“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, witha 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,” saidSarah 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 toMisterDurant? 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 andspit 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 risenfrom 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 thatheis too good for me.”
“For Heaven’s sake let there be anend 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 sweetwords. 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 nothear 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 anxiousfaces 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 wasnobody 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 comingupstairs 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, oranything 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 shouldhave 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 ofyour 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.”
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 Arthurwould 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;hewas 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, hisami 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 wholetown 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, andSarah 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,nothingwill 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, Icannotcall 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 totell 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 toincrease 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 mendof 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 withhim! 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 thatwas 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 donothing 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 ofillumination; 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 neverbe—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.
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 ofexcellence 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 themto 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 onthe 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 wifewith 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 inhot 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 Idespise 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 Nancyhome, 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 tobe 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 concernand 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; tokeep 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 nearlyso 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 oflooking 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 tofaire les cornesfor 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 therailleries 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 Frenchfor 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.
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!” Thisdid 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 healmost 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 NancyBates. 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 seeingher?”
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 withouther—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 ifthere was but one kind. I did not thinkyouwould 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 intoa 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 wasdisposed 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 thewoman 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 ofdesolation 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 herwill, 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?” saidSarah 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. Durantwith 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.”