HOW MONA INTERVIEWS THE DUCHESS--AND HOW SHE SUSTAINS CONVERSATION WITH
THE RODNEYS' EVIL GENIUS.
For some time they talk together, and then the duchess, fearing lest she
may be keeping Mrs. Geoffrey from the common amusement of a ballroom,
says, gently,--
"You are not dancing much?"
"No," says Mona, shaking her head. "Not--not to-night. I shall soon."
"But why not to-night?" asks her Grace, who has noticed with curiosity
the girl's refusal to dance with a lanky young man in a hussar uniform,
who had evidently made it the business of the evening to get introduced
to her. Indeed, for an hour he had been feasting his eyes upon her fresh
young beauty, and, having gone to infinite trouble to get presented to
her, had been rewarded for his trouble by a little friendly smile, a
shake of the head, and a distinct but kindly refusal to join in the mazy
dance.
"But why?" asks the duchess.
"Because"--with a quick blush--"I am not accustomed to dancing much.
Indeed, I only learned to-day, and I might not be able to dance with
every one."
"But you were not afraid to dance with Lauderdale, my son?" says the
duchess, looking at her.
"I should never be afraid of him," returns Mona. "He has kind eyes. He
is"--slowly and meditatively--"very like you."
The duchess laughs.
"He may be, of course," she says. "But I don't like to see a gay child
like you sitting still. You should dance everything for the night."
"Well, as I say, I shall soon," returns Mona, brightening, "because
Geoffrey has promised to teach me."
"If I were 'Geoffrey,' I think I shouldn't," says the duchess,
meaningly.
"No?" raising an innocent face. "To much trouble, you think, perhaps.
But, bless you, Geoffrey wouldn't mind that, so long as he was giving me
pleasure." At which answer the duchess is very properly ashamed of both
her self and her speech.
"I should think very few people would deem it a trouble to serve you,"
she says, graciously. "And perhaps, after all, you don't much care about
dancing."
"Yes, I do," says Mona, truthfully. "Just now, at least.
Perhaps"--sadly--"when I am your age I sha'n't."
This is a _betise_ of the first water. And Lady Rodney, who can
hear--and is listening to--every word, almost groans aloud.
The duchess, on the contrary, gives way to mirth, and, leaning back in
her chair, laughs softly but with evident enjoyment. Mona contemplates
her curiously, pensively.
"What have I said?" she asks, half plaintively. "You laugh, yet I did
not mean to be funny. Tell me what I said."
"It was only a little touch of nature," explains her Grace. "On that
congratulate yourself. Nature is at a discount these days. And I--I love
nature. It is so rare, a veritable philosopher's stone. You only told
me what my glass tells me daily,--that I am not so young as I once
was,--that, in fact, when sitting next pretty children like you, I am
quite old."
"_Did_ I say all that?" asks Mrs. Geoffrey, with wide eyes. "Indeed, I
think you mistake. Old people have wrinkles, and they do not talk as you
do. And when one is sweet to look at, one is never old."
To pay a compliment perfectly one must, I think, have at least a few
drops of Irish blood in one's veins. As a rule, the happy-go-lucky
people of Ireland can bring themselves to believe thoroughly, and
without hypocrisy, in almost anything for the time being,--can fling
themselves heart and soul into their flatteries, and come out of them
again as victors. And what other nation is capable of this? To make
sweet phrases is one thing; to look as if you felt or meant them is
quite another.
The little suspicion of blarney trips softly and naturally from Mona's
tongue. She doesn't smile as she speaks, but looks with eyes full of
flattering conviction at the stout but comely duchess. And in truth it
may be that in Mona's eyes she is sweet to look at, in that she has been
kind and tender towards her in her manner.
And the duchess is charmed, pleased beyond measure That faint touch
about the wrinkles was the happiest of the happy. Only that morning her
Grace, in spite of her unapproachable maid and unlimited care, had seen
an additional line around her mouth that had warned her of youth's
decline, and now to meet some one oblivious of this line is sweet to
her.
