Nancy. A novel

Front matter

etc NANCY Pk $tobcl. i Y RHODA BROUGHTON, AUTHOR OF "RED AS A ROSE IS SHE," " GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART," ETC, *' As thro' the land at eve we went, And pluck'd the ripened ears, We fell out, my wife and I, O we fell out I know not why, And kissed again with tears." A NEW EDITION. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON 1874. (All Rig/its Reserved.) TO MRS. ANDREW SPOTTISWOODE,. Ultis cSturg is JUibnssrb, AS A SLIGHT AND INADEQUATE PROOF OP HEARTY LOVE AND GRATITUDE FOR UNFAILING KINDNESS AND UNFLAGGING SYMPATHY. NANCY.

Chapter I

" Put into a small preserving part three ounces of fresh butter, and as soon as it is just melted, add one pound of brown sugar of moderate quality " " Not moderate — the browner the better," interpolates A1gy- " Cannot say I agree with you. I hate brown sugar — filthy stuff !" says Bobby contradictiously. " Not half so filthy as white, if you come to that," retorts Algy loftily, looking up from the lemon he is grating to ex tinguish his brother. " They clear white sugar with bullock's " " Keep these stirred gently over a clear fire for about fifteen minutes," interrupt I, beginning to read again very fast, in a loud, dull recitative, to hinder further argument, "or until a little of the mixture dipped into cold water breaks clear between the teeth without sticking to them. "When it is boiled to this point it must be poured out imme diately or it .vill burn."

Having galloped jovially along, scorning stops, I here NANCY. 2 pause out of breath. We are a large family, we Greys, and we are all making toffee. Yes, every one of us. It would take all the fingers of one hand, and the thumb of the other. to count us, 0 reader. Six ! Yes, six. A Frenchman might well hold up his hands in astonied horror at the insane prolificness — the fool-hardy fertility of British house holders. We come very issizprobably close together, except Tou Tou, who was an after-thought. There are no two of us, T am proud to say, exactly simultaneous, but we have come tumbling on each other's heels into the world in so hot a hurry that we evidently expected to find it a pleasant place when we got there. Perhaps we do — perhaps we do not : friends, you will hear and judge for yourselves.

A few years ago, when we were little, people used to say that we were quite a pretty sight, hke little steps one above another. We are big steps now, and no one any longer hazards the suggestion of our being pretty. On the other hand, nobody denies that we are each as well furnished with legs, arms, and other etceteras, as our neighbours, nor can affirm that we are notably more deficient in wits than those of our friends who have arrived in twos and threes. We are in the school-room, thc big bare school-room, that has seen us all — that is still seeing some of us — unwillingly dragged, and painfully goaded, up the steep slopes of book learning. Outside, the March wind is roughly hustling the dry brown trees, and pinching the diffident green shoots, while the round and rayless sun of late afternoon is staring from behind the elm twigs in at the long maps on the wall, in at the high chairs — tall of back, cruelly tiny of seat, off whose rungs we have kicked all the paint — in at the green baize table, richly freaked with ink-splashes.

Hardly less NANCY 3 red than the sun's are our burnt faces, gathered about the fire. This fire has no flame — only a glowing, ruddy heart, on which the bright brass saucepan sits ; and, kneeling before it, stirring the mess with a long iron spoon, is Barbara. Algy, as I have before remarked, is grating a lemon. Bobby is buttering soup plates. The Brat — the Brat always takes his ease if he can — is peeling almonds, fishing delicately for them in a cup of hot water with his finger and thumb ; and I, Nancy, am reading aloud the receipt at the top of my voice, out of a greasy, dogs'-eared cookery-book, which, since it came into our hands, has been the innocent father of many a hideous compound. Tou Tou alone, in consideration of her youth, is allowed to be a spectator. She sits on the edge of the table, swinging her thin legs, and kicking her feet together.

