"Fancy asking a bride on her honeymoon whether she wanted another man with her!" she said. "There is only one man in the moon, I've always heard."
Poor Jim found it rather hard to keep his temper, more especially as he knew that he had nothing to complain of. He shifted his position in his chair, and fixed his eye on a sail on the horizon, so that he could see Eva without looking at her.
"Algiers is quite a model place for a honeymoon, I should think," he said. "Of course, the object is to get out of the world. There is too large a piece of the world at Mentone. Don't you find it so?"
Eva raised her eyebrows. This last speech seemed to her to savour of impertinence, and needed no reply. Jim was clever enough to see that he had made a mistake, and his tone altered.
"Where are you going to stay in Algiers? I believe it is pleasanter out of the town, on the hills."
"Oh! Hayes has got a villa somewhere in Mustapha Supérieure. He has a passion for villas. He has a strong sense of possession. We have been making a sort of triumphal progress. He has a villa at Biarritz, which we stayed in, and now he has bought one here. Personally, I prefer a hotel, but, of course, villas are more suitable to honeymoons. You are more alone there. But they are rather spidery affairs if they are never lived in."
"Oh! spiders belong to the class of idyllic insects,"said Armine. "They swarm in hayfields on Sunday evenings, which is one of the most recognised idyllic settings."
"I don't think I can be idyllic," remarked Eva. "I never want to sit in hayfields. They make one feel creepy, and all sorts of strange things crawl down your back. It may be idyllic, but the consciousness of the creepy things makes one want to go for the idylls with a broom. Besides, spiders are so like a certain class of odious men."
Jim recalled at that moment a little thing that had struck his attention the same morning. Lord Hayes had been breakfasting in the verandah on the usual continental breakfast—a couple of rolls, two pieces of creamy butter, coffee, and a saucer of honey. A fly had found its way into the honey, and Hayes had extracted it with the butt end of his teaspoon. There was a methodical eagerness about this action that had made Jim think at that moment of a spider disentangling a fly from its web, and at Eva's words the scene flashed up before him again.
"I think I know what you mean," he said, feeling his way.
Eva, too, had noticed the scene in the morning, and Jim's remark made her wonder whether he also had it in his mind. When she had compared spiders to an odious class of men, she had not in the least thought of her husband. The possible impertinence of his first remarkreceived some confirmation. She was willing to be like a spider, too, if necessary.
"I daresay you do," she said. "There is nothing very subtle about it. I remember thinking this morning that you looked so like a spider when you were helping that fly out of your honey. Not that you belong to the odious class of men."
Jim flushed. The whip tingled unpleasantly on his shoulders.
"It was your husband who rescued the fly out of his honey," he said.
"Was it?" asked Eva, negligently. "I thought it was you."
She did not feel angry with him. He had made a mistake and had been punished for it. Justice had been done.
"It's getting rather cold," she went on. "Take me for a stroll, and give me your arm if you care for convention as little as you say you do. I am a little tired."
They walked up and down the gay street in front of the hotel for half-an-hour or so. Eva felt a vague stimulus in the homage of this presentable young man, in spite of his slight awkwardnesses. She felt he was not a man whom it was easy to make a fool of, but she was making a somewhat complete fool of him, and it pleased her. For the first time, perhaps, she caught a glimpse of her own power as a beautiful and attractivewoman. That glimpse roused no vanity in her, but considerable interest. The sense of personal power is always pleasant; no man or woman who is alive, in any sense of the word, will acquiesce in being a unit among units, or will fail to feel a delicate growing love of power. We brought nothing into the world, and we shall assuredly take nothing out; but while we are in the world, how we cling, with a persistence that no creed will shake, to the passionate desire for more and more and more. Eva was, in fact, on the threshold of the house called "Know Thyself." It is a house of varying size. To her it appeared large and well furnished.
They walked along the sea-wall westwards, and Eva sat down on the low balustrade. The air was still and windless, and forty feet below lay the smooth, grey backs of the rocks still shining with the salt water.
"What a frightful coward one is," she said, "not to throw oneself down and see what happens next. I always flatter myself that I'm brave; but I am not brave enough to risk anything, really. I think a year ago I might have thrown myself down if it had occurred very strongly to me, because I had nothing to risk. But now things are beginning to be interesting. I should risk a certain amount of amusement and pleasure if I just stepped over that wall. I wish you would step over and see, Mr. Armine; only that would be nogood, you couldn't come and tell me about it afterwards."
"Of course, lots of things are a bore," said he, "but I can't imagine any existence where that wouldn't be the case. I couldn't frame a life in my mind where one wouldn't be bored."
"Well, I sympathise with you. I probably am incapable—in fact, I know I am incapable—of many emotions, but I feel bored no longer. I used to feel nothing else."
Armine was sitting near her, looking the other way.
"What emotions can't you feel?" he asked suddenly.
Eva laughed.
"Oh! plenty, and perhaps the most important of all. That is why I fully expect not to feel all the emotions that Algiers should inspire in me."
Armine thought this remark much less inconsequent than it sounded, but he kept his reflections to himself.
Two days afterwards, Eva and her husband left Mentone for Marseilles. Jim walked down with them to the station, accounting for his action by saying that he expected a box from England, and it had not arrived, though it was two days overdue. To Eva this appeared the most shallow and unnecessary of subterfuges. There was some slight delay in starting, and hestood by their carriage window with his arms on the sill until the train moved.
Eva was leaning back in her corner, talking slowly but somewhat continuously.
"I hope your box will have come," she was saying with fine cruelty. "You must have been very eager about it to come down through these dusty streets, when you might be having a sail. I really thought you were coming to see us off till you explained about the box. I think I should have been rude enough to ask you to stop at home if it had been so. I hate being seen off. There is never anything to say; you feel as if you ought to make pretty little farewell speeches, but the farewell speeches always hang fire, I notice. And no one can continue an ordinary, rational, desultory conversation with fifty engines screaming at him. It is much better for everyone to pretend they are not going till the last moment, and then jump up quickly, say good-bye, and bundle into the cab. But at a railway station it is impossible to pretend you are not going. The apparatus of going is too obvious. Everyone is fussy and stupid at a station. Ah! we are really off, are we? Good-bye! I wish you were coming with us."
Eva smiled rather maliciously. The first impertinent remark had been settled with now, and they were quits again.
Jim Armine stood on the platform watching thesmoke of the receding train. He made a monosyllabic remark which is not worth setting down, and went back to the hotel. The box which he was expecting might languish alone in the parcel office for all that he cared.
