Adam and Eve

Front matter

By the same Author. DOROTHY FOX. In crown 8vo, uniform with "Adam and Eve," price 6s. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. The Westminster Review. ' As a novel it stands quite alone. Mrs. Parr has invented a new kind of heroine. The tale is a complete success from the first page to the last. There is not a character in whom we do not feel an interest. And the success is won by legiti mate means — careful studies of life, and careful character drawings.' Saturday Review. ' We are glad to meet with an attempt to paint those simple, honest people whom Defoe knew so well and so delighted to tell of.' The Times. ' We must thank the author for a charming novel. The style is fresh and natural, vigorous without vulgarity, simple without mawkishness. Dorothy Fox herself is repre sented as charming all hearts, and she will charm all readers.

We wish " Dorothy Fox" many editions.' The Examiner. ' We have seldom read a novel containing more truthful pictures of life. The busy toilsome world of society, and the happy, tranquil life of retirement, are alternately painted with much power. Each character is lifelike.' Morning Post. ' It is charming in most of its conceptions, and charming in its mixture of simplicity and complication, as well as for its purity of thought and the flowing ease of its style.' ADAM AND EVE BY MRS. PARR AUTHOR OF 'dorothy fox,' 'the prescotts of pamphillon,' etc THE POPULAR EDITION LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON ST. Publisfjers in ©roirtarg to ger fHajtstg tip ©uttrt 1881 All rights reserved. Printed by R & R. Clark, Edinburgh. NOTE. Polperro is romantically placed in a deep valley on the southeast of Cornivall, about eighteen miles west of Plymouth and four miles of Looe.

On the ivest there lies at the distance of six miles the harbour of Fowey. Carew, in Queen Elizabeth's time, mentions it in the folloiving very descriptive sentence : ' A little to the westward from, Killi garth the poore harbour and village of Polpera coucheih betweene two steepe hills, ivhere plenty of fish is vented to the fish-drivers, tvhom we call jowters.' At the beginning of the present century smuggling loas carried on so daringly and to such an extent as to call for better organised means to repress it. Officers were appointed on this service, whose business it was to get an intimate knowledge of the creeks and coves, and a boat and crew were stationed at Polperro. This, I have been told, was the germ of the Preventive or Coastguard service. This Polperro preventive boat was the first in Cornwall, and, it is said, in England.

Chapter I

Towards the close of a July evening, in the upper room of a house, which stood in one of London's narrowest thoroughfares, a woman sat striving to penetrate the tangled perplexities of her future. Her hands were idle ; her eyes rested on a low chair with a rail back and a patch-work cushion (her mother's chair), in which she had been wont to see a tender face and frail, bent figure ; but now in place of that loved form there rose before her a solitary mound of newly-turned earth ; and a sense of her utter desolation sweeping over her, Eve Pascal flung herself down in an agony of tears, and let the torrent of her grief run dry. Then she arose, stretching out her arms as if in mute entreaty to some invisible presence, and took a step nearer the window, straining her eyes to catch B sight of the sky, the very light of which was obscured and blotted out by the mass of chimneys from ware houses and workshops.

From the window, Eve let her gaze wander round the small room, inconveniently filled with heavy furniture, treasured by her mother as bearing testi mony to former thrift and respectable belongings, for Mrs. Pascal had come of a family who had seen better days, in right of which they could never over look that their orphan cousin had thrown herself away on a common seafaring man who had nothing but his handsome face and his dare-devil stories to set before her ; and although the despised husband never returned from the voyage, during which Eve was born, the relations saw in this no cause to restrain their tongues or to alter their judgment, and the sore hearted widow, resenting these continual jobations, gradually withdrew herself from her family, until not only had all communication ceased between them, but their very existence was no longer known to her.

As Eve's gaze fell successively on a tall eight day clock, with a brass -bound chest of drawers on one side, and a corresponding but more bulky set on the other, she gave an audible sigh. ' You'll try and keep the furniture together, Eve ?' her mother had said. And Eve had promptly answered, ' Yes,' in that spirit which then forbade her to think of gainsaying the slightest request which Mrs. Pascal might make ; the same spirit still filled the girl's heart, but her mind was troubled, and her thoughts oppressed, by the narrow loneliness of the life which, if she remained here, she saw spread out before her. Mrs. Pascal had supported herself by clear starching and fine -mending; she had taught her daughter enough to enable her to gain a living by the same employment, but up to the time of her mother's illness, although never refusing her assistance, Eve had not taken kindly to needlework.

