Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XL
My eyes are fixed on the mouldings of the ceiling, while a jumble of thoughts mix and muddle themselves in my head. Was Brindley Wood a dream? or is this a dream? Surely one or other must be, and, if this is not a dream, what is it? Is it reality, is it truth? And, if it is, how on earth did any thing so monstrous ever come about? How did he dare to approach her? How could he know that I had not told her? Is it possible that he cares for her really?�that he cared for her all along?�that he only went mad for one wicked moment? Is he sorry? how soon shall I have to meet him? On what terms shall we be? Will Roger be undeceived at last? Will he believe me? As my thoughts fall upon him, he opens the door and enters.
"Well, I am off, Nancy!" he says, speaking in his usual cool, friendly voice, to which I have now grown so accustomed that sometimes I could almost persuade myself that I had never known any lovinger terms; and standing with the door-handle in his hand.
He rarely kisses me now; never upon any of these little temporary absences. We always part with polite, cold, verbal salutations. Then, with a sudden change of tone, approaching me as he speaks.
"Is there any thing the matter? have you had bad news?"
My eyes drop at length from the scroll and pomegranate flower border of the ceiling. I sit up, and, with an involuntary movement, put my hand over the open letter that lies in my lap.
"I have had news," I answer, dubiously.
"If it is any thing that you had rather not tell me!" he says, hastily, observing my stupid and unintentional gesture, and, I suppose, afraid that I am about to drift into a second series of lies�"please do not. I would not for worlds thrust myself on your confidence!"
"It is no secret of mine," I answer, coldly, "everybody will know it immediately, I suppose: it is that Barbara�" I stop, as usual choked as I approach the abhorred theme. "Will you read the letter, please? that will be better!�yes�I had rather that you did�it will not take you long; yes, all of it!" (seeing that he is holding the note in his hand and conscientiously looking away from it as if expecting limitation as to the amount he is to peruse).
He complies. There is silence�an expectant silence on my part. It is not of long duration. Before ten seconds have elapsed the note has fallen from his hand; and, with an exclamation of the profoundest astonishment, he is looking with an expression of the most keenly questioning wonder at me.
"To Musgrave!"
I nod. I have judiciously placed myself with my back to the light, so that, if that exasperating flood of crimson bathe my face�and bathe it it surely will�is not it coming now?�do not I feel it creeping hotly up?�it may be as little perceptible as possible.
"It must be a great, great surprise to you!" he says, interrogatively, and still with that sound of extreme and baffled wonder in his tone.
"Immense!" reply I.
I speak steadily if low; and I look determinedly back in his face. Whatever color my cheeks are�I believe they are of the devil's own painting�I feel that my eyes are honest. He has picked up the note, and is reading it again.
"She seems to have no doubt"�(with rising wonder in face and voice)�"as to its greatly pleasing you!"
"So it would have done at one time," I answer, still speaking (though no one could guess with what difficulty), with resolute equanimity.
"And does not it now?" (very quickly, and sending the searching scrutiny of his eyes through me).
"I do not know," I answer hazily, putting up my hand to my forehead. "I cannot make up my mind, it all seems so sudden."
A pause. Roger has forgotten the partridges. He is sunk in reflection.
"Was there ever any talk of this before?" he says, presently, with a hesitating and doubtful accent, and an altogether staggered look. "Had you any reason�any ground for thinking that he cared about her?"
"Great ground," reply I, touching my cheeks with the tips of my fingers, and feeling, with a sense of self-gratulation, that their temperature is gradually, if slowly, lowering, "every ground�at one time!"
"At what time!"
"In the autumn," say I, slowly; my mind reluctantly straying back to the season of my urgent invitations, of my pressing friendlinesses, "and at Christmas, and after Christmas."
"Yes?" (with a quick eagerness, as if expecting to hear more).
"The boys," continue I, speaking without any ease or fluency, for the subject is always one irksome and difficult to me, "the boys took it quite for granted�looked upon it as a certain thing that he meant seriously until�"
"Until what?" (almost snatching the words out of my mouth).
"Until�well!" (with a short, forced laugh), "until they found that he did not."
"And�do you know?�but of course you do�can you tell me how they discovered that?"
He is looking at me with that same greedy anxiety in his eyes, which I remember in our last fatal conversation about Musgrave.