"Then you didn't go out much in Ireland?" she says, thinking it more
graceful to change the conversation at this point.
"Out? Oh, ever so much," says Mrs. Geoffrey.
"Ah!" says the duchess, feeling puzzled. "Then perhaps they don't dance
in Ireland.
"Yes, they do indeed, a great deal; at least I have heard so."
"Then I suppose when there you were too young to go out?" pursues the
poor duchess, striving for information.
"I wasn't," says Mona: "I went out a great deal. All day long I was in
the open air. That is what made my hands so brown last autumn."
"Were they brown?"
"As berries," says Mona, genially.
"At least they are a pretty shape," says the duchess glancing at the
slim little hands lying gloved in their owner's lap. "But I don't think
you quite understood the 'going out' in the light that I did. I mean,
did you go much into society?"
"There wasn't much society to go into," says Mona, "and I was only
fifteen when staying with Aunt Anastasia. She," confidentially, "made
rather a grand match for us, you know." (Lady Rodney grinds her teeth,
and tells herself she is on the point of fainting.) "She married the
Provost of Trinity College; but I don't think he did her any good. She
is the oddest old thing! Even to think of her now makes me laugh. You
should have seen her," says Mrs. Geoffrey, leaning back in her chair,
and giving way to her usual merry laugh, that rings like a peal of
silver bells, "with her wig that had little curls all over it, and her
big poke-bonnet like a coal-scuttle!"
"Well, I really wish I had seen her," says the good-humored duchess,
smiling in sympathy, and beginning to feel herself more capable of
thorough enjoyment than she has been for years. "Was she witty, as all
Irish people are said to be?"
"Oh, dear, no," says Mona, with an emphatic shake of her lovely head.
"She hadn't the least little bit of wit in her composition. She was as
solemn as an Eng----I mean a Spaniard (they are all solemn, are they
not?), and never made a joke in her life, but she was irresistibly comic
all the same." Then suddenly, "What a very pretty little woman that is
over there, and what a lovely dress!"
"Very pretty indeed, and quite good taste and that. She's a Mrs. Lennox,
and her husband is our master of the hounds. She is always quite correct
in the matter of _clothes_." There is an awful reservation in her
Grace's tone, which is quite lost upon Mona. "But she is by no means
little in her own opinion, and in fact rather prides herself upon
her--er--form generally," concludes the duchess, so far at a loss for a
word as to be obliged to fall back upon slang.
"Her form!" says Mrs. Geoffrey, surveying the tiny Mrs. Lennox from head
to foot in sheer wonderment. "She need hardly pride herself on that. She
hasn't much of it, has she?"
"Yes,--in her own estimation," says the duchess, somewhat severely,
whose crowning horror is a frisky matron, to which title little Mrs.
Lennox may safely lay claim.
"Well, I confess that puzzles me," says Mona, knitting her straight
brows and scanning the small lady before her with earnest eyes, who is
surrounded by at least a dozen men, with all of whom she is conversing
without any apparent effort. "I really think she is the smallest woman I
ever saw. Why, I am only medium height, but surely I could make two of
her. At least I have more figure, or form, as you call it, than she
has."
The duchess gives it up. "Yes, and a far better one, too," she says,
amiably, declining to explain. Indeed, she is delighted to meet a young
woman who actually regards slang as a foreign and unstudied language,
and shrinks from being the first to help her to forget the English
tongue. "Is there much beauty in Ireland?" she asks, presently.
"Yes, but we are all so different from the English. We have no pretty
fair hair in Ireland, or at least very little of it."
"Do you admire our hair? And we are all so heartily tired of it," says
the duchess. "Well, tell me more about your own land. Are the women all
like you? In style, I mean. I have seen a few, of course, but not enough
to describe a whole."
