The Lark by E Nesbit

Author:E Nesbit
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241983492
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVI

‘I think,’ said Jane, in a small, flat voice, ‘that I would rather go before he comes.’

‘Before who comes?’ Mr Rochester was laying the keys out on the table, one by one, in a row.

‘Your uncle.’

‘But he isn’t coming,’ said Mr Rochester, still intent on the keys. ‘Why can’t people use key-rings? These were on a cord, and it’s broken. They were all in a certain order. Only two labelled A and B – the rest en suite. A silly game. No – he’s not coming. He’s gone to Thibet. There’s a Buddhist manuscript there that he must see, or perish. So he’s gone to see it. But I’ve got a letter for you from him.’

‘You can post it to us,’ said Lucilla, in a voice smaller and flatter than Jane’s.

‘No need for that – I’ll give it you in half a minute. I’m only trying to remember how these things go. My dear girl,’ he ended, in a quite changed voice, ‘whatever is the matter?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Jane, now sufficiently recovered to bristle defensively. ‘Everything’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds, as Marcus Aurelius said, didn’t he? Only those unexpected things do rather take your breath away. I daresay our new gardener can take down the board. I don’t mind in the least,’ she went on, and she was now, indeed, a little breathless; ‘but I must say I think it would have been better to have let us alone, and not let us begin to work here and hope and plan things, and then spring this on us.’ She walked to the window and stood looking out at the cedars, which looked, to her eyes, twisted and rainbow-rimmed.

‘Springing what?’ asked Rochester in complete bewilderment. ‘Tell me – what?’ But Jane could find no voice to tell him what.

‘Springing what?’ he asked again.

‘What you told us,’ said Lucilla, in a sort of faint, timid growl, and then she too became speechless, and turned to the other window and gazed out at the gates and the board, also, to her, prismatically coloured.

‘But I haven’t told you anything yet,’ Rochester protested. Four eyes bright with unconcealable tears turned on him astonished reproach.

The bewildered young man was quite overcome. He gazed from Lucilla to Jane; his heart experienced a twinge at the sight of Lucilla’s brimming eyes, but when he saw the dejected droop of Jane’s head he lost his own.

‘Ah, don’t!’ he said, in a voice of extreme tenderness, and he took two steps and put his hand over Jane’s hand, which lay on the window-ledge. ‘Please, please don’t. I must have been incredibly stupid – I don’t know what I’ve done, but …’

Will it be believed that Mr Dix chose this exact moment to appear at the glass door and ask cheerfully where the wheelbarrow was kept? He looked very handsome though; his classic brow was dotted with beads of sweat, and his blue shirt, open at the neck and rolled up as to the sleeves, accentuated the blue of his eyes.

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