Chapter X: Part 10

"I was just closing this for the bag," ran the postscript, "when the afternoon letters came. I am so thankful I did not go out; I was very nearly doing so, and then I should have missed the post. There is most distressing news from Halswood. You will hardly believe it, Beauchamp, it seems so frightfully sudden, but it is really true--Herbert Chancellor is dead. My letter is from Addie, poor darling! They are in a terrible state of course. It was some sort of fit or stroke, and he such a young man! But you remember how stout he was growing when they were here. They had only gone to Halswood for a few days to see about re-furnishing it, and poor Addie says her mother will never be able to endure the place again. They want you to go there _at once_, to help them in all sorts of ways. They have no one to look to but that poor sickly boy, Roger, and of course you are the natural person. I must say I feel gratified at their remembering this. They would have written or telegraphed to you direct, but did not know your address, and Addie said she tried to telegraph to me but could not explain. The funeral is to be on Friday, so you have no time to lose. I am going, too, to poor dear Mrs Chancellor as soon as I can, so we shall meet at Halswood to-morrow or the day after."

Then came a second postscript:--

"I almost hesitate now about sending the first part of this letter, but perhaps it is as well to let it go. But do not let anything I have said hurt you, dearest Beauchamp. We can talk over all so much more satisfactorily, and I am sure you will believe I am only anxious to advise you for your good."

Captain Chancellor started to his feet, threw the letter aside with an impatient exclamation, opened the door, and shouted to his servant to get him a Bradshaw at once and to hurry on with his packing; then returned to his room, deliberately filled and lighted his pipe, and set to work to collect his ideas. First of all he must write to Eugenia, explaining his unavoidable absence on the morrow, then he must find out the next train to Crumby, the great junction whence he must make his way to Halswood. It was very unfortunate, he thought to himself; peculiarly so at this crisis. He was really sorry to hear of Herbert's death--the kindly, prosperous man so suddenly struck down--it was very melancholy and uncomfortable, and, he repeated, most peculiarly unfortunate that it should have happened just now. He understood Gertrude perfectly well; her "accidental" allusion to "that poor sickly Roger," her sudden change to "dearest Beauchamp," and promise of "advice."

"Advice!" exclaimed Captain Chancellor, "what `advice' do I want? The thing is done--`fait accompli'--and no more to be said about it. Can't she understand that? However, if she doesn't, I'll take care that she does without loss of time."

Then he wrote to Eugenia the letter which chilled her with its apparent indifference, feeling himself the while a rather badly-used person and very much inclined to quarrel with Gertrude.

"Faugh!" he exclaimed, as he glanced again over Mrs Eyrecourt's letter. "`Poor darling Addie!' If anything could be wanting to make me more in earnest about Eugenia--supposing, that is to say, that there were any possibility of drawing back--it would be the sight of that fat girl, with her silly giggle and doll's face."

So Sydney Laurence's wedding-day came and went. It was spent by Beauchamp Chancellor amidst the afflicted family at Halswood; poor Addie, who had truly loved her father, treating him to tears instead of giggles, her widowed mother to lamentations over her desolate state--"these two enormous properties and no male relation to relieve her of the burden of their management," and embarrassingly broad hints of her wishes "that Addie were married to some one she could look upon as a son, some one her dear father would have approved of," till Beauchamp found himself devoutly wishing he had made any excuse under heaven or earth to have avoided this painful visit to his relatives. For he was really sorry for them all; for poor Roger, whom he now saw for the first time--about whose delicate health there could be no doubt, and whose heart seemed broken by this great sorrow--perhaps most of all, and would have been glad to have cheered them.

"They are all so fond of you, Beauchamp," said Mrs Eyrecourt, when they were alone together, the evening after the funeral--Captain Chancellor was to leave the next morning--"they seem to look to you so naturally. It is really very gratifying to find that Herbert had made you Roger's guardian. He is terribly delicate, poor boy!"

"He _is_ delicate, no doubt," said Beauchamp, rather shortly, "but these delicate boys sometimes turn out perfectly strong men."

"Sometimes," said Gertrude, doubtfully. "He may do so, of course, but if he were my son I should be very unhappy about him. I should be very glad to see him grow stronger, poor boy, for his own sake and his mother's, but it looks to me very uncertain. That is just the trial, Beauchamp--the trial to me, I mean, of your position now--its uncertainty. Of course I cannot pretend that your interests are not for nearer and dearer to me than Roger's,"--she was too wise to attempt to speak any but her true feelings to one who knew her so well as her brother, even had she been addicted to protestations of disinterestedness, which she was not--"I cannot pretend that it would not be very delightful to me to see you the head of our family, the owner of this beautiful place, but my great dread for you is that of an uncertain position. If I could but have secured for you what would have placed you above very much caring how things here turn out! That is my great wish. That is what Mrs Chancellor has the comfort of feeling with regard to her daughters' future, whether Roger lives or dies."

"Everything is uncertain," observed Beauchamp, "and there are some contingencies it is perhaps better not to think about." Mrs Eyrecourt looked at him inquiringly and a little suspiciously: she did not understand this new tone of philosophy of his. He went on speaking: "Not that I quite know what you are alluding to when you speak of placing my future above uncertainty?"

