"My dear," Angelica interposed, "he is delighted to be distinguished by you in any way. But, by the p.r.i.c.king of my thumbs, something wicked"--and Colonel Colquhoun came out on to the terrace through the drawing room behind us. He shook hands with us all, his wife included, and then sat down.
"I say, Evadne--" Diavolo began.
"My dear boy," said Lady Adeline, "you mustn"t call Mrs. Colquhoun by her Christian name."
"Christian!" jeered Diavolo. "Now, that _is_ a good one! There"s nothing Christian about Evadne. We looked her up in the dictionary ages ago, didn"t we, Angelica? The name means Well-pleasing-one, as nearly as possible, and it suits her sometimes. Evadne--cla.s.sical Evadne--was noted for her devotion to her husband, and distinguished herself finally on his funeral pyre--she ex-pyred there."
We all groaned aloud. "It was a somewhat theatrical exit, I confess,"
Diavolo pursued. "But, I say, Angelica, wouldn"t it be fun to burn the colonel, and see Evadne do suttee on his body--only I doubt if she would!"
He turned to Evadne.
"Mrs. Colquhoun," he began ceremoniously; "may I have the honour of calling you by your heathen name--as in the days beyond recalling?"
"When you are good," she answered.
"Ugh!" he exclaimed. "I should have had more respect for your honesty if you said "no" at once. And it is very absurd of you, too, Evadne, because you know you are going to marry me when Colonel Colquhoun is promoted to regions of the blest. She would have married me first, only you stole a march on me, sir," he added, addressing Colonel Colquhoun. "However, I feel as if something were going to happen _now_, at last! There was a banshee wailing about my quarters in a minor key, very flat, last night.
She had come all the way from Ireland to warn Colonel Colquhoun, and mistaken the house, I suppose."
"My dear--"
We all looked round. It was Mr. Hamilton-Wells addressing Lady Adeline in his most precise manner. He was standing in the open French window just behind us, tapping one hand with the _pince-nez_ he held in the other.
"My dear, the cat has five kittens."
"My _dear!_" Lady Adeline exclaimed.
"They have only just arrived and--"
"Never mind them _now_," she cried hurriedly.
"But, my dear, you were anxious to know."
"I don"t want to know in the least," she protested.
"But only this morning you said--"
"Oh, that was upstairs," she interrupted.
"What difference does that make?" he wanted to know. "You don"t mean to say you are anxious about the cat when you are upstairs, and not anxious when you come down?"
Lady Adeline sank back in her chair, and resigned herself to a long altercation. Before it ended everybody else had disappeared, and I saw no more of Evadne on that occasion. But during the next few weeks I had many opportunities of observing the wonderful way she was waking up under the influence of the Heavenly Twins.
They gave her no time for reflection; it was the life of action against the life of thought, and it suited her.
The ladies frequently made my house the object of an afternoon walk, and stayed for tea. Lady Adeline declared that the "girls" dragged her over because they wanted a new victim to torment with their superabundant animal spirits. The superabundance was all Angelica"s, I knew, but still Evadne was an accomplice, and they neither of them spared me in those days. They would rob my hot-houses of the best fruits and flowers, disarrange my books, turn pictures they did not like with their faces to the wall, drape my statues fantastically, criticise what they called my absurd bachelor habits, and give me good advice on the subject of marriage; Lady Adeline sitting by meanwhile, aiding and abetting them with smiles, although protesting that she would not allow them to make me the b.u.t.t of their idle raillery.
Evadne had a pa.s.sion for the scent of gorse. She crammed pockets, sleeves, shoes, and the bosom of her dress with the yellow blossoms, and I often found these fragrant tokens of her presence scattered about my house after she had been there. Once, when we were all out walking together, she stopped to pick some from a bush, and as she was putting them into her bodice she made a remark which gave me pause to ponder.
"You will want to know why I do that, I suppose," she said. "You will be looking for a motive, for some secret spring of action. The simple fact that I love the gorse won"t satisfy you. You would like to know why I love it, when I first began to love it, and anything else about it that might enable you to measure my feeling for it."
This was so exactly what I was in the habit of doing with regard to many matters that I could not say a word. But what struck me as significant about the observation was the obvious fact, gathered by inference, that, while I had been studying her, she also had been studying me, and I had never suspected it.
She walked on with Angelica after she had spoken, and I dropped behind with Lady Adeline.
"_Your_ Evadne and Colonel Colquhoun"s wife are two very different people," I said. "The one is a lively girl, the other a sad and bitter woman."
"Sad, not bitter," Lady Adeline corrected.
"I have heard her say bitter things!" I maintained.
"You may, perhaps, have heard her condemn wrong ones rather too emphatically," Lady Adeline suggested. "But all this is only a phase. She is in rather a deep groove at present, but we shall be able to get her out of it."
"I don"t know," I answered dubiously. "I don"t think it is that exactly. I believe there is some kind of warp in her mind, I perceive it, but can neither define nor account for It yet. It is something morbid that makes her hold herself aloof. She has never allowed anybody in the neighbourhood to be intimate with her. Even I, who have seen her oftener than anybody, never feel that I know her really well--that I could reckon upon what she would do in an emergency. And I believe that there is something artificial in her att.i.tude; but why? What is the explanation of all that is unusual about her?"
