How Monica with faltering footsteps enters the mysterious moonlight,
and how she fares therein.
What a noise the tiny gravel makes beneath her feet, as she hurries
rapidly towards the garden! How her heart beats! Oh that she were back
again in her pretty safe room, with the naughty Kit to scold! Oh, if
Aunt Priscilla were to rise, and, looking out of her bedroom window,
catch a glimpse of her, as she hastes to meet the man she has been
forbidden to know! A thousand terrors possess her. The soft beauty of
the night is unseen, the rushing of sweet brooks in the distance is
unheard. She hurries on, a little, lithe, frightened figure, with wide
eyes and parted lips, to the rendezvous she has not sought. And what a
little way it had seemed in the glad daylight, yet what a journey in the
silent, fearsome night! There are real tears, born of sheer nervousness,
in her beautiful eyes, as she runs along the garden path, and at
last--_at last_--finds herself face to face with Desmond.
"Ah, you have come!" cries he, gladly, going to meet her while yet she
is a long way off.
"Yes." She can say no more, but her fear has departed at sight of him,
and once more she grows calm, collected, and mistress of herself. She
keeps well away from him, however, and holds out to him--that "white
wonder"--her hand, from a very great distance, as it seems to him. Does
she distrust him, then? Thinking of this, Brian takes the extended hand,
and holds it in a clasp that though tender is light, and refrains with
much forbearance from pressing his lips to it.
"To come _here_, and at this hour! It is madness!" says Monica, hastily.
"A very blessed madness, then, and with method in it: it has enabled me
to see _you_."
"Oh, do not talk like that. You ought not to see me at all. And, now,
what is it? Kit said you wanted me sadly."
"And so I do, and not only now but always."
"If," reproachfully, "it is nothing pressing, would not to-morrow have
done?"
"To-morrow never comes. There is nothing like to-day; and how could I
have lived till to-morrow? I could not sleep, I could not rest, until I
had seen you. My heart seemed on fire. Monica, how could you have
treated me as you did to-day?"
She is silent. The very fact of her not answering convinces him her
coldness at the Barracks was intentional, and his tone takes an
additional sadness as he speaks again.
"You meant it then?" he says. "You would not throw me even one poor
glance. If you could only look into my heart, and read how cruelly I
felt your unkindness, you might----"
"I don't know what you mean," says Monica. "Why should you talk of
unkindness? Why should I be kinder to you than to another?"
"Of your grace alone; I know that," says the young man, humbly. He has
paid court to many a town-bred damsel before this, and gained their
smiles too, and their sighs; yet now he sues to this cold child as he
never sued before, and knows his very soul is set on her good will.
"Why must you choose me to love,--_me_, of all the world?" says Monica,
tremulously: "it is wide, there are others--and----"
"Because I must. It is my fate, and I am glad of it. Whom worthier could
I love?" says the lover, with fond, passionate reverence.
"Many, no doubt. And why love at all? Let us be friends, then, if it is
indeed decreed that our lives meet----"
"There could never be mere friendship between you and me. If your heart
sleeps, at least your sense must tell you that."
"Then I could wish myself without sense. I want to know nothing about
it. Alas! how sad a thing is love!"
"And how joyous! It is the one emotion to be fed and fostered. 'All
others are but vanity.' I will persist in loving you until I die."
"That is a foolish saying; and, even if you do, what will come of it
all?" says Monica, with a sigh.
"Marriage, I trust," returns he, right cheerily. "Because, to give you
another example of love's endurance, and to quote old Southey to you, I
will tell you that he says,--
"'It is indestructable;
Its holy flame forever burneth:
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.'
but not yet awhile, I hope."
"You are a special pleader," says she, with a sudden smile.
"For the cause that I plead I would that I were a more eloquent
advocate."
"You are eloquent enough," glancing at him for a moment, and then again
turning away from him; "too eloquent," she says, with a little sigh.
He is still holding her hands, but now he does not speak or answer her
in any wise. A silence falls upon them, calm as the night. In "full
orbed glory" the moon above sails through the skies.
"A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven."
"There is one thing I must say, Monica," says the young man at last,
lifting her face gently with one hand until her eyes look into his own:
"remember, my life is in your hands."
"Do not overburden me," she answers, but in so low a voice that it can
scarce be heard. Yet _he_ hears.
"My darling, must I be a burden to you?" he says. "Monica, if this my
courtship is hateful to you, or more than you can bear, dismiss me now,
and I will go from you, no matter what it costs me."
"You are no true lover, to talk like that," she says, with a shadowy
smile.
"I am lover enough to wish you no pain or weariness of spirit."
"I doubt you are too good for me," she answers with a little burst of
feeling.
"I must be a paragon indeed if that be so," returns he. "Oh, Monica, if
you could only love me!"
