"I am sure you told me the truth," she began, "when I met you three days ago, and you said everything was right. We know nothing for certain, do we; we can only say what we think, and I am sure you thought that. Anyhow, these last three days have been very sweet. And now, Reggie, there is only one thing more to say ... you are free, absolutely free.... I am not so selfish as to wish to bind you to me.... I love you ... surely I may tell you once more what I have told you so often ... I love you with all my heart and soul, and I do not think I shall change. But we must wait. If that day comes when you say to me, 'Will you have me?' I shall say 'Yes.' But, you must say it in the same spirit in which I shall say 'Yes.' You know what that means, don't you? Ah, Reggie, I don't blame you. How could I do that?"
"Gerty, Gerty," cried he, "I would give all the world to be able to say that to you. I know what you mean. But I am helpless, dumb, blind, deaf. I can do nothing. I am tossed about. I don't know what is happening to me. And that you should suffer too."
Gertrude smiled, ever so faintly.
"It's a difficult world, isn't it," she said, "but it has its ups and downs. I have been very happy almost all my life."
"Forgive me, forgive me," he cried. "Gerty, say you don't hate me."
A deep tremor ran through her. When she met his imploring gaze, the desire of her young, strong love to gather him into her arms, to comfort him, tomakehim feel the depths of her yearning for him, to lose all for one moment in one last, clasping embrace was very hard to resist. "What harm is done?" whispered one voice within her, but another said, "He is not yours; he belongs to the woman he loves." For one moment she hesitated: tenderness, love, memory, wrestled with that other voice, but prevailed not. There was that within her stronger than them all.
"I love you more than all the world," she said, "and there is nothing to forgive."
For one moment she stood looking at him, treasuring the seconds that passed too quickly, knowing that before a short minute had passed that last look would be over. Such a pause is purely instinctive, and when instinct tells us that it is time to take up one's life again, it is impossible to stay longer.
That moment came all too soon, and Gertrude spoke again.
"Come, we must be going back. They will wonder where we are. Ah! there is the Princess. Reggie, pick me that tea-rose."
The Princess felt vaguely reassured. The look in Gertrude's face when she heard what Mrs. Rivière wassaying was not pleasant, and it remained in her mind with some vividness. But the last remark which she had overheard was distinctly encouraging.
"Really, you two people are too bad," she said. "You are here to amuse me and my guests, and show these little French people how magnificent, clean, nice, English boys and girls are. I've been entertaining a lot of stupid people, whom I didn't want to see, and who wouldn't have wanted to see me if I hadn't been a Highness. But I've got a great notion of my duty as a hostess. Didn't somebody write an "Ode to Duty"? You might as well write an "Ode to Dentistry." They are both very unpleasant, but they both keep you straight."
She led the way back to the lawn, and Gertrude and Reggie followed.
Society may be a farce, but it is a very grim farce. The devout but rejected lover, who has proposed to the lady of his love beneath an idyllic moon, goes to bed that night as usual, and if, in the agony of his mind, he has forgotten, to take the links out of his shirt in the evening, he will have to do it in the morning. The bows of his evening shoes will want untying just as much that night as on any other, and next morning he will find himself at the breakfast-table just as usual, having washed and brushed his teeth and combed his hair. The unkempt, haggard lovers of fiction have no existence in real life. Edwin does not refuse to shavebecause Angelina will have none of him, nor does he use his razor, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, for any more anatomical process than that of removing his superfluous hair. And Gertrude did not go home in floods of tears and refuse to be comforted, but she talked to several old acquaintances, and made several new ones, and quite a number of people said, "What a delightful girl Miss Carston is." But her grief was none the less deep for that.
Among the old acquaintances, Prince Villari chose to number himself.
"I hear Mr. Davenport, whom my wife says you were expecting, has arrived," said he. "Would you do me the pleasure to introduce him to me?"
Reggie was standing near Gertrude at the time, and she said,—
"Reggie, Prince Villari desires me to do you the honour to introduce you to him."
"Mrs. Carston has been so good as to accept a most informal invitation to dinner from my wife for to-night," continued the Prince. "She said we might hope that you and Mr. Davenport would join us too."
Gertrude did not flinch.
"I should be charmed," she said. "Reggie, you are not engaged, are you?"
The Prince smiled in anticipation of a "sweet, secret speech," but he was disappointed. Reggie consideredit an honour, and ventured to inquire at what time they should come.
"My wife has refused to allow Mrs. Carston to go home. She says it would be too cruel to entail that double journey over the most dusty mile of road in Europe twice in one day. May I add," he said, turning to Gertrude, "that it would also be too cruel if you went. It is already half-past six, and we dine in an hour. I see the people are all going. Let me show you the garden. Ah! I see Mr. Davenport has found an acquaintance. Won't you come with me down as far as the gate? There is a seat there commanding a lovely view."
Ah! but how Gertrude's heart knew that seat and that lovely view! Had she not looked on it once already this afternoon?
