Not Without Thorns

Mrs Eyrecourt grew crimson. There was no evading the charge; it was far too direct and circumstantial. She tried getting angry.

“I needn’t remind you of the old proverb about listeners, Roma,” she said, with an attempt at haughty indignation. “There was a time when I could hardly have believed you capable of such a thing, even though confessed by yourself; but I must have been mistaken in you in more ways than this. I cannot help your having heard what was said. I am not bound never to say anything about you that you would not like to hear – and to a near relation of my own too! You cannot expect to dictate to me what I am to talk about to my cousin.”

“That is nonsense, Gertrude,” answered Roma, so gently that the words did not sound disrespectful. “I have no intention of dictating to you. I have not even hinted at finding fault with what you said and allowed Mrs Chancellor to say, though I might perhaps be excused if I thought it hard that I should be so discussed by you with a person whom you have not known a fortnight; and it is nonsense for you to pretend that you think me capable of low eavesdropping. You know you don’t think so, Gertrude. Of course you know that my overhearing anything was purely accidental, and in your heart, Gertrude, you are bitterly sorry, not only that I overheard what I did, but that there was anything of the kind for me to hear.”

Gertrude was silent. “I don’t know if I am or not,” she said, half petulantly. “I don’t want to distrust you, Roma. If you heard all, you must have heard me say I could not bear to think you had deceived me.”

“And why should you think so?” exclaimed Roma, more vehemently. “I have never deceived you, dear Gertrude. You have been very good to me all these years since my mother died and I was left alone; there has never been any cloud between us, except about this unfortunate infatuation of your brother’s. I am not, in a sense, surprised at a woman like Mrs Chancellor thinking of me as she does – she has no reason to like me, and imagines me in her way – but you, Gertrude, ah! that is very different! Why should I deceive you as to my feelings to Beauchamp; what good would it do me if what Mrs Chancellor thinks were true, to conceal it from you? Oh, Gertrude, you know it has been all on his side all along; you cannot say I have ever encouraged him in the very least?”

“No-o,” said Gertrude, reluctantly. “Directly, you certainly have not done so. But I don’t know, Roma. I wish you wouldn’t ask me. As Mrs Chancellor said once, you may have been deceiving yourself.”

“I have not then; I have done nothing of the kind,” replied Roma, her dark eyes flashing as no light grey ones could do. “I tell you again, Gertrude, as I have told you a hundred times, I do not care for Beauchamp a straw, not in the way you mean. It is a perfect mystery to me what other women find so irresistible in him. I know him too well I suppose. To me he is the very antipodes of the sort of man I could care for. Selfish, weak, vain. He has good, qualities too of course, I know that as well or better than you do, but his faults and foibles are the sort that in a man I could least forget. There now, have I spoken plainly enough to convince you at last? I don’t want to offend you, Gertrude,” seeing that Mrs Eyrecourt, with true womanly inconsistency, now looked rather sulky at this unflattering depreciation of her Adonis; “you have forced it upon yourself. Good heavens! how unreasonable you are.”

“You are forgetting yourself, Roma,” said Gertrude, coldly.

“No, I am not. And if I were, would there not be some excuse? I am determined to come to an end of this. Either you must trust me, or if not I will go away. I will be a governess or a housemaid or anything, rather than stay with you if you doubt me. What would you have, Gertrude? You don’t want me to marry Beauchamp, yet you are angry because I am not the least atom in love with him? Would you like to be told that I am heart and soul devoted to him, but that to please you I was willing to sacrifice myself by refusing to have anything to say to him – would that be a pleasant state of things for you? I know very little about the feelings of people in love certainly – I have hardly a right to judge even of myself in such a predicament, but I don’t know but what I might have been capable of so sacrificing myself, Gertrude, rather than disappoint you after your many years’ goodness to me. I am grateful, whatever else I may not be. But such a state of things would have been wretched for you.”

Gertrude was touched. The old habit of sisterly trust and confidence was fast returning upon her.

“I do believe you, Roma,” she said, after a little silence. “I have never doubted you as much as you think. But it is altogether uncomfortable and anomalous.”

“I know it is. For no one more so than for me,” replied Miss Eyrecourt. “And my conviction that Beauchamp does not really care for me does not simplify matters. I doubt his being capable of what I call really caring for any one, though I don’t know,” she added thoughtfully, the expression of his face when he had begged her “never to sing that song again” returning to her memory; “but what can I do, Gertrude? You don’t want me to let him propose formally and hear my opinion of him in the plain words I have told it to you?”

