Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XVIII
I meet Bobby retiring to the kitchen to cook his mushrooms himself. He invites me to join him, but I refuse. It is the first time in the annals of history that I was ever known to say no to such an offer. Bobby regards me with reproachful anger, and makes a muffled remark, the drift of which I understand to be that, though I may pretend not to be, I am grown fine, as he always said I should. To-day it seems to me as if breakfast would never end. It is one of our fixed laws that no one shall leave the table until father gives the signal by saying grace. Sometimes, when he is in one of his unfortunate moods, he keeps us all staring at our empty cups and platters for half an hour. To-day I watch with warm anxiety the progress downward of the tea in his cup. At last he has come to the grounds. He lays down the Times. We all joyfully half bow our heads, in expectation of the wonted "For what we have received," etc., but speedily and disappointedly raise them again.
"Jane, can you spare me another cup?" and reburies himself in a long leader. Behind the shelter of the great sheet, I make a hideous contortion across the table at Sir Roger, who has fallen with great docility into our ways, and is looking back at me now with that gentle, steadfast serenity which is the leading characteristic of his face, but which this morning is, I cannot help thinking, a good deal disturbed, hard as he is trying to hide it. There are, thank Heaven, no more false starts. Next time that he lays down the paper, we are all afraid to bend our heads, for fear that the movement shall break the charm, and induce him to send for a fourth cup�he has already had three�but no! release has come at last.
"For what we have received the Lord make us truly thankful!"
Almost before we have reached "thankful," there is a noise of several chairs pushed back. Before you could say "knife!" we are all out of the room. All but Sir Roger! In deference, I suppose, to the feelings of the friend of his infancy, and not to appear too anxious to leave him�Sir Roger ought to have married Barbara, they two are always thinking of other people's feelings�he delays a little, and indeed they emerge together and find me sitting on one of the uncomfortable, stiff hall-chairs, on which nobody ever sits. To my dismay, I hear father say something about the chestnut colt's legs, and I know that another delay is in store for me. Sir Roger comes over to me, and takes his wide-awake from the stand beside me.
"We are going to the stables," he says, patting my shoulder.
I make a second hideous face. Often have I been complimented by the boys, on the flexibility of my features.
"I shall be back in ten minutes," he says, in a low voice; "will you wait for me in the morning-room?"
"I suppose I must," say I, reluctantly, with a disgusted and disappointed drawing down of the corners of my mouth.
Ten minutes pass; twenty, five-and-twenty! Still he has not come back. I walk up and down the room; I look out the window at the gardeners rolling the grass; I rend a large and comely rose into tatters, while all manner of unpleasant possibilities stalk along in order before my mind's eye. Perhaps Tempest is burnt down. Perhaps some bank, in which he has put all his money, has broken. Perhaps he has found out that his brother is not really dead after all! I dismiss this last worst suggestion as improbable. The door opens, and he enters.
"Here you are!" I cry, making a joyous rush at him. "I thought you were never coming! Please, is that your idea of ten minutes?"
"I could not help it," he answers; "he kept me talking; I could not get away any sooner."
"Why did you go?" say I, dutifully. "Why did not you say, when he asked you, 'No, I will not?' He would have done it to you as soon as look at you."
"That would have been so polite to one's host and father-in-law, would not it?" he answers, a little ironically. "After all, Nancy, where is the use of vexing people for nothing?"
"Not people generally," reply I, still chafed; "but I should like some one who was not his child, and in whom it would not be disrespectful, to pay him out for keeping us all as he did this morning; he knew as well as possible that we were dying to be off; that was why he had that last cup: he did not want it any more than I did. He did not drink it; did not you see? he left three-quarters of it."
Sir Roger does not answer, unless a slight shrug and a passing his hand across his face with a rather dispirited gesture be an answer. I feel ashamed of my petulance.
"Do you feel inclined to tell me about your ill news?" I say, gently, going over to him, and putting my hand on his shoulder. "I have been making so many guesses as to what it can be?"
"Have you?" he says, looking up. "I dare say. Well, I will tell you. Do you remember�I dare say you do not�my once mentioning to you that I had some property in the West Indies�in Antigua?"
