Then all is over. The two Misses Blake go slowly and with caution down the steep staircase, Monica and Mr. Ryde (who grows more devoted every minute) following, Terence and Kit bringing up the rear.
During the drive home the Misses Blake (who have thoroughly enjoyed themselves) are both pleasant and talkative. As the old horses jog steadily along the twilit road, they converse in quite a lively fashion of all they have heard and noticed, and laugh demurely over many a small joke.
Kit of course, is in raptures. Herfirstparty andsucha success! She had danced one set of quadrilles and one polka!twowhole dances! Ye gods, was there ever so happy a child! She chatters, and laughs, and rallies everybody so gayly that the old aunts are fain to die of merriment.
Yet Monica, who might—an' she chose—have had two partners for every dance, is strangely silent and depressed. No word escapes her: she leans back with her pretty tired head pressed close against the cushions. Perchance little Kit notices all this; because when any one addresses Monica she makes answer for her in the most careless manner possible, and by her sharp wit turns the attention of all from the sister she adores; yet in her heart she is angry with Monica.
Once only during this homeward drive something occurs to disturb the serenity of the Misses Blake. Kit, in one of her merry sallies, has touched upon Miss Fitzgerald; whereupon Aunt Priscilla, mindful of that late and lingering adieu of Terence, says, suddenly,—
"And how doyoulike Miss Fitzgerald, Terence?"
"She's delightful, aunt!" says the stricken Terence, enthusiastically. "Perfectly enchanting! You never met so nice a girl!"
"Oh, yes! I think I have, Terence," says Miss Priscilla, freezingly. "I am, indeed,sureI have."
"There's something about her right down fetching," saysMr. Beresford, giving himself airs. "Something—er—there, but difficult to describe."
"A 'je ne sais quoi young man,'" quotes the younger Miss Beresford, with a sneer. "She's tall enough to be one, at any rate. She is a horrid girl I think."
"You're jealous," says Terence, contemptuously. "Because you know you will never be half as good to look at."
"If I thought that," says Kit, growing very red, "I'd commit suicide."
"Tut! You are too silly a child to be argued with," says Terence, in a tone that is not to beborne.
Kit, rising in her seat, prepares for battle, and is indeed about to hurl a scathing rebuke upon him, when Miss Priscilla interrupts her.
"What is this great charm you see in Miss Fitzgerald, Terence?" she asks slowly.
"That is just what I cannot describe, aunt."
"I should think you couldn't, indeed!" puts in Kit, wrathfully.
"But, as I said before, she is delightful."
"Shemaybe," says Priscilla, the most damning doubt in her tone. "Shemaybe, my dear. Forbid that I should deny it! But there are some delightful people, Terence,that are not good for us."
Somehow, after this, conversation dwindles until it is gone. Terence sulks; Monica moons; Kit ponders; the Miss Blake snooze: and so at last home is reached.
How Kit sees a Vision, and being exhorted thereto by it, pleads a certain cause with great success.
How Kit sees a Vision, and being exhorted thereto by it, pleads a certain cause with great success.
It is ten o'clock, and as lovely a night as ever overhung the earth. The moon is at its fullest, the wind has fallen, all is calm as heaven itself, through which Dictynna's unclouded grandeur rolls.
The Misses Blake, fatigued by their unusual dissipation, ordered an early rout an hour agone, whereby bedroom candlesticks were in demand at nine or half-past nine o'clock.
Now, in Monica's room Kit is standing by the open window gazing in rapt admiration at the dew spangled garden beneath. Like diamonds glitter the grass and the flowers beneath the kiss of the grass and the queen of night.
Moonbeams are playing in the roses, and nestling in the lilies, and rocking to and fro upon the bosom of the stream.
There is a peace unspeakable on all around. One holds one's breath and feels a longing painful in its intensity as one drinks in the beauty of the earth and sky. 'Twereheavento be assured of love on such a night as this.
Stars make the vault above so fine that all the world, me-thinks, should be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun. There is a rush of feeling in the air,—a promise of better things to come,—of hope, of glad desire, of sweet love perfected!
"How lovely a night it is!" says Kit, leaning far out of the window, and gazing westward. She is at heart a born artist, with a mind, indeed, too full of strange, weird thoughts at times to augur well for the happiness of her future. Like many of her Irish race, she is dreamy, poetical,—intense at one moment, gay, wild impulsive the next.
"See what a flood of light there is on everything!" she says. "'Bathedin moonlight,' what a good thought was that. Monica, when I am as old as you, in a very few short years I shall be a poet."
