Mrs. Arthur; vol. 2 of 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Oh, mamma, don’t be so hard upon him.”

“So hard, am I hard? upon Arthur! God help me! I wish I could be a little harder; I wish I could think as little of him as he does of me or of what I feel,” cried Lady Curtis with a moan in her broken voice. Sir John did not show so much emotion. He stood gazing dully before him, not even looking at them, his eyes fixed upon vacancy; but many thoughts were revolving dully in his oppressed spirit too.

“Now that he has written to me like this, he shall be attended to,” said Sir John, “since he wants nothing but money, he shall have his money, and I will wash my hands of him. People do not spend a great deal in that rank of life do they? If that is how he is going to live, he must be provided for accordingly. I will speak to Rolt about it to-morrow. You see how he speaks of poor Rolt, a most meritorious man, that has no thought except our interest. And if it had not been that Arthur got hold of it before he ought to have known, Rolt would have bought the girl off and freed us. Ah, yes—Rolt is the best man of business, and the most considerate family friend I know.”

“But it was a dreadful thing to do; to buy her off! If you will think of it, papa, and think who she was, the girl whom Arthur loved. It does not matter,” cried Lucy with generous heat, “that we do not like her or approve of her. Arthur loved her; and this girl whom he loved so much, whom he thought more of than any one in the world, to be bought off!”

“Ay, that’s it,” said Sir John, “it would have all gone on smoothly if he had not broke in with his high flown ideas just like you; the thing would have been done but for that; and he would have been clear of her. But now that it’s come to this he shall have what he wants, and he shall have what he’s entitled to. I will see Rolt to-morrow,” said Sir John, never changing the dull fixedness of his eyes.

And it may be supposed that the remainder of the evening was not very cheerful. Lady Curtis locked both the letters up in a drawer of her writing-table. “It is a pity they should be separated, these two,” she said with that quivering smile of scorn which is so bitter, more painful than weeping. Yes, this was what all their hopes had come to. Arthur her boy, had chosen his own path, and this was what it was, nothing in which his father or mother had any share. What he liked better was the coarse girl who had married him for all the advantages he brought in his hand, and who had infatuated him, and made him such a one as herself. The sense of failure was in Lady Curtis’s mind, the pang of feeling that something inferior had been preferred to her, and to all that was worthy, by her boy. Can anything be more terrible than when father or mother is driven to despise the child of their bosoms? It happens often enough, and there is no such pang on earth. With trembling hands and this miserable quiver of a smile on her lip, she locked them away. Now surely it was time that they should rouse themselves, shake off the dull misery for Arthur’s loss which had paralysed the house, and brood no more over the desertion of one so unworthy their love.

“We have enough of this,” she said, “come, Lucy! I do not mean that your life should be spent in sackcloth because Arthur is unworthy. Because he is hobnobbing with the tax-collector, are there to be no cakes and ale in Oakley? We will send our invitations to-morrow,” she said with a mocking little laugh of pain. Sir John opened his eyes a little at the levity of this unintelligible phrase about cakes and ale. But he had long ceased to criticise my lady whatever she might do or say. She had odd ways of expressing herself sometimes, but she was always to be trusted in the main points.

“I shall speak to Rolt to-morrow,” he said for his part, which was more reasonable, as he went back to his room and resumed his Blue book. And he read till his usual hour, and lighted his candle exactly at the same moment as every other night, though his heart was heavy in his bosom like a lump of lead, not warming his blood as it ought to do. The ladies were not so reasonable, I need not say. They sat over the fire till it died out between them, neither of them remarking the blackness, or being aware that the cold they felt had anything to do with the external circumstances—talking it over and over, arguing, fighting even: Lucy taking the side of defense, while her mother darted arrows of bitter words at Arthur and the girl who had got such empire over him. Men do not make their miseries subjects of endless discussion like this, perhaps because two men are scarcely ever so much like the two halves of one soul as mother and daughter are; nor could any brother and father throw themselves wholly into such a question as the sister could do with the mother. Lucy fought for him, condemned him, justified him, all in a breath; and cried and struggled and held up Arthur’s standard even while she threw herself with passionate sympathy into the proud and sore disappointment of the mother whose hopes had been thus deceived. They were still there over the dead fire in full tide when the solemn little stroke of one startled them, and drove them to their rooms, chilled and miserable. How dark it was outside, the rain falling, the last leaves dropping, in the middle of the December night! It added a shivering of physical sympathy to eyes exhausted with crying and voices exhausted with talking over this ever expanding subject. Every thought and plan of the house had borne reference to Arthur for how many years; and this was how he dropped them, turned from them, threw himself upon the lower and baser elements of life.

CHAPTER IX.

ACCORDING to Lady Curtis’s hasty resolution, the invitations, to some at least, of the ordinary Christmas party were for an earlier date than usual. The climax of the distress produced by Arthur had come, and though the struggle was hard to pick up the ordinary occupations of life again, and go on as if nothing had happened, at a time when Arthur’s absence was so doubly felt and apparent, the impatient soul of his mother was better able to bear this variety of pain than the monotonous heaviness of the other, the dull presence of one thought that had been upon the house like bonds of iron. One of the first visitors who arrived was Durant, who had always been the first in Arthur’s time, next to the son of the house in familiarity and knowledge of everything and everybody about. Even during the miserable interval now passed, Durant’s letters had given a certain solace to Lady Curtis, as furnishing her always with something to talk of, something to discuss with Lucy, to whom she would point out freely the weakness of his arguments which were always in Arthur’s favour, and for which Arthur’s mother loved him, even while she took a delight in demonstrating their futility. Lucy had a long round to make among her poor people on the afternoon on which Durant was expected. She could not have told why it was that she chose that special day; perhaps because it was fine, a simple reason, quite satisfactory to the ordinary intelligence; perhaps because the association of ideas with him, whom she had not seen since he took her to Arthur’s wedding, was so painful that she was willing to postpone the meeting as long as possible; or perhaps she was desirous in Arthur’s interest that Lady Curtis should have her first conversation with his faithful friend undisturbed by any third person; or, perhaps, again Lucy had reasons of her own, into which none of us have any right to pry. She was for a long time at the almshouses, having started early to take advantage of the brightest part of the short winter day, and took her luncheon with Mrs. Rolt, the wife of the good agent, to whom the children at Oakley had been as her own since ever they were born. Mrs. Rolt had no children of her own, and she had as great a desire to talk about Arthur as his mother herself had. She plunged into the subject as soon as Lucy appeared, and there was nothing but sympathy and tenderness in the bosom of this simple-hearted retainer of the family, who was at the same time a far away cousin, and therefore on more familiar terms than are usually permitted to an agent’s wife. This visit detained Lucy also, so that it was four o’clock, and the red winter sunset just over when she started to walk up the long avenue. Durant had been expected by an earlier train at the station which was a mile or two off, so that Lucy felt herself safe. She set out upon her walk very full of a new incident which she had not previously heard of, the meeting between her aunt and her brother at Paris of which Mrs. Rolt had been informed by the Rector. “Why did not he tell us, or why did not Aunt Anthony write?” Lucy had said.