Eva Trout (36 page)

There stood Eva.

Not far off, in one of those chance islands of space, she stood tall as a candle, some accident of the light rendering her luminous from top to toe—in a pale suit, elongated by the elegance of its narrowness, and turned-back little hat of the same no-colour; no flowers, but on the lapel of the jacket a spraying-out subcontinent of diamonds: a great brooch. A soft further glow had been tinted on to her face; her eyes were increased by the now mothy dusk of their lashes. She was looking unhurriedly, all but abstractedly, in the direction of Henry.

“EVA!”

His sensational dash to reach her left Henry breathless and out of balance. “I was afraid, I thought you might never come!”

“I am not late?”

Up came the Arbles. Iseult unloaded her roses on to Henry before being the first to embrace Eva, which she did smothering a cry, in which was the accumulated past, against the bride’s cheek—so immune, so sculpted by calmness. “But then, you always were,” murmured Iseult Smith, intelligibly only to herself. Back again into being Iseult Arble, as they drew apart again, she cried: “And your brooch! Yours? Where was it all this time, Eva?” “It was my mother’s,” beamed the wearer, shining above the diamonds, “given her on their wedding day by my father.”

“Yes, Eva,” admitted Eric, “that’s a terrific rig-out. It does you justice. Know what I said to Izzy, just now when you hove into sight?—’That’s
not
Eva?’ ” Eva, giving credit where credit was due, said: “Fortnum & Mason.” He collected her hands in his and fervently crunched them. “God bless!” he declaimed, with direct emotion—more obliquely adding: “And no bones broken?” Henry, for whom the morning had gone by so far without a dig-in-the-ribs, now got one from Eric. “Well, you made it!” said Eric unacrimoniously. (Raising the roses clear of the operation, Henry restored them to Mrs. Arble, who tore off their wrappings and bestowed them on Eva.) “Who’d have thought it,” Eric vociferated, “that time I had to have that word with your father? ‘But don’t lose heart, vicar,’ I remember I told him, ‘that boy could have something!’ Neither was I so wrong: eh? Well, well, well. Well, all of the best—and I
mean
that!”

“Thank you,” said Henry.

“Mind, you be good to Eva!”

“I shall attempt to.”

Eva, carrying the roses, moved away up the platform. “
Constantine
?”

Constantine, still where Henry had left him, did not advance one step. Cryptically waiting for Eva, he watched her falter. “Yes, my dear?” he said, encouraging her on.

“I, I, I—” she began, lowering her lashes.

“Well, here I am.—And here’s yet another old friend!” He produced Mr. Denge, whose hat needless to say was already raised. Mr. Denge said: “Miss Trout, this is a joyful occasion!”

“Thank you,” she said, overcome.—”Welcome!” she added, by association. She turned to the other. “Constantine, it has been so long …”

“—I have the pleasure of bringing you,” Mr. Denge continued, rooting about in an inner pocket, “half a dozen small coffee-spoons, with the Broadstairs arms inlaid in coloured enamel. Mrs. Denge and I—”

“Look sharp, darling,” said Henry, at Eva’s elbow, “you— we—are being given a wedding present.” She did not react, being perturbed, so Henry stepped smartly up and received the prize. “I’m reminded,” said Constantine, “that I did not come empty-handed, either.” Fishing about behind him, he unpropped from a stanchion a florist’s box the size of an infant’s coffin, glazed, adorned with bridal rosettes: this he wielded at Eva (engulfed in roses) then Henry (slithering over with magazines) then finally landed on Mr. Denge. “And what,” cried Henry, “about the rest of the luggage?” Eva’s, he ascertained, had already been magicked into its rightful place: Henry coerced or hypnotised Mr. Denge into coming away down the train with him to track Henry’s suitcase. Off they went. “That boy is going to be competent, if you let him,” observed Constantine—he and Eva now being alone. (The Arbles had come to a stop two stanchions away.) Eva said: “Father Tony could not come, then?”

“No. I bring his apologies. Extra busy.”

She looked Constantine in the face. “He does not approve?”

“I have seen him approve more.”

She brought herself to watch the once-deadly mouth. “And you?”

“D’you know what, Eva,” he burst out, “you are looking smashing. A smash hit! Yes. Willy ought to be here.—You are keeping up the insurance on
that
, all right, I trust?” He indicated the brooch. “Looks twenty times more like itself than it did on Cissie; she was too wispy for it… And what,” he went on with barely a change of tone, “would you expect? I have nothing to say. Nothing to declare. No statement. No; it has been the same all along the line. This is just one thing more: by this time, what matter? This could seem the
comble
; but what is?—what can be? There is invariably more. Nothing
is
final, I suppose.” He shrugged his shoulders. “What makes you ask?—a little late in the day, one might have thought. It’s a pity I care for you. As a matter of interest,
where
are you getting married?”

