Mrs. Arthur: Volume 2 by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XV.

“THERE is something wrong at home!”

This most natural of all the ideas with which foreboding human nature sees a sudden arrival, sprang to Arthur’s lips almost in spite of himself. He was already so torn by anxiety and alarm that it seemed perfectly appropriate that other griefs should come to distract him, and he scarcely understood the eager “No” with which Durant replied. It was not till they were seated together, one at each side of the fire—Mr. Eagles having taken his departure—that Arthur realized that the burning confusion and pain in his head arose from the fact that his wife had gone out in a fit of passion a few hours ago and had not yet come back, not so very serious a matter—and was not owing to any suddenly heard of calamity, at home.

“No, things are all well, but I have something to say to you, Arthur,” said Durant. And he began a long commission, which Arthur heard vaguely and did not understand. It was to the effect that the post of attaché to a foreign embassy which the young man had wished for, was open to him, and this was coupled with overtures from the parents whose hearts were yearning over Arthur. Probably there is after all nothing so well calculated as long silence to wear out the indignation and resentment of fathers and mothers. However hot these may be at first, the blank misery of knowing nothing about a child beloved, damps and quenches the ardour of offence, and in a great many cases the cruel son or daughter has his or her will out of the sheer intolerableness of this break, and anxiety of the tender hearts on whom this unfeeling passiveness tells more severely than any more actively offensive treatment. This had been working for all these months at Oakley. Hearing nothing! it was almost worse than death, of which this miserable certainty that we shall hear no more of those we have lost, is the greatest bitterness—tempered, however, with the counterbalancing certainty which alone makes us capable of bearing it, that human events are over to them, and that none of the calamities with which we are familiar can happen to those who are beyond the veil. But the Curtises knew that anything or everything might be happening to Arthur, while they had no news of him, and were as ignorant of all his ways as if he had been dead. And when the information came of this vacancy which he had desired so much, the opportunity was not to be resisted. They had said nothing about it to each other for twenty-four hours, and then had burst forth the universal feeling. Let him accept this, and let him come home and bring his wife, if no better might be. She had been insolent, what did it matter? She was the price that must be paid for Arthur; and the moment it became possible to have Arthur, they all felt that they were too ready to pay any price. Lady Curtis had telegraphed for Durant when the general conviction burst forth, and the household at Oakley were now full of excitement, already beginning to prepare rooms for Arthur and his wife, and forgetting all other feelings in the pleasure of seeing their boy again. Durant had lost no time. He was too faithful a friend to consider that Arthur had all but repulsed his friendly offices after the marriage, and that not a word of recollection had reached him from Underhayes during the entire winter. He went down to Oakley at once to receive his commission, and here he was with full credentials. The father and mother made no conditions. If Arthur accepted this appointment, which was the best thing he could do, let him come home and bring his wife. That was all. And it may be supposed that Durant, feeling himself the bearer of proposals both generous and tender, was startled and affronted by the confused and pre-occupied way in which Arthur seemed to listen, not understanding him, starting at every sound outside, continually disturbed, and with a look of nervous agitation which had evidently nothing to do with the question in hand.

“Do you not understand me?” he cried at last, indignant: and then the rising excitement in Arthur’s mind burst forth.

“Durant, my wife has gone away to her mother’s. I—I can’t answer all at once.”

“What do you mean, Arthur? How disturbed you look! Has anything happened?” cried Durant. Arthur made an effort to recover himself. He laughed tremulously.

“You know me, Lewis,” he said, “I am a—nervous sort of fellow, though I don’t look it perhaps.”

“I know. There is something the matter, Arthur. What is it? Is your wife ill? What has happened?”

“Well—nothing has happened. I have been living rather a solitary life, and one gets irritable—and easily put out.”

“You have had a—difficulty, as the Americans call it—a lover’s quarrel,” said Durant, with a laugh, which was far from according with his feelings.

“That is just it. No, not a lover’s quarrel, but a difficulty. We see things from different points of view; and I don’t know how she will like this, I must wait. I cannot decide until I know.”

“Arthur, it is all very well, all very right to consult your wife; but you can’t think of neglecting such an opportunity. It is altogether unconditional. They will receive her, as if she were a Duke’s daughter; you know, when once they have made up their minds to it, there will be no stint, she will have no reason to complain of her reception.”

Arthur’s head was turned to the door.

“You will think me silly,” he said; “a fool! but I cannot help it. One thing I will tell you, Durant; I will go to Vienna. I don’t think it’s too late; five months is not long enough at my age to put a man out altogether, is it? But as for Nancy, I can’t answer. If she will go with me home, if she will go with me to Vienna, I can’t tell you. We must see her first. She is at her mother’s—”

“You don’t mean to say that she has left you, Arthur?”

