Eve was enchanted with her new home. She poured out her confidence to him who was so soon to be her husband, with the right to know her inmost thoughts, her every impulse or fancy. It was not often that she talked of herself; but today she was full of personal reminiscences, and Vansittart encouraged her innocent egotism.
“I don’t think you realize that you are playing the part of King Cophetua, and marrying a beggar-maiden,” she said. “I don’t think you can have any idea what a struggle my life has been since I was twelve years old—how that dear Nancy and I have had to scheme and manage, in order to feed four hungry girls. You remember how Hetty and Peggy giggled when you talked about dinner. We scarcely ever had a meal which you and Lady Hartley would call dinner. We were vegetarians half our time—we abstained when it wasn’t Lent. We had our Ember days all the year round. Oh, pray don’t look so horrified. We had the kind of food we liked. Vegetable soups, and savoury messes, salads and cheese, cakes and buns, bread and jam. We had meals that we all enjoyed tremendously—only we could not have asked a dropper-in to stay and lunch or dine—could we? So it was lucky people took so little notice of us.”
“My darling, you were the pearls, and your neighbours were the swine.”
“And then our dress. How could we be neat tailor-made girls when a ten-pound note once in a way was all we could extort from father for the whole flock? Ten pounds! Lady Hartley would pay as much for a bonnet as would buy gowns for all five of us. And then you bring me to this delicious old house—so spacious, so dignified, with such a settled air of wealth and comfort—and you ask if I can suggest improvement in things which to my mind are perfect.”
“My dearest, I want you to be happy, and very happy; and to feel that this house is your house, to deal with as you please.”
“I only want to live in it, with you,” she answered shyly, “and not to disappoint you. What should I do if King Cophetua were to repent his romantic marriage, and were to think of all the brilliant matches he might have made?”
“When we are settled here I will show you the girls my mother would have liked me to marry, and you will see that they are not particularly brilliant. And I do not even know if any of them would have accepted me, had I been minded to offer myself.”
“They could not have refused you. No one could. To know you is to adore you. Come, Jack, you have been talking rodomontade to me. It is my turn now. You are not extraordinarily handsome. I suppose, as a sober matter of fact, Mr. Sefton is handsomer. Don’t wince at the sound of his name. You know I have always detested him. I doubt if you are even exceptionally clever—but you have a kind of charm—you creep into a girl’s heart unawares. I pity the woman who loved you, and whom you did not love.”
Vansittart thought of Fiordelisa. Perhaps in every man’s life there comes one such ordeal as that—love cast at his feet, love worthless to him; but true love all the same, and priceless.
Eve Marchant’s wedding gifts were few but costly. She had no wide circle of acquaintances to shower feather fans and ivory paper-knives, standard lamps and silver boxes, teapots and cream-jugs, fruit spoons and carriage clocks upon her, till she sat among her treasures, bewildered and oppressed, like Tarpeia under the iron rain from warrior hands. Neighbours had stood aloof from the family at the Homestead, and could hardly come with gifts in their hands, now that the slighted girl was going to marry a man of some standing in an adjoining county, and to take her place among the respectabilities. The givers therefore were few, but the gifts were worthy. Mrs. Vansittart gave the pearl necklace which she had worn at her own bridal—a single string of perfect pearls, with a diamond clasp that had been in the family for a century and a half. Lady Hartley gave a set of diamond stars worthy to blaze in the fashionable firmament on a Drawing-Room day. Sir Hubert gave a three-quarter bred mare of splendid shape and remarkable power, perfect as hack or hunter, on whose back Eve had already taken her first lessons in equitation. And for the bridegroom! His gifts were of the choicest and the best considered; jewels, toilet nécessaire, travelling bag, books innumerable. He watched for every want, anticipated every fancy.
“Pray, pray don’t spoil me,” cried Eve. “You make me feel so horribly selfish. You load me with gifts, and you say you are not rich. You are ruining yourself for me.”
“A man can afford to ruin himself once in his life for his nearest and dearest,” he answered gaily. “Besides, if I give you all you want now, I shall cure you of any incipient tendency to extravagance.”
“I have no such tendency. My nose has been kept too close to the grindstone of poverty.”
“Poor, pretty little nose! Happily the grindstone has not hurt it.”
“And as for wants, who said I wanted Tennyson and Browning bound in vellum, or a travelling bag as big as a house? I have no wants, or they are all centred upon one object, which isn’t to be bought with money. I want you and your love.”
“I and my love are yours—have been yours since that night in the snowy road, when you entered into my life at a flash, like the sunlight through Newton’s shutter, like Undine, like Titania.”
One of the few wedding presents was embarrassing alike to bride and bridegroom, for it came from a man whom both disliked, but whom one of the two
