Kitabı oku: «Not Without Thorns», sayfa 15
Volume Two – Chapter Five.
As Fate would have it
La femme qui ne cesse pas d’aimer celui qui l’a fut souffrir, parvient à l’aimer encore davantage.
Let time and chance combine, combine.
T. Carlyle’s Adieu.
Who knows, indeed! Gerald left Nunswell on Monday morning, and for the rest of that day Eugenia’s thoughts were principally occupied in reflecting over all he had said, and wishing he had stayed longer and said more. She got up on Tuesday morning in the same spirit, and resolving to strike before the iron of her new determination to struggle against despondency and depression had had time to cool, she went out into the gardens armed with one of the few books she had brought with her, Schlegel’s “Philosophie der Sprache,” which she had been studying under her father’s direction just before her illness.
“I will force myself to read a certain quantity every day,” she decided, as she ensconced herself on the same garden seat on which she and Gerald had sat on Sunday afternoon. All around her reminded her of their conversation, of his few words of encouragement and advice.
“Trying must always be some good, whether one sees it or not, I suppose,” thought Eugenia, and with this somewhat vague but certainly innocuous piece of philosophy she set to work at her self-appointed task.
She found it harder than she had anticipated; considerably more so than it used to be; she did not make allowance for the effects of her illness, and entirely attributed the difficulty she met with to “stupidity” and “forgetfulness,” and thereupon ensued a fit of self-disgust.
“I to think myself clever, indeed!” she thought, “or able to be ever of use to any one. The first thing I have to do, it seems to me, is to get rid of my self-conceit. Why, I have forgotten more German in a month than I learnt in five years.”
She was not, however, to be easily baffled. She read and re-read each intricate sentence till its meaning became clear; till, too, her head ached and her eyes grew weary, and she was at last obliged to stop and rest before she had got half through the allotted portion. Her retreat was in a retired part of the gardens; hitherto she had been undisturbed by passers-by; suddenly, as she sat leaning back, her eyes closed, her whole appearance that of extreme weariness and languor, two gentlemen passed within a few yards of her. They were not speaking as they approached, but she heard their footsteps and opened her eyes for a moment, to close them again quickly when she saw that the two figures were disappearing in another direction.
“What an exquisitely pretty girl,” observed one of the two when they were out of earshot, “but how fearfully delicate she looks. I don’t think I ever saw such a transparent complexion. Did you notice her? She seemed to be asleep, and yet she looks as if she were some way gone in a decline. How extraordinary of her friends to let her fall asleep in the open air in April. How frightfully imprudent.”
“I didn’t notice her,” replied his companion, carelessly. “It’s not likely she is in a consumption, however. Consumptive people don’t come to Nunswell; it’s too cold. But if your feelings are interested, Thanet, I am quite willing to wait while you turn back and waken her. And you had better give her a little lecture on the subject of her imprudence at the same time, hadn’t you?”
“Nonsense, Chancellor,” replied Major Thanet, rather irritably. “If you had been on your back for three months, and suffering as I have been, you would understand what it is to have some feeling for your fellow-creatures. A year ago I should have laughed at such notions as you do now, I daresay,” he continued, more amiably, “but don’t make fun of me till you have had a touch of rheumatic fever yourself,” “I have no wish to try it, thank you,” said Captain Chancellor, lightly. “I am quite willing to take your word for it that, it is the reverse of agreeable. But a minute ago you would have it the young person must be half way gone in a decline, and now you say she’s in for rheumatic fever. We had better have a look at her, really: you said she was awfully pretty, didn’t you?” Major Thanet grunted a but half mollified assent. He was still too lame to walk without the help of his friend’s arm, so when Captain Chancellor turned to retrace their steps, he made no objection, though feeling still annoyed by what he considered his companion’s ill-timed “chaff.”
The girl was not asleep this time. She was reading, and did not look up till they had passed. Her attitude was still the same; she was half sitting, half lying on the bench, her head resting wearily on one hand, while the other held her book. Major Thanet looked at her, as they walked slowly past, with considerable interest.
“She is a lovely creature, whoever she is,” he remarked to his companion when they had walked on a little further. “Don’t you think so? She looks delicate, but hardly so much so as I fancied at first. It must have been the effect of her closed eyes.”
Captain Chancellor did not answer. Major Thanet was a much shorter man than his friend, and he stooped slightly in consequence of his illness. So he had not seen his companion’s face since they had passed the invalid girl. Now, however, he looked up, surprised at his silence, and a little irritated by his remark eliciting no reply.