"No, you won't, darling: you will be a musician. See what fairies lie beneath your fingers even now when you touch the piano or violin; be content, then, with your great gift, which most surelyisyours. And to me, indeed, it seems a grander thing to thrill and enchain and draw to your feet all hearts by the power of harmony that dwells within you, than by the divine gift of song that poets have."
"But their songsareharmony," says the child, turning quickly to her.
"Ay, the interpretation of it, but you have its very breath.No; search the world over, and you will find nothing so powerful to affect the souls of all as music."
"Well some day I shall want to do something," says Kit, vaguely; and then she turns to the window again, and lets her mind wander and lose itself in a mute sonata to the fair Isis throned above.
"It draws me," she says, presently, rising slowly and addressing Monica, but always with her gaze fixed upon the sleeping garden down below. "It is so bright,—so clear."
"What, Kit?"
"The moonlight. I must," restlessly, "go down into it for a little moment, or I shall not sleep through longing for it."
"But the doors are closed, my dearest, and Aunt Priscilla is in bed, and so are the servants."
"So much the better. I can draw the bolts myself without being questioned. You said just now," gayly, "I have a fairy beneath my fingers. I think I have a moon-fairy in my heart, because I love it so."
"Stay here with me, then, and worship it sensibly from my window."
"What! do you look for sense in 'moon-struck madness'? No; I shall go down to my scented garden. I have a fancy I cannot conquer to walk into that tiny flame-white path of moonlight over there near the hedge. Do you see it?"
"Yes. Well, go, if Titania calls you, but soon return, and bring me a lily,—I, too, have a fancy, you see,—a tall lily, fresh with dew and moonshine."
"You shall have the tallest, the prettiest I can find," says Kit from the doorway, where she stands framed unknowingly, looking such a slender, ethereal creature, with eyes too large for her small face, that Monica, with a sudden pang of fear, goes swiftly up to her, and, pressing her to her heart, holds her so for a moment.
"I know what you are thinking now," says Kit, with another laugh,—"that I shall die early."
"Kit! Kit!"
"Yes. Isn't it strange? I can read most people's thoughts. But be happy about me. I look fragile, I know, but I shall not die until I am quite a respectable age. Not a hideous age, you will understand, but with my hair and my teeth intact. One keeps one's hair until forty, doesn't one?"
"I don't know. I'm not forty," says Monica. "But hurry, hurry out of the garden, because the dew is falling."
Down the dark staircase, through the darker halls, into the brilliant moonlight, goes Kit. The wind, soft as satin, plays about her pretty brows and nestles through her hair, rewarding itself thus for its enforced quiet of an hour ago. Revelling in the freedom she has gained, Kit enters the garden and looks lovingly around upon her companions,—the flowers.
Who would sleep when beauty such as this is flung broadcast upon the earth, waiting for man to feast his slothful eyes upon it?
Lingeringly, tenderly, Kit passes by each slumbering blossom, or gazes into each drowsy bell, until the moonlit patch of grass she had pointed out to Monica is at last reached. Here she stands in shadow, glancing with coy delight at the fairyland beyond. Then she plunges into it, and looks a veritable fairy herself, slim, and tall, and beautiful, and more than worthy of the wand she lacks.
Walking straight up her silver path, she goes to where the lilies grow, in a bed close by the hedge. But, before she comes to them, she notes in the hedge itself a wild convolvulus, and just a little beyond it a wild dog-rose, parent of all roses. She stays to pluck them, and then—
"Kit," says a voice subdued and low, but so distinct as to sound almost in her ear.
She starts, and then looks eagerly around her, but nothing can she see. Was it a human voice, or a call from that old land that held great Zeus for its king? A message from Olympus it well might be, on such a night as this, when all things breathe of old enchantment and of mystic lore. Almost she fears yet hopes to see a sylvan deity peep out at her from the escalonia yonder, or from the white-flowered, sweetly-perfumed syringa in that distant corner,—Pan the musical, perhaps, with his sweet pipes, or a yet more stately god, the beautiful Apollo, with his golden lyre. Oh for the chance of hearing such godlike music, with only she herself and the pale Diana for an audience!
Perchance the gods have, indeed, been good to her, and sent her a special messenger on this yellow night. Fear forgotten, in the ecstasy of this hope, the strange child stands erect, and waits with eager longing for a second summons.
And it comes, but alas! in a fatally earthly tone that ruins her fond hope forever.
"Kit, it is I. Listen to me," says some one, and then a hole in the hedge is cleared, and Mr. Desmond, stepping through it, enters the moonlit patch, flushed but shamelessly unembarrassed.