“Oh no, no,” he said; “that is rather too absurd, the most ridiculous idea. Come along, Durant, let us get out and stretch our legs. I have not had a real walk for ages. Of course, as it’s Saturday you are going to stay till Monday? That is right, that is a true pleasure. She is at—her mother’s,” he added, changing the subject abruptly, and dropping his voice.

What did it mean? Durant could not tell. He had not disliked Nancy; though she had defied him too, it had been done in a way which did not offend the young man. He had admired her, even when she attacked himself personally; and he had been inclined to think as Arthur did, that she was a lily among those weeds. He had not been surprised at his friend’s infatuation. He had thought her a beautiful high-spirited girl, full of a generous if over vehement disdain for the conventional judgment that made her appear an unfit wife for a man of worldly position superior to her own. Her threat to give up her lover, and her counter decision to marry him disinherited, in order to show his friends how little she cared about his money, were fresh in his mind. And he had liked Nancy; though he had been formally on the other side as Lady Curtis’s agent, he had never really been unfriendly; he remembered well his old difficulties when he had tried to persuade Arthur to relinquish his faith to this girl who trusted in him, and with what a sense of relief he had found that all his arguments were vain, and Arthur’s honour and love invulnerable. He was mystified and perplexed, as well as grieved, by Arthur’s painful pre-occupation now, not knowing what could have happened. They went out in the teeth of the March wind, which blew sharp and keen along the suburban roads.

“I have not had anything to call a walk for weeks,” Arthur said, with a feverish look of eagerness, as they reached the fresh breadth of the common, with the green fields and country paths beyond. The hedgerows were bristling with buds, the skies softly blue, where they could be seen through the masses of cloud that swept across the great vault overhead. The young man sped along like a loosened greyhound, and his friend, fresh from the confinement of town, had hard ado to follow him. He talked little as he went along. Was he walking so fast to escape some care that weighed upon him? If it was not for that there was no other motive, for the walk was without any object. Now and then he would break forth for a moment about this prospect which Durant had come to offer him. “It would be the best thing,” he would say, “far the best thing. I must get rid of this one way or other.” Then he would be silent, and after a mile or so say to himself again, “Yes, this will not do—I must go, it is plain. Going may be salvation.” Durant did not know what irrepressible cares were plucking at his friend’s skirts and compelling him to these resolutions; and he himself talked calmly of Oakley, of the desires of the family there, and the haste they were in to send him off upon his mission, and all the anticipations of Arthur’s return which they had already begun to entertain. At this Arthur did nothing but shake his head, “Will she consent?” he said once. Would Nancy consent? was that what he meant? Consent! what excuse could she have not to consent? They walked far, at a great pace, and Durant was almost worn out. He lagged behind his friend as he approached the house. It was still all dark, one faint gleam of firelight in the drawing-room contending feebly with the grey of the twilight, no one at the window looking out for them, no lamp lighted. “Has Mrs. Curtis returned?” Arthur asked of the maid, as they went on, and was answered No. They went into her part of the house, the white little drawing-room, where indeed there were no pretty signs of Nancy’s presence, no work or books to mar the trimness of the place, but all the chairs set against the wall, and the fire flickering dimly in the grate. And the dinner hour came without any appearance of Nancy. Arthur got more and more agitated as the time went on—and Durant more and more surprised.

“Is your wife dining out?” he said, when he found they were about to sit down at the table without her. Arthur made no distinct answer; he said after a while, as if he had then heard the question for the first time—“She is at her mother’s.” He did not change his dress before dinner, or show any recollection of the need of such preliminaries, but sat over the fire, vaguely replying now and then when his friend spoke to him, and starting at every sound.

“Shall you not wait for Mrs. Curtis?” Durant said, as Arthur took him into the little dining-room.

“She is at her mother’s,” was all Arthur replied. Altogether it was very mysterious, and Durant could not but feel that there was mischief in the air.

At last when the clock had struck ten, and there was no appearance of Nancy, Arthur sprang to his feet. “I must go and fetch her,” he said, “this will never do—this will never do!” Durant took his hat mechanically also, and they walked out without another word into the windy night. The sky looked widened and enlarged by the boisterous breeze which drove mass after mass of clouds across the blue, and across the face of the waning moon, which shone out at intervals only to be swallowed up again by those floating vapours. There was a certain hurry, and coldness, and agitation in the night. The way from Rose Villas into the lighted street of Underhayes was dark, and the alternations of gloom and light in the sky made the vision uncertain. Durant could see how anxiously his friend peered at all the figures they met on the darkling road; but Nancy was not on her way home. They went on in silence to the street which Durant remembered perfectly, and to the door, at which Arthur left him standing as he went in. He had stood there before, and heard the voices in the parlour when he came here first in search of Arthur; how strange to come here now in search of Arthur’s runaway wife! for this was what it seemed to be now. He could hear the silence which followed Arthur’s entrance—a pause which was impressive from the confusion of voices that had been audible before. “I have come for Nancy,” he heard him say.

