Nancy Part 14

"Do they ever get _prawns_ here?" say I, with apparent irrelevancy, not being able to disengage my mind from the thought of sh.e.l.l-fish, "or is it too far inland? I am _so_ fond of them, and I fancied that these gentlemen--" (slightly indicating the broad, blue warrior-backs)--"were eating some."

His mouth curves into a sudden smile.

"Was that why you came to look?"

I laugh.

"I did not mean to be seen: that person must have had eyes in the back of his head."

I relapse into silence, and fish for the sprigs of woodruff floating in my Mai-Trank, while the talk pa.s.ses to Sir Roger. Presently I become aware that the stranger is addressing me by that new t.i.tle which makes me disposed to laugh.

"Lady Tempest, have you seen those lamps that they have here, in the shape of flowers? c.o.c.kney sort of things, but they are rather pretty."

"No," say I, eagerly, dropping my spoon and looking up; "_in the shape of flowers_? Where?"

"You cannot see them from here," he answers; "they are over there, nearer the river."

"I should like to see them," say I, decisively; "shall we, general?"

"Will you spare Lady Tempest for five minutes?" says the young man, addressing my husband; "it is not a hundred yards off."

At _my_ words Sir Roger had made a slight movement toward rising; but, at the stranger's, he resettles himself in his chair.

"Will you not come, too? Do!" say I, pleadingly; and, as I speak, I half stretch out my hand to lay it on his arm; then hastily draw it back, afraid and ashamed of vexing him by public demonstrations.

He looks up at me with a smile, but shakes his head.

"I think I am lazy," he says; "I will wait for you here."

We set off; I with a strongish, but unexplained feeling of resentment against my companion.

"Where are they?" I ask, pettishly; "not far off, I hope! I do not fancy I shall care about them!"

"I did not suppose that you would," he replies, in an extremely happy tone; "would you like us to go back?"

"No," reply I, carelessly, "it would not be worth while now we have started."

We march on in solemn silence, not particularly pleased with each other.

I am staring about me, with as greedily wondering eyes as if I were a young nun let loose for the first time. We pa.s.s a score--twoscore, threescore, perhaps--of happy parties, soldiers again, a _bourgeois_ family of three generations, the old grandmother with a mushroom-hat tied over her cap--soldiers and Frauleins _c.o.ketteering_. The air comes to our faces, dry, warm, and elastic, yet freshened by the river, far down in whose quiet heart all the lamps are burning again.

"Have you been here long?" says Mr. Musgrave, presently, in a formal voice, from which I see that resentment is not yet absent.

"Yes," say I, having on the other hand fully recovered my good-humor, "a good while--that is, not very long--three, four, three whole days."

"Do you call that a _good while_?"

"It seems more," reply I, looking frankly back at him in the lamplight, and thinking that he cannot be much older than Algy, and that, in consequence, it is rather a comfort not to be obliged to feel the slightest respect for him.

"And how long have you been abroad altogether?"

We have reached the flower-lamps. We are standing by the bed in which they are supposed to grow. There are half a dozen of them: a fuchsia, a convolvulus, lilies.

"I do not think much of them," say I, disparagingly, kneeling down to examine them. "What a villainous rose! It is like an _artichoke_!"

"I told you you would not like them," he says, not looking at the flowers, but switching a little stick nonchalantly about; then, after a moment: "How long did you say you had been abroad?"

"You asked me that before," reply I, sharply, rising from my knees, and discovering that the evening gra.s.s has left a disfiguring green trace on my smart _trousseau_ gown.

"Yes, and you did not give me any answer," he replies, with equal sharpness.

"Because I cannot for the life of me recollect," reply I, looking up for inspiration to the stars, which the great bright lamps make look small and pale. "I must do a sum: what day of the month is this?--the 31st?

Oh, thanks, so it is; and we were married on the 20th. It is ten days, then. Oh, it _must_ be more--it seems like ten _months_."

I am looking him full in the face as I say this, and I see a curious, and to me _puzzling_, expression of inquiry and laughter in the shady darkness of his eyes.

"Has the time seemed so long to you, then?"

"No," reply I, reddening with vexation at my own _betise_; "that is--yes--because we have been to so many places, and seen so many things--any one would understand _that_."

"And when do you go home?"

"In less than three weeks now," I reply, in an alert, or rather joyful tone; "at least I hope so--I mean" (again correcting myself)--"I _think_ so."

Somehow I feel dissatisfied with my own explanations, and recommence:

"The boys--that is, my brothers--will soon be scattered to the ends of the earth; Algy has got his commission, and Bobby will soon be sent to a foreign station--he is in the navy, you will understand; and so we all want to be together once again before they go."

"You are not going home _really_, then?" inquires my companion, with a slight shade of disappointment in his tone; "not to _Tempest_--that is?"

"What a number of questions you do ask!" say I, impatiently. "Of what possible interest can it be to you where we are going?"

"Only that I shall be your nearest neighbor," replies he, stiffly; "and, as Sir Roger has hardly ever been down hitherto, I am rather tired of living next an empty house."

"Our nearest neighbor!" cry I, with animation, opening my eyes. "Not _really_? Well, I am rather glad! Only yesterday I was asking Sir Roger whether there were many young people about. And _how_ near are you?

_Very_ near?"

"About as near as I well can be," answers he, dryly. "My lodge exactly faces yours."

"Too close," say I, shaking my head. "We shall quarrel."

"And do you mean to say," in a tone of attempted lightness that but badly disguises a good deal of hurt conceit, "that you never heard my name before?"

Again I shake my head.

"Never! and, what is more, I do not think I know what it is now: I suppose I did not listen very attentively, but I do not think I caught it."

"And your tone says" (with a very considerable accession of huffiness) "that you are supremely indifferent as to whether you _ever_ catch it."

I laugh.