Evelynarrived in London on a dark morning of early November, having travelled all night; but she scarcely so much as thought of her fatigue, and still less of the heavy yellow atmosphere, as she drove to the hotel where she had lived with her husband on their first arrival in England, when she knew nothing of the difficulties that were to rise like lions in her way. It had been June then, and everything was fresh and fair. And though even then she had thought with apprehension of the children, wondering whether they would receive her with prejudice, or what she could do to disarm opposition, no thought of anything more serious than the little contrarieties of household intercourse had ever come into her mind. What floods of experience, unthought of, unexpected, had come upon her since that time. Now she had learned to know herself and others, to realize a hundred dangers and difficulties which never had appeared upon her horizon before. Nothing that had happened in her previous life could have made it seem possible to her that she should come back again alone to London, on a sort of detective enterprise in the interests of her husband’s son—who did not love, but distrusted and feared her, though she had thus dared the very real dangers ofher husband’s displeasure and her own uneasy sense of unfitness and incapacity, on his behalf. She had thought and thought during the long sleepless night, turning the matter over in every possible view; sometimes appalled at her own hardihood in making such a venture; sometimes feeling that it was the only course she could have pursued; sometimes with a cold shade of self-distrust, asking herself how she could have undertaken it at all, how she could hope to carry it out. And, unfortunately, the more Evelyn thought, the stronger became this latter sentiment: how she was to find Eddy; how she was to begin such an inquiry; how she could put it to him in so many words that it was he who was guilty and not Archie. She had not entered with herself into these details until she had committed herself to this attempt. The question before had been, should she do it? should she take this chance of enlightenment? should she try at least what seemed the only way of attaining any certainty? It had seemed to her before she started, that she had but to be brought face to face with Eddy, to appeal to him and his better impulses in order to know. “If you can throw any light upon it,” she had meant to say; “if you know anything!” And it did not occur to her that he would hesitate to reply. He was lazy, light, unsettled, uncertain—badly trained, poor boy, without much moral sense, not careful to discriminate between right and wrong; but yet at the bottom of all a gentleman, with an instinctive sense of loyalty and truth. The difficulty at first was merely that of going, finding him, venturing upon the solitary journey, acting in her husband’s absence, without his knowledge: all of them very appalling things—for she had never been accustomed to act for herself in any practical emergency, although well enough accustomed to passive endurance of things she could not mend. The sudden sense that here was a thing which perhaps she could mend by sudden action had at first taken away her breath. It had seemed to her inexperience a mighty thing to do, to start off to London all by herself in James’s absence, as if she were running away. It looked like waiting till he was gone, and then taking advantage! She laughed at the suggestion, yet held her breath at the strange risk. He might think—and yet more, the servants might think, who were so apt to find out everything, and a great deal more than there was to find out. These conflicting thoughts had kept her mind in a ferment of anxiety, until she had actually taken that great step and started. And then they had dropped suddenly and given place to a new kind of trouble.
How was she to bring Eddy Saumarez to the bar, to put him to the question, to ask him to incriminate himself or his friends, to demand—What do you know? This new side of the matter rose up as soon as she had fairly begun her journey and caught her by the throat. The face of Eddy rose before her in the partial darkness behind the veiled lamp of the compartment in which she travelled alone. Oh not an easy face to confront, to over-awe, to reach the meaning of! A face that could pucker into humorous lines, that could put on veils of assumed incomprehension, that could look satirically amused, or innocently unconscious,or wildly merry, as it pleased! “What could make you think, dear Mrs. Rowland, that I knew anything?” he would say; or, “It is too delightful that you should have such an opinion of my insight;” or, perhaps, “You know I never learned the very alphabet of Archie, and how can I tell what he would do.” Such expressions she had heard from him often on other subjects, upon which he could baffle her smilingly, looking in her face all the time. And how could she hope to keep him to the point now, to bring him to a serious answer, to convince him of the importance of the position and the need there was that he should speak? In the middle of the journey her courage had so evaporated that she had almost determined to return again without making this unhopeful attempt. But there are always as many, or perhaps more, difficulties in the way of going back than there are in going forward, and Evelyn felt that she had committed herself too much to make it possible that she should go back. She drove to the hotel, and had her bath and changed her dress, and swallowed hurriedly that cup of tea which is the only sustenance possible in a moment of anxiety to so many women. And then she walked from the hotel to the insignificant fashionable street in which the house of Mr. Saumarez was. It was a small house, though the locality was irreproachable, and the blinds of the first floor were all carefully drawn down, though there were indications of life in the other parts. Evelyn’s knock was answered after a considerable interval by the old woman, caretaker or charwoman, who was left in charge when “the family” were absent. “Mr.Edward?” she said; “Mr. Eddy?—yes’m, he’s at ‘ome; but he’s not up yet, and won’t be this three or four hours.”
“Oh!” Evelyn was so startled in her breathless expectancy that she could scarcely answer this, which was half a disappointment and more than half a relief. There are moments when a brief postponement, even of the thing we most desire, is a certain ease to the strained faculties. She asked at what time Eddy would be visible and went away, turning towards Kensington Gardens, where she thought she might be able to spend the time until she must return. The park, of course, was empty, and though Kensington Gardens had still that cheerful number of comers and goers, which marks the vicinity of a district in which people live the whole year round, it was not otherwise than a place of “retired leisure” as it generally is. She walked up and down under the tall, bare trees, which stood about like ghosts in the yellow atmosphere, and sat down here and there and waited, looking at her watch from time to time, looking at the groups of children, and the old people and young girls who were taking their morning walk, and who looked at her with not much less curiosity than a stranger unknown calls forth in a village. She was not one of thehabitués, and perhaps, she thought, some sense of the tumult in her soul might have stolen into the calm foggy air around her, and startled the quiet promenaders with a consciousness of an uneasy spirit in their midst. She would not have been remarked in the adjoining park, where uneasy spirits abound, and all kinds of strange meetings, interviews, and revolutions take place. When she had waited as she thought long enough, she went back again to Blank Street. “Oh, it’s you again, Miss,” said the old woman. “Master Edward’s gone—I forgot to tell him as some one had been here; and he went out in a hurry, for he was going out to ‘is breakfast. I’m sure, Miss, I’m very sorry I forgot; but he wouldn’t have paid no attention, he was in such a hurry to get away.”
Evelyn pressed her hands tightly together, as if she had been pressing her heart between them. She ceased to feel the relief: the sickening suspense and delay made the light for a moment swim in her eyes.
“I am very anxious to see him,” she said. “At what time will he return?”
