MRS. ARTHUR.

                                  BY

                            MRS. OLIPHANT,

                               AUTHOR OF

                   “The Chronicles of Carlingford,”

                                &c. &c.


             “Fie, fie! unknit that threat’ning, unkind brow,
             And dart not scornful glances from those eyes.

                    *       *       *       *       *

             A woman mov’d is like a fountain troubled.”
                             TAMING OF THE SHREW.

                 “He breathed a sigh, and toasted Nancy!”
                                         DIBDIN.

                           IN THREE VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.

                                LONDON:
                    HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
                     13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

                                 1877.

                        _All rights reserved._




                             MRS. ARTHUR.




CHAPTER I.


“Is Mr. Curtis here?” said a voice at the door.

The door was so near the sitting-room that every demand made there was
easily heard, and even answered from within; and, indeed, Mrs. Bates was
in the habit of calling out an answer when it happened to be beyond the
powers of the daughter or small servant who opened. But this question
was one about which there was no difficulty. It was followed by a hearty
laugh from the assembled family.

“I should think he was--rather!” said Charley Bates, the son; and “Ask
Nancy,” said Matilda, the eldest daughter.

There was a considerable number of people in the little parlour--to wit,
Mr. Bates in his big chair on one side of the fire, sipping
rum-and-water, and reading a newspaper which was soft and crumpled with
the usage of the day at the nearest public-house; and Mrs. Bates on the
other, seated between the fireplace and the table, mending the stockings
of the family. Charley was reading an old yellow novel behind his
mother, and Matilda was making her winter bonnet with a quantity of
materials in a large piece of paper on the table, which was covered with
a red and green cloth. It was October, and not cold, but there was a
fire, and a branched gas pendant with two lights, shed heat as well as
light into the close little room. There was another daughter, Sarah
Jane, who was coming and going about the table, now and then making
incursions into the kitchen; and behind backs in the corner, on a black
haircloth sofa against the wall, were seated the pair of lovers. No one
threw any veil of doubt on the fact that they were a pair of lovers--nor
did their present aspect make this at all uncertain. They were seated
close together, talking in whispers; one of her hands clasped in his,
his arm, to all appearance, round her waist. Matilda screened them a
little, having her back turned towards them, which gave, or might have
given, a sense of remoteness to the pair, and justified their too
evident courtship. Otherwise they were in full light, the gas blazing
upon them; and it was scarcely possible to whisper an endearment which
was not audible. _She_ was a pretty girl, with brown hair, brown eyes,
and a pretty complexion, in a somewhat showy dress, cut very much in
“the fashion,” yet looking not at all out of place in the warm, crowded,
stuffy parlour, full of hot air and gas, and the fumes of rum-and-water.
She was Mrs. Bates’ second daughter, called Nancy, but preferring to be
called Anna, and engaged to a young gentleman who was a pupil of Mr.
Eagle the well-known “coach,” and had been for a year at Underhayes. He
had been coming after Nancy Bates all that time, and at present they
were engaged, and made love in the family parlour now that it was too
cold to take long walks. Mr. Curtis preferred the walk, but Nancy liked
the haircloth sofa. She was a good girl, and fond of her family, and she
liked them to share her happiness. The family party were all moderately
like each other, harmonious and happy, suiting their surroundings. There
seemed nothing out of place among them, the bonnet-making, or the old
yellow novel, or even the rum-and-water. But there was one great
incongruity in the room, and that was the hero, the young lover, who
certainly had no business there. He was dressed in an English
gentleman’s easy morning suit, a dress in which there is less apparent
pretension than any in the world perhaps, but which shows very
distinctly the condition of the wearer. His presence in the room put
the whole place out of harmony; it made the stuffy comfort look squalid
and mean; it rebuked the family ease and cheerfulness, the absence of
all disguise, the frank family union. In his person another element came
in, a something higher, which made all the rest more low. He was not the
sort of person to sit with his arm round his _fiancée_ in public, within
reach of papa’s rum, and mamma’s joke. All the rest went perfectly well
together; but he put everything in the wrong.

And the effect which he himself produced to every beholder, or would
have produced had there been any beholders, was wrought upon himself by
the sound of this voice at the door. It was a voice of modulation and
tone different from anything here. Even his Nancy, though he was so much
in love with her, young Curtis felt suddenly jarred and put out of tune
by it; he dropped her hand instinctively, and got up confused, a sudden
flush coming over his face.

“It is some one for me,” he said, in sudden embarrassment. And again the
family laughed more loudly than before.

“Any child could tell that, seeing as he’s just asked for you,” said
Mrs. Bates; “and I’m sure any friend of yours is welcome. Find a chair
for him, girls, if there is any chair free of your falals--and show him
in, Sarah Jane.”

“I think not; if you will excuse me I’ll go to him,” said the young man,
hastily. “I might bring him--if you are so kind--another time.”

“There’s no time so good as now,” said Mrs. Bates. “Don’t be shy, don’t
be shy, my dear. You don’t like him to find you with Nancy; but, bless
my soul, the time won’t be long that anyone will see you without
Nancy--”

“Oh,” said Nancy herself, saucily, “if he’s ashamed of _me_--”

“Ashamed of you, darling! as if that was possible,” said the young man,
stooping to whisper to her; “but it is a man, a college friend--I must
go.”

While he stood thus explaining, with an anxious face, and his Nancy
pouted and tossed her pretty head, the stranger suddenly appeared at the
open door.

“This way, this way!” Sarah Jane had cried, delighted by the advent of
another gentleman, and already wondering why Nancy should have all the
luck, and whether one wedding might not bring another.

The new-comer was tall; he was short-sighted, with a pucker on his
forehead, and a glass in his eye. He stood in the door, and hazily
regarded the scene, not penetrating it, nor finding out his friend for
the moment; but gazing somewhat vaguely, dazzled besides by the sudden
light, into the small crowded space and the group of strange faces.

“Ah, there you are, Curtis,” he said at last, with a gleam of
recognition; then turned to Mrs. Bates with an apology. “I hope you
will forgive such an intrusion. I had a commission to Curtis, and I did
not understand--I did not know--”

“Come in, Sir, come in,” said Mrs. Bates; “don’t think of
apologies--we’re very glad to see you. Sit you down, Sir, and if you’ve
just come off a journey, say what you would like, and it shall be got
for you--a drop of beer, or a cup of tea, or a glass with my good
gentleman. You see he’s making himself comfortable. And supper’s coming
in about an hour. You can hurry it up a bit, Sarah Jane,” cried the
hospitable mother, “if the gentleman has just come by the train.”

“Thank you,” said the stranger, sitting down on the chair that had been
cleared for him; “nothing to eat or to drink, thanks--you are too kind;
but I may wait till Curtis is ready. I have got something for you,
Arthur,” he said, turning again to his friend.

“Oh, have you?” said Curtis, dropping back upon the sofa, beside his
Nancy, as there was nothing else to be done; but he did not take her
hand again, or resume his former position. He sat very stiff and bolt
upright, withdrawn from her a little; but young men and young women do
not sit together behind backs for nothing, notwithstanding the gaslight;
and his air of withdrawal took an aspect ridiculously prudish, and
called attention. The family Bates looked curiously at the stranger, and
he looked curiously at them. Neither was much acquainted with the
_genre_ of the other, and on both sides there was a half-hostile
interest which quickened curiosity. But Matilda and Sarah Jane were not
hostile. Their curiosity was warm with benevolence. If Nancy had done so
well for herself, why not they too? He had dropped into their hands like
a new prey. Their eyes brightened, the energy of enterprise came into
their faces. A gentleman is a fine thing to girls of their condition,
far finer in promise than in reality. The appearance of a second quarry
of this kind turned their heads. Why should it not fall to one of them?

“You must have found it cold travelling, Sir,” said Matilda, wrapping up
her bonnet in the paper. “October nights get chilly, don’t they? and
Underhayes is a miserable little place if you have come from town.”

“I have come from the country,” said the stranger, with his
short-sighted stare. He was slightly annoyed, to tell the truth, to hear
it so clearly set down that he must have come from town. Did he look
like a man to come from town in October?--not thinking that town meant
everything that was splendid in Matilda’s eyes.

“Chilly!” cried Sarah Jane, eager to recommend herself. “I’m sure the
gentleman thinks this room a deal too hot. Shouldn’t you say so, Sir? I
can’t abide it; it gives me such a headache.”

“Come, girls, you needn’t quarrel,” said Mrs. Bates, in her round,
good-humoured voice. “We’ll allow you your different ways of thinking.
Your papa likes a warm fireside, don’t you, Bates? But I suppose the
gentleman comes straight from the beauty and fashion, as it says in the
newspapers.”

“Talking of the newspapers, Sir,” said Mr. Bates, putting down his,
“what do you think of the present crisis? What’s things coming to?
There’s Rooshia threatening in the East, and as for your Khedivys and
that sort, I don’t believe in them. We’ll all be in a precious hobble if
we don’t look out, as far as I can see.”

“There, there, Bates, none of your politics,” cried his wife; “once
begin that, and nobody can get in a word--and the gentleman is just off
a journey.”

Young Curtis sat uneasily while all this went on, like a dog in leash,
watching his opportunity to start. The sudden insight which had come to
him with the entrance of his friend upon this scene was strange, and
very painful. He was very much in love, poor young fellow, and when a
man is in love, it is curious how easily he can accept the circumstances
of his beloved and find them natural. Matilda and Sarah Jane had only
amused him before, as, indeed, they amused the new-comer now; but the
family changed its aspect entirely as the young man, who was almost a
member of it, realized to himself how it must appear to his friend, and
saw the whole scene, as it were, through Durant’s eyes. Durant’s eyes,
however, staring vaguely upon this slowly comprehended new world, did
not see half so clearly or so sharply as Arthur’s saw through them. He
gave double force and meaning to the other’s observations, and beheld
through him many things which the other did not see. Fortunately--and
how fortunate that was Arthur did not venture to say to himself--Nancy,
who was affronted, did not open her mouth. He adored her, and yet he was
glad she was affronted, notwithstanding the pain it gave him. He could
not bear to vex or alienate her for a moment, and yet he was thankful
not to be obliged to see her too with his friend’s eyes. But he saw all
the rest, and the _ensemble_ of the room, the village flirt Sarah Jane,
and the lout Charley, and Mr. Bates with his slippers, and felt how
stuffy it was, and the smell of the rum. His endurance had come to a
climax when Mr. Bates began to talk a little thickly of politics. Once
more he sprang to his feet.

“I know Durant has something to say to me,” he cried. “I think I must
ask you to excuse me to-night, Mrs. Bates. Everything must give way to
business.”

“Lord bless you, my dear, not of an evening,” said the genial woman.
“Don’t ye go. Supper’s coming. You know all our ways, and I daresay your
friend--Mr. Durant is it? and how do you do, Mr. Durant, now I know
you?--I daresay he’ll put up with us for your sake. Go you and hurry
the supper, Sarah Jane.”

“We’ll have to go, really,” said poor Arthur; and he stooped to his
sullen love and whispered, “Don’t be angry. He comes from my father.
Though I can’t bear to leave you, darling, I must hear what my father
says.”

“Oh, indeed, your father!” said Nancy. “I see what it is; it is just
what I have always told you. You’re ashamed of me and my folks, as soon
as you get hold of one of your fine friends.”

“Durant is not a fine friend, he is like my brother--he will be your
friend too,” whispered the young man in an agony.

But Nancy only pouted the more.

“I don’t want such friends. I have got my father and my brother to see
to me. You needn’t bring any of your fine gentlemen here.”

Notwithstanding, however, the blandishments of Sarah Jane and Matilda,
the stranger had risen too. He was much taller, and had a much finer
figure than Arthur, the sisters thought, and he smiled, though his look
was rather vague, staring as if he did not see them.

“You are very kind,” he said, holding out his hand to Mrs. Bates, who
hastened up to her feet too, to shake it with great cordiality. “I hope
you will kindly repeat your invitation for another day, and that Arthur
will bring me back, when I can take advantage of your hospitality; but I
must not come among you under false pretences,” he added, laughing, “for
I know nothing about the rank and fashion--that is in Arthur’s way
rather than mine.”

“Oh, Sir,” said Mrs. Bates, bowing, “we know what gentlemen means when
they speak in that high-minded way.”

This speech was such a triumph of genial mystification and confidence
that Durant stared still more, and hurried forth reduced to silence,
feeling himself unable in his present puzzled condition to cope with
such an intellect. Poor Arthur, trying to seize the hand of his beloved,
trying by piteous looks to move her from her sullen offence, lingered a
moment, but in vain.

“Never mind her,” said Mrs. Bates, “she will come to when you are gone.
It’ll all come right to-morrow. Good night, and God bless you! I’ll see
to Nancy; and you needn’t keep the door open and me in a draught,” she
added querulously, “if you won’t stay.”

This quickened the steps of the lover, but though he was glad to get
outside, and to leave the glare and odors of that room--so long his
bower of bliss, so suddenly revealed to him in its real aspect--blown
away, it is impossible to say how miserable he was at such a parting
from the object of his love. It was she who opened the door for him on
other occasions, lingered with him in the fresh evening air, and said
“Good-night” a thousand times over, each time more sweetly than the
time before. So at least the foolish young fellow thought. But she had
not lifted her head even to give him a last glance; she had not said
“Good-night!” at all; she had dismissed him with a cloud upon her face.
How was he to bear it till to-morrow? and yet how glad he was that when
all of them had talked and betrayed themselves, she had never brought
herself under those painful disenchanting reflections from his friend’s
eyes.

“Good-night, Arthur,” said saucy Sarah Jane; “and good-night, Mr.
Durant. Be sure you bring him back to-morrow. You have promised mamma to
come back morrow and have supper with us. Good-night, Mr. Durant.”

Durant replied to the “Good-night” with a suppressed laugh, and walked
away into the darkness with Arthur following. Though the freshness of
the night was so great a relief after the heat indoors, it was not
genial, but penetrating and dull, with a shrewish touch, such as
October often has; and the skies were dull with no moon, nothing but
drifting clouds, and the street of the little town was not attractive.
They walked on in silence together for some time, the stranger being
occupied longer than was necessary in lighting his cigar; but he had no
sooner managed this successfully than he threw it away again.

“Come to the inn, Arthur,” he cried; “it’s comfortless work talking
here.”




CHAPTER II.


The inn at Underhayes was not much to speak of, but the parlour in which
the two friends talked was larger than Mrs. Bates’s parlour, where all
the family assembled and all their existence was past. Durant sat down
at the table to consume a simple dinner, a hastily-cooked chicken, which
he had ordered after his journey, and which was not so savoury as the
supper which Mrs. Bates would have given him; nor was it so cheerful a
meal. While he ate, Arthur Curtis paced back and forward at the other
end of the room, which, with its bare carpet and scant furniture, was
still less objectionable than the room they had left, the place where
all his happiness had lain so long. Perhaps if the shock had come sooner
some deliverance would have been possible, though at the cost of a
heartbreak; but nothing was possible now except to carry out his
engagement. Lewis Durant was both honourable and high-minded, yet he had
come with no better intention than to prevent his friend from keeping
his word, with very little regard for the word and none at all for the
happiness of the other person who was chiefly concerned. Happiness of a
girl who had entangled a young man so much above herself! what was that
to anybody? If she should be robbed of her happiness, why, was it not
all her own fault? But he had not been so injudicious yet as to broach
this idea; he was approaching it gradually, “acquiring information” on
the subject. Of course it was natural that any one so interested in
Arthur’s affairs as he was, should like to know all about it, and he had
seen Lady Curtis herself he did not conceal from his friend, and the
anxious mother was “in a great way.”

“I’d like to take up satisfactory news, old fellow,” he said; “both for
their sake and my own.”

“What do you call satisfactory news?” said Arthur. His mind was in an
unexampled commotion. His old life and his new had come into active
conflict, and he himself seemed to be the puppet between them. But in
the midst of the excitement caused by this bringing back of all the
habits of his former existence, the poor young fellow was miserable at
the thought of having come away from his love without a kind word,
without a look even, which could stand in the place of their usual
Good-night.

“Well--it is difficult to speak in plain words between you and them. Of
course you know that this can’t be expected to give them satisfaction,
Arthur. They have not been led on step by step as you have--”

“What do you mean?” he said hastily. “Do you mean the vulgar sort of
thing that every fool says, that _she_ has been leading me on?”

“I certainly did not say so,” said Durant. “I mean they have not been
used to all the circumstances like you. Your mind has become familiar by
degrees with this family--with everything about them.”

“Say it out plainly; don’t mind my feelings,” said the other bitterly,
“with the difference between Bates, the tax-collector’s daughter and Sir
John Curtis’s son. Well! and what is the difference? All on her side;
all in her favour. She getting nothing but additional beauty from all
her surroundings, I--doing not much honour to mine.”

“I was not making any personal comparison, Arthur,” said Durant,
cautiously; “I was saying only--what you will fully allow--that taken
just by themselves, without that knowledge of personal excellence which
I suppose you have;--that the difference of the circumstances--the
difference of manners--well! cannot but startle--shock perhaps--your
immediate friends.”

“That means that you are shocked and startled. Mr. Bates’s rum-and-water
was too much for your delicate nerves,” said Arthur, with a sneer; “and
yet you and I have seen worse things that we were not shocked at.”

“Arthur, do you want to quarrel with me? or can you suppose I should
have come here, if I had felt the slightest desire or intention to
quarrel with you?”

The young man did not answer for some minutes, then he threw himself
into a chair by the table and concealed his face from the other’s gaze,
supporting his head on his hands. “Don’t you think I know everything you
can say?” he cried; “it is plain enough. They are not like us--there are
things in them which even I don’t relish. Their ways are more homely,
their manners more simple than we have been used to.”

“If it was only simplicity,” said Durant, shrugging his shoulders, and
thinking of the blandishments of the Misses Matilda and Sarah Jane.

“Well,” said Arthur, with a sudden outbreak, “call it what you like,
what disagreeable name you please, and then I ask you what have you got
to say to _her_? It is she I am going to marry, not her family. What
have you got to say to HER? She is the person to be thought of. Old
Bates is an old tax-collector, and the mother a good-natured old woman,
and the sisters flirts if you please; I don’t say anything to the
contrary; but what have you to say against the girl herself? What of
HER?”

“Arthur! I have nothing to say; how could I? She sat behind backs, with
you to screen her. I saw that she was pretty--”

“You saw that she was like a lily growing among weeds; that she was like
a princess among the common people; that she behaved like the best-bred
of ladies. That is what you would say, if you allowed yourself to speak
the truth.”

“If I speak at all I shall certainly speak the truth,” said Durant, with
a sigh of impatience. To him as to everyone else, Nancy Bates had seemed
only an ordinary pretty girl; nothing more.

“Then speak!” said Arthur, “for if there is one assumption more
intolerable than another, it is that of saying nothing with the aim of
sparing your friend, as one who has nothing but what is disagreeable to
say.”

“You press me too hard,” said Durant, smiling. “What can I say after
what you have said? Arthur, this girl may be a Una for anything I can
tell--as you wish me to believe she is; but how can I know? I can see
she is pretty; but I don’t know her; how can I divine what her character
is? She may be everything you think; but all that _I_ can possibly make
out is that she is a pretty girl, with sense enough to hold her
tongue.”

Arthur grew red and grew pale as his friend spoke; his lip curled over
his teeth with a furious sneer, almost like the snarl of a dog.

“Don’t you think,” he said, with an enraged semblance of extreme
civility, “that when you are speaking of a lady who is about to become
my wife, you might speak of her by another name than that of ‘the
girl.’”

“By Jove you are too good!” said Durant, half angry, half amused, “what
should I say? You called her a girl yourself, and so she is; so are the
Princesses for that matter.”

“I call her many things which it would not become strangers to call
her,” said Arthur, “and I think, perhaps, on the whole, it would be
better taste not to favour me with your opinion on this subject. You
would not, I suppose, give me your frank estimate of my mother, for
instance, whatever it might be--and it is equally unnecessary of my
wife.”

“As you please,” said Durant, offended; and then there ensued a
temporary pause, during which the stranger, driven back upon that
occupation, munched a crust with indignant fervour, and Arthur sat
moodily by, holding his head in his hands. It was Durant who was the
first to recover himself. The man who stands in the suspicious position
of adviser and reprover, naturally does regain his temper sooner than
the person who is advised and reproved. He said in a conciliating tone,
“Why should we quarrel? I can have no right to disapprove of your
choice. I am not here as the agent of your family, Arthur, who might
have a right to interfere, but only as your friend. I can wish nothing
but what is for your good.”

“For my good!” the young man said through his teeth; then he, too,
smoothed himself down. “I don’t want to quarrel, Durant; but if my
mother thinks I am to be dictated to--or any friend of mine supposes he
can come to look surprise and criticism, even if he does not say
anything----”

“This is too much,” said Durant, laughing; “if you are going to put
meaning in my eyes which nature has denied to them, what can I say to
you? I who scarcely see anything, to look criticism is rather too strong
for a blind old mole like me!”

“Short-sighted people see a great deal more than they own,” said Arthur,
oracularly, “but I don’t want to quarrel.” And then again there was a
pause.

“Answer me one thing,” said Durant, re-opening the question after an
interval; “have you really made up your mind to marry this--lady? Is it
all settled? Is there room, or is there no room for anything I might
find to say?”

“What could you find to say?”

“That is not the question,” said Durant; “whatever it might be it is
unnecessary to say it if everything is settled. But, Arthur, if there
is still time--if I may still once, before it is too late, speak plainly
to you?”

“It is too late,” said Arthur hotly. “I am to be married in a fortnight;
I should be married to-morrow if I could. Supposing you had the finest
arguments in the world, and the best reasons against it, do you think I
would break her heart and my own for your reasonings? Yes, it _is_ all
settled, and nothing on earth can change it.”

He got up as he spoke, and marched about the room with an air of
defiance. Then he came back to where his friend was sitting, and sat
down on a corner of the table, swinging his legs.

“All the same,” he said, with a laugh of affectation and bravado, “I’d
like to hear what you have to say against it. It might be novel and
amusing, perhaps.”

“I have not the slightest desire to be amusing.”

“Oh, impressive then--that is as good or better; impressive, eloquent!
let us hear, Durant. I should like a specimen of the grand style you
keep for your most serious cases.”

“Yours is not one of them,” said Durant calmly; “yours is simple enough.
Don’t let us go farther, Arthur; we should come to blows again, and that
would not answer my purpose, nor yours either.”

“Then you refuse to tell me what of course you came here to say. Your
plea cannot be very powerful this time, nor your brief worth much,” said
Arthur, with a pretence at scorn which was full of aggravation. This
stirred his friend more than anything yet had done.

“My brief,” he said, “was not prepared as most briefs are. It seems to
me that you are not worthy even to hear of it. ‘Prove the culprit
guilty’ is what most briefs enjoin, but this one was ‘Prove him
innocent; let his very judges see him to be right, and not wrong.’ These
were my instructions; they do not much resemble your notion of them;
nor do they deserve to be received in this way.”

Arthur rose again from his seat, and walked about the room restless and
uncertain.

“Say what you have to say,” he said; “I will not interrupt you. Let me
hear it all.”

“I have already told you that, if everything is settled and your mind
made up, it would be foolish to go on at all. If there is any hope I
will speak. Arthur,” said Durant suddenly, “you are very
fastidious--very difficult to please in ordinary cases. Do you think you
will be able to live with the good people we have seen to-night?”

“Why should I live with them? they have nothing to do with it. A wife
comes with her husband. _They_, whatever they may be, are quite outside
the question. She is to be thought of, and she alone.”

“Have you ever reflected, Arthur, that if _she_--the lady--is as noble a
character as you think, she will not give up her own people for you or
anyone? I should not care to have a woman do that for me. I think she
would have good reason to judge me severely after, if I failed in
threefold duty to her. You should be father and mother in such a
case--and husband too.”

“And so I mean to be, so I am! What are father and mother to me now? I
have formed a tie which is beyond all these mechanical, understood ties,
in which there is no choice on the child’s part; and she will feel as I
do.”

“Women don’t always do that,” said Durant; “and I, for one, don’t like
them when they do. Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that she did
not, what should you do then? It is worth taking into consideration.”

“She would be sure to do what was best; and if that is all, we can
easily baffle your cross-examination, Durant. You are not good at
bullying witnesses,” said Arthur, his heart rising in spite of him.
“Ask me something more difficult than this.”

“You would have to live,” said the other. “I don’t think that is more
difficult, but you may not be of my opinion. How are you to live? upon
your allowance, which has never been too much for you alone?”

“Two spend no more than one,” said the catechumen, recovering his
spirits; “and she is not a spendthrift like me. She has been trained to
make a little go a great way. She will reduce my expenses instead of
increasing them.”

“Yet two eat more than one, to put it on the simplest ground.”

“Eat! that is like you, Durant. How little you know about it! Is it on
eating one spends one’s money? So far as that goes, you may say what you
please. There is nothing in _you_, old fellow, to frighten anyone. Come,
I forgive your objections to my happiness when I see how little you
have got to say.”

“You are sure then, entirely sure, that it is your happiness, Arthur?”
Durant rose, and put his hands on his friend’s shoulders, looking down
upon him with a face full of emotion. “You have been the nearest a
brother of anything I ever knew--brother, or sister, or both together.
Are you sure, boy, are you sure? Happiness is a sacred thing. I would
not touch it, I would not harm it. Are you sure?”

“As sure as that I love her, Durant.”

The elder man dropped his hands from the other’s shoulder, and turned
away with a sigh. Whether it was the half-inspired look which at that
moment came into Arthur’s face, or the resemblance of that face to
another, or the superiority over himself of this boy whom he had been
lecturing, and whom he had lectured so often--whatever it was, he turned
away, with something that made his sight more uncertain than ever,
rising in his eyes.

“Then I can’t say anything to you,” he said, in a voice tremulous with
feeling. “I can say nothing to you! I would not meddle with that, right
or wrong, were it to cost me mine.”

“Yours, old fellow?” cried Arthur, in the effusiveness of victory.
“Hurrah for love! It’s the thing worth living for. Are you in Arcadia
too?”

Durant did not make any answer. He went to the window, and looked out
upon the dark night and the lamps flaring; and then returned to his
chair. Whatever commotion there had been in his countenance, he had got
rid of it. Neither blush nor smile was on his serious face, nor any
further manifestation of sympathy. Arthur looked at him, and burst into
excited laughter.

“You don’t look much like a fortunate shepherd,” he said. “Love! that
was a bad guess; it was law I should have said--briefs and fees, and a
silk gown at the end; that’s what moves you.”

“Ay, ay,” said the other, vaguely; “that’s what it is. Mine is not a
corresponding case. You were always luckier, brighter than I, and I
don’t grudge it you, Arthur. Your happiness (if you are happy) will be
almost as good for me as my own. But I don’t think either of them very
probable just now,” he went on, suddenly changing his tone; “that is the
fact. I am not in a good way, and, my boy, you are in a bad way. I’ll
say it once for all. You are deceiving yourself. You are the last man in
the world to do this sort of thing. You will repent it, sooner or later.
Don’t look at me as if you thought me a fool, with that supercilious
face. It is you who are the fool. You are going to do what you will wish
undone all the days of your life.”

“Durant!” cried Arthur, furious, springing from his seat, and lifting
his arm as if for a blow.

His friend stood up facing him, folding his arms. His face had flushed
with a momentary gleam of passion while he spoke. Now it stilled and
paled again, and he stood in his superior strength, looking calmly at
the slighter being whom he had roused to momentary fury. The young man’s
clenched fist fell by his side. He turned away angry, but subdued.

“No man in the world but you dare speak so,” he said, “and even from you
I will never bear it again.”

“You shall not be required,” said Durant, sadly. “I have said, once for
all, what was in my mind. Now--I know you well enough--you’ll go and do
what you want to do, Arthur, and with all the more zest. And when you
have paid for your happiness, and got to the bottom of it, you will come
to me again.”

“I think you presume a little too much on our long friendship,” said
Arthur, seizing his hat. “Good night; there has been enough of this.
Things will be bad indeed with me, I promise you, if, after this speech
of yours, I ever come to you again.”

He rushed out of the room before the other could reply. Durant went to
the window and looked after him with a wistful subdued light of pity and
tenderness in his face.

“I wonder how long it will be first?” he said to himself.




CHAPTER III.


