Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen Read Free Book Online

condemning her you seem to me to know nothing at all. She made a mistake, possibly: passion makes for mistakes—one can throw one’s life away.”
    Constantine raised an eyebrow. He did so slowly—as slowly, looking the speaker over. “One does not know,” he said. “Or, I do not—you do, perhaps?” All her story, all that made her his creature, was summoned up. A prolonged inhuman condolence was meted out to her. “Cissie,” he said, “did not live to tell the tale.”
    Iseult showed spirit. “ I still think her unfortunate!”
    “You take the noble view. But one misapprehension of yours I must clear up. Cissie did not a thing she did out of love. Revenge, purely—I am sorry to tell you.”
    “I don’t follow.”
    “I don’t wonder! Here, Mrs. Arble, we enter the zone of fantasy.”
    She looked speculatively at him across the table, then away —embarked on a train of thought. A feather, loosening from the turban, flirted with one of her cheek-bones—Constantine felt at liberty to look elsewhere. She tucked the feather away. A minute went by. The mountain of cerebration then brought forth what could have seemed a mouse. “Who was the young man?”
    “Giles-Georgie-Gerald? At this distance of time, I could hardly tell you. He terminated, poor wretch.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “No survivors.—Why?”
    “I don’t mean that. I mean, are you sure he’d existed? Was he ever met, was he seen? He was not a fiction?”
    “Mrs. Arble? I’m a little at sea.”
    “I was thinking of Eva.”
    “Very properly, yes. But in what connection?”
    “Eva’s engagement. Eva’s unspecified bridegroom— that mystery.”
    “Mystery,” he said agreeably, “was the word for it.” But his mind was elsewhere. “What are they doing, what on earth are they up to—or not up to?” He cast about him accusingly.
     
    “I’ve never known them so slow here; it’s getting scandalous. Or your riz de veaus receiving special attention, do let’s hope! … Yes, but of course yes: Eva’s romance.”
    “You believe there was one?”
    “A trifle dreamed-up, perhaps. If you wish to know who Mr. X was, I cannot help you. Ask her.”
    “But you’re her guardian. You didn’t?”
    “One felt some delicacy.”
    “Your approval was necessary. You gave it?”
    “It never came to that point, as frankly one rather felt it might not… . AH!” Leaning back, unstrung, he watched the trolley’s advance. Vibrations of heat invaded the table; covers were lifted—one disclosure being that Constantine was to partake of woodcock. “I hope,” he said kindly, “ you will have no regrets.”
    They ate.
    Iseult drew breath. Ominously, she touched her lips with her napkin—back to the chase? “But you were quite involved in this, Mr. Ormeau. Some castle you own, you promised her for the honeymoon.”
    “Castles in the air, castles in the air: what harm? Not, of course, that this castle does not exist: anything but! It’s, I think, pretty. At the far end of nowhere. It made a delightful school—a school, alas, in ways ahead of its time. (You would have been interested, I’m certain.) Since then, wasted: really almost a tragedy. And the rates, oh dear! It was Willy’s most generous gift; and was—you will know this?—Eva’s first alma mater . Can one wonder her fancy wove its way back?” He took on conviction with every mouthful of woodcock. “Eva is chronically romantic; that, I need hardly tell you ! So much so that to isolate a ‘romance’—”
    “I did not. I’m asking about her ‘engagement.’ At the time, it did rather perturb me. She was under our roof.”
    “So she was. But as one saw, it blew over.”
    “It seemed to me symptomatic.”
    “I’m sure, rightly; how very acute you are! Exactly what superseded it, one wonders? And what may not supersede that ? One will have to watch. Mrs. Arble, our responsibility does not end with April. Or so I feel.”
    “Do you?”
    “I do. We must face this: Eva’s