Nancy Part 35

"No; why?"

"She has only just got into it," he answers, slightly; "only about a fortnight, that is."

"I wonder," say I, ruminatingly, "what brought her to this part of the world, for she does not seem to know anybody."

He does not answer.

"We _ought_ to be friends, ought not we?" say I, beginning to laugh nervously, and looking appealingly toward him, "both of us coming to sojourn in a strange land! It is a curious coincidence our both settling here in such similar circ.u.mstances, at almost the same time, is not it?"

Still he is silent.

"_Is not it?_" cry I, irritably, raising my voice.

Again he has thrown his head back, and is perusing the sky, his hands clasped round one lifted knee.

"What _is_ a coincidence?" he says, languidly. "I do not think I quite know--I am never good at long words--two things that happen accidentally at the same time, is not it?"

He lays the faintest possible stress on the word accidentally.

"And you mean to say that this in not accidental?" I cry, quickly.

"I mean nothing; I only ask for information."

How still the world is to-day! The feathery water-weeds sway, indeed, to and fro, with the motion of the water, but the tall cats'-tails, and all the flags, stand absolutely motionless. I feel vaguely ruffled, and take up my forgotten book. Holding it so as to hide my companion's face from me, I begin to read ostentatiously. He seems content to be silent; lying on the flat of his back, at the bottom of the punt, staring at the sky, and declining the overtures, and parrying the attacks, of Vick, who, having taken advantage of his supine position to mount upon his chest, now stands there wagging her tail, and wasting herself in efforts, mostly futile, but occasionally successful, to lick the end of his nose.

A period of quiet elapses, during which, for the sake of appearances, I turn over a page. By-and-by, he speaks.

"Algy is your eldest brother, is not he?--get away, you little beast!"--(the latter clause, in a tone of sudden exasperation, is addressed, not to me, but to Vick, and tells me that my pet dog's endeavors have been crowned with a tardy prosperity.)

"Yes" (still reading sedulously).

"I thought so," with a slight accent of satisfaction.

"Why?" cry I, again letting fall my volume, and yielding to a curiosity as irresistible as unwise; for he had meant me to ask, and would have been disobliged if I had not.

"We all have our hobbies, don't you know?" he says, shifting his eyes from the sky, and fixing them on the less serene, less amiable object of my face--"some people's is old china--some Elzevir editions--_I_ have a mania for _clocks_--I have one in every room in my house--by-the-by, you have never been over my house--Mrs. Huntley's--she is a dear little woman, but she has her fancies, like the rest of us, and hers is--_eldest sons_!"

"But she is married!" exclaim I, stupidly. "What good can they do her, now?"--then, reddening a little at my own simplicity, I go on, hurriedly: "But he is such a boy!--younger than _you_--young enough to be her _son_--it _can_ be only out of good-nature that she takes notice of him."

"Yes--true--out of good-nature!" he echoes, nodding, smiling, and speaking with that surface-a.s.sent which conveys to the hearer no impression less than acquiescence.

"Boys are not much in her way, either," he pursues, carelessly; "generally she prefers such as are of _riper_ years--_much_ riper!"

"How spiteful you are!" I say, glad to give my chafed soul vent in words, and looking at him with that full, cold directness which one can employ only toward such as are absolutely indifferent to one. "How she _must_ have snubbed you!"

For an instant, he hesitates; then--

"Yes," he says, smiling still, though his face has whitened, and a wrathy red light has come into his deep eyes; "in the pre-Huntley era, I laid my heart at her feet--by-the-way, I must have been in petticoats at the time--and she kicked it away, as she had, no doubt, done--_others_."

The camel's backbone is broken. This last innuendo--in weight a straw--has done it. I speak never a word; but I rise up hastily, and, letting my novel fall heavily p.r.o.ne on the pit of its stomach at the punt-bottom, I take a flying leap to sh.o.r.e--_toward_ sh.o.r.e, I should rather say--for I am never a good jumper--Tou Tou's lean spider-legs can always outstride me--and now I fall an inch or two short, and draw one leg out booted with river-mud. But I pay no heed. I hurry on, pushing through the brambles, and leaving a piece of my gown on each. Before I have gone five yards--his length of limb and freedom from petticoats giving him the advantage over me--he overtakes me.

"What _has_ happened? at this rate you will not have much gown left by the time you reach the house."

To my excited ears, there seems to be a suspicion of laughter in his voice. I disdain to answer. The path we are pursuing is not the regular one; it is a short cut through the wood. At its widest it is very narrow; and, a little ahead of us, a bramble has thrown a strong arm right across it, making a th.o.r.n.y arch, and forbidding pa.s.sage. By a quick movement, Mr. Musgrave gets in advance of me, and, turning round, faces me at this defile.

"What _has_ happened?"

Still I remain stubbornly silent.

"We are not going to fight, at this time of day, such old friends as we are?"