Certainly we deteriorate in looks as we go downwards. In Barbara we made an excellent start : few families a better one, though we say it that should not. Although in Algy there was a slight falling off, it was not much to complain of. But I am sensibly uglier than Algy — (as indeed he has, on several occasions, disriassionately remarked to me); the Brat than me ; Bobby than the Brat ; and so steadily on, till we reach our nadir of unhandsomeness in Tou Tou. Tou Tou is our climax, and we confidently defy our neighbours and acquaintances to outdo her. Hapless young Tou Tou ! made up of the thinnest legs, tho widest mouth, the invisiblest nose, and over visiblest ears that ever went to the composition of a child of twelve years. " Keep stirring always ! You must take care that it does 1—2 NANCY. not stick to the bottom !" say I, closing the receipt-book, and speaking on my own account ; but stdl as one having authority.

"All very well to say 'Keep stirring always,'" answers Barbara, turning round a face unavoidably pretty, even though at the present moment deeply flame-coloured ; eyes stid sweetly laughing with gay good humour, even though half burnt out of her head, to answer me ; " but if you had been stirring as long as I have, you would wonder that you had any arm left to stir with, however feebly. Here, one of you boys, take a turn ! You Brat, you never do anything for your living !" The Brat complies, though not with eagerness. They change occupations ; the Brat stirs, and she fishes for almonds. Ten minutes pass : the toffee is done, and what is more it really is toffee. The upshot of our cookery is in general so startlingly indifferent from what we had intended, that the result in the present case takes us by surprise.

We all prove practicaUy that, in the words of the receipt-book, it " breaks clear between the teeth without sticking to them." It is poured into Bobby's soup plate, and we have thrown up the window sashes, and set it on the ledge to cool. The searching wind blows in dry and biting. Now it is rushing in a violent cur rent through the room, for the door has opened. Motlier enters. " To what may we attribute the honour of this visit ?" says Algy, turning away from the window to meet her, and setting her a chair. Bobby gives her a kiss, and the Brat a lump of toffee, concerning which it would be invidious to predicate which were the stickier ; so exceedingly adhesive are both. NANCY. 5 " Your father says—" begins she, sitting down. She is in terrupted by a loud and universal groan. " Says what t Something unpleasant of course.

Who is it now 1 Who has done anything now 1 I do hope it is the Brat," cries Bobby, viciously ; " it is quite his turn : he has been good boy of the family for the last week." " I dare say it is," replies the Brat resignedly, " one can't expect such prosperity as mine to last for ever." " Of course it is I," says Algy rather bitterly, " it is always I. I have never been good boy since I was ploughed ; and, please God, I never wiU be again." " But what is it? what is it ? About how bad is it ? Is it to be one of our worst rows 1" We are ad speaking together at the top of our voices ; indeed we rarely employ a lower key. " It is no one ; no one has done anything," replies mother, •when, at last, we allow her to make herself heard; "only your father sends you a message that as Sir Roger Tempest is coming here to-day, he hopes you will make less noise this evening in here than you did last night ; he says he could hardly hear the sound of his own voice."

" Ahem !" " Yery likely !" " I dare say !" in different tones of angry incredulity. " He begs you to see that the swing door is shut, as he does not wish his friend to imagine that he keeps a private Lunatic Asylum." A universal snort of indignation. " If we are Bedlamites, we know who made us so. We wiU tell old Roger if he asks," etc. " For my part," say I, resolutely pinching my lips together as I kneel on the carpet, and violently hammer the now cold NANCY. 6 and hard toffee with the handle of the poker, wliich in its day has been put to many uses vile, " I can tell you that I shaU not dine with you to-night : I shoidd infallibly say something to father — something unfortunate — I feel it rising ; and it would be unseemly to have one of our emeutes before this old gentleman, would not it V " They are nice breezy things when you are used to them," says Barbara, laughing ; " but one requires to be brought up to them."

