The Lady Evelyn: A Story of To-day

by Max Pemberton

CHAPTER IX

THE THIRD EARL OF MELBOURNE

There is hardly a pleasanter room in all England than the old Chamber of the Tapestries they use as a breakfast room at Melbourne Hall. Situated in the west wing of the great quadrangle, and giving off immediately from the famous long gallery, its tiny latticed casements permit a view which reveals at once all the cultivated beauty of the gardens and the wild woodland scenery of the park beyond, in a vista which never fails to win the admiration of the stranger, as it has won the love of many generations who have inhabited that historic mansion.

It is not a large room, but it tells much of the story of the house, its triumphs, its misfortunes, and its glories. Here you have the time-stained arms of John, the first baron, whose cinquefoil azure upon a crimson banner had been carried high at Agincourt; here were the crosslets fitchée of the House of Mar, whose feminine representative had come south to wed the third baron in the days of good King Hal. Fair fingers had worked these tapestries long ago, waiting, perchance, for news of husband or lover whom the wars had claimed, or fighting for a King whose son would laugh at their story of fidelity. It had been my lady's bower then, and knights and squires had doffed their caps as they passed its doors. To-day they gave it no nobler name than breakfast room, and therein, at half-past eight every morning, the Earl of Melbourne, more punctual than the clock itself, sat down to breakfast.

Now, here was a man who had been an adventurer all his life, a man of the field, the forest, and the sea; a bluff bearded man, not unrefined in face and feature, but utterly unsuited by the disposition of his will to the dignity which accident had thrust upon him, and resenting it every hour that he lived.

"What are we but slaves of our birth?" he would ask his daughter passionately. "Why am I cooped up in this old house when I might be on the deck of a good ship or under canvas in the Alleghany Mountains? You say that nothing forbids my doing it. You know it isn't true. The world would cry out on me if I cut myself adrift. And you yourself would be the first to complain of it. We owe it to society, Evelyn, to make ourselves miserable for the rest of our lives. They call it 'station' in the prayer-book, but the man who wrote that had never shot big game on the Zambesi or he'd have sung to a different tune."

Sometimes when Evelyn protested that society would really remain indifferent whatever they did, he would reply, a little brutally, that when she had found a husband it would be another matter.

"There will be two of you then to stand for the cinquefoil," he observed cynically. "I shall shake the handcuffs off and get back to the East. A man lives in the sunshine. Here he scarcely vegetates. When they inquire, in ten years' time, where the Earl of Melbourne is, you'll send them to the Himalayas to begin with, and there they can ask again. Don't lose time about it, Evelyn. You know that young John Hall is head over ears in love with you."

Evelyn's face would flush at this; and there had been an occasion when she answered him with the amazing intimation that she would sooner marry Williams, the groom, than the young baronet he spoke of. This frightened the old Earl exceedingly.

"Her mother's blood runs in her veins," he said to himself. "By heaven, she'd marry a stable-boy if I thwarted her."

Here was the spectre which haunted him continually. He feared to read the story of his own youth and marriage in the youth and marriage of his daughter. Notwithstanding his jests, his love for her was passionate and dominated every other instinct of his life. "You are all that I have in the world, my little Evelyn," he would confess in gentler moods. He desired her affection in like measure, but had never wholly won it. Perhaps instinctively she understood that some barrier of the past interposed itself between them. Her father's defects of character could not be absolutely hidden from her. She feared she knew not what.

And if this were her normal mood, what of the Evelyn who had gone to London at the bidding of a mad desire; who had become Etta Romney there; who had returned at the dead of night and awaited her father's home-coming with that tremulous expectation which at once could dread exposure and yet delight in the peril of it? When her first alarm had passed and quiet days had led her to believe that she dreamed the story of espionage, Evelyn could await the issue with no little confidence. After all, why should Count Odin betray her, even if he had her secret? He was a man of the world and had nothing to gain by dealing treacherously with a woman. Her father went to London so rarely that she might well deride the danger of his visits. Nothing but a clumsy accident could write that story so that the Earl might read it, she thought. And so she welcomed him home with all her habitual composure, and upon the morning of the second day of July she found herself seated opposite to him in my lady's bower, listening to his stories of Italy and his plans for the summer and the autumn months to come.

