"Und dennoch wohl uns, wenn die Asche treu Der Funken hegt, wenn dan
getauschte Herz Nicht mude wird, von Neuem zu ergluh 'n!"
Uhland.
"Eugenia," said Roma, when they were sitting together later in the day,
"I have something to tell you."
"What?" asked Eugenia.
"Some one is coming to see you--this evening or to-morrow morning, if
you would like that better."
"Who is it, Roma?" asked Eugenia, the colour rushing to her pale cheeks.
"Not--not Beauchamp?"
"Yes, it is Beauchamp," answered Roma. She had risen from her seat and
now stood beside Eugenia, looking down at her with an expression of
mingled anxiety and sympathy.
"Oh, Roma, you must have asked him to come, your letter must have
brought him," exclaimed Beauchamp's wife in great distress. "I know you
meant it well, dear Roma, but you should not have done it. I don't want
to see him just yet. I have been trying to make up my mind to do what I
suppose must be right--to offer to go back to him, and do my duty as his
wife. But you don't know how difficult it will be. Oh, so difficult!
He will never in the least understand the feelings that made me so
miserable; he will think it was all bad temper; or low common jealousy
of his having ever cared for _you_; oh, I see it all so plainly! Of
course I will ask him to forgive me--ah, how gladly I would do so if I
thought he could understand what he really has to forgive--it is not
that I shrink from. But I see that during the rest of our life together
I shall stand at such a hopeless disadvantage: he will not be able to
believe in my real wish and determination to do my best; it is my own
fault, I have brought it on myself, but that does not make it less
bitter. This that I have done--this leaving him and my home, will be
constantly rising up in judgment against me in his mind--it will never
seem to him that anything was wanting on _his_ side. I do mean to try,
Roma, I do indeed, but all the spring has gone out of everything. Oh,
how lonely it will be!"
Roma let her finish speaking without interrupting her. Then she said
gently--"I think you see things at their very worst, Eugenia. I think
there are feelings and motives in Beauchamp which will make your life
easier than you now imagine. But I don't think my saying so will do
much good. About his coming, however, I must explain that it was
entirely his own doing. My letter did not bring him. I did not say a
word in it but what I told you. And even if I had not written,
Beauchamp would have been here by now, for your brother-in-law had sent
him your address."
"_He_ need not have interfered," said Eugenia, haughtily.
Roma smiled. "He meant it for the best, I have no doubt," she said.
"You are sore and uneasy just now, Eugenia, and no wonder, but after
awhile you will see things more brightly, I feel sure. But now, what
about your seeing Beauchamp? He will be calling this evening to ask; he
said he would. Would you rather wait till to-morrow morning?"
"I don't know," said Eugenia, irresolutely. Then, as a new thought
struck her, "Have you seen him then, Roma?" she asked.
"Yes," answered Miss Eyrecourt. "I have seen him, and had a very long
talk with him--the longest talk, I think, I ever had with any gentleman!
But I don't think his wife will be jealous," she added, with a bright
smile, which, in spite of herself, extracted a faint, shadowy reflection
of itself from Eugenia.
Just then there came a ring at the bell.
"There he is," said Roma; "well, Eugenia?"
"I will see him now," said Eugenia, suddenly. "It is better--my putting
it off might only irritate him more."
Roma kissed her without speaking, and left the room.
In the few minutes that passed before Captain Chancellor came upstairs
how many painful anticipations had time to rush through Eugenia's brain!
She was determined to go through with what she had promised to Roma and
to herself to attempt: she would humble herself to the utmost that she
could truthfully do so; she would ask her husband's forgiveness; she
would own that she had taken up, with exaggeration and bitterness, Mrs
Eyrecourt's version of the past. All this she would say: she owed it to
her own self-respect to do so, hopeless as she felt of any good effect
it might have on her future, little as she anticipated that it would
awaken any generous or tender feelings towards her in her husband's
heart. She pictured to herself the cold air of superiority with which
he would receive her confession; she recalled the unsympathising
contempt with which on several occasions her impulsive endeavours to
draw nearer to him, to understand him better, had been thrown back on
herself with a recoil of indignant mortification--and she said to
herself that her fate was a very hard one.
