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APRIL'S LADY.
A NOVEL.
BY "THE DUCHESS"
_Author of "Molly Bawn," "Phyllis," "Lady Branksmere," "Beauty's
Daughters," etc., etc._
Montreal:
JOHN LOVELL & SON,
23 St. Nicholas Street.
Entered according to Act of Parliament in the year 1890, by John Lovell
& Son, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture and Statistics at
Ottawa.
APRIL'S LADY.
"Must we part? or may I linger?
Wax the shadows, wanes the day."
Then, with voice of sweetest singer,
That hath all but died away,
"Go," she said, but tightened finger
Said articulately, "Stay!"
CHAPTER I.
"Philosophy triumphs easily over past and over future evils, but
present evils triumph over philosophy."
"A letter from my father," says Mr. Monkton, flinging the letter in
question across the breakfast-table to his wife.
"A letter from Sir George!" Her dark, pretty face flushes crimson.
"And _such_ a letter after eight years of obstinate silence. There! read
it," says her husband, contemptuously. The contempt is all for the
writer of the letter.
Mrs. Monkton taking it up, with a most honest curiosity, that might
almost be termed anxiety, reads it through, and in turn flings it from
her as though it had been a scorpion.
"Never mind, Jack!" says she with a great assumption of indifference
that does not hide from her husband the fact that her eyes are full of
tears. "Butter that bit of toast for me before it is _quite_ cold, and
give Joyce some ham. Ham, darling? or an egg?" to Joyce, with a forced
smile that makes her charming face quite sad.
"Have you two been married eight whole years?" asks Joyce laying her
elbows on the table, and staring at her sister with an astonished gaze.
"It seems like yesterday! What a swindler old Time is. To look at
Barbara, one would not believe she could have been _born_ eight years
ago."
"Nonsense!" says Mrs. Monkton laughing, and looking as pleased as
married women--even the happiest--always do, when they are told they
look _un_married. "Why Tommy is seven years old."
"Oh! That's nothing!" says Joyce airily, turning her dark eyes, that are
lovelier, if possible, than her sister's, upon the sturdy child who is
sitting at his father's right hand. "Tommy, we all know, is much older
than his mother. Much more advanced; more learned in the wisdom of
_this_ world; aren't you, Tommy?"
But Tommy, at this present moment, is deaf to the charms of
conversation, his young mind being nobly bent on proving to his sister
(a priceless treasure of six) that the salt-cellar planted between them
belongs _not_ to her, but to him! This sounds reasonable, but the
difficulty lies in making Mabel believe it. There comes the pause
eloquent at last, and then, I regret to say, the free fight!
It might perhaps have been even freer, but for the swift intervention of
the paternal relative, who, swooping down upon the two belligerents with
a promptitude worthy of all praise, seizes upon his daughter, and in
spite of her kicks, which are noble, removes her to the seat on his left
hand.
Thus separated hope springs within the breasts of the lookers-on that
peace may soon be restored; and indeed, after a sob or two from Mabel,
and a few passes of the most reprehensible sort from Tommy (entirely of
the facial order), a great calm falls upon the breakfast-room.
"When I was your age, Tommy," says Mr. Monkton addressing his son, and
striving to be all that the orthodox parent ought to be, "I should have
been soundly whipped if I had behaved to my sister as you have just now
behaved to yours!"
"You _haven't_ a sister," says Tommy, after which the argument falls
flat. It is true, Mr. Monkton is innocent of a sister, but how did the
little demon remember that so _apropos_.
"Nevertheless," said Mr. Monkton, "if I _had_ had a sister, I _know_ I
should not have been unkind to her."
"Then she'd have been unkind to you," says Tommy, who is evidently not
afraid to enter upon a discussion of the rights and wrongs of mankind
with his paternal relative. "Look at Mabel! And I don't care _what_ she
says," with a vindictive glance at the angelic featured Mabel, who
glares back at him with infinite promise of a future settlement of all
their disputes in her ethereal eyes. "'Twas _my_ salt-cellar, not hers!"