The bridal pair crossed in one of the French Trans-atlantique steamers, which are built long and narrow for the sake of speed, and the accurate observation of the effect of a cross sea. Eva, with her serene immunity from human weaknesses, was sitting near the bows of the vessel, enjoying the warm, winter sun, and watched the great heaving masses of water, rushing up against the side of the vessel, with a sympathetic gladness in their glorious unrestraint. The position presented itself in a somewhat different light to her husband, who retired, under the influence of the same glorious unrestraint, with anything but sympathetic gladness in his heart. Eva felt a little contemptuous pity for him, but enjoyed being alone. It was drawing near that supreme hour when the sun just touches the horizon of water, and the depth of colour in southern sea and sky grows almost unbearable in its cruel fulness, in its air of knowing something, of being able to tell one, if one could only hear its message, some mystery that would make things plain. Eva was sitting on the windward side of the vessel, looking west, and her eyes were filled with a still, questioning wonder. She had arrived at that most agonising stage of feeling surethat a mystery was there, without grasping what it was to which she wanted any answer. Her mind was full of a vague wonder and expectancy—the wonder and expectancy of a mind just awakened from its dreamless sleep of indifference. One arm was thrown back, and her hand grasped the taffrail to steady herself. She had taken off her hat, and her hair was blown about in the singing breeze. The human interest which had begun to dawn in her, which had stirred and woke from its sleep with a sudden, startled cry, a few weeks ago, would not let the other wonder slumber. The sense of the eternal mystery of things watched side by side with the sense of the eternal mystery of men. But for this half-hour she was alone with it; she was unconscious of the heaving and tossing of the vessel; all she knew was that she questioned, with something like passionate eagerness, the great walls of wine-dark water with their heraldry of foam, the hissing monsters that rose and fell round her, the luminous miracle that was sinking in the west.
In the meantime, Lord Hayes had got, so to speak, his second wind, had emerged from the privacy of his cabin, and was walking along the deck towards her with a battered, dishevelled air. The punctuation of his steps was rigidly but irregularly determined by the laws of gravity as exhibited by a vessel pitching heavily in a fluid medium. Eva had not seen him coming, and he stood by her a few moments in silence.
"I feel a little better," he remarked at length, in precise, well-modulated tones.
Eva started and frowned as if she had been struck. She turned on him with angry impatience.
"Ah, you have spoiled it all," she cried.
She looked at him a moment, and then broke out into a mirthless laugh. He had wrapped a grey shawl round his shoulders, and on his head was a brown, deerstalker cap.
"My dear Hayes," she said, "you are in vivid contrast with the sunset, and you startled me. I was thinking about the sunset. However, it is nearly over now. You look like a sea-sick picture of twilight. That grey shawl is very twilighty. Come into the saloon and get me some tea."
That gentleman was in too enfeebled a condition to feel resentment, even if he had been by nature resentful. It is notorious that certain emotions of the mind cannot exist under certain conditions of the body. No normal man feels a tendency to anger after a good dinner, or a tendency to patience in the ten minutes preceding that function. No one feels spiritually exalted in the middle of the morning, or heroic when suffering from slight neuralgia, and I venture to add that no one has spirit enough to feel resentful after an hour or two of sea-sickness.
The villa at Algiers was a charming, Moorish house, with a predominance of twisted pilasters and shiningtiles, and bold, purple-belled creepers flaunting it over the white walls. It stood on the hills of Mustapha Supérieure, above the Eastern-looking town, surrounded by a rich, melodious garden, where the winter nightingales sang in the boughs of orange groves, which were bright with flower and fruit together, and where tall, listless eucalyptus trees shed their rough, odorous fruits thick on the path. But this soft beauty suited Eva's mind not so well as the bold, golden sun dropping into a wine-dark sea; in fact, she cordially detested the place. How much of her hatred was due to the fact that she was alone with her husband she did not care to ask herself. Certainly, the even monotony of one face, one low, well-modulated voice, was displeasing to her.
She found a malicious pleasure in giving him surprises. Her freshly-awakened interest in the human race sometimes took the bit in its teeth and ran riot, and, when it ran riot in his presence, she took no care to check it, but talked in a voluble, rather vicious vein, that startled him. For instance, at dinner one day, she had discussed certain books which he did not know women even read, and announced, somewhat vividly, views on life and being which were scarcely conventional. After dinner, they had sat out in the little passage that ran round the open square in the centre of the house, supported on twisted pillars, and Eva continued her newly-found confession of faith.
"Men seem to expect that women should be sexless replicas of themselves," she said. "All they would allow them is the inestimable privilege of being good. Virtue is its own reward, they say—so they cultivate their own pleasure with a fine disregard of virtue, and a curious pride in performing actions which certainly will lay up for them no store of virtuous and ineffable joy, while to the women they say, 'Be good; here is a blank cheque on the bank of Providence. The bigger the better.Au revoir.' A delightfully simple arrangement."
Lord Hayes gave a little cough, and added sugar to his coffee.
"I should always wish," he said, with the air of an after-dinner speaker; "I should always wish women to fulfil to the uttermost their own duties, which none but women can do."
"The duty of being good," said Eva. "Exactly so."
"I fail to see the justice of your remarks about the tendencies of men to regard women as sexless replicas of themselves," he said. "The province of women is quite different from that of men."
"Ah! let me explain," said Eva. "Men are bad and good mixed. Whether the bad or the good predominates is beside the point. Leave out the bad, and introduce no vivid good, and you get the sexlessness, and what remains is a sexless goodness, which is, as Isay, the sexless replica of the man. That is a man's woman."
"No doubt it is my own stupidity," said Lord Hayes politely, "but I still fail to agree with you. You do not take into account what I ventured to call the province of women, which, I say again, is quite different from the province of men."
"Da capo," murmured Eva. "Let us agree to differ, Hayes. I am rather sleepy; I think I shall go to bed."
Lord Hayes lighted a candle for her, and waited till it had burned up.
"Good-night," said Eva, nodding at him.
He bent forward to kiss her, and, as before, she surrendered her face to be kissed.
The length of these episodes calls for an apology, but there is just this to be said. Life, for most of us, consists of episodes, of interruptions, of parentheses. We can few of us keep up the epic vein and go sublimely on, building up from great harmonious scenes a great harmonious whole. The scene-shifter perspires and tugs at his mighty cardboard trees and impossible castles in the forest; they are stiff, they will not turn round. And he sits down—does this irresponsible and wholly unbusinesslike scene-shifter—and meditates. After all, is life really surrounded by these giants of the theatrical forest? Do we go into remote and virgin woods and chant our love in irreproachable epics?When we have made our great scene, when we stand in the pure, unselfish, heroic, villain-massacreing, devoted climax of our existence, are we quite sure that some one will throw the ethereal oxy-hydrogen light on to us at the right moment? Will the audience recognise how great we are: and, even if they do, will not the slightest accident with the oxy-hydrogen light turn our climax into an ante-climax? The irresponsible scene-shifter begins to see a more excellent way. Roll off your forest trees; send the manager of the oxy-hydrogen light home, give him eighteenpence to get drunk on—he will like it better than your heroic vein—let us have no scenery even. Just a few chairs and tables, a plain, grey sky, and no herpics. A few little episodes dealing of men who are not saints or silver kings, a few women who are not abbesses or Portias, who are in no epic mood, but in the mood of the majority of weak, unsatisfactory, careless, human beings, who can be unselfish and pure, but who are at times a little uncertain about the big riddle, unscrupulous, unkind, worldly. Besides, we are only in the first act at present. Perhaps the gigantic forest trees and the white light will come on later, but we do not promise. The irresponsible scene-shifter is right. So much, then, in praise of episode.
