AFTER the crisis of that conversation with Mrs. Curtis, which was at the bottom of so much harm and mischief, Arthur and Nancy stopped quarrelling with each other. They had each done and said things which they were disposed to repent of—and felt the existence generally of a state of things which was alarming, which at their worst they could not see without feeling that it might be possible to go too far. The fact that Arthur had gone away without seeing her after her rudeness to his aunt, his absence for hours, his absolute silence on the subject when they met at dinner had produced a great effect upon Nancy. It had been on her lips all the evening through to introduce the subject, to excuse herself or defend herself according as might be most suitable at the moment. But Arthur gave her no occasion. He had the advantage of education over her, the habit of self-restraint, at least the sense that it was necessary on occasion to restrain himself, an elementary lesson which Nancy had not as yet arrived at. And the effect upon her was great. She, too, kept silent, though against her will. She shut up in her breast this subject which, if she had talked about it, would, no doubt, have inflamed her to double wrath. And she grew a little frightened of the husband whom hitherto she had played with as she would, but who now in his newborn reserve and stillness was more than she could manage. She was afraid of him for the moment. He was no longer in her power. A tremendous menace seemed to lurk in his silence; and the consequence was that they lived in much greater harmony for the next week, both a little alarmed and penitent, and afraid of taking another step in the wrong direction. At the end of that time Arthur made the discovery which Nancy had already suggested to him, that howsoever great might be his desire to go to Italy, his means would not permit it. They had been living in their charming little apartment for three weeks, they had used a carriage constantly, and all that a Paris hotel can furnish that was most agreeable to eye and palate, and there was nothing, or next to nothing left. Arthur had not realised this fact when he had written his letter to his father. He had written indeed more out of the painful determination within him to uphold his wife, even in the face of what she had done to his relatives, by yielding to her will about their future, than from any more reasonable motive. He knew very well how that story would fly, how it would get to the ears of his mother and Lucy, and how everybody who knew him would pity poor Arthur. This it was which made him suddenly abandon his opposition, and determine to do as she wished. At all hazards he would maintain her credit, whatever might be her treatment of him. They might make her out to be what they pleased, they might tell what stories they would—he could not he knew contest them, but at all events everybody should see that he at least upheld her in her way of acting, gave her his support through all. This generous, if perhaps foolish, resolution, which was full of that grieved and suffering love which can no longer deny the justice of the accusations against its beloved, had been come to before he knew the necessity of returning home; but that necessity made it less forced and unnatural. For the last week of their stay there was little attempt at amusement. Denham, who had found great satisfaction in watching the proceedings of the bride, and who had already made many circles merry by his descriptions of her husband’s anxious endeavours to interest her in what she saw and heard, and her own absolute ignorance and unconcealed ennui, was ever at hand to suggest something, and had indeed two or three plans of his own for sharing this charming spectacle with some of his friends, with a trust in Arthur’s simplicity, which might not have been justified by the event. There were two in particular to whom he had promised an introduction to his “delicious Englishwoman,” had the young pair accepted the box at the Odéon which he had offered them, and the mischievous attaché was much disappointed by the failure of his plans. They declined it, however, with one accord. Nancy had quite convinced herself that it was “no fun” going to plays when you did not understand a word, and Arthur, on his side, had become disgusted with everything public. How did he know that they might not meet some one else whom he should be obliged to introduce to his wife, and whom his wife would receive with the same amiability which she had shown to Mrs. Curtis? The Curtises were still in Paris, and he had himself held an agitating conference with his aunt and Mary; but they came no more to the Rue Rivoli. This opportunity of making friends had been turned into the easiest way of making enemies. He would make no more such essays. Accordingly they sat “at home,” in the pretty little room with the white walls and white curtains. Arthur could always write his letters—it was not many he had to write now, as his family correspondence was cut off, and he had dropped most of his friends, but still he kept up the phrase; he wrote his letters, while she sat by the fire, sometimes taking out and putting in frills or trimmings to her dresses, sometimes yawning over a newspaper; they talked to each other a little now and then, and yawned in the intervals; they had no books except a few Tauchnitz volumes, which saved them from a complete breakdown, and they went early to bed which seemed always a virtuous thing to do. Thus the days went by. They did not talk any longer about going “home,” but it was tacitly understood between them that they were going back. This was what they had got to call it. And the day was fixed, and the boxes packed, and all settled, with scarcely any further consultation. Life, however, had become very sober prose after the triumphant exultation of the beginning, when three weeks after their marriage they crossed the Channel again on an early morning, Nancy very ill, and Arthur dignified but pale, and arrived at London on a rainy December night, wet and miserable as anything could well be.
