Mrs Molesworth (continued 7)

“A Wareborough dressmaker!” exclaimed Gertrude, lifting her eyebrows. “My dear Eugenia, you must excuse me, but I don’t think that sort of thing will please Beauchamp. He is so very particular.”

“I know he is,” replied Eugenia, quietly, “and therefore I always study to please him. He likes all the dresses I have, and no one can be more particular than I am about their fitting well. The person I speak of made this one,” touching the pretty lavender dress she was wearing, “and the one I had on last night. Don’t you think they fit well?”

“I really have not particularly observed,” said Gertrude, less cordially. “I dare say they do, but fitting is not everything.”

“Certainly not,” said Eugenia, “and of course I know a Wareborough dressmaker cannot make things as fashionably as a London one. But Sydney and I have taken pains to get this person to make our things in the way we like, and I do not care about being too fashionable. I don’t think it is good taste.”

Mrs Eyrecourt smiled, but her smile was not a very pleasant one, and she did not repeat her offer. She was far from thinking it worth her while to enter into any discussion with this very daring young person on even so trifling a subject as dress; but in her own mind she resolved to give her brother a hint as to the expediency of at once and for ever separating his wife from the influences of her former home.

“She is pretty enough to do very well if she had more manner and experience,” Mrs Eyrecourt allowed, with the impartiality on which she prided herself. “But she is really incredibly ignorant, and less docile than I expected. Ah, Beauchamp, you have made a sad mistake!”

The half-hour with Floss in the morning proved to have been the pleasantest part of Eugenia’s first day at Winsley. Mrs Eyrecourt was, of course, civil and attentive, but though, had she met her in other circumstances, Eugenia might have bestowed upon her a fair share of liking, it seemed impossible to Beauchamp’s wife to feel perfectly at ease with her; she felt herself, as it were, constantly on the defensive, and felt, too, that Gertrude was as constantly occupied in taking her measure, criticising what she considered her deficiencies, and noting her observations and opinions. It was far from comfortable. Never before, perhaps, in all her life had Eugenia been so painfully self-conscious, never before had her latent antagonism been so fully aroused; and what was, perhaps, in great measure the cause of both, never before had she known the meaning of—“ennui.” This sort of life, the being treated with the formality due to a visitor, unsoftened by intimacy or association, was to her intolerably dull. She tried to read, but her attention seemed beyond her control, and there was no one at hand to compare notes with, even if she did succeed in becoming interested; for though Gertrude rather affected literary tastes, and talked a good deal of the advantage and desirability of “keeping up with the books of the day,” her ideas of the hooks of the day hardly coincided with Eugenia’s, and to the girl’s inexperience her sister-in-law’s narrow-mindedness on many points seemed unparalleled. On some subjects Gertrude could talk with intelligence and even originality, but on few of these subjects was Eugenia much at home. She had never been inside a London theatre, the best singers of the day she knew but by name, she had never seen the Academy! Gossip or even mild scandal was utterly lost upon her, for she was a complete stranger to the section of the fashionable world in which Mrs Eyrecourt lived and moved and had her being, in which it was her fondest ambition to shine. Gertrude was not much given to exerting herself for the entertainment of her own sex at the best of times, but with respect to her sister-in-law she had really intended to do her utmost, and finding that she did not succeed did not add to her amiability. There would have been some amount of pleasurable excitement in taking Eugenia by the hand in the sense of patronising her, and it had been in this direction that Captain Chancellor had reckoned sanguinely on his sister’s goodwill, not taking into account the one obstacle to this comfortable arrangement—Eugenia’s decided objection to anything of the kind, which from the first Mrs Eyrecourt was quick to perceive and indirectly to resent. In this particular, as in many others, Beauchamp had read his wife’s character wrong, had been unable to estimate the past influences of her life. He had mistaken docility for weakness; the humility and self-distrust engendered by her great love and faith had seemed to him mere consciousness of ignorance and inexperience—a state of mind, to his thinking, eminently becoming in the untrained girl he had honoured by selecting as his wife.

It happened, unfortunately, too, that just at this time there was considerably less than usual “going on” in the Winsley neighbourhood. Of the adjacent families whom Gertrude thought fit to visit some were still in town, some had illness among them—nearly all, from one reason or another, were hors de combat with respect of dinner-parties, picnics, croquet, and the like. And in a general way the neighbourhood was remarkably sociable and friendly, and would have been very ready to make a nine days’ pet of the pretty bride, provided Mrs Eyrecourt had given it to be understood that such attention to her sister-in-law would be agreeable to herself, for Gertrude managed to “queen it” to a considerable extent over society in her part of the county.

“You will have rather an unfavourable idea of Winsley in one respect, I fear, Eugenia,” said Mrs Eyrecourt, one day. “I mean you must think it very dull. But nearly all our neighbours are still away. A month or two hence it will be quite different.”

“I don’t care about gaiety much, thank you,” replied Eugenia. “I have never been accustomed to it, and I can feel quite as happy without it.”

“You are very philosophical,” said Gertrude. “But I am surprised to hear you say you have not been accustomed to that sort of thing. I always understood that up among the Cottonocracy there were all sorts of grand doings; overwhelmingly magnificent dinner-parties and balls, and so on.”

“I dare say there are,” replied Eugenia, “but we never went to them. My father very seldom let us go anywhere, except to intimate friends like Mrs Dalrymple.”

“Oh indeed!” said Gertrude, and in her own mind she thought, “These Laurences considered themselves too good for Wareborough society, it appears. How absurd people are!”

On the whole, the pleasantest part of Eugenia’s days at Winsley was the half-hour in the morning when Floss joined her in her stroll in the garden, or on wet days in her own room. The stories went on at a great rate, and after she had exhausted all those relating to her own childhood Eugenia had to ransack her memory, and sometimes even to set her inventive powers to work. All seemed equally delightful to Floss. The child had never been so happy in her life, and to Eugenia the consciousness of having gained the little girl’s affection was very sweet.

End of Volume Two.

Volume Three—Chapter One.

Roma’s Sentiments.

And if thy wife and thou agree But ill, as like when short of victual. T. Carlyle, The Beetle. Il m’est impossible de ne point tous féliciter. Les Misérables.

Captain Chancellor had been away more than a fortnight. During that time Eugenia had received several short notes from him, most of which contained pretty much the same information, that business matters at Halswood had proved more complicated than he had expected, that there was so much to arrange and settle he found it impossible to return to Winsley as quickly as he had intended, but that he trusted Eugenia was comfortable and happy with his sister; indeed he felt sure she would be so, and so on. There was never any allusion to the little scene which had occurred the morning he left, and from the tone of his letters it was so evident to Eugenia that long before the remembrance of it had ceased acutely to distress her, her husband had forgotten all about it, that she on her side refrained from mentioning it.

“It will be best never to refer to it,” she thought to herself. “Only when Beauchamp returns I shall be doubly careful, so that he may see how anxious I am to please him even in trifles.”

