Mrs. Oliphant

“ Do not we love him, Mr. Durant? and yet he casts us off for some one he scarcely knows.”
“He will come back to you; it cannot be that the separation is for long. Arthur is not the man—”
“Oh, Mr. Durant, you mean that he will not be happy? I don’t want him to be unhappy. Oh, God forbid! and why should not he be happy,” said Lucy with tearful inconsistency, “if he loves her?” What could Durant say? He could think of nothing but the foolishest, most traitorous, dishonourable things, dishonourable to the trust put in him, treacherous to the confidence with which she held his arm. ”

“ Bates, “she’s just in one of her tantrums. Most times Nancy is as gentle as a lamb, but when she’s roused, she’s roused; and you’ll allow it’s aggravating. Not but Mr. Durant was very civil spoken, I haven’t a word to say against him. Indeed, I rather liked him, what I saw of him. You’re both too touchy, that’s what it is; Nancy can’t bear her sister to be set down as if she was nobody, and Arthur don’t like any joking about his friend. But there, there now, kiss and be friends, children! If you quarrel you only make each other miserable, and get miserable yourself. ”

“ In this frame of mind he ate his luncheon, and decided to stay another night at Underhayes. It was rather hard, indeed, to know what to do with himself in the afternoon; but he hoped that perhaps Arthur might change his mind, might think it worth while to come to him and argue the point; and in any arguing of the point, Durant felt that he must be successful. Then he had a bundle of correspondence to get through. A busy man is often entirely thrown out of his mental gear by finding himself shut up in a bare parlour in an inn, without any of his habitual tools, without books or papers. ”

“ I say nothing against Sarah Jane. I never have been the least negligent, the least disrespectful of your sister.”
“No, indeed,” said Sarah Jane, who was good-nature itself, “Arthur has never got on the high-horse to me. He’s always been kind. It’s nothing worth talking about. A deal of folks are touchy about their friends, more touchy than about themselves.”
“But,” said Arthur, sitting down on the sofa again, and relapsing into his lover’s whisper, “they are not you; you are yourself, my own Nancy, my flower among weeds—there is nobody like you ”

“ But his life was a blurred version, surrounded by all kinds of imperfections of a noble ideal—a thing not always perceived by his wife and his son, to whom however Sir John’s deficiencies, on the other hand, were very plain. And Arthur, for the time at least, was almost as contradictory of his father as Lewis was. He was light-minded and heedless, idle, foolish yet clever, generous yet selfish; the kind of young man who is always in scrapes, often in the wrong, yet rarely, or never, unbeloved. ”

“ I don’t know if you call that an idle friendship.”
“My dear cousin Lucy, I don’t want to say a word that is disagreeable to you. If you think Durant a better friend for Arthur than I am—”
“I was not saying what I thought, or giving any opinion about best or better. I was only speaking of the fact.”
“Well, so be it,” he said with a sigh; “but, at all events, you will not deny that there are few people to whom Arthur and his wife can be more important in the future. We are likely to live our lives out side by side.” ”

“ He was very much in love, poor young fellow, and when a man is in love, it is curious how easily he can accept the circumstances of his beloved and find them natural. Matilda and Sarah Jane had only amused him before, as, indeed, they amused the new-comer now; but the family changed its aspect entirely as the young man, who was almost a member of it, realized to himself how it must appear to his friend, and saw the whole scene, as it were, through Durant’s eyes. ”

“ Arthur was four-and-twenty, surely old enough to choose for himself, and the idea of consulting the father and mother (it being evident that they were not very likely to be satisfied with the marriage) did not occur to these good folks. A young tax-collector would not think of consulting his family, though he might like them to be pleased; and why should a baronet’s son, a young gentleman, much more his own master than any tax-collector, be bound to what his father and mother wished? ”

