Not Without Thorns

In her heart she was not without some feminine curiosity about Eugenia herself, her belongings, and the history of the whole affair, but the tone she had taken up would not allow her to show any such undignified interest. So Beauchamp and she walked up and down for a few minutes in silence; then Gertrude discovered it was growing chilly and returned to the house, leaving her brother to his cigar and solitude.

Volume Two – Chapter Eight.

Lookers-on

Ah, love, there is no better life than this;
To have known love, how bitter a thing it is,
…
Yea, these that know not, shall they have such bliss?

    Swinburne.
Mrs Eyrecourt drove her brother to the station the next morning in Addie’s pretty pony-carriage, which had been sent from Wylingham for the two or three weeks the Chancellors had originally intended to spend at Halswood. Gertrude was gentle and affectionate, anxious apparently to prove to Beauchamp the truth of her words that, whatever she might think of his conduct, it was too late in the day for any talk of quarrelling or coldness between them. She studiously avoided the subject of the previous evening’s conversation; only just at the last, when their drive was all but at an end, she asked one question.

“You did not tell me, Beauchamp, when it – when your marriage – is likely to be?” she said, with some hesitation. “Is any time fixed? Do you think it will be soon?”

“Yes,” answered Captain Chancellor, promptly; “I hope it will be very soon. Next month, if I can get leave, or in June. Long engagements are senseless when there is no reason for them.”

“Only it is not always the lady and her friends are so obliging about making their preparations in a hurry,” observed Mrs Eyrecourt. It was the first snappish remark she had allowed herself, and she regretted it instantly, though Beauchamp did not allow her to see that it had nettled him.

“No,” he said, coolly; “but then few girls are so free from home ties as Eugenia. Her life will be very lonely now, for her only sister is married, and I don’t see why there should be any delay.”

The truth was that the subject of the time for their marriage had not yet been alluded to. He had answered his sister on the spur of the moment, from a sort of wish to prove to her how definite the thing was, how useless any remonstrance or interference would be, and it had not at the moment occurred to him that by what he had said he had given occasion for any inference of undignified haste on the part of Eugenia’s family.

“Then I suppose it is possible – or probable even – that I shall not see you again as a bachelor?” said Gertrude, trying to speak lightly.

“That depends on your own movements. I have promised Mrs Chancellor to run down to Wylingham for a couple of days before long. Perhaps you may be with them?”

Mrs Eyrecourt shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she replied. “We go to town next week, and I cannot leave Roma alone there. Besides, I rather doubt their going back to Wylingham. I expect Mrs Chancellor will go to the sea-side next week. Roger is not the least fit for school again, and they say sea-air suits him.”

“Poor boy!” said Beauchamp; and they were both silent for a minute or two. Then he spoke again. “Mrs Chancellor will let me know if she changes her plans, I have no doubt. But in any case, Gertrude, I shall see you before long? You will come to the marriage?”

“Shall you wish it? I should not like to be invited merely out of civility,” said Mrs Eyrecourt. “And, besides, there will probably be a great many of Miss Laurence’s relations at it. They may not care about any more.”

“Nonsense!” said Beauchamp, wondering inwardly at the extraordinary attraction the making suffering saints of themselves seems to have for even otherwise sensible women; “nonsense, Gertrude! Of course I shall wish it, and of course Eugenia will too. And she has very few relations, as I have told you. Certainly I shall expect you.”

“Very well, dear Beauchamp; we shall see,” replied his sister, with unwonted meekness, and so they parted.

Gertrude had done one thing by what she had said to her brother – she had hastened the very catastrophe she was most anxious to avert. When Captain Chancellor, a few days after his return from Halswood, went over to Wareborough for a night, it was with the determination to hurry on matters as fast as possible, and to fix the earliest date practicable for his marriage. He hardly understood why he did so, and, if he tried to find a reason for this impetuosity, pretended to himself that it was the proper thing in the circumstances. That he was really influenced by any doubt of himself, any misgivings as to the result, in his case, of a long engagement, the course of which might see events greatly affecting his future, he would not allow even to himself. And there was, perhaps, some excuse for his deliberate self-deception, for no sooner was he in Eugenia’s presence and under the influence of her beauty and sweetness than every shadow of a cloud disappeared from his horizon.

