Volume One—Chapter Seven.Several People’s Feelings.Oh, for the ills half understood,The dim, dead woeLong ago.R. Browning.The rain was over, the evening had turned out fine after all. Captain Chancellor drove away in his fly from Mr Laurence’s door, but the Thurston brothers decided to walk.“I don’t spend much on flys and that sort of thing, Gerald,” said Frank, as he slipped his arm through his brother’s; “you used to be afraid I was inclined to be extravagant in little things, but I can tell you it only wants a hard winter in Wareborough to make a fellow ashamed of all that self-indulgence. Good heavens, Gerald! you don’t know, though you do know a good deal for a layman,” Gerald smiled to himself at this little bit of clerical bumptiousness, “about the poor, but you don’t know what there is here sometimes. I have half-a-dozen new schemes to consult you about. Mr Laurence has a clear head for organisation, but though so practical in his own department, he won’t come out of it. Education, education, is his cry from morning till night. I quite agree with it, but you can’t educate people or children till you’ve got them food to eat and clothes to wear. I know I don’t expect them to listen tomypart of the teaching till I show them I want to make their poor bodies more comfortable if I can.”“But Mr Laurence’s attention is not given to the very poor. It is more given to the class above them,” said Gerald.“Only because he can’t get hold of any others. Histheoriesembrace the whole human race,” replied Frank, laughing, “but he is wise enough to begin with those he can get hold of. It’s a pity he is not a very rich man. He would do an immense deal of good.”“He never could be a rich man, it seems to me,” said Gerald. “He is quite wanting in the love of money for its own sake, and I am not sure that any man ever amasses a great fortune who hasn’t a spice of this enthusiasm of gold in him. What you will do with the gold when you have it, is a secondary consideration. I do believe there grows upon many men an actual love of the thing itself.”“You’re not turning cynical, surely, Gerald?” said Frank, laughingly. “That would be a newrôlefor you.” His ear had detected a slight bitterness, a dispiritedness in his brother’s tone, though Gerald had exerted himself to speak with interest on general subjects in order to conceal his real state of feeling.Gerald laughed slightly. “I am afraid the more one sees of the world and of life the harder it is to keep altogether free of that sort of thing. But tell me about your own plans. What a sweet woman Sydney will be, Frank! I can hardly think of her as grown-up, you see. Have you and Mr Laurence touched upon business matters at all yet?”“Oh dear, yes!” said Frank, importantly. “It’s all as satisfactory as can be. With what you tell me is my share of our belongings, and what Mr Laurence can give Sydney, and my curacy we shall do splendidly. But I strongly suspect, Gerald, that you are giving me more than I have any right to. I believe you have added your own money to mine—I do really. Of course I can’t tell, for we never went into these things much before you went abroad, but I’m certain my father didn’t leave twice what you have made over to me.”“It’s all right, Frank; it is indeed,” said Gerald, earnestly. “I am doing very well now and am likely to do better. I shall go over my affairs with you some day soon to satisfy you. I could easily make your income larger, but perhaps it is as well for you to begin moderately. You’ll have to restrict your charities a little, you know, when you have a wife to think of.”“Yes, I know that,” replied the curate; “but, Gerald, you should look to home too. You will be marrying yourself.”“It is not likely,” said Mr Thurston. “I am thirty-one—seven years older than you, Frank; getting past the marryingage, you see.”Frank wondered a little, but said nothing, and went on to talk of other things. Suddenly a casual mention of the Dalrymples struck Gerald with a flash of remembrance.“Is not that Captain Chancellor we met to-night a friend of theirs?” he asked his brother.“Yes; I believe Mr Laurence and Eugenia met him there, and I am not at all sure that it wouldn’t have been a great deal better if they had not done so,” replied the young clergyman, oracularly. “Eugenia isn’t a bad sort of girl; she is well-meaning, and not stupid, and certainly very pretty; but I must say she is very childish and silly. She is constantly in extremes, always running full tilt against something or other. For my part, I confess I can’t make her out. I am uncommonly glad Sydney is so completely unlike her. I didn’t at all admire the way she allowed herself to be monopolised by that Captain Chancellor to-night. If they had a mother it would be different, but Mr Laurence would never see anything of that kind if it was straight before his eyes.”“You are rather unreasonable, I think, Frank,” said Gerald. “Such things will happen, you know. I suppose there have been occasions on which Sydney too has allowed herself to be monopolised. You would have thought it very hard if any one had objected.”“The cases are thoroughly different,” replied the younger Thurston. “I should very much doubt this man’s being in earnest.”This was a new view of the subject. Frank said no more, and Gerald did not encourage further remarks concerning Eugenia. He tried to recall all that had passed between himself and Miss Eyrecourt; but the more he thought it over, the more puzzled he became. Her evident self-consciousness when Captain Chancellor’s name was mentioned had impressed him with a conviction he had not stopped to analyse, that her relations with the gentleman in question were more than ordinarily friendly ones; and yet again her manner of alluding to Eugenia was perfectly explained by the supposition that the incipient flirtation—how Gerald hated the word!—had come very plainly under her observation when at Wareborough, yet without arousing any personal feeling of indignation or annoyance. She knew this Captain Chancellor well. Could it be that he was only amusing himself, and that, therefore, from his side, the matter seemed to her of little consequence? Gerald ground his teeth at the thought. Sydney’s inexperience of such things had limited her anxiety to the question of Captain Chancellor’s worthiness and suitability. Frank’s practical, matter-of-fact observation had suggested an even more painful misgiving to his brother, for Eugenia was not the sort of girl to whom a mere “flirtation” was possible. With her it would be all or nothing, and the damage to her whole nature of finding herself deceived could be little short of fatal. The fine metal would be sorely tested in so fiery a furnace. Were not the chances few that any of it would be left, save perhaps bent and distorted beyond recognition?And this was the end of Gerald Thurston’s long-anticipated return home—this was how he awoke from his dreams.For the next few weeks Gerald had very little leisure. A great accumulation of business matters dependent upon his presence in Wareborough forced themselves on his attention. Had things been as he had hoped to find them, he would have chafed greatly at this; as they were, however, selfishly speaking, he felt glad of hard work, which there was no escaping. He saw very little of the Laurences—he saw little even of his brother. Now and then he asked himself if he had possibly been over hasty and premature, and for a day or two this misgiving tantalised him afresh. It might be as well, he thought, to seek an opportunity of judging for himself, and however things were, it was time to accustom himself to perfect self-command in Eugenia’s presence. He had never seen Sydney alone since that first evening. On the one or two occasions he had been in Mr Laurence’s house since then, it seemed to him the youngfiancéehad avoided him purposely. “No doubt, poor little soul, she thinks it would pain me to revert to that evening,” he thought to himself; “and she doesn’t want to tell me that what she suspected then is becoming more and more confirmed, though I can see by her manner it is so.” Once Gerald purposely led to the mention of Captain Chancellor’s name in talking with his brother. To his surprise, he found that Frank’s slight prejudice and dislike had completely disappeared.“He is a very good fellow of his class,” said the clergyman. “Not very much in him, perhaps, but he seems to me honourable and straightforward, and thoroughly gentlemanly. He’s a good Churchman too, I’m glad to find. I like him very much—better than I expected. Eugenia might do worse. But, after all, if nothing comes of it, I can’t see that he will be in the least to blame. I don’t see that he pays her any more attention than he does to Sydney; but then certainly she is a very different person from Sydney,” added Frank, with considerable self-congratulation in the last few words. “I am sorry you don’t see more of Captain Chancellor, Gerald,” he continued. “You have been so busy lately, and he has never happened to be there the one or two times you have dropped in lately.”“No,” replied Mr Thurston; “Eugenia was not at home either, the last time. She has been staying somewhere, has she not?”“At the Dalrymples’. She is there a great deal. But never mind about her,” said Frank, rather cavalierly. “Give yourself a holiday now and then, Gerald. Even I find I must sometimes, and my work is not nearly so monotonous as yours. We are going to skate on Ayclough Pool to-morrow. I have promised to take the Dalrymple boys, whose holidays have begun.”“It’s rather a long way,” said Gerald, doubtfully.“Only four miles, and the weather is delightful for walking. We don’t start till one, so you’ll have all the morning. Sydney and Eugenia are coming to watch us. Do come; it will do you ever so much good. You have been dreadfully shut up since you came home,” persuaded Frank.“Very well,” said Gerald at last. This might be the opportunity he had been looking for. Frank’s opinion of Captain Chancellor had not reassured him, for the young clergyman was in many ways very inexperienced, incapable of understanding Eugenia, and constitutionally predisposed to judge of everything and everybody from his own straightforward point of view.“Whatever Captain Chancellor’s intentions are,” reflected Gerald, “he must be a man of a good deal of tact and foresight of a small kind.”It was quite true. “Of a kind,” Captain Chancellor’s acuteness and perception were unrivalled. He knew exactly how far to go without risking “anything unpleasant.” In all his numerous flirtations he had come off unscathed; never had any papa, urged thereto by an over-anxious mamma, taken the terrible step of demanding “his intentions;” his fastidious taste would indeed have been attracted by no girl, however charming, behind whom loomed the shadow of so coarse and hideous a possibility. He made a rule of looking well about him, making himself acquainted with the country, before he indulged in one of his little amusements, and so far he had never found himself wrong. In the present case he had been unusually lucky; fortune literally seemed to play into his hands, or perhaps it had appeared so to him, because at first the difficulties had promised to be great, and he had prepared to meet them with more than ordinary caution and skill. Mr Laurence’s house was just the sort of house in which it was far from easy to obtain a friendly and familiar footing. The arrangements were ponderous and formal notwithstanding their simplicity and absence of ostentation; the hours were regular and visitors few. When Mr Laurence expected a friend or two to dine with him, he gave his daughters a few days’ notice, and they never pretended to “make no difference;” on the contrary, Sydney consulted the cookery-book, and exhorted the cook; Eugenia arranged the flowers and the dessert, and gave a finishing touch to the positions of the drawing-room chairs. A household of this kind was new to Captain Chancellor, and it took him some little time quite to understand it, and when he did so he hesitated. Was it worth the necessary amount of “chandelle?” in this case represented by great tact, quick seizing of opportunity, and considerable patience; for Mr Laurence’s dissertations were quite out of his line, his cook not a French one, his wines—well, hardly so bad as might have been expected. But after all, life in Wareborough would be really unendurable without somepasse-tempsof the kind. A happy thought struck him—two happy thoughts. Frank Thurston and Mrs Dalrymple, excellent, admirable creatures both, perfectly adapted for his purpose. So he spent a few days in sedulously cultivating the curate, whose good word was of course, under existing circumstances, an Open sesame to the Laurence household, and so well succeeded in his design, that gradually all the family got accustomed to his dropping in at odd times just like Frank himself. They got accustomed to it, but did they like it? To Mr Laurence it was neither particularly agreeable nor the reverse; he got into the way of thinking of the new-comer as “a friend of Frank’s,” a pleasant, rather intelligent young man, who had seen a good deal of the world, and yet was easily entertained. To Sydney, this growing familiarity was the source of much secret anxiety, which yet she saw it best to keep to herself; to Eugenia—ah, what words will tell what it had come to be to Eugenia!—like the flowers in spring, like the sunshine, like life itself.Then Captain Chancellor called pretty frequently on his old friend Mrs Dalrymple, and made himself very agreeable to her. He told her he really did not know how he should have got through this winter but for her kindness and hospitality; it was no small boon to him to have one person in Wareborough he might venture to look upon as a friend, with whom he might talk over old days, etc, etc. And gradually he led the conversation round to the Laurences, said he was so much obliged to Mr Dalrymple for his introduction to Mr Laurence, really a remarkable man, a man whose acquaintance any one might be proud of; but had it not struck Mr Dalrymple that his daughters were rather to be pitied, not the younger one, of course she was very happy in her engagement to young Thurston, but the elder one, she had really a very dull life? He felt quite sorry for her sometimes, a little kindness was well bestowed on a girl like that, and she was so grateful to Mrs Dalrymple for what she had already shown her. Altogether, he drew so moving a picture of Eugenia’s monotonous existence that Mrs Dalrymple felt ready to ask her to take up her quarters permanently at Barnwood Terrace, and ended by setting off that very afternoon to invite Miss Laurence to spend a week with her, for it was just about Christmas time, her own young people were home from school, and there were plenty of other young people ready to join them in the merry-makings wherein Mrs Dalrymple’s heart delighted—Eugenia would be so useful with the Christmas tree and all the rest of it. And Eugenia was only too happy to come, and during the fortnight to which the visit extended there were not many days on which she and Captain Chancellor did not meet. It was all done so cleverly, she hardly realised that these constant meetings were not the result of a series of happy accidents, or at least, their being otherwise was never obtruded on her notice, for one of the girl’s great attractions in Beauchamp’s eyes was the shrinking refinement he, in a superficial way, was able to appreciate and was most careful never to offend. In many ways, however, she puzzled him, set at defiance his preconceived ideas. Sensitive and shy though she was, she showed to him sometimes a confiding frankness which he could not explain as the simplicity of an inferior or uncultivated nature; and it never occurred to him that in judging of Eugenia Laurence his ordinary measure was quite at fault; his boasted knowledge of the world and of women—clumsy impediments in the way of the work, that to understand her rightly he had greater need to unlearn than to learn. “She is certainly quite