“What are you thinking of, Chancellor?” he exclaimed. “Didn’t you see the girl? Don’t you?”
But his sentence was never completed, so much was he startled by what he saw in his friend’s face.
Captain Chancellor was deadly pale, paler by far than the girl whose pallor had attracted Major Thanet’s attention. An expression of extreme disquiet had replaced his ordinary air of comfortable well-bred nonchalance, and his voice sounded hoarse and abrupt when at last he spoke.
“There is a sheltered seat on there, I see, Thanet,” he said, pointing to a sort of arbour a little in front. “Do you mind my leaving you for a few minutes? I shall not be long, but – but – I must run back for a moment.”
“Certainly, certainly, by all means,” replied Major Thanet, good-naturedly, though feeling not a little curious. “One of the irresistible Beauchamp’s little ‘affaires,’ cropping up rather inconveniently, I fear, if what they say of his engagement to that very dark-eyed Miss Eyrecourt be true,” he said to himself; adding aloud, when Captain Chancellor had taken him at his word, and deposited him in the summerhouse, “Don’t hurry, my dear fellow, on my account. If the worst comes to the worst, I expect I can toddle back to the hotel with my stick.”
“Thank you. I shall not be long,” repeated Beauchamp, hardly knowing what Major Thanet had said, and setting off, as he spoke, at a rapid pace, in the direction of Eugenia’s seat.
But as he drew nearer to her, his steps slackened. After all, what had he to say to her? Was it not even possible he had been mistaken in her identity? And supposing it were she – that this fragile shadow were the blooming girl he had left, not without some misgiving and regret, only a few weeks ago – why should he suppose he was to blame for the change? She had never looked very strong; she might have had any ordinary illness, that had nothing to say to him or her possible feelings towards him. Girls, now-a-days, didn’t die of broken hearts; that sort of thing was all very well in novels and ballads, but was seldom come across in real life, and more than half-inclined to turn back again to his friend with some excuse for his eccentric behaviour, Captain Chancellor stopped short. But before he had time to decide what he should do, a faint, low cry, that seemed somehow to shape itself into the sound of his own name, arrested him. He was nearer the garden bench than he had imagined: in his hurry and confusion he had approached it by another path; a step or two in advance and Eugenia stood before him. She had recognised him after he had passed with Major Thanet the second time, had sat there in an indescribable conflict of emotions – of fear and self-distrust; of vague, unreasonable anticipation; of foolish, irrepressible delight in the knowledge of his near presence; of bitter, humiliating consciousness that such feelings were no longer lawful – that he was now the betrothed, possibly even the husband, of another woman.
“Why did I see him? What unhappy fate has brought him here – to revive it all – to begin again all my struggles – just when I was growing a little happier and more at peace?” she had been crying in her heart. And then her ears had caught the quickly – approaching footsteps – the firm, sharp tread which she told herself she could have known among a thousand, and she forgot everything; forgot all about Roma Eyrecourt and his sudden departure, her own misery, his apparent indifference; remembered only that at last – at last – she saw him again, stood within a few feet of the man she had been doing her utmost to banish for ever from her heart and thoughts. One glance, all the labour was in vain – all the painful task to begin over again at the very beginning!
He was the first to break silence. It would have been a farce to have done so with any ordinary conventional form of greeting; her agitation, as she stood there, pale as death, trembling from head to foot, grasping convulsively at the rough woodwork of the bench for support – her poor “Philosophie” lying on the ground at her feet – was too palpable to be ignored; to have attempted to do so would have been to insult her. And Beauchamp Chancellor was not the man to stab deliberately and in cold blood, however indifferent he might be to suffering which fell not within his sight. And just now, in full view of Eugenia’s altered features and pitiful agitation, all the latent manliness of his nature was aroused; for the time he almost forgot himself in the sudden rush of tenderness for the girl who, he could no longer doubt, had suffered sorely for his sake; whose guileless devotion contrasted not unpleasantly with the still fresh remembrance of Roma Eyrecourt’s scornful indifference. So it was in a tone of extreme and unconcealed anxiety that he spoke.
“You have been ill, Miss Laurence,” he exclaimed; “I can see that you have been dreadfully ill. Good heavens, and I not to know it! And I have startled you by coming upon you so unexpectedly. What can I do or say to make you forgive me.”
Eugenia was recovering herself a little by now; some consciousness of what was due to her own self-respect was returning to her; she made a hard fight to regain her self-possession.
