Читать книгу: «Rossmoyne», страница 17

CHAPTER XXI

How Mrs. Herrick grows worldly-wise and Olga frivolous – How Mr. Kelly tells a little story; and how, beneath the moonlight, many things are made clear.

Dinner has come to an end. The men are still dallying with their wine. The women are assembled in the drawing-room.

Olga, having drawn back the curtains from the central window, is standing in its embrasure, looking out silently upon the glories of the night. For the storm has died away; the wind is gone to sleep; the rain has sobbed itself to death; and now a lovely moon is rising slowly – slowly – from behind a rippled mass of grayest cloud. From out the dark spaces in the vault above a few stars are shining, – the more brilliantly because of the blackness that surrounds them. The air is sultry almost to oppressiveness, and the breath of the roses that have twined themselves around the railings of the balcony renders the calm night full of sweetest fragrance.

Even as she gazes, spellbound, the clouds roll backward, and stars grow and multiply exceedingly, until all

 
"the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold."
 

Madam O'Connor is talking to Miss Browne of certain family matters interesting to both. Miss Fitzgerald has gone upstairs, either to put on another coating of powder, or else to scold her long-suffering maid. Her mother has fallen into a gentle, somewhat noisy snooze.

A sudden similar thought striking both Monica and Mrs. Herrick at the same moment, they rise, and make a step towards the window where Olga is standing all alone.

Hermia, laying her hand on Monica's arm, entreats her by a gesture to change her purpose; whereon Monica falls back again, and Hermia, going on, parts the curtains, and, stepping in to where Olga is, joins her uninvited.

"Dreaming?" she says, lightly.

"Who would not dream on such a night as this? the more beautiful because of the miserable day to which it is a glorious termination. See, Hermia, how those planets gleam and glitter, as though in mockery of us poor foolish mortals down below."

"I don't feel a bit more foolish than I did this morning," says Hermia. "Do you, dear? You were giving yourself a great deal of credit for your common sense then."

"'Common sense,' – worldly wisdom, – how I hate the sound of all that jargon!" says Olga, petulantly. "Let us forget we must be wise, if only for one night. The beauty of that silent world of flowers beyond has somehow entered into me. Let me enjoy it. 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon that bank' down there! Watch it. Can you see how the roses quiver beneath its touch, as though stirred by some happy dream?"

"It is indeed a perfect night!" says Hermia, looking at her in some surprise. There is a suspicion of excitement in Olga's manner – arising, as it were, from the desire to hide one emotion by the betrayal of another – that strikes her listener as strange.

"How softly the air beats upon one's face!" says Mrs. Bohun, leaning a little forward. "The night is, as you say, perfect. Yet I don't know what is the matter with me: the more I feel the loveliness of all around, the sadder my heart seems to grow."

"What!" says Hermia, lifting her brows, "am I to learn now that you – the gayest of all mortals – have at last succumbed to the insufferable dreariness of this merry world?"

"You run too fast. I am a little perplexed, perhaps; but I have not succumbed to anything."

"Or any one, I hope, unless it be to your advantage. You are playing a silly game, Olga."

"The world would be lost unless it had a fool to sport with now and then."

"But why should you be the one to pander to its pleasures?"

"Who more fitting? I am tired of hearing you apply that word 'silly' to me, morning, noon, and night."

"It is too late to believe it possible that you and I should quarrel," says Mrs. Herrick, in a perfectly even tone: "so don't try to get up an imaginary grievance. You know you are dearer to me than anything on earth, after the children."

"Well, don't scold me any more," says Olga, coaxingly.

"I never scold; I only reason."

"Oh! but that is so much worse," says Olga. "It means the scolding, and a lot more besides. Do anything but reason with me, my dear Hermia."

"I will say that I think you are throwing yourself away."

"Where? Over the balcony?" – wilfully. "I assure you, you misjudge me: I am far too great a coward."

"You are not too great a coward to contemplate the committing of a much more serious betise. To-night his attentions were specially marked, and you allowed them."

"I can't think what you mean."

"Will you deny that Mr. Ronayne paid you very marked attention to-night?"

"Marked! Where did he make his impression, then? He didn't pinch me, if you mean that."

"Of course you can follow your own wishes, dearest, and I shall neither gain nor lose; but it does seem a pity, when you might be a countess and have the world at your feet. I know few so altogether fitted to fill the position, and still you reject it. You are pretty, clever, charming, – everything of the most desirable."

