“I have no good sense,” said the excited creature. “I never pretended to be sensible; you knew what I was when you married me, Arthur; and to be spied upon, and examined all over by a set of women—I can’t bear it, and I won’t, not for anybody in the world; not even for you!”
Poor Arthur did not make any immediate reply. He walked about the little room with agitated steps; then went and stood at the window, looking out with a blank and hopeless face. Perhaps silence was, of all others, the thing which Nancy could least encounter. She sat gazing at him, ready to make off in a moment to her room, to snatch her hat, and fly out, she knew not where; anywhere to escape from those shackles of her new life which were so intolerable. That he would rush after her, entreat her to return, promise everything that she wished seemed certain to Nancy. She did not calculate upon this, but was sure of it without thinking. But his silence chilled her, and when he spoke it was in a voice she did not recognise, a voice out of which all the music and sweetness seemed to have gone.
“I don’t know if this will have any influence upon you,” he said, “but it is worth thinking of: that we cannot live utterly estranged from my family. Some time or other we must seek a renewal of intercourse. I must seek it, not they; and if my Aunt Curtis could in the meantime convey a pleasant impression of you—if she was herself won to be on our side—I don’t say it would be of great consequence, but yet it would be a beginning. I don’t know what you think of my family, Nancy; if you think they are some kind of wild beasts to be avoided; but they can’t be avoided. We shall have to live by them, and it is for our good—it is indispensable—that we should be friends.”
“Friends!” cried Nancy, breathless with the effort of listening to him and keeping silence. “Then you may as well throw me over once for all, Arthur. Friends! with those that would take no notice of me—that never so much as named me in their letter.”
“That was my fault—that was my fault,” he said, turning round upon her. “I had no right to keep them in the dark. I ought to have gone to my mother and told her, not kept everything in holes and corners.”
“You were not a baby!” cried Nancy. “Why, you are four and twenty! Men don’t go and ask their mamma’s leave like girls.”
“That may be—but neither do men throw all their relatives over; tear themselves apart from their family. And I will not do it,” said Arthur with sudden self-assertion. “I will do anything in the world to please you but this. I will not quarrel with all who belong to me. As soon as I get an opportunity we must be reconciled to them—must, Nancy, there is no alternative. And why should you reject this easy way? My aunt is a kind woman. She will do us a good turn if she can. Try to please her, dear; won’t you try to please her for my sake?”
Nancy had started to her feet, when he said with such energy that he would not do it: but something arrested her. Whether the reasonableness of it, which was not likely, or the new force and vigour with which he spoke, or the pathos of the entreaty at the end, it would be difficult to say. But she was arrested, her attention caught, and the rush of her hasty blood restrained. After all, perhaps, there was something in what he said. It was not worth her while to fly from them—to avoid them as if she was afraid. But rather to show them her own superiority—to convince them that she was as good as they were, and had no occasion to fear them. This, perhaps, was scarcely the sentiment inculcated by Arthur’s speech; but rather the turn it took in the alembic of her own mind, in which a hundred crude ideas were fermenting and getting fused daily. She sat down again after a moment, when he had ceased speaking. Arthur, notwithstanding his appeal, had excited himself too much to care precisely what she was thinking, and even this gave a wholesome stimulus to the turn in the tide of her thoughts. He did not care, but he should be made to care—he should be proud of her—he should feel that those people who slighted her were slighting something above themselves. She would not yield so far as to say anything, to give her promise that she would endeavour to conciliate Mrs. Curtis. Not for her life; but what she said did not need to be any criterion of what she would do. She took up a book which happened to be on the table, and pretended to read it with an absolute absorption of interest which justified her silence; while he, on the other hand, having no certainty that he had moved her, but rather fearing the worst, kept pacing up and down between the window and the door, excited beyond the immediate question, having, for the first time, opened up the ultimate matter with himself. And when he once began to think of it, he could not shake off the idea. It was no question of expediency or possibility—a thing which ought to be done perhaps, yet might not. It seemed to him, thinking of it, that he must at once explain everything, and claim his forgiveness, and the reception of his bride. “I have done wrong—but it cannot be undone; nor is the wrong half so serious as you think.” This was what he must say. He had intended to write ever since he got to Paris, but had deferred it as an unpleasant business which might stand off from day to day. But now it appeared to him, all at once, that nothing was so important. Whatever else he did, he must reconcile himself with his father and mother, his own flesh and blood. If they would not, he must bear it; but nothing must be left undone on his part. This sudden conviction was brought upon him—was it by the sight of his relations—was it by Nancy’s unreasonable and absurd antipathy to them? He could not tell—but the fact that he could think of any sentiment on Nancy’s part as absurd and unreasonable showed what a leap he had suddenly made.
It was not till several hours later that Mrs. Curtis and her daughter appeared—for this time Mary had insisted upon coming, defying papa.
“We have done nothing but think of papa for the last three months,” she said. “I think we may be allowed a little of our own way now.”