and her husband went for two or three short visits to Redwold
Towers, and Sir Hubert and Lady Hartley came to Merewood; he for the
last of the pheasants--having pretty nearly cleared his own woods,
extensive as they were--she for the pleasure of being with Eve, to whom
she was sincerely attached.
And so the winter went by, a not unhappy winter. How could a young wife
be unhappy, adoring and adored by her husband? Hymen’s torch glowed
with gentlest light beside that hearth where the pine logs were heaped
so liberally, pine logs from Vansittart’s paternal woods.
Eve was in high health at Easter, radiant, full of life and spirits,
albeit in no wise forgetful of that grave on the hill where the
Maréchal Niel roses were growing so luxuriantly, and which was being
carefully tended by stranger hands. There are those at Cannes who take
a loving pride in that Garden of Death, whose care it is that this
place of rest should be for ever beautiful, a paradise of peace, the
very memory whereof should be sweet in the thoughts of the bereaved.
Eve could think now with resignation of that tranquil spot, and of the
young life which had come to a sudden pause on earth. Was it a full
stop, or only a hyphen? Was it the end of the book, or only the bottom
of the page, with the last word repeated over-leaf, to carry on the
story without a break?
Mrs. Vansittart insisted that her children should have the free use
of the house in Charles Street for the London season. She wanted Eve
to enjoy the privileges of her position as the wife of a man of good
family and good means. She had also a lingering hope that in the
high pressure of London society her son might awaken to some worthy
ambition--political or social, and might try to make his mark in the
world. She had always been ambitious for him--had always wanted him to
do something more than shoot his own pheasants, improve the cottages on
his estate, and live within his means. For a young man of his social
status, the political arena offered fair scope for ambition, and Mrs.
Vansittart had the common idea that any man of good abilities can
succeed in politics.