[CHAPTER I., ] [ II., ] [ III., ] [ IV., ] [ V., ] [ VI., ] [ VII., ] [ VIII., ] [ IX., ] [ X., ] [ XI., ] [ XII., ] [ XIII., ] [ XIV., ] [ XV.]

MRS. ARTHUR.

BY
MRS. OLIPHANT,
AUTHOR OF
“The Chronicles of Carlingford,”
&c. &c.

“Fie, fie! unknit that threat’ning, unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes.
. . . . . . .
A woman mov’d is like a fountain troubled.”
TAMING OF THE SHREW.

“He breathed a sigh, and toasted Nancy!”
DIBDIN.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1877.
All rights reserved.

MRS. ARTHUR.

CHAPTER I.

“IS Mr. Curtis here?” said a voice at the door.

The door was so near the sitting-room that every demand made there was easily heard, and even answered from within; and, indeed, Mrs. Bates was in the habit of calling out an answer when it happened to be beyond the powers of the daughter or small servant who opened. But this question was one about which there was no difficulty. It was followed by a hearty laugh from the assembled family.

“I should think he was—rather!” said Charley Bates, the son; and “Ask Nancy,” said Matilda, the eldest daughter.

There was a considerable number of people in the little parlour—to wit, Mr. Bates in his big chair on one side of the fire, sipping rum-and-water, and reading a newspaper which was soft and crumpled with the usage of the day at the nearest public-house; and Mrs. Bates on the other, seated between the fireplace and the table, mending the stockings of the family. Charley was reading an old yellow novel behind his mother, and Matilda was making her winter bonnet with a quantity of materials in a large piece of paper on the table, which was covered with a red and green cloth. It was October, and not cold, but there was a fire, and a branched gas pendant with two lights, shed heat as well as light into the close little room. There was another daughter, Sarah Jane, who was coming and going about the table, now and then making incursions into the kitchen; and behind backs in the corner, on a black haircloth sofa against the wall, were seated the pair of lovers. No one threw any veil of doubt on the fact that they were a pair of lovers—nor did their present aspect make this at all uncertain. They were seated close together, talking in whispers; one of her hands clasped in his, his arm, to all appearance, round her waist. Matilda screened them a little, having her back turned towards them, which gave, or might have given, a sense of remoteness to the pair, and justified their too evident courtship. Otherwise they were in full light, the gas blazing upon them; and it was scarcely possible to whisper an endearment which was not audible. She was a pretty girl, with brown hair, brown eyes, and a pretty complexion, in a somewhat showy dress, cut very much in “the fashion,” yet looking not at all out of place in the warm, crowded, stuffy parlour, full of hot air and gas, and the fumes of rum-and-water. She was Mrs. Bates’ second daughter, called Nancy, but preferring to be called Anna, and engaged to a young gentleman who was a pupil of Mr. Eagle the well-known “coach,” and had been for a year at Underhayes. He had been coming after Nancy Bates all that time, and at present they were engaged, and made love in the family parlour now that it was too cold to take long walks. Mr. Curtis preferred the walk, but Nancy liked the haircloth sofa. She was a good girl, and fond of her family, and she liked them to share her happiness. The family party were all moderately like each other, harmonious and happy, suiting their surroundings. There seemed nothing out of place among them, the bonnet-making, or the old yellow novel, or even the rum-and-water. But there was one great incongruity in the room, and that was the hero, the young lover, who certainly had no business there. He was dressed in an English gentleman’s easy morning suit, a dress in which there is less apparent pretension than any in the world perhaps, but which shows very distinctly the condition of the wearer. His presence in the room put the whole place out of harmony; it made the stuffy comfort look squalid and mean; it rebuked the family ease and cheerfulness, the absence of all disguise, the frank family union. In his person another element came in, a something higher, which made all the rest more low. He was not the sort of person to sit with his arm round his fiancée in public, within reach of papa’s rum, and mamma’s joke. All the rest went perfectly well together; but he put everything in the wrong.

And the effect which he himself produced to every beholder, or would have produced had there been any beholders, was wrought upon himself by the sound of this voice at the door. It was a voice of modulation and tone different from anything here. Even his Nancy, though he was so much in love with her, young Curtis felt suddenly jarred and put out of tune by it; he dropped her hand instinctively, and got up confused, a sudden flush coming over his face.

“It is some one for me,” he said, in sudden embarrassment. And again the family laughed more loudly than before.

“Any child could tell that, seeing as he’s just asked for you,” said Mrs. Bates; “and I’m sure any friend of yours is welcome. Find a chair for him, girls, if there is any chair free of your falals—and show him in, Sarah Jane.”

“I think not; if you will excuse me I’ll go to him,” said the young man, hastily. “I might bring him—if you are so kind—another time.”

“There’s no time so good as now,” said Mrs. Bates. “Don’t be shy, don’t be shy, my dear. You don’t like him to find you with Nancy; but, bless my soul, the time won’t be long that anyone will see you without Nancy—”

“Oh,” said Nancy herself, saucily, “if he’s ashamed of me—”

“Ashamed of you, darling! as if that was possible,” said the young man, stooping to whisper to her; “but it is a man, a college friend—I must go.”

While he stood thus explaining, with an anxious face, and his Nancy pouted and tossed her pretty head, the stranger suddenly appeared at the open door.

“This way, this way!” Sarah Jane had cried, delighted by the advent of another gentleman, and already wondering why Nancy should have all the luck, and whether one wedding might not bring another.

The new-comer was tall; he was short-sighted, with a pucker on his forehead, and a glass in his eye. He stood in the door, and hazily regarded the scene, not penetrating it, nor finding out his friend for the moment; but gazing somewhat vaguely, dazzled besides by the sudden light, into the small crowded space and the group of strange faces.

“Ah, there you are, Curtis,” he said at last, with a gleam of recognition; then turned to Mrs. Bates with an apology. “I hope you will forgive such an intrusion. I had a commission to Curtis, and I did not understand—I did not know—”

“Come in, Sir, come in,” said Mrs. Bates; “don’t think of apologies—we’re very glad to see you. Sit you down, Sir, and if you’ve just come off a journey, say what you would like, and it shall be got for you—a drop of beer, or a cup of tea, or a glass with my good gentleman. You see he’s making himself comfortable. And supper’s coming in about an hour. You can hurry it up a bit, Sarah Jane,” cried the hospitable mother, “if the gentleman has just come by the train.”

“Thank you,” said the stranger, sitting down on the chair that had been cleared for him; “nothing to eat or to drink, thanks—you are too kind; but I may wait till Curtis is ready. I have got something for you, Arthur,” he said, turning again to his friend.

“Oh, have you?” said Curtis, dropping back upon the sofa, beside his Nancy, as there was nothing else to be done; but he did not take her hand again, or resume his former position. He sat very stiff and bolt upright, withdrawn from her a little; but young men and young women do not sit together behind backs for nothing, notwithstanding the gaslight; and his air of withdrawal took an aspect ridiculously prudish, and called attention. The family Bates looked curiously at the stranger, and he looked curiously at them. Neither was much acquainted with the genre of the other, and on both sides there was a half-hostile interest which quickened curiosity. But Matilda and Sarah Jane were not hostile. Their curiosity was warm with benevolence. If Nancy had done so well for herself, why not they too? He had dropped into their hands like a new prey. Their eyes brightened, the energy of enterprise came into their faces. A gentleman is a fine thing to girls of their condition, far finer in promise than in reality. The appearance of a second quarry of this kind turned their heads. Why should it not fall to one of them?

“You must have found it cold travelling, Sir,” said Matilda, wrapping up her bonnet in the paper. “October nights get chilly, don’t they? and Underhayes is a miserable little place if you have come from town.”

“I have come from the country,” said the stranger, with his short-sighted stare. He was slightly annoyed, to tell the truth, to hear it so clearly set down that he must have come from town. Did he look like a man to come from town in October?—not thinking that town meant everything that was splendid in Matilda’s eyes.

“Chilly!” cried Sarah Jane, eager to recommend herself. “I’m sure the gentleman thinks this room a deal too hot. Shouldn’t you say so, Sir? I can’t abide it; it gives me such a headache.”

“Come, girls, you needn’t quarrel,” said Mrs. Bates, in her round, good-humoured voice. “We’ll allow you your different ways of thinking. Your papa likes a warm fireside, don’t you, Bates? But I suppose the gentleman comes straight from the beauty and fashion, as it says in the newspapers.”

“Talking of the newspapers, Sir,” said Mr. Bates, putting down his, “what do you think of the present crisis? What’s things coming to? There’s Rooshia threatening in the East, and as for your Khedivys and that sort, I don’t believe in them. We’ll all be in a precious hobble if we don’t look out, as far as I can see.”

“There, there, Bates, none of your politics,” cried his wife; “once begin that, and nobody can get in a word—and the gentleman is just off a journey.”

Young Curtis sat uneasily while all this went on, like a dog in leash, watching his opportunity to start. The sudden insight which had come to him with the entrance of his friend upon this scene was strange, and very painful. He was very much in love, poor young fellow, and when a man is in love, it is curious how easily he can accept the circumstances of his beloved and find them natural. Matilda and Sarah Jane had only amused him before, as, indeed, they amused the new-comer now; but the family changed its aspect entirely as the young man, who was almost a member of it, realized to himself how it must appear to his friend, and saw the whole scene, as it were, through Durant’s eyes. Durant’s eyes, however, staring vaguely upon this slowly comprehended new world, did not see half so clearly or so sharply as Arthur’s saw through them. He gave double force and meaning to the other’s observations, and beheld through him many things which the other did not see. Fortunately—and how fortunate that was Arthur did not venture to say to himself—Nancy, who was affronted, did not open her mouth. He adored her, and yet he was glad she was affronted, notwithstanding the pain it gave him. He could not bear to vex or alienate her for a moment, and yet he was thankful not to be obliged to see her too with his friend’s eyes. But he saw all the rest, and the ensemble of the room, the village flirt Sarah Jane, and the lout Charley, and Mr. Bates with his slippers, and felt how stuffy it was, and the smell of the rum. His endurance had come to a climax when Mr. Bates began to talk a little thickly of politics. Once more he sprang to his feet.

“I know Durant has something to say to me,” he cried. “I think I must ask you to excuse me to-night, Mrs. Bates. Everything must give way to business.”

“Lord bless you, my dear, not of an evening,” said the genial woman. “Don’t ye go. Supper’s coming. You know all our ways, and I daresay your friend—Mr. Durant is it? and how do you do, Mr. Durant, now I know you?—I daresay he’ll put up with us for your sake. Go you and hurry the supper, Sarah Jane.”

“We’ll have to go, really,” said poor Arthur; and he stooped to his sullen love and whispered, “Don’t be angry. He comes from my father. Though I can’t bear to leave you, darling, I must hear what my father says.”

“Oh, indeed, your father!” said Nancy. “I see what it is; it is just what I have always told you. You’re ashamed of me and my folks, as soon as you get hold of one of your fine friends.”

“Durant is not a fine friend, he is like my brother—he will be your friend too,” whispered the young man in an agony.

But Nancy only pouted the more.

“I don’t want such friends. I have got my father and my brother to see to me. You needn’t bring any of your fine gentlemen here.”

Notwithstanding, however, the blandishments of Sarah Jane and Matilda, the stranger had risen too. He was much taller, and had a much finer figure than Arthur, the sisters thought, and he smiled, though his look was rather vague, staring as if he did not see them.

“You are very kind,” he said, holding out his hand to Mrs. Bates, who hastened up to her feet too, to shake it with great cordiality. “I hope you will kindly repeat your invitation for another day, and that Arthur will bring me back, when I can take advantage of your hospitality; but I must not come among you under false pretences,” he added, laughing, “for I know nothing about the rank and fashion—that is in Arthur’s way rather than mine.”

“Oh, Sir,” said Mrs. Bates, bowing, “we know what gentlemen means when they speak in that high-minded way.”

This speech was such a triumph of genial mystification and confidence that Durant stared still more, and hurried forth reduced to silence, feeling himself unable in his present puzzled condition to cope with such an intellect. Poor Arthur, trying to seize the hand of his beloved, trying by piteous looks to move her from her sullen offence, lingered a moment, but in vain.

