How Kit sees a Vision, and being exhorted thereto by it, pleads a
certain cause with great success.
It is ten o'clock, and as lovely a night as ever overhung the earth. The
moon is at its fullest, the wind has fallen, all is calm as heaven
itself, through which Dictynna's unclouded grandeur rolls.
The Misses Blake, fatigued by their unusual dissipation, ordered an
early rout an hour agone, whereby bedroom candlesticks were in demand at
nine or half-past nine o'clock.
Now, in Monica's room Kit is standing by the open window gazing in rapt
admiration at the dew spangled garden beneath. Like diamonds glitter the
grass and the flowers beneath the kiss of the grass and the queen of
night.
Moonbeams are playing in the roses, and nestling in the lilies, and
rocking to and fro upon the bosom of the stream.
There is a peace unspeakable on all around. One holds one's breath and
feels a longing painful in its intensity as one drinks in the beauty of
the earth and sky. 'Twere _heaven_ to be assured of love on such a night
as this.
Stars make the vault above so fine that all the world, me-thinks, should
be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun. There is a
rush of feeling in the air,--a promise of better things to come,--of
hope, of glad desire, of sweet love perfected!
"How lovely a night it is!" says Kit, leaning far out of the window, and
gazing westward. She is at heart a born artist, with a mind, indeed, too
full of strange, weird thoughts at times to augur well for the happiness
of her future. Like many of her Irish race, she is dreamy,
poetical,--intense at one moment, gay, wild impulsive the next.
"See what a flood of light there is on everything!" she says. "'_Bathed_
in moonlight,' what a good thought was that. Monica, when I am as old as
you, in a very few short years I shall be a poet."
"No, you won't, darling: you will be a musician. See what fairies lie
beneath your fingers even now when you touch the piano or violin; be
content, then, with your great gift, which most surely _is_ yours. And
to me, indeed, it seems a grander thing to thrill and enchain and draw
to your feet all hearts by the power of harmony that dwells within you,
than by the divine gift of song that poets have."
"But their songs _are_ harmony," says the child, turning quickly to her.
"Ay, the interpretation of it, but you have its very breath. No; search
the world over, and you will find nothing so powerful to affect the
souls of all as music."
"Well some day I shall want to do something," says Kit, vaguely; and
then she turns to the window again, and lets her mind wander and lose
itself in a mute sonata to the fair Isis throned above.
"It draws me," she says, presently, rising slowly and addressing Monica,
but always with her gaze fixed upon the sleeping garden down below. "It
is so bright,--so clear."
"What, Kit?"
"The moonlight. I must," restlessly, "go down into it for a little
moment, or I shall not sleep through longing for it."
"But the doors are closed, my dearest, and Aunt Priscilla is in bed, and
so are the servants."
"So much the better. I can draw the bolts myself without being
questioned. You said just now," gayly, "I have a fairy beneath my
fingers. I think I have a moon-fairy in my heart, because I love it so."
"Stay here with me, then, and worship it sensibly from my window."
"What! do you look for sense in 'moon-struck madness'? No; I shall go
down to my scented garden. I have a fancy I cannot conquer to walk into
that tiny flame-white path of moonlight over there near the hedge. Do
you see it?"
"Yes. Well, go, if Titania calls you, but soon return, and bring me a
lily,--I, too, have a fancy, you see,--a tall lily, fresh with dew and
moonshine."
"You shall have the tallest, the prettiest I can find," says Kit from
the doorway, where she stands framed unknowingly, looking such a
slender, ethereal creature, with eyes too large for her small face, that
Monica, with a sudden pang of fear, goes swiftly up to her, and,
pressing her to her heart, holds her so for a moment.
"I know what you are thinking now," says Kit, with another laugh,--"that
I shall die early."
"Kit! Kit!"
"Yes. Isn't it strange? I can read most people's thoughts. But be happy
about me. I look fragile, I know, but I shall not die until I am quite a
respectable age. Not a hideous age, you will understand, but with my
hair and my teeth intact. One keeps one's hair until forty, doesn't
one?"
"I don't know. I'm not forty," says Monica. "But hurry, hurry out of the
garden, because the dew is falling."
Down the dark staircase, through the darker halls, into the brilliant
moonlight, goes Kit. The wind, soft as satin, plays about her pretty
brows and nestles through her hair, rewarding itself thus for its
enforced quiet of an hour ago. Revelling in the freedom she has gained,
Kit enters the garden and looks lovingly around upon her
companions,--the flowers.