"He went away," reply I, unable any longer to keep watch and ward over my countenance and voice, rising and walking hastily to the window.
The moment I have done it, I repent. However red I was, however confused I looked, it would have been better to have remained and faced him. For several minutes there is silence. I look out at the stiff comeliness of the variously tinted asters, at the hoary-colored dew that is like a film along the morning grass. I do not know what he looks at, because I have my back to him, but I think he is looking at Barbara's note again. At least, I judge this by what he says next�"Poor little soul!" (in an accent of the honestest, tenderest pity), "how happy she seems!"
"Ah!" say I, with a bitter little laugh, "she will mend of that, will not she?"
He does not echo my mirth; indeed, I think I hear him sigh.
"'Romances paint at full length people's wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages!'"
say I, in soft quotation, addressing rather myself and my thoughts than my companion.
He has joined me; he, too, is looking out at the serene aster-flowers, at the glittering glory of the dew.
"Since when you have learned to quote 'Don Juan?'" he asks, with a sort of surprise.
"Since when?" I reply, with the same tart playfulness�"oh! since I married! I date all my accomplishments from then!�it is my anno Domini."
Another silence. Then Sir Roger speaks again, and this time his words seem as slow and difficult of make as mine were just now.
"Nancy!" he says, in a low voice, not looking at me, but still facing the flowers and the sunshiny autumn sward, "do you believe that�that�this fellow cares about her really?�she is too good to be made�to be made�a mere cat's-paw of!"
"A cat's-paw!" cry I, turning quickly round with raised voice; the blood that so lately retired from it rushing again headlong all over my face; "I do not know�what you mean�what you are talking about!"
He draws his breath heavily, and pauses a moment before he speaks.
"God knows," he says, looking solemnly up, "that I had no wish to broach this subject again�God knows that I meant to have done with it forever�but now that it has been forced against my will�against both our wills�upon me, I must ask you this one question�tell me, Nancy�tell me truly this time"�(with an accent of acute pain on the word "this")�"can you say, on your honor�on your honor, mind�that you believe this�this man loves Barbara, as a man should love his wife?"
If he had worded his interrogation differently, I should have been sorely puzzled to answer it; as it is, in the form his question takes, I find a loop-hole of escape.
"As a man should love his wife?" I reply, with a derisive laugh, "and how is that? I do not think I quite know!�very dearly, I suppose, but not quite so dearly as if she were his neighbor's�is that it?"
As I speak, I look up at him, with a malicious air of pseudo-innocence. But if I expect to see any guilt�any conscious shrinking in his face�I am mistaken. There is pain�infinite pain�pain both sharp and long-enduring in the grieved depths of his eyes; but there is no guilt.
"You will not answer me?" he says, in an accent of profound disappointment, sighing again heavily. "Well, I hardly expected it�hardly hoped it!�so be it, then, since you will have it so; and yet�" (again taking up the note, and reading over one of its few sentences with slow attention), "and yet there is one more question I must put to you, after all�they both come to pretty much the same thing. Why"�(pointing, as he speaks, to the words to which he alludes)�"why should you have taken on yourself the blame of�of his departure from Tempest? what had you to say to it?"
In his voice there is the same just severity; in his eyes there is the same fire of deep yet governed wrath that I remember in them six months ago, when Mrs. Huntley first threw the firebrand between us.
"I do not know," I reply, in a half whisper of impatient misery, turning my head restlessly from side to side; "how should I know? I am sick of the subject."
"Perhaps!�so, God knows, am I; but had you any thing to say to it?"
He does not often touch me now; but, as he asks this, he takes hold of both my hands, more certainly to prevent my escaping from under his gaze, than from any desire to caress me.
It is my last chance of confession. I little thought I should ever have another. Late as it is, shall I avail myself of it? Nay! if not before, why now? Why now?�when there are so much stronger reasons for silence�when to speak would be to knock to atoms the newly-built edifice of Barbara's happiness�to rake up the old and nearly dead ashes of Frank's frustrated, and for aught I know, sincerely repented sin? So I answer, faintly indeed, yet quite audibly and distinctly:
"Nothing."
"Nothing?" (in an accent and with eyes of the keenest, wistfulest interrogation, as if he would wring from me, against my will, the confession I so resolutely withhold).
But I turn away from that heart-breaking, heart-broken scrutiny, and answer:
"Nothing!" |
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