Thelma Part 53

She followed him obediently, and her reappearance among her guests was hailed with enthusiasm,--Lady Winsleigh being particular effusive, almost too much so.

"Your headache has quite gone, dearest, hasn't it?" she inquired sweetly.

Thelma eyed her gravely. "I did not suffer from the headache, Clara,"

she said. "I was a little tired, but I am quite rested now."

Lady Winsleigh bit her lips rather vexedly, but said no more, and at that moment exclamations of delight broke from all a.s.sembled at the brilliant scene that suddenly flashed upon their eyes. Electricity, that radiant sprite whose magic wand has lately been bent to the service of man, had in less than a minute played such dazzling pranks in the gardens that they resembled the fabled treasure-houses discovered by Aladdin. Every tree glittered with sparkling cl.u.s.ters of red, blue, and green light--every flower-bed was bordered with lines and circles of harmless flame, and the fountains tossed up tall columns of amber rose, and amethyst spray against the soft blue darkness of the sky, in which a l.u.s.trous golden moon had just risen. The brilliancy of the illuminations showed up several dark figures strolling in couples about the grounds--romantic persons evidently, who were not to be persuaded to come indoors, even for the music of the band, which just then burst forth invitingly through the open windows of the picture-gallery.

Two of these pensive wanderers were Marcia Van Clupp and Lord Algernon Masherville,--and Lord Algy was in a curiously sentimental frame of mind, and weak withal, "_comme une pet.i.te queue d'agneau afflige_" He had taken a good deal of soda and brandy for his bilious headache, and, physically, he was much better,--but mentally he was not quite his ordinary self. By this it must not be understood that he was at all unsteadied by the potency of his medicinal tipple--he was simply in a bland humor--that peculiar sort of humor which finds strange and mystic beauty in everything, and contemplates the meanest trifles with emotions of large benevolence. He was conversational too, and inclined to quote poetry--this sort of susceptibleness often affects gentlemen after they have had an excellent dinner flavored with the finest Burgundy. Lord Algy was as mild, as tame, and as flabby as a sleeping jelly-fish,--and in this inoffensive, almost tender mood of his, Marcia pounced upon him.

She looked ravishingly pretty in the moonlight, with a white wrap thrown carelessly round her head and shoulders, and her bold, bird-like eyes sparkling with excitement (for who that knows the pleasure of sports, is not excited when the fox is nearly run to earth?), and she stood with him beside one of the smaller illuminated fountains, raising her small white hand every now and then to catch some of the rainbow drops, and then with a laugh she would shake them off her little pearly nails into the air again. Poor Masherville could not help gazing at her with a lack-l.u.s.tre admiration in his pale eyes,--and Marcia, calculating every move in her own shrewd mind, saw it. She turned her head away with a petulant yet coquettish movement.

"My patience!" she exclaimed; "yew _kin_ stare! Yew'll know me again when yew see me,--say?"

"I should know you anywhere," declared Masherville, nervously fumbling with the string of his eye-gla.s.s. "It's impossible to forget _your_ face, Miss Marcia!"

She was silent,--and kept that face turned from him so long that the gentle little lord was surprised. He approached her more closely and took her hand--the hand that had played with the drops in the fountain.

It was such an astonishingly small hand.--so very fragile-looking and tiny, that he was almost for putting up his eye-gla.s.s to survey it, as if it were a separate object in a museum. But the faintest pressure of the delicate fingers he held startled him, and sent the most curious thrill through his body--and when he spoke he was in such a flutter that he scarcely knew what he was saying.

"Miss--Miss Marcia!" he stammered, "have--have I said--anything to--to offend you?"

Very slowly, and with seeming reluctance, she turned her head towards him, and--oh, thou mischievous Puck, that sometimes takest upon thee the semblance of Eros, what skill is thine! . . . there were tears in her eyes--real tears--bright, large tears that welled up and fell through her long lashes in the most beautiful, touching, and becoming manner!

"And," thought Marcia to herself, "if I don't fetch him now, I never will!" Lord Algy was quite frightened--his poor brain grew more and more bewildered.

"Why--Miss Marcia! I say! Look here!" he mumbled in his extremity, squeezing her little hand tighter and tighter. "What--what _have_ I done! Good gracious! You--you really mustn't cry, you know--I say--look here! Marcia! I wouldn't vex you for the world!"

