Mrs. Geoffrey

She presses her hands still closer against her eyes, as though to shut out from her own mind the hatefulness of such a thought. And then, with a fresh effort, she brings herself back once more to the question that lies before her.

Oh, if by this one act of self-sacrifice she could restore the Towers with all its beauty and richness to Nicholas, and – and his mother, – how good a thing it would be! But will Geoffrey ever forgive her? Ah, sure when she explains the matter to him, and tells him how and why she did it, and how her heart bled in the doing of it, he will put his arms round her and pardon her sin. Nay, more, he may see how tender is the longing that compels her to the deed.

She uncovers her eyes, and glances for a bare instant at Rodney. Then once more the heavily-fringed lids close upon the dark-blue eyes, as if to hide the anguish in them, and in a smothered voice she says, with clenched teeth and a face like marble, "Yes, you may kiss me, – if you will."

There is a pause. In shrinking doubt she awaits the moment that shall make him take advantage of her words. But that moment never comes. In vain she waits. At length she lifts her eyes, and he, flinging the parchment at her feet, cries, roughly, —

"There! take it. I can be generous too."

"But," begins Mona, feebly, hardly sure of her blessed release.

"Keep your kiss," exclaims he, savagely, "since it cost you such an effort to give it, and keep the parchment too. It is yours because of my love for you."

Ashamed of his vehemence, he stoops, and, raising the will from the ground, presents it to her courteously. "Take it: it is yours," he says. Mona closes her fingers on it vigorously, and by a last effort of grace suppresses the sigh of relief that rises from her heart.

Instinctively she lowers her hand as though to place the document in the inside pocket of her coat, and in doing so comes against something that plainly startles her.

"I quite forgot it," she says, coloring with sudden fear, and then slowly, cautiously, she draws up to view the hated pistol he had left in the library the night before. She holds it out to him at arm's length, as though it is some noisome reptile, as doubtless indeed she considers it. "Take it," she says; "take it quickly. I brought it to you, meaning to return it. Good gracious! fancy my forgetting it! Why, it might have gone off and killed me, and I should have been none the wiser."

"Well, I think you would, for a moment or two at least," returns he, smiling grimly, and dropping the dangerous little toy with some carelessness into his own pocket.

"Oh, do take care!" cries Mona, in an agony: "it is loaded. If you throw it about in that rough fashion, it will certainly go off and do you some injury."

"Blow me to atoms, perhaps, or into some region unknown," says he, recklessly. "A good thing, too. Is life so sweet a possession that one need quail before the thought of resigning it?"

"You speak as one might who has no aim in life, says Mona, looking at him with sincere pity. When Mona looks piteous she is at her best. Her eyes grow large, her sweet lips tremulous, her whole face pathetic. The role suits her. Rodney's heart begins to beat with dangerous rapidity. It is quite on the cards that a man of his reckless, untrained, dare-devil disposition should fall madly in love with a woman sans peur et sans reproche.

"An aim!" he says, bitterly. "I think I have found an end to my life where most fellows find a beginning."

"By and you will think differently," says Mona, believing he alludes to his surrender of the Rodney property "You will get over this disappointment."

"I shall, – when death claims me," replies he.

"Nay, now," says Mona, sweetly, "do not talk like that. It grieves me. When you have formed a purpose worth living for, the whole world will undergo a change for you. What is dark now will seem light then; and death will be an enemy, a thing to battle with, to fight with desperately until one's latest breath. In the meantime," nervously, "do be cautious about that horrid weapon: won't you, now?"

"You ask me no questions about last night," he says, suddenly; "and there is something I must say to you. Get rid of that fellow Ridgway, the under-gardener. It was he opened the library window for me. He is untrustworthy, and too fond of filthy lucre ever to come to good. I bribed him."

He is now speaking with some difficulty, and is looking, not at her, but at the pattern he is drawing on the soft loam at his feet.

"Bribed him?" says Mona, in an indescribable tone.

"Yes. I knew about the secret panel from Warden, old Elspeth's nephew, who alone, I think, knew of its existence. I was determined to get the will. It seemed to me," cries he, with sudden excitement, "no such great crime to do away with an unrighteous deed that took from an elder son (without just cause) his honest rights, to bestow them upon the younger. What had my father done? Nothing! His brother, by treachery and base subterfuge, supplanted him, and obtained his birthright, while he, my father, was cast out, disinherited, without a hearing."

