Durant who was not by a long way so melancholy as he ought to have been, did what he could to make the party more cheerful. How could he be otherwise than happy with Lucy seated opposite to him, travelling with him, with an air of belonging to him, which filled the young man’s veins as with wine? Sometimes he almost could have believed that it was his own wedding day, not Arthur’s, and that something more than his most foolish hopes had been realized. Alas, on the contrary, did not Arthur’s wedding make his own more hopeless than ever? Would the parents ever consent to a second unsatisfactory alliance; and what could a poor young barrister, grandson of a fortunate saddler, with the saddler’s blood in his veins but none of his money in his pockets, be but a very unsatisfactory match for Sir John Curtis’s daughter? This thought did more than friendship to restore him to the state of mind becoming the occasion, and in harmony with his companions’ mood; but yet by moments he forgot it, and half believed himself to be carrying Lucy off to Italy, as Arthur was about to carry his wife away from these dreary skies. How much happier he would have been than Arthur! as much happier as Lucy Curtis was more lovely, more beautiful, more desirable than the young virago Nancy Bates. If Lucy only had been more humbly born, less well endowed! how could he wish her less fair and sweet?
He had to hold an umbrella over her as he took her to the church in which the ceremony was to take place, and he liked the rain. Old Davies, who came stumping and crying after them in a waterproof, thought it the most miserable day she ever had seen; but the young pair under the umbrella, though they were very sad (or thought they were) did not so much dislike the day. Lucy was much afraid lest she should meet the party, and yet had a yearning to be recognised by accident by her brother as well as a terror of it. She talked to Durant about this all the way, raising her pale face and those eyes which had the clearness of the skies after rain, and confiding all her feelings to him.
“If it was by accident there would be no harm; could there be any harm? I would not put myself in the way; but if it happened—”
“You could not see him to-day, could you, without also seeing her?”
A tear dropped hastily upon his arm, and Lucy turned her head a little away to hide that her eyes were again full. “That is the worst of all,” she said, “my only brother! and I shall never again be able to see him without her—that is the worst of all. Oh, Mr. Durant, I don’t mean anything against marriage, for I suppose people are—often—happy; but it is not happy for other people, is it? It tears one away from all that belong to one—”
How hard it was for him to answer her! “This is an exceptional case,” he said, his voice trembling a little, “but we must not be infidels to the highest happiness—and love.”
“Oh, love!” cried Lucy, who was thinking of her brother with all the faculties of her being, although her heart was vaguely warmed and stilled unawares by the close neighbourhood of this other who was not her brother. “Love! as if there was but one kind. I did not think you would have spoken so. Do not we love him, Mr. Durant? and yet he casts us off for some one he scarcely knows.”
“He will come back to you; it cannot be that the separation is for long. Arthur is not the man—”
“Oh, Mr. Durant, you mean that he will not be happy? I don’t want him to be unhappy. Oh, God forbid! and why should not he be happy,” said Lucy with tearful inconsistency, “if he loves her?” What could Durant say? He could think of nothing but the foolishest, most traitorous, dishonourable things, dishonourable to the trust put in him, treacherous to the confidence with which she held his arm. The very tightening of her hold, when they met other passers by on the narrow pavement, made him feel himself the basest of men, when he felt those unsayable words flutter to his lips—yet made them only flutter the more. He was glad to be able to put his companion into a deep pew in the old fashioned church, underneath the gallery, where it would be doubly impossible for anyone to see her. Lucy pulled her cloak closely round her, and drew her veil over her face. Mrs. Davies was short, and was almost lost in the depth of the pew—and they were all very glad that the church was still encumbered with this old-fashioned lumber, and that no restorations as yet had been commenced. Durant seated himself still further back. It was a gloomy place—an old church, low-roofed and partly whitewashed. The East window looked out into a great oak, which, with its yellow leaves, was the only thing that seemed to give a little light. The dreary lines of pews seemed to add to the dismal character of the scene, the half-daylight, the rain drizzling, the old pew-opener going about in pattens—no carpet laid down for the bridal feet, or any “fuss” made. Why should any “fuss” be made about Bates the tax-collector’s daughter? And no one was disposed to do honour to Arthur, but rather the reverse, as a young man forsaking his caste, and setting the worst of examples to all other young men.
Now and then somebody would come in with a sound of closing umbrellas, and swinging of the doors, and come noisily up the aisle and drop into a pew. Girls, like Sarah Jane, in cheap hats with cheaper feathers, who sat and whispered, and laughed, and looked about them, and women of Mrs. Bates’ own type, with big shawls and nondescript bonnets, came to see the Bates’ triumph with no very friendly sympathy. The dreariest scene! Durant sat behind and looked at it all with his heart beating. In the general commotion in which his mind was, he too could have cried as Lucy was doing over Arthur. How different was all this from the circumstances that ought to have attended the “happiest day of his life;” would it be the happiest day of his life;—or perhaps the most miserable? And yet, if the spectator could have taken the hand of that pale girl in front of him, and led her up to that dingy altar, how soon would he have forgotten all the circumstances! The damp-breathing place, the clammy pews, the squalor of the rain, the absence of all beauty and tokens of delight, what would they have done but make his happiness show all the brighter? Would the effect be the same with Arthur too? They had very soon an opportunity of judging; for Arthur came in suddenly by himself, looking anything but ecstatic. Fortunately, Durant thought, Lucy did not see him, her head being bent and covered with her hands. But Durant himself watched the bridegroom with feelings which he could not have described, a mixture of pity, and envy, and fellow-feeling, and contempt. That a man who was the brother of Lucy Curtis should throw away everything for Nancy Bates! and yet to have it in your power to throw away everything for love, to give the woman you had chosen, if she were only Nancy Bates, such a proof of affection, absolute and unmixed! But Arthur scarcely seemed conscious himself of that fine position. He was very pale, with an excited look about the eyes which gave him a worn and exhausted aspect. He was feeling to the bottom of his soul the squalor, the dinginess, the damp, and the gloom. What a day it was to be married on! What a place to be married in! What dismal surroundings? old Bates and Charley, and the uncle from Wapping, and not one familiar face to look kindly at him, to wish him happiness in a voice that was dear. He sat down in the front, gazing blankly, like Durant, at the oaktree that shed a little colour from its autumn leaves. It reminded him, by some fantastic trick of association, of the trees at home. Would he ever see that home again? The disjunction from everything he had cared for, from all he knew, came over him with a forlorn sense of desolation and solitude—on his wedding-day! Arthur felt he was doing wrong to his bride, but how could he help it? He, too, covered his face with his hands. Durant felt that if Lucy saw him she would rush to him in indifference to all appearances, but she did not know he had passed her so quietly, all alone.