The Star-Gazers Part 77

"And Lucy?" said Alleyne softly.

"Oh, yes, Moray, dear Moray," she cried, hiding her face in his breast.

"I am very glad, Oldroyd," said Alleyne, quietly. "I have thought of it sometimes, and wondered whether it would come to this, and--and I am very very glad."

He held out his hand and grasped the young doctor's very warmly, before kissing his sister, after which she escaped to her room, where she stayed for quite an hour before coming down shyly, and with a very happy look in her eyes.

Oldroyd was not gone. It was not likely. He had been staying with Alleyne in the observatory--watching his case as he told himself, but not succeeding in his self-deceit, and some kind of natural attraction led him back into the dining-room just as Lucy entered from the other door.

It must have been a further charge of natural attraction that led them straight into each other's arms, for the first long embrace and kiss, from which Lucy started back at last, all shame-faced, rosy-red, and with the sensation that she had just been guilty of something very wicked indeed.

"Are you happy, Lucy?" said Oldroyd.

"No," she said, looking at him earnestly, "and I shall not be till others are happy too."

Volume 3, Chapter XIII.

AS THROUGH A GLa.s.s.

"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove," says the poet; and there he stops, leaving the rest of the places under the pink little G.o.d's _regime_ to our imagination.

He was busy as ever at Brackley, with people in a humbler walk in life and there was an attraction there for a person who plays no prominent part in this narrative, to wit, Thompson, private dragoon in Her Majesty's service, and valet and confidential man to Captain Rolph.

He had long fixed his affections possibly in military temporary fashion upon Mason, Glynne's maid. These affections had glowed during the many visits to Warren and Hall, cooled down during the activities of service--rubbing down his master as he would a horse, and helping him to train--sinking for a year and a half or so after "the upset" at Brackley, and turning up again when the captain came back to The Warren to be hitched on again, as he termed it. For, truth to tell, it was known that Mason had one hundred and fourteen pounds deposited in consols with a certain old lady in Threadneedle Street.

Thompson felt glad then, when one day the captain said to him,--

"All packed up, isn't it?" and he replied that the luggage was ready.

Whereupon the captain told him that he would not want him for a month.

"And, by the way, go down to The Warren before my mother returns, and get my guns, a few books in my room, and the knick-knacks and clothes, and the rest."

"Won't you want 'em, sir, next time you're going down?"

"Mind your own business, fool, and get the things."

Thompson stood at attention, winked to himself, and thought of how near he would be to Brackley, and how, in spite of the past he would be sure of a welcome in the servants' hall. A month would be long enough to "pull that off;" and though he did not put it in words, to pull Mason's savings out of the great British bank.

But then there was Sinkins, the village carpenter and parish clerk, who often did jobs at the Hall, a man with whom he had come in contact more than a year before, over the preparations for Glynne's wedding, and had seen talking to Mason more than once, and whom he held in utter contempt.

It is of no use to disguise the truth, for no matter whether Matthew Sinkins was in his Sunday best, or in his regular carpenter's fustian, he always exhaled a peculiar odour of glue. Certainly it was often dashed with sawdust, suggestive of cellars and wine, or the fragrant resinous scent of newly cut satin shavings; but the glue overbore the rest, and maintained itself so persistently that, even during the week when Sinkins had the French polishing job at Brackley, and the naphtha and sh.e.l.lac clung to his clothes, there, making itself perceptible, was the regular good old carpenter's shop smell of glue.

Thompson said to Mason that it was disgusting, but she told him frankly that it was a good, clean, wholesome smell, and far preferable to that of the stables.

This, with toss of the head soon after Thompson's arrival, for, in spite of bygones he found on getting himself driven over from The Warren, quite a warm welcome from old friends, one and all being eager to talk over the past and learn everything that could be pumped out of Thompson respecting his master's doings since that terrible night.

Thompson was in the stable-yard smoking a cigar--a very excellent cigar, that had cost somewhere about a shilling--rather an extravagance for a young man in his position of life, but as it was one out of his master's box, the expense did not fall upon him; and had any one suggested that it was not honest for him to smoke the captain's cigars he would have looked at him with astonishment, and asked whether he knew the meaning of the word perquisites.