" Do you not dine either, Brat," say I, looking up, and waving the poker with suave command at him, " and we wdl brod bones for tea, and roast potatoes on the shovel." " Some of you must dine," says poor mother, rather wearily, " or your father — " " He cannot complain if we send our two specimen ones," say I, again looking up, and indicating Barbara and Algy with my weapon, " our sample figs : if Sir Robert — Sir Robin ■ — Sir Roger — what is he 1 — does not see the rest of us, he may perhaps imagine that we are all equady presentable, which would be more to your credit, motlier, than if Bobby and Tou Tou and I were to be submitted to the poor old thing's notice." Mother looks rather at sea. " What are you talking about 1 What poor old thing ! Oh ! I understand." " He wid have to see us," says Tou Tou, rather lugubriously, "he cannot help it — at prayers."

Tou Tou has descended from the table, and is standing propped against mother's knee, twisting one leg with ingenious grace round the other. " Bless your heart," says the Brat, comfortingly, " he will NANCY. 7 never find out that we are there : do you suppose that his blear old eyes will see aU across that big room, economically lit up by one pair of candles ?" Mother smiles. " Wait tid you see whether he has blear eyes !" " He must be pretty ancient," says Algy, in ad the inso lence of twenty, leaning his flat back against the mantelshelf, "as he was at school with father." " Father has not blear eyes," remarks Bobby, dryly. " Would God he had ! For then perhaps he would not sea our little vices quite so clearly with them as he does." " But then father has not been in India," retorts Algy, stretching.

" India plays the deuce with one's organs and appurtenances." " I wish you joy of him," say I, rising flushed and untidy from my knees, having successfudy smashed the toffee into little bits ; "from soup to walnuts, you wdl have to undergo a ceaseless tyranny of tales about Kitmaghars and dak bunga lows and Choto Hazery. Which of us has not suffered in our day from the horrible monotony of ideas of an old Indian ?" " Never you mind, Barbara !" cries the Brat, giving her a sounding brotherly pat on the back. " Pay no attention to her." " ' What great events from trivial causes spring !' as the poet says : you may live to bless the day that old Roger crossed our doors." "As how?" says Barbara, laughing, and rocking herself backwards and forwards in a veteran American rocking-chair, which, at different periods of our history, has served most of us the dirty turn of tipping us over, and presenting us re versed to the eyes of our famdy.

NANCY. " Never you mind," repeats the Brat, oracularly : " truth is stranger than fiction ! odd things happen : I read in the paper the other day of a man who pulled up the window for an old woman in the train, and she died at once — I do not mean on the spot, but very soon after, and when she died — listen, please, aU of you — •" (speaking very slowly and impressively) — "she left him two thousand pounds a year." " I wish I saw the application," answers Barbara, stdl rock ing and sighing. " Mind that you set a stool for his gouty foot," says Algy, feeling for his faint moustache, "and run and search for his spectacle-case, when he has mislaid it." " Seriously," say I, " what a grand thing it would be for the family if he were to adopt you, Barbara." " Or me," suggests the Brat, standing before the fire with his coat-tads under his arm.

" Why not me ? My manners to the aged are always considered particularly happy." " Here he is !" cries Tou Tou from the window, whither she has retired, and now stands, like a heron, on one leg, leaning her elbow on the sill. "Here is the dog-cart turning the corner !" We ad make a rush to the casement. " Yes, there he is ! sure enough ! our future benefactor !" says Algy, looking over the rest of our heads, and making a counterfeit greeting, " Welcome, welcome, good old man !" " And father, all affabdity, pointing out the lions," supple ments Bobby. We laugh grimly. "But who is it he has in the fly?" say I, as a second ve hicle fodows the first. " His harem, I suppose ! half a dozen old Wampoos." NANCY. 9 " His valet, to be sure," replies the Brat, chidingly, " with his stays, and his evening wig, and the calves of his legs."

