Not Without Thorns

And she almost felt sorry for Addie, working away so conscientiously and serenely, slurring no “tiresome bits,” doing her “expressions” —allegretto, rallentando, and all the rest of them – so precisely according to the letter of the instructions of her “finishing master,” Herr Spindler. She had really laboured hard, poor girl, to attain to her present undeniably great manual dexterity, and there had been difficulties in her way which had called for considerable patience and perseverance. For her hands – plump and short-fingered, though very nice little hands of their kind, and with a fair amount of muscle inside the white cushions – were not the sort of hands to which such wonderful agility as they were now displaying comes all at once or without a good deal of tutoring. It was really very funny to see the two little things scudding up and down after each other as hard as they could go, “exactly like two fat white mice,” thought Beauchamp to himself; and the conceit, for which (not being addicted to the reading of more poetry than that of the day likely to be discussed at dinner-parties) he was not indebted to any one but himself, so tickled his fancy that it enabled him to endure with patience the penance to which he was; subjected, and to thank Adelaide at the close of her performance with becoming graciousness for the pleasure she had afforded them all.

“You must have practised a great deal,” he observed to her.

“Oh, yes; two hours every day till I came out, and an hour every morning even now,” she replied.

“Dear me, I really admire your energy,” he said, quietly, slightly raising his eyebrows, and inwardly trusting he might have timely warning of the special hour at which this praiseworthy young person’s manual gymnastics were to be performed during her stay at Winsley. But Addie perceived no shadow of sarcasm in his softly uttered commendation, and took herself and her ample draperies across the room again to her mother’s side in the happiest possible frame of mind. These two or three words were all that passed between Captain Chancellor and herself of direct conversation during the evening; yet, before she fell asleep, Addie confessed to herself that her cousin Beauchamp was by far the most charming man she had ever met, “more charming and decidedly handsomer than even Sir Arthur Boscawen or Colonel Townshendly, of the Blues.”

Adelaide safely disposed of, Beauchamp felt that he deserved a reward.

“Come, Roma,” said he, in a low voice, skilfully making room for himself behind the sofa on which Miss Eyrecourt was sitting alone, “do come and sing. You must have seen I have been very good.”

Roma hesitated. She did not feel sure of what Gertrude wished her to do. Just then Mrs Eyrecourt glanced in her direction, and seemed by instinct to understand her perplexity. Beauchamp was beginning to look cross.

“Will you sing, Roma, dear?” said Gertrude, sweetly.

Roma rose at once. “Of course,” muttered Captain Chancellor, loud enough for her to hear, “for any one but me.”

Poor Roma – her position was not a very comfortable one at present. She knew as well as possible what was passing in Gertrude’s mind. Mrs Eyrecourt was proud of her sister-in-law’s singing, and she was pleased to have something so excellent of its kind wherewith to astonish her guests; but she would be very far from pleased, Roma felt certain, should Beauchamp be so ill-judged as to show any marked difference in his manner of comporting himself towards the two fair performers. She resolved on taking the bull by the horns.

“Beauchamp,” she said, coldly, when she was standing by the piano, looking over her songs, “you will oblige me by not standing beside me while I am singing. It fidgets me more than I can tell you.”

Without a word, Beauchamp stalked off. He was deeply offended.

“I have overshot the mark, now, I expect,” thought Roma. “The next thing will be, his forcing me to tell him what made me so cross. And I do dread any approach to an explanation with him. I am very unlucky; but what could I do?”

She felt thoroughly uncomfortable, and somehow – from this cause, probably – she certainly did not sing as well as usual. Every now and then, through the sound of the piano and of her own voice, she overheard Beauchamp’s remarks to Mrs Chancellor, beside whom he had ensconced himself, and that lady’s languid, affected tones in reply. Roma felt a little depressed: it went greatly against the grain with her to say or do anything to chill or alienate Beauchamp, for the old easy brother-and-sister state of things between them had never seemed so attractive to her as now that it was at an end.