Lewis Durant was the _ami de l’enfance_ of Arthur Curtis. He had always
been a little bigger, a little stronger, a little steadier, as he was a
little older than his friend. He was not a young man of family like
Arthur; and Lady Curtis, who was philosophical in her tendencies, had
pointed many a social criticism by the fact, laughingly commented upon,
that her son’s fagmaster at Eton, and Mentor in life, was the grandson
of the great saddler with whom Sir John and his predecessors had dealt
for ages. The Durants, who were French by origin, had made a great deal
of money in that business, and one of the sons had been made a
clergyman. This was the father of Lewis, who had been brought up
accordingly in as much luxury as his friend; but unfortunate
speculations on his father’s part had changed all that by this time, and
the young man was now fighting his way at the Bar, with very little to
keep up the warfare on, and none of those supports of good connection
which help the aristocratic poor to keep their heads above water. He had
a home in the depths of one of the Midland counties, where the
Rector--once able to hold his own with the best of his country
neighbours, and considered a very good sort of man--had fallen to the
ordinary parsonic level, without any standing ground beyond it, and not
much right to high consideration on that ground. For the Rev. Mr. Durant
was not a very good clergyman. It had not been the object of his life to
become so; but rather to obliterate from all minds by his luxurious
living, his carriages, his conservatories, his expenditure in every
way, that he was the son of the well-known saddler; as it has been that
saddler’s object to advance his son in life and make him a member of the
upper class by making him a clergyman. Everybody was quite conscious of
this while he was rich; but, naturally, everybody became still more
conscious of it when he became poor; and as his wealth had been his
chief standing ground, and he had not much worth or goodness, and no
activity, to gain him credit in his parish, the downfall was pretty
nearly complete. And the woman whom he had married had been no more than
a fit partner for such a man; so that when Lewis, their only child,
became old enough to think of home as anything more than a jolly place
to spend holidays in, the boy’s refined and delicate mind had suffered a
severe shock. How it was that he happened to possess a refined and
delicate mind is a totally different question, and one into which we
need not inquire; but the effect upon him of the ostentatious, showy,
lavish, and lazy wealth in the first instance, and of the useless,
slovenly, languid poverty which followed, was remarkable enough. A great
many things go by contraries in this perverse world, and nothing more
commonly than the habits of parents and children. In Scotland, it has
passed into a proverb that an active mother has an indolent daughter.
The insinuating and bland courtier has to struggle against the
abruptness or loutishness of his son, and even virtue has very often
moral weakness, if not worse, for its next descendant. In Lewis Durant’s
case the contradiction was a happy one. Disgusted by the aimless leisure
and nothingness of the paternal life, the young man flung himself into
work with a zeal and passion seldom to be found. He had no family
friends in the class he had been brought up in, and his personal friends
were of his own standing, themselves too young and inexperienced to help
others; but he had not cared for this; he had flung himself into the
work of his profession--the Bar--for which he had been trained as his
father had been trained for the Church, as the profession of a
gentleman, a trade not incompatible with the possession of a great deal
of money, and not requiring to be kept up by the happy man who was not
obliged to work for his bread. Perhaps the energy of the old saddler had
got into the veins of Lewis, transmuted into some kind of potable gold,
some elixir of force and life. If so, it had clearly “suffered a
sea-change into something rich and strange,” for there was no greed of
gold, no thirst for wealth in the young man’s mind. On the contrary, if
he had not known forcibly the many good things that money can do, and
which the absence of money prevents from getting done, Lewis would have
hated money, so associated was it with everything that had most galled
and humbled him. But money is not a thing to be scorned, and he had too
much sense and too much honesty to feign. He worked with a
concentration of force and steady effort which was intensified every
time he visited the aimlessness of his home. He had come from that home
now, and had left it, as he always did, impatient of rest, eager to
plunge again into the active warfare of life, to strain muscle and
sinew, and all the powers of mind and frame.

This was the man, who since they were boys, had been Arthur Curtis’s
chief friend. He himself was the only son of Sir John, a true rural
potentate, a man whose life was full of stolid dignity and duty, made
steady, and in a dull matter of fact manner, noble, by the proud sense
of obligation to his country, his son, and his dependents, such as long
descent and elevated position sometimes give. Sir John Curtis might
sometimes be ridiculous, but he was always respectable, making an aim at
his duty in a large, conscientious, stupid way, in which there was a
certain obtuse grandeur. He carried this into the smallest detail of
his life, and the result was, that he was held by most people to be
pompous, and admired by some as the chief source of serious comedy in
his neighbourhood. But his life was a blurred version, surrounded by all
kinds of imperfections of a noble ideal--a thing not always perceived by
his wife and his son, to whom however Sir John’s deficiencies, on the
other hand, were very plain. And Arthur, for the time at least, was
almost as contradictory of his father as Lewis was. He was light-minded
and heedless, idle, foolish yet clever, generous yet selfish; the kind
of young man who is always in scrapes, often in the wrong, yet rarely,
or never, unbeloved. He had been idle at the University, and had not
taken his degree--then had gone home for a time and had done nothing.
And now this last and most serious scrape of all had been brought on, as
it were, by the most virtuous resolution of his life. It was his
mother’s earnest desire that he should enter public life, in one way or
other; and Arthur himself had been dazzled by the chances of diplomacy,
an opening into which seemed before him, and had come now, in a sudden
fit of industry and virtue, to see if, by the help of a noted “coach,”
he could “pull through” his examinations, and get the University stamp,
though late, impressed upon him. There had been no particular reason why
he had not achieved that University stamp before. He was a tolerable
scholar, and had meant honours--but had not been industrious enough to
attain them, and had thrown up the milder standard in disgust. Thus he
had come to Underhayes, intending better than, perhaps, he had ever
steadfastly intended in his life; and lo! Nancy Bates was the result.

All this was in Durant’s mind, as, after a troubled night, he looked out
of his inn window in the morning upon a mellow sunshiny morning of true
October weather, a warm yellow haze in the air, which melted into the
ripe foliage below, and the mottled clouds above. The little town was
embosomed in trees. It was a little more than a village, a little less
than a town; and, perhaps, had become more of a suburb than either,
being within the radius of London, and coming nearer to that increasing
centre every day. The metropolis and the village had been long putting
forth arms of approach towards each other, and Underhayes had grown
gradually larger, and nearer year by year. There was still a village
green in the centre of the place; but the old houses had put on new
fronts, and got enlargements of various kinds, and had become the homes
of London people who went to town every morning, instead of the poorish,
but very genteel persons who used to inhabit them. This was a great gain
to the place, and made it swell and grow bigger and bigger; but at the
same time it was a loss and forfeiture of all the originality, and much
of the quiet beauty, and no little of the genial and graceful comfort
that had once dwelt around the green. Everybody was richer, larger,
vainer; and gorgeous entertainments were given, at which there was much
more expenditure but less friendliness than of old. The city men
considered themselves a great deal more intelligent, as they certainly
were more knowing, than the older inhabitants, the retired captains and
colonels, the widows and old maids, and solitary couples, who were now
dying out in the too active air of the place. But these relics of olden
days, at least, returned their scorn with interest, if they could not
compete with them in other ways. Half way between these two sections of
the community stood Mr. Eagles, the great “coach,” whose fame was in all
the schools and all the services. He lived in an old-fashioned house
with an old gate, the posts of which were surmounted by two great stone
balls, and which opened upon a bit of real avenue, and enclosed real
grounds, something more than a garden. It was a genuine old house, in
which a retired Cabinet Minister had once lived. It was true he had
built additions to it, but they were done in good taste, and strict
submission to the original style of the house, which was taken as a kind
of homage to the antique and Conservative class, by that class itself.
He had a large house, and he took pupils; but yet it was nothing like a
school, for the young men did not live with him--no one but young Mr.
Curtis, who was not to call a pupil, who was “reading” for his degree,
and who was a young man of excellent family and an acquisition to any
society. Arthur indeed, in his own person, was one of the chief
conciliatory circumstances which made the old inhabitants on the Green
tolerate and receive Mr. Eagles, whom the new inhabitants looked upon
with respect as a man who had made his way.

The little inn in which Durant had passed the night was opposite the
gateway with the stone balls. Underhayes was not enough of a place to
have a good inn. People who frequented inns had no object in going
there. It was not far enough from London, nor near enough; and there
were no exceptional attractions as in Kew or Richmond. Therefore, amid
all the changes and improvements, the Red Lion was just what it had
always been, a homely place with a sign-board standing out upon the edge
of the Green, and a bench, shaded by trees, where its homely customers
could sit and drink their beer. And on the other side of the Green stood
Mr. Eagle’s gate, breaking the high wall in which his house and its
grounds were enclosed, and from whence there burst, in autumn richness
of colour, over the wall, a rich border of trees.

Durant got up in much doubt and discomfort of mind after a restless
night. He went out into the soft breezy air, which was warm, yet not
quite free of the crispness of a first threatening of frost. Spruce men
were passing on all sides, well brushed and neat, with daintily rolled
umbrellas, with light great-coats, sometimes with a book, or a bundle of
letters to read in the train, going to business--all walking with air
alert that spoke of a definite aim, and the pre-occupation of something
to do--which did not interfere, however, with a genial readiness to
hear, or report the last piece of gossip. Many of them had choice
flowers in their coats, a touch of the poetry which means luxury rather
than taste, with which to sweeten the office and show the skill of their
respective gardeners. All this was new to Durant, who knew nothing about
the ways of the city, though he acknowledged with respect the air of
work and serious occupation, which called forth his sympathy, though it
did not take the form with which he was acquainted. He watched them
passing, going to the train; and then was conscious of the lull and
desertion of the Green:--the momentary pause, half of regret, half of
relief, at the departure of all this activity, and then the rising of
the second more tranquil wave of movement, the tradespeople’s carts and
messengers, the butcher and baker setting out on their rounds. How many
little worlds like this, each complete in its own conceit, were rushing
on and on, unconscious each of its neighbour! But he certainly had no
time for those _banales_ reflections, occupied as he was with painful
considerations as to whether he could still do anything, or say anything
to justify his mission here. What could he do or say? Arthur had left
him in high dudgeon--offended apparently beyond redemption. He was not
so much disturbed by this as he might have been; for he knew Arthur, and
that it was not in his nature to quarrel permanently, however angry he
might be for the moment. But the question was, whether he could do
anything independent of Arthur, upon whom he did not feel that his
influence for the present would be very weighty? He thought, with a
smile, of the recorded proceedings in a similar case, the steps taken by
the protectors of another Arthur--for where but in fiction can such
difficulties find their readiest parallel? But Durant had no standing
ground on which to emulate the masterly tactics of Major Pendennis,
though the example occurred to him seriously. No--the position of Arthur
Curtis had not been exaggerated, nor was there any glamour of false
light about the subject which he could dispel. He was very much puzzled,
very doubtful and anxious. He could not leave the place without
attempting something more--but what was he to do?

His thoughts were thus occupied when he saw the gates opposite to him
open hastily and some one come out--a small resolute man, with
peremptory short steps and a dogmatical bearing. Durant felt at once
that this was Mr. Eagles, and that he was coming towards him; and there
was an air of vexation still more decided than his own on the brow of
the famous tamer and trainer of “men.” He came across the Green at a
rapid pace.

“Mr. Durant, I presume? My name is Eagles,” he said. “I hope you have
brought some light with you on a most difficult subject. What is to be
done with this boy?”

“You mean Curtis?”

“Yes, I mean Curtis. Nothing in the least like it has ever happened
among my pupils before. I feel my establishment disgraced by
it--_disgraced_, Mr. Durant. So utterly abominable an example! I don’t
as a rule take charge of men’s morals or conduct, and I heartily repent
having received this one into my house. It was a silly thing for me to
do; but a fellow who had been at a public school and at the university,
who would have supposed he could have turned out such a fool?”

“Pardon me,” said Durant, reddening, “he may have been foolish, but he
is not a fool.”

“Oh, if you stand up for him! I thought you had come here, as is the
part of a friend, to endeavour to convince him of his folly.”

“It is not so easy. Is it not the very essence of folly to think itself
wiser than all its advisers?” said Durant with a sigh. “May I ask you
how you knew I was here.”

“Oh, he told me; there is a certain frankness about him. And I saw you
perambulating the Green, which is a thing unusual at this hour, and
guessed it must be you. I wish him to go.”

“To go! Curtis?”

“Yes, Curtis. I wish him to go. He is (of course) doing no good here,
and the story has oozed out, equally of course. How can I tell that some
other idiot may not be moved by his example, and put himself at the feet
of a sister? I shall get a bad name. I!--because your friend is a
sentimental idiot.”

“Patience!” said Durant, laughing in spite of himself. “I don’t see how
any one can blame you.”

“Nor I; but they will,” said Mr. Eagles. “Of all foolish and
unreasonable persons on the face of the earth, parents are the most
unreasonable. You must take your man away.”

“But he is not my man. I have no authority over him.”

“You are his friend, and you seem to have some sense, and you know his
father. This is my ultimatum--you must take your man away. I have no
time to say any more. Good morning, Mr. Durant. I like promptitude, and
I expect you to act at once upon what I say.”




CHAPTER IV.


Durant felt that after this shock he needed a little quiet, to
re-establish him in his former thoughts. Mr. Eagles had assailed him
like a charge of cavalry. He laughed, yet he was shaken. It was not in
his power to take away his man; indeed he was in the most uncomfortable
position possible, supposed to hold an official position in respect to
Arthur, and, indeed, endowed with powers of remonstrance and reproof,
but with no authority--the most difficult of all circumstances. He could
neither take away his man, nor even oblige that man to hear reason, and
yet he was more or less responsible for him; and to crown all, his man
had quarrelled with him, and shaken off even the ties of affection which
had hitherto bound them. This, it is true, did not affect him so much as
it might have done had he been less familiar with Arthur, who he knew
could never stand out or maintain the separation. To be sure, Arthur,
backed up by a new family, and with the possible evil animus of “a set
of women” added to his personal offence, was a person as yet unknown to
his friend; and though Durant was kind, and did not think evil of
others, yet he was not able to divest himself of the natural
prepossession against the “set of women” whose ideas henceforward must,
more or less, inspire Arthur. It is a compliment at least to the mental
power of women that this is the first thought that springs into anyone’s
head when a man makes, or is understood to be about to make, an
unsuitable marriage. The man may be wiser, cleverer, infinitely of more
importance than the woman as a moral being; but the whole inspiration
of his conduct is instantly believed to be _hers_. Durant had not a
notion what was the mental calibre of Nancy Bates. On the surface, of
course, it could only be taken for granted that a member of the educated
classes, a University man, would count for more than an untaught girl,
the daughter of ignorant people. But nobody thinks so, and Durant was
like everyone else. He began to wonder what sort of people the Bates’
were, and finally determined to go and see them according to the
invitation of last night. He might as well feign a little even, with
this admirable motive, and show himself friendly by way of being as
unfriendly as possible. He was not quite sure of the moral grandeur of
the proceeding. Take it all in all, indeed, the effort to seduce Arthur
from his allegiance before their very eyes, so to speak; to beguile him
into breaking his word and renouncing his plighted faith, was not, on
the surface, a highly moral proceeding. But yet Durant, when he came,
had been unable to conceive anything more desirable than this. If he
could only have succeeded in persuading Arthur to do it, it would not
only have left no weight on his conscience, but he would have felt that
he had done well. The girl herself! What of the girl herself? She was a
gambler, playing for high stakes. As for feeling on her part, who was at
all likely to take that into consideration? Certainly when Lewis Durant
did not (and it never occurred to him), it was extremely unlikely that
any one else would.

This thought, however, having got into his mind, he resolved on carrying
it out. He would go and see these people, and find out whether anything
could be done with them, and again (with a smile) he thought of Major
Pendennis and his most successful negotiations. These were the tactics
the Major adopted, and they had proved excellently adapted for the
purpose. The circumstances, however, were evidently different. Nothing
could be said of Arthur Curtis, unless his friend was prepared to lie in
his behalf, which would shake the confidence of the girl’s family in the
advantages of the marriage. He was Sir John’s only son, the estates were
entailed, there was but one sister to share even the personal property
of the family, and Lady Curtis was very well off in her own right.
Anything that could be said, would only make the Bates family more
certain that Nancy had done an admirable thing for herself, so admirable
that nothing should be allowed to stand in her way. Howsoever the
lover’s friends might object, nothing could be done to do away
altogether with the advantages of the marriage, and Durant felt that the
family would be fools indeed to allow any meddler like himself to affect
their action in the matter. Still people are fools now and then,
notwithstanding the strong hold of self-interest, and might be beguiled
into a false step, notwithstanding that every inducement was on the
other side. All this passed through Durant’s mind, and he did not blush
at the thought. It seemed to him quite justifiable, nay, laudable. It
was to save Arthur; if he could save Arthur by deceiving others, what
then? And as for the girl! Talk of hearts, if you please, in other
conditions of life, but the heart of a village girl who beguiles a
gentleman into falling in love with her! Honest, honourable, and true as
he was, Durant, strangely enough, had still no compunction there. Could
he have broken Arthur’s troth-plight like a wand, he would have been
delighted with himself.

He did not know his way very well, having threaded a number of small
dark streets, in the rain, the night before, led by the vague directions
of various officious guides; but he had a notion in which direction it
was, and he had abundance of time before him. He had not gone very far,
indeed, before he met an individual who might easily have guided him,
and whom he passed with a curious consciousness that here would be the
most vulnerable member of the family--no less a person than Mr. Bates
himself; a little stout man in a large white neckcloth, with a book in
his hand, and an appearance of ink spots about him, which betrayed the
existence of what is euphemistically called writing materials somewhere
about his person. The expression of his face was not less characteristic
of his profession. No softening atmosphere of rum was about him now. His
face was red, probably from those long continued, though moderate
evening indulgences, and his lips were pursed up and tight. He looked
the kind of man whose proceedings would be summary, who would take no
excuses, who would be rigid as fate in the punctuality of his
applications. Durant watched him furtively from the other side of the
street; and the conclusion to which he came was that Mr. Bates, though
obdurate with his district, would be incapable of standing an assault
from anyone of superior condition; and however arbitrary he might be to
a defaulter in rates, would not venture to withstand a Sir John, should
he demand the sacrifice of his Iphigenia. Should he approach him at
once, thus unprotected, in the middle of his duties, and frighten him
into a promise to shut his doors upon Arthur? For a moment Durant
hesitated; for, in the first place, he was not Sir John, and in the
second place, he distrusted the power of the tax-gatherer to contend
with “those women.” To subdue the women themselves was a more desperate
piece of work, but it would be more effectual were it done. With this
conclusion, he went on making his way in the direction which he supposed
the right one. He would not awaken curiosity by inquiring, and he had
abundant time, as it was still early. The forenoon was bright and
genial, but the place was very quiet. The men had been swept out of it
by the morning train. Except Mr. Bates, and the butchers and bakers,
and a stray parson of the High Church sect, who blocked out a large
piece of sunshine with his cassock and cloak, there was no one visible,
for it was too early for the female population to leave the business of
their houses. He was sure to find all the females of the Bates’ family,
he thought, in the stuffy little parlour, with probably some
preparations for dinner going on side by side with the bonnet making.
And the heroine, what might she be doing?--not seated on the sofa, nor
love-making he hoped; the bonnet was better than that. He made several
little pictures of her in his imagination, now standing upon her dignity
as engaged to a gentleman, putting on a multitude of little airs,
lording it over her sisters. No doubt this was how she would show her
success. He knew nothing whatever about Nancy, but as his object was to
destroy her hopes, he represented her to himself, unconsciously, as
affected by the very poorest version possible of these hopes. It was
natural. While, however, he was pursuing these thoughts and his way
together, he suddenly encountered, coming round a corner, one of the
sisters, whom he had met on the previous night. They came so suddenly
upon each other, that both paused, with the slight shock of almost
personal contact.

“Oh, Mr. Durant!” cried Sarah Jane.

She blushed “to be caught” in her cotton frock and shabby hat, running
out in the morning--not such was the apparel in which she would have
chosen to be seen by a gentleman--but Sarah Jane was a born flirt, and
even her frock did not subdue her. She would not lose the opportunity.
And to tell the truth, the cotton frock was much more becoming, had she
known it, than the cheap travesties of “the fashion” which she generally
wore.

“I am very glad to have met you, Miss Bates,” he said. “I was trying to
find the way to your house.”

“Oh, la!” said Sarah Jane, her eyes dancing. This was something to the
purpose, for why should he come to the house so soon but for _some
reason_? And it could not be Matilda. “But I ain’t Miss Bates, I’m the
youngest,” she said. “If you’ll just come two or three steps down this
street first, I’ll show you the way. I’ve got some ribbon to match--look
here, Matty’s new Sunday bonnet--but I shan’t be a moment, and I’ll show
you the way.”

Durant consented; it seemed to him the best chance he could have had of
acquiring information. He turned and walked down the street by the side
of the girl, who was half-wild with pride and pleasure. She could see
one or two faces glance out through shop-windows with surprise and envy.
To be seen walking along the street with such a gentleman-like-looking
man! There was nobody in Underhayes, except Arthur, who looked so
distinguished, not even Colonel Hooker, who was supposed by everybody
to be the glass of fashion. This was a delusion of fancy on Sarah Jane’s
part, for Durant’s appearance was nowise remarkable; but as life is but
thought, the idea was quite as good to her as if it had been true.

“I go all the messages,” said Sarah Jane. “I think it is very hard,
especially as the girl is there, doing next to nothing; but they say
they can’t trust the girl. Girls _are_ very queer; they are not to be
depended upon. I am sure, the trouble mamma has with ours!”

They had not kept a girl very long, and Sarah Jane was still a little
proud of it as of a sign of social distinction. She turned to her new
friend for sympathy, though reflecting, as she did so, that probably he
was living in lodgings, and had not in his own person either the pride
or the difficulty of managing a servant of any kind.

“Yes,” said Durant; “I agree with you, Miss Bates. Girls, so far as I
have seen them, are very queer.”

“Ain’t they?” cried Sarah Jane, relieved as to his circumstances, of
which a momentary doubt had crossed her mind; “never to be relied on,
and eating, ma says, as much as any two of us. So I go to the shops. I
don’t mind it, generally; and then if I didn’t go, who would? Matilda
has no eyes. She never sees when a thing doesn’t match; and Nancy, you
know, she’s always either with Arthur, or doing something for him. I
daresay he’s there now.”

“Is he there all day? That must be rather a bore for you.”

“That’s what I always say, Mr. Durant. I daresay Nancy may like it, for,
of course, he is her young man; but we can’t do a thing like we used,
with him always there. I wish to goodness gracious they were married.
Our parlour is a very nice room, but it’s too small to have these two
continually there. Mamma always will call it a parlour, though
drawing-room is so much better.”

“I prefer parlour.”

“Do you now? how funny! All our friends say drawing-room, though I
think, after all, they oughtn’t to, as we take our meals there. It is
such a trouble running in and out from one room to another, and keeping
up two fires. At least, I should not think it a trouble, but mamma does.
She likes her old-fashioned ways. Will Arthur be very rich, Mr. Durant,
and will he be a baronet when his father dies?”

“He will certainly be a baronet when his father dies.”

“What luck for Nancy!” cried Sarah Jane; “and she met him just by
chance, you know, as I might meet--anyone in the street.” She had
intended to say “you,” but paused in time. “When old Aunt Anna died, it
was her she left everything to, all her funny old dresses, and her
money. Perhaps you did not know that she was the rich one? People say
it is a shame, and that Matilda should have got it, as she is the
eldest; but Matilda isn’t so kind as Nancy. I should not have got any
good of it if Matilda had been the heiress. But fancy! when Nancy gets a
dress for herself, she always gets one for me too, so I am just as well
off as though the money were mine.”

“That is very kind of Miss Bates,” said Durant, not seeing how to find
his way through all this prattle, and a little impatient of the long
detour.

“She is not Miss Bates; she’s the second, next to me; and I think--if
you will not tell anyone--that when she marries Arthur, who is rich, she
will give up her legacy. I don’t know if it will be to me; I wish it
might be to me--not that I should keep it all to myself; but it is so
nice to have it all in one’s hands, and make the rest feel under
obligations to you. Don’t you think it is very nice? Especially Matilda.
I should like to say to her, ‘Matilda, dear, shouldn’t you like a new
bonnet?’ Oh, what fun it would be! and her looks between wanting the
bonnet and not wanting to have it from me.”

“It would be amusing, no doubt,” said Durant; “but do you think it is
quite sure that Mr. Curtis will be so rich? I should think it would be
better for your sister to keep her money, for she will have a great many
expenses.”

“Oh, you nasty, unkind, mean--that’s not what I was going to say,” cried
Sarah Jane; “but, dear me, you told me yourself Arthur was rich! Ain’t
he a baronet’s son? What does he want with her little bit of money? I
should be ashamed, myself, of taking money with my wife when I didn’t
want it, if I was a rich gentleman. I call that mean.”

“But perhaps Mr. Curtis is not so rich as you think,” said Durant. “His
father is not an old man; there is no reason why Sir John should not
live for twenty years or more.”

“Twenty years or more!” cried Sarah Jane, turning upon him eyes that
were full of dismay. She stopped short in the street to turn round and
fix upon him her alarmed gaze. “Do you mean to say that Nancy--do you
mean to tell me that Arthur?--But that would be no better than marrying
anyone else. Just Missis, like everybody! Why Nancy!--Nancy will never
give in to that.”

“I thought that probably you were deceiving yourselves,” said Durant,
with some complacency, wondering at this depth of ignorance indeed, but
extremely pleased with himself for having divined it, and thus finding a
means of working. “Miss Nancy, if she marries Mr. Curtis, will be plain
Missis, as you say, for all the world as if she had married the grocer
at the corner.”

“Oh, the grocer! that is what she is never likely to do,” cried Miss
Sarah Jane, with a conscious look towards the corner. The grocer was
standing at the door in his apron--a good-looking young man, whose eyes
were fixed, as Durant saw with some amusement, on himself, and with a
decidedly hostile look. Miss Sarah Jane gave him a nod of airy
fascination across the street. Perhaps but for this conversation she
would not have been so gracious. Durant perceived that he himself was
being presented in the light of a possible rival to the young tradesman,
of whom he had spoken so lightly, and it was all he could do to keep his
gravity in this very novel and unexpected conjuncture. He made an
effort, however, and went on.

“You must know,” he said, “that an independent poor man like that very
good-looking grocer--”

“Oh, poor! none so poor! he is better off than many folks that make a
deal more show,” said Sarah Jane.

“That is precisely what I was going to say. An independent man in his
position, may be really in much better circumstances than the son of a
more important person. Sir John Curtis is not a man to be trifled with,”
Durant went on, with a momentary half-amused compunction for this cruel
slander upon poor Sir John. “He is stern in his own views; he is capable
of withdrawing his son’s allowance altogether if he is dissatisfied with
his marriage. I am very sorry to alarm you, but I feared you might be
under some delusion, and this was what I wanted to say.”

Sarah Jane’s eyes had been growing wider and wider with alarm and
wonder. She turned round upon her heel as upon a pivot.

“Now I think of it,” she said, “Matilda had better come and match her
ribbon herself. It is only for the strings, and the bonnet is not more
than half done--and, please, come and tell all this to mother yourself.
Nancy’s a dear,” said the girl, with a look which entirely changed her
aspect to her sympathetic companion. “She may have her faults, but she’s
always been kind, and I can’t bear that she should be deceived. Come and
tell it to them at home. Mother knows a deal--she’s cleverer than any of
us; _she’ll_ know if you’re right or wrong; but I won’t have Nancy put
upon, not--” cried the girl, with a vehemence of regard which only the
strongest asseveration could justify--“not if I was never to have
another new dress for years and years!”




CHAPTER V.


The unlikely pair retraced their steps rapidly, turning towards the
house of the Bates’; but the effect of Durant’s revelation soon died off
from the mind of Sarah Jane. She had done what duty required in taking
him at once to her mother. Once told to that supreme authority, Sarah
Jane felt that her mind was clear of all responsibility, and, indeed, as
a matter of fact, she dismissed the burden of this new revelation long
before her companion ceased his efforts to impress it upon her. She
tried what she could to beguile him into lighter talk; she broke in upon
him with lively observations, and little essays of friendly
familiarity. The momentary agitation of sympathy which had almost
interested Durant in her died away. She began to pout as he went on.