There came a sort of tap at the door, and in answer to her tremulous
"come in," Captain Chancellor appeared. She was standing by the table,
in the same attitude as that in which Roma left her. She looked up as
Beauchamp closed the door, and came forward. To her surprise, she
perceived at once that he was looking ill and careworn, and that his
bearing was by no means free from agitation. She was so surprised that
she forgot what she had meant to say first of all; she opened her lips
mechanically, but no sound was heard: then a sort of giddiness came over
her for a moment, and half unconsciously she closed her eyes. He was
beside her in an instant. "Eugenia," he exclaimed, "Eugenia, how ill
you are looking! My poor darling, I may not have understood you--I have
been a blind, selfish, careless husband, but oh, my dear, you should not
have fancied I was so bad as not to care for your suffering! I did
care--I do care. Your leaving me has half broken my heart. Will you
not come back and try me again? Will you not believe in my love for
you? Truly, it has always been there, though you doubted it." Where
were all Eugenia's carefully considered words of confession? "Thus far
have I done wrong, but no farther; to this extent have I been wanting in
my wifely duty, but not beyond." She threw her arms round her husband's
neck, and careless of possible repulse she burst into tears.
"Beauchamp," she said, simply, "I am very sorry for what I have done
wrong. I will try to please you better in the future if you will
forgive the past."
"We will _both_ try again," he said, kindly, "Not that you did _not_
please me, my dear child. Your only fault was--was--well, perhaps, as I
have sometimes told you, you expected a little too much; your ideas were
a little bit too romantic for every-day life. The best of husbands and
wives knock against each other's fancies now and then, you know, and it
can't be always like a honeymoon,"--Eugenia winced at this a little, a
very little,--"but, all the same, I don't see why our chances of being
happy together are not quite as good as other people's. You will gain
experience, and I, I hope, will learn to understand you better. And I
think that's about all we can say. I am very thankful to have you again
safe and well, and the next time you make yourself miserable about
anything, come and ask _me_; don't go to other people, who see nothing
except through their own prejudices. Gertrude didn't mean to make
mischief; all the same she did so, as I told her. But Roma has put all
that right?"
"Yes," said Eugenia, "I--_we_--can never thank her enough for what she
has done."
"She says," pursued Beauchamp, with unwonted humility, "I should have
told you all about that old affair with her. I was very nearly doing so
once, I remember, but--I don't know how it was--I was bothered at that
time, and I liked to keep you distinct from it all. I was bitter about
Roma for a good while, and I disliked the subject. But, Eugenia, no
suffering I have ever had to bear in my life has equalled that of the
last few days."
They were silent for a minute or two. "I must say," Captain Chancellor
went on, speaking more in his usual tone, "the Thurstons behaved very
sensibly in not making any fuss. Nothing would have been so odious as
any absurd story getting about." But, happening to observe the pained
expression of Eugenia's face, he changed the subject, and went on to
talk of some plans he had in his head of going abroad for a time, taking
Eugenia to visit many places so far known to her but by name. "It would
be the best way of making you strong again," he said. "We might even
spend next winter out of England, if we liked." And, notwithstanding
the unexpected encouragement she had met with in her new resolutions, it
was a relief to Eugenia to be freed from the anticipation of an
immediate recommencement of the life at Halswood, hitherto so lonely and
uncongenial. She was touched, too, by the evident consideration for her
happiness which prompted this new scheme, and Beauchamp, on his side,
felt rewarded by her gratification for the amount of self-denial which
the proposed plan entailed on him.
So when Roma rejoined them she quickly saw that her hopes had not been
groundless; already the expression of Eugenia's face had grown brighter
and less despondent than she had seen it for long.
"Was I not a true prophet?" she said, to Eugenia, when they were by
themselves again. "Are not things more hopeful than you expected?"
"Yes," said Eugenia, thoughtfully, "they are; and it is you I have to
thank for their being so, Roma."
"No, don't say that," interrupted Roma, quickly. "I don't like you to
say so, because I want you to do Beauchamp justice. There is more to
work upon in him than you were inclined to think, and you, as I told you
before, have more power over him to draw out his best than any one else
ever had or could have."
"But still it is your doing," persisted Eugenia, affectionately; "for
who else but you could ever have opened my eyes to see this, or at least
to look for it?"
A new feeling had wakened in her heart to her husband. From the ashes
of the old unreasoning, wilfully blind, headstrong devotion had arisen a
calmer, more tempered, more enduring sentiment. As yet she was hardly
conscious of its existence; its component parts she could certainly not
have defined. She only said to herself, "I don't know how it is, but,
somehow, what has passed to-day has made me feel _sorry_ for Beauchamp.
I don't think hitherto any one has taken much pains to draw out what
Roma calls `his best.' And I am so weak and foolish and full of faults,
how can I hope to do it? Yet, somehow, I think I _do_ hope it."
