Nancy Part 31

"There is no particular use in making one's self _cheap_, is there?" he says, with a bitter little laugh. "What is the use of going to a place where you are told that _any one else_ will do as well?"

A pause. I walk along in silent wonderment. So he actually was happy again! We have left the church-yard. We are in the road, between the dusty quicks of the hedgerows. The carriages bowl past us, whirling clouds of dust down our throats. One is trotting by now, a victoria and pair of grays, and in it, leaning restfully back, and holding up her parasol, is the lady I noticed in church. Musgrave knows her apparently.

At least, he takes off his hat.

"Who is she?" I say, with a slightly aroused interest. "I was wondering in church. I suppose she is delicate, as she sat down through the psalms."

At the moment I address him, Mr. Musgrave is battling angrily with an angrier wasp, but no sooner has he heard my question than he ceases his warfare, and allows it to buzz within half an inch of his nose, as he turns his hazel eyes, full of astonished inquiry, upon me.

"You _do not know_?"

"Not I," reply I lightly. "How should I? I know n.o.body in these parts."

"That is Mrs. Huntley."

"You do not say so!" reply I, ironically. "I am sure I am very glad to hear it, but I am not very much wiser than I was before."

"Is it possible," he says, looking rather nettled at my tone, and lowering his voice a little, as if anxious to confine the question to me alone--a needless precaution, as there is no one else within hearing--"that you have _never_ heard of her?"

"Never!" reply I, in some surprise; "why should I?--has she ever done any thing very remarkable?"

He laughs slightly, but disagreeably.

"Remarkable! well, no, I suppose not!"

The victoria is quite out of sight now--quite out of sight the delicately poised head, the dove-colored parasol.

"You are joking, of course," says Frank, presently, turning toward me, and still speaking in that needlessly lowered key. "It is so long since I have seen you, that I have got out of the habit of remembering that you never speak seriously; but, _of course_, you have heard--I mean Sir Roger has mentioned her to you!"

"He has not!" reply I, speaking sharply, and raising my voice a little.

"Neither has he mentioned any of the other neighbors to me! He had not time." No rejoinder. "Most likely," continue I, speaking with quick heat, for something in his manner galls me, "he did not recollect her existence."

"Most likely."

He is looking down at the white dust which is defiling his patent-leather boots, and smiling slightly.

"How do you know--what reason have you for thinking that he was aware that there was such a person?" I ask, with injudicious eagerness.

"I have no reason--I think nothing," he answers, coldly, with an air of ostentatious reserve.

I walk on in a ruffled, jarred silence. Presently Frank speaks again.

"Are those two"--(slightly indicating by a faint nod the figures in front of us)--"the two you expected?--Are these--what are their names?--_Algy_ and _Barbara_?"

"Yes," say I, smiling, with recovered equanimity; "Algy and Barbara." A little pause. "You can judge for yourself now," say I, laughing rather nervously, "whether I spoke truth--whether Barbara is as like the St.

Catherine as I told you." For a moment he does not answer. "Of course,"

I say, rather crestfallen, "the bonnet makes a difference; the likeness is much more striking when it is off."

"The St. Catherine!" he repeats, with a puzzled air, "_what_ St.

Catherine? I am afraid you will think me very stupid, but I really am quite at sea."

"Do you mean to say," cry I, reddening with mortification, "that you forget--that you do not remember that St. Catherine of Palma Vecchio's in the Dresden Gallery that I always pointed out to you as having such a look of Barbara? Well, you _have_ a short memory!"

"Have I?" he answers, dryly; "perhaps for _some_ things; for _others_, I fancy that mine is a good deal longer than yours."

"It might easily be that," I answer, recovering from my temporary annoyance and laughing; "I suppose you mean for books and dates, and things of that kind. Well, you may easily beat me there. The landing of William the Conqueror, and the battle of Waterloo, were the only two dates I ever succeeded in mastering, and that was only after the struggle of years."

"Dates!" he says, impatiently, "pshaw! I was not thinking of _them_! I was thinking of Dresden!"

"Are you so sure that you could beat me there?" ask I, thoughtfully; "I do not know about that! I think I could stand a pretty stiff examination; but perhaps you are talking of the pictures and the names of the artists. Ah, yes! there you are right; with _me_ they go in at one ear, and out at another. Only the other day I was racking my brain to think of the name of the man that painted the _other_ Magdalen--not Guido's--I was telling Algy about it. Bah! what is it? I know it as well as my own."

His head is turned away from me. He does not appear to be attending.

"What is it?" I repeat; "have _you_ forgotten too?"

"Battoni!" he answers, laconically, still keeping his face averted.

"_Battoni!_ oh, yes! thanks--of course! so it is!--Algy" (raising my voice a little)--"_Battoni!_"

"Well, what about him?" replies Algy, turning his head, but not showing much inclination to slacken his speed or to join Frank and me.

"The Magdalen man--you know--I mean the man that painted the Magdalen, and whose name I could not recollect last night, Algy. Barbara! how fast you are walking!" (speaking rather reproachfully)--"stop a moment! I want to introduce you to Mr. Musgrave."

Thus adjured, they have come to a halt, and the presentation is made.

"Surely," think I, glancing at Barbara's face, slightly flushed by the heat, and still gently grave with the sobriety of expression left by devotion, "he _must_ see the likeness now!" To insure his having the chance of telling her that he does, I fall behind with Algy.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Claret cup has washed the dust from our throats; cold lamb and mayonnaise have restored the force of body and equanimity of mind which the exhausted air and long-drawn Gregorian chants of Tempest Church destroyed. Frank is lunching with us. He had accompanied us to our own gates, and had then made a feint of leaving, but I had pressed him, with an eagerness proportioned to the seriousness of my design upon him, to accompany us, and he had yielded with a willing ease.

I cannot help thinking that Algy does not look altogether pleased with the arrangement, but after all, it is _my_ house, and not Algy's. It is the first time that I have entertained a guest since the far-off childish birthdays, when the neighbors' little boys and girls used to be gathered together to drink tea out of the doll's tea service. In the afternoon, we all walk to church again, and in the same order. Barbara and Algy in front, Frank and I behind. I had planned differently, but Algy is obtuse, Barbara will come into the manoeuvres, and Frank seems simply indifferent. So it happens, that all through the park, and up the bit of dusty white road we are out of ear-shot of the other two.

"A sky worthy of Dresden!" says Mr. Musgrave, throwing back his head and looking up at the pale blue sultriness above our heads--the waveless, stormless ether sea--as we pace along, with the church-bells' measured ding-dong in our ears, and the cool ripe gra.s.ses about our feet.

"_Dear_ Dresden!" say I, pensively, with a sigh of mixed regret and remorse, as I look back on the suns.h.i.+ny hours that at the time I thought so long, in that fair, white foreign town.

"Dear Linkesches Bad!" says Frank, sighing too.

"Dear Groosegarten!" cry I, thinking of the long pottering stroll that Roger and I had taken one evening up and down its green alleys, and that _then_ I had found so tedious.

"Dear Zwinger!" retorts Frank.

"Dear Weisserhirsch!" say I, half sadly. "Dear white acacias! dear drives under the acacias!"

"_Drives under the acacias!_" echoes Frank, dropping his accent of sentimentalism, and speaking rather sharply. "We never had any drives under the acacias! We never had any drives at all, that I recollect!"