“There is nothing to forgive,” she answered, trying to smile, though her quivering lips and tremulous voice were by no means under her control. “I have been ill, but not ‘dreadfully.’ When one is usually strong, I suppose even a slight illness shakes one’s nerves. I am still absurdly easily startled.”
The last few words came very faintly. The same bewildering sensation of giddiness that she had felt once before in her life came over Eugenia; a horror seized her that in another moment she would again lose consciousness altogether – what might she not say, how might she not betray herself in such a case, to him – to this man who belonged to Roma Eyrecourt, not to her? She was standing by the end of the bench; she turned, and tried to reach the seat, but she could not see clearly, every object seemed to dance before her eyes, she would have fallen had not Beauchamp darted forward, caught her in his arms, and almost lifted her on to the bench. His touch seemed to inspire her with curious strength, the giddiness passed away; she sat up, and shrinking back from his supporting arm with an unmistakable air of repugnance, whispered – for she had not yet voice to speak – “Thank you, but please go away, Captain Chancellor. I am quite well again now.” Considerably mortified, Beauchamp sprang back. He was at all times easily nettled and prone to take offence, and in the present case the unexpectedness of the repulse made it additionally hurting. He stood still for a minute or two, watching Eugenia, as she sat in evident discomfort and constraint under his scrutiny. Then he spoke again – “I would have left you at once, Miss Laurence,” he said, stiffly, “if you were fit to be left, but you really are not. If you will tell me, however, where I can find your friends I will go in search of them, and not trouble you any more with my unwelcome presence.”
She looked up wistfully into his face.
“I have offended you,” she said. “Oh, what shall I do? I don’t know what to do. Oh, why did you come here? You make it so difficult – so dreadfully difficult. I don’t blame you – I know you could not help it: but I have been trying so hard to forget you, and you won’t let me. You have no right to put yourself in my way; it is cruel and unmanly of you,” she went on, with a quick fierceness in her tone; “you know how weak and ignorant I am. Why can’t you leave me? But, oh, what have I been saying?” And with a sudden awakening to the inference of her words, an overwhelming rush of shame, bewilderment, and misery, she hid her face in her hands, and burst into tears.
This was altogether too much for Captain Chancellor. He flung himself on the seat beside her, clasped her in his arms, lavishing upon her every term of lover-like endearment.
“Eugenia, my dearest, my own darling!” he exclaimed, “I cannot bear to see you so. Why should I keep away from you? Fate is too strong for prudence. We cannot be separated, you see. I will break every tie, I will crush every obstacle that can come between us. Look up, my dearest, and tell me you will be happy, and will trust yourself to me.”
She did not repulse him now; she was too exhausted and worn out to struggle. She hardly realised the meaning of his words, but for this short minute she allowed herself to rest in his arms, with a vague feeling that it was only for this once – he must go away, he must marry Roma; it must be, he could not break his word; and she, Eugenia, would never see him again; she would not live long now, she had no strength to struggle back to common life again, as she had nearly succeeded in doing; it would be better for her to die quietly, and then it would not surely matter to any one that she had for this once smothered her maidenly dignify, had allowed the promised husband of another to hold her in his arms, to call her his dearest, to kiss her pale cheeks, and swear he would never give her up.
Suddenly an approaching footstep startled them. Only a very few minutes had passed since Beauchamp had first returned to her, but to Eugenia it seemed hours. Captain Chancellor got up from the seat and stood quietly beside her, as if engaged in ordinary conversation. The new-comer was only a stranger who passed by without noticing them, but the interruption recalled Beauchamp’s thoughts to outside matters.
“I think perhaps I had better go,” he said, reluctantly, “but I cannot leave you to find your way back alone. My friend, Major Thanet, is waiting for me a little further on. He is lame, and cannot walk home alone. Would you mind remaining here a very few minutes till I have seen him safe back to his room, and then I can return here for you?”
The anxious tenderness of his words and manner was very sweet, to Eugenia, but she resisted the temptation. She had had her moment of weakness, but that was now past and gone. Still, this was not the time or place for saying what had to be said, nor had she now strength for any discussion. So she merely answered gently, so gently that any possibility of offence was out of the question —
“Please not. I mean, please don’t come back for me. It is better not. I am quite able to go home alone now; but if you would rather,” (in deference to a shake of his head), “you might leave a message at the hotel, asking Mrs Dalrymple’s maid to come for me. She will not be surprised; she often goes out with me, and she knows this seat.”
“I will do so,” he replied. “So you are with the Dalrymples!” – and Eugenia detected, and was not surprised at, a slight shade of annoyance in his tone.
“Yes,” she replied, simply.
