Rossmoyne Part 33

"Kit," says a voice subdued and low, but so distinct as to sound almost in her ear.

She starts, and then looks eagerly around her, but nothing can she see.

Was it a human voice, or a call from that old land that held great Zeus for its king? A message from Olympus it well might be, on such a night as this, when all things breathe of old enchantment and of mystic lore.

Almost she fears yet hopes to see a sylvan deity peep out at her from the escalonia yonder, or from the white-flowered, sweetly-perfumed syringa in that distant corner,--Pan the musical, perhaps, with his sweet pipes, or a yet more stately G.o.d, the beautiful Apollo, with his golden lyre. Oh for the chance of hearing such G.o.dlike music, with only she herself and the pale Diana for an audience!

Perchance the G.o.ds have, indeed, been good to her, and sent her a special messenger on this yellow night. Fear forgotten, in the ecstasy of this hope, the strange child stands erect, and waits with eager longing for a second summons.

And it comes, but alas! in a fatally earthly tone that ruins her fond hope forever.

"Kit, it is I. Listen to me," says some one, and then a hole in the hedge is cleared, and Mr. Desmond, stepping through it, enters the moonlit patch, flushed but shamelessly unembarra.s.sed.

Kit, pale with disappointment, regards him silently with no gentle glance.

"And to think," she says, at length, with slow scorn, looking him up and down with measureless contempt,--"to think I was mad enough to believe for one long moment that you might be Apollo, and that your voice was a cry from Parna.s.sus!"

At which, I regret to say, Mr. Desmond gives way to most unseemly mirth. "I never dreamed I should attain to such glory," he says. "I feel like 'the rapt one of the G.o.dlike forehead.'"

"You _may_," says the younger Miss Beresford, who has awakened from the dim dusk of "faerie lands forlorn" to the clearer light of earth. "You may," witheringly, "_feel_ like it, but you certainly don't _look_ like it."

"I am not complete, I know that," says Mr. Desmond still full of unholy enjoyment. "I lack 'bright Apollo's lute strung with his hair;' but if you will wait a moment I will run back to Coole and get the nearest thing to it."

He turns as if to fulfil his words, but Kit stops him.

"Don't go," she says, laughing gayly, now herself. "Even the very original lute would not transform you into a G.o.d. Stay if you want to.

After all, now I am again in my senses, I daresay you are as good to talk to as a heathen deity."

"Oh, no," says Mr. Desmond, humbly. "They always thundered when they spoke: so think how imposing and convincing their arguments must have been!"

"Horrid, _I_ should think," says Kit. "And now tell me what brought you here?"

This is abrupt, but, taking her in her own mood, Desmond answers, bluntly,--

"Monica."

"She _told_ you to come?"

"No. But I want to see her."

"She has gone to her room."

"Make her leave it again. Tell her I cannot rest until I see her; tell her anything; only bring her to me for even one short moment."

"But it is some time since I left her: perhaps she is in bed."

"But not asleep yet, surely. She loves _you_, Kit: induce her, then, to come to her window, that I may even catch a glimpse of her, if I may not speak with her. But she cannot be in bed; it is so early," says Mr.

Desmond, desperately.

"Well," says Kit, relenting, and striving to forget the blank occasioned by the subst.i.tution of an ordinary Desmond for an extraordinary deity, "I'll see what can be done."

"You will," eagerly, "really?"

"Yes, really. I will stand your friend," say Kit, solemnly, feeling now that, even if the old G.o.ds have denied her an intimate acquaintance with them, still they have devoted her to the service of Cupid, and have secretly commanded her to help on the machinations of his naughty little highness.

"Then will you tell her I want to see her--_here, now_--for only a bare second if she so wills it? Will you tell her this from me? Dear Kit, _sweet_ Kit, I entreat you to do this."

"Oh! how sweet I am when you want me to do something for you!" says she, with a little smile. "There! I can see through you as clearly as though you were crystal; but I like you all the same. You must have some good in you to fall in love with my Monica."

"Others can fall in love with her, too," returns he, with moody jealousy.

"Ah, yes! I saw that," says Kit, lifting her hands excitedly.

"Who could fail to see it? Who could fail to love her?" says Desmond, sadly. Then, being in such very poor case, and looking sorrowfully for comfort from any source, however small, he says, nervously,--

"Kit, answer me truthfully--you have sworn to be my friend: tell me, then, which do _you_ count the better man,--him, or me?"

But that a sense of honor forbids him to pry into his love's secret thoughts, he would have asked whom _she_ counted the better man.

"You," says Kit, calmly. "I have no doubt about it. I _hate_ fat men, and--and so does Monica. I have heard her say so, over and over again."

"Oh, Kit! what a dear little girl you are!" says Mr. Desmond, with grateful fervor.

"Well, I'm glad you like me," says Kit, "because"--frankly--"I like you.

It was very good of you to lend that gun to Terry; I haven't forgotten that, though, goodness knows, I only hope he won't do himself to death with it" (she delights in old-world phrases such as this); "and I like you, too, for loving Monica. Isn't she--" laying her hand upon his arm, and looking trustfully into his eyes,--"_isn't_ she pretty?"

"She is like an angel," says Desmond, feeling all his heart go out to the fragile, ethereal-looking child before him, as he listens to her praises of her sister.

"Or a saint, perhaps. Monica is a saintly name. Was she not the mother of St. Augustine?" says Kit, quickly. After the old G.o.ds, pa.s.sion for the saints, and their lilies and roses and fiery trials, animates her childish bosom. "Oh! and that reminded me," she says: "she told me to bring her in a lily, fresh with dew,--one of those lilies over there in that dark corner. Do you see them,--tall and white?"

"I see. Let me pick one for her. Here, take it to her, and," laying his lips upon it, "_this_ with it."

"I will. And now let me run in and try my utmost to persuade her to come out here. But," doubtfully, as she remembers how Monica refused with studied coldness to meet his parting glance at the Barracks a few hours ago, "do not be too sure of her coming. She _may_ refuse, you know. She is peculiar in many ways, and she thinks herself bound in honor to Aunt Priscilla not to look at you. But stay here, just in this spot, and think all the time that I am doing my very best for you."

Her little face is so earnest as she says all this, so fearful that he may have to endure disappointment, that he is greatly touched. Pushing back her hair from her forehead with both hands, he lays a light but loving kiss upon her brow.

"Go, my best friend. I trust all to you," he says, after which the slender sprite springs away from him, and, entering the shadows beyond, is soon lost to him.

Reaching the house, she mounts the stairs with swift but silent footsteps, and, after a nervous hesitation before the door of her aunt Priscilla's room, finds herself once again face to face with Monica.

That pretty cause of all this plotting is not in bed, as Kit had predicted might be the case. She is not even undressed. She has only exchanged her azure gown for a loose white morning robe, long and trailing, and lavishly trimmed at the throat and wrists with some rare old Mechlin lace that Aunt Penelope had given her a week ago, glad in the thought that it may perchance add another charm to the beauty of her darling.

Her hair is rolled up in a small, soft knot behind; her face is a little pale; her eyes, large and luminous, have great heavy shadows lying beneath them, suggestive of fatigue and tiring thought. Altogether, she is looking as lovely as any heart can desire.

"Ah, you have returned!" she says, as Kit enters. "How long you have been! I gave you up. I thought some pixy had become enamoured of you and had carried you off to his kingdom."

"I was in danger of nothing so insignificant as a pixy. It was the great Apollo's self I feared," says Kit, with a sly humorous smile. "And here is your lily: _he_ sent it to you with his love and a kiss."

"Apollo?" smiling.

"Why, yes. Who else could it be at this hour?"