‘Everything repeats itself. As in Eve’s case the sickness led up to marriage, or something like it, so will it be in your case. This is what Mr. Jordan and Eve did: they went into the little old chapel, and took each other’s hands before the altar, and swore fidelity to each other; that was all. Mr. Jordan is a Catholic, and would not have the knot tied by a church parson, and Eve would not confess to her name, she had that sense of decency left in her. They satisfied their consciences but it was no legal marriage. I believe he would have done what was right, but she was perverse, and refused to give her name, and say both who she was and whence she came.’ ‘Go on,’ said Jasper. ‘Well, then, about a year after this I heard where she was, and I went after her to Morwell, but I did not go openly—I had no wish to encounter Mr. Jordan. I tried to persuade Eve to return with me to Buckfastleigh. Who can lay to my charge that I am not a forgiving father? Have I not given you cold potato, and would have furnished you with veal pie if the old woman had not finished the scraps? I saw Eve, and I told her my mind pretty freely, both about her running away and about her connection with Jordan. I will say this for her—she professed to be sorry for what she had done, and desired my forgiveness. That, I said, I would give her on one condition only, that she forsook her husband and child, and came back to keep house for me. I could not bring her to a decision, so I appointed her a day, and said I would take her final answer on that. But I was hindered going; I forget just now what it was, but I couldn’t go that day.’ ‘Well, father, what happened?’ ‘As I could not keep my appointment—I remember now how it was, I was laid up with a grip of lumbago at Tavistock—I sent one of the actors there, from whom I had heard about her, with a message. I had the lumbago in my back that badly that I was bent double. When I was able to go, on the morrow, it was too late; she was gone.’ ‘Gone! Whither?’ ‘Gone off with the play-actor,’ answered Mr. Babb, grimly. ‘It runs in the blood.’ ‘You are sure of this?’ ‘Mr. Jordan told me so.’ ‘Did you not pursue her?’ ‘To what end? I had done my duty. I had tried my utmost to recover my daughter, and when for the second time she played me false, I wiped off the dust of my feet as a testimony against her.’ ‘She left her child?’ ‘Yes, she deserted her child as well as her husband—that is to say, Mr. Ignatius Jordan. She deserted the house that had sheltered her, to run after a homeless, bespangled, bepainted play-actor. I know all about it. The life at Morwell was too dull for her, it was duller there than at Buckfastleigh. Here she could see something of the world; she could watch the factory hands coming to their work and leaving it; but there she was as much out of the world as if she were in Lundy Isle. She had a hankering after the glitter and paint of this empty world.’