"Que serait la vie sans esperance? Qu'ils le disent ceux qui n'ont
plus rien a esperer ici bas."
_L'Homme de Quarante Ans_.
"Alas! alas! Hope is not prophecy."
"Sorry to keep you waiting--quite against my habit, I assure you. But
trains, you see, are worse than time and tide--they not only wait for no
one, they very often make people wait for them," said the lawyer, as he
shook bands cordially with his mother's guests. "And how is Master
Quintin?" he inquired, turning again to Mrs Eyrecourt. "He got no cold
bath this morning, I hope? I heard he was going skating with my
youngsters."
Gertrude was much more at home in skating and cricket than in babies and
eye-teeth, and Quin was always a congenial subject; so seeing her
released from her purgatory, Roma looked about in search of
entertainment for herself. Old Mrs Montmorris was now busy talking to
some one on her other side; it was the new arrival. Roma glanced up at
him, he was standing besides his hostess listening attentively to her
little soft, uninteresting remarks. He was quite a young man, at which
Roma felt surprised; for with the curious impatience of suspense, with
which a lively imagination, even on commonplace and not specially
interesting details, takes precedence of knowledge, she had
unconsciously pictured this friend of the lawyer's as middle-aged, if
not elderly. Her surprise made her examine him more particularly. He
was not exactly what she was accustomed to consider good-looking, though
tall and powerfully made without being awkward or clumsy. His hair,
though dark, was distinctly brown, not black, and he somehow gave the
impression of being naturally a fair-complexioned man, though at present
so tanned by exposure to sun and air, that one could but guess at his
normal colouring. From where she sat, Roma could not see much of his
eyes: she was wondering if they were brown or blue--when a general
movement, told her that dinner was announced.
Old Mr Montmorris toddled off with Gertrude on his arm, Roma was
preparing to follow her with Mr Christian Montmorris, whom she saw
bearing down in her direction, when his mother turned towards her with
an apologetic little smile.
"You will excuse me, my dear, I am sure, for keeping my son to myself.
I am very proud of having my boy's arm into the dining-room when he is
here--which is not so often as I should like."
Miss Eyrecourt was perfectly resigned, and expressed her feelings to
this effect in suitable language. She looked round for Miss Cecilia and
Miss Bessie, with whom she supposed she was to bring up the rear in
good-little-girl fashion, but this she found was by no means in
accordance with the Montmorris ideas of etiquette.
"Miss Eyrecourt," said the lawyer, recalling her truant attention, "will
you allow me to introduce my friend Mr Thurston to you?"
So on Mr Thurston's arm Miss Eyrecourt gracefully sailed away, feeling
herself, to tell the truth, much smaller than she ever remembered to
have felt herself before; he was so very tall and held himself so
uprightly, giving her, at this first introduction, a general impression
of unbendingness.
"What can I find to talk to him about?" she said to herself, for already
her instinct had told her he was not one of the order of men with whom
she was never at a loss for conversation. "He has only just returned
from India. He won't know anything about the regular set of things one
begins with. And I can see he is the sort of man that looks down upon
women as inferior creatures, and hasn't tact or breeding enough to hide
it. How I wish I could turn him into Beauchamp just till dinner is
over. How different it would be! Only the night before last, I was
sitting beside him at the Dalrymples'! Poor Beauchamp--he is certainly
very nice to talk to and laugh with!"
She gave a little sigh, quite unconscious that it was audible, till
looking up, she found that Mr Thurston was observing her with, a slight
smile on his face. She blushed--a weakness her four-and-twenty years
were not often guilty of. "Hateful man!" she said to herself. Yet she
could not help glancing at him again, unconcernedly as it were, just to
show him she was above feeling annoyed by his rudeness. She found out
what colour his eyes were now: they were grey, deep-set and penetrating.
Suddenly he surprised her by beginning to speak.
"I am sorry I smiled just now," he said--his voice was clear and
decisive in tone--"I saw you did not like it. But I really could not
help it. Your sigh was so very melancholy."
"I hardly see that that is any excuse for your smiling," she replied,
rather stiffly.
"Perhaps not. I daresay it was quite inexcusable," he said, quietly.