So it was decided that they should be married in June. Eugenia was so completely under her lover’s influence that whatever he proposed seemed to her wisest and best; and though some suggestions were mooted by Mr Laurence as to the advisability of the young people’s “seeing a little more of each other” before entering on that most solemn of bonds, companionship for life, there was no one at hand to support him in such an old-fashioned idea, and Captain Chancellor’s opinion that the deed “were well done quickly” encountered no important opposition. For Sydney and her husband were away on the clerical honeymoon of four weeks barring a Sunday, and only returned home, to begin life in their modest little house in a Wareborough terrace, in time to learn that all was settled, down to the day itself and the number of the bridesmaids.

“As good as married already, you see, Sydney,” said Frank. “Well, I only hope it will not prove a case of ‘repenting at leisure’ – that’s all I’ve got to say.”

“Frank,” exclaimed the young wife, in surprise and alarm, “what do you mean? You have always spoken as if you liked Captain Chancellor and thought highly of him. That has been one of my great comforts.”

“So it has wanted comfort, has it, the poor little thing?” said Frank, affecting to pat Sydney consolingly. “Why didn’t it say so before?”

“Don’t, please, dear Frank,” she said, earnestly, gently disengaging herself and smoothing the hair his hand had disarranged; “don’t laugh at me when I am so serious in my anxiety about Eugenia.”

“I am anxious about her too,” returned her husband, “but don’t mistake me. I am far from meaning to infer that I don’t think well of Chancellor. He’s by no means a bad fellow, but neither is he a piece of manly perfection, as I fancy Eugenia imagines. She really is so silly, Sydney, so extreme and exaggerated, I am afraid she is sure to have a grand smash some day. She rushes into things so frantically, and it would be perfect waste of breath to try to make her hear reason. And think how little she and Chancellor really know of each other.”

“You don’t need to remind me of that,” said Sydney, sadly. “Still I hardly see that a longer engagement would have mended matters. They could not have seen much of each other now he is at Bridgenorth, and after all – ”

“After all, all marriages are a good deal of a toss-up,” said Frank, lightly, “ours of course excepted. But don’t fret yourself about Eugenia. She and everyone else must learn their own lessons, I suppose, and I don’t see that there is anything to be done to help her.”

Sydney sighed and said no more. There was a mixture of truth in what Frank said, but yet on this one subject the sympathy between herself and Gerald was greater than she found in her husband, only, unfortunately, her knowledge of her brother-in-law’s secret forbade her appealing to him for comfort or advice. So she was fain to keep her fears to herself and try to see her sister’s future as hopefully as she could.

And time went on; the days and weeks flew rapidly by and the marriage-day drew near. On the Sunday preceding it Captain Chancellor came over from Bridgenorth for a few hours. It seemed to Eugenia that he looked out of spirits.

“Is anything the matter?” she asked anxiously, when they were alone together.

He looked a little surprised at her inquiry.

“What makes you think there is?” he answered, it seemed to her evasively. “No, there is nothing the matter – except, oh yes, by-the-bye, I must not forget to tell you – you will be sorry to hear my sister cannot be with us on Thursday after all.”

“Your sister, Mrs Eyrecourt,” exclaimed Eugenia. “Oh, I am so sorry!”

She hardly liked to ask the reason of this sudden change of intention; Beauchamp was far from communicative about his family affairs, and Eugenia knew little of Mrs Eyrecourt beyond her name.

“Yes,” he replied, “it is a pity. I only heard from her this morning. And oh, by-the-bye, she enclosed a note for you, not knowing your address.”

