"I almost hesitate now about sending the first part of this letter, but
perhaps it is as well to let it go. But do not let anything I have said
hurt you, dearest Beauchamp. We can talk over all so much more
satisfactorily, and I am sure you will believe I am only anxious to
advise you for your good."
Captain Chancellor started to his feet, threw the letter aside with an
impatient exclamation, opened the door, and shouted to his servant to
get him a Bradshaw at once and to hurry on with his packing; then
returned to his room, deliberately filled and lighted his pipe, and set
to work to collect his ideas. First of all he must write to Eugenia,
explaining his unavoidable absence on the morrow, then he must find out
the next train to Crumby, the great junction whence he must make his way
to Halswood. It was very unfortunate, he thought to himself; peculiarly
so at this crisis. He was really sorry to hear of Herbert's death--the
kindly, prosperous man so suddenly struck down--it was very melancholy
and uncomfortable, and, he repeated, most peculiarly unfortunate that it
should have happened just now. He understood Gertrude perfectly well;
her "accidental" allusion to "that poor sickly Roger," her sudden change
to "dearest Beauchamp," and promise of "advice."
"Advice!" exclaimed Captain Chancellor, "what `advice' do I want? The
thing is done--`fait accompli'--and no more to be said about it. Can't
she understand that? However, if she doesn't, I'll take care that she
does without loss of time."
Then he wrote to Eugenia the letter which chilled her with its apparent
indifference, feeling himself the while a rather badly-used person and
very much inclined to quarrel with Gertrude.
"Faugh!" he exclaimed, as he glanced again over Mrs Eyrecourt's letter.
"`Poor darling Addie!' If anything could be wanting to make me more in
earnest about Eugenia--supposing, that is to say, that there were any
possibility of drawing back--it would be the sight of that fat girl,
with her silly giggle and doll's face."
So Sydney Laurence's wedding-day came and went. It was spent by
Beauchamp Chancellor amidst the afflicted family at Halswood; poor
Addie, who had truly loved her father, treating him to tears instead of
giggles, her widowed mother to lamentations over her desolate
state--"these two enormous properties and no male relation to relieve
her of the burden of their management," and embarrassingly broad hints
of her wishes "that Addie were married to some one she could look upon
as a son, some one her dear father would have approved of," till
Beauchamp found himself devoutly wishing he had made any excuse under
heaven or earth to have avoided this painful visit to his relatives.
For he was really sorry for them all; for poor Roger, whom he now saw
for the first time--about whose delicate health there could be no doubt,
and whose heart seemed broken by this great sorrow--perhaps most of all,
and would have been glad to have cheered them.
"They are all so fond of you, Beauchamp," said Mrs Eyrecourt, when they
were alone together, the evening after the funeral--Captain Chancellor
was to leave the next morning--"they seem to look to you so naturally.
It is really very gratifying to find that Herbert had made you Roger's
guardian. He is terribly delicate, poor boy!"
"He _is_ delicate, no doubt," said Beauchamp, rather shortly, "but these
delicate boys sometimes turn out perfectly strong men."
"Sometimes," said Gertrude, doubtfully. "He may do so, of course, but
if he were my son I should be very unhappy about him. I should be very
glad to see him grow stronger, poor boy, for his own sake and his
mother's, but it looks to me very uncertain. That is just the trial,
Beauchamp--the trial to me, I mean, of your position now--its
uncertainty. Of course I cannot pretend that your interests are not for
nearer and dearer to me than Roger's,"--she was too wise to attempt to
speak any but her true feelings to one who knew her so well as her
brother, even had she been addicted to protestations of
disinterestedness, which she was not--"I cannot pretend that it would
not be very delightful to me to see you the head of our family, the
owner of this beautiful place, but my great dread for you is that of an
uncertain position. If I could but have secured for you what would have
placed you above very much caring how things here turn out! That is my
great wish. That is what Mrs Chancellor has the comfort of feeling
with regard to her daughters' future, whether Roger lives or dies."
"Everything is uncertain," observed Beauchamp, "and there are some
contingencies it is perhaps better not to think about." Mrs Eyrecourt
looked at him inquiringly and a little suspiciously: she did not
understand this new tone of philosophy of his. He went on speaking:
"Not that I quite know what you are alluding to when you speak of
placing my future above uncertainty?"
He had a pretty shrewd notion what she was thinking of; her last few
words had shown him that he was in for the "talking it over," the
"advice" she had volunteered, and he felt anxious to hear all she had to
say and have done with it. Gertrude hesitated.
"Suppose we take a turn outside, up and down the avenue--it looks
tempting, and it is woefully gloomy indoors," said Beauchamp, glancing
round the room in which they were standing. It was a depressing room, a
library crowded to excess with dingy volumes--many of them doubtless of
great value, all of them originally handsome and well-bound, but bearing
about them an unread, uncared-for look, filling the air with that
faintly musty smell perceptible in libraries seldom entered but by
servants, where fires are only lighted periodically to "keep out the
damp," where the sweet summer air but seldom enters. Of all rooms, a
library lived in and loved, where the books are dear old friends, the
window-seats little sanctuaries for quiet thought or earnest study--of
all rooms perhaps, such a one is the most delightful. But the library
at Halswood had been deserted and disregarded for many a long day. The
Chancellors were not a studious or scholarly race, still they were not
without refinement and cultivation; but for many years past Halswood had
been the home of a half imbecile old man whose only acute intelligence
had been that of hoarding, and the traces of his long neglect were
everywhere visible.