To return from the point at which we started before these unconscionable episodes found their way into the text, the honeymoon was over, the month wasApril, and Lord and Lady Hayes had returned to England. They were to spend a few days at Aston, and, after Easter, to go straight up to London. Old Lady Hayes was staying with her niece, who had married a certain Mr. Davenport, and had one son. Reggie Davenport was a favourite with the dowager, who bullied him incessantly, and who sometimes got furious, because he never lost his temper with her. She was to spend a fortnight in London with the Hayes, as a great concession, in order to make Eva's acquaintance, and would join them as soon as they had settled. It may be stated at once, that she regarded her son's marriage as a most unprincipled and selfish act, and as an insult levelled directly at herself.
Mrs. Grampound came up to see her daughter on the first day after their arrival.
"Your father would have come with me," she explained, "but he and Percy are away. I am quite alone at home. You are looking wonderfully well, dear, and I'm sure I needn't ask you whether you are happy?"
"Of course," said Eva, "those are the things that are taken for granted."
"I've come to have a little cosy talk with you," said Mrs. Grampound, settling herself in a chair and taking off her gloves.
A cosy little soliloquy would perhaps have been a more accurate description. She wandered on in a sortof pious intoxication at the contemplation of her daughter.
"The mistress of a great house like this has very great responsibilities, my darling," she said. "If dear James were not such a thoroughly able and upright man, I confess I should feel a wee bit nervous at seeing my darling whirled away into such a circle. Be very sure exactly how you are going to behave. There seems to me something very beautiful in the life of all those dear last-century, great ladies, whose husbands used to treat them with such charming old-fashioned courtesy, and lock them up whenever they went away, which must have been most tedious. Yes, and send a servant to tell the groom of the chambers to ask my lady if she would receive him. Dear me, yes."
"I don't think Hayes means to lock me up whenever he goes away," said Eva. "We haven't got a groom of the chambers, either."
"No, dear," said Mrs. Grampound; "I was just saying, wasn't I, that all that was changed. Husbands lounge in their wives' boudoirs now, and smoke cigarettes there. So much more human and natural. You don't mind the smell of smoke, do you, dear?"
"On the contrary," said Eva; "I smoke myself."
"Gracious, how shocking! What a wicked child. Of course, there's no harm in it, dear; lots of nice women smoke. I should not let Hayes know that. When a difficult time comes—there will be difficulttimes, of course, my Eva—there is no rose without its thorns—Let me see, what was I saying—ah! yes, those little indulgences, like letting a husband have a cigarette in the drawing-room every now and then, are very much appreciated. A little womanly tenderness," continued Mrs. Grampound, getting rather breathless, and volubly eloquent, "a little tact, a little wifely sympathy, just a look, the 'I know, I know,' which women can put into one little look, is all that is required to make those difficulties real advantages—concealed facilities, one might really call them; real renewals of the marriage vow; the rough places shall be plain, in fact, if we may use those words."
"We get on admirably together," said Eva; "he is most considerate for me, and most kind."
"I declare I positively love him," cried her mother. "Of course, in any case, I should teach myself—should compel myself—to love the man of your choice, but the first time I saw him, I said to myself, that is the husband for my Eva. It was one June evening," continued Mrs. Grampound with an impressional vagueness, "and we were dining somewhere, I can't remember where, and he was there too; dear me, I recollect it all as clearly as if it was yesterday. I remember old Lady Hayes telling us all that brown sherry was rank poison, and that she would as soon think of drinking a glass of laudanum. We all laughed a great deal, because our host had very famous brown sherry."
"It must have been very pleasant," said Eva.
"Dear old Lady Hayes," said Mrs. Grampound; "such a wonderful woman, such strong, shrewd common sense; I wonder if she will go on living with you, Eva? I don't think it's a very good plan myself—there is sure to be some little unpleasantness now and then."
"In spite of her strong, shrewd common sense?" asked Eva.
"Dear child, how you catch one's words up! Of course, her presence would be invaluable to you, if she stopped, and with such a guest constantly by you, of course you would learn a great deal. But I should make it quite plain what your relative positions must be. You are the mistress of the house, Eva; she is your husband's pensioner. Be very kind, very courteous, but very firm. Your rights are your rights. I daresay she will go to live at Brighton or Bournemouth or Bath, all those watering-places begin with a B; no doubt she has money of her own. You didn't think of asking Lord Hayes what would be done about that, did you, Eva? You might suggest it very gently and feelingly some time soon. Of course, you needn't express any opinion till you see what she is likely to do. Then, if it appears that she is proposing to live with you, just say very quietly that you will be very glad to have her. That will show, I think, that you know and are ready to insist on her occupying her proper positionin the house. And you went to Algiers, did you not?" continued her mother; "that dear, white town set like a pearl and all that on the sapphire sea. I forget who said that about it, but it seems to me a very poetical description. I could almost find it in my heart to envy you, dearest."
"Yes, it's a very pretty place," assented Eva.
"Darling, why do you tell me so little," said Mrs. Grampound, more soberly. "I have been thinking so continuously about you all the time you have been away; you have lived in all my thoughts. I have said to myself, 'Eva will be at home in four weeks, three weeks, two days, one day; to-day I shall see my dearest again.'"
"What is there to tell you?" said Eva, slowly. "You assume I am happy, and I don't deny it. I am also amused and interested. I find things very entertaining. If you like I will show you some photographs of Mentone and Algiers. I lost two thousand francs at Monte Carlo. Hayes is very generous about money matters, and he has the further requirement of being very rich. He is bent on my being magnificent, and so, for that matter, am I. You shall see some fine things. I have, as you told me before my marriage, great natural advantages in the way of beauty. Diamonds suit me very well, and I have quantities of diamonds."
Poor Mrs. Grampound's mental intoxication waspassing away rapidly, leaving behind a feeling of depression. At no time did her thoughts present themselves to her with distinctness; they were like seaweeds waving about close to the surface of the water. Sometimes, after a big wave had passed, sundry little ends of them appeared above the sea for a second or two, and Mrs. Grampound made anxious little grabs at these before they disappeared again. Consequently, her descriptions of them, as reflected in her conversation, were somewhat scrappy and inorganic.
She appeared, in the short silence that followed Eva's remarks, to have got hold of a new sort of sea-weed—a bitter, prickly fragment. At any rate she said, somewhat piteously,—
"Eva, Eva, tell me you are satisfied. You don't blame me, do you, for urging it on you?"
Eva could be very cruel. The foam-born Aphrodite, when she came "from barren deeps to conquer all with love," had, we may be sure, many undesirable suitors, and to these, I expect, she did not show any particular kindness or sympathy. She was, to judge by her face, too divine to be cruel in petty, irritating ways, but she was too divine not to be very human.
