Rossmoyne Part 3

"Certainly; it was nurse," replies Kit, with dignity.

"Dear me! and where is your nurse now?" asks Miss Priscilla, anxiously.

The query is a fortunate one, in that it turns the conversation into a different channel, and checks the eloquence of Kit and Terry, who are plainly on the brink of an open war.

"When last _I_ saw her," says Terence, "she was sitting on the top of our biggest box, with everything else strewn around her, and her feet resting on two brown-paper parcels.--I wonder," says Mr. Beresford, addressing Monica, "what on earth she had in those brown paper parcels.

She has been hugging them night and day ever since she left Jerusalem."

"Dynamite," suggested Monica, lightly; whereupon the two Misses Blake turn pale.

"At that rate, Aunt Priscilla, we needn't trouble about her," says Terence, pleasantly, "as she _must_ be blown up by this. None of those clock-work affairs could be arranged to go on much longer. Poor thing!

when in the flesh she wasn't half bad. I forgive her everything,--even her undying hatred to myself."

"If she is in fragments, so are our things," says Kit. "I think she _needn't_ have elected to sit on them at the supreme moment."

"You don't really think," says Miss Penelope, in a somewhat troubled tone, remembering how an innocent baker in Rossmoyne had had some of the explosive matter in question thrown into his kitchen the night before last,--"you don't really think that these parcels you speak of contain infernal machines?--Yes, that is what they call them, my dear Priscilla," turning to her sister, as though anxious to apologize for having used a word calculated to lead the mind to the lower regions.

By this time both Kit and Terence are convulsed with delight at the sensation they have created, and would probably have gone on to declare the innocent Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l an advanced Nihilist of the most dangerous type, but for Monica's coming to the rescue and explaining matters satisfactorily.

"Still, I cannot understand how you got up here so quickly," says Miss Penelope. "You know Moyne--home I hope you will call it for the future, my dears--" with a little fond pat on Monica's hand, "is quite three miles from the station."

"We should have thought nothing of that," says Terence, "but for Kit; she has had a fever, you know," pointing to the child's closely-cropped, dark little head; "so we said we would just stroll on a little and see what the country was like."

"And lovely it is," puts in Kit, enthusiastically. "We got up on a high hill, and saw the sea lying like a great quiet lake beneath us. There was scarcely a ripple on it, and only a soft sound like a sob." Her eyes, that are almost too big for her small face, glow brilliantly.

"And then there came by a man with a cart filled with hay, and he nodded to us and said, 'Good-morning, sir;' and so I nodded back, and said, 'How d'ye do?' to him and asked him was it far to Moyne House. 'A good step,' he said; 'three miles at the very least.'"

"He didn't; he said _laste_," says Kit, who is plainly in a litigious mood.

"At that," says Monica, breaking in eagerly, feeling, no doubt, she has been left too long out in the cold, and that it is time her voice were heard, "I suppose I looked rather forlorn, because he said, quite nicely 'Maybe ye'd not be too proud, miss, to get into me cart, an I'll dhrive the lot of ye up to the House, where as luck has it, I'm goin' meself.'"

She mimicks the soft Southern brogue very prettily.

"So up we got," says Kit, gayly, "and away we went in the nice sweet hay, jog trot, jog trot, and _so_ comfortable."

The Misses Blake by this time are filled with dismay. In Rossmoyne, where families are few and far between, and indecent scandal unknown, the smallest trifles are seized upon with avidity and manufactured into mountains. "A good appearance," Miss Penelope was taught at school, "is the first step in life," and here have these children been making _their_ appearance for the first time in a common hay-cart.

What will Madam O'Connor say? Madam O'Connor's father having always laid claim to being a direct descendant of one of the old kings of Munster, Madam's veins of course are filled with blood royal, and as such are to be held in reverence. What _won't_ this terrible old woman say, when she hears of the Beresfords' escapade?

The Misses Blake sit s.h.i.+vering, blinking their eyelids, and afraid to say anything.

"We got on splendidly," Terence is saying, "and might indeed have finished our journey respectably, but for Monica. _She_ laid our reputation in the dust."

