The large brown eyes looked up beseechingly into Roma’s; the piteous, troubled expression went straight to Roma’s heart.
“You poor child!” she exclaimed impulsively, but checking herself quickly she went on in a different tone.
“You must not be afraid. Things always seem strange and alarming at first. Try and take them more lightly and don’t be too easily daunted. I do know Beauchamp well, and I can assure you that, like many men, his bark is worse than his bite. You are more likely to annoy him by trying too much than too little to please him. He likes things to go on smoothly, and he can’t understand exaggerated feeling of any kind. I don’t think he is difficult to please, but he has got a certain set of ideas about women and wives – many men have, you know, but they modify in time. Only I suppose it is necessary to some extent to seem to agree with one’s husband whether one does thoroughly or not – just at first, you know, before people have got to understand each other quite well.”
“I am afraid that sort of thing would be very difficult to me,” said Eugenia, sadly. “You see, I have always been accustomed to saying all I felt, to meeting sympathy wherever I wanted it. In some things I found it in my father; in others in my sister.”
“You have been exceptionally happy,” said Roma.
“Yes,” returned Eugenia, “I have indeed. We always see our happiness most clearly when we look back. I fear I have been too tenderly cared for. Perhaps,” with a faint laugh, “perhaps I am a little spoilt.” Roma smiled, but did not answer immediately. They were walking slowly up and down the terrace. Suddenly she turned to Eugenia with a question.
“Do you dislike the idea of Halswood – of living there, I mean?”
“Yes,” answered Eugenia, frankly, “I do very much. I dislike the whole of it – the being rich, and all that.”
“Would you really rather Beauchamp had not succeeded to the property?” asked Roma again, with a glimmer of amusement in her dark eyes.
“Far rather,” returned Eugenia, with much emphasis.
“You extraordinary girl!” exclaimed Roma, now laughing outright; “what would Gertrude think if she heard you?”
“Perhaps she wouldn’t believe me,” said Eugenia, sagely. “But it is quite, quite true. Still I would not say so to her. I hardly think I would say so to Beauchamp even. It is the sort of feeling that he could hardly – that very few people could enter into.”
“Very few indeed, I should say,” replied Roma. “But, Eugenia, do you know I think you must try to get over the feeling. Solemnly, I assure you that I should have felt far more anxious about your future – yours and Beauchamp’s I mean – had he remained poor. You don’t know what it is. You don’t know how very few people can resist the deterioration of that struggling, pinching life.”
“We should not have been so very badly off,” said Eugenia, far from convinced that she was mistaken.
“Yes, you would,” persisted Roma; “for Beauchamp’s tastes are all those of a rich man. He is so fastidious, and as a bachelor he has been able to indulge his fastidiousness to a great extent. Oh no, no, you are quite mistaken, Eugenia! I assure you you should be very thankful you are rich. It takes – a very different man to Beauchamp to make a good poor husband,” she had it on her lips to utter, but stopped in time. Eugenia did not notice the interruption. She seemed to be thinking deeply.
“It seems to me so much more difficult than being poor,” she said. “But you must know some things much better than I. I will try to think it is best.”
“Yes, do, it will give you a much better start,” said Roma, cheerfully. “And remember my advice, to take things lightly and not to be too sensitive. Not very lofty sentiments, are they? But there’s some sense in them. Everything seems to be compromise, after all. Nobody is quite good or quite bad, and most people and most lives are made up of a great many littles of both. That is the extent of the philosophy to which my four-and-twenty years’ experience has brought me?”
“It is very sad, I think,” said Eugenia.
“But it might be worse?” suggested Roma.
Then they both laughed, and whether or no Roma’s philosophy much commended itself to her, Eugenia certainly went about with a lighter heart and brighter face than had been hers during the last few weeks.
And the latter part of Mrs Chancellor’s visit to Winsley certainly proved a notable exception to the old proverb that “three are no company,” for the three ladies were very much better company than the two had been, and Eugenia no longer counted the days to her departure, and openly expressed her hopes that when Beauchamp returned, he would arrange to stay a little while: with his sister; which expression of cordial feeling naturally gratified Mrs Eyrecourt, and disposed her to regard her young sister-in-law in a more favourable light. Roma looked on and smiled, and enjoyed the present comfortable state of things, thinking to herself nevertheless that it was not on the whole to be regretted that the two counties respectively containing Halswood Hall and Winsley Grange were at a considerable distance from each other.
