Not Without Thorns

Volume Two – Chapter Two.

Plain Speaking

“The fiery maiden-nature flashing forth.”City Poems.

Roma’s spirits rose considerably after her conversation with her sister-in-law. She did not look forward with much anticipation of enjoyment to the evening’s amusement – balls at four-and-twenty are very different from what they are at eighteen – still she felt more like her usual cheerful sensible self than she had done for some time.

“How very pretty your dress is, Miss Eyrecourt,” said Adelaide, cordially, perhaps a little enviously, when the two young ladies happened to find themselves side by side shaking out their plumage after the four miles’ drive, in the temporary cloak-room, at the Winsley “Unicorn.”

“I do so admire black, and those foxgloves are really lovely. So very natural! I never, saw them worn before. I am not at all pleased with my dress,” she went on discontentedly. “I have worn it once before, and I think one never feels comfortable in an old dress. I wish I had had my new pink after all. I don’t believe there will be many scarlet coats. Only two of our party have them.”

“There are sure to be a good many; and really your dress is exceedingly pretty,” replied Roma, consolingly. “It looks perfectly fresh.”

“Does it?” said Miss Chancellor, turning herself round, the better to observe the effect of her long sweep of drapery. “I’m glad you think it looks nice. I am engaged for the first dance to Captain Chancellor. I almost wish I wasn’t! Do you know, Miss Eyrecourt, though I think he is charming to look at, I cannot get on with him. I never can think of anything to say to him, and yet just see how Miss Fretville goes on with him, and mamma thinks him delightful too.”

Roma smiled. “Miss Fretville and you are two very different people,” she replied kindly, for the girl’s unaffectedness pleased her. “You will find that he dances beautifully, any way, which is the principal consideration to-night. Here he comes,” for by this time the whole party were in the ball-room, and the first dance was on the eve of commencing.

Captain Chancellor made his way quickly to where the two girls were standing.

“Our dance, I believe, Miss Chancellor?” he said to his cousin, then, somewhat to Roma’s surprise – his late conduct had not prepared her to be thus honoured – he turned towards her.

“Will you keep number ten for me, Roma,” he said; “I shall count upon it, remember!” and before, in the moment’s hurry, she had time to make any excuse, or even to decide that it would be well to do so, he had left her, and in another minute was whirling round the room, with the substantial Adelaide in his arms.

Miss Eyrecourt felt a little uneasy. Something in Beauchamp’s manner had struck her as peculiar: then, too, number ten was – as she knew by the arrangement of the card – the last dance before supper; evidently he had chosen it on purpose. There was no help for it, however; she must trust to her tact to steer clear of anything undesirable, but she almost wished she had pleaded illness or some excuse, and remained at home.

What a pity it all was! Long ago in the old comfortable days, how she had enjoyed dancing with Beauchamp, especially at these Winsley balls, where they knew everybody, and it was sociable and friendly, and people were not too fine to enjoy themselves. How nice it would be, thought Roma, if there was no such thing in the world as falling in love, real or imaginary.

Could it be true, as Beauchamp had so often told her, when he was vexed, that she was different from the rest of young ladyhood, cold, and self-contained and unwomanly? If so, was it not a pity she had not taken the best that came in her way, with out waiting in a vague belief that something better might possibly be yet to come? Portionless though she was, she had refused two or three very fair proposals before now, refused them for no reason except the little-sympathised-in one that she “did not care for” the men who had made them to her. But now, at four-and-twenty, there were times when she questioned the wisdom of her decisions, when she doubted if, after all, it was in her to care for any real flesh-and-blood lover, as long ago in the romantic girlish days it had seemed to her she could. She might have been fairly happy with Sir Philip Bartlemore for instance, buried in politics over head and ears though he was. Lady Bartlemore seemed comfortable and content, and every one spoke of her as fortunate in her married life; or with that undoubtedly disinterested and truly uninteresting Mr Fawcett, the Rector of Ferrivale, towards whom for some time Roma had vainly tried to coax into existence a warmer sentiment than respect – she would have gone on respecting him till now, she felt quite sure, and she would have had a home and ties of her own, whereas now she was of no particular use to any one, and the cause of disunion and trouble among her nearest friends. Had she made a mistake in not acting up to the practical, worldly-wise philosophy she always professed to believe in? There was no saying, and little use now in trying to decide; so Roma turned her attention to the present, danced as much as she felt inclined, laughed and talked with such of her partners as were worth the trouble, and made fun to herself of the others, till nine dances had come to an end, and she was startled by Beauchamp’s voice beside her claiming her for the tenth.

