Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XVI
Well, no one will deny that Sunday comes after Saturday; and it was Saturday evening, when the heavens painted themselves with fire, and the sun lit up all the house-windows to welcome us home. Sunday is not usually one of our blandest days, but we must hope for the best.
"General," say I, standing before him, dressed for morning church, after having previously turned slowly round on the point of my toes, to favor him with the back view of as delightful a bonnet, and as airily fresh and fine a muslin gown, as ever young woman said her prayers in�"by-the-by, do you like my calling you general?"
"At least I understand who you mean by it," he says, a little evasively; "which, after all, is the great thing, is not it?"
"It is my own invention," say I, rather proudly; "nobody put it into my head, and nobody else calls you by it, do they?"
"Not now."
"Not now?" cry I, surprised; "but did they ever?"
"Yes," he says, "for about a year, most people did; I was general a year before my brother died."
"Your brother died?" cry I, again repeating his words, and arching my eyebrows, which have not naturally the slightest tendency toward describing a semicircle. "What! you had a brother, too, had you? I never knew that before."
"Did you think you had a monopoly of them?" laughing a little.
"So you were not 'Sir' always?"
"No more than you are," he answers, smiling. "No, I was not born in the purple; for thirty-seven years of my life I earned my own bread�and rather dry bread too."
"You do not say so!" cry I, in some astonishment.
"If I had come here seven years ago," he says, taking both my pale yellow hands in his light gray ones, and looking at me with eyes which seem darker and deeper than usual under the shade of the brim of his tall hat�"by-the-by, you would have been a little girl then�as little as Tou Tou�"
"Yes," interrupt I, breaking in hastily; "but, indeed, I never was a bit like her, never. I never had such legs�ask the boys if I had!"
"I did not suppose that you had," he answers, bursting into a hearty and most unfeigned laugh! "but" (growing grave again), "Nancy, suppose that I had come here then! I should have had no shooting to offer the boys�no horses to mount Algy�no house worth asking Barbara to�"
"No more you would!" say I, too much impressed with surprise at this new light on Sir Roger's past life to notice the sort of wistfulness and inquiry that lurks in his last words; then, after a second, perceiving it: "And you think," say I, loosing my hands from his, and growing as pink as the delicate China rose-bud that is peeping round the corner of the trellis in at the window, "that there would not have been as much inducement then for me to propose to you, as there was in the present state of things!"
I am laughing awkwardly as I speak; then, eagerly changing the conversation, and rushing into another subject: "By-the-by, I had something to say to you�something quite important�before we digressed."
"Yes?"
"O general!" taking hold of the lapel of his coat, and looking up at him with appealing earnestness, "do you know that I have made up my mind to give him the bag to-day! it is no use putting off the evil day�it must come, after supper�they all say after supper!"
"Yes?"
"Well, I want you to talk to him all day, and get him into a good-humor by then, if you can, that is all!"
"That is all!" repeats my husband, with the slightest possible ironical accent. Then we go to church. It is too near to drive, so we all walk. The church-yard elms are out in fullest leaf above our heads. There are so many leaves, and they are so close together, that they hide the great brown rooks' nests. They do not hide the rooks themselves. It would take a good deal to do that. Dear pleasant-spoken rooks, talking so loudly and irreverently about their own secular themes�out-cawing the church-bells, as we pace by, devout and smart, to our prayers. Last time I walked up this path, it was hidden with red cloth, and flowers were tumbling under my feet. Ah! red cloth comes but once in a lifetime. It is only the queen who lives in an atmosphere of red cloth and cut flowers.
We are in church now. The service is in progress. Can it be only five Sundays ago that I was standing here as I am now, watching all the little well-known incidents? Father standing up in frock-coat and spectacles, keeping a sharp lookout over the top of his prayer-book, to see how late the servants are. The ill-behaved charity-boys emulously trying who shall make the hind-legs of his chair squeak the loudest on the stone floor. Toothless Jack leering distantly at Barbara from the side aisle. Something apparently is amusing him. He is smiling a little. I see his teeth. They, at least, are new. They were not here five weeks ago. The little starved curate�the one who tore his gloves into strips�loses his place in the second lesson, and madly plunges at three different wrong verses in succession, before he regains the thread of his narrative.
We have come to the sermon. The text is, "I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come." No sooner is it given out than Algy, Bobby, and Tou Tou, all look at me and grin; but father, who has a wily way of establishing himself in the corner of the pew, so as to have a bird's-eye view of all our demeanors, speedily frowns them down into a preternatural gravity. Ah, why to-day, of all days, did they laugh? and why to-day, of all days, did the servants file noisily in, numerous and out of breath, in the middle of the psalms? I tremble when I think of the bag.
Well, who will may laugh again now: we are out in the sunshine, with the church-yard grass bowing and swaying in the wind, and the little cloud-shadows flying across the half-effaced names of the forgotten dead, who lie under their lichen-grown tombs.
"Did you see his teeth?" asks Tou Tou, joining me with a leap, almost before I am outside the church-porch.
"They are not comfortable yet," remarks Bobby, gravely, as he walks beside me carrying my prayer-book. "I could see that: he was taking them out, and putting them in again, with his tongue all through the Litany."
"When once he has secured Barbara, I expect that they will go back with the box for good and all�eh, Barbara?" say I, laughing, as I speak; but Barbara is out of ear-shot. She is lingering behind to shake hands with the curate, and ask all the poor old people after their diseases. I never can recollect clearly who has what. I always apportion the rheumatism wrongly, but she never does. There she stands just by the church-gate, with the little sunny lights running up and down upon her snow-white gown, shaking each grimy old hand with a kind and friendly equality.
