Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XXXI
Yes, here out in the open it is still quite light; it seems two hours earlier than it did below in the dark dingle�light enough as plainly to see the faces of those one meets as if it were mid-day. I suppose that my late companion and I were too much occupied by our own emotions to hear, or at least notice the sound of wheels approaching us; but no sooner have I turned and left him, before I have gone three paces, than I am quickly passed by an open carriage and pair of grays�quickly, and yet slowly enough for me to recognize the one occupant. As to her�for it is Mrs. Huntley�she must have seen me already, as I stood with Mr. Musgrave on the edge of the wood, exchanging our last bitter words.
It is impossible that she could have helped it; but even had it been possible�had there been any doubt on the subject, that doubt would be removed by the unusual animation of her attitude, and the interest in her eyes, that I have time to notice, as she rolls past me.
I avert my face, but it is too late. She has seen my hat thrown on anyhow, as it were with a pitchfork�has seen my face swollen with weeping, and great tears still standing unwiped on my flushed cheeks. What is far, far worse, she has seen him, too. This is the last drop in an already over-full cup.
There is nothing in sight now�not even a cart�so I sit down on a heap of stones by the road-side, and, covering my hot face with my hands, cry till I have no more eyes left to cry with. Can this be the day I called good? Can this be that bright and merry day, when I walked elate and laughing between the deep furrows, and heard the blackbird and thrush woo their new loves, nor was able myself to refrain from singing?
My brain is a black chaos of whirling agonies, now together, now parting; so that each may make their separate sting felt, and, in turn, each will have to be faced. Pre�minent among the dark host, towering above even the thought of Barbara, is the sense of my own degradation. There must have been something in my conduct to justify his taking me so confidently for the bad, light woman he did. One does not get such a character for nothing. I have always heard that, when such things happen to people, they have invariably brought them on themselves. In incoherent misery, I run over in my head, as well as the confusion of it will let me, our past meetings and dialogues. In almost all, to my distorted view, there now seems to have been an unseemly levity. Things I have said to him; easy, familiar jokes that I have had with him; not that he ever had much sense of a jest�(even at this moment I think this incidentally)�course through my mind.
Our many t�te-�-t�tes to which, at the time, I attached less than no importance: through many of which I unfeignedly, irresistibly gaped; our meetings in the park�accidental, as I thought�our dawdling saunters through the meadows, as often as not at twilight; all, all recur to me, and, recurring, make my face burn with a hot and stabbing shame.
And Roger! This is the way in which I have kept things straight for him! This is the way in which I have rewarded his boundless trust! he, whose only fear was lest I should be dull! lest I should not amuse myself! Well, I have amused myself to some purpose now. I have made myself common talk for the neighborhood! He said so. I have brought discredit on Roger's honored name! Not even the consciousness of the utter cleanness of my heart is of the least avail to console me. What matter how clean the heart is, if the conduct be light? None but God can see the former; the latter lies open to every carelessly spiteful, surface-judging eye. And Barbara! Goaded by the thought of her, I rise up quickly, and walk hastily along the road, till I reach a gate into the park. Arrived there, and now free from all fear of interruption from passers-by, I again sit down on an old dry log that lies beneath a great oak, and again cover my face with my hands.
What care I for the growing dark? the darker the better! Ah! if it were dark enough to hide me from myself! How shall I break it to her�I, who, confident in my superior discernment, have always scouted her misgivings and turned into derision her doubts? If I thought that she would rave and storm, and that her grief would vent itself in anger, it would not be of half so much consequence. But I know her better. The evening has closed in colder. The birds have all ceased their singing, and I still sit on, in the absolute silence, unconscious�unaware of any thing round me; living only in my thoughts, and with a resolution growing ever stronger and stronger within me. I will not tell her! I will never tell any one. I, that have hitherto bungled and blundered over the whitest fib, will wade knee-deep in falsehoods, before I will ever let any one guess the disgrace that has happened to me. Oh that, by long silence, I could wipe it out of my own heart�out of the book of unerasable past deeds!
