Читать книгу: «Rossmoyne», страница 18

CHAPTER XXII

How Olga drowns a faithful servant – How Mr. Kelly conjures up a ghost – And how Monica, beneath the mystic moonbeams, grants the gift she first denies.

"Why so pale and wan, fond lover?" he says, lightly, laying his hand on Ulic's shoulder. The latter turns to him with a bright smile that renders his handsome face quite beautiful. Seeing its charm, Kelly asks himself, in half-angry fashion, how Olga can possibly hesitate for one moment between him and Rossmoyne. "But they are all alike heartless," he decides, bitterly.

"I am feeling neither pale nor wan," says Ronayne, still smiling. "It must be the moon, if anything. Look here, Kelly, something to-night has told me that it will all come right in the end. I shall gain her against the heaviest odds."

"If you mean Rossmoyne, he's the heaviest mortal I know," says Kelly.

"Well, he isn't suited to her, is he?" There is a strange excitement in Ronayne's manner. "Putting me out of the question altogether, I don't believe he could make her happy. If I thought he could, of course I should then go away somewhere, and find contentment in the thought of hers; but —you don't think she would do well to marry him do you Kelly?" He has controlled his features to an almost marvellous calm, but the agony of his question in his eyes cannot be hid.

"I think the woman who could even hesitate between you and him must be a fool and worse," says Kelly, whose temper is not his own to-night. "He is a pedantic ass, more in love with himself than he can ever be with anything else. While you – Look here, Ronayne; I wonder if any woman is worth it."

"Oh, she is," says Ronayne, with tender conviction. "I don't think she is at all like other people; do you? There's something different – something special– about her."

"I daresay," says Kelly, gently, which is rather good of him, considering his frame of mind.

"You're an awfully kind sort of fellow, Kelly, do you know?" says Ronayne, slipping his arm through his. "You are the only one I ever talk to about her. And I suppose I must bore you, though you don't say it. It's the most generous thing I know, your sympathizing with me as you do. If you were in love yourself, I could understand it. But you are not, you know."

"Oh, no; of course not," says Mr. Kelly.

"Is that your guitar, Mrs. Bohun? I wish you would sing us something," says Miss Browne at this moment.

"I don't sing much, – and never out of doors, it hurts my throat so," says Olga, smiling at her; "but if any else will sing, I will gladly play to them."

"Mr. Ronayne, – Ulic, – come here," says Monica, half shyly, but very sweetly. "You can sing, I know."

"Yes come here," says Olga, turning to him, and away from Lord Rossmoyne, who is talking to her in low, short, angry tones. But the latter, laying his hand on her arm, half compels her to turn to him again.

"Let some one else accompany him if he must sing," he says; "any one but you."

"No one else can."

"I object to your doing it."

"You won't when you hear him; he sings so sweetly," with the prettiest, most enthusiastic smile. "You really should hear him."

"You persist, then? you compel me to believe the worst, – to regard you as implicated in that story of Kelly's."

"I compel you to nothing. And as for the story, I thought it very amusing: didn't you?"

"No!" says Rossmoyne, with subdued fury.

"Do you know, I often said you lacked humor?" says Mrs. Bohun, with a little airy laugh; "and now I am sure of it. I thought it intensely comic; such a situation! I should like to have seen your face when the curtain was drawn, if you had been the young man."

"I must beg you to understand that such a situation would be impossible to me."

"I am to understand, then, that you would not 'emb – ' that was what he said, wasn't it? – a woman if you loved her?"

"Not without permission, certainly," very stiffly.

"Oh, dear!" says Olga; "what a stupid man! Well, I shouldn't think you would do it often. And so you wouldn't have liked to be that particular young man?"

This is a poser; Lord Rossmoyne parries the thrust.

"Would you have liked to be that young woman, – who, as it appears to me, wasn't at all particular?" he asks, in turn.

"That is no answer to my question," says Olga, who is angry with his last remark. "Are you afraid to say what you mean?"

"Afraid! No. To give publicity to a thing means always to vulgarize it: therefore, on consideration, I should not have cared to be that young man."

