NEXT day, restored to perfect good-humour by the occupation, Nancy went out with her mother to look at some houses which they had already selected for her choice. She came into the little sitting-room, in which Arthur had talked to Durant about his marriage, and where the young pair were established now—glowing and beaming from her early walk, to tell him all about these desirable residences. Rose Villas, Glenfield Road, was the name of the row, in which there were two houses, one empty, and one furnished, to be let.
“You must come with me and see them the moment you have had your lunch—I don’t want any lunch,” cried Nancy. “I am so delighted! The dearest little houses, Arthur! just big enough for us, and so bright, with gardens back and front, and everything that heart could desire.”
“But we don’t want two houses, do we?” he said.
“No, you silly boy; but if we take the one that is furnished, don’t you see, for little while, and the one that is not furnished for a permanency, then we can be comfortable in the one house while we furnish the other; ain’t that clever?” said Nancy, laughing. “I can’t fancy anything more delightful. Make haste with your luncheon, Arthur. Oh, yes, I will sit down with you, I will take a morsel; but I am in such a hurry. I do hope you will like them as much as I do. It is so nice to think of having a ’ome, as mother says.”
Arthur did not make any reply; after so much stormy weather as there had been, it grieved him to destroy all this sunshine by any remonstrances. He was glad to bask in it a little and put off the next difficulty. It was a bright winter afternoon when they sallied forth together, the red sun descending towards the west, and throwing up all the leafless trees beyond Mr. Eagles’ great house as on a crimson background, against which every branch and twig stood out—the Green more brilliantly green than usual from the many rains and from the afternoon redness which enhanced its colour—the red-brick houses all ruddy and warm in the light. Even to Arthur, whose heart was heavy, it was a pleasant walk to Glenfield Road. They were alone, and Nancy was in the gayest humour, full of satisfaction with herself. Though she had lost her confidence in the Paris dresses, which had much disappointed her mother and sisters, and was afraid that her travelling costume looked dreadfully dowdy (which was Sarah Jane’s opinion)—yet the sense of being at home, able to dazzle all her old companions with her good fortune, and to feel that her house and husband, and all her possessions, would be admired and to envied by the right people, had calmed all Nancy’s susceptibilities and raised her spirits to the highest point. She all but danced along the street, holding Arthur’s arm in a way which may be old-fashioned, but still comes natural to a bride. She was about to have a house of her own, a house fit for a lady, where obsequious tradesmen, once her equals, or better than she, would come for orders. She was about to have servants of her own—not a “girl,” as in the Bates’ establishment, but a cook and housemaid, as good as the Vicar or any of the fine people on the Green. And all these fine people would call upon her, Nancy thought; who was there among them equal to Mrs. Arthur Curtis, a baronet’s daughter-in-law, some time or other to be Lady Curtis—a baronet’s wife?—and who could speak familiarly of other baronets, Denham, for instance, as an intimate friend. And then there was Durant.
“Who is Durant,” she said, “Arthur? Is he anybody, is his father anybody? I had a long talk with him here once. I was angry—But on the whole I liked Durant.”
“He is—my oldest friend; and the man in all the world who knows most about me,” said Arthur, laughing in spite of himself; “but further information would not enlighten you, Nancy—”
“You mean that I don’t know your peerages, and that sort of thing,” said Nancy, piqued a little.
This time Arthur laughed with good will. “I don’t think the peerages would help you much,” he said. “Lewis Durant is a clergyman’s son, Nancy.”
“Only a clergyman?” She was disappointed. “But they must have been very rich or something, Arthur, or such proud folks as your people would not have let Durant be so intimate with you.”
“My people,” said Arthur with some haste, “would not have thought of interfering with my school friends to ask whose sons they were; and Lewis’s family, were rich—but they are not rich now. Call him Lewis, if you please, when you speak of him, Nancy; but don’t say Durant. It sounds fast; and you never will be fast, I hope.”
“Oh, it sounds fast, do you think?” Nancy was mollified. When he had made the same request before, she had thought it a stigma upon her as not knowing how a lady should talk, but this was a lesser offence. “Well then, Mr. Durant—if I must say Mr. Durant—isn’t he rich now?”
“No, not at all rich.”