"Like me? Oh, no," says Mrs. Geoffrey. "Some of them are really
beautiful, like pictures. When I was staying with Aunt Anastasia--the
Provost's wife, you remember--I saw a great many pretty people. I saw a
great many students, too," says Mona, brightening, "and liked them very
much. They liked me, too."
"How strange!" says the duchess, with an amused smile. "Are you quite
sure of that?"
"Oh, quite. They used to take me all over the college, and sometimes to
the bands in the squares. They were very good to me."
"They would be, of course," says the duchess.
"But they were troublesome, very troublesome," says Mrs. Geoffrey, with
a retrospective sigh, leaning back in her chair and folding her hands
together on her lap. "You can't imagine what a worry they were at
times,--always ringing the college bell at the wrong hours, and getting
tight!"
"Getting what?" asks the duchess, somewhat taken aback.
"Tight,--screwed,--tipsy, you know," replies Mona, innocently. "Tight
was the word they taught me. I think they believed it sounded more
respectable than the others. And the Divinity boys were the worst. Shall
I tell you about them?"
"Do," says the duchess.
"Well, three of them used to come to see Aunt Anastasia; at least they
_said_ it was auntie, but they never spoke to her if they could help it,
and were always so glad when she went to sleep after dinner."
"I think your Aunt Anastasia was very good to them," says the duchess.
"But after a bit they grew very tiresome. When I tell you they all three
proposed to me every day for a week, you will understand me. Yet even
that we could have borne, though it was very expensive, because they
used to go about stealing my gloves and my ribbons, but when they took
to punching each other's heads about me auntie said I had better go to
Uncle Brian for a while: so I went; and there I met Geoffrey," with a
brilliant smile.
"I think Geoffrey owes those Divinity boys more than he can ever pay,"
says the duchess, very prettily. "You must come and see me soon, child.
I am an old woman, and seldom stir from home, except when I am
positively ordered out by Malcom, as I was to-night. Come next Thursday.
There are some charming trifles at the old Court that may amuse you,
though I may fail to do so."
"I sha'n't want any trifles to amuse me, if you will talk to me," says
Mona.
"Well, come early. And now go and dance with Mr. Darling. He has been
looking at me very angrily for the last three minutes. By the by,"
putting up her glasses, "is that little girl in the lemon-colored gown
his sister?"
"Yes; that is Sir Nicholas's Doatie Darling," returns Mona, with a light
laugh. And then Nolly leads her away, and, feeling more confident with
him, she is once again dancing as gayly as the best.
"Your foot is plainly 'on your native heath,'" says Nolly, "though your
name may not be 'McGregor.' What on earth were you saying to that old
woman for the last four hours?"
"It was only twenty minutes," says Mona.
"Twenty minutes! By Jove, she must be more interesting than we thought,"
says Mr. Darling, "if you can put it at that time. I thought she was
going to eat you, she looked so pleased with you. And no wonder, too:"
with a loud and a hearty sigh.
"She was very nice to me," says Mona, "and is, I think, a very pleasant
old lady. She asked me to go and see her next Thursday."
"Bless my stars!" says Nolly; "you _have_ been going it. That is the day
on which she will receive no one but her chief pets. The duchess, when
she comes down here, reverses the order of things. The rest have an 'at
home' day. She has a 'not at home' day."
"Where are people when they are not at home?" asks Mona, simply.
"That's the eighth wonder of the world," says Mr. Darling, mysteriously.
"It has never yet been discovered. Don't seek to pry too closely into
it; you might meet with a rebuff."
"How sad Nicholas looks!" says Mona, suddenly.
In a doorway, somewhat out of the crush, Sir Nicholas is standing. His
eyes are fixed on Dorothy, who is laughing with a gay and gallant
plunger in the distance. He is looking depressed and melancholy; a
shadow seems to have fallen into his dark eyes.
"Now he is thinking of that horrid lawsuit again," says Nolly,
regretfully, who is a really good sort all round. "Let us go to him."
"Yes; let me go to him," says Mona, quickly; "I shall know what to say
better than you."
