“IS Mr. Curtis here?” said a voice at the door.
The door was so near the sitting-room that every demand made there was easily heard, and even answered from within; and, indeed, Mrs. Bates was in the habit of calling out an answer when it happened to be beyond the powers of the daughter or small servant who opened. But this question was one about which there was no difficulty. It was followed by a hearty laugh from the assembled family.
“I should think he was—rather!” said Charley Bates, the son; and “Ask Nancy,” said Matilda, the eldest daughter.
There was a considerable number of people in the little parlour—to wit, Mr. Bates in his big chair on one side of the fire, sipping rum-and-water, and reading a newspaper which was soft and crumpled with the usage of the day at the nearest public-house; and Mrs. Bates on the other, seated between the fireplace and the table, mending the stockings of the family. Charley was reading an old yellow novel behind his mother, and Matilda was making her winter bonnet with a quantity of materials in a large piece of paper on the table, which was covered with a red and green cloth. It was October, and not cold, but there was a fire, and a branched gas pendant with two lights, shed heat as well as light into the close little room. There was another daughter, Sarah Jane, who was coming and going about the table, now and then making incursions into the kitchen; and behind backs in the corner, on a black haircloth sofa against the wall, were seated the pair of lovers. No one threw any veil of doubt on the fact that they were a pair of lovers—nor did their present aspect make this at all uncertain. They were seated close together, talking in whispers; one of her hands clasped in his, his arm, to all appearance, round her waist. Matilda screened them a little, having her back turned towards them, which gave, or might have given, a sense of remoteness to the pair, and justified their too evident courtship. Otherwise they were in full light, the gas blazing upon them; and it was scarcely possible to whisper an endearment which was not audible. She was a pretty girl, with brown hair, brown eyes, and a pretty complexion, in a somewhat showy dress, cut very much in “the fashion,” yet looking not at all out of place in the warm, crowded, stuffy parlour, full of hot air and gas, and the fumes of rum-and-water. She was Mrs. Bates’ second daughter, called Nancy, but preferring to be called Anna, and engaged to a young gentleman who was a pupil of Mr. Eagle the well-known “coach,” and had been for a year at Underhayes. He had been coming after Nancy Bates all that time, and at present they were engaged, and made love in the family parlour now that it was too cold to take long walks. Mr. Curtis preferred the walk, but Nancy liked the haircloth sofa. She was a good girl, and fond of her family, and she liked them to share her happiness. The family party were all moderately like each other, harmonious and happy, suiting their surroundings. There seemed nothing out of place among them, the bonnet-making, or the old yellow novel, or even the rum-and-water. But there was one great incongruity in the room, and that was the hero, the young lover, who certainly had no business there. He was dressed in an English gentleman’s easy morning suit, a dress in which there is less apparent pretension than any in the world perhaps, but which shows very distinctly the condition of the wearer. His presence in the room put the whole place out of harmony; it made the stuffy comfort look squalid and mean; it rebuked the family ease and cheerfulness, the absence of all disguise, the frank family union. In his person another element came in, a something higher, which made all the rest more low. He was not the sort of person to sit with his arm round his fiancée in public, within reach of papa’s rum, and mamma’s joke. All the rest went perfectly well together; but he put everything in the wrong.
And the effect which he himself produced to every beholder, or would have produced had there been any beholders, was wrought upon himself by the sound of this voice at the door. It was a voice of modulation and tone different from anything here. Even his Nancy, though he was so much in love with her, young Curtis felt suddenly jarred and put out of tune by it; he dropped her hand instinctively, and got up confused, a sudden flush coming over his face.
“It is some one for me,” he said, in sudden embarrassment. And again the family laughed more loudly than before.
“Any child could tell that, seeing as he’s just asked for you,” said Mrs. Bates; “and I’m sure any friend of yours is welcome. Find a chair for him, girls, if there is any chair free of your falals—and show him in, Sarah Jane.”
“I think not; if you will excuse me I’ll go to him,” said the young man, hastily. “I might bring him—if you are so kind—another time.”
“There’s no time so good as now,” said Mrs. Bates. “Don’t be shy, don’t be shy, my dear. You don’t like him to find you with Nancy; but, bless my soul, the time won’t be long that anyone will see you without Nancy—”
“Oh,” said Nancy herself, saucily, “if he’s ashamed of me—”
“Ashamed of you, darling! as if that was possible,” said the young man, stooping to whisper to her; “but it is a man, a college friend—I must go.”
While he stood thus explaining, with an anxious face, and his Nancy pouted and tossed her pretty head, the stranger suddenly appeared at the open door.