The Prince was disposed to be particularly amiable.
"I am sure you must love this view," he said. "I know it's a great bore having views shown you, and that sort of thing, but I must say I think this view really is enchanting! Those mountains there look so fine in this evening light! They always remind me of the English lake scenery. My wife raves about English scenery; she says it is part of the only satisfactory system of life in the world, and belongs to the same order of things as roast beef and five o'clock tea, and daisies and large cart-horses. Ah! here is Mrs.Rivière; I suppose she has been looking at the scenery, too."
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Rivière had been doing nothing of the sort. She had come to a secluded corner, in order to smoke a cigarette and carry on a promising flirtation with a somewhat mature French count. But the mature French count had gone his way, and she was finishing her cigarette alone.
"I have been looking for that fascinating and wicked Englishman," she said. "Yes; isn't the view charming? You really don't know, Miss Carston, how dreadfully you are compromising yourself by going about with him. Take my word for it, as a married woman, that it endangers your reputation. Really, I don't know what young people are coming to. It's perfectly frightful. I heard all about him from a very dear friend of mine in London."
Gertrude felt an overwhelming desire to stop this sort of thing. Mrs. Rivière had run herself out by this time, and stood taking little puffs from her cigarette, and thinking how very Mimi-ish she was becoming. Gertrude stood by her a moment in silence, and Prince Villari thought the contrast between them very striking indeed. There was an expression in Gertrude's face which puzzled him somewhat and he waited in patience for an explanation which he felt sure was forthcoming.
"You mean Reggie Davenport?" she said at length.
"Reggie!" screamed Mrs. Rivière, "really you are getting on at a tremendous pace. I honestly tremble for you."
"Your fears are misplaced," said Gertrude, looking down at her. "I have been engaged to him for eighteen months."
She turned round after saying these words, and walked slowly back, the Prince by her side, without troubling herself to see the effect produced on Mrs. Rivière. They walked in silence for some yards, and then the Prince said,—
"May I offer you my congratulations on the double event—on your engagement, and your defeat of Mrs. Rivière? It was really very fine."
"Thanks," said she, without tremor or raised colour. "I don't like Mrs. Rivière. I think she is insupportable. Ah! there is Reggie. May I go and speak to him?"
The Prince walked gracefully off in another direction. He never made himselfde trop.
"Reggie," said she, "it was necessary, I found just now, to let Mrs. Rivière believe we were engaged, and I think, perhaps, we had better not let it be known what has happened just yet. I have good reason for it. But tell your mother. I am tired. I think I shall go indoors. Stop and talk to the Prince."
By a merciful arrangement of Nature's, a great shock is never entirely comprehended by the victim all at once. A numbness always succeeds it first, and the torn and bleeding tissues recover not altogether, but one by one. At present Gertrude was conscious that she did not wholly take in all that had happened. Volition and action in small things went on still with mechanical regularity, and it is doubtful whether any of those about her saw any difference. She wandered into the Princess's room which opened on to the verandah, and was pleased to find it untenanted. She threw herself down in a chair, and took up the paper, which had just come in by the mail. There was a famine somewhere, and a war somewhere else, Mr. Gladstone had gone to Biarritz, the Prince of Wales had opened a Working-Man's Institute and Lord Hayes was dead. His death, it appeared, was sudden.
The paper slipped from Gertrude's knees and fell crackling to the ground. So he was dead, and his wife a widow, like herself, she felt. She sat there for some time without stirring. So Lady Hayes, then, was free, and Reggie, as she had told him herself that afternoon, was free too. How very simple, after all, are the big problems of life, and how very cruel. Surely Eva could not help loving him. Anyone who knew him must love him; who could tell that half so well as herself, who loved him best? Was he not lovable? Surely, for she loved him. And whatwould Mrs. Rivière say? Her thoughts wandered blindly on, touching a hundred different points with accuracy, but without feeling, till they all centred round the main event.
Ah! the cruelty of it, the diabolical chance which placed these things on the devil's chessboard, for the devil to move and manœuvre with. She was to be the victim, it seemed; she was to give up the object of her long tender love to another woman, more beautiful, less scrupulous than herself, and her jealousy sprang to birth, full armed, terrible. Did the irony of fate go so far as this, that that woman, for whom she had herself declared Reggie free, should be free also? Her rejection of him—that was nothing, a wile to bring him back more humbly to her feet. Ah, yes, they would be married in St. Peter's, Eaton Square, probably, and Gertrude would go there, and sing "The Voice that breathed o'er Eden," and eat their—his—wedding cake, and be introduced to the bride, and throw a slipper after them for luck. Yes that was all extremely likely, one might almost say imminent. At this point Gertrude began to perceive that she was getting hysterical, and with a violent effort of self-control, she got up and walked to the window. The sun was just setting, and over the lawn strolled a tall figure, preceded by a still taller shadow. Reggie's eyes were bent to the ground, and he walked up close to the verandah without seeingher. The sight of that familiar, best-loved figure produced another mood in Gertrude; she watched it silently for a time, and then said to herself under her breath,—
"Pray, God, let her love him very much;" and then aloud, "Reggie."
