Duchess - Mrs. Geoffrey

"Byron?"

"Yes. And after Shakspeare, I like him best, and then Longfellow. Why do you speak in that tone? Don't you like him?"

"I think I like no poet half so well. You mistake me," replies he, ashamed of his own surprise at her preference for his lordship beneath the calm purity of her eyes. "But – only – it seemed to me Longfellow would be more suited to you."

"Well, so I do love him. And just then it was of him I was thinking: when I looked up to the sky his words came back to me. You remember what he says about the moon rising 'over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows,' and how, —

That is so sweet, I think."

"I remember it; and I remember, too, who watched all that: do you?" he asks, his eyes fixed upon hers.

"Yes; Gabriel – poor Gabriel and Evangeline," returns she, too wrapped up in recollections of that sad and touching tale to take to heart his meaning: —

That is the part you mean, is it not? I know all that poem very nearly by heart."

He is a little disappointed by the calmness of her answer.

"Yes; it was of them I thought," he says, turning his head away, – "of the – lovers. I wonder if their evening was as lovely as ours ?"

Mona makes no reply.

"Have you ever read Shelley?" asks he, presently, puzzled by the extreme serenity of her manner.

She shakes her head.

"Some of his ideas are lovely. You would like his poetry, I think."

"What does he say about the moon?" asks Mona, still with her knees in her embrace, and without lifting her eyes from the quiet waters down below.

"About the moon? Oh, many things. I was not thinking of the moon," with faint impatience; "yet, as you ask me, I can remember one thing he says about it."

"Then tell it to me," says Mona.

So at her bidding he repeats the lines slowly, and in his best manner, which is very good: —

He finishes; but, to his amazement, and a good deal to his chagrin, on looking at Mona he finds she is wreathed in smiles, – nay, is in fact convulsed with silent laughter.

"What is amusing you?" asks he, a trifle stiffly. – To give way to recitation, and then find your listener in agonies of suppressed mirth, isn't exactly a situation one would hanker after.

"It was the last line," says Mona, in explanation, clearly ashamed of herself, yet unable wholly to subdue her merriment. "It reminded me so much of that speech about tea, that they always use at temperance meetings; they call it the beverage 'that cheers but not inebriates.' You said 'that warms but not illumines,' and it sounded exactly like it. Don't you see!"

He doesn't see.

"You aren't angry, are you?" says Mona, now really contrite. "I couldn't help it, and it was like it, you know."

"Angry? no!" he says, recovering himself, as he notices the penitence on the face upraised to his.

"And do say it is like it," says Mona, entreatingly.

"It is, the image of it," returns he, prepared to swear to anything she may propose And then he laughs too, which pleases her, as it proves he no longer bears in mind her evil deed; after which, feeling she still owes him something, she suddenly intimates to him that he may sit down on the grass close beside her. He seems to find no difficulty in swiftly following up this hint, and is soon seated as near to her as circumstances will allow.

But on this picture, the beauty of which is undeniable, Mickey (the barbarian) looks with disfavor.

"If he's goin' to squat there for the night, – an' I see ivery prospect of it," says Mickey to himself, – "what on airth's goin' to become of me?"

Now, Mickey's idea of "raal grand" scenery is the kitchen fire. Bays and rocks and moonlight, and such like comfortless stuff, would be designated by him as "all my eye an' Betty Martin." He would consider the bluest water that ever rolled a poor thing if compared to the water that boiled in the big kettle, and sadly inferior to such cold water as might contain a "dhrop of the crather." So no wonder he views with dismay Mr. Rodney's evident intention of spending another half hour or so on the top of Carrick dhuve.

Patience has its limits. Mickey's limit comes quickly When five more minutes have passed, and the two in his charge still make no sign, he coughs respectfully but very loudly behind his hand. He waits in anxious hope for the result of this telling man[oe]uvre, but not the faintest notice is taken of it. Both Mona and Geoffrey are deaf to the pathetic appeal sent straight from his bronchial tubes.

Mickey, as he grows desperate, grows bolder. He rises to speech.

"Av ye plaze, miss, will ye soon be comin'?"

"Very soon, Mickey," says Mona, without turning her head. But, though her words are satisfactory, her tone is not. There is a lazy ring in it that speaks of anything but immediate action. Mickey disbelieves in it.

"I didn't make up the mare, miss, before comin' out wid ye," he says, mildly, telling this lie without a blush.

"But it is early yet, Mickey, isn't it?" says Mona.

"Awfully early," puts in Geoffrey.

"It is, miss; I know it, sir; but if the old man comes out an' finds the mare widout her bed, there'll be all the world to pay, an' he'll be screechin' mad."

"He won't go into the stable to-night," says Mona, comfortably.

"He might, miss. It's the very time you'd wish him aisy in his mind that he gets raal troublesome. An' I feel just as if he was in the stable this blessid minit lookin' at the poor baste, an' swearin' he'll have the life uv me."

"And I feel just as if he had gone quietly to bed," says

Mona, pleasantly, turning away.

But Mickey is not to be outdone. "An' there's the pigs, miss," he begins again, presently.

"What's the matter with them?" says Mona, with some pardonable impatience.

"I didn't give them their supper yet, miss; an' it's very bad for the young ones to be left starvin'. It's on me mind, miss, so that I can't even enjoy me pipe, and it's fresh baccy I have an' all, an' it might as well be dust for what comfort I get from it. Them pigs is callin' for me now like Christians: I can a'most hear them."

"I shouldn't think deafness is in your family," says Geoffrey, genially.

"No, sir; it isn't, sir. We're none of us hard of hearin' glory be to – . Miss Mona," coaxingly, "sure, it's only a step to the house: wouldn't Misther Rodney see ye home now, just for wanst?"

"Why, yes, of course he can," says Mona, without the smallest hesitation. She says it quite naturally, and as though it was the most usual thing in the world for a young man to see a young woman home, through dewy fields and beneath "mellow moons," at half-past ten at night. It is now fully nine, and she cannot yet bear to turn her back upon the enchanting scene before her. Surely in another hour or so it will be time enough to think of home and all other such prosaic facts.

"Thin I may go, miss?" says Mickey.

"Oh, yes, you may go," says Mona. Geoffrey says nothing. He is looking at her with curiosity, in which deep love is mingled. She is so utterly unlike all other women he has ever met, with their petty affectations and mock modesties, their would-be hesitations and their final yieldings. She has no idea she is doing anything that all the world of women might not do, and can see no reason why she should distrust her friend just because he is a man.