“LUCY, Lucy!” said Lady Curtis in a stifled voice.
It was the postmark, the thin paper of the foreign letter, the stamp of the hotel which had caught her eye; and it had not occurred to her as she opened the envelope that it was not Arthur’s handwriting. Indeed, Nancy had been copying Arthur’s handwriting, and had partially succeeded in making her own like his, at least for the length of the address. When she called to Lucy, it was that she had perceived the different writing, the unexpected form of address within, and had jumped at the conclusion that something had happened to Arthur, and that it was his servant who was writing. Lucy rushed to her, seeing her agitation, and coming behind her, read over her shoulder the letter which Lady Curtis threw an alarmed glance over, trembling in every limb. They trembled, both of them, with excitement as they went on. It was not what they expected; it was neither a letter from Arthur, nor yet an announcement of his illness, but something else, which they had not anticipated or thought of. It was the letter Nancy had written in hot haste and desperation, after the visit of Mrs. Curtis had come to so violent and sudden an end. My lady read it, the paper trembling in her hand, and Lucy read it over her shoulder, with painful, suppressed exclamations. This is what Nancy had said:—
“My Lady,
“Arthur says I am to write to you, though I do not know why; and I have told him I will, if I may say what I like and not show it to him. So you will know, if you are offended, that he has no hand in this. I am to say, I suppose, that I am sorry, though why I cannot tell. I did not think about you when I consented to marry Arthur? Why should I? In our class of life we don’t think that a young man’s mother has any right to interfere. I never thought of you, therefore I maintain I have nothing to be sorry for about you. I have enough to do to please my own father and mother; why should not he manage his as I did mine?
“And since we were married, what did I owe to you? You never did anything for me. You wrote to him, or you made Miss Lucy write to him on our wedding-day, and never once named me. You knew I would be his wife before he got it, but you never named me. Was that a way to make me wish to please you? And the best I could do was never to think of you at all. Was not that as good as putting him against me, never to mention my name on my wedding day? And why should I write to you now? You are old, and I am young. You ought to be the one to come and to say you are sorry. I am your son’s wife; therefore, I am as good as you are, whatever I may have been before; and I was an honest girl before, and as good as anybody. Why didn’t you come then, and make up to me? It is old people who ought to show an example to the young, not young people to the old.
“Now that I have said this, I will just warn you that if you try to make Arthur think badly of me, to separate him from me (which you can’t do, however you may try), that I will keep him separate from you. If you are fond of him, you will have to be civil to me, you and Miss Lucy, grand ladies though you are. You think me no better than the dirt below your feet; but if you do not treat me as I ought to be treated, I will keep Arthur from you, so that you shall never see him again. I have the power to do it, not like you, who have no power. He can do without his mother, but he can’t do without me. I think it is honest to tell you this, because he insisted I was to write to you—I shouldn’t have written to you of myself—and because I mean to come back home to England and settle at Underhayes, to be near my people, who have always been (not like you) kind to him as well as to me. So that now, my lady, you know exactly what I mean, you and Miss Lucy, and what I will do.
“ANNA FRANCES CURTIS.”
Lady Curtis was flushed and agitated; her eyes blazed hotly over her crimson cheeks.
“Was ever anyone so insolent?” she said, and bit her lip to keep from crying, altogether overwhelmed by the unexpected insult.
“Oh, mamma, the girl does not mean it!” cried Lucy, distressed, trying to take the letter. It was bad enough to read it once, but to read it as she knew her mother would do, over and over again, feeling the enormity ever greater, would be terrible. Lucy put out her hand for it, to take it away.
“I will not give it you, Lucy. I know what you mean to do; to put it in the fire that I may forget it, and think it is not half so bad.”
“No, mamma; but why should you dwell upon it? She wrote it hastily. See, there is haste in every line; but we will read it at leisure, and go over it again and again. She is so uninstructed, so inexperienced; and there is a kind of savage justice in it, if you will but think, mamma.”
