Volume Three—Chapter Seven.

Volume Three—Chapter Seven.Roma to the Rescue.That he has his faults cannot be doubtful; for we believe it was ascertained long ago, that there is no man free from them.Carlyle.It is dreary work—perhaps no one who has not had personal experience of it can imagine how dreary—to find oneself really alone in a strange place, with no customary daily duties to compel one’s attention, however unwilling; no chance of a friendly face looking in to break the monotony of the empty day; no anticipation even of the post bringing distraction in the shape of news, good or bad. Such had been Eugenia’s life for two days at Nunswell, and already in these two days she had many times been on the point of saying to herself she could not stand it much longer.“And is this to be my life?” she thought with a shiver, for, in the excitement of flying from her home, she had taken no account of the loneliness and dreariness that lay beyond. Now, the unconcealed disapproval of her nearest friends, the realisation of her anomalous position alone in lodgings in a strange place, were already bringing home, even to her uncalculating inexperience, something of the personal suffering, the bitter deprivations, the indefinite suspicion which must attach themselves to even the purest and noblest of women, once she voluntarily abandons her home. There may be cases, doubtless there are such, where a wife has no choice, where duty itself, deaf to all suggestions of expediency, relentlessly points out the way to abandonment of the post bravely battled for to the last—but such cases are rare, and the women to whose bitter experience they fall must have suffered too terribly to be sensitive to loneliness, or monotony, or half-averted looks. Not so was it with Eugenia Chancellor. What she had learnt from her sister of Frank’s opinion of her conduct had wounded her to the quick; her only idea had been at once to relieve her friends of her unwelcome presence, but she had altogether failed to realise the desolation and hopeless depression which seized upon her before she had been many hours in the Nunswell lodgings.The morning after she had met Gerald, she woke with a slight sensation of expectation. She hoped she should see him again; she wanted to talk to him, and tell him how she had thought over his words; she did not feel indignant at his plain-speaking, for it was not contemptuous and unsympathising like Frank’s, but sprang, she could not but feel, from genuine anxiety for her good, from single-minded incapability of advising her to act otherwise than as he believed to be right. “Still it is often impossible,” she thought, “for one person to judge of right and wrong for another,” and, more out of a feminine determination to prove herself justified in what she had done than from any vehement desire to persevere in her present course, she prepared herself mentally with a whole string of unanswerable arguments, of well-sounding sophistries with which to compel her old friend to acknowledge how exceptional was her position, how principle and self-respect, and unselfishness even, had driven her to this apparently undutiful step.It was still early when Rachel tapped at her mistress’s door. “A letter, ma’am,” she announced, as she came in.“A letter!” exclaimed Eugenia, not without excitement, “it must be a mistake. No one knows where—I mean, I have not sent my exact address yet.” But notwithstanding her words, her heart beat with vague, unreasonable hope—what could it be?—could Sydney have found her out, and be coming to her at once?—could Beauchamp himself be on the way to beseech her to return to him, to entreat her forgiveness for all he had made her suffer, to assure her that this last misery, this worst trouble of all, had somehow or other been a mistake, a mischievous exaggeration of his sister’s? As one possibility after another suggested itself to her imagination, Eugenia’s heart beat faster and faster. “Give it me quickly, Rachel,” she said impatiently. But as the girl brought it to her, she remarked, “It is not a letter by the post, ma’am. It is only a note—from the Spa Hotel, I believe,” and Eugenia’s hopes died within her. It was only a note—a few hurried words from Mr Thurston—beginning “My dear Mrs Chancellor,” to inform her of his being suddenly obliged to leave Nunswell on business, and to express his regret that he should not see her again. It was dated the previous evening. “As if he could have got any business letters after he saw me last night, and as if he would be likely to travel home about business on a Sunday,” thought Eugenia, with a bitter incredulity; “no, he has just thought it over, and agrees with Frank. They don’t want to have anything more to say to me.” And this day was even more miserable than its predecessors. She would not go to church, she dreaded now even the thought of a stroll in the gardens; she sat alone in the dull drawing-room all day with no books to read, no letters to write, nothing to do, nothing to hope for. And when bedtime came and she knelt, more from the force of old habit than from any expectation of comfort, guidance, or peace of mind, to pray to the Father who understands us all so much better than we understand ourselves, she started back from the appealing attitude in horror. For the only prayer which rose with any spontaneity to her lips was that she might sleep and never wake again.Hours passed and still she lay awake, feverish, restless, and yet exhausted. When at last she fell asleep it seemed to her afterwards that it must have been close to morning. And the longed-for unconsciousness brought her but little repose, for it was broken by anxious distressing dreams, of which the only one she could recall with any distinctness was the last before she awoke. She dreamt that it was again the night of her father’s death, she herself was hastening to him with Gerald Thurston; they were driving furiously along a road of which some features seemed familiar to her, though at the same time she felt perfectly certain she had never traversed it before; and from time to time her companion added to her feeling of indescribable bewilderment by asking her if it would not be better to turn now and go the other way. She never seemed to answer him, but every time he made the suggestion, the invisible driver appeared to respond by turning sharply, and driving away faster than ever in an apparently opposite direction. Suddenly the scene changed, and Eugenia found herself by her father’s bedside, in the room she knew so well; and she became conscious of the strange dual existence familiar to us all in dreams, for while there in her father’s presence, waiting for her own arrival, she was yet driving on with Gerald; again she heard his curious monotonous inquiry, “Don’t you think we had better turn now and go the other way?” Another change; she was now in the old state bedroom at Halswood, where she had spent the night of her arrival there; she was still watching by a bedside, still waiting for her own appearance. Then the sound of the carriage wheels, of which all this time she had been conscious, grew louder and louder; she heard them rattling up the smooth carriage drive at Halswood as if it were a paved Wareborough street. A clock began to toll, the figure in the bed by which she was watching seemed to move, and a sudden horror seized her. In her dream-agony she rushed to the door of the room, and found it locked; in despair, it seemed to her, she screamed aloud with frantic vehemence, “Let me out, let me out;” and a voice, which she recognised as her husband’s, answered from the other side—“Too late, too late. Better turn now and go the other way.” And at this crisis she awoke.It was broad daylight. Rachel was standing by her bedside, a cup of tea in her hand.“What is the matter?” asked Eugenia, confusedly. Then, coming a little to herself, she sat up and looked at the girl. “My head is aching dreadfully,” she said, laying it back among the pillows as she spoke; “is that why you have brought me some tea, Rachel? Oh, no; of course you could not know. But there is something the matter, Rachel; you look as if there were.”“No, indeed, ma’am, there isn’t; nothing, that is to say, except your head being bad. I was awake very early this morning, and I had my breakfast sooner than usual, and I thought you might like a cup of tea.”“I am very glad of it,” said Eugenia, languidly. “But what made you get up so early. Had you a bad night too?”“Oh, no, ma’am, thank you. I was wakened, by some visitors arriving unexpectedly about five o’clock. One visitor, at least. A young lady.”“What an odd time to arrive,” observed Eugenia, carelessly. But, glancing at Rachel as she spoke, something in the girl’s manner again caught her attention. “Whois the young lady?” she asked, quickly. “Is it some one to see me—is it my sister?”“No, ma’am, it is not Mrs Thurston,” replied Rachel, evidently afraid lest her words should cause disappointment. “It could not be Mrs Thurston, for she will only get your address this morning, you remember, ma’am. But itissome one for you. It is—”“It is I,” interrupted a voice at the door. “May I come in, Eugenia?” and in a moment Roma Eyrecourt stood by the bedside. “You poor child,” she went on, hurriedly, as if to cover some embarrassment, and without giving Eugenia time to speak; “how burning your hands are, and your head too! I am not going to tease you, dear. I have come to do exactly what you tell me, except go away. You won’t send me away, Eugenia, will you?”There was some anxiety in her tone; she leant over towards Eugenia as she spoke, and looked earnestly into her face with her beautiful, bright dark eyes—not keen or contemptuous now, but tender and loving, and almost entreating in their expression. The struggle, if there were one, was quickly over with Eugenia. She threw her arms round her friend’s neck and kissed her warmly. “It is very, very good of you to have come,” she whispered. “I know it is pure goodness that has brought you. I have tried to fancy I hated you, but I don’t. I love you and trust you. But, oh, Roma, I have been so miserable!”“Too miserable, a great deal too miserable. I can fancy it all,” said Roma, sympathisingly. “But, Eugenia, you do look so tired. I am sure you have not slept well. Do try to go to sleep again, and try to believe you are not going to be so miserable as you think. I will talk to you as much as ever you like when I see you looking better. I will tell you everything—what made me come here, andanythingmore you like to ask me, if you will do what I tell you now. I have one or two letters to write for the early post. I will come back in a little, I promise you.”Soothed in spite of herself by Roma’s kindness, comforted by the feeling that she was no longer alone, that one person, at least, in the world, still loved and cared for her, Eugenia fell asleep, and slept peacefully for two or three hours. Miss Eyrecourt, meantime, wrote her letters: one was addressed to Captain Chancellor at Halswood, another to Gerald Thurston, at Wareborough, a third to old Lady Dervock, whom she had quitted at rather short notice. Once or twice in writing she seemed somewhat at a loss.“I don’t want to exaggerate things,” she said to herself, “but I really should not be surprised if Eugenia had a bad illness—brain fever, or something of the kind. However, I can judge better when I see her again.”Roma’s fears were not fulfilled. Eugenia was much better when she saw her again. By the middle of the day she was up and dressed, and eager for the promised conversation. The mystery of the new-comer’s sudden appearance was easily explained.The “business” which had necessitated Gerald’s leaving on Saturday night had taken him all the way up to Deepthorne, whence he had returned accompanied by Roma herself. It had seemed to him the best thing to do, he felt certain that he might rely on Miss Eyrecourt’s friendship, and he felt certain too that in the end Eugenia would not blame him for his interference. By dint of hard travelling they had managed to reach Nunswell early on Monday morning, thence by the very next train, Gerald, already due at his post, had returned to Wareborough. This was all, so far, that Roma had to tell. Of what had taken place at Halswood she was in utter ignorance. “I have not heard from Gertrude for more than a week,” she told Eugenia. “I half thought of writing to her just now while you were asleep, but I decided not to do so till I had spoken to you. I have written to your husband though, Eugenia,” she added, with a little hesitation.“To Beauchamp,” exclaimed Beauchamp’s wife, her cheeks flushing; “oh, Roma, why did you? Could you not have waited for that till you had spoken to me?”“No, Eugenia,” said Roma, gently but decidedly, “I purposely wanted to writebeforeseeing more of you. It was not betraying your secret, for Mr Thurston told me you had let your sister know where you were, and of course Beauchamp would go to her to inquire about you. I merely wrote to tell him that I was with you, ready to stay as long as you want me.”“I don’t mind Beauchamp’s knowing where I am,” said Eugenia. “It will make no difference. He is not likely to seek me, for even if he cared about me, he will be too angry to take any such step.”Roma thought differently. Beauchamp’s regard for appearances was likely to be a powerful motive with him, but she was wise enough to keep this consideration to herself, and to direct her attention to the root of the matter.“How do you mean, ‘if he cared about you?’” she asked, quietly. “Do you doubt his caring for you?”“Roma!” exclaimed Eugenia, reproachfully, the tears rushing to her eyes, “how can, you ask me? You, of all people!”“You must tell me exactly what you mean, Eugenia,” said Roma, anxiously. “Half confidences are no use in such a case, and I, in return, promise to tell you what I believe to be the exact truth.”So Eugenia told her all; more fully even than to Sydney she related the whole history of her hopes and disappointments, her golden anticipations, and the bitter realities in which they had ended. And Roma listened with a gravely attentive face, striving to the best of her power to distinguish between fact and fancy, between Eugenia’s actual grounds for unhappiness, and her morbid inclination to exaggerate them. It was not for Roma so impossible as it might have been for many to arrive at a just comprehension of the state of matters, for the character of the one of the two persons chiefly concerned had been long ago gauged by her, that of the other had interested her greatly, and now every word and look and tone assisted her to a fuller understanding of its lights and shades, its beauties and defects. When Eugenia at last left off speaking, Miss Eyrecourt sat silent for a minute or two. Eugenia’s heart was beating fast with anxiety. “Roma,” she said at last, imploringly, “speak to me, do.”