Of course, by the cessation of his visits, Barbara will learn her fate in time. In time. Yes! but till then�till the long weeks in their lapse have brought the certainty of disappointment and mistake? How can I�myself knowing�watch her gentle confidence (for latterly her doubts�and whose would not?�have been set at rest) decline through all the suffering stages of uneasy expectation and deferred hope, to the blank, dull sickness of despair? How, without betraying myself, see her daily with wistful eyes looking�with strained ears listening�for a face and a step that come not? If she were one to love lightly, one of the many women who, when satisfied that it is no longer any use to cry and strive for the unattainable, the out of reach, clip and pare their affections to fit the unattainable, the within reach�! But I know differently.
Hitherto, whenever love has been offered to her�and the occasions have been not few�she has put it away from her; most gently, indeed, with a most eager desire to pour balm and not vinegar into the wounds she has made; with a most sincere sorrow and a disproportioned remorse at being obliged to cause pain to any living thing; yet, with a quiet and indifferent firmness, that left small ground for lingering hopes. And now, having once loved, she will be slow to unlove again.
It is quite dark now�as dark, at least, as it will be all night�and two or three stars are beginning to quiver out, small and cold, in the infinite distances of the sky. The sight of them, faintly trembling between the bare boughs of the trees, is the first thing that calls me back to the consciousness of outward things. Again I rise, and begin to walk, stumbling through the long wet knots of the unseen grass, toward the house. But when I reach it�when I see the red gleams shining through the chinks of the window-shutters�my heart fails me. Not yet can I face the people, the lights�Barbara! I turn into the garden, and pace up and down the broad, lonely walks: I pass and repass the cold river-gods of the unplaying fountain. I stand in the black night of the old cedar's shade. On any other day no possible consideration would have induced me to venture within the jurisdiction of its inky arms after nightfall; to-day, I feel as if no earthly or unearthly thing would have power to scare me. How long I stay, I do not know. Now and then, I put up my hands to my face, to ascertain whether my cheeks and eyes feel less swollen and burning; whether the moist and searching night-air is restoring me to my own likeness. At length, I dare stay no longer for fear of being missed, and causing alarm in the household. So I enter, steal up-stairs, and open the door of my boudoir, which Barbara and I, when alone, make our usual sitting-room. The candles are unlit; and the warm fire�evidently long undisturbed�is shedding only a dull and deceiving light on all the objects over which it ranges. So far, at least, Fortune favors me. Barbara and Vick are sitting on the hearth-rug, side by side. As I enter, they both jump up, and run to meet me. One of them gives little raptured squeaks of recognition. The other says, in a tone of relief and pleasure:
"Here you are! I was growing so frightened about you! What can have made you so late?"
"It was so�so�pleasant! The thrushes were singing so!" reply I, thus happily inaugurating my career of invention.
"But, my dear child, the thrushes went to bed two hours ago!"
"Yes," I answer, at once entirely nonplussed, "so they did!"
"Where have you been?" she asks, in a tone of ever-increasing surprise. "Did you go farther than you intended?"
"I went�to see�the old Busseys," reply I, slowly; inwardly pondering, with a stupid surprise, as to whether it can possibly have been no longer ago than this very afternoon, that the old man mistook me for the dead Belinda�and that I held the old wife's soapy hand in farewell in mine; "the�old�Busseys!" I repeat, "and it took�me a long�long time to get home!"
I shiver as I speak.
"You are cold!" she says, anxiously. "I hope you have not had a chill�" (taking my hands in her own slight ones)�"yes�starved!�poor dear hands; let me rub them!" (beginning delicately to chafe them).
Something in the tender solicitude of her voice, in the touch of her gentle hands, gives me an agony of pain and remorse. I snatch away my hands.
"No! no!" I cry, brusquely, "they do very well!"
Again she looks at me, with a sort of astonishment, a little mixed with pain; but she does not say any thing. She goes over to the fire, and stoops to take up the poker.
"Do not!" cry I, hastily, "there is plenty of light!�I mean�" (stammering) "it�it�dazzles me, coming in out of the dark."
As I speak, I retire to a distant chair, as nearly as possible out of the fire-light, and affect to be occupied with Vick, who has jumped up on my lap, and�with all a dog's delicate care not to hurt you really�is pretending severely to bite every one of my fingers. Barbara has returned to the hearth-rug. She looks a little troubled at first; but, after a moment or two, her face regains its usual serene sweetness.
