The Pride of Eve

It was a June day, and beyond the fir woods that broke the bluster of the south-west winds, a few white clouds floated in a deep blue sky. As for the rosery at Fernhill, no Pers...

About six o’clock James Canterton took leave of Guinevere, and passing out through the yew hedge, made his way down the rhododendron walk to the wicket gate that opened on the s...

The second day of Guinevere’s dawning found Canterton in the rosery, under the white tent umbrella. It was just such a day as yesterday, with perhaps a few more white galleons s...

Approaching the place you saw a line of scattered oaks and Scots firs, with straggling thorns and hollies between them along the line of a chestnut fence that had turned green w...

Eve Carfax read James Canterton’s letter at breakfast, and her mother, who like many passive people, was vapidly inquisitive, wanted to know when the letter had come, why it had...

The local committee of a society for the propagation of something or other had taken possession of Canterton’s library, and Mrs. Brocklebank was the dominant lady. The amount of...

He was walking slowly, his hands in his pockets, pausing from time to time to examine some particular rose bush for any signs of blight or rust. Eve’s place was in the very cent...

Eve Carfax was painting an easel picture of the walled garden when Lynette arrived with a camp-stool, a drawing book, a box of paints, and a little green watering-pot full of wa...

Gertrude Canterton came down ten minutes after the gong had sounded, bustling into the room with every sign of starting the day in a rush. Her hair looked messy, with untidy str...

Canterton needed pictures of the Italian gardens at Latimer Abbey, and since he had received permission to show the Latimer gardens in his book, it devolved upon Eve Carfax to m...

When Eve had left for Latimer, the routine of Canterton’s working day ran with the same purposefulness, like a familiar path in a garden, yet though the scene was the same, the...

Those who saw Lynette’s swoop towards her heroine attached no esoteric meaning to its publicity. A sage green frock and a bronze gold head went darting between the figures on th...

It was no unusual thing for Canterton to spend hours in the gardens and nurseries after dark. He was something of a star-gazer and amateur astronomer, but it was the life of the...

It was the last time that Eve heard the familiar clicking of the ivory pins, for Mrs. Carfax died quietly in her sleep, and was found with a placid smile on her face, her white...

Lynette had a little black velvet frock that had been put away in a drawer, because it was somewhat tarnished and out of fashion. Moreover, Lynette had grown three or four inche...

Being an individualist, a man who had always depended upon himself, Canterton had very little of the social sensitiveness that looks cautiously to the right and to the left befo...

At such a parting of the ways, Canterton’s elemental grimness showed itself. He was the peasant, sturdy, obstinate, steady-eyed, ready to push out into some untamed country, and...

The day had been close and sultry, and the bedroom still felt hot after the hours of scorching sunlight on the tiles. Eve drew the curtains back, and opened the casement to its...

The warm scent of the fir woods was about them, and a darkness that made their very thoughts seem secret and secure. They were the lovers of some ancient tale wandering in an ol...

It was like coming back out of a dream, save that the dream remained as a compelling and fateful reality, a power, a parting of the ways, a voice that cried “Explicit!” Her clar...

Canterton had looked into the eyes of the child, and had seen the woman’s eyes, Eve’s eyes, in the child’s. For Eve’s eyes had been like the eyes of Lynette, till he, the man, h...

It is a suggestive thought that the characteristic effects of our execrable climate have nowhere shown themselves more forcibly than in the atmosphere of the London suburbs. Tha...

Saturday afternoons and Sundays gave the pause in Eve’s week of scribbling and reading, and drawing at desk and table. She was infinitely glad of the leisure when it came, only...

The homelessness of the great city depressed her. She felt its chaotic vastness, knowing all the while that there was ordered purpose behind all its seeming chaos, and that all...

Hugh Massinger, Esq., was a person of some distinction as a novelist, and an æsthetic dabbler in Gothic mysteries. His novel “The Torch Lily” had had a great sale, especially in...

Although Hugh Massinger had reached the cynical age of thirty-seven, he had been so well treated by the Press and the public, that he had no cause to develop a sneer. His essent...

Mrs. Buss had surrendered at last to Eve’s persuasions, and a jobbing carpenter had erected a section-built shed in the back garden at Bosnia Road. The shed had a corrugated iro...

Three days before Christmas, Eve spent a quarter of an hour in a big toyshop in quest of something that she could send Lynette, and her choice came to rest upon a miniature cook...

The affair of Hugh Massinger, and Miss Champion’s attitude towards it, provided Eve with an experience that threw a glare of new light upon the life of a woman who sets out to e...

January and February passed, and Eve’s capital dwindled steadily, with no very obvious prospect of her being able to replenish it. She sold three more small pictures, and had on...

The Saturday on which John Parfit came to see Eve was one of those premature spring days that makes one listen for the singing of birds. The little front garden was full of sunl...

After she had written to John Parfit, Eve kept the promise she had made to Kate Duveen, but qualified her confession by an optimism that took the sting out of the truths that sh...

It was during these last weeks at Bosnia Road that Eve became fully conscious of that spirit of revolt that is one of the dominating features of contemporary life, for she was e...

During the next two weeks Eve’s moods fluctuated between compassionate altruism and bitter and half laughing scorn. Life was so tremendous, so pathetic, so strenuous, so absurd....

The night spent on the Embankment seat was less tragic than squalidly uncomfortable. Wedged in there between those hopeless other figures, Eve had to resist a nauseating sense o...

She was a tall and rather silent woman, fair-haired, grey-eyed, with a face that was young in outline and old in its white reserve. There was nothing slipshod or casual about he...

Three women with dusty shoes and brown faces came along under the Downs to Bignor village. They wore rough brown skirts, white blouses, and straw hats, and each carried a knapsa...

She sat up, and from that brown nook on the hill-side looked out upon a world that was all white mist, with a great silver sun struggling out of the east. Each blade of grass ha...

They found themselves at the “Black Boar” at Basingford, sitting round a green table under a may tree in the garden. The “Black Boar” was an ancient hostelry, all white plaster,...

Miss Vance, as much the time-table as ever, met them where the white gate opened on to the heath garden. It was Lynette’s supper hour, an absurd hour, she called it, but she obe...

Lizzie Straker and Joan Gaunt were at supper when Eve walked into their private sitting-room at the “Black Boar.” Eight o’clock had struck, but the window of the room faced west...

About eleven o’clock Lizzie Straker’s restlessness overflowed into action. She got up, whispered something to Joan Gaunt, and was about to push her way through the young fir tre...

Canterton went as far as the hedge, but did not follow the fugitives any farther. He stood there for two or three minutes, understanding that a sensitive woman who had been invo...

Eve, waiting at the Camber cross-roads under the shadow of a yew that grew in the hedgerow, saw an arm of light sweep slowly down the open road before her, the glare of Canterto...

Lynette vanished, and Canterton looked across the breakfast-table at his wife, who was submerged beneath the usual flood of letters. She had not been listening—had not heard wha...

Eve came down to breakfast in the panelled dining-room at “Rock Cottage,” and stood at one of the open windows, watching an Aberdeen puppy demolishing an old shoe in the middle...