Not Without Thorns

Suddenly an approaching footstep startled them. Only a very few minutes had passed since Beauchamp had first returned to her, but to Eugenia it seemed hours. Captain Chancellor got up from the seat and stood quietly beside her, as if engaged in ordinary conversation. The new-comer was only a stranger who passed by without noticing them, but the interruption recalled Beauchamp’s thoughts to outside matters.

“I think perhaps I had better go,” he said, reluctantly, “but I cannot leave you to find your way back alone. My friend, Major Thanet, is waiting for me a little further on. He is lame, and cannot walk home alone. Would you mind remaining here a very few minutes till I have seen him safe back to his room, and then I can return here for you?”

The anxious tenderness of his words and manner was very sweet, to Eugenia, but she resisted the temptation. She had had her moment of weakness, but that was now past and gone. Still, this was not the time or place for saying what had to be said, nor had she now strength for any discussion. So she merely answered gently, so gently that any possibility of offence was out of the question —

“Please not. I mean, please don’t come back for me. It is better not. I am quite able to go home alone now; but if you would rather,” (in deference to a shake of his head), “you might leave a message at the hotel, asking Mrs Dalrymple’s maid to come for me. She will not be surprised; she often goes out with me, and she knows this seat.”

“I will do so,” he replied. “So you are with the Dalrymples!” – and Eugenia detected, and was not surprised at, a slight shade of annoyance in his tone.

“Yes,” she replied, simply.

“But – but that will not matter?” he inquired, hesitatingly. “You are your own mistress. You will see me? I shall try to see you in an hour or two again. There will be no difficulty about it?”

He had turned to leave her, but waited an instant for her answer.

“Oh, no, there will be no difficulty. I will see you, or write to you,” she said, a little confusedly.

Her last words struck him rather oddly, but he attributed them to her nervousness and embarrassment; and, fearful of increasing these, he left her, as she desired.

And for the next quarter of an hour, till the maid came for her, Eugenia never took her eyes from the path down which Beauchamp had disappeared. “I shall never see him again,” she said to herself; “never, never. I must not. He must not break his word for me. Oh, I hope – I do hope I shall not live much longer.”

When she got back to the hotel, Eugenia found the Dalrymples both out. Mr Dalrymple she knew was off for the day on some expedition; but his wife, she found on inquiry, had left word for her that she would be in in half an hour. So Eugenia went up to her own room, and sitting down, tried to decide what was best to do. She only saw two things clearly, – she must not risk seeing Beauchamp again, and she must confide in Mrs Dalrymple.

“There is no help for it,” she said to herself. “Even if I told her nothing, she is sure to meet him, and she could not but suspect something. It would never do to let her find it out for herself. Why, Roma Eyrecourt is her cousin! No, I must trust her; and I must get her to let me go home at once. I cannot stay here, – I cannot.”

Mrs Dalrymple, returning from her walk, was met by a request that she would at once go to Miss Laurence’s room. She felt a little startled.

“What is the matter? Miss Laurence is not ill, surely?” she said to her maid, who was watching for her with Eugenia’s message.

The young woman, a comparative stranger, answered that she did not know; she had not thought Miss Laurence looking very well when she came in, but she had not complained. Eugenia’s face, however, confirmed her friend’s fears.

“You are ill, my dear child,” she exclaimed at once. “Have you got cold again, do you think? You were looking so well this morning.”

“I am not ill, – truly I am not,” replied Eugenia. “But, dear Mrs Dalrymple, I wanted to see you as soon as you came in, to ask you to be so very, very kind as to let me go home at once, – to-day if possible.”

“Go home to-day! My dear Eugenia, it is out of the question. You must be ill,” said Mrs Dalrymple, considerably perplexed, and half-inclined to think the girl’s brain was affected.

“No, no; it isn’t that. Oh, Mrs Dalrymple, I can’t bear to tell you! I have never spoken of it to any one, – only to one person at least,” she said, correcting herself, as the remembrance of her conversations with Gerald returned to her mind. “But I am sure I can trust you, and you will understand. It is – it is because Captain Chancellor is here that I want to go.”

“My poor child!” said Mrs Dalrymple, very tenderly, drawing Eugenia nearer her as she spoke; and though she said no more, the girl saw how mistaken she had been in imagining that no one had guessed her secret, and a painful flush of shame rose to her brow at the thought.

