There was a sound of talking outside just then, and a few minutes later Angelica herself came in with her father.
"Oh, you _darling!_ you _are_ a pretty boy!" she exclaimed, when she saw Diavolo, and then she went down on her knees beside him, put her arms round his neck, pulled him up, and hugged him roughly, an attention which he immediately resented. "Ah, I thought it was you!" he said, opening his eyes. "Good-bye, sweet sleep, good-bye!" Then he sat up, and, turning his back to Evadne, coolly rested himself against her knee. "I suppose we can have tea now," he said. "There"s always something to look forward to. Papa, dear, touch the bell, to save the Colonel the trouble."
Colonel Colquhoun laughed, and rang it himself good-naturedly.
"Diavolo!" Evadne exclaimed, pushing him away, "I am not going to nurse a great boy like you."
"Well, Angelica must, then," he said, changing his position so as to lean against his sister. Angelica laid her hand on his head, and her face softened. "Evadne _used_ to like to nurse me," he complained. "She"s not nearly so nice since she married. I say, Angelica, do you remember the wedding breakfast, when we agreed to drink as much champagne as the bridegroom? I swore I would never get drunk again, and I never have."
"Faith," said Colonel Colquhoun, "there are some who"d like to be able to say the same thing."
Some dogs had followed Angelica in, and had now to be turned out, because Evadne would not have dogs indoors. She said she liked a good dog"s character, but could not bear the smell of him.
"And how are the children?" Mr. Hamilton-Wells asked affably, when this diversion was over.
"There are no children!" Evadne exclaimed in surprise.
"Are there not, indeed. Now, that is singular," he observed. Then he looked at me as if he were about to say something interesting, but I hastily interposed. I was afraid he was going to speculate about the natural history of the phenomenon which had just struck him as being singular. He knew perfectly well that Evadne had no children, but he was subject, or affected to be subject, to moments of obliviousness, in which he was wont to ask embarra.s.sing questions.
"The weather is quite tropical," was the original observation I made. Mr.
Hamilton-Wells felt if the parting of his smooth, straight hair was exactly in the middle, patted it on either side, then shook back imaginary ruffles from his long white hands, and interlaced his jewelled fingers on his lap.
"You were never in the tropics, I think you told me?" he said to Evadne, with exaggerated preciseness. "Ah! now, I have been, off and on, several times. The heat is very trying. I knew a lady, the wife of a Colonial Governor, who used to be so overcome by it that she was obliged to undo all her things, let them slip to the ground, and step out of them, leaving them looking like a great cheese. She told me so herself, I a.s.sure you, and she was an exceedingly stout person."
The Heavenly Twins went into convulsions suddenly.
"Is that tea at last?" Evadne asked.
Colonel Colquhoun and I both gladly moved to make room for the servants who were bringing it in, and the conversation was not resumed until they had withdrawn. Then Angelica began: "I came to make a last appeal to you, Evadne. I want to tell you about a poor girl--"
"Oh, don"t break this lovely summer silence with tales of woe!" Evadne exclaimed, interrupting her. "I cannot do anything. Don"t ask me. You harrow my feelings to no purpose. I will not listen. It is not right that I should be forced to know."
"Well, I think you are making a mistake, Evadne," Angelica replied. "Don"t you think so?" looking at me. "She is sacrificing herself to save herself.
She imagines she can secure her own peace of mind by refusing to know that there is a weary world of suffering close at hand which she should be helping to relieve. Suffering for others strengthens our own powers of endurance; we lose them if we don"t exercise them--and that is the way you are sacrificing yourself to save yourself, Evadne. When some big trouble of your own, one of those which cannot be denied, comes upon you, it will crush you. You will have lost the moral muscle you should be exercising now to keep it in good working order and develop it well for your own use when you require it. It would not be worse for you to take a stimulant or a sedative to wind yourself up to an artificially pleasurable state when at any time you are not naturally cheerful--and that is what a too great love of peace occasionally ends in."
Evadne waved her ostrich feather fan backward and forward slowly, and looked out of the window. She would not even listen to this friendly counsel, and I felt sure she was making a mistake.
I only saw her once again that summer under Lady Adeline"s salutary influence. It was a few days later, and Evadne was in an expansive mood.
She had been spending the day with Lady Adeline, and the two had been for a drive together, and had overtaken me on the road and picked me up on their way back to Hamilton House. I had been for a solitary ramble, and was then returning to work, but Evadne said I must go back to tea with them: "For your own sake, because it is a shame to waste a summer day in work--a glorious summer day so evidently sent for our enjoyment."
"The greatest pleasure in life is to be in perfect condition for the work one loves," I answered; but I was settling myself comfortably in the carriage as I spoke, such is the consistency of man. But indeed it was not very difficult to persuade me to idle that afternoon. I had been inclining that way for weeks, under the influence of the intoxicating heat doubtless; and presently, when I found myself comfortably seated on the wide stone terrace outside the great drawing room at Hamilton House, under a shady awning, looking down upon lawns vividly green and lovely gardens all aglow with colour and alive with perfume, which is the soul of the flowers, I yielded sensuous service to the hour, and gave myself up to the enjoyment of it unreservedly.
