Mrs. Geoffrey Part 32

A choking sensation, rising from her heart, almost stops Mona's breath; her mouth feels parched and dry; her eyes widen. A sudden fear oppresses her. How is it going to be in all the future? Is Geoffrey's--her own husband's--mother to be her enemy?

Lady Rodney holds out her hand, and Mona lays hers within it.

"So glad you have come," says Lady Rodney, in a tone that belies her words, and in a sweet silvery voice that chills the heart of her listener. "We hardly thought we should see you so soon, the trains here are so unpunctual. I hope the carriage was in time?"

She waits apparently for an answer, at which Mona grows desperate. For in reality she has heard not one word of the labored speech made to her, and is too frightened to think of anything to say except the unfortunate lesson learned in the carriage and repeated secretly so often since. She looks round helplessly for Geoffrey; but he is laughing with his brother, Captain Rodney, whom he has not seen since his return from India, and so Mona, cast upon her own resources, says,--

"It was rather better than I antic.i.p.ated, thank you," not in the haughty tone adopted by her half an hour ago, but, in an unnerved and frightened whisper.

At this remarkable answer to a very ordinary and polite question, Lady Rodney stares at Mona for a moment, and then turns abruptly away to greet Geoffrey. Whereupon Captain Rodney, coming forward, tells Mona he is glad to see her, kindly but carelessly; and then a young man, who has been standing up to this silently upon the hearthrug, advances, and takes Mona's hand in a warm clasp, and looks down upon her with very friendly eyes.

At his touch, at his glance, the first sense of comfort Mona has felt since her entry into the room falls upon her. This man, at least, is surely of the same kith and kin as Geoffrey, and to him her heart opens gladly, gratefully.

He has heard the remarkable speech made to his mother, and has drawn his own conclusions therefrom. "Geoffrey has been coaching the poor little soul, and putting absurd words into her mouth, with--as is usual in all such cases--a very brilliant result." So he tells himself, and is, as we know, close to the truth.

He tells Mona she is very welcome, and, still holding her hand, draws her over to the fire, and moves a big arm-chair in front of it, in which he ensconces her, bidding her warm herself, and make herself (as he says with a kindly smile that has still kinder meaning in it) "quite at home."

Then he stoops and unfastens her sealskin jacket, and takes it off her, and in fact pays her all the little attentions that lie in his power.

"You are Sir Nicholas?" questions she at last, gaining courage to speak, and raising her eyes to his full of entreaty, and just a touch of that pathos that seems of right to belong to the eyes of all Irishwomen.

"Yes," returns he with a smile. "I am Nicholas." He ignores the formal t.i.tle. "Geoffrey, I expect, spoke to you of me as 'old Nick;' he has never called me anything else since we were boys."

"He has often called you that; but,"--shyly,--"now that I have seen you, I don't think the name suits you a bit."

Sir Nicholas is quite pleased. There is a sort of unconscious flattery in the gravity of her tone and expression that amuses almost as much as it pleases him. What a funny child she is! and how unspeakably lovely!

Will Doatie like her?

But there is yet another introduction to be gone through. From the doorway Violet Mansergh comes up to Geoffrey clad in some soft pale s.h.i.+mmering stuff, and holds out to him her hand.

"What a time you have been away!" she says, with a pretty, slow smile, that has not a particle of embarra.s.sment or consciousness in it, though she is quite aware that Jack Rodney is watching her closely. Perhaps, indeed, she is secretly amused at his severe scrutiny.

"You will introduce me to your wife?" she asks, after a few minutes, in her even, _trainante_ voice, and is then taken up to the big arm-chair before the fire, and is made known to Mona.

"Dinner will be ready in a few minutes: of course we shall excuse your dressing to-night," says Lady Rodney, addressing her son far more than Mona, though the words presumably are meant for her. Whereupon Mona, rising from her chair with a sigh of relief, follows Geoffrey out of the room and upstairs.

"Well?" says Sir Nicholas, as a deadly silence continues for some time after their departure, "what do you think of her?"

"She is painfully deficient; positively without brains," says Lady Rodney, with conviction. "What was the answer she made me when I asked about the carriage? Something utterly outside the mark."

"She is not brainless; she was only frightened. It certainly was an ordeal coming to a house for the first time to be, in effect, stared at.

And she is very young."