“If only he had really been my brother,” she said to herself, with a little sigh, and replied so absently and at random to Mr Chancellor’s civil little speech of thanks for her song, that he did not feel encouraged to remain at his post by her side.

She felt half inclined to betake herself quietly to her own room for the rest of the evening – no one seemed to want her. For almost the first time in her life she felt a stranger in her father’s house; realised, or began to fancy she did, that the tie which bound her to Gertrude was not one of blood. Mrs Eyrecourt seemed already marvellously at home with these hitherto unknown cousins of hers, and as for Beauchamp, whether or not he disliked the daughter, he certainly seemed to find the mother very entertaining!

“I wish I might go to bed,” thought Roma again; “but Gertrude would be vexed, and it would look as if something were the matter.”

So, more out of listlessness than anything else, she, without being asked to do so, began to sing again. The song she chose this time was the same ballad she had sung that evening at Brighton at the Montmorris’s, the evening on which she had met Mr Thurston. The words brought him to her mind. How had he found things at Wareborough? Was it as she had suspected between Beauchamp and Eugenia? Roma felt that she would give a good deal to know. That there was a change in Beauchamp, she was convinced, but of what nature, arising from what circumstances, she could not so easily decide, and she knew well he would do his best to keep her in the dark. Hardly taking in the sense of the words, she sang on half through the ballad. Her voice was more like itself by this time, and the music of the song was lovely: it was impossible for her not to sing it well. Gradually the murmur of the voices in the room grew fainter, then stopped altogether. As usual, when Roma exerted herself, all present succumbed to the charm.

“She sings beautifully – I do not know that I have ever heard, an amateur to equal her,” exclaimed Mrs Chancellor with the truthfulness of astonishment, turning round to Beauchamp when Miss Eyrecourt’s round and soft, yet clear, thrilling notes died away into silence. But no Beauchamp was there! Even Mrs Chancellor’s attractions had failed to keep him from his accustomed place.

Looking up, at the end of her song, to her surprise, Roma saw him standing beside her. But there was an expression on his face which startled her. He looked grave and troubled, Roma could almost have fancied he had grown paler than usual. Something very strangely out of the common must have occurred to disturb his serenity so visibly; what could it be?

“Roma,” he said, suddenly, but as if he had completely forgotten the offence she had given him, “I wish you would oblige me by never singing that song. I cannot bear it.”

“Cannot bear it? Beauchamp! Your favourite song – the song you yourself got for me? What do you mean?” exclaimed Roma, in extreme astonishment. “Do I not sing it well?”

“Far too well,” he replied, gloomily. Then, as he turned away, he repeated his request more strongly. “I really cannot tell you how much you will oblige me by never singing it.”

“Very well, then, I will not,” answered Roma, quietly. But in her heart she felt not a little puzzled by his unaccountable behaviour.

No wonder – he, himself, was not a little puzzled; more than puzzled, he was extremely out of patience with himself. He had, he felt assured, acted with consideration and foresight towards Eugenia Laurence; with half-a-dozen girls he could name he had carried his flirtations much further, and come out of them comfortably when he saw it was time to do so. What was there about this girl that now even, when he had for ever separated himself from her, impressed him so strangely? Why could he not forget her save as a pleasant passing fancy? Why should he be for ever imagining he saw her face, wistful and reproachful, as it had looked that last afternoon when he had hinted to her the probability of his soon leaving Wareborough? It was together too bad that the remembrance of her should thus annoy him; he felt disgusted with himself for losing his self-control this evening, when, as ill luck would have it, Roma picked out that stupid song, the last he had heard Eugenia sing. And how sweetly she had sung it – he had given it to her, and he had given her, too, his ideas as to how it should be sung, and she had proved an apt pupil. She made no pretensions to singing well; her voice was, of course, not to be compared with Roma’s in power and compass, but it was clear and sweet and bright, like her face and everything about her, and he had found it very charming. He fell into a reverie again when he recalled its tones, then he shook himself awake with some irritation.

