Not Without Thorns

But it was not Roma’s way to dwell on unpleasant suggestions. The meeting troubles half-way was an amusement which had never much recommended itself to her. So she answered brightly —

“Miserable, why should we think about being miserable? But all this time you are forgetting my travelling companion. As you won’t guess who he was, I suppose I must tell you. It was Mr Thurston, your brother-in-law’s brother, Eugenia. The stranger, the new arrival from India, Gertrude, that we met at dinner at the Mountmorrises’.”

“I was just thinking it must be he. He goes up and down that line so much. Did not you like him very much, Miss Eyrecourt? I do exceedingly. And he is so clever and thorough. The only thing not nice about him is, he is a little – funny – I don’t know what to call it.”

“Funny? Do you mean humorous?” said Roma, looking at her with some amusement. “It did not strike me particularly.”

“Oh no,” replied Eugenia. “I don’t mean that at all. I mean he is a little odd – uncertain. Sometimes he is so very much nicer than others. He gets queer fits of stiffness and reserve all of a sudden, and then one can make nothing of him. But oh,” she exclaimed, checking herself suddenly, “I shouldn’t criticise him in this way, for he has been so very good to me.”

“I don’t think you have said anything very treasonable,” said Roma. “I can understand what you mean. He is a sensitive man – almost too much so. He looks as if he had had troubles too, though he is cheerful and practical enough. There is something about him unlike most of the men one meets – they are as a rule so very like each other, or else there is something about me which draws out the same sort of remarks from nearly every young man I meet.”

“Really, Roma, I wish you would not talk such nonsense,” said Gertrude, rising as she spoke. “I do think you should be more careful in what you say. You are getting into a way of thinking you can do or say what you like, which strikes me as the reverse of good taste. I confess I do not like your travelling all the way from Marley with a person of whom you know next to nothing. I hardly even remember meeting this Mr Thurston at the Mountmorrises’, and whether we did or not, that sort of introduction entails no more.”

“But you forget that I said he was a connexion of Eugenia’s, Gertrude,” said Roma, quietly but very distinctly.

Mrs Eyrecourt’s tone softened.

“I did not notice what you said particularly,” she replied, as she left the room. “Of course Eugenia will know I did not intend to be so rude as to speak disparagingly of any of her friends.”

Roma smiled. “All the same, Gertrude, like many other people, is rude when she is cross,” she remarked to Eugenia, for they were now by themselves. “Eugenia,” noticing the puzzled expression of her companion’s face, “why do you look so ‘funny?’ Are you shocked at me?”

“No,” said Eugenia, “but I am not sure that I quite understand you.”

“I am not worth much study, I assure you,” said Roma, contentedly. “You will understand all there is to understand very soon. Suppose we go out a little. By-the-bye, doesn’t that child trouble you? I saw her out there with you for such a time this morning.”

“Floss,” said Eugenia, “trouble me? Oh no. I like her. I should have been very dull without her.”

“So you have been dull? I was afraid of it. I saw the look on your face when I said how glad I was to be back at Winsley again.”

“Oh dear! I wish I could keep looks from my face,” exclaimed Eugenia, pathetically. “Please forget about it. I should be so sorry to look as if I were not happy here. Beauchamp is so anxious that Mrs Eyrecourt and I should get on well. He is very fond of his sister, unusually so, isn’t he?”

“So he should be,” replied Roma. “He owes her so much: so do I. She has been very good to us both.”

“How?” asked Eugenia. “Of course I know she cares for Beauchamp, and – and takes great interest in him and all that, but still I don’t quite know how you mean.”

Roma looked surprised. “Has Beauchamp never told you how Gertrude has all her life been almost like a mother to him?” she said. “And to me too,” she added. “I wonder he never told you.”

“There has been so little time,” said Eugenia, hesitatingly; “but I wish you would tell me. I want to understand things better.”

There were no secrets involved. Roma was ready enough to give Beauchamp’s wife a little sketch of the past. When it was finished Eugenia sighed.

“Thank you,” she said. “I am glad to know it; I wish I had known it before. Perhaps it might have given me a different feeling to Mrs Eyrecourt, and I might have managed to make her like me. As it is, I fear she does not. Oh, Roma,” she went on, for the first time addressing Miss Eyrecourt by her Christian name – “oh, Roma, I wish I understood better. I am afraid I am not fit for the life before me. People seem to look at things so differently from what I fancied. I don’t always understand Beauchamp even. I vex him without in the least meaning it. You know him so well, do you think you could help me at all? I am so terribly, so miserably afraid of his coming to think he has made a mistake.”

The large brown eyes looked up beseechingly into Roma’s; the piteous, troubled expression went straight to Roma’s heart.

“You poor child!” she exclaimed impulsively, but checking herself quickly she went on in a different tone.

