THE next day the ordinary guests began to arrive at Oakley. They were not of a very lively character. With an instinctive sense of the difference, which the family were scarcely conscious of, changes had been made in the list of visitors which would have been got together in Arthur’s time. Scarcely any young men were of the party. When there is not a young man in the house what use in asking young men? unless it had been in a matrimonial point of view for Lucy’s sake, an idea which not only Lucy but her mother regarded (in the latter case injudiciously, it ought to be said) with scorn. Sir John had given up hunting long ago, and if he made a serious shot once or twice in a season, it was more upon the principle which makes an old king open a ball than any more active personal liking for the sport. The party accordingly consisted in great part of his contemporaries, some in Parliament, some in the law, chiefly belonging to the learned professions. There was a judge, and there was the head of a college, and for a few days there was a bishop; but as this latter functionary was the most sportive member of the party, he could not be counted as adding to its solemnity; and these magnates of course did not stay long. And then there was the Master of the Hounds who was more solemn; and there were the wives of these gentlemen, and in some cases their daughters, and a stray man or two of the order of those who know everybody and have been everywhere, and have done a little of everything, without getting more than a general reputation for themselves, and without giving any very clear indications to the world where they sprang from or to whom they belonged. There were also a few ladies of the same species, but whose families and antecedents were unimpeachable. It was Lady Curtis who abhored dullness, who had added these. Sir John liked the dullness, and did not object to having a lady next to him who dined well and said little. In spite of Lady Curtis’s efforts, however, the party was dull. It was perhaps too elderly and too serious. Well conducted married people are dull in society. They are not sufficiently interested in each other to exert themselves for each other’s amusement, and there can be little doubt that as a source of diversion and interest to their fellow creatures, a couple of naughty persons bent on flirtation and ill-behaviour make a better recompense to their entertainers. This element was sadly wanting at Oakley; there was no little drama to watch, legitimate genteel comedy ripening towards marriage and all the domestic joys, or more reprehensible episode tending the other way, such as often proves more exciting still to the jaded appetite of society. And it can scarcely be wondered at, if in the absence of other fun this respectable assembly threw itself on the affairs of the family. There was a great deal of conversation in corners about Arthur’s marriage. The Bates family were too low down in the world to have even reached the level of gossip, and except that he had made a very foolish marriage, a mésalliance in every sense of the word, no one knew anything further, except one lady was acquainted with Mrs. Anthony Curtis, and had received from her a vague account of her meeting with Nancy. This lady had formed an idea, quite erroneous as it happened, yet an idea, of Arthur’s wife, which was a point not attained to by anybody else in the house. She thought (as seemed so natural) that Nancy must have been an actress in a minor theatre, a nameless figurante, one of the class who are supposed to enthral well-born young men, and who, wonder of wonders, do so, to the everlasting astonishment of the world, notwithstanding all its theories on the subject. But it did not enter into anybody’s mind to suppose that the girl whom Arthur had married had not the advantage of being wicked and shameless. The lady who knew the story whispered it to others when none of the family were present. “Turned her out of her rooms, I assure you, my dear,” she said; “they were in the best rooms of a most expensive hotel, I need not say. Such people never spare any expense.”
“A girl from a theatre!—but what theatre? There are such differences; that means anything, from a lady to a dressing-girl.”
“She was not a lady, at least; that is the only one thing that is certain. She was a—” Here the teller of the tale stopped abruptly, adding in a louder tone, “I know only one lady on the stage, but she is enough to justify any amount of raving. Mrs. Kenworthy—don’t you know—you must have seen her.”
It need not be added that it was one of Lady Curtis’s friends, a middle-aged person who knew everybody, who spoke, and that the sudden break was owing to the entrance of Lucy, who came in unsuspicious, and caught them in the middle of their talk.
“Oh, yes, I have seen her,” said another, faltering, while the other members of the party broke up suspiciously, and began to talk to each other with great earnestness. Lucy had thought no evil when she came in, to see all the heads together, but this breaking up and evident desire to conceal the subject of discussion roused her. These were the sort of conversations that went on through the hospitable house. When Sir John was alone for a few minutes with the Judge, who had been the friend of his youth, that learned functionary took him by the buttonhole, and said, “What’s this, what’s this, Curtis, I hear about your son?” They talked of it under Lady Curtis’s eye in the drawing-room as they sipped their tea. Poor Arthur had been cast off by his family, they said; he must have been living a bad life before, or he could never have been thrown in the way of such a person, and never could have married her. Had he married her? that was the next question. Or was it not altogether disreputable, the connection itself and everything about it? So they talked; and Lucy for once got to feel it in the air, and to lose her temper sometimes at the sense of this strange mass of secret criticism of which her family was the object. She made an assault upon her cousin, the Rector, in the midst of it with nervous vehemence. He had been talking to Miss Wilton, the lady who had rushed into a description of Mrs. Kenworthy, when Lucy came into the room that morning and interrupted more important talk. Lucy, watching, had perceived that Bertie had held back while the other had been pressing questions upon him, and that after the interview Miss Wilton had hurried to a pair of expecting friends, and communicated to them the information which she had acquired. Miss Curtis called her cousin to her with a somewhat imperious gesture, a gesture, however, which he was very willing to obey.
