_Merchant of Venice_.
When the gentlemen came into the drawing-room, music was proposed.
"Come, Addie, my dear, let me see you at the piano," said her father,
laying his hand caressingly on the girl's fair head. "Not that it is
quite my place to propose it, by-the-bye; but you see, my dear Mrs
Eyrecourt, how thoroughly at home you have already made us all feel
ourselves. I want you to hear Addie play."
"Don't you sing?" inquired Gertrude, as Miss Chancellor rose, in
accordance with her father's request.
"No, she doesn't sing," said Mrs Chancellor, answering for her--"at
least, very little. But she _plays_!"
"If she _does_ play," thought Roma, "it will double her chances with
Beauchamp." Then there came a little pause of rather solemn
expectation.
Captain Chancellor, as in duty bound, conducted Mademoiselle to the
piano, gravely taking up his place behind her, near enough to perform
the task of turning over the leaves, for Adelaide was one of those young
ladies who are nowhere without their "notes." Roma, watching the pair
closely, thoroughly took in the position. There was no fluster about
Adelaide. She drew off her gloves quietly, and selected her piece of
music with perfect composure, well satisfied evidently with the
impression she was about to make on her audience, Captain Chancellor
standing with ceremonious deference, stiff and silent, in his place.
"They don't know him," thought Roma again. "Fortunately for their
satisfaction in their little arrangement, they don't know how Beauchamp
can look sometimes in such a position. Oh, you most foolish,
contrariest of men!"
But even Roma hardly knew how Beauchamp could look at such times. She
had never seen him standing beside Eugenia, bending low his handsome
head, to catch each varying expression of the beautiful face, each
sweet, bright glance of the lovely, speaking eyes, as the pretty fingers
softly played the music he loved best, or rested now and then idly on
the keys. She was no great performer, but her perception and
appreciation were delicate and vivid enough to satisfy even fastidious
Beauchamp--fastidious on this point without affectation, for the man's
love for music was deep and genuine. At no time was he so near to
forgetting himself, so close to the consciousness of the higher and
better things little dreamt of in the philosophy of his ordinary life,
as when under its influence. How far Roma's singing had had to do with
his imagining himself in love with her, it might be difficult to say.
So there was reason for Gertrude's feeling anxious, and Roma curious, as
to the sort of "playing" of which Miss Chancellor was capable. She
began at last--not noisily, she was too well taught for that; but
nevertheless she had not got through half-a-dozen bars, before Roma knew
that the less she and the piano had to do with each other in Beauchamp's
presence, the better for Gertrude's plans.
"If it should ever come to pass that he marries her, he will make her
promise to leave music alone," said Miss Eyrecourt to herself.
And she almost felt sorry for Addie, working away so conscientiously
and serenely, slurring no "tiresome bits," doing her
"expressions"--_allegretto, rallentando_, and all the rest of them--so
precisely according to the letter of the instructions of her "finishing
master," Herr Spindler. She had really laboured hard, poor girl, to
attain to her present undeniably great manual dexterity, and there had
been difficulties in her way which had called for considerable patience
and perseverance. For her hands--plump and short-fingered, though very
nice little hands of their kind, and with a fair amount of muscle inside
the white cushions--were not the sort of hands to which such wonderful
agility as they were now displaying comes all at once or without a good
deal of tutoring. It was really very funny to see the two little things
scudding up and down after each other as hard as they could go, "exactly
like two fat white mice," thought Beauchamp to himself; and the conceit,
for which (not being addicted to the reading of more poetry than that of
the day likely to be discussed at dinner-parties) he was not indebted to
any one but himself, so tickled his fancy that it enabled him to endure
with patience the penance to which he was; subjected, and to thank
Adelaide at the close of her performance with becoming graciousness for
the pleasure she had afforded them all.
"You must have practised a great deal," he observed to her.
"Oh, yes; two hours every day till I came out, and an hour every morning
even now," she replied.
