EVELYN scarcely went out at all next day. She paid a visit to some of the old furniture shops in the morning, which was a direction quite different from that in which she would be subjected to any painful meeting—and realised once more her husband’s simple maxim that there was great diversion in buying. She did buy within a certain range, expensive articles—things which she knew Madeline Leighton would covet but could not afford, with a kind of pleasure in the unnecessary extravagance which she was half ashamed of, half amused by when she realised it. The old marqueterie was solid and beautifully made, and had borne the brunt of years of usage; it was not a hollow fiction like the fabric of society which Lady Leighton and such as she expounded as unutterably vile, yet clung to as if it were the only thing true. Evelyn declared to herself that she would have no house in Chester Street. To cover up the old faded carpets with pretty Persian rugs, and make the dingy rooms fine with temporary fittings up which did not belong to them, was, like all the rest, a deception and disgust. The pretty things should be for her own house, where they would be placed to remain as long as she lived, where they would be like herself, at home. But except the time she spent in these shops, which was not very long, she did not go out all day. And she had, it must be allowed, got very tired of her own company, when in the afternoon the door was opened suddenly, and a servant appeared to announce some one, a young lady, about whose name he was very doubtful, for Mrs. Rowland. He was followed into the room by the slim figure of a girl looking very young but very self-possessed and unabashed, with an ease of manner which Evelyn was not accustomed to see in her kind. This young lady was dressed very simply, as girls who are not “out” (as well as many who are) are specially supposed to be. The grey frock was spotless, and beautifully made, but it was absolutely unadorned, and she had not an ornament or a ribbon about her to break the severe grace of her outline. But to make amends for this, she had the radiant complexion which is so often seen in English girls—a complexion not yet put in jeopardy either by hot rooms and late hours, or by the experiences of Ascot and Goodwood and Hurlingham; her hair was very light, not the conventional gold. She came forward to Evelyn with the air of a perfect little woman of the world. “I am Rosamond Saumarez,” she said, holding out her hand; “my father told me I was to come to see you.” Evelyn stumbled up to her feet with a startled sensation, bewildered by a visit so absolutely unexpected. The young lady took her extended hand, and shook it affably, then with a little air of begging Mrs. Rowland to be seated, like a young princess, drew forth for herself a low chair.
“He said I need not explain who I was, for that you would know.”
“Yes,” said Evelyn, “you must forgive me for being a little confused.”
“Oh, I dare say you were having a little doze. It is so warm; and don’t you find the noise soothing? There is never any break in it: it goes on and on, and puts one to sleep.”
“I don’t find it has that quality,” said Evelyn, half affronted to have it supposed that she was dozing. “It is strange for me,” she said, “to meet your father’s children. I knew him only as a young man.”
“Oh yes, I know,” said the young lady, nodding her head with an air of knowing all about it, which confused Evelyn still more.
“He told me he had two children, I think. Are you the eldest?” she asked almost timidly.
“Oh no, Eddy is the eldest: but I’m the most serious. I have got the sense of the family, everybody says. Eddy is with a crammer trying hard to pass the army examination; but he never will: he hates books, and is very fond of his fun. That may be natural, but you will agree that it is not very good for getting on in life.”
“I suppose not,” said Evelyn.
“No, certainly; and so much is thought of doing something now-a-days. I suppose father was not very much in the way of working when you knew him, Mrs. Rowland: and yet he is as hard upon Eddy as if he had done nothing but what was good all his life.”
“Your father is a very great sufferer, I fear,” said Evelyn, who had entirely lost her presence of mind, and did not know what to say.
“Oh no, not so much as you would think. Of course he’s very helpless: Jarvis has to do everything for him. But I don’t think he really minds—not so much as people would think. He likes to be pitied and sympathized with, and to look interesting. Poor father; he thinks he looks interesting; but perhaps you thought it went too far for that. Some people are quite afraid of him as if he might die on their hands.”
“Oh no,” cried Evelyn, faltering; “nobody would be so cruel; but it must be very terrible for you.”
“Well,” said Miss Saumarez, “we have been used to it a long time, it looks quite natural to us. But some people are frightened. It isn’t a thing, however, that kills, I believe. It may go on for years and years.”
“And you”—Evelyn felt that it was almost an irreverence to talk to this young lady as to a school-girl, but still it was to be supposed she was one—“you are still in the school-room, busy with lessons yet?”
“I don’t think I have ever been much in the school-room,” said the girl. “It has been rather difficult to manage my education. Father liked to have me at home when I was a little thing. I used to make him laugh. We tried several governesses, but they were not very successful; either they preferred to take care of him or they quarrelled with me. I don’t think I was a very nice child,” said Miss Rosamond impartially. “It wasn’t a good school, was it, to have all kinds of pettings and bon-bons because I was funny and could make him laugh, and then turned out, as if I had been a little dog, when he was cross.”