"We ought to give some parties, I suppose," he said; "the servants expect it, and we must not disappoint them. Ask all the people who don't want to come and get rid of them as quickly as you can. I have written to Colchester about the yacht and we ought to get her in commission in August. You always loved the sea, Evelyn, and this will be a change for you. We can put into Trouville and Étretat and see what the Frenchwomen are wearing. I shall steam down to the Mediterranean later on; but that won't be until December. We have the birds to kill first and plenty of them. Of course, I know you wanted to be in London this Spring, and it is not my fault if you did not go. This copper mine in Tuscany is going to make me as rich as Vanderbilt. I could not neglect it just because a lot of fools were driving mail phaetons in Bond Street."

Evelyn smiled a little coldly.

"Men do not drive mail phaetons nowadays," she said, "they drive motor-cars. Of course, it is very necessary for us to keep the wolf from the door—we are so poor, father."

The Earl had grown accustomed to remarks such as these, and had become skilful in evading them. He understood perfectly well that Evelyn expressed her own disappointment and that she meant to remind him of his broken promises to take a house in Mayfair for the season and to sacrifice his own pleasures at least for a few brief weeks.

"I am poor enough," he said, "to want all the money I can get. This old place costs a fortune to keep up. I mean to do big things here by and by, and twenty thousand won't be too much when they are done. Besides, it is not money that we men run after, but the gratification of our own vanity in getting it. The claims on this estate are heavy and they have to be met quickly if it is to be cleared. I backed my own opinion about this mine against the biggest house in Germany and I am coming out top all the time. If it put fifty thousand a year into my pocket, who'll benefit by it but you? Think of that when you talk about the little crowd of paupers you want to see in London. Money's money. And precious glad some of them would be to see the color of it."

Evelyn did not contradict him. She was too weary of the subject to wish to revive it. Imitating others, whose youth had been one of far from splendid poverty, the Earl permitted money to become the guiding principle of his life in the exact ratio of its acquisition. An exceedingly rich man when he inherited the bankrupt estates of the Melbournes, each year found a waning of his natural generosity, a growth of unaccustomed meanness, and a diligence in the quest of fortune which the circumstances made almost pathetic. On her part, Evelyn was perfectly well aware that he would give no parties at the Hall this year, would not take her to Trouville, nor visit the Mediterranean in the winter. Each season found its own excuses for delay. The wretched mine in Tuscany was a very godsend when postponements of any kind troubled the Earl for a good excuse.

"I am glad you are going to do something to the Hall," she said evasively; "at least there will be the painters' society to enjoy. After that I suppose I may go to Dieppe, as Aunt Anne wishes. It will be quite a dissipation—under the circumstances."

He looked at her rather sharply.

"So you went to London after all?" he said. "I thought you meant to put it off?"

"To put it off! That would have been a familiar task. I live to put things off. There is no one in all Derbyshire who has so many excuses to make as I have."

"My dear Evelyn, you know perfectly well why I dislike all this kind of thing."

"Indeed, I know nothing, except that you dislike it. This is the third year that you promised to take me to London and have disappointed me. If there is any reason that keeps us prisoners when others are free, would you not wish me to know of it? I am your daughter, and surely, father, you can speak to me of this."

"My dear little Evelyn," he said, hiding his embarrassment as well as might be, "you are talking the greatest nonsense in the world. If you want to go to London, you shall go to-morrow. Take a house, a flat, an hotel, anything you like—only don't ask me to go with you. I am past all that sort of thing. A city stifles me; the fools I find in it make me angry. If you like them, go and see them. I have been alone enough in my life not to mind very much being alone again."

