“Well, my dear, let us hope so; for he will want all his friends. I think so myself,” said Lady Curtis. “In any trouble! What do you call this but trouble? If he had lost everything he had in the world, it would not be half so bad; but men have such strange ways of looking at things. If he were to break his leg or get a bad illness, which would not be half so serious——”
“Oh, mamma!” cried Lucy, putting out two fingers of her pretty hand to avert the evil omen.
“Well, well, you know that is not what I mean. God forbid my boy should be ill, away from home, among strangers!” cried Lady Curtis. “It would be strange if you had to faire les cornes for anything his mother said; but what would illness be in comparison with this? In that case, Mr. Durant would be perfect, I feel sure of it; but now——”
“I think he was pleased to see how your heart melted to poor Arthur, and to know of this,” said Lucy, pointing to a letter which lay on the table. Was it for her to say that there was still something else which made Durant still more glad?
“Oh, Lucy! as if my heart required to be melted towards my son, my only boy!”
And then you may be sure Lucy cried; what could a girl do?
It can scarcely be said that these preparatory days were much more cheerful to Arthur. Everybody had dropped away from him. He had the prospect in a few days of what people are pleased to call happiness. He was to marry the bride of his choice, and to take her away with him, the two by themselves, the Elysium of the primitive imagination; and Arthur was very much in love. He believed that as soon as they got away, when he had once separated this rose of his from all the domestic thorns surrounding her, he would be perfectly happy. It was the one redeeming point in the difficulties of the moment that he entirely believed this. Then, at least, he thought he was sure of blessedness; and that prospect made much possible that would not have been possible otherwise. But to be cut off from all companionship of his own class, even from Mr. Eagles, and the “men” who frequented Mr. Eagles’ intellectual workshops; to be separated from his family whom he loved, though he was angry with them, to have nothing to do, though on ordinary occasions he was not disposed to do very much—this isolation was very hard upon Arthur. He had no society but that of the Bates’ household, and was often left to amuse himself as he could in the stuffy parlour, without even Nancy, who had naturally a great many things to do on the eve of her wedding, which brides in rich households are not called upon to think of. Arthur winced when he had to endure the companionship of the tax-collector or his son Charley, unsweetened by Nancy’s presence; and it must be allowed that as the time approached which was to bind him for ever to the family, his toleration of them, which during his courtship had been unbounded, began to give way. It began to be very hard to put up with Mr. Bates’ rum-and-water, and the railleries of Sarah Jane; and Matilda and Mrs. Bates, both of whom were “sensible,” began to perceive this—the mother with resentment, the daughter with a certain sympathy. Matilda intimated to her mother that “it was touch and go with Arthur,” and that she “wasn’t surprised;” but the father and son and Sarah Jane remained happily unaware that they were not the best of company for Nancy’s future husband, whom they called freely by his Christian name, making him “quite at home.” This gave him an eagerness to push on the wedding, which was quite the proper thing in the circumstances. He would have had it a week earlier if he could have persuaded them to depart from any of the grandeur they intended, and as it was, he chafed and grumbled at the delay in a way, which as Mrs. Bates remarked, was “most flattering” for them all. But poor Arthur had no intention of flattering. He could do nothing but sit in his lodgings, or in the Bates’ parlour, and watch the progress of the hours. After the wedding he vowed to himself he would change all that; there would be an entire revolution in his life; he would escape with his Nancy into a better and fresher air, and when they asked about the return of the pair, he did his best to evade the question.
“I don’t think we must bind ourselves to anything, Mrs. Bates. If Nancy likes Paris we may stay there—or if we can get as far as Italy——”
“Oh, I shan’t stay very long, mamma,” said Nancy, “I daresay I shall soon get tired among foreigners.”
“Shouldn’t I like to see you,” cried Mrs. Bates, “you that know the language! What a good thing it is you that is going, and not Matilda or Sarah Jane.”