Rossmoyne Part 62

"I object to your doing it."

"You won't when you hear him; he sings _so_ sweetly," with the prettiest, most enthusiastic smile. "You really should hear him."

"You persist, then? you compel me to believe the worst,--to regard you as implicated in that story of Kelly's."

"I compel you to nothing. And as for the story, I thought it very amusing: didn't you?"

"_No!_" says Rossmoyne, with subdued fury.

"Do you know, I often said you lacked humor?" says Mrs. Bohun, with a little airy laugh; "and now I am sure of it. I thought it intensely comic; such a situation! I should like to have seen your face when the curtain was drawn, if _you_ had been the young man."

"I must beg you to understand that such a situation would be _impossible_ to _me_."

"I am to understand, then, that you would not 'emb----' that was what he said, wasn't it?--a woman if you loved her?"

"Not without permission, certainly," very stiffly.

"Oh, dear!" says Olga; "what a stupid man! Well, I shouldn't think you would do it _often_. And so you wouldn't have liked to be that particular young man?"

This is a poser; Lord Rossmoyne parries the thrust.

"Would _you_ have liked to be that young woman,--who, as it appears to me, wasn't at all particular?" he asks, in turn.

"That is no answer to my question," says Olga, who is angry with his last remark. "Are you afraid to say what you mean?"

"Afraid! No. To give publicity to a thing means always to vulgarize it: therefore, on consideration, I should not have cared to be that young man."

"Ah! I should have thought otherwise," says Olga, in an indescribable tone. "Well, there must be consolation for you in the thought that you never can be.--Mr. Ronayne," calling to Ulic lightly, "are you coming, or must I sit fingering my lyre in vain?"

Ulic, coming slowly up to her, stands beside her, as she seats herself again upon the marble edge of the fountain, and runs her fingers gracefully over its strings.

His voice, a rich sweet tenor, breaks upon the air, blends with the beauty of the night, and sinks into it until all seems one great harmony. "'Tis I" is the song he has chosen, and a wonderful pathos that borders on despair enriches every note. He has forgotten every one but her, the pretty dainty creature who holds his heart in the hollow of her small hand. She must hear the melancholy that is desolating and thereby perfecting his voice; but, if so, she gives no sign. Once only her fingers tremble, but she corrects herself almost before her error is committed, and never after gives way to even the faintest suspicion of feeling.

Through the glade the music swells and throbs. Mary Browne, drawing instinctively nearer, seems lost in its enchantment. Monica, looking up with eyes full of tears into Desmond's face, finds his eyes fixed on her, and, with a soft, childish desire for sympathy, slips her hand unseen into his. How gladly he takes and holds it need not here be told.

As he comes to the last verse, Ronayne's voice grows lower; it doesn't tremble, yet there is in it something suggestive of the idea that he is putting a terrible constraint upon himself:

"If regret some time a.s.sail thee For the days when first we met, And thy weary spirit fail thee, And thine eyes grow dim and wet, Oh, 'tis I, love, At thy heart, love, Murmuring, 'How couldst thou forget?'"

The music lingers still for a moment, ebbs, and then dies away. Ronayne steps back, and all seems over. How Olga has proved so utterly unmoved by the pa.s.sionate protest is exercising more minds than one, when suddenly she rises and with a swift movement bends over the fountain.

Another moment, and she has dropped the guitar into the water. Some little silver ornament upon its neck flashes for an instant in the moonlight, and then it is gone.

"Oh, Olga!" says Hermia, making an involuntary step towards her.

"I shall never play on it again," says Olga, with a gesture that is almost impa.s.sioned. An instant, and it is all over,--her little burst of pa.s.sion, the thought that led to it,--everything!

"I hate it!" she says, with a petulant laugh. "I am glad to be rid of it. Somebody made me a present of it whom I learned to detest afterwards. No, Owen, do not try to bring it to life again: let it lie down there out of sight where I may learn to forget it."

"As you will, madame," says Owen Kelly, who has been fruitlessly fis.h.i.+ng for the drowned guitar.

"It is curious how hateful anything, however pretty, can become to us if we dislike the giver of it," says Mary Browne, pleasantly.

"Yes," says Hermia, quickly, glancing at her with a sudden gleam in her eyes,--of grat.i.tude, perhaps. A moment ago there had been a certain awkwardness following on Olga's capricious action; now these few careless, kindly words from this ugly stranger have dispelled it. And is she so plain, after all? The fastidious Hermia, gazing at her intently, asks herself this question. Surely before that bright and generous gleam in her eyes her freckles sink into insignificance.

"I knew you would like her," says Mr. Kelly, at this moment, speaking low in Hermia's ear.

When a woman is startled she is generally angry. Mrs. Herrick is angry now, whether because of his words, or the fact that she did not know he was so close to her, let who will decide.

"You are very, very clever," she says, glancing at him from under drooping lids, and then turning away.

"So they all tell me," returns he, modestly.

Rossmoyne, crossing the brilliant moonlit path that divides him from the group round Hermia, seats himself beside her, thereby leaving Olga and Ulic Ronayne virtually alone.

"You will regret that guitar to-morrow," says Ronayne,--"at least not the thing itself (I can replace that), but----"

"I regret nothing," says Mrs. Bohun, carelessly,--"unless I regret that you have taken an absurdly ill-tempered action so much to heart. I am ill-tempered, you know."

"I don't," says Ronayne.

"So courteous a liar must needs obtain pardon. But let us forget everything but this lovely night. Was there ever so serene a sky? see how the stars s.h.i.+ne and glimmer through the dark interstices of the blue-gray clouds!"

"They remind me of something,--of some words," says Ronayne, in a low voice. "They come to me now, I hardly know why, perhaps because of the night itself, and perhaps because--" he hesitates.

Olga is staring dreamily at the studded vault above her.

"About the stars?" she asks, without looking at him.

"Yes:--

'A poet loved a star, And to it whispered nightly, Being so fair, why art thou, love, so far, Or why so coldly s.h.i.+ne who s.h.i.+n'st so brightly?'

The poet was presumptuous, it seems to me."

"Was he? I don't know. All things come to him who knows how to wait."

"Who's waiting?" says Kelly's voice from the other side of the fountain; "and for what?"

"_Toujours_ Owen," says Mrs. Bohun, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders. "Well, no one even in this life is altogether without a taste of purgatory: mine (this is a delicate compliment to you, Owen, so listen to it) might have been worse. Do you know I have sometimes thought----"

"She has really!" interrupts Mr. Kelly, turning with cheerful encouragement to the others. "You wouldn't think it to look at her, would you? but I know her intimately, and can vouch for the truth of her words. Go on, my dear Olga."

But "my dear Olga" has turned aside, and declines to take any notice of his remark beyond a faint grimace.

"She's very shy," says Mr. Kelly, in an explanatory aside, "and _so_ retiring. Can't bear to hear herself publicly praised, or feel herself the centre of attraction. Let us haste to change the subject." This with many becks, and nods, and wreathed smiles, meant to explain the delicacy of the feeling that prompts him to this course. "By the by, Desmond, doesn't this fairy-like spot, and the moonlight, and the pathos of the silent night, and everything, remind you forcibly of old O'Connor?"

"But I always heard----" begins Monica, in a voice of much amazement; then she stops confusedly and presently goes on again, but in a different key. "Was The O'Connor, then, aesthetic?" she says.