“Never mind her,” said Mrs. Bates, “she will come to when you are gone. It’ll all come right to-morrow. Good night, and God bless you! I’ll see to Nancy; and you needn’t keep the door open and me in a draught,” she added querulously, “if you won’t stay.”

This quickened the steps of the lover, but though he was glad to get outside, and to leave the glare and odors of that room—so long his bower of bliss, so suddenly revealed to him in its real aspect—blown away, it is impossible to say how miserable he was at such a parting from the object of his love. It was she who opened the door for him on other occasions, lingered with him in the fresh evening air, and said “Good-night” a thousand times over, each time more sweetly than the time before. So at least the foolish young fellow thought. But she had not lifted her head even to give him a last glance; she had not said “Good-night!” at all; she had dismissed him with a cloud upon her face. How was he to bear it till to-morrow? and yet how glad he was that when all of them had talked and betrayed themselves, she had never brought herself under those painful disenchanting reflections from his friend’s eyes.

“Good-night, Arthur,” said saucy Sarah Jane; “and good-night, Mr. Durant. Be sure you bring him back to-morrow. You have promised mamma to come back morrow and have supper with us. Good-night, Mr. Durant.”

Durant replied to the “Good-night” with a suppressed laugh, and walked away into the darkness with Arthur following. Though the freshness of the night was so great a relief after the heat indoors, it was not genial, but penetrating and dull, with a shrewish touch, such as October often has; and the skies were dull with no moon, nothing but drifting clouds, and the street of the little town was not attractive. They walked on in silence together for some time, the stranger being occupied longer than was necessary in lighting his cigar; but he had no sooner managed this successfully than he threw it away again.

“Come to the inn, Arthur,” he cried; “it’s comfortless work talking here.”

CHAPTER II.

THE inn at Underhayes was not much to speak of, but the parlour in which the two friends talked was larger than Mrs. Bates’s parlour, where all the family assembled and all their existence was past. Durant sat down at the table to consume a simple dinner, a hastily-cooked chicken, which he had ordered after his journey, and which was not so savoury as the supper which Mrs. Bates would have given him; nor was it so cheerful a meal. While he ate, Arthur Curtis paced back and forward at the other end of the room, which, with its bare carpet and scant furniture, was still less objectionable than the room they had left, the place where all his happiness had lain so long. Perhaps if the shock had come sooner some deliverance would have been possible, though at the cost of a heartbreak; but nothing was possible now except to carry out his engagement. Lewis Durant was both honourable and high-minded, yet he had come with no better intention than to prevent his friend from keeping his word, with very little regard for the word and none at all for the happiness of the other person who was chiefly concerned. Happiness of a girl who had entangled a young man so much above herself! what was that to anybody? If she should be robbed of her happiness, why, was it not all her own fault? But he had not been so injudicious yet as to broach this idea; he was approaching it gradually, “acquiring information” on the subject. Of course it was natural that any one so interested in Arthur’s affairs as he was, should like to know all about it, and he had seen Lady Curtis herself he did not conceal from his friend, and the anxious mother was “in a great way.”

“I’d like to take up satisfactory news, old fellow,” he said; “both for their sake and my own.”

“What do you call satisfactory news?” said Arthur. His mind was in an unexampled commotion. His old life and his new had come into active conflict, and he himself seemed to be the puppet between them. But in the midst of the excitement caused by this bringing back of all the habits of his former existence, the poor young fellow was miserable at the thought of having come away from his love without a kind word, without a look even, which could stand in the place of their usual Good-night.

“Well—it is difficult to speak in plain words between you and them. Of course you know that this can’t be expected to give them satisfaction, Arthur. They have not been led on step by step as you have—”

“What do you mean?” he said hastily. “Do you mean the vulgar sort of thing that every fool says, that she has been leading me on?”

“I certainly did not say so,” said Durant. “I mean they have not been used to all the circumstances like you. Your mind has become familiar by degrees with this family—with everything about them.”

“Say it out plainly; don’t mind my feelings,” said the other bitterly, “with the difference between Bates, the tax-collector’s daughter and Sir John Curtis’s son. Well! and what is the difference? All on her side; all in her favour. She getting nothing but additional beauty from all her surroundings, I—doing not much honour to mine.”

“I was not making any personal comparison, Arthur,” said Durant, cautiously; “I was saying only—what you will fully allow—that taken just by themselves, without that knowledge of personal excellence which I suppose you have;—that the difference of the circumstances—the difference of manners—well! cannot but startle—shock perhaps—your immediate friends.”

“That means that you are shocked and startled. Mr. Bates’s rum-and-water was too much for your delicate nerves,” said Arthur, with a sneer; “and yet you and I have seen worse things that we were not shocked at.”

“Arthur, do you want to quarrel with me? or can you suppose I should have come here, if I had felt the slightest desire or intention to quarrel with you?”

The young man did not answer for some minutes, then he threw himself into a chair by the table and concealed his face from the other’s gaze, supporting his head on his hands. “Don’t you think I know everything you can say?” he cried; “it is plain enough. They are not like us—there are things in them which even I don’t relish. Their ways are more homely, their manners more simple than we have been used to.”

“If it was only simplicity,” said Durant, shrugging his shoulders, and thinking of the blandishments of the Misses Matilda and Sarah Jane.

“Well,” said Arthur, with a sudden outbreak, “call it what you like, what disagreeable name you please, and then I ask you what have you got to say to her? It is she I am going to marry, not her family. What have you got to say to HER? She is the person to be thought of. Old Bates is an old tax-collector, and the mother a good-natured old woman, and the sisters flirts if you please; I don’t say anything to the contrary; but what have you to say against the girl herself? What of HER?”

“Arthur! I have nothing to say; how could I? She sat behind backs, with you to screen her. I saw that she was pretty—”

“You saw that she was like a lily growing among weeds; that she was like a princess among the common people; that she behaved like the best-bred of ladies. That is what you would say, if you allowed yourself to speak the truth.”

“If I speak at all I shall certainly speak the truth,” said Durant, with a sigh of impatience. To him as to everyone else, Nancy Bates had seemed only an ordinary pretty girl; nothing more.

“Then speak!” said Arthur, “for if there is one assumption more intolerable than another, it is that of saying nothing with the aim of sparing your friend, as one who has nothing but what is disagreeable to say.”

“You press me too hard,” said Durant, smiling. “What can I say after what you have said? Arthur, this girl may be a Una for anything I can tell—as you wish me to believe she is; but how can I know? I can see she is pretty; but I don’t know her; how can I divine what her character is? She may be everything you think; but all that I can possibly make out is that she is a pretty girl, with sense enough to hold her tongue.”

Arthur grew red and grew pale as his friend spoke; his lip curled over his teeth with a furious sneer, almost like the snarl of a dog.

“Don’t you think,” he said, with an enraged semblance of extreme civility, “that when you are speaking of a lady who is about to become my wife, you might speak of her by another name than that of ‘the girl.’”

“By Jove you are too good!” said Durant, half angry, half amused, “what should I say? You called her a girl yourself, and so she is; so are the Princesses for that matter.”

“I call her many things which it would not become strangers to call her,” said Arthur, “and I think, perhaps, on the whole, it would be better taste not to favour me with your opinion on this subject. You would not, I suppose, give me your frank estimate of my mother, for instance, whatever it might be—and it is equally unnecessary of my wife.”

“As you please,” said Durant, offended; and then there ensued a temporary pause, during which the stranger, driven back upon that occupation, munched a crust with indignant fervour, and Arthur sat moodily by, holding his head in his hands. It was Durant who was the first to recover himself. The man who stands in the suspicious position of adviser and reprover, naturally does regain his temper sooner than the person who is advised and reproved. He said in a conciliating tone, “Why should we quarrel? I can have no right to disapprove of your choice. I am not here as the agent of your family, Arthur, who might have a right to interfere, but only as your friend. I can wish nothing but what is for your good.”

“For my good!” the young man said through his teeth; then he, too, smoothed himself down. “I don’t want to quarrel, Durant; but if my mother thinks I am to be dictated to—or any friend of mine supposes he can come to look surprise and criticism, even if he does not say anything——”

“This is too much,” said Durant, laughing; “if you are going to put meaning in my eyes which nature has denied to them, what can I say to you? I who scarcely see anything, to look criticism is rather too strong for a blind old mole like me!”

“Short-sighted people see a great deal more than they own,” said Arthur, oracularly, “but I don’t want to quarrel.” And then again there was a pause.

“Answer me one thing,” said Durant, re-opening the question after an interval; “have you really made up your mind to marry this—lady? Is it all settled? Is there room, or is there no room for anything I might find to say?”

“What could you find to say?”

“That is not the question,” said Durant; “whatever it might be it is unnecessary to say it if everything is settled. But, Arthur, if there is still time—if I may still once, before it is too late, speak plainly to you?”

“It is too late,” said Arthur hotly. “I am to be married in a fortnight; I should be married to-morrow if I could. Supposing you had the finest arguments in the world, and the best reasons against it, do you think I would break her heart and my own for your reasonings? Yes, it is all settled, and nothing on earth can change it.”

He got up as he spoke, and marched about the room with an air of defiance. Then he came back to where his friend was sitting, and sat down on a corner of the table, swinging his legs.

“All the same,” he said, with a laugh of affectation and bravado, “I’d like to hear what you have to say against it. It might be novel and amusing, perhaps.”

“I have not the slightest desire to be amusing.”

“Oh, impressive then—that is as good or better; impressive, eloquent! let us hear, Durant. I should like a specimen of the grand style you keep for your most serious cases.”

“Yours is not one of them,” said Durant calmly; “yours is simple enough. Don’t let us go farther, Arthur; we should come to blows again, and that would not answer my purpose, nor yours either.”

“Then you refuse to tell me what of course you came here to say. Your plea cannot be very powerful this time, nor your brief worth much,” said Arthur, with a pretence at scorn which was full of aggravation. This stirred his friend more than anything yet had done.

“My brief,” he said, “was not prepared as most briefs are. It seems to me that you are not worthy even to hear of it. ‘Prove the culprit guilty’ is what most briefs enjoin, but this one was ‘Prove him innocent; let his very judges see him to be right, and not wrong.’ These were my instructions; they do not much resemble your notion of them; nor do they deserve to be received in this way.”

Arthur rose again from his seat, and walked about the room restless and uncertain.

“Say what you have to say,” he said; “I will not interrupt you. Let me hear it all.”

“I have already told you that, if everything is settled and your mind made up, it would be foolish to go on at all. If there is any hope I will speak. Arthur,” said Durant suddenly, “you are very fastidious—very difficult to please in ordinary cases. Do you think you will be able to live with the good people we have seen to-night?”

“Why should I live with them? they have nothing to do with it. A wife comes with her husband. They, whatever they may be, are quite outside the question. She is to be thought of, and she alone.”

“Have you ever reflected, Arthur, that if she—the lady—is as noble a character as you think, she will not give up her own people for you or anyone? I should not care to have a woman do that for me. I think she would have good reason to judge me severely after, if I failed in threefold duty to her. You should be father and mother in such a case—and husband too.”

“And so I mean to be, so I am! What are father and mother to me now? I have formed a tie which is beyond all these mechanical, understood ties, in which there is no choice on the child’s part; and she will feel as I do.”

“Women don’t always do that,” said Durant; “and I, for one, don’t like them when they do. Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that she did not, what should you do then? It is worth taking into consideration.”

“She would be sure to do what was best; and if that is all, we can easily baffle your cross-examination, Durant. You are not good at bullying witnesses,” said Arthur, his heart rising in spite of him. “Ask me something more difficult than this.”

“You would have to live,” said the other. “I don’t think that is more difficult, but you may not be of my opinion. How are you to live? upon your allowance, which has never been too much for you alone?”

“Two spend no more than one,” said the catechumen, recovering his spirits; “and she is not a spendthrift like me. She has been trained to make a little go a great way. She will reduce my expenses instead of increasing them.”

“Yet two eat more than one, to put it on the simplest ground.”

