THE next day the ordinary guests began to arrive at Oakley. They were not of a very lively character. With an instinctive sense of the difference, which the family were scarcely conscious of, changes had been made in the list of visitors which would have been got together in Arthur’s time. Scarcely any young men were of the party. When there is not a young man in the house what use in asking young men? unless it had been in a matrimonial point of view for Lucy’s sake, an idea which not only Lucy but her mother regarded (in the latter case injudiciously, it ought to be said) with scorn. Sir John had given up hunting long ago, and if he made a serious shot once or twice in a season, it was more upon the principle which makes an old king open a ball than any more active personal liking for the sport. The party accordingly consisted in great part of his contemporaries, some in Parliament, some in the law, chiefly belonging to the learned professions. There was a judge, and there was the head of a college, and for a few days there was a bishop; but as this latter functionary was the most sportive member of the party, he could not be counted as adding to its solemnity; and these magnates of course did not stay long. And then there was the Master of the Hounds who was more solemn; and there were the wives of these gentlemen, and in some cases their daughters, and a stray man or two of the order of those who know everybody and have been everywhere, and have done a little of everything, without getting more than a general reputation for themselves, and without giving any very clear indications to the world where they sprang from or to whom they belonged. There were also a few ladies of the same species, but whose families and antecedents were unimpeachable. It was Lady Curtis who abhored dullness, who had added these. Sir John liked the dullness, and did not object to having a lady next to him who dined well and said little. In spite of Lady Curtis’s efforts, however, the party was dull. It was perhaps too elderly and too serious. Well conducted married people are dull in society. They are not sufficiently interested in each other to exert themselves for each other’s amusement, and there can be little doubt that as a source of diversion and interest to their fellow creatures, a couple of naughty persons bent on flirtation and ill-behaviour make a better recompense to their entertainers. This element was sadly wanting at Oakley; there was no little drama to watch, legitimate genteel comedy ripening towards marriage and all the domestic joys, or more reprehensible episode tending the other way, such as often proves more exciting still to the jaded appetite of society. And it can scarcely be wondered at, if in the absence of other fun this respectable assembly threw itself on the affairs of the family. There was a great deal of conversation in corners about Arthur’s marriage. The Bates family were too low down in the world to have even reached the level of gossip, and except that he had made a very foolish marriage, a mésalliance in every sense of the word, no one knew anything further, except one lady was acquainted with Mrs. Anthony Curtis, and had received from her a vague account of her meeting with Nancy. This lady had formed an idea, quite erroneous as it happened, yet an idea, of Arthur’s wife, which was a point not attained to by anybody else in the house. She thought (as seemed so natural) that Nancy must have been an actress in a minor theatre, a nameless figurante, one of the class who are supposed to enthral well-born young men, and who, wonder of wonders, do so, to the everlasting astonishment of the world, notwithstanding all its theories on the subject. But it did not enter into anybody’s mind to suppose that the girl whom Arthur had married had not the advantage of being wicked and shameless. The lady who knew the story whispered it to others when none of the family were present. “Turned her out of her rooms, I assure you, my dear,” she said; “they were in the best rooms of a most expensive hotel, I need not say. Such people never spare any expense.”
“A girl from a theatre!—but what theatre? There are such differences; that means anything, from a lady to a dressing-girl.”
“She was not a lady, at least; that is the only one thing that is certain. She was a—” Here the teller of the tale stopped abruptly, adding in a louder tone, “I know only one lady on the stage, but she is enough to justify any amount of raving. Mrs. Kenworthy—don’t you know—you must have seen her.”
It need not be added that it was one of Lady Curtis’s friends, a middle-aged person who knew everybody, who spoke, and that the sudden break was owing to the entrance of Lucy, who came in unsuspicious, and caught them in the middle of their talk.
“Oh, yes, I have seen her,” said another, faltering, while the other members of the party broke up suspiciously, and began to talk to each other with great earnestness. Lucy had thought no evil when she came in, to see all the heads together, but this breaking up and evident desire to conceal the subject of discussion roused her. These were the sort of conversations that went on through the hospitable house. When Sir John was alone for a few minutes with the Judge, who had been the friend of his youth, that learned functionary took him by the buttonhole, and said, “What’s this, what’s this, Curtis, I hear about your son?” They talked of it under Lady Curtis’s eye in the drawing-room as they sipped their tea. Poor Arthur had been cast off by his family, they said; he must have been living a bad life before, or he could never have been thrown in the way of such a person, and never could have married her. Had he married her? that was the next question. Or was it not altogether disreputable, the connection itself and everything about it? So they talked; and Lucy for once got to feel it in the air, and to lose her temper sometimes at the sense of this strange mass of secret criticism of which her family was the object. She made an assault upon her cousin, the Rector, in the midst of it with nervous vehemence. He had been talking to Miss Wilton, the lady who had rushed into a description of Mrs. Kenworthy, when Lucy came into the room that morning and interrupted more important talk. Lucy, watching, had perceived that Bertie had held back while the other had been pressing questions upon him, and that after the interview Miss Wilton had hurried to a pair of expecting friends, and communicated to them the information which she had acquired. Miss Curtis called her cousin to her with a somewhat imperious gesture, a gesture, however, which he was very willing to obey.
Hubert Curtis had not found himself, so far, any the better for the misfortune which had happened to Arthur. He was not taken more into favour at the Hall, nor did Lucy incline more to his society than when her brother was at Oakley. He had not gained any ground. However likely it might be that she would have a larger portion of the family goods, Bertie saw no probability that the advantage would in any way come to himself; he had almost, he thought, lost instead of gaining by Arthur’s absence. When Arthur was at home, he, as the nearest neighbour, the only man of anything near his own age close at hand, had a natural place at Oakley besides that derived from his relationship. But now what had he to do at the Hall? Lucy did not encourage him, certainly, in any devotion to her. Lady Curtis had an instinctive, half-jealous dislike to him, as she would have had probably to any young man whose sensible and correct behaviour was a standing reproach to Arthur. And Sir John could not be troubled by Bertie’s peace-making and desire to persuade him that all would eventually be well. Therefore he had suffered with Arthur, which was a thing he did not calculate upon; and it would be impossible to deny that his mother’s story about Arthur’s wife had given him a kind of grim satisfaction. If he were not bettered, at least others were the worse; he said, “poor Arthur!” with contemptuous content. If a man chose to make a fool of himself like that, it was only right that he should pay the penalty, and he had been unable to refrain from repeating his mother’s story to Mrs. Rolt, who was shocked and grieved, as Bertie, too, assumed to be. But he had not been guilty of the treachery of discussing it at the Hall. When Miss Wilton spoke to him, he had no desire to give her any further information, but answered as sparingly as possible. Of course it was now, when he really had been exercising a certain amount of virtue, that his punishment came.
“Bertie,” said Lucy, as he came up to her, “I want to know why my aunt goes on spreading that story, and why you talk it over with everybody except mamma and me?”
“What story?” But he did not attempt to deceive her further by pretending that he did not know.
“We were the most interested,” said Lucy. “If you had told us it would have been natural, and perhaps kind; but why do you tell it to other people? What good could that do?”
“What other people have I told it to?” he said. “I was questioned over there, but I made no reply, or at least as little as I could. I told Mrs. Rolt, and I beg your pardon for that. She was so anxious to know something, and I knew she was to be trusted. Don’t blame me, Lucy; I have not intended to be hard upon Arthur.”