“I don’t think you care for Paris,” said Arthur to his wife. They were driving out to the Bois, and the rain was drizzling, and it was not gay. There were fewer quarrels in this dull interval, but perhaps the fact scarcely improved the liveliness, if it slightly added to the happiness of their life.
“No,” she said, with some vivacity; “not at all. It was very nice for a day or two. But now we seem to have got all we wanted, don’t we, Arthur? Another afternoon in the Roo, or in the Palay Royal, just to pick up a few little presents, and I should be quite content to go as soon as you please.”
“You have seen very little, Nancy.”
“Oh, little! I have seen the whole place, all the best shops, and the best streets. I don’t know what more there is to see.”
“People will not talk about the shops and streets,” said Arthur, in his most didactic way; “but about the pictures in the Louvre, and about Notre Dame; and what music you have heard, and what plays you have seen.”
“I am sure mamma will never ask me any such questions,” said Nancy, “and I don’t suppose you are going to take me to see your great friends.”
“That reminds me,” said Arthur, nervously clearing his throat, “of a favour I was going to ask of you. Will you do something—that will be very disagreeable—for me, Nancy, for my sake?”
She looked at him very keenly, examining his face, conscious that this seeming simple prayer meant something more than appeared. “What is it?” she said, with a gleam of suspicion in her eyes.
“You will not promise then? you are cautious, Nancy. I should have pledged myself to do anything and everything for your sake.”
“What is it?” she repeated. “It is so easy to say what it is at once.”
“It is this then—do not reply in a hurry—I am very anxious about it, Nancy; don’t you think you might write a few lines—to my mother.”
“To your mother!” the audacity of the proposal took away her breath.
“Yes, I am going to write—to say what I truly feel: that I am sorry to have offended her—”
“Sorry to have married me!” she cried, almost jumping out of the carriage in her vehemence. She looked at him, trembling with rage and wonder. How could he face her and ask such a thing? How could he frame the words? did he think she was going to give in, to yield now, without rhyme or reason, she who was certainly determined never to yield?
“You know that is not the case,” he said; “you know that I have not repented marrying you—and never will. But, Nancy, it is not for our happiness or—well, I will say interest, though it is an ugly word—to be estranged from my mother. I want to write to her to tell her that I am grieved, hush! to have offended her. I should have known better. I should have managed so as that she might have seen you—known you, before she condemned me—”
“That is that you are sorry you did not send me on approval, as the shopkeepers say—me! Do you suppose I would have done it? Do you think I could have endured for a moment—”
“Can I not ask you a favour—acknowledging it to be a favour, without a quarrel?” said Arthur. “We have been married a fortnight, and how often have we quarrelled already? Nancy, is it worth the while? Could we not discuss a matter that concerns us both, calmly, without anger? If it seems to you impossible, say so. Am I unreasonable to torment you about a thing you refuse? But why quarrel—I hate it—and you cannot—like it.”
“How do you know I don’t like it?” she cried; then stopped herself, with some dim perception of her folly. “I will not do it,” she said, doggedly, “that is enough. My lady has never taken any notice of me—no, nor even your sister, that you are always holding up as a model. I will not lay myself down at their feet to be trampled upon; you may do it yourself, if you please.”
“I shall certainly write,” he said. “There will be no treading upon; but I shall write. If you will not do it, of course I cannot help it; but if you will be persuaded—out of your love for me—then I will be grateful to you, very grateful, Nancy. I will not say any more.”