Captain Chancellor came back a fortnight after Roma’s return, and a week later he took his wife to her new home. They did not travel thither by way of Wareborough, as Eugenia had hoped, but this disappointment she made up her mind to bear with philosophy. And Beauchamp, who had acted by his sister’s advice in the matter, appreciated his wife’s good behaviour to the extent of promising that once they were settled at Halswood, and had got the place into some sort of order, she should invite her father and Sydney and Frank to come to visit her in her own home. Eugenia mentioned this to Sydney in her next letter, but the smile with which the curate’s wife read the message was a rather sad one.
“Dear Eugenia!” she said to himself; “I am afraid she is going to be far away from us – farther than she or any of us thought. But I trust she will not miss us.”
Volume Three – Chapter Two.
Home
And sometimes I am hopeful as the spring,And up my fluttering heart is borne aloft,As high and gladsome as the lark at sunrise;And then, as though the fowler’s shaft had pierced it,It comes plumb down, with such a dead, dead fall.Philip Van Artevelde.It was late in the evening of an August day when Captain Chancellor and his wife reached Halswood. Beauchamp had been anxious to complete the journey at once without any halts by the way, but to do this it had been necessary to leave Winsley very early in the morning, in consequence of which Eugenia was very tired. A certain excitement had kept her up during the first part of the journey, an excitement arising from mingled causes, but of which the anticipation of the glories of Halswood about to be revealed to her was a much less considerable one than would have been generally credited. Till they had passed Marley Junction, the ugly familiar station where everybody coming south from or going north to Wareborough and Bridgenorth always changed carriages, Eugenia had not been without a childish hope that she might catch sight of some home face; Frank perhaps, or more probably his brother, or not impossibly her father even. A sort of warm thrill of pleasure passed through her at the thought; it was more than two months since she had seen arty one of the friends among whom her nineteen years of girlhood had been passed, and before her marriage she had never been away from her father’s house for more than a fortnight – some amount of home-sickness was surely to be excused. All the way to Marley she felt as if she were going home in reality; the sight of a tall chimney, the dirty smoke-begrimed red of the streets of brick houses of the first little manufacturing town through which they passed made the tears come into her eyes. Her husband noticed their dewy appearance and remonstrated with her on the folly of sitting close beside the window, “with that abominable smoke and filthy smuts flying in.” He got up and shut the window, remarking as he did so that railway lines to civilised places should really not be cut through these atrocious manufacturing districts; he trusted nothing would ever necessitate his entering Wareborough or Bridgenorth or any of these Wareshire towns again.
Eugenia said nothing, and changed her seat to the opposite side of the carriage as she was bidden. She had felt no temptation to confide to her husband the real cause of the emotion he had not even imagined to be such, but her eyes did not immediately recover themselves, and Marley once left behind, her spirits fell. Every mile of the unfamiliar country through which their journey now lay seemed to increase her painful sense of loneliness and strangeness.
“Oh,” thought she, as they at last reached Chilworth, the nearest point to Halswood. “Oh, if only this were Bridgenorth, and we were going to the little house, or even to the lodgings we used to talk of living in there, and Sydney perhaps waiting to welcome us.”
The tears got the length of dropping this time. She made no effort to conceal them, for by now it was too dark for her husband to see her face.
No sensation of any kind was perceptible at the little station on their arrival. Under the circumstances, of course any demonstration of rejoicing at the home-coming of the new lord of the greater part of the adjacent soil would have been the extreme of bad taste, and there was nothing by which a stranger could have guessed that the lady and gentleman who got out of the train and quietly passed through the station-gate to the carriage waiting outside were persons of more than ordinary local importance, save perhaps a certain extra obsequiousness on the part of the very unofficial-looking station-master, and a somewhat greater than usual readiness to bestir himself on the part of the solitary porter. Mrs Chancellor, however, was far too self-absorbed to notice anything of the kind; it had never occurred to her to think of herself and her husband as objects of interest or curiosity to the outside world, and had the joy bells been ringing and bonfires blazing she would probably have turned to her companion with an inquiry as to the cause.
