How Mrs. Herrick grows worldly-wise and Olga frivolous--How Mr.
Kelly tells a little story; and how, beneath the moonlight, many
things are made clear.
Dinner has come to an end. The men are still dallying with their wine.
The women are assembled in the drawing-room.
Olga, having drawn back the curtains from the central window, is
standing in its embrasure, looking out silently upon the glories of the
night. For the storm has died away; the wind is gone to sleep; the rain
has sobbed itself to death; and now a lovely moon is rising
slowly--slowly--from behind a rippled mass of grayest cloud. From out
the dark spaces in the vault above a few stars are shining,--the more
brilliantly because of the blackness that surrounds them. The air is
sultry almost to oppressiveness, and the breath of the roses that have
twined themselves around the railings of the balcony renders the calm
night full of sweetest fragrance.
Even as she gazes, spellbound, the clouds roll backward, and stars grow
and multiply exceedingly, until all
"the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold."
Madam O'Connor is talking to Miss Browne of certain family matters
interesting to both. Miss Fitzgerald has gone upstairs, either to put on
another coating of powder, or else to scold her long-suffering maid. Her
mother has fallen into a gentle, somewhat noisy snooze.
A sudden similar thought striking both Monica and Mrs. Herrick at the
same moment, they rise, and make a step towards the window where Olga is
standing all alone.
Hermia, laying her hand on Monica's arm, entreats her by a gesture to
change her purpose; whereon Monica falls back again, and Hermia, going
on, parts the curtains, and, stepping in to where Olga is, joins her
uninvited.
"Dreaming?" she says, lightly.
"Who would not dream on such a night as this? the more beautiful because
of the miserable day to which it is a glorious termination. See, Hermia,
how those planets gleam and glitter, as though in mockery of us poor
foolish mortals down below."
"I don't feel a bit more foolish than I did this morning," says Hermia.
"Do you, dear? You were giving yourself a great deal of credit for your
common sense then."
"'Common sense,'--worldly wisdom,--how I hate the sound of all that
jargon!" says Olga, petulantly. "Let us forget we _must_ be wise, if
only for one night. The beauty of that silent world of flowers beyond
has somehow entered into me. Let me enjoy it. 'How sweet the moonlight
sleeps upon that bank' down there! Watch it. Can you see how the roses
quiver beneath its touch, as though stirred by some happy dream?"
"It is indeed a perfect night!" says Hermia, looking at her in some
surprise. There is a suspicion of excitement in Olga's manner--arising,
as it were, from the desire to hide one emotion by the betrayal of
another--that strikes her listener as strange.
"How softly the air beats upon one's face!" says Mrs. Bohun, leaning a
little forward. "The night is, as you say, perfect. Yet I don't know
what is the matter with me: the more I feel the loveliness of all
around, the sadder my heart seems to grow."
"What!" says Hermia, lifting her brows, "am I to learn now that you--the
gayest of all mortals--have at last succumbed to the insufferable
dreariness of this merry world?"
"You run too fast. I am a little perplexed, perhaps; but I have not
succumbed to anything."
"Or any _one_, I hope, unless it be to your advantage. You are playing a
silly game, Olga."
"The world would be lost unless it had a fool to sport with now and
then."
"But why should _you_ be the one to pander to its pleasures?"
"Who more fitting? I am tired of hearing you apply that word 'silly' to
me, morning, noon, and night."
"It is too late to believe it possible that you and I should quarrel,"
says Mrs. Herrick, in a perfectly even tone: "so don't try to get up an
imaginary grievance. You know you are dearer to me than anything on
earth, after the children."
"Well, don't scold me any more," says Olga, coaxingly.
"I never scold; I only reason."
"Oh! but that is so much worse," says Olga. "It means the scolding, and
a lot more besides. Do anything but reason with me, my dear Hermia."
"I _will_ say that I think you are throwing yourself away."
"Where? Over the balcony?"--wilfully. "I assure you, you misjudge me: I
am far too great a coward."
"You are not too great a coward to contemplate the committing of a much
more serious _betise_. To-night his attentions were specially marked,
and you allowed them."
"I can't think what you mean."
"Will you deny that Mr. Ronayne paid you very marked attention
to-night?"
"Marked! Where did he make his impression, then? He didn't _pinch_ me,
if you mean that."
"Of course you can follow your own wishes, dearest, and I shall neither
gain nor lose; but it does seem a pity, when you might be a countess and
have the world at your feet. I know few so altogether fitted to fill the
position, and still you reject it. You are pretty, clever,
charming,--everything of the most desirable."
