Not Without Thorns

Mr Thurston, happening to glance in Captain Chancellor’s direction, saw, and rightly interpreted, the expression of his face. First, he felt amused, then a little indignant. What right had this man to approve or disapprove of whatever Eugenia chose to say or do? Lastly, an undefinable instinct urged him to turn the conversation, without appearing to do so, for happy Eugenia was walking on merrily, in unconsciousness of any cloud in her vicinity.

“I think, Miss Laurence,” said Gerald, “you have got a little confusion in your head between the ‘crystal sea’ of the Bible and Dante’s ‘sea of ice,’ haven’t you? One does get the queerest confused associations sometimes, especially of things one has first heard of in childhood, and I know your literary taste when you were a small person in pinafores was rather omnivorous, wasn’t it?”

Eugenia laughed and confessed it was true. Beauchamp did not seem edified by the conversation.

“Yes, Eugenia,” said Frank, “you have taken up a wrong idea altogether. The words ‘glass’ and ‘crystal’ are only used to give the idea of purity, not motionlessness or lifelessness. Why, don’t you remember the ‘water of life’ being described as ‘pure as crystal’ in another place? You shouldn’t begin criticising scriptural expressions unless you have studied the subject – no one should.”

His tone was slightly dictatorial and decidedly clerical. Eugenia’s face flushed; she looked up with a somewhat haughty answer on her lips, but to her amazement, and that of every one else, Captain Chancellor said, suddenly, addressing Frank, —

“I quite agree with you, Thurston.” Eugenia’s face changed from pink to crimson. Gerald, watching her anxiously, thought he had never seen the expression of any face change so quickly, but she walked on quietly without speaking. “If she would but see in time,” thought Gerald; “if she would but see in time! He worthy of her! he understand her! As well expect a blacksmith to make a watch, or – or – ” He could think of no comparison sufficiently forcible to suit his indignant frame of mind.

By this time they had emerged from the lane on to the high road. They were within a mile of their destination, and the skaters waxed impatient.

“We shall not have a long afternoon,” said the curate. “Suppose, Bob, you and Arthur and I push on? We shall walk a good deal quicker than the ladies. Will you and Chancellor follow at your leisure with Sydney and Eugenia, Gerald? I want the boys to have a good afternoon. You don’t mind, Sydney?”

So it was agreed. The four left behind naturally fell into pairs; Mr Thurston and Sydney in front, Eugenia and Captain Chancellor some little way in the rear.

Rather to Beauchamp’s surprise, for he fancied his uncalled-for remark – in reality greatly the result of the ill-tempered mood he had felt coming over him ever since he saw that the elder Thurston made one of the party – had offended her, Eugenia seemed by no means averse to this two-and-two arrangement. He felt uncomfortable and annoyed. It was the very first time he was conscious of having appeared to this girl in even ever so slightly unfavourable a light, and he felt anxious to destroy the unpleasant impression; he was not likely to see much more of her, and he hated any one to remember him with any disagreeable association. But how to begin the smoothing-over process he felt rather at a loss. To his surprise, Eugenia herself helped him.

“Captain Chancellor,” she said, suddenly, speaking faster than usual, as if to force back some hesitation, “I want to tell you I think Frank Thurston was right in what he said just now, and you were right to agree with him. I do speak at random, sometimes; and I shouldn’t have encouraged Bob to joke as I did. Of course, any one else could see there was no irreverence in my mind; but a child might not, and one can’t be too careful with children. I think I quite understand your disliking it, and I am so sorry.”

She looked up in his face with a deprecating humility, a sweet softness in her brown eyes that he had never seen in them before. Never had he thought her so charming. He did not attend to the exact meaning of her words, most certainly no anxiety as to the nature of the impressions left on the infant mind of Master Bob had troubled him; he was conscious only of an inference of apology in what she said, and of acknowledgment of his superior judgment that was very agreeable to him and very becoming to her. The “I am so sorry” at the end was quite delicious. “Dear little thing,” he said to himself, “it would not be difficult to mould her into one’s own pattern.” And aloud, he said, with the half deferential tenderness so curiously attractive to very young girls, —

“You are too good, Miss Laurence; a great deal too good. I have certainly rather strong feelings – prejudices, if you like – on some subjects, but I really feel it is more than good of you not to have resented my inexcusable expression of them.”