After a little time she succeeds in partially lifting the cloud that has
fallen on her brother. He has grown strangely fond of her, and finds
comfort in her gentle eyes and sympathetic mouth. Like all the rest, he
has gone down before Mona, and found a place for her in his heart. He is
laughing at some merry absurdity of hers, and is feeling braver, more
hopeful, when a little chill seems to pass over him, and, turning, he
confronts a tall dark young man who has come leisurely--but with a
purpose--to where he and Mona are standing.
It is Paul Rodney.
Sir Nicholas, just moving his glass from one eye to the other, says
"Good evening" to him, bending his head courteously, nay, very civilly,
though without a touch, or suspicion of friendliness. He does not put
out his hand, however, and Paul Rodney, having acknowledged his
salutation by a bow colder and infinitely more distant than his own,
turns to Mona.
"You have not quite forgotten me, I hope, Mrs. Rodney. You will give me
one dance?"
His eyes, black and faintly savage, seem to burn into hers.
"No; I have not forgotten you," says Mona, shrinking away from him. As
she speaks she looks nervously at Nicholas.
"Go and dance, my dear," he says, quickly, in a tone that decides her.
It is to please him, for his sake, she must do this thing; and so,
without any awkward hesitation, yet without undue haste, she turns and
lays her hand on the Australian's arm. A few minutes later she is
floating round the room in his arms, and, passing by Geoffrey, though
she sees him not, is seen by him.
"Nicholas, what is the meaning of this?" says Geoffrey, a few moments
later, coming up with a darkening brow to where Nicholas is leaning
against a wall. "What has possessed Mona to give that fellow a dance?
She must be mad, or ignorant, or forgetful of everything. She was with
you: why did you not prevent it?"
"My dear fellow, let well alone," says Nicholas, with his slow, peculiar
smile. "It was I induced Mona to dance with 'that fellow,' as you call
him. Forgive me this injury, if indeed you count it one."
"I don't understand you," says Geoffrey, still rather hotly.
"I think I hardly understand myself: yet I know I am possessed of a
morbid horror lest the county should think I am uncivil to this man
merely because he has expressed a hope that he may be able to turn me
out of doors. His hope may be a just one. I rather think it is: so it
pleased me that Mona should dance with him, if only to show the room
that he is not altogether tabooed by us."
"But I wish it had been any one but Mona," says Geoffrey, still
agitated.
"But who? Doatie will not dance with him, and Violet he never asks. I
fell back, then, upon the woman who has so little malice in her heart
that she could not be ungracious to any one. Against her will she read
my desire in my eyes, and has so far sacrificed herself for my sake. I
had no right to compel your wife to this satisfying of my vanity, yet I
could not resist it. Forget it; the dance will soon be over."
"It seems horrible to me that Mona should be on friendly terms with
your enemy," says Geoffrey, passionately.
"He is not my enemy. My dear boy, spare me a three-act drama. What has
the man done, beyond wearing a few gaudy rings, and some oppressive
neckties, that you should hate him as you do? It is unreasonable. And,
besides, he is in all probability your cousin. Parkins and Slow declare
they can find no flaw in the certificate of his birth; and--is not every
man at liberty to claim his own?"
"If he claims my wife for another dance, I'll----" begins Geoffrey.
"No, you won't," interrupts his brother, smiling. "Though I think the
poor child has done her duty now. Let him pass. It is he should hate me,
not I him."
At this Geoffrey says something under his breath about Paul Rodney that
he ought not to say, looking the while at Nicholas with a certain light
in his blue eyes that means not only admiration but affection.
Meantime, Mona, having danced as long as she desires with this enemy in
the camp, stops abruptly before a curtained entrance to a small
conservatory, into which he leads her before she has time to
remonstrate: indeed, there is no apparent reason why she should.
Her companion is singularly silent. Scarce one word has escaped him
since she first laid her hand upon his arm, and now again dumbness, or
some hidden feeling, seals his lips.