"Am I?" She steps into the drawing-room, and brings herself by a swift step or two opposite a huge mirror let into one of the walls. Standing before it, she surveys herself leisurely from head to foot, and then she smiles.

"I don't know about the 'clever,'" she says; "but I am sure I am pretty. In town last season – do you remember? – my hair created quite a furore, it is so peculiarly light. Ever so many people wanted to paint me. Yes, it was all very pleasant."

"Do you think it will be as pleasant to live here all your days, and find no higher ambition than the hope that your ponies may be prettier than Mrs. So-and-so's?"

"Do you remember that fancy ball, and how the prince asked who I was, and all the rest of it? He said one or two very pretty things to me. He, like you, said I was charming. Do you know," naively, "I have never got over the feeling of being obliged to any one who pays me a compliment? I am obliged to you now."

"And to the prince then. But you won't see many princes if you stay in Ireland, I fancy: they don't hanker after the soil."

"Poor Ireland!" says Mrs. Bohun.

"And compliments, I should say, will be almost as scarce."

"Ah! now, there you are wrong: they fly beneath these murky skies. We absolutely revel in them. What true Irishman but has one ripping freely from his mouth on the very smallest chance? And then, my dear Hermia, consider, are we not the proud possessors of the blarney-stone?"

"I wish, dearest, you would bring yourself to think seriously of Rossmoyne."

"I do think seriously of him. It would be impossible to think of him in any other way, he is so dull and pompous."

"He would make an excellent husband!"

"I have had enough of husbands. They are very unsatisfactory people. And besides – "

"Well?"

"Rossmoyne has a temper."

"And forty thousand a year."

"Not good enough."

"If you are waiting for an angel, you will wait forever. All men are – "

"Oh, Hermia! really, I can't listen to such naughty words, you know. I really wonder at you!"

"I wasn't going to say anything of the kind," says Hermia, with great haste, not seeing the laughter lurking in Olga's dark eyes. "I merely meant that – "

"Don't explain! —don't!" says Olga; "I couldn't endure any more of it." And she laughs aloud.

"Rossmoyne is very devoted to you. Is there anything against him, except his temper?"

"Yes, his beard. Nothing would induce me to marry a man with hair all over his face. It isn't clean."

"Give him five minutes and a razor, and he might do away with it."

"Give him five minutes and a razor, and he might do away with himself too," says Olga, provokingly. "Really. I think one thing would please me just as much as the other."

"Oh, then, you are bent on refusing him?" says Hermia, calmly. With very few people does she ever lose her temper; with Olga – never.

"I am not so sure of that, at all," says Olga, airily. "It is quite within the possibilities that I may marry him some time or other, – sooner or later. There is a delightful vagueness about those two dates that gives me the warmest encouragement."

"It is a pity you cannot be serious sometimes," says Mrs. Herrick, mildly.

A little hand upon her gown saves further expostulation. A little face looking up with a certainty of welcome into hers brings again that wonderful softness into Hermia's eyes.

"Is it you, my sweetest?" she says, fondly. "And where have you been? I have watched in vain for you for the last half-hour, my Fay."

"I was in the dining-room. But nurse called me; and now I have come to say good-night," says the child.

"Good-night, then, and God bless you, my chick. But where is my Georgie?"

"I'm here," says Georgie, gleefully, springing upon her in a violent fashion, that one would have believed hateful to the calm Hermia, yet that is evidently most grateful to her. She embraces the boy warmly, and lets her eyes follow him until he is out of sight. Then she turns again to the little maiden at her side.

"I must go with Georgie," says the child.

"So you shall. But first tell me, what have you got in your hand?"

"Something to go to bed with. See, mammy! It is a pretty red plum," opening her delicate pink fist, for her mother's admiration.

"Where did you get it, darling?"

"In the dining-room."

"From Lord Rossmoyne?"

"No. From Mr. Kelly. I would not have the one Lord Rossmoyne gave me."

Olga laughs mischievously, and Mrs. Herrick colors.

"Why?" she says.

"Because I like Mr. Kelly best."

"And what did you give him?"

"Nothing."

"Not even a kiss?" says Olga.

"No," somewhat shamefacedly.

"Her mother's own daughter!" says Olga, caressing the child tenderly, but laughing still. "A chilly mortal."

"Good-night, my own," says Hermia, and the child, having kissed them both again, runs away.

Olga follows her with wistful eyes.

"I almost wish I had a baby!" she says.

