MR. and Mrs. Arthur Curtis settled down in a day or two into No. 6, Rose Villas, where Nancy had her two maids to manage, and all that had seemed to her most delightful and desirable in life. The little drawing-room was not a particularly genial place in winter weather; the carpet was covered with a white linen cloth tightly strained, there were white muslin curtains at the windows, the walls were white and gold, after the approved fashion of little drawing-rooms in little villas. All this, if it was very clean-looking, as Nancy said, was chilly in December, and the little fireplace was so near the long French window, and both were so near the door, that the room was draughty, and scarcely so cosy as might have been desired. There was a piano in it, upon which Nancy could not play, though she had received lessons on the piano during those five quarters in which she had been at school; and a work-table, which she did not employ much for work; but no books, nor any pictures on the white-and-gold walls. When Arthur had exerted himself in the re-arrangement of the furniture, which Nancy did not go into with any enthusiasm—for she was still of opinion that a row of chairs set against the wall were “in their proper place,” and that to disturb them was almost an immorality—the discovery that he had nothing to do pressed with more and more force upon him. What did he want with anything to do? Nancy thought. Was it not the best thing in the world not to require to do anything, the true sign of being a gentleman? A certain scorn of people who worked for their living had taken possession of Mrs. Arthur Curtis. Why should they give themselves airs when they were all as one as a bricklayer, working for their bread? But anyone could see that Arthur was a gentleman. It is to be hoped that gentlemen in general were more at their ease under the burden of their gentility than Arthur. It was not—let no one be deceived—that he wanted to work. Work when he had read with Mr. Eagles had been extremely irksome to the young man. It was true he had not remained very long to try it, but he had not loved his studies, especially under the spur of the sharp and urgent “coach.” There are other things, however, which young men think of when they talk of having “something to do,” which do not tell very much in an industrial point of view. In his natural condition and at home, Arthur had many occupations. He shot, he hunted, he rode about the country, he paid visits; he was appealed to by people in trouble; he was consulted about the affairs of the estate. Sometimes he had to appear on the hustings in support of his father’s election; he had speeches to make now and then, and that interest in public business which is indispensable to one who may sometimes have to take part in it. All this was at an end now. The calm, not to stay stagnation of his present existence dropped over him as the curtain drops in a theatre upon the animated and busy scene. After the drama is over, or in the moment of repose between its acts, it is some immoveable representation of life or scenery, an unchangeable incident or landscape, that closes for us the brilliant stage upon which human life in all its changeableness and variety of emotion has been represented. Arthur’s domestic bliss was like this drop scene. His life was gone from him, with all its hopes and occupations; he was no longer the young Squire, as potent within his small territory as any Prince of Wales, no longer the budding magnate of the county, with responsibilities rising round him, with the covers to think of (if nothing more), and poachers to take in hand, and public life to look forward to. All that fuller existence had departed. The drop scene, representing a white-and-gold bower of bliss, with two figures seated (before the fire, but that was a matter of detail), all in all to each other, as romantic people say, had fallen with a remorseless completeness, hiding everything. He took a long walk with his wife every afternoon. Often he went out in the evening to fetch her from her father’s, or else he had the pleasure of entertaining her father and mother at home; and he would stroll out on his own account here and there, in the mornings, while Nancy was pretending to do her housekeeping, or read the Times languidly in the room appropriated to him, feeling as if all the busy commotion of the world indicated in it had gone away to such a distance from him that he could but faintly apprehend or understand it. The drop scene! To what innocent bosom would not that picture have commended itself? Two figures, young and fair to behold, the world forgetting, by the world forgot; living for each other, all for love, and the world well lost.
This went on for what was really a long time without disturbance. The establishment of the Arthur Curtises in Rose Villas gave the little world of Underhayes many causes of deliberation. Should they call? was a question hotly discussed. Call? on Bates the tax-collector’s daughter! Could anything be more absurd? the elder ladies said. But the younger ones were interested; who would not be interested in such a romantic business? and the gentlemen were either sorry for or curious about the young husband who had thus sacrificed everything to “a pretty face.” For the girl was just an uneducated girl like any other in her position, everybody said. There was no innate superiority in Nancy to justify her elevation, neither had her husband taken pains as even a romantic young fool, now and then, did, to educate her before making her his wife. Even now, so far as anyone knew, no attempt was being made to qualify Mrs. Arthur for her husband’s position in society. They had settled at Rose Villas, avowedly that she might be near her mother—with whom she was said to spend half her time; and no judicious governess or master able to impart instruction in those accomplishments which must have been wanting in her, was ever seen to enter her gates. Not even trying to improve her mind! She got the pick of the novels which came in Mudie’s box to the local library, in right of an unusually liberal subscription; but what could novels do for her? Under these circumstances, it became a doubly difficult question to know what to do. When she came home at first she had been very well dressed, which had made an impression in her favour. Her dark blue “silk” had filled the Green with admiration and envy. “Paris, of course!” the ladies said, who, notwithstanding their disapproval of such a marriage, were very curious indeed about the bride; and some added a joke or a sigh at the idea of putting delicate garments from Paris, not upon such as themselves, who could appreciate them, but upon Nancy Bates! However, this mingled approbation and disdain soon came to an end, for it was not long before the dark blue silk was thrown aside in favour of more showy garments. “If that is all they can do in Paris!” Sarah Jane had said, at the sight of it, and she had spent some time at a milliner’s in town and ought to know. Her own family all thought Nancy’s dresses dowdy, and ridiculously quiet for a bride; and the original “silk” which her parents had given her had been brought to the front again, with others of a similar character.