There was a momentary delay as she was getting into the carriage – Captain Chancellor turned back to give some additional instruction respecting the luggage. Eugenia standing waiting could not fail to notice that the brougham was a new one, and that everything about it, including the deep mourning livery of the men-servants, was perfectly well-appointed.
“What a nice carriage this is, Beauchamp,” she said, when the door was shut, and they were rolling smoothly and swiftly away.
“Yes,” he replied, not ill-pleased by her admiration; “I wrote for it when I first came down here. There was nothing fit for use. Herbert Chancellor never brought any carriages down here – not of course that they would have been mine if he had. Yes, it is a first-rate little brougham. Did you notice the horses? Oh no, by-the-bye it was too dark.”
“I did not notice them. The lamps lighted up the carriage, and drew my attention to it. The horses were more in the shade. Not that I should venture to give an opinion on them. You know how dreadfully ignorant I am of such things.”
“You will soon pick up quite as much knowledge of the kind as you need. I loathe and detest ‘horsy’ women. Roma even, if she were any one but herself, I should say had a shade too much of that sort of thing. But on the other hand, of course, it doesn’t do to be in a state of utter ignorance about such matters.”
“No, oh no,” said Eugenia. “I quite know how you mean. I want to understand a little more about a good many things that I have not come in the way of hitherto.”
Beauchamp’s tone had been pleasant and encouraging. Eugenia’s impressionable spirits began to rise. If she could but be sure of always pleasing her husband! If she could but feel that in all difficulties, great and small, she might appeal to him, certain of sympathy, certain of encouragement! It might come to be so – married life she had often heard, was not to be tested by the outset. Circumstances so far had certainly been somewhat against her. It might be that this coming to Halswood, so dreaded by her, was to be the beginning of the life of perfect union, of complete mutual comprehension which she had dreamt of.
A glow of new hopefulness seemed to creep through her at the thought – from very intensity of feeling she remained silent, wishing that she could find words in which to express to her husband a tithe of the yearning devotion, the ardent resolutions ready at his slightest bidding to spring into life. In a minute or two he spoke again.
“Are you tired, Eugenia?” he said. “What makes you so silent?”
There was a slight impatience in his tone. He wanted her to be bright and eager, and delighted with everything. He had by now almost got over his fear of “undue or underbred elation” at her good fortune, on his wife’s part, and when alone with him some amount of demonstrative appreciation of what through him had fallen to her share, would not have been objectionable. But, as was usual with her, when carried away by strong feeling of her own, Eugenia perceived nothing of the restrained irritation in Beauchamp’s voice.
“Tired,” she said, with a little start, “oh, no; at least I may be a little tired, but it isn’t that that made me silent. I was only thinking.”
Her voice quivered a little. A sudden fear of hysterics came over Captain Chancellor. Some women always got hysterics when they were tired, and Eugenia was so absurdly excitable. A word or a look at any moment would make her cry.
“Thinking,” he said, half rallyingly, half impatiently; “what about? Nothing unpleasant, I hope? though there certainly is no counting on women’s caprices.”
“I can’t possibly tell you all I was thinking,” she began, still speaking tremulously. “I was thinking how I do hope we shall be happy together in this new life, how I trust you will be pleased with me always, how I hope you will let me come to you with my little difficulties and anxieties, and – and that we may be at one always in everything, and not grow apart from each other. Oh, I can’t half say what I feel. I think – I think, I sympathise a little with the wife in the ‘Lord of Burleigh,’ I feel frightened and ignorant, and a little lonely. But oh, Beauchamp, if you will help me – don’t you remember that beautiful line —
“And he cheered her soul with love.
“If we always keep close together, I shall not regret anything.”
By this time she was in tears. Beauchamp was no great reader of poetry. He “got up” what was wanted for drawing-room small talk, and that was about all. But, as it happened, he knew the poem – the story of it, at least, to which she alluded, and had more than once made great fun of it.
“Catch any woman of the lower classes being such a fool. Founded on fact, not a bit of it. She died of consumption, you may be sure,” was the opinion he had expressed.
So, being a little “put out” to begin with, and by no means in the humour for a sentimental scene – tears, and all the rest of it – Eugenia’s somewhat incoherent speech, the allusion at the end of it especially, met with by no means a tender or sympathising reception.
