The Vicissitudes of Evangeline

It is stupid and silly, and makes one’s nose red, but I felt like crying a little before I got into bed.

Branches,Saturday afternoon, Nov. 5th.

This morning I woke with a headache, to see the rain beating against my windows, and mist and fog – a fitting day for the fifth of November. I would not go down to breakfast. Véronique brought me mine to my sitting-room fire, and, with Spartan determination, I packed steadily all the morning.

About twelve a note came up from Lord Robert; I paste it in:

“Dear Miss Travers, – Why are you hiding? Was I a bore last night? Do forgive me and come down. Has Christopher locked you in your room? I will murder the brute if he has!

“Yours very sincerely,“Robert Vavasour.”

“Can’t, I am packing,” I scribbled in pencil on the envelope, and gave it back to Charles, who was waiting in the hall for the answer. Two minutes after Lord Robert walked into the room, the door of which the footman had left open.

“I have come to help you,” he said in that voice of his that sounds so sure of a welcome you can’t snub him; “but where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” I said, a little forlornly, and then bent down and vigorously collected photographs.

“Oh, but you can’t go to London by yourself!” he said, aghast. “Look here, I will come up with you, and take you to my aunt, Lady Merrenden. She is such a dear, and I am sure when I have told her all about you she will be delighted to take care of you for some days until you can hunt round.”

He looked such a boy, and his face was so kind, I was touched.

“Oh no, Lord Robert! I cannot do that, but I thank you. I don’t want to be under an obligation to any one,” I said firmly. “Mr. Carruthers suggests a way out of the difficulty – that I should marry him, and stay here. I don’t think he means it really, but he pretends he does.”

He sat down on the edge of a table already laden with books, most of which overbalanced and fell crash on the floor.

“So Christopher wants you to marry him, the old fox!” he said, apparently oblivious of the wreck of literature he had caused. “But you won’t do that, will you? And yet I have no business to say that. He is a dam – good friend, Christopher.”

“I am sure you ought not to swear so often, Lord Robert, it shocks me, brought up as I have been,” I said, with the air of a little angel.

“Do I swear?” he asked, surprised. “Oh no, I don’t think so – at least there is no ‘n’ to the end of the ‘dams,’ so they are only an innocent ornament to conversation. But I won’t do it, if you don’t wish me to.”

After that he helped me with the books, and was so merry and kind I soon felt cheered up, and by lunch time all were finished, and in the boxes ready to be tied up, and taken away. Véronique, too, had made great progress in the adjoining room, and was standing stiff and maussade by my dressing-table when I came in. She spoke respectfully in French, and asked me if I had made my plans yet, for, as she explained to me, her own position seemed precarious, and yet having been with me for five years, she did not feel she could leave me at a juncture like this. At the same time she hoped Mademoiselle would make some suitable decision, as she feared (respectfully) it was “une si drole de position pour une demoiselle du monde,” alone with “ces messieurs.”

I could not be angry, it was quite true what she said.

“I shall go up this evening to Claridge’s, Véronique,” I assured her, “by about the 5.15 train. We will wire to them after luncheon.”

She seemed comforted, but she added, in the abstract, that a rich marriage was what was obviously Mademoiselle’s fate, and she felt sure great happiness and many jewels would await Mademoiselle, if Mademoiselle could be persuaded to make up her mind. Nothing is sacred to one’s maid! She knew all about Mr. Carruthers, of course. Poor old Véronique – I have a big, warm corner for her in my heart – sometimes she treats me with the frigid respect one would pay to a queen, and at others I am almost her enfant, so tender and motherly she is to me. And she puts up with all my tempers and moods, and pets me like a baby just when I am the worst of all.

Lord Robert had left me reluctantly when the luncheon gong sounded.

“Haven’t we been happy?” he said, taking it for granted I felt the same as he did. This is a very engaging quality of his, and makes one feel sympathetic, especially when he looks into one’s eyes with his sleepy blue ones. He has lashes as long and curly as a gipsy’s baby.

Mr. Carruthers was alone in the dining-room when I got in; he was looking out of the window, and turned round sharply as I came up the room. I am sure he would like to have been killing flies on the panes if he had been a boy! His eyes were steel.

“Where have you been all the time?” he asked, when he had shaken hands and said good-morning.

