Rossmoyne Part 49

"You are not doing it properly. I daresay Miss Beresford is making you uncomfortable; and I am sure you are trying to break her fan. Come over here and sit by me, and you will be much happier."

"Penance is good for the soul. I shall stay here," says Desmond.

"If we mean to get up tableaux, we certainly ought to set about them at once," says Herrick, indolently.

"There doesn't seem to be any work in anybody," says Olga, in despair.

"Try me," says Lord Rossmoyne, bending over her chair. He has only just come, and his arrival has been unannounced.

"Ah! _thank_ you!"--with a brilliant smile. "Now you _do_ look like business."

It is Monday, and four o'clock. Aghyohillbeg lying basking in the sunshine is looking its loveliest,--which is saying a great deal. The heat is so intense on this sweet July day that every one has deserted the house and come out to find some air,--a difficulty. They have tried the gra.s.s terraces, in vain, and now have congregated beneath a giant fir, and are, comparatively speaking, cool.

Just before luncheon Madam O'Connor brought Monica home in triumph with her from Moyne, to find Desmond, handsome and happy, on her doorstep, waiting with calm certainty an invitation to that meal. He got it, and to dinner likewise.

"We have set our hearts on tableaux, but it is _so_ difficult to think of any scene fresh and unhackneyed," says Olga, gazing plaintively into Lord Rossmoyne's sympathetic face.

"Don't give way," says Mr. Kelly, tenderly. "It must be a poor intellect that couldn't rise superior to such a demand as that. Given one minute, I believe even I could produce an idea as novel as it would be brilliant."

"You shall have your minute," says Olga, pulling out her watch.

"Now--begin----"

"Time's up," she says, presently, when sixty seconds have honestly expired.

"You might have said that thirty seconds ago, and I should not have objected," says Mr. Kelly, with an a.s.sured smile.

"And your idea."

"_The Huguenots!_"

Need I say that every one is exceedingly angry?

"Ever heard it before?" asks Mr. Kelly, with aggressive insolence; which question, being considered as adding insult to injury, is treated with silent contempt.

"I told you it was not to be done," says Olga, petulantly addressing everybody generally.

"I can't agree with you. I see no reason why it should fall to the ground," says Miss Fitzgerald, warmly, who is determined to show herself off in a gown that has done duty for "Madame Favart," and the "Bohemian Girl," and "Maritana," many a time and oft.

"I have another idea," says Mr. Kelly, at this opportune moment.

"If it is as useful as your first, you may keep it," says Olga, with pardonable indignation.

"I am misunderstood," says Mr. Kelly, mournfully, but with dignity. "I shall write to Miss Montgomery and ask her to make another pathetic tale about me. As you are bent on trampling upon an unknown genius,--poor but proud--I shall _not_ make you acquainted with this last beautiful thought which I have evolved from my inner consciousness."

"Don't say that! _do_ tell it to us," says Monica, eagerly, and in perfect good faith. She knows less of him than the others, and may therefore be excused for still believing in him.

"Thank you, Miss Beresford. _You_ can soar above a mean desire to crush a rising power. You have read, of course, that popular poem by our poet-laureate, called 'Enid.'"

"Yes," says Monica, staring at him.

"I mean the poem in which he has so faithfully depicted the way in which two escaped lunatics would be sure to behave if left to their own devices. Considered as a warning to us to keep bolts and bars on Colney Hatch and Hanwell, it may be regarded as a delicate attention. Dear Tennyson! he certainly is a public benefactor. There is a scene in that remarkable poem which I think might suit us. You remember where, after much wild careering in the foreground, the princ.i.p.al idiots decide upon riding home together, pillion fashion?"

"I--I think so," says Monica, who plainly doesn't, being much confused.

"'Then on his foot she sat her own and climbed,'--and then she threw her arms round him in a most unmaidenly fashion, if I recollect aright; but of course mad people _will_ be vehement, poor souls; they can't help it.

Now, supposing we adopted that scene, wouldn't it be effective? One of Madam O'Connor's big carriage-horses, if brought forward,--I mean the one that kicked over the traces, yesterday,--would, I firmly believe, create quite a sensation, and in all probability bring down the house."

"The stage, certainly," says Desmond.

"Ah! you approve of it," says Kelly, with suspicious grat.i.tude. "Then let us arrange it at once. Miss Beresford might throw her arms round Ryde, for example: that would be charming."

Desmond looking at this moment as if he would willingly murder him, Mr.

Kelly is apparently satisfied, and sinks to rest with his head upon his arm once more. No one else has heard the suggestion.

"I think you might help me, instead of giving voice to insane propositions," says Olga, reproachfully, turning her eyes upon Mr.

Kelly's bowed form,--he is lying prostrate on the gra.s.s,--which is shaking in a palsied fashion. "I really _did_ believe in _you_," she says, whereupon the young man, springing to his feet, flings his arms wide, and appeals in an impa.s.sioned manner to an unprejudiced public as to whether he has not been racking his brain in her service for the last half-hour.

"Then I wish you would go and rack it in somebody else's service," says Mrs. Bohun, ungratefully.

"Hear her!" says Mr. Kelly, gazing slowly round him. "She still persists in the unseemly abuse. She is bent on breaking my heart and driving sleep from mine eyelids. It is ungenerous, the more so that she knows I have not the courage to tear myself from her beloved presence. You, Ronayne, and you, Rossmoyne, can sympathize with me:

"'In durance vile here must I wake and weep, And all my frowzy couch in sorrow steep.'

Fancy a frowzy couch saturated with tears! you know," reproachfully to Olga, "_you_ wouldn't like to have to lie on it."

"Oh, do come and sit down here near me, and be silent," says Olga, in desperation.

"Why not have a play?" says Captain Cobbett, who with Mr. Ryde has driven over from Clonbree.

"'The play's the thing,'" says Brian Desmond, lazily; "but when you are about it, make it a farce."

"Oh, _no_!" says Miss Fitzgerald, with a horrified gesture; "_anything_ but that! Why not let us try one of the good old comedies?--'The School for Scandal,' for example?"

"_What!_" says Mr. Kelly, very weakly. He is plainly quite overcome by this suggestion.

"Well, why not?" demands the fair Bella, with just a _soupcon_ of asperity in her tone,--as much as she ever allows herself when in the society of men. She makes up for this abstinence by bestowing a liberal share of it upon her maid and her mother.

"It's--it's such a naughty, naughty piece," says Mr. Kelly, bashfully, beating an honorable retreat from his first meaning.

"Nonsense! One can strike out anything distasteful."

"Shades of Farren--and----Who would be Lady Teazle?" says Olga.

"I would," says Bella, modestly.

"That is more than good of you," says Olga, casting a curious glance at her from under her long lashes. "But I thought, perhaps----You, Hermia, would you not undertake it? You know, last season, they said you were----"

"No, dear, thanks. No, _indeed_," with emphasis.