His passion carries Mona along with it.

"It was unjust, no doubt; it sounds so," she says, faintly. Yet even as she speaks she closes her little slender fingers resolutely upon the parchment that shall restore happiness to Nicholas and dear pretty Dorothy.

"To return to Ridgway," says Paul Rodney, pulling himself up abruptly. "See him yourself, I beg of you, as a last favor, and dismiss him. Send him over to me: I will take him back with me to Australia and give him a fresh start in life. I owe him so much, as I was the first to tempt him into the wrong path; yet I doubt whether he would have kept straight even had he not met me. He is mauvais sujet all through."

"Surely," thinks Mona to herself, "this strange young man is not altogether bad. He has his divine touches as well as another."

"I will do as you ask," she says, wondering when the interview will come to an end.

"After all, I am half glad Nicholas is not to be routed," he says, presently, with some weariness in his tone. "The game wasn't worth the candle; I should never have been able to do the grand seigneur as he does it. I suppose I am not to the manner born. Besides, I bear him no malice."

His tone, his emphasis on the pronoun, is significant.

"Why should you bear malice to any one?" says Mona uneasily.

"Your husband called me 'thief.' I have not forgotten that," replies he, gloomily, the dark blood of his mother's race rushing to his cheek. "I shall remember that insult to my dying day. And let him remember this, that if ever I meet him again, alone, and face to face, I shall kill him for that word only."

"Oh, no! no!" says Mona, shrinking from him. "Why cherish such revenge in your heart? Would you kill me too, that you speak like this? Fling such thoughts far from you, and strive after good. Revenge is the food of fools."

"Well, at least I sha'n't have many more opportunities of meeting him," says Rodney. "I shall leave this country as soon as I can. Tell Nicholas to keep the title with the rest. I shall never use it. And now," growing very pale, "it only remains to say good-by."

"Good-by," says Mona, softly, giving him her hand. He keeps it fast in both his own. Just at this moment it dawns upon her for the first time that this man loves her with a love surpassing that of most. The knowledge does not raise within her breast – as of course it should do – feelings of virtuous indignation: indeed, I regret to say that my heroine feels nothing but a deep and earnest pity, that betrays itself in her expressive face.

"Last night you called me Paul. Do you remember? Call me it again, for the last time," he entreats, in a low tone. "I shall never forget what I felt then. If ever in the future you hear good of me, believe it was through you it sprung to life. Till my dying day your image will remain with me. Say now, 'Good-by, Paul,' before I go."

"Good by, dear Paul," says Mona, very gently, impressed by his evident grief and earnestness.

"Good-by, my – my beloved – cousin," he says, in a choked voice. I think the last word is an afterthought. He is tearing himself from all he holds most sacred upon earth, and the strain is terrible. He moves resolutely a a few yards away from her, as though determined to put space between him and her; yet then he pauses, and, as though powerless to withdraw from her presence, returns again, and, flinging himself on his knees before her, presses a fold of her gown to his lips with passionate despair.

"It is forever!" he says, incoherently. "Oh, Mona, at least —at least promise you will always think kindly of me."

"Always – indeed, always!" says Mona, with tears in her eyes; after which, with a last miserable glance, he strides away, and is lost to sight among the trees.

Then Mrs. Geoffrey turns quickly, and runs home at the top of her speed. She is half sad, yet half exultant, being filled to the very heart with the knowledge that life, joy, and emancipation from present evil lie in her pocket. This thought crowns all others.

As she comes to the gravel walk that leads from the shrubberies to the sweep before the hall door, she encounters the disgraced Ridgway, doing something or other to one of the shrubs that has come to grief during the late bad weather.

He touches his hat to her, and bids her a respectful "good afternoon," but for once she is blind to his salutation. Nevertheless, she stops before him, and, in a clear voice, says, coldly, —

"For the future your services will not be required here. Your new master, Mr. Paul Rodney, whom you have chosen to obey in preference to those in whose employ you have been, will give you your commands from this day. Go to him, and after this try to be faithful."