unlike any other girl I ever came across. She is not the least stupid, yet she could be very easily deceived. She has decided opinions of her own, and yet she is so yielding. In short—she is a charming collection of contradictions,” he said to himself. “Perhaps it’s just as well I am not likely to be here much longer.”Once or twice during the time that Eugenia was her guest, Mrs Dalrymple got alarmed at the responsibility she was incurring in allowing these young people to see so much of each other. But they seemed so light-hearted and happy, her boys and girls were so fond of Miss Laurence, Captain Chancellor made himself so useful in escorting the merry party to the pantomime, taking the boys to the circus, helping to adorn the Christmas tree, and in half-a-dozen different ways, that Mrs Dalrymple had not the heart to interfere. Besides, what could she do? Eugenia was her invited guest, she could not send her home like a child in disgrace; Beauchamp Chancellor was the son of her oldest friends, she could not shut her doors on him because he was handsome and her young visitor was pretty. Things of this kind must just take their chance, she decided, and in the present case the good lady comforted herself by a peculiar form of argument. Either Beauchamp was engaged to Roma Eyrecourt or he wasn’t. If he was, no harm was done; in other words, he, an engaged man, would never think of making love to another girl; if he wasn’t, then why shouldn’t he marry Eugenia Laurence as well as any one else, if he and she thought they would be happy together? And when the fortnight was over, and Eugenia kissed her and thanked her, and said she had “never been so happy before, never in all her life,” Mrs Dalrymple confided to her Henry that if Beauchamp Chancellor didn’t fall in love with her she would think very poorly of his taste; and she got quite cross with Henry for looking grave, and warning her that no good ever came of match-making.Eugenia spoke truly when she said she had never been so happy in her life, for at this time every day seemed to add fresh delight to her already overflowing cup. She had got beyond the stage of looking either to the past or future; she lived entirely in the beautiful present. The tiny shocks of uncongeniality, unresponsiveness—she had never given it a name—which in the earliest part of her acquaintance with Beauchamp Chancellor had occasionally made themselves felt, were seldom now experienced by her; and if they were, her determination to see no flaw in her idol was a special pleader always ready to start up in his defence. It was sure “to be her own fault”—she was “stupid,” or “matter-of-fact,” or “absurdly touchy and fanciful.” She was well under the spell. She never asked herself why she cared for him; she never thought, about his position, his prospects, his intentions; she did not trouble herself about whether he was rich or poor—whatever he was he was her perfection, her hero, her fairy prince, who had wakened her to life, whom she asked nothing better than to follow—“O’er the hills, and far awayBeyond their utmost purple rim;Beyond the night, across the day,Thro’ all the world...”She was sinking her all in the venture.Then there came the day of the expedition to Ayclough Pool.Ugly as Wareborough was, both in itself and its situation, there were yet to be found, as there are in the neighbourhood of most small towns, some fairly pretty walks a mile or two beyond its suburbs. The Woldshire side was the most attractive, for on this side one got out of the dead level so depressing to pedestrians in search of “a view,” and the undulating ground encouraged one to hope that in time, provided, of course, one walked far enough, one might come to something in the shape of a hill. Nor were such hopes deceptive. There really was a hill, or a very respectable attempt at one, which went by the name of Ayclough Brow, and half-way up which, one came upon the tiny little lake known as Ayclough Pool. There was rather a nice old farmhouse, perched up there too, not far from the Pool, and a chatty old farmer’s wife who was fond of entertaining visitors with her reminiscences of “the old days,” days when sheep could browse on the Brow without getting to look like animated soot-bags; when it was possible to gather a posy without smearing one’s hands with the smuts on the leaves; when Wareborough was a little market town, where the mail-coach to London from Bridgenorth used to stop twice a week, and rattle out again in grand style, horn and all, along the Ayclough Road. Many an accident to this same Royal Mail could the old body tell of, for her husband’s forbears had lived on the same ground for generations, and the smashes of various kinds that had taken place at a sharp bend of the road just below the Brow had been the great excitement in the lives of the dwellers in the lonely farmhouse, and the records thereof had been handed down religiously from father to son. More than one unfortunate traveller had been carried up to the farm, as the nearest dwelling-house, there to remain till the fractured limb was sound again, or till the bruised body and shaken nerves had recovered their equilibrium, or, in one or two yet sadder cases, under the roof-tree of the old house, far from home and friends, to end indeed the journey.There was one story which Eugenia since childhood had listened to with intense sympathy—a really tragic story—notwithstanding the exaggerated ghastliness of detail with which, like all local legends of the kind, in process of time it had become embellished. It was that of a bride and bridegroom, married “the self-same morn,” who had been among the victims of one of those terrible overturns. The bride had escaped unhurt, the husband was killed on the spot. They had carried him up to the farm, and then, for the day or two that elapsed before her friends could be communicated with, the poor girl had knelt in frantic agony beside the body, refusing to be comforted, at times wildly persisting he was not, could not be dead. By the next morning, the old farmer’s wife used to add in a solemnly impressive tone, “she had heard tell, th’ young leddy’s hair were that grey she moight ’a been sixty.” She had been taken away at last a raging lunatic, said the legend (probably in violent and very excusable hysterics), and of course never recovered her reason. There was no record of her name, the accident had occurred more than a hundred years ago, yet the story still clung to Ayclough Farm, and some people were not over and above fond of passing the bend in the road of a dark night. “’Twas lonesome, that bit of the way, very,” said the old woman, and the wind among the trees—there was a good deal of wind up Ayclough way sometimes—made queer sounds like a coach galloping furiously in the distance, and there were people that said still queerer sights were to be seen now and again on the fatal spot.Altogether there was a good deal of fascination about Ayclough, fascination felt all the more strongly by the Laurence girls, on account of the unusual dearth of the picturesque or of any material food for romance in their dull Wareborough home. A walk to the old farm had always been one of their recognised childish “treats,” though Eugenia used to get dreadfully frightened, and hide herself well under the bedclothes when they were left alone by their nurse at night, after one of these expeditions. Sydney used to feel her way across the room in the dark, and climb into Eugenia’s cot, and try to reason her into calmness.“How could the ghost of the young lady be so silly as to come back to the place where her husband had been killed, when it was more than a hundred years ago, and theymustbe both happy in heaven now, like the lovers on the willow pattern plates.”“Theywere turned into birds,” Eugenia would remonstrate, but Sydney could not see that that signified; “they were happy any way, and people in heaven must be even happier than birds. She couldn’t think what they should ever want to come back for, or suppose they did, why any one should be afraid of them.”Then Eugenia would shift her ground, and defend her terrors by a new argument.“Suppose ghosts weren’t really people’s souls, but evil spirits who looked like them? She had read somethingsohorrible like that in one of papa’s books the other day. It was a poem—she couldn’t remember the name—but it was ‘from the German.’ If it was only light, she would tell it to Sydney.”But Sydney was not at all sure that she wanted to hear it, and she thought papa would be angry if he knew that Eugenia read books he left about, whereupon Eugenia would promise to do so no more, and in the diversion of her thoughts thus happily brought about, Sydney, finding the outside of her sister’s bed less warm and comfortable than the inside of her own, would seize the opportunity of returning to her little cot, and in two minutes would be fast asleep, rousing for a moment again to agree sleepily to the entreaty that came across the room in Eugenia’s irritatingly wideawake voice, “that she wouldn’t tell nurse she had been frightened, or they would never be allowed to go to Ayclough any more.”
Oh, for the ills half understood,The dim, dead woeLong ago.R. Browning.
Oh, for the ills half understood,The dim, dead woeLong ago.R. Browning.
The rain was over, the evening had turned out fine after all. Captain Chancellor drove away in his fly from Mr Laurence’s door, but the Thurston brothers decided to walk.
“I don’t spend much on flys and that sort of thing, Gerald,” said Frank, as he slipped his arm through his brother’s; “you used to be afraid I was inclined to be extravagant in little things, but I can tell you it only wants a hard winter in Wareborough to make a fellow ashamed of all that self-indulgence. Good heavens, Gerald! you don’t know, though you do know a good deal for a layman,” Gerald smiled to himself at this little bit of clerical bumptiousness, “about the poor, but you don’t know what there is here sometimes. I have half-a-dozen new schemes to consult you about. Mr Laurence has a clear head for organisation, but though so practical in his own department, he won’t come out of it. Education, education, is his cry from morning till night. I quite agree with it, but you can’t educate people or children till you’ve got them food to eat and clothes to wear. I know I don’t expect them to listen tomypart of the teaching till I show them I want to make their poor bodies more comfortable if I can.”
“But Mr Laurence’s attention is not given to the very poor. It is more given to the class above them,” said Gerald.
“Only because he can’t get hold of any others. Histheoriesembrace the whole human race,” replied Frank, laughing, “but he is wise enough to begin with those he can get hold of. It’s a pity he is not a very rich man. He would do an immense deal of good.”
“He never could be a rich man, it seems to me,” said Gerald. “He is quite wanting in the love of money for its own sake, and I am not sure that any man ever amasses a great fortune who hasn’t a spice of this enthusiasm of gold in him. What you will do with the gold when you have it, is a secondary consideration. I do believe there grows upon many men an actual love of the thing itself.”
“You’re not turning cynical, surely, Gerald?” said Frank, laughingly. “That would be a newrôlefor you.” His ear had detected a slight bitterness, a dispiritedness in his brother’s tone, though Gerald had exerted himself to speak with interest on general subjects in order to conceal his real state of feeling.
Gerald laughed slightly. “I am afraid the more one sees of the world and of life the harder it is to keep altogether free of that sort of thing. But tell me about your own plans. What a sweet woman Sydney will be, Frank! I can hardly think of her as grown-up, you see. Have you and Mr Laurence touched upon business matters at all yet?”
“Oh dear, yes!” said Frank, importantly. “It’s all as satisfactory as can be. With what you tell me is my share of our belongings, and what Mr Laurence can give Sydney, and my curacy we shall do splendidly. But I strongly suspect, Gerald, that you are giving me more than I have any right to. I believe you have added your own money to mine—I do really. Of course I can’t tell, for we never went into these things much before you went abroad, but I’m certain my father didn’t leave twice what you have made over to me.”
“It’s all right, Frank; it is indeed,” said Gerald, earnestly. “I am doing very well now and am likely to do better. I shall go over my affairs with you some day soon to satisfy you. I could easily make your income larger, but perhaps it is as well for you to begin moderately. You’ll have to restrict your charities a little, you know, when you have a wife to think of.”
“Yes, I know that,” replied the curate; “but, Gerald, you should look to home too. You will be marrying yourself.”
“It is not likely,” said Mr Thurston. “I am thirty-one—seven years older than you, Frank; getting past the marryingage, you see.”
Frank wondered a little, but said nothing, and went on to talk of other things. Suddenly a casual mention of the Dalrymples struck Gerald with a flash of remembrance.
“Is not that Captain Chancellor we met to-night a friend of theirs?” he asked his brother.
“Yes; I believe Mr Laurence and Eugenia met him there, and I am not at all sure that it wouldn’t have been a great deal better if they had not done so,” replied the young clergyman, oracularly. “Eugenia isn’t a bad sort of girl; she is well-meaning, and not stupid, and certainly very pretty; but I must say she is very childish and silly. She is constantly in extremes, always running full tilt against something or other. For my part, I confess I can’t make her out. I am uncommonly glad Sydney is so completely unlike her. I didn’t at all admire the way she allowed herself to be monopolised by that Captain Chancellor to-night. If they had a mother it would be different, but Mr Laurence would never see anything of that kind if it was straight before his eyes.”
“You are rather unreasonable, I think, Frank,” said Gerald. “Such things will happen, you know. I suppose there have been occasions on which Sydney too has allowed herself to be monopolised. You would have thought it very hard if any one had objected.”
“The cases are thoroughly different,” replied the younger Thurston. “I should very much doubt this man’s being in earnest.”
This was a new view of the subject. Frank said no more, and Gerald did not encourage further remarks concerning Eugenia. He tried to recall all that had passed between himself and Miss Eyrecourt; but the more he thought it over, the more puzzled he became. Her evident self-consciousness when Captain Chancellor’s name was mentioned had impressed him with a conviction he had not stopped to analyse, that her relations with the gentleman in question were more than ordinarily friendly ones; and yet again her manner of alluding to Eugenia was perfectly explained by the supposition that the incipient flirtation—how Gerald hated the word!—had come very plainly under her observation when at Wareborough, yet without arousing any personal feeling of indignation or annoyance. She knew this Captain Chancellor well. Could it be that he was only amusing himself, and that, therefore, from his side, the matter seemed to her of little consequence? Gerald ground his teeth at the thought. Sydney’s inexperience of such things had limited her anxiety to the question of Captain Chancellor’s worthiness and suitability. Frank’s practical, matter-of-fact observation had suggested an even more painful misgiving to his brother, for Eugenia was not the sort of girl to whom a mere “flirtation” was possible. With her it would be all or nothing, and the damage to her whole nature of finding herself deceived could be little short of fatal. The fine metal would be sorely tested in so fiery a furnace. Were not the chances few that any of it would be left, save perhaps bent and distorted beyond recognition?
And this was the end of Gerald Thurston’s long-anticipated return home—this was how he awoke from his dreams.
