CHAPTER X.

Eden.

As a place of residence Eden was closed When Adam and Eve left home; And no one can live there, it is supposed, For many a year to come. But now and again, in the summer days, The gardens are open thrown That the public may walk down the grassy ways: And nobody walks alone.

Paul and Isabel were sitting in Kensington Gardens under the very tree where he asked her if she would be his wife. They now considered this tree their own peculiar property, and felt inclined to prosecute as trespassers any impertinent persons who dared so much as to walk beneath its shadow; and here was their usual trysting-place in those long and happy afternoons when the year and their engagement were alike young.

"Isn't it dreadful to think how we lived all those years without even having seen each other?" remarked Paul.

Isabel sighed. "It was a shocking waste of time!"

"And it kept me so ignorant and backward," added Paul, "I used to think that fine ladies were animated fashion-plates."

"What do you think they are now?"

"I don't think; I know that they are ideal beings with the airs of Paradise and the graces of Paris."

"I used to think that men were stupid creatures who only cared about dinners and debentures and things of that sort," said Isabel.

"What do you think them now?"

"I know they are intelligent animals with abominable tempers."

Paul laughed. "You are very rude!"

"I know I am. That is because I care for you. I am always rude to the people I really care for."

"That is unwise of you," remarked Paul, "though a not uncommon form of unwisdom. I have often noticed that the people who are ready to die for you, never think it necessary to pass the salt. They seem to imagine that the greater includes the less--which it doesn't."

"The wise people," added Isabel, "are aware that if they only pay you compliments and open your umbrella for you, they will have all the credit of dying for you with none of the expense. They are clever enough to know that, in questions of manners, the less includes the greater--or at any rate infers it."

"Then why are you rude to me, my dear Isabel? You don't seem to live up to your principles."

"I don't. A girl once told me that I should make a bad wife, a good friend, and a simply perfect acquaintance; and I believe she was right."

Paul smiled. "That is hardly a comforting prospect for me, but I mean to risk it nevertheless."

"You see," continued Isabel, who always enjoyed vivisecting herself, "I am awfully nice to people until I begin to care for them; then I become horrid. It is unfortunate, I admit, but nevertheless it is true."

"As I remarked before, I cannot commend your wisdom," said Paul, "I should pursue a precisely opposite course myself."

"You do," replied Isabel with generosity; "unlike me, you live up to your principles. When first I met you, I thought you rather stiff and difficult to get on with; talking to you was like walking up-hill or rowing up-stream; but now you grow more delightful every day, and more easy to talk to."

Paul looked pleased. "I certainly take more trouble to be nice to you than to anybody else."

"And you succeed beyond your wildest expectations. But I am quite different; as long as I really didn't care for you, I was able to be perfectly charming; I know I was."

"You both were and are," said Paul.

Isabel shook her head. "I know as well as ever the things I ought to say to you to please you, and a year ago I should have said them; but now my own feelings get in the way, and I want to say the things that please me; and so I cease to be charming."

"But, my dear girl, the things that please you please me."

"Oh! no, they don't; you deceive yourself if you think they do. Though less clever than I was before I fell in love, I am still a clever woman, and I know that if I said to you all I want to say I should bore you to death."

"Try me, that's all!" was Paul's terse rejoinder.

"For instance, if I followed my own impulses, I should ask you every hour if you loved me as much as you did the hour before."

"That would be a foolish question; you know I do."

"Then," continued Isabel, "I should ask you if you liked me as well as other people and things, all of which I should mention separately, till the list was as long and exhaustive as the _Benedicite_."

"That also would be a foolish question; you know I love you more than everything and everybody else put together."

"You see I was right," cried Isabel triumphantly; "my normal conversation, if I gave the rein to it, would bore you."

"No, it wouldn't; you couldn't bore me if you tried; but I own I should consider it somewhat unnecessary."

"I don't believe a man ever could really understand a woman," said Isabel rather sadly.

"Perhaps not, any more than a woman could really understand a man. But I don't see that it matters, as long as they love one another."

Isabel was silent.

