Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER IV
"Friends, Romans, and countrymen!" say I, on that same afternoon, strutting into the school-room, with my left hand thrust oratorically into the breast of my frock, and my right loftily waving, "I wish to collect your suffrages on a certain subject. Tell me," sitting down on a hard chair, and suddenly declining into a familiar and colloquial tone, "have you seen any signs of derangement in father lately?"
"None more than usual," answers Algy, sarcastically, lifting his pretty, disdainful nose out of his novel. "If, as the Eton Latin Grammar says, ira is a brevis furor you, will agree with me that he is pretty often out of his mind, in fact, a good deal oftener than he is in it."
"No, but really?"
"Of course not. What do you mean?"
"Put down all your books!" say I, impressively. "Listen attentively. Bobby, stop see-sawing that chair, it makes me feel deadly sick. Ah! my young friend, you will rue the day when you kept me sitting on the top of that wall�"
I break off.
"Go on! go on!" in five different voices of impatience.
"Well, then, father has sent a message by mother to the effect that I am to dine with them to-night�I, if you please�I!�you must own" (lengthening my neck as I speak, and throwing up my untidy flax head) "that sweet Nancies are looking up in the world."
A silence of stupefaction falls on the assembly. After a pause�
"YOU?"
"Yes, I!"
"And how do you account for it?"
"I believe," reply I, simpering, "that our future benefac�, no! I really must give up calling him that, or I shall come out with it to his face, as Bobby did last night. Well, then, Sir Roger asked me why I did not appear yesterday. I suppose he thought that I looked so very grown up, that they must be keeping me in pinafores by force."
Algy has risen. He is coming toward me. He has pulled me off my chair. He has taken me by the shoulders, and is turning me round to face the others.
"Allow me!" he says, bowing, and making me bow, too, "to introduce you to the future legatee!�Barbara, my child, you and I are nowhere. This depraved old man has clearly no feeling for symmetry of form or face; a long career of Begums has utterly vitiated his taste. To-morrow he will probably be clamoring for Tou Tou's company."
"Brat!" says Barbara, laughing, "where has the analogy between me and the man who pulled up the window in the train for the old woman gone to?"
"Mother said I was to look as nice as I could," say I, casting a rueful glance at the tea-board, at the large plum loaf, at the preparations for temperate conviviality. I have sat down on the threadbare blue-and-red hearth-rug, and am shading my face with a pair of cold pink hands, from the clear, quick blaze. "What am I to wear?" I say, gloomily. "None of my frocks are ironed, and there is no time now. I shall look as if I came out of the dirty clothes-basket! Barbara, dear, will you lend me your blue sash? Last time I wore mine the Brat upset the gum-bottle over my ends."
"Let us each have the melancholy pleasure of contributing something toward the decking of our victim," says Algy, with a grin; "have my mess-jacket!"
"Have as many beads as you can about you," puts in Bobby. "Begums always have plenty of beads."
A little pause, while the shifting flame-light makes small pictures of us on the deep-bodied teapot's sides, and throws shadowy profiles of us on the wall.
"Mother said, too, that I was to try and not say any of my unlucky things!" I remark, presently.
"Do not tell him," says Bobby, ill-naturedly, "as you told poor Captain Saunders the other day, that 'they always put the fool of the family into the army.'"
"I did not say so of myself," cry I, angrily. "I only told it him as a quotation."
"Abstain from quotations, then," retorts Bobby, dryly; "for you know in conversation one does not see the inverted commas."
"What shall I talk about?" say I, dropping my shielding hand into my lap, and letting the full fire-warmth blaze on eyes, nose, and cheeks. "Barbara, what did you talk about?"
"Whatever I talked about," replies Barbara, gayly, "they clearly were not successful topics, so I will not reveal what they were."
Barbara is standing by the tea-table, thin and willowy, a tea-caddy in one hand, and a spoon in the other, ladling tea into the deep-bodied pot�a spoonful for each person and one for the pot.
"I will draw you up a list of subjects to be avoided," says Algy, drawing his chair to the table, and pulling a pencil out of his waistcoat-pocket. "Here, Tou Tou, tear a leaf out of your copy-book�imprimis, old age."
"You are wrong there," cry I, triumphantly, "quite wrong; he is rather fond of talking of his age, harps upon it a good deal. He said to-day that he was an old wreck!"
