CHAPTER XIII. A CHOICE.
’Tis better far to love and be poor,
Than be rich with an empty heart.
Mrs. Harrington was sitting in the great drawing-room in Grosvenor Gardens, alone. The butler was fuming and cleaning plate in his pantry. The maid was weeping in the workroom. Mrs. Harrington had had a busy afternoon.
“’Tis always thus when she’s alone in the house,” the cook had said, with a grandiosity of style borrowed from the Family Herald. It is easy for the cook to be grandiose when the butler and the lady’s-maid are in trouble. Thus philosophy walketh in at the back door.
Mrs. Harrington’s sharp grey face twitched at times with a certain restlessness which was hers when she had no one at hand to bully. She could not concentrate her attention on the newspaper she held in her hands, and at intervals her eyes wandered over the room in search of something to find fault with. She made the mistake common to persons under such circumstances--she forgot to look in the mirror. Mrs. Harrington was tired of herself. She wished someone would call. At the same time she felt a cordial dislike to all her friends.
It was a hopelessly grey afternoon early in December, and every one was out of London. Mrs. Harrington had a certain circle of friends - middle-aged or elderly women, rich like herself, lonely like herself - whom she despised. They all rather disliked each other, these women, but they visited nevertheless. They dined together seriously; keeping in mind the cook, and watchful over the wine. But the majority of these ladies had gone away for the winter. The Riviera was created for such.
Mrs. Harrington, however, never went abroad in the winter. She said that she had travelled too much when she was younger--in the lifetime of her husband--to care about it now. The Honourable George Henry Harrington had, in fact, lived abroad for financial reasons, and the name was not of sweet savour in the nostrils of hotel-keepers. The married life referred to occasionally in cold tones by the Honourable Mrs. Harrington had been of that order which is curtly called “cat and dog,” and likewise “hand to mouth.”
Therefore Mrs. Harrington avoided the Continent. She could easily, of her affluence, have paid certain large debts which she knew to be outstanding, but she held a theory that dead men owe nothing. And with this theory she lubricated an easy-going conscience.
The mistress of the large house in Grosvenor Gardens was wondering discontentedly what she was going to do with herself until tea-time, when she heard the sound of a bell ringing far down in the basement. Despite the grand drawing-room, despite the rich rustle of her grey silk dress, this great lady peeped from behind the curtain, and saw a hansom cab.
A few minutes later the door was thrown open by the angry butler.
“Miss Challoner--Captain Bontnor.”
Eve came in, and at her heels Captain Bontnor, who sheered off as it were from the butler, and gave him a wide berth.
Mrs. Harrington could be gracious when she liked. She liked now, and she would have kissed her visitor had that young lady shown any desire for such an honour. But there was a faint reflex of Spanish ceremony in Eve Challoner, of which she was probably unaware. A few years ago it would not have been noticeable, but to-day we are hail-fellow-well-met even with ladies--which is a mistake, on the part of the ladies.
“So you received my letter, my dear,” said Mrs. Harrington.
“Yes,” replied Eve. “This is my uncle--Captain Bontnor.”
Mrs. Harrington had the bad taste to raise her eyebrows infinitesimally, and Captain Bontnor saw it.
“How do you do?” said Mrs. Harrington, with a stiff bow.
“I am quite well, thank you, marm,” replied the sailor, with more aplomb than Eve had yet seen him display.
Without waiting to hear this satisfactory intelligence, Mrs. Harrington turned to Eve again. She evidently intended to ignore Captain Bontnor systematically and completely.
“You know,” she said, “I am related to your father - ”
“By marriage,” put in Captain Bontnor, with simple bluntness. He was brushing his hat with a large pocket-handkerchief.
“And I have pleasant recollections of his kindness in past years. I stayed with him at the Casa d’Erraha more than once. I was staying there when--well, some years ago. I think you had better come and live with me until your poor father’s affairs have been put in order.”
Captain Bontnor raised his head and ceased his operations on the dusty hat. His keen old eyes, full of opposition, were fixed on Eve’s face. He was quite ready to be rude again, but women know how to avoid these shallow places better than men, with a policy which is not always expedient perhaps.