Eva raised her eyebrows.
"Why should I blame you? I am amused and interested. After all, that is more important than anything else. Surely I ought to be grateful to you. But to speak quite frankly, I did not marry to please you;I married to please myself, and Hayes, of course," she added.
Mrs. Grampound was very nearly shedding a few vague tears, but the appearance of Lord Hayes made her decide to postpone them.
"My charming mother-in-law," he said, "I am delighted to see you. Very much delighted, in fact. And am I not to see my father-in-law? How do you think Eva is looking?"
"Eva is looking wonderfully well," said she briskening herself up a little. "She has been giving me the most delightful accounts of your honeymoon. Mentone, Algiers, all those charming, romantic places. But Monte Carlo! Really, I was shocked. And Eva tells me she lost two hundred thousand francs—or was it two thousand, Eva? In any case, it is quite shocking, and I feel I ought to scold you for leading my child into bad ways."
"He didn't lead me," said Eva. "I went by myself. I think you remonstrated, didn't you, Hayes? You didn't play yourself, I know. However, I got a good deal of fun out of it. It was really exciting sometimes. After all, that is the chief thing. Two thousand francs was cheap. Tell mother about the new villa. I must go—I've got a hundred things to do."
Old Lady Hayes also made inquiries of her son as to what was to happen to her. She was a direct old lady, and she said,—
"And what is to become of me?"
Lord Hayes quailed under these unmasked batteries and felt most thankful that he would not have to meet them alone any longer. He had great confidence in Eva's courage, and felt that she would be quite up to the mark on such occasions. But he had, for the present, to trust to his own forces, and, with the idea of making the scene as little unpleasant as possible, he replied,—
"Of course, dear mother, you will do whatever suits you best. Your position in the house will necessarily be somewhat changed."
"Necessarily," said Lady Hayes.
Her son found no pertinent reply ready.
There is something peculiarly substantial and English about those houses which our aristocracy brighten with their presence, in the more fashionable parts of London, during several months of the year. Those lords of the earth, who cannot manage to breathe unless they have a thousand or more acres round their houses in the country, being sensible folk, are content to live, shoulder by shoulder, in rows of magnificent barracks, when they are in London. A porch supported byIonic pillars, with a line of Renaissance balustrade along the top, a sprinkling of Japanese awnings, a couple of dozen large, square windows looking out on to what is technically known as "the square garden," partly because it is round, and partly because it is sparsely planted with sooty, stunted bushes, scattered about on what courtesy interprets to be grass, and surrounded by large, forbidding railings, are the characteristics of the best London houses. They may not be distinguished by any striking, artistic beauty, but they are eminently habitable.
Along one of these rows, one June afternoon, a smart victoria was being driven rapidly. It was hung on the best possible springs, and the wheels were circumscribed with the best possible india-rubber tires. A water-cart had just passed up the street, and the air was full of that indescribable freshness which we associate in the country with summer rain, and which, in London, makes us feel that art is really doing a great deal to rival Nature. The progress of the well-appointed victoria was therefore as free from noise, jolts, and dust as locomotion is permitted to be in this imperfect world. There was only one occupant of this piece of perfection—for, of course, the coachman and footman are part of the carriage—and she was as perfect as her equipment. In other words, Lady Hayes was going home to tea.
The carriage drew up with noiseless precision at thecurb-stone, and Lady Hayes remained apparently unconscious of the stoppage till the powdered footman had rung the bell, and turned back the light crimson rug that covered her knees. Then she rose languidly and trailed her skirts across the pavement to the house. Above the porch was a square, canvas tent, with one side, away from the sun, open to admit the breeze, and Eva, as she passed upstairs, said to the man standing in the hall, "Tea upstairs, above the porch." This tent opened out of a low window in the drawing-room, through which Eva passed, and in which was sitting, as gaunt and forbidding as ever, her respected mother-in-law. That lady had grudgingly complied with the popular but misguided prejudices of London with regard to the skins wherewith the human animal clothes itself, but her stiff, black silk gown was as awe-inspiring as her grey, Jaeger dress and the boots with eight holes a-piece in them.
They had all been in London nearly a month, and the excellent old lady was living in a permanent equipment of heavy armour, with which to repel, assault, and batter her daughter-in-law. Eva, on the contrary, despised the old methods of warfare, and met these attacks, or led them, with no further implements than her own unruffled scorn, and a somewhat choice selection of small daggers and arrows, in the shape of a studied delicacy of sarcasm and polite impertinences. She resembled, in fact, an active and accomplished pea-shooter,who successfully pelted the joints of a mature and slowly-moving Goliath. The dowager glanced up as she entered. One of her laborious mottoes was "Punctuality is the root of virtue," and Eva, in consequence, held the view that punctuality is the last infirmity of possibly noble minds. She was quite willing to believe that her mother-in-law had an incomparably noble mind; she did not underrate her antagonist's strong points; in fact, her whole system was to emphasize them.
"Ah, you've come at last," said old Lady Hayes. "And pray, when are we to have tea?"
"I am late," said Eva. "I always am late, you know. Why didn't you have tea without me? Is Hayes in?"
"The servants have quite enough to do with the dance to-night without bringing up tea twice."
"Ah, that is so thoughtful and charming of you," said Eva, drawing off her long gloves. "The merciful man considers his beast. That is so good of you."
"And he considers his servants as well," said the dowager.
"Oh! I think servants are meant to be classed as a sort of beast. The good ones are machines, with volition; and if they are bad servants, of course they are beasts."
The dowager turned over the leaves of the current number of theLancetwith elaborate unconsciousness.
Eva finished taking off her gloves, and whistled a few bars of a popular tune.
"I don't know if it's customary for women to whistle now-a-days," said the old lady, for whistling, as Eva knew, was a safe draw, "but in my time it was thought most improper."
"Isn't there a French proverb—I daren't pronounce French before you—about 'we have changed all that?' That is a very silly proverb. It is the older generation who changed it themselves. They made their own system of life impossible. They reduced it to an absurdity."
The dowager, who spoke French with a fine Scotch accent, and knew it, finished buckling on, as it were, her greaves and cuirass, and presented arms.
"I confess I don't understand you. No doubt I am very stupid—I should like very much to know how we have reduced our life to an absurdity."
"I don't say the modern generation are not quite as absurd," said Eva, "but the difference is that they have not yet learned their absurdity. You see, the whole race of men, sinceb. c. 4004—that is the correct date, is it not?—have been devoting themselves to the construction of any theory of life which would hold water, and one by one they have been abandoned. The new theory, that nothing matters at all, has not yet been disproved, and considering that no theory hitherto has ever been permanent, it would be absurdto abandon this one till it is disproved in as convincing a manner as all its predecessors."
"I imagine that no previous age has ever sunk so deep in mere sensuous gratifications," said the dowager, lunging heavily.
