Volume Two—Chapter Twelve.
Venus more in the Field of View.
Lucy’s life about this time was not a happy one. Mrs Alleyne was cold and distant, Moray was growing more silent day by day, taking exercise as a duty, working or walking furiously, as if eager to get the duty done, so as to be able to drown harassing thoughts in his studies; hence he saw little of, and said little to his sister. The major looked stern when he met her, and Lucy’s sensitive little bosom heaved when she noticed his distant ways. Sir John, too, appeared abrupt and distant, not so friendly as of old, or else she thought so; and certainly Glynne was not so cordial, seeming to avoid her, and rarely now sending over one of her old affectionate notes imploring her to come to lunch and spend the day.
“Philip Oldroyd always looks at me as if I were a school-girl,” Lucy used to cry impetuously when she was alone, “and as if about to scold me for not wanting to learn my lessons. How dare he look at me like that, just as if there was anything between us, and he had a right!”
Then Lucy would have a long cry and take herself to task for speaking of the doctor as Philip Oldroyd, and, after a good sob, feel better.
Rolph was the only one of her acquaintances who seemed to be pleasant with her, and his pleasantry she disliked, avoiding him when she went out for a walk, but generally finding him in the way, ready to place himself at her side, and walk wherever she did.
Lucy planted barbed verbal arrows in the young officer’s thick hide, but the only effect of these pungent little attacks was to tickle him. He was not hurt in the slightest degree. In fact he enjoyed it under the impression that Lucy admired him immensely, and was ready to fall at his feet at any time, and declare her love.
“She doesn’t know anything,” he had mused. “Her sleepy brother noticed nothing, and as for the doctor—curse the doctor, let him mind his own business, or I’ll wring his neck. I could,” he added thoughtfully, “and I would.”
“Bah! it’s only a bit of flirtation, and the little thing is so clever and sharp and piquant that she’s quite a treat after a course of mushrooms with the major, and pigs and turnips with Sir John. If Alleyne should meet us—well, I met his sister, Glynne’s friend, and we were chatting—about Glynne of course. And as to the doctor, well, curse the doctor, as aforesaid. I believe the beast’s jealous, and I’ll make him worse before I’m done.”
In Rolph’s musings about Lucy he used to call her “little pickles” and “the sauce.” Once he got as far as “Cayenne,” a name that pleased him immensely, making up his mind, what little he had, to call her by one of those epithets—some day—when they grew a little more warmly intimate.
On the other hand, when Lucy went out walking, it was with the stern determination to severely snub the captain, pleasant as she told herself it would be to read Philip Oldroyd a good severe lesson, letting him see that she was not neglected; and then for the moment all her promises were forgotten, till she was going home again, when the only consolation she could find for her lapse was that her intentions had been of the most stringent kind; that she could not help meeting the captain, and that she really had tried all she could to avoid him; while there was the satisfaction of knowing that she was offering herself up as a kind of sacrifice upon the altar of duty for her brother’s welfare.
“Sooner or later dear Glynne must find out what a wretch that Rolph is, and then I shall be blamed—she’ll hate me; but all will be made happy for poor Moray.”
The consequence of all this was that poor Lucy about this time felt what an American would term very “mean” and ashamed of herself; mingled with this, too, was a great deal of sentiment. She was going to be a martyr—she supposed that she would die, the fact being that Lucy was very sick—sick at heart, and there was only one doctor in the world who could put her right.
Of course the thoughts turn here to the magnates of Harley and Brook and Grosvenor Street, and of Cavendish Square, but it was none of these. The prescription that would cure Lucy’s ailment was of the unwritten kind: it could only be spoken. The doctor to speak it was Philip Oldroyd, and its effect instantaneous, and this Lucy very well knew. But, like all her kind, she had a tremendous antipathy to physic, and, telling herself that she hated the doctor and all his works, she went on suffering in silence like the young lady named Viola, immortalised by one Shakespeare, and grievously sick of the same complaint.
It came like a surprise to Lucy one morning to receive a note from Glynne, written in a playful, half-chiding strain, full of reproach, and charging her with forgetting so old a friend.
“When it’s all her fault!” exclaimed Lucy, as she read on, to find Glynne was coming on that afternoon. “But Captain Rolph is sure to come with her, and that will spoil all. I declare I’ll go out. No, I won’t. I’ll stop, and I’ll be a martyr again, and stay and talk to him if it will make poor Moray happy, for I don’t care what becomes of me now.”
