"I cannot see what fault you can find in him, Honor."
"Sure if he's faultless, isn't that fault enough, my dear?"
"But you are almost rude to him," Belle Delorme says plaintively; "and
I'm sure I can't see why, for he is just a delightful man."
"Of course--you've fallen in love with him, Belle!" Honor retorts
coolly. "You fall in love with every good-looking man you meet. The
only marvel to me is how easily you contrive to fall out again."
"Sure it's as aisy as lapping crame," the girl says with a little
affected brogue and a smile that shows all her dimples. "It would never
do if we were all marble goddesses, you know. Life would be mighty dull
if one couldn't flirt a trifle."
"Certainly your life should not be dull, if flirting can brighten it,
my dear."
"No, it is not altogether dull," the other girl says demurely; "but it
would be nicer if one could live in Dublin or London--wouldn't it now?"
She looks very pretty as she lies there, her slim lissom form stretched
out in the full glare of the sunshine.
"What an artfully artless little creature you are, Belle! You mean to
imply that, if Brian asks you to be Mrs. Beresford, you will say 'Yes,'
for the pleasure of living in London?"
"And why not? Sure London is better than Donaghmore."
"And what is to become of poor Launce then?"
"Oh, Launce!" Belle says, turning pale. "You know quite well that he
has eyes for no one but Mrs. Dundas."
"My dear, Launce was not born yesterday," Launce's sister assures her
companion equably.
"Neither was Mrs. Dundas--nor the day before that," Belle bursts out
angrily. "I vow she looks as old as my mother when you get a fair view
of her in the daylight. But what does that matter? She has fascinated
him!"
"'How sweet the ways of women are,
How honeyed is their speech!'"
a man's voice says mockingly.
Honor turns lazily in her hammock, but Belle--poor blushing, mortified
Belle--springs to her feet with a cry.
"I knew I should find you here eating all those strawberries!" the
newcomer goes on placidly. "Girls do not expose their complexions to a
sun like this for nothing."
"Where are the others?" Honor asks lazily.
"'Deed and I hardly know. They strolled away by twos and threes till
there wasn't a soul left to chum with; and then I bethought me"--with a
mocking glance at Belle--"of you; and here I am."
"Polite!" her sister murmurs. "But, to tell the truth, dear, we should
prefer your room--no, your strawberries"--for he has begun his
onslaught already--"to your company."
"Sha'n't budge now till I've finished this pile," he retorts coolly;
and the girls laugh.
The sun slants fiery red between the boles of the old fruit-trees,
burns little crimson patches on Belle's fair skin, and turns Honor's
cheeks to the hue of wild poppies. The air is heavy with a dozen
different odors--of ripening fruit, mignonette, wild roses,
and--sweetest of all perhaps--clover from the great sloping fields
outside the orchard wall.
Launce has thrown himself upon the grass almost at Belle's feet, and is
talking in his low musical voice.
"Tantalizing the poor little thing!" Honor says to herself, as she
peeps across at them from her nest among the branches.
She is very fond of Belle Delorme, and she knows that not in all
Ireland could her brother find a sweeter, truer little wife. Perhaps he
is of the same opinion--perhaps not. It is not easy to read the
thoughts behind that square, masterful brow of his.
Presently they stroll away together, leaving Honor alone.
As she lies there in her low hammock, the shadows of leaf and bough
flickering on her face, a hand parts the branches, and a man looks in
at her.
She flushes deeply in her surprise at the sight of him, and then sits
up with a jerk that nearly brings her out of her nest with more speed
than grace.
"I'm sorry to have disturbed you," he says, smiling; "but I thought you
were asleep, and I could not help envying the good fortune of the fairy
prince who might be lucky enough to awaken you after the fashion of
fairy princes."
Something in his voice or in his eyes as he looks down at her makes the
light words seem almost tender.
"But no fairy princess ever come to Ireland, Mr. Beresford; it's only a
'fine country spoiled,' you know, and 'sunk in semi-barbarism'--not at
all the sort of place for a fairy prince to come to."
"I don't know that at all, Honor."
It is the first time he has called her Honor, and she looks up at him
half startled as he continues:
"It seems to me the fairy prince might travel farther and fare worse."
"But he might not think so, particularly if he was an English fairy
prince," the girl says dryly.
"Why are you so hard on us, Honor? Why are you so hard on me? I should
say. For you are sweetness itself to that little curate of Drum, and
he's about the poorest specimen of the Cockney I ever met."
"You couldn't expect that any but the 'poorest specimen' would
condescend to be a curate at Drum," she returns flippantly.
Taking no heed of her interruption, he goes on:
"You have grudged every kind word, every little attention lavished on
me since I've been here. Often and often I've said to myself, 'I will
go away and never look upon her face again.' But I have not gone."
"No," the girl says, feeling curiously abashed and contrite under the
gaze of those calmly accusing eyes. "I'm sorry if--if I have been rude
to you."
"I am glad to hear you say so. You have been rude certainly, but I am
quite ready to forgive all that--quite ready to shake hands and be
friends, if you care to have it so. If not, it is better that I should
go away--at once."
She most certainly is not fond of this man; and yet she feels pained at
the mere thought of his going away "at once." She holds out her hand
almost pleadingly.
"Oh, do not go away, please!" looking at him with sweet, grave eyes. "I
would rather shake hands and be friends."
"So be it!" he says, taking her hand, and holding it for a second in
both his own.
He is a man of the world, strong and self-repressed; yet now he turns
suddenly pale, and his eyes darken.