Hubert Curtis had not found himself, so far, any the better for the misfortune which had happened to Arthur. He was not taken more into favour at the Hall, nor did Lucy incline more to his society than when her brother was at Oakley. He had not gained any ground. However likely it might be that she would have a larger portion of the family goods, Bertie saw no probability that the advantage would in any way come to himself; he had almost, he thought, lost instead of gaining by Arthur’s absence. When Arthur was at home, he, as the nearest neighbour, the only man of anything near his own age close at hand, had a natural place at Oakley besides that derived from his relationship. But now what had he to do at the Hall? Lucy did not encourage him, certainly, in any devotion to her. Lady Curtis had an instinctive, half-jealous dislike to him, as she would have had probably to any young man whose sensible and correct behaviour was a standing reproach to Arthur. And Sir John could not be troubled by Bertie’s peace-making and desire to persuade him that all would eventually be well. Therefore he had suffered with Arthur, which was a thing he did not calculate upon; and it would be impossible to deny that his mother’s story about Arthur’s wife had given him a kind of grim satisfaction. If he were not bettered, at least others were the worse; he said, “poor Arthur!” with contemptuous content. If a man chose to make a fool of himself like that, it was only right that he should pay the penalty, and he had been unable to refrain from repeating his mother’s story to Mrs. Rolt, who was shocked and grieved, as Bertie, too, assumed to be. But he had not been guilty of the treachery of discussing it at the Hall. When Miss Wilton spoke to him, he had no desire to give her any further information, but answered as sparingly as possible. Of course it was now, when he really had been exercising a certain amount of virtue, that his punishment came.
“Bertie,” said Lucy, as he came up to her, “I want to know why my aunt goes on spreading that story, and why you talk it over with everybody except mamma and me?”
“What story?” But he did not attempt to deceive her further by pretending that he did not know.
“We were the most interested,” said Lucy. “If you had told us it would have been natural, and perhaps kind; but why do you tell it to other people? What good could that do?”
“What other people have I told it to?” he said. “I was questioned over there, but I made no reply, or at least as little as I could. I told Mrs. Rolt, and I beg your pardon for that. She was so anxious to know something, and I knew she was to be trusted. Don’t blame me, Lucy; I have not intended to be hard upon Arthur.”
“Hard upon Arthur! I did not suppose so; he can fight his own battles,” said Lucy, raising her head with a look which was almost haughty. “But you are unkind to us. You are my cousin, our nearest relation, Bertie. You should not go about telling disagreeable stories. And then you are a—”
“Go on,” he said; “recall me to my duties. I am a clergyman—was not that what you were about to say? and I ought not to be a gossip, going from house to house. I will not attempt to defend myself, Lucy. If that is my character, it is better I should say nothing; and certainly, if you think so, I cannot undertake to undeceive you. It is you who are unkind to me.”
“I don’t think so. I did not mean to say so much as that,” said Lucy, abashed. “But oh, Bertie, why should you treat us so? Are not we, is not Arthur, your own flesh and blood.”
“I am but too ready to acknowledge it, too glad to think of it,” he said with a sudden smile.
And as Lucy had no difficulty in looking at him, no shyness about meeting his eyes, she could not help seeing the eagerness in them, and softening of unmistakeable sentiment. Altogether, apart from the fact that she would be very well off and an excellent match, he liked her as sincerely as was in him. Love, perhaps, is too strong a word; but he liked her, well enough to have wanted to marry her if she had only possessed a competence and nothing more, if she had not been in any exceptional position as the only obedient and dutiful child of the house. Whether his sentiment was of a robust enough kind to have made him seek Lucy had she been poor, is a different question; but it might even have been strong enough for this, perhaps, for all anyone could say.
She was softened too. Lucy was not one of those farouche young women who resent being loved. She was sorry that any such mistaken feeling should be in his mind, if it was in his mind; but all the same she was rather softened than hardened by the look of eager conciliatoriness and desire to please her, which was in his face.