“This way, this way!” Sarah Jane had cried, delighted by the advent of another gentleman, and already wondering why Nancy should have all the luck, and whether one wedding might not bring another.
The new-comer was tall; he was short-sighted, with a pucker on his forehead, and a glass in his eye. He stood in the door, and hazily regarded the scene, not penetrating it, nor finding out his friend for the moment; but gazing somewhat vaguely, dazzled besides by the sudden light, into the small crowded space and the group of strange faces.
“Ah, there you are, Curtis,” he said at last, with a gleam of recognition; then turned to Mrs. Bates with an apology. “I hope you will forgive such an intrusion. I had a commission to Curtis, and I did not understand—I did not know—”
“Come in, Sir, come in,” said Mrs. Bates; “don’t think of apologies—we’re very glad to see you. Sit you down, Sir, and if you’ve just come off a journey, say what you would like, and it shall be got for you—a drop of beer, or a cup of tea, or a glass with my good gentleman. You see he’s making himself comfortable. And supper’s coming in about an hour. You can hurry it up a bit, Sarah Jane,” cried the hospitable mother, “if the gentleman has just come by the train.”
“Thank you,” said the stranger, sitting down on the chair that had been cleared for him; “nothing to eat or to drink, thanks—you are too kind; but I may wait till Curtis is ready. I have got something for you, Arthur,” he said, turning again to his friend.
“Oh, have you?” said Curtis, dropping back upon the sofa, beside his Nancy, as there was nothing else to be done; but he did not take her hand again, or resume his former position. He sat very stiff and bolt upright, withdrawn from her a little; but young men and young women do not sit together behind backs for nothing, notwithstanding the gaslight; and his air of withdrawal took an aspect ridiculously prudish, and called attention. The family Bates looked curiously at the stranger, and he looked curiously at them. Neither was much acquainted with the genre of the other, and on both sides there was a half-hostile interest which quickened curiosity. But Matilda and Sarah Jane were not hostile. Their curiosity was warm with benevolence. If Nancy had done so well for herself, why not they too? He had dropped into their hands like a new prey. Their eyes brightened, the energy of enterprise came into their faces. A gentleman is a fine thing to girls of their condition, far finer in promise than in reality. The appearance of a second quarry of this kind turned their heads. Why should it not fall to one of them?
“You must have found it cold travelling, Sir,” said Matilda, wrapping up her bonnet in the paper. “October nights get chilly, don’t they? and Underhayes is a miserable little place if you have come from town.”
“I have come from the country,” said the stranger, with his short-sighted stare. He was slightly annoyed, to tell the truth, to hear it so clearly set down that he must have come from town. Did he look like a man to come from town in October?—not thinking that town meant everything that was splendid in Matilda’s eyes.
“Chilly!” cried Sarah Jane, eager to recommend herself. “I’m sure the gentleman thinks this room a deal too hot. Shouldn’t you say so, Sir? I can’t abide it; it gives me such a headache.”
“Come, girls, you needn’t quarrel,” said Mrs. Bates, in her round, good-humoured voice. “We’ll allow you your different ways of thinking. Your papa likes a warm fireside, don’t you, Bates? But I suppose the gentleman comes straight from the beauty and fashion, as it says in the newspapers.”
“Talking of the newspapers, Sir,” said Mr. Bates, putting down his, “what do you think of the present crisis? What’s things coming to? There’s Rooshia threatening in the East, and as for your Khedivys and that sort, I don’t believe in them. We’ll all be in a precious hobble if we don’t look out, as far as I can see.”
“There, there, Bates, none of your politics,” cried his wife; “once begin that, and nobody can get in a word—and the gentleman is just off a journey.”
Young Curtis sat uneasily while all this went on, like a dog in leash, watching his opportunity to start. The sudden insight which had come to him with the entrance of his friend upon this scene was strange, and very painful. 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. Durant’s eyes, however, staring vaguely upon this slowly comprehended new world, did not see half so clearly or so sharply as Arthur’s saw through them. He gave double force and meaning to the other’s observations, and beheld through him many things which the other did not see. Fortunately—and how fortunate that was Arthur did not venture to say to himself—Nancy, who was affronted, did not open her mouth. He adored her, and yet he was glad she was affronted, notwithstanding the pain it gave him. He could not bear to vex or alienate her for a moment, and yet he was thankful not to be obliged to see her too with his friend’s eyes. But he saw all the rest, and the ensemble of the room, the village flirt Sarah Jane, and the lout Charley, and Mr. Bates with his slippers, and felt how stuffy it was, and the smell of the rum. His endurance had come to a climax when Mr. Bates began to talk a little thickly of politics. Once more he sprang to his feet.
