Part 48 (1/2)
There was now a new tone in her voice. Her eyes still sparkled in mischievous exultation that she had proved right and I come away sore and baffled. But when she spoke of the healing of my heart, there was an echo of sadness; the hinting of some smothered sorrow seemed to be struggling with her mirth. She was a creature all compounded of sudden changing moods; I did not know when they were true, when feigned in sport or to further some device. She came near now and bent over my chair, saying gently,
”Alas, I'm very wicked! I couldn't help the folk cheering me, Simon.
Surely it was no fault of mine?”
”You had no need to look out of the window of the coach,” said I sternly.
”But I did that with never a thought. I wanted the air. I----”
”Nor to jest and banter. It was mighty unseemly, I swear.”
”In truth I was wrong to jest with them,” said Nell remorsefully. ”And within, Simon, my heart was aching with shame, even while I jested. Ah, you don't know the shame I feel!”
”In good truth,” I returned, ”I believe you feel no shame at all.”
”You're very cruel to me, Simon. Yet it's no more than my desert. Ah, if----”; she sighed heavily. ”If only, Simon----,” she said, and her hand was very near my hair by the back of the chair. ”But that's past praying,” she ended, sighing again most woefully. ”Yet I have been of some service to you.”
”I thank you for it most heartily,” said I, still stiff and cold.
”And I was very wrong to-day. Simon, it was on her account.”
”What?” I cried. ”Did Mistress Quinton bid you put your head out and jest with the fellows on the pavement?”
”She did not bid me; but I did it because she was there.”
I looked up at her; it was a rare thing with her, but she would not meet my glance. I looked down again.
”It was always the same between her and me,” murmured Nell. ”Ay, so long ago--even at Hatchstead.”
”We're not in Hatchstead now,” said I roughly.
”No, nor even in Chelsea. For even in Chelsea you had a kindness for me.”
”I have much kindness for you now.”
”Well, then you had more.”
”It is in your knowledge why now I have no more.”
”Yes, it's in my knowledge!” she cried. ”Yet I carried Mistress Quinton from Dover.”
I made no answer to that. She sighed ”Heigho,” and for a moment there was silence. But messages pa.s.s without words, and there are speechless Mercuries who carry tidings from heart to heart. Then the air is full of whisperings, and silence is but foil to a thousand sounds which the soul hears though the dull corporeal ear be deaf. Did she still amuse herself, or was there more? Sometimes a part, a.s.sumed in play or malice, so grows on the actor that he cannot, even when he would, throw aside his trappings and wash from his face the paint which was to show the pa.s.sion that he played. The thing takes hold and will not be thrown aside; it seems to seek revenge for the light a.s.sumption and punishes the bravado that feigned without feeling by a feeling which is not feint. She was now, for the moment if you will, but yet now, in earnest.
Some wave of recollection or of fancy had come over her and transformed her jest. She stole round till her face peeped into mine in piteous bewitching entreaty, asking a sign of fondness, bringing back the past, raising the dead from my heart's sepulchre. There was a throbbing in my brain; yet I had need of a cool head. With a spring I was on my feet.
”I'll go and ask if Mistress Barbara sleeps,” I stammered. ”I fear she may not be well attended.”
”You'll go again? Once scorned, you'll go again, Simon? Well, the maid will smile; they'll make a story of it among themselves at their supper in the kitchen.”
The laugh of a parcel of knaves and wenches! Surely it is a small thing!