And here suddenly was the opening of a door which made all things possible. When that mental heliograph flashed in her face, and she became aware of what it meant, Evelyn, for almost the first time, retired into her room and locked her door, and for a whole hour turned a deaf ear to the demands made upon her. The children came and called in every tone of impatience, Edith, the eldest, tap-tapping upon the closed door for ten minutes continuously, and little Bobby kicking, to the great derangement of the thoughts going on within; but for the first and only time Evelyn held fast. She had plenty to do in that house, more than ever she had done before in her life. In the previous crises of that existence it had been other people who had done the thinking, and there had been little left for her but to submit. Now, however, the matter was in her hands, and no one else could help her. It was hard work getting her head clear enough to put this and that together; for the mere idea of marriage was very startling and indeed terrifying to the middle-aged woman who had put it out of all her calculations years ago, and who had retained merely the old youthful superstition that its only warrant was love. But was that really so? After all it was not so simple a thing that it could be thus dismissed and classified. It was a very complicated thing and involved many duties. It was not merely an emotional matter, but one full of practical necessities and exertions. To be a true and helpful companion through all the chances of life: to govern a household: to secure comfort and peace of mind and consolation in all circumstances and occurrences for the partner of life: to care for him and his interests as nobody else could do: to adopt his obligations and help him to serve God and to serve men—Evelyn Ferrars felt that she was capable of all that. It was a worthy office to fulfil, and it was surely the chief part. As for the other side it was undeniable that she shrank from it a little. But he was not young any more than herself. The hour was scarcely over when Mrs. Stanhope herself appeared at the door, half with the air of a mistress who has a right to all her retainer’s time, and half with that of a friend anxious to know what was the matter.
“The children tell me they cannot make you hear,” she said. “I came myself to see if you were ill, or if anything is wrong.”
“You have come just when I wanted you,” said Evelyn, “if I may shut the door on the children for ten minutes more. Helen, something very wonderful has happened, and I have been trying to think what I must do.”
“What has happened?” said Mrs. Stanhope in alarm.
“Mr. Rowland has asked me to—to marry him,” said Evelyn. She did not blush as women do, even when their feelings are but little stirred. She was too anxious to learn what her friend’s verdict would be.
Mrs. Stanhope uttered a cry, and rising up hastily, caught Evelyn in her arms. “Oh,” she said, “I shall lose you, Eve!” The words and the embrace were full of compunction, of kindness, and remorse; but Evelyn felt the relief, the thankfulness, that suddenly flooded her friend’s breast, and her decision was no longer in any doubt.
CHAPTER II.
“Mr. Rowland,” said Evelyn with a little tremor, “the first thing I would like to say to you is that we are neither of us very young.”
“Miss Ferrars,” said the engineer, “you are just as young as it is best and most beautiful to be.”
There came a light like the reflection of a sudden flame over a face which she at least thought to be a faded face. She had never at her youngest and fairest received such a compliment, and how it could have come from a plain man who had so little appearance of any poetry about him was bewildering. It was indeed difficult to resume the middle-aged matter-of-fact tone after such an unexpected break.
“I am forty-two,” she said, “and I have not been without experiences in my life. I want you to know what my past has been, before—”
“Whatever you please to tell me,” he said with an air of deep respect—“but I must say it is not necessary. I am quite satisfied; your experiences may have been painful—the world isn’t over good to people like you. If you will give me your companionship for the rest of our lives, that is enough for me, and far more than I can ever deserve. I have had my experiences too—”
“I must tell you, however, my story,” she said. Women, especially those who have lived in the virginal age for so long, are very conscientious in these matters. They have a much greater respect for love than ordinary people, and think it dishonourable to keep back the knowledge from a future husband of how they have been affected in this way during their past. The love that may have touched them years before they had even heard his name, seems to their over delicacy as if it must be a drawback to them in his eyes—a really guilty secret of which a clean breast must be made before the new and real history is allowed to begin.
“I was,” she said with a little hesitation, “engaged to be married at the usual age. It is a long time ago. My father had not met with any misfortunes then. We were living at home. That makes so great a difference in every way. We were of course well known people, friendly with everybody; everything about us was well known. You know in a county people are acquainted with everything about each other—you can’t conceal it when anything happens to you, even if you wished to conceal it.”
“I never had anything to do with a county,” he said, with a sort of respectful acquiescence, interested but not curious—“but I can understand what you mean.”
“Well: when my father speculated and was so unfortunate (it was really more for my sake than for any other reason that he speculated—and then he was drawn on) it became impossible to carry my engagement out. The gentleman I was engaged to, was not very well off then. We had to think what was best for both of us. We agreed that it would be best to break it off. I should only have been a sort of millstone round his neck. People might have expected him to help papa. And his own means were quite limited then. He had not been supposed a good match for me in my wealthy days—and when the tables were turned in this way, we both thought it was better to part.”
“And did the fellow let you go—did he give you up? The wretched cad!” cried James Rowland, adding this violent expression of opinion under his breath.
“You must not speak so, Mr. Rowland; it was a mutual agreement. We both, I need hardly say, felt it very much. I—for a long time. Indeed, it has had an influence upon all my life. Don’t think I have regretted it,” she said eagerly, “for if we had not done it by mutual agreement as we did, with a sense of the necessity—we should have been forced to do it. For as it turned out, I could not have left my father. He was very much shattered. It cost him a great deal to give up his home. He had been born there, and all his people before him.”
“And you, I suppose, were born there too, and all your people before you?”
“I? Oh! that was nothing! Wherever one is with one’s own belongings, there is home. It doesn’t matter for anything else. But it was more sad than words can say for poor papa. He had to move into the village to a little house. He bore it like a hero, thinking that it was best not to hide himself as if he had done any wrong. Misfortune and loss are not wrong. I want you,” she said, gently, having raised her head for that one profession of faith, but dropping into the usual quiet tone again, “to know exactly all about us before—”
“And did you ever see that—man again?”
The adjectives that were implied in the pause James Rowland made before he brought out the word “man” were lost upon Evelyn, who probably could not have imagined anything so forcible, not to say profane.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “often. We could not help it, to go anywhere he had to go through our village. He removed very