CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE GARDEN.

The next day the first thing that happened was the coming of a person whom Miss Ruth interviewed for her father in the morning-room. I was even then seeking Miss Ruth for Miss Eve, and on coming near the room could hear the man say that he was one Shan Healy, a servant of Dr. Lepsius, who, having traced to The Towers the owners of the yacht which had touched at Shunter, was now come to find out what he could as to his master’s son.

He seemed a person of some thirty years, slimly tall, with a scar that twists his upper lip, clad in rough new clothes: a man of an alert and amiable personality, so that Miss Ruth laid her hand on his sleeve to soothe him, for indeed he was in deep dreariness, and frequently sniffled. When I went in with the message, Miss Ruth sent me to call Miss Eve to her, so I ran back, and having brought Miss Eve, hung near to hear.

It was a long talk, the stranger having been given a seat near the grate, the sisters seated on each side of him, hearing his tale. I, for my share, was kept fidgety by the sounds of footsteps going about the house, and could gather only in fragments what was said—enough, however, to inform me of the marvel of the opportunity which has brought me this gorgeous bridegroom of mine, for here, it would appear, is Aladdin, and it is the wonderful lamps that are alight in his eyes. Only sparkle crisply, do, do, my little star, and come to me some spirit of perfect luck and alertness to spur me now with whispers how only four days more to hold him, till I have safely erected myself on my thrones, and bound my brows with crowns. Oh, I am silly with thoughts. But thrones, may be; may be, many crowns, as Josephine, who was but a _bourgeoise_, wore: for when Miss Eve asked this man, Healy, for what reason the father is in this fever as to the son being abroad in the world, the man answered that “the doctor regards it, lady, as a peril greater than a charge of gun-cotton piled under the globe, with a child holding a glowing coal by it: for, says he, the day that Master Hannibal gets to recognise the real grade of mankind’s mind he’ll be dragging the frame of society to fragments, like a child tearing a fly, leg by leg, for mischief.” The ladies had the eyes of a child who has listened late in the night to tales of the ancient time! “Well,” Miss Ruth murmured, having heard the wonders that the man had to tell, “I am in for it now, for though I do know, I promised him not to tell his whereabouts, being cross with his parent for not having instructed him in the Christian faith.” Then to Miss Eve, who, leaning forward with her chin on her palm, sat staring at some vision which she saw in the hearthplace, she remarked, “What do you say, Eve; what should I do?”

Now Miss Eve knit her brows, and presently replied, “Promises can’t be repealed, dear.”

“But since it may do much harm?” Miss Ruth suggested.

“Still,” muttered the lips of Miss Eve, “a promise.”

“Oh, lady, do, for God’s sake,” Healy now entreated of Miss Ruth, “not that I expect him to go back with me, but he’s so green to everything, badly needs somebody, lady, like a whale run ashore, has got no razors to shave, no jacket——”

At this of “razors,” Miss Ruth placed her hand upon the man’s in a movement of friendliness: for in truth he appears to be rather like his young master’s nurse than servant, and Miss Ruth’s heart, like waters haunted with squalls, is anew every minute smitten with all the world’s smart, as fluid and easy as Miss Eve is aloof. So she smiles with the man, saying, “Wait, I’ll question my God,” and gets up to go away to a window, from which she presently returns to Miss Eve with the words, “Eve, I’ll peach.”

To this Miss Eve at first answered nothing, but after a little asked, “What will he think of the worth of the promises made by us Christians? Knowing a first that has failed, never a second he’ll trust”; but Miss Ruth continued to believe that it would be better on the whole to betray; did not, however, outright do so, only revealing to Healy that the boy would be coming that evening to receive a Bible, and instructing Healy to be then on the terraces to meet him.

But there was one who had no wish that the boy should be taken unawares, and who, not meaning him any more to meet Miss Eve, immediately made up her mind to make known to him that he had been deceived by the ladies. So, after placing Miss Eve’s half-hourly hot water, down at once I started to him, and in passing near the morning-room, again had a peep of Miss Eve in solitude now, pacing there regularly to and fro with something of a frown, as it were a sentinel in a gown. But when I had got down to the cave, again my heart went aching, for again he was not there, and I thought then within myself, “It is going to be more troublesome to hold him in my prison than to keep quicksilver in a sieve, or to bind a wind with twine, and this is a wild kind of horse with wings that I have vaulted on, I think, which may chance in its raging to break every rib of my body.” Louder and louder I called out after him now, and there was no sound nor sign of him: only, on the cave’s floor now was a thing resembling a telescope, made of oak bored through the core; also I saw there a thing like a trap made of twigs, with the guts and gore of some animal close to it; also a hollowed stone containing water that was violently on the boil, though by what means the boy could cause this water to be bubbling and boiling there was more than one could conceive. There remained also most of the food which I had brought him, and having left what I had now brought, I had to hurry back up to The Towers.