Somehow, though, Lucy looked very cheerful that day, her eyes flashing with excitement; and it was evident that she was making plans for putting into execution at the earliest opportunity.
As it happened, Mrs Alleyne announced that she was going over to the town on business, and directly after the early dinner a chaise hired from one of the farmers was brought round, and the dignified lady took her place beside the boy who was to drive.
“Heigho!” sighed Lucy, as she stood watching the gig with its clumsy, ill-groomed horse, and the shock-headed boy who drove, and compared the turnout with the spic-and-span well-ordered vehicles that were in use at Brackley; and then she went down the garden thinking how nice it was to have money, or rather its products, and of how sad it was that Moray’s pursuits should always be making such heavy demands upon their income, and never pay anything back.
In spite of the dreariness of the outer walls of the house, the garden at The Firs had its beauties.
It was not without its claims to be called a wilderness still, but it was a pleasant kind of wilderness now, since it had been put in order, for it sloped down as steeply as the scarped side of some fortified town, and from the zigzagged paths a splendid view could be had over the wild common in fine weather, though it was a look-out over desolation in the wintry wet.
For a great change had been wrought in this piece of ground since Moray had delved in it, and bent his back to weed and fill barrows with the accumulated growth of years. There was quite a charm about the place, and the garden seat or two, roughly made out of rustic materials, had been placed in the most tempting of positions, shaded by the old trees that had been planted generations back, but which the sandy soil had kept stunted and dense.
But the place did not charm Lucy; it only made her feel more desolate and low spirited, for turn which way she would, she knew that while the rough laborious work had been done by her brother, Oldroyd’s was the brain that had suggested all the improvements, his the hand that had cut back the wild tangle of brambles, that overgrown mass of ivy, placed the chairs and seats in these selected nooks where the best views could be had, and nailed up the clematis and jasmine that the western gales had torn from their hold.
Go where she would, there was something to remind her of Oldroyd, and at last she grew, in spite of her self-command, so excited that she stopped short in dismay.
“I shall make myself ill,” she cried, half aloud; “and if I am ill, mamma will send for Mr Oldroyd; and, oh!”
Lucy actually blushed with anger, and then turned pale with dread, as in imagination she saw herself turned into Philip Oldroyd’s patient, and being ordered to put out her tongue, hold forth her hand that her pulse might be felt, and have him coming to see her once, perhaps twice, every day.
With the customary inconsistency of young ladies in her state, she exclaimed, in an angry tone, full of protestation,—
“Oh, it would be horrible!” and directly after she hurried indoors.
In due time Glynne arrived, and sent the pony carriage back, saying that she would walk home.
It was a long time since she had visited at The Firs, for of late the thought of Moray Alleyne’s name and his observatory had produced a strange shrinking sensation in Glynne’s breast, and it was not until she had mentally accused herself of having behaved very badly to Lucy in neglecting her so much that she had made up her mind to drive over; but now that the girls did meet the greeting between them was very warm, and the embrace in which they indulged long and affectionate.
“Why, you look pale, Glynne, dear,” cried Lucy, forgetting her own troubles, in genuine delight at seeing her old friend as in the days of their great intimacy.
“And you, Lucy, you are quite thin,” retorted Glynne. “You are not ill?”
“Oh, no!” cried Lucy, laughing. “I was never better; but, really, Glynne, you don’t seem quite well.”
Glynne’s reply was as earnest an assurance that she never enjoyed better health than at that present moment; and as she made this assurance she was watching Lucy narrowly, and thinking that, on the strength of the rumours she had heard from time to time, she ought to be full of resentment and dislike for her old friend, while, strange to say, she felt nothing of the kind.
“Mamma will be so sorry that she was away, Glynne,” said Lucy at last, in the regular course of conversation. “She likes you so very much.”
“Does she?” said Glynne, dreamily.
“Oh yes; she talks about you a great deal, but Moray somehow never mentions your name.”
“Indeed!” said Glynne quietly, “why should he?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lucy, watching her anxiously, and wondering whether she knew how often Captain Rolph had met her out in the lanes, and by the common side. “He seemed to like you so very much, and to take such great interest in you when you used to meet.”
Lucy watched her friend curiously, but Glynne’s countenance did not tell of the thoughts that were busy within her brain.