Chapter II

The wind is even colder than it was, stronger and more withering now that the sun's faint warmth is withdrawn, and that the smad and chidy stars possess the sky. Nevertheless, both the school-room windows are open. We are ad huddled shivering round the hearth, yet no one talks of closing them. The fact is that amateur cooking, though a graceful accom plishment, has its 2)enalties, and that at the present moment the smed of broiled bones and fried potatoes, that fills our place of learning, is something appalling. Why may not it penetrate beneath the swing-door, through the passages, and reach the drawing-room ? Such a thing has happened once or twice before. At the bare thought we all quake. I am in the pleasant situation, just at present, of owning a chilled body and a blazing face. Chiefest among the cooks have I been, and now I am sitting trying to fan my red cheeks and redder nose, with the back of an old atlas, gutted in some ancient brod, trying, in ■deference to Sir Roger, to cool down my appearance a little against prayer-time.

Alas ! the epoch is nearer than I think. Ting ! tang ! the loud bell is ringing through the house. My hair is loosened and tumbled with stooping over the fire, and I have burnt a hole right in the fore front of my gown, by letting a hot cinder fad from the grate upon it. There is, however, now no time to repair these dilapidations. We issue NANCY. from our lair, and en route meet the long string of servants filing from their distant regions. How is it that the cook's face is so much, much less red than mine ? Prayers are held in the justicing-room, and thither we are all repairing. The accustomed scene bursts on my eye. At one end the long, straight row of the servants, immovably devout, staring at the wad, with their backs to us. In the middle of the room, facing them, father, kneedng upon a chair, with his hands clenched, and his eyes closed, repeating the Church prayers. as if he were rather angry with them than otherwise.

Mother, kneeling on the carpet beside him, like the faithful, ruffed, and farthingaled wife on a fifteenth century tomb. Behind them, again, at some little distance, we and our visitor. With the best wid in the world to do so, I can get but a meagre view of the latter. The room is altogether rather dark, it being one of our manners and customs not to throw much light on prayers, and he has chosen the darkest corner of it. I only vaguely see the outline of a kneeling figure, evidently neither bulky nor obese, of a flat back, and vigorous shoulders. His face is generady hidden in his hands, but once or twice he lifts it to scan the proportions of my late grandfather's preposterously fat cob, whose portrait hangs on the wad above his head. There is no doubt that on some days the devil reigns with a more potent sway over people than on others.

To-night he has certainly entered into the boys. He often does a little, but this evening he is holding a great and mighty carnival amongst them. While father's strong, hard voice vibrates in a loud, dud monotone through the sdent room, they are engaged in a hundred dumb yet ungodly antics beldnd his back. Algernon has thrust his head far out between the rungs of NANCY. 11 his chair-back, and affects to be unable to withdraw it again, making movements of simulated suffocation. The Brat is stealthdy walking on his knees across the space that intervenes between them to Barbara, with intent, as I too wed know, of unseemly pinchings. If father unbutton his eyes, or move his head one barley-corn, we are all dead men. I hold my breath in a nervous agony. Thank heaven ! the harsh recita tion still flows on with equable loud slowness.

In happy ignorance of his offspring's antics, father is stid asking, or rather ordering, the Almighty (for there is more of command than entreaty in his tone) to prosper the High Court of Par liament. Also the Brat is now returning to his place, travelling with surprising noiseless rapidity over the Turkey carpet, dragging his shins and his feet after him. I draw a long breath of relief, and drop my hot face into my spread hands. My peace, however, is not of long duration. I am aroused again by a sort of choking snort from Tou Tou, who is beside me, a snort that seems compounded of mingled laughter and pain, and looking up, detect Bobby in the act of deftly punc turing one of her long, lean legs with a long brass pin, which he has found straying, after the vagabond manner of pins, over the carpet.