At the sound of his name he looked up and saw her.
"Come in here a minute," she said. "I have something to tell you."
Reggie nodded assent, and came along the verandah, until he reached the low, French window opening on to it.
"Come in," said Gertrude, "it's the Princess's room, but she isn't here. Sit down there."
Gertrude paused.
"The paper has just come," she said at length. "There is something I have read which I wish to tell you, Reggie. It affects you very deeply—I have just read it. Lord Hayes is dead."
"Ah, God!—"
The exclamation burst from him involuntarily. He could have checked it no more than a man can help wincing at a sudden, unexpected blow, or starting at a sudden noise. But into those two words he had cast all the cargo of his soul—hope, longing, love. Gertrude had heard them, had comprehended them, had swallowed the bitter draught.
A moment afterwards he saw that he had told her all, more convincingly than he had done even this afternoon, for he saw she realized it to the full.
"Ah, Gerty, what can I do?" he said, when the silence had become unbearable. "You know how it is with me. How can I help it? I wish I were dead, though the gates of hell were yawning to receive me."
"You did not wish you were dead two months ago," she said with a flash of scorn, "not even though the gates of heaven were open to receive you. You are not so easily contented now."
Reggie looked piteously at her.
"I know. I deserve all you could say of me. Much more than you ever would. I am a brute, a villain—I deserve to be shot. Yet you did not speak like that this afternoon; I am glad you have said it, though; I don't feel less guilty, God knows! but I am not so bad as not to feel thankful for any punishment."
"Let us say good-bye now," said Gertrude. "We shall not meet again like this."
She held out her hand to him, but volunteered no more intimate embrace. He grasped it, held it for a moment, and let it drop. Even the touch of hand had been something sacred before to him and her, he felt, but there was something dead between them; her hand was as another's. But to Gertrude that rush ofmemories was too great. Her strength had been too severely taxed already.
"Ah, Reggie," she cried, "do you leave me like this?"
"God help you!" he said, "and me too."
"Reggie, my darling," she cried suddenly, "shall that woman stand between you and me? Did you not promise me your love? Where are those promises? This is all a dream. Come to me again as you were once. You did not love anyone but me, you said—and once you told me you disliked wicked people. What has happened to those words of yours? Were they not true? It is a pity if they were not, for I have written them on my heart. Ah, my darling, my darling—" She threw her arms round him in a last embrace. "Reggie, dear," she whispered, "this is good-bye. I did not mean what I said just now. I did not know what I was saying. That was the best of me that spoke this afternoon when I said you were free. You are quite free. I hope she will love you as much ... as much as I have done—as I do. That will be enough. And now go. Leave me by myself. Good-bye, dear; good-bye."
She went with him on to the verandah, where the dusk was already falling, and as soon as he was outside the room, she turned quickly from him and went back, closing the glass door after her.
Lord Hayes was buried with his fathers and forefathers in the little churchyard at Hayes, and after the funeral Eva came back again to her London house. Mrs. Grampound came to see her occasionally, was tearful and voluble, and could hardly conceal her satisfaction at the handsome settlements Lord Hayes had made on his widow.
"So thoughtful of him," she would say, wiping her eyes, "to leave you the London house for life. He knew that you could not do without a few months in London every year; and the villa at Algiers, too, for the winter, in memory of the honeymoon. So unselfish!"
Mrs. Grampound seemed to think that his lordship's disembodied spirit might have preferred to keep the villa at Algiers to itself, and that the fact that he had left it to his widow seemed to imply that he renounced all rights of visiting these particular glimpses of the moon. But Eva assented, with the ghost of a smile, as the impossible interpretation occurred to her.
Reggie's letter to Mrs. Davenport, telling her that his engagement with Gertrude had been broken off, had arrived, and it was not very pleasant reading. He mentioned that this was prior to the news of LordHayes's death, and that he was coming back to England; and with all his old frankness, he said that he had written to Eva a letter of sympathy on her husband's death.
But if Reggie's letter gave pain to Mrs. Davenport, not to mention that Gertrude was not altogether happy just now, surely there was the corresponding balance somewhere. Eva, for instance—things were taking a fresh turn, were they not, for her? Her husband was just dead—that was true; but though the loss of a husband is not, in the general way, a matter for congratulation, her case was a little exceptional. And this morning a letter had come for her from someone she was very fond of, saying a few words for the sake of decency, and a few other words which, for the sake of decency, had better have been left unsaid. Reggie had told Eva that all was over between himself and Gertrude, and that he was coming back to London. The letter ended almost imperiously, "I shall come to see you—youshallsee me."
