Mrs. Molesworth - Not Without Thorns

“What does he do?” asked Captain Chancellor. “He is not a clergyman; but Miss Laurence said something about his giving a lecture to-night, unless I misunderstood her.”

“Oh no, you are quite right,” answered Mrs Dalrymple. “He was lecturing on somebody – Milton or Shakespeare, or some one of that kind – at the Wareborough-Brook Mechanics’ Institution to-night. It is really very good of him. We went to hear him once. It was most interesting, though perhaps a little too long, and I should have said, rather above his hearers’ comprehension.”

“I don’t know that, my dear – I don’t know that,” put in Mr Dalrymple. “Laurence knows what he is about. At one time perhaps I might have agreed with you – we were inclined to think him high-flown and unpractical, he and those young Thurstons – but we’ve come to change our opinion. Laurence’s lectures have been most successful, and he certainly makes good use of his talents.”

“Are they always on literary subjects?” inquired Roma, languidly.

“No; he varies them,” was the reply. “He gave a set on heat – or light, was it? He is really a wonderful man – seems at home on every subject. How he finds time to get together all his knowledge is what puzzles me!”

“Then, has he any regular occupation or profession?” asked Captain Chancellor.

“Oh dear, yes,” answered his hostess. “He is in business – just like Henry and every one else here. He is an unusually talented man. Every one says he should have been in one of the learned professions, but he doesn’t seem to think so. Whatever he had been, he could not have worked harder. Eugenia tells me he very often sits up till daylight, reading and writing. He makes the girls work too. They copy out his lectures, and look up references and all sorts of things. He has educated them almost like boys. It’s a wonder it hasn’t spoilt them. Yet they are simple, unaffected, nice girls. It is only a pity he shuts them up so.”

“They will soon make up for lost time in that direction. Miss Eugenia, at least, seems to take very kindly to a little amusement when she gets a chance. Quite right too – don’t you think so, Chancellor? She is very pretty, isn’t she?” said good Mr Dalrymple.

Beauchamp felt uncertain if his host had any covert meaning in these questions. He felt a little annoyed, and inclined to ignore them; but a very slight smile, which crept over Roma’s face, changed his intention.

“Pretty?” he repeated. “Yes, indeed she is; and her dancing is perfection.”

The Dalrymples looked pleased; and when Roma soon after got up, saying she felt sleepy, and it must be getting late, Captain Chancellor hoped his last observation had to do with her sudden discovery of fatigue.

He saw her off next morning, as Mrs Dalrymple had proposed. They parted very amicably, for Miss Eyrecourt did not recur to the subject of her warning. The fog had cleared away, and Captain Chancellor felt in very good spirits. Ugly as Wareborough was, he began to think he could manage to exist there pretty comfortably for a few months.

“I must get Dalrymple to introduce me more definitely to the Laurences,” he said to himself. “Mr Laurence’s philanthropical tastes are not much in my way, certainly; but I like a well-educated man. And his daughter isn’t the sort of girl one comes across every day – I saw that in an instant. Ah, yes, my dear Roma; I shall do very well, though your anxiety is most gratifying. Nor will it do you any harm to expend a little more of it upon me. I wonder if Mrs Dalrymple writes gossiping letters about what doesn’t concern her, like most women? As things look now, I rather hope she does.”

All hearts in all places under the blessed light of day say it, each in its own language – why not in mine? – Hayward’s Translation of Faust .

The short winter’s day was already nearly over; though the fog had cleared off, and frost was evidently on the way, it was still dull and dreary. Eugenia Laurence sat on the rug as close to the fire as she could get, feeling unusually out of spirits. She could not tell what was the matter with her, she only felt that it was difficult to believe herself in the same world as that on which she had closed her eyes last night. She had fallen asleep in a bewildering haze of delicious excitement, with vague anticipations of a somehow equally delightful to-morrow; it seemed to her, that never before had she realised the full value of her life and youth, and timidly acknowledged beauty; her dreams had been filled with a new presence – a presence to which, even to herself, she shrank from giving a name; everything about her – past, present and future – seemed bathed in light and colour.

She had awakened with an indefinite feeling of expectancy, and had felt unreasonably disappointed when she found all the commonplace details of her little familiar world very much the same as usual – a good deal less agreeable than usual in point of fact, for she was more tired than a thorough-going young lady would have considered possible as the result of such very mild dissipation as Mrs Dalrymple’s carpet dance, in consequence of which she slept three hours later than her wont – of itself a disturbing and depressing consciousness to a girl brought up to consider punctuality a cardinal virtue – and entered the dining-room only to find it deserted by its usual cheerful little breakfast party, and to be told by the servant, that “Miss Sydney” had been sent for early by the invalid aunt, and feared it would be afternoon before she could return home.

“How disappointing!” thought Eugenia, as she sat down to the solitary breakfast, she had little inclination to eat, “when I did so want to talk over last night with Sydney. I shall never go out anywhere without her again. I am not half as sensible as she is. How silly it is of me to feel so dull and unsettled this morning. I shall never want to go out if it makes me so silly. But oh, how I wish I could have it all over again to-night!”

Then she sat and dreamed for a few minutes – dreams which sent a smile and a blush over her pretty face. “Was it – could it be true?” she asked herself, “that he really thought her so pretty – so charming – as his tones and looks seemed to whisper?” She remembered every word he had said, she felt the very grasp of his hand as he bade her good-night. Then with a sharp revulsion came the remembrance that in all probability she would never see him again: he had said something about staying some little time in Wareborough – but what of that? Except for the chance of meeting him again at Mrs Dalrymple’s – a very slight one, this was the very first time her father had allowed her to go to anything in the shape of a party at Barnwood Terrace – he might spend years in Wareborough without their ever seeing each other: her father seldom made new acquaintances – hardly ever invited any one to his house. And even supposing anything so extraordinary as that he should do so in this case, would it be desirable, would she wish it? She looked round with something almost approaching disgust at the substantial, but certainly faded and dingy furniture of the room; she glanced out of the window, the prospect was gloomy and unlovely – Wareborough smoke and its begriming influences visible in all directions. No, she confessed to herself, her home was far from an attractive one; all about her would too surely offend, and repel a fastidious man accustomed, as he evidently was, to very different surroundings from those of an ugly little manufacturing town, where money was all in all, culture and refinement comparatively of little or no account. Her own dress even – she got up and looked at herself for a minute or two in the old-fashioned oblong mirror over the mantelpiece – the reflection was not a flattering one; still it could not altogether destroy the charm of the fresh young face, the eyes that could look so bright, though just now “a shadow lay” in them, the rich, soft chestnut brown hair. A little smile crept into the eyes and softened the curves of the mouth as she looked; perhaps her face really was rather nice, she had certainly never thought so much about it before – but her dress? What was wrong with it? It fitted well, its colour was unobtrusive and even pretty of its kind, the whole was perfectly suitable and becoming for a young girl of her age and position; only yesterday it had pleased her very well, but to-day it utterly failed to satisfy her vague, unreasonable aspirations. Poor Eugenia, the world began to look very unpromising and dreary again! She sat down and began to wish, or tried to fancy she wished, she had not gone to the Dalrymples’ the night before – had never had even this little peep of the beautiful, bewildering world outside her quiet humdrum middle-class home – the world in which all the women were graceful and charming, all the men high-bred and chivalrous, with irresistible eyes and sweet low voices like – “Captain Chancellor’s,” she was going on to say to herself, but stopped short suddenly.