Mrs. Oliphant

“ It can’t be lively here, doing nothing. Why, you’ve nothing to do, not even fishing or football, eh? I never hear of you playing football. What do you do?”
“Nothing,” said Arthur; “and I can’t say I like it; but what’s the good? I am too old for football and that sort of thing.”
“Ah, four-and-twenty, that’s a great age; but I know what you mean. Married! there’s the rub—feel yourself too grand for it. But look here, Curtis. A man can’t live with nothing to do.”
“The wonder to me is how long a man can live with nothing to do,” said Arthur. ”

“ Poor Arthur! he thought of his sister’s little simple toilettes, so fresh, so crisp, so plain! and he did not know—what foolish young man ever does know? that whereas the finery is an easy matter, these dainty sobrieties of garb are the highest quintessence of art. In novels, which are the chief exponents of young women to young men, and of young men to young women, has not the captivating humble bride always a spotless collar and cuffs ready for every emergency, which make her exquisite on all occasions? Why had not Nancy the secret of that little collar and snowy cuff? ”

“ Arthur her boy, had chosen his own path, and this was what it was, nothing in which his father or mother had any share. What he liked better was the coarse girl who had married him for all the advantages he brought in his hand, and who had infatuated him, and made him such a one as herself. The sense of failure was in Lady Curtis’s mind, the pang of feeling that something inferior had been preferred to her, and to all that was worthy, by her boy. Can anything be more terrible than when father or mother is driven to despise the child of their bosoms? ”

“ Eagles’ house, looking on the green, where Durant had been lodged. But before they reached that place there was a greeting to be got through at the station, the whole Bates family, no less, having assembled to welcome their daughter. Nancy’s spirits had risen from the moment she had touched English soil. She had talked to everybody, guards, porters, the servants at the hotel, with exuberant satisfaction, notwithstanding the bad passage and its natural consequences.
“Oh, what a blessing to be at home!” she said. “Oh, Arthur, isn’t it nice to be back? I feel as if I should like to hug everybody. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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{332} 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. ”

“ I believe she has managed very badly; and allowed everybody to see her want of cultivation—her strange—ignorance. Nevertheless,” he said earnestly, “I do not despair of Nancy. As for her good looks, they count for very little with me. What effect they may have on idle and unoccupied minds, I cannot pretend to say; but for a man like myself with a busy life and a pre-occupied imagination—”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Durant,” cried Lucy, “I did not wish to pry into your secrets.” ”

“ I don’t know what you think of my family, Nancy; if you think they are some kind of wild beasts to be avoided; but they can’t be avoided. We shall have to live by them, and it is for our good—it is indispensable—that we should be friends.”
“Friends!” cried Nancy, breathless with the effort of listening to him and keeping silence. “Then you may as well throw me over once for all, Arthur. Friends! ”

“ He had already felt it beginning for some time, but it was in full force from the moment which changed the tax-collector’s daughter into his wife. Thus he had felt, not amused, but irritated, when she made her appearance in that salmon-coloured “silk.” That Mrs. Bates’s daughter should wear the one fine and glistening garment she possessed to do honour to her bridegroom, and to dazzle the eyes of all beholders on her wedding-day, would there not have been in this a certain appropriateness in the midst of the inappropriateness, a sancta simplicitas which would have charmed him? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The people in the shops talk a great deal better. I never mistake them; and it worries me to look so stupid,” she added relenting. “I should not mind for myself; but it looks so bad for you having a wife that does not understand.”
“For me, my darling!” cried Arthur delighted. “Do I care? An evening at home will be a great deal more pleasant; but my wife never looks stupid, cannot look stupid,” said the foolish young man. And again all was well.
Thus the course of their honey-days went on not without fluctuations. What he said in his foolishness, was true so far, that Nancy did not look stupid. ”

“ Her will was all set steadfastly the other way, to reject all possibilities of improvement, and the idea of being educated up to her husband’s level. Was not she as good as he to start with, was not her family as good as his family, if not better? Not so rich, but nicer, kinder people, to be upheld in their plainness above any attempt to pull them down. Nancy’s native energy of mind all ran into vigorous scorn of any attempt to separate her from her own race and identify her with his. ”

