“What am I to do?” said Arthur, overcome, with a gasp as if for breath.
“Oh, my dear, my dear! Leave her; she is out of her senses, she is out of her senses, she is out of her mind! Leave her to me, and I’ll bring her to you to-morrow to beg your pardon. I will, Arthur, if anything in this world can do it,” Mrs. Bates said, clasping her hands.
“There is nothing else to be done,” said Arthur. He was as pale as death. He seemed to get his breath with difficulty as he stood there, struck with wonder, paralyzed with the sense of impotence in his mind, and the dire injury that had been done him. A friend may leave a friend, or even a child a parent; but when a wife, a six months’ bride, leaves her husband even for a day, even in the house of her father, it is as if some horrible convulsion had happened which turns the world upside down. He said nothing more to anyone, but went out, and caught at Durant’s arm to support him, and walked home under the flying clouds, through the stormy, agitated night. The night was like his mind, swept by wild thoughts, overclouded by profound glooms. He scarcely said anything to Durant, who seemed to divine all that happened, though nothing was said to him. It was well he was there. When they went back to the villa, the poor little villa, which was at once so desolate and so meaningless without Nancy, the young man gave a heavy groan, which seemed to echo through the mean little rooms. Could anything change this fact, any coming back again, any penitence? His wife had forsaken him. Nancy had gone back to her mother’s. It might be only for a night, but could anything change the fact? His life had come to a stop; no making up could alter that. As he had been even this morning, he could never be again any more.
It was Durant who told that little falsehood to the servants about why their mistress stayed away. She was not well, he said, and they need not wait up, as it was doubtful whether she would come home. And he stayed by Arthur through the long dull hours, hearing in breaks and snatches something of the story which poor Arthur felt was now over: how they had lived together, and how, according to all he could tell, they had parted. When the flood-tides were opened, it relieved Arthur to speak. He showed his friend in his despair all that was in his heart, his love for Nancy, which was ready to forgive everything, and yet the wounds which she had given to him.
“It is not her fault,” he said. “It is the want of training. She has never realised it, what she married for. She thinks it was only to be happy, to be loved and flattered, to have everything happy round her.” This the poor young fellow said as if it was the best excuse in the world. “That is how she has been brought up. It is not her fault. She has not considered me, nor that there is a duty; and was I to be the one to remind her of her duty, Durant? I did not want her to love me because it was her duty. I wanted her to do her duty because of her love,” said Arthur, unconsciously antithetical. Durant listened to everything, and made few comments. If he said anything in sympathy for his friend which meant condemnation of Nancy, Arthur rose up and stopped him. “How can you tell how she was aggravated?” he said. It was not till the middle of the night that Durant could persuade him to go to bed; and by that time the desolateness of the dreary little house without Nancy, which had no soul or meaning but Nancy, struck Lewis almost as much as it did Arthur. Poor little miserable shell of a place, which had outgrown its sense and its use!
Next day was a busy but a miserable day. Durant was at the Bates’ little house as soon as it was opened in the morning, hoping that his eloquence might be more effectual than that of the poor young husband, and that he might be able, through her mother, to induce Nancy to come back. He found Mrs. Bates very anxious and tearful, very well disposed, but powerless. He gave her a hint of the proposal he had brought from Oakley, and of the unconditional surrender of the Curtises, which the mother carried to her daughter upstairs, but without any favourable issue. Later he came back with Arthur. Nancy kept upstairs, she would not show—and all the household was against her.
“I never held with it,” said the tax-collector. “I told my wife so from the first. I never hold with a young woman complaining of her husband. Mrs. Bates is too kind a mother, that’s what it is.”
These things penetrated into Arthur’s heart almost unawares; that his wife had complained of him all through; that there had been talk of the advantages of the marriage, and that Nancy had hoped to be well off, and to make a great match, and had married him with that view. All these things sank into his heart. Was this true, or was it all the truth? It cannot be said that he believed it, yet it acted upon him as if he had believed, bringing a mingled pain and bitterness, against which at this moment he was incapable of struggling. All that day long they kept coming and going, pleading with her to return; but when another night came, and the slow hours dragged through with the same excitements as before—without her, or hope of her—all sense of possible renewal died out of these hasty young hearts, and the severance seemed complete.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
London: Printed by A. Schulze, 13, Poland Street.