"Of course he meant you to contradict him!" says Bobby, cackling, "and, from the little I know of you, I am morally certain that you did not�did you, now?"
"Well, no!" reply I, rather crestfallen; "I certainly did not. I would, though, in a minute, if I had thought that he wanted it."
"I wish," says Barbara, shutting the caddy with a snap, "that Providence had willed to send the dear old fellow into the world twenty years later than it did. In that case I should not at all have minded trying to be a comfort to him."
"He must have been very good-looking, must not he?" say I, pensively, staring at the red fire-caverns. "Very�before his hair turned gray. I wonder what color it was?"
Visions of gold yellow, of sunshiny brown, of warm chestnut locks, travel in succession before my mind's eye, and try in turn to adjust themselves to the good and goodly weather-worn face, and wide blue eyes of my new old friend.
"It is so nice and curly even now," I go on, "twice as curly as Algy's."
"Tongs," replies Algy, with short contempt, looking up from his list of prohibitions.
"Very good-looking!" repeat I, dogmatically, entirely ignoring the last suggestion.
"Perhaps when this planet was young!" retorts he, with the superb impertinence of twenty.
"You talk as if he were eighty years old," cry I, with an unaccountably personal feeling of annoyance. "He is only forty-seven!"
"Only forty-seven!"
And they all laugh.
"Well, I must be going, I suppose," cry I, leisurely rising, stretching, sighing, and beginning to collect the various articles of my wardrobe, scattered over the furniture. "Good-by, dear teapot! good-by, dear plum loaf! how I wish I was going to stay with you! It really is ten minutes past dressing-time, and father is always so pleased when one keeps him waiting for his soup."
"He would not say any thing to you to-day if you were late," says Bobby, astutely. "You might tumble over his gouty foot, and he would smile! Are we not the most united family in Christendom�when we have company?"
After all, I need not have disquieted myself; I am in very good time. When I open the drawing-room door, and make my entrance in the borrowed splendor of Barbara's broad blue-sash tails, and the white virginity of my own muslin frock, I find that neither of my parents have as yet made their appearance. Sir Roger has the hearth-rug to himself; at least he only shares it with Vick, and she is asleep; sitting very upright, it is true, with her thin tail round her toes, like a cat's, her head and whole body swaying from side to side in indisputable slumber. At sight of the chaste and modest apparition that the opened door yields to his gaze, an exclamation of pleasure escapes him�at least it sounds like pleasure.
"Ah! this is all right! You are here to-night at all events; but, by-the-by, what became of you yesterday?"
"What always becomes of me?" reply I, bluntly, lifting my grave gray eyes to his face, and to the hair which sweeps thick and waved above his broad brown forehead. (Tongs indeed!)
"I remember that you told me you had been cooking, but you cannot cook every night."
"Not quite," reply I, with a short smile, stretching my hands to the blaze.
"But do not you dine generally?"
"Never when I can possibly help it," I reply, with emphasis. And no sooner are the words out of my mouth than I see that I have already transgressed my mother's commands, and given vent to one of "my unlucky things." I stand silent and ashamed, reflecting that no after-tinkering will mend my unfortunate speech.
"And to-night you could not help it?" he asks, after a slight, hardly perceptible pause.
I look up to answer him. He is forty-seven years old. He is a general, and a sir, and has been in every known land; has killed big and little beasts, and known big and little people, and I am nineteen and nobody, and have rarely been beyond our own park and parish, and my acquaintance is confined to half a dozen turnipy squires and their wives; and yet he is looking snubbed, and it is I that have snubbed him. Well, I cannot help it. Truth is truth; and so I answer, in a low voice:
"No, father said I was to."
"And you look upon it as a great penance?" he says, still with that half-disappointed accent.
"To be sure I do," reply I, briskly. "So does Barbara. Ask her if she does not. So would you, if you were I."
"And why?"
"Hush!" say I, hearing a certain heavy, well-known, slow footfall. "He is coming! I will tell you by-and-by�when we are by ourselves."
After all, how convenient an elderly man is! I could not have said that to any of the young squires!
His blue eyes are smiling in the fire-light, as, leaning one strong shoulder against the mantel-piece, he turns to face me more fully.
"And when are we likely to be by ourselves?"