“Oh, please don’t talk for ever about Arthur; I ain’t in love with
Arthur, though Nancy is. I think you might find another subject,” she
said. “They make a deal too much of him at home; I think, and so does
Matilda, that there are nicer-looking and as gentlemanlike-looking in
Underhayes as he is. What do you think of Underhayes, Mr. Durant? Is not
it a pretty little place? If I had my choice I would live in London, and
every night of my life I’d go to a dance or to the play. I don’t pretend
to be good, as some girls are. I shouldn’t go about among the poor, or
sing in church. What I’d like, would be to go to a party every night, or
else to the play.”

“I should think you would soon be tired of that,” said Durant;
“fashionable people get quite worn out. They get pale and colourless,
not fresh and blooming, like you.”

“Oh,” cried Sarah Jane, feeling that this was the kind of talk in which
she shone, “tell me about fashionable people, Mr. Durant! Are they a
great deal prettier than we are? I suppose they look so with all their
grand dresses; but I should not care to catch people by dress, and make
them think me good-looking when I wasn’t; I would much rather look what
I am, and then nobody would be deceived.”

“You could have no inducement to look anything but what you are,” said
Durant amused, giving this young savage, since she asked for it so
plainly, the gewgaw of compliment which she wanted. Sarah Jane
brightened, and coloured, and bridled with pleasure. Let Nancy fare as
she might, here was an immediate advantage her sister could have,
without any evil effect on Nancy’s future.

“Oh, you are just like all the gentlemen,” she said, “always paying
compliments; if the girls were not a deal more sensible than you think,
you would turn our heads. But if there is one thing I despise, it is the
silly girls that believe everything that is said to them. A little
experience teaches you better than that,” said Sarah Jane.

“And what does experience teach Miss Bates,” said Durant, suppressing
his laugh.

“I told you before I was not Miss Bates; I am Miss Sarah Jane. Some
people don’t think it very pretty, but I will never be ashamed of my
name. Is it true that they go to five or six parties in a night, one
after the other? I should not like that; where I am enjoying myself I
like to stay. If it was dull, perhaps it would be a good thing to try
another, but fancy a ball being dull! it is, I suppose, for the old
wallflowers that don’t dance, but I think a ball heavenly. Don’t you
think so, Mr. Durant? I have been at three--the volunteers’ ball, and
the--two others that you wouldn’t know about; and I nearly danced my
shoes to pieces at all the three.”

“It was natural then that you should enjoy them,” said Durant.

“Yes, wasn’t it? I never would miss one if I could help it. Now Nancy
was so foolish she never went at all, but started out for a long walk
with Arthur, just as we were going. Wasn’t it silly? I think she was
sorry though next day, when she heard us talking of it and counting our
partners, Matilda and me. A girl may be going to be married, without
giving up all her pleasures. But Nancy is a deal too good; I believe she
would not mind giving up a ball even, if Arthur was not there, to let me
go.”

“I am glad to hear she is so kind.”

“Oh yes, she is very kind. But she wanted me to wear an old dress of
aunt’s, and that I would not put up with. She does not mind looking a
guy herself. I danced seven waltzes straight off, without ever sitting
down, but I was not tired--not a bit tired. Oh, what fun it was! I wish
there was one to-night--I wish there was one every night. I could dance
till six o’clock in the morning, and never tire.”

“I hope then for your sake,” said Durant, “that there are a great many
balls at Underhayes.”

“No, indeed. It requires to be some public thing, like the Volunteers. I
have seen dances in the houses on the Green; but then we were not asked,
and it was dreadful to stand and look in at the windows, and hear the
music. I am sure there were plenty of people there that were not a bit
better than we were. That girl that teaches the little Smithards--a bit
of a governess. Mamma said it was ridiculous having her, and not us--a
little bit of a governess! Now _we_ have never been required to do
anything for our living. We have always been kept at home, and have had
everything we wanted. That makes a deal of difference; don’t you think
it does, Mr. Durant?”

“I am not very clever in such subjects. I have to work very hard for my
living, Miss Sarah Jane.”

“Have you now? I should not have thought it, you look so like a
gentleman. I suppose it is the clothes,” said Sarah Jane thoughtfully.
“But even then,” she added with magnanimous indulgence, “that is quite
different; men may work without losing caste, mamma says, but not women.
And we have always been kept at home. I would not be a governess for the
world.”

“I do not suppose it can be a pleasant occupation,” said Durant.

“No, indeed. What are you, Mr. Durant? You don’t teach, do you? I wish
you had been in the army; I do so like officers, their manners are so
nice. Here we are at home already, I declare. What a pity, we have had
such a nice walk. Mamma, here’s Mr. Durant,” she said, rushing into the
little parlour; “and oh! look here, he is come to say that Arthur ain’t
at all rich--and that Nancy won’t be my lady--and that it’s all a
mistake.”

“What are you saying, Sarah Jane? Shut the door, can’t you, and not
shriek like that in the passage; should you like the girl to hear? I
wonder at you, child. Good evening, Mr. Durant,” said the mother,
stiffly. She did not hold out her hand to him, or ask him to sit down,
with the effusive hospitality of last night, but her daughters were more
kind; Matilda lifted the paper with all her materials off the sofa to
make room for him, and Sarah Jane dragged forth the most comfortable
chair.

“This is the coolest place, Mr. Durant,” she said. “Oh, isn’t it warm
here, with such a big fire? and it is quite a lovely morning, though
there is a breeze; and Mr. Durant and I have had the most delightful
walk!”

The former speech made the mother cold and Matilda kind; this had the
reverse effect--Matilda froze and Mrs. Bates began to thaw. The
gentleman who had taken a delightful walk with her youngest daughter,
was not a man to be frowned upon. Who could tell what might come out of
such a beginning? Mrs. Bates was governed by a different code of laws
from those which move the careful mothers of other spheres. She was not
afraid of delightful walks, or those meetings which are not always
accidental; besides, was not the stranger Arthur’s friend, and
consequently no stranger at all?

“I am sure it is very good of Mr. Durant to take the trouble of talking
to a little scatterbrain like you,” she said; “but girls will be girls;
we can’t put old heads on young shoulders; and indeed, poor things, why
shouldn’t they be light-hearted? We haven’t got much more than good
spirits and good constitutions to give them, Mr. Durant.”

“La, mamma! a great deal Mr. Durant must care for our spirits and our
constitutions!” cried Matilda; “I daresay he has come about business, as
Sarah Jane says. Was it something about Arthur, Sir? But you can’t tell
us anything that will hurt Arthur. We are so fond of him. We would not
believe any harm of him, whatever you might say.”

“I have no wish to say any harm of him,” said Durant; “I may claim,
indeed, to have more affection for him than a stranger can have. He has
been like a brother to me.”

“And I am sure he is very fond of you,” said Mrs. Bates, “a gentleman
couldn’t be fonder of another gentleman than he is of you. But, of
course, you know, Mr. Durant, when people are in love, they think of
nothing else.”

“Poor Curtis!” said Durant unawares. It was true enough that he “was
fond of” his friend; and yet, for the sake of this girl, Arthur had
quarrelled even with his old companion. He felt a profound pity for him
in his heart. What was he doing here, the foolish fellow--in this place,
so unlike everything he had ever known?

“Well!” said Mrs. Bates, “I wouldn’t say poor Curtis. So far as I have
seen, ’tis a happy time. After, when the cares of the world come on, and
there’s not means enough, or so forth, I might call ’em poor; but not
just now when everything is colour de rose. And, thank Heaven! there
cannot be any trouble about means with dear Arthur. Sarah Jane says, you
say he isn’t rich? that may be, Mr. Durant. I don’t look for wealth when
young folks are happy together, and fond of each other. Money ain’t
everything, as I always tell my girls.”

“No,” said Durant, taken aback. “I only thought, from what Miss Bates
said, that you might be deceived in respect to Curtis’s true position,
that was all. Of course, he has excellent prospects; but his father,
Sir John, is comparatively a young man. He will flourish for the next
twenty years, I hope. And as for the title, that of course--”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Bates with dignity. “And I do hope Sir John will
long be spared to his family. You must not take all that a silly girl
says for Gospel. I think we are quite aware of Mr. Curtis’s position,
Mr. Bates and me. Naturally, we made inquiries. He is not rich, but he
will have enough, I hope, to make a start--and my daughter has a little
of her own.”

“Oh, mamma! what’s two hundred and fifty pounds?” said Matilda, “that’s
Nancy’s fortune. It won’t last long, will it, Mr. Durant? And Arthur
hasn’t got a business, or anything to help him to a living. I think it’s
very kind of Mr. Durant to come and tell us all this about Sir John.”

“And”--said Durant pursuing his advantage, “I must speak plainly,
though it may not be pleasant. Sir John is not a man to take a lenient
view of anything that appears like disobedience. I do not think it
likely, pardon me for saying so, that the family will like the marriage.
They do not know, for one thing, the excellence of Miss Nancy.”

“Oh, Nancy!” said Matilda, under her breath, with a little toss of her
head, and Sarah Jane laughed. Nancy was only Nancy after all, and as for
excellence! Mrs. Bates took the matter differently, as may be supposed.

“I am not going to hear anyone talk disrespectful of my girl,” she said.
“She is as good a girl as ever breathed. I wish Sir John, or the Queen
herself, may have as good, and that ain’t a bad wish, Mr. Durant. She is
one that would do credit to any family, though I say it that shouldn’t.
She’s pretty and she’s good, and knows her duty a deal better than most.
Them that find fault with my Nancy, it’s because they don’t know what
she is. Me and her father could tell them a different story. She never
was one to go after pleasure like the other two.”

“Mamma!” said Matilda and Sarah Jane in a breath.

“Oh yes! I know what I am saying. You are good girls enough, but you’re
not like your sister. You were always the troublesome ones. You’d talk
and laugh with anybody. You have got no proper pride. But Nancy has
always kept herself to herself. However she got to be so fond of Arthur,
I never could make out, for she was not one to take up with strangers;
and never had any affair of the sort, nor so much as kept company with a
gentleman in all her days, till she met with Arthur. Oh! my Nancy is a
very uncommon girl, Mr. Durant. There are very few like her.”

“I am quite ready to believe it,” said Durant, proceeding on his
remorseless career, though compunctions pricked him for what he was
doing. “But Sir John does not know Miss Nancy. And there is Lady Curtis
to be taken into consideration.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Bates, subdued for the moment, “I don’t deny a lady may
have prejudices. I know by myself--that time when Charley was supposed
to be paying attention to--you remember, girls?--oh yes! a mother is to
be considered. But still--we have no reason to think Lady Curtis is
disagreeable, Mr. Durant, or will not hear reason. The time I am talking
of, about Charley--I took my measures. I got a friend of mine to speak
to the girl; and I met her myself--by accident like; and, I am glad to
say, it all came to nothing,” Mrs. Bates added with a sigh of relief.

“Then you perceive,” said Durant, “that you felt exactly as Lady Curtis
may be expected to feel.”

“Yes--mothers is the same everywhere, I suppose,” said Mrs. Bates, not
without complacence. “A little more money don’t make much difference,
Mr. Durant. If it was the Queen, a mother can’t be more than a mother.
And we’re all alike, never out of anxiety one way or other--thinking of
our children--a deal more than our children ever think of us,” she
added, shaking her head at her daughters with a sigh. “But I suppose
that’s the way of the world.”

“Let us return to Lady Curtis,” said the Devil’s advocate. “She, you
acknowledge, is likely to be prejudiced. You understand that, judging
from the feelings with which you heard of Mr. Charley’s entanglement--”

“It never went so far as an entanglement. Dear, no! you must not think
it was so serious.”

“But this is very serious, Mrs. Bates. Curtis has settled everything to
marry your daughter--so he tells me--and what will Lady Curtis think?
She does not know Miss Nancy, nor you. She will think these are some
designing people who have caught my son--”

At this there was a universal outcry, through which, however, Durant
threaded his way with composure, notwithstanding the threatening and
angry glances which surrounded him on every side.

“Designing people,” he repeated, “who have caught my son. You don’t
suppose I think so, who know you? But Lady Curtis does not know you--and
there is a certain difference between your rank and theirs. It is,
vulgarly speaking, a good match for Miss Nancy. I am speaking from their
point of view--this is how they _must_ think of it, you know. In their
rank of life, people generally meet and consult over a marriage. One
man’s son does not marry another man’s daughter on the same level of
society, without a great many consultations over it, and advances from
one to the other. The young lady has to be introduced to her future
husband’s family, and all the steps towards the marriage are taken
jointly. But there has been nothing of the kind in this case. The
Curtises have not even been informed of it. They found it out by chance.
Fancy then, Mrs. Bates, what their feelings must be? They find
themselves deceived and defied by their son; and they find that you are
quite willing to allow him to marry your daughter without the slightest
communication with his family--”

“Mr. Durant,” said Mrs. Bates, whimpering, “who gave you any right to
come like this and insult us? What have we done to you that you dare to
speak so? Oh! it is well seen that my husband is out, and we have no one
to protect us, girls. But I say it is mean to come here in the morning,
when there’s no one to stand up for us, and trample upon women. I say
it’s a poor sort of thing to do. You daren’t do it--no, he daren’t do
it--if your papa was here.”

“Oh, don’t talk nonsense, mother,” said Matilda, “what could father do?
Is he the one to take care of anybody? Mr. Durant, look here, I don’t
think you’re any way against us, are you? It’s in kindness that you’re
talking, ain’t it? I can’t think that a gentleman would come into a
house, if it was the house of poor folks, like this might be, and put on
a show of being friendly--and mean different. Folks learn a deal in this
world,” said the young woman, pushing away her bonnet-making, and
looking at him more and more keenly with rising suspicion; “but without
you owned to it, I wouldn’t believe that.”

“Miss Bates!” faltered Durant, rising to his feet. He grew crimson under
her honest straightforward look. It was honest and straightforward,
notwithstanding that there must, he felt, have been a certain
double-dealing, more or less, about Arthur; but he was in no position
now to find fault with the double-dealing of others--had he not acted
equivocally himself?

“I did not mean to deceive you,” he said, faltering. “I did not mean to
conceal from you that I was the friend of the Curtis family. I have
never said I approved of the marriage. I have naturally looked upon it
from their point of view.”

“He never said anything different,” said Sarah Jane, crying in sympathy
with her mother. “He never said he was our friend. This is what he has
been saying to me since ever I met him. As if nobody was ladies but
those that are rich! and as if the rest of the world was dirt--as if we
cared for his Curtises and his fine folks!”

“If it is on account of the family you care, Mr. Durant,” said Matilda,
more moderate, “it would be better if you said it straight out.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said, recovering himself, “it was not necessary.
I am not the agent of that family--nor am I the enemy of this family.
But the marriage is very unsuitable, as any man may see; it ought to be
opposed. What happiness can come of it? Judge for yourselves. Curtis
can’t do anything for his living, as Miss Bates says; and your
daughter’s little money, what is it? And if they marry, they will be
altogether dependent on Sir John, who does not like it--who goes further
than that--hates it, and is furious with his son. He would cut him off
with a shilling, if he could. But anyhow, he can stop his allowance; he
would throw them on their own resources--and then what would they do?
You have always kept her at home your daughter tells me; so that she
could do nothing to help. And he could do nothing--what could he do? He
has always been used to live expensively. Mrs. Bates, if you let it go
on, I am very sorry for you. The most likely thing that can happen is,
that they will be dependent on you.”

“Dependent on us!” this was such a dreadful suggestion, that all lesser
impulses of offence were forgotten. They gathered round him in tremulous
anxiety. “You don’t mean to say, Mr. Durant, that they would leave him
without a penny? I am speaking to you like a friend,” said Mrs. Bates,
“I am not particular to ask if you meant it or not. Would they leave him
without a penny?--a young man with all his extravagant ways.”

“Would not you do it yourself, if you thought it would stop such a
marriage?” said Durant.




CHAPTER VI.


Durant felt that he had done a good morning’s work. He had succeeded in
frightening Mrs. Bates, and striking with alarm the sensible mind of
Matilda, and the frivolous one of Sarah Jane. He left them in different
stages of perplexity and distress when he came away. They were not more
selfish than other people; but the idea of Nancy’s marriage, which they
had been so proud of in anticipation, coming to nothing, or coming to so
much worse than nothing as to throw the “young couple” on their hands,
naturally appalled them. Arthur had, which, perhaps, was also natural,
told them as little as possible about his family; he had slurred
vaguely over all details of how he and his bride were to live. He had
plenty for both, he said; there would be quite enough to give his Nancy
everything her heart could desire. What could they wish for more? The
daughter of a tax-collector is not usually burdened with very elaborate
marriage settlements.

“I hope your papa and mamma will be pleased,” Mrs. Bates had said, when
she had received the intimation of the betrothal, bestowing on her
future son-in-law a tearful kiss, which he bore like a hero.

“Oh, no fear of them; they will be pleased when they see Nancy,” he had
replied; and with this assurance she had been content.

As the time fixed for the marriage approached, no doubt there had been
searchings of heart on the subject; but these were rather directed to
the question, whether or not he would have any of his family asked to
the wedding than to anything more important. Arthur was four-and-twenty,
surely old enough to choose for himself, and the idea of consulting the
father and mother (it being evident that they were not very likely to be
satisfied with the marriage) did not occur to these good folks. A young
tax-collector would not think of consulting his family, though he might
like them to be pleased; and why should a baronet’s son, a young
gentleman, much more his own master than any tax-collector, be bound to
what his father and mother wished? Mr. Bates, who had a great respect
for the powers that be, had, indeed, grumbled a fear that “they mightn’t
like it;” but “Who cares?” had been the answer of his bolder spouse. She
remembered this now with a little horror.

“Your father is slow,” she said to her girls; “and sometimes we’re all
impatient, as we didn’t ought to be; but it’s wonderful how often he’s
right, is papa.”

The girls scouted the idea in words, but in their hearts they too were
somewhat impressed, and the little parlour was full of agitation all the
morning. Nancy was out, as the day was so fine, with her lover. They had
so nearly quarrelled on the previous night, that their morning meeting
was more interesting than usual, and they had gone out to make it up.
There was a common not far off, with stretches of gorse and little
thickets of half-grown trees, which was the resort of all lovers in the
neighbourhood; and there they had been spending the morning in the midst
of the autumnal sunshine, declaring to each other that nothing should
ever come between them again, neither enemies nor friends.

Durant went home to his inn, very well pleased with himself, though with
a qualm of compunction which he had not expected to feel. On the whole,
these people were not designing people. They were not the harpies of the
social imagination, who pounce upon the hapless _fils de famille_, and
crunch his bones. That did not make them in the smallest degree more
suitable to be connected with Arthur, but it made his friend a little
ashamed of the part he was playing. And at the same time he was
satisfied; for he did not want Arthur to make this foolish marriage, and
he wanted very much to please Lady Curtis, for reasons which will be
disclosed hereafter. He felt he had done a good day’s work, though,
perhaps, it was not work of a very noble kind. He did not believe in the
least that the Curtis family would sentence their son to starvation, or
to be dependent on the house of Bates, though he made use of that idea
to subjugate the latter; but Nature revenged herself upon him for this
lie by permitting him to believe another, which was that these
proceedings of his could have some influence in retarding Arthur’s
marriage. Though he ought to have known that the obstacles thus set up
would, on the contrary, make Arthur doubly eager, and lead him to force
on everything, a little mist of complacent delusion was over his eyes in
respect to his own adroitness, and he really believed that it might be
in his power to save Arthur. And then if he saved Arthur, what might not
Lady Curtis be disposed to do? Not, poor Durant, the same thing over
again, by bestowing her daughter, of whom she was much more proud than
she had ever been of Arthur, upon a poor, if rising barrister. No, that
was not likely, and he knew it was not likely; but yet he had a certain
vague faith in it which impelled him to do anything to please her; and
he thought what he had done would please her. He thought he had produced
some effect. There was a glow of comfortable sensation in his mind. If,
perhaps, he had been not quite kind, not quite just to the poor people
he had just quitted, what claim had they upon his kindness? None
whatever; and it was all perfectly legitimate, perfectly fair. Were they
not coming out of their natural sphere, clutching at the Baronet’s son
for their daughter, publicly boasting the time when Nancy should be my
lady? And was not any way of putting an end to this fair and defensible?
He had done nothing that it was not quite allowable to do.

In this frame of mind he ate his luncheon, and decided to stay another
night at Underhayes. It was rather hard, indeed, to know what to do with
himself in the afternoon; but he hoped that perhaps Arthur might change
his mind, might think it worth while to come to him and argue the point;
and in any arguing of the point, Durant felt that he must be successful.
Then he had a bundle of correspondence to get through. A busy man is
often entirely thrown out of his mental gear by finding himself shut up
in a bare parlour in an inn, without any of his habitual tools, without
books or papers. But he had letters to write, which was always an
occupation; and one of his letters was to Lady Curtis. Before he could
do this, however, it was necessary that he should get paper; and the day
was so mild, and the air so sweet, and the appearance of the little
place so pleasant, that he went out with an agreeable sense that his
business was not pressing, and that he might linger before coming in.

As Durant went out of the inn, however, he was run against by some one
coming in, in hot haste, and with every appearance of impatience and
impetuosity.

“I want to speak to a Mr. Durant that is staying here,” she said to the
waiter; then, stopping short with a start, turned her attention to
himself. “I think you are Mr. Durant,” she said.

It was Nancy Bates in person. Though he had seen her but vaguely on the
previous night, he recognised her now. Her hat looked as if it had been
put on hurriedly, and a long lock of brown hair had dropped upon her
shoulder. Durant could not but notice how long it was, and how soft and
shining it looked--not golden or red, but shining, glossy brown. It
caught his eye, even in the midst of the shock he experienced on hearing
her ask for him. What did she want with him? He felt himself shrink in
spirit, if not in outward appearance. Arthur he had been striving to
save, his conscience was clear in that respect; but this young woman,
what had his intention been so far as she was concerned? It was not to
save her he had been trying, but to break her heart, if she happened to
have one, and anyhow, heart or none, destroy her prospects, and steal
away her supposed good fortune. Therefore, he could not help it, he
shrank a little from Nancy; and there was a haste and hostile energy in
her looks which added to this feeling. He answered, almost in a tone of
deprecation,

“Yes, that is my name; and I think it is Miss Bates?”

“Anna Bates,” she said, with a little elevation of her head, as if the
name she pronounced had been one of imposing importance. “I want to
speak to you, please.”

Durant was entirely taken back. He looked at her with an air of helpless
bewilderment. What was he to do? Ask her to go back to his sitting-room
with him? ask her to go with him outside? He did not know what was
etiquette in such regions. No young woman with whom he was acquainted
had ever called upon him before, and the young man was utterly puzzled
and discomfited, and did not know what to do.

“Surely,” he said, hesitating between the stair and the door, with a
helpless look at the waiter, who might, he thought, have made some
suggestion.

That it was wrong to come to Mr. Durant “on business,” and business so
urgent, had never crossed Nancy’s mind before; but she saw that he
thought so, and this discovery, instead of abashing her, fired her with
new vehemence. The very wonder in his face was as a flag of aristocratic
superiority to Nancy, and made her wild.

“You are surprised,” she said, with a look of scorn, “that I should come
to you; but I am not one of your fine ladies that send for people to
come to them; and there is no room in our house for private talks. You
can speak to me in the street, I suppose.”

And with this she turned her back upon him and hurried out. Here she
paused a moment, seeing, perhaps, for the first time, the difficulties
of an indignant demand for explanations upon Underhayes Green, in the
face of all the people who were coming out on their afternoon walks, and
calls and business. None of these difficulties had ever troubled Nancy
before. The inconvenient splendour of being a person whose proceedings
were watched, had never attended her before. But now it all flashed
upon her in a moment. Already it was known in the place that she was
going to marry, or rather to be married by Mr. Curtis, and if she was
seen at three o’clock in the afternoon walking about the Green in close
conversation with another “gentleman,” what would everybody say? Very
different had been Sarah Jane’s feelings, who only hoped everybody she
knew might see her walking with the “gentleman.” Already the shadow of
her new position had come over Nancy, and the sense that observation now
would be degrading rather than flattering. She had not thought about it
at all in the fervour of her feelings, when she rushed out impetuously
to confront her adversary, but she perceived it through her adversary’s
eyes. She turned half-round to him, and waving her hand towards the
other side of the Green, where there was a little bit of shade with
trees, went on before him, rapidly crossing the grass. Durant followed.
He was nervous about what was going to happen to him; to take him thus
under the damp trees, from which a shower of leaves fell at every puff
of air, was very much like dragging him to some den where he could be
devoured at leisure. Could Arthur be there? but on reflection he felt
sure that Arthur, had he known, would have found some means of subduing
this impetuosity, and preventing an encounter. It could not be for
Arthur’s interest in any way. Before however they had got across the
Green, Durant’s fright had subsided; he began to be interested; the
situation was piquant, if no more; and that lock of brown hair was very
pretty. He would have thought it untidy in Sarah Jane, but here somehow
it looked well. He thought of the “sweet neglect” of Herrick’s
description; the tempestuous petticoat occurred to him in spite of
himself, and he began to be half pleased, half excited by this odd
adventure. What would Arthur say if he saw him being thus carried off
for a private interview? and the direct course which the impetuous
young woman was taking, brought them immediately in front of Mr. Eagle’s
gate. The little line of trees which looked like a Mall in the distance,
lay under his garden walls, and it turned out to be of much less
importance than he thought--a sweep of some old avenue, a hundred yards
or so of path between two fine ranges of elms. It led nowhere, and was
quite deserted. A better place for a mysterious interview could scarcely
be.

When they had got under the shade of the trees, she turned upon him
suddenly.

“You were at our house to-day,” she said; “you were saying a great many
things about--Mr. Curtis’s family. Did they send you, or what right have
you to speak for them? I want to know.”

“Miss Bates, you are very hasty--very peremptory.”

“I am no different from what I have a right to be,” she said, and he
could hear that her voice trembled with passion, and see that the lines
of her face were moving, and that there were tears which looked more
like fire than water in her eyes.

“What do you mean by coming and setting my folks against--Mr. Curtis?
You pretend to be a friend of his. What do you do it for? And what right
have you to interfere with me?”

“None in the world,” said Durant, hastily; “none in the world! nor do I.
I told your mother the truth about the Curtises, as I thought I was
bound to do.”

“Why were you bound to do it? _I_ did not ask you to give us any
information. You might have consulted me first, or--Mr. Curtis. If we
were willing to have nothing said about them, to have nothing to do with
them, was that your business? Don’t you think it’s like a busy-body--a
meddler, Mr. Durant? I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself!” she
said, the passion getting vent, and the tears falling hot and sudden in
spite of herself out of her eyes. “You, a gentleman! if it had been a
silly gossip of a woman, I should not have been surprised.”

This, as may be supposed, galled Durant immensely, for what can be
harder upon a man than to be called like a gossip and a woman? But he
had command of himself.

“I am distressed,” he said, “to have caused any annoyance; I had no
intention of doing so.”

“Then what was your intention?” she said; “I suppose you had one. It
will be honester to tell me directly what you mean.”

“I have no objection to tell you what I mean,” he said, “as I told your
mother. The Curtises are my friends. I know them thoroughly, and I know
that your marriage will grieve them to the heart. Pardon me if I must
speak plainly. It is no offence to you personally, for they don’t know
you. Arthur has told them the step he is going to take only at the last
moment; only, in fact, after they had been told of it from another
source. They are deeply offended, as may be easily supposed. He has not
behaved to them as he ought.”

“You will say nothing against Mr. Curtis, please.”

“But I must say something about him--Arthur! Have you any idea, Miss
Bates, what Arthur has been to me? My companion since he was _that_
height; my younger brother, my charge; nay, almost my child. And you
tell me I am not to speak of him! Is it possible, do you think? My
affection for Arthur gives me a right to say anything to him--or of
him.”

“There is no one in the world,” she said, with her lips quivering, “who
has so much right to him as me.”

