The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  * * * *

  Eva woke next morning from that dreamless sleep which only quickens our capabilities for suffering, woke with a start of pain into the full consciousness of her unimaginable future. But the absence of her husband was at least a mitigation; she felt she could not stand any extra burden just then. But would this horrible emptiness never cease—would there come no assuaging of her agony? It is hard, directly after some severe shock has been sustained, to believe in the possibly healing powers of time—all we feel is that the impossible tomorrows and tomorrows will stretch away until death, and none will be less impossible than the last. And when one is young, strong, serenely healthy, that is a serious thought. Surely Eva was paying for her folly. And still she never reconsidered her decision; she still saw with undoubted clearness that Reggie, leaving herself out of the question, would eventually be happier with Gertrude; that, for him, there were pleasant places open on this weary earth, into which he would, in all probability, soon pass and leave her for ever. His best chance of happiness lay there, and herself she did leave out of the question utterly and fearlessly. There is something to pity, and perhaps, after all, there is something to praise.

  There is nothing so unbearable as this consciousness of force that cannot be converted into effort, or reach fruition. It strikes with an unavailing hand at the gateways of our soul, but it cannot pass out and fulfil itself. And to Eva the sensation was wholly new. The coldest, least human of our species are just those who throw themselves with the most irresistible singleness into the force which has thawed them, when that unthawing comes. When their long winter is passed, the sap streams more fully into its channels, than in those who live, as it were, in most temperate climates, where the sap never wholly quits the trees. And Eva had none on whom to spend the force of her late waking love. The one who woke it was gone—gone by her own will—and the stream had no other outlet.

  The hours passed wearily on till noon. After lunch she had calls to make, and about five o’clock she returned home to dress for a ride. Lord Hayes had not yet come back, and she left word that she would be in before seven. But the exercise, the sun, the meeting of half a hundred people she knew had its due effect, and made the horror of that empty house the greater. To her it was a house full of ghosts, of dead possibilities and living horrors, and it was not till much before eight that she dismounted again at her door. The gloaming was rapidly deepening into night, the lamps had already been lit, and the white star on her horse’s forehead glimmered strangely through the dusk. She asked the man whether Lord Hayes had returned, and learned that he had come back soon after she had gone out. They were to dine at the Davenport’s at a quarter to nine, and Eva went straight to her room to dress. Lord Hayes, the man said, had already dressed and was sitting in his room, writing. He had given orders that he was not to be disturbed. Eva had two minds as to whether she should go to the Davenports that night or not, but the desire to see Mrs. Davenport, to learn whether Reggie had really gone, and how he had received her note, were too strong. She would be wiser, she knew, to say nothing about him, but the craving of her nature took no account of wisdom.

  Half an hour later, she came out from her room, dressed for the party, faultlessly beautiful. She had put on the diamonds she had worn two nights ago at the opera, and they lay on her breast like a living embodiment of light. Just as she came out on to the landing, a man came upstairs to say the carriage was round, and she turned aside to go to her husband’s room to tell him.

  She opened the door, and to her surprise found the room was dark. Then she called him, but got no answer. The man who had announced the carriage was still standing on the landing, and she turned to him.

  “Where is Lord Hayes?”

  “His Lordship went into the room an hour ago, my lady,” he said. “I have not seen him come out. He is not in his dressing-room.”

  Eva stood for a moment with her hand still grasping the door, for the space in which a new thought may strike the mind. Her eyebrows contracted, and the diamonds on her breast were suddenly stirred by a quick-drawn breath.

  “There is no light in there,” she said. “Bring me a lamp quickly.”

  She waited in the same position while the man fetched a lamp.

  “Take it in there,” she said; “no, give it me.”

  The man followed her in.

  By the writing-table, with his face fallen forward on the paper, sat her husband. His arms sprawled on each side, and every joint was relaxed. Eva looked at him for a moment, and then touched him.

  “Hayes!”

  There was no answer.

  “Hayes, Hayes!” she said, raising her voice.

  She set the lamp down on the table, close to the thing that sprawled there, and, taking him round the shoulders, dragged him up off the table. But the head fell back over one shoulder, and the two hands rattled against the wood-work of the chair, as his arms slipped off his knees.

