Kitabı oku: «Not Without Thorns», sayfa 22
Volume Three – Chapter Two.
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And sometimes I am hopeful as the spring,
And up my fluttering heart is borne aloft,
As high and gladsome as the lark at sunrise;
And then, as though the fowler’s shaft had pierced it,
It comes plumb down, with such a dead, dead fall.
Philip Van Artevelde.
It was late in the evening of an August day when Captain Chancellor and his wife reached Halswood. Beauchamp had been anxious to complete the journey at once without any halts by the way, but to do this it had been necessary to leave Winsley very early in the morning, in consequence of which Eugenia was very tired. A certain excitement had kept her up during the first part of the journey, an excitement arising from mingled causes, but of which the anticipation of the glories of Halswood about to be revealed to her was a much less considerable one than would have been generally credited. Till they had passed Marley Junction, the ugly familiar station where everybody coming south from or going north to Wareborough and Bridgenorth always changed carriages, Eugenia had not been without a childish hope that she might catch sight of some home face; Frank perhaps, or more probably his brother, or not impossibly her father even. A sort of warm thrill of pleasure passed through her at the thought; it was more than two months since she had seen arty one of the friends among whom her nineteen years of girlhood had been passed, and before her marriage she had never been away from her father’s house for more than a fortnight – some amount of home-sickness was surely to be excused. All the way to Marley she felt as if she were going home in reality; the sight of a tall chimney, the dirty smoke-begrimed red of the streets of brick houses of the first little manufacturing town through which they passed made the tears come into her eyes. Her husband noticed their dewy appearance and remonstrated with her on the folly of sitting close beside the window, “with that abominable smoke and filthy smuts flying in.” He got up and shut the window, remarking as he did so that railway lines to civilised places should really not be cut through these atrocious manufacturing districts; he trusted nothing would ever necessitate his entering Wareborough or Bridgenorth or any of these Wareshire towns again.
Eugenia said nothing, and changed her seat to the opposite side of the carriage as she was bidden. She had felt no temptation to confide to her husband the real cause of the emotion he had not even imagined to be such, but her eyes did not immediately recover themselves, and Marley once left behind, her spirits fell. Every mile of the unfamiliar country through which their journey now lay seemed to increase her painful sense of loneliness and strangeness.
“Oh,” thought she, as they at last reached Chilworth, the nearest point to Halswood. “Oh, if only this were Bridgenorth, and we were going to the little house, or even to the lodgings we used to talk of living in there, and Sydney perhaps waiting to welcome us.”
The tears got the length of dropping this time. She made no effort to conceal them, for by now it was too dark for her husband to see her face.
No sensation of any kind was perceptible at the little station on their arrival. Under the circumstances, of course any demonstration of rejoicing at the home-coming of the new lord of the greater part of the adjacent soil would have been the extreme of bad taste, and there was nothing by which a stranger could have guessed that the lady and gentleman who got out of the train and quietly passed through the station-gate to the carriage waiting outside were persons of more than ordinary local importance, save perhaps a certain extra obsequiousness on the part of the very unofficial-looking station-master, and a somewhat greater than usual readiness to bestir himself on the part of the solitary porter. Mrs Chancellor, however, was far too self-absorbed to notice anything of the kind; it had never occurred to her to think of herself and her husband as objects of interest or curiosity to the outside world, and had the joy bells been ringing and bonfires blazing she would probably have turned to her companion with an inquiry as to the cause.
There was a momentary delay as she was getting into the carriage – Captain Chancellor turned back to give some additional instruction respecting the luggage. Eugenia standing waiting could not fail to notice that the brougham was a new one, and that everything about it, including the deep mourning livery of the men-servants, was perfectly well-appointed.
“What a nice carriage this is, Beauchamp,” she said, when the door was shut, and they were rolling smoothly and swiftly away.
“Yes,” he replied, not ill-pleased by her admiration; “I wrote for it when I first came down here. There was nothing fit for use. Herbert Chancellor never brought any carriages down here – not of course that they would have been mine if he had. Yes, it is a first-rate little brougham. Did you notice the horses? Oh no, by-the-bye it was too dark.”
