“OH TELL HER, BRIEF IS LIFE, BUT LOVE IS LONG.”
As soon as Eve was well enough to be moved she left the rock and went
to finish the winter at Dinard. The doctor who attended her through
her illness suggested the south of France, Cannes for instance, as
the better climate for her; but she told him she had lost a sister at
Cannes, and that all that lovely coast was associated with her loss.
“It is very beautiful,” she said; “but I shall never go there again.
My sister was sent there because she was consumptive; but my case
is altogether different. It would be absurd to go to the south just
because I have had a touch of congestion, in consequence of an autumnal
ramble.”
“It was a somewhat severe touch, madam,” said the doctor; “but perhaps
Dinard may suit you very well. There are some people who say the
climate is almost as good as Provence.”
Sophy went with her sister to Dinard, which she pronounced a
considerable improvement upon Mont St. Michel, the mediævalism of which
picturesque settlement had in no wise reconciled her to existence in
a place without people and without shops. At Dinard there were smart
residents even in winter, and if Eve had not been obstinately bent upon
isolation they might have known people, as Sophy murmured regretfully.
Not knowing people, she soon wearied of Dinard, which was only the
sands and the sea over again, when one had exhausted the town and the
quaintness of shops which were unlike English shops, and had explored
St. Malo and St. Servan, and excursionized, chaperoned by Benson, as
far as Dinan, where she was more impressed by the bad drainage than by
the fine architecture.
Sophy began to talk of her home duties. Jenny’s letters had been most
exasperating of late, and it was too evident she was interfering with
Nancy, and making a mess of the housekeeping. Finally Sophy declared
that things at Fernhurst could go on no longer without her. Jenny had
been entertaining in a most reckless manner--people to luncheon, people
to tea. “She will be giving dinner-parties next,” said Sophy. “Nancy is
so weak about her, because she saved her life in the measles--as if it
was any merit of Jenny to have had measles worse than any of us.”
Eve did not oppose her departure, being somewhat weary of that light
talk which centred chiefly in self, one’s own experiences, sensations,
hopes, disappointments.
“How I wish you would go back with me, Eve!” urged Sophy, with very
real warmth. “Surely you would be happier at Fernhurst than here, and
it would be like the old days for us to have you again. You would be
one of us, the head of the family once more. You would forget that you
had ever left home.”
“Ah, Sophy, if that were possible! If any one could forget! They can’t,
dear. They only harden their hearts and call it forgetting. Dear old
Fernhurst! Yes, I should love to be there; to ramble over Blackdown
again, and hear the wind whistling in the dark fir trees; to look over
the weald far off to the faint streak of distant sea, just a line of
light on the horizon and no more. But it can’t be, Sophy. Fernhurst is
too near Redwold Towers, too near Mr. Sefton’s place, too near all the
people I have done with.”
“Poor Eve, it is sad to hear you talk of yourself as if you had
committed a crime. It was most trying when Mrs. Vansittart came over to
see us, and questioned us so closely about you. Did we think this or
that? Had we known of any unhappiness between you and Jack? Had we any
idea why you parted? I felt it more than the others, for I thought I
was at the bottom of it all with my foolish speech about your husband.
But I held my tongue. The others declared they knew nothing, could
not even surmise a reason for your conduct. They adored Jack, thought
him simply perfect as a husband, and Eve the luckiest girl of their
acquaintance. And then there was Lady Hartley. Of course we had to go
through the same kind of thing with her, not once but several times,
for she is always nice in asking us to her house, and in coming to tea
with us every now and then, and I know that she is very fond of you, in
her light-minded way. But, indeed, Eve, I don’t see any reason why you
should not go home with me. Nobody will venture to question you, and
Jack is in Africa----”
“No, no; I could not bear to see the people I know, or the old places.
I should be miserable. I see them often in my dreams--hill and common,
and lane, and cottage garden--and wake disappointed to find myself so
far away. But I could not bear to be there again--without him. No,
dear. Jack is travelling, and I am travelling. That is much the best
arrangement.”
“But you don’t travel,” remonstrated Sophy. “You bury yourself alive in
a place like this, and walk up and down the same stretch of sand every
day, or tramp along the same chalky road, or cross the same ridiculous
ferry, and march round the same windy ramparts. Surely you don’t call
that travelling.”
“I mean to do better by-and-by. I mean to go to Italy. Perhaps you
would spare me Hetty for a travelling companion?”
