Not Without Thorns. Molesworth Mrs.
excuse than the mere ghost of a chance that you may still come to-night. Still, I leave this note, in the remote possibility of your doing so, to ask you, if you do come, to follow me. They will be delighted to see you, and it would never do for your first evening to be spent alone. Be sure you make Martha get you something. I wish we had Dorothy back.”
Gerald remembered about Dorothy now. She had married a few months before. Of course; how stupid to have forgotten it! He had actually a wedding present for her in his trunk.
“No, thank you – nothing,” he replied to Martha’s inquiries as to what he would have, delivered in a tone suggestive of latent resentment of untimely meals. “Nothing except a glass of sherry – you can get me that, I suppose – and a biscuit; and stay – I shall want a cab in – yes, in ten minutes. Is the boy in? – you have a boy, I suppose? In ten minutes, remember;” for Martha’s muttered reply that she “would see” was not very promising.
She was as good as, or rather better than, her words. Within the prescribed time the cab was at the door, and Gerald ready (for a postscript to Frank’s note had told him “not to trouble about dressing. It would be too late if he stopped to unpack, and there were only to be one or two gentlemen at the Laurences’”), and rattling off again through the plashing streets, along the muddy road leading to the suburb where Mr Laurence lived. It was not a long drive, barely a mile, but to Gerald it seemed hours till he at last found himself standing outside the familiar door, the rain beating down steadily on his umbrella. The servant who opened here was also a stranger to him, and evidently Frank had forgotten to mention his brother’s possible appearance, for she stood irresolute, at a loss to account for his unseasonable visit. It was uncomfortable, and for the first time Gerald began to get impatient at this succession of small rebuffs, individually of no-moment, but, all together, sufficient to lower the temperature of his eager hopes and anticipations. A sort of reaction began to set in; for a minute or two he felt inclined not to reply to the servant’s inquiry as to whether he wished to see her master, but to turn away and walk home again through the rain – to Martha’s disgust, no doubt, – and never let Frank know he had obeyed his injunctions. Then he laughed at himself for even momentarily contemplating conduct which, had he been a boy again, and Dorothy there to give her opinion, she would certainly have described as “taking the pet,” and mustering his good spirits afresh, he inquired if Mr Frank Thurston were not dining with Mr Laurence.
“Mr Thurston is here to-night – Mr Thurston the clergyman,” replied the young woman, with more alacrity, imagining evidently that this call was on Frank ex officio. “He is still in the dining-room with the other gentlemen; but if it is anything very particular, I can tell him he is wanted at once; or if not, perhaps you will wait a few minutes till he leaves the dining-room.”
“Yes, that will be better. Do not disturb him till they come out. I am Mr Fra – Mr Thurston’s brother,” whereupon the damsel became all eagerness and civility – she was young and nice-looking, in no wise resembling the forbidding-looking Martha; “but I would rather you did not say who I am; just tell him he is wanted when he comes out. Where can I wait? In here?” She opened the door of the school-room. “Ah, yes, that will do.”
A chain of small coincidences seemed to connect Gerald’s return with his departure three years ago; trifling commonplace coincidences which, in a less highly-wrought state of feeling, he would probably not have observed, subtly preparing him, nevertheless, for sharper perception of the changes he had not yet owned to himself that he dreaded. For the least material natures are yet the most vividly impressed by their sensible surroundings, and a background of outward similarity throws out in strong relief immaterial differences and variations we should otherwise have been slower to realise, or, where the interest is but superficial, never perhaps have been conscious of at all.
A curious sensation came over Gerald as he entered the old school-room. Here it was that three years before he had seen the last of the Laurence sisters; it had been almost the same hour of the evening, for nine o’clock, he remembered, had struck while they were all standing there, and Frank had hurried him off, fearing he would lose his train. They had driven to the station by a very circuitous route, that his oldest friends might have his latest good-bye. And Sydney had cried, he remembered, when he kissed her, and Eugenia had grown pale when he shook hands with her, and mademoiselle had stood by with tears in her kind black French eyes, and three years had seemed to them all a very long look-out indeed! And now they were over; the winter of banishment and separation was past. Were the flowers about to spring for Gerald? was the singing of birds henceforth to sound through his life? was the fulfilment of his brightest hopes at hand?
Something was at hand. The door had been left slightly ajar, and his ear caught the approaching sounds of a slight rustle along the passage, and of a young, happy voice softly humming a tune. It came nearer and nearer. A sudden impulse caused Gerald to step back behind the doorway; the gas-light was low in the room: it was easy to remain in shadow.
She came in quickly, gave a slight exclamation of impatience at the insufficient light, then came forward into the middle of the room and stood on tiptoe, one arm stretched up as far it could reach to turn on the gas. She succeeded rather beyond her intentions, the light blazed out to the full, illuminating brilliantly her upraised face and whole figure, as she remained for a few moments in the same attitude, uncertain evidently if the flame was too high for safety. Was she changed? No, not changed, improved only, developed, young as she looked, from mere girlhood into early womanhood, of a loveliness surpassing even his high expectations. She was dressed in white, with no colour save somewhere a spot of bright rose; a knot of ribbon or a flower, he did not notice which, on the front of her dress. That was Eugenia all over; he remembered her love of brilliant contrast; however neutral in tint and unobtrusive the rest of her dress, there was always sure to be a dash of bright rich colour somewhere, in her hair, at her collar, round her wrists. Outwardly she was the same Eugenia, grown marvellously beautiful, but the same. And one look into her eyes would, he fancied, tell him all he so longed to know – that in spirit and heart she was still the same transparent, guileless, sensitive creature he had left, innocent and unsuspicious as a child, yet brightly intelligent, vividly imaginative. A rare creature, yet full of faults and inconsistencies; whose nature, however, he had studied closely, and knew well, and knowing it, asked no greater privilege than to take it into his own keeping, through life to guard it from all rude contact that might sully its purity or stunt its rich promise. He had left her, as he told Roma, free as air, bound by no shadow of a tie; yet there were times when he felt it almost impossible to believe that she had not guessed his secret, guessed it and – hope whispered – not resented it, and even, perhaps, in her vague girlish way looked forward to a day when it should no longer be a secret, when this strong deep love of his should receive its reward.
These were the dreams he had been living in, for three years; these were the hopes that had kept up his courage through much hard and toilsome work – dreams and hopes whose destruction would, indeed, be very hard to bear. But he felt no misgivings now; the mere sight of Eugenia, the delight of her near presence, seemed to have dispelled them like mists. He felt reluctant to break the sort of spell that had come over him since she entered the room; he stood in perfect silence, watching her, as if bewitched. She moved away in a minute or two, satisfied seemingly that the light might remain as it was, and crossed the room to a low cupboard at the other side from where Gerald stood. She pulled out a pile of loose music, and began searching among it for some missing piece. Mr Thurston thought it time to let her know he was there: she might be startled if she saw him suddenly when leaving the room. He came forward into the full light, giving a chair an obtrusively noisy push to attract her attention. She looked up, startled for an instant, but before she had time to realise her fear, he spoke.
“Eugenia.” That was all he said.
The colour came rushing over her face, for the momentary start had turned it somewhat pale. Whether her first sensation was pleasure or annoyance, it was impossible to say. That it was one or other Gerald felt certain, for that this crisis, to which he had looked forward so long and so anxiously, could appear to Eugenia an event of very trifling importance, it would have been impossible for him to believe. It took all his self-control to refrain from any expression of the strong emotion with which his whole being was filled; and he not unnaturally, therefore, attributed some