The long avenue at Oakley was as dreary as the damp street of
Underhayes. The rain drizzling, a constant soft downfall, half of the
chilly shower, half of the yellow leaves, going on without intermission.
Here and there one of the great oaks from which the place had its name,
stood up all russet and solid, with the dry leaves clinging to its
branches; here were feeble flutters of denuded sycamore and lime, there
elms standing up in a forlorn faded greenness, all rusty, shabby,
ragged, their year’s clothing worn out. The house itself appeared in
glimpses as they drove along, grey and cold with its broad low front
stretching along the damp terraces, which were so green with the wet as
to put everything out of harmony. The neighbourhood was proud of Oakley
Hall, which was said to be pure Italian, Palladian, or something finer
still if there is any finer word. It had an imposing front with
pediments and pillars, supposed to be white, but at present the very
colour of cold, damp and mournful. Lady Curtis shivered as they drove
along, sighting it by glimpses, now more, now less distinctly through
the trees. It was her home, but there was not much sympathy between the
lively quick-feeling woman and the blank splendour of the cold
long-drawn-out house. She was never fond of it at any time. What she
would have given for red brick! but Palladio was very much more
dignified if not so kindly. “How dismal we shall be without Arthur,” she
said as they approached. They had not talked very much to each other on
the journey. All 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. Now the men and their guns were all gone, and there was
an interval of quiet before them till Christmas, when Sir John’s
habitual party of parliamentary friends would assemble. Nothing but
mourning could interfere with that; and, “we can’t put on mourning for
Arthur, though God knows we might, if separation was all that was meant
by it,” said Lady Curtis.
“Oh, mamma!” said Lucy with her usual tone of gentle remonstrance.
Lady Curtis was very quick and outspoken. She said a great many things
with her lips which people in general say only in the seclusion of their
mind. Lucy _faisait les cornes_ again when her mother spoke of mourning
for Arthur. The suggestion was intolerable to her. It threw an
additional cloud upon the dreary streaming avenue and the grey blank of
the eyeless house.
Sir John, who was in reality expecting them anxiously, did not come to
the door to meet them, being a little too late in moving from his chair
in the library, which was his way. There were often advantages in it;
and perhaps to-day, as on other occasions, it was just as well that it
was in his library he received his wife and daughter, instead of meeting
them in the full sight of the servants. Sir John was a tall grey-haired
man with a sort of homely dignity about him. He was not clever, and
often enough the ladies felt it was difficult to get an idea into his
head--and when the idea was in his head, he was in the way of treating
it somewhat hardly, as if it was a thing rather than an idea. He could
not play with plans and intentions as his wife’s quick mind loved to
do--and when he received a blow, it crushed him with a sort of solid
monotony to which there was no relief. He had not believed it possible
that Arthur would persevere with a marriage which was so seriously
against his interests, and had thought it only “some of my lady’s
nonsense,” to think that this very fact would make Arthur more decided
in throwing himself away. But now that the thing was done, he would
allow no hope in it. His son was lost--the prey probably of a bad,
certainly of a designing woman, seeking her own interests alone. He
might as well die at once for any good that was likely to come of him
now. And in consequence of this determination, on the part of Sir John
that such a thing could not happen, the final act in the drama having
taken him entirely by surprise, notwithstanding all warnings, had shaken
him enormously in his health as well as in his immediate comfort. “He
might as well be dead,” he had said, after he knew that there was no
more hope; and those were the words which he repeated by way of greeting
to his wife and daughter.
“He might as well be dead at once--why did you let him do it?” he cried.
“If I had ever thought he could have been such a fool, I should have
taken care to be on the spot myself,” said Sir John.