He had a pretty shrewd notion what she was thinking of; her last few words had shown him that he was in for the "talking it over," the "advice" she had volunteered, and he felt anxious to hear all she had to say and have done with it. Gertrude hesitated.

"Suppose we take a turn outside, up and down the avenue--it looks tempting, and it is woefully gloomy indoors," said Beauchamp, glancing round the room in which they were standing. It was a depressing room, a library crowded to excess with dingy volumes--many of them doubtless of great value, all of them originally handsome and well-bound, but bearing about them an unread, uncared-for look, filling the air with that faintly musty smell perceptible in libraries seldom entered but by servants, where fires are only lighted periodically to "keep out the damp," where the sweet summer air but seldom enters. Of all rooms, a library lived in and loved, where the books are dear old friends, the window-seats little sanctuaries for quiet thought or earnest study--of all rooms perhaps, such a one is the most delightful. But the library at Halswood had been deserted and disregarded for many a long day. The Chancellors were not a studious or scholarly race, still they were not without refinement and cultivation; but for many years past Halswood had been the home of a half imbecile old man whose only acute intelligence had been that of hoarding, and the traces of his long neglect were everywhere visible.

Outside, pacing up and down the long avenue, whose grand old chestnuts were the boast of the country-side, things certainly looked more attractive.

"It _is_ a beautiful old place," said Beauchamp, stopping suddenly, and looking about him appreciatively, "though the house is desperately ugly. It looks as if it had been cut out of the middle of a street and stuck down here in this beautiful park by mistake. And the portico looks as if it, again, had nothing whatever to do with the house. I hate those great pillars so!--they look so meaningless. When was this house built, Gertrude, do you know?"

"Quite recently--that is to say, at the end of the last century," said Gertrude, "when everything was hideous. The old house was very picturesque; more like an enlarged edition of Winsley. Still, this house is a very _good_ one, Beauchamp. Some of the rooms--the drawing-rooms--are very fine."

"Oh yes, it's well enough inside. No doubt it might be made very habitable," replied her brother, indifferently. Then, with an effort, "What is it you want to say to me, Gertrude? Oh yes, by-the-bye, I remember. I was saying just now I did not quite understand your allusions to my future--to something you had had in your mind about it."

"I did not intend to say it," replied Gertrude; "it was only accidentally I said what I did. Of course you must see what I mean-- what a bright future of assured comfort and ease, whatever happens or does not happen here, would be before you if you chose."

"Yes, I see what you mean now," answered Beauchamp. "There is no use beating about the bush, Gertrude. Once for all I tell you plainly that if I hadn't a halfpenny in the world I could not marry Adelaide. I could not stand her a week. I should run away from her, and then where should we all be? No, truly, if any idea of this kind has increased your opposition to my marrying elsewhere I beg you to dismiss it. _That_ I never could have done."

Gertrude sighed. "You do not yourself know what you would or would not have done had there been no other influences about you, Beauchamp. I don't understand you. First there was Roma, now, barely two months after that was made an end of, you want me to approve of your engaging yourself to another girl. You are very changeable and inconsistent."

Beauchamp had had a second thought about the expediency of quarrelling with his sister. So, though her accusation annoyed him, as he felt she had some grounds for making it, he kept down his vexation and answered quietly--

"I am sorry to have appeared so to you. As regards Roma, I own that I quite see now that that was a mistake from the beginning; the less said about it the better.

"As regards my present engagement--" he hesitated. "No, Gertrude, I don't expect you as yet to _approve_ of it, but I hope you may do so in time. Wait till you see Eugenia."

"Seeing her cannot possibly alter the fact of your imprudence, though it may explain it," answered Mrs Eyrecourt, coldly. "Remember all I wrote to you. Oh, Beauchamp, do think what you are about! Even for _her_ sake you should do so. You are not the sort of man to make the best of an unsuitable marriage when the time comes for you to awake to its being so."

"I am perfectly awake already to everything that can be said about it," replied Captain Chancellor, a little sullenly. "The long and the short of it is that she isn't rich; that is the only `unsuitableness' you can possibly suspect."

"Not the only one, though of course it is an important one," said Gertrude. "You have rushed into this so rashly that I have every reason to suspect the whole affair. She is young and pretty; that is about all you can bring forward."

"We shall have enough to live on. You need not be afraid I intend to make any of my friends suffer for my imprudence," answered Beauchamp, hastily. They were approaching very near the edge of a quarrel now.

"Then you allow it is imprudent?" exclaimed Gertrude, quickly. But Beauchamp saw his mistake and changed his tone.

"Yes," he said, "yes, in one sense I suppose I do. But, prudent or imprudent, Gertrude, it is _done_, absolutely and irrevocably. I have a great deal to thank you for in the past, and I shall be very sorry if my marriage causes any coldness between us. I shall thank you very much if you will be kind to my wife--she will have a good deal to learn and will appreciate kindness. But you must decide how things are to be between us."

