Kitabı oku: «Mrs. Geoffrey», sayfa 11

"I will do my best," says Mona, earnestly; "but if I fail, – if after all my efforts your mother still refuses to love me, how will it be then?"

"As it is now; it need make no difference to us; and indeed I will not make the trial at all if you shrink from it, or if it makes you in the faintest degree unhappy."

"I do not shrink from it," replies she, bravely: "I would brave anything to be friends with your mother."

"Very well, then: we will make the attempt," says he, gayly. "'Nothing venture, nothing have.'"

"And 'A dumb priest loses his benefice,'" quotes Mona, in her turn, almost gayly too.

"Yet remember, darling, whatever comes of it," says Rodney, earnestly, "that you are more to me than all the world, – my mother included. So do not let defeat – if we should be defeated – cast you down. Never forget how I love you." In his heart he dreads for her the trial that awaits her.

"I do not," she says, sweetly. "I could not: it is my dearest remembrance; and somehow it has made me strong to conquer, Geoffrey," – flushing, and raising herself to her full height, as though already arming for action, – "I feel, I know, I shall in the end succeed with your mother."

She lifts her luminous eyes to his, and regards him fixedly as she speaks, full of hopeful excitement. Her eyes have always a peculiar fascination of their own, apart from the rest of her face. Once looking at her, as though for the first time impressed with this idea, Geoffrey had said to her, "I never look at your eyes that I don't feel a wild desire to close them with a kiss." To which she had made answer in her little, lovable way, and with a bewitching glance from the lovely orbs in question, "If that is how you mean to do it, you may close them just as often as ever you like."

Now he takes advantage of this general permission, and closes them with a soft caress.

"She must be harder-hearted than I think her, if she can resist you," he says, fondly.

CHAPTER XVI
HOW GEOFFREY AND MONA ENTER THE TOWERS – AND HOW THEY ARE RECEIVED BY THE INHABITANTS THEREOF

The momentous Friday comes at last, and about noon Mona and Geoffrey start for the Towers. They are not, perhaps, in the exuberant spirits that should be theirs, considering they are going to spend their Christmas in the bosom of their family, – at all events, of Geoffrey's family which naturally for the future she must acknowledge as hers. They are indeed not only silent, but desponding, and as they get out of the train at Greatham and enter the carriage sent by Sir Nicholas to meet them their hearts sink nearly into their boots, and for several minutes no words pass between them.

To Geoffrey perhaps the coming ordeal bears a deeper shade; as Mona hardly understands all that awaits her. That Lady Rodney is a little displeased at her son's marriage she can readily believe, but that she has made up her mind beforehand to dislike her, and intends waging with her war to the knife, is more than has ever entered into her gentle mind.

"Is it a long drive, Geoff?" she asks, presently, in a trembling tone, slipping her hand into his in the old fashion. "About six miles. I say, darling, keep up your spirits; if we don't like it, we can leave, you know. But" – alluding to her subdued voice – "don't be imagining evil."

"I don't think I am," says Mona; "but the thought of meeting people for the first time makes me feel nervous. Is your mother tall, Geoffrey?"

"Very."

"And severe-looking? You said she was like you."

"Well, so she is; and yet I suppose our expressions are dissimilar. Look here," says Geoffrey, suddenly, as though compelled at the last moment to give her a hint of what is coming. "I want to tell you about her, – my mother I mean: she is all right, you know, in every way, and very charming in general, but just at first one might imagine her a little difficult!"

"What's that?" asked Mona. "Don't speak of your mother as if she were a chromatic scale."

"I mean she seems a trifle cold, unfriendly, and – er – that," says Geoffrey. "Perhaps it would be a wise thing for you to make up your mind what you will say to her on first meeting her. She will come up to you, you know, and give you her hand like this," taking hers, "and – "

"Yes, I know," said Mona, eagerly interrupting him. "And then she will put her arms round me, and kiss me just like this," suiting the action to the word.

"Like that? Not a bit of it," says Geoffrey, who had given her two kisses for her one: "you mustn't expect it. She isn't in the least like that. She will meet you probably as though she saw you yesterday, and say, 'How d'ye do? I'm afraid you have had a very long and cold drive.' And then you will say – "

A pause.

"Yes, I shall say – " anxiously.

"You – will – say – " Here he breaks down ignominiously, and confesses by his inability to proceed that he doesn't in the least know what it is she can say.

