LITMIR.BIZ

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do believe in you. You look as if you’d got a nice sister, somehow.” She paused, picking at some sequins on her knees, and then, as if she had made up her mind, she started off, “Anyhow, I’m going to ask your advice. D’you ever get into a state where you don’t know your own mind? That’s the state I’m in now. You see, last night at the dance Raymond Oliver,—he’s the tall dark boy who looks as if he had Indian blood in him, but he says he’s not really,—well, we were sitting out together, and he told me all about himself, how unhappy he is at home, and how he hates being out here. They’ve put him into some beastly mining business. He says it’s beastly—I should like it, I know, but that’s neither here nor there. And I felt awfully sorry for him, one couldn’t help being sorry for him, and when he asked me to let him kiss me, I did. I don’t see any harm in that, do you? And then this morning he said he’d thought I meant something more, and I wasn’t the sort to let any one kiss me. And we talked and talked. I daresay I was very silly, but one can’t help liking people when one’s sorry for them. I do like him most awfully—” She paused. “So I gave him half a promise, and then, you see, there’s Alfred Perrott.”

      “Oh, Perrott,” said Hewet.

      “We got to know each other on that picnic the other day,” she continued. “He seemed so lonely, especially as Arthur had gone off with Susan, and one couldn’t help guessing what was in his mind. So we had quite a long talk when you were looking at the ruins, and he told me all about his life, and his struggles, and how fearfully hard it had been. D’you know, he was a boy in a grocer’s shop and took parcels to people’s houses in a basket? That interested me awfully, because I always say it doesn’t matter how you’re born if you’ve got the right stuff in you. And he told me about his sister who’s paralysed, poor girl, and one can see she’s a great trial, though he’s evidently very devoted to her. I must say I do admire people like that! I don’t expect you do because you’re so clever. Well, last night we sat out in the garden together, and I couldn’t help seeing what he wanted to say, and comforting him a little, and telling him I did care—I really do—only, then, there’s Raymond Oliver. What I want you to tell me is, can one be in love with two people at once, or can’t one?”

      She became silent, and sat with her chin on her hands, looking very intent, as if she were facing a real problem which had to be discussed between them.

      “I think it depends what sort of person you are,” said Hewet. He looked at her. She was small and pretty, aged perhaps twenty-eight or twenty-nine, but though dashing and sharply cut, her features expressed nothing very clearly, except a great deal of spirit and good health.

      “Who are you, what are you; you see, I know nothing about you,” he continued.

      “Well, I was coming to that,” said Evelyn M. She continued to rest her chin on her hands and to look intently ahead of her. “I’m the daughter of a mother and no father, if that interests you,” she said. “It’s not a very nice thing to be. It’s what often happens in the country. She was a farmer’s daughter, and he was rather a swell—the young man up at the great house. He never made things straight—never married her—though he allowed us quite a lot of money. His people wouldn’t let him. Poor father! I can’t help liking him. Mother wasn’t the sort of woman who could keep him straight, anyhow. He was killed in the war. I believe his men worshipped him. They say great big troopers broke down and cried over his body on the battlefield. I wish I’d known him. Mother had all the life crushed out of her. The world—” She clenched her fist. “Oh, people can be horrid to a woman like that!” She turned upon Hewet.

      “Well,” she said, “d’you want to know any more about me?”

      “But you?” he asked, “Who looked after you?”

      “I’ve looked after myself mostly,” she laughed. “I’ve had splendid friends. I do like people! That’s the trouble. What would you do if you liked two people, both of them tremendously, and you couldn’t tell which most?”

      “I should go on liking them—I should wait and see. Why not?”

      “But one has to make up one’s mind,” said Evelyn. “Or are you one of the people who doesn’t believe in marriages and all that? Look here—this isn’t fair, I do all the telling, and you tell nothing. Perhaps you’re the same as your friend”—she looked at him suspiciously; “perhaps you don’t like me?”

      “I don’t know you,” said Hewet.

      “I know when I like a person directly I see them! I knew I liked you the very first night at dinner. Oh dear,” she continued impatiently, “what a lot of bother would be saved if only people would say the things they think straight out! I’m made like that. I can’t help it.”

      “But don’t you find it leads to difficulties?” Hewet asked.

      “That’s men’s fault,” she answered. “They always drag it in-love, I mean.”

      “And so you’ve gone on having one proposal after another,” said Hewet.

      “I don’t suppose I’ve had more proposals than most women,” said Evelyn, but she spoke without conviction.

      “Five, six, ten?” Hewet ventured.

      Evelyn seemed to intimate that perhaps ten was the right figure, but that it really was not a high one.

      “I believe you’re thinking me a heartless flirt,” she protested. “But I don’t care if you are. I don’t care what any one thinks of me. Just because one’s interested and likes to be friends with men, and talk to them as one talks to women, one’s called a flirt.”

      “But Miss Murgatroyd—”

      “I wish you’d call me Evelyn,” she interrupted.

      “After ten proposals do you honestly think that men are the same as women?”

      “Honestly, honestly,—how I hate that word! It’s always used by prigs,” cried Evelyn. “Honestly I think they ought to be. That’s what’s so disappointing. Every time one thinks it’s not going to happen, and every time it does.”

      “The pursuit of Friendship,” said Hewet. “The title of a comedy.”

      “You’re horrid,” she cried. “You don’t care a bit really. You might be Mr. Hirst.”

      “Well,” said Hewet, “let’s consider. Let us consider—” He paused, because for the moment he could not remember what it was that they had to consider. He was far more interested in her than in her story, for as she went on speaking his numbness had disappeared, and he was conscious of a mixture of liking, pity, and distrust. “You’ve promised to marry both Oliver and Perrott?” he concluded.

      “Not exactly promised,” said Evelyn. “I can’t make up my mind which I really like best. Oh how I detest modern life!” she flung off. “It must have been so much easier for the Elizabethans! I thought the other day on that mountain how I’d have liked to be one of those colonists, to cut down trees and make laws and all that, instead of fooling about with all these people who think one’s just a pretty young lady. Though I’m not. I really might do something.” She reflected in silence for a minute. Then she said:

      “I’m afraid right down in my heart that Alfred Perrot won’t do. He’s not strong, is he?”

      “Perhaps he couldn’t cut down a tree,” said Hewet. “Have you never cared for anybody?” he asked.

      “I’ve cared for heaps of people, but not to marry them,” she said. “I suppose I’m too fastidious. All my life I’ve wanted somebody I could look up to, somebody great and big and splendid. Most men are so small.”

      “What d’you mean by splendid?” Hewet asked. “People are—nothing more.”

      Evelyn was puzzled.

      “We don’t care for people because of their qualities,” he tried to explain. “It’s just them that we care for,”—he struck

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