The Star-Gazers Part 31

Soon afterwards they went back to the drawing-room and partook of tea, the carriage arriving directly after, and everyone thinking it time to leave, for a curious chill had come over the party, Glynne having subsided into her old, silent, inanimate way, and no effort of the major or Sir John producing anything more than a temporary glow.

"Why, how quiet you are, Glynne," said Rolph, as they were on their way home.

"I was thinking," she replied, quietly.

"What about?"

"About?--Oh, the wonders of--of what I have seen to-night."

"Are you satisfied, my son?" said Mrs Alleyne, when she kissed him that night.

"Yes, dear mother, thoroughly," he said to her; and then to himself--"No."

END OF VOLUME ONE.

Volume 2, Chapter I.

AFTER A LAPSE.

It was about a mile from the Alleynes' where the sandy lane, going north, led by an eminence, rugged, scarped, and crowned with great columnar firs that must have sprung from seeds a couple of hundred years ago. By day, when the sun shone in from the east at his rising, or from the west at his going down, the great towering trunks that ran up seventy or eighty feet without a branch looked as if cast in ruddy bronze, while overhead the thick, dark, boughs interlaced and shut out the sky.

It was a gloomy enough spot by day amidst the maze of tall columns, with the ground beneath slippery from the dense carpeting of pine needles; by night, whether a soft breeze was overhead whispering in imitation of the surging waves, or it was a storm, there was ever that never-ending sound of the sea upon the sh.o.r.e, making the place in keeping with the spirit of him who sought for change and relief from troublous thoughts.

Moray Alleyne's brain was full of trouble, of imperious thoughts that would not be kept back, and one night, to calm his disturbed spirit, he went out from the observatory, bare-headed, to walk for a few minutes up and down the garden.

But there was no rest there, and, feeling confined and cribbed within fence and hedge, he glanced for a moment or two at the tall window with its undrawn blinds, through which he could see Mrs Alleyne, seated stiff and with an uncompromising look upon her face, busy st.i.tching at a piece of linen in which she was making rows of the finest nature, in preparation for a garment to be worn by her son.

Lucy was at the other side of the table, also working, but, as the lamplight fell upon her face, Alleyne could see that it was unruffled and full of content.

He sighed as he turned away, and thought of the past, when his thoughts went solely to his absorbing work--when this strange attraction, as he termed it, had not come upon him and drawn him, as it were, out of his course.

Only a short time back, and he went on in his matter-of-fact, mundane orbit, slowly working out problems, sometimes failing, but always returning to the task with the same calm peaceful serenity of spirit, waiting patiently for the triumph of science that sooner or later came for his reward.

How calm and unruffled all this had been. No fever of the soul, no tempest of spirit to disturb the even surface of his life. But now all was changed. They had torn him amongst them from the happy, placid life, to give him rage, and bitterness and pain.

His brow grew rugged and his hands clenched as he walked rapidly out on to the wild heath, heedless of the bushes and the inequalities of the ground, until he fell heavily, and leaped up again, to turn back. Then, giving up the wide waste of moor which he had instinctively chosen as being in accord with his frame of mind, he made straight for the next desolate spot, where it seemed to him that he could be alone with his thoughts, and perhaps school them into subjection.

"Cool down this madness," he once said aloud, laughing bitterly the while; and the sound of his strange voice made him start and hurry on along the shady lane, as if to escape from the unseen monitor who had reminded him of his suffering.

"Yes, it is madness," he muttered, "I could not have believed it true.

But, discipline, patience, I shall conquer yet."

He walked on, with the beads of perspiration coming softly out upon his brow; then, from being like a fine dew, they began to join one with the other, till they stood out in great drops unheeded, as he went swiftly on, and almost blindly at last turned rapidly up the steep ascent, climbing at times, and avoiding the pine trunks by a kind of blind instinct. He toiled on farther and farther, till he stood at the highest part of the great natural temple, with its windswept roof hidden in the darkness overhead, and two huge pines bending over to each other, like the sides of some huge east window, at the precipitous broken edge of the hill. Through this he could look straight away over the intervening billowy estate, to where Brackley Hall stood surrounded by trees, and with its lights shining softly against a vast background of darkness.

And now as he rested a hand upon a trunk, his vivid imagination pictured Glynne as being there, behind one or other of the softly-illumined panes.

Here he stopped and stood motionless for a time, gazing straight before him through the dimly-seen vista of the trunks, breathing in the soft, cool night air, dry and invigorating at that height. All was so still and silent, that, obeying his blind instinct, he seemed to have come there to find calmness and repose.

But they were not present; neither was the place dark--to him. For, as he stood there, with knotted brow, and teeth and hands clenched, turn which way he would there was light, and within that light, gazing at him with its intense, rapt expression--as if living and breathing upon his words--the one face that always haunted him now.

It had been so strange at first--that look of thoughtful veneration, that air of belief. Then, from being half-pleased, half-flattered, had come the time when it had created a want in his life--the desire to be master and go on teaching this obedient disciple who dwelt upon his words, took them so faithfully to heart, and waited patiently for fresh utterances from his lips.

It was not love on her part. He knew that. He was sure of it. At least it was the love of the science that he strove to teach--the thirsting of a spirit to know more and more of the wonders of infinite s.p.a.ce. She liked to be in his society, to listen to his words. He knew he was gauging Glynne Day's heart, when, with a sensation of misery that swept over him like some icy wave, he went over the hours they had spent together. But, when he tried to gauge his own he trembled, and asked himself why this madness had come upon him, robbing him of his peace and rest--making him so unfit for his daily work.