"Am I?" She steps into the drawing-room, and brings herself by a swift
step or two opposite a huge mirror let into one of the walls. Standing
before it, she surveys herself leisurely from head to foot, and then she
smiles.
"I don't know about the 'clever,'" she says; "but I am _sure_ I am
pretty. In town last season--do you remember?--my hair created quite a
furore, it is so peculiarly light. Ever so many people wanted to paint
me. Yes, it was all very pleasant."
"Do you think it will be as pleasant to live _here_ all your days, and
find no higher ambition than the hope that your ponies may be prettier
than Mrs. So-and-so's?"
"Do you remember that fancy ball, and how the prince asked who I was,
and all the rest of it? He said one or two very pretty things to me. He,
like you, said I was charming. Do you know," naively, "I have never got
over the feeling of being _obliged_ to any one who pays me a compliment?
I am obliged to _you_ now."
"And to the prince _then_. But you won't see many princes if you stay in
Ireland, I fancy: they don't hanker after the soil."
"Poor Ireland!" says Mrs. Bohun.
"And compliments, I should say, will be almost as scarce."
"Ah! now, _there_ you are wrong: _they_ fly beneath these murky skies.
We absolutely revel in them. What true Irishman but has one ripping
freely from his mouth on the very smallest chance? And then, my dear
Hermia, consider, are we not the proud possessors of the
blarney-stone?"
"I wish, dearest, you would bring yourself to think seriously of
Rossmoyne."
"I do think seriously of him. It would be impossible to think of him in
any other way, he is so dull and pompous."
"He would make an excellent husband!"
"I have had enough of husbands. They are very unsatisfactory people. And
besides----"
"Well?"
"Rossmoyne has a temper."
"And forty thousand a year."
"Not good enough."
"If you are waiting for an angel, you will wait forever. All men
are----"
"Oh, Hermia! really, I _can't_ listen to such naughty words, you know. I
really wonder at you!"
"I wasn't going to say anything of the kind," says Hermia, with great
haste, not seeing the laughter lurking in Olga's dark eyes. "I merely
meant that----"
"Don't explain!--_don't!_" says Olga; "I couldn't endure any more of
it." And she laughs aloud.
"Rossmoyne is very devoted to you. Is there anything against him, except
his temper?"
"Yes, his beard. _Nothing_ would induce me to marry a man with hair all
over his face. It isn't _clean_."
"Give him five minutes and a razor, and he might do away with it."
"Give him five minutes and a razor, and he might do away with himself
too," says Olga, provokingly. "Really. I think one thing would please me
just as much as the other."
"Oh, then, you are bent on refusing him?" says Hermia, calmly. With very
few people does she ever lose her temper; with Olga--never.
"I am not so sure of that, at all," says Olga, airily. "It is quite
within the possibilities that I may marry him some time or
other,--sooner or later. There is a delightful vagueness about those two
dates that gives me the warmest encouragement."
"It is a pity you cannot be serious _sometimes_," says Mrs. Herrick,
mildly.
A little hand upon her gown saves further expostulation. A little face
looking up with a certainty of welcome into hers brings again that
wonderful softness into Hermia's eyes.
"Is it you, my sweetest?" she says, fondly. "And where have you been? I
have watched in vain for you for the last half-hour, my Fay."
"I was in the dining-room. But nurse called me; and now I have come to
say good-night," says the child.
"Good-night, then, and God bless you, my chick. But where is my
Georgie?"
"I'm here," says Georgie, gleefully, springing upon her in a violent
fashion, that one would have believed hateful to the calm Hermia, yet
that is evidently most grateful to her. She embraces the boy warmly, and
lets her eyes follow him until he is out of sight. Then she turns again
to the little maiden at her side.
"I must go with Georgie," says the child.
"So you shall. But first tell me, what have you got in your hand?"
"Something to go to bed with. See, mammy! It is a pretty red plum,"
opening her delicate pink fist, for her mother's admiration.
"Where did you get it, darling?"
"In the dining-room."
"From Lord Rossmoyne?"
"No. From Mr. Kelly. I would not have the one Lord Rossmoyne gave me."
Olga laughs mischievously, and Mrs. Herrick colors.
"Why?" she says.
"Because I like Mr. Kelly best."
"And what did you give him?"
"Nothing."
"Not even a kiss?" says Olga.
"No," somewhat shamefacedly.
"Her mother's own daughter!" says Olga, caressing the child tenderly,
but laughing still. "A chilly mortal."
"Good-night, my own," says Hermia, and the child, having kissed them
both again, runs away.
Olga follows her with wistful eyes.
"I almost wish I had a baby!" she says.
