Molly Bawn Part 25

"Not money, but the love of it," replies she, quickly. "Do not lose heart, Philip; he cannot last forever; and this week how ill he has been!"

"So he has, poor old wretch," her companion interrupts her hastily.

"Well, I have just one clear week before me, and then,--I suppose I had better have recourse to my friends, the Jews. That will be a risky thing, if you like, under the circ.u.mstances. Should he find that out----"

"How can he? They are always so secret, so safe. Better do it than eat your heart out. And who is to betray you?"

"You." With a laugh.

"Ay, tremble!" says she, gayly; then softly, "If that is all you have to fear, Philip, you are a happy man. And when you have got the two thousand pounds, will you be free?"

"No, but comparatively easy for awhile. And who knows, by that time----"

"He may die?"

"Or something may turn up," exclaims he, hurriedly, not looking at her, and therefore unable to wonder at the stolidity and utter unconcern of her expression.

At this moment a querulous, broken voice comes to them from some inner room. "Marcia, Marcia!" it calls, with trembling impatience; and, with a last flick at the unoffending peac.o.c.k, she turns to go, yet lingers, as though loath to leave her companion.

"Good-bye,--for awhile," she says.

"Good-bye," replies he, and, clasping her lightly round the waist, presses a kiss upon her cheek,--not upon her lips.

"You will be here when I return?" asks she, turning a face slightly flushed by his caress toward him as she stands with one foot placed upon the bow-window sill preparatory to entering the room beyond. There is hope fully expressed in her tone.

"No, I think not," replies he, carelessly. "The afternoon is fine; I want to ride into Longley, for----" But to the peac.o.c.ks alone is the excuse made known, as Marcia has disappeared.

Close to a fire, although the day is oppressively warm, and wrapped in a flannel dressing-gown, sits an old man,--old, and full of the snarling captiousness that makes some white hairs hideous. A tall man, with all the remains of great beauty, but a singularly long nose (as a rule one should always avoid a person with a long nose), that perhaps once might have added a charm to the bold, aristocratic face it adorned, but now in its last days is only suggestive of birds of prey, being peaky and astonis.h.i.+ngly fine toward the point. Indeed, looking at it from a side-view, one finds one's self instinctively wondering how much leaner it can get before kindly death steps in to put a stop to its growth. And yet it matches well with the lips, which, curving downward, and thin to a fault, either from pain or temper, denote only ill-will toward fellow-man, together with a certain cruelty that takes its keenest pleasure in another's mental suffering.

Great piercing eyes gleam out from under heavy brows, and, looking straight at one, still withhold their inmost thoughts. Intellect (wrongly directed, it may be, yet of no mean order) and a fatal desire for power sparkle in them; while the disappointment, the terrible self-accusing sadness that must belong to the closing of such a life as comes of such a temperament as his, lingers round his mouth. He is meagre, shrunken,--altogether unlovely.

Now, as he glances up at Marcia, a pettishness, born of the sickness that has been consuming him for the past week, is his all-prevailing expression. Raising a hand fragile and white as a woman's, he beckons her to his side.

"How you dawdle!" he says, fretfully. "Do you forget there are other people in the world besides yourself? Where have you been?"

"Have I been long, dear?" says Marcia, evasively, with the tenderest air of solicitude, shaking up his pillows and smoothing the crumpled dressing-gown with careful fingers. "Have you missed me? And yet only a few minutes have really pa.s.sed."

"Where have you been?" reiterates he, irritably, taking no notice of her comfortable pats and shakes.

"With Philip."

"Ay, 'with Philip.' Always Philip. I doubt me the course of your love runs too smoothly to be true. And yet it was a happy thought to keep the old man's money well together." With a sneer.

"Dear grandpapa, we did not think of money, but that we love each other."

"Love--pis.h.!.+ do not talk to me of it. I thought you too shrewd, Marcia, to be misled by a mirage. It is a myth,--no more,--a sickening, mawkish tale. Had he no prospects, and were you penniless, I wonder how far 'love' would guide you?"

"To the end," says Marcia, quickly. "What has money to do with it? It can neither be bought nor sold. It is a poor affection that would wither under poverty; at least it would have no fears for us."

"Us,--us," returns this detestable old pagan, with a malicious chuckle.

"How sure we are! how positive! ready to risk our all upon our lover's truth! Yet, were I to question this faithful lover upon the same subject, I fear me that I should receive a widely different answer."

"I hope not, dear," says Marcia, gently, speaking in her usual soft, low tone. Yet a small cold finger has been laid upon her heart. A dim foreboding crushes her. Only a little pallor, so slight as to be imperceptible to her tormentor, falls across the upper part of her face and tells how blood has been drawn. Yet it is hardly the mere piercing of the skin that hurts us most; it is in the dark night hours when the wound rankles that our agony comes home to us.

"When is this girl coming?" asks the old man, presently, in a peevish tone, vexed that, as far as he can tell, his arrow has overshot the mark. "I might have known she would have caught at the invitation."

