M. E. Braddon

“ If there were blue skies now and then in a London February, what was February along the Riviera but the most exquisite springtime? And perhaps on all that favoured shore, Cannes has the richest firstfruits of the fertile year, for it is then that the mimosas are in their glory, and the hill of Californie is a yellow fairyland, an enchanted region, where all the trees drop golden rain.
Eve and her lover husband were at Cannes. Delicious as the place was at this season, and new as the shores of the Mediterranean were to Eve, she and her husband had not come there for their own pleasure. ”

“ The peaceful days, the perfect union between husband and wife, revived Eve’s spirits and did much to restore her health, sorely shaken by the ordeal through which she had passed. Fever had raged fiercely in the battle between life and death, and the long bright hair, which had made so fair a diadem in the days of her poverty, had been shorn from the burning head. She looked quaintly pretty now, with her boyish crop, framing the broad white forehead with crisp short curls. She laughed when Vansittart talked of next season, when his mother was to lend them the house in Charles Street. ”

“ There are people who would say I am foolish to grieve so much for a young sister; but it is the first time Death has touched us since mother went. We were such a happy little band. I never thought that one of us could die, and that one the youngest, the most loving of us all.”
“Dearest, I shall never think your grief unreasonable; but I want you to grieve less, for my sake, for the sake of the future. Think, Eve, only think what it will be to have that new tie between us, a child, belonging equally to each, looking equally to each for all it has of safety and of gladness upon this earth.” ”

“ In the long colonnades the throng pushed thickly; but Vansittart had been one of the strong men of the ’Varsity, a thrower of hammers, a jumper of long jumps, a man with a name that was famous at Lillie Bridge as well as at Oxford. He parted the throng as if it had been water, and would have made his way quickly to the brightest, largest, and gayest of the caffès, if it had not been for Lisa, who hung back to look at the lighted shop windows, windows that she could have seen any night of her life, but which had a particular attraction at Carnival time. ”

“ Vansittart was the first to break that agony of silence.
“Does this mean the end of love?” he asked. “Is all over and done with between you and me? Is love only a dream that we have dreamed?”
“Yes; it is a dream,” she answered, looking at him with tearless eyes, which had more misery in them than all the tears he had ever seen in the eyes of women. “It is something perhaps to have believed one’s self happy for two blessed years. You have been so good to me—so good to poor Peggy. ”

“ Vansittart and his wife never went to the village in the mountains, where all things had been made ready for their coming. Eve spent that afternoon which should have been her last at Cannes in the burial-ground on the hill, now in its glory of May flowers, a paradise of roses and white marble, a place full of tenderest memorials to the early dead, a spot which seemed especially dedicated to those whom the gods love best, the holy ones and pure of spirit, removed from the evil to come for hard middle-life and selfish old age. ”

“ I have no fear that I shall fail in getting at the truth when she and I are face to face. Woman against woman, wife against mistress, I know who will be the stronger.
“If I have wronged you, my beloved, your wife in penitent love. If you have wronged me, your wife no longer—Eve.”
A pleasant letter to greet a husband on his home-coming.
“Woman against woman, face to face, those two!” thought Vansittart. “She will discover—not that which she fears to discover, but a darker secret—and then it will be as she has said, my wife no longer.” ”

“ I am not the enemy you think me. There is no sacrifice I would not make for you. You know so little of the world that perhaps you hardly know how much a man of good birth sacrifices when he takes a wife who can bring him nothing but his heart’s desire. Try and understand that, Lisa. I love you too well to count the cost—too well to care that marriage with you cuts me off from all chance of marrying a woman whose money would quadruple my fortune and buy me a peerage. I could make such a marriage as that to-morrow if I choose, Lisa. ”

“ I am a very bad judge of humanity if my dislike of Sefton is not heartily reciprocated by Sefton’s dislike of me. And no doubt the more he dislikes me the more he will assure other people—my kindred especially—that he likes me. You are too straight yourself, mother, in every thought and purpose, to understand the Seftonian mind. It is the kind of intellect which always works crookedly. He admired Eve Marchant, allowed his admiration to be patent to everybody, and yet was not man enough to try to win her for his wife. ”

