“I have nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “I have made no accusations against anyone; but I cannot always give in. I have come here to please her, and she is not pleased. Let us go away. Let Nancy second me in my attempt to get back into a natural life. It is not natural that I should be cooped up here, doing nothing, wasting my time. I must get out of it somehow. Either you will go with me, Nancy, or I must go alone. I cannot go on in this way any longer.”
“You shan’t then!” she cried, with redoubled heat. “Go—wherever you like for me. Oh, yes, go back to your family that you’re so fond of. You and your friends do nothing but despise me, even a bit of a schoolmaster’s wife! Don’t hold me, don’t keep me back, mamma. I’ll not be left, whatever happens; it’s me that will go, and he can do what he pleases. Don’t I tell you! Nobody shall hold me, nobody shall keep me in one place rather than another against my will. But I shan’t stay to be forsaken. Oh, don’t think it, Arthur! It’s me that will go.”
“I have said nothing about forsaking you,” he said; but he was wearied out with such struggles, and he made no appeal to her to stay. This decided Nancy. She rushed impetuously from the room, leaving them all staring at each other, without giving a word of explanation. Mrs. Bates, whose face was somewhat blank, called to Sarah Jane to follow her sister, and herself turned to Arthur with an attempt at a smile.
“It will soon be over now,” she said. “You mustn’t be hard upon her, Arthur. For all we know, there may be something working with her that she can’t resist. Young women have queer ways, and you can’t tell what’s the cause of it till after. Don’t you mind; go back to your books, there’s a dear, and take no notice. She’ll have a good cry, and she’ll come to herself, and you mustn’t mind.”
It was not this address that quieted him; but what could he do? The position was so impossible that he was glad to withdraw from it. It was worse than ever, now that one of these altercations had taken place before witnesses; he went back sadly to his fire and sat down again, blaming himself for the exasperation which had made him speak. Probably Mrs. Bates was right, and it was all over. She might come downstairs, looking as if nothing had happened, or she might come down penitent, as she sometimes did; and this got the better of him at once. But anyhow, he would not insist upon continuing the altercation, he was too glad that it was over. He sat down, sighing, and drearily drew towards him the Demosthenes that lay on the table. How unimportant all that dead eloquence was, side by side with living passion! The petty stir of domestic dissensions was too near to let him hear the ring of the old disputations, the flow and flood of the old eloquence. Nancy’s voice, in all the warmth of passion, rang more clear on the ear than the greatest of orators. He sat with his nerves all thrilling, and his mind vainly striving to get a little instruction through his eyes. Those eyes read easily enough, hot though they were with the strain they had been subjected to, but the mind received no impression. It was more busy in his ears, listening to what was going on. He heard the hasty sound of Nancy’s footstep upstairs; then he heard her come down, and there were voices in the little hall, confused and undertoned, one voice mingling with another; and then there was the sound of the hall-door closing. He sat after this with a strange sensation, as if that sound of the door had jarred him in every limb. He did not seem able to move to see what it was. But the stillness that fell upon the little house was ominous. Instead of the excited voices which had been audible a little while ago, filling the place with contention, what a strange deadly sort of quiet! Arthur was wearied out. So many vicissitudes of feeling had not occurred in all his previous life as had come to him within these five months past. Happiness, delight, disappointment, vexation, irritated nerves, wounded affection, mortified pride, and that combination of impassioned love and disenchanted vision which is of all things in the world the hardest to bear. How different, how different from his anticipations! How lightly the lovers’ quarrels had gone off, quenched in tears and smiles, and mutual confessions and warmer fondness. “The falling out of faithful friends renewing is of love.” But then that must not go too far, or continue too long, and the shiver of hot shame which she had brought over him so often, the uncertainty as to how she would acquit herself which was always present, the passionate mortification with which he had seen other people’s smiles, or heard other people’s comments, all these were very different from the lovers’ quarrels. He held his Demosthenes steadily in his hand, and attempted to read. How far off it was! and the other so near; and of all the things that can occupy a man’s ear, what is so absorbing as the dead silence of vacancy after a struggle which has threatened everything, and had ended in—what? Nothing, silence, vacancy, probably bringing no consequence at all.
Nancy did not come in at the hour of luncheon. He waited for her, refusing that refreshment until it was clear she did not mean to come back. Then he swallowed a glass of wine hastily, and prepared in his turn to go out—not to seek her. He was resolved that this time, at least, she should be left in tranquillity, left to do what pleased her best. He had just gone into the hall to get his hat when some one came to the door. How his heart jumped! and how sick it grew again when it turned out to be only Mr. Eagles, who had come to make a serious remonstrance.
“You oughtn’t to lose your time,” the “coach” said, bending his brows. “If you can’t do anything better, you should come back to me. The old set are still hard at work, and there are two or three new men that will make their mark. It can’t be lively here, doing nothing. Why, you’ve nothing to do, not even fishing or football, eh? I never hear of you playing football. What do you do?”
“Nothing,” said Arthur; “and I can’t say I like it; but what’s the good? I am too old for football and that sort of thing.”
“Ah, four-and-twenty, that’s a great age; but I know what you mean. Married! there’s the rub—feel yourself too grand for it. But look here, Curtis. A man can’t live with nothing to do.”
“The wonder to me is how long a man can live with nothing to do,” said Arthur. “But as I say, what’s the good? I’m too old now to care about my degree. What does it matter, one way or the other? I have got beyond that stage.”