"'Romances paint at full length people's wooings,But only give a bust of marriages!'"
"'Romances paint at full length people's wooings,But only give a bust of marriages!'"
say I, in soft quotation, addressing rather myself and my thoughts than my companion.
He has joined me; he, too, is looking out at the serene aster-flowers, at the glittering glory of the dew.
"Since when you have learned to quote 'Don Juan?'" he asks, with a sort of surprise.
"Sincewhen?" I reply, with the same tart playfulness—"oh! since I married! I date all my accomplishments from then!—it is my anno Domini."
Another silence. Then Sir Roger speaks again, and this time his words seem as slow and difficult of make as mine were just now.
"Nancy!" he says, in a low voice, not looking at me, but still facing the flowers and the sunshiny autumn sward, "do you believe that—that—this fellowcares about her really?—she is too good to be made—to be made—a merecat's-pawof!"
"Acat's-paw!" cry I, turning quickly round with raised voice; the blood that so lately retired from it rushing again headlong all over my face; "I do not know—what you mean—what you are talking about!"
He draws his breath heavily, and pauses a moment before he speaks.
"God knows," he says, looking solemnly up, "that I had no wish to broach this subject again—God knows that I meant to have done with it forever—but now that it has been forced against my will—against both our wills—upon me, I must ask you this one question—tell me, Nancy—tell me trulythistime"—(with an accent of acute pain on the word "this")—"can you say,on your honor—on your honor, mind—that you believe this—this man loves Barbara, as a man should love his wife?"
If he had worded his interrogation differently, I should have been sorely puzzled to answer it; as it is, in the form his question takes, I find a loop-hole of escape.
"As a man should love his wife?" I reply, with a derisive laugh, "and how is that? I do not think I quite know!—very dearly, I suppose, but not quite so dearly as if she were his neighbor's—is that it?"
As I speak, I look up at him, with a malicious air of pseudo-innocence. But if I expect to see any guilt—any conscious shrinking in his face—I am mistaken. There is pain—infinite pain—pain both sharp and long-enduring in the grieved depths of his eyes; but there is no guilt.
"You will not answer me?" he says, in an accent of profound disappointment, sighing again heavily. "Well, I hardly expected it—hardly hoped it!—so be it, then, since you will have it so; and yet—" (again taking up the note, and reading over one of its few sentences with slow attention), "and yet there is one more question I must put to you, after all—they both come to pretty much the same thing. Why"—(pointing, as he speaks, to the words to which he alludes)—"why shouldyouhave taken on yourself the blame of—of his departure from Tempest? what hadyouto say to it?"
In his voice there is the same just severity; in his eyes there is the same fire of deep yet governed wrath that I remember in them six months ago, when Mrs. Huntley first threw the firebrand between us.
"I do not know," I reply, in a half whisper of impatient misery, turning my head restlessly from side to side; "how should I know? I amsickof the subject."
"Perhaps!—so, God knows, am I; buthadyou any thing to say to it?"
He does not often touch me now; but, as he asks this, he takes hold of both my hands, more certainly to prevent my escaping from under his gaze, than from any desire to caress me.
It is my last chance of confession. I little thought I should ever have another. Late as it is, shall I avail myself of it? Nay! if not before, whynow? Whynow?—when there are so much stronger reasons for silence—when to speak would be to knock to atoms the newly-built edifice of Barbara's happiness—to rake up the old and nearly dead ashes of Frank's frustrated, and for aught I know, sincerely repented sin? So I answer, faintly indeed, yet quite audibly and distinctly:
"Nothing."
"Nothing?" (in an accent and with eyes of the keenest, wistfulest interrogation, as if he would wring from me, against my will, the confession I so resolutely withhold).
But I turn away from that heart-breaking, heart-broken scrutiny, and answer:
"Nothing!"
"She dwells with beauty—beauty that must die,And joy whose hand is ever at his lipsBidding adieu!"
"She dwells with beauty—beauty that must die,And joy whose hand is ever at his lipsBidding adieu!"
Thus I accomplished my second lie: I that, at home, used to be a proverb for blunt truth-telling. They say that "facilis descensus Averni." I do not agree with them. I have not found it easy. To me it has seemed a very steep and precipitous road, set with sharp flints that cut the feet, and make the blood flow.
I think the second falsehood was almost harder to utter than the first: but, indeed, they were both very disagreeable. I cannot think why any one should have thought it necessary to invent the doctrine of a future retribution for sin.
It appears to me that, in this very life of the present, each little delinquency is so heavily paid for—so exorbitantly overpaid, indeed. Look, for instance, at my own case. I told a lie—a lie more of the letter than the spirit—and since then I have spent six months of my flourishing youth absolutely devoid of pleasure, and largely penetrated with pain.
I have stood just outside my paradise, peeping under and over the flaming sword of the angel that guards it. I have been near enough to smell the flowers—to see the downy, perfumed fruits—to hear the song of the angels as they go up and down within its paths; but I have been outside.
Now I have told another lie, and I suppose—nay, what better can I hope?—that I shall live in the same state of weary, disproportioned retribution to the end of the chapter.
These are the thoughts, interspersed and diversified with loud sighs, that are employing my mind one ripe and misty morning a few days later than the incidents last detailed.
Barbara is to arrive to-day. She is coming to pay us a visit—coming, like the lady mentioned by Tennyson, in "In Memoriam"—not, indeed, "to bring her babe," but to "make her boast." And how, pray, am I to listen with complacent congratulation to this boast? For the first time in my life I dread the coming of Barbara. How am I, whose acting, on the few occasions when I have attempted it, has been of the most improbably wooden description—how am I, I say, to counterfeit the extravagant joy, the lively sympathy, that Barbara will expect—and naturally expect—from me?
I get up and look at myself in the glass. Assuredly I shall have to take some severe measures with my countenance before it falls under my sister's gaze. Small sympathy and smaller joy is there in it now—it wears only a lantern-jawed, lack-lustre despondency. I practise a galvanized smile, and say out loud, as if in dialogue with some interlocutor:
"Yes,delightful!—I amsopleased!" but there is more mirth in the enforced grin of an unfleshed skull than in mine.
That will never take in Barbara. I try again—once, twice—each time with less prosperity than the last. Then I give it up. I must trust to Providence.
As the time for her coming draws nigh, I fall to thinking of the different occasions since my marriage, on which I have watched for expected comings from this window—have searched that bend in the drive with impatient eyes—and of the disappointment to which, on the two occasions that rise most prominently before my mind's eye, I became a prey.
Well, I am to be subject to no disappointment—if itwouldbe a disappointment—to-day.
Almost before I expect her—almost before she is due—she is here in the room with me, and we are looking at one another. I, indeed, am staring at her with a black and stupid surprise.
"Good Heavens!" say I, bluntly; "whathaveyou been doing to yourself?howhappy you look!"
I have always known theoretically that happiness was becoming; and I have always thought Barbara most fair.
"Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well,Fairer than Ruth among the fields of corn,Fair as the angel that said, 'Hail!' she seemed,"
"Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well,Fairer than Ruth among the fields of corn,Fair as the angel that said, 'Hail!' she seemed,"
butnow, what a lovely brightness, like that of clouds remembering the gone sun, shines all about her! What a radiant laughter in her eyes! What a splendid carnation on her cheeks! (How glad I am that I did not tell!)
