Not Without Thorns

“Oh, Sydney!” she exclaimed, suddenly. “How can we manage to have a very nice dinner on Thursday? We must have everything good and well arranged, and there are some things cook never sends up nicely. And don’t you think we might walk to Barton’s nursery-gardens to-morrow and get some flowers? I am sure papa would like everything to look nice.”

Sydney professed herself quite willing to speak to cook about exerting herself to the utmost – to walk any distance and in any direction Eugenia wished.

So they were very busy the next day, and on Thursday morning they went to Barton’s and got the flowers, as many as they thought they might afford. There were a few camelias among them, and in arranging them for the table, Eugenia kept out two – a scarlet one for Sydney, a white one for herself. But at the last moment the white flower fell to pieces, which so distressed Sydney that Eugenia had difficulty in persuading her to allow her own one to remain in its nest among the plaits of her soft fair hair.

“I don’t care for things you don’t share, Eugenia. I couldn’t be happy if you weren’t,” she said, with more earnestness than the occasion seemed to call for. And Eugenia laughed at her and called her a little goose, and looked as if she felt little fear that happiness and she would ever be far apart.

Volume One – Chapter Four.
Sisters-in-Law

“Prithee, say thou – the damsel hath a dowry?”

“Nay, truly, not so. No diamonds hath she but those of her eyes, no pearls but those in her mouth, no gold but that hidden among her hair.”

Old Play.

The morning succeeding the day on which Captain Chancellor had seen Roma off for Brighton, found her comfortably seated at breakfast with her sister-in-law in the lodgings which Mrs Eyrecourt had engaged for the month of sea air, generally by a happy coincidence, found necessary in late autumn for “the children.” Their visit to Brighton was later than usual this year, having been delayed by home engagements; most of Mrs Eyrecourt’s friends had left, and she was beginning to feel anxious to follow their example.

“I am so glad to have you back again, Roma,” she said, as she watched her sister-in-law pouring out the coffee. “It has been dreadfully dull the last week or two, and so cold. I shall be glad to be at home again. How did you manage to keep yourself alive in Cumberland?”

“Lady Dervock keeps her house very warm,” replied Roma. “The coldness isn’t the worst part of it – it is so dreadfully dull and out-of-the way. She was very kind, as I told you, and did her best to entertain me. She invited all the neighbours she has, to come to dinner in turn, but there are not many, and they are mostly old and stupid. Still, it was gratifying in one sense. I have no objection to be considered the woman my dear godmamma delighteth to honour. It looks promising. But I couldn’t live there. Ah, no,” with a little shudder. “I shall certainly let Deepthorne if ever it belongs to me.”

Mrs Eyrecourt looked up quickly. “Lady Dervock may put a clause in her will obliging you to do so,” she said. “I have heard of such things. But, seriously, Roma, I do hope you are not allowing yourself to count upon anything of that kind? It would be very foolish.”

“Count upon it!” repeated Roma, with an air of the utmost superiority to any such folly. “Certainly not, my dear Gertrude. I never count upon anything. I amuse myself by a little harmless speculation upon possibilities; that’s all, I assure you.”

“And about Wareborough? How did you get on there? Mary Dalrymple was very kind, of course, and made a great deal of you and all that, I have no doubt. But oh, Roma, how unlucky it was about Beauchamp’s turning up there. I cannot tell you how provoked I was.”

A look of annoyance came over her face as she spoke, heightening for the time the slight resemblance she bore to her brother. It was not a striking resemblance. She was a small, fair woman, considerably less good-looking than one would have expected to find Beauchamp Chancellor’s sister. Her figure, of its kind, was good, and shown to advantage by her dress, which was always unexceptionable in make and material, delicately but not obtrusively suggestive of her early widowhood. She hardly looked her age, which was thirty-one, for her skin was of the fine smooth kind which is slow to wrinkle deeply; her eyes of the “innocent-blue” shade, her hair soft and abundant.

Roma did not at once reply; but looking up suddenly, Mrs Eyrecourt saw that her sister-in-law was smiling.

“What are you laughing at, Roma?” she asked, with some asperity. “It’s very strange that you should begin to laugh when I am speaking seriously.”

