Kitabı oku: «The Star-Gazers», sayfa 13
“Oh yes, sometimes. She reads so much.”
“Fie, Captain Rolph!”
“No, no; nonsense. Oh, I say, though, I wish you would.”
“Really, Captain Rolph, I don’t understand you,” said Lucy, who was in a flutter of fright, mischief and triumph combined.
“Oh yes, you do,” he said, “but hold hard a minute. Back directly.”
He ran from her out to where something was hanging on a broken branch of a pine, and returned directly, putting on a flannel cricketing cap, and a long, hooded ulster, which, when buttoned up, gave him somewhat the aspect of a friar of orders grey, who had left his beads at home.
“You do understand me,” he said, not noticing the mirthful twinkle in Lucy’s eye at his absurd appearance. “Oh yes, you do. It’s all right. I say, Lucy Alleyne, what a one you are.”
Lucy’s eyebrows went up a little at this remark, but she did not assume displeasure, she only looked at him inquiringly.
“Oh, it’s all right,” he said again. “I am glad I met you, it’s so precious dull down here.”
“What, when you have all your training to see to, Captain Rolph.”
“Oh, yes; awfully dull. You see Glynne doesn’t take any interest in a fellow’s pursuits. She used to at first, but now it’s always books.”
“But you should teach her to be interested, Captain Rolph.”
“Oh, I say, hang it all, Lucy Alleyne, can’t you drop that captaining of a fellow when we’re out here tête-à-tête. It’s all very well up at the Hall but not here, and so early in the morning, we needn’t be quite so formal, eh?”
“Just as you like,” said Lucy, with the malicious twinkle in her eyes on the increase.
“That’s right,” cried Rolph; “and, I say, you know, come, own up – you did, didn’t you?”
“Did what?” cried Lucy.
“Know I was training this morning.”
“Indeed, no,” cried Lucy, indignantly, with a look that in no wise abashed the captain.
“Oh, come now, that won’t do,” cried Rolph. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not a bit ashamed,” cried Lucy stoutly; and then to herself, “Oh yes, I am – horribly. What a fright, to be sure!”
“That’s right,” cried Rolph, “but I know you did come, and I say I’m awfully flattered, I am, indeed. I wish, you know, you’d take a little more interest in our matches and engagements: it would make it so much pleasanter for a fellow.”
“Would it?” said Lucy.
“Would it? Why, of course it would. You see I should feel more like those chaps used, in the good old times, you know, when they used to bring the wreaths and prizes they had won, and lay ’em at ladies’ feet, only that was confoundedly silly, of course. I don’t believe in that romantic sort of work.”
“Oh, but that was at the feet of their lady-loves,” said Lucy, quickly.
“Never mind about that,” replied Rolph; “must have someone to talk to about my engagements. It’s half the fun.”
“Go and talk to Glynne, then,” said Lucy.
“That’s no use, I tell you. She doesn’t care a sou for the best bit of time made in anything. Here, I believe,” he said, warmly, “if that what’s-his-name chap, who said he’d put a girdle round the globe in less than no time, had done it, and come back to Glynne and told her so, she’d just lift up her eyes – ”
“Her beautiful eyes,” said Lucy, interrupting.
“Oh, yes, she’s got nice eyes enough,” said Rolph, sulkily; “but she’d only have raised ’em for a moment and looked at him, and said – ‘Have you really.’ Here, I say, Puck’s the chap I mean.”
“I don’t think Glynne’s very fond of athletic sports,” said Lucy.
“No, but you are; I know you are. Come, it’s of no use to deny it. I say I am glad.”
“Why, the monster’s going to make love to me,” said Lucy to herself.
“You are now, aren’t you?”
“Well, I don’t dislike them,” said Lucy; “not very much.”
“Not you; and, I say, I may talk to you a bit about my engagements, mayn’t I?”
“Really, Captain Rolph,” replied Lucy, demurely, “I hardly know what to say to such a proposal as this. To how many ladies are you engaged?”
“Ladies? Engaged? Oh, come now! I say, you know, you don’t mean that. I say, you’re chaffing me, you know.”
“But you said engaged, and I knew you were engaged to Glynne Day,” cried Lucy, innocently.