“Don’t say that,” she remonstrated, gently; “I do not feel it so at all. When any one finds fault with me, on the contrary, I feel that it must – that they must – ” she hesitated.

“That it must arise from no common interest in you?” he suggested. “And can you ever have doubted my feeling such, Miss Laurence? No one, I suppose, is quite perfection; but surely you must know that to me you appear so near it that a word or a tone which I should never notice in another woman, from you acquires importance.”

The words were dreadfully commonplace, but spoken in his peculiarly sweet, low voice, with his deep, expressive eyes looking unutterable things into hers, to Eugenia they sounded most “apt and gracious.” Nor was Beauchamp, for the time being, insincere. He really felt what he said. As he looked at this young creature, so sweet, so very pretty, so ready to believe in himself as the embodiment of every manly grace and excellence, a strange, altogether unprecedented rash, of feeling came over him. If he could but throw all to the winds – prospects and position and future and all – and clasp her in his arms and call her his darling, his “one woman in the world,” and carry her off there and then to some beautiful, impossible castle in the air, where there was no “society,” no growing old, no anybody or anything but each other!

It was but a moment’s passing, insane, altogether ridiculous dream, and Beauchamp soon recovered himself, and Eugenia little suspected the cause of his sudden silence, for she was in a sweet dream of her own, the same in which for many days now she had been living, and from which she would not be very easily roused. Each day, each hour, almost, it was gaining more hold upon her; every circumstance, every trifling incident, seemed to bring her more and more under its influence; no shadow of misgiving had as yet dimmed its beauty and glowing perfection.

Yet she was a girl to whom such a description of her enchantment as that suggested by the vulgar words “madly in love” was altogether and essentially inapplicable. We want a word surely to describe this higher, yet passionate love – the love of a pure, enthusiastic, undisciplined nature, dreaming that it has found its ideal, that the days of “gods and godlike men” are not yet over, to whom in such a belief all self-sacrifice, all self-surrender, would be possible, to whom the destruction of its ideal would risk the destruction of all faith beside.

They walked on in silence for a little; then, by a slight quickening of their pace, Beauchamp managed to overtake Mr Thurston and Sydney, who were only a few steps before them, and for the next half mile the four kept together. It was better so, Beauchamp said to himself, for he was beginning to feel a little less confident in his own ability to draw back in time; his recent sensations had startled him considerably, and Roma’s warning persisted in recurring most uncomfortably to his mind. Looking back over the wide range of his so-called “love affairs,” he could not hit upon any which on his side had threatened “to go so far.” Roma herself, with all her attractions, had never roused in him a similar storm. He was as determined as ever to win her in spite of all opposition, but he owned to himself that by the time he met her again at Winsley, he might safely boast that his allegiance had been more sharply tested than even she had had any idea of.

Some way further along the road they came to the sharp turn known as Ayclough Bend. Here, a lane to the right led up the hill to the farm, the high road to the left pursuing its course to twenty-miles-off Bridgenorth.

“This is our way,” said Mr Thurston, turning as he spoke in the direction of the lane, but both the girls had come to a stand beside a large stone lying at the side of the road.

“This is the Bride’s stone,” said Sydney, in an explanatory tone.

“Ah, yes, to be sure. Poor bride,” said Gerald, coming back again.

“Who is the bride? Why do you call this her stone?” inquired Captain Chancellor of Eugenia.

She gravely related the story. Even to this day it had a curious fascination for her. “It was on this stone he was thrown when the coach upset. And it is here, they say, she is still to be seen sometimes,” she said with a slight shudder. “Is it not a sad story?” she added, looking up with such pity in her eyes, that Beauchamp half fancied there were tears not far off. He didn’t feel inclined to laugh at her, he was in a rather unusual mood to-day. Still less, however, was he inclined that Gerald or Sydney should have the benefit of his rare fit of genuine sentimentality. So he answered carelessly —

“Very sad, if true, which I should feel inclined to doubt. I have heard the same story at other places. Besides, if it were true, pity would be wasted on the lady. No doubt she married again very speedily if she was so lovely and charming.”

Gerald hardly stayed to hear him finish the sentence. He walked on quickly, followed by Sydney, and both looked at each other as they heard Eugenia’s voice answering her companion brightly and happily as usual.

