Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XXV
One more day is gone. We are one day nearer Roger's return. This is the way in which I am growing to look at the flight of time; just as, in Dresden, I joyfully marked each sunset, as bringing me twenty-four hours nearer home and the boys. And now the boys are within reach; at a wish I could have them all round me; and still, in my thoughts, I hurry the slow days, and blame them for dawdling. With all their broad, gold sunshine, and their rainbow-colored flowers, I wish them away.
Alas! that life should be both so quick and so lagging! It is afternoon, and I am lying by myself on a cloak at the bottom of the punt�the unupsettable, broad-bottomed punt. My elbow rests on the seat, and a book is on my lap. But, in the middle of the pool, the glare from the water is unbearably bright, but here, underneath those dipping, drooped trees, the sun only filters through in little flakes, and the shade is brown, and the reflections are so vivid that the flags hardly know which are themselves�they, or the other flags that grow in the water at their feet.
A while ago I tried to read; but a private vexation of my own�a small new one�interleaved with its details each page of the story, and made nonsense of it. I have shut the volume, therefore, and, with my hat tilted over my eyes, and my cheek on my hand, am watching the long blue dragon-flies, and the numberless small peoples that inhabit the summer air. All at once, I hear some one coming, crashing and pushing through the woody undergrowth. Perhaps it is Algy come to say that he has changed his mind, and that he will not go after all! No! it is only Mr. Musgrave. I am a little disappointed, but, as my fondness for my own company is always of the smallest, I am able to smile a sincere welcome.
"It is you, is it?" I say, with a little intimate nod. "How did you know where I was?"
"Barbara told me."
"Barbara, indeed!" (laughing). "I wish father could hear you."
"I am very glad he does not."
"And so you found her at home?" I say, with a feeling of pleased curiosity, as to the details of the interview. (He cannot well have volunteered the abbey already, can he?)
"I suppose I may come in," he says, hardly waiting my permission to jump into the punt, which, however, by reason of the noble broadness of its bottom, is enabled to bid defiance to any such shock. "She was making a flannel petticoat for an old woman," he goes on, sitting down opposite me, and looking at me from under his hat-brim, with gravely shining eyes; "herring-boning, she called it. She has been teaching me how to herring-bone. I like Barbara."
"How kind of you!" I say, ironically, and yet a little gratified too. "And does she return the compliment, may I ask?"
He nods.
"Yes, I think so."
"She would like you better still if you were to lose all your money, and one of your legs, and be marked by the small-pox," I say, thoughtfully; "to be despised, and out at elbows, and down in the world, is the sure way to Barbara's heart."
I had meant to have drawn for him a pleasant and yet most true picture of her sweet disinterestedness, but his uneasy vanity takes it amiss.
"As it entails being enrolled among the blind and lame," he says, smiling sarcastically, and flushing a little, "I am afraid I shall never get there."
A moment ago I had felt hardly less than sisterly toward him. Now I look at him with a disgustful and disapprobative eye. What a very great deal of alteration he needs, and, with that face, and his abbey, and all his rooks to back it, how very unlikely he is to get it! Well, I at least will do my best!
We both remain quiet for a few moments. Vick sits at the end of the punt, a shiver of excitement running all over her little white body, her black nose quivering, and one lip slightly lifted by a tooth, as she gazes with eager gravity at the distant wild-ducks flying along in a row, with outstretched necks, making their pleasant quacks. How low they fly; so low that their feet splash in the water, that makes a bright spray-hue in the sun!
"Algy is going away to-morrow!" say I, presently.
"So he told me."
"This is his last evening here!" (in a rather dolorous tone).
"So I should gather," laughing a little at the obviousness of my last piece of information.
"And yet," say I, looking down through the clear water at a dead tree-bough lying at the bottom, and sighing, "he is going to dine out to-night�to dine with Mrs. Huntley."
"With Mrs. Huntley! when?" with a long-drawn whistle of intelligence.
"Tell me," cry I, impulsively, raising myself from my reclining pose, and sitting upright, "you will understand better than I do�perhaps it is my mistake�but, if you had seen a person only once for five or ten minutes, would you sign yourself 'Yours very sincerely' to them?"