The red-anger light has died out of his eyes. They look softer, and yet less languid, than I have ever seen them before; and there is subdued appeal and entreaty in his lowered voice. At the present moment, I distinctly dislike him. I think him altogether trying and odious, and I should be glad--yes, _glad_, if Vick were to bite a piece out of his leg; but, at the same time, I cannot deny that I have seldom seen any thing comelier than the young man who now stands before me, with the green woodland lights flickering about the close-shorn beauty of his face--he is well aware that his are not features that need _planting out_--while a lively emotion quickens all his lazy being.

"We are _not_ old friends! Let me pa.s.s!"

"_New_ friends, then--_friends_, at all events!" coming a step nearer, and speaking without a trace of sneer, sloth, or languor.

"Not friends at all! Let me pa.s.s!"

"Not until you tell me my offense--not until you own that we are friends!" (in a tone of quick excitement, and almost of authority, that, in him, is new to me).

"Then we shall stay here all night!" reply I, with a fine obstinacy, plumping down, as I speak, on the wayside gra.s.s, among the St.

John's-worts, and the red arum-berries. In a moment he has stepped aside, and is holding the stout purple bramble-stem out of my way.

"Pa.s.s, then!" he says, in a tone of impatience, frowning a little; "as you have said it, of course you will stick to it--right or wrong--or you would not be a woman; but, whether you confess it or not, we _are_ friends!"

"We are NOT!" cry I, resolute to have the last word, as I spring up and fly past him, with more speed than dignity, lest he should change his mind, and again detain me.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The swallows are gone: the summer is done: it is October. The year knows that I am in a hurry, and is hasting with its shortened days--each day marked by the loss of something fair--toward the glad Christmas-time--Christmas that will bring me back my Roger--that will set him again at the foot of his table--that will give me again the sound of his foot on the stairs, the smile in his fond gray eyes. So I thought yesterday, and to-day I have heard from him; heard that though he is greatly loath to tell me so, yet he cannot be back by Christmas; that I must hear the joy-bells ring, and see the merry Christmas cheer _alone_. It is true that he earnestly and insistantly begs of me to gather all my people, father, mother, boys, girls, around me. But, after all, what are father, mother, boys, girls, to me? Father never _was_ any thing, I will do myself that justice, but at this moment of sore disappointment as I lean my forehead on the letter outspread on the table before me, and dim its sentences with tears, I _belittle_ even the boys. No doubt that by-and-by I shall derive a little solace from the thought of their company; that when they come I shall even be inveigled into some sort of hilarity with them; but at present, "No."

There are some days on which all ills gather together as at a meeting.

This is one. Barbara is prostrated by a violent headache, and is in such thorough physical pain that even she cannot sympathize with me. Mr.

Musgrave never makes his now daily appearance--he comes, as I jubilantly notice, as regularly as the postman--until late in the afternoon. All day, therefore, I must refrain myself and be silent. And I am never one for brooding with private dumbness over my woes. I much prefer to air them by expression and complaint. About noon it strikes me that, _faute de mieux_, I will go and see Mrs. Huntley, tell her _suddenly_ that Roger is not coming back, and see if she looks vexed or confused or grieved. Accordingly, soon after luncheon, I set off in the pony-carriage. It is a quiet sultry-looking unclouded day. One uniform livery of mist clothes sky and earth, dimming the glories of the dying leaves, and making them look dull and sodden. Every thing has a drenched air: each crimson bramble-leaf is clothed in rain-drops, and yet it is not raining. The air is thick and heavy, and one swallows it like something solid, but it is not raining: in fact, it is an English fine day.

Under the delusive idea that it is warm, or at least not cold, I have protected my face with no veil, my hands with no mittens; so that, long before I reach the shelter of the Portugal laurels that warmly hem in and border Mrs. Huntley's little graveled sweep, the end of my nose feels like an icy promontory at a great distance from me, and my hands do not feel at all. Mrs. Huntley _is_ at home. Wise woman! I knew that she would be. I suppose that I follow on the footsteps of the butler more quickly than is usual, for, as the door opens, and before I can get a view of the inmate or inmates, I hear a hurried noise of scrambling, as of some one suddenly jumping up. For a little airy woman who looks as if one could blow her away--puff!--like a morsel of thistle-down or a s...o...b..ll, what a heavy foot Mrs. Huntley has! The next moment, I am disabused. Mrs. Huntley has clearly not moved. It was not _she_ that scrambled. She is lying back in a deep arm-chair, her silky head gently denting the flowered cushion, the points of two pretty shoes slightly advanced toward the fire, and a large feather fan leisurely waving to and fro, in one white hand. Beyond the _fan_ movement she is not _doing_ any thing that I can detect.

"How do you do?" say I, bustling in, in a hurry to reach the fire. "How comfortable you look! how cold it is!--Algy!!" For the enigma of the noise is solved. It was Algy who shuffled and scuffled--yes, scuffled up from the low stool which he has evidently been sharing with the pretty shoes--at Mrs. Huntley's feet, on to his long legs, on which he is now standing, not at all at ease. He does not answer.

"ALGY!" repeat I, in a tone of the profoundest, accentedest surprise, involuntarily turning my back upon my hostess and facing my brother.

"Well, what about me?" he cries tartly, irritated (and no wonder) by my open mouth and tragical air.

"What _has_ brought you here?" I ask slowly, and with a tactless emphasis.