“She is bewitched,” said Gerald, abruptly, and Sydney by her silence seemed to agree with him. “Just the sort of thing that would have put her out for the day, if Frank had said it to tease her.”

They had not seen the expression in Beauchamp’s eyes which belied his careless words, giving her, even about this trifle, a feeling that his confidence, his deeper feelings, were reserved for her alone.

“Yes,” said Sydney, with a sigh. “But, Gerald, I have come to see that there is nothing to be done. I tried once or twice to speak to Eugenia, some time ago, but it was no use. It only risked my losing her confidence altogether. Besides, what could I say? I know nothing against Captain Chancellor. I cannot even say I suspect anything; and I by no means dislike him. As an ordinary acquaintance I should like him very much.”

“You disliked him at first,” objected Gerald.

“No, not exactly,” said Sydney, thoughtfully. “I was only rather afraid of liking him too readily. I doubted him before I ever saw him, from what Eugenia told me of him; I doubted, I mean to say, his being the sort of person I should have chosen for her. But that sounds very presumptuous. Sisters don’t marry to please each other.”

“No,” said Gerald, with a slight laugh. “In that case Frank’s chance might not have been so good.”

“But Eugenia respects Frank, though they are always sparring with each other. She trusts him too. Ah, there is just the difference,” exclaimed Sydney, eagerly. “I don’t feel as if I could trust Captain Chancellor with Eugenia. I don’t suppose he will beat her or ill-use her,” she went on smiling half sadly. “I think he is kind-hearted and easy tempered, and a good enough sort of a man in many ways. But he won’t understand her, and that sort of misery would be worse to her than any.”

“But it would have been a great chance if she had married any one thoroughly congenial and suitable. Very few people do,” said Gerald, thinking to himself if there might not in the future be disappointment in store even for the earnest, unselfish girl beside him, good sterling fellow though Frank was.

“I know that,” answered Sydney, and then for a minute or two she remained silent. “Perhaps, Gerald,” she went on, “to put it quite fairly, a good deal of our anxiety arises from Eugenia’s side. I mean it is her own character that makes me afraid. I don’t think I should have misgivings about any other girl’s happiness if I heard she was going to marry Captain Chancellor. I don’t know that I should have been afraid for myself even, (though it sounds an odd thing to say, and I certainly couldn’t fancy myself caring for him). You see, Gerald, I expect so much less. With Eugenia it is always all or nothing.”

“Yes, I understand,” answered Gerald. “It is a question if such a nature can escape intense suffering, though I had fancied – but it’s no use thinking of that. There are some kinds of suffering which, it seems to me, would be ruinous to Eugenia, which she could not pass through without leaving the best of herself in the furnace. That is my worst fear, Sydney. I have never attempted to put it in words before. I could not have done so to any one but yourself.”

“But we can’t tell, Gerald,” said Sydney, timidly. “We can’t tell how what seems the worst training may turn out the best. We can’t believe that in the end it will not all have been the best, even our own mistakes.”

“The end is a very long way off,” said Gerald, gloomily, “and it is sad work for lookers-on sometimes. Of course, I know what you mean, Sydney, and one must at bottom believe it; but still one constantly sees what look very like fatal mistakes, and it is very seldom given to us on this side of the gate to see that good came out of the bad after all.”

Sydney did not answer. After awhile Mr Thurston spoke again, this time with evident hesitation.

“I am afraid you may be angry with me for what I am going to say, Sydney,” he began, “but I think I should say it. All your fears seem to point one way. I mean to the unlikelihood of Captain Chancellor’s satisfying Eugenia – suiting her – but have you never doubted him in any other way?”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed Sydney in vague alarm.

“Can’t you understand? It’s a horrid thing to say,” said Gerald impatiently. “Are you quite sure he is in earnest? May he not be only what is called amusing himself – flirting, or trifling, or any of those detestable expressions?”

Sydney grew crimson.

“No, Gerald,” she said, with immense indignation in her voice. “I certainly never for an instant supposed him capable of such baseness. I am surprised at you, Gerald. It is well you never hinted at anything of this kind before – or perhaps it is a pity you did not. I am exceedingly sorry I ever discussed the matter with you at all.”

