"The certainty that struck hope dead."--J. Ruskin.
These three weeks had passed drearily enough at Wareborough. Not with
everybody, of course. Frank Thurston for one was in a far from unhappy
state of mind--his marriage with Sydney Laurence was to take place in a
few weeks; thanks to Gerald's generosity no difficulties had come in its
way, and the prospects of the young people were bright enough to satisfy
all reasonable requirements. Sydney, in her calm way, was happy too.
She belonged to the class of women who to some extent identify the
husband with the home, and the selecting of this home, the discussion of
the rival merits of the two or three little houses which happened at the
time to be vacant in that part of Wareborough where they were to live,
was deeply interesting to her. Still more delightful to her was the
furnishing and adorning of the tiny habitation. Her taste was good, her
common sense and discrimination wonderful, and she had the happy knack
of never apparently opposing her lover, even when his ideas as to the
drawing-room curtains, or china dinner-service, hardly accorded with
what she considered suitable, or threatened to exceed the sums
respectively appropriated to these purposes. Yet in the end and without
the exercise of any conscious diplomacy, Sydney generally got her own
way. Eugenia on these occasions wondered at, admired, often almost lost
patience with her sister.
"You are really spoiling Frank, Sydney," she would say. "I don't
believe he half appreciates you."
But "Oh, yes, he does," Sydney would answer with a quiet smile, for
nothing that Eugenia could have said in those days would have had power
to draw forth any but the gentlest reply from the sister whose whole
soul was filled with an intensity of unexpressed, inexpressible sympathy
in the suffering which Eugenia was doing her utmost to conceal.
Since the night when they had learnt the certainty of Captain
Chancellor's departure, his name had never been even indirectly alluded
to by Eugenia. It was not that she was naturally reserved or too proud
to confide in her sister, but just at the first shock she felt that her
only strength lay in silence--once let the barriers of her reticence be
broken down, she trembled for her already overtaxed powers of
self-control. And besides she shrank from the not improbably adverse
view which Sydney might take of Captain Chancellor's behaviour.
"She does not know him as I do; she could not understand him," thought
Eugenia. "I could not, even by her, endure to hear him blamed or judged
in the common conventional way, for whatever others might think of him,
I believe him to be blameless. My faith in him is unshaken."
And so she believed it to be, not discerning that in this morbid
shrinking from any discussion of the subject even with Sydney, there lay
concealed an unacknowledged misgiving as to the soundness of the
foundations of her trust.
So she kept silence, and flattered herself that no one but Sydney could
possibly suspect that anything was amiss. It was not difficult for her
just at present to keep a little more than usual in the background, the
young fiancee being naturally the nine days' centre of observation. And
even if Miss Laurence did look hardly in her ordinary spirits, people
did not much wonder at it.
"It must be a trial to the two sisters, especially to Miss Laurence,
poor girl, to think of being parted, even though Mrs Frank Thurston,
that is to be, will only be a few streets off," observed one
kindly-hearted Wareborough matron to Mrs Dalrymple during a morning
call when the Laurence family happened to come on the tapis; to which
Mrs Dalrymple, who was feeling anything but happy about Eugenia's
altered looks, agreed with almost suspicious eagerness. For Mr
Dalrymple, with true masculine magnanimity, had already given symptoms
of having a stock of "I told you sos" in readiness for the first
suitable opportunity, and had Eugenia been less preoccupied, her
friend's increasingly demonstrative affection and constant reiteration
of "how _very_ well she was looking," could not but have roused the
girl's own suspicions.
Curiously enough, in these days Eugenia seemed to turn with satisfaction
to Gerald Thurston.
"How very much Gerald has improved again of late," she remarked one day
naively to Sydney. "For some time after he came home, I thought India
had spoilt him. He seemed rough and careless, as if he had got out of
the way of women's society, and was turning into a moody old bachelor.
But now he has got back his nice, gentle, understanding way. He seems
to know by instinct when, when--" she stopped and hesitated--"when Frank
and his chattering are almost more than I can bear," had been in her
thoughts, but she recollected herself in time to change it--"when one is
tired and disinclined to talk or anything," she said, wearily, and
Sydney had hard work to force back the expression of sympathy which she
felt would not at this stage be welcome.
"Yes," she answered simply, "Gerald is very good and kind."
