“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.”