"Song have thy day, and take thy fill of light
Before the night be fallen across thy way;
Sing while he may, man hath no long delight."
"What a delicious day!" says Joyce, stopping short on the hill to take a
look round her. It is the next day, and indeed far into it. Luncheon is
a thing of the past, and both she and Dysart know that it will take them
all their time to reach St. Bridget's Hill and be back again for
afternoon tea. They had started on their expedition in defiance of many
bribes held out to them. For one thing, there was to be a reception at
the Court at five; many of those who had danced through last night
having been asked to come over late in the afternoon of to-day to talk
over the dance itself and the little etceteras belonging to it.
The young members of the Monkton family had been specially invited, too,
as a sort of make up to Bertie, the little son of the house, who had
been somewhat aggrieved at being sent to bed without his share of the
festivities on hand. He had retired to his little cot, indeed, with his
arms stuffed full of crackers, but how could crackers and cakes and
sweets console any one for the loss of being out at an ungodly hour and
seeing a real live dance! The one thing that finally helped him to
endure his hard lot was a promise on his mother's part that Tommy and
Mabel Monkton should come down next day and revel with him among the
glorious ruins of the supper table. The little Monktons had not come,
however, when Joyce left for her walk.
"Going out?" Lady Swansdown had said to her, meeting her in the hall,
fully equipped for her excursion. "But why, my dear girl? We expect
those amusing Burkes in an hour or so, and the Delaneys, and----"
"Yes, why go?" repeats Beauclerk, who has just come up. His manner is
friendly in the extreme, yet a very careful observer might notice a
strain about it, a determination to be friendly that rather spoils the
effect. Her manner toward him last night after his interview with Miss
Maliphant in the garden and her growing coldness ever since, has
somewhat disconcerted, him mentally. Could she have heard, or seen, or
been told of anything? There might, of course, have been a little
_contretemps_ of some sort. People, as a rule, are so beastly
treacherous! "You will make us wretched if you desert us," says he with
_empressement_. As he speaks he goes up to her and lets his eyes as well
as his lips implore her. Miss Maliphant had left by the early train, so
that he is quite unattached, and able to employ his whole battery of
fascinations on the subjugation of this refractory person.
"I am sorry. Don't be more wretched than you can help!" says Joyce, with
a smile wonderfully unconcerned. "After a dance I want to walk to clear
my brain, and Mr. Dysart has been good enough to say he will accompany
me."
"Is he accompanying you?" says Beauclerk, with an unpardonable
supercilious glance around him as if in search of the absent Dysart.
"You mustn't think him a laggard at his post," says Miss Kavanagh, still
smiling, but now in a little provoking way that seems to jest at his
pretended suspicion of Dysart's constancy and dissolve it into the
thinnest of thin air. "He was here just now, but I sent him to loose the
dogs. I like to have them with me, and Lady Baltimore is pleased when
they get a run."
"Isabel is always so sympathetic," says he, with a quite new and
delightful rush of sympathy toward Isabel. "I suppose," glancing at
Joyce keenly, "you would not care for an additional escort? The
dogs--and Dysart--will be sufficient?"
"Mr. Dysart and the dogs will be," says she. "Ah! Here he comes," as
Dysart appears at the open doorway, a little pack of terriers at his
heels. "What a time you've been!" cries she, moving quickly to him. "I
thought you would never come. Good-bye, Lady Swansdown; good-bye,"
glancing casually at Beauclerk. "Keep one teapot for us if you can!"
She trips lightly up the avenue at Dysart's side, leaving Beauclerk in a
rather curious frame of mind.
"Yes, she has heard something!" That is his first thought. How to
counteract the probable influence of that "something" is the second. A
little dwelling upon causes and effects shows him the way. For an effect
there is often an antidote!
* * * * *
"Delicious indeed!" says Dysart, in answer to her remark. His answer is,
however, a little _distrait_. His determination of last night to bring
her here, and compel her to listen to the honest promptings of his heart
is still strong within him.
They have now ascended the hill, and, standing on its summit, can look
down on the wild deep sea beneath them that lies, to all possible
seeming, as calm and passive at their feet as might a thing inanimate.