“I made myself a dowdy to please Arthur. He likes it,” said Nancy; “but one can’t go on humouring one’s husband for ever, can one, mamma? One must think for one’s self sooner or later, and ladies surely know best about their own dress.”
Arthur had not attempted any remonstrance, what was the use? And Nancy had reappeared with a brightness of colour and breadth of ornament, which pleased her family a great deal better.
“Now you look something like a newly-married lady, with a husband that grudges you nothing,” Mrs. Bates said proudly, on that day when the Green shuddered at Mrs. Arthur’s new costume, and resolved with one mind, now at least, that nobody could be expected to call. But such resolutions did not always overcome the stronger inducements of curiosity, or of that pity and interest which moved some bosoms. Mrs. Eagles was the first to break the reserve. Her husband insisted upon it, she said. And she not only called, but asked “the Arthur Curtises” to dinner. Mrs. Eagles was a mild little woman, as soft-voiced as her husband was peremptory. She avowed frankly that she had been “very fond” of Arthur while he lived in her house. “He was so nice, he never would give any trouble that he could help, so unlike your parvenus; he was always so ready to do anything for you. Yes, I was very fond of him. The pupils are not attractive as a rule, but young Mr. Curtis was charming.” This was what she said to her neighbours when it was known that she had asked the bride to dinner, the boldest thing that had been done on the Green for many a day.
“I hope you found her charming, too,” said the Vicar’s wife, who was not disposed to compromise her dignity in such a way. Mrs. Eagles took a little time to answer the question, and cleared her throat.
“She is—quite unformed—I almost wonder that associating with a well-bred man should have had so little effect upon her manners. But then, she is natural—she has no affectations; that is always something,” said Mrs. Eagles, which was not the case with the Vicar’s wife. She did not, however, ask the dignified couple from the vicarage, but only a humbler newly married curate to meet the young pair, who, for their part, were thrown into considerable excitement by the invitation. How Nancy might have taken it on her own account is doubtful; but the delight of her family had driven all thoughts from her mind but those of delightful elevation in the world and entrance into society.
“It’s only a schoolmaster, it is true,” said Mrs. Bates; “no better, indeed not so good as ourselves, for I never was brought to such a pass that I had to take in lodgers to interfere with the family. I always was able to keep ourselves to ourselves, and of course the pupils are all the same as lodgers; but still you’ll meet the real gentry there, my pet, and it will be a beginning, and you needn’t be shy with people like them.” Thus encouraged, Nancy allowed herself to feel that to go out to a party was pleasant. For she too, though she had the distractions of her family and her housekeeping, was growing a little tired perhaps of the drop scene.