For the next few weeks Gerald had very little leisure. A great accumulation of business matters dependent upon his presence in Wareborough forced themselves on his attention. Had things been as he had hoped to find them, he would have chafed greatly at this; as they were, however, selfishly speaking, he felt glad of hard work, which there was no escaping. He saw very little of the Laurences—he saw little even of his brother. Now and then he asked himself if he had possibly been over hasty and premature, and for a day or two this misgiving tantalised him afresh. It might be as well, he thought, to seek an opportunity of judging for himself, and however things were, it was time to accustom himself to perfect self-command in Eugenia’s presence. He had never seen Sydney alone since that first evening. On the one or two occasions he had been in Mr Laurence’s house since then, it seemed to him the youngfiancéehad avoided him purposely. “No doubt, poor little soul, she thinks it would pain me to revert to that evening,” he thought to himself; “and she doesn’t want to tell me that what she suspected then is becoming more and more confirmed, though I can see by her manner it is so.” Once Gerald purposely led to the mention of Captain Chancellor’s name in talking with his brother. To his surprise, he found that Frank’s slight prejudice and dislike had completely disappeared.
“He is a very good fellow of his class,” said the clergyman. “Not very much in him, perhaps, but he seems to me honourable and straightforward, and thoroughly gentlemanly. He’s a good Churchman too, I’m glad to find. I like him very much—better than I expected. Eugenia might do worse. But, after all, if nothing comes of it, I can’t see that he will be in the least to blame. I don’t see that he pays her any more attention than he does to Sydney; but then certainly she is a very different person from Sydney,” added Frank, with considerable self-congratulation in the last few words. “I am sorry you don’t see more of Captain Chancellor, Gerald,” he continued. “You have been so busy lately, and he has never happened to be there the one or two times you have dropped in lately.”
“No,” replied Mr Thurston; “Eugenia was not at home either, the last time. She has been staying somewhere, has she not?”
“At the Dalrymples’. She is there a great deal. But never mind about her,” said Frank, rather cavalierly. “Give yourself a holiday now and then, Gerald. Even I find I must sometimes, and my work is not nearly so monotonous as yours. We are going to skate on Ayclough Pool to-morrow. I have promised to take the Dalrymple boys, whose holidays have begun.”
“It’s rather a long way,” said Gerald, doubtfully.
“Only four miles, and the weather is delightful for walking. We don’t start till one, so you’ll have all the morning. Sydney and Eugenia are coming to watch us. Do come; it will do you ever so much good. You have been dreadfully shut up since you came home,” persuaded Frank.
“Very well,” said Gerald at last. This might be the opportunity he had been looking for. Frank’s opinion of Captain Chancellor had not reassured him, for the young clergyman was in many ways very inexperienced, incapable of understanding Eugenia, and constitutionally predisposed to judge of everything and everybody from his own straightforward point of view.
“Whatever Captain Chancellor’s intentions are,” reflected Gerald, “he must be a man of a good deal of tact and foresight of a small kind.”
It was quite true. “Of a kind,” Captain Chancellor’s acuteness and perception were unrivalled. He knew exactly how far to go without risking “anything unpleasant.” In all his numerous flirtations he had come off unscathed; never had any papa, urged thereto by an over-anxious mamma, taken the terrible step of demanding “his intentions;” his fastidious taste would indeed have been attracted by no girl, however charming, behind whom loomed the shadow of so coarse and hideous a possibility. He made a rule of looking well about him, making himself acquainted with the country, before he indulged in one of his little amusements, and so far he had never found himself wrong. In the present case he had been unusually lucky; fortune literally seemed to play into his hands, or perhaps it had appeared so to him, because at first the difficulties had promised to be great, and he had prepared to meet them with more than ordinary caution and skill. Mr Laurence’s house was just the sort of house in which it was far from easy to obtain a friendly and familiar footing. The arrangements were ponderous and formal notwithstanding their simplicity and absence of ostentation; the hours were regular and visitors few. When Mr Laurence expected a friend or two to dine with him, he gave his daughters a few days’ notice, and they never pretended to “make no difference;” on the contrary, Sydney consulted the cookery-book, and exhorted the cook; Eugenia arranged the flowers and the dessert, and gave a finishing touch to the positions of the drawing-room chairs. A household of this kind was new to Captain Chancellor, and it took him some little time quite to understand it, and when he did so he hesitated. Was it worth the necessary amount of “chandelle?” in this case represented by great tact, quick seizing of opportunity, and considerable patience; for Mr Laurence’s dissertations were quite out of his line, his cook not a French one, his wines—well, hardly so bad as might have been expected. But after all, life in Wareborough would be really unendurable without somepasse-tempsof the kind. A happy thought struck him—two happy thoughts. Frank Thurston and Mrs Dalrymple, excellent, admirable creatures both, perfectly adapted for his purpose. So he spent a few days in sedulously cultivating the curate, whose good word was of course, under existing circumstances, an Open sesame to the Laurence household, and so well succeeded in his design, that gradually all the family got accustomed to his dropping in at odd times just like Frank himself. They got accustomed to it, but did they like it? To Mr Laurence it was neither particularly agreeable nor the reverse; he got into the way of thinking of the new-comer as “a friend of Frank’s,” a pleasant, rather intelligent young man, who had seen a good deal of the world, and yet was easily entertained. To Sydney, this growing familiarity was the source of much secret anxiety, which yet she saw it best to keep to herself; to Eugenia—ah, what words will tell what it had come to be to Eugenia!—like the flowers in spring, like the sunshine, like life itself.
Then Captain Chancellor called pretty frequently on his old friend Mrs Dalrymple, and made himself very agreeable to her. He told her he really did not know how he should have got through this winter but for her kindness and hospitality; it was no small boon to him to have one person in Wareborough he might venture to look upon as a friend, with whom he might talk over old days, etc, etc. And gradually he led the conversation round to the Laurences, said he was so much obliged to Mr Dalrymple for his introduction to Mr Laurence, really a remarkable man, a man whose acquaintance any one might be proud of; but had it not struck Mr Dalrymple that his daughters were rather to be pitied, not the younger one, of course she was very happy in her engagement to young Thurston, but the elder one, she had really a very dull life? He felt quite sorry for her sometimes, a little kindness was well bestowed on a girl like that, and she was so grateful to Mrs Dalrymple for what she had already shown her. Altogether, he drew so moving a picture of Eugenia’s monotonous existence that Mrs Dalrymple felt ready to ask her to take up her quarters permanently at Barnwood Terrace, and ended by setting off that very afternoon to invite Miss Laurence to spend a week with her, for it was just about Christmas time, her own young people were home from school, and there were plenty of other young people ready to join them in the merry-makings wherein Mrs Dalrymple’s heart delighted—Eugenia would be so useful with the Christmas tree and all the rest of it. And Eugenia was only too happy to come, and during the fortnight to which the visit extended there were not many days on which she and Captain Chancellor did not meet. It was all done so cleverly, she hardly realised that these constant meetings were not the result of a series of happy accidents, or at least, their being otherwise was never obtruded on her notice, for one of the girl’s great attractions in Beauchamp’s eyes was the shrinking refinement he, in a superficial way, was able to appreciate and was most careful never to offend. In many ways, however, she puzzled him, set at defiance his preconceived ideas. Sensitive and shy though she was, she showed to him sometimes a confiding frankness which he could not explain as the simplicity of an inferior or uncultivated nature; and it never occurred to him that in judging of Eugenia Laurence his ordinary measure was quite at fault; his boasted knowledge of the world and of women—clumsy impediments in the way of the work, that to understand her rightly he had greater need to unlearn than to learn. “She is certainly quite unlike any other girl I ever came across. She is not the least stupid, yet she could be very easily deceived. She has decided opinions of her own, and yet she is so yielding. In short—she is a charming collection of contradictions,” he said to himself. “Perhaps it’s just as well I am not likely to be here much longer.”
Once or twice during the time that Eugenia was her guest, Mrs Dalrymple got alarmed at the responsibility she was incurring in allowing these young people to see so much of each other. But they seemed so light-hearted and happy, her boys and girls were so fond of Miss Laurence, Captain Chancellor made himself so useful in escorting the merry party to the pantomime, taking the boys to the circus, helping to adorn the Christmas tree, and in half-a-dozen different ways, that Mrs Dalrymple had not the heart to interfere. Besides, what could she do? Eugenia was her invited guest, she could not send her home like a child in disgrace; Beauchamp Chancellor was the son of her oldest friends, she could not shut her doors on him because he was handsome and her young visitor was pretty. Things of this kind must just take their chance, she decided, and in the present case the good lady comforted herself by a peculiar form of argument. Either Beauchamp was engaged to Roma Eyrecourt or he wasn’t. If he was, no harm was done; in other words, he, an engaged man, would never think of making love to another girl; if he wasn’t, then why shouldn’t he marry Eugenia Laurence as well as any one else, if he and she thought they would be happy together? And when the fortnight was over, and Eugenia kissed her and thanked her, and said she had “never been so happy before, never in all her life,” Mrs Dalrymple confided to her Henry that if Beauchamp Chancellor didn’t fall in love with her she would think very poorly of his taste; and she got quite cross with Henry for looking grave, and warning her that no good ever came of match-making.
Eugenia spoke truly when she said she had never been so happy in her life, for at this time every day seemed to add fresh delight to her already overflowing cup. She had got beyond the stage of looking either to the past or future; she lived entirely in the beautiful present. The tiny shocks of uncongeniality, unresponsiveness—she had never given it a name—which in the earliest part of her acquaintance with Beauchamp Chancellor had occasionally made themselves felt, were seldom now experienced by her; and if they were, her determination to see no flaw in her idol was a special pleader always ready to start up in his defence. It was sure “to be her own fault”—she was “stupid,” or “matter-of-fact,” or “absurdly touchy and fanciful.” She was well under the spell. She never asked herself why she cared for him; she never thought, about his position, his prospects, his intentions; she did not trouble herself about whether he was rich or poor—whatever he was he was her perfection, her hero, her fairy prince, who had wakened her to life, whom she asked nothing better than to follow—
“O’er the hills, and far awayBeyond their utmost purple rim;Beyond the night, across the day,Thro’ all the world...”
“O’er the hills, and far awayBeyond their utmost purple rim;Beyond the night, across the day,Thro’ all the world...”
She was sinking her all in the venture.
Then there came the day of the expedition to Ayclough Pool.
Ugly as Wareborough was, both in itself and its situation, there were yet to be found, as there are in the neighbourhood of most small towns, some fairly pretty walks a mile or two beyond its suburbs. The Woldshire side was the most attractive, for on this side one got out of the dead level so depressing to pedestrians in search of “a view,” and the undulating ground encouraged one to hope that in time, provided, of course, one walked far enough, one might come to something in the shape of a hill. Nor were such hopes deceptive. There really was a hill, or a very respectable attempt at one, which went by the name of Ayclough Brow, and half-way up which, one came upon the tiny little lake known as Ayclough Pool. There was rather a nice old farmhouse, perched up there too, not far from the Pool, and a chatty old farmer’s wife who was fond of entertaining visitors with her reminiscences of “the old days,” days when sheep could browse on the Brow without getting to look like animated soot-bags; when it was possible to gather a posy without smearing one’s hands with the smuts on the leaves; when Wareborough was a little market town, where the mail-coach to London from Bridgenorth used to stop twice a week, and rattle out again in grand style, horn and all, along the Ayclough Road. Many an accident to this same Royal Mail could the old body tell of, for her husband’s forbears had lived on the same ground for generations, and the smashes of various kinds that had taken place at a sharp bend of the road just below the Brow had been the great excitement in the lives of the dwellers in the lonely farmhouse, and the records thereof had been handed down religiously from father to son. More than one unfortunate traveller had been carried up to the farm, as the nearest dwelling-house, there to remain till the fractured limb was sound again, or till the bruised body and shaken nerves had recovered their equilibrium, or, in one or two yet sadder cases, under the roof-tree of the old house, far from home and friends, to end indeed the journey.
There was one story which Eugenia since childhood had listened to with intense sympathy—a really tragic story—notwithstanding the exaggerated ghastliness of detail with which, like all local legends of the kind, in process of time it had become embellished. It was that of a bride and bridegroom, married “the self-same morn,” who had been among the victims of one of those terrible overturns. The bride had escaped unhurt, the husband was killed on the spot. They had carried him up to the farm, and then, for the day or two that elapsed before her friends could be communicated with, the poor girl had knelt in frantic agony beside the body, refusing to be comforted, at times wildly persisting he was not, could not be dead. By the next morning, the old farmer’s wife used to add in a solemnly impressive tone, “she had heard tell, th’ young leddy’s hair were that grey she moight ’a been sixty.” She had been taken away at last a raging lunatic, said the legend (probably in violent and very excusable hysterics), and of course never recovered her reason. There was no record of her name, the accident had occurred more than a hundred years ago, yet the story still clung to Ayclough Farm, and some people were not over and above fond of passing the bend in the road of a dark night. “’Twas lonesome, that bit of the way, very,” said the old woman, and the wind among the trees—there was a good deal of wind up Ayclough way sometimes—made queer sounds like a coach galloping furiously in the distance, and there were people that said still queerer sights were to be seen now and again on the fatal spot.
