Read Online Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen - Free Book Online

round the pond, up the woods, down where there used to be that garden—everywhere! Year after year I think, ‘Well, I never!’ and so will you do.” Mrs. Stote, the prophetess, spearhead of the party of local women induced by Kenneth to come in, when they could manage to, and clean up a bit, let go of her polisher-mop to extend her arms, graphically, for Eva’s benefit. “Yellow as technicolour! They’ll surprise you—miss,” she added, as an afterthought. Mrs. Stote spoke of Kenneth’s little community as “the school” to Kenneth only, and only out of civility. School, my eye! This was a Home, if ever she saw one, and moreover a Home for afflicted children. Nothing said or done by the inmates, consequently, caused her to turn a hair. There you were, you took the rough with the smooth. This big Eva seemed no worse than a little dull—now, why had she had to be put away? Anything you told her she took an interest in. Mrs. Stote had related to Eva the tense story of the herons being driven out by the swans, which meant bad luck, and of how the rooks had deserted, which meant worse. To which the girl had replied: “There are still the owls.”
    “ Ah .”
    Eva now asked: “When are the daffodils: in April?”
    “March, they come.”
    “April,” said Eva, longing for a concession, “is my birthday. April 21 st.”
    “They’ll be dying down then.” Mrs. Stote stooped to retrieve the mop.
    “I wish I could imagine them,” said Eva.
    “How can you expect to?—you’ve never seen them.”
    “I’ve seen daffodils.”
    “I daresay you may have.” Leaning her weight on the frail mop, Mrs. Stote looked about, before going back into action, at the spaces of unpromising floor. “But these you’d never believe in unless you saw them.”
    “But,” Eva discovered, “I do believe in them!”
    Which was as well, for she never saw them.
    Nor, by that March, was there anyone left to see them, other than Mrs. Stote coming in to caretake the emptied premises. Long before daffodils came, the school was no more— gone, leaving no trace of itself but some wear-and-tear, sunbursts of colourwash and a shot or two at a mural, various installations, some not yet paid for, and one proof more (were that needed) of the unconquerable unluckiness of the castle. To start with, Elsinore walked into the lake—she did not drown, but on being pulled out went into convulsions. That sparked off other mishaps: waves of food-poisoning thought to be due to verdigris in the f (copper, taken on with the castle); an attempt on the virtue of Jones the Milk by one of the girls; outbreaks of arson—nothing went very far —and two escapes (or, wayward departures). What was most distressing was, boredom began to set in—crises failed to amuse the children; they had plenty at home. They had relied on this castle to be respectable, and told Kenneth so—several spoke to him sharply. His rocket-like aesthetic evenings became damp squibs. In this humid, sunless, listless, rotty-smelling December, a further nightmare was the approach of Christmas—for which almost everybody was to remain here. Kenneth had thought of striking a pagan note, but under the circumstances would that do? … The police came; though only (so far) to check on bicycles. One had been stolen, or something.
    Elsinore got no better. She withdrew into coma. Sickness not having been envisaged, there was no sickroom; she continued, therefore, to lie in her sad bed distant only from Eva’s by the width of the window. Elsinore, destitute now of tears, had in her fragility and her piteous stillness the look of a thrown-out fledgling salvaged too late—eyes turned up under the purplish membrane of their faint lids, hair moistly wisped over the only just whiter pillow. Could she be dying?—the doctor finally sent for said so little. “Such an unhealthy little thing, poor thing,” complained the Hungarian lady, angered. “And as for you, Eva, where am I to put you? No other