"Do I?" she says, softly, and hiding her face, with the action of a shy child, on my shoulders. "I dare say."
"GoodHeavens!" repeat I, again, with more accentuation than before, and with my usual happy command and variety of ejaculation.
"Andyou?" she says, lifting her face, and speaking with a joyful confidence of anticipation in her innocent eyes, "andyou? you are pleased too, are not you?"
"Of course," reply I, quickly calling to my aid the galvanized smile and the unnatural tone in which I have been perfecting myself all the forenoon, "delighted! I never was so pleased in my life. I told you so in my letters, did not I?"
A look of nameless disappointment crosses her features for a moment.
"Yes," she says, "I know! but I want you to tell me again. I thought that you—would have such a—such a great deal to say about it."
"So I have!" reply I, uncomfortably, fiddling uneasily with a paper-knife that I have picked up, and trying how much ill-usage it will bear without snapping, "an immensity! but you see it is—it is difficult to begin, is not it? and you know I never was good at expressing myself, was I?"
We have sat down. I am not facing her. With a complexion that serves one such ill turns as mine does, one is not over-fond offacingpeople. I am beside her. For a moment we are both silent.
"Well," say I, presently, with an unintentional tartness in my tone, "why do not you begin? I am waiting to hear all about it! Begin!"
So Barbara begins.
"I am afraid," she says, smiling all the while, but growing as red as the bunch of late roses in my breast, "that I looked horriblypleased! One ought to look as if one did not care, ought not one?"
"Ought one?" say I, with interest, then beginning to laugh vociferously. "At least you were not as bad as the old maid who late in life received a very wealthy offer, and was so much elated by it that she took off all her clothes, and kicked her bonnet round the room!"
Barbara laughs.
"No, I was not quite so bad as that."
"And how did he do it?" pursue I, inquisitively. "Did he write or speak"
"He spoke."
"And what did he say? How did he word it? Ah!"—(with a sigh)—"I suppose you will not tell methat?"
She has abandoned her chair, and has fallen on her knees before me, hiding her face in my lap. Delicious waves of color, like the petals of a pink sweet-pea, are racing over her cheeks and throat.
"Was ever any one known to tell it?" she says, indistinctly.
"Yes," reply I, "Iwas. I told you what Roger said, word for word—all of you!"
"Didyou?"—(with an accent of astonished incredulity).
"Yes," say I, "do not you remember? I promised I would before I went into the drawing-room that day, and, when I came out, I wanted the boys to let me off, but they would not."
A pause.
"I wish," say I, a little impatiently, "that you would look up! Why need you mind if youarerather red? What doImatter? and so—and so—you arepleased!"
"Pleased!"
She has raised her head as I bid her, and on her face there is a sort of scorn at the poverty and inadequacy of the expression, and yet she replaces it with no other; only the sapphire of her eyes is dimmed and made more tender by rising tears.
Clearly we were never meant to be joyful, we humans! In any bliss greater than our wont, we can only hang out, to demonstrate our felicity, the sign and standard of woe.
"Nancy!"—(taking my hand, and looking at me with wistful earnestness)—"do you think itcanlast? Did ever any one feel as I do forlong?"
"I do not know—how can I tell?" reply I, discomfortably, as I absently eye the two halves of my paper-knife, which, after having given one or two warning cracks, has now snapped in the middle. Then Roger enters, and our talk ends.
"God made a foolish woman, making me!"
"God made a foolish woman, making me!"
"Have you any idea whom we shall meet?"
It is Barbara who asks this one morning at breakfast. The question refers to a three days' visit that it has become our fate to pay to a house in the neighborhood—a house not eight miles distant from Tempest, and over which we are grumbling in the minute and exhaustive manner which people mostly employ when there is a question of making merry with their friends.
I shake my head.
"I have not an idea, that is to say, except Mrs. Huntley, and she goes without saying!"
"Why?"
"We are known to be such inseparables, that she is always asked to meet us," reply I, with that wintry smile, which is my last accomplishment. "We pursue her round the country, do not we, Roger?"
Barbara opens her great eyes, but, with her usual tact, she says nothing. She sees that she has fallen on stony ground.
"She isthe oldest friend that we have in the world!" continue I, laughing pleasantly.
Roger does not answer, he does not even look up, but by a restless movement that he makes in his chair, by a tiny contraction of the brows, I see that my shot has told. I am becoming an adept in the infliction of these pin-pricks. It is one of the few pleasures I have left.
The day of our visit has come. We have relieved our feelings by grumbling up to the hall-door. Our murmuring must per force be stilled now, though indeed, were we toshoutour discontents at the top of our voices, there would be small fear of our being overheard by the master of the house, he being the boundlessly deaf old gentleman who paid his respects at Tempest on the day of Mrs. Huntley's first call, and insisted on mistaking Barbara for me. Whether he is yet set right on that head is a point still enveloped in Cimmerian gloom.
It is a bachelor establishment, as any one may perceive by a cursory glance at the disposition of the drawing-room furniture, and at the unfortunate flowers, tightly jammed, packed as thickly as they will go in one huge central bean-pot.
As we arrived rather late and were at once conducted to our rooms, we still remain in the dark as to our co-guests. Personally, I am not much interested in the question. There cannot be anybody that it will cause me much satisfaction to meet. It would give me a faint relief, indeed, to find that there were some matron of exalteder rank than mine to save me from my probable fate of bowling dark sayings at our old host, General Parker, from the season of clear soup to that of peaches and nuts. I dress quickly. The toilet is never to me a work of art. It is not that from my lofty moral stand-point I look down upon meretricious aids to faulty Nature. If I thought that it would set me on a fairer standing with Mrs. Zéphine, I would paint my cheeks an inch thick; would prune my eyebrows; daub my eyes, and make my hair yellower than any buttercups in the meadow; but I know that it would be of no avail. I should still be, compared to her, as a sign-painting to a Titian. For a long time now I have cared naught for clothes. I used greatly to respect their power, but they have donemeno good; and so my reverence for them is turned into indifference and contempt.
I think that I must be late. Roger went down some minutes ago, at my request, so that there might beonerepresentative of the family in time.
I hasten down-stairs, fastening my last bracelet as I go, and open the drawing-room door. I was wrong. There is no one down yet: even Roger has disappeared. I am the first. This is my impression for a moment: then I perceive that there is some one in the bow-window, half hidden by the drooped curtains; some one who, hearing my entry, is advancing to meet me. It is Musgrave! My first impulse, a wrong one, I need hardly say, is to turn and flee. I have even laid hold of the just abandoned handle, when he speaks.
"Are you going?" he says in a low voice, marked by great and evidently ungovernable agitation; "do not! if you wish, I will leave the room."
I look at him, and our eyes meet. He always was a pale young man—no bucolic beef-and-beer ruddiness about him—always of a healthy swart pallor; but now he is deadly white!—so, by-the-by, I fancy am I! His dark eyes burn with a shamed yet eager glow.
