The Star-Gazers Part 75

Then she waited patiently for days in the grim, cheerless home, where her brother seemed to be settling down into a thoughtful, dreamy man, who was ageing rapidly, and whose eyes always looked full of some terrible trouble, which was eating away his life, while, if possible, Mrs Alleyne looked older, thinner, and more careworn than of yore.

Oldroyd came at intervals professionally, but there was a peculiar distance observed between him and Lucy, who treated him with petulant angry resentment, and he was reserved and cold.

But his visits did no good. There were no walks with the doctor, no garden flowers bloomed at the astronomer's touch. Alleyne studied harder than ever, and his name rose in reputation among the scientific, but he received no visitors, paid no calls, and only asked for one thing from those of his household--to be let alone.

A week had elapsed before the postman, with a great deal of mysterious action, slipped a note into Lucy's hand, making her run to her room trembling and feeling guilty, to hold the letter open, illegible for the tears which veiled her eyes.

At last, though, she read the few brief lines which it contained:--

"Think of the past, Lucy, as of happy days spent with one who loved you, and who is now dead. Better that we should never meet again. Better, perhaps, if I had never lived. G.o.d bless _you_, dear. Good-bye."

Poor Lucy was too ill to appear at dinner that day, and for several more she did not stir out. Then Mrs Alleyne insisted upon her going for a walk, and, as if drawn by fate, she went straight toward the fir mount to climb to the top, where she could sit down and gaze at Brackley, and try to make out Glynne, who might be walking in the garden.

No: she saw no tall white figure there, and she felt that unless she borrowed some "optick tube" from her brother's observatory, she was not likely to see her friend a mile away, and she stood there low-spirited and tearful.

"If I could only see her, and say,--'Glynne, sister, what is all that terrible trouble to us? You are still the only friend I ever loved,'

and clasp her in my arms, and let her tears mingle with mine. Oh, please G.o.d," she said, softly, speaking like a little child, as she sank upon her knees amongst the thickly-shed pine needles, and clasped her hands, "let there be no more sorrow for my poor, dear friend; make her happy once again."

That fir-clad hill became Lucy's favourite resort by day, as it had been her brother's in the past, by night; and she went again and again, till one afternoon, following out an old habit, she was stooping to pick a plant from where it grew, when she became aware of someone approaching, and she started and coloured, and then recovered herself, and rose erect and slightly resentful, for Major Day, looking very sad and old stood before her, raising his hat.

"May I see what you have there?" he said gravely.

"I think it is an _Amanita_," said Lucy, trying hard to speak firmly, as she held out the whitish-looking fungus toward the old botanist, as if it had been a tiny j.a.panese parasol.

Major Day fixed his _pince-nez_ on the organ it was made to pinch, and, taking the curious vegetable, carefully examined it, turning it over and over before saying decisively,--

"Yes, exactly; _Amanita Vernus_, a very poisonous species, Miss Alleyne.

I--er--I am very glad to see that you keep up your knowledge of this interesting branch of botany. I have been paying a good deal of attention to it in Italy this past autumn and winter."

"Indeed," said Lucy.

"Yes, my dear--Miss Alleyne," said the major, correcting himself. "The Italians are great eaters of fungi. My brother found Rome and Florence very dull. Of course he was longing to be back amongst his farming stock. Great student of the improvement of cattle, Miss Alleyne. I found the country about Rome and Florence most interesting. It would have been far more so if I had had a sympathetic companion."

"I must--I will tell him everything," thought Lucy; and then the colour came, and she felt that it would be impossible, and that her only course was to allow time to smooth away this little burr.

"Are you finding truffles?" she said, with a.s.sumed cheerfulness.

He looked at her in a curiously wistful manner for a few moments, and that look was agony to Lucy, as her conscience told her that she had had a fall from the high niche to which she had risen in the major's estimation.

"Yes," he said, slowly, and there was an unwonted coldness and gravity in his manner; "at my old pursuit, Miss Alleyne--at my old pursuit. So you have not quite given it up?"