I raise myself, and lean over Tou Tou, to give the offender a silent buffet of admonition, and, lifting my eyes apprehen sively to see if I am noticed, I meet the blear eyes of Sir Roger fixed upon mine. He has turned his face quite towards me, and a ray from the candles fads full upon it. Blear I Wed, if his eyes are blear, then henceforth blear must bear a different signification from the unhandsome one it has hitherto worn. Henceforth it must mean blue as steel : it must mean NANCY. clear as a glass of spring water; keen as a wed-tempered knife ; kindly as the early sunshine. I am so astonished at my discovery, that I remain for sud two minutes staring blankly at the object of it, whde he also looks steadily at me ; then recodecting my manners, I burrow my face into my chair bottom, and so remain untd mother's gentle Amen, and a noise of shuffling and scrambling to their feet on the part of the congregation, ted me that the end has come.

We all go up to father, and coldly and stiffly kiss him. Whde I am waiting for my turn to receive our parent's chilly salute, I steal a second glance at our guest. Yes, he is old certainly. Despite the youth of his eyes, despite the up rightness, the utter freedom from superfluous flesh — from the ugly shaky bulkiness of age — in his tall and stalwart figure, still he is old — old in the eyes of nineteen — as old as father, perhaps — though in much better preservation — forty-eight or forty-nine ; for is not his hair iron-gray, and his heavy mous tache, and the thick and silky beard that fads on liis broad breast, are they not iron-gray too ? I have dropped my small and unwilling kiss on father's forehead — and said " good night " in a tone as suppressedly hostile as his own. Now I may go.

We may ad go. I am the last, or I think I am, to pass through the swing-door. I hurry along the passage to join the rest in the school-room, and upbraid the boys for the rash impiety of their demeanour. I feel a foot on my garments behind, and hear a long cracking sound that I too, too well know to mean gathers. "You beast!" cry I, in good nervous English, turning sharply round with my hand raised in act to strike, " that is the third time this week that you have torn out my " NANCY. 13 I stop dumbfoundered. If I mean to box the offender's ears, I must raise my hand considerably higher than it is at present. Angels and ministers of grace ! what has happened ? I have caded General Sir Roger Tempest a beast, and offered to cuff him. For a moment, I say, I am dumbfoundered. Then, for shyness has never been my besetting sin, and some thing in the genial laughter of Ids eyes reassures me, I hold out the injured portion of my raiment, and say, " Look ! when you see what you have done, I am sure you will forgive me ; but of course I meant it for Bobby.

I never dreamt it was you." He takes hold of one end of the rent — I of the other, and we both examine it. " How exceedingly clumsy of me ! how could it have happened ? I beg your pardon ten thousand times." In his words there is polite remorse and solicitude : in his face only a friendly mirth. He is old, that is clear. Had he been young, he would have said, with that variety and suitability of epithets so characteristic of this generation, " I am awfully sorry ! how awfully stupid of me ! what an awful duffer I am !" The gas is shining in its garish yellow brightness sud doivn upon us, as we stand together, illuminating my plain scorched face, the slatternly looseness of my hair, and the burnt hole in my gown. "You wdl have to give me another," I say, looking up at him and smiling. I should not have thought of saying it if he had been a young man, but with a vieux papa one may be at one's ease.

" There is nothing in the world I should like better," he says, with a sort of hurry and eagerness, not very suggestive NANCY. of a vieux papa; "but really — " (seeing me look rather ashamed of my proposition) — -"is it quite hopeless? the damage quite irremediable ?" " On the contrary," reply I, tucking my gathers in, with a graceful movement,' at the band of my gown ; " five minutes wdl make it as good as new — at least " (casting a disparaging eye over its frayed and toffee-marked surface) " as good as ever it will be in this world." A little pause. "I suppose I have lost my way," he says, thinking, I fmcy, that I look rather eager to be gone. "I am never very good at the geography of a strange house." " Yes," say I, promptly ; " you came through owr door in stead of your own. Shall I show you the way back ?"