“I was only thinking how best to put in words what I want to say,” said Roma. “Listen, Eugenia. I would say it was very wicked of Gertrude to tell you what she did, if I supposed that she at all realised what she was doing, or how you would take it. However, don’t let us speak of her. I would rather not. She has been very kind to me, and she is more silly and small than malevolent. As to what she told you, it was a mixture of truth and falsehood, but the part that you cared about so deeply was untrue. It is quite untrue that Gertrude’s interference separated Beauchamp and me. It was not required. I refused to marry him because I did not care for him in that way in the least, and also because I did not believe, and never shall, that he cared for me either. Even if I had cared for him, I don’t know but what my dread of vexing Gertrude, of seeming to repay her kindness by ingratitude, would have been strong enough to stop me; but that wasnotthe reason. I simply did not care for him, except in a sisterly sort of way. And he—he fancied he cared for me, but he never did. It was greatly out of contradiction, and also because my indifference piqued him—he was so spoilt wherever he went, so sought after and petted! But I think I know the worst of him, and you may believe me, Eugenia, that he never cared as earnestly, astruly, for any woman as for you. I regretted your marriage, because, matter-of-fact as I am myself, I saw how different you were—I feared there would be sorrow in store for you—I feared Beauchamp would not understand you—but all the same, I never liked him so much as when I found how hedidcare for you. He is not a grand character, Eugenia; I dare say what you tell me you suspect may have been true—that he thought it was very grand of him to marry for love, notwithstanding his great prospects, and I have no doubt Gertrude helped him to think so. But, all the same, he did marry for love, and he loves you still; and, dear Eugenia, you will come to see, I do believe, that there is still a fair share of happiness waiting for you. No one will ever have the same power for good over Beauchamp as you, and even if you begin again with little hope or heart, encouragement will come; all the more quickly, perhaps, because of your faint expectations. Now I have told you exactly what I think. I have gone against the old advice never to meddle between husband and wife. I allow that you have had a great deal to bear, not a little to complain of. But, knowing Beauchamp as I do, I must say he has had something to bear too. In the first place, he is innocent of your having imagined him a different character from what he really is; he could not possibly understand it if it was told him. There has been a sort of playing at cross-purposes; for you have not made the best of him from your mistaken notion of the material you had to work upon.Now, you can face things. Leave the past, and decide bravely to do the best with the present.”The tears were running down Eugenia’s pale cheeks: “You forget, Roma,” she said, sadly. “I have no present. I have cut myself away from it. I believe all you say, every word of it. I mean, I believeyou. But if, as you allow, Beauchamp has not understood me hitherto, how could he ever understand the feelings which made me leave him? He must be a different man from what I now believe him to be if what I have done does not estrange us more than ever. For no mere surface peace would satisfy me, Roma. I mean, I could not agree to go back and begin again, merely for the sake of appearances, knowing that in reality there was no possibility of happiness for us.”“We shall see,” said Roma. “Sometimes things turn out quite the other way from what we expect. But I do think, Eugenia, you should make up your mind to do what ever you come to see is right for you to do, and never mind about Beauchamp’s motives for being willing, if he prove so, to meet you half-way.”Eugenia did not answer, and Roma thought it as well to leave her now to think things over in her own way. In her heart Miss Eyrecourt was not without a hope that this crisis might prove a turning-point; that the shock of finding Eugenia gone might open her husband’s eyes to some part of the unhappiness she had endured, and that the way in which Gertrude had acted might lead him to a clearer understanding of the danger of her influence in his household. “Gertrude is sure to clear herself if she possibly can,” thought Roma; “still Beauchamp must see she at least did not try to do any good. Besides, he must be conscious of how he has allowed her to speak of Eugenia, and how he has spoken himself. I wonder what happened when he came home and found his wife gone.”This was what had happened. It was on Thursday that Mrs Chancellor had left Halswood, where her husband was expected to return the next day. But the next day came and went, and it was not till pretty late on Saturday afternoon that he made his appearance. Mrs Eyrecourt in the meantime was suffering from no more painful feeling than annoyance, and some amount of indignation at her sister-in-law’s unceremonious behaviour. Anxiety she felt none, for Eugenia had by no means allowed the whole depth of her feelings to appear during her conversation with her husband’s sister, and the note which was given to Gertrude on her return home from a drive that Thursday afternoon, in explanation of her hostess’s absence, had been carefully worded by Eugenia, and only left on her sister-in-law’s mind the impression that she herself must be held of small account by her brother’s wife if some unexplained summons from her Wareborough friends was considered of sufficient importance to justify so unheard-of a breach of hospitality.Beauchamp’s non-appearance the next day irritated her still further. She was by no means in the sweetest of tempers when Captain Chancellor came home. He came back in a more than usually kindly frame of mind towards his wife. He had enjoyed his visit very much. Everybody had been very civil to him, and several people had inquired pointedly for Eugenia, whose troubles and serious illness had awakened the sympathy and interest—sincere and genuine so far as they go—which, after all, selfish and conventional as we nineteenth-century people are supposed to have become, are not yet difficult to awaken in the hearts of many of those among whom we live. Lady Hereward had been of the party, and her peculiar interest in the young mother’s bereavement had caused her to single out Beauchamp in a gratifying manner.“I cannot tell you,” she had said to him, drawing him aside for a moment—“I cannot tell you how much I have been thinking lately of that beautiful young wife of yours, Captain Chancellor. I was very nearly writing to her when I heard of her—her disappointment, but I feared it might seem intrusive. Will you tell her so? And whenever she feels equal to it, I do hope you will bring her to spend a few quiet days with me. You must be very good to her—you will forgive an old woman’s impertinence?—you must beverygood to her. No doubt you are, but I doubt if even the best of husbands canquiteenter into her sorrow. It is not to be expected they should, perhaps. And following so quickly on her father’s death too! Ah, yes, it was very sad! And she has no mother! Give her my messages, and tell her of my sympathy, and be very patient with her, even if her grief seems exaggerated. There, now, I have kept up my character as a meddlesome old woman, have I not?”But Beauchamp felt by no means offended. The interest was too evidently genuine, the sympathy too womanly for the words to annoy. And then the speaker was Lady Hereward! Captain Chancellor thought over what she had said, and was all the better for it.No one was to be seen in Eugenia’s sitting-room when he reached home on Saturday afternoon. “She must be out,” he thought; and the sound of Mrs Eyrecourt’s voice as he passed an open window confirmed his supposition. He was hastening out to join them by the door opening from his own “den” on to the sort of terrace below, when a letter, addressed to him in Eugenia’s handwriting, placed conspicuously on the mantelpiece, caught his eye. In another moment he had opened and read it. His bright complexion turned to a grey pallor; a look of wild distress replaced the expression of smiling indifference habitual to him; all the nerve and spring seemed to melt out of his bearing; for “she has gone out of her mind,” was the first thought that occurred to him—“grief has driven her insane,” as Lady Hereward’s words returned to his mind. “Good heavens! and this note is dated Thursday! What may not have happened by now?” Then his sister’s voice, gay and careless as usual, again reached his ear. “Gertrude must know it. What is she thinking of? What is the meaning of it all?”A sort of giddiness came over him. He had to sit down for a moment to prevent himself falling. Then he went forward to the window from which steps led to the walk below, and called to Mrs Eyrecourt.“Gertrude,” he said, “come here at once. I want you.”Full of her own grievances, which the sight of her brother recalled freshly to her mind, Mrs Eyrecourt hardly relished the authoritative summons. She came up the steps slowly, calling to her dog, whose company she much preferred to that of her daughter.“So you have come back at last, Beauchamp!” she said, as she drew near him. “I was very nearly setting off home this morning, I can tell you. I wonder what you asked me to come to see you for!”Her pettishness was quite lost on her brother.“Gertrude,” he said, excitedly, as if he had not heard her words, “do you not know, ordoyou know about Eugenia? What has happened?”“What has happened?” she repeated, looking a little startled; “nothing that I know of, except that she has gone to her friends at Wareborough—her sister, or aunt, or somebody—for a day or two. I suppose she often goes there, does she not? though I certainly thought she might have waited till my visit was over.”“Isthatall you know?” said Beauchamp, impatiently. “Do you not know with what intention she left this—that she went, never to return?”“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mrs Eyrecourt, now for the first time taking alarm. “You don’t mean to say she has run away—run awaywithsome one? How frightful! What a scandal! Oh, Beauchamp, how terribly you have been deceived!”“Take care what you say, Gertrude,” said Captain Chancellor, sternly. “Run awaywithany one—my wife—Eugenia! What are you thinking of? Read that!”He thrust into her hand the letter he had found on his mantelpiece, and while watching her read it, he almost laughed, not with standing his distress, at the utter incompatibility of his sister’s coarsely commonplace supposition with the perfect guilelessness, the transparency and innocence, he had often been half inclined to look upon as but a part of his wife’s childishness and inexperience.Eugenia’s note to her husband was as follows:—“I am going away because I am too hopeless and miserable to bear my life longer. Hitherto I have clung to hope and to you through all my suffering, believing that at least youhadloved me. Now I know the whole bitter truth. I am going to my own friends. I will agree to any arrangements you like to make, but I do not want any money, except what I have of my own. I cannot think that you will in any way miss me, but I trust you will be happier without me than you have been with me.“Eugenia.”Mrs Eyrecourt did not speak when she had finished reading this. Beauchamp, observing her closely, fancied she looked pale and frightened.“Can you explain any of this to me?” he asked, impatiently. “Has anything happened in my absence, to explain it? Or must I think she has gone out of her mind?”Gertrude hesitated a little. “There was—we had a rather disagreeable conversation the day you left,” she began. “I don’t know who in the world could have put it in her head—trulyI don’t, Beauchamp—but all of a sudden Eugenia challenged me with having been the cause of yournotmarrying Roma, and by some peculiar reasoning of her own, from that she went on to argue that I was the cause of your hasty proposal to her, which she seems to look upon as the misfortune of her life.”“And what did you tell her?”“What could I tell her but the truth? She seemed to have a very fair notion of it to begin with. I could not have deceived her. Certainly she is the most hot-headed exaggerated person I ever knew. She talked of having been deceived and all sorts of things. She must have been infatuated to think that you, with your prospects—and altogether—could havedeliberatelychosen her, or that your friends could have approved of your doing so, though of course both you and they were too honourable to try to draw back once the thing was actually done.”Captain Chancellor laughed. There was a slight incredulousness in his laugh which made Gertrude very irate. “Then what you have told me is about the general substance of what you told her?” he said.“I suppose so,” said Mrs Eyrecourt, sulkily. “I did not begin it. I do not consider myself in any way responsible for what she has done. She seemed all right again at luncheon, and as you must have seen, I never even associated this foolish fit of jealousy of hers with her sudden visit to her friends.”But Beauchamp was not yet satisfied. For almost the first time in his life, he felt that he had his sister in his power, and he used it to the utmost. Little by little he extracted from her a full account of what had passed between her and his wife, including what she had told Eugenia of her really mistaken impression of the true relations that had existed between himself and Roma Eyrecourt, and when he had learnt all that she had to tell, he turned from her with a bitter “Thank you, Gertrude. You have certainly done your best to ruin any chances of happiness I had. I never before had a conception how spiteful a spiteful woman could be. You disliked Eugenia from the first, because she was my choice and not yours, and in the pleasure of making her miserable you have cared little what became of me.”Mrs Eyrecourt was so offended that she first burst into tears, and then decided upon setting off to join Addie and her mother that very afternoon, leaving Floss behind her till she sent directions for her journey home. Captain Chancellor did not care. Before his sister had fixed her train, he was half-way to Wareborough, where, however, disappointment awaited him in the shape of the Thurstons’ complete ignorance of Eugenia’s whereabouts. The interview with his wife’s relations threatened at first to be a stormy one, for, in his increasing anxiety and perplexity, he was more than half inclined to blame them for this new complication. But they were patient and judicious; the sight of his unfeigned distress inclined Sydney to judge him more leniently than she had ever done, and new hopes began to spring in her heart, that if only Eugenia were with them again, all might yet be well. In the end, Beauchamp went home again to Halswood, by Frank’s advice, to wait there quietly till they heard from their sister.“I am certain we shall have a letter from her to-morrow or Monday,” said Frank, “for even if she were ill, her maid Rachel, who, we were glad to find, is with her, would write. And it is better for you to go home, and look as if nothing were wrong. Your staying here would only make a talk, and I shall telegraph instantly we hear.”So Beauchamp went home—home to the desolate house where Eugenia had felt so sure he would never miss her; and the loneliness and anxiety and wretchedness of the next two days brought him face to face with some truths hitherto but little recognised or considered in his pleasure-loving, self-regarding life.And after all it was Roma’s letter, reaching him on Tuesday morning only, which first brought relief to the fears growing almost more than he could endure, for, by some mischance, Eugenia’s unlucky note to her sister, too late for Saturday’s post from Nunswell, was not received at its destination till this same Tuesday morning.At first sight of Miss Eyrecourt’s letter, Captain Chancellor could hardly believe his eyes. “Romawith her,” he exclaimed; “Roma, of all people! How can I reconcile that with Gertrude’s story?”Incomprehensible as it was, however, the news was marvellously welcome. Half-an-hour later came Frank Thurston’s promised telegram, and that very afternoon, hardly to her surprise, Rachel brought word privately to Miss Eyrecourt, that Captain Chancellor wished to know how he could see her.“He does not want my mistress to be told of his arrival till he has seen you, ma’am,” said Rachel; adding discreetly, “of course with her not being very strong it might startle her, not expecting my master so soon.”