"Dear me, I really admire your energy," he said, quietly, slightly
raising his eyebrows, and inwardly trusting he might have timely warning
of the special hour at which this praiseworthy young person's manual
gymnastics were to be performed during her stay at Winsley. But Addie
perceived no shadow of sarcasm in his softly uttered commendation, and
took herself and her ample draperies across the room again to her
mother's side in the happiest possible frame of mind. These two or
three words were all that passed between Captain Chancellor and herself
of direct conversation during the evening; yet, before she fell asleep,
Addie confessed to herself that her cousin Beauchamp was by far the most
charming man she had ever met, "more charming and decidedly handsomer
than even Sir Arthur Boscawen or Colonel Townshendly, of the Blues."
Adelaide safely disposed of, Beauchamp felt that he deserved a reward.
"Come, Roma," said he, in a low voice, skilfully making room for himself
behind the sofa on which Miss Eyrecourt was sitting alone, "do come and
sing. You must have seen I have been very good."
Roma hesitated. She did not feel sure of what Gertrude wished her to
do. Just then Mrs Eyrecourt glanced in her direction, and seemed by
instinct to understand her perplexity. Beauchamp was beginning to look
cross.
"Will you sing, Roma, dear?" said Gertrude, sweetly.
Roma rose at once. "Of course," muttered Captain Chancellor, loud
enough for her to hear, "for any one but me."
Poor Roma--her position was not a very comfortable one at present. She
knew as well as possible what was passing in Gertrude's mind. Mrs
Eyrecourt was proud of her sister-in-law's singing, and she was pleased
to have something so excellent of its kind wherewith to astonish her
guests; but she would be very far from pleased, Roma felt certain,
should Beauchamp be so ill-judged as to show any marked difference in
his manner of comporting himself towards the two fair performers. She
resolved on taking the bull by the horns.
"Beauchamp," she said, coldly, when she was standing by the piano,
looking over her songs, "you will oblige me by not standing beside me
while I am singing. It fidgets me more than I can tell you."
Without a word, Beauchamp stalked off. He was deeply offended.
"I have overshot the mark, now, I expect," thought Roma. "The next
thing will be, his forcing me to tell him what made me so cross. And I
do dread any approach to an explanation with him. I am very unlucky;
but what could I do?"
She felt thoroughly uncomfortable, and somehow--from this cause,
probably--she certainly did not sing as well as usual. Every now and
then, through the sound of the piano and of her own voice, she overheard
Beauchamp's remarks to Mrs Chancellor, beside whom he had ensconced
himself, and that lady's languid, affected tones in reply. Roma felt a
little depressed: it went greatly against the grain with her to say or
do anything to chill or alienate Beauchamp, for the old easy
brother-and-sister state of things between them had never seemed so
attractive to her as now that it was at an end.
"If only he had really been my brother," she said to herself, with a
little sigh, and replied so absently and at random to Mr Chancellor's
civil little speech of thanks for her song, that he did not feel
encouraged to remain at his post by her side.
She felt half inclined to betake herself quietly to her own room for the
rest of the evening--no one seemed to want her. For almost the first
time in her life she felt a stranger in her father's house; realised, or
began to fancy she did, that the tie which bound her to Gertrude was not
one of blood. Mrs Eyrecourt seemed already marvellously at home with
these hitherto unknown cousins of hers, and as for Beauchamp, whether or
not he disliked the daughter, he certainly seemed to find the mother
very entertaining!
"I wish I might go to bed," thought Roma again; "but Gertrude would be
vexed, and it would look as if something were the matter."
So, more out of listlessness than anything else, she, without being
asked to do so, began to sing again. The song she chose this time was
the same ballad she had sung that evening at Brighton at the
Montmorris's, the evening on which she had met Mr Thurston. The words
brought him to her mind. How had he found things at Wareborough? Was
it as she had suspected between Beauchamp and Eugenia? Roma felt that
she would give a good deal to know. That there was a change in
Beauchamp, she was convinced, but of what nature, arising from what
circumstances, she could not so easily decide, and she knew well he
would do his best to keep her in the dark. Hardly taking in the sense
of the words, she sang on half through the ballad. Her voice was more
like itself by this time, and the music of the song was lovely: it was
impossible for her not to sing it well. Gradually the murmur of the
voices in the room grew fainter, then stopped altogether. As usual,
when Roma exerted herself, all present succumbed to the charm.
