Rossmoyne Part 63

At this even Lord Rossmoyne, who was in the lowest depths of despair, gives way to open mirth.

"Well, no, not exactly," says Ulic Ronayne. "There was a fatal healthiness about his appearance that disagreed with that idea. But he certainly was fond of this little place; he put up the fountain himself, had it brought all the way from Florence for the purpose; and he had a trick of lying here on his face and hands for hours together, grubbing for worms,--or studying the insect world I think he used to call it."

"I have always thought," says Mr. Kelly, in a tone of reflective sadness, "what an uncomfortable position that must be."

"What must be?"

"Lying on one's face and hands. What becomes of the rest of one? Does one keep one's heels in the air whilst doing it? To me it sounds awful!

Yet only last week I read in the papers of a fellow who was found on a road on his face and hands, and the doctors said he must have been in that position _for hours!_ Fancy--_your_ nose, for instance, Rossmoyne, in the mud, and your heels in the air, _for hours_!"

Lord Rossmoyne, having vainly tried to imagine his dignified body in such a position, looks distinctly offended.

"No, _n.o.body_ would like it," says Kelly, pathetically, answering his disgusted look exactly as if it had been put into words. "There is a shameful frivolity about it not to be countenanced for a moment. Yet good and wise men have been said to do it. Fancy the Archbishop of Canterbury, now, balancing himself on his nose and his palms! Oh! it _can't_ be true!"

His voice by this time is positively piteous, and he looks earnestly around, as though longing for some one to support his disbelief.

"You are really excelling yourself to-night," says Mrs. Herrick, in a delicately disdainful tone.

"Am I? I am glad," humbly, "that _you_ have had an opportunity of seeing me at my poor best."

"I wonder," says Desmond, suddenly, "if, when old O'Connor revisits the earth at the witching hour, he comes in the att.i.tude so graphically described by Kelly? In acrobat fashion, I mean."

At this Monica breaks into laughter so merry, so full of utterly childish _abandon_ and enjoyment, that all the others perforce join in it.

"Oh! fancy a ghost standing on his head!" she says, when she can speak.

"I shouldn't fancy it at all," says Mr. Kelly, gloomily. "I _won't_. Far from it. And I should advise you, Miss Beresford, to treat with less frivolity a subject so fraught with terror,--especially at this time of night. If that 'grand old man' were to appear now," with a shuddering glance behind him, "what _would_ become of us all?"

"An unpleasant idea!" says Miss Browne,--"so unpleasant, indeed, that I think I should like to go for a little walk somewhere,--_any_where, away from the scene of the late Mr. O'Connor's nightly visitations."

"Come to the end of the shrubbery, then," says Desmond, "and look at the sea. It should be worth the trouble on such a night as this. Come you too, Olga."

"I should like it, but my head aches so," says Mrs. Bohun, plaintively.

And, indeed, she is very pale. "It is either the moonlight which oppresses me, or--I don't know what. No! I shall go indoors, I think."

"Then I shall go with you," says Mrs. Herrick, regarding her with a certain anxiety. "But you," turning to Mary Browne, "must not miss a glimpse of the coast by moonlight. Mr. Kelly will show it to you."

She slips her arm through Olga's, and turns towards the house; Ulic Ronayne accompanies them; but Lord Rossmoyne and Owen Kelly move in the contrary direction with Miss Browne. Monica and Desmond have gone on before; and even when the others arrive at the point in the shrubbery from which a glimpse of the ocean can be distinctly seen, these last two people are not to be discovered anywhere.

Yet they are not so distant as they seem. Desmond has led Monica to a rather higher spot, where the desired scene can be more vividly beheld, and where too they can be--oh, blessed thought!--_alone_.

Through a belt of dark-green fir-trees, whose pale tips are touched with silver by the moon, can be seen the limitless ocean, lying in restless waiting in the bay below.

A sort of enforced tranquillity has fallen upon it,--a troubled calm,--belied by the hoa.r.s.e, sullen roar that rises now and again from its depths, as when some larger death-wave breaks its bounds, and, rushing inland, rolls with angry violence up the beach. Soft white crests lie upon the great sea's bosom, tossing idly hither and thither, glinting and trembling beneath the moon's rays, as though reluctantly subdued by its cold influence.

