Baring-Gould Sabine
Eve
CHAPTER XL.
ANOTHER SACRIFICE
Watt was no longer in the hall. Whither he had gone none knew; how he had gone none knew. The man in the quadrangle was too alarmed by the glass panes being blown out in his face, to see whether the boy had passed that way. But, indeed, no one now gave thought to Watt; the men ran to the corn-chamber to examine it. A lantern was lighted, the door examined and found to be locked. It was unfastened, and Joseph and the rest entered. The light penetrated every corner, fell on the straw and the onion-heap. Martin Babb was not there.
‘May I be darned!’ exclaimed Joseph, holding the lantern over his head. ‘I looked at the walls, at the floor, at the door: I never thought of the roof, and it is by the roof he has got away.’
Indeed, the corn-chamber was unceiled. Martin, possibly assisted, had reached the rafters, thence had crept along the roof in the attics, and had entered the room that belonged to the girls, and descended from the window by the old Jargonelle pear.
Then the constables and Joseph turned on the sentinel, and heaped abuse upon him for not having warned them of what was going on. It was in vain for him to protest that from the outside he could not detect what was in process of execution under the roof. Blame must attach to someone, and he was one against four.
Their tempers were not the more placable when it was seen that the bottle of brandy had been upset and was empty, the precious spirit having expended itself on the floor.
Then the question was mooted whether the fugitive should not be pursued at once, but the production by Barbara of another bottle of rum decided them not to do so, but await the arrival of morning. Suddenly it occurred to Joseph that the blame attached, not to any of those present, who had done their utmost, but to the warder who had been shot, and so had detached two of their number, and had reduced the body so considerably by this fatality as to incapacitate them from drawing a cordon round the house and watching it from every side. If that warder were to die, then the whole blame might be shovelled upon him along with the earth into his grave.
The search was recommenced next day, but was ineffectual. In which direction Martin had gone could not be found. Absolutely no traces of him could be discovered.
Presently Mr. Coyshe arrived, in a state of great excitement. He had attended the wounded man, and had heard an account of the capture; on his way to Morwell the rumour reached him that the man had broken away again. Mr. Coyshe had, as he put it, an inquiring mind. He thirsted for knowledge, whether of scientific or of social interest. Indeed, he took a lively interest in other people’s affairs. So he came on foot, as hard as he could walk, to Morwell, to learn all particulars, and at the same time pay a professional visit to Mr. Jordan.
Barbara at once asked Mr. Coyshe into the parlour; she wanted to have a word with him before he saw her father.
Barbara was very uneasy about Eve, whose frivolity, lack of ballast, and want – as she feared – of proper self-respect might lead her into mischief. How could her sister have been so foolish as to dress up and dance last evening before a parcel of common constables! To Barbara such conduct was inconceivable. She herself was dignified and stiff with her inferiors, and would as soon have thought of acting before them as Eve had done as of jumping over the moon. She did not consider how her own love and that of her father had fostered caprice and vanity in the young girl, till she craved for notice and admiration. Barbara thought over all that Eve had told her: how she had lost her mother’s ring, how she had received the ring of turquoise, how she had met Martin on the Rock platform. Every incident proclaimed to her mind the instability, the lack of self-respect, in her sister. The girl needed to be watched and put into firmer hands. She and her father had spoiled her. Now that the mischief was done she saw it.
What better step could be taken to rectify the mistake than that of bringing Mr. Coyshe to an engagement with Eve?
She was a straightforward, even blunt, girl, and when she had an aim in view went to her work at once. So, without beating about the bush, she said to the young doctor —
‘Mr. Coyshe, you did me the honour the other day of confiding to me your attachment to Eve. I have been considering it, and I want to know whether you intend at once to speak to her. I told my father your wishes, and he is, I believe, not indisposed to forward them.’
‘I am delighted to hear it,’ said the surgeon; ‘I would like above everything to have the matter settled, but Miss Eve never gives me a chance of speaking to her alone.’
‘She is shy,’ said Barbara; then, thinking that this was not exactly true, she corrected herself; ‘that is to say – she, as a young girl, shrinks from what she expects is coming from you. Can you wonder?’
‘I don’t see it. I’m not an ogre.’
‘Girls have feelings which, perhaps, men cannot comprehend,’ said Barbara.
‘I do not wish to be precipitate,’ observed the young surgeon. ‘I’ll take a chair, please, and then I can explain to you fully my circumstances and my difficulties.’ He suited his action to his word, and graciously signed to Barbara to sit on the sofa near his chair. Then he put his hat between his feet, calmly took off his gloves and threw them into his hat.