That he has his faults cannot be doubtful; for we believe it was ascertained long ago, that there is no man free from them.Carlyle.

That he has his faults cannot be doubtful; for we believe it was ascertained long ago, that there is no man free from them.Carlyle.

It is dreary work—perhaps no one who has not had personal experience of it can imagine how dreary—to find oneself really alone in a strange place, with no customary daily duties to compel one’s attention, however unwilling; no chance of a friendly face looking in to break the monotony of the empty day; no anticipation even of the post bringing distraction in the shape of news, good or bad. Such had been Eugenia’s life for two days at Nunswell, and already in these two days she had many times been on the point of saying to herself she could not stand it much longer.

“And is this to be my life?” she thought with a shiver, for, in the excitement of flying from her home, she had taken no account of the loneliness and dreariness that lay beyond. Now, the unconcealed disapproval of her nearest friends, the realisation of her anomalous position alone in lodgings in a strange place, were already bringing home, even to her uncalculating inexperience, something of the personal suffering, the bitter deprivations, the indefinite suspicion which must attach themselves to even the purest and noblest of women, once she voluntarily abandons her home. There may be cases, doubtless there are such, where a wife has no choice, where duty itself, deaf to all suggestions of expediency, relentlessly points out the way to abandonment of the post bravely battled for to the last—but such cases are rare, and the women to whose bitter experience they fall must have suffered too terribly to be sensitive to loneliness, or monotony, or half-averted looks. Not so was it with Eugenia Chancellor. What she had learnt from her sister of Frank’s opinion of her conduct had wounded her to the quick; her only idea had been at once to relieve her friends of her unwelcome presence, but she had altogether failed to realise the desolation and hopeless depression which seized upon her before she had been many hours in the Nunswell lodgings.

The morning after she had met Gerald, she woke with a slight sensation of expectation. She hoped she should see him again; she wanted to talk to him, and tell him how she had thought over his words; she did not feel indignant at his plain-speaking, for it was not contemptuous and unsympathising like Frank’s, but sprang, she could not but feel, from genuine anxiety for her good, from single-minded incapability of advising her to act otherwise than as he believed to be right. “Still it is often impossible,” she thought, “for one person to judge of right and wrong for another,” and, more out of a feminine determination to prove herself justified in what she had done than from any vehement desire to persevere in her present course, she prepared herself mentally with a whole string of unanswerable arguments, of well-sounding sophistries with which to compel her old friend to acknowledge how exceptional was her position, how principle and self-respect, and unselfishness even, had driven her to this apparently undutiful step.

It was still early when Rachel tapped at her mistress’s door. “A letter, ma’am,” she announced, as she came in.

“A letter!” exclaimed Eugenia, not without excitement, “it must be a mistake. No one knows where—I mean, I have not sent my exact address yet.” But notwithstanding her words, her heart beat with vague, unreasonable hope—what could it be?—could Sydney have found her out, and be coming to her at once?—could Beauchamp himself be on the way to beseech her to return to him, to entreat her forgiveness for all he had made her suffer, to assure her that this last misery, this worst trouble of all, had somehow or other been a mistake, a mischievous exaggeration of his sister’s? As one possibility after another suggested itself to her imagination, Eugenia’s heart beat faster and faster. “Give it me quickly, Rachel,” she said impatiently. But as the girl brought it to her, she remarked, “It is not a letter by the post, ma’am. It is only a note—from the Spa Hotel, I believe,” and Eugenia’s hopes died within her. It was only a note—a few hurried words from Mr Thurston—beginning “My dear Mrs Chancellor,” to inform her of his being suddenly obliged to leave Nunswell on business, and to express his regret that he should not see her again. It was dated the previous evening. “As if he could have got any business letters after he saw me last night, and as if he would be likely to travel home about business on a Sunday,” thought Eugenia, with a bitter incredulity; “no, he has just thought it over, and agrees with Frank. They don’t want to have anything more to say to me.” And this day was even more miserable than its predecessors. She would not go to church, she dreaded now even the thought of a stroll in the gardens; she sat alone in the dull drawing-room all day with no books to read, no letters to write, nothing to do, nothing to hope for. And when bedtime came and she knelt, more from the force of old habit than from any expectation of comfort, guidance, or peace of mind, to pray to the Father who understands us all so much better than we understand ourselves, she started back from the appealing attitude in horror. For the only prayer which rose with any spontaneity to her lips was that she might sleep and never wake again.

Hours passed and still she lay awake, feverish, restless, and yet exhausted. When at last she fell asleep it seemed to her afterwards that it must have been close to morning. And the longed-for unconsciousness brought her but little repose, for it was broken by anxious distressing dreams, of which the only one she could recall with any distinctness was the last before she awoke. She dreamt that it was again the night of her father’s death, she herself was hastening to him with Gerald Thurston; they were driving furiously along a road of which some features seemed familiar to her, though at the same time she felt perfectly certain she had never traversed it before; and from time to time her companion added to her feeling of indescribable bewilderment by asking her if it would not be better to turn now and go the other way. She never seemed to answer him, but every time he made the suggestion, the invisible driver appeared to respond by turning sharply, and driving away faster than ever in an apparently opposite direction. Suddenly the scene changed, and Eugenia found herself by her father’s bedside, in the room she knew so well; and she became conscious of the strange dual existence familiar to us all in dreams, for while there in her father’s presence, waiting for her own arrival, she was yet driving on with Gerald; again she heard his curious monotonous inquiry, “Don’t you think we had better turn now and go the other way?” Another change; she was now in the old state bedroom at Halswood, where she had spent the night of her arrival there; she was still watching by a bedside, still waiting for her own appearance. Then the sound of the carriage wheels, of which all this time she had been conscious, grew louder and louder; she heard them rattling up the smooth carriage drive at Halswood as if it were a paved Wareborough street. A clock began to toll, the figure in the bed by which she was watching seemed to move, and a sudden horror seized her. In her dream-agony she rushed to the door of the room, and found it locked; in despair, it seemed to her, she screamed aloud with frantic vehemence, “Let me out, let me out;” and a voice, which she recognised as her husband’s, answered from the other side—“Too late, too late. Better turn now and go the other way.” And at this crisis she awoke.

It was broad daylight. Rachel was standing by her bedside, a cup of tea in her hand.

“What is the matter?” asked Eugenia, confusedly. Then, coming a little to herself, she sat up and looked at the girl. “My head is aching dreadfully,” she said, laying it back among the pillows as she spoke; “is that why you have brought me some tea, Rachel? Oh, no; of course you could not know. But there is something the matter, Rachel; you look as if there were.”

“No, indeed, ma’am, there isn’t; nothing, that is to say, except your head being bad. I was awake very early this morning, and I had my breakfast sooner than usual, and I thought you might like a cup of tea.”

“I am very glad of it,” said Eugenia, languidly. “But what made you get up so early. Had you a bad night too?”

“Oh, no, ma’am, thank you. I was wakened, by some visitors arriving unexpectedly about five o’clock. One visitor, at least. A young lady.”

“What an odd time to arrive,” observed Eugenia, carelessly. But, glancing at Rachel as she spoke, something in the girl’s manner again caught her attention. “Whois the young lady?” she asked, quickly. “Is it some one to see me—is it my sister?”

“No, ma’am, it is not Mrs Thurston,” replied Rachel, evidently afraid lest her words should cause disappointment. “It could not be Mrs Thurston, for she will only get your address this morning, you remember, ma’am. But itissome one for you. It is—”

“It is I,” interrupted a voice at the door. “May I come in, Eugenia?” and in a moment Roma Eyrecourt stood by the bedside. “You poor child,” she went on, hurriedly, as if to cover some embarrassment, and without giving Eugenia time to speak; “how burning your hands are, and your head too! I am not going to tease you, dear. I have come to do exactly what you tell me, except go away. You won’t send me away, Eugenia, will you?”

There was some anxiety in her tone; she leant over towards Eugenia as she spoke, and looked earnestly into her face with her beautiful, bright dark eyes—not keen or contemptuous now, but tender and loving, and almost entreating in their expression. The struggle, if there were one, was quickly over with Eugenia. She threw her arms round her friend’s neck and kissed her warmly. “It is very, very good of you to have come,” she whispered. “I know it is pure goodness that has brought you. I have tried to fancy I hated you, but I don’t. I love you and trust you. But, oh, Roma, I have been so miserable!”

“Too miserable, a great deal too miserable. I can fancy it all,” said Roma, sympathisingly. “But, Eugenia, you do look so tired. I am sure you have not slept well. Do try to go to sleep again, and try to believe you are not going to be so miserable as you think. I will talk to you as much as ever you like when I see you looking better. I will tell you everything—what made me come here, andanythingmore you like to ask me, if you will do what I tell you now. I have one or two letters to write for the early post. I will come back in a little, I promise you.”

Soothed in spite of herself by Roma’s kindness, comforted by the feeling that she was no longer alone, that one person, at least, in the world, still loved and cared for her, Eugenia fell asleep, and slept peacefully for two or three hours. Miss Eyrecourt, meantime, wrote her letters: one was addressed to Captain Chancellor at Halswood, another to Gerald Thurston, at Wareborough, a third to old Lady Dervock, whom she had quitted at rather short notice. Once or twice in writing she seemed somewhat at a loss.

“I don’t want to exaggerate things,” she said to herself, “but I really should not be surprised if Eugenia had a bad illness—brain fever, or something of the kind. However, I can judge better when I see her again.”

Roma’s fears were not fulfilled. Eugenia was much better when she saw her again. By the middle of the day she was up and dressed, and eager for the promised conversation. The mystery of the new-comer’s sudden appearance was easily explained.

