Want of exercise and incessant study had placed their effects on
Alleyne. The greyness was showing in streaks in his hair, and the lines
seemed deeper in his forehead, as Lucy came gently into the observatory
where her brother was apparently intent upon some tremendous problem.
Lucy, too, looked thinner than of old. There was a careworn aspect in
her face, and her eyes told tales of tears more often shed than is the
custom with young ladies as a rule.
As she entered the observatory and closed the door, she stood gazing at
her brother with her hands clasped, thinking of the money that had been
expended upon his scientific pursuits, keeping them all exceedingly
poor, and, for result, helping to make Alleyne a worn and old-looking
man.
What a thing it seemed, she thought; how changed their home and all
their simple life had become, and all through their proximity to
Brackley.
"I wish we had gone away from here months upon months ago," she said to
herself impatiently. "We might have been so happy anywhere else. And I
thought, too, that everything was going to be so pleasant, with Glynne
for my companion, only people seemed to have leagued themselves against
us; and I'm sure there's no harm in either poor Moray or myself, only we
couldn't help liking someone else. Heigho!"
"Who's that?" cried Alleyne, starting, for Lucy's sigh had been uttered
aloud. "Oh, you, Lucy," he said, dropping his eyes again.
"I've only come to see you, dear, for a little while, Moray, darling,
how late you were last night."
He started wildly, caught the hands she had laid caressingly upon his
shoulders, and stared in her face.
"How did you know?" he cried hoarsely.
"Don't, dear; you hurt me."
He relaxed his grasp, and she felt him trembling.
"Don't be angry with me, Moray," she said, bursting into tears. "It was
only because I loved you and suffered with you. I can't bear to see my
darling brother like this."
"You--you were watching me?" he stammered.
"Don't call it by that unkind title, dear," she said. "I cannot bear
it. I know how you grieve, and I have often sat at my window and seen
you go out of a night, and waited till you came back. One night--don't
be angry with me, Moray," she cried, throwing her arms about his
neck--"I followed you to the Fir Mount, to see you were up there
watching Glynne's window."
"Lucy! Last night?"
"No, no, dear," she cried in alarm. "Don't--don't be so fierce with me.
It was only once."
He uttered a low, hoarse sigh as if of relief.
"It was one night when you had quite frightened me by being so
despondent. I was afraid you meant to do yourself some mischief, and I
stole out to see where you went. As soon as I understood why you had
gone there, I came back."
"Was it so strange a thing for an astronomer to go out to a high place
where he could see some planet rise?"
Lucy was silent for a few moments.
"No, dear," she said at last in a whisper, "nor for a man who loves to
go and watch the house that holds all that is dear to him in life. But,
Moray, dear, what is the matter with your hand?"
"Nothing," he said, hastily thrusting his bandaged hand into his pocket.
"Only a cut--from a knife--nothing more. There--that will do. Why did
you come?"
"It is the twenty-fifth, Moray. I thought I'd come and remind you."
"Twenty-fifth," he said hurriedly; "twenty-fifth?"
"Yes, dear, Glynne Day's wedding."
She regretted speaking the next instant, as she saw her brother's head
go down upon his hand; but he looked up at her directly, and, to her
surprise, with a peculiar smile.
"Thank you for reminding me, dear," he said. "I hope she will be very
happy."
"I don't," cried Lucy petulantly, "and I'm sure she won't be. Oh, how
could she be so foolish as to engage herself to such a man as that!"
Alleyne did not reply, but sat gazing before him at a broad band of
sunlight which cut right across the portion of the great room where he
was seated. It seemed to him that Glynne was the bright bar of light
that had been thrown across the dark, shadowy life that he had led; and
to make the idea more real, the passing of a cloud cut the ray suddenly,
and the great, chill room, with its uncouth instruments, its piles of
scientific lumber, and its dust, was gloomy once again.
The bright ray had come and gone. It was but a memory now, and Alleyne
uttered a sigh of relief, for he told himself that the past was dead,
and he must divide it from his present existence by a broad, well-marked
line.