Kit, pale with disappointment, regards him silently with no gentle glance.
"And to think," she says, at length, with slow scorn, looking him up and down with measureless contempt,—"to think I was mad enough to believe for one long moment that you might be Apollo, and that your voice was a cry from Parnassus!"
At which, I regret to say, Mr. Desmond gives way to mostunseemly mirth. "I never dreamed I should attain to such glory," he says. "I feel like 'the rapt one of the godlike forehead.'"
"Youmay," says the younger Miss Beresford, who has awakened from the dim dusk of "faerie lands forlorn" to the clearer light of earth. "You may," witheringly, "feellike it, but you certainly don'tlooklike it."
"I am not complete, I know that," says Mr. Desmond still full of unholy enjoyment. "I lack 'bright Apollo's lute strung with his hair;' but if you will wait a moment I will run back to Coole and get the nearest thing to it."
He turns as if to fulfil his words, but Kit stops him.
"Don't go," she says, laughing gayly, now herself. "Even the very original lute would not transform you into a god. Stay if you want to. After all, now I am again in my senses, I daresay you are as good to talk to as a heathen deity."
"Oh, no," says Mr. Desmond, humbly. "They always thundered when they spoke: so think how imposing and convincing their arguments must have been!"
"Horrid,Ishould think," says Kit. "And now tell me what brought you here?"
This is abrupt, but, taking her in her own mood, Desmond answers, bluntly,—
"Monica."
"Shetoldyou to come?"
"No. But I want to see her."
"She has gone to her room."
"Make her leave it again. Tell her I cannot rest until I see her; tell her anything; only bring her to me for even one short moment."
"But it is some time since I left her: perhaps she is in bed."
"But not asleep yet, surely. She lovesyou, Kit: induce her, then, to come to her window, that I may even catch a glimpse of her, if I may not speak with her. But she cannot be in bed; it is so early," says Mr. Desmond, desperately.
"Well," says Kit, relenting, and striving to forget the blank occasioned by the substitution of an ordinary Desmond for an extraordinary deity, "I'll see what can be done."
"You will," eagerly, "really?"
"Yes, really. I will stand your friend," say Kit, solemnly, feeling now that, even if the old gods have denied her an intimate acquaintance with them, still they have devoted herto the service of Cupid, and have secretly commanded her to help on the machinations of his naughty little highness.
"Then will you tell her I want to see her—here, now—for only a bare second if she so wills it? Will you tell her this from me? Dear Kit,sweetKit, I entreat you to do this."
"Oh! how sweet I am when you want me to do something for you!" says she, with a little smile. "There! I can see through you as clearly as though you were crystal; but I like you all the same. You must have some good in you to fall in love with my Monica."
"Others can fall in love with her, too," returns he, with moody jealousy.
"Ah, yes! I saw that," says Kit, lifting her hands excitedly.
"Who could fail to see it? Who could fail to love her?" says Desmond, sadly. Then, being in such very poor case, and looking sorrowfully for comfort from any source, however small, he says, nervously,—
"Kit, answer me truthfully—you have sworn to be my friend: tell me, then, which doyoucount the better man,—him, or me?"
But that a sense of honor forbids him to pry into his love's secret thoughts, he would have asked whomshecounted the better man.
"You," says Kit, calmly. "I have no doubt about it. Ihatefat men, and—and so does Monica. I have heard her say so, over and over again."
"Oh, Kit! what a dear little girl you are!" says Mr. Desmond, with grateful fervor.
"Well, I'm glad you like me," says Kit, "because"—frankly—"I like you. It was very good of you to lend that gun to Terry; I haven't forgotten that, though, goodness knows, I only hope he won't do himself to death with it" (she delights in old-world phrases such as this); "and I like you, too, for loving Monica. Isn't she—" laying her hand upon his arm, and looking trustfully into his eyes,—"isn'tshe pretty?"
"She is like an angel," says Desmond, feeling all his heart go out to the fragile, ethereal-looking child before him, as he listens to her praises of her sister.
"Or a saint, perhaps. Monica is a saintly name. Was she not the mother of St. Augustine?" says Kit, quickly. After the old gods, passion for the saints, and their lilies and roses and fiery trials, animates her childish bosom. "Oh! and that reminded me," she says: "she told me to bring herin a lily, fresh with dew,—one of those lilies over there in that dark corner. Do you see them,—tall and white?"
"I see. Let me pick one for her. Here, take it to her, and," laying his lips upon it, "thiswith it."
