‘Tell me,’ said Jasper, leaning his elbow on the table, and putting his hand over his eyes to screen them from the light, and allow him to watch his father’s face—’tell me everything, as you undertook. Tell me how my poor sister came to Morwell, and how she left it.’
‘There is not much to tell,’ answered the father; ‘you know that she ran away from home after her mother’s death; you were then nine or ten years old. She hated work, and lusted after the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. After a while I heard where she was, that she was ill, and had been taken into Morwell House to be nursed, and that there she remained after her recovery.’
‘Strange,’ mused Jasper; ‘she fell ill and was taken to Morwell, and I—it was the same. Things repeat themselves; the world moves in a circle.’
‘Everything repeats itself. As in Eve’s case the sickness led up to marriage, or something like it, so will it be in your case. This is what Mr. Jordan and Eve did: they went into the little old chapel, and took each other’s hands before the altar, and swore fidelity to each other; that was all. Mr. Jordan is a Catholic, and would not have the knot tied by a church parson, and Eve would not confess to her name, she had that sense of decency left in her. They satisfied their consciences but it was no legal marriage. I believe he would have done what was right, but she was perverse, and refused to give her name, and say both who she was and whence she came.’
‘Go on,’ said Jasper.
‘Well, then, about a year after this I heard where she was, and I went after her to Morwell, but I did not go openly—I had no wish to encounter Mr. Jordan. I tried to persuade Eve to return with me to Buckfastleigh. Who can lay to my charge that I am not a forgiving father? Have I not given you cold potato, and would have furnished you with veal pie if the old woman had not finished the scraps? I saw Eve, and I told her my mind pretty freely, both about her running away and about her connection with Jordan. I will say this for her—she professed to be sorry for what she had done, and desired my forgiveness. That, I said, I would give her on one condition only, that she forsook her husband and child, and came back to keep house for me. I could not bring her to a decision, so I appointed her a day, and said I would take her final answer on that. But I was hindered going; I forget just now what it was, but I couldn’t go that day.’
‘Well, father, what happened?’
‘As I could not keep my appointment—I remember now how it was, I was laid up with a grip of lumbago at Tavistock—I sent one of the actors there, from whom I had heard about her, with a message. I had the lumbago in my back that badly that I was bent double. When I was able to go, on the morrow, it was too late; she was gone.’
‘Gone! Whither?’
‘Gone off with the play-actor,’ answered Mr. Babb, grimly. ‘It runs in the blood.’