MRS. ARTHUR.
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT,
AUTHOR OF
“The Chronicles of Carlingford,”
&c. &c.
“Fie, fie! unknit that threat’ning, unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes.
* * * * *
A woman mov’d is like a fountain troubled.”
TAMING OF THE SHREW.
“He breathed a sigh, and toasted Nancy!”
DIBDIN.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1877.
_All rights reserved._
MRS. ARTHUR.
CHAPTER I.
It was like a dream when it was all over, so huddled up at the end, so
seemingly causeless; the sudden outburst of accumulated dissatisfaction
and failure breaking out in a moment, a storm out of a clear sky, as it
were. There was no adequate reason for the catastrophe; greater troubles
had been between them before, more violent disputes; perhaps it was that
never before had there been any witnesses, nor had the menace ever
before come from Arthur’s side. When he left Underhayes, almost carried
off by Durant, yet with many stings in his heart, which in time, at
least, might slay the love that was still warm within him, Arthur could
think of his married life only as a dream. Nancy had refused to see him.
She would make no arrangement, listen to no terms, make no promises;
indeed, she would not communicate with her husband or his friend except
through her parents, and refused to say anything except that all was
over, that she never wanted to hear Arthur’s name again. The father and
mother were without any question deeply distressed. Mrs. Bates was, on
the whole, a sensible woman, who, though she might be disposed to back
up her married daughter in a certain amount of folly and hot-headedness
as to the honours and privileges which were “no more than what she had a
right to,” was yet horrified at the notion of practical divorce and
disjunction such as this; and her husband not only shared this moral
horror, but was profoundly excited by the idea of having his daughter,
whom he had believed to be provided for, once more on his hands. All
through that long Sunday, and for some days after, Durant did nothing
but come and go between the two houses with proposals of all kinds. If
Nancy would not return, would she join Arthur in London and go to Oakley
with him? If she would not go to Oakley, would she go to Vienna, where
they could make a fresh start, having both, it was to be hoped, learned
a tremendous lesson? To all these suggestions Nancy answered No. She
kept upstairs, locking her door, when her husband himself came. No, she
would do nothing. She would not go to his friends to be despised. She
would not go abroad with him to be miserable. He knew how she hated
foreign countries. She would not go home to him, or see him to discuss
these questions. He could go where he pleased, she would not put herself
in his way. She would not shame him among his fine friends. Nobody
should say she was a burden on her husband. It is impossible to imagine
anything more confused, more agitated, more feverish than the course of
these painful days; but at last it became apparent even to Arthur that
this could go on no longer. Many little indications of a state of things
which he had never dreamt of, and which was fatal to the self-esteem
which is in every man’s bosom, worked on the poor young fellow’s mind as
much as the actual grievance of the moment. That he had been thought of
as a good match was, perhaps, inevitable in the circumstances; but even
that is not agreeable; and to know that your wife has gone to her
father’s house to complain of you, is an offence which few men could
easily forgive. All this produced in Arthur’s mind an impression of
painful unreality in the past than which there is nothing more wounding,
more bitter on earth. That love should fail and hearts change is bad
enough; but that the love which you have believed in implicitly should
never have existed at all, that your affection should have been regarded
as a matter of worldly advantage, and your conduct discussed with
others, what thought can sting more deeply? It destroyed not only
Arthur’s faith in his wife, but his faith in the life they had lived
together. Hitherto it had been her too great sincerity, her incapacity
for feigning, he thought, poor fellow, which had been their rock ahead.
And now was all insincere, was all feigned from beginning to end? His
head seemed to turn, and the giddy world to go round with him, and that
wrath “which works like madness in the brain,” the wrath which is half
love, and which feels every injury with twofold aggravation of
resentment, yet yearning, took possession of his mind. It was in this
condition that he left Underhayes. Durant had made on Arthur’s behalf
the most careful arrangements for Nancy with her father. She was to
retain the villa if she chose, and the half of the allowance Sir John
gave to his son. Arthur would have given the whole, had that been
possible. As it was she would be well off, able to do as she pleased,
according to her breeding, to help her family, to occupy an important
position among them. The poor young fellow thought with bitterness that
this would be more congenial to her than any elevation which could have
reached her with him; and perhaps, indeed, there was some reason in
this, for the elevations which could reach her as Arthur’s wife were, in
a sense, humiliations. Everybody in his rank looked upon her with
wonder, with curiosity and suspicion, as on a creature of a different
race. Her actions were scrutinized, her little imperfections noted as
they never would have been otherwise. Whereas as the richest member of
the family, the one standing above them all at once by nature and by
position, the family goddess and beauty, and most successful member,
Nancy was looked up to and adored. Perhaps it was not wonderful that a
young creature with no sense of duty in her, who had expected merely, as
Arthur said, to be made happy, flattered, courted, and caressed in her
marriage, and to whom such disappointment had come, should prefer the
position in which she could regain a little of the self-pride and
complacency which was natural to her. The first blow which assails that
complacency, how terrible it is! And Nancy had been beaten down, though
she would not own it, by the sense of universal disapproval, by the
failure even of her own confidence in herself.
