Not Without Thorns

“Some of the new servants are to be here to-morrow,” said Mrs Grier, to Captain Chancellor. “I hope you will find everything comfortable in the meantime, sir.”

Dinner – or, more properly speaking, supper – was prepared for the travellers in the dining-room – a huge, dark cavern of a room it looked to Eugenia, who shivered as the fireless grate met her view. She was too tired to eat; but, afraid of annoying her husband, she made a pretence of doing so, feeling eager for Sydney’s letter, and a chat with Rachel about “home,” in her own room.

These pleasures were deferred for a little by the appearance of Mrs Grier to do the honour of showing her lady her rooms. The housekeeper had rather taken a fancy to Mrs Chancellor. Eugenia’s allusion to what she “must have had to go through,” had been a most lucky one, for Mrs Grier was one of those curiously constituted beings to whom condolence never comes amiss. The most delicate flattery was less acceptable to her than a sympathising remark that she was “looking far from well,” and no one could pay her a higher compliment than by telling her she bore traces of having known a great deal of trouble. She was not, for her class, an uneducated person; but she was constitutionally superstitious. Omens, dreams, deathbeds, funerals, all things ghastly and ghostly, were dear to her soul; and her thirty-three years’ life in a gloomy, half-deserted house, such as Halswood had been under the old régime, had not conduced to a healthier tone of mind.

“Along this way, if you please, ma’am,” she said to Eugenia, pointing to the long corridor which ran to the right of the great staircase they had come up by. “The rooms to the left have not been occupied for many years. We thought – that is, Mr Blinkhorn and I – that you would prefer to use the rooms which have been the best family-rooms for some generations. It would feel less strange-like – more at home, if I may say so. Here, ma’am,” opening the first door she came to, “is what was the late Mrs Chancellor’s boudoir. It is eight-and-twenty years next month since she was taken ill suddenly, sitting over there by the window in that very chair. It was heart-disease, I believe. She had had a good deal of trouble in her time, poor lady, for the old Squire was always peculiar. They carried her —we did (I was her maid then) – into her bedroom – the next room, ma’am – this,” again opening a door, with an air of peculiar gratification in what she was going to say, “and she died the same night in the bed you see, standing as it does now.”

The present Mrs Chancellor gave a little shiver.

“The next room again, ma’am,” proceeded Mrs Grier, “is quite as pleasant a one as this, and about the same size. It is the room in which old Mr Chancellor breathed his last, last December. He was eighty-nine, ma’am; but he died very hard, for all that. We prepared both these rooms that you might take your choice.”

“Thank you,” replied Eugenia. “I certainly do not feel as if I preferred either. What rooms did the last Mr and Mrs Chancellor use when they were here?” she went on to ask, in a desperate hope that she might light upon some more inviting habitation than these great, dark, musty apartments, with their funereal four-post bedsteads and gloomy associations.

“They had rooms on the other side of the passage,” said Mrs Grier. “Mrs Chancellor had a prejudice against those beautiful mahogany bedsteads,” with indignant emphasis. Evidently Herbert Chancellor’s wife had found small favour in the eyes of Mrs Grier. “But Mr Chancellor died,” with satisfaction, “in his grandfather’s room – the next door, as I told you, ma’am, to this.”

“I don’t wonder at it,” thought Eugenia to herself. She wished she could find courage to ask if it would not be possible for her at once to take up her quarters in one of the rooms in which, so far at least, no Chancellor had lain in state, and was just meditating a request to be shown the one in which Herbert had not died, when Mrs Grier nipped her hopes in the bud.

“To-morrow, of course, any room can be prepared that you like, ma’am,” said the housekeeper; “but for to-night, these two beds are the only ones with sheets on.”

There was a slightly aggrieved tone in her voice. Eugenia instantly took alarm that she might have hurt the old lady’s feelings.

“Oh, thank you, Mrs Grier!” she exclaimed. “I am quite satisfied with this room, and I am sure it will be very comfortable. To-morrow I should like you to show me all over the house. Of course I don’t yet know how we shall settle about any of the rooms permanently. It depends on Captain Chancellor. He intends to refurnish several. But now I think I will go to bed, if you will send Rachel. I am so tired!”

“You do look tired, ma’am. It quite gave me a turn to see you so white when you came first, ma’am,” said Mrs Grier, more cheerfully than she had yet spoken.

And at supper in her own room, when she went downstairs, she confided to Mr Blinkhorn certain agreeable presentiments with regard to their new mistress.

“A nice-spoken young lady. None of your dressed-up fine ladies like the last Mrs Chancellor and her daughter, who must have French beds to sleep in, and could never so much as remember one’s name. Oh, no, this Mrs Chancellor is a different kind altogether. But, mark my words, Mr Blinkhorn, she isn’t long for this world. The Captain may talk of luck turning – ah, indeed! – was it for nothing I dreamt I saw our new lady with black hair instead of brown? Was it for nothing the looking-glass dipped out of my hands when I was dusting her room again this afternoon?”

“But it didn’t break,” objected Mr Blinkhorn.