“Spare her, indeed! You have but to ask her, and she will spare
herself. She won’t ask my leave. She is pining for a change. She even
wanted to go into a convent by way of variety. She would think nothing
of going over to Rome; and if you take her to Italy you will have to be
very careful that the priests don’t get hold of her.”
“I will take care of her, Sophy. Benson and I will keep the priests at
bay. Benson is a dragon of Protestantism.”
It was settled that Hester should meet Eve and her maid in Paris early
in April, and that they should travel from that city, slowly and at
their ease, by Basle and Lucerne to Milan, and thence to the Italian
lakes, or possibly to Venice. Eve trembled as she spoke the name of
that fatal city. She had a morbid longing to go there to look upon her
brother’s grave before she died. She could afford to indulge any fancy
in the way of travelling, for the pin-money sent her quarterly by the
trustee to her marriage settlement was sufficient for her wants, and
over and above this private income of hers the trustee, who was also
her husband’s solicitor, sent her a hundred and fifty pounds quarterly,
in accordance with Mr. Vansittart’s parting instructions. She had
protested against this extra allowance, assuring the solicitor that the
income under her settlement was sufficient for her maintenance, and the
solicitor had replied that he was instructed to furnish her with six
hundred a year during his client’s absence from Europe, and that as his
client was in Africa, beyond the reach of letters, it was impossible
to depart from his instructions. Eve was thus richer than her needs,
and was able to be generous to the sisters, whose letters informed her
of the result of her bounty, in the shape of a much smarter style of
living at the Homestead. They had a page to open the door; they dined
at eight o’clock, and they always had dessert on the table. They had
their afternoon; and carriages--chiefly pony--came from far distances
to take tea with them, Jenny assured her sister.
“Your marriage lifted us all out of the mire,” wrote Jenny; “but
it is too sad to think of Jack in Africa and you a broken-hearted
wanderer. It is awfully sad, and we can none of us guess the why or
the wherefore. We feel that there must be some terrible secret. No
light reason could have parted you. Mr. Sefton is at the Manor, hunting
every day, and going long distances by rail when there are no hounds
in the neighbourhood. We hear he has been paying attentions to Lord
Haverstock’s only daughter, who will be enormously rich. No doubt he
will end by marrying for money. Poor Sophy turned deadly pale the first
Sunday she saw him in church. We were earlier than usual, and we were
seated in our pew as he came up the nave, staring about him as if he
had been in a theatre.”
* * * * *
With Hetty for her travelling companion, Eve felt more her own
mistress, and, therefore, happier than she had felt with Sophy. Hetty
was only fifteen, and might be treated as a child, and, indeed, she
still possessed some of the best attributes of childhood; was incurious
about the future save when it promised some novelty, change of place,
new possession, amusement or excitement; was deeply interested in
trifles, and had no margin of mind left for serious things.
Such a companion may do much for a heart weighed down by the burden
of unavailing regret. Hetty, when allowed to give full scope to her
own absorbing individuality, left very little room for any one else’s
feelings. Her delight in travelling was so intense as to be almost
contagious. Everything interested her, and the newness of things was a
perpetual surprise. She paused in her raptures only to pity the people
who are doomed never to travel. She kept a list of the towns through
which she passed, were it only sitting in a railway carriage. She had
brought the shabby old family atlas from the Homestead, and had it open
on her lap in the railway carriage, poring over it till her eyes ached,
and rarely able to find the place she was looking for in that pale and
faded type.
They stopped a couple of nights at Basle, where the Rhine was rapture.
They stopped a week at the Schweitzerhoff, and exhausted the drives and
excursions about Lucerne, and explored the lake of the Forest Cantons,
and climbed the Righi, and did all that the veriest Cockney tourist can
do, personally conducted by Hetty, who read her Baedeker every morning,
and gave her sister no rest till the day’s excursion had been settled
upon.
“Sophy said I was not to let you brood,” explained Hetty. “I was to
take care you went about and enjoyed the scenery.”
Eve went about uncomplainingly, first to please Hetty, and next because
days and weeks must be got rid of somehow, and sorrow must keep moving
by day if it would court a few hours’ respite by night. Eve had her
little cough still--only a little cough; but the experienced Benson
heard that dull, hacking sound with some anxiety, remembering poor
Peggy’s chance, and how little it had done for her. Would it ever come
to that pass with her young mistress, Benson wondered? Was the fatal
strain in the blood of all these fair sisters, with their transparent
complexions and hectic bloom? Half a year ago Eve had seemed in
exuberant health, as well as in exuberant spirits, the fairest type of
youthful womanhood, dancing along the flowery path of life with foot so
light as never to touch the thorns, or disturb the snake asleep in the
sun. The parting with the man she adored had changed her whole being,
and the sound of her laughter was heard no more, despite of the lively
Hetty’s provocations to mirth.