She hesitated.

“Leave it!” he cut in instantly—dismissingly. “If you run into trouble, you know where to find me. Talking of that, where’s Jeremy? Wasn’t he following you? One sees no signs of him.” He looked about. “Ha!” he exclaimed. “Here at least comes the Happy Band, again!” On the return, past drifted the seekers—still seeking, unflaggingly. Was hope dwindling? Mistlike phantoms, the aunts, uncles and cousins in passing by bent phantom eyes upon Eva. Cricket matches and flower shows. They suspected her of being who she was?—impossible to say. One signal only was wanted, one indication: she gave neither. One by one, she suffered them to evaporate. The last of the driblets of wilting flowers being no more, she then turned to Constantine. “All they know about me is, that I am tall.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I invited them.”

“You were their missing bride? You’ve behaved infernally. Not that that’s any longer any business of mine.”

“I became too shy. I have been lost for too long. All the same, Constantine, am I like nobody? Those were my people; they
should
have known me. My father told me my eyes are like my mother’s—are they? I believe my forehead is like my father’s: is it?”

Laden as before, but for now being plus the retrieved suitcase, back dashed Henry and Mr. Denge. “The work of a minute!” Mr. Denge declared, lifting the suitcase proudly. “How’s the charade going, would you say?” asked Henry, drawing Eva aside. “My love, my sister,” he went on in a lower voice, still more frantic, “couldn’t we possibly arise and come away? Where’s all this stuff to
go
, Eva? I suppose we have seats, reservations? Come on, show me!” She vacillated. Mr. Denge, securing an audience, reported excitedly: “
Something
or other’s afoot further down this platform! Film either being shot or they’re televising a royalty or celebrity: cameras galore!”

“I hope that is not Jeremy,” said Eva, as she and Henry withdrew, disappearing, for what this time must not be more than a minute, into the Golden Arrow. Here were their places. He dumped the magazines, she her roses. The suitcase was whisked away; with it, Constantine’s gift.

They missed, thus, what was going on down the platform. It was, of course, Jeremy—who else? His performance attracted more and more onlookers—Mrs. Caliber being no longer competent to restrain him. Audience-minded, as are contemporary crowds, see-ers off and travellers stood back respectfully, according space and free play to the child star and not obstructing, they hoped, the rigged-up cameras which, as Mr. Denge had, they took to be present and in action, or soon in action—for, how should there not be cameras? The boy when first he appeared on the stage, or platform, had been carrying a Gallic scarlet despatch-case: he went on to put the case down and, at once gravely and with a flourish, unlock it. He lifted out, in a manner evidently rehearsed, what had been its contents—to the accompaniment of a titillated if for the first moment aghast gasp along the platform. He not so much flourished the thing as put it through what
could
be its paces.

“Now, come on,” said an attendant, “don’t you do that!”

“Leave him alone,” said someone, “he’s only acting!” A widespread supporting murmur was gone against only by Mrs. Caliber. “No, now stop that, there’s a good little boy!—Half the trouble is, you see, that he can’t hear,” she told any few sympathisers she gathered. “He’s as good as gold in reality. Keeping himself occupied all these last days, doing his French mouth exercises all by himself in front of the mirror or when not that playing away at his games, while his mother as could not be helped has been out and about in a rush buying her wedding clothes, and so on. And a child likes to play gunman, it’s human nature. Not that he had any business to bring that
here
, though. How was I to know what he had in that little bag? Some goodbye surprise for his mother, I assumed it to be —wouldn’t you have? No use asking, because he can’t speak, you see. That’s another great pity. Not that that’s anything but a stage dummy he’s got hold of—though how he got hold of that beats me; his mother indulges him. What he’s got there couldn’t be anything other: how could it?”

Eric knew otherwise. “Do you see what I see?” he said to Iseult—he and she, loose-ended, having been magnetised into the gathered crowd. He, ahead of her, got the first view.

First, therefore, she only said: “Yes; that’s Jeremy.”

“Yes, but do you see what I see?” He yanked her forward.

“Oh, no—no! Oh my God, no—it can’t be possible!”

“There you are, however.—Since you pinched it, did you fire it off?—Nn-nn?—Then there’s one in it.”