“I did not notice them. The lamps lighted up the carriage, and drew my attention to it. The horses were more in the shade. Not that I should venture to give an opinion on them. You know how dreadfully ignorant I am of such things.”
“You will soon pick up quite as much knowledge of the kind as you need. I loathe and detest ‘horsy’ women. Roma even, if she were any one but herself, I should say had a shade too much of that sort of thing. But on the other hand, of course, it doesn’t do to be in a state of utter ignorance about such matters.”
“No, oh no,” said Eugenia. “I quite know how you mean. I want to understand a little more about a good many things that I have not come in the way of hitherto.”
Beauchamp’s tone had been pleasant and encouraging. Eugenia’s impressionable spirits began to rise. If she could but be sure of always pleasing her husband! If she could but feel that in all difficulties, great and small, she might appeal to him, certain of sympathy, certain of encouragement! It might come to be so – married life she had often heard, was not to be tested by the outset. Circumstances so far had certainly been somewhat against her. It might be that this coming to Halswood, so dreaded by her, was to be the beginning of the life of perfect union, of complete mutual comprehension which she had dreamt of.
A glow of new hopefulness seemed to creep through her at the thought – from very intensity of feeling she remained silent, wishing that she could find words in which to express to her husband a tithe of the yearning devotion, the ardent resolutions ready at his slightest bidding to spring into life. In a minute or two he spoke again.
“Are you tired, Eugenia?” he said. “What makes you so silent?”
There was a slight impatience in his tone. He wanted her to be bright and eager, and delighted with everything. He had by now almost got over his fear of “undue or underbred elation” at her good fortune, on his wife’s part, and when alone with him some amount of demonstrative appreciation of what through him had fallen to her share, would not have been objectionable. But, as was usual with her, when carried away by strong feeling of her own, Eugenia perceived nothing of the restrained irritation in Beauchamp’s voice.
“Tired,” she said, with a little start, “oh, no; at least I may be a little tired, but it isn’t that that made me silent. I was only thinking.”
Her voice quivered a little. A sudden fear of hysterics came over Captain Chancellor. Some women always got hysterics when they were tired, and Eugenia was so absurdly excitable. A word or a look at any moment would make her cry.
“Thinking,” he said, half rallyingly, half impatiently; “what about? Nothing unpleasant, I hope? though there certainly is no counting on women’s caprices.”
“I can’t possibly tell you all I was thinking,” she began, still speaking tremulously. “I was thinking how I do hope we shall be happy together in this new life, how I trust you will be pleased with me always, how I hope you will let me come to you with my little difficulties and anxieties, and – and that we may be at one always in everything, and not grow apart from each other. Oh, I can’t half say what I feel. I think – I think, I sympathise a little with the wife in the ‘Lord of Burleigh,’ I feel frightened and ignorant, and a little lonely. But oh, Beauchamp, if you will help me – don’t you remember that beautiful line —
“And he cheered her soul with love.
“If we always keep close together, I shall not regret anything.”
By this time she was in tears. Beauchamp was no great reader of poetry. He “got up” what was wanted for drawing-room small talk, and that was about all. But, as it happened, he knew the poem – the story of it, at least, to which she alluded, and had more than once made great fun of it.
“Catch any woman of the lower classes being such a fool. Founded on fact, not a bit of it. She died of consumption, you may be sure,” was the opinion he had expressed.
So, being a little “put out” to begin with, and by no means in the humour for a sentimental scene – tears, and all the rest of it – Eugenia’s somewhat incoherent speech, the allusion at the end of it especially, met with by no means a tender or sympathising reception.
“Really, Eugenia,” he began, and at the sound of the two words all the new hopefulness, the revived tenderness, the warmth died in the girlish wife’s heart – a cold, dull ache of disappointment, relieved but by the more acute stings of mortification and wounded feeling, setting in, the same instant, in their stead. “Really, Eugenia, you choose very odd times for your fits of – I really don’t know what to call it – exaggerated sentiment, as you object to ‘gushingness.’ We haven’t been quarrelling that I know of, and I have no intention of doing so. What you mean by talking of ‘not regretting’ anything, I don’t know in the least. I hate maudlin sentiment, and that poetry you are so fond of stuffs your head with it. For goodness’ sake, try to be comfortable, and let me be so. No one expects impossibilities of you – you talk as if I were an unreasonable tyrant. If anything could ‘drive us apart,’ as you call it, it would be this sort of nonsense, and these everlasting tears.”