“ It is sweet to say these for his sake: that his sin may be forgiven.”
“Ah, you do not understand. You do not know what death is,” said Eve, with gloomy anger, getting up from the sofa, and rearranging her loosened hair with trembling hands.
“It must come to all of us,” answered Lisa, with a philosophical shrug. “Better that it should come in a moment as his came, without suffering, without fear, than that we should live to be old and fat and full of maladies. People die of dreadful diseases that one shudders only to hear of, and that is called a natural death. ”

“ No man was ever so kind as you have been, except for love’s sake. You must have cared for me. You cared for me that day in Venice—the happiest day in my life. Your heart turned to me as my heart turned to you, in the sunshine on the lagune, in the evening at the theatre. Every day that I have lived since then has strengthened my love. For God’s sake, don’t tell me that I am nothing to you.”
“You are very much to me, Lisa. You are a friend for whom I desire all good things that this world and the world that comes after death can give. ”

“ From all that he had heard of Sefton’s character Vansittart doubted much that he was capable of a generous love, or that he was the kind of man to marry a girl whose father was under a cloud.
And she?—was she weak and foolish, innocently yielding her heart to a man who meant evil? or was she her father’s daughter, a schemer by instinct and inclination, like Becky Sharp? Vansittart tried to put himself in Joe Sedley’s place, tried to realize how a man may see honesty and sweet simplicity where there are only craft and finished acting. ”

“ Fate comes, like the servant bidden to call us of a morning, and shakes the sleeper by the shoulder. The dream vanishes through the ivory gate, and the waking world in all its harsh reality is there.
Eve’s awakening came in a most unexpected shape. It came one October morning in the first week of her residence at Merewood. It came in a letter from her old servant, a letter in a shabby envelope, lying hidden among that heap of letters, monogrammed, coroneted, fashionable, which lay beside Mrs. Vansittart’s plate when she took her seat at the breakfast table. ”

“ The four sisters, in their gauzy white frocks and Gainsborough hats, when clustered in a group at the church door, might have suggested four cherubic heads looking out of a fleecy cloud, so fresh and bright were the young faces, in the unalloyed happiness of the occasion—happiness almost supernal, for, regardless of precedent, and mysteriously divining Peggy’s desire, the bridegroom had given them watches, dainty little watches, with an “E” in brilliants upon each golden back—E, for Eve; E, for Ecstasy; E, for Everlasting bliss! Peggy felt she had nothing more to ask of life. ”

“ He had admired a good many women since he left Eton; but he had never seen the woman for whom he cared to sacrifice his liberty, for whose sake he could bind himself for all his life to come. He knew himself well enough to know that all his passions were short-lived, and that, however deeply he might be in love to-day, satiety might come to-morrow.
He was ambitious, and he meant to marry a woman who could bring him increase of fortune and social status. He was not to be drifted into matrimony by the caprice of the hour. Much as he had admired Eve Marchant, he had never thought of marrying her. ”

“ Signora Vivanti’s personality was a new sensation; and to a blasé London public there is nothing so precious as a new sensation. Signor Zinco proved a true prophet. That touch of vulgarity which he had spoken of deprecatingly to Vansittart had made Lisa’s fortune. Had she come straight from the Milan Conservatorio, cultivated to the highest pitch, approved by Verdi himself, she would hardly have succeeded as she had done, with all the rough edges of her grand voice unpolished, and all the little caprices and impertinences of a daughter of the people unchastened and unrestrained. ”

“ Ah, Si’ora, that is not love. If your husband belonged to me, and he loved me as he loves you, he might kill twenty men, and I would cling to him and love him still. What would their life be to me, or their death, if I had him?”
“You are a semi-civilized savage, and you can’t understand,” [Pg 315] said Eve, sternly. “Life and death, good name, and honour, have no meaning for you.”
“Love means more than all,” said Lisa, doggedly.
“There is only one man you have the right to love,” said Eve; “the man who ought to have been your husband. ”

