ACCORDING to Lady Curtis’s hasty resolution, the invitations, to some at least, of the ordinary Christmas party were for an earlier date than usual. The climax of the distress produced by Arthur had come, and though the struggle was hard to pick up the ordinary occupations of life again, and go on as if nothing had happened, at a time when Arthur’s absence was so doubly felt and apparent, the impatient soul of his mother was better able to bear this variety of pain than the monotonous heaviness of the other, the dull presence of one thought that had been upon the house like bonds of iron. One of the first visitors who arrived was Durant, who had always been the first in Arthur’s time, next to the son of the house in familiarity and knowledge of everything and everybody about. Even during the miserable interval now passed, Durant’s letters had given a certain solace to Lady Curtis, as furnishing her always with something to talk of, something to discuss with Lucy, to whom she would point out freely the weakness of his arguments which were always in Arthur’s favour, and for which Arthur’s mother loved him, even while she took a delight in demonstrating their futility. Lucy had a long round to make among her poor people on the afternoon on which Durant was expected. She could not have told why it was that she chose that special day; perhaps because it was fine, a simple reason, quite satisfactory to the ordinary intelligence; perhaps because the association of ideas with him, whom she had not seen since he took her to Arthur’s wedding, was so painful that she was willing to postpone the meeting as long as possible; or perhaps she was desirous in Arthur’s interest that Lady Curtis should have her first conversation with his faithful friend undisturbed by any third person; or, perhaps, again Lucy had reasons of her own, into which none of us have any right to pry. She was for a long time at the almshouses, having started early to take advantage of the brightest part of the short winter day, and took her luncheon with Mrs. Rolt, the wife of the good agent, to whom the children at Oakley had been as her own since ever they were born. Mrs. Rolt had no children of her own, and she had as great a desire to talk about Arthur as his mother herself had. She plunged into the subject as soon as Lucy appeared, and there was nothing but sympathy and tenderness in the bosom of this simple-hearted retainer of the family, who was at the same time a far away cousin, and therefore on more familiar terms than are usually permitted to an agent’s wife. This visit detained Lucy also, so that it was four o’clock, and the red winter sunset just over when she started to walk up the long avenue. Durant had been expected by an earlier train at the station which was a mile or two off, so that Lucy felt herself safe. She set out upon her walk very full of a new incident which she had not previously heard of, the meeting between her aunt and her brother at Paris of which Mrs. Rolt had been informed by the Rector. “Why did not he tell us, or why did not Aunt Anthony write?” Lucy had said.
“Oh, my pet, what could she write? I don’t suppose it was pleasant,” Mrs. Rolt said, “however angry you, may be with your own, you don’t like to hear them blamed by others; and Mrs. Anthony has sense enough to know that.”
“Then why did she mention it at all?” said Lucy.
“Oh, my love, that would have been more than flesh and blood is equal to. To have had an adventure like that, and not to have mentioned it at all! She said Mrs. Arthur behaved dreadfully to her, abused her, turned her out of her rooms. But we must take all that with a great many grains of salt, for you know your Aunt Anthony, my dear.”
“Yes, I know Aunt Anthony; but how dreadful it is that Arthur’s wife—fancy, Arthur’s wife!—should give anyone occasion to say that she behaved badly. You will not tell mamma?”
“No, indeed, I promise you; and I daresay, if we could know it all, the half isn’t true. You mustn’t worry about it, my darling,” said Mrs. Rolt, kissing Lucy as she went away.
The girl shook her head. Why should they tell her such things if they meant her not to worry? and yet she was feverishly glad that she had been told, as people are in respect to every such family misery. She went in at the great gates, with her cheek still flushed by the agitation of the news. To hear that a friend, a member of the family, had actually met and spoken with Nancy, seemed to bring her nearer, to make her more real. And perhaps there was a personal advantage in this thrill of renewed agitation about Arthur, which replaced for the moment some of her own thoughts. For lo! it so occurred that all Lucy’s precautions had been futile. She had not walked half-a-dozen yards when she heard behind her the rattle of the dogcart swinging round the corner to the gate, that had been sent for Durant to the station; and before she had time to collect her thoughts, it drew up suddenly just behind her, and Durant himself sprung out of it, and in a moment was at her side. The dogcart went on with his portmanteau, and she felt herself exactly in the circumstances she had so elaborately avoided, bound, without chance of escape, to a long solitary walk through the still avenue, and a long confidential talk before he had seen anyone else, with her brother’s friend.
