How Monica's heart fails her; and how at last Hope (whose name is
Brian) comes back to her through the quivering moonlight.
And now night has fallen at last upon this long day. A gentle wind is
shivering through the elms; a glorious moon has risen in all its beauty,
and stands in "heaven's wide, pathless way," as though conscious of its
grandeur, yet sad for the sorrows of the seething earth beneath. Now
clear, now resplendent she shines, and now through a tremulous mist
shows her pure face, and again for a space is hidden,
"As if her head she bow'd
Stooping through a fleecy cloud."
Miss Priscilla, with a sense of now-found dignity upon her, has gone
early to bed. Miss Penelope has followed suit. Terence, in the privacy
of his own room, is rubbing a dirty oily flannel on the bright barrels
of his beloved gun, long since made over to him as a gift by Brian.
Kit is sitting on the wide, old-fashioned window-seat in Monica's room
at her sister's feet, and with her thin little arms twined lovingly
round her. She is sleepy enough, poor child, but cannot bear to desert
Monica, who is strangely wakeful and rather silent and _distraite_. For
ever since the morning when he had come to carry Miss Priscilla to
Coole, Brian has been absent from her; not once has he come to her; and
a sense of chill and fear, as strong as it is foolish, is overpowering
her.
She rouses herself now with a little nervous quiver that seems to run
through all her veins and lets her hand fall on Kit's drooping head.
"It grows very late. Go to bed, darling," she says, gently.
"Not till you go," says Kit, tightening the clasp of her arms.
"Well, that shall be in a moment, then," says Monica, with a stifled
sigh. All through the dragging day and evening she has clung to the
thought that surely her lover will come to bid her "good-night." And now
it is late, and he has not come, and----
She leans against the side of the wide-open casement, and gazes in sad
meditation upon the slumbering garden underneath. The lilies,--"tall
white garden-lilies,"--though it is late in the season now, and
bordering on snows and frosts, are still swaying to and fro, and giving
most generously a rich perfume to the wondering air. Earth's stars they
seem to her, as she lifts her eyes to compare them with the
"forget-me-nots of the angels," up above.
Her first disappointment about her love is desolating her. She leans her
head against the woodwork, and lifts her eyes to the vaguely-tinted sky.
Thus, with face upturned, she drinks in the fair beauty of the night,
and, as its beauty grows upon her, her sorrow deepens.
"With how sad steps, O moon! thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face,
Thou feel'st a lover's case!
I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace,
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries."
As she watches the pale moon, Sidney's sad words return to her. Just now
Diana is resting in a path of palest azure, whilst all around her
clouds, silver-tinged, are lying out from her, trembling in mid-air.
Great patches of moonlight lie upon the garden sward. One seems brighter
than its fellows, and as her eyes slowly sink from heaven to earth they
rest upon it, as though attracted unconsciously by its brilliancy. And,
even as she looks, a shadow falls athwart it, and then a low, quick cry
breaks from her lips.
"What is it?" says Kit, scrambling to her knees.
"Only Brian," says Monica, with a hastily-drawn breath. A rich color has
rushed into her cheeks, her eyes are alight, her lips have curved
themselves into a happy smile.
"It's all right now, then, and I can go," says Kit, joyfully.
"Go? To bed, you mean, darling?"
"Yes, now I know you are _happy_," says Kit, tenderly; and then the
sisters embrace, and presently Monica is alone, but for the shadow in
the moonlight.
"It is you, Monica?" says Brian, coming close beneath her window, and
looking upwards.
She leans out to him, her white gown gleaming softly in the moon's rays.
"Oh, why venture out at this hour?" she says, nervously. Now he is
here,--woman-like,--fears for his safety, forgotten before, arise in all
their horror. "They may have followed you; they may----"
"Come down to the balcony," he interrupts her, with a light laugh. "I
want to talk to you. Nonsense, dear heart! I am as safe as a church. Who
would touch me, with an angel like you near to protect me?"