He strode on to and fro, winding in and out amongst the tall pillars of this darkened nature-temple, fighting his mental fight and praying from time to time for help to crush down the madness that had a.s.sailed him where he had thought himself so strong.

Strive how he would, though, there was Glynne's face ever gazing up into his; and beside it, half-mockingly, in its calm, satisfied content, was Rolph's; and as he met the eyes, there was the cool, contemptuous, pitying look, such as he had seen upon the young officer's face again and again, mingled with the arrogant air of dislike that he made so little effort to conceal.

For a time Alleyne had been growing calmer; his determined efforts to master himself had seemed as if about to be attended with success; but as in fancy he had seen Rolph's face beside that of Glynne, a feeling of rage--of envious rage--that mastered him in turn held sway.

But it was not for long; the power of a well-disciplined brain was brought to bear, and Moray Alleyne stood at last with his arms folded, leaning against a tree, thinking that after this mad ebullition of pa.s.sion, he had gained the victory, and that henceforth all this was going to be as a bygone dream.

It must have been by some occult law of attraction that deals with human beings as inanimate objects are drawn together upon the surface of a pond, that Rolph, in contemptuous scorn of the sedative tea that would be on the way in Sir John's drawing-room, and holding himself free for a little self-indulgence, took three cigars from his future father-in-law's cabinet in the smoking-room, secured a box of matches, and, after putting on a light overcoat and soft hat, strolled out on to the lawn.

"Been on duty with her all day," he said, with a half laugh, "and a fellow can't quite give himself up to petticoat government--not hers.

If it wasn't for Aldershot being so near, it would be awful."

Glynne was seated alone in the drawing-room, where the shaded lamp stood on the side-table, deep in a book that she was reading with avidity; and as Rolph, with his hands in his pockets, strolled round the house, he, too, stopped to look in at the window.

"There's no nonsense about it," he said, "she is pretty--I might say beautiful, and there isn't a girl in the regiment who comes near her."

"Humph! what a chance. The old boys are snoring in the dining-room, each with a handkerchief over his head, and for the next two hours I dare say we should be alone, and--drink tea!" he said with an air of disgust. "I hope she won't be so confoundedly fond of tea when we're married. It's rather too much of a good thing sometimes. And a man wants change."

He thrust his hands deeply into his coat pockets, where one of them came in contact with a cigar, which he took out, bit off the end mechanically, and stood rolling it to and fro between his lips.

"Shall I go in?" he asked himself. "Hang it, no! If one's too much with a girl she'll grow tired of you before marriage. Better keep her off a little, and not spoil her too soon. Yes, she really is a very handsome girl. Just fancy her in one of the smartest dresses a tip-top place could turn out, and sitting beside a fellow on a four-in-hand-- Ascot, say, or to some big meet. There won't be many who will put us-- her, I mean"--he added, with a dash of modesty--"in the shade. Here, I'll go and have a talk to her. No, I won't. I sha'n't get my cigar if I do. We shall have plenty of _tete-a-tetes_, I dare say. And I promised to-night--What's she reading, I wonder? Last new novel, I suppose. Puzzles me," he said to himself, as he swung round, "how a woman can go on reading novels at the rate some of them do. Such stuff!

It's only about one in a hundred that is written by anybody who knows what life really is--about horses and dogs--and sport," he added after a little thought. "Poor little Glynne. It pleases her, though, and I sha'n't interfere, but she might cultivate subjects more that agree with my tastes--say the hunt--and the field."

He gave one glance over his shoulder at the picture of the reading girl in the drawing-room and then went off across the lawn, to be stopped by the wire fence, against which he paused as if measuring its height.

Then going back for a dozen yards or so he took a sharp run, meaning to leap it, but stopped short close to the wire.

"Won't do," he muttered; "too dark."

He then stepped over it, bending the top wire down and making it give a loud tw.a.n.g when released, as he walked on sharply towards the footway that crossed the path and led away to the fir woods, whistling the while.

Perhaps if he had known that the book Glynne was reading with such eagerness did not happen to be a novel, but a study of the heavens, by one, Mr Lockyer, the ideas that coursed through his mind would not have been of quite so complacent a character--that is to say, if the strain upon his nature to supply him with muscles and endurance had left him wit enough to put that and that together, and judge by the result.

"It's getting precious dull here, and home's horrid," said Rolph, as he stopped in the shadow of a tree, whose huge trunk offered shelter from the breeze.

Here he proceeded, in the quiet deliberate fashion of a man who makes a study of such matters, and who would not on any consideration let a cigar burn sidewise, to light the roll he held in his teeth. He struck a match, coquetted with the flame, holding it near and drawing it away, till the leaf was well alight, when he placed his hands in his pockets, and walked on, puffing complacently, for a short distance at a moderate pace, but, finding the path easy and smooth, his mind began to turn to athletics, and, taking his hands from his pockets, he stopped short and doubled his fists.

"Won't do to get out of condition with this domestic spaniel life," he said, with a laugh, and, drawing a long breath, he set off walking, taking long, regular strides, and getting over the ground at a tremendous pace for about half a mile, when he stopped short to smile complacently.

"Not bad that," he said aloud, "put out my cigar though;" and, again sheltering himself behind a tree, he struck a match and relit the roll of tobacco.

"I must do a little more of this early of a morning," he said, as he regained his breath, and cooled down gradually by slowly walking on, and as fate arranged it, entering the great fir clump on the side farthest from the lane.