Rossmoyne

"She may be," says Priscilla, the most damning doubt in her tone. "She may be, 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.

CHAPTER XI

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. 'Twere heaven to 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. "'Bathed in 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 surely is yours. 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 songs are harmony," 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 most unseemly mirth. "I never dreamed I should attain to such glory," he says. "I feel like 'the rapt one of the godlike forehead.'"

"You may," 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, "feel like it, but you certainly don't look like 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, I should 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."

"She told you 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 loves you, 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 her to 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, sweet Kit, 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 do you count 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 whom she counted the better man.

"You," says Kit, calmly. "I have no doubt about it. I hate fat 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't she 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 her in 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, "this with 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. She may refuse, 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 sly humorous smile. "And here is your lily: he sent 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 you flout and scorn him?"

In the ancient library below, the young ladies in the novels always flouted their 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 do not flout 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 of his poor heart, if you like, wasting and wearing away because of your unkindness. If I had 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. To look at you, one would think you couldn't be unkind if you tried; and yet the barbarity of 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.

"What didn't you do? you mean. You would not even grant him one kind parting glance. I could have cried for 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 even more awful 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 for himself," 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 —they would 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, "that that so much matters: I don't want to marry anybody! But – but," lowering her lids, "I do want him to love me."

"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's a girl for you! give me a 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, – "really nothing. 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 be brutal, 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 evening shivering with 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, and twenty Aunt 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).

"But this," 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 be gone if 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!