Chapter 29

How Miss Priscilla is driven to enter Coole--How she there receives an important proposal, but with much fortitude declines it--And how The Desmond suffers more from a twinge of conscience than from a bullet.

In the morning, a certain amount of constraint prevails with every one. Kit is, of course, aware of all that has happened, and of the day's expected visitor for Monica, who has refused to come down to breakfast, and who is as unsettled and miserable as she well can be. Kit has espoused her cause _con amore_, and is (I need hardly say) ready for open war at a moment's notice. She has indeed arranged a plan of action that will bring her on the battle-field at a critical moment to deliver a speech culled from some old novels in her room and meant to reduce both her aunts to annihilation.

When breakfast is over she disappears to study her part afresh, and the Misses Blake, too, separate and go to their own rooms, with an air of careful unconcern, that would not have imposed upon a one-year babe.

When again they reappear, they seem desirous of avoiding each other's glances, whereupon it occurs suddenly to everybody that they have both put on their very best silk gowns and lace caps, and have in fact got themselves up with elaborate care to receive--a _Desmond_! No wonder they are ashamed of themselves!

Still keeping up the outward symptoms of supreme indifference, they seat themselves in the drawing-room, Miss Penelope attacking her knitting with tremendous vigor, whilst Miss Priscilla gets apparently lost in the pages of "Temple Bar." Monica, sliding in presently like a small ghost, in her clinging white gown, slips into a seat in the window that overlooks the avenue, and hides herself and her pretty anxious face behind the lace curtains.

An hour glides by with aggravating slowness; and then a sound of wheels upon the gravel makes Monica's heart beat almost to suffocation. The two Misses Blake, suddenly forgetful of their _role_ of unconcern, start from their seats and go to the window where Monica now is standing. A brougham and pair of horses drive up to the door, and a young man, opening the door, springs to the ground. It is Desmond.

"To come here in a close carriage!" says Miss Priscilla, with much contempt. "Is he afraid of catching cold, I wonder? I never heard of such foppery in my life."

"He is not a fop," says Monica, indignantly, and then she catches sight of her lover's face, and something in it awakes within her a prescience of coming evil.

Then the drawing-room door is thrown open with rather unceremonious haste, and the young man, entering, goes straight to where Miss Priscilla is standing, merely taking and holding Monica's hand as he reaches her, but addressing to her neither word nor look. He seems greatly agitated, and altogether unlike the man who stood here yesterday and almost defied them. His face is very pale, and full of honest grief and indignation.

"My uncle is at death's doors," he says in a voice that quivers with rage and excitement. "Coming home late last night he was shot at by some ruffians from behind the blackthorn hedge on the Coole road. He wants you Miss Blake" (to Priscilla). "He is asking for you. You will not refuse to come to a man who may be dying for all we know! I have brought the carriage for you, and I implore you not to delay, but to come to him at once."

Miss Priscilla has sunk into a chair, and is quite colorless; Miss Penelope clasps her hands.

"Oh, poor George!" she says, involuntarily, almost unconsciously. His present danger has killed remembrance of all the angry years that stand between to-day and the time when last she called him by his Christian name.

"When did it happen? How?" asks Monica, tightening her fingers round his, and trembling visibly.

"About ten o'clock last evening. Both Kelly and I were with him, and a groom. Two shots were fired. Kelly and I jumped off the dog-cart and gave chase and succeeded in securing one of them. There were four altogether, I think. We did not know my uncle was wounded when we ran after them, but when we came back we found Murray the groom holding him in his arms. He was quite insensible. I left Kelly and Murray to guard our prisoner, and drove my uncle home myself. He is very badly hurt. Miss Blake," turning again to Miss Priscilla, "you will come with me?"

"Oh, yes, yes," says Miss Priscilla, faintly.

"And I shall go with you, my dear Priscilla," says Miss Penelope, heroically. "Yes, you will want me. To find yourself face to face with him after all these years of estrangement and in so sad a state will be distressing. It is well I should be on the spot to lend you some support."

Miss Priscilla lays her hand on her arm.

"I think I shall go alone, Penelope," she says, falteringly. For one moment Miss Penelope is a little surprised, and then in another moment she is not surprised at all. But I believe in her heart she is a good deal disappointed: there is a flavor of romance and excitement about this expedition she would gladly have tasted.

