Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XLV
The cloth is therefore laid, with the dead heather-flowers beneath it, and the low leaden sky above. As large stones as can be found have to be sought on the moorland road to weight it, and hinder our banquet from flying bodily away. It is at last spread�cold lamb, cold partridges, chickens, mayonnaise, cakes, pastry�they have just been arranged in their defenceless nakedness under the eye of heaven, when the rain begins. And, when it begins, it begins to some purpose. It deceives us with no false hopes�with no breakings in the serried clouds�with no flying glimpses of blue sky. Down it comes, straight, straight down, on the lamb, on the mayonnaise, splash into the bitter. Each of us seizes the viand dearest to his or her heart, and tries to shelter it beneath his or her umbrella. But in vain! The great slant storm reaches it under the puny defense. Even Mr. Parker has to change the form of his consolation, though not the spirit. He can no longer deny that it is raining; but what he now says is that it will not last�that it is only a shower�that he is very glad to see it come down so hard at first, as it is all the more certain to be soon over.
Nobody has the heart to contradict him, though everybody knows that it is a lie. Mrs. Huntley, at the first drop, has made for the coach, and now sits in it, serene and dry. Algy follows her, with a chicken and a champagne bottle. I sit doggedly still, where I am, on the cold moor.
Roger has not spoken to me since my rude reception of him on arriving, but he now comes up to me.
"Had not you better follow her example?" he asks, speaking rather formally, and looking toward the coach, where with smiling profile and neat hair, my rival is sitting, reveling among the flesh-pots.
Something in the sight of her sleek, smooth tidiness, joined to the consciousness of my own miserable, blowsed disorder, stings me more even than the rain-drops are doing.
"Not I!" I answer, brusquely; "that is what I trust I shall never do!"
He passes by my sneer without notice.
"In this rain you will be drenched in two minutes."
"Apr�s!"
"Apr�s!" he repeats, impatiently, "apr�s? you will catch your death of cold!"
"And you will be a widower!" reply I, with a bitter smile.
Barbara is as obstinate as I am. She, too, seems to prefer the spite of the elements to disturbing the t�te-�-t�te in the coach. Musgrave has made her as comfortable as he can, with her back against the poor little Scotch fir, and a plaid over both their heads.
The feast proceeds in solemn silence. Even if we had the heart to talk, the difficulty of making ourselves heard would quite check the inclination.
There are little puddles in all our plates�the bread and cakes are pap�the lamb is damp and flabby, and the mayonnaise is reduced to a sort of watery whey.
Mr. Parker is the only one who, under these circumstances, makes any attempt to pretend that we are enjoying ourselves.
"This is not so bad, after all," he says, still with that same unconquerable accent of joviality. He has to say it three times, and to put up his hands to his mouth like a speaking-trumpet, before any one hears him. When they do, "answer comes there none!"
I, indeed, am not in a position for conversation at the exact moment that the demand is made upon me. I have just come to the end of a long wrestle with my umbrella. It has at last got its wicked will, and has turned right inside out! All its whalebones are aspiring heavenward. It is transformed into a melancholy cup�like a great ugly flower, on a bare stalk. I lay the remains calmly down beside me, and affront the blast and the tempest alone! I have a brown hat on�at least it was brown when we set off�I am just wondering, therefore, with a sort of stupid curiosity, why the rill that so plenteously distills from its brim, and so madly races down my cold nose, should be sky blue, when I perceive that Barbara has left her shelter, and her lover, and is standing beside me.
"Poor Nancy!" she says, with a softly compassionate laugh, "how wet you are! come under the plaid with me! you have no notion how warm it keeps one; and the tree, though it does not look much, saves one a bit, too�and Frank does not mind being wet�come quick!"
I am too wretched to object. No water-proof could stand the deluge to which mine has been subjected. My shoulder-blades feel moist and sticky: my hair is in little dismal ropes, and dreadful runlets are coursing down my throat, and under my clothes.