The day rolls by; afternoon service; walk round the grounds; early dinner (we always embitter our lives on Sundays by dining at six, which does the servants no good, and sours the tempers of the whole family); then prayers. Prayers are always immediately followed by that light refection which we call supper.
As the time approaches, my heart sinks imperceptibly lower in my system than the place where it usually resides.
"Be ready, Sister Nancy,
For the time is drawing nigh,"
says Algy, solemnly, putting his arm round my shoulders, as, the prayer-bell having rung, we set off for the wonted justicing-room.
"Have a pull at my flask," suggests Bobby, seriously; "there is some cognac left in it since the day we fished the pool. It would do you all the good in the world, and, if you took enough, you would feel able to give him ten bags, or, indeed, throw them at his head at a pinch."
"Have you got it?" say I, faintly, to the general, who at this moment joins us.
"Yes, here it is."
"But what will you do with it meanwhile?" cry I, anxiously; "he must not see it first."
"Sit upon it," suggests Algy, flippantly.
"Hang it round his neck while he is at prayers," bursts out Bobby, with the air of a person who has had an illumination; "you know he always pretends to have his eyes shut."
"And at 'Amen,' he would awake to find himself famous," says Algy, pseudo-pompously.
But this suggestion, although I cannot help looking upon it as ingenious, I do not adopt.
Prayers on Sunday are a much finer and larger ceremonial than they are on week-days. In the first place, instead of a few of the church prayers quickly pattered, which are ended in five minutes, we have a whole long sermon, which lasts twenty. In the second place, the congregation is so much greater. On week-days it is only the in-door servants; on Sundays it is the whole staff�coachman, grooms, stablemen. I think myself that it is more in the nature of a parade, to insure that none of the establishment are out sweethearting, than of a religious exercise. Usually I am delighted when the sermon is ended. Even Barrow or Jeremy Taylor would sound dull and stale if fired off in a flat, fierce monotone, without emphasis or modulation. To-night, at every page that turns, my heart declines lower and lower down. It is ended now; so is the short prayer that follows it. We all rise, and father stands with his hawk-eyes fixed on the servants, as they march out, counting them. The upper servants are all right; so are the housemaids, cookmaids, and lesser scullions. Alas! alas! there is a helper wanting.
Having listened to and disbelieved the explanation of his absence, father leads the way into supper, but the little incident has taken the bloom off his suavity.
Sir Roger has deposited the bag�still wrapped in its paper coverings�on a chair, in a modest and unobtrusive corner of the dining-room, ready for presentation. He did this just before prayers. As we enter the room, father's eyes fall on it.
"What is that?" he cries, pointing with his forefinger, and turning severely to the boys. "How many times have I told you that I will not have parcels left about, littering the whole place? Off with it!"
"If you please, father," say I, in a very small and starved voice, "it is not the boys', it is mine."
"Yours, is it?" with a sudden change of tone, and return to amenity. "Oh, all right!" (Then, with a little accent of sudden jocosity)�"One of your foreign purchases, eh?"
We sit round the snowy table, in the pleasant light of the shaded lamps, eating chicken-salad, and abasing and rifling the great red pyramids of strawberries and raspberries, but talking not much. We young ones never can talk out loud before father. He has never heard our voices raised much above a whisper. I do not think he has an idea what fine, loud, Billingsgate voices his children really have. He has said grace�we always have a longer, gratefuller grace than usual on Sundays�and has risen to go.
"Now for it!" cries Bobby, wildly excited, and giving me an awful dig in the ribs with his elbow.
"Shall I get it?" asks the general, in an encouraging whisper. "Cheer up, Nancy! do not look so white! it is all right."
He rises and fetches it, slips it quickly out of its coverings, and puts it into my hand. Father has reached the door, I run after him.
"Father!" cry I, in a choked and trembling voice. "Stop!"
He turns with the handle in his grasp, and looks at me in some surprise.
"Father!" cry I, beginning again, and holding my gift out nervously toward him, "here's�here's�here's a bag!"
This is my address of presentation. I hear the boys tittering at the table behind me�a sound which, telling me how ill I am speeding, makes my confusion tenfold worse. I murmur, helplessly and indistinctly, something about his never traveling, and my knowing that fact�and having been always sure that he would hate it�and then I glance helplessly round with a wild idea of flight. But at the same moment an arm of friendly strength comes round my shoulders�a friendly voice sounds in my buzzing ears.
"James," it says, simply and directly, "she has brought you a present, and she is afraid that you will not care about it."
"A present!" echoes my father, the meaning of the inexplicable object which has suddenly been thrust into his grasp beginning to dawn upon him. "Oh, I see! I am sure, my dear Nancy"�with a sort of embarrassed stiffness that yet means to be gracious�"that I am extremely obliged to you, extremely; and though I regret that you should have wasted your money on me�yet�yet�I assure you, I shall always prize it very highly."
Then he goes out rather hastily. I return to the supper-table.
"Shake hands!" cries Algy, pouring me out a glass of claret. "Now, perhaps, you have some faint idea of what I felt when I had to return thanks for the bridesmaids."
"Nancy!" cries Bobby, holding out the fruit to which he alludes, and speaking in a wobbly, quivering voice, with a painfully literal imitation of my late address, "here's�here's�here's a peach!"
But I am burying my face in Sir Roger's shoulder, like a shy child.
"I like you!" I say, creeping up quite close to him. "You were the only one that came to help me. If it had not been for you, I should be there still!" |
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