“You may think that I ought to say something about the long break in my letters, and I am aware that it would not be without reason; but what am I to say? My marriage was really a thing which concerned me most. I would have been ready to make any apologies for the indiscretions with which it was accompanied, and for the fundamental mistake of not having explained my wishes and intentions to you from the first. But that is too late now, and you must permit me to say that the strange step you yourself took in sending Rolt to Underhayes to interfere in my business, justifies the silence in which I have taken refuge since, as being more respectful to you than anything I can say. I trust and desire to believe that the extraordinary proposals made by him did not emanate from you; nothing indeed but the mind of a pettifogging attorney could have suggested such means of endeavouring to outwit and frustrate an honourable attachment. I can never meet with civility the originator of these proposals, and it is a desire to say nothing on the subject which has kept me silent even to you.
“I now write about a serious matter which it is necessary to call your attention to. The allowance which was ample for me at Oxford, or when I was in another condition of life, is naturally quite inadequate to the expenses of a married man. My wife and I are about to return to England, and at her desire we will proceed at first to Underhayes, where her family reside. Our plans are not yet decided; but the first requisite for any arrangement is to know exactly by what degree you may be disposed to increase my income, in order that I may be able to provide for the increased expense to which I am now subject. We have been in Paris some weeks, and had it not been for the succour which my mother’s generosity provided me, I do not see how I could have afforded to my wife all that it was indispensable my wife and Sir John Curtis’s daughter-in-law should have. These of course are extraneous expenses; but I must request that you will kindly come to a decision about my present income with as little delay as possible. This is doubly important, as we shall thus only be able to make up our minds on what scale of living it will be proper for us to make our start.
“My wife desires her respects to my mother, Lucy, and yourself.
“Affectionately,
“Arthur Curtis.”
“And this is all!” said Lady Curtis, throwing it on the table with a mixture of scorn and grief; “in so short a time how well she has tutored him. Oh don’t say anything, Lucy! I can see that girl’s hand in every word; and this is all!”
“Surely it is all,” said Sir John, “you don’t think I would keep back anything, why should I? It’s all, and enough too, I think. A fellow like that whom we’ve all petted and spoiled, thinking of nothing but his allowance! It’s disappointing, that it certainly is. When one thinks that’s Arthur!” said his father, his lower lip quivering with unusual emotion, yet something that was intended for a smile.
“Oh don’t make him out any worse than he is,” said Lady Curtis, “I can see that girl’s hand through all.”
Now a more gratuitous assertion than this could not be. Arthur had written when away from Nancy altogether in the writing room of the English Club. She had known nothing about what he was doing, and still less did she know that he had made up his mind not to struggle with his fate any longer, but to let her go back to her congenial soil, which would secure at least no further encounters with people of his own class, even when met in the recent accidental way. He could not, he felt, risk anything like this again. He had not strength for it. It was better to yield to her than to wear himself out with such paltry miseries; but up to this moment even Nancy herself did not know of his decision. Lady Curtis however did not know this, nor did the despair in Arthur’s mind ever occur to her, or the state of severance between him and his wife which had really existed when these two letters were written. It seemed to her that they were full of one spirit, and that Nancy had got the entire command and put her own unregulated soul into her husband. Dear as he was to his mother, the bold figure of this girl whom she had never seen, seem to rise up and obliterate her son before Lady Curtis’s eyes—obliterate him intellectually and morally—so that all she saw was a shadow of Nancy, not the reality of Arthur. Sir John did not take this figurative view. He took what he saw for granted, exercising no spirit of divination. He was wounded not to sharp pain like his wife, but with a heavy sense of evil. This was all Arthur wanted, not to be his father’s right hand man, to help him (for, privately, Sir John was of opinion that he had a great deal to do) to become the real head of the estate, understanding everything as his father had wished; but only to have his allowance increased! that was all. It did not give Sir John a less pang in his matter of fact way than it did his wife, but this was the low level of interpretation by which he explained to himself the boy who had been his pride.
As for Lucy, she read the two letters with a double distress, as seeming to see something in both of them which escaped her parents. She thought it was because she was young, and in sympathy with these two foolish, erring, unkind, young people, that she was able to read between the lines and see that they were not so unkind as they seemed. There was, as she had said, a kind of savage justice in Nancy’s letter from Nancy’s point of view, and insolent though it was, Lucy felt that she could understand it, and could excuse it though it was inexcusable. And as for Arthur’s cold interestedness and apparent indifference to everything, was not this only a sign of mortal pain, a proof that he felt himself in a position from which he could not recede, which he dared not discuss or enter into? “Oh,” she cried in the tumult of feeling which rose within her, “do not take it all for granted like this. Arthur is not what you think him, papa. He feels it, oh, I know he feels it to the bottom of his heart; but how can he discuss it, how can he open such a subject with us? She is his wife, and she knows what we think of her.”
“Oh, Lucy, hold your peace,” cried Lady Curtis, whose heart was wrung to breaking, “what is the use of this casuistry, as if you knew him better than we do. No, I cannot shut my eyes to the truth whatever you may do; this boy for whom we have done so much, whom we have brought up so carefully, finds something more congenial in low society than in ours. It is unworthy of us to groan over such a preference. See, he avows it. He is going back to that wretched place, to the society of his wife’s relations. We ought to be proud,” said Lady Curtis with her eyes flashing, with a miserable make believe of a smile on her lips, “that is what he likes best, my boy!”