"Yew bet yew wouldn't!" said Marcia, with slow and nasal plaintiveness.

"I like that! That's the way yew English talk. But yew kin hang round a girl a whole season and make all her folks think badly of her--and--and--break her heart--yes--that's so!" Here she dried her eyes with a filmy lace handkerchief. "But don't _yew_ mind me! I kin bear it.

I kin worry through!" And she drew herself up with dignified resignation--while Lord Algy stared wildly at her, his feeble mind in a whirl. Presently she smiled most seductively, and looked up with her dark, tear-wet eyes to the moon.

"I guess it's a good night for lovers!" she said, sinking her ordinary tone to an almost sweet cadence. "But we're not of that sort, are we?"

The die was cast! She looked so charming--so irresistible, that Masherville lost all hold over his wits. Scarcely knowing what he did, he put his arm round her waist. Oh, what a warm, yielding waist! He drew her close to his breast, at the risk of breaking his most valuable eyegla.s.s,--and felt his poor weak soul in a quiver of excitement at this novel and delicious sensation.

"We are--we are of that sort!" he declared courageously. "Why should you doubt it, Marcia?"

"I believe _yew_ if _yew_ say so," responded Marcia. "But I guess yew're only fooling me!"

"Fooling you!" Lord Algy was so surprised that he released her quite suddenly from his embrace--so suddenly that she was a little frightened.

Was she to lose him, after all?

"Marcia," he continued mildly, yet with a certain manliness that did not ill become him. "I--I hope I am too much of--of a gentleman to--to '_fool_' any woman, least of all you, after I have, as you say, compromised you in society by my--my attentions. I--I have very little to offer you--but such as it is, is yours. In--in short, Marcia, I--I will try to make you happy if you can--can care for me enough to--to--marry me!"

Eureka! The game was won! A vision of Masherville Park, Yorkshire, that "well-timbered and highly desirable residence," as the auctioneers would describe it, flitted before Marcia's eyes,--and, filled with triumph, she went straight into her lordly wooer's arms, and kissed him with thorough transatlantic frankness. She was really grateful to him. Ever since she had come to England, she had plotted and schemed to become "my lady" with all the vigor of a purely republican soul,--and now at last, after hard fighting, she had won the prize for which her soul had yearned. She would in future belong to the English aristocracy--that aristocracy which her relatives in New York pretended to despise, yet openly flattered,--and with her arms round the trapped Masherville's neck, she foresaw the delight she would have in being toadied by them as far as toadyism could be made to go.

She is by no means presented to the reader as a favorable type of her nation--for, of course, every one knows there are plenty of sweet, unselfish, guileless American girls, who are absolutely incapable of such unblushing marriage-scheming as hers,--but what else could be expected from Marcia? Her grandfather, the navvy, had but recently become endowed with Pilgrim-Father Ancestry,--and her maternal uncle was a boastful pork-dealer in Cincinnati. It was her bounden duty to enn.o.ble the family somehow,--surely, if any one had a right to be ambitious, she was that one! And wild proud dreams of her future pa.s.sed through her brain, little Lord Algy quivered meekly under her kiss, and returned it with all the enthusiasm of which he was capable. One or two faint misgivings troubled him as to whether he had not been just a little too hasty in making a serious _bona fide_ offer of marriage to the young lady by whose Pilgrim progenitors he was not deceived. He knew well enough what her antecedents were, and a faint shudder crossed him as he thought of the pork-dealing uncle, who would, by marriage, become _his_ uncle also. He had long been proud of the fact that the house of Masherville had never, through the course of centuries, been a.s.sociated, even in the remotest manner with trade--and now!--

"Yet, after all," he mused, "the Marquis of Londonderry openly advertises himself as a coal-merchant, and the brothers-in-law of the Princess Louise are in the wine trade and stock-broking business,--and all the old knightly blood of England is mingling itself by choice with that of the lowest commoners--what's the use of my remaining aloof, and refusing to go with the spirit of the age? Besides, Marcia loves me, and it's pleasant to be loved!"

Poor Lord Algy. He certainly thought there could be no question about Marcia's affection for him. He little dreamed that it was to his t.i.tle and position she had become so deeply attached,--he could not guess that after he had married her there would be no more Lord Masherville worth mentioning--that that individual, once independent, would be entirely swallowed up and lost in the dashing personality of Lady Masherville, who would rule her husband as with a rod of iron.

