Kitabı oku: «Not Without Thorns», sayfa 24
“It is exceedingly kind of you. I should have liked very much to go to you the week after next,” began Eugenia, looking as if she meant what she said. “It is so unlucky – but I am afraid we must decline. We are engaged for the whole of that week at home. You remember, Beauchamp? I heard this morning that – ”
“I think you have made a confusion between the week after next and the week after that,” said Captain Chancellor, blandly. “I don’t know of anything to prevent our accepting Lady Hereward’s invitation. We did expect some friends; but, don’t you remember, Eugenia, that Colonel Masterton put off his visit for a week?”
“Yes,” said Eugenia, quietly; “I remember.”
“Then may I hope to see you,” asked Lady Hereward, feeling a little puzzled, “on Tuesday? – that will be the 22nd. George comes the same day.”
“Certainly,” said Beauchamp. “We shall be delighted to join you.”
And “Thank you – you are very, very kind,” said Eugenia again.
The tone in which the simple words were uttered was almost girlishly cordial, yet, somehow, Lady Hereward did not feel satisfied. “Her manner is a little peculiar,” she thought to herself, as she drove back again to Stebbing-le-Bray, “though at first she seemed so frank. I hope my invitation did not really interfere with anything. Could it be shyness that made her not want to come? How very lovely her eyes are! I wonder if my Alice’s eyes would have looked like that – they were brown. Alice would not have been so pretty. And, dear me, by this time she might have had a daughter as old as that child! Ah, my little Alice!”
When Lady Hereward had gone, Eugenia sat still for a moment or two, then rose and left the room. In the hall she met her husband.
“Where are you going?” he said. “Come in here for a minute,” opening the door of his study, beside which they were standing. She followed him, but did not sit down. “Tell me,” he went on, “how do you like the old lady?”
“Very much,” replied Eugenia; then turned again, as if eager to go.
“What are you in such a hurry about? Can’t you wait a minute?” he said, impatiently. “Where are you going?”
“To write to Sydney, of course, to put off their visit,” she answered, her lips quivering. “I must do it at once.”
“Confound Sydney!” he broke out, rudely. “Your temper, Eugenia, is enough to provoke a saint. Wait an instant – do be reasonable – why can’t you propose to Sydney to – ”
But he had gone too far. Eugenia turned and looked at him for a moment with the unlovely light of angry indignation in her eyes; then left the room quietly.
“By Jove!” said Beauchamp, when left to himself, “I begin to suspect I have been a great fool, after all!”
But reflection and a cigar soothed him a little; half an hour later he followed his wife to her boudoir. She was writing busily.
“Eugenia,” he began, “I am sorry for my rudeness just now, but you are very unreasonable. Why can’t you write to your people, and ask them to come on the Friday? We return then. Any one but you would understand my reasons for wishing to go to Marshlands.”
“I do understand them, rather too well,” replied his wife, coldly. “As for asking my people to come on Friday, it is out of the question. My brother-in-law cannot be away on Sunday; and besides, I cannot ask my father and Sydney – neither of them strong – to come so long a journey for only two days.”
“Why for only two days?”
“Because on Monday all your friends are coming, and you do not wish mine to be here at the same time.”
“I never said anything of the kind,” exclaimed Beauchamp, angrily, aware nevertheless that he had thought something very much of the kind. It was not that he was ashamed of Mr Laurence or Sydney; he liked them both very well; but there had been a good deal of “chaff” about his Wareborough marriage, and he had imagined more. He could ill bear chaff, and his constitutional and avowed arrogance laid him peculiarly open to it in certain directions. How he had sneered and made fun of other men in the old days for being “caught” by a pretty face or a pair of bright eyes! He was not ashamed of his marriage – he was proud of his wife in herself – but on the whole, he preferred that his old friends, on their first visit, should not find the house full of his Wareborough relations-in-law. But he had not imagined that Eugenia suspected this.
“I never said anything of the kind,” he repeated, working himself into a rage. “But I warn you, Eugenia, if you don’t take care what you are about, you will drive me into thinking, and saying too, many things I never wish to think or say.”
She got up from her seat, and stood facing him.