“Oh, then I suppose he has to work for his living like—any common man? I am so glad you are not like that, Arthur. What a difference it must make! To have one’s husband away all day at his work—or to have one’s husband always at one’s side, ready to take a walk, or to answer a question, or anything. I am so glad you are a gentleman, Arthur. I never should have been happy had I married a man in any other rank of life.”
“Durant is just as much a gentleman as I am, Nancy.”
“What! when he has to work for his living? Oh, yes, I know. Whoever wears good clothes, and knows how to behave himself in society, is called a gentleman for the name of the thing, Arthur. The assistants in Shoolbred’s are all gentlemen, of course; but that is not what I mean—you know what I mean. Now supposing that Durant—I mean Mr. Durant—had known us longer, and got to coming to our house as you did, and Sarah Jane and he had fancied each other, she would not have been nearly so happy as I am.”
“Was that thought of?” said Arthur, with a smile which did not evidence any real amusement. “I did not know that had been seriously thought of.”
“Oh, yes, it was thought of. Why shouldn’t it have happened? He was your friend; and they say one wedding brings on another. I don’t think Sarah Jane would have minded,” said Nancy in perfect good faith. “She would have thrown Raisins over in a moment; and indeed I think she treats Raisins very badly with all her flirtations. I tell her it is he who will throw her over one of these days.”
“So Durant might have been preferred to Mr. Raisins,” said Arthur. “What a chance for Lewis!”
Nancy did not feel quite comfortable about the meaning of this laugh. Perhaps it was not entirely regret for what Durant had lost; but as at this moment they came in sight of Rose Villas, her whole attention was drawn to the more exciting subject. “There is the empty one, Arthur,” she said, “look, how pretty! But I see the door of No. 6 is open, so let us go there first. There is such a pretty garden behind, and the windows open into it. There is not much in the garden now, but it will be delicious in summer. Oh, yes, here we are; this is Mr. Curtis, Mrs. Smith. We have come again, if you please, to go over the house.”
“If you please, ma’am,” said the prim little landlady, whose lodgings had not let so well as usual, and who was not unwilling to get rid of her house. Nancy ran through it delighted, taking her husband from one room to another. “This you could have to write your letters in, Arthur, and this would be my drawing-room,” cried Nancy, glowing with not unlovely pride; “and look what a dear little Davenport, and an inlaid table, and that funny little three-cornered thing in the corner, and a nice white cloth over the carpet—so clean-looking—almost like our white carpets in Paris.”
Arthur allowed himself to be dragged all over the house. It was like a hundred, nay a million other semi-detached suburban villakins. The little rooms were neat enough, if not beautiful; and Arthur, though he had been brought up in Oakley, amid his mother’s favourite splendours, was not sufficiently fastidious to be annoyed by the common-place surroundings. It was not the want of beauty that moved him; but the sensation of “settling down,” which was so delightful to Nancy, affected his imagination like a nightmare. She was so satisfied herself, so anxious to know every particular about the maids whom Mrs. Smith “could recommend,” so eager about everything, that his gloomy looks passed without remark. And Arthur did not check her delight until, having settled matters with Mrs. Smith, she insisted upon carrying him next to No. 9, which was to let unfurnished. “This is the most interesting,” she said. “Come along, Arthur; for you know this will be our real ’ome—this we will furnish ourselves;” and she dragged him to the door. Nancy did not usually drop her h’s, but she was too familiar with this form of the word to call it anything but ’ome.
Here, however, Arthur had strength of mind to resist. “That is enough for to-day. You must not ask me to do more to-day. After dinner we will talk it all over, all about it, over the fire.”
“After dinner?” said Nancy. “Oh! I said we would go and see mother, and tell her what we had settled. Why, what is the matter, Arthur—may not I go and see mother? We have only been one day back, and you begin to make faces already! You cannot say I am bringing my people on you.”
“I think you might be content with me sometimes,” said Arthur, with an attempt at a smile.
“I have been content with you for three weeks,” said Nancy. “I have never seen a soul but you. I should think you would like to see another face now and again as well as I do—and my own folks!” Arthur did not say any more. He diverted the conversation into other channels, and led her back to the subject of the villa, which on the whole was safer ground; and when the evening came and their dinner was over, and Nancy went off with a certain gay temerity, yet not without alarm, to get her wrap, Arthur took his hat to accompany her without saying a word. She was in a state of the greatest exultation, scarcely able to restrain little songs of triumph as they walked along the half-lighted street, and clasping his arm close, with a show of affection which went to Arthur’s heart.