“I beg your pardon, Gertrude – I do, really,” said Roma, apologetically. “I didn’t mean to smile. I was only thinking how curiously like each other you and Beauchamp are when you are not pleased. Oh, he was so cross to me the other night at the Dalrymples’! Only to poor me! He was more charming than ever to every one else. And it was all through trying to please you, Gertrude. I wouldn’t dance with him on account of your letter, and whether you believe it of me or not, I do hate making myself disagreeable – even to Beauchamp.” There was a curious undertone of real feeling in her last words. Gertrude felt sorry for her, and showed it in her manner.

“I don’t want you to make yourself disagreeable, Roma. I only want to save real disagreeables in the future. It is both of you I think of. Certainly this infatuation of Beauchamp’s is most unlucky; and though you say you are so sure of yourself, still, you know, dear, he is very attractive, and – ”

“Of course he is,” interrupted Roma – “very attractive, and splendidly handsome, and everything that is likely to make any girl fall in love with him. But I am not any girl, Gertrude, and I never could fall in love with him. Oh, I do wish you would get that well into your little head! What a great deal of worry it would save you and me! I have a real liking and affection for Beauchamp – how could I not have it, when you remember how we have been thrown together? – but I know his faults and weaknesses as well as his good qualities. Oh, no! If ever I imagine myself falling in love with any one, it is with a very different sort of person. Not that I ever intend to do anything so silly; but that is beside the point. Now, Gertrude, are you convinced? By-the-bye, you should apologise for speaking of poor Beauchamp’s amiable feelings as an ‘infatuation,’ shouldn’t you?”

“I didn’t mean it in that sense,” replied Mrs Eyrecourt, meekly. “I only meant – ”

“Yes, I know what you meant,” interrupted Roma again. “You meant that, as we are both penniless, or very nearly so, and, what is worse, both of us blessed with most luxurious tastes and a supreme contempt for economy, we couldn’t do worse than set out on our travels through life together. Of course I quite agree with you. Even if I cared for Beauchamp – which I don’t – I know we should be wretched. I couldn’t stand it, and I am quite sure he couldn’t. The age for that sort of thing is past long ago. Every sensible person must see that, though now and then, in weak moments, one has a sort of hazy regret for it, just as one regrets one’s childish belief in fairy tales.” She sat silent for a minute or two, looking down absently, idly turning the spoon round and round in her empty cup. Then suddenly she spoke again. “It is very puzzling to know what is best to do,” she said, looking up. “Do you know, Gertrude, notwithstanding your repeated injunctions to me to try to snub Beauchamp without letting it come to a regular formal proposal, and all that, I really believe I should, on my own responsibility (it couldn’t cause more uncomfortable feeling than the present state of things), have let it come to a crisis and be done with, but for another, a purely unselfish, reason.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mrs Eyrecourt, looking alarmed.

“Just this: I think it possible that his fancy – after all, I am not sure that it is anything but fancy, or whatever you call it – for me, may keep him from something still sillier.”

“What do you mean?” repeated Gertrude again. “You can’t mean that Beauchamp would think of marrying any one still – ”

She hesitated.

“Still less desirable than I?” said Roma, coolly. “Yes – that is exactly what I do mean.”

“He would never be so foolish!” exclaimed her sister-in-law. “He is too alive to his own interests – too much a man of the world. And think what numberless flirtations he has had! Oh, no, Roma! he would never do anything foolish of that kind, I feel sure.”

“I don’t,” said the younger lady. “He is a man of the world, he is alive to his own interests; but still, Gertrude, remember what we know as a fact – that at this moment, though it should ruin all his prospects for life, he is ready – more than ready, absurdly eager to marry me. So we mustn’t count too much on his worldly wisdom, cool-headed and experienced in such matters as he seems. Certainly, contradiction may have had a good deal to do with the growth and continuance of his feelings for me. There is that to be considered; and knowing that, I was idiotic enough to try to warn him.”

“To warn him! Oh, Roma; do you mean that there is some one already that he would ever really think of seriously?” asked Mrs Eyrecourt, with great anxiety.