"She sings beautifully--I do not know that I have ever heard, an amateur
to equal her," exclaimed Mrs Chancellor with the truthfulness of
astonishment, turning round to Beauchamp when Miss Eyrecourt's round and
soft, yet clear, thrilling notes died away into silence. But no
Beauchamp was there! Even Mrs Chancellor's attractions had failed to
keep him from his accustomed place.
Looking up, at the end of her song, to her surprise, Roma saw him
standing beside her. But there was an expression on his face which
startled her. He looked grave and troubled, Roma could almost have
fancied he had grown paler than usual. Something very strangely out of
the common must have occurred to disturb his serenity so visibly; what
could it be?
"Roma," he said, suddenly, but as if he had completely forgotten the
offence she had given him, "I wish you would oblige me by never singing
that song. I cannot bear it."
"Cannot bear it? Beauchamp! Your favourite song--the song you yourself
got for me? What do you mean?" exclaimed Roma, in extreme astonishment.
"Do I not sing it well?"
"Far too well," he replied, gloomily. Then, as he turned away, he
repeated his request more strongly. "I really cannot tell you how much
you will oblige me by never singing it."
"Very well, then, I will not," answered Roma, quietly. But in her heart
she felt not a little puzzled by his unaccountable behaviour.
No wonder--he, himself, was not a little puzzled; more than puzzled, he
was extremely out of patience with himself. He had, he felt assured,
acted with consideration and foresight towards Eugenia Laurence; with
half-a-dozen girls he could name he had carried his flirtations much
further, and come out of them comfortably when he saw it was time to do
so. What was there about this girl that now even, when he had for ever
separated himself from her, impressed him so strangely? Why could he
not forget her save as a pleasant passing fancy? Why should he be for
ever imagining he saw her face, wistful and reproachful, as it had
looked that last afternoon when he had hinted to her the probability of
his soon leaving Wareborough? It was together too bad that the
remembrance of her should thus annoy him; he felt disgusted with himself
for losing his self-control this evening, when, as ill luck would have
it, Roma picked out that stupid song, the last he had heard Eugenia
sing. And how sweetly she had sung it--he had given it to her, and he
had given her, too, his ideas as to how it should be sung, and she had
proved an apt pupil. She made no pretensions to singing well; her voice
was, of course, not to be compared with Roma's in power and compass, but
it was clear and sweet and bright, like her face and everything about
her, and he had found it very charming. He fell into a reverie again
when he recalled its tones, then he shook himself awake with some
irritation.
"What a fool I am," he reflected. He was alone again with his cigar by
the fire--Herbert Chancellor was no smoker, which was unfortunate for
Beauchamp, little inclined as he was at present for solitary
meditation--"What a fool I am to bother myself like this. I hope I am
not going to be ill. I have not felt so out of sorts for years. It is
all Roma's fault--I shall tell her so some day; she has a great deal to
answer for. No doubt, it will all come right in the end with her; I
have never really feared but what it would. It would be all right any
day if either of us had a fortune; but she is so desperately afraid of
vexing Gertrude, and Gertrude's head, I can see, is now full of that
stupid Adelaide, and Roma's shilly-shallying will have made it far more
difficult to bring Gertrude round. I have more than half a mind to
leave Roma to herself for a while, and let her fancy I have given up
thoughts of it: it would not do her any harm. How very handsome she is
looking just now, and how exquisitely she sang that last song! It is
too bad--"
Then he fell to thinking what he could do in the direction of
distracting his thoughts from his undeserved troubles, seeing that, for
the present at least, there was no satisfaction to be got out of Roma.