More than once it had happened that the same post which brought Eugenia a short note from her husband brought Mrs Eyrecourt a much lengthier epistle from him. This was the case one morning about this time. It was a dull, close day, and Eugenia, always sensitive to such influences, had been hoping earnestly while dressing that her letters might bring news of Beauchamp’s speedy return. The disappointment was great when she opened the thin letter addressed to her, dated this time from Bridgenorth, and found that another fortnight must pass before he could rejoin her.

“I came on here yesterday,” he wrote, “having got through the most pressing part of the business at Halswood, and hoping to get my leave, which is up next week, extended at once, for my papers were sent in last week. But I find as I am here I must stay till the middle of the month, when I hope to get away for good.”

“Another whole fortnight,” sighed Eugenia. “Oh dear, how I do wish Beauchamp had let me wait for him at home instead of here. It would have been so different. I could have seen Sydney every day.”

The tears rose unbidden to her eyes at the thought of the contrast between such a state of things and her present position, but she checked them back quickly, as looking up she saw that Gertrude was watching her. She went on reading her letter, though she already knew its few words by heart, holding it so as to prevent her sister-in-law seeing how short it was.

“You have a letter from Beauchamp, I suppose,” said Gertrude. “So have I—a tremendous one, isn’t it?” she fluttered half a dozen sheets through her fingers for Eugenia’s benefit. “I really can’t read it all till after breakfast. It is all about Halswood. I was anxious to know how he finds everything, and so Beauchamp has sent me all the details—the particulars of the whole, the rents of the great farms, how the entailed money property is invested, and I don’t know all what, but all so interesting to me of course, knowing it so well. It isn’t exactly womens’ business certainly, but then I have had a good deal of business to look after in my time. The womenkind of men of property should be able to help their husbands and sons, you know.”

She went on speaking as if Eugenia were an ordinary uninterested visitor, either really forgetting, or affecting to do so, that to the woman before her of all women in the world Beauchamp Chancellor’s interests must be the closest and dearest. The blood seemed to boil in the young wife’s veins, but recent experience had not been lost upon her, and her power of self-control had increased greatly in the last few weeks.

So she answered, quietly, “Yes, they certainly should, and so should other people’s wives too. It is one of my father’s hobbies that women of all classes should be better educated, so that they may be better able to help men, and sometimes to work alone even.”

“Oh, I wasn’t referring to that sort of thing. I hate all that talk about women’s rights, and so on: it is very bad taste,” exclaimed Gertrude, contemptuously. “I don’t know, and don’t want to know anything about the women of any class but my own. But of course there is nothing unfeminine in managing one’s own business matters when one understands how. I have almost been brought up to it, you see, always having lived on our own land—and I certainly need all I know now, with Quintin’s long minority before me and Beauchamp at the head of the Halswood affairs too. He is sure to be always consulting me. That reminds me I must be quick, for I must answer his letter before luncheon, and it will take me a good while.”

She went on with her breakfast, but happening to move aside the large envelope of her brother’s letter, her eye fell on another, which, with a little exclamation, “From Roma, I didn’t expect to hear from her to-day,” she took up and read.

“Roma is coming home to-morrow,” she announced to Eugenia, in a minute or two. “A week sooner than she expected.”

“Is she really? I am so glad!” exclaimed Eugenia, thankful for any interruption to the present uncongenial tête-à-tête with her sister-in-law, doubly thankful that it came in the shape of a person she was already inclined to like.

“Why, have you ever seen her? Oh yes, to be sure, she stayed a night at Wareborough and was at your marriage. I forgot you had seen her,” said Mrs Eyrecourt.

“I saw more of her last winter,” said Eugenia, “at the time she stayed a week or so with Mrs Dalrymple—just when Beauchamp first came to Wareborough,”—“and I met him in the fog, and all the world was changed to me,” was the unspoken conclusion of her sentence.

“Oh yes; I think I remember something about it,” said Gertrude, indifferently. “Dear me, was that only last winter? What changes in so short a time!”

She sighed softly. Somehow the sigh was irritating to Eugenia; her instinct told her that the reflections accompanying it would not have been gratifying to her to hear. But she little guessed what they actually were. “If I had foreseen it all,” thought Gertrude, “I certainly would not have been so eager to prevent Beauchamp’s marrying Roma,” (for that this would have come to pass had she chosen to encourage it, no power on earth, no protestations of the young lady herself, however earnest, could ever make Mrs Eyrecourt cease to believe): “it would have been far—oh, infinitely better than this! Though of course even now nothing could have been so perfectly suitable as Addie Chancellor,” and then poor Gertrude sighed.

“I am very glad too Roma is coming,” she said, amiably, becoming conscious suddenly of the audibleness of her sigh, and feeling a little shocked at herself. “By-the-bye, Eugenia, she sends her love to you and hopes to find you still here.”

“Thank you,” replied Eugenia, rather coldly. But in her heart she did feel very glad of the news. She hoped many things from Roma’s advent. Roma was kind and womanly and sensible. She had known Beauchamp all his life, and must understand him thoroughly. Her advice Eugenia would not feel inclined to scorn. Roma could never be patronising; hers was by many degrees too large a nature for anything so small. And though clever mostly in a worldly sense perhaps—clever and satirical and dreadfully au fait of everything—Eugenia did not feel in the least afraid of her. Though she had been everywhere and seen everything and knew everybody; though her education had reached far, in directions where Eugenia Laurence’s had never even begun, yet she was not conventional, not spoilt, not incapable of sympathy with the great human universe outside her own immediate sphere. Such at least was Eugenia’s ideal Roma—Roma with the bright dark eyes, ready words, and kindly smile.

And Mrs Eyrecourt was very glad too. Roma would help her, she hoped, to entertain this pretty, uninteresting wife of Beauchamp’s, whom she found such heavy work; for Roma was great at this sort of task—she had quite a knack of getting stupid people to talk, discordant ones to agree, doing it too, with so much self-forgetfulness and tact, that the credit of this comfortable state of things usually fell to Gertrude’s own share.

“Such a charming hostess! so unselfish and considerate for every one.”

It was not much to be wondered at that so warm-hearted and unselfish a creature had not found the charge of her husband’s young sister a burdensome one. And as, even in this crooked life, goodness sometimes is recompensed, Gertrude Eyrecourt met with her reward. Everybody—her everybody—praised her for her sisterly behaviour to homeless Roma; and Roma herself, whose capacity for gratitude was both wide and deep, thanked her constantly, though tacitly, by doing everything in her power to please her, resolutely refusing to see her smallnesses and selfishnesses, admiring her and respecting her judgment—and now and then too by determinedly disagreeing with her.

Both Mrs Eyrecourt and her guests found their hopes fulfilled. Roma’s return improved the state of things immensely. She came home in great spirits, having enjoyed her visit far more than she had expected, yet declaring, and with evident sincerity, somewhat to Eugenia’s surprise, that she felt delighted to be at home again.