"Ah! I should have thought otherwise," says Olga, in an indescribable tone. "Well, there must be consolation for you in the thought that you never can be. – Mr. Ronayne," calling to Ulic lightly, "are you coming, or must I sit fingering my lyre in vain?"

Ulic, coming slowly up to her, stands beside her, as she seats herself again upon the marble edge of the fountain, and runs her fingers gracefully over its strings.

His voice, a rich sweet tenor, breaks upon the air, blends with the beauty of the night, and sinks into it until all seems one great harmony. "'Tis I" is the song he has chosen, and a wonderful pathos that borders on despair enriches every note. He has forgotten every one but her, the pretty dainty creature who holds his heart in the hollow of her small hand. She must hear the melancholy that is desolating and thereby perfecting his voice; but, if so, she gives no sign. Once only her fingers tremble, but she corrects herself almost before her error is committed, and never after gives way to even the faintest suspicion of feeling.

Through the glade the music swells and throbs. Mary Browne, drawing instinctively nearer, seems lost in its enchantment. Monica, looking up with eyes full of tears into Desmond's face, finds his eyes fixed on her, and, with a soft, childish desire for sympathy, slips her hand unseen into his. How gladly he takes and holds it need not here be told.

As he comes to the last verse, Ronayne's voice grows lower; it doesn't tremble, yet there is in it something suggestive of the idea that he is putting a terrible constraint upon himself:

 
"If regret some time assail thee
For the days when first we met,
And thy weary spirit fail thee,
And thine eyes grow dim and wet,
Oh, 'tis I, love,
At thy heart, love,
Murmuring, 'How couldst thou forget?'"
 

The music lingers still for a moment, ebbs, and then dies away. Ronayne steps back, and all seems over. How Olga has proved so utterly unmoved by the passionate protest is exercising more minds than one, when suddenly she rises and with a swift movement bends over the fountain. Another moment, and she has dropped the guitar into the water. Some little silver ornament upon its neck flashes for an instant in the moonlight, and then it is gone.

"Oh, Olga!" says Hermia, making an involuntary step towards her.

"I shall never play on it again," says Olga, with a gesture that is almost impassioned. An instant, and it is all over, – her little burst of passion, the thought that led to it, – everything!

"I hate it!" she says, with a petulant laugh. "I am glad to be rid of it. Somebody made me a present of it whom I learned to detest afterwards. No, Owen, do not try to bring it to life again: let it lie down there out of sight where I may learn to forget it."

"As you will, madame," says Owen Kelly, who has been fruitlessly fishing for the drowned guitar.

"It is curious how hateful anything, however pretty, can become to us if we dislike the giver of it," says Mary Browne, pleasantly.

"Yes," says Hermia, quickly, glancing at her with a sudden gleam in her eyes, – of gratitude, perhaps. A moment ago there had been a certain awkwardness following on Olga's capricious action; now these few careless, kindly words from this ugly stranger have dispelled it. And is she so plain, after all? The fastidious Hermia, gazing at her intently, asks herself this question. Surely before that bright and generous gleam in her eyes her freckles sink into insignificance.

"I knew you would like her," says Mr. Kelly, at this moment, speaking low in Hermia's ear.

When a woman is startled she is generally angry. Mrs. Herrick is angry now, whether because of his words, or the fact that she did not know he was so close to her, let who will decide.

"You are very, very clever," she says, glancing at him from under drooping lids, and then turning away.

"So they all tell me," returns he, modestly.

Rossmoyne, crossing the brilliant moonlit path that divides him from the group round Hermia, seats himself beside her, thereby leaving Olga and Ulic Ronayne virtually alone.

"You will regret that guitar to-morrow," says Ronayne, – "at least not the thing itself (I can replace that), but – "

"I regret nothing," says Mrs. Bohun, carelessly, – "unless I regret that you have taken an absurdly ill-tempered action so much to heart. I am ill-tempered, you know."

"I don't," says Ronayne.

"So courteous a liar must needs obtain pardon. But let us forget everything but this lovely night. Was there ever so serene a sky? see how the stars shine and glimmer through the dark interstices of the blue-gray clouds!"