There I spied Miss Eve still pacing in that same machine-like fashion as before, as queenly slow of step as when a lady, conning poetry by rote, paces with closed eyes. However, within twenty minutes now she called me, to ask me to take tea to her with my own hands, as on the day before; nor did I get any time to go down the mountain again, for after lunch I had to take the walk over to St. Arvens, where, at the vicarage, before a Mr. Rae, an aged _curé_, I made an affidavit as to there being “no impediment” to my marriage, and he promised to procure me by the 27th, from “the Bishop’s Registry,” the licence to marry, with a stamp on it for £2 3s. 6d. So far, then, all goes well, thank God; and in passing back through St. Arvens, having got my finger measured at Martin’s shop, I there gave orders for the wedding-ring, since I do not regard it as a good thing to bring my former wedding-ring into use for this new bridegroom. By the time I came home, elated with hopes, it was already late, and before long I was bearing tea, as bidden, to Miss Eve. There was an afternoon picnic at the Devil’s Pulpit, where many of the party were; a few were at tennis; Miss Ruth was in the book-room in the thick of scribbling off a basketful of her correspondence with Christendom; and Miss Eve was with Monsieur the Minister of the Interior. But this time when I bore in their tea they were less close together: Monsieur de Courcy sitting in a mood of gloom on the sofa, gazing at the floor between his legs, Miss Eve standing nearer the fire-place, fingering white violets, with a bent face. And I, listening in the corridor, heard her murmur to him that “pain like a curse or some venomous perfume infects all Eve’s poor daughters: curst that they needs must endure, worse when they needs must inflict,” from which I gathered that the poor Monsieur de Courcy, having been given to hope for twenty-four hours, was now definitely turned away, though, as I left the corridor, I heard him cry out crazily, “There is some reason! I know that you like me, Eve!” but what answer was given to this I did not gather.

Then, after spending some time at the wardrobe, preparing the bath, arranging four costumes for her choosing, and the perfumery and lotions for her _toilette de soir_, I thought I might have just time to run down to the boy, but was now anew disappointed by being summoned to yet new toils by Miss Ruth, who, having received a bale of toys from the Dean of somewhere, presents me five dolls to dress! So that is the way it is? It was always to be dressing dolls that I was born, was it not, ladies? Wait only four days more! and perhaps you will then not know your lady’s-maid for the smile that will writhe her lips, and for the royalty of that rage of joy which will shine in her eyes.

For the evening Miss Eve, for some reason, would put on her poudre blue with the Borzoi ornaments, and orchids, and now I had a small hour to myself, for, as to dinner, eating was far enough beneath that sphere of fairies where my brain was in a reel; so, having merely tasted a spoonful of soup, off I hastened to him....

He was not there at the cave, still he was not there! And I could only guess that, his awes of his “Man” having already grown less great, he had roamed far, and ah, I asked my heart if he had not done it four days too soon for my fate.... I had no paper to write him that he would be betrayed by the ladies if he came up, and after half an hour’s waiting returned to The Towers.

Nothing was then left me to do but to watch, and at first I lurked under the conservatory’s shadow, and then, conscious that I might be observed, moved up to pry from behind the curtains of that front bedroom on the right.

Thence I soon saw Healy appear on the terraces, and soon from the drawing-room out to him moves Miss Ruth. Miss Eve did not appear, though invited by Miss Ruth, I know, to assist at the rendezvous. So Miss Ruth and Healy conversed a while, and I heard the stable-clock strike nine as Miss Ruth introduced Healy into the conservatory to wait there concealed, and then returned to pace the terrace in the moonlight. Three minutes afterwards, half a mile off on the meadow below the lawn, I beheld a runner coming with a wide stride, his elbows at his side, his head thrown back, his lips opened, pressing prone home like a beast with its ribs breathing deeply from long travelling. At once I was certain that it was no one but him by his black skull, his shaggy shirt, and by observing how with a bouncing somehow and a buoyancy in his gait the boy came gaily—beautiful! like a fabulous youth booted with something pneumatic; and soon, scaling the terraces, he stood panting before Miss Ruth, I kneeling at the window’s sill with my ear low to hear him excusing his lateness: for, said he, he had had a high-day of adventures, and then had been again delayed by watching a conflagration eight miles away, and the deaths of a man and a child.

“Really?” says Miss Ruth to him, “and what, sir, is the name of this poor man who was burnt?” to which he gave the answer that he had heard the man called “George Perkins, the grocer.”

“What, Mr. Perkins, the grocer, of Up Brooming?” cries Miss Ruth shrinkingly, with eyes of alarm, “burnt to death?” and “Oh!” she murmured with ruth.