“Eat! that is like you, Durant. How little you know about it! Is it on eating one spends one’s money? So far as that goes, you may say what you please. There is nothing in you, old fellow, to frighten anyone. Come, I forgive your objections to my happiness when I see how little you have got to say.”

“You are sure then, entirely sure, that it is your happiness, Arthur?” Durant rose, and put his hands on his friend’s shoulders, looking down upon him with a face full of emotion. “You have been the nearest a brother of anything I ever knew—brother, or sister, or both together. Are you sure, boy, are you sure? Happiness is a sacred thing. I would not touch it, I would not harm it. Are you sure?”

“As sure as that I love her, Durant.”

The elder man dropped his hands from the other’s shoulder, and turned away with a sigh. Whether it was the half-inspired look which at that moment came into Arthur’s face, or the resemblance of that face to another, or the superiority over himself of this boy whom he had been lecturing, and whom he had lectured so often—whatever it was, he turned away, with something that made his sight more uncertain than ever, rising in his eyes.

“Then I can’t say anything to you,” he said, in a voice tremulous with feeling. “I can say nothing to you! I would not meddle with that, right or wrong, were it to cost me mine.”

“Yours, old fellow?” cried Arthur, in the effusiveness of victory. “Hurrah for love! It’s the thing worth living for. Are you in Arcadia too?”

Durant did not make any answer. He went to the window, and looked out upon the dark night and the lamps flaring; and then returned to his chair. Whatever commotion there had been in his countenance, he had got rid of it. Neither blush nor smile was on his serious face, nor any further manifestation of sympathy. Arthur looked at him, and burst into excited laughter.

“You don’t look much like a fortunate shepherd,” he said. “Love! that was a bad guess; it was law I should have said—briefs and fees, and a silk gown at the end; that’s what moves you.”

“Ay, ay,” said the other, vaguely; “that’s what it is. Mine is not a corresponding case. You were always luckier, brighter than I, and I don’t grudge it you, Arthur. Your happiness (if you are happy) will be almost as good for me as my own. But I don’t think either of them very probable just now,” he went on, suddenly changing his tone; “that is the fact. I am not in a good way, and, my boy, you are in a bad way. I’ll say it once for all. You are deceiving yourself. You are the last man in the world to do this sort of thing. You will repent it, sooner or later. Don’t look at me as if you thought me a fool, with that supercilious face. It is you who are the fool. You are going to do what you will wish undone all the days of your life.”

“Durant!” cried Arthur, furious, springing from his seat, and lifting his arm as if for a blow.

His friend stood up facing him, folding his arms. His face had flushed with a momentary gleam of passion while he spoke. Now it stilled and paled again, and he stood in his superior strength, looking calmly at the slighter being whom he had roused to momentary fury. The young man’s clenched fist fell by his side. He turned away angry, but subdued.

“No man in the world but you dare speak so,” he said, “and even from you I will never bear it again.”

“You shall not be required,” said Durant, sadly. “I have said, once for all, what was in my mind. Now—I know you well enough—you’ll go and do what you want to do, Arthur, and with all the more zest. And when you have paid for your happiness, and got to the bottom of it, you will come to me again.”

“I think you presume a little too much on our long friendship,” said Arthur, seizing his hat. “Good night; there has been enough of this. Things will be bad indeed with me, I promise you, if, after this speech of yours, I ever come to you again.”

He rushed out of the room before the other could reply. Durant went to the window and looked after him with a wistful subdued light of pity and tenderness in his face.

“I wonder how long it will be first?” he said to himself.

CHAPTER III.

LEWIS DURANT was the ami de l’enfance of Arthur Curtis. He had always been a little bigger, a little stronger, a little steadier, as he was a little older than his friend. He was not a young man of family like Arthur; and Lady Curtis, who was philosophical in her tendencies, had pointed many a social criticism by the fact, laughingly commented upon, that her son’s fagmaster at Eton, and Mentor in life, was the grandson of the great saddler with whom Sir John and his predecessors had dealt for ages. The Durants, who were French by origin, had made a great deal of money in that business, and one of the sons had been made a clergyman. This was the father of Lewis, who had been brought up accordingly in as much luxury as his friend; but unfortunate speculations on his father’s part had changed all that by this time, and the young man was now fighting his way at the Bar, with very little to keep up the warfare on, and none of those supports of good connection which help the aristocratic poor to keep their heads above water. He had a home in the depths of one of the Midland counties, where the Rector—once able to hold his own with the best of his country neighbours, and considered a very good sort of man—had fallen to the ordinary parsonic level, without any standing ground beyond it, and not much right to high consideration on that ground. For the Rev. Mr. Durant was not a very good clergyman. It had not been the object of his life to become so; but rather to obliterate from all minds by his luxurious living, his carriages, his conservatories, his expenditure in every way, that he was the son of the well-known saddler; as it has been that saddler’s object to advance his son in life and make him a member of the upper class by making him a clergyman. Everybody was quite conscious of this while he was rich; but, naturally, everybody became still more conscious of it when he became poor; and as his wealth had been his chief standing ground, and he had not much worth or goodness, and no activity, to gain him credit in his parish, the downfall was pretty nearly complete. And the woman whom he had married had been no more than a fit partner for such a man; so that when Lewis, their only child, became old enough to think of home as anything more than a jolly place to spend holidays in, the boy’s refined and delicate mind had suffered a severe shock. How it was that he happened to possess a refined and delicate mind is a totally different question, and one into which we need not inquire; but the effect upon him of the ostentatious, showy, lavish, and lazy wealth in the first instance, and of the useless, slovenly, languid poverty which followed, was remarkable enough. A great many things go by contraries in this perverse world, and nothing more commonly than the habits of parents and children. In Scotland, it has passed into a proverb that an active mother has an indolent daughter. The insinuating and bland courtier has to struggle against the abruptness or loutishness of his son, and even virtue has very often moral weakness, if not worse, for its next descendant. In Lewis Durant’s case the contradiction was a happy one. Disgusted by the aimless leisure and nothingness of the paternal life, the young man flung himself into work with a zeal and passion seldom to be found. He had no family friends in the class he had been brought up in, and his personal friends were of his own standing, themselves too young and inexperienced to help others; but he had not cared for this; he had flung himself into the work of his profession—the Bar—for which he had been trained as his father had been trained for the Church, as the profession of a gentleman, a trade not incompatible with the possession of a great deal of money, and not requiring to be kept up by the happy man who was not obliged to work for his bread. Perhaps the energy of the old saddler had got into the veins of Lewis, transmuted into some kind of potable gold, some elixir of force and life. If so, it had clearly “suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange,” for there was no greed of gold, no thirst for wealth in the young man’s mind. On the contrary, if he had not known forcibly the many good things that money can do, and which the absence of money prevents from getting done, Lewis would have hated money, so associated was it with everything that had most galled and humbled him. But money is not a thing to be scorned, and he had too much sense and too much honesty to feign. He worked with a concentration of force and steady effort which was intensified every time he visited the aimlessness of his home. He had come from that home now, and had left it, as he always did, impatient of rest, eager to plunge again into the active warfare of life, to strain muscle and sinew, and all the powers of mind and frame.

This was the man, who since they were boys, had been Arthur Curtis’s chief friend. He himself was the only son of Sir John, a true rural potentate, a man whose life was full of stolid dignity and duty, made steady, and in a dull matter of fact manner, noble, by the proud sense of obligation to his country, his son, and his dependents, such as long descent and elevated position sometimes give. Sir John Curtis might sometimes be ridiculous, but he was always respectable, making an aim at his duty in a large, conscientious, stupid way, in which there was a certain obtuse grandeur. He carried this into the smallest detail of his life, and the result was, that he was held by most people to be pompous, and admired by some as the chief source of serious comedy in his neighbourhood. But his life was a blurred version, surrounded by all kinds of imperfections of a noble ideal—a thing not always perceived by his wife and his son, to whom however Sir John’s deficiencies, on the other hand, were very plain. And Arthur, for the time at least, was almost as contradictory of his father as Lewis was. He was light-minded and heedless, idle, foolish yet clever, generous yet selfish; the kind of young man who is always in scrapes, often in the wrong, yet rarely, or never, unbeloved. He had been idle at the University, and had not taken his degree—then had gone home for a time and had done nothing. And now this last and most serious scrape of all had been brought on, as it were, by the most virtuous resolution of his life. It was his mother’s earnest desire that he should enter public life, in one way or other; and Arthur himself had been dazzled by the chances of diplomacy, an opening into which seemed before him, and had come now, in a sudden fit of industry and virtue, to see if, by the help of a noted “coach,” he could “pull through” his examinations, and get the University stamp, though late, impressed upon him. There had been no particular reason why he had not achieved that University stamp before. He was a tolerable scholar, and had meant honours—but had not been industrious enough to attain them, and had thrown up the milder standard in disgust. Thus he had come to Underhayes, intending better than, perhaps, he had ever steadfastly intended in his life; and lo! Nancy Bates was the result.

All this was in Durant’s mind, as, after a troubled night, he looked out of his inn window in the morning upon a mellow sunshiny morning of true October weather, a warm yellow haze in the air, which melted into the ripe foliage below, and the mottled clouds above. The little town was embosomed in trees. It was a little more than a village, a little less than a town; and, perhaps, had become more of a suburb than either, being within the radius of London, and coming nearer to that increasing centre every day. The metropolis and the village had been long putting forth arms of approach towards each other, and Underhayes had grown gradually larger, and nearer year by year. There was still a village green in the centre of the place; but the old houses had put on new fronts, and got enlargements of various kinds, and had become the homes of London people who went to town every morning, instead of the poorish, but very genteel persons who used to inhabit them. This was a great gain to the place, and made it swell and grow bigger and bigger; but at the same time it was a loss and forfeiture of all the originality, and much of the quiet beauty, and no little of the genial and graceful comfort that had once dwelt around the green. Everybody was richer, larger, vainer; and gorgeous entertainments were given, at which there was much more expenditure but less friendliness than of old. The city men considered themselves a great deal more intelligent, as they certainly were more knowing, than the older inhabitants, the retired captains and colonels, the widows and old maids, and solitary couples, who were now dying out in the too active air of the place. But these relics of olden days, at least, returned their scorn with interest, if they could not compete with them in other ways. Half way between these two sections of the community stood Mr. Eagles, the great “coach,” whose fame was in all the schools and all the services. He lived in an old-fashioned house with an old gate, the posts of which were surmounted by two great stone balls, and which opened upon a bit of real avenue, and enclosed real grounds, something more than a garden. It was a genuine old house, in which a retired Cabinet Minister had once lived. It was true he had built additions to it, but they were done in good taste, and strict submission to the original style of the house, which was taken as a kind of homage to the antique and Conservative class, by that class itself. He had a large house, and he took pupils; but yet it was nothing like a school, for the young men did not live with him—no one but young Mr. Curtis, who was not to call a pupil, who was “reading” for his degree, and who was a young man of excellent family and an acquisition to any society. Arthur indeed, in his own person, was one of the chief conciliatory circumstances which made the old inhabitants on the Green tolerate and receive Mr. Eagles, whom the new inhabitants looked upon with respect as a man who had made his way.

The little inn in which Durant had passed the night was opposite the gateway with the stone balls. Underhayes was not enough of a place to have a good inn. People who frequented inns had no object in going there. It was not far enough from London, nor near enough; and there were no exceptional attractions as in Kew or Richmond. Therefore, amid all the changes and improvements, the Red Lion was just what it had always been, a homely place with a sign-board standing out upon the edge of the Green, and a bench, shaded by trees, where its homely customers could sit and drink their beer. And on the other side of the Green stood Mr. Eagle’s gate, breaking the high wall in which his house and its grounds were enclosed, and from whence there burst, in autumn richness of colour, over the wall, a rich border of trees.