“I know Durant has something to say to me,” he cried. “I think I must ask you to excuse me to-night, Mrs. Bates. Everything must give way to business.”
“Lord bless you, my dear, not of an evening,” said the genial woman. “Don’t ye go. Supper’s coming. You know all our ways, and I daresay your friend—Mr. Durant is it? and how do you do, Mr. Durant, now I know you?—I daresay he’ll put up with us for your sake. Go you and hurry the supper, Sarah Jane.”
“We’ll have to go, really,” said poor Arthur; and he stooped to his sullen love and whispered, “Don’t be angry. He comes from my father. Though I can’t bear to leave you, darling, I must hear what my father says.”
“Oh, indeed, your father!” said Nancy. “I see what it is; it is just what I have always told you. You’re ashamed of me and my folks, as soon as you get hold of one of your fine friends.”
“Durant is not a fine friend, he is like my brother—he will be your friend too,” whispered the young man in an agony.
But Nancy only pouted the more.
“I don’t want such friends. I have got my father and my brother to see to me. You needn’t bring any of your fine gentlemen here.”
Notwithstanding, however, the blandishments of Sarah Jane and Matilda, the stranger had risen too. He was much taller, and had a much finer figure than Arthur, the sisters thought, and he smiled, though his look was rather vague, staring as if he did not see them.
“You are very kind,” he said, holding out his hand to Mrs. Bates, who hastened up to her feet too, to shake it with great cordiality. “I hope you will kindly repeat your invitation for another day, and that Arthur will bring me back, when I can take advantage of your hospitality; but I must not come among you under false pretences,” he added, laughing, “for I know nothing about the rank and fashion—that is in Arthur’s way rather than mine.”
“Oh, Sir,” said Mrs. Bates, bowing, “we know what gentlemen means when they speak in that high-minded way.”
This speech was such a triumph of genial mystification and confidence that Durant stared still more, and hurried forth reduced to silence, feeling himself unable in his present puzzled condition to cope with such an intellect. Poor Arthur, trying to seize the hand of his beloved, trying by piteous looks to move her from her sullen offence, lingered a moment, but in vain.
“Never mind her,” said Mrs. Bates, “she will come to when you are gone. It’ll all come right to-morrow. Good night, and God bless you! I’ll see to Nancy; and you needn’t keep the door open and me in a draught,” she added querulously, “if you won’t stay.”
This quickened the steps of the lover, but though he was glad to get outside, and to leave the glare and odors of that room—so long his bower of bliss, so suddenly revealed to him in its real aspect—blown away, it is impossible to say how miserable he was at such a parting from the object of his love. It was she who opened the door for him on other occasions, lingered with him in the fresh evening air, and said “Good-night” a thousand times over, each time more sweetly than the time before. So at least the foolish young fellow thought. But she had not lifted her head even to give him a last glance; she had not said “Good-night!” at all; she had dismissed him with a cloud upon her face. How was he to bear it till to-morrow? and yet how glad he was that when all of them had talked and betrayed themselves, she had never brought herself under those painful disenchanting reflections from his friend’s eyes.
“Good-night, Arthur,” said saucy Sarah Jane; “and good-night, Mr. Durant. Be sure you bring him back to-morrow. You have promised mamma to come back morrow and have supper with us. Good-night, Mr. Durant.”
Durant replied to the “Good-night” with a suppressed laugh, and walked away into the darkness with Arthur following. Though the freshness of the night was so great a relief after the heat indoors, it was not genial, but penetrating and dull, with a shrewish touch, such as October often has; and the skies were dull with no moon, nothing but drifting clouds, and the street of the little town was not attractive. They walked on in silence together for some time, the stranger being occupied longer than was necessary in lighting his cigar; but he had no sooner managed this successfully than he threw it away again.
“Come to the inn, Arthur,” he cried; “it’s comfortless work talking here.”
THE inn at Underhayes was not much to speak of, but the parlour in which the two friends talked was larger than Mrs. Bates’s parlour, where all the family assembled and all their existence was past. Durant sat down at the table to consume a simple dinner, a hastily-cooked chicken, which he had ordered after his journey, and which was not so savoury as the supper which Mrs. Bates would have given him; nor was it so cheerful a meal. While he ate, Arthur Curtis paced back and forward at the other end of the room, which, with its bare carpet and scant furniture, was still less objectionable than the room they had left, the place where all his happiness had lain so long. 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! what was that to anybody? If she should be robbed of her happiness, why, was it not all her own fault? But he had not been so injudicious yet as to broach this idea; he was approaching it gradually, “acquiring information” on the subject. Of course it was natural that any one so interested in Arthur’s affairs as he was, should like to know all about it, and he had seen Lady Curtis herself he did not conceal from his friend, and the anxious mother was “in a great way.”