With the words and tones of our last parting ringing in our ears, we both feel that it would be useless affectation to attempt to meet as ordinary acquaintance.
"No," say I, faintly, almost in a whisper, "it—it does not matter! only that I did not know that you were to be here!"
"No more did I, until this morning!" he answers, eagerly; "this morning—at the last moment—young Parker asked me to come down with him—and I—I knew we must meet sooner or later—that it could not be put off forever, and so I thought we might as well get over it here as anywhere else!"
Neither of us has thought of sitting down. He is speaking with rapid, low emotion, and I stand stupidly listening.
"I suppose so," I answer lazily. I cannot for the life of me help it, friends. I am back in Brindley Wood. He has come a few steps nearer me. His voice is always low, but now it is almost a whisper in which he is so rapidly, pantingly speaking.
"I shall most likely not have another opportunity, probably we shall not be alone again, and Imusthear, Imustknow—have you forgiven me?"
As he speaks, the recollection of all the ill he has done me, of my lost self-respect, my alienated Roger, my faded life, pass before my mind.
"ThatI have not!" reply I, looking full at him, and speaking with a distinct and heavy emphasis of resentment and aversion, "and, by God's help, I never will!"
"You willnot!" he cries, starting back with an expression of the utmost anger and discomfiture. "You willnot! you will carry vengeance for one mad minute through a whole life! It isimpossible! impossible!ifyouare so unforgiving, how do you expect God to forgive you your sins?"
I shrug my shoulders with a sort of despairing contempt. God has seemed to me but dim of late.
"He may forgive them or leave them unforgiven as He sees best; but—I will never forgive you!"
"What!" he cries, his face growing even more ash-white than it was before, and his voice quivering with a passionate anger; "not forBarbara'ssake?"
I shudder. I hate to hear him pronounce her name.
"No," say I, steadily, "not for Barbara's sake!"
"You will have to," he cries violently; "it is nonsense! think of the close connection, of therelationshipthat there will be between us! think of the remarks you will excite! you will defeat your own object!"
"I will excite no remark!" I reply resolutely. "I will be quite civil to you! I will say 'good-morning' and 'good-evening' to you; if you ask me a question I will answer it; but—I willneverforgive you!"
We are standing, as I before observed, close together, and are so wholly occupied—voices, eyes, and ears—with each other, that we do not perceive the approach of two hitherto unseen people who are coming dawdling and chatting up the conservatory that opens out of the room; two people that I suppose have been there, unknown to us, all along. They have come quite close now, and we must needs perceive them.
In a second our eager talk drops into silence, and we look with involuntary, startled apprehension toward them. They are Roger and Mrs. Huntley. This is why he acceded with such alacrity to my request. This is why he was so afraid of being late. He has been helping her to smell the jasmine, and to look down the datura's great white trumpet-throats.
Even at this agitated moment I have time to think this with a jeering pain. The next instant all other feelings are swallowed up in breathless dread as to how they will meet. My fears are groundless. On first becoming aware, indeed, whosetête-à-têteit is that he has interrupted, whose low, quick voices they are that have dropped into such sudden, suspicious silence at his approach—I can see him start perceptibly, can see his gray eyes dart with lightning quickness from Musgrave to me, and from me to Musgrave; and in his voice there is to me an equally perceptible tone of ice-coldness; but to an ordinary observer it would seem the greeting, neither more nor less warm, exchanged between two moderately friendly acquaintances meeting after absence.
"How are you, Musgrave? I had no idea that you were in this part of the world!"
"No more had I!" answers Musgrave, with an exaggerated laugh. "No more I was, until—untilto-day."
He has not caught the infection of Roger's stately calm. His face has not recovered atraceof even its usual slight color, and his eyes are twitching nervously. Mrs. Huntley appears unaware of any thing. Her artistic eye has been caught by the tight bean-pot, and her fingers are employed in trying to give a little air of ease and liberty to its crowded inmates. Then, thank God, the others come in, and dinner is announced, and the situation is ended.
The old host, still under the influence of his hallucination, is bearing down like a hawk (with his old bent elbow extended) on Barbara, until intercepted and redirected by a whispered roar and graphic pantomime on the part of his nephew. Then, at last, he realizes Roger's bad taste, and we go in.
As soon as we are seated, I look about me. It is a round table. For my part, I hate a round table. There is no privacy in it. Everybody seems eavesdropping on everybody else.
There are only eight of us in all—those I have enumerated, and Algy. Yes, he is here. Bellona is a goddess who can always spare her sons when there is any chance of their getting into mischief. Roger has taken Mrs. Huntley.That, poor man, he could hardly help, his only alternative being his own sister-in-law. Musgrave has taken Barbara. He is still as white as the table-cloth, and hardly speaks. It is clear thathewill not get up his conversation again, until after the champagne has been round. Algy has taken no one; and, consequently, a bear is an amiable and affable beast in comparison of him. I am placed between our host and his nephew. The latter comes in for a good deal of my conversation, as most of my remarks have to be taken up and rebellowed by him with a loud emphasis, that contrasts absurdly with their triviality; and even then they mostly miscarry, and turn into something totally different.
Talking to the old man is not a dialogue, but a couple of soliloquies, carried on mostly on different subjects, which in vain try to become the same, between two interlocutors. Through soup we prospered—that is to say, we talked of the weather; and though I said several things about it that surprised me a good deal, yet we both knew that weweretalking of the weather. But since then we have been diverging ever more and more hopelessly.Heis at the shah's visit, and so he imagines am I. I, on the contrary, am at the Bishop of Winchester's death, and, for the last five minutes have been trying, with all the force of my lungs, and with a face rendered scarlet by the double action of heat and of the consciousness of being the object of respectful attention to the whole company, to convey to him that, in my opinion, the deceased prelate ought to have been buried in Westminster Abbey. I have at last succeeded, at least in so far as to make him understand that I wishsomebodyto be buried in Westminster Abbey; but, as he still persists in thinking it the shah, we are perhaps not much better off than we were before. I lean back with a sense of despairing defeat, and, behind my fan, turn to the young man on the other side. He is a jolly-looking fellow, with an aureole of fiery red hair.
"Would you mind," say I, with panting appeal, "trying to make him understand that itis notthe shah?"
He complies, and, while he is trying to make it clear to his uncle that he wrongs me in crediting me with any wish to thrust the Persian monarch among the ashes of the Plantagenets, I take breath, and look round again. Algy is eating nothing, and is drinking every thing that is offered to him. His face is not much redder than Musgrave's, and he is glancing across the table at Mrs. Huntley, with the haggard anger of his eyes. Of this, however, she seems innocently unaware. She is leaning back in her chair; so is Roger. They are talking low and quickly, and looking smilingly at each other. When does his face ever light up into such alert animation when he is talking to me? There can be no doubt of it! Why blink a thing because it is unpleasant? Ibore him.
I have no intention of listening, and yet I hear some of their words—enough to teach me the drift of their talk. "Residency!" "Cawnpore!" "Simlah!" "CursedSimlah!" "CursedCawnpore!" My attention is recalled by the voice of my old neighbor.
