Oh, for the ills half understood,
The dim, dead woe
Long ago.
R. Browning.
The rain was over, the evening had turned out fine after all. Captain
Chancellor drove away in his fly from Mr Laurence's door, but the
Thurston brothers decided to walk.
"I don't spend much on flys and that sort of thing, Gerald," said Frank,
as he slipped his arm through his brother's; "you used to be afraid I
was inclined to be extravagant in little things, but I can tell you it
only wants a hard winter in Wareborough to make a fellow ashamed of all
that self-indulgence. Good heavens, Gerald! you don't know, though you
do know a good deal for a layman," Gerald smiled to himself at this
little bit of clerical bumptiousness, "about the poor, but you don't
know what there is here sometimes. I have half-a-dozen new schemes to
consult you about. Mr Laurence has a clear head for organisation, but
though so practical in his own department, he won't come out of it.
Education, education, is his cry from morning till night. I quite agree
with it, but you can't educate people or children till you've got them
food to eat and clothes to wear. I know I don't expect them to listen
to _my_ part of the teaching till I show them I want to make their poor
bodies more comfortable if I can."
"But Mr Laurence's attention is not given to the very poor. It is more
given to the class above them," said Gerald.
"Only because he can't get hold of any others. His _theories_ embrace
the whole human race," replied Frank, laughing, "but he is wise enough
to begin with those he can get hold of. It's a pity he is not a very
rich man. He would do an immense deal of good."
"He never could be a rich man, it seems to me," said Gerald. "He is
quite wanting in the love of money for its own sake, and I am not sure
that any man ever amasses a great fortune who hasn't a spice of this
enthusiasm of gold in him. What you will do with the gold when you have
it, is a secondary consideration. I do believe there grows upon many
men an actual love of the thing itself."
"You're not turning cynical, surely, Gerald?" said Frank, laughingly.
"That would be a new _role_ for you." His ear had detected a slight
bitterness, a dispiritedness in his brother's tone, though Gerald had
exerted himself to speak with interest on general subjects in order to
conceal his real state of feeling.
Gerald laughed slightly. "I am afraid the more one sees of the world
and of life the harder it is to keep altogether free of that sort of
thing. But tell me about your own plans. What a sweet woman Sydney
will be, Frank! I can hardly think of her as grown-up, you see. Have
you and Mr Laurence touched upon business matters at all yet?"
"Oh dear, yes!" said Frank, importantly. "It's all as satisfactory as
can be. With what you tell me is my share of our belongings, and what
Mr Laurence can give Sydney, and my curacy we shall do splendidly. But
I strongly suspect, Gerald, that you are giving me more than I have any
right to. I believe you have added your own money to mine--I do really.
Of course I can't tell, for we never went into these things much before
you went abroad, but I'm certain my father didn't leave twice what you
have made over to me."
"It's all right, Frank; it is indeed," said Gerald, earnestly. "I am
doing very well now and am likely to do better. I shall go over my
affairs with you some day soon to satisfy you. I could easily make your
income larger, but perhaps it is as well for you to begin moderately.
You'll have to restrict your charities a little, you know, when you have
a wife to think of."
"Yes, I know that," replied the curate; "but, Gerald, you should look to
home too. You will be marrying yourself."
"It is not likely," said Mr Thurston. "I am thirty-one--seven years
older than you, Frank; getting past the marrying _age_, you see."
Frank wondered a little, but said nothing, and went on to talk of other
things. Suddenly a casual mention of the Dalrymples struck Gerald with
a flash of remembrance.
"Is not that Captain Chancellor we met to-night a friend of theirs?" he
asked his brother.
"Yes; I believe Mr Laurence and Eugenia met him there, and I am not at
all sure that it wouldn't have been a great deal better if they had not
done so," replied the young clergyman, oracularly. "Eugenia isn't a bad
sort of girl; she is well-meaning, and not stupid, and certainly very
pretty; but I must say she is very childish and silly. She is
constantly in extremes, always running full tilt against something or
other. For my part, I confess I can't make her out. I am uncommonly
glad Sydney is so completely unlike her. I didn't at all admire the way
she allowed herself to be monopolised by that Captain Chancellor
to-night. If they had a mother it would be different, but Mr Laurence
would never see anything of that kind if it was straight before his
eyes."