They were all very indignant, however, when Arthur suggested that she should wear a simple white dress for this first appearance. White, like an unmarried girl! and as if her husband was not well enough off to afford her a “silk!” Finally, with great hurry and strain of all their efforts to get it ready in time, Nancy appeared in light blue, which was becoming enough, though rather incomplete in those finishing touches which mark the difference between a home-made garment and one which has come from the hands of the initiated. As for Arthur he laughed at himself, not without a little bitterness, as he made his simple toilet. He was pleased to be asked out to dinner by his former “coach.” It excited him vaguely, partly with pleasure, partly with anxiety. It was “revisiting the glimpses of the moon,” for the first time for all these months; for the slow winter had crept round to March again, and all the world was stirring into life. To describe the kind of Christmas this poor young fellow had spent would be too much for ordinary powers—exiled as he was from everything belonging to himself, and driven into close, too close encounter with all the jollities of so different a sphere. He had borne them, and kept them at arm’s length, as far as he could, and thank heaven, they were over. But the impatience in his heart grew stronger as the days grew longer, and the world turned to spring. He was as glad of Mr. Eagles’ invitation as if the “coach” had been Prime Minister with all manner of advantages to bestow. That impetuous little personage could not, had he gained first places for all his pupils in all the examinations under the sun, have put himself in the same position with the son of such a rural magnate as Sir John Curtis; but Arthur was as glad of his notice and his wife’s notice, as if the level of the Bates family had been his own original level. Nevertheless, there were difficulties in launching Nancy even into this mild little scholastic world. Arthur did not feel that he could venture to give her those hints about the manners of ordinary society, which might have steered her safely through the not appalling dangers of a dinner party. He did what he could by way of suggestion and supposition, taking it for granted that she would know; but even that simple mode of communicating instruction aroused her suspicions. “Oh, you needn’t be afraid, I know how to behave myself,” she said, with a toss of her head. How did she know—was it by instinct? instinct is a doubtful guide through the usages of society; but anyhow, Arthur did not venture to say any more. When she came downstairs, however, ready to start, with her blue dress all decorated and looped up with orange-blossoms, Arthur made a determined stand. He said, “You must take those things off, they are ridiculous,” with a peremptoriness which she could not resist, saucy as she was. Arthur at this moment did not seem a person to be trifled with. “Do you want to make a laughing-stock of your sister?” the young man said, confounding them all; and the obnoxious decorations were taken off with a silent speed that was wonderful. It was wonderful, as being inspired by a mysterious sense of having made a mistake. They had no idea what the mistake was; and their pride would not permit them to ask enlightenment; but they felt it the more from its mysterious and unknown character. When Nancy was ready, and wrapped in the warm white sortie du bal which they had bought in Paris, the effect of this error was sufficiently obliterated; and the young husband’s heart swelled with a little pride when he presented her to the man who had sent him out of his house because of Nancy. That practical protestation had not done much more good than all the other efforts which had been made to sever Arthur from his love; and here she was now, fair and blooming, an unquestionable fact, which they were all compelled to recognize. But as he left her in charge of Mrs. Eagles, and dropped off behind, what anxiety was in Arthur’s thoughts! It was her first essay in society; would she take the trouble to please? He stood furtively watching her as he talked to the Curate, whose wife was also on her trial, but caused him no such tremour. The Curate’s wife was a small young lady of ordinary breeding and appearance, not to be compared with Nancy in any possible respect. But she had been born a clergyman’s, not a tax-collector’s daughter. She knew the outside of social ways, and how not to commit herself, which was exactly what Nancy did not know.
And it must be allowed that, when Arthur saw that only this Curate and his wife had been invited to meet them, he was wroth with a savage sort of anger and scornful humiliation. He gave no sign of his feelings; but he had been accustomed to be somebody wherever he went, and the sense that he had now dropped into a doubtful position, in which only the Curate could be supposed likely to countenance him, gave him a sense of what had befallen him more sharp and sudden than anything else that had happened, even than the familiarities of the Bates family. To say that Nancy was angry too, would be little. Her whole soul rose up in a blaze of wrath. She had expected to see everything that was fine and famous on the Green, and to receive, in a way, the homage of the assembled aristocracy. Nobody with a title lived at Underhayes, and Nancy considered that she herself had all but a title, and was to be admired in proportion; yet there was no one here but the little Curate’s wife. She talked largely to Mr. Eagles during dinner, giving him her opinion of Society in England.
“Of course being brought up in a place like this, I have seen but little; and here not much to speak of,” she said, with a frankness that prepossessed her host—himself so trenchant and decided at all times.
“You are right, very right, Mrs. Curtis. The people about here are not much to speak of. We have to put up with it, for we can get no better. Retired people are mostly a set of nuisances; having done all the mischief they can in the world in their own persons, they revile everybody who is beginning, and put mischief into their heads.”
“Yes, Dr. Eagles.” He was called Doctor by the common people about, and he did not like it. “Yes; there never was such a gossiping place, I’ve heard many people say. They have nothing to do themselves, and they pull everybody to pieces. I have never gone into it, but I can’t abide that sort of thing. They are so stuck up; don’t you think they are dreadfully stuck up? and what is there in them to make them better than their neighbours? Don’t you think so, Dr. Eagles? I do hate everything like that,” said Nancy, energetically. “I suppose you did not like to ask them to meet Arthur and me?”
“I—I don’t ask anyone,” said Mr. Eagles, taken aback for the moment. “It is my wife that asks the people.” Then he began to realize that getting out of a difficulty by putting it upon his wife, was not a noble proceeding. “The fact is, I don’t think anyone was asked. We thought, I suppose, that you didn’t care for it. I don’t myself; I hope Curtis is not giving up work altogether. He may be tempted to do so, having no immediate object, but he ought never to interrupt his course of study. He was getting on very well with me.”