"Ah, do you think so?" said Eva. "Of course, it is impertinent in me to try to argue the matter with you, as experience is the only safe guide in such matters, and you have experience of at least one more generation than I. But that seems to me altogether untrue. As we know from the Bible, desire shall fail, because it has been gratified to the utmost that human desire can conceive, I imagine. Well, I think desire has failed to a great extent. The men of your generation, for instance, and the generation before, drank so much port wine that this generation drink none. The daily three bottles that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers indulged in, has fulfilled the desire of port to the uttermost. No one gets drunk now. I don't think I ever saw a man drunk. They used to fall under the table, did they not? What a charming state of things! But it has at least produced a fastidiousness in us, which considers heavy drinking coarse and low.
"My father was a teetotaler, and so was my husband," said the old lady, rather wildly.
"I think that the habit of drinking in men," continued Eva, "is really the fault of the women; you, ofcourse, are an instance in point. Your husband was a teetotaler—surely, through your influence. If the men of the last generation were vile, the women, I think, were viler still. What is the word? Oh! yes, vicarious. The men sinned vicariously for the women."
"It is easy to speak lightly of the virtues of your forefathers," remarked the dowager; "much easier than to practice them yourself."
"Ah! you misunderstand me," said Eva. "Heaven forbid that I should speak lightly of them! Their virtues were as gigantic and as loathsome to them, as their vices are to me. They used to go to church with the most appalling regularity, and eat salt fish in Lent, and have their clergyman to dinner on Sunday, which meant no port wine to speak of. Of course, they made up for it by having a little quiet cock-fighting on Sunday afternoon, but you cannot expect perfection."
"Cock-fighting seems to me no more brutal than butchering hand-reared pheasants," said the dowager.
"Ah! that is the war-cry of people who don't know anything about shooting," said Eva. "The hand-reared pheasant comes over the guns at the height of about sixty feet, at forty miles an hour. I watched them shooting last year at home. There was a big wind, and Hayes missed seventeen birds in succession. Take a gun and try for yourself. Of course, you say the same thing about partridge-driving. You say the manly thing is to walk your partridges up instead ofhaving them driven to you. The truth is that one of the reasons why men go partridge-driving now is because it is so much more difficult than walking them up. Certainly Hayes's butchery of hand-reared pheasants was a most humane proceeding. Did you ever see a cock-fight?"
"Cock-fighting improved the breed," said the other, "though I disapprove of it entirely."
"Well," said Eva, "it killed off the weak ones. The survival of the fittest, of course. And we reap the benefits by having particularly large eggs to eat; at least, I suppose a stalwart chicken begins life in a stalwart egg."
Old Lady Hayes rose with dignity.
"I think tea must be ready," she said. "In fact, it is probably cold by this time."
"Time does pass so in conversation," said Eva, languidly. "Ah! they have sent some orchids. How nice and cool they look." She snapped off a spray of the delicate, cultured blossoms, and fastened them, in her dress. "I think tea is put in the room above the porch. I rather expect Jim Armine," she said, as she settled herself in a low, basket chair. "I wonder when the absurd custom of women pouring out tea will go out; why a woman should have that abominable trouble I cannot think. Of course, when tea was rather a rarity, a sort of up-to-date luxury, it was natural. The hostess gave her guests a smart little present."
Old Lady Hayes accepted the challenge. She said:
"It used to be held to be the province of women to be matronly and womanly and domestic. They were in their places at the fireside, at the tea-table, not in the smoking-room and in grand stands."
"I am referring to the manual labour of pouring out tea," said Eva; "but whatever the province of women may be, they seem to me to fill it very inadequately when their husbands go to bed drunk every night. It is such a comfort to know that your father and husband were teetotalers, for I can say these things without being personal. Your father was a Presbyterian minister, was he not? How do you call it in the dear Scotch language—meenister, isn't it?"
"He was a learned, upright man."
"How nice!" said? Eva. "I can add a meenister to my ancestry. Do you know who my great-grandfather was? He was a crossing-sweeper, originally, in New York. Then he went West, you know, and, being 'cute, made a pile."
"You have very distinct traces of your American origin," said the old lady with asperity.
"And you of the dear Scotch talk," said Eva. "I always like the Scotch so much. They are so honest and sterling and serious. Hoots, mon!" she added meditatively.
The dowager took a second cup of tea. She had been accustomed to consider tea as a destructive agentin the days of seven o'clock dinner, but as Eva refused personally to dine till half-past eight, she found that, though perhaps destructive, it was less unpleasant than pure inanition. She had enunciated some startling warnings as to what would happen to people who dined at half-past eight earlier in her sojourn in London, and Eva had told her, with great courtesy, that she was quite at liberty to dine at seven or half-past six, or six if she liked, but she was afraid that her daughter-in-law would be unable to share the meal with her. Whether her mother-in-law's constitution had become so strongly fortified by the use of drugs that she could now afford to play tricks with it, we are not called upon to say; at any rate, the half-past eight dinner had, at present, made no perceptible inroads on her digestive or vital powers.
Eva had finished tea, and proceeded to light a cigarette.
"After our dreadfully keen encounter," she explained, "I want soothing. Argument is very trying to the nerves. Tobacco, on the other hand, is eminently soothing. Permit me to soothe myself."
Old Lady Hayes watched these proceedings through eyelids drooped over vigilant, irritated eyes.
Eva's whole personality was radically abhorrent to her. Her complete modernity seemed to her an epitome of all that is unsuitable to woman. Even her best points—her extreme tolerance, her cold purity—wererepugnant, because they were the outcome of what she considered a wrong principle. Tolerance, according to the old lady's code, was the fruit of charity—Eva's tolerance was the fruit of indifferences. In the same way, the purity, the utter stainlessness of Eva's mind was the result of fastidiousness, which, according to the other, was the sinful opposite of charity. Purityviafastidiousness, not morality, was to her the fig on the thistle, the grape on the thorn, which, however excellent in itself, could not be good because it must partake of the nature of its parent stem.
"Of course, I know how utterly you must disapprove of me," continued Eva with sincerity; "my whole system, or rather want of system, of life, must seem to you to be utterly inexcusable. Life is a complicated business and rather tiresome at the best. It is continually fractious and annoying and irritating. Its whole object seems to be to make one angry. But my plan is to bear with it; to treat it as a tiresome child, not to let it irritate and annoy me, to avoid all possible collisions with it—and, to do all this, you mustn't be serious or too particular."
"I was brought up to believe in moral responsibilities," said the old lady, "in some idea of duty, in a notion that it was not our mission simply to amuse ourselves and disregard others."
"Just so," said Eva; "that illustrates very wellwhat I mean by reducing things to an absurdity. Duty dominated everything, and the port wine affairs were merely regarded as interludes. Of course, if men are brought up to believe in these ponderous responsibilities, they must have interludes. We have done away, or rather you made it inevitable that we should do away, with responsibilities and interludes alike."
"And not unnaturally you have nothing left."
