“Do ladies go to such places? I thought ladies had never anything to do with politics.”
“My dear Nancy,” said Arthur, seizing the opportunity to be instructive, “when you go into society, you will find that people talk a great deal about such things, whether they care for them or not; they are the things that people talk about. And it is reasonable to think,” he went on, more and more improving the occasion, “that, when you are in a foreign country, you should like to see what is most important in it. That is always taken for granted. You see Denham thought that was one of the things you would like to see.”
This silenced Nancy more than could have been supposed possible. She had never seen this stranger before, and probably never would see him again; but the fact that he had expected her to know what he meant, and to be interested in the French Parliament, impressed her infinitely more than all Arthur’s anxious efforts for her improvement. Were ladies like that, she could not help asking herself? What a bother it would be to be a lady, if that was the sort of thing they were expected to care for—a lot of old men making speeches, which she could not understand one word of! but that of course nobody could be supposed to know. She was overawed, and received Arthur’s sermon more meekly than she had received any of his didactic addresses before. She supposed now that sister of his, that Lucy, would have gone and understood every word, that she would have liked the playacting, and talked about it, and laughed as Arthur did, that she would have seen a great deal in those stupid old pictures. Nancy was silent and dismayed. To be a lady seemed to her a hard trade. How different from the case of Underhayes, the talk about Lizzie Brown and Raisins, the grocer, in the snug parlour where everybody was so comfortable! Her mother and Sarah Jane never would ask her about the bear-fighting in the Assembly, nor how she liked M. Got. A longing for home seized the girl, and a terror of what seemed before her. To be sure, if she had known it, the talk about Lizzie Brown was quite as much in Sir John Denham’s way as in that of Mrs. Bates; but then his Lizzie Brown was perhaps an Empress, which makes a difference more or less. The two young people had never been so silent in each other’s company. They drove back so full of many thoughts that neither perceived the pre-occupation of the other, and oddly enough they were both thinking of their homes; Arthur, with a pang, but without any desire to find himself there—Nancy with the strongest determination to get back. There was a half-smile in Arthur’s eyes, but a smile which was strangely associated with that pain behind the eyeballs and slight constriction of the throat, which means unsheddable tears, as his home seemed to rise up before him among its woods. He saw his father in his library, his mother in that gilded and satin-hung morning-room, which was à la Louis Quinze, but which nobody thought in bad taste, as we see people in a dream. They did not look at him, nor welcome him, and he did not wish to be there. How could he take Nancy there? He was separated from them, perhaps for ever, and he could scarcely wish it to be otherwise. But Nancy on her side thought of home with much livelier feelings. Oh, only to be there! free to show all her pretty things, her new “silks,” her trinkets and furs: to let everybody see how fine she was: to talk just as she liked, not to be made to admire anything she did not understand—not to be burdened with bonds beyond her comprehension, limits of speech, and word, and action, beyond which it was not “becoming,” not “appropriate,” not “right” perhaps, that she should go. At home she had done what she liked, run out of doors when she pleased, laughed as loudly as she pleased, been as ignorant as she pleased. It did not occur to Nancy that at home it had been her inclination to stand on her superiority, as one who had been five quarters at school, and was altogether “a cut above” Matilda and Sarah Jane.
They were sitting after dinner that evening, yawning a little, when Sir John Denham’s card was brought to Arthur. He looked at Nancy half doubtfully, an expression which she caught at once.
“Shall he come up, or shall I go down to him?” he said.
“Oh just as you like,” said Nancy, with the quick thought passing through her mind that Arthur did not choose that his fine friends should see her. He looked at her again; in reality to see what she wished; but to Nancy it seemed an inquisitorial glance, criticising her all over, if perhaps she was “fit to be seen.”
“I will go down and bring him up,” he said. When he was gone, Nancy too looked at herself in one of the many mirrors. She still wore the dark blue silk dress which had been made for her since she came to Paris, with ruffles of lace at the throat and wrists. It was very plain. Should she run and put on the salmon-coloured one, which was a great deal finer, before Arthur returned with the stranger? She hesitated a moment; but her good angel interfered and kept her still. Sir John Denham thought her on the whole a lady-like young woman when he came into the room. Evidently there must be something queer about the business altogether, Denham thought; but she was very pretty, and looked comme il faut, so far as he could see.
“I have to make a thousand apologies,” he said, “but I thought it better to run up and tell my story myself, hoping that Curtis would intercede for me as an old friend. May I be allowed to open my mouth at all, at such an inappropriate moment? A thousand thanks; I came to say that if you would be at the Palais de Justice at twelve to-morrow, I could meet you there with La Pic, who is a friend of mine, and would take you in. There is to be an interpellation which probably may be amusing—and if you are going on so soon—”
“It is very kind of you, Denham, I am sure my wife will like it.”
“Mrs. Curtis looks a little doubtful, I think,” said Denham, “but of course you must not mind me. It is only if it will amuse you.”