Who would sleep when beauty such as this is flung broadcast upon the
earth, waiting for man to feast his slothful eyes upon it?
Lingeringly, tenderly, Kit passes by each slumbering blossom, or gazes
into each drowsy bell, until the moonlit patch of grass she had pointed
out to Monica is at last reached. Here she stands in shadow, glancing
with coy delight at the fairyland beyond. Then she plunges into it, and
looks a veritable fairy herself, slim, and tall, and beautiful, and more
than worthy of the wand she lacks.
Walking straight up her silver path, she goes to where the lilies grow,
in a bed close by the hedge. But, before she comes to them, she notes in
the hedge itself a wild convolvulus, and just a little beyond it a wild
dog-rose, parent of all roses. She stays to pluck them, and then--
"Kit," says a voice subdued and low, but so distinct as to sound almost
in her ear.
She starts, and then looks eagerly around her, but nothing can she see.
Was it a human voice, or a call from that old land that held great Zeus
for its king? A message from Olympus it well might be, on such a night
as this, when all things breathe of old enchantment and of mystic lore.
Almost she fears yet hopes to see a sylvan deity peep out at her from
the escalonia yonder, or from the white-flowered, sweetly-perfumed
syringa in that distant corner,--Pan the musical, perhaps, with his
sweet pipes, or a yet more stately god, the beautiful Apollo, with his
golden lyre. Oh for the chance of hearing such godlike music, with only
she herself and the pale Diana for an audience!
Perchance the gods have, indeed, been good to her, and sent her a
special messenger on this yellow night. Fear forgotten, in the ecstasy
of this hope, the strange child stands erect, and waits with eager
longing for a second summons.
And it comes, but alas! in a fatally earthly tone that ruins her fond
hope forever.
"Kit, it is I. Listen to me," says some one, and then a hole in the
hedge is cleared, and Mr. Desmond, stepping through it, enters the
moonlit patch, flushed but shamelessly unembarrassed.
Kit, pale with disappointment, regards him silently with no gentle
glance.
"And to think," she says, at length, with slow scorn, looking him up and
down with measureless contempt,--"to think I was mad enough to believe
for one long moment that you might be Apollo, and that your voice was a
cry from Parnassus!"
At which, I regret to say, Mr. Desmond gives way to most unseemly
mirth. "I never dreamed I should attain to such glory," he says. "I feel
like 'the rapt one of the godlike forehead.'"
"You _may_," says the younger Miss Beresford, who has awakened from the
dim dusk of "faerie lands forlorn" to the clearer light of earth. "You
may," witheringly, "_feel_ like it, but you certainly don't _look_ like
it."
"I am not complete, I know that," says Mr. Desmond still full of unholy
enjoyment. "I lack 'bright Apollo's lute strung with his hair;' but if
you will wait a moment I will run back to Coole and get the nearest
thing to it."
He turns as if to fulfil his words, but Kit stops him.
"Don't go," she says, laughing gayly, now herself. "Even the very
original lute would not transform you into a god. Stay if you want to.
After all, now I am again in my senses, I daresay you are as good to
talk to as a heathen deity."
"Oh, no," says Mr. Desmond, humbly. "They always thundered when they
spoke: so think how imposing and convincing their arguments must have
been!"
"Horrid, _I_ should think," says Kit. "And now tell me what brought you
here?"
This is abrupt, but, taking her in her own mood, Desmond answers,
bluntly,--
"Monica."
"She _told_ you to come?"
"No. But I want to see her."
"She has gone to her room."
"Make her leave it again. Tell her I cannot rest until I see her; tell
her anything; only bring her to me for even one short moment."
"But it is some time since I left her: perhaps she is in bed."
"But not asleep yet, surely. She loves _you_, Kit: induce her, then, to
come to her window, that I may even catch a glimpse of her, if I may not
speak with her. But she cannot be in bed; it is so early," says Mr.
Desmond, desperately.
"Well," says Kit, relenting, and striving to forget the blank occasioned
by the substitution of an ordinary Desmond for an extraordinary deity,
"I'll see what can be done."
"You will," eagerly, "really?"
"Yes, really. I will stand your friend," say Kit, solemnly, feeling now
that, even if the old gods have denied her an intimate acquaintance with
them, still they have devoted her to the service of Cupid, and have
secretly commanded her to help on the machinations of his naughty little
highness.
