Chapter 8

"My darling, darling boy!" she exclaimed, as he opened the door and peeped in. "Streatfield, bring that chair for his lordship, and--oh, you can go for a few minutes."

Then she folded him in her arms, and almost sobbed with joy to see him again.

"Well, mother," he said, when she had kissed him and murmured over him as much as she wished. "Here I am, and what a sickening climate! And where are you off to?"

"I am going to dine with Morella Winmarleigh," said Lady Bracondale, "early, to go to the opera, and then I shall take her on to the Brantingham's ball. Won't you join us at either place, Hector? I feel it so dreadfully, having to rush off like this, your first evening, darling."

She stood back and looked at him. She must see for herself whether he was well, and if this riotous life she feared he had been leading lately had not too greatly told upon him. Her fond eyes detected an air of weariness: he looked haggard, and not so full of spirits as he usually was. Alas! if he would only stay in England!

"I am rather tired, mother; I may look in at the opera, but I can't face a ball. How is Anne, and what is she doing to-night?" he said.

"Anne has a bad cold. We have had such weather--nothing but rain since Sunday night! She is dining at home and going to bed early. I have just had a telephone message from her; she is longing to see you, too."

"I think I shall go round and dine with her then," said Hector, "and join you later."

They talked on for about ten minutes before he left her to dress, running against Streatfield in the passage. She had known him since his birth, and beamed with joy at his return.

He chaffed her about growing fat, and went on his way to telephone to his sister.

"His lordship looks pale, my lady," said the demure woman, as she fastened Lady Bracondale's bracelet. She, too, disapproved of Paris and bachelorhood, but she did not love Morella Winmarleigh.

"Oh, you think so, Streatfield?" Lady Bracondale exclaimed, in a worried voice. "Now that we have got him back we must take great care of him. His lordship will join me at the opera. Are you sure he likes those aigrettes in my hair?"

"Why, it's one of his lordship's favorite styles, my lady. You need have no fears," said the maid.

And thus comforted, Lady Bracondale descended the great staircase to her carriage.

She was still a beautiful woman, though well past fifty. Her splendid, dark hair had hardly a thread of gray in it, and grew luxuriantly, but she insisted upon wearing it simply parted in the middle and coiled in a mass of plaits behind, while one braid stood up coronet fashion well at the back of her head. She was addicted to rich satins and velvets, and had a general air of Victorian repose and decorum. There was no attempt to retain departed youth; no golden wigs or red and white paint disfigured her person, which had an immense natural dignity and stateliness. It made her shiver to see some of her contemporaries dressed and arranged to represent not more than twenty years of age. But so many modern ways of thought and life jarred upon her!

"Mother is still in the early seventies; she has never advanced a step since she came out," Anne always said, "and I dare say she was behind the times even then."

Meanwhile, Hector was dressing in his luxurious mahogany-panelled room. Everything in the house was solid and prosperous, as befitted a family who had had few reverses and sufficient perspicacity to marry a rich heiress now and then at right moments in their history.

This early Georgian house had been in the then Lady Bracondale's dower, and still retained its fine carvings and Old-World state.

"How shall I see her again?" was all the thought which ran in Lord Bracondale's head.

"She won't be at a ball, but she might chance to have thought of the opera. It would be a place Mr. Brown would like to exhibit her at. I shall certainly go."

Lady Anningford was tucked up on a sofa in her little sitting-room when her brother arrived at her charming house in Charles Street. Her husband had been sent off to a dinner without her, and she was expecting her brother with impatience. She loved Hector as many sisters do a handsome, popular brother, but rather more than that, and she had fine senses and understood him.

She did not cover him with caresses and endearments when she saw him; she never did.

"Poor Hector has enough of them from mother," she explained, when Monica Ellerwood asked her once why she was so cold. "And men don't care for those sort of things, except from some one else's sister or wife."

"Dear old boy!" was all she said as he came in. "I am glad to see you back."

