Eunice, a novel

Chapter I

1\T RS. DAMPIER stood in front of the long, narrow mirror set into a panel of the painted wardrobe that occupied almost all of the wall space on one side of her hotel bedroom. The room was small and high up, and from the window, now darkened by green wooden shutters, could have been seen a wide view of the close-clustered roofs, towers, and domes of Rome lying under a brilliant April sky.

The floor of red tiles was partially covered with some worn rugs. Several trunks standing open afforded glimpses of a disordered collection of personal belongings. The labels on the trunks revealed the fact that their owner had recently made a voyage of some length, and from this it might be deduced that she was only a bird-of-passage in Rome.

Mrs. Dampier was a pale woman of middle height, bigly made, but with that suggestion of emaciation which is often the result of long residence in tropical climates. She had very thick, fair hair and large, unquiet, grey eyes. The grey-green twilight produced by the closed shutters was not becoming to her. It showed too plainly the shadows under her eyes, the droop of her discontented mouth, the sharp little perpendicular lines between the brows. The mirror, which was an imperfect one, revealed these things to her now with a touch of grotesque and distorted exaggeration . . . She went impatiently to the window, flung back the persienneSy and looked out at the scene beyond.

The first swifts of the year were wheeling about in that sky of incomparable blue. The beautiful 7 pale city gleamed tranquilly in the strong spring sunlight. There was a touch of sirocco in the air, making it soft with an almost unhealthy softness. Beyond the houses she could see the dark line of trees that marked the Passeggiata Margherita and the green swelling outline of Monte Mario spreading toward the north. Here and there in the streets and on the hills there were distinct patches of young bright green, the glimmer of newly-opened leaves.

Mrs. Dampier shut the window again, for the sun was bright enough to make her eyes ache. She flung herself down on the sofa upholstered in red velvet, and closed her eyes.

A little tap at the door and the handle was cautiously turned, and a light footstep came across the room. A child of about seven years old stood hesitatingly beside the sofa, finger on lip, in a watchful attitude. She wore a short-sleeved, low-necked muslin frock, a blue sash, and a string of coral beads that she had persuaded her mother to buy for her the day before at a shop in the Piazza di Spagna. Her legs were bare down to the short white socks, and were thin and rather brown. She was an attractive-looking little creature with a mop of black gipsy curls, and she had strange dark eyes, darker even than those of the little Roman children.

Mrs. Dampier opened her eyes and looked at her small daughter with a certain irritation.

“Why are you not lying down? I told ayah to put you to bed. You ought to be asleep !”

“I did try, but it’s too hot. And ayah’s snoring so.” She slurred over the r a little.

“Well, you can’t stay here. You fidget me,” said Mrs. Dampier.

“Where’s papa’s photo?” asked the child, going over to the dressing-table and apparently taking no notice of her mother’s speech.

“I don’t know. On the table, I suppose. What do you want it for?”

“I want to kiss it and say good-morning. He said I wasn’t to forget him.”

“I can’t get up and look for it now, Eunice. If : isn’t there you can’t have it. Now run back to your room and tell ayah to give you your tea and take you back to the Pincio.”

“I like the Borghese Gardens best,” said Eunice, moving the various toilet accessories with which the table was literally strewn with her small delicate fingers.

“I don’t care which it is,” said Mrs. Dampier, closing her eyes. She did not want to get up and remove the child forcibly from the room, and yet she knew it was improbable that Eunice would go away unless some effort of the kind were made.

“I like to look at the ducks on the lake. And there are lots of other children. But they all have English nurses — at least almost all the English ones do. I’m the only one who’s got an ayah. There was a boy called Geoffrey yesterday who laughed at her.”

“You can’t stay here. You are disturbing me,” said Mrs. Dampier.

“Let me stay a little. Ayah’s always cross if I wake her. And I’ll be very quiet.”

She sat down on one of the boxes near the window, clasping her knee with her hand. She looked like a diminutive statue. For a few minutes there was silence in the room, and then she began to croon softly to herself, one of the monotonous melancholy coolie-songs of the East. A thin wailing trickle of sound filled the room.