He had no curiosity about his son, where he was going--what he was
doing. He might as well have been dead. To be sure when he himself was
dead, Arthur must come back and reign in his state; but then Sir John
felt no necessity within himself that he should ever die. It was so far
off, that it was unnecessary to calculate upon that remote contingency,
and in the meantime it was his son who had departed out of this life,
left it altogether without possibility of return. He had spent these
last few days very mournfully in the solitude of his vast house. One or
two intimate friends had come to see him, but he had not cared to
receive their visits. The Rector had been there for a long time that
very day preaching strange doctrines: that a thing being done could not
be undone, and that it would be wise now to make the best of everything
that happened. The Rector was a Curtis too, Sir John’s own nephew, and
though he was shocked by this domestic incident, he was aware that it
would be best not to allow it to come to anything scandalous. He had
ventured to suggest that, perhaps, things might turn out better than
they appeared. “Better!” said Sir John, “he might as well have been
dead.” He had been able to think of nothing else since he had heard of
it; and his thoughts of Arthur were all of the kind which come into the
minds of those who have lost their children. All the old forgotten
nursery stories came back to him. What a boy he was--so active, so
strong, such a good shot for his years, ready to ride at any thing, and
with an opinion of his own on politics and all that. While he sat in his
library pretending to read and write (and what is it that elderly
gentlemen find to do when they are shut up for day after day, pretending
to read and write in their libraries?) these fancies came surging up
about him exactly as if Arthur had been dead. He would put down his
paper suddenly to think out a little joke of his when he was five, or a
school-boy prank at fifteen. What promise, what ability, a hundred times
cleverer than ever I was! and all to end in this. The dull surprise in
his mind was inexhaustible; how could he be such a fool--how could he
commit moral suicide in this way? And why had not his mother put a stop
to it? This dull misery which he was suffering did not affect Sir
John’s ordinary habits; he went on, to all outward appearance, just as
usual. He fulfilled every duty he had been accustomed to; ate at the
usual times, took all the usual courses at dinner, and presented an
imperturbable countenance to the butler and the footman who waited upon
him; but his heart was heavy with the thought of his son who was lost.
Though he was so glad to have his wife and daughter back again, he met
them almost with reproaches.
“You went away, but you have not done any good,” he said. “I expected
little, but still you might have been of some use--and you have been of
no use. It is exactly as if he were dead.”
“Oh, papa, not that,” cried Lucy; but Lady Curtis only cried as she
dropped into the big chair by the fire to get a little warmth. She felt
at first as if her husband had a right to reproach her, notwithstanding
that she had done everything she could; for she had left him with
perhaps a boast of her own influence, and with very high hopes. It had
seemed to her that Arthur must yield; and not only had Arthur not
yielded, but all the harm that had been threatened was accomplished, and
their only son was lost to them. She could not contradict what Sir John
said. She was humbled, she who had been so confident; she had gone away
almost promising to bring him back with her, confident in her power over
her boy. Never before had her husband gained such an advantage. He had a
kind of right to jibe at her henceforward, if he chose to exercise it.
She had nothing to answer to him. It was quite true what he had said.
What difference would it have made had the boy died.
“I never thought it would come to this,” said Sir John, “not that I
believed in your remonstrances; but I could not have believed that the
fellow was such a fool. What does he suppose he will make by it? He had
everything that heart could desire, a good allowance, a good home; and
to go and cut his own throat as it were, to make an end of himself! He
might just as well have done it at once. 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.
“What he could think he was to gain by it!” Sir John resumed, encouraged
by this support, which he did not always receive from his wife. “Debt
and that sort of thing is bad enough, and we know how young men are
drawn into it; but what could anybody suppose this was going to be but
ruin and destruction; what could he think there was to gain?”
“Oh, papa!” Lucy could not keep silence any longer. It was not the habit
of the house to allow papa to have everything his own way. When Arthur’s
youthful peccadilloes had been discussed hitherto, Lady Curtis, however
she might object to his conduct, had always been his champion with his
father, and one of the greatest marvels and most confusing circumstances
of all was this silence on her part, and surrender as it were of Arthur
to be crushed as Sir John pleased. Lucy could not be still and hear it
all. “Oh, papa!” she cried, “you speak as if poor Arthur thought of
nothing but his own interest; was he so selfish? you know that he never
thought of what was for his interest at all. Cannot you believe that he
loved her, and that this was his motive?”
“My dear,” said Sir John, “I was not speaking to you. You stand up for
one another as is natural. But see, even your mother has not a word to
say.”
This roused Lady Curtis from her depression. “I disapprove of it all as
much as you can do, John; I am as unhappy; but still I do not think
there was any calculation in Arthur’s mind; how should there have been?
It was the height of foolishness and wicked hastiness, but he knew he
could get nothing by it--he knew it was ruin, as you say.”
“Why did he do it then?” cried Sir John with outspread hands, appealing
to heaven and earth, his eyebrows raised, shaking his head and looking
about as if for an answer. Perhaps he felt his son’s defection the most
of all of them, although when all was well with Arthur he was not one of
the fathers who cultivate their sons unduly, but on the contrary was
often impatient of Lady Curtis’s interest in anything connected with the
boy, and her anxiety about him. “What could happen to him?” Sir John was
in the habit of saying, when, as sometimes happened, there would be a
commotion in the house because Arthur did not write often enough.
“Depend upon it he is all right.” This had been his mood before; but now
he seemed to miss Arthur wherever he turned. A thousand questions seemed
to arise on which he would have liked to consult him; he wanted him to
shoot a too-well preserved preserve, he wanted him to say what he
thought about those new cottages which had to be built. Sir John did not
see the need of new cottages; _he_ did not want a new house, he was
contented with his old one; and why should not other people be content?
but in case the cottages should be forced upon him he should have liked
to know what Arthur thought. Now that he was gone, there seemed to arise
some special reason for appealing to him almost every day. It was as if
he had died.