The boy – he is little more – cowers beneath her glance. He changes color, and drops the branch he holds. No excuse rises to his lips. To attempt a lie with those clear eyes upon him would be worse than useless. He turns abruptly away, and is dead to the Towers from this moment.

CHAPTER XXXIII

HOW CONVERSATION GROWS RIFE AT THE TOWERS – AND HOW MONA ASSERTS HERSELF – AND HOW LADY RODNEY LICKS THE DUST

"Where can Mona be?" says Doatie, suddenly.

We must go back one hour. Lady Lilias Eaton has come and gone. It is now a quarter to five, and Violet is pouring out tea in the library.

"Yes; where is Mona?" says Jack, looking up from the cup she has just given him.

"I expect I know more than most about her," says Nolly, who is enjoying himself immensely among the sponge, and the plum-cakes. "I told her the Æsthetic was likely to call this afternoon, and advised her strongly to make her escape while she could."

"She evidently took your advice," says Nicholas.

"Well, I went rather minutely into it, you know. I explained to her how Lady Lilias was probably going to discuss the new curfew-bell in all its bearings; and I hinted gloomily at the 'Domesday Book.' That fetched her. She vamoosed on the spot."

"Nothing makes me so hungry as Lady Lilias," says Doatie, comfortably. She is lying back in a huge arm-chair that is capable of holding three like her, and is devouring bread and butter like a dainty but starved little fairy. Nicholas, sitting beside her, is holding her tea-cup, her own special tea-cup of gaudy Sèvres. "She is very trying, isn't she, Nicholas? What a dazzling skin she has! – the very whitest I ever saw."

"Well, that is in her favor, I really think," says Violet, in her most unprejudiced manner. "If she were to leave off her rococo toilettes, and take to Elise or Worth like other people, and give up posing, and try to behave like a rational being, she might almost be called handsome."

No one seconds this rash opinion. There is a profound silence. Miss Mansergh looks mildly round for support, and, meeting Jack's eyes, stops there.

"Well, really, you know, yes. I think there is something special about her," he says, feeling himself in duty bound to say something.

"So there is; something specially awful," responds Nolly, pensively. "She frightens me to death. She has an 'eye like a gimlet.' When I call to mind the day my father inveigled me into the library and sort of told me I couldn't do better than go in for Lilias, my knees give way beneath me and smite each other with fear. I shudder to think what part in her mediæval programme would have been allotted to me."

"You would have been her henchman, – is that right, Nicholas? – or her varlet," says Dorothy, with conviction, "And you would have had to stain your skin, and go round with a cross-bow, and with your mouth widened from ear to ear to give you the correct look. All æsthetic people have wide mouths, have they not, Nicholas?"

"Bless me, what an enthralling picture!" says Mr. Darling. "You make me regret all I have lost. But perhaps it is not yet too late. I say, Dolly, you are eating nothing. Have some more bread-and-butter or cake, old girl. You don't half take care of yourself."

"Well, do you know, I think I will take another bit of cake," says Doatie, totally unabashed. "And – cut it thick. After all, Noll, I don't believe Lilias would ever marry you, or any other man: she wouldn't know what to do with you."

"It is very good of you to say that," says Nolly, meekly but gratefully. "It gives me great support. You honestly believe, then, that I may escape?"

"Just fancy the Æsthetic with a husband, and a baby on her knee."

"Like 'Loraine Loraine Loree,'" says Violet, laughing.

"Did she have both together on her knee?" asks Dorothy, vaguely. "She must have found it heavy."

"Oh, one at a time," says Nolly. "She couldn't do it all at once. Such a stretch of fancy requires thought."

At this moment, Geoffrey – who has been absent – saunters into the room, and, after a careless glance around, says, lightly, as if missing something, —

"Where is Mona?"

"Well, we thought you would know," says Lady Rodney, speaking for the first time.

"Yes. Where is she?" says Doatie: "that is just what we all want to know. She won't get any tea if she doesn't come presently, because Nolly is bent on finishing it. Nolly," with plaintive protest, "don't be greedy."

"We thought she was with you," says Captain Rodney, idly.

"She is out," says Lady Rodney, in a compressed tone.

"Is she? It is too late for her to be out," returns Geoffrey, thinking of the chill evening air.

"Quite too late," acquiesces his mother, meaningly. "It is, to say the least of it, very strange, very unseemly. Out at this hour, and alone, – if, indeed, she is alone!"

