“Cavendish at Stainforth!” Lady Curtis echoed, turning pale. She saw through the pretence, but she did not see through the cause of it. If it was her son who immediately occurred to her mind, what mother will blame her? She ignored all motives of his own on Durant’s part with pitiless, though unconscious cruelty; and left the table precipitately, her heart beating with sudden agitation. “Oh, Lewis, something has happened to Arthur; and you have come to break it to me!” she said, turning round upon him as he followed her into her morning-room.
“No,” he said, with a sheepish air of guilt, feeling himself absolutely wicked to have thus frightened her for ends of his own.
Lucy had lingered behind, and was following him when she heard this reply. She turned at once and went away. Her heart had beat even more wildly than her mother’s at sight of him, but with less simplicity of feeling. Was it just that Arthur should always be the first thought? If it was not something which had happened to Arthur that brought Lewis here, then it was—something else. This conclusion, so very simple when put into these words, filled Lucy with involuntary excitement. When he said “No” to her mother’s question, she turned and went away. Was he going to risk it then, to dare all the dangers of absolute separation? Lucy had not seen him for more than a year; but she knew what was in his heart. She had never doubted him; she had been faithful herself to the undisclosed hope, and so had he. She hurried away to her own room, while he, she knew it, went to try their fortune, to put it to the test, to lose or gain everything. Lucy’s heart beat so that she could not think. And would they be so hard, so cruel as to deny her her happiness, the father and mother who loved her so dearly? Most probably they would do so. She could not deceive herself. Most likely he would be sent away without hope, perhaps with disdain. A girl has a terrible moment to go through when she knows that her life, and the life of another still more dear to her, are thus being decided for her without any power of hers to interfere. If Lewis asked her for her love, she would tell him yes, she would give it, she had given it; but herself she could not give. She was free, you may say, of age, fully capable of choosing, and with no law, human or divine, to prevent her from settling, what was more important to her than to anyone, her own course and her own companion in life. All so true, yet so futile in its truth. Lucy was free; yet tied hand and foot, bound by innumerable gossamer threads of duty and affection, which she could not, and would not, if she could, attempt to break. It was no law nor enacted disability, nothing that Parliament could touch, nor public opinion, nor emancipation of women; but nature, unrepealable, unchangeable, that bound her. She could not go to her usual occupations, she could not go downstairs. She sat trembling, scarcely able to think for the sound in her ears of commotion within her. She had to sit and wait while he made his venture; she knew there was nothing, for the moment, in her power.
“Not Arthur!” cried Lady Curtis. “Oh, forgive me, Lewis, that I always think of my own boy first. You are sure there is nothing that you want to tell me gently? I know your kind heart—not to frighten me?”
“I want to tell you something—about myself, Lady Curtis.”
“Ah!” she cried in a tone of relief; and then with a perceptible ease and calm of indifference, “about yourself? I hope it is something very good, very delightful, something equal to your deserts. There is nothing I could be so happy to hear.”
“Something of that to begin with,” he said, and told her of the advantages that had come to him; his appointment on the Commission, and his first important brief. Lady Curtis was delighted, as she had promised to be. She threw herself into the discussion of his prospects with enthusiasm.
“I am as glad as I could be of anything, except good fortune to Arthur,” she said. “My dear Lewis, you who have been so good to us all! you come next. And now all the world is before you, and everything that is good. Thank God for it! though I never had any doubt on the subject,” she said, smiling at him through tears of pleasure, as she held both his hands.
How cheering this was! sympathy could not be more warm, more cordial, more affectionate. It warmed his heart, and brought the tears to his own eyes.
“Yes,” he said, “it is the beginning, I believe, and hope—. It is the opening of the door. My career ought to be clear now, if I have courage and heart to go on.”