Chapter 12

How Monica with faltering footsteps enters the mysterious moonlight, and how she fares therein.

What a noise the tiny gravel makes beneath her feet, as she hurries rapidly towards the garden! How her heart beats! Oh that she were back again in her pretty safe room, with the naughty Kit to scold! Oh, if Aunt Priscilla were to rise, and, looking out of her bedroom window, catch a glimpse of her, as she hastes to meet the man she has been forbidden to know! A thousand terrors possess her. The soft beauty of the night is unseen, the rushing of sweet brooks in the distance is unheard. She hurries on, a little, lithe, frightened figure, with wide eyes and parted lips, to the rendezvous she has not sought. And what a little way it had seemed in the glad daylight, yet what a journey in the silent, fearsome night! There are real tears, born of sheer nervousness, in her beautiful eyes, as she runs along the garden path, and at last--_at last_--finds herself face to face with Desmond.

"Ah, you have come!" cries he, gladly, going to meet her while yet she is a long way off.

"Yes." She can say no more, but her fear has departed at sight of him, and once more she grows calm, collected, and mistress of herself. She keeps well away from him, however, and holds out to him--that "white wonder"--her hand, from a very great distance, as it seems to him. Does she distrust him, then? Thinking of this, Brian takes the extended hand, and holds it in a clasp that though tender is light, and refrains with much forbearance from pressing his lips to it.

"To come _here_, and at this hour! It is madness!" says Monica, hastily.

"A very blessed madness, then, and with method in it: it has enabled me to see _you_."

"Oh, do not talk like that. You ought not to see me at all. And, now, what is it? Kit said you wanted me sadly."

"And so I do, and not only now but always."

"If," reproachfully, "it is nothing pressing, would not to-morrow have done?"

"To-morrow never comes. There is nothing like to-day; and how could I have lived till to-morrow? I could not sleep, I could not rest, until I had seen you. My heart seemed on fire. Monica, how could you have treated me as you did to-day?"

She is silent. The very fact of her not answering convinces him her coldness at the Barracks was intentional, and his tone takes an additional sadness as he speaks again.

"You meant it then?" he says. "You would not throw me even one poor glance. If you could only look into my heart, and read how cruelly I felt your unkindness, you might----"

"I don't know what you mean," says Monica. "Why should you talk of unkindness? Why should I be kinder to you than to another?"

"Of your grace alone; I know that," says the young man, humbly. He has paid court to many a town-bred damsel before this, and gained their smiles too, and their sighs; yet now he sues to this cold child as he never sued before, and knows his very soul is set on her good will.

"Why must you choose me to love,--_me_, of all the world?" says Monica, tremulously: "it is wide, there are others--and----"

"Because I must. It is my fate, and I am glad of it. Whom worthier could I love?" says the lover, with fond, passionate reverence.

"Many, no doubt. And why love at all? Let us be friends, then, if it is indeed decreed that our lives meet----"

"There could never be mere friendship between you and me. If your heart sleeps, at least your sense must tell you that."

"Then I could wish myself without sense. I want to know nothing about it. Alas! how sad a thing is love!"

"And how joyous! It is the one emotion to be fed and fostered. 'All others are but vanity.' I will persist in loving you until I die."

"That is a foolish saying; and, even if you do, what will come of it all?" says Monica, with a sigh.

"Marriage, I trust," returns he, right cheerily. "Because, to give you another example of love's endurance, and to quote old Southey to you, I will tell you that he says,--

"'It is indestructable; Its holy flame forever burneth: From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.'

but not yet awhile, I hope."

"You are a special pleader," says she, with a sudden smile.

"For the cause that I plead I would that I were a more eloquent advocate."

"You are eloquent enough," glancing at him for a moment, and then again turning away from him; "too eloquent," she says, with a little sigh.

He is still holding her hands, but now he does not speak or answer her in any wise. A silence falls upon them, calm as the night. In "full orbed glory" the moon above sails through the skies.

"A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, Breaks the serene of heaven."

"There is one thing I must say, Monica," says the young man at last, lifting her face gently with one hand until her eyes look into his own: "remember, my life is in your hands."

"Do not overburden me," she answers, but in so low a voice that it can scarce be heard. Yet _he_ hears.

"My darling, must I be a burden to you?" he says. "Monica, if this my courtship is hateful to you, or more than you can bear, dismiss me now, and I will go from you, no matter what it costs me."

"You are no true lover, to talk like that," she says, with a shadowy smile.

"I am lover enough to wish you no pain or weariness of spirit."

"I doubt you are too good for me," she answers with a little burst of feeling.