Durant threw up his shoulders and his hands in the excitement of the
moment. “So it appears,” he said, “so I suppose--though how it should be
so, God knows, is the last of mysteries. Well! let us say he belongs to
you, and that not his oldest friend, not his nearest relation, has a
right to discuss him if you forbid. It is the wildest madness, but I
suppose, as you say, it is true. And what then, Miss Bates? he will have
_you_, but he will have nothing besides. Everyone else will be separated
from him; his parents not only offended, but wounded to the heart; his
friends alienated, his position lost. What will he be then, and what
will he do? A man cannot be a lover and nothing else all his life. He
would tire of that, and you would tire of it; but he will have nothing
to fall back upon; and after all, if a man defies his parents and throws
off their influence, why should they exert themselves to secure to him
the means of defying them? They will not do it--why should they? and you
will find that you have married poverty--helplessness--discontent.”

“And if I do,” she said, “will that show I am marrying for money? You
bad man! You cruel friend! You go and tell everybody that it is because
he will be rich--because I shall be my lady--that I am going to marry
Arthur. How dare you! how dare you! But if this is how it is going to
be, you will all find out different; you will find it is not for his
money or for his rank. Go away!” she cried, clenching a hand which was
small but strong, and full of impassioned energy; “go away! and don’t
tell lies of me.”

Durant was impressed in spite of himself; he tried to smile, but could
not, and he tried to be angry, but could not refrain from a certain
half-respect, half-admiration.

“I tell no lies of you or anyone,” he said; “I warn you--”

“Warn me! of what? that I shall have a way of showing whether I’m true
or not,” she said, “whether I’m good or not; and you think that will
frighten _me_! Mr. Durant, if his mother sent you, you may go back and
tell her what I say. You’ve dared me to give him up, and I won’t give
him up; and if I were to give him up a hundred times it would make no
difference, for he would not give up me. You can tell her all that. He
can do without her, but he can’t do without me.”

“Do you think that is a kind thing to tell a mother?”

“I don’t care,” said Nancy, “you have said worse to me; and it’s
true--and so it’s always true. I’d tell my own mother the same. What’s a
mother? they didn’t choose to have us; they didn’t pick us out of the
world; and now that we’re here we’ve got to do the best we can for
ourselves. You may go where you like upon your missions, Mr. Durant, but
not here--you shan’t come here; and if you come till doomsday you
wouldn’t do any good, for they put more trust in me--and so they
ought--than in a cunning lawyer like you. We know what lawyer means,”
said the excited girl, once more shaking her small clenched fist in his
face, “liar! and that’s seen in you.”

With this she turned and walked suddenly away, turning the corner of the
high garden wall, and disappearing in a whirlwind of excitement and
emotion, while he stood thunderstruck, staring after her. Durant stood
still and stared, with his mouth open in the extremity of his surprise.
He was too much startled even to be angry; but he was discomfited, there
was no mistaking that sensation. As he stood looking after the excited
girl, a sense of smallness, almost of baseness, came over him. He had
wanted to save Arthur, but he had not taken the other human creature
into consideration, who was just as important as Arthur to the world;
and he had not realized the kind of being he had to deal with, when he
had drawn up his own brief, as it were, and instructed himself in the
line of argument to be pursued. Lawyer, liar! that was a sharp thorn. He
was able to smile feebly at it, as he picked himself up and went slowly
back to his inn; but he could not shake off the sense of failure--the
sense of smallness and meanness that had come over him. Not only had he
found a foeman worthy of his steel, but she had baffled him and put him
to shame even in his own eyes.




CHAPTER VII.


Nor were Durant’s troubles over for that day. In the evening another
tempest came upon him. He had finished his solitary dinner, and written
his letter to Lady Curtis, which was considerably changed from what it
was intended to be. He had meant to say that he was in great hopes of
having succeeded in his attempt to convince the Bates’ that it was not
for their interest to allow Arthur to marry their daughter; but after
his interview with Nancy, he could not say this. On the contrary, he
gave a description of her future daughter-in-law, which was very much
more favourable to that young woman than anyone could have expected.

“She has a great deal of character,” he wrote. “She is not vulgar by
nature, nor devoid of intelligence. If things come to the worst,
something may be made of her.”

This was not very satisfactory to Lady Curtis, who would almost rather
have heard that her son was about to marry a demon incarnate, who would
disgust him sooner or later, and from whom even yet he might be driven.
So that poor Durant had doubly lost his work.

He was finishing this letter when his door was opened suddenly, and
Arthur Curtis came in unannounced. He was quite pale, with eyes which
gleamed red and angry, and an air of furious calm--passion at the white
stage to which no utterance would suffice. He came in, closed the door
behind him, and then coming forward, dashed his clenched hand upon the
table.

“Look here,” he said, “I’ll have none of your interference, Durant.
Friend you may be, if you like, but dictator to me never--no, I cannot
put up with it, and I won’t. What has come to you that you can steal
into people’s houses and try to deceive a lot of silly women? That is
not the sort of thing that used to suit you.”

“I have deceived nobody,” said Durant, getting red in spite of himself.
“It is you who have deceived them.”

“Yes, that’s it, isn’t it?--the argument suits the conduct,” said
Arthur, with a sneer. “‘It is not me, it is you,’--the very thing I
should have expected to be said; but look here, Durant, if you come
between her and me again, if you try to make mischief with her family,
if you get me into further trouble, I’ll--by Jove, I’ll--”

“What will you do?” said Durant, rising, restored to his
self-possession, and looking the other steadily in the face.

They stood within a few paces of each other, the one aggressive and
furious, the other calm, but excited. They had never had a break before
since childhood, and had stood by each other in all kinds of
difficulties. This was in Durant’s mind, and made the crisis more bitter
to him; but Arthur was too much excited to think of it, or of anything
else but his grievance. Notwithstanding this, however, the calm look of
the familiar face confronting him stilled the young man. He turned away
after a moment, and took to angry pacing about the room.

“You!” he cried, “You! If anyone had told me that you would not stand by
me in a difficulty, would not be my help in any trouble, I should not
have believed it. It would have seemed impossible; and that you should
take up arms _against_ me--against _me_!--_you_, Durant!”

“Arthur,” said his friend, with great emotion, “let us speak plainly.
You must always be to me, when you are in difficulty, the first person
to be thought of. I cannot believe, any more than you can, in
circumstances where I should not stand by you; but listen! you are not
in difficulty now--you are on the verge, as I think, of a great mistake.
Nothing can be more different. As your friend is bound to help you in
trouble, so is he bound by every rule to do his best to extricate you
now.”

“To extricate me!” cried Arthur, with scorn. “From what? From love,
happiness, and honour? Are these things from which to extricate a man?
And not only so, but to work by underhand means to force me out of the
position I have chosen, and which, whatever you may think of it, is
Heaven to me.”

“I have been working by no underhand means.”

“What else can you call it? You might have said what you would to me.
You were free to say what you liked; but to attack them--behind my
back--”

“Arthur,” said Durant, “it is useless to evade the matter; this is
exactly one of those moments which are often fatal to friendship. You
think you are on the eve of happiness. I think you are securing your own
misery. Am I to help you to destroy yourself? do you think that is a
duty of friendship? or is it not rather my part, by every possible
means, to stop you before you go over the precipice?”

“Your very words are an insult,” said Arthur; “to me, and to one who is
more precious to me than myself.”

“Yet I suppose I may have my opinion,” said Durant. “You cannot forbid
me that. I say nothing against anybody. I only say this will be fatal to
you, and it seems to me, if I could hinder it--”

“You can no more hinder it than you can keep the sun from rising
to-morrow.”

“I am very sorry to hear it, Arthur. I would give a great deal if I
could. Think what a change it will make in your life. You will not take
your degree now. As for diplomacy, you are shut out from that--it would
be impossible. So will Parliament be and the public life you once
thought of. Your own business of a country gentleman you are kept from
while your father lives. You have no time for anything else. Where will
be your shooting, your fishing, your hunting in the season, your
society? You will have to live on your allowance, sparely, economically,
without a horse, without a margin. Everything given up for--what?”

“For _her_--for happiness--for everything that makes life worth having.”

“For happiness? I don’t know much about it, Arthur; it has not come my
way. Is it object enough for a man’s life? When you live for happiness,
are you happy? I ask for information. Myself, I get on well enough, but
I have never made any great exertion for such an object. Will it answer
the purpose? will it repay the cost?”

“You are trying to cheat me out of my just indignation,” said Arthur,
“are we on such a footing at this moment as to discuss the position in
your cool way? Oh, I confess it is cleverly done! you resume the old
tone, you go back to the habit of many a discussion. But at present this
will not do. There is something more urgent in hand.”

“Why should it not do? You are vexed that I have spoken to the Bates
family; but after all, as I have been routed horse and foot by the young
lady herself, and ordered off the field of battle--”

“You acknowledge that!” said Arthur subdued, “ah, I thought you were
more sensible than you give yourself credit for being. She is grand when
she is excited. Well, Durant, I suppose it is of no use grumbling with
you. You know me, when we have quarrelled I always want to make it up
to-morrow. I can’t do without you, old fellow; that is not what I came
to say; but it is too strong for me. I want you, Durant; you have always
stood by me. It does not feel natural that you should be on the other
side.”

“I am not on the other side,” said Durant with compunction. There were
some things in his letter to Lady Curtis which recurred to him, and gave
him a choking sensation. His intentions had been friendly, but his
acts--Well! as they had been altogether unsuccessful they did not matter
much; and he too felt it difficult to resist the familiar face and tone.
If he could have done any good;--but as this was impossible, why make a
painful breach? He held out his hand to his friend. “Look here, Arthur,”
he said with a smile, “what is the good of fighting? If I could stop
your marriage I would do it; but apparently I can’t; I don’t conceal
from you that I am very sorry; but if you do this very foolish thing,
it seems a pity that you should lose a friend too.”

Arthur did not take the hand held out to him; but he sat down somewhat
sullenly on the opposite side of the table, and then there ensued a
pause, for neither knew what to say.

“I am going back to town to-morrow,” said Durant, “I will not undertake
to further your prospects; but if you wish any communication made--to
take off the edge of the unkindness, Arthur--”

“Unkindness! I have done no unkindness.”

“What--to settle all this without any reference to them, without
explanation, without trying to secure their sympathy, their approval--”

“Approval! that was a likely thing; what was the use of making appeals
or giving explanations? Here is an example; the moment they do hear,
they send you primed and prepossessed against it. I answered their
questions; but I knew it was useless, and why should I humiliate
myself--and _her_? When it is irrevocable and can’t be altered, I always
intended to let them know the whole, and throw myself upon their mercy.”

“It is clear you expect more magnanimity from them than they have found
in you.”

“Well,” said Arthur coolly, “a man must have queer parents if he does
not take that for granted. They do put up with things when they can’t
help themselves. What is the good of worrying them with opposition
(which it was clear they must make) and which could only irritate both
parties? No, it was not done by inadvertence, it was done advisedly. If
you never learned, old fellow, the advantage of doing a thing without
permission rather than in the face of a prohibition--it makes all the
difference,” said Arthur with a sudden hoarse laugh, which ended as
suddenly as it began, and had anything but humour in the sound of it.
“No, I have no instructions to give you, I will write as soon as--well,
after we are married; why should I do anything before?”

“Arthur, for God’s sake!” cried his friend, “pause still, think what you
are doing.”

“That is enough, that is enough! don’t risk our friendship once again,
just after it has been renewed; and as you say, if I am going to do
anything so very imprudent, at least don’t let me lose my friend too,”
he said, looking at Durant, with eyes which laughed, yet were not far
off from tears, and grasping his hand hurriedly. “I’m glad we are not
parting for ever, old boy, as I almost feared: though I should not
wonder if the next morning after we had parted for ever, I had knocked
you up to tell you what folly it was. A dozen years are not done away
with so easily, are they? after all.”

They stood grasping each other’s hands for a moment, both too much
affected for words. Was there a softening, a yielding in Arthur’s
breast? were the ties of the familiar life he knew of old, the faithful
and tried affections, family, friends, home, coming back upon him,
surging over the hot passion of the new? Durant held him fast for a
moment longer than his friend’s grasp held, then with a sigh let his
hand drop. He would not venture to raise all the question again. It must
be left to reason, to his own heart, to--well, at the last, to that
guidance of God which when everything fails we can trust or mistrust as
the case may be. Evidently there was nothing more for friendship to do
or say. And what could with justice have been done or said, Durant asked
himself as he dropped wearily into his seat again after Arthur had gone?
Could any one hope or expect that the guidance of God would lead him to
break the most sacred pledge a man could give? If he did so his family
might rejoice, but what could anyone, even those most relieved by it,
think of Arthur? He might escape ruin, but by what? falsehood. And which
was worst? Could any man dare to go to him and say--Throw off those vows
you have repeated so often, cast aside this other creature as dear to
heaven as yourself, whom you have persuaded of your love, break her
heart, spoil her life, and then return spotless, an honourable man, to
your own? If such an adviser could be, Durant felt that he was incapable
of the effort: he felt even that with his respect his very love for
Arthur would evaporate were he to know him capable of such treachery and
baseness. And yet this was what he had been urging on him! No wonder
that the young lover, being a true man, was indignant. Yet,
notwithstanding, it was ruin for Arthur, of that there could be as
little doubt. This girl, so high-spirited, so pretty, so young, so
attractive in a hundred ways, would be his destruction, separating him
from his own original and natural place, cutting short his career,
neutralizing all his advantages. Alas for love, the love of the poets!
At what a sacrifice was this young man purchasing that crown of life! at
the cost of his home, his future, the very use that was in him as a man.
Yet not all these considerations would justify the betrayal of the
creature who loved him, or the breaking of his faith. In this dilemma
his friend could but keep silent even from thought, with a certain shame
of himself and horror of his own efforts, notwithstanding that he had
been right in making them, which is one of the most wonderful of human
paradoxes. His heart was heavy for Arthur going gaily to his
destruction. Yet had he saved himself at this eleventh hour, what could
anyone have thought of Arthur? Durant could not but feel a sensation of
relief that he was not so brave and so wise.

Next morning he left Underhayes, without seeing anything more either of
the lovers, or the little group which surrounded them; but not without
another amusing reminder of the responsibilities he had incurred by
interfering. He had no object in going to London by that expeditious
morning train which carried off all the business men. He watched them
once more, streaming along, neat and cheerful, with cherished rosebuds
in their button-holes--rosebuds beyond the reach of the rest of the
world; and when the place was clear and the express gone, started
leisurely for a less crowded train. It did not occur to him to notice a
quick decisive step coming up behind him, as he went to the station. It
was not Arthur’s springy rapid step, which might have roused him; but
one heavier and more decided. Durant however was much startled by
finding himself struck lightly but sharply upon the shoulder, as the
owner of this footstep came up to him. “Mr. Durant,” said Mr. Eagles,
“why is not Curtis with you? I told you that I expected you to take
away your man. Why do you let him slip through your fingers? I can’t
have him here.”

“I told you, Mr. Eagles, that I had no authority over Curtis.”

“No one has any authority; there is no such thing nowadays: call it
influence if you like, I don’t mind names--but take him away. He is
doing no good with me. Never did after the first week. Dilettante
fellow, fond of classical reading; that’s not the sort of thing I care
for, Mr. Durant. When a man comes to me he comes to work, whether he
likes it or not. I am not half sure that I don’t prefer them when they
dislike it, triumph of principle then. Curtis is worse than doing no
good, as I told you, he is doing himself harm. What do you mean to do
about this business? Is he to be allowed to make a fool of himself and
destroy all his prospects?”

“I must repeat that I have no authority over Arthur Curtis,” said
Durant, “I am only his friend and school-fellow. You know how little a
man will allow his friend to interfere in such a matter.”

“On the contrary, I know they are the only people who can interfere.
Parents might as well--whistle. I scarcely wonder at that: if one may
say so broadly of so large a class, there is not a greater nuisance than
parents; and in this sort of business they’re hopeless. But a man like
himself, knowing all the consequences--why, no one could speak with so
much authority.”

“What would you advise me to say to him?” said Durant, with a kind of
half hope that this sharp and energetic intelligence might strike out
some new suggestion, tempered by an inclination to laugh and flout at
any solution he might offer of the difficulty. “For myself I am at my
wits’ end.”

“Say to him!” said the little pedagogue with a snort and puff of fiery
resolution. “I’d take him away, I should not waste words. I’d have him
out of the place before the day was over. There’s nothing like isolation
in any bad disease.”

“There are difficulties,” said Durant, “to make him go in the first
place is not easy; and there is perhaps a claim of honour--I don’t know
how to advise him to cancel his word.”

“Honour! word!” said Mr. Eagles, in successive snorts, “I can see how
well qualified you are for the business. Fiddlesticks! a little money
afterwards would salve all that. Is he to ruin himself for the sake of
his word--to Bates the tax-collector’s daughter!” The force of ridicule
seemed incapable of going further. “I will not resort to your advice,
Mr. Durant, no offence, when any of my men are in trouble.”

“Thanks, I hope you will not,” said Durant, nettled; and so rushed to
his train in considerable indignation and excitement. His word to
Bates’s daughter! was not that as good as his word to a Duchess? the
young man asked himself. He was near becoming Arthur’s advocate instead
of his adversary. And if Lady Curtis assailed him as Mr. Eagles had
done, what should he say to her? Must he lose all hopes of pleasing the
family in consequence of this moral dilemma? Durant had no hope that any
pleasure he could do to the family would ever really influence them
towards the granting of his own private wishes which had never been
breathed in any ear. He knew, in short, as well as a man can know by
conviction of the understanding, that these wishes were absolutely
hopeless, and that nothing he could do to propitiate the family would
really tell upon them. But nevertheless he clung to the hope of proving
himself useful, of doing something which would conciliate and dispose
them towards him. Foolish young man! and what if Nancy Bates with her
impetuous indignation, her self-confidence, her strong satisfaction in
Arthur’s poverty, which would prove her disinterestedness, should spoil
it all?




CHAPTER VIII.


“He has gone; he will never trouble you any more, and I hope you will
forgive him, dear, for my sake. Poor old Durant, he has always looked
after me, and bullied me. When I was at Eton first, I was his fag. I
don’t think he can forget that.”

“I daresay not,” said Nancy, “he thinks he should always have the upper
hand. He thinks you should never have any friends but of his choosing.
And then he will go and tell stories about us all to your father and
mother.”

“I don’t think, perhaps, you do him quite justice,” said Arthur, musing,
with a flush on his face. “Old Durant is not like that. The worst he
has to say, he will say to yourself, not behind your back; and he will
not gossip about you.”

“He is free to gossip as much as ever he likes, so far as I am
concerned; but I don’t like those sort of people--and give into them I
would not--not for the world!”

“Mr. Durant is gone, is he?” said Sarah Jane, in a voice of dismay. “You
are so selfish you two! What harm was he doing? I am sure he was very
nice. What did you send him away for? It is so like you, Nancy, blazing
up into one of your fits, and never thinking of spoiling other people’s
fun--what you always do.”

“Hillo!” said Arthur, half amused, half angry, “what has Durant to do
with other people’s fun? He is not at all a funny person so far as I can
see.”

“Oh! he may not show it to you, but Mr. Durant is very good company,”
said Sarah Jane with a toss of her head. “He is not so dreadfully
ancient that you should call him Old Durant; and I am sure if he likes
to come back here, I shall be very glad for one. And I think he will
too,” said the girl, elevating her foolish but not unpretty nose. It was
of the tip-tilted order, and could express a great deal of half-saucy
piquant self-confidence. Arthur stared at her blankly with a painful
sort of offence coming over him. It made him quite unreasonably angry
that this foolish girl should suppose that Durant--_Durant_, of all
people in the world! was interested in her pink prettiness--the idea
quite shocked him. He whispered to Nancy, in the corner, a little
admonition.

“You should not let that girl talk so,” he said. “To hear her chatter of
Durant! It is like a magpie and an eagle. You, who have so much more
sense, you should not let her do so. It makes one angry in spite of
oneself.”

This was a whisper in the confidence of their closeness and oneness; but
Nancy replied aloud, “Why shouldn’t she chatter about Durant if she
pleases. He is no better than she is. Magpie, indeed! you are very
uncivil, Arthur. I think my sister is quite as good as your friend--even
if it was a nicer friend than Durant.”

“Did he say I was a magpie?” said Sarah Jane. “Oh, Nancy! and me always
standing up for him. I did to Durant himself. I said we are all very
fond of Arthur, we’ll none of us believe any harm of Arthur. Oh! and to
call me a magpie! I could not have believed it of him,” and the girl
shed a shower of facile tears.

“You see this is how it acts,” said Nancy. “Durant comes here and tries
to make mischief, and you tell me no, he has done nothing wrong; it is
only his mistaken ideas; he will say nothing to other people half so bad
as he says to ourselves. That is all very well, Arthur; but when I see
to the contrary, you yourself insulting my family for the sake of
Durant!”--

“My darling,” said Arthur, humbly, “don’t, I beseech you!--don’t if you
care for me, say Durant!”

“What should I say?” cried Nancy, more and more roused. “Mr. Durant, my
Lord Durant, perhaps? Oh let’s be respectful, Sarah Jane! We didn’t know
that it was royalty that was coming. Arthur is humble enough himself,
but the moment we set up to be as good as his friend, then it shows. And
I should like to know why we are to be on our knees to _Mister_ Durant?
Why shouldn’t Sally have her fun out of him if she likes? Oh, let me
alone, mother! don’t go on winking and nodding at me. Arthur may take
offence if he pleases, he may take himself off altogether if he
pleases--what do I care? Do you think I am going to lie down for his
family to tread over and spit upon, and all his friends? Not I! If he
expects that, he has reckoned without Nancy--and that he’ll soon see.”

“Oh, Arthur, don’t mind her,” cried Mrs. Bates, “she’s just in one of
her tantrums. Most times Nancy is as gentle as a lamb, but when she’s
roused, she’s roused; and you’ll allow it’s aggravating. Not but Mr.
Durant was very civil spoken, I haven’t a word to say against him.
Indeed, I rather liked him, what I saw of him. You’re both too touchy,
that’s what it is; Nancy can’t bear her sister to be set down as if she
was nobody, and Arthur don’t like any joking about his friend. But
there, there now, kiss and be friends, children! If you quarrel you only
make each other miserable, and get miserable yourself. The night before
last and last night were both spoiled with it. Don’t you go on, now he’s
gone.”

“I have no wish to go on,” said Arthur, rather gloomily. He had risen
from the side of his betrothed, and was walking up and down, biting his
nails, which was a way he had. Certainly there was no reason in the
world why he should be so sensitive about Durant. Durant’s social
pretensions were much beneath his own and he had found his fate in this
humble place; why should every vein tingle with the idea that Durant,
who was only the Bond Street saddler’s grandson after all, should flirt
with Sarah Jane? But nature is unreasonable. Right or wrong, the
suggestion filled him with ridiculous annoyance and disgust.

“Well, mother,” said Nancy, “if my sister is not to be allowed to joke
about his friend, why should he pretend to be in love with me? Sarah
Jane is as good as I am. She’s just the same as I am. She’s younger, and
most folks think she’s prettier. If Durant is too good for her, it
stands to reason that _he_ is too good for me.”

“For Heaven’s sake let there be an end of this!” cried Arthur. “You
don’t know the effect your words have upon me. They make me ill, they
make me wretched. I say nothing against Sarah Jane. I never have been
the least negligent, the least disrespectful of your sister.”

“No, indeed,” said Sarah Jane, who was good-nature itself, “Arthur has
never got on the high-horse to me. He’s always been kind. It’s nothing
worth talking about. A deal of folks are touchy about their friends,
more touchy than about themselves.”

“But,” said Arthur, sitting down on the sofa again, and relapsing into
his lover’s whisper, “they are not you; you are yourself, my own Nancy,
my flower among weeds--there is nobody like you; don’t you know that I
think so? Then don’t expect me to put them, or anyone, on the same level
with you.”

Nancy held back and grumbled still, shutting her ear against these
sweet words. But Sarah Jane had retired from the field, and her mother
made secret signs to her, deprecating her folly. Why should she “go on”
like that, and worry Arthur? Thus after awhile the commotion subsided.
Durant was gone safely out of the place, and it was within about ten
days only of the wedding. This must certainly be the last of the storms,
though it was by no means the first. The house was too small to overflow
with millinery, as most houses do at such a moment, and the Bates’ were
not rich enough to fit out the bride extensively; but yet they were
doing what they could for her. Though she had only white muslin for her
wedding-dress, her mother had gone up to Shoolbred’s to buy Nancy a
“silk” for best, which, except her aunt’s old ones, was the first “silk”
she had ever had. And everything was progressing. Arthur, if he could
have managed it, would have had a kind of runaway wedding, but the
Bates’ were respectable, and would not hear of such a thing. All was to
be done decently and in order, however he might feel. It was the first
wedding in the family, and they meant to do justice to it. But when
Arthur went back to his room in Mr. Eagles’ commodious house that
evening, his heart was heavier than it became the heart of a bridegroom
to be. Up to this time he had been able to turn off with a laugh the
incongruities of his position; even they seemed to give piquancy to his
happiness, and to the perfections of the beautiful bride whom he had
found in so humble a place. Who could think of the place when they saw
her? And Nancy in reality was full of variety and charm, and the
courtship had been amusing as well as entrancing, devoid of all that
monotony which is the usual curse of successful love. But Durant’s visit
had given a great shock to the young man, and oddly enough the whole
force of that shock only came upon him when Sarah Jane made her little
speech implying an interest on her part in Durant. Sarah Jane! the idea
was so preposterous, so unnatural, that he laughed in spite of himself,
and then grew hot, and red, and angry.

This attempt to repeat his own love-history, with Durant for the hero
and Sarah Jane for the heroine, seemed to throw ridicule and debasement
upon the little romance of which, up to this moment, he had been almost
proud. It seemed to place Sarah Jane on the same level with her sister,
a suggestion which fired him to fury. For there was just so much truth
in it as made the suggestion intolerable. To the eyes of the world,
perhaps, even to his mother and sister, there might seem no difference
between Nancy and Sarah Jane; and he himself might seem to others to
make as ridiculous a figure as he would feel Durant to make had he
fallen a victim to the other girl’s attractions. The feeling that this
was so, though he would not allow it in words, haunted him, as it were,
underground, in the bottom of his heart, and made him more angry than
anything had yet done. He would not allow it to be put into words even
within his mind, but it had flashed across him, and could not now be
annihilated; he himself must appear to others as contemptible, as
idiotical as he would have felt Durant to be had he wanted to marry
Sarah Jane. And this idea brought all his native world before him, his
mother and sister, who, no doubt, by this time had heard Durant’s
account, and were talking it over, as women do, going over and over it,
and coming back to it again and again. He could see them in the large
rooms of the house in town, where they had come hastily from the country
on hearing all this, and where he had been summoned to meet them, though
he had refused to go. How different those rooms were from Mrs. Bates’
parlour! It would have been strange indeed if the contrast had not
struck him. He saw in imagination the two anxious faces close to each
other in the wider horizon of their life and surroundings, the spacious
quiet, the order and refinement which he had grown almost out of
acquaintance with. What story would Durant tell, what account would he
give? Would he place Nancy on a level with the others of her family, or
was he sufficiently clever to perceive the vast difference between them?
Arthur could not tell. If Durant had, indeed, walked and talked
voluntarily with Sarah Jane, was it possible that he could perceive the
infinite superiority of Nancy? His lip curled with the true stage sneer.
He was ready to have laughed the “Ha, ha!” the bitter laugh of
conventional ridicule and despair. It was long now since he had paid any
attention to the reading which was his supposed object, and he rushed
hastily upstairs to his room when he entered the house of Mr. Eagles. It
was a large, handsome, old-fashioned house. He went upstairs, glad that
all the doors were closed, and that there was nobody to meet him on the
stairs to ask him unpleasant questions. Mr. Eagles had said something to
him on the day before which had offended Arthur, but which he had been
half inclined to laugh at; but he did not laugh now. Out of his own
half-amusement with the circumstances of his wooing, he had come
suddenly, through Durant, to have an angry and wounded consciousness of
how it would appear to the world. Even the Eagles’, what must they
think? Arthur resolved hastily not to continue here, to separate himself
at least from criticism. Certainly Durant, thus far, had done him
nothing but harm. He had opened his eyes, as the eyes of Adam were
opened in the garden, and a hot, resentful shame, not of his Nancy or
his projected marriage, but of the wrong and ridiculous ideas people
might entertain about them, had risen up in his mind. Nothing could have
been a worse preparation for the visit which Mr. Eagles himself was
coming upstairs to make him. Mr. Eagles felt that he had already
delayed much too long, and put himself in the wrong by his
non-interference; but Durant’s visit had broken the ice for him, and he
had made up his mind to delay no longer. Arthur had scarcely lighted his
candles and thrown himself into his easy-chair by the fire, when the
master of the house knocked at his door.

