Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XLI
"She dwells with beauty�beauty that must die,
And joy whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu!"
Thus I accomplished my second lie: I that, at home, used to be a proverb for blunt truth-telling. They say that "facilis descensus Averni." I do not agree with them. I have not found it easy. To me it has seemed a very steep and precipitous road, set with sharp flints that cut the feet, and make the blood flow.
I think the second falsehood was almost harder to utter than the first: but, indeed, they were both very disagreeable. I cannot think why any one should have thought it necessary to invent the doctrine of a future retribution for sin.
It appears to me that, in this very life of the present, each little delinquency is so heavily paid for�so exorbitantly overpaid, indeed. Look, for instance, at my own case. I told a lie�a lie more of the letter than the spirit�and since then I have spent six months of my flourishing youth absolutely devoid of pleasure, and largely penetrated with pain.
I have stood just outside my paradise, peeping under and over the flaming sword of the angel that guards it. I have been near enough to smell the flowers�to see the downy, perfumed fruits�to hear the song of the angels as they go up and down within its paths; but I have been outside.
Now I have told another lie, and I suppose�nay, what better can I hope?�that I shall live in the same state of weary, disproportioned retribution to the end of the chapter.
These are the thoughts, interspersed and diversified with loud sighs, that are employing my mind one ripe and misty morning a few days later than the incidents last detailed.
Barbara is to arrive to-day. She is coming to pay us a visit�coming, like the lady mentioned by Tennyson, in "In Memoriam"�not, indeed, "to bring her babe," but to "make her boast." And how, pray, am I to listen with complacent congratulation to this boast? For the first time in my life I dread the coming of Barbara. How am I, whose acting, on the few occasions when I have attempted it, has been of the most improbably wooden description�how am I, I say, to counterfeit the extravagant joy, the lively sympathy, that Barbara will expect�and naturally expect�from me?
I get up and look at myself in the glass. Assuredly I shall have to take some severe measures with my countenance before it falls under my sister's gaze. Small sympathy and smaller joy is there in it now�it wears only a lantern-jawed, lack-lustre despondency. I practise a galvanized smile, and say out loud, as if in dialogue with some interlocutor:
"Yes, delightful!�I am so pleased!" but there is more mirth in the enforced grin of an unfleshed skull than in mine.
That will never take in Barbara. I try again�once, twice�each time with less prosperity than the last. Then I give it up. I must trust to Providence.
As the time for her coming draws nigh, I fall to thinking of the different occasions since my marriage, on which I have watched for expected comings from this window�have searched that bend in the drive with impatient eyes�and of the disappointment to which, on the two occasions that rise most prominently before my mind's eye, I became a prey.
Well, I am to be subject to no disappointment�if it would be a disappointment�to-day.
Almost before I expect her�almost before she is due�she is here in the room with me, and we are looking at one another. I, indeed, am staring at her with a black and stupid surprise.
"Good Heavens!" say I, bluntly; "what have you been doing to yourself? how happy you look!"
I have always known theoretically that happiness was becoming; and I have always thought Barbara most fair."Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well,
Fairer than Ruth among the fields of corn,
Fair as the angel that said, 'Hail!' she seemed,"
but now, what a lovely brightness, like that of clouds remembering the gone sun, shines all about her! What a radiant laughter in her eyes! What a splendid carnation on her cheeks! (How glad I am that I did not tell!)
"Do I?" she says, softly, and hiding her face, with the action of a shy child, on my shoulders. "I dare say."
"Good Heavens!" repeat I, again, with more accentuation than before, and with my usual happy command and variety of ejaculation.
"And you?" she says, lifting her face, and speaking with a joyful confidence of anticipation in her innocent eyes, "and you? you are pleased too, are not you?"
"Of course," reply I, quickly calling to my aid the galvanized smile and the unnatural tone in which I have been perfecting myself all the forenoon, "delighted! I never was so pleased in my life. I told you so in my letters, did not I?"
A look of nameless disappointment crosses her features for a moment.
"Yes," she says, "I know! but I want you to tell me again. I thought that you�would have such a�such a great deal to say about it."
"So I have!" reply I, uncomfortably, fiddling uneasily with a paper-knife that I have picked up, and trying how much ill-usage it will bear without snapping, "an immensity! but you see it is�it is difficult to begin, is not it? and you know I never was good at expressing myself, was I?"
We have sat down. I am not facing her. With a complexion that serves one such ill turns as mine does, one is not over-fond of facing people. I am beside her. For a moment we are both silent.
"Well," say I, presently, with an unintentional tartness in my tone, "why do not you begin? I am waiting to hear all about it! Begin!"
So Barbara begins.
"I am afraid," she says, smiling all the while, but growing as red as the bunch of late roses in my breast, "that I looked horribly pleased! One ought to look as if one did not care, ought not one?"
"Ought one?" say I, with interest, then beginning to laugh vociferously. "At least you were not as bad as the old maid who late in life received a very wealthy offer, and was so much elated by it that she took off all her clothes, and kicked her bonnet round the room!"
Barbara laughs.
"No, I was not quite so bad as that."
"And how did he do it?" pursue I, inquisitively. "Did he write or speak"
"He spoke."
"And what did he say? How did he word it? Ah!"�(with a sigh)�"I suppose you will not tell me that?"
She has abandoned her chair, and has fallen on her knees before me, hiding her face in my lap. Delicious waves of color, like the petals of a pink sweet-pea, are racing over her cheeks and throat.
"Was ever any one known to tell it?" she says, indistinctly.
"Yes," reply I, "I was. I told you what Roger said, word for word�all of you!"
"Did you?"�(with an accent of astonished incredulity).
"Yes," say I, "do not you remember? I promised I would before I went into the drawing-room that day, and, when I came out, I wanted the boys to let me off, but they would not."
A pause.
"I wish," say I, a little impatiently, "that you would look up! Why need you mind if you are rather red? What do I matter? and so�and so�you are pleased!"
"Pleased!"
She has raised her head as I bid her, and on her face there is a sort of scorn at the poverty and inadequacy of the expression, and yet she replaces it with no other; only the sapphire of her eyes is dimmed and made more tender by rising tears.
Clearly we were never meant to be joyful, we humans! In any bliss greater than our wont, we can only hang out, to demonstrate our felicity, the sign and standard of woe.
"Nancy!"�(taking my hand, and looking at me with wistful earnestness)�"do you think it can last? Did ever any one feel as I do for long?"
"I do not know�how can I tell?" reply I, discomfortably, as I absently eye the two halves of my paper-knife, which, after having given one or two warning cracks, has now snapped in the middle. Then Roger enters, and our talk ends. |
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