“What a fool I am,” he reflected. He was alone again with his cigar by the fire – Herbert Chancellor was no smoker, which was unfortunate for Beauchamp, little inclined as he was at present for solitary meditation – “What a fool I am to bother myself like this. I hope I am not going to be ill. I have not felt so out of sorts for years. It is all Roma’s fault – I shall tell her so some day; she has a great deal to answer for. No doubt, it will all come right in the end with her; I have never really feared but what it would. It would be all right any day if either of us had a fortune; but she is so desperately afraid of vexing Gertrude, and Gertrude’s head, I can see, is now full of that stupid Adelaide, and Roma’s shilly-shallying will have made it far more difficult to bring Gertrude round. I have more than half a mind to leave Roma to herself for a while, and let her fancy I have given up thoughts of it: it would not do her any harm. How very handsome she is looking just now, and how exquisitely she sang that last song! It is too bad – ”

Then he fell to thinking what he could do in the direction of distracting his thoughts from his undeserved troubles, seeing that, for the present at least, there was no satisfaction to be got out of Roma. A flirtation with Addie Chancellor was not attractive, and might involve him seriously, watched and guarded as she was. He wished he had not promised Gertrude to stay so long at Winsley; he did not feel at all sure that he would not do more wisely to spend part of his leave elsewhere; he would see about it, very likely something or other would turn up. And, besides, any day might bring things to a crisis with Roma. If not, he could afford to wait a little longer; the best woman in the world was not worth bothering oneself about; and, determined to act upon this comforting doctrine, Captain Chancellor lit another cigar, and having smoked it went calmly to bed. But his sleep was broken, and his dreams uneasy – they were haunted by Eugenia, pale-faced and sad-eyed as he had seen her last. Once it was even worse – he dreamt, he saw her lying dead, and in some unexplained, mysterious way the impression grew strong upon him that he had killed her. He awoke with a start of horror and was thankful to find it a dream – to see, by the faint morning light just beginning to break, the familiar objects in his room, and remember where he was.

“But if this sort of thing goes on,” he said to himself, “I can’t stay here. I must go away – to town even, or to Paris, or somewhere for a change, whether Gertrude likes it or not.”

The next day or two, however, brought something in the way of distraction. Several other guests arrived, of whom two or three of the gentlemen were old and friendly acquaintances of Beauchamp’s, glad to see him again at Winsley – for, unlike many men of his class, he was a favourite with his own sex wherever he choose to be so – and among the accompanying wives and daughters there were some sufficiently attractive for him to find no difficulty in amusing himself in his usual way; on the whole, not to Mrs Eyrecourt’s dissatisfaction. She knew her brother pretty thoroughly. Though her hopes with regard to Adelaide Chancellor had never been alluded to, she felt that Beauchamp was perfectly aware of their existence, and in every smallest detail of his unexceptionably civil behaviour to the girl, she read a tacit defiance of her wishes, a determined opposition to them. Yet she did not despair. She blamed herself for having been injudicious and premature; she owned that Addie, pretty and amiable as she was, was hardly equal to taking her irresistible cousin’s experienced heart by storm. Nevertheless, a little time might do wonders; and in the meanwhile the more general he was in his flirtations the better, and she congratulated herself on her wise selection of guests. She had long ago forgotten her fright about the Wareborough young lady, whose name she had never even heard; all her fears were concentrated in Roma.

Roma was far from happy at this juncture. A painful consciousness was beginning to grow upon her that her relations with Gertrude were not what they had been; for the first time in the several years they had lived together she felt that she was not altogether in her sister-in-law’s confidence; worse than this, that she was no longer thoroughly trusted. And she was at no loss to whose influence to attribute this mortifying change. Scrupulously careful as she was in the regulation of her manner to Beauchamp, that it should not be by a shade more or less familiar than was natural to their acknowledged position of brotherly and sisterly intimacy – indifferent, distant even, as it was now apparently Captain Chancellor’s rôle to appear to her – Roma yet saw clearly that Adelaide’s mother, with her sharp worldly eyes, her conventional suspicion of every unmarried woman not fortunate enough to be an heiress, was on the scent of something below the surface between herself and the man Mrs Chancellor had picked out for her future son-in-law.