“I’d like to take up satisfactory news, old fellow,” he said; “both for their sake and my own.”
“What do you call satisfactory news?” said Arthur. His mind was in an unexampled commotion. His old life and his new had come into active conflict, and he himself seemed to be the puppet between them. But in the midst of the excitement caused by this bringing back of all the habits of his former existence, the poor young fellow was miserable at the thought of having come away from his love without a kind word, without a look even, which could stand in the place of their usual Good-night.
“Well—it is difficult to speak in plain words between you and them. Of course you know that this can’t be expected to give them satisfaction, Arthur. They have not been led on step by step as you have—”
“What do you mean?” he said hastily. “Do you mean the vulgar sort of thing that every fool says, that she has been leading me on?”
“I certainly did not say so,” said Durant. “I mean they have not been used to all the circumstances like you. Your mind has become familiar by degrees with this family—with everything about them.”
“Say it out plainly; don’t mind my feelings,” said the other bitterly, “with the difference between Bates, the tax-collector’s daughter and Sir John Curtis’s son. Well! and what is the difference? All on her side; all in her favour. She getting nothing but additional beauty from all her surroundings, I—doing not much honour to mine.”
“I was not making any personal comparison, Arthur,” said Durant, cautiously; “I was saying only—what you will fully allow—that taken just by themselves, without that knowledge of personal excellence which I suppose you have;—that the difference of the circumstances—the difference of manners—well! cannot but startle—shock perhaps—your immediate friends.”
“That means that you are shocked and startled. Mr. Bates’s rum-and-water was too much for your delicate nerves,” said Arthur, with a sneer; “and yet you and I have seen worse things that we were not shocked at.”
“Arthur, do you want to quarrel with me? or can you suppose I should have come here, if I had felt the slightest desire or intention to quarrel with you?”
The young man did not answer for some minutes, then he threw himself into a chair by the table and concealed his face from the other’s gaze, supporting his head on his hands. “Don’t you think I know everything you can say?” he cried; “it is plain enough. They are not like us—there are things in them which even I don’t relish. Their ways are more homely, their manners more simple than we have been used to.”
“If it was only simplicity,” said Durant, shrugging his shoulders, and thinking of the blandishments of the Misses Matilda and Sarah Jane.
“Well,” said Arthur, with a sudden outbreak, “call it what you like, what disagreeable name you please, and then I ask you what have you got to say to her? It is she I am going to marry, not her family. What have you got to say to HER? She is the person to be thought of. Old Bates is an old tax-collector, and the mother a good-natured old woman, and the sisters flirts if you please; I don’t say anything to the contrary; but what have you to say against the girl herself? What of HER?”
“Arthur! I have nothing to say; how could I? She sat behind backs, with you to screen her. I saw that she was pretty—”
“You saw that she was like a lily growing among weeds; that she was like a princess among the common people; that she behaved like the best-bred of ladies. That is what you would say, if you allowed yourself to speak the truth.”
“If I speak at all I shall certainly speak the truth,” said Durant, with a sigh of impatience. To him as to everyone else, Nancy Bates had seemed only an ordinary pretty girl; nothing more.
“Then speak!” said Arthur, “for if there is one assumption more intolerable than another, it is that of saying nothing with the aim of sparing your friend, as one who has nothing but what is disagreeable to say.”
“You press me too hard,” said Durant, smiling. “What can I say after what you have said? Arthur, this girl may be a Una for anything I can tell—as you wish me to believe she is; but how can I know? I can see she is pretty; but I don’t know her; how can I divine what her character is? She may be everything you think; but all that I can possibly make out is that she is a pretty girl, with sense enough to hold her tongue.”
Arthur grew red and grew pale as his friend spoke; his lip curled over his teeth with a furious sneer, almost like the snarl of a dog.
“Don’t you think,” he said, with an enraged semblance of extreme civility, “that when you are speaking of a lady who is about to become my wife, you might speak of her by another name than that of ‘the girl.’”
“By Jove you are too good!” said Durant, half angry, half amused, “what should I say? You called her a girl yourself, and so she is; so are the Princesses for that matter.”
