by E. F. Benson
“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 well what 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 a year 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 tomorrow, 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 tonight. 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 tonight?” 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 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 bookcase—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, wit
h 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 toψ 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.