She would not have been the least offended had Eugenia finished her
sentence as had been on her tongue. How she pitied her no words could
have told, and many a time Frank's unconscious cheerfulness jarred even
on Sydney herself, poor child, feeling almost as if the contrast of her
own happy content was a crime against Eugenia's shattered hopes.
She pitied Gerald too. It was worse for him now, she said to herself,
than if all had been as she had expected. True, he might then have
realised more acutely the sharpness of his disappointment, have suffered
unselfishly from his misgivings as to the worthiness of her choice; "but
still," thought Sydney, in her sensible way, "it would have been over
and certain--a thing that was to be, and he would have been beginning to
get accustomed to it."
But now though Eugenia in the body was still among them, the heart and
soul--the very life it seemed just now, had gone out of her. All the
freshness and brightness had been sacrificed--whatever possibilities the
far-off future might yet conceal, the Eugenia of Gerald's first love,
the Eugenia of his absent dreams, was gone for ever, could never be his.
She _had_ never been his, it was true, but Sydney's womanish faith in
the "what would have been," was indefensibly great. Correspondingly
deep was her unspoken disappointment, her vehement, almost fierce
indignation against the cause of all this trouble, the wanton destroyer
of her sister's youth and happiness. Had she come upon the subject with
Frank, he would, she knew, have either refused to believe in Eugenia's
suffering, or have blamed her as herself the originator of it.
"But he doesn't understand her, and that man threw dust in his eyes.
Supposing even that Eugenia _was_ easily deceived, allowing her to be,
as Frank says, impressionable and extreme, does that excuse _him_;
cold-hearted, unprincipled, selfish man of the world that he must be, to
have robbed my darling of her happiness."
But all these feelings, little suspected under her quiet exterior,
Sydney kept to herself.
Late one afternoon, about six weeks after Captain Chancellor had left
Wareborough, the sisters on their way home from a long and rather
fatiguing shopping expedition, happened to pass Barnwood Terrace.
"Don't you think we might go in and see Mrs Dalrymple for a few
minutes?" suggested Sydney. "She has been twice to see us since we have
called on her, and she is always so kind."
"Very well; if you like I don't care," replied Eugenia, and Sydney
hastened to ring the bell before she could change her mind. The girl
was jealous for her sister that no occasion should be given for either
kindly or spiteful gossip, and it was well for Eugenia that she had so
discriminating a friend at hand; for in the preoccupation of her
perplexity and trouble, it would never have occurred to her that any
regard should be paid to the possible comments of the little outside
Wareborough world.
Mrs Dalrymple was at home, and as cordially delighted as usual to see
her two friends, yet Sydney was at once conscious of a slight underlying
constraint in her manner, perceptible chiefly perhaps in the
kind-hearted woman's extra effusiveness and palpable endeavour to be
quite as easy and cheerful as her wont.
"She has something on her mind," thought Sydney, "something she is
uncertain about telling us," for the girl had no great opinion of Mrs
Dalrymple's power of reserve, and every time that their hostess
introduced a new subject of conversation Sydney trembled, she hardly
knew why, and glanced furtively in her sister's direction. Eugenia sat
quietly, unconscious of anything unusual in Mrs Dalrymple's demeanour,
now and then putting in a remark on one or other of the various topics
touched upon. She was at that stage of very youthful suffering at which
a sort of calm often falls upon the inexperienced subject of it; in
reality a simple physical reaction, but which she told herself, with a
childish yet morbid satisfaction, must be "the apathy of despair." Her
life, she told herself, was over; she had sounded the very depths of
suffering, she had experienced the worst, the very worst; only one
possible aggravation of what she had endured was conceivable to her; yet
not so either, for her heart refused to listen to the faintest
suggestion of so monstrous an idea as that of her having been deceived
in her hero. Could it be possible that he had never been "in earnest,"
that he did not really care for her, that the softly hinting words and
looks more eloquent than words had meant nothing? Oh no, no, it could
not be; though all the world should swear it to her, she would refuse to
believe it.
"For if I ever came to think so, I should die," she said to herself,
with the innocent arrogance of youth which cannot believe that ever a
human being's sufferings equalled its own, or that the worst anguish is
not that which kills, but that which is lived through. For in those
natures which have the deepest capacity for suffering there is usually
an appalling reserve of strength and endurance, and to such, dying is
not so easy of achievement, as, fresh from their baptism of woe, they
are apt to imagine. And Eugenia did not yet know either that there is a
"living," compared to which this ignorantly invoked "dying,"--a girl's
hazy, sentimental notion of it, that is to say--were but child's play.