“How dare you say so?” cried Lady Curtis, in whose mind the immediate pain and hurt received were too violent to be thus smoothed away, and who was as little able for the moment to inquire into the absolute justice of the matter as Nancy herself. The tears began to glisten in her eyes, tears of genuine suffering. “This is what our children bring us,” she said; “they for whom we are ready to make any sacrifice—insult, the flaunting in our face of some poor creature, surely, surely not worth as much as his mother was to him, Lucy; not worth you—you, my child; of that I may be sure at least; and his home, and all that was worth having in life—”
And some scalding drops fell on her hands in a hot and sudden shower. Tears do not last at Lady Curtis’ age; they cost too much; only a sharp stab like this could bring them, hasty and unwilling, from her eyes.
“I know it is hard, very hard; but, mamma—”
Lucy was interrupted by the sound of her father’s heavy step approaching the room. He threw the door open and came in hastily. He, too, had a letter in his hand, and held it out to his wife as he came forward.
“He has written at last,” he said. “It is a fine thing to have waited so long for. Look, Elizabeth, if you can read it, what your boy says.”
Lady Curtis took the letter, looking anxiously at her husband’s face to read its effect. And then Lucy and she read it as they had read the other, the girl over her mother’s shoulder. The very sight of Arthur’s handwriting moved them. He had written a few words to Lucy to thank her for the money and the blessing conveyed to him on his wedding day; but except these few warm words they had not heard from him since that painful violent letter which Lady Curtis had received after the visit of Mr. Rolt, the family lawyer, to Underhayes. And that had given the ladies so much pain that the very sight of the dear and familiar handwriting brought it back. Sir John went to the fire as was his way, and set himself up against the mantel-piece, turning towards them the dullness of his long melancholy countenance, which showed little change of expression one way or another. His heavy repose, not unclouded with trouble, contrasted sharply with the eager and anxious looks of his wife and daughter already disturbed and excited. They read, breathless with anxiety and haste, flying over the paper, taking in its meaning almost at a glance in a way which was wonderful to him. He shook his head slightly as he saw this rapid process; it was impossible they could understand it, he said to himself; even Arthur’s letter! skimmed over with feminine want of thoroughness in anything, as if it had been a book.
Arthur’s letter, so far as external forms went, was dutiful enough.
“My dear father,
“You may think that I ought to say something about the long break in my letters, and I am aware that it would not be without reason; but what am I to say? My marriage was really a thing which concerned me most. I would have been ready to make any apologies for the indiscretions with which it was accompanied, and for the fundamental mistake of not having explained my wishes and intentions to you from the first. But that is too late now, and you must permit me to say that the strange step you yourself took in sending Rolt to Underhayes to interfere in my business, justifies the silence in which I have taken refuge since, as being more respectful to you than anything I can say. I trust and desire to believe that the extraordinary proposals made by him did not emanate from you; nothing indeed but the mind of a pettifogging attorney could have suggested such means of endeavouring to outwit and frustrate an honourable attachment. I can never meet with civility the originator of these proposals, and it is a desire to say nothing on the subject which has kept me silent even to you.
“I now write about a serious matter which it is necessary to call your attention to. The allowance which was ample for me at Oxford, or when I was in another condition of life, is naturally quite inadequate to the expenses of a married man. My wife and I are about to return to England, and at her desire we will proceed at first to Underhayes, where her family reside. Our plans are not yet decided; but the first requisite for any arrangement is to know exactly by what degree you may be disposed to increase my income, in order that I may be able to provide for the increased expense to which I am now subject. We have been in Paris some weeks, and had it not been for the succour which my mother’s generosity provided me, I do not see how I could have afforded to my wife all that it was indispensable my wife and Sir John Curtis’s daughter-in-law should have. These of course are extraneous expenses; but I must request that you will kindly come to a decision about my present income with as little delay as possible. This is doubly important, as we shall thus only be able to make up our minds on what scale of living it will be proper for us to make our start.
“My wife desires her respects to my mother, Lucy, and yourself.
“Affectionately,
“ARTHUR CURTIS.”
“And this is all!” said Lady Curtis, throwing it on the table with a mixture of scorn and grief; “in so short a time how well she has tutored him. Oh don’t say anything, Lucy! I can see that girl’s hand in every word; and this is all!”