“Break, what has that to do with it?” exclaimed Mrs Grier, indignantly. “But I know of old it’s no use wasting words on some subjects on you, Mr Blinkhorn. Those that won’t see won’t see, but some day you may remember my words.”

But, notwithstanding Mrs Grier’s forebodings, notwithstanding her own wounded and troubled spirit, Eugenia Chancellor soon fell asleep, and slept soundly. She fell asleep with Sydney’s letter under her pillow, and its loving words in her heart; and the next morning, when the sun shone again, and her husband spoke kindly and seemed to have forgotten yesterday’s cloud, she began again to think that after all life might be bright for her, and their home a happy one.

“Comme on pense à vingt ans.”

Volume Three – Chapter Three.

Visitors, Expected and Unexpected

Eins ist was besänftigt; die Liebe. – Börne.

Yes, things certainly looked brighter next morning, but the brightness was somewhat fitful and tremulous. Encouraged by it, nevertheless, Eugenia made many new resolutions – too many perhaps – and cherished again new hopes. She set herself with palpitating earnestness to please her husband, and repeated to herself, whenever she had reason to think she had done so, that her former failures had been entirely attributable to her own bad management, want of tact, or exaggerated sensitiveness. Her desire to bring herself, and not Captain Chancellor, in guilty; her determination to see him, and everything about him, by the light of her former hopes and beliefs would have been piteous to any one well acquainted with both characters. She was fighting, not merely for happiness, but for faith – her terror, fast maturing, though as yet resolutely ignored, was not so much that her married life should prove a disappointment as that she should be forced into acknowledging the unworthiness of her idol – that the day should come when, in unutterable bitterness of spirit, she should be driven to confess, “behold it was a dream;” when, the glamour gone for ever, the prize she had won should be seen by her for but “a poor thing” after all. For should that day ever come, Eugenia, little as she knew herself, yet felt instinctively it would go sorely with her – ever prone to extremes, her judgment would then be warped by disappointment, as formerly by unreasonable expectation.

“If I ever come to believe Beauchamp selfish, small-minded, or in any sense less noble than my ideal husband,” she had once said to herself, “I cannot imagine that I could endure to remain with him – I cannot imagine that I could live. Only,” she added, and this reflection many a time stood her in good stead, giving her a sense of security – of firm ground in one direction, “there is one thing I can never be disappointed in – the certainty of his love. Even should it die out altogether – should he live to regret his marriage, and think it a mistake, I shall know that it was mine – that to win me he threw every other consideration aside.”

But just at this time – their first coming to Halswood – Mrs Chancellor instinctively shunned meditation, and for a while the plan seemed to answer. There was a good deal to do – a good many arrangements to make as to which it was almost a matter of necessity that her husband should consult her. There was all the new furniture to select, the choice of rooms to make, and into these interests Eugenia threw herself with a good deal of her old energy, tempered however by her determination in all things great and small to submit to Beauchamp’s wishes – to accept his opinion as incontestably best. And up to a certain point this plan succeeded, and, difficult as it was for Eugenia to live in a state of semi-suppression, of incessant watchfulness over each word, and tone, and even look for fear that in any way she should offend, yet she fancied she believed she was doing no more than her wifely duty – that she was happy in acting thus, and that by-and-by, “when we get to understand each other,” life would be all she had dreamed of.

But to an essentially honest nature this self-delusion could not be kept up for ever. Nor, notwithstanding all the goodwill in the world, was it possible for Eugenia – impulsive, vehement, yearning for sympathy, and eager to confide to the friend nearest to her every thought, doubt, hope which sprang to life in her busy brain – for long to adhere to the rule of conduct she had laid down for herself. Her very conscientiousness, her very humility ranged themselves against her; how could she judge or interpret the conduct or opinions of the man she would have gladly died rather than lose her lofty faith in, by a standard lower than that by which she tested herself? She never yet had allowed to herself the existence of the creeping, encroaching, serpent-like fear she dared not face; but, nevertheless, it was making its way to the very centre of her fortress. Day by day she propped up its tottering foundations with some feeble, inefficient attempt at a bulwark – some plausible excuse or suggestion of misapprehension or undeserved self-blame – refusing to see how the whole once beautiful fabric was doomed, how the best remaining chance for her was bravely to make an end of it, to set to work again with the materials yet left to her to uprear a less imposing but more firmly-built tower of defence, better fitted than her fairy palace to stand, not only the great storms, but the smaller trials – the daily damps, and mists, and chills of life.

But this, Eugenia would not do. She clung with desperate infatuation to her dream, and in her heart of hearts she said —

“If it is to end in ruin, let it be so, and great will be the fall thereof. But I will not hasten my own misery by thinking about it beforehand.”

They had been now between two and three months at Halswood; the weeks had at the very first passed quickly enough, for Eugenia had succeeded in filling them with a succession of petty interests. Captain Chancellor was very well pleased with her, on the whole. She had proved more submissive than he had anticipated, though a great part of the credit of this satisfactory state of things was doubtless due to his own judicious management. He had always had his own theories as to the proper way of controlling and training the opposite sex, and had often been contemptuous on the subject of unhappy marriages.