"Oh, of course I don't mean to _quarrel_ with you, Beauchamp," answered Mrs Eyrecourt, stiffly. "It is rather late in the day for that sort of thing. I shall be glad to see your wife when you are married, but I can't make any promises of romantic friendship and so on. I hope you will be happy, and I shall of course show any kindness I can to--to Miss Laurence when she is my sister-in-law; but you must take into account the great disparity between her and me--of age and other things--and don't expect impossibilities. It is best to speak plainly, you know, and then you will not expect too much. I shall do all in my power, I assure you."

"Thank you," said Beauchamp, but without much gratification in his tone. He felt dissatisfied and uncomfortable, vexed with Gertrude, and yet more vexed that he could not exactly blame her. Her sentiments were neither exaggerated nor unreasonable; they were very much the same as what he had himself often expressed on similar subjects. Yet she had managed to take the bloom off his prospects, to insinuate a very unpleasant misgiving that after all he had _not_ known what he was about. Gertrude read his feelings pretty correctly, but she derived little satisfaction from so doing. The thing was too far gone, she feared; of course there was the chance of the proverbial slip before the marriage actually took place, but so slender a contingency was not to be taken into account.

"No," thought Mrs Eyrecourt, "it is sure to go through. Undesirable things always do, and these Wareborough people know what they are about."

In her heart she was not without some feminine curiosity about Eugenia herself, her belongings, and the history of the whole affair, but the tone she had taken up would not allow her to show any such undignified interest. So Beauchamp and she walked up and down for a few minutes in silence; then Gertrude discovered it was growing chilly and returned to the house, leaving her brother to his cigar and solitude.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER EIGHT.

LOOKERS-ON.

Ah, love, there is no better life than this;
To have known love, how bitter a thing it is,
...
Yea, these that know not, shall they have such bliss?

Swinburne.

Mrs Eyrecourt drove her brother to the station the next morning in Addie's pretty pony-carriage, which had been sent from Wylingham for the two or three weeks the Chancellors had originally intended to spend at Halswood. Gertrude was gentle and affectionate, anxious apparently to prove to Beauchamp the truth of her words that, whatever she might think of his conduct, it was too late in the day for any talk of quarrelling or coldness between them. She studiously avoided the subject of the previous evening's conversation; only just at the last, when their drive was all but at an end, she asked one question.

"You did not tell me, Beauchamp, when it--when your marriage--is likely to be?" she said, with some hesitation. "Is any time fixed? Do you think it will be soon?"

"Yes," answered Captain Chancellor, promptly; "I hope it will be very soon. Next month, if I can get leave, or in June. Long engagements are senseless when there is no reason for them."

"Only it is not always the lady and her friends are so obliging about making their preparations in a hurry," observed Mrs Eyrecourt. It was the first snappish remark she had allowed herself, and she regretted it instantly, though Beauchamp did not allow her to see that it had nettled him.

"No," he said, coolly; "but then few girls are so free from home ties as Eugenia. Her life will be very lonely now, for her only sister is married, and I don't see why there should be any delay."

The truth was that the subject of the time for their marriage had not yet been alluded to. He had answered his sister on the spur of the moment, from a sort of wish to prove to her how definite the thing was, how useless any remonstrance or interference would be, and it had not at the moment occurred to him that by what he had said he had given occasion for any inference of undignified haste on the part of Eugenia's family.

"Then I suppose it is possible--or probable even--that I shall not see you again as a bachelor?" said Gertrude, trying to speak lightly.

"That depends on your own movements. I have promised Mrs Chancellor to run down to Wylingham for a couple of days before long. Perhaps you may be with them?"

Mrs Eyrecourt shook her head. "I don't think so," she replied. "We go to town next week, and I cannot leave Roma alone there. Besides, I rather doubt their going back to Wylingham. I expect Mrs Chancellor will go to the sea-side next week. Roger is not the least fit for school again, and they say sea-air suits him."

"Poor boy!" said Beauchamp; and they were both silent for a minute or two. Then he spoke again. "Mrs Chancellor will let me know if she changes her plans, I have no doubt. But in any case, Gertrude, I shall see you before long? You will come to the marriage?"

"Shall you wish it? I should not like to be invited merely out of civility," said Mrs Eyrecourt. "And, besides, there will probably be a great many of Miss Laurence's relations at it. They may not care about any more."

"Nonsense!" said Beauchamp, wondering inwardly at the extraordinary attraction the making suffering saints of themselves seems to have for even otherwise sensible women; "nonsense, Gertrude! Of _course_ I shall wish it, and of course Eugenia will too. And she has very few relations, as I have told you. Certainly I shall expect you."

"Very well, dear Beauchamp; we shall see," replied his sister, with unwonted meekness, and so they parted.

Gertrude had done one thing by what she had said to her brother--she had hastened the very catastrophe she was most anxious to avert. When Captain Chancellor, a few days after his return from Halswood, went over to Wareborough for a night, it was with the determination to hurry on matters as fast as possible, and to fix the earliest date practicable for his marriage. He hardly understood why he did so, and, if he tried to find a reason for this impetuosity, pretended to himself that it was the proper thing in the circumstances. That he was really influenced by any doubt of himself, any misgivings as to the result, in his case, of a long engagement, the course of which might see events greatly affecting his future, he would not allow even to himself. And there was, perhaps, some excuse for his deliberate self-deception, for no sooner was he in Eugenia's presence and under the influence of her beauty and sweetness than every shadow of a cloud disappeared from his horizon.