“Yes, the train was late; there was some slight accident on the line, at which I have been fuming and fretting. But, as it happens, it has been a lucky detention,” said Durant.
Lucy took no notice, not even so much as by a smile.
“You said you were very busy.”
“Yes, I am getting plenty of work to do; not very distinguished work as yet, but I hope better may come.”
“Your leading counsel will fall ill some day, and it will be a very interesting, romantic case, and you will be inspired to make the most eloquent speech, and your fortune will be made.”
“I see you know how such things happen,” he said with a laugh.
“Oh, yes, I have read a great many novels,” said Lucy. “That is always how young barristers get on; and between that and the woolsack is but a step.”
“A very long stride, I fear; but I do not insist on the woolsack,” said Durant; and then there was a pause, and he said lower, “I saw Arthur a few days ago.”
“Did you see him? Oh, Mr. Durant, you must not mind what mamma says. She has begun to jeer at him, and that is the worst of all. How was he looking? Poor Arthur, poor boy! And his wife—did you see her? Oh, I have been hearing such a story of her!”
“What story?” he asked anxiously.
He had heard many; but on the whole he was no enemy to Nancy. He saw the glimmer of tears in Lucy’s eyes, and this did much to steel his heart against Arthur’s wife; but still he had no feeling against Nancy. He was ready even, more or less, to stand up in her defence.
“My aunt, it appears, saw her in Paris, Mr. Durant.”
“Oh, it is Mrs. Curtis’s story then?” he said.
“You speak as if there were a great many stories about her,” said Lucy, with sudden heat.
“No; but one hears everything, you know, in town—especially, I think, at this time of the year, when there are few men about, and they talk of everything.”
“Yes,” said Lucy, “I have heard often of the gossip in your clubs, that it is worse and more unkind than any other gossip.”
“Do not be too hard upon us! It is as petty and miserable as gossip is everywhere. But I have seen Mrs. Curtis, and heard it from herself. It is nothing, a misunderstanding between women—”
“Which, of course, you consider the merest trifle,” cried Lucy, much more piqued by this countershot than he had been by the assault on the clubs. Women are certainly on this point more ready to take offence than men, who have the calm confidence of their own superiority to fall back upon.
“I do not, indeed; but the women in question are not of the highest order. Mrs. Curtis most likely was fussy and interfering; and Nancy—”
“Do you call her Nancy?” cried Lucy, opening wide eyes.
“I beg your pardon. I got used to the name before she was Mrs. Arthur; and there is such a wonderful incongruity in the idea that she is Mrs. Arthur,” he said, doing his best to conciliate by this remark; but this slip of the name had evidently had a bad effect, he could not tell why. He thought that Lucy (in whom he had never before seen any indication of such foolish family pride) was offended by such a familiarity; and yet what could he say to excuse it? “Mrs. Curtis was intrusive, probably,” he went on, “and Mrs. Arthur resented it.”
“Oh, do not change the name you are accustomed to for me, Mr. Durant!”
“I am not accustomed to it,” he answered meekly, feeling that something was wrong, but not knowing what it was. “She resented it, I suppose. I do not wish to be disagreeable, but you know that a lady like Mrs. Curtis can be very officious and interfering; and she resented it, I suppose.”
Poor Durant! if he thought he was mending matters by calling Arthur’s wife she, with that little emphasis, how mistaken he was! Lucy’s heart was conscious of a thrill and jar, such as one’s foot or hand might experience if suddenly striking against some sharp angle in the dark. She had no right to feel so unreasonably offended with Durant, so unreasonably disdainful of Arthur’s wife. Lucy was angry with herself for the force of her sentiments, which seemed so utterly out of proportion with the matter on hand. She thought it more dignified and befitting to retire from any further question of it. But her aspect changed unawares, her very form grew stiffer and more erect, and she said, icily, “You said you saw Arthur. Is he looking better than when we saw him last?”
