The Star-Gazers. Fenn George Manville

so much to do – endless labour – and if I do not husband my strength, I – you are right: a man must take exercise and sleep. Mr Oldroyd, I shall take your advice, and – Hush, here they come.”

      In effect, looking red-eyed, but perfectly calm now, Mrs Alleyne entered with Lucy, and the rest of the dinner passed off most pleasantly to Oldroyd, who was ready to accord that the poor, badly-cooked mutton was the most delicious he had ever eaten, and the vegetables as choice as could have been grown. Doubtless this was due to Lucy’s grateful glances, and the quiet, grave condescension with which Mrs Alleyne turned from her idol to say a few words now and then.

      Even Alleyne himself seemed to be making efforts to drag himself back from the company of the twin orbs in space, or the star-dust of the milky way, to chat about the ordinary things of every-day life; and at last, it was with quite a guilty sensation of having overstepped the bounds of hospitality in his stay that Oldroyd rose to go.

      “You will call and see us again soon, Mr Oldroyd?” said Mrs Alleyne, with the dignity of a reigning queen.

      “Professionally, madam,” he said, “there is no need. I have exhausted my advice at this first visit. It is for you to play the nurse, and see that my suggestions are carried out.”

      “Then as a friend,” said the lady, extending her thin white hand. “I am sure my son feels grateful to you, and will be glad to see you at any time.”

      She glanced at Alleyne, who was seated in the sunshine, holding a pair of smoked glass spectacles to his eyes, and gazing up at the dazzling orb passing onwards towards the west.

      “I thank you heartily,” said Oldroyd. “Society is not so extensive here that one can afford to slight so kind an invitation.”

      “Mr Oldroyd going?” said Alleyne, starting, as, in obedience to a look from her mother, Lucy bent over him, and, pressing the glasses down with one hand, whispered a few words in his ear.

      “Yes, I must be off now,” said the young doctor.

      “You will come and see us again soon?” said Alleyne. “Would you care to see my observatory? It might interest you a little.”

      “I shall be glad,” said Oldroyd, “very glad – some day,” and after a most friendly good-bye, he took his soft hat and stout stick, and, leaving the cheerless, sombre house, went down the steep slope, and took a short cut across the rough boggy land towards his patient’s cottage.

      “Thorough lady, but she is very stiff; and she worships her son. Charming little girl that. Nice and natural. No modern young-ladyism in her,” he muttered, as he picked his way. “I should think it would be possible to be in her company a whole day without a single allusion to frilling, or square-cut, or trains, or the colour and shape of Miss Blank’s last new bonnet. Quite a sensible little girl. Pretty flower growing in very uncongenial soil, but she seems happy enough.”

      Philip Oldroyd’s communings were checked by some very boggy patches, which had to be leaped and skirted, and otherwise avoided; but as soon as he was once more upon firm ground, he resumed where he had left off.

      “Wonderfully fond of her brother, too. Well, I don’t wonder. He’s a fine fellow after all. I thought him a dullard – a book-worm; but he’s something more than that. Why, when he wakes up out of his dreamy state, he’s a noble-looking fellow. What a model he would make for an artist who wanted to paint a Roman senator. Why doesn’t nature give us all those fine massive heads, with crisp hair and beard? Humph! lost in his far-seeing studies, and nothing will draw him out of them for more than a few hours. Nothing would ever draw him away but one thing. One thing? No, not it, though. He’s not the sort of man. He’s good-looking enough, and he has a voice that, if bent to woo, would play mischief with a woman’s heart. He’ll never take that complaint, though, I’ll vow. It would be all on the lady’s side. And yet, I don’t know: man is mortal after all. I am for one. Very mortal indeed, and if I go often to The Firs, I shall be mixing Lucy Alleyne up with my prescriptions, and that won’t do at all.”

      Volume One – Chapter Seven.

      Planets in Opposition

      Judith Hayle was busy “tidying up” the keeper’s cottage, which looked brighter since her return home, for there were flowers in glasses set here and there, and she was mentally wishing that father would clean the captain’s double gun out in the wash-house instead of bringing a pail of water into the living-room, to plant between his knees as he worked the rod up and down the barrels.

      The girl looked serious, for her sudden return had made her father stern, and she expected to be called upon for more explanation, and a cross-examination, which did not begin.

      “Who’s this?” said the keeper, with a quick look through the little lattice. “The missus. Here, Judy, she hasn’t come here for nothing. Go upstairs and let me see her first.”

      The girl looked startled and hurriedly obeyed, while her father hastily wiped his hands and opened the door.

      Mrs Rolph was close up, and he went out into the porch to meet her, drawing aside quietly and gravely to let her pass.

      “Will you walk in, ma’am?”

      “Yes, Hayle, thank you,” said Mrs Rolph, speaking in a distant, dignified way, as of a mistress about to rebuke an erring servant.

      She passed him, looking quickly round the room in search of Judith, and then, turning her eyes inquiringly upon the keeper, who drew a chair forward, and then stood back respectfully as Mrs Rolph sat down.

      “Do you know why I have come here, Hayle?” she said, striving to speak as one who feels herself aggrieved.

      “Yes, ma’am. ’Bout sending Judith home.”

      “Your child has spoken to you?”

      “No, ma’am.”

      Mrs Rolph coughed faintly, to gain time. The task did not seem so easy in presence of this sturdy, independent-looking Englishman, and she regretted the tone she had taken, and her next remark as soon as it was spoken.

      “Well, Hayle,” she continued, “what have you to say to this?”

      “Nay, ma’am,” said the keeper coldly; “it’s what have you to say?”

      Mrs Rolph wanted to speak quietly, and make a kind of appeal to the keeper, but the words would not come as she wished, and she turned upon him, in her disappointment and anger, with the first that rose to her lips.

      “To say? That all this is disgraceful. I am bitterly hurt and grieved to find that you, an old servant of my husband, the man whom he rescued from disgrace, should, in return for the kindness of years and years, give me cause to speak as I am compelled to do now.”

      “Indeed, ma’am!”

      “Yes. Out of kindness to your poor dead wife, I took Judith, and clothed and educated her, treated her quite as if she had been of my own family, made her the companion of my niece; in short, spared nothing; and my reward is this: that she has set snares for my son, and caused an amount of unhappiness in my house that it may take years to get over, and which may never be forgotten. Now, then, what excuse have you to offer? What has your child to say?”

      The keeper looked at her and smiled.

      “Nay, ma’am,” he said quietly, “you don’t mean all this, and you would not speak so if you were not put out. You know that I’ve got a case against you. I trusted my poor lass in your hands.”

      “Trusted, man?”

      “Yes, ma’am, that’s the word – trusted her. You promised to be like a mother to her.”

      “And I have been till she proved ungrateful.”

      “Nay, she has not been ungrateful, ma’am, and you know it. It’s for me to ask you what you were doing to let your son put such ideas in my poor child’s head.”

      “Hayle!”

      “Yes, ma’am, I must speak my mind.”

      “It is madness. You know