"They remind me of something, – of some words," says Ronayne, in a low voice. "They come to me now, I hardly know why, perhaps because of the night itself, and perhaps because – " he hesitates.

Olga is staring dreamily at the studded vault above her.

"About the stars?" she asks, without looking at him.

"Yes: —

 
'A poet loved a star,
And to it whispered nightly,
Being so fair, why art thou, love, so far,
Or why so coldly shine who shin'st so brightly?'
 

The poet was presumptuous, it seems to me."

"Was he? I don't know. All things come to him who knows how to wait."

"Who's waiting?" says Kelly's voice from the other side of the fountain; "and for what?"

"Toujours Owen," says Mrs. Bohun, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders. "Well, no one even in this life is altogether without a taste of purgatory: mine (this is a delicate compliment to you, Owen, so listen to it) might have been worse. Do you know I have sometimes thought – "

"She has really!" interrupts Mr. Kelly, turning with cheerful encouragement to the others. "You wouldn't think it to look at her, would you? but I know her intimately, and can vouch for the truth of her words. Go on, my dear Olga."

But "my dear Olga" has turned aside, and declines to take any notice of his remark beyond a faint grimace.

"She's very shy," says Mr. Kelly, in an explanatory aside, "and so retiring. Can't bear to hear herself publicly praised, or feel herself the centre of attraction. Let us haste to change the subject." This with many becks, and nods, and wreathed smiles, meant to explain the delicacy of the feeling that prompts him to this course. "By the by, Desmond, doesn't this fairy-like spot, and the moonlight, and the pathos of the silent night, and everything, remind you forcibly of old O'Connor?"

"But I always heard – " begins Monica, in a voice of much amazement; then she stops confusedly and presently goes on again, but in a different key. "Was The O'Connor, then, æsthetic?" she says.

At this even Lord Rossmoyne, who was in the lowest depths of despair, gives way to open mirth.

"Well, no, not exactly," says Ulic Ronayne. "There was a fatal healthiness about his appearance that disagreed with that idea. But he certainly was fond of this little place; he put up the fountain himself, had it brought all the way from Florence for the purpose; and he had a trick of lying here on his face and hands for hours together, grubbing for worms, – or studying the insect world I think he used to call it."

"I have always thought," says Mr. Kelly, in a tone of reflective sadness, "what an uncomfortable position that must be."

"What must be?"

"Lying on one's face and hands. What becomes of the rest of one? Does one keep one's heels in the air whilst doing it? To me it sounds awful! Yet only last week I read in the papers of a fellow who was found on a road on his face and hands, and the doctors said he must have been in that position for hours! Fancy —your nose, for instance, Rossmoyne, in the mud, and your heels in the air, for hours!"

Lord Rossmoyne, having vainly tried to imagine his dignified body in such a position, looks distinctly offended.

"No, nobody would like it," says Kelly, pathetically, answering his disgusted look exactly as if it had been put into words. "There is a shameful frivolity about it not to be countenanced for a moment. Yet good and wise men have been said to do it. Fancy the Archbishop of Canterbury, now, balancing himself on his nose and his palms! Oh! it can't be true!"

His voice by this time is positively piteous, and he looks earnestly around, as though longing for some one to support his disbelief.

"You are really excelling yourself to-night," says Mrs. Herrick, in a delicately disdainful tone.

"Am I? I am glad," humbly, "that you have had an opportunity of seeing me at my poor best."

"I wonder," says Desmond, suddenly, "if, when old O'Connor revisits the earth at the witching hour, he comes in the attitude so graphically described by Kelly? In acrobat fashion, I mean."

At this Monica breaks into laughter so merry, so full of utterly childish abandon and enjoyment, that all the others perforce join in it.

"Oh! fancy a ghost standing on his head!" she says, when she can speak.

"I shouldn't fancy it at all," says Mr. Kelly, gloomily. "I won't. Far from it. And I should advise you, Miss Beresford, to treat with less frivolity a subject so fraught with terror, – especially at this time of night. If that 'grand old man' were to appear now," with a shuddering glance behind him, "what would become of us all?"

