Not Without Thorns

“You don’t understand me,” he said, not resenting her hasty accusation. “It is nothing of that kind. One can’t talk of ‘false,’ when there has been no sort of promise claimed or given, directly or indirectly. I shall have no one but myself to thank for it, if it is all over. Only I think I should be much better – less likely to make a fool of myself, in short,” with a smile, “if I were not quite unprepared. That is why I want you to tell me what was in your mind. I know it is a very odd thing to ask, but our whole conversation has been odd. Just think; what have I not told you or allowed you to infer, and two hours ago I had never heard your name?”

While he was speaking, Roma had been collecting her wits. “Mr Thurston,” she said gravely, “I cannot tell you anything. There are passing impressions and fancies which take a false substance and form from merely putting them into words. Truly, I have nothing it would be fair – to yourself, I mean – to tell you her;” decision was strengthened by the recollection of Gertrude’s ridicule of her “absurd fancifulness” this very morning. “I can only say,” with a smile, “that I don’t agree with my song. There is no need for ‘taking on trust.’ Go and see for yourself. If you are disappointed, I pity you with all my heart, but if you are deceived in any way it will be your own fault, not hers. She is candour itself. Still, don’t be too easily discouraged. I wish you well.”

“Thank you,” he said, for he saw she was thoroughly determined to say no more, and they both moved away to other parts of the room.

Nothing more passed between them except a word or two when they were saying good-night. “We may meet again some day, Miss Eyrecourt – at Wareborough. Perhaps,” said Mr Thurston.

“Perhaps,” said Roma, “but ‘some day’ is a wide word.”

“Not always,” he replied, and that was all. “You seemed to get on unusually well with that friend of Christian Montmorris’s, Roma,” said Gertrude, when they were shut up together in the carriage on their way home. Her tone was half satisfied and inquisitive: she evidently had not made up her mind if her sister-in-law should be scolded or not. Roma had been debating how much of her conversation with Mr Thurston it would be well to retail to Mrs Eyrecourt, but something in Gertrude’s remark jarred upon her, and she instantly resolved to tell her nothing.

“Did I?” she said, indifferently. “Well, there was no one else to get on with; and he had just come from India, so he was rather more amusing than the Montmorrises.”

“Is he going back again immediately?” asked Mrs Eyrecourt, but she never waited for the answer. A new idea struck her. “Oh, by-the-bye, Roma,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it odd – just when we were talking about the Halswood Chancellors this morning – old Mr Montmorris tells me the second son, that is to say rather, the second grandson, died last year. Isn’t it odd we never heard of it? He seems to have a very high opinion of the new head of the family – Herbert Chancellor; he says Halswood will be a very different place now. The income has increased amazingly; old Uncle Chancellor spent so little; and Herbert Chancellor’s wife has a large fortune too, he tells me. Fancy, Roma, their eldest child, a girl, is eighteen. Wouldn’t she be nice for Beauchamp?”

“Very,” replied Roma, satirically. “She’s got money – that’s all that needs to be considered.”

“You shouldn’t speak so, Roma. As if I would ever put money before other things – goodness and suitableness and all that,” said Gertrude, in an injured tone. “You’re in one of your queer humours to-night, I see. But I daresay you’re very tired, poor child! and it was very good-natured of you to come to the Montmorrises’ with me.”

Volume One – Chapter Six.

Gerald’s Home-Coming

Fairer than stars were the roses,
Faint was the fragrance and rare;
Not any flower in the garden
Could with those roses compare.

*****

But another had taken delight
In colour and perfume rare.
And another hand had gathered
My roses beyond compare.

    Wild Roses.
It was late in the evening when Gerald Thurston at last found himself again at Wareborough. He had written to Frank to expect him by a certain train, or, failing that, not till the following day; but after all he found himself too late to leave town at the appointed hour, and only just in time to catch the afternoon express. He hesitated at first about remaining where he was another night. It would be a disappointment to his brother not to meet him at the station; but in the end, the temptation of reaching a few hours sooner the place containing everything and everybody dearest to him on earth – to him, ugly and repellent though it might be to a stranger, emphatically home– proved too strong. And thus it came to pass that he reached his destination pretty late in the evening, and that no familiar figure standing on the station platform in eager anticipation met his eyes, as, in a sort of vague hope that “Frank or some one” might have thought it worth while to see the express come in, he stretched his head out of the carriage window, when the slackening speed and drearily-prolonged whistle told him he had reached his journey’s end. He had not expected any one. It was entirely his own fault, he repeated to himself so positively, as to suggest some real though unrecognised and perhaps unreasonable disappointment. It seemed in every sense a cold welcome, and he felt glad to get away from the dingy station, where even the porters were strangers to him, out into the sloppy streets, for now every turn of the cab wheels was taking him nearer home. It was raining heavily, and was very cold. It had been raining heavily and had been bitterly cold too, he remembered, when he had left Wareborough at the same season three years ago.

