EVE’S cheeks showed a deep rose bloom; she was no longer the snow-white woman whom near-sighted Miss Sabrina had furtively scanned upon her arrival at Romney six months before. She was still markedly erect, but her step had become less confident, her despotic manner had disappeared. Often now she was irresolute, and she had grown awkward—a thing new with her; she did not know how to arrange her smallest action, hampered by this new quality.
But since the terrible hour when Ferdie had appeared at the end of the corridor with his candle held aloft and his fixed eyes, life with her had rushed along so rapidly that she had seemed to be powerless in its current. The first night in Paul’s cottage, in her little room next to Cicely’s, she had spent hours on her knees by the bedside pouring forth in a flood of gratitude to Some One, Somewhere—she knew no formulas of prayer—that she had been delivered from the horror that had held her speechless through all the long journey. Ferdie was living! She repeated it over and over—Ferdie was living!
At the time there had been no plan; she had stepped back into her room to get the pistol, not with any purpose of attack, but in order not to be without some means of defence. The pistol was one of Jack’s, which she had found and taken possession of soon after her arrival, principally because it had been his; she had seen him with it often; with it he himself had taught her to shoot. Then at the last, when Jack’s poor little boy had climbed up by the boat’s seat, and the madman had made that spring towards him, then she had—done what she did. She had done it mechanically; it had seemed the only thing to do.
But, once away, the horror had come, as it always does and must, when by violence a human life has been taken. She had dropped the pistol into the Sound, but she could not drop the ghastly picture of the dark figure on the sand, with its arms making two or three spasmodic motions, then becoming suddenly still. Was he dead? If he was, she, Eve Bruce, was a murderer, a creature to be imprisoned for life,—hanged. How people would shrink from her if they knew! And how monstrous it was that she should touch Cicely! Yet she must. Cain, where is thy brother? And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. Would it come to this, that she should be forced at last to take her own life, in order to be free from the horror of murder? These were the constant thoughts of that journey northward, without one moment’s respite day or night.
But deliverance had come: he was alive! God was good after all, God was kind; he had lifted from her this pall of death. He was alive! He was alive!
“Oh, I did not do it! I am innocent! That figure has gone from the sand; it got up and walked away!” She laughed in the relief, the reaction, and buried her face in the pillow to stifle it. “Cicely will not know what I am laughing at; she will wonder. I need never tell her anything now, because the only men who were suspected have got safely away. She is safe, little Jack is safe, and Ferdie is not dead; he is alive—alive!” So swept on through the night the tide of her immense joy. For the next day and the next, for many days after, this joy surged within her, its outward expression being the flush, and the brilliant light in her eyes.
Eve Bruce had a strongly truthful nature, she was frank not only with others, but with herself; she possessed the unusual mental quality (unusual in a woman) of recognizing facts, whether they were agreeable or not; of living without illusions. This had helped to give her, perhaps, her brusque manner, with its absence of gentleness, its scanty sweetness. With her innate truthfulness, it was not long before this woman perceived that there was another cause contributing to the excitement that was quickening her breath and making life seem new. The discovery had come suddenly.
It had been arranged that on a certain day they should walk out to the mine, Paul, the judge, Hollis, and herself. When the time came, Hollis appeared alone, Paul was too busy to leave the office. They walked out to the mine. But Eve felt her feet dragging, she was unaccountably depressed. Upon her return, as she came in sight of the cottage, she remembered how happy she had been there the day before, and for many days. What had changed? Had she not the same unspeakable great cause for joy? For what reason did the day seem dull and the sky dark? And then the truth showed itself: it was because Paul Tennant was not there; nothing else.
Another woman would have veiled it, would not have acknowledged the fact even to herself; for women have miraculous power of really believing only what they wish to believe; for many women facts, taken alone, do not exist. But Eve had no such endowments. She had reached her room; she pushed to the door and stood there motionless; after two or three minutes she sank into the nearest chair; here she sat without stirring for some time. Then she rose, went down the stairs, and out again. It was six o’clock, but there were still two hours of daylight; she hurried towards the nearest border of forest, and, just within its fringe, she began walking rapidly to and fro, her hands, clasped together, hanging before her, her eyes on the ground. She did not come back until nightfall.
As she entered she met Paul.