“I call her many things which it would not become strangers to call her,” said Arthur, “and I think, perhaps, on the whole, it would be better taste not to favour me with your opinion on this subject. You would not, I suppose, give me your frank estimate of my mother, for instance, whatever it might be—and it is equally unnecessary of my wife.”
“As you please,” said Durant, offended; and then there ensued a temporary pause, during which the stranger, driven back upon that occupation, munched a crust with indignant fervour, and Arthur sat moodily by, holding his head in his hands. 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.”
“For my good!” the young man said through his teeth; then he, too, smoothed himself down. “I don’t want to quarrel, Durant; but if my mother thinks I am to be dictated to—or any friend of mine supposes he can come to look surprise and criticism, even if he does not say anything——”
“This is too much,” said Durant, laughing; “if you are going to put meaning in my eyes which nature has denied to them, what can I say to you? I who scarcely see anything, to look criticism is rather too strong for a blind old mole like me!”
“Short-sighted people see a great deal more than they own,” said Arthur, oracularly, “but I don’t want to quarrel.” And then again there was a pause.
“Answer me one thing,” said Durant, re-opening the question after an interval; “have you really made up your mind to marry this—lady? Is it all settled? Is there room, or is there no room for anything I might find to say?”
“What could you find to say?”
“That is not the question,” said Durant; “whatever it might be it is unnecessary to say it if everything is settled. But, Arthur, if there is still time—if I may still once, before it is too late, speak plainly to you?”
“It is too late,” said Arthur hotly. “I am to be married in a fortnight; I should be married to-morrow if I could. Supposing you had the finest arguments in the world, and the best reasons against it, do you think I would break her heart and my own for your reasonings? Yes, it is all settled, and nothing on earth can change it.”
He got up as he spoke, and marched about the room with an air of defiance. Then he came back to where his friend was sitting, and sat down on a corner of the table, swinging his legs.
“All the same,” he said, with a laugh of affectation and bravado, “I’d like to hear what you have to say against it. It might be novel and amusing, perhaps.”
“I have not the slightest desire to be amusing.”
“Oh, impressive then—that is as good or better; impressive, eloquent! let us hear, Durant. I should like a specimen of the grand style you keep for your most serious cases.”
“Yours is not one of them,” said Durant calmly; “yours is simple enough. Don’t let us go farther, Arthur; we should come to blows again, and that would not answer my purpose, nor yours either.”
“Then you refuse to tell me what of course you came here to say. Your plea cannot be very powerful this time, nor your brief worth much,” said Arthur, with a pretence at scorn which was full of aggravation. This stirred his friend more than anything yet had done.
“My brief,” he said, “was not prepared as most briefs are. It seems to me that you are not worthy even to hear of it. ‘Prove the culprit guilty’ is what most briefs enjoin, but this one was ‘Prove him innocent; let his very judges see him to be right, and not wrong.’ These were my instructions; they do not much resemble your notion of them; nor do they deserve to be received in this way.”
Arthur rose again from his seat, and walked about the room restless and uncertain.
“Say what you have to say,” he said; “I will not interrupt you. Let me hear it all.”
“I have already told you that, if everything is settled and your mind made up, it would be foolish to go on at all. If there is any hope I will speak. 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 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. I think she would have good reason to judge me severely after, if I failed in threefold duty to her. You should be father and mother in such a case—and husband too.”
“And so I mean to be, so I am! What are father and mother to me now? I have formed a tie which is beyond all these mechanical, understood ties, in which there is no choice on the child’s part; and she will feel as I do.”
“Women don’t always do that,” said Durant; “and I, for one, don’t like them when they do. Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that she did not, what should you do then? It is worth taking into consideration.”
“She would be sure to do what was best; and if that is all, we can easily baffle your cross-examination, Durant. You are not good at bullying witnesses,” said Arthur, his heart rising in spite of him. “Ask me something more difficult than this.”
“You would have to live,” said the other. “I don’t think that is more difficult, but you may not be of my opinion. How are you to live? upon your allowance, which has never been too much for you alone?”
“Two spend no more than one,” said the catechumen, recovering his spirits; “and she is not a spendthrift like me. She has been trained to make a little go a great way. She will reduce my expenses instead of increasing them.”
“Yet two eat more than one, to put it on the simplest ground.”
“Eat! that is like you, Durant. How little you know about it! 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 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 would not touch it, I would not harm it. Are you sure?”
“As sure as that I love her, Durant.”
