Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XXXVI
When I rose this morning, I did not think that I should have cried before night; indeed, nothing would have seemed to me so unlikely. Cry! on the day of Roger's first back-coming! absurd! And yet now the morning is still quite young, and I have wept abundantly.
I am always rather good at crying. Tears with me do not argue any very profound depth of affliction. My tears have always been somewhat near my eyes, a fact well known to the boys, whom my pearly drops always leave as stolid and unfeeling as they found them. But the case is different with Roger. Either he is ignorant, or he has forgotten the facility with which I weep, and his distress is proportioned to his ignorance.
My eyes are dried again now, though they and my nose still keep a brave after-glow; and Roger and I are at one again. But, for my part, on this first day, I think it would have been pleasanter if we had never been at two. However, smiling peace is now again restored to us, and no one, to look at us, as we sit in my boudoir after breakfast, would think that we, or perhaps I should say I, had been so lately employed in chasing her away. As little would any one, looking at the blandness of Vick's profile, as she slumbers on the window-seat in the sun, conjecture of her master-passion for the calves of strangers' legs.
"So you see that I must go, Nancy," says Roger, with a rather wistful appeal to my reason, of whose supremacy he is not, perhaps, quite so confident as he was when he got up this morning. "You understand, don't you, dear?"
I nod.
"Yes, I understand."
I still speak in a subdued and snuffly voice, but the wrath has gone out of me.
"Well, you�would you mind," he says, speaking rather hesitatingly, as not quite sure of the reception that his proposition may meet with�"would you mind coming with me as far as Z�phine's?"
"Do you mean come all the way, and go in with you, and stay while you are there?" cry I, with great animation, as a picture of the strict supervision which, by this course of conduct, I shall be enabled to exercise over Mrs. Z�phine's oscillades, poses, and little verbal tendernesses, flashes before my mind's eye.
Roger looks down.
"I do not know about that," he says, slowly. "Perhaps she would not care to go into her husband's liabilities before a�a str�before a third person!"
"Two is company and three is none, in fact," say I, with a slight relapse into the disdainful and snorting mood.
He looks distressed, but attempts no argument or explanation.
"How far did you mean me to come, then?" say I, half ashamed of my humors, but still with an after-thought of pettishness in my voice. "Escort you to the hall-door, I suppose, and kick my heels among the laurestines until such time as all Mr. Huntley's bills are paid?"
He turns away.
"It is of no consequence," he says, with a slight shade of impatience, and a stronger shade of disappointment in his voice. "I see that you do not wish it, but what I meant was, that you might have walked with me as far as the gate, so that on this first day we might lose as little of each other's society as possible."
"And so I will!" cry I, impulsively, with a rush of tardy repentance. "I�I�meant to come all along. I was only�only�joking!"
But to both of us it seems but a sorry jest. We set forth, and walk side by side through the park. Both of us are rather silent. Yes, though we have eight months' arrears of talk to make up, though it seemed to me before he came that in a whole long life there would scarce be time for all the things I had to say to him, yet, now that we are reunited, we are stalking dumbly along through the withered white grass, pallid from the winter storms. Certainly, we neither of us could say any thing so well worth hearing as what the lark, in his most loud and godly joy, is telling us from on high. Perhaps it is the knowledge of this that ties our tongues.
The sun shines on our heads. He has not much power yet, but great good-will. And the air is almost as gentle as June. We have left our own domain behind us, and have reached Mrs. Huntley's white gate. Through the bars I see the sheltered laurestines all ablow.
"May I wait for you here?" say I, with diffident urgency, reflecting hopefully, as I make the suggestion, on the wholesome effect, on the length of the interview that the knowledge of my being, flattening my nose against the bars of the gate all through it, must necessarily have.
Again he looks down, as if unwilling to meet my appealing eyes.
"I think not, Nancy," he answers, reluctantly. "You see, I cannot possibly tell how long I might be obliged to keep you waiting."
