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The Author's Press Series of the Works of Elinor Glyn
The restaurant of the Grand Hotel in Rome was filling up. People weredining rather late—it was the end of May and the entertainments werelessening, so they could dawdle over their repasts and smoke theircigarettes in peace.
Stella Rawson came in with her uncle and aunt, Canon and the HonorableMrs. Ebley, and they took their seats in a secluded corner. They lookeda little out of place—and felt it—amid this more or less gay company.But the drains of the Grand Hotel were known to be beyond question,and, coming to Rome so late in the season, the Reverend Canon Ebleyfelt it was wiser to risk the contamination of the over-worldly-mindedthan a possible attack of typhoid fever. The belief in a divineprotection did not give him or his lady wife that serenity it mighthave done, and they traveled fearfully, taking with them their ownjaeger sheets among other precautions.
They realized they must put up with the restaurant for meals, but atleast the women folk should not pander to the customs of the place andwear evening dress. Their subdued black gowns were fastened to thethroat. Stella Rawson felt absolutely excited—she was twenty-one yearsold, but this was the first time she had ever dined in a fashionablerestaurant, and it almost seemed like something deliciously wrong.
Life in the Cathedral Close where they lived in England was not highlyexhilarating, and when its duties were over it contained only mildgossip and endless tea-parties and garden-parties by way of recreation.
Canon and the Honorable Mrs. Ebley were fairly rich people. The UncleErasmus' call to the church had been answered from inclination—notnecessity. His heart was in his work. He was a good man and did hisduty according to the width of the lights in which he had been broughtup.
Mrs. Ebley did more than her duty—and had often too much momentum,which now and then upset other people's apple carts.
She had, in fact, been the moving spirit in the bringing about of herniece Stella's engagement to the Bishop's junior chaplain, a younggentleman of aesthetic aspirations and eight hundred a year of his own.
Stella herself had never been enthusiastic about the affair. As a man,Eustace Medlicott said absolutely nothing at all to her—though to besure she was quite unaware that he was inadequate in this respect. Noman had meant anything different up to this period of her life. She hadseen so few of them she was no judge.
Eustace Medlicott had higher collars than the other curates, andintoned in a wonderfully melodious voice in the cathedral. And quite anumber of the young ladies of Exminster, including the Bishop's seconddaughter, had been setting their caps at him from the moment of hisarrival, so that when, by the maneuvers of Aunt Caroline Ebley, Stellafound him proposing to her, she somehow allowed herself to murmur somesort of consent.
Then it seemed quite stimulating to have a ring and to be congratulatedupon being engaged. And the few weeks that followed while the thing wasfresh and new had passed quite pleasantly. It was only when about amonth had gone by that a gradual and growing weariness seemed to befalling upon her.
To be the wife of an aesthetic high church curate, who fasted severelyduring Lent and had rigid views upon most subjects, began to gro