Rossmoyne Part 55

"_Do_ they? how do you know, dear?" asks Olga Bohun, sweetly.

Miss Fitzgerald, feeling she has made a _faux-pas_, colors violently, tries to get herself out of it, and flounders helplessly. Lord Rossmoyne is looking surprised, Ulic Ronayne and Desmond amused.

"Every one says so," says the fair Bella, at last, in a voice that trembles with anger: "you know very well they do."

"I don't, indeed, my dear Bella. My acquaintance with--er--that sort of person has been limited: I quite envy you your superior knowledge."

Here Olga laughs a little, low, rippling laugh that completes her enemy's defeat. After the laugh there is a dead silence.

"I think somebody ought to remove the poor little child," says Mr.

Kelly, in a low, impressive tone, pointing to Mrs. Herrick's little girl. At which everybody laughs heartily, and awkwardness is banished.

"Browne?--I knew an Archibald Browne once: anything to this girl?" asks Lord Rossmoyne, hurriedly, unwilling to let silence settle down on them again.

"Big man with a loose tie?" asks Ulic.

"Ye-es. There was something odd about his neck, now I remember," says Rossmoyne.

"That was her father. He had an idea he was like Lord Byron, and always wore his necktie flying in the wind."

"He couldn't manage it, though," says Mr. Kelly, with as near an attempt at mirth as he ever permits himself. "It always flew the wrong way.

Byron's, if you call to mind his many portraits, always flew over his left shoulder; old Browne's wouldn't. By the bye," thoughtfully, "Byron must have had a wind of his own, mustn't he? our ordinary winds don't always blow in the same direction, do they?"

"I would that a wind could arise to blow you in some direction, when you are in such an idle mood as now," says Mrs. Herrick, in a low tone.

"If it would blow me in _your_ direction, I should say amen to that," in a voice as subdued as her own.

"May the Fates avert from me a calamity so great!"

"You will have to entreat them very diligently, if you hope to escape it."

"Are you so very determined, then?"

"Yes. Although I feel I am mocked by the hope within me, still I shall persist."

"You waste your time."

"I am content to waste it in such a cause. Yet I am sorry I am so distasteful to you."

"That is not your fault. I forgive you that."

"What is it, then, you can't forgive in me?"

"Not more than I can't forgive in another. 'G.o.d made you all, therefore let you all pa.s.s for men.' I don't deal more hardly with you than with the rest, you see. You are only one of many."

"That is the unkindest thing you ever said to me. And that is saying much. Yet I, too, will beseech the Fates in my turn."

"To grant you what?"

"The finding of you in a gentler mind."

The faintest flicker of a smile crosses her lips. She lays her knitting on her knee for an instant, that she may the more readily let her tapered fingers droop until they touch the pale brow of the child at her feet; then she resumes it again, with a face calm and emotionless as usual.

"Old Browne's girl can't owe her father much," Desmond is saying _apropos_ of something both lost and gone before, so far as Kelly and Mrs. Herrick are concerned.

"About a hundred thousand pounds," says Ronayne. "She is quite a catch, you know. No end of money. The old fellow died a year ago."

"No, he didn't; he demised," says Kelly, emerging from obscurity into the light of conversation once more. "At least, so the papers said.

There is a tremendous difference, you know. A poor man dies, a rich man demises. One should always bear in mind that important social distinction."

"And the good man! What of him?" says Desmond, looking at his friend.

"What does Montgomery say?"

"Yes, that is very mysterious," says Kelly, with bated breath.

"According to Montgomery, 'the good man _never_ dies.' Think of that!

_Never_ dies. He walks the earth forever, like a superannuated ghost, only awfuller."

"Have you ever seen one?" asks Olga, leaning forward.

"What? a man that never died? Yes, lots of 'em. Here's one," laying his hand upon his breast.

"No. A man that never will die?"

"How can I answer such a question as that? Perhaps Ronayne, there, may be such a one."

"How stupid you are! I mean, did you ever meet a man who _couldn't_ die?"

"Never,--if he went the right way about it."

"Then, according to your showing, you have never seen a good man." She leans back again in her chair, fatigued but satisfied.

"I'm afraid they are few and far between," says Hermia.

"Now and again they _have_ appeared," says Mr. Kelly, with a modest glance. "Perhaps I shall never die."

"Don't make us more unhappy than we need be," says Mrs. Herrick, plaintively.

"How sad that good men should be so scarce!" says Miss Fitzgerald, with a glance she means to be funny, but which is only dull.

"Don't make trite remarks, Bella," says Mrs. Bohun, languidly. "You know if you did meet one he would bore you to death. The orthodox good man, the oppressive being we read about, but never see, is unknown to me or you, for which I, at least, am devoutly grateful."

"To return to old Browne," says Ulic: "he wasn't good, if you like. He was a horrid ill-tempered, common old fellow, thoroughly without education of any kind."

"He went through college, however, as he was fond of boasting whenever he got the chance."

"And when he didn't get it he made it."

"In at one door and out at the other, that's how he went through Trinity," says Mr. Kelly. "Oh, how I hated that dear old man, and _how_ he hated me!"