The Star-Gazers Part 11

"Is she very ill?" said Lucy sympathetically.

"Stricken with a fatal disease, my dear young lady," he replied.

"Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Lucy.

"One, however, that gives neither pain nor trouble. She will not suffer in the least."

"I'm glad of that," cried Lucy, "for I like the poor old lady. What is her complaint?"

"Senility," said Oldroyd, smiling. "Why, my dear Miss Alleyne, she is ninety-five."

"Will you come with me, Lucy," said Mrs Alleyne, who had been vainly trying to catch her daughter's eye, and then--"perhaps Mr Oldroyd will excuse us."

"Not if you are going to make any additions to the meal on my account, madam," said the doctor, hastily. "I am the plainest of plain men--a bachelor who lives on chops and steaks, and it needs a sharp-edged appet.i.te to manage these country cuts."

Mrs Alleyne smiled again, and the visitor was left alone.

"Old lady didn't like my staying," he said to himself. "Shouldn't have asked me, then. I am hungry, but--Oh! what a pretty, natural, clever little witch it is. I wish I'd a good practice; I should try my luck if I had, and I don't think there is any one in the way."

"Humph! End of the world," he said, rising and crossing to look at the picture. "What a ghastly daub!"

"What a wilderness; why don't they have the garden done up?" he continued, going to one of the windows, and looking at the depressing, neglected place without. "Ugh! what a home for such a bright little blossom. It must be something awful on a wet, wintry day."

"Sorry I stopped," he said, soon after.

"No, I'm not; I'm glad. Now, I'll be bound to say there's boiled mutton and turnips for dinner, and plain rice pudding. It's just the sort of meal one would expect in a house like this. Mum!"

He gave his lips a significant tap, for the door opened, and Lucy entered, accompanied by a sour-looking maid with a clayey skin and dull grey eyes, bearing a tray.

"Be as quick as you can, Eliza," said Lucy. "You won't mind my helping, Mr Oldroyd, will you?" she continued. "We only keep one servant now."

"Mind? Not I," he replied cheerily. "Let me help too. I'll lay the knives and forks."

"No, no, no!" cried Lucy, as she wondered what Mrs Alleyne would have said if she had heard her allusion to "one servant now."

"Oh, but I shall," he said; and the maid looked less grim as she saw the doctor begin to help. "Let's see," he said, "knives right, forks left.

Won't do to turn the table round if you place them wrong, as the Irishman did."

Just then the maid--Eliza--left the room to fetch some addition to the table.

"I am glad you are going to stay, Mr Oldroyd," said Lucy naively.

"Are you?" he said, watching her intently as the busy little hands produced cruets and gla.s.ses from the sideboard cupboard.

"Oh yes, for it is so dull here."

"Do you find it so?"

"Oh, no, I don't. I was thinking of Moray. It will be someone for him to talk to. Mamma fidgets about him so; but I felt as sure as could be that he only looked ill because he works so terribly hard."

A step was heard outside, and the young doctor started from the table, where he was arranging a couple of spoons on either side of a salt-cellar, with so guilty a look that Lucy turned away her head to conceal a smile.

Oldroyd saw it though, and was annoyed at being so weak and boyish; but he felt that, after all, he was right, for it would have looked extremely undignified in Mrs Alleyne's eyes if he had been caught playing so domestic a part in a strange house.

"I wish she had not laughed at me, though," he said to himself; and then he tried to pa.s.s the matter off as Mrs Alleyne came back, bland and dignified, trying to conceal the fact that she had been out to make a few preparations that would help to hide the poverty of the land.

"You will excuse our meal being very simple, Mr Oldroyd," she said quietly; "I did not expect company."

"If you would kindly treat me as if I were not company, Mrs Alleyne, I should be greatly obliged," replied Oldroyd; and then there was an interchange of bows--that on the lady's part being of a very dignified but gracious kind, one that suggested tolerance, and an absolute refusal to accept the doctor as anything else than a visitor.

Oldroyd felt rather uncomfortable, but there was comfort in Lucy's presence, as, utterly wanting in her mother's reserve, she busied herself in trying to make everything pleasant and attractive for their guest, in so natural and homely a manner, that while the doctor had felt one moment that he wished he had not stayed, the next he was quite reconciled to his fate.

"I feel as sure as can be that I am right," thought Oldroyd, as at the end of a few minutes, Eliza entered with a large dish, whose contents were hidden by a battered and blackened cover, placed it upon the table, retreated, came back with a couple of vegetable dishes, retreated once more and came back with four dinner-plates, whose edges were chipped and stained from long usage.

Oldroyd glanced at Lucy, and saw her pretty forehead wrinkled up, reading accurately enough that she was troubled at the shabbiness of the table's furnis.h.i.+ngs; and, as if she felt that he was gazing at her, she looked up quickly, caught his eye, and coloured with vexation, feeling certain as she did that he had read her thoughts.

"Will you excuse me a moment, Mr Oldroyd?" said Mrs Alleyne, with dignity. "We do not use a dinner-bell, the noise disturbs my son. I always fetch him from the observatory myself."

Oldroyd bowed again, and crossed the room to open the door for his hostess to pa.s.s out.

"What a nuisance all this formality is," he thought to himself, "I hate it;" but all the same, he felt constrained to follow Mrs Alleyne's lead, and he was beginning once more to regret his stay when he turned to encounter the fresh, natural, girlish look of the daughter of the house.

"Mamma makes a regular habit of fetching my brother to meals, Mr Oldroyd," said Lucy; "I don't believe he would come unless she went.

But while she is away, do tell me once again you don't think Moray is going to be seriously ill?"

"But I do think so," he replied.

"Oh, Mr Oldroyd!"

The young doctor gazed at the pretty sympathetic face with no little pleasure, as he saw its troubled look, and the tears rising in the eyes.

"How nice," he thought, "to be anyone she cares for like this," and then he hugged himself upon his knowledge, which in this case was power--the power of being able to change that troubled face to one full of smiles.

"I think he is going to be very seriously ill--if he does not alter his way of life."

"He could avoid the illness, then?" cried Lucy, with the change coming.

"Certainly he could. He has only to take proper rest and out-door exercise to be as well as you are."

"Then pray advise him, Mr Oldroyd," said Lucy, who was beaming now. "Do try and get him to be sensible. It is of no use to send him medicine-- he would not take a drop. Hus.h.!.+ here he is."

At that moment there were slow, deliberate steps in the hall, and then the door opened, and Mrs Alleyne, with a smile full of pride upon her calm, stern face, entered, leaning upon the arm of a tall, grave, thoughtful-looking man, whose large dark-grey eyes seemed to be gazing straight before him, through everything, into the depths of s.p.a.ce, while his mind was busy with that which he sought to see.

He was apparently about three or four-and-thirty, well-built and muscular; but his muscles looked soft and rounded. There was an appearance of relaxation, even in his walk; and, though his eyes were wide open, he gave one the idea of being in a dream. He was dressed in a loose, easy-fitting suit of tweeds, but they had been put on anyhow, and the natural curls of his dark-brown hair and beard made it very evident that the time he spent at the toilet-table was short.

What struck the visitor most was the veneration given to the student by his mother and sister, the former full of pride in her offspring, as she drew back his chair, and waited until he had seated himself, before she took her own place at the head of the table, and signed to her guest to follow her example.

It was a reversal of the ordinary arrangements at a board, for Oldroyd found himself opposite Moray Alleyne, with Mrs Alleyne and her daughter at the head and foot. In fact, it soon became evident that Mrs Alleyne's son took no interest whatever in matters terrestrial of a domestic nature, his mind being generally far away.