La femme qui ne cesse pas d'aimer celui qui l'a fut souffrir, parvient
a l'aimer encore davantage.
Let time and chance combine, combine.
T. Carlyle's _Adieu_.
Who knows, indeed! Gerald left Nunswell on Monday morning, and for the
rest of that day Eugenia's thoughts were principally occupied in
reflecting over all he had said, and wishing he had stayed longer and
said more. She got up on Tuesday morning in the same spirit, and
resolving to strike before the iron of her new determination to struggle
against despondency and depression had had time to cool, she went out
into the gardens armed with one of the few books she had brought with
her, Schlegel's "Philosophie der Sprache," which she had been studying
under her father's direction just before her illness.
"I will force myself to read a certain quantity every day," she decided,
as she ensconced herself on the same garden seat on which she and Gerald
had sat on Sunday afternoon. All around her reminded her of their
conversation, of his few words of encouragement and advice.
"Trying must always be some good, whether one sees it or not, I
suppose," thought Eugenia, and with this somewhat vague but certainly
innocuous piece of philosophy she set to work at her self-appointed
task.
She found it harder than she had anticipated; considerably more so than
it used to be; she did not make allowance for the effects of her
illness, and entirely attributed the difficulty she met with to
"stupidity" and "forgetfulness," and thereupon ensued a fit of
self-disgust.
"I to think myself clever, indeed!" she thought, "or able to be ever of
use to any one. The first thing I have to do, it seems to me, is to get
rid of my self-conceit. Why, I have forgotten more German in a month
than I learnt in five years."
She was not, however, to be easily baffled. She read and re-read each
intricate sentence till its meaning became clear; till, too, her head
ached and her eyes grew weary, and she was at last obliged to stop and
rest before she had got half through the allotted portion. Her retreat
was in a retired part of the gardens; hitherto she had been undisturbed
by passers-by; suddenly, as she sat leaning back, her eyes closed, her
whole appearance that of extreme weariness and languor, two gentlemen
passed within a few yards of her. They were not speaking as they
approached, but she heard their footsteps and opened her eyes for a
moment, to close them again quickly when she saw that the two figures
were disappearing in another direction.
"What an exquisitely pretty girl," observed one of the two when they
were out of earshot, "but how fearfully delicate she looks. I don't
think I ever saw such a transparent complexion. Did you notice her?
She seemed to be asleep, and yet she looks as if she were some way gone
in a decline. How extraordinary of her friends to let her fall asleep
in the open air in April. How frightfully imprudent."
"I didn't notice her," replied his companion, carelessly. "It's not
likely she is in a consumption, however. Consumptive people don't come
to Nunswell; it's too cold. But if your feelings are interested,
Thanet, I am quite willing to wait while you turn back and waken her.
And you had better give her a little lecture on the subject of her
imprudence at the same time, hadn't you?"
"Nonsense, Chancellor," replied Major Thanet, rather irritably. "If you
had been on your back for three months, and suffering as I have been,
you would understand what it is to have some feeling for your
fellow-creatures. A year ago I should have laughed at such notions as
you do now, I daresay," he continued, more amiably, "but don't make fun
of me till you have had a touch of rheumatic fever yourself," "I have no
wish to try it, thank you," said Captain Chancellor, lightly. "I am
quite willing to take your word for it that, it is the reverse of
agreeable. But a minute ago you would have it the young person must be
half way gone in a decline, and now you say she's in for rheumatic
fever. We had better have a look at her, really: you said she was
awfully pretty, didn't you?" Major Thanet grunted a but half mollified
assent. He was still too lame to walk without the help of his friend's
arm, so when Captain Chancellor turned to retrace their steps, he made
no objection, though feeling still annoyed by what he considered his
companion's ill-timed "chaff."
The girl was not asleep this time. She was reading, and did not look up
till they had passed. Her attitude was still the same; she was half
sitting, half lying on the bench, her head resting wearily on one hand,
while the other held her book. Major Thanet looked at her, as they
walked slowly past, with considerable interest.
"She is a lovely creature, whoever she is," he remarked to his companion
when they had walked on a little further. "Don't you think so? She
looks delicate, but hardly so much so as I fancied at first. It must
have been the effect of her closed eyes."
Captain Chancellor did not answer. Major Thanet was a much shorter man
than his friend, and he stooped slightly in consequence of his illness.
So he had not seen his companion's face since they had passed the
invalid girl. Now, however, he looked up, surprised at his silence, and
a little irritated by his remark eliciting no reply.
"What are you thinking of, Chancellor?" he exclaimed. "Didn't you see
the girl? Don't you?"