“Poor fellow!” continued Lucy, “he thinks of scarcely anything but his studies.”
Lucy was very fond of Glynne, she felt all the young girlish enthusiasm of her age for the graceful statuesque maiden; while in her heart of hearts Glynne had often wished she were as bright and light-hearted and merry as Lucy. All the same though, now, excellent friends as they were, there was suspicion between them, and dread, and a curious self-consciousness of guilt that made the situation feel strange; and over and over again Glynne thought it was time to go—that she had better leave, and still she stayed.
“You never say anything to me now about your engagement, dear,” said Lucy at last, and as the words left her lips the guilty colour flushed into her cheeks, and she said to herself, “Oh! how dare I say such a thing?”
“No,” said Glynne, quietly and calmly, opening her great eyes widely and gazing full in those of her friend, but seeing nothing of the present, only trying to read her own life in the future, what time she felt a strange sensation of wonder at her position. “No: I never talk about it to any one,” she said at last; “there is no need.”
“No need?” exclaimed Lucy with a gasp; and she looked quite guilty, as she bent towards Glynne ready to burst into tears, and confess that she was very very sorry for what she had done—that she utterly detested Captain Rolph, and that if she had seemed to encourage him, it was in the interest of her brother and friend.
But Glynne’s calm matter-of-fact manner kept her back, and she sat and stared with her pretty little face expressing puzzledom in every line.
“No; I do not care to talk about it,” said Glynne calmly, “there is no need to discuss that which is settled.”
“Settled, Glynne?”
“Well, inevitable,” said Glynne coldly. “When am I to congratulate you, Lucy?” she added, with a grave smile.
“Is she bantering me?” thought Lucy; and then quickly, “Congratulate me? there is not much likelihood of that, Glynne, dear. Poor girls without portion or position rarely find husbands.”
“Indeed!” said Glynne gravely. “Surely a portion, as you call it, is not necessary for genuine happiness?”
“No, no, of course not, dear,” cried Lucy hastily. “But I know what you mean, and I’ll answer you. No—emphatically no: there is nobody.”
“Nobody?”
“Nobody!” cried Lucy, shaking her head vigorously. “Don’t look at me like that, dear,” she continued, imploringly, for she was most earnest now in her effort to make Glynne believe, if she suspected any flirtation with Rolph, that her old friend was speaking in all sincerity and truth. “If there were anything, dear, I should be unsettled until I had told you.”
She rose quickly, laid her hands upon Glynne’s shoulders, and kissed her forehead, remaining standing by her side.
“I am glad to hear you say so, Lucy,” replied Glynne, gazing frankly in her eyes, “for I was afraid that there was some estrangement springing up between us.”
“Yes,” cried Lucy, “you feel as I have felt. It is because you have not spoken out candidly and freely as you used to speak to me, dear.”
Glynne’s forehead contracted slightly, for she winced a little before the charge, one which recalled a bitter struggle through which she had passed, and the final conquest which she felt that she had gained.
She opened her lips to speak, but no words came, for as often as friendship for Lucy urged confession, shame acted as a bar, and stopped the eager speech that was ready for escape.
No: she felt she could not speak. A cloud had come for a time across her life; but it was now gone, and she was at rest. She could not—she dared not tell Lucy her inmost thoughts, for if she did she knew that she would be condemning herself to a hard fight with a special advocate, one who would gain an easy victory in a cause which she dreaded to own had the deepest sympathy of her heart.
Just at that moment Eliza entered hastily.
“Oh, if you please, Miss, I’m very sorry, but—”
The girl stopped short. She had made up her speech on her way to the room, but had forgotten the presence of the visitor, so she broke down, with her mouth open, feeling exceedingly shamefaced and guilty, for she knew that the simple domestic trouble about which she had come was not one that ought to be blurted forth before company.
“Will you excuse me, dear?” said Lucy, and, crossing to Eliza, she followed that young lady out of the room, to hear the history of a disaster in the cooking department; some ordinary preparation, expressly designed for that most unthankful of partakers, Moray Alleyne, being spoiled.
Hardly had Lucy left her alone, and Glynne drawn a breath of relief at having time given to compose herself, than a shadow crossed the window, there was a quick step outside, and the next moment there was a hand upon the glass door that led out towards the observatory, as Alleyne entered the room.