“Oh, Miss, I can’t tell,” said the old woman. “Sometimes he’ll come in to dress for dinner, sometimes not. I does for them in other ways, but not cooking, except just a cup of tea.”
“At what time,” said Evelyn; “six or seven? tell me! I am very anxious to see him.”
“Well, Miss, it’s just a chance,” the caretaker said.
And with this she was dismissed to wait the live-long day, with nothing to do, in that forced inaction which is the most miserable of all things. I do not know a more dreadful ordeal to go through than to go to a strange place upon one special mission, which is your only errand there, and not to be able to accomplish it, and to have a whole dreary day to get over in forced patience, until you can try again. Mrs. Rowland went back to the hotel, and spent the greater part of the day staring through the window, with somesort of hope that she might see Eddy’s face, and be able to rush after him, and stop him in the midst of the crowd. At six o’clock she went back, and at seven, and at eight, walking about and about in the intervals, so as to keep the door in sight: but nobody came. It was not any attempt on Eddy’s part to elude her, for he did not know anything about her. He did not come home on that evening to dine, that was all. The next day she waited until a later hour before she went. Alas! he had gone out earlier on that particular morning! The old woman had said that a lady from Scotland had been inquiring for him; but he had flung away with a contemptuous outcry “Confound all ladies from Scotland!” which Mrs. Jones was too polite to repeat. In the evening Evelyn had no better luck; but she left her card with an entreaty pencilled upon it that he would come to see her in her hotel, and sat through the evening watching for every step. But no one came. The third day was the day on which she ought to have gone home; but it was impossible to go away now leaving this quest unaccomplished, whatever might happen. She wrote a hurried letter to her husband explaining something, though not all, and with a determined resolve that this day should not pass in the same inactivity, went out again. The old woman received her like an old acquaintance. “He’s in, Miss, but he’s in bed,” she said. Evelyn stepped quickly into the house. “I must see him,” she said. “Lawks, Miss!” said the woman, “you won’t go up to a young gentleman in his bedroom.” Evelyn only repeated “I must must see him.” She did not perceive an air ofgreater bustle and movement about the house. What was it to her who was there, if she could but see Eddy?
“My good woman,” she said, “my business is very important. Mr. Saumarez has just left my house in the country, and something has happened that may hurt him—that may most seriously hurt him. Show me where his room is: I will take the responsibility on myself.”
“Oh, Miss, it isn’t my place to show in a lady. I couldn’t do it; I daren’t do it: and you’re too nice and too respectable for such a thing—oh, lady!” cried the old woman, as the visitor went on passing her. Evelyn met a man-servant on the stairs with a cup of soup in his hand. Except that he was a servant, and in a dark livery, she made no other note in respect to him. She said in the calm of the excitement which had now taken hold of her like a giant, “Tell me which is Mr. Edward’s room?”
“Mr. Edward’s room?—he is not up, madam,” said the man.
“It does not matter; I must see him—which is his room?”
She was so determined that she pushed past him, quite pale, and with a desperation which the man, more experienced than the old charwoman, recognised. He followed her upstairs, and opened a door. “If you will go in there, I will send him to you.” It was a small sitting-room, Eddy’s no doubt, from the pipes and foils and riding-whips and other mannish boyish articles that hung on the walls. Evelyn would have turned back when she saw that he was not there. “Iam not to be foiled,” she said; “I must see him; take me to his room, or else I will find it for myself!”
“Ma’am,” said the man, “I know you’re a lady and a friend of the family. I have seen you before. I give you my word I’ll bring him to you, if you’ll wait here.”
She sat down and waited close by the open door. She was determined that he should not escape her, whatever his desire might be. The man, after a vain attempt to close the door upon her, opened the next door and went in. She heard the blinds drawn up, something said softly, then an astonished cry. At all events, whatever might come of it, she had at least secured her opportunity at last.
It was half-an-hour, however, before, after many movements and commotion in the next room, Eddy came forth hurried and breathless, with a face that looked old and wan in the light of the morning, a light he was not much accustomed to face. Poor little pale, old-young face, something between the shrivelled countenance of an old man and that of a pinched, unwholesome child! to think that he should not yet be of age, and yet wear that look: but Mrs. Rowland had no time for such reflections. She rose up quickly, just within the open door, and put out an eager hand. He might even now have escaped her, she felt, had she not been standing there, where he was obliged to pass; and his tremor and anxiety at the sight of her were evident. He cried, “Mrs. Rowland!” letting fall a book which was in his hand.
“Yes; I have come down direct from Scotland to speak to you. I have been three days trying to seeyou.” She had scarcely breath enough to say so many words.
“The old woman,” said Eddy, “told me something about a lady from Scotland; but I thought it bosh; she is such an old fool. I did not flatter myself there was any lady in Scotland who would take the trouble to come after me; and you, Mrs. Rowland——”
“You did not think of seeing me? Can you imagine no reason why I should come?” she said.
To Evelyn’s astonishment—for her enigmatical question had really been put at pure hazard—Eddy’s sallow and careworn face flushed over with a violent red, and then became more than sallow, cadaverous, and a cold moisture came out upon his forehead.
“Let me shut the door,” he said, “it’s cold; and can I order you anything: a cup of tea—breakfast? Ah!” he said with a laugh, “of course you’ve breakfasted hours ago; but I’m sure you will not mind if I order my tea: one wants it in a morning when one has been late overnight.”
“You look—as if you had been very late overnight, Eddy.”
“Oh, I acknowledge I was; who denies it?” said Eddy, with again an attempt at a laugh. “It’s the nature of the beast: one minds one’s manners, at a place like Rosmore; but in town one can’t help one’s self, not even when town’s out of town, and it’s only thedebristhat are left.”
“You would have done better to stay at Rosmore,” she said gently; “you do not look the same person.”
“I am not the same person. Who would not bebetter there?” he said. And here he burst into an uneasy laugh. “You have not come at this hour in the morning, and dragged an unlucky wretch out of bed, only that we should exchange compliments about Rosmore?”
“No, indeed. I have a little history to give you, Eddy, and an appeal to make. You know, or you divined, I cannot tell which, something of what happened before you left?”
“The night of the ball?—oh I divined: that is to say, I saw. A man does not arrive in hot haste at nearly midnight, when a ball is going on, and demand the master of the house; and the master of the house does not send in equal haste for his son, who is closeted with him for a long time, then comes out looking conscious and distracted, and finally disappears, without the instructed spectator forming an idea that something must have happened. I am a very instructed spectator, Mrs. Rowland. I have seen various things of the kind. The sons have disappeared for shorter or longer times, and the fathers have remained masters of the field. Here, Rogers, put it on this little table, and take away those things to eat. I want nothing but some tea.”
