Not Without Thorns

“You need not feel any responsibility about it,” he said. “To all intents and purposes I assure you the thing is done. I have already written to Mr Laurence,” he took a letter out of his pocket and held it up to her, “and really it is too late to stop my seeing Eugenia. My chief reason for wishing to do so is to clear up the extraordinary misapprehension you told me of. It is only fair to me to let me put all that right. And it would be only cruel to her to leave things as they are. She is not strong, and I can’t bear her to suffer any more.” The genuine anxiety in the last few words carried the day.

“I didn’t think of not explaining things to her,” said Mrs Dalrymple, rising irresolutely from her seat as she spoke. “I could have done that. However, I daresay it is better for you to see her yourself.”

“I am quite sure it is,” said Captain Chancellor. “And to confess all my wickedness to you, had you prevented my seeing Miss Laurence here openly, I should, I assure you, have done my best to see her some other way. You could not have put a stop to either of us walking in the gardens, for instance?”

He smiled as he paid it; there was a little defiance in the smile. Mrs Dalrymple sighed gently, and shook her head.

“You were always a very self-willed little boy, Beauchamp,” she remarked, as she at last departed on her errand. Then she put her head in again at the door with a second thought.

“You will not blame me if Eugenia does not wish to see you at once?” she said. “She has been very much upset this morning, and perhaps it may be better to let her rest a little, and see you this evening.” – “And by then Henry will be back,” she added in her own mind, with a cowardly sense of satisfaction that in that case her lord and master would go shares in the possible blame.

“By all means beg Miss Laurence to do just as she likes,” replied Beauchamp, urbanely. “I can call again at any hour this evening she likes to name, if she prefers it to seeing me now.”

His misgivings, however, were of the slenderest. When he was left alone, he strolled again to the window, and stood looking out, but without seeing much of what was before him. He was thinking, more deeply perhaps than he had ever thought before; and when at last he heard the sound of the door opening softly, he started and looked round, not without a certain anxiety. But it was as he had expected, Eugenia herself, – and, oh, what a transfigured Eugenia! Never yet had he seen her as he saw her now. Notwithstanding the still evident fragility of her appearance, there was about her whole figure a brightness, a soft radiance of happiness impossible to describe. Her brown hair seemed to have gained new golden lights; her eyes, always sweet, looked deeper and yet more brilliant; there was a flush of carnation in her cheeks over which lugubrious Major Thanet would have shaken his head, which Beauchamp at the moment thought lovelier than any rose-tint he had ever seen.

She came forward quickly, – more quickly than he advanced to meet her. He seemed almost startled by her beauty, and looked at her for a moment without speaking. He could hardly understand her perfect absence of self-consciousness, her childlike “abandon” of overwhelming joy.

“Beauchamp, oh, Beauchamp,” she exclaimed, as their hands met, “she has told me it was all a mistake, and, oh, I am so very happy!”

So she was, unutterably happy. Life for her, she felt, could hold no more perfect moment than this, and that there could be anything unbecoming in expressing her happiness, above all to him to whom she owed it, who shared it, as she believed, to the full, never in the faintest degree occurred to her. She did not think her lover cold or less fervent in his rejoicing than herself; she trusted him too utterly for such an idea to be possible to her, even had there been more cause for it than there really was. For, after the first instant, Captain Chancellor found it easy to respond to her expressions of thankfulness and delight; found it too by no means an unpleasing experience to be hailed by this lovely creature as the hero of her dreams, the fairy prince whom even yet she could hardly believe had chosen her – a very Cinderella as she seemed to herself in comparison with him – out of all womankind to be his own. And, even if a shade more reserve, a trifle more dignity, would have been better in accordance with his taste, his notion of the perfectly well-bred bearing in such circumstances, after all, was there not every excuse for such innocent shortcoming, such sweet forgetfulness? She was so young, he reflected, had seen nothing, or worse than nothing, of society, – for far better for a girl to be brought up in a convent than in the mixed society of a place like Wareborough, – it was only a marvel to see her as she was. And deeper than these reflections lay another consciousness of excuse in his mind, which yet, even to himself, he would have shrunk from the bad taste of putting into words, – the consciousness that it was not every girl whose bridegroom elect was a Beauchamp Chancellor!

