Chapter III: Husband and Wife

"Thus each retains his notions, every one."
JANE TAYLOR.

DUTTON PARK stood on sufficiently high ground to command a view of the town, and of the surrounding country. In one direction Ripley Brow might be seen, the Brow standing up boldly, more than two miles away. Between, the river wound in curves among low green banks and meadows, after its rush through the gorge.

On a fine day, such as this, anyone walking in the Park grounds could see the "S-like" windings shine here and there with the brightness of burnished metal in the sunshine; grey spaces of water intervening.

There were two ways of reaching the house from the main road. One was by a shady drive, well bowered, the trees meeting overhead in a continuous arch. The other lay through open park-like fields, ending in two large ponds, one on either side of the garden entrance. Following the latter road, Mr. Trevelyan and Jean lingered three or four minutes to watch the swans; then they crossed the wide lawn of the garden, which was sprinkled with pines and yews. Beds of massed colouring, closely packed, showed rich and artistic arrangements of tints. The house was extensive, white and low, guiltless of creepers, and on one side, sheltered by a group of mighty elms.

The great drawing-room, over forty-five feet long, was used only on state occasions. Evelyn's favourite resort for ordinary purposes was the library, a long four-windowed room, well lined with books. General Villiers had his private study besides, and Evelyn had her boudoir; but when at home, she was usually to be found in the library.

On this particular afternoon, she stood in the end window, a large bow, gazing somewhat pensively upon the outer view: not as if she very much cared for it.

At twenty-five, Evelyn well fulfilled the promise of her girlhood, so far as actual beauty was concerned. The delicacy of form and feature, the perfection of colouring, the grace of movement, were unchanged. They had only ripened into a fuller loveliness, with the addition of a finished repose and graciousness of manner, an exquisite high-bred ease, which no mere girl can show.

She wore a cream-coloured dress of India muslin, handsome in make and rich in embroidery. There was about her every appearance of a life of ease, of luxury, of affectionate care, every token of a sheltered existence. Looking upon her from without, it might seem that she had not a want ungratified.

Yet those who studied Evelyn Villiers with observant eyes were conscious of something lacking. They knew that life to this fair creature had not thus far been all that it might have been. The delicate cheek had already a slight inward curve, marring its perfect oval; a curve which in such a face could only have come from illness or from wear and tear. The graceful bearing had about it a touch of weariness, of listless indifference, like one tired of her surroundings. The closed lips had gained a faintly satirical set; and the violet eyes contained a look of forlornness, as if she thirsted perpetually after something unattainable. It had been said that the expression of those eyes was as of a captive creature, chained down, and hopeless of escape.

But these were the views of those only who could see a little below the surface. People in general said how pretty and sweet and charming she was—only rather too exclusive, rather difficult to know! And what an enviable life she led! To be sure, one might wish that the husband were a few years younger: but then he was rich and gentlemanly, delightful in his manners, and such a good man too! What mattered a little discrepancy in age? Mrs. Villiers was a happy woman: she had everything she could possibly desire!

"Mr. Trevelyan! How good of him! And Jean!"

Evelyn did not stir till the callers were announced. Then she went forward, in her soft restrained fashion, holding out two hands, a rare gesture with Mrs. Villiers.

"I am so glad to see you both. This is kind. It is just what I wanted, treating me like an old friend! Somehow I have always had the feeling that my most real friends were at Dulveriford Rectory; though I have seen so little of you since my marriage. I hope to see more now. We have come back to settle down for a time. My husband is tired of travelling."

"General Villiers was so good as to say that we might call at once, not waiting till after Sunday."

"Did he? That was kind. He knew I wished it. And this is Jean! The old look, I see—hardly changed."

She kissed Jean's cheek in her winning way—for Evelyn could be irresistibly winning when she chose, though she did not always choose.

"Do I know you well enough?" she asked.

"Jean is a child still," promptly asserted Mr. Trevelyan, while Jean breathed a "Yes" of unlimited meaning.

Evelyn smiled. She knew in a moment her power over the girl, and she was glad to know it. Jean interested her: not only for the sake of Mr. Trevelyan, whom Evelyn had always liked. Jean herself was so uncommon: not exactly good-looking, but so very uncommon. There was a trenchant attractiveness about the aristocratic pose of Jean's head, and the straightforward earnestness of her singular eyes, combined with an abnormal simplicity of dress and manner.

Evelyn's glance travelled over her, taking in all particulars: then she sat down on a sofa, making Jean do the same.

"I want to know this child well," she said, with her sweet graciousness. "Yes, I suppose she is a child still—compared with me. But I have a fancy that we shall be friends some day. Will you come and see me, Jean, when I am alone, now and then?"

Jean's eyes brightened into a golden glow like sunshine. "If I may," she said.

"The oftener the better," quoth Mr. Trevelyan, who was under the power of Evelyn's magic wand, though not to such an extent as to lose his own individuality.

"Thanks! Then come often, Jean—as often as you can be spared. I must introduce you to my little boudoir. Only think, that naughty brother of mine has not been near me since Wednesday morning."

