And this was her first parting from her husband!
When the pony-carriage was out of sight Eugenia went up to her own room, and, locking the door against all possibility of intrusion, wept the bitter tears of youth when it first experiences what it is to be repulsed and scorned by the one it had deemed all sympathy and devotion, when the first terrible suspicion creeps in that it has been deceived in its idol. For none of the small jars in Paris had ended like this; she had felt them acutely at the time, but they had invariably been smoothed over again. But that Beauchamp should have spoken so harshly, so woundingly, just as he was leaving her, when there could be no opportunity of removing the sting his words had left—it was too cruel, and Eugenia’s tears flowed afresh.
In one respect she did him injustice. Before she was out of his sight her husband had repented of his harshness; the white, wounded look that had come over her sweet eager face followed him all the day, and had he not been afraid of Gertrude’s making fun of him he would have turned back at the lodge and begged Eugenia to forgive him before he left her. Still, at the same time, he remained fully satisfied that he had had cause for annoyance, and he quite believed that in the end Eugenia, like the rest of her sex, would be none the worse for a few sharp words.
By-and-by it occurred to Eugenia that her sister-in-law’s criticism of her red eyes was by no means to be desired. She set to work to bathe them, therefore, and then, the more effectually to remove their traces, she put on her hat and went out for a stroll. How pretty it was out of doors! The house, quaint and irregular, with its gables and latticed windows, was thoroughly to Eugenia’s liking; the grounds well kept, but not too modern in appearance to suit the ivy-grown Grange; the beauty of the midsummer sky, the fragrance of the sweet fresh summer-morning air, every object which caught her eye, every breath which wafted across her face seemed fall of harmony and content.
“How I wish I could feel happy too!” thought Eugenia.
And, after all, what a very small thing had caused her unhappiness, what a mere trifle had roused Beauchamp’s displeasure! That was the worst of it, she thought; if so very little made him angry, how could she hope to avoid incessantly irritating him? Yet he was not an ill-tempered man exactly—not so much ill-tempered as exacting and prejudiced.
“We have lived in such different worlds,” said Eugenia to herself, “that I suppose it is no wonder we do not at once understand each other’s feelings on all subjects. Perhaps in a little while I shall manage better, and, of course, before his sister little things may annoy him that would not otherwise do so, and it is nice of him to wish her to see everything about me in the best light. If only he had not gone away angry with me!”
Thus she tried to soften and excuse what had so pained her. She would not, even to herself, allow that she felt more than a passing disappointment; that Beauchamp himself was beginning to reveal a character less admirable, less lofty than her ideal, she was as yet far from owning. The triviality, and vulgarity even, of some of the prejudices and apprehensions he had avowed, she instinctively refrained from dwelling upon. She could not have understood them had she done so, for the excuses for her husband’s smallnesses—the struggling, anomalous circumstances in which the childhood and youth of the brother and sister had been spent, the triumph of Gertrude’s successful marriage and her determination that Beauchamp’s career should be a brilliant one—all these were unknown to Eugenia. She saw that he was considerably under his sister’s influence, much more so, indeed, than she had expected; but she attributed it to habit and association, knowing little of the greatness of the obligations which he owed to Mrs Eyrecourt.
And even had the whole history been related to her, all the details explained, it would have been of little service. Eugenia was far from the stage of being able to pity or judge leniently where she could not sympathise; and, indeed, any suggestion that there were deficiencies in her husband’s nature for which she must learn to “make allowance” she would still, at this time, have repelled with indignation; the hard lesson before her could be learnt by herself alone, and the hardest part would be that of recognising the good yet remaining in her lot, though the manner and form of it should be utterly different from the imagined bliss of her girlish dreams.
She was walking slowly up and down the terrace on the south side of the house—the same terrace which had been the scene of Roma’s unintentional eavesdropping—when a voice from behind startled her, a small, eager, childish voice.