"What I don't understand in women is their passion for trying dangerous experiments," continued Paul. "Now, I am ready to suffer any amount of pain, if you could gain any benefit thereby; but I am not ready, I confess, to suffer any amount of pain, for you just to see how I look when I am suffering it."

Isabel tried not to smile, but failed. "Do you know when I am trying experiments on you?" she asked.

"Perfectly; I am not such a fool as you think, and I strongly object to the process. Besides it does as little credit to your eye as to your heart, because I really don't look at all nice when I am cross or unhappy. Now do I?"

"No, my dear Paul, I am bound to own that affliction is most unbecoming to you."

"Then why subject me to it?"

Isabel made another futile attempt not to smile.

"Look here," said her lover, "if you will only say straight out to me, 'I am going to talk to Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith just to make you jealous,' I shall know what you are driving at; and I will be a very Othello as long as it pleases you. In fact you needn't bring Jones or Smith into the concern at all; just say, 'Paul, I want you to be jealous for half an hour,' and I will entertain the green-eyed monster to any extent."

"How absurd you are!"

"But," continued Paul, "when you suddenly--without any apparent reason--develop an abnormal craving for the society of Jones or Smith, coupled with an equally inexplicable aversion to the sight of me, I cannot for the life of me make out what I have done to offend you; and my days are made wretched and my nights hideous by dreams of suicide and agonies of remorse."

Isabel laughed. "If you are clever enough to see through my little game, why does it make you so miserable?" she asked.

"That is where I am such an ass! Although, by this time, I have learnt the reason of your intermittent attachments to Jones or Smith, nothing but the customs of good society--grafted on to an early religious training--keeps me from punching of heads and shedding of blood every time I see you smile on the brutes."

"You dear man, you really are very nice!"

"So are you, when you don't think that a course of jealousy is necessary to my moral training," added Paul.

"It isn't good for you to have everything your own way," said Isabel reprovingly.

"If you want to see how I look when I am being hurt, tell me so, and I will go and have a tooth out," said Paul pleasantly, "I should much prefer that, to seeing you talk to the sort of idiots you flirt with sometimes."

"You are a very obliging young man!"

"I am. True, this plan can only be carried out thirty-two times, for obvious reasons; but I daresay we shall think of something else for the thirty-third, if only you will be patient."

"Does it really hurt much when I am nasty to you?" inquired Isabel.

"I should think so. Can't you see that it does?"

"You look rather horrid, Paul, I must say, on those occasions."

"And I feel horrid too. Yet I am a reasonable man, and I can see that you had a right to try this dodge two or three times, just to prove to yourself that I really cared; but what beats me is why you keep on doing it, when you are as certain that I love you as you are that I am sitting here. It is like vaccinating a baby every week, just to torture the creature."

"Oh! Paul, I don't do it every week; only once in three weeks at most."

Paul smiled. "Couldn't you make the experiments 'like angels' visits, few and far between'? Say once in six weeks now?"

"You forgive me each time, however often I do it; I've noticed that."

"Oh! I should forgive you till seventy times seven, but that doesn't make it any the pleasanter for me."

"Poor old boy!" whispered Isabel tenderly.

"By the way," said Paul, "I want you to come with me to see my people. You have not seen them yet, and I want to show them what a prize I have been lucky enough to win. Will you come to Chayford with me next week?"

"Yes, if you want me to. I will do anything you want, Paul, always."

"Then we will go next Tuesday."

"I wonder if your people will like me," mused Isabel.

"Of course they will. How could they--being sane--do otherwise?"

"Suppose they don't like me," persisted Isabel.

"Then I shall quarrel with them; but they will, I am sure of it."

"How sure you always are of everything, Paul!"

"Am I?"

"Yes; you are so strong, you always do what you mean to do, and other people always do what you wish."

Paul shook his head. "I have meant to do two things in my life, and I have only done one of them. Fifty per cent. is not such an enormous success after all."

"What were the two things?" asked Isabel.

"I meant to take a First at Oxford, and I meant to make you love me."