“If you’re not quiet this moment, Eunice, I shall get up and put you out of the room I”

The sound ceased abruptly, but the child continued to sit there in the shadows, patient and watchful. There was something in her attitude of the indolent, concentrated patience of the peoples of the East among whom the short seven years of her life had been for the most part spent. She and her mother were on their way home for the first time since they had gone out to India when Eunice was a baby.

Eunice was sharp and developed beyond her years. She had already shown signs of playing off one parent against the other, as precocious children will in a household that is slightly divided against itself. She preferred her father, who was uniformly kind to her. Mrs. Dampier possessed an imperfectly governed temper, and her notions of discipline were summary and drastic.

At the back of the drawer of the dressing-table Eunice finally discovered, after much adroitly-silent searching, the desired photograph of her father. It portrayed a typical English officer with a keen, thin face and steady, penetrating eyes. Eunice lifted it to her lips and whispered a greeting. Then she took a piece of soft paper, wrapped it up, and put it back in the drawer. Having done this, she quietly crossed the room and slipped out on to the darkened hotel landing with its rows of numbered doors on each side. At the farther end she opened another door brusquely; the sound aroused the ayah from her slumbers.

“Mamma says I’m to have my tea. And then we are to go out — to the gardens where we went yesterday.”

The ayah arose and proceeded to light the spiritlamp, over which she placed a small kettle of water. From a tin she produced biscuits. A little tray was put in readiness for Mrs. Dampier; for, although she generally had her tea elsewhere, she liked a cup before she went out. The ayah was a fat, gooditi natured woman clad in volurmnons and brilliant draperies. She was a Tamil whom Mrs. Dampier had picked up in Colombo, and she was already devoted to Eunice, whom she called Little Missy.

This afternoon Eunice was impatient to go out. The hotel was a dull place; she had to stay all the time in one of the two bedrooms except when they went downstairs to the big dining-room for their meals. And, although there were other children ritting at some of the little square tables, she was not allowed to talk to any of them. Besides, they were for the most part Italian children, who would not understand her.

Eunice dominated the ayah with a child’s instinctive tyranny. The moment tea was finished they went out and climbed the hill that separated them from the Borghese Gardens. The immense umbrella-pines waved their lustrous, mop-like heads against a sky of pure sapphire. The grass was a carpet of bright emerald. Here and there a Judastree flaunted purple boughs. A fountain flung up delicious crystal sprays. It was an enchanting world, to which the dark, spreading branches of the ilex-trees lent a shadowy mystery. Eunice, however, bestowed scant attention upon the beauty of the scene, although with her childish love of rich color, she found the Judas-trees attractive. The Girardino del Lago was her objective — the place where so many children congregated, and where yesterday she had seen the little English boy, Geoffrey.

Besides, the lake itself was an object of the most fascinating character. There was a temple at one end, and on the water there were ducks which performed interesting nautical exercises, as if for the sole purpose of amusing the children of many nations who assembled there.

The sun-warmed air was full of delicate spring scents. Little groups of laughing, shouting children ran hither and thither under the great ilex-trees that formed a deep avenue of shade. Many curious eyes turned to look at the ayah as she waddled down the broad pale path with Eunice’s slight little figure skipping by her side. The stiff, white-clad English nurses mingled contempt with their astonishment, and murmurs of “Well, I neverj” “Such a sight!” were freely exchanged.

Eunice soon distinguished Geoffrey sitting on a seat with another boy who was reading a book. They were both dressed alike in blue sailor suits. Their nurse — an elderly, formidable-looking person — was standing a little way off talking to a companion.

Eunice approached without shyness. All her life she had been accustomed to people. She went up to Geoffrey and held out her hand. He slipped off his seat. The other boy glanced up quickly from his book. He looked at Eunice with dreamy dark eyes. Then he went on reading.

“Come and look at the ducks,” Eunice said to Geoffrey. They went down the path together. Suddenly she gave a quick glance backward.

“Who is that boy?” she said; “he wasn’t here yesterday.”