"You are rather unreasonable, I think, Frank," said Gerald. "Such
things will happen, you know. I suppose there have been occasions on
which Sydney too has allowed herself to be monopolised. You would have
thought it very hard if any one had objected."
"The cases are thoroughly different," replied the younger Thurston. "I
should very much doubt this man's being in earnest."
This was a new view of the subject. Frank said no more, and Gerald did
not encourage further remarks concerning Eugenia. He tried to recall
all that had passed between himself and Miss Eyrecourt; but the more he
thought it over, the more puzzled he became. Her evident
self-consciousness when Captain Chancellor's name was mentioned had
impressed him with a conviction he had not stopped to analyse, that her
relations with the gentleman in question were more than ordinarily
friendly ones; and yet again her manner of alluding to Eugenia was
perfectly explained by the supposition that the incipient flirtation--
how Gerald hated the word!--had come very plainly under her observation
when at Wareborough, yet without arousing any personal feeling of
indignation or annoyance. She knew this Captain Chancellor well. Could
it be that he was only amusing himself, and that, therefore, from his
side, the matter seemed to her of little consequence? Gerald ground his
teeth at the thought. Sydney's inexperience of such things had limited
her anxiety to the question of Captain Chancellor's worthiness and
suitability. Frank's practical, matter-of-fact observation had
suggested an even more painful misgiving to his brother, for Eugenia was
not the sort of girl to whom a mere "flirtation" was possible. With her
it would be all or nothing, and the damage to her whole nature of
finding herself deceived could be little short of fatal. The fine metal
would be sorely tested in so fiery a furnace. Were not the chances few
that any of it would be left, save perhaps bent and distorted beyond
recognition?
And this was the end of Gerald Thurston's long-anticipated return home--
this was how he awoke from his dreams.
For the next few weeks Gerald had very little leisure. A great
accumulation of business matters dependent upon his presence in
Wareborough forced themselves on his attention. Had things been as he
had hoped to find them, he would have chafed greatly at this; as they
were, however, selfishly speaking, he felt glad of hard work, which
there was no escaping. He saw very little of the Laurences--he saw
little even of his brother. Now and then he asked himself if he had
possibly been over hasty and premature, and for a day or two this
misgiving tantalised him afresh. It might be as well, he thought, to
seek an opportunity of judging for himself, and however things were, it
was time to accustom himself to perfect self-command in Eugenia's
presence. He had never seen Sydney alone since that first evening. On
the one or two occasions he had been in Mr Laurence's house since then,
it seemed to him the young _fiancee_ had avoided him purposely. "No
doubt, poor little soul, she thinks it would pain me to revert to that
evening," he thought to himself; "and she doesn't want to tell me that
what she suspected then is becoming more and more confirmed, though I
can see by her manner it is so." Once Gerald purposely led to the
mention of Captain Chancellor's name in talking with his brother. To
his surprise, he found that Frank's slight prejudice and dislike had
completely disappeared.
"He is a very good fellow of his class," said the clergyman. "Not very
much in him, perhaps, but he seems to me honourable and straightforward,
and thoroughly gentlemanly. He's a good Churchman too, I'm glad to
find. I like him very much--better than I expected. Eugenia might do
worse. But, after all, if nothing comes of it, I can't see that he will
be in the least to blame. I don't see that he pays her any more
attention than he does to Sydney; but then certainly she is a very
different person from Sydney," added Frank, with considerable
self-congratulation in the last few words. "I am sorry you don't see
more of Captain Chancellor, Gerald," he continued. "You have been so
busy lately, and he has never happened to be there the one or two times
you have dropped in lately."
"No," replied Mr Thurston; "Eugenia was not at home either, the last
time. She has been staying somewhere, has she not?"
"At the Dalrymples'. She is there a great deal. But never mind about
her," said Frank, rather cavalierly. "Give yourself a holiday now and
then, Gerald. Even I find I must sometimes, and my work is not nearly
so monotonous as yours. We are going to skate on Ayclough Pool
to-morrow. I have promised to take the Dalrymple boys, whose holidays
have begun."
"It's rather a long way," said Gerald, doubtfully.
"Only four miles, and the weather is delightful for walking. We don't
start till one, so you'll have all the morning. Sydney and Eugenia are
coming to watch us. Do come; it will do you ever so much good. You
have been dreadfully shut up since you came home," persuaded Frank.