“Really, Eugenia,” he began, and at the sound of the two words all the new hopefulness, the revived tenderness, the warmth died in the girlish wife’s heart – a cold, dull ache of disappointment, relieved but by the more acute stings of mortification and wounded feeling, setting in, the same instant, in their stead. “Really, Eugenia, you choose very odd times for your fits of – I really don’t know what to call it – exaggerated sentiment, as you object to ‘gushingness.’ We haven’t been quarrelling that I know of, and I have no intention of doing so. What you mean by talking of ‘not regretting’ anything, I don’t know in the least. I hate maudlin sentiment, and that poetry you are so fond of stuffs your head with it. For goodness’ sake, try to be comfortable, and let me be so. No one expects impossibilities of you – you talk as if I were an unreasonable tyrant. If anything could ‘drive us apart,’ as you call it, it would be this sort of nonsense, and these everlasting tears.”
He had paused once or twice in this speech, but Eugenia remained perfectly silent, and this irritated him into saying more than he intended, more than he actually felt, and the consciousness of the harshness of his own words irritated him still further. Still Eugenia did not speak. He let down the carriage window on his side impatiently, thrust his head out into the darkness, then drew it in, and jerked up the glass again. Eugenia did not move – he glanced at her. The tears he had complained of had disappeared as if by magic; her face, in the uncertain light of the carriage lamps, looked unnaturally white and set, the mouth compressed, the eyes gazing straight before them. It was really too bad of her to behave so absurdly, thought Beauchamp, feeling himself not a little aggrieved. Still, he wished he had not spoken quite so strongly.
“Eugenia,” he began again, “do try to be reasonable. You take up everything so exaggeratedly. You know perfectly well I have no wish to hurt you. But really it is not easy to avoid doing so. Living with you is like treading on egg-shells.”
Then she turned towards him with a look in her eyes which he had never seen in them before – a look which the sweet wistful eyes of Eugenia Laurence had never known, a look which should have made her husband consider what he was doing, what he had done.
“It is a terrible pity you did not find out my real character before,” she said, “before it was too late. As it is too late, however, no doubt the best thing you can do is to tell me plainly how I can make myself the least disagreeable to you. You shall be troubled by no more ‘maudlin sentiment,’ or tears. So much I can promise you.” Then she became perfectly silent again. Captain Chancellor gave a little laugh.
“I am glad to hear it,” he said, with a slight sneer. “And, by Jove! what a temper she has after all,” he thought to himself. “They are all alike, I suppose, all the world over. They all want a tight hand. But I flatter myself I know how to break them in.” Then he hummed a tune, drew out his watch and looked what o’clock it was, fidgeted with the window again, all with an air of perfect indifference, which he imagined to be his actual state of mind. But far down in his heart there was a little ache of self-reproach and uneasiness. Had Eugenia turned to him now with tearful eyes and broken words, little as he might have understood her feelings, he would certainly not have repulsed her.
Just at this moment the carriage turned in at the Halswood lodge. There was an instant’s stoppage, while the heavy iron gates were opened, then they went on again, even more swiftly and smoothly than before.
“We are only a quarter of a mile from the house now,” said Captain Chancellor. “You should see the lights from your side.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Eugenia, indifferently, turning her eyes listlessly in the direction in which he pointed, thinking that she would not care if an earthquake were suddenly to swallow up Halswood and everything connected with it, herself included; yet determined to hide all feeling – to appear as unconcerned as Beauchamp himself. “Ah, yes, I see them over there. I hope they will have fires,” with a little shiver.
“Fires?” repeated Beauchamp. “After such a hot day. Why, it is oppressive still. You can’t be cold, surely?”
“Yes, I am,” she said, “very;” and as she spoke, the carriage drew up under the pillared portico, which Captain Chancellor had pronounced so desperately ugly the first time he came to Halswood, and in another moment Eugenia’s feet had crossed the threshold of what was now her home.
Three or four servants were waiting in the hall. At first sight Mrs Chancellor imagined them to be all strangers to her, but in another moment, to her delight, she recognised in the face of a young girl standing modestly somewhat in the rear of the others, the familiar features of Barbara’s niece. Mrs Eyrecourt had not succeeded in her design of substituting a more experienced lady’s maid in the place of Eugenia’s protégée. Something had been said about it, but in the pressure of more important arrangements Captain Chancellor had allowed the matter to stand over for the present, and it had been arranged that Rachel should be sent to Halswood the day before her mistress’s arrival, but in the absorption of her own thoughts Eugenia had for the time forgotten this, and the pleasure of the surprise was great.
