Chapter 27

When I return home, I find that Barbara is still no better. She is still lying in her darkened room, and has asked not to be disturbed. And even _my_ wrongs are not such as to justify my forcing myself upon the painful privacy of a sick-headache. How much the better am I then than I was before my late expedition? I have brought home my old grievance quite whole and unlightened by communication, and I have got a new and fresh one in addition, with absolutely no one to whom to impart it; for, even when Frank comes, I will certainly not tell _him_. I am too restless to remain in-doors over the fire, though thoroughly chilled by my late drive, and resolve to try and restore my circulation by a brisk walk in the park.

The afternoon is still young, and the day is mending. A wind has risen, and has pulled aside the steel-colored cloud-curtain, and let heaven's eyes--blue, though faint and watery--look through. And there comes another strong puff of autumnal wind, and lo! the sun, and the leaves float down in a sudden shower of amber in his light. I march along quickly and gravely through the long drooped grass--no longer sweet and fresh and upright, in its green summer coat--through the frost-seared pomp of the bronze bracken, till I reach a little knoll, whose head is crowned by twelve great brother beeches. From time immemorial they have been called the Twelve Apostles, and under one apostle I now stand, with my back against his smooth and stalwart trunk.

How _beaming_ is death to them! Into what a glorious crimson they decline! My eyes travel from one tree-group to another, and idly consider the many-colored majesty of their decay. Over all the landscape there is a look of plaintive uncontent. The distant town, with its two church-spires, is choked and effaced in mist: the very sun is sickly and irresolute. All Nature seems to say, "Have pity upon me--I die!"

It is not often that our mother is in sympathy with her children. Mostly when we cry she broadly laughs; when we laugh and are merry she weeps; but to-day my mood and hers match. The tears are as near my eyes as hers--as near hers as mine.

"'See the leaves around us falling!'"

say I, aloud, stretching out my right arm in dismal recitation. We had the hymn last Sunday, which is what has put it into my head:

"'See the leaves around us falling, Dry and withered to the ground--'"

Another voice breaks in:

"'Thus to thoughtless mortals calling--.'"

"How you made me jump!" cry I, descending with an irritated leap to prose, and at least making the leaves say something entirely different from what they had ever been known to say before.

"Why did not you bring your sentinel, Vick?"

He--it is Musgrave, of course--has joined me, and is leaning his flat back also against the apostle, and, like me, is looking at the mist, at the red and yellow leaves--at the whole low-spirited panorama.

"She is ill," say I, lamentably, drawing a portrait in lamp-black and Indian-ink of the whole family; "we are _all_ ill--Barbara is ill!"

"Poor Barbara!"

"She has got a headache."

"POOR Barbara!"

"And I have got a heartache," say I, more for the sake of preserving the harmony of my sketch, and for making a pendant to Barbara, than because the phrase accurately describes my state.

"Poor _you_!"

"_Poor me, indeed!_" cry I, with emphasis, and to this day I cannot make up my mind whether the ejaculation were good grammar or no.

"I have had _such_ bad news," I continue, feeling, as usual, a sensible relief from the communication of my grief. "Roger is not coming back!"

"_Not at all?_"

The words are the same as those employed by Mrs. Huntley; but there is much more alacrity and liveliness in the tone.

"_Not at all!_" repeat I, scornfully, looking impatiently at him; "that is so likely, is not it?"--then "No not _at all_"--I continue, ironically, "he has run off with some one else--some one _black_!" (with a timely reminiscence of Bobby's happy flight of imagination).

"Not till _when_, then?"

"Not till after Christmas," reply I, sighing loudly, "which is almost as bad as not at all."

"I knew _that_!" he says, rather petulantly; "you told me _that_ before!"

"_I told you that before?_" cry I, opening my eyes, and raising my voice; "why, how could I? I only heard it myself this morning!"

"It was not you, then," he says, composedly; "it must have been some one else!"

"It _could_ have been no one else," retort I, hastily. "I have told no one--no one at least from whom _you_ could have heard it."

"All the same, I _did_ hear it" (with a quiet persistence); "now, who could it have been?" throwing back his head, elevating his chin, and lifting his eyes in meditation to the great depths of burning red in the beech's heart, above him--"ah!"--(overtaking the recollection)--"I know!"

"Who?" say I, eagerly, "not that it _could_ have been any one."

"It was Mrs. Huntley!" he answers, with an air of matter-of-fact indifference.

I laugh with insulting triumph. "Well, that _is_ a bad hit! What a pity that you did not fix upon some one else! I have once or twice suspected you of drawing the long bow--_now_ I am sure of it! As it happens, I have just come from Mrs. Huntley, and she knew no more about it than the babe unborn!"