The “business” which had necessitated Gerald’s leaving on Saturday night had taken him all the way up to Deepthorne, whence he had returned accompanied by Roma herself. It had seemed to him the best thing to do, he felt certain that he might rely on Miss Eyrecourt’s friendship, and he felt certain too that in the end Eugenia would not blame him for his interference. By dint of hard travelling they had managed to reach Nunswell early on Monday morning, thence by the very next train, Gerald, already due at his post, had returned to Wareborough. This was all, so far, that Roma had to tell. Of what had taken place at Halswood she was in utter ignorance. “I have not heard from Gertrude for more than a week,” she told Eugenia. “I half thought of writing to her just now while you were asleep, but I decided not to do so till I had spoken to you. I have written to your husband though, Eugenia,” she added, with a little hesitation.

“To Beauchamp,” exclaimed Beauchamp’s wife, her cheeks flushing; “oh, Roma, why did you? Could you not have waited for that till you had spoken to me?”

“No, Eugenia,” said Roma, gently but decidedly, “I purposely wanted to writebeforeseeing more of you. It was not betraying your secret, for Mr Thurston told me you had let your sister know where you were, and of course Beauchamp would go to her to inquire about you. I merely wrote to tell him that I was with you, ready to stay as long as you want me.”

“I don’t mind Beauchamp’s knowing where I am,” said Eugenia. “It will make no difference. He is not likely to seek me, for even if he cared about me, he will be too angry to take any such step.”

Roma thought differently. Beauchamp’s regard for appearances was likely to be a powerful motive with him, but she was wise enough to keep this consideration to herself, and to direct her attention to the root of the matter.

“How do you mean, ‘if he cared about you?’” she asked, quietly. “Do you doubt his caring for you?”

“Roma!” exclaimed Eugenia, reproachfully, the tears rushing to her eyes, “how can, you ask me? You, of all people!”

“You must tell me exactly what you mean, Eugenia,” said Roma, anxiously. “Half confidences are no use in such a case, and I, in return, promise to tell you what I believe to be the exact truth.”

So Eugenia told her all; more fully even than to Sydney she related the whole history of her hopes and disappointments, her golden anticipations, and the bitter realities in which they had ended. And Roma listened with a gravely attentive face, striving to the best of her power to distinguish between fact and fancy, between Eugenia’s actual grounds for unhappiness, and her morbid inclination to exaggerate them. It was not for Roma so impossible as it might have been for many to arrive at a just comprehension of the state of matters, for the character of the one of the two persons chiefly concerned had been long ago gauged by her, that of the other had interested her greatly, and now every word and look and tone assisted her to a fuller understanding of its lights and shades, its beauties and defects. When Eugenia at last left off speaking, Miss Eyrecourt sat silent for a minute or two. Eugenia’s heart was beating fast with anxiety. “Roma,” she said at last, imploringly, “speak to me, do.”

“I was only thinking how best to put in words what I want to say,” said Roma. “Listen, Eugenia. I would say it was very wicked of Gertrude to tell you what she did, if I supposed that she at all realised what she was doing, or how you would take it. However, don’t let us speak of her. I would rather not. She has been very kind to me, and she is more silly and small than malevolent. As to what she told you, it was a mixture of truth and falsehood, but the part that you cared about so deeply was untrue. It is quite untrue that Gertrude’s interference separated Beauchamp and me. It was not required. I refused to marry him because I did not care for him in that way in the least, and also because I did not believe, and never shall, that he cared for me either. Even if I had cared for him, I don’t know but what my dread of vexing Gertrude, of seeming to repay her kindness by ingratitude, would have been strong enough to stop me; but that wasnotthe reason. I simply did not care for him, except in a sisterly sort of way. And he—he fancied he cared for me, but he never did. It was greatly out of contradiction, and also because my indifference piqued him—he was so spoilt wherever he went, so sought after and petted! But I think I know the worst of him, and you may believe me, Eugenia, that he never cared as earnestly, astruly, for any woman as for you. I regretted your marriage, because, matter-of-fact as I am myself, I saw how different you were—I feared there would be sorrow in store for you—I feared Beauchamp would not understand you—but all the same, I never liked him so much as when I found how hedidcare for you. He is not a grand character, Eugenia; I dare say what you tell me you suspect may have been true—that he thought it was very grand of him to marry for love, notwithstanding his great prospects, and I have no doubt Gertrude helped him to think so. But, all the same, he did marry for love, and he loves you still; and, dear Eugenia, you will come to see, I do believe, that there is still a fair share of happiness waiting for you. No one will ever have the same power for good over Beauchamp as you, and even if you begin again with little hope or heart, encouragement will come; all the more quickly, perhaps, because of your faint expectations. Now I have told you exactly what I think. I have gone against the old advice never to meddle between husband and wife. I allow that you have had a great deal to bear, not a little to complain of. But, knowing Beauchamp as I do, I must say he has had something to bear too. In the first place, he is innocent of your having imagined him a different character from what he really is; he could not possibly understand it if it was told him. There has been a sort of playing at cross-purposes; for you have not made the best of him from your mistaken notion of the material you had to work upon.Now, you can face things. Leave the past, and decide bravely to do the best with the present.”

The tears were running down Eugenia’s pale cheeks: “You forget, Roma,” she said, sadly. “I have no present. I have cut myself away from it. I believe all you say, every word of it. I mean, I believeyou. But if, as you allow, Beauchamp has not understood me hitherto, how could he ever understand the feelings which made me leave him? He must be a different man from what I now believe him to be if what I have done does not estrange us more than ever. For no mere surface peace would satisfy me, Roma. I mean, I could not agree to go back and begin again, merely for the sake of appearances, knowing that in reality there was no possibility of happiness for us.”

“We shall see,” said Roma. “Sometimes things turn out quite the other way from what we expect. But I do think, Eugenia, you should make up your mind to do what ever you come to see is right for you to do, and never mind about Beauchamp’s motives for being willing, if he prove so, to meet you half-way.”

Eugenia did not answer, and Roma thought it as well to leave her now to think things over in her own way. In her heart Miss Eyrecourt was not without a hope that this crisis might prove a turning-point; that the shock of finding Eugenia gone might open her husband’s eyes to some part of the unhappiness she had endured, and that the way in which Gertrude had acted might lead him to a clearer understanding of the danger of her influence in his household. “Gertrude is sure to clear herself if she possibly can,” thought Roma; “still Beauchamp must see she at least did not try to do any good. Besides, he must be conscious of how he has allowed her to speak of Eugenia, and how he has spoken himself. I wonder what happened when he came home and found his wife gone.”

This was what had happened. It was on Thursday that Mrs Chancellor had left Halswood, where her husband was expected to return the next day. But the next day came and went, and it was not till pretty late on Saturday afternoon that he made his appearance. Mrs Eyrecourt in the meantime was suffering from no more painful feeling than annoyance, and some amount of indignation at her sister-in-law’s unceremonious behaviour. Anxiety she felt none, for Eugenia had by no means allowed the whole depth of her feelings to appear during her conversation with her husband’s sister, and the note which was given to Gertrude on her return home from a drive that Thursday afternoon, in explanation of her hostess’s absence, had been carefully worded by Eugenia, and only left on her sister-in-law’s mind the impression that she herself must be held of small account by her brother’s wife if some unexplained summons from her Wareborough friends was considered of sufficient importance to justify so unheard-of a breach of hospitality.

Beauchamp’s non-appearance the next day irritated her still further. She was by no means in the sweetest of tempers when Captain Chancellor came home. He came back in a more than usually kindly frame of mind towards his wife. He had enjoyed his visit very much. Everybody had been very civil to him, and several people had inquired pointedly for Eugenia, whose troubles and serious illness had awakened the sympathy and interest—sincere and genuine so far as they go—which, after all, selfish and conventional as we nineteenth-century people are supposed to have become, are not yet difficult to awaken in the hearts of many of those among whom we live. Lady Hereward had been of the party, and her peculiar interest in the young mother’s bereavement had caused her to single out Beauchamp in a gratifying manner.

“I cannot tell you,” she had said to him, drawing him aside for a moment—“I cannot tell you how much I have been thinking lately of that beautiful young wife of yours, Captain Chancellor. I was very nearly writing to her when I heard of her—her disappointment, but I feared it might seem intrusive. Will you tell her so? And whenever she feels equal to it, I do hope you will bring her to spend a few quiet days with me. You must be very good to her—you will forgive an old woman’s impertinence?—you must beverygood to her. No doubt you are, but I doubt if even the best of husbands canquiteenter into her sorrow. It is not to be expected they should, perhaps. And following so quickly on her father’s death too! Ah, yes, it was very sad! And she has no mother! Give her my messages, and tell her of my sympathy, and be very patient with her, even if her grief seems exaggerated. There, now, I have kept up my character as a meddlesome old woman, have I not?”

But Beauchamp felt by no means offended. The interest was too evidently genuine, the sympathy too womanly for the words to annoy. And then the speaker was Lady Hereward! Captain Chancellor thought over what she had said, and was all the better for it.

No one was to be seen in Eugenia’s sitting-room when he reached home on Saturday afternoon. “She must be out,” he thought; and the sound of Mrs Eyrecourt’s voice as he passed an open window confirmed his supposition. He was hastening out to join them by the door opening from his own “den” on to the sort of terrace below, when a letter, addressed to him in Eugenia’s handwriting, placed conspicuously on the mantelpiece, caught his eye. In another moment he had opened and read it. His bright complexion turned to a grey pallor; a look of wild distress replaced the expression of smiling indifference habitual to him; all the nerve and spring seemed to melt out of his bearing; for “she has gone out of her mind,” was the first thought that occurred to him—“grief has driven her insane,” as Lady Hereward’s words returned to his mind. “Good heavens! and this note is dated Thursday! What may not have happened by now?” Then his sister’s voice, gay and careless as usual, again reached his ear. “Gertrude must know it. What is she thinking of? What is the meaning of it all?”

A sort of giddiness came over him. He had to sit down for a moment to prevent himself falling. Then he went forward to the window from which steps led to the walk below, and called to Mrs Eyrecourt.

“Gertrude,” he said, “come here at once. I want you.”

Full of her own grievances, which the sight of her brother recalled freshly to her mind, Mrs Eyrecourt hardly relished the authoritative summons. She came up the steps slowly, calling to her dog, whose company she much preferred to that of her daughter.

“So you have come back at last, Beauchamp!” she said, as she drew near him. “I was very nearly setting off home this morning, I can tell you. I wonder what you asked me to come to see you for!”

Her pettishness was quite lost on her brother.

“Gertrude,” he said, excitedly, as if he had not heard her words, “do you not know, ordoyou know about Eugenia? What has happened?”

“What has happened?” she repeated, looking a little startled; “nothing that I know of, except that she has gone to her friends at Wareborough—her sister, or aunt, or somebody—for a day or two. I suppose she often goes there, does she not? though I certainly thought she might have waited till my visit was over.”

“Isthatall you know?” said Beauchamp, impatiently. “Do you not know with what intention she left this—that she went, never to return?”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mrs Eyrecourt, now for the first time taking alarm. “You don’t mean to say she has run away—run awaywithsome one? How frightful! What a scandal! Oh, Beauchamp, how terribly you have been deceived!”

“Take care what you say, Gertrude,” said Captain Chancellor, sternly. “Run awaywithany one—my wife—Eugenia! What are you thinking of? Read that!”

He thrust into her hand the letter he had found on his mantelpiece, and while watching her read it, he almost laughed, not with standing his distress, at the utter incompatibility of his sister’s coarsely commonplace supposition with the perfect guilelessness, the transparency and innocence, he had often been half inclined to look upon as but a part of his wife’s childishness and inexperience.

Eugenia’s note to her husband was as follows:—

“I am going away because I am too hopeless and miserable to bear my life longer. Hitherto I have clung to hope and to you through all my suffering, believing that at least youhadloved me. Now I know the whole bitter truth. I am going to my own friends. I will agree to any arrangements you like to make, but I do not want any money, except what I have of my own. I cannot think that you will in any way miss me, but I trust you will be happier without me than you have been with me.“Eugenia.”

“I am going away because I am too hopeless and miserable to bear my life longer. Hitherto I have clung to hope and to you through all my suffering, believing that at least youhadloved me. Now I know the whole bitter truth. I am going to my own friends. I will agree to any arrangements you like to make, but I do not want any money, except what I have of my own. I cannot think that you will in any way miss me, but I trust you will be happier without me than you have been with me.“Eugenia.”