"Quite so. We are human beings who find themselves in a state of consciousness, and a state of consciousness demands that you should do something or think something. We fulfil those demands to a certain extent, but we do not make a mumbo-jumbo of them. You see there have always been a certain number of people with a desire to do certain things—to be kind, to be respectable and reasonable; and a certain number of these have a tendency—we all have tendencies—to construct a theory about what they do. They have, to begin with, a genius for doing their duty, and doing your duty is an unremunerative occupation in this wicked world. Then there comes in their inexorable need of making a theory. Duty is unremunerative here, but amusing oneself is remunerative. Therefore there must be a place and a time when the balance is struck, when to have done your duty is remunerative, and not to have done your duty is unremunerative; and the Paradiso and the Inferno are already made."
The blood of all the clans was up.
"Do you mean to say," gasped the dowager, "that you deny the existence of—'
"Ah, my dear lady," said Eva, "do not let us say things we shall be sorry for afterwards. I deny nothing, and I affirm nothing. I am only pointing out that many people do deny and affirm a great many things. The fault lies with them. If they had affirmed nothing, and denied nothing, would the fact that I did the same seem so horrible to you? Would you have evolved all your system of denials and affirmations out of your own inner consciousness?"
This was a little too much. Old Lady Hayes surged up out of her chair and confronted her.
"You believe nothing—you fear nothing—you love nothing. All you care for, are your wretched little hair-splittings about tendencies, and the modern view of life. When you call my beliefs superstitions and inventions, you think you have annihilated them."
"Excuse me," said Eva, "I have no wish to annihilate them, nor do I pretend to do so. I wish I shared them. It must make everything so very easy if it is labelled right or wrong; if every choice is like a cross road with a sign-post, 'Heaven and Hell.' It must be so like those little allegories about children with bare feet walking along a dusty road, with flowers by the side, and lions and tigers hiding among the flowers. Having read the allegories, of course, you know that if you only keep to the road, it will soon become flowery,and beautiful boots will mysteriously grow on to your feet. And you have the inestimable satisfaction of seeing the lions and tigers gnawing at the bones of the people who go to pick flowers, and of reflecting that not only do they have no beautiful boots, but that the lions and tigers have eaten them up, so that the beautiful boots would be no use to them even if they had them. No doubt you expect me to be seized upon soon, and eaten. It must be very unpleasant. I notice that you never go to help them; you are too much occupied in walking along your tight-rope road."
"This is mere burlesque."
"And who is the author of this burlesque?" asked Eva.
"Perhaps it is another characteristic of your generation to ridicule the most sacred beliefs of others," she replied. "I should have thought any code of good manners would have forbade that. Jews take off their hats when they come into a Christian church."
Eva rose without any show of haste or impatience.
"Au revoir," she said. "You will excuse me, I know. I have half-a-hundred things to do."
She went through the open window into the drawing-room. As she passed the head of the stairs, she saw a well-known figure coming up, preceded by a footman.
"Ah, Jim," she cried, "how late you are. Come to my room. I have been discussing religious questions with my mother-in-law, and, well—and so we parted in more senses than one. Have you had tea? No? Bring Mr. Armine some tea to my room."
"She's rather a powerful old lady, isn't she?" asked Jim, who, since the Hayes' return from abroad, had managed to establish himself on a fairly intimate footing.
"She has been abusing me with immense power and vigour," said Eva. "I am the incarnation of all that is horrible in her eyes. The one incomprehensible thing to that generation is this generation."
"The converse holds, too," said he.
"No; I understand them perfectly. Their nature is the basis of ours; we are the heirs of all previous ages, just as they were. The later development has incorporated the earlier, but it is contrary to the nature of the earlier to understand the later. Just in the same way, I understand what I was a year ago, though, if I saw now what I should be in another year, it would probably be incomprehensible to me."
"I shouldn't have thought you would change much."
Eva took a book from a small table near her, and opened it with a quick, dramatic movement.
"It is like that," she said. "Whether I have changed, or only discovered, I don't know. But ayear ago the book was shut, and now I have read the first chapter."
"At any rate, you have some ideas about the last chapter, then; I suppose all the characters have come on the stage?"
"Ah! but who can tell what will happen to them? No character can be uninfluenced by circumstances. If it is a book worth reading, they will have altered by the end. Circumstances have led me to open the book, they will determine my subsequent career; and circumstances, in the shape of gout or cancer or something, will make me close it."
"Is it interesting reading?"
Eva looked at him, with a smile gathering on her mouth.
"Particularly interesting," she said. "I am sure you are interested too."
In the silence that followed, a tap came at the door, which was repeated, and Lord Hayes entered. He was irreproachably dressed in a black frock coat, with a fine gardenia in his button-hole. He was rather short-sighted, and blinked in the manner of a small, tame owl.
"I am sure I beg your pardon," he said; "but I tapped, and there was no answer, and so I came in."
Eva turned to him.
"It is of no consequence. Have you had tea?"
"I found some tea in the drawing-room, thank you. I am bound to say it was rather cold?"
"Have you seen your mother?"
"Yes; she was not cordial. Her manner implied that she had been a little upset about something. She is going to stay with the Davenports for a week, in Hyde Park Gardens, she said, before she goes down into the country. She has, in fact, determined to leave us on the day after to-morrow, instead of stopping till next week."
Eva pointed to a box of cigarettes.
"You may smoke," she said; "Jim, the matches are by you."
"A cigarette would be very refreshing," said Lord Hayes. "The heat and the noise have made me a little fatigued. And, I suppose, we shall be up very late to-night. My mother informed me she would not be present at our little dance."
"Not even at the cotillion?" asked Eva.
"The cotillion ought to be very pretty," said he. "I am satisfied with the appearance of the room. I sent word to Aston not to spare the choicest orchids. Have you seen the staircase since they put the flowers in?"
"Yes," said Eva; "it looks charming. I am much obliged to you for taking all that trouble."
Lord Hayes bowed.
"I am delighted," he said. "I am very glad youare satisfied. Princess Frederick is coming, is she not?"
"Yes," said Eva; "I met her this afternoon. I did not know she was in London. Of course I asked her."
"It will be very brilliant," said her husband, solemnly.
Jim Armine rose to go.
"You will be here to-night?" asked Eva. "We don't begin till eleven."
"The heat is getting very oppressive," said Lord Hayes, politely, as he opened the door for him. "The thermometer was standing at eighty-two degrees in the Window of White's."