"I will. And now let me run in and try my utmost to persuade her to come out here. But," doubtfully, as she remembers how Monica refused with studied coldness to meet his parting glance at the Barracks a few hours ago, "do not be too sure of her coming. Shemayrefuse, you know. She is peculiar in many ways, and she thinks herself bound in honor to Aunt Priscilla not to look at you. But stay here, just in this spot, and think all the time that I am doing my very best for you."
Her little face is so earnest as she says all this, so fearful that he may have to endure disappointment, that he is greatly touched. Pushing back her hair from her forehead with both hands, he lays a light but loving kiss upon her brow.
"Go, my best friend. I trust all to you," he says, after which the slender sprite springs away from him, and, entering the shadows beyond, is soon lost to him.
Reaching the house, she mounts the stairs with swift but silent footsteps, and, after a nervous hesitation before the door of her aunt Priscilla's room, finds herself once again face to face with Monica.
That pretty cause of all this plotting is not in bed, as Kit had predicted might be the case. She is not even undressed. She has only exchanged her azure gown for a loose white morning robe, long and trailing, and lavishly trimmed at the throat and wrists with some rare old Mechlin lace that Aunt Penelope had given her a week ago, glad in the thought that it may perchance add another charm to the beauty of her darling.
Her hair is rolled up in a small, soft knot behind; her face is a little pale; her eyes, large and luminous, have great heavy shadows lying beneath them, suggestive of fatigue and tiring thought. Altogether, she is looking as lovely as any heart can desire.
"Ah, you have returned!" she says, as Kit enters. "How long you have been! I gave you up. I thought some pixy had become enamoured of you and had carried you off to his kingdom."
"I was in danger of nothing so insignificant as a pixy. It was the great Apollo's self I feared," says Kit, with a slyhumorous smile. "And here is your lily:hesent it to you with his love and a kiss."
"Apollo?" smiling.
"Why, yes. Who else could it be at this hour?"
"Yet there is something strange in your manner."
"That is as it should be. On such a night as this, how could one escape a little touch of that'moonstruck madness' I spoke of a while since? Go out yourself, walk through that moonlit garden just where I walked, to where in that corner over the rays melt into shadow, and try if there be nothing in it to make your heart beat faster."
"I could do it, and return calm as I am now."
"Then you are no true woman."
"What! must a woman be so foolishly romantic as to tremble in the moonlight, to be true?"
"Moonlights differ. There is a witchery abroad to-night. Go, and judge for yourself if there be not truth in my words."
"I can see enough of it from this," says Monica, leaning her bare snowy arms—from which her loose sleeves have fallen—upon the window-ledge, and turning her eyes to the pale sky studded with bright stars, "to bewitch me, if indeed it has the power you ascribe to it."
Foiled in her first effort to send her to Desmond's arms, Kit flings herself upon the ground beside her, and lays her arms upon her lap and looks lovingly but reproachfully into her eyes.
"I think you were a little unkind to that dear Brian this evening," she says.
"That dear Brian will recover from my cruel treatment, I make no doubt," says Monica, with affected lightness, though, in truth, remorse is gnawing at her heartstrings.
"If he does, he will show his very good sense. He loves you: why, then, do youfloutand scorn him?"
In the ancient library below, the young ladies in the novels alwaysfloutedtheir lovers. Not having the faintest idea how they perform this arduous task, Kit still adopts the word as having a sonorous sound, and uses it now with—as she hopes—great effect.
"I donotflout him," says Monica, indignantly. "But what am I to do? am I to make Aunt Priscilla wretched, then, because of him, and break her poor heart perhaps?"
"Oh, bother her heart!" says the younger Miss Beresford, with more candor than decency: "think ofhispoor heart, if you like, wasting and wearing away because of yourunkindness. IfIhad a lover, that is not how I should treat him. I should do anything in the world he asked me. I should defy everybody in the world for him, and think them well lost. I should run away with him at a moment's notice if he asked me.Now!"
"Oh, Kit!" says Monica, aghast at all this energy.
"I should indeed," nothing daunted; "I shouldn't hesitate. And, at all events, I should be civil to him at all times. Why, the way you treated that wretched young man to-day at Clonbree Barracks was, I consider, shameful! And you call yourself, I dare say, soft-hearted. Tolookat you, one would think you couldn't be unkind if you tried; and yet thebarbarityof your conduct to-day, to a person who literally worships the ground you walk on, was——"
"But what did I do?" interrupts poor Monica, trembling before this whirlwind.