"Have you nothing to say, Moray?" whispered Lucy at last. "Do you not
understand? Are you not going to make one more effort to make her
change her purpose."
"My dear Lucy!" he said tenderly.
That was all, but he took her in his arms and kissed her, as if she were
still the little child whom he used to pet and play with years before.
As soon as he released her she stood looking at him with her brows knit
for a few moments, and then said,--
"Moray, should you mind very much if I were to go?"
"Go?" he said dreamily. "Go?"
"Yes; to see Glynne married."
She saw a twitching of the nerves of his face as he realised her
meaning, and was regretting her question, when he said softly,--
"No, my dear, no. Go if you wish it. Yes, go."
He turned from her and resumed his work, making figures rapidly on a
sheet of paper before him, and as he evidently wished to be alone, she
stole softly out of the room.
Half-an-hour later Alleyne, who had left his work as soon as Lucy
quitted him, and gone to a window which overlooked the road, saw his
sister, very plainly dressed in white, go along the lane towards
Brackley Church.
He did not stir, but stood watching till the white dress disappeared
among the tall columnar fir trees.
Then came another figure going in the same direction, and in his moody,
despairing state, Alleyne hardly noted for a few moments who it was,
till the figure stopped short to turn and talk to a tall, gaunt-looking
man, whom Alleyne recognised as Hayle, the man he had seen when Oldroyd
was attending him, and it was the latter now speaking.
After a few minutes conversation, Alleyne saw Hayle shake his head, and
go in one direction, while Oldroyd went in the other, that taken by
Lucy, toward the church.
Then Alleyne turned from the window with a blank look of despair in his
eyes, a strange vacant wildness of aspect in his drawn and haggard
countenance. He walked to and fro. He threw himself into his great
chair, but only to spring up again and pace the room with eager, hurried
steps.
He sank helplessly down upon his chair once more, and rested his
throbbing brow upon his hands, his misery so acute that he felt that he
was going mad; but as the time went on, a dull feeling of lethargy came
over him, and he sat there crouched together till Mrs Alleyne came into
the room and touched him with her cold, thin hand, when he started.
"My boy!" she said tenderly, as she laid her hands upon his shoulders,
"is it so hard to bear?"
"Hard? Yes, cruelly hard," he said, with a sigh of misery.
"And in turn we have to bear these agonies," she said softly. "I have
known them, too, my boy, hours of despair when life all looked too black
to be faced, and there seemed to be nothing to do but die."
He looked at her inquiringly.
"Yes, my boy, these troubles have been mine at times, and I have thought
like this--thought as you have thought since that woman came between us
to blast our hearth."
"Hush!" he cried, almost fiercely. "Not one disloyal word against her,
mother. It was my ill-balanced nature led me wrong, and she never came
between you and me."
"Forgive me, my boy," cried Mrs Alleyne, as he took her in his arms. "I
know, I know. Always my own true loving son. But it seems so hard that
she should have treated you as she did."
"Hush, mother! Hush!" he replied. "She was not to blame."
"Not to blame?" retorted Mrs Alleyne. "You defend her, but, had she not
led you on by her soft words and wiles, you had never come to think of
her like this. But she will repent: so sure as she marries that man,
she will bitterly repent."
"You are giving me cruel pain, mother," said Alleyne sadly.
"My boy! my own brave boy!" cried Mrs Alleyne, clinging to him. "I will
say no more! I will be silent, indeed. No word on the subject shall
ever leave my lips again. There: forgive me."
"Forgive you, mother!" he said softly, as he drew her more closely, and
kissed her lips, "I have nothing to forgive. You felt what you thought
to be a just indignation on my behalf. It is so easy to think those we
love must be in the right, so hard to see when we alone are in the
wrong. There, let us talk about it no more, for--Why, Lucy! what is the
matter?"
Lucy hurried into the observatory, looking hot and excited, threw
herself into a chair, sobbing hysterically, and for some time not a word
could be obtained from her.