"You? Why, you can't take care of yourself! You are the least fitted to have a child of any woman that I know. Leave all such charges to staid people like me. Why, you are a baby at heart, yourself, this moment."

"That would be no drawback. It would only have created sympathy between me and my baby. I would have understood all her bad moods and condoned all her crimes."

"If you had been a mother, you would have had a very naughty child."

"I should have had a very happy child, at least." Then she laughs. "Fancy me with a dear little baby!" she says, – "a thing all my own, that would rub its soft cheek against mine and love me better than anything!"

"And rumple all your choicest Parisian gowns, and pull your hair to pieces. I couldn't fancy it at all."

Here the door opens to admit the men, the celestial half-hour after dinner having come to an end. With one consent they all converge towards the window, where Olga and Hermia are standing with Monica, who had joined them to bid good-night to little Fay. Miss Fitzgerald, who had returned to the drawing-room freshly powdered, seeing how the tide runs, crosses the room too, and mingles with the group in the window.

"How long you have been! We feared you dead and buried," she says to Kelly, with elephantine playfulness.

"We have, indeed. I thought the other men would never stir. Why did you not give me the chance of leaving them? The faintest suggestion that you wanted me would have brought me here hours ago."

"If I had been sure of that, I should have sent you a message; it would have saved me a lecture," says Olga, flashing a smile at Hermia.

"I should disdain to send a message," says the proud Bella, "I would not compel any man's presence. 'Come if you will; stay away if you won't,' is my motto; and I cannot help thinking I am right."

"You are, indeed, quite right. Coercion is of small avail in some cases," says Olga, regarding her with the calm dignity of one who plainly considers the person addressed of very inferior quality indeed.

"A woman can scarcely be too jealous of her rights nowadays," says Miss Fitzgerald. "If she has a proper knowledge of her position, she ought to guard it carefully."

"A fine idea finely expressed!" says Kelly, as though smitten into reverence by the grandeur of her manner.

"I wonder what is a man's proper position?" says Olga lazily.

"He will always find it at a woman's feet," says Miss Fitzgerald, grandly, elated by Kelly's apparent subjection.

That young man looks blankly round him. Under tables and chairs and lounges his eyes penetrate, but without the desired result.

"So sorry I can't see a footstool anywhere!" he says, lifting regretful eyes to Miss Fitzgerald; "but for that I should be at your feet from this until you bid me rise."

"Hypocrite!" says Olga in his ear; after which conversation becomes more general; and presently Miss Fitzgerald goes back to the fire under the mistaken impression that probably one of the men will follow her there.

The one– whoever he is —doesn't.

"Do you know," says Mr. Kelly, in a low tone, to the others, "the ugly girl's awfully nice! She is a pleasant deceit. 'She has no winsome looks, no pretty frowning,' I grant you; but she can hold her own, and is so good-humored."

"What a lovely night!" says Monica, gazing wistfully into the misty depths of the illuminated darkness beyond. "I want to step into it, and – we have not been out all day."

"Then why not go now?" says Hermia, answering her glance in a kindly spirit.

"Ah! will you come?" says Monica, brightening into glad excitement.

"Let us go as far as the fountain in the lower garden," says Olga: "it is always beautiful there when the moon is up."

"Avoid the grass, however; wet feet are dangerous," says Lord Rossmoyne, carefully.

"You will die an old bachelor," retorts Olga, saucily, "if you take so much 'thought for the morrow.'"

"It will certainly not be my fault if I do," returns Rossmoyne, calmly, but with evident meaning.

"Mrs. Bohun, bring your guitar," says Desmond, "and we will make Ronayne sing to it, and so imagine ourselves presently in the land of the olive and the palm."

"Shall we ask the others to come with us?" says Monica, kindly, glancing back into the drawing-room.

"Miss Browne, for example," suggests Owen Kelly. If he hopes by this speech to arouse jealousy in anybody present, he finds himself, later on, mightily mistaken.

"If she is as good a sort as you say, I daresay she would like it," says Olga. "And, besides, if we leave her to Bella's tender mercies she will undoubtedly be done to death by the time we return."

"Oh, do go and rescue her," says Mrs. Herrick, turning to Kelly. Her tone is almost appealing.

"Perhaps Miss Fitzgerald will come too," says Monica, somewhat fearfully.

"Don't be afraid," says Olga. "Fancy Bella running the risk of having a bad eye or a pink nose in the morning! She knows much better than that."