Outside, pacing up and down the long avenue, whose grand old chestnuts
were the boast of the country-side, things certainly looked more
attractive.
"It _is_ a beautiful old place," said Beauchamp, stopping suddenly, and
looking about him appreciatively, "though the house is desperately ugly.
It looks as if it had been cut out of the middle of a street and stuck
down here in this beautiful park by mistake. And the portico looks as
if it, again, had nothing whatever to do with the house. I hate those
great pillars so!--they look so meaningless. When was this house built,
Gertrude, do you know?"
"Quite recently--that is to say, at the end of the last century," said
Gertrude, "when everything was hideous. The old house was very
picturesque; more like an enlarged edition of Winsley. Still, this
house is a very _good_ one, Beauchamp. Some of the rooms--the
drawing-rooms--are very fine."
"Oh yes, it's well enough inside. No doubt it might be made very
habitable," replied her brother, indifferently. Then, with an effort,
"What is it you want to say to me, Gertrude? Oh yes, by-the-bye, I
remember. I was saying just now I did not quite understand your
allusions to my future--to something you had had in your mind about it."
"I did not intend to say it," replied Gertrude; "it was only
accidentally I said what I did. Of course you must see what I mean--
what a bright future of assured comfort and ease, whatever happens or
does not happen here, would be before you if you chose."
"Yes, I see what you mean now," answered Beauchamp. "There is no use
beating about the bush, Gertrude. Once for all I tell you plainly that
if I hadn't a halfpenny in the world I could not marry Adelaide. I
could not stand her a week. I should run away from her, and then where
should we all be? No, truly, if any idea of this kind has increased
your opposition to my marrying elsewhere I beg you to dismiss it.
_That_ I never could have done."
Gertrude sighed. "You do not yourself know what you would or would not
have done had there been no other influences about you, Beauchamp. I
don't understand you. First there was Roma, now, barely two months
after that was made an end of, you want me to approve of your engaging
yourself to another girl. You are very changeable and inconsistent."
Beauchamp had had a second thought about the expediency of quarrelling
with his sister. So, though her accusation annoyed him, as he felt she
had some grounds for making it, he kept down his vexation and answered
quietly--
"I am sorry to have appeared so to you. As regards Roma, I own that I
quite see now that that was a mistake from the beginning; the less said
about it the better.
"As regards my present engagement--" he hesitated. "No, Gertrude, I
don't expect you as yet to _approve_ of it, but I hope you may do so in
time. Wait till you see Eugenia."
"Seeing her cannot possibly alter the fact of your imprudence, though it
may explain it," answered Mrs Eyrecourt, coldly. "Remember all I wrote
to you. Oh, Beauchamp, do think what you are about! Even for _her_
sake you should do so. You are not the sort of man to make the best of
an unsuitable marriage when the time comes for you to awake to its being
so."
"I am perfectly awake already to everything that can be said about it,"
replied Captain Chancellor, a little sullenly. "The long and the short
of it is that she isn't rich; that is the only `unsuitableness' you can
possibly suspect."
"Not the only one, though of course it is an important one," said
Gertrude. "You have rushed into this so rashly that I have every reason
to suspect the whole affair. She is young and pretty; that is about all
you can bring forward."
"We shall have enough to live on. You need not be afraid I intend to
make any of my friends suffer for my imprudence," answered Beauchamp,
hastily. They were approaching very near the edge of a quarrel now.
"Then you allow it is imprudent?" exclaimed Gertrude, quickly. But
Beauchamp saw his mistake and changed his tone.
"Yes," he said, "yes, in one sense I suppose I do. But, prudent or
imprudent, Gertrude, it is _done_, absolutely and irrevocably. I have a
great deal to thank you for in the past, and I shall be very sorry if my
marriage causes any coldness between us. I shall thank you very much if
you will be kind to my wife--she will have a good deal to learn and will
appreciate kindness. But you must decide how things are to be between
us."
"Oh, of course I don't mean to _quarrel_ with you, Beauchamp," answered
Mrs Eyrecourt, stiffly. "It is rather late in the day for that sort of
thing. I shall be glad to see your wife when you are married, but I
can't make any promises of romantic friendship and so on. I hope you
will be happy, and I shall of course show any kindness I can to--to Miss
Laurence when she is my sister-in-law; but you must take into account
the great disparity between her and me--of age and other things--and
don't expect impossibilities. It is best to speak plainly, you know,
and then you will not expect too much. I shall do all in my power, I
assure you."
"Thank you," said Beauchamp, but without much gratification in his tone.
He felt dissatisfied and uncomfortable, vexed with Gertrude, and yet
more vexed that he could not exactly blame her. Her sentiments were
neither exaggerated nor unreasonable; they were very much the same as
what he had himself often expressed on similar subjects. Yet she had
managed to take the bloom off his prospects, to insinuate a very
unpleasant misgiving that after all he had _not_ known what he was
about. Gertrude read his feelings pretty correctly, but she derived
little satisfaction from so doing. The thing was too far gone, she
feared; of course there was the chance of the proverbial slip before the
marriage actually took place, but so slender a contingency was not to be
taken into account.
"No," thought Mrs Eyrecourt, "it is sure to go through. Undesirable
things always do, and these Wareborough people know what they are
about."
In her heart she was not without some feminine curiosity about Eugenia
herself, her belongings, and the history of the whole affair, but the
tone she had taken up would not allow her to show any such undignified
interest. So Beauchamp and she walked up and down for a few minutes in
silence; then Gertrude discovered it was growing chilly and returned to
the house, leaving her brother to his cigar and solitude.