" Since I have come so far, may not I come a little farther ?" he asks, glancing rather longingly at the half-open school room door, whence sounds of pious mirth are again beginning to re-issue. " Do you mean really ?" ask I, with a highly dissuasive in flection of voice. " Please not to-night : we are all higgledy piggledy — at sixes and sevens ! To ted you the truth we have been cooking. I wonder you did not smell it in the drawing-room." Again he looks amused. " May not I cook too? I can, though you look disbeliev ing ; there are few people that can beat me at an Irish stew when I set my mind to it." A head (Bobby's) appears round the school-room door. " I say, Nancy, who are you colloguing with out there ? I believe you have got hold of our future benefac " NANCY. 15 An " oh !" of utter discomfiture, and the head is with drawn.

" I am keeping you," Sir Roger says. " Wed, I wdl say good-night. You will shake hands, won't you, to show that you bear no malice ?" " That I will," reply I, heartily stretching out my right hand, and giving his a cordial shake. For was not he at school with father?

Chapter III

Day has followed night. The broiled smell has at length evacuated the school-room, but a good deal of toffee, spdt in the pouring out, stdl adheres to the carpet, making it nice and sticky. The wind is stid running roughly about over the earth, and the yedow crocuses in the dark-brown garden borders, opened to their widest extent, are staring up at the sun. How can they stare so straight up at him without blinking ? I have been trying to emulate them — trying to stare, too, up at him, through the pane, as he rides laughing aloft in the faint far sky ; and my presumptuous eyes have rained down tears in consequence. I am trying now to read ; but a hundred thousand things distract me. The sun shining warm on my shoulder, as I lean against the window : the divine morning clamour of the birds : their invitations to come out that will take no nay : and last, but oh ! not, not least, the importunate voices of Barbara and Tou Tou.

Every morning at this hour they have a weary tussle with the verb NANCY. " aimer," " to love." It is hard that they should have pitched upon so tender-hearted a verb for the battle-field of so grim a struggle. J'aime, I love. Tu aimes, II aime, Thou lovest. He loves. Nous aimons, Vous aimez, Ils aiment, We love. You love. They love. Tins with endless variations of ingenious and hideous in accuracies — this, interspersed with foolish laughter and bitter tears, is what I have dady been audience to, for the last two months. The day before yesterday a great stride was taken : the present tense was pronounced vanquished, and Barbara and her pupil passed on in triumph to the imperfect, "j'aimais, I loved, or was loving." To-day, in order to be quite on the safe side, a return has been made to "j'aime," and it has been discovered that it has utterly disappeared from our young sister's memory.

" J'aimais, I loved, or was loving," has entirely routed and dispersed his elder brother, "j'aime, I love." The old strain is, therefore, desperately resumed. J'aime, I love. Tu aimes. II aime, Thou lovest. He loves, etc. It is making me drowsy. Ten minutes more, and I shad be asleep in the sun, with my head down-dropped on the win dow-sill. I get up, and, putting on my out-door garments, stray out into the sun, leaving Barbara, her pretty forehead puckered with ineffectual wrath, and Tou Tou, blurred with grimy tears, to their death-straggle with the restive verb " to NANCY. 17 love." It is the end of March, and when one can hide round a corner from the wind, one has a foretaste of summer, in the sun's warm strength. I gaze lovingly at the rich brown earth, so lately freed from the frost's grasp, through which the blunt green buds are gently forcing themselves.

I look down the flaming crocus throats — the imperial purple goblets with powdery gold stamens — and at the modest little pink faces of the hepaticas. All over our wood tliere is a faint yet certain purply shade, forerunner of the summer green, and the loud and sweet-voiced birds are abroad. Oh, spring ! spring ! with all your searching east winds, with your late shriveding frosts, with your occasional untimely sleets and snows, you are yet as much better than summer as hope is better than fruition. J'aime, I love. Tu aimes, II aime, Thou lovest. He loves. It runs in my head Idee some sdly refrain. I meet Bobby. I also meet Vick, my little shivering smooth white terrier. They both join me. The one wriggles herself into the shape of a trembling comma, and foolishly abasing herself rods over on her back, to demonstrate her joy at my advent.