"Tell Miss Browne to make haste," says Mrs. Herrick, turning to Kelly. "Because we are impatient, – we are longing to precipitate ourselves into the moonlight. Come, Olga; come, Monica; they can follow."

Miss Browne, however, on being appealed to, shows so honest a disregard for covering of any sort, beyond what decency had already clothed her with, that she and Kelly catch up with the others even before the fountain is reached.

It is, indeed, a fairy dell to which they have been summoned, – a magic circle, closed in by evergreens with glistening leaves. "Dark with excessive light" appears the scene; the marble basin of the fountain, standing out from the deep background, gleams snow-white beneath Diana's touch. "The moon's an arrant thief." Perchance she snatches from great Sol some beauties even rarer than that "pale fire" he grants her – it may be, against his will. So it may well be thought, for what fairest day can be compared with a moonlit night in languorous July?

The water of the fountain, bubbling ever upwards, makes sweet music on the silent air; but, even as they hark to it, a clearer, sweeter music makes the night doubly melodious. From bough to bough it comes and goes, – a heavenly harmony, not to be reproduced by anything of earthly mould.

 
"O nightingale, that on yon gloomy spray
Warbles at eve, when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill."
 

Clear from the depths of the pine woods beyond, the notes ascend, softly, tenderly. Not often do they enrich our Irish air, but sometimes they come to gladden us with a music that can hardly be termed of earth. The notes rise and swell and die, only to rise and to slowly fade again, like "linked sweetness long drawn out."

Seating themselves on the edge of the fountain, they acknowledge silently the beauty of the hour. Olga's hand, moving through the water, breaks it into little wavelets on which the riotous moonbeams dance.

"Where are your bangles, Olga? you used to be famous for them?" asks Desmond, idly.

"I have tired of them."

"Poor bangles!" says Ulic Ronayne, in a low tone heard only by her.

"What a heavy sigh!"

"A selfish one, too. More for myself than for the discarded bangles. Yet their grievance is mine."

"I thought they suited you," says Desmond.

"Did you? Well, but they had grown so common; every one used to go about laden with them. And then they made such a tiresome tinkle-tinkle all over the place."

"What place?" says Lord Rossmoyne, who objects to slang of even the mildest description from any woman's lips, most of all from the lips of her whom he hopes to call his wife.

"Don't be stupid!" says this prospective wife, with considerable petulance.

"You are fickle, I doubt," goes on Rossmoyne, unmoved. "A few months ago you raved about your bangles, and had the prettiest assortment I think I ever saw. Thirty-six on each arm, or something like it. We used to call them your armor. You said you were obliged to wear the same amount exactly on each arm, lest you might grow crooked."

"I know few things more unpleasant than having one's silly remarks brought up to one years afterwards," says Olga, with increasing temper.

"Months not years," says Rossmoyne, carefully. Whereupon Mrs. Bohun turns her back upon him, and Mrs. Herrick tells herself she would like to give him a good shake for so stupidly trying to ruin his own game, and Ulic Ronayne feels he is on the brink of swearing with him an eternal friendship.

"Bangles?" breaks in Owen Kelly, musingly. "Harmless little circular things women wear on their wrists, aren't they? But awkward too at times, – amazingly awkward. As Olga has feelingly remarked, they can make a marvellously loud tinkle-tinkle at times. I know a little story about bangles, that ought to be a warning against the use of them. Would any one like to hear my little story? It is short, but very sweet."

Every one instantly says "Yes," except Olga, who has drawn herself together and is regarding him with a stony glare.

"Well, there was once on a time a young woman, who had some bangles, and a young man; she had other things too, such as youth and beauty, but they weren't half so important as the first two items; and wherever she and her bangles went, there went the young man too. And for a long time nobody knew which he loved best, the beauteous maiden or the gleaming bangles. Do I make myself clear?"

"Wonderfully so, for you," says Mrs. Herrick.

"Well one day the young man's preference was made 'wonderfully so' too. And it was in this wise. On a certain sunny afternoon, the young woman found herself in a conservatory that opened off a drawing-room, being divided from it only by a hanging Indian curtain; a hanged Indian curtain she used to call it ever afterwards; but that was bad grammar, and bad manners too."

"I feel I'm going to sleep," says Desmond, drowsily. "I hope somebody will rouse me when he has done, or pick me out of the water if I drop into it. Such a rigmarole of a story I never heard in my life."