He laughs dryly.
"Not unless I was writing after dinner�why?"
"Nothing�no reason!"
Again he laughs.
"I think I can guess."
"Her name is Z�phine," say I again, leaning over the boat-side and pulling my forefinger slowly to and fro through the warm brown water.
"I am well aware of that fact" (smiling).
How near the swans are drawing toward us! One, with his neck well thrown back, and his wings raised and ruffled, sailing along like a lovely snow-white ship; another, with less grace and more homeliness, standing on his head, with black webs paddling out behind.
"You were quite wrong on Sunday�quite," say I, speaking with sudden abruptness, and reddening.
"On Sunday!" (throwing his luminous dark eyes upward to the light clouds and faint blue of the August sky above us, as if to aid his recollection), "nothing more likely�but what about?"
"About�Roger," I answer, speaking with some difficulty ("and Mrs. Huntley," I was going to add, but some superstition hinders me from coupling their names even in a sentence).
"I dare say"�carelessly�"but what new light have you had thrown upon the matter?"
"I asked her," I say, looking him full in the face, with simple directness.
"Asked her!" repeats he, with an accent of profound astonishment. "Asked the woman whether she had been engaged to him, and jilted him? Impossible!"
"No! no!" cry I, with tremulous impatience, "of course not; but I asked her whether she used not to know him in India, and she said, 'Yes, we met several times,' just like that�she no more blushed and looked confused than I should if any one asked me whether I knew you!"
He is still leaning over the punt, and has begun to dabble as I did.
"You certainly have a way of putting things very strongly," he says in a rather low voice, "convincingly so!"
"She did not even know what part of the world he was in!" I cry, triumphantly.
"Did she say so?" (lifting up his face, and speaking quickly).
"Well, no�o�" I answer, reluctantly; "but I said, 'He is in the West Indies,' and she answered 'Yes,' or 'Indeed,' or 'Is he?' I forget which, but at any rate it implied that it was news to her."
A pike leaps not far from us, and splashes back again. I watch to see whether the widening faint circles will have strength to reach us, or whether the water's smile will be smoothed and straightened before it gets to us.
"Did Mrs. Huntley happen to say" (leaning lazily back, and speaking carelessly), "how she liked her house?"
"No; why?"
"She has only just got into it," he answers, slightly; "only about a fortnight, that is."
"I wonder," say I, ruminatingly, "what brought her to this part of the world, for she does not seem to know anybody."
He does not answer.
"We ought to be friends, ought not we?" say I, beginning to laugh nervously, and looking appealingly toward him, "both of us coming to sojourn in a strange land! It is a curious coincidence our both settling here in such similar circumstances, at almost the same time, is not it?"
Still he is silent.
"Is not it?" cry I, irritably, raising my voice.
Again he has thrown his head back, and is perusing the sky, his hands clasped round one lifted knee.
"What is a coincidence?" he says, languidly. "I do not think I quite know�I am never good at long words�two things that happen accidentally at the same time, is not it?"
He lays the faintest possible stress on the word accidentally.
"And you mean to say that this in not accidental?" I cry, quickly.
"I mean nothing; I only ask for information."
How still the world is to-day! The feathery water-weeds sway, indeed, to and fro, with the motion of the water, but the tall cats'-tails, and all the flags, stand absolutely motionless. I feel vaguely ruffled, and take up my forgotten book. Holding it so as to hide my companion's face from me, I begin to read ostentatiously. He seems content to be silent; lying on the flat of his back, at the bottom of the punt, staring at the sky, and declining the overtures, and parrying the attacks, of Vick, who, having taken advantage of his supine position to mount upon his chest, now stands there wagging her tail, and wasting herself in efforts, mostly futile, but occasionally successful, to lick the end of his nose. A period of quiet elapses, during which, for the sake of appearances, I turn over a page. By-and-by, he speaks.
"Algy is your eldest brother, is not he?�get away, you little beast!"�(the latter clause, in a tone of sudden exasperation, is addressed, not to me, but to Vick, and tells me that my pet dog's endeavors have been crowned with a tardy prosperity.)
"Yes" (still reading sedulously).
"I thought so," with a slight accent of satisfaction.
