Nancy Part 43

"Do not!" cry I, hastily, "there is plenty of light!--I mean--" (stammering) "it--it--dazzles me, coming in out of the dark."

As I speak, I retire to a distant chair, as nearly as possible out of the fire-light, and affect to be occupied with Vick, who has jumped up on my lap, and--with all a dog's delicate care not to hurt you _really_--is pretending severely to bite every one of my fingers.

Barbara has returned to the hearth-rug. She looks a little troubled at first; but, after a moment or two, her face regains its usual serene sweetness.

"And I have been here ever since you left me!" she says, presently, with a look of soft gayety. "I have had _no_ visitors! Not even"--(blus.h.i.+ng a little)--"the usual one."

"No?" say I, bending down my head over Vick, and allowing her to have a better and more thorough lick at the bridge of my nose than she has ever enjoyed in her life before.

"_You_ did not meet him, I suppose?" she says, interrogatively.

"_I!_" cry I, starting guiltily, and stammering. "Not I! Why--why should I?"

"Why should not you, rather?" she says, laughing a little. "It is not such a _very_ unusual occurrence?"

"Do you think not?" I say, in a voice whose trembling is painfully perceptible to myself. "You do not think I--I--" ("You do not think I meet him on purpose," I am going to say; but I break off suddenly, aware that I am betraying myself).

"He will come earlier to-morrow to make up for it"--she says, in a low voice, more to herself than to me--"yes"--(clasping her hands lightly in her lap, while the fire-light plays upon the lovely mildness of her happy face, and repeating the words softly)--"yes, he will come earlier to-morrow!"

I _cannot_ bear it. I rise up abruptly, trundling poor Vick, to whom this reverse is quite unexpected, down on the carpet, and rus.h.i.+ng out of the room.

It is evening now--late evening, drawing toward bedtime. I am sitting with my back to the light, and have asked for a shade for the lamp, on the plea that the wind has cut my eyes--but, in spite of my precautions, I am well aware that the disfigurement of my face is still unmistakably evident to the most casual eye; and, from the anxious care with which Barbara looks _away from me_, when she addresses me, I can perceive that she has observed it, as, indeed, how could she fail to do? If Tou Tou were here, she would overwhelm me with officious questions--would stare me crazy, but Barbara averts her eyes, and asks nothing.

We have been sitting in perfect silence for a long while; no noise but the click of Barbara's knitting-pins, the low flutter of the fire-flame, and the sort of suppressed choked _inward_ bark, with which Vick attacks a phantom tomcat in her dreams.

Suddenly I speak.

"Barbara!" say I, with a hard, forced laugh, "I am going to ask you a silly question: tell me, did you ever observe--has it ever struck you that there was something rather--rather _offensive_ in my manner to men?"

Her knitting drops into her lap. Her blue eyes open wide, like dog-violets in the sun; she is _obliged_ to look at me now.

"_Offensive!_" she echoes, with an accent of the most utter surprise and mystification. "Good Heavens, no! What has come to the child?

Oh!"--(with a little look of dawning intelligence)--"I see! You mean, do not you smite them too much? Are not you sometimes a little too _hard_ upon them?"

"No," say I, gravely; "I did not mean that."

She looks at me for explanation, but I can give none. More silence.

Vick is either in hot pursuit of, or hot flight from, the tomcat; all her four legs are quivering and kicking in a mimic gallop.

"Do you remember," say I, again speaking, and again prefacing my words by an uneasy laugh, "how the boys at home used always to laugh at me, because I never knew how to flirt, nor had any pretty ways? Do you think"--(speaking slowly and hesitatingly)--"that boys--one's brothers, I mean--would be good judges of that sort of thing?"

"As good as any one else's brothers, I suppose," she says, with a low laugh, but still looking puzzled; "but why do you ask?"

"I do not know," reply I, trying to speak carelessly; "it came into my head."

"Has any one been accusing you?" she says, a little curiously, "But no!

who _could_? You have seen no one, not even--"

"No, no!" interrupt I, shrinking from the sound of the name that I know is coming; "of course not; no one!"

The clock strikes eleven, and wakes Vick. Barbara rises, rolls up her knitting, and, going over to the fireplace, stands with one white elbow resting on the chimney-piece, and slender neck drooped, pensively gazing at the low fire.

"Do you know," she says, with a half-confused smile, that is also tinged with a little anxiety, "I have been thinking--it is the first time for three months that he has not been here at all, either in the morning, the afternoon, or the evening!"

"Is it?" say I, slightly s.h.i.+vering.

"I think," she says, with a rather embarra.s.sed laugh, "that he must have heard _you_ were out, and that that was why he did not come. You know I always tell you that he likes you best."

She says it, as a joke, and yet her great eyes are looking at me with a sort of wistfulness, but neither to _them_ nor to her words can I make any answer.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

Next morning I am sitting before my looking-gla.s.s--never to me a pleasant article of furniture--having my hair dressed. I am hardly awake yet, and have not quite finished disentangling the real live disagreeables which I have to face, from the imaginary ones from which my waking has freed me. At least, in real life, I am not perpetually pursued, through dull abysses, by a man in a c.r.a.pe mask, from whom I am madly struggling to escape, and who is perpetually on the point of overtaking and seizing me.

It was a mistake going to sleep at all last night. It would have been far wiser and better to have kept awake. The _real_ evils are bad enough, but the dream ones in their vivid life make me s.h.i.+ver even now, though the morning sun is lying in companionable patches on the floor, and the birds are loudly talking all together. Do _no_ birds ever listen?

Distracted for a moment from my own miseries, by the noise of their soft yet sharp hubbub, I am thinking this, when a knock comes at the door, and the next moment Barbara enters. Her blond hair is tumbled about her shoulders; no white rose's cheeks are paler than hers; in her hand she has a note. In a moment I have dismissed the maid, and we are alone.

"I want you to read this!" she says, in an even and monotonous voice, from which, by an effort whose greatness I can dimly guess, she keeps all sound of trembling.

I have risen and turned from the gla.s.s; but now my knees shake under me so much that I have to sit down again. She comes behind me, so that I may no longer see her: and putting her arms round my neck, and hiding her face in my unfinished hair, says, whisperingly:

"Do not fret about it, Nancy!--I do not mind much."

Then she breaks into quiet tears.

"Do you mean to say that he has had the _insolence_ to write to you," I cry, in a pa.s.sion of indignation, forgetting for the moment Barbara's ignorance of what has occurred, and only reminded of it by the look of wonder that, as I turn on my chair to face her, I see come into her eyes.

"Have not you been expecting him every day to write to me?" she asks, with a little wonder in her tone; "but _read_!" (pointing to the note, and laughing with a touch of bitterness), "you will soon see that there is no _insolence_ here."

I had quite as lief, in my present state of mind, touch a yard-long wriggling ground-worm, or a fat wood-louse, as paper that his fingers have pressed; but I overcome my repulsion, and unfold the note.

"DEAR MISS GREY:

"Can I do any thing for you in town? I am going up there to-morrow, and shall thence, I think, run over to the Exhibition. I have no doubt that it is just like all the others; but _not_ to have seen it will set one at a disadvantage with one's fellows. I am afraid that there is no chance of your being still at Tempest when I return. I shall be most happy to undertake any commissions.

"Yours sincerely,

"F. MUSGRAVE"

The note drops from my fingers, rolls on to my lap, and thence to the ground. I sit in stiff and stupid silence. To tell the truth, I am trying strongly to imagine how I should look and what I should say, were I as ignorant of causes as Barbara thinks me, and to look and speak accordingly.