"I know," says Mona, brightening, and putting on an air so different from her own usual unaffected one as to strike her listener with awe. "I shall say, 'Oh! thanks, quite too awfully much, don't you know? but Geoffrey and I didn't find it a bit long, and we were as warm as wool all the time.'"

At this appalling speech Geoffrey's calculations fall through, and he gives himself up to undisguised mirth.

"If you say all that," he says, "there will be wigs on the green: that's Irish, isn't it? or something like it, and very well applied too. The first part of your speech sounded like Toole or Brough, I'm not sure which."

"Well, it was in a theatre I heard it," confesses Mona, meekly: "it was a great lord who said it on the stage, so I thought it would be all right."

"Great lords are not necessarily faultlessly correct, either on or off the stage," says Geoffrey. "But, just for choice, I prefer them off it. No, that will not do at all. When my mother addresses you, you are to answer her back again in tones even colder than her own, and say – "

"But, Geoffrey, why should I be cold to your mother? Sure you wouldn't have me be uncivil to her, of all people?"

"Not uncivil, but cool. You will say to her, 'It was rather better than I anticipated, thank you.' And then, if you can manage to look bored, it will be quite correct, so far, and you may tell yourself you have scored one."

"I may say that horrid speech, but I certainly can't pretend I was bored during our drive, because I am not," says Mona.

"I know that. If I was not utterly sure of it I should instantly commit suicide by precipitating myself under the carriage-wheels," says Geoffrey. "Still – 'let us dissemble.' Now say what I told you."

So Mrs. Rodney says, "It was rather better than I anticipated, thank you," in a tone so icy that his is warm beside it.

"But suppose she doesn't say a word about the drive?" says Mona, thoughtfully. "How will it be then?"

"She is safe to say something about it, and that will do for anything," says Rodney, out of the foolishness of his heart.

And now the horses draw up before a brilliantly-lighted hall, the doors of which are thrown wide as though in hospitable expectation of their coming.

Geoffrey, leading his wife into the hall, pauses beneath a central swinging lamp, to examine her critically. The footman who is in attendance on them has gone on before to announce their coming: they are therefore for the moment alone.

Mona is looking lovely, a little pale perhaps from some natural agitation, but her pallor only adds to the lustre of her great blue eyes and lends an additional sweetness to the ripeness of her lips. Her hair is a little loose, but eminently becoming, and altogether she looks as like an exquisite painting as one can conceive.

"Take off your hat," says Geoffrey, in a tone that gladdens her heart, so full it is of love and admiration; and, having removed her hat, she follows him though halls and one or two anterooms until they reach the library, into which the man ushers them.

It is a very pretty room, filled with a subdued light, and with a blazing fire at one end. All bespeaks warmth, and home, and comfort, but to Mona in her present state it is desolation itself. The three occupants of the room rise as she enters, and Mona's heart dies within her as a very tall statuesque woman, drawing herself up languidly from a lounging-chair, comes leisurely up to her. There is no welcoming haste in her movements, no gracious smile, for which her guest is thirsting, upon her thin lips.

She is dressed in black velvet, and has a cap of richest old lace upon her head. To the quick sensibilities of the Irish girl it becomes known without a word that she is not to look for love from this stately woman, with her keen scrutinizing glance and cold unsmiling lips.

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 anticipated, 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 title. "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 shimmering 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 embarrassment 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, shifting 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 wishing 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 shivering the good pleasure of your next-door neighbor, is according to Mr. Rodney, a hardship too great for human endurance.

Having accomplished her toilet without the assistance 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, passing 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 godly 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 fashion, 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.

The stranger is advancing slowly: he is swarthy, and certainly not prepossessing. His hair is of that shade and texture that suggests unpleasantly the negro. His lips are a trifle thick, his eyes like sloes. There is, too, an expression of low cunning in these latter features that breeds disgust in the beholder.

He does not see Mona until he is within a yard of her, a thick bush standing between him and her. Being always a creature of impulse, she has stood still on seeing him, and is lost in wonder as to who he can be. One hand is lifting up her gown, the other is holding together the large soft white fleecy shawl that covers her shoulders, and is therefore necessarily laid upon her breast. Her attitude is as picturesque as it is adorable.

The stranger, having come quite near, raises his head, and, seeing her, starts naturally, and also comes to a standstill. For a full half-minute he stares unpardonably, and then lifts his hat. Mona – who, as we have seen, is not great in emergencies – fails to notice the rudeness, in her own embarrassment, and therefore bows politely in return to his salutation.