And it would be impossible to describe the strange desolation and sense
that all was over and ended, with which this self-willed and hot-headed
girl woke to her misery on the morning after Arthur went away. The
probation of the last few months had been very bad for Nancy. She was
not altogether unworthy, as poor Arthur was inclined to think, of the
higher opinion which had been formed of her; indeed it was the finer
element in her nature which had led her astray in the final strain and
trial. She who had been the superior of her family, who had been raised
to the poetic heaven of a young lover’s adoration, had after her
marriage plunged at once into a bottomless abyss of inferiority and
humiliation. It had begun upon her wedding-day with the vision of Lucy,
in whom her jealous, suddenly enlightened eyes had seen at a glance so
many differences, so many refinements unknown to herself--and with
Arthur’s objection to her salmon-coloured dress. Then her ignorance, her
want even of the most elementary acquaintance with the world he was
familiar with, was brought home to the alarmed, resentful girl on every
side of her. The more she found herself wanting, the hotter had risen
that suppressed fury in her heart against herself, her belongings, her
breeding, and the new circumstances which brought out all their
deficiencies. Pride first, and the vanity of flattered and self-admiring
youth had risen wildly against the apparent need of improvement, of
education and culture, which alone would have fitted her to be Arthur’s
wife; and if she rejected with proud disgust and self-assertion the idea
of improvement in herself, what was there for it but to turn her back
upon Arthur’s world and drag him into her own, where she was at her
ease, where she was still the first, whatever happened? This, however,
had not contented Nancy’s mind. She had been no more satisfied here than
elsewhere. The mere fact of withdrawing her husband into this village
atmosphere, which he supported patiently or impatiently, according to
the mood of the moment, but always with an effort, was in itself a
confession of failure. She was unfit for the society of his equals; and
he, was not he unfit for hers? None of these things had Nancy said to
herself, but they were all surging within, pushing her on by their very
tumult and unrest to ever more and more entire committal of herself to
this foolish and wrong way.
Nobody knew better than she how foolish it was and wrong; but the more
the conviction grew, the more ungovernable was her determination to be
stopped by no one, to yield to no one, to assert herself as everybody’s
equal or superior, claiming in her own right all the consideration that
a princess could command. She had never put these feelings into words,
passionate and vehement though they were, nor had she anyone in the
world to whom she could confide them. Poor girl! the conflict in her
mind had often been beyond utterance; but she had clung desperately all
through to that most variable and poorest of supports her personal
pride. And this had driven her into all manner of follies, as has been
seen, and into this culminating folly at last. She lay sleepless all the
night through, and wept, thinking of Arthur. It would be better for
him. No more would that anxious look come over his face, the look which
had driven her wild and made her ruder and more self-assertive than
ever, that anxiety as to her behaviour and her appearance which made her
tingle with the consciousness that she was still Nancy Bates, and would
still be judged as such, whatever might happen. He would not be troubled
with Nancy Bates now. He would go back untrammeled among his fine
friends, where nobody made mistakes in dress, and where everybody knew
as their A B C those things which were mysteries to her. He would be
free; Nancy jumped up in her bed clenching her hands, her eyes heavy,
her head hot, her brain almost mad with passion--he would be free! and
she left here to be sneered at, and smiled at, and pointed at--a wife, a
woman who had been forsaken. Then this furious sense of humiliation
would melt, and burst forth into a sense of something better which she
had concealed, which no one had ever known. She had been a failure; but
who would love him so well as she did among all the fine people he might
meet with? who would think of him so much? She, thinking of him, had
brought little happiness to Arthur; her love had been as a fire which
scorched and charred rather than one which warmed and gladdened--but
still, if anything happened to him, if trouble came in his way, who
would be faithful like his wife, faithful to death, ready to confront
every danger for him; but that he would never know. The convulsions of
feeling which she thus went through fortunately made Nancy ill. For a
day or two she was feverish, and kept her bed, where she was waited on
with sedulous care by her mother and sisters. They had never failed in
kindness or affection, but they were now more anxious, more concerned
than ever, for Nancy was still the great person of the family. She was
rich in comparison with them. She had a house of her own--she was a
lady. Numberless benefits might flow to them from her hands. This was
not necessary to make these good people kind to their own flesh and
blood; but still such considerations warm and quicken human feeling.