“It all looks exactly the same,” he thought to himself, as he glanced at the gas-lighted shops, the muddy pavements, the passers-by hurrying along as if eager to get out of the rain. “For all the change I see, it might be the very evening I went away, and my three years in India a dream.”

He had left the bulk of his luggage at the station, and drove straight to the little house his brother and he had called home since their parents’ death, where, with the help of an old servant who had once been their nurse, they had kept together the most valued of their household gods, and where Gerald had for long lived on the plainest fare, and denied himself every luxury, that Frank’s university career might not come to an untimely close. All that was over now, however; brighter days had come: Frank had fulfilled Gerald’s best hopes, and Gerald himself was now, comparatively speaking, a rich man. He had seen the worst of the material part of the struggle; he had made his way some distance up the hill now, he told himself. He might pause and take breath, might allow himself to dream about a future he had worked hard for, the destruction of which, though he might strive to bear it manfully, would be no passing disappointment, would, it seemed to him, take all the light out of his life.

He was lost in a reverie when the cab stopped. Another little chill fell upon him, when the opening door showed, not Dorothy’s familiar face, all aflame with eager anxiety to welcome her boy, but that of a total stranger. A freezingly proper maiden of mature years, who inquired in suspicious tones, eyeing with dissatisfaction the carpet bag he held in his hand, his only visible luggage, “if he were Mr Thurston’s brother, for if so there was a note for him on the dining-room chimbley-piece.” And into the dining-room she followed him, though evidently reassured by his acquaintance with the arrangements of the house, and stood by him in an uncomfortably uncertain uninterested manner, as unlike Dorothy’s hospitable heartiness as darkness is to light, while he read Frank’s note.

“I have been twice to the station,” it said; “for as you named 4:50 as ‘the latest,’ I thought I had better meet the 3:55 also. You say so positively you will not come by a later, that I think I must quite give you up. I am dining at the Laurences’. There was a particular reason for it, so I can’t get off without a better excuse than the mere ghost of a chance that you may still come to-night. Still, I leave this note, in the remote possibility of your doing so, to ask you, if you do come, to follow me. They will be delighted to see you, and it would never do for your first evening to be spent alone. Be sure you make Martha get you something. I wish we had Dorothy back.”

Gerald remembered about Dorothy now. She had married a few months before. Of course; how stupid to have forgotten it! He had actually a wedding present for her in his trunk.

“No, thank you – nothing,” he replied to Martha’s inquiries as to what he would have, delivered in a tone suggestive of latent resentment of untimely meals. “Nothing except a glass of sherry – you can get me that, I suppose – and a biscuit; and stay – I shall want a cab in – yes, in ten minutes. Is the boy in? – you have a boy, I suppose? In ten minutes, remember;” for Martha’s muttered reply that she “would see” was not very promising.

She was as good as, or rather better than, her words. Within the prescribed time the cab was at the door, and Gerald ready (for a postscript to Frank’s note had told him “not to trouble about dressing. It would be too late if he stopped to unpack, and there were only to be one or two gentlemen at the Laurences’”), and rattling off again through the plashing streets, along the muddy road leading to the suburb where Mr Laurence lived. It was not a long drive, barely a mile, but to Gerald it seemed hours till he at last found himself standing outside the familiar door, the rain beating down steadily on his umbrella. The servant who opened here was also a stranger to him, and evidently Frank had forgotten to mention his brother’s possible appearance, for she stood irresolute, at a loss to account for his unseasonable visit. It was uncomfortable, and for the first time Gerald began to get impatient at this succession of small rebuffs, individually of no-moment, but, all together, sufficient to lower the temperature of his eager hopes and anticipations. A sort of reaction began to set in; for a minute or two he felt inclined not to reply to the servant’s inquiry as to whether he wished to see her master, but to turn away and walk home again through the rain – to Martha’s disgust, no doubt, – and never let Frank know he had obeyed his injunctions. Then he laughed at himself for even momentarily contemplating conduct which, had he been a boy again, and Dorothy there to give her opinion, she would certainly have described as “taking the pet,” and mustering his good spirits afresh, he inquired if Mr Frank Thurston were not dining with Mr Laurence.

“Mr Thurston is here to-night – Mr Thurston the clergyman,” replied the young woman, with more alacrity, imagining evidently that this call was on Frank ex officio. “He is still in the dining-room with the other gentlemen; but if it is anything very particular, I can tell him he is wanted at once; or if not, perhaps you will wait a few minutes till he leaves the dining-room.”

