Mrs. Geoffrey

"Does he really?" asks Mona, with eyes wide open. "I am sure if I ever meet your brother Nick I shall be dreadfully afraid of him."

"Don't betray me, at all events. He is a touchy sort of fellow, and mightn't like to think I knew that about him. Jack, my second brother, sings too. He is coming home from India directly, and is an awfully good sort, though I think I should rather have old Nick after all."

"You have two brothers older than you?" asks Mona, meditatively.

"Yes; I am that most despicable of all things, a third son."

"I have heard of it. A third son would be poor, of course, and – and worldly people would not think so much of him as of others. Is that so?"

She pauses. But for the absurdity of the thing, Mr. Rodney would swear there is hope in her tone.

"Your description is graphic," he answers, lightly, "if faintly unkind; but when is the truth civil? You are right. Younger sons, as a rule, are not run after. Mammas do not hanker after them, or give them their reserve smiles, or pull their skirts aside to make room for them upon small ottomans."

"That betrays the meanness of the world," says Mona, slowly and with indignation. "Has not Geoffrey just declared himself to be a younger son?"

"Does it? I was bred in a different belief. In my world the mighty do no wrong; and a third son is nowhere. He is shunted; handed on; if possible, scotched. The sun is not made for him, or the first waltz, or caviare, or the 'sweet shady side' of anything. In fact, he 'is the man of no account' with a vengeance!"

"What a shame!" says Mona, angrily. Then she changes her note, and says, with a soft, low, mocking laugh, "How I pity you!"

"Thanks. I shall try to believe you, though your mirth is somewhat out of place, and has a tendency towards heartlessness." (He is laughing too.) "Yet there have been instances," goes on Mr. Rodney, still smiling, while watching her intently, "when maiden aunts have taken a fancy to third sons, and have died leaving them lots of tin."

"Eh?" says Mona.

"Tin, – money," explains he.

"Oh, I dare say. Yes, sometimes: but – " she hesitates, and this time the expression of her face cannot be misunderstood: dejection betrays itself in every line – "but it is not so with you, is it? No aunt has left you anything?"

"No, – no aunt," returns Rodney, speaking the solemn truth, yet conveying a lie: "I have not been blessed with maiden aunts wallowing in coin."

"So I thought," exclaims Mona, with a cheerful nod, that under other circumstances should be aggravating, so full of content it is. "At first I fea – I thought you were rich, but afterwards I guessed it was your brothers' ground you were shooting over. And Bridget told me, too. She said you could not be well off, you had so many brothers. But I like you all the better for that," says Mona, in a tone that actually savors of protection, slipping her little brown hand through his arm in a kindly, friendly, lovable fashion.

"Do you?" says Rodney. He is strangely moved; he speaks quietly, but his heart is beating quickly, and Cupid's dart sinks deeper in its wound.

"Is your brother, Mr. Rodney, like you?" asks Mona presently.

He has never told her that his eldest brother is a baronet. Why he hardly knows, yet now he does not contradict her when she alludes to him as Mr. Rodney. Some inward feeling prevents him. Perhaps he understands instinctively that such knowledge will but widen the breach that already exists between him and the girl who now walks beside him with a happy smile upon her flower-like face.

"No; he is not like me," he says, abruptly: "he is a much better fellow. He is, besides, tall and rather lanky, with dark eyes and hair. He is like my father, they tell me; I am like my mother."

At this Mona turns her gaze secretly upon him. She studies his hair, his gray eyes, his irregular nose, – that ought to have known better, – and his handsome mouth, so resolute, yet so tender, that his fair moustache only half conceals. The world in general acknowledges Mr. Rodney to be a well-looking young man of ordinary merits, but in Mona's eyes he is something more than all this; and I believe the word "ordinary," as applied to him, would sound offensive in her ears.

"I think I should like your mother," she says, naively and very sweetly, lifting her eyes steadily to his. "She is handsome, of course; and is she good as she is beautiful?"

Flattery goes a long way with most men, but in this instance the subtle poison touches Mr. Rodney even more than it pleases him. He presses the hand that rests upon his arm an eighth of an inch nearer to his heart than it was before, if that be possible.

"My mother is a real good sort when you know her," he says, evasively; "but she's rather rough on strangers. However, she is always all there, you know, so far as manners go, and that."