"An unpleasant idea!" says Miss Browne, – "so unpleasant, indeed, that I think I should like to go for a little walk somewhere, —anywhere, away from the scene of the late Mr. O'Connor's nightly visitations."

"Come to the end of the shrubbery, then," says Desmond, "and look at the sea. It should be worth the trouble on such a night as this. Come you too, Olga."

"I should like it, but my head aches so," says Mrs. Bohun, plaintively. And, indeed, she is very pale. "It is either the moonlight which oppresses me, or – I don't know what. No! I shall go indoors, I think."

"Then I shall go with you," says Mrs. Herrick, regarding her with a certain anxiety. "But you," turning to Mary Browne, "must not miss a glimpse of the coast by moonlight. Mr. Kelly will show it to you."

She slips her arm through Olga's, and turns towards the house; Ulic Ronayne accompanies them; but Lord Rossmoyne and Owen Kelly move in the contrary direction with Miss Browne. Monica and Desmond have gone on before; and even when the others arrive at the point in the shrubbery from which a glimpse of the ocean can be distinctly seen, these last two people are not to be discovered anywhere.

Yet they are not so distant as they seem. Desmond has led Monica to a rather higher spot, where the desired scene can be more vividly beheld, and where too they can be – oh, blessed thought! —alone.

Through a belt of dark-green fir-trees, whose pale tips are touched with silver by the moon, can be seen the limitless ocean, lying in restless waiting in the bay below.

A sort of enforced tranquillity has fallen upon it, – a troubled calm, – belied by the hoarse, sullen roar that rises now and again from its depths, as when some larger death-wave breaks its bounds, and, rushing inland, rolls with angry violence up the beach. Soft white crests lie upon the great sea's bosom, tossing idly hither and thither, glinting and trembling beneath the moon's rays, as though reluctantly subdued by its cold influence.

Across the whole expanse of the water a bright path is flung, that has its birth in heaven, yet deigns to accept a resting-place on earth, – a transitory rest, for there in the far distance on the horizon, where the dull grays of sea and sky have mingled, it has joined them, and seems again to have laid hold of its earliest home.

The birds are asleep in their sea-bound nests; the wind has died away. There is nothing to break the exquisite stillness of the night, save the monotonous beating of the waves against the rocks, and the faint rippling murmur of a streamlet in the ash-grove.

The whole scene is so rich with a beauty mystical and idealistic that Monica draws instinctively nearer to Desmond, with that desire for sympathy common to the satisfied soul, and stirs her hand in his.

Here, perhaps, it will be as well to mention, once for all, that whenever I give you to understand that Desmond is alone with Monica you are also to understand, without the telling, that he has her hand in his. What pleasure there can be for two people in standing, or sitting, or driving, as the case may be, for hours, palm to palm (this is how the poetical one expresses it), I leave all true lovers to declare. I only know for certain that it is a trick common to every one of them, rich and poor, high and low. I suppose there is consolation in the touch, – a sensation of nearness. I know, indeed, one young woman who assured me her principal reason for marrying Fred in a hurry (Fred was her husband) lay in the fact that she feared if she didn't she would grow left-handed, as he was always in possession of the right during their engagement.

"Ah! you like it," says Desmond, looking down upon her tenderly, – alluding to the charming view spread out before them, – the dark firs, the floating moon, the tranquil stars, the illimitable ocean, "of Almightiness itself the immense and glorious mirror."

Monica makes no verbal answer, but a sigh of intensest satisfaction escapes her, and she turns up to his a lovely face full of youth and heaven and content. Her eyes are shining, her lips parted by a glad, tremulous smile. She is altogether so unconsciously sweet that it would be beyond the power of even a Sir Percivale to resist her.

"My heart of hearts!" says Desmond, in a low, impassioned tone.

Her smile changes. Without losing beauty, it loses something ethereal and gains a touch of earth. It is more pronounced; it is, in fact, amused.

"I wonder where you learned all your terms of endearment," she says, slowly, looking at him from under her curling lashes.

