How the Misses Blake receive the nephew of their sworn foe--How
Monica at all hazards proclaims her truth--And how Miss Priscilla
sees something that upsets her and the belief of years.
One moment of coma ensues. It is an awful moment, in which nobody seems
even to breathe. The two Misses Blake turn into a rigidity that might
mean stone; the young man pauses irresolutely, yet with a sternness
about his lips that bespeaks a settled purpose not to be laid aside for
any reason, and that adds some years to his age.
Monica has turned to him. The tangled wool has fallen unconsciously from
her hands to her feet. Her lips are parted, her eyes wide: she sways a
little. Then a soft rapturous cry breaks from her, there is a
simultaneous movement on his part and on hers; and then--she is in his
arms.
For a few moments speech is impossible to them: there seems nothing in
the wide world but he to her, and she to him.
Then he lifts her face, and looks at her long and eagerly.
"Yes, I have found you again, my love,--_at last_," he says.
"Ah! how long it has seemed!" whispers she, with tears in her eyes.
The old ladies might have been in the next county, so wrapt are they in
their happy meeting. Their hearts are beating in unison; their souls are
in their eyes. She has reached her home,--his breast,--and has laid her
heart on his. The moment is perfect, and as near heaven as we poor
mortals can attain until kindly death comes to our aid.
It is but a little moment, however. It passes, and recollection returns.
Monica, raising her head, sees the two Misses Blake standing side by
side, with folded, nerveless hands, and fixed eyes, and horror-stricken
faces. Shrinking still closer to her lover, Monica regards them with a
troubled conscience and with growing fear. She is at last discovered,
and her sin is beyond redemption.
She trembles in Desmond's arms, and pales visibly. But the frantic
beating of her heart against his renders him strong and bold. He throws
up his head, with the action of one determined to fight to the death.
No one shall ever take her from him. He is only too anxious to enter the
lists and do battle for his love.
And then, as his eyes light upon his foes, his spirit dies. Poor old
ladies, so stupefied, so stricken! are they not already conquered?
Looking at the frail front they present, he feels his weapons must be
blunted in this fight, his gloves anything but steel.
A terrible silence fills the room,--a silence that grows almost
unbearable, until at length it is broken by Miss Priscilla. Her voice is
low, and hushed and broken.
"Monica, why did you deceive us?" she says.
There is reproach, agonized disappointment, in her tone, but no anger.
To these poor old women the moment is tragical. The child of their last
years--the one thing they had held most dear and sacred--has proved
unworthy, has linked herself with the opposition, has entered the lists
of the enemy. They are quite calm, though trembling. Their grief is too
great for tears. But they stand together, and there is a lost and
heart-broken look about them.
Monica, seeing it, breaks away from her lover's restraining arms, and,
running to Miss Priscilla, falls down on her knees before her, and,
clasping her waist with her soft, white arms, bursts into bitter tears.
She clings to Miss Priscilla; but the old lady, though her distress is
very apparent, stands proudly erect, and looks not at her, but at
Desmond. The tears gather slowly in her eyes--tears come ever slowly to
those whose youth lies far behind--and fall upon the repentant sunny
head; but the owner shows no sign of forgiveness; yet I think she would
have dearly liked to take the sweet sinner in her arms, to comfort and
forgive her, but for the pride and wounded feeling that overmastered
her.
"Your presence here, sir, is an insult," she says to Desmond, meaning to
be stern; but her grief has washed away the incivility of her little
speech and has left it only vaguely reproachful. Desmond lowers his head
before her gaze, and refrains from answer or explanation. A great sorrow
for the defencelessness of _their_ sorrow has arisen in his breast for
these old aunts, and killed all meaner thoughts. I think he would have
felt a degree of relief if they had both fallen upon him, and said hard
things to him, and so revenged themselves in part.
Monica is sobbing bitterly. Not able to endure her grief, Desmond,
going even to the feet of Miss Priscilla, tries to raise her from the
ground. But she clings even more closely to Miss Priscilla, and so
mutely refuses to go to him.
A pang, a sudden thought, shoots through him, and renders him desperate.
Will they be bad to his poor little girl when he is gone? will they
scold her?
"Oh, madam," he says to Miss Priscilla, with a break in his voice,
"_try_ to forgive her; be gentle with her. It was all my fault,--mine
entirely. I loved her, and when she refused to hear me plead my cause,
and shrunk from me because of that unhappy division that separates my
family from yours, and because of her reverence for your wishes, I still
urged her, and induced her to meet me secretly."
"You did an evil deed, sir," says Miss Priscilla.
"I acknowledge it. I am altogether to blame," says Desmond, hastily.
"She has had nothing to do with it. Do not, I beseech you, say anything
to her when I am gone that may augment her self-reproach." He looks with
appealing eyes at Miss Blake, his hand on Monica's shoulder, who has her
face hidden in a fold of her aunt's gown.
"Sir," says Miss Priscilla, drawing herself up, with a touch of
old-world grandeur in her manner, but a sad tremulousness in her tone,
"my niece has been with us now for some time, and we have dared to hope
she has been treated in accordance with the great love we feel for her."
"The _great_ love," echoes Miss Penelope, gently. Though deeply
distressed, both old ladies are conscious of a subdued admiration for
the young man, because of the tenderness of his fears for his beloved.
"But if," says Miss Priscilla, with a mournful glance at the pretty
bowed head--"if _she_ thinks we have failed in our love towards her, as
indeed it seems it may be, by your finding it necessary to ask us to
treat her with kindness in this trouble,--we can only say to her that we
regret,--that we----" Here she breaks down, and covers her sad old face
with her trembling hands.
