Beyond The Rocks Part 6

V

Theodora was sitting rather on the outskirts of the party in the _bosquet_, her two devoted admirers still on either side of her. All the chairs were arranged informally, and hers was against the opening, so that it proved easy for Lord Bracondale to come up behind her unperceived.

She believed he had gone. She could not see distinctly from where she was, but she had thought she saw the automobile whizzing by. She recognized Mrs. Ellerwood's hat. An unconscious feeling of blankness came over her. She grew more silent.

A lady beyond the Prince spoke to him, and at that moment Mr.

Hoggenwater rose to put down her coffee-cup, and in this second of loneliness a deep voice said in her ear:

"I could not go--I wanted to say good-night to you!"

Then Theodora experienced a new emotion; she could not have told herself what it was, but suddenly a gladness spread through her spirit; the moon looked more softly bright, and her sweet eyes dilated and glowed, while that voice, gentle as a dove's, trembled a little as she said:

"Lord Bracondale! Oh, you startled me!"

He drew a chair and sat down behind her.

"How shall we get rid of your Hogginheimer millionaire?" he whispered.

"I feel as if I wanted to kill every one who speaks to you to-night."

The half light, the moon, Paris, and the spring-time! Theodora spent the next hour in a dream--a dream of bliss.

Mrs. McBride, with her all-seeing eye, perceived the turn events had taken. She was full of enjoyment herself; she had quite--almost quite--decided to listen to the addresses of Captain Fitzgerald, therefore her heart, not her common-sense, was uppermost this night.

It could not hurt Theodora to have one evening of agreeable conversation, and it would do Herryman Hoggenwater a great deal of good to be obstacled; thus she expressed it to herself. That last success with Princess Waldersheim had turned his empty head. So she called him and planted him in a safe place by an American girl, who would know how to keep him, and then turned to her own affairs again.

The Prince was a man of the world, and understood life. So Theodora and Lord Bracondale were left in peace.

The latter soon moved his chair to a position where he could see her face, rather behind her still, which entailed a slightly leaning over att.i.tude. They were beyond the radius of the lights in the _bosquet_.

Lord Bracondale was perfectly conversant with all moves in the game; he knew how to talk to a woman so that she alone could feel the strength of his devotion, while his demeanor to the world seemed the least compromising.

Theodora had not spoken for a moment after his first speech. It made her heart beat too fast.

"I have been watching you all through dinner," he continued, with only a little pause. "You look immensely beautiful to-night, and those two told you so, I suppose."

"Perhaps they did!" she said. This was her first gentle essay at fencing. She would try to be as the rest were, gay and full of badinage.

"And you liked it?" with resentment.

"Of course I did; you see, I never have heard any of these nice things much. Josiah has always been too ill to go out, and when I was a girl I never saw any people who knew how to say them."

She had turned to look at him as she said this, and his eyes spoke a number of things to her. They were pa.s.sionate, and resentful, and jealous, and full of something disturbing. Thrills ran through poor Theodora.

His eyes had been capable of looking most of these things before to other women, when he had not meant any of them, but she did not know that.

"Well," he said, "they had better not return or recommence their compliments, because I am not in the mood to be polite to them to-night."

"What is your mood?" asked Theodora, and then felt a little frightened at her own daring.

"My mood is one of unrest--I would like to be away alone with you, where we could talk in peace," and he leaned over her so that his lips were fairly close to her ear. "These people jar upon me. I would like to be sitting in the garden at Amalfi, or in a gondola in Venice, and I want to talk about all your beautiful thoughts. You are a new white flower for me, as different as an angel from the other women in the world."

"Am I?" said she, in her tender tones. "I would wish that you should always keep that good thought of me. We shall soon go our different ways. Josiah has decided to leave next week, and we are not likely to meet in England."

"Yes, we are likely to meet--I will arrange it," he said.

There was nothing hesitating about Hector Bracondale--his way with women had always been masterful--and this quality, when mixed with a sudden bending to their desires, was peculiarly attractive. To-night he was drifting--drifting into a current which might carry him beyond his control.

It was now several years since he had been in love even slightly. His position, his appearance, his personal charm, had all combined to spoil a nature capable of great things. Life had always been too smooth. His mother adored him. He had an ample fortune. Every marriageable girl in his world almost had been flung at his head. Women of all cla.s.ses with one consent had done their best to turn him into a c.o.xcomb and a beast.