“What a child it is!” he murmured to himself, as he stroked back the sunny brown hair from the white temples, and looked smilingly down into the liquid depths of the sweet, loving eyes. There would be a great deal to teach her, he thought to himself; some things perhaps he must help her to unlearn; but with such a pupil the prospect of the task before him was not appalling. Suddenly there recurred to him the memory of the misapprehension of his words of which Mrs Dalrymple had told him. This must be set right at once, – his fiancée must be taught to view such things differently, to recognise the established feelings of the world – his world – on such matters.

“Eugenia, my dearest,” he began, rather gravely, and the gravity reflected itself in her face as instantly as a passing cloud across the sun is mirrored in the clear water of the lake beneath, “I want to ask you one thing. How could you distrust me, misinterpret me so, as Mrs Dalrymple tells me you did?”

“I never for an instant distrusted you,” she answered quickly. “At the worst – at the very worst – I never doubted you. I believed you were bound in some way, – bound by ties which in honour you could not break; but, Beauchamp, I never blamed you, or doubted that we should not have been separated had it been in your power to avoid it. Distrust you? Oh, no; I knew too well. I judged you by myself.”

“My darling!” he replied, kissing her again. Her sentiments were very pretty, very romantic, and so forth, and not objectionable considering she was a woman, but still hardly to the purpose. And, woman though she was, she must learn to take less poetical and high-flown, more conventional and “accepted,” views of things. Yet notwithstanding his pleasing sense of masculine superiority, he had winced a little inwardly while she spoke. For a moment there flashed before him an impulse of perfect honesty and candour, a temptation to tell her what small ground she had had for this innocent faith of hers, – a sort of yearning to be loved by her for what he was, and no more.

“But, no,” he decided, “it would not do. If she once heard about Roma, she would never forget it. It would spoil all. If she did not resent my admiration for Roma, she would resent my having amused myself and her at Wareborough with what I never then dreamt would end seriously with either of us, at the very time I was counting on all coming straight with the other. She would never believe that I really cared for her, as most certainly I do. No, it would never do. Her head, poor dear, is cram-full of belief in first love and only love, and all the rest of the school-girl creed, and I am sure I don’t want to disturb it, or to awake any nonsensical jealousy.”

For that the green-eyed, hydra-headed monster lies somewhere sleeping in every woman’s heart, Captain Chancellor doubted as little as that there are fish in the sea or smouldering fires in Mount Vesuvius. And that no wife has a right to peep behind the closed door of her husband’s previous life, or to resent exclusion therefrom, was another of his not-to-be-disputed axioms. So he only smiled and called her his darling, and put away from him the momentary impulse to risk all by confiding to her the true history of the events and feelings of the last few months.

“But in another sense you distrusted me,” he went on after a little pause, speaking gravely again and with some hesitation, as if fearful of hurting her; “how could you reconcile my – my manner to you this morning with what you were then believing about me?”

“I didn’t reconcile it,” answered Eugenia, naïvely; “I only thought, as I had done before, that honour and inclination were pointing different ways;” here she stopped abruptly and blushed crimson. “It sounds dreadfully conceited to say this,” she added, “but you asked me, and I must tell you everything now, must not I? I was so bitterly sorry for you, and, oh, so miserable myself.”

It was a little hard to say anything but sweet words to this, but Beauchamp persevered.

“But don’t you see, dearest, had it been as you thought, I could not have broken my pledge without the grossest dishonour? Perhaps you hardly understand how these things are looked upon in the world, you are so young and innocent, and perhaps a tiny little bit too romantic,” here he stroked her cheek fondly, “but you will learn that there are some things men of honour cannot do, not even to win such a darling as you.”

The crimson, hardly yet faded from the girl’s face, deepened almost painfully. She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke it seemed to cost her a little effort.