“But – but that will not matter?” he inquired, hesitatingly. “You are your own mistress. You will see me? I shall try to see you in an hour or two again. There will be no difficulty about it?”
He had turned to leave her, but waited an instant for her answer.
“Oh, no, there will be no difficulty. I will see you, or write to you,” she said, a little confusedly.
Her last words struck him rather oddly, but he attributed them to her nervousness and embarrassment; and, fearful of increasing these, he left her, as she desired.
And for the next quarter of an hour, till the maid came for her, Eugenia never took her eyes from the path down which Beauchamp had disappeared. “I shall never see him again,” she said to herself; “never, never. I must not. He must not break his word for me. Oh, I hope – I do hope I shall not live much longer.”
When she got back to the hotel, Eugenia found the Dalrymples both out. Mr Dalrymple she knew was off for the day on some expedition; but his wife, she found on inquiry, had left word for her that she would be in in half an hour. So Eugenia went up to her own room, and sitting down, tried to decide what was best to do. She only saw two things clearly, – she must not risk seeing Beauchamp again, and she must confide in Mrs Dalrymple.
“There is no help for it,” she said to herself. “Even if I told her nothing, she is sure to meet him, and she could not but suspect something. It would never do to let her find it out for herself. Why, Roma Eyrecourt is her cousin! No, I must trust her; and I must get her to let me go home at once. I cannot stay here, – I cannot.”
Mrs Dalrymple, returning from her walk, was met by a request that she would at once go to Miss Laurence’s room. She felt a little startled.
“What is the matter? Miss Laurence is not ill, surely?” she said to her maid, who was watching for her with Eugenia’s message.
The young woman, a comparative stranger, answered that she did not know; she had not thought Miss Laurence looking very well when she came in, but she had not complained. Eugenia’s face, however, confirmed her friend’s fears.
“You are ill, my dear child,” she exclaimed at once. “Have you got cold again, do you think? You were looking so well this morning.”
“I am not ill, – truly I am not,” replied Eugenia. “But, dear Mrs Dalrymple, I wanted to see you as soon as you came in, to ask you to be so very, very kind as to let me go home at once, – to-day if possible.”
“Go home to-day! My dear Eugenia, it is out of the question. You must be ill,” said Mrs Dalrymple, considerably perplexed, and half-inclined to think the girl’s brain was affected.
“No, no; it isn’t that. Oh, Mrs Dalrymple, I can’t bear to tell you! I have never spoken of it to any one, – only to one person at least,” she said, correcting herself, as the remembrance of her conversations with Gerald returned to her mind. “But I am sure I can trust you, and you will understand. It is – it is because Captain Chancellor is here that I want to go.”
“My poor child!” said Mrs Dalrymple, very tenderly, drawing Eugenia nearer her as she spoke; and though she said no more, the girl saw how mistaken she had been in imagining that no one had guessed her secret, and a painful flush of shame rose to her brow at the thought.
Then, after a moment’s pause, her friend spoke again.
“You are sure of it?” she inquired. “You are sure that he is here, – actually here? May you not have made, some mistake?”
“Oh, no; I am sure, quite sure,” repeated Eugenia, earnestly. “He is certainly here, staying at Nunswell. For all I know, in this very house.”
Mrs Dalrymple sat silent again for a little, apparently thinking it over.
“I don’t quite understand it,” she said at length; “what he is doing here just now, I mean. I thought he was at Winsley. But all the same, – though of course it is most unfortunate, most peculiarly unfortunate, – the very thing of all others I should most have wished to avoid for you, – all the same, my dear child, I confess I hardly see that it would be right or wise for us to allow it to interfere with our plans. Of course, if you go home, we shall go too. That does not matter; it would make very little difference to us. But don’t you think, Eugenia, it would be just a little undignified, – not to say cowardly, – to seem afraid of him, – to run away whenever he appears? I should like him rather to see, or to think, that he is no more to you than he deserves to be. Don’t be offended with me. I have felt for you and with you more than I can express all through.”
She waited rather anxiously for Eugenia’s answer. It was slow of coming. Mrs Dalrymple began to fear she had gone too far; she could not understand the look of embarrassment on Eugenia’s face.
“Yes,” she said, at last; “you are quite right. It would have been cowardly to have run away had it been as you think, though I dare say I should have wished to do so all the same. I am a coward, I suppose; at least, I entirely distrust my own strength. And I have reason enough to do so,” she added, in a lower tone, hardly intended for her companion’s ears. “But it isn’t quite as you think. It is not only on my own account I want to go away. It is not only that I have seen him – Captain Chancellor, I mean. I have spoken to him. He saw me this morning in the gardens, and came back to speak to me; and – and – if I stay here he will insist on seeing me, and it may be very painful for us all.”