So it was decided that they should be married in June. Eugenia was so completely under her lover's influence that whatever he proposed seemed to her wisest and best; and though some suggestions were mooted by Mr Laurence as to the advisability of the young people's "seeing a little more of each other" before entering on that most solemn of bonds, companionship for life, there was no one at hand to support him in such an old-fashioned idea, and Captain Chancellor's opinion that the deed "were well done quickly" encountered no important opposition. For Sydney and her husband were away on the clerical honeymoon of four weeks barring a Sunday, and only returned home, to begin life in their modest little house in a Wareborough terrace, in time to learn that all was settled, down to the day itself and the number of the bridesmaids.

"As good as married already, you see, Sydney," said Frank. "Well, I only hope it will not prove a case of `repenting at leisure'--that's all I've got to say."

"Frank," exclaimed the young wife, in surprise and alarm, "what do you mean? You have _always_ spoken as if you liked Captain Chancellor and thought highly of him. That has been one of my great comforts."

"So it has wanted comfort, has it, the poor little thing?" said Frank, affecting to pat Sydney consolingly. "Why didn't it say so before?"

"Don't, please, dear Frank," she said, earnestly, gently disengaging herself and smoothing the hair his hand had disarranged; "don't laugh at me when I am so serious in my anxiety about Eugenia."

"I am anxious about her too," returned her husband, "but don't mistake me. I am far from meaning to infer that I don't think well of Chancellor. He's by no means a bad fellow, but neither is he a piece of manly perfection, as I fancy Eugenia imagines. She really is so silly, Sydney, so extreme and exaggerated, I am afraid she is sure to have a grand smash some day. She rushes into things so frantically, and it would be perfect waste of breath to try to make her hear reason. And think how little she and Chancellor really know of each other."

"You don't need to remind me of that," said Sydney, sadly. "Still I hardly see that a longer engagement would have mended matters. They could not have seen much of each other now he is at Bridgenorth, and after all--"

"After all, all marriages are a good deal of a toss-up," said Frank, lightly, "ours of course excepted. But don't fret yourself about Eugenia. She and everyone else must learn their own lessons, I suppose, and I don't see that there is anything to be done to help her."

Sydney sighed and said no more. There was a mixture of truth in what Frank said, but yet on this one subject the sympathy between herself and Gerald was greater than she found in her husband, only, unfortunately, her knowledge of her brother-in-law's secret forbade her appealing to him for comfort or advice. So she was fain to keep her fears to herself and try to see her sister's future as hopefully as she could.

And time went on; the days and weeks flew rapidly by and the marriage-day drew near. On the Sunday preceding it Captain Chancellor came over from Bridgenorth for a few hours. It seemed to Eugenia that he looked out of spirits.

"Is anything the matter?" she asked anxiously, when they were alone together.

He looked a little surprised at her inquiry.

"What makes you think there is?" he answered, it seemed to her evasively. "No, there is nothing the matter--except, oh yes, by-the-bye, I must not forget to tell you--you will be sorry to hear my sister cannot be with us on Thursday after all."

"Your sister, Mrs Eyrecourt," exclaimed Eugenia. "Oh, I am so sorry!"

She hardly liked to ask the reason of this sudden change of intention; Beauchamp was far from communicative about his family affairs, and Eugenia knew little of Mrs Eyrecourt beyond her name.

"Yes," he replied, "it is a pity. I only heard from her this morning. And oh, by-the-bye, she enclosed a note for you, not knowing your address."

He felt for his pocket-book, which contained the note. It was a mere civil expression of apology for being obliged at the last to give up thoughts of being present at the ceremony; it began "Dear Miss Laurence," and ended "Yours sincerely." The reason given for her unavoidable absence was "the serious illness of a near relative." Eugenia looked puzzled.

"A near relative--" she said, inquiringly. "Some one on Mr Eyrecourt's side of the house, I suppose."

"Mr Eyrecourt is dead," said Beauchamp. "Oh yes, I know, but I mean it must be a relation of his who is seriously ill. If it were a relation of _yours_, it might be rather awkward, might it not? What should we do?"

"Put off the marriage?" suggested Captain Chancellor, laughing, but not heartily. "Would you like that, Eugenia? Well, as it happens, the person in question _is_ a near relation of mine too--the nearest male relation of my own family in the world. You remember my telling you of the sudden death of a cousin of mine about two months ago--Mr Chancellor, of Halswood? This boy who is so ill now is his only son."

"Is he _very_ ill?" asked Eugenia.

"Yes," answered her fiance, with a slight shortness in his manner, giving the girl the impression that he disliked being questioned on the subject. ("How fond he must be of his poor young cousin!" was her simple interpretation of his unresponsiveness.) "Yes, I fancy so. I don't suppose he can live long."

"Then," persisted Eugenia, her colour rising to her cheeks in spite of her endeavour to be perfectly calm and "sensible," "then should you not be with him, Beauchamp? Would it not be better--more--more seemly, perhaps, really to put off our marriage?"