“Mr. Eagles!” he cried, with angry consternation, as he saw him.

Of course, he knew what was coming. He cast a quick, instinctive glance
at a portmanteau which was in a corner. He would pack it up at once, and
be gone.

“I have seen nothing of you, Curtis, for some weeks,” said Mr. Eagles,
abruptly. “I have been remiss in seeing you on the subject. Men come
here, you are aware, to read, not for other pursuits; but you have not
been reading.”

“No; you have reason to find fault,” said Arthur, with candour. “I
acknowledge it. And the fact is, I am on the eve of going away. I, too,
ought to have seen you about it before, but I have been occupied.”

“Evidently--and how occupied?” said the little man, sternly. “I have
nothing to do with your morals, Mr. Curtis. I didn’t undertake to look
after your conduct.”

“Conduct--morals!” cried the young man.

“Yes, Sir!” said the “coach,” in a voice of thunder, “conduct and
morals. Do you think it shows either morals or conduct to shirk entirely
the object for which you were received under my roof, and to give all
your attention to a love affair--an intrigue?”

“How dare you use such a word?” cried Arthur; but the effect of his
indignation was spoiled by the fact that his opponent was too voluble
and energetic to give him his turn in speaking, or anything more than
just a momentary opportunity to insert, edgeways, half a word.

“This is not what you came here for,” said Mr. Eagles. “Your father has
a right to turn upon me, and ask me what I mean by it; and all the
fathers of all the men have a right to drag me over the coals for
countenancing such misconduct. Parents are intolerable, but here they
might have some reason. I have done wrong in letting you remain under my
roof.”

“That is easily managed,” cried Arthur, with a rush, seizing upon the
portmanteau. “You shall very soon be relieved of my presence.”

“I mean to be,” said Mr. Eagles. “You ought to have gone long since. You
ought never to have been here at all. Oh,” he said, with provoking
composure, as Arthur began in fury to empty his drawers bodily into the
portmanteau, “it is not necessary to clear out to-night. Nothing can
happen before to-morrow. I don’t want to be unreasonable. You can stay
for to-night.”

“Not another hour!” cried Arthur in his excitement, and he violently
pulled out one drawer after another.

Mr. Eagles stood for a moment and watched him with a saturnine smile. At
last he resumed.

“You had better go in comfort when you go; there is no such hurry all at
once. To-morrow will do. Does your father, may I ask, know how your time
has been occupied here?”

“Perhaps you have told him,” said Arthur, looking up from his hurried
packing.

“No, Sir; I have not told him. I have nothing to do with it. I expressly
said that I was not responsible for conduct; but he ought to have been
informed all the same. I hope somebody has done it. If it were my
business, if I had ever gone in for that sort of thing, I should have
done it. I take no credit for being silent. It was no business of mine
that you were making a fool of yourself. But on second thoughts, I think
I have made a mistake. It was my business, more or less. The men ought
not to have been subjected to such an example.”

“Mr. Eagles,” cried Arthur, furious, “do you mean me to toss you out of
window, or throw you downstairs?”

“You are welcome to try,” said the little man, standing firm as a rock,
with his legs wide apart; “perfectly welcome to try. I am out of
training, it is true, but I am not afraid of you, and I mean that you
should hear the truth for once before you leave my house. Your conduct,
Sir, has been that of a fool--not a wicked fool, I am glad to say. If
you had been deceiving that girl, it is I who would have kicked you
downstairs, training or not; but though you’re honourable, you’re a
fool, Sir; you’re sacrificing your life; for what?--for a delusion. No
man of your position ever got on comfortably with a girl of hers,
uneducated, uncultivated--”

“Have you nearly done?” asked Arthur, white with rage, and scarcely able
to restrain himself.

“I have done altogether,” said Mr. Eagles. “You have my opinion, and
that is all that is necessary. The house is shut up for the night. Don’t
show yourself twice a fool by rushing out at this hour. Go to bed and
quiet your heated brains, and go to-morrow. You are a fool, as I say,
but you are not dishonourable, and I hope your idiocy may turn out
better than it deserves to do. Good night.”




CHAPTER IX.


On the evening of the same day Durant told his tale to Lady Curtis. She
and her daughter had come to London on hearing the news of Arthur’s
“entanglement,” as many an alarmed mother and sister have done before
them. Sir John either could not, or would not join them. He had less
faith than women have in the efficacy of personal remonstrances, and
indeed he had no great faith in the delinquency to start with, and gave
his son credit for “more sense,” if less virtue, than they believed him
capable of. To hear that Arthur was on the eve of marriage had stunned
Sir John. He had written with indignant vehemence, and he had
commissioned his “man of business” to go and see the “young fool;” and
he had forbidden his wife to go to her son as she desired. “Get him to
come to you if you can,” he had said; but he was afraid for the results
of a visit from his wife with the possibility of an introduction of the
girl, and a melting of my lady’s heart over her son’s love. Sir John
gave his wife credit for much more sentiment than she possessed; and as
for Lucy, she of course was sentimental enough to be sympathetic at once
without any preliminaries. “You had better leave him to the lawyers,”
Sir John said, having a strong confidence in people who could make
themselves disagreeable; but he consented that the ladies should go to
town to be near the spot, if the other functionaries managed to
“unearth” the culprit. Once away from that temptation, once delivered
from the syren who had “entangled” him, no doubt Arthur would be safer
with his mother and sister than anywhere else. And Lady Curtis had
acquiesced, though with reluctance, in this prohibition. She had felt
that to go and see him might bring her into painful collision with the
other people about him, and at the best would expose Arthur to what a
young man likes least, the shame of being interfered with, and worried
by his family in full sight of the world. Sir John, however, had nothing
to do with the mission of Durant; _he_ was the emissary of the ladies
called by them to their aid in the emergency. No other messenger had
seemed to them so suitable. His dearest friend, his _ami de l’enfance_,
what more natural than that they should have recourse to his aid? And in
these circumstances it may be supposed how hard it was for Durant to
tell the story of his own defeat. He did it in the library in Berkeley
Square in the waning afternoon, just before the evening fell. The room
itself which seemed to him half as big as the whole town of Underhayes,
was full of ghostly books, showing here and there in a streak of
gilding, in a bit of white vellum, which caught the remains of the red
October sunshine. The thinned trees waved slowly across the windows, and
when a gust of wind came, a shower of falling leaves swept over the
firmament outside. Lady Curtis sat between the fire and the nearest
window, listening intently with her eyes fixed on his face. Lucy was in
one of the window-seats, almost behind their visitor. She could not
watch his face openly as her mother did; but she was not less anxious
than her mother. When he turned round to her, as he did often, she
shrank a little further back, preferring to watch him unobserved; for to
Lucy, as to many other women, it seemed that half the story was told by
the countenance of the teller. Lady Curtis had been a beautiful woman in
her day, and had the beauty of her age now, as perfect an example of
forty-five as could be desired. She was ample in form, but her head and
face had retained all their delicacy and refinement; and if there was a
slight hollow in the cheek, and a slight fulness about the throat,
neither was sufficient to tell against her; and modified by youth, and
by a somewhat softer disposition, Lucy’s face was as her mother’s. They
were neither of them brilliant in colour. Lady Curtis had acquired
something in this way with the matronly increase of her figure; but Lucy
had no more than the rose tint which health gives, and her hair was soft
light brown, a shade or two lighter than her eyes, hair which in her
mother’s case was so daintily sprinkled with grey as to appear only
lighter in tint than it had once been. Whoever desired to see Lady
Curtis as she was at twenty had but to look at her daughter, and whoever
wanted to make sure what Lucy would look like a quarter of a century
hence could see it in Lady Curtis’s face. It gives an additional charm
to both when this resemblance is carried out as it was in these two. It
makes both youth and age more fair, bringing them together in a tender
half mist of illusion, one face in two representations; the mother and
the child both profited by it; Lady Curtis showing at her best in her
darling’s brown eyes, and disclosing in her own how little there was to
alarm the warmest admirer in that darling’s future. And they were proud
of their resemblance, a little for the beauty’s sake, perhaps, but a
great deal more for the love’s. Durant felt all around him a subtle air
of witchery between the mother and the daughter. The very atmosphere was
Lucy, sweet, soft, yet penetrating. And the two ladies seemed to look at
each other through him as if he had been made of glass, and knew his
inmost heart.

At present they were much cast down by what he said. He had described to
them the Bates household, the little stuffy parlour, the rum and water,
and Sarah Jane; and worst of all Arthur’s determined adherence to his
love, and his promise. It seemed incredible to them that their son and
brother should be satisfied in such a place. Some occult influence,
something uncanny, seemed to be in the “infatuation” altogether. “And,
Mr. Durant, do you really think nothing, _nothing_ will make him give it
up?”

“Indeed I do think so,” said Durant, “I cannot say otherwise, and I am
sure you would not wish to hear anything less than the truth. He
is--very much attached--to her.”

“And she--is just like the others,” said Lady Curtis faintly, “a little
better you said, not so vulgar? Heaven help us! that I should speak so
of my son’s--no, Mr. Durant, not yet, I _cannot_ call her my son’s
bride. Something may come in the way, something must be thought of--”

“I don’t think you will find anything. I have used every argument;--and
to tell the truth I do not know that I am quite sure, in my own
mind--of course I did not say this to Arthur--I am not quite convinced
in my own thoughts--”

“Of what, Mr. Durant?” Lady Curtis said this anxiously in front of him,
and Lucy breathed it half under her breath behind. He looked at the
mother, but turned his chair a little so as to come nearer the daughter,
who eluded him, gliding still a little further back.

“Well,” he said, “you may not be pleased, but I must speak according to
my conscience. I would give a year of my life to get Arthur free, you
know that--”

“What are you going to tell us?” cried Lady Curtis, clasping her white
hands. Lucy did not say anything, but leant forward, so intent that when
he again turned to her, she did not as usual withdraw.

“It is just this,” he said, sinking his voice; and the evening air
seemed to make a visible droop towards the darkening to increase the
alarming effect: “that I dare not on my honour say any more to Arthur on
the subject. He is a gentleman; I cannot even to save him from misery
bid him break his word.”

“Good God!” cried Lady Curtis, starting to her feet, and her excitement
was so strong that the exclamation may be forgiven her. “His word! when
his whole career and happiness are at stake--to a creature like that!”

“I knew that was what you were going to say,” came to him, in a sigh,
from the dim light in the window, against which, herself a shadow, Lucy
was. And this, though there was no word of encouragement in it, gave
Durant strength.

“I understand your feeling,” he said, addressing her mother, “I thought
the same when I went there; but Lady Curtis--”

“Don’t speak to me, don’t speak to me!” she cried, “they have entrapped
you too; you have encouraged him in his folly;--his word!”

She walked up and down the room in a fit of impatience, her hands
clasped, and inarticulate moans came from her unawares. The firelight
seemed to get stronger and warmer as the daylight waned, and it was
against this glow that they saw her figure in her excitement. They--for
Lucy kept still in the window putting up her hand furtively to dry her
eyes, not joining herself to her mother. She had put herself silently,
he felt it, on his side. In another minute Lady Curtis sat down again,
dropping impatiently into her chair. “Well!” she said almost harshly,
“how about his word?”

“Do not be angry with me,” said Durant quite humbly. He could afford to
be humble with Lucy backing him up. “I have not betrayed to him this
feeling, which--if it is fantastic I cannot help it.” Here Lucy made a
slight movement which seemed to him to imply a “no, no,” “I have acted
against it. It was not in my mind at first. But if you will consider
the circumstances--There is nothing which can be called entrapping.
Nothing has been done to deceive him, all the reverse; and he has
engaged himself to this girl voluntarily, made every kind of promise to
her. Can I bid him withdraw now, perjure himself, deceive her?”

“Tut! tut!” said Lady Curtis, “don’t deceive yourself with big words;
all this solemnity is unnecessary. They are not accustomed to it in that
class of society; a little arrangement with the family, an offer of so
much--Do you really think more would be wanted? Mr. Durant, you are too
romantic. How I wish I had gone myself!”

“You would have done no good had you gone yourself. Even if you could
have persuaded the family, there is Arthur to deal with--and her--He
loves her, Lady Curtis, there is no sham on Arthur’s part.”

“Fiddlesticks!” she cried, rising again in restless excitement. “Arthur,
a boy, a light-hearted creature that would mend of any heartbreak in a
week; and she--of course I don’t know her--but there is nothing so good
for wounded feelings, or so healing, as banknotes.”

“Mamma!” said Lucy, holding out her hands with a mute entreaty; and then
she added, “If you offered them money, what would Arthur say?”

“Oh, what would Arthur say? and what would Arthur do? and is he not
bound to keep his word?” cried Lady Curtis. “How you worry me with your
sentimentalizing! What should have been done was to bring him away, to
hush it up. And it might have been done; but Mr. Durant has spoiled it
all; he might have done it. Nobody has so much power with Arthur. If he
had only brought him away for a single day all might have been well.”

“He would not have come,” said Durant, more to himself than to her, for
he was vexed and angry, though he was most anxious not to show it.
“I--power with him! He quarrelled with me outright, would not speak to
me. I tried what I could. The family might have yielded, but she would
not yield--not an inch. She told me--when I threatened that Sir John and
you would withdraw or diminish his allowance, and that he might become
poor--that there was all the more reason why she should hold by him--it
would prove her sincerity.”

“I should have said the same thing,” said Lucy, holding her breath.

“You! you have been brought up very differently. So, she was
disinterested, was she? Ah!” said Lady Curtis, calming a little, “that
is more dangerous than I thought.”

“Yes,” said Durant, pleased to have produced some effect, and carried
beyond the bounds of prudence, “that is exactly what she said. It was
her only chance to show that it was of himself she was thinking, not any
wish to be rich or to become my lady.”

“To become my lady!” My Lady faltered as if a blow had been struck at
her. Yes, to be sure, her son would be Sir Arthur in his turn, and his
wife Lady Curtis, everybody knew that; but to feel that your end is
anticipated, and your very name appropriated, this gives even to the
old, much more to the middle-aged, a curious thrill of sensation. It was
a shock to her. She felt as if she had been struck; then she recovered
herself and laughed a little, short, hard laugh. “So,” she said, rubbing
her hands feebly together, “she is looking forward to that. I did not
think of that.”

Durant saw his mistake, but he did not see how to mend it. Lucy, darting
upon him in the darkness what he felt to be a glance of reproach, rushed
hastily past him to her mother. But by this time Lady Curtis had
recovered herself.

“Never mind,” she said, “never mind, my dear. It was quite natural. But
that was not Arthur. No, we know him better than to believe that.”

“And she does not know you--did not know what she was saying.”

“Oh, as for that! Ring the bell, Lucy. Let us have the lamp at least, if
we can have no other light on the subject. It was just the thing, of
course, that an ignorant under-bred girl would think of.”

“But, mamma! Yes, it was her ignorance; and she said--that was what you
were telling us, Mr. Durant? that she would be glad to think there was
no chance of this now?”

“Lucy,” said her mother, taking no notice of Durant, “the one thing that
could vex me most in this would be that you, out of perverse youthful
generosity, should take up the part of champion to this girl. Yes, you
are beginning, I have noticed it. But I cannot bear this, it is the only
thing wanting to fill up my cup.”

“I will not, mother dear. I will do nothing to vex you. You shall not
have to struggle with me too. Has there ever been a time when we have
not been in sympathy? But still we must be just,” said Lucy, with her
arm round her mother’s waist. She said the last words almost in a
whisper. They stood clinging together, relieved against the warm light
from the fire. All the rest of the room had fallen into darkness, the
windows but so many stripes of a pale glimmer, no real light coming from
them, all gloom about, only this glow of warmth showing the two who held
together. Durant had nothing to do with that warmth and union. He sat
behind in the dark, neither taking any notice of him. And in his heart
there was a certain bitterness. He had left his own concerns at their
appeal. He had taken a great deal of trouble, and this was all the
acknowledgment. He felt very sore and wounded in his heart.

Then lights were brought into the room, lamps which made two partial
circles of illumination; and the presence of the servant who brought
them, necessitated a few words on ordinary subjects. Lady Curtis resumed
her seat with that anxious hypocrisy by which we show our respect for
the curious world below stairs, and asked Mr. Durant if he meant to
remain in town, or if he was going back to the country. And he told her,
not without meaning, that having come to town, though a little earlier
than he intended, he meant to stay. There was a pause when they were
alone again, and then Durant rose to go away.

“I am afraid I have not succeeded in doing what you expected of me,” he
said, somewhat drearily. “I did the best I could, and if you like I will
go again, though I shall get but a poor reception. I am unfortunate,” he
added, with a faint smile, which had its meaning too.

“Mamma,” said Lucy, “you are not going to let Mr. Durant go, thinking we
are ungrateful to him! That can never be--when he has taken so much
trouble.”

“Trouble when one has failed does not count for much,” he said, smiling.
“It is unkind to talk to me of being grateful or ungrateful; am I not as
much, I mean almost as much, very nearly as much, interested in Arthur
as yourselves? as if he were my brother,” he said with vehemence. “He
has been so; I can never think of him otherwise whatever happens.”

“And whatever happens you will always think of him so?” cried Lucy, for
the moment forgetting her reserve. “Oh promise me, Mr. Durant! Even if
this makes a difference to us, it will make none to you? If he is so
wrong, if he is so foolish that we have to turn from him, you will not?
It will make no change to you?”

“None!” he said, fervently. “None! I will stand by him whatever happens.
You may trust me--especially now.”

Lucy knew that he meant especially since she had asked him, and got a
sudden soft suffusion of colour which tinted her to her very hair; but
Lady Curtis thought he meant, and how justly! especially now when there
was need of every friendship to stand by her son. She answered him with
a struggle between the gratitude which she ought to feel, and the
annoyed disappointment and distress that filled her heart.

“We have no right to ask such a pledge from you, Mr. Durant. Yes, you
have always been very kind, very kind. Forgive me,” she said, softening,
“if I am too unhappy to say what I ought. I thought something might have
been done. But to think that we must stand by calmly and see him
accomplish his own destruction! Oh, think again!” she cried, with sudden
tears, “can we do nothing, nothing more, to save my boy from this
miserable fate?”

Durant put down his hat. He did not go till late, nearly midnight. They
sat and talked of Arthur, nothing but Arthur, the whole evening
through.




CHAPTER X.


That which Lady Curtis had reproached Durant for not doing was done by
the lawyers so successfully that Arthur Curtis was driven almost
frantic, and swore wild oaths of vengeance upon his family. Sir John’s
ambassador was not held back by any delicacy. He offered a sum which
made Mrs. Bates tremble, and moved her husband to declare, with
emphasis, that they had never thought of going against Sir John--that,
of course, they wouldn’t go against Sir John. Mr. Bates had a reverence
for the upper classes which was almost sublime. He made no radical
revolutionary demand of excellence from them--he did not even require
that they should benefit, or be especially civil to himself. Anyhow, and
under any circumstances, he was willing to give himself up to be trodden
under the feet of any Sir John, if need was; and that he should oppose
one, after his will was fully known, seemed impossible. Especially a Sir
John with a bag of money in his hand.

“Let him marry our Nancy after Sir John Curtis, his excellent father,
has spoke against it! You couldn’t do such a thing, Sarah,” he said,
“and when there is a nice bit of money coming in for doing what is only
our dooty--”

“Our duty is first to Nancy,” said Mrs. Bates doubtfully, “and if we
were to say it shouldn’t be, who can tell if she’d obey us? Nancy has a
spirit of her own.”

That this was true they both had good occasion to know. But it was a
great temptation. The lawyer gave them to understand that if Nancy
could be withdrawn from the field, and Arthur allowed to go free--(this
was how they all put it, making believe that Arthur was a kind of caged
bird, to be let loose, or kept in a cage at will)--a thousand pounds
might be forthcoming. A thousand pounds! never before in all their lives
had such a sum been dangled before the eyes of this pair. There seemed
so many things that they could do with it. It would portion off, they
thought, all the children. With two hundred a piece, Matilda and Sarah
Jane would be heiresses, and Charley might have a little more to start
him in business; and a sum left in the bank for a rainy day. What a
heavenly prospect it was! “Was there any sweetheart in the world,” the
tax-collector asked, “that was worth it?” and Mrs. Bates shook her head
emphatically and said, “No--certainly not!” But then would Nancy see
that? Girls had their own ways of thinking; and on the other side was
her sweetheart, and the marriage that was all settled, that everybody
knew of--Mrs. Bates felt that even to herself this would be a bitter
pill--to countermand all the preparations for the wedding, and give all
the neighbours a right to say that the Bates’ had overreached
themselves, and pride was having a fall. This, no doubt, would be a
tremendous price to pay; but, a thousand pounds! They talked it over
until it seemed to them both that not to have this thousand pounds would
be at once a deception and a wrong. The Lord knew it was not for
themselves they wanted it. But Mr. Bates was more and more strongly of
opinion that to prefer a sweetheart to this sum of money, that would be
the making of the family, was something beyond mortal perversity. He was
for sending her away at once to a brother of his who lived in Wapping,
without leaving her time to communicate with Arthur.

“But you must lock her up when she gets to Wapping,” said Mrs. Bates
regretfully, “or she’d write to him straight off to let him know where
she was--and where would be the gain?”

“Well, Sally, we’d have had nothing to do with it, you know,” said Mr.
Bates, not liking to put the suggestion into words--but yet feeling that
if the thousand pounds was paid, and circumstances happened after, over
which they had no control--why, they could have no control over
circumstances--and nobody would ask them to give back the money. Mr.
Bates’ wits had been sharpened by his tax-collecting, but his wife was
not so clever.

“If we take the money, we’ll have to do the work,” she said, “and it’s
all very well to talk, but who’ll manage Nancy? That girl do scare me.”

“Fudge! you can manage her if you like. What girl can stand out again
her mother?” said Bates.

“It is a deal you know,” said his wife with mingled grandeur and scorn;
“but I’ll sound Nancy. I think sometimes that she’s a bit tired of him.
He’s a gentleman, and has nice ways; but he’s not so desperate in
earnest like as John Raisins is after Sarah Jane.”

“Ah! that’s the kind of husband to get for your girls. A steady young
fellow doing a good business, with a nice shop and a nice house. That’s
the man for my money,” said Mr. Bates.

“That shows again just what a deal you know,” said she, “Sarah Jane
would rather have had Mr. Durant, that lawyer fellow, if he had offered,
than half a dozen of Johnny Raisins. That’s how it is with girls. A
gentleman! that’s all their cry. And I won’t say but I like ’em best
myself,” Mrs. Bates said after a pause. “They have a different way with
them; but these are things that women take more notice of than men.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said the tax-collector, piqued by the suggestion.

“You know, William,” said Mrs. Bates solemnly, “that if it hadn’t been
for your genteel ways, and what you may call a genteel business, not
like a shop, or that sort of thing, that I’d never have married you.”

“Oh, I like that!” he said. But he was on the whole pleased to think his
occupation still struck his wife as a genteel business. “I’ve got to
give an answer to the gentleman to-morrow, Sally. There’s not much time
to lose.”

“I’ll sound Nancy,” said Mrs. Bates, but she shook her head.

“Sound her! I’d pack her off to Sam,” said the father; but that only
showed how little he knew.

And Nancy, as Mrs. Bates divined, on being sounded, was furious. She had
no words to express her indignation. She rushed out in hot haste to find
Arthur, and denounce his family to him. He had left Mr. Eagles, and was
living in lodgings on the Green, and there Nancy flew in hot haste,
tapping at his window, which was on the ground floor, and calling him
forth. She would have gone in, but it had been evident to her that this
was not the kind of thing that pleased Arthur. She burst forth into a
furious assault upon his family the moment he joined her.

“If it was not just giving in to them, I’d never see you more,” she
said, “that is what you call gentlefolks--to come undermining, offering
money, insulting folks that are a deal better than themselves!”

“Trying to ruin my happiness,” said Arthur, with flashing eyes; “that is
not the thing you seem to think of.”

“How can I, when it’s me that’s insulted?” cried the girl. “Oh! I’d like
to give them a bit of my mind. I’d just like to tell my lady what a girl
like me thinks of her. I’d like to tell her that, just to spite her.
Just to show how I despise her, I’d marry you if you hadn’t a penny.”

“Nancy, my mother has nothing to do with this,” said Arthur, to whom, as
was natural enough, this form of moral obligation was not the most
delightful. “I don’t mean to say that you have not a perfect right to be
indignant. But it is not my mother that is to blame.”

“Oh, yes, so you think,” cried the girl; “but it’s always women that do
the worst things. I’m not afraid of men. They may stab you bold to your
face, but they don’t do this sort of sneaking, cruel thing. I’d give
anything I’ve got in the world just for one half-hour with my lady, her
and me.”

“My mother has nothing to do with it,” repeated Arthur; but though he
was convinced on this point, his mother, who had nothing to do with it,
suddenly appeared to him as an enemy; and he, too, felt a hot resentment
against her in his heart. And when he had taken Nancy home, which he
did somewhat against her will, for she did not think his escort at all
necessary; he rushed to Mr. Rolt, the lawyer, and poured such floods of
wrath upon him that the veteran almost quailed. He wrote to Sir John
that evening that Arthur was quite impracticable, and that “affairs must
take their course.” “If I had known earlier, something might have been
done, for the parents did not seem unwilling to compromise,” he wrote,
which made Sir John, in his turn, curse the old formalist.

“If I had but gone myself!” he said.

Lady Curtis was completely innocent of this mission; perhaps she would
not have disapproved of it, but certainly she herself would have gone
more delicately to work. She was informed of it by a furious letter from
Arthur, which cost her many tears.

“If it is your doing, mother, if you have thus insulted the girl who
ought to be like your own daughter, then I can only say that you have
lost your son,” he wrote; and the two ladies in Berkeley Square shed
tears of anguish and indignation over this cruel letter.

“This is likely to endear the girl to me, is it not?” said Lady Curtis,
when she could speak.

“Oh, he does not mean it, he cannot mean it!” cried Lucy, with sobs in
her voice.

“No,” said the mother, unconsciously taking up Nancy’s argument, with
that curious contempt of the men involved in such a quarrel which is so
strangely characteristic of women; “no, it is not him, it is her; and
this is the influence my boy, my only boy, is to be under all his life!”

What could Lucy say? There was nothing further to be said or done.

And it may be supposed that as the day approached, and they knew that he
who had been the object of deepest concern and affection to both, the
son who had been his mother’s favourite, the brother whom his sister had
looked up to and regarded with a semi-worship so long as he would let
her, was about to go through the most important act of his life without
their presence or sympathy--excitement ran very high in the veins of the
two ladies. Sir John called them home by every post, having in his mind
a secret dread that they might do something or say something to
compromise him, or at least themselves, in respect to Arthur; and Lady
Curtis, without ever saying why, made excuses to remain, now a week, now
a day longer. She did not even tell herself why; she would not allow the
thought to form itself, that, perhaps, even at the last moment, Arthur
might appear, at least to ask her forgiveness and blessing, if not to
tell her that he had repented and abandoned this evil way. She stayed in
Berkeley Square, trembling every time there was a knock at the door,
gazing wistfully from the window at passing cabs and carriages. When
Durant came in a Hansom, one wintry evening, he was received with open
arms at the door; and the disappointment and impatience in Lady Curtis’s
face at the sight of him, was very far from flattering.

“Oh!” she cried, “I thought it was--” and burst into tears.

When Lucy tried to say that he could not come now, that to desert his
bride now would be unmanly and treacherous, her mother turned upon her
with a dumb rage which was terrible to see. She hoped till the very eve
of the marriage--the time fixed for which Durant had informed them of.
And that evening Lucy made a prayer, which her mother was deeply angered
by at first, but finally yielded to. Lucy begged, with tears, to be
allowed to go and witness her brother’s marriage, from a distance, at
least. She promised to do nothing and say nothing which would betray
her; to keep her veil down, not to speak to him, not to give him any
token of her presence. All this Lucy promised, and at last she carried
her point. They spent a miserable evening together, Durant coming in
late to bring them the last news. He had found out the hour, and all
about the wedding arrangements, and he was too happy to put himself at
Lucy’s service to escort her to Underhayes. Lady Curtis’ old maid, who
had known Arthur all his life, and who could not be kept from knowing
all the family affairs, was to go with them; and Durant pledged himself
to meet them at the railway, and take care of them, and see that they
were protected from any contact with the family of Arthur’s bride. In
the prospect of this, Durant was, perhaps, not so downcast about
Arthur’s unhappy marriage as he ought to have been, and Lady Curtis
surprised sundry signs of unseemly satisfaction in him.