Across the whole expanse of the water a bright path is flung, that has its birth in heaven, yet deigns to accept a resting-place on earth,--a transitory rest, for there in the far distance on the horizon, where the dull grays of sea and sky have mingled, it has joined them, and seems again to have laid hold of its earliest home.

The birds are asleep in their sea-bound nests; the wind has died away.

There is nothing to break the exquisite stillness of the night, save the monotonous beating of the waves against the rocks, and the faint rippling murmur of a streamlet in the ash-grove.

The whole scene is so rich with a beauty mystical and idealistic that Monica draws instinctively nearer to Desmond, with that desire for sympathy common to the satisfied soul, and stirs her hand in his.

Here, perhaps, it will be as well to mention, once for all, that whenever I give you to understand that Desmond is alone with Monica you are also to understand, without the telling, that he has her hand in his. What pleasure there can be for two people in standing, or sitting, or driving, as the case may be, for _hours_, palm to palm (this is how the poetical one expresses it), I leave all true lovers to declare. I only know for certain that it is a trick common to every one of them, rich and poor, high and low. I suppose there is consolation in the touch,--a sensation of nearness. I know, indeed, one young woman who a.s.sured me her princ.i.p.al reason for marrying Fred in a hurry (Fred was her husband) lay in the fact that she feared if she didn't she would grow left-handed, as he was always in possession of the right during their engagement.

"Ah! you like it," says Desmond, looking down upon her tenderly,--alluding to the charming view spread out before them,--the dark firs, the floating moon, the tranquil stars, the illimitable ocean, "of Almightiness itself the immense and glorious mirror."

Monica makes no verbal answer, but a sigh of intensest satisfaction escapes her, and she turns up to his a lovely face full of youth and heaven and content. Her eyes are shining, her lips parted by a glad, tremulous smile. She is altogether so unconsciously sweet that it would be beyond the power of even a Sir Percivale to resist her.

"My heart of hearts!" says Desmond, in a low, impa.s.sioned tone.

Her smile changes. Without losing beauty, it loses something ethereal and gains a touch of earth. It is more p.r.o.nounced; it is, in fact, amused.

"I wonder where you learned all your terms of endearment," she says, slowly, looking at him from under her curling lashes.

"I learned them when I saw you. They had their birth then and there."

An eloquent silence follows this earnest speech. The smile dies from Monica's lips, and a sudden thoughtfulness replaces it.

"You never called any one your 'heart of hearts' before, then?" she asks, somewhat wistfully.

"Never--_never_. You believe me?"

"Yes." Her lids drop. Some inward thought possesses her, and then--with a sudden accession of tenderness very rare with her--she lifts her head, and lays her soft, cool cheek fondly against his.

"My beloved!" says the young man, in a tone broken by emotion.

For a moment he does not take her in his arms; some fear lest she may change her mind and withdraw her expression of affection deters him; and when at last he does press her to his heart, it is gently and with a careful suppression of all vehemence.

Perhaps no man in all the world is so calculated to woo and win this girl as Desmond. Perhaps there is no woman so formed to gain and keep him as Monica.

Holding her now in a light but warm clasp, he knows he has his heaven in his arms; and she, though hardly yet awake to the full sweetness of "Love's young dream," understands at least the sense of perfect rest and glad content that overfills her when with him.

"What are you thinking of?" she says, presently.

"'Myn alderlevest ladye deare,'" quotes he, softly.

"And what of her?"

"'That to the deth myn herte is to her holde,'--yes, for ever and ever,"

says Desmond, solemnly.

"I am very glad of that," says Monica, simply; and then she raises herself from his embrace and looks straight down to the sea again.

At this moment voices, not approaching but pa.s.sing near them, reach their ears.

"They are going in," says Monica, hurriedly, and with a regret that is very grateful to him. "We must go too."

"Must we?" reluctantly. "Perhaps," brightening, "they are only going to try the effect higher up."