Molly Bawn Part 72

"Tut! nonsense. I think nothing of you. Such a golden opportunity thrown away! In your place I should have been senseless in half a minute in Tedcastle's arms."

"Forgive my stupidity. I only turned and caught hold of Teddy's arm, and held him as though I never meant to let him go."

"Perhaps that was your secret wish, were the truth known. Molly, you are wiser than I am. What is a paltry fainting fit to the touch of a soft, warm hand? Go on."

"Well, the invader, when he had gazed into s.p.a.ce, withdrew again, leaving us to our own devices. Cecil, if we had been discovered! I in my dressing-gown! Not all the waters of the Atlantic would have saved me from censure. I never was so terrified. Who _could_ it have been?"

"'Oh! 'twas I, love; Wandering by, love,'"

declares Cecil, going off into a perfect peal of laughter. "Never, never have I been so entertained! And so I frightened you? Well, be comforted. I was terrified in my turn by your long absence; so much so that, without a candle, I crept down-stairs, stole along the hall, and looked into the drawing-room. Seeing no one, I retreated, and gained my own room again as fast as I could. Oh, how sorry I am I did not know!

Consider your feelings had I stolen quietly toward your hiding-place step by step! A splendid situation absolutely thrown away."

"You and Mr. Potts ought to be brother and sister, you both revel so in the bare idea of mischief," says Molly, laughing too.

And then Cecil, declaring it is all hours, turns her out of her room, and presently sleep falls and settles upon Herst and all its inmates.

CHAPTER XXVII.

"Death is here, and death is there; Death is busy everywhere; All around, within, beneath, Above is death,--and we are death.

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter h.o.a.r, Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more, O never more."

--Sh.e.l.ley.

It is just two o'clock, and Sunday. They have all been to church. They have struggled manfully through their prayers. They have chanted a depressing psalm or two to the most tuneless of ancient ditties. They have even sat out an incomprehensible sermon with polite gravity and many a weary yawn.

The day is dull. So is the rector. So is the curate,--unutterably so.

Service over, they file out again into the open air in solemn silence, though at heart glad as children who break school, and wend their way back to Herst through the dismantled wood.

The trees are nearly naked: a short, sad, consumptive wind is soughing through them. The gra.s.s--what remains of it--is brown, of an unpleasant hue. No flowers smile up at them as they pa.s.s quietly along. The sky is leaden. There is a general air of despondency over everything. It is a day laid aside for dismal reflection; a day on which hateful "might have beens" crop up, for "melancholy has marked it for its own."

Yet just as they come to a turn in the park, two magpies (harbingers of good when coupled; messengers of evil when apart) fly past them directly across their path.

"'Two for joy!'" cries Molly, gayly, glad of any interruption to her depressing thoughts. "I saw them first. The luck is mine."

"I think _I_ saw them first," says Sir Penthony, with no object beyond a laudable desire to promote argument.

"Now, how could you?" says Molly. "I am quite twenty yards ahead of you, and must have seen them come round this corner first. Now, what shall I get, I wonder? Something worth getting, I do hope."

"'Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed,'" says Mr. Potts, moodily, who is as gloomy as the day.

"I expect nothing."

"You are jealous," retorts Molly. "Sour grapes,"--making a small _moue_ at him. "But you have no claim upon this luck; it is all my own. Let n.o.body for a moment look upon it as his or hers."

"You are welcome to it. I don't envy you," says Cecil, little thinking how prophetic are her words.

They continue their walk and their interrupted thoughts,--the latter leading them in all sorts of contrary directions,--some to love, some to hate, some to cold game-pie and dry champagne.

As they enter the hall at Herst, one of the footmen steps forward and hands Molly an ugly yellow envelope.

"Why, here is my luck, perhaps!" cries she, gayly. "How soon it has come! Now, what can be in it? Let us all guess."

She is surprised, and her cheeks have flushed a little. Her face is full of laughter. Her sweet eyes wander from one to another, asking them to join in her amus.e.m.e.nt. No thought, no faintest suspicion of the awful truth occurs to her, although only a thin piece of paper conceals it from her view.

"A large fortune, perhaps," says Sir Penthony; while the others close round her, laughing, too. Only Luttrell stands apart, calmly indifferent.

"Or a proposal. That would just suit the rapid times in which we live."

"I think I would at once accept a man who proposed to me by telegraph,"

says Molly, with pretty affectation. "It would show such flattering haste,--such a desire for a kind reply. Remember,"--with her finger under the lap of the envelope,--"if the last surmise proves correct I have almost said yes."

She breaks open the paper, and, smiling still, daintily unfolds the enclosure.

What a few words!--two or three strokes of the pen. Yet what a change they make in the beautiful, _debonnaire_ countenance! Black as ink they stand out beneath her stricken eyes. Oh, cruel hand that penned them so abruptly!

"Come home at once. Make no delay. Your brother is dead."

Gray as death grows her face; her body turns to stone. So altered is she in this brief s.p.a.ce, that when she raises her head some shrink away from her, and some cry out.

"Oh, Molly! what is it?" asks Lady Stafford, panic-stricken, seizing her by the arm; while Luttrell, scarcely less white than the girl herself, comes unconsciously forward.

Molly's arms fall to her sides; the telegram flutters to the floor.

"My brother is dead," she says, in a slow, unmeaning tone.

"He is dead," she says again, in a rather higher, shriller voice, receiving no response from the awed group that surrounds her. Their silence evidently puzzles her. Her large eyes wander helplessly over all their faces, until at length they fall on Luttrell's. Here they rest, knowing she has found one that loves her.

"Teddy--Teddy!" she cries, in an agonized tone of desolation; then, throwing up her arms wildly toward heaven, as though imploring pity, she falls forward senseless into his outstretched arms.

All through the night Cecil Stafford stays with her, soothing and caressing her as best she can. But all her soothing and caressing falls on barren soil.

Up and down the room throughout the weary hours walks Molly, praying, longing for the daylight; asking impatiently every now and then if it "will never come." Surely on earth there is no greater cross to bear than the pa.s.sive one of waiting when distress and love call loudly for a.s.sistance.

Her eyes are dry and tearless; her whole body burns like fire with a dull and throbbing heat. She is composed but restless.

"Will it soon be day?" she asks Cecil, almost every half hour, with a fierce impatience,--her entire being full of but one idea, which is to reach her home as soon as possible.

And again:

"If I had not fainted I might have been there now. Why did I miss that train? Why did you let me faint?"