Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XLIV
Partridges are not General Parker's strong point, and the few he ever had his nephew has already shot. Roger must, therefore, for one day abstain from the turnip-ridges. To amuse us, however, and keep us all sociably together, and bridge the yawning gulf between breakfast and dinner, we are to be sent on an expedition. Not only an expedition, but a picnic. This is perhaps a little risky in such a climate as ours, and in a month so doubtfully hovering on the borders of winter as September; but the sun is shining, and we therefore make up our minds, contrary to all precedent, that he must necessarily go on shining.
Some ten miles away there is a spot whence one can see seven counties, not to speak of the sea, a mountain or two, and some other trifles; and thither Mr. Parker is kindly going to bowl us down on his coach.
A drive on a coach is always to me a most doubtful joy; the ascent, labor; the drive itself, long anxiety and peril; the descent, agony, and sometimes shame. However, that is neither here nor there. I am going. It is still half an hour till the time appointed for our departure, and I am sitting alone in my room when Roger enters.
"Nancy," he says, coming quickly toward me, "have you any idea what sort of a whip that boy is?"
"Not the slightest!" reply I, shortly.
I feel as hard as a flint to-day. Algy's words last night seem to have confirmed and given a solider reality to my worst fears. He has walked to the window and is looking out.
"Are you nervous?" say I, with a slightly sarcastic smile.
He does not appear to notice the sarcasm.
"Yes," he says, "that is just what I am. He is a mad sort of fellow, and a coach is not a thing to play tricks with!"
"No," say I, indifferently. It seems to me of infinitely little consequence whether we are upset or not.
"That is what I came to speak to you about!" he says, still looking out of the window.
"Z�phine�"
"Is nervous, too?" ask I, smiling disagreeably. "What a curious coincidence!"
"I do not know whether she is nervous or not!" he answers, quickly; "I never asked her, but it seems that Huntley never would let her go on a drag; he had seen some bad accident, and it had given him a fright�"
"And so you and she are going to stay at home?" say I, coldly, but breathing a little heavily, and whitening.
"Stay at home!" he echoes, impatiently, "of course not; why should we? The fact is" (beginning to speak quickly in clear and eager explanation) "that I heard them talking of this plan yesterday, and so I thought I would be on the safe side, and send over to Tempest for the pony-carriage, and it is here now, and�"
"And you are going to drive her in it?" I say, still speaking quietly, and smiling. "I see! nothing could be nicer!"
"I wish to Heaven that you would not take the words out of my mouth," he cries, losing his temper a little; while his brows contract into a slight and most unwonted frown. "What I wish to know is, will you drive her?"
"I!!"
"Yes, you; I know�" (speaking with a sort of hurried deprecation) "I know that you are not fond of her; she is not a woman that other women are apt to get on with; but it would not be for long! I tell you candidly" (with a look of sincere anxiety) "I do not half like trusting you to Parker!�I think you are as likely as not to come to grief."
"To come to grief!" repeat I, with a harsh, dry laugh; "ha! ha! perhaps I have done that already!"
"But will you?" he asks, eagerly; not heeding my sorry mirth, and taking my hand. "I would drive you myself, if I could, and if�" (almost humbly) "if it would not bore you; but you see�" (rather slowly) "about the carriage, she�she asked me, and one does not like to say 'No' to such an old friend!"
Old friend! At the phrase, Algy's sneering white face rises before my mind's eye.
"Will you?" he repeats, looking pleadingly at me, with the gray darkness of his eyes.
"No, I will not!" I reply, resolutely, and still with that unmirthful mirth; "what ever else I may be, I will not be a spoil-sport!"
"A spoil-sport!" he echoes, passionately, while his face darkens, and hardens with impatient anger; "good God! will you never understand?"
Then he hastily leaves the room. And so it comes to pass that, half an hour later, I am crawling up with a sick heart to the box-seat, piteously calling on all around me to hold down my garments during my ascent. The grooms have let go the horses' heads, and have climbed up in dapper lightness at the back: we are through the first gate! Bah! that was a near shave of the post; yes, we are off, off for a long day's pleasuring! The very thought is enough to put any one in low spirits, is not it?