Yet Eva was not the owner of the balance of happiness to make all square. How was that? But Eva was very conscious herself, as she sat with Reggie's letter in her hand, why she was not happy. Reggie was coming to offer himself, body and soul, to her, and there was nothing in the world that she desired but to give herself, body and soul, to him. It seemed very simple. Unfortunately it was only more impossible.
She had decided only a week ago that he was happier, or would be happier with another than with her. She knew it, she knew it; she was convinced of it by instinct and reasoning alike. It seemed to her that there was nothing she knew except that—that, and a certain dull remorse when she thought of that moment, when she had found the thing, which had been her husband, lying like a broken doll in the dark room. She wished she had made more of that bad job; he was so weak, so inadequate, surely it had not been worth while to spar with one so immeasurably her inferior. And he had been very kind to her, as kind as she would let him. He had been like a little dog, which had been purely amiable at first, but had got to snap instinctively when it was approached, from the certainty that it was going to be teased. She recalled that shrinking, hunted look that she had seen so often on his face when he had snapped at her and she had turned on him with a whip. To do her justice, the provocations, or, at any rate, the challenge had usually been on his side, but after all, would it not have been better so many times to have let it pass—not to have slashed so savagely? Ah, well, he was dead; Eva envied him now.
For the road to her happiness was as impassable as ever; her husband's death had made no difference to that. She knew that Reggie's best chance of happiness was not with her, but with another, and, unfortunately for Eva, she found that this fact could not be overlooked.And that necessity of securing his happiness came first; it was the most essential part of her love for him; the impossibility she had felt on that morning after they had seen Tannhäuser, or rather heard the overture together, of doing anything that was not for the best of his happiness, as far as in her and in her sober judgment lay, remained as impossible as ever. The existence of her husband, she felt then, was altogether a smaller matter. If she had felt it good that she and Reggie should love one another, she would have been content to go on living as they had lived before, seeing each other in ball-rooms, in crowded dining-rooms, in any publicity, just touching his hand, just reading that secret knowledge in his eyes, and she knew that he would have waited indefinitely as blissfully as herself. But her knowledge of herself and him rendered that impossible, and it was impossible still. Surely it was very hard; she did not ask for much, and that little was infinitely impossible.
Meanwhile, the hours were bringing Reggie closer to London, and closer to her. "I shall come and see you—youshallsee me!" The words rang in her head, till it seemed the whole air held nothing but them. That imperious note, the first she had heard from him, was terribly dear to her, as it is to all men and women, when the one they love commands that which they long to do. He was changed, Mrs. Davenport had said; he had become a man. Eva felt in his words that thechange had come—he spoke to her as a man to a woman. He pleaded no longer, he demanded, he announced his claims. She pictured him coming to her, bold in the assurance of his love. "You are mine," he would say, "you are mine, and I am yours. Let us come away together. Ah! but you shall come; you dare not say 'no.'"
Against the sight of him, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, Eva knew she would be powerless. The impossibilities on which she dwelt would sink, she well knew, into nothing by the side of that one great impossibility—that of resisting his claims when he came to seek and have her. Surely nothing on earth, not duty, nor unselfishness, nor wisdom, was so strong as Love, the soft, delicate-winged Love, which neither strove nor wept, but only smiled and smiled, until its claims, its claims in full, were willingly poured into its outstretched hand.
Eva rose from where she had been sitting, and walked upland down the room. Dressed in black from head to foot, she looked like an image of despair. She looked round the room, not hers, she felt, but his. That was the chair where he used to sit; the last day he had been there, he had pushed it back into the window and had sat in the sun, because he said he had a cold. He had been smoking a cigarette and had put it down on the window sill, where it had made the paint blister and burn. She had brought him a littleBenares ware ash-tray, to put it in after that. Ah! there was the ash-tray, with the stump of a cigarette still in it. The servants ought to have cleared it away—and yet—well, perhaps it was too small to notice. In any case, she would not speak about it. No, on the whole she would speak about it, and she rang the bell. They should dust the room more carefully, she said to the man; that cigarette end had been there a week. After all, it did not matter, she added, as she took the ash-tray up. "No, leave it where it is; but let the room be dusted more carefully another time." Poor, momentous little cigarette-end!
He will see her, will he? Ah! but he shall not. Eva, who had always felt herself so strong, was suddenly weak. If she knew that he was there, was waiting to know if he could see her, how could she say she would not see him, and if she saw him, how could she not yield? It was impossible, impossible. Meanwhile, she had a day and a night in which to decide what to do. He would not be in London till to-morrow morning. Many things may happen in a day or a night. She might go away, away somewhere where he would never know and could never follow her. And where in the world was that? Where would not she follow him? Perhaps nowhere in the world, out of the world somewhere—perhaps—perhaps....
There was a piece of green, unturned grass next the grave where her husband lay, in that peaceful churchyardwhere the trees sang low together in the wind. How would it do to go there, to be quite quiet at last? "Perchance to dream?" Yes; but surely if she dreamed at all, she would dream of Reggie. One might do worse, she thought, than dream of him.