“No,” said Durant, hesitating; “I am not able to say that he is. I hope Lady Curtis will not ask me that question.”
“Oh!” said Lucy, the tears springing to her eyes, “do you think I am not as anxious about my only brother—as concerned as mamma?”
“Indeed I do not mean anything of the kind; but I can speak to you more freely. You understand; you always did understand, Miss Curtis,” he said, looking at her with a tender admiration which stole the hardness from Lucy’s heart in spite of herself. “I do not know how it was. It is so natural that Lady Curtis—that all his family should see the folly and the unkindness of it most. But you always saw the whole—and understood.”
“I never excused Arthur, Mr. Durant. No one could know the evil of what he has done—the pain it has produced so well as I.”
“I know,” he said softly, “all the more honour to your delicate heart that understood. I beg your pardon—I was only speaking by way of explanation. I can speak to you as I cannot speak—to any one else. Arthur is not looking well, poor fellow—he is harassed and worried to death. All the glamour has gone out of his eyes, and he sees his wife’s family now as other people see them, as very common-place, sordid, uneducated people, with whom, or with their like, he has no affinity. I would not say even that he did not see this more deeply than—I do, for instance, who am quite indifferent. To me they seem good sort of people enough—in their way. But Arthur has the horror of feeling that they belong to him more or less—and that he is called upon to associate with them.”
“Poor boy! oh, poor boy! and he was always so fastidious! But that is nothing, Mr. Durant—they do not belong to him. He can shake them off whenever he likes; but her—what of her? She is the chief person to be thought of,” said Lucy, with a sigh that it should be so.
“This is precisely the thing which I can say to you, and to no other,” said Durant. “She is not the same as they are. If you could fancy one of the stories of a stolen child—that was always different, always superior to the children of the people who brought it up—”
“Superior—Aunt Anthony’s story does not sound much like superiority! I think you are influenced, as they say gentlemen always are, by her good looks, and that is why you make an exception in favour of—my sister-in-law,” said Lucy, with a sound in those words such as Durant had never heard before from her lips. He looked at her in the growing twilight with wonder and pain. Was his certainty of her superiority to every other person concerned, about to turn out vain? It was almost dark, and he could not make out the expression of Lucy’s face; and of all things in the world the last that could have occurred to the young man was any thing to account for this, which should have been flattering to himself.
When he spoke again, there was some distress in his voice, and a half tone of complaint, “I thought I might venture on saying this to you—I thought you would understand; the facts are all against her. I believe she has managed very badly; and allowed everybody to see her want of cultivation—her strange—ignorance. Nevertheless,” he said earnestly, “I do not despair of Nancy. As for her good looks, they count for very little with me. What effect they may have on idle and unoccupied minds, I cannot pretend to say; but for a man like myself with a busy life and a pre-occupied imagination—”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Durant,” cried Lucy, “I did not wish to pry into your secrets.”
She would not have said it had she taken time to think. What folly to let him know that she understood that enigmatical phrase about the pre-occupied imagination! Lucy went on, quickening her pace, feeling the glow of a sudden blush run all over her in the gathering dark. And the silence seemed to thrill about them with all manner of possibilities of what might be said next. They were as much alone as if they had been in a desert island—bare trees standing closely about, the twilight all grey among the branches, the whole world still and listening. The thrill came to Lucy too, a kind of visionary tremor.
“Mamma will be looking out for you,” she said, hurriedly. “She will scold me for keeping you so long walking, when you might have been there in the dogcart half an hour ago;” and she sensibly quickened her own pace.
