Everything went on very quietly at Oakley during these two years.
Arthur’s visit at home was very brief, and not very lively. And if there
was a temporary sense of relief in Lady Curtis’s mind to know that he
had escaped from the influence of “those people” and “that young woman,”
it soon disappeared in presence of Arthur’s melancholy looks, and in
contemplation of the painful position of a man so young, who was
married, and yet not married, and whose path, accordingly, could not but
be full of thorns and troubles. Such a position is dangerous and
difficult in any sphere; but how much more in that to which he was
going, where every temptation of society would surround the young man,
and every freedom would be accorded to him! The mother and sister had
many a discussion over him; but how difficult it was to question him on
the subject, to pry into those arrangements of his which he did not care
to reveal, or to ask anything about the final causes of the separation!
Arthur, for his part, did not speak on the subject; when he arrived, at
first, he had let them know, in a few words, that his wife and he had
parted. “Don’t ask me about it, for I can’t tell you. I don’t know how
it is,” he had said to his mother. “She will not conform to my way of
living, and I cannot conform to hers--that is all. There is no blame;
but how it happened, don’t ask me, for I don’t know.” Lady Curtis
respected the request absolutely, and inquired no more of him. But it is
needless to say how interesting the subject was to her; and with what
eagerness she endeavoured to get the information otherwise which Arthur
would not furnish. Durant told her all that he knew personally, all that
happened under his own eyes; but this was not much more satisfactory
than Arthur’s silence. “He has an air of thinking that she was not so
very much in the wrong after all,” Lady Curtis said. “I do not
understand Lewis. You would almost think, from the letters he writes,
that she had bewitched him too.”
“I don’t think so,” Lucy said quickly, with a passing look upon her face
which surprised her mother.
“I don’t mean to say anything against her,” said Lady Curtis. “It is not
to be supposed that she has any great fault. God forbid, Lucy! I did not
mean that.”
Lucy did not make any reply. It was not, perhaps, her brother’s wife she
was thinking of. And when Arthur went away, Nancy became as if she had
never existed to the family. They had Arthur’s letters as in the days
when nothing lay between him and home; nothing but mere distance and
absence--time and space, innocent obstacles which harm no one, though
they are hard enough to put up with. And his wife, whom he ceased to
speak of, fell into the background with his people. To be sure, when
any young man in the county, or whom they knew, made a brilliant and
satisfactory marriage, Lady Curtis and Lucy would look at each other
with quick interchange of glances. And Sir John would come in, in the
afternoon, and set his back against the mantel-piece, while he took his
cup of tea, and say with a sigh, “They seem to be making a great fuss
over young Seymour’s marriage.”
“Yes,” Lady Curtis would answer with another sigh, “and no
wonder--nothing could be more suitable.” They were almost angry with
young Seymour for marrying as the heir to such a property ought to have
married; and, probably, Lucy would launch some arrow at the new pair in
sheer impatience of the praise thus accorded. “So suitable that it is
unnecessary to think of love in the matter,” Lucy perhaps would say. And
then Sir John would shrug his shoulders as he stood before the fire.
“Love! that’s neither here nor there; if all the follies could be
collected that have been done in the name of love!” And he would shake
his grey old head, and again sigh, looking with eyes of admiration at
Lucy as he went slowly back to his library, not able to get young
Seymour and his fine marriage out of his head. Lady Curtis broke into a
smile against her will as he went away.
“You are not to think of any such folly, Lucy,” she said, “your father
thinks that with your fortune you would be very happy unmarried. He says
it is only poor people who need fear the fate of old maids. This is a
great step for Sir John to take, who is such a Conservative.”
“Are old maids against the Tory faith?” said Lucy, not sorry to have
something to say.
“Yes; it is the ancient creed that every woman should marry, and that it
is only the ugly, the cross, and the unloveable that fail to attain that
glorious end. What a stretch of principle this is for your father! _I_
do not go so far even with my advanced views.”
Lady Curtis looked at her daughter curiously as she spoke. They spent
their lives together, hour by hour and year by year. They had everything
in common--when the post came in, they opened each other’s letters
indiscriminately, the last depth of mutual confidence; read the same
books, thought the same thoughts, were one in all the affairs of life;
and yet in this most intimate affair of all, the mother looked at the
daughter with unutterable yearnings of curiosity, not knowing what Lucy
thought.
Nothing was said for some time after. Spring had come breathing over the
woods, and to look between the pillars of the facade through the long
windows of my lady’s room upon the avenue, was like looking into a
wilderness of buds and hopes. “Here is Bertie coming again,” she said
with a little impatience; then laughing, “he is one, Lucy, of whom your
father is afraid.”