“Surely it is all,” said Sir John, “you don’t think I would keep back anything, why should I? It’s all, and enough too, I think. A fellow like that whom we’ve all petted and spoiled, thinking of nothing but his allowance! It’s disappointing, that it certainly is. When one thinks that’s Arthur!” said his father, his lower lip quivering with unusual emotion, yet something that was intended for a smile.
“Oh don’t make him out any worse than he is,” said Lady Curtis, “I can see that girl’s hand through all.”
Now a more gratuitous assertion than this could not be. Arthur had written when away from Nancy altogether in the writing room of the English Club. She had known nothing about what he was doing, and still less did she know that he had made up his mind not to struggle with his fate any longer, but to let her go back to her congenial soil, which would secure at least no further encounters with people of his own class, even when met in the recent accidental way. He could not, he felt, risk anything like this again. He had not strength for it. It was better to yield to her than to wear himself out with such paltry miseries; but up to this moment even Nancy herself did not know of his decision. Lady Curtis however did not know this, nor did the despair in Arthur’s mind ever occur to her, or the state of severance between him and his wife which had really existed when these two letters were written. It seemed to her that they were full of one spirit, and that Nancy had got the entire command and put her own unregulated soul into her husband. Dear as he was to his mother, the bold figure of this girl whom she had never seen, seem to rise up and obliterate her son before Lady Curtis’s eyes—obliterate him intellectually and morally—so that all she saw was a shadow of Nancy, not the reality of Arthur. Sir John did not take this figurative view. He took what he saw for granted, exercising no spirit of divination. He was wounded not to sharp pain like his wife, but with a heavy sense of evil. This was all Arthur wanted, not to be his father’s right hand man, to help him (for, privately, Sir John was of opinion that he had a great deal to do) to become the real head of the estate, understanding everything as his father had wished; but only to have his allowance increased! that was all. It did not give Sir John a less pang in his matter of fact way than it did his wife, but this was the low level of interpretation by which he explained to himself the boy who had been his pride.
As for Lucy, she read the two letters with a double distress, as seeming to see something in both of them which escaped her parents. She thought it was because she was young, and in sympathy with these two foolish, erring, unkind, young people, that she was able to read between the lines and see that they were not so unkind as they seemed. There was, as she had said, a kind of savage justice in Nancy’s letter from Nancy’s point of view, and insolent though it was, Lucy felt that she could understand it, and could excuse it though it was inexcusable. And as for Arthur’s cold interestedness and apparent indifference to everything, was not this only a sign of mortal pain, a proof that he felt himself in a position from which he could not recede, which he dared not discuss or enter into? “Oh,” she cried in the tumult of feeling which rose within her, “do not take it all for granted like this. Arthur is not what you think him, papa. He feels it, oh, I know he feels it to the bottom of his heart; but how can he discuss it, how can he open such a subject with us? She is his wife, and she knows what we think of her.”
“Oh, Lucy, hold your peace,” cried Lady Curtis, whose heart was wrung to breaking, “what is the use of this casuistry, as if you knew him better than we do. No, I cannot shut my eyes to the truth whatever you may do; this boy for whom we have done so much, whom we have brought up so carefully, finds something more congenial in low society than in ours. It is unworthy of us to groan over such a preference. See, he avows it. He is going back to that wretched place, to the society of his wife’s relations. We ought to be proud,” said Lady Curtis with her eyes flashing, with a miserable make believe of a smile on her lips, “that is what he likes best, my boy!”
“Oh, mamma, don’t be so hard upon him.”
“So hard, am I hard? upon Arthur! God help me! I wish I could be a little harder; I wish I could think as little of him as he does of me or of what I feel,” cried Lady Curtis with a moan in her broken voice. Sir John did not show so much emotion. He stood gazing dully before him, not even looking at them, his eyes fixed upon vacancy; but many thoughts were revolving dully in his oppressed spirit too.
