“What do you mean by an open breach?” she said indignantly. “You talk as if Arthur had murdered some one. If you will tell me plainly what you want to know, I will endeavour to give all the necessary information.”
“My dear aunt! is it not natural I should like to know? Arthur and I have always been good friends. In happier circumstances, I should have married him, or helped to have married him—surely you don’t think it is mere vulgar curiosity. I don’t conceal that I should like to know.”
Lady Curtis threw her work aside. She could not keep up the appearance of calm. “I am sure you mean very well, Bertie,” she said, (though, indeed, she was by no means so very sure). “And, perhaps, I am not so patient as I ought to be. I can’t talk my boy over as if he were a stranger. Arthur has been very foolish—”
“You think I don’t understand,” said the Rector, “do you think I am so unfeeling? I know how hard it must be, and Sir John is very severe. But after all, what is done cannot be undone. Things of this kind so often turn out better than anyone expected. This is why I wanted to know if you had seen the lady. If she has sense, it may all come right, indeed it may—women are so quick, they pick up things so fast. I wish you would let me persuade you to take a little comfort. Things may not be nearly so bad as they seem.”
All this was so well said that even the suspicious mother could not make any objections. After all, the chief thing against him was that he was not under a cloud, that he had not made an imprudent marriage; and it was hard to refuse his kindness, and treat him as an enemy on that account. Lady Curtis, who was changeable by right of her quick temper and feelings, melted all at once, and opened her mind to him—her mind at least, if not her heart.
“If she had been a girl with any feeling how could she have married so?” she cried. “Not one friend with him—his father and mother holding aloof. No, Bertie, it is very good of you to say so, but I have not any hope. Our boy is lost to us. Of course, when we are out of the way, he will come and take his place here, and she will take my place, which is no pleasant thing to think of; but in the meantime we have lost our boy.”
“Indeed, you must not think so,” said the Rector, “when the first infatuation is over, Arthur will come back. He will not be happy in so different a sphere. He will miss you—he will miss Lucy—and all his old ways. In—how long shall I say? in a month, six weeks—he will come back and beg your pardon.”
“I hope he will not have so little perception,” said Lady Curtis, the colour rising in her face. “You speak as if it were a case in which such a conclusion was possible; and no doubt there are such cases; but this girl—this girl is—Don’t ask me—how can I tell you all the impossibilities of it? I see them, and I know that Arthur is lost to us. As his poor father says, ‘he might as well be dead!’”
Lucy had not said anything, but Lady Curtis saw without looking that her daughter was not on her side. Lucy’s head was very erect—her mouth was closed firmly, as if she was holding herself in; there was a certain resistance in the poise of that head, and displeasure in the mouth. Lady Curtis stopped short after she had answered her nephew, and turning suddenly round to her daughter burst forth: “Say what you mean, Lucy—say what you mean! I would rather have anything said to me than see you keep it in and despise what your mother says.”
“How could I despise what you say, mamma,” said Lucy, “or what you think either? But I should like Bertie to know that I cannot blame Arthur as other people do. He is dreadfully wrong in some things; but we can’t tell he is wrong at all in the great thing. Mamma, I cannot help it—I don’t want to vex you. For anything we know, she may be the one wife in the world for Arthur; and when he was promised to her, pledged to her, and had got her love, and given her his—I should have hated my brother if he had forsaken her. Yes, I know you will be angry—but I can’t help it. I might have been glad in a way—it might have been better for the family; but I should have hated and despised him. He could never have been Arthur to me any more—that, indeed, would have been as bad as dying,” said Lucy emphatically with fire in her eyes.