‘I hate precipitation,’ said Mr. Coyshe. ‘Let us thoroughly understand each other. I am a poor man. Excuse me, Miss Jordan, if I talk in a practical manner. You are long and clear headed, so – but I need not tell you that – so am I. We can comprehend each other, and for a moment lay aside that veil of romance and poetry which invests an engagement.’
Barbara bowed.
‘An atmosphere surrounds a matrimonial alliance; let us puff it away for a moment and look at the bare facts. Seen from a poetic standpoint, marriage is the union of two loving hearts, the rapture of two souls discovering each other. From the sober ground of common sense it means two loaves of bread a day instead of one, a milliner’s bill at the end of the year in addition to that of the tailor, two tons of coals where one had sufficed. I need not tell you, being a prudent person, that when I am out for the day my fire is not lighted. If I had a wife of course a fire would have to burn all day. I may almost say that matrimony means three tons of coal instead of one, and you know how costly coals come here.’
‘But, Mr. Coyshe – ’
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘I may be plain, but I am truthful. I am putting matters before you in the way in which I am forced to view them myself. When an ordinary individual looks on a beautiful woman he sees only her beauty. I see more; I anatomise her mentally, and follow the bones, and nerves, and veins, and muscles. So with this lovely matrimonial prospect. I see its charms, but I see also what lies beneath, the anatomy, so to speak, and that means increased coal, butcher’s, baker’s bills, three times the washing, additional milliners’ accounts.’
‘You know, Mr. Coyshe,’ said Barbara, a little startled at the way he put matters, ‘you know that eventually Morwell comes to Eve.’
‘My dear Miss Jordan, if a man walks in stocking soles, expecting his father-in-law’s shoes, he is likely to go limpingly. How am I to live so long as Mr. Jordan lives? I know I should flourish after his death – but in the mean time – there is the rub. I’d marry Eve to-morrow but for the expense.’
‘Is there not something sordid – ’ began Barbara.
‘I will not allow you to finish a sentence, Miss Jordan, which your good sense will reproach you for uttering. I saw at a fair a booth with outside a picture of a mermaid combing her golden hair, and with the face of an angel. I paid twopence and went inside, to behold a seal flopping in a tub of dirty water. All the great events of life – birth, marriage, death – are idealised by poets, as that disgusting seal was idealised on the canvas by the artist: horrible things in themselves but inevitable, and therefore to be faced as well as we may. I need not have gone in and seen that seal, but I was deluded to do so by the ideal picture.’
‘Surely,’ exclaimed Barbara laughing, ‘you put marriage in a false light?’
‘Not a bit. In almost every case it is as is described, a delusion and a horrible disenchantment. It shall not be so with me, so I picture it in all its real features. If you do not understand me the fault lies with you. Even the blessed sun cannot illumine a room when the panes of the window are dull. I am a poor man, and a poor man must look at matters from what you are pleased to speak of as a sordid point of view. There are plants I have seen suspended in windows said to live on air. They are all pendulous. Now I am not disposed to become a drooping plant. Live on air I cannot. There is enough earth in my pot for my own roots, but for my own alone.’
‘I see,’ said Barbara, laughing, but a little irritated. ‘You are ready enough to marry, but have not the means on which to marry.’
‘Exactly,’ answered Mr. Coyshe. ‘I have a magnificent future before me, but I am like a man swimming, who sees the land but does not touch as much as would blacken his nails. Lord bless you!’ said Mr. Coyshe, ‘I support a wife on what I get at Beer Alston! Lord bless me!’ he stood up and sat down again, ‘you might as well expect a cock to lay eggs.’
Barbara bit her lips. ‘I should not have thought you so practical,’ she said.
‘I am forced to be so. It is the fate of poor men to have to count their coppers. Then there is another matter. If I were married, well, of course, it is possible that I might be the founder of a happy family. In the South Sea Islands the natives send their parents periodically up trees and then shake the trunks. If the old people hold on they are reprieved, if they fall they are eaten. We eat our parents in England also, and don’t wait till they are old and leathery. We begin with them when we are babes, and never leave off till nothing is left of them to devour. We feed on their energies, consume their substance, their time, their brains, their hearts piecemeal.’
‘Well!’
‘Well,’ repeated Mr. Coyshe, ‘if I am to be eaten I must have flesh on my bones for the coming Coyshes to eat.’
‘You need not be alarmed as to the prospect,’ said Barbara gravely. ‘I have been left a few hundred pounds by my aunt, they bring in about fifty pounds a year. I will make it over to my sister.’
‘You see for yourself,’ said Mr. Coyshe, ‘that Eve is not a young lady who can be made into a sort of housekeeper. She is too dainty for that. Turnips may be tossed about, but not apricots.’