"Whatdidn'tyou do? you mean. You would not even grant him one kind parting glance. I could havecriedfor him, he looked so sad and forlorn. I think he looked like suicide,—I do, indeed,—and I shouldn't wonder a bit if in the morning we heard——"
"Oh, Kit, don't!don't!"says Monica, in an agony, as this awful insinuation gains force with her.
"Well, I won't then," says the advocate, pretending to surrender her point by adroitly changing her front. A very Jesuit at soul is this small Kit. "After all, I daresay he will grow tired of your incivility, and so—forget you. Some one else will see how dear a fellow he is, and smile upon him, and then he will give you up."
This picture, being in Monica's eyes evenmoreawful than the former, makes great havoc in her face, rendering her eyes large and sorrowful, and, indeed, so suffused with the heart's water that she seems upon the very verge of tears. She turns these wet but lovely orbs upon her tormentor.
"That would be the best thing he could do forhimself," she says, so sadly that Kit insensibly creeps closer to her; "and as for me, it doesn't matter about me, of course."
"Monica, you like him, then," says Kit, suddenly, rising on her knees and looking into her sister's averted eyes. "I am sure of it: I know it now. Why did you not confide in me before?"
"Because it seems all so hopeless; even—if I loved him enough to marry him—theywould never give in" (meaning,presumably, her aunts): "so why should he or I waste time over so impossible a theory?"
"Why should it be impossible? Why should you not be married?"
"Because the fates are against us. Not," quickly, "thatthatso much matters: I don't want to marryanybody! But—but," lowering her lids, "I do want him toloveme."
"My dear child, talk sense if you talk at all," says the material Kit. "There never yet was a heroine in any novel ever read by me (and I have had a large experience) who didn't want to marry the man of her heart. Now just look at that girl of Rhoda Broughton's, in 'Good-by, Sweetheart!' We can all see she didn't die of any disease, but simply because she couldn't be wedded to the man she loved.There'sa girl for you! givemea girl like that. If ever I fall in love with a man, and I find I can't marry him, I shall make a point of dying of grief. It is so graceful; just like what I have heard of Irving and Ellen Terry—I mean, Romeo and Juliet!"
"But I can't bear to deceive Aunt Priscilla," says Monica. "She is so kind, so good."
"Stuff and nonsense!" says Kit promptly. "Do you suppose, when Aunt Priscilla was young, she would have deserted—let us say—Mr. Desmond the elder, at the beck and call of any one? She has too much spirit, to do her credit. Though I must say her spirit is rather out of place now, at times."
"What would you have me do, then?" asks Monica, desperately.
"Oh, nothing," says Kit, airily,—"reallynothing. I am too young, of course, to give advice," with a little vicious toss of her small head. "And of course, too, I know nothing of the world's ways," with another toss, that conveys to her auditor the idea that she believes herself thoroughly versed and skilled in society's lore, but that as yet she is misunderstood. "And it is not my place, of course, to dictate to an elder sister." This severely, and evidently intended as a slap at Monica because of some little rebuke delivered by her, the other day, on the subject of age. "But," with concentrated energy, "I would not bebrutal, if I were you."
"Brutal?" faintly.
"Yes,brutal, to keep him waiting for you all this time in the shadow near the ivy wall!"
Having discharged this shell, she waits in stony silence for a reply. She waits some time. Then—
"Are you speaking of—of Mr. Desmond?" asks Monica, in a trembling voice.
"Yes. He is standing there now, and has been, for—oh, for hours,—on the bare chance of gaining one word from you."
"Now?" starting.
"Yes. He said he would wait until I had persuaded you to go out. If I had such a lover, I know I should not keep him waiting for me all the eveningshiveringwith cold."
(It is the balmiest of summer nights.)
"Oh! what shall I do?" says Monica, torn in two between her desire to be true to her aunt and yet not unkind to her lover.
"As I said before," says the resolute Kit, turning her small pale face up to her sister, "I know I am not entitled to dictate to any one, but this I know, too, that if I were you, andtwentyAunt Priscillas were at my side, I should still—go to him! There!"
She conquers. Monica rises slowly, and as a first move in the desired direction goes—need I say it?—to the looking-glass. Need I say, also, that she feels dissatisfied with her appearance?
"Then I suppose I had better dress myself all over again," she says, glancing with much discontent at the charming vision the glass returns to her.
"No, no!" says Kit, decidedly. She has now arranged herself as Mistress of the Ceremonies, and quite gives herself airs. "Do not add even a touch to your toilet. You are quite too sweet as you are, and 'time presses'" (another quotation from one of her mouldy volumes).