"Well, perhaps it will be better so," she says, amiably. "I am glad he has sent for you. He will be the easier for _your_ forgiveness, though he cannot obtain _hers_, now. Come upstairs: you should not keep Mr. Desmond waiting." There is a kindly light in her eyes as she glances at the young man. And then she takes Miss Priscilla away to her room, and helps her carefully with her toilet, and accepts the situation as a matter of course, though in her secret soul she is filled with amazement at The Desmond's sending for Miss Priscilla even though lying at death's door.

And indeed when the old man had turned to Brian and asked him to bring Miss Blake to Coole, Brian himself had known surprise too, and some misgivings. Was he going to make her swear never to give her consent to his (Brian's) marriage with her niece? or was he going to make open confession of that dishonorable action which caused Miss Blake's pretty stepsister to suffer dire tribulation, according to the gossips round?

"I should like to see Priscilla Blake," the old squire had said, in a low whisper, his nephew leaning over him to catch the words, and then he had muttered something about "old friends and forgiveness," that had not so easily been understood.

"You shall see her," the younger man says, tenderly. "I'll go for her myself. I am sure she won't refuse to come."

"_Refuse!_" There is something in the squire's whisper that puzzles Brian.

"I am certain she will not," he repeats, mechanically, whilst trying to translate it. But the look has faded from the old man's face, and his tone is different, when he speaks again.

"If she is afraid to come," he says, generously, having evidently settled some knotty point of inward discussion to his entire satisfaction, "tell her from me that I am ready and willing to forgive _all_."

"You mean you are anxious to obtain her forgiveness," says Brian, with the kindly intention of assisting the old man's wandering imagination.

"Eh?" says the squire, sharply. "What d'ye mean, Brian? Speak, lad, when I desire you."

"Look here, George! if you excite yourself like this, you know what the consequences will be," says Brian, sharply, in his turn. "I only meant that, as you--er--jilted their stepsister, I suppose you are anxious to obtain their pardon, now you feel yourself pretty low. But I'd advise you to wait and see about that when you have recovered your strength a little."

"And you believed that old story too!" says the poor squire, forlornly. "I didn't jilt her at all, Brian. _It was she jilted me!_"

"_What!_" says Brian, turning to see if the bullet had touched his brain instead of his ribs.

"'Tis true. I tell you, that girl broke my heart. She was the prettiest creature I ever saw, with soft dove's eyes, and a heavenly smile, and no more heart than _that_," striking the post of the old-fashioned bedstead with his uninjured arm. "I gave myself up to her, I worshipped the very ground she walked on, and within a fortnight of our wedding she calmly wrote to tell me she could not marry me!"

"Giving a reason?"

"No. Even _she_, I presume, could not summon sufficient courage to tell the wretch she had deluded of her love for another. She gave me no reason. She entreated me, however, to keep silence about the real author of the breach between us,--that is, herself. _I_ was the one to break off our engagement! I was to bear all the blame! She implored me to conceal her share in it, and finally demanded of me, as a last favor, that I would give the world to understand I had thrown _her_ over."

"A charmingly disinterested specimen of womankind," says Brian, raising his brows.

"And this to _me_," says The Desmond, an indignant sob making his weak voice weaker,--"a man who had always kept himself straight in the eyes of the world. I was required to represent myself as a low, despicable fellow, one of those who seek a woman's affections only to ignore them at the sight of the next pretty face."

"But you refused to comply with her request?" says Brian, hastily.

"No, sir, I didn't," says the squire, shame struggling with his excitement. "On the contrary, I gave in to her in every respect. I believe at that time I would cheerfully have allowed myself to be branded as a _thief_ if she had desired it and if it would have saved her one scrap of discomfort. She was afraid of her sisters, you see. I blamed them then, Brian, but I think now her fear of them arose from the fact that _they_ were as true as _she_ was----Well, well!"

"This is indeed a revelation," says Brian.

"Yes; you wouldn't think they would behave like that, would you?" says Mr. Desmond, eagerly.

"Who? The Misses Blake?" says Brian, startled.

"Yes. It wasn't like them to keep silent all these years, and let me bear the brunt of the battle, when they knew I was innocent and that it was their own flesh and blood who was in fault. Yet they turned their backs upon me, and have treated me ever since as though I were in reality the miscreant they have succeeded in making me out."

