Eva Trout Read Online Free PDF

read, read on, then read again, she found herself thinking surprisingly well of Eva. Yes, decidedly Eva rose in her estimation—the girl had precipitated something , which was what everybody needed. The long Larkins bog-down looked like nearing its end. What had Eva been up to? Iseult felt stirrings of that original vivisectional interest which had drawn her to her uncouth pupil. In the glow of knowing herself fallen in hate with (for what else was this?) she relived the year at the school, and the years after, during which this organism had so much loved her. She regretted nothing. Might it not be, she wondered, that she and Eva had only now arrived at their true bourne?
    And the letter not only revivified, it was balm. Continuously being ignored by Constantine had mortified Iseult more than she admitted. “Our acquaintanceship …” There had been one meeting: the half-day visit by him to Larkins, to assure himself as to its suitability as a repository for Eva, then talk money. He had been more than satisfied on the one score, she on the other. Since then, nothing. Made use of, made sure of, she had been written off: a former teacher down there on a former fruit farm. Now the tune began to be different; or did it not? The reader felt herself smile. Also, the expert in English professionally analysed this document—what a way to write, what garlands of affectation! Yet, to give him credit, this was quite a performance. This mannered manner of his was not quite the thing; no. Yet the ambiguities had one sort of merit, or promise—one was at least on the verge of the Henry James country.
    She turned the letter over and over throughout the day on which it arrived. When Eric came home, she turned it over to him. He ingested it slowly. “Well,” he pronounced, “here’s a kettle of fish!”
    She agreed. “A bombshell.”
    “Not to me,” he declared. “I saw how the wind was blowing —you remember, I told you.”
    “No, never, Eric. You never told me.” “Only the other evening, here in this room. Or tried to, but then you became upset.” “Oh, then? I thought you were angry.” “Yes,” he said, “that’s what comes of attempting to talk. Can anybody wonder I keep my mouth shut? Apart from that, though, couldn’t you see for yourself?” “That she hated me?”
    “The conclusions you jump to!—and that’s a wicked conclusion. There’s no harm in Eva. Even what it says here—” he gave an emphatic shake to the blue pages—”even what this says gives no ground for that. All this does is, bear out what I told you: she’s disappointed. She’s had her heart broken, here. Isn’t that enough?”
    “Enough, it seems, to have made a tremendous scene of,” meditated Iseult.
    “Yes, scared the guts out of him ,” said Eric with relish. “She had to let off to someone—other than us.” “Still, Eric … going behind our backs?” “She had the right, if she wanted to: she’s his business. Why shouldn’t he do something—or would that kill him?”
    “I’ve no idea,” said Iseult. “Give me back his letter.” She smoothed it, it being the worse for mauling, folded it, slid it back in its envelope. She then put to Eric: “What ought I to do?”
    “What he says, I suppose: see him.”
    She fatefully hesitated. “You think I ought to?”
    “As things are.”
    “I suppose you’re right. Yes, I’m afraid so.”
    “I do grant, Izzy, it’s a good deal to ask. That backbreaking train-journey twice over, and the time it wastes. Not to speak of the worry. However. See he pays your expenses.”
    “ Eric !”
    He stared.
    She covered her eyes. “Oh, Eric—really!”

    Constantine’s head was aureoled as he sat down again, repeating: “Yes, this has been more than good of you.” At his back was a window; January sunshine came in, diffused by fibreglass curtains. This office of his had (at least from where Iseult sat) an extensive view of nothing; it was near to the top of one of those crops