"Ladies first--pleasure afterwards," says his father somewhat idly.
"Oh _Freddy_!" says his wife.
"Seditious language _I_ call it," says Jocelyne with a laugh.
"Eh?" says Mr. Monkton. "Why what on earth have I been saying now. I
quite believed I was doing the heavy father to perfection and teaching
Tommy his duty."
"Nice duty," says Jocelyne, with a pretence of indignation, that makes
her charming face a perfect picture. "Teaching him to regard us as
second best! I like that."
"Good heavens! did I give that impression? I must have swooned," says
Mr. Monkton penitently. "When last in my senses I thought I had been
telling Tommy that he deserved a good whipping; and that if good old
Time could so manage as to make me my own father, he would assuredly
have got it."
"Oh! _your_ father!" says Mrs. Monkton in a low tone; there is enough
expression in it, however, to convey the idea to everyone present that
in her opinion her husband's father would be guilty of any atrocity at a
moment's notice.
"Well, _'twas_ my salt-cellar," says Tommy again stoutly, and as if
totally undismayed by the vision of the grand-fatherly scourge held out
to him. After all we none of us feel things much, unless they come
personally home to us.
"Was it?" says Mr. Monkton mildly. "Do you know, I really quite fancied
it was mine."
"What?" says Tommy, cocking his ear. He, like his sister, is in a
certain sense a fraud. For Tommy has the face of a seraph with the heart
of a hardy Norseman. There is nothing indeed that Tommy would not dare.
"Mine, you know," says his father, even more mildly still.
"No, it wasn't," says Tommy with decision, "it was at _my_ side of the
table. _Yours_ is over there."
"Thomas!" says his father, with a rueful shake of the head that
signifies his resignation of the argument; "it is indeed a pity that I
am _not_ like my father!"
"Like him! Oh _no_," says Mrs. Monkton emphatically, impulsively; the
latent dislike to the family who had refused to recognize her on her
marriage with their son taking fire at this speech.
Her voice sounds almost hard--the gentle voice, that in truth was only
meant by Mother Nature to give expression to all things kind and loving.
She has leant a little forward and a swift flush is dyeing her cheek.
She is of all women the youngest looking, for her years; as a matron
indeed she seems absurd. The delicate bloom of girlhood seems never to
have left her, but--as though in love of her beauty--has clung to her
day by day. So that now, when she has known eight years of married life
(and some of them deeply tinctured with care--the cruel care that want
of money brings), she still looks as though the morning of womanhood was
as yet but dawning for her.
And this is because love the beautifier went with her all the way! Hand
in hand he has traveled with her on the stony paths that those who marry
must undoubtedly pursue. Never once had he let go his hold, and so it
is, that her lovely face has defied Time (though after all that
obnoxious Ancient has not had yet much opportunity given him to spoil
it), and at twenty-five she looks but a little older than her sister,
who is just eighteen, and seven years younger than she is.
Her pretty soft grey Irish eyes, that are as nearly _not_ black as it is
possible for them to be, are still filled with the dews of youth. Her
mouth is red and happy. Her hair--so distinctly chestnut as to be almost
guilty of a shade of red in it here and there--covers her dainty head in
rippling masses, that fall lightly forward, and rest upon a brow,
snow-white, and low and broad as any Greek's might be.
She had spoken a little hurriedly, with some touch of anger. But quick
as the anger was born, so quickly does it die.
"I shouldn't have said that, perhaps," says she, sending a little
tremulous glance at her husband from behind the urn. "But I couldn't
help it. I can't _bear_ to hear you say you would like to be like him."
She smiles (a little, gentle, "don't-be-angry-with-me" smile, scarcely
to be resisted by any man, and certainly not by her husband, who adores
her). It is scarcely necessary to record this last fact, as all who run
may read it for themselves, but it saves time to put it in black and
white.
"But why not, my dear?" says Mr. Monkton, magisterially. "Surely,
considering all things, you have reason to be deeply grateful to Sir
George. Why, then, abuse him?"