Of this Mona is glad. She has no desire to converse with him, and is
just congratulating herself upon her good fortune in that he declines to
speak with her, when he breaks the welcome silence.
"Have they taught you to hate me already?" he asks, in a low, compressed
tone, that make her nerves assert themselves.
"I have been taught nothing," she says, with a most successful grasp at
dignity. "They do not speak of you at the Towers,--at least, not
unkindly." She looks at him as she says this, but lowers her eyes as she
meets his. This dark, vehement young man almost frightens her.
"Yet, in spite of what you say, you turn from me, you despise me,"
exclaims he, with some growing excitement.
"Why should I despise you?" asks she, slowly, opening her eyes.
The simple query confounds him more than might a more elaborate one put
by a clever worldling. Why indeed?
"I was thinking about this impending lawsuit," he stammers, uneasily.
"You know of it, of course? Yet why should I be blamed?"
"No one blames you," says Mona; "yet it is hard that Nicholas should be
made unhappy."
"Other people are unhappy, too," says the Australian, gloomily.
"Perhaps they make their own unhappiness," says Mona, at random. "But
Nicholas has done nothing. He is good and gentle always. He knows no
evil thoughts. He wishes ill to no man."
"Not even to me?" with a sardonic laugh.
"Not even to you," very gravely. There is reproof in her tone. They are
standing somewhat apart, and her eyes have been turned from him. Now, as
she says this, she changes her position slightly, and looks at him very
earnestly. From the distant ballroom the sound of the dying music comes
sadly, sweetly; a weeping fountain in a corner mourns bitterly, as it
seems to Mona, tear by tear, perhaps for some lost nymph.
"Well, what would you have me do?" demands he, with some passion. "Throw
up everything? Lands, title, position? It is more than could be expected
of any man."
"Much more," says Mona; but she sighs as she says it, and a little look
of hopelessness comes into her face. It is so easy to read Mona's face.
"You are right," he says, with growing vehemence: "no man would do it.
It is such a brilliant chance, such a splendid scheme----." He checks
himself suddenly. Mona looks at him curiously, but says nothing. In a
second he recovers himself, and goes on: "Yet because I will not
relinquish my just claim you look upon me with hatred and contempt."
"Oh, no," says Mona, gently; "only I should like you better, of course,
if you were not the cause of our undoing."
"'Our'? How you associate yourself with these Rodneys!" he says,
scornfully; "yet you are as unlike them as a dove is unlike a hawk. How
came you to fall into their nest? And so if I could only consent to
efface myself you would like me better,--tolerate me in fact? A poor
return for annihilation. And yet," impatiently, "I don't know. If I
could be sure that even my memory would be respected by you----." He
pauses and pushes back his hair from his brow.
"Why could you not have stayed in Australia?" says Mona, with some
excitement. "You are rich; your home is there; you have passed all your
life up to this without a title, without the tender associations that
cling round Nicholas and that will cost him almost his life to part
with. You do not want them, yet you come here to break up our peace and
make us all utterly wretched."
"Not you," says Paul, quickly. "What is it to you? It will not take a
penny out of your pocket. Your husband," with an evil sneer, "has his
income secured. I am not making you wretched."
"You are," says Mona, eagerly. "Do you think," tears gathering in her
eyes, "that I could be happy when those I love are reduced to despair?"
"You must have a large heart to include all of them," says Rodney with a
shrug. "Whom do you mean by 'those you love?' Not Lady Rodney, surely.
She is scarcely a person, I take it to inspire that sentiment in even
your tolerant breast. It cannot be for her sake you bear me such
illwill?"
"I bear you no illwill; you mistake me," says Mona, quietly: "I am only
sorry for Nicholas, because I do love him."
"Do you?" says her companion, staring at her, and drawing his breath a
little hard. "Then, even if he should lose to me lands, title, nay, all
he possesses, I should still count him a richer man than I am."