“It is all Beauchamp’s fault. It is very cruel of him to place me in such a position. I believe he wants these people to think that he dislikes me, and that I – oh, no, he could not be so horribly coarse,” thought Roma, though she grew furious at the idea. “Why won’t he believe simply that I only care for him as a brother, and let us be comfortable as we used to be? And why is Gertrude so weak as to be turned against me when I have told her so plainly how it is?”

And there were times at which she almost wished that things would come to a crisis, and that she might have the opportunity she had hitherto on every account so carefully avoided of telling Captain Chancellor the plain truth; that to one woman in the world his fascinations were less than nothing. But at present things showed no signs of coming to any such crisis. Beauchamp comported himself to her with exaggerated and obtrusive indifference, and amused himself very comfortably with a handsome Miss Fretville, whose fiancé was safe in India, and (rather more discreetly) with pretty Lady Exyton, whose husband was sixty, and, so long as his dinner was to his taste, calmly tolerant of her ladyship’s harmless little flirtations.

Had the change been less sudden and obtrusive, Roma would have been only too glad to believe it genuine. As it was, she rightly attributed it to pique – a powerful motive in some natures, for wounded vanity has many of the symptoms and sensations of the genuine malady, often enough deceiving even the patient’s self.

End of Volume One.

Volume Two – Chapter One .

Eavesdropping

Rom. The hurt cannot be much.

Mer. No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough.

It was the day of the Winsley Hunt Ball. The Halswood Chancellors’ stay had already considerably exceeded the week originally proposed as its extent; but Gertrude had persuaded them “not to talk of going away” till after the twenty-fifth, the date of this important local event. So they had stayed on, and with them the Exytons and the Gourlays, and ever so many other people, till the Grange was filled to overflowing with fine ladies and gentlemen, and still finer ladies’ maids and gentlemen’s gentlemen.

Gertrude was in her element, so in his own way was Beauchamp; he had felt much more comfortable since there had been a little more going on, and he had had less time for solitary meditation; and Roma, though he had not seen her for several days except in general society, was so agreeably gentle and subdued, that he began to think his new way of behaving to her was really going to prove a success. At any rate he would try it a little longer, it would do her no harm; and so long as the house was as lively as it had been lately, time did not hang heavy on his hands. There were two or three young ladies among the visitors in whom Adelaide Chancellor had discovered kindred spirits, so Roma was freed from the burden of entertaining the girl, and not sorry to be so; for the first few days during which they had been more thrown together had been quite enough for Miss Eyrecourt. Yet she felt very lonely sometimes; Gertrude seemed to be always surrounded by her guests, and to make her plans and arrangements without consulting Roma in the old way at all, and the understanding between her and Mrs Chancellor was evidently closer and more confidential than ever.

It was a mild spring-like morning: the meet, one of the last of the season, was at some distance from the Grange, and most of the guests had set off early, riding and driving, to be in time for it. Beauchamp – who did not hunt, not being rich enough to do so in what he considered proper style, but who nevertheless rode well enough, and managed to be always sufficiently well mounted to look as if his forswearing the field was to be solely attributed to eccentricity or indolence – had preferred this morning to drive Lady Exyton’s ponies, their pretty owner at his side. Addie had borrowed the horse Roma usually rode, and under her father’s wing intended to do great things; every one had arranged to go somehow or with somebody except Roma herself, who, fancying that nobody wanted her, and that her sister-in-law would prefer her remaining in the background, had kept out of the way till it was too late for her to be included in any of the arrangements.