"I do not mind waiting at all," persist I, eagerly. "I am not very impatient; I shall not expect you to be very quick, and" (going on very fast, to hinder him from the second refusal which I see hovering on his lips), "and it is not at all cold; just now you yourself said that you had felt many a chillier May-day, and I am so warmly wrapped up, pet!" (taking hold of one of his fingers, and making it softly travel up and down the fur of my thick coat).
He shakes his head, with a gesture unwilling, yet decided.
"No, Nancy, it could not be! I had rather that you would go home."
"I have no doubt you would!" say I, turning sharply and huffily away; then, with a sudden recollecting and repenting myself, "May I come back, then?" I say, meekly. "Come and fetch you, I mean, after a time�any long time that you like!"
"Will you?" he cries, with animation, the look of unwilling refusal vanishing from his face. "Would you like? would not it be too much trouble?"
"Not at all! not at all!" reply I, affably. "How soon, then?" (taking out my watch); "in half an hour?"
Again his face falls a little.
"I think it must be longer than that, Nancy."
"An hour, then?" say I, lifting a lengthened countenance wistfully to his; "people may do a good deal in an hour, may not they?"
"Had not we better be on the safe side, and say an hour and a half?" suggests he, but somewhat apprehensively�or I imagine so. "I shall be sure not to keep you a minute then�I do not relish the notion of my wife's tramping up and down this muddy road all by herself."
"And I do not relish the notion of my husband�" return I, beginning to speak very fast, and then suddenly breaking off�"Well, good-by!"
"Say, good-by, Roger," cries he, catching my hand in detention, as I turn away. "Nancy, if you knew how fond I have grown of my own name! In despite of Tichborne, I think it lovely."
I laugh.
"Good-by, Roger!"
He has opened the gate, and turned in. I watch him, as he walks with long, quick steps, up the little, trim swept drive. As I follow him with my eyes, a devil enters into me. I cry�
"Roger!"
He turns at once.
"Ask her to show you Algy's bracelet," I say, with an awkward laugh; and then, thoroughly afraid of the effect of my bomb-shell, and not daring to see what sort it is, I turn and run quickly away.
The end of the hour and a half finds me punctually peering through the bars again. Well, I am first at the rendezvous. This, perhaps, is not very surprising, as I have not given him one moment's law. For the first five minutes, I am very fairly happy and content. The lark is still fluttering in strong rapture up in the heights of the sky; and for these five minutes I listen to him, soothed and hallowed. But, after they are past, it is different. God's bird may be silent, as far as I am concerned: not a verse more of his clear psalm do I hear. An uneasy devil of jealousy has entered into me, and stopped my ears. I take hold of the bars of the gate, and peer through, as far as my head will go: then I open it, and, stealing on tiptoe up the drive a little way, to the first corner, look warily round it. Not a sign of him! Not a sound! Not even a whisper of air to rustle the glistening laurel-leaves, or stir the flat laurestine-sprays.
I return to the road, and inculcate patience on myself. Why may not I take a lesson in easy-mindedness from Vick? Was not it Hartley Coleridge who suggested that perhaps dogs have a language of smell; and that what to us is a noisome smell, is to them a beautiful poem? If so, Vick is searching for lyrics and epics in the ditch. I stroll along the wintry brown hedge-row, and begin to pick Roger a little, scant nosegay. He shall see how patient I am! how unsulky! with what sunny mildness I can wait his leisure! I have already two or three snow-drops in my breast, that I picked as I came through the garden. To these I add a drooping hazel-tassel or two, and a little bit of honeysuckle-leaf, just breaking greenly into life. This is all I can find�all the scentless first-fruits of the baby year.
It is ten minutes past the due time now. Again I listen intently, as I listened yesterday, for his coming. There is a sound now; but, alas! not the right one! It is the rumbling of an approaching carriage. A pony-chaise bowls past. The occupants are acquaintances of mine, and we bow and smile to each other. As long as they are in sight, I affect to be diligently botanizing in the hedge. When they have disappeared, I sit down on a heap of stones, and take out my watch for the hundredth time; a whole quarter of an hour!
"He does not relish the notion of his wife's tramping up and down this muddy road by herself, does not he?" say I, speaking out loud, and gnashing my teeth.