Altogether there was a good deal of fascination about Ayclough, fascination felt all the more strongly by the Laurence girls, on account of the unusual dearth of the picturesque or of any material food for romance in their dull Wareborough home. A walk to the old farm had always been one of their recognised childish “treats,” though Eugenia used to get dreadfully frightened, and hide herself well under the bedclothes when they were left alone by their nurse at night, after one of these expeditions. Sydney used to feel her way across the room in the dark, and climb into Eugenia’s cot, and try to reason her into calmness.
“How could the ghost of the young lady be so silly as to come back to the place where her husband had been killed, when it was more than a hundred years ago, and theymustbe both happy in heaven now, like the lovers on the willow pattern plates.”
“Theywere turned into birds,” Eugenia would remonstrate, but Sydney could not see that that signified; “they were happy any way, and people in heaven must be even happier than birds. She couldn’t think what they should ever want to come back for, or suppose they did, why any one should be afraid of them.”
Then Eugenia would shift her ground, and defend her terrors by a new argument.
“Suppose ghosts weren’t really people’s souls, but evil spirits who looked like them? She had read somethingsohorrible like that in one of papa’s books the other day. It was a poem—she couldn’t remember the name—but it was ‘from the German.’ If it was only light, she would tell it to Sydney.”
But Sydney was not at all sure that she wanted to hear it, and she thought papa would be angry if he knew that Eugenia read books he left about, whereupon Eugenia would promise to do so no more, and in the diversion of her thoughts thus happily brought about, Sydney, finding the outside of her sister’s bed less warm and comfortable than the inside of her own, would seize the opportunity of returning to her little cot, and in two minutes would be fast asleep, rousing for a moment again to agree sleepily to the entreaty that came across the room in Eugenia’s irritatingly wideawake voice, “that she wouldn’t tell nurse she had been frightened, or they would never be allowed to go to Ayclough any more.”
Volume One—Chapter Eight.On the Brink.I love snow, and all the formsOf the radiant frost;I love waves and winds and storms,Everything almostWhich is nature’s, and may beUntainted by man’s misery.Shelley.Of the many times the sisters had walked to Ayclough they had never had a lovelier day for their ramble than the one on which they set off with Frank Thurston and the young Dalrymples, to skate on the Pool. It was February, early February, and the Frost spirit, who had been late of coming this year, seemed inclined to make up for the delay by paying a pretty long visit now he had really got as far down south from his own home as Wareshire. He had greatly disappointed his special friends, the school-boys of the community, by not spending Christmas with them, as in the good old days, we are told, was his invariable custom, and the last two Saturdays Arthur and Bob Dalrymple had hardly consented to eat any dinner, so eager were they to make the most of their friend’s company on these precious holiday afternoons.“We expect Captain Chancellor to come with us, Frank,” said Sydney, as the little party were setting off from Mr Laurence’s door. “He said he would join us at the Brook Bridge at half-past one. He passes that way coming to our house, you know. He dined with us last night, and when he heard where we were going to-day, he said he would like to come too.”“All right,” said Frank. “I expect some one too. I persuaded Gerald to promise to come. He never gives himself any play now at all. Ever since he came back from India he has been working far too hard. I don’t think he is looking well either. He’s not half the man he was before he went to India. Ah, there he comes! You girls must make a great deal of him to-day, for I want to coax him to give himself more relaxation.”Eugenia and Sydney were very ready to do as Frank wished, and when Gerald came up to them he was most graciously received. It was quite true that he was not looking well. Eugenia noticed it very distinctly; he was looking much less well even than on his first return, and her heart smote her for the scanty thought she had of late bestowed on her old friend.“I am so very glad you can come with us to-day, Gerald,” she said. “It is like old times, isn’t it?”“Like, but very different,” he thought to himself, but aloud he answered cheerfully, and in spite of himself his spirits began to rise. Itwaslike old times to have Eugenia walking beside him, her sweet bright face looking up in his, no one to dispute his claim upon her for the time. But his visions were soon dispelled. A new expression stole into her eyes, a soft flush crept over her face even while he watched it, and following the direction of her gaze to discover the cause of the change, Mr Thurston saw—Captain Chancellor coming forward quickly in their direction.The two men had never met since the evening of Gerald’s return. They had eyed each other with covert suspicion then; they eyed each other with a scarcely more cordial feeling now. A slight, an almost imperceptibly slight, shade, it seemed to Gerald, came over Captain Chancellor’s handsome face when he recognised Eugenia’s companion. And he was not mistaken.“What can that fellow be turning up again for?” Beauchamp was saying to himself. “I thought he was comfortably over head and ears in business. I don’t fancy him somehow. I wish to goodness he were back in India!”But notwithstanding this unexpressed hostility, outwardly, as was his habit, Captain Chancellor made himself very agreeable. He seemed to take special pains to be civil and cordial in his manner to Mr Thurston, and Frank felt a little annoyed at Gerald’s somewhat ungracious reception of his friendly overtures.“What a pleasant fellow Chancellor is, really,” observed Frank to Sydney. “Poor old Gerald hasn’t improved in his manners with being in India, I’m afraid. I don’t think he can be well. He is so surly and stiff sometimes now, and he never used to be.”“Poor old Gerald” was only human after all. He was feeling very cross and bitter just now. His one ewe-lamb of a happy afternoon had been stolen from him. He could not all at once respond with careless cordiality to David’s civil speeches, but walked on beside Eugenia in grave and moody silence.Eugenia could not make him out. How could he—how could any one—feel cross or sad on such an exquisite day? She herself was so happy. Everything was so beautiful, she could hardly help singing and dancing as she went along. They were out of Wareborough and its suburbs by now. The feeling, to dwellers in towns so ever-fresh and exhilarating, of “being in the country” was beginning to come over them. The lane along which they were walking was pleasant even at this season—pleasanter, in a sense, than in spring or summer; for though some hardy primroses, some few dog-roses and honeysuckles, were brave enough still, year after year, to show their welcome faces along the banks, it seemed to cost them an effort. They hardly looked at home beside the dingy hedges and smoke-dulled grass. But to-day the fields wore their “silver thatch;” “icy feathers fledged” the hedges; there was no fault to be found with either, in this bright winter clothing. The lane was hardly distinguishable from a real country lane.“How beautiful it is! Did you ever see a more exquisite day?” exclaimed Eugenia, looking up to the clear green-blue sky through the delicate tracery of the bare branches of the trees. “One could imagine oneself miles and miles away from any town.”She had been walking a few steps in front of the others. As she spoke, she stopped for a moment, and turned round facing them. How pretty she looked! To Gerald it seemed she had never looked lovelier than standing there, in her thick dark-grey cloth dress, with her favourite bit of bright colour—a scarlet knot at her throat this time—reflecting its warmth and brilliance in her eager, upturned face.“Itisa lovely day!” said Sydney; “but, Eugenia, you used to dislike winter so—even bright frosty days you used to say were ghastly and mocking, and all sorts of disagreeable things.”“I don’t like winter at all,” answered Eugenia, falling back into her place, and walking on beside the others. “But to-day is hardly like winter. There is a living feeling in the air, cold though it is—a sort of slight stir and rustle even among the bare boughs.””‘The spring comes slowly up the way,’” said Gerald. “It’s very slowly, though. Of course we are only at the beginning of February; still, I know the feeling you mean, Eugenia. I have often fancied I could distinguish a sort of soft expectancy about this time of year.”Captain Chancellor happened to be a little way behind them. Either Gerald imagined him out of ear-shot, or for the moment had forgotten him altogether.“Yes,” said Eugenia; “that’s just it. It is the lifelessness of winter I dislike. And a bright still winter’s day has light without warmth—an idea that certainly is very ghastly to me. I like life, and movement, and warmth. Almost the loveliest summer sensation to me is that sort of soft, happy bustle that seems to go on among the birds and the flowers and the insects—all the dear creatures. Ah, how beautiful summer is!” She stopped for an instant; then, recurring to her former train of thought, she went on. “Doesn’t the idea of a ‘crystal sea’ seem rather repulsive to you, Gerald? I think it would be quite frightful. Fancy a motionless ocean!”Beauchamp, and Frank, and the Dalrymple boys were close beside them now. Beauchamp had walked on faster since he saw Eugenia talking with apparent interest to the curate’s brother. Her last remark was overheard.“It would be jolly nice to skate upon!” said Bob Dalrymple.Eugenia broke into clear, merry laughter.“I’m afraid you’ll not find any skates there, Bob,” she said to the boy; and then they both laughed again, as if she had said something immensely funny.“It takes very little water to make a perfect pool for a tiny fish;” it takes very little wit to satisfy a child’s appreciative powers. Bob was only twelve, and Eugenia was apt to grow very like a child herself when in high spirits. Mr Thurston smiled at their merriment; and though Sydney, in Frank’s presence, always trembled a little when she saw Eugenia verging on one of the reckless moods, charming enough when “a great many people” were not there, in the present case she could not help smiling too. Only Captain Chancellor looked annoyed. There were certain things that greatly offended his taste. He could not endure to hear a woman discuss religion or politics, he could not endure to hear a woman say anything funny, and then laugh at it. And of all conceivable subjects to joke upon, he most objected to joking on “religious subjects;” he thought it “bad style.” As Frank had said, Captain Chancellor was, or at any rate considered himself, “a good churchman,” of the class to whom it is not given to discriminate between the spirit and the letter. He hated Dissenters and Radicals—so far, that is to say, as he considered such beings worthy of attention at all. He was not the sort of man to whom it occurred readily, that to the best of rules there may be exceptions. More than once Roma herself had fallen under the ban of his disapproval, both as regarded the subjects she chose for discussion, and her remarks thereupon. But then Roma was a very different person; besides which, in her own set, she had established a name for a certain amount of originality, and this made her to some extent a privileged person.Mr Thurston, happening to glance in Captain Chancellor’s direction, saw, and rightly interpreted, the expression of his face. First, he felt amused, then a little indignant. What right had this man to approve or disapprove of whatever Eugenia chose to say or do? Lastly, an undefinable instinct urged him to turn the conversation, without appearing to do so, for happy Eugenia was walking on merrily, in unconsciousness of any cloud in her vicinity.“I think, Miss Laurence,” said Gerald, “you have got a little confusion in your head between the ‘crystal sea’ of the Bible and Dante’s ‘sea of ice,’ haven’t you? One does get the queerest confused associations sometimes, especially of things one has first heard of in childhood, and I know your literary taste when you were a small person in pinafores was rather omnivorous, wasn’t it?”Eugenia laughed and confessed it was true. Beauchamp did not seem edified by the conversation.“Yes, Eugenia,” said Frank, “you have taken up a wrong idea altogether. The words ‘glass’ and ‘crystal’ are only used to give the idea of purity, not motionlessness or lifelessness. Why, don’t you remember the ‘water oflife’ being described as ‘pure as crystal’ in another place? You shouldn’t begin criticising scriptural expressions unless you have studied the subject—no one should.”His tone was slightly dictatorial and decidedly clerical. Eugenia’s face flushed; she looked up with a somewhat haughty answer on her lips, but to her amazement, and that of every one else, Captain Chancellor said, suddenly, addressing Frank,—“I quite agree with you, Thurston.” Eugenia’s face changed from pink to crimson. Gerald, watching her anxiously, thought he had never seen the expression of any face change so quickly, but she walked on quietly without speaking. “If she would but see in time,” thought Gerald; “if she would but see in time! He worthy of her! he understand her! As well expect a blacksmith to make a watch, or—or—” He could think of no comparison sufficiently forcible to suit his indignant frame of mind.By this time they had emerged from the lane on to the high road. They were within a mile of their destination, and the skaters waxed impatient.“We shall not have a long afternoon,” said the curate. “Suppose, Bob, you and Arthur and I push on? We shall walk a good deal quicker than the ladies. Will you and Chancellor follow at your leisure with Sydney and Eugenia, Gerald? I want the boys to have a good afternoon. You don’t mind, Sydney?”So it was agreed. The four left behind naturally fell into pairs; Mr Thurston and Sydney in front, Eugenia and Captain Chancellor some little way in the rear.Rather to Beauchamp’s surprise, for he fancied his uncalled-for remark—in reality greatly the result of the ill-tempered mood he had felt coming over him ever since he saw that the elder Thurston made one of the party—had offended her, Eugenia seemed by no means averse to this two-and-two arrangement.Hefelt uncomfortable and annoyed. It was the very first time he was conscious of having appeared to this girl in even ever so slightly unfavourable a light, and he felt anxious to destroy the unpleasant impression; he was not likely to see much more of her, and he hated any one to remember him with any disagreeable association. But how to begin the smoothing-over process he felt rather at a loss. To his surprise, Eugenia herself helped him.