“I expect that is nonsense, too,” she said. “At least, it is either nonsense or very obvious, for I suppose when anyone laughs, however fully he laughs, there is always something tragic behind. Ah, how nice to laugh entirely just once from your hair to your heels.”
“Can’t you do that ever?” asked Evelyn sympathetically.
“No, never, nor can most people, I think. We are all haunted houses; there is always a ghost of some kind tapping at the door or lurking in the dusk. Only a few people have no ghosts. I should think your’s were infinitesimal. You are much to be envied.”
Evelyn listened with all his ears to this; partly because he and Madge were already such good friends, and anything new about her was interesting; partly because, though, as he had said, surface was enough for him – it bore so very directly on his coming portrait of her.
“Yes, I expect that is true,” he said; “most people certainly have their ghosts. But it is wise to wall up one’s haunted room, is it not?”
Madge shook her head.
“Yes, but it is still there,” she said.
She got up from the low chair in which she was sitting with an air of dismissing the subject of their talk.
“Come, ask me some more of those very silly riddles,” she said. “I think they are admirable in laying ghosts. So, too, are you, Mr. Dundas. I am sure you will not resent it when I say it is because you are so frightfully silly. Ghosts cannot stand silliness.”
Evelyn laughed.
“It is so recuperative to be silly,” he said, “because it requires no effort to a person of silly disposition, that is to say. One has to be oneself. How easy!”
She opened her eyes at this.
“That means you find it easy to be natural,” she said. “Why, I should have thought that was almost the most difficult thing in the world to be. Now a pose is easy; it is like acting; you have got to be somebody else. But to be oneself! One has to know what one is, first of all, one has to know what one likes.”
Evelyn laughed again.
“Not at all. You just have to shut your eyes, take a long breath, and begin talking. Whatever you say is you.”
The girl shook her head.
“Ah, you don’t understand,” she said. “You, you, I, everybody, are really all sorts of people put into one envelope. Am I to say what one piece of me is prompting me to say or what another is thinking about? And it’s just the same with one’s actions; one hardly ever does a thing which every part of one wants to do; one’s actions, just like one’s words, are a sort of compromise between the desires of one’s different components.”
She paused a moment, and, with a woman’s quickness of intuition provided against that which might possibly be in his mind.
“Of course, when a big choice comes,” she said, “one’s whole being has to consent. But one only has half a dozen of those in one’s life, I expect.”
She had guessed quite rightly, for the idea of her marriage had inevitably suggested itself to Evelyn when she said “one hardly ever does a thing which every part of one wants to do.” But in the addition she had made to her speech there was even a more direct allusion to it, which necessarily cancelled from his mind the first impression. He was bound, in fact, to accept her last word. But he fenced a little longer.
“I don’t see that one choice can really be considered bigger than another,” he said. “The smallest choice may have the hugest consequences which one could never have foretold, because they are completely outside one’s own control. I may, for instance, settle to go up to London to-morrow by the morning train or the later one. Well, that seems a small enough choice, but supposing one train has a frightful accident? What we can control is so infinitesimal compared to what lies outside us – engine-drivers, bullets, anything that may kill.”
The girl shuddered slightly.
“It is all so awful,” she said, “that. An ounce of lead, a fall, and one is extinguished. It is so illogical, too.”
“Ah, anything that happens to one’s body, or mind either, is that,” said Evelyn.
“How? Surely one is responsible for what happens to one’s mind.”
“Yes, in the way of learning ancient history, if we choose, or having drawing-lessons. But all the big things that can happen to one are outside one’s control. Love, hate, falling in love particularly is, I imagine, completely independent of one’s will.”
The girl gave a short, rather scornful laugh.
“But one sees a determined effort to marry someone,” she said, “often productive of a very passable imitation of falling in love.”
Had she boxed his ears, Evelyn could not have been more astonished. If this was an example of shutting the eyes; drawing a long breath and being natural, he felt that there was after all something to be said for the artificialities in which we are most of us wont to clothe ourselves. There was a very Marah of bitterness in the girl’s tone; he felt, too, as if all the time she had concealed her hand, so to speak, behind her back, and suddenly thrown a squib at him, an explosive that cracked and jumped and jerked in a thoroughly disconcerting manner. And she read the blankness of his face aright, and hastened to correct the impression she had made.
“Did you ever get behind a door when you were a child,” she asked, “and jump out calling ‘Bo!’? That is what I did just then, and it was a complete success.”
He looked at her a moment with his head on one side, as if studying an effect.
“But it was you who jumped out?” he asked rather pertinently.
“Ah, I wouldn’t even say that,” said she. “I think it was only a turnip-ghost that I had stuck behind the door.”
Evelyn gave a sort of triumphant shout of laughter.
“Well, for the moment it took me in,” he said. “I really thought it was you.”
FIFTH
THE season in London this year had been particularly amusing; there had been a quite unusually large number of balls, the opera had been one perpetual coruscation of evening stars that sang together, the conduct of May and early June from a meteorological point of view had been impeccable, and in consequence when the world in general came back after Whitsuntide they came for the most part with a pleasurable sense of returning for the second act of a play of which the first had been really enchanting. Like taking one’s seat again for a play was the sense that various unfinished situations which had been left in an interesting stage would now move forward to their dramatic climaxes. One, however – this was rather unfair – had developed itself to a happy close in the country, and Madge Ellington’s engagement to Philip was generally pronounced to be very nice indeed. On both sides, indeed, it was very nice; for it had not been seemly that a millionaire should be unmarried so long, and on the other hand it had not been seemly that Madge should be unmarried so long. But now they had both seen the error of their ways, and had agreed to marry each other.
And above all, it was very nice for Lady Ellington, about whom it was generally known that she had made a considerable sum in speculation lately. To do that was universally recognised as being an assured advance towards the bankruptcy court, but to have captured a wealthy son-in-law who was a magnate in the South African market turned her steps, or might be hoped to turn them, away from the direction of the courts, and point instead towards the waters of comfort and cash. Another thing that excited to some extent the attention and applause of the world was a certain change of demeanor in Madge, which was very noticeable after her return to London from the Whitsuntide holiday. She had always been rather given to put her head in the air, and appear not to notice people; but her engagement had brought to her an added geniality. Hitherto she had been something of “a maid on yonder mountain height,” but the shepherd, Philip Home, had, it appeared, convinced her that “love was of the valley,” and she had quite distinctly come down. This, at