Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XXIII
Claret cup has washed the dust from our throats; cold lamb and mayonnaise have restored the force of body and equanimity of mind which the exhausted air and long-drawn Gregorian chants of Tempest Church destroyed. Frank is lunching with us. He had accompanied us to our own gates, and had then made a feint of leaving, but I had pressed him, with an eagerness proportioned to the seriousness of my design upon him, to accompany us, and he had yielded with a willing ease.
I cannot help thinking that Algy does not look altogether pleased with the arrangement, but after all, it is my house, and not Algy's. It is the first time that I have entertained a guest since the far-off childish birthdays, when the neighbors' little boys and girls used to be gathered together to drink tea out of the doll's tea service. In the afternoon, we all walk to church again, and in the same order. Barbara and Algy in front, Frank and I behind. I had planned differently, but Algy is obtuse, Barbara will come into the man�uvres, and Frank seems simply indifferent. So it happens, that all through the park, and up the bit of dusty white road we are out of ear-shot of the other two.
"A sky worthy of Dresden!" says Mr. Musgrave, throwing back his head and looking up at the pale blue sultriness above our heads�the waveless, stormless ether sea�as we pace along, with the church-bells' measured ding-dong in our ears, and the cool ripe grasses about our feet.
"Dear Dresden!" say I, pensively, with a sigh of mixed regret and remorse, as I look back on the sunshiny hours that at the time I thought so long, in that fair, white foreign town.
"Dear Linkesches Bad!" says Frank, sighing too.
"Dear Groosegarten!" cry I, thinking of the long pottering stroll that Roger and I had taken one evening up and down its green alleys, and that then I had found so tedious.
"Dear Zwinger!" retorts Frank.
"Dear Weisserhirsch!" say I, half sadly. "Dear white acacias! dear drives under the acacias!"
"Drives under the acacias!" echoes Frank, dropping his accent of sentimentalism, and speaking rather sharply. "We never had any drives under the acacias! We never had any drives at all, that I recollect!"
"You had not, I dare say," reply I, carelessly, "but we had. They are the things that I look back at with the greatest pleasure of any thing that happened there!"
Frank does not apostrophize as "dear" any other public resort; indeed, he turns away his head, and we walk on without uttering a word for a few moments.
"By-the-by," say I, with a labored and not altogether successful attempt at appearing to speak with suddenness and want of premeditation, "what did you mean this morning, about that la�about Mrs. Huntley?"
"I meant nothing," he answers, but the faint quiver of a smile about his mouth contradicts his words.
"That is not true!" reply I, with impatient brusqueness; "why were you surprised at my not having heard of her?"
"I was not surprised."
"What is the use of so many falsehoods?" cry I, indignantly; "at least I would choose some better time than when I was going to church for telling them. What reason have you for supposing that�that Roger knows more about her than I�than Barbara do?"
"How persistent you are!" he says, with that same peculiar smile�not latent now, but developed�curbing his lips and lightening in his eyes. "There is no baffling you! Since you dislike falsehoods, I will tell you no more. I will own to you that I made a slip of the tongue; I took it for granted that you had been told a certain little history, which it seems you have not been told."
The blood rushes headlong to my face. It feels as if every drop in my body were throbbing and tingling in my cheeks, but I look back at him hardily.
"I don't believe there is any such history."
"I dare say not."
More silence. Swish through the buttercups and the yellow rattle; a lark, miles above our heads, singing the music he has overheard in heaven. Frank does not seem inclined to speak again.
"Your story is not true," say I, presently, laughing uncomfortably, and unable to do the one wise thing in my reach, and leave the subject alone�"but untrue stories are often amusing, more amusing than the true ones. You may tell yours, if you like."
"I have not the slightest wish."
A few steps more. How quickly we are getting through the park! We shall reach the church, and I shall not have heard. I shall sit and stand and kneel all through the service with the pain of that gnawing curiosity�that hateful new vague jealousy aching at my heart.
It is impossible! I stop. I stand stock-still in the summer grass.
"I hate your hints! I hate your innuendoes!" I say, passionately. "I have always lived with people who spoke their thoughts straight out! Tell me this moment! I will not move a step from this spot till you do."
"I have nothing worth speaking of to tell," he answers, slightly. "It is only that never having had a wife myself, I have taken an outsider's view; I have taken it for granted that when two people marry each other they make a clean breast of their past history�make a mutual confession of their former�"
He pauses, as if in search of a word.
"But supposing," cry I, eagerly, "that they have nothing to tell, nothing to confess�"
He shrugs his shoulders.
"That is so likely, is it not?"
"Likely or not," cry I, excitedly, "it was true in my case. If you had put me on the rack, I could have confessed nothing!"
"I do not see the analogy," he answers, coldly; "you are�what did you tell me? nineteen?�It is to be supposed"�(with a rather unlovely smile)�"that your history is yet to come; and he is�forty-seven! We shall be late for church!"�with a glance at Algy's and Barbara's quickly diminishing figures.
"I do not care whether we are late or not!" cry I, vehemently, and stamping on the daisy-heads as I speak. "I will not stir until you tell me."
"There is really no need for such excitement!" returns he with a cold smile; "since you will have it, it is only that rumor�and you know what a liar rumor is�says that once, some years ago, they were engaged to marry each other."
"And why did not they?" speaking with breathless panting, and forgetting my stout asseveration that the whole tale is a lie.
"Because�mind, I vouch for nothing, I am only quoting rumor again�because�she threw him over."
"Threw him over!" with an accent of most unfeigned astonishment.
"You are surprised!" he says, quickly, and with what sounds to me like a slightly annoyed inflection of voice; "it does seem incredible, does not it? But at that time, you see, he had not all the desirables�not quite the pull over other men that he has now; his brother was not dead or likely to die, and he was only General Tempest, with nothing much besides his pay."
"Threw�him�over!" repeat I, slowly, as if unable yet to grasp the sense of the phrase.
"We shall certainly be late; the last bell is beginning," says Frank, impatiently.
I move slowly on. We have reached the turnstile that gives issue from the park to the road. The smart farmers' wives, the rosy farmers' daughters, are pacing along through the powdery dust toward the church-gate.
"Is she a widow?" ask I, in a low voice.
He laughs sarcastically.
"A widow indeed, and desolate, eh? No! I believe she has a husband somewhere about, but she keeps him well out of sight�away in the colonies. He is there now, I fancy."
"And why is not she with him?" cry I, indignantly; but the moment that the words are out of my mouth, I hang my head. Might not she ask the same question with regard to me?
"She did not like the sea, perhaps," answers Frank, demurely. |
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