"I learned them when I saw you. They had their birth then and there."

An eloquent silence follows this earnest speech. The smile dies from Monica's lips, and a sudden thoughtfulness replaces it.

"You never called any one your 'heart of hearts' before, then?" she asks, somewhat wistfully.

"Never —never. You believe me?"

"Yes." Her lids drop. Some inward thought possesses her, and then – with a sudden accession of tenderness very rare with her – she lifts her head, and lays her soft, cool cheek fondly against his.

"My beloved!" says the young man, in a tone broken by emotion.

For a moment he does not take her in his arms; some fear lest she may change her mind and withdraw her expression of affection deters him; and when at last he does press her to his heart, it is gently and with a careful suppression of all vehemence.

Perhaps no man in all the world is so calculated to woo and win this girl as Desmond. Perhaps there is no woman so formed to gain and keep him as Monica.

Holding her now in a light but warm clasp, he knows he has his heaven in his arms; and she, though hardly yet awake to the full sweetness of "Love's young dream," understands at least the sense of perfect rest and glad content that overfills her when with him.

"What are you thinking of?" she says, presently.

"'Myn alderlevest ladye deare,'" quotes he, softly.

"And what of her?"

"'That to the deth myn herte is to her holde,' – yes, for ever and ever," says Desmond, solemnly.

"I am very glad of that," says Monica, simply; and then she raises herself from his embrace and looks straight down to the sea again.

At this moment voices, not approaching but passing near them, reach their ears.

"They are going in," says Monica, hurriedly, and with a regret that is very grateful to him. "We must go too."

"Must we?" reluctantly. "Perhaps," brightening, "they are only going to try the effect higher up."

"No. They are crossing the gravel to the hall door."

"They are devoid of souls, to be able to quit so divine a view in such hot haste. Besides, it is absurdly early to think of going indoors yet. By Jove, though!" looking at his watch, "I'm wrong: it is well after eleven. Now, who would have thought it?"

"Are you sure you mean eleven?" with flattering incredulity.

"Only too sure. Hasn't the time gone by quickly? Well, I suppose I must take you in, which means candles and bed for you, and a dreary drive home for Kelly and me, and not a chance of seeing you alone again."

"This time last week you couldn't have seen me at all," says Miss Beresford.

"True. I am ungrateful. And altogether this has been such a delightful evening, – to me at least: were," doubtfully, "you happy?"

"Very, very happy," with earnest, uplifted eyes.

"Darling love! – I am afraid I must give you up to Mrs. O'Connor now," he goes on, presently, when an ecstatic thought or two has had time to come and go. "But, before going, say good-night to me here."

"Good-night, Brian."

He has never attempted to kiss her since that first time (and last, so far) in the orchard; and even now, though her pretty head is pressed against him, and her face is dangerously close to his, he still refrains. He has given her his word and will not break it; but perhaps he cannot altogether repress the desire to expostulate with her on her cruelty, because he gives voice to the gentle protest that rises to his lips.

"That is very cold good-night," he says. "You would say quite as much as that to Kelly or any of the others."

"I shouldn't call Mr. Kelly by his Christian name."

"No; but you would, Ronayne."

"Well, I shan't again, if you don't like it."

"That has nothing at all to do with what I mean. I only think you might show me a little more favor than the rest."

"Good-night, then, dear Brian. Now, I certainly shouldn't dream of calling Mr. Ronayne dear Ulic."

"Of course not. I should hope not, indeed! But still – there is something else that you might do for me."

Miss Beresford draws herself a little —a very little – away from him, and, raising her head, bestows upon him a glance that is a charming combination of mischief and coquetry. A badly-suppressed smile is curving the corner of her delicate lips.

"What a long time it takes you to say it!" she says, wickedly.

At this they both break into low, soft laughter, —delicious laughter! – that must not be overheard, and is suggestive of a little secret existing between them, that no one else may share.

"That is an invitation," says Desmond, with decision. "I consider you have now restored to me that paltry promise I made to you the other day in the orchard. And here I distinctly decline ever to renew it again. No, there is no use in appealing to me: I am not to be either softened or coerced."

