Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XXII
Suppose that in all this world, during all its ages, there never was a case of a person being always in an ill-humor. I believe that even Xantippe had her lucid intervals of amiability, during which she fondled her Socrates. At all events, father has. On the day after my disappointment, one such interval occurs. He relents, allows Algy and Barbara to have the carriage, and sends them off to Tempest.
Either Mr. Musgrave becomes aware of this fact, or, as I had anticipated, he forgets his promise, for he never appears, and I do not see him again till Sunday. By Sunday my cheeks are no longer raw; the furniture has stopped cracking�seeing that no one paid any attention to it, it wisely left off�and the ghosts await a fitter opportunity to pounce.
I have heard from Sir Roger�a cheerful note, dated Southampton. If he is cheerful, I may surely allow myself to be so too. I therefore no longer compunctiously strangle any stray smiles that visit my countenance. I have taken several drives with Barbara in my new pony-carriage�it is a curious sensation being able to order it without being subject to fathers veto�and we have skirted our own park, and have peeped through his close wooden palings at Mr. Musgrave's, have strained our eyes and stretched our necks to catch a glimpse of his old gray house, nestling low down among its elms. (Was there ever an abbey that did not live in a hollow?) With bated breath, lest the groom behind should overhear me, I have slightly sketched to Barbara the outline of an idea for establishing her in that weather-worn old pile�an idea which I think was born in my mind as long ago as the first evening that I saw its owner at the Linkesches Bad, and heard that he had an abbey, and that it was over against my future home.
Barbara does not altogether deny the desirability of the arrangement; she is not, however, so sanguine as I as to its feasibility, and she positively declines to consent to enter actively into it until she has seen him. This will be on Sunday. To Sunday, therefore, I look forward with pious haste.
Well, it is Sunday now�the Sunday of my first appearance as a bride at Tempest church. A bride without her bridegroom! A pang of mortification and pain shoots through me, as this thought traverses my soul. I look at myself dissatisfiedly in the glass. Alas! I am no credit to his taste. If, for this once. I could but look taller, personabler, older!
"They will all say that he has made a fool of himself," I say, half aloud.
It is a sultry day, without wind or freshness, and with a great deal of sun; but in spite of this, I put on a silk gown, rich and heavy, as looking more married than the cobweb muslins in which I have hitherto met the summer heat. On my head I place a sedately feathered bonnet, which would not have misbecome mother. I meet Algy and Barbara in my boudoir. They are already dressed. I examine Barbara with critical care, and with a discontented eye, though to a stranger her appearance would seem likely to inspire any feeling rather than dissatisfaction, for she looks as clean and fair and chastely sweet as ever maiden did. Ben Jonson must have known some one like her when he wrote: "Have you seen but a bright lily grow
Before rude hands have touched it?
Have you marked but the fall of the snow
Before the soil hath smutched it?
Have you felt the wool of the beaver
Or swan's-down ever?
Or have smelled of the bud of the brier,
Or the nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
Oh so white, oh so soft, oh so sweet is she?"
But all the same, having a bonnet on, she is distinctly less like Palma Vecchio's St. Catherine, to which in my talk with Frank I compared her, than she was bareheaded this morning at breakfast. Who in the annals of history ever heard of a saint in a bonnet?
"I wish that people might be allowed to go to church without their bonnets these hot Sundays," I say, grumblingly. "You especially, Barbara."
She laughs.
"I should be very glad, but I am afraid the beadle would turn me out."
"For Heaven's sake," says Algy, gravely, putting back his shoulders and throwing out his chest, as he draws on a pair of exact gray gloves, "do not let us make ourselves to stink in the nostrils of the inhabitants by any eccentricities of conduct, on this our first introduction to them. If we consulted our own comfort, there is no doubt that we should reduce our toilets by a good many more articles than a bonnet�in fact�" (with an air of reflection), "I shudder to think where we should stop!"
We are in church now. I have run the gantlet of the observation of all the parishioners, and have been unable to look calmly unaware of it; on the contrary, have grown consciously rosy red, and have walked over hastily between the open sittings. But now I have reached the shelter of our own seat, near the top of the church, with all the gay bonnets behind me, and only the pulpit, the spread-eagle reading-desk, and the gaudy stained window in front. As soon as I am established�almost sooner, perhaps�I turn my eyes in search of Mr. Musgrave. I know perfectly where to look for him, as he drew a plan of Tempest church and the relative position of our sittings, with the point of his stick on the gravel in the gardens close to the Zwinger at Dresden, while we sat under the trees by the little pool, feeding the pert sparrows and the intimate cock-chaffinch that resort thither. He is not there!
