Molly Bawn Part 54

"No! Am I? Because I wish to be like other women?"

"A hopeless wish, and a very unwise one."

"'Hopeless!' And why, pray?" With a little uplifting of the straight brows and a little gleam from under the long curled lashes.

"Because," says her lover, with fond conviction, "you are so infinitely superior to them, that they would have to be born all over again before you could bring yourself to fall into their ways."

"What! every woman in the known world?"

"Every one of them, I am eternally convinced."

"Teddy," says Molly, rubbing her cheek in her old caressing fas.h.i.+on against his sleeve, and slipping her fingers into his, "you may go on.

Say anything you like,--call me any name you choose,--and I promise not to be one bit angry. There!"

When Luttrell has allowed himself time to let his own strong brown fingers close upon hers, and has solaced himself still further by pressing his lips to them, he takes courage and goes on, with a slightly accelerated color:

"Well, you see, Molly, you have made the subject a forbidden one, and--er--it is about our engagement I want to speak. Now, remember your promise, darling, and don't be vexed with me if I ask you to shorten it. Many people marry and are quite comfortable on five hundred pounds a year; why should not we? I know a lot of fellows who are doing uncommonly well on less."

"Poor fellows!" says Molly, full of sympathy.

"I know I am asking you a great deal,"--rather nervously,--"but won't you think of it, Molly?"

"I am afraid I won't, just yet," replies that lady, suavely. "Be sensible, Teddy; remember all we said to John, and think how foolish we should look going back of it all. Why should things not go on safely and secretly, as at present, and let us put marriage out of our heads until something turns up? I am like Mr. Micawber; I have an almost religious belief in the power things have of turning up."

"_I_ haven't," says Luttrell, with terse melancholy.

"So much the worse for you. And besides, Teddy, instinct tells me you are much nicer as a lover than you will be as a husband. Once you attain to that position, I doubt I shall be able to order you about as I do at present."

"Try me."

"Not for a while. There, don't look so dismal, Ted; are we not perfectly happy as we are?"

"You may be, perhaps."

"Don't say, 'perhaps;' you may be certain of it," says she, gayly. "I haven't a doubt on the subject. Come, do look cheerful again. Men as fair as you should cultivate a perpetual smile."

"I wish I was a n.i.g.g.e.r," says Luttrell, impatiently. "You have such an admiration for blackamoors, that then, perhaps, you might learn to care for me a degree more than you do just now. Shadwell is dark enough for you."

"Yes; isn't he handsome?" With much innocent enthusiasm. "I thought last night at dinner, when----"

"I don't in the least want to know what you thought last night of Shadwell's personal appearance," Luttrell interrupts her, angrily.

"And I don't in the least want you to hold my hand a moment longer,"

replies Miss Ma.s.sereene, with saucy retaliation, drawing her fingers from his with a sudden movement, and running away from him up the stone steps of the balcony into the house.

All through the night, both when waking and in dreams, the remembrance of the slight cast upon her absent mother by Mr. Amherst, and her own silent acceptance of it, has disturbed the mind of Marcia. "A dancer!"

The word enrages her.

Molly's little pa.s.sionate movement and outspoken determination to hear no ill spoken of her dead father showed Marcia even more forcibly her own cowardice and mean policy of action. And be sure she likes Molly none the more in that she was the one to show it. Yet Molly cannot possibly entertain the same affection for a mere memory that she feels for the mother on whom she has expended all the really pure and true love of which she is capable.

It is not, therefore, toward her grandfather, whose evil tongue has ever been his own undoing, she cherishes the greatest bitterness, but toward herself, together with a certain scorn that, through moneyed motives, she has tutored herself to sit by and hear the one she loves lightly mentioned.

Now, looking back upon it, it appears to her grossest treachery to the mother whose every thought she knows is hers, and who, in her foreign home, lives waiting, hoping, for the word that shall restore her to her arms.

A kind of anxiety to communicate with the injured one, and to pour out on paper the love she bears her, but dares not breathe at Herst, fills Marcia. So that when the house is silent on this Sunday afternoon,--when all the others have wandered into the open air,--she makes her way to the library, and, sitting down, commences one of the lengthy, secret, forbidden missives that always find their way to Italy, in spite of prying eyes and all the untold evils that so surely wait upon discovery.

