Rossmoyne

He clasps the slender fingers closer, as though loath to part with them, and yet his tale has come to a climax.

"If I have told my story so badly, perhaps I had better tell it all over again," he says, with a base assumption of virtuous regret.

"No. I would not give you that trouble for the world," she says, mischievously, and then the dawning smile widens, brightens into something indescribable, but perfect.

"Oh, Monica, I do think you are the sweetest thing on earth," says the young man, with sudden fervid passion; and then all at once, and for the first time, he puts out his arms impulsively and draws her to him. She colors, – still smiling, however, – and after a brief hesitation, moves slowly but decidedly back from him.

"You don't hate me to touch you, do you?" asks he, rather hurt.

"Oh, no, indeed!" hurriedly. "Only – "

"Only what, darling?"

"I hardly know what," she answers, looking bewildered. "Perhaps because it is all so strange. Why should you love me better than any one? – and yet you do," anxiously, "don't you?"

The innocently-expressed anxiety makes his heart glad.

"I adore you," he says, fervently; and then, "Did no one ever place his arm round you before, Monica?"

He finds a difficulty in even asking this.

"No, no," with intense surprise at the question, and a soft, quick glance that is almost shamed. "I never had a lover in my life until I met you. No one except you ever told me I was pretty. The first time you said it I went home (when I was out of your sight," reddening, "I ran all the rest of the way) and looked at myself in the glass. Then," naively, "I knew you were right. Still I had my doubts; so I called Kit and told her about it; and she," laughing, "said you were evidently a person of great discrimination, so I suppose she agreed with you."

"She could hardly do otherwise."

"Yet sometimes," says Monica, with hesitation and a downcast face, "I have thought it was all mere fancy with you, and that you don't love me really."

"My sweetheart, what a cruel thing to say to me!"

"But see how you scold me! Only now," nervously plucking little bits of bark from the trunk of the tree, "you accused me of dreadful things. Yes, sometimes I doubt you."

"I wonder where I leave room for doubt? Yet I must convince you. What shall I swear by, then?" he asks, half laughing: "the chaste Diana up above – the lovers' friend – is in full glory to-night; shall I swear by her?"

"'Oh, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, lest that thy love prove likewise variable,'" quotes she archly; "and yet," with a sudden change of mood, and a certain sweet gravity, "I do not mistrust you."

She leans slightly towards him, and unasked, gives her hand into his keeping once again. She is full of pretty tender ways and womanly tricks, and as for the best time for displaying them, for this she has a natural talent.

Desmond, clasping her hand, looks at her keenly. His whole heart is in his eyes.

"Tell me that you love me," he says, in a low unsteady voice.

"How can I? I don't know. I am not sure," she says, falteringly; "and," shrinking a little from him, "it is growing very late. See how the moon has risen above the firs. I must go home."

"Tell me you love me first."

"I must not love you; you know that."

"But if you might, you could?"

"Ye – es."

"Then I defy all difficulties, – aunts, and friends, and lovers. I shall win you in the teeth of all barriers, and in spite of all opposition. And now go home, my heart's delight, my best beloved. I have this assurance from you, that your own lips have given me, and it makes me confident of victory."

"But if you fail," she begins, nervously; but he will not listen to her.

"There is no such word," he says, gayly. "Or, if there is, I never learnt it. Good-night, my love."

"Good-night." A little frightened by his happy vehemence she stands well away from him, and holds out her hands in farewell. Taking them, he opens them gently and presses an impassioned kiss on each little pink-tinged palm. With a courteous reverence for her evident shyness, he then releases her, and, raising his hat, stands motionless until she has sprung down the bank and so reached the Moyne fields again.

Then she turns and waves him a second and last good night. Returning the salute, he replaces his hat on his head, and thrusting his hands deep in his pockets, turns towards Coole – and dinner. He is somewhat late for the latter, but this troubles him little, so set is his mind upon the girl who has just left him.

Surely she is hard to win, and therefore —how desirable! "The women of Ireland," says an ancient chronicler, "are the coyest, the most coquettish, yet withal the coldest and virtuousest women upon earth." Yet, allowing all this, given time and opportunity, they may be safely wooed. What Mr. Desmond complains of bitterly, in his homeward musings to-night, is the fact that to him neither time nor opportunity is afforded.