Mrs Eyrecourt did not speak when she had finished reading this. Beauchamp, observing her closely, fancied she looked pale and frightened.

“Can you explain any of this to me?” he asked, impatiently. “Has anything happened in my absence, to explain it? Or must I think she has gone out of her mind?”

Gertrude hesitated a little. “There was—we had a rather disagreeable conversation the day you left,” she began. “I don’t know who in the world could have put it in her head—trulyI don’t, Beauchamp—but all of a sudden Eugenia challenged me with having been the cause of yournotmarrying Roma, and by some peculiar reasoning of her own, from that she went on to argue that I was the cause of your hasty proposal to her, which she seems to look upon as the misfortune of her life.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“What could I tell her but the truth? She seemed to have a very fair notion of it to begin with. I could not have deceived her. Certainly she is the most hot-headed exaggerated person I ever knew. She talked of having been deceived and all sorts of things. She must have been infatuated to think that you, with your prospects—and altogether—could havedeliberatelychosen her, or that your friends could have approved of your doing so, though of course both you and they were too honourable to try to draw back once the thing was actually done.”

Captain Chancellor laughed. There was a slight incredulousness in his laugh which made Gertrude very irate. “Then what you have told me is about the general substance of what you told her?” he said.

“I suppose so,” said Mrs Eyrecourt, sulkily. “I did not begin it. I do not consider myself in any way responsible for what she has done. She seemed all right again at luncheon, and as you must have seen, I never even associated this foolish fit of jealousy of hers with her sudden visit to her friends.”

But Beauchamp was not yet satisfied. For almost the first time in his life, he felt that he had his sister in his power, and he used it to the utmost. Little by little he extracted from her a full account of what had passed between her and his wife, including what she had told Eugenia of her really mistaken impression of the true relations that had existed between himself and Roma Eyrecourt, and when he had learnt all that she had to tell, he turned from her with a bitter “Thank you, Gertrude. You have certainly done your best to ruin any chances of happiness I had. I never before had a conception how spiteful a spiteful woman could be. You disliked Eugenia from the first, because she was my choice and not yours, and in the pleasure of making her miserable you have cared little what became of me.”

Mrs Eyrecourt was so offended that she first burst into tears, and then decided upon setting off to join Addie and her mother that very afternoon, leaving Floss behind her till she sent directions for her journey home. Captain Chancellor did not care. Before his sister had fixed her train, he was half-way to Wareborough, where, however, disappointment awaited him in the shape of the Thurstons’ complete ignorance of Eugenia’s whereabouts. The interview with his wife’s relations threatened at first to be a stormy one, for, in his increasing anxiety and perplexity, he was more than half inclined to blame them for this new complication. But they were patient and judicious; the sight of his unfeigned distress inclined Sydney to judge him more leniently than she had ever done, and new hopes began to spring in her heart, that if only Eugenia were with them again, all might yet be well. In the end, Beauchamp went home again to Halswood, by Frank’s advice, to wait there quietly till they heard from their sister.

“I am certain we shall have a letter from her to-morrow or Monday,” said Frank, “for even if she were ill, her maid Rachel, who, we were glad to find, is with her, would write. And it is better for you to go home, and look as if nothing were wrong. Your staying here would only make a talk, and I shall telegraph instantly we hear.”

So Beauchamp went home—home to the desolate house where Eugenia had felt so sure he would never miss her; and the loneliness and anxiety and wretchedness of the next two days brought him face to face with some truths hitherto but little recognised or considered in his pleasure-loving, self-regarding life.

And after all it was Roma’s letter, reaching him on Tuesday morning only, which first brought relief to the fears growing almost more than he could endure, for, by some mischance, Eugenia’s unlucky note to her sister, too late for Saturday’s post from Nunswell, was not received at its destination till this same Tuesday morning.

At first sight of Miss Eyrecourt’s letter, Captain Chancellor could hardly believe his eyes. “Romawith her,” he exclaimed; “Roma, of all people! How can I reconcile that with Gertrude’s story?”

Incomprehensible as it was, however, the news was marvellously welcome. Half-an-hour later came Frank Thurston’s promised telegram, and that very afternoon, hardly to her surprise, Rachel brought word privately to Miss Eyrecourt, that Captain Chancellor wished to know how he could see her.

“He does not want my mistress to be told of his arrival till he has seen you, ma’am,” said Rachel; adding discreetly, “of course with her not being very strong it might startle her, not expecting my master so soon.”

