She saw lights dying down in the distance, and the world which had once
seemed so desirable seemed to her strangely trivial and easily denied.
Already she could look back at the poor struggling ones, struggling for
what to-morrow will be abandoned, forgotten, passing illusions; and she
wondered how it was that she had not always thought as she thought
to-day. Her thoughts passed into reveries, and she awoke, remembering
that Monsignor had told her that he did not like her living alone in
Park Lane. But in Dulwich she would be with her father, whom she had
long neglected, and she would be near St. Joseph's and her confessor. At
the same moment she remembered that she could not write to her lovers
from Park Lane. She put her jewels back in the safe, and told Merat to
pack sufficient things for a month, and to follow her with them to
Dulwich. Merat asked for more precise instruction, but Evelyn said she
must use her good sense; she was going away at once, and Merat must
follow by a later train.
"Then Mademoiselle does not want the carriage?"
"No, I shall go by train."
* * * * *
She found her father in the workroom, and the sight of him in his cap
and apron mending an old musical instrument caused many home scenes to
flash across her mind, and she did not know whether it was from
curiosity or a desire to please him that she asked the name of the
strange little instrument he was repairing. It looked like an overgrown
concertina, and he explained that it was a tiny virginal, and pointed
out the date; it was made in 1631, in Roman notation.
"Father," she said, "I have come back to you; we shall never be
separated any more--if you'll have me back."
"Have you back, dear! What has happened now?"
He stood with a chisel in his hand, and she noticed that he dug the
point nervously into the soft deal plank. She sat down on a small wooden
stool, and kicking the shavings with her feet, she said--
"Father, a great deal has happened. I have sent Owen away ... I shall
never see him again; I'm sorry to have to speak about him to you; you
mustn't be angry; he was very good to me, and he asked me to marry him;
he did everything--I'm afraid I've broken his heart."
"You're very strange, Evelyn, and I don't know what answer to make to
you.... Why did you send him away, and why did you refuse to marry him?"
"I sent him away because I thought it wrong to live with him, and I
refused to marry him--well, I don't know, father, I don't know why I
refused to marry him. It seemed to me that if he had wished to marry me
he ought to have done so long ago."
"Is that the only reason you can give?"
"It is the only reason I know. You seem sorry for him, father, are you?
I hope you are. He has been very good to me. I've often wished to tell
you; it has often been in my heart to tell you that you should not hate
him. He was very good to me, no one could have been kinder; he was very
fond of me, you must not bear him any ill will."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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