Explanations had to be given. Jean left them to her father, and Mr. Trevelyan said no more than was needful, but Evelyn drew certain particulars from him by skilful questioning.

"The old story," she said. "My aunt will do her best to spoil him. After all, the only hope lies in school."

"Cyril doesn't want to be a coddle," spoke up Jean in his defence.

"You and he are great friends, are you not?"

"I don't know. Yes; I suppose so," Jean answered slowly, as if anxious to be exact.

Presently, with an abrupt change of subject—only, nothing that Evelyn did ever had an abrupt effect—Mrs. Villiers asked—

"What of Dutton parties and politics?"

"I am not a man of Dutton," was the answer.

"The better able, perhaps, to take a dispassionate outside view."

"That may be," cautiously, "but I am very busy in my own work. Not much time to watch other people."

"I wish 'other people' could say the same. It seems to me that the normal occupation of Dutton generally is to sit and look at its neighbours—not with approving eyes."

"A common result of too little to do."

"And looking at them means talking about them. Things have always been so, I suppose; but after years away, one notices more. I have been in the thick of it all this week. Everybody does not wait, like you and Jean, for leave to call before Sunday. Perhaps I should not have given leave in some cases—" with a slight curl of her lip. "I have had any number of callers: and they all seem convinced that the one object of my coming home is to hear how badly the world has gone on in my absence. The Dutton world I mean."

"So long as they keep to generalities—" and a pause.

"They do not. It is all about individuals."

"Such remarks may be checked, if one is resolved."

Evelyn's face wore a curious look, as if she were conscious of certain elements in the question which he had failed to grasp.

"Perhaps—" she said gently. And then—

"St. John's is unchanged, I hear. The shabby little boys still in full force!"

Mr. Trevelyan smiled, and drew cabalistic signs on the carpet with his walking-stick, while Jean listened and learnt. "I imagine that a good many elderly people would be distressed at changes in St. John's," he said.

"People who believe in the infallibility of sixty years ago: I never do understand that view of matters. Why must all that is done at a certain date in one's life be right, and every after deviation be wrong? Shall I come to the same way of thinking when I am old?"

"It is a not unusual result of age with ordinary minds."

"But may not people go on and learn more, instead of standing still? And don't the needs of different generations differ? Doesn't human nature take fresh developments from time to time, wanting varieties of help? I don't often talk like this—" and a restless caged look came into her beautiful eyes. "People would not understand. But surely truth as a whole is wider than it is made out by some such good people."

"Truth as a whole is wide as Him who is the Truth: and He is wider than the Universe which He has made. Our views of Truth may be narrow, but Truth itself is never narrow." Mr. Trevelyan spoke in a brief incisive style, and she smiled.

"Yes: that is what I meant. You understand. One gets a glimpse of how things really are sometimes—and then to come down to the little circles of good people, saying hard things of each other—But I shall be as bad as they, if I go on! We had better talk of something else. Tell me about your sister. Is she well? Busy as ever, I suppose. I want to see her the first day I can. Ah—here is my husband."

A nameless change crept over Evelyn, noted at once by the observant Jean. She looked up with a kind expression, a species of polite wifely welcome; but the smile vanished, and with it, her engaging sweetness. In a moment, the violet eyes grew weary, the lips satirical, the whole manner dignified and listless.

General Villiers came in quickly, with his military step and carriage; handsome still, though his grey hair had become white, and he was older in appearance by many years than the number of his summers warranted. Chronic ill-health is apt to age a man: and he had suffered much at times from rheumatism. He might have been easily taken for past seventy: and it was quite true, as Mrs. Kennedy had said, that he looked like Evelyn's grandfather. He had even begun to stoop a little. At the moment of his entrance, a distinct frown was stamped upon his brow, as if something had vexed him: but it cleared away at the sight of callers, and he came forward to greet them, with his air of polished courtesy.

The Trevelyans did not belong to that "St. John set" which formed his own chosen environment when at home. As he would perhaps have said, they did not "suit him." He knew, however, that Evelyn liked them: and he was too affectionate a husband not to be pleased with what gave her pleasure, even though he might be just a little uneasy at the prospect of an intimacy in that quarter.

He was somewhat in bondage to the opinions of others; not of "others" generally, but of certain leading individuals in his own clique; Miss Devereux, for instance, and Lady Lucas, and Colonel Atherstone, none of whom liked or approved of Mr. Trevelyan. Where his own kindliness of heart would have carried him on, he was often pulled back by a recollection of what others—these particular "others—" might say. Still, he was a thorough gentleman, and small-talk went as smoothly as a glissade for several minutes, till Mr. Trevelyan rose to go.

"Jean must be sure to come again very soon," Evelyn said, kissing the girl; and Jean went off in a state of smothered radiance, which her father could not even guess at.

"My dear!" the General said seriously, when he and Evelyn were alone, speaking in a tone of reproof. He was a most devoted husband, as husbands go, but seven years of married life do undoubtedly, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, make away with the romance of attachment. Dearly as the General loved his fair young wife, he was not at all incapable of finding fault with her; and this premonitory "My dear!" did not come with the shock of anything unusual. It only came as something unwelcome: and her lips grew slightly hard.