"I fear I am a very uncivilised being altogether," he went on. "For the
last three years I have been living in an out-of-the-way part of India,
where I seldom saw any Europeans but those immediately connected with my
work, and you would hardly believe how strange it seems to me to be
among cultivated, refined people again."
"Then you are not in the army?" asked Miss Eyrecourt.
"Oh, no, I am an engineer; but only a civil one," he replied. Roma
looked as if she hardly understood him. "I don't suppose you know much
of my sort of work, or my part of the country," he went on. "The south
knows less of the north, in some ways, than the north of the south. It
strikes one very forcibly when one returns home to little England, after
being on the other side of the world. Still, it is natural you
shouldn't know much of the north; for though we come south for variety
and recreation, we cannot expect you to find pleasure in visiting such
places as the Black Country or the manufacturing districts."
"You are taking a great deal for granted, I think," said Roma, becoming
interested. "And why should you not give credit for sometimes having
other motives than pleasure to--" "other classes besides your own," she
was going to have added, but the words struck her as ill-bred. "I mean
to say," she went on, choosing her words with difficulty, a very unusual
state of things for her--"don't you think it possible people--an idle
person, like me, we will say--ever do anything or go anywhere with any
other motive than pleasure or amusement? I think it a great mistake to
take up those wholesale notions. As it happens, I _do_ know something
of the north--yes, of the north, in your sense of the word," for she
fancied he looked incredulous. "I only left Wareborough yesterday
morning." ("I needn't tell _you_ what took me up there," she added to
herself, smiling as she remembered how she had teased Beauchamp by her
exaggerated account of the motives of her visit to Deepthorne).
"Wareborough!" exclaimed Mr Thurston. Roma was amused by his evident
surprise. "How very odd! Wareborough is my home. I hope to be there
again by Wednesday or Thursday. But that can't interest you," he went
on, looking a little ashamed of his own eagerness; "and of course it
isn't really odd. People must be travelling between Wareborough and
Brighton every day. One gets in the way of exaggerating trifles of the
kind absurdly when one has lived some time so completely out of the
world as I have done. It struck me as such a curious little
coincidence, for I think you are the first lady I have had any
conversation with since I landed. I came by long sea too, for the sake
of an invalid friend, so my chances of re-civilising myself have been
very small, so far."
"It _was_ an odd little coincidence," replied Roma, good-humouredly.
"But after all, you know," she added, "the world is very small."
He hardly caught the sense of her remark.
"In one sense, I suppose it is," he said, slowly; "but in another--all,
no, Miss Eyrecourt, you are fortunate if you have never felt how
dreadfully big the world is! It used to seem a perfectly frightful way
off from everything--everybody I cared for, out there sometimes."
He spoke gravely, and with an introspective look in his eyes, as if
reviewing past anxieties known only to himself.
"And then," he went on in the same tone, "absence is absence, after all.
One can never count surely on finding any one, or anything what one
left them."
"Nought looks the same save the nest we made," said Roma, softly.
"Don't laugh at me, Mr Thurston--fray don't," she went on, hurriedly.
"I am not the least sentimental. I never look at poetry, only sometimes
little rubbishy bits I learnt as a child come into my head and `give me
feelings,' as I once heard a little girl say."
"Then they are poetry to _you_," said her companion, kindly--earnestly
almost, and a look came into his eyes which she had not seen in them
before--a look which gave Roma a silly passing feeling of envy of the
woman on whom some day they might rest with an intensity of that gaze.
"Let me see," he went on, "I think I too remember learning those verses
as a child--
"Gone are the heads of the silvery hair.
And the young that were have a brow of care.
"Isn't that it? I don't think I am likely to find those changes
exactly. Perhaps, after all, what I most dread is not actual change--
not change from what really _was_--but change from what I have gone on
imagining to myself--hoping for, dreaming of. Ah, it would be very hard
to bear!"
He seemed almost to have forgotten he was speaking aloud. Roma felt
interested, though she could not altogether follow his train of thought.
"It looks rather like a case of the girl he left behind," she said to
herself, with her usual habit of making fun of anything approaching
"sentiment," and she thought it would be as well to give the
conversation a turn. "Are you going to live at Wareborough now?" she
inquired, "I wonder if you know my friends there!"
