Mrs. Vansittart liked and admired Eve Marchant; but she did not let her heart go out to her as it ought to have gone to the girl who was so soon to be to her as a daughter. Colonel Marchant’s existence was a rock of offence which even maternal love could not surmount. She had talked to her family lawyer, an old and trusted ally, and from him she had heard all that was to be said for and against Eve’s father. He was not quite so black, perhaps, as his neighbours in the country had painted him; but his career had been altogether disreputable, and his present associations were among the most disreputable men, calling themselves gentlemen, about town. He was a familiar figure in the cardroom at clubs where play was high, and was looked upon with unmitigated terror by the parents and guardians of young men of fortune or expectations. A youth who affected Colonel Marchant’s society was known to be in a bad way.
And now the question was not only of Colonel Marchant, but of his son, who was even a darker character than the father, and whose darkness might at any time overshadow his sister’s name. It was easy enough to say that the sister was blameless, that it was no fault of hers that her father was a Bohemian, and her brother a swindler and a forger. Society does not easily forgive sisters or daughters for such relationships, and now that the pseudo-scientific craze of heredity has taken hold of the English mind, society is less inclined even than of yore to ignore the black sheep in the fold. Everyone who heard of Eve Marchant’s antecedents would anticipate evil for her husband. The bad strain would show itself somehow before long. The duskiness in the parental wool would crop up in the fleece of the lamb.
It was hard for the mother who doted on her only son to feel ashamed of his wife’s relations and upbringing; and Mrs. Vansittart feared that to the end of her life she must needs feel this shame. Already her neighbours at Merewood had tortured her by their keen interest in her son’s betrothed, their eagerness to know every detail, their searching questions about her people, all veiled under that affectionate friendliness which excuses the most tormenting curiosity.
Mrs. Vansittart was a good woman and a devoted mother, but she had the temperament which easily yields to worrying ideas, to apprehensions of potential evils, and her love of her son had just that alloy of jealousy which is apt to cause trouble. While Vansittart was going about with his betrothed from one scene of amusement to another, utterly happy in her company, enchanted to show her places and people which were as new to her as if they had been in fairyland, his mother was brooding over her fears and fostering her forebodings, and affording Wilfred Sefton every opportunity of improving his acquaintance with her. It was a shock to Vansittart to find that Sefton had established himself on the most familiar footing in Charles Street, a privileged dropper-in, who might call six days out of the seven if he chose, since Mrs. Vansittart had no allotted day for receiving, but was always at home to her friends between four and five during the summer season, when the pleasantest hour for driving was after five.
Sefton was clever, lived entirely in society and for society, during the brief London season, frequented the studios of artists and the tea-parties of litterateurs, knew, or pretended to know, everything that was going to happen in the world of art and letters, and would have been welcome on his own merits in the circles of the frivolous. He contrived to amuse Mrs. Vansittart, and to impress her with an exaggerated idea of his talent and versatility.
“He can talk well upon every subject,” she told her son.
“My dear mother, you mean that he is an adept in the season’s jargon, and can talk of those subjects which came into fashion last month; like the new cut of our coat collars, and the new colour of our neckties. A man of that kind always impresses people with his cleverness in May and the first half of June. Talk with him later, and you’ll find him flat, stale, and unprofitable. By July he will have emptied his bag.”
It was scarcely a surprise to Vansittart, knowing his mother’s liking for Mr. Sefton, to find that gentleman seated in her drawing-room one Saturday evening when he returned rather late from a polo match at Hurlingham. It was to be Eve’s last Saturday in London. June was at hand, and she was to go back to Fernhurst on the first of the month, to spend the small remnant of her single life with her sisters. She was to be married on St. John’s Day.
They had lingered at the tea-table on the lawn, sighing sentimentally over the idea that this was positively the last Saturday: that not again for nearly a year could they sit together drinking tea out of the homely little brown teapot, and watching the careless crowd come and go in the sunshine and the summery air.
In Charles Street, the cups and saucers had not been cleared away, although it was