I nod.
"To be sure I do; I recollect I had not an idea where Antigua was, and I looked out for it at once in Tou Tou's atlas."
"Well, a fortnight�three weeks ago�it was when we were in Dresden, I had a letter telling me of the death of my agent out there. I knew nothing about him personally�had never seen him�but he had long been in my poor brother's employment, and was very highly thought of by him."
"Poor brother!" think I; "well, thank Heaven! at least he has not revived; he would not be 'poor' if he had," but I say only, "Yes?" with a delicately interrogative accent.
"And to-day comes this letter"�(pulling one out of his pocket)�"telling me that now that his affairs have been looked into, they are found to be in the greatest confusion�that he has died bankrupt, in fact; and not only that, but that he has been cheating me right and left for years and years, appropriating the money which ought to have been spent on the estate to his own uses; and, as misfortunes never come single, I also hear"�(unfolding the sheet, and glancing rather disconsolately over it)�"that there has been a hurricane, which has destroyed nearly all the sugar-canes."
The thought of Job and his successive misfortunes instantly occurs to me�the Sabeans, the Chaldeans, the great wind from the wilderness�but being a little doubtful as to his example having a very consoling effect, with some difficulty, and at the cost of a great pressure exercised on myself, I abstain from mentioning him.
"To make a long story short," continues Sir Roger, "and not to bother you with unnecessary details�"
"But indeed they would not bother me," interrupt I, eagerly, putting my hand through his arm, and turning my face anxiously up to him; "I should enjoy hearing them. I wish you would not think that all sensible, sober things bother me."
"My dear," he says, gently pinching my cheek, "I think nothing of the kind, but I know that not all the explanations in the world will alter the result, which is, that I shall not get a farthing from the property this year, and very likely not next either."
"You do not say so!" cry I, trying to impart a tragic tone to my voice, and only hoping that my face looks more distressed and aghast than it feels.
To tell you the truth, I am mightily relieved. At this period of my history, money troubles seem to me the lightest and airiest of all afflictions. I have sat down, and Sir Roger is walking up and down, with a restlessness unlike his usual repose; on his face there is a vexed and thwarted look, that is unfamiliar to me. The old parrot sits in the sun, outside his cage, scratching his head, and chuckling to himself. Tou Tou's voice comes ringing from the garden. It has a tone of mingled laughter and pain, which tells me that she is undergoing severe and searching discipline at the hands of Bobby.
"I suppose," say I, presently, speaking with some diffidence, "that that is all. Of course I do not mean to say that it is not very bad, but is there nothing worse?"
"Is not it bad enough?" he asks, half laughing. "What did you expect?"
"You know," say I, still hesitatingly, "I have not an idea how well off you are; I mean, how much a year you have. Mercenary as I am"�(laughing nervously)�"I never thought of asking you; but I suppose, even if the earth were to open and swallow Antigua�even if there were no such things as West Indies�we should still have money enough to buy us bread and cheese, should not we?"
"Well, it is to be hoped so," he answers, a gleam of amusement flashing like a little sunshiny arrow across his vexation; "it would be a bad lookout for you and me, would not it, considering the size of our appetites, if we should not?"
A little pause. Tou Tou's voice again. The anguish has conquered the laughter, and is now mixed with a shrill treble wrath. Polly is alternately barking like Vick, and laughing with a quiet amusement at his own performance.
"Do you think," say I, still airing my opinion with timidity, as one that has no great opinion of their worth, "that it does one much good to be rich beyond a certain point?�that a large establishment, for instance, gives one much pleasure? I am sure it does not in our case; if you were to know the number of nails that the servants and their iniquities have knocked into mother's coffin�yes, and father's, too."
"Have they?" (a little absently). He is still pacing up and down restlessly�to and fro�along and across�he that is usually so innocent of fidget or fuss. "Nancy," he says, half seriously, half in rueful jest, "if you want a thing done, do it yourself: mind that, all your life. I am a standing instance of the disadvantage of having let other people do it for me. The fact is, I ought to have gone out there long ago, to look after things myself."