There was a moment’s pause, during which the little table was covered with a shining white polished cloth, which reflected the fire in a surface made semi-transparent by starch and borax and a glittering silver tea-pot placed upon it; which made a still warmer reflection in the foggy yellow of the morning air. Eddy poured himself out his tea with his usual air of easycomposure, a little overdone. But this Mrs. Rowland was not herself of a sufficiently easy mind to see.
“Eddy,” she said, “I have been told—I don’t know how to say it to you.” It had never till this moment occurred to her how difficult it would be to say, nor did she even know what she meant to imply, or how he could be connected with the matter. “I have been told,” she repeated rather breathlessly, “that you, perhaps, might know something of—that in the dreadful position of affairs I might ask—you—”
“Ask me—what?” he said with a smile. The corners of his mouth trembled a little. He spilt the cream which he was pouring into his tea, but she did not observe these incidents, and indeed what could they have had to do with the question—but it was no question—which she asked? “Of course, if I can tell you anything, Mrs. Rowland, or throw any light—But tell me first. Ask me—what?”
She gazed at him a moment, and then poor Evelyn acknowledged her own impotence by a sudden burst of tears. “I have come down from Scotland,” she said, “without my husband’s knowledge. I have wandered to and fro—this is now the third day—trying to see you, Eddy. I am worn out, and my nerves have gone all wrong. I can’t be sure of the step I am taking, if I am mistaken or not. The only thing I can do is to ask you simply—do you know anything about it? I don’t know what. I have nothing clear in my head, only a sort of despair of making anything of it, ever. I was told that you might know something—thatyou might help me. If you can, for God’s sake do it Eddy! I will be grateful to you all my life.”
He spilt a little of his tea as he carried it to his lips. After all, though nothing can be so hardened as youth, nothing is at the same time so soft. Eddy was not invulnerable as some people of his age, as Marion, for instance, appeared to be. He had never in his life been subjected to this sort of appeal. A young man who has a mother and other anxious friends is, perhaps, subjected to it over much, and at last comes to regard the appeal to his emotional nature—the argument against going wrong, that it will break some one else’s heart—as a bore rather than a touching plea. But Eddy, who had never had any mother, and to whom no one had ever appealed thus, was moved—more than he could have imagined it possible that he should be moved. He put down his tea-cup with a trembling hand. He could not look in the face of the woman who had been so kind to him, and who looked at him with the utmost eloquence of which eyes were capable, eyes full of emotion and of tears, to back up her words. He did not know what reply to make to her. He had been already mightily shaken by the success of that greatcoupof his. When an error or crime is a failure, the conscience is quiet: we do not take upon ourselves the guilt of a thing by which we have gained nothing; but when, as in the present case, it succeeds perfectly, then the inexperienced spirit trembles. Eddy was only at this stage. He had received his proportion of the money, and he had still the remains of the hundred-and-fifty pounds which Archie had givenhim. Never had he known what it was to have so much in his pockets. He had been throwing it away in handfuls, as was natural, and as the excitement lessened, the compunction grew. It was not so much compunction, as it was a horrible sense of the insignificant value of a thing for which he had risked so much. He had, indeed, freed himself from the money-lender’s hands, and was no longer in his power; yet never in his life would he be sure that he was not in somebody’s power. And presently the money, the curse, and the payment of his act, would be exhausted, and he no better, how much worse than before! These thoughts had been in Eddy’s mind before this appeal was made to him. He had banished them, but they were ever waiting at his door, ready to catch him at an unguarded moment. And now here was this lady, this dear woman who had been kind to him! He could not swallow that tea, much as he wanted it or some restorative. He set it down again with a trembling hand. That had happened to Eddy, which some of the old Puritans meant when they described Satan as flinging so big a stone at the head of his victim, that it recoiled upon himself.
“Mrs. Rowland,” he said, “we are speaking parables, and though we both know something, we don’t understand what we each know. Will you tell me simply what has happened to Archie, and why? I guessed at it. I might not be right in my guess. Tell me as if I had never heard anything of it, and did not know.”
Evelyn dried her eyes, and recovered her calm. She obeyed him literally without a word of preface.“On the night of the ball a messenger arrived from the bank, bringing with him a cheque, purporting to be my husband’s, for a thousand pounds. It was a forged cheque.”
Eddy, in spite of himself, shivered as if with a sudden chill. He put his hands up to his eyes. It might have been merely a gesture of wonder and dismay.
“Mr. Rowland, I think wrongly, had been suspicious and uneasy about Archie before. He sent for him, and he was the more angry that Archie could not come till all the guests were gone. He held out the cheque to his son, and accused him of having done it.”
Eddy withdrew his hands from his face and looked up. “Which he did not, which he never did, which he was not capable of,” he cried quickly.
“Oh Eddy, God bless you! I knew you would say so. And so did I—from the bottom of my heart.”
“He was not,” cried Eddy, with a sort of hysterical laugh, “clever enough—not half! he had not got it in him—nor bold enough—a fellow like that! He could not have done it if he had tried.”
“Oh Eddy! but that was not my husband’s view. Archie was so astonished at first that he thought it something to laugh at. And then he was angry, furious, as passionate as his father. And then—he shook the dust from off his feet, as the Bible says, and left the house. And God knows if he will ever come back. Never, I think, till his innocence is proved. And his father—he is inexorable, he thinks, but he is very unhappy. Eddy!”
The tone of appeal in that last word was indescribable. She raised her voice a little and her eyes, and looked at him. And Eddy, unaccustomed, could not bear the look in those eyes.
“You speak of proving his innocence,” he said; “was there any proof of his guilt?”
“Nothing: but that his handwriting is like his father’s.”
“And do you know,” said Eddy looking away, “have you found out to whom, for instance, it was paid?”
“My husband,” said Evelyn, “is a very proud man. His honour is his life. He accepted the cheque, though he knew at once what it was. He would allow no questions. Therefore, it is impossible to inquire, to get any particulars. And the plan he devised to serve Archie will be his ruin. Imagine such a thing! We dare not ask lest he should be suspected; and so he must lie under suspicion all his life!”
“Oh, not so bad as that—fathers are not so bad as that: he will forgive him.”
“But he will never ask to be forgiven—nor accept forgiveness; how should he, being innocent?” said Evelyn.