“Now that he has written to me like this, he shall be attended to,” said Sir John, “since he wants nothing but money, he shall have his money, and I will wash my hands of him. People do not spend a great deal in that rank of life do they? If that is how he is going to live, he must be provided for accordingly. I will speak to Rolt about it to-morrow. You see how he speaks of poor Rolt, a most meritorious man, that has no thought except our interest. And if it had not been that Arthur got hold of it before he ought to have known, Rolt would have bought the girl off and freed us. Ah, yes—Rolt is the best man of business, and the most considerate family friend I know.”
“But it was a dreadful thing to do; to buy her off! If you will think of it, papa, and think who she was, the girl whom Arthur loved. It does not matter,” cried Lucy with generous heat, “that we do not like her or approve of her. Arthur loved her; and this girl whom he loved so much, whom he thought more of than any one in the world, to be bought off!”
“Ay, that’s it,” said Sir John, “it would have all gone on smoothly if he had not broke in with his high flown ideas just like you; the thing would have been done but for that; and he would have been clear of her. But now that it’s come to this he shall have what he wants, and he shall have what he’s entitled to. I will see Rolt to-morrow,” said Sir John, never changing the dull fixedness of his eyes.
And it may be supposed that the remainder of the evening was not very cheerful. Lady Curtis locked both the letters up in a drawer of her writing-table. “It is a pity they should be separated, these two,” she said with that quivering smile of scorn which is so bitter, more painful than weeping. Yes, this was what all their hopes had come to. Arthur her boy, had chosen his own path, and this was what it was, nothing in which his father or mother had any share. What he liked better was the coarse girl who had married him for all the advantages he brought in his hand, and who had infatuated him, and made him such a one as herself. The sense of failure was in Lady Curtis’s mind, the pang of feeling that something inferior had been preferred to her, and to all that was worthy, by her boy. Can anything be more terrible than when father or mother is driven to despise the child of their bosoms? It happens often enough, and there is no such pang on earth. With trembling hands and this miserable quiver of a smile on her lip, she locked them away. Now surely it was time that they should rouse themselves, shake off the dull misery for Arthur’s loss which had paralysed the house, and brood no more over the desertion of one so unworthy their love.
“We have enough of this,” she said, “come, Lucy! I do not mean that your life should be spent in sackcloth because Arthur is unworthy. Because he is hobnobbing with the tax-collector, are there to be no cakes and ale in Oakley? We will send our invitations to-morrow,” she said with a mocking little laugh of pain. Sir John opened his eyes a little at the levity of this unintelligible phrase about cakes and ale. But he had long ceased to criticise my lady whatever she might do or say. She had odd ways of expressing herself sometimes, but she was always to be trusted in the main points.
“I shall speak to Rolt to-morrow,” he said for his part, which was more reasonable, as he went back to his room and resumed his Blue book. And he read till his usual hour, and lighted his candle exactly at the same moment as every other night, though his heart was heavy in his bosom like a lump of lead, not warming his blood as it ought to do. The ladies were not so reasonable, I need not say. They sat over the fire till it died out between them, neither of them remarking the blackness, or being aware that the cold they felt had anything to do with the external circumstances—talking it over and over, arguing, fighting even: Lucy taking the side of defense, while her mother darted arrows of bitter words at Arthur and the girl who had got such empire over him. Men do not make their miseries subjects of endless discussion like this, perhaps because two men are scarcely ever so much like the two halves of one soul as mother and daughter are; nor could any brother and father throw themselves wholly into such a question as the sister could do with the mother. Lucy fought for him, condemned him, justified him, all in a breath; and cried and struggled and held up Arthur’s standard even while she threw herself with passionate sympathy into the proud and sore disappointment of the mother whose hopes had been thus deceived. They were still there over the dead fire in full tide when the solemn little stroke of one startled them, and drove them to their rooms, chilled and miserable. How dark it was outside, the rain falling, the last leaves dropping, in the middle of the December night! It added a shivering of physical sympathy to eyes exhausted with crying and voices exhausted with talking over this ever expanding subject. Every thought and plan of the house had borne reference to Arthur for how many years; and this was how he dropped them, turned from them, threw himself upon the lower and baser elements of life.