“Oh, but you know I meant engagements to run at athletic meetings. Of course I’m only engaged to Glynne, but that’s no reason why a man shouldn’t have a bit of a chat to any one else – any one pretty and sympathetic, and who took an interest in a fellow’s pursuits. I say, I’ve got a wonderful match on, Lucy.”
“How dare he call me Lucy!” she thought; and an indignant flash from her eyes fell upon a white-topped button mushroom beside the road. “A pretty wretch to be engaged to poor Glynne. Oh, how stupid she must be!”
The mushroom was not snatched up, and Rolph went on talking, with his hands far down in the pockets of his ulster.
“It’s no end of a good thing, and I’m sure to win. It’s to pick up five hundred stones put five yards apart, and bring ’em back and put ’em in a basket one at a time; so that, you see, I have to do – twice five yards is ten yards the first time, and then twice ten yards the second time; and then twice twenty yards is forty yards the third time, and then twice forty yards is eighty yards the fourth time, and – Here, I say, I’m getting into a knot, I could do it if I had a pencil.”
“But I thought you would have to run.”
“Yes; so I have. I mean to tot up on a piece of paper. It’s five yards more twice over each time, you know, and mounts up tremendously before you’re done; but I’ve made up my mind to do it, and I will.”
“All that’s very brave of you,” cried Lucy, looking him most shamelessly full in the eyes, and keeping her own very still to conceal the twitching mischief that was seeking to make puckers and dimples in all parts of her pretty face.
“Well,” he said, heavily, “you can’t quite call it brave. It’s plucky, though,” he added, with a self-satisfied smile. “There are not many fellows in my position who would do it.”
“Oh, no, I suppose not,” said Lucy, with truthful earnestness this time; and then to herself: “He’s worse than I thought.”
“Now that’s what I like, you know,” exclaimed Rolph. “That’s what I want – a sort of sympathy, you know. To feel that when I’m doing my best to win some cup or belt there’s one somewhere who takes an interest in it, and is glad for me to win. Do you see?”
“Oh, of course I am glad for you to win, if it pleases you,” said Lucy, demurely.
“But it doesn’t please me if it doesn’t please you,” cried Rolph. “I’ve won such a heap of times, that I don’t care for it much, unless there should be some one I could come and tell about it all.”
“Then why not tell Glynne?” said Lucy, opening her limpid eyes, and gazing full in the captain’s face.
“Because it’s of no use,” cried Rolph. “I’ve tried till I’m sick of trying. I want to tell you.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t tell me,” said Lucy.
“Oh, yes I must, and I’m going to begin now. I shall tell you all my ventures, and what I win, and when I am going to train; and – I say, Lucy, you did come out this morning to see me train?”
“Indeed, I did not,” she cried; “and even if I had, I should not tell you so.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Rolph, laughing. “I’m satisfied.”
“What a monster for poor Glynne to be engaged to. I believe, if I were to encourage him, he’d break off his engagement.”
“I am glad I met you,” said Rolph, suddenly, and he went a little closer to Lucy, who started aside into the wet grass, and glanced hastily round. “Why, what are you doing?” he said.
“I wanted to pick that mushroom,” she said.
“Oh, never mind the mushrooms, you’ll make your little feet wet, and I want to talk to you. I say, I’m going to train again to-morrow morning. You’ll come, won’t you. Pray do! – Who’s this?”
Both started, for, having approached unheard, his pony’s paces muffled by the turf, Philip Oldroyd cantered by them, gazing hard at Lucy, and raising his hat stiffly to Rolph, as he went past.
“Confound him! Where did he spring from?” cried Rolph. “Why, he quite startled you,” he continued, for Lucy’s face, which had flushed crimson, now turned of a pale waxen hue.
“Oh, no; it is nothing,” she said, as a tremor ran through her frame, and she hesitated as to what she should do, ending by exclaiming suddenly that she must go back home at once.
“But you’ll come and see me train to-morrow morning,” said Rolph.
“No, no. Oh, no. I could not,” cried Lucy; and she turned and hurried away.
