Rossmoyne Part 46

Monica, raising her head with extreme nervousness, had just time to see Mr. Desmond in the huge fir-tree above her, before he drops at her feet.

"What on earth were you doing up there?" asks she, thinking it wise to adopt the offensive style, so as to be first in the field, feeling instinctively that a scolding is coming and that she deserves it.

"Watching _you_," returns he, sternly, nothing dismayed by her a.s.sumption of injured innocence, so her little ruse falls through.

"A charming occupation, certainly!" says Miss Beresford, with fine disgust.

"I climbed up into that tree," says Mr. Desmond, savagely, "and from it saw that you had spent your entire day with that idiot, Ryde."

"Do you think," says Miss Beresford, with awful calm, "that it was a _gentlemanly_ thing to climb into that tree, like a horrid schoolboy, and spy upon a person?--_do you?_"

"I don't," vehemently, "but I was driven to it. I don't care what is gentlemanly. I don't care," furiously, "what you think of me. I only know that my mind is now _satisfied_ about you, and that I know you are the most abominable flirt in the world, and that you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"Well, I'm not," with great self-possession.

"The more to your discredit! That only means that you are bent on doing it again."

"I shall certainly always talk to any man who talks to me. That is,"

cuttingly, "any man who knows how to conduct himself with propriety."

"Meaning--_I_ don't, I suppose?"

"_Certainly_ you don't."

"Oh, if it comes to that," says Desmond, in tones of the deepest desperation, and as if nothing is left to expect but the deluge in another moment.

And, in effect, it comes. Not, as one has been taught to expect, in sudden storm, and wind, and lightning, but first in soft light drops, and then in a perfect downpour, that bursts upon them with pa.s.sionate fury.

As they are standing beneath a magnificent beech, they get but a taste of the shower in reality, though Desmond, seeing some huge drops lying on Monica's thin white gown, feels his heart smite him.

"Here, take this," he says, roughly, taking off his coat and placing it round her shoulders.

"No, thank you," says Miss Beresford, stiffly.

"You must," returns he, and, to his surprise, she makes no further resistance. Perhaps she is cowed by the authority of his manner; _perhaps_ she doesn't like the raindrops.

Encouraged, however, by her submission to a further daring of fortune, he says, presently,--

"You might have given Cobbett a turn, I think, instead of devoting yourself all day to that egregious a.s.s."

"He prefers talking to Hermia. I suppose you don't want me to go up to people and ask them to be civil to me?"

"Some other fellow, then."

"You would be just as jealous of him, whoever he was."

"I am not jealous at all," indignantly. "I only object to your saying one thing to _me_ and another to _him_."

"What is the one thing I say to you?"

This staggers him.

"You must find me a very monotonous person if I say only one thing to you always."

"I haven't found you so."

"Then it--whatever it is--must be one of the most eloquent and remarkable speeches upon record. _Do_ tell it to me."

"Look here, Monica," says Mr. Desmond, cautiously evading a reply: "what I want to know is--what you _see_ in Ryde. He is tall, certainly, but he is fat and effeminate, with 'a forehead villanous low.'"

"Your own is very low," says Miss Beresford.

"If I thought it was like _his_, I'd make away with myself. And you listen to all his stories, and believe them every one. I don't believe a single syllable he says: I never met such a bragger. To listen to him, one would think he had killed every tiger in Bengal. In my opinion, he never even saw one."

"'Les absents ont toujours tort,'" quotes she, in a low, significant tone.

This is the finis.h.i.+ng stroke.

"Oh! you _defend_ him," he says, as savagely almost as one of those wild beasts he has just mentioned. "In your eyes he is a hero, no doubt. I daresay all women see virtue in a man who 'talks as familiarly of roaring lions as maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs.'"

"I don't think maids of thirteen, as a rule, talk much of puppy-dogs.

I'm sure Kit doesn't," says Monica, provokingly. "And really, to do Mr.

Ryde justice too, I never heard him mention a roaring lion. Perhaps you are thinking of Artemus Ward's lion that goes about 'seeking whom he may devour somebody.'" She smiles in a maddening fas.h.i.+on.

"I am thinking of Ryde," says Desmond. "I am thinking, too, how mad I was when I thought you liked me better than him. I _did_ think it, you know; but now I am _desillusionnee_. It is plain to me you are infatuated about this fellow, who is 'perfumed like a milliner' and hasn't two ideas in his head."

"I can't think where you find all your quotations," says Monica, who is now seriously annoyed; "but I must ask you not to worry me any further about Mr. Ryde."

"You are madly in love with him," says Desmond, choking with rage. Upon which Miss Beresford loses the last remnant of her patience, and very properly turns her back on him.

The rain has ceased, but during its reign has extinguished the dying sun, which has disappeared far below the horizon. A great hush and silence has followed the petulant burst of storm, and a peace unspeakable lies on all the land. There is a little glimpse of the ocean far away beyond the giant firs, and one can see that its waves are calm, and the fis.h.i.+ng-boats upon its bosom scarcely rock.

The gra.s.s is bending still with the weight of the past rain, and a plaintive dripping from the trees can be heard,--a refres.h.i.+ng sound that lessens the sense of heat. The small birds stir cosily in their nests, and now and then a drowsy note breaks from one or another; a faint mist, white and intangible, rises from the hills, spreading from field to sky, until

"The earth, with heaven mingled, in the shadowy twilight lay, And the white sails seemed like spectres in a cloud-land far away."

"Ah! you don't like me to say that," says Desmond, unappeased by the beauty of the growing night; "but----"

"Do not say another word," says Monica, imperiously. The moon is rising slowly--slowly,--and so, by the by, is her temper. "I forbid you. Here,"

throwing to him his coat; "I think I have before remarked that the rain is _quite_ over. I am sorry I ever touched anything belonging to you."

Desmond having received the coat, and put himself into it once more, silence ensues. It does, perhaps, strike him as a hopeful sign that she shows no haste to return home and so rid herself of a presence she has inadvertently declared to be hateful to her, because presently he says, simply, if a little warmly,--

"There is no use in our quarreling like this. I won't give you up without a further struggle, to _any_ man. So we may as well have it out now. Do you care for that--for Ryde?"

"If you had asked me that before,--sensibly,--you might have avoided making an exhibition of yourself and saying many rude things. I don't in the least mind telling you," says Miss Beresford, coldly, "that I _can't bear_ him."

"Oh, Monica! is this _true_?" asks he, in an agony of hope.