Yet within its depths what terrible--what mournful tragedies lie! And,
as if in contrast, what ecstatic joys! To one it speaks like death
itself--to another:
"The bridegroom sea
Is toying with the shore, his wedded bride,
And in the fullness of his marriage joy
He decorates her tawny brow with shells,
Retires a pace to see how fair she looks,
Then, proud, runs up to kiss her."
"Shall we sit here?" says Dysart, indicating a soft mound of grass that
overlooks the bay. "You must be tired after last night's dancing."
"I _am_ tired," says she, sinking upon the soft cushion that Nature has
provided with a little sigh of satisfaction.
"Perhaps I should not have asked--have extracted--a promise from you to
come here," says Dysart, with contrition in his tone. "I should have
remembered you would be overdone, and that a long walk like this----"
"Would be the very thing to restore me to a proper state of health," she
interrupts him, with the prettiest smile. "No, don't pretend you are
sorry you brought me here. You know it is the sheerest hypocrisy on your
part. You are glad, that you brought me here, I hope, and
I"--deliberately--"am glad that you did."
"Do you mean that?" says Dysart, gravely. He had not seated himself
beside her, and is now looking down her from a goodly height. "Do you
know why I brought you?"
"To bring me back again as fresh as a daisy," suggests she, with a laugh
that is spoiled in its birth by a glance from him.
"No, I did not think of you at all. I thought only of myself," says
Dysart, speaking a little quickly now. "Call that selfish if you
will--and yet----"
He stops short, and comes closer to her. "To think in that way was to
think of you too. Joyce, there is at all events one thing you do
know--that I love you."
Miss Kavanagh nods her head silently.
"There is one thing, too, that I know," says Dysart now with a little
tremble in his voice, "that you do not love me!"
She is silent.
"You are honest," says he, after a pause. "Still"--looking at her--"if
there wasn't hope one would know. Though the present is empty for me, I
cannot help dwelling on the thought that the future may
contain--something!"
"The future is so untranslatable," says she, with a little evasion.
"Tell me this at least," says Dysart, very earnestly, bending over her
with the air of one determined to sift his chances to the last grain,
"you like me?"
"Oh, yes."
"Better than Courtenay, for example?" with a fleeting smile that fails
to disguise the real anxiety he is enduring.
"What an absurd question!"
"Than Dicky Brown?"
"Yes."
But here she lifts her head and gazes at him in a startled way that
speaks of quick suspicion. There is something of entreaty, too, in her
dark eyes, a desire that he will go no further.
But Dysart deliberately disregards it.
"Than Beauclerk?" asks he in a clear, almost cruel tone.
A horrible red rushes up to dye her pretty cheeks, in spite of all her
efforts to subdue it. Great tears of shame and confusion suffuse her
eyes. One little reproachful glance she casts at him, and then:
"Of course," says she, almost vehemently, if a little faintly, her eyes
sinking to the ground.
Dysart stands before her as if stricken into stone. Then the knowledge
that he has hurt her pierces him with a terrible certainty, overcomes
all other thoughts, and drives him to repentance.
"I shouldn't have asked you that," says he bluntly.
"No, no!" says she, acquiescing quickly, "and yet," raising an eager,
lovely face to his, "I hardly know anything about--about myself.
Sometimes I think I like him, sometimes----" She stops abruptly and
looks at him with a pained and frightened gaze. "Do you despise me for
betraying myself like this?"
"No--I want to hear all about it."
"Ah! That is what I want to hear myself. But who is to tell me? Nature
won't. Sometimes I hate him. Last night----"
"Yes, I know. You hated him last night. I don't wish to know why. I am
quite satisfied in that you did so."
"But shall I hate him to-morrow? Oh, yes, I think so--I hope so," cries
she suddenly. "I am tired of it all. He is not a real person, not one
possible to class. He is false--naturally treacherous, and yet----"
She breaks off again very abruptly, and turns to Dysart as if for help.
"Let us forget him," she says, and then in a little frightened way, "Oh,
I wish I could be sure I could forget him!"
"Why can't you?" says Dysart, in his downright way. "It means only a
strong effort after all. If you feel honestly," with an earnest glance
at her, "like that toward him, you must be mad to give him even a corner
in your heart."
"That is it," says she, "there the puzzle begins. I don't know if he
ever has a corner in my heart. He attracts me, but attraction is not
affection, and the heart holds only love and hatred. Indifference is
nothing."