“Poor Bertie!” said Lucy composedly; but she was startled into dismay
when her mother suddenly burst into tears.
“To think,” said Lady Curtis, “that Bertie’s child, if he had a child,
would be your father’s heir!”
“Mamma!” Lucy blushed crimson, then laughed. “He is the second son--and
Arthur--”
“Arthur will never have any children,” said Lady Curtis gloomily, “if
things do not change. And she is young and strong, as young as you
are--why should she die to accommodate us? And Gerald Curtis is a
wandering invalid. Ah! there is no fear of the Seymours--they will have
their own flesh and blood after them whatever happens. But your father
is growing an old man, Lucy; and Bertie--Bertie’s son will be the heir!”
“He is not even married yet; there can be no need for vexing ourselves
over such a remote contingency.”
“But it will happen,” said Arthur’s mother, “though it is so remote. My
boy is like Warrington, in ‘Pendennis,’ Lucy, shut off from life; no
child for him, no love for him; all because of one foolish, foolish step
when he was nothing but a boy!”
“But, mamma! you really do not mean that boys should be permitted to
escape the consequences of such foolish steps,” cried Lucy. “How unlike
you to say so!”
“Ah! one becomes unlike one’s self when it is one’s self that suffers,”
said Lady Curtis with a sigh.
And then Bertie made his appearance, and all feeling was banished from
her countenance. She discussed young Seymour’s marriage with interest.
“Nothing could have been more suitable. So suitable that one felt
something must interpose to put a stop to it. The girl of all others he
ought to have married! And a charming girl--pretty and well-bred, and
sweet--”
“I hear they are all immensely pleased; but I do not admire her so much
as you do. She is not the style I care for,” said the Rector. “She is
too charming, and too sensible, and too everything she ought to be--for
me.”
“Faultily faultless,” said Lady Curtis smiling. She was pleased that he
did not approve of young Seymour’s perfect wife.
“And she is heavy,” said Bertie. “I used to know her very well. Her
brother was of my college. She will not be an addition to the gaiety of
the family. She has not very much to say for herself.”
“All the more suitable,” Lady Curtis said, brightening visibly, “they
are all heavy.” She had never liked Bertie so well. She told him the
news in Arthur’s last letter, that he was liking Vienna very much, and
happy in his new position; and wound up by an invitation to dinner. Lucy
sat by and worked, and wondered, not without a smile about the corners
of her mouth. She had no objection to her cousin, nor any alarm of him
in her mind. He was “not the style she cared for,” she said to herself
with a mocking echo of his speech; but that Lady Curtis, after her
melancholy anticipation of the inevitable heirship of Bertie’s
problematical son should be so easily mollified, amused her daughter.
She let the conversation go on while she worked quietly, thinking her
own thoughts. Lucy did not, perhaps, find the idea of remaining
unmarried as attractive as her father did. She smiled at that too in
her secret thoughts. Who is there that does not smile at it, being
young? Why should there be anyone in the world who was not happy--who
did not have all that the imagination desires, love and honour, and all
the brightnesses and sympathy which love can give? Lucy had a private
world to retire into at odd moments, a world so peopled that her fancy
could not receive the idea of a lonely life. While her mother and Bertie
talked, she had opened her secret door and gone in, entering into that
vague sweet blessedness of dreams which is more than any vulgar reality
of happiness. She heard their conversation, but it did not touch her.
Her head was bent down a little over that work at which she was seldom
so industrious, and even the smile was concealed that floated about her
lips--that smile which was not for her family, much as she loved them.
Lady Curtis had tried her best to lift the curtain, to look into that
secret world of which she suspected the existence, but which she had no
clue to, no thread to guide her through; but it did not occur to her to
think of this at the moment when her daughter had escaped into it from
her very side.
“So Bertie is coming,” said Sir John. “Why, Bertie? Yes, to be sure, he
is a relation, and has a claim; but I see no reason why you should ask
him so often. It looks as if you meant to throw him in Lucy’s way.”
“He will never be anything to Lucy,” said Lady Curtis, smiling.
“That is all very well; but how do you know? Girls are not like anything
else. They may hate a man one week and accept him the next. I’ve lived
long enough to see that.”
“You think they like to begin with a little aversion, as Mrs. Malaprop
says--”
“Eh? I don’t know anything about Mrs. Malaprop. I speak from my own
observation. I would not put him in Lucy’s way.”