No sooner, however, did she feel that the responsibility of providing for her mother's comfort depended on her exertions, than she sat down with the most willing alacrity, and managed the little business so deftly and so well, that a great load was lifted from the widow's heart, and she rested assured that she might lay aside all anxiety on the score of her child's future daily bread. But the work which had been a pleasure then, had become an irksome labour now ; the monotony of the quiet employment was unendurable. Death had snapped asunder the bondage to which love had submitted, and, without any power to oppose it, the girl's nature asserted itself and refused to continue longer its course of uneventful existence. Up to the morning of the previous day, these longings and yearnings after freedom had been hopeless, but an unlooked-for letter had changed the whole current of events, and had sent her pent-up thoughts and wishes hurrying off through a thousand new and unexplored channels.

This letter had come from her uncle, her father's half-brother, in answer to a letter she had sent announcing her mother's death. Eve had written this letter in compliance with her mother's request — a request made because it had seemed, to Mrs. Pascal's mind, a respect due to her husband's memory that his family should be told of her death, and thereby know that there was one the less to bear their name. Beyond the fact that her husband had a brother and some cousins living in an out-of-the-way village in Cornwall, Mrs. Pascal knew nothing of these relations. She had written to them when the news of Andrew's death came, telling them that she was left with one child, a girl ; and had received a reply that if ' she'd come down and live among them, they'd do for her and the little maid.' But the stories which her husband had told of his native village, and the life lived there, had filled the town bred wife with horror ; and, though she thanked them for their kind offer, she felt she would sooner beg her bread in London than live at ease with those, who, to use her husband's words, ' feared neither God nor devil.' Since this letter, no further communication had passed between them ; and when Eve had written her sad announcement, it was with a strong feeling that in all probability this uncle was long ago dead, and that (only she had given her mother the promise) she might well spare herself the trouble of sending the letter.

A fortnight passed by, and now an answer had come, couched in very much the same words, and containing an offer very similar to that which, some twenty years before, Mrs. Pascal had refused : namely, that if Eve would come and see them, they would make her welcome for as long as she liked to stay. As Eve read this letter, her face flushed with excitement ; for a time the burden of her grief was lifted off her heart, and her quick imagination carried her at once to the far-off village where 'the houses were washed by the waves, the rocks rose high as mountains, and you could stand at your door and see the great ships sail by.' Eve's pulse quickened at the picture, for she was a sailor's child, and her inheritance was the love that is born in the hearts of those whose fathers, and their fathers before them, have gone down to the sea in ships, and seen the wonders of the deep.

Mrs. Pascal's recollections of the stories her hus band had told, had been unwittingly kept alive by the interest his daughter took in them. The storms, the wrecks, the tales of hairbreadth escapes, and of drowned men, which made the mother's heart beat with fear, filled Eve with excitement, and wonder that her father should have left that life for such dull security as they possessed. It never occurred to her to propose that her mother should leave London ; such a thing would have seemed not only improbable, but impossible. In those days, unless some great event befell them, people lived and died where they were born ; necessity was the only recognised obligation for leaving one place to go to another, and any desire to roam was looked upon as the offspring of an ill-regulated disposition.

Therefore it was only at such moments as these that Eve gave expression to the wish which leavened her inmost thoughts, and coloured with romance her idle dreams — to go out into the world, to see people she had never seen before, to live some life other than the daily routine of dull respectability, to have joys and sorrows springing out of unforeseen accidents and strange emergencies, to be the centre of hopes and fears. These and a hundred more extravagant longings had lain smouldering in Eve's breast, to be set ablaze by this letter, which seemed to open out the way leading to the new existence after which she so greedily thirsted. There was but one drawback, and that was the knowledge that, in accepting her uncle's offer, she would be acting in direct opposition to her mother's wishes — not her expressed wishes — for the possibility of such an offer had never occurred to Mrs. Pascal's mind ; although, had it done so, she would have felt perfectly secure that Eve would never entertain the thought of leaving the place where she had been brought up and had friends, to live dependent upon relations whose ways were more in keeping with the godless heathens than the respectable people of a Christian country.

But Eve well knew that, if her mother were AD A As AND EVE. 7 alive, she would never have ventured to propose the step she now contemplated, and this fact alone was weighty enough to set the balance trembling between this and her future happiness. ' What could I do with the furniture ? ' she said, with a despondent movement of her hands. ' Perhaps Reuben would take care of it,' suggested that temporising spirit always at hand when battle wages between duty and inclination. ' You need only go for a time,' insinuated the tempter ; 'and the room behind his shop is always empty.' Eve frowned ; she admitted the suggestion, but disliked the expedient, feeling she had no right to ask a favour from a man who needed but encouragement to ask, on his part, a boon which she could never grant. But the tare of desire was already springing up, choking the resolutions she had so recently made ; and before another hour passed by, Eve was resolved to write and tell her uncle that she accepted his offer, for a time at least, and that she would start for Polperro as soon as she had safely housed, with a friend, the furniture which her mother had bidden her keep.

