Not Without Thorns

The girl’s wits were not of the brightest at any time. Now she looked confused and frightened. “I thought you knew, ma’am,” she exclaimed, “I fetched a fly immediately you had gone out, for the lady. She has gone.”

“Gone!” cried Sydney, in dismay, forgetful of everything except the shock of distress and disappointment.

“She left this note for you, ma’am,” added the servant.

“Perhaps she has gone home,” thought Sydney, with sudden hope. She tore open the envelope.

“Thank you, dearest Sydney,” said the note, “for your love and kindness. After what you have told me, however, of your husband’s feelings, I cannot stay longer with you. But do not be uneasy about me. I will write to you in a day or two. I cannot tell you where I am going, for I do not know myself. I am very miserable and very desolate; but I am not so selfish as to wish, to make you unhappy too.

“Your affectionate Eugenia.”

“What else is she doing than making me miserable too?” thought Sydney. “Oh, Eugenia, this is very cruel of you.”

Frank came in almost immediately. He too was greatly distressed, and at first a little alarmed, and in consequence of these feelings, after the manner of men, he relieved himself by scolding his wife.

“You must have irritated her,” he exclaimed. “I really thought you were more judicious, Sydney. It would have been far better to have said nothing till I came in, and then I would have put the whole before her clearly, but not so as to hurt her.” Sydney took the undeserved blame meekly, nor did she remind her husband that, in saying what she had, she had acted by his express injunctions.

“I blame myself for leaving her,” she said, sadly.

Then they set to work to think what was best to do. Frank’s first impulse was to trace his sister-in-law at once. There would be little difficulty in finding her, he said. It would be easy to discover the driver of the fly, and learn from him to what station he had taken her – for Wareborough boasted no less than three – and, once certain of the railway by which she had travelled, the rest would be easy.

“For it is not,” he said, “as if she had any particular reason for mystery. She is sure in any case to write to us in a day or two.”

In this Sydney agreed, so after talking it over a little more, they decided it would be best to take no such steps as Frank had at first proposed.

“The publicity of making any inquiries about her,” he said, “is one of the things most to be avoided. Besides I hardly feel that I have a right to take any such steps. I will write to Chancellor at once; I shall write very carefully, you may be sure. But don’t be uneasy, Sydney. We shall hear from her in a day or two, you’ll see.” Sydney sighed. There was nothing for it but patience.

“I wish Gerald were at home,” she thought. But he was not, and the next day or two passed very anxiously with Eugenia’s sister.

The elder Mr Thurston was at this time away on a fishing expedition, having allowed himself the rare luxury of a fortnight’s holiday. He had been fishing up, or down, the stream from which Nunswell takes its name, and for the last few days had made this little watering-place his headquarters. It was a Friday when Eugenia left Wareborough, and late on the following day, Gerald, having returned to Nunswell, there to spend Sunday in decorous fashion, was strolling in the public gardens – the very gardens where he had sat and talked with Eugenia, some fifteen or sixteen months ago – the same gardens where, the very next day, “time and chance combining,” Beauchamp Chancellor and she had met again – when something familiar, something indefinably suggestive in the gait and bearing of a lady walking slowly a little way in front of him, caught Mr Thurston’s attention. He was thinking of Eugenia at the moment. The resemblance of the figure before him to the object of his thoughts struck him suddenly as the explanation of his vague sensation.

“If Eugenia were dead,” he said to himself, “I should shrink from dispelling the illusion, as no doubt many a ghost could be dispelled; but believing her to be alive and well, I think I should like to see the face of that tall, black-robed lady. Very likely she is old and ugly.” And half smiling at his own fancies, he quietly quickened his steps so as to overtake her. It was not difficult to do so. The part of the garden where the two were walking was retired and unfrequented. There was hardly another person within sight. As Gerald’s increased pace brought him quickly on a line with the solitary lady, the sounds of his footsteps caught her ear. Just as he passed her, she mechanically turned her face in his direction. Mr Thurston’s nerves were under good control, but the start of almost incredulous surprise at seeing his own wild fancy realised, betrayed him into a sudden exclamation.

“Eugenia!” he said, impetuously, “Eugenia, is it really you?” And even while he spoke, he looked at her again more closely, with a new fear of being the victim of some extraordinarily strong accidental resemblance. But it was not so. Eugenia’s surprise, though considerable, was less overpowering than Gerald’s, and she answered him composedly enough.

“Yes,” she said, with a little smile – a smile that somehow, however, failed to lighten up her face as of old – a poor, pitiful, unsatisfactory attempt at a smile only. “Yes, it is certainly I. Are you very much astonished to see me? Where have you sprung from?”

“I have been fishing down the Nun,” he replied. “Are you staying here? Is Captain Chancellor here?”

“Yes and no,” she answered, with a very forced attempt at playfulness. “I am staying here, but alone.”

“Alone!” he exclaimed in surprise.

“Yes, alone,” she repeated. “Why do you cross-question me so, Gerald? Why do you look at me so? I am not a baby. You are as bad as Frank. I wish I hadn’t met you. I didn’t want you to speak to me. I don’t want any one to speak to me. I have no friends, and I don’t want any.”

Then suddenly, to his utter amazement, she finished up this petulant, incoherent speech by bursting into tears. They were the first she had shed since she left Halswood; and once released from the unnatural restraint in which they had been pent up, they took revenge on it by the violence with which they poured forth. The position was by no means a pleasant one for Mr Thurston, though he did not share Captain Chancellor’s exaggerated horror of tears, or believe with him that they were invariably the precursors of hysterics. “Something must be wrong, very wrong, I fear,” he thought, and his unselfish anxiety and genuine pity for the suffering woman by his side quickened his instincts on her behalf. For a minute or two he walked on beside her in silence. Then, as they were approaching the more frequented part of the gardens, and her sobs gave no sign of subsiding, he spoke to her – quietly and kindly, but with a slight inference of authority in his tone, which, excited as she was, she instinctively obeyed.