“Not exactly that – at least, not as yet,” replied Roma. “What I mean is, that if I succeeded, as I could easily, if it came to the point, in quite convincing him he must altogether give up thoughts of me, he would be very likely to do worse – or more foolishly, at least. I have no doubt the girl is as good as she is pretty – I was taken by her myself – but utterly, completely unsuited to him in every single respect. And for this reason, Gertrude, I was very civil to Beauchamp at the end: I let him come to the station to see me off – we parted most affectionately. I wanted to do away with the bad effects of my warning, which I feared had offended him deeply the night before. But after all, perhaps, the warning was rather encouraging to his vain hopes than otherwise. I do believe he thought I was jealous.”

She smiled at the recollection. “The worst of it is,” she went on, “if he thinks so, it will probably lead to his flirting all the more desperately, in hopes of my hearing of it. And then if it comes to my being driven into formally refusing him, what shall I do when he comes to us in February? He told me he is to have six weeks then. And he will go back to Wareborough again after that. Oh dear, oh dear, it is all dreadfully plain to my prophetic vision.”

“Roma, do be serious. You don’t mean to say – you can’t mean, that this girl, whoever she is, is a Wareborough girl. Wareborough!” with supreme contempt, “Why, we all thought your cousin, Mary Pevensey, throwing herself away when she married Henry Dalrymple, though he didn’t exactly belong to Wareborough, and was so rich. By-the-bye, this girl may be rich; not that that would reconcile me to it,” with a sigh.

“But it might somewhat modify the vehemence of your opposition,” said Roma, in her usual lazy, half-bantering tone, from which her unwonted earnestness had hitherto roused her. “No, Gertrude; you must not even apply that unction to your damask cheek – what am I saying? I never can remember those horrid little quotations we had to hunt up at school, and I am so sleepy with travelling all yesterday – lay that flattering unction to your soul, I mean. Beauchamp would say I was trying to make a female Dundreary of myself – a good thing he’s not here. No, she is not rich. I told you she was utterly unsuited to him in every way. I found out she wasn’t rich before Beauchamp ever saw her; something interested me in her, I don’t know what exactly, and I asked Mary about her.”

“Not rich, and Wareborough! Oh, no, Roma; I am quite satisfied. There is no fear in that quarter. It is only one of his incessant flirtations, I am sure.”

“If so, it will be all on his side. She isn’t the sort of girl to flirt. It would be all or nothing with her, I expect,” said Roma, oracularly.

“I can’t understand what makes you think so much of it,” said Mrs Eyrecourt, fretfully. “How often did you see them together?”

“Only once – that last evening at the Dalrymples! There was a carpet dance. Don’t you remember I wrote and told you they would ask Beauchamp, when they heard he was coming?” said Roma.

“Only once. You only saw them together once, and that at a dance, where Beauchamp was sure to flirt – especially as you snubbed him! Really, Roma, you are absurdly fanciful,” exclaimed Mrs Eyrecourt.

Roma took the remark in good part.

“Perhaps I am,” she replied; “but it isn’t generally a weakness of mine to be so. For all I know, the girl is engaged to someone else, or she and Beauchamp may never see each other again. I don’t say I have any grounds for what I fear. One gets impressions sometimes that one can’t account for.”

“Ah, yes, and I really think, dear, you are a little morbid on the subject. You have had so much worry about Beauchamp,” said Gertrude, consolingly. “But as you’ve told me so much, tell me a little more. Is she such a very pretty girl? There must be something out of the common about her to have attracted you. Who is she?”

“She is a – ” began Miss Eyrecourt, but a noise at the door interrupted her. There was a bang, then a succession of tiny raps, then a fumbling at the handle.

“That tiresome child!” exclaimed Mrs Eyrecourt. “Floss,” in a higher key, “be quiet, do. Run up stairs – never mind her, Roma; go on with what you were saying.” But the fumbling continued. Roma’s nerves, perhaps, were not quite in train this morning; however that may have been, the noise was very irritating. She got up at last and opened the door.

“Come in, Floss,” she said, good-humouredly, but her invitation was not accepted.

“I won’t come into rooms when people call me a tiresome child at the door and I haven’t been naughty,” said the new-comer, with much dignity and scanty punctuation.

