“Everything is uncertain,” observed Beauchamp, “and there are some contingencies it is perhaps better not to think about.” Mrs Eyrecourt looked at him inquiringly and a little suspiciously: she did not understand this new tone of philosophy of his. He went on speaking: “Not that I quite know what you are alluding to when you speak of placing my future above uncertainty?”
He had a pretty shrewd notion what she was thinking of; her last few words had shown him that he was in for the “talking it over,” the “advice” she had volunteered, and he felt anxious to hear all she had to say and have done with it. Gertrude hesitated.
“Suppose we take a turn outside, up and down the avenue—it looks tempting, and it is woefully gloomy indoors,” said Beauchamp, glancing round the room in which they were standing. It was a depressing room, a library crowded to excess with dingy volumes—many of them doubtless of great value, all of them originally handsome and well-bound, but bearing about them an unread, uncared-for look, filling the air with that faintly musty smell perceptible in libraries seldom entered but by servants, where fires are only lighted periodically to “keep out the damp,” where the sweet summer air but seldom enters. Of all rooms, a library lived in and loved, where the books are dear old friends, the window-seats little sanctuaries for quiet thought or earnest study—of all rooms perhaps, such a one is the most delightful. But the library at Halswood had been deserted and disregarded for many a long day. The Chancellors were not a studious or scholarly race, still they were not without refinement and cultivation; but for many years past Halswood had been the home of a half imbecile old man whose only acute intelligence had been that of hoarding, and the traces of his long neglect were everywhere visible.
Outside, pacing up and down the long avenue, whose grand old chestnuts were the boast of the country-side, things certainly looked more attractive.
“It is a beautiful old place,” said Beauchamp, stopping suddenly, and looking about him appreciatively, “though the house is desperately ugly. It looks as if it had been cut out of the middle of a street and stuck down here in this beautiful park by mistake. And the portico looks as if it, again, had nothing whatever to do with the house. I hate those great pillars so!—they look so meaningless. When was this house built, Gertrude, do you know?”
“Quite recently—that is to say, at the end of the last century,” said Gertrude, “when everything was hideous. The old house was very picturesque; more like an enlarged edition of Winsley. Still, this house is a very good one, Beauchamp. Some of the rooms—the drawing-rooms—are very fine.”
“Oh yes, it’s well enough inside. No doubt it might be made very habitable,” replied her brother, indifferently. Then, with an effort, “What is it you want to say to me, Gertrude? Oh yes, by-the-bye, I remember. I was saying just now I did not quite understand your allusions to my future—to something you had had in your mind about it.”
“I did not intend to say it,” replied Gertrude; “it was only accidentally I said what I did. Of course you must see what I mean—what a bright future of assured comfort and ease, whatever happens or does not happen here, would be before you if you chose.”
“Yes, I see what you mean now,” answered Beauchamp. “There is no use beating about the bush, Gertrude. Once for all I tell you plainly that if I hadn’t a halfpenny in the world I could not marry Adelaide. I could not stand her a week. I should run away from her, and then where should we all be? No, truly, if any idea of this kind has increased your opposition to my marrying elsewhere I beg you to dismiss it. That I never could have done.”
Gertrude sighed. “You do not yourself know what you would or would not have done had there been no other influences about you, Beauchamp. I don’t understand you. First there was Roma, now, barely two months after that was made an end of, you want me to approve of your engaging yourself to another girl. You are very changeable and inconsistent.”