"Then will you tell her I want to see her--_here, now_--for only a bare
second if she so wills it? Will you tell her this from me? Dear Kit,
_sweet_ Kit, I entreat you to do this."
"Oh! how sweet I am when you want me to do something for you!" says she,
with a little smile. "There! I can see through you as clearly as though
you were crystal; but I like you all the same. You must have some good
in you to fall in love with my Monica."
"Others can fall in love with her, too," returns he, with moody
jealousy.
"Ah, yes! I saw that," says Kit, lifting her hands excitedly.
"Who could fail to see it? Who could fail to love her?" says Desmond,
sadly. Then, being in such very poor case, and looking sorrowfully for
comfort from any source, however small, he says, nervously,--
"Kit, answer me truthfully--you have sworn to be my friend: tell me,
then, which do _you_ count the better man,--him, or me?"
But that a sense of honor forbids him to pry into his love's secret
thoughts, he would have asked whom _she_ counted the better man.
"You," says Kit, calmly. "I have no doubt about it. I _hate_ fat men,
and--and so does Monica. I have heard her say so, over and over again."
"Oh, Kit! what a dear little girl you are!" says Mr. Desmond, with
grateful fervor.
"Well, I'm glad you like me," says Kit, "because"--frankly--"I like you.
It was very good of you to lend that gun to Terry; I haven't forgotten
that, though, goodness knows, I only hope he won't do himself to death
with it" (she delights in old-world phrases such as this); "and I like
you, too, for loving Monica. Isn't she--" laying her hand upon his arm,
and looking trustfully into his eyes,--"_isn't_ she pretty?"
"She is like an angel," says Desmond, feeling all his heart go out to
the fragile, ethereal-looking child before him, as he listens to her
praises of her sister.
"Or a saint, perhaps. Monica is a saintly name. Was she not the mother
of St. Augustine?" says Kit, quickly. After the old gods, passion for
the saints, and their lilies and roses and fiery trials, animates her
childish bosom. "Oh! and that reminded me," she says: "she told me to
bring her in a lily, fresh with dew,--one of those lilies over there in
that dark corner. Do you see them,--tall and white?"
"I see. Let me pick one for her. Here, take it to her, and," laying his
lips upon it, "_this_ with it."
"I will. And now let me run in and try my utmost to persuade her to come
out here. But," doubtfully, as she remembers how Monica refused with
studied coldness to meet his parting glance at the Barracks a few hours
ago, "do not be too sure of her coming. She _may_ refuse, you know. She
is peculiar in many ways, and she thinks herself bound in honor to Aunt
Priscilla not to look at you. But stay here, just in this spot, and
think all the time that I am doing my very best for you."
Her little face is so earnest as she says all this, so fearful that he
may have to endure disappointment, that he is greatly touched. Pushing
back her hair from her forehead with both hands, he lays a light but
loving kiss upon her brow.
"Go, my best friend. I trust all to you," he says, after which the
slender sprite springs away from him, and, entering the shadows beyond,
is soon lost to him.
Reaching the house, she mounts the stairs with swift but silent
footsteps, and, after a nervous hesitation before the door of her aunt
Priscilla's room, finds herself once again face to face with Monica.
That pretty cause of all this plotting is not in bed, as Kit had
predicted might be the case. She is not even undressed. She has only
exchanged her azure gown for a loose white morning robe, long and
trailing, and lavishly trimmed at the throat and wrists with some rare
old Mechlin lace that Aunt Penelope had given her a week ago, glad in
the thought that it may perchance add another charm to the beauty of her
darling.
Her hair is rolled up in a small, soft knot behind; her face is a little
pale; her eyes, large and luminous, have great heavy shadows lying
beneath them, suggestive of fatigue and tiring thought. Altogether, she
is looking as lovely as any heart can desire.
"Ah, you have returned!" she says, as Kit enters. "How long you have
been! I gave you up. I thought some pixy had become enamoured of you and
had carried you off to his kingdom."
"I was in danger of nothing so insignificant as a pixy. It was the great
Apollo's self I feared," says Kit, with a sly humorous smile. "And here
is your lily: _he_ sent it to you with his love and a kiss."
"Apollo?" smiling.
"Why, yes. Who else could it be at this hour?"
"Yet there is something strange in your manner."