“Thank you,” replied Eve. “Thank you very much, but my uncle has kindly offered me a home.”
Mrs. Harrington’s grey face suggested a scorn which she apparently did not think it worth while to conceal from a person who wiped the inside of his hat with his pocket-handkerchief in a lady’s presence.
“But,” she said coldly, “I should think that your uncle cannot fail to see the superior advantages of the offer I am now making you, from a social point of view, if from no other.”
“I do see them advantages, marm,” said the captain bluntly. He looked at Eve with something dog-like peering from beneath his shaggy eyebrows.
“Of course,” continued Mrs. Harrington, ignoring the confession, “you have been brought up as a lady, and are accustomed to refinement, and in some degree to luxury.”
“You needn’t make it any plainer, marm,” blurted out Captain Bontnor. “I don’t need you to tell me that my niece is above me. I don’t set up for bein’ anything nor what I am. There’s not much of the gentleman about me. But--”
He paused, and half turned towards Eve.
“But, ’cording to my lights, I’m seeking to do my duty towards the orphan child of my sister Amelia Ann.”
“Not overlooking the fact, I suppose, that the orphan child of your sister Amelia Ann has a very fair income of her own.”
Captain Bontnor smiled blandly, and smoothed his hat with his sleeve.
“Not overlooking that fact, marm,” he said, “if you choose to take it so.”
Mrs. Harrington turned to Eve again with a faint reflex of her overbearing manner towards the Ingham-Bakers and other persons who found it expedient to submit.
“You will see at a glance,” she said, “that it is impossible for you to live with Captain Bontnor.”
“I have already accepted his kind offer,” returned the girl. “Thank you, nevertheless.”
“But,” said Mrs. Harrington, “that was before you knew that I was ready to make a home for you.”
Captain Bontnor had turned away. He blew his nose so loudly that Mrs. Harrington frowned. There was something trumpet-like and defiant in the sound. Opposition had ever a strange effect on this spoilt woman. She liked it, as serving to enhance the value of the wish which she rarely failed to gratify in the end.
“You must remember your position,” she continued. “These are very democratic days, when silly people think that all men are equal. A lady is nevertheless still a lady, and a gentleman a gentleman, though one does not often meet them. I wish you to come and live with me.”
Eve’s dark eyes flashed suddenly. She glanced at her uncle, and said nothing.
“A girl with money is a ready dupe to designing persons,” added Mrs. Harrington.
“I am saved that danger, for I have no money,” replied Eve.
“Nonsense, child! I know the value of land in Mallorca. I see already that you are being deceived.”
She glanced significantly towards the captain, who was again smiling blandly.
“The matter has been fully gone into,” explained Eve, “by competent persons. The Val d’Erraha does not belong to me. It was held by my father only on ‘rotas’--the Minorcan form of lease--and it has now been returned to the proprietor.”
Mrs. Harrington’s keen face dropped. She prided herself upon being a woman of business, and as such had always taken a deep interest in the affairs of other people. It is to be presumed that women have a larger mental grasp than men. They crave for more business when they are business-like, and thus by easy steps descend to mere officiousness.
Eve’s story was so very simple and, to the ears of one who had known her father, so extremely likely, that Mrs. Harrington had for the moment nothing to say. She knew the working of the singular system on which land is to this day held in tenure in Majorca and Minorca, and there was no reason to suppose that there was any mistake or deception respecting the estate of the Val d’Erraha.
A dramatist of considerable talent, who is not sufficiently studied in these modern times, has said that a man in his time plays many parts. He left it to be understood that a woman plays only one. The business woman is the business woman all through her life--she is never the charitable lady, even for a moment.
Mrs. Harrington had wished to have the bringing out of a beautiful heiress. She had no desire to support a penniless orphan. The matter had, in her mind, taken the usual form of a contract in black and white. Mrs. Harrington would supply position and a suitable home--Eve was to have paid for her own dresses--chosen by the elder contractor--and to have filled gracefully the gratifying, if hollow, position of a young person of means looking for a husband.