“I shall not do it,” she said; and then there ensued a silence, which was so long that it alarmed her. Generally Arthur had been but too obsequious, anxious to make up, to clear away any lingering cloud; but this time he said nothing. The fact was that his mind was too full of a multitude of thoughts to leave him any time to speak. He was wondering, in a kind of desolate way, what to do. He had ceased to be an independent agent, he could not go there and come here at his own pleasure. To be sure he was supposed to be the authority, to decide everything, to regulate every step they took; but how different this was in reality from the sound of it! A man has a right to take his wife where he pleases—yes, when she will go; but if the man is a tender-hearted, generous, foolish, impulsive young fellow in love, what becomes of this sublime authority of his? just about as much as comes of all the defences the law can place around a woman to save her from cruelty and oppression, when she happens to be of a like nature and loves her tyrant. Law is one thing, and love is another. Arthur did not know how to oppose Nancy, how to make any move without her agreement and sympathy, and he had already had many indications which way her mind was fixed. She wanted to go home to England, to Underhayes: and he wanted her to stay away, to remove further off from England. His whole mind was occupied by the discussion of expedients how to manage this, how to persuade her from her desire. And he was not even aware of the silence into which he sank, and which she thought so deliberate, and done with so distinct an intention of punishing her. They drove along in the Victoria, which had carried them about so often, side by side neither saying a word. Already Nancy’s appearance had changed. She had put aside her traveling-dress for another “silk” which Arthur had given her, and which was also dark blue in colour; over this she wore a warm mantle trimmed with soft fur about the throat and wrists, a delicate little bonnet, all corresponding, with that graceful Parisian taste, which is not to be picked up in the Paris streets any more than in the London shops, but dwells in its own costly shrine apart. All this changed Nancy’s appearance wonderfully. There was still, perhaps, something in her bearing when she was on foot, that showed the tax-collector’s daughter, the pretty girl of a country town, a little swing and loudness, a careless step and defiant pose; but in the carriage by her husband’s side, wrapped up in those furs, reclining in absolute ease and well-being, Nancy might have been a duke’s daughter for anything anyone could say. There were many of the people about who noticed them as they drove along, the handsome young English couple, usually so lively, to-day so taciturn. A man cannot belong to “Society,” cannot be brought up at Eton and Oxford, even if he is not in Society, without being known, and there were plenty of people who recognised Arthur Curtis, and wondered over his companion—who was she? They had not believed at first that she was his wife. One of these men, more curious than the rest, came to the edge of the pathway now as the Victoria got into the line, and was obliged to go slowly.
“Curtis! is it really you, old fellow? I had been told you were here, but I could not believe my eyes.”
“Was there anything so strange in my being here?” said Arthur, rousing himself up. This was one of the men who know everything and everybody, who have it in their power to convey a bad or good impression to more important persons than themselves. This put Arthur at once on his mettle. “You must let me introduce you to my wife,” he said, “My friend, Denham, Nancy. We have not been very long here.”
Nancy was excited by this sudden encounter with one of Arthur’s friends, one of those, perhaps, who knew his “folks,” and belonged to that unknown sphere of which she felt at once curious and defiant. She did not know very well what to do, whether to shake hands with him, or to refrain. Happily the instinct of comfortableness which suggested no change of position made her bow only, and as this little gesture was accompanied by a blush, very natural to the bridal condition and sentiment, the new-comer swore to himself, by Jove! that, were she as good as she looked, Curtis had got a prize.
“Beg pardon for intruding on your domestic happiness,” he said; “but the truth was I had not heard—Not much going on is there? But Paris is as good a place as another for this dreary time of the year.”
“No, I don’t suppose there is much going on, we have been nowhere; and we are off again directly, for Rome, I think,” said Arthur. “Paris is empty like other places. We have not seen a soul we know.”
“I don’t suppose you were likely to look for them,” said Denham. “Would Mrs. Curtis care to see the bear-fight in the Assembly? sometimes it is fun. I will see after it, if you like, on the first good day?”
“Should you, Nancy?” said Arthur, turning to her. Nancy had not a notion what the Assembly or the bear-fight was. She positively trembled in terror of saying something wrong. She who had never hesitated before.
“I—don’t know,” she said; “I don’t care for any—fighting.”
“Oh, they are all muzzled,” said Denham, laughing. “Meurice’s? I will call and let you know.”
“Thanks, but it is not worth the trouble; we shall be off in a few days.”
“If you go to Rome, Neville is there,” cried the stranger after them, as the line moved on more quickly; and he took off his hat to Nancy with a respectful politeness that enchanted her; she was pleased with the novelty of talking to a stranger even for a moment. It made the air a little less still and self-absorbed.
“Who is he?” she asked, with momentary awe.
“Denham, he’s one of the attachés here, not a bad fellow; but talks like half-a-dozen old women.”
“We need not mind how Mr. Denham talks,” said Nancy, with a little elevation of her head. “We have nothing to be afraid of. He can talk as much as he likes for what I care.”
“Isn’t there? But he is Sir John, not Mr. Denham,” said Arthur, carelessly.
Nancy sat a little more upright, shaking herself free of the wraps, and her eyes glistened. “Was that a baronet?” she said, with a little awe—then added, “And so will you be, Arthur. I don’t understand saying anything but Mr. to a gentleman. But you will be a baronet, too.”
“Not for a long time, I hope,” said Arthur, with a sigh. It brought him back to all the tangled course of his own affairs. He was not by nature the kind of son who calculates on the time that must elapse before he comes to his kingdom, and it was very strange to him to see his wife’s eyes brighten at the idea of that “rise in life,” which meant his father’s death. “Poor old governor, I hope he may live to be a hundred,” he said, with a half-laugh, which was a half-sigh. Nancy did not join in this wish. She stared a little with consternation at the thought.
