Not Without Thorns

She was a very small person indeed. Of years she numbered five, in height and appearance she might easily have passed for three. She was hardly a pretty child, for her features, though small and delicate, were wanting in the rosebud freshness so charming in early childhood; her eyes, when one succeeded in penetrating to them through the tangle of wavy light hair that no combing and brushing could keep in its place, were peculiar in colour and expression. There was a queer greenish light in them as she looked up into Roma’s face with a half-resentful, half-questioning gaze, standing there on the door-mat, her legs very wide apart, under one arm a very small kitten, under the other a very big doll – fond objects of her otherwise somewhat unappreciated devotion. She was a curious child, full of “touchy tempers and contrary ways,” not easily cowed, rebellious and argumentative, and no one had as yet taken the trouble to understand her – to draw out the fund of unappropriated affection in her baby heart.

Roma got tired of holding the door open. “Come, Floss,” she said, impatiently, “come in quickly.”

Floss stared at her for another minute without speaking. Then, “No,” she said deliberately. “I won’t come in nor neither go out;” and as Roma turned away with a little laugh and a careless, “then stay where you are, Floss,” the child shook with indignation and impotent resentment.

“She is really dreadful, Roma,” said Mrs Eyrecourt, plaintively. “For some time past nurse tells me it is the same thing every day – out of one temper into another, from morning to night.”

“She must take after her uncle,” said Roma; “it is all contradiction. Don’t bother yourself about her, Gertrude. I’ll ring for nurse.”

And the matter ended in the poor little culprit being carried off to the nursery in a whirlwind of misery and passion, reiterating as she went that mamma and aunt made her naughty when she had “comed down good.”

“What has become of Quintin?” asked Roma, when they were again left in peace. “I haven’t seen him this morning.”

“He is spending the day with the Montmorris boys. He set off quite early, immediately after his breakfast, in great spirits, dear fellow,” replied his mother. “How different he is from Floss, Roma!”

“Yes,” answered Roma, “he is a nice boy. But it comes easily to people like Quintin to be good, Gertrude. He has everything in his favour – perfect health, a naturally easy temper, good looks, and every one inclined to think the best of him. Whereas poor little Flossy seems to have been always at war with the world. She is so delicate too. My conscience pricks me sometimes a little about that child.”

“I don’t see that there is anything more to be done for her. I trust to her growing out of these tempers in time,” said Mrs Eyrecourt, philosophically – she was always philosophical about Floss when not in her immediate presence. “Speaking of the Montmorris boys, Roma, reminds me we are dining there to-day. That is to say – I accepted for myself certainly, and for you conditionally, the day before yesterday. You are not too tired to go?”

“Oh, no. I daresay I shall feel brisker by the evening,” replied Roma. “I suppose it isn’t anything very overwhelming, is it? for my wardrobe is getting rather dilapidated – I didn’t think I should have been so long without going home, you know. By-the-bye, Gertrude, are you not in deeper mourning than when I went away?”

“Yes, I forgot to tell you. Indeed, I hardly thought you would care to hear – the poor old man had been virtually dead for so long. It is for our old uncle – Beauchamp’s and my uncle I mean – Mr Chancellor of Halswood. He died a fortnight ago. It was hardly necessary to go into mourning; he was only my father’s uncle. But still he was the head of the family, and I thought it better.”

“Who succeeds him?” asked Roma. “Halswood is a nice place, isn’t it?”

“Very; but they have never kept it up properly,” said Mrs Eyrecourt. “At least, not for many years past. Old Uncle Chancellor has been half in his dotage for ever so long, but still he had sense enough to be jealous of his grandsons. There are two of them; the elder of course succeeds. He has sons; he has been married some years. We know very little of them now. My great uncle was angry with my father for selling Winsedge to your people, Roma; for though it was not entailed, and had come into the hands of a younger son, it had been a long, long time in the family. And that made a coolness they never got over.”

“Why did your father sell it?” inquired Roma. “It would have been very nice for you now if it had belonged to Beauchamp. Much nicer than for it to be Quin’s, who has got plenty already.”

