The Star-Gazers Part 36

"Let me go and try if I can meet him," said Oldroyd, jumping up.

"Poachers wouldn't touch him."

"Yes, do, Mr Oldroyd. I will go with you," cried Lucy, forgetting in her excitement that such a proposal was hardly etiquette. But neither mother nor daughter, in their anxiety, seemed to have the slightest idea of there being anything extraordinary at such a time.

"It won't do," Oldroyd had been saying to himself, "even if it should prove that I'm not a conceited a.s.s to think such things, and she--bless her sweet, bright little face--ever willing to think anything of me, I should be a complete scoundrel to try and win her. Let me see, what did I make last year by my practice? Twenty-eight pounds fifteen, and nine pounds of it still owing, and likely to be owing, for I shall never get a _sou_. Then this year, what shall I take? Well, perhaps another five pounds on account of her brother's illness. I must be mad."

"Yes," he said, after a pause, "I must be mad, and must have been worse to come down here to this out-of-the-way place, where there is not the most remote chance of my getting together a practice. No, it won't do, I must play misogynist, and be as cold towards the bright little thing as if I were a monk."

As these thoughts ran through his mind, others came to crowd them out-- thoughts of a snug little home, made bright by a sweet face looking out from door or window to see him coming back after a long, tiring round.

What was enough for one was enough for two--so people argued. That was right enough as regarded a house, but doubtful when it came to food, and absurd if you went as far as clothing.

"No, it would never do," he said to himself, "I could not take her from her home to my poor, shabby place."

But as he thought this he involuntarily looked round Mrs Alleyne's dining-room, that lady being at the window, and he could not help thinking that, after all, his cottage-like home was infinitely preferable to this great, gaunt, dingy place, where anything suggestive of any comfort was out of the question.

"Yes, she would be more comfortable," he muttered; "and--there, I'm going mad again. I will not think such things."

Just then Lucy came in ready for starting, and all Philip Oldroyd's good intentions might have been dressed for departure as well. Certainly, they all took flight, as he followed the eager little maiden into the hall.

"Pray--pray let me have news of him directly you find him, Mr Oldroyd,"

cried Mrs Alleyne, piteously. "Run back yourself. You cannot tell what I suffer. Something must have happened."

"You shall know about him directly, Mrs Alleyne," replied Oldroyd. "But pray make your mind easy, nothing can have happened to him here. The worst is that he may have gone to the Hall."

"No, he would not have gone there without first letting me know."

"Don't come to the gate, mamma," cried Lucy. "There, go in; Mr Oldroyd will take care of me, and we'll soon bring the truant back, only pray be satisfied. Come, Mr Oldroyd, let us run."

The next minute they were outside the gate, and hurrying down the slope to the common, over whose rugged surface Lucy walked so fast that Oldroyd had to step out boldly. Here the sandy road was reached, and they went on, saying but little, wanting to say but little, for, in spite of all, there was a strange new ecstatic feeling in Lucy's bosom; while, in spite of his honesty something kept whispering to Oldroyd that it would be very pleasant if they were unable to find Alleyne for hours to come.

He was not to be gratified in this, though, for at the end of a quarter of an hour's walking, when they came opposite to the big clump of pines, Lucy proposed that they should go up there.

"I know how fond he is of this place," she said, rather excitedly; "and as its clearer now, I should not be at all surprised to find him here watching the moon, or the rising of some of the stars."

"We'll go if you wish it," said Oldroyd, "but it seems a very unlikely place at a time like this."

"Ah, but my brother is very curious about such things," said Lucy, as she left the road, and together they climbed up till all at once she uttered a faint cry--

"Look! there--there he is!"

"Why, Alleyne! Is that you?" cried Oldroyd, as in the full moonlight they saw a dark figure rise from the foot of a pine, and then come slowly towards them silently, and in the same vacant fas.h.i.+on as one in a dream.

"Moray, why don't you speak?" cried Lucy, piteously. "Why, you've not been to sleep, have you?" and she caught his arm.

"Sleep?" he said, in a strangely absent manner.

"Yes, asleep? Poor mamma has been fretting herself to death about you, and thinking I don't know what. Make haste."

"Are you unwell, Alleyne?" said Oldroyd, quietly; and the other looked at him wistfully.

"No--no," he said at length; "quite well--quite well. I have been thinking--that is all. Let us make haste back."

Lucy and Oldroyd exchanged meaning glances, and then the former bit her lip, angry at having seemed to take the young doctor into her confidence; and after that but little was said till they reached The Firs, where Mrs Alleyne was pacing the hall, ready to fling her long, thin arms round her son's neck, and hold him in her embrace as she tenderly reproached him for the anxiety he had caused.