He had paused once or twice in this speech, but Eugenia remained perfectly silent, and this irritated him into saying more than he intended, more than he actually felt, and the consciousness of the harshness of his own words irritated him still further. Still Eugenia did not speak. He let down the carriage window on his side impatiently, thrust his head out into the darkness, then drew it in, and jerked up the glass again. Eugenia did not move – he glanced at her. The tears he had complained of had disappeared as if by magic; her face, in the uncertain light of the carriage lamps, looked unnaturally white and set, the mouth compressed, the eyes gazing straight before them. It was really too bad of her to behave so absurdly, thought Beauchamp, feeling himself not a little aggrieved. Still, he wished he had not spoken quite so strongly.
“Eugenia,” he began again, “do try to be reasonable. You take up everything so exaggeratedly. You know perfectly well I have no wish to hurt you. But really it is not easy to avoid doing so. Living with you is like treading on egg-shells.”
Then she turned towards him with a look in her eyes which he had never seen in them before – a look which the sweet wistful eyes of Eugenia Laurence had never known, a look which should have made her husband consider what he was doing, what he had done.
“It is a terrible pity you did not find out my real character before,” she said, “before it was too late. As it is too late, however, no doubt the best thing you can do is to tell me plainly how I can make myself the least disagreeable to you. You shall be troubled by no more ‘maudlin sentiment,’ or tears. So much I can promise you.” Then she became perfectly silent again. Captain Chancellor gave a little laugh.
“I am glad to hear it,” he said, with a slight sneer. “And, by Jove! what a temper she has after all,” he thought to himself. “They are all alike, I suppose, all the world over. They all want a tight hand. But I flatter myself I know how to break them in.” Then he hummed a tune, drew out his watch and looked what o’clock it was, fidgeted with the window again, all with an air of perfect indifference, which he imagined to be his actual state of mind. But far down in his heart there was a little ache of self-reproach and uneasiness. Had Eugenia turned to him now with tearful eyes and broken words, little as he might have understood her feelings, he would certainly not have repulsed her.
Just at this moment the carriage turned in at the Halswood lodge. There was an instant’s stoppage, while the heavy iron gates were opened, then they went on again, even more swiftly and smoothly than before.
“We are only a quarter of a mile from the house now,” said Captain Chancellor. “You should see the lights from your side.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Eugenia, indifferently, turning her eyes listlessly in the direction in which he pointed, thinking that she would not care if an earthquake were suddenly to swallow up Halswood and everything connected with it, herself included; yet determined to hide all feeling – to appear as unconcerned as Beauchamp himself. “Ah, yes, I see them over there. I hope they will have fires,” with a little shiver.
“Fires?” repeated Beauchamp. “After such a hot day. Why, it is oppressive still. You can’t be cold, surely?”
“Yes, I am,” she said, “very;” and as she spoke, the carriage drew up under the pillared portico, which Captain Chancellor had pronounced so desperately ugly the first time he came to Halswood, and in another moment Eugenia’s feet had crossed the threshold of what was now her home.
Three or four servants were waiting in the hall. At first sight Mrs Chancellor imagined them to be all strangers to her, but in another moment, to her delight, she recognised in the face of a young girl standing modestly somewhat in the rear of the others, the familiar features of Barbara’s niece. Mrs Eyrecourt had not succeeded in her design of substituting a more experienced lady’s maid in the place of Eugenia’s protégée. Something had been said about it, but in the pressure of more important arrangements Captain Chancellor had allowed the matter to stand over for the present, and it had been arranged that Rachel should be sent to Halswood the day before her mistress’s arrival, but in the absorption of her own thoughts Eugenia had for the time forgotten this, and the pleasure of the surprise was great.