“Unhappy fiddlesticks,” he would declare, “it’s all his own fault. He should have given her to understand once for all at the start who was to be master, and he would have had no more trouble.”

The trouble that had fallen to his own share he owned to himself had certainly not been great, and the proof of the pudding being generally allowed to be in the eating, he felt pleasantly conscious of his own success. There was only one thing about his wife that ever seriously annoyed him – her spirits were not of late what they had been; certainly, some amount of repose and reserve of manner had been wanting in her at first, and he was pleased to see how quickly she had, at a hint or two from him, set herself to acquire it; but then, again, there had been a great charm in her girlish gaiety and graceful merriment.

“I never heard any woman laugh better than Eugenia,” he thought. “Most women laugh so atrociously, that I wish it was made penal, but she laughs charmingly.”

Then he wondered why of late he had so seldom heard that sweet, soft, bright sound. “She can’t be dull,” he said to himself, “we have had a fair amount of variety since we came here. Besides, catch a woman being dull and not complaining of it! And if there is anything she wants, she would have been sure to ask for it.”

He firmly believed himself the most indulgent of husbands, and so, in a certain practical sense, perhaps he was. He “grudged her nothing,” though, indeed, her tastes continued so simple, that her own allowance from her father promised more than to cover her whole personal expenses; he never went away from home without bringing her some costly present when he came back – the first time, it had been a bracelet of great value. Eugenia had thanked him for it warmly, but then, eyeing it with some misgiving, had said something about its being too good for her.

“I don’t feel as if I liked wearing such splendid things, Beauchamp,” had been her words. “It hardly seems consistent with – ”

“With what?” he had asked, irritated already.

“With my former quiet life, with present things, even, my sister being the wife of a poor curate, for one thing. But oh, don’t be vexed, Beauchamp, I am very silly, I know. Forgive me. For the thought of me, the wish to please me, I cannot thank you enough. That would have delighted me had the bracelet been the plainest in the world.”

Upon which, Beauchamp had turned from her angrily, with some muttered words about “sentimental nonsense and affectation,” and Eugenia had had a sore fit of penitence for the inexcusable ingratitude which had thus wounded his sensitive spirit. And, after all, she did deserve some blame for unnecessarily irritating him in this instance.

And thus, whether really the case or not, it always seemed to him in any of the discussions or disagreements which still, notwithstanding Eugenia’s scrupulous care, occasionally arose between them. And no wonder that he thought so. It was always the same story. Eugenia annoyed him, probably in some very trivial matter, as to which, nevertheless, he felt bound to act up to his principle of “keeping a tight hand on her, letting her feel the reins.”

And invariably it ended in her taking all the blame on herself, exerting all her powers of logic (or sophistry) to convince herself that the fault lay with her alone. It was but rarely, very, very rarely, that she allowed her strong true sense of justice, of self-respect and womanly right, to break out from the restraint in which she had condemned it to dwell. And on such occasions, according to the invariable law of reaction, the unnatural repression avenged itself, and as had been the case in the carriage the night they came to Halswood, Eugenia’s bitterness of indignation and fiery temper horrified herself, and did her infinite injustice with her husband. It was a bad state of things altogether – bad for Eugenia, worse, perhaps, for her husband, fostering his selfishness, increasing his narrow-minded self-opinionativeness.

The day after the one on which it had occurred to Beauchamp that Eugenia’s spirits were not what they had been, it happened that she got a letter from Sydney. It came in the morning, and as Captain Chancellor handed it to her, a joyful exclamation escaped her.

“From Sydney! Oh, I am so glad! I have not heard from her for such a time.”

“What do you call ‘such a time,’ I wonder?” said Captain Chancellor, good-humouredly. “A week, I suppose?”

“No, longer than that,” replied Eugenia. And then, encouraged by his tone, she added, “You know Sydney and I had hardly ever been separated before, and lately I have been particularly anxious to hear from home – from Wareborough – on account of my father not having been well.”

“Your father ill! I never heard of it. I wonder you did not tell me,” said her husband.

“It was when you were away – the week before last – I heard it. I think I mentioned it when I wrote,” said Eugenia, timidly, reluctant to own to herself that Beauchamp could so soon have forgotten a matter of such interest to her.

“Ah, well, perhaps you did. It is nothing serious, I suppose?” And without waiting for an answer, Captain Chancellor proceeded to read his own letters.

One among them was from an old brother officer, a friend of several years’ standing, recently returned from abroad, whom he had invited to come down for a few days’ shooting, intending to arrange a suitable party to meet him.

“Eugenia,” he said, looking up quickly, after reading this letter, “Colonel Masterton cannot come till the 29th. That leaves us all the week after next free. Of course I shall not ask the others till he comes. How would you like to have your people for a few days then – the Thurstons and your father. The change might do him good, and you seem dying to see your sister.”

Eugenia’s face glowed all over with delight. The old bright look came into her eyes, the old eager ring thrilled again through her voice.