“I do not think Mr. Durant is nearly so true a friend to my poor boy as
I should have expected,” she said, with a suspicious cloud on her face,
when he went away.

“Oh, mamma, I am sure he is very fond of Arthur,” said Lucy. She too had
seen, perhaps, the glimpses of satisfaction which burst through his
gravity; but then Lucy, better informed than her mother, set them down
to the right cause.

“He may be fond of Arthur, but he does not see as we do that this is
destruction to him,” said Lady Curtis, putting her handkerchief to her
wet eyes.

“I am sure he will be his warm friend in any trouble.”

“Well, my dear, let us hope so; for he will want all his friends. I
think so myself,” said Lady Curtis. “In any trouble! What do you call
this but trouble? If he had lost everything he had in the world, it
would not be half so bad; but men have such strange ways of looking at
things. If he were to break his leg or get a bad illness, which would
not be half so serious----”

“Oh, mamma!” cried Lucy, putting out two fingers of her pretty hand to
avert the evil omen.

“Well, well, you know that is not what I mean. God forbid my boy should
be ill, away from home, among strangers!” cried Lady Curtis. “It would
be strange if you had to _faire les cornes_ for anything his mother
said; but what would illness be in comparison with this? In that case,
Mr. Durant would be perfect, I feel sure of it; but now----”

“I think he was pleased to see how your heart melted to poor Arthur, and
to know of this,” said Lucy, pointing to a letter which lay on the
table. Was it for her to say that there was still something else which
made Durant still more glad?

“Oh, Lucy! as if my heart required to be melted towards my son, my only
boy!”

And then you may be sure Lucy cried; what could a girl do?

It can scarcely be said that these preparatory days were much more
cheerful to Arthur. Everybody had dropped away from him. He had the
prospect in a few days of what people are pleased to call happiness. He
was to marry the bride of his choice, and to take her away with him, the
two by themselves, the Elysium of the primitive imagination; and Arthur
was very much in love. He believed that as soon as they got away, when
he had once separated this rose of his from all the domestic thorns
surrounding her, he would be perfectly happy. It was the one redeeming
point in the difficulties of the moment that he entirely believed this.
Then, at least, he thought he was sure of blessedness; and that prospect
made much possible that would not have been possible otherwise. But to
be cut off from all companionship of his own class, even from Mr.
Eagles, and the “men” who frequented Mr. Eagles’ intellectual
workshops; to be separated from his family whom he loved, though he was
angry with them, to have nothing to do, though on ordinary occasions he
was not disposed to do very much--this isolation was very hard upon
Arthur. He had no society but that of the Bates’ household, and was
often left to amuse himself as he could in the stuffy parlour, without
even Nancy, who had naturally a great many things to do on the eve of
her wedding, which brides in rich households are not called upon to
think of. Arthur winced when he had to endure the companionship of the
tax-collector or his son Charley, unsweetened by Nancy’s presence; and
it must be allowed that as the time approached which was to bind him for
ever to the family, his toleration of them, which during his courtship
had been unbounded, began to give way. It began to be very hard to put
up with Mr. Bates’ rum-and-water, and the railleries of Sarah Jane; and
Matilda and Mrs. Bates, both of whom were “sensible,” began to perceive
this--the mother with resentment, the daughter with a certain sympathy.
Matilda intimated to her mother that “it was touch and go with Arthur,”
and that she “wasn’t surprised;” but the father and son and Sarah Jane
remained happily unaware that they were not the best of company for
Nancy’s future husband, whom they called freely by his Christian name,
making him “quite at home.” This gave him an eagerness to push on the
wedding, which was quite the proper thing in the circumstances. He would
have had it a week earlier if he could have persuaded them to depart
from any of the grandeur they intended, and as it was, he chafed and
grumbled at the delay in a way, which as Mrs. Bates remarked, was “most
flattering” for them all. But poor Arthur had no intention of
flattering. He could do nothing but sit in his lodgings, or in the
Bates’ parlour, and watch the progress of the hours. After the wedding
he vowed to himself he would change all that; there would be an entire
revolution in his life; he would escape with his Nancy into a better and
fresher air, and when they asked about the return of the pair, he did
his best to evade the question.

“I don’t think we must bind ourselves to anything, Mrs. Bates. If Nancy
likes Paris we may stay there--or if we can get as far as Italy----”

“Oh, I shan’t stay very long, mamma,” said Nancy, “I daresay I shall
soon get tired among foreigners.”

“Shouldn’t I like to see you,” cried Mrs. Bates, “you that know the
language! What a good thing it is you that is going, and not Matilda or
Sarah Jane.”

“Oh I should soon have got on,” said the latter personage. “I should
soon have picked it up, _commeng vous portez vous_; I know a little
already.”

“But not like Nancy, who had French for five quarters at Miss
Woodroof’s, when your poor dear aunt was alive. My sister was one that
thought a great deal of education--”

“I wish you would not all talk together,” said Nancy, whose temper was
not improved by her important position. “I hated it. I never learned a
word I could help. I’ll let Arthur do all the talking; and as soon as
ever we can, you’ll see us home.”

“On the contrary,” said Arthur, with secret uneasiness, “you will like
Paris so well that you will never wish to leave it. It is so gay and
bright; and if we can go on as far as Italy--that is what I should like
most.”

“Anyhow, you will be back before Christmas?”

“Oh, Christmas! long before that!” said Nancy.

Arthur said nothing; but he recorded a vow in the depths of his heart.




CHAPTER XI.


Durant met Lucy at the station on the morning of Arthur’s wedding day.
She was under the charge of old Mrs. Davies, the confidential woman who
had nursed Lady Curtis’s children through their sicknesses, and petted
them at all times and seasons since ever they were born. Lucy was very
pale, but her distress was nothing to that of old Davies, who seemed to
think it her duty to cry all the way, and heaved from time to time the
bitterest sighs. “Oh, my dear young gentleman,” she said at intervals,
“Oh, Master Arthur! to think as I should have lived to see such a day!”
This did not improve Lucy’s spirits, who sat very pale in a corner,
sometimes piteously lifting her eyes to Durant for sympathy. The day
chosen for Arthur’s marriage was the 1st of November, as inappropriate a
moment for a wedding as could well be imagined, All Saints’ day, the
anniversary of death, not of bridal, and a gloomy morning, with a soft
persistent drizzle of rain, and skies that looked like lead. “I hope the
sun will shine a little,” said Lucy.

“Oh, Miss Lucy,” said old Davies, “why should the sun shine? They can’t
expect no happiness, flying in the face of their parents like this.”

Durant who was not by a long way so melancholy as he ought to have been,
did what he could to make the party more cheerful. How could he be
otherwise than happy with Lucy seated opposite to him, travelling with
him, with an air of belonging to him, which filled the young man’s veins
as with wine? Sometimes he almost could have believed that it was his
own wedding day, not Arthur’s, and that something more than his most
foolish hopes had been realized. Alas, on the contrary, did not Arthur’s
wedding make his own more hopeless than ever? Would the parents ever
consent to a second unsatisfactory alliance; and what could a poor young
barrister, grandson of a fortunate saddler, with the saddler’s blood in
his veins but none of his money in his pockets, be but a very
unsatisfactory match for Sir John Curtis’s daughter? This thought did
more than friendship to restore him to the state of mind becoming the
occasion, and in harmony with his companions’ mood; but yet by moments
he forgot it, and half believed himself to be carrying Lucy off to
Italy, as Arthur was about to carry his wife away from these dreary
skies. How much happier he would have been than Arthur! as much happier
as Lucy Curtis was more lovely, more beautiful, more desirable than the
young virago Nancy Bates. If Lucy only had been more humbly born, less
well endowed! how could he wish her less fair and sweet?

He had to hold an umbrella over her as he took her to the church in
which the ceremony was to take place, and he liked the rain. Old Davies,
who came stumping and crying after them in a waterproof, thought it the
most miserable day she ever had seen; but the young pair under the
umbrella, though they were very sad (or thought they were) did not so
much dislike the day. Lucy was much afraid lest she should meet the
party, and yet had a yearning to be recognised by accident by her
brother as well as a terror of it. She talked to Durant about this all
the way, raising her pale face and those eyes which had the clearness of
the skies after rain, and confiding all her feelings to him.

“If it was by accident there would be no harm; could there be any harm?
I would not put myself in the way; but if it happened--”

“You could not see him to-day, could you, without also seeing _her_?”

A tear dropped hastily upon his arm, and Lucy turned her head a little
away to hide that her eyes were again full. “That is the worst of all,”
she said, “my only brother! and I shall never again be able to see him
without _her_--that is the worst of all. Oh, Mr. Durant, I don’t mean
anything against marriage, for I suppose people are--often--happy; but
it is not happy for other people, is it? It tears one away from all that
belong to one--”

How hard it was for him to answer her! “This is an exceptional case,” he
said, his voice trembling a little, “but we must not be infidels to the
highest happiness--and love.”

“Oh, love!” cried Lucy, who was thinking of her brother with all the
faculties of her being, although her heart was vaguely warmed and
stilled unawares by the close neighbourhood of this other who was not
her brother. “Love! as if there was but one kind. I did not think _you_
would have spoken so. Do not we love him, Mr. Durant? and yet he casts
us off for some one he scarcely knows.”

“He will come back to you; it cannot be that the separation is for long.
Arthur is not the man--”

“Oh, Mr. Durant, you mean that he will not be happy? I don’t want him to
be unhappy. Oh, God forbid! and why should not he be happy,” said Lucy
with tearful inconsistency, “if he loves her?” What could Durant say? He
could think of nothing but the foolishest, most traitorous,
dishonourable things, dishonourable to the trust put in him, treacherous
to the confidence with which she held his arm. The very tightening of
her hold, when they met other passers by on the narrow pavement, made
him feel himself the basest of men, when he felt those unsayable words
flutter to his lips--yet made them only flutter the more. He was glad to
be able to put his companion into a deep pew in the old fashioned
church, underneath the gallery, where it would be doubly impossible for
anyone to see her. Lucy pulled her cloak closely round her, and drew her
veil over her face. Mrs. Davies was short, and was almost lost in the
depth of the pew--and they were all very glad that the church was still
encumbered with this old-fashioned lumber, and that no restorations as
yet had been commenced. Durant seated himself still further back. It was
a gloomy place--an old church, low-roofed and partly whitewashed. The
East window looked out into a great oak, which, with its yellow leaves,
was the only thing that seemed to give a little light. The dreary lines
of pews seemed to add to the dismal character of the scene, the
half-daylight, the rain drizzling, the old pew-opener going about in
pattens--no carpet laid down for the bridal feet, or any “fuss” made.
Why should any “fuss” be made about Bates the tax-collector’s daughter?
And no one was disposed to do honour to Arthur, but rather the reverse,
as a young man forsaking his caste, and setting the worst of examples to
all other young men.

Now and then somebody would come in with a sound of closing umbrellas,
and swinging of the doors, and come noisily up the aisle and drop into a
pew. Girls, like Sarah Jane, in cheap hats with cheaper feathers, who
sat and whispered, and laughed, and looked about them, and women of Mrs.
Bates’ own type, with big shawls and nondescript bonnets, came to see
the Bates’ triumph with no very friendly sympathy. The dreariest scene!
Durant sat behind and looked at it all with his heart beating. In the
general commotion in which his mind was, he too could have cried as Lucy
was doing over Arthur. How different was all this from the circumstances
that ought to have attended the “happiest day of his life;” would it be
the happiest day of his life;--or perhaps the most miserable? And yet,
if the spectator could have taken the hand of that pale girl in front of
him, and led her up to that dingy altar, how soon would he have
forgotten all the circumstances! The damp-breathing place, the clammy
pews, the squalor of the rain, the absence of all beauty and tokens of
delight, what would they have done but make his happiness show all the
brighter? Would the effect be the same with Arthur too? They had very
soon an opportunity of judging; for Arthur came in suddenly by himself,
looking anything but ecstatic. Fortunately, Durant thought, Lucy did not
see him, her head being bent and covered with her hands. But Durant
himself watched the bridegroom with feelings which he could not have
described, a mixture of pity, and envy, and fellow-feeling, and
contempt. That a man who was the brother of Lucy Curtis should throw
away everything for Nancy Bates! and yet to have it in your power to
throw away everything for love, to give the woman you had chosen, if
she were only Nancy Bates, such a proof of affection, absolute and
unmixed! But Arthur scarcely seemed conscious himself of that fine
position. He was very pale, with an excited look about the eyes which
gave him a worn and exhausted aspect. He was feeling to the bottom of
his soul the squalor, the dinginess, the damp, and the gloom. What a day
it was to be married on! What a place to be married in! What dismal
surroundings? old Bates and Charley, and the uncle from Wapping, and not
one familiar face to look kindly at him, to wish him happiness in a
voice that was dear. He sat down in the front, gazing blankly, like
Durant, at the oaktree that shed a little colour from its autumn leaves.
It reminded him, by some fantastic trick of association, of the trees at
home. Would he ever see that home again? The disjunction from everything
he had cared for, from all he knew, came over him with a forlorn sense
of desolation and solitude--on his wedding-day! Arthur felt he was
doing wrong to his bride, but how could he help it? He, too, covered his
face with his hands. Durant felt that if Lucy saw him she would rush to
him in indifference to all appearances, but she did not know he had
passed her so quietly, all alone.

And then the few spectators began to whisper and stir, and turn their
heads to the door; and a carriage was heard to stop. Lucy raised her
head and put back her veil a little. She gazed breathless at the bride,
who came up the aisle on her father’s arm. Nancy was dressed in simple
white muslin, the resources of the family having been concentrated on
the “silk” in which she was to take her departure from home. But she had
a veil like the most fashionable of brides, and a crown of
orange-blossoms, such as would have put most brides to shame. Lucy gazed
at her, more and more forgetting that she herself ought not to be seen,
and her heart swelled with a mixture of attraction and repulsion. That
dress and that moment equalizes conditions. A woman cannot be more than
a bride if she should be a queen. Nancy had a right to be considered as
the type of all youth and womanhood, as much as if she had been the most
exalted of women. Arthur was but a poor type of the other side, but for
her there was no drawback, except the rain, and she had not been
conscious of the rain. With her head a little drooped, but her pretty
figure erect, she walked up the aisle, leaning on her shabby old
father’s arm, like a lily, notwithstanding the meanness of the prop. She
was happy; she was serious; full of awe, which gave delicacy to her
looks and movements, uncertain yet serene upon the threshold of her
life. Durant, who had no prejudice, became an instant convert to her as
she passed him, virginal, abstracted, a vision of whiteness and serious
tender mystery. And Lucy, who was moved against her will, could do
nothing but gaze, forgetting herself, till old Davies sighed so loud and
shook her head so persistently that her young mistress took fright. It
was not a wedding that occupied much time. There was no music, no
nuptial hymn or wedding march for Nancy Bates, and the two spectators
who were most interested had scarcely recovered from their thrill of
excitement when the stir about the altar told that it was all over, and
the party going to the vestry to sign the register. This was the signal
for the other people present to open their pew-doors, and pull up their
shawls, and lift their damp umbrellas; and Sarah Jane, who was full of
excitement and satisfaction, proud of her white bonnet and her new
frock, came tripping down the aisle to speak to some of those companions
of her own, whose dingy dresses made such a wonderful contrast to her
own bright and gay garb. “Didn’t she behave beautiful? hasn’t it gone
off well?” said Sarah Jane, triumphing over everyone who was not in
pink muslin. And while she stood giving information of the future
movements of the bridal pair, describing fully where “Arthur” was about
to take Nancy, Durant bent forward to endeavour to induce Lucy to leave.
He had forgotten all about Sarah Jane, but she had not forgotten him.
She gave a little scream of surprise, and looked eagerly at the
half-veiled young lady. Then she rushed off, forgetting even her pink
muslin, and calling audibly on Arthur as she approached the door of the
vestry, which the rest of the party had entered.

“Arthur! Arthur!” she called, rushing in among them, “there’s one of
your people there----”

“Hold your tongue,” said her mother in alarm. “Sarah Jane! recollect
you’re in church.”

“I’m speaking to Arthur, mamma; there’s one of your people there, as
sure as--as sure as anything, and Mr. Durant with her. He did not see
me,” cried Sarah Jane, with an angry blush, “but I know him; and there’s
a young lady and an old lady.”

“And quite natural too, and I’m very glad of it,” said Mrs. Bates.
“Fancy my staying away if it was Charley’s wedding! I’ll go and ask my
lady to come and have a bit of dinner.”

“It must be a mistake,” said Arthur, paler than ever; “it cannot be my
mother.”

He put out his hand to stop Mrs. Bates; then he stood aghast, gazing
after her. He could not leave his newly-made bride, and how could he
meet his mother’s eyes?

“Oh, go--go,” said Nancy; “you needn’t mind me.” Then she herself
melted, touched by the situation. “Yes, go, Arthur. I will wait for
you,” she said, with something that looked almost like dignity.

He dared not take her with him. He went with mingled eagerness and
reluctance, wondering, affected, ready to bless his mother, or to cast
off all duty to her for ever.

He found Mrs. Bates haranguing old Davies, his mother’s maid, calling
her “my lady,” and begging that she would do them the honour to come to
the wedding breakfast.

“I don’t pretend to call it breakfast, it’s more like what your ladyship
would call a lunch; but the young folks must have something substantial
before they start on their journey--and we’ll take it so friendly, and
such an honour. It is just what we were wanting, and not daring to hope
for, my lady,” said Mrs. Bates, beaming. “Arthur, you can tell her
ladyship--”

“Why, Davies, you!” cried Arthur, sharply, stung by sudden rage. “What
are you doing here?”

“Davies! Ain’t she my lady after all?” cried Mrs. Bates.

Lucy had been almost crouching in a corner of the pew; but when she saw
her brother’s troubled and worn face, she could not restrain herself.

“Oh, Arthur, how could you think mamma would come?” she said. “How could
she come after the letter you sent her? But we could not let it be
without one near you that loved you; and I am here,” said Lucy, coming
forward, putting back her veil, the tears rushing to her eyes.

Arthur was overcome by the sight of her, by the voice, by the incident
altogether. He was so much excited and overcome that he could have cried
too. He took his sister’s outstretched hands, and kissed her cheek.

“Lucy, I will never forget this. Come and speak to Nancy, and then they
can take you away.”

Here Durant came forward, with a feeling that he would be condemned on
all sides.

“I don’t think Lady Curtis meant that your sister should see anyone,” he
said.

“Lucy, I suppose you are old enough to choose for yourself--is he the
keeper of your conscience?” cried Arthur.

Lucy looked at her guardian, with a faint, deprecatory smile quivering
on her lip.

“I must,” she said; “I must! How can I help it?”

She seemed to ask his permission; and what was he that he should give or
withhold permission? He stood aside, and with reluctant hands opened the
pew-door.

Just then Nancy, tired of waiting, and drawn by potent curiosity, came
forward alone. She had thrown back her bridal veil. It was natural that
there should be a certain defiant expression on her face. She strolled
towards them with an appearance of carelessness, a cavalier air. Nancy’s
heart was beating loudly enough. She was afraid of the ladies whom she
might be about to face, but that only made her put on a bolder and more
saucy aspect. She was half-wounded that he should have left her for a
moment, half-anxious for the result, and really eager and wistful,
wishing to please if she could, had anyone been able to see into her
heart. But an image of more complete defiance and saucy freedom than
this girl, with her veil put up in a crumpled mass, approaching with a
bold swing of her person and a loud-sounding step, could not have been
found. All her virginal grace, her tender bridehood and womanhood,
seemed to have suddenly flown.

Lucy looked up at her and quailed; her lip quivered more and more; she
looked at Durant with an appeal, she looked at Arthur with a pitiful
glance. Finally, she stepped forward, and said, softly,

“I must not stay. I wish you may be very, very happy, you and my
brother. Oh, Arthur, you know I wish you happy!” Then she made a pause,
for Nancy gave no response. “I am sorry,” she went on, faltering, “that
it has all been so unhappy--that we have not known you--that Arthur has
been so unkind; but it is not our fault.”

“Oh, it does not matter,” said Nancy. She was touched by the look of the
girl who stood before her, but to give in was impossible. “It doesn’t
matter a bit. I don’t suppose we should have got on, had we known each
other. It is better it should be as it is.”

And with this she turned and walked slowly back towards the vestry,
turning her back upon them. Lucy stood still for a moment in dismay.
Then she said, breathless,

“Good-bye, Arthur, good-bye! Davies will give you a letter, but don’t
open it now. Good-bye, and God bless you. Take me away, Mr. Durant, take
me away! Come, come,” she said, hastening him as they got to the door.
“I shall be crying again if we don’t go, I am so silly. I don’t care for
the rain, only come, come away!”

Then they were out of doors again, in the wet street, at a distance even
from old Davies, who came hobbling after them, the rain blowing in their
faces, everything over. Lucy clung to his arm and hurried him on,
choking the sobs that would come into her throat.

“How can I forgive myself?” he cried. “I have allowed you to be
insulted--I, who would not let the wind blow on you if I had my will.”

She remembered this after, and his agitated look, but did not see them
then.

“Oh, it is not that,” she said. “It does not matter, as she told me. But
oh, Arthur! he does not belong to us any longer, he cares nothing about
us!” cried Lucy, with the shock of discovery which no previous
preparation in the mind can lessen.

She had said, as she came, that her brother was severed from his family;
but now she saw it with her eyes, and felt the sharpness of the fact, so
different from anticipation. Durant was full of a hundred compunctions,
as if he had been the cause. He would have said philosophically enough
to his own sister that it was the course of nature; but it seemed
horrible, unnatural, that such a thing should happen to Lucy. The little
suppressed sobs that came from her at intervals as they went back to the
train, seemed to rend his own heart.




CHAPTER XII.


Though it was his wedding-day, and though he was an impassioned lover,
it would be impossible to describe the sensation of despair with which
Arthur saw his sister and his friend hurry out of the church. His bride
had left him on the other side, turning her back upon him. He was left
there, with Mrs. Bates and old Davies! There was a tragical-ludicrous
air about the group which seemed the very culmination of that squalor of
the weather and the surroundings, which not even Nancy’s bridal-wreath,
and Sarah Jane’s pink muslin could counteract. Mrs. Bates and Mrs.
Davies were fitly matched. They were ready to fly at each other’s
throats, metaphorically, as they stood there, confronting each other:
Mrs. Bates red with confusion and wrath to think that she should have
called this _person_ my lady, and Davies dissolved in tears and
speechless with indignation. What had young Arthur to do between them?
They seemed like symbolical emblems of his fate. No longer to have to do
with the beautiful things of this earth, grace, cultivation, loveliness;
but with the meaner conditions, the bare, unattractive prose of
existence. Everything that was shabby and rusty and poor had taken the
place of all that was lovely and pleasant and of good report. Beauty and
youth were evanescent qualities; they would flit away even from his
bride; and what had he to look forward to but another Mrs. Bates as his
final companion? This horrible idea did not communicate itself in so
many words, but it flitted vaguely upon the air, giving Arthur a sudden
horror of Mrs. Bates, who had taken the place of his mother, as it
seemed. He turned away to follow Nancy, but was stopped by old Davies,
who called out a despairing “Oh, Master Arthur!” and put a letter, wet
with unnecessary tears, into his hand.

“Is it from my mother, Davies?” he said.

“I don’t know, Sir, if it’s my lady or Miss Lucy. I was to have took it;
I wasn’t to have seen you; but now as I have seen you--oh, Master
Arthur, Master Arthur, how could you, Sir?” cried Davies, with streaming
eyes and uplifted hands.

He turned away with rage in his heart, clenching his hand involuntarily;
but at that moment Mrs. Bates interfered, and changed the current of
Arthur’s feelings.

“You are a most impertinent person,” said Mrs. Bates. “How dare you
speak to my son-in-law so? And in church, too! Though you are only a
servant, you ought to know better.”

“Davies!” cried Arthur, rushing back and taking the old woman’s hands,
“go after Lucy--quick! She is alone. But first say, ‘God bless you!’
dear old Davies. There never was a time that you did not say ‘God bless
you’ before!”

“And I will say it!” cried the old woman. “I will say it, never mind who
hears. Oh, Master Arthur, dear, God bless you! But you’ve broke my
lady’s heart, and Miss Lucy’s too.”

“Run after her--go, Davies, go! my sister is alone,” cried Arthur,
giving her such a grasp of his young hands, and turning her round
towards the door with such impetuosity, that poor old Davies all but
tripped upon the matting in the aisle.

He thrust the letter into his pocket, and went back to Nancy, who stood
at the vestry door, looking round for him, with nothing but disdain in
her face, and little but dismay in her heart.

“If he leaves me like this now, what will he do after?” Nancy was saying
to herself; and though she loved him dearly, and though it was a great
marriage for Nancy Bates, her heart quailed for the moment at the
difficulties before her, and she repented of the step she had just
taken. She stood up against the vestry-door, defying her bridegroom and
all his belongings, as it seemed, with dilated nostrils and curled lips,
and insolent gaze. But in her heart, what a darkness of despair was
quivering about poor Nancy! What had she done? Plunged into a new world,
which was all against her, which was superior to her, in which she had
nothing but Arthur, who already, ten minutes after he had pledged her
his faith, had deserted her--for _them_! Oh, how much better to have
stayed by the old mother, the shabby father who loved her! Her whole
inner being was quivering with this pang of sudden desolation and
enlightenment. But with what a look of disdain and defiance she regarded
her bridegroom as he came back to her! no softening in her eyes, however
much there might be in her heart.

“Forgive me, Nancy,” he said, gently. “You have a right to be vexed; but
don’t turn from me, my darling, as if I were unworthy a look.”

“It is you who think me unworthy a look!” she cried, “you and your
fine-lady sister, and all your grand friends. Oh, I am sure you would
much rather go to them. If they had only come yesterday instead of
to-day!”

“Hush, hush!” he said, taking her unwilling hand. She was everything he
had in the world now, and any stirrings of anger that might rise in his
mind were speedily suppressed by the emergency. People have more
dominion even over their feelings than they think. He got rid of the
resentment which springs so quickly when the nerves are overstrung and
the mind excited, by simple force of the position; for if he allowed
himself to quarrel with Nancy, what remained to him? The situation was
impossible. He drew her hand within his arm. “Is everybody ready?” he
said. “We have not much time to lose. Come!” he added, lower. “Darling,
we are going to leave all the trouble behind, both on your side and my
side.”

“There is no trouble on my side!”

“Well, then, on mine; we are leaving it all behind. Is not everything
happiness, everything delight beyond this church door?”

She could not continue the controversy: for Arthur’s face had regained
the lover-look which Nancy had felt the absence of all that strange
morning. She had to walk by his side, with her arm in his, and his soft
words and glowing looks, and the way in which he held her hand upon his
arm, gradually stole at once the misery and the defiance out of her
heart. She began to forget the untoward details, and to feel only the
thrill of this mysterious thing which had happened. That she was no
longer Nancy Bates but Mrs. Arthur Curtis, to be my Lady Curtis
sometime--no longer a poor girl, the tax-collector’s daughter, but a
lady! All in a moment, this mystic change had been made. And she _was_
changed; she felt it, with a sudden revulsion of sentiment. The laugh of
Sarah Jane behind her filled her with a half impatient shame. She was
annoyed to hear her mother telling over the just concluded incident. She
herself had a right to be angry, but what had they to do with Miss
Curtis’ visit? Lucy’s visit! that was what her brother’s wife had a
right to call her; but “the Bateses” had no right to interfere at all.
Had Arthur said this, she would have blazed into high resentment and
declared her family to be as good, if not better, than his; but in the
seclusion of her private soul, a seclusion not yet in any way impaired
by the fact that she was married, this was how she was thinking. It gave
her a sense of importance that Lucy had come. She had taken no notice of
Arthur’s family, but they had been compelled to take notice of her. And
in time to come when she might have many battles to fight with them, it
would be well to have this fact in hand. Accordingly, when the party
arrived at home, it was Nancy who silenced her mother, whose indignation
against Arthur for allowing her to address old Nurse Davies as my lady
was great.

