The Rubicon

"Did he – was he very unhappy about it?" she asked.

"Not too unhappy."

"What do you mean?"

"From what I know of him," said Mrs. Davenport, "especially since this sudden change has come, if you speak now, you may make the whole difference to him. Make him angry and sore, and then let him go off to Aix, and I think Gertrude will do the rest. I wonder if she will guess what has happened. I hope not."

"How she will hate me!" murmured Eva, "and so will Reggie. It is really hard to see what I am to gain by the arrangement."

"Ah! don't go back now," entreated Mrs. Davenport. "See, I have no pride left. I implore you to do what I ask. You are very powerful; I know your power too well, and so does Reggie, God help him!"

"I wonder if it is really better to be unselfish than selfish," mused Eva, more to herself than to Mrs. Davenport, "or to try to do good at all. We are so very short sighted that we may be doing the worst thing possible. Who were those very ingenious people who did harm when they wanted to, in order that good might follow? Anyhow, if I do this, I shall not have chosen the selfish course. I suppose there will be an imperishable reward for me somewhere. Even so, perhaps I am really doing the selfish thing by doing as you ask me; it all depends, doesn't it, on how much I like him? whether I like him enough to be unselfish; whether the burden of being selfish wouldn't be harder to bear than the burden of being unselfish."

"I know how little I matter to you personally," said Mrs. Davenport, "but you will know at least that I think you have done a very noble thing, something of which not many are capable; something it was very hard for you to do."

"Ah! you don't understand me a bit," broke out Eva. "I assure you that no one's opinion has an atom of weight with me. I fear evil report as little as I covet good. Let me think for a few moments."

Mrs. Davenport was silent; she hardly heard Eva's last speech, for all her thoughts were on her possible decision. That she had not dismissed her at once, had not refused to see her, she felt was a favourable sign. Eva, she knew, was quite capable, in spite of a certain intimacy between them, of having sent a message that she saw no one in the morning. Mrs. Davenport feared her and her cold, hard power, as she feared nothing else in the world. She sat there pale, almost trembling, while Eva passed slowly up and down the room, for a few minutes. But at the end of one of these turns, when she was by the door, she passed out, and Mrs. Davenport heard her step ascending the stairs. She waited there while the minute hand crept round the dial of the great bronze clock on the mantelpiece, and it was half-an-hour before Eva appeared again, with a large, unsealed envelope in her hand. She looked very weary, but as faultlessly beautiful as ever.

"I have not sealed it," she said, "because I thought you might like to read it, and while I am about it I might as well do it handsomely. At the same time, I would sooner you did not read it, but I shall neither blame you nor try to dissuade you if you wish to. With it is Reggie's photo – the one he gave me. You need not take them. Will you read it? No? Then I will send a man with it at once, as you don't care to look at the letter. There is no reason why you should be turned into a penny post because your son has called me a wicked woman. He was quite right, by the way – perfectly right. I – "

Eva stopped suddenly, for there was that tremor in her voice which had been there once before at this interview.

"I will not betray myself," she determined, biting her lip, in a splendid effort to keep command over herself.

"There is just one thing that I should like to ask you," she went on almost at once; "send me a line now and then, to tell me about Reggie, and whether it is all right between him and the girl. I liked him very much, you know, and I shall never see him again, I suppose."

Mrs. Davenport was much moved. She had guessed, and guessed correctly, that Reggie would not be the only sufferer, and that Eva had behaved heroically, and tears partly of relief, but partly of gratitude and admiration, started to her eyes.

"God bless you for what you have done!" she whispered. "I can say no more than that."

The tension broke.

"Leave me quickly," cried Eva, as the large, painful sobs began to break from her throat. "Go at once!"

"Eva, Eva," cried Mrs. Davenport, stretching out her hands to her.

"Go – go at once!" cried the other.

She turned rapidly from her, and Mrs. Davenport, without another word, left the room. She just saw Eva sink in the arm-chair she had been occupying before, and bury her face in her hands. Mrs. Davenport closed the door quietly and went out.

She had left behind her, and she knew it, a sorrow greater and more desolate than Reggie's weaker nature would ever know. She remembered Percy's prediction, that some day Eva "would do something sublimely unselfish, and that would be when she fell in love."

It was still only about mid-day when she left the house, and she had purposely said "Good-bye" to Reggie before she went, for, presupposing the success of her expedition, of which Reggie knew nothing, her presence was unnecessary and undesirable. If, on the other hand, she was unsuccessful, she had determined to go to the station and meet her husband, and acquaint him with the state of things. She drove about for an hour or so, and then changed her mind, and determined to make an effort to see Reggie before he set off.

She arrived home just as he was starting, and they met in the hall, and when she saw his face she drew a deep breath of satisfaction and relief. He was unmistakably angry.

"You are just off, are you, dear?" she said quietly. "Give Gertrude my love, and – and be very brave and make an effort, dear boy. It will not be easy. God bless you, my darling?"

"She wrote to me this morning," whispered Reggie hoarsely, as he kissed his mother. "I will never speak to her or think of her again. Ah! Mummy, good-bye! you have saved me."

CHAPTER VIII

After Mrs. Davenport had left her, Eva remained in the dining-room for an hour or more. She had chosen, and the choice was not easy. But it seemed to her as if the struggle came afterwards rather than before. The letter she had written to Reggie rose before her, and her heart cried to her for mercy. But the clear knowledge which she had arrived at, that his chance of happiness grew in direct relation to remoteness from herself, remained unclouded, and at no moment of that hour's agony would she have reconsidered her decision. That she had so decided was a matter of wonder to her, for it is always a surprise to find that we are better, not worse, than we think; but her investment in unselfishness gave her no quick returns, for at present, as she well knew, Reggie was as miserable as she was. The sacrifice of two victims called down no immediate answer from the blessed gods in the way of a sudden cessation of pain.