Her tone is so unpleasant and so significant that silence falls upon the room. Geoffrey says nothing. Perhaps he alone among them fails to understand the meaning of her words. He seems lost in thought. So lost, that the others, watching him, wonder secretly what the end of his meditations will bring forth: yet, one and all, they mistake him: no doubt of Mona ever has, or ever will, I think, cross his mind.

Lady Rodney regards him curiously, trying to read his downcast face. Has the foolish boy at last been brought to see a flaw in his idol of clay?

Nicholas is looking angry. Jack, sinking into a chair near Violet, says, in a whisper, that "it is a beastly shame his mother cannot let Mona alone. She seems, by Jove! bent on turning Geoffrey against her."

"It is cruel," says Violet, with suppressed but ardent ire.

"If – if you loved a fellow, would anything turn you against him?" asks he, suddenly, looking her full in the face.

And she answers, —

"Nothing. Not all the talking in the wide world," with a brilliant blush, but with steady earnest eyes.

Nolly, mistrustful of Geoffrey's silence, goes up to him, and, laying his hands upon his shoulders, says, quietly, —

"Mrs. Geoffrey is incapable of making any mistake. How silent you are, old fellow!"

"Eh?" says Geoffrey, rousing himself and smiling genially. "A mistake? Oh, no. She never makes mistakes. I was thinking of something else. But she really ought to be in now, you know; she will catch her death of cold."

The utter want of suspicion in his tone drives Lady Rodney to open action. To do her justice, dislike to Mona has so warped her judgment that she almost believes in the evil she seeks to disseminate about her.

"You are wilfully blind," she says, flushing hotly, and smoothing with nervous fingers an imaginary wrinkle from her gown. "Of course I explained matters as well as I could to Mitchell, but it was very awkward, and very unpleasant, and servants are never deceived."

"I hardly think I follow you," says Geoffrey, in a frozen tone. "In regard to what would you wish your servants deceived?"

"Of course it is quite the correct thing your taking it in this way," goes on his mother, refusing to be warned, and speaking with irritation, – "the only course left open; but it is rather absurd with me. We have all noticed your wife's extraordinary civility to that shocking young man. Such bad taste on her part, considering how he stands with regard to us, and the unfortunate circumstances connected with him. But no good ever comes of unequal marriages."

"Now, once for all, mother – " begins Nicholas, vehemently, but Geoffrey, with a gesture, silences him.

"I am perfectly content, nay more than content, with the match I have made," he says, haughtily; "and if you are alluding to Paul Rodney, I can only say I have noticed nothing reprehensible in Mona's treatment of him."

"You are very much to be admired," says his mother, in an abominable tone.

"I see no reason why she should not talk to any man she pleases. I know her well enough to trust her anywhere, and am deeply thankful for such knowledge. In fact," with some passion, sudden but subdued, "I feel as though in discussing her in this cold-blooded fashion I am doing her some grievous wrong."

"It almost amounts to it," says Nicholas, with a frown.

"Besides, I do not understand what you mean," says Geoffrey, still regarding his mother with angry eyes "Why connect Mona's absence with Paul Rodney?"

"I shall tell you," exclaims she, in a higher tone, her pale-blue eyes flashing. "Two hours ago my own maid received a note from Paul Rodney's man directed to your wife. When she read it she dressed herself and went from this house in the direction of the wood. If you cannot draw your own conclusions from these two facts, you must be duller or more obstinate than I give you credit for."

She ceases, her work accomplished. The others in the room grow weak with fear, as they tell themselves that things are growing too dreadful to be borne much longer. When the silence is quite insupportable, poor little Dorothy struggles to the front.

"Dear Lady Rodney," she says, in a tremulous tone, "are you quite sure the note was from that – that man?"

"Quite sure," returns her future mother-in law, grimly. "I never speak, Dorothy, without foundation for what I say."

Dorothy, feeling snubbed, subsides into silence and the shadow that envelopes the lounge on which she is sitting.

To the surprise of everybody, Geoffrey takes no open notice of his mother's speech. He does not give way to wrath, nor does he open his lips on any subject. His face is innocent of anger, horror, or distrust. It changes, indeed, beneath the glow of the burning logs but in a manner totally unexpected. An expression that might even be termed hope lights it up. Like this do his thoughts run: "Can it be possible that the Australian has caved in, and, fearing publicity after last night's fiasco, surrendered the will to Mona?"