The elder man dropped his hands from the other’s shoulder, and turned away with a sigh. Whether it was the half-inspired look which at that moment came into Arthur’s face, or the resemblance of that face to another, or the superiority over himself of this boy whom he had been lecturing, and whom he had lectured so often—whatever it was, he turned away, with something that made his sight more uncertain than ever, rising in his eyes.
“Then I can’t say anything to you,” he said, in a voice tremulous with feeling. “I can say nothing to you! I would not meddle with that, right or wrong, were it to cost me mine.”
“Yours, old fellow?” cried Arthur, in the effusiveness of victory. “Hurrah for love! It’s the thing worth living for. Are you in Arcadia too?”
Durant did not make any answer. He went to the window, and looked out upon the dark night and the lamps flaring; and then returned to his chair. Whatever commotion there had been in his countenance, he had got rid of it. Neither blush nor smile was on his serious face, nor any further manifestation of sympathy. Arthur looked at him, and burst into excited laughter.
“You don’t look much like a fortunate shepherd,” he said. “Love! that was a bad guess; it was law I should have said—briefs and fees, and a silk gown at the end; that’s what moves you.”
“Ay, ay,” said the other, vaguely; “that’s what it is. Mine is not a corresponding case. You were always luckier, brighter than I, and I don’t grudge it you, Arthur. Your happiness (if you are happy) will be almost as good for me as my own. But I don’t think either of them very probable just now,” he went on, suddenly changing his tone; “that is the fact. 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.
His friend stood up facing him, folding his arms. His face had flushed with a momentary gleam of passion while he spoke. Now it stilled and paled again, and he stood in his superior strength, looking calmly at the slighter being whom he had roused to momentary fury. The young man’s clenched fist fell by his side. He turned away angry, but subdued.
“No man in the world but you dare speak so,” he said, “and even from you I will never bear it again.”
“You shall not be required,” said Durant, sadly. “I have said, once for all, what was in my mind. Now—I know you well enough—you’ll go and do what you want to do, Arthur, and with all the more zest. And when you have paid for your happiness, and got to the bottom of it, you will come to me again.”
“I think you presume a little too much on our long friendship,” said Arthur, seizing his hat. “Good night; there has been enough of this. Things will be bad indeed with me, I promise you, if, after this speech of yours, I ever come to you again.”
He rushed out of the room before the other could reply. Durant went to the window and looked after him with a wistful subdued light of pity and tenderness in his face.
“I wonder how long it will be first?” he said to himself.
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. The Durants, who were French by origin, had made a great deal of money in that business, and one of the sons had been made a clergyman. This was the father of Lewis, who had been brought up accordingly in as much luxury as his friend; but unfortunate speculations on his father’s part had changed all that by this time, and the young man was now fighting his way at the Bar, with very little to keep up the warfare on, and none of those supports of good connection which help the aristocratic poor to keep their heads above water. He had a home in the depths of one of the Midland counties, where the Rector—once able to hold his own with the best of his country neighbours, and considered a very good sort of man—had fallen to the ordinary parsonic level, without any standing ground beyond it, and not much right to high consideration on that ground. For the Rev. Mr. Durant was not a very good clergyman. It had not been the object of his life to become so; but rather to obliterate from all minds by his luxurious living, his carriages, his conservatories, his expenditure in every way, that he was the son of the well-known saddler; as it has been that saddler’s object to advance his son in life and make him a member of the upper class by making him a clergyman. Everybody was quite conscious of this while he was rich; but, naturally, everybody became still more conscious of it when he became poor; and as his wealth had been his chief standing ground, and he had not much worth or goodness, and no activity, to gain him credit in his parish, the downfall was pretty nearly complete. 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. How it was that he happened to possess a refined and delicate mind is a totally different question, and one into which we need not inquire; but the effect upon him of the ostentatious, showy, lavish, and lazy wealth in the first instance, and of the useless, slovenly, languid poverty which followed, was remarkable enough. A great many things go by contraries in this perverse world, and nothing more commonly than the habits of parents and children. 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. He had no family friends in the class he had been brought up in, and his personal friends were of his own standing, themselves too young and inexperienced to help others; but he had not cared for this; he had flung himself into the work of his profession—the Bar—for which he had been trained as his father had been trained for the Church, as the profession of a gentleman, a trade not incompatible with the possession of a great deal of money, and not requiring to be kept up by the happy man who was not obliged to work for his bread. Perhaps the energy of the old saddler had got into the veins of Lewis, transmuted into some kind of potable gold, some elixir of force and life. If so, it had clearly “suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange,” for there was no greed of gold, no thirst for wealth in the young man’s mind. On the contrary, if he had not known forcibly the many good things that money can do, and which the absence of money prevents from getting done, Lewis would have hated money, so associated was it with everything that had most galled and humbled him. But money is not a thing to be scorned, and he had too much sense and too much honesty to feign. He worked with a concentration of force and steady effort which was intensified every time he visited the aimlessness of his home. He had come from that home now, and had left it, as he always did, impatient of rest, eager to plunge again into the active warfare of life, to strain muscle and sinew, and all the powers of mind and frame.