“You are unjust and unreasonable, Sydney, and unkind too,” exclaimed Gerald, with a good deal of wounded feeling. “Don’t you see how painful it is to me to suggest such a thing to you, who know what you do about me? But I am in earnest, Sydney. It is well you, at least, should be prepared for such a possibility. You cannot suppose that I have any selfish motive in suggesting it. You don’t think that, selfishly speaking, I should wish it to turn out so? If Captain Chancellor disappeared to-day, and was never heard of again, that would do me no good. How could it?”

“I didn’t think you had any selfish motive,” answered Sydney, gently. “I only thought that – that – naturally perhaps you saw him worse than he is.”

“Frank has said the same,” replied Mr Thurston, in a but half mollified tone.

“Frank!” repeated Sydney, “Frank! Oh, no, Gerald! He likes Captain Chancellor; he thinks well of him.”

“Well, I didn’t say he disliked him. He, only looking at the thing in a careless, superficial, way, does not seem to think any blame could be attached to this man if – oh, how I hate these vulgar expressions! – if he simply does go away without, as it is called, ‘coming to the point’ at all. Frank cannot see that he pays Eugenia any particular attentions. He only thinks her very likely to deceive herself in this sort of thing.” Sydney looked dreadfully startled. If Frank thought so, must there not be some ground for this new anxiety? But if so, how despicably false Captain Chancellor must be! How false and how hatefully worldly-wise to have thus, as it were, screened himself beforehand by securing Frank’s favourable opinion! For that he had not deliberately set himself to gain Eugenia’s affections from the first, Sydney could not for an instant allow. What on Eugenia would be the effect of the discovery of such treachery, poor Sydney dared not allow herself to imagine. But no, it could not be. After all, no man could be so coldblooded, so selfish, so wicked, as to crush the happiness out of a fair young life for the sake of a few weeks’ amusement. Sydney had read of such things, but was loth to believe in them. Gerald’s troubles had made him morbidly suspicious. Frank had spoken hastily, and, after all, Frank was far from being in a position to judge. So she endeavoured to reassure herself, and fancied she had done so.

She was unusually quiet, however, for the rest of the afternoon. The others – Frank and the boys, Eugenia and Captain Chancellor, that is to say – were in the highest spirits. Only Sydney and Mr Thurston seemed uninfluenced by the fresh keen air, the exhilarating amusement.

“I thought your sister could skate too – at least, that she was learning, like you,” said Beauchamp to Eugenia, who was just beginning to feel a little at home on the ice. “Doesn’t she like it?”

“She skates better than I, a good deal,” replied the girl. “I don’t know what has come over her this afternoon. She looks so tired and out of spirits!” And as she spoke, she looked anxiously in Sydney’s direction.

Captain Chancellor noticed the quick change of expression that came over her face. Five minutes before, he had thought nothing could be lovelier than Eugenia, laughing and merry; now it seemed to him this tenderly anxious expression showed the sweetness of her eyes to greater advantage. What a fascinating face the child had! – never two minutes the same, and each change bringing out some new beauty. He stood watching her, till he almost forgot where he was. She turned suddenly, and caught his gaze; blushed a little, and looked away again. Something in his face puzzled her – a perplexed, uneasy look, that she had never seen there before. Suddenly Bob Dalrymple wheeled up to where they were standing, and came to a halt.

“What a brilliant colour that ribbon of yours is, Miss Laurence!” said Captain Chancellor, abruptly. “Is scarlet your favourite colour? You generally have some of it about you.”

“Only in winter,” answered Eugenia, lightly. “In summer I can’t bear it. My tastes change altogether with the seasons.”

“So if you come back next summer, you’d better look out,” said Bob, addressing Captain Chancellor, and grinning maliciously. “She won’t like you then. It’s a good thing you’re going before the weather changes.” And so saying, he skimmed off again.

“What does he mean?” exclaimed Eugenia, not disguising the shock the boy’s words had given her. “You are not going away, Captain Chancellor?”

There was an unconscious entreaty in her voice, that gave Beauchamp a sudden thrill of pain and self-reproach.

“Not just yet, I hope. But my plans are a little – are not quite decided at present,” he answered, confusedly. Then, notwithstanding his resolutions, the look in Eugenia’s face tempted him to say more.