“ Arthur,” said Durant suddenly, “you are very fastidious—very difficult to please in ordinary cases. Do you think you will be able to live with the good people we have seen to-night?”
“Why should I live with them? they have nothing to do with it. A wife comes with her husband. They, whatever they may be, are quite outside the question. She is to be thought of, and she alone.”
“Have you ever reflected, Arthur, that if she—the lady—is as noble a character{32} as you think, she will not give up her own people for you or anyone? I should not care to have a woman do that for me. ”

“ It was Durant who was the first to recover himself. The man who stands in the suspicious position of adviser and reprover, naturally does regain his temper sooner than the person who is advised and reproved. He said in a conciliating tone, “Why should we quarrel? I can have no right to disapprove of your choice. I am not here as the agent of your family, Arthur, who might have a right to interfere, but only as your friend. I can wish nothing but what is for your good.” ”

“ This was a whisper in the confidence of their closeness and oneness; but Nancy replied aloud, “Why shouldn’t she chatter about Durant if she pleases. He is no better than she is. Magpie, indeed! you are very uncivil, Arthur. I think my sister is quite as good as your friend—even if it was a nicer friend than Durant.”
“Did he say I was a magpie?” said Sarah Jane. “Oh, Nancy! and me always standing up for him. I did to Durant himself. I said we are all very fond of Arthur, we’ll none of us believe any harm of Arthur. ”

“ Durant?”
“I am not very clever in such subjects. I have to work very hard for my living, Miss Sarah Jane.”
“Have you now? I should not have thought it, you look so like a gentleman. I suppose it is the clothes,” said Sarah Jane thoughtfully. “But even then,” she added with magnanimous indulgence, “that is quite different; men may work without losing caste, mamma says, but not women. And we have always been kept at home. I would not be a governess for the world.”
“I do not suppose it can be a pleasant occupation,” said Durant. ”

“ She never was one to go after pleasure like the other two.”
“Mamma!” said Matilda and Sarah Jane in a breath.
“Oh yes! I know what I am saying. You are good girls enough, but you’re not like your sister. You were always the troublesome ones. You’d talk and laugh with anybody. You have got no proper pride. But Nancy has always kept herself to herself. However she got to be so fond of Arthur, I never could make out, for she was not one to take up with strangers; and never had any affair of the sort, nor so much as kept company with a gentleman in all her days, till she met with Arthur. ”

“ Perhaps if the shock had come sooner some deliverance would have been possible, though at the cost of a heartbreak; but nothing was possible now except to carry out his engagement. Lewis Durant was both honourable and high-minded, yet he had come with no better intention than to prevent his friend from keeping his word, with very little regard for the word and none at all for the happiness of the other person who was chiefly concerned. Happiness of a girl who had entangled a young man so much above herself! ”

“ I am not in a good way, and, my boy, you are in a bad way. I’ll say it once for all. You are deceiving yourself. You are the last man in the world to do this sort of thing. You will repent it, sooner or later. Don’t look at me as if you thought me a fool, with that supercilious face. It is you who are the fool. You are going to do what you will wish undone all the days of your life.”
“Durant!” cried Arthur, furious, springing from his seat, and lifting his arm as if for a blow.{37}
His friend stood up facing him, folding his arms. ”

“ Nancy was only Nancy after all, and as for excellence! Mrs. Bates took the matter differently, as may be supposed.
“I am not going to hear anyone talk disrespectful of my girl,” she said. “She is as good a girl as ever breathed. I wish Sir John, or the Queen herself, may have as good, and that ain’t a bad wish, Mr. Durant. She is one that would do credit to any family, though I say it that shouldn’t. She’s pretty and she’s good, and knows her duty a deal better than most. Them that find fault with my Nancy, it’s because they don’t know what she is. ”

“ He will never be of any good again.”
“It is quite true, it is quite true,” said Lady Curtis, “all that your papa says is true.” Her heart was so wrung that she scarcely knew whom she was addressing, Arthur, who had gone away in his disobedience, or Lucy, in whom there were faint appearances of standing up for her brother. The mother would not divest herself of the sense of a domestic audience to be convinced, whom perhaps their papa might be effectual with, though she had failed herself. ”