Volume Three—Chapter Eight.O si sic Omnia!“Und dennoch wohl ûns, wenn die Asche treû Der Fûnken hegt, wenn dan getäuschte Herz Nicht müde wird, von Neûem zû erglüh ’n!”Uhland.“Eugenia,” said Roma, when they were sitting together later in the day, “I have something to tell you.”“What?” asked Eugenia.“Some one is coming to see you—this evening or to-morrow morning, if you would like that better.”“Who is it, Roma?” asked Eugenia, the colour rushing to her pale cheeks. “Not—not Beauchamp?”“Yes, it is Beauchamp,” answered Roma. She had risen from her seat and now stood beside Eugenia, looking down at her with an expression of mingled anxiety and sympathy.“Oh, Roma, you must have asked him to come, your letter must have brought him,” exclaimed Beauchamp’s wife in great distress. “I know you meant it well, dear Roma, but you should not have done it. I don’t want to see him just yet. I have been trying to make up my mind to do what I suppose must be right—to offer to go back to him, and do my duty as his wife. But you don’t know how difficult it will be. Oh, so difficult! He will never in the least understand the feelings that made me so miserable; he will think it was all bad temper; or low common jealousy of his having ever cared foryou; oh, I see it all so plainly! Of course I will ask him to forgive me—ah, how gladly I would do so if I thought he could understand what he really has to forgive—it is not that I shrink from. But I see that during the rest of our life together I shall stand at such a hopeless disadvantage: he will not be able to believe in my real wish and determination to do my best; it is my own fault, I have brought it on myself, but that does not make it less bitter. This that I have done—this leaving him and my home, will be constantly rising up in judgment against me in his mind—it will never seem to him that anything was wanting onhisside. I do mean to try, Roma, I do indeed, but all the spring has gone out of everything. Oh, how lonely it will be!”Roma let her finish speaking without interrupting her. Then she said gently—“I think you see things at their very worst, Eugenia. I think there are feelings and motives in Beauchamp which will make your life easier than you now imagine. But I don’t think my saying so will do much good. About his coming, however, I must explain that it was entirely his own doing. My letter did not bring him. I did not say a word in it but what I told you. And even if I had not written, Beauchamp would have been here by now, for your brother-in-law had sent him your address.”“Heneed not have interfered,” said Eugenia, haughtily.Roma smiled. “He meant it for the best, I have no doubt,” she said. “You are sore and uneasy just now, Eugenia, and no wonder, but after awhile you will see things more brightly, I feel sure. But now, what about your seeing Beauchamp? He will be calling this evening to ask; he said he would. Would you rather wait till to-morrow morning?”“I don’t know,” said Eugenia, irresolutely. Then, as a new thought struck her, “Have you seen him then, Roma?” she asked.“Yes,” answered Miss Eyrecourt. “I have seen him, and had a very long talk with him—the longest talk, I think, I ever had with any gentleman! But I don’t think his wife will be jealous,” she added, with a bright smile, which, in spite of herself, extracted a faint, shadowy reflection of itself from Eugenia.Just then there came a ring at the bell.“There he is,” said Roma; “well, Eugenia?”“I will see him now,” said Eugenia, suddenly. “It is better—my putting it off might only irritate him more.”Roma kissed her without speaking, and left the room.In the few minutes that passed before Captain Chancellor came upstairs how many painful anticipations had time to rush through Eugenia’s brain! She was determined to go through with what she had promised to Roma and to herself to attempt: she would humble herself to the utmost that she could truthfully do so; she would ask her husband’s forgiveness; she would own that she had taken up, with exaggeration and bitterness, Mrs Eyrecourt’s version of the past. All this she would say: she owed it to her own self-respect to do so, hopeless as she felt of any good effect it might have on her future, little as she anticipated that it would awaken any generous or tender feelings towards her in her husband’s heart. She pictured to herself the cold air of superiority with which he would receive her confession; she recalled the unsympathising contempt with which on several occasions her impulsive endeavours to draw nearer to him, to understand him better, had been thrown back on herself with a recoil of indignant mortification—and she said to herself that her fate was a very hard one.There came a sort of tap at the door, and in answer to her tremulous “come in,” Captain Chancellor appeared. She was standing by the table, in the same attitude as that in which Roma left her. She looked up as Beauchamp closed the door, and came forward. To her surprise, she perceived at once that he was looking ill and careworn, and that his bearing was by no means free from agitation. She was so surprised that she forgot what she had meant to say first of all; she opened her lips mechanically, but no sound was heard: then a sort of giddiness came over her for a moment, and half unconsciously she closed her eyes. He was beside her in an instant. “Eugenia,” he exclaimed, “Eugenia, how ill you are looking! My poor darling, I may not have understood you—I have been a blind, selfish, careless husband, but oh, my dear, you should not have fancied I was so bad as not to care for your suffering! I did care—I do care. Your leaving me has half broken my heart. Will you not come back and try me again? Will you not believe in my love for you? Truly, it has always been there, though you doubted it.” Where were all Eugenia’s carefully considered words of confession? “Thus far have I done wrong, but no farther; to this extent have I been wanting in my wifely duty, but not beyond.” She threw her arms round her husband’s neck, and careless of possible repulse she burst into tears. “Beauchamp,” she said, simply, “I am very sorry for what I have done wrong. I will try to please you better in the future if you will forgive the past.”“We willbothtry again,” he said, kindly, “Not that you didnotplease me, my dear child. Your only fault was—was—well, perhaps, as I have sometimes told you, you expected a little too much; your ideas were a little bit too romantic for every-day life. The best of husbands and wives knock against each other’s fancies now and then, you know, and it can’t be always like a honeymoon,”—Eugenia winced at this a little, a very little,—“but, all the same, I don’t see why our chances of being happy together are not quite as good as other people’s. You will gain experience, and I, I hope, will learn to understand you better. And I think that’s about all we can say. I am very thankful to have you again safe and well, and the next time you make yourself miserable about anything, come and askme; don’t go to other people, who see nothing except through their own prejudices. Gertrude didn’t mean to make mischief; all the same she did so, as I told her. But Roma has put all that right?”“Yes,” said Eugenia, “I—we—can never thank her enough for what she has done.”“She says,” pursued Beauchamp, with unwonted humility, “I should have told you all about that old affair with her. I was very nearly doing so once, I remember, but—I don’t know how it was—I was bothered at that time, and I liked to keep you distinct from it all. I was bitter about Roma for a good while, and I disliked the subject. But, Eugenia, no suffering I have ever had to bear in my life has equalled that of the last few days.”They were silent for a minute or two. “I must say,” Captain Chancellor went on, speaking more in his usual tone, “the Thurstons behaved very sensibly in not making any fuss. Nothing would have been so odious as any absurd story getting about.” But, happening to observe the pained expression of Eugenia’s face, he changed the subject, and went on to talk of some plans he had in his head of going abroad for a time, taking Eugenia to visit many places so far known to her but by name. “It would be the best way of making you strong again,” he said. “We might even spend next winter out of England, if we liked.” And, notwithstanding the unexpected encouragement she had met with in her new resolutions, it was a relief to Eugenia to be freed from the anticipation of an immediate recommencement of the life at Halswood, hitherto so lonely and uncongenial. She was touched, too, by the evident consideration for her happiness which prompted this new scheme, and Beauchamp, on his side, felt rewarded by her gratification for the amount of self-denial which the proposed plan entailed on him.So when Roma rejoined them she quickly saw that her hopes had not been groundless; already the expression of Eugenia’s face had grown brighter and less despondent than she had seen it for long.“Was I not a true prophet?” she said, to Eugenia, when they were by themselves again. “Are not things more hopeful than you expected?”“Yes,” said Eugenia, thoughtfully, “they are; and it is you I have to thank for their being so, Roma.”“No, don’t say that,” interrupted Roma, quickly. “I don’t like you to say so, because I want you to do Beauchamp justice. There is more to work upon in him than you were inclined to think, and you, as I told you before, have more power over him to draw out his best than any one else ever had or could have.”“But still it is your doing,” persisted Eugenia, affectionately; “for who else but you could ever have opened my eyes to see this, or at least to look for it?”A new feeling had wakened in her heart to her husband. From the ashes of the old unreasoning, wilfully blind, headstrong devotion had arisen a calmer, more tempered, more enduring sentiment. As yet she was hardly conscious of its existence; its component parts she could certainly not have defined. She only said to herself, “I don’t know how it is, but, somehow, what has passed to-day has made me feelsorryfor Beauchamp. I don’t think hitherto any one has taken much pains to draw out what Roma calls ‘his best.’ And I am so weak and foolish and full of faults, how can I hope to do it? Yet, somehow, I think Idohope it.”They all left Nunswell the next day, Roma travelling with them as far as Wareborough only, where she had promised a short visit to her cousins, the Dalrymples; Beauchamp and his wife returning to Halswood, there at once to commence preparations for their visit to foreign parts.Eugenia trembled a little as they drew near the spot which, but so few days before, she had quitted with something very like despair in her heart. There was a mingling of almost superstitious apprehensiveness in her shrinking from “beginning again”—with new motives, new hopes, new patience—in the very place which had witnessed the woeful failure of her first essays, the cloudy ending to the too brilliant promise of the dawn of her married life. But these half-morbid feelings she was wise enough to keep to herself.“I only hope,” she thought, “that Mrs Grier will not think herself bound to receive me in state after so short an absence. If she does I shall take it as a bad omen. She is a very good creature, but I shall never forget her first reception.”So it was with some little apprehension that Mrs Chancellor looked out of the carriage as the front of the house came in sight. She knew Mrs Eyrecourt had gone; it had never occurred to her that poor little Floss had been temporarily left behind. Her surprise was great, her relief and pleasure extreme, when, almost before the carriage had stopped, she heard her own name shouted in the little girl’s peculiar pronunciation: “Aunty ’Genia, Aunty ’Genia, you have comed back! Kiss me quick! You never said good-bye when you wented away, and I cwied so! Please don’t never go away any more!”The tears were not very far away from Eugenia’s own eyes, as she lifted the excited little mortal in her arms, and kissed the eager, flushed face.“Dear little Floss,” she said, “I am so glad to come back to you;” and even Beauchamp was struck by the little scene.“What an eccentric little creature it is,” he said to his wife, when, Floss’s rhapsodies having subsided, she said good-night and went off to bed “as good as gold.”“Who would have thought that Gertrude’s child could have hugged away as vehemently at anyone as Floss did just now.”And the child’s demonstrative affection put it into his head to make an unexpected proposal to Eugenia. “How would you like to take Floss with us?” he said. “I have no doubt Gertrude would be enchanted to let her come, and the child’s maid is French, which would be an advantage. You see we shall not be moving about at any uncomfortable speed; you are not strong enough for it, and that sort of thing is not my idea of travelling for pleasure. When there is no need for hurry, much better take it leisurely.”Eugenia was delighted; she knew, though she never told it to anyone, the indirect influence for good which Floss’s innocent championship had had upon her life, and the idea of the child’s happiness was pleasant to her. Mrs Eyrecourt was delighted; so delighted that she wrote back accepting her brother’s offer, as if no shadow of anything disagreeable had ever disturbed the harmony of their intercourse. It suited her particularly well, to have Floss disposed of for the present, as she was anticipating a round of visits in which a child would have been rather an encumbrance, while yet, for the sake of appearances, she could not make up her mind to leave the little girl alone at Winsley for many weeks at a time. It looked well, too, to be able to tell her friends that her brother and his wife, “having no children of their own,” had taken such a fancy to her little daughter that they had begged leave to take her abroad with them for the winter; for Gertrude had sense enough to know that “family jars” are, of all things, the most undignified and “vulgar,” and she had endured some perturbation of spirit of late as to the probable nature of her future terms with her Halswood relatives.“I am so glad you are going abroad,” she wrote; “it will be the very thing to set up Eugenia’s health and spirits. By-the-bye, I must not forget to send all sorts of kind messages from Addie and Victoria and their mother. The girls were sorry not to see you at Halswood as was arranged, but of course they quite understand my explanation about Eugenia’s not being well enough to receive them, and they hope to pay their visit some other time” etc, etc.Some people—for of course in the neighbourhood of Halswood as elsewhere there were to be found human beings with superfluous energy to spare from the management of their own concerns, which they apparently conceived it to be their duty to bestow on those of others—some people thought it very odd and absurd of Captain and Mrs Chancellor to burden themselves with a child on their foreign tour. It was so odd as only to be explicable by the comprehensive assertion of Mrs Chancellor’s being, to say the least, “very odd altogether.” For notwithstanding all the care that had been taken to guard against outside remark, some amount of gossip had oozed out concerning Eugenia’s hasty flight from Halswood. Servants, the very best of them perhaps, will but be servants. It was not in Mrs Grier’s nature to refrain from lugubrious head-shakings and mysterious allusions when she found that her young mistress had actually left home without any explanation to herself, the vice-gerent of the establishment, of the reasons for this sudden step; it was not in the unexceptionable Blinkhorn’s nature to refrain, at the first table at least, from comment upon his master’s state of anxiety and dejection during the days of uncertainty and foreboding which succeeded his return home. And the natures of the various inferior functionaries in the Halswood household, being neither better nor worse than are ordinarily met with in their respective capacities, the rolling stone of gossip, contrary to the adage, grew and gathered as it went, till but few of the great houses in the neighbourhood, none certainly of the tea-tables in the little town of Chilworth or of the less pretentious Sunday afternoon entertainments in the farm houses on the estate, but had their own pet version of the Halswood scandal.Of this, however, the principals in the little drama were, as is not unfrequently the case, in happy ignorance. As to the Chilworth edition of the story, as to the village chatter, they were of little consequence. They lived their appointed nine days, then died a natural death. But as to the more discreetly veiled, but nevertheless the far more insidious, whisper that went the round of “the county,” there is little saying where it would have stopped, how deep might not have been the social injury it would have caused to impulsive, reckless, innocent Eugenia, had it not suddenly received its death-blow from an unexpected but irresistible hand. It came to Lady Hereward’s ears, how or whence matters little, that the wife of the master of Halswood, “the girl with the beautiful face” which somehow had recalled the memory of the long years ago dead and buried little Alice, the young mother whose little baby had died, had somehow or other done something which threatened to get her “talked about.” And the good old woman rose to the occasion. “I think you are not aware, my dear Lady Vaughan,” she said, the first time the subject was publicly alluded to before her, “in fact, I am quite sure youcannotbe aware that the young lady of whom you are speaking is a valued friend of mine, for I am certain you would not intentionally hurt my feelings or those of any one. Mrs Chancellor has passed through much sorrow, and she has my deepest sympathy. The report to which you allude is an exaggerated version of the simple fact that she was called away rather suddenly in her husband’s absence to some of her own friends. When she comes home again strong and well, as I hope she will, it will give me great pleasure to introduce her and any of my friends who have not yet met, to each other, for I hope she will be often at Marshlands.” Then she changed the subject; but this was the last that was heard, publicly at least, of “Mrs Chancellor’s elopement,” for Lady Hereward had queened it to some purpose during her forty years reign in the county.It was in the latter part of July that Beauchamp and his wife left home. They stayed a little time in town, then proceeded by easy stages to Switzerland, intending there to spend the remainder of the summer and the early autumn, and when the colder weather drew near, to turn their steps to some one of the winter nests in the south of France. Their programme was carried out even more fully than they had intended. Winter came and went, though they learnt it only by the shortening and then lengthening again of the soft, sunny days; spring and summer, chasing travellers and swallows away once more to less sultry regions, followed; autumn returned, and Christmas, in the unfamiliar garb he wears by the shores of the blue Mediterranean, had passed by yet again, with his all-the-world-over greeting of “glad tidings and great joy,” before there was any talk of Halswood being again inhabited by its owners. Before that time came, Floss had learnt to chatter French like a magpie, Eugenia had come to doubt if she after all sufficiently appreciated the inestimable privilege of being “English bred and born,” and Beauchamp, on his part, was beginning to wonder if he would be equal to keeping his seat across country next season, after his long sojourning in the tents of Kedar, otherwise regions where “le sport” was alluded to with the uncomprehending bewilderment with which we used to discuss the fascination of the feast of Juggernaut—where a day with the Pau foxhounds furnished the only procurable pretence of a run.At last the time for their return home was fixed. It had been in July they left England; it was not till the April “next but one” that they found themselves again within her shores, their party augmented by the presence of a French bonne, with a flapping white cap and a very satisfactory “worldly-looking” baby, a great boy of four months old, a most respectable son and heir to the hitherto ill-fated Chancellor estates. At first Eugenia’s disappointment that the little creature was not a daughter was great; but this feeling she expressed to no one, well aware that sympathy therein was hardly to be expected. She had learnt a good deal, she was learning every day more and more of the wisdom, the necessity of making the best of the materials with which she had to work; slowly, painfully was coming home to her the interpretation of the dream, the lesson of the great “life’s trial” in which so rashly, so ignorantly she had engaged. “Love” for her had not been “clear gain,” viewed by the light of the dim knowledge of to-day; but in the wiser afterwards “the sun will pierce;” the follies, the failures, the mistakes, the delusions will be lost in the beautiful whole, may indeed prove to have been essential to its perfection.Not that Beauchamp Chancellor’s wife said or thought all this to herself; she speculated and theorised and philosophised much less than of old; she lived more in the present, taking life, as we all must take it sooner or later, if it is to be endurable at all, in a day-by-day fashion, leaving the “huge mounds of years,” the bewildering mazes of whys and wherefores, past and future, to be considered “by-and-by”—by-and-by, when surely we shall see things somewhat more clearly, more justly, more divinely, but a by-and-by which will never come to us if, dissatisfied with the fair promise of its far-off beauty, we seek to grasp its shadowy substance before the time.So, in a sense—must it not always be but in a sense?—Eugenia was happy. Happier perhaps possibly, because she thought less about being happy than in the old days. She had seen before her in imagination a dreary road; to her surprise, ever and again as she walked along, fresh flowers began to spring by the wayside—little unobtrusive blossoms, hardly distinguishable till her foot had all but crushed out their tender life; tiny buds of brightness and sweetness, bringing many an unexpected spot of colour or breath of fragrance into her daily life.She grew to be very thankful that her child was a boy; she learnt to be grateful for every link of sympathy between her husband and herself, she tried her utmost to strengthen and rivet each one of these; and though, apparently, at least, her efforts often failed, sometimes, on the other hand, she was rewarded by success surpassing her most sanguine hopes.“He is not a grand character,” Roma had said, justly, “but, all the same, there is a great deal of good in him; and of all people, you, Eugenia, have most power to draw out and strengthen this.” And these simple words Beauchamp’s wife henceforth never allowed herself to forget.They reached Halswood safe and well on a lovely spring evening. There stood Mrs Grier, her black silk dress relieved for once by some cheerful pink ribbons, tears of joy in her eyes at the non-fulfilment of her many gloomy prophecies. It was indeed, as she took care to inform her mistress, “a day she had little expected ever to see.” But Eugenia could smile at her now, as she assured her that “the luck had certainly turned” with the arrival of the great crowing baby who was to bring life and brightness to the old house.And before long Halswood looked more cheerful than it had done for many a day. Mrs Eyrecourt’s anxiety to resume the guardianship of her little daughter was not so overwhelming as to be allowed to interfere with her plans for the season. She had just taken a house in town for her usual three months, so she contented herself with “a mere glimpse” of the travellers as they passed through, expressed herself delighted with the improvement in the child’s manners and appearance, and yielded without much pressing to the proposal that Floss should accompany her friends home and remain with them till the summer. “The country is much better for children certainly,” said Mrs Eyrecourt. “I shall feel happier for Floss not to be so long in town. I only wish I could go down to Halswood with you myself, but it is impossible. I must be in town as much as I can now, so that dear Quin can spend his Saturdays and Sundays with me.”But though Gertrude could not spare time to welcome the absentees back to Halswood, Roma could. She joined them there within a week of their arrival, and for a few pleasant days Sydney and her belongings joined them too. Poor Sydney’s holidays were not many, but her busy life seemed to suit her; her fair face was as calm, her voice as sweet and even, as in her girlish days; and when she and Frank went away, back again to smoky Wareborough, they were cheered by the thought that their intercourse with Eugenia promised to be frequent and cordial. Not much private talk had passed between the sisters; Eugenia was charier of confidences, than had once been natural to her, but Sydney was satisfied.“She is much happier than I ever hoped to see her,” said the younger sister to her husband. “It is not exactly thesortof happiness I should long ago have imagined would have contented Eugenia; somehow, even though I feel so thankful and relieved about her, I could hardly prevent the tears coming to my eyes when I looked at her. She must have suffered so much, Frank (though outwardly things have been so prosperous with her) to be so changed.”“She has had to learn her lessons like other people,” said Frank, oracularly.“But isn’t it wonderful how she adapts herself to her husband?” said Sydney. “He is improved, I must allow; but therecannotbe much sympathy between them, and Eugenia must know it.”“No doubt she does, but better women than Eugenia,” replied Frank, with a spice of his old antagonism, “have had to get on with less. And Chancellor’s by no means a bad fellow after all; many a man would have had less patience with Eugenia’s freaks and fancies than he. I always told you they’d shake into their places some day. By-the-bye, you must remind me to give that invitation to Gerald. I hope he will go, for more reasons than one.”Sydney smiled. “I hope so too,” she said.