“Up in my room packing,” I said simply. “Lord Robert was so kind, he helped me – we have got everything done, and may I order the carriage for the 5.15 train, please?”

“Certainly not – confound Lord Robert!” Mr. Carruthers said. “What business is it of his? You are not to go. I won’t let you. Dear, silly, little child – ” his voice was quite moved. “You can’t possibly go out into the world all alone. Evangeline, why won’t you marry me? I – do you know, I believe – I shall love you – ”

“I should have to be perfectly sure that the person I married loved me, Mr. Carruthers,” I said, demurely, “before I consented to finish up my life like that.”

He had no time to answer, for Mr. Barton and Lord Robert came into the room.

There seemed a gloom over luncheon. There were pauses, and Lord Robert had a more pathetic expression than ever. His hands are a nice shape – but so are Mr. Carruthers’, they both look very much like gentlemen.

Before we had finished, a note was brought in to me. It was from Lady Katherine Montgomerie. She was too sorry, she said, to hear of my lonely position, and she was writing to ask if I would not come over and spend a fortnight with them at Tryland Court.

It was not well worded, and I had never cared much for Lady Katherine, but it was fairly kind, and fitted in perfectly with my plans.

She had probably heard of Mr. Carruthers’ arrival, and was scandalized at my being alone in the house with him.

Both men had their eyes fixed on my face when I looked up, as I finished reading the note.

“Lady Katherine Montgomerie writes to ask me to Tryland,” I said; “so if you will excuse me I will answer it, and say I will come this afternoon,” – and I got up.

Mr. Carruthers rose too, and followed me into the library. He deliberately shut the door and came over to the writing-table where I sat down.

“Well, if I let you go, will you tell her then that you are engaged to me, and I am going to marry you as soon as possible.”

“No, indeed I won’t!” I said, decidedly.

“I am not going to marry you, or any one, Mr. Carruthers. What do you think of me – ! Fancy my consenting to come back here for ever, and live with you – when I don’t know you a bit – and having to put up with your – perhaps – kissing me, and, and – things of that sort! It is perfectly dreadful to think of!”

He laughed as if in spite of himself. “But supposing I promised not to kiss you – ?”

“Even so,” I said, and I couldn’t help biting the end of my pen, “it could happen that I might get a feeling I wanted to kiss some one else – and there it is! Once you’re married, everything nice is wrong!”

“Evangeline! I won’t let you go – out of my life – you strange little witch, you have upset me, disturbed me, I can settle to nothing. I seem to want you so very much.”

“Pouff!” I said, and I pouted at him.

“You have everything in your life to fill it – position, riches, friends – you don’t want a green-eyed adventuress.”

I bent down and wrote steadily to Lady Katherine. I would be there about 6 o’clock, I said, and thanked her in my best style.

“If I let you go, it is only for the time,” Mr. Carruthers said, as I signed my name. “I intend you to marry me – do you hear!”

“Again I say qui vivra verra!” I laughed, and rose with the note in my hand.

Lord Robert looked almost ready to cry when I told him I was off in the afternoon.

“I shall see you again,” he said. “Lady Katherine is a relation of my aunt’s husband, Lord Merrenden. I don’t know her myself, though.”

I do not believe him – how can he see me again – young men do talk a lot of nonsense.

“I shall come over on Wednesday to see how you are getting on,” Mr. Carruthers said. “Please do be in.”

I promised I would, and then I came upstairs.

And so it has come to an end, my life at Branches. I am going to start a new phase of existence, my first beginning as an adventuress!

How completely all one’s ideas can change in a few days. This day three weeks ago Mrs. Carruthers was alive. This day two weeks ago I found myself no longer a prospective heiress – and only three days ago I was contemplating calmly the possibility of marrying Mr. Carruthers – and now – for heaven – I would not marry any one! And so, for fresh woods and pastures new. Oh! I want to see the world, and lots of different human beings – I want to know what it is makes the clock go round – that great, big, clock of life – I want to dance, and to sing, and to laugh, and to live– and – and – yes – perhaps some day to kiss some one I love – !

Tryland Court, Headington,Wednesday, November 9th.