Eva was sitting back in her chair, in an attitude that was common with her, with her two hands clasped over one knee. She had developed a great power of doing nothing; whether it was a survival of the days of the blank white page, or an effect of the change that had given her so much to think about, is doubtful; probably the habit of the first was adapted to the needs of the second. Life was interesting and amusing—a new book in a new language. She had found herself suddenly transplanted from a silent, pleasant garden to a crowded reception-hall. Her tastes did not lie in the direction of gardens; they seemed to her very monotonous. The beautiful but silent and weary-looking girl, who had been looked at and passed by, foundLondon a different place when she learned that the rows of eyes in the reception-room looked to her as a sort of center. There is nothing so inexplicable as the phenomenon called "the rage." The opera screamed and starved unheard for years in London, when suddenly the whole of London became aware that it was the most delicious thing in the world. It had been there all the time; it was advertised in the morning papers, but nobody cared. In the same way with Eva—she was living before, and she was living after; she had been advertised at balls and concerts, but the advertisement had been entirely unremunerative. Then a middle-aged peer had remarked that Miss Grampound seemed to him worthy of the highest compliment that a man can pay a woman, with the consequence that all London was of one mind that she was exactly what they had been looking for so long. Eva's head was not turned, nor was her heart touched, but the effect was that she became conscious of herself, and conscious of other people. Pygmalion had touched Galatea and Galatea sprang to life.
Pygmalion inevitably has the worst of it. When a whole race of men bursts almost simultaneously on one woman, it is not to be expected that she will single out one. They are all queer and interesting, some are attractive. Poor little Pygmalion may beat his breast in the corner and say, "It is mine, it is all mine," but no one will listen to him; least of all Galatea. His bestcourse is to keep on good terms with his handiwork, and be very polite and obliging. He is compelled to act as bear-leader to this incarnated stone, but he had better not allude to the time when he called her off her pedestal; and unless he is a fool, he will not try to put any finishing stroke to his handiwork. He let her have a soul, let him remember that he did not let her have it. The material is his, her flesh and blood, for he paid for it when it came from the quarries, but his possession ends there. The rest is hers and all the world's.
Lord Hayes sat down again on the chair he had just left, and repeated his remark about the thermometer at White's. Eva stifled a yawn.
"I suppose that was in the shade, was it not?"
"Oh, yes," he said; "in the sun the temperature would have been much higher."
"Your mother and I had a somewhat plain-spoken conversation this afternoon," she said; "I came in for a good deal of abuse."
"I imagined her sudden departure was owing to something of the kind," he said. "I am sorry it has occurred; personally, I always avoid quarrelling with anyone."
"It is a mistake," said she; "but if two people disagree, they must quarrel some time. Besides, I didn't quarrel with her. I was even amused, I am sorry to say."
"That is—if you will pardon my saying so—the surest method of quarrelling."
Eva looked at him gravely.
"You have admirable good sense," she said; "I always thought you had. But, after all, it is a good thing to be amused."
There are certain hours of the day which seem to exist only in England, and one of these is the hour before dinner in winter. We are quite certain that there is a certain time in all countries which is identical, according to the statements made by clocks and other clumsy contrivances, with this sacred time, but it is not the same thing. Where else in the world may we look for that sense of domestic comfort, that hour thought away before the fire, after a long day's tramp in the snow, or an afternoon on black, patient ice, that lends itself to be drawn and scribbled on by the ringing, clear-cutting skates? The hour is there, the pitiful, unmeaning sixty minutes, from half-past six to half-past seven, but it is a mockery, a delusion, with no more soul about it than a photograph or a bust. Let us look at the real thing.
Firelight—no candles, but bright firelight—enough to think by. A chair drawn up on to the hearth-rug, and two large feet resting on the fender. If you lookabout, you will see two evening shoes lying near, and, if you are human, you will sympathize with the impulse that led to their temporary want of employment.
The proprietor of these large feet is proportionately large. He has half-dressed for dinner; that is to say, a rough, Norfolk jacket takes the place of a dress coat and he has no shoes on. He has been out shooting all day, and got a very fair bag, with twelve woodcock among it, which is truth, not grammar. When he came in, after a bitterly cold and entirely satisfactory day, he drank no less than three cups of tea and ate an alarming quantity of muffins. Then, being still very cold and extremely dirty, he wallowed for a quarter-of-an-hour in a bath about as large as a small pond, and became warm and clean. Then he dressed for dinner, barring the dress-coat, came into the smoking-room, where he kicked off his shoes, lit a briar-wood pipe, and proceeded to spend the next half-hour in looking at the fire, enjoying the particular peace of mind which is inseparable from a sane mind and a sane body.
While he looks into the fire and finds entertainment there, we may as well take a look at the room and then at him. It is always a good plan to look well at anyone's room, for everyone leaves on a room they frequent a personal impress which is almost always infallible. An aquiline nose or a deep, dreamy eye are often the legitimate outcome of an ancestry with certaintendencies, which may have dropped out of existence in any particular case, though their corporeal stamp remains, but no Crusader or king of Vikings will be able to touch with their ghostly fingers the particular sanctum of any man or woman in the nineteenth century. Their portraits may frown down from the walls of the dining-hall, but the clank of their swords, the rhythm of their oars, is not heard in the smoking-room.
A table-cloth, betwixt and between the table and the floor, and half-a-dozen cartridges, which act as a drag on its slipping further, may be of too ephemeral a nature to lay much stress on, but they are indications which will be useful if borne out by confirmatory evidence. A book-case—that is better. Badminton on shooting, Badminton on hunting, Badminton on coursing, Badminton on racing, Badminton on fishing; let us not forget the six cartridges. A book upside down on the top shelf, with not more than forty pages cut—Robert Elsmere. Remember that. Four volumes of Dickens, bearing the mark of a well-spent and battered existence.Tess of the D'Urbevilles—not more than half cut, but the last six pages also cut. That also, in conjunction with the state ofRobert Elsmere, is distinctly important.Ravenshoe—signs of wear—in much the same state as Pickwick.Demosthenes' de Corona—dog-eared and filthy, with the meanings of many unpardonably irregular Greek words, I am sorryto say, written down in the margin in a minute hand. The utterly abandoned, dishevelled appearance of the rest of the book suggested that the extreme care with which these were written was not wholly owing to any reverential adoration of that immortal author. A small Greek Lexicon, from γ to ψ inclusive, also filthy, with several crude but vivid illustrations in red ink. A volume of Browning. Certain lyrical poems, with pencil marks by the side—a difficult factor, but not inexplicable.
Such were the habits, so to speak, of this room, to which we confidently hope to find a key in the habits of the six feet something of flesh and bone warming itself in front of the fire. Making all possible allowance for the deceptive character of appearances, we may at once hazard two epithets on him—well-bred and English. In spite of the thorough tanning his skin had undergone, you would be right in concluding that he was a pure Englishman, who had been subjected lately to a tropical sun; in fact, he had only been a fortnight in England. His name, to descend to less metaphysical matters, was Reginald Davenport, the son of a Mr. Davenport, who has been mentioned incidentally in this history as being the nephew, by marriage, of old Lady Hayes, and whose house the dowager had selected to be her ark of refuge, after she had been driven out, with loss, by Eva's criticisms on religion and the last generation. Eva had never seen her handsomeyoung connection, for he had been travelling for the last year, and only came back to England, as I have said, two weeks before we discovered him in the smoking-room—some five months after Eva had left London. He was a friend of Percy, Eva's brother; in fact, that gentleman was expected here this evening, to do murder and sudden death among the woodcock. And some one else was coming, who, to tell the truth, interested Reggie far more than any number of his other friends. Percy had intimated that he was in the habit of falling in love once a fortnight, and he had just done so to such good purpose that he was definitely and irrevocably engaged. These periodic fallings in love were slightly embarrassing, because the charming girls with whom he fell in love—he never fell in love with anyone who was not charming—sometimes fell in love with him; and the emotional atmosphere of his neighbourhood became extremely electrical and exciting.