“What did—the gentleman—mean about bear-fighting? Is it a Zoological garden? Assembly in some places means a ball,” said Nancy, “it was rather a jumble; what did he mean?”
“He meant the French Parliament, in which they make the laws, as the House of Commons does in England—or at least, we may say so for the sake of description,” said Arthur; to which Nancy replied with a little startled “Oh!” of disappointment and suspicion.
“Do ladies go to such places? I thought ladies had never anything to do with politics.”
“My dear Nancy,” said Arthur, seizing the opportunity to be instructive, “when you go into society, you will find that people talk a great deal about such things, whether they care for them or not; they are the things that people talk about. And it is reasonable to think,” he went on, more and more improving the occasion, “that, when you are in a foreign country, you should like to see what is most important in it. That is always taken for granted. You see Denham thought that was one of the things you would like to see.”
This silenced Nancy more than could have been supposed possible. She had never seen this stranger before, and probably never would see him again; but the fact that he had expected her to know what he meant, and to be interested in the French Parliament, impressed her infinitely more than all Arthur’s anxious efforts for her improvement. Were ladies like that, she could not help asking herself? What a bother it would be to be a lady, if that was the sort of thing they were expected to care for—a lot of old men making speeches, which she could not understand one word of! but that of course nobody could be supposed to know. She was overawed, and received Arthur’s sermon more meekly than she had received any of his didactic addresses before. She supposed now that sister of his, that Lucy, would have gone and understood every word, that she would have liked the playacting, and talked about it, and laughed as Arthur did, that she would have seen a great deal in those stupid old pictures. Nancy was silent and dismayed. To be a lady seemed to her a hard trade. How different from the case of Underhayes, the talk about Lizzie Brown and Raisins, the grocer, in the snug parlour where everybody was so comfortable! Her mother and Sarah Jane never would ask her about the bear-fighting in the Assembly, nor how she liked M. Got. A longing for home seized the girl, and a terror of what seemed before her. To be sure, if she had known it, the talk about Lizzie Brown was quite as much in Sir John Denham’s way as in that of Mrs. Bates; but then his Lizzie Brown was perhaps an Empress, which makes a difference more or less. The two young people had never been so silent in each other’s company. They drove back so full of many thoughts that neither perceived the pre-occupation of the other, and oddly enough they were both thinking of their homes; Arthur, with a pang, but without any desire to find himself there—Nancy with the strongest determination to get back. There was a half-smile in Arthur’s eyes, but a smile which was strangely associated with that pain behind the eyeballs and slight constriction of the throat, which means unsheddable tears, as his home seemed to rise up before him among its woods. He saw his father in his library, his mother in that gilded and satin-hung morning-room, which was à la Louis Quinze, but which nobody thought in bad taste, as we see people in a dream. They did not look at him, nor welcome him, and he did not wish to be there. How could he take Nancy there? He was separated from them, perhaps for ever, and he could scarcely wish it to be otherwise. But Nancy on her side thought of home with much livelier feelings. Oh, only to be there! free to show all her pretty things, her new “silks,” her trinkets and furs: to let everybody see how fine she was: to talk just as she liked, not to be made to admire anything she did not understand—not to be burdened with bonds beyond her comprehension, limits of speech, and word, and action, beyond which it was not “becoming,” not “appropriate,” not “right” perhaps, that she should go. At home she had done what she liked, run out of doors when she pleased, laughed as loudly as she pleased, been as ignorant as she pleased. It did not occur to Nancy that at home it had been her inclination to stand on her superiority, as one who had been five quarters at school, and was altogether “a cut above” Matilda and Sarah Jane.
They were sitting after dinner that evening, yawning a little, when Sir John Denham’s card was brought to Arthur. He looked at Nancy half doubtfully, an expression which she caught at once.
“Shall he come up, or shall I go down to him?” he said.
“Oh just as you like,” said Nancy, with the quick thought passing through her mind that Arthur did not choose that his fine friends should see her. He looked at her again; in reality to see what she wished; but to Nancy it seemed an inquisitorial glance, criticising her all over, if perhaps she was “fit to be seen.”
“I will go down and bring him up,” he said. When he was gone, Nancy too looked at herself in one of the many mirrors. She still wore the dark blue silk dress which had been made for her since she came to Paris, with ruffles of lace at the throat and wrists. It was very plain. Should she run and put on the salmon-coloured one, which was a great deal finer, before Arthur returned with the stranger? She hesitated a moment; but her good angel interfered and kept her still. Sir John Denham thought her on the whole a lady-like young woman when he came into the room. Evidently there must be something queer about the business altogether, Denham thought; but she was very pretty, and looked comme il faut, so far as he could see.