“ Tivett’s animated conversation, and Eve and Vansittart were walking alone.
“A little way.” Who could measure distance or count the minutes in such an exhilarating atmosphere as breathed around that wooded hillside in the balmy April morning? Every step seemed to take them into a finer air, and to lift their hearts with an increasing gladness. All around them rippled the sea of furze and heather, broken by patches of woodland, and grassy glades that were like bits stolen out of the New Forest, and flung down here upon this swelling hillside. ”

“ She was never tired of the hillside paths, the luxury of ferns, and palms, and aloes, the glory of the golden-tufted mimosas, the peach blossom, the anemones, the silvery threads of water creeping down the rocky gorges, such narrow streamlets, cleaving Titanic rocks. To Peggy these things brought no satiety; while the more earthly enjoyment of afternoon tea at Rumpelmeyer’s, sitting out of doors, and eating as many cakes and bon-bons as ever she liked, was only a lesser revelation of a world where all was beauty. Eve and her husband saw the crowds at Rumpelmeyer’s with an amused interest. ”

“ The next day was Easter Sunday, a day when the morning sun is said to dance upon the waters; a day when the dawn seems more glorious, when the flowers that deck the churches seem fairer than mere earthly flowers, when the swelling chords of the organ and the voices even of the village choir have a sweetness that suggests the heavenly chorus. To John Vansittart, at least, among those who worshipped in the village church that Easter Day, there seemed a gladness in all things—a pure and thrilling gladness as of minds attuned to holiness and ready to believe. ”

“ When I look back, and think of Burano, it is like a dream of quiet; a tranquil world set in the bosom of the waters; a cradle for sleep; life that is half slumber. Here every one is awake.”
“But your London is not beautiful,” said Lisa. “This court is not like Venice. It is liker than your big, noisy streets; but when one looks up the sky is murky and grey—not like the strip of blue above the Calle. If I could live where I could see water from my window—even your dull, dark river—I should be happier ”

“ Lisa flew to meet him. She was in her black frock, with a bit of scarlet ribbon tied round her throat, and another bit of scarlet tying up her great untidy knot of blue-black hair. The rusty black gown, the scarlet ribbons, the olive face, with its carnation flush and star-like eyes, made a brilliant picture after the school of Murillo. Vansittart could but see that she was strikingly handsome—just the kind of woman to take the town by storm, if she were once seen and heard in opera bouffe.
Zinco was a little old man, with no more figure than an eighteen-gallon cask. ”

“ I cannot tell you our reasons, for they involve a secret the revelation of which would be disastrous to me—the only secret I ever kept from you. Eve is blameless—chaste and faithful as in the beginning of our wedded lives. I implore you to think of her always with affection; to shelter and cherish her if ever she appeal to your love or claim your protection. She is entitled to your respect and to your pity. The only sinner—never a deliberate sinner—is your son, who in his shattered domestic life pays the forfeit of one unhappy act. ”

“ He was dead, and she would see him no more on earth—killed in a tavern brawl, for the sake of a worthless woman. And the husband she adored, he, too, was dead—dead to her for ever. She had renounced him, and he was free to go his own way, and lead his own life, and find consolation and happiness where he could. Her friends of Mayfair had told her that no man laments long for the loss of any woman; that one beautiful face blots out another; that there is no image, however cherished, which does not grow faint, and fade and vanish, as a circle widens and melts away upon still water. ”

“ Well, he was cured of his passion for Eve, cured by that cold douche of indifference which the young lady had poured upon him; cured by the feeling of angry scorn which had been evoked by her preference for Vansittart; for a man who, in worldly position, in good looks, and in culture, Wilfred Sefton regarded as his inferior. He could not go on caring for a young woman who had shown herself so deficient in taste as not to prefer the dubious advances of a Sefton to the honest love of a Vansittart. ”

“ If Easter had been a time of happiness for Vansittart and Eve, bringing with it the revelation of mutual love, Whitsuntide was no less happy; happier, perhaps, in its serene security, and in the familiarity of a love which seemed to have lasted for a long time.
“Only seven weeks!” exclaimed Eve, in one of their wanderings among the many cattle-tracks on Bexley Hill, no sound of life or movement in all the world around them save the hum of insects and the chime of cow bells. “To think that we have been engaged only seven weeks! It seems a lifetime.” ”