‘Yes,’ said Barbara, ‘I and my sister are quite different.’
‘You will not repent of this determination?’ asked Mr. Coyshe. ‘I suppose it would not be asking you too much just to drop me a letter with the expression of your intention stated in it? I confess to a weakness for black and white. The memory is so treacherous, and I find it very like an adhesive chest plaster – it sticks only on that side which applies to self.’
‘Mr. Coyshe,’ said Barbara, ‘shall we go in and see papa? You shall be satisfied. My memory will not play me false. My whole heart is wrapped up in dear Eve, and the great ambition of my life is to see her happy. Come, then, we will go to papa.’
CHAPTER XLI.
ANOTHER MISTAKE
Barbara saw Mr. Coyshe into her father’s room, and then went upstairs to Eve, caught her by the arm, and drew her into her own room. Barbara had now completely made up her mind that her sister was to become Mrs. Coyshe. Eve was a child, never would be other, never capable of deciding reasonably for herself. Those who loved her, those who had care of her must decide for her. Barbara and her father had grievously erred hitherto in humouring all Eve’s caprices, now they must be peremptory with her, and arrange for her what was best, and force her to accept the provision made for her.
What are love matches but miserable disappointments? Not quite so bad as pictured by Mr. Coyshe. The reality would not differ from the ideal as thoroughly as the seal from the painted mermaid; but there was truth in what he said. A love match was entered into by two young people who have idealised each other, and before the first week is out of the honeymoon they find the ideal shattered, and a very prosaic reality standing in its place. Then follow disappointment, discontent, rebellion. Far better the foreign system of parents choosing partners for their children; they are best able to discover the real qualities of the suitor because they study them dispassionately, and they know the characters of their daughters. Who can love a child more than a parent, and therefore who is better qualified to match her suitably?
So Barbara argued with herself. Certainly Eve must not be left to select her husband. She was a creature of impulse, without a grain of common-sense in her whole nature.
Barbara drew Eve down beside her on the sofa at the foot of her bed, and put her arm round her waist. Eve was pouting, and had red eyes; for her sister had scolded her that morning sharply for her conduct the preceding night, and her father had been excited, and for the first time in his life had spoken angrily to her, and bidden her cast off and never resume the costume in which she had dressed and bedizened herself.
Eve had retired to her room in a sulk, and in a rebellious frame of mind. She cried and called herself an ill-treated girl, and was overcome with immense pity for the hardships she had to undergo among people who could not understand and would not humour her.
Eve’s lips were screwed up, and her brow as nearly contracted into a frown as it could be, and her sweet cheeks were kindled with fiery temper-spots.
‘Eve dear,’ said Barbara, ‘Mr. Coyshe is come.’
Eve made no answer, her lips took another screw, and her brows contracted a little more.
‘Eve, he is closeted now with papa, and I know he has come to ask for the hand of the dearest little girl in the whole world.’
‘Stuff!’ said Eve peevishly.
‘Not stuff at all,’ argued Barbara, ‘nor’ – intercepting another exclamation – ’no, dear, nor fiddlesticks. He has been talking to me in the parlour. He is sincerely attached to you. He is an odd man, and views things in quite a different way from others, but I think I made out that he wanted you to be his wife.’
‘Barbara,’ said Eve, with great emphasis, ‘nothing in the world would induce me to submit to be called Mrs. Squash.’
‘My dear, if the name is the only objection, I think he will not mind changing it. Indeed, it is only proper that he should. As he and you will have Morwell, it is of course right that a Jordan should be here, and – to please the Duke and you – he will, I feel sure, gladly assume our name. I agree with you that, though Coyshe is not a bad name, it is not a pretty one. It lends itself to corruption.’
‘Babb is worse,’ said Eve, still sulky.
‘Yes, darling, Babb is ugly, and it is the pet name you give me, as short for Barbara. I have often told you that I do not like it.’
‘You never said a word against it till Jasper came.’
‘Well, dear, I may not have done so. When he did settle here, and we knew his name, it was not, of course, seemly to call me by it. That is to say,’ said Barbara, colouring, ‘it led to confusion – in calling for me, for instance, he might have thought you were addressing him.’
‘Not at all,’ said Eve, still filled with a perverse spirit. ‘I never called him Babb at all, I always called him Jasper.’ Then she took up her little apron and pulled at the embroidered ends, and twisted and tortured them into horns. ‘It would be queer, sister, if you were to marry Jasper, you would become double Babb.’
‘Don’t,’ exclaimed Barbara, bridling; ‘this is unworthy of you, Eve; you are trying to turn your arms against me, when I am attacking you.’