But his sentence was never completed, so much was he startled by what he
saw in his friend's face.
Captain Chancellor was deadly pale, paler by far than the girl whose
pallor had attracted Major Thanet's attention. An expression of extreme
disquiet had replaced his ordinary air of comfortable well-bred
nonchalance, and his voice sounded hoarse and abrupt when at last he
spoke.
"There is a sheltered seat on there, I see, Thanet," he said, pointing
to a sort of arbour a little in front. "Do you mind my leaving you for
a few minutes? I shall not be long, but--but--I _must_ run back for a
moment."
"Certainly, certainly, by all means," replied Major Thanet,
good-naturedly, though feeling not a little curious. "One of the
irresistible Beauchamp's little `affaires,' cropping up rather
inconveniently, I fear, if what they say of his engagement to that very
dark-eyed Miss Eyrecourt be true," he said to himself; adding aloud,
when Captain Chancellor had taken him at his word, and deposited him in
the summerhouse, "Don't hurry, my dear fellow, on my account. If the
worst comes to the worst, I expect I can toddle back to the hotel with
my stick."
"Thank you. I shall not be long," repeated Beauchamp, hardly knowing
what Major Thanet had said, and setting off, as he spoke, at a rapid
pace, in the direction of Eugenia's seat.
But as he drew nearer to her, his steps slackened. After all, what had
he to say to her? Was it not even possible he had been mistaken in her
identity? And supposing it were she--that this fragile shadow were the
blooming girl he had left, not without some misgiving and regret, only a
few weeks ago--why should he suppose he was to blame for the change?
She had never looked very strong; she might have had any ordinary
illness, that had nothing to say to him or her possible feelings towards
him. Girls, now-a-days, didn't die of broken hearts; that sort of thing
was all very well in novels and ballads, but was seldom come across in
real life, and more than half-inclined to turn back again to his friend
with some excuse for his eccentric behaviour, Captain Chancellor stopped
short. But before he had time to decide what he should do, a faint, low
cry, that seemed somehow to shape itself into the sound of his own name,
arrested him. He was nearer the garden bench than he had imagined: in
his hurry and confusion he had approached it by another path; a step or
two in advance and Eugenia stood before him. She had recognised him
after he had passed with Major Thanet the second time, had sat there in
an indescribable conflict of emotions--of fear and self-distrust; of
vague, unreasonable anticipation; of foolish, irrepressible delight in
the knowledge of his near presence; of bitter, humiliating consciousness
that such feelings were no longer lawful--that he was now the betrothed,
possibly even the husband, of another woman.
"Why did I see him? What unhappy fate has brought him here--to revive
it all--to begin again all my struggles--just when I was growing a
little happier and more at peace?" she had been crying in her heart.
And then her ears had caught the quickly--approaching footsteps--the
firm, sharp tread which she told herself she could have known among a
thousand, and she forgot everything; forgot all about Roma Eyrecourt and
his sudden departure, her own misery, his apparent indifference;
remembered only that at last--at last--she saw him again, stood within a
few feet of the man she had been doing her utmost to banish for ever
from her heart and thoughts. One glance, all the labour was in vain--
all the painful task to begin over again at the very beginning!
He was the first to break silence. It would have been a farce to have
done so with any ordinary conventional form of greeting; her agitation,
as she stood there, pale as death, trembling from head to foot, grasping
convulsively at the rough woodwork of the bench for support--her poor
"Philosophie" lying on the ground at her feet--was too palpable to be
ignored; to have attempted to do so would have been to insult her. And
Beauchamp Chancellor was not the man to stab deliberately and in cold
blood, however indifferent he might be to suffering which fell not
within his sight. And just now, in full view of Eugenia's altered
features and pitiful agitation, all the latent manliness of his nature
was aroused; for the time he almost forgot himself in the sudden rush of
tenderness for the girl who, he could no longer doubt, had suffered
sorely for his sake; whose guileless devotion contrasted not
unpleasantly with the still fresh remembrance of Roma Eyrecourt's
scornful indifference. So it was in a tone of extreme and unconcealed
anxiety that he spoke.
"You have been ill, Miss Laurence," he exclaimed; "I can see that you
have been dreadfully ill. Good heavens, and I not to know it! And I
have startled you by coming upon you so unexpectedly. What can I do or
say to make you forgive me."
Eugenia was recovering herself a little by now; some consciousness of
what was due to her own self-respect was returning to her; she made a
hard fight to regain her self-possession.
"There is nothing to forgive," she answered, trying to smile, though her
quivering lips and tremulous voice were by no means under her control.
"I have been ill, but not `dreadfully.' When one is usually strong, I
suppose even a slight illness shakes one's nerves. I am still absurdly
easily startled."