“You must not be afraid. Things always seem strange and alarming at first. Try and take them more lightly and don’t be too easily daunted. I do know Beauchamp well, and I can assure you that, like many men, his bark is worse than his bite. You are more likely to annoy him by trying too much than too little to please him. He likes things to go on smoothly, and he can’t understand exaggerated feeling of any kind. I don’t think he is difficult to please, but he has got a certain set of ideas about women and wives – many men have, you know, but they modify in time. Only I suppose it is necessary to some extent to seem to agree with one’s husband whether one does thoroughly or not – just at first, you know, before people have got to understand each other quite well.”

“I am afraid that sort of thing would be very difficult to me,” said Eugenia, sadly. “You see, I have always been accustomed to saying all I felt, to meeting sympathy wherever I wanted it. In some things I found it in my father; in others in my sister.”

“You have been exceptionally happy,” said Roma.

“Yes,” returned Eugenia, “I have indeed. We always see our happiness most clearly when we look back. I fear I have been too tenderly cared for. Perhaps,” with a faint laugh, “perhaps I am a little spoilt.” Roma smiled, but did not answer immediately. They were walking slowly up and down the terrace. Suddenly she turned to Eugenia with a question.

“Do you dislike the idea of Halswood – of living there, I mean?”

“Yes,” answered Eugenia, frankly, “I do very much. I dislike the whole of it – the being rich, and all that.”

“Would you really rather Beauchamp had not succeeded to the property?” asked Roma again, with a glimmer of amusement in her dark eyes.

“Far rather,” returned Eugenia, with much emphasis.

“You extraordinary girl!” exclaimed Roma, now laughing outright; “what would Gertrude think if she heard you?”

“Perhaps she wouldn’t believe me,” said Eugenia, sagely. “But it is quite, quite true. Still I would not say so to her. I hardly think I would say so to Beauchamp even. It is the sort of feeling that he could hardly – that very few people could enter into.”

“Very few indeed, I should say,” replied Roma. “But, Eugenia, do you know I think you must try to get over the feeling. Solemnly, I assure you that I should have felt far more anxious about your future – yours and Beauchamp’s I mean – had he remained poor. You don’t know what it is. You don’t know how very few people can resist the deterioration of that struggling, pinching life.”

“We should not have been so very badly off,” said Eugenia, far from convinced that she was mistaken.

“Yes, you would,” persisted Roma; “for Beauchamp’s tastes are all those of a rich man. He is so fastidious, and as a bachelor he has been able to indulge his fastidiousness to a great extent. Oh no, no, you are quite mistaken, Eugenia! I assure you you should be very thankful you are rich. It takes – a very different man to Beauchamp to make a good poor husband,” she had it on her lips to utter, but stopped in time. Eugenia did not notice the interruption. She seemed to be thinking deeply.

“It seems to me so much more difficult than being poor,” she said. “But you must know some things much better than I. I will try to think it is best.”

“Yes, do, it will give you a much better start,” said Roma, cheerfully. “And remember my advice, to take things lightly and not to be too sensitive. Not very lofty sentiments, are they? But there’s some sense in them. Everything seems to be compromise, after all. Nobody is quite good or quite bad, and most people and most lives are made up of a great many littles of both. That is the extent of the philosophy to which my four-and-twenty years’ experience has brought me?”

“It is very sad, I think,” said Eugenia.

“But it might be worse?” suggested Roma.

Then they both laughed, and whether or no Roma’s philosophy much commended itself to her, Eugenia certainly went about with a lighter heart and brighter face than had been hers during the last few weeks.

And the latter part of Mrs Chancellor’s visit to Winsley certainly proved a notable exception to the old proverb that “three are no company,” for the three ladies were very much better company than the two had been, and Eugenia no longer counted the days to her departure, and openly expressed her hopes that when Beauchamp returned, he would arrange to stay a little while: with his sister; which expression of cordial feeling naturally gratified Mrs Eyrecourt, and disposed her to regard her young sister-in-law in a more favourable light. Roma looked on and smiled, and enjoyed the present comfortable state of things, thinking to herself nevertheless that it was not on the whole to be regretted that the two counties respectively containing Halswood Hall and Winsley Grange were at a considerable distance from each other.

Captain Chancellor came back a fortnight after Roma’s return, and a week later he took his wife to her new home. They did not travel thither by way of Wareborough, as Eugenia had hoped, but this disappointment she made up her mind to bear with philosophy. And Beauchamp, who had acted by his sister’s advice in the matter, appreciated his wife’s good behaviour to the extent of promising that once they were settled at Halswood, and had got the place into some sort of order, she should invite her father and Sydney and Frank to come to visit her in her own home. Eugenia mentioned this to Sydney in her next letter, but the smile with which the curate’s wife read the message was a rather sad one.

“Dear Eugenia!” she said to himself; “I am afraid she is going to be far away from us – farther than she or any of us thought. But I trust she will not miss us.”

Volume Three – Chapter Two.

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And sometimes I am hopeful as the spring,
And up my fluttering heart is borne aloft,
As high and gladsome as the lark at sunrise;
And then, as though the fowler’s shaft had pierced it,
It comes plumb down, with such a dead, dead fall.