“It requires study, Captain Rolph,” he said thoughtfully, “and time to appreciate the value of the results achieved in astronomy. Perhaps we have nothing to show that is of direct utility to man, but everything in nature is so grand – there is so much to be learned, that, for my part, I wonder why everybody does not thirst for knowledge.”
“Yes,” said Glynne, thoughtfully, and below her breath.
“Oh, we all dabble in science, more or less,” said Rolph, glancing at Sir John with a look that seemed to say, “You see how I’ll trot him out.” “Here’s the major goes in for toadstools, and Sir John for big muttons and portly pigs.”
“And Captain Rolph for exhibitions of endurance, to prove that a man is stronger than a horse,” said the major, drily.
“Yes, and not a bad thing, either, eh, Sir John?”
“Oh, every man to his taste,” said the host; “but I believe in a man feeding himself up, and not starving himself down.”
“Oilcake and turnips, eh?”
“Yes, both good things in their way, but I like the chemical components to have taken other forms, Rob, my boy; good Highland Scots beef and Southdown mutton.”
“I hope you will be able to indulge in a good dinner, Rolph?” said the major, looking at the young officer as if he amused him.
“Trust me for that, major,” replied the young man loudly. “I’m not bad at table.”
“I thought, perhaps,” said the major sarcastically, “that you might be in training, and forbidden to eat anything but raw steak and dry biscuit.”
“Oh, dear, no,” said Rolph seriously. “Quite free now, major, quite free.”
“That’s a blessing,” muttered Sir John, who looked annoyed and fidgety. “Hah, dinner at last.”
“Walking makes me hungry and impatient, Miss Alleyne. Come along, you are my property. First lady.”
He held out his arm, and, as Lucy laid her little hand upon it, he went out of the drawing-room chatting merrily; and, as he did so, Rolph leaped from his seat, and drew himself upright as if to display the breadth of his chest and the size of his muscles.
“Glad of it,” he said. “I’m sharp set. Come along, Glynne.”
Alleyne gazed at them intently with a strange feeling of depression coming over his spirit, and so lost to other surroundings that he did not reply to the major, who came up to him, moved by a desire to be polite to a man whom he was beginning to esteem.
Then Major Day drew back and his keen eyes brightened, for Glynne said quietly, —
“You forget. Go on in with uncle.”
“Eh?” said the young officer, looking puzzled.
“Go on in with my uncle,” said Glynne quietly.
And she crossed to where Alleyne was standing, and, in the character of hostess, laid her hand upon his arm.
“There, you’re dismissed for to-night, Rolph,” said the major, who could hardly conceal his satisfaction at this trifling incident.
Then, thrusting his arm through that of the athlete, he marched him to the dining-room, the young man’s face growing dark and full of annoyance at having to give way in this case of ordinary etiquette.
“Confound the fellow! I wish they wouldn’t ask him here,” he muttered.
“Mind seems to be taking the lead over muscles to-day,” said the major to himself, as he walked beside the young officer to the dining-room, while Glynne came more slowly behind, her eyes growing deeper and very thoughtful as she listened to Alleyne’s words.
Volume One – Chapter Thirteen.
Mars Makes a Mistake
The dinner, with its pleasant surroundings of flowers and glittering plate and glass, with the finest and whitest of linen, was delightful to Lucy, though to her it was as if there was something wanting, in spite of her position as principal guest. This resulted in her receiving endless little attentions from Sir John; but more than once she felt quite irritated with her brother, who seemed to find no more pleasure in the carefully cooked viands than in the homely joints at The Firs. He ate a little of what was handed to him, almost mechanically, and drank sparingly of the baronet’s choice wines; but his mind was busy upon nothing else than the subject upon which Glynne was asking him questions.
The major had plenty to say to Lucy, but he kept noticing the increase of animation in Glynne. For she had been awakened from her ordinary, placid, dreamy state to an intense interest in the subject under discussion.
Major Day did not know why he did it, but three times as that dinner progressed, he laid down his knife and fork, thrust his hands beneath the table, and rubbed them softly.
“Muscles is out in the cold to-night,” he muttered. “He’ll have to go in training for exercising his patience. Bring him to his senses.”
Possibly it was very weak of the major, but he had fresh in his memory, several little pieces of bitter ridicule directed at him by the captain, respecting the botanical pursuit in which he engaged.