"Butthis," says Monica, plucking at her pretty loose gown, that hangs in limp artistic folds round her slight figure and is pranked out with costly laces.
"It is perfect! Have you no eyes for the beautiful? There, go, you silly child; Nature has been so good to you, you now deride her prodigality, and make little of the gifts she has bestowed upon you. Go to——"
"Good gracious!" says Monica, pausing to stare at her aghast. "Where did you learn all that?"
"It is in a book below; I learned it by heart, to say it to you some day, and now I have done it. There, be quick! He will begoneif you don't make haste. His patience by this time must be exhausted. Think what he has been enduring; I only hope he hasn't fainted from sheer fatigue, that's all!"
"Will you stay here till I come back," says Monica, nervously, "or will you come with me?"
"I shall stay here; and don't hurry on my account. I shall be quite happy with this lamp and your Chaucer. There, go now; and tell him I sent you. And," mischievously, "don't be civil to him, you know, but rate him soundly for presuming to disturb your worship at this hour."
"Oh! if any one sees me!" says Monica, quaking.
"You will never get hanged for a big crime," returns Kit, laughing; and then Monica steps out lightly, fearfully, upon the corridor outside, and so, with her heart dying within her, creeps past her aunt's doors, and down the wide staircase, and through the hall, and at last into the silver moonlight!
How Monica with faltering footsteps enters the mysterious moonlight, and how she fares therein.
How Monica with faltering footsteps enters the mysterious moonlight, and how she fares therein.
What a noise the tiny gravel makes beneath her feet, as she hurries rapidly towards the garden! How her heart beats! Oh that she were back again in her pretty safe room, with the naughty Kit to scold! Oh, if Aunt Priscilla were to rise, and, looking out of her bedroom window, catch a glimpse of her, as she hastes to meet the man she has been forbidden to know! A thousand terrors possess her. The soft beauty of the night is unseen, the rushing of sweet brooks in the distance is unheard. She hurries on, a little, lithe, frightened figure, with wide eyes and parted lips, to the rendezvous she has not sought. And what a little way it had seemed in the glad daylight, yet what a journey in the silent, fearsome night! There are real tears, born of sheer nervousness, in her beautiful eyes, as she runs along the garden path, and at last—at last—finds herself face to face with Desmond.
"Ah, you have come!" cries he, gladly, going to meet her while yet she is a long way off.
"Yes." She can say no more, but her fear has departed at sight of him, and once more she grows calm, collected, and mistress of herself. She keeps well away from him, however, and holds out to him—that "white wonder"—her hand, froma very great distance, as it seems to him. Does she distrust him, then? Thinking of this, Brian takes the extended hand, and holds it in a clasp that though tender is light, and refrains with much forbearance from pressing his lips to it.
"To comehere, and at this hour! It is madness!" says Monica, hastily.
"A very blessed madness, then, and with method in it: it has enabled me to seeyou."
"Oh, do not talk like that. You ought not to see me at all. And, now, what is it? Kit said you wanted me sadly."
"And so I do, and not only now but always."
"If," reproachfully, "it is nothing pressing, would not to-morrow have done?"
"To-morrow never comes. There is nothing like to-day; and how could I have lived till to-morrow? I could not sleep, I could not rest, until I had seen you. My heart seemed on fire. Monica, how could you have treated me as you did to-day?"
She is silent. The very fact of her not answering convinces him her coldness at the Barracks was intentional, and his tone takes an additional sadness as he speaks again.
"You meant it then?" he says. "You would not throw me even one poor glance. If you could only look into my heart, and read how cruelly I felt your unkindness, you might——"
"I don't know what you mean," says Monica. "Why should you talk of unkindness? Why should I be kinder to you than to another?"
"Of your grace alone; I know that," says the young man, humbly. He has paid court to many a town-bred damsel before this, and gained their smiles too, and their sighs; yet now he sues to this cold child as he never sued before, and knows his very soul is set on her good will.
"Why must you choose me to love,—me, of all the world?" says Monica, tremulously: "it is wide, there are others—and——"
"Because I must. It is my fate, and I am glad of it. Whom worthier could I love?" says the lover, with fond, passionate reverence.
"Many, no doubt. And why love at all? Let us be friends, then, if it is indeed decreed that our lives meet——"
"There could never be mere friendship between you and me. If your heart sleeps, at least your sense must tell you that."
"Then I could wish myself without sense. I want to know nothing about it.Alas! how sad a thing is love!"
"And how joyous! It is the one emotion to be fed and fostered. 'All others are but vanity.' I will persist in loving you until I die."
