Читать книгу Not Without Thorns - Molesworth Mrs. - Страница 5

“Que serait la vie sans espérance? Qu’ils le disent ceux qui n’ont plus rien à espérer ici bas.”

L’Homme de Quarante Ans.

“Alas! alas! Hope is not prophecy.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting – quite against my habit, I assure you. But trains, you see, are worse than time and tide – they not only wait for no one, they very often make people wait for them,” said the lawyer, as he shook bands cordially with his mother’s guests. “And how is Master Quintin?” he inquired, turning again to Mrs Eyrecourt. “He got no cold bath this morning, I hope? I heard he was going skating with my youngsters.”

Gertrude was much more at home in skating and cricket than in babies and eye-teeth, and Quin was always a congenial subject; so seeing her released from her purgatory, Roma looked about in search of entertainment for herself. Old Mrs Montmorris was now busy talking to some one on her other side; it was the new arrival. Roma glanced up at him, he was standing besides his hostess listening attentively to her little soft, uninteresting remarks. He was quite a young man, at which Roma felt surprised; for with the curious impatience of suspense, with which a lively imagination, even on commonplace and not specially interesting details, takes precedence of knowledge, she had unconsciously pictured this friend of the lawyer’s as middle-aged, if not elderly. Her surprise made her examine him more particularly. He was not exactly what she was accustomed to consider good-looking, though tall and powerfully made without being awkward or clumsy. His hair, though dark, was distinctly brown, not black, and he somehow gave the impression of being naturally a fair-complexioned man, though at present so tanned by exposure to sun and air, that one could but guess at his normal colouring. From where she sat, Roma could not see much of his eyes: she was wondering if they were brown or blue – when a general movement, told her that dinner was announced.

Old Mr Montmorris toddled off with Gertrude on his arm, Roma was preparing to follow her with Mr Christian Montmorris, whom she saw bearing down in her direction, when his mother turned towards her with an apologetic little smile.

“You will excuse me, my dear, I am sure, for keeping my son to myself. I am very proud of having my boy’s arm into the dining-room when he is here – which is not so often as I should like.”

Miss Eyrecourt was perfectly resigned, and expressed her feelings to this effect in suitable language. She looked round for Miss Cecilia and Miss Bessie, with whom she supposed she was to bring up the rear in good-little-girl fashion, but this she found was by no means in accordance with the Montmorris ideas of etiquette.

“Miss Eyrecourt,” said the lawyer, recalling her truant attention, “will you allow me to introduce my friend Mr Thurston to you?”

So on Mr Thurston’s arm Miss Eyrecourt gracefully sailed away, feeling herself, to tell the truth, much smaller than she ever remembered to have felt herself before; he was so very tall and held himself so uprightly, giving her, at this first introduction, a general impression of unbendingness.

“What can I find to talk to him about?” she said to herself, for already her instinct had told her he was not one of the order of men with whom she was never at a loss for conversation. “He has only just returned from India. He won’t know anything about the regular set of things one begins with. And I can see he is the sort of man that looks down upon women as inferior creatures, and hasn’t tact or breeding enough to hide it. How I wish I could turn him into Beauchamp just till dinner is over. How different it would be! Only the night before last, I was sitting beside him at the Dalrymples’! Poor Beauchamp – he is certainly very nice to talk to and laugh with!”

She gave a little sigh, quite unconscious that it was audible, till looking up, she found that Mr Thurston was observing her with, a slight smile on his face. She blushed – a weakness her four-and-twenty years were not often guilty of. “Hateful man!” she said to herself. Yet she could not help glancing at him again, unconcernedly as it were, just to show him she was above feeling annoyed by his rudeness. She found out what colour his eyes were now: they were grey, deep-set and penetrating. Suddenly he surprised her by beginning to speak.

“I am sorry I smiled just now,” he said – his voice was clear and decisive in tone – “I saw you did not like it. But I really could not help it. Your sigh was so very melancholy.”

“I hardly see that that is any excuse for your smiling,” she replied, rather stiffly.