Miss Mona looks puzzled.

"I don't think I understand you," she says, at length, gravely. "Where would the rest of her be, if she wasn't all in the same place?"

She says this in such perfect good faith that Mr. Rodney roars with laughter.

"Perhaps you may not know it," says he, "but you are simply perfection!"

"So Mr. Moore says," returns she, smiling.

Had she put out all her powers of invention with a view to routing him with slaughter, she could not have been more successful than she is with this small unpremeditated speech. Had a thunderbolt fallen at his feet, he could not have betrayed more thorough and complete discomfiture.

He drops her arm, and looks as though he is prepared to drop her acquaintance also, at a moment's notice.

"What has Mr. Moore to do with you?" he asks, haughtily. "Who is he, that he should so speak to you?"

"He is our landlord," says Mona, calmly, but with uplifted brows, stopping short in the middle of the road to regard him with astonishment.

"And thinks you perfection?" in an impossible tone, losing both his head and his temper completely. "He is rich, I suppose; why don't you marry him?"

Mona turns pale.

"To ask the question is a rudeness," she says, steadily, though her heart is cold and hurt. "Yet I will answer you. In our country, and in our class," with an amount of inborn pride impossible to translate, "we do not marry a man because he is 'rich,' or in other words, sell ourselves for gold."

Having said this, she turns her back upon him contemptuously, and walks towards her home.

He follows her, full of remorse and contrition. Her glance, even more than her words, has covered him with shame, and cured him of his want of generosity.

"Forgive me, Mona," he says, with deep entreaty. "I confess my fault. How could I speak to you as I did! I implore your pardon. Great sinner as I am, surely I shall not knock for forgiveness at your sweet heart in vain!"

"Do not ever speak to me like that again," says Mona, turning upon him eyes humid with disappointment, yet free from wrath of any kind. "As for Mr. Moore," with a curl of her short upper lip that it does him good to see, and a quick frown, "why, he is as old as the hills, and as fat as Tichborne, and he hasn't got a single hair on his head!"

But that Mr. Rodney is still oppressed with the fear that he has mortally offended her, he could have laughed out loud at this childish speech; but anxiety helps him to restrain his mirth. Nevertheless he feels an unholy joy as he thinks on Mr. Moore's bald pate, his "too, too solid flesh," and his "many days."

"Yet he dares to admire you?" is what he does say, after a decided pause.

"Sure they all admire me," says Miss Mona, with an exasperating smile, meant to wither.

But Mr. Rodney is determined to "have it out with her," as he himself would say, before consenting to fade away out of her sight.

"But he wants to marry you. I know he does. Tell me the truth about that," he says, with flattering vehemence.

"Certainly I shall not. It would be very mean, and I wonder at you to ask the question," says Mona, with a great show of virtuous indignation. "Besides," mischievously, "if you know, there is no necessity to tell you anything."

"Yet answer me," persists he, very earnestly.

"I can't," says Mona; "it would be very unfair; and besides," petulantly, "it is all too absurd. Why, if Mr. Moore were to ask me to marry him ten thousand times again, I should never say anything but 'no.'"

Unconsciously she has betrayed herself. He hears the word "again" with a strange sinking of the heart. Others, then, are desirous of claiming this wild flower for their own.

"Oh, Mona, do you mean that?" he says. But Mona, who is very justly incensed, declines to answer him with civility.

"I begin to think our English cousins are not famous for their veracity," she says, with some scorn. "You seem to doubt every one's word; or is it mine in particular? Yet I spoke the truth. I do not want to marry any one."

Here she turns and looks him full in the face; and something – it may be in the melancholy of his expression – so amuses her that (laughter being as natural to her lips as perfume to a flower) she breaks into a sunny smile, and holds out to him her hand in token of amity.

"How could you be so absurd about that old Moore?" she says, lightly. "Why he has got nothing to recommend him except his money; and what good," with a sigh, "does that do him, unless to get him murdered!"

"If he is as fat as you say, he will be a good mark for a bullet," says Mr. Rodney, genially, almost – I am ashamed to say – hopefully. "I should think they would easily pot him one of these dark night that are coming. By this time I suppose he feels more like a grouse than a man, eh? – 'I'll die game' should be his motto."