“Yes, that will be better. Do not disturb him till they come out. I am Mr Fra – Mr Thurston’s brother,” whereupon the damsel became all eagerness and civility – she was young and nice-looking, in no wise resembling the forbidding-looking Martha; “but I would rather you did not say who I am; just tell him he is wanted when he comes out. Where can I wait? In here?” She opened the door of the school-room. “Ah, yes, that will do.”

A chain of small coincidences seemed to connect Gerald’s return with his departure three years ago; trifling commonplace coincidences which, in a less highly-wrought state of feeling, he would probably not have observed, subtly preparing him, nevertheless, for sharper perception of the changes he had not yet owned to himself that he dreaded. For the least material natures are yet the most vividly impressed by their sensible surroundings, and a background of outward similarity throws out in strong relief immaterial differences and variations we should otherwise have been slower to realise, or, where the interest is but superficial, never perhaps have been conscious of at all.

A curious sensation came over Gerald as he entered the old school-room. Here it was that three years before he had seen the last of the Laurence sisters; it had been almost the same hour of the evening, for nine o’clock, he remembered, had struck while they were all standing there, and Frank had hurried him off, fearing he would lose his train. They had driven to the station by a very circuitous route, that his oldest friends might have his latest good-bye. And Sydney had cried, he remembered, when he kissed her, and Eugenia had grown pale when he shook hands with her, and mademoiselle had stood by with tears in her kind black French eyes, and three years had seemed to them all a very long look-out indeed! And now they were over; the winter of banishment and separation was past. Were the flowers about to spring for Gerald? was the singing of birds henceforth to sound through his life? was the fulfilment of his brightest hopes at hand?

Something was at hand. The door had been left slightly ajar, and his ear caught the approaching sounds of a slight rustle along the passage, and of a young, happy voice softly humming a tune. It came nearer and nearer. A sudden impulse caused Gerald to step back behind the doorway; the gas-light was low in the room: it was easy to remain in shadow.

She came in quickly, gave a slight exclamation of impatience at the insufficient light, then came forward into the middle of the room and stood on tiptoe, one arm stretched up as far it could reach to turn on the gas. She succeeded rather beyond her intentions, the light blazed out to the full, illuminating brilliantly her upraised face and whole figure, as she remained for a few moments in the same attitude, uncertain evidently if the flame was too high for safety. Was she changed? No, not changed, improved only, developed, young as she looked, from mere girlhood into early womanhood, of a loveliness surpassing even his high expectations. She was dressed in white, with no colour save somewhere a spot of bright rose; a knot of ribbon or a flower, he did not notice which, on the front of her dress. That was Eugenia all over; he remembered her love of brilliant contrast; however neutral in tint and unobtrusive the rest of her dress, there was always sure to be a dash of bright rich colour somewhere, in her hair, at her collar, round her wrists. Outwardly she was the same Eugenia, grown marvellously beautiful, but the same. And one look into her eyes would, he fancied, tell him all he so longed to know – that in spirit and heart she was still the same transparent, guileless, sensitive creature he had left, innocent and unsuspicious as a child, yet brightly intelligent, vividly imaginative. A rare creature, yet full of faults and inconsistencies; whose nature, however, he had studied closely, and knew well, and knowing it, asked no greater privilege than to take it into his own keeping, through life to guard it from all rude contact that might sully its purity or stunt its rich promise. He had left her, as he told Roma, free as air, bound by no shadow of a tie; yet there were times when he felt it almost impossible to believe that she had not guessed his secret, guessed it and – hope whispered – not resented it, and even, perhaps, in her vague girlish way looked forward to a day when it should no longer be a secret, when this strong deep love of his should receive its reward.

These were the dreams he had been living in, for three years; these were the hopes that had kept up his courage through much hard and toilsome work – dreams and hopes whose destruction would, indeed, be very hard to bear. But he felt no misgivings now; the mere sight of Eugenia, the delight of her near presence, seemed to have dispelled them like mists. He felt reluctant to break the sort of spell that had come over him since she entered the room; he stood in perfect silence, watching her, as if bewitched. She moved away in a minute or two, satisfied seemingly that the light might remain as it was, and crossed the room to a low cupboard at the other side from where Gerald stood. She pulled out a pile of loose music, and began searching among it for some missing piece. Mr Thurston thought it time to let her know he was there: she might be startled if she saw him suddenly when leaving the room. He came forward into the full light, giving a chair an obtrusively noisy push to attract her attention. She looked up, startled for an instant, but before she had time to realise her fear, he spoke.