Durant got up in much doubt and discomfort of mind after a restless night. He went out into the soft breezy air, which was warm, yet not quite free of the crispness of a first threatening of frost. Spruce men were passing on all sides, well brushed and neat, with daintily rolled umbrellas, with light great-coats, sometimes with a book, or a bundle of letters to read in the train, going to business—all walking with air alert that spoke of a definite aim, and the pre-occupation of something to do—which did not interfere, however, with a genial readiness to hear, or report the last piece of gossip. Many of them had choice flowers in their coats, a touch of the poetry which means luxury rather than taste, with which to sweeten the office and show the skill of their respective gardeners. All this was new to Durant, who knew nothing about the ways of the city, though he acknowledged with respect the air of work and serious occupation, which called forth his sympathy, though it did not take the form with which he was acquainted. He watched them passing, going to the train; and then was conscious of the lull and desertion of the Green:—the momentary pause, half of regret, half of relief, at the departure of all this activity, and then the rising of the second more tranquil wave of movement, the tradespeople’s carts and messengers, the butcher and baker setting out on their rounds. How many little worlds like this, each complete in its own conceit, were rushing on and on, unconscious each of its neighbour! But he certainly had no time for those banales reflections, occupied as he was with painful considerations as to whether he could still do anything, or say anything to justify his mission here. What could he do or say? Arthur had left him in high dudgeon—offended apparently beyond redemption. He was not so much disturbed by this as he might have been; for he knew Arthur, and that it was not in his nature to quarrel permanently, however angry he might be for the moment. But the question was, whether he could do anything independent of Arthur, upon whom he did not feel that his influence for the present would be very weighty? He thought, with a smile, of the recorded proceedings in a similar case, the steps taken by the protectors of another Arthur—for where but in fiction can such difficulties find their readiest parallel? But Durant had no standing ground on which to emulate the masterly tactics of Major Pendennis, though the example occurred to him seriously. No—the position of Arthur Curtis had not been exaggerated, nor was there any glamour of false light about the subject which he could dispel. He was very much puzzled, very doubtful and anxious. He could not leave the place without attempting something more—but what was he to do?

His thoughts were thus occupied when he saw the gates opposite to him open hastily and some one come out—a small resolute man, with peremptory short steps and a dogmatical bearing. Durant felt at once that this was Mr. Eagles, and that he was coming towards him; and there was an air of vexation still more decided than his own on the brow of the famous tamer and trainer of “men.” He came across the Green at a rapid pace.

“Mr. Durant, I presume? My name is Eagles,” he said. “I hope you have brought some light with you on a most difficult subject. What is to be done with this boy?”

“You mean Curtis?”

“Yes, I mean Curtis. Nothing in the least like it has ever happened among my pupils before. I feel my establishment disgraced by it—disgraced, Mr. Durant. So utterly abominable an example! I don’t as a rule take charge of men’s morals or conduct, and I heartily repent having received this one into my house. It was a silly thing for me to do; but a fellow who had been at a public school and at the university, who would have supposed he could have turned out such a fool?”

“Pardon me,” said Durant, reddening, “he may have been foolish, but he is not a fool.”

“Oh, if you stand up for him! I thought you had come here, as is the part of a friend, to endeavour to convince him of his folly.”

“It is not so easy. Is it not the very essence of folly to think itself wiser than all its advisers?” said Durant with a sigh. “May I ask you how you knew I was here.”

“Oh, he told me; there is a certain frankness about him. And I saw you perambulating the Green, which is a thing unusual at this hour, and guessed it must be you. I wish him to go.”

“To go! Curtis?”

“Yes, Curtis. I wish him to go. He is (of course) doing no good here, and the story has oozed out, equally of course. How can I tell that some other idiot may not be moved by his example, and put himself at the feet of a sister? I shall get a bad name. I!—because your friend is a sentimental idiot.”

“Patience!” said Durant, laughing in spite of himself. “I don’t see how any one can blame you.”

“Nor I; but they will,” said Mr. Eagles. “Of all foolish and unreasonable persons on the face of the earth, parents are the most unreasonable. You must take your man away.”

“But he is not my man. I have no authority over him.”

“You are his friend, and you seem to have some sense, and you know his father. This is my ultimatum—you must take your man away. I have no time to say any more. Good morning, Mr. Durant. I like promptitude, and I expect you to act at once upon what I say.”

CHAPTER IV.

DURANT felt that after this shock he needed a little quiet, to re-establish him in his former thoughts. Mr. Eagles had assailed him like a charge of cavalry. He laughed, yet he was shaken. It was not in his power to take away his man; indeed he was in the most uncomfortable position possible, supposed to hold an official position in respect to Arthur, and, indeed, endowed with powers of remonstrance and reproof, but with no authority—the most difficult of all circumstances. He could neither take away his man, nor even oblige that man to hear reason, and yet he was more or less responsible for him; and to crown all, his man had quarrelled with him, and shaken off even the ties of affection which had hitherto bound them. This, it is true, did not affect him so much as it might have done had he been less familiar with Arthur, who he knew could never stand out or maintain the separation. To be sure, Arthur, backed up by a new family, and with the possible evil animus of “a set of women” added to his personal offence, was a person as yet unknown to his friend; and though Durant was kind, and did not think evil of others, yet he was not able to divest himself of the natural prepossession against the “set of women” whose ideas henceforward must, more or less, inspire Arthur. It is a compliment at least to the mental power of women that this is the first thought that springs into anyone’s head when a man makes, or is understood to be about to make, an unsuitable marriage. The man may be wiser, cleverer, infinitely of more importance than the woman as a moral being; but the whole inspiration of his conduct is instantly believed to be hers. Durant had not a notion what was the mental calibre of Nancy Bates. On the surface, of course, it could only be taken for granted that a member of the educated classes, a University man, would count for more than an untaught girl, the daughter of ignorant people. But nobody thinks so, and Durant was like everyone else. He began to wonder what sort of people the Bates’ were, and finally determined to go and see them according to the invitation of last night. He might as well feign a little even, with this admirable motive, and show himself friendly by way of being as unfriendly as possible. He was not quite sure of the moral grandeur of the proceeding. Take it all in all, indeed, the effort to seduce Arthur from his allegiance before their very eyes, so to speak; to beguile him into breaking his word and renouncing his plighted faith, was not, on the surface, a highly moral proceeding. But yet Durant, when he came, had been unable to conceive anything more desirable than this. If he could only have succeeded in persuading Arthur to do it, it would not only have left no weight on his conscience, but he would have felt that he had done well. The girl herself! What of the girl herself? She was a gambler, playing for high stakes. As for feeling on her part, who was at all likely to take that into consideration? Certainly when Lewis Durant did not (and it never occurred to him), it was extremely unlikely that any one else would.

This thought, however, having got into his mind, he resolved on carrying it out. He would go and see these people, and find out whether anything could be done with them, and again (with a smile) he thought of Major Pendennis and his most successful negotiations. These were the tactics the Major adopted, and they had proved excellently adapted for the purpose. The circumstances, however, were evidently different. Nothing could be said of Arthur Curtis, unless his friend was prepared to lie in his behalf, which would shake the confidence of the girl’s family in the advantages of the marriage. He was Sir John’s only son, the estates were entailed, there was but one sister to share even the personal property of the family, and Lady Curtis was very well off in her own right. Anything that could be said, would only make the Bates family more certain that Nancy had done an admirable thing for herself, so admirable that nothing should be allowed to stand in her way. Howsoever the lover’s friends might object, nothing could be done to do away altogether with the advantages of the marriage, and Durant felt that the family would be fools indeed to allow any meddler like himself to affect their action in the matter. Still people are fools now and then, notwithstanding the strong hold of self-interest, and might be beguiled into a false step, notwithstanding that every inducement was on the other side. All this passed through Durant’s mind, and he did not blush at the thought. It seemed to him quite justifiable, nay, laudable. It was to save Arthur; if he could save Arthur by deceiving others, what then? And as for the girl! Talk of hearts, if you please, in other conditions of life, but the heart of a village girl who beguiles a gentleman into falling in love with her! Honest, honourable, and true as he was, Durant, strangely enough, had still no compunction there. Could he have broken Arthur’s troth-plight like a wand, he would have been delighted with himself.

He did not know his way very well, having threaded a number of small dark streets, in the rain, the night before, led by the vague directions of various officious guides; but he had a notion in which direction it was, and he had abundance of time before him. He had not gone very far, indeed, before he met an individual who might easily have guided him, and whom he passed with a curious consciousness that here would be the most vulnerable member of the family—no less a person than Mr. Bates himself; a little stout man in a large white neckcloth, with a book in his hand, and an appearance of ink spots about him, which betrayed the existence of what is euphemistically called writing materials somewhere about his person. The expression of his face was not less characteristic of his profession. No softening atmosphere of rum was about him now. His face was red, probably from those long continued, though moderate evening indulgences, and his lips were pursed up and tight. He looked the kind of man whose proceedings would be summary, who would take no excuses, who would be rigid as fate in the punctuality of his applications. Durant watched him furtively from the other side of the street; and the conclusion to which he came was that Mr. Bates, though obdurate with his district, would be incapable of standing an assault from anyone of superior condition; and however arbitrary he might be to a defaulter in rates, would not venture to withstand a Sir John, should he demand the sacrifice of his Iphigenia. Should he approach him at once, thus unprotected, in the middle of his duties, and frighten him into a promise to shut his doors upon Arthur? For a moment Durant hesitated; for, in the first place, he was not Sir John, and in the second place, he distrusted the power of the tax-gatherer to contend with “those women.” To subdue the women themselves was a more desperate piece of work, but it would be more effectual were it done. With this conclusion, he went on making his way in the direction which he supposed the right one. He would not awaken curiosity by inquiring, and he had abundant time, as it was still early. The forenoon was bright and genial, but the place was very quiet. The men had been swept out of it by the morning train. Except Mr. Bates, and the butchers and bakers, and a stray parson of the High Church sect, who blocked out a large piece of sunshine with his cassock and cloak, there was no one visible, for it was too early for the female population to leave the business of their houses. He was sure to find all the females of the Bates’ family, he thought, in the stuffy little parlour, with probably some preparations for dinner going on side by side with the bonnet making. And the heroine, what might she be doing?—not seated on the sofa, nor love-making he hoped; the bonnet was better than that. He made several little pictures of her in his imagination, now standing upon her dignity as engaged to a gentleman, putting on a multitude of little airs, lording it over her sisters. No doubt this was how she would show her success. He knew nothing whatever about Nancy, but as his object was to destroy her hopes, he represented her to himself, unconsciously, as affected by the very poorest version possible of these hopes. It was natural. While, however, he was pursuing these thoughts and his way together, he suddenly encountered, coming round a corner, one of the sisters, whom he had met on the previous night. They came so suddenly upon each other, that both paused, with the slight shock of almost personal contact.

“Oh, Mr. Durant!” cried Sarah Jane.

She blushed “to be caught” in her cotton frock and shabby hat, running out in the morning—not such was the apparel in which she would have chosen to be seen by a gentleman—but Sarah Jane was a born flirt, and even her frock did not subdue her. She would not lose the opportunity. And to tell the truth, the cotton frock was much more becoming, had she known it, than the cheap travesties of “the fashion” which she generally wore.

“I am very glad to have met you, Miss Bates,” he said. “I was trying to find the way to your house.”

“Oh, la!” said Sarah Jane, her eyes dancing. This was something to the purpose, for why should he come to the house so soon but for some reason? And it could not be Matilda. “But I ain’t Miss Bates, I’m the youngest,” she said. “If you’ll just come two or three steps down this street first, I’ll show you the way. I’ve got some ribbon to match—look here, Matty’s new Sunday bonnet—but I shan’t be a moment, and I’ll show you the way.”

Durant consented; it seemed to him the best chance he could have had of acquiring information. He turned and walked down the street by the side of the girl, who was half-wild with pride and pleasure. She could see one or two faces glance out through shop-windows with surprise and envy. To be seen walking along the street with such a gentleman-like-looking man! There was nobody in Underhayes, except Arthur, who looked so distinguished, not even Colonel Hooker, who was supposed by everybody to be the glass of fashion. This was a delusion of fancy on Sarah Jane’s part, for Durant’s appearance was nowise remarkable; but as life is but thought, the idea was quite as good to her as if it had been true.

“I go all the messages,” said Sarah Jane. “I think it is very hard, especially as the girl is there, doing next to nothing; but they say they can’t trust the girl. Girls are very queer; they are not to be depended upon. I am sure, the trouble mamma has with ours!”