“Captain Chancellor,” she said, suddenly, speaking faster than usual, as if to force back some hesitation, “I want to tell you I think Frank Thurston was right in what he said just now, and you were right to agree with him. I do speak at random, sometimes; and I shouldn’t have encouraged Bob to joke as I did. Of course, any one else could see there was no irreverence in my mind; but a child might not, and one can’t be too careful with children. I think I quite understand your disliking it, and I am so sorry.”She looked up in his face with a deprecating humility, a sweet softness in her brown eyes that he had never seen in them before. Never had he thought her so charming. He did not attend to the exact meaning of her words, most certainly no anxiety as to the nature of the impressions left on the infant mind of Master Bob had troubled him; he was conscious only of an inference of apology in what she said, and of acknowledgment of his superior judgment that was very agreeable to him and very becoming to her. The “I am so sorry” at the end was quite delicious. “Dear little thing,” he said to himself, “it would not be difficult to mould her into one’s own pattern.” And aloud, he said, with the half deferential tenderness so curiously attractive to very young girls,—“You are too good, Miss Laurence; a great deal too good. I have certainly rather strong feelings—prejudices, if you like—on some subjects, but I really feel it is more than good of you not to have resented my inexcusable expression of them.”“Don’t say that,” she remonstrated, gently; “I do not feel it so at all. When any one finds fault with me, on the contrary, I feel that it must—that they must—” she hesitated.“That it must arise from no common interest in you?” he suggested. “And can you ever have doubtedmyfeeling such, Miss Laurence? No one, I suppose, is quite perfection; but surely you must know that to me you appear so near it that a word or a tone which I should never notice in another woman, from you acquires importance.”The words were dreadfully commonplace, but spoken in his peculiarly sweet, low voice, with his deep, expressive eyes looking unutterable things into hers, to Eugenia they sounded most “apt and gracious.” Nor was Beauchamp, for the time being, insincere. He really felt what he said. As he looked at this young creature, so sweet, soverypretty, so ready to believe in himself as the embodiment of every manly grace and excellence, a strange, altogether unprecedented rash, of feeling came over him. If he could but throw all to the winds—prospects and position and future and all—and clasp her in his arms and call her his darling, his “one woman in the world,” and carry her off there and then to some beautiful, impossible castle in the air, where there was no “society,” no growing old, no anybody or anything but each other!It was but a moment’s passing, insane, altogether ridiculous dream, and Beauchamp soon recovered himself, and Eugenia little suspected the cause of his sudden silence, for she was in a sweet dream of her own, the same in which for many days now she had been living, and from which she would not be very easily roused. Each day, each hour, almost, it was gaining more hold upon her; every circumstance, every trifling incident, seemed to bring her more and more under its influence; no shadow of misgiving had as yet dimmed its beauty and glowing perfection.Yet she was a girl to whom such a description of her enchantment as that suggested by the vulgar words “madly in love” was altogether and essentially inapplicable. We want a word surely to describe this higher, yet passionate love—the love of a pure, enthusiastic, undisciplined nature, dreaming that it has found its ideal, that the days of “gods and godlike men” are not yet over, to whom in such a belief all self-sacrifice, all self-surrender, would be possible, to whom the destruction of its ideal would risk the destruction of all faith beside.They walked on in silence for a little; then, by a slight quickening of their pace, Beauchamp managed to overtake Mr Thurston and Sydney, who were only a few steps before them, and for the next half mile the four kept together. It was better so, Beauchamp said to himself, for he was beginning to feel a little less confident in his own ability to draw back in time; his recent sensations had startled him considerably, and Roma’s warning persisted in recurring most uncomfortably to his mind. Looking back over the wide range of his so-called “love affairs,” he could not hit upon any which onhisside had threatened “to go so far.” Roma herself, with all her attractions, had never roused in him a similar storm. He was as determined as ever to win her in spite of all opposition, but he owned to himself that by the time he met her again at Winsley, he might safely boast that his allegiance had been more sharply tested than even she had had any idea of.Some way further along the road they came to the sharp turn known as Ayclough Bend. Here, a lane to the right led up the hill to the farm, the high road to the left pursuing its course to twenty-miles-off Bridgenorth.“This is our way,” said Mr Thurston, turning as he spoke in the direction of the lane, but both the girls had come to a stand beside a large stone lying at the side of the road.“This is the Bride’s stone,” said Sydney, in an explanatory tone.“Ah, yes, to be sure. Poor bride,” said Gerald, coming back again.“Who is the bride? Why do you call this her stone?” inquired Captain Chancellor of Eugenia.She gravely related the story. Even to this day it had a curious fascination for her. “It was on this stone he was thrown when the coach upset. And it is here, they say, she is still to be seen sometimes,” she said with a slight shudder. “Is it not a sad story?” she added, looking up with such pity in her eyes, that Beauchamp half fancied there were tears not far off. He didn’t feel inclined to laugh at her, he was in a rather unusual mood to-day. Still less, however, was he inclined that Gerald or Sydney should have the benefit of his rare fit of genuine sentimentality. So he answered carelessly—“Very sad, if true, which I should feel inclined to doubt. I have heard the same story at other places. Besides, if it were true, pity would be wasted on the lady. No doubt she married again very speedily if she was so lovely and charming.”Gerald hardly stayed to hear him finish the sentence. He walked on quickly, followed by Sydney, and both looked at each other as they heard Eugenia’s voice answering her companion brightly and happily as usual.“She is bewitched,” said Gerald, abruptly, and Sydney by her silence seemed to agree with him. “Just the sort of thing that would have put her out for the day, if Frank had said it to tease her.”They had not seen the expression in Beauchamp’s eyes which belied his careless words, giving her, even about this trifle, a feeling that his confidence, his deeper feelings, were reserved for her alone.“Yes,” said Sydney, with a sigh. “But, Gerald, I have come to see that there is nothing to be done. I tried once or twice to speak to Eugenia, some time ago, but it was no use. It only risked my losing her confidence altogether. Besides, what could I say? I know nothing against Captain Chancellor. I cannot even say I suspect anything; and I by no means dislike him. As an ordinary acquaintance I should like him very much.”“You disliked him at first,” objected Gerald.“No, not exactly,” said Sydney, thoughtfully. “I was only rather afraid of liking him too readily. I doubted him before I ever saw him, from what Eugenia told me of him; I doubted, I mean to say, his being the sort of person I should have chosen for her. But that sounds very presumptuous. Sisters don’t marry to please each other.”“No,” said Gerald, with a slight laugh. “In that case Frank’s chance might not have been so good.”“But EugeniarespectsFrank, though they are always sparring with each other. She trusts him too. Ah, there is just the difference,” exclaimed Sydney, eagerly. “I don’t feel as if I could trust Captain Chancellor with Eugenia. I don’t suppose he will beat her or ill-use her,” she went on smiling half sadly. “I think he is kind-hearted and easy tempered, and a good enough sort of a man in many ways. But he won’tunderstandher, and that sort of misery would be worse to her than any.”“But it would have been a great chance if she had married any one thoroughly congenial and suitable. Very few people do,” said Gerald, thinking to himself if there might not in the future be disappointment in store even for the earnest, unselfish girl beside him, good sterling fellow though Frank was.“I know that,” answered Sydney, and then for a minute or two she remained silent. “Perhaps, Gerald,” she went on, “to put it quite fairly, a good deal of our anxiety arises from Eugenia’s side. I mean it is her own character that makes me afraid. I don’t think I should have misgivings about any other girl’s happiness if I heard she was going to marry Captain Chancellor. I don’t know that I should have been afraid for myself even, (though it sounds an odd thing to say, and I certainly couldn’t fancy myself caring for him). You see, Gerald, I expect so much less. With Eugenia it is always all or nothing.”“Yes, I understand,” answered Gerald. “It is a question if such a naturecanescape intense suffering, though I had fancied—but it’s no use thinking of that. There are some kinds of suffering which, it seems to me, would be ruinous to Eugenia, which she could not pass through without leaving the best of herself in the furnace. That is my worst fear, Sydney. I have never attempted to put it in words before. I could not have done so to any one but yourself.”“But we can’t tell, Gerald,” said Sydney, timidly. “We can’t tell how what seems the worst training may turn out the best. We can’t believe that in the end it will not all have been the best, even our own mistakes.”“The end is a very long way off,” said Gerald, gloomily, “and it is sad work for lookers-on sometimes. Of course, I know what you mean, Sydney, and one must at bottom believe it; but still one constantly sees what look very like fatal mistakes, and it is very seldom given to us on this side of the gate to see that good came out of the bad after all.”Sydney did not answer. After awhile Mr Thurston spoke again, this time with evident hesitation.“I am afraid you may be angry with me for what I am going to say, Sydney,” he began, “but I think I should say it. All your fears seem to point one way. I mean to the unlikelihood of Captain Chancellor’s satisfying Eugenia—suiting her—but have you never doubted him in any other way?”“What do you mean?” exclaimed Sydney in vague alarm.“Can’t you understand? It’s a horrid thing to say,” said Gerald impatiently. “Are you quite sure he is in earnest? May he not be only what is called amusing himself—flirting, or trifling, or any of those detestable expressions?”Sydney grew crimson.“No, Gerald,” she said, with immense indignation in her voice. “I certainly never for an instant supposed him capable of such baseness. I am surprised at you, Gerald. It is well you never hinted at anything of this kind before—or perhaps it is a pity you did not. I am exceedingly sorry I ever discussed the matter with you at all.”“You are unjust and unreasonable, Sydney, and unkind too,” exclaimed Gerald, with a good deal of wounded feeling. “Don’t you see how painful it is to me to suggest such a thing toyou, who know what you do about me? But I am in earnest, Sydney. It is well you, at least, should be prepared for such a possibility. You cannot suppose that I have any selfish motive in suggesting it. You don’t think that,selfishlyspeaking, I should wish it to turn out so? If Captain Chancellor disappeared to-day, and was never heard of again, that would domeno good. How could it?”“I didn’t think you had any selfish motive,” answered Sydney, gently. “I only thought that—that—naturally perhaps you saw him worse than he is.”“Frank has said the same,” replied Mr Thurston, in a but half mollified tone.“Frank!” repeated Sydney, “Frank! Oh, no, Gerald! He likes Captain Chancellor; he thinks well of him.”“Well, I didn’t say he disliked him. He, only looking at the thing in a careless, superficial, way, does not seem to think any blame could be attached to this man if—oh, how I hate these vulgar expressions!—if he simply does go away without, as it is called, ‘coming to the point’ at all. Frank cannot see that he pays Eugenia any particular attentions. He only thinks her very likely to deceive herself in this sort of thing.” Sydney looked dreadfully startled. If Frank thought so, must there not be some ground for this new anxiety? But if so, how despicably false Captain Chancellor must be! How false and how hatefully worldly-wise to have thus, as it were, screened himself beforehand by securing Frank’s favourable opinion! For that he hadnotdeliberately set himself to gain Eugenia’s affections from the first, Sydney could not for an instant allow. What on Eugenia would be the effect of the discovery of such treachery, poor Sydney dared not allow herself to imagine. But no, it could not be. After all, no man could be so coldblooded, so selfish, so wicked, as to crush the happiness out of a fair young life for the sake of a few weeks’ amusement. Sydney had read of such things, but was loth to believe in them. Gerald’s troubles had made him morbidly suspicious. Frank had spoken hastily, and, after all, Frank was far from being in a position to judge. So she endeavoured to reassure herself, and fancied she had done so.She was unusually quiet, however, for the rest of the afternoon. The others—Frank and the boys, Eugenia and Captain Chancellor, that is to say—were in the highest spirits. Only Sydney and Mr Thurston seemed uninfluenced by the fresh keen air, the exhilarating amusement.“I thought your sister could skate too—at least, that she was learning, like you,” said Beauchamp to Eugenia, who was just beginning to feel a little at home on the ice. “Doesn’t she like it?”“She skates better than I, a good deal,” replied the girl. “I don’t know what has come over her this afternoon. She looks so tired and out of spirits!” And as she spoke, she looked anxiously in Sydney’s direction.Captain Chancellor noticed the quick change of expression that came over her face. Five minutes before, he had thought nothing could be lovelier than Eugenia, laughing and merry; now it seemed to him this tenderly anxious expression showed the sweetness of her eyes to greater advantage. What a fascinating face the child had!—never two minutes the same, and each change bringing out some new beauty. He stood watching her, till he almost forgot where he was. She turned suddenly, and caught his gaze; blushed a little, and looked away again. Something in his face puzzled her—a perplexed, uneasy look, that she had never seen there before. Suddenly Bob Dalrymple wheeled up to where they were standing, and came to a halt.“What a brilliant colour that ribbon of yours is, Miss Laurence!” said Captain Chancellor, abruptly. “Is scarlet your favourite colour? You generally have some of it about you.”“Only in winter,” answered Eugenia, lightly. “In summer I can’t bear it. My tastes change altogether with the seasons.”“So if you come back next summer, you’d better look out,” said Bob, addressing Captain Chancellor, and grinning maliciously. “She won’t like you then. It’s a good thing you’re going before the weather changes.” And so saying, he skimmed off again.“What does he mean?” exclaimed Eugenia, not disguising the shock the boy’s words had given her. “You are not going away, Captain Chancellor?”There was an unconscious entreaty in her voice, that gave Beauchamp a sudden thrill of pain and self-reproach.“Not just yet, I hope. But my plans are a little—are not quite decided at present,” he answered, confusedly. Then, notwithstanding his resolutions, the look in Eugenia’s face tempted him to say more.“You must know, Miss Laurence, how painful, how unendurable it will be to me to leave Wareborough,” he said, in a low, hurried voice.“Will you not come back again?” she asked, very quietly, striving hard to force back the intense eagerness with which she awaited his reply.