They were not fond of Nancy for what she had to bestow, but the fact
that she had something to bestow did not diminish their fondness. They
hushed the house and kept it still, making Charley’s life miserable, and
the father’s a burden to him, for Nancy’s sake. It was her nerves, poor
thing, they said, and everything had to give way to Nancy’s
nerves--things hitherto unknown in the house.
When, however, Nancy came downstairs at last, after her bout of illness,
she experienced not only the horrible sense of re-beginning which wrings
the soul after any great calamity, but a sudden and fantastic increase
of misery in the disgust which seized upon her for all her surroundings.
Not only had she a new life to begin without Arthur, without hope,
without any future widening of her horizon possible; but the home which
she had sought so anxiously, and to which she had clung in opposition to
Arthur and defiance of him, suddenly changed its aspect to her. She
felt it the first afternoon when she came downstairs supported, though
it was unnecessary, by her anxious mother, and was placed in the old
easy-chair by the fire, which was burning brightly, though it was not
necessary either, on this soft spring afternoon. She had scarcely sat
down in the chair, which was her father’s chair, close to the fire and
to the little mahogany bracket on which he placed his rum-and-water,
when this sudden loathing seized her. The afternoon sun was shining into
the room, betraying dust where dust was not expected, showing the
imperfections of everything--the old haircloth sofa in the corner, the
not very clean carpet, the table covered with painted oil-cloth.
Meanness, smallness, poverty seemed to have come into every detail. The
air was too warm, and it was not fresh, but retained odours of the
dinner, of the beer and cheese with which it had been concluded; for
Mrs. Bates had not liked to open the window to chill the air for the
invalid. What spell had fallen upon this room, which she had so longed
for, and which she had returned to with such content? How mean it
looked, what a contracted, paltry place, unlovely, unsweet! And it was
to this that she had dragged Arthur! this was the thought that flew like
an arrow through Nancy’s mind. They brought a little tray with tea, and
hot muffins to tempt her invalid appetite, and Mrs. Bates was at once
alarmed and vexed when she pushed it peevishly away and declined to eat.
“You all know I can’t bear muffins!” cried Nancy, pushing it away
rudely; and her own action made her sick with self-disgust as she noted
unconsciously how rude, how ungracious and ungrateful it was. Yes, she
was like the place, rude, ill-bred, not a lady! She could have cried,
but she was too proud to cry, and instead of this innocent relief to her
mind, became cross in her wretchedness and found fault with everything.
“Oh, how hot it is!” she cried, “how can you live in this stifling
atmosphere? One would think you were always having dinner, it is so
stuffy--open the window for pity sake!” But when the window was open
she began to shiver. “There is not a corner that is out of the draught,”
she said. Nothing that they did pleased her. Sarah Jane’s noisy ways, as
she went sweeping about, knocking down a chair here and a footstool
there, sweeping against the table, were insupportable, and Matilda’s
demure quietness not much better. Everything grated on Nancy. And this
was where she had brought Arthur! and had been angry that he was not
delighted; and now Arthur was gone never to be found any more. Oh, how
her heart sank in her miserable bosom! Then came tea, the tray placed
upon the oilcloth, and hot toast this time brought to her instead of the
muffins. The room was full now, her father and Charley added to the
group of women. Mr. Bates looked at her when he came in, sitting in his
chair, with a “humph!” of disapproval. Was she not only to be a failure
as far as all their hopes were concerned, but to occupy his place also
and put everybody out? Nancy saw the look, and jumped up in hot
resentment.
“Oh, you shall have your chair!” she cried, and retreated to the sofa,
where her mother feared she would take cold, so far from the fire.
“Cold!” cried Nancy, “I think I shall never be cool again. You don’t
know how stuffy it is in this close little room.”
“Upon my word!” said Sarah Jane. “Nobody’s obliged to stay here. It is
good enough for us, and so it might be for Nancy. I don’t see that she’s
any better than the rest.”
“Oh, hold your tongue, Sarah Jane,” cried Mrs. Bates; “can’t you see
that your poor sister is poorly and out of sorts?” But neither did she
like to hear the parlour called stuffy. If it was good enough for the
others, why was it not good enough for Nancy? And then the family
settled to their evening occupations, and the lamp was brought in, which
added the smell of paraffin to that of the tea. And then Mr. Bates had
his rum-and-water; and Mr. Raisins came to visit Sarah Jane. He came in
with a witty greeting to the family, which made them all laugh.