“My dear!” said Evelyn, dismayed.
“Oh, I am afraid you think me awful,” said Rosamond, “but really it is all quite true.”
“It is a long time since I was a girl like you,” said Mrs. Rowland, “and we were not allowed to be so frank and speak our mind; that is the chief difference, I suppose.”
“Oh, I have always heard from all the old ladies that I am dreadful. But certainly the thing we do now-a-days is to speak our mind—rather a little more than less, don’t you know. We don’t carry any false colours, or pretend to pretty feelings, like the girls in the story-books. What humbugs you must have been in your time!”
“I don’t think we were humbugs,” said Evelyn. She was beginning to be amused by this frank young person, who made her feel so young and inexperienced. It was Evelyn who was the little girl, and Rosamond the sage, acquainted with the world and life.
“Father says so; but then, he thinks all people are humbugs. He says we really can think of no one but ourselves, whatever we may pretend.”
“But you mustn’t believe in that,” said Evelyn. “It is a dreadful way of looking at the world. Nobody can tell how much kindness and goodness there is unless they have been in circumstances to try it, which I have. You must not enter upon life with that idea, for it is quite false.”
“What! when father says so? Oughtn’t I to believe that he knows best?”
“Oh, when your father says so!” said Evelyn, startled. “My dear, I don’t think your father can mean it. He may say it—in jest——”
“Oh, don’t be afraid, Mrs. Rowland,” cried the girl, cheerfully. “I don’t take everything he says for gospel. He’s a disappointed man, you know. He never got exactly what he wanted. Mother and he did not get on, I am told: and there is every appearance that Eddy will be a handful, as I suppose father was himself in his day. And then he’s paralysed. That should be set against a lot, shouldn’t it? I always say so to myself when he is nasty to me.”
“I am very glad that you do,” said Evelyn, with tears in her eyes. “It should indeed stand against a great deal. And as you grow older you will understand better how such dreadful helplessness affects the mind——”
“Oh,” cried Rosamond, breaking in, “if you think there’s any softening of the brain or that sort of thing, you are very very much mistaken. If you only knew how clever he is! I have heard him take in people—people, you know, like my uncle the bishop, and that sort of person, with an account of pious feelings, and how he knows it is all for his good, and so forth. You would think he was a saint to hear him—and the poor bishop looking so bothered, knowing too much to quite believe it, and yet not daring to contradict him. It was as good as a play. I shrieked with laughter when he was gone, and so did father. It was the funniest thing I ever saw.”
“My dear!” cried Evelyn again, wringing her hands in protestation; but what could she say? If she had been disposed to take in hand the reformation of Edward Saumarez’s daughter, it could not be by adding to her unerring clear sight and criticism of him. “Do you see much,” she said, in a kind of desperation, “of the bishop?” with a clutch at the moral skirts of some one who might be able to help.
“Oh no, only when he comes to town. They don’t ask us now to the Palace, for I am sure he never can make up his mind about father, whether he is a real saint or—the other thing. Aunt Rose is the relation you know, not the bishop. It is by mother’s side, so they naturally disapprove of papa.”
Evelyn did not at all know how to deal with this girl, who was so cognisant of the world and all its ways. Rosamond was even more a woman of the world than Madeline Leighton. She believed in less, and she seemed to know more, and her calm girlish voice, and the pearly tints of her infantine radiance of countenance produced upon the middle-aged listener a sensation of utter confusion impossible to describe. She asked hurriedly, with an endeavour to divert the easy stream of words to another subject, “Have you any friends of your own age, my dear, to amuse yourself with?”
“Oh plenty,” said Rosamond, “quantities! There are such crowds of girls; wherever one goes, nothing but women, women, till one is sick of them. I have a very great friend whom I see constantly, and who is exactly of my way of thinking. As soon as we are old enough we both mean to take up a profession. I have not quite decided upon mine, but she means to be a doctor. She is studying a little now, whenever she can get a moment, and looking forward to the time when she shall be old enough to put down her foot. Of course they will try to forbid it, and that sort of thing. But she has quite made up her mind. As for me, I have not such a clear leading as Madeline. I am still quite in doubt.”
“Madeline,” said Evelyn. “I wonder if by chance that is Madeline Leighton whom I saw the other day?”
Miss Saumarez nodded her head. “But you must promise,” she said, “not to betray us to her mother. Of course we quite allow that we are too young to settle upon anything now. She is only seventeen. I am nearly two years older, but then, unfortunately, I have not the same clear vocation. And of course something must be allowed for natural hindrances, as long as father lives.”