“Eugenia.” That was all he said.

The colour came rushing over her face, for the momentary start had turned it somewhat pale. Whether her first sensation was pleasure or annoyance, it was impossible to say. That it was one or other Gerald felt certain, for that this crisis, to which he had looked forward so long and so anxiously, could appear to Eugenia an event of very trifling importance, it would have been impossible for him to believe. It took all his self-control to refrain from any expression of the strong emotion with which his whole being was filled; and he not unnaturally, therefore, attributed some degree of emotion, agreeable or the reverse, to the other chief actor in the little drama whose scenes he had so often rehearsed in imagination. He waited eagerly for her to speak.

“Gerald!” she exclaimed. “How you startled me! What in the world did you come in; in this queer way, for? We quite gave you up when you were not in time for dinner. Come into the drawing-room, or stay, I’ll send for Frank, if you would rather see him alone first. He will be so delighted.”

She was running away, but he called her back. Her last words were cordial enough, though her first had been undoubtedly cross. Few people like being startled; it sets them at a disadvantage, and in a more or less ludicrous position. Eugenia had a peculiar dislike to it; she could not bear to be thought nervous or wanting in self-control, and she felt conscious that her cheeks had betrayed her momentary panic, and this added to her annoyance. She had been very desirous of meeting Gerald Thurston heartily when he came, she wanted to please Sydney and Frank; she had felt so happy the last few days that she wanted to please everybody. It was just a little awkward Gerald’s arriving in this unexpected way when she was preoccupied and perhaps a little excited about other things, but after all it wouldn’t matter. Sydney and Frank would soon make him feel himself at home. So, her momentary annoyance past, she turned back, and willingly enough, when he called to her to stop.

“Won’t you even shake hands with me, Eugenia?” he said.

There was a strange change in his voice from the bright, eager tone in which he had first called her by her name, but she was too self-absorbed to perceive it.

“Of course I will,” she replied, heartily, holding out her hand. “I beg your pardon for forgetting it. But you really did startle me a good deal, Gerald,” she added, looking up with a pretty little air of mingled apology and reproach.

“Did I?” he said, gently. “I am very sorry.”

He had taken her hand and held it, and, anxious now to welcome him kindly, Eugenia did not at once withdraw it.

“Yes, indeed,” she said. “How was I to know you were not a housebreaker, standing there, you huge person. Fancy meeting you again for the first time in such a queer way.”

She was now fall of brightness and merriment. So like, so very like, the Eugenia he had left, that he began to recover from the first thrill of disappointment, to think that perhaps there had been no real cause for it. This gay, laughing manner was not exactly what he had imagined hers would be when they first met again; but still it was natural and unaffected, and she had always had rather a horror of “scenes.” And, after all, if he found her as he had left her, should he not feel satisfied? He had had no grounds for suspecting that she in the least returned his feelings, or was even aware of their existence. He was quite patient enough to begin at the beginning: to teach her by gentle degrees to love him; to serve, if need be, the old world seven years’, service for her sake, content with slow progress and small signs of her growing favour. There was but one dread which paralysed him altogether. What if he were too late?

He let go her hand. He was anxious in no way to ruffle the extreme sensitiveness he knew so well.

“You don’t know how I have looked forward to coming home again all these long years, Eugenia.”

Her sympathy was touched. “Poor Gerald,” she said, and for the first time she looked straight into his face, and their eyes met. He had thought he could read so much in those eyes; they were less easily fathomed than he had imagined.

“Eugenia,” he said, very gravely – she could not imagine what he was going to say – “you have grown very beautiful.”

To his surprise, she neither blushed nor looked down. She smiled up in his face, a bright, happy smile that seemed to flood over as with sunshine her lovely face, to add brilliance even to the rich wavy chestnut hair. “I am so glad you think so,” she said, softly. “It makes it more possible to understand his thinking so,” was the unuttered reflection that explained her curious speech.

Gerald had no key to her thoughts, therefore the strangeness of her reply struck him sharply, for he knew her to be incapable of small vanity or self-conceit. He looked at her again; she was still smiling; long ago her smile had seemed to him one of her greatest charms; it was so sweet and tender as well as bright, so wonderfully fresh and youthful, and with a certain dauntlessness about it – a defiance of failure and trouble, a fearless, childlike trustfulness. All this Gerald used to fancy he could read in Eugenia’s smile; could he do so still? He could not tell, he turned away. He would not own to himself that his instinct had discovered a change; a dreaminess, a strange wistfulness had come over the dear face as it smiled up at him – a subtle indescribable shadow of alteration.