Mrs. Eyrecourt

“ 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. ”

“ And in a general way the neighbourhood was remarkably sociable and friendly, and would have been very ready to make a nine days’ pet of the pretty bride, provided Mrs Eyrecourt had given it to be understood that such attention to her sister-in-law would be agreeable to herself, for Gertrude managed to “queen it” to a considerable extent over society in her part of the county.
“You will have rather an unfavourable idea of Winsley in one respect, I fear, Eugenia,” said Mrs Eyrecourt, one day. “I mean you must think it very dull. But nearly all our neighbours are still away. ”

“ Only, and he brightened up again at this, she had not yet seen Eugenia; no doubt once she did so it would be all right. Miss Laurence had but to show herself, and the victory would be achieved; she would find no resistance—it would be a case of simply “walking over the ground” of Mrs Eyrecourt’s prejudices. For Gertrude was not a small woman in the sense of any petty jealousy of another’s attractions. She was nearly as sensitive as Beauchamp himself to beauty, and upon this he determined to trade. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Captain Chancellor had been standing at a little distance from her, idly fingering a book that lay on the table while she read Mrs Eyrecourt’s note. As she spoke he turned round, crossed the room quickly to where she sat, and stood before her with a dark look on his fair face, an angry light in his blue eyes.
“Are you in earnest, Eugenia? Do you mean what you say?” he exclaimed, in a hard, unpleasant tone. “Do you know that what you have said is a most extraordinary thing for a girl to say to—to the man she is going to many, two days before the time fixed for doing so? ”

“ And Mrs Eyrecourt was very glad too. Roma would help her, she hoped, to entertain this pretty, uninteresting wife of Beauchamp’s, whom she found such heavy work; for Roma was great at this sort of task—she had quite a knack of getting stupid people to talk, discordant ones to agree, doing it too, with so much self-forgetfulness and tact, that the credit of this comfortable state of things usually fell to Gertrude’s own share.
“Such a charming hostess! so unselfish and considerate for every one.” ”

“ But in any case, Gertrude, I shall see you before long? You will come to the marriage?”
“Shall you wish it? I should not like to be invited merely out of civility,” said Mrs Eyrecourt. “And, besides, there will probably be a great many of Miss Laurence’s relations at it. They may not care about any more.”
“Nonsense!” said Beauchamp, wondering inwardly at the extraordinary attraction the making suffering saints of themselves seems to have for even otherwise sensible women; “nonsense, Gertrude! Of course I shall wish it, and of course Eugenia will too. ”

“ Selfish, weak, vain. He has good, qualities too of course, I know that as well or better than you do, but his faults and foibles are the sort that in a man I could least forget. There now, have I spoken plainly enough to convince you at last? I don’t want to offend you, Gertrude,” seeing that Mrs Eyrecourt, with true womanly inconsistency, now looked rather sulky at this unflattering depreciation of her Adonis; “you have forced it upon yourself. Good heavens! how unreasonable you are.”
“You are forgetting yourself, Roma,” said Gertrude, coldly. ”

“ Roma was ready enough to give Beauchamp’s wife a little sketch of the past. When it was finished Eugenia sighed.
“Thank you,” she said. “I am glad to know it; I wish I had known it before. Perhaps it might have given me a different feeling to Mrs Eyrecourt, and I might have managed to make her like me. As it is, I fear she does not. Oh, Roma,” she went on, for the first time addressing Miss Eyrecourt by her Christian name—“oh, Roma, I wish I understood better. I am afraid I am not fit for the life before me. People seem to look at things so differently from what I fancied. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Long engagements are senseless when there is no reason for them.”
“Only it is not always the lady and her friends are so obliging about making their preparations in a hurry,” observed Mrs Eyrecourt. It was the first snappish remark she had allowed herself, and she regretted it instantly, though Beauchamp did not allow her to see that it had nettled him.
“No,” he said, coolly; “but then few girls are so free from home ties as Eugenia. Her life will be very lonely now, for her only sister is married, and I don’t see why there should be any delay.” ”

“ And the latter part of Mrs Chancellor’s visit to Winsley certainly proved a notable exception to the old proverb that “three are no company,” for the three ladies were very much better company than the two had been, and Eugenia no longer counted the days to her departure, and openly expressed her hopes that when Beauchamp returned, he would arrange to stay a little while: with his sister; which expression of cordial feeling naturally gratified Mrs Eyrecourt, and disposed her to regard her young sister-in-law in a more favourable light. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He had never been able to persuade himself that Eugenia had thoroughly entered into the spirit of his advice.
“She is certainly clever naturally,” he replied, evasively, “and I suppose she is what is called well-educated. Her father is a very talented man, in an odd, eccentric way, and education is his hobby. He has taught his daughters all sorts of things—almost as if they were boys.”
“Ah, indeed,” said Mrs Eyrecourt, regretfully. ”