"Grateful! To Sir George! To your father!" cries his wife, hotly and
quick, and----
"Freddy!" from his sister-in-law brings him to a full stop for a moment.
"Do you mean to tell me," says he, thus brought to bay, "that you have
nothing to thank Sir George for?" He is addressing his wife.
"Nothing, nothing!" declares she, vehemently, the remembrance of that
last letter from her husband's father, that still lies within reach of
her view, lending a suspicion of passion to her voice.
"Oh, my dear girl, _consider_!" says Mr. Monkton, lively reproach in his
tone. "Has he not given you _me_, the best husband in Europe?"
"Ah, what it is to be modest," says Joyce, with her little quick
brilliant laugh.
"Well, it's not true," says Mrs. Monkton, who has laughed also, in spite
of herself and the soreness at her heart. "He did _not_ give you to me.
You made me that gift of your own free will. I have, as I said before,
nothing to thank him for."
"I always think he must be a silly old man," says Joyce, which seems to
put a fitting termination to the conversation.
The silence that ensues annoys Tommy, who dearly loves to hear the human
voice divine. As expressed by himself first, but if that be
impracticable, well, then by somebody else. _Anything_ is better than
dull silence.
"Is he that?" asks he, eagerly, of his aunt.
Though I speak of her as his aunt, I hope it will not be misunderstood
for a moment that Tommy totally declines to regard her in any
reverential light whatsoever. A playmate, a close friend, a confidante,
a useful sort of person, if you will, but certainly not an _aunt_, in
the general acceptation of that term. From the very first year that
speech fell on them, both Mabel and he had refused to regard Miss
Kavanagh as anything but a confederate in all their scrapes, a friend to
rejoice with in all their triumphs; she had never been aunt, never,
indeed, even so much as the milder "auntie" to them; she had been
"Joyce," only, from the very commencement of their acquaintance. The
united commands of both father and mother (feebly enforced) had been
insufficient to compel them to address this most charming specimen of
girlhood by any grown up title. To them their aunt was just such an one
as themselves--only, perhaps, a little _more_ so.
A lovely creature, at all events, and lovable as lovely. A little
inconsequent, perhaps at times, but always amenable to reason, when put
into a corner, and full of the glad, laughter of youth.
"Is he what?" says she, now returning Tommy's eager gaze.
"The best husband in Europe. He _says_ he's that," with a doubtful stare
at his father.
"Why, the _very_ best, of course," says Joyce, nodding emphatically.
"Always remember that, Tommy. It's a good thing to _be_, you know.
_You'll_ want to be that, won't you?"
But if she has hoped to make a successful appeal to Tommy's noble
qualities (hitherto, it must be confessed, carefully kept hidden), she
finds herself greatly mistaken.
"No, I won't," says that truculent person distinctly. "I want to be a
big general with a cocked hat, and to kill people. I don't want to be a
husband _at all_. What's the good of that?"
"To pursue the object would be to court defeat," says Mr. Monkton
meekly. He rises from the table, and, seeing him move, his wife rises
too.
"You are going to your study?" asks she, a little anxiously. He is about
to say "no" to this, but a glance at her face checks him.
"Yes, come with me," says he instead, answering the lovely silent appeal
in her eyes. That letter has no doubt distressed her. She will be
happier when she has talked it over with him--they two alone. "As for
you, Thomas," says his father, "I'm quite aware that you ought to be
consigned to the Donjon keep after your late behavior, but as we don't
keep one on the premises, I let you off this time. Meanwhile I haste to
my study to pen, with the assistance of your enraged mother, a letter to
our landlord that will induce him to add one on at once to this
building. After which we shall be able to incarcerate you at our
pleasure (but _not_ at yours) on any and every hour of the day."
"Who's Don John?" asks Tommy, totally unimpressed, but filled with
lively memories of those Spaniards and other foreign powers who have
unkindly made more difficult his hateful lessons off and on.