"_You?_ Why, you can't take care of yourself! You are the least fitted
to have a child of any woman that I know. Leave all such charges to
staid people like me. Why, you are a baby at heart, yourself, this
moment."
"That would be no drawback. It would only have created sympathy between
me and my baby. I would have understood all her bad moods and condoned
all her crimes."
"If you had been a mother, you would have had a very naughty child."
"I should have had a very happy child, at least." Then she laughs.
"Fancy me with a dear little baby!" she says,--"a thing all my own, that
would rub its soft cheek against mine and love me better than anything!"
"And rumple all your choicest Parisian gowns, and pull your hair to
pieces. I couldn't fancy it at all."
Here the door opens to admit the men, the celestial half-hour after
dinner having come to an end. With one consent they all converge towards
the window, where Olga and Hermia are standing with Monica, who had
joined them to bid good-night to little Fay. Miss Fitzgerald, who had
returned to the drawing-room freshly powdered, seeing how the tide runs,
crosses the room too, and mingles with the group in the window.
"How long you have been! We feared you dead and buried," she says to
Kelly, with elephantine playfulness.
"We have, indeed. I thought the other men would never stir. Why did you
not give me the chance of leaving them? The faintest suggestion that
_you_ wanted me would have brought me here _hours_ ago."
"If I had been sure of that, I should have sent you a message; it would
have saved me a lecture," says Olga, flashing a smile at Hermia.
"I should disdain to send a message," says the proud Bella, "I would not
_compel_ any man's presence. 'Come if you will; stay away if you won't,'
is _my_ motto; and I cannot help thinking I am right."
"You are, indeed, quite right. Coercion is of small avail in _some_
cases," says Olga, regarding her with the calm dignity of one who
plainly considers the person addressed of very inferior quality indeed.
"A woman can scarcely be too jealous of her rights nowadays," says Miss
Fitzgerald. "If she has a proper knowledge of her position, she ought to
guard it carefully."
"A fine idea finely expressed!" says Kelly, as though smitten into
reverence by the grandeur of her manner.
"I wonder what is a man's proper position?" says Olga lazily.
"He will always find it at a woman's feet," says Miss Fitzgerald,
grandly, elated by Kelly's apparent subjection.
That young man looks blankly round him. Under tables and chairs and
lounges his eyes penetrate, but without the desired result.
"So sorry I can't see a footstool anywhere!" he says, lifting regretful
eyes to Miss Fitzgerald; "but for that I should be at your feet from
this until you bid me rise."
"Hypocrite!" says Olga in his ear; after which conversation becomes more
general; and presently Miss Fitzgerald goes back to the fire under the
mistaken impression that probably one of the men will follow her there.
The _one_--whoever he is--_doesn't_.
"Do you know," says Mr. Kelly, in a low tone, to the others, "the ugly
girl's awfully nice! She is a pleasant deceit. 'She has no winsome
looks, no pretty frowning,' I grant you; but she can hold her own, and
is _so_ good-humored."
"What a lovely night!" says Monica, gazing wistfully into the misty
depths of the illuminated darkness beyond. "I want to step into it,
and--we have not been out all day."
"Then why not go now?" says Hermia, answering her glance in a kindly
spirit.
"Ah! _will_ you come?" says Monica, brightening into glad excitement.
"Let us go as far as the fountain in the lower garden," says Olga: "it
is always beautiful there when the moon is up."
"Avoid the grass, however; wet feet are dangerous," says Lord Rossmoyne,
carefully.
"You will die an old bachelor," retorts Olga, saucily, "if you take so
much 'thought for the morrow.'"
"It will certainly not be my fault if I do," returns Rossmoyne, calmly,
but with evident meaning.
"Mrs. Bohun, bring your guitar," says Desmond, "and we will make Ronayne
sing to it, and so imagine ourselves presently in the land of the olive
and the palm."
"Shall we ask the others to come with us?" says Monica, kindly, glancing
back into the drawing-room.
"Miss Browne, for example," suggests Owen Kelly. If he hopes by this
speech to arouse jealousy in anybody present, he finds himself, later
on, mightily mistaken.
"If she is as good a sort as you say, I daresay she would like it," says
Olga. "And, besides, if we leave her to Bella's tender mercies she will
undoubtedly be done to death by the time we return."
"Oh, do go and rescue her," says Mrs. Herrick, turning to Kelly. Her
tone is almost appealing.
"Perhaps Miss Fitzgerald will come too," says Monica, somewhat
fearfully.
"Don't be afraid," says Olga. "_Fancy_ Bella running the risk of having
a bad eye or a pink nose in the morning! She knows much better than
that."