"Yes—" she said.

"I think, my love, that now we are at home, you must make up your mind to be a little more guarded, more careful in your manner, when friends call friends of long standing."

"More guarded!"

"Perhaps that is hardly the word. What I mean is, that you have to be a little more kind and pleasant, my love, even where you do not so very particularly care for the callers themselves. It is necessary to guard one's manner sometimes from over-coldness, as well as from over-frankness. I am speaking early for your sake as well as for my own. I should be sorry if a wrong impression went forth of my wife; and you cannot, I am convinced, really wish to give offence. It is only inadvertence."

"Offence to whom, William?"

"It is hardly needful to mention names. I think you will understand without further explanation. You did not of course intend to act slightingly to anybody; but a certain amount of attention is due to people in a certain position; and when it is withheld—can you wonder that they are hurt?"

"I cannot be otherwise than natural."

"Nay, Evelyn—surely politeness ought to be natural."

"I have not failed in bare politeness, and I will not," she said quietly. "But more is expected, and I cannot give it. I don't like Dutton people."

"You do not really know them. There is at least no need to pass judgment until you do."

"I have no wish to know them any better."

"Then I am to understand that your manner yesterday to some of my friends—a manner which gave pain—was not inadvertent, but intentional?"

Evelyn almost spoke, almost told him of the real cause. It was a pity that she did not. Though he might have been difficult to convince, he would not in the abstract have approved of gossip, and he would at least have seen that she had a reason for showing coldness.

"But what is the use?" she asked herself plaintively. "He will not understand."

She turned away with a sigh, making no answer, and the frown on the General's brow was stamped there during many hours. He thought Evelyn was wilfully bent on opposing him.

It was difficult, perhaps, for him to think otherwise, when she would not attempt to make her motives clear; yet no doubt it was difficult also for Evelyn to enter on such an attempt, when she had so often tried and failed. The state of tension between them had grown gradually out of an utter discrepancy of mind and character, at least not less in degree than the discrepancy of age. In such cases, it is often most difficult to say where the blame lies.

For he was so good, so earnest, a man: and withal so fixed in his views. When he had made up his mind, he had made up his mind, and nothing could move him. This was a marked idiosyncrasy, a part of his very nature; and it was equally shown on questions of great moment and of passing interest.

On almost every conceivable subject of importance, he had come to definite conclusions some thirty or forty years earlier; and he had not since deviated by a hair's breadth, at least not consciously, from the neat solution of each difficulty, then laid down by himself for his own instruction. He was never troubled by a shadow of doubt that his opinions might not be absolutely and altogether right. He never thought it possible that here or there he might be mistaken. He had his Bible; he studied it; he reached certain conclusions. When other people, studying their Bibles no less earnestly, reached different conclusions, they of course were wrong.

He was too gentlemanly and kind-hearted to judge them harshly in words; but he always felt their deviations from truth, as held by himself, to be sad and perplexing; and he had no pleasure in their society. His friends were always those who agreed with himself, who submitted to his dictum. All who did so agree, he accepted and believed in thoroughly; so thoroughly that, as we have seen, Evelyn was hopeless of her power to disturb that belief. All who did not so agree were relegated to the outer circle of mere acquaintances.

But he could not so relegate his wife: and Evelyn by no means agreed with him on all points. She made no effort to conceal the fact; and this was a lasting grief to the single-eyed simple-hearted man. For if he were inevitably always in the right, she must of necessity, where she differed from him, be always in the wrong.

Evelyn's mind and character were in many respects a complete enigma to the General. He could not fathom her; could not grasp the complexities of a nature so unlike his own. It was not his fault. A short-sighted man cannot fairly be blamed for not seeing so far as a long-sighted man.

The General, with all his real goodness and nobleness, had a narrow make of mind, a contracted mental vision. And at sixty-two or sixty-three years of age, he was incapable of gauging his young wife of twenty-five. She had not yet come to her full growth. She was expanding, gaining fresh knowledge, assimilating new thoughts, year by year. He had been petrified early into a permanent shape; and for thirty or forty years past, he had almost ceased to expand. How could the two minds suit?

Evelyn's restless thought, her searching into the foundations of statements which he accepted en bloc, her eager listening to fresh theories, her weariness of religious strifes and factious oppositions—all of these he resolved with sorrowful haste into "dangerous tendencies," and to all of these, he set himself in resolute opposition. He was indeed most willing to discuss vexed questions with her; and he would never, like many men, forget his gentlemanliness in the heat of argument; but he always began and ended with the assumption that he himself was inevitably right, and he had no power to see her side of the matter.

So it came to pass that Evelyn fell into a habit of systematically evading all discussion; not merely all religious discussion, which under the circumstances was no doubt her wisest course, but all discussion of most everyday matters. If he found fault, she offered no defence. If he misjudged her, she attempted no explanation. It was "no use," she told herself. Such a state of things, which in any other relationship of life would be hardly more than endurable, when existing between a husband and wife could not but result in distress and isolation.