Barbara may be crowned with any abomination, in the way of a bonnet, that ever entered into the grotesque imagination of a milliner to conceive�coal-scuttle, cottage, spoon�for all that it matters. The organ strikes up, a file of chorister-boys in dirty surplices�Tempest is a more pretentious church than ours�and a brace of clergy enter. All through the Confession I gape about with vacant inattention�at the grimy whiteness of the choir; at the back of the organist's head; at the parson, a mealy-mouthed fledgling, who, with his finger on his place in the prayer to prevent his losing it, is taking a stealthy inventory of my charms.
Suddenly I hear the door, which has been for some time silent, creak again in opening. Footsteps sound along the aisle. I look up. Yes, it is he! walking as quickly and noiselessly as he can, and looking rather ashamed of himself, while patches of red, blue, and golden light, from the east window, dance on his Sunday coat and on the smooth darkness of his hair. I glance at Barbara, to give her notice of the approach of her destiny, but my glance is lost. Barbara's stooped head is hidden by her hands, and her pure thoughts are away with God. As a pis aller, I look at Algy. No absorption in prayer on his part baffles me. He is leaning his elbow on his knee, and wearily biting the top of his prayer-book. He returns my look by another, which, though wordless, is eloquent. It says, in raised eyebrow and drooped mouth, "Is that all? I do not think much of him?"
The church is full and hot. The windows are open, indeed, but only the infinitesimally small chink that church-windows ever do open. The pew-opener sedulously closes the great door after every fresh entrance. I kneel simmering through the Litany. Never before did it seem so long! Never did the chanted, "We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!" appear so endlessly numerous.
Under cover of my arched hands, shading my eyes, I peep at one after another of the family groups. Most of them are behind me indeed, but there are still a good many that I can get a view of sideways. Among these, the one that oftenest engages my notice is a small white woman, evidently a lady�and, at the moment I first catch sight of her, with closed eyes and drawn-in nostrils, inhaling smelling-salts, as if to her, too, church was up-hill work this morning�in a little seat by herself. At the other pews one glance a piece satisfies me, but, having looked at her once, I look again. I could not tell you why I do it. There is nothing very remarkable about her in the matter of either youth or beauty, and yet I look.
The service is ended at length, but eagerly as I long for the fresh air, we are�whether to mark our own dignity, or to avoid further scrutiny on the part of our fellow-worshipers�almost the last to issue from the church. At the porch we find Mr. Musgrave waiting. A sort of mauvaise honte and a guilty conscience combine to disable me from promptly introducing him to my people, and before I recover my presence of mind, Algy has walked on with Barbara, and I am left to follow with Frank.
He does not seem in one of his most sunshiny humors, but perhaps the long morning service, so trying in its present arrangement of lengthy prayers, praises, and preaching, to a restless and irritable temper, is to blame for that.
"I suppose," he says, speaking rather stiffly, "that I must congratulate you on the arrival of the first detachment."
"First detachment of what?"
"Of your family. I understood you to say that there were to be relays of them during all Sir Roger's absence."
"It is to be hoped so, I am sure," I say, devoutly; "especially" (looking up at him with mock reproach) "considering the way in which my friends neglect me. You never came, after all! No!" (seeing the utter unsmilingness of his expression, and speaking hastily), "I am not serious; I am only joking! No doubt you heard that they had come, and thought that you would be in the way. But, indeed you would not. We had no secrets to talk; we should not have minded you a bit."
"I did hear that they had arrived," he answers, still speaking ungraciously, "but even if I had not, I should not have come!"
I look up in his face, and laugh.
"You forgot? Ah, I told you you would!"
"I did not forget."
Again I look up at him, this time in honest astonishment, awaiting the solution of his enigma.
"There is no particular use in making one's self cheap, is there?" he says, with a bitter little laugh. "What is the use of going to a place where you are told that any one else will do as well?"
A pause. I walk along in silent wonderment. So he actually was happy again! We have left the church-yard. We are in the road, between the dusty quicks of the hedgerows. The carriages bowl past us, whirling clouds of dust down our throats. One is trotting by now, a victoria and pair of grays, and in it, leaning restfully back, and holding up her parasol, is the lady I noticed in church. Musgrave knows her apparently. At least, he takes off his hat.
"Who is she?" I say, with a slightly aroused interest. "I was wondering in church. I suppose she is delicate, as she sat down through the psalms."