"Tell Miss Browne to make haste," says Mrs. Herrick, turning to Kelly.
"Because we are impatient,--we are longing to precipitate ourselves into
the moonlight. Come, Olga; come, Monica; they can follow."
Miss Browne, however, on being appealed to, shows so honest a disregard
for covering of any sort, beyond what decency had already clothed her
with, that she and Kelly catch up with the others even before the
fountain is reached.
It is, indeed, a fairy dell to which they have been summoned,--a magic
circle, closed in by evergreens with glistening leaves. "Dark with
excessive light" appears the scene; the marble basin of the fountain,
standing out from the deep background, gleams snow-white beneath Diana's
touch. "The moon's an arrant thief." Perchance she snatches from great
Sol some beauties even rarer than that "pale fire" he grants her--it may
be, against his will. So it may well be thought, for what fairest day
can be compared with a moonlit night in languorous July?
The water of the fountain, bubbling ever upwards, makes sweet music on
the silent air; but, even as they hark to it, a clearer, sweeter music
makes the night doubly melodious. From bough to bough it comes and
goes,--a heavenly harmony, not to be reproduced by anything of earthly
mould.
"O nightingale, that on yon gloomy spray
Warbles at eve, when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill."
Clear from the depths of the pine woods beyond, the notes ascend,
softly, tenderly. Not often do they enrich our Irish air, but sometimes
they come to gladden us with a music that can hardly be termed of earth.
The notes rise and swell and die, only to rise and to slowly fade again,
like "linked sweetness long drawn out."
Seating themselves on the edge of the fountain, they acknowledge
silently the beauty of the hour. Olga's hand, moving through the water,
breaks it into little wavelets on which the riotous moonbeams dance.
"Where are your bangles, Olga? you used to be famous for them?" asks
Desmond, idly.
"I have tired of them."
"Poor bangles!" says Ulic Ronayne, in a low tone heard only by her.
"What a heavy sigh!"
"A selfish one, too. More for myself than for the discarded bangles. Yet
their grievance is mine."
"I thought they suited you," says Desmond.
"Did you? Well, but they had grown so common; every one used to go about
laden with them. And then they made such a tiresome tinkle-tinkle all
over the place."
"What place?" says Lord Rossmoyne, who objects to slang of even the
mildest description from any woman's lips, most of all from the lips of
her whom he hopes to call his wife.
"Don't be stupid!" says this prospective wife, with considerable
petulance.
"You are fickle, I doubt," goes on Rossmoyne, unmoved. "A few months ago
you raved about your bangles, and had the prettiest assortment I think I
ever saw. Thirty-six on each arm, or something like it. We used to call
them your armor. You said you were obliged to wear the same amount
exactly on each arm, lest you might grow crooked."
"I know few things more unpleasant than having one's silly remarks
brought up to one years afterwards," says Olga, with increasing temper.
"_Months_ not _years_," says Rossmoyne, carefully. Whereupon Mrs. Bohun
turns her back upon him, and Mrs. Herrick tells herself she would like
to give him a good shake for so stupidly trying to ruin his own game,
and Ulic Ronayne feels he is on the brink of swearing with him an
eternal friendship.
"Bangles?" breaks in Owen Kelly, musingly. "Harmless little circular
things women wear on their wrists, aren't they? But awkward too at
times,--amazingly awkward. As Olga has feelingly remarked, they _can_
make a marvellously loud tinkle-tinkle at times. I know a little story
about bangles, that ought to be a warning against the use of them. Would
any one like to hear my little story? It is short, but very sweet."
Every one instantly says "Yes," except Olga, who has drawn herself
together and is regarding him with a stony glare.
"Well, there was once on a time a young woman, who had some bangles, and
a young man; she had other things too, such as youth and beauty, but
they weren't half so important as the first two items; and wherever she
and her bangles went, there went the young man too. And for a long time
nobody knew which he loved best, the beauteous maiden or the gleaming
bangles. Do I make myself clear?"
"Wonderfully so, for _you_," says Mrs. Herrick.
"Well one day the young man's preference was made 'wonderfully so' too.
And it was in this wise. On a certain sunny afternoon, the young woman
found herself in a conservatory that opened off a drawing-room, being
divided from it only by a hanging Indian curtain; a _hanged_ Indian
curtain she used to call it ever afterwards; but that was bad grammar,
and bad manners too."
"I feel I'm going to sleep," says Desmond, drowsily. "I hope somebody
will rouse me when he has done, or pick me out of the water if I drop
into it. Such a rigmarole of a story I never heard in my life."