Then, after a moment’s pause, her friend spoke again.

“You are sure of it?” she inquired. “You are sure that he is here, – actually here? May you not have made, some mistake?”

“Oh, no; I am sure, quite sure,” repeated Eugenia, earnestly. “He is certainly here, staying at Nunswell. For all I know, in this very house.”

Mrs Dalrymple sat silent again for a little, apparently thinking it over.

“I don’t quite understand it,” she said at length; “what he is doing here just now, I mean. I thought he was at Winsley. But all the same, – though of course it is most unfortunate, most peculiarly unfortunate, – the very thing of all others I should most have wished to avoid for you, – all the same, my dear child, I confess I hardly see that it would be right or wise for us to allow it to interfere with our plans. Of course, if you go home, we shall go too. That does not matter; it would make very little difference to us. But don’t you think, Eugenia, it would be just a little undignified, – not to say cowardly, – to seem afraid of him, – to run away whenever he appears? I should like him rather to see, or to think, that he is no more to you than he deserves to be. Don’t be offended with me. I have felt for you and with you more than I can express all through.”

She waited rather anxiously for Eugenia’s answer. It was slow of coming. Mrs Dalrymple began to fear she had gone too far; she could not understand the look of embarrassment on Eugenia’s face.

“Yes,” she said, at last; “you are quite right. It would have been cowardly to have run away had it been as you think, though I dare say I should have wished to do so all the same. I am a coward, I suppose; at least, I entirely distrust my own strength. And I have reason enough to do so,” she added, in a lower tone, hardly intended for her companion’s ears. “But it isn’t quite as you think. It is not only on my own account I want to go away. It is not only that I have seen him – Captain Chancellor, I mean. I have spoken to him. He saw me this morning in the gardens, and came back to speak to me; and – and – if I stay here he will insist on seeing me, and it may be very painful for us all.”

“I don’t understand,” exclaimed Mrs Dalrymple. “What can he want to see you for? What can he have to say to you, – he, engaged to Roma Eyrecourt?”

“I can’t tell you. I am so afraid of making you angry, for of course she is your cousin,” said Eugenia, in great distress. “But still I thought it best to be quite open with you. He forgot himself, – for the time only, I dare say,” she continued, with an irrepressible sigh and a sudden sense of bitter humility. “He saw that I had been ill, and I think he was dreadfully sorry for me, and I was alone, and somehow I suppose I was frightfully undignified, and unmaidenly even,” – the harsh word, though self-inflicted, bringing a painful blush with it. “I dare say it was all my fault, but any way he offered to give up everything for my sake, to break all ties and obstacles.”

“And you accepted such a proposal?” exclaimed Mrs Dalrymple, indignantly, for, after all, “blood is thicker than water,” and the imagined insult to her kinswoman, of such treatment, struck home.

“No, oh, no; of course not,” replied Eugenia, eagerly. “That is what makes me want to go. I had not time – we were interrupted – I could not make him understand that such a thing was impossible, – impossible in every sense, – for him, – for me. Could I, do you think, marry any man who, for my sake, had broken his word to another woman, – had perhaps broken another woman’s heart? Oh, no, no. You do not think I could? I would rather die!”

“And do you think he really meant it?” questioned Mrs Dalrymple. “Certainly I have not seen much of him of late years, but I used to know him well, and I must say it is not the sort of thing I should have imagined him doing. He must be either a better or a worse man than I have supposed – possibly both.”

Eugenia did not reply to the last observation: perhaps she did not hear it. But she answered Mrs Dalrymple’s question.

“I do think he meant it. And I think he will continue to mean it unless it is at once discouraged,” she said; “at once, before he has time to do anything rash with regard to Miss Eyrecourt. It will not be enough for me to refuse to see him – I must go away. While I stay here, any unlucky chance might bring us together again, like this morning. And I cannot trust myself, now that he knows – for he does know,” she turned her face away, “that – that I do care for him, that I would make any sacrifice for him except doing wrong, or letting him do wrong. Though, indeed, I must not boast: no one knows how hard it is not to do wrong, till one is tried.”

“My poor child,” said Mrs Dalrymple, quite as tenderly now as at the beginning of the conversation. And then she added, “I wonder what we should do. I wish Henry were back.”

