Nancy Part 59

The cloth is therefore laid, with the dead heather-flowers beneath it, and the low leaden sky above. As large stones as can be found have to be sought on the moorland road to weight it, and hinder our banquet from flying bodily away. It is at last spread--cold lamb, cold partridges, chickens, _mayonnaise_, cakes, pastry--they have just been arranged in their defenceless nakedness under the eye of heaven, when the rain begins. And, when it begins, it begins to some purpose. It deceives us with no false hopes--with no breakings in the serried clouds--with no flying glimpses of blue sky. Down it comes, straight, _straight_ down, on the lamb, on the _mayonnaise_, splash into the bitter. Each of us seizes the viand dearest to his or her heart, and tries to shelter it beneath his or her umbrella. But in vain! The great slant storm reaches it under the puny defense. Even Mr. Parker has to change the _form_ of his consolation, though not the spirit. He can no longer deny that it is raining; but what he now says is that it will not last--that it is only a shower--that he is very glad to see it come down so hard at first, as it is all the more certain to be soon over.

n.o.body has the heart to contradict him, though everybody knows that it is a lie. Mrs. Huntley, at the first drop, has made for the coach, and now sits in it, serene and dry. Algy follows her, with a chicken and a champagne bottle. I sit doggedly still, where I am, on the cold moor.

Roger has not spoken to me since my rude reception of him on arriving, but he now comes up to me.

"Had not you better follow her example?" he asks, speaking rather formally, and looking toward the coach, where with smiling profile and neat hair, my rival is sitting, reveling among the flesh-pots.

Something in the sight of her sleek, smooth tidiness, joined to the consciousness of my own miserable, blowsed disorder, stings me more even than the rain-drops are doing.

"Not I!" I answer, brusquely; "that is what I trust I shall never do!"

He pa.s.ses by my sneer without notice.

"In this rain you will be drenched in two minutes."

"Apres!"

"_Apres!_" he repeats, impatiently, "_apres?_ you will catch your death of cold!"

"And you will be a widower!" reply I, with a bitter smile.

Barbara is as obstinate as I am. She, too, seems to prefer the spite of the elements to disturbing the _tete-a-tete_ in the coach. Musgrave has made her as comfortable as he can, with her back against the poor little Scotch fir, and a plaid over both their heads.

The feast proceeds in solemn silence. Even if we had the heart to talk, the difficulty of making ourselves heard would quite check the inclination.

There are little puddles in all our plates--the bread and cakes are _pap_--the lamb is damp and flabby, and the _mayonnaise_ is reduced to a sort of watery whey.

Mr. Parker is the only one who, under these circ.u.mstances, makes any attempt to pretend that we are enjoying ourselves.

"This is not so bad, after all," he says, still with that same unconquerable accent of joviality. He has to say it three times, and to put up his hands to his mouth like a speaking-trumpet, before any one hears him. When they do, "answer comes there none!"

I, indeed, am not in a position for conversation at the exact moment that the demand is made upon me. I have just come to the end of a long wrestle with my umbrella. It has at last got its wicked will, and has turned right inside out! All its whalebones are aspiring heavenward. It is transformed into a melancholy _cup_--like a great ugly flower, on a bare stalk. I lay the remains calmly down beside me, and affront the blast and the tempest alone! I have a brown hat on--at least it _was_ brown when we set off--I am just wondering, therefore, with a sort of stupid curiosity, why the _rill_ that so plenteously distills from its brim, and so madly races down my cold nose, should be _sky blue_, when I perceive that Barbara has left her shelter, and her lover, and is standing beside me.

"Poor Nancy!" she says, with a softly compa.s.sionate laugh, "how wet you are! come under the plaid with me! you have no notion how warm it keeps one; and the tree, though it does not _look_ much, saves one a bit, too--and Frank does not mind being wet--come quick!"

I am too wretched to object. No water-proof could stand the deluge to which mine has been subjected. My shoulder-blades feel moist and _sticky_: my hair is in little dismal ropes, and dreadful runlets are coursing down my throat, and under my clothes.

Without any remonstrance, I snuggle under the plaid with Barbara--with a little of the feeling of soothing and dependence with which, long ago, in the dear old dead days at home, I used, when I was a naughty child, or a bruised child--and I was very often both--to creep to her for consolation.