"There is a terrible mistake somewhere," says Brian. "They do verily believe you to be the miscreant you describe."

"Brian, come here!" says the old man, in an ominously calm tone. "Do you mean to tell me Priscilla Blake believes me guilty of having behaved dishonestly to her sister Katherine? You positively think this?"

"I _know_ it," says Brian, who feels it is better to get out the plain unvarnished truth at once.

"You have no doubt? Think, Brian; think."

"I needn't.--There is no doubt on my mind."

"Then she deceived us _all_," says the squire, in a stricken tone. Then he roused himself again. He seems to have recovered his strength wonderfully during the past hour. "Go, get me Priscilla Blake," he says. "Hurry, boy! hurry! I must make it right with her before I die."

"Before you recover, you mean," says Brian, cheerily. "There! lie down now, and keep yourself quiet, or you won't be looking your best when she comes."

* * * * *

And now Miss Priscilla has come, and is standing beside the bed of her quondam friend, looking down upon him with dim eyes.

"I am sorry to meet you again like this, George Desmond," she says, at last, in tones meant to be full of relentless displeasure, but which falter strangely.

"She made as great a fool of _you_ as of _me_, Priscilla," is the squire's answer, whose tired mind can only grasp one thought,--the treachery of the woman he had loved! And then it all comes out, and the letter the false Katherine had written him is brought out from a little secret drawer, bound round with the orthodox blue ribbon, and smelling sadly of dust, as though to remind one of all things, of warmest sweetest love, of truest trust, and indeed of that fair but worthless body from whose hand it came, now lying mouldering and forgotten in a foreign land.

"Oh, I wouldn't have believed it of her!" says Miss Priscilla, weeping bitterly. "But there must have been something wrong with her always, though we could never see it. What an angel face she had! But the children, they speak terribly of her, and they say--that she--and James Beresford--did not get on at all."

"Eh?" says the squire. He rises himself on his sound elbow, and quite a glow of color rushes into his pallid cheeks. When, with a groan of self-contempt, he sinks back again, and the light in his eye (was it of satisfaction?) dies.

"You have met Brian," he says presently. "What do you think of him, Priscilla? He is a good lad,--a _very_ good lad."

"He looks it," says Miss Priscilla, shortly.

"He does," heartily. "Well, I'm told this boy of mine is in love with your girl."

"Who told you?" says Miss Priscilla.

"Brian himself," says the Squire.

"I like that in him," says Miss Priscilla. "Well, George, if you will look upon that as settled, so shall I."

"So be it," says the squire--"Eh, my dear? but doesn't it make us feel old to be discussing the love-affairs of these young things, when it seems only yesterday that we--that you and I, Priscilla----"

"That is all buried long ago: don't rake it up. It died when first your eyes fell on _her_," says Miss Blake, hurriedly.

"I was a fool," says the squire. "But, somehow, since I have been talking to you, I don't think I'm going to die this time, and old scenes came back to me, and--I suppose it is too late now, Priscilla?"

There is no mistaking his meaning.

"Oh, yes; a whole lifetime too late," says Miss Priscilla, with a soft, faint blush that would not have misbecome a maiden in her teens. "But I am glad we are friends again, George."

She pressed his hand with real affection, and then colors again warmly, as though afraid of having discovered herself in the act of committing an indiscretion. Could that gentle pressure be called forward, or light, or unseemly? Terrible thought!

"So am I, my dear," says the squire. And then again, "You won't think of it, then, Priscilla?"

"No, no," says Miss Blake, feeling flattered at his persistence, and then she actually laughs out loud, and The Desmond laughs too, though feebly; and then the doctor comes in again, and Miss Priscilla goes home, to tell Miss Penelope, in the secrecy of her chamber, and with the solemnity that befits the occasion, all about the squire's proposal, its reception, and its rejection.

Be assured no minutest detail is forgotten; Miss Penelope is soon in possession of every smallest look and word connected with it, and deeply gratifying is the manner in which the great news is received by that gentle maiden.

"Though late in the day, Penelope," says Miss Priscilla, as a sort of wind-up to her recital, "it was an offer of marriage _any_ woman might be proud of, be she young or old; and he _meant_ it, too. He was quite _pressing_. Twice he asked me, although my first was a most decided 'No.'"

