Chapter 11

"Oh, don't come in yet, Billy, like a darling," she said, "I want to talk to Hector alone."

And the meek and fond Lord Anningford had obediently retired to his smoking-room.

"Well, Hector," she said, when she had greeted him, "and so you are going to the Fitzgeralds' for Whitsuntide, and not to Bracondale, mother tells me this morning. She is in the seventh heaven, taking it for a sign, as you had to manoeuvre so to be asked, that things are coming to a climax between you and Morella."

"Morella? Is she going?" said Hector, absently. He had quite forgotten that fact, so perfectly indifferent was he to her movements, and so completely had his own aims engrossed him.

"Why--dear boy!" Anne gasped. The whole scene, highly colored by repetition, had been recounted to her. How Morella had told him of her plans, and how he had at once got introduced to Lady Ada, and played his cards so skilfully that the end of the evening produced the invitation.

"Oh yes, of course, I remember she is going," he said, impatiently. "Anne, you haven't asked that beast Wensleydown to-day, have you?"

"No, dear. What made you think so?"

"I saw you talking to him in the park this morning, and I feared you might have. I shall certainly quarrel with him one of these days."

"You will have an opportunity, then, at Beechleigh, as he will be there. He is always with the Fitzgeralds," Anne said, and she tried to laugh. "But don't make a scandal, Hector."

She saw his eyes blaze.

"He is going there, is he?" he said, and then he stared out of the window.

Anne knew nothing of the relationship between Theodora and Sir Patrick. She never for a moment imagined the humble Browns would be invited to this exceptionally smart party. And yet she was uneasy. Why was Hector going? What plan was in his head? Not Morella, evidently. But she had never believed that would be his attraction.

And Hector was too preoccupied to enlighten her.

"Is mother coming to lunch?" he asked.

"Yes, by her own request. I had not meant to ask her--Oh, well, you know, she is never very pleased at your having new friends, and I thought she might fix Mrs. Brown with that stony stare she has sometimes, and we would be happier without her; but she was determined to come."

"It is just as well," he said, "because she will have to get accustomed to it. I shall ask my friends the Browns down to Bracondale on every occasion, and as she is hostess there the stony stare won't answer."

"Manage her as best you may," said Anne. "But you know how she can be now and then--perfectly annihilating to unfortunate strangers."

Hector's finely chiselled lips shut like a vise.

"We shall see," he said. "And who else have you got? None of the Harrowfield-Devlyn crew, I hope--"

"Hector, how strange you are! I thought you and Lady Harrowfield were the greatest friends, so of course I asked her. No one in London can make a woman's success as she can."

"Or mar it so completely if she takes a dislike! Have you ever heard of her doing a kindness to any one? I haven't!" he said, irritably.

Then he walked to the window and back quickly.

"I tell you I am sick of it all, Anne. Last night, whoever I spoke to had something vile to impute or insinuate about every one they mentioned; and Lady Harrowfield, with a record of her own worse than the lowest, rode a high horse of virtue, and was more spiteful than all the rest put together. I loathe them, the whole crew. What do they know of anything good or pure or fine? Painted Jezebels, the lot of them!"

"Hector!" almost screamed Lady Anningford. "What has come over you, my dear boy?"

"I will tell you," he said; and his voice, which had been full of passion, now melted into a tone of deep tenderness. "I love a woman whose pure goodness has taught me there are other possibilities in life beyond the aims of these vile harpies of our world--a woman whose very presence makes one long to be better and nobler, whose dear soul has not room for anything but kind and loving thoughts of sweetness and light. Oh, Anne, if I might have her for my own, and live away down at Bracondale far from all this, I think--I think I, too, could learn what heaven would mean on earth."

"Dear Hector!" said Anne, who was greatly moved. "Oh, I am so sorry for you! But what is to be done? She is married to somebody else, and you will only injure her and yourself if you see too much of her."

"I know," he said. "I realize it sometimes--this morning, for instance--and then--and then--"

He did not add that the thought of Lord Wensleydown and the rest swarming round Theodora drove him mad, deprived him of his power of reasoning, and filled him with a wild desire to protect her, to be near her, to keep her always for himself, always in his sight.