“I should not be so particular,” said Eddy, with a momentary gleam of humour in his eyes. He could not be serious for long together without some such relief. “And so Mr. Rowland has got the cheque,” he said; then, after a pause, “And may I ask, dear Mrs. Rowland, who was so kind as to suggest that you should ask me?”
“Marion for one: I can’t tell why,” Evelyn said.
(“Oh,” Eddy said within himself, with another twinkle in his eyes, “I owe you one for that, my little May.”)
“And a very different person—a man whom perhaps you scarcely know, who suggested that your friend Johnson——”
“Oh, my friend Johnson! the beast—to call that fellow my friend!” cried Eddy in a more audible parenthesis.
“Eddy,” said Evelyn gravely, “in that respect you were very much to blame.”
“Oh, in every respect I am much to blame!” cried the young man, springing from his chair. The vehemence of his motion was such that Evelyn had to put up her hand to save the table against which he kicked in his rapid movement. He went across the room, and stood with his back to her, his shoulders up to his ears, his hands in his pockets, absorbed in his thoughts. And they were not pleasant thoughts: and they ranged over the widest space, the whole course of the future through which that cloud might ever be ready to fall: the horror of the consequences should they overtake him, the ruin of name and fame, the scandal and the catastrophe. It was not a thing which could be lived down, or which people could forget. All those arguments which are of so little use in the face of temptation, are of tremendous force when the deed is done, and nothing remains but the penalty to pay. His lively, quick intelligence, roused to rapid action, made its calculations with lightning speed: not unmoved by the thought of Archie in the strange jumble of selfish andunselfish motives—not untouched by the misery which had been produced on all sides.
He turned round again at the end of a few minutes, which seemed to Evelyn like so many years.
“Mr. Rowland has the cheque?” he said. “Would he give it to you, and could you burn it?”
“Eddy?”
“Do you think I am going out of my senses? But I am not. If he will give you the cheque and let you burn it, I will—clear it all up,” said Eddy with a gasp; “and make Archie’s innocence as clear as the day.”
“Eddy! Eddy!”
“Ah, you speak to me in a different tone now: your voice sounds like a blessing. But wait till you know, Mrs. Rowland; perhaps it will change again. I will not take your kind hand till after. I am not going to cheat you out of your sympathy. Look here,” he said, standing by her, “this is what you must do. Telegraph at once, ‘If you will give me cheque to destroy, full information will be given from quite different quarter.’ There,” he said, “that’s as concise as it can be made. I will come to your hotel at five, when you will have your answer, and bring—all that you want.”
“The proof,” she said, “that it was not Archie?”
“The proof,” he replied, with a long-drawn breath, “who it was.”
Evelynleft the little sitting-room and went downstairs with a quickly beating heart. She did not quite see the meaning of what she was bidden to do. It was like the formula of a doctor’s prescription, obscure yet authoritative, and to be obeyed without doubt or delay. Her heart was beating high, and her brain throbbing in sympathy. She had no thought but to get as quickly as possible to the nearest telegraph office; the only thing that restrained her was the thought that she was not quite sure where her husband was. It had been settled that he should return home that day, on which she had determined to return too so as to meet him. That part of her intention she evidently could not carry out, but in her absorption she did not reflect that, if he had arrived, it would be to the disappointment and surprise of finding her gone, without any explanation; that he would probably be annoyed and displeased, and not in a mood to receive her laconic and unexplained question graciously. This did not enter into Evelyn’s mind at all. She was given up to one thought. That Rowland should be harsh to her or misunderstand her did not occur to her as possible.
She hurried downstairs to fulfil her mission, bidding Eddy remain and take his breakfast. “You look as if you wanted it, my poor boy,” she said, patting him on the shoulder.
“Oh, I want it—and something stronger!” he said, with a laugh.
“No, my dear; oh, no, my dear,” she said anxiously. She even came back from the door, hurried and eager as she was, to deliver, like a true woman, a few very broken words on this subject. “Be content with the tea, dear Eddy,” she said. A great tenderness for the boy had risen in her breast. He had never known his mother; how much there was to be excused in him! And he might have been her own son! though she thanked God that it was not so, and reflected with horror what her life would have been, had her youthful hopes been fulfilled, with such a man as Edward Saumarez had turned out to be, and with such a son: yet the very thought that she might have been the boy’s mother always softened Evelyn. He was such a boy, too, still! though he had run the course of so many unknown ills—young enough to be taken into his mother’s arms, if he had one, and coaxed and persuaded back to innocence. Eddy had no such feeling in the roused and excited state of his mind; he would not laugh as she left him so as she could hear, but waited till, as he thought, she had left the house before he allowed that unsteady peal to burst forth. “Be content with the tea! Oh, the natural preacher, the all-advising woman!” but with the sound of that “dear Eddy!” in his ears the young man laughed till he cried—only because it was so good a joke, he said to himself: but in this there was a certain self-deception too.
Evelyn was hurrying out, waiting for no one toopen the door for her, when she was suddenly stopped by Rogers, the servant who, she now recollected suddenly, was the personal attendant of Saumarez himself. She had not attempted to account for his presence, nor indeed thought of him in the hurry of her thoughts. But it now flashed upon her, with sudden surprise and vexation, in the enlightenment of his words—“My master, ma’am,” he said, “would like to see you before you go.”
“Your master!” It was with a gasp of alarm that Evelyn replied. “I did not know,” she said, “that Mr. Saumarez was here.”
“We came home—sudden,” said the man, “yesterday. My master will often take a fancy like that. And he hopes, ma’am, that you will not go out of the house without giving him the pleasure of seeing you.”
“I am in great haste,” Mrs. Rowland said. “I came to Mr. Edward entirely on business. I am very sorry Mr. Saumarez was told that I was here: for indeed I have no time——”
“Mr. Saumarez bade me say, ma’am, that as you knew he was unable to come to you, he hoped as you would overlook the liberty and come to him.” Rogers stood respectfully but firmly between Evelyn and the door. Not, of course, to prevent her going, which was an impossibility, but with a moral impulse that she felt incapable of resisting. “He has been in a deal of suffering, and it will cheer him up, ma’am,” the man said.
With a pang of disappointment she yielded to the delay. It could only be for a few minutes, after all.She was exceedingly unwilling not only to be delayed, but to encounter Eddy’s father under any circumstances, and above all in his own house. She followed the attendant with great suppressed impatience and reluctance. The sitting-room occupied by Saumarez was close to the door, with a window upon the street. It was the dining-room of the little London house, the back part, which was separated from the front by folding-doors, half-covered with curtains, being Saumarez’s bedroom. He was seated in his invalid chair between the fire and the window, and though the foggy morning had very little light in it, a blind of much the same colour as the fog, yellowish and grimy, was drawn down half over the window. Out of this obscurity, upon which the red light of the fire shed at one side an illumination which looked smoky in the atmosphere of the fog, the long thin countenance, peaked beard, and gleaming eyes of the invalid were visible with the most striking Rembrandt effect. He held out to Evelyn a very thin, very white hand.