I am looking him full in the face, but, to my surprise, I cannot detect the expression of confusion and defeat which I anticipate. There is only the old white-anger look that I have such a happy knack of calling up on his features.

"I _am_ a consummate liar!" he says, quietly, though his eyes flash. "Every one knows _that_; but, all the same, she _did_ tell me."

"I do not believe a word of it!" cry I, in a fury.

He makes no answer, but, lifting his hat, begins to walk quickly away. For a hundred yards I allow him to go unrecalled; then, as I note his quickly-diminishing figure and the heavy mists beginning to fold him, my resolution fails me; I take to my heels and scamper after him.

"Stop!" say I, panting as I come up with him, "I dare say--perhaps--you _thought_ you were speaking truth!--there must, must be some _mistake_!"

He does not answer, but still walks quickly on.

"Tell me!" cry I, posting on alongside of him, breathless and distressed--"when was it? where did you hear it? how long ago?"

"I never heard it?"

"Yes, you did," cry I, passionately, asseverating what I have so lately and passionately denied. "You know you did; but when was it? how was it? where was it?"

"It was _nowhere_," he answers with a cold, angry smile. "I was _drawing the long bow_!"

I stop in baffled rage and misery. I stand stock-still, with the long, dying grass wetly and limply clasping my ankles. To my surprise he stops too.

"I wish you were _dead_!" I say tersely, and it is not a figure of speech. For the moment I do honestly wish it.

"Do you?" he answers, throwing me back a look of hardly inferior animosity; "I dare say I do not much mind." A little pause, during which we eye each other, like two fighting-cocks. "Even if I _were_ dead," he says, in a low voice--"mind, I do not blame you for wishing it--sometimes I wish it myself--but even if I _were_, I do not see how that would hinder Sir Roger and Mrs. Huntley from corresponding."

"They _do not_ correspond," cry I, violently; "it is a falsehood!" Then, with a quick change of thought and tone: "But if they do, I--I--do not mind! I--I--am very glad--if Roger likes it! There is no harm in it."

"Not the slightest."

"Do you _always_ stay at home?" cry I, in a fury, goaded out of all politeness and reserve by the surface false acquiescence of his tone; "do you _never_ go away? I _wish_ you would! I wish"--(speaking between laughing and crying)--"that you could take your abbey up on your back, as a snail does its shell, and march off with it into another county."

"But unfortunately I cannot."

"What have I done to you?" I cry, falling from anger to reproach, "that you take such delight in hurting me? You can be pleasant enough to--to other people. I never hear you hinting and sneering away any one else's peace of mind; but as for me, I never--_never_ am alone with you that you do not leave me with a pain--a tedious long ache _here_"--(passionately clasping my hands upon my heart).

"Do not I?"--(Then half turning away in a lowered voice)--"_nor you me_!"

"_I!_" repeat I, positively laughing in my scorn of this accusation. "_I_ hint! _I_ imply! why, I _could_ not do it, if I were to be shot for it! it is not _in_ me!"

He does not immediately answer; still, he is looking aside, and his color changes.

"Ask mother, ask the boys, ask Barbara," cry I, in great excitement, "whether I ever _could_ wrap up any thing neatly, if I wished it ever so much? Always, _always_, I have to blurt it out! _I_ hint!"

"Hint! no!" he repeats, in a tone of vexed bitterness. "Well, no! no one could accuse you of _hinting_! Yours is honest, open cut and thrust!"

"If it is," retort I, bluntly, still speaking with a good deal of heat, "it is your own fault! I have no wish to quarrel, being such near neighbors, and--and--altogether--of course I had rather be on good terms than bad ones! When you _let_ me--when you leave me alone--I _almost_--sometimes I _quite_ like you. I am speaking seriously! I _do_."

"You do not say so?" again turning his head aside, and speaking with the objectionable intonation of irony.

"At home," pursue I, still chafing under the insult to my amiability, "I never was reckoned quarrelsome--_never_! Of course I was not like Barbara--there are not many like her--but I did very well. Ask _any one_ of them--it does not matter which--they will all tell you the same--whether I did not!"

"You were a household angel, in fact?"

"I was nothing of the kind," cry I, very angry, and yet laughing: the laughter caused by the antagonism of the epithet with the many recollected blows and honest sounding cuffs that I have, on and off, exchanged with Bobby.

A pause.

The sun has quite gone now: sulky and feeble, he has shrunk to his cold bed in the west, and the victor-mist creeps, crawls, and soaks on unopposed.

"Good-night!" cry I, suddenly. "I am going!" and I am as good as my word.

With the triple agility of health, youth, and indignation, I scurry away through the melancholy grass, and the heaped and fallen leaves, home.