"Oh, poor Nicholas!" says Mona sadly, "and poor little Doatie!"
"You speak as if my victory was a foregone conclusion," says Rodney.
"How can you tell? He may yet gain the day, and I may be the outcast."
"I hope with all my heart you will," says Mona.
"Thank you," replies he stiffly; "yet, after all, I think I should bet
upon my own chance."
"I am afraid you are right," says Mona. "Oh, why did you come over at
all?"
"I am very glad I did," replies he, doggedly. "At least I have seen you.
They cannot take that from me. I shall always be able to call the
remembrance of your face my own."
Mona hardly hears him. She is thinking of Nicholas's face as it was half
an hour ago when he had leaned against the deserted doorway and looked
at pretty Dorothy.
Yet pretty Dorothy at her very best moments had never looked, nor ever
could look, as lovely as Mona appears now, as she stands with her hands
loosely clasped before her, and the divine light of pity in her eyes,
that are shining softly like twin stars.
Behind her rises a tall shrub of an intense green, against which the
soft whiteness of her satin gown gleams with a peculiar richness. Her
gaze is fixed upon a distant planet that watches her solemnly through
the window from its seat in the far-off heaven, "silent, as if it
watch'd the sleeping earth."
She sighs. There is pathos and sweetness and tenderness in every line of
her face, and much sadness. Her lips are slightly parted, "her eyes are
homes of silent prayer." Paul, watching her, feels as though he is in
the presence of some gentle saint, sent for a space to comfort sinful
earth.
A passionate admiration for her beauty and purity fills his breast: he
could have fallen at her feet and cried aloud to her to take pity upon
him, to let some loving thought for him--even him too--enter and find
fruitful soil within her heart.
"Try not to hate me," he says, imploringly, in a broken voice, going
suddenly up to her and taking one of her hands in his. His grasp is so
hard as almost to hurt her. Mona awakening from her reverie, turns to
him with a start. Something in his face moves her.
"Indeed, I do not hate you," she says impulsively. "Believe me, I do
not. But still I fear you."
Some one is coming quickly towards them. Rodney, dropping Mona's hand,
looks hurriedly round, only to see Lady Rodney approaching.
"Your husband is looking for you," she says to Mona, in an icy tone.
"You had better go to him. This is no place for you."
Without vouchsafing a glance of recognition to the Australian, she
sweeps past, leaving them again alone. Paul laughs aloud.
"'A haughty spirit comes before a fall,'" quotes he contemptuously.
"I must go now. Good-night," says Mona, kindly if coldly. He escorts her
to the door of the conservatory There Lauderdale, who is talking with
some men, comes forward and offers her his arm to take her to the
carriage. And then adieux are said, and the duke accompanies her
downstairs, whilst Lady Rodney contents herself with one of her sons.
It is a triumph, if Mona only knew it, but she is full of sad
reflections, and is just now wrapped up in mournful thoughts of Nicholas
and little Dorothy. Misfortune seems flying towards them on strong swift
wings. Can nothing stay its approach, or beat it back in time to effect
a rescue? If they fail to find the nephew of the old woman Elspeth in
Sydney, whither he is supposed to have gone, or if, on finding him they
fail to elicit any information from him on the subject of the lost will,
affairs may be counted almost hopeless.
"Mona," says Geoffrey, to her suddenly, in a low whisper, throwing his
arm round her (they are driving home, alone in the small
night-brougham)--"Mona, do you know what you have done to-night? The
whole room went mad about you. They would talk of no one else. Do not
let them turn your head."
"Turn it where, darling?" asks she, a little dreamily.
"Away from me," returns he, with some emotion, tightening his clasp
around her.
"From you? Was there ever such a dear silly old goose," says Mrs.
Geoffrey, with a faint, loving laugh. And then, with a small sigh full
of content, she forgets her cares for others for awhile, and, nestling
closer to him, lays her head upon his shoulder and rests there happily
until they reach the Towers.