Her crisp, clear little voice reached the ears of the boy who sat there reading. He too heard Geoffrey’s answer.

“It’s my twin brother, Julian.”

“Why doesn’t he come and play?” demanded Eunice.

“He likes reading best,” said Geoffrey.

“I want him to come. Ask him.” There was the imperious note in her voice that so often characterized it when she addressed the ayah.

Julian did not wait to be asked. He shut up his book, slipped it into his pocket, and came toward them. He was taller than Geoffrey, and rather slender, with a pale face and dark brown eyes and hair. Geoffrey was plump and rosy, with yellow hair and big blue eyes; he was a very pretty boy, and his English fairness always attracted admiring attention in Rome.

“Who is that wo^jian? Why does she wear those clothes?” asked Geoffrey, indicating the ayah, who was following them, by a slight gesture of his yellow head.

“That’s my ayah. Mamma engaged her in Colombo because she said she couldn’t be bothered with me on board ship,” said Eunice.

“Nurse said she wouldn’t speak to her for all the world,” said Geoffrey.

“I’m sure ayah doesn’t want to be spoken to I” said Eunice, indignantly.

“Why do you repeat what nurse says?” said Julian, speaking for the first time. “What can it matter? If they did speak they wouldn’t probably understand each other.”

Now they were standing by the edge of the little lake. At the opposite end stood the temple embowered in brilliant spring verdure. An early butterfly floated across the water looking like a detached white flower impelled by the breeze. There were little ripples on the surface of the water. The three children stood there for a few minutes in silence.

“Are you going to live in Rome?” said Julian at last.

Eunice shook her head.

“We shall go to London next week. We’re staying at the hotel. I don’t like it. I’m all day nearly in the bedroom. It’s dull. I liked India best.”

“We have been here for two years,” said Julian;

“we have an apartment. Perhaps you would be allowed to come to see us.”

“And then nurse would have to speak to the ayah,” put in Geoffrey in an exultant tone. He had a youthful ambition to “score off” nurse whenever such a process was practicable.

“We’ll ask mother when she comes. She said she would meet us here this afternoon,” said Julian.

Geoffrey said: “How can mother ask her when we don’t even know her name ?”

Julian looked at Eunice inquiringly.

“It’s Eunice. Eunice Dampier.”

“Have you got a father as well as a mother?” asked Geoffrey.

“Yes, but he isn’t here. He stayed behind in India. That is because he is in the army and he couldn’t get leave.”

“I’m going into the army when I’m big,” announced Geoffrey. “Father says I may.”

“Is he in the army too?” asked Eunice.

Julian shook his head.

“He’s a poet,” he said. “His name is Norman Parmeter. Haven’t you ever heard of him?”

“No,” said Eunice, feeling terribly ashamed of her ignorance. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a poet. I don’t even quite know what it means.”

“There’s mother I” said Geoffrey, darting away.

Eunice’s first impression of Mrs. Parmeter was that she looked very young — almost like a girl. She was very pretty, with quantities of soft brown hair and laughing brown eyes. She wore a grey dress with a white fur that she had slipped slightly off her shoulders. She had on a broad-brimmed white hat trimmed with blue wings. She bent down and kissed Geoffrey, and Eunice heard her say, “Well, my cherub I” When she raised her head again she was laughing, and she ran toward Julian and kissed him too.

“And who’s your little friend?” she asked, touching Eunice on the shoulder.

“Tell her your name, please,” said Julian, who had a nervous fear of mispronouncing the unfamiliar words.

“Eunice Dampier.”

“Oh, I think I met your mother at tea yesterday. Wasn’t she at Mrs. Millward’s?”

“She went out to tea,” said Eunice.

“And she said she had just arrived from India?”

“Yes, that was mamma,” said Eunice.

“You must come to tea with my two boys,” said Mrs. Parmeter. “I’ll write to your mother.”

“She says she’s never seen a poet,” put in Geoffrey.

Mrs. Parmeter laughed.