“Who do you think was my travelling companion part of the way?” she said, when the three ladies were sitting together the first morning after her arrival. “He got in at Marley, and saw me into my train at the junction—he was going on to town. Do guess who it was—he is a friend of yours, Eugenia. Why, how stupid you both are! You are generally so quick at guessing, Gertrude.”

“I!” exclaimed Mrs Eyrecourt, looking up, as if aware for the first time that Roma had been speaking to her. “I beg your pardon, I thought you said the unknown was a friend of Eugenia’s.”

“Well, and if I did, is the world so big that by no conceivable chance two people living at opposite ends of the country could happen to have any mutual acquaintances?” said Roma. “To hear you speak, Gertrude, any one would think you had never been five miles from home. Like a nun I remember seeing when I was a child, in a convent in Switzerland, who thought, but wasn’t quite sure—the mere idea even of such an adventure seemed to overawe her—that when she was quite a little girl she had once been at Martigny, six miles from home. Why, Gertrude, I thought you prided yourself on being something of a cosmopolitan. Were you never at a place that long ago, when nobody but Miss Burney’s heroines ever went anywhere, used to be called Brighthelmstone, and did you never dine with certain friends of yours there, who never get new dresses unless they are guaranteed to be of the fashion of twenty years ago, dear old souls?”

She spoke playfully, but there was a sharpness in her raillery which Mrs Eyrecourt did not love. She could not endure being laughed at, and she felt annoyed with Roma for making fun of any of her friends, be they never so funny, all of which Roma knew, and had dealt out her words accordingly, for she had not been half an hour at home before she knew exactly how the wind blew as regarded the young wife, and she was on the alert to show Gertrude she need not look to her for sympathy in her prejudice.

But to Eugenia it was actual pain to witness the annoyance or discomfiture of another. A sort of instinct made her try to change the conversation.

“Did you say that the Swiss nun had never in her life been anywhere?” she asked Roma. “Why had she been always in a convent? I never knew children could be sent to convents except as pupils.”

“This girl was an orphan, and she had some money, and she had come to look on the convent as her home,” said Roma; “she wasn’t quite a lady; her father had been a rich farmer. I daresay she was happy enough, but it made a great impression on me as a child. It seemed so dreadful to be shut in between those four high walls when the world outside was so beautiful. I shouldn’t have pitied her half so much if the convent had been in an ugly place.”

“I don’t know,” said Eugenia, with a dreamy look in her eyes; “I think it would be something to have the sky and mountains to look out at if one were miserable.”

The expression of her face struck Roma with a slight pain. It was not thus she had looked on her wedding-day, even when blinded with the tears of her farewell. Through those tears Roma had been able to pronounce her “perfectly happy.”

“Is it Gertrude’s fault, I wonder,” thought Roma, with quick indignation, “or can she be stirring already in her slumber? And only six weeks married.”

But it was not Roma’s way to dwell on unpleasant suggestions. The meeting troubles half-way was an amusement which had never much recommended itself to her. So she answered brightly—

“Miserable, why should we think about being miserable? But all this time you are forgetting my travelling companion. As you won’t guess who he was, I suppose I must tell you. It was Mr Thurston, your brother-in-law’s brother, Eugenia. The stranger, the new arrival from India, Gertrude, that we met at dinner at the Mountmorrises’.”

“I was just thinking it must be he. He goes up and down that line so much. Did not you like him very much, Miss Eyrecourt? I do exceedingly. And he is so clever and thorough. The only thing not nice about him is, he is a little—funny—I don’t know what to call it.”

“Funny? Do you mean humorous?” said Roma, looking at her with some amusement. “It did not strike me particularly.”

“Oh no,” replied Eugenia. “I don’t mean that at all. I mean he is a little odd—uncertain. Sometimes he is so very much nicer than others. He gets queer fits of stiffness and reserve all of a sudden, and then one can make nothing of him. But oh,” she exclaimed, checking herself suddenly, “I shouldn’t criticise him in this way, for he has been so very good to me.”

“I don’t think you have said anything very treasonable,” said Roma. “I can understand what you mean. He is a sensitive man—almost too much so. He looks as if he had had troubles too, though he is cheerful and practical enough. There is something about him unlike most of the men one meets—they are as a rule so very like each other, or else there is something about me which draws out the same sort of remarks from nearly every young man I meet.”

“Really, Roma, I wish you would not talk such nonsense,” said Gertrude, rising as she spoke. “I do think you should be more careful in what you say. You are getting into a way of thinking you can do or say what you like, which strikes me as the reverse of good taste. I confess I do not like your travelling all the way from Marley with a person of whom you know next to nothing. I hardly even remember meeting this Mr Thurston at the Mountmorrises’, and whether we did or not, that sort of introduction entails no more.”

“But you forget that I said he was a connexion of Eugenia’s, Gertrude,” said Roma, quietly but very distinctly.

Mrs Eyrecourt’s tone softened.

“I did not notice what you said particularly,” she replied, as she left the room. “Of course Eugenia will know I did not intend to be so rude as to speak disparagingly of any of her friends.”

Roma smiled. “All the same, Gertrude, like many other people, is rude when she is cross,” she remarked to Eugenia, for they were now by themselves. “Eugenia,” noticing the puzzled expression of her companion’s face, “why do you look so ‘funny?’ Are you shocked at me?”

“No,” said Eugenia, “but I am not sure that I quite understand you.”

“I am not worth much study, I assure you,” said Roma, contentedly. “You will understand all there is to understand very soon. Suppose we go out a little. By-the-bye, doesn’t that child trouble you? I saw her out there with you for such a time this morning.”

“Floss,” said Eugenia, “trouble me? Oh no. I like her. I should have been very dull without her.”

“So you have been dull? I was afraid of it. I saw the look on your face when I said how glad I was to be back at Winsley again.”

“Oh dear! I wish I could keep looks from my face,” exclaimed Eugenia, pathetically. “Please forget about it. I should be so sorry to look as if I were not happy here. Beauchamp is so anxious that Mrs Eyrecourt and I should get on well. He is very fond of his sister, unusually so, isn’t he?”

“So he should be,” replied Roma. “He owes her so much: so do I. She has been very good to us both.”

“How?” asked Eugenia. “Of course I know she cares for Beauchamp, and—and takes great interest in him and all that, but still I don’t quite know how you mean.”

Roma looked surprised. “Has Beauchamp never told you how Gertrude has all her life been almost like a mother to him?” she said. “And to me too,” she added. “I wonder he never told you.”

“There has been so little time,” said Eugenia, hesitatingly; “but I wish you would tell me. I want to understand things better.”

There were no secrets involved. Roma was ready enough to give Beauchamp’s wife a little sketch of the past. When it was finished Eugenia sighed.

