The Star-Gazers Part 67

"I wish we had gone away from here months upon months ago," she said to herself impatiently. "We might have been so happy anywhere else. And I thought, too, that everything was going to be so pleasant, with Glynne for my companion, only people seemed to have leagued themselves against us; and I'm sure there's no harm in either poor Moray or myself, only we couldn't help liking someone else. Heigho!"

"Who's that?" cried Alleyne, starting, for Lucy's sigh had been uttered aloud. "Oh, you, Lucy," he said, dropping his eyes again.

"I've only come to see you, dear, for a little while, Moray, darling, how late you were last night."

He started wildly, caught the hands she had laid caressingly upon his shoulders, and stared in her face.

"How did you know?" he cried hoa.r.s.ely.

"Don't, dear; you hurt me."

He relaxed his grasp, and she felt him trembling.

"Don't be angry with me, Moray," she said, bursting into tears. "It was only because I loved you and suffered with you. I can't bear to see my darling brother like this."

"You--you were watching me?" he stammered.

"Don't call it by that unkind t.i.tle, dear," she said. "I cannot bear it. I know how you grieve, and I have often sat at my window and seen you go out of a night, and waited till you came back. One night--don't be angry with me, Moray," she cried, throwing her arms about his neck--"I followed you to the Fir Mount, to see you were up there watching Glynne's window."

"Lucy! Last night?"

"No, no, dear," she cried in alarm. "Don't--don't be so fierce with me.

It was only once."

He uttered a low, hoa.r.s.e sigh as if of relief.

"It was one night when you had quite frightened me by being so despondent. I was afraid you meant to do yourself some mischief, and I stole out to see where you went. As soon as I understood why you had gone there, I came back."

"Was it so strange a thing for an astronomer to go out to a high place where he could see some planet rise?"

Lucy was silent for a few moments.

"No, dear," she said at last in a whisper, "nor for a man who loves to go and watch the house that holds all that is dear to him in life. But, Moray, dear, what is the matter with your hand?"

"Nothing," he said, hastily thrusting his bandaged hand into his pocket.

"Only a cut--from a knife--nothing more. There--that will do. Why did you come?"

"It is the twenty-fifth, Moray. I thought I'd come and remind you."

"Twenty-fifth," he said hurriedly; "twenty-fifth?"

"Yes, dear, Glynne Day's wedding."

She regretted speaking the next instant, as she saw her brother's head go down upon his hand; but he looked up at her directly, and, to her surprise, with a peculiar smile.

"Thank you for reminding me, dear," he said. "I hope she will be very happy."

"I don't," cried Lucy petulantly, "and I'm sure she won't be. Oh, how could she be so foolish as to engage herself to such a man as that!"

Alleyne did not reply, but sat gazing before him at a broad band of sunlight which cut right across the portion of the great room where he was seated. It seemed to him that Glynne was the bright bar of light that had been thrown across the dark, shadowy life that he had led; and to make the idea more real, the pa.s.sing of a cloud cut the ray suddenly, and the great, chill room, with its uncouth instruments, its piles of scientific lumber, and its dust, was gloomy once again.

The bright ray had come and gone. It was but a memory now, and Alleyne uttered a sigh of relief, for he told himself that the past was dead, and he must divide it from his present existence by a broad, well-marked line.

"Have you nothing to say, Moray?" whispered Lucy at last. "Do you not understand? Are you not going to make one more effort to make her change her purpose."

"My dear Lucy!" he said tenderly.

That was all, but he took her in his arms and kissed her, as if she were still the little child whom he used to pet and play with years before.

As soon as he released her she stood looking at him with her brows knit for a few moments, and then said,--

"Moray, should you mind very much if I were to go?"

"Go?" he said dreamily. "Go?"

"Yes; to see Glynne married."

She saw a twitching of the nerves of his face as he realised her meaning, and was regretting her question, when he said softly,--

"No, my dear, no. Go if you wish it. Yes, go."

He turned from her and resumed his work, making figures rapidly on a sheet of paper before him, and as he evidently wished to be alone, she stole softly out of the room.

Half-an-hour later Alleyne, who had left his work as soon as Lucy quitted him, and gone to a window which overlooked the road, saw his sister, very plainly dressed in white, go along the lane towards Brackley Church.

He did not stir, but stood watching till the white dress disappeared among the tall columnar fir trees.

Then came another figure going in the same direction, and in his moody, despairing state, Alleyne hardly noted for a few moments who it was, till the figure stopped short to turn and talk to a tall, gaunt-looking man, whom Alleyne recognised as Hayle, the man he had seen when Oldroyd was attending him, and it was the latter now speaking.

After a few minutes conversation, Alleyne saw Hayle shake his head, and go in one direction, while Oldroyd went in the other, that taken by Lucy, toward the church.

Then Alleyne turned from the window with a blank look of despair in his eyes, a strange vacant wildness of aspect in his drawn and haggard countenance. He walked to and fro. He threw himself into his great chair, but only to spring up again and pace the room with eager, hurried steps.

He sank helplessly down upon his chair once more, and rested his throbbing brow upon his hands, his misery so acute that he felt that he was going mad; but as the time went on, a dull feeling of lethargy came over him, and he sat there crouched together till Mrs Alleyne came into the room and touched him with her cold, thin hand, when he started.

"My boy!" she said tenderly, as she laid her hands upon his shoulders, "is it so hard to bear?"

"Hard? Yes, cruelly hard," he said, with a sigh of misery.

"And in turn we have to bear these agonies," she said softly. "I have known them, too, my boy, hours of despair when life all looked too black to be faced, and there seemed to be nothing to do but die."

He looked at her inquiringly.

"Yes, my boy, these troubles have been mine at times, and I have thought like this--thought as you have thought since that woman came between us to blast our hearth."

"Hus.h.!.+" he cried, almost fiercely. "Not one disloyal word against her, mother. It was my ill-balanced nature led me wrong, and she never came between you and me."

"Forgive me, my boy," cried Mrs Alleyne, as he took her in his arms. "I know, I know. Always my own true loving son. But it seems so hard that she should have treated you as she did."