  “Quick, quick!” she cried to the man. “What are you standing there for? Don’t you see he is ill? Let the carriage go off to the doctor’s and bring him back. You fool, run! Send a man here at once!”

  Eva ran to the bell and rang it furiously. There was a sound of hurried footsteps on the stairs, and two men came running up.

  “Lord Hayes is ill,” said Eva. “Take him to his room, and lay him on the bed.”

  She could not bear to stop in the room to see that nerveless thing being moved, and went out to the passage, where her maid met her. The atmosphere of terror had spread through the whole house, and servants were running up.

  “Oh! My lady, what is the matter—is he dead?” asked that somewhat hysterical young woman, clasping her hands.

  Eva turned fiercely on her.

  “Nothing is the matter. What do you mean by saying that? Run downstairs and get some brandy. Quick! Do you hear?”

  The two men passed out close to Eva with their grim burden. She shuddered as they moved slowly along to the bedroom door. Then, after a moment she followed them. They had laid him on the bed, but, even in that attitude, the limpness was not that of a living man.

  “Leave me, wait till the doctor comes, and bring him up,” said she.

  When she was alone, she lit the candles and brought them near his face. She took up one of the open hands, and felt for the pulse, but found it not. Then, looking up suddenly, she saw her own face in the glass, set in a half circle of light from the diamonds on her neck. For a long moment she gazed, and then, setting the candles down, she unclasped the necklace, and dashed it on to the ground.

  BOOK III

  CHAPTER I

  Mrs. Carston was a widow, with only one daughter. She was a woman to whom querulousness had, by habit, become a second nature, but she had, as she often remarked, cause enough for complaint. Her husband, of whom she had been very fond, died suddenly, leaving her with one girl, a younger son, and less income than she could comfortably manage on. Then, two months later, her son died, leaving her alone with Gertrude. Her health, never very good, was much weakened by the double shock, and of late years she had become a habituée at Aix for four or five weeks every May, when there were plenty of English people there, with whom she used to talk gossip, and bemoan her unfortunate health.

  Gertrude managed to be very happy during the earlier part of that month. The enchanted valley, in which there falls not hail nor rain nor any snow, had a great charm for her, and she used to avail herself of the early morning hours, when her mother was undergoing her baths and douches and treatment, to wander far among the thick, dewy meadows, over which the mountains keep watch. She would pick great bunches of the early gentians and meadow sweet, and tall, tasselled grasses, and make their sitting-room bright with their wild, free beauty. The flowers sold in the market place had less attraction for her; they reminded her of towns, and she found it sweeter in the country. She had, too, at first, a very happy background to this pure joy of living, in the thought of Reggie. Ever since the winter, her love for him had been undergoing a sl
ow, steady change; it had deepened and widened imperceptibly from day to day, and, looking back on the early days of their courting, the hours now seemed to her to have been unmomentous and shallow, save that they held the germ which had ripened into this. And he was going to join them, as he had said, in a few weeks, and she felt she particularly wished to be with him again, in the way that she would be at Lucerne—away from his world and her world. Those quiet hours had for her in anticipation a glorious possibility. She would make Reggie feel all that he was to her, make him understand the new depths which she knew had been opened by her love in her nature.

  She did not usually see her mother till the twelve o’clock déjeuner, and one morning, about five days after their arrival, she had got up earlier than usual and walked down to the lake. The day before, Reggie’s letter, announcing Lady Hayes’s sudden desire to have her photograph, had arrived, and for an hour or two she had been filled with perplexing doubts, of which she felt ashamed. But her true and deep loyalty had soon reasserted itself, and she had chased them from her mind. She told herself that she was absolutely unjustified in ever letting the vaguest uneasiness rise into her thoughts. Whatever her feeling was, it had sprung from that irrational pique with which she had received Reggie’s remarks concerning Eva six months ago. She had then conceived in her mind a dislike and distrust for a woman she had never seen, and that weed she had allowed to grow until, just before she left London, she had refused to go to lunch with her for no reason at all. Decidedly it was time to pull the weed up.

