The Money Moon Part 12

"Ah, Miss Anthea," said he, lifting his hat, "I sent Georgy to find you, but it seems he forgot to mention that I was waiting."

"I'm awful' sorry, Mr. Ca.s.silis,--but Uncle Porges was telling us 'bout dragons, you know," Small Porges hastened to explain.

"Dragons!" repeated Mr. Ca.s.silis, with his supercilious smile, "ah, indeed! dragons should be interesting, especially in such a very quiet, shady nook as this,--quite an idyllic place for story-telling, it's a positive shame to disturb you," and his sharp, white teeth gleamed beneath his moustache, as he spoke, and he tapped his riding-boot lightly with his hunting-crop as he fronted Bellew, who had risen, and stood bare-armed, leaning upon his pitch-fork. And, as in their first meeting, there was a mute antagonism in their look.

"Let me introduce you to each other," said Anthea, conscious of this att.i.tude,--"Mr. Ca.s.silis, of Brampton Court,--Mr. Bellew!"

"Of nowhere in particular, sir!" added Bellew.

"And pray," said Mr. Ca.s.silis perfunctorily as they strolled on across the meadow, "how do you like Dapplemere, Mr. Bellew?"

"Immensely, sir,--beyond all expression!"

"Yes, it is considered rather pretty, I believe."

"Lovely, sir!" nodded Bellew, "though it is not so much the beauty of the place itself, that appeals to me so much as what it--contains."

"Oh, indeed!" said Mr. Ca.s.silis, with a sudden, sharp glance, "to what do you refer?"

"Goose-berries, sir!"

"I--ah--beg your pardon?"

"Sir," said Bellew gravely, "all my life I have fostered a secret pa.s.sion for goose-berries--raw, or cooked,--in pie, pudding or jam, they are equally alluring. Unhappily the American goose-berry is but a hollow mockery, at best--"

"Ha?" said Mr. Ca.s.silis, dubiously.

"Now, in goose-berries, as in everything else, sir, there is to be found the superlative, the quintessence,--the ideal. Consequently I have roamed East and West, and North and South, in quest of it."

"Really?" said Mr. Ca.s.silis, stifling a yawn, and turning towards Miss Anthea with the very slightest shrug of his shoulders.

"And, in Dapplemere," concluded Bellew, solemnly, "I have, at last, found my ideal--"

"Goose-berry!" added Anthea with a laugh in her eyes.

"Arcadia being a land of ideals!" nodded Bellew.

"Ideals," said Mr. Ca.s.silis, caressing his moustache, "ideals and--ah--goose-berries,--though probably excellent things in themselves, are apt to pall upon one, in time; personally, I find them equally insipid,--"

"Of course it is all a matter of taste!" sighed Bellew.

"But," Mr. Ca.s.silis went on, fairly turning his back upon him, "the subject I wished to discuss with you, Miss Anthea, was the--er --approaching sale."

"The sale!" she repeated, all the brightness dying out of her face.

"I wished," said Ca.s.silis, leaning nearer to her, and lowering his voice confidentially, "to try to convince you how--unnecessary it would be--if--" and he paused, significantly.

Anthea turned quickly aside, as though to hide her mortification from Bellew's keen eyes; whereupon he, seeing it all, became, straightway, more dreamy than ever, and, laying a hand upon Small Porges' shoulder, pointed with his pitch-fork to where at the other end of the "Five-acre"

the hay-makers worked away as merrily as ever:

"Come, my Porges," said he, "let us away and join yon happy throng, and--er--

'With Daphnis, and Clo, and Blowsabel We'll list to the--er--cuckoo in the dell.'"

So, hand in hand, the two Porges set off together. But when they had gone some distance, Bellew looked back, and then he saw that Anthea walked with her head averted, yet Ca.s.silis walked close beside her, and stooped, now and then, until the black moustache came very near the curl--that curl of wanton witchery that peeped above her ear.

"Uncle Porges--why do you frown so?"

"Frown, my Porges,--did I? Well, I was thinking."

"Well, I'm thinking too, only I don't frown, you know, but I'm thinking just the same."

"And what might you be thinking, nephew?"

"Why I was thinking that although you're so awful fond of goose-berries, an' though there's lots of ripe ones on the bushes I've never seen you eat a single one."

CHAPTER X

_How Bellew and Adam entered into a solemn league and covenant_

"Look at the moon to-night, Uncle Porges!"

"I see it."

"It's awfull' big, an' round, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's very big, and very round."

"An'--rather--yellow, isn't it?"

"Very yellow!"

"Just like a great, big golden sovereign, isn't it"

"Very much like a sovereign, my Porges."

"Well, do you know, I was wondering--if there was any chance that it was a--Money Moon?"

They were leaning out at the lattice, Small Porges, and Big Porges.

Anthea and Miss Priscilla were busied upon household matters wholly feminine, wherefore Small Porges had drawn Bellew to the window, and there they leaned, the small body enfolded by Bellew's long arm, and the two faces turned up to the silvery splendour of the moon.

But now, Anthea came up behind them, and, not noticing the position of Bellew's arm as she leaned on the other side of Small Porges, it befell that her hand touched, and for a moment, rested upon Bellew's hand, hidden as it was in the shadow. And this probably began it.

The air of Arcadia, as has been said before, is an intoxicating air; but it is more, it is an air charged with a subtle magic whereby the commonest objects, losing their prosaic, matter-of-fact shapes, become transfigured into things of wonder, and delight. Little things that pa.s.s as mere ordinary common-places,--things insignificant, and wholly beneath notice in the every day world, become fraught with such infinite meaning, and may hold such sublime, such undreamed of possibilities --here in Arcadia. Thus, when it is recorded that Anthea's hand accidentally touched, and rested upon Bellew's--the significance of it will become at once apparent.

"And pray," said Anthea, laying that same hand in the most natural manner in the world, upon the Small Porges' curls, "Pray what might you two be discussing so very solemnly?"