"Heavens, child, how I love you!" he cries; and the next instant he has
stooped and kissed her on the lips. It is done in a second. The girl
looks up at him from among her pillows, as hurt and angry as if the
kiss had been a blow; and he looks back at her, amazed at his own
audacity.
"On my honor, I did not mean to do it!" he says, almost humbly. "I did
not know I should be such a weak fool as to yield to temptation in that
mad fashion, only I love you so, and you----"
"And I am 'only an Irish girl,'" she interrupts him
vehemently--"little better than a savage in your eyes. If I had been an
English lady you would never have taken such a liberty--never!"
Her passionate resentment angers him, slow to anger as he is by nature
and habit.
"If you hate me so much, Honor, that the touch of my lips insults you
beyond forgiveness, the sooner we part the better," he says bitterly.
"You would please me best by going away, and never letting me see your
face again," she answers with equal bitterness.
There is the sound of a step on the gravel, and a man's laugh--a
peculiar vibrating laugh that brings the color into Honor's
face--reaches them in the stillness.
But the steps pass on, and do not come near their corner among the old
fruit-trees. Brian Beresford bends nearer to the girl, lying there amid
the bending branches, with the sunshine on her averted face.
"You are only a child, Honor, for all your twenty summers! You no more
know your own heart than I do. Take care! If you send me away--me and
my love--you may find that you have made a mistake!"
But she will not answer him--she will not even look at him. For all the
sign of life she gives she might be that Sleeping Beauty to whom he
first likened her.
"If ever you should feel sorry, Honor, for what you have said
to-day--if ever you should care to have me back, either as a friend or
lover, send for me, and I will come."
The words are calm enough, but by some instinct she divines that the
face bent close to hers is neither calm or cold. She hears him go away,
as he came, through the gap in the high hedge, but she does not even
open her eyes to watch him go. But, when all is still again, and she
knows that he has passed away out of her life, as surely as he has
passed out of the old-fashioned garden, she bursts into tears.
"Oh, what has come to me?" she says to herself again and again, in a
very maze of wonder at her own sensations. "I do not love the man. His
coming or his going matters nothing to me."
But, although she says this, not once but many times, the words bring
her no comfort. They do not still for one moment the inexplicable plain
that has risen in her heart. She gets up after awhile and goes back to
the house, choosing the small door at the side, so that she may meet no
one.
Aileen is ironing in the large front-kitchen, smoothing out, as she
calls it, one of Honor's pretty white dresses. It is a labor of love
with the old woman, and every week she comes up from her little cottage
to perform it.
At sight of her young mistress standing in the doorway, bright-eyed and
flushed, and strangely unlike herself, the good woman pauses.
"An' is it yourself, alanna? Shure my eyes have been aching for the
sight of your face this hour or more! But what ails ye, Miss Honor
darlint? Shure my black drames--bad 'cess to me for naming them till
ye--have not been troubling your mind?"
"No, no!" the girl says, laughing. "I am not troubled about anything,
only hot and thirsty, and--yes, Aileen, I may as well own it--cross."
She laughs again, but her voice is tremulous, and she keeps her face
well turned from the light.
"I wish it was only cross that I was, darlint!" the old woman says with
the peculiar solemnity of her class. "But it's sore and heavy-hearted I
am, and that's the blessed truth. I've done nothing but drame since
ever I saw you last, and every night it's the same thing over and over
again, till my brain is almost turned wid it, and I rise up in the
morning all in a cold perspoiration."
"Dear old Aileen," the girl says tenderly, "poor Rooney's awful death
has upset you? It has upset us all for that matter! And then it must be
so dreadful for you alone on that great bleak bog."
"Miss Honor, do ye mind my drame?"
"Every word of it, Aileen."
"Ye mind how I dramed that the boys dug the grave out on the moss, and
hid it out of sight wid green branches!"
"I do surely."
"Well, Miss Honor, ever and always in my drame that grave is there
still. I watch the boys dig it deep in the black earth, and cover the
gaping mouth of it; and me shaking and trembling all the time. But
these past three nights--the saints be above us!--there's been another
grave, alanna."
"Another grave!" The girl laughs. "Why, that is getting too dreadful!"
She plucks a spray of roses from the open window behind her, as she
sits on the great oak dresser, and shreds the delicate red petals all
over the lap of her gown.
"Listen to me, Miss Honor, and cease your funning! This is no time to
laugh and jest at a warning that comes from the saints themselves! That
the masther is in danger of his life I know as well as if I saw the
very bullet that was to shoot him. The grave was dug deep and
broad--and deep and broad it would need to be, save us!--out there on
yer own lawn, just forenent the drawing-room windies!"
She has left her ironing-table and come close up to the girl, her
face--a delicate-featured face, peasant as she is--rigid with intense
feeling, her eyes shining, her upraised hand tremulous.
"Oh, Miss Honor darlint, shure he'd follow you to the ends of the
world! Take him away from this till the bad feeling has time to cool
down. Things will right themselves, never fear--the old times will come
round again; but, if the masther stays on at Donaghmore, he'll never
live to enjoy them."
"But if he will not go away?" says Honor, a tone of anxiety in her
voice. "You know how obstinate he is; and that letter from Dublin about
landlords running away from their posts has upset him dreadfully. Oh,
no, Aileen, he'll never leave Donaghmore!"
"Then the saints purtect him!" Aileen answers tremulously. "But as sure
as my name is Aileen Walsh harm will come of it!"