But Durant did not share in that thrill. It affected him only with a contrary touch of despondency. Lucy’s fright lest he should go on to tell her who it was who had pre-occupied his imagination (could she entertain any doubt who it was?) reflected itself in his melancholy sense that he dared not tell her any more. He dared not because he was poor, he who, even if he had been rich, would not have been thought her equal by anyone belonging to her; and because he was her father’s guest, and incapable of betraying his hospitality by a word to his daughter which Sir John would not have permitted. Thus that suggestion of self-disclosure ended in a blank silence which neither would break. He, too, quickened his steps to keep up with her, and in a few minutes they reached the house, which rayed out light into the darkness from the open door and windows. It seemed all bright, all open, full of hospitable warmth and radiance. When Durant had come here before, he had come with Arthur, and there had been a rush of mother and sister to the door to meet the heir of everything, the first thought and hope of all within these walls. Durant had been half-saddened many a time by that warm and exuberant welcome which Arthur always received. He himself had been received kindly too, but with what a difference! and as there was no particular enthusiasm about him in his own home, notwithstanding the fact that his family were indebted to him for everything, he had never been able to divest himself of a certain envy for Arthur. But he was a thousand times more saddened now to go up the great steps into the hall, and see no mother hurrying out to receive her son, no Arthur coming with cheerful outcry, nothing but himself stealing in softly, half ashamed of being there without Arthur, half afraid to look at Lucy, who must feel it too, he felt. He did not know how to go on and meet Lady Curtis’s eyes. He felt sure they must meet him with a reproach. “Where is Arthur?” he felt the very house say to him; and almost wished that he had been guilty, that he could have taken their reproaches to himself, and answered for his friend’s sake, “It is my fault.” He paused in the hall, and looked round wistfully at Lucy. Her eyes were wet, her lips faltering. She held out that hand to him.
“I know,” she said; “but when we have got over the first, it will be almost as if he had come too.”
“Almost!” he said shaking his head. He felt his eyes grow wet, and held her hand almost without knowing that he held it. Lady Curtis had heard the movement in the hall, though she had been trying not to hear it, and the shock had been broken to her by the arrival of the dogcart which she thought was bringing him. She came out now hiding her agitation with a smile, and held out her hands. Neither of them could speak. But when they got into that room which had seen so many happy meetings, it was too much for Arthur’s mother. She took hold of his arm convulsively with both her hands, and leaned her weight upon his shoulder and cried, “Oh, my boy!” through the sobs which she could not suppress. Durant was overcome at once by the emotion and the confidence. He stooped down with tender reverence and kissed her cheek.
“He is all the brother I have ever known,” he said.
“Yes, Lewis, yes, I know; God bless you! you have always been on Arthur’s side.”
Lucy stood by with strange currents of thought going through her mind, dimly understanding the man who was not her lover, but whose imagination was pre-occupied past being touched by any one else—yet tempted grievously to misunderstand him, and wondering with a latent pain just ready to come into being, whether this was one of the common mockeries of fate which made her mother receive him thus almost as a son, at the very time when he had ceased to entertain that sentiment which might have made a true son of him? Strange are the vagaries of young minds at this doubtful period, when everything is undisclosed and uncertain. She had entertained no doubt as to who it was who occupied his imagination when he had said those words. Did she really entertain a doubt now? or was she fostering such a thing into being—trying to make herself believe it? it would be hard to say. She stood by wondering, feeling in herself all the germs of doubt, and that inclination to nurse and develope them, and make herself unhappy which most of us have felt; all this, however, tempered by a curious thrill of pleasure to hear what Lady Curtis said. Lewis! they had called him Lewis Durant among themself for years, as (she felt no doubt) he had called her Lucy; but the name had never been employed before by anyone but Arthur. This was a leap unspeakable in intimacy. Lady Curtis had adopted him, so to speak, by thus involuntary casting herself upon him, and the sudden use of his name. But what did he think? was it Arthur only that was in his mind?
Lucy drew her mother’s chair to the fire, and pulled off her own thick outdoor jacket. There was tea on the table ready to be poured out, and the soft lamplight and warm glow of the fire brought out all the prettiness of the room, with its gay tints and gleams of gold. What had trouble to do in that cheerful place, amid those artificial graces which had become natural and kindly by use and wont? The stir of her daughter’s movements brought Lady Curtis to herself. They sat down round the fire as if the new comer had been another son, and talked of Arthur. It was almost as endless, almost as engrossing a talk as when the mother and sister sat alone together, and felt as if they could never cease. But by and by Sir John came in for his cup of tea, and asked how it was the train was so late, and all the particulars of the journey. Sir John himself had delayed half an hour beyond his usual time in coming for his tea. He had felt Durant’s arrival too.