They all left Nunswell the next day, Roma travelling with them as far as
Wareborough only, where she had promised a short visit to her cousins,
the Dalrymples; Beauchamp and his wife returning to Halswood, there at
once to commence preparations for their visit to foreign parts.
Eugenia trembled a little as they drew near the spot which, but so few
days before, she had quitted with something very like despair in her
heart. There was a mingling of almost superstitious apprehensiveness in
her shrinking from "beginning again"--with new motives, new hopes, new
patience--in the very place which had witnessed the woeful failure of
her first essays, the cloudy ending to the too brilliant promise of the
dawn of her married life. But these half-morbid feelings she was wise
enough to keep to herself.
"I only hope," she thought, "that Mrs Grier will not think herself
bound to receive me in state after so short an absence. If she does I
shall take it as a bad omen. She is a very good creature, but I shall
never forget her first reception."
So it was with some little apprehension that Mrs Chancellor looked out
of the carriage as the front of the house came in sight. She knew Mrs
Eyrecourt had gone; it had never occurred to her that poor little Floss
had been temporarily left behind. Her surprise was great, her relief
and pleasure extreme, when, almost before the carriage had stopped, she
heard her own name shouted in the little girl's peculiar pronunciation:
"Aunty 'Genia, Aunty 'Genia, you have comed back! Kiss me quick! You
never said good-bye when you wented away, and I cwied so! Please don't
never go away any more!"
The tears were not very far away from Eugenia's own eyes, as she lifted
the excited little mortal in her arms, and kissed the eager, flushed
face.
"Dear little Floss," she said, "I am so glad to come back to you;" and
even Beauchamp was struck by the little scene.
"What an eccentric little creature it is," he said to his wife, when,
Floss's rhapsodies having subsided, she said good-night and went off to
bed "as good as gold."
"Who would have thought that Gertrude's child could have hugged away as
vehemently at anyone as Floss did just now."
And the child's demonstrative affection put it into his head to make an
unexpected proposal to Eugenia. "How would you like to take Floss with
us?" he said. "I have no doubt Gertrude would be enchanted to let her
come, and the child's maid is French, which would be an advantage. You
see we shall not be moving about at any uncomfortable speed; you are not
strong enough for it, and that sort of thing is not my idea of
travelling for pleasure. When there is no need for hurry, much better
take it leisurely."
Eugenia was delighted; she knew, though she never told it to anyone, the
indirect influence for good which Floss's innocent championship had had
upon her life, and the idea of the child's happiness was pleasant to
her. Mrs Eyrecourt was delighted; so delighted that she wrote back
accepting her brother's offer, as if no shadow of anything disagreeable
had ever disturbed the harmony of their intercourse. It suited her
particularly well, to have Floss disposed of for the present, as she was
anticipating a round of visits in which a child would have been rather
an encumbrance, while yet, for the sake of appearances, she could not
make up her mind to leave the little girl alone at Winsley for many
weeks at a time. It looked well, too, to be able to tell her friends
that her brother and his wife, "having no children of their own," had
taken such a fancy to her little daughter that they had begged leave to
take her abroad with them for the winter; for Gertrude had sense enough
to know that "family jars" are, of all things, the most undignified and
"vulgar," and she had endured some perturbation of spirit of late as to
the probable nature of her future terms with her Halswood relatives.
"I am so glad you are going abroad," she wrote; "it will be the very
thing to set up Eugenia's health and spirits. By-the-bye, I must not
forget to send all sorts of kind messages from Addie and Victoria and
their mother. The girls were sorry not to see you at Halswood as was
arranged, but of course they quite understand my explanation about
Eugenia's not being well enough to receive them, and they hope to pay
their visit some other time" etc, etc.
Some people--for of course in the neighbourhood of Halswood as elsewhere
there were to be found human beings with superfluous energy to spare
from the management of their own concerns, which they apparently
conceived it to be their duty to bestow on those of others--some people
thought it very odd and absurd of Captain and Mrs Chancellor to burden
themselves with a child on their foreign tour. It was so odd as only to
be explicable by the comprehensive assertion of Mrs Chancellor's being,
to say the least, "very odd altogether." For notwithstanding all the
care that had been taken to guard against outside remark, some amount of
gossip had oozed out concerning Eugenia's hasty flight from Halswood.
