“It is quite true, it is quite true,” said Lady Curtis, “all that your papa says is true.” Her heart was so wrung that she scarcely knew whom she was addressing, Arthur, who had gone away in his disobedience, or Lucy, in whom there were faint appearances of standing up for her brother. The mother would not divest herself of the sense of a domestic audience to be convinced, whom perhaps their papa might be effectual with, though she had failed herself.
“What he could think he was to gain by it!” Sir John resumed, encouraged by this support, which he did not always receive from his wife. “Debt and that sort of thing is bad enough, and we know how young men are drawn into it; but what could anybody suppose this was going to be but ruin and destruction; what could he think there was to gain?”
“Oh, papa!” Lucy could not keep silence any longer. It was not the habit of the house to allow papa to have everything his own way. When Arthur’s youthful peccadilloes had been discussed hitherto, Lady Curtis, however she might object to his conduct, had always been his champion with his father, and one of the greatest marvels and most confusing circumstances of all was this silence on her part, and surrender as it were of Arthur to be crushed as Sir John pleased. Lucy could not be still and hear it all. “Oh, papa!” she cried, “you speak as if poor Arthur thought of nothing but his own interest; was he so selfish? you know that he never thought of what was for his interest at all. Cannot you believe that he loved her, and that this was his motive?”
“My dear,” said Sir John, “I was not speaking to you. You stand up for one another as is natural. But see, even your mother has not a word to say.”
This roused Lady Curtis from her depression. “I disapprove of it all as much as you can do, John; I am as unhappy; but still I do not think there was any calculation in Arthur’s mind; how should there have been? It was the height of foolishness and wicked hastiness, but he knew he could get nothing by it—he knew it was ruin, as you say.”
“Why did he do it then?” cried Sir John with outspread hands, appealing to heaven and earth, his eyebrows raised, shaking his head and looking about as if for an answer. Perhaps he felt his son’s defection the most of all of them, although when all was well with Arthur he was not one of the fathers who cultivate their sons unduly, but on the contrary was often impatient of Lady Curtis’s interest in anything connected with the boy, and her anxiety about him. “What could happen to him?” Sir John was in the habit of saying, when, as sometimes happened, there would be a commotion in the house because Arthur did not write often enough. “Depend upon it he is all right.” This had been his mood before; but now he seemed to miss Arthur wherever he turned. A thousand questions seemed to arise on which he would have liked to consult him; he wanted him to shoot a too-well preserved preserve, he wanted him to say what he thought about those new cottages which had to be built. Sir John did not see the need of new cottages; he did not want a new house, he was contented with his old one; and why should not other people be content? but in case the cottages should be forced upon him he should have liked to know what Arthur thought. Now that he was gone, there seemed to arise some special reason for appealing to him almost every day. It was as if he had died.
And there was a long silence in the big still room where the family had met together after their misfortune. How few families are there which have not known such sorrowful silences: when there is one absent to be bitterly blamed, and some one in fretful anguish cries out, and the others heartbroken, try for excuses and find nothing to say. This was how it was. The mother and daughter had talked it over till there seemed no more to add, but Sir John had not had this relief. All his pain and anger had been locked up in his own bosom, and now they burst forth. “What did he do it for? What did he suppose he could make by it?” Sir John did not believe that his son thought anything could be made by it, but how was he to repress the intolerable pang in his own heart for Arthur’s loss and ruin? And yet he was angry that nobody defended Arthur when he stopped speaking. He was angry also when the women attempted to defend him. It did not much matter which it was. He was silent for a moment; and the dull sky outside, and the dull air with its double rain from the clouds and the trees filled up the great windows with dreariness, adding another element of depression, and Lady Curtis gazed drearily into the fire stooping over it, to get a little warmth, and Lucy stood by the table motionless with tears upon her cheek. Then Sir John burst forth again.
“If there had been anything to justify it, you know! One has heard of a man losing his head for a great beauty, something out of the way—a syren, you know. But a village girl, and, from all I hear, a virago, a temper—”
“Don’t let us speak of her,” said Lady Curtis, with a movement of disgust. “It’s enough that he has done it. Oh, the foolish, foolish boy! Separated himself entirely from his own sphere, and his natural life, and us.”
“Mamma,” said Lucy, breathless, “I don’t want to excuse Arthur; but what could you say worse of him, both papa and you, if he had done something wrong?”