Mrs. Geoffrey Part 31

Then he tells her all the truth about his interview with his mother, only suppressing such words as would be detrimental to the cause he has in hand, and might give her pain.

"And when she sees you all will be well," he says, still clinging bravely to his faith in this panacea for all evils. "Everything rests with you.'

"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,"--flus.h.i.+ng, 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 pa.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on. "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 antic.i.p.ated, 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 antic.i.p.ated, 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 l.u.s.tre 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.