“I have to make a thousand apologies,” he said, “but I thought it better to run up and tell my story myself, hoping that Curtis would intercede for me as an old friend. May I be allowed to open my mouth at all, at such an inappropriate moment? A thousand thanks; I came to say that if you would be at the Palais de Justice at twelve to-morrow, I could meet you there with La Pic, who is a friend of mine, and would take you in. There is to be an interpellation which probably may be amusing—and if you are going on so soon—”
“It is very kind of you, Denham, I am sure my wife will like it.”
“Mrs. Curtis looks a little doubtful, I think,” said Denham, “but of course you must not mind me. It is only if it will amuse you.”
Nancy vacillated between two courses; she was tempted to a little bravado, to avow boldly her ignorance, and shame the pretensions which her husband made on her behalf; and on the other hand she was also tempted to commend herself to this stranger, who was a real baronet, and finer than anyone she had ever talked with before. Why should she let him see how little she knew? And in this wavering she took a long time to make up her reply.
“I do not understand much about—politics,” she said.
“Especially French politics, I suppose,” said Sir John, smiling and showing large white teeth. “So I should think, Mrs. Curtis; I don’t understand them though it is my business; but it is fine to see how they fly at each other, and will not keep still for all the Presidents in the world. I hope Curtis has been letting you see a little of Paris. We must excuse him, I suppose, for keeping you so entirely to himself.”
“We have been at a theatre or two,” said Arthur carelessly, “that is all; we are just passing through.”
“And I am sorry there is nothing going on yet; after Christmas, if you were staying, I might be of some use. Some of the balls are worth going to in the Carnival. But why should I tell this to you who, probably know a great deal better than I do—”
“Oh no,” said Nancy, “I have never been in Paris before.”
“Ah, that accounts—” said Sir John. “The fact is I have been wondering that I had not seen you anywhere; what luck for Curtis to have so many new things to show you. But there is not much going on. I suppose you are going to Oakley for Christmas, Curtis. Lucky fellow, with nothing to do but amuse yourself. Put me at the feet of the ladies there; I have not seen Lady Curtis or your sister for ages. A poor beggar like me would not know what to do with such a place, otherwise I should envy you, Oakley. What a place! what woods! what a park! it is only in England that one sees anything like it.”
“You were always a romancer, Denham, Oakley is nothing particular. Being home it is very pleasant; but as a model of an English house—”
“I maintain it is, and Mrs. Curtis shall judge between us. It is not a feudal castle—I allow you might find finer things in that line; it has neither moat nor dungeon, I suppose; but for a gentleman’s house—why, we have nothing in the least like it here. Don’t you agree with me, Mrs. Curtis? You have not been long enough in the family to depreciate their good things as they do. I am sure you will give your vote for Oakley against anything you see between this and Rome, of its kind—I wait for your support.”
It was a strange situation enough. Denham did not understand; but he divined, and liked to play with the unknown danger in Nancy’s doubtful looks, and Curtis’s evident anxiety. As for Nancy, she looked at her husband with a perceptible tremor. She wanted him to instruct her, to indicate what she was to say: though, had it been possible that he could have dictated to her, that very fact would have made her perverse. At last she said hesitating, “I have seen—so little—I could not judge—I have never been out of England before.”
“Ah, that accounts—” said Denham vaguely; and he was very much puzzled by this subdued bride, who had no enthusiasm either for the new world she was visiting or the old world which she had left so lately. He tried to draw her out on a variety of subjects; but Nancy, though at intervals an impulse of self-revelation would come upon her, and it was on her lips to tell him that she knew nothing of Oakley, and cared nothing, and should never be there, nor go to Rome, nor do any one of these things he was talking of, was on the other hand so afraid of betraying herself that she held back, looking stiff and silent, and scarcely could be got to say a word. As for Arthur, his anxiety made him somewhat excited and restless, it took away all ease from his manner. He wanted her to join in the conversation, to come out of the shell of reserve in which she had shut herself up; and yet he was afraid of what she might say if once roused. She was a clever girl, with much natural energy and force; but yet it was annoying how entirely the daughter of Bates the tax-collector was at a loss listening to the conversation of the two men who were not clever, yet who knew by nature many things of which she had not a notion. This Assembly they wanted her to go to, what was it? Why should she go? What was an inter—inter—what? Their world and hers were totally different, though one of them was her husband. She was relieved when they veered into gossip and began to talk of people, though she did not know the people. There she could follow them even in her ignorance; for had not she too a Lizzie Brown?