The last few words came very faintly. The same bewildering sensation of
giddiness that she had felt once before in her life came over Eugenia; a
horror seized her that in another moment she would again lose
consciousness altogether--what might she not say, how might she not
betray herself in such a case, to him--to this man who belonged to Roma
Eyrecourt, not to her? She was standing by the end of the bench; she
turned, and tried to reach the seat, but she could not see clearly,
every object seemed to dance before her eyes, she would have fallen had
not Beauchamp darted forward, caught her in his arms, and almost lifted
her on to the bench. His touch seemed to inspire her with curious
strength, the giddiness passed away; she sat up, and shrinking back from
his supporting arm with an unmistakable air of repugnance, whispered--
for she had not yet voice to speak--"Thank you, but _please_ go away,
Captain Chancellor. I am quite well again now." Considerably
mortified, Beauchamp sprang back. He was at all times easily nettled
and prone to take offence, and in the present case the unexpectedness of
the repulse made it additionally hurting. He stood still for a minute
or two, watching Eugenia, as she sat in evident discomfort and
constraint under his scrutiny. Then he spoke again--"I would have left
you at once, Miss Laurence," he said, stiffly, "if you were fit to be
left, but you really are not. If you will tell me, however, where I can
find your friends I will go in search of them, and not trouble you any
more with my unwelcome presence."
She looked up wistfully into his face.
"I have offended you," she said. "Oh, what shall I do? I don't know
what to do. Oh, why did you come here? You make it so difficult--so
dreadfully difficult. I don't blame you--I know you could not help it:
but I have been trying so hard to forget you, and you won't let me. You
have no right to put yourself in my way; it is cruel and unmanly of
you," she went on, with a quick fierceness in her tone; "you know how
weak and ignorant I am. Why can't you leave me? But, oh, what have I
been saying?" And with a sudden awakening to the inference of her
words, an overwhelming rush of shame, bewilderment, and misery, she hid
her face in her hands, and burst into tears.
This was altogether too much for Captain Chancellor. He flung himself
on the seat beside her, clasped her in his arms, lavishing upon her
every term of lover-like endearment.
"Eugenia, my dearest, my own darling!" he exclaimed, "I cannot bear to
see you so. Why should I keep away from you? Fate is too strong for
prudence. We cannot be separated, you see. I will break every tie, I
will crush every obstacle that can come between us. Look up, my
dearest, and tell me you will be happy, and will trust yourself to me."
She did not repulse him now; she was too exhausted and worn out to
struggle. She hardly realised the meaning of his words, but for this
short minute she allowed herself to rest in his arms, with a vague
feeling that it was only for this once--he must go away, he must marry
Roma; it must be, he could not break his word; and she, Eugenia, would
never see him again; she would not live long now, she had no strength to
struggle back to common life again, as she had nearly succeeded in
doing; it would be better for her to die quietly, and then it would not
surely matter to any one that she had for this once smothered her
maidenly dignify, had allowed the promised husband of another to hold
her in his arms, to call her his dearest, to kiss her pale cheeks, and
swear he would never give her up.
Suddenly an approaching footstep startled them. Only a very few minutes
had passed since Beauchamp had first returned to her, but to Eugenia it
seemed hours. Captain Chancellor got up from the seat and stood quietly
beside her, as if engaged in ordinary conversation. The new-comer was
only a stranger who passed by without noticing them, but the
interruption recalled Beauchamp's thoughts to outside matters.
"I think perhaps I had better go," he said, reluctantly, "but I cannot
leave you to find your way back alone. My friend, Major Thanet, is
waiting for me a little further on. He is lame, and cannot walk home
alone. Would you mind remaining here a very few minutes till I have
seen him safe back to his room, and then I can return here for you?"
The anxious tenderness of his words and manner was very sweet, to
Eugenia, but she resisted the temptation. She had had her moment of
weakness, but that was now past and gone. Still, this was not the time
or place for saying what had to be said, nor had she now strength for
any discussion. So she merely answered gently, so gently that any
possibility of offence was out of the question--
"Please not. I mean, please don't come back for me. It is better not.
I am quite able to go home alone now; but if you would rather," (in
deference to a shake of his head), "you might leave a message at the
hotel, asking Mrs Dalrymple's maid to come for me. She will not be
surprised; she often goes out with me, and she knows this seat."
"I will do so," he replied. "So you are with the Dalrymples!"--and
Eugenia detected, and was not surprised at, a slight shade of annoyance
in his tone.
"Yes," she replied, simply.
"But--but that will not matter?" he inquired, hesitatingly. "You are
your own mistress. You will see me? I shall try to see you in an hour
or two again. There will be no difficulty about it?"