“I am ignorant, very ignorant,” she said gently. “But there are some things it doesn’t require years or experience to know. I trust you will not find me ignorant in these. Don’t think I thought you capable of breaking your word – not even for me,” with a little smile and an attempt at playfulness, “but I thought – ” she hesitated; “I have read that even the noblest and best may be terribly drawn two ways sometimes – there may come to the best of us tremendous temptations, may there not? Could the best people ever get to be the best if they had not felt temptation more strongly than others? And then, too, though one hardly likes to say so, there do seem sometimes to come times when ordinary rules – not real right and wrong of course, but our way of interpreting them – seem to fail one; when keeping one’s word in one direction would be breaking it more unpardonably in another. Oh no, no, if I could put in words what I felt for and thought of you this morning, you would see I did you no dishonour.”

There was a pathetic appeal in her tone as she uttered the last few words; she had said more than she intended, carried away by her subject, and the remembrance of the battle of feelings she herself had so recently fought her way through. Captain Chancellor was a little puzzled, a little annoyed, and a little surprised. It was not quite so easy to assert his superiority as he had imagined. Instinctively he sheltered himself by taking it for granted.

“My darling,” he said again, “don’t distress yourself. Don’t imagine I meant to blame you. I only meant there are things and ways of looking at things which your innocence cannot have had experience of. But this need trouble neither of us now – you will never be alone now, even in thought. You will always trust me, dearest?”

“Yes,” whispered Eugenia, softly, “and you will teach me all I don’t know, and teach me to be better too, more worthy of you.”

Captain Chancellor was enchanted. There was a docility about this sweet Eugenia of his, which he might have sought for long and vainly among more sophisticated maidens. She looked more irresistibly lovely than ever at this moment; there was a tender dewiness in her eyes which might turn into tears were it not kissed away, so he lost no time in averting the possible catastrophe. And Eugenia accepted his caresses and smiled her happiness, and stifled far, far away, down in the very furthest off corner of her heart, a little silly, absurd pain, an infinitesimal feeling of disappointment that she had not been quite perfectly understood – stifled it so determinedly that she thought she had forgotten its having had even a momentary existence.

It was not till she was alone again – Beauchamp having departed to post his letter to her father – alone with her happiness, feeling almost overwhelmed by Mrs Dalrymple’s congratulations and affectionate excitement (for Mary was too kind-hearted to obtrude the wet blanket of her somewhat uncomfortable sense of responsibility), that there recurred to Eugenia the remembrance of the expressions made use of by her lover, which had helped to continue the mystification regarding his relations with Miss Eyrecourt.

What could he have meant, she said to herself, by his allusions to ties which must be broken, obstacles to be overcome? She knew of none; her father, she felt satisfied, would never dream of opposing her wishes, would do all in his power to promote her happiness.

“I will ask Beauchamp to-morrow,” she thought, and then again discarded the idea. She had a certain shrinking from alluding, however slightly, to the misapprehension which had cost her so much. Could it be that his friends had other views for him, and would be disappointed by his choice? “It maybe so,” she thought; “I am neither rich nor grand. I should not wonder if his relations wish him to marry Miss Eyrecourt; or, possibly, he is afraid that his marriage may interfere with his getting on in his profession. That he need not fear, I would never consent to be in his way. That is not my idea of a good wife,” and she smiled confidently, as many another untried girl has smiled, at the thought of all she could do and suffer, and make the best of, for his sake. None of her reflections cast any shadow on her joy.

“We love each other, that is all that matters. And if there are any difficulties in the way, which I should know of, he will tell me, and if he does not, I can trust him.”

The very next morning there came, forwarded from Wareborough to Mrs Dalrymple, a letter from Mrs Winter, in which after the usual feminine amount of irrelevant matter, she went on to say, “I have often wondered how soon you found out the incorrectness of the report about Miss Eyrecourt’s engagement to Captain Chancellor. Indeed, it has been rather on my mind to set it right with you, but the very day after I last wrote I was called away to nurse my mother, and the last six weeks have been entirely spent in the sick-room,” etc, etc. “And besides, as you are so nearly connected with the young lady, you are quite sure to have heard it was only, a piece of local gossip.”

Eugenia smiled when her friend showed her the letter.