So Eugenia sat quietly beside Sydney in Mrs Dalrymple's luxurious
drawing-room--a room full of associations to her--calm in the belief
that she had known the worst; that her unapproachable, unsurpassable
sorrow had, as it were, set her apart from the rest of the world; that
for the future the only life remaining for her was that of unselfish,
self-devoting interest in the lives and interests of others. For this
was the role that Eugenia, ever extreme, imaginative, and incapable of
the sometimes so salutary resting on one's oars, the taking one's life
and its lessons day by day soberly and trustingly, instead of insisting
on unravelling the tangled thread oneself--had now already marked out
for herself, and, true to her new ideal, she tried to listen with
interest to Mrs Dalrymple's commonplacisms, to answer brightly and
smile cheerfully at the proper times. She imagined the shock to be
over, the doomed limb already severed, and that she had known the
acutest agony; when, alas, she woke from this dream to find that the
worst was yet to come, that what she had endured was but the first
shrinking of the tender flesh from the cold steel of the surgeon's
knife.
Her attention, in spite of her efforts, had flagged a little; she was
recalling in fancy the many times Beauchamp Chancellor and she had been
together in this room, from that first evening that now seemed so long
ago, when he had found her standing alone at the door in the fog, and
had asked her to dance without knowing her name. Suddenly something
that Mrs Dalrymple was saying recalled her to the present. Their
hostess had been asking Sydney, as her intimacy with the girls excused
her in doing, some questions as to the proposed arrangements for her
marriage.
"I do hope it will be fine weather at the time," she had been saying.
"Not merely on the day itself, of course, though one naturally likes
some sunshine for a bride, but for the honeymoon. You will enjoy your
tour so much more if it is fine."
"Yes," agreed Sydney. "But of that we must take our chance. April is
never to be counted on."
"No, and yet it is such a favourite month for marriages," replied Mrs
Dalrymple. "I hear of--let me see--three among my near friends, which
are fixed for this April,--a niece of Henry's, one of the Conroys. I
forget if you have ever met them here? She is marrying a Mr Mildmay
Jones, in the Civil Service, and going out to India. Then there is your
marriage, Sydney, and another I only heard of yesterday. You remember
my cousin Roma, Roma Eyrecourt," (here it was that Eugenia's attention
was attracted), "of course you do--she was here last December, you
know."
She stopped, as if waiting for Sydney's reply, for to her the question
had been addressed. In reality, poor woman, she felt unable to screw up
her courage to make the announcement which she yet knew it would be
cruel and impossible to withhold.
Little shivers of cold began to creep over Sydney. She felt inclined to
shake Mrs Dalrymple--why could she not either have held her tongue or
said it out quickly without this unnecessary torture of suspense? For
Eugenia was listening: there she sat, Sydney seemed to see without
looking at her, in an unnatural tension of expectation, her eyes, which
had somehow grown to look larger of late, fixed on the speaker.
"No," said Sydney, in a weak, faint, almost querulous voice, quite
unlike her own.
"No, I _don't_ know her. I didn't see her when she was here."
"Ah, no, by-the-bye you didn't," said Mrs Dalrymple, and something kept
her from turning to Eugenia, the one who did know her cousin, as would
have been natural, "I remember. But though you don't know her, you know
Captain Chancellor very well. I can't tell you how surprised I was to
hear of those two being really engaged. Of course it has often been
spoken of, but I long ago made up my mind it would never be. I could
get no satisfaction out of Roma when she was here, but I certainly
didn't think it looked like it. Beauchamp Chancellor never gave me the
slightest reason to expect it--rather the other way indeed. Really I
don't think I ever was so surprised."
"And the marriage is to take place very soon, I think you said,"
inquired Sydney, with the same strange sensation she had had once before
of being a mere machine asking questions at her sister's bidding.
"Yes, very soon, I believe," Mrs Dalrymple went on again in the same
nervous, hurried manner. "Next month--about the same time as yours. I
have not heard the whole particulars yet. My letter was not from Roma
herself, but from Mrs Winter, a friend of mine who is staying near
there just now. I must write and congratulate them both, I suppose,
though--I hope they won't ask us to the marriage, however; I certainly
don't want to go."