“Oh, Rachel!” she exclaimed with effusion, darting forward and shaking hands eagerly with the young girl – “I am so pleased to see you. Did you come yesterday, and how did you leave them all? How is papa? And Miss Sydney – Mrs Thurston, I mean?”
“They are both very well, indeed, ma’am,” said the girl, flushing with pleasure at the friendly greeting – her spirits had been somewhat depressed since her arrival; the great, empty house, the few servants, all middle-aged or old, had seemed strange and cold to Barbara’s niece; “I went to see Mrs Thurston the last thing the night before I left – there is a letter waiting for you from her upstairs that she told me to put in your room – and Mr Laurence, ma’am, he wished me to – ”
“Eugenia,” said Captain Chancellor’s voice from behind his wife, “Eugenia, if you are not very particularly occupied, will you spare me a moment?”
She had vexed him again, but in the softening influence of the home news, the sound of the dear home names, Eugenia’s better self was again uppermost. There was no resentment or haughtiness in her tone or manner as she turned quickly towards her husband.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” she exclaimed; “I was so pleased to see Rachel and hear about them all at home, that!” But she said no more, for glancing at Beauchamp, she saw that her words had deepened rather than lightened the look of annoyance on his face.
“Mrs Grier,” he said, addressing an elderly person in black silk, tall, thin, stiff, and yet depressed-looking, who came forward as she heard her name. “Eugenia, this is Mrs Grier. Mrs Grier has been at Halswood for I don’t know how many years. How many is it?” turning to the housekeeper with the pleasant smile that so lighted up his somewhat impassive face.
“Thirty-three, sir,” replied Mrs Grier, thawing a little, “and more changes in the three than in all the thirty.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Eugenia, kindly, shaking hands with the melancholy housekeeper. “You must have had a great deal to go through lately.”
“I have, indeed, ma’am. Three funerals in a year, and all three the masters of the house,” answered Mrs Grier, shaking her head solemnly. “It isn’t often things happen so in a family. But all the same, ma’am, I wish you joy, you and my master, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” said the two thus cheerfully addressed.
Eugenia felt almost inclined to laugh; but Captain Chancellor hardly relished the peculiar style of Mrs Grier’s congratulation.
“It’s time the luck should turn again now,” he said lightly. “Three is the correct number for that sort of thing, isn’t it?” Mrs Grier seemed struck by the remark.
“There may be something in that, sir,” she allowed.
Then one or two others of the head servants, who, having endured the twenty-five years of semi-starvation of the old Squire’s rule, had come to be looked upon as fixtures in the place, were in turn introduced by name to Mrs Chancellor.
“Some of the new servants are to be here to-morrow,” said Mrs Grier, to Captain Chancellor. “I hope you will find everything comfortable in the meantime, sir.”
Dinner – or, more properly speaking, supper – was prepared for the travellers in the dining-room – a huge, dark cavern of a room it looked to Eugenia, who shivered as the fireless grate met her view. She was too tired to eat; but, afraid of annoying her husband, she made a pretence of doing so, feeling eager for Sydney’s letter, and a chat with Rachel about “home,” in her own room.
These pleasures were deferred for a little by the appearance of Mrs Grier to do the honour of showing her lady her rooms. The housekeeper had rather taken a fancy to Mrs Chancellor. Eugenia’s allusion to what she “must have had to go through,” had been a most lucky one, for Mrs Grier was one of those curiously constituted beings to whom condolence never comes amiss. The most delicate flattery was less acceptable to her than a sympathising remark that she was “looking far from well,” and no one could pay her a higher compliment than by telling her she bore traces of having known a great deal of trouble. She was not, for her class, an uneducated person; but she was constitutionally superstitious. Omens, dreams, deathbeds, funerals, all things ghastly and ghostly, were dear to her soul; and her thirty-three years’ life in a gloomy, half-deserted house, such as Halswood had been under the old régime, had not conduced to a healthier tone of mind.