“I hope so. I earnestly hope I may be able to do so,” he answered; and for the time the hope was sincere. “But I am not my own master. I can’t explain all I mean. I am hampered in every direction. But some day, perhaps— No, it is no use—”He stopped.Eugenia stood beside him without speaking. He glanced half timidly at her face. Its expression puzzled him. It was getting late now; the rest of the party had taken off their skates, and were coming towards them across the pond, prepared evidently for the walk home. Beauchamp felt desperate. He might not have another opportunity of saying what he now felt hemustsay.“Miss Laurence—Eugenia,” he exclaimed. She started a little. “I must ask you one thing: Will you think as well as you can of me, even if others may blame me? Will you not judge me by appearances more than you can help? My position is full of difficulty. As I said just now, I am not in any sense my own master; but—if I may hope for nothing else—I would at least like to think you would judge me leniently, even if I hardly seem to deserve it.”He wasquitein earnest now. He had never spoken so to any woman before. When he had left home this afternoon, he had not the slightest idea he should speak so to this woman to-day. He got his answer.“You need not ask me to judge you leniently. I do not think it would be possible for me ever to judge you at all. Nothing—no one but yourself could ever make me think ill of you.”She looked up at him with a light in her beautiful eyes as she said these words, that made Beauchamp Chancellor feel strangely unlike his usual equable, comfortable self. Why did she trust him so? Why did she take things so deeply, so in earnest? Why was she not like the ninety-and-nine other girls he had flirted with, and thought pretty, and talked nonsense to, and left none the worse? He felt half provoked with her for being so different, yet a vague instinct whispered to him, that in this very difference lay her peculiar charm.There were no more têtes-à-têtes. It was getting dusk as they walked home, and they all kept together, and the conversation was general. Sydney wondered a little why Eugenia was so quiet, but supposed she must be suffering from some amount of reaction from her high spirits earlier in the day.Captain Chancellor bade them good-night at their own door. Sydney fancied his manner a little odd—more abrupt, less self-possessed than usual, when he shook hands with her. He did not call the next day, as she somehow half expected, nor the day after, and Eugenia did not seem surprised. She did not look well, Sydney fancied; and when urged by her sister to tell what was wrong, she confessed, to having felt over fatigued since Saturday’s long walk.“She has many and many a time walked to Ayclough and back without being tired,” thought Sydney. “There must be something wrong. Can they have quarrelled?”Possessed with this idea, she watched eagerly for Captain Chancellor’s next appearance, and thought it doubly unlucky that Frank’s absence from home for a day or two should have happened at this crisis, when through him she might have learnt something of what was the matter, and if anything lay within her power to do for her sister. To a superficial observer, poor Sydney, during these few days, would have looked the more anxious and unhappy of the two. It was as sad as strange to her to believe Eugenia in suffering, and to be in ignorance of the cause.On Thursday evening the sisters were sitting by themselves in the drawing-room, their father busy writing in his own little room, when there came a ring at the front door bell. Up jumped Sydney, her heart beating considerably faster than its wont, her face full of eagerness.“That must be Frank,” observed Eugenia, quietly.For the time being, the sisters seemed to have changed characters.“Frank!” exclaimed Sydney; and though it was five days since she had seen herfiancé, at the supposition, her face fell. “Oh, no, it can’t be Frank! He was not to return till Friday—that’s to-morrow.”But Frank it was. No trace of disappointment was legible in Eugenia’s countenance as she welcomed him rather more cordially than usual, whereas Sydney’s manner was preoccupied and almost cold. Frank was tired, however, and very glad to be home again; and not being gifted with the quickest perception in the world, discovered nothing amiss. Eugenia rang for tea for him, and he drew in his chair near the fire, and sat there drinking it in comfortable content, telling them all about his journey and adventures, and what a charming little country parsonage he had been staying at—“The very place for you and me, Sydney, when we get old, and past hard work.” And Sydney smiled, without seeming to hear what he was saying. Then a new thought struck Frank.“Oh, by-the-bye,” he exclaimed, “did you see Chancellor before he left? He went off quite in a hurry at the end. He told me on Saturday evening he was expecting to go soon, but he thought he would be here through this week. And this evening I got a letter from him from some place or other—Wins— something—his home, I suppose—saying how sorry he was not to have seen me, to say good-bye—some family arrangements, he said, had called him off in a hurry at the last.”“I saw a note in his handwriting addressed to papa on the hall-table. It came by this evening’s post. No doubt, it was saying the same thing,” said Eugenia.She almost overdid it; even Frank looked up, struck by the strange unfamiliar monotone in which she spoke.“But he is coming back again. He is certain to come back again, Frank? Tell me, isn’t he quitecertainto come back again?” asked Sydney, with a quick, painful eagerness in her voice, as if entreating Frank not to answer no.He stared at her for a moment, he did not understand her. Had he done so, he might have softened the bluntness of his reply, for he was far from callous or hardhearted to suffering in any shape.“How interested you seem in his movements, Sydney. I have always thought you didn’t particularly like him. You’ve changed your opinion rather suddenly, surely? Come back again? No, it is very unlikely indeed that he will ever come back again. The 203rd is sure to leave Bridgenorth before Captain Chancellor’s leave is over, and, of course, the Wareborough detachment will go too. The regiment has been quite its time here. Chancellor was aide-de-camp to his cousin, General Conyers, somewhere in Ireland, till he came here—that’s how he happened to be so short a time here.”“And where will the regiment go to?” inquired Sydney. The words seemed to form themselves mechanically on her lips; a strange feeling came over her that it was really Eugenia, not herself, who was speaking.“Goodness knows,” answered Frank. “Oh, yes, by-the-bye, I remember Chancellor saying they were next on the roster for foreign service. He said, a few months would see him in India, unless he sold out. I shouldn’t much wonder if he did. I shouldn’t much wonder if—” he hesitated. For the first time a slight misgiving seemed to come over him; he looked up in some little embarrassment. Eugenia was sitting perfectly still, looking just as usual. He felt reassured.“If what?” asked Sydney, again with the same feeling of being forced by the intensity of her sister’s anxiety to continue putting these questions against her own will.“Oh, nothing,” said Frank. “That is to say, it is only a fancy of mine that there may be something between Chancellor and that handsome Miss Eyrecourt. His cousin, isn’t she? I never saw her, but he had rather a constrained way of alluding to her, I noticed, and he had half-a-dozen photographs of her in different attitudes and dresses.”“I should think it very likely,” said somebody—for the moment Sydney actually did not recognise the voice as her sister’s. “I wonder if papa wants any tea, Sydney. I think I’ll go and see.”She rose from her seat almost as she spoke, walked quietly to the door, and left the room.Five minutes later, on some pretext, Sydney followed her—not to Mr Laurence’s study, up to Eugenia’s own room. It was quite dark. Sydney had to feel her way across the floor.“Eugenia,” she said, softly.No one answered. She groped her way to the bed. Down at one end a figure was kneeling or crouching, she could not tell which. She felt it was her sister. Round the poor child’s quivering frame stole two clinging, clasping arms; all over her eyes and cheeks and mouth fell tears and kisses.“Don’t push me away,don’t, Eugenia,” entreated Sydney.There was a moment’s hesitation—a struggle between pride and old habit of love and confidence for the victory. But pride had had more than its share of work lately; it gave in.“Oh, Sydney,” came at last, with a convulsive grasp of her sister. “Oh, Sydney, how shall I bear it? I don’t blamehim.Hecouldn’t help it, but I do think my heart is broken.”
I love snow, and all the formsOf the radiant frost;I love waves and winds and storms,Everything almostWhich is nature’s, and may beUntainted by man’s misery.Shelley.
I love snow, and all the formsOf the radiant frost;I love waves and winds and storms,Everything almostWhich is nature’s, and may beUntainted by man’s misery.Shelley.
Of the many times the sisters had walked to Ayclough they had never had a lovelier day for their ramble than the one on which they set off with Frank Thurston and the young Dalrymples, to skate on the Pool. It was February, early February, and the Frost spirit, who had been late of coming this year, seemed inclined to make up for the delay by paying a pretty long visit now he had really got as far down south from his own home as Wareshire. He had greatly disappointed his special friends, the school-boys of the community, by not spending Christmas with them, as in the good old days, we are told, was his invariable custom, and the last two Saturdays Arthur and Bob Dalrymple had hardly consented to eat any dinner, so eager were they to make the most of their friend’s company on these precious holiday afternoons.
“We expect Captain Chancellor to come with us, Frank,” said Sydney, as the little party were setting off from Mr Laurence’s door. “He said he would join us at the Brook Bridge at half-past one. He passes that way coming to our house, you know. He dined with us last night, and when he heard where we were going to-day, he said he would like to come too.”
“All right,” said Frank. “I expect some one too. I persuaded Gerald to promise to come. He never gives himself any play now at all. Ever since he came back from India he has been working far too hard. I don’t think he is looking well either. He’s not half the man he was before he went to India. Ah, there he comes! You girls must make a great deal of him to-day, for I want to coax him to give himself more relaxation.”
Eugenia and Sydney were very ready to do as Frank wished, and when Gerald came up to them he was most graciously received. It was quite true that he was not looking well. Eugenia noticed it very distinctly; he was looking much less well even than on his first return, and her heart smote her for the scanty thought she had of late bestowed on her old friend.
“I am so very glad you can come with us to-day, Gerald,” she said. “It is like old times, isn’t it?”
“Like, but very different,” he thought to himself, but aloud he answered cheerfully, and in spite of himself his spirits began to rise. Itwaslike old times to have Eugenia walking beside him, her sweet bright face looking up in his, no one to dispute his claim upon her for the time. But his visions were soon dispelled. A new expression stole into her eyes, a soft flush crept over her face even while he watched it, and following the direction of her gaze to discover the cause of the change, Mr Thurston saw—Captain Chancellor coming forward quickly in their direction.
The two men had never met since the evening of Gerald’s return. They had eyed each other with covert suspicion then; they eyed each other with a scarcely more cordial feeling now. A slight, an almost imperceptibly slight, shade, it seemed to Gerald, came over Captain Chancellor’s handsome face when he recognised Eugenia’s companion. And he was not mistaken.
“What can that fellow be turning up again for?” Beauchamp was saying to himself. “I thought he was comfortably over head and ears in business. I don’t fancy him somehow. I wish to goodness he were back in India!”
But notwithstanding this unexpressed hostility, outwardly, as was his habit, Captain Chancellor made himself very agreeable. He seemed to take special pains to be civil and cordial in his manner to Mr Thurston, and Frank felt a little annoyed at Gerald’s somewhat ungracious reception of his friendly overtures.
“What a pleasant fellow Chancellor is, really,” observed Frank to Sydney. “Poor old Gerald hasn’t improved in his manners with being in India, I’m afraid. I don’t think he can be well. He is so surly and stiff sometimes now, and he never used to be.”
“Poor old Gerald” was only human after all. He was feeling very cross and bitter just now. His one ewe-lamb of a happy afternoon had been stolen from him. He could not all at once respond with careless cordiality to David’s civil speeches, but walked on beside Eugenia in grave and moody silence.
Eugenia could not make him out. How could he—how could any one—feel cross or sad on such an exquisite day? She herself was so happy. Everything was so beautiful, she could hardly help singing and dancing as she went along. They were out of Wareborough and its suburbs by now. The feeling, to dwellers in towns so ever-fresh and exhilarating, of “being in the country” was beginning to come over them. The lane along which they were walking was pleasant even at this season—pleasanter, in a sense, than in spring or summer; for though some hardy primroses, some few dog-roses and honeysuckles, were brave enough still, year after year, to show their welcome faces along the banks, it seemed to cost them an effort. They hardly looked at home beside the dingy hedges and smoke-dulled grass. But to-day the fields wore their “silver thatch;” “icy feathers fledged” the hedges; there was no fault to be found with either, in this bright winter clothing. The lane was hardly distinguishable from a real country lane.
“How beautiful it is! Did you ever see a more exquisite day?” exclaimed Eugenia, looking up to the clear green-blue sky through the delicate tracery of the bare branches of the trees. “One could imagine oneself miles and miles away from any town.”
She had been walking a few steps in front of the others. As she spoke, she stopped for a moment, and turned round facing them. How pretty she looked! To Gerald it seemed she had never looked lovelier than standing there, in her thick dark-grey cloth dress, with her favourite bit of bright colour—a scarlet knot at her throat this time—reflecting its warmth and brilliance in her eager, upturned face.
“Itisa lovely day!” said Sydney; “but, Eugenia, you used to dislike winter so—even bright frosty days you used to say were ghastly and mocking, and all sorts of disagreeable things.”
“I don’t like winter at all,” answered Eugenia, falling back into her place, and walking on beside the others. “But to-day is hardly like winter. There is a living feeling in the air, cold though it is—a sort of slight stir and rustle even among the bare boughs.”
”‘The spring comes slowly up the way,’” said Gerald. “It’s very slowly, though. Of course we are only at the beginning of February; still, I know the feeling you mean, Eugenia. I have often fancied I could distinguish a sort of soft expectancy about this time of year.”
Captain Chancellor happened to be a little way behind them. Either Gerald imagined him out of ear-shot, or for the moment had forgotten him altogether.
