Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XXI
However, not all the hot tears in the world�not all the swelled noses and boiled-gooseberry eyes avail to alter the case. Not even all my righteous wrath against the boys profits�and I do keep Bobby at arms'-length for a day and a half. No one who does not know Bobby understands how difficult such a course of proceeding is; for he is one of those people who ignore the finer shades of displeasure. The more delicately dignified and civilly frosty one is to him, the more grossly familiar and hopelessly, obtusely friendly is he. I have made several more efforts to change Sir Roger's decision, but in vain. He makes the case more difficult by laying his refusal chiefly on his own convenience; dilating on the much greater speed and ease with which he will be able to transact his business, if alone, than if weighted by a woman, and a woman's paraphernalia, and also on the desirability of having in me a locum tenens for himself at Tempest. But, in my soul, I know that both these are hollow pretenses to lighten the weight on my conscience.
"But," say I, with discontented demurring, "you have been away often before! how did Tempest get on then?"
He laughs.
"Very middling, indeed! last time I was away the servants gave a ball in the new ballroom�so my friends told me afterward, and the time before, the butler took the housekeeper a driving-tour in my T.-cart. I should not have minded that much�but I suppose he was not a very good whip, and so he threw down one of my best horses, and broke his knees!"
"Well, they shall not give a ball!" say I, resolutely, "but"�(in a tone of melancholy helplessness)�"they may throw down all the horses, for any thing I can do to prevent them! A horse's knees would have to be very much broken before I should perceive that they were!"
"You must get Algy to help you," he says, kindly. "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, is not it? Poor boy!"�(laughing)�"You must not expect him to be very keen about my speedy return."
As he speaks, an arrow of animosity toward Algy shoots through my heart.
We are at Tempest�Sir Roger and I. It has been his wish to establish me there before his departure; and now it is the gray of the evening before his setting off, and we are strolling through the still park. Vick is racing, with idiotic ardor, through the tall green bracken, after the mottled deer, yelping with shrill insanity, and vainly imagining that she is going to overtake them. The gray rabbits are scuttling across the grass rides in the pale light: as I see them popping in and out of their holes, I cannot help thinking of Bobby. Apparently, Sir Roger also is reminded of him.
"Nancy," he says, looking down at me with a smile of recollected entertainment, "have you forgiven Bobby yet for leaving you sitting on the wall? I remember, in the first blaze of your indignation, you vowed that never should he fire a gun in your preserves!�do you still stick to it, or have you forgiven him?"
"That I have not!" cry I, heartily. "None of them shall shoot any thing! Why should they? Every thing shall be kept for you against you come back!"
He raises his eyebrows a little.
"Rabbits and all?"
"Rabbits and all!" reply I, firmly.
"And what will the farmers say?" asks Sir Roger, smiling.
I have not considered this aspect of the question, so remain silent. We walk on without speaking for some moments. The deer, in lofty pity for Vick, have stopped to allow her to get nearer to them. With their fine noses in the air, and their proud necks compassionately turned toward her, they are waiting, while she pushes, panting and shrieking, through the stout fern-stems; then, leap cruelly away in airy bounds.
"If I am not back by Christmas�" says Sir Roger, presently.
"By Christmas!" interrupt I, aghast, "one, two, three, four, five months�but you must!�you MUST!" clasping both hands on his arm.
"I hope I shall, certainly," replies he; "but one never knows what may happen! If I am not�"
"But you must," repeat I urgently, and apparently resolved that he shall never reach the end of his sentence; "if you are not�I warn you�you may not like it�I dare say you will not�but�I shall come to look for you!"
"In a sailing-vessel, like the governor-general's wife?" asks he with a smile.
And now he is gone! gone in the first freshness of the morning! This year, I seem fated to witness the childhood of many summer days. The carriage that bears him away is lost to sight�dwindled away to nothing among the park-trees. Five minutes ago, my arms were clinging with a tightness of a clasp that a bear might have admired round his neck. I was too choked with tears to say much, and kept repeating with the persistence of a guinea-fowl, but without the distinctness, "Come back! come back!"
"Good-by, my Nancy!" he says, holding me a little from him, that he may the better consider my face, "be quite�quite happy, while I am away�indeed, that will be the way to please me best, and be a little glad to see me when I come back!"