Then she took out her hat, and prepared to get ready to go on an errand which would take her through the street, at the far end of which was a small shop, bearing over it the name of ' Reuben May, Watch and Clock maker.'

Chapter II. The

owner of this shop, Reuben May, was a young man rather below the middle size, with a thin, spare figure and an earnest, thoughtful face ; his com plexion was sallow, and his features by no means good, except his forehead which was broad and well shaped, and his eyes which were bright and pene trating. From boyhood Reuben had shown a sober, studious disposition, and to this, as he grew older, he added an independence of thought and opinion which attracted him towards the then fast-increasing body of Methodists. It was through this common bond of religious opinion that Reuben's acquaintance with Mrs. Pascal had been brought about. They had fallen into speaking and hand-shaking through sitting near to each other in the little chapel which both frequented ; this had led to walking home together, discussing the sermon and the minister, until, from a certain sympathy of thought and ADA Al AND EVE. 9 opinion, a feeling of friendship sprang up between them, and Mrs. Pascal, seeing that the young fellow had no relations and few, if any, friends, had invited him to come to her house, an invitation which Reuben readily accepted, and had so completely benefited by, that at the time of her death, next to her daughter, the chief mourner at the widow's humble grave had been Reuben May.

When, from necessity, Eve was obliged to carry home her work, Reuben would often take her place by the sick woman's bed, and at such times open his heart with a frankness he had never before shown ; tell her of his aspirations, his failings, and his weak nesses, the strongest of which he confessed, with some shamefacedness, to be an overpowering love for her daughter Eve, which, in spite of scanty encouragement and small hope of return, he found himself unable to overcome. Poor Mrs. Pascal ! it was no slight task to with hold herself from giving some small encouragement to the furtherance of a union, the accomplishment of which had been one of the fondest desires of her heart. For months her eyes had never fallen on these two without the wish coming that their lives might be united in marriage ; but the nearer she approached that time when all earthly interests must be given up, the firmer grew her conviction that this wish of her heart had best be abandoned.

Feeling sore at the disappointment, she had on almost the last occasion of these confidences told ADA As AND EVE. 10 Reuben, that many a time she had had it in her mind to chide him for not having more cunning in his speech to Eve ; and Reuben had regretfully acknowledged the too frequent sharpness of a tongue very prone to give offence, for, unluckily for the success of Reuben's suit, his love had eyes, and his religion was in that stage when zeal is apt to run ahead of discretion. Did but the suspicion of a shadow come into her mother's face, and Eve's quick retort or stinging repartee was swallowed down and repented of ; but she desired that her words should be as thorns and nettles to Reuben's outspoken cen sures and rebukes ; and if she could but discover she was causing a smart, fresh fuel was added to the fire of her tongue.

And yet, knowing this, seeing her motive, and wincing under her utter disregard of his annoyance, Eve was dearer to him than all the world ; his heart craved after her love, and lay as a stone within him in presence of any other woman. As he sat on this June evening close up to the small window, apparently engrossed in repairing the cog-wheel of the watch he held in his hand, any one might have said, there was a man very far removed from the rose-tinted region of romance. Yet the God-sent gift of love had been lodged within his breast, and was spreading its halo over all he saw and did. Mechanically he turned over his tools and found the one best suited to his work ; but even while he did so, he was looking on a vision in which his ADA As AND EVE. 11 heart was no longer solitary, neither was his lot lonely.

Hand in hand he and his elect walked through life, and lo ! earth with its toilsome roads and cloudy skies became paradise ; and as he still dreamed on, a voice close by awakened him, and, looking up, the Eve of this Eden stood before him. ' Why, Reuben, you seem scared,' she said, smiling at the dazed look on the young man's face. ' And no wonder,' he replied, quickly recovering himself, ' for I do believe this is the first time you've ever put foot inside my place !' ' I wanted to have a little talk with you,' said Eve, ignoring the slight reproach which Reuben's words were meant to convey ; ' and I thought, as I had to go out, I'd come round by here and ask you if you'd much to do this evening.' ' Nothing that'll hinder anything you may want of me,' returned Reuben, promptly ; ' the light's all but gone, and, anyway, I should have been thinking of shutting up in the course of a half-hour or so.