“Yes,” replied Gertrude, slowly; “it would have been very nice, but it could not have been. My father was dreadfully in debt, and even selling Winsedge didn’t clear him. When he died it was all my poor mother could do to start Beauchamp in the army. Poor Beauchamp! it has been very hard upon him to be so restricted, with his tastes, and his looks, and his feelings altogether. He has never been extravagant, as young men go, but he hates poverty.” Roma laughed. “I don’t think he knows much about it, so far,” she said. “Wait till he is married with very little more than he has now – two or three hundred a year and his pay. It wouldn’t be long before love came flying out of his window. But, dear me,” starting up as a timepiece struck the hour, “how late it is! I must write to tell Mary Dalrymple of my safe arrival. What time is the Montmorris’s dinner hour? Seven; oh, I am glad of that; we shall get home early.”

The Montmorrises were quiet, steady-going, rather old-fashioned people, who lived in Brighton as evenly and monotonously as they would have lived in a country village. They were not by any means in Mrs Eyrecourt’s “set,” but they were very old friends of the Chancellor family – old Mr Montmorris, indeed, had been their lawyer for generations, and his firm, in which his eldest son now represented him, still managed the Halswood affairs. Once upon a time there had been a large family of young Montmorrises, but, after the manner of large families, they were now scattered far and wide – “some were married, some were dead,” two maiden sisters only, no longer youthful, still representing at home the boys and girls, the “children” of long ago. But their brother – Mr Christian Montmorris, the hope of the family and the head of the firm – had by this time a wife and large family of his own, none of whom had any objection to spending a few weeks now and then at “grandpapa’s,” on which occasions their father used to “run down” from town as many times a week as he could spare the time, “running up again” by the first train the next morning; for he was a shrewd, clever, energetic man, with some fingers to spare for other pies besides those it was his legitimate office to cook; with a clear head and a sharp eye for a wary venture or a profitable investment. Among other by-concerns of this kind, in which his name did not appear, he was interested in the affairs of the great Wareborough engineering company, in whose employ Gerald Thurston, the curate’s elder brother, had spent the last three years in India.

The sisters-in-law were received by their friends with open arms.

“So kind of you to come to us in this unceremonious way. So pleased to see Miss Eyrecourt again. We quite feared Mrs Eyrecourt would have left Brighton this year before you joined her,” said Miss Cecilia Montmorris. And then old Mrs Montmorris broke in with self-congratulations that “Christy” had just arrived unexpectedly, and, what was more, had brought a friend with him, a gentleman just arrived from India. “We were quite pleased to see him, I assure you,” she continued, addressing Roma in particular, “for a new-comer always brings a little variety; and now that my boys are all away from us we seem to be falling out of fresh acquaintances sadly. Mr Montmorris and I are getting too old for any sort of gaiety,” she went on. “It is dull for Cecilia and Bessie sometimes, but they are good girls, very, and they know it won’t be always that they will have their father and me to care for. Besides, they have a little change now and then when Mrs Christian takes one of them up to town for a week or two. Bessie is going back with them next week. And you have been away up in the north, I hear, my dear? How did you like that? I used to know Cumberland in my young days.”

So she chattered on with the not unpleasing garrulity of gentle, kindly old age. She was a very sweet old lady, and Roma considered herself much more fortunate than her sister-in-law, who had been seized upon by Mrs Christian Montmorris to have poured into her sympathising ear an account of how dreadfully ill her youngest but one had been the last two days, cutting its eye-teeth. Gertrude smiled and said, “indeed,” and tried to look interested; but Roma laughed inwardly at her evident eagerness to change the conversation. Mrs Eyrecourt was not a person in whom the maternal instinct was in all directions fully developed: she loved her handsome little son as much as she could love anything; she honestly meant to do her best by Floss, but on certain points she was by no means an authority. It is, indeed, a question if both Quintin and Floss might not have passed through babyhood guiltless of cutting any teeth at all without her awaking from her happy unconsciousness of their failure in the performance of this important infantine obligation.