"That is a foolish saying; and, even if you do, what will come of it all?" says Monica, with a sigh.
"Marriage, I trust," returns he, right cheerily. "Because, to give you another example of love's endurance, and to quote old Southey to you, I will tell you that he says,—
'It is indestructable;Its holy flame forever burneth:From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.'
'It is indestructable;Its holy flame forever burneth:From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.'
but not yet awhile, I hope."
"You are a special pleader," says she, with a sudden smile.
"For the cause that I plead I would that I were a more eloquent advocate."
"You are eloquent enough," glancing at him for a moment, and then again turning away from him; "too eloquent," she says, with a little sigh.
He is still holding her hands, but now he does not speak or answer her in any wise. A silence falls upon them, calm as the night. In "full orbed glory" the moon above sails through the skies.
"A dewy freshness fills the silent air;No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,Breaks the serene of heaven."
"A dewy freshness fills the silent air;No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,Breaks the serene of heaven."
"There is one thing I must say, Monica," says the young man at last, lifting her face gently with one hand until her eyes look into his own: "remember, my life is in your hands."
"Do not overburden me," she answers, but in so low a voice that it can scarce be heard.Yethehears.
"My darling, must I be a burden to you?" he says. "Monica, if this my courtship is hateful to you, or more than you can bear, dismiss me now, and I will go from you, no matter what it costs me."
"You are no true lover, to talk like that," she says, with a shadowy smile.
"I am lover enough to wish you no pain or weariness of spirit."
"I doubt you are too good for me," she answers with a little burst of feeling.
"I must be a paragon indeed if that be so," returns he. "Oh, Monica, if you could only love me!"
"Idarenot." Then, as though sorry for these words, she holds out her hands to him, and says, with a quick smile, "Oh, Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?"
"I wish I knew," returns he sadly. "Yet if I were sure of one thing I should not despair. Monica, tell me you don't like Ryde."
"I can't," says Monica. "He is very kind to me always. I am sure I ought to like him."
"How has he been kind to you?"
"Oh, in many ways."
"He has brought you a cup of somebody else's tea, I suppose, and has probably trotted after you with a camp-stool; is that kindness?"
"If one is hot or tired, yes."
"You are one of the most grateful specimen of your sex. I wish there was anything for which you might be grateful to me. But I am not great at thepetits soinsbusiness."
"I shouldn't have thought so this afternoon," says Monica, maliciously, "when you were happy with Olga Bohun. But see, the moon has risen quite above the elms. I must go."
"Not yet. There is something else. When am I to see you again?—when?"
"That is as fate wills it."
"Youare my fate. Will it, then, and say to-morrow."
"No, no!" exclaims she, releasing her hands from his, "I cannot indeed. Imustnot. In being here with you now I am doing wrong, and am betraying the two people in the world who are most kind to me. How shall I look into their eyes to-morrow? No; I will not promise to meet you anywhere—ever."
"How tender you are with them, and with me how cruel!"
"You have many joys in your life, but they how few!"
"You are wrong there. The world has grown useless to me since I met you. You are my one joy, and you elude me; therefore pity me too."
"Who made you so gracious a courtier?" asks she, with a little shrug of her rounded shoulders.
"Now you cast scorn upon me," says Desmond, half angrily, and as he says it the thought of Kit's wordfloutcomes to her, and she smiles. It is an idle thought, yet it is with difficulty she cleaves to the less offensive smiles and keeps herself from laughing aloud.
"Why should I do that?" she says, a little saucily. Indeed, she knows this young man to be so utterly in her power—and power is so sweet when first acquired, and so prone to breedtyranny—that she hardly turns aside to meditate upon the pain she may be causing him.
"I don't know," a little sadly; then, "Monica,you like me?"
"Yes, I like you," says Miss Beresford, as she might have answered had she been questioned as to her opinion of an aromatic russet.
Repressing a gesture of impatience, Desmond goes on calmly,—
"Better than Ryde?"
"Than Mr. Ryde?" She stops and glances at the gravel at her feet in a would-be thoughtful fashion, and pushes it to and fro with her pretty Louis Quinze shoe. She pauses purposely, and makes quite an affair of her hesitation.
"Yes, Ryde," says he, impatiently.
"How can I answer that?" she says, at length, with studied deliberation, "when I know so little of either him—or you?"
His indignation increases.
"Knowing us both atleastequally well, you must have formed by this time some opinion of us."
"I should indeed," says the young girl, slowly, always with her eyes upon the gravel;"but unfortunately it never occurred to me,—the vital necessity of doing so, I mean."