“How queerly things are twisted up together,” she said, but she was happy enough now to forget all the past, save as enhancing the present. She was perfectly satisfied with Beauchamp’s explanation (he did not feel called upon to make it a very ample one) of his inconsistent conduct: his misgivings as to the wisdom of marrying on his limited means, his ignorance of the real state of her feelings towards him, his anxiety to take no such step without the approval of the sister to whom he owed so much – all good reasons and founded on fact as far as they went.

“I hope your sister will like me,” said Eugenia, thoughtfully. “It is with her Miss Eyrecourt lives, is it not? I think I liked Miss Eyrecourt, at least I think so now,” with a smile and a blush which made her lover congratulate himself on his reticence.

Mr Dalrymple and Major Thanet both opened their eyes when they heard the news.

“Well, my dear,” said the former, oracularly, “I trust you will never have reason to regret your share in the affair;” but to the young people themselves he was “mean” enough to be profusely congratulatory.

“Just like a man,” thought poor Mrs Dalrymple. “If Henry were the least given to clairvoyance, and that sort of thing, I should really think he went off yesterday on purpose that he might be able to put the responsibility on to me.”

Captain Chancellor’s friend did not mince the matter. He had scented one of Beauchamp’s little “affaires,” but the actual dénouement so suddenly announced to him by his companion was rather startling.

“Going to be married,” he exclaimed; “and this morning you had as much idea of anything of the kind – at least in this quarter,” pointedly, “as – as,” the gallant officer hesitated, at a loss for a sufficiently forcible expression, “as I have of marrying the man in the moon.”

Beauchamp laughed shortly and contemptuously. Major Thanet’s perceptions were not of the quickest.

“Are you sure you know what you are about, my dear fellow?” he inquired confidentially.

“Perfectly, thank you,” answered Captain Chancellor, and the tone of the three words was unmistakable. So Major Thanet took his cue, and not being behind the rest of the world in his capability of “bearing perfectly like a Christian the misfortunes of another,” resigned himself with a cigar, and a sigh over “Chancellor’s infatuation,” to the apparently inevitable, and being introduced to Eugenia a day or two after by her fiancé, congratulated her with as much graceful fervour as if no piece of news of the kind had ever in his life afforded him such unmingled satisfaction.

Eugenia thought him charming, seeing him through the flattering medium of his position as one of Beauchamp’s oldest friends, and was a very little surprised that the cordiality of her expressions regarding him hardly appeared as gratifying to her lover as she could have expected.

“Am I too outspoken, Beauchamp?” she ventured to inquire. “You don’t think me ‘gushing,’ I hope?” with a little smile, but some anxiety, and his answer, “Never to me,” was scarcely reassuring.

“I will try to learn to be more dignified and – and more reserved, or whatever it is my manner is wanting in,” she said, penitentially. And then the tiny cloud cleared off Beauchamp’s face, and he told her she could never in his eyes be nearer perfection than she was already, and all was sunshine again – sunshine almost too brilliant and dazzling, with a want of the steady glow about it which tells of the settled maturity of summer; reminding one rather of the flashing radiance of uncertain April “with his shoures,” “April, when men woo” – sunshine, nevertheless, which brought back the roses to Eugenia’s cheeks, and added new radiance to her beautiful eyes.

Volume Two – Chapter Seven.

Fait Accompli

Things without all remedyShould be without regard: what’s done isdone.Macbeth.

And thus it came about that Eugenia returned home to Wareborough the week before her sister’s marriage, a very picture of radiant happiness.

“How little we imagined what was to be the end of my visit to Nunswell! Do you remember how dreadfully unwilling I was to go?” she said to Sydney, when they were alone together for the first time the evening she came home.

And Sydney smiled back to her, and tried her best to be sympathising in joy as in sorrow, and Eugenia was too intensely happy to discover that there was any effort required on her sister’s part, or that it was not entirely successful.

Contrary to the usual course of true love at the critical stage when fathers are applied to, and ways and means have to be considered, there occurred no difficulties threatening to overthrow Eugenia’s new-found happiness; or rather perhaps, such as there were, were smoothed away by her friends’ kindness. Her father, at all times indulgent in intention, had had his somewhat undemonstrative affection quickened into activity by his anxiety during her illness, and was too delighted to see the change in her to lay much stress on the fact of Captain Chancellor’s very limited means. And Beauchamp on his side was somewhat agreeably disappointed by Mr Laurence’s generosity.