It was rather a relief to be alone for a little while. She was, in a general way, fond of amusement and society, accustomed and not indifferent to a fair share of admiration. But lately she had not had heart or spirit to enter into things as usual; Gertrude’s coldness had already, it seemed to her, affected the tone of others; she said to herself she was getting old, “nearly five and twenty,” and “passée,” and ill-tempered, and it would not be long before Beauchamp would congratulate himself heartily on not having been taken at his word by her.

“I almost wish sometimes I could have cared for him as he cares or thinks he cares for me. But it would have been dreadful to have so vexed Gertrude after all her kindness to me. It is bad enough to feel that she distrusts me without my deserving it, but that would have been worse. No; I should not like to care for him; but it is very lonely sometimes.”

She was pacing slowly up and down a sheltered terrace walk that ran along one side of the house. On to this walk opened by glass doors several of the rooms most used by the family, the library, the morning-room, Mrs Eyrecourt’s little boudoir, and between these glass doors were placed here and there garden seats against the wall. Roma got tired of walking up and down; though still only February it was temptingly mild, so she sat down on one of the seats without observing that the glass door nearest it was slightly ajar. Voices from within reached her, she heard the sound of her own name; then before she had time to realise what she was doing, two or three sentences fell with cruel distinctness upon her ears.

“It is very difficult for me to think it is Roma’s fault. She has assured me so earnestly that there was nothing of the kind on her part, I cannot bear to think how she must have deceived me.”

The voice was Gertrude’s; the tone anxious and irresolute. Then came the answer; it was Mrs Chancellor who was speaking now.

“Ah, yes; that is the worst part of it. I can feel for you, my dear Gertrude; I can indeed. As to the affair itself, had she only been frank about it, one could hardly have blamed her. A man of dear Beauchamp’s attractions, thrown so much in her society – and she, of course she is handsome in a certain style, and her singing is really good, though not quite refined enough to suit my taste; but – what was I saying? Oh yes, of course, she, you know, is no longer very young, and has nothing, literally nothing you say, to look forward to? It is only too natural. It is most distressing altogether, and how perplexing for Beauchamp, dear fellow. A moment’s folly or weakness and a young man may be ruined, ruined in a sense of course, for life! Ah yes, I see it all, far more clearly than can be possible for one so young and unsuspicious as you, dearest Gertrude. But I do think Beauchamp has behaved beautifully, from what you tell me, beautifully. And – ”

But just then there came a knock at the door of the boudoir in which the two ladies were sitting, and Mrs Chancellor’s maid appeared, or rather, that is to say, the sound of her voice penetrated to Roma still motionless on the garden seat outside, and it became evident to the involuntary eavesdropper that the confidential tête-à-tête was at an end. She had not meant to listen; just when the interruption came she had been on the point of marching into the room and stating what she had heard. Now of course before the servant it was out of the question. She rose from her seat, ran along the terrace and entered the house at the other side; then hastening upstairs she waited at the door of her own room till, as she expected, in a few minutes she saw Mrs Chancellor coming along the passage, followed by the maid, who wished to consult her about some important question of millinery for the evening’s adornment.

Then Roma walked deliberately downstairs again, across the hall, down the passage to the door of Gertrude’s boudoir, at which she knocked, and in obedience to her sister-in-law’s unsuspecting “come in,” entered Mrs Eyrecourt’s presence with no sign of agitation or uneasiness on her countenance.

“Gertrude,” she said, quietly. Gertrude started a little; she had not expected to see Roma, and glancing up at her now she felt instinctively that something must be the matter. Roma’s face was so grave, and she looked so dreadfully tall. What could it be? Gertrude laid down her pen – she was in the middle of a letter – and waited in some alarm for what was to follow, feeling perhaps the least little bit in the world guilty, when she remembered what her thoughts had lately been of her sister-in-law. “Gertrude,” said Roma again, “I have come to tell you that I heard what you said of me just now; what you said and what you allowed Mrs Chancellor to say of me in this very room not ten minutes ago.”