Lady Adeline shook her head, and was silent for some seconds, then she said: "I once had a friend--but her moral nature quite halted. It was because she had lost her faith in men. A woman who thinks that only women can be worthy is like a bird with a broken wing. But I don"t say that that is Evadne"s case at all. Since she came to us she has seemed to be much more like one of those marvellous casks of sherry out of which a dozen different wines are taken. The flavour depends on the doctoring. Here, under Angelica"s influence--why, she has filled your pocket with gorse blossoms!"
It was true. In taking out my handkerchief, I had just scattered the flowers, and so discovered that they were there. "Then you give her credit for less individuality--you think her more at the mercy of her surroundings than I do," I said.
But before she could answer me, Evadne herself had joined us. I suppose I was looking grave, for she asked in a playful tone:
"Did he ever frolic, Lady Adeline, this solemn seeming--_Don_? Was he always in earnest, even on his mother"s lap, and occupied with weighty problems of life and death when other babes were wondering with wide open eyes at the irresponsible action of their own pink toes?"
Which made me reflect. For if I were in the habit of being a dull bore myself it was no wonder that I seldom saw her looking lively.
The following week Evadne went home, and as soon as she was settled at As-You-Like-It, she seemed to relapse once more into her former state of apathy. I saw her day after day as I pa.s.sed, sitting sewing in the wide west window above the holly hedge; and so long as she was left alone she seemed to be content; but I began to notice at this time that any interruption at her favourite occupation did not please her. The summer heat, the scent of flowers streaming through open windows, the song of birds, the level landscape, here vividly green with the upspringing aftermath, there crimson and gold where the poppies gleamed amongst the ripening corn--all such sweet sensuous influences she looked out upon lovingly, and enjoyed them--so long as she was left alone. On hot afternoons, Diavolo would go and lie at her feet sometimes, with a cushion under his head; and him she tolerated; but only, I am sure, because he always fell asleep.
I had to go to As-You-Like-It one day to transact some business with Colonel Colquhoun, and when we had done he asked me to go up into the drawing room with him. "Come, and I"ll show you a pretty picture," he said.
It _was_ a pretty picture. They had both fallen asleep on that occasion. It was a torrid day outside, but the deep bay where they were was cool and shady. The windows were wide open, the outside blinds were drawn down low enough to keep out the glare, but not so far as to hide the view. Behind Evadne was a stand of flowers and foliage plants. Diavolo was lying on the floor in his favourite att.i.tude with a black satin cushion under his head, and was, with his slender figure, refined features, thick, curly, fair hair, and fine transparent skin, slightly flushed by the heat, a perfect specimen of adolescent grace and beauty. He looked like a young lover lying at the feet of his lady. Evadne was sitting in a low easy chair, with a high back, against which her head was resting. Half her face was concealed by a fan of white ostrich feathers which she held in her left hand, and the moment I looked at her the haunting certainty of having seen her in exactly that position once before recurred to me. She was looking well that afternoon. Her glossy dark brown hair showed bright as bronze against the satin background of the chair. She was dressed in a gown of silver gray cashmere lined with turquoise blue silk, which showed between the folds; cool colours of the best shade to set off the ivory whiteness of her skin.
Colonel Colquhoun considered the group meditatively. "She keeps her looks," he observed in an undertone; "and Diavolo"s catching her up."
I looked at him inquiringly.
"She"s six or eight years older than he is, you know," he explained; "but you wouldn"t think it now."
I wondered what he had in his mind.
"Times are changing," he proceeded. "Now, when I was a lad, if a lady had liked me as well as Evadne likes that boy, I"d have taken advantage of her preference."
"Not if the lady had been of her stamp," I said drily.
"Well, true for you," he acknowledged. "But it isn"t the lady only in this case. It"s that young sybarite himself. He"s as particular as she is. He said the other day at mess--it was a guest night, and there was a big dinner on, and somebody proposed "Wine and Women" for a toast, but he wouldn"t drink it: "Oh, spare me," he said, in that slow way he has, something like his father"s; "Wine and women, as you take them, are things as coa.r.s.e in the way of pleasure as pork and porter are for food." We asked him then to give us his own ideas of pleasure; but he said he didn"t think anybody there was educated up to them, even sufficiently to understand them!--and he wasn"t joking altogether, either," Colonel Colquhoun concluded.
At that same moment Evadne opened her eyes wide, and looked at us a second before she spoke, but showed no other sign of surprise.
"I am afraid I have been asleep," she said, rising deliberately, and shaking hands with me across the prostrate Diavolo. "Do sit down."
She sank back into her own chair as she spoke, and fanned a fly from Diavolo"s face. "I never knew anyone sleep so soundly," she said, looking down at him lovingly. "He rides out here nearly every day when he is not on duty, simply for his siesta. Angelica is jealous, I believe, because he will not go to her. He says there is no repose about Angelica, and that it is only here with me that he finds the dreamful ease he loves."