“I am not a rich man,” said Eugenia’s father, “and now that my children are grown up I sometimes take blame to myself that I am not a richer, I might have been so perhaps, but though nearly all my life has been spent in this place where money-making is the great object, I never caught the fever,” here he smiled, and Captain Chancellor wondered in his own mind what on earth any one could find of interest in Wareborough, setting aside “the great object” to which his future father-in-law alluded thus contemptuously. “I am not ambitious,” continued Mr Laurence, “either for myself or my children,” Beauchamp stared a little, “but I am very anxious to see them happy, and nothing but very grave objections would make me interfere with their wishes. I am perfectly satisfied with Sydney’s choice, and, though of course I have had much less opportunity of knowing you than has been the case as regards Frank Thurston, I trust, I think I may say I believe, I shall feel the same with Eugenia’s.”

He looked at Captain Chancellor with a half-inquiry. The young man, though not feeling particularly flattered, bowed silently. But catching sight again of Mr Laurence’s eyes, the sort of appeal, of wistful anxiety in their expression, came home to him and awoke his better nature. It was impossible to take offence at the plain speaking of so straightforward and single-minded a man as Eugenia’s father, eccentric though he might be, so Beauchamp answered gently and respectfully —

“I hope with all my heart, my dear sir, that you will indeed feel so. I think I can answer for myself that I shall do my best, my very best, to make her happy.”

He held out his hand to Mr Laurence as he spoke, as if in ratification of the treaty. The older man took it and shook it, after the manner of Englishmen in moments of strong feeling, vigorously. Then they both looked at each other again.

“He’s by no means an unpresentable father-in-law, Wareborough-bred though he is,” thought Beauchamp, feeling sufficiently pleased with himself to see other people in a rose-coloured light.

And “I do not wonder at Eugenia,” was the reflection that passed through her father’s mind.

For Beauchamp looked his very best just now. There was a kindly light in his blue eyes, which added greatly to their attractiveness, a slight air of deference had replaced his usual calm, somewhat supercilious self-possession; he looked altogether younger and brighter and heartier.

He felt rewarded for the amiability and tact (a quality on the possession of which he rather prided himself) he had shown, when Mr Laurence proceeded to touch upon practical matters. The sum he named as the yearly allowance he intended to settle on Eugenia exceeded Captain Chancellor’s expectations, if indeed he may be said to have had any; for when habitually calculating, self-considering persons act upon impulse, throwing prudence to the winds, their recklessness is apt to exceed that of more impetuous natures – a certain mortification at having disregarded their accepted rule of conduct renders the remembrance of the inconsistency unpalatable; for the time being they bury all practical considerations out of sight. So Beauchamp was perfectly sincere, and Mr Laurence could see that he was so, when he exclaimed —

“You are very generous, very generous indeed. I had no idea of anything so liberal. Indeed, to tell the truth, I fear I gave little thought to this part of the matter at all,” (for now that his rashness had not turned out so badly, after all, he began to be rather proud of it). “I suppose,” with a smile, “I thought only of Eugenia herself. But of course – for her sake – I don’t hesitate to say I am very glad of what you tell me – very glad indeed.”

And the interview ended with mutual satisfaction.

“Yes,” thought Beauchamp, as he returned to the drawing-room, where Eugenia was awaiting the result of the tête-à-tête in “papa’s study,” not, it must be confessed, with any great amount of anxiety, for her faith in her father was great, her ignorance of money matters unlimited – “Yes,” thought Captain Chancellor, “we shall be able to scrub on. After all of course it will be only what Gertrude calls ‘genteel starvation.’ How she used to ring the changes on that for Roma’s benefit! But Eugenia will have quite as much as she would have had, and with much less expensive tastes. And in the old days, when I was determined to marry Roma, I used to make out it would not be so very bad. Of course there is the difference in other ways, position and connection and all that, to be taken into account, but after all – ”