Without any remonstrance, I snuggle under the plaid with Barbara�with a little of the feeling of soothing and dependence with which, long ago, in the dear old dead days at home, I used, when I was a naughty child, or a bruised child�and I was very often both�to creep to her for consolation.
Thanks to the wind, and to our proximity, we are able to talk without a fear of being overheard.
"You are wrong!" Barbara says, glancing first toward the coach, and then turning the serene and limpid gravity of her blue eyes on me; "you are making a mistake!"
I do not affect to understand her.
"Am I?" I say, indignantly; "I am doing nothing of the kind! it is not only my own idea!�ask Algy!"
"Algy!" (with a little accent of scorn), "poor Algy!�he is in such a fit state for judging, is not he?"
We both involuntarily look toward him.
It is his turn now, and his morosity is exchanged for an equally uncomfortable hilarity. His cheeks are flushed; he is laughing loudly, and going in heavily for the champagne. The next moment he is scowling discourteously at his old host, who, with his poor old chuckle entirely drowned, and overcome by an endless sort of choking monotony of cough, is clambering on tottery old legs into the coach, to try and get his share of shelter.
We both laugh a little; and then Barbara speaks again.
"Nancy, I want to say something to you. Just now I heard Roger ask whether there was a fly to be got at the public-house where the horses are put up, and it seems there is; and he has sent for it. You may think that it is for her, but it is not�it is for you! Will you promise me to go home in it, if he asks you?"
I am silent.
"Will you?" she repeats, taking hold of one of my froggy hands, while her eyes shine with a soft and friendly urgency; "you know you always used to take my advice when we were little�will you?"
Somehow, at her words, a little warmth of comfortable reassurance steals about my heart. At home she always used to be right: perhaps she is right now�perhaps I am wrong. I will be even better than her suggestion.
Roger is standing not far from us. The rain has drenched his beard and his heavy mustache: the great drops stand on his eyelashes, and on his straight brows. Perhaps I only imagine it, but to me he looks sad and out of heart. It is not the weather that makes him so, if he is. Much he cares for that!
I call him "Roger!" My voice is small and low, and the wind is large and loud, but he hears me.
"Yes?" (turning at the sound with a surprised expression).
"May I go home in the fly?" I ask impulsively, yet humbly, "I mean with�with her!" (a gulp at the pronoun), then, under the influence of a fear that he may think that I am driven by a hankering after creature comforts to this overture, I go on quickly, "it is not because I want to be kept dry�if I were to be dragged through the sea I could not be wetter than I am�but if you wish�Barbara thought�Barbara said�"
I mumble off into shy incoherency.
"Will you?" he says, with a tone of eagerness and pleasure, which, if not real, is at least admirably feigned. "It is what I was just wishing to ask you, only" (laughing with a sort of constraint and a touch of bitterness) "I really was afraid!"
"Am I such a shrew?" I say, looking at him with a feeling of growing light-heartedness. "Ah! I always was! was not I, Barbara?" Then, a moment after, in a tone that is almost gay, I say, "May Barbara come, too? is there room?"
"Of course!" he answers readily; "surely there is plenty of room for all!"
While the words are yet on his lips, while I am still smiling up at him, under the soaked tartan there comes a voice from the coach.
"Roger!"
He obeys the summons. It is just five paces off, and I hear each of the slow and softly-enunciated words that follow.
"I hear that you have sent for a fly! how very thoughtful of you! did you ever forget any thing, I wonder? I was�no�not dreading my drive home; but now I am quite looking forward to it. Why did you not bring a pack of cards? we might have had a game of b�zique."
"I think we have made another arrangement," he answers, quietly. "I think Nancy will be your companion instead of me."
"Lady Tempest!" (with a slight but to me quite perceptible raising of eyebrows, and accenting of words).
"Yes, Nancy."