“Aunt Anthony might have told us herself. She need not have let other people know,” she said, shifting her ground, and in a gentler tone.
But here he had a very good answer provided.
“My mother is not here,” he said, quite gently, without a tinge of reproach. “She cannot either explain or defend herself.”
What could Lucy say? She blushed crimson, deeply moved by the sting of this retort courteous.
“I wished her to be here,” she said.
“You always wish what is kind. I did not think it was you; but, Lucy, don’t you see—”
At this moment Sir John came up, placing himself so that the conversation was interrupted. As the mantel-piece was not near enough to be leant upon, he leaned upon one of the marble consoles behind which a big glass rose to the ceiling, reflecting his figure and the faces of the two in front of him.
“I have often noticed,” he said, “that when we have a mild rainy November, the cold is bitter in spring. Have you remarked that, Bertie? But, to be sure, you are not a country bird, you don’t know much about the weather; but you will learn, you will learn before you are my age.”
“It seems a simple enough conclusion, and I don’t mind accepting it as part of my creed,” said the Rector with a laugh, in which, however, there was some surprise mixed, for he did not understand what motive his uncle could have in placing himself there to make this very unimportant remark.
“They tell me the meet is to be here to-morrow,” said Sir John; “and some of the ladies are going to ride. I am very glad Lucy doesn’t hunt. You had better come up and make yourself useful, Bertie, now that there’s nobody in the house. I suppose you don’t ride now to speak of? Of course, there’s Durant; I don’t know what his fancy is. I never was a cross-country man myself. I was always fond of more serious pursuits. Your father now, my brother Tony, he was always fond of it—a sort of practical fellow. As for me, I always took a pleasure in more serious things.”
“You were born for Parliament, Sir,” said the Rector, half with veiled satire, half with a disposition to please his uncle, who had been kind enough, and from whom more kindness yet might come.
“Well, yes, perhaps you are right,” said Sir John; “that was more in my way; I always took an interest in public business. When I was a boy at Eton I used to read the debates as regularly as I do now—and I have never changed my principles or turned my coat, Bertie. That is something to say after thirty years of public life. I have never seen reason to modify my opinions as so many people do. One set of principles has been enough to guide me through life, and I cannot believe that any man wants more.”
“It is a very happy state of mind, Sir,” said the Rector, wondering more and more why his uncle had elected him to hear the characteristics of his wisdom. Lucy had cleverly stolen away to do her duty by the other guests, and only Lady Curtis was aware of her husband’s real meaning. She smiled within herself at his simple device to separate Lucy from a man who might put in the pretensions of a lover. But when Lucy, after stealing away from her cousin’s side, was to be seen a little while after at Durant’s, then it was Lady Curtis’s turn to look serious, and she herself moved from her own chair when she saw them talking, with a lively sense of the same need for interference which had moved her husband. When Lady Curtis joined them their conversation was simple enough, nothing to alarm any parent; but yet she remained there talking with something of her old brightness, until Lucy had left that end of the room, too, in turn, and had gone to carry consolation to old Mrs. Nuttenden in the corner, who was slightly deaf, and not amusing—with her efforts to amuse whom, nobody interfered.
Durant did not notice the gentle interference in the Rector’s case, but he felt it very distinctly in his own, and with a little pang said to himself, that he would give no occasion for this watchfulness, but would shorten his proposed stay as he had already intended to do. This was not because there was any failure of the kindness, even the affection with which he had been first received. Lady Curtis talked to him as she did to nobody else but Lucy, confided in him—called him Lewis, as she had done when he arrived, and discussed her son with him, with family freedom and trust, in a manner indeed which would have filled many young men with fond imaginations and made them feel themselves almost wooed. And Sir John was quite kind, though in a different way. He had always been slightly suspicious of Durant as one of those clever men who are never quite safe, and of whom you cannot be too sure what levelling and atheistical sentiments may accompany their intellectual gifts. One of my Lady’s sort of people, Sir John had always considered him, not a retainer of his own, but on the other side; yet because he was so associated with Arthur, Sir John’s heart had melted to him also. So that it was no failure of the most cordial welcome which made Durant feel it better to hasten away. He went to his room that night quite decided by the manner of the woman who called him by his Christian name, and looked at him with such motherly affection in her eyes. Was it Lady Curtis’s fault? He did not blame her. He said to himself, that had Lucy been his own sister, he would not have given her to a poor barrister without family, without connections, with burdens of his own upon his shoulders, and no honours to bestow. Why should he linger there? Now that Arthur was so far off from Oakley—now, above all, that Arthur was married, the most complete of severing influences, it was inevitable (he said) that his connection with Oakley must gradually drop off. They would not mean it—they would not wish it—yet it would come to pass; and why should he seek to prevent it? Was there not between them a great gulf fixed—that gulf which wealth might fill up, perhaps, which his old grandfather’s money might have thrown a golden bridge across, had it still existed; but which now gaped like the bottomless pit, and could never be crossed by any skill or effort of his. Should he stay only to impress this more and more upon himself? He made up his mind that very night.
