by E. F. Benson
“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 you are 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, found London 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 best course 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.”
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
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 look about, 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 certain tendencies, 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 fin
gers 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 of Robert 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 sorry to 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 handsome young 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 no obscure 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’t talk 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 see
m one too many to the unbiassed mind. Rather like the serpent in paradise, who was certainly de 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 the simple, 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.