Next day they went back. Arthur had taken rooms at the little inn which stood opposite Mr. Eagles’ house, looking on the green, where Durant had been lodged. But before they reached that place there was a greeting to be got through at the station, the whole Bates family, no less, having assembled to welcome their daughter. Nancy’s spirits had risen from the moment she had touched English soil. She had talked to everybody, guards, porters, the servants at the hotel, with exuberant satisfaction, notwithstanding the bad passage and its natural consequences.
“Oh, what a blessing to be at home!” she said. “Oh, Arthur, isn’t it nice to be back? I feel as if I should like to hug everybody. How much nicer everything looks in England! One can have some tea or some beer, instead of always that sour wine; and sausage-rolls and Bath buns!” cried Nancy, looking at these appalling luxuries in the Dover refreshment-room with unfeigned delight. It had been on Arthur’s lips to cry out, “For heaven’s sake speak a little lower!” but he said to himself, what was the use? One or two people turned round and smiled. And she bought a Bath-bun notwithstanding her recent sufferings. It seemed to Nancy better than all the delicate plats in the world. It was English, it was adapted to her native tastes and her usually fine digestion. Arthur hurried her away with the objectionable dainty in a little paper-bag in her hand.
“We must give in to prejudices a little,” he said. “You know most people think there is nothing like French cookery.”
“I would not give a nice plain English dinner—mother will have one for us to-morrow, I know—for all the little oddments they have in France,” said Nancy.
When she was Nancy Bates she did not talk like this, nor eat Bath-buns out of paper bags. The fact of being Mrs. Arthur Curtis, with a fine gentleman, an unmistakeable “swell” for a husband, became again an exhilarating consciousness, and turned Nancy’s head a little as soon as she had got to England again; and how could she show her satisfaction so well as by that demonstrative indulgence of personal tastes, and ostentation of personal satisfaction which is the essence of vulgarity, yet may be the mere froth of ignorance and light-hearted confidence? All this was sufficiently trying to Arthur, especially when strangers heard these patriotic outbursts, and showed by their smiles, as they passed, their appreciation of her simplicity. But when they got to Underhayes station, where Mrs. Bates, Matilda, and Sarah Jane stood on the platform waiting, Arthur’s heart sank in his bosom. Why? If Nancy’s mother had been a duchess, she could not have done anything different. But Mrs. Bates, with her brown front, and the flowers in her bonnet, and Sarah Jane in the latest fashion, were too much for poor Arthur. He busied himself about the luggage, and wondered how it was, for all so many times as he had seen them before, that he had never seen them until now? And this was how he was to be surrounded for the rest of his life! Visions of his mother and Lucy came gliding before him as he saw Nancy’s boxes, so much larger and heavier now than when they went away, lifted out—his own people! with their light steps, their soft voices, the tender delight in their eyes. Mrs. Bates was probably as fond of her child as Lady Curtis was of Arthur; that she should show that fondness so differently was not her fault, but that of Providence which had settled her lot in life. He tried to say to himself that this was so, but it was hard. On the whole, the best thing was to look after the boxes until those welcomes and embraces were over, which all the town seemed to have come out to see. Some of Mr. Eagles’ “men” were among the passengers by the train. Arthur shrank among the luggage altogether to escape from their eyes.
“Where is Arthur?” said Mrs. Bates. “I hope Arthur knows that you’re not going to be allowed to go off to an inn the first day you come back. To be sure, it’s tea, not dinner, as I suppose you’ve been accustomed to; but tea, with a nice roast chicken and sausages, which is as good as a dinner every day; and it’s all ready and waiting. Arthur! How long he is about the boxes to be sure. Shall we leave him to send them down to the ‘Dragon,’ and you come along, my Nancy, with me?”
