Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XXXV
So the king enjoys his own again, and Roger is at home. Not yet�and now it is the next morning�has his return become real to me. Still there is something phantom and visionary about it: still it seems to me open to question whether, if I look away from him for a moment, he may not melt and disappear into dream-land.
All through breakfast I am dodging and peeping from behind the urn to assure myself of the continued presence and substantial reality of the strong shoulders and bronze-colored face that so solidly and certainly face me. As often as I catch his eye�and this is not seldom, for perhaps he too has his misgivings about me�I smile, in a manner, half ashamed, half sneaky, and yet most wholly satisfied.
The sun, who is not by any means always so well-judging, often hiding his face with both hands from a wedding, and hotly and gaudily flaming down on a black funeral, is shining with a temperate February comeliness in at our windows, on our garden borders; trying (and failing) to warm up the passionless melancholy of the chilly snow-drop families, trying (and succeeding) to add his quota to the joy that already fills and occupies our two hearts.
"How fine it is!" I cry, flying with unmatronly agility to the window, and playing a waltz on the pane. "That is right! I should have been so angry if it had rained; let us come out at once�I want to hear your opinion about the laurels; they want cutting badly, but I could not have them touched while you were away, though Bobby's fingers�when he was here�itched to be hacking at them. Come, I have got on my strong boots on purpose!�at once."
"At once?" he repeats, a little doubtfully turning over the letters that lie in a heap beside his plate. "Well, I do not know about that�duty first, and pleasure afterward. Had not I better go to Z�phine Huntley's first, and get it over?"
"To Z�phine Huntley's?" repeat I, my fingers suddenly breaking off in the middle of their tune, as I turn quickly round to face him; the smile disappearing from my face, and my jaw lengthening; "you do not mean to say that you are going there again?"
"Yes, again!" he answers, laughing a little, and slightly mimicking my tragic tone; "why not, Nancy?"
I make no answer. I turn away and look out; but I see a different landscape. It looks to me as if I were regarding it through dark-blue glass.
"I have got a whole sheaf of letters and papers from her husband for her," pursues Roger, apparently calmly, and utterly unaware of my discomfiture, "and I do not want to keep her out of them longer than I can help."
Still I make no rejoinder. My fingers stray idly up and down the glass; but it is no longer a giddy waltz that they are executing�if it is a tune at all, it is some little dirge.
"What has happened to you, Nancy?" says Roger, presently, becoming aware of my silence, rising and following me; "what are you doing�catching flies?"
"No," reply I, with an acrid smartness, "not I! I leave that to Mrs. Z�phine."
Once again he regards me with that look of unfeigned surprise, tinged with a little pain which yesterday I detected on his face. When I look at him, when my eyes rest on the brave and open honesty of his, my ugly, nipping doubts disappear.
"Do not go," say I, standing on tiptoe, so that my hands may reach his neck, and clasp it, speaking in my most beguiling half-whisper; "why should you fetch and carry for her? let John or William take her letters. Are you so sure" (with an irresistible sneer) "that she is in such a hurry for them?�stay with me this one first day!�do, please�Roger."
It is the first time in all my history that I have succeeded in delivering myself of his Christian name to his face�frequently as I have fired it off in dialogues with myself, behind his back. It shoots out now with the loud suddenness of a mismanaged soda-water cork.
"Roger!" he repeats, in an accent of keen pleasure, catching me to his heart; "what! I am Roger, after all, am I? The 'general' has gone to glory at last, has he?�thank God!"
"I will ring and tell John at once," say I, with subtile amiability, disengaging myself from his arms, and walking quickly toward the bell.
"Stay!" he says, putting his hand on me in detention, before I have made two steps; "you must not! it is no use! John will not do, or William either: it is a matter of business. I have" (sighing) "to go through many of these papers with her."
"You?"
"Yes, I; why is that so surprising?"
"What possible concern is it of yours?" ask I, throwing the reins on the neck of my indignation, and urging that willing steed to a sharp gallop, crimsoning as I speak, and raising my voice, as has ever been our immemorial wont in home-broils. "For my part, I never saw any good come of people putting their fingers into their neighbors' pies!"
"Not even if those neighbors are the oldest friends they have in the world?" he says, gently, yet eying with some wonder�perhaps apprehension, for odd things frighten men�the small scarlet scold who stands swelling with ruffled feathers, and angry eyes, winking to keep the tears out of them, before him.