“I am glad it is a waltz,” she said cordially, judging that a return to the old easy terms would be her best temporary policy. “It is ages since we have had one together, and we understood each other’s paces so well. I have not been very lucky to-night; so far as dancing goes, that is to say. My partners have belonged more to the order of ‘those that talk.’ How have you been getting on?”

“I! oh, I don’t know. Well enough,” replied Captain Chancellor somewhat absently. “Lady Exyton dances well to look at, but she’s rather too light and too small for me. Blanche Fretville again is a thought too big, and she bounces rather.”

“You are as difficult to please as ever, I see,” remarked Roma, rashly.

Beauchamp looked at her: his eyes and the consciousness of the mistake she had made, caused her colour to deepen. Her vexation with herself increased.

“Yes,” he replied, quietly, but with meaning in his tone, “I am. No one should know that better than you, Roma.”

Just then, to her relief, the music began. “Are you ready?” he asked, and in a moment they were off.

It is something for poor creatures such as most of us are, to be able to do anything perfectly, even so altogether small a thing as dancing! There is a real satisfaction while it lasts, in feeling that the thing we are doing could not be done better. And this agreeable consciousness was always Roma’s when waltzing with Beauchamp. They were a perfectly well-matched pair; their movements as harmonious as the blending of two voices in a duet. Once, long ago, Roma had said to Beauchamp that whatever he had done to offend her, it would be beyond her power to refuse to forgive him after dancing with him. It had been a passing laughing remark, and he had forgotten its ever having been made. Still, some instinctive desire to gain for himself every possible advantage in what was before him, had probably had to do with the details of his conduct this evening.

The waltz came to an end – all too soon, for more reasons than one, for Roma. She had not been able to make any plan of defence; she could only trust to her tact and quick-wittedness. Captain Chancellor seemed in no hurry to get rid of her. She was afraid of appearing anxious to leave him; symptoms of such a feeling on her part might only precipitate what she hoped to evade. So they promenaded up and down the room among all the other couples, saying little to each other, Roma all alert for the first chance of escape. Suddenly a door hitherto closed was thrown open; a general movement in the new direction ensued. Beauchamp started.

“Supper!” he exclaimed. “By-the-bye, I forgot. Will you excuse me, Roma, for a moment?”

She was only too ready; her hand was withdrawn from his arm almost before the words were out of his mouth.

“Never mind about me,” she said quickly. “I see Gertrude over there. I can make my way to her quite well alone.”

She did not know if he heard what she had said or not, in a moment he had disappeared. And, alas! for the vanity of human expectations, Gertrude was no longer to be seen “over there.” Nearly every one had by this time left the ball-room; the few who were still in process of filing out were not of Roma’s acquaintances. She began to feel rather uncomfortable and deserted, and a little indignant with Beauchamp. One or two couples glanced at her as they passed, with some surprise.

“What can Miss Eyrecourt be standing there alone for?” said a girl who knew her by name only, to the gentleman she was with.

“Better ask Captain Chancellor,” replied the young man. He was the son of one of the managers, formerly head clerk, of the Winsley Bank, and his acquaintance with the “county” was decidedly limited. As might have been expected therefore, his knowledge of its private arrangements was minute in the extreme, now and then indeed suggesting suspicions of clairvoyance.

“Who is he?” asked the girl, a stranger to the neighbourhood, to whom five minutes before Mr Thompson had pointed out Miss Eyrecourt, condescendingly, as “one of our belles – has been, that is to say.”

“He is a sort of a connection of hers,” he replied, “that is to say, a brother of Mrs Eyrecourt’s. He and she – Captain Chancellor and Miss Eyrecourt, are engaged to be married, though it is not generally known. There he is,” he added, lowering his voice, for at that moment, as if in confirmation of his statement, Beauchamp, conspicuous by running against the supper-seeking stream, passed them, on his way back to the ball-room.