“Und dennoch wohl ûns, wenn die Asche treû Der Fûnken hegt, wenn dan getäuschte Herz Nicht müde wird, von Neûem zû erglüh ’n!”Uhland.

“Und dennoch wohl ûns, wenn die Asche treû Der Fûnken hegt, wenn dan getäuschte Herz Nicht müde wird, von Neûem zû erglüh ’n!”Uhland.

“Eugenia,” said Roma, when they were sitting together later in the day, “I have something to tell you.”

“What?” asked Eugenia.

“Some one is coming to see you—this evening or to-morrow morning, if you would like that better.”

“Who is it, Roma?” asked Eugenia, the colour rushing to her pale cheeks. “Not—not Beauchamp?”

“Yes, it is Beauchamp,” answered Roma. She had risen from her seat and now stood beside Eugenia, looking down at her with an expression of mingled anxiety and sympathy.

“Oh, Roma, you must have asked him to come, your letter must have brought him,” exclaimed Beauchamp’s wife in great distress. “I know you meant it well, dear Roma, but you should not have done it. I don’t want to see him just yet. I have been trying to make up my mind to do what I suppose must be right—to offer to go back to him, and do my duty as his wife. But you don’t know how difficult it will be. Oh, so difficult! He will never in the least understand the feelings that made me so miserable; he will think it was all bad temper; or low common jealousy of his having ever cared foryou; oh, I see it all so plainly! Of course I will ask him to forgive me—ah, how gladly I would do so if I thought he could understand what he really has to forgive—it is not that I shrink from. But I see that during the rest of our life together I shall stand at such a hopeless disadvantage: he will not be able to believe in my real wish and determination to do my best; it is my own fault, I have brought it on myself, but that does not make it less bitter. This that I have done—this leaving him and my home, will be constantly rising up in judgment against me in his mind—it will never seem to him that anything was wanting onhisside. I do mean to try, Roma, I do indeed, but all the spring has gone out of everything. Oh, how lonely it will be!”

Roma let her finish speaking without interrupting her. Then she said gently—“I think you see things at their very worst, Eugenia. I think there are feelings and motives in Beauchamp which will make your life easier than you now imagine. But I don’t think my saying so will do much good. About his coming, however, I must explain that it was entirely his own doing. My letter did not bring him. I did not say a word in it but what I told you. And even if I had not written, Beauchamp would have been here by now, for your brother-in-law had sent him your address.”

“Heneed not have interfered,” said Eugenia, haughtily.

Roma smiled. “He meant it for the best, I have no doubt,” she said. “You are sore and uneasy just now, Eugenia, and no wonder, but after awhile you will see things more brightly, I feel sure. But now, what about your seeing Beauchamp? He will be calling this evening to ask; he said he would. Would you rather wait till to-morrow morning?”

“I don’t know,” said Eugenia, irresolutely. Then, as a new thought struck her, “Have you seen him then, Roma?” she asked.

“Yes,” answered Miss Eyrecourt. “I have seen him, and had a very long talk with him—the longest talk, I think, I ever had with any gentleman! But I don’t think his wife will be jealous,” she added, with a bright smile, which, in spite of herself, extracted a faint, shadowy reflection of itself from Eugenia.

Just then there came a ring at the bell.

“There he is,” said Roma; “well, Eugenia?”

“I will see him now,” said Eugenia, suddenly. “It is better—my putting it off might only irritate him more.”

Roma kissed her without speaking, and left the room.

In the few minutes that passed before Captain Chancellor came upstairs how many painful anticipations had time to rush through Eugenia’s brain! She was determined to go through with what she had promised to Roma and to herself to attempt: she would humble herself to the utmost that she could truthfully do so; she would ask her husband’s forgiveness; she would own that she had taken up, with exaggeration and bitterness, Mrs Eyrecourt’s version of the past. All this she would say: she owed it to her own self-respect to do so, hopeless as she felt of any good effect it might have on her future, little as she anticipated that it would awaken any generous or tender feelings towards her in her husband’s heart. She pictured to herself the cold air of superiority with which he would receive her confession; she recalled the unsympathising contempt with which on several occasions her impulsive endeavours to draw nearer to him, to understand him better, had been thrown back on herself with a recoil of indignant mortification—and she said to herself that her fate was a very hard one.

There came a sort of tap at the door, and in answer to her tremulous “come in,” Captain Chancellor appeared. She was standing by the table, in the same attitude as that in which Roma left her. She looked up as Beauchamp closed the door, and came forward. To her surprise, she perceived at once that he was looking ill and careworn, and that his bearing was by no means free from agitation. She was so surprised that she forgot what she had meant to say first of all; she opened her lips mechanically, but no sound was heard: then a sort of giddiness came over her for a moment, and half unconsciously she closed her eyes. He was beside her in an instant. “Eugenia,” he exclaimed, “Eugenia, how ill you are looking! My poor darling, I may not have understood you—I have been a blind, selfish, careless husband, but oh, my dear, you should not have fancied I was so bad as not to care for your suffering! I did care—I do care. Your leaving me has half broken my heart. Will you not come back and try me again? Will you not believe in my love for you? Truly, it has always been there, though you doubted it.” Where were all Eugenia’s carefully considered words of confession? “Thus far have I done wrong, but no farther; to this extent have I been wanting in my wifely duty, but not beyond.” She threw her arms round her husband’s neck, and careless of possible repulse she burst into tears. “Beauchamp,” she said, simply, “I am very sorry for what I have done wrong. I will try to please you better in the future if you will forgive the past.”

“We willbothtry again,” he said, kindly, “Not that you didnotplease me, my dear child. Your only fault was—was—well, perhaps, as I have sometimes told you, you expected a little too much; your ideas were a little bit too romantic for every-day life. The best of husbands and wives knock against each other’s fancies now and then, you know, and it can’t be always like a honeymoon,”—Eugenia winced at this a little, a very little,—“but, all the same, I don’t see why our chances of being happy together are not quite as good as other people’s. You will gain experience, and I, I hope, will learn to understand you better. And I think that’s about all we can say. I am very thankful to have you again safe and well, and the next time you make yourself miserable about anything, come and askme; don’t go to other people, who see nothing except through their own prejudices. Gertrude didn’t mean to make mischief; all the same she did so, as I told her. But Roma has put all that right?”

“Yes,” said Eugenia, “I—we—can never thank her enough for what she has done.”

“She says,” pursued Beauchamp, with unwonted humility, “I should have told you all about that old affair with her. I was very nearly doing so once, I remember, but—I don’t know how it was—I was bothered at that time, and I liked to keep you distinct from it all. I was bitter about Roma for a good while, and I disliked the subject. But, Eugenia, no suffering I have ever had to bear in my life has equalled that of the last few days.”

They were silent for a minute or two. “I must say,” Captain Chancellor went on, speaking more in his usual tone, “the Thurstons behaved very sensibly in not making any fuss. Nothing would have been so odious as any absurd story getting about.” But, happening to observe the pained expression of Eugenia’s face, he changed the subject, and went on to talk of some plans he had in his head of going abroad for a time, taking Eugenia to visit many places so far known to her but by name. “It would be the best way of making you strong again,” he said. “We might even spend next winter out of England, if we liked.” And, notwithstanding the unexpected encouragement she had met with in her new resolutions, it was a relief to Eugenia to be freed from the anticipation of an immediate recommencement of the life at Halswood, hitherto so lonely and uncongenial. She was touched, too, by the evident consideration for her happiness which prompted this new scheme, and Beauchamp, on his side, felt rewarded by her gratification for the amount of self-denial which the proposed plan entailed on him.

So when Roma rejoined them she quickly saw that her hopes had not been groundless; already the expression of Eugenia’s face had grown brighter and less despondent than she had seen it for long.

“Was I not a true prophet?” she said, to Eugenia, when they were by themselves again. “Are not things more hopeful than you expected?”

“Yes,” said Eugenia, thoughtfully, “they are; and it is you I have to thank for their being so, Roma.”

“No, don’t say that,” interrupted Roma, quickly. “I don’t like you to say so, because I want you to do Beauchamp justice. There is more to work upon in him than you were inclined to think, and you, as I told you before, have more power over him to draw out his best than any one else ever had or could have.”

“But still it is your doing,” persisted Eugenia, affectionately; “for who else but you could ever have opened my eyes to see this, or at least to look for it?”

A new feeling had wakened in her heart to her husband. From the ashes of the old unreasoning, wilfully blind, headstrong devotion had arisen a calmer, more tempered, more enduring sentiment. As yet she was hardly conscious of its existence; its component parts she could certainly not have defined. She only said to herself, “I don’t know how it is, but, somehow, what has passed to-day has made me feelsorryfor Beauchamp. I don’t think hitherto any one has taken much pains to draw out what Roma calls ‘his best.’ And I am so weak and foolish and full of faults, how can I hope to do it? Yet, somehow, I think Idohope it.”

They all left Nunswell the next day, Roma travelling with them as far as Wareborough only, where she had promised a short visit to her cousins, the Dalrymples; Beauchamp and his wife returning to Halswood, there at once to commence preparations for their visit to foreign parts.

Eugenia trembled a little as they drew near the spot which, but so few days before, she had quitted with something very like despair in her heart. There was a mingling of almost superstitious apprehensiveness in her shrinking from “beginning again”—with new motives, new hopes, new patience—in the very place which had witnessed the woeful failure of her first essays, the cloudy ending to the too brilliant promise of the dawn of her married life. But these half-morbid feelings she was wise enough to keep to herself.

“I only hope,” she thought, “that Mrs Grier will not think herself bound to receive me in state after so short an absence. If she does I shall take it as a bad omen. She is a very good creature, but I shall never forget her first reception.”