“Mamma, you will just stop that,” said Nancy. “You went out of the room
in a hurry before Arthur knew. Was it his fault?”

Mrs. Bates was thunderstruck. She had thought of a great many things
that might happen, sooner than that Nancy should take up the cudgels for
her new family.

“Bless us all!” she said, “is it a reason that no one should dare to
speak, because you are Mrs. Arthur Curtis?”

But it was not a moment to quarrel. And when after the meal which Mrs.
Bates had thought Lady Curtis would call a luncheon, the mother and
sisters left the table with the bride, in a body, to change her dress,
according to the well-understood formula of marriages, there was nothing
but affection and tears, as is becoming at such a moment. There were no
strangers present at the meal. It had been the strong desire of Sarah
Jane that Mr. Raisins should be invited, he who it was understood was
likely to cause another “wedding in the family” before long. But this
had not been permitted, partly on account of Arthur, partly because
there was no room.

“We must have your Uncle Sam, and how are we to squeeze in another?”
Mrs. Bates had asked; and all Sarah Jane’s indignant protestations about
the impossibility of a wedding “without one young man,” were silenced
by the physical impossibility. The limited number of the party thus took
away much of the supposed festive character from the repast. But for the
wedding cake on the table, it might have been a very ordinary domestic
dinner; and even Sarah Jane’s pink muslin was of little use to her, and
had no effect to speak of upon her spirits. To be sure there were a few
people coming to tea, whatever consolation might be got from that. The
little parlour was hot and stuffy with eight people seated round the
table; and no effort that Arthur could make could keep from his mind a
sense of the grotesque incongruity of the scene. People who were passing
peered in at the window to see the wedding party, and get a glimpse of
the bride. Arthur had found the parlour an earthly paradise at almost
every other hour; but he had not been in the habit of coming at this
hour. He had never even seen the family at their early dinner; and to
have his health drank by Uncle Sam from Wapping was a new experience to
him.

“I hope as you’ll both be happy, Mr. Curtis, and that you’ll have every
satisfaction in Nancy,” said Mr. Sam Bates, solemnly drinking a glass of
the brown and filmy port which they all pledged the bride and bridegroom
in. He looked at her as if she had been an article just sold, with a
calculation of all the uses she might be put to, as he hoped she would
give satisfaction. “I have heard a deal of my niece Nancy, and I know
she’s had a many advantages,” he said. “I hope she’ll act up to them,
Mr. Curtis, and give you every satisfaction in the married state.”

This was the toast of the day, and they all hoped that Arthur would have
got up and made a speech; and when he only said, “I am much obliged to
you, Mr. Bates,” they were all a trifle disappointed, especially on
account of Uncle Sam, who they felt required some practical proof that
Nancy’s husband was, in reality, the very fine gentleman and member of
the upper classes which they had represented him to be--not perceiving
that Sam’s speech of itself proved his perception of the fact. And it
was very strange that all these details, which would have amused Arthur
greatly, with a kindly amusement without any gall in it, when he first
began to come to the house, and which, even up to a very recent period,
he would have regarded with amiable toleration, should have become
unendurable to him now, at the very moment when he had become legally a
member of the household party, and had more reason than ever before to
judge them charitably, and look upon their doings and sayings with
indulgent eyes; but so it was. How this should be, it is hard to
explain, but it was quite natural to feel; and it is scarcely possible
to exaggerate the impatience that was in his mind to get away, and to
carry Nancy away. She was his now--“there was no longer any occasion for
him,” he said, unconsciously to himself, “to put up with this.” He was
enfranchised. Soon there would be land and sea, miles and leagues of it,
of English soil, and foreign ground between them; and it would be his
own fault if he exposed himself to another dinner in that parlour. When
Nancy went away to change her dress, attended by her mother and sisters,
Mr. Bates got out the rum, and called to “the girl” for hot water.

“You’ll take a drop before you start for luck,” he said; and though
Arthur would not take any, Sam Bates was very willing to do so. The
smell of it sickened the young man, for the first time fastidious and
critical. He got up and went to the window to look for the carriage
which was coming to take his bride and himself away. They were going to
Dover direct, to cross in a day or two. How he counted the moments till
he could get out into the fresh air, however damp and gloomy, never,
with his will, to come back here any more.

But another shock awaited poor Arthur when Nancy came downstairs attired
in the “silk” which was the crown of her little trousseau. It was light
and thin, and rustled much, and was of a kind of salmon colour, between
pink and brown, largely trimmed with flounces and fringes and bits of
lace--every kind of florid ornamentation. The women were so proud of the
effect, that Nancy was brought downstairs with the little brown jacket
on her arm, which she was to wear over this resplendent garb, which, it
seemed to Arthur’s eyes, might have been worn at a flower-show on a
brilliant day of summer; for he was not sufficiently trained in details
to be aware how the cheap elaboration of Nancy’s gown would have showed
among the costlier productions of fashion.

“My! what a swell!” cried Charley Bates, while the two elders looked up
complaisant from their rum and water. It was indeed a proud moment for
the family.

“The thought I’ve had over this dress!” said the proud mother, with a
pull here, and a pinch there to the cracking folds, “for you see there
were so many things to think of; the present moment isn’t everything;
and if she takes care of it, it will be quite good for next summer, and
always a handsome dress for an occasion. And then if they meet friends,
and are asked out of an evening, there she is! what could be better? You
may say she’s a swell--but lasting was in my mind.”

“It’s a splendid costoom,” said Uncle Sam. “I hope there’s a something
in the pocket for luck. And very pretty you look in it, Nancy, and I
wish you health to wear it, my dear, and plenty more when that’s done.”

“She must not look for many like this,” said Mrs. Bates; “not just at
present, till Sir John comes round. Parents may stretch a point, but I
would never have a young woman be hard upon her husband. Turn round,
dear, and show the basques. I never saw a dress that did Miss Snips more
credit. But Arthur don’t give his opinion. A shawl! Oh, if that isn’t
like a man! Cover her up in a shawl on her wedding-day!”

“But what if she catches cold on her wedding-day?” said poor Arthur.

He put his hand caressingly on the pinkness of the shoulder, and looked
at his bride with all the show of admiration which he could put on to
hide his secret horror. He was worn out with excitement and emotion,
which, no doubt, was the reason why this final accident gave him such a
shiver of horror.

Nancy, who had grown suspicious as he grew fastidious, took fire
instantly. She flung away from his caressing touch.

“I’d better go upstairs again, and put on my old merino!” she cried,
with a flush of passion, wheeling round with indignant impetuosity, and
a fury of disappointment in her heart. They all caught and held her,
while she struggled to get free.

“She was always like that,” cried her mother. “She never could bear a
word about her things. Nancy, dear, it ain’t that he doesn’t like it.
It’s all his anxiety for you.”

“My dear Nancy, the carriage is here,” cried Arthur, half frantic. “We
shall lose the train. The dress is beautiful, but the day is cold and
wet--”

“Don’t you see, dear, he don’t want you to spoil your lovely dress--”

“And be as hoarse as an old crow all the honeymoon,” said the amiable
Matilda. “That’s what Arthur is thinking of, and right too! And here’s
my new shawl, that I brought down on purpose. Look at the coachman, off
of his box, looking in.”

This reduced them all to calm. The coachman sat serenely overhead,
contemplating the scene in the parlour with much satisfaction. His
attention, however, was chiefly centred in the steaming rum-and-water,
which, though it disgusted Arthur, looked very comfortable to the damp
cabman in the drizzle, who was elderly, and had no particular interest
in the bride. “Lord, how some folks does enjoy themselves!” he was
saying in his secret soul. And, fortunately, there was no more time to
think of the dress. Matilda wrapped her sister in her big shawl, and
they all pressed round with kisses and farewells, of which Arthur had
his share. He did not like them to kiss him, but how could he help it?
He was on his good behaviour, ready to accept and forgive everything so
long as he could get away.

And when they at last drove from the door, what a relief it was! The
Bates’ all stood in a circle outside, waving good-byes and yet more
kisses, not heeding either the rain or the draggled spectators who stood
by. Nor were the other missiles wanting which are common on such
occasions. An old white shoe, one of those which Sarah Jane had danced
to pieces on the night of the Volunteers’ ball, thrown violently after
them, glanced in at the window, and fell on the opposite seat as they
set out. Never was there a more squalid spell discharged at the shy and
doubtful happiness for which Arthur Curtis had paid so great a price. He
took it between his finger and thumb, and pitched it out of the window.
Perhaps that, too, was an injudicious step to take.

“I think you might have gone a little further off before you showed my
folks how you despise them, Arthur,” cried Nancy, with flaming cheeks.

Poor Arthur! there was not much laughter in his mood. But he made an
effort to be light-hearted and gay.

“It was too dirty for anything,” he said, laughing; and then he drew her
within his arm, and said, “At last, Nancy! only you and I!”

“Yes; you have got rid of them all at last,” said Nancy, making an
effort to resist.

But, after all, they were in love with each other, and had been married
that morning. The incipient hostility dropped, and he forgave her dress,
and she forgave his criticism. Her manners were as imperfect as her
gown; but now she was free from all influences that were perverse, and
she was his Nancy--his bride, the girl he loved, the object of his
choice. He had paid dearly for the prize he was carrying away. It was
not the time, certainly, to look out for flaws in that prize now.

Thus they set off on their honeymoon, poor inexperienced young souls! He
persuaded her, with no great difficulty, to stay in London first for a
few days--hoping to be able to correct the dress--for how could he take
her to France, where dress means something, to travel in November in a
salmon-coloured silk gown? This may seem a poor sort of thing to occupy
a bridegroom’s thoughts. But then the vehemence of a reformer and
missionary was added in Arthur’s case to the new sense of responsibility
that was upon him. He must make her perfect--if he could.




CHAPTER XIII.


The long avenue at Oakley was as dreary as the damp street of
Underhayes. The rain drizzling, a constant soft downfall, half of the
chilly shower, half of the yellow leaves, going on without intermission.
Here and there one of the great oaks from which the place had its name,
stood up all russet and solid, with the dry leaves clinging to its
branches; here were feeble flutters of denuded sycamore and lime, there
elms standing up in a forlorn faded greenness, all rusty, shabby,
ragged, their year’s clothing worn out. The house itself appeared in
glimpses as they drove along, grey and cold with its broad low front
stretching along the damp terraces, which were so green with the wet as
to put everything out of harmony. The neighbourhood was proud of Oakley
Hall, which was said to be pure Italian, Palladian, or something finer
still if there is any finer word. It had an imposing front with
pediments and pillars, supposed to be white, but at present the very
colour of cold, damp and mournful. Lady Curtis shivered as they drove
along, sighting it by glimpses, now more, now less distinctly through
the trees. It was her home, but there was not much sympathy between the
lively quick-feeling woman and the blank splendour of the cold
long-drawn-out house. She was never fond of it at any time. What she
would have given for red brick! but Palladio was very much more
dignified if not so kindly. “How dismal we shall be without Arthur,” she
said as they approached. They had not talked very much to each other on
the journey. All that could be said about Arthur had been said on the
night of Lucy’s return from Underhayes, but it was not possible to keep
absolute silence about him now. The house was so full of Arthur; they
seemed to see him upon the steps, in the avenue, appearing across the
park with his gun. And now he had disappeared from the place. Their own
sudden departure, when they first heard of his folly, had broken up the
lingering remnant of a shooting party which had assembled at Oakley,
chiefly for Arthur’s pleasure, but which no persuasions had induced
Arthur to join. Now the men and their guns were all gone, and there was
an interval of quiet before them till Christmas, when Sir John’s
habitual party of parliamentary friends would assemble. Nothing but
mourning could interfere with that; and, “we can’t put on mourning for
Arthur, though God knows we might, if separation was all that was meant
by it,” said Lady Curtis.

“Oh, mamma!” said Lucy with her usual tone of gentle remonstrance.

Lady Curtis was very quick and outspoken. She said a great many things
with her lips which people in general say only in the seclusion of their
mind. Lucy _faisait les cornes_ again when her mother spoke of mourning
for Arthur. The suggestion was intolerable to her. It threw an
additional cloud upon the dreary streaming avenue and the grey blank of
the eyeless house.

Sir John, who was in reality expecting them anxiously, did not come to
the door to meet them, being a little too late in moving from his chair
in the library, which was his way. There were often advantages in it;
and perhaps to-day, as on other occasions, it was just as well that it
was in his library he received his wife and daughter, instead of meeting
them in the full sight of the servants. Sir John was a tall grey-haired
man with a sort of homely dignity about him. He was not clever, and
often enough the ladies felt it was difficult to get an idea into his
head--and when the idea was in his head, he was in the way of treating
it somewhat hardly, as if it was a thing rather than an idea. He could
not play with plans and intentions as his wife’s quick mind loved to
do--and when he received a blow, it crushed him with a sort of solid
monotony to which there was no relief. He had not believed it possible
that Arthur would persevere with a marriage which was so seriously
against his interests, and had thought it only “some of my lady’s
nonsense,” to think that this very fact would make Arthur more decided
in throwing himself away. But now that the thing was done, he would
allow no hope in it. His son was lost--the prey probably of a bad,
certainly of a designing woman, seeking her own interests alone. He
might as well die at once for any good that was likely to come of him
now. And in consequence of this determination, on the part of Sir John
that such a thing could not happen, the final act in the drama having
taken him entirely by surprise, notwithstanding all warnings, had shaken
him enormously in his health as well as in his immediate comfort. “He
might as well be dead,” he had said, after he knew that there was no
more hope; and those were the words which he repeated by way of greeting
to his wife and daughter.

“He might as well be dead at once--why did you let him do it?” he cried.
“If I had ever thought he could have been such a fool, I should have
taken care to be on the spot myself,” said Sir John.

He had no curiosity about his son, where he was going--what he was
doing. He might as well have been dead. To be sure when he himself was
dead, Arthur must come back and reign in his state; but then Sir John
felt no necessity within himself that he should ever die. It was so far
off, that it was unnecessary to calculate upon that remote contingency,
and in the meantime it was his son who had departed out of this life,
left it altogether without possibility of return. He had spent these
last few days very mournfully in the solitude of his vast house. One or
two intimate friends had come to see him, but he had not cared to
receive their visits. The Rector had been there for a long time that
very day preaching strange doctrines: that a thing being done could not
be undone, and that it would be wise now to make the best of everything
that happened. The Rector was a Curtis too, Sir John’s own nephew, and
though he was shocked by this domestic incident, he was aware that it
would be best not to allow it to come to anything scandalous. He had
ventured to suggest that, perhaps, things might turn out better than
they appeared. “Better!” said Sir John, “he might as well have been
dead.” He had been able to think of nothing else since he had heard of
it; and his thoughts of Arthur were all of the kind which come into the
minds of those who have lost their children. All the old forgotten
nursery stories came back to him. What a boy he was--so active, so
strong, such a good shot for his years, ready to ride at any thing, and
with an opinion of his own on politics and all that. While he sat in his
library pretending to read and write (and what is it that elderly
gentlemen find to do when they are shut up for day after day, pretending
to read and write in their libraries?) these fancies came surging up
about him exactly as if Arthur had been dead. He would put down his
paper suddenly to think out a little joke of his when he was five, or a
school-boy prank at fifteen. What promise, what ability, a hundred times
cleverer than ever I was! and all to end in this. The dull surprise in
his mind was inexhaustible; how could he be such a fool--how could he
commit moral suicide in this way? And why had not his mother put a stop
to it? This dull misery which he was suffering did not affect Sir
John’s ordinary habits; he went on, to all outward appearance, just as
usual. He fulfilled every duty he had been accustomed to; ate at the
usual times, took all the usual courses at dinner, and presented an
imperturbable countenance to the butler and the footman who waited upon
him; but his heart was heavy with the thought of his son who was lost.
Though he was so glad to have his wife and daughter back again, he met
them almost with reproaches.

“You went away, but you have not done any good,” he said. “I expected
little, but still you might have been of some use--and you have been of
no use. It is exactly as if he were dead.”

“Oh, papa, not that,” cried Lucy; but Lady Curtis only cried as she
dropped into the big chair by the fire to get a little warmth. She felt
at first as if her husband had a right to reproach her, notwithstanding
that she had done everything she could; for she had left him with
perhaps a boast of her own influence, and with very high hopes. It had
seemed to her that Arthur must yield; and not only had Arthur not
yielded, but all the harm that had been threatened was accomplished, and
their only son was lost to them. She could not contradict what Sir John
said. She was humbled, she who had been so confident; she had gone away
almost promising to bring him back with her, confident in her power over
her boy. Never before had her husband gained such an advantage. He had a
kind of right to jibe at her henceforward, if he chose to exercise it.
She had nothing to answer to him. It was quite true what he had said.
What difference would it have made had the boy died.

“I never thought it would come to this,” said Sir John, “not that I
believed in your remonstrances; but I could not have believed that the
fellow was such a fool. What does he suppose he will make by it? He had
everything that heart could desire, a good allowance, a good home; and
to go and cut his own throat as it were, to make an end of himself! He
might just as well have done it at once. He will never be of any good
again.”

“It is quite true, it is quite true,” said Lady Curtis, “all that your
papa says is true.” Her heart was so wrung that she scarcely knew whom
she was addressing, Arthur, who had gone away in his disobedience, or
Lucy, in whom there were faint appearances of standing up for her
brother. The mother would not divest herself of the sense of a domestic
audience to be convinced, whom perhaps their papa might be effectual
with, though she had failed herself.

“What he could think he was to gain by it!” Sir John resumed, encouraged
by this support, which he did not always receive from his wife. “Debt
and that sort of thing is bad enough, and we know how young men are
drawn into it; but what could anybody suppose this was going to be but
ruin and destruction; what could he think there was to gain?”

“Oh, papa!” Lucy could not keep silence any longer. It was not the habit
of the house to allow papa to have everything his own way. When Arthur’s
youthful peccadilloes had been discussed hitherto, Lady Curtis, however
she might object to his conduct, had always been his champion with his
father, and one of the greatest marvels and most confusing circumstances
of all was this silence on her part, and surrender as it were of Arthur
to be crushed as Sir John pleased. Lucy could not be still and hear it
all. “Oh, papa!” she cried, “you speak as if poor Arthur thought of
nothing but his own interest; was he so selfish? you know that he never
thought of what was for his interest at all. Cannot you believe that he
loved her, and that this was his motive?”

“My dear,” said Sir John, “I was not speaking to you. You stand up for
one another as is natural. But see, even your mother has not a word to
say.”

This roused Lady Curtis from her depression. “I disapprove of it all as
much as you can do, John; I am as unhappy; but still I do not think
there was any calculation in Arthur’s mind; how should there have been?
It was the height of foolishness and wicked hastiness, but he knew he
could get nothing by it--he knew it was ruin, as you say.”

“Why did he do it then?” cried Sir John with outspread hands, appealing
to heaven and earth, his eyebrows raised, shaking his head and looking
about as if for an answer. Perhaps he felt his son’s defection the most
of all of them, although when all was well with Arthur he was not one of
the fathers who cultivate their sons unduly, but on the contrary was
often impatient of Lady Curtis’s interest in anything connected with the
boy, and her anxiety about him. “What could happen to him?” Sir John was
in the habit of saying, when, as sometimes happened, there would be a
commotion in the house because Arthur did not write often enough.
“Depend upon it he is all right.” This had been his mood before; but now
he seemed to miss Arthur wherever he turned. A thousand questions seemed
to arise on which he would have liked to consult him; he wanted him to
shoot a too-well preserved preserve, he wanted him to say what he
thought about those new cottages which had to be built. Sir John did not
see the need of new cottages; _he_ did not want a new house, he was
contented with his old one; and why should not other people be content?
but in case the cottages should be forced upon him he should have liked
to know what Arthur thought. Now that he was gone, there seemed to arise
some special reason for appealing to him almost every day. It was as if
he had died.

And there was a long silence in the big still room where the family had
met together after their misfortune. How few families are there which
have not known such sorrowful silences: when there is one absent to be
bitterly blamed, and some one in fretful anguish cries out, and the
others heartbroken, try for excuses and find nothing to say. This was
how it was. The mother and daughter had talked it over till there seemed
no more to add, but Sir John had not had this relief. All his pain and
anger had been locked up in his own bosom, and now they burst forth.
“What did he do it for? What did he suppose he could make by it?” Sir
John did not believe that his son thought anything could be made by it,
but how was he to repress the intolerable pang in his own heart for
Arthur’s loss and ruin? And yet he was angry that nobody defended Arthur
when he stopped speaking. He was angry also when the women attempted to
defend him. It did not much matter which it was. He was silent for a
moment; and the dull sky outside, and the dull air with its double rain
from the clouds and the trees filled up the great windows with
dreariness, adding another element of depression, and Lady Curtis gazed
drearily into the fire stooping over it, to get a little warmth, and
Lucy stood by the table motionless with tears upon her cheek. Then Sir
John burst forth again.

“If there had been anything to justify it, you know! One has heard of a
man losing his head for a great beauty, something out of the way--a
syren, you know. But a village girl, and, from all I hear, a virago, a
temper--”

“Don’t let us speak of her,” said Lady Curtis, with a movement of
disgust. “It’s enough that he has done it. Oh, the foolish, foolish boy!
Separated himself entirely from his own sphere, and his natural life,
and us.”

“Mamma,” said Lucy, breathless, “I don’t want to excuse Arthur; but
what could you say worse of him, both papa and you, if he had done
something _wrong_?”

They both turned upon her, furious: yet so thankful to her for standing
up for him with whom both were wroth beyond words.

“Wrong!” they both cried in one breath. “Are you mad, child? Do you
think he has not done wrong?”

“He has been very, very foolish,” cried Lucy, growing pale. “Yes, he is
wrong; oh, yes, I know he is wrong. But if he had done something
shameful, _wicked_, mother--people’s sons have done so--sin--crime--you
could not take it more seriously, you could not say worse of him.”

“Sin!” said Sir John. “Lucy, you are a girl, you don’t understand
things. A man might be sinful enough, and not cut himself off like this.
It is worse, ever so much worse, both for him and us, than what girls
like you call sin.”

“No, papa!” cried Lucy, with flashing eyes. “I will not hear you speak
so of Arthur. He has been disobedient to you; but he is a man. God does
not mean us always to be obedient like little children. And he has done
nothing that is wrong. I will not hear anyone say so.”

“Wrong!” cried Lady Curtis, rising in her indignation and pain. “Do you
call it right to bring misery and disgrace into a family, to break off
all his old ties for a new one, to throw off father and mother, and duty
and honour, for the sake of a fancy, for the sake of a pretty face? What
does he know more of her than a pretty face? Love! is that what can be
called love?--for the sake of his own will and self-indulgence, the
unkind, selfish boy!”

And then she sat down again and cried bitterly, which was a relief to
her. Sir John could not cry, but he got angry, which was a relief to
him.

“Let me never hear you excuse him again,” he cried, “or you will make
me fear that you are not to be trusted either. What, Lucy! you think
children are not to be expected to obey their parents--you, a girl!
Then, God help us, what have we to expect, your mother and I?--our only
boy lost to us in a disgraceful connection, and our only girl ready to
follow his example.”

“Papa!” cried Lucy, indignant, yet trembling.

“Is that the prospect before us? It is kind of you to give us warning:
and to take such a moment for doing it, when we are crushed
sufficiently, I should think.” Then he changed from this pathetic,
sarcastic tone, and turned upon her with fierce and threatening looks.
“But mind you, Lucy, I’ll shut you up, as fathers had a right to do
once. I’ll keep you on bread and water--by Heaven, I will--before you
disgrace yourself like Arthur, right or wrong!”

“Hush, hush!” cried Lady Curtis, roused. “Oh, John, you forget
yourself. Lucy, Lucy, your papa does not mean it. We don’t distrust you.
Fancy distrusting Lucy, our Lucy, John! Oh, we are not come to that!”
and she went to her daughter, and kissed her, and held her close in her
arms.

Lucy had not said a word, but she had raised her head as her father
vituperated, and fixed her eyes upon him steadily. She was not a girl to
be frightened; but her mother grew frightened looking at her, and seeing
the pale indignation and firmness in her face.

“Of course, I never meant that,” said Sir John, fretfully, sitting down
in his chair with an angry _thud_ which seemed but an echo of his sigh.
“Why do you put your fantastic meanings into a man’s plain words? Hadn’t
you better go and get your things off, and make yourselves comfortable?
And you can send me a cup of tea. It is all this wretched, depressing
day.”




CHAPTER XIV.


The Rector came up next morning to see his aunt and his cousin, and hear
their story. Nothing for a long time had interested him so much; and
though he was very sorry for Arthur, and sorry for those who had so much
to suffer on Arthur’s account, there was a latent feeling in Hubert
Curtis’s mind that some advantage, more or less, though he could not
exactly tell what, was likely to come to himself from Arthur’s
misconduct. He did not wish to profit by his cousin’s loss, but the
impression was strong on his mind that this was likely to be the case
whether he wished it or not, and, naturally, it moved him to a certain
excitement. Hubert Curtis was not specially adapted to be a clergyman;
in fact, it might, perhaps, be said that, of all professions for which
he was unadapted, the Church was the chief. It had not been thought of
for him till he was eighteen, just leaving Eton, and with thoughts of a
crack regiment and all the pleasure of life in his mind. By that time
Arthur was fifteen, and it had become quite apparent that there was no
likelihood of a second son at the Hall to hold the living of Oakley, as
was the tradition in the family; and Sir John’s uncle, who was the then
incumbent, was old and growing infirm. This being the case, there was a
hurried consultation on the subject in the family; in consequence of
which General Curtis paid a short visit to his brother at Oakley. It was
because of that uncle, who was still a young man, in possession of
Oakley Rectory when Anthony Curtis, Sir John’s younger brother, grew up,
that he himself had been made a soldier instead of a clergyman. He was
now a General in the Indian Army, with a tolerable fortune, and sons
enough to reinforce all the professions. Hubert was his second boy; he
was a lively fellow, full of fun, as his family said, and in those days
rather apt to get into scrapes--the very boy for the Army. And when the
General came home and announced the result of the family conclave, which
was that Hubert, instead of putting on a red coat, was to go to the
University and study for the Church, there was much tribulation in the
old house at Kensington, where the General lived with all his children.
The sisters wept with Bertie, who was in despair, and Mrs. Curtis went
about the house with a mournful countenance, saying to everybody, “It is
so much for his interest, it is a thousand a year.” After a while, it is
true, this consideration healed and bound up even the broken heart of
Bertie. A man does not come easily into possession of a thousand a year
as a soldier, and it was not pretended that he was clever to push his
way to the front of his profession; whereas here his income would be
certain and immediate, and nothing would depend on his cleverness. The
parish was small; there was a capital house, very good society, good
shooting, fishing, everything a man could desire; and as for the duty,
there was not very much of that, and by means of a curate it would
always be possible to diminish what little there was.

Thus matters were smoothed down, and Bertie went to the University; and
in due time, on his uncle’s death, became the Rector of Oakley, like all
his grand-uncles before him. He was so far conscientious that he did not
keep a curate, the parish being one which contained about two hundred of
a population only--that is, he did not keep a permanent curate, though
he indulged freely in occasional aid. But it may be supposed that in
these circumstances Bertie Curtis was not, perhaps, so adapted for his
work, or so devoted to it as most of the other clergymen of whom we are
so proud in England. He liked his ease, which they are not supposed to
do, and that liberty of going where he liked, and doing what he liked,
which only the richer members of his profession can indulge in. He went
to all the races all over the country, and betted a good deal in a quiet
way; but, to be sure, the village people did not know where he was when
he was absent from home, and he might just as well have been at a
meeting of the Church Union as at the Doncaster meeting. And Sir John
and the other magnates did not care. Some of them said Bertie Curtis was
thrown away where he was, such a good fellow! He “got on” just as well
as if he had been the most devoted parish priest under the sun. In
externals he was good-looking enough, with the good features and high
nose which belonged to the family; of good height, rather over than
under middle size, but not tall; well-made, well-dressed, active, and
not stupid--on the whole, an attractive, agreeable Squire-parson, quite
benevolent enough, and not disposed to be uncivil or disagreeable to any
man. Poachers he hated by nature, dissenters he disliked professionally,
though he was too much of a gentleman even to notice them; but otherwise
he was friendly enough to everybody who did not interfere with him.