“I hope you will never leave him,” said Evelyn warmly. “It is true I am old-fashioned, and do not understand a girl with a profession; but everybody must see that in your case your duty lies at home.”
“If anybody who was a very good match wanted to marry me,” said the girl with a laugh, “would you then think that my duty lay at home?”
Evelyn felt herself reduced to absolute imbecility by this bewildering question. “My dear—my dear—you know a great deal too much; you are too wise,” she said.
“But that’s not an answer,” said Rosamond; “you see the logic of it, and you daren’t give me an answer. You just beg the question. I must go away now; but father told me I was to ask you if I might come again.”
“If you care to come to such an old-world, old-fashioned, puzzled person as I am,” said Evelyn, with a troubled smile.
“I should like it, if I may. Father says you are the real good, and a great many people I know only pretend. I should like to know better what the real good was like, so I will come again to-morrow, if I may.”
“Come, but not because I am the real good. I am a very puzzled person, and you who are only a little girl seem to know a great deal more than I.”
Rosamond smiled, for the first time, a bright and childlike smile. She had smiled and even laughed in the course of her prelections as the same required it. But for the first time her face lighted up. “Oh, perhaps you will find there is not so much in me as you think,” she said, giving her hand to the middle-aged and much-perplexed person before her, after the fashion of the time. I forget what the fashion of the time was in those days. People had not begun at that period to shake their friends’ hands high into the air as if they were grasping a pump handle. Evelyn stood and looked after her aghast, not capable of sitting down or changing out of that pose while the girl went away. She crept out, half ashamed of doing so, into the balcony, to watch her as she appeared in the crowded road outside: and after a moment, Rosamond came forth, accompanied by a large mastiff, who performed several gambols of joy about her as she stepped out into the stream of people. Evelyn watched her going along, keeping, so to speak, the crown of the causeway, she and her dog giving place to no one. She was on her right side of the pavement, and to be hustled out of her course was an impossibility. Her strong, confident step, her half masculine dress, jacket and hat like those of a youth, were wonderful and terrible to the woman who had never moved anywhere without an attendant. She stared after this wonderful young creature with a bewilderment which almost took from her the power of thought.
Later in the day Lady Leighton came in, penitentially, and in a softened mood. “I was very silly to frighten you,” she said; “I can’t think what made me such a fool. I forgot that you were you, and not any one else. I was right enough so far as ordinary society goes, only not right in respect to Evelyn Ferrars.”
“Evelyn Rowland, doubly removed from your traps and snares of society,” said Evelyn with a smile.
“Well—be it so;—but I hope you are not really going to give up that delightful plan about the Chester Street house, because I was silly and spoke unadvisedly with my lips. If punishment were to come upon a woman for every time she did that——”
“No great punishment,” said Evelyn. “You will come and see me in my own house, and that will be better than seeing me at Chester Street—or not seeing me—you who have never a moment to yourself.”
“That is true. I never have a moment to myself,” said Lady Leighton. “I am going off now to St Roque’s to see about getting Mr. Pincem, the great surgeon, to look very specially after a favourite patient of mine: and then I must come back to Grosvenor Place to a drawing-room meeting: and then—but I can sandwich you in between the two, Evelyn, if you want to go over any of those houses again.”
“I don’t want to go over any of them again, thanks. I was quite satisfied with Chester Street if I had wanted any. Perhaps, however, I ought to let the people know.”
“Oh, never mind the people,” said Lady Leighton, “if you actually mean to give it up and throw me over; for it is me you ought to think of. And why? because I told you that Ned Saumarez, though he is paralysed, was as great a flirt as ever——”
“Don’t let us have it all over again,” said Evelyn, “I take no interest in it. By the way I have just had a strange visitor—his daughter, Madeline. She tells me that your daughter is her dearest friend.”
“His daughter? Oh, Rosamond! yes, she and Maddy run about everywhere together, and plot all manner of things.”
“Are you not afraid of their plottings, two wild girls together.”
“I afraid! oh dear, not I; they will probably both marry before they have time to do any mischief. That puts all nonsense out of their head. I know! they are going to walk the hospitals, and heaven knows what; relieve the poor and also see life. I never contradict them—what is the use? Somebody will turn up in their first or second season with enough of money and sufficiently presentable. And they will be married off, and become like other people, and we shall hear of their vagaries no more.”
“They will then have every moment occupied, and more things to do than hours to do them in, Madeline, like you.”
“Precisely like me,” said the woman of the world; “and an excellent good thing, too, Evelyn, if you would allow yourself to see it. Do you think it would be so good for me if I had more time to think? My dear, you know many things a great deal better than I do, but you don’t know the world. There are as many worries in a day in London as there are in a year out of it. That is, I mean there are in society, both in London and the country, annoyances such as you people in your tranquillity never can understand. I am not without my troubles, though I don’t wear them on my sleeve. I do what is far better. I am so busy, I have not time to think of them. There are troubles about money, troubles about the boys, troubles about—well, Leighton is not always a model husband, my dear, like yours. And it will be well for the girls if they do as I do, and don’t leave themselves too much time to think.”
