Not Without Thorns

“It must be a trial to the two sisters, especially to Miss Laurence, poor girl, to think of being parted, even though Mrs Frank Thurston, that is to be, will only be a few streets off,” observed one kindly-hearted Wareborough matron to Mrs Dalrymple during a morning call when the Laurence family happened to come on the tapis; to which Mrs Dalrymple, who was feeling anything but happy about Eugenia’s altered looks, agreed with almost suspicious eagerness. For Mr Dalrymple, with true masculine magnanimity, had already given symptoms of having a stock of “I told you sos” in readiness for the first suitable opportunity, and had Eugenia been less preoccupied, her friend’s increasingly demonstrative affection and constant reiteration of “how very well she was looking,” could not but have roused the girl’s own suspicions.

Curiously enough, in these days Eugenia seemed to turn with satisfaction to Gerald Thurston.

“How very much Gerald has improved again of late,” she remarked one day naïvely to Sydney. “For some time after he came home, I thought India had spoilt him. He seemed rough and careless, as if he had got out of the way of women’s society, and was turning into a moody old bachelor. But now he has got back his nice, gentle, understanding way. He seems to know by instinct when, when – ” she stopped and hesitated – “when Frank and his chattering are almost more than I can bear,” had been in her thoughts, but she recollected herself in time to change it – “when one is tired and disinclined to talk or anything,” she said, wearily, and Sydney had hard work to force back the expression of sympathy which she felt would not at this stage be welcome.

“Yes,” she answered simply, “Gerald is very good and kind.”

She would not have been the least offended had Eugenia finished her sentence as had been on her tongue. How she pitied her no words could have told, and many a time Frank’s unconscious cheerfulness jarred even on Sydney herself, poor child, feeling almost as if the contrast of her own happy content was a crime against Eugenia’s shattered hopes.

She pitied Gerald too. It was worse for him now, she said to herself, than if all had been as she had expected. True, he might then have realised more acutely the sharpness of his disappointment, have suffered unselfishly from his misgivings as to the worthiness of her choice; “but still,” thought Sydney, in her sensible way, “it would have been over and certain – a thing that was to be, and he would have been beginning to get accustomed to it.”

But now though Eugenia in the body was still among them, the heart and soul – the very life it seemed just now, had gone out of her. All the freshness and brightness had been sacrificed – whatever possibilities the far-off future might yet conceal, the Eugenia of Gerald’s first love, the Eugenia of his absent dreams, was gone for ever, could never be his. She had never been his, it was true, but Sydney’s womanish faith in the “what would have been,” was indefensibly great. Correspondingly deep was her unspoken disappointment, her vehement, almost fierce indignation against the cause of all this trouble, the wanton destroyer of her sister’s youth and happiness. Had she come upon the subject with Frank, he would, she knew, have either refused to believe in Eugenia’s suffering, or have blamed her as herself the originator of it.

“But he doesn’t understand her, and that man threw dust in his eyes. Supposing even that Eugenia was easily deceived, allowing her to be, as Frank says, impressionable and extreme, does that excuse him; cold-hearted, unprincipled, selfish man of the world that he must be, to have robbed my darling of her happiness.”

But all these feelings, little suspected under her quiet exterior, Sydney kept to herself.

Late one afternoon, about six weeks after Captain Chancellor had left Wareborough, the sisters on their way home from a long and rather fatiguing shopping expedition, happened to pass Barnwood Terrace.

“Don’t you think we might go in and see Mrs Dalrymple for a few minutes?” suggested Sydney. “She has been twice to see us since we have called on her, and she is always so kind.”

“Very well; if you like I don’t care,” replied Eugenia, and Sydney hastened to ring the bell before she could change her mind. The girl was jealous for her sister that no occasion should be given for either kindly or spiteful gossip, and it was well for Eugenia that she had so discriminating a friend at hand; for in the preoccupation of her perplexity and trouble, it would never have occurred to her that any regard should be paid to the possible comments of the little outside Wareborough world.

Mrs Dalrymple was at home, and as cordially delighted as usual to see her two friends, yet Sydney was at once conscious of a slight underlying constraint in her manner, perceptible chiefly perhaps in the kind-hearted woman’s extra effusiveness and palpable endeavour to be quite as easy and cheerful as her wont.

“She has something on her mind,” thought Sydney, “something she is uncertain about telling us,” for the girl had no great opinion of Mrs Dalrymple’s power of reserve, and every time that their hostess introduced a new subject of conversation Sydney trembled, she hardly knew why, and glanced furtively in her sister’s direction. Eugenia sat quietly, unconscious of anything unusual in Mrs Dalrymple’s demeanour, now and then putting in a remark on one or other of the various topics touched upon. She was at that stage of very youthful suffering at which a sort of calm often falls upon the inexperienced subject of it; in reality a simple physical reaction, but which she told herself, with a childish yet morbid satisfaction, must be “the apathy of despair.” Her life, she told herself, was over; she had sounded the very depths of suffering, she had experienced the worst, the very worst; only one possible aggravation of what she had endured was conceivable to her; yet not so either, for her heart refused to listen to the faintest suggestion of so monstrous an idea as that of her having been deceived in her hero. Could it be possible that he had never been “in earnest,” that he did not really care for her, that the softly hinting words and looks more eloquent than words had meant nothing? Oh no, no, it could not be; though all the world should swear it to her, she would refuse to believe it.