Mr. Hamilton-Wells was there, making tea in the precisest manner, and looking more puritanical than ever. How to reconcile his coldly formal exterior with the interior from which emanated his choice of subjects in conversation is a matter which I have not yet had time to study, although I am convinced that the solution of the problem would prove to be of great scientific value and importance. I was not in the habit of thinking of him as either a man or a woman myself, however, but as a specimen of humanity broadly, and domestically as a husband whom I always suspected of being a sharp sword of the law, although I had never obtained the slightest evidence of the fact.
Lady Adeline was lolling in a low cane chair, fatigued by her drive, and longing aloud for tea; and Evadne was flitting about with her hat in her hand, laughing and talking more than any of us. She was wearing an art gown, very becoming to her, and suitable also for such sultry weather, as Mr. Hamilton-Wells remarked.
"I suppose you are a strong supporter of the aesthetic dress movement," he said, doubtless alluding to the graceful freedom of her delicate primrose draperies.
"Not at all," she answered, seating herself on the arm of a chair near Lady Adeline, and opening her fan gently as she spoke.
I was inspired to ask for more tea just then. Mr. Hamilton-Wells poured it out and handed it to me. "You take milk," he informed me, "but no sugar."
Then he folded his hands and recommenced. "To return to the original point of departure," he began, "which was modern dress, if I remember rightly"--he smiled round upon us all, knowing quite well that he remembered rightly--"that brings us by an obvious route to another question of the day; I mean the position of women. How do you regard their position at this latter end of the nineteenth century, Evadne?"
"I do not regard it at all, if I can help it," she answered incisively.
Mr. Hamilton-Wells dropped his outspread hands upon his knees.
"If I remember rightly," he said, "you take no interest in politics either. That is quite a phenomenon at this latter end of the nineteenth century."
"I have my duties--the duties of my social position, you know," she answered, "and my own little pursuits as well, neither of which I can neglect for the affairs of the world."
"But are they enough for you?" Lady Adeline ventured.
Evadne glanced up to see what she meant, and then smiled. "The wisdom of ages is brought to the training of each little girl," she said; "and to fit her for our position, she is taught that a woman"s one object in life is to be agreeable."
"You mean that a woman of decided opinions is not an agreeable person?"
Lady Adeline asked.
"Decided opinions must always be offensive to those who don"t hold them,"
Evadne rejoined.
"A woman must know that the future welfare of her own s.e.x, and the progress of the world at large, depends upon the action of women now, and the success attending it," Angelica observed comprehensively.
"Yes, but she knows also that her own comfort and convenience depend entirely on her neutrality," Evadne answered. "It is not high-minded to be neutral, I know, when it is put in that way; but a woman who is so becomes exactly what the average man, taken at his word, would have her be, and he is, we are a.s.sured, the proper person to legislate."
She looked at us all defiantly as she spoke, and furled her fan; and just at that moment Colonel Colquhoun joined us. He had come to fetch her, and his entrance gave a new turn to the conversation.
"It has been oppressively hot all day," he observed.
"Yes," Lady Adeline answered, "and I do so long for the mountains in weather like this."
"Oh, do you?" said Evadne. "Are you subject to the magnet of the mountains? I am not. I do not want to feel the nothingness of man; I like to believe in his greatness, in his infinite possibilities. I like to think of life as a level plain over which we can gallop to some goal--I don"t know what, but something desirable; and the actual landscape pleases me best so. The great tumbled mountains make me melancholy, they are always foreboding something untoward, even at the best of times; but the open s.p.a.ces, windswept and evident--I love them. I am at home on them. I can breathe there--I am free."
This was the natural woman at last, in her aspirations unconsciously showing herself superior to the artificial creature she was trying to be.
"I hate the melancholy mountains," the ever-ready Angelica burst forth. "I loathe the inconstant sea. The breezy plain for a gallop! It is there that one feels free!"
Colonel Colquhoun looked at Evadne meditatively, and slowly twisted each end of his heavy blond moustache. "I haven"t seen you riding for some time now," he said, "and it"s a pity, for you"ve a fine seat on a horse."
I was obliged to make up that night for the time lost in the afternoon, and the dawn had broken when at last I put my work away. I opened the study windows wider to salute it. A lark was singing somewhere out of sight--
Die Lerche, die im augen nicht, Doch immer in den ohren ist--
and the ripples of undecipherable sound struck some equally inarticulate chord of sense, and fell full-fraught with a.s.sociation. The breeze, murmurous amongst the branches, set the leaves rustling like silk attire.
Did I imagine it, or was there really a faint sweet perfume of yellow gorse in the air? A thrush on a bough below began to flute softly, trying its tones before it burst forth, giving full voice to its enthusiasm in one clear call, eloquent of life and love and longing, and all expressed in just three notes--crotchet, quaver, crotchet and rest--which shortly shaped themselves to a word in my heart, a word of just three syllables, the accent being on the penultimate--"E-vad-ne! E-vad-ne!"
Good Heavens!