“Perhaps not. I daresay it was quite inexcusable,” he said, quietly. “I fear I am a very uncivilised being altogether,” he went on. “For the last three years I have been living in an out-of-the-way part of India, where I seldom saw any Europeans but those immediately connected with my work, and you would hardly believe how strange it seems to me to be among cultivated, refined people again.”

“Then you are not in the army?” asked Miss Eyrecourt.

“Oh, no, I am an engineer; but only a civil one,” he replied. Roma looked as if she hardly understood him. “I don’t suppose you know much of my sort of work, or my part of the country,” he went on. “The south knows less of the north, in some ways, than the north of the south. It strikes one very forcibly when one returns home to little England, after being on the other side of the world. Still, it is natural you shouldn’t know much of the north; for though we come south for variety and recreation, we cannot expect you to find pleasure in visiting such places as the Black Country or the manufacturing districts.”

“You are taking a great deal for granted, I think,” said Roma, becoming interested. “And why should you not give credit for sometimes having other motives than pleasure to – ” “other classes besides your own,” she was going to have added, but the words struck her as ill-bred. “I mean to say,” she went on, choosing her words with difficulty, a very unusual state of things for her – “don’t you think it possible people – an idle person, like me, we will say – ever do anything or go anywhere with any other motive than pleasure or amusement? I think it a great mistake to take up those wholesale notions. As it happens, I do know something of the north – yes, of the north, in your sense of the word,” for she fancied he looked incredulous. “I only left Wareborough yesterday morning.” (“I needn’t tell you what took me up there,” she added to herself, smiling as she remembered how she had teased Beauchamp by her exaggerated account of the motives of her visit to Deepthorne).

“Wareborough!” exclaimed Mr Thurston. Roma was amused by his evident surprise. “How very odd! Wareborough is my home. I hope to be there again by Wednesday or Thursday. But that can’t interest you,” he went on, looking a little ashamed of his own eagerness; “and of course it isn’t really odd. People must be travelling between Wareborough and Brighton every day. One gets in the way of exaggerating trifles of the kind absurdly when one has lived some time so completely out of the world as I have done. It struck me as such a curious little coincidence, for I think you are the first lady I have had any conversation with since I landed. I came by long sea too, for the sake of an invalid friend, so my chances of re-civilising myself have been very small, so far.”

“It was an odd little coincidence,” replied Roma, good-humouredly. “But after all, you know,” she added, “the world is very small.”

He hardly caught the sense of her remark.

“In one sense, I suppose it is,” he said, slowly; “but in another – all, no, Miss Eyrecourt, you are fortunate if you have never felt how dreadfully big the world is! It used to seem a perfectly frightful way off from everything – everybody I cared for, out there sometimes.”

He spoke gravely, and with an introspective look in his eyes, as if reviewing past anxieties known only to himself.

“And then,” he went on in the same tone, “absence is absence, after all. One can never count surely on finding any one, or anything what one left them.”

“Nought looks the same save the nest we made,” said Roma, softly. “Don’t laugh at me, Mr Thurston – fray don’t,” she went on, hurriedly. “I am not the least sentimental. I never look at poetry, only sometimes little rubbishy bits I learnt as a child come into my head and ‘give me feelings,’ as I once heard a little girl say.”

“Then they are poetry to you,” said her companion, kindly – earnestly almost, and a look came into his eyes which she had not seen in them before – a look which gave Roma a silly passing feeling of envy of the woman on whom some day they might rest with an intensity of that gaze. “Let me see,” he went on, “I think I too remember learning those verses as a child —

“Isn’t that it? I don’t think I am likely to find those changes exactly. Perhaps, after all, what I most dread is not actual change – not change from what really was– but change from what I have gone on imagining to myself – hoping for, dreaming of. Ah, it would be very hard to bear!”

He seemed almost to have forgotten he was speaking aloud. Roma felt interested, though she could not altogether follow his train of thought.

“It looks rather like a case of the girl he left behind,” she said to herself, with her usual habit of making fun of anything approaching “sentiment,” and she thought it would be as well to give the conversation a turn. “Are you going to live at Wareborough now?” she inquired, “I wonder if you know my friends there!”