Monica springs to her feet.
"Oh, auntie!" she says, a world of love and reproach and penitence in
her voice. She throws her arms round her aunt's neck; and, Miss
Priscilla clasping her in turn, somehow in one moment the crime is
condoned, and youth and age are met in a fond embrace.
"Go, sir," says Miss Priscilla, presently, without lifting her eyes.
There is so much gentleness in her tone that the young man is emboldened
to ask a question.
"You will permit me to come to-morrow, to--to--plead my cause?" he says,
anxiously.
Miss Priscilla hesitates, and a pang of apprehension rushes through his
heart. He is almost in despair, when Miss Penelope's voice breaks the
oppressive silence.
"Yes. Come to-morrow," she says, pressing Miss Priscilla's arm. "To-day
we are too tired, too upset. To-morrow let it be."
"I thank you madam," says Desmond, humbly; and then he turns to go, but
still lingers, with grieved eyes fixed on Monica.
"Monica, you will give me one parting word?" he says, at last, as though
the petition is wrung from him.
Still holding Miss Priscilla's hand, she turns to him, and, raising her
other arm, places it softly round his neck. Holding them both thus, she
seems the embodiment of the spirit that must in the end unite them. Her
position compels her to throw back her head a little, and she smiles at
him, a sad little smile, but bright with love and trust.
"Not a _parting_ word," she says, with a sweetness so grave as to be
almost solemn.
"You will be true to me?" says Desmond, reckless of listeners. He has
his arms round her, and is waiting for her answer with a pale, earnest
face. Something in the whole scene touches the two kindly old maids with
a sense of tender reverence.
"Until my death," says the girl, with slow distinctness, laying her head
against the gray sleeve of his coat.
A great wave of color--born of emotion and love that is stronger than
the grave--sweeps over his face. He stoops and lays his lips on hers.
When he is gone, Monica turns suddenly upon Miss Priscilla.
"Do not say a word to me!" she cries, feverishly; "I could not bear
it--_now_. I may have done wrong, but I am not sorry for it. I love him.
That should explain everything to you; it means _all_ to me! Nothing can
alter that! And I will have nothing said,--nothing; and----"
"Nothing shall be said, dear child," says Miss Penelope, gently.
"Everything shall be as you wish with regard to us. Can you not trust us
to spare you where we _can_?"
"I am ungrateful. I must go and think it all out," says Monica,
stoutly, pressing her hands against her head. She turns away. A little
cry breaks from Miss Priscilla.
"Oh! not without kissing us _too_, Monica!" she says, in a broken voice,
holding out her arms to her niece. Monica throws herself into them.
* * * * *
Long and eager is the discussion that follows on the girl's
disappearance.
The two Misses Blake, side by side, argue (with what they erroneously
term dispassionate calmness) the case just laid before them.
"I don't know what is to be done," says Miss Priscilla, at length: "all
I do know is that, for her sake, consent will be impossible."
"And what is to be said to him to-morrow? He looks so earnest, so--full
of her. _What_ is to be said to him?"
"So his uncle looked at her mother," says Miss Priscilla, with a
terrible bitterness; "and what came of that? Is this young man to steal
from us our best and dearest--as _he_ did? Be firm, Penelope. For her
sake crush this attachment before the fickleness that is in his blood
asserts itself to break her heart."
"I fear it will be broken either way," says Miss Penelope, who has a
secret hankering after all true lovers.
"At least her self-respect will be spared, and for that she will thank
us later on. She must give him up!"
"Priscilla," says Miss Penelope, in a low tone, "supposing she _refuses_
to do it?"
"When I have fully explained the matter to her, she will withdraw her
refusal," says Miss Priscilla, very grandly, but her expression is not
up to her tone in anyway. It is, indeed, depressed and uncertain.
"He struck me as being a very attractive young man," ventures Miss
Penelope absently.
"Humph!" says Miss Priscilla.
"And--but that would be impossible in one of his name--a very _lovable_
young man," says Miss Penelope, timidly.
"Hah!" says Miss Priscilla: this ejaculation is not meant for surprise
or acquiescence, but is merely a warlike snort.
"And very loving, too," says Miss Penelope, dreamily. "I never saw such
eyes in my life! and he never took them off her."
"Penelope," says Miss Priscilla, with such a sudden and awful amount of
vehemence as literally makes Miss Penelope jump, "I am ashamed of you.
Whatever we--that is" (slightly confused) "_you_ may think about that
young man, please keep it to yourself, and at least let me never hear
you speak of a Desmond in admiring terms."
So saying, she stalks from the rooms and drives down to the village to
execute a commission that has been hanging over her for a fortnight, and
which she chooses to-day to fulfil, if only to prove to the outer world
that she is in no wise upset by the afternoon excitement.
Yet in a very short time she returns from her drive, and with a
countenance so disturbed that Miss Penelope's heart is filled with fresh
dismay.
"What is it?" she says, following Miss Priscilla into her own room. "You
have heard something further; you have seen----"
"Yes, I have seen _him_--young Desmond," says Miss Priscilla, with an
air of much agitation. "It was just outside the village, on my way home;
and he was carrying a little hurt child in his arms, and he was hushing
it so tenderly; and--the little one was looking up in his face--and he
kissed it--and----_Why_ isn't he a _bad_, _wicked_ young man?" cries
Miss Priscilla, in a frenzy of despair, bursting into tears.