"But it wasn't your own fault that you couldn't take a First; at least it would have been your fault if you had done so, instead of helping your people. It was splendid of you to give up your ambition for them!"

"Thank you, dear," said Paul. "Still, the fact remains that I did not do what I meant to do; which shows that there is a stronger Power than one's own will after all. I used to think that success or failure lay in the hollow of one's hand; and now I am beginning to see that the best of us can do nothing but 'rough-hew'. But when I was young I made up my mind to shape my own ends for myself."

"And now?"

"As regards the two things that I wanted most, Divinity shaped the one and it is left to you to shape the other; so I am not such a very independent fellow after all."

"I hope I shall shape my part all right," said Isabel softly.

Paul looked grave. "It will go hard with me if you don't, Isabel."

There was great excitement at Chayford over the news of Paul's engagement. Mrs. Martin had always hated Paul for fear he should wish to marry Alice; but she hated him still more for not having wished it, and she hated Isabel most of all for having come between Alice and the thing which was considered most undesirable for her.

"I trust that this engagement will turn out for Paul's real welfare," she said to Paul's mother one day; "but I have my doubts, as Miss Carnaby is evidently a thoroughly worldly person, and so will probably be very extravagant."

"Paul is so devoted to Miss Carnaby that I feel no doubt about her making him happy," replied Paul's mother cheerfully, "and I am sure she must be really nice and good, or else Paul would not be so fond of her."

Mrs. Martin shook her head. "Beauty and rank are minor matters, and have, I fear, proved more attractive to Paul than more solid charms."

"Miss Carnaby is not beautiful, however," suggested Mrs. Seaton, "though Paul says her aunt, Lady Farley, is."

Mrs. Martin pricked up her ears at the title. "Is her aunt called Lady Farley, did you say? Dear me, how very interesting! What Farleys are they?"

"Sir Benjamin Farley is a G.C.B., I believe, and had an Indian governorship for a time."

"I know the name; I have often seen it in the papers; but I had no idea that Sir Benjamin was a prospective relative of dear Paul's. I hope, Mrs. Seaton, that should Lady Farley ever visit you, you will do your old friend the honour of asking me to meet her."

"I do not expect Lady Farley ever will visit me," said the minister's wife rather stiffly.

"Still if she did, dear friend, it would be such a delight to me to meet her. And such an advantage, too; for talking with those interesting and distinguished public characters is an education in itself, I consider."

Although Mrs. Seaton fully recognized the necessity for education on Mrs. Martin's part, she did not feel herself called upon to supply the need; so she merely said: "Paul and Miss Carnaby are coming to stay with us next week."

"Indeed; how very delightful! I hope that you will bring the dear young lady frequently to see us while she is with you. She will doubtless feel much more at home in a house like The Cedars than in a small cottage such as this."

"Paul's wife will have to make herself at home among Paul's people," said Mrs. Seaton quietly.

"But think of the discomfort," persisted Mrs. Martin with her usual tact and refinement of feeling, "to a person accustomed to a large establishment! Don't you think it would be better if Miss Carnaby stayed at The Cedars altogether? Mr. Martin and I should be very pleased to entertain her, and she would be a nice friend for Alice." And visions of Alice's entry into society, by the door of Isabel, floated through Mrs. Martin's mind.

"It is very kind of you, but I am sure Paul would prefer Miss Carnaby to stay with us. You see, if she is a lady, she will think no worse of us for having a small house and living quietly; and if she is not, Paul had better find it out before it is too late."

But Mrs. Martin still looked doubtful. "It will be a great change from what she is accustomed to, and I cannot help feeling that the dear young lady would be more at home with us."

The minister's wife could hardly restrain a smile as she recalled a sentence in her son's last letter, which said: "Whatever you do, keep those awful Martins out of the way; their blatant vulgarity would make Isabel positively ill, and I don't want her to be exposed to it". But she wisely kept the humour of the situation to herself, and held her peace.

"I suppose you will dine late while Miss Carnaby is with you," persisted Mrs. Martin: "an early dinner is considered extremely vulgar by well-bred people, I can assure you."