They went from Lucerne to Como, and lingered in that enchanting region
until the midsummer heat drove them into the mountains. They roughed it
in the Dolomites till October, and then went down to Lake Leman, and
established themselves for the winter at Lausanne, where Eve took her
sister’s education seriously in hand, and placed her as day-boarder in
a very superior establishment “to be finished.” Here they lived very
quietly, Hetty interested in her work, and improving herself with a
rapidity which astounded her mistresses, who had been scandalized at
her benighted condition from the educational point of view, and who had
not yet grasped the idea that a girl who has led a free out-of-door
life until she is fifteen years old has a stock of brain power that
makes education a much easier business for her between that age and
twenty than it is for the victim of premature culture, who has been
straining and exhausting the growing brain ever since she was five.
Hetty revived her juvenile French, and took to German and Italian as
readily as to tennis or golf. Eve was delighted with her progress, and
for Hetty’s sake she stayed at Lausanne, with only a summer holiday in
the Jura, until the second winter of her exile, when by her English
doctor’s advice she went up to St. Moritz, Hetty, who was growing
a very pretty girl, accompanying her, and turning the heads of all
the young men at the Kulm Hotel, most especially when she played one
of poor Samary’s characters in a little French duologue with the
all-accomplished Dr. Holland.
Home letters told Eve that Vansittart was still in Africa, and that his
mother was living very quietly at Merewood. From that lady, directly,
Eve had not heard of late. She had answered her daughter-in-law’s
letter coldly and cruelly, as it seemed to Eve.
“I cannot enter into your domestic mystery,” she wrote. “I only know
that you took my son’s life into your keeping, and that you have
wrecked it. He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. We
were very happy together till you crossed his path; and now he is an
exile, and I do not even know the reason of his banishment. Forgive me
if I say I wish he had never seen your face.”
* * * * *
Lord Haverstock’s daughter was now the Honourable Mrs. Sefton, and
her husband was said to have secured the highest matrimonial prize in
Sussex. The lady’s aristocratic features had the stamp of a shrewish
temper, as plainly as ever a knife was stamped “Sheffield.” She was
proud of her birth and of her money, and a lesser man than Wilfred
Sefton would have had a bad time with her, but he was reported to
be equal to the situation. They entertained enormously, and were
considered an acquisition to the neighbourhood. The Miss Marchants
had been bidden to all their parties, and Sophy’s cheerful tone in
describing the high jinks at the Manor showed that she had outlived her
disappointment.
“Everybody knows that he married for money,” concluded Sophy, after
a graphic account of a New Year’s dance given by Mrs. Sefton, “and
everybody admires the way he manages his wife. He is obviously supreme
in everything. If he had married a curate’s daughter he could not be
more completely the master, although her income is nearly treble his,
and they are always buying land, either adding to the Sefton property,
or creeping over the county in other directions. They have no heir
as yet, or promise of an heir, which is a disappointment to Lord
Haverstock, who wanted a grandson immediately. I don’t believe it is
possible to imagine a more unhappy marriage, looked at from our point
of view; but as, in my opinion, he never had a heart, in spite of his
folly about the Venetian singer, it is just the kind of marriage to
suit him.
“Lady Hartley’s last baby is perfection--a girl--and I am asked to be
godmother, a great compliment, considering her extensive circle and
what snobs people are.
“Nancy sends you her dear love, and wants me to tell you that she
always uses the lovely carved workbox, with the sleeping lion on the
lid, which you sent her from Lucerne.
“Shall I secure you a few remnants at Marshall’s or Robinson’s before
the January sales are over? You must pay outrageous prices for
everything in Switzerland.”
So much for news from home. The London papers afforded ample
information about Signora Vivanti, who pursued her successful career
unchecked, and rose a step or so in public estimation with each
new part she created--“created” was the word the critics used of
this uncultured islander’s impersonations. She had fresh whims, and
eccentricities, and gaieties for each new character. She was _peuple_
to the marrow of her bones, and she had all the cleverness and
unflagging pleasure in life which belongs to the populace. Her London
public adored her, and to provincial audiences she came as a revelation
of what gaiety of heart really means. She seemed a well-spring of
joyousness, and sent her audience home convinced that life was not so
very dreary after all.