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that," says Mona, with a shudder. "It isn't at all nice of you; and especially when you know how miserable I am about my poor country."

"It is a pity anything should be said against Ireland," says Rodney, cleverly; "it is such a lovely little spot."

"Do you really like it?" asks she, plainly delighted.

"I should rather think so. Who wouldn't? I went to Glengariffe the other day, and can hardly fancy anything more lovely than its pure waters, and its purple hills that lie continued in the depths beneath."

"I have been there. And at Killarney, but only once, though we live so near."

"That has nothing to do with it," says Rodney. "The easier one can get to a place the more one puts off going. I knew a fellow once, and he lived all his time in London, and I give you my word he had never seen the Crystal Palace. With whom did you go to Killarney?"

"With Lady Mary. She was staying at the castle there; it was last year, and she asked me to go with her. I was delighted. And it was so pleasant, and everything so – so like heaven. The lakes are delicious, so calm, so solitary, so full of thought. Lady Mary is old, but young in manner, and has read and travelled so much, and she likes me," says Mona, naively. "And I like her. Do you know her?"

"Lady Mary Crighton? Yes, I have met her. An old lady with corkscrew ringlets, patches, and hoops? She is quite grande dame, and witty, like all you Irish people."

"She is very seldom at home, but I think I like her better than any one I ever met."

"Do you?" says Geoffrey, in a tone that means much.

"Yes, – better than all the women I ever met," corrects Mona, but without placing the faintest emphasis upon the word "women," which omission somehow possesses its charm in Rodney's eyes.

"Well, I shall go and judge of Killarney myself some day," he says, idly.

"Oh, yes, you must indeed," says the little enthusiast, brightening. "It is more than lovely. How I wish I could go with you!"

She looks at him as she says this, fearlessly, honestly, and without a suspicion of coquetry.

"I wish you could!" says Geoffrey from his heart.

"Well, I can't, you know," with a sigh. "But no matter: you will enjoy the scenery even more by yourself."

"I don't think I shall," says Geoffrey, in a low tone.

"Well, we have both seen the bay," says Mona, cheerfully, – "Bantry Bay I mean: so we can talk about that. Yet indeed" – seriously – "you cannot be said to have seen it properly, as it is only by moonlight its full beauty can be appreciated. Then, with its light waves sparkling beneath the gleam of the stars, and the moon throwing a path across it that seems to go on and on, until it reaches heaven, it is more satisfying than a happy dream. Do you see that hill up yonder?" pointing to an elevation about a mile distant: "there I sometimes sit when the moon is full, and watch the bay below. There is a lovely view from that spot."

"I wish I could see it!" says Geoffrey, longingly.

"Well so you can," returns she, kindly. "Any night when there is a good moon come to me and I will go with you to Carrickdhuve – that is the name of the hill – and show you the bay."

She looks at him quite calmly, as one might who sees nothing in the fact of accompanying a young man to the top of a high mountain after nightfall. And in truth she does see nothing in it. If he wishes to see the bay she loves so well, of course he must see it; and who so competent to point out to him all its beauties as herself?

"I wonder when the moon will be full," says Geoffrey, making this ordinary remark in an everyday tone that does him credit, and speaks well for his kindliness and delicacy of feeling, as well as for his power of discerning character. He makes no well-turned speeches about the bay being even more enchanting under such circumstances, or any orthodox compliment that might have pleased a woman versed in the world's ways.

"We must see," says Mona, thoughtfully.

They have reached the farm again by this time, and Geoffrey, taking up the guns he had left behind the hall door, – or what old Scully is pleased to call the front door in contradistinction to the back door, through which he is in the habit of making his exits and entrances, – holds out his hand to bid her good-by.

"Come in for a little while and rest yourself," says Mona, hospitably, "while I get the brandy and send it up to poor Kitty."

It strikes Geoffrey as part of the innate sweetness and genuineness of her disposition that, after all the many changes of thought that have passed through her brain on their return journey, her first concern on entering her own doors is for the poor unhappy creature in the cabin up yonder.

"Don't be long," he says, impulsively, as she disappears down a passage.

"I won't, then. Sure you can live alone with yourself for one minute," returns she, in very fine Irish; and, with a parting smile, sweet as nectar and far more dangerous, she goes.

