Part 33 (1/2)

”Kit,” says a voice subdued and low, but so distinct as to sound almost in her ear.

She starts, and then looks eagerly around her, but nothing can she see.

Was it a human voice, or a call from that old land that held great Zeus for its king? A message from Olympus it well might be, on such a night as this, when all things breathe of old enchantment and of mystic lore.

Almost she fears yet hopes to see a sylvan deity peep out at her from the escalonia yonder, or from the white-flowered, sweetly-perfumed syringa in that distant corner,--Pan the musical, perhaps, with his sweet pipes, or a yet more stately G.o.d, the beautiful Apollo, with his golden lyre. Oh for the chance of hearing such G.o.dlike music, with only she herself and the pale Diana for an audience!

Perchance the G.o.ds have, indeed, been good to her, and sent her a special messenger on this yellow night. Fear forgotten, in the ecstasy of this hope, the strange child stands erect, and waits with eager longing for a second summons.

And it comes, but alas! in a fatally earthly tone that ruins her fond hope forever.

”Kit, it is I. Listen to me,” says some one, and then a hole in the hedge is cleared, and Mr. Desmond, stepping through it, enters the moonlit patch, flushed but shamelessly unembarra.s.sed.

Kit, pale with disappointment, regards him silently with no gentle glance.

”And to think,” she says, at length, with slow scorn, looking him up and down with measureless contempt,--”to think I was mad enough to believe for one long moment that you might be Apollo, and that your voice was a cry from Parna.s.sus!”

At which, I regret to say, Mr. Desmond gives way to most unseemly mirth. ”I never dreamed I should attain to such glory,” he says. ”I feel like 'the rapt one of the G.o.dlike forehead.'”

”You _may_,” says the younger Miss Beresford, who has awakened from the dim dusk of ”faerie lands forlorn” to the clearer light of earth. ”You may,” witheringly, ”_feel_ like it, but you certainly don't _look_ like it.”

”I am not complete, I know that,” says Mr. Desmond still full of unholy enjoyment. ”I lack 'bright Apollo's lute strung with his hair;' but if you will wait a moment I will run back to Coole and get the nearest thing to it.”

He turns as if to fulfil his words, but Kit stops him.

”Don't go,” she says, laughing gayly, now herself. ”Even the very original lute would not transform you into a G.o.d. Stay if you want to.

After all, now I am again in my senses, I daresay you are as good to talk to as a heathen deity.”

”Oh, no,” says Mr. Desmond, humbly. ”They always thundered when they spoke: so think how imposing and convincing their arguments must have been!”

”Horrid, _I_ should think,” says Kit. ”And now tell me what brought you here?”

This is abrupt, but, taking her in her own mood, Desmond answers, bluntly,--

”Monica.”

”She _told_ you to come?”

”No. But I want to see her.”

”She has gone to her room.”

”Make her leave it again. Tell her I cannot rest until I see her; tell her anything; only bring her to me for even one short moment.”

”But it is some time since I left her: perhaps she is in bed.”

”But not asleep yet, surely. She loves _you_, Kit: induce her, then, to come to her window, that I may even catch a glimpse of her, if I may not speak with her. But she cannot be in bed; it is so early,” says Mr.

Desmond, desperately.

”Well,” says Kit, relenting, and striving to forget the blank occasioned by the subst.i.tution of an ordinary Desmond for an extraordinary deity, ”I'll see what can be done.”