“My darling,” said Arthur, humbly, “don’t, I beseech you!—don’t if you care for me, say Durant!”
“What should I say?” cried Nancy, more and more roused. “Mr. Durant, my Lord Durant, perhaps? Oh let’s be respectful, Sarah Jane! We didn’t know that it was royalty that was coming. Arthur is humble enough himself, but the moment we set up to be as good as his friend, then it shows. And I should like to know why we are to be on our knees to Mister Durant? Why shouldn’t Sally have her fun out of him if she likes? Oh, let me alone, mother! don’t go on winking and nodding at me. Arthur may take offence if he pleases, he may take himself off altogether if he pleases—what do I care? Do you think I am going to lie down for his family to tread over and spit upon, and all his friends? Not I! If he expects that, he has reckoned without Nancy—and that he’ll soon see.”
“Oh, Arthur, don’t mind her,” cried Mrs. Bates, “she’s just in one of her tantrums. Most times Nancy is as gentle as a lamb, but when she’s roused, she’s roused; and you’ll allow it’s aggravating. Not but Mr. Durant was very civil spoken, I haven’t a word to say against him. Indeed, I rather liked him, what I saw of him. You’re both too touchy, that’s what it is; Nancy can’t bear her sister to be set down as if she was nobody, and Arthur don’t like any joking about his friend. But there, there now, kiss and be friends, children! If you quarrel you only make each other miserable, and get miserable yourself. The night before last and last night were both spoiled with it. Don’t you go on, now he’s gone.”
“I have no wish to go on,” said Arthur, rather gloomily. He had risen from the side of his betrothed, and was walking up and down, biting his nails, which was a way he had. Certainly there was no reason in the world why he should be so sensitive about Durant. Durant’s social pretensions were much beneath his own and he had found his fate in this humble place; why should every vein tingle with the idea that Durant, who was only the Bond Street saddler’s grandson after all, should flirt with Sarah Jane? But nature is unreasonable. Right or wrong, the suggestion filled him with ridiculous annoyance and disgust.
“Well, mother,” said Nancy, “if my sister is not to be allowed to joke about his friend, why should he pretend to be in love with me? Sarah Jane is as good as I am. She’s just the same as I am. She’s younger, and most folks think she’s prettier. If Durant is too good for her, it stands to reason that he is too good for me.”
“For Heaven’s sake let there be an end of this!” cried Arthur. “You don’t know the effect your words have upon me. They make me ill, they make me wretched. I say nothing against Sarah Jane. I never have been the least negligent, the least disrespectful of your sister.”
“No, indeed,” said Sarah Jane, who was good-nature itself, “Arthur has never got on the high-horse to me. He’s always been kind. It’s nothing worth talking about. A deal of folks are touchy about their friends, more touchy than about themselves.”
“But,” said Arthur, sitting down on the sofa again, and relapsing into his lover’s whisper, “they are not you; you are yourself, my own Nancy, my flower among weeds—there is nobody like you; don’t you know that I think so? Then don’t expect me to put them, or anyone, on the same level with you.”
Nancy held back and grumbled still, shutting her ear against these sweet words. But Sarah Jane had retired from the field, and her mother made secret signs to her, deprecating her folly. Why should she “go on” like that, and worry Arthur? Thus after awhile the commotion subsided. Durant was gone safely out of the place, and it was within about ten days only of the wedding. This must certainly be the last of the storms, though it was by no means the first. The house was too small to overflow with millinery, as most houses do at such a moment, and the Bates’ were not rich enough to fit out the bride extensively; but yet they were doing what they could for her. Though she had only white muslin for her wedding-dress, her mother had gone up to Shoolbred’s to buy Nancy a “silk” for best, which, except her aunt’s old ones, was the first “silk” she had ever had. And everything was progressing. Arthur, if he could have managed it, would have had a kind of runaway wedding, but the Bates’ were respectable, and would not hear of such a thing. All was to be done decently and in order, however he might feel. It was the first wedding in the family, and they meant to do justice to it. But when Arthur went back to his room in Mr. Eagles’ commodious house that evening, his heart was heavier than it became the heart of a bridegroom to be. Up to this time he had been able to turn off with a laugh the incongruities of his position; even they seemed to give piquancy to his happiness, and to the perfections of the beautiful bride whom he had found in so humble a place. Who could think of the place when they saw her? And Nancy in reality was full of variety and charm, and the courtship had been amusing as well as entrancing, devoid of all that monotony which is the usual curse of successful love. But Durant’s visit had given a great shock to the young man, and oddly enough the whole force of that shock only came upon him when Sarah Jane made her little speech implying an interest on her part in Durant. Sarah Jane! the idea was so preposterous, so unnatural, that he laughed in spite of himself, and then grew hot, and red, and angry.
