The Rubicon

"I am glad you reminded me," he said. "I told them that I wished particularly to leave England at once, and asked them to telegraph to me in case I was wanted. It appears that they do not expect any immediate disturbance, so I shall be able to come with you on Thursday – in fact, there will be nothing to detain me."

"You had better stop if you think you are wanted," said Eva. "I can manage perfectly by myself, and Jim Armine will be with me; he wrote to-day. But if they don't want you, of course you'll go with me."

"Armine is coming, then, is he?" asked her husband.

"Yes; you don't object to him, I hope?"

"Not in the least."

"If you do, it would have been better if you had said so at once," said Eva, carelessly. "I've asked him now."

"Why should you suppose I object to him?" he asked suddenly.

"You didn't seem very cordial about it. Have you asked anybody else?"

"I mentioned it to my mother when I saw her in Trelso, but she said she wouldn't come."

"Ah!" said Eva, with the ghost of a smile, "did she say why?"

"Apparently it was for your sake – because of you, in fact."

"I expect she meant for her own sake. I should be charmed to have her. There is a straightforwardness, a refusal to compromise, in her behaviour to me, that is very refreshing."

"She speaks of you with bitterness – I might almost say rancour," remarked Lord Hayes.

"I am more sinned against than sinning, then," said Eva. "I always feel perfectly charitable towards her. She loathes me; but, after all, that is not her fault. Really, it is wonderful what a fine order of hatred is compatible with the most orthodox Christianity. But of course I am one of the works of the devil, which she has been led to renounce from a child."

Thus it came about that, before the middle of December, Lord Hayes and his wife, and Jim Armine, were installed in the charming little villa at Algiers. The Gulf of Lyons was kinder on this occasion to the susceptibilities of Lord Hayes, and he produced his white umbrella, and sat on a deck chair in untroubled contemplation. He always wore a yachtsman's cap and brown shoes on calm trips, which were, somehow, particularly aggravating to Eva.

She was sitting on deck when he came upstairs on the morning after their departure from Marseilles, and Eva had a long, malignant look at him as he approached her.

"You look completely nautical this morning," she said slowly. "I hope it won't get rough, for your sake, or you will have to retire. The commodore will be found groaning in his cabin. But, perhaps you are only a fighting sailor, like Lord Nelson, who was always ill, wasn't he? In that case, I hope we sha'n't meet any Moorish privateers. If we are attacked during a storm, you will be completely exposed."

Eva had rarely said anything to him in such simple bad taste, and her husband was surprised. The childishness of her strictures, however, rather amused him than otherwise, for he thought he had the key to them, in a rather awkward little scene which had taken place the evening before. Eva had been arguing some point with Jim Armine, and he had got a little excited. She had just made an assertion which seemed to him to contradict what she had said a moment before, and by an unlucky slip he exclaimed, —

"Why, Eva, you said just the opposite a minute ago."

The mistake was pardonable enough: when a man is in love with a woman, he naturally thinks of her by her Christian name, and it is excusable if, in some momentary excitement, he uses it. Eva was startled. He had never called her that before, and, losing her self-control for one half second, she uttered a sudden exclamation of anger, and glanced at her husband. He was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, looking at the sunset. He turned to Jim Armine, and said politely, —

"I think you must have misunderstood Lady Hayes."

The poor young man flushed deeply, and Eva bit her lips, divided between her annoyance and a desire to laugh. But the annoyance conquered in the end, as the delicate, veiled insult of her husband's speech dawned upon her. His words certainly bore another interpretation, though whether he had meant it or not she was not quite sure, and she could not ask him. But Jim Armine evidently took them in the obscurer sense and was horribly disconcerted, and Eva not unnaturally felt extremely annoyed. He was, possibly, trying to make a fool of her, and she had not the least intention of being treated in such a manner. After a few moments she found something to say, but the conversation was evidently over. Jim Armine soon strolled away to the other end of the deck, and Eva was left alone with her husband.

As soon as the other was out of hearing, she said to him, —

"I do not wish you to speak of me in that way. Please remember that."

"I regret having offended you," replied he, "but I do not choose that Armine should call you by your Christian name, Eva, in fact."

"Your speech implied more than that," she said.

Lord Hayes determined to make a stand.

"You are very quick at finding meanings."

"What you said was insulting."

"It is insulting to you that he should call you Eva?"

"Do you admit, then, that your speech bore another meaning?"

Lord Hayes lit another cigarette.

"I admit nothing of the sort. Not at all."

"You will be so good as to apologise to him."

"I have no reason for supposing that he imagined it to bear any meaning but the obvious one – the one, in fact, which I meant to convey. Of course you are at liberty to explain to him that, if you choose."

For the first time Eva was conscious of a slight disadvantage, and Lord Hayes distinctly saw it. As she sat still silent, he looked at his watch and remarked, —

"I am afraid they propose to give us dinner at seven. It is a barbarous custom. Perhaps you would like to know that it is now five minutes to seven."

He carefully furled his white umbrella, and walked down the deck to the saloon. He made in his mind a careful little note of the occurrence, against that possible contingency of suspicion coming down the avenue. It was characteristic of him that he was as evenly polite as ever to Jim Armine, and advised him to drink white wine and not red, and remarked to him at tea afterwards that the Albert biscuits were stale, but that it was interesting to observe that the English manufactories of biscuits held their own abroad; in fact, that the makers of the stale Albert biscuits were Huntly & Palmer.

This suggestive little scene accounted, in his mind, for Eva's unusual want of politeness on the subject of his yachtsman's cap and brown canvas shoes. But he did not consider that a reason for abandoning them; in fact, they became to him a sort of commemorative medal on the occasion of his victory. A force which has an unbroken record of defeat is apt to dwell on a single and unexpected victory. In the main he was right in attributing Eva's irritation that morning to her slight discomfiture on the evening before, for though she had dismissed, or rather forgotten, the occurrence, there was still in her a latent resentment that unconsciously vented itself in this manner.

They had been at the villa four or five days, and Lord Hayes had got into the habit of observing his wife and Jim Armine somewhat closely. Eva was rather silent; to her husband she hardly spoke at all, though now and then at meals she would begin talking, more to herself than the others. Jim Armine was not a very wise young man, and he said things sometimes, that, with another woman, would have betrayed him, but Eva did not seem to notice them.

They were seated at lunch one day, when Eva took up her parable. She had said nothing at all, as her way was, for some minutes, and Lord Hayes had been describing to Jim how the eucalyptus oil was extracted from the tree.

"You must excuse my silence, Mr. Armine," she said, "but, you know, I have all sorts of recollections about this villa. We were here, you know, on our wedding tour, after we had been on the Riviera – just Hayes and myself – and we used to sit out in the garden and listen to the nightingales singing of love. It was very romantic; no doubt Hayes has spoken to you of it, when you pour out your hearts in the smoking-room, after I have gone to bed. It is always odd to me that men choose that time for being confidential. I should have thought it would have disturbed your night's rest."

"How do you know that we are confidential, then?" asked Jim.

"Why, of course you are; there isn't time to be confidential during the day. Besides, that is the only time when you are sure not to be invaded by women. I shall hide in the smoking-room some night and listen to what you say."

"There is nothing you might not hear," said her husband.

"You mean that, I suppose, in order to deter me from listening, assuming that, being a woman, I only care to hear what is not meant for my ears. But you said it very politely."

"Not at all; it was a formal invitation," said he, "an assurance of how entirely welcome you would be."

"Thanks. Of course you and I are under a sort of mutual compact to delight in each other's society at any time or place."

Lord Hayes laughed.

"One eternal honeymoon. Surely the golden age will return."