His shadow, as he moves away, may again be seen for an instant, before
he turns the corner of the old house; and Monica, opening her door
softly, runs lightly down the corridor and the staircase, and across the
hall and the drawing-room floor until she reaches the balcony beyond,
where she finds his arms awaiting her.
"You have missed me all day?" he says, after a pause that to them has
been divine.
"Oh, Brian, what a day it has been!" she clings to him. "All these past
hours have been full of horror. Whenever I thought of your danger last
night, I seemed to grow cold and dead with fear; and then when the
minutes slipped by, and still you never came to me, I began to picture
_you_ as cold and dead, and then----Ah!" she clings still closer to him,
and her voice fails her. "I never knew," she whispers, brokenly, "how
well I loved you until I so nearly lost you. I could not live without
you now."
"Nor shall you," returns he, straining her to his heart with passionate
tenderness. "My life is yours, to do what you will with it. And somehow
all day long I knew (and was happy in the knowledge, forgive me that)
that you were lonely for want of me; but I could not come to you, my
soul, until this very moment. Yet, believe me, I suffered more than you
during our long separation." (If any one laughs here, it will prove he
has never been in love, and so is an object of pity. This should check
untimely mirth.)
"You felt it long too, then?" says Monica, hopefully.
"How can you ask me that? Your darling face was never once out of my
mind, and yet I _could_ not come to you. I had so many things to do, so
many people to see, and then the poor old fellow was so ill. But have we
not cause to be thankful?--at last the breach between our houses is
healed, and we may tell all the world of our love."
"You should have heard Aunt Priscilla, how she talked of you when she
came back to-day from Coole," says Monica, in a little fervent glow of
enthusiasm. "It was beautiful! You know she must have _understood_ you
all along to be able to say the truth of you so well. She said so much
in your favor that she satisfied even me."
She says this with such a graceful _naivete_, and such an utter belief
in his superiority to the vast majority of men, that Mr. Desmond does
well to feel the pride that surges in his heart.
"I really think she has fallen in love with you," says Miss Beresford,
at the last, with a little gay laugh.
"Perhaps that is why she refused the squire," says Brian; and then he
basely betrays trust, by telling her all that tale of the late wooing of
Miss Priscilla, and its result, which awakens in the breast of that
ancient lady's niece a mirth as undutiful as it is prolonged.
"And what were you doing all day?" she says, when it has somewhat
subsided.
"Trying to keep my uncle--did I tell you he has fallen in love with your
photograph?--from talking himself into a brain fever, and I was swearing
hard, and----"
"_Brian!_"
"Only informations, darling! And I wouldn't have done that either, only
I had to. They made me. Lay the blame on '_they_.' It wasn't my fault,
indeed. If I had thought for a moment you had the slightest objection to
that sort of----"
"Nonsense! don't be silly; go on," says Miss Beresford, austerely.
"Well, then, I listened patiently to a good deal of raving from Kelly on
the subject of Hermia Herrick. I don't suppose I should have exhibited
as much patience as I did, but for the fact that I was waiting on
George--my uncle--at the time, and couldn't get away. And after that I
listened with even more patience to a perfect farrago of nonsense from
our sub-inspector about the would-be assassin we have caught, and his
fellows; and, besides all this, I thought of _you_ every moment since
last I saw you."
"_Every_ moment. Not _one_ neglected?" asks she, smiling.
"I'll swear to that too, if you like. I'm in good practice now."
"No, no," hastily. "I can believe you without that."
"Did you hear about your Ryde?" asks Desmond, suddenly.
"I disclaim the possession," says Monica. "But what of him?"
"He has been ordered, with his regiment, to Egypt, to fight Arabi, where
I hope he will be shot. And the 36th are coming in his place."
"How can you say such shocking things?"
"Is it shocking to say the 36th are coming to Clonbree?"
"No, but what you said about Mr. Ryde."
"Oh, that! Well, I hope, then, if they don't knock the life they will
knock the conceit and the superfluous _flesh_ out of him: will that do?"