And now he is gone; and I am left standing at the hall-door with level hand shading my eyes from the red sun�with a smeared face�with the butler and two footmen respectfully regarding my affliction�(they do not like to disappear, till they have shut the door�I do not like to ask them to retire, and I do not like to lose the last glimpse) so there I remain�nineteen�a grass widow, and�ALONE! I shall not, however, be alone for long; for this evening Barbara is coming. Algy is to bring her, and to stay a few days on his way to Aldershott. All day long, I wander with restless aimlessness about the house, my big house�so empty, so orderly in its stateliness�so frightfully silent! Ah! the doll's house whose whole front came out at once was a better companion�much more friendly, and not half so oppressive. In almost every room, I cry profusely�disagreeable tears of shame and remorse and grief�only, O friends! I will tell you now, what I would not tell myself then, that the grief, though true, was not so great as either of the other feelings. I lunch in the great dining-room, with tall full-length Tempests eying me with constant placidity from the walls; with the butler and footman still trying respectfully to ignore my swelled nose and bunged-up eyes.
As evening draws on�evening that is to bring some voices, some sound of steps to me and my great dumb house�I revive a little. If it were Bobby that were coming, my mind would be weighted by the thought of the repression his spirits would need, but Algy's mirth is several shades less violent, and Barbara is never jarringly joyful. So I change my dress, bathe my face, make my maid retwist my hair, and prepare to be chastenedly and moderately glad to see them.
At least there will be some one to occupy two more of these numberless chairs; two more for the stolid family portraits to eye; two voices, nay three, for I shall speak then, to drown the sounding silence.
It is time they should be here. The carriage went to the station more than an hour ago. I sit down in a window-seat that commands the park, and look along the drive by which the general went this morning.
Dear Roger! I will practise calling him "Roger" when I am by myself, and then perhaps I may be able to address him by it when he comes home. I will say, "How are you, Roger?"
I have fallen into a pleasant reverie, with my head leaned against the curtain, in which I see myself giving glib utterance to this formula, as I stand in a blue gown�Roger likes me in blue�and a blue cap�I look older in a cap�while he precipitates himself madly�
My reverie breaks off. Some one has entered, and is standing by me. It is a footman, with a telegram on a salver. Albeit I know the trivial causes for which people employ the telegraph-wires nowadays, I never can get over my primal deadly fear of those yellow envelopes, that seem emblems and messengers of battle, murder, and sudden death. As I tear it open, a hundred horrible impossible possibilities flash across my brain. Algy and Barbara have both been killed in a railway-accident, and have telegraphed to tell me so; the same fate has happened to Roger, and he has adopted the same course.
"Algernon Grey to Lady Tempest.
"Cannot come: not allowed. He has turned nasty."
The paper drops into my lap, as I draw a long breath of mingled relief and disappointment. A whole long evening�long night of this solitude before me! perhaps much more, for they do not even say that they will come to-morrow! I must utter my disappointment to somebody, even if it is only the footman.
"They are not coming!" say I, plaintively; then, recollecting and explaining myself, "I mean, they need not send in dinner! I will not have any!" I cannot stand another repast�three times longer than the last too�for one can abridge luncheon, seated in lorn dignity between the staring dead on the walls, and the obsequious living.
As soon as the man is fairly out of the room, I cry again. Yes, though my hair is readjusted, though I spent more than a quarter of an hour in bathing my eyes, and restoring some semblance of white to their lids, though I had resolved�and without much difficulty, too, hitherto�to be dry-eyed for the rest of the evening. What does it matter what color my eyelids are? what size my nose is? or how beblubbered my cheeks? Not a soul will see them, except my maid, and I am naturally indifferent as to the effect I produce upon her. I look at the clock on the mantel-piece. It has stopped�ornamental clocks mostly do�but even this trivial circumstance adds to my affliction. I instantly take out my pocket-handkerchief, and begin to cry again. Then I look at my watch; a quarter-past seven only�and my watch always gains! Two hours and three-quarters before I can, with the smallest semblance of decency, go to bed. Meanwhile I am hungry. Though my husband has deserted me, though my brother and sister have failed me, my appetite has done neither.