"Well," says Miss Beresford, "listen to me." She stands well back from him this time, and, catching up the tail of her white gown, throws it negligently over her arm. "If you must have – you know what! – at least you shall earn it. I will race you for it, but you must give me long odds, and then, if you catch me before I reach that laurel down there, you shall have it. Is that fair?"

Plainly, from her exultant look, she thinks she can win.

"A bargain!" says Desmond. "And, were you Atalanta herself, I feel I shall outrun you."

"So presumptuous! Take care. 'Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,' and you may trip."

"I may not, too."

"Well," moving cautiously away from him, "when I come to that branch there, and say one, two, three, you – will —Now!"

At this, before he is half prepared, she cries, "one, two, three," with scandalous haste, and rushes away from him down the moonlit path. Swift and straight as a deer she flies, but, alas! just as the goal is all but reached, she finds the race is not to her, and that she is a prisoner in two strong arms!

"Now, who was presumptuous?" says Desmond, gazing into her lovely face. Her head, with a touch of exhaustion about it, is thrown back against his chest; through her parted lips her breath is coming with a panting haste, born of excitement and her fruitless flight. He bends over her, lower, and lower still. She feels herself altogether in his power.

"As you are strong, be merciful," she whispers, faintly. A warm flood of crimson has dyed her cheeks; her smile has faded; she struggles slightly, and then all in one moment Desmond becomes aware that tears have sprung into her eyes.

Instantly he releases her.

"Darling, forgive me," he says, anxiously. "See how your heart is beating now, and all for nothing! Of course I shall let you off your bargain. What do you take me for? Do you think I should make you unhappy for all the world could offer? Take those tears out of your eyes this instant, or I shall be seriously angry with you."

Monica laughs, but in a rather nervous fashion, and lets her lover dry her eyes with his own handkerchief. Then she sits down with him upon a rustic seat close by, wishing to be quite mistress of herself again before encountering the glare of the drawing-room lamps and the still more searching light of her friends' eyes.

For a full minute not a word is spoken by either of them She is inwardly troubled; he is downcast. Presently she rises with a little restless movement.

"No, do not stir just yet," she says. "I only want to pick some of that syringa behind you, it is so sweet."

Disinclined for action of any sort, he obeys her. She slips away behind him, and he sits there waiting listlessly for her return, and thinking, somewhat sadly, how small a way he has made with her, and that she is almost as shy with him now as on that day by the river when first they met.

And then something marvellous happens that puts all his theories and regrets and fears to flight forever. Two soft arms – surely the softest in this wide glad world – steal round his neck; a gold-brown head is laid against his; a whisper reaches him.

"You were very good to me about that!" says somebody, tremulously; and then two warm childish lips are laid on his, and Monica is in his arms.

"I wonder what it was that frightened you?" says Desmond, in a tender whisper, drawing her down on his knees and enfolding her closely as though she were in form the child that verily at heart she still is. "Tell me."

"I don't know." She has twined her bare beautiful arms around him, and is rubbing her cheek softly up and down against his in a fresh access of shyness.

"I think you do, my dearest."

"It was only this; that when I found I couldn't get away from you, I was frightened. It was very foolish of me, but whenever I read those stories about prisoners of war, and people being confined in dungeons, and that, I always know that if I were made a captive I should die."

"But surely your lover's arms cannot be counted a prison, my life!"

"Yes, if they held me when I wanted to get away."

"But," reproachfully, "would you want to get away?"

She hesitates, and, lifting one arm, runs her fingers coaxingly through the hair fashion has left him.

"I don't want to go away now, at all events," she temporizes sweetly. Then, a moment later, "But I must, nevertheless. Come," nervously, "we have been here a long time, and Madam O'Connor will be angry with me; and besides," pityingly, "you have all that long drive home still before you."

"I forgot all about the time," says Desmond, truthfully. "You are right: we must go in. Good-night again, my own."

Without waiting for permission this time, he stoops and presses his lips to hers. An instant later he knows with a thrill of rapture that his kiss has been returned.