“At what time shall I come for you?” he said, as they drew near the door.
“Come for me! are you not coming with me, Arthur?”
“I have not finished my letters,” he said; “as you say, we have had three weeks of holiday; and then I was out with you all this afternoon. I must finish my letters for the post to-night.”
She unclasped her hands from his arm without a word, and went in; and the glimpse Arthur had of the parlour did not tempt him to follow. Young Raisins was one of the company. He was seated on the sofa where Arthur had been in the habit of sitting, presumably behind backs, and out of the observation of the others, with Nancy. Young Raisins was now the lover on hand, and the sight of him in that place sent the blood to Arthur’s head as he walked away. Could it be possible that he himself had been unspeakably happy there a few weeks ago, finding nothing but pleasantness in the four straight walls, and beauty in the family affection that made all these people hang so closely together. Raisins now occupied the foreground of the picture as he had done before, with infinitely greater suitability. And this was the home which his wife loved. There was the sting of it! had she been indifferent, undutiful—even careless, as he thought he remembered that she once was; but Nancy’s matrimonial experience, which was not entirely successful, perhaps, had thrown her back upon her earlier affections in a way which is not unusual, though Arthur was not aware of that. Her husband and she had only their love to hold them together; their habits were not like, their manner of thought was different. Even when she was at her boldest and most confident point, Nancy was never quite at home with the “gentleman” she had married; but with her own people, she was entirely at her ease. Arthur did not take this into consideration; but he was candid enough to feel a compunction as he walked away, and to acknowledge that from Nancy’s point of view, it might seem hard that he could not spend an hour or two without complaining in the society of the family who had been everything to her all her life. It was hard, that so soon, before a month of her married life was over, she should have to choose between the old home and the new, between her parents and her husband. Arthur had a generous mind, and this perception kept him from feeling himself the aggrieved person, as he had been half disposed to do. It forced him, also, instead of wandering about as he had done on the previous night, and brooding over the difficulties of his new position, to go back to his hotel and really write the half imaginary letters which were his only business, and the reason which he had again given for his abandonment of that family circle. His letters were not all imaginary: there was one from Mr. Rolt, the agent, in answer to Arthur’s letter to his father. Sir John had been too indignant, as well as perhaps (but this he was not conscious of) too little disposed for exertion to answer it himself. He had handed over the note, not to the lawyer brother, against whom Arthur had vowed vengeance, but to the agent, who had always been a favourite, the friend of their youth, with the young Curtises, both boy and girl. Mr. Rolt’s letter was very kind and reasonable, and to answer it without proving himself to be in the wrong was difficult. Sir John did not object to raising his allowance—he did not refuse anything Arthur asked him. There was nothing hard in the stipulations, nothing forbidding in what his father’s deputy wrote.
“Your family do not wish you to suffer, how could you think it?—they do not wish to reduce you from your natural position. Had you treated them as they might have expected to be treated, my dear Arthur,” wrote the good man who had known him all his life, “you might, I think, have reckoned on Sir John’s indulgence to any extent; but you have not put that trust in your father and mother, though they certainly deserved it at your hands; and can you wonder if Sir John is angry? He will not write to you himself, feeling that your letter is not the kind of letter he ought to have had from you in the circumstances; but he has instructed me to tell you that your wishes shall be complied with to any reasonable amount. He does not wish you to suffer in personal comfort in consequence of the step you have taken.”