Arthur had gone in without any question. He had left his friend at the door, neither thinking nor caring that some revelation might be made which it was better Durant should not hear. He steadied his own countenance not to look angry or anxious. “Are you ready?” he said, addressing his wife, “I did not think you meant to stay so long.”

“You have not given yourself much trouble to look after me,” said Nancy. “No, I am not ready. I don’t mean to go.”

“What does she mean?” he said with a tremble in his voice, turning to Mrs. Bates.

“Oh, Arthur, I don’t know what she means. She is as hot-tempered and as contrary as possible. She takes up things quite wrong. You never meant to drive her away, did you? You had not thought of leaving her—tell her for heaven’s sake! She will not listen to me.”

There was no one in the parlour but Mrs. Bates and Sarah Jane. It was a night when the tax-collector was busy adding up one of his lists of defaulters, and it was the same party which had witnessed the dispute of the morning which was assembled now. That was one reason of the sudden quiet; the other was, the awe and horror that had come over the family at Nancy’s obstinate resolution to stay at home, and return to her husband no more—a resolution which he had divined, and which had weighed on him for the whole day.

“I—leave her!” said Arthur, “what did I say that looked like leaving her? Nancy, come home. I have been very unhappy, not knowing why you stayed away from me, and now I have something to consult you about. Come home.”

“I am at home,” said Nancy, sullenly. “It is no use talking. I have taken my resolution. Go away, Arthur, as you said, I mean to stay here.”

“What does she mean?” he cried in dismay.

“Oh! I mean what I say. You told me you were going. You said I might come if I pleased. I—who hate strangers—I, after all the slights you’ve brought upon me! but that any how you were going. I’ve left for good and all. Mother can go and pack up the things, and dismiss the servants, and leave you free; but one word’s enough to me, Arthur, you shall never have occasion to say another. I don’t budge from here unless mother turns me out. And as soon as you please, you can go.”

They all looked at each other—the others pale, Nancy red with excitement and passion.

“You don’t mean this, Nancy,” Arthur said. “You cannot mean, for a hasty word, to forsake me; it is not possible. A hasty word! how many have you said to me. Come—come, you are angry; but how little there is to be angry about! We have had more serious discussions before,” he added with a faint smile, “and you have said much worse things to me.”

“It does not matter what I said, but what you said. No, Arthur, you may put up with whatever you like; but I won’t put up with it,” she said, in all the unreasonableness of passion. “You might think it didn’t matter what I say; but I think it does matter what you say. No, I am not going back. You may talk till you’re sick—it won’t make any difference to me.”

“Nancy! don’t be such a fool,” said Sarah Jane. “Why, only think how people will talk. Not six months married, and coming back home! And after all the fuss that was made about your marrying, and the grand catch we fancied it was. When you come to think of it you can’t be such a fool.”

“Nancy—Nancy, my dear, you’re unreasonable! indeed you’re unreasonable—when Arthur says he did not mean it.”

“Nancy!” cried the young man, “why do you torment me like this—what have I done to you? You make my life a constant contention. We never have a quiet moment. Have I failed in love to you—have I not thought of you in everything? You will drive me mad, I think. Have I ever neglected you, or injured you?”

“You said you would leave me,” said Nancy, “that’s enough, I told you at the time. Oh! never a man in this world shall say that he has forsaken me! I am not one that will be forsaken. Go, Arthur, go where you please. I shall stay here.”

“Nancy, Lewis Durant is at the door. He has brought a message of the greatest importance from Oakley.”

“Lewis Durant!” she started to her feet with fresh impetuosity, “that was all that was wanted. Do you think I will stay behind to see Lewis Durant—to let him spy and tell my Lady. No, mamma, no! That’s decided me. Good night to you all. You may do what you please—but here I’ll stay.”

And Nancy darted out of the midst of them, quick as thought, while they all stood stupefied, and rushed out of the room and upstairs, where, as they listened they heard her quick steps overhead thrilling through the little house, and the quick closing and locking of the door.