Goodness gracious! I have been here four whole days, and I continually ask myself how I shall be able to stand it for the rest of the fortnight. Before I left Branches I began to have a sinking at the heart. There were horribly touching farewells with housekeepers and people I have known since a child, and one hates to have that choky feeling – especially as just at the end of it – while tears were still in my eyes, Mr. Carruthers came out into the hall, and saw them – so did Lord Robert!

I blinked, and blinked, but one would trickle down my nose. It was a horribly awkward moment.

Mr. Carruthers made profuse inquiries as to my comforts for the drive, in a tone colder than ever, and insisted upon my drinking some cherry brandy. Such fussing is quite unlike his usual manner, so I suppose he too felt it was a tiresome quart d’heure. Lord Robert did not hide his concern, he came up to me and took my hand while Christopher was speaking to the footman who was going with me.

“You are a dear,” he said, “and a brick, and don’t you forget I shall come and stay with Lady Katherine before you leave, so you won’t feel you are all among strangers.”

I thanked him, and he squeezed my hand so kindly – I do like Lord Robert.

Very soon I was gay again, and insouciante, and the last they saw of me was smiling out of the brougham window as I drove off in the dusk. They both stood upon the steps and waved to me.

Tea was over at Tryland when I arrived, such a long, damp drive! And I explained to Lady Katherine how sorry I was to have had to come so late, and that I could not think of troubling her to have up fresh for me – but she insisted, and after a while a whole new lot came, made in a hurry with the water not boiling, and I had to gulp down a nasty cup – Ceylon tea, too – I hate Ceylon tea! Mr. Montgomerie warmed himself before the fire, quite shielding it from us, who shivered on a row of high-backed chairs beyond the radius of the hearth rug.

He has a way of puffing out his cheeks and making a noise like “Bur-r-r-r” – which sounds very bluff and hearty, until you find he has said a mean thing about some one directly after. And while red hair looks very well on me, I do think a man with it is the ugliest thing in creation. His face is red, and his nose and cheeks almost purple, and fiery whiskers, fierce enough to frighten a cat in a dark lane.

He was a rich Scotch manufacturer, and poor Lady Katherine had to marry him, I suppose, though, as she is Scotch herself, I daresay she does not notice that he is rather coarse.

There are two sons and six daughters, one married, four grown-up, and one at school in Brussels, and all with red hair! – but straight and coarse, and with freckles and white eyelashes. So really it is very kind of Lady Katherine to have asked me here.

They are all as good as gold on top, and one does poker work, and another binds books and a third embroiders altar-cloths, and the fourth knits ties – all for charities, and they ask everyone to subscribe to them directly they come to the house. The tie and the altar-cloth one were sitting working hard in the drawing-room – Kirstie and Jean are their names – Jessie and Maggie, the poker worker and the bookbinder have a sitting-room to themselves, their workshop they call it. They were there still, I suppose, for I did not see them until dinner. We used to meet once a year at Mrs. Carruthers’ Christmas parties ever since ages and ages, and I remember I hated their tartan sashes, and they generally had colds in their heads, and one year they gave every one mumps, so they were not asked the next. The altar-cloth one, Jean, is my age, the other three are older.

It was really very difficult to find something to say, and I can quite understand common people fidgeting when they feel worried like this. I have never fidgeted since eight years ago, the last time Mrs. Carruthers boxed my ears for it. Just before going up to dress for dinner Mr. Montgomerie asked blank out if it was true that Mr. Carruthers had arrived. Lady Katherine had been skirting round this subject for a quarter of an hour.

I only said yes, but that was not enough, and once started, he asked a string of questions, with “Bur-r-r-r” several times in between. Was Mr. Carruthers going to shoot the pheasants in November? Had he decided to keep on the chef? Had he given up diplomacy? I said I really did not know any of these things, I had seen so little of him.

Lady Katherine nodded her head, while she measured a comforter she was knitting to see if it was long enough.

“I am sure it must have been most awkward for you, his arriving at all; it was not very good taste on his part, I am afraid, but I suppose he wished to see his inheritance as soon as possible,” she said.

I nearly laughed, thinking what she would say if she knew which part of his inheritance he had really come to see. I do wonder if she has ever heard that Mrs. Carruthers left me to him, more or less, in her will!