"On the twenty-seventh,--the day you mentioned. She must be anxious to make your acquaintance, as she has not lost an hour," says Marcia, in a tone that might mean anything. "But"--sweetly--"why distress yourself, dear, by having her at all? If it disturbs your peace in the very least, why not write to put her off, at all events until you feel stronger? Why upset yourself, now you are getting on so nicely?" As she speaks she lets her clear, calm eyes rest fully upon the hopeless wreck of what once was strong before her. No faintest tinge of insincerity mars the perfect kindliness of her tone. "Why not let us three remain as we are, alone together?"

"What!" cries Mr. Amherst, angrily, and with excitement, raising himself in his chair, "am I to shut myself up within these four walls with nothing to interest me from day to day beyond your inane twaddle?

No, I thank you. I will have the house full,--full--do you hear, Marcia?--and that without delay? Do you want me to die of _ennui_ in this bare barrack of a place?"

"Well, do not make yourself ill, dear," says Marcia, with an admirably executed sigh. "It shall be as you wish, of course. I only spoke for your good,--because--I suppose (being the only near relative I have on earth besides my mother), I--love you."

"You are very good," replies the old man, grimly, utterly untouched by all this sweetness, "but I will have my own way. And don't you 'dear'

me again. Do you hear, Marcia? I won't have it: it reminds me of my wife. Pah!"

The days fade, the light wanes, and night's cold dewy mantle falls thickly on the longing earth.

Marcia, throwing wide her cas.e.m.e.nts, stretches out her arms to the moonlight and bathes her white face and whiter neck in the cool flood that drenches all the quiet garden.

There is peace everywhere, and rest, and happy sleep, but not for Marcia; for days, for weeks, she has been haunted by the fear that Philip's affection for her is but a momentary joy, that, swiftly as the minutes fly, so it dwindles. To-night this fear is strong upon her.

Not by his word, not by his actions, but by the subtle nothings that, having no name, yet are, and go to make up the dreaded whole, has this thought been forced upon her. The cooling glance, the suppressed restlessness, the sudden lack of conversation, the kind but unloving touch, the total absence of a lover's jealousy,--all go to prove the hateful truth. And now her grandfather's sneer of the morning comes back to torture her and make a.s.surance doubly sure. Yet hardly three months have pa.s.sed since Philip Shadwell asked her to be his wife.

"Already his love wanes," she murmurs, turning up her troubled face and eyes, too sad for tears, to the starry vault above her, where the small luminous bodies blink and tremble and take no heed of a ridiculous love-tale, more or less. Her tone is low and despairing; and as she speaks she beats her hands together slowly, noiselessly, yet none the less pa.s.sionately.

In vain she tries to convince herself her doubts are groundless, to compel herself to believe her arms are full, when in her heart she knows she but presses to her bosom an empty, fleeting shadow. The night's dull vapors have closed upon her, and, while exaggerating her misery, still open her eyes with kind cruelty to the end that surely awaits her.

So she sits hugging her fears until the day breaks, and early morning, peeping in at her, wafts her a kiss as it flies over the lawn and field and brooklet. Then, wearied by her watching, she flings herself upon her bed, and, gaining a short but dreamless sleep, wakens refreshed, to laugh at her misgivings of the night before,--at her grandfather's hints,--at aught that speaks to her of Philip's falseness.

Despair follows closely upon night. Hope comes in the train of day. And Marcia, standing erect before her gla.s.s, with her beautiful figure drawn to its full height and her handsome head erect, gazes long and earnestly at the reflection therein. At last the deep flush of satisfaction dyes her cheeks; all her natural self-reliance and determination return to her; with a little laugh at her own image (on which she builds her hopes), she defies fate, and, running down the staircase with winged feet, finds herself on the last step, almost in Philip's arms.

"Abroad so early!" he says, with a smile; and the kindliness of his tone, the more than kindness of his glance, confirm her hopes of the morning. She is looking very pretty, and Philip likes pretty women, hence the kindly smile. And yet, though he might have done so without rebuke (perhaps because of that), he forgot to kiss her. "You are the early bird, and you have caught me," he says. "I can only hope you will not make your breakfast off me. See,"--holding out to her an unclosed letter,--"the deed is done. I have written to my solicitor to get me the money from Lazarus and Harty."

"Oh, Philip! I have been thinking," she says, following him into the library, "and now it seems to me a risk. You know his horror of Jews,--you know how he speaks of your own father and his unfortunate dealings with them. Yesterday I felt brave, and advised you, as I fear, wrongly; to-day----"

"I have been thinking it over too,"--lighting the taper on the table, and applying the sealing-wax to the flame,--"and now it seems to me the only course left open. And yet"--speaking gayly, but pausing as the wax falls upon the envelope--"perhaps--who knows?--I may be sealing my own fate."

"You make me superst.i.tious. Why imagine horrors? Yet if you have any doubts, Philip,"--laying one shapely white finger upon the letter,--"do not send it. Something tells me to warn you. And, besides, are you quite sure they will lend you the money?"

"They will hardly refuse a paltry two thousand to the heir of Herst Royal."

"But you are not the heir."

"In the eyes of the world I am."