Mrs. Harrington’s business habits had, in fact, kept her fully alive to the advantages likely to accrue to herself; and the small fact that Eve was penniless reduced these advantages to a mythical reward in the hereafter. And business people have not time to think of the hereafter.
It is possible that simple old Captain Bontnor in part divined these thoughts in the set grey eyes, the grey wrinkled face.
“You’ll understand, marm,” he said, “that my niece will not be in a position to live the sort o’ life” - he paused, and looked round the vast room, quite without admiration - “the sort o’ life you’re livin’ here. She couldn’t keep up the position.”
“It would not be for long,” said Mrs. Harrington, already weighing an alternative plan. She looked critically at Eve, noting, with the appraising eye of a middle-aged woman of the world, the grace of her straight young form, the unusual beauty of her face. “If you could manage to allow her sufficient to dress suitably for one season, I dare say she would make a suitable marriage.”
Eve turned on her with a flash of bright dark eyes. “Thank you; I do not want to make a suitable marriage.”
Captain Bontnor laid his hand on her arm.
“My dear,” he said, “don’t take any heed of her. She doesn’t know any better. I have heard tell of such women, but”--he looked round the room--“I did not look to meet with one in a house like this. I did not know they called themselves ladies.”
Mrs. Harrington gasped. She lived in a world where people think such things as these, but do not say them. Captain Bontnor, on the other hand, had not yet encountered a person of whom he was so much afraid as to conceal a hostile opinion, should he harbour such.
He was patting Eve’s gloved hand as if she had been physically hurt, and Eve smiled down into his sympathetic old face. It is a singular fact that utter worldliness in a woman seems to hurt women less than it does men.
Mrs. Harrington, with frigid dignity, ignored Captain Bontnor, and addressed herself exclusively to Eve.
“You must be good enough to remember,” she said, “that I can scarcely have other motives than those of kindness.”
A woman is so conscious of the weak links in her chain of argument, that she usually examines them publicly.
“I do remember that,” replied Eve, rather softened by the grey loneliness of this woman’s life--a loneliness which seemed to be sitting on all the empty chairs--“and I am very grateful to you. I think, perhaps, my uncle misunderstood you. But--”
“Yes--but--”
“Under the circumstances, I think it will be wiser for me to accept his kind offer, and make my home with him. I hope to be able to find some work which will enable me to--to help somewhat towards the household expenses.”
Mrs. Harrington shrugged her shoulders.
“As you like,” she said. “After a few months of a governess’s life perhaps you may reconsider your decision. I know--”
She was going to say that she knew what it was, but she recollected herself in time.
“I know,” she said instead, “girls who have lived such lives.”
With the air of Spain Eve Challoner seemed to have inhaled some of the Spanish pride, which is as a stone wall against which charity and pity may alike beat in vain. From her superior height the girl looked down on the keen-faced little woman.
“I am not in a position to choose,” she said. “I am prepared for some small hardships.”
Mrs. Harrington turned to ring the bell. With the sudden caprice which her money had enabled her to cultivate, she had taken a liking to Eve.
“You will have some tea?” she said.
Eve turned to thank her, and suddenly her heart leaped to her throat. She caught her breath, and did not answer for a moment.
“Thank you,” she said; and her eyes stole back to the mantelpiece, where a large photograph of Fitz seemed to watch her with a quiet, thoughtful smile.
The whole room appeared to be different after that. Mrs. Harrington seemed to be a different woman--the world seemed suddenly to be a smaller place and less lonely.
During the remainder of the short visit they talked of indifferent topics, while Captain Bontnor remained silent. Mrs. Harrington’s caprice grew stronger, and before tea was over she said--
“My dear, if you will not come and live with me, at all events make use of me. Your uncle will, no doubt, have to make some small changes in his household. I propose that you stay with me a week or ten days, until he is ready for you.”
This with a slight conciliatory bow towards Captain Bontnor, who stared remorselessly at the clock.
“Thank you; I should very much like to,” said Eve, mindful of the mantelpiece.