“Nancy,” he said, “I cannot think how you can be so—unkind. Do you think I mean any offence to you, or that they mean any offence? Of course you know they wanted me to marry some one—better off; some one they knew.”
“Oh, let me go,” she cried, choking with pain and rage together, “I will go back to my mother; and you can go to yours, of whom you think so much. What does it matter about a common girl like me!”
“I think you are trying to drive me mad,” he said, “have I ever wavered between you and my mother? but I see now where I did wrong; I should have gone to her and made a friend of her, instead of defying her. I should have taken you to her—”
“Taken me!” she jumped up and faced him, trembling with agitation and fury, “taken me! am I to be dragged about to people that don’t want me, to people that dare to despise me?”
“Nancy!”
“Nancy! that’s all you can call me now. I used to be your love and your darling; now we’re married, and I’m bound and can’t get free, and you call me Nancy! Oh! if it was all to do again, and I knew what I know now!”
“What on earth do you know now that you did not know a week ago?” he cried with an impatience beyond words; and yet he felt half inclined to laugh. That the impassioned creature who stood defying him, blazing in impulsive wrath, should resent the absence of those loves and darlings and tender words with which he had hitherto caressed her ears, so hotly as to desire to break every bond between them, struck him with a sudden sense of the absurdity of their quarrel. He went suddenly up to her and took her into his arms. “But you are my darling,” he said, “all the same; though you are the most unreasonable, the most quick-tempered, the most provoking. Sweet! what is everybody in the world to me compared with you?”
Thus the first quarrel terminated, though not without considerably more trouble. Nancy perhaps saw too the foolishness of this impossible struggle, and yielded after a certain amount of flattery, coaxing, and caresses. And the cloud blew over so completely that, much to his surprise he found himself able to persuade this despairing bride next morning to get the travelling dress he wished her to have, and to tone herself down generally, and make herself warm and comfortable and less fine. They crossed the Channel two days after, more lovers than ever; but no longer publishing their recent nuptials in their appearance, with Nancy’s “silk” carefully packed at the bottom of her box, and herself in a dark blue gown and little plumed hat, looking more like Mrs. Arthur Curtis than Nancy Bates had ever done before. Arthur’s heart beat high with pride and pleasure as they watched the white cliffs disappearing. Nancy not without a little natural sentiment, for she had never been out of England before, and it seemed a great thing to her to be out of her own country, and on the verge of a “foreign land.” But fortunately the passage was a very good one, so that no less elevated feeling mingled with these tender regrets. He had her in his own hands now, the bridegroom said to himself; all her antecedents left behind, the home and relations happily got rid of, and all the influences of her new life around her to wean her from the past. And how tractable she had shown herself already, how willing to be convinced! a tender creature, who accepted his dictation sweetly two minutes after she had burst forth in rebellion against him; who had been indignant at his sister’s letter (and it was, Arthur allowed to himself, nasty of Lucy, rather like a spiteful girl after all as Nancy said, not to mention her in that little note which was intended to be so gentle and peace-making), and then had forgiven it so frankly as to use part of the money that Lucy sent. This unreasonable, inconsistent, foolish, generous, hot-headed, soft-hearted darling, could any man desire better than to have her wholly to himself to guide her wayward feet into the print of wifely, womanly ways? The mean little house, the poor form of existence at Underhayes (ungrateful young man! it had seemed an idyllic life, full of noble simplicity and poetry, when he knew her first) lay far behind, and while the probation lasted it would seem so natural that England itself should fade out of sight, and all that was past be forgotten; until by and by he should take his bride home a lady in every outward sign, as she was, he assured himself in heart. It is so easy in a young man’s glowing fancy to work this change. Likewise it is very quickly done in many novels, and with wonderful facility and completeness; and, as has been said, where but from novels was Arthur to have acquired any experience in the treatment of cases like his own? All went well during that journey. It was a beautiful day of the early winter; warmly soft as November can sometimes be, by way of contrast to its ordinary miseries, the sea and the sky alike blue; and if the wind was cold, what there was of it, the sun shining so warmly as to neutralize the wind. And Nancy now at least was well defended and need fear no chill. Her cheeks glowed with the fresh breeze, her little outcries, half of alarm half of exhilaration, when the steamboat gave a small pitch which hurt nobody, delighted Arthur. She clung to him and steadied herself by him with both hands clasped on his arm, and had no thought, now that her moment of sentiment was over, of anything but the excitement of this novel world into which she was hastening. All the clouds that had been upon their horizon seemed to float away.
“I have been thinking,” she said, when they got into the railway-carriage on the other side, and Nancy had got over her first amused wonder and bewilderment, “to hear everybody talking and not to understand a word.” They had a carriage to themselves, though that is not so easy to manage on the other side, and Arthur, delighted with his task, had begun to teach her little phrases in the tongue, which notwithstanding her much-talked-of previous studies was quite an unknown tongue to Nancy. “I have been thinking—”
“What is it? Something very grave indeed, judging from that serious face.”