CHAPTER II HE Parmeters lived high up in an old Roman

A palace, occupying the whole of the top floor. They had lived there for more than two years, always promising themselves that when the twins should arrive at the age of nine they would return to England for purposes of education. That time was now rapidly approaching, and they were already talking of going back to their house in Brighton, which had been let during their long absence.

Geoffrey had forgotten Brighton ; he seldom alluded to any events prior to their sojourn in Rome. With Julian it was different. He had a very accurate memory for past things, and often referred to them in a way which tantalized Geoffrey, who disliked these reminiscences. He had been to the same i6 place at the same time; his mind, he would indignantly affirm, was just as old as Julian’s, but he couldn’t remember either the pier or the aquarium, or going out for an hour or two in the little rocking steamer. It was all nonsense to say that Julian was so much cleverer. He could not read to himself till at least six months later than Geoffrey; he was very stupid about the multiplication table — just try him with eight times seven I Perhaps he had invented all that part about the sea-lions and the octopus and the fish swimming about behind great glasses in what seemed to be green mysterious caves ! However, Mrs. Parmeter was able to assure Geoffrey that Julian had really remembered these details and had described them accurately.

“Then why can’t I remember far back like Julian?” Geoffrey asked the question in an aggrieved tone, as if the blame ought rightly to be attached to some one else.

“Perhaps he’s got a better memory,” suggested Mrs. Parmeter.

“Then why can’t he remember eight times seven? / can remember!”

“It’s a different kind of memory,” said Mrs. Parmeter, kissing his flushed, bewildered face.

The twins were ve^ unlike, both in appearance and in character. Julian always managed to be the taller of the two— not very much, barely half an inch, yet enough to make the matter a bone of contention during the noisy nursery years. They had an English governess, who came to teach them every morning. She reported very favorably always about Geoffrey’s quickness; his marvelous progress, his rapid assimilation. Julian was slow and plodding. He liked reading, was seldom without a book in his hand, but he didn’t seem able to learn his lessons.

They were the only two children. Once, it is true, there had been a person who was still sometimes cautiously, almost reverently, alluded to as Baby Sister. Even Geoffrey remembered the brief episode vaguely, but he had no recollection, as Julian had, of a cradle trimmed with pink ribbons and little pink cluster roses, and a mass of white, soft, fluffy things in the midst of which a tiny dark head was visible. When you approached the cradle, Julian had told him, mother or nurse would pull aside a white covering so that you might “look at Baby.” Julian and Geoffrey had both continually wanted to look at Baby. There was a queer scent about her of violetpowder, and she was very soft to touch and had tiny crumpled-up hands. “Just the very image of Master Julian, ma’am,” nurse used to say, and Geoffrey would look jealously at his brother and lisp out: “Why isn’t she like me? I want her to be like me.” They would ask why she was like that — so small and soft, and sleeping nearly all the time, and awakening only to. cry. Why didn’t she get up and run about and talk, instead of indulging in that senseless, purposeless weeping? They were told to wait. Next year, nurse would wisely prophesy, she might run about and try to say a few words. But there was, alas, no next year for Baby Sister. She had died when she was only two months old, when the twins were not quite six. Although Geoffrey had forgotten all about that time, Julian remembered it perfectly. He could never be induced, however, to relate any details of Baby Sister’s illness and death, and Geoffrey had long ago given up questioning him on those topics, which he felt might yield matter of surpassing interest. He did not believe that Julian’s silence was due to lack of memory. He would always grow angry in the end if you persisted in questioning him.

i8

Julian indeed remembered it all with a curious distinctness. There had been puzzling things at the time, but then a great deal that concerned Baby Sister was immensely mysterious. He had always felt, however, that later on they would be capable of explanation. It was no use asking nurse to enlighten him, for she had been the first to check any manifestation of curiosity on his part or on Geoffrey’s, and she had told them, “like good boys,” never to mention Baby Sister to Poor Mummy unless she mentioned her first.