“Oh, Rachel!” she exclaimed with effusion, darting forward and shaking hands eagerly with the young girl – “I am so pleased to see you. Did you come yesterday, and how did you leave them all? How is papa? And Miss Sydney – Mrs Thurston, I mean?”
“They are both very well, indeed, ma’am,” said the girl, flushing with pleasure at the friendly greeting – her spirits had been somewhat depressed since her arrival; the great, empty house, the few servants, all middle-aged or old, had seemed strange and cold to Barbara’s niece; “I went to see Mrs Thurston the last thing the night before I left – there is a letter waiting for you from her upstairs that she told me to put in your room – and Mr Laurence, ma’am, he wished me to – ”
“Eugenia,” said Captain Chancellor’s voice from behind his wife, “Eugenia, if you are not very particularly occupied, will you spare me a moment?”
She had vexed him again, but in the softening influence of the home news, the sound of the dear home names, Eugenia’s better self was again uppermost. There was no resentment or haughtiness in her tone or manner as she turned quickly towards her husband.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” she exclaimed; “I was so pleased to see Rachel and hear about them all at home, that!” But she said no more, for glancing at Beauchamp, she saw that her words had deepened rather than lightened the look of annoyance on his face.
“Mrs Grier,” he said, addressing an elderly person in black silk, tall, thin, stiff, and yet depressed-looking, who came forward as she heard her name. “Eugenia, this is Mrs Grier. Mrs Grier has been at Halswood for I don’t know how many years. How many is it?” turning to the housekeeper with the pleasant smile that so lighted up his somewhat impassive face.
“Thirty-three, sir,” replied Mrs Grier, thawing a little, “and more changes in the three than in all the thirty.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Eugenia, kindly, shaking hands with the melancholy housekeeper. “You must have had a great deal to go through lately.”
“I have, indeed, ma’am. Three funerals in a year, and all three the masters of the house,” answered Mrs Grier, shaking her head solemnly. “It isn’t often things happen so in a family. But all the same, ma’am, I wish you joy, you and my master, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” said the two thus cheerfully addressed.
Eugenia felt almost inclined to laugh; but Captain Chancellor hardly relished the peculiar style of Mrs Grier’s congratulation.
“It’s time the luck should turn again now,” he said lightly. “Three is the correct number for that sort of thing, isn’t it?” Mrs Grier seemed struck by the remark.
“There may be something in that, sir,” she allowed.
Then one or two others of the head servants, who, having endured the twenty-five years of semi-starvation of the old Squire’s rule, had come to be looked upon as fixtures in the place, were in turn introduced by name to Mrs Chancellor.
“Some of the new servants are to be here to-morrow,” said Mrs Grier, to Captain Chancellor. “I hope you will find everything comfortable in the meantime, sir.”
Dinner – or, more properly speaking, supper – was prepared for the travellers in the dining-room – a huge, dark cavern of a room it looked to Eugenia, who shivered as the fireless grate met her view. She was too tired to eat; but, afraid of annoying her husband, she made a pretence of doing so, feeling eager for Sydney’s letter, and a chat with Rachel about “home,” in her own room.
These pleasures were deferred for a little by the appearance of Mrs Grier to do the honour of showing her lady her rooms. The housekeeper had rather taken a fancy to Mrs Chancellor. Eugenia’s allusion to what she “must have had to go through,” had been a most lucky one, for Mrs Grier was one of those curiously constituted beings to whom condolence never comes amiss. The most delicate flattery was less acceptable to her than a sympathising remark that she was “looking far from well,” and no one could pay her a higher compliment than by telling her she bore traces of having known a great deal of trouble. She was not, for her class, an uneducated person; but she was constitutionally superstitious. Omens, dreams, deathbeds, funerals, all things ghastly and ghostly, were dear to her soul; and her thirty-three years’ life in a gloomy, half-deserted house, such as Halswood had been under the old régime, had not conduced to a healthier tone of mind.
