And the sunshine you recall—
Ah, my dear, but is it true?
Did such sunshine ever fall
Out of any sky so blue?
Half I think you dreamed it all.
M. Brotherton.
They were in Paris. It was oppressively hot, glaringly sunny. Under any other circumstances Captain Chancellor would have grumbled outrageously at the heat and the dust and the glare, but in a bridegroom of barely a fortnight, greater philosophy and good temper were to be expected. So he contented himself with groaning within reasonable bounds, and laughing a little at Eugenia’s extraordinary energy and powers of enjoyment, for to her, the untravelled, impressionable English girl, it was all beyond expression charming and intensely interesting. She felt herself in veritable fairyland, she had never before imagined that life could be so enchanting. There was novelty and fascination for her at every step, even the sound of a foreign tongue heard for the first time with the dainty crispness of Parisian accent was delightful to her ears; the shops were not shops, but bewildering masses of lovely things arranged to perfection; the churches, above all, were so beautiful, the music so sublime, that Eugenia wondered how any one living within their reach could ever feel anything but “good.”
That her husband thoroughly sympathised in her enjoyment she of course took for granted, and for some time nothing occurred to shake her in this happy belief. It was true to a great extent that he did so, though true in a sense that would have been perfectly incomprehensible to her had any one attempted to explain it. But after a little time Beauchamp began to get rather tired of Eugenia’s untireableness. It is entertaining enough to act spectator to a country cousin’s ecstasies, especially if the country cousin in question be a refined, intelligent, and very beautiful girl; but of this amusement, as of most others, Captain Chancellor began to find it was possible to have enough. Then he had a morbid horror of any approach to “gushingness,” and there were times at which it appeared to him that, but for her grace and beauty, Eugenia might have fallen under the ban of this terrible charge. And most of all, perhaps, his young wife annoyed him more than once by asking him questions he was obliged to confess he could not answer—questions about some “stupid old picture or other,” which in reality his taste was far too uncultivated to admire, though he would, have shrunk from confessing to such a barbarism; or she would let her thoughts drift, back to the old days—days about which, English girl though she was, she had read, much and imagined more—and her eyes would sparkle and colour glow, and sometimes even a tear or two would make its unbidden appearance as she recalled in fancy the glittering old-world pageants, the tremendous tragedies, the extraordinary fluctuations of national weal and woe of which this Paris—wonderful, beautiful Paris—had been the scene. And at such moments she would look to her companion for sympathy in her enthusiasm, would refer to him, perhaps, for more accurate information about the subject or event momentarily uppermost in her mind; and once, when with a little disappointment—arising not from the failure of the information, but from the evident want of sympathy, she turned away somewhat sadly, the few words, which escaped her, “I wish papa were here!” irritated Beauchamp more than he afterwards liked to remember, for his answer had been chilling in the extreme.
“I am really not a walking biography or history, Eugenia,” he had said. “And, besides, I think it is pedantic and affected of you to chatter so about such things. It’s not at all in your line, I assure you.”
Afterwards he tried to soften what he had said.
“I did not mean to speak unkindly to-day when we were at the Luxembourg,” he began. “You know that I should never wish to do so, don’t you, dearest? I must confess I have two especial bêtes noires, and I could not endure to see the least taint of either in my wife.”
“What are they?” asked Eugenia, quietly.
“Learned women and gushing young ladies,” he answered. “Now don’t be hurt, dear. There is nothing of the kind about you really, only you see I want you to be quite perfect.”
Eugenia did not answer at once. When she spoke her voice did not sound quite like itself.
“I knew you had sometimes thought me too demonstrative,” she said; ”‘gushing’ I suppose is the only word for it, but I do so dislike it! But as for thinking myself ‘learned’—oh, Beauchamp, you cannot mean that! I, that every day of my life am more and more deploring my ignorance! How could you think me capable of such folly?”