Rossmoyne Part 60

"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 gra.s.s, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 a.s.sortment 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 friends.h.i.+p.

"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 n.o.body 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.