Now, it so happened that early in the day the major had been out for a long walk, and had come upon a magnificent cluster of a fungus that he had not yet tried for its edible qualities. It was the peculiar grey-brown, scaly-topped mushroom, called by botanists Amanita Rubescens, and said to be of admirable culinary value.
“We’ll have a dish of these to-night,” thought the major, picking a fair quantity of the choicest specimens, which he took home and gave to the butler, with instructions to hand them to the cook for a dish in the second course.
Morris, the butler, put the basket down upon the hall table, and went to see to the drawing down of a window blind; and no sooner had he gone than Rolph, who had heard the order, came from the billiard-room into the hall to get his hat and stick preparatory to starting for a walk.
He was passing the major’s basket where it stood upon the hall table, when an idea flashed across his brain, and he stopped, glanced round, grinned, and then, as no one was near, took up the creel, walked swiftly across the hall out into the garden, dived into the plantation, ran rapidly down the long walk out of sight of the house, and turned into the pheasant preserve. Here, throwing out the major’s fungi, he looked sharply about and soon collected an equal quantity of the first specimens he encountered, and then turned back.
“A sarcastic old humbug,” he muttered; “let him have a dish of these, and if any of them disagree with him, it will be a lesson for the old wretch. He experimented upon me once with his confounded boleti, as he called them; now, I’ll experimentalise upon him.”
As a rule such an act as this could not have been performed unseen, but fate favoured the captain upon this occasion, and he reached the hall without being noticed, replaced the creel upon the table from which he had taken it, and then went for a walk.
Now, it so happened that Morris, the butler, had crossed the hall since, but the creel not being where he had placed it, he did not recall his orders; but going to answer a bell half-an-hour afterwards, he caught sight of the basket, remembered what he had been told, and, on his return, took the fungi into the kitchen.
“Here, cook,” he said, “you’re to dress these for the second course.”
In due time cook, who was a very slow-moving, thoughtful woman, found herself by the basket which she opened, and then turned the fungi out upon a dish.
“Well,” she exclaimed, “of all the trash! Mrs Mason, do, for goodness’ sake, look at these.”
Glynne’s maid, who was performing some mystic kind of cooking on her own account, to wit, stirring up a saucepan full of thin blue starch with a tallow candle, turned and looked at the basket of fungi, and said, —
“Oh, the idea! What are they for?”
“To cook, because them star-gazing folks are coming. Morris says Miss Glynne’s always talking about finding the focus now.”
“But these things are poison.”
“Of course they are. I wouldn’t give them to a pig;” and with all the autocratic determination of a lady in her position, she took the dish, and threw its contents behind her big roasting fire. “There, that’s the place for them! Mary, go and tell Jones I want him.”
Jones was cook’s mortal enemy; and in the capacity of supplier of fruit and vegetables for kitchen use, he had daily skirmishes with the lady, whom he openly accused of spoiling his choice productions, and sending them to table unfit for use, while she retaliated by telling him often that he could not grow a bit of garden-stuff fit to be seen – that his potatoes were watery, his beetroot pink, his cauliflowers masses of caterpillars and slugs.
Under these circumstances, Jones tied the string of his blue serge apron a little more tightly, twisted the said serge into a tail, which he tucked round his waist, and leaving the forcing-house, where he was busy, set his teeth, pushed his hat down over his nose, and, quite prepared for a serious quarrel, walked heavily into the kitchen. But only to be disarmed, for there was a plate on the white table, containing a splendid wedge of raised pie, with a piece of bread, and a jug of ale beside a horn.
Jones looked at cook, and she nodded and smiled; she also condescended to put her lips first to the freshly-filled horn, and then folded her arms and leaned against the table, while the gardener ate his “snack,” feeling that after all, though she had her bit of temper, cook was really what he called “a good sort.”
“Ah,” he said at last, with a sigh, after a little current chat, “I must be off now. Let’s see; you’ve got in all you want for to-night?”
“Yes, everything,” said cook, smiling, “and I must get to work, too. You haven’t any mushrooms, I suppose?”
“Haven’t got any mushrooms?” said Jones, reproachfully. “Why, I’ve a bed just coming on.”
“Then I should like to make a dish to-day, and use a few in one of my sauces,” said cook; and half-an-hour later Jones returned with a basketful, which he deposited upon the table with a thrill of pride.
