“Those are good signs, no doubt. Your wife is of an active temperament, highly nervous, but with a very happy disposition. Her sister’s fatal illness has tried her severely; but we must look to the arising of a new interest as the best cure for sorrow.”
“Poor Peggy! Yes, we shall brood less upon her loss when we have our little one to think about.”
The thought of Eve’s coming happiness as a mother was his chief comfort. She could not fail to be consoled by the infant whose tender life would absorb her every thought, whose sleeping and waking would be a source of interest and anxiety. But before the consoler’s coming there was a dreary interval to be bridged over, and this was a cause of fear.
There was a journey to be taken, for the climate of Cannes would be too hot for health, or even for endurance, before mother and child could be moved. Thus it was imperative that they should move without delay. Indeed, Vansittart thought they could not too soon leave the scene so closely associated with the image of the dead—where everything recalled Peggy, and the alternating hopes and fears of those gradual stages on her journey to the grave. On this path her feet had tripped so lightly last February, when her illness was talked of as “only a cough.” Under this giant eucalyptus her couch had been established in April, when walking had become a painful effort, and she could only lie and absorb the beauty of her surroundings, and talk of the coming days in which she would be strong again, and able to go up to the Signal with Jack.
Vansittart fancied that Eve would catch eagerly at the idea of leaving that haunted house; but her grief increased at the thought of going away.
“I like to be here in the place she loved. I can at least console myself with remembering how happy she was with us; and what a joy Californie and the wild walks above Golfe Juan were to her. Sometimes I think she is in the garden still. I lie upon the sofa here and watch the window, expecting to see her come creeping in, leaning upon the stick you gave her—so white and weak and thin—but so bright, so patient, so lovable.”
Then came the inevitable burst of tears, with the threatening of hysteria, and it was all her husband could do to tranquillize her.
“The comfort you get here is a cruel comfort, dearest,” he said. “We shall both be ever so much better away from Cannes—at St. Martin de Lantosque, in the cool mountain air. Our rooms are ready for us, we shall have our own servants, and if the accommodation be somewhat rough—”
“Do you think I mind roughness with you? I could be happy in a hut. Oh, Jack, you are so patient with my grief! 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.”
XXI
“From the Evil to Come”
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. Eve gave herself up to the luxury of grief on that last day, taking her fond farewell of that quiet bed where, under a coverlet of pale roses, the happy child slept the everlasting sleep. She lingered, and lingered, as the sun sloped towards the dark ridge of hills; lingered when the great flaming disc touched the rugged line, until there was only the afterglow to light her back to Californie. Vansittart had trusted her alone with the steady Benson, now promoted from Peggy’s nurse to be Eve’s own maid. He had cheques to write and final arrangements to make; and he thought that there would be greater tranquillity for Eve in solitude, with only an attendant. It was better there should be no one to whom she could expatiate on her grief, for her talk with him had always tended to hysteria. Thus convenience and prudence had both counselled his leaving her to herself; and it was only when the clock on the mantelpiece chimed the quarter before eight and the shadows deepened in the corners of the room that he felt he had been imprudent. He went hurriedly out to the terrace in front of the villa, and felt that creeping chillness in the air which follows quickly upon sundown on this southern shore. The carriage stopped at the gate as he went out, and Eve was in his arms, to be welcomed first and scolded afterwards.
“It is with you I am most angry, Benson,” he