So poor Gertrude sat there, looking and feeling very much bored and rather indignant with Roma for the mischievous glances of pity she now and then bestowed upon her. At last, however, the door opened to admit the two gentlemen, whose late arrival had prolonged “the stupid quarter-of-an-hour,” and with, a sensation of relief Mrs Eyrecourt turned to reply to Mr Christian Montmorris’s greeting, feeling that she had had quite enough of his better-half for some time to come.

Volume One – Chapter Five.

Mutual Friends

“Que serait la vie sans espérance? Qu’ils le disent ceux qui n’ont plus rien à espérer ici bas.”

L’Homme de Quarante Ans.

“Alas! alas! Hope is not prophecy.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting – quite against my habit, I assure you. But trains, you see, are worse than time and tide – they not only wait for no one, they very often make people wait for them,” said the lawyer, as he shook bands cordially with his mother’s guests. “And how is Master Quintin?” he inquired, turning again to Mrs Eyrecourt. “He got no cold bath this morning, I hope? I heard he was going skating with my youngsters.”

Gertrude was much more at home in skating and cricket than in babies and eye-teeth, and Quin was always a congenial subject; so seeing her released from her purgatory, Roma looked about in search of entertainment for herself. Old Mrs Montmorris was now busy talking to some one on her other side; it was the new arrival. Roma glanced up at him, he was standing besides his hostess listening attentively to her little soft, uninteresting remarks. He was quite a young man, at which Roma felt surprised; for with the curious impatience of suspense, with which a lively imagination, even on commonplace and not specially interesting details, takes precedence of knowledge, she had unconsciously pictured this friend of the lawyer’s as middle-aged, if not elderly. Her surprise made her examine him more particularly. He was not exactly what she was accustomed to consider good-looking, though tall and powerfully made without being awkward or clumsy. His hair, though dark, was distinctly brown, not black, and he somehow gave the impression of being naturally a fair-complexioned man, though at present so tanned by exposure to sun and air, that one could but guess at his normal colouring. From where she sat, Roma could not see much of his eyes: she was wondering if they were brown or blue – when a general movement, told her that dinner was announced.

Old Mr Montmorris toddled off with Gertrude on his arm, Roma was preparing to follow her with Mr Christian Montmorris, whom she saw bearing down in her direction, when his mother turned towards her with an apologetic little smile.

“You will excuse me, my dear, I am sure, for keeping my son to myself. I am very proud of having my boy’s arm into the dining-room when he is here – which is not so often as I should like.”

Miss Eyrecourt was perfectly resigned, and expressed her feelings to this effect in suitable language. She looked round for Miss Cecilia and Miss Bessie, with whom she supposed she was to bring up the rear in good-little-girl fashion, but this she found was by no means in accordance with the Montmorris ideas of etiquette.

“Miss Eyrecourt,” said the lawyer, recalling her truant attention, “will you allow me to introduce my friend Mr Thurston to you?”

So on Mr Thurston’s arm Miss Eyrecourt gracefully sailed away, feeling herself, to tell the truth, much smaller than she ever remembered to have felt herself before; he was so very tall and held himself so uprightly, giving her, at this first introduction, a general impression of unbendingness.

“What can I find to talk to him about?” she said to herself, for already her instinct had told her he was not one of the order of men with whom she was never at a loss for conversation. “He has only just returned from India. He won’t know anything about the regular set of things one begins with. And I can see he is the sort of man that looks down upon women as inferior creatures, and hasn’t tact or breeding enough to hide it. How I wish I could turn him into Beauchamp just till dinner is over. How different it would be! Only the night before last, I was sitting beside him at the Dalrymples’! Poor Beauchamp – he is certainly very nice to talk to and laugh with!”

She gave a little sigh, quite unconscious that it was audible, till looking up, she found that Mr Thurston was observing her with, a slight smile on his face. She blushed – a weakness her four-and-twenty years were not often guilty of. “Hateful man!” she said to herself. Yet she could not help glancing at him again, unconcernedly as it were, just to show him she was above feeling annoyed by his rudeness. She found out what colour his eyes were now: they were grey, deep-set and penetrating. Suddenly he surprised her by beginning to speak.