  So she went out next morning feeling a wider happiness than ever. That act of loyalty was finding a full reward, and the meadows had never looked so green, nor the water so lovely, nor the background of her thoughts so satisfying. The post had not come in when she left the hotel, and the certainty of a letter from Reggie awaiting her return added its solid contribution to her happiness.

  The tall, graceful figure, walking swiftly along the poplar avenue out of the town, was very characteristically English. Several French women, as she passed through the streets, turned to look at her, wondering who was that English demoiselle, who walked so fast; why she was at Aix at all, and, above all, for what conceivable reason she should want to walk. But none of them failed to smile pleasantly when Gertrude gave them a “bon jour”; her face was so irresistibly happy and handsome, and they went back to their work smiling, and forgetting for the moment to scold Jean or Pierre for putting their dirty little fingers in the washtub.

  Gertrude got down to the lake while the sun was still behind the big range of hills to the east, though, looking back, she could see the tops of the mountains behind, and even the lower pastures beneath them touched by the new gold. She sat down on the landing-stage and watched the glory spreading downwards, till it reached the clear, white town she had left, and finally the sun itself swung into sight over the serrated outline of the eastern hills. The small, blue ripples tapped an invitation on the sides of the pleasure boats lying at anchor, and Gertrude determined to have a short row before going back. The boat-keeper expressed astonishment and dismay when he heard that mademoiselle proposed to row herself, but Gertrude stripped off the light jacket she was wearing and told him to get two light sculls, and, with a laugh, disdaining his outstretched hand, she jumped into the boat and pushed off.

  Life was very sweet that morning. She was going to write to Reggie and tell him to come very soon, before they left Aix, for it was a nice place, and he could row as much as he liked, and go for long walks, and there were horses to be had. As she paddled quietly along, she pictured herself here again with him in a week or two. He would be sure to come. Had he not said he did not care for London, and he did happen to care for her? She wanted her mother to know him too, for she had only seen him at present on fugitive visits, and her “ideas” about him were vaguer than Gertrude wished.

  The sun was already high when she landed again, but the dusty mile of road up to Aix was short in her anticipations. There would be a letter for her from someone she cared about, infinitely dear to her, but, as the advertisements often say, “of no value but to the owner.” So she walked up not feeling the sun, only conscious of an inward glow of happiness which nothing could touch.

  Yes—the post had come in, and the polite porter looked through the letters. Miss Carston? No; none had come this morning. “Was he quite sure?” Yes; but perhaps mademoiselle would like to look through them for herself. Mademoiselle did like to do so, and she went upstairs to see her mother, feeling that the doubts, which she had buried the day before, had celebrated a private resurrection on their own account.

  “Summer had stopped.” There are no words for it but those. Was the sky still as blue? Possibly, but not for her. And when the sky is not blue for us, it is noticeable that we do not care very much, even the most unselfish of us, whether it is blue for others or not.

  Gertrude, in fact, passed on the stairs a colonial bishop and his wife, whom she had been accustomed to make the sharers of her intense joy in its blue spring; but when the lady recorded her opinion that it was a lovely day, Gertrude felt that the remark was singularly ill-chosen.

  She found her mother upstairs, preparing to come down. It was one of her bad days, and Gertrude knew that even greater attention than usual would be required of her.

  “I have been wanting you ever so long—these two hours at least,” said her mother, as she entered. “I wish you could manage to think about me sometimes. But that is always the way. Invalids never matter. They can look after themselves.”

  Gertrude kissed her mother and took off her hat.

  “I am so sorry,” she said, “I went a longer walk than usual, right down to the lake, and had a short row. Did you have your massage earlier this morning? You are not usually ready till twelve, and it is not twelve yet.”

  “No, I had it at ten, as usual. Why should I have it earlier?”

  “I thought you said you had been waiting for me so long. However, here I am now. I won’t be out so late another morning. What did you want me to do?”

  “Mrs. Rivière met me at the bath,” said her mother, “and wanted me to go for a picnic this afternoon, and you. I think I shall go. I want a breath of fresh air; they are going up to the Monastery, on the far side of the lake. We shall have to dress up, I suppose. Princess Villari is going, and the Prince too, I think.”