Rossmoyne Part 18

"_Quite_ that," emphatically.

"It has been often done before: yours is not a solitary case."

"Solitary or not, there were elements about it inexcusable," says the old squire, beating his hand upon the table as though to emphasize his words.

"I wouldn't take it so much to heart if I were you," says Brian, who is really beginning to pity him.

"It has lain on my heart for twenty years. I can't take it off now,"

says the squire.

"You have evidently suffered," returns Brian, who is getting more and more amazed at the volcano he has roused. "Of course I can quite understand that if you were once more to find yourself in similar circ.u.mstances you would act very differently."

"I should indeed!--_very_ differently. A man seldom makes a fool of himself twice in a lifetime."

("He's regretting her now," thinks Brian.)

But out loud he says,--

"You didn't show much wisdom, I daresay."

"No, none; and as for _her_,--to fling away such a love as that----"

Here he pauses, and looks dreamily at the silver tankard before him.

This last speech rather annoys Brian; to gloat over the remembrance of a love that had been callously cast aside to suit the exigences of the moment, seems to the younger man a caddish sort of thing not to be endured.

("Though what the mischief any pretty girl of nineteen could have seen in _him_," he muses, gazing with ill-concealed amazement at his uncle's ugly countenance, "is more than I can fathom.")

"Perhaps it wasn't so deep a love as _you_ imagine," he cannot refrain from saying _a propos_ to his uncle's last remark, with a view to taking him down a peg.

"It was, sir," says the Squire, sternly. "It was the love of a lifetime.

People may doubt as they will, but I know _no_ love has superseded it."

"Oh, he is in his dotage!" thinks Brian, disgustedly; and, rising from the table, he makes a few more trivial remarks, and then walks from the dining-room on to the balcony and so to the garden beneath.

Finding his friend Kelly in an ivied bower, lost in a cigar, and possibly, though improbably, in improving meditation, he is careful not to disturb him, but, making a successful detour, escapes his notice, and turns his face towards that part of Coole that is connected with Moyne by means of the river.

At Moyne, too, dinner has come to an end, and, tempted by the beauty of the quiet evening, the two old ladies and the children have strolled into the twilit garden.

There is a strange and sweet hush in the air--a stillness full of life--but slumberous life. The music of streams can be heard, and a distant murmur from the ocean; but the birds have got their heads beneath their wings, and the rising night-wind wooes them all in vain.

Shadows numberless are lying in misty corners; the daylight lingers yet, as though loath to quit us and sink into eternal night. It is an eve of "holiest mood," full of tranquillity and absolute calm.

"It is that hour of quiet ecstasy, When every rustling wind that pa.s.ses by The sleeping leaf makes busiest minstrelsy."

"You are silent, Priscilla," says Miss Penelope, glancing at her.

"I am thinking. Such an eve as this always recalls Katherine; and yesterday _that meeting_,--all has helped to bring the past most vividly before me."

"Ah, dear, yes," says Miss Penelope, regarding her with a furtive but tender glance. "How must _he_ have felt, when he thought what grief he brought to her young life!"

"You are talking of mother?" asks Kit, suddenly, letting her large dark eyes rest on Miss Penelope's face, as though searching for latent madness there.

"Yes, my dear, of course."

"He would not have dared so to treat her had her father been alive or had we been blessed with a brother," says Miss Priscilla, sternly. "He proved himself a dastard and a coward."

"Perhaps there was some mistake," says Monica, timidly, plucking a pale blossom and pretending to admire it.

"No, no. We believe he contracted an affection for some other girl, and for her sake jilted your mother. If so, retribution fit and proper followed on his perfidy, because he brought no wife later on to grace his home. Doubtless he was betrayed in his turn. That was only just."

"There seems to be reason in that conjecture," says Miss Penelope, "because he went abroad almost immediately. I saw him shortly before he left the country, and he was then quite a broken-down man. He must have taken his _own_ misfortune greatly to heart."

"Served him right!" says Miss Priscilla, uncompromisingly. "He deserved no greater luck. Your mother suffered so much at his hands that she almost lost her health. I don't believe she ever got over it."

"Oh, yes, she did," says Terry, suddenly; "she got over it uncommonly well. We didn't know who Mr. Desmond was then, of course; but I know she used to make quite a joke of him."

"A joke!" says Miss Priscilla, in an awful tone.

"Yes, regular fun, you know," goes on Terence, undaunted. "One day she was telling father some old story about Mr. Desmond, a 'good thing'

_she_ called it, and she was laughing heartily; but he wasn't, and when she had finished, I remember, he said something to her about want of 'delicacy of feeling,' or something like that."

"I was there," says Kit, in her high treble. "He said, too, she ought to be ashamed of herself."

"Oh, that was nothing," says Mr. Beresford, airily. "Father and mother never agreed for a moment; they were always squabbling from the time they got up till they went to bed again."

The Misses Blake have turned quite pale.

"Terence how can you speak so of your sainted mother?" says Miss Penelope. "I'm sure, from her letters to us, she was a most _devoted_ mother and wife, and, indeed, sacrificed her every wish and pleasure to yours."

"I never knew it cost her so much to _keep away_ from us," says Terence.

"If she was dying for our society, she must indeed have sacrificed herself, because she made it the business of her life to avoid us from morn to dewy eve."

"Doubtless she had her duties," says Miss Penelope, in a voice of suppressed fear. What is she going to hear next? what are these dreadful children going to say?

"Perhaps she had," said Terence. "If so, they didn't agree with her, as she was always in a bad temper. She used to give it to papa right and left, until he didn't dare to call his soul his own. When I marry, I shall take very good care my wife doesn't lead me the life my mother led my father."

"_Your_ wife! who'd marry _you_?" says Kit, scornfully, which interlude gives the discussion a rest for a little time. But soon they return to the charge.

"Your mother when here had an angelic temper," says Miss Penelope. Miss Priscilla all this time seems incapable of speech.

"Well, she hadn't when _there_," says Terence; and then he says a dreadful thing, as vulgar as it is dreadful, that fills his aunt's heart with dismay. "She and my father fought like cat and dog," he says; and the Misses Blake feel their cup is indeed full.

"And she never would take Monica anywhere," says Kit; "so selfish!"

It is growing _too_ terrible. Is their idol to be shattered thus before their eyes?