Then in a moment or two they went down to dinner, talking of various things. And all through it, while the servants were in the room, she prattled about Paris and their friends and the gossip of the day; and she had a shocking cold in her head, too, and might well have been forgiven for being dull.

But when they were at last alone, back in the little sitting-room, she looked at him hard, and her voice, which was rather deep like his, grew full of tenderness as she asked: "What is it, Hector? Tell me about it if I can help you."

He got up and stood with his back to the wood fire, which sparkled in the grate, comforting the eye with its brightness, while the wind and rain moaned outside.

"You can't help me, Anne; no one can," he said. "I have been rather badly burned, but there is nothing to be done. It is my own fault--so one must just bear it."

"Is it the--eh--the Frenchwoman?" his sister asked, gently.

"Good Lord, no!"

"Or the American Monica came back so full of?"

"The American? What American? Surely she did not mean my dear Mrs. McBride?"

"I don't know her name," Anne said, "and I don't want you to say a thing about it, dear, if I can't help you; only it just grieves me to see you looking so sad and distrait, so I felt I must try if there is anything I can do for you. Mother has been on thorns and dying of fuss over this Frenchwoman and the diamond chain--("How the devil did she hear about that?" thought Hector)--until Monica came back with a tale of your devotion to an American."

"One would think I was eighteen years old and in leading-strings still, upon my word," he interrupted, with an irritated laugh. "When will she realize I can take care of myself?"

"Never," said Lady Anningford, "until you have married Morella Winmarleigh; then she would feel you were in good hands."

He laughed again--bitterly this time.

"Morella Winmarleigh! I would not be faithful to her for a week!"

"I wonder if you would be faithful to any woman, Hector? I have often thought you do not know what it means to love--really to love."

"You were perfectly right once. I did not know," he said; "and perhaps I don't now, unless to feel the whole world is a sickening blank without one woman is to love--really to love."

Anne noticed the weariness of his pose and the vibration in his deep voice. She was stirred and interested as she had never been. This dear brother of hers was not wont to care very much. In the past it had always been the women who had sighed and longed and he who had been amused and pleased. She could not remember a single occasion in the last ten years when he had seemed to suffer, although she had seen him apparently devoted to numbers of women.

"And what are you going to do?" she asked, with sympathy, "She is married, of course?"

"Yes."

"Hector, don't you want me to speak about it?"

He took a chair now by his sister's sofa, and he began to turn over the papers rather fast which lay on a table near by.

"Yes, I do," he said, "because, after all, you can do something for me. I want you to be particularly kind to her, will you, Anne, dear?"

"But, of course; only you must tell me who she is and where I shall find her."

"You will find her at Claridge's, and she is only the wife of an impossible Australian millionaire called Brown--Josiah Brown."

"Poor dear Hector, how terrible!" thought Anne. "It is not the American, then?" she said, aloud.

"There never was any American," he exclaimed. "Monica is the most ridiculous gossip, and always sees wrong. If she had not Jack to keep her from talking so much she would not leave one of us with a rag of character."

"I will go to-morrow and call there, Hector," Lady Anningford said. "My cold is sure to be better; and if she is not in, shall I write a note and ask her to lunch? The husband, too, I suppose?"

"I fear so. Anne, you are a brick."

Then he said good-night, and went to the opera.

Left to herself, Lady Anningford thought: "I suppose she is some flashy, pretty creature who has caught Hector's fancy, the poor darling. One never has chanced to find an Australian quite, quite a lady. I almost wish he would marry Morella and have done with it."

Then she lay on her sofa and pondered many things.

She was a year older than her brother, and they had always been the closest friends and comrades.

Lady Anningford was more or less a happy and contented woman now, but there had been moments in her life scorched by passion and infinite pain. Long ago in the beginning when she first came out she had had the misfortune to fall in love with Cyril Lamont, married and bad and attractive. It had given him great pleasure to evade the eye of Lady Bracondale, pure dragon and strict disciplinarian. Anne was a good girl, but she was eighteen years old and had tasted no joy. She was not an easy prey, and her first year had passed in storms of emotion suppressed to the best of her powers.