Servants, the very best of them perhaps, will but be servants. It was
not in Mrs Grier's nature to refrain from lugubrious head-shakings and
mysterious allusions when she found that her young mistress had actually
left home without any explanation to herself, the vice-gerent of the
establishment, of the reasons for this sudden step; it was not in the
unexceptionable Blinkhorn's nature to refrain, at the first table at
least, from comment upon his master's state of anxiety and dejection
during the days of uncertainty and foreboding which succeeded his return
home. And the natures of the various inferior functionaries in the
Halswood household, being neither better nor worse than are ordinarily
met with in their respective capacities, the rolling stone of gossip,
contrary to the adage, grew and gathered as it went, till but few of the
great houses in the neighbourhood, none certainly of the tea-tables in
the little town of Chilworth or of the less pretentious Sunday afternoon
entertainments in the farm houses on the estate, but had their own pet
version of the Halswood scandal.
Of this, however, the principals in the little drama were, as is not
unfrequently the case, in happy ignorance. As to the Chilworth edition
of the story, as to the village chatter, they were of little
consequence. They lived their appointed nine days, then died a natural
death. But as to the more discreetly veiled, but nevertheless the far
more insidious, whisper that went the round of "the county," there is
little saying where it would have stopped, how deep might not have been
the social injury it would have caused to impulsive, reckless, innocent
Eugenia, had it not suddenly received its death-blow from an unexpected
but irresistible hand. It came to Lady Hereward's ears, how or whence
matters little, that the wife of the master of Halswood, "the girl with
the beautiful face" which somehow had recalled the memory of the long
years ago dead and buried little Alice, the young mother whose little
baby had died, had somehow or other done something which threatened to
get her "talked about." And the good old woman rose to the occasion.
"I think you are not aware, my dear Lady Vaughan," she said, the first
time the subject was publicly alluded to before her, "in fact, I am
quite sure you _cannot_ be aware that the young lady of whom you are
speaking is a valued friend of mine, for I am certain you would not
intentionally hurt my feelings or those of any one. Mrs Chancellor has
passed through much sorrow, and she has my deepest sympathy. The report
to which you allude is an exaggerated version of the simple fact that
she was called away rather suddenly in her husband's absence to some of
her own friends. When she comes home again strong and well, as I hope
she will, it will give me great pleasure to introduce her and any of my
friends who have not yet met, to each other, for I hope she will be
often at Marshlands." Then she changed the subject; but this was the
last that was heard, publicly at least, of "Mrs Chancellor's
elopement," for Lady Hereward had queened it to some purpose during her
forty years reign in the county.
It was in the latter part of July that Beauchamp and his wife left home.
They stayed a little time in town, then proceeded by easy stages to
Switzerland, intending there to spend the remainder of the summer and
the early autumn, and when the colder weather drew near, to turn their
steps to some one of the winter nests in the south of France. Their
programme was carried out even more fully than they had intended.
Winter came and went, though they learnt it only by the shortening and
then lengthening again of the soft, sunny days; spring and summer,
chasing travellers and swallows away once more to less sultry regions,
followed; autumn returned, and Christmas, in the unfamiliar garb he
wears by the shores of the blue Mediterranean, had passed by yet again,
with his all-the-world-over greeting of "glad tidings and great joy,"
before there was any talk of Halswood being again inhabited by its
owners. Before that time came, Floss had learnt to chatter French like
a magpie, Eugenia had come to doubt if she after all sufficiently
appreciated the inestimable privilege of being "English bred and born,"
and Beauchamp, on his part, was beginning to wonder if he would be equal
to keeping his seat across country next season, after his long
sojourning in the tents of Kedar, otherwise regions where "le sport" was
alluded to with the uncomprehending bewilderment with which we used to
discuss the fascination of the feast of Juggernaut--where a day with the
Pau foxhounds furnished the only procurable pretence of a run.
At last the time for their return home was fixed. It had been in July
they left England; it was not till the April "next but one" that they
found themselves again within her shores, their party augmented by the
presence of a French bonne, with a flapping white cap and a very
satisfactory "worldly-looking" baby, a great boy of four months old, a
most respectable son and heir to the hitherto ill-fated Chancellor
estates. At first Eugenia's disappointment that the little creature was
not a daughter was great; but this feeling she expressed to no one, well
aware that sympathy therein was hardly to be expected. She had learnt a
good deal, she was learning every day more and more of the wisdom, the
necessity of making the best of the materials with which she had to
work; slowly, painfully was coming home to her the interpretation of the
dream, the lesson of the great "life's trial" in which so rashly, so
ignorantly she had engaged. "Love" for her had not been "clear gain,"
viewed by the light of the dim knowledge of to-day; but in the wiser
afterwards "the sun will pierce;" the follies, the failures, the
mistakes, the delusions will be lost in the beautiful whole, may indeed
prove to have been essential to its perfection.
