Not Without Thorns. Molesworth Mrs.
on the contrary, was eminently pleased with herself, and had thoroughly recovered her own respect. The task set before her she imagined to be all but achieved – the goal of perfect mastery of the impression she now believed to have been a very fleeting one, all but won.
One day at dinner, within a week of the foggy evening, her father turned towards her with a startling announcement.
“Oh, by-the-bye, Eugenia, I was forgetting to tell you. I expect two or three gentlemen to dine here the day after to-morrow. Mr Foulkes, the school-inspector, you know, Mr Payne, and Frank Thurston – there is just a chance of Gerald, but Frank hardly expects him so soon, he has been detained in town by business – and I asked Captain Chancellor, the Dalrymples’ friend. He called on me yesterday at my office to get a little local information he required, and I was much pleased with him. He seems very intelligent, and superior to most young men of his standing. It must be dull for him here – very different from a place where there is a large garrison – but he says he likes it better.”
Eugenia hardly heard her father’s last words: she was conscious only of a rush of tumultuous, bewildering delight. What had become of her strong-mindedness, her self-control, all her grand resolutions? She felt that Sydney was purposely not looking at her; it was almost worse than if she had been. Never mind! Sydney soon would be able to judge for herself as to whether she were, after all, so very silly. In any case this was not of her doing – this unhoped-for fulfilment of her dreams. Dreams she had not encouraged, had kept down with a strong hand. It had been right to do so; might not this news of her father’s be looked upon as her deserved reward? The idea was a pleasant one; it excused to herself her own extreme, unreasonable happiness.
The rest of the dinner appeared to her a very feast of the gods; she herself was radiant with happiness – it seemed to sparkle about her in a hundred different ways. Even her father was struck with her brightness and beauty. He held her back for a moment as she passed him when she and Sydney left the room, and kissed her fondly – an unusual thing for him to do, and it added to the girl’s enchantment.
Only Sydney seemed in low spirits this evening, but she roused herself at Eugenia’s first word of reproach, and wisely refrained, from the slightest renewal of her former warning. Eugenia’s moods were seldom of long duration. A little cloud came over her sun even before they were joined by their father from the dining-room. Its cause was a very matter-of-fact one.
“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