At the moment I address him, Mr. Musgrave is battling angrily with an angrier wasp, but no sooner has he heard my question than he ceases his warfare, and allows it to buzz within half an inch of his nose, as he turns his hazel eyes, full of astonished inquiry, upon me.
"You do not know?"
"Not I," reply I lightly. "How should I? I know nobody in these parts."
"That is Mrs. Huntley."
"You do not say so!" reply I, ironically. "I am sure I am very glad to hear it, but I am not very much wiser than I was before."
"Is it possible," he says, looking rather nettled at my tone, and lowering his voice a little, as if anxious to confine the question to me alone�a needless precaution, as there is no one else within hearing�"that you have never heard of her?"
"Never!" reply I, in some surprise; "why should I?�has she ever done any thing very remarkable?"
He laughs slightly, but disagreeably.
"Remarkable! well, no, I suppose not!"
The victoria is quite out of sight now�quite out of sight the delicately poised head, the dove-colored parasol.
"You are joking, of course," says Frank, presently, turning toward me, and still speaking in that needlessly lowered key. "It is so long since I have seen you, that I have got out of the habit of remembering that you never speak seriously; but, of course, you have heard�I mean Sir Roger has mentioned her to you!"
"He has not!" reply I, speaking sharply, and raising my voice a little. "Neither has he mentioned any of the other neighbors to me! He had not time." No rejoinder. "Most likely," continue I, speaking with quick heat, for something in his manner galls me, "he did not recollect her existence."
"Most likely."
He is looking down at the white dust which is defiling his patent-leather boots, and smiling slightly.
"How do you know�what reason have you for thinking that he was aware that there was such a person?" I ask, with injudicious eagerness.
"I have no reason�I think nothing," he answers, coldly, with an air of ostentatious reserve.
I walk on in a ruffled, jarred silence. Presently Frank speaks again.
"Are those two"�(slightly indicating by a faint nod the figures in front of us)�"the two you expected?�Are these�what are their names?�Algy and Barbara?"
"Yes," say I, smiling, with recovered equanimity; "Algy and Barbara." A little pause. "You can judge for yourself now," say I, laughing rather nervously, "whether I spoke truth�whether Barbara is as like the St. Catherine as I told you." For a moment he does not answer. "Of course," I say, rather crestfallen, "the bonnet makes a difference; the likeness is much more striking when it is off."
"The St. Catherine!" he repeats, with a puzzled air, "what St. Catherine? I am afraid you will think me very stupid, but I really am quite at sea."
"Do you mean to say," cry I, reddening with mortification, "that you forget�that you do not remember that St. Catherine of Palma Vecchio's in the Dresden Gallery that I always pointed out to you as having such a look of Barbara? Well, you have a short memory!"
"Have I?" he answers, dryly; "perhaps for some things; for others, I fancy that mine is a good deal longer than yours."
"It might easily be that," I answer, recovering from my temporary annoyance and laughing; "I suppose you mean for books and dates, and things of that kind. Well, you may easily beat me there. The landing of William the Conqueror, and the battle of Waterloo, were the only two dates I ever succeeded in mastering, and that was only after the struggle of years."
"Dates!" he says, impatiently, "pshaw! I was not thinking of them! I was thinking of Dresden!"
"Are you so sure that you could beat me there?" ask I, thoughtfully; "I do not know about that! I think I could stand a pretty stiff examination; but perhaps you are talking of the pictures and the names of the artists. Ah, yes! there you are right; with me they go in at one ear, and out at another. Only the other day I was racking my brain to think of the name of the man that painted the other Magdalen�not Guido's�I was telling Algy about it. Bah! what is it? I know it as well as my own."
His head is turned away from me. He does not appear to be attending.
"What is it?" I repeat; "have you forgotten too?"
"Battoni!" he answers, laconically, still keeping his face averted.
"Battoni! oh, yes! thanks�of course! so it is!�Algy" (raising my voice a little)�"Battoni!"
"Well, what about him?" replies Algy, turning his head, but not showing much inclination to slacken his speed or to join Frank and me.
"The Magdalen man�you know�I mean the man that painted the Magdalen, and whose name I could not recollect last night, Algy. Barbara! how fast you are walking!" (speaking rather reproachfully)�"stop a moment! I want to introduce you to Mr. Musgrave."
Thus adjured, they have come to a halt, and the presentation is made.
"Surely," think I, glancing at Barbara's face, slightly flushed by the heat, and still gently grave with the sobriety of expression left by devotion, "he must see the likeness now!" To insure his having the chance of telling her that he does, I fall behind with Algy. |
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