"Talking of that—" he says—(talking ofwhat, in Heaven's name?)—"I once knew a man—a doctor, at Norwich—who did not marry till he was seventy-eight, and had four as fine children as any man need wish to see."
By the extraordinary irrelevancy of this anecdote, I am so taken aback that, for a moment, I am unable to utter. Seeing, however, that some comment is expected from me, I stammer something about its being a great age. He, however, imagines that I am asking whether they were boys or girls.
"Three boys and a girl, or three girls and a boy!" he answers, with loud distinctness—"I cannot recollect which; but, after all—" (with an acrid chuckle)—"that is not the point of the story!"
I sink back in my chair, with a slight shiver.
"Give it up!" says my other neighbor, with a compassionate smile, and speaking in a voice not a whit lower than usual—"Iwould!—it really is no good!"
"Why does not he have atrumpet?" ask I, with a slight accent of irritation, for I have suffered much, and it is hot.
"He had one once," replies my companion, still pityingly regarding the flushed discomposure of my face; "but peoplewouldinsist on bawling so loudly down it, that they nearly broke the drum of his ear, and sohebrokeit."
I laugh a little, but in a puny way. There is not much laugh in me. Again I look round the table. Musgrave is better; he is a better color than he was. Under the influence of Barbara's gentle talk, his features have reassumed almost serenity. Algy isnobetter. I see him lean back, and speak to the servant behind him. He is asking for more champagne. I wish he would not. He has had quite enough already. Roger and Mrs. Huntley are much as they were. They are still leaning back in their chairs—still looking with friendly intimacy into each other's eyes—still smiling. Again a few words of their talk reach me.
"Do you recollect?"
"Do you remember?"
"Have you forgotten?"
Clearly, they have fallen upon old times. I wish—I dearly wish—that I might bite a piece out of somebody.
"I saw pale kings, and princes, too;Pale warriors, death-pale were they all,They cried, 'La Belle Dame, sans merci,'Hath thee in thrall."
"I saw pale kings, and princes, too;Pale warriors, death-pale were they all,They cried, 'La Belle Dame, sans merci,'Hath thee in thrall."
The long penance of dinner is over at last, thank God! I may intermit my hopeless roarings, melancholy as those of any caged zoological beast. Roger and Zéphine must also fain suspend their reminiscences. There being no lady of the house, I have taken upon myself to hasten the date of our departure. Before Mrs. Zéphine has finished her last grape, I have swept her incontinently away into the drawing-room. But I might as well have let it alone: almost before you could say "Knife" they are after us. I suppose that when three are eager to come, and only two anxious to stay—(I acquit my old friend and his nephew of any over-hurry to rejoin us)—the three must needs get their way. Anyhow, here they all five are! I am so hot! so hot! Nothing heats one like bellowing and being miserable and a failure. I have again taken advantage of the mistressless condition of the establishment, have drawn back the window-curtains, and lifted the heavy sash. The night always soothes me. There is something so stilling in the far placidity of the high stars—in the sweet sharpness of the night winds. I have sat down on a couch in the embrasure, alone.
When the men come in, I remain alone. It does not at all surprise or much vex me. I have nothing pleasant to say to any one. Also, I think I must be almost hidden by the droop of the curtains. Roger, indeed, sent his eyes round the room on his first entry, as if searching for something or somebody. It cannot be Mrs. Huntley, who is right under his nose, and who is, indeed, saying something playful to him over the top of her black fan. For once, he does not hear her. He is still looking. Then he catches a glimpse of my skirts, and comes straight toward me. Thank God! itwasme he was looking for. I feel a little throb of disused gladness, as I realize this.
"Are not you cold?" he says, perceiving the open window.
"Not I!" reply I, brusquely—"naught never comes to harm."
"I wish you would have a shawl!" he says, as the evening wind comes, with the tartness of autumn, to his face.
"Why do not you say, 'do, for my sake!' as Algy once said to me, when he mistook me in the dark for Mrs. Huntley?" reply I, with a mocking laugh—"I am not sure that he did not adddarling, but I will excusethat!"
At the mention of Algy, a shade crosses his face, and his eye travels to where, in the dignified solitude of a corner, my eldest brother is sitting, biting his lips, and reading "Alice Through the Looking-glass," upside down.
"Foolish fellow! I wish he had not come!"
"I dare say he returns the compliment."
"I wish she would leave him alone!" he says, with an accent of impatience, more to himself than to me.
"That is so likely," say I, quickly, "so much her way, is not it?"
I suppose that something in the exceeding bitterness of my tone strikes him, for his eyes return from Algy to me.
"Nancy," he says, speaking with a sort of hesitating impulse, while a dark flush crosses his face, "it has occurred to me once or twice—if the idea had been less unspeakably absurd, it would have occurred to me many times—that you are—arejealousof Zéphine and me!—Youjealous of ME!!"
There is such a depth of emphasis in his last words—such a wealth of reproachful appeal in the eyes that are bent on me—that I can answer nothing. I say neither yea nor nay. He has sat down on the couch beside me.
"Tell me," he says, with low, quick excitement—"and for God's sake do not grow scarlet, and turn your head aside as you mostly have done—did you, or did you not know that—thatMusgravewas to be here to-day?"
"Idid not—indeedIdid not!" I cry, with passionate eagerness; thankful for once to be able to tell the truth; "we none of us did—not even Barbara!"
He repeats my last words with a slightly sarcastic inflection, "not even Barbara!"
A moment's pause.
"Why did you stop talking so suddenly, the moment that we interrupted you?" he asks, with an abruptness that is almost harsh—"what were you talking about?"
Phew! how hot it is! even though one is by the open window!—even despite the cool moistness of the night wind.
"I was—I was—I was—congratulating him!" I say, doing the very thing he has forbidden me, reddening and turning half away. He makes no rejoinder; only I hear him sigh, and put his hand with a quick, impatient movement to his head.
"You believe me?" I ask, timidly, laying my hand on his arm.
"No,I do not!" he replies, shaking off my touch, and turning his stern and glittering eyes full upon me. "I should be afooland anidiotif I did!"
Then he rises hastily and leaves me. I watch him as he joins the other men. They areallround her now—all but Musgrave.
Algy has left his corner and his reversed picture-book, moved thereto by the unparalleled audacity of young Parker, who has pulled one of the sofa-cushions down on the floor, and is squatting on it, like a great toad at her feet, examining a gnat-bite on her sacred arm.
Even the old host is doing the agreeable according to his lights. In a very loud voice he is narrating a long anecdote about a pretty girl that he once saw at a windmill near Seville, during the Peninsular. With a most unholy chuckle he is trying to hint that there was more between him and the young lady than it well beseems him to tell; but fortunately no one, but I, is listening to him.
I turn away my head, and look out of the window up at Charles's Wain, and all my other bright old friends. No one is heeding me—no one sees me; so I drop my hot cheek on the sill.
Suddenly I start up. Some one is approaching me: some one has thrown himself with careless freedom on the couch beside me. It is Algy.
Having utterly failed in dislodging Mr. Parker from his cushion—having had a suggestion on his part, on the treatment of the gnat-bite, passed over in silent contempt—he has retired from the circle in dudgeon.