"It seems terrible, your having been so cold to him, poor fellow!" says Miss Penelope, with a regretful sigh for the griefs of the rejected Desmond.

"What could I do?" says Miss Priscilla, with an air of self-defence. This thought, that she can actually be accused of having treated the sterner sex in a hardhearted fashion, is cakes and ale to her.

"We must not talk of this, Penelope," she says, presently. "It would be unfair. It must never transpire through _us_ that George Desmond laid his heart and fortune at my feet only to be rejected."

To her these old-world phrases sound grand and musical and full of fire and sentiment.

"No, no," says Miss Penelope, acquiescing freely, yet with a sigh; she would have dearly liked to tell her gossips of this honor that has been done her dear Priscilla. And, after all, she has her wish, for the story gets about, spread by the hero of it himself.

The squire, tired, no doubt, of keeping secrets, and perhaps (but this in a whisper) grateful to her because of her refusal, goes about everywhere, and tells people far and near of his offer; so that when their friends flock to Moyne, and, giving The Desmond as their authority for it, accuse Miss Priscilla of her refusal, and she still, with maidenly modesty, parries their questions, Miss Penelope, feeling herself absolved from further reticence, comes to the front and gives them a full and true account of the wonderful event.

"Yes, Priscilla might indeed have reigned as queen at Coole had she so wished it, and well graced the position too," winds up Miss Penelope, on all these occasions, with much pride and dignity.

Brian, who had been busy all the morning swearing informations, and so forth, with Mr. Kelly and the groom, before magistrates and others, coming into his uncle's room about half an hour after Miss Blake's departure, finds him considerably better both in mind and in body, though feeble in spirit, as is only natural. Indeed, the bullet had done him little harm, causing merely a flesh-wound, but the shock had been severe to a man of his years.

"Come here, Brian; I want to tell you something," he says, as the young man leans over him.

"You are not to talk," says his nephew, peremptorily.

"If you won't listen to me, I'll send for Bailey, the steward," says the squire. "Nonsense! it does me good." And then he tells him all the particulars of Miss Priscilla's visit relating to his engagement with Katherine Beresford, with one reservation.

"It is all right between us now," he says, in a pleased tone. "She told me everything, and it appears we were both sadly taken in, though I don't wish to say anything against her even now. I daresay she had her own grievances, poor soul; and indeed Priscilla said----"

Here he pauses, and a guilty flush covers his pale face. He hesitates, and then beckons Brian to come even nearer.

"Look you, lad! I'm not quite at ease even yet. There's something wrong here!" laying his hand upon his heart.

"Is it pain?" asks his nephew, anxiously. "I told you you were talk----"

"No, no, boy. It's only mental pain. I want to be ashamed of myself, and I _can't_. I'm feeling a satisfaction about something that I shouldn't. It's not right, Brian. It's not a gentlemanly feeling, but I can't curb it. The more I think of it, the more pleased I feel. Eh? You don't look as if you understood me."

"I don't, much," confesses Brian, seating himself on the edge of the bed. "You see, you haven't told me what it is all about."

"It is about Katherine Beresford. Priscilla told me, and I should like to tell you. I say, Brian, you won't throw it in my teeth, now, when I'm better, eh?"

"I swear I won't," says Brian.

"Well, she told me Katherine had a regular _devil_ of a life with her husband, and _I'm glad of it_! _There!_" says the squire; after which disgraceful confession he regularly scrambles under the bedclothes, with a view to hiding his shame and his exultation from public view.

Brian fairly roars with laughter. At the sound of his welcome mirth, the old man slowly emerges from the sheets again, and looks at him doubtfully, but with growing hope.

"_She_ had the best of it, of course; any one would have the best of it with James Beresford," he says. "But she couldn't have been altogether comfortable; that's what I mean. I don't want you to think I should rejoice at her having received bad treatment at her husband's hands. He had all the bad treatment to himself, I expect."

"So do I," says Brian, who is laughing still.

"And you don't think so badly of me for it?" says the Squire, anxiously.

"Not I," says Brian.

"Still, it's rather a mean sort of feeling, isn't it, now? It's very low--eh?"

"Low or not," says Brian, with decision, "I'm perfectly certain if it was _my_ case I should feel just like that myself."

"You're the comfort of my life, Brian," says his uncle, gratefully; and then he indulges in a covert smile himself, after which he drops off into a slumber, sound and refreshing.