But he continued to be a man for all that, and went his own way; only as no one can remain stationary, the crust of selfishness and cynicism was perhaps thickening with years, and his soul was growing hidden still deeper beneath it all. From the beginning something in Theodora had spoken to the best in him. He was conscious of feelings of dissatisfaction with himself when he left her, of disgust with the days of unmeaning aims.

He had begun out of idle admiration; he had continued from inclination; but to-night it was _plus fort que lui_, and he knew he was in love.

The habit of indulging any emotion which gave him pleasure was still strong upon him; it was not yet he would begin to a.n.a.lyze where this pa.s.sion might lead him--might lead them both.

It was too deliciously sweet to sit there and whisper to her sophistries and reasonings, to take her sensitive fancy into new worlds, to play upon her feelings--those feelings which he realized were as fine and as full of tone as the sounds which could be drawn from a Stradivarius violin.

It was a night of new worlds for them both, for if Theodora had never looked into any world at all, he also had never even imagined one which could be so quite divine as this--this shared with her in the moonlight, with the magic of the Tzigane music and the soft spring night.

He had just sufficient mastery over himself left not to overstep the bounds of respectful and deep interest in her. He did not speak a word of love. There was no actual sentence which Theodora felt obliged to resent--and yet through it all was the subtle insinuation that they were more than friends--or would be more than friends.

And when it was all over, and Theodora's pulses were calmer as she lay alone on her pillow, she had a sudden thrill of fear. But she put it aside--it was not her nature to think herself the object of pa.s.sions. "I would be a very silly woman to flatter myself so," she said to herself, and then she went to sleep.

Lord Bracondale stayed awake for hours, but he did not sup with Esclarmonde de Chartres or Marion de Beauvoison. And the Cafe de Paris--and Maxims--and the afterwards--saw him no more.

Once again these houris asked each other, "Mais qu'est-ce qu'il a! Ce bel Hector? Ou se cache-t-il?"

VI

Before she went to bed in her hotel in the Rue de Rivoli, Monica Ellerwood wrote to her aunt.

"PARIS, _May 15th_.

"MY DEAR AUNT MILLY,--We have had a delicious little week, Jack and I, quite like an old honeymoon pair--and to-day we ran across Hector, who has remained hidden until now. He is looking splendid, just as handsome and full of life as ever, so it does not tell upon his const.i.tution, that is one mercy! Not like poor Ernest Bretherton, who, if you remember, was quite broken up by her last year. And I have one good piece of news for you, dear Aunt Milly. I do not believe he is so frantically wrapped up in this Esclarmonde de Chartres woman after all--in spite of that diamond chain at Monte Carlo. For to-night he took us to dine at Armenonville--although Jack particularly wanted to go to the Madrid--and when we got there we saw at once why! There was a most beautiful woman dining there with a party, and Hector never took his eyes off her the whole of dinner, Jack says--I had my back that way--and he got rid of us as soon as he could and went and joined them. Very young she looked, but I suppose married, from her pearls and clothes--American probably, as she was perhaps too well dressed for one of us; but quite a lady and awfully pretty. Hector was so snappish about it, and would not tell her name, that it makes me sure he is very much in love with her, and Jack thinks so too. So, dear Aunt Milly, you need have no more anxieties about him, as she can't have been married long, she looks so young, and so must be quite safe. Jack says Hector is thoroughly able to take care of himself, anyway, but I know how all these things worry you. If I can find out her name before I go I will, though perhaps you think it is out of the frying-pan into the fire, as it makes him no more in the mood to marry Morella Winmarleigh than before. Unless, of course, this new one is unkind to him. We shall be home on Sat.u.r.day, dear Aunt Milly, and I will come round to lunch on Sunday and give you all my news.

"Your affectionate niece, "MONICA ELLERWOOD."

Which epistle jarred upon Hector's mother when she read it over coffee at her solitary dinner on the following night.

"Poor dear Monica!" she said to herself. "I wonder where she got this strain from--her father's family, I suppose--I wish she would not be so--bald."

Then she sat down and wrote to her son--she was not even going to the opera that night. And if she had looked up in the tall mirror opposite, she would have seen a beautiful, stately lady with a puckered, plaintive frown on her face.