There was silence for a few moments. Then both Mrs Dalrymple and
Sydney were startled by the sound of Eugenia's voice. She spoke in a
quiet, rather dreamy tone, as if the sense of her words was hardly
realised by her--but of the peculiarity of her manner only Sydney was
aware.
"Will you kindly give our congratulations too, when you write, Mrs
Dalrymple, please--mine especially. I saw Miss Eyrecourt several times,
and we all know Captain Chancellor very well, you know."
"Certainly I will, my dear Eugenia, with the greatest pleasure," replied
Mrs Dalrymple, with rather injudicious empressement. A very little
encouragement would have drawn out the whole of her smouldering
indignation against Beauchamp and womanly fellow-feeling with Eugenia's
wrongs, but without some hint from the sisters that the expression of
her opinion would not be considered indelicate or intrusive, even Mrs
Dalrymple felt that in this case, as in most others, the less said the
better, and held her peace accordingly.
A minute or two passed, but no more allusion was made to the news which
had so disturbed their hostess's equilibrium. And before there was
opportunity for the discussion of any other subject, the sisters, moved
by a common instinct, discovered that it was getting late, and that they
had already outstayed their time. Mrs Dalrymple could not resist
kissing them both affectionately as they said good-bye, but this was the
only expression of sympathy on which she ventured.
It was already twilight out of doors. Still not so dusk but that Sydney
stole timid glances at her sister's face in wistful anxiety as to what
there might be there to read. But it seemed all blank: she might have
stared at her with open inquiry, Eugenia would have been unconscious of
it. She walked along quite quietly, replying mechanically to the little
commonplace observations Sydney hazarded from time to time; but for the
curious expression, or rather curious absence of expression in her
usually changeful, speaking face, her sister would have suspected
nothing but that Eugenia was in a more than usually silent mood this
evening. As it was, Sydney felt bewildered and uncertain, vaguely
apprehensive, yet not satisfied that there was new cause for any
increase of her anxiety.
"Possibly," thought Sydney, "this definite news may do her good. It may
show her what a poor creature he is after all, and may rouse her to
shake herself free of the remembrance of him altogether."
She hardly understood that to Eugenia such a reaction, healthy and
"sensible" though it might be, was impossible. Through all her despair
and misery Eugenia clung with instinctive self-regard to her delusion;
over and over again she repeated to herself in almost the same words,
the poor little formula of faith in her lover which she told herself and
really imagined she believed. It was her safeguard at this time, and
well for her that she could hold to it; for what to some girls would
have been merely a passing though sharp mortification, would to her have
been a loss of self-respect extensive enough to have shaken the whole
foundations of her character.
Very near their own house the sisters were overtaken by Frank Thurston.
He walked beside them to the door, but seemed to hesitate about
entering.
"Aren't you coming in, Frank?" asked Sydney.
"It is hardly worth while," he replied, eyeing regretfully his but half
consumed cigar. "I have only five minutes to spare. Suppose you walk
up and down with me, Sydney, instead of my coming in. It's going to be
a beautiful evening."
Sydney glanced at Eugenia.
"Yes, do, Sydney," said Eugenia.
Sydney fancied she could discern in this a longing on her sister's part
to be alone, if but for a quarter of an hour.
"Very well, then, I will stay out with you for a little, Frank," she
agreed, and Eugenia entered the house by herself.
When she got into the hall, for the first time she became conscious of
feeling different from usual, strangely weak and giddy and very cold.
Afraid of the servant's observing anything amiss, she abandoned her
intention of rushing upstairs at once to her own room, and went instead
to the drawing-room, where she knew she would find no one. There was no
light in the room but that of a large, brightly burning fire. Eugenia
drew a low seat close to it, and in a minute or two when the warmth had
penetrated a little through her thick dress, she seemed to feel better.
Still, however, she was only half restored; she felt that going upstairs
would be quite beyond her powers, so she sat still, vaguely relieved
that Sydney did not appear with kindly but unendurable expressions of
anxiety as to what was wrong.
How long she had sat there she did not know, when the door opened
quietly and some one came in. Eugenia looked up. It was not Sydney.