"Caviare can't be appreciated by the general; it is too strong for you,"
says Mr. Kelly, severely. "But to continue----Anything wrong with you,
my dear Olga?"
"Nothing!" says Mrs. Bohun, with icy indignation.
"Well. In this conservatory my heroine of the bangles found herself; and
here, too, as a natural consequence, was found the young man. There was
near them a lounge,--skimpy enough for one, but _they_ found it amply
large for _two_. Curious fact in itself, wasn't it? And I think the
young man so far forgot himself as to begin to make violent----and just
as he was about to emb----the young woman, whose name was----, she very
properly, but with somewhat mistaken haste, moved away from him, and in
so doing set all her bangles a-tinkling. Into full cry they burst,
whereupon the curtain was suddenly drawn back from the drawing-room
side, giving the people there a full view of the conservatory _and_
its--contents! The _denouement_ was full of interest,--positively
thrilling! I should advise all true lovers of a really good novel to
obtain this book from their libraries and discover it for themselves."
Here Mr. Kelly stops, and looks genially around.
"I think I shall take to writing reviews," he says, sweetly. "I like my
own style."
A dead silence follows his "little story," and then Mrs. Herrick lifts
her eyes to his.
"'I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedick: nobody marks
you,'" she quotes, with a touch of scorn.
"_You_ do, my dear Lady Disdain, or else you would not have addressed me
that contemptuous remark."
"An absurd story, altogether!" says Olga, throwing up her head, a smile
lightening her eyes as they meet Kelly's. At her tone, which is more
amused than annoyed, Ronayne lets his hand fall into the water close to
hers, and doubtless finds its cool touch (the water's, I mean, of
course) very refreshing, as it is fully five minutes before he brings it
to the surface again.
"True, nevertheless," says Kelly. "Both the principals in my story were
friends of mine. I knew--indeed, I may safely say I _know_--them well."
"I am glad you said '_were_,'" says Olga, shaking her blonde head at
him. Lord Rossmoyne, by this time, is looking as black as a
thunder-cloud.
"A questionable friend you must be, to tell tales out of school," says
Mrs. Herrick.
"I defy any one to say I have told anything," says Kelly, with
much-injured innocence. "But I am quite prepared to hear my actions, as
usual, grossly maligned. I am accustomed to it now. The benefit of the
doubt is not for _me_."
"There isn't a doubt," says Hermia.
"Go on. I must try to bear it,"--meekly. "I know I am considered
incapable of a pure motive."
"Was it you drew back the curtain?"
"Well, really, yes, I believe it was. I wanted my friend, you see, and I
knew I should find him with the bangles. Yes; it was I drew the
curtain."
"Just what I should have expected from you," says Mrs. Herrick.
"Ah! Thank you! Now at last you are beginning to see things in their
true light, and to take my part," says Mr. Kelly, with exaggerated
gratitude. "Now, indeed, I feel I have not lived in vain! You have,
though at a late hour, recognized the extraordinary promptitude that
characterizes my every action. While another might have been hesitating,
I drew the curtain. I am seldom to be found wanting, I may, indeed,
always be discovered just where----"
"You _aren't_ wanting," interrupts Mrs. Herrick, with a sudden smile.
"How can _that_ be," says Kelly, with reproachful sadness, "when I am
generally to be found near you?"
At this Hermia gives in, and breaks into a low soft laugh.
"But I wish you had not told that story of Olga and Mr. Ronayne," she
says, in a whisper, and with some regret. "You saw how badly Rossmoyne
took it."
"That is partly why I told it. I think you are wrong in trying to make
that marriage: she would be happier with Ronayne."
"For a month or two, perhaps."
"Oh, make it _three_," says Kelly, satirically. "Surely the little
winged god has so much staying power."
"A few weeks ago you told me you did not believe in him at all."
"I have changed all that."
"Ah! _you_ can be fickle too."
"A man is not necessarily fickle because when he discovers the only true
good he leaves the bad and presses towards it. I think, too, his
mentor," in a lowered tone, "should be the last to misjudge him."
"Nothing is so lasting, at least, as riches," says Mrs. Herrick, with a
chastened but unmistakable desire to change his mood. "Olga with
unlimited means and an undeniable place in the world of society would be
a happier Olga than as the wife of a country gentleman."
"I don't agree with you; but you know best--_perhaps_. You speak your
own sentiments, of course. A title is indispensable to you too, as well
as to her?"
His tone is half a question.
"It counts," she says, slowly, trifling with firm though slender fingers
with the grasses that are growing in the interstices of the marble.
"Pshaw!" says Kelly. Rising with a vehemence foreign to him, he crosses
to where Ulic Ronayne is standing alone.