"I _dare_ not." Then, as though sorry for these words, she holds out her
hands to him, and says, with a quick smile, "Oh, Romeo, Romeo! wherefore
art thou Romeo?"
"I wish I knew," returns he sadly. "Yet if I were sure of one thing I
should not despair. Monica, tell me you don't like Ryde."
"I can't," says Monica. "He is very kind to me always. I am sure I ought
to like him."
"How has he been kind to you?"
"Oh, in many ways."
"He has brought you a cup of somebody else's tea, I suppose, and has
probably trotted after you with a camp-stool; is that kindness?"
"If one is hot or tired, yes."
"You are one of the most grateful specimen of your sex. I wish there was
anything for which you might be grateful to me. But I am not great at
the _petits soins_ business."
"I shouldn't have thought so this afternoon," says Monica, maliciously,
"when you were happy with Olga Bohun. But see, the moon has risen quite
above the elms. I must go."
"Not yet. There is something else. When am I to see you again?--when?"
"That is as fate wills it."
"_You_ are my fate. Will it, then, and say to-morrow."
"No, no!" exclaims she, releasing her hands from his, "I cannot indeed.
I _must_ not. In being here with you now I am doing wrong, and am
betraying the two people in the world who are most kind to me. How shall
I look into their eyes to-morrow? No; I will not promise to meet you
anywhere--_ever_."
"How tender you are with them, and with me how cruel!"
"You have many joys in your life, but they how few!"
"You are wrong there. The world has grown useless to me since I met you.
You are my one joy, and you elude me; therefore pity me too."
"Who made you so gracious a courtier?" asks she, with a little shrug of
her rounded shoulders.
"Now you cast scorn upon me," says Desmond, half angrily, and as he says
it the thought of Kit's word _flout_ comes to her, and she smiles. It is
an idle thought, yet it is with difficulty she cleaves to the less
offensive smiles and keeps herself from laughing aloud.
"Why should I do that?" she says, a little saucily. Indeed, she knows
this young man to be so utterly in her power--and power is so sweet when
first acquired, and so prone to breed tyranny--that she hardly turns
aside to meditate upon the pain she may be causing him.
"I don't know," a little sadly; then, "Monica, you like me?"
"Yes, I like you," says Miss Beresford, as she might have answered had
she been questioned as to her opinion of an aromatic russet.
Repressing a gesture of impatience, Desmond goes on calmly,--
"Better than Ryde?"
"Than Mr. Ryde?" She stops and glances at the gravel at her feet in a
would-be thoughtful fashion, and pushes it to and fro with her pretty
Louis Quinze shoe. She pauses purposely, and makes quite an affair of
her hesitation.
"Yes, Ryde," says he, impatiently.
"How can I answer that?" she says, at length, with studied deliberation,
"when I know so little of either him--or you?"
His indignation increases.
"Knowing us both at _least_ equally well, you must have formed by this
time some opinion of us."
"I should indeed," says the young girl, slowly, always with her eyes
upon the gravel; "but unfortunately it never occurred to me,--the vital
necessity of doing so, I mean."
Though her head is still bent, he can detect the little amused smile
that is curving her mobile lips. There can be small doubt but that she
is enjoying his discomfiture immensely.
"Certainly there is no reason why _you_ should waste a thought on either
him or me," he returns, stiffly.
"No; and yet I do waste one on--_you_--sometimes," says she, with a
gleam of tenderness, and a swift glance from under her long lashes that
somehow angers him intensely.
"You are a coquette," he says, quietly. There is contempt both in his
look and tone. As she hears it, she suddenly lifts her head, and,
without betraying chagrin, regards him steadfastly.
"Is that so?" she says. "Sometimes I have _thought_ it, but----"
The unmistakable hope her pause contains angers him afresh.
"If you covet the unenviable title," he says, bitterly, "be happy. You
can lay just claim to it. You are more than worthy of it."
"You flatter me," she says, letting a glance so light rest upon him that
it seems but the mere quiver of her eyelids.
"I meant no flattery, believe me."
"I do believe you: I quite understand."
"Not quite, I think," exclaims he, the sudden coldness of her manner
frightening him into better behavior. "If--if I have said anything to
offend you, I ask your forgiveness."
"There is nothing to forgive, indeed, and you have failed to offend me.
But," slowly, "you have made me very sorry for you."
"_Sorry?_"
"Yes, for your most unhappy temper. It is quite the worst, I think, I
have ever met with. _Good_-night Mr. Desmond: pray be careful when going
through that hedge again; there are some rose-trees growing in it, and
thorns do hurt so dreadfully."
So saying, she gathers up her white skirts, and, without a touch of her
hand, or even a last glance, flits like a lissome ghost across the
moonlit paths of the garden, and so is gone.