When she is gone, Geoffrey walks impatiently up and down the small hall, conflicting emotions robbing him of the serenity that usually attends his footsteps. He is happy, yet full of a secret gnawing uneasiness that weighs upon him daily, hourly. Near Mona – when in her presence – a gladness that amounts almost to perfect happiness is his; apart from her is unrest. Love, although he is but just awakening to the fact, has laid his chubby hands upon him, and now holds him in thrall; so that no longer for him is that most desirable thing content, – which means indifference. Rather is he melancholy now and then, and inclined to look on life apart from Mona as a doubtful good.

For what, after all, is love, but

"A madness most discreet,A choking gall, and a preserving sweet?"

There are, too, dispassionate periods, when he questions the wisdom of giving his heart to a girl lowly born as Mona undoubtedly is, at least on her father's side. And, indeed, the little drop of blue blood inherited from her mother is so faint in hue as to be scarcely recognizable by those inclined to cavil.

And these he knows will be many: there would be first his mother, and then Nick, with a silent tongue but brows uplifted, and after them Violet, who in the home circle is regarded as Geoffrey's "affinerty," and who last year was asked to Rodney Towers for the express purpose (though she knew it not) of laying siege to his heart and bestowing upon him in return her hand and – fortune. To do Lady Rodney justice, she was never blind to the fortune!

Yet Violet, with her pretty, slow, trainante voice and perfect manner, and small pale attractive face, and great eyes that seem too earnest for the fragile body to which they belong, is as naught before Mona, whose beauty is strong and undeniable, and whose charm lies as much in inward grace as in outward loveliness.

Though uncertain that she regards him with any feeling stronger than that of friendliness (because of the strange coldness that she at times affects, dreading perhaps lest he shall see too quickly into her tender heart), yet instinctively he knows that he is welcome in her sight, and that "the day grows brighter for his coming." Still, at times this strange coldness puzzles him, not understanding that

"No lesse was she in secret heart affected,But that she masked it in modestie,For feare she should of lightnesse be detected."

For many days he had not known "that his heart was darkened with her shadow." Only yesterday he might perhaps have denied his love for her, so strange, so uncertain, so undreamt of, is the dawning of a first great attachment. One looks upon the object that attracts, and finds the deepest joy in looking, yet hardly realizes the great truth that she has become part of one's being, not to be eradicated until death or change come to the rescue.

Perhaps Longfellow has more cleverly – and certainly more tenderly – than any other poet described the earlier approaches of the god of Love, when he says, —

"The first sound in the song of loveScarce more than silence is, and yet a sound.Hands of invisible spirits touch the stringsOf that mysterious instrument, the soul,And play the prelude of our fate."

For Geoffrey the prelude has been played, and now at last he knows it. Up and down the little hall he paces, his hands behind his back, as his wont when deep in day-dreams, and asks himself many a question hitherto unthought of. Can he – shall he – go farther in this matter? Then this thought presses to the front beyond all others: – "Does she – will she – ever love me?"

"Now, hurry, Bridget," says Mona's low soft voice, – that "excellent thing in woman." "Don't be any time. Just give that to Kitty, and say one prayer, and be back in ten minutes."

"Law, Miss Mona, ye needn't tell me; sure I'm flyin' I'll be there an' back before ye'll know I'm gone." This from the agile Biddy, as (exhilarated with the knowledge that she is going to see a corpse) she rushes up the road.

"Now come and see my own room," says Mona, going up to Rodney, and, slipping her hand into his in a little trustful fashion that is one of her many, loving ways, she leads him along the hall to a door opposite the kitchen. This she opens, and with conscious pride draws him after her across its threshold. So holding him, she might at this moment have drawn him to the world's end, – wherever that may be!

It is a very curious little room they enter, – yet pretty, withal, and suggestive of care and affection, and certainly not one to be laughed at. Each object that meets the view seems replete with pleasurable memory, – seems part of its gentle mistress. There are two windows, small, and with diamond panes like the parlor, and in the far end is a piano. There are books, and some ornaments, and a huge bowl of sweetly-smelling flowers on the centre-table, and a bracket or two against the walls. Some loose music is lying on a chair.

