“If it takes effect on you like this, just to see one that knows them, even though she don’t belong to them,” said Matilda, “what will they do to you if they come themselves? and that young lady said she would come herself—and oh! hasn’t she got quick eyes? she’ll read you all through and through in a moment.”
“Let me alone,” said Nancy; “do you think I care who comes? I have more control over myself than you think.”
“I’d like to see some more signs of it,” said Matilda; “I thought you had mended of your silly ways; but here you are again, walking up and down and rampaging as bad as you were at home. If this is all to begin over again at the first mention of Arthur, whatever in all the world did you leave Arthur for?”
“Because I was mad, I think;” said Nancy.
“Well, that was always my opinion. Your husband, a nice well-dispositioned young man, that would have done anything to please you! and all for us at home, that were fond of you to be sure; but didn’t want you very much, Nancy.”
“You are cruel, very cruel, to tell me so,” cried Nancy, “to tell me now!”
“Well, now is the only time I could have told you,” said Matilda, composedly. “I wouldn’t have said it then to hurt your feelings; but you can’t blame poor old father and mother now, and it is quite true. When a daughter has married and gone off with a husband, who wants her back again at home? But nobody would be unkind and hurt your feelings; and now you hear the same from the other side. When married folks are separated, what can anyone think but that there’s something wrong? on one side or on the other side, it’s all one. But between you there’s nothing wrong, only your tempers—only your temper, Nancy, I should say, for Arthur, I will say that for him, always stood a deal more than he ought to have stood, a deal more than I’d have stood in his place.”
Nancy made no reply. She retreated into her recessed window, and put down her head into her hands among all the “rubbish” of autumn leaves which Matilda was so severe upon, and cried. It was all true. So long as her father and mother lived, there had been a kind of anchor to her wayward soul in the thought that Arthur and his family had slighted and condemned them, whom she was bound to defend and vindicate; and this gave a certain reason and excuse for her own conduct, which of itself did not bear any cooler examination. Her books, from which she had acquired such strange bits of heterogeneous information, had not guided her much in the way of thought; but to be at a distance from any exciting period of individual history is of itself sufficient to throw a cold gleam of uncomfortable light upon it, light which we would in most cases elude if we could. Nancy had eluded it by impulsive action after the change which had compelled her to think, the two deaths which threw her, as it were, adrift upon the world. She had rushed at one thing and another, given up her allowance, resigned her villa, removed here, without leaving herself much time to consider; but now the retarded moment could be held off no longer, and she was obliged to think. There was not much that was satisfactory in the retrospect. Was it possible that they had not wanted her at home? and that she had spoiled Arthur’s life as well as her own? For what? She could not tell. Because his family “looked down upon her,” because he objected to live in Underhayes, because she was foolish, hot-headed, unreasonable. And now what prospect was there that the husband whom she had thus slighted, and his family whom she had defied and wounded through him, would be ready to forgive, to take her into favour? A temporary despair came over Nancy. The first time that an impetuous young mind sees its own faults, and thoroughly disapproves of itself, what a moment that is! Reproof of others most generally brings with it an impulse of self-defence which defeats self-judgment; but when first, in the silence, unaccused of any one, the soul rises up and judges itself, what a pang is there in the always tardy conviction—too late, perhaps, late always, after suffering and making to suffer, distracted in the best cases with the desperate question whether there may still be a place of repentance. Matilda, sitting calmly at her needlework, had not the least idea what passionate despairings were in Nancy’s mind as she sat there and cried. What was to become of her? The elder sister had been anxious enough over that question when Nancy was so foolish as to give up her allowance. Matilda herself had settled to join Charley in New Zealand, where useful young women like herself were, she knew, wanted, as men’s wives, and in other domestic capacities; but she would not forsake her foolish sister—and now Matilda awaited with sufficient composure the solution of the question, what was to become of them? If, when their transparent secret was found out, the Curtises showed themselves willing to take charge of Arthur’s wife, Matilda intended to give her so very distinct a piece of her mind that there could no longer be any possibility of self-deception on the part of Nancy; and to lay before her then and there the option of return to her duties or immediate emigration; but, in the meantime, until this crisis arrived, the sensible Matilda could wait. She was working quietly at her own outfit for New Zealand at this very moment, while Nancy studied her books, or drew, or “played” with the “rubbish” which littered the room. Matilda, like most people, had a respect for education, and perhaps there might be good in all that; but while this fantastic, undirected preparation for something, she could not tell what, was going on with Nancy, Matilda made those matter-of-fact preparations which can never be without their use. She made her chemises for the voyage while the other tried to make herself “a lady.” The one attempt might fail, but not the other; and thus she worked on steadily, altogether unconscious of the wild surgings of despair and self-condemnation in Nancy’s mind. Matilda did not know what these sentiments were. She herself had always done her duty, and as for Nancy, she had been very silly, and there was an end of it. If she persevered in being silly, Matilda had fully settled within herself that she would take the command of affairs, and bring the fantastic young woman to her senses, by giving her at least a piece of her mind.
Things went on in this way for a week or two after Mrs. Rolt’s visit; nothing further occurred to disturb the sisters in their stillness, and Nancy at least required the stimulation of some new thing. She got into despair about her reading, her conscientious pursuit of knowledge and accomplishments. If things were always to go on as now, what was the good? Every day she got up hoping that something might happen, some encounter that would quicken the blood in her veins; but nothing happened. It was rainy weather, and not even a hairbreadth escape of meeting Lucy, or any chance of being recognized—that danger which she professed to fear and secretly longed for—had ever happened. The village life was very dull and still, and the sisters had no natural distractions, no breaks upon the heaviness and monotony of the rainy autumn days. To Matilda, indeed, it was occupation enough to get on steadily with her chemises, and she even rejoiced in the quiet which permitted her to “get so much done.” But Nancy, even without the sense of uncertainty in her fate which made her restless, was not sufficiently placid of nature to have lived without break or change; and her whole scheme of living, artificial as it had been from the beginning, was disorganized and broken up. She had hoped everything at first, making a little romance of the story: how Arthur would come to seek her as soon as he knew of “what had happened;” how, failing to find her at Underhayes, he would rush everywhere to look for her, advertise for her, pursue her far and near; how he would come sadly home to tell his mother that his Nancy was lost for ever and his heart broken; and then would find her, turning all trouble into joy. This was the fancy the foolish girl had cherished in her heart; but there was no sign or appearance that anything would come of it. On the contrary, she began to perceive something like the real state of affairs; she saw what she had brought upon her husband by her causeless abandonment of him, and something of the light in which her conduct must appear to others; and how could she be sure that he was now ready to pardon, ready to open his arms to her again? This thought disturbed all Nancy’s confidence in her progress, in her reading, her French, her beautifully shaded étude. What folly these labours would all turn to if he despised them, and had no interest in her improvement! It could do her no good to be a lady unless she was reconciled to Arthur; and what if to be reconciled was no longer Arthur’s desire?
Mrs. Rolt, however, for her part, was most agreeably moved and excited by the new neighbours, to whom her visit had brought excitement of so different a kind. She hurried out to the Hall to tell the story, in her waterproof and goloshes. It was too wet for Lucy to venture to the village; but Cousin Julia could have ventured anywhere in the strength of such a piece of news as she had now to carry. She told how she had gone to call, chiefly moved by Lucy’s encouragements.