“Thank you,” she said. “I am glad to know it; I wish I had known it before. Perhaps it might have given me a different feeling to Mrs Eyrecourt, and I might have managed to make her like me. As it is, I fear she does not. Oh, Roma,” she went on, for the first time addressing Miss Eyrecourt by her Christian name—“oh, Roma, I wish I understood better. I am afraid I am not fit for the life before me. People seem to look at things so differently from what I fancied. I don’t always understand Beauchamp even. I vex him without in the least meaning it. You know him so well, do you think you could help me at all? I am so terribly, so miserably afraid of his coming to think he has made a mistake.”

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.

“Along this way, if you please, ma’am,” she said to Eugenia, pointing to the long corridor which ran to the right of the great staircase they had come up by. “The rooms to the left have not been occupied for many years. We thought—that is, Mr Blinkhorn and I—that you would prefer to use the rooms which have been the best family-rooms for some generations. It would feel less strange-like—more at home, if I may say so. Here, ma’am,” opening the first door she came to, “is what was the late Mrs Chancellor’s boudoir. It is eight-and-twenty years next month since she was taken ill suddenly, sitting over there by the window in that very chair. It was heart-disease, I believe. She had had a good deal of trouble in her time, poor lady, for the old Squire was always peculiar. They carried her—we did (I was her maid then)—into her bedroom—the next room, ma’am—this,” again opening a door, with an air of peculiar gratification in what she was going to say, “and she died the same night in the bed you see, standing as it does now.”

The present Mrs Chancellor gave a little shiver.

“The next room again, ma’am,” proceeded Mrs Grier, “is quite as pleasant a one as this, and about the same size. It is the room in which old Mr Chancellor breathed his last, last December. He was eighty-nine, ma’am; but he died very hard, for all that. We prepared both these rooms that you might take your choice.”

“Thank you,” replied Eugenia. “I certainly do not feel as if I preferred either. What rooms did the last Mr and Mrs Chancellor use when they were here?” she went on to ask, in a desperate hope that she might light upon some more inviting habitation than these great, dark, musty apartments, with their funereal four-post bedsteads and gloomy associations.

“They had rooms on the other side of the passage,” said Mrs Grier. “Mrs Chancellor had a prejudice against those beautiful mahogany bedsteads,” with indignant emphasis. Evidently Herbert Chancellor’s wife had found small favour in the eyes of Mrs Grier. “But Mr Chancellor died,” with satisfaction, “in his grandfather’s room—the next door, as I told you, ma’am, to this.”

“I don’t wonder at it,” thought Eugenia to herself. She wished she could find courage to ask if it would not be possible for her at once to take up her quarters in one of the rooms in which, so far at least, no Chancellor had lain in state, and was just meditating a request to be shown the one in which Herbert had not died, when Mrs Grier nipped her hopes in the bud.

“To-morrow, of course, any room can be prepared that you like, ma’am,” said the housekeeper; “but for to-night, these two beds are the only ones with sheets on.”

There was a slightly aggrieved tone in her voice. Eugenia instantly took alarm that she might have hurt the old lady’s feelings.

“Oh, thank you, Mrs Grier!” she exclaimed. “I am quite satisfied with this room, and I am sure it will be very comfortable. To-morrow I should like you to show me all over the house. Of course I don’t yet know how we shall settle about any of the rooms permanently. It depends on Captain Chancellor. He intends to refurnish several. But now I think I will go to bed, if you will send Rachel. I am so tired!”

“You do look tired, ma’am. It quite gave me a turn to see you so white when you came first, ma’am,” said Mrs Grier, more cheerfully than she had yet spoken.

And at supper in her own room, when she went downstairs, she confided to Mr Blinkhorn certain agreeable presentiments with regard to their new mistress.

“A nice-spoken young lady. None of your dressed-up fine ladies like the last Mrs Chancellor and her daughter, who must have French beds to sleep in, and could never so much as remember one’s name. Oh, no, this Mrs Chancellor is a different kind altogether. But, mark my words, Mr Blinkhorn, she isn’t long for this world. The Captain may talk of luck turning—ah, indeed!—was it for nothing I dreamt I saw our new lady with black hair instead of brown? Was it for nothing the looking-glass dipped out of my hands when I was dusting her room again this afternoon?”

“But it didn’t break,” objected Mr Blinkhorn.

“Break, what has that to do with it?” exclaimed Mrs Grier, indignantly. “But I know of old it’s no use wasting words on some subjects on you, Mr Blinkhorn. Those that won’t see won’t see, but some day you may remember my words.”

But, notwithstanding Mrs Grier’s forebodings, notwithstanding her own wounded and troubled spirit, Eugenia Chancellor soon fell asleep, and slept soundly. She fell asleep with Sydney’s letter under her pillow, and its loving words in her heart; and the next morning, when the sun shone again, and her husband spoke kindly and seemed to have forgotten yesterday’s cloud, she began again to think that after all life might be bright for her, and their home a happy one.

“Comme on pense à vingt ans.”

Volume Three—Chapter Three.

Visitors, Expected and Unexpected.

Eins ist was besänftigt; die Liebe.—Börne.

Yes, things certainly looked brighter next morning, but the brightness was somewhat fitful and tremulous. Encouraged by it, nevertheless, Eugenia made many new resolutions—too many perhaps—and cherished again new hopes. She set herself with palpitating earnestness to please her husband, and repeated to herself, whenever she had reason to think she had done so, that her former failures had been entirely attributable to her own bad management, want of tact, or exaggerated sensitiveness. Her desire to bring herself, and not Captain Chancellor, in guilty; her determination to see him, and everything about him, by the light of her former hopes and beliefs would have been piteous to any one well acquainted with both characters. She was fighting, not merely for happiness, but for faith—her terror, fast maturing, though as yet resolutely ignored, was not so much that her married life should prove a disappointment as that she should be forced into acknowledging the unworthiness of her idol—that the day should come when, in unutterable bitterness of spirit, she should be driven to confess, “behold it was a dream;” when, the glamour gone for ever, the prize she had won should be seen by her for but “a poor thing” after all. For should that day ever come, Eugenia, little as she knew herself, yet felt instinctively it would go sorely with her—ever prone to extremes, her judgment would then be warped by disappointment, as formerly by unreasonable expectation.

“If I ever come to believe Beauchamp selfish, small-minded, or in any sense less noble than my ideal husband,” she had once said to herself, “I cannot imagine that I could endure to remain with him—I cannot imagine that I could live. Only,” she added, and this reflection many a time stood her in good stead, giving her a sense of security—of firm ground in one direction, “there is one thing I can never be disappointed in—the certainty of his love. Even should it die out altogether—should he live to regret his marriage, and think it a mistake, I shall know that it was mine—that to win me he threw every other consideration aside.”