"Anne," he said, at last, "promise me you will go out of your way to be kind to her. Don't let these other odious women put pin-points into her, because she is so innocent, and all unused to this society. She is just my queen and my darling. Will you remember that?"

And as Anne looked she saw there were two great tears in his eyes--his deep-gray eyes which always wore a smile of whimsical mockery--and she felt a lump in her throat.

This dear, dear brother! And she could do nothing to comfort him--one way or another.

"Hector, I will promise--always," she said, and her voice trembled. "I am sure she is sweet and good; and she is so lovely and fascinating--and oh, I wish--I wish--too!"

Then he bent down and kissed her, just as his mother and Lady Harrowfield came into the room.

Anne felt glad she had not informed them they were to meet the Browns, as was her first intention. She seemed suddenly to see with Hector's eyes, and to realize how narrow and spiteful Lady Harrowfield could be.

Most of the guests arrived one after the other, and were talking about the intimate things they all knew, when "Mr. and Mrs. Brown" were announced, and the whole party turned to look at them, while Lady Harrowfield tittered, and whispered almost audibly to her neighbor:

"These are the creatures Florence insisted upon my giving an invitation to last night. I did it for her sake, of course, so wretchedly poor she is, dear Florence, and she hopes to make a good thing out of them. Look at the man!" she added. "Has one ever sees such a person, except in a pork-butcher's shop!"

"I have never been in one," said Hector, agreeably, a dangerous flash in his eyes; "but I hear things are too wonderfully managed at Harrowfield House--though I had no idea you did the shopping yourself, dear Lady Harrowfield."

She looked up at him, rage in her heart. Hector had long been a hopeless passion of hers--so good-looking, so whimsical, and, above all, so indifferent! She had never been able to dominate and ride rough-shod ever him. When she was rude and spiteful he answered her back, and then neglected her for the rest of the evening.

But why should he defend these people, whom, probably, he did not even know?

She would watch and see.

Then they went in to luncheon, without waiting for two or three stray young men who were always late.

And Theodora found herself sitting between the Crow and a sleek-looking politician; while poor Josiah, extremely ill at ease, sat at the left hand of his hostess.

Anne had purposely not put Hector near Theodora; with her mother there she thought it was wiser not to run any risks.

Lady Bracondale was sufficiently soothed by her happy dream of the cause of Hector's visit to Beechleigh to be coldly polite to Theodora, whom Anne had presented to her before luncheon. She sat at the turn of the long, oval table just one off, and was consequently able to observe her very carefully.

"She is extremely pretty and looks well bred--quite too extraordinary," she said to herself, in a running commentary. "Grandfather a convict, no doubt. She reminds me of poor Minnie Borringdon, who ran off with that charming scapegrace brother of Patrick Fitzgerald. I wonder what became of them?"

Lady Bracondale deplored the ways of many of the set she was obliged to move in--Delicia Harrowfield, for instance. But what was one to do? One must know one's old friends, especially those to whom one had been a bridesmaid!

The Crow, who had begun by being determined to find Theodora as cunning as other angels he was acquainted with, before the second course had fallen completely under her spell.

No one to look into her tender eyes could form an adverse opinion about her; and her gentle voice, which only said kind things, was pleasing to the ear.

"'Pon my soul, Hector is not such a fool as I thought," Colonel Lowerby said to himself. "This seems a bit of pure gold--poor little white lady! What will be the end of her?"

And opposite, Hector, with great caution, devoured her with his eyes.

Theodora herself was quite happy, though her delicate intuition told her Lady Harrowfield was antagonistic to her, and Hector's mother exceedingly stiff, while most of the other women eyed her clothes and talked over her head. But they all seemed of very little consequence to her, somehow.

She was like the sun, who continues to shine and give warmth and light no matter how much ugly imps may look up and make faces at him.

Theodora was never ill at ease. It would grieve her sensitive heart to the core if those she loved made the faintest shade of difference in their treatment of her--but strangers! They counted not at all, she had too little vanity.