Thanks to the wind, and to our proximity, we are able to talk without a fear of being overheard.

"You are wrong!" Barbara says, glancing first toward the coach, and then turning the serene and limpid gravity of her blue eyes on me; "you are making a mistake!"

I do not affect to understand her.

"_Am I?_" I say, indignantly; "I am doing nothing of the kind! it is not only my own idea!--ask Algy!"

"_Algy!_" (with a little accent of scorn), "poor Algy!--he is in such a fit state for judging, is not he?"

We both involuntarily look toward him.

It is _his_ turn now, and his morosity is exchanged for an equally uncomfortable hilarity. His cheeks are flushed; he is laughing loudly, and going in heavily for the champagne. The next moment he is scowling discourteously at his old host, who, with his poor old chuckle entirely drowned, and overcome by an endless sort of choking monotony of cough, is clambering on tottery old legs into the coach, to try and get his share of shelter.

We both laugh a little; and then Barbara speaks again.

"Nancy, I want to say something to you. Just now I heard Roger ask whether there was a fly to be got at the public-house where the horses are put up, and it seems there _is_; and he has sent for it. You may think that it is for _her_, but it is not--it is for _you_! Will you promise me to go home in it, if he asks you?"

I am silent.

"Will you?" she repeats, taking hold of one of my froggy hands, while her eyes s.h.i.+ne with a soft and friendly urgency; "you know you always used to take my advice when we were little--will you?"

Somehow, at her words, a little warmth of comfortable rea.s.surance steals about my heart. At home she always used to be right: perhaps she is right now--perhaps _I_ am wrong. I will be even better than her suggestion.

Roger is standing not far from us. The rain has drenched his beard and his heavy mustache: the great drops stand on his eyelashes, and on his straight brows. Perhaps I only imagine it, but to me he looks sad and out of heart. It is not the weather that makes him so, if he is. Much he cares for that!

I call him "Roger!" My voice is small and low, and the wind is large and loud, but he hears me.

"Yes?" (turning at the sound with a surprised expression).

"May I go home in the fly?" I ask impulsively, yet humbly, "I mean with--with _her_!" (a gulp at the p.r.o.noun), then, under the influence of a fear that he may think that I am driven by a hankering after creature comforts to this overture, I go on quickly, "it is not because I want to be kept dry--if I were to be dragged through the sea I could not be wetter than I am--but if you wish--Barbara thought--Barbara said--"

I mumble off into shy incoherency.

"_Will_ you?" he says, with a tone of eagerness and pleasure, which, if not real, is at least admirably feigned. "It is what I was just wis.h.i.+ng to ask you, only" (laughing with a sort of constraint and a touch of bitterness) "I really was _afraid_!"

"Am I such a _shrew_?" I say, looking at him with a feeling of growing light-heartedness. "Ah! I always was! was not I, Barbara?" Then, a moment after, in a tone that is almost gay, I say, "May Barbara come, too? is there room?"

"Of course!" he answers readily; "surely there is plenty of room for all!"

While the words are yet on his lips, while I am still smiling up at him, under the soaked tartan there comes a voice from the coach.

"Roger!"

He obeys the summons. It is just five paces off, and I hear each of the slow and softly-enunciated words that follow.

"I hear that you have sent for a fly! how very thoughtful of you! did you ever forget _any thing_, I wonder? I was--no--not _dreading_ my drive home; but now I am _quite_ looking forward to it. Why did you not bring a pack of cards? we might have had a game of bezique."

"I think we have made another arrangement," he answers, quietly. "I think Nancy will be your companion instead of me."

"_Lady Tempest!_" (with a slight but to me quite perceptible raising of eyebrows, and accenting of words).

"Yes, Nancy."

I can see her face, but not his. To my acutely listening, sharply jealous ears there sounds a tone of faint and carefully hidden annoyance in his voice. It seems to me, too, that her features would not dare to wear such an expression of open disappointment if they were not answered and meeting something in his. I therefore take my course. I jump up hastily, flinging off the plaid, and advance toward the interlocutors.

She is just saying, "Oh, I understand! very nice!" in a little formal voice when I break in.

"I am going to do nothing of the kind!" I cry, hurriedly. "I have altered my mind; I shall keep to the coach, that is" (with a nervous laugh, and a miserable attempt at coquetry), "if Mr. Parker is not tired of me."