This was the man, who since they were boys, had been Arthur Curtis’s chief friend. He himself was the only son of Sir John, a true rural potentate, a man whose life was full of stolid dignity and duty, made steady, and in a dull matter of fact manner, noble, by the proud sense of obligation to his country, his son, and his dependents, such as long descent and elevated position sometimes give. Sir John Curtis might sometimes be ridiculous, but he was always respectable, making an aim at his duty in a large, conscientious, stupid way, in which there was a certain obtuse grandeur. He carried this into the smallest detail of his life, and the result was, that he was held by most people to be pompous, and admired by some as the chief source of serious comedy in his neighbourhood. 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. He had been idle at the University, and had not taken his degree—then had gone home for a time and had done nothing. And now this last and most serious scrape of all had been brought on, as it were, by the most virtuous resolution of his life. It was his mother’s earnest desire that he should enter public life, in one way or other; and Arthur himself had been dazzled by the chances of diplomacy, an opening into which seemed before him, and had come now, in a sudden fit of industry and virtue, to see if, by the help of a noted “coach,” he could “pull through” his examinations, and get the University stamp, though late, impressed upon him. There had been no particular reason why he had not achieved that University stamp before. He was a tolerable scholar, and had meant honours—but had not been industrious enough to attain them, and had thrown up the milder standard in disgust. Thus he had come to Underhayes, intending better than, perhaps, he had ever steadfastly intended in his life; and lo! Nancy Bates was the result.
All this was in Durant’s mind, as, after a troubled night, he looked out of his inn window in the morning upon a mellow sunshiny morning of true October weather, a warm yellow haze in the air, which melted into the ripe foliage below, and the mottled clouds above. The little town was embosomed in trees. It was a little more than a village, a little less than a town; and, perhaps, had become more of a suburb than either, being within the radius of London, and coming nearer to that increasing centre every day. The metropolis and the village had been long putting forth arms of approach towards each other, and Underhayes had grown gradually larger, and nearer year by year. There was still a village green in the centre of the place; but the old houses had put on new fronts, and got enlargements of various kinds, and had become the homes of London people who went to town every morning, instead of the poorish, but very genteel persons who used to inhabit them. This was a great gain to the place, and made it swell and grow bigger and bigger; but at the same time it was a loss and forfeiture of all the originality, and much of the quiet beauty, and no little of the genial and graceful comfort that had once dwelt around the green. Everybody was richer, larger, vainer; and gorgeous entertainments were given, at which there was much more expenditure but less friendliness than of old. The city men considered themselves a great deal more intelligent, as they certainly were more knowing, than the older inhabitants, the retired captains and colonels, the widows and old maids, and solitary couples, who were now dying out in the too active air of the place. But these relics of olden days, at least, returned their scorn with interest, if they could not compete with them in other ways. Half way between these two sections of the community stood Mr. Eagles, the great “coach,” whose fame was in all the schools and all the services. He lived in an old-fashioned house with an old gate, the posts of which were surmounted by two great stone balls, and which opened upon a bit of real avenue, and enclosed real grounds, something more than a garden. It was a genuine old house, in which a retired Cabinet Minister had once lived. It was true he had built additions to it, but they were done in good taste, and strict submission to the original style of the house, which was taken as a kind of homage to the antique and Conservative class, by that class itself. He had a large house, and he took pupils; but yet it was nothing like a school, for the young men did not live with him—no one but young Mr. Curtis, who was not to call a pupil, who was “reading” for his degree, and who was a young man of excellent family and an acquisition to any society. Arthur indeed, in his own person, was one of the chief conciliatory circumstances which made the old inhabitants on the Green tolerate and receive Mr. Eagles, whom the new inhabitants looked upon with respect as a man who had made his way.