Could you step inside for the value of ten minutes ?' he asked, lifting up the portion of the counter which covered the entrance partition. To his surprise Eve stepped through, and, Reuben having cleared a chair, she seated herself, while he returned to what was, after this, but a mere pretence of finishing his work. ' You've a nice-sized room here,' observed Eve, taking a critical survey of the apartment. ' Fairish,' said Reuben, endeavouring to keep ADAM AND EVE. 12 under the thumping of his heart, which rendered ordinary conversation somewhat trying. ' It would take plenty more than you've got in it now?' continued Eve, interrogatively. ' Oh yes ! no doubt but it would hold a thing or two more,' said Reuben, very fierce with himself for being put out of countenance by this slim young thing, who could look at him and his belongings with the most enviable composure.

He would not allow himself to be mastered ; it was against all reason that he, Reuben May, who could hold his own, ah ! and better than his own, with most men he knew, should be set trembling like an aspen leaf because of a pale face and a pair of gray eyes ; the thing was ridiculous, and, to prove it, he took up one tool after another, examining them critically, and whistling the while with an air of the most abstracted unconcern. An expression of vexation, then of disappointment, passed over Eve's face ; that was not the way men took love. Surely Reuben could not care for her so much as she had counted upon, or he would never sit whistling there, and she close by. Although not favourably disposed towards the lover, Eve coveted the love ; she wanted to see some one racked with torture, driven to despair, called into life by a smile, and killed by a frown.

This was love read by the index of her own passionate nature, for Eve had nothing else to teach her ; she knew no experience, no books to tell her ADA As AND EVE. 13 how many a strange disguise the blind god walks under. As she felt, Reuben ought to feel, that is, if he loved her ; and if not, then came the temptation to make him, and this impulse made her throw a touch of sadness into her voice as she said : ' In spite of what you say, Reuben, I see that you are busy to-night, and I mustn't expect that you are going to give up your time to me whenever I may want any little thing of you ; but, you see, I haven't got anybody, as it were, to go to — not now.' But before the ' now ' came trembling out, Reuben had recklessly swept away all his tools, had jumped up, pushed back his chair, and was making a dash towards the outer place where he kept the shutters. ' I won't be a minute, Eve,' he said. ' I haven't got nothing to do, indeed I haven't ; and then I shall be ready to go anywhere, wherever you like, with you.

I ain't busy a bit ; I wasn't doing anything ; I was only thinking — of — something.' Eve gave a reassured smile, and then, seeing he was pausing to know her wishes, she said : ' I do want to have a talk with you, and I thought, if you wouldn't mind it, we might go to Holloway, and then I could speak to you as we went along.' Reuben gave a ready acquiescence, and only detaining Eve while he smartened up his appearance in keeping with the honour of the occasion, they started off for St. Mark's churchyard, in a corner of which was Mrs. Pascal's humble grave. Engrossed by the separate interests which filled their minds, they had gone a considerable distance without a word being exchanged between them. Suddenly Reuben awoke to this fact, and, doubtful how his companion might be affected by it, he cast a some what disturbed glance in her direction ; but, instead of displeasure, he was reassured with a smile, which, accepting it as a good omen, he resolved to turn to immediate account, and at once made a desperate plunge by saying : 'Love's a queer sort of a thing, Eve, isn't it ?' 'Queer?' she said, with a surprised look; 'how queer, Reuben ?' ' Why, in its ways it is.

It comes to you whether you will or not, and it settles on the one it makes choice of, no matter what you have to say for or against it.' ' Oh, I don't think that would ever be your case ;' and Eve pursed up her lips and gave a decided shake of her head. 'You always tell me that every right-minded person acts from principle, and has no doubt about choosing right from wrong ; and of course you speak from experience.' Reuben tried to waive the thrust by saying : ' That's a very good rule, but, you know, every rule has an exception ; ' and he gave a sigh, as he looked toward her, which seemed to say the exception in his case had come now. ' Only you just look here, now,' he said, after a few minutes spent in silent debate as to the best mode of entering upon the difficulties of his subject ; ' supposing I was to set you to pick out among all the young women you see — say at chapel, then — the one you thought was best fitted to be my wife, what's the sort of one you'd fix upon, eh ?