“ Of course Eugenia will throw herself completely into my side of the house, and not bother about Wareborough. That is the beauty of marrying a girl who has seen nothing and is better than her surroundings.”
So, sanguinely mused Captain Chancellor, and all the while there was news at the end of his sister’s letter which had escaped his observation, news which was to alter the whole colour of his future, which, so far as regarded Mrs Eyrecourt’s friendly feelings to Eugenia, could not possibly have come at a worse time. ”

“ But suppose I refuse to be guided by Frank’s advice?”
“I won’t suppose it,” said Sydney; “Eugenia, you will think differently after a while. You don’t realise how terrible a thing you propose; you would be the last person to bear philosophically the sort of odium that always attaches itself to a woman in the position that yours would be. I do feel for you intensely; still I cannot but think there was exaggeration in this last trouble—I mean in what Mrs Eyrecourt told you. Things may yet be happier with you. But you must believe that both Frank and I are earnest in our anxiety about you. ”

“ I expect my sister here in a week or two, which will cheer us up a little. It will never do for Eugenia to yield to depression. The doctors assure me she will be all right if she will keep up her spirits, and Mrs Eyrecourt is just the person to discourage that sort of thing—low spirits and hypochondria.”
Sydney sighed. She knew very little of Mrs Eyrecourt, but she felt an instinctive doubt of her sister’s “grief being med’cinable” by such doctoring. ”

“ And Mrs Eyrecourt had been very kind to her brother, and, while he lived, had influenced her husband to be the same, winning his goodwill towards Beauchamp in part, perhaps, by that which she herself showed to his step-sister, Roma, when she in turn came to be left motherless and homeless.
Winsley Grange was a thoroughly and really “desirable residence.” A long, low, thick-walled, deep-windowed house of no particular architecture, sufficiently picturesque, with its gable ends and lattices, not to disappoint the expectations suggested by its name ”

“ I do wish she would leave me to manage my own affairs,” he thought to himself, though to please her he hung about the house idle all the afternoon, in case of the Halswood party possibly appearing before their time. Gertrude’s excitement was not only on his account, keenly anxious though she was that he and Adelaide Chancellor should impress each other agreeably; there was to Mrs Eyrecourt a peculiar and not unnatural feeling of gratification in receiving as her guests for the first time the head of the family—Mr Chancellor of Halswood himself—and his belongings. ”

“ You see we shall not be moving about at any uncomfortable speed; you are not strong enough for it, and that sort of thing is not my idea of travelling for pleasure. When there is no need for hurry, much better take it leisurely.”
Eugenia was delighted; she knew, though she never told it to anyone, the indirect influence for good which Floss’s innocent championship had had upon her life, and the idea of the child’s happiness was pleasant to her. Mrs Eyrecourt was delighted ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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.
Volume One—Chapter Five. Mutual Friends.
“Que serait la vie sans espérance? ”

“ Judging by the easy manner in which she got up to receive me, the misfortune that has befallen her daughter seemed to have produced no sobering change in this frivolous woman.
“My dear Winterfield,” she began, “I have behaved infamously. I won’t say that appearances were against you at Brussels—I will only say I ought not to have trusted to appearances. You are the injured person; please forgive me. Shall we go on with the subject? or shall we shake hands, and say no more about it?”
I shook hands, of course. Mrs. Eyrecourt perceived that I was looking for Stella. ”

“ I told you I knew no one here, and I am too shy to dance with any of the Miss Harveys.”
“But Miss Eyrecourt, you know her?” persisted Eugenia, though the gravity was fast clearing off her face.
“Of course I do. She is a sort of a sister of mine. I fancied you knew, for she is Mrs Dalrymple’s cousin, and she has been staying here for some little time. You know Mrs Dalrymple very well, don’t you?”
“Yes. She is always very kind to us,” replied the girl. “I knew Miss Eyrecourt was her cousin, but I didn’t know she was any relation of yours, though I have heard Mrs Dalrymple talk of you. ”

“ She left the child with a kiss, but when she got to the dining-room door, happening to glance back again, there was the shaggy head pressed against the bannisters, the funny eyes peering down after her.
“What a queer little girl!” thought Eugenia. “I wonder if her mother was like her at her age? How odd it sounds to hear a child talking about not liking her nearest friends. I wonder if Mrs Eyrecourt and Roma dislike children?”
On the whole Eugenia had felt agreeably disappointed in her sister-in-law. Gertrude looked so young and pretty compared to what she had expected ”

“ You don’t deserve your cousin—Miss Eyrecourt I mean—to be so good to you,” said Eugenia, reproachfully.
“Don’t I? I fancy I fully deserve all the goodness I get from her,” replied Beauchamp, with a tinge of bitterness in his tone which made Eugenia tell him he had certainly been rubbed the wrong way by some one or something, he was so moody and captious, which little scolding he took in good part and exerted himself to a greater appearance of amiability, till the few hours of his visit were over and he was due again at Bridgenorth. ”