"If you had been there, you could not have stopped the hurricane coming, any more than Canute could stop the waves," say I, filching a piece of history from "Little Arthur," and pushing it to the front.
He smiles.
"Not the hurricane�no; but the hurricane was the lesser evil. I might have done something to avert, or, at least, lessen the greater one. To tell the truth, I meant to have gone out there this spring�had, indeed, almost fixed upon a day for starting, when�you stopped me."
"I!"
"Yes," he says, pausing in his walk in front of me, and looking at me with a face full of sunshine, content, and laughter; a face whence hurricanes, West Indies, and agents have altogether fled; "you called me a 'beast', and the expression startled me so much�I suppose from not being used to it�that it sent the West Indies, yes, and the East ones too, clean out of my head."
"I hope," say I, anxiously, "that you will never tell any one that I said that. They would think that I was in the habit of calling people 'beasts', and indeed�indeed, I very seldom use so strong a word, even to Bobby."
"Well," he says, not heeding my request, not, I am sure, hearing it, and resuming his walk, "what is done cannot be undone, so there is no use whining about it, Nancy" (again stopping before me, and this time taking my face in his two hands). "Will you mind much, or will you not?�do you ever mind any thing much, I wonder?" (eagerly and wistfully scanning my face, as if trying to read my character through the mask of my pale skin, and small and unremarkable features). "Well, there is no help for it�as I did not go then, I must go now."
"Go!" repeat I, panting in horrid surprise, "go where?�to Antigua?"
"Yes, to Antigua."
No need now to dress my voice in the tones of factitious tragedy�no need to lengthen my face artificially. It feels all of a sudden quite a yard and a half long. Polly has stopped barking: he is now calling, "Barb'ra! Barb'ra!" in father's voice, and he hits off the pompous severity of his tone with such awful accuracy, that did not my eyes assure me to the contrary, I could swear that my parent was in the room.
After a moment I rise, throw my arms round Sir Roger, and lay my head on his breast�a most unwonted caress on my part, for we are not a couple by any means given to endearments.
"Do not go!" I say in a coaxing whisper, "do nothing of the kind!�stay at home!"
"And will you go instead of me?" he asks with a gentle irony, stroking, the while, my plaits as delicately as if he were afraid that they would come off, which indeed, indeed, they would not.
"By myself," say I, laughing, but not raising my head. "Oh! of course; nothing I should like better, and I should be so invaluable in mending the sugar-canes, and keeping the new agent on his P's and Q's, should not I?"
He laughs.
"Stay!" say I, again whispering, as being more persuasive; "where would be the use of going now? It would be shutting the stable-door after the steed was stolen, and�" (this in a still lower voice)�"we are beginning to get on so nicely, too."
"Beginning!" he echoes, with a half-melancholy smile, "only beginning? have not we always got on nicely?"
"And if we are poorer," continue I, insinuatingly, "I believe we shall get on better still. I am sure that poor people are fonder of one another than rich ones�they have less to distract them from each other."
I have now raised my head, and perceive that Sir Roger does not look very much convinced.
"But granting that poverty is better than riches, do you believe that it is, Nancy?�for my part I doubt it�for myself I will own to you that I have found it pleasant not to be obliged to look at sixpence upon both sides; but that," he says with straightforward simplicity, "is perhaps because I have not long been used to it�because once, long ago, I wanted money badly�I would have given my right hand for it, and could not get it!"
"What did you want it for?" cry I, curiously, pricking my ears, and for a moment forgetting my private troubles in the hope of a forthcoming anecdote.
"Ah! would not you like to know?" he says, playfully, but he does not explain: instead, he goes on: "Even granting that it is so, do you think it would be very manly to let a fine estate run to ruin, because one was too lazy to look after it? Do you think it would be quite honest�quite fair to those that will come after us?"
"Those that will come after us!" cry I, scornfully, making a face for the third and last time this morning. "And who are they, pray? Some sixteenth cousin of yours, I suppose?"
"Nancy," he says, gravely, but in a tone whose gentleness takes all harshness from the words, "you are talking nonsense, and you know as well as I do that you are!"