Come, give me your idea of the right sort of woman for me to take !' ' Oh, I know exactly,' returned Eve promptly, conjuring up a vision of a certain Tamson Walters, whose propriety and decorum had often been held up to her as a model which she might fitly follow. ' She ought to be short and square, with a little fat face, and light-blue eyes, and her mouth ought to be buttoned-up so, and her nose turned up like that' ' Come, never mind her looks,' laughed Reuben, forced into recognising the intended caricature. ' When a man's got matrimony in his eye, he mustn't only look skin-deep ; if he does, he deserves the doll he's sure to get.' ' Oh, but wait, I'm going on to the rest,' for Eve was anxious to do justice to her rival's peculiarities. ' Only you must let me draw her my own way, you know.

I'm always obliged to describe the outside as well as the inside of a person I want other people to see. Of course she must have experienced con version, and so be able to rebuke those whose hearts are still dwelling in sin, which is certain to be the case if they don't push back all their hair, and hide it, like she does, under a hideous net cap with no border.' Reuben gave a reproving shake of his head. ' Come, that'll do,' he said ; ' I know who you're pointing to, and all I say is, I wish all women were made out of such good stuff as Tamson Walters is. The man who calls her wife, I shall call a lucky chap.' 'Then why don't you let that man be yourself?' said Eve. ' I'm sure, if you ask her, she couldn't say less than " Verily I will " to her dear brother Reuben.' And the manner of her mimicry, as she folded her hands and let drop her eyes, was so bewitching, that all the reproof Reuben had ready to say died on his lips ; and looking at her with eyes which told his tale far more eloquently than words, he said : ' But suppose I don't want her to say " yes."

Suppose I'm foolish enough to set my heart on somebody who can tease me into a rage one minute, and set me in a good temper the next — who one hour I say I never want to see any more, and the next I'm counting the minutes that'll bring the time when we'll meet again — who worries and torments me so, that, do what I can, I can't get her out of my head by night nor day — who's got more faults than anybody I ever knew, and yet if I was asked how I'd have her altered, I could not tell you, for the life of me. Ah, Eve, you may well laugh ! ' he exclaimed, reflecting the smile which had overspread her face ; ' for if I was to talk from now to next week, I could never make you know the great fool you've made, and are still making, of me.' ' I ?' the smile turned into an expression of the most bewildered astonishment ; ' why, what have I got to do with it, Reuben ?' ' What have you got to do with it ? as if you didn't know all the time I was talking about you — that's just one of your teasing ways ; why, the minute I began you knew what was sticking in my throat and wouldn't come out.

You've known for twelve months and more what I've been wanting to say, only that I saw the foolishness of it ; and, as far as that goes, I see it still, but I can't get over it. Oh, Eve ! you're as the very apple of my eye !' he said, with increasing earnestness. ' Sometimes I think it must be the allurements of the devil, and then I'm for putting it down to the workings of the Almighty ; anyway, all I know is, I can't battle against it any longer — it's mastered me altogether ; and though I promised your mother I'd act by you like a brother, and put aside all the rest, I can't do it, Eve, that I can't. Unless you'll promise to settle down into trying to make up your mind to marry me, I must go away far off from here to some place where I shan't see nor hear of you again.' Eve's heart leaped up in triumph.

He did love her then, and in spite of himself, too. This man, who was always teaching and reproving, and trying to be her master, was, after all, her slave. For a moment every other feeling was swallowed up in C ADA As AND EVE. 18 victory — but only for a moment — for pity was already near, and in another instant was clamouring so loud that Eve had to ask its name before she could assure herself the voice she heard was not the subtle voice of love. 'Oh, Reuben!' she said, 'why didn't you tell me all this before ?' ' I thought you knew it,' he said. 'No, I didn't quite know it. I used to think sometimes that you cared a little ; and then some thing would come and I'd think you didn't. Of course I saw you liked to talk to me and that — but I didn't know that what you felt was real love ! ' 'Real love?' he echoed. 'What do women know about real love ?

A little dribbling fondness for somebody who can make them pretty speeches, that's all they feel. While I — I've wrestled with love as 'twere a giant, and the giant has thrown me so that I lie on the ground helpless, and whether 'tis best to hope for life or death from you, God knows —I don't!' And he stood for a few moments all but mastered by his emotion. A little sigh escaped Eve, and the sound seemed to arouse Reuben, and bring him back to the present. ' Mine's a queer kind of courting, Eve,' he said, looking up and meeting her troubled face. ' I know I ain't saying a bit what I ought to, to you, but for all that I've got it in my heart to try to make you comfortable ; and you should have all I could give you, and not more to do than you'd a mind to do. As far as I could make it, your life should go easy with you, Eve.' ' Easy with me ?' she cried contemptuously ; ' as if I cared for sitting still all my life — doing nothing, seeing nothing, being nothing !' ' It ain't a bad sort of life though, Eve.