Both her neighbors, the young politician and the Crow, were completely fascinated by her. She had not the slightest accent in speaking English, but now and then her phrasing had a quaint turn which was original and attractive.

Anne was not enjoying her luncheon-party. The impression of sorrow and calamity which the conversation with her brother had left upon her deepened rather than wore off.

Josiah's commonplace and sometimes impossible remarks perhaps helped it.

She seemed to realize how it must all jar on Hector. To know his loved one belonged to this worthy grocer--to understand the hopelessness of the position!

Anne was proud of her family and her old name. It was grief, too, to think that after Hector the title would go to Evermond Le Mesurier, the unmarried and dissolute uncle, if he survived his nephew, and then would die out altogether. There would be no more Baron Bracondales of Bracondale, unless Hector chose to marry and have sons. Oh, life was a topsy-turvy affair at the best of times, she sighed to herself.

Just before the ladies left the table, Josiah had announced their intended visit to Beechleigh, and his wife's relationship to Sir Patrick Fitzgerald and the old Earl Borringdon.

It came as a thunderclap to Lady Anningford. This accounted for Hector's eagerness to obtain the invitation--accounted for Theodora's exceeding look of breeding--accounted for many things.

She only trusted her mother had not heard the news also. So much better to leave her in her fool's paradise about Morella.

If Lady Harrowfield knew, she said nothing about it. She absolutely ignored Theodora, as though she had never shaken hands with her in her own house the night before. Theodora wondered at her manners--she did not yet know Mayfair.

The conversation turned upon some of the wonderful charities they were all interested in, and Theodora thought how good and kind of them to help the poor and crippled. And she said some gentle, sympathetic things to a lady who was near her. And Anne thought to herself how sweet and beautiful her nature must be, and it made her sadder and sadder.

Presently they all began to discuss the ball at Harrowfield House. It had been too lovely, they said, and Lady Harrowfield joined in with one of her sharp thrusts.

"Of course it could not be just as one would have wished. I was obliged to ask all sorts of people I had never even heard of," she said. "The usual grabbing for invitations, you know, to see the Royalties. Really, the quaint creatures who came up the stairs! I almost laughed in their faces once or twice."

"But don't you like to feel what pleasure you gave them, the poor things?" Theodora said, quite simply, without the least sarcasm. "You see, I know you gave them pleasure, because my husband and I were some of them--and we enjoyed it, oh, so much!"

And she smiled one of her adorable smiles which melted the heart of every one else in the room. But of Lady Harrowfield she made an enemy for life. The venomous woman reddened violently--under her paint--while she looked this upstart through and through. But Theodora was quite unconscious of her anger. To her Lady Harrowfield seemed a poor, soured old woman very much painted and ridiculous, and she felt sorry for unlovely old age and ill-temper.

Meanwhile, Lady Bracondale was being favorably impressed. She was a most presentable young person, this wife of the Australian millionaire, she decided.

Anne took the greatest pains to be charming to Theodora. They were sitting together on a sofa when the men came into the room.

Hector could keep away no longer. He joined them in their corner, while his face beamed with joy to see the two people he loved best in the world apparently getting on so well together.

"What have you been talking about?" he asked.

"Nothing very learned," said Anne. "Only the children. I was telling Mrs. Brown how Fordy's pony ran away in the park this morning, and how plucky he had been about it."

"They are rather nice infants," said Hector. "I should like you to see them," and he looked at Theodora. "Mayn't we have them down, Anne?"

Lady Anningford adored her offspring, and was only too pleased to show them; but she said:

"Oh, wait a moment, Hector, until some of these people have gone. Lady Harrowfield hates children, and Fordy made some terrible remarks about her wig last time."

"I wish he would do it again," said Hector. "She took the skin off every one the whole way through lunch."

"But Colonel Lowerby told me she was one of the cleverest women in London!" exclaimed Theodora; "and surely it is not very clever just to be bitter and spiteful!"

"Yes, she is clever," said Anne, with a peculiar smile, "and we are all rather under her thumb."