It was Gerald Thurston!
"Oh," thought poor Eugenia, "oh, if only I were up in my own room! Oh,
how can I sit and talk to Gerald!"
Then, however, there came a slight sensation of relief that it was
Gerald and not Frank! She stood up to shake hands as usual when he
crossed the room to where she was, but the giddy feeling returned, and
she sat down again rather abruptly.
"I have been with your father in his study for the last hour," explained
Gerald. "He has asked me to stay to dinner and go with him to his
lecture at Marny Mills to-night, so you must excuse my clothes."
"Oh, certainly," said Eugenia, smiling. "It wants more than
half-an-hour to dinner-time still," Gerald went on, speaking faster than
usual--the truth being that this tete-a-tete with Eugenia, the first
since the memorable evening of his return, was by no means to his
taste--"don't let me be in your way. I should not have come into the
drawing-room, but your father had some letters to write, and I thought I
was in _his_ way. I met Sydney flying upstairs as I came across the
hall, and she told me I should find a book and a fire in here."
"There are some library books and new magazines over there on that
side-table," replied Eugenia, moving her head in the direction she
meant. "But you are not in my way," she went on indifferently. "I
wasn't doing anything."
She shivered perceptibly as she spoke. Then she stooped to reach the
poker, and began nervously stirring the fire.
Mr Thurston stopped on his way to the side-table. He came back to the
fire-place and took the poker out of Eugenia's hands. Even in the
instant's contact he felt their icy coldness.
"Let me do that for you," he said gently. In her nervousness Eugenia
had already done the very thing she would have wished not to do. She
had stirred the glowing red into a vivid blaze, which fell full on her
face. Something in it must have looked different from usual, for before
she could turn away, Gerald spoke.
"Eugenia, what is the matter?" he exclaimed impulsively. "You are as
cold as ice--you must be ill."
She felt his eyes fixed upon her: extreme annoyance gave her momentary
strength.
"Don't, Gerald, please, don't," she said, half beseechingly, half
petulantly. "There is nothing the matter. I may have got a chill, that
is all. But please don't look at me. I do so dislike it."
She rose, resolved to put an end to his scrutiny. "I _will_ get across
the room," she thought. She made two or three steps feebly but
determinedly, wondering vaguely what had come to her feet, they felt so
powerless and heavy; then, it seemed to her, she stepped suddenly down,
down into unfathomable depths, into darkness compared to which midnight
was as noon-day. "I am dying," she thought to herself before her senses
quite deserted her. "What will _he_ think, how will he feel when he
hears it?" And it seemed to her she called aloud with her last breath.
"Beauchamp! oh, Beauchamp!"
In reality the words were a barely audible whisper, which would
certainly have been unintelligible to ears less jealously sharp than
those of her one hearer.
"My darling," muttered Gerald, "so it is his doing, is it?"
The first two words made their way to Eugenia's not yet quite
unconscious brain. Afterwards she thought she must have dreamt that
Beauchamp had answered her cry.
She had never fainted before. She could not at all understand the
painful coming back to life; to finding herself after all--instead of
awaking in the mysterious country across the river of which we know so
little, so terribly little--in the old way again, lying on the
drawing-room sofa, with a keen cold current of air blowing in her face.
"Where am I?" she said, as people always do say in such circumstances,
glancing round her, apprehensively. But before Gerald had time to
reply, her wits had sufficiently recovered themselves to take in the
position.
It had not been much of a faint after all; her young life had not
required much doctoring to regain its balance for the time. Mr
Thurston had merely carried her to the window, and opened it to allow
the fresh air to try what it could do. Then, laying her on the sofa, he
was glad to see she was coming round again without his requiring to
summon the assistance which he felt certain she would shrink from.
The room was bright with fire-light, and the cold air still blew in
freshly. Eugenia lay still for a minute or two, gazing before her.
Then she tried to rouse herself, and after a moment's hesitation, seeing
she could hardly manage it, Gerald put his arm round her, and helped her
to sit up. He need not have been afraid of annoying her. She took his
help with the most perfect simplicity, as if he had been her brother.
