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April's Lady: A Novel

<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2> <div class="blockquot">"No love lost between us." </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> "Well," says Mr. Monkton, turning to his wife as the study (a rather nondescript place) 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?" "Not with you," says she, returning his smile indeed, but faintly, and without heart, "that horrid letter! I felt I must talk of it to someone, and——" "I was that mythical person. I quite understand. I take it as a special compliment." "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." "I should feel it a great deal harder if you didn't want to tell me about it," says he. He has come nearer to her and has pressed her into a chair—a dilapidated affair that if ever it had a best day has forgotten it by now—and yet for all that is full of comfort. "I am only sorry"—moving away again and leaning against the chimney piece—"that you should be so foolish as to let my father's absurd prejudices annoy you at this time of day." "He will always have it in his power to annoy me," says she quickly. "That perhaps," with a little burst of feeling, "is why I can't forgive him. If I could forget, or grow indifferent to it all, I should not have this hurt feeling in my heart. But he is your father, and though he is the most unjust, the cruellest man on earth, I still hate to think he should regard me as he does." "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." "That's only an aggravation of his offence," her color heightening; "the very fact that he should condemn me unseen, unheard, adds to the wrong he has done me instead of taking from it." She rises abruptly and begins to pace up and down the room, the hot Irish blood in her veins afire. "No"—with a little impatient gesture of her small hand—"I can't sit still. Every pulse seems throbbing. He has opened up all the old wounds, and——" She pauses and then turns upon her husband two lovely flashing eyes. "Why, why should he suppose that I am vulgar, lowly born, unfit to be your wife?" "My darling girl, what can it matter what he thinks? A ridiculous headstrong old man in one scale, and——" "But it does matter. I want to convince him that I am not—not—what he believes me to be." "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." "No, I don't," quickly. "If I talked for ever I shouldn't be able to make you think that. But——" She turns to him suddenly, and gazes at him through large eyes that are heavy with tears. "I shall always be sorry for one thing, and that is—that you first met me where you did." "At your aunt's? Mrs. Burke's?" "She is not my aunt," with a little frown of distaste; "she is nothing to me so far as blood is concerned. Oh! Freddy." She stops close to him, and gives him a grief-stricken glance. "I wish my poor father had been alive when first you saw me. That we could have met for the first time in the old home. It was shabby—faded"—her face paling now with intense emotion. "But you would have known at once that it had been a fine old place, and that the owner of it——" She breaks down, very slightly, almost imperceptibly, but Monkton understands that even one more word is beyond her. "That the owner of it, like St. Patrick, came of decent people," quotes he with an assumption of gaiety he is far from feeling. "My good child, I don't want to see anyone to know that of you. You carry the sign manual. It is written in large characters all over you." "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." "If he had accepted that title he would have been as—the same—as your father!" There is defiance in this sentence. "Quite the same!" "No, no, he would not," her defiance now changes into, sorrowful honesty. "Your father has been a baronet for centuries, my father would have only been a baronet for a few years." "For centuries!" repeats Mr. Monkton with an alarmed air. There is a latent sense of humor (or rather an appreciation of humor) about him that hardly endears him to the opposite sex. His wife, being Irish, condones it, because she happens to understand it, but there are moments, we all know, when even the very best and most appreciative women refuse to understand anything. This is one of them. "Condemn my father if you will," says Mr. Monkton, "accuse him of all the crimes in the calendar, but for my sake give up the belief that he is the real and original Wandering Jew. Debrett—Burke—either of those immaculate people will prove to you that my father ascended his throne in——" "You can laugh at me if you like, Freddy," says Mrs. Monkton with severity tempered with dignity; "but if you laughed until this day month you couldn't make me forget the things that make me unhappy." "I don't want to," says Mr. Monkton, still disgracefully frivolous. "I'm one