Not that Beauchamp Chancellor's wife said or thought all this to
herself; she speculated and theorised and philosophised much less than
of old; she lived more in the present, taking life, as we all must take
it sooner or later, if it is to be endurable at all, in a day-by-day
fashion, leaving the "huge mounds of years," the bewildering mazes of
whys and wherefores, past and future, to be considered "by-and-by"--
by-and-by, when surely we shall see things somewhat more clearly, more
justly, more divinely, but a by-and-by which will never come to us if,
dissatisfied with the fair promise of its far-off beauty, we seek to
grasp its shadowy substance before the time.
So, in a sense--must it not always be but in a sense?--Eugenia was
happy. Happier perhaps possibly, because she thought less about being
happy than in the old days. She had seen before her in imagination a
dreary road; to her surprise, ever and again as she walked along, fresh
flowers began to spring by the wayside--little unobtrusive blossoms,
hardly distinguishable till her foot had all but crushed out their
tender life; tiny buds of brightness and sweetness, bringing many an
unexpected spot of colour or breath of fragrance into her daily life.
She grew to be very thankful that her child was a boy; she learnt to be
grateful for every link of sympathy between her husband and herself, she
tried her utmost to strengthen and rivet each one of these; and though,
apparently, at least, her efforts often failed, sometimes, on the other
hand, she was rewarded by success surpassing her most sanguine hopes.
"He is not a grand character," Roma had said, justly, "but, all the
same, there is a great deal of good in him; and of all people, you,
Eugenia, have most power to draw out and strengthen this." And these
simple words Beauchamp's wife henceforth never allowed herself to
forget.
They reached Halswood safe and well on a lovely spring evening. There
stood Mrs Grier, her black silk dress relieved for once by some
cheerful pink ribbons, tears of joy in her eyes at the non-fulfilment of
her many gloomy prophecies. It was indeed, as she took care to inform
her mistress, "a day she had little expected ever to see." But Eugenia
could smile at her now, as she assured her that "the luck had certainly
turned" with the arrival of the great crowing baby who was to bring life
and brightness to the old house.
And before long Halswood looked more cheerful than it had done for many
a day. Mrs Eyrecourt's anxiety to resume the guardianship of her
little daughter was not so overwhelming as to be allowed to interfere
with her plans for the season. She had just taken a house in town for
her usual three months, so she contented herself with "a mere glimpse"
of the travellers as they passed through, expressed herself delighted
with the improvement in the child's manners and appearance, and yielded
without much pressing to the proposal that Floss should accompany her
friends home and remain with them till the summer. "The country is much
better for children certainly," said Mrs Eyrecourt. "I shall feel
happier for Floss not to be so long in town. I only wish I could go
down to Halswood with you myself, but it is impossible. I must be in
town as much as I can now, so that dear Quin can spend his Saturdays and
Sundays with me."
But though Gertrude could not spare time to welcome the absentees back
to Halswood, Roma could. She joined them there within a week of their
arrival, and for a few pleasant days Sydney and her belongings joined
them too. Poor Sydney's holidays were not many, but her busy life
seemed to suit her; her fair face was as calm, her voice as sweet and
even, as in her girlish days; and when she and Frank went away, back
again to smoky Wareborough, they were cheered by the thought that their
intercourse with Eugenia promised to be frequent and cordial. Not much
private talk had passed between the sisters; Eugenia was charier of
confidences, than had once been natural to her, but Sydney was
satisfied.
"She is much happier than I ever hoped to see her," said the younger
sister to her husband. "It is not exactly the _sort_ of happiness I
should long ago have imagined would have contented Eugenia; somehow,
even though I feel so thankful and relieved about her, I could hardly
prevent the tears coming to my eyes when I looked at her. She must have
suffered so much, Frank (though outwardly things have been so prosperous
with her) to be so changed."
"She has had to learn her lessons like other people," said Frank,
oracularly.
"But isn't it wonderful how she adapts herself to her husband?" said
Sydney. "He is improved, I must allow; but there _cannot_ be much
sympathy between them, and Eugenia must know it."
"No doubt she does, but better women than Eugenia," replied Frank, with
a spice of his old antagonism, "have had to get on with less. And
Chancellor's by no means a bad fellow after all; many a man would have
had less patience with Eugenia's freaks and fancies than he. I always
told you they'd shake into their places some day. By-the-bye, you must
remind me to give that invitation to Gerald. I hope he will go, for
more reasons than one."
Sydney smiled. "I hope so too," she said.