He had turned to leave her, but waited an instant for her answer.
"Oh, no, there will be no difficulty. I will see you, or write to you,"
she said, a little confusedly.
Her last words struck him rather oddly, but he attributed them to her
nervousness and embarrassment; and, fearful of increasing these, he left
her, as she desired.
And for the next quarter of an hour, till the maid came for her, Eugenia
never took her eyes from the path down which Beauchamp had disappeared.
"I shall never see him again," she said to herself; "never, never. I
must not. He must not break his word for me. Oh, I hope--I do hope I
shall not live much longer."
When she got back to the hotel, Eugenia found the Dalrymples both out.
Mr Dalrymple she knew was off for the day on some expedition; but his
wife, she found on inquiry, had left word for her that she would be in
in half an hour. So Eugenia went up to her own room, and sitting down,
tried to decide what was best to do. She only saw two things clearly,--
she must not risk seeing Beauchamp again, and she must confide in Mrs
Dalrymple.
"There is no help for it," she said to herself. "Even if I told her
nothing, she is sure to meet him, and she could not but suspect
something. It would never do to let her find it out for herself. Why,
Roma Eyrecourt is her cousin! No, I _must_ trust her; and I must get
her to let me go home at once. I cannot stay here,--I cannot."
Mrs Dalrymple, returning from her walk, was met by a request that she
would at once go to Miss Laurence's room. She felt a little startled.
"What is the matter? Miss Laurence is not ill, surely?" she said to her
maid, who was watching for her with Eugenia's message.
The young woman, a comparative stranger, answered that she did not know;
she had not thought Miss Laurence looking very well when she came in,
but she had not complained. Eugenia's face, however, confirmed her
friend's fears.
"You are ill, my dear child," she exclaimed at once. "Have you got cold
again, do you think? You were looking so well this morning."
"I am not ill,--truly I am not," replied Eugenia. "But, dear Mrs
Dalrymple, I wanted to see you as soon as you came in, to ask you to be
so very, very kind as to let me go home at once,--to-day if possible."
"Go home to-day! My dear Eugenia, it is out of the question. You must
be ill," said Mrs Dalrymple, considerably perplexed, and half-inclined
to think the girl's brain was affected.
"No, no; it isn't that. Oh, Mrs Dalrymple, I can't bear to tell you!
I have never spoken of it to any one,--only to one person at least," she
said, correcting herself, as the remembrance of her conversations with
Gerald returned to her mind. "But I am sure I can trust you, and you
will understand. It is--it is because Captain Chancellor is here that I
want to go."
"My poor child!" said Mrs Dalrymple, very tenderly, drawing Eugenia
nearer her as she spoke; and though she said no more, the girl saw how
mistaken she had been in imagining that no one had guessed her secret,
and a painful flush of shame rose to her brow at the thought.
Then, after a moment's pause, her friend spoke again.
"You are sure of it?" she inquired. "You are sure that he is here,--
actually here? May you not have made, some mistake?"
"Oh, no; I am sure, quite sure," repeated Eugenia, earnestly. "He is
certainly here, staying at Nunswell. For all I know, in this very
house."
Mrs Dalrymple sat silent again for a little, apparently thinking it
over.
"I don't quite understand it," she said at length; "what he is doing
here just now, I mean. I thought he was at Winsley. But all the
same,--though of course it is most unfortunate, most peculiarly
unfortunate,--the very thing of all others I should most have wished to
avoid for you,--all the same, my dear child, I confess I hardly see that
it would be right or wise for us to allow it to interfere with our
plans. Of course, if you go home, we shall go too. That does not
matter; it would make very little difference to us. But don't you
think, Eugenia, it would be just a little undignified,--not to say
cowardly,--to seem afraid of him,--to run away whenever he appears? I
should like him rather to see, or to think, that he is no more to you
than he deserves to be. Don't be offended with me. I have felt for you
and with you more than I can express all through."
She waited rather anxiously for Eugenia's answer. It was slow of
coming. Mrs Dalrymple began to fear she had gone too far; she could
not understand the look of embarrassment on Eugenia's face.
"Yes," she said, at last; "you are quite right. It would have been
cowardly to have run away had it been as you think, though I dare say I
should have wished to do so all the same. I am a coward, I suppose; at
least, I entirely distrust my own strength. And I have reason enough to
do so," she added, in a lower tone, hardly intended for her companion's
ears. "But it isn't quite as you think. It is not only on my own
account I want to go away. It is not only that I have _seen_ him--
Captain Chancellor, I mean. I have spoken to him. He saw me this
morning in the gardens, and came back to speak to me; and--and--if I
stay here he will insist on seeing me, and it may be very painful for us
all."