"She is a woman therefore to be won;" but how is his courtship to be sped, if thorns are to beset his path on every side, and if persistent malice blocks his way to the feet of her whom he adores?

He reaches home in an unenviable frame of mind, and is thoroughly unsociable to Owen Kelly and the old squire all the evening.

Next morning sees him in the same mood; and, indeed, it is about this time he takes to imagining his little love as being a hapless prisoner in the hands of two cruel ogres (I am afraid he really does apply the term "ogres" to the two old ladies of Moyne), and finds a special melancholy pleasure in depicting her as a lonely captive condemned to solitary confinement and dieted upon bread and water.

To regard the Misses Blake in the light either of ogres or witches required some talent; but Mr. Desmond, at this period of his love-affair, managed it.

He would go about, too, singing, —

"Oh, who will o'er the downs so free,"

taking immense comfort out of, and repeating over and over again, such lines as —

"I sought her bower at break of day,'Twas guarded safe and sure;""Her father he has locked the door,Her mother keeps the key;But neither bolt nor bar shall keepMy own true love from me," —

until bars, and bolts, and locks, and keys seemed all real.

CHAPTER XVIII

How, after much discussion, the devoted, if mistaken, adherents of Thalia gain the day – and how, for once in his life, Owen Kelly feels melancholy that is not assumed.

"I wish you would all attend," says Olga Bohun, just a little impatiently, looking round upon the assembled group, with brows uplifted and the point of a pencil thrust between her rose-red lips.

"Thrice-blessed pencil!" murmurs Mr. Kelly, in a very stage whisper. "Man is the superior being, yet he would not be permitted to occupy so exalted a position. Are you a stone, Ronayne, that you can regard the situation with such an insensate face?" Mr. Ronayne is at this moment gazing at Mrs. Bohun with all his heart in his eyes. He starts and colors. "I cannot help thinking of that dear little song about the innocent daisy," goes on Mr. Kelly, with a rapt expression. "But I'd 'choose to be a pencil, if I might be a flower.'"

"Now do let us decide upon something," says Olga, taking no heed of this sally, and frowning down the smile that is fighting for mastery.

"Yes; now you are all to decide upon something at once," says Mr. Kelly, gloomily. "There is a difficulty about the right way to begin it, but it must be done; Mrs. Bohun says so. There is to be no deception. I shall say one, two, three, and away, and then every one must have decided: the defaulter will be spurned from the gates. Now, one, two – Desmond," sternly "you are not deciding!"

"I am, indeed," says Desmond, most untruthfully. He is lying on the grass at Monica's feet, and is playing idly with her huge white fan.

"You are not doing it properly. I daresay Miss Beresford is making you uncomfortable; and I am sure you are trying to break her fan. Come over here and sit by me, and you will be much happier."

"Penance is good for the soul. I shall stay here," says Desmond.

"If we mean to get up tableaux, we certainly ought to set about them at once," says Herrick, indolently.

"There doesn't seem to be any work in anybody," says Olga, in despair.

"Try me," says Lord Rossmoyne, bending over her chair. He has only just come, and his arrival has been unannounced.

"Ah! thank you!" – with a brilliant smile. "Now you do look like business."

It is Monday, and four o'clock. Aghyohillbeg lying basking in the sunshine is looking its loveliest, – which is saying a great deal. The heat is so intense on this sweet July day that every one has deserted the house and come out to find some air, – a difficulty. They have tried the grass terraces, in vain, and now have congregated beneath a giant fir, and are, comparatively speaking, cool.

Just before luncheon Madam O'Connor brought Monica home in triumph with her from Moyne, to find Desmond, handsome and happy, on her doorstep, waiting with calm certainty an invitation to that meal. He got it, and to dinner likewise.

"We have set our hearts on tableaux, but it is so difficult to think of any scene fresh and unhackneyed," says Olga, gazing plaintively into Lord Rossmoyne's sympathetic face.

"Don't give way," says Mr. Kelly, tenderly. "It must be a poor intellect that couldn't rise superior to such a demand as that. Given one minute, I believe even I could produce an idea as novel as it would be brilliant."

"You shall have your minute," says Olga, pulling out her watch. "Now – begin – "

"Time's up," she says, presently, when sixty seconds have honestly expired.

"You might have said that thirty seconds ago, and I should not have objected," says Mr. Kelly, with an assured smile.

"And your idea."

"The Huguenots!"