“Here we are again! and how was you all?” he said, with refined
jocosity; and was making his way to the sofa, which was the lover’s
corner, when he saw Nancy there, and drew up with a significant look of
dismay and a prolonged whistle of surprise. Nancy could bear it no
longer. She started up with a cry of anger, and flew up-stairs to her
room, sick with disgust and misery.
“Do you like to see me insulted, mamma?” she said, when Mrs. Bates
followed. “How can you endure that vulgar fellow? and how dares he show
his insolence to me?”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Bates, “you must not be unreasonable. He did not
mean to be insolent. If we have not the refinements you have been used
to, Nancy, still you mustn’t forget the advantages of your old home--”
“Advantages!” Nancy murmured under her breath, but pride kept down the
cry. Had not she sacrificed her life for these advantages, cast her own
existence to the winds? She went to bed miserable, and cried herself to
sleep.
This was but a melancholy beginning to the new life. When she heard
afterwards the arrangements that Arthur had made for her comfort, her
first impulse was to accept nothing.
“I am no wife to him,” she cried, “and why should I take his money? I
will not take his money. What am I to Arthur now that he should maintain
me? It is like taking charity.”
But here Mr. Bates came in, who had a certain authority in such matters,
if not a great deal of influence in other ways. Mr. Bates would stand no
nonsense. It was bad enough that the responsibility of his daughter, and
her behaviour as a married woman separated from her husband, should fall
upon her parents; but her support certainly should not, of that he was
clear. And Nancy, fresh from all these conflicts and miseries, was cowed
before her father, and dared not resist him, notwithstanding all her
efforts to hold her own. She who had not yielded to Arthur’s love and
generosity, yielded to the tax-collector’s practical decidedness. She
could not help herself. And after a few days’ growing wretchedness in
this “home,” for which she had sacrificed so much, Nancy was glad to
retire to the villa with the sensible Matilda for her companion, and
begin again as she best could in such changed and fallen circumstances
the career so perversely cut short. At least it was a relief to get away
from the stuffy parlour, and the rum-and-water, and the grocer’s wit and
courtship--all of which, heaven forgive her, she had called upon her
husband to endure.
* * * * *
In two years from this time, strangely enough, the Bates family and
almost all trace of them disappeared from Underhayes. Nothing had
happened to them for all Nancy’s lifetime till her marriage--nothing of
an exciting kind. There had been neither misfortune nor great success in
the house; but all had gone on with humdrum regularity, unexciting,
unalarming. Mr. Bates had got a little mild promotion, and they had
saved a very little money, and for the rest had eaten and drunk, and
slept and woke, and all had been as if it might thus go on for ever. So
flows the tranquil current of life, in many cases, for years and years,
until at length the cycle of change commences, and all that has been
done is undone. Nancy’s marriage was the first family event, but it was
followed in close succession by others. Charley went to New Zealand
shortly after the separation between Arthur Curtis and his wife. Then a
little after Sarah Jane married. Then Mr. Bates, in the midst of his
tax-collecting, had an accident, and after lingering for a time died;
and Mrs. Bates, a person of apparently robust constitution, both bodily
and mental, developed all at once, to the amazement of her family and
friends, an incapacity to live without the man whom she had not been
very enthusiastic about, or devoted to, during his lifetime, and died in
her turn, leaving her house desolate. Matilda, the only representative
of the name, would have joined Charley in New Zealand but for her
sister, to whom she had proved a discreet and faithful companion. After,
however, the little house was cleared, and all the old furniture
dispersed, sold, or laid up in the house of the Raisins’ for their
future use, the two elder sisters disappeared, no one, except, perhaps,
Sarah Jane, who said nothing about it, knowing whither. The little
parlour passed away, like all the teas and dinners that had been
consumed there, and the family existence ended. Notwithstanding the
moving events that had been transacted in it, and the temporary link
which had been woven between it and the upper classes of society, its
history was all over like a bubble, like the snow on the mountain and
the foam on the river. The same fate befalls small and great; but in the
case of a tax-collector the conclusion is more complete than that which
comes upon the higher classes, which Mr. Bates respected so much. Death,
emigration, marriage, disappearance, thus followed each other in swift
succession. Young Mrs. Raisins, blooming in her shop--where, however,
her bridegroom did not permit her to appear to minister to the wants of
a vulgar public, keeping her, on the contrary, in high happiness and
splendour, and without requiring her to do anything, in her drawing-room
above the shop--alone remained of the family in Underhayes. And as for
Nancy, no one knew anything about her, nor where she had gone.