He felt for his pocket-book, which contained the note. It was a mere civil expression of apology for being obliged at the last to give up thoughts of being present at the ceremony; it began “Dear Miss Laurence,” and ended “Yours sincerely.” The reason given for her unavoidable absence was “the serious illness of a near relative.” Eugenia looked puzzled.

“A near relative – ” she said, inquiringly. “Some one on Mr Eyrecourt’s side of the house, I suppose.”

“Mr Eyrecourt is dead,” said Beauchamp. “Oh yes, I know, but I mean it must be a relation of his who is seriously ill. If it were a relation of yours, it might be rather awkward, might it not? What should we do?”

“Put off the marriage?” suggested Captain Chancellor, laughing, but not heartily. “Would you like that, Eugenia? Well, as it happens, the person in question is a near relation of mine too – the nearest male relation of my own family in the world. You remember my telling you of the sudden death of a cousin of mine about two months ago – Mr Chancellor, of Halswood? This boy who is so ill now is his only son.”

“Is he very ill?” asked Eugenia.

“Yes,” answered her fiancé, with a slight shortness in his manner, giving the girl the impression that he disliked being questioned on the subject. (“How fond he must be of his poor young cousin!” was her simple interpretation of his unresponsiveness.) “Yes, I fancy so. I don’t suppose he can live long.”

“Then,” persisted Eugenia, her colour rising to her cheeks in spite of her endeavour to be perfectly calm and “sensible,” “then should you not be with him, Beauchamp? Would it not be better – more – more seemly, perhaps, really to put off our marriage?”

She made the suggestion in all good faith and unselfish anxiety in no way to add to what she now imagined must be the cause of her lover’s constraint and depression; she was little prepared for the effect of her words.

Captain Chancellor had been standing at a little distance from her, idly fingering a book that lay on the table while she read Mrs Eyrecourt’s note. As she spoke he turned round, crossed the room quickly to where she sat, and stood before her with a dark look on his fair face, an angry light in his blue eyes.

“Are you in earnest, Eugenia? Do you mean what you say?” he exclaimed, in a hard, unpleasant tone. “Do you know that what you have said is a most extraordinary thing for a girl to say to – to the man she is going to many, two days before the time fixed for doing so? Do you really mean that you are ready to catch at any excuse for putting off our marriage indefinitely? Perhaps you really mean that you would like to put it off altogether – if so, you had better say so.”

A more suspicious or sophisticated girl would have taken fright at this strange distortion of the simple meaning of her words, might have guessed it to be a ruse on the part of her fiancé to throw upon her the blame of what he himself was not brave enough to do in a straightforward fashion; a girl of a haughtier spirit than Eugenia would have felt nothing but indignation at the unmerited reproach, and in nine cases out of ten the “lovers’ quarrel” certain to ensue would have ended in something the reverse of “very pretty.” But Eugenia was too single-minded in her faith and devotion to feel anything but astonishment and distress.

“Beauchamp,” she exclaimed, in a voice brimming over with tender reproach, her brown eyes filling with tears, “oh, Beauchamp, how can you speak so to me? You know, you must know, I only meant exactly what I said. I was afraid of being, as it were, in your way just at this crisis, when you may feel you should be with your cousin. I didn’t know there was anything ‘extraordinary’ in what I said. I wanted to be unselfish.”

“But it isn’t unselfish to propose such a thing to me in that cool way, as if it would cost you nothing at all,” said Captain Chancellor, with a sudden change of tone. “Oh, my darling, you do look so frightfully pretty with the tears in your eyes! Oh, you cold-blooded, aggravating little creature! Do you think that all the cousins in the world may not fall ill and die for what I care when I have you beside me? Don’t you think it possible I may want to be married whether you do or not?”

He had thrown his arms round her by now, was looking down into her face with all the old “irresistibleness” of eyes and lips, every trace of annoyance melted like snow before the sun.