Need I say that every one is exceedingly angry?

"Ever heard it before?" asks Mr. Kelly, with aggressive insolence; which question, being considered as adding insult to injury, is treated with silent contempt.

"I told you it was not to be done," says Olga, petulantly addressing everybody generally.

"I can't agree with you. I see no reason why it should fall to the ground," says Miss Fitzgerald, warmly, who is determined to show herself off in a gown that has done duty for "Madame Favart," and the "Bohemian Girl," and "Maritana," many a time and oft.

"I have another idea," says Mr. Kelly, at this opportune moment.

"If it is as useful as your first, you may keep it," says Olga, with pardonable indignation.

"I am misunderstood," says Mr. Kelly, mournfully, but with dignity. "I shall write to Miss Montgomery and ask her to make another pathetic tale about me. As you are bent on trampling upon an unknown genius, – poor but proud – I shall not make you acquainted with this last beautiful thought which I have evolved from my inner consciousness."

"Don't say that! do tell it to us," says Monica, eagerly, and in perfect good faith. She knows less of him than the others, and may therefore be excused for still believing in him.

"Thank you, Miss Beresford. You can soar above a mean desire to crush a rising power. You have read, of course, that popular poem by our poet-laureate, called 'Enid.'"

"Yes," says Monica, staring at him.

"I mean the poem in which he has so faithfully depicted the way in which two escaped lunatics would be sure to behave if left to their own devices. Considered as a warning to us to keep bolts and bars on Colney Hatch and Hanwell, it may be regarded as a delicate attention. Dear Tennyson! he certainly is a public benefactor. There is a scene in that remarkable poem which I think might suit us. You remember where, after much wild careering in the foreground, the principal idiots decide upon riding home together, pillion fashion?"

"I – I think so," says Monica, who plainly doesn't, being much confused.

"'Then on his foot she sat her own and climbed,' – and then she threw her arms round him in a most unmaidenly fashion, if I recollect aright; but of course mad people will be vehement, poor souls; they can't help it. Now, supposing we adopted that scene, wouldn't it be effective? One of Madam O'Connor's big carriage-horses, if brought forward, – I mean the one that kicked over the traces, yesterday, – would, I firmly believe, create quite a sensation, and in all probability bring down the house."

"The stage, certainly," says Desmond.

"Ah! you approve of it," says Kelly, with suspicious gratitude. "Then let us arrange it at once. Miss Beresford might throw her arms round Ryde, for example: that would be charming."

Desmond looking at this moment as if he would willingly murder him, Mr. Kelly is apparently satisfied, and sinks to rest with his head upon his arm once more. No one else has heard the suggestion.

"I think you might help me, instead of giving voice to insane propositions," says Olga, reproachfully, turning her eyes upon Mr. Kelly's bowed form, – he is lying prostrate on the grass, – which is shaking in a palsied fashion. "I really did believe in you," she says, whereupon the young man, springing to his feet, flings his arms wide, and appeals in an impassioned manner to an unprejudiced public as to whether he has not been racking his brain in her service for the last half-hour.

"Then I wish you would go and rack it in somebody else's service," says Mrs. Bohun, ungratefully.

"Hear her!" says Mr. Kelly, gazing slowly round him. "She still persists in the unseemly abuse. She is bent on breaking my heart and driving sleep from mine eyelids. It is ungenerous, the more so that she knows I have not the courage to tear myself from her beloved presence. You, Ronayne, and you, Rossmoyne, can sympathize with me:

'In durance vile here must I wake and weep,And all my frowzy couch in sorrow steep.'

Fancy a frowzy couch saturated with tears! you know," reproachfully to Olga, "you wouldn't like to have to lie on it."

"Oh, do come and sit down here near me, and be silent," says Olga, in desperation.

"Why not have a play?" says Captain Cobbett, who with Mr. Ryde has driven over from Clonbree.

"'The play's the thing,'" says Brian Desmond, lazily; "but when you are about it, make it a farce."

"Oh, no!" says Miss Fitzgerald, with a horrified gesture; "anything but that! Why not let us try one of the good old comedies? – 'The School for Scandal,' for example?"

"What!" says Mr. Kelly, very weakly. He is plainly quite overcome by this suggestion.

"Well, why not?" demands the fair Bella, with just a soupcon of asperity in her tone, – as much as she ever allows herself when in the society of men. She makes up for this abstinence by bestowing a liberal share of it upon her maid and her mother.