“No one would be less likely to attract Lucy’s attention. Why, Bertie!
he is no more equal to Lucy--”
“As if that mattered,” said Sir John, with quiet contempt. “What do they
care? You’ve had one example; you ought to know better; and you will
have another before you know where you are. You are injudicious, I must
say. You don’t mind whom you introduce Lucy to, my lady; and if it is
not one it will be another,” he said, winding up hurriedly as Lucy came
in. The parents both looked at her with that tender admiration which is,
perhaps, of all admiration the most exquisite. They were not easily
pleased in respect to Lucy. Her dress, her ornaments, her appearance
were all surveyed with fastidious eyes; and from her shiny hair to the
tip of her little satin shoe, these two difficult people could bear no
imperfection in this lamp of their life. Sir John’s inspection was not
so minute or so intelligent as his wife’s; he could not tell what she
had on, or whether there was technical perfection in her toilette; but
he was very critical about the general effect. As for Lady Curtis, she
went into all the details; and they were both satisfied; it was no
small thing to say. There was a little cluster of white narcissus in her
hair, which her mother liked, but at which Sir John shook his head. “Is
that for Bertie?” he said jealously, in his mind. Girls were strange
creatures; they liked to be admired whether they cared for the man who
admired them or not; and no doubt she would fall a victim to one of my
lady’s _protégés_, if not to Bertie. This thought it was, along with
disapprobation of the flowers, as something added to her toilette for
Bertie’s sake, which made Sir John shake his head.
“The Rolts were to have been here to-day,” said Lady Curtis; “but I hear
Mrs. John caught cold at the Seymours’, and Julia has gone to nurse
her.”
“Julia is always nursing somebody,” said Sir John.
Julia was Mrs. Rolt, the wife of the agent, who was a humble relation of
the Curtises; and Mrs. John Rolt was the wife of his brother, the lawyer
at Oakenden, who had the affairs of the county in his hands.
“She will have heard everything about the marriage. As soon as she comes
back she will rush up here, wet or dry, to tell us what the bridesmaids
had on, and all about the breakfast; it is a long time,” said Lady
Curtis with a sigh, “since there have been such grand doings in the
county; not since Arthur came of age.”
“I am glad to hear that Arthur gets on so well in Vienna,” said the
Rector, addressing himself to his uncle; “that is better than the
Seymours’ junketings. I hope he’ll make a mark in diplomacy. He ought
with his abilities.”
“Ah, yes,” said Sir John; “as for making a mark, that’s another thing.
It’s very well for the present; but a country gentleman’s place is at
home in his own county. It’s all very well now.”
“Well, Sir,” said the Rector, “some of us have no chance beyond the
county, or even the parish; but when a man has a chance he ought to take
advantage of it.”
“There’s nothing better than the county,” said Sir John, “and the parish
for a clergyman. What would you have? You can’t do more than your duty
wherever you may be. I hope Arthur will stick to his, and then I shan’t
complain. If he had been at it sooner it would have been better for us
all.”
“Lewis Durant has been hearing a great deal about him,” said Lady
Curtis; “everything that is most satisfactory. Lewis is not much in
society, I suppose, his work would not permit it; but he hears
everything at the club. That is where you men get all your news. I hear
all sorts of things from him; and he knows the kind of news that is most
acceptable here.”
“There is a great deal in that,” said the Rector. “Some men make quite a
business of it. It helps a man on wonderfully; but if Durant is rising
in his profession, as you were saying, he can’t have much time for his
club. Son of old Durant, the saddler, isn’t he? How odd that such men
should be in clubs at all.”
Bertie Curtis knew exactly what he was doing; he was not cowed by the
look of indignant wonder which met him from Lady Curtis’s eyes, nor the
less open gleam of scorn and defiance which came from under Lucy’s
drooped eyelids. It was Sir John the Rector meant to work upon, not the
ladies, whom he knew to be partizans of his rival. Nobody had ever
hinted that Durant was his rival, or that Sir John was nervous on the
subject; but there are some things which reveal themselves without the
aid of words.
“Not the son, the grandson,” said Sir John. “Old Durant is dead long
ago, and left a very good fortune; but they’ve run through a great part
of it, I fear. That is the worst of fortunes made in trade; they go as
fast as they come. As for young Durant, I wish half the young men in the
clubs were half as good fellows. But he is not the kind of man, one must
allow, whom you would expect to see familiar in our houses.”
“What kind of men do you like to see familiar in your house?” said Lady
Curtis. “Empty-headed nobodies? Lewis will always make his way. He has
friends that are more worth having than we are. He goes everywhere.”