Faithful friend! never yet was it known to quit me, and here it is! I decide to have tea in my own boudoir. Tea is informal, and one need not be waited on at it. When it comes, I try to dawdle over it as much as possible, to sip my tea with labored slowness, and bite each mouthful with conscientious care. When I have finished, I think with satisfaction that I cannot have occupied less than half an hour. Again I consult my watch. Exactly twelve minutes. It is now five minutes to eight; two hours and five minutes more! I sigh loudly, and putting on my hat stroll out into the wide and silent garden. It is as yet unfamiliar to me. I do not know where half the walks lead. I have no favorite haunts, no chosen spot of solitude and greenery, where old and pleasant thoughts meet me. Many such have I at home, but none here. I wander objectlessly, pleasurelessly about with Vick�apparently sharing my depression�trotting subduedly, with tail half-mast high, at my heels, and at length sit down on a bench under a mulberry-tree. The scentless flame of the geraniums and calceolarias fills, without satisfying my eyes; the gnats' officious hum offends my ears; and thoughts in comparison of which the calceolarias are sweet and the gnats melodious, occupy my mind.
Sir Roger will most likely be drowned on his voyage out. Bobby will almost certainly be sent to Hong-Kong, and, as a natural consequence, die of a putrid fever. Algy has just entered the army; there can be no two opinions as to our going to war immediately with either Russia or America. Algy will probably be among the first to fall, and will die, grasping his colors, and shouting "Victory!" or "Westminster Abbey!" or perhaps both.
I have not yet decided what he shall be shouting, when the current of my thoughts is turned by seeing some one�thank Heaven, not a footman, this time!�advancing across the sward toward me. Surely I know the nonchalant lounge of that walk�the lazy self-consciousness of that gait, though, when last I saw it, it was not on dewy English turf, but on the baking flags of a foreign town. It is Mr. Musgrave. Until this moment I have ungratefully forgotten his existence, and all the interesting facts he told me connected with his existence�how his lodge faces ours�how he has no father nor mother, and lives by himself at an abbey. Alas! in this latter particular, can I not feel for him? Am I not living by myself at a hall?
Vick recognizes him at about the same moment as I do. Having first sprung at him with that volubility of small but hostile yaps, with which she strikes terror into the hearts of tramps, she has now�having smelt him to be not only respectable, but an acquaintance�changed her behavior to a little servile whine and a series of high jumps at his hand.
"It is you, is it?" cry I, springing up and running to meet him with an elate sensation of company and sociability; "I had quite forgotten that you lived near here. I'm so glad!"
At my happy remark as to having been hitherto oblivious of his existence, his face falls in the old lowering way I remember so well, and that brings back to me so forcibly the Prager Strasse, the Zwinger, the even sunshine, that favored my honey-moon; but at the heartily-expressed joy at seeing him, with which I conclude, he cheers up again. If he had known that I was in so reduced a state that I should have enjoyed a colloquy with a chimney-sweep, and not despised exchanging opinions with a dustman, he would not have thought my admission worth much.
"So you have come at last," he says, holding my hand, and looking at me with those long dark eyes that I would swear were black had not a conscientious and thorough daylight scrutiny of them assured me long ago that they were hazel.
"Yes," say I, cheerfully; "I told you you would catch sight of us, sooner or later, if you waited long enough."
"And your tenants never dragged you in, after all?"
"No," say I; "we did not give them the chance. But how do you know? Were you peeping out of your lodge? If I had remembered that you lived there, I would have been on the lookout for you."
"You had, of course, entirely forgotten so insignificant a fact?" he says, with a tone of pique.
That happy one! how well I recollect it! I feel quite fondly toward it; it reminds me so strongly of the Linkesches Bad, of the brisk band, and of Roger smoking and smiling at me with his gray eyes across our Mai-trank.
"Yes," I say, contritely, "I am ashamed to say I had�quite; but you see I have had a good many things to think of lately."
At this point it strikes me that he must have forgotten that he has my hand, so I quietly, and without offense, resume it.
"And you are alone�Sir Roger has left you quite alone here?"
"Yes," say I, lachrymosely; "is not it dreadful? I never was so miserable in my life; I do not think I ever was by myself for a whole night before, and"�(lowering my voice to a nervous whisper)�"they tell me there is a ghost somewhere about. Did you ever hear of it?�and the furniture gives such cracks!"
"And�he has gone by himself?" he continues, still harping on the same string, as if unable to leave it.
"Yes," reply I, laconically, hanging my head, for this is a topic on which I feel always guilty, and never diffuse.
"H'm!" he says, ruminatingly, and as if addressing the remark more to himself than to me. "I suppose it is difficult to get out of old habits, and into new ones, all of a sudden."
"I do not know what you mean by old habits and new habits," cry I, angrily; "if you think he did not want me to go with him, you are very much mistaken; he would have much rather that I had."
"But you," looking at me penetratingly, and speaking with a sort of alacrity, "you did not see it? I remember of old" (with a smile) "your abhorrence of the sea."