To any one acquainted with Marcia, her manner of commencing her letter would be a revelation. To one so cold, so self-contained, the weaker symptoms of affection are disallowed; yet this is how she begins:

"My own Beloved,--As yet I have no good news to send you, and little that I can say,--though ever as I write to you my heart is full. The old man grows daily more wearisome, more detestable, more inhuman, yet shows no sign of death. He is even, as it seems to me, stronger and more full of life than when last I wrote to you, now three weeks ago. At times I feel dispirited, almost despairing, and wonder if the day will ever come when we two shall be reunited,--when I shall be able to welcome you to my English home, where, in spite of prejudices, you will be happy, because you will be with me."

Here, unluckily, because of the trembling of her fingers, a large spot of ink falls heavily from her pen upon the half-written page beneath, destroying it.

With an exclamation expressive of impatience, Marcia pushes the sheet to one side and hastily commences again upon another. This time she is more successful, and has reached almost the last word in her final tender message, when a footstep approaching disturbs her. Gathering up her papers, she quits the library by its second door, and, gaining her own room, finishes and seals her packet.

Not until then does she perceive that the blotted sheet is no longer in her possession,--that by some untoward accident she must have forgotten it behind her in her flight.

Consternation seizes her. Whose were the footsteps that broke in upon her quietude? Why had she not stood her ground? With a beating heart she runs down-stairs, enters the library once more with cautious steps, only to find it empty. But, search as she may, the missing paper is not to be found.

What if it has fallen into her grandfather's keeping! A cold horror falls upon her. After all these weary years of hated servitude to be undone! It is impossible even fickle fortune should play her such a deadly trick!

Yet the horror continues until she finds herself again face to face with her grandfather. He is more than usually gracious,--indeed, almost marked in his attentions to her,--and once more Marcia breathes freely.

No; probably the paper was destroyed; even she herself in a fit of abstraction may have torn it up before leaving the library.

The evening, being Sunday, proves even duller than usual. Mr. Amherst, with an amount of consideration not to be expected, retires to rest early. The others fall insensibly into the silent, dozy state. Mr.

Darley gives way to a gentle snore. It is the gentlest thing imaginable, but effectual. Tedcastle starts to his feet and gives the fire a vigorous poke. He also trips very successfully over the footstool, that goes far to make poor Darley's slumbers blest, and brings that gentleman into a sitting posture.

"This will never do," Luttrell says, when he has apologized profusely to his awakened friend. "We are all growing sleepy. Potts, exert your energies and tell us a story."

"Yes, do, Plantagenet," says Lady Stafford, rousing herself resolutely, and shutting up her fan with a lively snap.

"I will," says Potts, obligingly, without a moment's hesitation.

"Potts is always equal to the occasion," Sir Penthony remarks, admiringly. "As a penny showman he would have been invaluable and died worth any money. Such energy, such unflagging zeal is rare. That pretty gunpowder plot he showed his friends the other night would fetch a large audience."

"Don't ask me to be the audience a second time," Lady Stafford says, unkindly. "To be blown to bits once in a lifetime is, I consider, quite sufficient."

"'Well, if ever I do a ky-ind action again,'" says Mr. Potts,--who is brimful of odd quotations, chiefly derived from low comedies,--posing after Toole. "It is the most mistaken thing in the world to do anything for anybody. You never know where it will end. I once knew a fellow who saved another fellow from drowning, and hanged if the other fellow didn't cling on him ever after and make him support him for life."

"I'm sure that's an edifying tale" says Sir Penthony, with a deep show of interest. "But--stop one moment, Potts. I confess I can't get any further for a minute or two. _How_ many fellows were there? There was your fellow, and the other fellow, and the other fellow's fellow; was that three fellows or four? I can't make it out. I apologize all round for my stupidity, but would you say it all over again, Potts, and very slowly this time, please, to see if I can grasp it?"

"Give you my honor I thought it was a conundrum," says Henry Darley.

Plantagenet laughs as heartily as any one, and evidently thinks it a capital joke.

"You remind me of no one so much as Sothern," goes on Sir Penthony, warming to his theme. "If you went on the stage you would make your fortune. But don't dream of acting, you know; go in for being yourself, pure and simple,--plain, unvarnished Plantagenet Potts,--and I venture to say you will take London by storm. The British public would go down before you like corn before the reaper."