Here broke in the voice of Miss Bessie Montmorris, whose ears, from her seat on Mr Thurston’s other side, had caught the word Wareborough. “We had a governess once who afterwards went to live at Wareborough,” she remarked, with amusing irrelevancy; the truth was she thought Miss Eyrecourt had had quite her share of the good-looking stranger’s attention, and caught at the first straw to draw it to herself. “It was some years ago,” she continued.

“So I should suppose,” muttered Roma, who was not altogether pleased at Miss Bessie’s interruption, and felt delighted to see by a slight contraction of the muscles of Mr Thurston’s mouth, that her murmur had reached his ears.

“Her name,” went on Miss Bessie, calmly, “was Bérard – Mademoiselle Bérard. She was French. I remember all about her going to live at Wareborough, for she used to write to us regularly. I can tell you the name of the family she went to. She stayed there some years. I have the name and address written down somewhere, so I am sure I am right,” as if her hearers had been eagerly beseeching her for accurate information on the subject – “it was Laurence. There were two little girls, and no mother.”

Confirmed story-tellers, it is said, “sometimes speak the truth by mistake.” In the same way, exceedingly silly people do sometimes by a happy chance succeed in producing a sensation. Miss Bessie Montmorris, had she been gifted with clairvoyance, could not have hit upon a name as certain to affect vividly both her hearers as the one that had just passed her lips. For the interest of the morning’s conversation was still strong upon Roma, and Mr Thurston, for reasons best known to himself, was not in a frame of mind to hear quite unmoved this unexpected mention of his friends by name.

Both started, then each looked surprised at the other for doing so. Mr Thurston was the first to speak – it seemed to Miss Eyrecourt, that he was eager to conceal the slight momentary disturbance of his equilibrium. His words were addressed to Miss Bessie, but Roma felt that she was intended to listen to them.

“I remember your friend, Mademoiselle Bérard, very well, Miss Montmorris,” he said. “And an excellent creature she is. The Laurences are old friends of mine. I thought them most fortunate in meeting with Mademoiselle Bérard, for of course motherless girls require extra care. Do you happen to know where she is now? Somewhere in the South of France was her home, I think, was it not?”

He engaged Miss Bessie in recalling how long it was since she had heard from “Mademoiselle,” what she had then said as to her plans, etc, and rather mischievously muddled the poor thing with questions exposing the extremely limited state of her acquaintance with French geography. So that in a few minutes Miss Bessie felt not indisposed to retire from the field and gave, subsequently, in the family council, as her opinion of “Christy’s friend,” that he was a “heavy, prosy young man, quite without conversation.”

When she was safely off his hands, engaged in an amicable sisterly discussion with Mrs Christian across the table as to the precise hour at which Mr Beamish, the family apothecary, had called this morning, and about what o’clock to-morrow it was thought probable the last eye-tooth would appear, Mr Thurston returned to Roma.

“After all,” he said, smiling. “I quite agree with you, the world is very small.” Roma laughed. “I certainly did not expect to have an instance of the truth of my quotation so very soon,” she said. “I met the Laurences when I was staying at Wareborough just now. I see you know them too.”

“Very well indeed,” he replied. “You will not wonder so much at my evident interest in what Miss Montmorris was talking about when I tell you that one of the Miss Laurences is engaged to be married to my brother – my only brother. He is a curate at Wareborough. Perhaps you met him too?”

Roma’s face expressed extreme surprise, and to any one well enough acquainted with her to read a little below the surface, it would have been plain, that at first, the surprise was not of a disagreeable kind.

