The Vicissitudes of Evangeline

The Vicissitudes of Evangeline

The Vicissitudes of Evangeline

 

Author: Elinor Glyn

 

BRANCHES PARK,

 

_November 3rd, 1904_.

 

I WONDER so much if it is amusing to be an adventuress, because that

is evidently what I shall become now. I read in a book all about it;

it is being nice-looking and having nothing to live on, and getting a

pleasant time out of life--and I intend to do that! I have certainly

nothing to live on, for one cannot count £300 a year--and I am

extremely pretty, and I know it quite well, and how to do my hair, and

put on my hats, and those things, so, of course, I am an adventuress!

I was not intended for this _rôle_--in fact Mrs. Carruthers adopted

me on purpose to leave me her fortune, as at that time she had

quarrelled with her heir, who was bound to get the place. Then she was

so inconsequent as not to make a proper will--thus it is that this

creature gets everything, and I nothing!

 

I am twenty, and up to the week before last, when Mrs. Carruthers got

ill, and died in one day, I had had a fairly decent time at odd moments

when she was in a good temper.

 

There is no use pretending even when people are dead, if one is writing

down one’s real thoughts. I detested Mrs. Carruthers most of the time.

A person whom it was impossible to please. She had no idea of justice,

or of anything but her own comfort, and what amount of pleasure other

people could contribute to her day!

 

How she came to do anything for me at all was because she had been

in love with papa, and when he married poor mamma--a person of no

family--and then died, she offered to take me, and bring me up, just

to spite mamma, she has often told me. As I was only four I had no say

in the matter, and if mamma liked to give me up that was her affair.

Mamma’s father was a lord, and her mother I don’t know who, and they

had not worried to get married, so that is how it is poor mamma came to

have no relations. After papa was dead she married an Indian officer,

and went off to India, and died too, and I never saw her any more--so

there it is, there is not a soul in the world who matters to me, or I

to them, so I can’t help being an adventuress, and thinking only of

myself, can I?

 

Mrs. Carruthers periodically quarrelled with all the neighbours, so

beyond frigid calls now and then in a friendly interval, we never saw

them much. Several old, worldly ladies used to come to stay, but I

liked none of them, and I have no young friends. When it is getting

dark, and I am up here alone, I often wonder what it would be like if

I had--but I believe I am the kind of cat that would not have got on

with them too nicely--so perhaps it is just as well; only to have had a

pretty--aunt, say, to love one, that might have been nice.

 

Mrs. Carruthers had no feelings like this. “Stuff and

nonsense”--“sentimental rubbish” she would have called them. To get

a suitable husband is what she brought me up for, she said, and for

the last years had arranged that I should marry her detested heir,

Christopher Carruthers, as I should have the money, and he the place.

 

He is a diplomat, and lives in Paris, and Russia, and amusing places

like that, so he does not often come to England. I have never seen him.

He is quite old--over thirty--and has hair turning gray.

 

Now he is master here, and I must leave--unless he proposes to marry me

at our meeting this afternoon, which he probably won’t do.

 

However, there can be no harm in my making myself look as attractive

as possible under the circumstances. As I am to be an adventuress, I

must do the best I can for myself. Nice feelings are for people who

have money to live as they please. If I had ten thousand a year, or

even five, I would snap my fingers at all men, and say, “No, I make my

life as I choose, and shall cultivate knowledge and books, and indulge

in beautiful ideas of honour and exalted sentiments, and perhaps one

day succumb to a noble passion.” (What grand words the thought even is

making me write!!) But as it is, if Mr. Carruthers asks me to marry

him, as he has been told to do by his aunt, I shall certainly say yes,

and so stay on here, and have a comfortable home. Until I have had this

interview it is hardly worth while packing anything.

 

What a mercy black suits me! My skin is ridiculously white--I shall

stick a bunch of violets in my frock, that could not look heartless, I

suppose. But if he asks me if I am sad about Mrs. Carruthers’ death, I

shall not be able to tell a lie.

