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

Volume Two – Chapter Eight.
Lookers-on

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

Swinburne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“As good as married already, you see, Sydney,” said Frank. “Well, I only hope it will not prove a case of ‘repenting at leisure’ – that’s all I’ve got to say.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He looked a little surprised at her inquiry.

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

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

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

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

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

“A near relative – ” she said, inquiringly. “Some one on Mr Eyrecourt’s side of the house, I suppose.”

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

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

“Is he very ill?” asked Eugenia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Beauchamp, you are very ungrateful. You don’t deserve your cousin – Miss Eyrecourt I mean – to be so good to you,” said Eugenia, reproachfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then you think Eugenia Laurence – I beg her pardon, Mrs Chancellor – is really happy? At least that is the inference from what you say,” inquired Gerald.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She spoke with a little impatience. Gerald felt puzzled.

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

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

“But is she certain to awake?” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are they – Captain Chancellor and his wife – likely to be much in your neighbourhood?” he asked.

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

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

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