‘May I not defend myself?’
Then Barbara drew her arm tighter round her sister, kissed her pretty neck under the delicate shell-like ear, and said, ‘Sweetest! we never fight. I never would raise a hand against you. I would run a pair of scissors into my own heart rather than snip a corner off this dear little ear. There, no more fencing even with wadded foils. We were talking of Mr. Coyshe.’
Eve shrugged her shoulders.
‘Revenons à nos moutons,’ she said, ‘though I cannot say old Coyshe is a sheep; he strikes me rather as a jackdaw.’
‘Old Coyshe! how can you exaggerate so, Eve! He is not more than five or six-and-twenty.’
‘He is wise and learned enough to be regarded as old. I hate wise and learned men.’
‘What is there that you do not hate which is not light and frivolous?’ asked Barbara a little pettishly. ‘You have no serious interests in anything.’
‘I have no interests in anything here,’ said Eve, ‘because there is nothing here to interest me. I do not care for turnips and mangold, and what are the pigs and poultry to me? Can I be enthusiastic over draining? Can the price of bark make my pulses dance? No, Barbie (Bab you object to), I am sick of a country life in a poky corner of the most out-of-the-way county in England except Cornwall. Really, Barbie, I believe I would marry any man who would take me to London, and let me go to the theatre and to balls, and concerts and shows. Why, Barbara! I’d rather travel round the country in a caravan and dance on a tight-rope than be moped up here in Morwell, an old fusty, mouldering monk’s cell.’
‘My dear Eve!’
Barbara was so shocked, she could say no more.
I am in earnest. Papa is ill, and that makes the place more dull than ever. Jasper was some fun, he played the violin, and taught me music, but now you have meddled, and deprived me of that amusement; I am sick of the monotony here. It is only a shade better than Lanherne convent, and you know papa took me away from that; I fell ill with the restraint.’
‘You have no restraint here.’
‘No – but I have nothing to interest me. I feel always as if I was hungry for something I could not get. Why should I have “Don Giovanni,” and “Figaro,” and the “Barber of Seville” on my music-stand, and strum at them? I want to see them, and hear them alive, acting, singing, particularly amid lights and scenery, and in proper costume. I cannot bear this dull existence any longer. If Doctor Squash will take me to a theatre or an opera I’ll marry him, just for that alone – that is my last word.’
Barbara was accustomed to hear Eve talk extravagantly, and had not been accustomed to lay much weight on what she said; but this was spoken so vehemently, and was so prodigiously extravagant, that Barbara could only loosen her hold of her sister, draw back to the far end of the sofa, and stare at her dismayedly. In her present state of distress about Eve she thought more seriously of Eve’s words than they deserved. Eve was angry, discontented, and said what came uppermost, so as to annoy her sister.
‘Eve dear,’ said Barbara gravely, ‘I pray you not to talk in this manner, as if you had said good-bye to all right principle and sound sense. Mr. Coyshe is downstairs. We must decide on an answer, and that a definite one.’
‘We!’ repeated Eve; ‘I suppose it concerns me only.’
‘What concerns you concerns me; you know that very well, Eve.’
‘I am not at liberty, I suppose, to choose for myself?’
‘You are a dear good girl, who will elect what is most pleasing to your father and sister, and promises greatest happiness to yourself.’
Eve sat pouting and playing with the ends of her apron. Then she took one end which she had twisted into a horn, and put it between her pearly teeth, whilst she looked furtively and mischievously at her sister, who sat with her hands on her lap, tapping the floor with her feet.
‘Barbie!’ said Eve slily.
‘Well, dear!’
‘Do lend me your pocket-handkerchief. I have been crying and made mine wet. Papa was so cross and you scolded me so sharply.’
Barbara, without looking at her sister, held out her handkerchief to her. Eve took it, pulled it out by the two ends, twirled it round, folded, knotted it, worked diligently at it, got it into the compact shape she desired, laid it in her arms, with the fingers under it, and then, without Barbara seeing what she was about – ’Hist!’ said Eve, and away shot the white rabbit she had manufactured into Barbara’s lap. Then she burst into a merry laugh. The clouds had rolled away. The sun was shining.
‘How can you! How can you be so childish!’ burst from Barbara, as she started up, and let the white rabbit fall at her feet. ‘Here we are,’ said Barbara, with some anger, ‘here we are discussing your future, and deciding your happiness or sorrow, and you – you are making white rabbits! You really, Eve, are no better than a child. You are not fit to choose for yourself. Come along with me. We must go down. Papa and I will settle for you as is best. You want a master who will bring you into order, and, if possible, force you to think.’