"Now I am here, you will sing me something," says Geoffrey, presently.

"I wonder what kind of songs you like best," says Mona, dreamily, letting her fingers run noiselessly over the keys of the Collard. "If you are like me, you like sad ones."

"Then I am like you?" returns he, quickly.

"Then I will sing you a song I was sent last week," says Mona, and forthwith sings him "Years Ago," mournfully, pathetically, and with all her soul, as it should be sung. Then she gives him "London Bridge," and then "Rose-Marie," and then she takes her fingers from the piano and looks at him with a fond hope that he will see fit to praise her work.

"You are an artiste," says Geoffrey, with a deep sigh when she has finished. "Who taught you, child? But there is no use in such a question. Nobody could teach it to you: you must feel it as you sing. And yet you are scarcely to be envied. Your singing has betrayed to me one thing: if ever you suffer any great trouble it will kill you."

"I am not going to suffer," says Mona, lightly. "Sorrow only falls on every second generation; and you know poor mother was very unhappy at one time: therefore I am free. You will call that superstition, but," with a grave shake of her head, "it is quite true."

"I hope it is," says Geoffrey; "though, taking your words for gospel, it rather puts me out in the cold. My mother seems to have had rather a good time all through, devoid of anything that might be termed trouble."

"But she lost her husband," says Mona, gently.

"Well, she did. I don't remember about that, you know. I was quite a little chap, and hustled out of sight if I said 'boo.' But of course she's got over all that, and is as jolly as a sand-boy now," says Geoffrey, gayly. (If only Lady Rodney could have heard him comparing her to a "sand-boy"!)

"Poor thing!" says Mona, sympathetically, which sympathy, by the by, is utterly misplaced, as Lady Rodney thought her husband, if anything, an old bore, and three months after his death confessed to herself that she was very glad he was no more.

"Where do you get your music?" asks Geoffrey, idly, wondering how "London Bridge" has found its way to this isolated spot, as he thinks of the shops in the pretty village near, where Molloy and Adams, and their attendant sprite called Weatherley, are unknown.

"The boys send it to me. Anything new that comes out, or anything they think will suit my voice, they post to me at once."

"The boys!" repeats he, mystified.

"Yes, the students, I mean. When with aunty in Dublin I knew ever so many of them, and they were very fond of me."

"I dare say," says Mr. Rodney, with rising ire.

"Jack Foster and Terry O'Brien write to me very often," goes on Mona, unconsciously. "And indeed they all do occasionally, at Christmas, you know, and Easter and Midsummer, just to ask me how I am, and to tell me how they have got through their exams. But it is Jack and Terry, for the most part, who send me the music."

"It is very kind of them, I'm sure," says Geoffrey, unreasonably jealous, as, could he only have seen the said Terry's shock head of red hair, his fears of rivalry would forever have been laid at rest. "But they are favored friends. You can take presents from them, and yet the other day when I asked you if you would like a little gold chain to hang to your mother's watch, you answered me 'that you did not require it' in such a tone as actually froze me and made me feel I had said something unpardonably impertinent."

"Oh, no," says Mona, shocked at this interpretation of her manner. "I did not mean all that; only I really did not require it; at least" – truthfully – "not much. And, besides, a song is not like a gold chain; and you are quite different from them; and besides, again," – growing slightly confused, yet with a last remnant of courage, – "there is no reason why you should give me anything. Shall I" – hurriedly – "sing something else for you?"

And then she sings again, some old-world song of love and chivalry that awakes within one a quick longing for a worthier life. Her sweet voice rings through the room, now glad with triumph, now sad with a "lovely melancholy," as the words and music sway her. Her voice is clear and pure and full of pathos! She seems to follow no rule; an "f" here or a "p" there, on the page before her, she heeds not, but sings only as her heart dictates.

When she has finished, Geoffrey says "thank you" in a low tone. He is thinking of the last time when some one else sang to him, and of how different the whole scene was from this. It was at the Towers, and the hour with its dying daylight, rises before him. The subdued light of the summer eve, the open window, the perfume of the drowsy flowers, the girl at the piano with her small drooping head and her perfectly trained and very pretty voice, the room, the soft silence, his mother leaning back in her crimson velvet chair, beating time to the music with her long jewelled, fingers, – all is remembered.