“I hope you had your old governess with you, at least,” she continued, as we went up the stairs, “so that you could feel less uncomfortable – really a most shocking situation for a girl alone in the house with an unmarried man.”

I told her Mr. Barton was there too, but I had not the courage to say anything about Lord Robert; only that Mr. Carruthers had a friend of his down, who was a great judge of pictures, to see them.

“Oh! a valuer, I suppose. I hope he is not going to sell the Correggios!” she exclaimed.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said, leaving the part about the valuer unanswered.

Mr. Carruthers, being unmarried, seemed to worry her most; she went on about it again before we got to my bedroom door.

“I happened to hear a rumour at Miss Sheriton’s (the wool shop in Headington, our town), this morning,” she said, “and so I wrote at once to you. I felt how terrible it would be for one of my own dear girls to be left alone with a bachelor like that – I almost wonder you did not stay up in your own rooms.”

I thanked her for her kind thought, and she left me at last!

If she only knew! The unmarried ones who came down the passage to talk to Mademoiselle were not half so saucy as the old fellows with wives somewhere. Lord Bentworth was married, and he wanted me to kiss him, whereas Colonel Grimston had no wife, and he never said bo! to a goose! And I do wonder what she thought Mr. Carruthers was going to do to me, that it would have been wiser for me to stay up in my rooms. Perhaps she thinks diplomats, having lived in foreign places, are sort of wild beasts.

My room is frightful after my pretty rosy chintzes at Branches. Nasty yellowish wood furniture, and nothing much matching; however there are plenty of wardrobes, so Véronique is content.

They were all in the drawing-room when I got down, and Malcolm, the eldest son, who is in a Highland Militia regiment, had arrived by a seven o’clock train.

I had that dreadful feeling of being very late, and Mr. Montgomerie wanting to swear at me, though it was only a minute past a quarter to eight.

He said “Bur-r-r-r” several times, and flew off to the dining-room with me tucked under his arm, murmuring it gave no cook a chance to keep the dinner waiting! So I expected something wonderful in the way of food, but it is not half so good as our chef gave us at Branches. And the footmen are not all the same height, and their liveries don’t fit like Mrs. Carruthers always insisted that ours should do.

Malcolm is a tittsy-pootsy man! Not as tall as I am, and thin as a rail, with a look of his knees being too near together. He must be awful in a kilt, and I am sure he shivers when the wind blows, he has that air. I don’t like kilts, unless men are big, strong, bronzed creatures who don’t seem ashamed of their bare bits. I saw some splendid specimens marching once in Edinburgh, and they swung their skirts just like the beautiful ladies in the Bois, when Mademoiselle and I went out of the Allée Mrs. Carruthers told us to try always to walk in.

Lady Katherine talked a great deal at dinner about politics, and her different charities, and the four girls were so respectful and interested, but Mr. Montgomerie contradicted her whenever he could. I was glad when we went into the drawing-room.

That first evening was the worst of all, because we were all so strange; one seems to get acclimatized to whatever it is after a while.

Lady Katherine asked me if I had not some fancy work to do. Kirstie had begun her ties, and Jean the altar-cloth again.

“Do let Maggie run to your room and fetch it for you,” she said.

I was obliged to tell her I never did any. “But I – I can trim hats,” I said. It really seemed so awful not to be able to do anything like them, I felt I must say this as a kind of defence for myself.

However, she seemed to think that hardly a lady’s employment.

“How clever of you!” Kirstie exclaimed. “I wish I could; but don’t you find that intermittent? You can’t trim them all the time. Don’t you feel the want of a constant employment?”

I was obliged to say I had not felt like that yet, but I could not tell them I particularly loved sitting perfectly still, doing nothing.

Jessie and Maggie played Patience at two tables which folded up, and which they brought out, and sat down to with a deliberate accustomed look, which made me know at once they did this every night, and that I should see those tables planted exactly on those two spots of carpet each evening during my whole stay. I suppose it is because they cannot bring the poker work and the bookbinding into the drawing-room.

“Won’t you play us something?” Lady Katherine asked, plaintively. Evidently it was not permitted to do nothing, so I got up and went to the piano.

Fortunately I know heaps of things by heart, and I love them, and would have gone on, and on, so as to fill up the time, but they all said “thank you” in a chorus after each bit, and it rather put me off.