But just at this time—their first coming to Halswood—Mrs Chancellor instinctively shunned meditation, and for a while the plan seemed to answer. There was a good deal to do—a good many arrangements to make as to which it was almost a matter of necessity that her husband should consult her. There was all the new furniture to select, the choice of rooms to make, and into these interests Eugenia threw herself with a good deal of her old energy, tempered however by her determination in all things great and small to submit to Beauchamp’s wishes—to accept his opinion as incontestably best. And up to a certain point this plan succeeded, and, difficult as it was for Eugenia to live in a state of semi-suppression, of incessant watchfulness over each word, and tone, and even look for fear that in any way she should offend, yet she fancied she believed she was doing no more than her wifely duty—that she was happy in acting thus, and that by-and-by, “when we get to understand each other,” life would be all she had dreamed of.

But to an essentially honest nature this self-delusion could not be kept up for ever. Nor, notwithstanding all the goodwill in the world, was it possible for Eugenia—impulsive, vehement, yearning for sympathy, and eager to confide to the friend nearest to her every thought, doubt, hope which sprang to life in her busy brain—for long to adhere to the rule of conduct she had laid down for herself. Her very conscientiousness, her very humility ranged themselves against her; how could she judge or interpret the conduct or opinions of the man she would have gladly died rather than lose her lofty faith in, by a standard lower than that by which she tested herself? She never yet had allowed to herself the existence of the creeping, encroaching, serpent-like fear she dared not face; but, nevertheless, it was making its way to the very centre of her fortress. Day by day she propped up its tottering foundations with some feeble, inefficient attempt at a bulwark—some plausible excuse or suggestion of misapprehension or undeserved self-blame—refusing to see how the whole once beautiful fabric was doomed, how the best remaining chance for her was bravely to make an end of it, to set to work again with the materials yet left to her to uprear a less imposing but more firmly-built tower of defence, better fitted than her fairy palace to stand, not only the great storms, but the smaller trials—the daily damps, and mists, and chills of life.

But this, Eugenia would not do. She clung with desperate infatuation to her dream, and in her heart of hearts she said—

“If it is to end in ruin, let it be so, and great will be the fall thereof. But I will not hasten my own misery by thinking about it beforehand.”

They had been now between two and three months at Halswood; the weeks had at the very first passed quickly enough, for Eugenia had succeeded in filling them with a succession of petty interests. Captain Chancellor was very well pleased with her, on the whole. She had proved more submissive than he had anticipated, though a great part of the credit of this satisfactory state of things was doubtless due to his own judicious management. He had always had his own theories as to the proper way of controlling and training the opposite sex, and had often been contemptuous on the subject of unhappy marriages.

“Unhappy fiddlesticks,” he would declare, “it’s all his own fault. He should have given her to understand once for all at the start who was to be master, and he would have had no more trouble.”

The trouble that had fallen to his own share he owned to himself had certainly not been great, and the proof of the pudding being generally allowed to be in the eating, he felt pleasantly conscious of his own success. There was only one thing about his wife that ever seriously annoyed him—her spirits were not of late what they had been; certainly, some amount of repose and reserve of manner had been wanting in her at first, and he was pleased to see how quickly she had, at a hint or two from him, set herself to acquire it; but then, again, there had been a great charm in her girlish gaiety and graceful merriment.

“I never heard any woman laugh better than Eugenia,” he thought. “Most women laugh so atrociously, that I wish it was made penal, but she laughs charmingly.”

Then he wondered why of late he had so seldom heard that sweet, soft, bright sound. “She can’t be dull,” he said to himself, “we have had a fair amount of variety since we came here. Besides, catch a woman being dull and not complaining of it! And if there is anything she wants, she would have been sure to ask for it.”

He firmly believed himself the most indulgent of husbands, and so, in a certain practical sense, perhaps he was. He “grudged her nothing,” though, indeed, her tastes continued so simple, that her own allowance from her father promised more than to cover her whole personal expenses; he never went away from home without bringing her some costly present when he came back—the first time, it had been a bracelet of great value. Eugenia had thanked him for it warmly, but then, eyeing it with some misgiving, had said something about its being too good for her.

“I don’t feel as if I liked wearing such splendid things, Beauchamp,” had been her words. “It hardly seems consistent with—”

“With what?” he had asked, irritated already.

“With my former quiet life, with present things, even, my sister being the wife of a poor curate, for one thing. But oh, don’t be vexed, Beauchamp, I am very silly, I know. Forgive me. For the thought of me, the wish to please me, I cannot thank you enough. That would have delighted me had the bracelet been the plainest in the world.”

Upon which, Beauchamp had turned from her angrily, with some muttered words about “sentimental nonsense and affectation,” and Eugenia had had a sore fit of penitence for the inexcusable ingratitude which had thus wounded his sensitive spirit. And, after all, she did deserve some blame for unnecessarily irritating him in this instance.

And thus, whether really the case or not, it always seemed to him in any of the discussions or disagreements which still, notwithstanding Eugenia’s scrupulous care, occasionally arose between them. And no wonder that he thought so. It was always the same story. Eugenia annoyed him, probably in some very trivial matter, as to which, nevertheless, he felt bound to act up to his principle of “keeping a tight hand on her, letting her feel the reins.”

And invariably it ended in her taking all the blame on herself, exerting all her powers of logic (or sophistry) to convince herself that the fault lay with her alone. It was but rarely, very, very rarely, that she allowed her strong true sense of justice, of self-respect and womanly right, to break out from the restraint in which she had condemned it to dwell. And on such occasions, according to the invariable law of reaction, the unnatural repression avenged itself, and as had been the case in the carriage the night they came to Halswood, Eugenia’s bitterness of indignation and fiery temper horrified herself, and did her infinite injustice with her husband. It was a bad state of things altogether—bad for Eugenia, worse, perhaps, for her husband, fostering his selfishness, increasing his narrow-minded self-opinionativeness.

The day after the one on which it had occurred to Beauchamp that Eugenia’s spirits were not what they had been, it happened that she got a letter from Sydney. It came in the morning, and as Captain Chancellor handed it to her, a joyful exclamation escaped her.

“From Sydney! Oh, I am so glad! I have not heard from her for such a time.”

“What do you call ‘such a time,’ I wonder?” said Captain Chancellor, good-humouredly. “A week, I suppose?”

“No, longer than that,” replied Eugenia. And then, encouraged by his tone, she added, “You know Sydney and I had hardly ever been separated before, and lately I have been particularly anxious to hear from home—from Wareborough—on account of my father not having been well.”

“Your father ill! I never heard of it. I wonder you did not tell me,” said her husband.

“It was when you were away—the week before last—I heard it. I think I mentioned it when I wrote,” said Eugenia, timidly, reluctant to own to herself that Beauchamp could so soon have forgotten a matter of such interest to her.

“Ah, well, perhaps you did. It is nothing serious, I suppose?” And without waiting for an answer, Captain Chancellor proceeded to read his own letters.

