"What did she mean? She did not like to be away when Mr Oldroyd visited
her brother? What she said, of course. Ah, how prone men are to put a
second meaning to other people's words. How ready I was to think ill of
the little lassie and her brother; and I am as ready now to own that she
is innocence itself. I used to think, though, that she cared for
Oldroyd."
Meanwhile, Lucy was walking straight along by the side of the road, back
towards The Firs, with Oldroyd, on his disreputable-looking steed, a
yard or two upon her left.
By quitting the road and cutting across the open boggy land, amidst the
furze and whortleberry scrub Lucy could have saved a quarter-of-a-mile,
and left her companion behind; or even if he had elected to follow her,
the softness of the soil and the constant recurrence of swampy patches
about, which one on foot could easily avoid, would have necessitated so
much care that he would have been left far behind.
But Lucy trudged steadily on with her pretty little face trying to look
stern and hard, but failing dis--no, not dismally, for hers was a type
of countenance from which the prettiness could not be eliminated try how
one would.
Oldroyd was angry--bitterly angry. But he was in love. Once more
jealous fear had attacked him. For had not he plainly seen Lucy's face
held up in the most matter-of-fact manner for the major to bend down and
kiss? Certainly he was an old man, old enough to be her grandfather,
and the kiss had been given when he who witnessed it was two or three
hundred yards away; but there was the fact and Oldroyd felt furious.
All this time had passed since he had felt that he was growing very fond
of Lucy, and his affection had been nipped and blackened like the top of
a spring potato, by an unkindly frost, consequent upon the Rolph affair,
while still like the spring potato, though the first shoots had been
nipped, it was only for more and stronger ones to form and grow faster
and faster than before. But Lucy had made no sign.
And so they went on towards The Firs on that delicious spring day, when
the larks were singing overhead, the young growth of the pines shed a
sweet odour of lemon to be wafted across the road, and at every step,
Lucy's little feet crushed down a daisy, but the bright-eyed flower
lifted its head again as soon as she had passed and did not seem to be
trampled in the least. Oldroyd did as Lucy did--stared straight before
him, letting the reins--a much mended pair--rest on the pony's neck;
while Peter hung his head in a sleepy, contemplative way, and sometimes
walked, sometimes slowly ambled on, as if moved by his spirit to keep
abreast of Lucy.
Oldroyd's brow knit closely as he mentally wrote out a prescription to
meet his new case, and then mentally tore it up again, ending by at last
turning quite fiercely towards Lucy, giving the pony's ribs a couple of
kicks as he snatched up the reins to force it forward, and then, as she
started half frightened by his near approach, he said to her in a
reproachful voice,--
"How can you behave so cruelly to me, Lucy?" According to all canons
the rule in such a case was for Lucy to start, open her eyes a little
more widely, stare, and say,--
"Mr Oldroyd, I don't know what you mean!" But this was out on a common,
and not in a west-end drawing-room. Her heart was full, and she was not
disposed just then to fence and screen herself with maidenly
conventionalities. She knew well enough that Philip Oldroyd loved her
very dearly, almost as dearly, she owned in her heart of hearts, as she
loved him, and that he was alluding broadly to her conduct with Rolph,
her long display of resentment, and also to her having given the major a
kiss that day. He was very angry and jealous, but that did not annoy
her in the least. It gave her pleasure. He spoke very sharply to her
just then--viciously and bitterly; but she did not mind that either. It
was piquant. It gave her a pleasant little thrill. There was a
masterly sound about it, and she felt as if it was pleasant to be
mastered just then, when she was in the most wilful and angry of moods.
"You know what I mean," he said, quickly, "you know how I love you."
"Oh!" said Lucy to herself very softly; but though every nerve tingled
with pleasure, not a muscle stirred, and she kept her face averted.
"You know," continued Oldroyd, "how long I have loved you; but you take
delight in trampling upon my best feelings. I suppose," he added
bitterly, "it is because I am so poor."
"Indeed it is not!" cried Lucy with spirit, as she kept her back to him;
"how can you think me so pitiful and mean!"
"Well, then, why do you treat me so badly?"
"I don't treat you badly."
This was very commonplace, and Lucy's continuous stare straight before
her did not give it dignity.
"You do treat me badly--cruelly--worse," exclaimed Oldroyd, kicking his
pony's ribs so viciously, that the poor brute resented it by shaking his
head, and wagging his tail.
"You have treated me shamefully, Mr Oldroyd," cried Lucy.
It was getting terribly commonplace now.
"Indeed I have not," he replied. "How could I help feeling hurt when I
saw you as I did with that horse-jockey foot-racing animal?"