"That is as it should be. On such a night as this, how could one escape
a little touch of that 'moonstruck madness' I spoke of a while since? Go
out yourself, walk through that moonlit garden just where I walked, to
where in that corner over the rays melt into shadow, and try if there be
nothing in it to make your heart beat faster."
"I could do it, and return calm as I am now."
"Then you are no true woman."
"What! must a woman be so foolishly romantic as to tremble in the
moonlight, to be true?"
"Moonlights differ. There is a witchery abroad to-night. Go, and judge
for yourself if there be not truth in my words."
"I can see enough of it from this," says Monica, leaning her bare snowy
arms--from which her loose sleeves have fallen--upon the window-ledge,
and turning her eyes to the pale sky studded with bright stars, "to
bewitch me, if indeed it has the power you ascribe to it."
Foiled in her first effort to send her to Desmond's arms, Kit flings
herself upon the ground beside her, and lays her arms upon her lap and
looks lovingly but reproachfully into her eyes.
"I think you were a little unkind to that dear Brian this evening," she
says.
"That dear Brian will recover from my cruel treatment, I make no doubt,"
says Monica, with affected lightness, though, in truth, remorse is
gnawing at her heartstrings.
"If he does, he will show his very good sense. He loves you: why, then,
do you _flout_ and scorn him?"
In the ancient library below, the young ladies in the novels always
_flouted_ their lovers. Not having the faintest idea how they perform
this arduous task, Kit still adopts the word as having a sonorous sound,
and uses it now with--as she hopes--great effect.
"I do _not_ flout him," says Monica, indignantly. "But what am I to do?
am I to make Aunt Priscilla wretched, then, because of him, and break
her poor heart perhaps?"
"Oh, bother her heart!" says the younger Miss Beresford, with more
candor than decency: "think of _his_ poor heart, if you like, wasting
and wearing away because of your unkindness. If _I_ had a lover, that
is not how I should treat him. I should do anything in the world he
asked me. I should defy everybody in the world for him, and think them
well lost. I should run away with him at a moment's notice if he asked
me. _Now!_"
"Oh, Kit!" says Monica, aghast at all this energy.
"I should indeed," nothing daunted; "I shouldn't hesitate. And, at all
events, I should be civil to him at all times. Why, the way you treated
that wretched young man to-day at Clonbree Barracks was, I consider,
shameful! And you call yourself, I dare say, soft-hearted. To _look_ at
you, one would think you couldn't be unkind if you tried; and yet the
_barbarity_ of your conduct to-day, to a person who literally worships
the ground you walk on, was----"
"But what did I do?" interrupts poor Monica, trembling before this
whirlwind.
"What _didn't_ you do? you mean. You would not even grant him one kind
parting glance. I could have _cried_ for him, he looked so sad and
forlorn. I think he looked like suicide,--I do, indeed,--and I shouldn't
wonder a bit if in the morning we heard----"
"Oh, Kit, don't! _don't!_" says Monica, in an agony, as this awful
insinuation gains force with her.
"Well, I won't then," says the advocate, pretending to surrender her
point by adroitly changing her front. A very Jesuit at soul is this
small Kit. "After all, I daresay he will grow tired of your incivility,
and so--forget you. Some one else will see how dear a fellow he is, and
smile upon him, and then he will give you up."
This picture, being in Monica's eyes even _more_ awful than the former,
makes great havoc in her face, rendering her eyes large and sorrowful,
and, indeed, so suffused with the heart's water that she seems upon the
very verge of tears. She turns these wet but lovely orbs upon her
tormentor.
"That would be the best thing he could do for _himself_," she says, so
sadly that Kit insensibly creeps closer to her; "and as for me, it
doesn't matter about me, of course."
"Monica, you like him, then," says Kit, suddenly, rising on her knees
and looking into her sister's averted eyes. "I am sure of it: I know it
now. Why did you not confide in me before?"
"Because it seems all so hopeless; even--if I loved him enough to marry
him--_they_ would never give in" (meaning, presumably, her aunts): "so
why should he or I waste time over so impossible a theory?"
"Why should it be impossible? Why should you not be married?"
"Because the fates are against us. Not," quickly, "that _that_ so much
matters: I don't want to marry _anybody_! But--but," lowering her lids,
"I do want him to _love_ me."
"My dear child, talk sense if you talk at all," says the material Kit.
"There never yet was a heroine in any novel ever read by me (and I have
had a large experience) who didn't want to marry the man of her heart.