How odd that she had not thought of this before! It was so very simple, so very satisfactory. She only cared for one thing in this world, and that she could not have. So why wait here?
But he must never know—that would spoil it all. He must never even suspect. Eva had an intense horror of anything like melodrama, and she wished everything to be as natural as possible. If only she could hire a madman from a lunatic asylum to shoot her—no, shooting would not do—it was noisy, messy, a hundred things it should not be. Surely doctors knew plenty of ways by which one could glide quietly out of the world without suspicion—they knew so many ingenious devices by which they can keep us in the world, that they must know some to let us out. Some clean, soothing drug which presented no traces at apost-mortemdiagnosis—that was the word, was it not? Eva smiled when she pictured herself going to a doctor and asking for a drug of this description. A suspicious mind might perhaps attach undue importance to such a visit, if made a few hours before her death. What fools people were!
Eva pondered, till after a moment a sudden thoughtstruck her. Was not suicide, of a kind, more misleading to those—to him to whom she wished it to be misleading, than death from apparently natural causes? Her husband had died four days before, and, nominally, she was a more or less broken-hearted widow; to Reggie, at least, broken-hearted enough, for it was part of the concealment which she had practised to him, to hide her relations with her husband, and when she decided to let him know the rest of her, that was a side issue which she had not shown him. Would not the self-sought death of a heart-broken widow be the most complete disguise to her action, far more complete than the clumsy death by pistols or overdoses? "It is always a good thing to add details," thought Eva to herself. The worst of it was that such a death was somewhat melodramatic; but when the actor quits the boards for ever, it may be excusable that he makes one concession, in spite of his own distaste, to set the audience in a roar. Yes, she would have it so.
Lord Hayes used to dabble in chemistry in an amateur way, and Eva remembered his showing her, in his laboratory at Aston, a little bottle full of a harmless-looking liquid, the smell of which reminded her at first of soft cool peaches, but afterwards of the almond icing on the top of wedding cakes. He had told her that it was prussic acid, and that one drop of it on the tongue would kill a man. She remembered the incident clearly, because when she smelled it she had shuddered, andhad thought of her own wedding cake. The bottle was sure to be there still—it stood on the second shelf to the right as you opened the door of the laboratory, and it had a large, red label on it. It was curious how accurately the whole thing came back to her.
The bottle was at Aston, and he was buried in the churchyard there. She regretted the necessity of melodrama, but she would not be alive to regret it afterwards. Eva had no fear, only a longing to get it over—to be quite sure that nothing would stop her carrying out her intention of putting herself out of the reach of him she loved. She would go down to Aston that afternoon; meanwhile, there were three or four hours to be spent in London. Well, there were very few preparations to make. When we take that longest journey of all, there is no packing to be done, no arrangements to be made, as when we go away for a three days' visit. All arrangements are made for us; death provides us with an excellent courier who will forget nothing.
There were just two notes she wished to write—one to Mrs. Davenport, saying that she had heard from Reggie, to say he was coming back to London, and that he wished to see her; that she had given him hiscongéonce for all and had no intention of seeing him, and that it would save her trouble if Mrs. Davenport would communicate this to him.
It was not a very easy note to write for manyreasons, but the other was even harder; it was to Gertrude Carston, and ran as follows:—
"You will wonder what I, of all women in the world, can have to say to you. Do not resent my writing till you have read. I have done you a cruel wrong and I am sorry for it. I allowed Reggie Davenport to fall in love with me, when I might have stopped it. If I had cared for him it would have been different, for my husband is dead, and he would have married me. In that case I should not have been sorry as I am now. But I never cared for him at all; I did it thoughtlessly, and, as far as I had any motive at all, because it amused me. My husband was the only man I ever cared for; he is dead and I wish I were dead too. It is but poor amends that I can make, but this I promise you, that I will never see Reggie Davenport again. Be very patient with him; he will love you as well as you love him, and that I know is not a little. He will come back to you and you will not hate me then."I wish I could have seen you to tell you these things. I think you would have believed me; and I must ask you to believe me now. You will have heard of my husband's death. May you never know what that means. If you like, show Mr. Davenport what I have written to you; it will be good that he should know that I never cared for him."I am not so bad as you think; I did my best to stop him caring for me when we saw Tannhäuser together; he went away to you, I know, next morning, and I hoped that that would have been the end. Perhaps, if you saw me, you would be sorry for me now. Above all, remember he will come back to you; it will be with you as if I had never come between you. The fault was mine, do not cast it up to him."
"You will wonder what I, of all women in the world, can have to say to you. Do not resent my writing till you have read. I have done you a cruel wrong and I am sorry for it. I allowed Reggie Davenport to fall in love with me, when I might have stopped it. If I had cared for him it would have been different, for my husband is dead, and he would have married me. In that case I should not have been sorry as I am now. But I never cared for him at all; I did it thoughtlessly, and, as far as I had any motive at all, because it amused me. My husband was the only man I ever cared for; he is dead and I wish I were dead too. It is but poor amends that I can make, but this I promise you, that I will never see Reggie Davenport again. Be very patient with him; he will love you as well as you love him, and that I know is not a little. He will come back to you and you will not hate me then.