“ When Arthur was at home, he, as the nearest neighbour, the only man of anything near his own age close at hand, had a natural place at Oakley besides that derived from his relationship. But now what had he to do at the Hall? Lucy did not encourage him, certainly, in any devotion to her. Lady Curtis had an instinctive, half-jealous dislike to him, as she would have had probably to any young man whose sensible and correct behaviour was a standing reproach to Arthur. And Sir John could not be troubled by Bertie’s peace-making and desire to persuade him that all would eventually be well. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ What could Arthur do but protest that he loved her more, if that were possible, for the pains she had taken to please him, and thought the salmon-coloured dress lovely; but after a while he returned to the charge. “In France,” he said with the air of an authority, “they are great on having a dress for every different occasion. Their dresses for the morning they never wear in the evening, and their travelling dresses—”
“But goodness me!” cried Nancy, “what an extravagant way of going on! It may be all very well for duchesses and grand ladies; but that would never do for a poor girl like me.” ”

“ Had Arthur gone from her? Would he not come back again? A speechless dismay took possession of her soul, followed by flashes of passion, and still deeper and deeper despondency. There was but one thing that it seemed possible to do, except flight, which she was not equal to at this dreadful moment, when she was not sure whether he had flown from her. If he had been in the next room she might have had strength to flee ”

“ Such sentiments are not unusual in human bosoms. Husbands feel so for their wives, and wives for their husbands, and parents for their children. Why will they show themselves at their worst to make strangers laugh, or wonder, or despise; and at the same time, how do they dare, these strangers, to despise, or laugh, or wonder? A more painful conflict of feeling cannot be.
This was what Arthur was thinking, sitting drearily, not among the ruins of his domestic happiness, but before the sunny, common-place, too trimly new and flimsy altar of those capricious deities who rule the hearth. ”

“ Lucy sat and knitted, her mind wandering after Arthur, trying to imagine the brightest winter weather in Paris, and her brother enjoying himself, instead of the rainy skies here, the muddy roads and grey miserable day. Lady Curtis was in her chair by the window for the sake of the light, busy with her crewels.
“They may say what they like about the higher art of these subdued tints,” she said, “but nature is not subdued in her tints. How am I to do the autumn leaves in those tones of colour? They are high and bright in nature.” She said this, but she was thinking of Arthur all the time ”

“ I have never seen reason to modify my opinions as so many people do. One set of principles has been enough to guide me through life, and I cannot believe that any man wants more.”
“It is a very happy state of mind, Sir,” said the Rector, wondering more and more why his uncle had elected him to hear the characteristics of his wisdom. Lucy had cleverly stolen away to do her duty by the other guests, and only Lady Curtis was aware of her husband’s real meaning. She smiled within herself at his simple device to separate Lucy from a man who might put in the pretensions of a lover. ”

“ Arthur is not looking well, poor fellow—he is harassed and worried to death. All the glamour has gone out of his eyes, and he sees his wife’s family now as other people see them, as very common-place, sordid, uneducated people, with whom, or with their like, he has no affinity. ”

“ It is the easiest language—everybody says so,” said Arthur. “You could pick it up in a few weeks. You would so soon feel{103} at home there. The good people are fond of everything that is beautiful. Oh, they are not all good people, I suppose. Sometimes they will ask too much from you; they will, perhaps, cheat you a little, in quite a friendly way—”
“I could not endure that!” cried Nancy. “That is the one thing I could not put up with; and foreigners are all like that, Arthur; they pretend kindness so long as they have something to gain; but they don’t really care. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Bates never had the benefit of foreign travel; but there are a many things you young people enjoy now that your fathers and your mothers didn’t have.”
“You may speak for yourself, Mr. Bates,” said his wife. “I cannot say that I ever had any desire to go to foreign parts. There is plenty to learn in England if one would make a good use of what one knows; and Nancy, poor child, don’t seem to have enjoyed it. Look how thin she is, and so pale. She quite frightened me when I saw her first. ‘Is that my blooming Nancy?’ I said to myself—not meaning to throw any reflection upon Arthur. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”