This was the man who came up to the Hall, concerned and interested, to
inquire about Arthur--feeling very sorry for Arthur, yet with an
indistinct but not unpleasant consciousness that one way or another
Arthur’s mistake and failure in life must be good for himself. There was
one little weakness which Hubert had: an inclination towards his cousin
Lucy, who did not at all incline towards him. Up to the present moment
it cannot be said to have gone the length of love, but he felt that it
would be in every respect very suitable if Lucy and he could “hit it
off together.” Sir John would like to have his daughter settled so near
him, and Lucy’s fortune would be a very comfortable addition to Bertie’s
thousand a year; and then he liked her better than any of the girls
about, better than all the young ladies whom, he modestly felt, he might
have for the asking. There are indeed, it must be avowed, a great many
young ladies in the world to whom a thousand a year is as attractive as
it proved to Bertie Curtis, and who, being unable to get it as Bertie
Curtis did, have to “go in for” the clergyman, instead of going in
legitimately for the living, as it is the man’s proud privilege to do.
But none of these aspirants pleased him as Lucy did, who was not an
aspirant at all. In this the contradictoriness of human nature showed
itself. He liked Lucy; but Lucy did not care for him. She did not go so
far as to dislike her cousin, but she perceived as girls of fantastic
notions have a way of doing that Bertie’s aims were not very high; and
he was not old enough to be looked up to, and to have his faults
condoned like the kind old uncle whose place he occupied, who was not an
ideal parish priest any more than Bertie, but whom Lucy would not permit
anyone to criticize.

When the Rector was seen coming up the avenue next morning, neither Lady
Curtis nor Lucy was delighted by the sight. “He is coming to ask after
Arthur, that pink of propriety who never did anything imprudent or
compromised himself for other people,” said Lady Curtis; which perhaps
was not quite just; for Hubert had “compromised himself,” if that was
any credit to him, often enough when he was at the University, before it
became his profession to be good. But there are many mothers and sisters
who will understand Lady Curtis’s feelings. To be sympathized with when
your scapegrace is out of favour by some respectable contemporary who
never was in anybody’s black books in all his virtuous life, is not that
more than feminine flesh and blood can bear? Does not one hate the
virtuous youth who has always so wisely shunned the broad path and the
green? And Bertie was especially obnoxious to this hatred. Bertie who
frequented all the race-courses in a black tie, and had a book on every
great “event,” and yet was always so decorous, keeping within the bounds
of clergymanly correctness, though he never professed to be devoted to
his profession. Had he been an open humbug and hypocrite, he would have
offended these ladies less. They knew how sympathetic he would be about
Arthur, how he would “understand his feelings,” and yet show in his
faultless manly demeanour how weak it was of Arthur to throw himself
away. Lucy’s first impulse had been to leave the room when she saw
Bertie appearing, but she was convinced of the futility of this when
Lady Curtis sprang to her feet impatiently. “There is Bertie,” she
cried, “Lucy, you always get on with Bertie, I really cannot put up with
him to-day.”

“But you would not leave me alone--not alone--to entertain Bertie
to-day.”

“My dear, what does it matter, he is your cousin,” said Lady Curtis; and
then she changed her mind and took her seat again. “Of course he is sure
to speak to me about it some time or other--as well to-day as any day,”
she said; “but oh, Lucy, to see him sitting there so correct and proper,
and my Arthur--!” cried the vexed mother.

“Arthur has done nothing wicked,” said Lucy, elevating her head, with
again that look of resolution in her eyes. Lady Curtis did not
understand this look. She was afraid of it. She asked herself could Lucy
have anything on her mind? Lucy would not and could not emulate Arthur.
No chance that she would distress her parents with a lover of low
degree, or any man who was not a gentleman. But then if Lucy “took
anything into her head,” that would be worse than anything Arthur could
do. A trembling came over Lady Curtis. It was hard enough to lose her
son, but Lucy seemed now everything she had in the world. While these
thoughts were passing through her mind, Bertie was shown into the room.
There were some clerical tricks which he had learned, though he did not
assume a clerical deportment generally. He would take the hand of a
sufferer and press it with silent meaning, with eyes full of sympathy,
and if anything in the world could have exasperated Lady Curtis more
than the mere fact of his coming, it would have been this deeply-meaning
look from Bertie’s eyes.

This however was got over, and so was the close pressure of the hand
which seemed to say so much, and Bertie sat down. The ladies were in a
small morning-room which they were fond of, which opened out upon the
green terrace in summer; and there they lived half out of doors in a
kind of stony bower formed by two of the pillars which adorned the front
of the house. The windows were very long and straight, the room was
furnished luxuriously, in a taste which is scarcely approved by the
art-standards of the present day. But they liked it for very different
reasons: Lady Curtis because she had herself furnished it, arranged
every festoon of the drapery, and chosen every scrap of the Louis Quinze
furniture: and Lucy because she had always known it like this and could
not bear any change. Lady Curtis sat with her back to the light, that at
least Bertie might not see the effect of his condolences. His face was
so serious, so sympathetic, so full of feeling, that few people could
have withstood it. He did not say much as he pressed their hands, and
after he sat down there was a pause. Lady Curtis had grasped at her
work when he appeared. It is a great safeguard to a woman to have a
piece of work which she can bend her head over, and thus avoid the
inspection of such serious eyes. “I heard you had got home yesterday,”
he said, “I am sure my uncle will mend now that you are here.”

“Was papa ill,” said Lucy, “while we were away?”

“Ill is not the word, perhaps: but one could not help seeing that he was
very unhappy. He will be better now. I came up to the Hall to see if I
could be of any use in amusing him a little, but it was not me he
wanted. And how is Arthur? I hope you saw him before--”

“Yes, thanks, I saw him,” said Lucy, “he is very well. There has never
been anything the matter with him that I know of.”

“No, not with his health of course; and I hope, aunt, you were more
satisfied about--the lady--than we hoped;--or I should say feared--”

“If you mean Mrs. Arthur,” said Lady Curtis, forcing herself to speak
the words steadily, “I did not see her, Bertie. I did not wish to see
her; therefore I cannot give you any opinion on the subject.”

“Nay,” he said gently, “I did not want any opinion. I only trusted that
you had been--pleased, or, at least, less displeased--than we fancied. I
suppose they have gone abroad?”

“I suppose so,” said Lucy rather drearily. This cross-questioning was
insupportable to her also; but she was not of an impatient temper like
her mother; accordingly while Lady Curtis fumed, it was Lucy who had to
speak.

“That will be a good thing,” said the Reverend Bertie, “so much can be
done abroad. It is really the place to go to when a little polish is
wanted. The very fact of living among foreigners is good for one in the
way of culture, and Arthur himself has such good manners. I hope you
will not think it an impertinent question--but I hope, my dear aunt,
there is no open breach?”

“What do you mean by an open breach?” she said indignantly. “You talk as
if Arthur had murdered some one. If you will tell me plainly what you
want to know, I will endeavour to give all the necessary information.”

“My dear aunt! is it not natural I should like to know? Arthur and I
have always been good friends. In happier circumstances, I should have
married him, or helped to have married him--surely you don’t think it is
mere vulgar curiosity. I don’t conceal that I should like to know.”

Lady Curtis threw her work aside. She could not keep up the appearance
of calm. “I am sure you mean very well, Bertie,” she said, (though,
indeed, she was by no means so very sure). “And, perhaps, I am not so
patient as I ought to be. I can’t talk my boy over as if he were a
stranger. Arthur has been very foolish--”

“You think I don’t understand,” said the Rector, “do you think I am so
unfeeling? I know how hard it must be, and Sir John is very severe. But
after all, what is done cannot be undone. Things of this kind so often
turn out better than anyone expected. This is why I wanted to know if
you had seen the lady. If she has sense, it may all come right, indeed
it may--women are so quick, they pick up things so fast. I wish you
would let me persuade you to take a little comfort. Things may not be
nearly so bad as they seem.”

All this was so well said that even the suspicious mother could not make
any objections. After all, the chief thing against him was that _he_ was
not under a cloud, that he had not made an imprudent marriage; and it
was hard to refuse his kindness, and treat him as an enemy on that
account. Lady Curtis, who was changeable by right of her quick temper
and feelings, melted all at once, and opened her mind to him--her mind
at least, if not her heart.

“If she had been a girl with any feeling how could she have married so?”
she cried. “Not one friend with him--his father and mother holding
aloof. No, Bertie, it is very good of you to say so, but I have not any
hope. Our boy is lost to us. Of course, when we are out of the way, he
will come and take his place here, and she will take my place, which is
no pleasant thing to think of; but in the meantime we have lost our
boy.”

“Indeed, you must not think so,” said the Rector, “when the first
infatuation is over, Arthur will come back. He will not be happy in so
different a sphere. He will miss you--he will miss Lucy--and all his old
ways. In--how long shall I say? in a month, six weeks--he will come back
and beg your pardon.”

“I hope he will not have so little perception,” said Lady Curtis, the
colour rising in her face. “You speak as if it were a case in which
such a conclusion was possible; and no doubt there are such cases; but
this girl--this girl is--Don’t ask me--how can I tell you all the
impossibilities of it? I see them, and I know that Arthur is lost to us.
As his poor father says, ‘he might as well be dead!’”

Lucy had not said anything, but Lady Curtis saw without looking that her
daughter was not on her side. Lucy’s head was very erect--her mouth was
closed firmly, as if she was holding herself in; there was a certain
resistance in the poise of that head, and displeasure in the mouth. Lady
Curtis stopped short after she had answered her nephew, and turning
suddenly round to her daughter burst forth: “Say what you mean,
Lucy--say what you mean! I would rather have anything said to me than
see you keep it in and despise what your mother says.”

“How could I despise what you say, mamma,” said Lucy, “or what you
think either? But I should like Bertie to know that I cannot blame
Arthur as other people do. He is dreadfully wrong in some things; but we
can’t tell he is wrong at all in the great thing. Mamma, I cannot help
it--I don’t want to vex you. For anything we know, she may be the one
wife in the world for Arthur; and when he was promised to her, pledged
to her, and had got her love, and given her his--I should have hated my
brother if he had forsaken her. Yes, I know you will be angry--but I
can’t help it. I might have been glad in a way--it might have been
better for the family; but I should have hated and despised him. He
could never have been Arthur to me any more--that, indeed, would have
been as bad as dying,” said Lucy emphatically with fire in her eyes.

Lady Curtis was so moved with displeasure that she could scarcely find
words to reply. “You, Lucy, you! to go and put yourself on the side of
such a creature.”

“I don’t put myself on her side, but Arthur has done nothing
irremediable--I cannot, I cannot allow it to be said! Oh, foolish,
foolish! unwise, unkind, ill-judged, whatever you please,” she said,
“but he has done nothing against his honour, or against nature. He may
repent it bitterly; but what he has done is not irremediable, I cannot
have it said.”

“All for love,” said the Rector musing, with a half smile, “and the
world well lost!”

“I do not mean anything nonsensical,” said Lucy, blushing hotly with the
shame of youth for being supposed capable of high-flown sentiment. “I am
speaking of mere truth and honour. What is a man who is false to his
word? who can be shaken off by other people’s interference from the most
solemn engagements a man can make? I had not thought of it when we left
home. It seemed just like going to get Arthur out of any foolish
scrape--as you did when he was saucy at Eton--and when he got into
trouble about his work. But this is different--a man must keep his
word.”

“When he has made mad promises that will ruin him--when he is cheated
into vows he does not mean--when he makes engagements that will be the
torment and destruction of his life?”

“I--I--suppose so--when he has given his word,” said Lucy, overwhelmed
by her mother’s vehemence, and by the sudden sense that even to this
subject, which seemed so distinct, there was a second side.




CHAPTER XV.


“I hope you are not vexed by the interest I take in it,” said the
Rector. “I fear my aunt is, though why, I cannot imagine; but, Lucy, I
wish you would trust me, and tell me what you can. Who has a better
right to be interested than I have? Not to say that I have been fond of
Arthur all his life, and that he is one of my nearest relations, next
thing to a brother, already.”

There was something in the way in which he pronounced this “already”
which roused Lucy, she did not quite know why. It seemed to convey an
insinuation that there were still closer connections possible. She
interrupted him hastily.

“I never knew that Arthur and you were such very good friends. Oh, yes,
cousins, of course. But cousin means almost anything, much or little, as
people like.”

“That is not a very kind speech,” he said. “I always thought I had a
certain right both to Arthur and you; but when you say this--”

“I do not mean anything unkind, but it is so. When people have been
brought up together it is different. Arthur’s great friend,” said Lucy,
firmly, and with decision, though with a slight, additional colour, “who
is like a brother to him, is Mr. Durant.”

The Rector smiled.

“You snub me very unmercifully,” he said, “and I don’t know why either.
I suppose you mean that Arthur does not care for me. Well, of course, if
it is so, one must put up with that. Durant? yes, Durant, I know, was
his great ally; but since they have lost all their money, I thought
Durant could not afford to keep up idle friendship; so, at least, it was
said.”

“He has been very kind to Arthur. I don’t know if you call that an idle
friendship.”

“My dear cousin Lucy, I don’t want to say a word that is disagreeable to
you. If you think Durant a better friend for Arthur than I am--”

“I was not saying what I thought, or giving any opinion about best or
better. I was only speaking of the fact.”

“Well, so be it,” he said with a sigh; “but, at all events, you will not
deny that there are few people to whom Arthur and his wife can be more
important in the future. We are likely to live our lives out side by
side.”

“You mean after papa--”

“Now you are angry with me again! It may be years and years hence, and I
hope it will; but in the course of nature, and my uncle would be the
first to wish it, Arthur will succeed him. We are both a great deal
younger than Sir John; and I suppose I am here for life--unless you are
unkind to me, Lucy, and make me indifferent to everything,” he said,
lowering his voice.

She took no notice of this, unless by quickening her pace, and
insensibly withdrawing a little further from his side. They were walking
down together to the village, where Lucy had her favourite old women to
see after her return home. She had no excuse for refusing her cousin’s
escort, and why should she refuse it? He was very nice; there was
nothing in him that any lady could object to. He was her own near
relative, and their way was the same as far as the village, and she
liked him well enough. Why had everybody at the Hall this unexpressed,
incipient distrust of Hubert Curtis? Lucy could not tell; and perhaps it
was not necessary to have such a feeling to explain her little proud
movement aside, her slight withdrawal when he spoke in this tone of
subdued tenderness. She did not choose that her cousin should be tender
to her, and therefore it was quite natural that she should withdraw.

“I suppose you are right,” she said. “Of course, you are a great deal
younger than papa; but it gives one a shock to think what may happen
when he--I prefer, for my part, not to think of it. Yes,” Lucy
continued, with that sudden inconsistency which she had from her mother;
“of course, Arthur and his wife will be of importance to you when we are
all away from the Hall; and you have a right to hear all I can tell you.
Well, Cousin Bertie--”

“May I not protest against this?” he said. “You are not kind to me,
Lucy. What an air of selfish, interested, business-like curiosity you
put upon the simple sentiment I expressed!”

At this Lucy blushed once more; for to be thought capable of imputing
base motives, was not that as bad as to be base one’s self?

“I beg your pardon,” she said; “perhaps I am twisted a little--the wrong
way. How can one help that, when everything has gone so contrary? Well,
I will tell you all I know, and you must forgive me if I was
disagreeable.”

“You are never disagreeable,” he said, in again that objectionable tone,
and with a world of objectionable meaning, “to _me_.”

Lucy veered a little further off from him, as if she had been forced by
the wind, but went on taking no notice of the interruption.

“I saw her, for a moment. Yes, I thought you would be surprised. She is
very handsome; and I was prejudiced--of course I was prejudiced. I
thought, as women, I suppose, always do, that she looked bold, not as a
girl should. I have no doubt,” said Lucy, with a sigh, “that she thought
the same of me.”

“No one could think that of you.”

“Oh, perhaps not that, but something equally disagreeable. She thought
most probably that I was proud. She did not speak to me. I said I hoped
she would be happy,” said Lucy, dropping her voice, “and I hope I meant
it, but I am not quite sure. Of course, I wish Arthur to be happy, and
he cannot be happy unless his wife is. So that, at least, makes my wish
quite sincere.”

“And she did not speak to you! She did not think it an honour, the
greatest honour that could have been done her--”

“Why should she think it an honour? It was her wedding-day. She was the
first person to be thought of. And I did not mean to see her, at least,
to speak to her. I did not mean that Arthur should find me out. Oh!”
cried Lucy, with sudden compunction, “I retract all I said just now.
When she came into the church, before she knew that I was there, she did
not look bold. She looked beautiful, yes, beautiful! happy and serious,
and not thinking who was there. Just, I should think, as a girl who is
going to be married ought to look,” said Lucy, with a soft mantling of
colour, less than a blush, impersonal, meaning the soft thrill of
fellow-feeling, nothing more.

“But afterwards--you thought her bold?--who is she? Did you see her
people? Has she any people?” said Bertie, “that is almost as important
as herself.”

Lucy gave a slight shudder, which was not thrown away upon her
companion. She had scarcely seen the rest of the Bates’ at the time, but
now the peculiarities of the other members of the group seemed to come
back to her with the retrospective memory which excitement possesses.
She could see them now--the shabby father upon whom that beautiful girl
leant, the mother in her Paisley shawl, and the flippant Sarah Jane.
These were the “people” of her brother’s wife. She made no reply, and
her cousin went on.

“What a blessing that so much of the estate is entailed! Radicals may
speak as they please about the law of entail, but how many old families
would be kept up without? Fortunately, however angry my uncle might be,
he has no power to punish Arthur; at least it cannot but be a moderate
punishment. So long as he has Oakley--”

“He has not Oakley, Cousin Bertie. I wish you would not always talk of
the time when papa will be gone. We may all be gone before him for
anything we know;” and once more she put out her two fingers under the
folds of her warm jacket to avert the omen. The Rector caught the
movement and laughed.

“You are superstitious, Lucy. Why do you make that mystic sign at me?”

“I am not superstitious--it is to avert superstition;” she said quickly,
with an idea that she was giving a reason. “But I don’t like a
conversation that is all occupied with what will happen when papa
is----, or that discusses my brother as if--You may think me fanciful if
you please, but I do not like it. I should not talk about Uncle
Anthony’s--to you.”

She would not say the words death or dying, but left them to the
imagination.

“You may say whatever you please to me,” said the Rector softly, with a
smile, and so far as concerned _his_ father’s death anyone might have
discussed it. General Curtis had not much to leave, it was not his end
that would work any great change one way or other in the world. His sons
would receive their pittance, and there would be no more about it. She
might talk of it as long as she pleased, and the Rector’s feelings would
not be much affected. But this was not the impression that Hubert Curtis
wished to produce upon his cousin. He meant to say _you_ may say what
you please--_you_ are privileged, there is nothing that I would not
accept from _you_.

But by this time they had reached the end of the avenue. The Rectory was
the nearest house. It was a very handsome red-brick house, not older
than the days of Queen Anne, standing only a little way off the road,
half concealed in its shrubberies, well-kept, graceful, and comfortable.
The pediment of the front showed over the lower growth of trees, and was
sheltered and embosomed in the loftier ones. A noble old cedar
stretching its long level arms across the road stood close by the gate.
All kinds of fine flowering shrubs were in clumps in front of the house:
some shining in dark evergreen, and some rapidly dropping their
many-coloured leaves. There was something in the shape of sculpture
adorning the pediment, and the Oakley tigers ramped on the posts of the
gate; while behind stretched a large enclosure, full, apparently, of
fine trees. It was as good as many a squire’s house in the country, one
of the very finest specimens extant of an English Rectory. At a distance
of about a quarter of a mile lay the village, such a spruce and trim
place as villages are which live in kindly neighbourship with a rich
Lord of the Manor and a fastidious Rector--their gardens, their windows,
everything was in good order. There were flowers even now,
chrysanthemums and dahlias, and some pale monthly roses. The end nearest
the Hall and the Rectory was a sort of square built on three sides. The
houses were old, with high-pitched roofs, covered with those soft
brown-red tiles upon which lichens grow, and nothing could be more
picturesque. A row of little old almshouses, older than either Rectory
or Hall, was on one side, on the other was the Exchange, the Regent
Street of Oakley. Here stood the inn, a rustic country inn with a sign
on a post in front of it, and the post-office, with Berlin wool patterns
in its little projecting window, and the shop in which you could buy
everything. It was so civilized a place that in the post-office there
was a little circulating library, chiefly of novels; and scarcely less
innocent was the inn parlour where two papers were taken, and where the
village men dropped in as into a club, to see if there was any news. The
remains of an old cross stood in the centre of this little square. It
was reduced to a mere stone post, with half illegible carvings, and in
more modern days somebody had built a drinking-fountain close to it,
taking advantage of the old well which had been there from time
immemorial. The drinking-fountain was shabby, as drinking-fountains have
a way of being, but when horses stopped to drink out of the trough, and
a few people came with jugs of an afternoon for the water, which was
quite famous for making tea, with the broken old stone of the cross
standing up into the blue skies beyond them, it was a pleasant sight
enough. Everything, however, was grey with the November chill. Few
people were out of doors, but the afternoon had begun to brighten
through the haze, promising better weather.

“I am going to the almshouses,” said Lucy, making a decided stop, in
order to take leave of her companion.

“I will walk to the cross with you,” he said. And as they came within
reach of the village windows more than one good woman within, glad even
of this mild incident to pass the afternoon, came and looked at them
across the muslin blind, and decided that something would come o’ that.
“And I shouldn’t wonder if it was soon,” said the village dressmaker,
getting up to look at the call of her assistant, “for one wedding brings
another.”

“Oh, is it true as it’s nobody but a poor girl that young Squire has
married?” asked the assistant, under her breath, who was young too, and
pretty, and remembered that the young Squire had looked in at the
window more than once as he had passed. “It might have been _me_!” She
said to herself.

“There’s that overskirt to finish, Miss Cording,” said the dressmaker
peremptorily. She prided herself in allowing no nonsense to be talked
among her young ladies. Lucy did not know of the eyes that were upon
her, or of the guess in everybody’s mind. She walked very sedately to
the cross, and then turned round and bid her cousin good-bye.

“I have people to see in the almshouses, too,” he said. “I will go on
with you.”

“I did not know you went there,” said Lucy. She was better acquainted
with the poor people than he was, and indeed did a curate’s work, and
saved (though without intending it) a great deal of trouble to the
Rector.

“You make me out to be worse than I am,” he said, with an uneasy flush
upon his face. “I may not perhaps take to the poor people as you do--I
have not been brought up to it; but I am not such a stranger in the
parish as you think.”

“I did not think anything about it,” said Lucy, calmly; and this perhaps
he felt the hardest of all.

Sir John came strolling into his wife’s sitting-room after these two
young people had gone down the avenue. He was restless, and came in
there three or four times a day for no reason at all, except the
restlessness of a troubled mind. He went up to the window, near which
she was sitting, to get the light on her work, for Lady Curtis was not
so young as she had once been, and her eyes, as she said, were going.
She had not had courage to go out and face the damp air and the long
dreary avenue with Lucy. She sat there mournfully enough by herself,
trying to think she was interested in her crewels. Sir John did not say
anything when he first came in, but went up to the window, and stared
out with eyes that did not seem to see anything. But they did see
something, for he said after a moment,

“Is that Bertie that has gone down the avenue with Lucy? What does she
want with him?”

“Nothing,” said Lady Curtis. “She was going to the village, and he was
returning to the Rectory.”

“What does he want with her then?” said Sir John, “you should not let
her walk about the country with any stray man that may turn up.”

“It is her cousin, John--surely she may walk down the avenue with her
cousin--when they are both going the same way.”

“Oh yes,” he said; “surely she may, what harm can there be in it? Until
you find out suddenly perhaps that another marriage has been concocted
under your nose, and another of your children thrown herself away.”

“Have you seen any signs of it? Should you dislike it, John? I am so
glad! I almost feared you were--favourable to him--thinking of something
of the kind.”

“I!” he went from the window to the fire, and propped himself up against
the mantelpiece with his back to it. From thence he talked slowly,
perorating at his ease, and it was so pleasant to him to have an
audience, and to have attention, that a sense of relief and comfort, not
to speak of warmth, stole into his whole being. “I don’t like parsons,”
he said, “I never trust them--you can’t tell what they’re after. It may
be your money for charities, or it may be your daughter; and you never
know which it is. And Bertie’s so much worse than an ordinary parson
that he doesn’t even pretend to like his trade. He wasn’t brought up to
it, not young enough. So he has his own vices to start with, and the
parson vices plastered over them. I don’t like your wolf in sheep’s
clothing.”

“Perhaps we are hard upon him, John. Poor fellow, it was not his fault
he was put into the Church; it is not his congenial sphere.”

“He should have been on the turf,” said Sir John. “If I had known the
kind of fellow he was, notwithstanding the traditions of the family, he
shouldn’t have had the living; and if we don’t mind he’ll have our girl
too.”

“Oh, no!” said Lady Curtis. “I was half afraid you _wished_ for it, and
was grieved for your disappointment.”

“Disappointment!” he echoed again, and then after a pause he said,
earnestly, “My lady, there must be no nonsense about Lucy. There must be
no second _fiasco_ of a marriage. You are not a duenna, and I don’t want
you to behave as if she was not to be trusted; but, after all, what is
Lucy but a girl, like others? She must be taken care of; there must be
no nonsense about her. If Arthur had behaved as he ought, it might have
been different; but Arthur has been a fool, and there’s an end of it,
and that changes her position.”

“John,” said Lady Curtis, hastily, “you will do nothing without
consideration? I am not defending Arthur, but you will not do anything
without serious thought?”

“What do you suppose I can do?” he asked, with some bitterness.
“Nothing, or next to nothing. Oh, no, he will have everything his own
way. But Lucy’s position is changed all the same. She is, as it were,
the only one we have. If it were not that celibacy never answers, I
would tie her up not to marry, at least, in our lifetime.”

“Oh, John!” cried Lady Curtis, in the extremity of her surprise.

“Well, why not? It would be a great deal pleasanter for you and me. I
hate a girl marrying, losing her head, as they all do, and forgetting
herself for some poor creature of a man. Lord, if they knew just what
the men are that they take for something above the common! I don’t think
I could bear to see my Lucy philandering and going on with a fellow,
probably not worth a word from her. But celibacy, I suppose, does not
answer; at least, it is supposed not to answer, especially for women. A
man may get on well enough.”

“A great many women get on well enough; but you cannot wish it, John,
surely you cannot wish it. Is it to secure a companion for us that you
would have Lucy, poor child, give up her own life?”

“That is nonsense,” said Sir John. “Life is something more than
marriage. That is the folly of women. Nothing makes up to them for this
one thing. They have got it into their heads that love--love and
marrying--is all life is good for. Fiddlesticks! Look at all the men in
the clubs. They are chiefly unmarried men, and they lead a pleasant
life enough. A married man, with all his cares, can’t come up to them.
They have a much jollier time of it than I have, for example.”

“But Lucy--our Lucy! You would not like her to be like one of your old
_roués_ at the club!” cried Lady Curtis, half horrified, half laughing.

“They are not _roués_; that’s another of your fancies. They are worthy
old fellows, many of them with a great stake in the country. Now why, I
say, mightn’t a woman do just as well unmarried? There would be plenty
for her to enjoy. If she hadn’t her club, she would have society as much
as she could set her face to; and she could travel, if she liked that,
as much as any man, and see life; and she could do no end of good, if
that was her turn. Look at Miss Coutts.”

“And this is the life you would choose for Lucy!” cried her mother. “Are
you out of your senses, John? No kind husband for her, like what you
have been to me; no children to climb about her--”

“Pshaw!” said Sir John. “As for the kind husband, that’s one of your
pretty speeches, my lady, and you may be laughing at me, for anything I
know; and children--to treat her as Arthur has treated you and me! Did
we ever refuse the fellow anything in reason? No, I don’t say it would
do, I only said I would tie her up if I could, if it had been
practicable; and I believe it would have been a great blessing for all
of us--for her too, if she could have thought so; but then I don’t
suppose she would have thought so,” and, with a sigh, he walked away.


                       END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

           London: Printed by A. Schulze, 13, Poland Street.