She is still wondering vaguely who he can be, when he breaks the silence.

"It is an early hour to be astir," he says, awkwardly; then, finding she makes no response, he goes on, still more awkwardly. "Can you tell me if this path will lead me to the road for Plumston?"

Plumston is a village near. The first remark may sound Too free and easy, but his manner is decorous in the extreme. In spite of the fact that her pretty head is covered with a silk handkerchief in lieu of a hat, he acknowledges her "within the line," and knows instinctively that her clothes, though simplicity itself, are perfect both in tint and in texture.

He groans within him that he cannot think of any speech bordering on the Grandisonian, that may be politely addressed to this sylvan nymph; but all such speeches fail him. Who can she be? Were ever eyes so liquid before, or lips so full of feeling?

"I am sorry I can tell you nothing," says Mona, shaking her head. "I was never in this wood before; I know nothing of it."

"I should know all about it," says the stranger, with a curious contraction of the muscles of his face, which it may be he means for a smile. "In time I shall no doubt, but at present it is a sealed book to me. But the future will break all seals as far at least as Rodney Towers is concerned."

Then she knows she is speaking to "the Australian," (as she has heard him called), and, lifting her head, examines his face with renewed interest. Not a pleasant face by any means, yet not altogether bad, as she tells herself in the generosity of her heart.

"I am a stranger; I know nothing," she says again, hardly knowing what to say, and moving a little as though she would depart.

"I suppose I am speaking to Mrs. Rodney," he says, guessing wildly, yet correctly as it turns out, having heard, as all the country has besides, that the bride is expected at the Towers during the week. He has never all this time removed his black eyes from the perfect face before him with its crimson headgear. He is as one fascinated, who cannot yet explain where the fascination lies.

"Yes, I am Mrs. Rodney," says Mona, feeling some pride in her wedded name, in spite of the fact that two whole months have gone by since first she heard it. At this question, though, as coming from a stranger, she recoils a little within herself, and gathers up her gown more closely with a gesture impossible to misunderstand.

"You haven't asked me who I am," says the stranger, as though eager to detain her at any cost, still without a smile, and always with his eyes fixed upon her face. It seems as though he positively cannot remove them, so riveted are they.

"No;" she might in all truth have added, "because I did not care to know," but what she does say (for incivility even to an enemy would be impossible to Mona) is, "I thought perhaps you might not like it."

Even this is a small, if unconscious, cut, considering what objectionable curiosity he evinced about her name. But the Australian is above small cuts, for the good reason that he seldom sees them.

"I am Paul Rodney," he now volunteers, – "your husband's cousin, you know. I suppose," with a darkening of his whole face, "now I have told you who I am, it will not sweeten your liking for me."

"I have heard of you," says Mona, quietly. Then, pointing towards that part of the wood whither he would go, she says, coldly, "I regret I cannot tell you where this path leads to. Good-morning."

With this she inclines her head, and without another word goes back by the way she has come.

Paul Rodney, standing where she has left him, watches her retreating figure until it is quite out of sight, and the last gleam of the crimson silk handkerchief is lost in the distance, with a curious expression upon his face. It is an odd mixture of envy, hatred, and admiration. If there is a man on earth he hates with cordial hatred, it is Geoffrey Rodney who at no time has taken the trouble to be even outwardly civil to him. And to think this peerless creature is his wife! For thus he designates Mona, – the Australian being a man who would be almost sure to call the woman he admired a "peerless creature."

When she is quite gone, he pulls himself together with a jerk, and draws a heavy sigh, and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, continues his walk.

At breakfast Mona betrays the fact that she has met Paul Rodney during her morning ramble, and tells all that passed between him and her, – on being closely questioned, – which news has the effect of bringing a cloud to the brow of Sir Nicholas and a frown to that of his mother.

"Such presumption, walking in our wood without permission," she says, haughtily.

"My dear mother, you forget the path leading from the southern gate to Plumston Road has been open to the public for generations. He was at perfect liberty to walk there."

"Nevertheless, it is in very bad taste his taking advantage of that absurd permission, considering how he is circumstanced with regard to us," says Lady Rodney. "You wouldn't do it yourself, Nicholas, though you find excuses for him."

A very faint smile crosses Sir Nicholas's lips.

"Oh, no, I shouldn't," he says, gently; and then the subject drops.

And here perhaps it will be as well to explain the trouble that at this time weighs heavily upon the Rodney family.