Molly Bawn Part 29

"What! you have seen him, then?" cries Molly, full of her own idea, and oblivious of dignity. "Is he handsome, Sarah? Young? Describe him to me."

"He is short, miss, and stoutish, and--and----"

"Yes! Do go on, Sarah, and take that smile off your face: it makes you look downright imbecile. 'Short!' 'Stout!' Good gracious! of what on earth could Teddy have been thinking."

"His manners is most agreeable, miss, and altogether he is a most gentleman-like young man."

"Well, of course he is all that, or he isn't anything; but stout!----"

"Not a bit stiffish, or uppish, as one might expect, considering where he come from. And indeed, Miss Molly," with an irrepressible giggle, "he did say as how----"

"What!" icily.

"As how I had a very bewidging look about the eyes."

"Sarah," exclaims Miss Ma.s.sereene, sinking weakly into a chair, "do you mean to tell me my cousin Philip--Captain Shadwell--told you--had the impertinence to speak to you about----"

"Law, Miss Molly, whatever are you thinking about?--Captain Shadwell!

why, I haven't so much as laid eyes on him! I was only speaking of his young man, what goes by the name of Peters."

"Ridiculous!" cries Molly, impatiently; then bursting into a merry laugh, she laughs so heartily and so long that the somewhat puzzled Sarah feels compelled to join.

"'Short, and stout, and gentlemanly'--ha, ha, ha! And so Peters said you were bewidging, Sarah? Ah! take care, and do not let him turn your head: if you _do_, you will lose all your fun, and gain little for it. Is that a bell? Oh, Sarah! come, dispatch, dispatch, or I shall be late, and eternally disgraced."

The robing proceeds, and when finished leaves Molly standing before her maid with (it must be confessed) a very self-satisfied smirk upon her countenance.

"How am I looking, Sarah? I want a candid opinion; but on no account say anything disparaging."

"Lovely!" says Sarah, with comfortable haste. "There's no denying it, Miss Molly. Miss Amherst below, for all her dark hair and eyes (and I don't say but that she is handsome), could not hold a candle to you, as the saying is--and that's a fact."

"Is there anything in all the world," says Miss Ma.s.sereene, "so sweet as sincere praise? Sarah, you are a charming creature. Good-bye; I go--let us hope--to victory. But if not,--if I find the amiable relatives refuse to acknowledge my charms I shall at least know where to come to receive the admiration I feel I so justly deserve!"

So saying, with a little tragic flourish, she once more wends her way down-stairs, trailing behind her her pretty white muslin gown, with its flecks of coloring, blue as her eyes, into the drawing-room.

The close of autumn brings to us a breath of winter. Already the daylight has taken to itself wings and flown partially away; and though, as yet, a good deal of it through compa.s.sion lingers, it is but a half-hearted dallying that speaks of hurry to be gone.

The footman, a young person, of a highly morbid and sensitive disposition, abhorrent of twilights, has pulled down all the blinds in the sitting-rooms, and drawn the curtains closely, has lit the lamps, and poked into a blaze the fire, that Mr. Amherst has the wisdom to keep burning all the year round in the long chilly room.

Before the fire, with one arm on the mantel-piece, and one foot upon the fender, stands a young man, in an att.i.tude suggestive of melancholy. Hearing the rustling of a woman's garments, he looks up, and, seeing Molly, stares at her, first lazily, then curiously, then amazedly, then----

She is quite close to him; she can almost touch him; indeed, no farther can she go without putting him to one side; and still he has not stirred. The situation grows embarra.s.sing, so embarra.s.sing that, what with the ludicrous silence and Philip Shadwell's eyes which betray a charmed astonishment, Molly feels an overpowering desire to laugh. She compromises matters by smiling, and lowering her eyelids just half an inch.

"You do not want all the fire, do you?" she asks, demurely, in a low tone.

"I beg your pardon," exclaims Philip, in his abstraction, moving in a direction closer to the fire, rather than from it. "I had no idea I was. I"--doubtfully, "am I speaking to Miss Ma.s.sereene?"

"You are. And I--I know I am speaking to Captain Shadwell."

"Yes," slowly. "That is my name,--Philip Shadwell."

"We are cousins, then," says Molly, kindly, as though desirous of putting him at his ease. "I hope we shall be, what is far better, friends."

"We must be; we are friends," returns he, hastily, so full of surprise and self-reproach as to be almost unconscious of his words.

Is this the country cousin full of freckles and _mauvaise honte_, who was to be pitied, and lectured, and taught generally how to behave?--whose ignorance was to draw forth groans from pit and gallery and boxes? A hot blush at his own unmeant impertinence thrills him from head to foot. Were she ever, by any chance, to hear what he had said.

Oh, perish the thought!--it is too horrible!

A little laugh from Molly somewhat restores his senses.

"You should not stare so," she says, severely, with an adorable attempt at a frown. "And you need not look at me all at once, you know, because, as I am going to stay here a whole month, you will have plenty of time to do it by degrees, without fatiguing yourself. By the bye,"

reproachfully, "I have come a journey to-day, and am dreadfully tired, and you have never even offered me a chair; must I get one for myself?"

"You have driven any manners I may possess out of my head," replies he, laughing, too, and pus.h.i.+ng toward her the coziest chair the room contains. "Your sudden entrance bewildered me; you came upon me like an apparition; more especially as people in this house never get to the drawing-room until exactly one minute before dinner is announced."

"Why?"

"Lest we should bore each other past forgiveness. Being together as we are every day, and all day long, one can easily imagine how a very little more pressure would smash the chains of politeness. You may have heard of the last straw and its disastrous consequences?"

"I have. I am sorry I frightened you. To-morrow night I shall know better, and shall leave you to your silent musings in peace."

"No; don't do that!" says her companion, earnestly. "On no account do that. I think the half-hour before dinner, sitting by the fire, alone, as we are now, the best of the whole day; that is, of course, if one spends it with a congenial companion."

"Are you a congenial companion?"

"I don't know," smiling. "If you will let me, I can at least try to be."

"Try, then, by all means." In a moment or two,--"I should like to fathom your thoughts," says Molly. "When I came in, there was more than bewilderment in your face; it showed--how shall I express it? You looked as though you had expected something else?"

"Will you forgive me if I say I did?"

"What, then? A creature tall, gaunt, weird----?"

"No."

"Fat, red, uncomfortable?"

This touches so nearly on the truth as to be unpleasant. He winces.

"I will tell you what I did not expect," he says, hastily, coloring a little. "How should I? It is so seldom one has the good luck to discover in autumn a rose belonging to June."

His voice falls.

"Am I one?" asks she, looking with dangerous frankness into the dark eyes above her, that are telling her silently, eloquently, she is the fairest, freshest, sweetest queen of flowers in all the world.

The door opens, and Mr. Amherst enters, then Marcia. Philip straightens himself, and puts on his usual bored, rather sulky expression. Molly smiles upon her grumpy old host. He offers her his arm, Philip does the same to Marcia, and together they gain the dining-room.

It is an old, heavily wainscoted apartment, gloomy beyond words, so immense that the four who dine in it tonight appear utterly lost in its vast centre.

Marcia, in an evening toilet of black and ivory, sits at the head of the table, her grandfather opposite to her. Philip and Molly are _vis-a-vis_ at the sides. Behind stand the footmen, as sleek and well-to-do, and imbecile, as one can desire.