“Miss Laurence engaged to your brother?” she repeated, without noticing the latter part of Mr Thurston’s speech. “How very strange! Somehow I feel as if I could hardly believe it – having seen her so lately, only the – night before last – ” she hesitated. After all, she must have been completely mistaken in her estimate of that girl’s character. She must be a flirt indeed, and not a very desirable sort of a flirt either, even according to Roma’s not very stringent notions on these subjects, to have looked up into any man’s face, be he never so charming, with those bright innocent smiles of hers, in the sort of way she had looked up into Beauchamp’s, knowing herself to be engaged to another. And a clergyman, too! Somehow the latter fact seemed to Roma to aggravate the unbecomingness of her dancing half the evening with him, and the still more marked “sitting out,” all of which Roma had explained by her extreme inexperience and youth, finding any other theory untenable in the presence of that buoyant girlish bearing, those lovely, honest, unsuspicious eyes. “I think I had fallen a little in love with her myself,” thought Roma. “But if she is really engaged, it is a great relief on Beauchamp’s account, and indirectly on my own. For Gertrude may be as incredulous as she likes – it is not often he will come across a girl like that, and more than half in love with him already, as, engaged or not engaged, I am certain she is.”

But when she had reached this point in her meditations, she became aware that Mr Thurston was looking at her in some perplexity, waiting for her to finish her uncompleted sentence. How could she finish it? She could not tell him what she was thinking, that his brother was very much to be pitied, and that Miss Laurence was by no means “what she seemed,” but that on all accounts, her own and Captain Chancellor’s included, the sooner they were married the better. “What a complication,” thought Roma, “and how odd that this complete stranger, this Mr Thurston, or rather his brother, should be mixed up in my private affairs in this roundabout way.” She felt a silly sort of inclination to burst out laughing: it made her feel nervous to see him sitting there looking at her, waiting for her to speak. Why did he want so much to hear what she had to say? She could not understand the look of restrained eagerness in her face. She must say something.

“It is very absurd of me to feel as if Miss Laurence could not be engaged without its having been formally announced to me,” she began. “I only saw her a few times, but I think she impressed me unusually. She is so very pretty, so – I don’t know what to call it – like a bunch of wild flowers; a perfect embodiment of brightness and young-ness, and everything sweet and fresh and – ingenuous;” the last word came with a little halt. It was not lost on her companion; not a tone or a look of Miss Eyrecourt’s but had been noted by him with breathless acuteness since Eugenia Laurence had become the subject of their conversation. But he refrained just yet from explaining her mistake to her. “It is rather curious that Mrs Dalrymple, my cousin, where I was staying – you know her, no doubt, she is a friend of the Laurence’s – did not tell me of it, is it not?”

“I am not at all sure that she knows of the engagement as a fact,” Mr Thurston replied, quietly. “It has been a sort of taken-for-granted thing among ourselves, but they were both so young, that it was agreed it should not be formally recognised for some time. Indeed, my return home is to be the signal for its actual announcement, as I stand in loco parentis to my brother, though not very many years his senior. It is no secret, though,” with a smile, “most likely I should not have mentioned it had this been Wareborough instead of Brighton. But I fancied you must have thought my manner odd when the Laurences were mentioned. I must set you right on one point, however. From what you say of her I see you think it is the elder Miss Laurence I mean. It is not Eugenia, who is engaged to my brother, but the younger one – Sydney.”

“Sydney, a younger sister? Oh yes, I remember; but I never happened to see her. She was away from home nearly all the week I was there. But, dear me, she must be a perfect child. Eugenia doesn’t look eighteen,” exclaimed Miss Eyrecourt.

“Sydney is almost that. Eugenia has always looked younger than her age. It was by that I recognised her – in your description, I mean.”

He spoke rather confusedly, and his own slight embarrassment prevented his noticing the curious mingling of expressions on his companion’s face. She did not know if she was glad or sorry to find herself mistaken.

“So I may reinstate Eugenia in my good opinion, and fall in love with her again if I choose,” she reflected. “And Beauchamp may do so too, unfortunately, without clashing with the curate; but I am not by any means sure that it would not be clashing with the curate’s brother.”

She looked up again at Mr Thurston as the thought struck her definitely for the first time. Her wits were quick, her instinct quicker. Why should he have so instantly discovered it was Eugenia she was thinking of? That was a lame excuse he had given of her reference to the girl’s extreme youth. Sydney was still younger. Ah, no! her words had been tinged with the charm she had herself felt the influence of in Eugenia; and he, lover-like, had forthwith appropriated the tribute of admiration as his lady-love’s, and no one else’s! Was she – would she be his lady-love? How would it all end? Roma fell into a reverie, which lasted till she found herself back in the drawing-room again, listening to old Mrs Montmorris’s platitudes, and young Mrs Montmorris’s pitter-patter conversation till she could almost have fancied the last hour was a dream.