"Oh no," cried Lucy, trying to pa.s.s over the coldness, which chilled her warm young heart. "I have been collecting several times lately, and--"

Lucy stopped short, for the major was looking at her keenly, as if recalling the fact that when she had been mushrooming she had encountered Rolph sauntering about with a cigar in his mouth.

"Yes," said the major, quietly; "and were you very successful?"

It was a very simple question, just such a one as anyone might ask to help a hesitating speaker who had come to a standstill; but to Lucy it seemed so different from what she had been accustomed to hear from the major's lips. His manner had always been tenderly paternal towards her; there had been such openness and full confidence between them, and such a warm pressure of hand to hand. Now this was gone, and there was a cold and dreary gap.

"Successful?" said Lucy, with her voice trembling and her face beginning to work. "Yes--no--I--Have you many truffles, Major Day?"

This last with an effort to master her emotion, and its effect, as she spoke sharply and quickly, was to give her time to recover herself, and the major a respite from what had threatened to be a painful scene.

"Yes, yes; a fair number," he said, as if he were addressing one who was a comparative stranger, but towards whom he wished to behave with the greatest deference. "They are very small, though--very small; not like those they dig in France. May I send you a few, my--Miss Alleyne?"

Lucy shook her head, for her emotion mastered her this time. That alteration from what was to have been "my dear" to "Miss Alleyne" was too much for her, and she bowed hastily and hurried away.

But the major hastened after her, and overtook her in the lane.

"Miss Alleyne--Lucy," he cried. "One moment, please."

"Major Day!" she cried, in surprise.

"And your very good old friend, my dear. Since I saw you last I have been thinking a great deal, and many things which troubled me before we left home have gradually a.s.sumed an entirely fresh aspect. I was hasty, and, to be frank, I used to think ill of you, and my conscience is so full of reproach that I--if you'll excuse me--I--I must beg your pardon."

"Beg my pardon, Major Day?" said Lucy, and she turned red and white by turns as she began to tremble.

"Yes, my dear, and ask you to forgive me."

"Forgive you, Major Day?"

"Yes, my dear, I fear I was too ready to believe you were weak and foolish, and did not give you credit for being what you are, and--there, there, my dear, I surrender at discretion, I leave it to your generosity to let me march off with colours flying."

"Dear Major Day! I didn't deserve that you should think so ill of me,"

sobbed Lucy pa.s.sionately, and laying her hands in the old man's she made no resistance as he drew her towards him, and kissed her forehead, just when, according to his unlucky custom, Oldroyd came into sight.

At the moment when the major bent down and pressed his lips on little Lucy's white forehead, the pony's head was directed straight towards them; the next instant he had sprung round like a weather-c.o.c.k, and his head was directed towards home, but only for a few moments, before it was dragged round again, and the doctor come slowly ambling towards them, looking indignant and fierce.

"Then we are to be the best of friends again, eh, my dear, and I am quite forgiven?"

"Oh, yes, dear Major Day," said Lucy; "but please don't think so ill of me again."

"I'm a dreadful old scoundrel ever to have thought ill of you at all,"

cried the major. "There, we must forget all the past. Ah, doctor, how are you? When are you coming up to the hall? My brother will be glad to see you, I'm sure."

"I hope Sir John is not unwell?" said Oldroyd, trying to wither Lucy with a look, and bringing back upon himself such an indignant flash that he metaphorically curled up, as he muttered something to himself about the daring impudence some women could display.

"Unwell? dear me, no," said the major. "A little pulled down by too much inaction abroad; nothing hurts him though much. I mean come as a visitor. How is the health of the neighbourhood, eh?"

"Excellent, Major Day, that is, excepting Mr Alleyne's."

"What! Mr Alleyne ill? Bless my soul! you did not say anything about it, my dear."

"My dear! my dear!" muttered Oldroyd between his teeth; "always my dear.

Surely the old idiot is not going to marry the wicked little flirt."

"I had not had time, Major Day," said Lucy eagerly, "but I don't think dear Moray is any worse than usual."

"Worse than usual? Then he has been unwell?"