She made the suggestion in all good faith and unselfish anxiety in no way to add to what she now imagined must be the cause of her lover's constraint and depression; she was little prepared for the effect of her words.

Captain Chancellor had been standing at a little distance from her, idly fingering a book that lay on the table while she read Mrs Eyrecourt's note. As she spoke he turned round, crossed the room quickly to where she sat, and stood before her with a dark look on his fair face, an angry light in his blue eyes.

"Are you in earnest, Eugenia? Do you mean what you say?" he exclaimed, in a hard, unpleasant tone. "Do you know that what you have said is a most extraordinary thing for a girl to say to--to the man she is going to many, two days before the time fixed for doing so? Do you really mean that you are ready to catch at any excuse for putting off our marriage indefinitely? Perhaps you _really_ mean that you would like to put it off altogether--if so, you had better say so."

A more suspicious or sophisticated girl would have taken fright at this strange distortion of the simple meaning of her words, might have guessed it to be a ruse on the part of her fiance to throw upon her the blame of what he himself was not brave enough to do in a straightforward fashion; a girl of a haughtier spirit than Eugenia would have felt nothing but indignation at the unmerited reproach, and in nine cases out of ten the "lovers' quarrel" certain to ensue would have ended in something the reverse of "very pretty." But Eugenia was too single-minded in her faith and devotion to feel anything but astonishment and distress.

"Beauchamp," she exclaimed, in a voice brimming over with tender reproach, her brown eyes filling with tears, "oh, Beauchamp, how can you speak so to me? You know, you _must_ know, I only meant exactly what I said. I was afraid of being, as it were, in your way just at this crisis, when you may feel you should be with your cousin. I didn't know there was anything `extraordinary' in what I said. I wanted to be unselfish."

"But it isn't unselfish to propose such a thing to me in that cool way, as if it would cost you nothing at all," said Captain Chancellor, with a sudden change of tone. "Oh, my darling, you do look so frightfully pretty with the tears in your eyes! Oh, you cold-blooded, aggravating little creature! Do you think that all the cousins in the world may not fall ill and die for what I care when I have you beside me? Don't you think it possible _I_ may want to be married whether you do or not?"

He had thrown his arms round her by now, was looking down into her face with all the old "irresistibleness" of eyes and lips, every trace of annoyance melted like snow before the sun.

"Yes," she whispered, her mouth still quivering, "I suppose you do, or," with an attempt at playfulness, "you wouldn't have asked me. And I don't _want_ to put it off, Beauchamp, for it isn't as if you were living here and I could often see you. Then I shouldn't mind. But every time you go away I can't help fancying something may go wrong and you may never come back. And it would be dreadful for you to go away-- ever so far off, isn't it?--just now. I should feel dreadfully superstitious about it,"--she gave a little shiver--"oh, it would be miserable!"

"Yes, and all the trousseau, and the remarks of Mrs Grundy and Mr Jones Robinson!" said Captain Chancellor.

"_Those_ things would not trouble me much," said Eugenia, quickly. "I wish you would not think all women are like that, Beauchamp."

But he was in a good humour again by now, so he stroked her pretty hair fondly and told her, whatever being "like that" might mean, he certainly did not think any other woman was like her. And she smiled and was quite happy again, and asked him to promise never to look at her so coldly or speak so harshly, which he did.

"But something must have put you out a little, Beauchamp," she went on, waxing bolder. "I thought so when you first came in. Are you much troubled about your cousin?"

"I am sorry, very sorry, both for him and for his family," replied Captain Chancellor. "But do believe me, Eugenia, there is nothing wrong."

And with this she had to be content. Not that she distrusted him; his tone sounded perfectly sincere, and she did not in the least suspect him of wishing to deceive her. She only fancied that he did not like to cloud the present to her by folly sharing with her his sorrow and anxiety, and this seemed to her a mistake.

A little silence ensued, for Eugenia would not press her inquiries further. Suddenly Beauchamp spoke again.

"I am really losing my head to-day," he said. "I had another letter to tell you of, that I received at the same time as my sister's." He felt in his pocket again. "Ah yes, here it is."

He glanced at it for a moment, then put it into her hands. It was from Roma, written in a very different tone from Mrs Eyrecourt's stiff little note, and, though nominally addressed to Beauchamp, evidently intended for them both.

"An idea has struck me," wrote Roma, "that though Gertrude cannot now be at Wareborough for your marriage, I might manage to be there instead of her, if you and Eugenia (I may call her so, may I not?) would like it. I do not like the idea of no one of your own side of the house being present. We leave town on Tuesday--Gertrude, as she will have told you, and the children, to join the Chancellors at Torquay, and I to go north again for a month. This is sooner than we had intended, so I have not made any plans for my journey, but I am sure Mary Dalrymple will take me in, if you will ask her about it. Please answer by return, and then I can write to her myself. I do hope my proposal will not be unwelcome."

"How very nice of her!" exclaimed Eugenia, with sparkling eyes. "I am delighted she is coming. Of course we should have asked her at first if we had known she would care to come. I am so pleased, are not you, Beauchamp?"