A flirtation with Addie Chancellor was not attractive, and might involve
him seriously, watched and guarded as she was. He wished he had not
promised Gertrude to stay so long at Winsley; he did not feel at all
sure that he would not do more wisely to spend part of his leave
elsewhere; he would see about it, very likely something or other would
turn up. And, besides, any day might bring things to a crisis with
Roma. If not, he could afford to wait a little longer; the best woman
in the world was not worth bothering oneself about; and, determined to
act upon this comforting doctrine, Captain Chancellor lit another cigar,
and having smoked it went calmly to bed. But his sleep was broken, and
his dreams uneasy--they were haunted by Eugenia, pale-faced and sad-eyed
as he had seen her last. Once it was even worse--he dreamt, he saw her
lying dead, and in some unexplained, mysterious way the impression grew
strong upon him that he had killed her. He awoke with a start of horror
and was thankful to find it a dream--to see, by the faint morning light
just beginning to break, the familiar objects in his room, and remember
where he was.
"But if this sort of thing goes on," he said to himself, "I can't stay
here. I must go away--to town even, or to Paris, or somewhere for a
change, whether Gertrude likes it or not."
The next day or two, however, brought something in the way of
distraction. Several other guests arrived, of whom two or three of the
gentlemen were old and friendly acquaintances of Beauchamp's, glad to
see him again at Winsley--for, unlike many men of his class, he was a
favourite with his own sex wherever he choose to be so--and among the
accompanying wives and daughters there were some sufficiently attractive
for him to find no difficulty in amusing himself in his usual way; on
the whole, not to Mrs Eyrecourt's dissatisfaction. She knew her
brother pretty thoroughly. Though her hopes with regard to Adelaide
Chancellor had never been alluded to, she felt that Beauchamp was
perfectly aware of their existence, and in every smallest detail of his
unexceptionably civil behaviour to the girl, she read a tacit defiance
of her wishes, a determined opposition to them. Yet she did not
despair. She blamed herself for having been injudicious and premature;
she owned that Addie, pretty and amiable as she was, was hardly equal to
taking her irresistible cousin's experienced heart by storm.
Nevertheless, a little time might do wonders; and in the meanwhile the
more general he was in his flirtations the better, and she congratulated
herself on her wise selection of guests. She had long ago forgotten her
fright about the Wareborough young lady, whose name she had never even
heard; all her fears were concentrated in Roma.
Roma was far from happy at this juncture. A painful consciousness was
beginning to grow upon her that her relations with Gertrude were not
what they had been; for the first time in the several years they had
lived together she felt that she was not altogether in her
sister-in-law's confidence; worse than this, that she was no longer
thoroughly trusted. And she was at no loss to whose influence to
attribute this mortifying change. Scrupulously careful as she was in
the regulation of her manner to Beauchamp, that it should not be by a
shade more or less familiar than was natural to their acknowledged
position of brotherly and sisterly intimacy--indifferent, distant even,
as it was now apparently Captain Chancellor's _role_ to appear to her--
Roma yet saw clearly that Adelaide's mother, with her sharp worldly
eyes, her conventional suspicion of every unmarried woman not fortunate
enough to be an heiress, was on the scent of something below the surface
between herself and the man Mrs Chancellor had picked out for her
future son-in-law.
"It is all Beauchamp's fault. It is very cruel of him to place me in
such a position. I believe he wants these people to think that he
dislikes me, and that I--oh, no, he could not be so horribly coarse,"
thought Roma, though she grew furious at the idea. "Why won't he
believe simply that I only care for him as a brother, and let us be
comfortable as we used to be? And why is Gertrude so weak as to be
turned against me when I have told her so plainly how it is?"
And there were times at which she almost wished that things would come
to a crisis, and that she might have the opportunity she had hitherto on
every account so carefully avoided of telling Captain Chancellor the
plain truth; that to one woman in the world his fascinations were less
than nothing. But at present things showed no signs of coming to any
such crisis. Beauchamp comported himself to her with exaggerated and
obtrusive indifference, and amused himself very comfortably with a
handsome Miss Fretville, whose _fiance_ was safe in India, and (rather
more discreetly) with pretty Lady Exyton, whose husband was sixty, and,
so long as his dinner was to his taste, calmly tolerant of her
ladyship's harmless little flirtations.
Had the change been less sudden and obtrusive, Roma would have been only
too glad to believe it genuine. As it was, she rightly attributed it to
pique--a powerful motive in some natures, for wounded vanity has many of
the symptoms and sensations of the genuine malady, often enough
deceiving even the patient's self.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Volume One.