Then I hurl my little posy away from me into the mud, as far as it will go. What has become of my patience? my sunny mildness? Then, as the recollection of the velvet-gown and mob-cap episode recurs to me, I repent me, and, crossing the road, pick up again my harmless catkins and snow-drops, and rearrange them. I have hardly finished wiping the mire from the tender, lilac-veined snow-drop petals, before I hear his voice in the distance, in conversation with some one. Clearly, Delilah is coming to see the last of him! I expect that she mostly escorts them to the gate. In my present frame of mind, it would be physically impossible for me to salute her with the bland civility which society enjoins on people of our stage of civilization. I therefore remain sitting on my heap.
Presently, Roger emerges alone. He does not see me at first, but looks up the road, and down the road, in search of me. When, at last, he perceives me, no smile�(as has ever hitherto been his wont)�kindles his eyes and lips. With unstirred gravity, he approaches me.
"Here you are at last!" cry I, scampering to meet him, but with a stress, from which human nature is unable to refrain, on the last two words.
"At last?" he repeats in a tone of surprise; "am I over time?�Yes"�(looking at his watch)�"so I am! I had no idea of it; I hope you have not been long waiting."
"I was here to the minute," reply I, curtly; and again my tongue declines to refrain from accentuation.
"I beg your pardon!" he says, still speaking with unnecessary seriousness, as it seems to me, "I really had no idea of it."
"I dare say not," say I, with a little wintry grin; "I never heard that they had a clock in paradise."
"In paradise!" he repeats, looking at me strangely with his keen, clear eyes, that seem to me to have less of a caress in them than they ever had before on meeting mine. "What has paradise to say to it? Do you imagine that I have been in paradise since I left you here?"
"I do not know, I am sure!" reply I, rather confused, and childishly stirring the stiff red mud with the end of my boot, "I believe they mostly do; Algy does�" then afraid of drawing down the vial of his wrath on me a second time for my scandal-mongering propensities, I go on quickly; "Were you talking to yourself as you came down the drive? I heard your voice as if in conversation. I sometimes talk to myself when I am by myself, quite loud."
"Do you? I do not think I do; at least I am not aware of it; I was talking to Z�phine."
"Why did not she come to the gate, then?" inquire I, tartly; "did she know I was there? did not she want to see me?"
"I do not know; I did not ask her."
I look up at him in strong surprise. We are in the park now�our own unpeopled, silent park, where none but the deer can see us; and yet he has not offered me the smallest caress; not once has he called me "Nancy;" he, to whom hitherto my homely name has appeared so sweet. It is only an hour and three-quarters since I parted from him, and yet in that short space an indisputable shade�a change that exits not only in my imagination, but one that no most careless, superficial eye could avoid seeing�has come over him. Face, manner, even gait, are all altered, I think of Algy�Algy as he used to be, our jovial pet and playfellow, Algy as he now is, soured, sulky, unloving, his very beauty dimmed by discontent and passion. Is this the beginning of a like change in Roger?
A spasm of jealous agony, of angry despair, contracts my heart as I think this.
"Well, are all Mr. Huntley's debts paid?" I ask, trying to speak in a tone of sprightly ease; "is there a good hope of his coming back soon?"
"Not yet a while; in time, perhaps, he may."
Still there is not a vestige of a smile on his face. He does not look at me as he speaks; his eyes are on the long, dead knots of the colorless grass at his feet; in his expression despondency and preoccupation strive for supremacy.
"Have you made your head ache?" I say, gently stealing my hand into his; "there is nothing that addles the brains like muddling over accounts, is there?"
Am I awake? Can I believe it? He has dropped my hand, as if he disliked the touch of it.
"No, thanks, no. I have no headache," he answers, hastily.
Another little silence. We are marching quickly along, as if our great object were to get our t�te-�-t�te over. As we came, we dawdled, stood still to listen to the lark, to look at the wool-soft cloud-heaps piled in the west�on any trivial excuse indeed; but now all these things are changed.
"Did you talk of business all the time?" I ask, by-and-by, with timid curiosity.