"You are wrong again," say I, reddening, and still speaking with some heat, "I wished to go�I begged him to take me. However sick I had been, I should have liked it better than being left moping here, without a soul to speak to!"
Silence for a moment. Then he speaks with a rather sarcastic smile.
"I confess myself puzzled; if you were dying to go, and he were dying to take you, how comes it that you are sitting at the present moment on this bench?"
I can give no satisfactory answer to this query, so take refuge in a smile.
"I see," say I, tartly, "that you have still your old trick of asking questions. I wish that you would try to get the better of it; it is very disadvantageous to you, and very trying to other people!"
He takes this severe set-down in silence.
The trees that surround the garden are slowly darkening. The shadows that intervene between the round masses of the sycamore-leaves deepen, deepen. A bat flitters dumbly by. Vick, to whose faith all things seem possible, runs sharply barking and racing after it. We both laugh at the fruitlessness of her undertaking, and the joint merriment restores suavity to me, and assurance to him.
"And are you to stay here by yourself all the time he is away�all?"
"God forbid!" reply I, with devout force.
"Not? well, then�I am really afraid this is a question again, but I cannot help it. If you will not volunteer information, I must ask for it�who is to be your companion?"
"I suppose they will take turns," say I, relapsing into dejection, as I think of the precarious nature of the society on which I depend; "sometimes one, sometimes another, whichever can get away best�they will take turns."
"And who is to have the first turn?" he asks, leaning back in the corner of the seat, so as to have a fuller view of my lamentable profile; "when is the first installment of consolatory relatives to arrive?"
"Algy and Barbara were to have come to-day," reply I, feeling a covert resentment against something of faintly gibing in his tone, but being conscious that it is not perceptible enough to justify another snub, even if I had one ready, which I have not.
"And they did not?"
"Now is not that a silly question?" cry I, tartly, venting the crossness born of my desolation on the only person within reach; "if they had, should I be sitting moping here with nobody but Vick to talk to?"
"You forget me! may I not run in couples even with a dog?" he asks, with a little bitter laugh.
"I did not forget you," reply I, coolly; "but you do not affect the question one way or another�you will be gone directly and�when you are�"
"Thank you for the hint," he cries springing up, picking up his little stick off the grass and flushing.
"You are not going?" cry I, eagerly, laying my hand on his coat-sleeve, "do not! why should you? there is no hurry. Let me have some one to help me to keep the ghosts at bay as long as I can!" then, with a dim consciousness of having said something rather odd, I add, reddening, "I shall be going in directly, and you may go then."
He reseats himself. A tiny air is ruffling the flower-beds, giving a separate soft good-night to each bloom.
"And what happened to Algy and Barbara?" he says presently.
"Happened? Nothing!" I answer, absently.
"Very brutal of Algy and Barbara, then!" he says, more in the way of a reflection than a remark.
"Very brutal of father, you should say!" reply I, roused by the thought of my parent to a fresh attack of active and lively resentment.
"I have no doubt I should if I knew him."
"He would not let them come!" say I, explanatorily, "for what reason? for none�he never has any reasons, or if he has, he does not give them. I sometimes think" (laughing maliciously) "that you will not be unlike him, when you grow old and gouty."
"Thank you."
"You have no father, have you?" continue I, presently; "no, I remember your telling me so at the Linkesches Bad. Well" (laughing again, with a certain grim humor), "I would not fret about it too much, if I were you�it is a relationship that has its disadvantages."
He laughs a little dryly.
"On whatever other heads I may quarrel with Providence, at least no one can accuse me of ever murmuring at its decrees in this respect."
We have risen. The darkness creeps on apace, warmly, without damp or chillness; but still, on it comes! I have to face the prospect of my great and gloomy house all through the lagging hours of the long black night!
"They will come to-morrow, certainly, I suppose?" (interrogatively).
"Not certainly, at all!" reply I, with an energetic despondence in my voice; "quite the contrary! most likely not! most likely not the day after either, nor the day after that�"
"And if they do not" (with an accent of sincere compassion), "what will you do?"
"What I have done to-day, I suppose," I answer dejectedly; "cry till my cheeks are sore! You may not believe me" (passing my bare fingers lightly over them as I speak), "but they feel quite raw. I wonder" (with a little dismal laugh) "why tears were made salt!�they would not blister one half so much if they were fresh water."