“I know what you mean,” she said, huskily, a white despair creeping over her face. “You mean that you regret your marriage. Why did you do it at all then? – tell me. Why did you make me think you everything great and noble, to open my eyes now like this? Why did you not leave me where I was, happy and loved, instead of making me care for you? Why did you ask me to be your wife?”
“Why, indeed? You may well ask,” replied Captain Chancellor, in a bitter, contemptuous tone.
Then he turned and left the room. He put down all she had said to “temper,” of course; but some of her words had wounded and mortified him not a little.
Eugenia stood there where he had left her, in blank, bewildered misery. Only one thought glanced with any brightness through the black cloud of wretchedness which seemed to choke her.
“He did love me once,” she said to herself. “If all the rest was a dream, still he did love me once.”
And but for this, she thought she must have died.
Volume Three – Chapter Four.
“By the Spring.”
Life, that dares send
A challenge to his end,
And when it comes, say, “Welcome, friend.”
Crashaw.
Tuesday the 22nd came, but Captain Chancellor set off on his visit to Marshlands alone. Eugenia was ill – too ill to leave her room, though better than she had been. The restrained suffering of the last few weeks, the unhealthily reserved and isolated life she had begun to live – she to whom sympathy was as the air she breathed – all had told upon her; and the excitement of the painful discussion with her husband the day of Lady Hereward’s unfortunate visit, had been the finishing stroke. After that she gave way altogether.
She was not sorry to be ill. On the whole, she felt it the best thing that could have happened to her. She was glad to be alone. She was very glad now that Sydney’s visit had been deferred. With all her haste and impulsiveness, there was in her a curious mixture of clear-headedness and reasoning power. She liked to understand things – to get to the bottom of them. Now that she had left off pretending to deceive herself with false representations – now that she had ceased to try to cheat herself into imagining she was happy – she found a strange, half-morbid satisfaction in dissecting and analysing the whole – her own character and her husband’s; the past lives of both, and the influences that had made them what they were; the special, definite causes of their discordancy.
“He is not – I see it plainly now,” she said to herself, with a curious, hopeless sort of calm, “he is not in the very least the man I imagined. That Beauchamp has never existed. Is it just, therefore, that I should blame the real one for not being what he never was?” Here she got a little puzzled, and tried to look at it from a fresh point of view. “And being what he is, and no more, why should I not make the best of it? It seems to me there is something repulsive and unworthy in the thought. I would almost rather go on being miserable. Yet I suppose many women have had to do it. I could fancy Sydney, for instance, doing it, and never letting any one suspect she had had it to do. In time, perhaps, I may find it easier, or grow callous.”
Then she would set to work to think out a new rôle for herself – that of an utterly lonely, impossibly self-reliant woman, living a life of self-abnegation, of lofty devotion to duty – unappreciated devotion, unsuspected abnegation – such as no woman has ever yet lived since women were. Seen through the softening medium of physical weakness, not amounting to actual suffering, this new way of looking at things came to have a certain attraction for her. The idea of total and lasting sacrifice of all hopes of personal happiness, all yearning for sympathy, was grand enough and impossible enough to recommend itself greatly to this ardent, extreme nature, to which anything was better than second bests, nothing so antagonistic as compromise in any form.
“I have staked my all and lost,” she said to herself with a sort of piteous grandiloquence; “there is nothing left me but duty and endurance; for though he did love me, I doubt if he does so now. I am not necessary to his happiness. He does not and cannot understand me.”
Only unfortunately there were two or three little difficulties in the way of settling down comfortably to this conclusion. In the first place, notwithstanding her love of theorising, and of idealising even the woes of her lot, Eugenia was essentially honest, and being so she could not allow to herself that her conduct had been blameless, especially in this last and most serious disagreement. She had said things which she knew would gall and irritate her husband. In the morbid excitement of the moment she owned to herself that she had even wished them to have this effect, that his behaviour might excuse the violence of her indignation. And her conduct in general – her conduct ever since their marriage – ever since, at least, the first few weeks of careless happiness – how did that now appear to her from her new point of view? She knew she had been gentle, and in a superficial sense unselfish; with but very rare exceptions she had entirely merged her own wishes in those of her husband, had opposed nothing that he had suggested. Such submission, such sinking of her own individuality, had been unnatural and forced, completely foreign to her character. And, what had been its motive? Not the highest – far from it. It had not been that she really believed that in so doing she was acting her wifely part to perfection; it had not been earnest endeavour after the best within her reach that had prompted her, but rather, a cowardly, a selfish determination to close her eyes to the facts of her life – a weak refusal to see anything she did not want to see – the old wilful cry, “All or nothing; give me all or I die” – the shrinking from owning, even to herself, the self-willed impetuosity with which she had acted – the terror of acknowledging that she had been deceived, or rather, had deceived herself.