This attempt to repeat his own love-history, with Durant for the hero and Sarah Jane for the heroine, seemed to throw ridicule and debasement upon the little romance of which, up to this moment, he had been almost proud. It seemed to place Sarah Jane on the same level with her sister, a suggestion which fired him to fury. For there was just so much truth in it as made the suggestion intolerable. To the eyes of the world, perhaps, even to his mother and sister, there might seem no difference between Nancy and Sarah Jane; and he himself might seem to others to make as ridiculous a figure as he would feel Durant to make had he fallen a victim to the other girl’s attractions. The feeling that this was so, though he would not allow it in words, haunted him, as it were, underground, in the bottom of his heart, and made him more angry than anything had yet done. He would not allow it to be put into words even within his mind, but it had flashed across him, and could not now be annihilated; he himself must appear to others as contemptible, as idiotical as he would have felt Durant to be had he wanted to marry Sarah Jane. And this idea brought all his native world before him, his mother and sister, who, no doubt, by this time had heard Durant’s account, and were talking it over, as women do, going over and over it, and coming back to it again and again. He could see them in the large rooms of the house in town, where they had come hastily from the country on hearing all this, and where he had been summoned to meet them, though he had refused to go. How different those rooms were from Mrs. Bates’ parlour! It would have been strange indeed if the contrast had not struck him. He saw in imagination the two anxious faces close to each other in the wider horizon of their life and surroundings, the spacious quiet, the order and refinement which he had grown almost out of acquaintance with. What story would Durant tell, what account would he give? Would he place Nancy on a level with the others of her family, or was he sufficiently clever to perceive the vast difference between them? Arthur could not tell. If Durant had, indeed, walked and talked voluntarily with Sarah Jane, was it possible that he could perceive the infinite superiority of Nancy? His lip curled with the true stage sneer. He was ready to have laughed the “Ha, ha!” the bitter laugh of conventional ridicule and despair. It was long now since he had paid any attention to the reading which was his supposed object, and he rushed hastily upstairs to his room when he entered the house of Mr. Eagles. It was a large, handsome, old-fashioned house. He went upstairs, glad that all the doors were closed, and that there was nobody to meet him on the stairs to ask him unpleasant questions. Mr. Eagles had said something to him on the day before which had offended Arthur, but which he had been half inclined to laugh at; but he did not laugh now. Out of his own half-amusement with the circumstances of his wooing, he had come suddenly, through Durant, to have an angry and wounded consciousness of how it would appear to the world. Even the Eagles’, what must they think? Arthur resolved hastily not to continue here, to separate himself at least from criticism. Certainly Durant, thus far, had done him nothing but harm. He had opened his eyes, as the eyes of Adam were opened in the garden, and a hot, resentful shame, not of his Nancy or his projected marriage, but of the wrong and ridiculous ideas people might entertain about them, had risen up in his mind. Nothing could have been a worse preparation for the visit which Mr. Eagles himself was coming upstairs to make him. Mr. Eagles felt that he had already delayed much too long, and put himself in the wrong by his non-interference; but Durant’s visit had broken the ice for him, and he had made up his mind to delay no longer. Arthur had scarcely lighted his candles and thrown himself into his easy-chair by the fire, when the master of the house knocked at his door.