But when that hour was passed, she went upstairs to her husband, to see him about the business he had mentioned. She felt strongly the necessity of being active, of doing something, no matter what, which might possibly take her a little out of herself. Our moral nature has to go to bed when it is hurt, and it is well to leave it there, and not fidget at the bandages to see how it is getting on.

The business resolved itself into affairs connected with the ironworks at Trelso, and Lord Hayes told her that he was going down that afternoon, and would stop the night there, returning the following day. And Eva, longing for distraction, found none there. Her mother and Percy were in town, and she drove off, and fetched them back to lunch.

The sight of so well-appointed a house, and the thought that, in a measure, it was part of her environment, as being the mother of its mistress, always put Mrs. Grampound in an excellent humour, at times bordering on a sort of mature playfulness.

"And how is my little daughter behaving?" she asked Lord Hayes, as soon as they were seated at lunch. "I hope she is doing me credit, and you, too, of course. I don't like the way girls behave now. I'm sure they do things we should have got dreadfully abused for when we were young, and now no one takes any notice whatever. Dear Eva, what a lovely piece in the middle of the table. That is new, is it not?"

"The beauty of it is that it's very old," remarked Eva.

"Really, it looks so bright and fresh. And talking of brightness and freshness, I met Mr. Davenport the other day. He spoke of you a great deal, as if he knew you quite well."

"He is a great friend of Eva's," said her husband, watching her. "Why hasn't he come to see you to-day, Eva?"

"Chiefly because he left by the mail for Aix this morning," said Eva. "He asked me to say good-bye to you for him."

Lord Hayes had the satisfaction of believing this to be untrue, but that was small compared with the complete failure on his part to ruffle Eva's bosom with an uneven breath, or raise the slightest tinge of colour to her face.

"I'm quite in love with him," she went on slowly, without looking at her husband. "I feel quite desolate without him. Hayes, you must be particularly kind to me all day. Though, of course, you mustn't hope to compete with Reggie in my affections."

Lord Hayes smiled, and took some jelly. Most people know that particular moment experienced at varying distances from Dover pier, when they are not quite sure whether they enjoy the motion or not. Lord Hayes was, metaphorically speaking, being a little tossed about, and if he did not yet think with longing of terra firma, he was not sorry to remember that he would be alone at Trelso that evening.

"What a beautiful thing it is, is it not," he said, addressing Mrs. Grampound, "when a wife reposes such confidence in her husband, that she tells him she is in love with someone else. Truly there can be no secrets between such."

Mrs. Grampound tittered shrilly. To state the truth, as Eva had done, is often the surest, sometimes the only, way of producing a complete misconception. She failed to notice the acidity in Lord Hayes's face and voice, and thought the scene quite too charming. But Percy noticed and wondered.

"What shocking things to say to each other," cried she. "Eva, you naughty child, how can you? And you deserve I should scold you too," she said, turning to her son-in-law.

"Reggie has scorned me and my homage altogether," continued Eva gravely, speaking chiefly in order to produce a sort of counter-irritant to her own pain, on the same principle as that on which children, suffering from toothache, may be observed to bite their lips. "He has gone off to Aix to see his fiancée. He gave me her photograph – wasn't that a cruel thing to do? – and his own. Really, it was most shameless. I was never so humiliated before. I think, when Hayes goes away to Trelso, I shall take the train to Aix and sit watching the hotel windows, and serenade him in the hotel garden. It's quite a new idea for a woman to serenade her lover. Why did you never serenade me, Hayes? I should like to see you serenade on a cold night under a silk umbrella. Can you sing, by the way? You'd have to leave a good deal to the lute, like the man in Browning who serenaded at a villa during a thunderstorm. Your mother wouldn't approve of serenading, would she? The evening fever sets in about that time, I think, from eleven till two – of course, the damp wouldn't matter if you had Jaeger boots with eight holes in them."

"Eva, you naughty girl," said her mother again.

Yes; there was just a little too much motion. Metaphorically speaking, Lord Hayes went below.

"I've got to go to Trelso this afternoon," he said. "I hear that the men are getting more and more discontented. There is an organised body of Socialists down there, who incite them and refer to me as a brutal tyrant. What a very odd way to spend your life, you know – going about the country calling us names. I can't think what they imagine they will get by it."

"It is rather hard to call you a brutal tyrant," said Eva with some amusement. "Now, if they had said so of Reggie, or of me, for example – Yes, Percy, you may smoke here, or let's go up to the top of the porch. There is a tent there, and it is deliciously cool."

The two gentlemen stayed behind a moment, and Eva and her mother went on. Lunch made Mrs. Grampound even more effusive than usual.

"I do so love to think of you here in your beautiful house, darling," she said to Eva, as they passed up the great marble stairs; "with your husband devoted to you, and all that. A charming little scene at lunch, so playful and delicately touched. But you always were clever, dear. It is such a happiness to me to think of you like this. That yellow collar you have on your liveries is very becoming. How much do you pay your chef? Ah, what a charming little room this tent makes! I suppose you and your husband often sit here."

She subsided into a low chair, and looked at Eva affectionately, or, at any rate, with an air of proud proprietorship.