“Yes,” she said, “I have been all wrong together. How selfish I have been too! Months ago how indignant I used to get with poor Sydney if she ever attempted, as she used to call it, to ‘clip my wings for me.’ How angry I was with papa when he suggested that we should defer our marriage till we knew a little more of each other! How selfish I was in Paris, too – selfish and unsympathising in Beauchamp’s change of fortune! Perhaps, after all, it is no more than I have deserved that he should feel as he does now.”
The reflection was a wholesome one, and its influence softening, and Beauchamp had been very kind since her illness. He might not understand her, but at times she felt it was certainly going too far to say that he no longer cared for her. He seemed to have already quite forgotten all about this last discussion, and in truth the impression it had made upon him had been by no means a deep one. “It was all a fit of temper of Eugenia’s,” he said to himself, and as one of his fixed ideas was that such a thing as a woman without a temper had never existed, he resigned himself to his fate, with the hope that his share of this unavoidable drawback to the charms of married life might be small.
Up to the last Captain Chancellor hoped that his wife would be able to accompany him to Marshlands. To do him justice, he was very reluctant to go without her.
“It is such a pity,” he said. “It would be just what I should like, for you to see a good deal of Lady Hereward. It isn’t every one that she takes to, I can tell you.”
“I like her in herself,” said Eugenia; “the only thing I dislike her for is that she is Lady Hereward. I got tired of her name before I had ever seen her.”
The moment she had said this she regretted it. Beauchamp’s brow clouded over.
“Of course,” he replied, coldly, “if you set yourself against her I can’t help it. Perhaps the best plan would be for me to write making an excuse for us both, and have done with the acquaintance. I am sick of discussions about everything I propose.”
It was hard upon her; it was so seldom, so very seldom she had opposed him in anything, or even expressed an opinion.
“I am very sorry I cannot go,” she said, “but your giving up going is not to be thought of. There is no reason for it. I am not seriously ill. There is nothing wrong with me but what a few days’ rest will set right.”
This was true. So Captain Chancellor set off for Marshlands alone, and Eugenia, solitary and suffering, spent in her own room the week she had so eagerly anticipated.
Time went on. November past, midwinter is soon at hand, and Christmas had come and gone before, contrary to the Chilworth doctor’s sanguine opinion, Mrs Chancellor was at all like herself again. It was a dreary winter to her. Had she been in good health, some reaction from the hopeless depression which had gradually taken hold of her would have been pretty sure to set in – a reaction, perhaps, of a sound and healthy nature; possibly, nevertheless, of the reverse. This, however, was not the case. At the beginning of her illness, things had looked more promising: her husband’s kindness had touched and softened her, her own reflections had pointed the right way. But as the days went on and Eugenia felt herself growing weaker instead of stronger, her clearer view of things clouded over again. It takes a great reserve of mutual trust and sympathy to stand the wearing effects of a trying though not acute illness. Beauchamp got tired of his wife’s never being well – so at least she fancied – tired of it, and then indifferent, or if not indifferent, accustomed to it. And whether this was really the case or not, there was some excuse for her believing it to be so, for the habitual small selfishness of his nature was thrown out in strong relief by circumstances undoubtedly trying.
“If people looked forward to realities, they would choose their husbands and wives differently. It is only about a year ago since I first met Beauchamp. Oh, how silly and ignorant I must have been! How perfect life – life with him – looked to me,” thought Eugenia, bitterly.
She was more than usually depressed that day. Captain Chancellor had left home to spend a week at Winsley, where a merry Christmas party was expected, and though Eugenia had no wish to accompany him, even had she been able to do so, though she had not put the slightest difficulty in the way of his going, yet his readiness to do so wounded and embittered her. For he had got into the habit of often leaving home now – never for very long at a time, certainly – never without making every arrangement for her comfort; but yet the fact of his liking to go, increased her unhappy state of mind. Everything seemed against her. During all these months she had never succeeded in seeing her own people. Another invitation had been sent to them and accepted. For Eugenia had had the unselfishness to place the deferring of their first visit in a natural and favourable light, making it appear to be quite as much her own doing as her husband’s, and a subject of great regret to both.
