“I am sorry everything is cold,” said Mrs. Bates; “we waited as long as we could. But Nancy wanted her tea very badly after her journey. Here is a leg of chicken I saved for you.”
“I am not hungry,” said Arthur, feeling his new alienation and separation amid all the silent party. “I will take a cup of tea, please. I had the boxes to look after.”
“You might have left the boxes to take care of themselves,” said his wife; “you are not always so careful. You might have come with me when I first came home after being married. And all the people about staring; but you don’t mind. It used to be different when we were here before; but I ain’t of so much consequence now,” cried Nancy. “Wives are different from sweethearts; I see that all now.”
Arthur felt a sensation of chill despair come over him in the midst of this domestic heat. He restrained himself by a strange effort and would say nothing; and, indeed, he did not feel the impulse of passion to speak. A dreary despondency took possession of him. How often he had sat there on the sofa in the corner, and felt himself happy! What was it that made the change? for Nancy had shown “tempers,” fits of caprice, uncertainty of mood before their marriage. But it had not affected him as it did now. Succour came to him, however, in an unexpected way.
“I don’t approve of nagging at a man, whatever he’s done,” said Mr. Bates. “If you’ve had any tiffs honeymooning, you should have the sense to stop ’em now. If you like to quarrel in your own place, I’ll not interfere, I haven’t got the right; but don’t do it here. Your father’s house is no more than a friend’s house so far as that goes. It ain’t your place, Nancy, to expose your husband here.”
“I hope I know what’s my place, as well as you or anyone,” said Nancy, growing red, and accepting the challenge. She had never been fond of restraint, and she liked it now less than ever. She gave her head a toss of defiance, entrenched as she was behind the walls of support and shelter which her mother and sisters gave, who unconditionally took her side. She flashed defiance at the other end of the table, where Arthur sat with a flush of shame on his face, and poor Mr. Bates in his crumpled white tie for his sole partisan.
“I think Mr. Bates is right,” said Arthur, “and that it would be better to postpone this question till we are alone.”
“And I hope you found Paris pleasant, Sir,” said the well-intentioned father. “I have often heard that it was a very fine city. It must have been a great advantage for Nancy, seeing it with one that knew it well. In my young days going to France was more of a business than going to America is now. Me and Mrs. Bates never had the benefit of foreign travel; but there are a many things you young people enjoy now that your fathers and your mothers didn’t have.”
“You may speak for yourself, Mr. Bates,” said his wife. “I cannot say that I ever had any desire to go to foreign parts. There is plenty to learn in England if one would make a good use of what one knows; and Nancy, poor child, don’t seem to have enjoyed it. Look how thin she is, and so pale. She quite frightened me when I saw her first. ‘Is that my blooming Nancy?’ I said to myself—not meaning to throw any reflection upon Arthur. What does man know of such things? She’s been doing too much. I feel sure that’s what it is, rattling about here and there and everywhere, and engagements in the evening—”
“We didn’t have many engagements in the evening,” said Nancy. “We used to go to the theatres at first; but we soon got tired. The acting was so bad, not like English acting; and such queer French, not a bit like anything I ever learnt. For one thing, they talk so fast. But I could not understand a bit, and what was the good of going to a play and not understanding a word? And we never saw anybody, except an aunt of Arthur’s, a person—but I won’t speak of her, for she was rude to me—and Sir John Denham, who used to come and sit of an evening, and who brought us tickets for places. It was very kind of him; and there was a lot of places to see, and a whole lot of old pictures and things that Arthur thought I was to go crazy over; but I never did. One place was where some prison was knocked down (I never remembered the names) and, another was where the Queen had her head cut off.”