The little inn in which Durant had passed the night was opposite the gateway with the stone balls. Underhayes was not enough of a place to have a good inn. People who frequented inns had no object in going there. It was not far enough from London, nor near enough; and there were no exceptional attractions as in Kew or Richmond. Therefore, amid all the changes and improvements, the Red Lion was just what it had always been, a homely place with a sign-board standing out upon the edge of the Green, and a bench, shaded by trees, where its homely customers could sit and drink their beer. And on the other side of the Green stood Mr. Eagle’s gate, breaking the high wall in which his house and its grounds were enclosed, and from whence there burst, in autumn richness of colour, over the wall, a rich border of trees.
Durant got up in much doubt and discomfort of mind after a restless night. He went out into the soft breezy air, which was warm, yet not quite free of the crispness of a first threatening of frost. Spruce men were passing on all sides, well brushed and neat, with daintily rolled umbrellas, with light great-coats, sometimes with a book, or a bundle of letters to read in the train, going to business—all walking with air alert that spoke of a definite aim, and the pre-occupation of something to do—which did not interfere, however, with a genial readiness to hear, or report the last piece of gossip. Many of them had choice flowers in their coats, a touch of the poetry which means luxury rather than taste, with which to sweeten the office and show the skill of their respective gardeners. All this was new to Durant, who knew nothing about the ways of the city, though he acknowledged with respect the air of work and serious occupation, which called forth his sympathy, though it did not take the form with which he was acquainted. He watched them passing, going to the train; and then was conscious of the lull and desertion of the Green:—the momentary pause, half of regret, half of relief, at the departure of all this activity, and then the rising of the second more tranquil wave of movement, the tradespeople’s carts and messengers, the butcher and baker setting out on their rounds. How many little worlds like this, each complete in its own conceit, were rushing on and on, unconscious each of its neighbour! But he certainly had no time for those banales reflections, occupied as he was with painful considerations as to whether he could still do anything, or say anything to justify his mission here. What could he do or say? Arthur had left him in high dudgeon—offended apparently beyond redemption. He was not so much disturbed by this as he might have been; for he knew Arthur, and that it was not in his nature to quarrel permanently, however angry he might be for the moment. But the question was, whether he could do anything independent of Arthur, upon whom he did not feel that his influence for the present would be very weighty? He thought, with a smile, of the recorded proceedings in a similar case, the steps taken by the protectors of another Arthur—for where but in fiction can such difficulties find their readiest parallel? But Durant had no standing ground on which to emulate the masterly tactics of Major Pendennis, though the example occurred to him seriously. No—the position of Arthur Curtis had not been exaggerated, nor was there any glamour of false light about the subject which he could dispel. He was very much puzzled, very doubtful and anxious. He could not leave the place without attempting something more—but what was he to do?
His thoughts were thus occupied when he saw the gates opposite to him open hastily and some one come out—a small resolute man, with peremptory short steps and a dogmatical bearing. Durant felt at once that this was Mr. Eagles, and that he was coming towards him; and there was an air of vexation still more decided than his own on the brow of the famous tamer and trainer of “men.” He came across the Green at a rapid pace.
“Mr. Durant, I presume? My name is Eagles,” he said. “I hope you have brought some light with you on a most difficult subject. What is to be done with this boy?”
“You mean Curtis?”
“Yes, I mean Curtis. Nothing in the least like it has ever happened among my pupils before. I feel my establishment disgraced by it—disgraced, Mr. Durant. So utterly abominable an example! I don’t as a rule take charge of men’s morals or conduct, and I heartily repent having received this one into my house. It was a silly thing for me to do; but a fellow who had been at a public school and at the university, who would have supposed he could have turned out such a fool?”
“Pardon me,” said Durant, reddening, “he may have been foolish, but he is not a fool.”
“Oh, if you stand up for him! I thought you had come here, as is the part of a friend, to endeavour to convince him of his folly.”
“It is not so easy. Is it not the very essence of folly to think itself wiser than all its advisers?” said Durant with a sigh. “May I ask you how you knew I was here.”
“Oh, he told me; there is a certain frankness about him. And I saw you perambulating the Green, which is a thing unusual at this hour, and guessed it must be you. I wish him to go.”
“To go! Curtis?”
“Yes, Curtis. I wish him to go. He is (of course) doing no good here, and the story has oozed out, equally of course. How can I tell that some other idiot may not be moved by his example, and put himself at the feet of a sister? I shall get a bad name. I!—because your friend is a sentimental idiot.”
“Patience!” said Durant, laughing in spite of himself. “I don’t see how any one can blame you.”
“Nor I; but they will,” said Mr. Eagles. “Of all foolish and unreasonable persons on the face of the earth, parents are the most unreasonable. You must take your man away.”
“But he is not my man. I have no authority over him.”