“Thanks, dear lady,” he said, “for this gracious visit. I scarcely hoped for anything so good. In London, at this time of the year, a fair visitor of any kind is a rarity; but you!—I believed you to be dispensing hospitality in marble halls,” he added, with a little laugh of the veiled satire which implied to Evelyn all that scorn of her late marriage, and parvenu husband, and vulgar wealth, which he did not put into words.
“You wonder, perhaps, what I have done with Rosamond,” she said; “but she is perfectly well andperfectly safe. My own absence from home is one of three days only. I return to-night.”
“Ah, Rosamond,” he said; “poor child! To tell the truth I did not think of Rosamond. She is quite safe, I have no doubt. But you? What is my friend Rowland about that he allows his beautiful wife to come up to London, even in the dead season, on business, by herself?”
“The business,” she said, hurriedly, “was my own, and he could not have done it for me. I hope you are better, and that the waters——”
“The waters,” he said, with a smile, “are good to amuse people with an idea that something is being done for them. That is the best of medical science now-a-days. It does amuse one somehow, however vain one knows it to be, to think that something is being done. And so your business, my dear lady, concerned my son? Happy Eddy to be mixed up in the affairs of such a woman as you.”
“There was a question I had to ask him,” said Evelyn, faltering.
“Of so much importance that you have tried to find him vainly for two days. I say again, happy Eddy! I wish these were questions which his father could answer: but alas! all that is over with me.”
“The question did not personally concern either him or me,” said Evelyn, “but the well-being of a third person, for whom I am very closely concerned.”
“Happy third person!” said the invalid, with a gleam of those wolfish, eager eyes out of the partialgloom. “I would I were one of those third persons. And Rowland, my good friend, does he know all about it, and of a necessity so strong that a lovely lady had almost forced her way into Eddy’s room?”
“Mr. Saumarez,” said Evelyn, feeling her cheeks burn. “My husband knows, or will know, exactly in every particular what I have done, and will approve of it. You know what a boy of Eddy’s age, and lately a visitor in my own house, the companion of my husband’s son, must be to me.”
“Age is very deceitful,” said Saumarez with a laugh, “especially in Eddy’s case, if you will permit me to say it. He is not a boy, as you will call him, to be judged by mere numerals. Eddy is one of the sons occasionally to be met with in highly civilized life, who are older than their fathers. Even a husband’s son, dear lady, has been known to be not over-safe,” he added with again that mocking laugh.
“There is no question of safety,” said Evelyn. She felt the blaze of shame to be so addressed, enveloping her from head to foot like a fire. “You must pardon me if I say that this is a kind of conversation very unpleasing to me,” she said with spirit, “and most uncalled for.” His laugh sounded like the laugh of a devil in her ears.
“Nay,” he said, “you must not let my precious balms break your head. I speak as a friend, and in your best interests, Evelyn.”
“My name is Mrs. Rowland, Mr. Saumarez.”
“Oh! if I could ever forget the time when you were not Mrs. Rowland, but my Evelyn! But that, of course,is not to the purpose,” he added with a sigh, at which he presently laughed. “We get sentimental. Dear lady, if you will let me say it, your age is precisely the one which is most dangerous, and in which a taste for youth has been often shown, in various conspicuous examples.”
Evelyn rose to her feet with a start of offence and shame. She had not known it was in her to be so wildly, almost fiercely angry. “Not another word!” she said. “You abuse your privileges as a sick man. I will not hear another word.”
“And what,” he said in a low voice, stretching out his hand to detain her, “if I—or Rogers—were to let my good friend Rowland know that he had difficulty in preventing the trusted and honoured wife from making a forcible entrance into a young man’s room?”
If Evelyn had been a weak or unreasoning woman, had she been without trust in her husband or herself, had she been apt to concealment, or to believe, as so many do, that an evil motive is always the most readily believed in—it is possible that she might at this odious moment, a moment she could never bear to think of after—have been lost one way or other, bound as a miserable thrall under this man’s power, whose malignant mouth could have done her such vile and frightful injury. But fortunately she was none of these things. It had not even once occurred to her that her determination to see Eddy, wherever she might find him, would have been made the subject of any remark. And if she now perceived that it was a foolish andimprudent thing, the discovery was made in a moment of such extreme excitement that it had no effect upon her. She stood by him for a second, towering over him in a wrath which possessed and inspired her. “Do so,” she said, “at once: or rather let Rogers do so, Mr. Saumarez. It will not be so degrading to him, a man without instruction, possibly knowing no better, as it would be to you. And besides, he could speak from personal knowledge. His letter will find my husband at Rosmore. Good-bye.”
“And do you think you are to silence the world in this way?” said Saumarez. “Myself, or Rogers perhaps, and your husband if he is such a fool—but——”
“Good-bye,” she said once more.
“Evelyn!” he cried.
“Good-bye.” Mrs. Rowland went out of the house like an arrow from a bow, drawing the door behind her, with a sound that rang through the sleepy street. She came so quickly that she almost discovered a watcher on the other side, intent upon all her movements; that is, she gave him the shock of a possible discovery: for, as for Evelyn, she saw nothing. Her eyes were dim and misty with the heat of indignation that seemed to rise up from her flushed cheeks and panting breath to blind her. She walked away with the impulse of that wrath, at a pace that would have been impossible under other circumstances, walking far and fast, incapable of thinking even where it was that she wanted to go.
The pure air, however, and the rapid movement, soon brought Mrs. Rowland to herself, and she turnedback upon her rapid course so suddenly that again—But she did not observe any one, or anything in the road, which, even in this dead season, was sufficiently full to confuse an unaccustomed visitor. She went at once to the telegraph office and sent off the message, as a matter of precaution, sending it to Rosmore, and in duplicate to the house of Sir John Marchbanks, where it was possible Rowland might still be. She added a word of explanation to the message dictated by Eddy. “Don’t be surprised to hear from me, from London,” she wrote, without any recollection of the concise style necessary to a telegram, “all explanations when we meet, and I know you will approve.” When she had sent this off, Evelyn was solaced and more or less restored to herself. She walked back more calmly to the hotel, beginning to feel a little the effect of the morning’s exertions and excitement. But when she reached the shelter of her room, and felt herself alone, and under no restraint from other people’s looks, she was incapable of keeping up any longer. A long fit of crying gave vent to the pent up trouble in her breast. She bent down her head upon her hands and wept like a child, helplessly. When one has been outraged, insulted, hurt in every fibre, and with no power to vindicate or avenge, which are momentary modes of relief—the mingled pain and shame and rage, quite justifiable, yet making up a passion which hurts almost as much as the cause which produced it, lay all one’s defences low. Men even are wrought to tears by such means, how much more a woman, to whom that expression of suffering is always so painfully and inconveniently near.