The presence of Moray Alleyne, and the way in which he was taken up, as the captain called it, by Glynne, so filled the mind of Rolph, that there was no room for anything else, and as the dinner went on, his annoyance so sharpened his appetite that he ate very heartily of the two entrées and the joint. It was not until the second course was in progress that a dish was handed round, to which, after a telegraphic glance between the major and Lucy, that young lady helped herself. Glynne took some mechanically, to the major’s great delight, and, like Lucy, went on eating. Then the dish was handed to Rolph, who fixed his glass in his eye, and started slightly as he suddenly recalled the trick he had played in the hall.
“What’s this?” he said in an undertone to the butler.
“Sham pinions ho nateral, sir.”
“Humph! no. Take the dish to Mr Alleyne.”
The man took the dish round to the guest, who, talking the while to Glynne, helped himself liberally, and went on eating.
“Won’t you have some, Rolph?” said the major, helping himself in turn.
“I! No. Don’t care for such dishes.”
“Seems to be very good,” said the major. “Smells delicious, and everyone’s eating it.”
“Not the ladies?” whispered Rolph.
“Yes; they’re revelling.”
“Good heavens!” muttered Rolph; and he turned cold and damp, the perspiration standing upon his brow.
“Nothing worse in this world than prejudice,” said the major, taking a mouthful of the delicate dish.
“Ah, yes: superb. Jack, old fellow, try some of these fungi.”
“Get out!” said Sir John, sipping his wine.
“But, my dear boy, they are simply magnificent,” cried the major. “Here, take the dish to your master.”
The mushrooms were handed, and Sir John tried a little, recalled the dish, and had some more, while Rolph sat perfectly still, not daring to speak, though he saw everyone at the table partaking of the stew.
“What are these?” said Sir John. “They’re very good.”
“Agaricus Rubescens, my boy. Tons of them rot every year, because there is no one to pick them but Miss Lucy Alleyne and your humble servant here.”
“Well, don’t let’s have any more go rotten,” cried Sir John. “They’re delicious, eh, Mr Alleyne?”
“I beg your pardon,” said the visitor, looking up.
“These fungi,” said the host, “uncommonly good.”
“Yes, admirable,” said Alleyne, who had finished his, and had not the most remote recollection of their quality.
“I don’t believe he tasted them,” said Sir John to himself.
“These are the fungi, Morris, that I gave you to-day to take into the kitchen?” said the major.
“Yes, sir,” said Morris, and the major finished his with great gusto.
“Uncommonly delicious!” he said.
“Capital, Jem,” cried Sir John; “but I hope they won’t poison us.”
“Trust me for that. They’ve been well tested, and are perfectly wholesome. Splendid dish.”
“They’ll all be in agonies before long,” thought Rolph. “I hope poor Glynne won’t be very bad. A bit of an attack would serve her right, though, for going on like that with the star-gazer. Phew! how hot the room is.”
“I give you credit, Jem,” cried the host. “What do you say, Miss Alleyne? It’s of no use to ask these people; they are off on comets or something else.”
“Oh, I’m growing a confirmed fungus-eater, Sir John,” said Lucy. “I am Major Day’s disciple. I think them delicious.”
“You’re a very charming little lassie, and I like you immensely,” thought Sir John, gazing at Lucy curiously and thoughtfully; “but I hope Jem has too much common sense to be making a fool of himself over you. He likes you, I know, but fungus-hunting is one thing and wife-hunting another. No, I won’t think it of you. You wouldn’t lead him on, and he’s too full of sound sense.”
“I shall have to leave the table,” said Rolph to himself. “I never felt so uncomfortable in my life. Ought I to go and get a doctor here? D – n the toadstools! I only meant the major to taste them. Who’d ever have thought that they’d all go in for them. Phew! how hot the room is. Champagne.”
The butler filled up his glass, and Rolph, in his excitement, tossed it off, with the result that the next time Morris went round, he filled the captain’s glass again.
“The thought of it all makes me feel ill,” said Rolph to himself.
“I’ve got a splendid pupil in Miss Alleyne,” said the major, sipping his wine. “I’ve given Glynne up. She can’t tell an agaric from one of the polypori. Mr Alleyne, if you’re trying to teach her star-names, you may give it up as a bad job.”
“Don’t interrupt, uncle,” said Glynne, shaking her finger at him, playfully.
“How pale the poor girl looks,” thought Rolph, who was now in an agony of apprehension. “Phew! this room is warm!” and he gulped down his glass of wine.
“Jack,” said the major, “I couldn’t have believed those fungi would be so delicious; cook has won the cordon bleu. Here, Morris, you are sure these are the same fungi?”
