Rossmoyne Part 34

"Yet there is something strange in your manner."

"That is as it should be. On such a night as this, how could one escape a little touch of that 'moonstruck madness' I spoke of a while since? Go out yourself, walk through that moonlit garden just where I walked, to where in that corner over the rays melt into shadow, and try if there be nothing in it to make your heart beat faster."

"I could do it, and return calm as I am now."

"Then you are no true woman."

"What! must a woman be so foolishly romantic as to tremble in the moonlight, to be true?"

"Moonlights differ. There is a witchery abroad to-night. Go, and judge for yourself if there be not truth in my words."

"I can see enough of it from this," says Monica, leaning her bare snowy arms--from which her loose sleeves have fallen--upon the window-ledge, and turning her eyes to the pale sky studded with bright stars, "to bewitch me, if indeed it has the power you ascribe to it."

Foiled in her first effort to send her to Desmond's arms, Kit flings herself upon the ground beside her, and lays her arms upon her lap and looks lovingly but reproachfully into her eyes.

"I think you were a little unkind to that dear Brian this evening," she says.

"That dear Brian will recover from my cruel treatment, I make no doubt,"

says Monica, with affected lightness, though, in truth, remorse is gnawing at her heartstrings.

"If he does, he will show his very good sense. He loves you: why, then, do you _flout_ and scorn him?"

In the ancient library below, the young ladies in the novels always _flouted_ their lovers. Not having the faintest idea how they perform this arduous task, Kit still adopts the word as having a sonorous sound, and uses it now with--as she hopes--great effect.

"I do _not_ flout him," says Monica, indignantly. "But what am I to do?

am I to make Aunt Priscilla wretched, then, because of him, and break her poor heart perhaps?"

"Oh, bother her heart!" says the younger Miss Beresford, with more candor than decency: "think of _his_ poor heart, if you like, wasting and wearing away because of your unkindness. If _I_ had a lover, that is not how I should treat him. I should do anything in the world he asked me. I should defy everybody in the world for him, and think them well lost. I should run away with him at a moment's notice if he asked me. _Now!_"

"Oh, Kit!" says Monica, aghast at all this energy.

"I should indeed," nothing daunted; "I shouldn't hesitate. And, at all events, I should be civil to him at all times. Why, the way you treated that wretched young man to-day at Clonbree Barracks was, I consider, shameful! And you call yourself, I dare say, soft-hearted. To _look_ at you, one would think you couldn't be unkind if you tried; and yet the _barbarity_ of your conduct to-day, to a person who literally wors.h.i.+ps the ground you walk on, was----"

"But what did I do?" interrupts poor Monica, trembling before this whirlwind.

"What _didn't_ you do? you mean. You would not even grant him one kind parting glance. I could have _cried_ for him, he looked so sad and forlorn. I think he looked like suicide,--I do, indeed,--and I shouldn't wonder a bit if in the morning we heard----"

"Oh, Kit, don't! _don't!_" says Monica, in an agony, as this awful insinuation gains force with her.

"Well, I won't then," says the advocate, pretending to surrender her point by adroitly changing her front. A very Jesuit at soul is this small Kit. "After all, I daresay he will grow tired of your incivility, and so--forget you. Some one else will see how dear a fellow he is, and smile upon him, and then he will give you up."

This picture, being in Monica's eyes even _more_ awful than the former, makes great havoc in her face, rendering her eyes large and sorrowful, and, indeed, so suffused with the heart's water that she seems upon the very verge of tears. She turns these wet but lovely orbs upon her tormentor.

"That would be the best thing he could do for _himself_," she says, so sadly that Kit insensibly creeps closer to her; "and as for me, it doesn't matter about me, of course."

"Monica, you like him, then," says Kit, suddenly, rising on her knees and looking into her sister's averted eyes. "I am sure of it: I know it now. Why did you not confide in me before?"