“What should he go on with his studies for?” said Nancy; “he does not require it to make a living. He may please himself what he does. Oh, I shouldn’t like my husband to have to work! When a man is born a gentleman, Dr. Eagles—”
“You have been good enough to bestow a degree upon me to which I have no right,” said Mr. Eagles. “I am simple Mr., like all the rest, though I am obliged to work for my living, and it would be of use to me. A man ought to work, however, when he’s young like Curtis. If he doesn’t now, he will miss it after. I’ve always told him so.”
“I am sure I don’t think so at all,” said Nancy. “Why should he work? or anyone in the position of a gentleman? You know what I mean by a gentleman. Father is as good as Arthur, or anyone, and he has to work.”
This mollified Mr. Eagles.
“I hope we are all gentlemen,” he said, as lightly as was possible for him, “whether we work or not.”
“Oh yes, in a kind of a way,” said Nancy, with careless scorn, “in your manners, and so forth. And clergymen, and teachers, and those sort of people are called so out of civility; but I never think anybody is a gentleman that has his own living to make.”
“I think you are a little hard upon us, Mrs. Curtis,” said the Curate, with a smile.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to be hard,” said Nancy. “You are just as good as anyone else. Those that have plenty to live on are the best off, but I don’t say that I despise those that have to work. They are good enough in their way. It isn’t their fault they were born as they are, nor was it any virtue in my husband to be born Arthur Curtis. He couldn’t help it, neither can you.”
Thus Nancy vanquished the adversary at the dinner-table. When the ladies went back to the drawing-room, which was not till a late hour, for it took a long time to make Nancy understand Mrs. Eagles’ little nods and signs from the other end of the table—but when they got upstairs at last, the Curate’s wife benevolently interfered to set Nancy at her ease after this mistake.
“I daresay you have been used to the French way of the men coming upstairs along with the ladies; and a far better plan it is, I think.”
Nancy looked coolly at the questioner. She was more comfortable when Arthur’s eyes were not upon her, watching everything she said and did.
“I didn’t make any mistake,” she said, “but gentlemen’s conversation is the best, isn’t it? I wanted to have as much as I could of that. I didn’t want to be left to women’s society—three petticoats together,” and she laughed with insolent meaning. Nancy had read a great many novels, and she knew that these were the sentiments generally attributed to a heroine, and she was determined that there should be nothing in her mind which she would not have the courage to say.
“I hope we shall not be so very tiresome to you,” said Mrs. Eagles, with an involuntary glance at the other. “We hear you have been in Paris, Mrs. Curtis. You must have enjoyed that. It is always so bright and gay.”
“I did not think it was gay at all,” said Nancy, “a very stupid place. Everybody talked so queerly, not at all like the French one learns at school; and they have such queer dishes, and altogether they are so queer. Have you been in Paris? I did not find it at all gay.”
“There are so many things to see,” Mrs. Eagles suggested.
“Oh, what sort of things to see! Places where things have happened that nobody knows anything about, or if one ever heard of them one has forgotten. I don’t call that amusing,” said Nancy. “There are very handsome shops, but I did not care much for French taste, do you? they are so fond of dingy colours; nothing clean-looking nor bright. I was so glad to get back to England.”
“So was I,” said the Curate’s wife, “when we were abroad; but I thought it all so interesting. I did enjoy it when we were there. The very names of the places that one had read about in history!”
“I never read history,” said Nancy, carelessly. “I like to see things happening now; and nothing seemed to happen, but just hearing about old dusty rubbish. Oh, yes, the streets were nice. Arthur says that in summer there are races, and amusements, and concerts out of doors, and all that sort of thing, but it was too cold when we were there. I went to hear the men speaking in Parliament, but it was dull; what is the good of listening to long speeches? One of Arthur’s friends took us—Sir John Denham—you may have heard of him. He was always offering us boxes for the theatre, but that was dull too.”
“I am afraid you were difficult to please,” said Mrs. Eagles; but the Curate’s wife began to listen with a certain interest. It is always pleasant to hear familiarly about the Sir Johns of this world.
“Yes, they all said I was difficult to please,” said Nancy, sweeping out of the chair she had just chosen, and nearly knocking down a small table on which stood a lamp. “Did you get your furniture from town, Mrs Eagles? Did you have one of the tip-top upholsterers to do it, or did you pick up things cheap?”
“I am afraid we tried as much as we could to pick up things cheap,” said Mrs. Eagles, restraining the inclination to laugh which was gaining upon her. The other young woman was listening anxiously, seeing no fun in it, and their entertainer thought she liked Mrs. Arthur best.
“I thought so,” said Nancy, calmly, fixing her eyes upon an Italian cabinet which was the pride of the house, “but I should just put my house into the hands of some tip-top man. I don’t like making up with part old and part new. I shall have everything of the best and the newest fashion,” she said, looking round with a delightful glow of complaisant superiority. But then she was Sir John Curtis’s daughter-in-law, and Mrs. Eagles was but a schoolmaster’s wife.