I can see her face, but not his. To my acutely listening, sharply jealous ears there sounds a tone of faint and carefully hidden annoyance in his voice. It seems to me, too, that her features would not dare to wear such an expression of open disappointment if they were not answered and meeting something in his. I therefore take my course. I jump up hastily, flinging off the plaid, and advance toward the interlocutors.
She is just saying, "Oh, I understand! very nice!" in a little formal voice when I break in.
"I am going to do nothing of the kind!" I cry, hurriedly. "I have altered my mind; I shall keep to the coach, that is" (with a nervous laugh, and a miserable attempt at coquetry), "if Mr. Parker is not tired of me."
This is the way in which I take Barbara's advice. The fly arrives presently, and the original pair depart in it. Roger neither looks at nor speaks to me again; in fact, he ignores my existence; although, under the influence of one of those speedy and altogether futile repentances which always follow hard on the heels of my tantrums, I have waylaid him once or twice in the hope that he would be induced to recognize it. But no! this time I have outdone myself. I have tried his patience a little too far. I am in disgrace.
It is long, long after their departure before we get under way. The grooms have either misunderstood Mr. Parker's directions, or are enjoying their mulled beer over the pot-house fire too much to be in any violent haste again to meet the raw air and the persisting deluge.
It is past six o'clock before the horses arrive on the ground; it is half-past before we are off.
And meanwhile Mr. Parker has been rivaling Algy in the ardor with which he calls in the aid of the champagne to keep out the wet. At each fresh tumbler his joviality goes up a step, until at length it reaches a pitch which produces an opposite effect on me, and engenders a depressed fright.
"Barbara," say I, in a low voice, when at length the moment of departure draws near, and only Musgrave is within ear-shot�"Barbara, has it struck you? do not you think he is rather�"
Barbara, however, is diffident of her own opinion, and repeats my question to her lover.
He shrugs his shoulders.
"Is he? I have not noticed him; nothing more likely; last time I saw him he was flying! It was in India at a great pig-sticking meeting, and after dinner he got up to the top of a big mango-tree, and tried to fly! Of course he fell down, but he was so drunk that he was not in the least hurt."
Mr. Musgrave seems to think this an amusing anecdote; but we do not.
"Why do not you drive?" I ask, contrary to all my resolutions addressing my future brother-in-law, and indeed forgetting in my alarm that I had ever made such. I am reminded of it, however, by the look of gratification that flashes�for only one moment and is gone�but still flashes into the depths of his great dark eyes.
"It is so likely that he would let me!" he says, laughing.
"I would not mind so much if I were at the back!" I say, piteously, turning to Barbara. "At the back one does not know what is coming, but on the box one sees whatever is happening."
"That is rather an advantage I think," she answers, laughing. "I do not mind; I will go on the box."
"Will you?" say I, eagerly. "Do! and I will take care of the old general at the back."
So it is settled. We are on the point of starting now. Mr. Parker is up and is already beginning to struggle with the hopeless muddle of his reins. I think we have perhaps done him an injustice; at all events, his condition is not at all what it must have been when he mounted the mango. Algy's morosity has returned tenfold, and he is performing the evolution familiarly known as "pulling your nose to vex your face." That is to say, he is standing about in the pouring rain utterly unprotected from it. He entirely declines to put on any mackintosh or overcoat. Why he does this, or how it punishes Mrs. Huntley, I cannot say, but so it is.
We are off at last. I, in accordance with my wishes, up at the back, facing the grooms; but not at all in accordance with my wishes, Mr. Musgrave, and not the old host, is my companion.
"This is all wrong!" I cry, with vexed abruptness, as I see who it is that is climbing after me. "Where is the general? We settled that he�"
"I am afraid you will have to put up with me!" interrupts Musgrave, coldly, with that angry and mortified darkening of the whole face, and sudden contraction of the eye-balls that I used so well to know. "We could not make him hear; we all tried, but none of us could make him understand." So I have to submit.