"I wish I could have seen you to tell you these things. I think you would have believed me; and I must ask you to believe me now. You will have heard of my husband's death. May you never know what that means. If you like, show Mr. Davenport what I have written to you; it will be good that he should know that I never cared for him.
"I am not so bad as you think; I did my best to stop him caring for me when we saw Tannhäuser together; he went away to you, I know, next morning, and I hoped that that would have been the end. Perhaps, if you saw me, you would be sorry for me now. Above all, remember he will come back to you; it will be with you as if I had never come between you. The fault was mine, do not cast it up to him."
This letter took some time in the writing. It was not easy to write, but when it was done, Eva closed it for fear of drawing back, and sent both off at once to the post. She longed to finish some one of those things that lay before her to do, so that she could not go back from finishing them all. She was afraid of being weak, but not from fear of death. It was far easier to die than to live with that impassable barrier between her and happiness.
She arrived at Aston about four o'clock. She had sent a telegram to the house saying that she was coming for a few nights, and a carriage was at the station to meet her. She went first of all to the little laboratory opening off what had been her husband's study, and found that she had remembered the place where the bottle stood, with its red label. She uncorked it to make sure it was right. Yes, the almond on the top of wedding-cakes—her wedding-cake—it was exactly that smell. Then she drew her blackveil over her face and went out again. There were certain grimly comic details which she had determined to go through, in order to lend probability to her act, and, with this purpose, she went into the hothouses, and the gardeners who were working saw her pick an armful of delicate orchids and white lilies. She tore the plants up like one possessed, and with her load of sweet-smelling whiteness, they saw her go down the path that led to the churchyard.
There were several loiterers there, among them the old sexton, who remembered afterwards that a lady, dressed in black, scattered a mass of flowers over Lord Hayes's grave, and then threw herself down on the fresh-turned earth, and lay there for half an hour or it might have been more. He knew her to be Lady Hayes, and when he went away, for the dusk was falling, he left her still there.
But when the sexton had gone, Eva got up. "One scene more of this weary farce," she said half aloud. "Ah, Reggie, Reggie, may you never know!"
In the gloaming she went back to the tall house, standing stately among its terraces and garden beds. The sun had sunk; only in the west was a great splash of crimson, the nightingales were singing in the elm trees, and white-winged moths fluttered about over the flower-beds. As she entered, she turned once more to look over the peaceful, unconscious earth. The river lay like a chain of crimson pools among the trees belowthe meadow; on the far bank was a brown-faced country lad fishing, and nearer, in the hayfields, were a few belated labourers returning from their work. Across the river she could see the red walls of her old home and the flower-beds gleaming in the light of the sunken sun. Then, for the first moment, a sudden spasm of regret, of longing, and of horror for what she was going to do came over her. It would have been better to have finished that last act at the grave itself, but an unaccountable repugnance to being found by the first passer-by had prevented her.
Next moment she had swept it away. Surely she was not going to turn coward now. She turned, and passed through the study, with step as firm as ever, and with all her indolent, unrivalled grace of movement, into the laboratory beyond.