“Oh, indeed!” replied Miss Smith, with the sex’s usual keen interest in such matters. “I am glad you told me. It is such fun to watch engaged people.”

She communicated the fact in all good faith to her next partner, who happened to be one of the officers in the cavalry regiment stationed in the neighbouring town. This gentleman, not personally acquainted with either of the two people it chiefly concerned, mentioned it again casually as an undoubtedly well-authenticated piece of local news to a brother officer, whose wife, an old school-friend of Mrs Dalrymple’s, happened to be writing to that lady the next day. The object of her letter being to ask for an introduction to the family at Winsley Grange, the major’s wife naturally alluded to the engagement as a “just announced” occurrence, not forgetting, on the principle of “the three black crows,” to add, what she probably really thought she had been told, that “she understood the marriage was to take place almost immediately.”

Roma was sitting quite alone in the empty ball-room, when, to her great surprise, Beauchamp rejoined her. She had not liked his deserting her so unceremoniously, but this unexpected reappearance alarmed her: still she determined to seem to suspect nothing out of the common.

“So you haven’t forgotten me after all, Beauchamp?” she said good-humouredly. “You needn’t have come back for me though, I don’t care about any supper.”

“Don’t you really? Come now, that’s quite a fortunate coincidence,” said Captain Chancellor, seating himself deliberately beside her, “for as it happens I don’t want any either. We can spend the interval that less ethereal beings than you and I, Roma, devote to vulgar eating and drinking in a little congenial conversation.”

“But your partner?” objected Roma; “that is to say, the lady you took in to supper. What will she be thinking of you?”

“I didn’t take any one in to supper,” replied Captain Chancellor, composedly. “The reason I deserted you so unceremoniously was only that I had promised Lady Exyton to tell Vandeleur where she was to be found, and I had forgotten.”

Roma, who was really rather hungry, began to long for the comparative safety of the crowded supper-room. How she wished now she had not told that useless little fib about not wanting anything to eat.

“What is the matter?” asked Beauchamp, presently. “What are you looking so unhappy about?”

“I am tired,” she answered hastily. “I have got a little headache. I wish I could get a cup of tea, but I suppose there would be no chance of such a thing so late in the evening.”

“Every chance,” replied he; and for one happy moment Miss Eyrecourt thought he was going to volunteer an expedition in search of it. “If you will wait till the supper is over I will guarantee your getting it. I am so sorry you are tired, Roma, but I have not thought you looking well for some time. You may have fancied I did not notice your looks or think about you, but if so you have been mistaken.”

There was the unmistakable tone of a prelude in this little speech. Roma grew desperate, as a last hope she tried to offend him.

“I am not obliged to you for noticing my looks,” she said haughtily – “still less for commenting upon them. There are few things I dislike more than remarks of the kind. I am tired, as I told you, Beauchamp, and I want to sit here quietly by myself. It will oblige me very much if you will go away and leave me alone.”

Captain Chancellor had risen from his seat and stood before her, looking down on her flushed face, waiting quietly till she had come to the end of her not very civil speech. He was perfectly cool. Roma hardly understood the expression of his face, but she felt that, so far at least in the interview, he had the advantage of her.

“You needn’t think you will make me angry, and get rid of me in that way, Roma,” he said coolly. “You have tried that plan successfully several times, but I understand you better now, I am glad to say. Yes, I understand you thoroughly now at last, and I will have no more mystifications and shillyshallying.”

It was a peculiar sort of love-making. There was a tone of triumph in his way of speaking that irritated Miss Eyrecourt even while it bewildered her.

“What do you mean, Beauchamp?” she asked, really at a loss to understand what he was driving at.