One among them was from an old brother officer, a friend of several years’ standing, recently returned from abroad, whom he had invited to come down for a few days’ shooting, intending to arrange a suitable party to meet him.

“Eugenia,” he said, looking up quickly, after reading this letter, “Colonel Masterton cannot come till the 29th. That leaves us all the week after next free. Of course I shall not ask the others till he comes. How would you like to have your people for a few days then—the Thurstons and your father. The change might do him good, and you seem dying to see your sister.”

Eugenia’s face glowed all over with delight. The old bright look came into her eyes, the old eager ring thrilled again through her voice.

“Oh, Beauchamp, thank you, thank you so much for thinking of it. It would be delightful. I cannot tell you how I should enjoy it.”

“Why have you never spoken of it before if you wish it so much?” asked Beauchamp, not unkindly, but with the slight irritation of incipient self-reproach. “I can’t guess your wishes always, you know.”

“I did mention it once,” she said, timidly again. “Don’t you remember, the first time you had to go away I asked if Sydney might come to me.”

“But that was an absurd proposal. It would have looked so ridiculous to bring Mrs Thurston all the way here because I was to be away, and naturally when your friends do come I should wish to be at home to receive them; so you had better write about their coming, to-day.”

He rose as he spoke, and gathering his letters and newspapers together, left the room, feeling very well pleased with himself, and not sorry to see the bright flush of happiness his proposal had brought to his wife’s pale cheeks.

She was indeed feeling very happy. Never since her marriage, since at least the first few days of unalloyed enjoyment in Paris—had she felt so eagerly delighted about anything. And the bright gleam had not come before it was wanted. Notwithstanding Beauchamp’s comfortable belief that they had had a fair amount of variety since coming to Halswood, Eugenia’s life had latterly been very dull. The most pleasurable part of the variety had fallen to his own share—two or three “runs up to town” to see about the new furniture, or new carriages, or something of the kind; one or two short visits to bachelor shooting-boxes, to which ladies were not invited; plenty of the exhilarating out-door life, which he thoroughly enjoyed, to which as yet Eugenia, not over strong, and completely unaccustomed to horses, was not sufficiently acclimatised to find it enjoyable. No wonder Captain Chancellor considered that the last three months had been far from dull. They would not have seemed so to Eugenia, had her inner life been a more natural and healthy one; but as it was, the outside distractions that had come in her way had been few and by no means powerful.

Most of the “families of position” in the neighbourhood had called on them, but the very biggest people of all—a family residing at a considerable distance from Halswood—had not yet done so; and Beauchamp’s evident anxiety on this point had not been unobserved by Eugenia, though resolutely put aside by her as one of the things into which she would not look. Some of their neighbours had already invited them to dinner, and they had gone; but Eugenia had not enjoyed the experience, and felt little wish to renew it. “Long ago,” as now in her own mind she had learnt to call her girlhood, even the dullest of dinner-parties would have furnished her quick observation, her lively imagination, her fresh, eager nature with material for interest and entertainment. But now-a-days it was different. She was self-conscious and self-absorbed, and, as a matter of course, less attractive in herself, less ready to find others so. Her one engrossing sensation in company was anxiety to please, or at least to avoid displeasing her husband, which left her none of the leisure of mind or self-forgetfulness essential to her enjoyment of the people or scenes about her. And these had not been sufficiently striking or interesting to force her out of herself. There were not many young people in the neighbourhood; those of her own sex nearest in age to Eugenia happening at this time to be either young girls not yet out of the schoolroom, or youthful matrons, with whom Mrs Chancellor could not feel that she had much in common. They all seemed happy and busy, perfectly at ease, satisfied with their lives and themselves. “Or else,” thought Eugenia, “they are more clever at hiding their anxieties and disappointments than I am.” In many cases doubtless true. She had not yet learnt, as most women of deep feeling sooner or later must learn, to smile when the heart feels all but breaking, to force interest in the trivialities around one, when one’s own life, or what may be dearer than life, seems hanging in the balance. At this stage of her history, such seeming she would probably have stigmatised as mere hypocrisy, not taking into account that unselfishness and worthy self-respect, as often as pride, furnish the motive for the wearing of that most tragic “des masques tragiques—celui qui avait un sourire.”

So, though her beauty and gentleness prepossessed many in her favour—many even of those whose prejudices as well as curiosity had been aroused by the fact that the wife of the new master of Halswood was not exactly of their world, belonging, indeed, to one of “those dreadful manufacturing places, where the sun never shines for the smoke, and all the people drop their h’s, you know”—Eugenia Chancellor did not make much way among her new acquaintances. The women allowed she was “pretty” and unassuming, but stupid or shy, they were not sure which. The men hooted at “pretty”—“lovely” or “beautiful” was nearer the mark—and hesitated about the “shy or stupid” suggestion, coming, however, in almost every case to allow that she was difficult to get on with—either “Chancellor bullied her at home,” or she had married him without caring for him; that she was not happy was evident. At which proof of masculine discrimination, the wives and mothers held up their hands in scornful incredulity. It was “just like Fred, or Arthur, or ‘your papa,’ to make a romantic mystery about her, because she is pretty. There is nothing plainer to see than that she is silent and stiff because she feels rather out of her element as yet. It is all strange to her, of course, having been brought up as she has been, and really she is to be felt for.”

But the “feeling for her,” giving itself vent in one or two instances in the direction of a disposition to patronise, was not responded to; and after a while the temporary sensation on the subject of Mrs Chancellor died away, especially when it oozed out that Lady Hereward had not yet called at Halswood.

Little cared Eugenia, as she ran upstairs to consult her lugubrious friend Mrs Grier on the subject of the prettiest and pleasantest rooms to be forthwith—fifteen days beforehand—prepared for her expected guests.

“My sister, Mrs Thurston, and my father, are coming the week after next,” she announced to the housekeeper, ignoring the possibility of the yet un-posted letter of invitation receiving any but a favourable reply. “You must let me know if you think of anything wanting for these rooms.” And the bright expectation in the young face touched even Mrs Grier’s unready sympathy in joy. She forgave Eugenia’s presumptuous rejection of the gloomy chambers, long since deserted in favour of more cheerful quarters, by the master and mistress of the house, where the funereal four-posters still reigned, and was inspired to suggest ever so many tiny wants and improvements which sent her young mistress off to Chilworth in the brougham, in a pleasant excitement of novel housewifely importance. It was but seldom that interests of the kind offered themselves to Eugenia—another of the unfortunate blanks in her new life—for Mrs Grier, notwithstanding her dreams and visions, was, practically, an excellent head of affairs. Everything about the house was always in perfect order. If the under-servants proved inefficient or otherwise undesirable they were sent away, and Mrs Grier or Blinkhorn procured others; if the dinner was not thoroughly to Captain Chancellor’s liking, one or other of this responsible pair was informed of the fact, and desired to see it remedied, or, in a case of unusual gravity, the “chef” himself would be summoned to receive personal instruction from his master, who considered himself, and very probably justly, no mean authority on gastronomical problems.