Could Eve have known more than the newspapers told her she would have
known that the Signora was keeping herself what Mr. Hawberk called
“straight.” Slander had not breathed upon her name. She had loved,
and her love had been rejected; and from the hour of that disillusion
she had concentrated her affections upon that which never betrays or
disappoints. Lisa and her aunt found the chief delight of their lives
in the scraping and self-denial which enabled them to add to their
hoard.
Lisa no longer bought diamonds, and wore her whole fortune upon her
neck and arms. The diamonds were a very delightful form of investment,
but the elementary theory of principal and interest had been gradually
borne in upon her mind, and she now knew enough of finance to know that
she ought to get something for her money. Reluctantly, and with serious
misgivings, she followed the advice of her manager and opened a deposit
account at the Union Bank, whither her light feet tripped gaily once a
week, and where she handed in the major part of her salary to a clerk
who could scarcely write the receipt under the too near radiance of
those dazzling eyes.
Life was so cheap for two abstemious women and one little boy.
Vansittart had paid three years’ rent of the flat in advance before
he left Southampton. Lisa and la Zia were on velvet, and while the
deposit account was growing there came offers from America, which were
intoxicating in their liberality. American agents had seen and heard
the lovely Venetian; Anglo-American newspapers had written about her
talents and her beauty; and the always enterprising agent-in-advance
was eager to introduce her to the Western world.
Lisa carried the tempting offers to her London manager, who shrugged
his shoulders, and raised her salary, for the sixth or seventh time.
“You will ruin me if I try to keep you, Signora,” he said; “but I can’t
afford to lose you.”
The prima donna and her aunt used to sit over their handful of fire
in the small hours after a cheap but savoury supper of liver, or some
other abomination, chopped up in a seething mass of macaroni, reeking
of garlic and oil. There was no dish the smartest restaurant in London
could have provided that they would have enjoyed better than their
native kitchen. They came of a people who can make a feast out of a
morsel of meat which the sturdy British workman would toss to his dog.
Their luxuries and their pleasures were alike of the cheapest. A jaunt
to Greenwich or Kew by river, a long day roaming about the Crystal
Palace, idle afternoons on the grassy levels of Battersea Park, basking
in the sunshine while Paolo made pies in the sand. Pleasures as simple
as these sufficed for Lisa, while her fortune was growing at the Union
Bank. By the kind manager’s advice she had invested the bulk of her
wealth in railway shares, to which she had added from time to time as
her deposit account grew. She had at first been very chary of trusting
the railway with her savings, preferring to confide in the bank, which
looked solid and respectable; but on being assured that she would get
better interest from the railway with equal security, she consented to
become a shareholder. It was pleasant when sitting with her aunt in a
third-class carriage on the way to Windsor or Richmond to be able to
remind that good lady that she, Lisa, was part owner of the carriage,
and indeed of the whole line.
Economical as the two women were their parsimony never degenerated into
meanness. If their fare was humble they were always ready to share it
with a friend. Little Zinco, who was a bachelor, dined with his pupil
every Sunday, la Zia devoting the whole morning, after an early Mass in
the chapel near Sloane Street, to the preparation of a little bit of
beef stuffed with raisins, and a mess of rice and cheese, while Lisa
in her best gown, escorted by the faithful Zinco, attended Mass at the
Oratory or the Pro-Cathedral.
In their after-midnight talk by the fire, when autumnal or wintry
nights made a fire a necessity, Lisa and la Zia built their castle in
the air, and that castle was a small house on the Guidecca, a house of
which they could let a couple of floors, reserving the piano nobile, or
upper story, with its fine views over the blue water, for themselves,
and furnishing the same gorgeously with carved chestnut wood and inlaid
ebony, from one of the big manufactories on the Grand Canal. Here they
were to live happily ever after, when once Fiordelisa had earned an
income that would maintain them for the rest of their days, and pay for
Paolo’s education.
Already he had shown a passionate love of music, and Zinco saw in him
the makings of a fine opera singer.
“He will be handsome, he will be big,” said the ’cello, “and already at
five years old he shows me that he has an ear as true as a bird’s, or
as yours. You will send him to the Conservatorio at Milan as soon as he
is old enough to enter, and he will find his fortune in his larynx as
you have.”