And there was a long silence in the big still room where the family had
met together after their misfortune. 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. All his pain and
anger had been locked up in his own bosom, and now they burst forth.
“What did he do it for? What did he suppose he could make by it?” Sir
John did not believe that his son thought anything could be made by it,
but how was he to repress the intolerable pang in his own heart for
Arthur’s loss and ruin? And yet he was angry that nobody defended Arthur
when he stopped speaking. He was angry also when the women attempted to
defend him. It did not much matter which it was. He was silent for a
moment; and the dull sky outside, and the dull air with its double rain
from the clouds and the trees filled up the great windows with
dreariness, adding another element of depression, and Lady Curtis gazed
drearily into the fire stooping over it, to get a little warmth, and
Lucy stood by the table motionless with tears upon her cheek. Then Sir
John burst forth again.
“If there had been anything to justify it, you know! One has heard of a
man losing his head for a great beauty, something out of the way--a
syren, you know. But a village girl, and, from all I hear, a virago, a
temper--”
“Don’t let us speak of her,” said Lady Curtis, with a movement of
disgust. “It’s enough that he has done it. Oh, the foolish, foolish boy!
Separated himself entirely from his own sphere, and his natural life,
and us.”
“Mamma,” said Lucy, breathless, “I don’t want to excuse Arthur; but
what could you say worse of him, both papa and you, if he had done
something _wrong_?”
They both turned upon her, furious: yet so thankful to her for standing
up for him with whom both were wroth beyond words.
“Wrong!” they both cried in one breath. “Are you mad, child? Do you
think he has not done wrong?”
“He has been very, very foolish,” cried Lucy, growing pale. “Yes, he is
wrong; oh, yes, I know he is wrong. But if he had done something
shameful, _wicked_, mother--people’s sons have done so--sin--crime--you
could not take it more seriously, you could not say worse of him.”
“Sin!” said Sir John. “Lucy, you are a girl, you don’t understand
things. A man might be sinful enough, and not cut himself off like this.
It is worse, ever so much worse, both for him and us, than what girls
like you call sin.”
“No, papa!” cried Lucy, with flashing eyes. “I will not hear you speak
so of Arthur. He has been disobedient to you; but he is a man. God does
not mean us always to be obedient like little children. And he has done
nothing that is wrong. I will not hear anyone say so.”
“Wrong!” cried Lady Curtis, rising in her indignation and pain. “Do you
call it right to bring misery and disgrace into a family, to break off
all his old ties for a new one, to throw off father and mother, and duty
and honour, for the sake of a fancy, for the sake of a pretty face? What
does he know more of her than a pretty face? Love! is that what can be
called love?--for the sake of his own will and self-indulgence, the
unkind, selfish boy!”
And then she sat down again and cried bitterly, which was a relief to
her. Sir John could not cry, but he got angry, which was a relief to
him.
“Let me never hear you excuse him again,” he cried, “or you will make
me fear that you are not to be trusted either. What, Lucy! you think
children are not to be expected to obey their parents--you, a girl!
Then, God help us, what have we to expect, your mother and I?--our only
boy lost to us in a disgraceful connection, and our only girl ready to
follow his example.”
“Papa!” cried Lucy, indignant, yet trembling.
“Is that the prospect before us? It is kind of you to give us warning:
and to take such a moment for doing it, when we are crushed
sufficiently, I should think.” Then he changed from this pathetic,
sarcastic tone, and turned upon her with fierce and threatening looks.
“But mind you, Lucy, I’ll shut you up, as fathers had a right to do
once. I’ll keep you on bread and water--by Heaven, I will--before you
disgrace yourself like Arthur, right or wrong!”
“Hush, hush!” cried Lady Curtis, roused. “Oh, John, you forget
yourself. Lucy, Lucy, your papa does not mean it. We don’t distrust you.
Fancy distrusting Lucy, our Lucy, John! Oh, we are not come to that!”
and she went to her daughter, and kissed her, and held her close in her
arms.
Lucy had not said a word, but she had raised her head as her father
vituperated, and fixed her eyes upon him steadily. She was not a girl to
be frightened; but her mother grew frightened looking at her, and seeing
the pale indignation and firmness in her face.
“Of course, I never meant that,” said Sir John, fretfully, sitting down
in his chair with an angry _thud_ which seemed but an echo of his sigh.
“Why do you put your fantastic meanings into a man’s plain words? Hadn’t
you better go and get your things off, and make yourselves comfortable?
And you can send me a cup of tea. It is all this wretched, depressing
day.”