“You must know, Miss Laurence, how painful, how unendurable it will be to me to leave Wareborough,” he said, in a low, hurried voice.

“Will you not come back again?” she asked, very quietly, striving hard to force back the intense eagerness with which she awaited his reply.

“I hope so. I earnestly hope I may be able to do so,” he answered; and for the time the hope was sincere. “But I am not my own master. I can’t explain all I mean. I am hampered in every direction. But some day, perhaps – No, it is no use – ”

He stopped.

Eugenia stood beside him without speaking. He glanced half timidly at her face. Its expression puzzled him. It was getting late now; the rest of the party had taken off their skates, and were coming towards them across the pond, prepared evidently for the walk home. Beauchamp felt desperate. He might not have another opportunity of saying what he now felt he must say.

“Miss Laurence – Eugenia,” he exclaimed. She started a little. “I must ask you one thing: Will you think as well as you can of me, even if others may blame me? Will you not judge me by appearances more than you can help? My position is full of difficulty. As I said just now, I am not in any sense my own master; but – if I may hope for nothing else – I would at least like to think you would judge me leniently, even if I hardly seem to deserve it.”

He was quite in earnest now. He had never spoken so to any woman before. When he had left home this afternoon, he had not the slightest idea he should speak so to this woman to-day. He got his answer.

“You need not ask me to judge you leniently. I do not think it would be possible for me ever to judge you at all. Nothing – no one but yourself could ever make me think ill of you.”

She looked up at him with a light in her beautiful eyes as she said these words, that made Beauchamp Chancellor feel strangely unlike his usual equable, comfortable self. Why did she trust him so? Why did she take things so deeply, so in earnest? Why was she not like the ninety-and-nine other girls he had flirted with, and thought pretty, and talked nonsense to, and left none the worse? He felt half provoked with her for being so different, yet a vague instinct whispered to him, that in this very difference lay her peculiar charm.

There were no more têtes-à-têtes. It was getting dusk as they walked home, and they all kept together, and the conversation was general. Sydney wondered a little why Eugenia was so quiet, but supposed she must be suffering from some amount of reaction from her high spirits earlier in the day.

Captain Chancellor bade them good-night at their own door. Sydney fancied his manner a little odd – more abrupt, less self-possessed than usual, when he shook hands with her. He did not call the next day, as she somehow half expected, nor the day after, and Eugenia did not seem surprised. She did not look well, Sydney fancied; and when urged by her sister to tell what was wrong, she confessed, to having felt over fatigued since Saturday’s long walk.

“She has many and many a time walked to Ayclough and back without being tired,” thought Sydney. “There must be something wrong. Can they have quarrelled?”

Possessed with this idea, she watched eagerly for Captain Chancellor’s next appearance, and thought it doubly unlucky that Frank’s absence from home for a day or two should have happened at this crisis, when through him she might have learnt something of what was the matter, and if anything lay within her power to do for her sister. To a superficial observer, poor Sydney, during these few days, would have looked the more anxious and unhappy of the two. It was as sad as strange to her to believe Eugenia in suffering, and to be in ignorance of the cause.

On Thursday evening the sisters were sitting by themselves in the drawing-room, their father busy writing in his own little room, when there came a ring at the front door bell. Up jumped Sydney, her heart beating considerably faster than its wont, her face full of eagerness.

“That must be Frank,” observed Eugenia, quietly.

For the time being, the sisters seemed to have changed characters.

“Frank!” exclaimed Sydney; and though it was five days since she had seen her fiancé, at the supposition, her face fell. “Oh, no, it can’t be Frank! He was not to return till Friday – that’s to-morrow.”

But Frank it was. No trace of disappointment was legible in Eugenia’s countenance as she welcomed him rather more cordially than usual, whereas Sydney’s manner was preoccupied and almost cold. Frank was tired, however, and very glad to be home again; and not being gifted with the quickest perception in the world, discovered nothing amiss. Eugenia rang for tea for him, and he drew in his chair near the fire, and sat there drinking it in comfortable content, telling them all about his journey and adventures, and what a charming little country parsonage he had been staying at – “The very place for you and me, Sydney, when we get old, and past hard work.” And Sydney smiled, without seeming to hear what he was saying. Then a new thought struck Frank.