Now just look at that girl of Rhoda Broughton's, in 'Good-by,
Sweetheart!' We can all see she didn't die of any disease, but simply
because she couldn't be wedded to the man she loved. _There's_ a girl
for you! give _me_ a girl like that. If ever I fall in love with a man,
and I find I can't marry him, I shall make a point of dying of grief. It
is so graceful; just like what I have heard of Irving and Ellen Terry--I
mean, Romeo and Juliet!"
"But I can't bear to deceive Aunt Priscilla," says Monica. "She is so
kind, so good."
"Stuff and nonsense!" says Kit promptly. "Do you suppose, when Aunt
Priscilla was young, she would have deserted--let us say--Mr. Desmond
the elder, at the beck and call of any one? She has too much spirit, to
do her credit. Though I must say her spirit is rather out of place now,
at times."
"What would you have me do, then?" asks Monica, desperately.
"Oh, nothing," says Kit, airily,--"really _nothing_. I am too young, of
course, to give advice," with a little vicious toss of her small head.
"And of course, too, I know nothing of the world's ways," with another
toss, that conveys to her auditor the idea that she believes herself
thoroughly versed and skilled in society's lore, but that as yet she is
misunderstood. "And it is not my place, of course, to dictate to an
elder sister." This severely, and evidently intended as a slap at Monica
because of some little rebuke delivered by her, the other day, on the
subject of age. "But," with concentrated energy, "I would not be
_brutal_, if I were you."
"Brutal?" faintly.
"Yes, _brutal_, to keep him waiting for you all this time in the shadow
near the ivy wall!"
Having discharged this shell, she waits in stony silence for a reply.
She waits some time. Then--
"Are you speaking of--of Mr. Desmond?" asks Monica, in a trembling
voice.
"Yes. He is standing there now, and has been, for--oh, for hours,--on
the bare chance of gaining one word from you."
"Now?" starting.
"Yes. He said he would wait until I had persuaded you to go out. If I
had such a lover, I know I should not keep him waiting for me all the
evening _shivering_ with cold."
(It is the balmiest of summer nights.)
"Oh! what shall I do?" says Monica, torn in two between her desire to be
true to her aunt and yet not unkind to her lover.
"As I said before," says the resolute Kit, turning her small pale face
up to her sister, "I know I am not entitled to dictate to any one, but
this I know, too, that if I were you, and _twenty_ Aunt Priscillas were
at my side, I should still--go to him! There!"
She conquers. Monica rises slowly, and as a first move in the desired
direction goes--need I say it?--to the looking-glass. Need I say, also,
that she feels dissatisfied with her appearance?
"Then I suppose I had better dress myself all over again," she says,
glancing with much discontent at the charming vision the glass returns
to her.
"No, no!" says Kit, decidedly. She has now arranged herself as Mistress
of the Ceremonies, and quite gives herself airs. "Do not add even a
touch to your toilet. You are quite too sweet as you are, and 'time
presses'" (another quotation from one of her mouldy volumes).
"But _this_," says Monica, plucking at her pretty loose gown, that hangs
in limp artistic folds round her slight figure and is pranked out with
costly laces.
"It is perfect! Have you no eyes for the beautiful? There, go, you silly
child; Nature has been so good to you, you now deride her prodigality,
and make little of the gifts she has bestowed upon you. Go to----"
"Good gracious!" says Monica, pausing to stare at her aghast. "Where did
you learn all that?"
"It is in a book below; I learned it by heart, to say it to you some
day, and now I have done it. There, be quick! He will be _gone_ if you
don't make haste. His patience by this time must be exhausted. Think
what he has been enduring; I only hope he hasn't fainted from sheer
fatigue, that's all!"
"Will you stay here till I come back," says Monica, nervously, "or will
you come with me?"
"I shall stay here; and don't hurry on my account. I shall be quite
happy with this lamp and your Chaucer. There, go now; and tell him I
sent you. And," mischievously, "don't be civil to him, you know, but
rate him soundly for presuming to disturb your worship at this hour."
"Oh! if any one sees me!" says Monica, quaking.
"You will never get hanged for a big crime," returns Kit, laughing; and
then Monica steps out lightly, fearfully, upon the corridor outside, and
so, with her heart dying within her, creeps past her aunt's doors, and
down the wide staircase, and through the hall, and at last into the
silver moonlight!