"Very badly. He was a horrid man in many ways, but he did _you_ no
harm."
"He dared to look at you."
"The cat may look at the king."
"But the cat may not look at my queen. So now, madam, what have you to
say?"
"Well, never mind, then: tell me about Hermia. So Mr. Kelly is engaged
to her?"
"Yes. He has just discovered her to be the most superior as well as the
loveliest woman upon earth. He told me so. I ventured mildly, but
firmly, to differ with him and enter a protest on your behalf, but he
wouldn't hear of it. In his opinion you are nowhere beside the majestic
Hermia."
"I know that. He is right," says Monica, meekly. But there is a
reproachful question in her eyes, as she says it, that contradicts the
meekness.
"He is _not_," says Desmond, with loving indignation, pressing her dear
little head so close against his heart that she can hear it throbbing
bravely and can find joy in the thought that each separate throb is all
her own. "The man who thinks so must be insane. A fig for Hermia! Where
would she be if placed beside _you_, my 'Helen fair beyond compare'?"
"You are prejudiced; you tell too flattering a tale," says Monica, with
soft disparagement; but the fond, foolish, lover-like words are very
dear and sweet to her, all the same.
He has his arms round her; in her tender childish fashion she has laid
her cheek against his; and now, with a slow movement, she turns her head
until her lips reach his.
"I love you," she whispers.
Almost in a sigh the words are breathed, and a sense of rapture--of
completion--renders the young man for the instant mute. Yet in her soul
so well she knows of his content that she cares little for any answer
save that which his fond eyes give.
A breath from the sleeping world of flowers below comes up to the
balcony and bathes the lovers in its sweets. The "wandering moon" looks
down upon them, and lights up the dark windows behind them, till they
looked like burnished silver. A deadly silence lies on grass and bough;
it seems to them as though, of all the eager world, they two only are
awake, and alone!
"Do I count with you, then, as more than all?" he says, at length; "than
Terence or than Kit?"
"You know it," she says, earnestly.
Suddenly he loosens his arms from round her, and, pushing her slender,
white-robed figure gently backwards, gazes searchingly into her calm but
wondering face.
"Tell me," he says,--some mad, inward craving driving him to ask the
needless question--"how would it have been with you if I had been killed
yesterday? Would you _in time_ have loved again?"
I am not sure, but I think he would have recalled the words when it is
too late. A quiver runs through the girl's frame; a great wave of
emotion sweeping over her face transfigures it, changing its calm to
quick and living grief. The moonbeams, catching her, fold her in floods
of palest glory, until he who watches her with remorseful eyes can only
liken her to a fragile saint, as she stands there in her white, clinging
draperies.
"You are cruel," she says, at last, with a low, gasping cry.
He falls at her feet.
"Forgive me, my love, my darling!" he entreats, "I should never have
said that, and yet I am glad I did. To feel, to _know_ you are
altogether mine----"
"You had a doubt?" she says; and then two large tears rise slowly, until
her beautiful eyes look passionate reproach at him through a heavy mist.
Then the mist clears, and two shining drops, quitting their sweet home,
fall upon the back of the small hand she has placed nervously against
her throat.
"A last one, and it is gone _forever_." He rises to his feet. "Place
your arms round my neck again," he says, with anxious entreaty, "and let
me feel myself forgiven."
A smile, as coy as it is tender, curves her dainty lips, as she lifts to
his two, soft, dewy eyes, in which the light of a first love has at last
been fully kindled. She comes a step nearer to him, still smiling,--a
lovely thing round which the moonbeams riot as though in ecstasy over
her perfect fairness,--and then in another instant they are both in
heaven, "in paradise in one another's arms!"
"You are happy?" questions he, after a long pause, into which no man may
look.
"I am with _you_," returns she, softly.
"How sweet a meaning lies within your words!"
"A true meaning. But see, how late it grows! For a few hours we must
part. Until to-morrow--good-night!"
"Good-night, my life! my sweet, _sweet_ heart!" says Desmond.
THE END.