She was a very small person indeed. Of years she numbered five, in height and appearance she might easily have passed for three. She was hardly a pretty child, for her features, though small and delicate, were wanting in the rosebud freshness so charming in early childhood; her eyes, when one succeeded in penetrating to them through the tangle of wavy light hair that no combing and brushing could keep in its place, were peculiar in colour and expression. There was a queer greenish light in them as she looked up into Roma’s face with a half-resentful, half-questioning gaze, standing there on the door-mat, her legs very wide apart, under one arm a very small kitten, under the other a very big doll – fond objects of her otherwise somewhat unappreciated devotion. She was a curious child, full of “touchy tempers and contrary ways,” not easily cowed, rebellious and argumentative, and no one had as yet taken the trouble to understand her – to draw out the fund of unappropriated affection in her baby heart.

Roma got tired of holding the door open. “Come, Floss,” she said, impatiently, “come in quickly.”

Floss stared at her for another minute without speaking. Then, “No,” she said deliberately. “I won’t come in nor neither go out;” and as Roma turned away with a little laugh and a careless, “then stay where you are, Floss,” the child shook with indignation and impotent resentment.

“She is really dreadful, Roma,” said Mrs Eyrecourt, plaintively. “For some time past nurse tells me it is the same thing every day – out of one temper into another, from morning to night.”

“She must take after her uncle,” said Roma; “it is all contradiction. Don’t bother yourself about her, Gertrude. I’ll ring for nurse.”

And the matter ended in the poor little culprit being carried off to the nursery in a whirlwind of misery and passion, reiterating as she went that mamma and aunt made her naughty when she had “comed down good.”

“What has become of Quintin?” asked Roma, when they were again left in peace. “I haven’t seen him this morning.”

“He is spending the day with the Montmorris boys. He set off quite early, immediately after his breakfast, in great spirits, dear fellow,” replied his mother. “How different he is from Floss, Roma!”

“Yes,” answered Roma, “he is a nice boy. But it comes easily to people like Quintin to be good, Gertrude. He has everything in his favour – perfect health, a naturally easy temper, good looks, and every one inclined to think the best of him. Whereas poor little Flossy seems to have been always at war with the world. She is so delicate too. My conscience pricks me sometimes a little about that child.”

“I don’t see that there is anything more to be done for her. I trust to her growing out of these tempers in time,” said Mrs Eyrecourt, philosophically – she was always philosophical about Floss when not in her immediate presence. “Speaking of the Montmorris boys, Roma, reminds me we are dining there to-day. That is to say – I accepted for myself certainly, and for you conditionally, the day before yesterday. You are not too tired to go?”

“Oh, no. I daresay I shall feel brisker by the evening,” replied Roma. “I suppose it isn’t anything very overwhelming, is it? for my wardrobe is getting rather dilapidated – I didn’t think I should have been so long without going home, you know. By-the-bye, Gertrude, are you not in deeper mourning than when I went away?”

“Yes, I forgot to tell you. Indeed, I hardly thought you would care to hear – the poor old man had been virtually dead for so long. It is for our old uncle – Beauchamp’s and my uncle I mean – Mr Chancellor of Halswood. He died a fortnight ago. It was hardly necessary to go into mourning; he was only my father’s uncle. But still he was the head of the family, and I thought it better.”

“Who succeeds him?” asked Roma. “Halswood is a nice place, isn’t it?”

“Very; but they have never kept it up properly,” said Mrs Eyrecourt. “At least, not for many years past. Old Uncle Chancellor has been half in his dotage for ever so long, but still he had sense enough to be jealous of his grandsons. There are two of them; the elder of course succeeds. He has sons; he has been married some years. We know very little of them now. My great uncle was angry with my father for selling Winsedge to your people, Roma; for though it was not entailed, and had come into the hands of a younger son, it had been a long, long time in the family. And that made a coolness they never got over.”

“Why did your father sell it?” inquired Roma. “It would have been very nice for you now if it had belonged to Beauchamp. Much nicer than for it to be Quin’s, who has got plenty already.”