"This is lively, is not it?" he says, in an aggressively loud voice, as if he were quarrelsomely anxious to be overheard.
I say "Hush!" apprehensively.
"As no one makes the slightest attempt to entertainus, we must entertain each other, I suppose!"
"Yes, dear old boy!" I say, affectionately, "why not?—it would not be the first time by many."
"That does not make it any the more amusing!" he says, harshly.—"I say, Nancy"—his eyes fixing themselves with sullen greediness on the central figure of the group he has left—on the slight round arm (after all, not half so round or so white as Barbara's or mine)—which is still under treatment, "iseau de cologne good for those sort of bites?—her armisbad, you know!"
"Bad!" echo I, scornfully; "bad!why, I amalllumps, more or less, and so is Barbara! who mindsus!"
"You ought to make your old man—'auld Robin Gray'—mind you," he says, with a disagreeable laugh. "It ishisbusiness, but he does not seem to see it, does he? ha! ha!"
"Iwish!" cry I, passionately; then I stop myself. After all, he is hardly himself to-night, poor Algy!
"By-the-by," he says, presently, with a wretchedly assumed air of carelessness, "is it true—it is as well to come to the fountain-head at once—is it true thatonce, some time in the dark ages, he—he—thought fit to engage himself to, toher?" (with a fierce accent on the last word).
A pain runs through my heart. Well, that is nothing new nowadays. He too has heard it, then.
"I do not know!" I answer, faintly.
"What! he has not told you?Kept it dark!eh?" (with the same hateful laugh).
"He has kept nothing dark!" I answer, indignantly. "One day he began to tell me something, and I stopped him! I would not hear; I did not want to hear, I believe; I am sure that they are—only—only—old friends."
"Old friends!" he echoes, with a smile, in comparison of which our host's satyr-leer seems pleasant and chaste. "Old friends!you call yourself a woman of the world" (indeed I call myself nothing of the kind), "you call yourself a woman of the world, and believethat! They looked likeold friendsat dinner to-day, did not they? A little less than kin, and more than kind! Ha! ha!"
Partridges are not General Parker's strong point, and the few he ever had his nephew has already shot. Roger must, therefore, for one day abstain from the turnip-ridges. To amuse us, however, and keep us all sociably together, and bridge the yawning gulf between breakfast and dinner, we are to be sent on an expedition. Not only an expedition, but a picnic. This is perhaps a little risky in such a climate as ours, and in a month so doubtfully hovering on the borders of winter as September; but the sun is shining, and we therefore make up our minds, contrary to all precedent, that he must necessarily go on shining.
Some ten miles away there is a spot whence one can see seven counties, not to speak of the sea, a mountain or two, and some other trifles; and thither Mr. Parker is kindly going to bowl us down on his coach.
A drive on a coach is always to me a most doubtful joy; the ascent, labor; the drive itself, long anxiety and peril; the descent, agony, and sometimes shame. However, that is neither here nor there. I am going. It is still half an hour till the time appointed for our departure, and I am sitting alone in my room when Roger enters.
"Nancy," he says, coming quickly toward me, "have you any idea what sort of a whip that boy is?"
"Not the slightest!" reply I, shortly.
I feel as hard as a flint to-day. Algy's words last night seem to have confirmed and given a solider reality to my worst fears. He has walked to the window and is looking out.
"Are younervous?" say I, with a slightly sarcastic smile.
He does not appear to notice the sarcasm.
"Yes," he says, "that is just what I am. He is a mad sort of fellow, and a coach is not a thing to play tricks with!"
"No," say I, indifferently. It seems to me of infinitely little consequence whether we are upset or not.
"That is what I came to speak to you about!" he says, still looking out of the window.
"Zéphine—"
"Is nervous, too?" ask I, smiling disagreeably. "What a curious coincidence!"
"I do not know whether she is nervous or not!" he answers, quickly; "I never asked her, but it seems that Huntley never would let her go on a drag; he had seen some bad accident, and it had given him a fright—"
"And so you and she are going to stay at home?" say I, coldly, but breathing a little heavily, and whitening.
"Stay at home!" he echoes, impatiently, "of course not; why should we? The fact is" (beginning to speak quickly in clear and eager explanation) "that I heard them talking of this plan yesterday, and so I thought I would be on the safe side, and send over to Tempest for the pony-carriage, and it is here now, and—"
"And you are going to drive her in it?" I say, still speaking quietly, and smiling. "I see! nothing could be nicer!"
"I wish to Heaven that you would not take the words out of my mouth," he cries, losing his temper a little; while his brows contract into a slight and most unwonted frown. "What I wish to know is, willyoudrive her?"
"I!!"
"Yes,you; I know—" (speaking with a sort of hurried deprecation) "I know that you are not fond of her; she is not a woman that other women are apt to get on with; but it would not be for long! I tell you candidly" (with a look of sincere anxiety) "I do not half like trusting you to Parker!—I think you are as likely as not to come to grief."
"To come to grief!" repeat I, with a harsh, dry laugh; "ha! ha! perhaps I have done that already!"
"But will you?" he asks, eagerly; not heeding my sorry mirth, and taking my hand. "I would drive you myself, if I could, and if—" (almost humbly) "if it would not bore you; but you see—" (rather slowly) "about the carriage, she—sheaskedme, and one does not like to say 'No' to such an old friend!"
Old friend!At the phrase, Algy's sneering white face rises before my mind's eye.
"Will you?" he repeats, looking pleadingly at me, with the gray darkness of his eyes.
"No, I will not!" I reply, resolutely, and still with that unmirthful mirth; "what ever else I may be, I will not be aspoil-sport!"
"Aspoil-sport!" he echoes, passionately, while his face darkens, and hardens with impatient anger; "good God! will youneverunderstand?"
Then he hastily leaves the room. And so it comes to pass that, half an hour later, I am crawling up with a sick heart to the box-seat, piteously calling on all around me to hold down my garments during my ascent. The grooms have let go the horses' heads, and have climbed up in dapper lightness at the back: we are through the first gate! Bah! that was a near shave of the post; yes, we are off, off for a long day's pleasuring! The very thought is enough to put any one in low spirits, is not it?
Barbara and Musgrave are behind us; and at the back, our old host and Algy. The two latter are, I think, specially likely to enjoy themselves; as the raw morning air has got down the old gentleman's throat, and he is coughing like a wheezy old squirrel; and Algy is in a dumb frenzy. I am no great judge of coachmanship, but we have not gone a quarter of a mile, before it is borne in on my mind that Mr. Parker has about as much idea of driving as a tomcat. The team do what is good in their eyes; we must throw ourselves on their clemency and discretion, for clearly our only hope is in them. He has not an idea of keeping them together; they are all over the place; the wheelers' reins are all loose on their backs. We seem to have an irresistible tendency toward bordering to the right which keeps us hovering over the ditch. However, fortunately, the road is very broad—one of the old coach-roads—and the vehicles we meet are few and anxious to get out of our way. Such as they are, I will do ourselves the justice to say that we try our best to run down each and all of them.