Though her head is still bent, he can detect the little amused smile that is curving her mobile lips. There can be small doubt but that she is enjoying his discomfiture immensely.
"Certainly there is no reason whyyoushould waste a thought on either him or me," he returns, stiffly.
"No; and yet I do waste one on—you—sometimes," says she, with a gleam of tenderness, and a swift glance from under her long lashes that somehow angers him intensely.
"You are a coquette," he says, quietly. There is contempt both in his look and tone. As she hears it, she suddenly lifts her head, and, without betraying chagrin, regards him steadfastly.
"Is that so?" she says. "Sometimes I havethoughtit, but——"
The unmistakable hope her pause contains angers him afresh.
"If you covet the unenviable title," he says, bitterly, "be happy. You can lay just claim to it. You are more than worthy of it."
"You flatter me," she says, letting a glance so light rest upon him that it seems but the mere quiver of her eyelids.
"I meant no flattery, believe me."
"I do believe you: I quite understand."
"Not quite, I think," exclaims he, the sudden coldness of her manner frightening him into better behavior. "If—if I have said anything to offend you, I ask your forgiveness."
"There is nothing to forgive, indeed, and you have failed to offend me. But," slowly, "you have made me very sorry for you."
"Sorry?"
"Yes, for your most unhappy temper. It is quite the worst, I think, I have ever met with.Good-night Mr. Desmond: pray be careful when going through that hedge again; there are some rose-trees growing in it, and thorns do hurt so dreadfully."
So saying, she gathers up her white skirts, and, without a touch of her hand, or even a last glance, flits like a lissome ghost across the moonlit paths of the garden, and so is gone.
How Kit reads between the lines—How the Misses Blake show themselves determined to pursue a dissipated course, and how Monica is led astray by an apt pupil of Machiavelli.
How Kit reads between the lines—How the Misses Blake show themselves determined to pursue a dissipated course, and how Monica is led astray by an apt pupil of Machiavelli.
Early next morning Bridget, Monica's maid, enters Kit's room in a somewhat mysterious fashion. Glancing all round the room furtively, as though expecting an enemy lying in ambush behind every chair and table, she says, in a low, cautious tone,—
"A letter for you, miss."
As she says this, she draws a note from beneath her apron, where, in her right hand, it has been carefully hidden,—socarefully, indeed, that she could not have failed to create suspicion in the breast of a babe.
"For me," says Kit, off her guard for once.
"Yes, miss."
"Who brought it?"
"A bit of a gossoon, miss, out there in the yard beyant. An' he wouldn't give me his name; but sure I know him well for a boy of the Maddens', an' one of the Coole people. His father, an' his gran'father before him, were laborers with the ould Squire."
"Ah, indeed!" says Kit. By this time she has recovered her surprise and her composure. "Thank you, Bridget," she says, with quite a grandiloquent air: "put it there, on that table. It is of no consequence, I dare say: you can go."
Bridget—who, like all her countrywomen, dearly likes a love-affair, and is quite aware of young Mr. Desmond's passion for her mistress—is disappointed.
"The gossoon said he was to wait for an answer, miss," she says, insinuatingly. "An' faix," waxing confidential, "I think I caught sight of the coat-tails of Misther Desmond's man outside the yard gate."
"You should never think on such occasions, Bridget; and coat-tails are decidedlylow," says the younger Miss Beresford, with scathing reproof.
"They weren't very low, miss. He wore one o' them cutaway coats," says Bridget, in an injured tone.
"You fail to grasp my meaning," says Kit, gravely. "However, let it pass. If this note requires an answer, you can wait in the next room until I write it."
"Very well, miss," says the discomfited Bridget; and Kit, finding herself in another moment alone, approaches the table, and with a beating heart takes up the note. "It is—itmustbe from Brian!"
The plot thickens; andshehas been selected to act a foremost part in it! She is to be the confidante,—the tried and trusted friend; without her aid all the fair edifice Cupid is erecting would crumble into dust.
And is there no danger, too, to be encountered,—perhaps to be met and overcome? If perchance all be discovered,—if Aunt Priscilla should suddenly be apprised of what is now going on beneath her very spectacles,—will not she,—Kit,—in her character of "guide, philosopher, and friend" to the culprits, come in for a double share of censure? Yes, truly there are breakers ahead, and difficulties to be overcome. There is joy and a sense of heroism in this thought; and she throws up her small head defiantly, and puts out one foot with quite a martial air, as it comes to her.
Then she tears open the envelope, and reads as follows:—