When Evelyn had overcome this weakness and recovered her confusion, I cannot assert that her mind was easy or her thoughts comfortable. Was she so sure that her husband would approve? Had she not been imprudent and unguarded in what she had done? The thought had not entered her mind before, but the light of a vile suggestion is one that makes the whitest innocence pause and shudder. Could any one else for a moment think——. She said to herself, No, no! with a high head and expanded nostril. But it made her unhappy in spite of herself. It was as if something filthy and festering had been thrown into her mind. She could not forget it, could not throw it forth again, felt its unutterable foulness like a burn or a wound. Rogers, perhaps the servants, might have thought—for servants have dreadful ways of thinking, dreadful back-stair ways, the ideas of minds which peep and watch, and hope to detect. He might have thought—and in that mysterious way in which such whispers fly, it might be communicated to some other privileged attendant, and so go forth upon the air, an evil breath. Was it possible! was it possible! Evelyn seemed to feel already the confusion, the bewilderment, the restless horror of a whispered scandal, an accusation that never could be met, because never openly made, one of those vile breathings which go through society. It is so strange to think that one may one’s self be subject to such an insinuated wrong. Herself! the last person, the most unlikely, the most impossible! It wasalready a wrong to her that the vile idea should be put within the furthest range of things thought of. And thus Mrs. Rowland spent a very restless and miserable afternoon. She could neither eat nor rest. She put up her “things,” the few necessaries she had brought with her, to be ready for the night train, and tried to still herself, to keep quiet, to read, but without effect. There is nothing so difficult to get through as a day spent in waiting, and it was scarcely past twelve o’clock, when, after all she had gone through, she returned to the solitary empty hotel room, with its big stone balustrade against the window, and the crowd sweeping along below. She went out upon the balcony and watched for the coming of the telegraph boy with an answer to her message. There were dozens of telegraph boys coming and going, and at intervals she could see one below, mounting the very steps of the hotel. But hour after hour passed, and nothing came for her. On two or three occasions she ran to the door of her room, as if that could quicken the steps of the tardy messenger; but among the many people who passed up and down the stairs and looked at her curiously, there was no one bringing the reply upon which all the success of this painful mission hung.
And then it was five o’clock: but not soon, not till months of weary waiting seemed to have passed; and then ensued, to Evelyn perhaps the worst of all, a half-hour of excitement and expectation almost beyond bearing. Would Eddy come? Would he stand by his bargain, though she was not able to do so with hers. It was nothing that he did not appear at the hour.He had never been punctual. He was one of those who do not know the value of time, nor what it is to others to keep to an hour. Nothing would ever convince Eddy that the rest of the world were not as easy in respect to time, as little bound by occupation as himself. He had no understanding of those who do a certain thing at a certain time every day of their lives. The waiter appeared bringing lights, uncalled for, for Evelyn, sitting in the partial dark, looking out upon the lamps outside, felt her heart beating too quick and fast to give her leisure to think of what was required or the hour demanded. He brought lights, he brought tea; he made an attempt, which she prevented to draw the curtains, and shut out the gleaming world outside, the lights and sounds which still seemed to link her with the distance, and made it possible that some intelligence might still come, some answer to her prayer. And then suddenly, all at once, in the hush after the waiter had gone from the room, Eddy opened the door. Mrs. Rowland sprang from her seat as if she had not expected him at all, and his coming was the greatest surprise in the world.
“Eddy! you!”
“Did you not expect me?” he said, astonished.
She drew a chair near her, and made him sit down. “I feel as if I had brought you here on false pretences. I have got no answer to the telegram.”
Eddy had taken a small pocket-book out of his breast pocket, and held it in his hand. He stopped suddenly, and looked at it, then at Mrs. Rowland.He was excited and pale, but yet his usual humorous look broke over his face. “No answer?” he said.
“Did I tell you my husband was from home? he ought to have returned to-day; but perhaps he has not done so. I ought also to have returned to-day. It means nothing but that he has not got home.”
“There is no answer,” Eddy said, as if explaining matters to himself, “and I will be giving myself away and no security acquired. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound,” he said. “I have got it all here, Mrs. Rowland; but you ought to give me your word that I shall not be the worse for it.”
She sat gazing at him with such uncomprehension, that he laughed aloud.
“She doesn’t understand me,” he said, “not a bit: it is not in her to understand; she has not an idea how serious it is.”
Eddy’s hands were unsteady, his little grey eyes were sparkling with a feverish fire. From his foot, which he kept shaking in nervous commotion, as he sat on the table with one leg suspended, to the mobile eyebrows, which quivered and twisted over his forehead, there was nothing still about him. He took a piece of paper on which something was written out of his pocket-book, and looked at it, holding it in his hand.
“Here it is,” he said, and his voice shook a little, though its tone was light enough. “The guilty witness. When you put this into your husband’s hands, Mrs. Rowland, he will know who forged his name. Have you a safe place to put it in, a purse or something?For, remember, I am placing my life in your hands.”
“Eddy, Eddy, you frighten me! I can’t imagine what you mean.”
“No, I know you can’t; perhaps not even when you see it will you know. But give him that, Mrs. Rowland, and he will understand.”
He held the paper a moment more, and then gave it to her. There was not a particle of colour in his sallow, small face. He sat on the corner of the table, swinging one leg, at first not looking at her, a smile on his face, which grew every moment more grey.
Evelyn took the paper almost with alarm. She gazed at it with a look at first of intense surprise and disappointment. What did it mean? her husband’s signature written two or three times on a piece of paper, as if he had been trying a pen. James—James, twice or thrice repeated; then “Rowland.” Then in full, “James Rowland,” with a characteristic flourish at the end. She looked at the paper and then at Eddy, and then——
It was his look that forced conviction on her mind, not the guilty witness in her hand. She gave a great cry, “Eddy!” and put her hand over her eyes, as if to shut out some unwelcome sight.