“Certainly not,” said Gertrude, hastily. “It would be most disagreeable – just now especially; the Chancellors would hear of it, and – altogether – ”

“It would be horrid, I allow,” answered Roma, consideringly. “A good blow to Beauchamp’s vanity might not do him any harm, but he would never forgive the dealer thereof. We could never be all comfortable together again. As for the Chancellors, I don’t know that it would much matter. I don’t think there is much chance of success in that quarter, Gertrude. Of course it would be a good marriage for Beauchamp, and he is far more likely to be a good husband rich than poor, and Addie is pretty and amiable. It would be all right if he saw it so of course, but I don’t think he will. However, I don’t want to be in the way. I tell you what, Gertrude, I had better go away.”

“Go away!” repeated Mrs Eyrecourt, in amazement. “Roma, oh no! that would never do.”

“I don’t mean for always,” said Roma. “I am not so in love with independence as to want to leave you unless you drive me to it – for, of course, as Mrs Chancellor delicately observed, I have ‘literally nothing else to look to.’ You are my bread and butter you see, Gertrude – for of course the trifle I have is hardly enough to dress upon; and I assure you I don’t want to quarrel with you if I can help it.” Gertrude winced a little. “If my father’s second wife had been an heiress like his first, things would have been different. No, I didn’t mean going away for always – only for a few weeks, till Beauchamp is away again.”

“He would be sure to suspect the reason, and would be angry,” objected Mrs Eyrecourt.

“Not he; I could manage it so that neither he nor any one else could suspect the reason. I shall probably be telegraphed for in a few days. I had a letter from my godmother this morning, which paves the way beautifully for a sudden summons. She is a good old soul. I shall write to her at once. Beauchamp is all right for the present. He is trying a new plan with me, and before he discovers its vanity I shall be safe out of his way.”

“Roma,” said Gertrude, penitently, “you are very good and unselfish.”

“No, I’m not. Neither the one nor the other,” said Roma, cheerfully. Her spirits had quite returned to her now that Gertrude was herself again. “Kiss me, Gertrude, and I will forget that you ever doubted me. What’s that noise? Some one listening again? It is certainly not I this time.”

She walked quickly to the window and looked out. The glass door was still ajar, but no one was to be seen. “It must have been my fancy,” she said, returning to Mrs Eyrecourt. But just then an unmistakable rustling was heard along the passage. “There is Mrs Chancellor coming back again. I must go before she comes in. You won’t tell her any of what we have been talking about, Gertrude? You will not let her know of my having overheard what she said?”

“Of course not. How can you ask me, Roma? I shall never mention you to her again at all if I can help it,” answered Mrs Eyrecourt, and almost before she had finished speaking, Roma had disappeared through the glass door, only just in time to escape Adelaide’s mother, who entered in great tribulation concerning the non-appearance of the flowers from Foster’s, ordered for the completion of Miss Chancellor’s ball-dress.

“What to do, I really don’t know, my dear Gertrude,” she began in a tone of sore distress. “The whole effect of the dress depends upon them. And we have felt anxious about the dress already. Pink is rather an experiment for Adelaide at a ball, for she does flush, you know, and on this account I have hitherto prohibited it. But she had so set her heart upon it I agreed to try it, and I have been trusting to these flowers – water-lilies, all white, you know – to soften the colour.”

“And has she no other ball-dress ready in case they don’t come?” inquired Mrs Eyrecourt, not sorry that Mrs Chancellor’s thoughts were thus diverted from the former subject of their conversation. “I didn’t know she was thinking of pink for to-night – at a Hunt ball, you see, against the scarlet coats – ”

“Of course,” interrupted Mrs Chancellor. “Dear me, that makes it worse and worse! How could Adelaide and Fraser be so stupid? But there is her white tulle. I do believe there would be time to alter the trimming, and it is a lovely dress. Would you, dearest Gertrude, mind coming up with me to look at it? I should be so thankful for your opinion.”

Dearest Gertrude had no objection, and as the two ladies passed along the corridor upstairs, they met Roma coming out of her own room with a book in her hand.

“Can you tell me where the second volume of ‘Arrows in the Dark,’ is to be found, Gertrude?” she asked innocently, as they passed her.