“There is really very little for me to do,” wrote Eugenia once to her sister. “Beauchamp does not care for me to meddle in the housekeeping, and I can see it is far better done than it would be by me. All the new furniture has come, and of course it is beautiful. I took a good deal of interest in choosing it, but it isn’t half such fun as when one has to think how one can make one’s money get all one wants. And I think the rooms are too big to enjoy the prettiness of the things. Do you remember the choosing of your drawing-room carpet? I am afraid, Sydney dear, I am quite out of my element as a fine lady. There are no poor people, even, that I can hear of. They all seem dreadfully well off, and well looked after by the clergyman and the agent and their wives. I wish I could study more, but I think I have got lazy, or else it is the difference of having to do everything alone. There are lots of books in the library—many whose names even I never heard. I wish I had papa’s direction! We get all our new books from town once a month, but they very seldom send the ones I want, and when they do I want you to talk them over with.”

Sydney sighed as she read this letter. It was not often Eugenia wrote so despondently, but Sydney’s perceptions were acute.

“Poor Eugenia,” she thought. “It isn’t only these outside things which are wrong, I fear. If other things had equalled her hopes, these would have been all right. The want lies deeper, I fear—the blank is one hard to fill. How I wish I could see her!”

The next week brought Eugenia’s invitation. It would have been difficult to decline it. “You must come,” she wrote. “I am living in the thoughts of it, Sydney; it will be absolute cruelty to refuse. I cannot tell you how I long to see you all again.”

So, though leaving home even for a few days, was now no small effort to Mr Laurence, and though Frank Thurston groaned a good deal in anticipation, he “hated fine houses and grand people,” and all his people, the East-enders of Wareborough, would go to the bad in double-quick time if he let them out of his sight for the best part of a week; who would take the night schools? who would see to the confirmation classes? etc, etc, etc—it ended, as Sydney had quietly determined it should, in a letter of acceptance being sent to Halswood by return of post. And Mrs Thurston took the opportunity of chaffing her husband a little on what she termed his growing self-conceit.

”‘Un bon prêtre,’” she said, ”‘c’est bien bon.’ I quite agree with Jean Valjean. But still, Frank, of the very best of things it is possible to have too much.”

Whereupon Frank told her she was very impertinent. There was little fear of these two misunderstanding each other.

There is a mischievous French proverb which tells us that “le malheur n’est jamais si près de nous qu’alors que tout nous sourit.” Things were certainly more smiling than usual with Eugenia Chancellor the morning that she received Sydney’s cheerful acceptance of the invitation to Halswood, and was graciously told by Beauchamp in answer to her announcement of the news “that he was glad they were coming, and he hoped the weather would be fine.” But misfortune—disappointment, at least, was near at hand; misfortune in the shape of a plain-looking little old lady in a shabby pony carriage, who about an hour after luncheon this same day made her appearance under the ugly portico, and learning that Mrs Chancellor was at home, alighted, and was shown into the morning-room, giving a name for announcement to the footman newly imported from town, which, taken in conjunction with her unimposing appearance, somewhat excited that gentleman’s surprise.

She had not driven in by the grand entrance, but by the second best lodge, that on the road leading to the village of Stebbing-le-Bray. Captain Chancellor, setting off on a long ride, passed the old lady in the funny little carriage, and, wondering who she could be, asked for information on the subject from the man at the lodge, a venerable person thoroughly up in local celebrities. The answer he received caused him to open his handsome blue eyes, and to change his programme for the afternoon. He rode out at the Stebbing lodge, made a cut across the country which brought him on to the Chilworth Road, and re-entering his own domain, dismounted at home twenty minutes after he had set off, to find his wife and the little old lady in evidently friendly converse in the morning-room.

Somewhat startled by her husband’s unlooked-for reappearance, uncertain if he and her visitor were already acquainted, Eugenia hesitated a moment in introducing her companions. But the stranger was quite equal to the occasion.

“How do you do, Captain Chancellor?” she said, cordially. “I am so pleased to meet you at last. By hearsay, do you know, you are already an old friend of mine?”

Beauchamp bowed with a slight air of inquiry.

“A nephew of mine, or, to be exact, which they say women never are, a grand-nephew of my husband’s, has so often spoken of you to me. You will remember him—George Vandeleur; he was in your regiment in the Crimea, though you have seldom met each other since?”

Captain Chancellor’s face lightened up, and what Eugenia called his nicest look came over it. He had been very kind to young Vandeleur, at the time little more than a boy, and it was pleasant to find himself remembered.

Lady Hereward had the happiest knack of saying agreeable things, of pleasing when she wished to please. Those who liked her liked her thoroughly, and trusted her implicitly; but, on the other hand, those who disliked her were quite as much in earnest about it. And both parties, I suspect, coalesced in being more or less afraid of her, for, insignificant as she appeared, she could hit hard in certain directions, though her heart was true, her sympathies wide. Coming, perhaps, within Roma Eyrecourt’s category of “those to whom it was easy to be good,” there had certainly been nothing in the circumstances of her life to develop meanness in any form, and on this, in whatever guise she came across it—humbug, petty ambition, class prejudice—she was therefore, as is the tendency of poor humanity towards the foibles oneself “is not inclined to,” apt to be rather too hard. Since birth she had been placed in a perfectly assured and universally recognised position. She had had nothing to be ambitious about; even her want of beauty had not amounted to a trial, for her powers of fascination, as is sometimes the case with plain women, had been more than compensatingly great; and before she was twenty she had had every unexceptionable parti of the day at her feet. How it came to pass she was not “spoilt” those who knew her best often marvelled, but even they did not know all about her. For she had had her sorrows, had passed through a fiery furnace—how it all happened matters little, the love-story of a plain-looking old woman of sixty would hardly be interesting begun at the wrong end—and the gold of her nature had emerged, therefrom, unwasted and pure. In the end she had married, at twenty-two, Lord Hereward, a peer of great wealth and position, a man whom she liked and respected, and with whom she had bravely made the best of her life. Trouble was not over for her yet, however. She had two children, a son who grew up satisfactorily to man’s estate, behaving himself creditably at school, and college, and everywhere, who in time married, as was to be expected, and became the centre of another family; and a daughter, who was as the apple of her mother’s eye, whom she loved as strong natures only can love. And one day—one awful day—the little daughter died suddenly and painfully, and Margaret Hereward’s heart broke.

And all the outside world said: “How sad for the poor Herewards; but what a blessing it was not the boy,” and then forgot all about it, for the chief sufferer never reminded any one of her woe.