They had not kept a girl very long, and Sarah Jane was still a little proud of it as of a sign of social distinction. She turned to her new friend for sympathy, though reflecting, as she did so, that probably he was living in lodgings, and had not in his own person either the pride or the difficulty of managing a servant of any kind.

“Yes,” said Durant; “I agree with you, Miss Bates. Girls, so far as I have seen them, are very queer.”

“Ain’t they?” cried Sarah Jane, relieved as to his circumstances, of which a momentary doubt had crossed her mind; “never to be relied on, and eating, ma says, as much as any two of us. So I go to the shops. I don’t mind it, generally; and then if I didn’t go, who would? Matilda has no eyes. She never sees when a thing doesn’t match; and Nancy, you know, she’s always either with Arthur, or doing something for him. I daresay he’s there now.”

“Is he there all day? That must be rather a bore for you.”

“That’s what I always say, Mr. Durant. I daresay Nancy may like it, for, of course, he is her young man; but we can’t do a thing like we used, with him always there. I wish to goodness gracious they were married. Our parlour is a very nice room, but it’s too small to have these two continually there. Mamma always will call it a parlour, though drawing-room is so much better.”

“I prefer parlour.”

“Do you now? how funny! All our friends say drawing-room, though I think, after all, they oughtn’t to, as we take our meals there. It is such a trouble running in and out from one room to another, and keeping up two fires. At least, I should not think it a trouble, but mamma does. She likes her old-fashioned ways. Will Arthur be very rich, Mr. Durant, and will he be a baronet when his father dies?”

“He will certainly be a baronet when his father dies.”

“What luck for Nancy!” cried Sarah Jane; “and she met him just by chance, you know, as I might meet—anyone in the street.” She had intended to say “you,” but paused in time. “When old Aunt Anna died, it was her she left everything to, all her funny old dresses, and her money. Perhaps you did not know that she was the rich one? People say it is a shame, and that Matilda should have got it, as she is the eldest; but Matilda isn’t so kind as Nancy. I should not have got any good of it if Matilda had been the heiress. But fancy! when Nancy gets a dress for herself, she always gets one for me too, so I am just as well off as though the money were mine.”

“That is very kind of Miss Bates,” said Durant, not seeing how to find his way through all this prattle, and a little impatient of the long detour.

“She is not Miss Bates; she’s the second, next to me; and I think—if you will not tell anyone—that when she marries Arthur, who is rich, she will give up her legacy. I don’t know if it will be to me; I wish it might be to me—not that I should keep it all to myself; but it is so nice to have it all in one’s hands, and make the rest feel under obligations to you. Don’t you think it is very nice? Especially Matilda. I should like to say to her, ‘Matilda, dear, shouldn’t you like a new bonnet?’ Oh, what fun it would be! and her looks between wanting the bonnet and not wanting to have it from me.”

“It would be amusing, no doubt,” said Durant; “but do you think it is quite sure that Mr. Curtis will be so rich? I should think it would be better for your sister to keep her money, for she will have a great many expenses.”

“Oh, you nasty, unkind, mean—that’s not what I was going to say,” cried Sarah Jane; “but, dear me, you told me yourself Arthur was rich! Ain’t he a baronet’s son? What does he want with her little bit of money? I should be ashamed, myself, of taking money with my wife when I didn’t want it, if I was a rich gentleman. I call that mean.”

“But perhaps Mr. Curtis is not so rich as you think,” said Durant. “His father is not an old man; there is no reason why Sir John should not live for twenty years or more.”

“Twenty years or more!” cried Sarah Jane, turning upon him eyes that were full of dismay. She stopped short in the street to turn round and fix upon him her alarmed gaze. “Do you mean to say that Nancy—do you mean to tell me that Arthur?—But that would be no better than marrying anyone else. Just Missis, like everybody! Why Nancy!—Nancy will never give in to that.”

“I thought that probably you were deceiving yourselves,” said Durant, with some complacency, wondering at this depth of ignorance indeed, but extremely pleased with himself for having divined it, and thus finding a means of working. “Miss Nancy, if she marries Mr. Curtis, will be plain Missis, as you say, for all the world as if she had married the grocer at the corner.”

“Oh, the grocer! that is what she is never likely to do,” cried Miss Sarah Jane, with a conscious look towards the corner. The grocer was standing at the door in his apron—a good-looking young man, whose eyes were fixed, as Durant saw with some amusement, on himself, and with a decidedly hostile look. Miss Sarah Jane gave him a nod of airy fascination across the street. Perhaps but for this conversation she would not have been so gracious. Durant perceived that he himself was being presented in the light of a possible rival to the young tradesman, of whom he had spoken so lightly, and it was all he could do to keep his gravity in this very novel and unexpected conjuncture. He made an effort, however, and went on.

“You must know,” he said, “that an independent poor man like that very good-looking grocer—”

“Oh, poor! none so poor! he is better off than many folks that make a deal more show,” said Sarah Jane.

“That is precisely what I was going to say. An independent man in his position, may be really in much better circumstances than the son of a more important person. Sir John Curtis is not a man to be trifled with,” Durant went on, with a momentary half-amused compunction for this cruel slander upon poor Sir John. “He is stern in his own views; he is capable of withdrawing his son’s allowance altogether if he is dissatisfied with his marriage. I am very sorry to alarm you, but I feared you might be under some delusion, and this was what I wanted to say.”

Sarah Jane’s eyes had been growing wider and wider with alarm and wonder. She turned round upon her heel as upon a pivot.

“Now I think of it,” she said, “Matilda had better come and match her ribbon herself. It is only for the strings, and the bonnet is not more than half done—and, please, come and tell all this to mother yourself. Nancy’s a dear,” said the girl, with a look which entirely changed her aspect to her sympathetic companion. “She may have her faults, but she’s always been kind, and I can’t bear that she should be deceived. Come and tell it to them at home. Mother knows a deal—she’s cleverer than any of us; she’ll know if you’re right or wrong; but I won’t have Nancy put upon, not—” cried the girl, with a vehemence of regard which only the strongest asseveration could justify—“not if I was never to have another new dress for years and years!”

CHAPTER V.

THE unlikely pair retraced their steps rapidly, turning towards the house of the Bates’; but the effect of Durant’s revelation soon died off from the mind of Sarah Jane. She had done what duty required in taking him at once to her mother. Once told to that supreme authority, Sarah Jane felt that her mind was clear of all responsibility, and, indeed, as a matter of fact, she dismissed the burden of this new revelation long before her companion ceased his efforts to impress it upon her. She tried what she could to beguile him into lighter talk; she broke in upon him with lively observations, and little essays of friendly familiarity. The momentary agitation of sympathy which had almost interested Durant in her died away. She began to pout as he went on.

“Oh, please don’t talk for ever about Arthur; I ain’t in love with Arthur, though Nancy is. I think you might find another subject,” she said. “They make a deal too much of him at home; I think, and so does Matilda, that there are nicer-looking and as gentlemanlike-looking in Underhayes as he is. What do you think of Underhayes, Mr. Durant? Is not it a pretty little place? If I had my choice I would live in London, and every night of my life I’d go to a dance or to the play. I don’t pretend to be good, as some girls are. I shouldn’t go about among the poor, or sing in church. What I’d like, would be to go to a party every night, or else to the play.”

“I should think you would soon be tired of that,” said Durant; “fashionable people get quite worn out. They get pale and colourless, not fresh and blooming, like you.”

“Oh,” cried Sarah Jane, feeling that this was the kind of talk in which she shone, “tell me about fashionable people, Mr. Durant! Are they a great deal prettier than we are? I suppose they look so with all their grand dresses; but I should not care to catch people by dress, and make them think me good-looking when I wasn’t; I would much rather look what I am, and then nobody would be deceived.”

“You could have no inducement to look anything but what you are,” said Durant amused, giving this young savage, since she asked for it so plainly, the gewgaw of compliment which she wanted. Sarah Jane brightened, and coloured, and bridled with pleasure. Let Nancy fare as she might, here was an immediate advantage her sister could have, without any evil effect on Nancy’s future.

“Oh, you are just like all the gentlemen,” she said, “always paying compliments; if the girls were not a deal more sensible than you think, you would turn our heads. But if there is one thing I despise, it is the silly girls that believe everything that is said to them. A little experience teaches you better than that,” said Sarah Jane.

“And what does experience teach Miss Bates,” said Durant, suppressing his laugh.

“I told you before I was not Miss Bates; I am Miss Sarah Jane. Some people don’t think it very pretty, but I will never be ashamed of my name. Is it true that they go to five or six parties in a night, one after the other? I should not like that; where I am enjoying myself I like to stay. If it was dull, perhaps it would be a good thing to try another, but fancy a ball being dull! it is, I suppose, for the old wallflowers that don’t dance, but I think a ball heavenly. Don’t you think so, Mr. Durant? I have been at three—the volunteers’ ball, and the—two others that you wouldn’t know about; and I nearly danced my shoes to pieces at all the three.”

“It was natural then that you should enjoy them,” said Durant.

“Yes, wasn’t it? I never would miss one if I could help it. Now Nancy was so foolish she never went at all, but started out for a long walk with Arthur, just as we were going. Wasn’t it silly? I think she was sorry though next day, when she heard us talking of it and counting our partners, Matilda and me. A girl may be going to be married, without giving up all her pleasures. But Nancy is a deal too good; I believe she would not mind giving up a ball even, if Arthur was not there, to let me go.”

“I am glad to hear she is so kind.”

“Oh yes, she is very kind. But she wanted me to wear an old dress of aunt’s, and that I would not put up with. She does not mind looking a guy herself. I danced seven waltzes straight off, without ever sitting down, but I was not tired—not a bit tired. Oh, what fun it was! I wish there was one to-night—I wish there was one every night. I could dance till six o’clock in the morning, and never tire.”

“I hope then for your sake,” said Durant, “that there are a great many balls at Underhayes.”

“No, indeed. It requires to be some public thing, like the Volunteers. I have seen dances in the houses on the Green; but then we were not asked, and it was dreadful to stand and look in at the windows, and hear the music. I am sure there were plenty of people there that were not a bit better than we were. That girl that teaches the little Smithards—a bit of a governess. Mamma said it was ridiculous having her, and not us—a little bit of a governess! Now we have never been required to do anything for our living. We have always been kept at home, and have had everything we wanted. That makes a deal of difference; don’t you think it does, Mr. Durant?”

“I am not very clever in such subjects. I have to work very hard for my living, Miss Sarah Jane.”

“Have you now? I should not have thought it, you look so like a gentleman. I suppose it is the clothes,” said Sarah Jane thoughtfully. “But even then,” she added with magnanimous indulgence, “that is quite different; men may work without losing caste, mamma says, but not women. And we have always been kept at home. I would not be a governess for the world.”

“I do not suppose it can be a pleasant occupation,” said Durant.

“No, indeed. What are you, Mr. Durant? You don’t teach, do you? I wish you had been in the army; I do so like officers, their manners are so nice. Here we are at home already, I declare. What a pity, we have had such a nice walk. Mamma, here’s Mr. Durant,” she said, rushing into the little parlour; “and oh! look here, he is come to say that Arthur ain’t at all rich—and that Nancy won’t be my lady—and that it’s all a mistake.”

“What are you saying, Sarah Jane? Shut the door, can’t you, and not shriek like that in the passage; should you like the girl to hear? I wonder at you, child. Good evening, Mr. Durant,” said the mother, stiffly. She did not hold out her hand to him, or ask him to sit down, with the effusive hospitality of last night, but her daughters were more kind; Matilda lifted the paper with all her materials off the sofa to make room for him, and Sarah Jane dragged forth the most comfortable chair.

“This is the coolest place, Mr. Durant,” she said. “Oh, isn’t it warm here, with such a big fire? and it is quite a lovely morning, though there is a breeze; and Mr. Durant and I have had the most delightful walk!”