“Along this way, if you please, ma’am,” she said to Eugenia, pointing to the long corridor which ran to the right of the great staircase they had come up by. “The rooms to the left have not been occupied for many years. We thought – that is, Mr Blinkhorn and I – that you would prefer to use the rooms which have been the best family-rooms for some generations. It would feel less strange-like – more at home, if I may say so. Here, ma’am,” opening the first door she came to, “is what was the late Mrs Chancellor’s boudoir. It is eight-and-twenty years next month since she was taken ill suddenly, sitting over there by the window in that very chair. It was heart-disease, I believe. She had had a good deal of trouble in her time, poor lady, for the old Squire was always peculiar. They carried her —we did (I was her maid then) – into her bedroom – the next room, ma’am – this,” again opening a door, with an air of peculiar gratification in what she was going to say, “and she died the same night in the bed you see, standing as it does now.”
The present Mrs Chancellor gave a little shiver.
“The next room again, ma’am,” proceeded Mrs Grier, “is quite as pleasant a one as this, and about the same size. It is the room in which old Mr Chancellor breathed his last, last December. He was eighty-nine, ma’am; but he died very hard, for all that. We prepared both these rooms that you might take your choice.”
“Thank you,” replied Eugenia. “I certainly do not feel as if I preferred either. What rooms did the last Mr and Mrs Chancellor use when they were here?” she went on to ask, in a desperate hope that she might light upon some more inviting habitation than these great, dark, musty apartments, with their funereal four-post bedsteads and gloomy associations.
“They had rooms on the other side of the passage,” said Mrs Grier. “Mrs Chancellor had a prejudice against those beautiful mahogany bedsteads,” with indignant emphasis. Evidently Herbert Chancellor’s wife had found small favour in the eyes of Mrs Grier. “But Mr Chancellor died,” with satisfaction, “in his grandfather’s room – the next door, as I told you, ma’am, to this.”
“I don’t wonder at it,” thought Eugenia to herself. She wished she could find courage to ask if it would not be possible for her at once to take up her quarters in one of the rooms in which, so far at least, no Chancellor had lain in state, and was just meditating a request to be shown the one in which Herbert had not died, when Mrs Grier nipped her hopes in the bud.
“To-morrow, of course, any room can be prepared that you like, ma’am,” said the housekeeper; “but for to-night, these two beds are the only ones with sheets on.”
There was a slightly aggrieved tone in her voice. Eugenia instantly took alarm that she might have hurt the old lady’s feelings.
“Oh, thank you, Mrs Grier!” she exclaimed. “I am quite satisfied with this room, and I am sure it will be very comfortable. To-morrow I should like you to show me all over the house. Of course I don’t yet know how we shall settle about any of the rooms permanently. It depends on Captain Chancellor. He intends to refurnish several. But now I think I will go to bed, if you will send Rachel. I am so tired!”
“You do look tired, ma’am. It quite gave me a turn to see you so white when you came first, ma’am,” said Mrs Grier, more cheerfully than she had yet spoken.
And at supper in her own room, when she went downstairs, she confided to Mr Blinkhorn certain agreeable presentiments with regard to their new mistress.
“A nice-spoken young lady. None of your dressed-up fine ladies like the last Mrs Chancellor and her daughter, who must have French beds to sleep in, and could never so much as remember one’s name. Oh, no, this Mrs Chancellor is a different kind altogether. But, mark my words, Mr Blinkhorn, she isn’t long for this world. The Captain may talk of luck turning – ah, indeed! – was it for nothing I dreamt I saw our new lady with black hair instead of brown? Was it for nothing the looking-glass dipped out of my hands when I was dusting her room again this afternoon?”
“But it didn’t break,” objected Mr Blinkhorn.
“Break, what has that to do with it?” exclaimed Mrs Grier, indignantly. “But I know of old it’s no use wasting words on some subjects on you, Mr Blinkhorn. Those that won’t see won’t see, but some day you may remember my words.”
But, notwithstanding Mrs Grier’s forebodings, notwithstanding her own wounded and troubled spirit, Eugenia Chancellor soon fell asleep, and slept soundly. She fell asleep with Sydney’s letter under her pillow, and its loving words in her heart; and the next morning, when the sun shone again, and her husband spoke kindly and seemed to have forgotten yesterday’s cloud, she began again to think that after all life might be bright for her, and their home a happy one.
“Comme on pense à vingt ans.”