“Certain, sir,” replied the butler. “I took them into the kitchen myself.”
“And were they all used?”
“I think so, sir; part for the ontries in the first course.”
“What!” roared Rolph, who had been horribly guilty over that dish; and he turned white as he clutched the seat of his chair.
“Salmy of poulay ho sham pinions, sir,” said Morris, politely; and he picked a menu from the table and laid it before the captain, who refixed the glass in his eye and glared at the card.
“Do you mean to say that the hashed chicken and the other dish was made up with those con – those toadstools that were – were in that basket?”
“Yes, sir, the basket Major Day brought in, sir,” said Morris.
Sir John chuckled. The major burst into a regular roar.
“Are – are you sure, Morris?” gasped Rolph, turning a sickly yellow.
“Yes, sir; quite sure.”
“My dear fellow,” cried the major, wiping his eyes, “what is the matter?”
“I’ve – I’ve eaten a great many of them,” panted Rolph.
“Well, so we all have, and delicious they were. Why, hang it, man, they won’t poison you.”
“Don’t!” gasped Rolph, with a wild look in his eyes; and, clutching at the decanter, he poured a quantity of sherry into a tumbler and gulped it down.
“I say, Rob, are you ill?” said Sir John, kindly.
“Yes – no – I don’t know,” gasped the captain, gazing wildly from one to the other, in search of a fresh victim to the poison.
“Would you like to leave the table?” said Sir John. “Here, Morris, give Captain Rolph a liqueur of brandy.”
The butler hurriedly filled a wine glass, and the captain tossed it off as if it had been water, gazing dizzily round at the anxious faces at the table.
“Do you feel very bad, Robert?” said Glynne, rising and going round to his side to speak with great sympathy, as she softly laid her hand upon his broad shoulder.
“Horribly,” whispered the captain, who was fast losing his nerve. “Don’t you?”
“I? No. I am quite well.”
“It was those cursed toadstools,” cried Rolph, savagely.
“Nonsense, my dear sir,” said the major, firmly. “We have all eaten them, and they were delicious.”
“Give me your arm, some one,” groaned Rolph, rising from his chair; and the major caught him, and helped him from the room, Alleyne and Sir John following, after begging Lucy and Glynne to remain seated.
“Send for a doctor – quick – I’m poisoned,” said Rolph – “quick!”
“Here, send to the town,” cried Sir John. “Let a groom gallop over. No; there’s Mr Oldroyd in the village. Here, you, James, run across the park, you’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Telegraph – physician,” gasped Rolph.
“Poor fellow! He seems bad.”
“I think,” said Alleyne, quietly, “that a good deal of it is nervous dread.”
Rolph looked daggers at him, and then closed his eyes and groaned, as he lay back on a sofa in the library.
“Have – have you telegraphed – sent a telegram?” said Rolph, after lying back with his eyes closed for a few minutes.
“I have sent for Mr Oldroyd,” said Sir John, “and we will go by his advice. It would take a man half an hour to gallop to the station. We shall have the doctor here long before that.”
Rolph looked round, partly for help, partly to see who was to be the next man attacked, and then closed his eyes, and lay breathing heavily.
“I wish you wouldn’t bring in those confounded – eh? Who’s there?” said Sir John. “Oh, you, my dear. No, you can’t do any good. Go and talk to Miss Alleyne. Fit of indigestion coming on the top of a lot of physical exertion – training and that sort of thing. He’ll be better soon.”
Glynne, who had come to the door, closed it and went away, while Rolph uttered a groan.
“I was saying,” continued Sir John, “I wish you wouldn’t bring those confounded things into the house. You will be poisoning us some day.”
“What nonsense, Jack!” cried the major. “I tell you the fungi were perfectly good. You ate some of them yourself. How do you feel?”
“Oh, I’m all right.”
“So is Mr Alleyne; so are the girls; so am I. It is not the mushrooms, I’m sure. More likely your wine. We are all as well as can be.”
“Attack you suddenly,” groaned Rolph, piteously.
“Ah, well if it does,” said the major, “I won’t make such a fuss over it. Why, when we had the cholera among us at Darjeebad, the men did not make more trouble.”
Rolph squeezed his eyes together very closely, and bit his lips, wishing mentally that a fit would seize the major, while he upbraided Fortune for playing him such a prank as this; and then he lay tolerably still, waiting for nearly half an hour, during which notes were compared by the others, one and all of whom declared that they never felt better. Glynne came twice to ask if she could be of any service, and to say that Lucy was eager to help; and then there were steps in the hall, and, directly after, Oldroyd was shown in, looking perfectly cool and business-like, in spite of his hurried scamper across the park.
