Miss Devereux, spinster

by Agnes Giberne

Cyril was at his best, handsome and conversational; and Lady Lucas' beaming countenance seemed to bespeak her forgiveness of the company into which she found herself plunged. After all, had not the Trevelyans ancestors—and were there not blue ingredients in the Trevelyan blood?

Mrs. Trevelyan, "Jem's mother" as she was called by many, was the model of a sweet elderly lady, and Evelyn was more like her old self than Jem had yet seen her. Jem himself looked fagged and out of spirits with the worries of the past month. Perhaps he felt a little disappointed at not having to take Evelyn in; at all events, Jean thought so, even while dutifully "not allowing herself" to think anything of the kind. He quite failed to get any manner of a rise out of Miss Moggridge, for the young baronet's entertainment; indeed, conversation flagged much between the two. The one being a man of action, the other a woman of theories, they were less likely to act match and match-box than Cyril had expected.

Miss Moggridge was a lady of independent though small means; not a "companion" in the ordinary sense of the word, since she received nothing from Evelyn but a home and the privilege of dancing attendance upon her. She had no home ties of her own, and she had fallen over head and ears in love with Evelyn, as one woman does sometimes fall in love with another. Miss Moggridge did not gush and fuss sentimentally over her love, as some women do in a like case—women of Sybella's calibre—but she was silently ready to give time and life to the object of her affections. Evelyn, touched by this intense though commonly dumb devotion, and feeling the need of permanent companionship, had somewhat hastily suggested living together—in other words, had offered to take Miss Moggridge into her ménage. The offer had been at once eagerly accepted.

But to have a devoted friend out of the house, and to be with that friend always in the house, are two different things. A friendship, which is only enhanced by the little partings and meetings and excitements of the one existence, will not always stand the pull of the other. The compact had not long been made before Evelyn began, after her wont, to regret it.

She was sincerely fond of Miss Moggridge; yet this fondness was a mild affair compared with the absorbing and jealous worship of the older lady. Miss Moggridge's dumbness of love lessened under the thawing influence of perpetual nearness; and the ardour of a devotion which could never leave its object alone became a weariness to that object. Evelyn loved freedom, even while she craved for more ties; and she found her freedom hampered.

Miss Moggridge was large in make, and superlatively plain. Her face, no less than her body, was large; the nose was crooked; the eyes were small; the teeth were discoloured; the complexion really was "liver-hued." She had not in looks a single redeeming point; and she was also somewhat gauche, somewhat excitable, somewhat opinionated, somewhat clever, and by fits and starts a great talker. Towards Evelyn she was monotonously mild and yielding on all questions of opinion: towards other people she was hardly less monotonously argumentative. All this had been a matter for amusement in the friend whom Evelyn saw for an hour or two at a time, but in her perpetual companion, she did not like it so well. She was equally teased by the inevitable agreement with herself, and by the inevitable disagreement with the rest of the world.

There were oppositions and inconsistencies in Miss Moggridge, as in most human beings. Theologically she prided herself on being Broad; and she showed her share of human contractedness by her unlimited abuse of those whom she counted "Narrow." The abuse was not couched in unladylike terms, but it was sufficiently severe; and to Evelyn such tirades always came as an attack upon her husband's memory. Of course, she never said so; and Miss Moggridge never guessed what Evelyn felt, or the tirades would have ceased in her hearing. As they did not cease, they helped to loosen the bond which attached the two ladies together.

Miss Moggridge was also an advocate for "female rights;" and on this topic she was apt to wax explosive, to the immense delight of young men, who, calm in the consciousness of their inborn superiority, could afford to smile. Miss Moggridge might not "see it," but so much the better fun. Evelyn, however, did not accept certain modern versions of female rights, and she had begun to grow tired of the declamations on this subject, once only entertaining.

Side by side with such characteristics were to be found in Miss Moggridge a large modicum of womanly tenderness when something or somebody called it out; a painful womanly consciousness of her own ugliness; and a vehement love of beauty. There is something pathetic in such a beauty-loving soul as hers, enshrined in so clumsy a casket. If, in any mysterious sense, the soul can be supposed to secrete the body, as a mollusc secretes it shell, one can only wonder how Miss Moggridge's poetic soul should have put forth so inadequate an expression of itself.

This jumble of characteristics in female form was now Evelyn's chosen companion. For how long? Perhaps for the rest of her life. Could anything ever separate them? Evelyn sometimes put this question to herself drearily; not that she did not love Miss Moggridge, but that she did not love to be bound.