Barbara and Musgrave are behind us; and at the back, our old host and Algy. The two latter are, I think, specially likely to enjoy themselves; as the raw morning air has got down the old gentleman's throat, and he is coughing like a wheezy old squirrel; and Algy is in a dumb frenzy. I am no great judge of coachmanship, but we have not gone a quarter of a mile, before it is borne in on my mind that Mr. Parker has about as much idea of driving as a tomcat. The team do what is good in their eyes; we must throw ourselves on their clemency and discretion, for clearly our only hope is in them. He has not an idea of keeping them together; they are all over the place; the wheelers' reins are all loose on their backs. We seem to have an irresistible tendency toward bordering to the right which keeps us hovering over the ditch. However, fortunately, the road is very broad�one of the old coach-roads�and the vehicles we meet are few and anxious to get out of our way. Such as they are, I will do ourselves the justice to say that we try our best to run down each and all of them.
It is September, as I have before said. The leaves are still all green, only a stray bramble reddening here and there; but most of the midsummer hedge-row peoples are gathered to their rest. Only a lagging few, the slight-throated blue-bell, the uncouth ragwort, the little, tight scabious, remain. At least, the berries are here, however. While each red hip shows where a faint rose blossomed and fell; while the elder holds stoutly aloft her flat, black clusters; while the briony clasps the hawthorn-hedge, we cannot complain. Not only the main things of Nature, but all her odds and ends, are so exceedingly fair and daintily wrought.
It is one of those days that look charming, when seen through the window; bright and sunny, with lights that fly, and shadows that pursue; but it is a very different matter when one comes to feel it. There is a bleak, keen wind, that sends the clouds racing through the heavens, and that blows right in our teeth; nearly strangling me by the violence with which it takes hold of my head.
There has been no rain for a week or two, and it is a chalky country. The dust is waltzing in white whirlwinds along the road. High up as we are, it reaches us, and thrusts its fine and choking powder up our noses.
"I suppose," say I, doubtfully, looking up at the shifting uncertainty of the heavens, and trying to speak in a sprightly tone, a feat which I find rather hard of accomplishment, with such a blast cutting my eyes, and making me gasp�"I suppose that it will not rain!"
"Rain! not it!" replies our coachman, with contemptuous cheerfulness.
"The glass was going down!" I say, humbly, "and I think I felt a drop just now!"
"Impossible! it could not rain with this wind."
He says this with such a jovial and robust certainty of scorn, that I am half inclined to distrust the sky's evidence�to disbelieve even in the big drop that so indisputably splashed into my eye just now. "But in case it does rain," continue I, pertinaciously, "I suppose that there is a house near, or some place where we can take refuge?"
"No, there is no house nearer than a couple of miles"�making the statement with the easiest composure�"but it will not rain."
"Perhaps"�say I, with a sinking heart�"there is a wood�trees?"
"Well, no, there is not much in the way of trees�except Scotch firs�there are plenty of them�it is a bare sort of place�that is the beauty of it, you know"�(with a tone of confident pride)�"there is a monstrously fine view from it!�one can see seven counties!"
"Yes," say I, faintly, "so I have heard!"
At this point, the old gentleman is understood to be bawling something from the back. By the utter morosity of Algy's face�faintly seen in the distance�I conjecture that it is a joke; and, by the chuckling agony of zest with which the old man is delivered of it, I further conclude that it is something slightly unclean, but, thanks to the wind, none of us overtake a word of it. The wind's spirits are rising. Its play is becoming ever more and more boisterous. It would be difficult to imagine any thing disagreeabler than it is making itself; but perhaps it will keep off the rain. Thinking this, I try to bear its blows and buffets�its slaps on the face�its boxes on the ear�with greater patience. We have left the broad and safe high-road; Mr. Parker having, in an evil moment, bethought himself of a short-cut. We are, therefore, entangled in a labyrinth of cross-roads�finger-postless, guideless, solitary. So solitary, indeed, that we meet only one vacant boy of tender years, of whom, when we inquire the way, the wind absolutely refuses to allow us to hear a word of the broad Doric of his answer. At last�after many bold and stout declarations on the part of Mr. Parker, that he will not be beaten�that he knows the way as well as he does his A B C�and that he will find it if he stays till midnight�he is compelled, by the joint and miserable clamor of us all, to turn back�(a frightful process, as the road is narrow, and the coach will not lock)�to retrace our steps, and take up again the despised high-road, where we had left it. These man�uvres have naturally taken some time. It is three o'clock in the afternoon before we at length reach the great spread of desolate, broad, moorland, which is our destination. For more than an hour, absolute silence has fallen upon us. Like poor Yorick, we are "quite, quite chapfallen!" Even the gallant old gentleman could not make a dirty jest if he were to be shot for it. Mr. Parker alone maintains his exasperating good spirits. We find Roger and Mrs. Huntley sitting on the heather waiting for us. There is a good deal of relief�as it seems to me�in the former's eye, as he sees us appear on the scene; and a good deal of another expression, as he watches the masterly manner in which we pull up: all the four horses floundering together on their haunches; the leaders, moreover, exhibiting a mysterious desire to turn round and look in the wheelers' faces.