"You can get rid of him finally," says Dysart, boldly, "by giving
yourself to me. That will kill all----"
All he may be going to say is killed on his lips at this moment by two
little wild shrieks of joy that sound right behind his head. Both he and
Joyce turn abruptly in its direction--he with a sense of angry
astonishment, she with a fell knowledge of its meaning. It is, indeed,
no surprise to her when Tommy and Mabel appear suddenly from behind the
rock just close to them, that hides the path in part, and precipitates
themselves into her arms.
"We saw you, we saw you!" gasps Tommy, breathless from his run up the
hill: "we saw you far away down there on the road, and we told Bridgie"
(the maid) "that we'd run up, and she said 'cut along,' so here we are."
"You are, indeed," says Dysart, with feeling.
"We knew you'd be glad to see us," goes on Tommy to Joyce in the
beautiful roar he always adopts when excited; "you haven't been home for
years, and Bridgie says that's because you are going to be married
to----"
"Get up, Tommy, you are too heavy, and, besides, I want to kiss Mabel,"
says Tommy's aunt with prodigious haste and a hot cheek.
"But mammy says you're a silly Billy," says Mabel in her shrill treble,
"an' that----"
"Mammy is a shockingly rude person," says Mr. Dysart, hurrying to break
into the dangerous confidence, no matter at what cost, even at the
expense of the adored mammy. His remark is taken very badly.
"She's not," says Tommy, glowering at him. "Father says she's an angel,
and he knows. I heard him say it, and angels are never rude!"
"'Twas after he made her cry about something," says Mabel, lifting her
little flower-like face to Dysart's in a miniature imitation of her
brother's indignation. "She was boo-booing like anything, and then
father got sorry--oh!--dreadful sorry--and he said she was an angel, and
she said----"
"Oh, Mabel!" says Joyce, weakly, "you know you oughtn't to say such----"
"Well, 'twas your fault, 'twas all about you," says Tommy, defiantly.
"Why don't you come home? Father says you ought to come, and mammy says
she doesn't know which of 'em it'll be; and father says it won't be any
of them, and--what's it all about?" turning a frankly inquisitive little
face up to hers. "They wouldn't tell us, and we want to know which of
'em it will be."
"Yes, an' is it jints?" demands Mabel, who probably means giants, and
not cold meats.
"I don't know what she means," says Miss Kavanagh, coldly.
"I say, you two," says Mr. Dysart, brilliantly, "wouldn't you like to
run a race? Bridget must be tired of waiting for you down there at the
end of the hill, and----"
"She isn't waiting, she's talking to Mickey Daly," says Tommy.
"Oh, I see. Well, look here. I bet you, Tommy, strong as you look, Mabel
can outrun you down the hill."
"She! she!" cries Tommy, indignantly; "I could beat her in a minute."
"You can't," cries Mabel in turn. "Nurse says I'm twice the child that
you are."
"Your legs are as short as a pin," roars Tommy; "you couldn't run."
"I can. I can. I can," says Mabel, on the verge of a violent flood of
tears.
"Well, we'll see," says Mr. Dysart, who now begins to think he has
thrown himself away on a silly Hussar regiment, when he ought to have
taken rank as a distinguished diplomat. "Come, I'll start you both down
the hill, and whichever reaches Bridget first wins the day."
Instantly both children spring to the front of the path.
"You're standing before me, Tommy."
"No, I'm not."
"You're cheating--you are!"
"Cheat yourself! Mr. Dysart, ain't I all right?"
"I think you should give her a start; she's the girl, you know," says
Dysart. "There now, go. That's very good. Five yards, Tommy, is a small
allowance for a little thing like Mabel. Steady now, you two! One--Good
gracious, they're off," says he, turning to Miss Kavanagh with a sigh of
relief mingled with amusement. "They had no idea of waiting for more
than one signal. I hope they will meet this Bridget, and get back to
their mother."
"They are not going to her just now. They are going on to the Court to
spend the afternoon with Bertie," says Joyce; "Barbara told me so last
night. Dear things! How sweet they looked!"
"They are the prettiest children I know," says Dysart--a little absent
perhaps. He falls into silence for a moment or two, and then suddenly
looks at her. He advances a step.