"It's – it's such a naughty, naughty piece," says Mr. Kelly, bashfully, beating an honorable retreat from his first meaning.

"Nonsense! One can strike out anything distasteful."

"Shades of Farren – and – Who would be Lady Teazle?" says Olga.

"I would," says Bella, modestly.

"That is more than good of you," says Olga, casting a curious glance at her from under her long lashes. "But I thought, perhaps – You, Hermia, would you not undertake it? You know, last season, they said you were – "

"No, dear, thanks. No, indeed," with emphasis.

"Cobbett does Joseph Surface to perfection," breaks in Mr. Ryde, enthusiastically.

"Oh, I say now, Ryde! Come, you know, this is hardly fair," says the little captain, coyly, who is looking particularly pinched and dried to-day, in spite of the hot sun. There is a satisfied smirk upon his pale lips, and a poor attempt at self-depreciation about his whole manner.

"You know you took 'em by storm at Portsmouth, last year, – made 'em laugh like fun. You should see him," persists Ryde, addressing everybody generally.

"Perhaps you mean the part of Charles Surface," says Ronayne, in some surprise.

"No. Joseph: the sly one you know," says Ryde chuckling over some recollection.

"Well, it never occurred to me that Joseph's part might be termed a funny one," says Mr. Kelly, mildly; "but that shows how ignorant all we Irish are. It will be very kind of you, Cobbett, to enlighten us, – to show us something good, in fact."

"Really, you know, you flatter me absurdly," says Cobbett, the self-depreciation fainter, the smirk broader.

Lord Rossmoyne, whose good temper is not his strong point, glances angrily at him, smothers an explosive speech, and walks away with a sneer.

"And Sir Peter, – who will kindly undertake Sir Peter?" asks Olga, with a smile that is faintly sarcastic. "Will you, Owen?" to Mr. Kelly.

"Don't ask me. I could not act with Cobbett and Miss Fitzgerald. I mean, I should only disgrace them," says Kelly, who is a member of a famous dramatic club in Dublin, and who has had two offers from London managers to tread the boards. "I feel I'm not up to it, indeed."

"I suspect you are not," says Hermia Herrick, with a sudden smile that lights up all her cold impassive face. Kelly, catching it, crawls lazily over to her, along the grass, Indian fashion, and finding a fold of her gown lays his arm on it, and his head on his arm, and relapses into silence.

"Ryde has done it," says Captain Cobbett.

"Indeed!" says Olga, raising questioning eyes to the big marine standing behind Monica's chair.

"Ye – es. We – er – do a good deal of that sort of thing in our country," says Ryde, with conscious worth. "I have done Sir Peter once or twice; and people have been good enough not to – " with a little laugh – "hiss me. I have a style of my own; but – er – " with an encouraging glance at the other men, "I daresay there are many here who could do it as I do it."

"Not one, I am convinced," says Desmond, promptly; and Monica laughs softly.

"We must think it over. I don't believe anything so important could be got up without deep deliberation – " Olga is beginning, when Kelly, by a movement of the hand, stops her.

"Do let it go on to its bitter end," he says, in a whisper, with most unusual animation for him. "Mrs. Herrick, help me."

"Why not, Olga?" says Hermia, in a low tone. "The principal characters are willing; we have not had a real laugh for some time: why throw away such a perfect chance?"

"Oh! that– " says Olga.

Here a slight diversion is caused by the appearance of a footman, tea tray, a boy, a gypsy table, a maid, a good deal of fruit, maraschino, brandy, soda, and Madam O'Connor. The latter, to tell the truth, has been having a siesta in the privacy of her own room, and has now come down, like a giant refreshed, to see how her guests are getting on.

"Well, I hope you're all happy," she says, jovially.

"We are mad with perplexity," says Olga.

"What's the matter, then, darling?" says Madam. "Hermia, like a good child, go and pour out the tea."

"I'll tell you all about it," says Brian, who is a special favorite of Madam O'Connor's, coming over to her and stopping behind her chair to whisper into her ear.

Whatever he says makes her laugh immoderately. It is easy to bring smiles to her lips at any time, – her heart having kept at a standstill whilst her body grew old, – but now she seems particularly fetched.

"Yes, yes, my dear Olga, let them have their own way," she says merrily.