After a while they asked her to sing. She was not sorry to do anything to get over the time till the gentlemen joined them again, for four female Montmorrises without an idea among them were not entertaining. And singing was a pleasure to Roma. It cost her no effort; her voice was sound and true and suggestive, and so well trained that it sounded perfectly natural. She had sung two songs, and was half-way through a third, when she heard the door open and the gentlemen enter. “Hush!” said Mrs Christian. “Hush!” repeated Miss Bessie and Miss Cecilia, and the two Messrs Montmorris obediently seated themselves with audibly elaborate endeavours at noiselessness till the song should be over. Roma felt more than half inclined to stop, and was lifting her hands from the piano with this intention, when a voice beside her whispering, “Go on, please,” made her change her mind. It was Mr Thurston. “How could such a great tall creature as he have come across the room so quietly?” thought Miss Eyrecourt to herself; and then she became suddenly alive to the very sentimental nature of the ballad she was singing. It was new to her to feel the least shy or self-conscious; she had sung it hundreds of times before, often with Beauchamp standing behind her chair, but the meaning of the words had never before come home to her as now. There was no help for it, however; she must go through with it now; but she wished Mr Thurston would go over to the sofa and talk to Miss Cecilia. She came to the fourth verse —

She caught sight of Mr Thurston’s face. It was very grave. Was he thinking of Eugenia? Roma resolved she would never sing a love song again. She got to the last verse: —

“Thank you,” said Mr Thurston, and his words were echoed from all parts of the room. “I don’t think I ever heard that song before,” he observed, when the clamour of thanks had subsided again.

“I don’t fancy you ever did,” replied Roma. “I have only got it in manuscript. It was set to music by a friend of Be – my – my – ” She stopped. Mr Thurston was looking at her curiously. For no reason that she could give to herself she felt her cheeks suddenly blushing crimson. What had come over her to-night? Never in all her life did she remember having been so absurdly silly. She made a great effort. “I always tumble over Captain Chancellor’s connexion with me,” she said, boldly; “it is such an indescribable one. He is my sister-in-law’s brother. By the way, Mr Thurston, he is at Wareborough just now – stationed there; you may meet him.”

“I shall certainly remember your mention of him if I do,” said Mr Thurston, courteously. Then he recurred to the subject of the song. “It is very pretty, both words and music, and it is a great treat to me to hear such singing as yours, Miss Eyrecourt.”

“It is the only thing I can do. I am very idle and useless,” she said, rather sadly.

“Your one talent? I don’t know about that,” he replied. “I should say you could do a great many things well if you liked to try. Perhaps it is the thing you best like doing? We are often apt to consider that the only thing we can do.”

“Perhaps. I daresay you are right,” her voice was more subdued than usual. “I suppose there is no law forcing certain human beings to be drones.”

“Or butterflies?” suggested Mr Thurston. “Well, or butterflies,” she continued, with a smile, “whether they will or not. But,” with a little hesitation, and a glance round to make sure that Gertrude was not within hearing, “when one has no special duties, no very near ties – however kind one’s friends may be – it is a little difficult, isn’t it, to be anything better?”

“Not a little —very,” he said, kindly, looking sorry for her. “But it may not always be so,” in a lower tone.

“That is thanks to my idiotic blush when I mentioned Beauchamp,” thought Roma. She felt annoyed, and, rising from her seat, stood by the piano turning over the loose music lying about, without speaking. For a moment Mr Thurston watched her silently, his face had a perplexed look as if he were endeavouring to make up his mind about something.

“Miss Eyrecourt,” he said at last. “Will you do me a little favour? Will you tell me something I want to know, and not think it odd of me to ask it?”

“If I can, I will,” she answered. “What is it?”

“I want you to tell me,” he said, speaking clearly and unhesitatingly now, “I want you to tell me why it was so much easier for you to believe the fact of my brother’s engagement to the younger Miss Laurence than to the elder.”