“Arthur! Arthur!” cried Sarah Jane at the top of her voice, rushing towards him, “mother’s gone on with Nancy, and I’m to wait for you. You needn’t be so particular about the boxes, the porter will take them safe enough. And come along, do come along! Nancy’s gone on before with mother, and I’m quite hungry for my tea.”
One of the “men” at Mr. Eagles’ turned round, hearing every word of this speech, and grinned, Arthur thought, in derision.
“Don’t wait for me,” he said, faintly. “Go on, please, and I will follow. There are a great many things to be looked after, and I must see what sort of rooms they have given us. Go on, and never mind me.”
“Oh, if you’re too fine to walk down Underhayes with your own sister-in-law!” cried Sarah Jane; and to Arthur’s great relief she took offence, and rushed after her mother and sisters, calling this time, “Nancy! Nancy! stop a bit, I’m coming.”
The “man” lingered till she was gone, perhaps with a little pity for the bridegroom. He was a happy boy of twenty, working his eyes out for the Indian Civil examination, who had always been accustomed to think that his was rather a hard case, and that Curtis was a great “swell.”
“How d’ye do, Curtis? Can I look after these things for you?” he said, coming up shyly. Arthur made haste to clear every sign of cloudy weather from his downcast face.
“It is a bother looking after them,” he said; “my first try, you know—and one loses one’s temper. Still grinding hard, I suppose?”
“Harder and harder! Eagles gets more mad every day. What lucky fellows some people are!” said the young man with a little sigh, as he nodded and turned away.
Arthur felt himself echo the sigh. Was it he that was the lucky fellow? He had thought so too when he left Underhayes, carrying with him the bride for whom he had felt willing to relinquish all the world. This is an easy thing enough to say. To relinquish all the world, and carry one’s Nancy off into some flowery Eden where nobody could intermeddle with one’s bliss—ah, yes; but the Bates family! They, it was evident would not permit themselves to be relinquished like all the world. Arthur walked at his leisure, glad to defer the moment of reunion, down to the inn, and saw his rooms and deposited his luggage. Perhaps Nancy had a right to be angry when at last he followed her. They had waited till the chicken and sausages were nearly cold; but by this time they were in the middle of their meal, Mr. Bates already in his slippers at the foot of the table when Arthur arrived. The little parlour was hot and close, full of mingled odours; they were all a little flushed, what with the unusual warmth, what with the meal. Nancy herself had been placed next to the fire, as the traveller to whom the best place was necessarily given, and she was crimson with excitement, pleasure, anger, and the stifling atmosphere all combined. The voices all ceased when Arthur came in.
“I think you might have paid my mother the respect of coming directly,” said Nancy in high tones.
“Oh, hush, dear, hush! I am sure Arthur didn’t mean any rudeness,” said Mrs. Bates.
But there was an interval of silence, marking general disapproval, and they all turned to look at him as at a culprit. He sat down in the vacant place much against his will, amid unfriendly or indignant looks. Even to the Bates’ family he was no longer welcome as an angel from Heaven.
“I am sorry everything is cold,” said Mrs. Bates; “we waited as long as we could. But Nancy wanted her tea very badly after her journey. Here is a leg of chicken I saved for you.”
“I am not hungry,” said Arthur, feeling his new alienation and separation amid all the silent party. “I will take a cup of tea, please. I had the boxes to look after.”
“You might have left the boxes to take care of themselves,” said his wife; “you are not always so careful. You might have come with me when I first came home after being married. And all the people about staring; but you don’t mind. It used to be different when we were here before; but I ain’t of so much consequence now,” cried Nancy. “Wives are different from sweethearts; I see that all now.”
Arthur felt a sensation of chill despair come over him in the midst of this domestic heat. He restrained himself by a strange effort and would say nothing; and, indeed, he did not feel the impulse of passion to speak. A dreary despondency took possession of him. How often he had sat there on the sofa in the corner, and felt himself happy! What was it that made the change? for Nancy had shown “tempers,” fits of caprice, uncertainty of mood before their marriage. But it had not affected him as it did now. Succour came to him, however, in an unexpected way.