“Your man says that Captain Rolph has been poisoned by eating bad mushrooms,” said the young doctor. “Is this so?”
“He has had some of the same dish as all the rest,” said Sir John; “and my brother declares they were perfectly safe.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Oldroyd, who had seated himself by his patient, and was questioning and examining him.
“Better get him to bed,” he said, after a pause; “and, while he is undressing, I will run home and get him something.”
He started directly, and was back just as Rolph sank upon his pillow.
“There, sir, drink that,” said Oldroyd, in a quiet decisive tone; and, after displaying a disposition to refuse, the young officer drank what was offered to him, and soon after sank into a heavy sleep.
“I’ll come back about twelve, Sir John,” said the doctor. “I don’t think he will be any worse. In fact, I believe he’ll be all right in the morning.”
“But what is it?” said Sir John, in a whisper. “If it is the mushrooms, why are we not all ill?”
“Well, as far as I can make out,” said Oldroyd, “there is nothing the matter with him but a nervous fit, and an indication of too much stimulant. It seems to me that he has frightened himself into the belief that he has been poisoned. But I’ll come in again about twelve.”
“No, no; pray stay, Mr Oldroyd,” cried Sir John. “Come down into the drawing-room, and have a cup of tea and a chat. You don’t think we need telegraph for further advice?”
“Really, Sir John, I fail to see why you should,” said Oldroyd. “Your friend is certainly, as far as my knowledge goes, not seriously ill.”
“Then come and sit down till you want to see him again,” said Sir John. “I’m very glad to know you, Mr Oldroyd. You do know my brother? Yes, and Mr Alleyne? That’s well. Now come and see Miss Day and her friend. – Oh, my dears,” cried the baronet, in his hearty tones, “here is Mr Oldroyd come to cheer you with the best of news. Mr Oldroyd, my daughter – Well, Morris, what is it?”
“If you please. Sir John, cook says, Sir John, she’s very sorry that there should be any unpleasant feeling about the mushrooms; but she had an accident with the ones Major Day sent to be cooked, and those you had for dinner were Jones’s own growing in the pits.”
“I could have sworn they had the regular mushroom flavour,” cried the major.
“Then we needn’t fidget about our dinner,” said Sir John, laughing. “Doctor, you’re right. Morris, that will do.”
Somehow from that minute the evening brightened very pleasantly at Brackley. Lucy thought it charming, and Glynne was an attentive listener to every astronomical word that fell from Alleyne’s lips. Twice over Oldroyd went up to see his patient, and each time came back with the information that he was sleeping heavily, and that there was not the slightest cause for alarm.
After that, no one was uneasy, and Rolph was almost forgotten. Alleyne left with his sister about eleven, the two being sent home in the brougham. Glynne needed no persuasion to go to bed, and Oldroyd sat and smoked a cigar with the major and Sir John in the library till twelve, when he went and had another look at his patient.
“Well,” said the baronet, on his return, “what news?”
“Sleeping like a baby,” replied Oldroyd. “I think I’ll go now.”
“Anybody sitting up for you, Mr Oldroyd?”
“Oh, no.”
“Then there’s no one to be uneasy about your absence?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then would you oblige me by stopping here to-night, in case you are wanted?”
Oldroyd was perfectly willing to oblige, and he was shown to a spare bedroom, where he slept heartily till eight, and then rose and went to the patient, whom he found dressing for his morning walk, while his self-issued bulletin was that he was better.
He would not believe the cook.
Volume One – Chapter Fourteen.
Terrestrial Trials
“I think it was very foolish of your brother to invite them, Lucy,” said Mrs Alleyne, austerely. “All these preparations are not made without money; and when they are made, we have the bitterness of feeling that what is luxury to us is to them contemptible and mean.”
“Oh, but, mamma, you don’t know Glynne, or you would not talk like that. She is as simple in her tastes as can be, and thinks nothing of the luxury in which they live.”
“She would think a great deal of it, my dear, if, by any misfortune in life, it should all pass from her.”
“No, mamma, I don’t think she would,” said Lucy. “She is a strange girl.”
“For my part,” said Mrs Alleyne, very sternly, “I don’t think we are doing wisely in keeping up this intimacy.”