“Better that they should think I have grown cold and indifferent even,” she thought, “than that they should suspect the truth.” But no one except Frank had at this time thought anything of the kind.
“I won’t go, another time,” he growled. “I never heard anything so cool in my life. If it is Eugenia’s own doing, I don’t want to have anything more to say to her. If not, I pity her, but she chose her husband herself.”
And Sydney had some difficulty to smooth him down again, and to gain his consent to the acceptance of the second invitation when in course of time it made its appearance.
It was accepted, but the visit did not take place. Before the date fixed for it arrived, Mr Laurence had another attack of illness, from which he only recovered sufficiently to be moved to a milder place, where for a few weeks, Sydney, though at no small personal inconvenience, accompanied him. Something was said by her in one of her letters to Eugenia, suggestive of her joining them and taking her share in the nursing and cheering of their father; but the proposal met with no response. Loyal and true-hearted as she was, Sydney felt chilled and disappointed, and said no more. But all through the winter, in reality passed by Eugenia in loneliness, and suffering, and yearning for sympathy, which only a mistaken desire to spare her sister sorrow prevented her expressing – all these months Sydney pictured her as happy and prosperous, so free from cares herself as to be in danger of forgetting their existence in the lives of others. For the more steadily hopeless Eugenia grew, the more cheerfully she wrote. And forced cheerfulness often bears a strong resemblance to heartlessness.
“I am glad and thankful she is happy,” thought Sydney, “and she certainly must be so, for it is not in her to conceal it if she were not; but I did not think prosperity would have changed Eugenia.”
Nor would she, for any conceivable consideration, have owned to any one, least of all perhaps to her husband, that she did think so.
Mr Laurence had fortunately no misgivings on the subject of his elder daughter. She was happy, she wrote regularly and affectionately – she had twice fixed a time for him to visit her, but circumstances had come in the way. It was all quite right. He loved her as fondly as ever, with perhaps a shade more fondness than the child “who was ever with him,” whose new ties had in no wise been allowed to interfere with her daughterly devotion; it never occurred to him that Eugenia’s affection could be dimmed.
“I should like to see her,” he said sometimes – “I should like to see her very much – in her own home too. But by the spring we shall be able to arrange for it; by the spring, no doubt, I shall be more like myself again, and able to manage a little going about. We must go together, Sydney, my dear, as Eugenia wished.”
And Sydney said, “Yes, by the spring they must arrange it.” But a shadowy misgiving, that had visited her not unfrequently of late – a little, painful, choking feeling in her throat, a sudden moisture in her eyes, made themselves felt, when she looked at her father’s thin, worn face, and heard him talk about “the spring;” and she wondered, as so many loving watchers wonder, “if the doctors had told her the whole truth.”
There had always been a certain unworldliness about Mr Laurence – a gentle philosophy, an unexacting unselfishness, and of late all these had increased. Practical as he had proved himself in his far-seeing philanthropy, he was a man to whom it came naturally to live much in the unseen, to whom the thought that “to this life there is a to-morrow,” was full of encouragement and consolation – a to-morrow in more senses than the one of individual blessedness – a to-morrow when the work begun here, however poor and imperfect in itself, shall be carried on, purified, strengthened, rendered a thousand times more powerful for good – a to-morrow even for the races yet unborn in this world. All this he believed, and his life had shown that he did so. Yet many people shook their heads over his “want of religious principle,” his “dangerously lax notions,” and prophesied that no blessing could follow the labours of such a man. But such sayings little troubled Sydney’s father. He smiled with kindly tolerance, and thought to himself that some time or other such things would come to be viewed differently.
About the middle of February, Mr Laurence and his daughter returned home to Wareborough. On the last day of March, Sydney’s boy was born – a strong, handsome, satisfactory baby – with whom the young parents were greatly delighted. Sydney recovered her strength quickly, and before April was over, Mr Laurence, who had seemed much better of late, and who had taken wonderfully to his grandson, began to talk again of the often-deferred visit to Eugenia.