"Because it seems all so hopeless; even--if I loved him enough to marry him--_they_ would never give in" (meaning, presumably, her aunts): "so why should he or I waste time over so impossible a theory?"

"Why should it be impossible? Why should you not be married?"

"Because the fates are against us. Not," quickly, "that _that_ so much matters: I don't want to marry _anybody_! But--but," lowering her lids, "I do want him to _love_ me."

"My dear child, talk sense if you talk at all," says the material Kit.

"There never yet was a heroine in any novel ever read by me (and I have had a large experience) who didn't want to marry the man of her heart.

Now just look at that girl of Rhoda Broughton's, in 'Good-by, Sweetheart!' We can all see she didn't die of any disease, but simply because she couldn't be wedded to the man she loved. _There's_ a girl for you! give _me_ a girl like that. If ever I fall in love with a man, and I find I can't marry him, I shall make a point of dying of grief. It is so graceful; just like what I have heard of Irving and Ellen Terry--I mean, Romeo and Juliet!"

"But I can't bear to deceive Aunt Priscilla," says Monica. "She is so kind, so good."

"Stuff and nonsense!" says Kit promptly. "Do you suppose, when Aunt Priscilla was young, she would have deserted--let us say--Mr. Desmond the elder, at the beck and call of any one? She has too much spirit, to do her credit. Though I must say her spirit is rather out of place now, at times."

"What would you have me do, then?" asks Monica, desperately.

"Oh, nothing," says Kit, airily,--"really _nothing_. I am too young, of course, to give advice," with a little vicious toss of her small head.

"And of course, too, I know nothing of the world's ways," with another toss, that conveys to her auditor the idea that she believes herself thoroughly versed and skilled in society's lore, but that as yet she is misunderstood. "And it is not my place, of course, to dictate to an elder sister." This severely, and evidently intended as a slap at Monica because of some little rebuke delivered by her, the other day, on the subject of age. "But," with concentrated energy, "I would not be _brutal_, if I were you."

"Brutal?" faintly.

"Yes, _brutal_, to keep him waiting for you all this time in the shadow near the ivy wall!"

Having discharged this sh.e.l.l, she waits in stony silence for a reply.

She waits some time. Then--

"Are you speaking of--of Mr. Desmond?" asks Monica, in a trembling voice.

"Yes. He is standing there now, and has been, for--oh, for hours,--on the bare chance of gaining one word from you."

"Now?" starting.

"Yes. He said he would wait until I had persuaded you to go out. If I had such a lover, I know I should not keep him waiting for me all the evening _s.h.i.+vering_ with cold."

(It is the balmiest of summer nights.)

"Oh! what shall I do?" says Monica, torn in two between her desire to be true to her aunt and yet not unkind to her lover.

"As I said before," says the resolute Kit, turning her small pale face up to her sister, "I know I am not ent.i.tled to dictate to any one, but this I know, too, that if I were you, and _twenty_ Aunt Priscillas were at my side, I should still--go to him! There!"

She conquers. Monica rises slowly, and as a first move in the desired direction goes--need I say it?--to the looking-gla.s.s. Need I say, also, that she feels dissatisfied with her appearance?

"Then I suppose I had better dress myself all over again," she says, glancing with much discontent at the charming vision the gla.s.s returns to her.

"No, no!" says Kit, decidedly. She has now arranged herself as Mistress of the Ceremonies, and quite gives herself airs. "Do not add even a touch to your toilet. You are quite too sweet as you are, and 'time presses'" (another quotation from one of her mouldy volumes).

"But _this_," says Monica, plucking at her pretty loose gown, that hangs in limp artistic folds round her slight figure and is pranked out with costly laces.

"It is perfect! Have you no eyes for the beautiful? There, go, you silly child; Nature has been so good to you, you now deride her prodigality, and make little of the gifts she has bestowed upon you. Go to----"

"Good gracious!" says Monica, pausing to stare at her aghast. "Where did you learn all that?"