On the whole, I feel inclined to risk another epithet in this preliminary skirmishing round Reggie. Yes—indubitably boyish. By boyish, I mean the power of enjoying life without thinking about it. Such a gift—the gift of serene receptiveness, of complete irresponsibility—is rare, fascinating and, at times, intensely irritating. The majority of ordinary work-a-day folk have, as Eva said, a certain capacity for doing their duty, and forming theories about it. Reggie knew noobscure idol called Duty, to which he owed obedience, but he was ruled by a quantity of cleanly, wholesome instincts, that made him honest, good-natured, lovable and affectionate. The worst of drawing your morality from the springs of your nature is that, if a mischievous hand gets to meddling with those springs, to diverting the course of the water, or, perhaps, putting a little piece of something not entirely wholesome in that clear fountain, your moral digestion is considerably disorganised. At the same time, an innate morality is productive of a more lively faith than a collection of dried plants from the gardens of other men's experience. They may be the same plants, but they are alive, not pressed and sapless.
Reggie never hazarded any guesses as to the answer of that Gordian riddle called life. The how, why and wherefore of existence cannot even be said to have been uninteresting to him—such questions did not exist for him at all. But, by virtue of an innate sweetness of disposition, he had an undoubted capacity for being content to live, and be nice to those in the same predicament of living as himself. Such natures are not often saddled with great mental gifts; but very often hold a great capacity for loving and being loved, with the restful love one feels for shady places on dusty roads, for the "times of refreshing" that are so divinely human. This gift is one which many children possess, and which few retain beyond childhood.It is dangerous, fascinating, dazzling, seductive and very unsettling, but it is very sweet.
This fathom of well-bred, boyish, English life was nearly asleep, but not quite. In fact, a very slight sound made him particularly wakeful, for it was a sound for which he had been listening—the sound of carriage wheels outside. He went quickly out of the room, and was in the hall before the front door was opened. Ah! well, the meeting of two young lovers is very pretty, but it has happened before.
Percy arrived in time for dinner, and when Mr. Davenport retired from the smoking-room soon after eleven, he left there the two young men, who did not seem inclined to go to bed. Reggie, in fact, had an alarming number of things to say, and he proceeded to say them with guileless straightforwardness.
"I am awfully glad you were able to come," he began; "I wanted you to see Gertrude very much. You must be my best man, you know. We're not going to be married yet; not for a year. You see, I was half-engaged when I went to India, and we settled to wait then for two years. Well, one year's gone, that's something."
"You're a detestably lucky fellow," said Percy, on whom a charmingly pretty and thoroughly nice girl had made her legitimate impression.
"Oh! I know I am; detestably lucky, as you say. Doesn't she sing beautifully, too? Hang it all, I won'ttalk about it, or else I shall go on for ever, and it's rather dull for you."
Percy laughed.
"Oh, don't mind me. I'm very happy. Pour out your joyful soul, but pass me a cigar first."
"Cigars!" said Reggie. "I really had quite forgotten about smoking. That's what comes of being in love. Really, old fellow, you had better fall in love as soon as you possibly can. Depend upon it, there's nothing like it. Here, catch!"
Reggie chucked a cigar case across to him.
"Have you seen your new cousin yet?" asked Percy.
"Who? Oh, Lady Hayes. No, I haven't. She's perfectly lovely, isn't she?"
"Eva has always been considered good-looking," remarked the other solemnly.
"I don't particularly care for Hayes himself," said Reggie. "He's so awfully polite and dried up. But I expect your sister's made him wake up a bit. I want to know her. Where is she?"
"They're abroad again, at present. Jim Armine's with them."
"Jim Armine?" said Reggie, doubtfully. "That pale chap with a big place in Somersetshire?"
"Probably the same. I don't know why Eva likes him so. I can't bear him."
"He's an oily sort of fellow," remarked Reggie,frankly. "But lots of women like him. He's too clever for me. I'm awfully stupid, you know."
"They met him abroad on their honeymoon," said Percy, "and he hung about a good deal, I fancy."
"I'm blowed if I'll have another man hanging about on my honeymoon," said Reggie.
"No; I don't suppose you will. It does seem one too many to the unbiassed mind. Rather like the serpent in paradise, who was certainlyde trop."
"What serpent?" said Reggie, who was obviously thinking of something else. "Oh, I see, the devil, you mean."
"No, I didn't mean the devil exactly; I meant any third person."
"We're going shooting to-morrow over the High Croft," said Reggie, after a pause, in which he had determined, by a rapid mental process, that he was unable to initiate any more statements on the subject of the serpent, "and Gertrude and mother are going to bring us lunch. You and father will have to shoot alone after lunch; I'm going to drive on with Gertrude, just round about and home again."
Gertrude Carston certainly seemed a most desirable partner for Reggie; they were really both of them detestably lucky people. She had considerable beauty, of a large, breezy order; she was quite as adorably child-like as he, and showed quite as few signs of any tendency to grow up. She was fond of hunting, lawn-tennis,animals, loud hymns, anything, in fact, of a pronounced and intelligible stamp; she was quite ridiculously fond of Reggie, and they both behaved in the foolish, delightful manner in which people in such a predicament do behave. They had both settled to get up early the next morning and have a short walk before breakfast, which was not till a quarter to ten, but in the morning they both felt it quite impossible to do so, and came down feebly a few minutes after the gong had sounded, and pretended that they had been up an immense time waiting for the other, till that particularly flimsy falsehood broke down, and they both laughed prodigiously. It was obviously a good, honest love-match; for each of them only the other existed, in no ethereal, mysterious form, but simply as a capital, honest human being, lovable in every part. There were no regrets, no unsatisfied longings, no sentimental, half-morbid affection that was exacting or jealous. Love, like Janus of old, is a two-headed god. On some he smiles, to others his eyes are full of strange, bewildering doubts; on his lips there is a smile that is half a sigh, that wakes at times a tumultuous happiness, a bitter aching at others, and never brings content. That love may be more complex, more worthy of the agonised questionings with which men and women have worshipped him, more deserving of the reproach, the longing, the dread, the reviling, that has found its expression in bitter verses and heart-broken epigrams, but thesimple, smiling face is there for some to see, and those are blest who see it. Their love may be on a lower level, but it is very sweet, and lies among pleasant gardens and by melodious streams; for such there is no mountain top, compassed about by heaven; earth lies about them, not beneath them, and for them there is no painful climbing, no bleeding hands or panting breasts, and perhaps, at the top, nothing but clouds and cold, palpable mist.