Here broke in the voice of Miss Bessie Montmorris, whose ears, from her
seat on Mr Thurston's other side, had caught the word Wareborough. "We
had a governess once who afterwards went to live at Wareborough," she
remarked, with amusing irrelevancy; the truth was she thought Miss
Eyrecourt had had quite her share of the good-looking stranger's
attention, and caught at the first straw to draw it to herself. "It was
some years ago," she continued.
"So I should suppose," muttered Roma, who was not altogether pleased at
Miss Bessie's interruption, and felt delighted to see by a slight
contraction of the muscles of Mr Thurston's mouth, that her murmur had
reached his ears.
"Her name," went on Miss Bessie, calmly, "was Berard--Mademoiselle
Berard. She was French. I remember all about her going to live at
Wareborough, for she used to write to us regularly. I can tell you the
name of the family she went to. She stayed there some years. I have
the name and address written down somewhere, so I am sure I am right,"
as if her hearers had been eagerly beseeching her for accurate
information on the subject--"it was Laurence. There were two little
girls, and no mother."
Confirmed story-tellers, it is said, "sometimes speak the truth by
mistake." In the same way, exceedingly silly people do sometimes by a
happy chance succeed in producing a sensation. Miss Bessie Montmorris,
had she been gifted with clairvoyance, could not have hit upon a name as
certain to affect vividly both her hearers as the one that had just
passed her lips. For the interest of the morning's conversation was
still strong upon Roma, and Mr Thurston, for reasons best known to
himself, was not in a frame of mind to hear quite unmoved this
unexpected mention of his friends by name.
Both started, then each looked surprised at the other for doing so. Mr
Thurston was the first to speak--it seemed to Miss Eyrecourt, that he
was eager to conceal the slight momentary disturbance of his
equilibrium. His words were addressed to Miss Bessie, but Roma felt
that she was intended to listen to them.
"I remember your friend, Mademoiselle Berard, very well, Miss
Montmorris," he said. "And an excellent creature she is. The Laurences
are old friends of mine. I thought them most fortunate in meeting with
Mademoiselle Berard, for of course motherless girls require extra care.
Do you happen to know where she is now? Somewhere in the South of
France was her home, I think, was it not?"
He engaged Miss Bessie in recalling how long it was since she had heard
from "Mademoiselle," what she had then said as to her plans, etc, and
rather mischievously muddled the poor thing with questions exposing the
extremely limited state of her acquaintance with French geography. So
that in a few minutes Miss Bessie felt not indisposed to retire from the
field and gave, subsequently, in the family council, as her opinion of
"Christy's friend," that he was a "heavy, prosy young man, quite without
conversation."
When she was safely off his hands, engaged in an amicable sisterly
discussion with Mrs Christian across the table as to the precise hour
at which Mr Beamish, the family apothecary, had called this morning,
and about what o'clock to-morrow it was thought probable the last
eye-tooth would appear, Mr Thurston returned to Roma.
"After all," he said, smiling. "I quite agree with you, the world is
_very_ small." Roma laughed. "I certainly did not expect to have an
instance of the truth of my quotation so very soon," she said. "I met
the Laurences when I was staying at Wareborough just now. I see you
know them too."
"Very well indeed," he replied. "You will not wonder so much at my
evident interest in what Miss Montmorris was talking about when I tell
you that one of the Miss Laurences is engaged to be married to my
brother--my only brother. He is a curate at Wareborough. Perhaps you
met him too?"
Roma's face expressed extreme surprise, and to any one well enough
acquainted with her to read a little below the surface, it would have
been plain, that at first, the surprise was not of a disagreeable kind.
"Miss Laurence engaged to your brother?" she repeated, without noticing
the latter part of Mr Thurston's speech. "How very strange! Somehow I
feel as if I could hardly believe it--having seen her so lately, only
the--night before last--" she hesitated. After all, she must have been
completely mistaken in her estimate of that girl's character. She must
be a flirt indeed, and not a very desirable sort of a flirt either, even
according to Roma's not very stringent notions on these subjects, to
have looked up into any man's face, be he never so charming, with those
bright innocent smiles of hers, in the sort of way she had looked up
into Beauchamp's, knowing herself to be engaged to another. And a
clergyman, too! Somehow the latter fact seemed to Roma to aggravate the
unbecomingness of her dancing half the evening with him, and the still
more marked "sitting out," all of which Roma had explained by her
extreme inexperience and youth, finding any other theory untenable in
the presence of that buoyant girlish bearing, those lovely, honest,
unsuspicious eyes. "I think I had fallen a little in love with her
myself," thought Roma. "But if she is really engaged, it is a great
relief on Beauchamp's account, and indirectly on my own. For Gertrude
may be as incredulous as she likes--it is not often he will come across
a girl like that, and more than half in love with him already, as,
engaged or not engaged, I am _certain_ she is."