The former speech made the mother cold and Matilda kind; this had the reverse effect—Matilda froze and Mrs. Bates began to thaw. The gentleman who had taken a delightful walk with her youngest daughter, was not a man to be frowned upon. Who could tell what might come out of such a beginning? Mrs. Bates was governed by a different code of laws from those which move the careful mothers of other spheres. She was not afraid of delightful walks, or those meetings which are not always accidental; besides, was not the stranger Arthur’s friend, and consequently no stranger at all?

“I am sure it is very good of Mr. Durant to take the trouble of talking to a little scatterbrain like you,” she said; “but girls will be girls; we can’t put old heads on young shoulders; and indeed, poor things, why shouldn’t they be light-hearted? We haven’t got much more than good spirits and good constitutions to give them, Mr. Durant.”

“La, mamma! a great deal Mr. Durant must care for our spirits and our constitutions!” cried Matilda; “I daresay he has come about business, as Sarah Jane says. Was it something about Arthur, Sir? But you can’t tell us anything that will hurt Arthur. We are so fond of him. We would not believe any harm of him, whatever you might say.”

“I have no wish to say any harm of him,” said Durant; “I may claim, indeed, to have more affection for him than a stranger can have. He has been like a brother to me.”

“And I am sure he is very fond of you,” said Mrs. Bates, “a gentleman couldn’t be fonder of another gentleman than he is of you. But, of course, you know, Mr. Durant, when people are in love, they think of nothing else.”

“Poor Curtis!” said Durant unawares. It was true enough that he “was fond of” his friend; and yet, for the sake of this girl, Arthur had quarrelled even with his old companion. He felt a profound pity for him in his heart. What was he doing here, the foolish fellow—in this place, so unlike everything he had ever known?

“Well!” said Mrs. Bates, “I wouldn’t say poor Curtis. So far as I have seen, ’tis a happy time. After, when the cares of the world come on, and there’s not means enough, or so forth, I might call ’em poor; but not just now when everything is colour de rose. And, thank Heaven! there cannot be any trouble about means with dear Arthur. Sarah Jane says, you say he isn’t rich? that may be, Mr. Durant. I don’t look for wealth when young folks are happy together, and fond of each other. Money ain’t everything, as I always tell my girls.”

“No,” said Durant, taken aback. “I only thought, from what Miss Bates said, that you might be deceived in respect to Curtis’s true position, that was all. Of course, he has excellent prospects; but his father, Sir John, is comparatively a young man. He will flourish for the next twenty years, I hope. And as for the title, that of course—”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Bates with dignity. “And I do hope Sir John will long be spared to his family. You must not take all that a silly girl says for Gospel. I think we are quite aware of Mr. Curtis’s position, Mr. Bates and me. Naturally, we made inquiries. He is not rich, but he will have enough, I hope, to make a start—and my daughter has a little of her own.”

“Oh, mamma! what’s two hundred and fifty pounds?” said Matilda, “that’s Nancy’s fortune. It won’t last long, will it, Mr. Durant? And Arthur hasn’t got a business, or anything to help him to a living. I think it’s very kind of Mr. Durant to come and tell us all this about Sir John.”

“And”—said Durant pursuing his advantage, “I must speak plainly, though it may not be pleasant. Sir John is not a man to take a lenient view of anything that appears like disobedience. I do not think it likely, pardon me for saying so, that the family will like the marriage. They do not know, for one thing, the excellence of Miss Nancy.”

“Oh, Nancy!” said Matilda, under her breath, with a little toss of her head, and Sarah Jane laughed. Nancy was only Nancy after all, and as for excellence! Mrs. Bates took the matter differently, as may be supposed.

“I am not going to hear anyone talk disrespectful of my girl,” she said. “She is as good a girl as ever breathed. I wish Sir John, or the Queen herself, may have as good, and that ain’t a bad wish, Mr. Durant. She is one that would do credit to any family, though I say it that shouldn’t. She’s pretty and she’s good, and knows her duty a deal better than most. Them that find fault with my Nancy, it’s because they don’t know what she is. Me and her father could tell them a different story. She never was one to go after pleasure like the other two.”

“Mamma!” said Matilda and Sarah Jane in a breath.

“Oh yes! I know what I am saying. You are good girls enough, but you’re not like your sister. You were always the troublesome ones. You’d talk and laugh with anybody. You have got no proper pride. But Nancy has always kept herself to herself. However she got to be so fond of Arthur, I never could make out, for she was not one to take up with strangers; and never had any affair of the sort, nor so much as kept company with a gentleman in all her days, till she met with Arthur. Oh! my Nancy is a very uncommon girl, Mr. Durant. There are very few like her.”

“I am quite ready to believe it,” said Durant, proceeding on his remorseless career, though compunctions pricked him for what he was doing. “But Sir John does not know Miss Nancy. And there is Lady Curtis to be taken into consideration.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Bates, subdued for the moment, “I don’t deny a lady may have prejudices. I know by myself—that time when Charley was supposed to be paying attention to—you remember, girls?—oh yes! a mother is to be considered. But still—we have no reason to think Lady Curtis is disagreeable, Mr. Durant, or will not hear reason. The time I am talking of, about Charley—I took my measures. I got a friend of mine to speak to the girl; and I met her myself—by accident like; and, I am glad to say, it all came to nothing,” Mrs. Bates added with a sigh of relief.

“Then you perceive,” said Durant, “that you felt exactly as Lady Curtis may be expected to feel.”

“Yes—mothers is the same everywhere, I suppose,” said Mrs. Bates, not without complacence. “A little more money don’t make much difference, Mr. Durant. If it was the Queen, a mother can’t be more than a mother. And we’re all alike, never out of anxiety one way or other—thinking of our children—a deal more than our children ever think of us,” she added, shaking her head at her daughters with a sigh. “But I suppose that’s the way of the world.”

“Let us return to Lady Curtis,” said the Devil’s advocate. “She, you acknowledge, is likely to be prejudiced. You understand that, judging from the feelings with which you heard of Mr. Charley’s entanglement—”

“It never went so far as an entanglement. Dear, no! you must not think it was so serious.”

“But this is very serious, Mrs. Bates. Curtis has settled everything to marry your daughter—so he tells me—and what will Lady Curtis think? She does not know Miss Nancy, nor you. She will think these are some designing people who have caught my son—”

At this there was a universal outcry, through which, however, Durant threaded his way with composure, notwithstanding the threatening and angry glances which surrounded him on every side.

“Designing people,” he repeated, “who have caught my son. You don’t suppose I think so, who know you? But Lady Curtis does not know you—and there is a certain difference between your rank and theirs. It is, vulgarly speaking, a good match for Miss Nancy. I am speaking from their point of view—this is how they must think of it, you know. In their rank of life, people generally meet and consult over a marriage. One man’s son does not marry another man’s daughter on the same level of society, without a great many consultations over it, and advances from one to the other. The young lady has to be introduced to her future husband’s family, and all the steps towards the marriage are taken jointly. But there has been nothing of the kind in this case. The Curtises have not even been informed of it. They found it out by chance. Fancy then, Mrs. Bates, what their feelings must be? They find themselves deceived and defied by their son; and they find that you are quite willing to allow him to marry your daughter without the slightest communication with his family—”

“Mr. Durant,” said Mrs. Bates, whimpering, “who gave you any right to come like this and insult us? What have we done to you that you dare to speak so? Oh! it is well seen that my husband is out, and we have no one to protect us, girls. But I say it is mean to come here in the morning, when there’s no one to stand up for us, and trample upon women. I say it’s a poor sort of thing to do. You daren’t do it—no, he daren’t do it—if your papa was here.”

“Oh, don’t talk nonsense, mother,” said Matilda, “what could father do? Is he the one to take care of anybody? Mr. Durant, look here, I don’t think you’re any way against us, are you? It’s in kindness that you’re talking, ain’t it? I can’t think that a gentleman would come into a house, if it was the house of poor folks, like this might be, and put on a show of being friendly—and mean different. Folks learn a deal in this world,” said the young woman, pushing away her bonnet-making, and looking at him more and more keenly with rising suspicion; “but without you owned to it, I wouldn’t believe that.”

“Miss Bates!” faltered Durant, rising to his feet. He grew crimson under her honest straightforward look. It was honest and straightforward, notwithstanding that there must, he felt, have been a certain double-dealing, more or less, about Arthur; but he was in no position now to find fault with the double-dealing of others—had he not acted equivocally himself?

“I did not mean to deceive you,” he said, faltering. “I did not mean to conceal from you that I was the friend of the Curtis family. I have never said I approved of the marriage. I have naturally looked upon it from their point of view.”

“He never said anything different,” said Sarah Jane, crying in sympathy with her mother. “He never said he was our friend. This is what he has been saying to me since ever I met him. As if nobody was ladies but those that are rich! and as if the rest of the world was dirt—as if we cared for his Curtises and his fine folks!”

“If it is on account of the family you care, Mr. Durant,” said Matilda, more moderate, “it would be better if you said it straight out.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said, recovering himself, “it was not necessary. I am not the agent of that family—nor am I the enemy of this family. But the marriage is very unsuitable, as any man may see; it ought to be opposed. What happiness can come of it? Judge for yourselves. Curtis can’t do anything for his living, as Miss Bates says; and your daughter’s little money, what is it? And if they marry, they will be altogether dependent on Sir John, who does not like it—who goes further than that—hates it, and is furious with his son. He would cut him off with a shilling, if he could. But anyhow, he can stop his allowance; he would throw them on their own resources—and then what would they do? You have always kept her at home your daughter tells me; so that she could do nothing to help. And he could do nothing—what could he do? He has always been used to live expensively. Mrs. Bates, if you let it go on, I am very sorry for you. The most likely thing that can happen is, that they will be dependent on you.”

“Dependent on us!” this was such a dreadful suggestion, that all lesser impulses of offence were forgotten. They gathered round him in tremulous anxiety. “You don’t mean to say, Mr. Durant, that they would leave him without a penny? I am speaking to you like a friend,” said Mrs. Bates, “I am not particular to ask if you meant it or not. Would they leave him without a penny?—a young man with all his extravagant ways.”

“Would not you do it yourself, if you thought it would stop such a marriage?” said Durant.

CHAPTER VI.

DURANT felt that he had done a good morning’s work. He had succeeded in frightening Mrs. Bates, and striking with alarm the sensible mind of Matilda, and the frivolous one of Sarah Jane. He left them in different stages of perplexity and distress when he came away. They were not more selfish than other people; but the idea of Nancy’s marriage, which they had been so proud of in anticipation, coming to nothing, or coming to so much worse than nothing as to throw the “young couple” on their hands, naturally appalled them. Arthur had, which, perhaps, was also natural, told them as little as possible about his family; he had slurred vaguely over all details of how he and his bride were to live. He had plenty for both, he said; there would be quite enough to give his Nancy everything her heart could desire. What could they wish for more? The daughter of a tax-collector is not usually burdened with very elaborate marriage settlements.

“I hope your papa and mamma will be pleased,” Mrs. Bates had said, when she had received the intimation of the betrothal, bestowing on her future son-in-law a tearful kiss, which he bore like a hero.

“Oh, no fear of them; they will be pleased when they see Nancy,” he had replied; and with this assurance she had been content.

As the time fixed for the marriage approached, no doubt there had been searchings of heart on the subject; but these were rather directed to the question, whether or not he would have any of his family asked to the wedding than to anything more important. Arthur was four-and-twenty, surely old enough to choose for himself, and the idea of consulting the father and mother (it being evident that they were not very likely to be satisfied with the marriage) did not occur to these good folks. A young tax-collector would not think of consulting his family, though he might like them to be pleased; and why should a baronet’s son, a young gentleman, much more his own master than any tax-collector, be bound to what his father and mother wished? Mr. Bates, who had a great respect for the powers that be, had, indeed, grumbled a fear that “they mightn’t like it;” but “Who cares?” had been the answer of his bolder spouse. She remembered this now with a little horror.

“Your father is slow,” she said to her girls; “and sometimes we’re all impatient, as we didn’t ought to be; but it’s wonderful how often he’s right, is papa.”