"Very well," said Gerald at last. This might be the opportunity he had
been looking for. Frank's opinion of Captain Chancellor had not
reassured him, for the young clergyman was in many ways very
inexperienced, incapable of understanding Eugenia, and constitutionally
predisposed to judge of everything and everybody from his own
straightforward point of view.
"Whatever Captain Chancellor's intentions are," reflected Gerald, "he
must be a man of a good deal of tact and foresight of a small kind."
It was quite true. "Of a kind," Captain Chancellor's acuteness and
perception were unrivalled. He knew exactly how far to go without
risking "anything unpleasant." In all his numerous flirtations he had
come off unscathed; never had any papa, urged thereto by an over-anxious
mamma, taken the terrible step of demanding "his intentions;" his
fastidious taste would indeed have been attracted by no girl, however
charming, behind whom loomed the shadow of so coarse and hideous a
possibility. He made a rule of looking well about him, making himself
acquainted with the country, before he indulged in one of his little
amusements, and so far he had never found himself wrong. In the present
case he had been unusually lucky; fortune literally seemed to play into
his hands, or perhaps it had appeared so to him, because at first the
difficulties had promised to be great, and he had prepared to meet them
with more than ordinary caution and skill. Mr Laurence's house was
just the sort of house in which it was far from easy to obtain a
friendly and familiar footing. The arrangements were ponderous and
formal notwithstanding their simplicity and absence of ostentation; the
hours were regular and visitors few. When Mr Laurence expected a
friend or two to dine with him, he gave his daughters a few days'
notice, and they never pretended to "make no difference;" on the
contrary, Sydney consulted the cookery-book, and exhorted the cook;
Eugenia arranged the flowers and the dessert, and gave a finishing touch
to the positions of the drawing-room chairs. A household of this kind
was new to Captain Chancellor, and it took him some little time quite to
understand it, and when he did so he hesitated. Was it worth the
necessary amount of "_chandelle_?" in this case represented by great
tact, quick seizing of opportunity, and considerable patience; for Mr
Laurence's dissertations were quite out of his line, his cook not a
French one, his wines--well, hardly so bad as might have been expected.
But after all, life in Wareborough would be really unendurable without
some _passe-temps_ of the kind. A happy thought struck him--two happy
thoughts. Frank Thurston and Mrs Dalrymple, excellent, admirable
creatures both, perfectly adapted for his purpose. So he spent a few
days in sedulously cultivating the curate, whose good word was of
course, under existing circumstances, an Open sesame to the Laurence
household, and so well succeeded in his design, that gradually all the
family got accustomed to his dropping in at odd times just like Frank
himself. They got accustomed to it, but did they like it? To Mr
Laurence it was neither particularly agreeable nor the reverse; he got
into the way of thinking of the new-comer as "a friend of Frank's," a
pleasant, rather intelligent young man, who had seen a good deal of the
world, and yet was easily entertained. To Sydney, this growing
familiarity was the source of much secret anxiety, which yet she saw it
best to keep to herself; to Eugenia--ah, what words will tell what it
had come to be to Eugenia!--like the flowers in spring, like the
sunshine, like life itself.
Then Captain Chancellor called pretty frequently on his old friend Mrs
Dalrymple, and made himself very agreeable to her. He told her he
really did not know how he should have got through this winter but for
her kindness and hospitality; it was no small boon to him to have one
person in Wareborough he might venture to look upon as a friend, with
whom he might talk over old days, etc, etc. And gradually he led the
conversation round to the Laurences, said he was so much obliged to Mr
Dalrymple for his introduction to Mr Laurence, really a remarkable man,
a man whose acquaintance any one might be proud of; but had it not
struck Mr Dalrymple that his daughters were rather to be pitied, not
the younger one, of course she was very happy in her engagement to young
Thurston, but the elder one, she had really a very dull life? He felt
quite sorry for her sometimes, a little kindness was well bestowed on a
girl like that, and she was so grateful to Mrs Dalrymple for what she
had already shown her. Altogether, he drew so moving a picture of
Eugenia's monotonous existence that Mrs Dalrymple felt ready to ask her
to take up her quarters permanently at Barnwood Terrace, and ended by
setting off that very afternoon to invite Miss Laurence to spend a week
with her, for it was just about Christmas time, her own young people
were home from school, and there were plenty of other young people ready
to join them in the merry-makings wherein Mrs Dalrymple's heart
delighted--Eugenia would be so useful with the Christmas tree and all
the rest of it. And Eugenia was only too happy to come, and during the
fortnight to which the visit extended there were not many days on which
she and Captain Chancellor did not meet. It was all done so cleverly,
she hardly realised that these constant meetings were not the result of
a series of happy accidents, or at least, their being otherwise was
never obtruded on her notice, for one of the girl's great attractions in
Beauchamp's eyes was the shrinking refinement he, in a superficial way,
was able to appreciate and was most careful never to offend. In many
ways, however, she puzzled him, set at defiance his preconceived ideas.