“When do you think he will be back?” asked Eugenia, influenced not so much by her friend’s wifely belief in Mr Dalrymple’s diplomatic powers as by her own anxiety to obtain his approval of her at once leaving Nunswell.

“I don’t know. Not before evening,” replied her friend.

“And something must be done – should be done before post-time,” said Eugenia. “He said he would call to see me; would it do for me to write a note to be given him when he comes? It will be so difficult to say it. Oh dear, oh dear!”

She got up from her seat, and walked to the window and back again, her hands clasped, in restless misery. There came a knock at the door.

“A gentleman to see Miss Laurence, if you please, ma’am,” said Mrs Dalrymple’s Bertha, importantly. “This is his card. He asked for the young lady staying with you, ma’am.”

Mrs Dalrymple took the card mechanically, and glanced at the name as if there were still any possibility of mistake.

“Captain Chancellor,” the two words stared her in the face, and down in the corner in little letters – “203rd (East Woldshire) Regiment.”

It all looked so straightforward and aboveboard: there was no apparent consciousness of conduct or intentions “unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.” And yet the girl he was calmly proposing to treat with ignominy and indignity was her own cousin; the girl for whose sake he proposed so to dishonour himself actually a guest in her own charge! Mrs Dalrymple felt more and more perplexed. How could the young man have the audacity to send up his card in this brazen-faced way? Surely there must be some strange mistake. A sudden thought struck her. She turned to Eugenia, standing pale, and with great, wistful eyes, beside her.

“He does mean it, you see,” whispered the girl.

“Yes, I see,” replied the matron. Then turning to the servant: “Bertha, say to Captain Chancellor we shall see him immediately,” and when Bertha had departed on her errand, “Eugenia, my love,” she said gently, “I think it will be best for me to see him.”

“Very well. Thank you very much,” replied Eugenia, yet with a wild, unreasonable regret that she had been so taken at her word, that fate had not forced her into seeing him again, into the very danger her better nature so dreaded and shrank from.

Volume Two – Chapter Six.

Sunshine

… All hearts in love use their own tongues:Let every eye negotiate for itself,And trust no agent.Much Ado about Nothing.

Captain Chancellor was standing by the window when Mrs Dalrymple entered the room. As the sound of the door opening caught his ear, he turned sharply round with a look of eager expectancy on his fair, handsome face, which did not escape the notice of Eugenia’s self-constituted guardian, and notwithstanding his habitual good breeding and self-possession, he did not altogether succeed in concealing the disappointment which was caused him by the sight of his old friend’s substantial proportions in the place of the girlish figure he had been watching for. He was eager to see Eugenia again. Unimpulsive though he was by nature, little as he had dreamt but three short hours before of ever again seeing her, of holding her in his arms and calling her his own, he was now almost passionately anxious for her presence. Away from her, he had found it difficult to realise, to justify to himself, this rash, unpremeditated deed he had done – a deed at variance with all his preconceived ideas, all the intentions of his life. But beside her, in the light of her sweet eyes, in the sense of her loveliness, of her delicate grace – above all, of her clinging trust in and entire devotion to himself, he felt that all his scruples and misgivings would vanish into air. He would feel satisfied then of what he tried to believe he felt satisfied of now, that being what he was, a man and not a statue, a “gentleman” who (in his own sense) held honour high, and would scorn to take advantage of a woman’s weakness, he could not have acted otherwise. Fortified thus, he could brave all, – his friends’ probable “chaff” on his weakness, “to think of Chancellor’s throwing himself away after all for a pair of bright eyes;” his sister’s certain disapproval, Roma’s possible contempt. These, and more practical disagreeables, in the shape of poverty, comparatively speaking, at least; the loss of the personal luxuries which even with his limited means had, as a bachelor, been within his easy reach; the general, indescribable descent from the position of a much-made-of young officer without encumbrances, to that of a struggling captain in a line regiment with a delicate wife and too probable family – all these appalling visions already fully recognised, Beauchamp had forthwith set to work to make up his mind to. But he was thirsting for his reward. He was in a very good humour with himself. For the first time in his life he had acted purely on an impulse, and this impulse he imagined to be a much nobler one than it really was. He did not exactly call his conduct by fine names to himself, but in his heart he longed to hear Eugenia do so. He loved her tenderly, he said now to himself that he certainly did so, yet not hitherto so vehemently that he could not have put his love on one side in acknowledgment of weightier considerations. He had been shocked by the change in her appearance, and to some extent took blame to himself in the matter, yet, even while doing so, a slight, a very slight tinge of contempt for her weakness and transparency, mingled itself with his concern and self-reproach. She was not certainly of the stuff of a “Clara Vere de Vere;” there was an amount of undisciplined, unsophisticated effusiveness about her, hardly in accordance with his notion of “thorough-breeding,” yet such as she was she was infinitely sweet; he was only longing to have her beside him to tell her so, to clasp her in his arms again, and kiss the colour into her soft white cheeks.