Then I know that I may as well be silent. After a pause:
"And when," say I, in as lamentable a voice as King Darius sent down among the lions in search of Daniel�"how soon, I mean, are we to set off?"
"We!" he cries, a sudden light springing into his eyes, and an accent of keen pleasure into his voice. "Do you mean to say that you thought of coming too?"
I look up in surprise.
"Do not wives generally go with their husbands?"
"But would you like to come?" he asks, seizing my hands, and pressing them with such unconscious eagerness, that my wedding-ring makes a red print in its neighbor-finger.
O friends, I wish to Heaven that I had told a lie! It would have been, I am sure, one of the cases in which a lie would have been justifiable�nay, praiseworthy, too. But, standing there, under the truth of his eyes, I have to be true, too.
"Like!" say I, evasively, casting down my eyes, and fiddling uneasily with one of the buttons of his coat, "it is hardly a question of 'like,' is it? I do not imagine that you like it much yourself?�one cannot always be thinking of what one likes."
The pressure of his fingers on mine slackens; and, though, thanks to my wedding-ring, it was painful, I am sorry. After a minute:
"But you have not," say I, trying to speak in a tone of light and airy cheerfulness, "answered my question yet�how soon we must set off? You know what a woman always thinks of first�her clothes, and I must be seeing to my packing."
"The sooner the better," he answers, with a preoccupied look. "Not later than ten days hence!"
"Ten days!"
Again my jaw falls. He has altogether loosed my hands now, and resumed his walk. I sit down by the table, lean my elbows on it, and push my fingers through my hair in most dejected musing. Polly has been dressing himself; turning his head over his shoulder, and arranging his feathers with his aquiline nose. He has finished now, and has just given vent, in a matter-of-fact, unemotional voice, to an awful oath! There is the sound of brisk feet on the sunny gravel outside. Bobby's face looks in at the window�broad, sunburnt, and laughing.
"Well! what is up now?" cries he, catching a glimpse of my disconsolate attitude. "You look as if the fungi had disagreed with you!"
"Then appearances are deceitful," reply I, trying to be merry, "for they have not."
He has only glanced in upon us in passing: he is gone again now. I rebury my hands in my locks, which, instead of a highly-cultivated garden, I am rapidly making into a wilderness.
"I suppose," say I, in a tone which fitly matches the length of my face, "that Bobby will have got a ship before I come back; I hope they will not send him to any very unhealthy station�Hong-Kong, or the Gold Coast."
"I hope not."
"What port shall we sail from?"
"Southampton."
"And how long�about how long will the voyage be?"
"About seventeen days to Antigua."
"And how long"�(still in the same wretched and resignedly melancholy voice)�"shall we have to stay there?"
"It depends upon the state in which I find things?"
A good long pause. My elbows are growing quite painful, from the length of time during which they have been digging into the hard marqueterie table, and my hair is as wild as a red Indian's. Ten days! ten little galloping days, and then seventeen long, slow, monstrous ones! Seventeen days at sea! seventeen days and seventeen nights, too�do not let us forget that�of that deadly nausea, of that unspeakable sinking of all one's inside to the very depths of creation�of the smell of boiling oil, and the hot, sick, throbbing of engines!
"I hope," say I, in a voice so small that I hardly recognize it for my own, "that I shall not be quite as ill all the way as I was crossing from Calais to Dover; and the steward," continue I, in miserable meditation, "kept telling me all the while what a fine passage we were having, too!"
"So we were!"
Another pause. I am still thinking of the horrid theme; living over again my nearly-forgotten agonies.
"Do you remember," say I, presently, "hearing about that Lady Somebody�I forget her name�but she was the wife of one Governor-General of India, and she always suffered so much from sea-sickness that she thought she should suffer less in a sailing-vessel, and so returned from India in one, and just as she came in sight of the shores of England she died!"
As I reach this awful climax, I open my eyes very wide, and sink my voice to a tragic depth.
"The moral is�" says Sir Roger, stopping beside me, laying his hand on my chair back, and regarding me with a mixture of pain and diversion in his eyes, "stick to steam!" |
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