Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XLIII
"I saw pale kings, and princes, too;
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all,
They cried, 'La Belle Dame, sans merci,'
Hath thee in thrall."
The long penance of dinner is over at last, thank God! I may intermit my hopeless roarings, melancholy as those of any caged zoological beast. Roger and Z�phine must also fain suspend their reminiscences. There being no lady of the house, I have taken upon myself to hasten the date of our departure. Before Mrs. Z�phine has finished her last grape, I have swept her incontinently away into the drawing-room. But I might as well have let it alone: almost before you could say "Knife" they are after us. I suppose that when three are eager to come, and only two anxious to stay�(I acquit my old friend and his nephew of any over-hurry to rejoin us)�the three must needs get their way. Anyhow, here they all five are! I am so hot! so hot! Nothing heats one like bellowing and being miserable and a failure. I have again taken advantage of the mistressless condition of the establishment, have drawn back the window-curtains, and lifted the heavy sash. The night always soothes me. There is something so stilling in the far placidity of the high stars�in the sweet sharpness of the night winds. I have sat down on a couch in the embrasure, alone.
When the men come in, I remain alone. It does not at all surprise or much vex me. I have nothing pleasant to say to any one. Also, I think I must be almost hidden by the droop of the curtains. Roger, indeed, sent his eyes round the room on his first entry, as if searching for something or somebody. It cannot be Mrs. Huntley, who is right under his nose, and who is, indeed, saying something playful to him over the top of her black fan. For once, he does not hear her. He is still looking. Then he catches a glimpse of my skirts, and comes straight toward me. Thank God! it was me he was looking for. I feel a little throb of disused gladness, as I realize this.
"Are not you cold?" he says, perceiving the open window.
"Not I!" reply I, brusquely�"naught never comes to harm."
"I wish you would have a shawl!" he says, as the evening wind comes, with the tartness of autumn, to his face.
"Why do not you say, 'do, for my sake!' as Algy once said to me, when he mistook me in the dark for Mrs. Huntley?" reply I, with a mocking laugh�"I am not sure that he did not add darling, but I will excuse that!"
At the mention of Algy, a shade crosses his face, and his eye travels to where, in the dignified solitude of a corner, my eldest brother is sitting, biting his lips, and reading "Alice Through the Looking-glass," upside down.
"Foolish fellow! I wish he had not come!"
"I dare say he returns the compliment."
"I wish she would leave him alone!" he says, with an accent of impatience, more to himself than to me.
"That is so likely," say I, quickly, "so much her way, is not it?"
I suppose that something in the exceeding bitterness of my tone strikes him, for his eyes return from Algy to me.
"Nancy," he says, speaking with a sort of hesitating impulse, while a dark flush crosses his face, "it has occurred to me once or twice�if the idea had been less unspeakably absurd, it would have occurred to me many times�that you are�are jealous of Z�phine and me!�You jealous of ME!!"
There is such a depth of emphasis in his last words�such a wealth of reproachful appeal in the eyes that are bent on me�that I can answer nothing. I say neither yea nor nay. He has sat down on the couch beside me.
"Tell me," he says, with low, quick excitement�"and for God's sake do not grow scarlet, and turn your head aside as you mostly have done�did you, or did you not know that�that Musgrave was to be here to-day?"
"I did not�indeed I did not!" I cry, with passionate eagerness; thankful for once to be able to tell the truth; "we none of us did�not even Barbara!"
He repeats my last words with a slightly sarcastic inflection, "not even Barbara!"
A moment's pause.
"Why did you stop talking so suddenly, the moment that we interrupted you?" he asks, with an abruptness that is almost harsh�"what were you talking about?"
Phew! how hot it is! even though one is by the open window!�even despite the cool moistness of the night wind.
"I was�I was�I was�congratulating him!" I say, doing the very thing he has forbidden me, reddening and turning half away. He makes no rejoinder; only I hear him sigh, and put his hand with a quick, impatient movement to his head.
"You believe me?" I ask, timidly, laying my hand on his arm.
"No, I do not!" he replies, shaking off my touch, and turning his stern and glittering eyes full upon me. "I should be a fool and an idiot if I did!"
Then he rises hastily and leaves me. I watch him as he joins the other men. They are all round her now�all but Musgrave.
Algy has left his corner and his reversed picture-book, moved thereto by the unparalleled audacity of young Parker, who has pulled one of the sofa-cushions down on the floor, and is squatting on it, like a great toad at her feet, examining a gnat-bite on her sacred arm.
Even the old host is doing the agreeable according to his lights. In a very loud voice he is narrating a long anecdote about a pretty girl that he once saw at a windmill near Seville, during the Peninsular. With a most unholy chuckle he is trying to hint that there was more between him and the young lady than it well beseems him to tell; but fortunately no one, but I, is listening to him.
I turn away my head, and look out of the window up at Charles's Wain, and all my other bright old friends. No one is heeding me�no one sees me; so I drop my hot cheek on the sill.
Suddenly I start up. Some one is approaching me: some one has thrown himself with careless freedom on the couch beside me. It is Algy.
Having utterly failed in dislodging Mr. Parker from his cushion�having had a suggestion on his part, on the treatment of the gnat-bite, passed over in silent contempt�he has retired from the circle in dudgeon.
"This is lively, is not it?" he says, in an aggressively loud voice, as if he were quarrelsomely anxious to be overheard.
I say "Hush!" apprehensively.
"As no one makes the slightest attempt to entertain us, we must entertain each other, I suppose!"
"Yes, dear old boy!" I say, affectionately, "why not?�it would not be the first time by many."
"That does not make it any the more amusing!" he says, harshly.�"I say, Nancy"�his eyes fixing themselves with sullen greediness on the central figure of the group he has left�on the slight round arm (after all, not half so round or so white as Barbara's or mine)�which is still under treatment, "is eau de cologne good for those sort of bites?�her arm is bad, you know!"
"Bad!" echo I, scornfully; "bad! why, I am all lumps, more or less, and so is Barbara! who minds us!"
"You ought to make your old man�'auld Robin Gray'�mind you," he says, with a disagreeable laugh. "It is his business, but he does not seem to see it, does he? ha! ha!"
"I wish!" cry I, passionately; then I stop myself. After all, he is hardly himself to-night, poor Algy!
"By-the-by," he says, presently, with a wretchedly assumed air of carelessness, "is it true�it is as well to come to the fountain-head at once�is it true that once, some time in the dark ages, he�he�thought fit to engage himself to, to her?" (with a fierce accent on the last word).
A pain runs through my heart. Well, that is nothing new nowadays. He too has heard it, then.
"I do not know!" I answer, faintly.
"What! he has not told you? Kept it dark! eh?" (with the same hateful laugh).
"He has kept nothing dark!" I answer, indignantly. "One day he began to tell me something, and I stopped him! I would not hear; I did not want to hear, I believe; I am sure that they are�only�only�old friends."
"Old friends!" he echoes, with a smile, in comparison of which our host's satyr-leer seems pleasant and chaste. "Old friends! you call yourself a woman of the world" (indeed I call myself nothing of the kind), "you call yourself a woman of the world, and believe that! They looked like old friends at dinner to-day, did not they? A little less than kin, and more than kind! Ha! ha!" |
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