The Lady Evelyn Part 31

He answered her, still grinning:

"You get back to London, quick, missee. Master says so. Dis am his carriage. Verry sorry, missy."

She perceived that he played a part and would contend with him no more.

Still nodding his black head and showing his white teeth, he turned the carriage about and disappeared down the lane. When the rolling sound of the wheels had quite died away, Evelyn began to walk along the lane in that which she believed to be the direction of London. The mists lifted as the sun began to warm them. She was terribly cold, chilled to the very bone, and exhausted both bodily and mentally; but she pushed on bravely and presently out of the mists a cottage appeared and then another. Yet a hundred yards farther down the lane and she espied some modern villas in the Queen Anne style and after that quite a considerable village lying in the hollow.

It would have been about eight o'clock of the morning by this time; and workmen pa.s.sed her with the firm tread and the cheery "Good-morning, miss," which are still to be seen and heard within ten miles of the metropolis. At first she scarcely had the courage to ask where she was; for she realized how strangely the question must fall upon other ears at such a time and under such circ.u.mstances; but plucking up her courage presently as a lad approached her, she stopped him and learned that this was the village of Pinner, and that it lay just thirteen miles from London.

"Yonder's the station, miss, just round there to the right. I suppose you've walked over from Harrow. Lots of ladies do now they've took to hockey. I don't like that--not me. It hurts the shins unless you've got thick 'uns like the new girls has."

He was quite a conversationalist, the boy, and he rambled on with a precise account of his own intimate affairs, dating from the happy anniversary of a present of five shillings from a gentleman in a "broke-in-half" motor car to the recent arrival of a little sister, with whom he expected he would shortly quarrel. One of his most cheerful items of information was that which revealed the near proximity of an inn, styled by him "a public"; but which, nevertheless, brought to Evelyn such visions of hot steaming coffee and new warm bread and a fireside whereby she might thaw her frozen hands that she bestowed a whole shilling upon him willingly; and for that he, as a true cavalier, conducted her immediately to the hostelry.

"And I do hope you'll walk over from Harrow another morning, and that I'll meet you in the lane," he said with an interested and mercenary laugh delightful to hear. It was good after all to listen to the sound of an honest voice. And this boy spoke in the accustomed tongue of men.

She found the people of the inn awake and bustling. The story told for her by the loquacious lad was a very _open sesame_. A dear old lady with a very dirty face ushered her into a prim parlor and put out the Sunday tea service. Workmen in the bar raised their voices for her benefit, and one of them narrated at length how formerly he had kept a servant at "twenty shilling a week, same as you get, Bill." The coffee, however, could not have been better. Evelyn drank it greedily, and, learning that there were trains to London frequently, she caught one at ten o'clock and by a little after half-past she was in a hansom going down to Baker Street.

Her direction to the cabman had been "the Carlton Theatre"--why exactly she could not say. Naturally, she felt shy for the moment of returning to her hotel, dishevelled and weary as she was. The theatre would be open, she knew; for a rehearsal had been called at twelve o'clock, and the great Mr. Izard expected her there to hear of a new play which he had already pa.s.sed as "bully." Fortunately for her, she slipped by old Jacob at the stage door so quietly that he was quite unaware of her presence ... and then going to her own dressing-room, to her chagrin she discovered it to be locked and remembered that her maid had the key.

They had set a scene upon the stage, the garden scene of "Haddon Hall"; and weird and cold and melancholy was its aspect in this morning light.

To Evelyn it seemed as an emblem of those scenes of her girlhood which she had forever quitted. The loneliness of her life, the pity of it, the quenched fires of ambition--thoughts of these came to her one by one and said "there is no longer hope in the world." Etta Romney, that daughter of pa.s.sion and the soul's unrest, love had killed her, and never would she be reborn. There stood in her place an Evelyn who believed herself to be utterly alone, forsaken of all, even of him who had taught her the supreme lesson of her being. For her father she had an abiding pity. The harvest he had reaped had been of his own sowing; but her affection for him rose above any consideration of judgment and she accused herself because she had left him in the hour of trial. For the rest the dreadful story of the night remained her chief burden. To whom should she tell it; who must be her confidant? Should she run hysterically to the police, saying, "I believe that a crime has been committed in an unknown house at Hampstead?" To whose profit! The two men might have met in fair fight according to the custom of their country. And would anyone be found in the house by even the cleverest detective after those hours had pa.s.sed! She knew not which would be the prudent course. Her own despair spoke louder than any claim of human justice.

The great Mr. Izard appeared at the theatre at eleven o 'clock. His first cheery greeting to her ended abruptly when he perceived the state of distress into which she had fallen ... her haggard eyes, her white face, the restlessness of mood and quick changing att.i.tudes which betrayed her.

"Miss Romney!" he exclaimed aghast, "are you ill, my dear? ... Good G.o.d! what has happened?"

"I cannot play to-day," she said.... "I am going to my home, Mr.

Izard, to my father. I shall never play in your theatre again. My acting days are done."

He saw that she was really ill and would not trouble her with any of the old arguments. His own carriage, he said, should take her to the station. Her a.s.surance that she would go down to Derbyshire alone troubled him, for he was a big-hearted man, as most of his kind. When Evelyn left him, she knew that she was leaving a friend ... and how few friends has any man or woman among us! Perhaps the truth of this helped her upon her long journey to Derbyshire. She was going to her father, to him who had loved her ... she was going to him to tell him every word of that story and to say to him, "Take me to Gavin, let us go together and forget that another has ever come between us." All else in the world, its rewards, its prizes, its teachings, seemed less to her than this gospel of love now warming her heart to life and bidding her look up. By it should peace come to him--to them both if Gavin lived!

