So poor Gertrude sat there, looking and feeling very much bored and rather indignant with Roma for the mischievous glances of pity she now and then bestowed upon her. At last, however, the door opened to admit the two gentlemen, whose late arrival had prolonged “the stupid quarter-of-an-hour,” and with, a sensation of relief Mrs Eyrecourt turned to reply to Mr Christian Montmorris’s greeting, feeling that she had had quite enough of his better-half for some time to come.
Volume One – Chapter Five.
Mutual Friends
“Que serait la vie sans espérance? Qu’ils le disent ceux qui n’ont plus rien à espérer ici bas.”
L’Homme de Quarante Ans.
“Alas! alas! Hope is not prophecy.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting – quite against my habit, I assure you. But trains, you see, are worse than time and tide – they not only wait for no one, they very often make people wait for them,” said the lawyer, as he shook bands cordially with his mother’s guests. “And how is Master Quintin?” he inquired, turning again to Mrs Eyrecourt. “He got no cold bath this morning, I hope? I heard he was going skating with my youngsters.”
Gertrude was much more at home in skating and cricket than in babies and eye-teeth, and Quin was always a congenial subject; so seeing her released from her purgatory, Roma looked about in search of entertainment for herself. Old Mrs Montmorris was now busy talking to some one on her other side; it was the new arrival. Roma glanced up at him, he was standing besides his hostess listening attentively to her little soft, uninteresting remarks. He was quite a young man, at which Roma felt surprised; for with the curious impatience of suspense, with which a lively imagination, even on commonplace and not specially interesting details, takes precedence of knowledge, she had unconsciously pictured this friend of the lawyer’s as middle-aged, if not elderly. Her surprise made her examine him more particularly. He was not exactly what she was accustomed to consider good-looking, though tall and powerfully made without being awkward or clumsy. His hair, though dark, was distinctly brown, not black, and he somehow gave the impression of being naturally a fair-complexioned man, though at present so tanned by exposure to sun and air, that one could but guess at his normal colouring. From where she sat, Roma could not see much of his eyes: she was wondering if they were brown or blue – when a general movement, told her that dinner was announced.
Old Mr Montmorris toddled off with Gertrude on his arm, Roma was preparing to follow her with Mr Christian Montmorris, whom she saw bearing down in her direction, when his mother turned towards her with an apologetic little smile.
“You will excuse me, my dear, I am sure, for keeping my son to myself. I am very proud of having my boy’s arm into the dining-room when he is here – which is not so often as I should like.”
Miss Eyrecourt was perfectly resigned, and expressed her feelings to this effect in suitable language. She looked round for Miss Cecilia and Miss Bessie, with whom she supposed she was to bring up the rear in good-little-girl fashion, but this she found was by no means in accordance with the Montmorris ideas of etiquette.
“Miss Eyrecourt,” said the lawyer, recalling her truant attention, “will you allow me to introduce my friend Mr Thurston to you?”
So on Mr Thurston’s arm Miss Eyrecourt gracefully sailed away, feeling herself, to tell the truth, much smaller than she ever remembered to have felt herself before; he was so very tall and held himself so uprightly, giving her, at this first introduction, a general impression of unbendingness.
“What can I find to talk to him about?” she said to herself, for already her instinct had told her he was not one of the order of men with whom she was never at a loss for conversation. “He has only just returned from India. He won’t know anything about the regular set of things one begins with. And I can see he is the sort of man that looks down upon women as inferior creatures, and hasn’t tact or breeding enough to hide it. How I wish I could turn him into Beauchamp just till dinner is over. How different it would be! Only the night before last, I was sitting beside him at the Dalrymples’! Poor Beauchamp – he is certainly very nice to talk to and laugh with!”
She gave a little sigh, quite unconscious that it was audible, till looking up, she found that Mr Thurston was observing her with, a slight smile on his face. She blushed – a weakness her four-and-twenty years were not often guilty of. “Hateful man!” she said to herself. Yet she could not help glancing at him again, unconcernedly as it were, just to show him she was above feeling annoyed by his rudeness. She found out what colour his eyes were now: they were grey, deep-set and penetrating. Suddenly he surprised her by beginning to speak.
“I am sorry I smiled just now,” he said – his voice was clear and decisive in tone – “I saw you did not like it. But I really could not help it. Your sigh was so very melancholy.”
“I hardly see that that is any excuse for your smiling,” she replied, rather stiffly.
“Perhaps not. I daresay it was quite inexcusable,” he said, quietly. “I fear I am a very uncivilised being altogether,” he went on. “For the last three years I have been living in an out-of-the-way part of India, where I seldom saw any Europeans but those immediately connected with my work, and you would hardly believe how strange it seems to me to be among cultivated, refined people again.”
“Then you are not in the army?” asked Miss Eyrecourt.
“Oh, no, I am an engineer; but only a civil one,” he replied. Roma looked as if she hardly understood him. “I don’t suppose you know much of my sort of work, or my part of the country,” he went on. “The south knows less of the north, in some ways, than the north of the south. It strikes one very forcibly when one returns home to little England, after being on the other side of the world. Still, it is natural you shouldn’t know much of the north; for though we come south for variety and recreation, we cannot expect you to find pleasure in visiting such places as the Black Country or the manufacturing districts.”
“You are taking a great deal for granted, I think,” said Roma, becoming interested. “And why should you not give credit for sometimes having other motives than pleasure to – ” “other classes besides your own,” she was going to have added, but the words struck her as ill-bred. “I mean to say,” she went on, choosing her words with difficulty, a very unusual state of things for her – “don’t you think it possible people – an idle person, like me, we will say – ever do anything or go anywhere with any other motive than pleasure or amusement? I think it a great mistake to take up those wholesale notions. As it happens, I do know something of the north – yes, of the north, in your sense of the word,” for she fancied he looked incredulous. “I only left Wareborough yesterday morning.” (“I needn’t tell you what took me up there,” she added to herself, smiling as she remembered how she had teased Beauchamp by her exaggerated account of the motives of her visit to Deepthorne).
“Wareborough!” exclaimed Mr Thurston. Roma was amused by his evident surprise. “How very odd! Wareborough is my home. I hope to be there again by Wednesday or Thursday. But that can’t interest you,” he went on, looking a little ashamed of his own eagerness; “and of course it isn’t really odd. People must be travelling between Wareborough and Brighton every day. One gets in the way of exaggerating trifles of the kind absurdly when one has lived some time so completely out of the world as I have done. It struck me as such a curious little coincidence, for I think you are the first lady I have had any conversation with since I landed. I came by long sea too, for the sake of an invalid friend, so my chances of re-civilising myself have been very small, so far.”
“It was an odd little coincidence,” replied Roma, good-humouredly. “But after all, you know,” she added, “the world is very small.”
He hardly caught the sense of her remark.
“In one sense, I suppose it is,” he said, slowly; “but in another – all, no, Miss Eyrecourt, you are fortunate if you have never felt how dreadfully big the world is! It used to seem a perfectly frightful way off from everything – everybody I cared for, out there sometimes.”
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