 

I am sad, of course, because death is a terrible thing, and to die like

that, saying spiteful things to every one, must be horrid--but I can’t,

I can’t regret her! Not a day ever passed that she did not sting some

part of me--when I was little, it was not only with her tongue, she

used to pinch me, and box my ears until Doctor Garrison said it might

make me deaf, and then she stopped, because she said deaf people were

a bore, and she could not put up with them.

 

I shall not go on looking back! There are numbers of things that even

now make me raging to remember.

 

I have only been out for a year. Mrs. Carruthers got an attack of

bronchitis when I was eighteen, just as we were going up to town for

the season, and said she did not feel well enough for the fatigues, and

off we went to Switzerland. And in the autumn we travelled all over the

place, and in the winter she coughed and groaned, and the next season

would not go up until the last court, so I have only had a month of

London. The bronchitis got perfectly well, it was heart-failure that

killed her, brought on by an attack of temper because Thomas broke the

Carruthers vase.

 

I shall not write of her death, or the finding of the will, or the

surprise that I was left nothing but a thousand pounds, and a diamond

ring.

 

Now that I am an adventuress, instead of an heiress, of what good to

chronicle all that! Sufficient to say if Mr. Carruthers does not obey

his orders, and offer me his hand this afternoon, I shall have to pack

my trunks, and depart by Saturday--but where to is yet in the lap of

the gods!

 

He is coming by the 3.20 train, and will be in the house before four,

an ugly, dull time; one can’t offer him tea, and it will be altogether

trying and exciting.

 

He is coming ostensibly to take over his place, I suppose, but in

reality it is to look at me, and see if in any way he will be able to

persuade himself to carry out his aunt’s wishes. I wonder what it will

be like to be married to some one you don’t know, and don’t like? I am

not greatly acquainted yet with the ways of men. We have not had any

that you could call that here, much--only a lot of old wicked sort of

things, in the autumn, to shoot the pheasants, and play bridge with

Mrs. Carruthers. The marvel to me was how they ever killed anything,

such antiques they were! Some Politicians and ex-Ambassadors, and

creatures of that sort; and mostly as wicked as could be. They used

to come trotting down the passage to the schoolroom, and have tea with

Mademoiselle and me on the slightest provocation! and say such things!

I am sure lots of what they said meant something else, Mademoiselle

used to giggle so. She was rather a good-looking one I had the last

four years, but I hated her. There was never anyone young and human who

counted.

 

I did look forward to coming out in London, but, being so late, every

one was preoccupied when we got there--and no one got in love with

me much. Indeed, we went out very little, a part of the time I had a

swollen nose from a tennis ball at Ranelagh--and people don’t look at

girls with swollen noses.

 

I wonder where I shall go and live! Perhaps in Paris--unless, of

course, I marry Mr. Carruthers,--I don’t suppose it is dull being

married. In London all the married ones seemed to have a lovely time,

and had not to bother with their husbands much.

 

Mrs. Carruthers always assured me love was a thing of absolutely no

consequence in marriage. You were bound to love some one, some time,

but the very fact of being chained to him would dispel the feeling. It

was a thing to be looked upon like measles, or any other disease, and

was better to get it over, and then turn to the solid affairs of life.

But how she expected me to get it over when she never arranged for me

to see anyone I don’t know.

 

I asked her one day what I should do if I got to like some one after I

am married to Mr. Carruthers, and she laughed one of her horrid laughs,

and said I should probably do as the rest of the world. And what do

they do?--I wonder?--Well, I suppose I shall find out some day.

 

Of course there is the possibility that Christopher (do I like the name

of Christopher, I wonder?)--well, that Christopher may not want to

follow her will.

 

He has known about it for years, I suppose, just as I have, but I

believe men are queer creatures, and he may take a dislike to me. I am

not a type that would please every one. My hair is too red, brilliant

dark fiery red like a chestnut when it tumbles out of its shell, only

burnished like metal. If I had the usual white eyelashes I should be

downright ugly, but, thank goodness! by some freak of nature mine are

black and thick, and stick out when you look at me sideways, and I

often think when I catch sight of myself in the glass that I am really

very pretty--all put together--but, as I said before, not a type to please every one.