“Yes,” said Eugenia; “that’s just it. It is the lifelessness of winter I dislike. And a bright still winter’s day has light without warmth—an idea that certainly is very ghastly to me. I like life, and movement, and warmth. Almost the loveliest summer sensation to me is that sort of soft, happy bustle that seems to go on among the birds and the flowers and the insects—all the dear creatures. Ah, how beautiful summer is!” She stopped for an instant; then, recurring to her former train of thought, she went on. “Doesn’t the idea of a ‘crystal sea’ seem rather repulsive to you, Gerald? I think it would be quite frightful. Fancy a motionless ocean!”
Beauchamp, and Frank, and the Dalrymple boys were close beside them now. Beauchamp had walked on faster since he saw Eugenia talking with apparent interest to the curate’s brother. Her last remark was overheard.
“It would be jolly nice to skate upon!” said Bob Dalrymple.
Eugenia broke into clear, merry laughter.
“I’m afraid you’ll not find any skates there, Bob,” she said to the boy; and then they both laughed again, as if she had said something immensely funny.
“It takes very little water to make a perfect pool for a tiny fish;” it takes very little wit to satisfy a child’s appreciative powers. Bob was only twelve, and Eugenia was apt to grow very like a child herself when in high spirits. Mr Thurston smiled at their merriment; and though Sydney, in Frank’s presence, always trembled a little when she saw Eugenia verging on one of the reckless moods, charming enough when “a great many people” were not there, in the present case she could not help smiling too. Only Captain Chancellor looked annoyed. There were certain things that greatly offended his taste. He could not endure to hear a woman discuss religion or politics, he could not endure to hear a woman say anything funny, and then laugh at it. And of all conceivable subjects to joke upon, he most objected to joking on “religious subjects;” he thought it “bad style.” As Frank had said, Captain Chancellor was, or at any rate considered himself, “a good churchman,” of the class to whom it is not given to discriminate between the spirit and the letter. He hated Dissenters and Radicals—so far, that is to say, as he considered such beings worthy of attention at all. He was not the sort of man to whom it occurred readily, that to the best of rules there may be exceptions. More than once Roma herself had fallen under the ban of his disapproval, both as regarded the subjects she chose for discussion, and her remarks thereupon. But then Roma was a very different person; besides which, in her own set, she had established a name for a certain amount of originality, and this made her to some extent a privileged person.
Mr Thurston, happening to glance in Captain Chancellor’s direction, saw, and rightly interpreted, the expression of his face. First, he felt amused, then a little indignant. What right had this man to approve or disapprove of whatever Eugenia chose to say or do? Lastly, an undefinable instinct urged him to turn the conversation, without appearing to do so, for happy Eugenia was walking on merrily, in unconsciousness of any cloud in her vicinity.
“I think, Miss Laurence,” said Gerald, “you have got a little confusion in your head between the ‘crystal sea’ of the Bible and Dante’s ‘sea of ice,’ haven’t you? One does get the queerest confused associations sometimes, especially of things one has first heard of in childhood, and I know your literary taste when you were a small person in pinafores was rather omnivorous, wasn’t it?”
Eugenia laughed and confessed it was true. Beauchamp did not seem edified by the conversation.
“Yes, Eugenia,” said Frank, “you have taken up a wrong idea altogether. The words ‘glass’ and ‘crystal’ are only used to give the idea of purity, not motionlessness or lifelessness. Why, don’t you remember the ‘water oflife’ being described as ‘pure as crystal’ in another place? You shouldn’t begin criticising scriptural expressions unless you have studied the subject—no one should.”
His tone was slightly dictatorial and decidedly clerical. Eugenia’s face flushed; she looked up with a somewhat haughty answer on her lips, but to her amazement, and that of every one else, Captain Chancellor said, suddenly, addressing Frank,—
“I quite agree with you, Thurston.” Eugenia’s face changed from pink to crimson. Gerald, watching her anxiously, thought he had never seen the expression of any face change so quickly, but she walked on quietly without speaking. “If she would but see in time,” thought Gerald; “if she would but see in time! He worthy of her! he understand her! As well expect a blacksmith to make a watch, or—or—” He could think of no comparison sufficiently forcible to suit his indignant frame of mind.
By this time they had emerged from the lane on to the high road. They were within a mile of their destination, and the skaters waxed impatient.
“We shall not have a long afternoon,” said the curate. “Suppose, Bob, you and Arthur and I push on? We shall walk a good deal quicker than the ladies. Will you and Chancellor follow at your leisure with Sydney and Eugenia, Gerald? I want the boys to have a good afternoon. You don’t mind, Sydney?”
So it was agreed. The four left behind naturally fell into pairs; Mr Thurston and Sydney in front, Eugenia and Captain Chancellor some little way in the rear.
Rather to Beauchamp’s surprise, for he fancied his uncalled-for remark—in reality greatly the result of the ill-tempered mood he had felt coming over him ever since he saw that the elder Thurston made one of the party—had offended her, Eugenia seemed by no means averse to this two-and-two arrangement.Hefelt uncomfortable and annoyed. It was the very first time he was conscious of having appeared to this girl in even ever so slightly unfavourable a light, and he felt anxious to destroy the unpleasant impression; he was not likely to see much more of her, and he hated any one to remember him with any disagreeable association. But how to begin the smoothing-over process he felt rather at a loss. To his surprise, Eugenia herself helped him.
“Captain Chancellor,” she said, suddenly, speaking faster than usual, as if to force back some hesitation, “I want to tell you I think Frank Thurston was right in what he said just now, and you were right to agree with him. I do speak at random, sometimes; and I shouldn’t have encouraged Bob to joke as I did. Of course, any one else could see there was no irreverence in my mind; but a child might not, and one can’t be too careful with children. I think I quite understand your disliking it, and I am so sorry.”
She looked up in his face with a deprecating humility, a sweet softness in her brown eyes that he had never seen in them before. Never had he thought her so charming. He did not attend to the exact meaning of her words, most certainly no anxiety as to the nature of the impressions left on the infant mind of Master Bob had troubled him; he was conscious only of an inference of apology in what she said, and of acknowledgment of his superior judgment that was very agreeable to him and very becoming to her. The “I am so sorry” at the end was quite delicious. “Dear little thing,” he said to himself, “it would not be difficult to mould her into one’s own pattern.” And aloud, he said, with the half deferential tenderness so curiously attractive to very young girls,—
“You are too good, Miss Laurence; a great deal too good. I have certainly rather strong feelings—prejudices, if you like—on some subjects, but I really feel it is more than good of you not to have resented my inexcusable expression of them.”
“Don’t say that,” she remonstrated, gently; “I do not feel it so at all. When any one finds fault with me, on the contrary, I feel that it must—that they must—” she hesitated.
“That it must arise from no common interest in you?” he suggested. “And can you ever have doubtedmyfeeling such, Miss Laurence? No one, I suppose, is quite perfection; but surely you must know that to me you appear so near it that a word or a tone which I should never notice in another woman, from you acquires importance.”
The words were dreadfully commonplace, but spoken in his peculiarly sweet, low voice, with his deep, expressive eyes looking unutterable things into hers, to Eugenia they sounded most “apt and gracious.” Nor was Beauchamp, for the time being, insincere. He really felt what he said. As he looked at this young creature, so sweet, soverypretty, so ready to believe in himself as the embodiment of every manly grace and excellence, a strange, altogether unprecedented rash, of feeling came over him. If he could but throw all to the winds—prospects and position and future and all—and clasp her in his arms and call her his darling, his “one woman in the world,” and carry her off there and then to some beautiful, impossible castle in the air, where there was no “society,” no growing old, no anybody or anything but each other!
It was but a moment’s passing, insane, altogether ridiculous dream, and Beauchamp soon recovered himself, and Eugenia little suspected the cause of his sudden silence, for she was in a sweet dream of her own, the same in which for many days now she had been living, and from which she would not be very easily roused. Each day, each hour, almost, it was gaining more hold upon her; every circumstance, every trifling incident, seemed to bring her more and more under its influence; no shadow of misgiving had as yet dimmed its beauty and glowing perfection.
Yet she was a girl to whom such a description of her enchantment as that suggested by the vulgar words “madly in love” was altogether and essentially inapplicable. We want a word surely to describe this higher, yet passionate love—the love of a pure, enthusiastic, undisciplined nature, dreaming that it has found its ideal, that the days of “gods and godlike men” are not yet over, to whom in such a belief all self-sacrifice, all self-surrender, would be possible, to whom the destruction of its ideal would risk the destruction of all faith beside.
They walked on in silence for a little; then, by a slight quickening of their pace, Beauchamp managed to overtake Mr Thurston and Sydney, who were only a few steps before them, and for the next half mile the four kept together. It was better so, Beauchamp said to himself, for he was beginning to feel a little less confident in his own ability to draw back in time; his recent sensations had startled him considerably, and Roma’s warning persisted in recurring most uncomfortably to his mind. Looking back over the wide range of his so-called “love affairs,” he could not hit upon any which onhisside had threatened “to go so far.” Roma herself, with all her attractions, had never roused in him a similar storm. He was as determined as ever to win her in spite of all opposition, but he owned to himself that by the time he met her again at Winsley, he might safely boast that his allegiance had been more sharply tested than even she had had any idea of.
Some way further along the road they came to the sharp turn known as Ayclough Bend. Here, a lane to the right led up the hill to the farm, the high road to the left pursuing its course to twenty-miles-off Bridgenorth.
“This is our way,” said Mr Thurston, turning as he spoke in the direction of the lane, but both the girls had come to a stand beside a large stone lying at the side of the road.
“This is the Bride’s stone,” said Sydney, in an explanatory tone.
“Ah, yes, to be sure. Poor bride,” said Gerald, coming back again.
“Who is the bride? Why do you call this her stone?” inquired Captain Chancellor of Eugenia.
She gravely related the story. Even to this day it had a curious fascination for her. “It was on this stone he was thrown when the coach upset. And it is here, they say, she is still to be seen sometimes,” she said with a slight shudder. “Is it not a sad story?” she added, looking up with such pity in her eyes, that Beauchamp half fancied there were tears not far off. He didn’t feel inclined to laugh at her, he was in a rather unusual mood to-day. Still less, however, was he inclined that Gerald or Sydney should have the benefit of his rare fit of genuine sentimentality. So he answered carelessly—
“Very sad, if true, which I should feel inclined to doubt. I have heard the same story at other places. Besides, if it were true, pity would be wasted on the lady. No doubt she married again very speedily if she was so lovely and charming.”
Gerald hardly stayed to hear him finish the sentence. He walked on quickly, followed by Sydney, and both looked at each other as they heard Eugenia’s voice answering her companion brightly and happily as usual.
“She is bewitched,” said Gerald, abruptly, and Sydney by her silence seemed to agree with him. “Just the sort of thing that would have put her out for the day, if Frank had said it to tease her.”
They had not seen the expression in Beauchamp’s eyes which belied his careless words, giving her, even about this trifle, a feeling that his confidence, his deeper feelings, were reserved for her alone.
“Yes,” said Sydney, with a sigh. “But, Gerald, I have come to see that there is nothing to be done. I tried once or twice to speak to Eugenia, some time ago, but it was no use. It only risked my losing her confidence altogether. Besides, what could I say? I know nothing against Captain Chancellor. I cannot even say I suspect anything; and I by no means dislike him. As an ordinary acquaintance I should like him very much.”
“You disliked him at first,” objected Gerald.
“No, not exactly,” said Sydney, thoughtfully. “I was only rather afraid of liking him too readily. I doubted him before I ever saw him, from what Eugenia told me of him; I doubted, I mean to say, his being the sort of person I should have chosen for her. But that sounds very presumptuous. Sisters don’t marry to please each other.”
“No,” said Gerald, with a slight laugh. “In that case Frank’s chance might not have been so good.”
“But EugeniarespectsFrank, though they are always sparring with each other. She trusts him too. Ah, there is just the difference,” exclaimed Sydney, eagerly. “I don’t feel as if I could trust Captain Chancellor with Eugenia. I don’t suppose he will beat her or ill-use her,” she went on smiling half sadly. “I think he is kind-hearted and easy tempered, and a good enough sort of a man in many ways. But he won’tunderstandher, and that sort of misery would be worse to her than any.”
“But it would have been a great chance if she had married any one thoroughly congenial and suitable. Very few people do,” said Gerald, thinking to himself if there might not in the future be disappointment in store even for the earnest, unselfish girl beside him, good sterling fellow though Frank was.
“I know that,” answered Sydney, and then for a minute or two she remained silent. “Perhaps, Gerald,” she went on, “to put it quite fairly, a good deal of our anxiety arises from Eugenia’s side. I mean it is her own character that makes me afraid. I don’t think I should have misgivings about any other girl’s happiness if I heard she was going to marry Captain Chancellor. I don’t know that I should have been afraid for myself even, (though it sounds an odd thing to say, and I certainly couldn’t fancy myself caring for him). You see, Gerald, I expect so much less. With Eugenia it is always all or nothing.”
“Yes, I understand,” answered Gerald. “It is a question if such a naturecanescape intense suffering, though I had fancied—but it’s no use thinking of that. There are some kinds of suffering which, it seems to me, would be ruinous to Eugenia, which she could not pass through without leaving the best of herself in the furnace. That is my worst fear, Sydney. I have never attempted to put it in words before. I could not have done so to any one but yourself.”