“ And I was thinking how different our lives would have been if you had never come to Fernhurst. Eve would just have gone on slaving to make both ends meet, cutting out all our frocks, and working her Wilcox and Gibbs, and bearing with father’s temper, and going without things. I should have outgrown my strength all the same; but there would have been no one to bring us to Cannes. I should never have seen the Mediterranean, or the Snow Alps, or mother’s grave. I should never have seen Eve in pretty tea-gowns, with nothing in the world to do except sit about and look lovely. ”

“ She was exquisitely happy; and what can the human mind require beyond perfect bliss?
These wedded lovers lingered long over that summer holiday. It was an ideal summer—a summer of sunshine and cloudless skies, varied only by an occasional thunderstorm—tempest enjoyed by Vansittart and Eve, who loved Nature in her grand and awful as well as in her milder aspects—and a tempest from the heights above Boscastle, or from the grassy cliffs of the Lizard, is a spectacle to remember. They spun out the pleasures of that simple Cornish tour. ”

“ Vansittart told himself; “ruffians both. And are two lives to be blighted because of those few moments of fury, in which the brute got the upper hand of the man? No, a thousand times no. I will marry her, and let Fate do the worst to us both. Fate can but part us. Why should I anticipate evil by taking the initiative? A man who has happiness in his hand and lets it go, for any question of conscience, may be a fine moral character, but he is not the less a fool. Life is not long enough for scruples that part faithful lovers.” ”

“ I do not doubt, therefore, that your pretty Eve is all you think her. She certainly is a graceful and gracious creature, with a delicate prettiness of the wild rose type, which I prefer greatly to the azalea or the camellia order of beauty. She cannot fail to love you—nor can she fail to be deeply grateful to you for having rescued her from shabby surroundings and a neglectful father. God grant that this step which you have taken—the most solemn act in a man’s life—may bring you the happiness which the marriage of true minds must always bring. ”

“ Eve was in high health at Easter, radiant, full of life and spirits, albeit in no wise forgetful of that grave on the hill where the Maréchal Niel roses were growing so luxuriantly, and which was being carefully tended by stranger hands. There are those at Cannes who take a loving pride in that Garden of Death, whose care it is that this place of rest should be for ever beautiful, a paradise of peace, the very memory whereof should be sweet in the thoughts of the bereaved. ”

“ What more could a man do for the woman he meant to marry? Sophy was intoxicated with this delicate token of subjugation. She imagined herself looked at and talked about as the future Mrs. Sefton. Unconsciously she gave herself some small airs of an affianced wife; chiding him; making little jokes at his expense; pretending to underrate his surroundings—the pretty childish graces and little pettish tricks which come naturally to the weaker sex before marriage, as if they were recompensing themselves in advance for the iron heel under which they are to exist afterwards. ”

“ No. There is no comfort in religion, or in unbelief. Religion only means obedience, and public worship, and kindness to the poor, and a good orderly life. It doesn’t mean the certainty of getting back our dead—somewhere, somehow, and being happy again as we have been.”
“We can rest in the hope of that, Eve, knowing that we are immortal.”
“Knowing? But we don’t know. Nobody has ever come back to tell us. Oh, if but once, only once, for one moment in a year, our dead could come back and look at us, and speak to us, death would not be death.”
Mrs. Vansittart spoke no more of comfort. ”

“ Eve, the tea-maker and mistress of the feast, rose as Mr. Vansittart was announced, and came forward two or three steps to greet him, half in firelight, half in lamplight, brilliant and full of colour as an early Italian picture. Her gown was bright red merino, which set off the fairness of her complexion, and the pale gold in her brown hair; such a cheap gown, if he had only known, bought at one of the sales for half its value, timid beauty being afraid of the strong colour. ”

“ Country cousins seeing the great city in this joyous season may be excused for thinking that life in London is always delectable; and, bored to death in their country quarters in the dull depth of an agricultural winter, or suffering under the discomforts of a ten-mile journey behind a pair of “boilers,” on a snow-bound road, to a third-rate ball, may not unnaturally envy the children of the city their January and February dances, and dinners, and theatres, all, as these rustics imagine, within a quarter of an hour’s drive.
Eve Vansittart thoroughly enjoyed the pleasures of a London season ”