Eva Sorel had a companion and guardian, Susan Rappard, a thorough
scarecrow, clad in black, and absent-minded. She had emerged with Eva
out of the unknown past, and she was still rubbing its darkness out of
her eyes when Eva, at eighteen, saw the paths of light open to her. But
she played the piano admirably, and thus accompanied Eva’s practice.
Crammon had paid her some attentions, and the tone in which he spoke
of her mistress gained her sympathy. She persuaded Eva to receive him.
“Take her flowers,” she whispered. “She’s fond of them.”
Eva and Susan Rappard lived in two rooms in a small hotel. Crammon
brought such masses of roses that the close corridors held the
fragrance for many hours.
As he entered he saw Eva in an armchair in front of a mirror. Susan was
combing her hair, which was of the colour of honey.
On the carpet was kneeling a lad of seventeen who was very pale and
whose face bore traces of tears. He had declared his love to Eva. Even
when the stranger entered he had no impulse to get up; his luckless
passion made him blind.
Crammon remained standing by the door.
“Susan, you’re hurting me!” Eva cried. Susan was startled and dropped
the comb.
Eva held out her hand to Crammon. He approached and bent over to kiss
it.
“Poor chap,” she said, smiling, and indicating the lad, “he torments
himself cruelly. It’s so foolish.”
The boy pressed his forehead against the back of her chair. “I’ll kill
myself,” he whimpered. Eva clapped her hands and brought her face with
its arch mockery of sadness near to the boy’s.
“What a gesture!” Crammon thought. “How perfect in its light
completeness, how delicate, how new! And how she raised her lids
and showed the strong light of her starry eyes, and dropped her chin
a little in that inclination of the head, and wore a smile that was
unexpected in its blending of desire and sweetness and cunning and
childlikeness!”
“Where is my golden snood?” Eva asked and arose.
Susan said that she had left it on the table. She looked there in vain.
She fluttered hither and thither like a huge black butterfly: she
opened and closed drawers, shook her head, thoughtfully pressed her
hand against her forehead, and finally found the snood under the piano
lid next to a roll of bank notes.
“It’s always that way with us,” Eva sighed. “We always find things. But
we have to hunt a long time.” She fastened the snood about her hair.
“I can’t place your French accent,” Crammon remarked. His own
pronunciation was Parisian.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Perhaps it’s Spanish. I was in Spain a
long time. Perhaps it’s German. I was born in Germany and lived there
till I was twelve.” Her eyes grew a little sombre.