1.The Steel Hammer.ByLouis Ulbach.2.Eve.A Novel. ByS. Baring-Gould.3.For Fifteen Years.A Sequel to The Steel Hammer. ByL. Ulbach.4.A Counsel of Perfection.A Novel. ByLucas Malet.5.The Deemster.A Romance. ByHall Caine.6.A Virginia Inheritance.ByEdmund Pendleton.7.Ninette: An Idyll of Provence. By the author of Véra.8."The Right Honourable." A Romance of Society and Politics. ByJustin McCarthyand Mrs.Campbell-Praed.9.The Silence of Dean Maitland.ByMaxwell Grey.10.Mrs. Lorimer: A Study in Black and White. ByLucas Malet.11.The Elect Lady.ByGeorge MacDonald.12.The Mystery of the "Ocean Star".ByW. Clark Russell.13.Aristocracy.A Novel.14.A Recoiling Vengeance.ByFrank Barrett. With Illustrations.15.The Secret of Fontaine-la-Croix.ByMargaret Field.16.The Master of Rathkelly.ByHawley Smart.17.Donovan: A Modern Englishman. ByEdna Lyall. (Cheap edition.)18.This Mortal Coil.ByGrant Allen.19.A Fair Emigrant.ByRosa Mulholland.20.The Apostate.A Romance. ByErnest Daudet.21.Raleigh Westgate; or, Epimenides in Maine. ByHelen K. Johnson.22.Arius the Libyan: A Romance of the Primitive Church.23.Constance, and Calbot's Rival.ByJulian Hawthorne.24.We Two.ByEdna Lyall. (Cheap edition.)25.A Dreamer of Dreams.By the author of Thoth.26.The Ladies' Gallery.ByJustin McCarthyand Mrs.Campbell-Praed.27.The Reproach of Annesley.ByMaxwell Grey.28.Near to Happiness.29.In the Wire-Grass.ByLouis Pendleton.30.Lace.A Berlin Romance. ByPaul Lindau.31.American Coin.A Novel. By the author of Aristocracy.32.Won by Waiting.ByEdna Lyall.33.The Story of Helen Davenant.ByViolet Fane.34.The Light of Her Countenance.ByH. H. Boyesen.35.Mistress Beatrice Cope.ByM. E. Le Clerc.36.The Knight-Errant.ByEdna Lyall.37.In the Golden Days.ByEdna Lyall.38.Giraldi; or, The Curse of Love. ByRoss George Dering.39.A Hardy Norseman.ByEdna Lyall.40.The Romance of Jenny Harlowe, and Sketches of Maritime Life. ByW. Clark Russell.41.Passion's Slave.ByRichard Ashe-King.42.The Awakening of Mary Fenwick.ByBeatrice Whitby.43.Countess Loreley.Translated from the German ofRudolf Menger.44.Blind Love.ByWilkie Collins.45.The Dean's Daughter.BySophie F. F. Veitch.46.Countess Irene.A Romance of Austrian Life. ByJ. Fogerty.47.Robert Browning's Principal Shorter Poems.48.Frozen Hearts.ByG. Webb Appleton.49.Djambek the Georgian.ByA. G. von Suttner.50.The Craze of Christian Engelhart.ByHenry Faulkner Darnell.51.Lal.ByWilliam A. Hammond, M.D. (Cheap edition.)52.Aline.A Novel. ByHenry Gréville.53.Joost Avelingh.A Dutch Story. ByMaarten Maartens.54.Katy of Caloctin.ByGeorge Alfred Townsend.55.Throckmorton.A Novel. ByMolly Elliot Seawell.56.Expatriation.By the author of Aristocracy.57.Geoffrey Hampstead.ByT. S. Jarvis.58.Dmitri.A Romance of Old Russia. ByF. W. Bain, M.A.59.Part of the Property.ByBeatrice Whitby.60.Bismarck in Private Life.By a Fellow Student.61.In Low Relief.ByMorley Roberts.62.The Canadians of Old.An Historical Romance. ByPhilippe Gaspé.63.A Squire of Low Degree.ByLily A. Long.64.A Fluttered Dovecote.ByGeorge Manville Fenn.65.The Nugents of Carriconna.An Irish Story. ByTighe Hopkins.66.A Sensitive Plant.By E. andD. Gerard.67.Doña Luz.ByJuan Valera. Translated by Mrs.M. J. Serrano.68.Pepita Ximenez.ByJuan Valera. Translated by Mrs.M. J. Serrano.69.The Primes and Their Neighbors.Tales of Middle Georgia. ByRichard Malcolm Johnston.70.The Iron Game.ByHenry F. Keenan.71.Stories of Old New Spain.ByThomas A. Janvier.72.The Maid of Honor.By Hon.Lewis Wingfield.73.In the Heart of the Storm.ByMaxwell Grey.74.Consequences.ByEgerton Castle.75.The Three Miss Kings.ByAda Cambridge.76.A Matter of Skill.ByBeatrice Whitby.77.Maid Marian, and Other Stories.ByMolly Elliot Seawell.78.One Woman's Way.ByEdmund Pendleton.79.A Merciful Divorce.ByF. W. Maude.80.Stephen Ellicott's Daughter.By Mrs.J. H. Needell.81.One Reason Why.ByBeatrice Whitby.82.The Tragedy of Ida Noble.ByW. Clark Russell.83.The Johnstown Stage, and Other Stories.ByRobert H. Fletcher.84.A Widower Indeed.ByRhoda BroughtonandElizabeth Bisland.85.The Flight of the Shadow.ByGeorge MacDonald.86.Love or Money.ByKatharine Lee.87.Not All in Vain.ByAda Cambridge.88.It Happened Yesterday.ByFrederick Marshall.89.My Guardian.ByAda Cambridge.90.The Story of Philip Methuen.By Mrs.J. H. Needell.91.Amethyst: The Story of a Beauty. ByChristabel R. Coleridge.92.Don Braulio.By Juan Valera. Translated byClara Bell.93.The Chronicles of Mr. Bill Williams.ByRichard M. Johnston.94.A Queen of Curds and Cream.ByDorothea Gerard.95."La Bella" and Others.ByEgerton Castle.96."December Roses."By Mrs.Campbell-Praed.97.Jean de Kerdren.ByJeanne Schultz.98.Etelka's Vow.ByDorothea Gerard.99.Cross Currents.ByMary A. Dickens.100.His Life's Magnet.ByTheodora Elmslie.101.Passing the Love of Women.By Mrs.J. H. Needell.102.In Old St. Stephen's.ByJeanie Drake.103.The Berkeleys and Their Neighbors.ByMolly Elliot Seawell.104.Mona Maclean, Medical Student.ByGraham Travers.105.Mrs. Bligh.ByRhoda Broughton.106.A Stumble on the Threshold.ByJames Payn.107.Hanging Moss.ByPaul Lindau.108.A Comedy of Elopement.ByChristian Reid.109.In the Suntime of her Youth.ByBeatrice Whitby.110.Stories in Black and White.ByThomas Hardyand Others.110½.An Englishman in Paris.Notes and Recollections.111.Commander Mendoza.ByJuan Valera.112.Dr. Paull's Theory.By Mrs.A. M. Diehl.113.Children of Destiny.ByMolly Elliot Seawell.114.A Little Minx.ByAda Cambridge.115.Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon.ByHall Caine.116.The Voice of a Flower.ByE. Gerard.117.Singularly Deluded.By the author of Ideals.118.Suspected.ByLouisa Stratenus.119.Lucia, Hugh, and Another.By Mrs.J. H. Needell.120.The Tutor's Secret.ByVictor Cherbuliez.121.From the Five Rivers.By Mrs.F. A. Steel.122.An Innocent Impostor, and Other Stories.ByMaxwell Grey.123.Ideala.BySarah Grand.124.A Comedy of Masks.ByErnest DowsonandArthur Moore.125.Relics.ByFrances MacNab.126.Dodo: A Detail of the Day.ByE. F. Benson.127.A Woman of Forty.ByEsmè Stuart.128.Diana Tempest.ByMary Cholmondeley.129.The Recipe for Diamonds.ByC. J. Cutcliffe Hyne.130.Christina Chard.By Mrs.Campbell-Praed.131.A Gray Eye or So.ByFrank Frankfort Moore.132.Earlscourt.ByAlexander Allardyce.133.A Marriage Ceremony.ByAda Cambridge.134.A Ward in Chancery.By Mrs.Alexander.135.Lot 13.ByDorothea Gerard.
Each 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents and $1.00.
THE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A MEMSAHIB.BySara Jeannette Duncan. With 37 Illustrations byF. H. Townsend. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
THE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A MEMSAHIB.BySara Jeannette Duncan. With 37 Illustrations byF. H. Townsend. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
"It is impossible for Sara Jeannette Duncan to be otherwise than interesting. Whether it be a voyage around the world, or an American girl's experiences in London society, or the adventures pertaining to the establishment of a youthful couple in India, there is always an atmosphere, a quality, a charm peculiarly her own."—Brooklyn Standard-Union.
"It is like traveling without leaving one's arm-chair to read it. Miss Duncan has the descriptive and narrative gift in large measure, and she brings vividly before us the street scenes, the interiors, the bewilderingly queer natives, the gayeties of the English colony."—Philadelphia Telegraph.
"Another witty and delightful book."—Philadelphia Times.
A SOCIAL DEPARTURE; How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by Ourselves.BySara Jeannette Duncan. With 111 Illustrations byF. H. Townsend. 12mo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.75.
A SOCIAL DEPARTURE; How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by Ourselves.BySara Jeannette Duncan. With 111 Illustrations byF. H. Townsend. 12mo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.75.
"Widely read and praised on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific, with scores of illustrations which fit the text exactly and show the mind of artist and writer in unison."—New York Evening Post.
"It is to be doubted whether another book can be found so thoroughly amusing from beginning to end."—Boston Daily Advertiser.
"For sparkling wit, irresistibly contagious fun, keen observation, absolutely poetic appreciation of natural beauty, and vivid descriptiveness, it has no recent rival."—Mrs.P. T. Barnum's Letter to theNew York Tribune.
"A brighter, merrier, more entirely charming book would be, indeed, difficult to find."—St. Louis Republic.
AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON.BySara Jeannette Duncan. With 80 Illustrations byF. H. Townsend. 12mo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.50.
AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON.BySara Jeannette Duncan. With 80 Illustrations byF. H. Townsend. 12mo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.50.
"One of the most naïve and entertaining books of the season."—New York Observer.
"The raciness and breeziness which made 'A Social Departure,' by the same author, last season, the best-read and most-talked-of book of travel for many a year, permeate the new book, and appear between the lines of every page."—Brooklyn Standard-Union.
"So sprightly a book as this, on life in London as observed by an American, has never before been written."—Philadelphia Bulletin.
"Overrunning with cleverness and good-will."—New York Commercial Advertiser.
"We shall not interfere with the reader's privilege to find out for herself what, after her presentation at court and narrow escape from Cupid's meshes in England, becomes of the American girl who is the gay theme of the book. Sure we are that no one who takes up the volume—which, by the way, is cunningly illustrated—will lay it down until his or her mind is at rest on this point."—Toronto Mail.