Ah, if Gavin lived! How often by the way did that voice of doubt cry the question in her ears? As a heavy cloud upon the garden of her hopes so the thought recurred and would not be put away. If Gavin lived! Evelyn heard the words wherever she turned; they were spoken to her upon the breezes of that winter day, rolled out by the humming wheels as the train carried her northward, uttered by unknown voices which compelled her to listen. They followed her to Moretown; they were with her when she dismissed the hired carriage at the gates of Melbourne Hall and set out to walk across the park toward her home.

Her desire to enter the house without observation or effusive welcome was in great part the fruit of her thoughts. She must be alone; she must have the full command of herself before she told her father the true story of yesternight.

The sun had set upon a glorious winter's day; a day of clear skies and bright scenes and fresh invigorating breezes. Now when eve fell the west wind ebbed away with the hours and left a twilight deeply still and beautiful. Not a branch of the leafless trees stirred in all that vast park about Melbourne Hall. Wide vistas of glade and avenue might have known no human foot since their story began. The deer browsed or moved with step so light that the quickest ear could not detect it. To Evelyn it mattered not whether she trod the park at dawn or dusk.

Every landmark seemed as her own possession. Here was the dell wherein, long ago, she had played Di Vernon's part to the summer skies; there, the arbor to which she had carried the romances upon which her young imagination feasted. Far away, dark and gray between the trees, stood her home, offering her so chill a welcome that her heart sank wearily and tears came to her burning eyes. How if her father also had left her; if she found the great house empty and the gates of it shut!

Such an end to her journey was not impossible; but the dread of it was in itself a heavy sorrow.

To be alone even at the gates of her home. Yes, it might be that.

Standing upon the little bridge that spanned the river; she listened to its melancholy song and echoed it in her heart. Alone, it said--the dream lived, love lost, the world empty. What mattered it now that G.o.d's providence had saved her yesternight? Better, she thought in her distress, that she lay in yonder silent pool, drifting upon the slow eddies to rest and oblivion. For what had the world to give her? The tears flowed fast at the remembrance of all she had hoped, all she had suffered, all she had lost. "Gavin," she cried aloud, "save me, Gavin, for I cannot live alone."

He came to her swiftly out of the darkness. But yesterday he had returned from Bukharest and, just as she to-day, had gone to Melbourne Hall to find it shuttered and empty. A good act of his destiny made it known to him at Moretown station that the Lady Evelyn had returned from London. He followed her swiftly and overtook her upon the bridge.

And so as in the dream of the unforgotten days he took her from the shadow of the river to his heart and, holding her close, he said:

"Evelyn, beloved, I am here as you wish."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Evelyn, beloved, I am here as you wish."]

EPILOGUE

THE DOCTOR DRINKS A TOAST

In the Spring of the year following upon Gavin Ord's return from Bukharest, the Reverend Harry Fillimore playing, as he claimed, "the game of his life" upon the links at Moretown, found himself to his chagrin both oblivious of the troubles of others and utterly unsympathetic toward his old friend Doctor Philips.

"My dear fellow," he would say, "what can you expect when you will take your eye off the ball? Now do be patient. For my sake, be patient."

The doctor, driving his ball with savage ferocity into a deep and awful pit, treated these observations with the just scorn they merited. He neither criticised nor contested them; but having struck the offending ball five times with little result, he picked it up deliberately and uttered a remark which the vulgar at any rate might have considered appropriate.

"She's at Gibraltar," he said without preface.

"Come, dear fellow--now do be patient. I will not encourage strong language; you know that I will not."

Dr. Philips laughed such a melancholy laugh that even the good-natured parson looked up from his beloved ball.

"I was talking of the Lady Evelyn," he said quietly.

"I'm sorry--I'd forgotten it, Fred."

"Oh, well, memory isn't a jewel in these cases. I had a letter from the Earl this morning--eh, yes? He says the yacht's become a nest of turtledoves. They're going on to Malta if the weather's not too hot.

He doesn't mean to come here at all this year, you see. That's what I wanted to tell you. It seems that the man Odin went back to Bukharest and is now fighting the Government for his father's property. They confiscated it or something, according to the criminal law there. Pity the gypsies didn't kill him at Hampstead--eh? They seem to have come pretty near it by all accounts."

The vicar expressed the opinion that the gypsies were the only honest men that Bukharest would be likely to send to Moretown; but neither spoke of Evelyn again until they were alone with their cigars after dinner that night. Then, as a sacred confidence between them, Harry Fillimore confessed something that had long been on his mind.

"Father and daughter," he said, "shared the burden of a terrible heritage. One might have said that they had been born under an Eastern sun and had inherited Eastern pa.s.sions. In all of us, as the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson believed, there are two personalities--the good and the evil; and our lives are lived as we conquer the one and foster the other. Robert Forrester never made an honest effort to extirpate those weaker traits of character which ruined his career at the beginning. Evelyn, on her part, did not realize the meaning of her life until Gavin Ord taught her to love him. Her escapade in London, the craving for light and music and glitter ... there you had the East speaking to her. But the man's voice was the voice of the West, and she listened to it. Such a woman has found peace or none will ever find it. Her will has saved both herself and her father. Let us grudge her nothing of her happiness, Fred. You loved her? What man that had not loved would not? But you'll wish a blessing on her and lift a gla.s.s to her as I do, just because you're what you are--a great big-hearted Englishman, who will share his joys with all, but will tell his sorrows to none."

The doctor turned his head away. Very slowly and deliberately he filled his gla.s.s, and, lifting it, he said:

"G.o.d bless her!"

THE END