“But you will come,” said Rolph, gazing after her. “I’ll lay two to one – five to one – fifty to one – she comes. She’s caught – wired – netted. Pretty little rustic-looking thing. I rather like the little lassie; she’s so fresh and innocent. I wonder what dignified Madame Glynne would say. Bet a hundred to one little Lucy’s thinking about me now, and making up her mind to come.”
He was right; Lucy was thinking about him, and wishing he had been at the bottom of the sea that morning before he had met her.
“Oh, what will Mr Oldroyd think?” she sobbed, as the tears ran down her face. “It’s nothing to him, and he’s nothing to me; but it’s horrible for him to have seen me walking out at this time in the morning, and alone, with that stupid, common, racing, betting creature, whom I absolutely abominate.”
She walked on, weeping silently for a few minutes before resuming her self-reproaches.
“I’m afraid it was very wicked and wrong and forward of me, but I did so want to know whether he really cared for Glynne. And he doesn’t – he doesn’t – he does not,” she sobbed passionately. “He’s a wicked, bad, empty-headed, deceitful monster; and he’d make Glynne wretched all her life. Why, he was making love to me, and talking slightingly of her all the time.”
Here there was another burst of sobs, in the midst of which, and the accompanying blinding tears, she stooped down to pick another mushroom, but only to viciously throw it away, for it to fall bottom upwards impaled upon the sharp thorns of a green furze bush close at hand.
“I don’t care,” she cried; “they may think what they like, both of them, and they may say what they like. I was trying to fight my poor, dear, injured, darling brother’s battle, and to make things happier for him, and if I’m a martyr through it, I will be, and I don’t care a pin.”
She was walking on, blinded by the veil of tears that fell from her eyes, seeing nothing, hearing nothing of the song of birds and the whirr and hum of the insect world. The morning was now glorious, and the wild, desolate common land was full of beauty; but Lucy’s heart was sore with trouble, and outburst followed outburst as she went homeward.
“I’ve found him out, though, after all, and it’s worth every pain I may feel, and Glynne shall know what a wretch he is, and then she’ll turn to poor, dear Moray, and he’ll be happy once again. Poor fellow, how he has suffered, and without a word, believing that there was no hope for him when there is; and I don’t care, I’m growing reckless now; I’d even let Glynne see how unworthy Captain Rolph is, by going to meet him. It doesn’t matter a bit, people will believe I’m weak and silly; and if the captain were to boast that he had won me, everybody would believe him. Oh, it’s dreadful, dreadful, I want to do mischief to some one else and – and – and – but I don’t care, not a bit. Yes, I do,” she sobbed bitterly. “Everybody will think me a weak, foolish, untrustworthy girl, and it will break my heart, and – oh!”
Lucy stopped short, tear-blinded, having nearly run against an obstacle in the way.
The obstacle was Lucy’s mental definition of “everybody,” who would think slightingly of her now.
For “everybody” was seated upon a pony, waiting evidently for her to come.
Volume Two – Chapter Seven.
Starlight Doings
It was astonishing how great the interest in the stars had now become in the neighbourhood of Brackley. Glynne was studying hard so as to learn something of the wondrous orbs of whose astounding nature Moray Alleyne loved to speak; and now Philip Oldroyd had told himself that it would be far better if he were not quite so ignorant on matters astronomical.
The result was that he had purchased a book or two giving accounts of the Royal Observatory, the peculiarities of the different instruments used, the various objects most studied; and in these works he was coaching himself up as fast as he could on the present night – having “a comfortable read” as he called it, before going to bed – when there came a bit of a novelty for him, a sudden summons to go and see a patient.
“What’s the matter?” he said, going to the door to answer the call, after a glance at his watch, to see that it was half-past twelve.
“Well, sir,” said the messenger, Caleb Kent, “it’s mate o’ mine hurt hissen like, somehow. Met of a fall, I think.”
“Fall, eh? Where is he hurt?”
“Mostlings ’bout the ’ead, sir, but he’s a bit touched all over.”
“What did he fall off – a cart?”
“No, sir, it warn’t off a cart. Hadn’t you better come and see him, sir?”
“Of course, my man, but I don’t want to go away from home, and then find I might have taken something, and saved my patient a great deal of suffering.”