Sensitive and shy though she was, she showed to him sometimes a
confiding frankness which he could not explain as the simplicity of an
inferior or uncultivated nature; and it never occurred to him that in
judging of Eugenia Laurence his ordinary measure was quite at fault; his
boasted knowledge of the world and of women--clumsy impediments in the
way of the work, that to understand her rightly he had greater need to
unlearn than to learn. "She is certainly quite unlike any other girl I
ever came across. She is not the least stupid, yet she could be very
easily deceived. She has decided opinions of her own, and yet she is so
yielding. In short--she is a charming collection of contradictions," he
said to himself. "Perhaps it's just as well I am not likely to be here
much longer."
Once or twice during the time that Eugenia was her guest, Mrs Dalrymple
got alarmed at the responsibility she was incurring in allowing these
young people to see so much of each other. But they seemed so
light-hearted and happy, her boys and girls were so fond of Miss
Laurence, Captain Chancellor made himself so useful in escorting the
merry party to the pantomime, taking the boys to the circus, helping to
adorn the Christmas tree, and in half-a-dozen different ways, that Mrs
Dalrymple had not the heart to interfere. Besides, what could she do?
Eugenia was her invited guest, she could not send her home like a child
in disgrace; Beauchamp Chancellor was the son of her oldest friends, she
could not shut her doors on him because he was handsome and her young
visitor was pretty. Things of this kind must just take their chance,
she decided, and in the present case the good lady comforted herself by
a peculiar form of argument. Either Beauchamp was engaged to Roma
Eyrecourt or he wasn't. If he was, no harm was done; in other words,
he, an engaged man, would never think of making love to another girl; if
he wasn't, then why shouldn't he marry Eugenia Laurence as well as any
one else, if he and she thought they would be happy together? And when
the fortnight was over, and Eugenia kissed her and thanked her, and said
she had "never been so happy before, never in all her life," Mrs
Dalrymple confided to her Henry that if Beauchamp Chancellor didn't fall
in love with her she would think very poorly of his taste; and she got
quite cross with Henry for looking grave, and warning her that no good
ever came of match-making.
Eugenia spoke truly when she said she had never been so happy in her
life, for at this time every day seemed to add fresh delight to her
already overflowing cup. She had got beyond the stage of looking either
to the past or future; she lived entirely in the beautiful present. The
tiny shocks of uncongeniality, unresponsiveness--she had never given it
a name--which in the earliest part of her acquaintance with Beauchamp
Chancellor had occasionally made themselves felt, were seldom now
experienced by her; and if they were, her determination to see no flaw
in her idol was a special pleader always ready to start up in his
defence. It was sure "to be her own fault"--she was "stupid," or
"matter-of-fact," or "absurdly touchy and fanciful." She was well under
the spell. She never asked herself why she cared for him; she never
thought, about his position, his prospects, his intentions; she did not
trouble herself about whether he was rich or poor--whatever he was he
was her perfection, her hero, her fairy prince, who had wakened her to
life, whom she asked nothing better than to follow--
"O'er the hills, and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim;
Beyond the night, across the day,
Thro' all the world..."
She was sinking her all in the venture.
Then there came the day of the expedition to Ayclough Pool.