"And I have been here ever since you left me!" she says, presently, with a look of soft gayety. "I have had no visitors! Not even"�(blushing a little)�"the usual one."
"No?" say I, bending down my head over Vick, and allowing her to have a better and more thorough lick at the bridge of my nose than she has ever enjoyed in her life before.
"You did not meet him, I suppose?" she says, interrogatively.
"I!" cry I, starting guiltily, and stammering. "Not I! Why�why should I?"
"Why should not you, rather?" she says, laughing a little. "It is not such a very unusual occurrence?"
"Do you think not?" I say, in a voice whose trembling is painfully perceptible to myself. "You do not think I�I�" ("You do not think I meet him on purpose," I am going to say; but I break off suddenly, aware that I am betraying myself).
"He will come earlier to-morrow to make up for it"�she says, in a low voice, more to herself than to me�"yes"�(clasping her hands lightly in her lap, while the fire-light plays upon the lovely mildness of her happy face, and repeating the words softly)�"yes, he will come earlier to-morrow!"
I cannot bear it. I rise up abruptly, trundling poor Vick, to whom this reverse is quite unexpected, down on the carpet, and rushing out of the room.
It is evening now�late evening, drawing toward bedtime. I am sitting with my back to the light, and have asked for a shade for the lamp, on the plea that the wind has cut my eyes�but, in spite of my precautions, I am well aware that the disfigurement of my face is still unmistakably evident to the most casual eye; and, from the anxious care with which Barbara looks away from me, when she addresses me, I can perceive that she has observed it, as, indeed, how could she fail to do? If Tou Tou were here, she would overwhelm me with officious questions�would stare me crazy, but Barbara averts her eyes, and asks nothing.
We have been sitting in perfect silence for a long while; no noise but the click of Barbara's knitting-pins, the low flutter of the fire-flame, and the sort of suppressed choked inward bark, with which Vick attacks a phantom tomcat in her dreams.
Suddenly I speak.
"Barbara!" say I, with a hard, forced laugh, "I am going to ask you a silly question: tell me, did you ever observe�has it ever struck you that there was something rather�rather offensive in my manner to men?"
Her knitting drops into her lap. Her blue eyes open wide, like dog-violets in the sun; she is obliged to look at me now.
"Offensive!" she echoes, with an accent of the most utter surprise and mystification. "Good Heavens, no! What has come to the child? Oh!"�(with a little look of dawning intelligence)�"I see! You mean, do not you smite them too much? Are not you sometimes a little too hard upon them?"
"No," say I, gravely; "I did not mean that."
She looks at me for explanation, but I can give none. More silence.
Vick is either in hot pursuit of, or hot flight from, the tomcat; all her four legs are quivering and kicking in a mimic gallop.
"Do you remember," say I, again speaking, and again prefacing my words by an uneasy laugh, "how the boys at home used always to laugh at me, because I never knew how to flirt, nor had any pretty ways? Do you think"�(speaking slowly and hesitatingly)�"that boys�one's brothers, I mean�would be good judges of that sort of thing?"
"As good as any one else's brothers, I suppose," she says, with a low laugh, but still looking puzzled; "but why do you ask?"
"I do not know," reply I, trying to speak carelessly; "it came into my head."
"Has any one been accusing you?" she says, a little curiously, "But no! who could? You have seen no one, not even�"
"No, no!" interrupt I, shrinking from the sound of the name that I know is coming; "of course not; no one!"
The clock strikes eleven, and wakes Vick. Barbara rises, rolls up her knitting, and, going over to the fireplace, stands with one white elbow resting on the chimney-piece, and slender neck drooped, pensively gazing at the low fire.
"Do you know," she says, with a half-confused smile, that is also tinged with a little anxiety, "I have been thinking�it is the first time for three months that he has not been here at all, either in the morning, the afternoon, or the evening!"
"Is it?" say I, slightly shivering.
"I think," she says, with a rather embarrassed laugh, "that he must have heard you were out, and that that was why he did not come. You know I always tell you that he likes you best."
She says it, as a joke, and yet her great eyes are looking at me with a sort of wistfulness, but neither to them nor to her words can I make any answer. |
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