“But we can’t tell, Gerald,” said Sydney, timidly. “We can’t tell how what seems the worst training may turn out the best. We can’t believe that in the end it will not all have been the best, even our own mistakes.”
“The end is a very long way off,” said Gerald, gloomily, “and it is sad work for lookers-on sometimes. Of course, I know what you mean, Sydney, and one must at bottom believe it; but still one constantly sees what look very like fatal mistakes, and it is very seldom given to us on this side of the gate to see that good came out of the bad after all.”
Sydney did not answer. After awhile Mr Thurston spoke again, this time with evident hesitation.
“I am afraid you may be angry with me for what I am going to say, Sydney,” he began, “but I think I should say it. All your fears seem to point one way. I mean to the unlikelihood of Captain Chancellor’s satisfying Eugenia—suiting her—but have you never doubted him in any other way?”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed Sydney in vague alarm.
“Can’t you understand? It’s a horrid thing to say,” said Gerald impatiently. “Are you quite sure he is in earnest? May he not be only what is called amusing himself—flirting, or trifling, or any of those detestable expressions?”
Sydney grew crimson.
“No, Gerald,” she said, with immense indignation in her voice. “I certainly never for an instant supposed him capable of such baseness. I am surprised at you, Gerald. It is well you never hinted at anything of this kind before—or perhaps it is a pity you did not. I am exceedingly sorry I ever discussed the matter with you at all.”
“You are unjust and unreasonable, Sydney, and unkind too,” exclaimed Gerald, with a good deal of wounded feeling. “Don’t you see how painful it is to me to suggest such a thing toyou, who know what you do about me? But I am in earnest, Sydney. It is well you, at least, should be prepared for such a possibility. You cannot suppose that I have any selfish motive in suggesting it. You don’t think that,selfishlyspeaking, I should wish it to turn out so? If Captain Chancellor disappeared to-day, and was never heard of again, that would domeno good. How could it?”
“I didn’t think you had any selfish motive,” answered Sydney, gently. “I only thought that—that—naturally perhaps you saw him worse than he is.”
“Frank has said the same,” replied Mr Thurston, in a but half mollified tone.
“Frank!” repeated Sydney, “Frank! Oh, no, Gerald! He likes Captain Chancellor; he thinks well of him.”
“Well, I didn’t say he disliked him. He, only looking at the thing in a careless, superficial, way, does not seem to think any blame could be attached to this man if—oh, how I hate these vulgar expressions!—if he simply does go away without, as it is called, ‘coming to the point’ at all. Frank cannot see that he pays Eugenia any particular attentions. He only thinks her very likely to deceive herself in this sort of thing.” Sydney looked dreadfully startled. If Frank thought so, must there not be some ground for this new anxiety? But if so, how despicably false Captain Chancellor must be! How false and how hatefully worldly-wise to have thus, as it were, screened himself beforehand by securing Frank’s favourable opinion! For that he hadnotdeliberately set himself to gain Eugenia’s affections from the first, Sydney could not for an instant allow. What on Eugenia would be the effect of the discovery of such treachery, poor Sydney dared not allow herself to imagine. But no, it could not be. After all, no man could be so coldblooded, so selfish, so wicked, as to crush the happiness out of a fair young life for the sake of a few weeks’ amusement. Sydney had read of such things, but was loth to believe in them. Gerald’s troubles had made him morbidly suspicious. Frank had spoken hastily, and, after all, Frank was far from being in a position to judge. So she endeavoured to reassure herself, and fancied she had done so.
She was unusually quiet, however, for the rest of the afternoon. The others—Frank and the boys, Eugenia and Captain Chancellor, that is to say—were in the highest spirits. Only Sydney and Mr Thurston seemed uninfluenced by the fresh keen air, the exhilarating amusement.
“I thought your sister could skate too—at least, that she was learning, like you,” said Beauchamp to Eugenia, who was just beginning to feel a little at home on the ice. “Doesn’t she like it?”
“She skates better than I, a good deal,” replied the girl. “I don’t know what has come over her this afternoon. She looks so tired and out of spirits!” And as she spoke, she looked anxiously in Sydney’s direction.
Captain Chancellor noticed the quick change of expression that came over her face. Five minutes before, he had thought nothing could be lovelier than Eugenia, laughing and merry; now it seemed to him this tenderly anxious expression showed the sweetness of her eyes to greater advantage. What a fascinating face the child had!—never two minutes the same, and each change bringing out some new beauty. He stood watching her, till he almost forgot where he was. She turned suddenly, and caught his gaze; blushed a little, and looked away again. Something in his face puzzled her—a perplexed, uneasy look, that she had never seen there before. Suddenly Bob Dalrymple wheeled up to where they were standing, and came to a halt.
“What a brilliant colour that ribbon of yours is, Miss Laurence!” said Captain Chancellor, abruptly. “Is scarlet your favourite colour? You generally have some of it about you.”
“Only in winter,” answered Eugenia, lightly. “In summer I can’t bear it. My tastes change altogether with the seasons.”
“So if you come back next summer, you’d better look out,” said Bob, addressing Captain Chancellor, and grinning maliciously. “She won’t like you then. It’s a good thing you’re going before the weather changes.” And so saying, he skimmed off again.
“What does he mean?” exclaimed Eugenia, not disguising the shock the boy’s words had given her. “You are not going away, Captain Chancellor?”
There was an unconscious entreaty in her voice, that gave Beauchamp a sudden thrill of pain and self-reproach.
“Not just yet, I hope. But my plans are a little—are not quite decided at present,” he answered, confusedly. Then, notwithstanding his resolutions, the look in Eugenia’s face tempted him to say more.
“You must know, Miss Laurence, how painful, how unendurable it will be to me to leave Wareborough,” he said, in a low, hurried voice.
“Will you not come back again?” she asked, very quietly, striving hard to force back the intense eagerness with which she awaited his reply.
“I hope so. I earnestly hope I may be able to do so,” he answered; and for the time the hope was sincere. “But I am not my own master. I can’t explain all I mean. I am hampered in every direction. But some day, perhaps— No, it is no use—”
He stopped.
Eugenia stood beside him without speaking. He glanced half timidly at her face. Its expression puzzled him. It was getting late now; the rest of the party had taken off their skates, and were coming towards them across the pond, prepared evidently for the walk home. Beauchamp felt desperate. He might not have another opportunity of saying what he now felt hemustsay.
“Miss Laurence—Eugenia,” he exclaimed. She started a little. “I must ask you one thing: Will you think as well as you can of me, even if others may blame me? Will you not judge me by appearances more than you can help? My position is full of difficulty. As I said just now, I am not in any sense my own master; but—if I may hope for nothing else—I would at least like to think you would judge me leniently, even if I hardly seem to deserve it.”
He wasquitein earnest now. He had never spoken so to any woman before. When he had left home this afternoon, he had not the slightest idea he should speak so to this woman to-day. He got his answer.
“You need not ask me to judge you leniently. I do not think it would be possible for me ever to judge you at all. Nothing—no one but yourself could ever make me think ill of you.”
She looked up at him with a light in her beautiful eyes as she said these words, that made Beauchamp Chancellor feel strangely unlike his usual equable, comfortable self. Why did she trust him so? Why did she take things so deeply, so in earnest? Why was she not like the ninety-and-nine other girls he had flirted with, and thought pretty, and talked nonsense to, and left none the worse? He felt half provoked with her for being so different, yet a vague instinct whispered to him, that in this very difference lay her peculiar charm.
There were no more têtes-à-têtes. It was getting dusk as they walked home, and they all kept together, and the conversation was general. Sydney wondered a little why Eugenia was so quiet, but supposed she must be suffering from some amount of reaction from her high spirits earlier in the day.
Captain Chancellor bade them good-night at their own door. Sydney fancied his manner a little odd—more abrupt, less self-possessed than usual, when he shook hands with her. He did not call the next day, as she somehow half expected, nor the day after, and Eugenia did not seem surprised. She did not look well, Sydney fancied; and when urged by her sister to tell what was wrong, she confessed, to having felt over fatigued since Saturday’s long walk.
“She has many and many a time walked to Ayclough and back without being tired,” thought Sydney. “There must be something wrong. Can they have quarrelled?”
Possessed with this idea, she watched eagerly for Captain Chancellor’s next appearance, and thought it doubly unlucky that Frank’s absence from home for a day or two should have happened at this crisis, when through him she might have learnt something of what was the matter, and if anything lay within her power to do for her sister. To a superficial observer, poor Sydney, during these few days, would have looked the more anxious and unhappy of the two. It was as sad as strange to her to believe Eugenia in suffering, and to be in ignorance of the cause.
On Thursday evening the sisters were sitting by themselves in the drawing-room, their father busy writing in his own little room, when there came a ring at the front door bell. Up jumped Sydney, her heart beating considerably faster than its wont, her face full of eagerness.
“That must be Frank,” observed Eugenia, quietly.
For the time being, the sisters seemed to have changed characters.
“Frank!” exclaimed Sydney; and though it was five days since she had seen herfiancé, at the supposition, her face fell. “Oh, no, it can’t be Frank! He was not to return till Friday—that’s to-morrow.”
But Frank it was. No trace of disappointment was legible in Eugenia’s countenance as she welcomed him rather more cordially than usual, whereas Sydney’s manner was preoccupied and almost cold. Frank was tired, however, and very glad to be home again; and not being gifted with the quickest perception in the world, discovered nothing amiss. Eugenia rang for tea for him, and he drew in his chair near the fire, and sat there drinking it in comfortable content, telling them all about his journey and adventures, and what a charming little country parsonage he had been staying at—“The very place for you and me, Sydney, when we get old, and past hard work.” And Sydney smiled, without seeming to hear what he was saying. Then a new thought struck Frank.
“Oh, by-the-bye,” he exclaimed, “did you see Chancellor before he left? He went off quite in a hurry at the end. He told me on Saturday evening he was expecting to go soon, but he thought he would be here through this week. And this evening I got a letter from him from some place or other—Wins— something—his home, I suppose—saying how sorry he was not to have seen me, to say good-bye—some family arrangements, he said, had called him off in a hurry at the last.”
“I saw a note in his handwriting addressed to papa on the hall-table. It came by this evening’s post. No doubt, it was saying the same thing,” said Eugenia.
She almost overdid it; even Frank looked up, struck by the strange unfamiliar monotone in which she spoke.
“But he is coming back again. He is certain to come back again, Frank? Tell me, isn’t he quitecertainto come back again?” asked Sydney, with a quick, painful eagerness in her voice, as if entreating Frank not to answer no.
He stared at her for a moment, he did not understand her. Had he done so, he might have softened the bluntness of his reply, for he was far from callous or hardhearted to suffering in any shape.
“How interested you seem in his movements, Sydney. I have always thought you didn’t particularly like him. You’ve changed your opinion rather suddenly, surely? Come back again? No, it is very unlikely indeed that he will ever come back again. The 203rd is sure to leave Bridgenorth before Captain Chancellor’s leave is over, and, of course, the Wareborough detachment will go too. The regiment has been quite its time here. Chancellor was aide-de-camp to his cousin, General Conyers, somewhere in Ireland, till he came here—that’s how he happened to be so short a time here.”
“And where will the regiment go to?” inquired Sydney. The words seemed to form themselves mechanically on her lips; a strange feeling came over her that it was really Eugenia, not herself, who was speaking.
“Goodness knows,” answered Frank. “Oh, yes, by-the-bye, I remember Chancellor saying they were next on the roster for foreign service. He said, a few months would see him in India, unless he sold out. I shouldn’t much wonder if he did. I shouldn’t much wonder if—” he hesitated. For the first time a slight misgiving seemed to come over him; he looked up in some little embarrassment. Eugenia was sitting perfectly still, looking just as usual. He felt reassured.
“If what?” asked Sydney, again with the same feeling of being forced by the intensity of her sister’s anxiety to continue putting these questions against her own will.
“Oh, nothing,” said Frank. “That is to say, it is only a fancy of mine that there may be something between Chancellor and that handsome Miss Eyrecourt. His cousin, isn’t she? I never saw her, but he had rather a constrained way of alluding to her, I noticed, and he had half-a-dozen photographs of her in different attitudes and dresses.”
“I should think it very likely,” said somebody—for the moment Sydney actually did not recognise the voice as her sister’s. “I wonder if papa wants any tea, Sydney. I think I’ll go and see.”
She rose from her seat almost as she spoke, walked quietly to the door, and left the room.
Five minutes later, on some pretext, Sydney followed her—not to Mr Laurence’s study, up to Eugenia’s own room. It was quite dark. Sydney had to feel her way across the floor.
“Eugenia,” she said, softly.
No one answered. She groped her way to the bed. Down at one end a figure was kneeling or crouching, she could not tell which. She felt it was her sister. Round the poor child’s quivering frame stole two clinging, clasping arms; all over her eyes and cheeks and mouth fell tears and kisses.
“Don’t push me away,don’t, Eugenia,” entreated Sydney.
There was a moment’s hesitation—a struggle between pride and old habit of love and confidence for the victory. But pride had had more than its share of work lately; it gave in.
“Oh, Sydney,” came at last, with a convulsive grasp of her sister. “Oh, Sydney, how shall I bear it? I don’t blamehim.Hecouldn’t help it, but I do think my heart is broken.”