It was a very excellent cigar, and being so it might have been supposed to have a soothing effect; but whatever may have been its sedative qualities they were not apparent, for Thompson's face was gloomy, consequent upon his having seen Matthew Sinkins go up to the side door with his basket of tools hanging from his shoulder, and kept in that position by the hammer being thrust through one of the handles, that handle being pa.s.sed through its fellow.

"Him here, again?" exclaimed Thompson. "He's always hanging about the place. Well, it's as free for me as for him, I suppose. I shall go and see."

Thompson who was a smart, dapper-looking swarthy man, with closely cut hair, very small mutton chop whiskers, and dark beady eyes, threw away the half-smoked cigar, gave a touch to his carefully-tied white cravat, glanced down at his brightly polished boots, and let his eyes rest upon his very closely fitting Bedford cord trousers before crossing the yard, whistling in a nonchalant manner, and walking into the servants' hall, where Matthew Sinkins was waiting with his tool basket on the floor by his side.

"Hallo, chips!" said Thompson, condescendingly, "how's trade?"

"Pretty tidy, Mr Thompson," said the carpenter, slowly, and taking out the two-foot rule which dwelt in a long narrow pocket down one leg of his trousers, but sheathing it again directly, as if it were a weapon which he did not at present need.

"Glad of it," said Thompson. "Haven't they asked you to have a horn of ale?"

"Yes, Mr Thompson; oh, yes. Miss Mason has gone to get one for me from Mr Morris."

"Oh! has she?" said Thompson; and this news was of so discomforting a nature that he was taken a little aback. "Job on?"

"Yes, Mr Thompson, I'm wanted. You're here again, then. Thought you was going abroad."

"No," said Thompson, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and see-sawing himself to and fro, from toe to heel and back. "No, we're not gone yet, Mr Sinkins; and if it's any pleasure to you to know it, I don't see any likelihood of our going for some time to come. What have you got to say to that?"

Mr Sinkin's big hand went deliberately down the leg of his trousers, and he half drew out the rule again, as if he meant to measure the captain's attendant, but he allowed the narrow strip of boxwood to glide back into its place and breathed hard.

"I say, what have you got to say to that, Mr Sinkins?" said Thompson, nodding his head a good deal, and unconsciously making himself wonderfully like a pugnacious bantam c.o.c.k ruffling himself in the presence of a heavy, stolid, barn-door fowl.

"Got to say to it?" replied Sinkins, calmly.

"Yes, sir, got to say to it, sir," cried Thompson, with an irritating air of superiority that appeared to suggest that he had got the carpenter in a corner now, from which he did not mean to let him escape until he had answered the question put to him so sharply.

Sinkins seemed to feel that his rule was necessary once again, but the boxwood was allowed to slip back as its master shook his head, and said in a slow serious way,--

"I haven't got anything to say to it, Mr Thompson, sir."

"Oh, you haven't."

"No, sir," replied the carpenter stolidly. "If I was to say a lot to it, I don't see as it would make any difference one way or the other."

"No, sir, I should think it wouldn't," cried Thompson; and just then Miss Mason, the brisk-looking, dark-eyed, ale-bearing Hebe of two-and-twenty, came in, looking as if she were wearing an altered silk dress that had once been the property of Glynne Day.

"Oh, you are here, Mr Thompson, are you?" she said with a voice full of acidity.

"Yes, ma'am, I am here," said Thompson, sharply.

"Perhaps you'll come up as soon as you've drunk your ale, Mr Sinkins,"

said Miss Mason, sweetly. "I'll show you which room."

Matthew placed the horn at his lips, and removed it so reluctantly that it ceased to be a horn of plenty, and he set it back upon the table with a sigh. He stooped then and took the handle of his hammer, lifting the tool basket, so that chisels and screws, and drivers, gimlets, saws, and planes, all jumbled up together, as they were swung round upon the strong man's shoulder, but only to be swung off again and carried in the hand, as being more suitable in so grand a place as Brackley Hall.

"Are you quite ready, Mr Sinkins," said Miss Mason, in a tone of voice that seemed quite affectionate.

"Yes, miss, I'm quite ready."