The girls scouted the idea in words, but in their hearts they too were somewhat impressed, and the little parlour was full of agitation all the morning. Nancy was out, as the day was so fine, with her lover. They had so nearly quarrelled on the previous night, that their morning meeting was more interesting than usual, and they had gone out to make it up. There was a common not far off, with stretches of gorse and little thickets of half-grown trees, which was the resort of all lovers in the neighbourhood; and there they had been spending the morning in the midst of the autumnal sunshine, declaring to each other that nothing should ever come between them again, neither enemies nor friends.

Durant went home to his inn, very well pleased with himself, though with a qualm of compunction which he had not expected to feel. On the whole, these people were not designing people. They were not the harpies of the social imagination, who pounce upon the hapless fils de famille, and crunch his bones. That did not make them in the smallest degree more suitable to be connected with Arthur, but it made his friend a little ashamed of the part he was playing. And at the same time he was satisfied; for he did not want Arthur to make this foolish marriage, and he wanted very much to please Lady Curtis, for reasons which will be disclosed hereafter. He felt he had done a good day’s work, though, perhaps, it was not work of a very noble kind. He did not believe in the least that the Curtis family would sentence their son to starvation, or to be dependent on the house of Bates, though he made use of that idea to subjugate the latter; but Nature revenged herself upon him for this lie by permitting him to believe another, which was that these proceedings of his could have some influence in retarding Arthur’s marriage. Though he ought to have known that the obstacles thus set up would, on the contrary, make Arthur doubly eager, and lead him to force on everything, a little mist of complacent delusion was over his eyes in respect to his own adroitness, and he really believed that it might be in his power to save Arthur. And then if he saved Arthur, what might not Lady Curtis be disposed to do? Not, poor Durant, the same thing over again, by bestowing her daughter, of whom she was much more proud than she had ever been of Arthur, upon a poor, if rising barrister. No, that was not likely, and he knew it was not likely; but yet he had a certain vague faith in it which impelled him to do anything to please her; and he thought what he had done would please her. He thought he had produced some effect. There was a glow of comfortable sensation in his mind. If, perhaps, he had been not quite kind, not quite just to the poor people he had just quitted, what claim had they upon his kindness? None whatever; and it was all perfectly legitimate, perfectly fair. Were they not coming out of their natural sphere, clutching at the Baronet’s son for their daughter, publicly boasting the time when Nancy should be my lady? And was not any way of putting an end to this fair and defensible? He had done nothing that it was not quite allowable to do.

In this frame of mind he ate his luncheon, and decided to stay another night at Underhayes. It was rather hard, indeed, to know what to do with himself in the afternoon; but he hoped that perhaps Arthur might change his mind, might think it worth while to come to him and argue the point; and in any arguing of the point, Durant felt that he must be successful. Then he had a bundle of correspondence to get through. A busy man is often entirely thrown out of his mental gear by finding himself shut up in a bare parlour in an inn, without any of his habitual tools, without books or papers. But he had letters to write, which was always an occupation; and one of his letters was to Lady Curtis. Before he could do this, however, it was necessary that he should get paper; and the day was so mild, and the air so sweet, and the appearance of the little place so pleasant, that he went out with an agreeable sense that his business was not pressing, and that he might linger before coming in.

As Durant went out of the inn, however, he was run against by some one coming in, in hot haste, and with every appearance of impatience and impetuosity.

“I want to speak to a Mr. Durant that is staying here,” she said to the waiter; then, stopping short with a start, turned her attention to himself. “I think you are Mr. Durant,” she said.

It was Nancy Bates in person. Though he had seen her but vaguely on the previous night, he recognised her now. Her hat looked as if it had been put on hurriedly, and a long lock of brown hair had dropped upon her shoulder. Durant could not but notice how long it was, and how soft and shining it looked—not golden or red, but shining, glossy brown. It caught his eye, even in the midst of the shock he experienced on hearing her ask for him. What did she want with him? He felt himself shrink in spirit, if not in outward appearance. Arthur he had been striving to save, his conscience was clear in that respect; but this young woman, what had his intention been so far as she was concerned? It was not to save her he had been trying, but to break her heart, if she happened to have one, and anyhow, heart or none, destroy her prospects, and steal away her supposed good fortune. Therefore, he could not help it, he shrank a little from Nancy; and there was a haste and hostile energy in her looks which added to this feeling. He answered, almost in a tone of deprecation,

“Yes, that is my name; and I think it is Miss Bates?”

“Anna Bates,” she said, with a little elevation of her head, as if the name she pronounced had been one of imposing importance. “I want to speak to you, please.”

Durant was entirely taken back. He looked at her with an air of helpless bewilderment. What was he to do? Ask her to go back to his sitting-room with him? ask her to go with him outside? He did not know what was etiquette in such regions. No young woman with whom he was acquainted had ever called upon him before, and the young man was utterly puzzled and discomfited, and did not know what to do.

“Surely,” he said, hesitating between the stair and the door, with a helpless look at the waiter, who might, he thought, have made some suggestion.

That it was wrong to come to Mr. Durant “on business,” and business so urgent, had never crossed Nancy’s mind before; but she saw that he thought so, and this discovery, instead of abashing her, fired her with new vehemence. The very wonder in his face was as a flag of aristocratic superiority to Nancy, and made her wild.

“You are surprised,” she said, with a look of scorn, “that I should come to you; but I am not one of your fine ladies that send for people to come to them; and there is no room in our house for private talks. You can speak to me in the street, I suppose.”

And with this she turned her back upon him and hurried out. Here she paused a moment, seeing, perhaps, for the first time, the difficulties of an indignant demand for explanations upon Underhayes Green, in the face of all the people who were coming out on their afternoon walks, and calls and business. None of these difficulties had ever troubled Nancy before. The inconvenient splendour of being a person whose proceedings were watched, had never attended her before. But now it all flashed upon her in a moment. Already it was known in the place that she was going to marry, or rather to be married by Mr. Curtis, and if she was seen at three o’clock in the afternoon walking about the Green in close conversation with another “gentleman,” what would everybody say? Very different had been Sarah Jane’s feelings, who only hoped everybody she knew might see her walking with the “gentleman.” Already the shadow of her new position had come over Nancy, and the sense that observation now would be degrading rather than flattering. She had not thought about it at all in the fervour of her feelings, when she rushed out impetuously to confront her adversary, but she perceived it through her adversary’s eyes. She turned half-round to him, and waving her hand towards the other side of the Green, where there was a little bit of shade with trees, went on before him, rapidly crossing the grass. Durant followed. He was nervous about what was going to happen to him; to take him thus under the damp trees, from which a shower of leaves fell at every puff of air, was very much like dragging him to some den where he could be devoured at leisure. Could Arthur be there? but on reflection he felt sure that Arthur, had he known, would have found some means of subduing this impetuosity, and preventing an encounter. It could not be for Arthur’s interest in any way. Before however they had got across the Green, Durant’s fright had subsided; he began to be interested; the situation was piquant, if no more; and that lock of brown hair was very pretty. He would have thought it untidy in Sarah Jane, but here somehow it looked well. He thought of the “sweet neglect” of Herrick’s description; the tempestuous petticoat occurred to him in spite of himself, and he began to be half pleased, half excited by this odd adventure. What would Arthur say if he saw him being thus carried off for a private interview? and the direct course which the impetuous young woman was taking, brought them immediately in front of Mr. Eagle’s gate. The little line of trees which looked like a Mall in the distance, lay under his garden walls, and it turned out to be of much less importance than he thought—a sweep of some old avenue, a hundred yards or so of path between two fine ranges of elms. It led nowhere, and was quite deserted. A better place for a mysterious interview could scarcely be.

When they had got under the shade of the trees, she turned upon him suddenly.

“You were at our house to-day,” she said; “you were saying a great many things about—Mr. Curtis’s family. Did they send you, or what right have you to speak for them? I want to know.”

“Miss Bates, you are very hasty—very peremptory.”

“I am no different from what I have a right to be,” she said, and he could hear that her voice trembled with passion, and see that the lines of her face were moving, and that there were tears which looked more like fire than water in her eyes.

“What do you mean by coming and setting my folks against—Mr. Curtis? You pretend to be a friend of his. What do you do it for? And what right have you to interfere with me?”

“None in the world,” said Durant, hastily; “none in the world! nor do I. I told your mother the truth about the Curtises, as I thought I was bound to do.”

“Why were you bound to do it? I did not ask you to give us any information. You might have consulted me first, or—Mr. Curtis. If we were willing to have nothing said about them, to have nothing to do with them, was that your business? Don’t you think it’s like a busy-body—a meddler, Mr. Durant? I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself!” she said, the passion getting vent, and the tears falling hot and sudden in spite of herself out of her eyes. “You, a gentleman! if it had been a silly gossip of a woman, I should not have been surprised.”

This, as may be supposed, galled Durant immensely, for what can be harder upon a man than to be called like a gossip and a woman? But he had command of himself.

“I am distressed,” he said, “to have caused any annoyance; I had no intention of doing so.”

“Then what was your intention?” she said; “I suppose you had one. It will be honester to tell me directly what you mean.”

“I have no objection to tell you what I mean,” he said, “as I told your mother. The Curtises are my friends. I know them thoroughly, and I know that your marriage will grieve them to the heart. Pardon me if I must speak plainly. It is no offence to you personally, for they don’t know you. Arthur has told them the step he is going to take only at the last moment; only, in fact, after they had been told of it from another source. They are deeply offended, as may be easily supposed. He has not behaved to them as he ought.”

“You will say nothing against Mr. Curtis, please.”

“But I must say something about him—Arthur! Have you any idea, Miss Bates, what Arthur has been to me? My companion since he was that height; my younger brother, my charge; nay, almost my child. And you tell me I am not to speak of him! Is it possible, do you think? My affection for Arthur gives me a right to say anything to him—or of him.”

“There is no one in the world,” she said, with her lips quivering, “who has so much right to him as me.”

Durant threw up his shoulders and his hands in the excitement of the moment. “So it appears,” he said, “so I suppose—though how it should be so, God knows, is the last of mysteries. Well! let us say he belongs to you, and that not his oldest friend, not his nearest relation, has a right to discuss him if you forbid. It is the wildest madness, but I suppose, as you say, it is true. And what then, Miss Bates? he will have you, but he will have nothing besides. Everyone else will be separated from him; his parents not only offended, but wounded to the heart; his friends alienated, his position lost. What will he be then, and what will he do? A man cannot be a lover and nothing else all his life. He would tire of that, and you would tire of it; but he will have nothing to fall back upon; and after all, if a man defies his parents and throws off their influence, why should they exert themselves to secure to him the means of defying them? They will not do it—why should they? and you will find that you have married poverty—helplessness—discontent.”

“And if I do,” she said, “will that show I am marrying for money? You bad man! You cruel friend! You go and tell everybody that it is because he will be rich—because I shall be my lady—that I am going to marry Arthur. How dare you! how dare you! But if this is how it is going to be, you will all find out different; you will find it is not for his money or for his rank. Go away!” she cried, clenching a hand which was small but strong, and full of impassioned energy; “go away! and don’t tell lies of me.”

Durant was impressed in spite of himself; he tried to smile, but could not, and he tried to be angry, but could not refrain from a certain half-respect, half-admiration.

“I tell no lies of you or anyone,” he said; “I warn you—”

“Warn me! of what? that I shall have a way of showing whether I’m true or not,” she said, “whether I’m good or not; and you think that will frighten me! Mr. Durant, if his mother sent you, you may go back and tell her what I say. You’ve dared me to give him up, and I won’t give him up; and if I were to give him up a hundred times it would make no difference, for he would not give up me. You can tell her all that. He can do without her, but he can’t do without me.”

“Do you think that is a kind thing to tell a mother?”

“I don’t care,” said Nancy, “you have said worse to me; and it’s true—and so it’s always true. I’d tell my own mother the same. What’s a mother? they didn’t choose to have us; they didn’t pick us out of the world; and now that we’re here we’ve got to do the best we can for ourselves. You may go where you like upon your missions, Mr. Durant, but not here—you shan’t come here; and if you come till doomsday you wouldn’t do any good, for they put more trust in me—and so they ought—than in a cunning lawyer like you. We know what lawyer means,” said the excited girl, once more shaking her small clenched fist in his face, “liar! and that’s seen in you.”