In her embarrassment, Roma gave a foolish answer —

“You forget,” she said, “that I don’t know the younger sister. It is easy to accept anything one is told about a perfect stranger, though I did feel surprised. She is so young.”

“Surprised perhaps, but nothing more?” he persisted. “It is just what you say – you know nothing of the one sister, but you do know something of the other; something which made it difficult for you to credit what you thought I told you of her. It is that something I want you to tell me. You don’t know what a service you may be doing me.”

“But I can’t tell you,” said Roma, becoming more and more uncomfortable. “And I don’t think I would if I could. It makes me feel like a spy.”

Just then her eye caught the last words of the song she had been singing, lying on the piano beside her!

But oh, my love, if false thou prove!

Mr Thurston’s glance followed hers. He read the line too.

“You don’t understand me,” he said, not resenting her hasty accusation. “It is nothing of that kind. One can’t talk of ‘false,’ when there has been no sort of promise claimed or given, directly or indirectly. I shall have no one but myself to thank for it, if it is all over. Only I think I should be much better – less likely to make a fool of myself, in short,” with a smile, “if I were not quite unprepared. That is why I want you to tell me what was in your mind. I know it is a very odd thing to ask, but our whole conversation has been odd. Just think; what have I not told you or allowed you to infer, and two hours ago I had never heard your name?”

While he was speaking, Roma had been collecting her wits. “Mr Thurston,” she said gravely, “I cannot tell you anything. There are passing impressions and fancies which take a false substance and form from merely putting them into words. Truly, I have nothing it would be fair – to yourself, I mean – to tell you her;” decision was strengthened by the recollection of Gertrude’s ridicule of her “absurd fancifulness” this very morning. “I can only say,” with a smile, “that I don’t agree with my song. There is no need for ‘taking on trust.’ Go and see for yourself. If you are disappointed, I pity you with all my heart, but if you are deceived in any way it will be your own fault, not hers. She is candour itself. Still, don’t be too easily discouraged. I wish you well.”

“Thank you,” he said, for he saw she was thoroughly determined to say no more, and they both moved away to other parts of the room.

Nothing more passed between them except a word or two when they were saying good-night. “We may meet again some day, Miss Eyrecourt – at Wareborough. Perhaps,” said Mr Thurston.

“Perhaps,” said Roma, “but ‘some day’ is a wide word.”

“Not always,” he replied, and that was all. “You seemed to get on unusually well with that friend of Christian Montmorris’s, Roma,” said Gertrude, when they were shut up together in the carriage on their way home. Her tone was half satisfied and inquisitive: she evidently had not made up her mind if her sister-in-law should be scolded or not. Roma had been debating how much of her conversation with Mr Thurston it would be well to retail to Mrs Eyrecourt, but something in Gertrude’s remark jarred upon her, and she instantly resolved to tell her nothing.

“Did I?” she said, indifferently. “Well, there was no one else to get on with; and he had just come from India, so he was rather more amusing than the Montmorrises.”

“Is he going back again immediately?” asked Mrs Eyrecourt, but she never waited for the answer. A new idea struck her. “Oh, by-the-bye, Roma,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it odd – just when we were talking about the Halswood Chancellors this morning – old Mr Montmorris tells me the second son, that is to say rather, the second grandson, died last year. Isn’t it odd we never heard of it? He seems to have a very high opinion of the new head of the family – Herbert Chancellor; he says Halswood will be a very different place now. The income has increased amazingly; old Uncle Chancellor spent so little; and Herbert Chancellor’s wife has a large fortune too, he tells me. Fancy, Roma, their eldest child, a girl, is eighteen. Wouldn’t she be nice for Beauchamp?”

“Very,” replied Roma, satirically. “She’s got money – that’s all that needs to be considered.”

“You shouldn’t speak so, Roma. As if I would ever put money before other things – goodness and suitableness and all that,” said Gertrude, in an injured tone. “You’re in one of your queer humours to-night, I see. But I daresay you’re very tired, poor child! and it was very good-natured of you to come to the Montmorrises’ with me.”