But when she had reached this point in her meditations, she became aware
that Mr Thurston was looking at her in some perplexity, waiting for her
to finish her uncompleted sentence. How could she finish it? She could
not tell him what she was thinking, that his brother was very much to be
pitied, and that Miss Laurence was by no means "what she seemed," but
that on all accounts, _her_ own and Captain Chancellor's included, the
sooner they were married the better. "What a complication," thought
Roma, "and how odd that this complete stranger, this Mr Thurston, or
rather his brother, should be mixed up in my private affairs in this
roundabout way." She felt a silly sort of inclination to burst out
laughing: it made her feel nervous to see him sitting there looking at
her, waiting for her to speak. Why did he want so much to hear what she
had to say? She could not understand the look of restrained eagerness
in her face. She must say something.
"It is very absurd of me to feel as if Miss Laurence could not be
engaged without its having been formally announced to me," she began.
"I only saw her a few times, but I think she impressed me unusually.
She is so _very_ pretty, so--I don't know what to call it--like a bunch
of wild flowers; a perfect embodiment of brightness and _young_-ness,
and everything sweet and fresh and--ingenuous;" the last word came with
a little halt. It was not lost on her companion; not a tone or a look
of Miss Eyrecourt's but had been noted by him with breathless acuteness
since Eugenia Laurence had become the subject of their conversation.
But he refrained just yet from explaining her mistake to her. "It is
rather curious that Mrs Dalrymple, my cousin, where I was staying--you
know her, no doubt, she is a friend of the Laurence's--did not tell me
of it, is it not?"
"I am not at all sure that she knows of the engagement as a fact," Mr
Thurston replied, quietly. "It has been a sort of taken-for-granted
thing among ourselves, but they were both so young, that it was agreed
it should not be formally recognised for some time. Indeed, my return
home is to be the signal for its actual announcement, as I stand _in
loco parentis_ to my brother, though not very many years his senior. It
is no _secret_, though," with a smile, "most likely I should not have
mentioned it had this been Wareborough instead of Brighton. But I
fancied you must have thought my manner odd when the Laurences were
mentioned. I must set you right on one point, however. From what you
say of her I see you think it is the elder Miss Laurence I mean. It is
not Eugenia, who is engaged to my brother, but the younger one--Sydney."
"Sydney, a younger sister? Oh yes, I remember; but I never happened to
see her. She was away from home nearly all the week I was there. But,
dear me, she must be a perfect child. Eugenia doesn't look eighteen,"
exclaimed Miss Eyrecourt.
"Sydney is almost that. Eugenia has always looked younger than her age.
It was by that I recognised her--in your description, I mean."
He spoke rather confusedly, and his own slight embarrassment prevented
his noticing the curious mingling of expressions on his companion's
face. She did not know if she was glad or sorry to find herself
mistaken.
"So I may reinstate Eugenia in my good opinion, and fall in love with
her again if I choose," she reflected. "And Beauchamp may do so too,
unfortunately, without clashing with the curate; but I am not by any
means sure that it would not be clashing with the curate's brother."
She looked up again at Mr Thurston as the thought struck her definitely
for the first time. Her wits were quick, her instinct quicker. Why
should he have so instantly discovered it was Eugenia she was thinking
of? That was a lame excuse he had given of her reference to the girl's
extreme youth. Sydney was still younger. Ah, no! her words had been
tinged with the charm she had herself felt the influence of in Eugenia;
and he, lover-like, had forthwith appropriated the tribute of admiration
as his lady-love's, and no one else's! Was she--would she be his
lady-love? How would it all end? Roma fell into a reverie, which
lasted till she found herself back in the drawing-room again, listening
to old Mrs Montmorris's platitudes, and young Mrs Montmorris's
pitter-patter conversation till she could almost have fancied the last
hour was a dream.