“For if I ever came to think so, I should die,” she said to herself, with the innocent arrogance of youth which cannot believe that ever a human being’s sufferings equalled its own, or that the worst anguish is not that which kills, but that which is lived through. For in those natures which have the deepest capacity for suffering there is usually an appalling reserve of strength and endurance, and to such, dying is not so easy of achievement, as, fresh from their baptism of woe, they are apt to imagine. And Eugenia did not yet know either that there is a “living,” compared to which this ignorantly invoked “dying,” – a girl’s hazy, sentimental notion of it, that is to say – were but child’s play.

So Eugenia sat quietly beside Sydney in Mrs Dalrymple’s luxurious drawing-room – a room full of associations to her – calm in the belief that she had known the worst; that her unapproachable, unsurpassable sorrow had, as it were, set her apart from the rest of the world; that for the future the only life remaining for her was that of unselfish, self-devoting interest in the lives and interests of others. For this was the rôle that Eugenia, ever extreme, imaginative, and incapable of the sometimes so salutary resting on one’s oars, the taking one’s life and its lessons day by day soberly and trustingly, instead of insisting on unravelling the tangled thread oneself – had now already marked out for herself, and, true to her new ideal, she tried to listen with interest to Mrs Dalrymple’s commonplacisms, to answer brightly and smile cheerfully at the proper times. She imagined the shock to be over, the doomed limb already severed, and that she had known the acutest agony; when, alas, she woke from this dream to find that the worst was yet to come, that what she had endured was but the first shrinking of the tender flesh from the cold steel of the surgeon’s knife.

Her attention, in spite of her efforts, had flagged a little; she was recalling in fancy the many times Beauchamp Chancellor and she had been together in this room, from that first evening that now seemed so long ago, when he had found her standing alone at the door in the fog, and had asked her to dance without knowing her name. Suddenly something that Mrs Dalrymple was saying recalled her to the present. Their hostess had been asking Sydney, as her intimacy with the girls excused her in doing, some questions as to the proposed arrangements for her marriage.

“I do hope it will be fine weather at the time,” she had been saying. “Not merely on the day itself, of course, though one naturally likes some sunshine for a bride, but for the honeymoon. You will enjoy your tour so much more if it is fine.”

“Yes,” agreed Sydney. “But of that we must take our chance. April is never to be counted on.”

“No, and yet it is such a favourite month for marriages,” replied Mrs Dalrymple. “I hear of – let me see – three among my near friends, which are fixed for this April, – a niece of Henry’s, one of the Conroys. I forget if you have ever met them here? She is marrying a Mr Mildmay Jones, in the Civil Service, and going out to India. Then there is your marriage, Sydney, and another I only heard of yesterday. You remember my cousin Roma, Roma Eyrecourt,” (here it was that Eugenia’s attention was attracted), “of course you do – she was here last December, you know.”

She stopped, as if waiting for Sydney’s reply, for to her the question had been addressed. In reality, poor woman, she felt unable to screw up her courage to make the announcement which she yet knew it would be cruel and impossible to withhold.

Little shivers of cold began to creep over Sydney. She felt inclined to shake Mrs Dalrymple – why could she not either have held her tongue or said it out quickly without this unnecessary torture of suspense? For Eugenia was listening: there she sat, Sydney seemed to see without looking at her, in an unnatural tension of expectation, her eyes, which had somehow grown to look larger of late, fixed on the speaker.

“No,” said Sydney, in a weak, faint, almost querulous voice, quite unlike her own.

“No, I don’t know her. I didn’t see her when she was here.”

“Ah, no, by-the-bye you didn’t,” said Mrs Dalrymple, and something kept her from turning to Eugenia, the one who did know her cousin, as would have been natural, “I remember. But though you don’t know her, you know Captain Chancellor very well. I can’t tell you how surprised I was to hear of those two being really engaged. Of course it has often been spoken of, but I long ago made up my mind it would never be. I could get no satisfaction out of Roma when she was here, but I certainly didn’t think it looked like it. Beauchamp Chancellor never gave me the slightest reason to expect it – rather the other way indeed. Really I don’t think I ever was so surprised.”

“And the marriage is to take place very soon, I think you said,” inquired Sydney, with the same strange sensation she had had once before of being a mere machine asking questions at her sister’s bidding.

“Yes, very soon, I believe,” Mrs Dalrymple went on again in the same nervous, hurried manner. “Next month – about the same time as yours. I have not heard the whole particulars yet. My letter was not from Roma herself, but from Mrs Winter, a friend of mine who is staying near there just now. I must write and congratulate them both, I suppose, though – I hope they won’t ask us to the marriage, however; I certainly don’t want to go.”

There was silence for a few moments. Then both Mrs Dalrymple and Sydney were startled by the sound of Eugenia’s voice. She spoke in a quiet, rather dreamy tone, as if the sense of her words was hardly realised by her – but of the peculiarity of her manner only Sydney was aware.