“It would be a nice little change for you, Sydney, and Eugenia would be so pleased to see her little nephew. Her letters are full of questions about him. I have a great, mind to write to her myself, and ask what time next month would be convenient for her to receive us. I think my doing so would please her. I should be sorry for her to think we had not taken the first opportunity of going to see her. They are sure to be at home next month?”
“Yes,” said Sydney, “I remember Eugenia’s saying in one of her letters, that they were not going to town this year. I don’t know why, for not long ago she said something about their probably buying a house in town. Well, father dear, baby and I – and Frank too, I dare say – will be ready whenever you arrange for it with Eugenia.”
But Mr Laurence never wrote. The very next day – it was early in May now – the Thurstons got a message, asking Sydney to go to see him as soon as she could. There was “nothing very much the matter,” said the note, which he had written himself – “a slight return of the old symptoms,” that was all; but it was enough to send his daughter to him without loss of time. Enough, too, to make the doctors look grave, and warn Mrs Thurston that there was every appearance of a long and trying illness before them, unless the next day or two brought a decidedly favourable change. No such change came. Divided between anxiety for her father and for her little infant, Sydney had almost more upon her hands than she could overtake. A few days after the commencement of Mr Laurence’s illness, the Thurston household took up its quarters temporarily in Sydney’s old home, that she might be the better able to give to her father the constant care and attention he required. At first he seemed to improve again, and Sydney was able to send a better report to Eugenia. But another week saw a change for the worse. Nothing very serious, said the doctors – nothing to cause immediate anxiety – but sufficiently discouraging, nevertheless. And then there came the usual injunction, “At all costs, the patient’s spirits were to be kept up, his every wish complied with.”
One morning Mr Laurence woke out of an uneasy sleep in a state of feverish agitation unusual to him.
“Sydney,” he said, excitedly, when his daughter entered the room, “I have had a painful dream about Eugenia. It seemed to me that she was unhappy. I must see her at once. If I were well I would go to her. As it is, you must send for her. Do you think she can come to-day? I cannot rest till I have seen her.”
Sydney was greatly startled, but she retained her presence of mind.
“I will see about it at once,” she replied, soothingly, “and no doubt she will come immediately. I wish I had thought of it before, dear father; but we fancied you would enjoy seeing her more when you were a little stronger.”
“Never mind,” he said: “it will be all right if you will send at once now.”
Two hours later Sydney came back to tell him it was done. A messenger had already started for Halswood. “I thought it better than telegraphing,” she said; “they are so far from the station;” but Mr Laurence did not seem to care to hear any details. He was quite satisfied with knowing that the thing was done, and before long he fell asleep again and slept calmly.
About three o’clock that afternoon a Chilworth fly drove up to the front entrance of Halswood; a gentleman alighted, rang the bell, and inquired if Captain Chancellor were at home. He was answered in the negative, the master of the house was out, would not be in till between four and five.
“Mrs Chancellor, then?”
Disappointment again. She was not well enough to see visitors. Could the gentleman send in his message?
The gentleman hesitated. The position was an awkward one. “Is there no one I can see? No friend, perhaps, staying in the house?” he inquired at last.
A gleam of light – the footman, murmuring an unintelligible name, turns appealingly to Mr Blinkhorn in the background, who comes forward.
“Miss Heyrecourt is staying here at present, sir – a relation of my master’s,” Mr Blinkhorn condescended to explain, going on to express his readiness to convey the stranger’s card to the young lady if he would favour him with the same.
A look of relief overspread the countenance of Gerald Thurston, for he it was who had undertaken to carry the sick man’s message to his daughter, Frank being hopelessly engaged in clerical duties.
“Miss Eyrecourt?” exclaimed Mr Thurston, hunting for a calling-card; “I am very glad to hear it. She will see me, I am sure.”
Mr Blinkhorn and his satellites thought this looked suspicious, and afterwards retailed the stranger’s delight at the mention of Miss Eyrecourt’s name for the benefit of the servant’s hall. In another minute Gerald was shaking hands with Roma, and explaining to her the reason of his sudden appearance. At first her expression was bright and cheerful; she was evidently pleased to see him again and interested in what he had to tell. But as he went on, her face grew grave – graver even than there seemed cause for.