The slight noise near the window of the boudoir had not after all been Roma’s fancy. Eavesdropping was in fashion to-day at Winsley.

When Captain Chancellor had driven Lady Exyton safely home again from the meet, and deposited her at the hall door, she begged him to go round with the ponies to the stable to explain to her groom a little matter in the harness requiring immediate adjustment. His errand accomplished, he strolled back to the house again by a roundabout route through the terrace garden. Here he suddenly came upon his niece, intently engaged in ascertaining how many new little worms she could chop up one big one into, her nursemaid, seated on a garden bench at a little distance, being safely engrossed with crochet.

“What are you doing, you nasty cruel little girl?” exclaimed Beauchamp, in considerable disgust.

In a general way Floss rather affected her uncle: such an address, however, roused all her latent ire.

“I ain’t nasty. And you’re cwueller to shoot pwetty birds and bunnies. Worms is ugly, and they doesn’t mind cutting,” she replied, defiantly.

“How do you know? You wouldn’t like to be chopped up into little bits, would you?” remonstrated Captain Chancellor, with a vague feeling that somewhere in his memory, could he but lay hold of it, there was a verse of one of Dr Watts’s hymns appropriate to quote on the occasion.

“No,” returned Floss calmly, “I wouldn’t, ’cause I’m not a worm. Worms doesn’t mind. I know they doesn’t. I know lots of things,” she continued, mysteriously peeping up into her uncle’s face with her green eyes; “lots and lots that nobody more knows.”

“Do you?” said Beauchamp, carelessly. “Let’s hear some of your secrets, Floss.”

“I’ll tell you one if you won’t tell nobody,” said the child. She was evidently burning to communicate it, or she would not so quickly have forgiven her uncle’s insulting greeting.

“All right, I won’t tell nobody.”

“Listen, stoop down, Uncle Beachey. Low down; now listen and I’ll whisper,” said Floss. Then to his amazement – he had expected only some childish confidence or complaint – she whispered into his ear the words, “Aunty Woma’s going away.” Beauchamp started back. “Roma is going away,” he repeated. “Nonsense, Floss. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I do, I do,” exclaimed the child, in her eagerness to prove herself right, throwing all reserve to the winds, “she said so to mamma. I heard her, and mamma said she was good, and I know she’s going.”

“How did you hear her? Where were you?” questioned Beauchamp.

“I was under the sofa – in there, in mamma’s room,” said Floss, pointing in the direction of the boudoir. “My ball went in, and I went in too, and mamma thought I came out again, but I didn’t. I hided under the sofa for nurse not to see me, and it was a long time – hours, I should think – before she finded me,” she continued triumphantly.

“But how did you hear your aunt was going away – did nurse tell you?” asked Captain Chancellor, somewhat mystified.

“No, in course not,” exclaimed Floss, contemptuously. “Nurse doesn’t know. Aunty Woma came into the room and spoke lots to mamma. She said she would make something for mamma, but mamma wouldn’t have it; and then she said she would go away, and mamma said she was good, but you would be angwy, and Aunty Woma said, ‘No; you wouldn’t expeck.’”

”‘Wouldn’t expect?’ What can the child mean? Wasn’t it suspect she said, Floss?” a brilliant light flashing upon him.

“Yes, suchpeck,” agreed Floss. “It was suchpeck; and what could it be aunty said she’d make for mamma, Uncle Beachey?” she continued, evidently disposed now to regard her hearer as an interpreter of the jumble in her brain. “It was something like satin flies.”

Captain Chancellor stared at the child without speaking. He saw, or thought he at last saw, through it all. He turned to go, but a thought occurred to him.

“Floss,” he said, very impressively, “it wasn’t good of you to listen to what your mamma and aunt were saying. They would be very angry if they knew.”

“Oh, don’t tell. Uncle Beachey, you said you wouldn’t tell nobody,” said the little girl beseechingly.

“I’m not going to tell. But remember, Floss, you must be sure not to tell any one else, not nurse or any one, do you hear? It doesn’t matter for me, but other people might scold you.”

“Then I won’t tell,” decided Floss. “And do you think Aunty Woma will go away, Uncle Beachey? I hope she will. I like her best when she goes away, for then she can’t call me a tiresome plague, and she bwings me a pwesent when she comes back.”