“Yes, sir; quite right, sir,” said the man mysteriously; “well, you see, sir, I can’t talk about it like. It weer a fall certainly, but some one made him fall.”
“Oh, a fight, eh?”
“Yes, sir; there was a bit of a fight.”
“Well, if your mate has been fighting, is he bad enough to want a doctor?”
“He’s down bad, sir. It warn’t fisties.”
“Sticks?”
The man nodded.
“Anything worse?”
“Well, sir, I didn’t mean to speak about it, but it weer.”
“I think I have it,” thought Oldroyd. “The man has been shot in a poaching affray. Where is it?” he said aloud.
“Lars cottage through Lindham, sir. Tile roof.”
“Six miles away?”
“Yes, sir; ’bout six miles.”
As Oldroyd spoke, he was busily thrusting a case or two and some lint into his pockets, and filling a couple of small phials; after which he buttoned up his coat and put out his lamp.
“Now, then, my man, I must just call at the mill, and then I’m ready for you.”
“Going to walk, sir?” said the messenger.
“No; I’m going to get the miller’s pony. I’m sorry I can’t offer to drive you back.”
“Never you mind about me, sir. I can get over the ground,” said the man; and following Oldroyd down the lane, he stopped with him at a long low cottage, close beside the dammed up river, where a couple of sharp raps caused a casement to be opened.
“You, doctor?” said a voice; and on receiving an answer in the affirmative, there was the word “catch,” and Oldroyd cleverly caught a key attached by a string to a very large horse-chestnut. Then the casement was closed, and the two went round to the stable, where a stout pony’s slumbers were interrupted, and the patient beast saddled and bridled and led out, ready to spread its four legs as far apart as possible when the young doctor mounted as if afraid of being pulled over by his weight.
“Now, then,” said Oldroyd, relocking the door, “forward as fast as you like. When you’re tired I’ll get down.”
“Oh, I sha’n’t be tired,” said the man, quietly; and he started off at a regular dog-trot. “That there pony’ll go anywhere, sir, so I shall take the short cuts.”
“Mind the boggy bits, my man.”
“You needn’t be skeard about them, sir; that there pony wouldn’t near one if you tried to make him.”
Oldroyd nodded, and the man trotted to the front, the pony following, and, in spite of two or three proposals that they should change places, the guide kept on in the same untiring manner.
Here and there, though, when they had passed the common, and were ascending the hills, the man took hold of the pony’s mane, and trudged by the side; and during these times Oldroyd learned all about the fight in the fir wood.
“Whose place was it at?” said Oldroyd at last.
“Sir John Day’s, sir.”
After that they proceeded in silence till they reached the first houses of a long, straggling hamlet, when a thought occurred to Oldroyd to which he at once gave utterance.
“I say, my man, why didn’t you go to Doctor Blunt? He was two miles nearer to you than I am.”
Caleb laughed hoarsely, and shook his head.
Oldroyd checked his willing little mount at a long, low cottage beside the road, and went down the strip of garden. Three men were at the door, and they made way for him, touching their hats in a surly fashion as he came up.
“Know how he is?” said Oldroyd, sharply.
“Bout gone, sir. Glad you’ve come,” said one of the men; and Oldroyd raised the latch and went into the low-ceiled kitchen, where a tallow candle was burning in a lantern, but there was no one there.
“Here’s the doctor, miss,” said the man who had before spoken, crossing to a doorway opening at once upon a staircase, when a frightened-looking girl, with red eyes and a scared look upon her countenance, came hurrying downstairs.
“Would you please to come up, sir,” she said. “Oh. I am so glad you’ve come.”
Oldroyd followed her up the creaking staircase, and had to stoop to enter the sloping-ceiled room, where, with another pale, scared woman kneeling beside the bed, and a long, snuffed candle upon an old chest of drawers, giving a doleful, ghastly light, lay a big, black-whiskered, shaggy-haired man, his face pinched and white, and plenty of tokens about of the terrible wound he had received.
Oldroyd went at once to the bed, made a hurried examination, took out his case, and for the next half hour he was busy trying to staunch the bleeding, and place some effectual bandages upon the wound.