Monica turns upon him an appealing glance from her large soft eyes that would have melted any heart but that of a brother's.

"Aunt Priscilla," says the adamantine youth, "what is the name of the house with a big gate, about a half a mile from this?"

"Coole Castle," replies she, stiffly, the very fact of having to mention the residence of the detested Desmond making her heart beat violently.

But Terry is a person blind to speaking glances and deaf to worded hints. In effect, Terry and tact are two; so he goes on, unheeding his aunt's evident disrelish for the subject,--

"Well, just as we got to Coole, I saw a fellow standing inside the entrance-gate, smoking a cigar. I fancied he looked amused, but would have thought nothing of that, only I heard him laugh aloud, and saw he was staring over my head--I was driving--to where Monica and Kit were, on the top of the hay. It occurred to me then to see what the girls were doing, so I stood up on the shaft, and looked, and----"

Here he pauses, as though slightly overcome.

"What, my dear?" asks Miss Priscilla, anxiously.

"There was Monica lying in an aesthetic att.i.tude,--_very_ aesthetic,--with her chin in her hands, and her eyes on the horse's ears, and her thoughts I presume in heaven, or wherever young ladies keep them, and with her heels----"

"It isn't _truth_!--it _isn't_!" interrupts Monica, blus.h.i.+ng furiously, and speaking with much indignation. "I don't believe a single word of it!"

"And with her heels----"

"_Terence!_"

"In mid-air. She was kicking them up and down with delight," says Terence, fairly bubbling over with joy at the recollection. "It was the most humiliating sight for a modest brother. I shall never forgive her for it. Besides, the strange young man was----"

"If you say another word," says Monica, white with wrath and tears in her eyes, "I shall never speak to you again, or help you out of any trouble."

This awful threat has the desired effect of reducing Mr. Beresford to subjection. He goes down before the foe, and truckles to her meanly.

"You needn't take it so much to heart," he says soothingly: "there wasn't much in it, after all; and your shoes are very pretty, and so are your feet."

The compliment works wonders; Monica quite brightens up again, but the two old ladies are hopelessly scandalized.

"I feel a.s.sured, Terence," says Miss Priscilla, with much dignity, "that under _no_ circ.u.mstances could a niece of mine show too much of her----her----"

Here Miss Priscilla blushes, and breaks down.

"Legs?" suggests Terry, politely.

"But who was the strange young man?" asks Miss Penelope, curiously.

"Our friend of the hay-cart said his name was Desmond, and that he was nephew to the master of the house behind the big gates," returns Kit, fluently.

"Desmond!" says Miss Priscilla, greatly agitated. "Let me never hear you mention that name again! It has been our bane! Forget you have ever been so unfortunate as to encounter this young man; and if ill luck should ever drive him across your path again, remember you do not--you never _can_--know him."

"But I'm certain he will know Monica if he sees her again," says Kit.

"He stared at her as if she had seven heads."

"No wonder, considering her equivocal position. And as to knowing Monica, I'm not certain of that, of course, but I'm utterly positive he could swear to her _shoes_ in a crowd," says Terence, with unholy delight. "He was enchanted with them, and with the clocks on her stockings: I think he was taking the pattern of them."

"He was _not_," says Monica, almost weeping. "He couldn't see them. I was too high up."

"What will you bet he doesn't know the color of them?" asks her tormentor, with a fresh burst of appreciation of the undignified scene.

"When I see him again I'll ask him."

"Terence," says Miss Priscilla, growing very pale, "you must never see him again, or, at all events, you must never speak to him. Understand, once for all, that intimacy between us and the inhabitants of Coole is impossible. This feud I hint at touches you even more closely than it touches us, but you cannot feel it more than we do,--perhaps not as much. The honor of our family has suffered at the hands of the Master of Coole. He is the enemy of our house!"

"Priscilla!" murmurs Miss Penelope, in a low and trembling tone.

"Do not try to check me, Penelope. I _will_ speak," says Miss Priscilla, sternly. "This man, years ago, offered one near and dear to us an indignity not to be lightly borne. The world is wide," turning to the astonished children, "you can make friends where you choose; but I would have you recollect that _never_ can a Beresford and a Desmond have aught in common."