“Yes,” replied Gertrude, slowly; “it would have been very nice, but it could not have been. My father was dreadfully in debt, and even selling Winsedge didn’t clear him. When he died it was all my poor mother could do to start Beauchamp in the army. Poor Beauchamp! it has been very hard upon him to be so restricted, with his tastes, and his looks, and his feelings altogether. He has never been extravagant, as young men go, but he hates poverty.” Roma laughed. “I don’t think he knows much about it, so far,” she said. “Wait till he is married with very little more than he has now – two or three hundred a year and his pay. It wouldn’t be long before love came flying out of his window. But, dear me,” starting up as a timepiece struck the hour, “how late it is! I must write to tell Mary Dalrymple of my safe arrival. What time is the Montmorris’s dinner hour? Seven; oh, I am glad of that; we shall get home early.”

The Montmorrises were quiet, steady-going, rather old-fashioned people, who lived in Brighton as evenly and monotonously as they would have lived in a country village. They were not by any means in Mrs Eyrecourt’s “set,” but they were very old friends of the Chancellor family – old Mr Montmorris, indeed, had been their lawyer for generations, and his firm, in which his eldest son now represented him, still managed the Halswood affairs. Once upon a time there had been a large family of young Montmorrises, but, after the manner of large families, they were now scattered far and wide – “some were married, some were dead,” two maiden sisters only, no longer youthful, still representing at home the boys and girls, the “children” of long ago. But their brother – Mr Christian Montmorris, the hope of the family and the head of the firm – had by this time a wife and large family of his own, none of whom had any objection to spending a few weeks now and then at “grandpapa’s,” on which occasions their father used to “run down” from town as many times a week as he could spare the time, “running up again” by the first train the next morning; for he was a shrewd, clever, energetic man, with some fingers to spare for other pies besides those it was his legitimate office to cook; with a clear head and a sharp eye for a wary venture or a profitable investment. Among other by-concerns of this kind, in which his name did not appear, he was interested in the affairs of the great Wareborough engineering company, in whose employ Gerald Thurston, the curate’s elder brother, had spent the last three years in India.

The sisters-in-law were received by their friends with open arms.

“So kind of you to come to us in this unceremonious way. So pleased to see Miss Eyrecourt again. We quite feared Mrs Eyrecourt would have left Brighton this year before you joined her,” said Miss Cecilia Montmorris. And then old Mrs Montmorris broke in with self-congratulations that “Christy” had just arrived unexpectedly, and, what was more, had brought a friend with him, a gentleman just arrived from India. “We were quite pleased to see him, I assure you,” she continued, addressing Roma in particular, “for a new-comer always brings a little variety; and now that my boys are all away from us we seem to be falling out of fresh acquaintances sadly. Mr Montmorris and I are getting too old for any sort of gaiety,” she went on. “It is dull for Cecilia and Bessie sometimes, but they are good girls, very, and they know it won’t be always that they will have their father and me to care for. Besides, they have a little change now and then when Mrs Christian takes one of them up to town for a week or two. Bessie is going back with them next week. And you have been away up in the north, I hear, my dear? How did you like that? I used to know Cumberland in my young days.”

So she chattered on with the not unpleasing garrulity of gentle, kindly old age. She was a very sweet old lady, and Roma considered herself much more fortunate than her sister-in-law, who had been seized upon by Mrs Christian Montmorris to have poured into her sympathising ear an account of how dreadfully ill her youngest but one had been the last two days, cutting its eye-teeth. Gertrude smiled and said, “indeed,” and tried to look interested; but Roma laughed inwardly at her evident eagerness to change the conversation. Mrs Eyrecourt was not a person in whom the maternal instinct was in all directions fully developed: she loved her handsome little son as much as she could love anything; she honestly meant to do her best by Floss, but on certain points she was by no means an authority. It is, indeed, a question if both Quintin and Floss might not have passed through babyhood guiltless of cutting any teeth at all without her awaking from her happy unconsciousness of their failure in the performance of this important infantine obligation.

So poor Gertrude sat there, looking and feeling very much bored and rather indignant with Roma for the mischievous glances of pity she now and then bestowed upon her. At last, however, the door opened to admit the two gentlemen, whose late arrival had prolonged “the stupid quarter-of-an-hour,” and with, a sensation of relief Mrs Eyrecourt turned to reply to Mr Christian Montmorris’s greeting, feeling that she had had quite enough of his better-half for some time to come.