“You will think me silly,” he said; “a fool! but I cannot help it. One thing I will tell you, Durant; I will go to Vienna. I don’t think it’s too late; five months is not long enough at my age to put a man out altogether, is it? But as for Nancy, I can’t answer. If she will go with me home, if she will go with me to Vienna, I can’t tell you. We must see her first. She is at her mother’s—”
“You don’t mean to say that she has left you, Arthur?”
“Oh no, no,” he said; “that is rather too absurd, the most ridiculous idea. Come along, Durant, let us get out and stretch our legs. I have not had a real walk for ages. Of course, as it’s Saturday you are going to stay till Monday? That is right, that is a true pleasure. She is at—her mother’s,” he added, changing the subject abruptly, and dropping his voice.
What did it mean? Durant could not tell. He had not disliked Nancy; though she had defied him too, it had been done in a way which did not offend the young man. He had admired her, even when she attacked himself personally; and he had been inclined to think as Arthur did, that she was a lily among those weeds. He had not been surprised at his friend’s infatuation. He had thought her a beautiful high-spirited girl, full of a generous if over vehement disdain for the conventional judgment that made her appear an unfit wife for a man of worldly position superior to her own. Her threat to give up her lover, and her counter decision to marry him disinherited, in order to show his friends how little she cared about his money, were fresh in his mind. And he had liked Nancy; though he had been formally on the other side as Lady Curtis’s agent, he had never really been unfriendly; he remembered well his old difficulties when he had tried to persuade Arthur to relinquish his faith to this girl who trusted in him, and with what a sense of relief he had found that all his arguments were vain, and Arthur’s honour and love invulnerable. He was mystified and perplexed, as well as grieved, by Arthur’s painful pre-occupation now, not knowing what could have happened. They went out in the teeth of the March wind, which blew sharp and keen along the suburban roads.
“I have not had anything to call a walk for weeks,” Arthur said, with a feverish look of eagerness, as they reached the fresh breadth of the common, with the green fields and country paths beyond. The hedgerows were bristling with buds, the skies softly blue, where they could be seen through the masses of cloud that swept across the great vault overhead. The young man sped along like a loosened greyhound, and his friend, fresh from the confinement of town, had hard ado to follow him. He talked little as he went along. Was he walking so fast to escape some care that weighed upon him? If it was not for that there was no other motive, for the walk was without any object. Now and then he would break forth for a moment about this prospect which Durant had come to offer him. “It would be the best thing,” he would say, “far the best thing. I must get rid of this one way or other.” Then he would be silent, and after a mile or so say to himself again, “Yes, this will not do—I must go, it is plain. Going may be salvation.” Durant did not know what irrepressible cares were plucking at his friend’s skirts and compelling him to these resolutions; and he himself talked calmly of Oakley, of the desires of the family there, and the haste they were in to send him off upon his mission, and all the anticipations of Arthur’s return which they had already begun to entertain. At this Arthur did nothing but shake his head, “Will she consent?” he said once. Would Nancy consent? was that what he meant? Consent! what excuse could she have not to consent? They walked far, at a great pace, and Durant was almost worn out. He lagged behind his friend as he approached the house. It was still all dark, one faint gleam of firelight in the drawing-room contending feebly with the grey of the twilight, no one at the window looking out for them, no lamp lighted. “Has Mrs. Curtis returned?” Arthur asked of the maid, as they went on, and was answered No. They went into her part of the house, the white little drawing-room, where indeed there were no pretty signs of Nancy’s presence, no work or books to mar the trimness of the place, but all the chairs set against the wall, and the fire flickering dimly in the grate. And the dinner hour came without any appearance of Nancy. Arthur got more and more agitated as the time went on—and Durant more and more surprised.
“Is your wife dining out?” he said, when he found they were about to sit down at the table without her. Arthur made no distinct answer; he said after a while, as if he had then heard the question for the first time—“She is at her mother’s.” He did not change his dress before dinner, or show any recollection of the need of such preliminaries, but sat over the fire, vaguely replying now and then when his friend spoke to him, and starting at every sound.
“Shall you not wait for Mrs. Curtis?” Durant said, as Arthur took him into the little dining-room.
“She is at her mother’s,” was all Arthur replied. Altogether it was very mysterious, and Durant could not but feel that there was mischief in the air.
At last when the clock had struck ten, and there was no appearance of Nancy, Arthur sprang to his feet. “I must go and fetch her,” he said, “this will never do—this will never do!” Durant took his hat mechanically also, and they walked out without another word into the windy night. The sky looked widened and enlarged by the boisterous breeze which drove mass after mass of clouds across the blue, and across the face of the waning moon, which shone out at intervals only to be swallowed up again by those floating vapours. There was a certain hurry, and coldness, and agitation in the night. The way from Rose Villas into the lighted street of Underhayes was dark, and the alternations of gloom and light in the sky made the vision uncertain. Durant could see how anxiously his friend peered at all the figures they met on the darkling road; but Nancy was not on her way home. They went on in silence to the street which Durant remembered perfectly, and to the door, at which Arthur left him standing as he went in. He had stood there before, and heard the voices in the parlour when he came here first in search of Arthur; how strange to come here now in search of Arthur’s runaway wife! for this was what it seemed to be now. He could hear the silence which followed Arthur’s entrance—a pause which was impressive from the confusion of voices that had been audible before. “I have come for Nancy,” he heard him say.
Arthur had gone in without any question. He had left his friend at the door, neither thinking nor caring that some revelation might be made which it was better Durant should not hear. He steadied his own countenance not to look angry or anxious. “Are you ready?” he said, addressing his wife, “I did not think you meant to stay so long.”