"Very good. Let us consider it settled," says Mrs. Bohun. "But I should like some tableaux afterwards, as a wind-up."

"Yes, certainly," says Ronayne. "What do you think, Madam?"

"I have set my mind on them," says his old hostess, gayly. "You are such a handsome boy, Ulic, that I'm bent on seeing you in fancy clothes; and so is somebody else, I daresay. Look at the children, how they steal towards us; were there ever such demure little mice? Come here, Georgie, my son, I have peaches and pretty things for you."

The kind old soul holds out her arms to two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, who are coming slowly, shyly towards her. They are so like Hermia Herrick as to be unmistakably hers. The boy, coming straight to Madame O'Connor, climbs up on her lap and lays his bonny cheek against hers; but the girl, running to her mother, who is busy over the tea-tray, nestles close to her.

"Gently, my soul," say Hermia, in a soft whisper. Though she still calmly pours out the tea, with Kelly beside her, she lets the unoccupied hand fall, to mingle with the golden tresses of the child. As her hand meets the little sunny head, a marvellous sweetness creeps into her face and transfixes it to a heavenly beauty. Kelly, watching her, marks the change.

Going round to the child, he would have taken her in his arms, – as is his habit with most children, being a special favorite in every nursery; but this little dame, drawing back from him, repels him coldly. Then, as though fearing herself ungracious, she slowly extends to him a tiny, friendly hand, which he accepts. The likeness between this grave baby and her graver mother is so remarkable as to be almost ludicrous.

"I think you haven't given Mr. Kelly even one kiss to-day," says her mother, smiling faintly, and pressing the child closer to her. "She is a cold little thing, is she not?"

"I suppose she inherits it," says Owen Kelly, without lifting his eyes from the child's fair face.

Mrs. Herrick colors slightly.

"Will you let me get you some tea, Fay?" says Mr. Kelly, addressing the child almost anxiously.

"No, thank you," says the fairy, sweetly but decidedly. "My mammy will give me half hers. I do not like any other tea."

"I am not in favor to-day," says Kelly, drawing back and shrugging his shoulders slightly, but looking distinctly disappointed. It may be the child sees this, because she comes impulsively forward, and, standing on tiptoe before him, holds her arms upwards towards his neck.

"I want to kiss you now," she says, solemnly, when he has taken her into his embrace. "But no one else. I only want to kiss you sometimes – and always mamma."

"I am content to be second where mamma is first. I am glad you place me with her in your mind. I should like to be always with mamma," says Kelly. He laughs a little, and kisses the child again, and places her gently upon the ground, and then he glances at Hermia. But her face is impassive as usual. No faintest tinge deepens the ordinary pallor of her cheeks. She has the sugar tongs poised in the air, and is apparently sunk in abstruse meditation.

"Now, I wonder who takes sugar and who doesn't," she says, wrinkling up her pretty brows in profound thought. "I have been here a month, yet cannot yet be sure. Mr. Kelly, you must call some one else to our assistance to take round the sugar, as you can't do everything."

"I can do nothing," says Kelly, in a low tone, after which he turns away and calls Brian Desmond to come to him.

CHAPTER XIX

How Desmond asserts himself, and shows himself a better man than his rival – And how a bunch of red roses causes a breach, and how a ring heals it.

"Then it is decided," says Olga. "'The School for Scandal' first, and tableaux to follow. Now for them. I suppose four altogether will be quite sufficient. We must not try the patience of our poor audience past endurance."

"It will be past that long before our tableaux begin," says Ulic Ronayne, in a low tone. He is dressed in a tennis suit of white flannel, and is looking particularly handsome.

Olga makes a pretty little moue, but no audible response.

"I have two arranged," she says, "but am distracted about three and four. Will anybody except Mr. Kelly come to my assistance?"

"Oh, you're jealous because you didn't think of 'Enid' and the carriage-horse yourself," returns that young man, with ineffable disdain, – "or that Dolly Varden affair."

"Well, that last might do, – modified a little," says Olga, brightening. "Mr. Ryde is enormous enough for anything. Quite an ideal Hugh."

"Quite," says Ronayne, with a smile.

"Then it has arranged itself; that is, if you agree, dear?" says Olga, turning to Monica.

"It shall be as you wish. I mean, I know nothing about it," gently; "but I shall like to help you if I can."