“There is nothing immediate to be feared,” Gerald said, in conclusion; “Mr Laurence may linger for months as he is, or he may, it’s just possible, he may recover. I saw the doctor after I had seen Sydney this morning. I thought it would be more satisfactory for Eu – for Mrs Chancellor to hear I had done so.”
“Yes,” said Roma, “it was a good thought;” but she spoke a little absently, and still looked very grave. “I hope Eugenia will be able to go at once,” she went on. “She is not very strong, but I think she is quite well enough to go, and I am sure she will think so. Only you know,” with a smile, “she must consult her husband too, and I don’t know what he will say. You see, she has been more or less an invalid for so long.”
“I did not know it,” said Gerald, with concern and surprise. “Indeed, I don’t think Sydney does.”
“Does she not?” exclaimed Roma. “Eugenia must have concealed it then. A mistake, I think. Those things always lead to misapprehension. But she is really much better now. Shall I go and tell her? She had a headache to-day, that was why she didn’t want to see any one. There is not much time to spare. When did you say you must leave?”
“The best train leaves Chilworth at six; the next at 7:30,” he replied.
“Well, I must tell her at once, then,” said Roma. “I am leaving here myself at five. I have only been here two days, on my way, or rather out of my way, north. I spend to-night at Stebbing with some friends who happen to be going north too, to-morrow.”
“You should have come by Wareborough again,” suggested Gerald. “I am sure Mrs Dalrymple would have been delighted to see you.”
“Next time, perhaps,” answered Roma. Then she added, with a smile, “I am quite getting to like Wareborough – or, at least, some of the people in it – though I used to think it such a dreadful place.”
Suddenly something in her own words made her blush and feel ashamed of herself. “I must go to Eugenia,” she said, hastily, leaving the room rather abruptly as she spoke.
“I wonder what there is about that Mr Thurston that always makes me behave in his presence like an underbred schoolgirl?” she thought to herself, as she went upstairs.
Barely five minutes – certainly not ten – had passed when the door of the room where Gerald was waiting opened, and Eugenia herself appeared. He had turned, expecting to see Roma again; a slight constraint was immediately perceptible in his manner when he saw who the new-comer was. The last time he had seen her had been on her marriage day. At first sight he hardly thought her much altered. She did not look ill, for the excitement of Roma’s news, the eagerness to hear more, had brought a bright colour to her cheeks. When it faded again he saw how pale she really was.
“Oh, Gerald!” she exclaimed, with all her old winning impulsiveness, “how good of you to come! How very good of you t Of course I shall go back with you at once. And Roma tells me there is no actual cause for more anxiety? You are sure of that, are you not, Gerald?”
He repeated to her word for word what the doctor had said to him that morning. She felt he was speaking the truth, and seemed satisfied.
“I expect Beauchamp in directly,” she said, looking at her watch. “He will probably want to take me home himself, but I shall try to persuade him not. He is going out to dinner to-night. It will be quite unnecessary for him to come. I shall tell him he may come to fetch me if he likes.”
She spoke confidently, but with a certain nervous hurry of manner new to her, and that did not escape Gerald’s observation. Just then Roma joined them. A sudden thought struck Eugenia.
“You have had nothing to eat, Gerald,” she exclaimed. “Roma, dear, would you ring and order some luncheon in the dining-room? I think I must run upstairs again and hasten Rachel. She is not accustomed to sudden moves.”
Captain Chancellor came home from his ride about the time he was expected. He was a very punctual man. He came in at a side door, without ringing. The first sign of life that met him as he crossed the hall, was the sight, through the half-open dining-room door, of an entertainment of some kind going on within. An impromptu repast at which the only guest was a stranger, a man, that was all Beauchamp could see, for the unknown was sitting with his back to him, but as he looked, a still more astonishing sight met his eyes, Roma, no less a person than Roma, was keeping the stranger company!
Who on earth could it be? Beauchamp hated unexpected visitors, and irregular meals and “upsets” of every kind; above all he hated that anything should take place in his own house without his knowing all the ins and outs of it. Vaguely annoyed, he was turning to make inquiry, when an eager voice arrested him. It was the voice of Rachel, a very flushed and excited Rachel. Captain Chancellor objected to the lower orders displaying their feelings in his presence, and at the best of times there was a latent antagonism between Eugenia’s husband and her maid.