“Does he, indeed?” said the Rector; “and his profession, what becomes of
his profession? His father--or grandfather, was it?--would not have
approved of that; but lawyers, though everybody says they are so
hardworking, have a great deal of leisure, I think. How different a
clergyman is, now--”
“Cousin Bertie, were you not at Epsom or somewhere the other day?” said
Lucy, whose indignation was almost beyond words.
“Yes; I went down with Gerald, who has to be amused, poor fellow; but I
did not think anyone knew,” the Rector said, hastily; at which Sir John,
though perhaps it was not quite polite, shook his head.
“The turf is all very well,” he said. “It suits some men well enough;
but a clergyman should not get the name of it, Bertie. I don’t like it
for a clergyman.”
“Nor I, Sir; you are perfectly right, as you always are. I may have
liked horses too much in my younger days--not wisely, but too well,
perhaps--we all have some weakness; but I hope since I took orders
there has been nothing to object to,” said the Rector, looking his
astonished uncle full in the face, with mild defiance. And what could
Sir John say thus boldly encountered? “Poor Gerald is a wretched
invalid,” he continued, “sick of everything. I never saw such a _blasé_
washed out being. He has had too much of what people call life, and he’s
tired enough of it all. They think at home that his health depends upon
keeping him amused--that’s why I went,” said Bertie, with all the
innocence imaginable. “We’ve all got to amuse him, and you might just as
well try to amuse this table. He is bored to death with everything. But
then, he always was my father’s favourite, and he can do no wrong.”
There was a pause, for this Gerald, the eldest son, who was bored with
everything, and in bad health, and possessed every attribute disliked by
Sir John, was, failing Arthur, the heir presumptive of Oakley; and this
passed through the minds of all the party, bringing a pang of
unhappiness with it, as the Rector knew it would do.
“Is he likely to marry I wonder?” said Sir John.
“That is the only foolish thing he has omitted to do. It is far from
being a foolish thing with most people; but with him, worn out in body
and mind, old before his time--and without a penny, why should he
marry?”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Sir John, with a sigh; and then he
broke out hastily with an exclamation and question, in which a stranger
would have seen little coherence. “Lord, what a strange world it is! How
many boys are there of the Seymours?” he said.
That was the bitterest thought to them. Young Seymour to marry somebody
so very suitable, and failing him, if he had not married, half-a-dozen
boys to succeed! whereas Arthur had put himself out of court, and made
all succession in the direct line impossible; and there were only
Anthony’s sons to follow. Anthony’s sons! the thought was gall and
wormwood to them both. Gerald, a worn out young _roué_, and Bertie; one
of them must come after Arthur, who had cut off himself, or at least cut
off all following, all blessings of succession. And such a suitable
marriage as young Seymour had made! What wonder if it went to their
hearts.
“I’ve seen Durant at Epsom too,” said the Rector, forgetting, for the
moment, his own line of self-defence; “he’s very much about, I think;
here and there, and wherever one goes. Men of his class lay themselves
out to please; they have more motive, I suppose, than men of more
assured position.”
“Mr. Durant,” said Lady Curtis, hotly, “lays himself out, if you like
the expression, Bertie, to be of use to his friends. He has got from his
Maker one of the kindest hearts that ever beat, and consequently he is
welcome wherever he is known.”
“There is justice though in what Bertie says,” said Sir John, coming up
with his heavy forces to conclude the argument. “A young fellow like
that may be very friendly, but you can’t take his friendship for
nothing, my lady; and what would you ladies say who make so much of him,
if the tradesman’s grandson asked for one of your daughters? That would
open your eyes.”
Sir John felt that he had made a great _coup_ when he said this, and he
was glad of the opportunity of saying it; but nevertheless he was a
little afraid of the consequences.
“Take another glass of wine,” he said, hurriedly, pushing the decanter
towards his nephew. “You’ll excuse me not sitting long to-night, for
I’ve something to do.”
This cut short any indignant remonstrance that might have been on Lady
Curtis’s lips. She and Lucy took the hint and went away; but they did
not say anything to each other, as they certainly would have done had
anyone but Durant been in question. To tell the truth, the great
curiosity in Lady Curtis’s curious and lively mind was on this subject
of Durant. What did Lucy think of him? What did he think of Lucy? But as
neither one nor the other had spoken to her on the subject, how could
she interfere? She stole many a look at her daughter as they went to
their tranquil occupations together. Perhaps Lucy’s eyes were heavier
than usual, less ready to meet her mother’s; but she said not a word on
the subject; and from Lady Curtis’s side, after that utterance of her
husband’s, what was there to say?