Well, we are off now. The night is coming quickly down: it will be quite dark an hour sooner than usual to-night, so low does the great black cloud-curtain stoop to the earth's wet face. Ink above us, so close above us, too, that it seems as if one might touch it with lifted hand; ink around us; a great stretch of dull and sulky heather; and, maddening around us with devilish glee, hitting us, buffeting us, bruising us, taking away our breath, and making our eyelids smart, is a wind�such a wind! I should have laughed if any one had told me an hour ago that it would rise. I should have said it was impossible, and yet it certainly has.
The wind which turned my umbrella inside out was a zephyr compared to that which is now thundering round us. Sometimes, for one, for two false moments, it lulls (the lulls are almost awfuller than the whirlwind that follows them), then with gathered might it comes tearing, howling, whooping down on us again, gnashing its angry teeth; bellowing with a voice like ten million lost devils. And on its pinions what rain it brings; what stinging, lacerating, bitter rain! And now, to add to our misfortunes, to pile Pelion on Ossa, we lose our way. Mr. Parker cannot be persuaded to abandon the idea of the short-cut. The natural result follows.
If we were hopelessly bewildered�utterly at sea among the maze of lonely roads into which he has again betrayed us at high noon�what must we be now in the angry dark of the evening? This time we have to go into a field to turn, a field full of tussocks, which in the dark we are unable to see, and over which the horses flounder and stumble. However, now at length�now that we have wasted three-quarters of an hour, and that it is quite pitch dark�(I need hardly say that we have no lamps)�we have at length regained the blessed breadth of the high-road, and I think that not even our coachman, to whose faith most things seem possible, will attempt to leave it a second time. I give a sigh of relief.
"It is all plain sailing now!" Musgrave says, reassuringly.
"There is one bad turn," reply I, gloomily�"very bad, at the bottom of the village by the bridge."
We relapse into silence, and into our unnatural battle with the elements. I have to grasp my hat firmly with one hand, and the side of the coach with the other, to prevent being blown off. If my companion were any one else, I should grasp him.
We are only a mile and a half from our haven now; the turn I dread is nearing.
"Are you frightened?" asks Musgrave, in a pause of the storm.
"Horribly!" I answer.
I have forgotten Brindley Wood�have forgotten all the mischief he has done. I recollect only that he is human, and that we are sharing what seems to me a great and common peril.
"Do not be frightened!" he says, in an eager whisper�"you need not. I will take care of you!"
Even through all the preoccupation of my alarm something in his tone jars upon and angers me.
"You take care of me!" I cry, scornfully. "How could you? I wish you would not talk nonsense."
We have reached the turn now! Shall we do it? One moment of breathless anxiety. I set my teeth and breathe hard. No, we shall not! We turn too sharp, and do not take a wide-enough sweep. The coach gives a horrible lurch. One side of us is up on the hedge-bank!�we are going over! I give a little agonized yell, and make a snatch at Frank, while my fingers clutch his nearest hand with the tenacity of a devil-fish. If it were his hair, or his nose, I should equally grasp it. Then, somehow�to this moment I do not know how�we right ourselves. The grooms are down like a shot, pulling at the horses' heads, and in a second or two�how it is done I do not see, on account of the dark�but with many bumpings, and shouts and callings, and dreadful jolts, we come straight again, and I drop Frank's hand like a hot chestnut.
In ten minutes more we are briskly and safely trotting up to the hall-door. Before we reach it, I see Roger standing under the lit portico, with level hand shading his eyes, which are intently staring out into the darkness.
"All right? nothing happened?" he asks, in a tone of the most poignant anxiety, almost before we have pulled up.
"All right!" replies Barbara's voice, softly cheerful. "Are you looking for Nancy? She is at the back with Frank."
Roger makes no comment, but this time he does not offer to lift me down.
"Well, here we are!" cries Mr. Parker, coming beaming into the hall, with his mackintosh one great drip, laughing and rubbing his hands. "And though I say it that should not, there are not many that could have brought you home better than I have done to-night, and, I declare, in spite of the rain, we have not had half a bad day, have we?"
But we are all strictly silent. |
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