"Oh, I do not know," reply I, indifferently. "Any time."
And then father enters, and I am dumb. Presently, dinner is announced, and we walk in; I on father's arm. He addresses me several times with great bonhomie and I respond with nervous monosyllables. Father is always suavity itself to us, when we have guests; but, when one is not in the habit of being treated with affability, it is difficult to enter into the spirit of the joke. Several times I catch our guest's frank eyes, watching me with inquiring wonder, as I respond with brief and low-voiced hurry to some of my parent's friendly and fatherly queries as to the disposition of my day. And I sit tongue-tied and hungry�for, thank God, I have always had a large appetite�dumb as the butler and footman�dumb as the racing-cups on the sideboard�dumber than Vick, who, being a privileged person, is standing�very tall�on her hind-legs, and pawing Sir Roger's coat-sleeve, with a small, impatient whine.
"Why, Nancy, child!" says father, helping himself to sweetbread, and smiling, "what made you in such a hurry to get away this morning out of the park?"
(Why can't he always speak in that voice? always smile?�even his nose looks a different shape.)
"Near�luncheon-time," reply I, indistinctly, with my head bent so low that my nose nearly touches the little square of bare neck that my muslin frock leaves exposed.
"Not a bit of it�half an hour off.�Why, Roger, I am afraid you had not been making yourself agreeable! eh, Nancy?"
"No," say I, mumbling, "that is�yes�quite so."
"I was very agreeable, as it happened�rather more brilliant than usual, if possible, was not I? And, to clear my character, and prove that you thought so, you will take me out for another walk, some day, will not you?"
At the sound of his voice so evidently addressing me, I look up�look at him.
"Yes! with pleasure! when you like!" I answer heartily, and I neither mumble nor stutter, nor do I feel any disposition to drop my eyes. I like to look at him. For the rest of dinner I am absolutely mute, I make only one other remark, and that is a request to one of the footmen to give me some water. The evening passes. It is but a short one�at least, as regards the company of the gentlemen, for they sit late; father's port, I am told, not being to be lightly left for any female frippery. I retire to the school-room, and regale my brethren with lively representations of father's unexampled benignity. I also resume with Algy the argument about tongs, at the very point where I had dropped it. It lasts till prayer-time; and its monotony is relieved by personalities. The devil in the boys is fairly quiescent to-night, and our evening devotions pass over with tolerable peace; the only contretemps being that the Brat, having fallen asleep, remains on his knees when "Amen" raises the rest of the company from theirs, and has to be privily and heavily kicked to save him from discovery and ruin. Having administered the regulation embrace to father, and heartily kissed mother�not but what I shall see her again; she always comes, as she came when we were little, to kiss us in bed�I turn to find Sir Roger holding open the swing-door for us.
"Are you quite sure about it to-night?" I say, stretching out my hand to him to bid him good-night. "Ours on the right�yours on the left�do you see?"
"Yours on the right�mine on the left," he repeats, "Yes�I see�I shall make no more mistakes�unless I make one on purpose."
"Do not come without telling us beforehand!" I cry, earnestly. "I mean really: if you hold a vague threat of paying us a visit over our heads, you will keep us in a state of unnatural tidiness for days."
I make a move toward retiring, but he still has hold of my hand.
"And about our walk?"
The others�boys and girls�have passed us: the servants have melted out of sight; so has mother; father is speaking to the butler in the passage�we are alone.
"Yes? what about it?" I ask, my eyes calmly resting on his.
"You will not forget it?"
"Not I!" reply I, lightly. "I want to hear the end of the anecdote about father's nose! I cannot get over the idea of him in a stiff white petticoat: I thought of it at dinner, whenever I looked at him!"
At the mention of father, his face falls a little.
"Nancy," he says, abruptly, taking possession of my other hand also, "why did you answer your father so shortly to-day? Why did you look so scared when he tried to joke with you?"
"Ah, why?" reply I, laughing awkwardly.
"You are not afraid of him, surely?"
"Oh, no�not at all!"
"Why do you speak in that sneering voice? It is not your own voice; I have known you only twenty-four hours, and yet I can tell that."
"I will not answer any more questions," reply I, recovering both hands with a sudden snatch: "and if you ask me any more, I will not take you out walking! there!"
So I make off, laughing. |
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