Possessed with this thought, – which drowns all others, – he clasps his hands behind his back and saunters to the window. "Shall he go and meet Mona and learn the truth at once? Better not, perhaps; she is such a clever child that it is as well to let her achieve victory without succor of any sort."

He leans against the window and looks out anxiously upon the darkening twilight. His mother watches him with curious eyes. Suddenly he electrifies the whole room by whistling in a light and airy fashion his favorite song from "Madame Favart." It is the "Artless Thing," and nothing less, and he whistles it deliberately and dreamily from start to finish.

It seems such a direct running commentary on Mona's supposed ill deed that every one – as by a single impulse – looks up. Nolly and Jack Rodney exchange covert glances. But for the depression that reigns all round, I think these two would have given way to frivolous merriment.

"By Jove, you know, it is odd," says Geoffrey, presently, speaking as one might who has for long been following out a train of thought by no means unpleasant, "his sending for her, and that: there must be something in it. Rodney didn't write to her for nothing. It must have been to – " Here he checks himself abruptly, remembering his promise to Mona to say nothing about the scene in the library. "It certainly means something," he winds up, a little tamely.

"No doubt," returns his mother, sneeringly.

"My dear mother," says Geoffrey, coming back to the firelight, "what you would insinuate is too ridiculous to be taken any notice of." Every particle of his former passion has died from his voice, and he is now quite calm, nay cheerful.

"But at the same time I must ask you to remember you are speaking of my wife."

"I do remember it," replies she, bitterly.

Just at this moment a light step running up the stairs outside and across the veranda makes itself heard. Every one looks expectant, and the slight displeasure dies out of Geoffrey's face. A slender, graceful figure appears at the window, and taps lightly.

"Open the window, Geoff," cries Mona, eagerly, and as he obeys her commands she steps into the room with a certain touch of haste about her movements, and looks round upon them earnestly, – some peculiar expression, born of a glad thought, rendering her lovely face even more perfect than usual.

There is a smile upon her lips; her hands are clasped behind her.

"I am so glad you have come, darling," says little Dorothy, taking off her hat, and laying it on a chair near her.

Geoffrey removes the heavy lace that lies round her throat, and then leads her up to the hearthrug nearly opposite to his mother's arm-chair.

"Where have you been, Mona?" he asks, quietly, gazing into the great honest liquid eyes raised so willingly to his own.

"You shall guess," says Mrs. Geoffrey, gayly, with a little laugh. "Now, where do you think?"

Geoffrey says nothing. But Sir Nicholas, as though impulsively, says, —

"In the wood?"

Perhaps he is afraid for her. Perhaps it is a gentle hint to her that the truth will be best. Whatever it may be, Mona understands him not at all. His mother glances up sharply.

"Why, so I was," says Mona, opening her eyes with some surprise, and with an amused smile. "What a good guess, and considering how late the hour is, too!"

She smiles again. Lady Rodney, watching her intently, tells herself if this is acting it is the most perfectly done thing she ever saw in her life, either on the stage or off it.

Geoffrey's arm slips from his wife's shoulders to her rounded waist.

"Perhaps, as you have been so good at your first guess you will try again," says Mona, still addressing Nicholas, and speaking in a tone of unusual light-heartedness, but so standing that no one can see why her hands are so persistently clasped behind her back. "Now tell me who I was with."

This is a thunderbolt. They all start guiltily, and regard Mona with wonder. What is she going to say next?

"So," she says, mockingly, laughing at Nicholas, "you cannot play the seer any longer? Well, I shall tell you. I was with Paul Rodney!"

She is plainly quite enchanted with the sensation she is creating, though she is far from comprehending how complete that sensation is. Something in her expression appeals to Doatie's heart and makes her involuntarily go closer to her. Her face is transfigured. It is full of love and unselfish joy and happy exultation: always lovely, there is at this moment something divine about her beauty.

"What have you got behind your back?" says Geoffrey, suddenly, going up to her.

She flushes, opens her lips as if to speak, and yet is dumb, – perhaps through excess of emotion.