“I never thought, Eric. I never really thought—”

“Then it beats me to know what you pinched it for.—I let things slide, day after day. That old souvenir. Meant to take it out, have a look at it, do a job on it—never brought myself to. How did you ever know it was in the house, now I come to think? But one thing I am certain of: there was one in it.— Keep still. Don’t startle him.”

The boy executed a pirouette. Everybody laughed. He drew in the firearm, looking about with a certain air of design. A child’s ballet enactment of a
crime passionel
? Or a boy model, advertising something: “Little Lord XXX will shoot up the train, if he isn’t given—?”

Jeremy saw Iseult. But her hair was different—was it not? He sent her a teasing smile. “Eric, I think I
could
get it away from him,” she said.

Away up there in the Golden Arrow, Henry and Eva remained standing—back they must go, in a minute! They were far from alone; down the long, suave car various fellow-occupants were already seated. In here it seemed, after the platform, silent—to be not overheard, the two had to stand close together. As though the train had started and started swaying, they swayed slightly. “I’m not going to get off,” he said, brushing his lips against her ear. “I’m not going to get off this train, I mean. Did you really want me to?—did you imagine I would?”

“I had not thought yet.”

“Hadn’t you—
hadn’t
you?”

“Though, when I saw your suitcase …”

“That could have been a fake, full of bricks and things.— But it isn’t, Eva; it isn’t. Do you mind?”

Something took place: a bewildering, brilliant, blurring filling up, swimming and brimming over; then, not a torrent from the eyes but one, two, three, four tears, each hesitating, surprised to be where it was, then wandering down. The speediest splashed on to the diamond brooch. “Look what is
happening
to me!” exulted Eva. She had no handkerchief, not having expected to require one,—she blotted about on her face with a crunched-up glove. “What a coronation day … “

“Are you happy?” asked Henry, awed.

“A coronation being living, today.”

“I wish, beloved,” he said, frowning, “we were in a compartment of our own, like people going away used to be. Are there no more of those?”

“I was fortunate,” Eva dizzily told him, “obtaining any seats.”

“You’ve got the tickets and so on? Give them to me, then.”

“Why?”

“It looks more lifelike, I mean more usual.” The illusory swaying of the train became more marked. “Where are we off to?—where are we going? What are we doing?—I’ve burned
my
boats … I can’t get over those tears, those extraordinary tears!”

“We must go back, now.”

“To the rest. Yes.—I believe, Eva, we ought to have been standing these wretched people champagne.”

They descended from the train.

“Speech!” shouted Mr. Denge promptly. Constantine was in the act of engorging two pills. He slid the Fabergé box back into its pocket, saying: “The Arbles seem to be elsewhere; sorry, Eva, this makes us rather a small group. News of Jeremy, though—eh, Mrs. Caliber?” Mrs. Caliber, only waiting, cried: “
Madam
—yes!”

“Mrs. Caliber, where
is
he?”

“I thought I should come and tell you, he’s been cutting capers, over-excited, with many egging him on who should know better, but a lady in an Alice-band succeeded in catching hold of him—any minute now, she’s bringing him along. Though if she coaxes that thing away from him, as she was trying to, she’s cleverer than I am. All’s well that ends well, however. You ought to have heard those little birds of yours keeping on, this morning, anyone might have told them it was your wedding day. You’re looking your be.st, madam, if I may say so.—Is that the gentleman?”

Eva introduced Henry to Mrs. Caliber.

“Can’t take his eyes off you, can he!” said Mrs. Caliber.

“Speech!” repeated Mr. Denge.

“Fortunately for Henry,” said Constantine, “time is limited. In fact, you two had better cut the
adieux
short and get back to the train now; I take it you don’t want a rush at the last moment? Any parting remarks had better devolve on me. On behalf of all, I wish you a pleasant future. The future, as we know, will resemble the past in being the result, largely, of a concatenation of circumstances. Many of our best moments, as well as our worst, are fortuitous. (Let us hope that only the best moments await this bridal pair.) I do not say there is no method in human madness. Our affections could not, I suppose, survive—as they do—were they entirely divorced from reason, though the tie is often a rather tenuous one. Well, bless you Eva; and bless you Henry! I regret the wholly secular nature of this occasion, but Father Clavering-Haight could not be with us. Let this sunshine we stand in be a good omen! Things may break well for you; that has been known to happen. Er—life stretches ahead. May a favourable concatenation of circumstances … No, here I become a trifle tied up, I think. That is enough.—Henry, you’d better kiss Eva.”