“I don’t care,” said Nancy, “you have said worse to me; and it’s true—and so it’s always true. I’d tell my own mother the same. What’s a mother? they didn’t choose to have us; they didn’t pick us out of the world; and now that we’re here we’ve got to do the best we can for ourselves. You may go where you like upon your missions, Mr. Durant, but not here—you shan’t come here; and if you come till doomsday you wouldn’t do any good, for they put more trust in me—and so they ought—than in a cunning lawyer like you. We know what lawyer means,” said the excited girl, once more shaking her small clenched fist in his face, “liar! and that’s seen in you.”
With this she turned and walked suddenly away, turning the corner of the high garden wall, and disappearing in a whirlwind of excitement and emotion, while he stood thunderstruck, staring after her. Durant stood still and stared, with his mouth open in the extremity of his surprise. He was too much startled even to be angry; but he was discomfited, there was no mistaking that sensation. As he stood looking after the excited girl, a sense of smallness, almost of baseness, came over him. He had wanted to save Arthur, but he had not taken the other human creature into consideration, who was just as important as Arthur to the world; and he had not realized the kind of being he had to deal with, when he had drawn up his own brief, as it were, and instructed himself in the line of argument to be pursued. Lawyer, liar! that was a sharp thorn. He was able to smile feebly at it, as he picked himself up and went slowly back to his inn; but he could not shake off the sense of failure—the sense of smallness and meanness that had come over him. Not only had he found a foeman worthy of his steel, but she had baffled him and put him to shame even in his own eyes.
CHAPTER VII.
NOR were Durant’s troubles over for that day. In the evening another tempest came upon him. He had finished his solitary dinner, and written his letter to Lady Curtis, which was considerably changed from what it was intended to be. He had meant to say that he was in great hopes of having succeeded in his attempt to convince the Bates’ that it was not for their interest to allow Arthur to marry their daughter; but after his interview with Nancy, he could not say this. On the contrary, he gave a description of her future daughter-in-law, which was very much more favourable to that young woman than anyone could have expected.
“She has a great deal of character,” he wrote. “She is not vulgar by nature, nor devoid of intelligence. If things come to the worst, something may be made of her.”
This was not very satisfactory to Lady Curtis, who would almost rather have heard that her son was about to marry a demon incarnate, who would disgust him sooner or later, and from whom even yet he might be driven. So that poor Durant had doubly lost his work.
He was finishing this letter when his door was opened suddenly, and Arthur Curtis came in unannounced. He was quite pale, with eyes which gleamed red and angry, and an air of furious calm—passion at the white stage to which no utterance would suffice. He came in, closed the door behind him, and then coming forward, dashed his clenched hand upon the table.
“Look here,” he said, “I’ll have none of your interference, Durant. Friend you may be, if you like, but dictator to me never—no, I cannot put up with it, and I won’t. What has come to you that you can steal into people’s houses and try to deceive a lot of silly women? That is not the sort of thing that used to suit you.”
“I have deceived nobody,” said Durant, getting red in spite of himself. “It is you who have deceived them.”
“Yes, that’s it, isn’t it?—the argument suits the conduct,” said Arthur, with a sneer. “‘It is not me, it is you,’—the very thing I should have expected to be said; but look here, Durant, if you come between her and me again, if you try to make mischief with her family, if you get me into further trouble, I’ll—by Jove, I’ll—”