So it was really very disappointing, instead of Eugenia, to be brought face to face with Mary Dalrymple. He made the best of it, however – in a general way he was very clever at doing so. He came forward with his usual gently pleasant smile, his hand outstretched in greeting, murmuring something about being so pleased, so very pleased to see Mrs Dalrymple again. She hardly appeared to take in the sense of his words.

“How do you do, Captain Chancellor?” she said as she shook hands. Afterwards he fancied there had been a very slight hesitation in her manner before doing so, but at the time his complete unsuspiciousness prevented his imagining the possibility of such a thing. “It is quite an unexpected pleasure to meet you here.”

“Yes,” he answered cautiously, uncertain to what extent Eugenia might have taken Mary into her confidence, and feeling his way before committing himself; “yes, I thought my turning up would be a surprise you.”

“I thought you were still at Winsley,” said Mrs Dalrymple, also feeling her way.

“Oh dear no,” he replied. “Winsley is all very well for a fortnight, but six weeks of it would be rather too much of a good thing. I left Winsley some time ago. I am here now with an old friend of mine. Major Thanet, who has been very ill with rheumatic fever, and came down hero to recruit.”

“And are you returning to Winsley again soon?” inquired Mrs Dalrymple, her suspicion increasing that they were playing at cross purposes in some direction.

“Oh dear no,” he said again. “My leave is about up – I got a little more than my six weeks on Thanet’s account. I am due at Bridgenorth next week.”

“At Bridgenorth,” repeated Mrs Dalrymple. “Oh, indeed; and do you remain here till then?”

“Upon my word I can’t say,” replied Captain Chancellor, with an approach to impatience in his tone. “I certainly didn’t come here to sit being catechised by Mary Pevensey all the afternoon,” he said to himself, waxing wroth at Mrs Dalrymple’s cross questions and Eugenia’s non-appearance. Then suddenly throwing caution to the winds, “To tell you the truth,” exclaimed he, “my plans at present depend greatly upon yours.”

“Upon ours – may I ask why?” inquired Eugenia’s chaperone quietly, and without testifying the surprise her visitor expected.

“Because upon yours depend those of your visitor – at least so I suppose,” answered Beauchamp, coolly. “Miss Laurence is staying with you. If she stays here till next week, I shall stay too; if she goes I shall probably go too.”

“Where?” asked Mrs Dalrymple, looking up at him with a puzzled yet anxious expression on her comely face.

“To Wareborough! to ask her father to consent to her engagement to me,” he replied stoutly. “I shall either see him or write to him at once from here.”

“But – ” began Mrs Dalrymple, coming to a dead stop.

“But what?”

“You can’t marry two people.”

“Certainly not. Has any one been telling you I intended doing so,” he replied, beginning, in spite of his vexation, to laugh.

“Yes,” answered Mrs Dalrymple, naïvely. “At least, not exactly that. But I was told some time ago that you were to be married to my cousin Roma next month, and of course I believed it. Eugenia thinks so too.”

“Eugenia thinks so too,” repeated Captain Chancellor, his face darkening. “How can she possibly think so? And whoever told her such an infernal falsehood, I should like to know?” he went on angrily, for it was unspeakably annoying to him that any shadow, however distorted, of his late relations to Roma should thus follow him about – should dim the brightness of the little-looked-for consolation that had offered itself.

Mrs Dalrymple was by no means taken aback by this outburst. “It was I that told Eugenia,” she said simply.

“I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Beauchamp at once, his manner softening. “Of course you, too, were misinformed. I wonder – ” he hesitated.

