Not Without Thorns

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 believe you. 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 be very good to her. No doubt you are, but I doubt if even the best of husbands can quite enter 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, or do you 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.”

“Is that all 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 away with some 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 away with any 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 you had loved 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 —truly I don’t, Beauchamp – but all of a sudden Eugenia challenged me with having been the cause of your not marrying 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 have deliberately chosen 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. “Roma with 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 for you; 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 on his side. 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.”

“He need 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 will both try again,” he said, kindly, “Not that you did not please 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 ask me; 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 feel sorry for 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 I do hope 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.