"You might have known that I had a reason for it, and that I was
behaving so on behalf of my friend," said Lucy.
"How was I to be able to analyse the secrets of your heart?" said
Oldroyd, romantically.
"Then you looked insultingly at me just now, when dear old grandfatherly
Major Day spoke to me, and behaved to me as he did. Why--oh, I haven't
patience with myself for speaking about it all as I do. It is degrading
and weak; and what right, sir," she panted, "have you to ask me for such
explanations?"
"I do it in all humbleness, Lucy," he whispered, with his voice
softening. "I have nothing to say in my defence, only that I love you
so dearly that it cuts me to the heart to think that--that--oh, my
darling, look at me like that again."
It was all in a moment. Lucy's eyes had ceased to flash, and had darted
out such a confession of forgiveness, and love, and tenderness, all
mingled, as made Oldroyd forget all about the laws of equitation, and
fall off his pony on the wrong side, to catch Lucy's hand in his and
draw it tightly through his arm.
Peter began to nibble placidly at shoots, and everything was more
commonplace than ever, for they walked slowly along by the roadside,
with their heads down, perfectly silent; while the pony browsed along,
with his head down, and the rein dragging on the ground, till after a
bit he trod upon it, gave his head a snatch at the check, and broke it,
making it very little worse than it was before.
And so they went on, with the larks singing overhead, the grass and
daisies springing beneath their feet, and the world looking more
beautiful than it ever did before; what time Glynne was sitting, pale,
large-eyed, and thin, in her own room, reading hard--some heavy work,
which she jealously placed aside whenever she had finished perusing; and
Moray Alleyne was alone in his observatory, gaunt, grey, and strange,
busy over the calculations respecting the star he had been watching for
nights past, that bright particular star that seemed somehow connected
with the woman he had ventured to love.
"Are you very angry, Mrs Alleyne?" said Oldroyd, as he took Lucy's hand
in his and walked with her to where the mistress of The Firs was seated,
busily stitching, in the very perfection of neatness, the pleats of a
new garment for her son.
"Angry?" said Mrs Alleyne, starting and flushing, and then turning pale
as she dropped her work, and her hands began to tremble. "Does this
mean--does this mean--?"
"That we love each other?" replied Oldroyd, glancing sidewise at Lucy.
"Yes, madam, it does, and I feel dread and shame, I scarcely know what,
when I speak to you like this, for I am so poor, and my prospects so
extremely wanting in brightness."
"We are used to being poor, Mr Oldroyd," said Mrs Alleyne, sadly.
"Then you do not object?"
"Why should I?" said Mrs Alleyne. "It is natural that my child should
some day form an attachment. She has, I presume, done so?"
"Oh, yes, yes, yes, mamma," cried Lucy, "a long time now."
"Then, knowing as I do, that the attachment is to a man of sterling
worth," said Mrs Alleyne softly, as she held out her hand, "what more
could I wish?"
Oldroyd caught the hand in his and kissed it, hesitated a moment, and
then bent down and kissed Mrs Alleyne's thin pinched lips.
"It has given me the stimulus I wanted," he said, proudly. "Mrs
Alleyne, Lucy shall not be a poor man's wife, but--Ah, Alleyne."
"Ah, Oldroyd," said the astronomer, in his soft, deep voice, and he
smiled sadly; "come to prescribe for me again. And I'm better than ever
now--but--is anything wrong?"
For the positions of the three occupants of the room he had entered
struck him as being singular.
"Yes," cried Oldroyd, "very wrong. I, being a poor surgeon and general
practitioner, have been asking your mother's consent to Lucy's becoming
my wife."
"And Lucy?" said Alleyne softly.
"Oh, yes, Moray, dear Moray," she cried, hiding her face in his breast.
"I am very glad, Oldroyd," said Alleyne, quietly. "I have thought of it
sometimes, and wondered whether it would come to this, and--and I am
very very glad."
He held out his hand and grasped the young doctor's very warmly, before
kissing his sister, after which she escaped to her room, where she
stayed for quite an hour before coming down shyly, and with a very happy
look in her eyes.
Oldroyd was not gone. It was not likely. He had been staying with
Alleyne in the observatory--watching his case as he told himself, but
not succeeding in his self-deceit, and some kind of natural attraction
led him back into the dining-room just as Lucy entered from the other
door.
It must have been a further charge of natural attraction that led them
straight into each other's arms, for the first long embrace and kiss,
from which Lucy started back at last, all shame-faced, rosy-red, and
with the sensation that she had just been guilty of something very
wicked indeed.
"Are you happy, Lucy?" said Oldroyd.
"No," she said, looking at him earnestly, "and I shall not be till
others are happy too."
Volume 3, Chapter XIII.