“You know what I mean,” he answered; and Roma could see that he put some force on himself to keep down his rising irritation. “You know perfectly what I mean. Not many hours ago you told Gertrude you were willing to make a sacrifice of yourself for her,” (this was what after much cogitation Captain Chancellor had made out of Floss’s “satin flies,” and the look of utter astonishment on Roma’s face told him that his shot had hit the mark); “have you forgotten that you were sacrificing some one else as well as yourself? All these years, Roma, I have waited, if not always patiently, at least, more so than many men would have done,” (“yes,” thought Roma, “and amused yourself very agreeably between times,”) “and now I think I deserve my reward. I have always suspected what I now know, that Gertrude was the real difficulty; but for this suspicion your conduct would certainly have been most incomprehensible to me, still till to-day I hardly realised that she could carry her unjustifiable tyranny so far, or that you could so tamely yield to it.”

Here and there during this speech Roma had softened a little to her would-be lover, had even pitied him a little when it dawned upon her that the truth she had no option now but to tell him in unmistakable words might after all cause him some real pain: but the confident belief in the irresistible nature of his own charms, calmly inferred in his closing words, provoked her out of such weakness. She felt no difficulty now in hardening her heart.

“How you have got your knowledge, Beauchamp, of what passed between Gertrude and me to-day certainly baffles my comprehension; but, however you have done so, you must allow me to tell you that it is a very garbled version of the real conversation that has come to you,” began Roma.

“I don’t believe it,” interrupted the young man, hotly. “You are trying to mystify me again. Can you deny that Gertrude’s interference has gone the length of driving you from Winsley while I am there?”

“Certainly I deny it,” she replied. “It is perfectly true that Gertrude and I agreed together that it would not be unadvisable for me to leave Winsley for a time.”

“For the time of my being there?” he interrupted again.

“Well, yes, if you force me to say so, that was the time we proposed for my absence. But Gertrude was not the originator of the plan. It was my own wish.”

“Indeed!” he said, incredulously. “And if not to propitiate Gertrude, what on earth was your motive?”

“The foolish one,” she returned, getting very angry, “of wishing to spare myself the pain of saying, and you the pain – or rather, perhaps, I should say, the mortification, of hearing what I would much rather never have been driven to put into words.”

“And what may that be?” he asked, growing paler than was his wont, but with a sneer on his face that made Roma, in her exaggerated indignation, marvel that ever she could have thought him handsome.

“The truth,” she replied, vehemently, “the plain state of the case – namely, that there is one woman who does not think you irresistible; who would not marry you, hardly, I think, to save her life; who pities the woman that does marry you – vain, selfish, shallow as you are!” She stopped, breathless with excitement.

“Thank you,” said Beauchamp. He was still standing before her, to all outward appearance composedly enough, but still with the same disfiguring sneer over his handsome features. “Thank you,” he repeated, slowly. “One is never too old to learn, I suppose. I thought I knew something of women; till to-night I thought I knew something of you– I imagined you refined, gentle, and womanly, but you have undeceived me. Still, of course, pray understand how sincerely I thank you for your plain speaking; the only pity is that you have so long deferred it, out of regard, no doubt, for the pain – oh no, by-the-bye, I am too shallow to be capable of feeling pain, mortification I think you kindly called it – it might cause me.”

He turned to go. The intensity of wounded feeling from which he was suffering, the utter unexpectedness of the blow, had given him for the time a sort of dignity, a power of retort new to him. Never before, perhaps, had Roma been so near admiring him as now, when the mixture of truth in his sarcastic words stung her so deeply. A sort of remorse seized upon her – she felt that she had gone too far. Poor Beauchamp! he might be all she had taunted him with being, but had he deserved such treatment at her hands?

“Beauchamp,” she exclaimed, appealingly, “Beauchamp, don’t go like that. Forgive me. I have said more than I meant. You have been mistaken all along. You don’t really care for me in that way. Some day you will see you have never done so. Oh, do let us be friends in the old way; you don’t know how I wish it!”

At the first sound of her voice he had stopped short and half turned round. A foolish, wild idea flashed through his mind that possibly he had been premature in believing her, that now at the last moment, when she judged him all but lost to her, he was yet to see this proud woman at his feet. But in a moment her words undeceived him.