He was happily ignorant of his future, and he walked in the gardens for some time with his arm round Marcia's waist, in a very placid and romantic frame of mind. By-and-by he escorted her into the house, where the dancing was in full swing--and she, with a sweet smile, bidding him wait for her in the refreshment-room, sought for and found her mother, who as usual, was seated in a quiet corner with Mrs. Rush-Marvelle, talking scandal.

"Well?" exclaimed these two ladies, simultaneously and breathlessly.

Marcia's eyes twinkled. "Guess he came in as gently as a lamb!" she said.

They understood her. Mrs. Rush-Marvelle rose from her chair in her usual stately and expensive manner.

"I congratulate you, my dear!" kissing Marcia affectionately on both cheeks. "Bruce Errington would have been a better match,--but, under the circ.u.mstances, Masherville is really about the best thing you could do.

You'll find him quite easy to manage!" This with an air as though she were recommending a quiet pony.

"That's so!" said Marcia carelessly, "I guess we'll pull together somehow. Mar-ma," to her mother--"yew kin turn on the news to all the folks yew meet--the more talk the better! I'm not partial to secrets!"

And with a laugh, she turned away.

Then Mrs. Van Clupp laid her plump, diamond-ringed hand on that of her dear friend, Mrs. Marvelle.

"You have managed the whole thing beautifully," she said, with a grateful heave of her ample bosom. "Such a clever creature as you are!"

She dropped her voice to a mysterious whisper. "You shall have that cheque to-morrow, my love!"

Mrs. Rush-Marvelle pressed her fingers cordially.

"Don't hurry yourself about it!"--she returned in the same confidential tone. "I dare say you'll want me to arrange the wedding and the 'crush'

afterwards. I can wait till then."

"No, no! that's a separate affair," declared Mrs. Van Clupp. "I must insist on your taking the promised two hundred. You've been really so _very_ energetic!"

"Well, I _have_ worked rather hard," said Mrs. Marvelle, with modest self-consciousness. "You see nowadays it's so difficult to secure suitable husbands for the girls who ought to have them. Men _are_ such slippery creatures!"

She sighed--and Mrs. Van Clupp echoed the sigh,--and then these two ladies,--the nature of whose intimacy may now be understood by the discriminating reader,--went together to search out those of their friends and acquaintances who were among the guests that night, and to announce to them (in the strictest confidence, of course!) the delightful news of "dear Marcia's engagement." Thelma heard of it, and went at once to proffer her congratulations to Marcia in person.

"I hope you will be very, very happy!" she said simply, yet with such grave earnestness in her look and voice that the "Yankee gel" was touched to a certain softness and seriousness not at all usual with her, and became so winning and gentle to Lord Algy that he felt in the seventh heaven of delight with his new position as affianced lover to so charming a creature.

Meanwhile George Lorimer and Pierre Duprez were chatting together in the library. It was very quiet there,--the goodly rows of books, the busts of poets and philosophers,--the large, placid features of the Pallas Athene crowning an antique pedestal,--the golden pipes of the organ gleaming through the shadows,--all these gave a solemn, almost sacred aspect to the room. The noise of the dancing and festivity in the distant picture-gallery did not penetrate here, and Lorimer sat at the organ, drawing out a few plaintive strains from its keys as he talked.

"It's your fancy, Pierre," he said slowly. "Thelma may be a little tired to-day, perhaps--but I know she's perfectly happy."

"I think not so," returned Duprez. "She has not the brightness--the angel look--_les yeux d'enfant_,--that we beheld in her at that far Norwegian Fjord. Britta is anxious for her."

Lorimer looked up, and smiled a little.

"Britta? It's always Britta with you, _mon cher_! One would think--" he paused and laughed.

"Think what you please!" exclaimed Duprez, with a defiant snap of his fingers. "I would not give that little person for all the _grandes dames_ here to-day! She is charming--and she is _true_!--_Ma foi!_ to be true to any one is a virtue in this age! I tell you, my good boy, there is something sorrowful--heavy--on _la belle_ Thelma's mind--and Britta, who sees her always, feels it--but she cannot speak. One thing I will tell you--it is a pity she is so fond of Miladi Winsleigh."

"Why?" asked Lorimer, with some eagerness.

"Because--" he stopped abruptly as a white figure suddenly appeared at the doorway, and a musical voice addressed them--