Mrs. Arthur: Volume 1 by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

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.