There was, however, one thing which Julian remembered, and which he had never mentioned to any one; and therein lay the secret of his sudden wrath when Geoffrey questioned him. He always felt that if it were known, even after more than two years — since no Statute of Limitations absolves from punishment the sins of the nursery — some terrible but merited Nemesis would overtake him. He had been disobedient, and his disobedience, like that of his earliest forefathers, had resulted in the eating of , the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and it would be hard to say whether the sin or its result weighed the more heavily upon the smarting conscience of Julian.

When Baby was first taken ill — with an illness that was alluded to in hushed voices as It — she was taken up, cradle and all, to a vast, unfamiliar chamber called the Spare Room, sometimes but very rarely inhabited by a Visitor who must never be Disturbed. Its windows looked straight out upon the English Channel and upon the crowds of people that moved perpetually up and down the Brighton front. Baby Sister shared this attribute peculiar to visitors, for after she had been carried up to the spare room the twins were told she must not be disturbed, and they never again had an opportunity of asking to “look at Baby.” Mother was always in the spare room, and you hardly ever saw her during those mysterious, unexplained days. She was with Baby, and she did not come into the nursery even to say good night to the twins. Geoffrey cried a little — he missed the comforting touch, the plans for to-morrow which she would whisper, and which always sounded so delightful. Julian did not cry; he was too busy with his thoughts.

He could still remember how perplexed his thoughts were at that time, continually spinning round questions that seemed to have no answers. The doctors, for instance. At first there had been one — the usual one who had come so often to see mother during that very mysterious period which had immediately followed the sudden appearance of Baby Sister, although she had continually assured the twins that she was perfectly well. When Baby Sister had been ill a few days two doctors came, and on one never-to-be-forgotten afternoon there were three. The third was an elderly man with piercing eyes, of whom Julian had felt afraid. He had met him on the stairs when he and Geoffrey were going out for their walk. Julian had hated the walks on those days, when so many strange, unusual things were going on in the house. He remembered the weather quite well, and the sound of a high wind would recall it to him to that day. It was in November, and there was a high, blustering wind and a brown, ugly-looking sea with great waves all darkened and discolored with long snakes of seaweed. On that afternoon nurse had refused to go down to the sea ; she turned up Brunswick Square and walked along the Western Road as far as Ship Street. At every comer they saw an oblong-shaped space of dark sea and paler sky between the two rows of houses, and the wind blew up through it as if through an open window. Each time nurse would put up her hand to her bonnet and murmur something that sounded like being blown about.

Julian did not pay much attention to nurse. She was a person who habitually grumbled, and the weather, of whatever quality, was seldom to her liking. He walked briskly along and never once stopped to look at anything attractive that was displayed in shop-windows because mother had begged him to be a very good boy. But his thoughts were full of the strangely silent, oddly changed house in Brunswick Terrace. It was more than a week since he had been allowed to look at Baby. She hardly ever cried now. He had overheard nurse whispering mysteriously to one of the maids about its being Something Catching. What the Something was he did not hear, but assuredly it formed part of the unexplained happenings of the Spare Room. On the following day he and Geoffrey did not go for a walk at all, although the day was fine and there was no wind. They were left alone in the nursery and were given their paintboxes with some old numbers of the Graphic to color. This was a pastime reserved as a rule for wet days. Julian could remember that henceforward the amusement lost something of its savor; it was associated with that desolate time when no one came near them except to bring their meals. They wanted mother there to tell them which colors to use and to do a bit every now and then. She could mix such wonderful greens, and she knew how to make the brush into a sharp point that never strayed beyond the edge of the picture. Two sad little boys, gloomy and dejected and supremely puzzled, sat demurely, scarcely speaking, at the big nursery table. They were still painting when the door opened and mother came into the room. Her dark hair was roughened, she looked very tired and pale, there were tears in her eyes.

“Darling Julian — darling Geoff,” she said.

“Baby Sister — Her voice broke; she looked

wildly round as if she had not the courage to go on. Then with a visible effort she added: “Dear little Baby Sister has gone to heaven.”