The shock affected the three in different ways. Sarah Jane began to cry. Mrs. Bates, trembling, went up to Arthur and caught him by the arm. This strange, terrible incident changed him from her son-in-law, with whom she was familiar, into her daughter’s judge, before whom she trembled.

“Oh, Mr. Curtis, Mr. Curtis!” she said. “The girl’s wild and out of her senses. Don’t think too badly of her. It’s like a madness. Oh, forgive her!” The mother was in too deadly earnest to be able for tears.

“What am I to do?” said Arthur, overcome, with a gasp as if for breath.

“Oh, my dear, my dear! Leave her; she is out of her senses, she is out of her senses, she is out of her mind! Leave her to me, and I’ll bring her to you to-morrow to beg your pardon. I will, Arthur, if anything in this world can do it,” Mrs. Bates said, clasping her hands.

“There is nothing else to be done,” said Arthur. He was as pale as death. He seemed to get his breath with difficulty as he stood there, struck with wonder, paralyzed with the sense of impotence in his mind, and the dire injury that had been done him. A friend may leave a friend, or even a child a parent; but when a wife, a six months’ bride, leaves her husband even for a day, even in the house of her father, it is as if some horrible convulsion had happened which turns the world upside down. He said nothing more to anyone, but went out, and caught at Durant’s arm to support him, and walked home under the flying clouds, through the stormy, agitated night. The night was like his mind, swept by wild thoughts, overclouded by profound glooms. He scarcely said anything to Durant, who seemed to divine all that happened, though nothing was said to him. It was well he was there. When they went back to the villa, the poor little villa, which was at once so desolate and so meaningless without Nancy, the young man gave a heavy groan, which seemed to echo through the mean little rooms. Could anything change this fact, any coming back again, any penitence? His wife had forsaken him. Nancy had gone back to her mother’s. It might be only for a night, but could anything change the fact? His life had come to a stop; no making up could alter that. As he had been even this morning, he could never be again any more.

It was Durant who told that little falsehood to the servants about why their mistress stayed away. She was not well, he said, and they need not wait up, as it was doubtful whether she would come home. And he stayed by Arthur through the long dull hours, hearing in breaks and snatches something of the story which poor Arthur felt was now over: how they had lived together, and how, according to all he could tell, they had parted. When the flood-tides were opened, it relieved Arthur to speak. He showed his friend in his despair all that was in his heart, his love for Nancy, which was ready to forgive everything, and yet the wounds which she had given to him.

“It is not her fault,” he said. “It is the want of training. She has never realised it, what she married for. She thinks it was only to be happy, to be loved and flattered, to have everything happy round her.” This the poor young fellow said as if it was the best excuse in the world. “That is how she has been brought up. It is not her fault. She has not considered me, nor that there is a duty; and was I to be the one to remind her of her duty, Durant? I did not want her to love me because it was her duty. I wanted her to do her duty because of her love,” said Arthur, unconsciously antithetical. Durant listened to everything, and made few comments. If he said anything in sympathy for his friend which meant condemnation of Nancy, Arthur rose up and stopped him. “How can you tell how she was aggravated?” he said. It was not till the middle of the night that Durant could persuade him to go to bed; and by that time the desolateness of the dreary little house without Nancy, which had no soul or meaning but Nancy, struck Lewis almost as much as it did Arthur. Poor little miserable shell of a place, which had outgrown its sense and its use!

Next day was a busy but a miserable day. Durant was at the Bates’ little house as soon as it was opened in the morning, hoping that his eloquence might be more effectual than that of the poor young husband, and that he might be able, through her mother, to induce Nancy to come back. He found Mrs. Bates very anxious and tearful, very well disposed, but powerless. He gave her a hint of the proposal he had brought from Oakley, and of the unconditional surrender of the Curtises, which the mother carried to her daughter upstairs, but without any favourable issue. Later he came back with Arthur. Nancy kept upstairs, she would not show—and all the household was against her.

“I never held with it,” said the tax-collector. “I told my wife so from the first. I never hold with a young woman complaining of her husband. Mrs. Bates is too kind a mother, that’s what it is.”

These things penetrated into Arthur’s heart almost unawares; that his wife had complained of him all through; that there had been talk of the advantages of the marriage, and that Nancy had hoped to be well off, and to make a great match, and had married him with that view. All these things sank into his heart. Was this true, or was it all the truth? It cannot be said that he believed it, yet it acted upon him as if he had believed, bringing a mingled pain and bitterness, against which at this moment he was incapable of struggling. All that day long they kept coming and going, pleading with her to return; but when another night came, and the slow hours dragged through with the same excitements as before—without her, or hope of her—all sense of possible renewal died out of these hasty young hearts, and the severance seemed complete.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.