So it was with some little apprehension that Mrs Chancellor looked out of the carriage as the front of the house came in sight. She knew Mrs Eyrecourt had gone; it had never occurred to her that poor little Floss had been temporarily left behind. Her surprise was great, her relief and pleasure extreme, when, almost before the carriage had stopped, she heard her own name shouted in the little girl’s peculiar pronunciation: “Aunty ’Genia, Aunty ’Genia, you have comed back! Kiss me quick! You never said good-bye when you wented away, and I cwied so! Please don’t never go away any more!”

The tears were not very far away from Eugenia’s own eyes, as she lifted the excited little mortal in her arms, and kissed the eager, flushed face.

“Dear little Floss,” she said, “I am so glad to come back to you;” and even Beauchamp was struck by the little scene.

“What an eccentric little creature it is,” he said to his wife, when, Floss’s rhapsodies having subsided, she said good-night and went off to bed “as good as gold.”

“Who would have thought that Gertrude’s child could have hugged away as vehemently at anyone as Floss did just now.”

And the child’s demonstrative affection put it into his head to make an unexpected proposal to Eugenia. “How would you like to take Floss with us?” he said. “I have no doubt Gertrude would be enchanted to let her come, and the child’s maid is French, which would be an advantage. You see we shall not be moving about at any uncomfortable speed; you are not strong enough for it, and that sort of thing is not my idea of travelling for pleasure. When there is no need for hurry, much better take it leisurely.”

Eugenia was delighted; she knew, though she never told it to anyone, the indirect influence for good which Floss’s innocent championship had had upon her life, and the idea of the child’s happiness was pleasant to her. Mrs Eyrecourt was delighted; so delighted that she wrote back accepting her brother’s offer, as if no shadow of anything disagreeable had ever disturbed the harmony of their intercourse. It suited her particularly well, to have Floss disposed of for the present, as she was anticipating a round of visits in which a child would have been rather an encumbrance, while yet, for the sake of appearances, she could not make up her mind to leave the little girl alone at Winsley for many weeks at a time. It looked well, too, to be able to tell her friends that her brother and his wife, “having no children of their own,” had taken such a fancy to her little daughter that they had begged leave to take her abroad with them for the winter; for Gertrude had sense enough to know that “family jars” are, of all things, the most undignified and “vulgar,” and she had endured some perturbation of spirit of late as to the probable nature of her future terms with her Halswood relatives.

“I am so glad you are going abroad,” she wrote; “it will be the very thing to set up Eugenia’s health and spirits. By-the-bye, I must not forget to send all sorts of kind messages from Addie and Victoria and their mother. The girls were sorry not to see you at Halswood as was arranged, but of course they quite understand my explanation about Eugenia’s not being well enough to receive them, and they hope to pay their visit some other time” etc, etc.

Some people—for of course in the neighbourhood of Halswood as elsewhere there were to be found human beings with superfluous energy to spare from the management of their own concerns, which they apparently conceived it to be their duty to bestow on those of others—some people thought it very odd and absurd of Captain and Mrs Chancellor to burden themselves with a child on their foreign tour. It was so odd as only to be explicable by the comprehensive assertion of Mrs Chancellor’s being, to say the least, “very odd altogether.” For notwithstanding all the care that had been taken to guard against outside remark, some amount of gossip had oozed out concerning Eugenia’s hasty flight from Halswood. Servants, the very best of them perhaps, will but be servants. It was not in Mrs Grier’s nature to refrain from lugubrious head-shakings and mysterious allusions when she found that her young mistress had actually left home without any explanation to herself, the vice-gerent of the establishment, of the reasons for this sudden step; it was not in the unexceptionable Blinkhorn’s nature to refrain, at the first table at least, from comment upon his master’s state of anxiety and dejection during the days of uncertainty and foreboding which succeeded his return home. And the natures of the various inferior functionaries in the Halswood household, being neither better nor worse than are ordinarily met with in their respective capacities, the rolling stone of gossip, contrary to the adage, grew and gathered as it went, till but few of the great houses in the neighbourhood, none certainly of the tea-tables in the little town of Chilworth or of the less pretentious Sunday afternoon entertainments in the farm houses on the estate, but had their own pet version of the Halswood scandal.

Of this, however, the principals in the little drama were, as is not unfrequently the case, in happy ignorance. As to the Chilworth edition of the story, as to the village chatter, they were of little consequence. They lived their appointed nine days, then died a natural death. But as to the more discreetly veiled, but nevertheless the far more insidious, whisper that went the round of “the county,” there is little saying where it would have stopped, how deep might not have been the social injury it would have caused to impulsive, reckless, innocent Eugenia, had it not suddenly received its death-blow from an unexpected but irresistible hand. It came to Lady Hereward’s ears, how or whence matters little, that the wife of the master of Halswood, “the girl with the beautiful face” which somehow had recalled the memory of the long years ago dead and buried little Alice, the young mother whose little baby had died, had somehow or other done something which threatened to get her “talked about.” And the good old woman rose to the occasion. “I think you are not aware, my dear Lady Vaughan,” she said, the first time the subject was publicly alluded to before her, “in fact, I am quite sure youcannotbe aware that the young lady of whom you are speaking is a valued friend of mine, for I am certain you would not intentionally hurt my feelings or those of any one. Mrs Chancellor has passed through much sorrow, and she has my deepest sympathy. The report to which you allude is an exaggerated version of the simple fact that she was called away rather suddenly in her husband’s absence to some of her own friends. When she comes home again strong and well, as I hope she will, it will give me great pleasure to introduce her and any of my friends who have not yet met, to each other, for I hope she will be often at Marshlands.” Then she changed the subject; but this was the last that was heard, publicly at least, of “Mrs Chancellor’s elopement,” for Lady Hereward had queened it to some purpose during her forty years reign in the county.

It was in the latter part of July that Beauchamp and his wife left home. They stayed a little time in town, then proceeded by easy stages to Switzerland, intending there to spend the remainder of the summer and the early autumn, and when the colder weather drew near, to turn their steps to some one of the winter nests in the south of France. Their programme was carried out even more fully than they had intended. Winter came and went, though they learnt it only by the shortening and then lengthening again of the soft, sunny days; spring and summer, chasing travellers and swallows away once more to less sultry regions, followed; autumn returned, and Christmas, in the unfamiliar garb he wears by the shores of the blue Mediterranean, had passed by yet again, with his all-the-world-over greeting of “glad tidings and great joy,” before there was any talk of Halswood being again inhabited by its owners. Before that time came, Floss had learnt to chatter French like a magpie, Eugenia had come to doubt if she after all sufficiently appreciated the inestimable privilege of being “English bred and born,” and Beauchamp, on his part, was beginning to wonder if he would be equal to keeping his seat across country next season, after his long sojourning in the tents of Kedar, otherwise regions where “le sport” was alluded to with the uncomprehending bewilderment with which we used to discuss the fascination of the feast of Juggernaut—where a day with the Pau foxhounds furnished the only procurable pretence of a run.

At last the time for their return home was fixed. It had been in July they left England; it was not till the April “next but one” that they found themselves again within her shores, their party augmented by the presence of a French bonne, with a flapping white cap and a very satisfactory “worldly-looking” baby, a great boy of four months old, a most respectable son and heir to the hitherto ill-fated Chancellor estates. At first Eugenia’s disappointment that the little creature was not a daughter was great; but this feeling she expressed to no one, well aware that sympathy therein was hardly to be expected. She had learnt a good deal, she was learning every day more and more of the wisdom, the necessity of making the best of the materials with which she had to work; slowly, painfully was coming home to her the interpretation of the dream, the lesson of the great “life’s trial” in which so rashly, so ignorantly she had engaged. “Love” for her had not been “clear gain,” viewed by the light of the dim knowledge of to-day; but in the wiser afterwards “the sun will pierce;” the follies, the failures, the mistakes, the delusions will be lost in the beautiful whole, may indeed prove to have been essential to its perfection.

Not that Beauchamp Chancellor’s wife said or thought all this to herself; she speculated and theorised and philosophised much less than of old; she lived more in the present, taking life, as we all must take it sooner or later, if it is to be endurable at all, in a day-by-day fashion, leaving the “huge mounds of years,” the bewildering mazes of whys and wherefores, past and future, to be considered “by-and-by”—by-and-by, when surely we shall see things somewhat more clearly, more justly, more divinely, but a by-and-by which will never come to us if, dissatisfied with the fair promise of its far-off beauty, we seek to grasp its shadowy substance before the time.

So, in a sense—must it not always be but in a sense?—Eugenia was happy. Happier perhaps possibly, because she thought less about being happy than in the old days. She had seen before her in imagination a dreary road; to her surprise, ever and again as she walked along, fresh flowers began to spring by the wayside—little unobtrusive blossoms, hardly distinguishable till her foot had all but crushed out their tender life; tiny buds of brightness and sweetness, bringing many an unexpected spot of colour or breath of fragrance into her daily life.

She grew to be very thankful that her child was a boy; she learnt to be grateful for every link of sympathy between her husband and herself, she tried her utmost to strengthen and rivet each one of these; and though, apparently, at least, her efforts often failed, sometimes, on the other hand, she was rewarded by success surpassing her most sanguine hopes.

“He is not a grand character,” Roma had said, justly, “but, all the same, there is a great deal of good in him; and of all people, you, Eugenia, have most power to draw out and strengthen this.” And these simple words Beauchamp’s wife henceforth never allowed herself to forget.

They reached Halswood safe and well on a lovely spring evening. There stood Mrs Grier, her black silk dress relieved for once by some cheerful pink ribbons, tears of joy in her eyes at the non-fulfilment of her many gloomy prophecies. It was indeed, as she took care to inform her mistress, “a day she had little expected ever to see.” But Eugenia could smile at her now, as she assured her that “the luck had certainly turned” with the arrival of the great crowing baby who was to bring life and brightness to the old house.

And before long Halswood looked more cheerful than it had done for many a day. Mrs Eyrecourt’s anxiety to resume the guardianship of her little daughter was not so overwhelming as to be allowed to interfere with her plans for the season. She had just taken a house in town for her usual three months, so she contented herself with “a mere glimpse” of the travellers as they passed through, expressed herself delighted with the improvement in the child’s manners and appearance, and yielded without much pressing to the proposal that Floss should accompany her friends home and remain with them till the summer. “The country is much better for children certainly,” said Mrs Eyrecourt. “I shall feel happier for Floss not to be so long in town. I only wish I could go down to Halswood with you myself, but it is impossible. I must be in town as much as I can now, so that dear Quin can spend his Saturdays and Sundays with me.”

But though Gertrude could not spare time to welcome the absentees back to Halswood, Roma could. She joined them there within a week of their arrival, and for a few pleasant days Sydney and her belongings joined them too. Poor Sydney’s holidays were not many, but her busy life seemed to suit her; her fair face was as calm, her voice as sweet and even, as in her girlish days; and when she and Frank went away, back again to smoky Wareborough, they were cheered by the thought that their intercourse with Eugenia promised to be frequent and cordial. Not much private talk had passed between the sisters; Eugenia was charier of confidences, than had once been natural to her, but Sydney was satisfied.

“She is much happier than I ever hoped to see her,” said the younger sister to her husband. “It is not exactly thesortof happiness I should long ago have imagined would have contented Eugenia; somehow, even though I feel so thankful and relieved about her, I could hardly prevent the tears coming to my eyes when I looked at her. She must have suffered so much, Frank (though outwardly things have been so prosperous with her) to be so changed.”

“She has had to learn her lessons like other people,” said Frank, oracularly.

“But isn’t it wonderful how she adapts herself to her husband?” said Sydney. “He is improved, I must allow; but therecannotbe much sympathy between them, and Eugenia must know it.”

“No doubt she does, but better women than Eugenia,” replied Frank, with a spice of his old antagonism, “have had to get on with less. And Chancellor’s by no means a bad fellow after all; many a man would have had less patience with Eugenia’s freaks and fancies than he. I always told you they’d shake into their places some day. By-the-bye, you must remind me to give that invitation to Gerald. I hope he will go, for more reasons than one.”

Sydney smiled. “I hope so too,” she said.

Back to IndexNext