"Caviare can't be appreciated by the general; it is too strong for you," says Mr. Kelly, severely. "But to continue – Anything wrong with you, my dear Olga?"

"Nothing!" says Mrs. Bohun, with icy indignation.

"Well. In this conservatory my heroine of the bangles found herself; and here, too, as a natural consequence, was found the young man. There was near them a lounge, – skimpy enough for one, but they found it amply large for two. Curious fact in itself, wasn't it? And I think the young man so far forgot himself as to begin to make violent – and just as he was about to emb – the young woman, whose name was – , she very properly, but with somewhat mistaken haste, moved away from him, and in so doing set all her bangles a-tinkling. Into full cry they burst, whereupon the curtain was suddenly drawn back from the drawing-room side, giving the people there a full view of the conservatory and its – contents! The denouement was full of interest, – positively thrilling! I should advise all true lovers of a really good novel to obtain this book from their libraries and discover it for themselves."

Here Mr. Kelly stops, and looks genially around.

"I think I shall take to writing reviews," he says, sweetly. "I like my own style."

A dead silence follows his "little story," and then Mrs. Herrick lifts her eyes to his.

"'I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedick: nobody marks you,'" she quotes, with a touch of scorn.

"You do, my dear Lady Disdain, or else you would not have addressed me that contemptuous remark."

"An absurd story, altogether!" says Olga, throwing up her head, a smile lightening her eyes as they meet Kelly's. At her tone, which is more amused than annoyed, Ronayne lets his hand fall into the water close to hers, and doubtless finds its cool touch (the water's, I mean, of course) very refreshing, as it is fully five minutes before he brings it to the surface again.

"True, nevertheless," says Kelly. "Both the principals in my story were friends of mine. I knew – indeed, I may safely say I know– them well."

"I am glad you said 'were,'" says Olga, shaking her blonde head at him. Lord Rossmoyne, by this time, is looking as black as a thunder-cloud.

"A questionable friend you must be, to tell tales out of school," says Mrs. Herrick.

"I defy any one to say I have told anything," says Kelly, with much-injured innocence. "But I am quite prepared to hear my actions, as usual, grossly maligned. I am accustomed to it now. The benefit of the doubt is not for me."

"There isn't a doubt," says Hermia.

"Go on. I must try to bear it," – meekly. "I know I am considered incapable of a pure motive."

"Was it you drew back the curtain?"

"Well, really, yes, I believe it was. I wanted my friend, you see, and I knew I should find him with the bangles. Yes; it was I drew the curtain."

"Just what I should have expected from you," says Mrs. Herrick.

"Ah! Thank you! Now at last you are beginning to see things in their true light, and to take my part," says Mr. Kelly, with exaggerated gratitude. "Now, indeed, I feel I have not lived in vain! You have, though at a late hour, recognized the extraordinary promptitude that characterizes my every action. While another might have been hesitating, I drew the curtain. I am seldom to be found wanting, I may, indeed, always be discovered just where – "

"You aren't wanting," interrupts Mrs. Herrick, with a sudden smile.

"How can that be," says Kelly, with reproachful sadness, "when I am generally to be found near you?"

At this Hermia gives in, and breaks into a low soft laugh.

"But I wish you had not told that story of Olga and Mr. Ronayne," she says, in a whisper, and with some regret. "You saw how badly Rossmoyne took it."

"That is partly why I told it. I think you are wrong in trying to make that marriage: she would be happier with Ronayne."

"For a month or two, perhaps."

"Oh, make it three," says Kelly, satirically. "Surely the little winged god has so much staying power."

"A few weeks ago you told me you did not believe in him at all."

"I have changed all that."

"Ah! you can be fickle too."

"A man is not necessarily fickle because when he discovers the only true good he leaves the bad and presses towards it. I think, too, his mentor," in a lowered tone, "should be the last to misjudge him."

"Nothing is so lasting, at least, as riches," says Mrs. Herrick, with a chastened but unmistakable desire to change his mood. "Olga with unlimited means and an undeniable place in the world of society would be a happier Olga than as the wife of a country gentleman."

"I don't agree with you; but you know best —perhaps. You speak your own sentiments, of course. A title is indispensable to you too, as well as to her?"

His tone is half a question.

"It counts," she says, slowly, trifling with firm though slender fingers with the grasses that are growing in the interstices of the marble.

"Pshaw!" says Kelly. Rising with a vehemence foreign to him, he crosses to where Ulic Ronayne is standing alone.