It is not my fancy; he does plainly hesitate.
"Not quite all," he answers, in a low voice, and still looking away from me.
"About what, then?" I persist, in a voice through whose counterfeit playfulness I myself too plainly hear the unconquerable tremulousness; "may not I hear?�or is it a secret?"
He does not answer; it seems to me that he is considering what response to make.
"Perhaps," say I, still with a poor assumption of lightness and gayety, "perhaps you were talking of�of old times."
He laughs a little, but whose laugh has he borrowed? in that dry, harsh tone there is nothing of my Roger's mellow mirth!
"Not we; old times must take care of themselves; one has enough to do with the new ones, I find."
"Did she�did she say any thing to you about�about Algy, then?"�hesitatingly.
"We did not mention his name."
There is something so abrupt and trenchant in his tone that I have not the spirit to pursue my inquiries any further. In deep astonishment and still deeper mortification, I pursue my way in silence.
Suddenly Roger comes to a stand-still.
"Nancy!" he says, in a voice that is more like his own, stopping and laying his hands on my shoulders; while in his eyes is something of his old kindness; yet not quite the old kindness either; there is more of unwilling, rueful yearning in them than there ever was in that�"Nancy, how old are you?�nineteen, is it not?"
"Very nearly twenty," reply I, cheerfully, for he has called me "Nancy," and I hail it as a sign of returning fine weather; "we may call it twenty; will not it be a comfort when I am well out of my teens?"
"And I am forty-eight," he says, as if speaking more to himself than to me, and sighing heavily; "it is a monstrous, an unnatural disparity!"
"It is not nearly so bad as if it were the other way," reply I, laughing gayly; "I forty-eight, and you twenty, is it?"
"My child! my child!"�speaking with an accent of, to me, unaccountable suffering�"what possessed me to marry you? why did not I adopt you instead? It would have been a hundred times more seemly!"
"It is a little late to think of that now, is not it?" I say, with an uncomfortable smile; then I go on, with an uneasy laugh, "that was the very idea that occurred to us the first night you arrived; at least, it never struck us as possible that you would take any notice of me, but we all said what a good thing it would be for the family if you would adopt Barbara or the Brat."
"Did you?" (very quickly, in a tone of keen pain); "it struck you all in the same light then?"
"But that was before we had seen you," I answer, hastily, repenting my confession as soon as I see its effects. "When we had, we soon changed our tune."
"If I had adopted you," he pursues, still looking at me with the same painful and intent wistfulness, "if I had been your father, you would have been fond of me, would not you? Not afraid of me�not afraid to tell me any thing that most nearly concerned you�you would perhaps"�(with a difficult smile)�"you would perhaps have made me your confidant, would you, Nancy?"
I look up at him in utter bewilderment.
"What are you talking about? Why do I want a confidant? What have I to confide? What have I to tell any one?"
Our eyes are resting on each other, and, as I speak, I feel his go with clean and piercing search right through mine into my soul. In a moment I think of Musgrave, and the untold black tale now forever in my thought attached to him, and, as I so think, the hot flush of agonized shame that the recollection of him never fails to call to my face, invades cheeks, brow, and throat. To hide it, I drop my head on Roger's breast. Shall I tell him now, this instant? Is it possible that he has already some faint and shadowy suspicion of the truth�some vague conjecture concerning it, as something in his manner seems to say? But no! it is absolutely impossible! Who, with the best will in the world, could have told him? Is not the tale safely buried in the deep grave of Musgrave's and my two hearts?
I raise my head, and twice essay to speak. Twice I stop, choked. How can I put into words the insult I have received? How can I reveal to him the slack levity, the careless looseness, with which I have kept the honor confided to me?
As my eyes stray helplessly round in a vain search for advice or help from the infinite unfeeling apathy of Nature, I catch sight of the distant chimneys of the abbey! How near it is! After all, why should I sow dissension between such close neighbors? why make an irreparable breach between two families, hitherto united by the kindly ties of mutual friendship and good-will?