All this time the man never opened his eyes, but lay with his teeth clenched, and lips nipped so closely together, that they seemed to form a thin line across the lower part of his face. Oldroyd knew that he must be giving the man terrible pain, but he did not shrink, bearing it all stoically, if he was conscious, though there were times when his attendant thought he must be perfectly insensible to what was going on.
The women obeyed the slightest hint, and worked hard; but all the while Oldroyd felt that he had been called upon too late, and that the man must sink from utter exhaustion.
To his surprise, however, just as he finished his task, and was bending over his patient counting the pulsation in the wrist, the man unclosed his eyes, and looked up at him.
“Well, doctor,” he said, coolly; “what’s it to be – go or stay?”
“Life, I hope,” replied Oldroyd, as he read the energy and determination of the man’s nature. This was not one who would give up without a struggle, for his bearing during the past half hour had been heroic.
“Glad of it,” sighed the wounded man. “I haven’t done yet; and to-night’s work has given me a fresh job on hand.”
“Now, keep perfectly still and do not speak,” said Oldroyd, sternly. “Everything depends upon your being at rest. Sleep if you can. I will stop till morning to see that the bleeding does not break out again.”
“Thankye, doctor,” said the man gruffly; and just then a pair of warm lips were pressed upon Oldroyd’s hand, and he turned sharply.
“Hallo!” he said. “I’ve been so busy that I did not notice you. I’ve seen your face before.”
“Yes, sir; I met you once near The Warren – Mrs Rolph’s.”
“Thought I’d seen you. But you – are you his wife?”
“No,” said the girl, smiling faintly. “This is my father.”
“What an absurd blunder. Why, of course, I remember now. I did not know him again. It’s Mrs Rolph’s keeper.”
The flush that came into the girl’s face was visible even by the faint light of the miserable tallow candle, as Oldroyd went on in a low voice, —
“Poor fellow! I misjudged him. I took him for a poacher, and its the other way on. The scoundrels! No, no, don’t give way,” whispered Oldroyd, as the girl let her face fall into her hands and began to sob convulsively. “There, there: cheer up. We won’t let him die. You and I will pull him through, please God. Hush! quietness is everything. Go and tell those men to be still, and say I shall not want the pony till six or seven o’clock. One of them must be ready, though, in case I want a messenger to run to the town.”
Oldroyd’s words had their effect, for a dead silence fell upon the place, and the injured man soon slept quietly, lying so still, that Judith, after her return, sought the young doctor’s eyes from time to time, asking dumbly whether he was sure that something terrible had not occurred.
At such times Oldroyd rose, bent over his patient and satisfied himself that all was going well before turning to his fellow-watcher and giving her an encouraging smile.
Then there would be a weary sigh, that told of relief from an anxiety full of dread, and the night wore on.
For a time, Oldroyd, as he sat there in that dreary room, glancing occasionally at the dull, unsnuffed candle, fancied that the men had stolen away, but he would soon know that he was wrong, for the faint odour of their bad tobacco came stealing up through the window, and he knew as well as if he were present that they were sitting about on the fence or lounging against the walls of the cottage.
Between three and four, the critical time of the twenty-four hours, when life is at its lowest ebb, a sigh came from the bed, and the sufferer grew restless to a degree that made Oldroyd begin to be doubtful, but the little uneasy fit passed off, and there was utter silence once again.
Philip Oldroyd’s thoughts wandered far during this time of watching; now his imagination raised for his mental gaze the scene of the desperate encounter, and he seemed to see the blows struck, hear the oaths and fierce cries, succeeded by the report of the gun, and the groan of the injured man as he fell.
Then that scene seemed to pass away, and the room at The Firs came into sight, with its grim, blank look, the stiff figure of Mrs Alleyne; calm, deeply absorbed Alleyne; and the sunshine of the whole place, Lucy, who seemed to turn what was blank and repulsive into all that was bright and gay.
As he thought on of Lucy all the gloom and ghastliness of that wretched cottage garret faded away, a pleasant glow of satisfaction came over him, and he sat there building dreamy castles of a bright and prosperous kind, and putting Lucy in each, forgetting for the time the poverty of his practice, his own comparatively hopeless state, and the chances that she, whom he now owned that he worshipped, would be carried off by some one more successful in the world.