He has drawn a pace or two nearer to me. In this light one has to look closely at any object that one wishes specially and narrowly to observe; and I myself have pointed out the peculiarities of my countenance to him, so I cannot complain if he scrutinizes me with a lengthy attention.
"It is going to be such a dark night!" I say, with a slight shiver; "and if the wind gets up, I know that I shall lie awake all night, thinking that the gen�that Roger is drowned! Do you not think" (looking round apprehensively) "that it is rising already? See how those boughs are waving!"
"Not an atom!" reassuringly.
We both look for an instant at the silent flower-beds, at the sombre bulk of the house.
"If they do not come to-morrow�" begins Frank.
"But they will!" cry I, petulantly; "they must! I cannot do without them! I believe some people do not mind being alone�not even in the evenings, when the furniture cracks and the door-handles rattle. I dare say you do not; but I hate my own company; I have never been used to it. I have always been used to a great deal of noise�too much, I have sometimes thought, but I am sure that I never shall think so again!"
"Well, but if they do not�"
"You have said that three times," I cry, irritably. "You seem to take a pleasure in saying it. If they do not�well, what?"
"I will not say what I was going to say," he answers, shortly. "I shall only get my nose bitten off if I do."
"Very well, do not!" reply I, with equal suavity.
We walk in silence toward the house, the wet grass is making my long gown drenched and flabby. We have reached the garden-door whence I issued, and by which I shall return.
"You must go now, I suppose," say I, reluctantly. "You will be by yourself too, will not you? Tell me" (speaking with lowered confidential tone), "do your chairs and tables ever make odd noises?"
"Awful!" he answers, laughing. "I can hardly hear myself speak for them."
I laugh too.
"You might as well tell me before you go what the remark that I quenched was? One always longs to hear the things that people are going to say, and do not! Have no fear! your nose is quite safe!"
"It is nothing much," he answers, with self-conscious stiffness, looking down and poking about the little dark pebbles with his cane; "nothing that you would care about."
"Care about!" echo I, leaning my back against the dusk house-wall, and staring up at the sombre purple of the sky. "Well, no! I dare say not! What should I care to hear now? I am sure I should be puzzled to say! But, as I have been so near it, I may as well be told."
"As you will!" he answers, with an air of affected carelessness. "It is only that, if they do not come to-morrow�"
"Fourth time!" interject I, counting on my fingers and smiling.
"If you wish�if you like�if it would be any comfort to you�I shall be happy�I mean I shall be very glad to come up again about the same time to-morrow evening."
"Will you?" (eagerly, with a great accession of exhilaration in my voice). "Are you serious? I shall be so much obliged if you will, but�"
"It is impossible that any one can say any thing," he interrupts, hastily. "There could be no harm in it!"
"Harm!" repeat I, laughing. "Well, hardly! I cannot fancy a more innocent amusement."
Though my speech is in agreement with his own, the coincidence does not seem to gratify him.
"What did you mean, then?" he says, sharply. "You said 'but'�"
"Did I?" answer I, again throwing back my head, and looking upward, as if trying to trace my last preposition among the clouds; "but�but�where could I have put a 'but'?�oh, I know! but you will most likely forget! Do not!" I continue, bringing down my eyes again, and speaking in a coaxing tone. "If you do, it will be play to you, but death to me; the thought of it will keep me up all the day!"
"Will it?" in a tone of elated eagerness. "You are not gibing, I suppose? it does not sound like your gibing voice!"
"Not it!" reply I, gloomily. "My gibing voice is packed away at the bottom of my imperial. I do not think it has been out since we left Dresden. Well, good-night! What do you want to shake hands again for? We have done that twice already. You are like the man who, the moment he had finished reading prayers to his family, began them all over again. Mind you do not forget! and" (laughing) "if you cannot come yourself, send some one else! any one will do�I am not particular, but I must have some one to speak to!"
Almost before my speech is finished, Frank is out of sight. With such rapid suddenness has he disappeared round the house-corner. I stand for a moment, marveling a little at his hurry. Five minutes ago he seemed willing enough to dawdle on till midnight. Then I go in, and forget his existence. |
Admission Charges
Address
Buses
B&B�s/Guest Houses
Campsites/Caravans
Credit Cards
Cricket
Disabled Facilities
Email
Fax
Film
Food
Parks/Gardens
Golf
Hotels
Libraries
Opening Hours
Places of Worship
Pubs/Bars
Schools/Colleges:
Shops/Gifts
Taxis:
Telephone No.
Tourist Information
Vets
Web Address
Illustration(s) or 