It was forty years ago now, and few remembered that a little Lady Alice Godwin had ever existed. In time, of course, her mother came to learn that even with a broken heart one can go on living, and her healthy nature reasserted itself in an increased power of sympathy—an active energy in lightening or, at least, sharing other women’s sorrows. But still, as she grew older, she hardened in her special dislikes, her pet intolerances.

She went on talking about her nephew for a while, explaining, by the way, how it was she had come to make her first call at Halswood in so informal a fashion.

“I am staying at Stebbing Rectory for a day or two,” she said. “A young cousin of mine is the wife of Mr Mervyn, the clergyman there. She has just got her first baby—a little girl;” she paused for an instant; “such a nice baby, and I came over to look after her a little. She has no mother. Hearing how very near I was to you, I thought I would not miss the opportunity of seeing you so easily. It is a long drive from Marshlands here. When you come to see me it must not be only for a call.”

She did not tell that the calling on the new Mrs Chancellor, which had been a vague and indefinite intention in her mind before coming to Stebbing, had taken active form, from hearing from her cousin some of the local gossip about the stranger—that she was pretty, but so stiff and reserved that no one could get on with her; that some people called her awkward and underbred, others suspected that she was not happy (Mrs Mervyn’s own opinion), but that from one cause or another her life bid fair to become a lonely and isolated one. And the sight of Eugenia’s face rewarded the old lady for the kindly effort she had made. It was not so much her beauty, though Lady Hereward loved to see a pretty face; it was her sweet, bright, yet wistful expression, that straightway touched the maternal chord in her visitor’s heart. Possibly, too, contradiction had something to do with the interest Eugenia at once awakened.

“Underbred, indeed!” she said to herself, contemptuously. “I wish I could teach some people I know, what good breeding really is. As to her being unhappy, I can’t say. I must see more of her.”

She acted at once on this determination, for, before she left, she invited her new young friends to spend three days of the next week but one at Marshlands. There was a particular reason for fixing this time; “George” was coming, and would be delighted to meet Captain Chancellor again.

“I would give you a choice if I could,” she went on, fancying that she perceived a slight hesitation in Mrs Chancellor’s manner, “for I really do want you to come. But I fear I cannot. We are going away the end of the same week to Hereward, for some time. We old people need a breath of sea air now and then.”

“It is exceedingly kind of you. I should have liked very much to go to you the week after next,” began Eugenia, looking as if she meant what she said. “It is so unlucky—but I am afraid we must decline. We are engaged for the whole of that week at home. You remember, Beauchamp? I heard this morning that—”

“I think you have made a confusion between the week after next and the week after that,” said Captain Chancellor, blandly. “I don’t know of anything to prevent our accepting Lady Hereward’s invitation. We did expect some friends; but, don’t you remember, Eugenia, that Colonel Masterton put off his visit for a week?”

“Yes,” said Eugenia, quietly; “I remember.”

“Then may I hope to see you,” asked Lady Hereward, feeling a little puzzled, “on Tuesday?—that will be the 22nd. George comes the same day.”

“Certainly,” said Beauchamp. “We shall be delighted to join you.”

And “Thank you—you are very, very kind,” said Eugenia again.

The tone in which the simple words were uttered was almost girlishly cordial, yet, somehow, Lady Hereward did not feel satisfied. “Her manner is a little peculiar,” she thought to herself, as she drove back again to Stebbing-le-Bray, “though at first she seemed so frank. I hope my invitation did not really interfere with anything. Could it be shyness that made her not want to come? How very lovely her eyes are! I wonder if my Alice’s eyes would have looked like that—they were brown. Alice would not have been so pretty. And, dear me, by this time she might have had a daughter as old as that child! Ah, my little Alice!”

When Lady Hereward had gone, Eugenia sat still for a moment or two, then rose and left the room. In the hall she met her husband.

“Where are you going?” he said. “Come in here for a minute,” opening the door of his study, beside which they were standing. She followed him, but did not sit down. “Tell me,” he went on, “how do you like the old lady?”

“Very much,” replied Eugenia; then turned again, as if eager to go.

“What are you in such a hurry about? Can’t you wait a minute?” he said, impatiently. “Where are you going?”

“To write to Sydney, of course, to put off their visit,” she answered, her lips quivering. “I must do it at once.”

“Confound Sydney!” he broke out, rudely. “Your temper, Eugenia, is enough to provoke a saint. Wait an instant—do be reasonable—why can’t you propose to Sydney to—”

But he had gone too far. Eugenia turned and looked at him for a moment with the unlovely light of angry indignation in her eyes; then left the room quietly.

“By Jove!” said Beauchamp, when left to himself, “I begin to suspect I have been a great fool, after all!”

But reflection and a cigar soothed him a little; half an hour later he followed his wife to her boudoir. She was writing busily.

“Eugenia,” he began, “I am sorry for my rudeness just now, but you are very unreasonable. Why can’t you write to your people, and ask them to come on the Friday? We return then. Any one but you would understand my reasons for wishing to go to Marshlands.”

“I do understand them, rather too well,” replied his wife, coldly. “As for asking my people to come on Friday, it is out of the question. My brother-in-law cannot be away on Sunday; and besides, I cannot ask my father and Sydney—neither of them strong—to come so long a journey for only two days.”

“Why for only two days?”

“Because on Monday all your friends are coming, and you do not wish mine to be here at the same time.”

“I never said anything of the kind,” exclaimed Beauchamp, angrily, aware nevertheless that he had thought something very much of the kind. It was not that he was ashamed of Mr Laurence or Sydney; he liked them both very well; but there had been a good deal of “chaff” about his Wareborough marriage, and he had imagined more. He could ill bear chaff, and his constitutional and avowed arrogance laid him peculiarly open to it in certain directions. How he had sneered and made fun of other men in the old days for being “caught” by a pretty face or a pair of bright eyes! He was not ashamed of his marriage—he was proud of his wife in herself—but on the whole, he preferred that his old friends, on their first visit, should not find the house full of his Wareborough relations-in-law. But he had not imagined that Eugenia suspected this.

“I never said anything of the kind,” he repeated, working himself into a rage. “But I warn you, Eugenia, if you don’t take care what you are about, you will drive me into thinking, and saying too, many things I never wish to think or say.”

She got up from her seat, and stood facing him.

“I know what you mean,” she said, huskily, a white despair creeping over her face. “You mean that you regret your marriage. Why did you do it at all then?—tell me. Why did you make me think you everything great and noble, to open my eyes now like this? Why did you not leave me where I was, happy and loved, instead of making me care for you? Why did you ask me to be your wife?”

“Why, indeed? You may well ask,” replied Captain Chancellor, in a bitter, contemptuous tone.

Then he turned and left the room. He put down all she had said to “temper,” of course; but some of her words had wounded and mortified him not a little.

Eugenia stood there where he had left her, in blank, bewildered misery. Only one thought glanced with any brightness through the black cloud of wretchedness which seemed to choke her.

“He did love me once,” she said to herself. “If all the rest was a dream, still he did love me once.”