Mrs. Seaton looked surprised. "Certainly not; why should we? I cannot see anything vulgar in the time of one's dinner--it is merely a matter of household convenience. But I think it would be extremely vulgar to alter our habits so as to make our visitor imagine that we were in any way different from what we are. Nothing is really vulgar save pretence; and that is always vulgar, in whatever rank of society it is found."

"Ah! dear Mrs. Seaton, you are too unworldly. Believe me, it is the small things that you despise--such as late dinners and plenty of servants and proper evening-dresses--that make the difference between gentlepeople and others."

"Do you think so? I had an idea that the difference lay in quite another direction."

"Then you were mistaken," replied Mrs. Martin. "I am extremely sensitive to such things myself, and I assure you I should not feel that I was a lady if I dined before seven o'clock, and did not dress for dinner. It is in these trifles that good breeding is really shown. Mr. Martin laughs at me; but I tell him I could not digest my dinner if I did not wear a low dress and a flower in my hair--even if it were only a chrysanthemum."

For the first time in her life Mrs. Seaton felt that her sense of humour ran on the same lines as Mr. Martin's; but she did not point out this similarity to his wife. She merely preserved the chrysanthemum in her memory, to regale Paul and Joanna with at some future time.

But there was no one in Chayford more deeply interested in Paul's love-affair than Martha.

"Well, to be sure, Miss Joanna," she said one day; "it seems only yesterday that I whipped Master Paul for flying into a passion and kicking Mrs. Martin's cook, because she passed the remark that you were the ugliest little girl she'd ever set eyes on; and now he is old enough to be taking to himself a wife. Time does fly, and no mistake!"

Joanna sighed. She was a good woman, and unselfish, but it is "a bitter thing to look into happiness through another man's eyes". "Isabel Carnaby is a lucky girl," she remarked; "for I am sure Paul is a man who will make any woman happy."

Martha shook her head. "Don't be too sure of anything about a man, miss--not even if it is our Paul. They are queer creatures, even the best of them!"

"You are always hard on men, Martha."

"So I am, miss, they are such wild, feckless folks. First in a tantrum about one thing, and then about another, till there is no pleasing them; and they are no use--and far less ornament--as far as I can see."

"You don't understand how to manage them, I am afraid," laughed Joanna.

"Not I, my dear. The Lord Who made them may understand them, but I don't; for if I'd had the making of them, they'd have been made after a different pattern, I can tell you."

"But you must not say all this to Miss Carnaby," warned the wise Joanna.

"Of course not, miss; I know well enough what to say to folks that are courting. Now there was my niece, Eunice Tozer; she got engaged to a young man in her father's shop--and a sore disappointment it was to them all, herself included, that she hadn't done better."

"I hope you didn't say so to her, Martha."

"Not I, my dear! She came complaining to me that it was but a poor settling for her, but I soon cheered her up. 'Eunice,' says I, 'with such a plain face as yours it is a wonder you've got a husband at all--let alone the sort; and you ought to be thankful, instead of finding fault.' That was the way to look at the matter, to my thinking, and I soon made Eunice see it in the same light."

"Was Eunice happy when she was married?" Joanna asked.

"As happy as any woman could be with a man tied to her for the rest of her days; but, as you know, I don't hold with the men, miss. They are troublesome creatures, especially all of them."

"They are indeed," exclaimed Joanna with amusement.

"You see, miss, my mother always said that the troubles which came direct from the Lord, she could bear without murmuring; but the troubles which came from father's stupidity were a different thing, and she hadn't common patience with them. Many a time has she passed the remark that, if a woman has got a husband, she spends all her life in bearing for him the consequences of the things she particularly told him not to do."

Joanna nodded. "That must really be very irritating! It would try me more than anything."

"And me too, miss. There is nothing like a man for trying the temper. Mark my word, it is because there is no marrying or giving in marriage in heaven that the temper of an angel _is_ the temper of an angel. If the angels had got husbands, there'd be a different tale about their tempers, I'll be bound!"