"She doesn't seem to trouble much about little Lucy," thought the doctor. "Well, so much the more easy for any one who wanted her for a wife."

"That couldn't be me," he said, at the end of a few minutes, and then--

"I wonder what all this means about Alleyne. He must have been having an interview with someone in that Grove. Miss Day, for a hundred.

Humph! She must have said something he did not like, or he would not look like this."

Then, to the great satisfaction of all, the doctor took his leave, and walked home declaring he would not think of Lucy any more, with the result that the more he strove, the more her pleasant little face made itself plain before him, her eyes looking into his, and ill.u.s.trating the book he tried to read on every page with a most remarkable sameness, but a repet.i.tion that did not tire him in the least.

Volume 2, Chapter IV.

A COLLISION.

Mrs Rolph did not see much of her son, who divided his time between Brackley and Aldershot, when he was not away to attend some athletic meeting. But she was quite content, and paid her calls upon Glynne in company with Marjorie, who sat and beamed upon Sir John's daughter, and lost not an opportunity for getting her arm about the waist of her cousin's betrothed, being so intensely affectionate that Glynne stared at her wonderingly at times, and then tried to reciprocate the love bestowed upon her, failed dismally, and often asked Lucy whether she liked Miss Emlin? to receive a short, sharp shake of the head in return.

"Sha'n't say," Lucy replied one day. "If I do, you'll think I'm jealous."

Rolph was not aware of the fact, for Marjorie generally avoided him, and behaved as if she were putting the past farther back; but all the same, she watched her cousin furtively on every possible occasion whenever he was at home or staying at Brackley; and to cover her proceedings, she developed an intense love for botany, and more than once encountered Major Day with Lucy and Glynne, and compared notes. But the major never displayed any great desire to impart information, or to induce the young lady to take up his particular branch.

"Pity Rolph didn't marry her," muttered the old man. "Foxy doesn't like Glynne at all."

Madge's botanical studies had a good deal to do with the _gynias_, and with watching Rolph, who was not aware that his pleasant vices were making of themselves the proverbial rods to scourge him, and unfortunately injure others as well. For Marjorie's brain was busy; and as she watched him, she made herself acquainted with every movement, noting when he rode over to Brackley or took a walk out into the woods-- walks which made her writhe, for she gave her cousin the credit of making his way toward Lindham, out by the solitary collection of houses on the road to nowhere, the spot where Ben Hayle had made his new home.

At these times Marjorie hung upon the tenterhooks of agony and suspense till he returned, when there was a warm glow of satisfaction in her breast if his looks showed that his visit had been unsuccessful.

Sometimes though, she was stung by her jealousy into believing that he obtained interviews with Judith, for he would come back looking more satisfied and content.

She watched him one day, and saw him take the path down through the wood, and she also watched his return.

In a few days he went again in the same direction, and on the next morning she started off before he had left the house, and turned down through the woods to an opening miles away, where, in happier days, she had been wont to gather blackberries; and here she knew she could easily hide in the sandy hollows, and see anyone going toward Lindham--herself unseen.

It was a lonely nook, where, in bygone days, a number of the firs had been cut down, and a sandpit, or rather sand-pits had been formed.

These had become disused, the rabbits had taken possession, and, as sun and air penetrated freely, a new growth of furze, heather and broom grew up among the hollows and knolls.

What her plans were she kept hidden, but a looker-on would have said that she had carefully prepared a mine, and that some day, she would spring that mine upon her cousin with a result that would completely overturn his projects, but whether to her own advantage remained to be seen.

As Marjorie approached, the rabbits took flight, and their white tails could be seen disappearing into their burrows, a certain sign that no one had been by before her; and in a few minutes she was safely ensconced in a deep hollow surrounded by brambles, after she had taken the precaution to lay a few fern leaves in the bottom of a little basket, and rapidly pick a few weeds to give colour to her presence there.

The time glided on, and all was so still that a stone-chat came and sat upon a twig close at hand, watching her curiously. Then the rabbits stole out one by one from their burrows, and began to race here and there, indulging in playful bounds as if under the impression that it was evening; but though Marjorie strained her ears to listen, there was no sound of approaching steps, and at last she sat there with her brow full of lines, and her eyes staring angrily from beneath her contracted brows.

"He will not come to-day," she muttered. "What shall I do?"

"Oh!" she cried, in a harsh whisper, after a long pause, as she crushed together the nearest tuft of leaves, "I could kill her."

She winced slightly, and then glanced contemptuously at her glove, which was torn, and in three places her white palm was pierced, scratched and bleeding, for she had grasped a twig or two of bramble.