of the things, and yet——" "Don't!" says his wife, so abruptly, and with such an evident determination to give way to mirth, coupled with an equally strong determination to give way to tears, that he at once lays down his arms. "Go on then," says he, seating himself beside her. She is not in the arm-chair now, but on an ancient and respectable sofa that gives ample room for the accommodation of two; a luxury denied by that old curmudgeon the arm-chair. "Well, it is this, Freddy. When I think of that dreadful old woman, Mrs. Burke, I feel as though you thought she was a fair sample of the rest of my family. But she is not a sample, she has nothing to do with us. An uncle of my mother married her because she was rich, and there her relationship to us began and ended." "Still——" "Yes, I know, you needn't remind me, it seems burnt into my brain, I know she took us in after my father's death, and covered me and Joyce with benefits when we hadn't a penny in the world we could call our own. I quite understand, indeed, that we should have starved but for her, and yet—yet—" passionately, "I cannot forgive her for perpetually reminding us that we had not that penny!" "It must have been a bad time," says Monkton slowly. He takes her hand and smoothes it lovingly between both of his. "She was vulgar. That was not her fault; I forgive her that. What I can't forgive her, is the fact that you should have met me in her house." "A little unfair, isn't it?" "Is it? You will always now associate me with her!" "I shan't indeed. Do you think I have up to this? Nonsense! A more absurd amalgamation I couldn't fancy." "She was not one of us," feverishly. "I have never spoken to you about this, Freddy, since that first letter your father wrote to you just after our marriage. You remember it? And then, I couldn't explain somehow—but now—this last letter has upset me dreadfully; I feel as if it was all different, and that it was my duty to make you aware of the real truth. Sir George thinks of me as one beneath him; that is not true. He may have heard that I lived with Mrs. Burke, and that she was my aunt; but if my mother's brother chose to marry a woman of no family because she had money,"—contemptuously, "that might disgrace him, but would not make her kin to us. You saw her, you—" lifting distressed eyes to his—"you thought her dreadful, didn't you?" "I have only had one thought about her. That she was good to you in your trouble, and that but for her I should never have met you." "That is like you," says she gratefully, yet impatiently. "But it isn't enough. I want you to understand that she is quite unlike my own real people—my father, who was like a prince," throwing up her head, "and my uncle, his brother." "You have an uncle, then?" with some surprise. "Oh no, had," sadly. "He is dead then?" "Yes. I suppose so. You are wondering," says she quickly, "that I have never spoken to you of him or my father before. But I could not. The thought that your family objected to me, despised me, seemed to compel me to silence. And you—you asked me very little." "How could I, Barbara? Any attempt I made was repulsed. I thought it kinder to——" "Yes—I was wrong. I see it now. But I couldn't bear to explain myself. I told you what I could about my father, and that seemed to me sufficient. Your people's determination to regard me as impossible tied my tongue." "I don't believe it was that," says he laughing. "I believe we were so happy that we didn't care to discuss anything but each other. Delightful subjects full of infinite variety! We have sat so lightly to the world all these years, that if my father's letter had not come this morning I honestly think we should never have thought about him again." This is scarcely true, but he is bent on giving her mind a happier turn if possible. "What's the good of talking to me like that, Freddy," says she reproachfully. "You know one never forgets anything of that sort. A slight I mean; and from one's own family. You are always thinking of it; you know you are." "Well, not always, my dear, certainly—" says Mr. Monkton temporizing. "And if even I do give way to retrospection, it is to feel indignant with both my parents." "Yes; and I don't want you to feel like that. It must be dreadful, and it is my fault. When I think how I felt towards my dear old dad, and my uncle—I——" "Well, never mind that. I've got you, and without meaning any gross flattery, I consider you worth a dozen dads. Tell me about your uncle. He died?" "We don't know. He went abroad fifteen years ago. He must be dead I think, because if he were alive he would certainly have written to us. He was very fond of Joyce and me; but no letter from him has reached us for years. He was charming. I wish you could have known him." "So do I—if you wish it. But—" coming over and sitting down beside her, "don't you think it is a little