It is September, as I have before said. The leaves are still all green, only a stray bramble reddening here and there; but most of the midsummer hedge-row peoples are gathered to their rest. Only a lagging few, the slight-throated blue-bell, the uncouth ragwort, the little, tight scabious, remain. At least, the berries are here, however. While each red hip shows where a faint rose blossomed and fell; while the elder holds stoutly aloft her flat, black clusters; while the briony clasps the hawthorn-hedge, we cannot complain. Not only themainthings of Nature, but all her odds and ends, are so exceedingly fair and daintily wrought.
It is one of those days that look charming, when seen through the window; bright and sunny, with lights that fly, and shadows that pursue; but it is a very different matter when one comes tofeelit. There is a bleak, keen wind, that sends the clouds racing through the heavens, and that blows right in our teeth; nearly strangling me by the violence with which it takes hold of my head.
There has been no rain for a week or two, and it is a chalky country. The dust is waltzing in white whirlwinds along the road. High up as we are, it reaches us, and thrusts its fine and choking powder up our noses.
"I suppose," say I, doubtfully, looking up at the shifting uncertainty of the heavens, and trying to speak in a sprightly tone, a feat which I find rather hard of accomplishment, with such a blast cutting my eyes, and making me gasp—"I suppose that it will not rain!"
"Rain!not it!" replies our coachman, with contemptuous cheerfulness.
"The glass was going down!" I say, humbly, "and I think I felt a drop just now!"
"Impossible!itcouldnot rain with this wind."
He says this with such a jovial and robust certainty of scorn, that I am half inclined to distrust the sky's evidence—to disbelieve even in the big drop that so indisputably splashed into my eye just now. "But in case itdoesrain," continue I, pertinaciously, "I suppose that there is a house near, or some place where we can take refuge?"
"No, there is no house nearer than a couple of miles"—making the statement with the easiest composure—"but it will not rain."
"Perhaps"—say I, with a sinking heart—"there is a wood—trees?"
"Well, no, there is not much in the way of trees—except Scotch firs—there are plenty of them—it is a bare sort of place—that is the beauty of it, you know"—(with a tone of confident pride)—"there is a monstrously fine view from it!—one can seesevencounties!"
"Yes," say I, faintly, "so I have heard!"
At this point, the old gentleman is understood to be bawling something from the back. By the utter morosity of Algy's face—faintly seen in the distance—I conjecture that it is a joke; and, by the chuckling agony of zest with which the old man is delivered of it, I further conclude that it is something slightly unclean, but, thanks to the wind, none of us overtake a word of it. The wind's spirits are rising. Its play is becoming ever more and more boisterous. It would be difficult to imagine any thing disagreeabler than it is making itself; but perhaps itwillkeep off the rain. Thinking this, I try to bear its blows and buffets—its slaps on the face—its boxes on the ear—with greater patience. We have left the broad and safe high-road; Mr. Parker having, in an evil moment, bethought himself of a short-cut. We are, therefore, entangled in a labyrinth of cross-roads—finger-postless, guideless, solitary.Sosolitary, indeed, that we meet only one vacant boy of tender years, of whom, when we inquire the way, the wind absolutely refuses to allow us to hear a word of the broad Doric of his answer. At last—after many bold and stout declarations on the part of Mr. Parker, that hewill notbe beaten—that he knows the way as well as he does his A B C—and that he will find it if he stays till midnight—he is compelled, by the joint and miserable clamor of us all, to turn back—(a frightful process, as the road is narrow, and the coach will not lock)—to retrace our steps, and take up again the despised high-road, where we had left it. These manœuvres have naturally taken some time. It is three o'clock in the afternoon before we at length reach the great spread of desolate, broad, moorland, which is our destination. For more than an hour, absolute silence has fallen upon us. Like poor Yorick, we are "quite, quite chapfallen!" Even the gallant old gentleman could not make a dirty jest if he were to be shot for it. Mr. Parker alone maintains his exasperating good spirits. We find Roger and Mrs. Huntley sitting on the heather waiting for us. There is a good deal of relief—as it seems to me—in the former's eye, as he sees us appear on the scene; and a good deal of another expression, as he watches the masterly manner in which we pull up: all the four horses floundering together on their haunches; the leaders, moreover, exhibiting a mysterious desire to turn round and look in the wheelers' faces.
"Here we are!" cries Mr. Parker, joyously; "I have brought you along capitally, have not I?—but I am afraid we are a little late—eh, Mrs. Huntley? I hope we have not kept you long."
"Isit late?" she replies, with a smile and a fine hypocrisy—for shelookshungry—"I did not know; we have been quite happy!"
Roger has risen, and is coming to help me down, but I say, crossly, "Do not, please; Algy manages best!" Algy, however, has no intention of helping anybody down. He has helpedhimselfdown; and, without a word or a look to any of his fellow-travellers, has thrown himself down on the heather at Mrs. Huntley's feet, and is relieving his mind by audible animadversions on our late triumphal progress. I am therefore left to the tender mercies of the grooms; at least, I should have been, if Mr. Musgrave had not taken pity on me, and guided my uncertain feet and the petticoats, which Zephyr is doing his playful best to turn over my head, down the steep declivity of the ladder. This, as you may guess, does not help to restore my equanimity. However, I am down now, on firm ground; and, at least, we are rid of the dust. My eyes are still full of grit, but I suppose they will get over that. I turn them disconsolately about.
On a fine sunny day—with butterflies hovering over the heather-flowers, and bees sucking honey from the gorse—with little mild airs playing about, and a torquoise sky shining overhead—it might be a spot on which to lie and dream dreams of paradise; butnow! The sun has finally retired, and hid his sulky face for the day; the heather is over; and, though the gorse is not, yet it gives no fragrance to the raw air. All over the great rolling expanse there is a heavy, leaden look, caught from the angry heavens above. The great clouds are gathering themselves together to battle; and the mighty wind, with nothing to check its progress, is sweeping over the great plain, and singing with eerie, loud mournfulness.
I shudder.
"Where are the Scotch firs?" (I say, querulously, to Mr. Parker, who by this time had joined me); "you said there were plenty of them! where are they?"
"Where?" (looking cheerfully round), "oh,there!" (pointing to where one lightning-riven little wreck bends its sickly head to the gale). "Ah! I see there is onlyone, after all. I thought that there had been more."
My heart sinks. Is that one withered, scathed little stick to be our sole protection against the storm, so evidently quickly coming up?
"Fine view, is not it?" pursues my companion, not in the least perceiving my depression, and complacently surveying the prospect. "Of course it might have been clearer, but, after all, you get a very good idea of it."
I turn my faint eyes in the same direction as his. Down on the horizon the sullen rain-clouds are settling, and, to meet them, there stretches a dead, colorless flat, dotted with little round trees, little church-spires, little houses, little fields, little hedges—one of those mappy views, that lack even the beauties of a map—the nice pink and green and blue lines which so gayly define the boundaries of each county.
"Very extensive, is not it?" he says, proudly; "you know you can see—"
"Seven counties!" interrupt I, sharply, snapping the words out of his mouth. "Yes, I know; you told me."