Did he love Lucy? Yes, he told himself, he was afraid he did – afraid, for it seemed so hopeless an affair. Did she love him? No, he dared not think that, but at one time, during the most weary portion of the watching, he could not help wishing that she might fall ill, and the duty be his to bring her back to health and strength.
He was angry with himself directly after, though he owned that such a trouble might fill her with gratitude towards him, and gratitude was a step towards love.
In the midst of these thoughts Oldroyd made himself more angry still, for he inadvertently sighed, with the effect of making the women start, and Judith gaze at him wonderingly. To take off their attention he softly shifted his seat, and began once more to think of his patient and his chances of life.
The poor fellow was sleeping easily, and so far there were no signs of the feverish symptoms that follow wounds.
The night wore on; the candle burned down in the socket, and was replaced by another, which in its turn burned out, and its successor was growing short when the twitterings of the birds were heard, and the ghostly dawn came stealing into that cheerless, whitewashed room, whose occupants’ faces seemed to have taken their hue from the ceiling.
The injured man still slept, and his breathing was low and regular, encouraged by which the countenances of the women were beginning to lose their despairing, scared aspect, as they glanced from doctor to patient, and back again.
At last the cold and pallid light of the room gave place to a warm red glow, and Oldroyd went softly to the window to see the rising sun, thinking the while what a dreary life was his, called from his comfortable home to come some six miles in the dead of the night to such a ghastly scene as this, and then to sit and watch, his payment probably the thanks of the poor people he had served.
The east was one glow of orange and gold, and the beauty of the scene, with the dewy grass and trees glittering in the morning light, chased away the mental shadows of the night.
“Not so bad a life after all,” he said to himself. “Money’s very nice, but a man can’t devote his life to greed. What a glorious morning, and how I should like a cup of tea.”
He turned to look at his patient, and found that the woman had gone, while Judith now asked him in an imploring whisper if there was any hope.
“Hope? Yes,” he replied, “it would have killed some men, but look at your father’s physique. Why, he is as strong as a horse. Take care of him and keep him quiet. Let him sleep all he can.”
Judith glanced at the wounded man, and then at Oldroyd, to whisper at last piteously, and after a good deal of hesitation, —
“The police, sir: if they come, they mustn’t take him away, must they?”
“Take him away?” said Oldroyd, wonderingly, “certainly not. I say he must not be moved. Here, I’ll write it down for you. It would be his death.”
He drew out his pocket-book to write a certificate as to the man’s state, and Judith took it, with an air approaching veneration, to fold it and place it in her bosom.
Just then the woman returned, and, after a whispering with Judith, asked Oldroyd to come down.
He glanced once more at his patient, and then followed the girl downstairs, where, in a rough but cleanly way, a cup of tea had been prepared and some bread and butter.
These proved to be so good that, feeling better for the refreshment, Oldroyd could not help noticing that, but for the traces of violent grief, Judith would have been extremely pretty.
“Will father get better, sir?” said the girl, pleadingly.
“Better? Yes, my girl,” said Oldroyd, wondering at the rustic maiden’s good looks. “There, there, don’t be foolish,” he continued, as the girl caught his hand to kiss it.
She shrank away, and coloured a little, when Oldroyd hastened to add more pleasantly, —
“I think he’ll soon be better.”
She gave him a bright, grateful look through her tears, and then hurriedly shrank away.
“Hah! that’s better,” he said to himself, as he went on with his simple meal. “A cup of tea, and a little sunshine, what a difference they do make in a man’s sensations. Humph! past six. No bed for me till to-night,” he exclaimed, as he glanced at his watch; and rising, he went softly upstairs once more, to find that his patient was still sleeping, with Judith watching by his pillow.
Oldroyd just nodded to her, and made a motion with one finger that she should come to his side.
“I’ll ride over in the afternoon,” he whispered; and then he went quietly down, said “good-morning” to the woman waiting, and with the sensation upon him that the night’s work did not seem so horrible now that the sun had risen, he stepped out.