"Oh, yes, I don't mind. I have no objection to her coming," said Captain Chancellor, indifferently and somewhat absently. He had taken another letter from his pocket and had been glancing over it while Eugenia read Roma's note. Now he folded it up and put it away, but the perusal of it seemed to have brought a little cloud again to his face.

"Beauchamp, you are very ungrateful. You don't deserve your cousin-- Miss Eyrecourt I mean--to be so good to you," said Eugenia, reproachfully.

"Don't I? I fancy I fully deserve all the goodness I get from _her_," replied Beauchamp, with a tinge of bitterness in his tone which made Eugenia tell him he had certainly been rubbed the wrong way by some one or something, he was so moody and captious, which little scolding he took in good part and exerted himself to a greater appearance of amiability, till the few hours of his visit were over and he was due again at Bridgenorth.

It was Mrs Eyrecourt's letter that had irritated and excited him. In it she told him of Roger's unmistakably hopeless state, mingling regrets that he could not be with the poor boy, "who is so fond of you, you know," with hints of her sisterly interest in the vast change impending in his own prospects. "I cannot pretend not to think of what is coming as it affects you, dearest Beauchamp. I fear I have always been inclined to be ambitious for you, and now when my pride in you seems likely to have the gratification of seeing you in such a position as the head of your house has always had the _power_, if he had the will, to fill, I fear I shall not be easily content. I shall expect great things of you. But I am forgetting--I must not run on as if I still held the first place with you. Other ties and influences must now naturally come before mine. And oh, how earnestly I trust I may agree with you that you have done wisely just now! I own that I felt hurt at your having so completely refrained from consulting or confiding in me, but I have tried to put aside all such personal feeling and to believe you may have had reason for acting so strangely to me. So do not imagine that I am the least prejudiced, and remember always that your interests can be dearer to no one than to your sister."

It was all very reasonable and natural and sisterly, and no doubt Beauchamp should have felt properly grateful and gratified. But all the same the immediate effect of the letter was to make him very cross; and but for Eugenia's simplicity and unsuspicious sweetness, this last visit to Wareborough might have been a last indeed. And had such a catastrophe occurred, it is hardly to be supposed that Mrs Eyrecourt would have taken it much to heart.

Nothing of the kind came to pass, however. Thursday arrived, a bright, sunny day; the guests respectively made their appearance, and Eugenia Laurence was married to Beauchamp Chancellor without more ado, finding it, when it came to the point, a harder matter to say farewell to father and sister and to "home," even though only a dingy old house in a dull Wareborough street, than she had at all been able to anticipate. And it was in tears after all that the bride, whose fondest hopes were realised, who believed herself to be most happy among women, left her father's house, henceforward to be to him very desolate.

"Why can't people get over all their crying beforehand and in private, I wonder," said Mr Thurston, rather gruffly, as he stood among the other guests to watch the departure of the hero and heroine of the day. He spoke half to himself, but the young lady standing beside him made answer to his remark.

"It is no real test of feeling to cry when one is excited. I fancy it is a mere physical result of the sort of fuss a girl is kept in for some time before. Where a bride is _really_ unhappy she would probably exert herself to hide her feelings."

"Then you think Eugenia Laurence--I beg her pardon, Mrs Chancellor--is _really_ happy? At least that is the inference from what you say," inquired Gerald.

"I did not mean to imply anything," answered Roma, lightly. "I only said her crying or not crying had nothing to say to her real feelings. But if you want to know my real opinion--I am almost a stranger to her, remember--I do think she is very, perfectly happy."

She raised her keen but kindly dark eyes to Mr Thurston as she spoke, and looked him full in the face. "Far better for him to have done at once and for ever with all sentimentalism about her," was the thought in her mind. "She is thoroughly and pathetically in love with Beauchamp and has never cared a straw for Mr Thurston, and the more completely he realises this the better for every one concerned." Nevertheless she rather expected to detect some sign of remaining soreness--he had been so very deeply in earnest about the girl, the Eugenia of his dreams, when she had last seen him that night at Brighton at the Montmorrises'-- to find him shrink from her unpalatable expression of belief in the perfect happiness of Beauchamp's wife. She was disappointed. Mr Thurston only looked grave, and his voice was completely free from effort or constraint when he spoke again.

"I am very glad, very thankful that you think so," he said. "I am very much in earnest in my hopes that she will be happy, that she has chosen well for herself. And of course, though you know her slightly, you must know him--Captain Chancellor--well, therefore your opinion has great weight with me."

His eyes, the deep-set, penetrating grey eyes, whose expression, now she saw them again, seemed curiously familiar to her--were fixed on her this time. Roma felt uncomfortable; it was not easy to allow one's words to be taken for more than their value under the scrutiny of Gerald Thurston's gaze. A slight look of embarrassment crept over her face. "Yes," she began, "Beauchamp and I are very old friends; very good friends too. I have a great regard for him. I think he has a great many good qualities but--I did not exactly mean--I don't quite--" she floundered more and more desperately as she became conscious of the increasing gravity of her hearer's expression, then suddenly she came to a dead stop.