“They seem,” said Evelyn, glad to turn the seriousness of this speech aside and not to seem curious (though she was) about her friend’s troubles, “to exercise the privilege of thinking very freely at their present stage. But this poor girl has no mother, and no doubt she has been left a great deal to herself.”
“I know you don’t mean that for a hit at me,” said her friend; “though you may perhaps think a woman with so much to do must neglect her children. Madeline is every bit as bad as Rosamond, my dear. They mean no harm either of them. They want, poor darlings, to work for their living and to see life. It is a pity their brothers don’t share their youthful fancies. The boys prefer to do nothing, and the kind of life they see is not very desirable. But by the blessing of Providence nothing very dreadfully bad comes of it either way. The girls find that they have to marry and settle down, like their mothers before them; and the boys—well, the boys! oh, they come out of it somehow at the end.”
And to the great amazement of Evelyn, this woman of the world, this busy idler and frivolous fine lady suddenly fell into a low outburst of crying, as involuntary as it was unexpected, saying, amid her tears: “Oh, please God, please God, they will all come through at the end!”
Mrs. Rowland was a woman who had known a great deal of trouble, but when she was thus the witness of her friend’s unsuspected pain, she said to herself that she was an ignorant woman and knew nothing. She had not believed there was anything serious at all, not to say anguish and martyrdom, in Madeline Leighton’s life. She held her friend in her arms for a moment, and they kissed each other; but Evelyn did not ask any question. Perhaps Lady Leighton thought she had told her everything, perhaps she had that instinctive sense that everybody must know, which belongs to the class who are accustomed to have their movements chronicled, and all they do known. For she offered no explanation, but only said, as she raised her head from Evelyn’s shoulder and dried her eyes, with a little tremulous laugh in which the tears still lingered, “I am as sure of that as I am that I live. If we didn’t think so, half of us would die.”
Not two minutes after this she returned to the charge again about the house in Chester Street. “Will you really not think of it again, Evelyn? It would be such a pleasure to have you near: and, my dear, I should never say a word about any Platonic diversion that amused you. On the contrary, I’d flirt with Mr. Rowland and keep him off the scent.—Oh, let me laugh: I must laugh after I have cried. Well, if you have decided, I don’t mind saying that you are quite as well out of Ned Saumarez’s way. Sending the girl to see you was a very serious step. And he is a man that will stick at nothing. Perhaps it is all the better that you are going away.”
“That is the strongest argument you could use,” said Evelyn, “to keep me here.”
“Perhaps that was what I intended,” said Lady Leighton; “but, dear, how late it is, I must go——” She had reached the door when she suddenly turned back. “What time did you fix for our visit to you, Evelyn? I must work it into our list. Without organisation one could never go anywhere at all. It must be between the end of October and the middle of December. Would the 10th November to the 20th suit you? or is that too long. One must be perfectly frank about these matters, or one never could go on at all.”
“It must be when you please, and for as long as you please, dear Madeline,” said Mrs. Rowland. She added, “I fear, you know, it will be rather dull I don’t know whether there is any society, and James——”
“I will put it down 10th to 15th,” said Lady Leighton, seriously noting this consideration. And then she gave her friend a hasty embrace, and hurried away.
How strange it all was! Evelyn felt as if she had peeped through some crevice behind the lively bustling stage, and suddenly seen what was going on behind the scenes. There had been little behind the scenes in her own life. It had been sad, but it had all been open as the day. And now, when she stood at the beginning of a new life, she had nothing to wound, nothing to make her reluctant that any word should leap to light, even that story of hers which had been so near tragedy, of which Edward Saumarez had been the hero. She almost blushed at the importance she had given that story, now that she had seen again the man who had been the hero of it. It seemed to lose all the dignity and tragic meaning which had been the chief thing in her life for so long.
While Evelyn was thinking this, a letter was put into her hand, in which her husband bade her do exactly as she pleased about the Chester Street house. “If you like to stay there for a little, my dear, and see your old friends, I shall like that best; and if you prefer to come home with me at once, and take possession of Rosmore, that is what I shall like best. It is for you to choose: and in the meantime I am coming back to town, to do whatever you like to-morrow night.”
To-morrow of the day on which the letter was written meant that very day upon which Evelyn received it. She had not pretended to be in love with her good middle-aged husband, she, a subdued middle-aged woman. But what a haven of quiet, and plain honest understanding, and simple truth and right she seemed to float into when she realised that he was coming back to her to-night.