“Will you kindly give our congratulations too, when you write, Mrs Dalrymple, please – mine especially. I saw Miss Eyrecourt several times, and we all know Captain Chancellor very well, you know.”

“Certainly I will, my dear Eugenia, with the greatest pleasure,” replied Mrs Dalrymple, with rather injudicious empressement. A very little encouragement would have drawn out the whole of her smouldering indignation against Beauchamp and womanly fellow-feeling with Eugenia’s wrongs, but without some hint from the sisters that the expression of her opinion would not be considered indelicate or intrusive, even Mrs Dalrymple felt that in this case, as in most others, the less said the better, and held her peace accordingly.

A minute or two passed, but no more allusion was made to the news which had so disturbed their hostess’s equilibrium. And before there was opportunity for the discussion of any other subject, the sisters, moved by a common instinct, discovered that it was getting late, and that they had already outstayed their time. Mrs Dalrymple could not resist kissing them both affectionately as they said good-bye, but this was the only expression of sympathy on which she ventured.

It was already twilight out of doors. Still not so dusk but that Sydney stole timid glances at her sister’s face in wistful anxiety as to what there might be there to read. But it seemed all blank: she might have stared at her with open inquiry, Eugenia would have been unconscious of it. She walked along quite quietly, replying mechanically to the little commonplace observations Sydney hazarded from time to time; but for the curious expression, or rather curious absence of expression in her usually changeful, speaking face, her sister would have suspected nothing but that Eugenia was in a more than usually silent mood this evening. As it was, Sydney felt bewildered and uncertain, vaguely apprehensive, yet not satisfied that there was new cause for any increase of her anxiety.

“Possibly,” thought Sydney, “this definite news may do her good. It may show her what a poor creature he is after all, and may rouse her to shake herself free of the remembrance of him altogether.”

She hardly understood that to Eugenia such a reaction, healthy and “sensible” though it might be, was impossible. Through all her despair and misery Eugenia clung with instinctive self-regard to her delusion; over and over again she repeated to herself in almost the same words, the poor little formula of faith in her lover which she told herself and really imagined she believed. It was her safeguard at this time, and well for her that she could hold to it; for what to some girls would have been merely a passing though sharp mortification, would to her have been a loss of self-respect extensive enough to have shaken the whole foundations of her character.

Very near their own house the sisters were overtaken by Frank Thurston. He walked beside them to the door, but seemed to hesitate about entering.

“Aren’t you coming in, Frank?” asked Sydney.

“It is hardly worth while,” he replied, eyeing regretfully his but half consumed cigar. “I have only five minutes to spare. Suppose you walk up and down with me, Sydney, instead of my coming in. It’s going to be a beautiful evening.”

Sydney glanced at Eugenia.

“Yes, do, Sydney,” said Eugenia.

Sydney fancied she could discern in this a longing on her sister’s part to be alone, if but for a quarter of an hour.

“Very well, then, I will stay out with you for a little, Frank,” she agreed, and Eugenia entered the house by herself.

When she got into the hall, for the first time she became conscious of feeling different from usual, strangely weak and giddy and very cold. Afraid of the servant’s observing anything amiss, she abandoned her intention of rushing upstairs at once to her own room, and went instead to the drawing-room, where she knew she would find no one. There was no light in the room but that of a large, brightly burning fire. Eugenia drew a low seat close to it, and in a minute or two when the warmth had penetrated a little through her thick dress, she seemed to feel better. Still, however, she was only half restored; she felt that going upstairs would be quite beyond her powers, so she sat still, vaguely relieved that Sydney did not appear with kindly but unendurable expressions of anxiety as to what was wrong.

How long she had sat there she did not know, when the door opened quietly and some one came in. Eugenia looked up. It was not Sydney. It was Gerald Thurston!

“Oh,” thought poor Eugenia, “oh, if only I were up in my own room! Oh, how can I sit and talk to Gerald!”

Then, however, there came a slight sensation of relief that it was Gerald and not Frank! She stood up to shake hands as usual when he crossed the room to where she was, but the giddy feeling returned, and she sat down again rather abruptly.

“I have been with your father in his study for the last hour,” explained Gerald. “He has asked me to stay to dinner and go with him to his lecture at Marny Mills to-night, so you must excuse my clothes.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Eugenia, smiling. “It wants more than half-an-hour to dinner-time still,” Gerald went on, speaking faster than usual – the truth being that this tête-à-tête with Eugenia, the first since the memorable evening of his return, was by no means to his taste – “don’t let me be in your way. I should not have come into the drawing-room, but your father had some letters to write, and I thought I was in his way. I met Sydney flying upstairs as I came across the hall, and she told me I should find a book and a fire in here.”

“There are some library books and new magazines over there on that side-table,” replied Eugenia, moving her head in the direction she meant. “But you are not in my way,” she went on indifferently. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

She shivered perceptibly as she spoke. Then she stooped to reach the poker, and began nervously stirring the fire.

Mr Thurston stopped on his way to the side-table. He came back to the fire-place and took the poker out of Eugenia’s hands. Even in the instant’s contact he felt their icy coldness.