“You wonder by whom?” said his hostess. “There is no reason why I should not tell you. It was Mrs Winter who mentioned it to me in a letter, as having been announced, or at least generally believed, at the Winsley Hunt Ball. And I had no reason to disbelieve it. To tell you the truth, it seemed to me to explain things a little.”

Captain Chancellor did not inquire to what things she alluded. He took up the first part of her speech.

“Who is Mrs Winter, may I ask? I don’t think I ever heard of her.”

“She is an old friend of mine,” replied Mrs Dalrymple. “Her husband is Major in the 19th Lancers, now at Sleigham. She wrote to thank me for having asked some of my friends near there to call on her – your sister especially – and in this letter she mentioned Roma’s just announced engagement.”

“But I am surprised you took such a piece of news at secondhand, my dear Mrs Dalrymple,” said Beauchamp. “Had it been true, Roma would have been sure to write to tell you.”

“I don’t know that she would,” replied Roma’s cousin. “We do not write very often, and I know she has a large circle of friends. You might as well say it was strange of me not to write to congratulate her. I did think of doing so, but other things put it out of my head. Eugenia Laurence’s illness for one thing – I was very anxious about her – and to tell you the real truth, Beauchamp,” she went on, with a sudden change of tone, and addressing him as she had been accustomed to do in his boyhood, “I did not feel very able to congratulate either you or Roma as heartily as I should have wished to do in such circumstances, considering all I had seen and observed during your stay at Wareborough. I believe now I may have done you great injustice, and I fear poor dear Eugenia had suffered unnecessarily through me. But I think you will both forgive me,” and she smiled up at him with all her old cordiality.

Captain Chancellor smiled too, with visible consciousness of no small magnanimity in so doing.

“All’s well that ends well,” he answered lightly, “though certainly in such matters it is best to take nothing on hearsay, and to be slow to pronounce on apparently inconsistent, conduct,” he added rather mysteriously. “I must confess, however, that I can’t understand Miss Laurence believing this absurd report – if she had done so till she met me again even, but after our – our conversation this morning?” he looked inquiringly at Mrs Dalrymple.

“Yes, she believes it at the present moment,” replied she. “You said something which seemed to confirm it – about ‘breaking ties,’ or something of the kind.”

“Did I?” he said, colouring a little, and not altogether pleased at so much having been repeated by Eugenia to her friend. “It is a little hard upon one to have to explain all one’s expressions at all sorts of times, you know. Of course what I said referred entirely to what my friends may think of it – Gertrude for instance – the imprudence and all that sort of thing. Of course till Gertrude sees Eugenia, it is natural for her to think a good deal about the outside part of it – prospects and position, you know. There is the strong prejudice against Wareborough and places of the kind, in the first place.”

In saying this he forgot for the moment whom he was speaking to; or if he thought of her at all, it was as Mary Pevensey, not as Mrs Dalrymple, the wife of the Wareborough mill-owner. She looked up quickly, but she had long ago learnt indifference to such allusions on her own score. Eugenia’s position, however, might be more open to discomfort therefrom.

“Then I advise Gertrude to get rid of all such prejudices at once,” said the Wareborough lady, somewhat sharply.

Captain Chancellor did not reply. He might have smoothed down the little awkwardness by some judicious hint of apology, but he was not inclined to take the trouble; he was beginning to think he had had quite enough of his old friend for the present. She had shown a somewhat undesirable readiness to place herself in loco matris towards Eugenia, one of whose attractions, to his mind, lay in the fact that marriage with her entailed upon him no Wareborough or other matron in the shape of mother-in-law.

He got up from his chair and strolled to the window. “It looks very like rain,” he observed amiably. “May I see Miss Laurence now, Mrs Dalrymple?”

Mrs Dalrymple looked uneasy – it was quite as bad as, or rather worse, she thought, than, if her twelve-year-old Minnie were grown up! In that case, at least, she could feel that the responsibility was a natural and unavoidable one, and, if she behaved unwisely, no one would have any right to scold her but Henry; but in the present instance – suppose Mr Laurence took it in his head to blame her for allowing matters to go so far without his consent? On the other hand, her soft heart was full of compassion for Eugenia, and eagerness to see her happy. Captain Chancellor read her hesitation.