After a while they asked her to sing. She was not sorry to do anything
to get over the time till the gentlemen joined them again, for four
female Montmorrises without an idea among them were not entertaining.
And singing was a pleasure to Roma. It cost her no effort; her voice
was sound and true and suggestive, and so well trained that it sounded
perfectly natural. She had sung two songs, and was half-way through a
third, when she heard the door open and the gentlemen enter. "Hush!"
said Mrs Christian. "Hush!" repeated Miss Bessie and Miss Cecilia, and
the two Messrs. Montmorris obediently seated themselves with audibly
elaborate endeavours at noiselessness till the song should be over.
Roma felt more than half inclined to stop, and was lifting her hands
from the piano with this intention, when a voice beside her whispering,
"Go on, please," made her change her mind. It was Mr Thurston. "How
could such a great tall creature as he have come across the room so
quietly?" thought Miss Eyrecourt to herself; and then she became
suddenly alive to the very sentimental nature of the ballad she was
singing. It was new to her to feel the least shy or self-conscious; she
had sung it hundreds of times before, often with Beauchamp standing
behind her chair, but the meaning of the words had never before come
home to her as now. There was no help for it, however; she must go
through with it now; but she wished Mr Thurston would go over to the
sofa and talk to Miss Cecilia. She came to the fourth verse--
The time and all so fairy sweet,
That at each word we did say,
I felt the time for love so meet
That love I gave away.
She caught sight of Mr Thurston's face. It was very grave. Was he
thinking of Eugenia? Roma resolved she would never sing a love song
again. She got to the last verse:--
We take on trust, forsooth we must,
And reckon as we see;
But oh, my love, if false thou prove,
What recks all else to me?
"Thank you," said Mr Thurston, and his words were echoed from all parts
of the room. "I don't think I ever heard that song before," he
observed, when the clamour of thanks had subsided again.
"I don't fancy you ever did," replied Roma. "I have only got it in
manuscript. It was set to music by a friend of Be--my--my--" She
stopped. Mr Thurston was looking at her curiously. For no reason that
she could give to herself she felt her cheeks suddenly blushing crimson.
What had come over her to-night? Never in all her life did she
remember having been so absurdly silly. She made a great effort. "I
always tumble over Captain Chancellor's connexion with me," she said,
boldly; "it is such an indescribable one. He is my sister-in-law's
brother. By the way, Mr Thurston, he is at Wareborough just now--
stationed there; you may meet him."
"I shall certainly remember your mention of him if I do," said Mr
Thurston, courteously. Then he recurred to the subject of the song.
"It is very pretty, both words and music, and it is a great treat to me
to hear such singing as yours, Miss Eyrecourt."
"It is the only thing I can do. I am very idle and useless," she said,
rather sadly.
"Your one talent? I don't know about that," he replied. "I should say
you could do a great many things well if you liked to try. Perhaps it
is the thing you best like doing? We are often apt to consider that the
only thing we _can_ do."
"Perhaps. I daresay you are right," her voice was more subdued than
usual. "I suppose there is no law forcing certain human beings to be
drones."
"Or butterflies?" suggested Mr Thurston. "Well, or butterflies," she
continued, with a smile, "whether they will or not. But," with a little
hesitation, and a glance round to make sure that Gertrude was not within
hearing, "when one has no special duties, no very near ties--however
kind one's friends may be--it is a little difficult, isn't it, to be
anything better?"
"Not a little--_very_," he said, kindly, looking sorry for her. "But it
may not always be so," in a lower tone.
"That is thanks to my idiotic blush when I mentioned Beauchamp," thought
Roma. She felt annoyed, and, rising from her seat, stood by the piano
turning over the loose music lying about, without speaking. For a
moment Mr Thurston watched her silently, his face had a perplexed look
as if he were endeavouring to make up his mind about something.
"Miss Eyrecourt," he said at last. "Will you do me a little favour?
Will you tell me something I want to know, and not think it odd of me to
ask it?"
"If I can, I will," she answered. "What is it?"
"I want you to tell me," he said, speaking clearly and unhesitatingly
now, "I want you to tell me why it was so much easier for you to believe
the fact of my brother's engagement to the younger Miss Laurence than to
the elder."