Mr Thurston did not appear to pity her confusion. He remained silent for a minute, as if half expecting her to speak again, then he said, quietly--

"I wish you would not be afraid of telling me what you really do mean. We seem fated to be confidential with each other at rather short notice, don't we? And I don't think you will consider my interest in what we were speaking of unnatural."

"No, indeed I do not," returned Roma, cordially. "And I should be very sorry for you to misunderstand me or attach more weight to what I may say or not say than it is worth. Only when I said I thought Eugenia perfectly happy, I suppose I meant that she thinks herself so."

"But thinking herself so is being so, is it not?" said Gerald, smiling slightly.

"Yes," said Roma, doubtfully, "I suppose it is. But, to speak quite plainly," she went on, growing tired of beating about the bush and not altogether relishing Mr Thurston's pertinacity, "what I really mean is that _I_ should not consider the fate of being Beauchamp's wife the happiest in the world. But Eugenia thinks so, and long may she continue to do so."

She spoke with a little impatience. Gerald felt puzzled.

"But you like him, don't you?" he said. "He has been almost a sort of brother to you, has he not?"

"Yes, I like him and I think well of him. I wouldn't for worlds have you imagine I do not. But I think Eugenia in many ways too good for him, and if she ever wakes to this the chances are she will not do him justice _then_, any more than she does now." She spoke sadly and seriously. Mr Thurston understood her now, and saw that no shadow of personal feeling had influenced her former speech. His face, too, was grave as he answered her.

"But is she certain to awake?" he said.

"Of that you can judge better than I," answered Roma.

"And, after all, sooner or later everyone must awake," he went on, as if speaking to himself.

"Except those who have never been asleep," said Roma. "The longer I live the more thankful I am that I was born an eminently practical person, in no way inclined to exaggerated belief in any one. There is not a grain of tragedy in my composition."

"I remember your saying something of that kind to me the first time we met," said Gerald. "I was rather sceptical then, and I don't know that I am in a more believing frame of mind now. I don't think you quite know the meaning of your words."

"Oh yes, I do," said Roma, laughing. "However, the subject is not worth discussing."

Gerald saw she did not care for more talk about herself, and when he spoke again it was in a different tone.

"Are they--Captain Chancellor and his wife--likely to be much in your neighbourhood?" he asked.

"I don't know. I hardly think so. Their plans are rather uncertain, I fancy," replied Roma, remembering the frail, fast-waning life which alone stood between Beauchamp and a very different future to that anticipated by Eugenia and her friends. "Of course as long as he stays in the army they must go wherever he is sent. Still, no doubt I shall see them sometimes, and," she hesitated a little, "if my friendship is worth having, you may be sure Eugenia shall have it, such as it is. I think I have fallen a good deal in love with her myself," she smiled, and then blushed a little, as she remembered to whom she was speaking.

"Thank you," said Gerald, as fervently as if he had been seeking the goodwill of a new relation for a young, inexperienced sister.

Roma stayed two days at Wareborough before continuing her journey north. She saw Mr Thurston again once or twice, but their talk was confined to general subjects, and Eugenia was not mentioned, save casually, by either of them.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER NINE.

A SHORT HONEYMOON.

And the sunshine you recall--
Ah, my dear, but is it true?
Did such sunshine ever fall
Out of any sky so blue?
Half I think you dreamed it all.

M. Brotherton.

They were in Paris. It was oppressively hot, glaringly sunny. Under any other circumstances Captain Chancellor would have grumbled outrageously at the heat and the dust and the glare, but in a bridegroom of barely a fortnight, greater philosophy and good temper were to be expected. So he contented himself with groaning within reasonable bounds, and laughing a little at Eugenia's extraordinary energy and powers of enjoyment, for to her, the untravelled, impressionable English girl, it was all beyond expression charming and intensely interesting. She felt herself in veritable fairyland, she had never before imagined that life could be so enchanting. There was novelty and fascination for her at every step, even the sound of a foreign tongue heard for the first time with the dainty crispness of Parisian accent was delightful to her ears; the shops were not shops, but bewildering masses of lovely things arranged to perfection; the churches, above all, were so beautiful, the music so sublime, that Eugenia wondered how any one living within their reach could ever feel anything but "good."

That her husband thoroughly sympathised in her enjoyment she of course took for granted, and for some time nothing occurred to shake her in this happy belief. It was true to a great extent that he did so, though true in a sense that would have been perfectly incomprehensible to her had any one attempted to explain it. But after a little time Beauchamp began to get rather tired of Eugenia's untireableness. It is entertaining enough to act spectator to a country cousin's ecstasies, especially if the country cousin in question be a refined, intelligent, and very beautiful girl; but of this amusement, as of most others, Captain Chancellor began to find it was possible to have enough. Then he had a morbid horror of any approach to "gushingness," and there were times at which it appeared to him that, but for her grace and beauty, Eugenia might have fallen under the ban of this terrible charge. And most of all, perhaps, his young wife annoyed him more than once by asking him questions he was obliged to confess he could not answer-- questions about some "stupid old picture or other," which in reality his taste was far too uncultivated to admire, though he would, have shrunk from confessing to such a barbarism; or she would let her thoughts drift, back to the old days--days about which, English girl though she was, she had read, much and imagined more--and her eyes would sparkle and colour glow, and sometimes even a tear or two would make its unbidden appearance as she recalled in fancy the glittering old-world pageants, the tremendous tragedies, the extraordinary fluctuations of national weal and woe of which this Paris--wonderful, beautiful Paris-- had been the scene. And at such moments she would look to her companion for sympathy in her enthusiasm, would refer to him, perhaps, for more accurate information about the subject or event momentarily uppermost in her mind; and once, when with a little disappointment--arising not from the failure of the information, but from the evident want of sympathy, she turned away somewhat sadly, the few words, which escaped her, "I wish papa were here!" irritated Beauchamp more than he afterwards liked to remember, for his answer had been chilling in the extreme.