Frank is young, very young; he has been�so Roger himself told me�very ill brought up. Perhaps he has already repented, who knows? I try to persuade myself that these are the reasons�and sufficient reasons�of my silence, and I take my resolution afresh. I will be dumb. The flush slowly dies out of my face, and, when I think it is almost gone, I venture to look again at Roger. I think that his eyes have never left me. They seem to be expecting me to speak, but, as I still remain silent, he turns at length away, and also gently removes his hands from my shoulders. We stand apart.
"Well, Nancy," he says, sighing again, as if from the bottom of his soul, "my poor child, it is no use talking about it. I can never be your father now."
"And a very good thing too!" rejoin I, with a dogged stoutness. "I do not see what I want with two fathers; I have always found one amply enough�quite as much as I could manage, in fact."
He seems hardly to be listening to me. He has dropped his eyes on the ground, and is speaking more to himself than to me.
"Husband and wife we are!" he says, with a slow depression of tone, "and, as long as God's and man's laws stand, husband and wife we must remain!"
"You are not very polite," I cry, with an indignant lump rising in my throat; "you speak as if you were sorry for it�are you?"
He lifts his eyes again, and again their keen search investigates the depths of my soul; but no human eye can rightly read the secrets of any other human spirit; they find what they expect to find, not what is there. Clear and cuttingly keen as they are, Roger's eyes do not read my soul aright.
"Are you, Nancy?"
"If you are, I am," I reply, with a half-smothered sob.
He makes no rejoinder, and we begin again to walk along homeward, but slowly this time.
"We have made a mistake, perhaps," he says, presently, still speaking with the same slow and ruminating sadness in his tone. "The inscrutable God alone knows why He permits his creatures to mar all their seventy years by one short false step�yes�a mistake!"
(Ah me! ah me! I always mistrusted those laurestines! They sent me back my brother churlish and embittered, but oh! that in my steadfast Roger they should have worked such a sudden deadly change!)
"Is it more a mistake," I cry, bursting out into irrepressible anger, "than it was two hours ago, when I left you at that gate? You did not seem to think it a mistake then�at least you hid it very well, if you did"�(then going on quickly, seeing that he is about to interrupt me)�"have you been comparing notes, pray? Has she found it a mistake, too?"
"Yes, that she has! Poor soul! God help her!" he answers, compassionately.
Something in the pity of his tone jars frightfully on my strung nerves.
"If God has to help all the poor souls who have made mistakes, He will have his hands full!" I retort, bitterly.
Another silence. We are drawing near the pleasure-grounds�the great rhododendron belt that shelters the shrubbery from the east wind.
"Nancy," says Roger, again stopping, and facing me too. This time he does not put his hands on my shoulders; the melancholy is still in his eyes, but there is no longer any harshness. They repossess their natural kindly benignity. "Though it is perhaps impossible that there should be between us that passionate love that there might be between people that are nearer each other in age�more fitly mated�yet there is no reason why we should not like each other very heartily, is there, dear? why there should not be between us absolute confidence, perfect frankness�that is the great thing, is not it?"
He is looking with such intense wistfulness at me, that I turn away. Why should not there be passionate love between us? Who is there but himself to hinder it? So I make no answer.
"I dare say," he says, taking my right hand, and holding it with a cool and kindly clasp, "that you think it difficult�next door to impossible�for two people, one at the outset, one almost on the confines of life, to enter very understandingly into each other's interests! No doubt the thought that I�being so much ahead of you in years"�(sighing again heavily)�"cannot see with your eyes, or look at things from your stand-point�would make it harder for you to come to me in your troubles; but indeed, dear, if you believe me, I will try, and, as we are to spend our lives together, I think it would be better, would not it?"
He speaks with a deprecating humility, an almost imploring gentleness, but I am so thoroughly upset by the astounding change that has come over the tone of his talk�by the clouds that have suddenly darkened the morning sunshine of my horizon�that I cannot answer him in the same tone.
"Perhaps we shall not have to spend all our lives together!" I say, with a harsh laugh. "Cheer up! One of us may die! who knows?"
After that we neither of us say any thing till we reach the house. |
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