“I don’t approve of nagging at a man, whatever he’s done,” said Mr. Bates. “If you’ve had any tiffs honeymooning, you should have the sense to stop ’em now. If you like to quarrel in your own place, I’ll not interfere, I haven’t got the right; but don’t do it here. Your father’s house is no more than a friend’s house so far as that goes. It ain’t your place, Nancy, to expose your husband here.”
“I hope I know what’s my place, as well as you or anyone,” said Nancy, growing red, and accepting the challenge. She had never been fond of restraint, and she liked it now less than ever. She gave her head a toss of defiance, entrenched as she was behind the walls of support and shelter which her mother and sisters gave, who unconditionally took her side. She flashed defiance at the other end of the table, where Arthur sat with a flush of shame on his face, and poor Mr. Bates in his crumpled white tie for his sole partisan.
“I think Mr. Bates is right,” said Arthur, “and that it would be better to postpone this question till we are alone.”
“And I hope you found Paris pleasant, Sir,” said the well-intentioned father. “I have often heard that it was a very fine city. It must have been a great advantage for Nancy, seeing it with one that knew it well. In my young days going to France was more of a business than going to America is now. Me and Mrs. Bates never had the benefit of foreign travel; but there are a many things you young people enjoy now that your fathers and your mothers didn’t have.”
“You may speak for yourself, Mr. Bates,” said his wife. “I cannot say that I ever had any desire to go to foreign parts. There is plenty to learn in England if one would make a good use of what one knows; and Nancy, poor child, don’t seem to have enjoyed it. Look how thin she is, and so pale. She quite frightened me when I saw her first. ‘Is that my blooming Nancy?’ I said to myself—not meaning to throw any reflection upon Arthur. What does man know of such things? She’s been doing too much. I feel sure that’s what it is, rattling about here and there and everywhere, and engagements in the evening—”
“We didn’t have many engagements in the evening,” said Nancy. “We used to go to the theatres at first; but we soon got tired. The acting was so bad, not like English acting; and such queer French, not a bit like anything I ever learnt. For one thing, they talk so fast. But I could not understand a bit, and what was the good of going to a play and not understanding a word? And we never saw anybody, except an aunt of Arthur’s, a person—but I won’t speak of her, for she was rude to me—and Sir John Denham, who used to come and sit of an evening, and who brought us tickets for places. It was very kind of him; and there was a lot of places to see, and a whole lot of old pictures and things that Arthur thought I was to go crazy over; but I never did. One place was where some prison was knocked down (I never remembered the names) and, another was where the Queen had her head cut off.”
“Oh, la!” cried Sarah Jane.
“Yes, that was a pleasant thing to be interested in, wasn’t it? Oh, the lots and lots of people that had their heads cut off, if you could put any faith in it! As if that was what one wanted to see! I never believed one quarter of what they said.”
“And quite right,” said her mother; “they do make up stories; but didn’t you go to see something a little livelier, Nancy? I thought there was everything that was gay in Paris. But if that was all, my poor child, I don’t wonder if you felt low, away from everybody you knew. But things will be quite different now,” she said, encouragingly. “You will settle down, you and Arthur, in a nice snug little English ’ome. There is no place like ’ome, as the song says. And you’ll fall into each other’s ways; and you’ll have us close at hand if anything’s wrong. Oh, you’ll see everything will go as smooth as velvet! and me, or Sarah Jane, or Matty always to help you to put things straight.”
At this prospect Nancy brightened up, and the conversation went on in a livelier strain. But Nancy’s brows lowered when Arthur, feeling it all grow more and more intolerable, got up just before the rum-and-water stage, under pretence of business.
“I have some letters which I must write,” he said. Nancy’s countenance grew dark again, and Mr. Bates lamented audibly.
“I thought you’d have joined me and been comfortable, now you’re a married man and got your courting over,” said the tax-collector. Poor Arthur! was this expected of him, that he should share the rum-and-water too? He scarcely knew how he managed to get away at last, promising to return for his wife when his letters were written. But he had in reality no letters to write. He walked about through the darkness very sadly, wondering what he was to do. It was weak perhaps to have yielded to her, to have suffered her to lead him back here; it was all intolerable, the house, the family, the talk. They had been well enough once, how did it happen that they were beyond all patience now?