"It is perfectly ridiculous how you pander to her!" Hector said, impatiently. "I should never allow my wife to have anything but a distant acquaintance with her if I were married," and he glanced at Theodora.

Lady Anningford's duties as hostess took her away from them then, and he sat down on the sofa in her place.

"Oh, how I hate all this!" he said. "How different it is to Paris! It grates and jars and brings out the worst in one. These odious women and their little, narrow ways! You will never stay much in London--will you, Theodora?"

"I have always to do what Josiah wishes, you know; he rather likes it, and means us to come back after Whitsuntide, I think."

Hector seemed to have lost the power of looking ahead. Whitsuntide, and to be with her in the country for that time, appeared to him the boundary of his outlook.

What would happen after Whitsuntide? Who could say?

He longed to tell her how his thoughts were forever going back to the day at Versailles, and the peace and beauty of those woods--how all seemed here as though something were dragging him down to the commonplace, away out of their exalted dream, to a dull earth. But he dared not--he must keep to subjects less moving. So there was silence for some moments.

Theodora, since coming to London, had begun to understand it was possible for beautiful Englishmen to be husbands now and then, and that the term is not necessarily synonymous with "bore" and "duty"--as she had always thought it from her meagre experience.

She could not help picturing what a position of exquisite happiness some nice girl might have--some day--as Hector's wife. And she looked out of the window, and her eyes were sad. While the vision which floated to him at the same moment was of her at his side at Bracondale, and the delicious joy of possessing for their own some gay and merry babies like Fordy and his little brother and sister. And each saw a wistful longing in the other's eyes, and they talked quickly of banal things.

XXII

The Crow stayed on after all the other guests had left. He knew his hostess wished to talk to him.

It had begun to pour with rain, and the dripping streets held out no inducement to them to go out.

They pulled up their two comfortable arm-chairs to the sparkling wood fire, and then Colonel Lowerby said:

"You look sad, Queen Anne. Tell me about it."

"Yes, I am sad," said Anne. "The position is so hopeless. Hector loves her--loves her really--and I do not wonder at it; and she seems just everything that one could wish for him. A thousand times above Morella in intellect and understanding. All the things Hector and I like she sees at once. No need of explaining to her, as one has to to mother and Morella always."

"Yes," said the Crow. He did not argue with her as usual.

"It seems so fearful to think of her forever bound to that dreadful old grocer, whom she treats with so much deference and gentleness. The whole thing has made me sad. Hector is perfectly miserable; and, do you know, they are going to Beechleigh for Whitsuntide. Sir Patrick Fitzgerald is her uncle--and, of course, Hector is going, too, and--"

She did not finish her sentence. Her voice died away in a pathetic note as she gazed into the fire.

The Crow fidgeted; he had been devoted to Anne since she was a child of ten, and he hated to see her troubled.

"Look here," he said. "I investigated her thoroughly at luncheon, and I don't often make a mistake, do I?"

"No," said Anne. "Well--?"

"Well, she appeared to me to have some particular quality of sweetness--you were right about her looking like an angel--and I think she has got an angel's nature more or less; and when people are really like that there is some one up above looks after them, and I don't think we need worry much--you and I."

"Dear old Crow!" said Anne; "you do comfort me. But all the same, angel or not, Hector is so attractive--and he is a man, you know, not one of these anæmic, artistic, æsthetic things we see about so often now; and thrown together like that--how on earth will they be able to help themselves?"

The Crow was silent.

"You see," she continued, "beyond Morella, who is too absolutely unalluring and respectable to come to harm anywhere, and Miss Linwood, who only cares for bridge, there will hardly be another woman in the house who has not got a lover, and the atmosphere of those things is catching--don't you think so?"

"It is nature," said Colonel Lowerby. "A woman in possession of her health and faculties requires a mate, and when her husband is attending to sport or some other man's wife, she is bound to find one somewhere. I don't blame the poor things."

"Oh, nor I!" said Anne. "I don't ever blame any one. And just one, because you love him, seems all right, perhaps. It is six different ones in a year, and a seventh to pay the bills, that I find vulgar."

