Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: Tom Sawyers Neue Abenteuer by Twain Mark
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 307 lines and 15656 words, and 7 pages
APRIL'S LADY.
A NOVEL.
BY "THE DUCHESS"
Montreal: JOHN LOVELL & SON, 23 St. Nicholas Street.
Entered according to Act of Parliament in the year 1890, by John Lovell & Son, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture and Statistics at Ottawa.
APRIL'S LADY.
"Must we part? or may I linger? Wax the shadows, wanes the day." Then, with voice of sweetest singer, That hath all but died away, "Go," she said, but tightened finger Said articulately, "Stay!"
"Philosophy triumphs easily over past and over future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy."
"A letter from my father," says Mr. Monkton, flinging the letter in question across the breakfast-table to his wife.
"A letter from Sir George!" Her dark, pretty face flushes crimson.
Mrs. Monkton taking it up, with a most honest curiosity, that might almost be termed anxiety, reads it through, and in turn flings it from her as though it had been a scorpion.
It might perhaps have been even freer, but for the swift intervention of the paternal relative, who, swooping down upon the two belligerents with a promptitude worthy of all praise, seizes upon his daughter, and in spite of her kicks, which are noble, removes her to the seat on his left hand.
Thus separated hope springs within the breasts of the lookers-on that peace may soon be restored; and indeed, after a sob or two from Mabel, and a few passes of the most reprehensible sort from Tommy , a great calm falls upon the breakfast-room.
"When I was your age, Tommy," says Mr. Monkton addressing his son, and striving to be all that the orthodox parent ought to be, "I should have been soundly whipped if I had behaved to my sister as you have just now behaved to yours!"
"Ladies first--pleasure afterwards," says his father somewhat idly.
"Eh?" says Mr. Monkton. "Why what on earth have I been saying now. I quite believed I was doing the heavy father to perfection and teaching Tommy his duty."
"Nice duty," says Jocelyne, with a pretence of indignation, that makes her charming face a perfect picture. "Teaching him to regard us as second best! I like that."
"Good heavens! did I give that impression? I must have swooned," says Mr. Monkton penitently. "When last in my senses I thought I had been telling Tommy that he deserved a good whipping; and that if good old Time could so manage as to make me my own father, he would assuredly have got it."
"Was it?" says Mr. Monkton mildly. "Do you know, I really quite fancied it was mine."
"What?" says Tommy, cocking his ear. He, like his sister, is in a certain sense a fraud. For Tommy has the face of a seraph with the heart of a hardy Norseman. There is nothing indeed that Tommy would not dare.
"Mine, you know," says his father, even more mildly still.
Her voice sounds almost hard--the gentle voice, that in truth was only meant by Mother Nature to give expression to all things kind and loving.
She has leant a little forward and a swift flush is dyeing her cheek. She is of all women the youngest looking, for her years; as a matron indeed she seems absurd. The delicate bloom of girlhood seems never to have left her, but--as though in love of her beauty--has clung to her day by day. So that now, when she has known eight years of married life , she still looks as though the morning of womanhood was as yet but dawning for her.
And this is because love the beautifier went with her all the way! Hand in hand he has traveled with her on the stony paths that those who marry must undoubtedly pursue. Never once had he let go his hold, and so it is, that her lovely face has defied Time , and at twenty-five she looks but a little older than her sister, who is just eighteen, and seven years younger than she is.
She had spoken a little hurriedly, with some touch of anger. But quick as the anger was born, so quickly does it die.
She smiles . It is scarcely necessary to record this last fact, as all who run may read it for themselves, but it saves time to put it in black and white.
"But why not, my dear?" says Mr. Monkton, magisterially. "Surely, considering all things, you have reason to be deeply grateful to Sir George. Why, then, abuse him?"
"Freddy!" from his sister-in-law brings him to a full stop for a moment.
"Do you mean to tell me," says he, thus brought to bay, "that you have nothing to thank Sir George for?" He is addressing his wife.
"Nothing, nothing!" declares she, vehemently, the remembrance of that last letter from her husband's father, that still lies within reach of her view, lending a suspicion of passion to her voice.
"Ah, what it is to be modest," says Joyce, with her little quick brilliant laugh.
"I always think he must be a silly old man," says Joyce, which seems to put a fitting termination to the conversation.
"Is he that?" asks he, eagerly, of his aunt.
A lovely creature, at all events, and lovable as lovely. A little inconsequent, perhaps at times, but always amenable to reason, when put into a corner, and full of the glad, laughter of youth.
"Is he what?" says she, now returning Tommy's eager gaze.
But if she has hoped to make a successful appeal to Tommy's noble qualities , she finds herself greatly mistaken.
"To pursue the object would be to court defeat," says Mr. Monkton meekly. He rises from the table, and, seeing him move, his wife rises too.
"You are going to your study?" asks she, a little anxiously. He is about to say "no" to this, but a glance at her face checks him.
"Yes, come with me," says he instead, answering the lovely silent appeal in her eyes. That letter has no doubt distressed her. She will be happier when she has talked it over with him--they two alone. "As for you, Thomas," says his father, "I'm quite aware that you ought to be consigned to the Donjon keep after your late behavior, but as we don't keep one on the premises, I let you off this time. Meanwhile I haste to my study to pen, with the assistance of your enraged mother, a letter to our landlord that will induce him to add one on at once to this building. After which we shall be able to incarcerate you at our pleasure on any and every hour of the day."
"Who's Don John?" asks Tommy, totally unimpressed, but filled with lively memories of those Spaniards and other foreign powers who have unkindly made more difficult his hateful lessons off and on.
"No love lost between us."
"Well," says Mr. Monkton, turning to his wife as the study is reached. He has closed the door, and is now looking at her with a distinctly quizzical light in his eyes and in the smile that parts his lips. "Now for it. Have no qualms. I've been preparing myself all through breakfast and I think I shall survive it. You are going to have it out with me, aren't you?"
"I know it is hard on you, but when I am really vexed about anything, you know, I always want to tell you about it."
"There is one thing, however, you do forget," says Mr. Monkton gravely. "I don't want to apologize for him, but I would remind you that he has never seen you."
"Then come over to England and see him."
"No--never! I shall never go to England. I shall stay in Ireland always. My own land; the land whose people he detests because he knows nothing about them. It was one of his chief objections to your marriage with me, that I was an Irish girl!"
She stops short, as though her wrath and indignation and contempt is too much for her.
"Barbara," says Monkton, very gently, but with a certain reproach, "do you know you almost make me think that you regret our marriage."
"At your aunt's? Mrs. Burke's?"
"Yet I wish you had known me before my father died," says she, her grief and pride still unassuaged. "He was so unlike anybody else. His manners were so lovely. He was offered a baronetcy at the end of that Whiteboy business on account of his loyalty--that nearly cost him his life--but he refused it, thinking the old name good enough without a handle to it."
"Kavanagh, we all know, is a good name."
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page