“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.”