The horses have been led away to the distant ale-house. The coach stands forlorn and solitary on the moor. Some of us, looking at the threatening aspect of the weather, have suggested thatwetoo should make for shelter; but this suggestion is indignantly vetoed by Mr. Parker.
"Rain!not a bit of it! It is notthinkingof raining! The wind! what is the matter with the wind? Nice and fresh! Much better than one of those muggy days, when you can hardly breathe!"
The cloth is therefore laid, with the dead heather-flowers beneath it, and the low leaden sky above. As large stones as can be found have to be sought on the moorland road to weight it, and hinder our banquet from flying bodily away. It is at last spread—cold lamb, cold partridges, chickens,mayonnaise, cakes, pastry—they have just been arranged in their defenceless nakedness under the eye of heaven, when the rain begins. And, when it begins, it begins to some purpose. It deceives us with no false hopes—with no breakings in the serried clouds—with no flying glimpses of blue sky. Down it comes, straight,straightdown, on the lamb, on themayonnaise, splash into the bitter. Each of us seizes the viand dearest to his or her heart, and tries to shelter it beneath his or her umbrella. But in vain! The great slant storm reaches it under the puny defense. Even Mr. Parker has to change theformof his consolation, though not the spirit. He can no longer deny that it is raining; but what he now says is that it will not last—that it is only a shower—that he is very glad to see it come down so hard at first, as it is all the more certain to be soon over.
Nobody has the heart to contradict him, though everybody knows that it is a lie. Mrs. Huntley, at the first drop, has made for the coach, and now sits in it, serene and dry. Algy follows her, with a chicken and a champagne bottle. I sit doggedly still, where I am, on the cold moor.
Roger has not spoken to me since my rude reception of him on arriving, but he now comes up to me.
"Had not you better follow her example?" he asks, speaking rather formally, and looking toward the coach, where with smiling profile and neat hair, my rival is sitting, reveling among the flesh-pots.
Something in the sight of her sleek, smooth tidiness, joined to the consciousness of my own miserable, blowsed disorder, stings me more even than the rain-drops are doing.
"Not I!" I answer, brusquely; "that is what I trust I shall never do!"
He passes by my sneer without notice.
"In this rain you will be drenched in two minutes."
"Après!"
"Après!" he repeats, impatiently, "après?you will catch your death of cold!"
"And you will be a widower!" reply I, with a bitter smile.
Barbara is as obstinate as I am. She, too, seems to prefer the spite of the elements to disturbing thetête-à-têtein the coach. Musgrave has made her as comfortable as he can, with her back against the poor little Scotch fir, and a plaid over both their heads.
The feast proceeds in solemn silence. Even if we had the heart to talk, the difficulty of making ourselves heard would quite check the inclination.
There are little puddles in all our plates—the bread and cakes arepap—the lamb is damp and flabby, and themayonnaiseis reduced to a sort of watery whey.
Mr. Parker is the only one who, under these circumstances, makes any attempt to pretend that we are enjoying ourselves.
"This is not so bad, after all," he says, still with that same unconquerable accent of joviality. He has to say it three times, and to put up his hands to his mouth like a speaking-trumpet, before any one hears him. When they do, "answer comes there none!"
I, indeed, am not in a position for conversation at the exact moment that the demand is made upon me. I have just come to the end of a long wrestle with my umbrella. It has at last got its wicked will, and has turned right inside out! All its whalebones are aspiring heavenward. It is transformed into a melancholycup—like a great ugly flower, on a bare stalk. I lay the remains calmly down beside me, and affront the blast and the tempest alone! I have a brown hat on—at least itwasbrown when we set off—I am just wondering, therefore, with a sort of stupid curiosity, why therillthat so plenteously distills from its brim, and so madly races down my cold nose, should besky blue, when I perceive that Barbara has left her shelter, and her lover, and is standing beside me.
"Poor Nancy!" she says, with a softly compassionate laugh, "how wet you are! come under the plaid with me! you have no notion how warm it keeps one; and the tree, though it does notlookmuch, saves one a bit, too—and Frank does not mind being wet—come quick!"
I am too wretched to object. No water-proof could stand the deluge to which mine has been subjected. My shoulder-blades feel moist andsticky: my hair is in little dismal ropes, and dreadful runlets are coursing down my throat, and under my clothes.
Without any remonstrance, I snuggle under the plaid with Barbara—with a little of the feeling of soothing and dependence with which, long ago, in the dear old dead days at home, I used, when I was a naughty child, or a bruised child—and I was very often both—to creep to her for consolation.
Thanks to the wind, and to our proximity, we are able to talk without a fear of being overheard.
"You are wrong!" Barbara says, glancing first toward the coach, and then turning the serene and limpid gravity of her blue eyes on me; "you are making a mistake!"
I do not affect to understand her.
"Am I?" I say, indignantly; "I am doing nothing of the kind! it is not only my own idea!—ask Algy!"
"Algy!" (with a little accent of scorn), "poor Algy!—he is in such a fit state for judging, is not he?"
We both involuntarily look toward him.
It ishisturn now, and his morosity is exchanged for an equally uncomfortable hilarity. His cheeks are flushed; he is laughing loudly, and going in heavily for the champagne. The next moment he is scowling discourteously at his old host, who, with his poor old chuckle entirely drowned, and overcome by an endless sort of choking monotony of cough, is clambering on tottery old legs into the coach, to try and get his share of shelter.
We both laugh a little; and then Barbara speaks again.
"Nancy, I want to say something to you. Just now I heard Roger ask whether there was a fly to be got at the public-house where the horses are put up, and it seems thereis; and he has sent for it. You may think that it is forher, but it is not—it is foryou! Will you promise me to go home in it, if he asks you?"
I am silent.
"Will you?" she repeats, taking hold of one of my froggy hands, while her eyes shine with a soft and friendly urgency; "you know you always used to take my advice when we were little—will you?"
Somehow, at her words, a little warmth of comfortable reassurance steals about my heart. At home she always used to be right: perhaps she is right now—perhapsIam wrong. I will be even better than her suggestion.
Roger is standing not far from us. The rain has drenched his beard and his heavy mustache: the great drops stand on his eyelashes, and on his straight brows. Perhaps I only imagine it, but to me he looks sad and out of heart. It is not the weather that makes him so, if he is. Much he cares for that!
I call him "Roger!" My voice is small and low, and the wind is large and loud, but he hears me.
"Yes?" (turning at the sound with a surprised expression).
"May I go home in the fly?" I ask impulsively, yet humbly, "I mean with—withher!" (a gulp at the pronoun), then, under the influence of a fear that he may think that I am driven by a hankering after creature comforts to this overture, I go on quickly, "it is not because I want to be kept dry—if I were to be dragged through the sea I could not be wetter than I am—but if you wish—Barbara thought—Barbara said—"
I mumble off into shy incoherency.
"Willyou?" he says, with a tone of eagerness and pleasure, which, if not real, is at least admirably feigned. "It is what I was just wishing to ask you, only" (laughing with a sort of constraint and a touch of bitterness) "I really wasafraid!"