“Yes,” he said, swinging his foot, his head sunk upon his breast; “that is just about what it is: and I am a—a—everything that is bad. But not such a cad as to let another man be ruined instead of me,” he cried.
Evelyn got up to her feet, stumbling, not seeing where she went, her eyes blinded with tears. “Oh, mypoor boy, my poor boy!” she cried, putting her arms round him, drawing him to her.
“Is that how you take it?” he said, with a sob. “I did not expect you to take it like that.”
“Oh, Eddy!” she said, not able to find other words; “oh, my poor boy!”
He drew himself away from her a little, dashing off the tears that were in his eyes. “You know what that means, Mrs. Rowland,” he said, “though you may be sorry for me, and he may forgive me for your sake; but it is separation for ever. I mustn’t presume to let you be kind to me.” He took her back to her chair and placed her in it, and kissed her hand. And then he took up his hat. “It could mean nothing else, and I should be too thankful that he takes no step. Of course, I shall never see any of you again.” Then he suddenly laughed out, the colour coming back to his face. “And I was fond of that little Marion,” he said; “I was, though you might not think it, and she did not deserve it any more than I do. I was—but all that’s at an end now.”
Thesemovements of Evelyn’s were watched, although she did not know it, and in the strangest way. Rowland left home leaving no address, nor any other indication of what he meant to do the evening after his return to Rosmore. He came back on the Wednesday, and on Friday morning he arrived in London, andfollowed his wife’s steps to the hotel, where he felt sure she would go. When he arrived he was told that Mrs. Rowland was indeed there, but had just gone out. “She cannot be out of sight yet,” the porter said, pointing the direction she had taken, and Rowland, without a word, followed his wife. He had no intention when he did so, no plan but to overtake her, to join her, to ask for an explanation of her conduct: but he had scarcely caught sight of the well-known figure walking before him along the thronged pavement before another idea struck him. He would not make himself known, he would watch what she was doing, and leave his eventual conduct to the guidance of the moment. One great motive which induced him to come to this resolution was that the moment he caught sight of her, James Rowland, who had left home breathing flame and fire, shrank into himself, and felt that he no more dared approach his wife with an air of suspicion and demand an explanation of her conduct, than he dared invade the retirement of the Queen. The one thing was about as possible as the other. All his old reverence for his lady-wife, all his conviction of her absolute superiority to everybody he had ever known came back upon him like a flood. Who was he to demand an explanation from her? Was it likely that he could know better what was seemly and becoming than she did? Was it possible that she, the crowning glory of his life, could do anything against his honour, could commit or compromise him in any way? A hush fell upon his troubled tempestuous mind the moment he perceived her before him, walking along with quiet dignity, unpretending, yetnot, he said to himself in his pride, to be overlooked anywhere, moving among the common crowd as if she were in a presence chamber. He held his breath with a sort of horror at the thought that he might have been capable of going up to her, in his passion, asking her what she did there, whom she wanted, commanding her to return home at once. The sight of the sweep of her dark skirt, the carriage of her head, arrested him, temper and irritation and all, in a moment. He fell back a step or two, with a vague inclination to turn tail altogether, turn back homewards and humbly await her coming, which should be in her own time. But his heart was so sore that he could not do that. He followed her mechanically till she turned off the great thoroughfare to the smaller street, where he still followed, taking some precaution to keep himself out of her sight. He might have saved himself the trouble, for Evelyn saw nothing save the great object she had in view—the interview which was before her.
He watched her into Saumarez’s house, divining whose house it was, with a pang at his heart. There was a convenient doorway opposite in which he could stand and wait for her return; and there he placed himself, with the most curious shame of himself and his unwonted unnatural position. Watching his wife! which was only less intolerable than accusing her, disclosing to her that he was capable of suspecting her spotless meaning whatever it might be. No one who has not tried that undignifiedmétiercan have any idea how the watcher can divine what is going on inside a housefrom the minute signs which show outside. He saw a certain commotion in the upper storey, a vague vision of her figure at the window, the blinds quickly drawn up in the next room, enough to make him, all his senses quickened with anxiety and eagerness, divine, more or less, what was taking place. He saw a man come to the window, looking moodily out as if in thought, turning round to speak to some one behind. Whoever it was, it was not the crippled Saumarez, who, it had been so intolerable to him to think, was to be consulted on his affairs. Then he seemed to perceive by other movements below that the visitor was received in the lower room; and then she came hurriedly out, taking him by surprise, with no decorous attendance to the door, rushing forth almost as if escaping. He had to hurry after to keep up with her hasty excited steps. And then he followed her to the telegraph office, and then back to the hotel. He had got without difficulty a room close by, being anxious above measure not to betray to any one that he was not with her, that there was any separation between them—only not quite so anxious for that as that she should not see him, or divine that he had followed her. He sat with his door ajar all the afternoon, in the greatest excitement, watching her, making sure that she expected some one, listening to her enquiries at the servants if no telegram had come. She expected, then, a reply; was it from himself at home? Finally, Rowland saw Eddy, to his infinite surprise, arrive in the evening, and heard from where he watched the sound of a conversation, not without audible risings and fallings of tone, whichmarked some gamut of emotion in it. Eddy! what could his wife have to do with Eddy? Was it on that boy’s business, in answer to any appeal from him, that she had come? Was it perhaps to ask help for Eddy that she had sent that useless telegram? James Rowland had been deeply offended by the idea that his wife had come to consult another man upon his affairs; but it stung him again into even hotter momentary passion now, when the conviction came upon him that it was not his affairs, but something altogether unconnected with him that had brought her so suddenly to London away from her home. The first would have been an error of judgment almost unpardonable. The second was—it was a thing that could not bear thinking of. His wife consecrated to the sharing of all his sorrows, and who had shown every appearance of taking them up as her own, to leave her home and her husband in his trouble, and come here all this way in so strange and clandestine a manner at the call of Eddy—Eddy! He had himself been very favourable to Eddy, better than the boy deserved, who, however, had been generous about Archie, seeking an opportunity of making his obligations known: but that she, who had pretended to such interest in Archie, should suddenly be found to be thinking not of him but of another boy!