“I don’t understand,” exclaimed Mrs Dalrymple. “What can he want to see you for? What can he have to say to you, – he, engaged to Roma Eyrecourt?”
“I can’t tell you. I am so afraid of making you angry, for of course she is your cousin,” said Eugenia, in great distress. “But still I thought it best to be quite open with you. He forgot himself, – for the time only, I dare say,” she continued, with an irrepressible sigh and a sudden sense of bitter humility. “He saw that I had been ill, and I think he was dreadfully sorry for me, and I was alone, and somehow I suppose I was frightfully undignified, and unmaidenly even,” – the harsh word, though self-inflicted, bringing a painful blush with it. “I dare say it was all my fault, but any way he offered to give up everything for my sake, to break all ties and obstacles.”
“And you accepted such a proposal?” exclaimed Mrs Dalrymple, indignantly, for, after all, “blood is thicker than water,” and the imagined insult to her kinswoman, of such treatment, struck home.
“No, oh, no; of course not,” replied Eugenia, eagerly. “That is what makes me want to go. I had not time – we were interrupted – I could not make him understand that such a thing was impossible, – impossible in every sense, – for him, – for me. Could I, do you think, marry any man who, for my sake, had broken his word to another woman, – had perhaps broken another woman’s heart? Oh, no, no. You do not think I could? I would rather die!”
“And do you think he really meant it?” questioned Mrs Dalrymple. “Certainly I have not seen much of him of late years, but I used to know him well, and I must say it is not the sort of thing I should have imagined him doing. He must be either a better or a worse man than I have supposed – possibly both.”
Eugenia did not reply to the last observation: perhaps she did not hear it. But she answered Mrs Dalrymple’s question.
“I do think he meant it. And I think he will continue to mean it unless it is at once discouraged,” she said; “at once, before he has time to do anything rash with regard to Miss Eyrecourt. It will not be enough for me to refuse to see him – I must go away. While I stay here, any unlucky chance might bring us together again, like this morning. And I cannot trust myself, now that he knows – for he does know,” she turned her face away, “that – that I do care for him, that I would make any sacrifice for him except doing wrong, or letting him do wrong. Though, indeed, I must not boast: no one knows how hard it is not to do wrong, till one is tried.”
“My poor child,” said Mrs Dalrymple, quite as tenderly now as at the beginning of the conversation. And then she added, “I wonder what we should do. I wish Henry were back.”
“When do you think he will be back?” asked Eugenia, influenced not so much by her friend’s wifely belief in Mr Dalrymple’s diplomatic powers as by her own anxiety to obtain his approval of her at once leaving Nunswell.
“I don’t know. Not before evening,” replied her friend.
“And something must be done – should be done before post-time,” said Eugenia. “He said he would call to see me; would it do for me to write a note to be given him when he comes? It will be so difficult to say it. Oh dear, oh dear!”
She got up from her seat, and walked to the window and back again, her hands clasped, in restless misery. There came a knock at the door.
“A gentleman to see Miss Laurence, if you please, ma’am,” said Mrs Dalrymple’s Bertha, importantly. “This is his card. He asked for the young lady staying with you, ma’am.”
Mrs Dalrymple took the card mechanically, and glanced at the name as if there were still any possibility of mistake.
“Captain Chancellor,” the two words stared her in the face, and down in the corner in little letters – “203rd (East Woldshire) Regiment.”
It all looked so straightforward and aboveboard: there was no apparent consciousness of conduct or intentions “unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.” And yet the girl he was calmly proposing to treat with ignominy and indignity was her own cousin; the girl for whose sake he proposed so to dishonour himself actually a guest in her own charge! Mrs Dalrymple felt more and more perplexed. How could the young man have the audacity to send up his card in this brazen-faced way? Surely there must be some strange mistake. A sudden thought struck her. She turned to Eugenia, standing pale, and with great, wistful eyes, beside her.
“He does mean it, you see,” whispered the girl.
“Yes, I see,” replied the matron. Then turning to the servant: “Bertha, say to Captain Chancellor we shall see him immediately,” and when Bertha had departed on her errand, “Eugenia, my love,” she said gently, “I think it will be best for me to see him.”
“Very well. Thank you very much,” replied Eugenia, yet with a wild, unreasonable regret that she had been so taken at her word, that fate had not forced her into seeing him again, into the very danger her better nature so dreaded and shrank from.