This quasi-appeal to her pity was his invariable argument. He would have been embarrassed had she accepted his proposals; but he knew full well that she would not accept them. And so he made them with a generosity which cost him nothing but a momentary tremor of doubt lest her answer should disappoint him.

"Oh," she said, rising from the table and going to the window to look across the park, "I am satiated with gayety—and Aunt Anne is a very paragon of giddiness. We went to bed every night at half-past nine and got up at six; and, of course, Richmond is quite Mayfair when you learn to know it."

The Earl, rising also, would have laughed it off, despite the ridiculous nature of the effort.

"Poor old Anne is not as young as she was," he exclaimed lightly. "I dare say you found her a little tiresome. Well, I suppose you came home when you were tired of it?"

"Yes," said Evelyn, without turning round, "I came home when I was tired of it."

He could not see the deep blush upon her cheeks, nor would he have understood it had he done so. Indeed, she was truthful so far as the letter of the truth went. A visit to Richmond had been the excuse which carried her from Melbourne Hall. Three dreary days she had spent in a prim house overlooking the Thames. The home of the skittish Aunt Anne, whose sixty years did not forbid her still to look out, like Sister Mary, for an heroic "Him" upon her horizon. From Richmond, Evelyn had gone to the Carlton Theatre; and now, for an instant, even here in her own home, the Etta Romney could return to delight in her adventure.

What a sensation had attended her disappearance from London? Safely guarded in her jewel-case upstairs were cuttings from the newspapers of the days succeeding that mad flight. Be sure that the great Charles Izard made the most of his misfortune. He had believed that Etta Romney left him at the bidding of caprice and at the voice of caprice would return to him again. His shrewd mind instantly perceived that the truth would best serve him on this occasion; and though he was not on very good terms with truth, the quarrel was soon patched up. To all the reporters he told the full story of this captivating romance.

"The girl came to me from nowhere," he said frankly, "and where she has gone God knows. I gave her a hearing because she wrote me the cleverest letter I have read for many a long day. Her home was in Derbyshire, and this was a Derbyshire play. I saw her act one scene in my theatre and said that she was 'bully.' She had the best send off I can remember. Then comes the night when I am strung up on my own hook. She expresses her trunks and quits. About that I know as much as you do. Her traps were left at St. Pancras station, and a letter says that she has given up the theatre. Well, I don't believe it. A girl who can act like that will never give up the theatre. In one month or six she'll be starring in my plays. She cannot help herself; she's got to do it."

Nothing whets the public's appetite so surely as curiosity; and all London had grown curious about Etta Romney. Discerning men, who had but half-praised her when she first appeared, hastened to declare that her loss was irreparable. Less responsible journals gave coherent accounts of the whole business, written in the back office by gentlemen who knew nothing whatever about it. The affair, at first but a nine days' wonder, became a standing headline when the editor of a popular newspaper boldly offered a hundred guineas for the discovery of Etta Romney's whereabouts.

Etta read all about this in the brief days that intervened between her own return and her father's. While the woman in her rejoiced at the success they spoke of, the child failed to perceive the danger of this undue publicity or to guard in any way against it. It is true that she had been very much alarmed upon the night she fled from London; but as the weeks went by and neither word nor message reached her from Count Odin, or indeed from any of the friends she had made at the theatre, a new sense of security came to her and compelled her to delight in what appeared to be the final success of her escapade. Surely now her father would remain in ignorance of it to the end, she argued. She believed that it would be so, though whether the Etta Romney within her were really dead, she did not dare to say.

The spirit of her mad desire; the passionate longing for liberty and triumph before the world; the knowledge of the rare gifts she possessed and of the future they might win for her, were these to be forever shut behind the gates of her silent house, however beautiful that house might be? She knew not. The future alone could tell her whither the voice of her destiny would call her.