Rowland had scarcely gone through such a time of self-contention in all his life as during the hour or two that elapsed between Eddy’s departure and the time of the train. Eddy went away with a sort offaux airof satisfaction, which imposed upon the unaccustomed, inexperienced detective. He at least seemed to be satisfied, whoever was distressed. He had his hat over his brows, but he swung his stick lightly in his hand, and began to hum an opera air as he went down the stairs. She must have liberated him from some scrape, settled his affairs for him somehow—the young reprobate, who was always in trouble! Rowland would not have refused to help the boy himself: he would have treated Eddy very gently had he appealed to him; but that his wife should put herself so much out of the way for Eddy, was intolerable to him. He sat there within his half-open door, angry, miserable, and heard her give her orders about her departure. She was going by the night train, and wanted some tea, and her bill and a cab got for her in time. “It is only six now,” he heard her say with a sigh, as the waiter stood at the open door. She was longing to get home, was she? glad to be done with it, though she had come all this way to do it, whatever it was. He went downstairs then and got some dinner for himself, and arranged his own departure at the same hour. It was the strangest journey. She in one carriage, altogether unconscious of his vicinity, he in another, so deeply conscious of her’s. He sprang out of his compartment at every station, to steal past the window of the other, to catch a passing glimpse of her. There was another lady in the corner nearest the door, but in the depths of the carriage he could see her profile, pale against the dark cushions, her eyes sometimes shut, and weariness and lassitude in every line of her figure and attitude as she lay back in her corner. He didnot think she was asleep. She would be thinking over what she had done for Eddy; thinking not of her husband and his trouble, but of that other—the other man’s boy. And bitter and sore were Rowland’s thoughts. The fury with which he had started was not so heavy as this; for then he had thought that she was fully occupied with his troubles, though so unwise, so little judicious as to confide them to the last man in the world whose sympathy he could have desired. But now to think that it was not his trouble at all that had occupied his wife, nothing about him, though, heaven knew, he had enough to bear—but the well-deserved discomfort of another, the needs of the trifling boy, ill-behaved and untrustworthy, for whom his own father had little to say. Less and less did James Rowland feel himself able to make himself known to his wife, to upbraid or reproach her. Why should he? he had no reason. She was spotless, if ever woman was. She had not even offended against him in the way he had feared. She had left home only to do a good action; to be kind. He was well aware of this; and to assail her, to take her to task, to accuse her even of carelessness towards him, was more than he could permit himself to do: it was impossible. But still it seemed to Rowland, as he travelled home, with unspeakable, suppressed anger and pain, that this was the most unsupportable of all, and that Eddy’s shuffling, inconsiderable figure would stand between them now for ever and ever. Not that he was jealous of Eddy: it was disappointment, disenchantment, the failure of his trust in her. To leave the boy, in whom she hadprofessed so much interest, and whose well-being, greatly as he had sinned, involved his father’s, without lifting a hand to help him, though she led her husband to believe that she would do something, work a miracle, bring him back; and go off to the end of the earth, secretly, without telling anybody, to the succour of Eddy! It was intolerable, though there might not be a word to say.
Then came the arrival, jaded and chilled, at Glasgow, in the cold gray of the morning, scarcely light. He kept about and watched what she would do, nothing doubting that her next step would be to the other railway which would take her to the banks of the loch, in time for the early boat to Rosmore. But Evelyn did not carry out this part of the programme, to his great surprise. She lingered at the station, performing such a toilet as was possible; waiting, it appeared, until the morning was a little more advanced. It was more and more difficult to keep out of her sight, yet keep her in sight in this familiar place where everybody knew him. He pulled up his greatcoat to his ears, his travelling cap down upon his forehead. He could not even copy her and add to his comfort by a wash, lest in that moment she should disappear. He could not even get a cup of coffee, and his outer man stood more in need of restoratives and support than hers, and could ill bear the want of them. But at length the morning became sufficiently advanced, as it seemed, for her purpose, and she got into a cab with her small bag, which was all her baggage. He could not tell what orders she gave to the driver, buthe ordered the man, into whose cab he jumped without more delay than he could help, to follow that in which Evelyn was. At this moment all the excitement of those bewildering twenty-four hours culminated. He felt as though he could scarcely breathe: he could not bear his travelling-cap on his head, though it was light enough, or his coat across his chest, though it was a cold morning to ordinary persons, people who felt cold and heat, and had no fiery furnace within them. He kept his uncovered head out of the window of his cab, watching the slow progress of the one before him. How slow it was, creeping along the dark streets as if she had told the man to go slowly to postpone some crisis, some climax of excitement to which she was bound! Rowland’s heart thumped like a steam-engine against his labouring breast. Where was she going? Who could there be in Glasgow to whom it was of the slightest consequence what happened to Eddy Saumarez, who would even know of his existence? She must be deep in the boy’s secrets indeed, he said to himself, with scornful wrath, to know in all this strange town who could have anything to do with him. He seemed to recognise the turns she was taking with a bewildered perception of the unsuspected, of something that might be coming quite different to anything he had thought. Where was she going? The dingy streets are like each other everywhere, few features of difference to distinguish them, and yet he seemed to be going over ground he knew. That shop at the corner he had surely seen before—of course he must have seen it before! Where could a stranger go in Glasgowthat he had not been before, he who was to the manner born, who had spent his childhood in Glasgow, and gone to his daily work by these very ways? Yes, of course, he knew it all very well, every turn, not only from the old times of his youth, but—Where was she going? His heart beat louder than ever, the veins on his temples set up independent pulses, something fluttered in his bosom like a bird, making him sick with wonder and expectancy. Where was she going? What, what could she mean? What did she want here?
The Sauchiehall Road—full of the greyness of the November morning: children playing on the pavement, women going about with their baskets to get their provisions, a lumbering costermonger’s cart trundling along noisily over the stones, with a man crying “caller codfish prime; caller haddies!” all incised into this man’s beating brain as if done with a knife. He stopped his cab hurriedly, jumped out, dismissed it, and walked slowly along, with his eyes upon the other lumbering vehicle in front. The buzzing in his brain was so wild that everything was confused, both sound and sights, and he stumbled over the children on the pavement as he went along, not seeing where he went. At last it stopped, and his heart stopped too with one sudden great thump like a sledge-hammer. A flash of sudden light seemed to come from something, he knew not what, whether in his eyes or outside of them, showing like a gleam from a lantern the well-known house, the big elderberry bush, with its dusty, black clusters of fruit. And she came out of her cab and went quickly up to the door.
Rowland stood quite still in the midst of the passengers on the pavement, the children knocking against him as they hopped about on one foot, propelling the round piece of marble, with which they were playing, from one chalked compartment to another. It hit him on the shin, but did not startle him from his amazement, from his pause of wonder, and the blank of incapacity to understand. What was she doing here of all places in the world? What did she want there? What had that house to do with Eddy Saumarez? Eddy Saumarez—Eddy! It got into a sort of rhyme in his brain. What had that house to do with it? What did she want there? What—what was the meaning of it all?