"Thank you, Gerald," she said, softly, "you are so kind. You have
always been kind to me, ever since I was quite little," and half
unconsciously she allowed her still throbbing head to lean for a moment
on his shoulder. It was rather hard upon him--the perfect sisterliness
of the little action made it all the more so. A sudden fear came over
him that she would feel how fast his heart was beating, and would be
startled into consciousness. So, very gently, under pretence of
arranging the sofa cushion, he removed the arm that was round her. She
did not seem to observe it.
"Are you better now, Eugenia?" he said, kindly. "I don't know if I did
right in opening the window, for I believe it must have been a chill
that made you faint. But I am no doctor, and a good blow of fresh air
was the only thing that occurred to me."
"I am sure it was the best thing to do," she answered; "I am not cold
now. I don't think it was real cold. It must have been the feeling of
fainting coming on. I never fainted before, and I have always thought
it _so_ silly," she added with a little smile. "I am all right now, I
shall go upstairs in a minute, Gerald." Appealingly, "You won't tell
anybody?"
"Not if you promise me to tell Sydney, and see the doctor if you have
any return of it, or don't feel quite well in any way."
"Very well, I will promise that," she replied, meekly enough. "It was
very good of you not to call any one and make a fuss." Then, after a
moment's hesitation, the hot colour rushing over her pale face, she
added in a lower voice, "Gerald, didn't I say something?"
There was no use parrying her inquiry. Sorely against his will, Gerald
found himself obliged to accept the position of her confidant.
"Yes," he said, simply; Eugenia did not perceive that it was sternly as
well.
"Ah, I thought so," she murmured. "I know I can trust you, though
sometimes one prefers to trust no one. Don't misunderstand me," she
added quickly, becoming alive to the grave expression of his face; "in
_one_ sense, I should not care if everybody knew what you suspect. No
one need be ashamed of I can't explain. I mean, I don't want pity. I
am not to be pitied, and _no one_ is to be blamed. Only, people who
only know half cannot understand, so I feel that my strength just now
lies in silence."
Mr Thurston looked at her very anxiously, the hard look melting out of
his face.
"Take care you do not overrate your strength," he said gently.
Eugenia smiled, but said nothing. Then she stood up, and was about to
try if she could walk, when Gerald stopped her.
"Wait one instant," he exclaimed, and before she had the least idea what
he meant, he was back again with a glass of wine.
"Drink that, or at least half of it," he said. "I found it on the
sideboard. It must be getting near dinner-time."
Eugenia did as he told her, and then he let her go.
"Good night; I don't think I shall come down to dinner, and thank you
again very, very much, and--and please _remember_," were her last words.
Ten minutes later Sydney appeared, dressed for dinner, with a rather
troubled face. She was anxious about Eugenia, she told Gerald; it
looked as if she had caught a chill somehow--she had persuaded her not
to come down again, but to go straight to bed.
"But talking of chills," she went on, hastily, "this room is enough to
freeze one. What can it be? Why, actually, the window is open. My
dear Gerald, what can you be made of to have sat here without finding it
out?"
Mr Dalrymple was dining with a bachelor friend that evening. It was
pretty late when he got home to his wife, but he found her wide awake,
and evidently in better spirits than she had been for the last day or
two.
"Well, my dear Henry," she began, "I am happy to tell you that for once
your fears have been exaggerated. The Laurence girls were here to-day,
and I told them--quite naturally, just in the course of conversation,
you know--the piece of news I had heard. And I assure you, Eugenia took
it beautifully; was not the least surprised or upset; begged me to send
her congratulations, and so on. She cannot have been impressed by
Beauchamp Chancellor as you thought, for she is a girl that shows all
her feelings. It is quite a relief to me. I feel quite happy about her
now."
"Do you?" said Henry, with cruel satire. "I'm glad to hear it. Only I
suspect your feelings are not at this moment shared by her family. Mr
Le Neve was dining at Hill's to-night, and a couple of hours ago he was
sent for in a hurry to the Laurences. He said he would look in again,
and so he did, and told us the patient was Miss Laurence--Eugenia, I
mean. And I can tell you _he_ is far from easy about her. My own idea
is she's in for brain fever. Be sure you send round first thing in the
morning to inquire."
Poor Mrs Dalrymple was crushed at once.
"Don't you think Mr Le Neve is rather an alarmist?" she ventured,
timidly.
But Henry was very unfeeling. "I can't say I do," he replied, leaving
his wife to her own reflections, which considerably interfered with her
night's rest.