With this she turned and walked suddenly away, turning the corner of the high garden wall, and disappearing in a whirlwind of excitement and emotion, while he stood thunderstruck, staring after her. Durant stood still and stared, with his mouth open in the extremity of his surprise. He was too much startled even to be angry; but he was discomfited, there was no mistaking that sensation. As he stood looking after the excited girl, a sense of smallness, almost of baseness, came over him. He had wanted to save Arthur, but he had not taken the other human creature into consideration, who was just as important as Arthur to the world; and he had not realized the kind of being he had to deal with, when he had drawn up his own brief, as it were, and instructed himself in the line of argument to be pursued. Lawyer, liar! that was a sharp thorn. He was able to smile feebly at it, as he picked himself up and went slowly back to his inn; but he could not shake off the sense of failure—the sense of smallness and meanness that had come over him. Not only had he found a foeman worthy of his steel, but she had baffled him and put him to shame even in his own eyes.

CHAPTER VII.

NOR were Durant’s troubles over for that day. In the evening another tempest came upon him. He had finished his solitary dinner, and written his letter to Lady Curtis, which was considerably changed from what it was intended to be. He had meant to say that he was in great hopes of having succeeded in his attempt to convince the Bates’ that it was not for their interest to allow Arthur to marry their daughter; but after his interview with Nancy, he could not say this. On the contrary, he gave a description of her future daughter-in-law, which was very much more favourable to that young woman than anyone could have expected.

“She has a great deal of character,” he wrote. “She is not vulgar by nature, nor devoid of intelligence. If things come to the worst, something may be made of her.”

This was not very satisfactory to Lady Curtis, who would almost rather have heard that her son was about to marry a demon incarnate, who would disgust him sooner or later, and from whom even yet he might be driven. So that poor Durant had doubly lost his work.

He was finishing this letter when his door was opened suddenly, and Arthur Curtis came in unannounced. He was quite pale, with eyes which gleamed red and angry, and an air of furious calm—passion at the white stage to which no utterance would suffice. He came in, closed the door behind him, and then coming forward, dashed his clenched hand upon the table.

“Look here,” he said, “I’ll have none of your interference, Durant. Friend you may be, if you like, but dictator to me never—no, I cannot put up with it, and I won’t. What has come to you that you can steal into people’s houses and try to deceive a lot of silly women? That is not the sort of thing that used to suit you.”

“I have deceived nobody,” said Durant, getting red in spite of himself. “It is you who have deceived them.”

“Yes, that’s it, isn’t it?—the argument suits the conduct,” said Arthur, with a sneer. “‘It is not me, it is you,’—the very thing I should have expected to be said; but look here, Durant, if you come between her and me again, if you try to make mischief with her family, if you get me into further trouble, I’ll—by Jove, I’ll—”

“What will you do?” said Durant, rising, restored to his self-possession, and looking the other steadily in the face.

They stood within a few paces of each other, the one aggressive and furious, the other calm, but excited. They had never had a break before since childhood, and had stood by each other in all kinds of difficulties. This was in Durant’s mind, and made the crisis more bitter to him; but Arthur was too much excited to think of it, or of anything else but his grievance. Notwithstanding this, however, the calm look of the familiar face confronting him stilled the young man. He turned away after a moment, and took to angry pacing about the room.

“You!” he cried, “You! If anyone had told me that you would not stand by me in a difficulty, would not be my help in any trouble, I should not have believed it. It would have seemed impossible; and that you should take up arms against me—against me!—you, Durant!”

“Arthur,” said his friend, with great emotion, “let us speak plainly. You must always be to me, when you are in difficulty, the first person to be thought of. I cannot believe, any more than you can, in circumstances where I should not stand by you; but listen! you are not in difficulty now—you are on the verge, as I think, of a great mistake. Nothing can be more different. As your friend is bound to help you in trouble, so is he bound by every rule to do his best to extricate you now.”

“To extricate me!” cried Arthur, with scorn. “From what? From love, happiness, and honour? Are these things from which to extricate a man? And not only so, but to work by underhand means to force me out of the position I have chosen, and which, whatever you may think of it, is Heaven to me.”

“I have been working by no underhand means.”

“What else can you call it? You might have said what you would to me. You were free to say what you liked; but to attack them—behind my back—”

“Arthur,” said Durant, “it is useless to evade the matter; this is exactly one of those moments which are often fatal to friendship. You think you are on the eve of happiness. I think you are securing your own misery. Am I to help you to destroy yourself? do you think that is a duty of friendship? or is it not rather my part, by every possible means, to stop you before you go over the precipice?”

“Your very words are an insult,” said Arthur; “to me, and to one who is more precious to me than myself.”

“Yet I suppose I may have my opinion,” said Durant. “You cannot forbid me that. I say nothing against anybody. I only say this will be fatal to you, and it seems to me, if I could hinder it—”

“You can no more hinder it than you can keep the sun from rising to-morrow.”

“I am very sorry to hear it, Arthur. I would give a great deal if I could. Think what a change it will make in your life. You will not take your degree now. As for diplomacy, you are shut out from that—it would be impossible. So will Parliament be and the public life you once thought of. Your own business of a country gentleman you are kept from while your father lives. You have no time for anything else. Where will be your shooting, your fishing, your hunting in the season, your society? You will have to live on your allowance, sparely, economically, without a horse, without a margin. Everything given up for—what?”

“For her—for happiness—for everything that makes life worth having.”

“For happiness? I don’t know much about it, Arthur; it has not come my way. Is it object enough for a man’s life? When you live for happiness, are you happy? I ask for information. Myself, I get on well enough, but I have never made any great exertion for such an object. Will it answer the purpose? will it repay the cost?”

“You are trying to cheat me out of my just indignation,” said Arthur, “are we on such a footing at this moment as to discuss the position in your cool way? Oh, I confess it is cleverly done! you resume the old tone, you go back to the habit of many a discussion. But at present this will not do. There is something more urgent in hand.”

“Why should it not do? You are vexed that I have spoken to the Bates family; but after all, as I have been routed horse and foot by the young lady herself, and ordered off the field of battle—”

“You acknowledge that!” said Arthur subdued, “ah, I thought you were more sensible than you give yourself credit for being. She is grand when she is excited. Well, Durant, I suppose it is of no use grumbling with you. You know me, when we have quarrelled I always want to make it up to-morrow. I can’t do without you, old fellow; that is not what I came to say; but it is too strong for me. I want you, Durant; you have always stood by me. It does not feel natural that you should be on the other side.”

“I am not on the other side,” said Durant with compunction. There were some things in his letter to Lady Curtis which recurred to him, and gave him a choking sensation. His intentions had been friendly, but his acts—Well! as they had been altogether unsuccessful they did not matter much; and he too felt it difficult to resist the familiar face and tone. If he could have done any good;—but as this was impossible, why make a painful breach? He held out his hand to his friend. “Look here, Arthur,” he said with a smile, “what is the good of fighting? If I could stop your marriage I would do it; but apparently I can’t; I don’t conceal from you that I am very sorry; but if you do this very foolish thing, it seems a pity that you should lose a friend too.”

Arthur did not take the hand held out to him; but he sat down somewhat sullenly on the opposite side of the table, and then there ensued a pause, for neither knew what to say.

“I am going back to town to-morrow,” said Durant, “I will not undertake to further your prospects; but if you wish any communication made—to take off the edge of the unkindness, Arthur—”

“Unkindness! I have done no unkindness.”

“What—to settle all this without any reference to them, without explanation, without trying to secure their sympathy, their approval—”

“Approval! that was a likely thing; what was the use of making appeals or giving explanations? Here is an example; the moment they do hear, they send you primed and prepossessed against it. I answered their questions; but I knew it was useless, and why should I humiliate myself—and her? When it is irrevocable and can’t be altered, I always intended to let them know the whole, and throw myself upon their mercy.”

“It is clear you expect more magnanimity from them than they have found in you.”

“Well,” said Arthur coolly, “a man must have queer parents if he does not take that for granted. They do put up with things when they can’t help themselves. What is the good of worrying them with opposition (which it was clear they must make) and which could only irritate both parties? No, it was not done by inadvertence, it was done advisedly. If you never learned, old fellow, the advantage of doing a thing without permission rather than in the face of a prohibition—it makes all the difference,” said Arthur with a sudden hoarse laugh, which ended as suddenly as it began, and had anything but humour in the sound of it. “No, I have no instructions to give you, I will write as soon as—well, after we are married; why should I do anything before?”

“Arthur, for God’s sake!” cried his friend, “pause still, think what you are doing.”

“That is enough, that is enough! don’t risk our friendship once again, just after it has been renewed; and as you say, if I am going to do anything so very imprudent, at least don’t let me lose my friend too,” he said, looking at Durant, with eyes which laughed, yet were not far off from tears, and grasping his hand hurriedly. “I’m glad we are not parting for ever, old boy, as I almost feared: though I should not wonder if the next morning after we had parted for ever, I had knocked you up to tell you what folly it was. A dozen years are not done away with so easily, are they? after all.”

They stood grasping each other’s hands for a moment, both too much affected for words. Was there a softening, a yielding in Arthur’s breast? were the ties of the familiar life he knew of old, the faithful and tried affections, family, friends, home, coming back upon him, surging over the hot passion of the new? Durant held him fast for a moment longer than his friend’s grasp held, then with a sigh let his hand drop. He would not venture to raise all the question again. It must be left to reason, to his own heart, to—well, at the last, to that guidance of God which when everything fails we can trust or mistrust as the case may be. Evidently there was nothing more for friendship to do or say. And what could with justice have been done or said, Durant asked himself as he dropped wearily into his seat again after Arthur had gone? Could any one hope or expect that the guidance of God would lead him to break the most sacred pledge a man could give? If he did so his family might rejoice, but what could anyone, even those most relieved by it, think of Arthur? He might escape ruin, but by what? falsehood. And which was worst? Could any man dare to go to him and say—Throw off those vows you have repeated so often, cast aside this other creature as dear to heaven as yourself, whom you have persuaded of your love, break her heart, spoil her life, and then return spotless, an honourable man, to your own? If such an adviser could be, Durant felt that he was incapable of the effort: he felt even that with his respect his very love for Arthur would evaporate were he to know him capable of such treachery and baseness. And yet this was what he had been urging on him! No wonder that the young lover, being a true man, was indignant. Yet, notwithstanding, it was ruin for Arthur, of that there could be as little doubt. This girl, so high-spirited, so pretty, so young, so attractive in a hundred ways, would be his destruction, separating him from his own original and natural place, cutting short his career, neutralizing all his advantages. Alas for love, the love of the poets! At what a sacrifice was this young man purchasing that crown of life! at the cost of his home, his future, the very use that was in him as a man. Yet not all these considerations would justify the betrayal of the creature who loved him, or the breaking of his faith. In this dilemma his friend could but keep silent even from thought, with a certain shame of himself and horror of his own efforts, notwithstanding that he had been right in making them, which is one of the most wonderful of human paradoxes. His heart was heavy for Arthur going gaily to his destruction. Yet had he saved himself at this eleventh hour, what could anyone have thought of Arthur? Durant could not but feel a sensation of relief that he was not so brave and so wise.

Next morning he left Underhayes, without seeing anything more either of the lovers, or the little group which surrounded them; but not without another amusing reminder of the responsibilities he had incurred by interfering. He had no object in going to London by that expeditious morning train which carried off all the business men. He watched them once more, streaming along, neat and cheerful, with cherished rosebuds in their button-holes—rosebuds beyond the reach of the rest of the world; and when the place was clear and the express gone, started leisurely for a less crowded train. It did not occur to him to notice a quick decisive step coming up behind him, as he went to the station. It was not Arthur’s springy rapid step, which might have roused him; but one heavier and more decided. Durant however was much startled by finding himself struck lightly but sharply upon the shoulder, as the owner of this footstep came up to him. “Mr. Durant,” said Mr. Eagles, “why is not Curtis with you? I told you that I expected you to take away your man. Why do you let him slip through your fingers? I can’t have him here.”

“I told you, Mr. Eagles, that I had no authority over Curtis.”