"I must be a paragon indeed if that be so," returns he. "Oh, Monica, if you could only love me!"

"I _dare_ not." Then, as though sorry for these words, she holds out her hands to him, and says, with a quick smile, "Oh, Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?"

"I wish I knew," returns he sadly. "Yet if I were sure of one thing I should not despair. Monica, tell me you don't like Ryde."

"I can't," says Monica. "He is very kind to me always. I am sure I ought to like him."

"How has he been kind to you?"

"Oh, in many ways."

"He has brought you a cup of somebody else's tea, I suppose, and has probably trotted after you with a camp-stool; is that kindness?"

"If one is hot or tired, yes."

"You are one of the most grateful specimen of your sex. I wish there was anything for which you might be grateful to me. But I am not great at the _petits soins_ business."

"I shouldn't have thought so this afternoon," says Monica, maliciously, "when you were happy with Olga Bohun. But see, the moon has risen quite above the elms. I must go."

"Not yet. There is something else. When am I to see you again?--when?"

"That is as fate wills it."

"_You_ are my fate. Will it, then, and say to-morrow."

"No, no!" exclaims she, releasing her hands from his, "I cannot indeed. I _must_ not. In being here with you now I am doing wrong, and am betraying the two people in the world who are most kind to me. How shall I look into their eyes to-morrow? No; I will not promise to meet you anywhere--_ever_."

"How tender you are with them, and with me how cruel!"

"You have many joys in your life, but they how few!"

"You are wrong there. The world has grown useless to me since I met you. You are my one joy, and you elude me; therefore pity me too."

"Who made you so gracious a courtier?" asks she, with a little shrug of her rounded shoulders.

"Now you cast scorn upon me," says Desmond, half angrily, and as he says it the thought of Kit's word _flout_ comes to her, and she smiles. It is an idle thought, yet it is with difficulty she cleaves to the less offensive smiles and keeps herself from laughing aloud.

"Why should I do that?" she says, a little saucily. Indeed, she knows this young man to be so utterly in her power--and power is so sweet when first acquired, and so prone to breed tyranny--that she hardly turns aside to meditate upon the pain she may be causing him.

"I don't know," a little sadly; then, "Monica, you like me?"

"Yes, I like you," says Miss Beresford, as she might have answered had she been questioned as to her opinion of an aromatic russet.

Repressing a gesture of impatience, Desmond goes on calmly,--

"Better than Ryde?"

"Than Mr. Ryde?" She stops and glances at the gravel at her feet in a would-be thoughtful fashion, and pushes it to and fro with her pretty Louis Quinze shoe. She pauses purposely, and makes quite an affair of her hesitation.

"Yes, Ryde," says he, impatiently.

"How can I answer that?" she says, at length, with studied deliberation, "when I know so little of either him--or you?"

His indignation increases.

"Knowing us both at _least_ equally well, you must have formed by this time some opinion of us."

"I should indeed," says the young girl, slowly, always with her eyes upon the gravel; "but unfortunately it never occurred to me,--the vital necessity of doing so, I mean."

Though her head is still bent, he can detect the little amused smile that is curving her mobile lips. There can be small doubt but that she is enjoying his discomfiture immensely.

"Certainly there is no reason why _you_ should waste a thought on either him or me," he returns, stiffly.

"No; and yet I do waste one on--_you_--sometimes," says she, with a gleam of tenderness, and a swift glance from under her long lashes that somehow angers him intensely.

"You are a coquette," he says, quietly. There is contempt both in his look and tone. As she hears it, she suddenly lifts her head, and, without betraying chagrin, regards him steadfastly.

"Is that so?" she says. "Sometimes I have _thought_ it, but----"

The unmistakable hope her pause contains angers him afresh.

"If you covet the unenviable title," he says, bitterly, "be happy. You can lay just claim to it. You are more than worthy of it."

"You flatter me," she says, letting a glance so light rest upon him that it seems but the mere quiver of her eyelids.

"I meant no flattery, believe me."

"I do believe you: I quite understand."

"Not quite, I think," exclaims he, the sudden coldness of her manner frightening him into better behavior. "If--if I have said anything to offend you, I ask your forgiveness."

"There is nothing to forgive, indeed, and you have failed to offend me. But," slowly, "you have made me very sorry for you."

"_Sorry?_"

"Yes, for your most unhappy temper. It is quite the worst, I think, I have ever met with. _Good_-night Mr. Desmond: pray be careful when going through that hedge again; there are some rose-trees growing in it, and thorns do hurt so dreadfully."

So saying, she gathers up her white skirts, and, without a touch of her hand, or even a last glance, flits like a lissome ghost across the moonlit paths of the garden, and so is gone.