But that did not hinder him on the next day after these events, which was Sunday, from finding himself by Lucy’s side in one of the quiet moments of that quiet day. He was going off the next morning, and it chanced to him, unawares, to come into the Louis Quinze room in the interval between church and luncheon, which is a moment of general dispersion in which no one knows where any one is. Lucy was in the morning-room writing a letter, when Durant came in. He was very self-denying, yet when she stopped and laid down her pen, and said, “Come in, don’t go away!” he could not resist the invitation. He came in and stood near her, leaning upon the corner of the mantel-shelf close to one of those big rococo Cupids between whom Sir John was so fond of placing himself. And Lucy was a little eager, almost agitated, more resolute to talk to him than he was to talk to her. She said without any preface, “Are you really going away to-morrow? I was surprised—and I don’t seem to have seen you at all, or to have said half I had to say.”
“I must go,” he said with a sigh, “for many reasons; and chiefly because—”
“Because what? You do not think there is any change, Mr. Durant? You must not think there is any change: there is no one mamma trusts in so entirely as in you.”
“I am very glad to think so,” he said, “and to believe that she would trust me if any thing occurred—if I was wanted.” Here he made a pause, and added in a low tone, “and you too?”
“And I too! can you doubt it? I know,” said Lucy faltering, “that Arthur has no such true friend.”
He made a little unconscious gesture with his hand. She knew exactly what it meant. It meant Arthur, always Arthur! never anything on his own account; always for the use that might be made of him. But this would have been very unreasonable had he put it into words, for it was precisely on this reason that he had claimed to be trusted, “if anything occurred—if he was wanted.” Very unreasonable and inconsistent; but then men are so.
And what could she say? She could not take the initiative, and tell him that her interest in him, at least, was not all on account of Arthur. She made a tremulous pause, and then said, “Everything is so different this year. We have done nothing but talk to you of Arthur. The time seems gone in which we used to talk so freely—of, us all.”
“Yes,” he said, “it is kind, very kind of you to use such words. What talks we have had here of—us all! before we had began to feel the differences between us.”
“What differences?” she said eagerly. “Mr. Durant, I hope you are too generous to think that any outside differences—” Poor Lucy coloured and grew so eager, that her earnestness defeated its object, and she could not get the words out.
“Not that,” he said, “not the loss of our money. I know no one here would think the less of me for that—perhaps the better,” he added with a smile, “as being just a poor man now, without any pretence of equality on account of wealth. I did not mean that; but rather the enlightenment that comes with years, and that shows to me how little I, being what I am, ever could be on the same footing with you.”
“Mr. Durant, you are unkind—you are ungenerous!”
“Not so—not so; but I am older and a little wiser. And according to the custom of mortal things, this enlightenment comes just when it is most painful to me—most bitter to realise.”
“I cannot hear you say so,” Lucy said, getting up trembling from her chair. “Difference—what difference? I know none. I never have been told of any.”
And he looked at her all quivering with the desire to say more—to set open the doors of his heart, and show her herself in it, and all that was there. He looked at her, and shook his head sadly.
“I have no right to say any more. I would be a poor creature if I said any more; but still it is so—and it is better for me to go away. You will not misunderstand me? That would be the cruellest of all.”
“I think there is one thing more cruel,” said Lucy with an impulse which carried her away, and for which she could not forgive herself afterwards, “and that is to speak mysteries to your friends, and expect them to understand you, yet never tell them what you mean—that is the thing that is most cruel.”
“Should I speak then, though it is hopeless—though it is almost dishonourable?” he cried excited and breathless. Lucy trembling, turned half, yet but half away.
“Ah! you are here then! I have been looking for you,” said the voice of Lady Curtis at the door. “You are talking to Lucy who has a letter to write, and I have something to say to you, Lewis—come to me here.”
Lucy had gone back to her writing before her mother stopped speaking; she did not even look at him again; but she said very low, “I think I understand,” as he passed her slowly to obey that call.