Mr. Johnson did not come up to Evelyn’s ideas of a distinguished don; but Mrs. Rowland was aware that appearances are often deceptive in the case of such great personages, and it did not occur to her that October was an unlikely moment for a reading party. She was perhaps the only one who attached any significance at all to the words. She begged Mr. Johnson to find a seat for himself, and share their luncheon. He was an insignificant person, with furtive eyes and a sallow complexion, clothed in the usual tweeds. “I am sure, madam, I am much obliged to you,” he said; which was somewhat startling; but dons are often very old-fashioned, as Evelyn was aware.
The conversation went on as if he were not there. He was a taciturn person, but gave a great and concentrated attention to the basket. To see him eating and drinking recalled to Evelyn stories which everybody in her youth had been fond of telling to the disadvantage of the dons.
“You have very little in your bag. I would have killed more myself,” said Marion.
“Ah, I dare say,” Eddy replied; “you’ve no heart and no conscience, and what would you care what you killed? A man or two in the bag would have made it much heavier.”
“As if I would take the trouble to shoot men!”
“And a woman can’t be tried for manslaughter,” said Eddy: and they both laughed as if, except their own rather poor fun, there was nothing that was of any interest in the world.
Rosamond kept her stately pose, her lofty manner of treating the subject under discussion, but she was perhaps scarcely more elevated in her aim. “Can you tell me the names of the mountains, now?” she said, with an emphasis which only Archie understood.
And he woke up from that self-absorbed dullness which was the aspect he presented in general, and pointed out to her peak after peak, not without an occasional glance at Roderick in the background, who gave him a nod back again over the young lady’s head. Evelyn looked on, perceiving all these little details with an unembarrassed attention. It was seldom she was so free to observe what was going on about her: the business of a large household, to which she was yet unaccustomed, the calls of her husband upon her attention, the cares of the mistress of the house to keep everything going, had lessened her possibilities of observation. But the position of an elder woman in the midst of a little company of this description is sometimes almost uncomfortably free. There is no pretence made of any particular regard to her amusement, and she is allowed to observe at her leisure. Evelyn perceived, with a little alarm, the position of affairs. Was it perhaps accidental—a mere fortuitous conjunction of the two who most attracted each other? Was it perhaps a plan, a scheme? She had been so long out of the world of social scheming that she had forgotten its ways. She observed for a little with a half benign amusement the skirmishing of Marion and Eddy, the little onslaughts and withdrawals, provocations not much more refined than a milkmaid’s jibes, responses not in better taste. Mrs. Rowland had not thought much of the “style” of Edward Saumarez, the younger, from the beginning—an old-fashioned word, which in the language of the present day would mean that she thought him “bad form.” Words change, and so do all forms of expression, but the actual fact does not alter. As she mentally compared this commonplace young man whose manners she thought bad and whose person was so entirely without distinction, with his father—the love of her own youth, the handsome, distinguished, courtly Saumarez of another day, a sudden rush of painful feeling came over Evelyn. Was this what he intended? Was it to be so done that she herself should seem the schemer, the matchmaker, promoting the advantage of his son and daughter above that of her husband’s children? Nobody remarked how Evelyn was looking, or inquired what it was that gave occasion for that sudden flush and paleness. Was this what it meant—his eagerness to connect his children with her, that she should invite them, assume the responsibility of them? Evelyn saw everything that might have been is his mind as with the flash of a sudden light. He had jilted her, but she had never ceased to care for him, people would say; as witness the results. Had she not thrown her husband’s boy and girl, inexperienced, suspecting nothing, made of money, into the grip of those clever Saumarez?
Evelyn got up from her seat in the horror of the thought that thus came into her mind, and with the sensation that she must do something at once to put an end to it. But nobody even remarked her movement, and she sat down again with a pant of baffled eagerness. Rosamond and Archie sat with their backs to her, full of their own subject: the dull boy was awakening under that siren’s touch; while Marion and Eddy kept up a deafening chatter about something much more interesting than the mountains or waters—themselves; each moving on the lines that answered best. Was the plan laid out in all its details? Had they come with their constructions to captivate these two homely Rowlands before the other harpies had so much as got note of them, to anticipate all competition? It was just such a heartless scheme as he might have conceived in his unsoftened, unchastened suffering. And Madeline Leighton’s words came back upon Evelyn’s mind with a sudden horror: “He will compromise you, if he can, with your husband.” How angry she had been, thinking only of the ordinary sense of these words. Ah! here was another sense—a sense she had never dreamt of! If Eddy Saumarez with his bad little record, his short story of as much folly as could be crammed into a life of twenty, asked Marion’s father for her hand and fortune—and Archie, with the power of sullen opposition which was in him, proclaimed his intention of marrying Rosamond, to whom would her husband turn as the cause of these premature engagements? Who would be blamed by the world? Would any one believe that she had not thought of such a contingency? Would James——James, whose soul trusted in her? Oh, villain and traitor! was this his way of punishing her for having escaped from his influence, for the late happiness that had made her so much better off than he was? Madeline’s warning had not been strong enough or clear enough to save her. Evelyn clasped her hands in her lap till the pressure hurt her, and looked on helpless at the work which was going so briskly on at her side, the work which she would be believed to have planned—with eyes which could scarcely endure the sight.
“I have always observed,” Rosamond was saying, with the air of a sage, “that the more you take an interest in anything, the more amused you are. Everything is tiresome when you don’t take an interest. My father is an instance. He is never out of his chair: he can’t do anything without Rogers, not even raise himself up. You would think he had a dreadful life: but he has not: he watches the people, and knows everything that happens. I am a little like that myself. Now Eddy has no such interest in anything. He likes horses and billiards and that sort of thing, and bad company generally.” Rosamond gave a glance behind at Eddy’s acquaintance, who was making a perfectly good luncheon, and keeping up a furtive observation of everybody round him. “I don’t like,” she said, “the looks of that man. Do you think he belongs to any college? I don’t.”