"Why?" cry I, again letting fall my volume, and yielding to a curiosity as irresistible as unwise; for he had meant me to ask, and would have been disobliged if I had not.
"We all have our hobbies, don't you know?" he says, shifting his eyes from the sky, and fixing them on the less serene, less amiable object of my face�"some people's is old china�some Elzevir editions�I have a mania for clocks�I have one in every room in my house�by-the-by, you have never been over my house�Mrs. Huntley's�she is a dear little woman, but she has her fancies, like the rest of us, and hers is�eldest sons!"
"But she is married!" exclaim I, stupidly. "What good can they do her, now?"�then, reddening a little at my own simplicity, I go on, hurriedly: "But he is such a boy!�younger than you�young enough to be her son�it can be only out of good-nature that she takes notice of him."
"Yes�true�out of good-nature!" he echoes, nodding, smiling, and speaking with that surface-assent which conveys to the hearer no impression less than acquiescence.
"Boys are not much in her way, either," he pursues, carelessly; "generally she prefers such as are of riper years�much riper!"
"How spiteful you are!" I say, glad to give my chafed soul vent in words, and looking at him with that full, cold directness which one can employ only toward such as are absolutely indifferent to one. "How she must have snubbed you!"
For an instant, he hesitates; then�
"Yes," he says, smiling still, though his face has whitened, and a wrathy red light has come into his deep eyes; "in the pre-Huntley era, I laid my heart at her feet�by-the-way, I must have been in petticoats at the time�and she kicked it away, as she had, no doubt, done�others."
The camel's backbone is broken. This last innuendo�in weight a straw�has done it. I speak never a word; but I rise up hastily, and, letting my novel fall heavily prone on the pit of its stomach at the punt-bottom, I take a flying leap to shore�toward shore, I should rather say�for I am never a good jumper�Tou Tou's lean spider-legs can always outstride me�and now I fall an inch or two short, and draw one leg out booted with river-mud. But I pay no heed. I hurry on, pushing through the brambles, and leaving a piece of my gown on each. Before I have gone five yards�his length of limb and freedom from petticoats giving him the advantage over me�he overtakes me.
"What has happened? at this rate you will not have much gown left by the time you reach the house."
To my excited ears, there seems to be a suspicion of laughter in his voice. I disdain to answer. The path we are pursuing is not the regular one; it is a short cut through the wood. At its widest it is very narrow; and, a little ahead of us, a bramble has thrown a strong arm right across it, making a thorny arch, and forbidding passage. By a quick movement, Mr. Musgrave gets in advance of me, and, turning round, faces me at this defile.
"What has happened?"
Still I remain stubbornly silent.
"We are not going to fight, at this time of day, such old friends as we are?"
The red-anger light has died out of his eyes. They look softer, and yet less languid, than I have ever seen them before; and there is subdued appeal and entreaty in his lowered voice. At the present moment, I distinctly dislike him. I think him altogether trying and odious, and I should be glad�yes, glad, if Vick were to bite a piece out of his leg; but, at the same time, I cannot deny that I have seldom seen any thing comelier than the young man who now stands before me, with the green woodland lights flickering about the close-shorn beauty of his face�he is well aware that his are not features that need planting out�while a lively emotion quickens all his lazy being.
"We are not old friends! Let me pass!"
"New friends, then�friends, at all events!" coming a step nearer, and speaking without a trace of sneer, sloth, or languor.
"Not friends at all! Let me pass!"
"Not until you tell me my offense�not until you own that we are friends!" (in a tone of quick excitement, and almost of authority, that, in him, is new to me).
"Then we shall stay here all night!" reply I, with a fine obstinacy, plumping down, as I speak, on the wayside grass, among the St. John's-worts, and the red arum-berries. In a moment he has stepped aside, and is holding the stout purple bramble-stem out of my way.
"Pass, then!" he says, in a tone of impatience, frowning a little; "as you have said it, of course you will stick to it�right or wrong�or you would not be a woman; but, whether you confess it or not, we are friends!"
"We are NOT!" cry I, resolute to have the last word, as I spring up and fly past him, with more speed than dignity, lest he should change his mind, and again detain me. |
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