“Suppose we turn and walk back again a little way,” he said. “You have over-tired yourself, I am afraid.”

She did not speak at once, but turned as he directed. He could see now that she was making strong efforts to control herself. When she thought that she could trust her voice, she spoke.

“I am ashamed of myself, Gerald, utterly ashamed of myself,” she said at last. “What must you think of me? I suppose I have over-tired myself. I have been walking about here nearly all day. I had nothing else to do.”

“And you are really alone here?” he inquired.

“Yes, except my maid, Rachel Brand; you remember her? – I am quite alone.”

“And how – how is it so?” he was going to ask, but stopped. “No,” he went on, “I will not presume on our old friendship to ask questions you may not care to answer; only tell me, Eugenia, can I be of any service to you?”

“None, thank you,” she answered sadly. “No one can help me. Even Sydney no longer feels with me – that is why I am here alone.”

“Your doubting Sydney makes me doubt if things are so bad as they seem to you,” he said, with a little smile.

“Don’t doubt it,” she said quickly. “They could not be worse, Gerald,” she added, after a little pause. “You have known a good deal about me – more perhaps almost than any one else. I will tell you the worst sting of my misery – I have come to know that my husband does not care for me – that he never has done so – that never a woman made a more fatal mistake than I when I married.”

Mr Thurston started violently; a sort of spasm of pain contracted his forehead – pain of the past, not of the present, so far as he himself was concerned.

“Eugenia,” he said, gravely, “from you, these are terrible words.”

“I know they are,” she said bitterly, “but I believe they are true. I married under a double delusion. But I believe I could have endured the one great disappointment of finding how I had overestimated my – my – never mind. I say, I think I could have learnt to bear my many disappointments, and make the best of my materials, had my other belief, my sheet anchor, not failed me as it has done. By the light of what I now know, I can see that for some time its hold has been growing feeble and uncertain on me, and in consequence my strength has decreased, my good resolutions have faded, till now I have nothing to hold to. I hardly care where I drift – what does it matter?”

“What does it matter?” broke out Gerald, indignantly. “Eugenia, do you know what you are saying? Oh, you foolish, presumptuous child! Does duty depend on inclination, do obligations cease to bind us when they become difficult or painful? Allowing that you have been deceived, allowing that you have found your life essentially other than you expected, does that set you free from responsibility? The world is bad enough already, but what it would be if we all regulated our conduct by your principles, I should shudder to think. And the cowardliness of it too! Eugenia, I thought you a woman incapable of thus deserting your post!”

The colour had mounted to Eugenia’s pale face, but the tears had ceased to flow. “You are very hard, Gerald,” she said at last. “You cannot possibly estimate my position correctly. I left my husband because I felt I should grow worse if I stayed, grow worse myself, and make him grow so too. For my belief in him once shattered, no link remained between us, no common ground on which we could meet. What could be the end of such a life?”

“What will be the end of the one you have chosen for yourself, and forced upon him?” asked Gerald. “Duties once discarded, we are not immediately allowed to console ourselves with others of our own choosing, as you will find to your cost. What are you intending to do – why did you come here?”

“I don’t know. It just came into my mind. I meant to wait here till something could be settled for the future. My husband is not the sort of man to force me to return: he is too proud. I don’t want any money from him. I have enough of my own. I suppose some sort of separation could be agreed upon. I have heard of such things.”

She spoke with a sort of dreary indifference.

“And, in the meantime, why come here alone? Why not go to Sydney.”

“I did,” she said. Then she went on to tell him why she had left his brother’s house. “Frank evidently disapproved of me altogether,” she remarked, “and even Sydney seemed to think I greatly exaggerated things.”

“As to that I can’t judge. I don’t wish to judge,” said Gerald, quickly. “Of course, I should suppose you have reason to trust implicitly the sources of the information on which you acted?” he looked at her keenly as he spoke. Eugenia slightly changed colour.

“My own instincts are not likely to deceive me,” she said, hotly. But her honesty pushed itself in, with some misgiving. “There is one person I should like to see – a person I trust thoroughly. Of course she can only confirm what I discovered, but still, strictly speaking, I suppose I should have her confirmation before I can say I am quite sure of what I acted upon.”

“Do you mean Miss Eyrecourt?” said Gerald.

“Yes,” answered Eugenia, looking up with some surprise at his correct guess.

“I am glad you trust her,” he said, briefly. They had turned again by now, and from time to time other strollers passed them, glancing at them in one or two cases, with the slight, indolent curiosity with which watering-place loungers inspect each other. Eugenia’s veil was drawn down, but her tall figure in its deep mourning garments could not but be somewhat conspicuous. Gerald chose the quietest paths, but still he grew uneasy. He did not like to leave his companion till he had seen her safely to her own door; his terror lest she should suspect him of suggesting the expediency of their separating, made it impossible for him to find any plausible excuse for saying good-bye: yet at every step he realised more painfully the awkwardness that might attend their recognition. “Ever so many Wareborough people come here,” he reflected, “and who knows but what by this time there is full hue and cry after the missing Mrs Chancellor. It is frightful to think what she is exposing herself to,” and, glancing at her as the thought crossed his mind, some irritation mingled with his pity. “She is too absorbed to understand it, but something must be done at once.”

“Does Sydney know where you are now?” he asked.

“No,” she replied, “not yet. But I am going to write to her to-night.”