"I thought father was the oldest friend you had in the world!" say I, with a jealous tartness; "you always used to tell us so."
"Some of my oldest friends, then," he answers, looking a little amused, "since you will have me so exact."
"If Mrs. Huntley is the oldest friend you have in the world," say I, acrimoniously, still sticking to his first and most offensive form of expression, and heavily accenting it, "I wonder that you never happened to mention her existence before you went."
"So do I," he says, a little thoughtfully. "I am not much of a friend, am I? but�" (looking at me with that sincere and hearty tenderness which, as long as I am under its immediate influence, always disarms me) "my head was full of other things; and people drop out of one's life so; I had neither seen nor heard of her since�since she married."
("Since she was engaged to you," say I, mentally interlining this statement, "and threw you over because you were not rich enough! why cannot you be honest and say so?") but aloud I give utterance to nothing but a shrewish and disbelieving "Hm!"
A pause. I do not know what Roger is thinking of, but I am following out my own train of thought; the fruit of which is this observation, made with an air of reflection:
"Mr. Huntley is a very rich man, I suppose?"
Roger laughs.
"Rich! poor Huntley! that is the very last thing his worst enemy could accuse him of! why, he was obliged to run the constable two years ago."
"But I suppose," say I, slowly, "that he was better off�well off once�when she married him, for instance?"
"How did you know that?" he asks, a little surprised. "Who told you? Yes; at that time he was looked upon as quite a parti."
"Better off than you, I suppose?" say I, still speaking slowly, and reading the carpet. "I mean than you were then?"
Again he laughs.
"He might easily have been that? I had nothing but my younger son's portion and my pay; why, Nancy, I had an idea that I had told you that before."
"I dare say you did," reply I, readily, "but I like to hear it again."
Yet another pause.
"He is badly off now, then," say I, presently, with a faintly triumphant accent.
"About as badly off as it is possible to be," answers Roger, very gravely; "that is my business with his wife; she and I are trying to make an arrangement with his creditors, to enable him to come home."
"To come home!" echo I, raising my eyebrows in an artless astonishment; "but if he does come home, what will become of Algy and the rest of them?"
"The rest of whom?" asks Roger, but there is such a severity in his eye as he puts the question that it is not too much to say I dare not explain. The one thing hated of Roger's soul�the one thing for which he has no tolerance, and on which he brings to bear all the weight of his righteous wrath, is scandal. Not even me will he allow to nibble at a neighbor's fame.
"Is she much changed since you saw her last?" pursue I presently, with infantile guilelessness; "was her hair red then? some people say it used to be black!"
I raise my eyes to his face as I put this gentle query, in order the better to trace its effect; but the concern that I see in his countenance is so very much greater than any that I had intended to have summoned that I have no sooner hurled my dart than I repent me of having done it.
"Nancy!" he says, putting one hand under my chin, and stroking my hair with the other�"am I going to have a backbiting wife? Child! child! there was neither hatred nor malice in the little girl I found sitting at the top of the wall."
I do not answer.
"Nancy," he says again, in a voice of most thorough earnestness, "I have a favor to ask of you�I know when I put it that way, that you will not say 'No;' if you do not mind, I had rather you did not abuse Z�phine Huntley!�for the matter of that, I had rather you did not abuse any one�it does not pay, and there is no great fun in it; but Z�phine specially not."
"Why specially?" cry I, breathing short and speaking again with a quick, raised voice. "I know that it is a bad plan abusing people, you need not tell me that, I know it as well as you do, and I never did it at home, before I married, never!�none of them ever accused me of it�I was always quite good-natured about people, quite; but why she specially? why is she to be more sacred than any one else?"
"It is an old story," he answers, passing his hand across his forehead with what looks to me like a rather weary gesture and sighing, "I do not know why I did not tell you before�did not I ever?�no, by-the-by, I remember I never did; well, I will tell you now, and then you will understand!"
"Do not!" cry I, passionately, putting my fingers in my ears, and growing scarlet, while the tears rush in mad haste to my eyes, for I imagine that I well know what is coming. "I do not want to hear! I had rather not! I hate old stories." He looks at me in silent dismay. "I mean," say I, seeing that some explanation is needed, "that I know all about it!�I have heard it already! I have been told it."
"Been told it? By whom?"
"Never mind by whom!" reply I, removing my fingers from my ears, and covering with both hot hands my hotter face. "I have been told it! I have heard it, and, what is more, I will not hear it again!" |
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