"Here we are!" cries Mr. Parker, joyously; "I have brought you along capitally, have not I?�but I am afraid we are a little late�eh, Mrs. Huntley? I hope we have not kept you long."
"Is it late?" she replies, with a smile and a fine hypocrisy�for she looks hungry�"I did not know; we have been quite happy!"
Roger has risen, and is coming to help me down, but I say, crossly, "Do not, please; Algy manages best!" Algy, however, has no intention of helping anybody down. He has helped himself down; and, without a word or a look to any of his fellow-travellers, has thrown himself down on the heather at Mrs. Huntley's feet, and is relieving his mind by audible animadversions on our late triumphal progress. I am therefore left to the tender mercies of the grooms; at least, I should have been, if Mr. Musgrave had not taken pity on me, and guided my uncertain feet and the petticoats, which Zephyr is doing his playful best to turn over my head, down the steep declivity of the ladder. This, as you may guess, does not help to restore my equanimity. However, I am down now, on firm ground; and, at least, we are rid of the dust. My eyes are still full of grit, but I suppose they will get over that. I turn them disconsolately about.
On a fine sunny day�with butterflies hovering over the heather-flowers, and bees sucking honey from the gorse�with little mild airs playing about, and a torquoise sky shining overhead�it might be a spot on which to lie and dream dreams of paradise; but now! The sun has finally retired, and hid his sulky face for the day; the heather is over; and, though the gorse is not, yet it gives no fragrance to the raw air. All over the great rolling expanse there is a heavy, leaden look, caught from the angry heavens above. The great clouds are gathering themselves together to battle; and the mighty wind, with nothing to check its progress, is sweeping over the great plain, and singing with eerie, loud mournfulness.
I shudder.
"Where are the Scotch firs?" (I say, querulously, to Mr. Parker, who by this time had joined me); "you said there were plenty of them! where are they?"
"Where?" (looking cheerfully round), "oh, there!" (pointing to where one lightning-riven little wreck bends its sickly head to the gale). "Ah! I see there is only one, after all. I thought that there had been more."
My heart sinks. Is that one withered, scathed little stick to be our sole protection against the storm, so evidently quickly coming up?
"Fine view, is not it?" pursues my companion, not in the least perceiving my depression, and complacently surveying the prospect. "Of course it might have been clearer, but, after all, you get a very good idea of it."
I turn my faint eyes in the same direction as his. Down on the horizon the sullen rain-clouds are settling, and, to meet them, there stretches a dead, colorless flat, dotted with little round trees, little church-spires, little houses, little fields, little hedges�one of those mappy views, that lack even the beauties of a map�the nice pink and green and blue lines which so gayly define the boundaries of each county.
"Very extensive, is not it?" he says, proudly; "you know you can see�"
"Seven counties!" interrupt I, sharply, snapping the words out of his mouth. "Yes, I know; you told me."
The horses have been led away to the distant ale-house. The coach stands forlorn and solitary on the moor. Some of us, looking at the threatening aspect of the weather, have suggested that we too should make for shelter; but this suggestion is indignantly vetoed by Mr. Parker.
"Rain! not a bit of it! It is not thinking of raining! The wind! what is the matter with the wind? Nice and fresh! Much better than one of those muggy days, when you can hardly breathe!" |
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