To this he replied—and I disliked him for it—that there was no need for any feeling of grief or loss, since this grocer’s life, he felt certain, was a life of no value, one greatly below the human grade, his figure having the grossness of the gorilla’s, and his soul on a similar level, since in the attempt that he had made to steal he had failed even to death....

“To steal?” breathed Miss Ruth; “Mr. Perkins, the grocer? A prayer-leader? There must be some mistake!”

“No,” he said—at least he took it, he said, for granted that the grocer had meant to steal, since there appeared to be no other motive for his demented rush into the conflagration.

“He rushed to rescue the child!” cries Miss Ruth.

“So,” he replies, with his smile, “the people of the region seemed to imagine,” but as the child, he observed, was not even the grocer’s own offspring, and as even an ape’s eye might have recognised the fatal state of the conflagration, therefore he could only suppose that the motive of the grocer was to grasp some hoard.... Whereupon the saint suddenly throws up her hands with drollery, and once more, as on the evening before, could not resist running to bring Miss Eve to hear the story of the good grocer, who, having perished as a hero, was still impeached of stealing! But Miss Eve would not immediately come, so that the other sister had need to entreat her thrice with, “Yes, come, yes, come,” ere Miss Eve, deciding, appeared on the terrace in her poudre blue, the moonlight’s hue, Hannibal Lepsius making the abject obeisances of a Jew before her face. Then the three spoke during some moments, or Miss Ruth and the young man spoke, Miss Eve, with an air of musing, waiting mutely near. I heard only in fragments what was said, but gathered that Miss Ruth, having ridiculed the grotesqueness of the good grocer being accused of stealing, the young man now began to glorify and laud stealing, asking if the Spartans did not rightly regard it as an excellent art of life; and what was dishonourable about it, he wished to know, save to be of so drowsy a consciousness, he said, as to fail or to be found out in it? In the midst of which speech of his, Miss Eve, without saying a word, turned away, and went pacing westward behind the conservatory toward the garden, the young man all agape after her, and Miss Ruth saying to him, “Now, I’m afraid you have quite blundered into my sister’s bad books, though I, too, say with you that there’s no wrong in stealing, save that it does seem rather selfish, does it not? and selfishness, I think, is the sole falsity, the only fault. But never mind, it will be quite well, let us wait and pray, for I prophesy in the Spirit that one day light will spring from on high in you. I am only sorry that we have to separate, but here’s the promised Bible, which for love of me you will read frequently, while I for love of you will wrestle—Listen!” for he, half turned toward the conservatory, hardly heard her, his eyeballs all beguiled away with a hungry glaring in them the way that Miss Eve had disappeared. “Listen!” she says, “I have considered it best to betray you——”

“Ah!” now he span about to frown a second at her, into her, one may say, and some other seconds stood dumb, considering it; looked up, too (why, I do not know), at the window where I knelt hidden. At any rate, he saw now the truth of my prophecy that Miss Ruth would betray him, and that I was no lapwing that says “pee-wit.” In a moment more by some reasoning of his own he seems to have surmised that Healy was concealed in the conservatory, for toward it with his usual ill-breeding, leaving Miss Ruth, he immediately rushed. Just then the footman John ran out with some message for Miss Ruth, who went in with him, and soon out from the conservatory hurried Hannibal Lepsius, holding Healy by the sleeve, leading him to the terrace’s brink, where he caused him to sit with a warning finger. The next instant he himself was off with the fleetest feet the way that Miss Eve had disappeared, tossing aside in his flight the Bible brought him by the other sister into the basin of water where the sun-dial stands, and as he vanished I, too, though with a shivering in my right knee which shook me throughout, rushed toward the house-back, and out into the top part of the garden, all my heart in a conflagration and tremble of haste to break into some outrageous row, and shout my wrongs.

