The Star-Gazers Part 74

"But you won't kill him, Rob. Don't do that, dearest; it would be too dreadful."

"No; I won't kill him if I can help it. That would be too bad, eh? I won't nail his ears to the pump."

"Ah, my darlings! here still," said Mrs Rolph, who entered, smiling, but with the tears trickling down her cheeks. "Madge, my child, what has become of my salts--you know, the cut-gla.s.s bottle with the gold top."

"Never mind the salts, mother," said Rolph, boisterously; "sugar has done it. I've quite brought Madge to--haven't I, p.u.s.s.y?"

"Oh, Rob, dearest," cried Madge, hiding her face upon his breast, and shuddering slightly as she nestled there, as if a cold breath of wind had pa.s.sed over to threaten the blasting of her budding hopes.

"It's all right, mother, and--there as soon as you like. Come, little wifey to be, begin your duties at once. Big strong husbands want plenty of food when they are not training. They are like the lawyers who need refreshers. I'm choking for a pint of Ba.s.s. No, no, mother; let her ring. Satisfied?"

"Rob, my darling, you've made me a happy woman at last--so proud, so very proud of my darling son."

"All right," cried Rolph, gruffly; "but, look here, I'm not going to figure at Brackley over a business like this. I'm off back to barracks."

"So soon, Rob," cried Madge, and the scared look came into her eyes again, as she involuntarily glanced at the window as if expecting to see Caleb Kent peering in.

"Madge, my darling! Look at her, Rob."

"Bah! what a cowardly, nervous little puss it is," cried Rolph, taking her in his arms, and she clung to him sobbing hysterically. "Look here, mother; you'd better take a house, or furnished apartments in town at once, and we'll get the business done there. Madge is afraid of bogies.

Weak and hysterical, and that sort of thing. Get her away; the place is dull, and the poachers are hanging about here a good deal."

Marjorie uttered a faint shriek which was perfectly real.

"Take us away at once, Rob, dear," she whispered pa.s.sionately; "I can't bear to be separated from you now."

"All right," he said. "I'll stop and take care of you till you're ready to start, and see you safe in town. You can go to a hotel for a day or two. Will that do?"

"Yes, dear; admirably," cried Mrs Rolph, eagerly; and Marjorie uttered a sigh of consent that was like a moan of pain.

Volume 3, Chapter XII.

RE THE FOCUS.

News reaches the servants' hall sooner than it does the drawing-room, and before long it was known at Brackley that a wedding was in the air.

Cook let it off in triumph one day at dinner. She had been very silent for some time, and then began to smile, till Morris, the butler, who had noted the peculiarities of this lady for years, suddenly exclaimed,--"Now then, what is it? Out with it, cook!"

"Oh, don't ask me; it's nothing."

"Yes, it is," said the butler, with a wink directed all round the table.

"What are you laughing at?"

"It does seem so rum," cried cook, laughing silently till her face was peony-like in hue.

"Well, you might give us a bit, cook," said the major's valet. "What is it?"

"They've--they've found the focus again," cried cook, laughing now quite hysterically.

"Eh? Where?" cried Morris.

"Over at The Warren."

"What," cried the butler severely; "made it up? Cook, I should be sorry to say unpleasant things to any lady, but if you were a man, I should tell you that you were an old fool."

"Well, I'm sure!" cried cook, "that's polite, when I heered it only this morning from the butcher, who'd just come straight from The Warren, where he heered it all."

"What? That Captain Rolph had made it up with our Miss Glynne?

Rubbish, woman, rubbish! After the way he pitched the poor girl over and went off shooting, that could never be."

"If people would not be quite so clever," said cook, addressing the a.s.sembled staff of servants round the table, "and would not jump at things before they know, perhaps they'd get on a little better in life.

As if I didn't know that she'd never marry now. I said as the captain had made up matters with his cousin, that carrotty-headed girl who came to be bridesmaid."

"You don't mean it," cried Morris.

"It's a fact," said cook, "and it's to come off at once."

"What, her? Disgraceful!"

Cook smiled again, with the quiet confidence of knowledge, and ignoring the butler's remark, she fixed the maids in turn with her eye.

"Mrs Rolph has taken a furnished house in London for three months, and they're going to it next week, and as Perkins' man says, it do seem hard, after getting on for two years without delivering regular joints at the house for them to be off again."

"Well," said Mason, Glynne's maid, contemptuously, "I wish the lady joy of him. A low, common, racing and betting man. I wouldn't marry him if he was made of gold."

"Right, Mrs Mason," said Morris. "I don't know what Nature was thinking about to make him an officer. No disrespect meant to those in the stables, but to my mind, if Captain Rolph--and I saw a deal of him when he was here--had found his--his--"

"Focus," suggested cook, and there was a roar in which the butler joined, by way of smoothing matters over with his fellow-servant.

"I meant to say level, cook. He would have been a helper, or the driver of a cab. He was never fit for our young lady."

The servants' hall tattle proved to be quite correct, for within a week The Warren was vacant again, Rolph being back at barracks, and Mrs Rolph and her niece at a little house in one of the streets near Lowndes Square, busily occupied in preparing the lady's _trousseau_, for the marriage was to take place within a month.

It was not long after that the news reached The Firs, and Lucy became very thoughtful, and ended by feeling glad. She hardly knew why, but she was pleased at the idea of Captain Rolph being married and out of the way.

And now, by no means for the first time, a great longing came over Lucy to see Glynne Day again. She knew that the family had been for a year and a half in Italy, and only heard by accident that they had returned to Brackley, so quietly was everything arranged. Then, as the days glided by, and she heard no more news, the longing to see Glynne again intensified.

She felt the tears come into her eyes and trickle down her cheeks as she thought of the terrible catastrophe--never even alluded to at The Firs-- a horror which had saved her from being Rolph's wife, but at what a cost!

"Poor Moray!" she sighed more than once in her solitary communings.

"Poor Glynne! and they might have been by now happy husband and wife.

It is too horrible--too dreadful. How could Fate be so cruel!"

Lucy shivered at times as she mentally called up the careworn, beautiful, white face of her old friend, who had never been seen outside the walls of the house, so far as she could learn, since her return.

And at last, trembling the while, as if her act were a sin, instead of true womanly love and charity, she wrote a simple little letter to Glynne, asking to see her, for that she loved her very dearly, and that the past was nothing to them, and ought not to separate two who had always been dear friends.

She posted the letter secretly, feeling that mother and brother would oppose the act, and that day the rustic postman was half-a-crown the richer upon his promising to retain and deliver into her own hands any letter addressed to her which might arrive.