“My husband is sure to approve of what I do,” said Evelyn, with a little dignity. “But I prefer to consult him all the same. He may have formed other engagements. It may be necessary to go up to Rosmore at once. But I confess that I should like—if there is nothing else in the way.”
“And that is all,” cried Lady Leighton, “after all my efforts! Well, if it must be so, telegraph to him—or at least tell him to answer you by telegraph: for that house might still be swept up while you are hesitating. Oh, I know it is rather late for a house to be snapped up. But when you want a thing it immediately becomes a chance that some one else will want it too. I shall look for you to-morrow to luncheon, Evelyn: now, mind that you don’t fail me, and we’ll go out after and settle about it, and do all that is necessary. Shouldn’t you like now to go and look at a few more Persian rugs? and that little Chippendale set you were telling me of? The next best thing to spending money one’s self is helping one’s friend to do it,” said Lady Leighton. “Indeed, some people think it is almost more agreeable: for you have the pleasure, without the pain of paying. Come, Evelyn, and we can finish with a turn in the Park before dinner. I always like to get as much as possible into every day.”
It was indeed a necessity with the town lady to get as much as she could into her day. If she had not gone to choose the rugs on her friend’s account, she would have had to make for herself some other piece of business equally important. There was not an hour that had not its occupation. Looking at the houses had filled the afternoon with bustle and excitement: and doing all that was necessary, i.e., rearranging all the furniture, covering up the dingy carpets, choosing new curtains, etc., would furnish delightful “work” for two or three. Lady Leighton had never an hour that was without its engagement, as she said with a sigh. She envied her friends who had leisure. She had not a moment to herself.
And Evelyn wrote a hurried letter to her husband about the Chester Street house, and the pleasure of staying in town for a week or two, as she put it vaguely, and introducing him to some of her friends. She even in her haste mentioned Lord and Lady Leighton, knowing that he had a little weakness for a title—a thing she was sadly ashamed of when she came to think. But the best of us are so easily led away.
CHAPTER VII.
The bustle of this afternoon’s occupation, which left her no time to think before she was deposited at her hotel for her late dinner, put serious thoughts out of Evelyn’s mind; and even when that hasty meal, over which she had no inclination to linger, was ended, and she had relapsed into the comfort of a dressing gown, and lay extended in an easy chair beside the open windows, hearing all the endless tumult of town, half with a sense of being left out, and half with self-congratulations over her quiet, she was little inclined to reflection. The echo of all that she had been doing hung about her, and that pleasant little commotion of choice, of arrangement and organization, which is involved in a new house and new settlement, absorbed her thoughts. They went very fast, setting a thousand things stirring. There is nothing that moves the woman of to-day more than the task of making a house pretty and harmonious, and forming a version of home out of any spare hired dwelling. Evelyn had anticipated having this to do for Rosmore. But James had somehow taken it out of her hands. He had gone to prepare it for her, not thinking that she would have liked much better to have a share in the doing. And now to think of having her little essay for herself, and setting up a temporary home out of her own fancy, turning a few bare rooms into a place full of fragrance and brightness, pleased her fancy. She listened to the carriages flying past with an endless roll of sound, so many of them conveying society to its favourite haunts, to one set of brilliant rooms after another, to new combinations of smiling faces and beautiful toilettes, with a half melancholy half pleasing excitement. To be above, and listen to that sound, is always slightly melancholy, and Evelyn could not but think a little of the pleasure of emerging from the silence of solitude, of seeing and being seen, of finding friends from whom she had been long parted, and a dazzling vision of life which was all the brighter from being partially forgotten, and never very perfectly known. From where she sat she could see the glare of the carriage lamps, and now and then some glimpses of the persons within—a lady’s white toilette surging up at the window or a brilliant shirt front looking almost like another lamp inside. It amused her to watch that stream flow on.
And then there came over her a dark shadow, the vision of the man who had been so young and so full of life when she saw him last, and who was so death-like and fallen now. The thought chilled her suddenly to the heart. She drew back from the window, and wrapped herself in a shawl, with the shudder of a cold which was not physical but spiritual. In the midst of all that ceaseless loudness of life and movement and pleasure, and of the vision which had visited her own brain of lighted rooms, and animated faces, and brilliant talk—to drop back to that wreck of existence, the helpless man leaning upon his servant’s arm, bundled up like a piece of goods, unresisting, compelled to submit to those cares which were an indignity, yet which were necessary to very existence! The echo came back to Evelyn’s heart. If there was in her mind, who in reality cared for none of these things, a little sentiment of loneliness as she saw the stream of life go by, what must there be in his, to whom society was life, and who was cut off from all its pleasures? Her imagination followed him to the prison of his weakness, his melancholy home, with this imperative servant who tended and ruled all his movements, for his sole society. God help him! What a condition to come to, after all the experiences of his life!
Should she ever meet him again, she had asked herself, partly with a vaguely formed wish of saying some word of kindness to so great a sufferer, partly with a shrinking reluctance to give herself the pain of looking upon his humiliation again? But it was almost as great a shock as on the first meeting to see him coming along the park as she walked to Lady Leighton’s next day. He was being drawn along in his wheeled chair by the man who had bundled him up so summarily on the previous occasion. Evelyn would have hurried on, but he held out his hand appealingly, and even called her name as she endeavoured to pass. “Won’t you stop and speak to me?” he said. It was impossible to resist that appeal. She stood by him looking down upon his ashy countenance, the loose lips and half-open mouth which babbled rather than talked, and which it required an effort at first to understand. “Will you sit down a little and talk?” he said. “It’s a pleasure I don’t often have, a talk with an old friend. Sit there, and I’ll have my chair drawn beside you. I hope you won’t think yourself a victim, as I fear some of my friends do——”
“Oh no,” she said anxiously, “don’t think so: I—was going to see Madeline—but it will not matter——”
“Oh, she can spare you for half an hour.”