And it must be allowed that, when Arthur saw that only this Curate and his wife had been invited to meet them, he was wroth with a savage sort of anger and scornful humiliation. He gave no sign of his feelings; but he had been accustomed to be somebody wherever he went, and the sense that he had now dropped into a doubtful position, in which only the Curate could be supposed likely to countenance him, gave him a sense of what had befallen him more sharp and sudden than anything else that had happened, even than the familiarities of the Bates family. To say that Nancy was angry too, would be little. Her whole soul rose up in a blaze of wrath. She had expected to see everything that was fine and famous on the Green, and to receive, in a way, the homage of the assembled aristocracy. Nobody with a title lived at Underhayes, and Nancy considered that she herself had all but a title, and was to be admired in proportion; yet there was no one here but the little Curate’s wife. She talked largely to Mr. Eagles during dinner, giving him her opinion of Society in England.
“Of course being brought up in a place like this, I have seen but little; and here not much to speak of,” she said, with a frankness that prepossessed her host—himself so trenchant and decided at all times.
“You are right, very right, Mrs. Curtis. The people about here are not much to speak of. We have to put up with it, for we can get no better. Retired people are mostly a set of nuisances; having done all the mischief they can in the world in their own persons, they revile everybody who is beginning, and put mischief into their heads.”
“Yes, Dr. Eagles.” He was called Doctor by the common people about, and he did not like it. “Yes; there never was such a gossiping place, I’ve heard many people say. They have nothing to do themselves, and they pull everybody to pieces. I have never gone into it, but I can’t abide that sort of thing. They are so stuck up; don’t you think they are dreadfully stuck up? and what is there in them to make them better than their neighbours? Don’t you think so, Dr. Eagles? I do hate everything like that,” said Nancy, energetically. “I suppose you did not like to ask them to meet Arthur and me?”
“I—I don’t ask anyone,” said Mr. Eagles, taken aback for the moment. “It is my wife that asks the people.” Then he began to realize that getting out of a difficulty by putting it upon his wife, was not a noble proceeding. “The fact is, I don’t think anyone was asked. We thought, I suppose, that you didn’t care for it. I don’t myself; I hope Curtis is not giving up work altogether. He may be tempted to do so, having no immediate object, but he ought never to interrupt his course of study. He was getting on very well with me.”
“What should he go on with his studies for?” said Nancy; “he does not require it to make a living. He may please himself what he does. Oh, I shouldn’t like my husband to have to work! When a man is born a gentleman, Dr. Eagles—”
“You have been good enough to bestow a degree upon me to which I have no right,” said Mr. Eagles. “I am simple Mr., like all the rest, though I am obliged to work for my living, and it would be of use to me. A man ought to work, however, when he’s young like Curtis. If he doesn’t now, he will miss it after. I’ve always told him so.”
“I am sure I don’t think so at all,” said Nancy. “Why should he work? or anyone in the position of a gentleman? You know what I mean by a gentleman. Father is as good as Arthur, or anyone, and he has to work.”
This mollified Mr. Eagles.
“I hope we are all gentlemen,” he said, as lightly as was possible for him, “whether we work or not.”