absurd, Barbara, after all these years, to think it necessary to tell me that you have good blood in your veins? Is it not a self-evident fact; and—one more word dearest—surely you might do me the credit to understand that I could never have fallen in love with anyone who hadn't an ancestor or two." "And yet your father——" "I know," rising to his feet, his brow darkening. "Do you think I don't suffer doubly on your account? That I don't feel the insolence of his behavior toward you four-fold? There is but one excuse for him and my mother, and that lies in their terrible disappointment about my brother—their eldest son." "I know; you have told me," begins she quickly, but he interrupts her. "Yes, I have been more open with you than you with me. I feel no pride where you are concerned. Of course my brother's conduct towards them is no excuse for their conduct towards you, but when one has a sore heart one is apt to be unjust, and many other things. You know what a heart-break he has been to the old people, and is! A gambler, a dishonorable gambler!" He turns away from her, and his nostrils dilate a little; his right hand grows clenched. "Every spare penny they possess has been paid over to him of his creditors, and they are not over-burdened with riches. They had set their hearts on him, and all their hopes, and when he failed them they fell back on me. The name is an old one; money was wanted. They had arranged a marriage for me, that would have been worldly wise. I too disappointed them!" "Oh!" she has sprung to her feet, and is staring at him with horrified eyes. "A marriage! There was someone else! You accuse me of want of candor, and now, you—did you ever mention this before?" "Now, Barbara, don't be the baby your name implies," says he, placing her firmly back in her seat. "I didn't marry that heiress, you know, which is proof positive that I loved you, not her." "But she—she—" she stammers and ceases suddenly, looking at him with a glance full of question. Womanlike, everything has given way to the awful thought, that this unknown had not been unknown to him, and that perhaps he had admired—loved—— "Couldn't hold a candle to you," says he, laughing in spite of himself at her expression which, indeed, is nearly tragic. "You needn't suffocate yourself with charcoal because of her. She had made her pile, or rather her father had, at Birmingham or elsewhere, I never took the trouble to inquire, and she was undoubtedly solid in every way, but I don't care for the female giant, and so I—you know the rest, I met you; I tell you this only to soften your heart, if possible, towards these lonely, embittered old people of mine." "Do you mean that when your brother disappointed them that they——" she pauses. "No. They couldn't make me their heir. The property is strictly entailed (what is left of it); you need not make yourself miserable imagining you have done me out of anything more than their good-will. George will inherit whatever he has left them to leave." "It is sad," says she, with downcast eyes. "Yes. He has been a constant source of annoyance to them ever since he left Eton." "Where is he now?" "Abroad, I believe. In Italy, somewhere, or France—not far from a gaming table, you may be sure. But I know nothing very exactly, as he does not correspond with me, and that letter of this morning is the first I have received from my father for four years." "He must, indeed, hate me," says she, in a low tone. "His elder son such a failure, and you—he considers you a failure, too." "Well, I don't consider myself so," says he, gaily. "They were in want of money, and you—you married a girl without a penny." "I married a girl who was in herself a mine of gold," returns he, laying his hands on her shoulders and giving her a little shake. "Come, never mind that letter, darling; what does it matter when all is said and done?" "The first after all these years; and the, last—you remember it? It was terrible. Am I unreasonable if I remember it?" "It was a cruel letter," says he slowly; "to forget it would be impossible, either for you or me. But, as I said just now, how does it affect us? You have me, and I have you; and they, those foolish old people, they have——" He pauses abruptly, and then goes on in a changed tone, "their memories." "Oh! and sad ones!" cries she, sharply, as if hurt. "It is a terrible picture you have conjured up. You and I so happy, and they—Oh! poor old people!" "They have wronged you—slighted you—ill-treated you," says he, looking at her. "But they are unhappy; they must be wretched always about your brother, their first child. Oh! what a grief is theirs!" "What a heart is yours!" says he, drawing her to him. "Barbara! surely I shall not die until they have met you, and learned why I love you." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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