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