"I am really not a walking biography or history, Eugenia," he had said. "And, besides, I think it is pedantic and affected of you to chatter so about such things. It's not at all in your line, I assure you."

Afterwards he tried to soften what he had said.

"I did not mean to speak unkindly to-day when we were at the Luxembourg," he began. "You know that I should never wish to do so, don't you, dearest? I must confess I have two especial _betes noires_, and I could not endure to see the least taint of either in my wife."

"What are they?" asked Eugenia, quietly.

"Learned women and gushing young ladies," he answered. "Now don't be hurt, dear. There is nothing of the kind about you really, only you see I want you to be _quite_ perfect."

Eugenia did not answer at once. When she spoke her voice did not sound quite like itself.

"I knew you had sometimes thought me too demonstrative," she said; "`gushing' I suppose is the only word for it, but I do _so_ dislike it! But as for thinking myself `learned'--oh, Beauchamp, you cannot mean that! I, that every day of my life am more and more deploring my ignorance! How could you think me capable of such folly?"

"I did not think you capable of it," answered Beauchamp, slightly nettled. "I only said your manner might make other people think so if you did not take care. And there is another thing I want to say to you, Eugenia. It is really not absolutely necessary for you to tell everybody we meet that you have never been in Paris before. Those people I introduced to you to-day, for instance--Miss Fretville and her brother--I heard you telling them you had not only never been here before, but that you had never been out of England. What business is it of theirs? Why in the world should you expose our private affairs to every casual acquaintance?"

"I had no idea what I said could vex you," said Eugenia, humbly, but with considerable astonishment. "Indeed, I could hardly have avoided it. Miss Fretville asked me if I did not think some street or other wonderfully improved by some new buildings--I forget what--and if I did not think the Empress had grown much stouter, and ever so many little things like that--you know the sort of things people make talk about at first--and I was obliged to say I had not been here before. Surely it would have been worse to have pretended I knew about things I had never seen? It is no crime never to have been out of England."

There was a little spice of self-assertion in the last sentences which hardly accorded with Captain Chancellor's notion of wifely submission.

"Crime!" he repeated. "Nonsense! You know quite well what I mean, only you are so exaggerated. Of course any one that knows you and the quiet way you have been brought up and all that, would not be surprised at your having seen so little; but there is a sort of bravado in decrying one's antecedents unnecessarily, which appears to me the extreme of bad taste."

"_Truly_, Beauchamp, I don't understand you," said Eugenia earnestly. "I am very sorry for having annoyed you,"--here her voice for the first time faltered a little--"I will try never to do so again in the same way, but--but I do think you fancy things a little. I was not thinking of my `antecedents' in any way. I simply answered what I was asked. But I am very sorry--very, very sorry I vexed you." The words came very brokenly now and the brown eyes grew suspiciously dewy.

"Never mind about it any more, then. There is nothing to look miserable about, you silly child," said Beauchamp, beginning to think he had, perhaps, spoken too strongly. "Tears in your eyes! Oh, Eugenia, I believe you know you are irresistible when you cry! But don't, dear, you really mustn't. You would not wish me to be afraid of telling you any little thing that I should like you to alter?"

"No, of course not," answered Eugenia, stifling her wounded feeling and endeavouring to smile in return for his caresses. "Of course not, but only--"

"But only you are a silly child," said her husband, interrupting her. "By-the-bye, Eugenia, I have been quite surprised to hear how well you speak French; your accent is excellent. No one would suppose you had never been out of England unless you told it."

"We had a French governess," said Eugenia, "and it is very easy to learn to speak French fairly. Papa cared more about German. Of course German is more of a study than French; it opens the door to so much; so many books suffer in the translation."

"Quite a mistake to put German before French," said Captain Chancellor, decidedly. "French will carry you all over the Continent, and any girl who speaks it easily will do very well. There are plenty of English books to read on any subject that comes within a woman's sphere."

Eugenia had it on her lips to give her husband some of her father's opinions on the vexed question he had referred to, but on second thoughts refrained. Beauchamp would be certain to disagree with her, might, not improbably, ridicule her notions as high-flown and exaggerated, would-be "strong-minded" and altogether absurd, and such ridicule she had not yet learnt to bear with equanimity. So she said no more, and during the remainder of their stay in Paris she conducted herself on all occasions of sightseeing with the nearest approach to amiable impassiveness to which she could attain.