"And perhaps unused to society," puts in Violet, mildly. As she speaks she picks up a tiny feather that has clung to her gown, and lightly blows it away from her into the air.

"She looked awfully cut up, poor little thing," says Jack, kindly. "You were the only one she opened her mind to, Nick What did she say? Did she betray the ravings of a lunatic or the inanities of a fool?"

"Neither."

"Then, no doubt, she heaped upon you priceless gems of Irish wit in her mother-tongue?"

"She said very little; but she looks good and true. After all, Geoffrey might have done worse."

"Worse!" repeats his mother, in a withering tone. In this mood she is not nice, and a very little of her suffices.

"She is decidedly good to look at, at all events," says Nicholas, s.h.i.+fting ground. "Don't you think so, Violet?"

"I think she is the loveliest woman I ever saw," returns Miss Mansergh, quietly, without enthusiasm, but with decision. If cold, she is just, and above the pettiness of disliking a woman because she may be counted more worthy of admiration than herself.

"I am glad you are all pleased," says Lady Rodney, in a peculiar tone; and then the gong sounds, and they all rise, as Geoffrey and Mona once more make their appearance. Sir Nicholas gives his arm to Mona, and so begins her first evening at the Towers.

CHAPTER XVII.

HOW MONA RISES BETIMES--AND HOW SHE ENCOUNTERS A STRANGER AMIDST THE MORNING DEWS.

All through the night Mona scarcely shuts her eyes, so full is her mind of troubled and perplexing thoughts. At last her brain grows so tired that she cannot pursue any subject to its end, so she lies silently awake, watching for the coming of the tardy dawn.

At last, as she grows weary for wis.h.i.+ng for it,--

"Morning fair Comes forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray"

and light breaks through shutter and curtain, and objects pale and ghostly at first soon grow large and intimate.

"Brown night retires; young day pours in apace, And opens all a lawny prospect wide."

Naturally an early riser, Mona slips noiselessly from her bed, lest she shall wake Geoffrey,--who is still sleeping the sleep of the just,--and, going into his dressing-room, jumps into his bath, leaving hers for him.

The general bath-room is to Geoffrey an abomination; nothing would induce him to enter it. His own bath, and nothing but his own bath, can content him. To have to make uncomfortable haste to be first, or else to await s.h.i.+vering the good pleasure of your next-door neighbor, is according to Mr. Rodney, a hards.h.i.+p too great for human endurance.

Having accomplished her toilet without the a.s.sistance of a maid (who would bore her to death), and without disturbing her lord and master, she leaves her room, and, softly descending the stairs, bids the maid in the hall below a "fair good-morning," and bears no malice in that the said maid is so appalled by her unexpected appearance that she forgets to give her back her greeting. She bestows her usual bonnie smile upon this stricken girl, and then, pa.s.sing by her, opens the hall door, and sallies forth into the gray and early morning.

"The first low fluttering breath of waking day Stirs the wide air. Thin clouds of pearly haze Float slowly o'er the sky, to meet the rays Of the unrisen sun."

But which way to go? To Mona all round is an undiscovered country, and for that reason possesses an indiscribable charm. Finally, she goes up the avenue, beneath the gaunt and leafless elms, and midway, seeing a path that leads she knows not whither, she turns aside and follows it until she loses herself in the lonely wood.

The air is full of death and desolation. It is cold and raw, and no vestige of vegetation is anywhere. In the distance, indeed, she can see some fir-trees that alone show green amidst a wilderness of brown, and are hailed with rapture by the eye, tired of the gray and sullen monotony. But except for these all is dull and unfruitful.

Still, Mona is happy: the walk has done her good, and warmed her blood, and brought a color soft and rich as carmine, to her cheeks. She has followed the winding path for about an hour, briskly, and with a sense of _bien-etre_ that only the young and G.o.dly can know, when suddenly she becomes aware that some one was following her.

She turns slowly, and finds her fellow-pedestrian is a young man clad in a suit of very impossible tweed: she blushes hotly, not because he is a young man, but because she has no hat on her head, having covered her somewhat riotous hair with a crimson silk handkerchief she had found in Geoffrey's room, just before starting. It covers her head completely, and is tied under the chin Connemara fas.h.i.+on, letting only a few little love-locks be seen, that roam across her forehead, in spite of all injunctions to the contrary.

Perhaps, could she only know how charmingly becoming this style of headdress is to her flower-like face, she would not have blushed at all.