“Thank you again,” he said, coming nearer her, and speaking in a low voice, for just then some of the younger people – those who cared more for dancing than supper – began to straggle back into the ball-room, “but you must excuse me for saying – as plain speaking is the order of the day – that I can’t echo your wish. Even ‘vain, selfish, shallow’ people have feelings, you know, sometimes, of a kind.” Then, with a complete and sudden change of voice, he added aloud, “Shall we go to the supper-room now, and see what we can get? It must be getting less crowded.” And with the habitual instinct of not leaving the woman in an awkward or unprotected position, he offered Roma his arm, which she, wounded beyond expression, yet not without a certain feeling of gratitude for his consideration, was fain to accept.

Surely a more uncomfortable pair never walked arm-in-arm across a ball-room! They made their way in silence, meeting of course face to face the returning stream, feeling themselves agreeably exposed to the critical remarks of the many to whom, at least by sight, they were well known. Entering the supper-room, to her relief, Roma descried Gertrude and some of her party still seated in a corner, and she lost no time in joining them with some plausible excuse for her tardy appearance. But it is to be feared she never got the cup of tea on which she had so set her heart.

The rest of the evening passed like a dreary farce. It was all Roma could do to smile and talk sufficiently as usual to prevent Mrs Eyrecourt’s suspicions being aroused; for as yet she could not decide how much or how little of what had passed it would be well for her to confide to her sister-in-law. She felt unspeakably thankful when at last she found herself at home again, safe in the solitude of her own room, free to think over quietly the painful occurrences of the evening, and to decide what now was best for her to do. But when she tried to think it all over she found herself too tired and dispirited to do so reasonably or sensibly; worse still, when she gave up the attempt and went to bed, she could not sleep, and when, after tossing about for two or three hours, she at last fell into an uneasy doze, it was only to awake with a start and the indescribably wretched feeling familiar to us all that something was the matter, and that she must at once arouse her faculties to recall its details.

Light was beginning to break, however; she found she must have slept longer than she had imagined. Yes; it was nearly eight o’clock. She got up and dressed without ringing for her maid, who had sat up late for her the night before, and thinking that the fresh morning air might refresh her, she spent the next hour in a brisk walk round the park.

When she came in again, and was hastening to take off her hat and cloak, she passed Captain Chancellor’s room. The door was open, and just inside she caught sight of his man-servant engaged in strapping a portmanteau. Roma stopped short; the servant happening to look up, perceived her standing in the doorway.

“What time is your master leaving, Barlow?” she asked, coolly, as if she knew all about it.

“Half-past ten, ma’am,” was the reply. “At least, the dog-cart is ordered for then.”

Roma passed on to her own room, feeling very unhappy. She had no anticipation of Beauchamp’s acting so precipitately, and she could not bear to be, even unwillingly, the cause of annoyance and vexation to her sister-in-law. What could she do? There was no use trying to see Gertrude, she would certainly not be awake enough to take it all in, and persuade her brother to reconsider his plans. Much as she shrank from seeing Captain Chancellor again, Roma now wished she could do so; there was just a possibility that she might be able to stop his leaving so hastily, especially if she reminded him of her own determination to go away from Winsley for a time. She went down to the dining-room with a half-formed determination to try what she could do. None of the guests had as yet made their appearance, but at one end of the long table stood a cup of coffee already poured out, and other signs that some one intended breakfasting at once. It did not look promising. Miss Eyrecourt hung about uncertain what to do, but just as she was deciding that it would be better for her not to interfere, Captain Chancellor walked in.

For the first moment he did not see her, but sat down hastily to his breakfast. Then happening to look up, he caught sight of her, and started visibly. Roma felt very uncomfortable; till she was actually in it she had not realised the awkwardness of the position. Now, however, her good sense came to her aid.

“Beauchamp,” she said, trying to speak as much as possible as usual, though her voice trembled a little, “I want to ask you something.”

“Be so kind as to tell me what it is as quickly as possible,” he said, stiffly. “I am leaving immediately.”

“There are two things I want to ask you,” she went on hurriedly. “The first is, will you forgive me for having hurt you more than I need have done last night. I don’t suppose I could have avoided hurting you to some extent, but what I had to say I might have said differently. In short, Beauchamp, I am afraid now that I lost my temper, and I am very sorry for it.”