“I am sorry I smiled just now,” he said – his voice was clear and decisive in tone – “I saw you did not like it. But I really could not help it. Your sigh was so very melancholy.”

“I hardly see that that is any excuse for your smiling,” she replied, rather stiffly.

“Perhaps not. I daresay it was quite inexcusable,” he said, quietly. “I fear I am a very uncivilised being altogether,” he went on. “For the last three years I have been living in an out-of-the-way part of India, where I seldom saw any Europeans but those immediately connected with my work, and you would hardly believe how strange it seems to me to be among cultivated, refined people again.”

“Then you are not in the army?” asked Miss Eyrecourt.

“Oh, no, I am an engineer; but only a civil one,” he replied. Roma looked as if she hardly understood him. “I don’t suppose you know much of my sort of work, or my part of the country,” he went on. “The south knows less of the north, in some ways, than the north of the south. It strikes one very forcibly when one returns home to little England, after being on the other side of the world. Still, it is natural you shouldn’t know much of the north; for though we come south for variety and recreation, we cannot expect you to find pleasure in visiting such places as the Black Country or the manufacturing districts.”

“You are taking a great deal for granted, I think,” said Roma, becoming interested. “And why should you not give credit for sometimes having other motives than pleasure to – ” “other classes besides your own,” she was going to have added, but the words struck her as ill-bred. “I mean to say,” she went on, choosing her words with difficulty, a very unusual state of things for her – “don’t you think it possible people – an idle person, like me, we will say – ever do anything or go anywhere with any other motive than pleasure or amusement? I think it a great mistake to take up those wholesale notions. As it happens, I do know something of the north – yes, of the north, in your sense of the word,” for she fancied he looked incredulous. “I only left Wareborough yesterday morning.” (“I needn’t tell you what took me up there,” she added to herself, smiling as she remembered how she had teased Beauchamp by her exaggerated account of the motives of her visit to Deepthorne).

“Wareborough!” exclaimed Mr Thurston. Roma was amused by his evident surprise. “How very odd! Wareborough is my home. I hope to be there again by Wednesday or Thursday. But that can’t interest you,” he went on, looking a little ashamed of his own eagerness; “and of course it isn’t really odd. People must be travelling between Wareborough and Brighton every day. One gets in the way of exaggerating trifles of the kind absurdly when one has lived some time so completely out of the world as I have done. It struck me as such a curious little coincidence, for I think you are the first lady I have had any conversation with since I landed. I came by long sea too, for the sake of an invalid friend, so my chances of re-civilising myself have been very small, so far.”

“It was an odd little coincidence,” replied Roma, good-humouredly. “But after all, you know,” she added, “the world is very small.”

He hardly caught the sense of her remark.

“In one sense, I suppose it is,” he said, slowly; “but in another – all, no, Miss Eyrecourt, you are fortunate if you have never felt how dreadfully big the world is! It used to seem a perfectly frightful way off from everything – everybody I cared for, out there sometimes.”

He spoke gravely, and with an introspective look in his eyes, as if reviewing past anxieties known only to himself.

“And then,” he went on in the same tone, “absence is absence, after all. One can never count surely on finding any one, or anything what one left them.”

“Nought looks the same save the nest we made,” said Roma, softly. “Don’t laugh at me, Mr Thurston – fray don’t,” she went on, hurriedly. “I am not the least sentimental. I never look at poetry, only sometimes little rubbishy bits I learnt as a child come into my head and ‘give me feelings,’ as I once heard a little girl say.”

“Then they are poetry to you,” said her companion, kindly – earnestly almost, and a look came into his eyes which she had not seen in them before – a look which gave Roma a silly passing feeling of envy of the woman on whom some day they might rest with an intensity of that gaze. “Let me see,” he went on, “I think I too remember learning those verses as a child —

“Gone are the heads of the silvery hair.