“ How few families are there which have not known such sorrowful silences: when there is one absent to be bitterly blamed, and some one in fretful anguish cries out, and the others heartbroken, try for excuses and find nothing to say. This was how it was. The mother and daughter had talked it over till there seemed no more to add, but Sir John had not had this relief. ”

“ There must be no second fiasco of a marriage. You are not a duenna, and I don’t want you to behave as if she was not to be trusted; but, after all, what is Lucy but a girl, like others? She must be taken care of; there must be no nonsense about her. If Arthur had behaved as he ought, it might have been{307} different; but Arthur has been a fool, and there’s an end of it, and that changes her position.”
“John,” said Lady Curtis, hastily, “you will do nothing without consideration? I am not defending Arthur, but you will not do anything without serious thought?” ”

“ All{249} that could be said about Arthur had been said on the night of Lucy’s return from Underhayes, but it was not possible to keep absolute silence about him now. The house was so full of Arthur; they seemed to see him upon the steps, in the avenue, appearing across the park with his gun. And now he had disappeared from the place. Their own sudden departure, when they first heard of his folly, had broken up the lingering remnant of a shooting party which had assembled at Oakley, chiefly for Arthur’s pleasure, but which no persuasions had induced Arthur to join. ”

“ CHAPTER III. LEWIS DURANT was the ami de l’enfance of Arthur Curtis. He had always been a little bigger, a little stronger, a little steadier, as he was a little older than his friend. He was not a young man of family like Arthur; and Lady Curtis, who was philosophical in her tendencies, had pointed many a social criticism by the fact, laughingly commented upon, that her son’s fagmaster at Eton, and Mentor in life, was the grandson of the great saddler with whom Sir John and his predecessors had dealt for ages. ”

“ Is it on eating one spends one’s money? So far as that goes, you may say what you please. There is nothing in you, old fellow, to frighten anyone. Come, I forgive your objections{34} to my happiness when I see how little you have got to say.”
“You are sure then, entirely sure, that it is your happiness, Arthur?” Durant rose, and put his hands on his friend’s shoulders, looking down upon him with a face full of emotion. “You have been the nearest a brother of anything I ever knew—brother, or sister, or both together. Are you sure, boy, are you sure? Happiness is a sacred thing. ”

“ I ain’t in love with Arthur, though Nancy is. I think you might find another subject,” she said. “They make a deal too much of him at home; I think, and so does Matilda, that there are nicer-looking and as gentlemanlike-looking in Underhayes as he is. What do you think of Underhayes, Mr. Durant? Is not it a pretty little place? If I had my choice I would live in London, and every night of my life I’d go to a dance or to the play. I don’t pretend to be good, as some girls are. I shouldn’t go about among the poor, or sing in church. ”

“ When people have been brought up together it is different. Arthur’s great friend,” said Lucy, firmly, and with decision, though with a slight, additional colour, “who is like a brother to him, is Mr. Durant.” ”

“ In Scotland, it has passed into a proverb that an active mother has an indolent daughter. The insinuating and bland courtier has to struggle against the abruptness or loutishness of his son, and even virtue has very often moral weakness, if not worse, for its next descendant. In Lewis Durant’s case the contradiction was a happy one. Disgusted by the aimless leisure and nothingness of the paternal life, the young man flung himself into work with a zeal and passion seldom to be found. ”

“ If it were not that celibacy never answers, I would tie her up not to marry, at least, in our lifetime.”
“Oh, John!” cried Lady Curtis, in the extremity of her surprise.
“Well, why not? It would be a great deal pleasanter for you and me. I hate a girl marrying, losing her head, as they all do, and forgetting herself for some poor creature of a man. Lord, if they knew{308} just what the men are that they take for something above the common! I don’t think I could bear to see my Lucy philandering and going on with a fellow, probably not worth a word from her. ”

“ And the woman whom he had married had been no more than a fit partner for such a man; so that when Lewis, their only child, became old enough to think of home as anything more than a jolly place to spend holidays in, the boy’s refined and delicate mind had suffered a severe shock. ”