"Dans les premières passions, les femmes aiment l'amant; et dans les autres, elles aiment l'amour," quoted the Crow. "It was ever the same, you see. It is the seventh to pay the bills that seems vulgar and modern."

"Billy and I stayed there for the pheasant shoot last November, and I assure you we felt quite out of it, having no little adventures at night like the rest. Lady Ada is the picture of washed-out respectability herself, and so--to give her some reflected color, I suppose--she asks always the most go-ahead, advanced section of her acquaintances."

"Well, I shall be there this time," said the Crow; "she invited me last week."

This piece of news comforted Lady Anningford greatly. She felt here would be some one to help matters if he could.

"Morella will be perfectly furious when she gets there and finds she was not the reason of Hector's empressement for the invitation. And in her stolid way she can be just as spiteful as Lady Harrowfield."

"Yes, I know."

Then they were both silent for a while--Anne's thoughts busy with the mournful idea of the end of the House of Bracondale should Hector never marry, and the Crow's of her in sympathy, his eyes watching her face.

At last she spoke.

"I believe it would be best for Hector to go right away for a year or so," she sighed. "But, however it may be, I fear, alas! it can only end in tears."

XXIII

Beechleigh was really a fine place, built by Vanbrugh in his best days.

Three tiers of fifteen tall windows looked to the north in a front and two short wings, while colonnades led down to splendid wrought-iron gates, and blocks of buildings constructed in the same stately style. Fifteen more windows faced the south; and the centre one of the first floor led, with sweeping steps, to a terrace, while seven casements adorned each of the eastern and western sides.

On the southern side the view, for that rather flat country, was superb.

It gave, from a considerable elevation--through a wide opening of giant oaks and elms--a peep of the lake a mile below, and on in a long avenue of turf to a vista of smiling country.

On the splendid terrace peacocks spread their tails, and vases of carved stone broke at intervals the gray old balustrade.

Inside the house was equally nobly planned: all the rooms of great height and perfect proportion, and filled with pictures and tapestries and bronzes and antiques of immense value.

It had come to these spendthrift Irish Fitzgeralds through their grandmother, the last of an old ducal race. And two generations of Hibernian influence had curtailed the fine fortune which went with it, until Sir Patrick often felt it no easy matter to make both ends meet in the luxurious and gilded fashion which was necessary to himself and his friends.

If he and Lady Ada pinched and scraped when alone, keeping few servants on board wages, the parties, at all events, were done with all their wonted regal splendor.

"I shall stay with you, Patrick, as long as you can afford this cook," Lady Harrowfield said once to him; "but when you begin to economize, don't trouble to ask me. I hate poor people, when it shows."

A promising son, on the true Fitzgerald lines, was at Oxford now, and gave many anxious crows'-feet full opportunity of developing round his mother's faded eyes.

A plain daughter, Barbara, was pushed into corners and left much to herself. And a brilliant, flashing, up-to-date niece of Lady Ada's took always the first place.

Mildred was so clever, and her lovers were so well chosen, and so thoroughly of the right set or of great wealth; while a puny husband was helped to something in South Africa, when the man in possession was a Jew--or as agent for tea and jam in the colonies--when he happened to be only a colossally successful Englishman. And once, during a prominent politician's reign, poor Willie Verner enjoyed a few months in his own land as secretary to a newly started Radical club.

This Whitsuntide party was perhaps the smartest of the year.

By Saturday evening over thirty people would be gathered together under the Beechleigh roof.

Josiah, though exceedingly proud and pleased at the invitation, felt nervous at the thought of the visit. Not so Mr. Toplington, who, although he knew he should probably have to blush for his master, and might get a very secondary place in the "room," still felt he would hold his own when he could let it be known what magnificent wages he received from Mr. Brown.

"A long sight more than I'd get out of any lord," he thought. "And money is money. And all classes feels it."

Theodora, on the contrary, was neither proud nor pleased. She looked forward to the visit with excitement and dread.

Hector would be there, among all these people whom she did not know. And her awakened heart had begun to tell her that she loved him wildly, and to see him could only be alternate mad joy and remorse and anguish.