"Am I such ashrew?" I say, looking at him with a feeling of growing light-heartedness. "Ah! I always was! was not I, Barbara?" Then, a moment after, in a tone that is almost gay, I say, "May Barbara come, too? is there room?"
"Of course!" he answers readily; "surely there is plenty of room for all!"
While the words are yet on his lips, while I am still smiling up at him, under the soaked tartan there comes a voice from the coach.
"Roger!"
He obeys the summons. It is just five paces off, and I hear each of the slow and softly-enunciated words that follow.
"I hear that you have sent for a fly! how very thoughtful of you! did you ever forgetany thing, I wonder? I was—no—notdreadingmy drive home; but now I amquitelooking forward to it. Why did you not bring a pack of cards? we might have had a game of bézique."
"I think we have made another arrangement," he answers, quietly. "I think Nancy will be your companion instead of me."
"Lady Tempest!" (with a slight but to me quite perceptible raising of eyebrows, and accenting of words).
"Yes, Nancy."
I can see her face, but not his. To my acutely listening, sharply jealous ears there sounds a tone of faint and carefully hidden annoyance in his voice. It seems to me, too, that her features would not dare to wear such an expression of open disappointment if they were not answered and meeting something in his. I therefore take my course. I jump up hastily, flinging off the plaid, and advance toward the interlocutors.
She is just saying, "Oh, I understand! very nice!" in a little formal voice when I break in.
"I am going to do nothing of the kind!" I cry, hurriedly. "I have altered my mind; I shall keep to the coach, that is" (with a nervous laugh, and a miserable attempt at coquetry), "if Mr. Parker is not tired of me."
This is the way in which I take Barbara's advice. The fly arrives presently, and the original pair depart in it. Roger neither looks at nor speaks to me again; in fact, he ignores my existence; although, under the influence of one of those speedy and altogether futile repentances which always follow hard on the heels of my tantrums, I have waylaid him once or twice in the hope that he would be induced to recognize it. But no! this time I have outdone myself. I have tried his patience a little too far. I am in disgrace.
It is long,longafter their departure beforeweget under way. The grooms have either misunderstood Mr. Parker's directions, or are enjoying their mulled beer over the pot-house fire too much to be in any violent haste again to meet the raw air and the persisting deluge.
It is past six o'clock before the horses arrive on the ground; it is half-past before we are off.
And meanwhile Mr. Parker has been rivaling Algy in the ardor with which he calls in the aid of the champagne to keep out the wet. At each fresh tumbler his joviality goes up a step, until at length it reaches a pitch which produces an opposite effect on me, and engenders a depressed fright.
"Barbara," say I, in a low voice, when at length the moment of departure draws near, and only Musgrave is within ear-shot—"Barbara, has it struck you? do not you think he is rather—"
Barbara, however, is diffident of her own opinion, and repeats my question to her lover.
He shrugs his shoulders.
"Is he? I have not noticed him; nothing more likely; last time I saw him he wasflying! It was in India at a great pig-sticking meeting, and after dinner he got up to the top of a big mango-tree, and tried tofly! Of course he fell down, but he was so drunk that he was not in the least hurt."
Mr. Musgrave seems to think this an amusing anecdote; but we do not.
"Why do notyoudrive?" I ask, contrary to all my resolutions addressing my future brother-in-law, and indeed forgetting in my alarm that I had ever made such. I am reminded of it, however, by the look of gratification that flashes—for only one moment and is gone—but still flashes into the depths of his great dark eyes.
"It is so likely that he would let me!" he says, laughing.
"I would not mind so much if I were at theback!" I say, piteously, turning to Barbara. "At the back one does not know what is coming, but on the box one sees whatever is happening."
"That is rather an advantage I think," she answers, laughing. "I do not mind; I will go on the box."
"Will you?" say I, eagerly. "Do!and I will take care of the old general at the back."
So it is settled. We are on the point of starting now. Mr. Parker is up and is already beginning to struggle with the hopeless muddle of his reins. I think we have perhaps done him an injustice; at all events, his condition is not at all what it must have been when he mounted the mango. Algy's morosity has returned tenfold, and he is performing the evolution familiarly known as "pulling your nose to vex your face." That is to say, he is standing about in the pouring rain utterly unprotected from it. He entirely declines to put on any mackintosh or overcoat. Why he does this, or how it punishes Mrs. Huntley, I cannot say, but so it is.
We are off at last. I, in accordance with my wishes, up at the back, facing the grooms; but not at all in accordance with my wishes, Mr. Musgrave, and not the old host, is my companion.
"This is all wrong!" I cry, with vexed abruptness, as I see who it is that is climbing after me. "Where is the general? We settled that he—"
"I am afraid you will have to put up with me!" interrupts Musgrave, coldly, with that angry and mortified darkening of the whole face, and sudden contraction of the eye-balls that I used so well to know. "We could not make him hear; we all tried, but none of us could make him understand." So I have to submit.
Well, we are off now. The night is coming quickly down: it will bequitedark an hour sooner than usual to-night, so low does the great black cloud-curtain stoop to the earth's wet face. Ink above us, so close above us, too, that it seems as if one might touch it with lifted hand; ink around us; a great stretch of dull and sulky heather; and, maddening around us with devilish glee, hitting us, buffeting us, bruising us, taking away our breath, and making our eyelids smart, is a wind—such a wind! I should have laughed if any one had told me an hour ago that it would rise. I should have said it was impossible, and yet it certainly has.
The wind which turned my umbrella inside out was a zephyr compared to that which is nowthunderinground us. Sometimes, for one, for two false moments, it lulls (the lulls are almost awfuller than the whirlwind that follows them), then with gathered might it comes tearing, howling, whooping down on us again, gnashing its angry teeth; bellowing with a voice like ten million lost devils. And on its pinions what rain it brings; what stinging, lacerating, bitter rain! And now, to add to our misfortunes, to pile Pelion on Ossa, welose our way. Mr. Parker cannot be persuaded to abandon the idea of the short-cut. The natural result follows.
If we were hopelessly bewildered—utterly at sea among the maze of lonely roads into which he has again betrayed us at high noon—what must we be now in the angry dark of the evening? This time we have to go into a field to turn, a field full of tussocks, which in the dark we are unable to see, and over which the horses flounder and stumble. However, now at length—now that we have wasted three-quarters of an hour, and that it is quite pitch dark—(I need hardly say that we have no lamps)—we have at length regained the blessed breadth of the high-road, and I think that not even our coachman, to whose faith most things seem possible, will attempt to leave it a second time. I give a sigh of relief.
"It is all plain sailing now!" Musgrave says, reassuringly.
"There is one bad turn," reply I, gloomily—"very bad, at the bottom of the village by the bridge."
We relapse into silence, and into our unnatural battle with the elements. I have to grasp my hat firmly with one hand, and the side of the coach with the other, to prevent being blown off. If my companion were any one else, I should grasphim.
We are only a mile and a half from our haven now; the turn I dread is nearing.
"Are you frightened?" asks Musgrave, in a pause of the storm.
"Horribly!" I answer.
I have forgotten Brindley Wood—have forgotten all the mischief he has done. I recollect only that he is human, and that we are sharing what seems to me a great and common peril.