Ugly as Wareborough was, both in itself and its situation, there were
yet to be found, as there are in the neighbourhood of most small towns,
some fairly pretty walks a mile or two beyond its suburbs. The
Woldshire side was the most attractive, for on this side one got out of
the dead level so depressing to pedestrians in search of "a view," and
the undulating ground encouraged one to hope that in time, provided, of
course, one walked far enough, one might come to something in the shape
of a hill. Nor were such hopes deceptive. There really was a hill, or
a very respectable attempt at one, which went by the name of Ayclough
Brow, and half-way up which, one came upon the tiny little lake known as
Ayclough Pool. There was rather a nice old farmhouse, perched up there
too, not far from the Pool, and a chatty old farmer's wife who was fond
of entertaining visitors with her reminiscences of "the old days," days
when sheep could browse on the Brow without getting to look like
animated soot-bags; when it was possible to gather a posy without
smearing one's hands with the smuts on the leaves; when Wareborough was
a little market town, where the mail-coach to London from Bridgenorth
used to stop twice a week, and rattle out again in grand style, horn and
all, along the Ayclough Road. Many an accident to this same Royal Mail
could the old body tell of, for her husband's forbears had lived on the
same ground for generations, and the smashes of various kinds that had
taken place at a sharp bend of the road just below the Brow had been the
great excitement in the lives of the dwellers in the lonely farmhouse,
and the records thereof had been handed down religiously from father to
son. More than one unfortunate traveller had been carried up to the
farm, as the nearest dwelling-house, there to remain till the fractured
limb was sound again, or till the bruised body and shaken nerves had
recovered their equilibrium, or, in one or two yet sadder cases, under
the roof-tree of the old house, far from home and friends, to end indeed
the journey.
There was one story which Eugenia since childhood had listened to with
intense sympathy--a really tragic story--notwithstanding the exaggerated
ghastliness of detail with which, like all local legends of the kind, in
process of time it had become embellished. It was that of a bride and
bridegroom, married "the self-same morn," who had been among the victims
of one of those terrible overturns. The bride had escaped unhurt, the
husband was killed on the spot. They had carried him up to the farm,
and then, for the day or two that elapsed before her friends could be
communicated with, the poor girl had knelt in frantic agony beside the
body, refusing to be comforted, at times wildly persisting he was not,
could not be dead. By the next morning, the old farmer's wife used to
add in a solemnly impressive tone, "she had heard tell, th' young
leddy's hair were that grey she moight 'a been sixty." She had been
taken away at last a raging lunatic, said the legend (probably in
violent and very excusable hysterics), and of course never recovered her
reason. There was no record of her name, the accident had occurred more
than a hundred years ago, yet the story still clung to Ayclough Farm,
and some people were not over and above fond of passing the bend in the
road of a dark night. "'Twas lonesome, that bit of the way, very," said
the old woman, and the wind among the trees--there was a good deal of
wind up Ayclough way sometimes--made queer sounds like a coach galloping
furiously in the distance, and there were people that said still queerer
sights were to be seen now and again on the fatal spot.
Altogether there was a good deal of fascination about Ayclough,
fascination felt all the more strongly by the Laurence girls, on account
of the unusual dearth of the picturesque or of any material food for
romance in their dull Wareborough home. A walk to the old farm had
always been one of their recognised childish "treats," though Eugenia
used to get dreadfully frightened, and hide herself well under the
bedclothes when they were left alone by their nurse at night, after one
of these expeditions. Sydney used to feel her way across the room in
the dark, and climb into Eugenia's cot, and try to reason her into
calmness.
"How could the ghost of the young lady be so silly as to come back to
the place where her husband had been killed, when it was more than a
hundred years ago, and they _must_ be both happy in heaven now, like the
lovers on the willow pattern plates."
"_They_ were turned into birds," Eugenia would remonstrate, but Sydney
could not see that that signified; "they were happy any way, and people
in heaven must be even happier than birds. She couldn't think what they
should ever want to come back for, or suppose they did, why any one
should be afraid of them."
Then Eugenia would shift her ground, and defend her terrors by a new
argument.
"Suppose ghosts weren't really people's souls, but evil spirits who
looked like them? She had read something _so_ horrible like that in one
of papa's books the other day. It was a poem--she couldn't remember the
name--but it was `from the German.' If it was only light, she would
tell it to Sydney."
But Sydney was not at all sure that she wanted to hear it, and she
thought papa would be angry if he knew that Eugenia read books he left
about, whereupon Eugenia would promise to do so no more, and in the
diversion of her thoughts thus happily brought about, Sydney, finding
the outside of her sister's bed less warm and comfortable than the
inside of her own, would seize the opportunity of returning to her
little cot, and in two minutes would be fast asleep, rousing for a
moment again to agree sleepily to the entreaty that came across the room
in Eugenia's irritatingly wideawake voice, "that she wouldn't tell nurse
she had been frightened, or they would never be allowed to go to
Ayclough any more."