I thought I heard talking down there at the bottom of the garden, and, bottling up my rage, shivering, I crawled like a snail down the three steps into a garden-walk which lay between bowers and arches made of box-twigs. There the voice of the boy again reached me, clearly now; so down another path on my right I prowled to its end, and now could see them down there at the bottom by the seat, he on his knees to Miss Eve like a very slave, she standing still, looking not at him, but at the north shrubbery-wall with a frown on her brow, while round in cruises above-head a white owl, I remember, was moving smoothly about in the moonlight, like a musing spirit cruising: for I somehow observed each little object, just as a person in going to the guillotine does, I have heard; and I observed that, though the previous day there had been bristles on his cheeks, he was at present clean-shaven, and I observed that Miss Eve’s handkerchief, which she had dropped, hung from the young man’s right ear; and I observed that he offered her earnestly the one half of a halfpenny, or of a penny, at which she would not look. Then I saw her lips speak, and she pointed southward, enjoining him, it seemed, to leave her, upon which up the boy sprang, and was now about, I believe, to seize her body, but all at once now was in flight—along the alley down which I was peeping! _Why_ in flight I could not conjecture, till suddenly I saw Monsieur le Comte de Courcy appear from the north walk, with his cane uplifted in the air. He, it seems, pacing with two ladies in the north shrubbery, and seeing through the gate, may be, a male without a jacket molesting Miss Eve, had run to protect her, at which the young man, ever fearful of his “Man,” had taken to his heels: and before ever I could raise my self up to run, he, raining his steps, had pelted by me, looking back over his shoulder at Monsieur de Courcy. He seemed, when his eyes fell upon me, to see me there without surprise; and on some way he still ran, more and more slowly now, however, looking back always at Monsieur de Courcy who, cane in air, was pursuing him. But all at once the boy, making only loitering steps that halted, almost stopped, amazement painted on his face—that he was so inefficiently chased, I take it; amazement, and also, though he always smiled, a terror which stretched his nostrils as the cane of Monsieur the Minister came. I stood awe-struck at it! and Miss Eve, too, appeared to be apprehensive of something fearful, for she tripped some distance in Monsieur the Minister’s rear, and once called out after him. He, however, seemed not to hear her: still on came his great bulk of body, the cane, the eye-glass and glassy shirt-front, till he was quite near the turning in which I lurked, his teeth grinning white to bite his cigarette between them. But he never advanced as far forward as my turning: all at once Hannibal Lepsius was at him; and in that instant of bewilderment, ere one’s wits could decide what had been done, or in what way done, one was aware of the cane of Monsieur the Minister wheeling high away up in the air, up where the owl wound its flight, while the Minister himself was now on the ground, and his cigarette, no longer in his mouth, now stuck out of one nostril, the glowing end upward.... Oh, I was smitten with compunction for Monsieur de Courcy, he a man of so much culture—and with a feeling of affright! he being one whose anger it must be a truly grievous thing to bring upon oneself.... As Miss Eve hurried to him, I ran off.... The young man also had vanished, appalled, as I imagine, at the enormity of his defiance of his “Man”; and when I ran out to the terraces, neither of him nor of Healy was any trace to be seen, nor when I ran down to his river-cave.... I came back up lagging and agued, yes, trembling throughout in a kind of ague-fit....

Then, till my bell summoned me at midnight, I lay sullen, and, as it were, dead, though uttering a sob anon. But soon after midnight I had my mistress in my hands before the mirror, had already made ready her hair, and now after massage with the preparation, was getting on her night-gloves, when she remarks to me, “What is the matter? Your fingers quiver,” and I then replied to her, “Miss Vickery, this is because I have it on my mind to inform you that I am about to leave your service in a hurry, since I am about to be married.” I expected to feel her start a little! but even in that electric blaze of the two candelabra I could detect no surprise in her, and oh, these English with their cold spleens, how one dislikes them! She muttered to me, “Don’t be agitated; when do you go?” did not even inquire who was that future-one of mine. But as it was mainly in order to proclaim this to her that I had spoken, I made the remark, “I believe, Miss Vickery, that you have even seen my future-one, who is that young individual named Hannibal Lepsius”—whereat as when a nerve leaps a little, it appeared certain to me that her hand stirred in mine: and I was pleased within myself at this.

She asked not one question, but I now informed her frankly of everything, how, in his passion for me, after seeing me in the bushes, the young man had swum aboard the yacht, how I had hidden him, brought him hither, and now was about to receive the bishop’s licence to marry him—keeping meantime a sharp eye of observation upon her face in the mirror: but beyond a little raising up of her palms once as in amazement, she listened calmly, making no remark; only, the moment I stopped, up she stood, went to the large wardrobe, and now began prodigally to shower out her gowns, gown after gown, upon the arm-chair for my wedding-gift, so that I stood agape at the largesse of her busy arm, and this sharp shower of her bounty—quite a thousand pounds, as I now count—for out, too, with the others flew that pearl grey, the ermine stole, that orchid-mauve silk with the spotted poplin, and now the China silk tea-gown with the Valenciennes insertions, and that great creation for the Coaching Club Meet last year, only that once worn. “And are all these really for me, Miss Vickery?” I said to her in the midst of it; “you are truly good and gracious, Miss Vickery,” I said, to which she made no answer, but continued to rain her largesse with a scornful arm. I had to make three journeys out of the chamber, submerged beneath these riches, and comforted inwardly of the pangs that rankled in me. Even when I supposed that I had taken out everything, the stole was still left, and when I now stepped in softly for this from behind the portière, I came upon the lady standing there as naked now as a lily, her outlines all slenderly long-drawn as by the pencil of a stripling painter who has never yet ventured, save in his dreamings, to be voluptuous, and she appeared to stand tip-toe stretched to spurn and desert this earth, and return to her heavens. Suddenly, chancing to catch sight of me behind her, all that marble was washed in one blush, as though I was he upon whom perhaps her heart was musing.