Mr. Montgomerie and Malcolm did not come in for ages, and I could see Lady Katherine getting uneasy. One or two things at dinner suggested to me that these two were not on the best terms, perhaps she feared they had come to blows in the dining-room. The Scotch, Mrs. Carruthers said, have all kinds of rough customs that other nations do not keep up any longer.

They did turn up at last, and Mr. Montgomerie was purple all over his face, and Malcolm a pale green, but there were no bruises on him; only one could see they had had a terrible quarrel.

There is something in breeding after all, even if one is of a barbarous country. Lady Katherine behaved so well, and talked charities and politics faster than ever, and did not give them time for any further outburst, though I fancy I heard a few “dams” mixed with the “bur-r-r-rs,” and not without the “n” on just for ornament, like Lord Robert’s.

It was a frightful evening.

Wednesday, Nov. 9th (continued).

Malcolm walked beside me going to church the next day. He looked a little less depressed and I tried to cheer him up.

He did not tell me what his worries were, but Jean had said something about it when she came into my room as I was getting ready. It appears he has got into trouble over a horse called Angela Grey. Jean gathered this from Lady Katherine, she said her father was very angry about it, as he had spent so much money on it.

To me it does not sound like a horse’s name, and I told Jean so, but she was perfectly horrified, and said it must be a horse, because they were not acquainted with any Angela Grey, and did not even know any Greys at all: so it must be a horse!

I think that a ridiculous reason, as Mrs. Carruthers said all young men knew people one wouldn’t want to – and it was silly to make a fuss about it – and that they couldn’t help it – and they would be very dull if they were as good as gold like girls.

But I expect Lady Katherine thinks differently about things to Mrs. Carruthers, and the daughters are the same.

I shall ask Lord Robert when I see him again if it is a horse or no.

Malcolm is not attractive, and I was glad the church was not far off.

No carriages are allowed out on Sunday, so we had to walk, and coming back it began to rain, and we could not go round the stables, which I understand is the custom here every Sunday.

Everything is done because it is the custom – not because you want to amuse yourself.

“When it rains and we can’t go round the stables,” Kirstie said, “we look at the old ‘Illustrated London News,’ and go there on our way from afternoon church.”

I did not particularly want to do that, so stayed in my room as long as I could. The four girls were seated at a large table in the hall, each with a volume in front of her when I got down at last. They must know every picture by heart, if they do it every Sunday it rains – they stay in England all the winter!

Jean made room for me beside her.

“I am at the ‘Sixties,’” she said. “I finished the ‘Fifties’ last Easter.” So they evidently do even this with a method.

I asked her if there were not any new books they wanted to read, but she said Lady Katherine did not care for their looking at magazines or novels unless she had been through them first, and she had not time for many, so they kept the few they had to read between tea and dinner on Sunday.

By this time I felt I should do something wicked; and if the luncheon gong had not sounded, I do not know what would have happened.

Mr. Montgomerie said rather gallant things to me when the cheese and port came along, while the girls looked shocked, and Lady Katherine had a stony stare. I suppose he is like this because he is married. I wonder, though, if young married men are the same, I have never met any yet.

By Monday night I was beginning to feel the end of the world would come soon! It is ten times worse than even having had to conceal all my feelings, and abjectly obey Mrs. Carruthers. Because she did say cynical, entertaining things sometimes to me, and to her friends, that made one laugh. And one felt it was only she who made the people who were dependent upon her do her way, because she, herself, was so selfish, and that the rest of the world were free if once one got outside.

But Lady Katherine, and the whole Montgomerie milieu, give you the impression that everything and everybody must be ruled by rules; and no one could have a right to an individual opinion in any sphere of society.

You simply can’t laugh, they asphyxiate you. I am looking forward to this afternoon, and Mr. Carruthers coming over. I often think of the days at Branches, and how exciting it was, with those two, and I wish I were back again.

I have tried to be polite and nice to them all here, and yet they don’t seem absolutely pleased.

Malcolm gazes at me with sheep’s eyes. They are a washy blue, with the family white eyelashes (how different to Lord Robert’s!). He has the most precise, regulated manner, and never says a word of slang, he ought to have been a young curate, and I can’t imagine him spending his money on any Angela Greys, even if she is a horse or not.