"I _don't_ understand," exclaimed Mrs Dalrymple. "What can he want to
see you for? What can he have to say to you,--he, engaged to Roma
Eyrecourt?"
"I can't tell you. I am so afraid of making you angry, for of course
she is your cousin," said Eugenia, in great distress. "But still I
thought it best to be quite open with you. He forgot himself,--for the
time only, I dare say," she continued, with an irrepressible sigh and a
sudden sense of bitter humility. "He saw that I had been ill, and I
think he was dreadfully sorry for me, and I was alone, and somehow I
suppose I was frightfully undignified, and unmaidenly even,"--the harsh
word, though self-inflicted, bringing a painful blush with it. "I dare
say it was all my fault, but any way he offered to give up everything
for my sake, to break all ties and obstacles."
"And you accepted such a proposal?" exclaimed Mrs Dalrymple,
indignantly, for, after all, "blood is thicker than water," and the
imagined insult to her kinswoman, of such treatment, struck home.
"No, oh, no; of course not," replied Eugenia, eagerly. "That is what
makes me want to go. I had not time--we were interrupted--I could not
make him understand that such a thing was impossible,--impossible in
every sense,--for him,--for me. Could I, do you think, marry any man
who, for my sake, had broken his word to another woman,--had perhaps
broken _another_ woman's heart? Oh, no, no. You do not think I could?
I would rather die!"
"And do you think he really meant it?" questioned Mrs Dalrymple.
"Certainly I have not seen much of him of late years, but I used to know
him well, and I must say it is not the _sort_ of thing I should have
imagined him doing. He must be either a better or a worse man than I
have supposed--possibly both."
Eugenia did not reply to the last observation: perhaps she did not hear
it. But she answered Mrs Dalrymple's question.
"I do think he meant it. And I think he will continue to mean it unless
it is at once discouraged," she said; "at once, before he has time to do
anything rash with regard to Miss Eyrecourt. It will not be enough for
me to refuse to see him--I must go away. While I stay here, any unlucky
chance might bring us together again, like this morning. And I cannot
trust myself, now that he knows--for he _does_ know," she turned her
face away, "that--that I do care for him, that I would make any
sacrifice for him except doing wrong, or letting him do wrong. Though,
indeed, I must not boast: no one knows how hard it is not to do wrong,
till one is tried."
"My poor child," said Mrs Dalrymple, quite as tenderly now as at the
beginning of the conversation. And then she added, "I wonder what we
should do. I wish Henry were back."
"When do you think he will be back?" asked Eugenia, influenced not so
much by her friend's wifely belief in Mr Dalrymple's diplomatic powers
as by her own anxiety to obtain his approval of her at once leaving
Nunswell.
"I don't know. Not before evening," replied her friend.
"And something must be done--should be done before post-time," said
Eugenia. "He said he would call to see me; would it do for me to write
a note to be given him when he comes? It will be so difficult to say
it. Oh dear, oh dear!"
She got up from her seat, and walked to the window and back again, her
hands clasped, in restless misery. There came a knock at the door.
"A gentleman to see Miss Laurence, if you please, ma'am," said Mrs
Dalrymple's Bertha, importantly. "This is his card. He asked for the
young lady staying with you, ma'am."
Mrs Dalrymple took the card mechanically, and glanced at the name as if
there were still any possibility of mistake.
"Captain Chancellor," the two words stared her in the face, and down in
the corner in little letters--"203rd (East Woldshire) Regiment."
It all looked so straightforward and aboveboard: there was no apparent
consciousness of conduct or intentions "unbecoming an officer and a
gentleman." And yet the girl he was calmly proposing to treat with
ignominy and indignity was her own cousin; the girl for whose sake he
proposed so to dishonour himself actually a guest in her own charge!
Mrs Dalrymple felt more and more perplexed. How could the young man
have the audacity to send up his card in this brazen-faced way? Surely
there must be some strange mistake. A sudden thought struck her. She
turned to Eugenia, standing pale, and with great, wistful eyes, beside
her.
"He does mean it, you see," whispered the girl.
"Yes, I see," replied the matron. Then turning to the servant: "Bertha,
say to Captain Chancellor we shall see him immediately," and when Bertha
had departed on her errand, "Eugenia, my love," she said gently, "I
think it will be best for _me_ to see him."
"Very well. Thank you very much," replied Eugenia, yet with a wild,
unreasonable regret that she had been so taken at her word, that fate
had not _forced_ her into seeing him again, into the very danger her
better nature so dreaded and shrank from.