She drew them close to her when she had taken a seat in the big arm-chair by the fire. They sat, both of them, on her knees, their arms around her. Sometimes she kissed them and a hot tear fell on their wondering little faces. Geoffrey cried a little ; he did not quite know why. Julian felt a strange lump in his throat. He wasn’t satisfied with being told that Baby Sister had gone to heaven; he wanted, achingly, to know much more. Most children experience a passionate curiosity with regard to the mysteries of birth and death. Did it mean, for instance, he asked himself, that she wasn’t upstairs any more ? Had she floated out into the sky just as such a short time ago she must have floated into the house, escorted, perhaps, by shining angels? Was the pink-and- white cradle quite empty? If he pulled aside the flimsy veil would there be now no dark, fluffy little head against the diminutive pillow? These were some of the questions he desired to ask, but with a child’s intuitive delicacy in the presence of grief he did not utter them. Mother was evidently very unhappy, and he could never remember seeing her cry before. And, besides, she was very tired. They had not been sitting there long when the door opened, and Norman Parmeter stood hesitatingly on the threshold in the falling autumn dusk.

“Come, Ivy darling,” he said gently. “I’m going to insist upon your lying down.”

The children slid from her knees. Julian remembered feeling half afraid to look at his father for fear of discovering that he too had been crying. But there were no signs of unusual emotion on his hard, finely-cut face.

“Come, Ivy,*’ he said again; “those great boys will tire you.” Mrs. Parmeter rose and went toward him.

“Oh, they never tire me,” she said. When she reached the door she turned and called the children to her as if to make amends to them for anything wounding in their father’s speech. She stooped down and kissed them, first Geoffrey and then Julian. That was always her way, although Julian was the elder. It was a long time before he realized that she put Geoffrey first because he wasn’t really first. He might be hurt, and Julian couldn’t be hurt — because he knew.

“And look here, boys, you’re to stay here.” Mr. Parmeter’s voice held its rare authoritative ring. “Nurse is very busy — she can’t be with you this evening. You’re not to go to the spare room. Do you understand?”

“Yes, father,” they said in chorus, m obedient little treble voices.

When Mr. Parmeter spoke in that sharp, incisive tone they never disobeyed him. Julian used to say he “had sparks in his eyes,” a danger-signal. But when their parents had both left the nursery — mother a little unwillingly, as they both in their hearts believed — the two boys stared at each other in silence. A sense of mysterious upheaval impressed them with a deep melancholy. Geoffrey was the first to speak.

“Why mayn’t we go there, Ju ? Is she still there ?”

Julian would have given worlds to know the answer to that question. He said evasively :

“Mother said she’d gone to heaven.”

“All of her?’’ persisted Geoffrey.

“I s’pose so,” said Julian, unconvinced.

“Did she have wings to fly? I’d love to have wings I”

Julian shook his head.

“If she’d had wings we should have seen them.”

“They might have grown while she was ill. Perhaps that’s why we weren’t allowed to see her.”

“Nurse said it was something catching. Wings aren’t catching,” said Julian.

They were put to bed early that night. Nurse came up to perform this ceremony, and said she was “dog-tired.” She invited them to be good and as quick as possible. No loitering by the fire. Although she sniffed a little and her nose was rather red, she hadn’t that dreadful white look that had been on mother’s face ; to Julian she had even an air of secret enjoyment. She was full of importance, and seemed to emphasize purposely the mysterious quality of the activities upon which she was engaged. Julian and Geoffrey at that time slept in a room by themselves, and nurse in an adjoining apartment, with the communicating door left open. Geoffrey fell asleep quickly, but Julian remained awake far into the night. He heard nurse go quietly into her room, and after a short interval the light was switched off. There was a moon, and a slanting silver ray slipped through the clinks of the shutters and filled the room with a cold, bluish, unearthly light. It made Geoffrey’s little cot look very pallid. Julian sat up in bed, his heart beating. From the adjoining room he could hear the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of nurse’s snoring, and to-night he felt that there was something actually comforting and reassuring in the sound. It was familiar and commonplace amid so much that was bewildering and confusing. About Baby Sister, for instance, Baby in heaven — Julian knew as much about religion as most ca re fully-b rough t-up Catholic children of six. He said his prayers night and morning; he recited grace both before and after meals, crossing himself with closed eyes.