Only an Irish Girl Part 2

Launce has thrown himself upon the gra.s.s almost at Belle's feet, and is talking in his low musical voice.

"Tantalizing the poor little thing!" Honor says to herself, as she peeps across at them from her nest among the branches.

She is very fond of Belle Delorme, and she knows that not in all Ireland could her brother find a sweeter, truer little wife. Perhaps he is of the same opinion--perhaps not. It is not easy to read the thoughts behind that square, masterful brow of his.

Presently they stroll away together, leaving Honor alone.

As she lies there in her low hammock, the shadows of leaf and bough flickering on her face, a hand parts the branches, and a man looks in at her.

She flushes deeply in her surprise at the sight of him, and then sits up with a jerk that nearly brings her out of her nest with more speed than grace.

"I'm sorry to have disturbed you," he says, smiling; "but I thought you were asleep, and I could not help envying the good fortune of the fairy prince who might be lucky enough to awaken you after the fashion of fairy princes."

Something in his voice or in his eyes as he looks down at her makes the light words seem almost tender.

"But no fairy princess ever come to Ireland, Mr. Beresford; it's only a 'fine country spoiled,' you know, and 'sunk in semi-barbarism'--not at all the sort of place for a fairy prince to come to."

"I don't know that at all, Honor."

It is the first time he has called her Honor, and she looks up at him half startled as he continues:

"It seems to me the fairy prince might travel farther and fare worse."

"But he might not think so, particularly if he was an English fairy prince," the girl says dryly.

"Why are you so hard on us, Honor? Why are you so hard on me? I should say. For you are sweetness itself to that little curate of Drum, and he's about the poorest specimen of the c.o.c.kney I ever met."

"You couldn't expect that any but the 'poorest specimen' would condescend to be a curate at Drum," she returns flippantly.

Taking no heed of her interruption, he goes on:

"You have grudged every kind word, every little attention lavished on me since I've been here. Often and often I've said to myself, 'I will go away and never look upon her face again.' But I have not gone."

"No," the girl says, feeling curiously abashed and contrite under the gaze of those calmly accusing eyes. "I'm sorry if--if I have been rude to you."

"I am glad to hear you say so. You have been rude certainly, but I am quite ready to forgive all that--quite ready to shake hands and be friends, if you care to have it so. If not, it is better that I should go away--at once."

She most certainly is not fond of this man; and yet she feels pained at the mere thought of his going away "at once." She holds out her hand almost pleadingly.

"Oh, do not go away, please!" looking at him with sweet, grave eyes. "I would rather shake hands and be friends."

"So be it!" he says, taking her hand, and holding it for a second in both his own.

He is a man of the world, strong and self-repressed; yet now he turns suddenly pale, and his eyes darken.

"Heavens, child, how I love you!" he cries; and the next instant he has stooped and kissed her on the lips. It is done in a second. The girl looks up at him from among her pillows, as hurt and angry as if the kiss had been a blow; and he looks back at her, amazed at his own audacity.

"On my honor, I did not mean to do it!" he says, almost humbly. "I did not know I should be such a weak fool as to yield to temptation in that mad fashion, only I love you so, and you----"

"And I am 'only an Irish girl,'" she interrupts him vehemently--"little better than a savage in your eyes. If I had been an English lady you would never have taken such a liberty--never!"

Her pa.s.sionate resentment angers him, slow to anger as he is by nature and habit.

"If you hate me so much, Honor, that the touch of my lips insults you beyond forgiveness, the sooner we part the better," he says bitterly.

"You would please me best by going away, and never letting me see your face again," she answers with equal bitterness.

There is the sound of a step on the gravel, and a man's laugh--a peculiar vibrating laugh that brings the color into Honor's face--reaches them in the stillness.

But the steps pa.s.s on, and do not come near their corner among the old fruit-trees. Brian Beresford bends nearer to the girl, lying there amid the bending branches, with the sunshine on her averted face.

"You are only a child, Honor, for all your twenty summers! You no more know your own heart than I do. Take care! If you send me away--me and my love--you may find that you have made a mistake!"

But she will not answer him--she will not even look at him. For all the sign of life she gives she might be that Sleeping Beauty to whom he first likened her.

"If ever you should feel sorry, Honor, for what you have said to-day--if ever you should care to have me back, either as a friend or lover, send for me, and I will come."

The words are calm enough, but by some instinct she divines that the face bent close to hers is neither calm or cold. She hears him go away, as he came, through the gap in the high hedge, but she does not even open her eyes to watch him go. But, when all is still again, and she knows that he has pa.s.sed away out of her life, as surely as he has pa.s.sed out of the old-fashioned garden, she bursts into tears.

"Oh, what has come to me?" she says to herself again and again, in a very maze of wonder at her own sensations. "I do not love the man. His coming or his going matters nothing to me."

But, although she says this, not once but many times, the words bring her no comfort. They do not still for one moment the inexplicable plain that has risen in her heart. She gets up after awhile and goes back to the house, choosing the small door at the side, so that she may meet no one.

Aileen is ironing in the large front-kitchen, smoothing out, as she calls it, one of Honor's pretty white dresses. It is a labor of love with the old woman, and every week she comes up from her little cottage to perform it.

At sight of her young mistress standing in the doorway, bright-eyed and flushed, and strangely unlike herself, the good woman pauses.

"An' is it yourself, alanna? Shure my eyes have been aching for the sight of your face this hour or more! But what ails ye, Miss Honor darlint? Shure my black drames--bad 'cess to me for naming them till ye--have not been troubling your mind?"

"No, no!" the girl says, laughing. "I am not troubled about anything, only hot and thirsty, and--yes, Aileen, I may as well own it--cross."

She laughs again, but her voice is tremulous, and she keeps her face well turned from the light.

"I wish it was only cross that I was, darlint!" the old woman says with the peculiar solemnity of her cla.s.s. "But it's sore and heavy-hearted I am, and that's the blessed truth. I've done nothing but drame since ever I saw you last, and every night it's the same thing over and over again, till my brain is almost turned wid it, and I rise up in the morning all in a cold perspoiration."

"Dear old Aileen," the girl says tenderly, "poor Rooney's awful death has upset you? It has upset us all for that matter! And then it must be so dreadful for you alone on that great bleak bog."

"Miss Honor, do ye mind my drame?"

"Every word of it, Aileen."

"Ye mind how I dramed that the boys dug the grave out on the moss, and hid it out of sight wid green branches!"

"I do surely."

"Well, Miss Honor, ever and always in my drame that grave is there still. I watch the boys dig it deep in the black earth, and cover the gaping mouth of it; and me shaking and trembling all the time. But these past three nights--the saints be above us!--there's been another grave, alanna."

"Another grave!" The girl laughs. "Why, that is getting too dreadful!"