But Rachel, seeing which way the wind blew, had prudently fled. There was nothing for it but to go up to Eugenia’s room, and find out for himself the reason of all this disturbance.
Ten minutes later, the bell of Mrs Chancellor’s dressing-room rang sharply, and a message came down to Miss Eyrecourt, requesting her to go upstairs at once.
When Roma entered the room, there stood the husband and wife, the former looking out of the window, tapping his boots impatiently with the riding whip still in his hand; the latter by the side of a half-filled trunk, her face white and miserable, but with a gleam in her eyes which Roma had never seen there before.
“Roma,” she cried, as Miss Eyrecourt came in, with a passionate, appealing despair in her voice, “Roma, he won’t let me go! And my father longing so for me. Roma, speak to him.”
“Roma knows better,” said Beauchamp, with a hard little laugh. “Let you go? I should think not. You must be completely insane to think of such a thing. You who have been making yourself out too much of an invalid to go anywhere—why, you refused Lady Vaughan for this very evening!—to think of setting off on a three or four hours’ journey with a perfect stranger—a stranger to me at least, whom your father sends off in this helter-skelter fashion to fetch you, because he is not very well and nervous and fanciful. I never heard such a thing in my life! I can’t understand your complete indifference to appearances in the first place.”
Eugenia said not a word. Roma, knowing of old the mood which Beauchamp was in, controlled her indignation, though it was not very easy to do so.
“Perhaps you will come downstairs, and hear the whole particulars from Mr Thurston himself,” she said to Captain Chancellor, coldly. He took the hint, and followed her out of the room. Outside, on the landing, she turned upon him. “Do not think I am going to interfere,” she said quickly. “I know it would be useless. I don’t take upon myself to say that she should go, that she is well enough—though, to my thinking, the distress and disappointment will be worse for her than the journey—but in the thing itself you may be right. But this I do say, that the way you have done it, your manner to her, is simply,” she hesitated a moment, “brutal,” she added, with contemptuous distinctness. “Bringing in the vulgar question of ‘appearances’ at such a time!”
This was her parting shot. She turned and left him, and Beauchamp, without having replied to her by word or glance, stalked away downstairs to Mr Thurston.
He was very civil to Gerald, so civil as to make the new-comer feel that he was looked upon as a total stranger; so full of acknowledgments of the great trouble Mr Thurston had given himself, as to suggest that the qualification “unnecessary” was in his thoughts all the time. But Gerald did not care enough for the man to be annoyed or in any way affected by his opinion; he only cared for the errand he had come upon, and his disappointment was great when he found it was to be a fruitless one. He did not attempt to hide it.
“I am exceedingly sorry that Mrs Chancellor cannot return with me,” he said; “it is very unfortunate.”