This was the letter which Arthur had to answer. He paused, reflecting on it, repeating to himself, “does not wish you to suffer in personal comfort.” Were there other ways which they suspected and calculated upon in which he might suffer for his disobedience? He paused to go over all that had happened within the last three months. Could he have acted otherwise than he had done? If he had given his confidence to his parents from the beginning, as they reproached him for not doing, what would have been the issue? With what eyes would Lady Curtis and Lucy have looked upon his Nancy, who, for her part, would have defied them? He shook his head as he sat pondering over the sheet of paper before him. No! no! had he confided in them things would have been worse, not better—for anyhow he would have married Nancy, if without their consent, if against their deliberate judgment, what did it matter? except that the last would have been the worst. He could fancy how she would have met their inspection—how she would have repulsed and scorned them. No—no, he repeated to himself. Better to leave them in ignorance than to hazard the open quarrels, the inevitable rending asunder that must have followed. They could not have withdrawn his heart from Nancy. No, again no! And the breach would have been more bitter, not less. With a sigh he decided that, on the whole, he had not chosen the worst way. He did not say to himself that both were bad enough, but he sighed. Nancy had left him to go to her family, to be happy in the stuffy little parlour, where her father drank his rum and water; and he—he sighed, going no further—for his belongings, for his home, for the natural occupations of his life. They did not regret their choice either of them; but yet within the first month of their marriage, this curious return upon themselves had happened to both. Perhaps this is not so wonderful even among the happiest as we pretend; for is not the beginning the hardest, in marriage as in so many other things? Arthur wrote and posted his letter, feeling himself bound to do so after what he had said; then went on to fetch his wife from her father’s house. They were very merry there, he could hear as he passed the lighted window; and it was more and more curious to him when he went in to find young Raisins the master of the situation, amusing them all with his jokes. Arthur, in his time, had never had so much succès. He was rather glad to see that Nancy was not enjoying the fun like the rest, but sat a little apart and with a somewhat moody countenance until he entered, when she flung off her gravity, plunged into the riot that was going on round the table, where Mr. Raisins was doing tricks with cards, and laughed and talked with the best. Arthur could not make out whether this was to show him her superior gaiety and light-heartedness at home, or whether it was his own presence which brought back her light-heartedness. And he himself, touched by compunction, did his best to make himself agreeable, to show that he wished for a good intelligence between them. He was more successful in this than he had hoped. Young Raisins’ fine qualities had so charmed and delighted the house that Arthur too shared the good feeling he had called forth. Mrs. Bates melted altogether, and spreading out her hands declared that “this was a happy meeting,” and that “parents” had reason to be satisfied, indeed, when their girls were thus happily settled. “When you all rally round the ‘old house,’” were the words the gratified mother used; but unfortunately in the general impulse of emotion that followed, Arthur could scarcely restrain a slight laugh, which Nancy, who seemed to be all ear, remarked, though no one else noticed it. Why should he laugh? He would not have laughed had it been the old house of Oakley, amid its trees and parks, that was to be rallied round; and why not the small tenement in East Street, Underhayes? Was it possible that materialism could go so far as to measure sentiment by the size of the house? He said this to himself, yet still laughed in his mind, and could not tell why.
“I hope you have written your letters,” Nancy said, coldly, as they walked home.
“Yes; the one I specially wanted to write is gone. It was an answer to Mr. Rolt’s which I told you about.”
“Then you will have no excuse about writing letters to-mor—I mean another night. You will not have that reason to give for staying away.”
“You do not want me to spend every evening at your mother’s, Nancy?”
“Ah, now it comes out,” she said. “I knew it all along. It was not letters, but because you wanted to escape from us, from my family, whom you look down upon. If you despise them, you should never have married me; for I will stick to them as long as I live.”
“I am not in the habit of making lying excuses,” said Arthur, as calmly as he could; “and it is not necessary,” he added after a pause, controlling the sentiment in his voice, “to despise a family because you do not wish to be with them every night.”
“Every night! this is the second night,” cried Nancy in high disdain.
“Nancy,” said Arthur, “do not let us quarrel. I don’t want to interfere with your natural affection, but you cannot expect me to feel exactly as you do. It is not possible! And don’t you think it would be wise to agree that there are great differences between your family and me? that we are likely to agree better apart, and that a meeting now and then would be best, not too often? I don’t want to dictate to you—”
“No; it would be more wise, as you say, not to try,” said Nancy. “I see now. This is why you wouldn’t condescend to look at the other house. Ah, I see! you mean to go away, to leave this place, which is the only place I can be happy in. This is your plan? Oh, I allow it is a fine plan! but it will not be so easy to carry out.”
“I don’t want, I say, to dictate to you. I don’t want you to give up anything that is important for your happiness. But I have given up my people for you, Nancy—”
“Then go back to your people, and have done with it!” cried Nancy, throwing herself free from his arm, to which she had been clinging, and pushing him from her. Arthur was so startled to find himself driven to the edge of the pavement by this energetic impulse, that even the power of speech seemed taken from him. And what was there to say?