The situation had been full of shades and contrasts. The outward, a strictly guarded lamb, the life of the world and aristocratic propriety; and the inward, a daily growing mad love for an impossible person, snatched and secret meetings after tea in country-houses, walks in Kensington Gardens, rides along lonely lanes out hunting, and, finally, the brink of complete ruin and catastrophe--but for Hector.

"Where should I be now but for Hector?" her thoughts ran.

Hector was just leaving Eton in those days, and had come up and discovered matters, while she sobbed in his arms, at the beginning of her second season. He had comforted her and never scolded a word, and then he had gone out armed with a heavy hunting-crop, found Cyril Lamont, and had thrashed the man within an inch of his life. It was one of Hector's pleasantest recollections, the thought of his cowering form, his green silk smoking-jacket all torn, and his eyes sightless. Cyril Lamont's talents had not run in the art of self-defence, and he had been very soon powerless in the hands of this young athlete.

The Lamonts went abroad that night, and stayed there for quite six months, during which time Anne mended her broken heart and saw the folly of her ways.

Hector and she had never alluded to the matter all these years, only they were intimate friends and understood each other.

Lady Bracondale adored Hector and was fond of Anne, but had no comprehension of either. Anne was a _frondeuse_, while her mother's mind was fashioned in carved lines and strict boundaries of thought and action.

XVII

Meanwhile, Hector reached the opera, and made his way to the omnibus box where he had his seat.

He felt he could not stand Morella Winmarleigh just yet. The second act of "Faust" was almost over, and with his glass he swept the rows of boxes in vain to find Theodora. He sat a few minutes, but restlessness seized him. He must go to the other side and ascertain if she could be discovered from there. Morella Winmarleigh's box commanded a good view for this purpose, so after all he would face her.

He looked up at her opposite. She sat there with his mother, and she seemed more thoroughly wholesomely unattractive than ever to him.

He hated that shade of turquoise blue she was so fond of, and those unmeaning bits and bows she had stuck about. She was a large young woman with a stolid English fairness.

Her hair had the flaxen ends and sandy roots one so often sees in those women whose locks have been golden as children. It was a thin, dank kind of hair, too, with no glints anywhere. Her eyes were blue and large and meaningless and rather prominent, and her lightish eyelashes seemed to give no shade to them.

Morella's orbs just looked out at you like the bow-windows of a sea-side villa--staring and commonplace. Her features were regular, and her complexion, if somewhat all too red, was fresh withal; so that, possessing an income of many thousands, she passed for a beauty of exceptional merit.

She had a good maid who used her fingers dexterously, and did what she could with a mistress devoid of all sense of form or color.

Miss Winmarleigh went to the opera regularly and sat solidly through it. The music said nothing to her, but it was the right place for her to be, and she could talk to her friends before going on to the numerous balls she attended.

If she loved anything in the world she loved Hector Bracondale, but her feelings gave her no anxieties. He would certainly marry her presently, the affair would be so suitable to all parties; meanwhile, there was plenty of time, and all was in order. The perfect method of her account-books, in which the last sixpence she spent in the day was duly entered, translated itself to her life. Method and order were its watchwords; and if the people who knew her intimately--such as her chaperon, Mrs. Herrick, and her maid, Gibson--thought her mean, she was not aware of their opinion, and went her way in solid rejoicing.

Lady Bracondale was really attached to her. Morella's decorum, her absence of all daring thought in conversation, pleased her so. She had none of that feeling when with Miss Winmarleigh she suffered in the company of her daughter Anne, who said things so often she did not quite understand, yet which she dimly felt might have two meanings, and one of them a meaning she most probably would disapprove of.

She loved Anne, of course, but oh, that she could have been more like herself or Morella Winmarleigh!

Both women saw Hector in the omnibus box, and saw him leave it, and were quite ready with their greetings when he joined them.

Miss Winmarleigh had a slight air of proprietorship about her, which every one knew when Hector was there. And most people thought as she did, that he would certainly marry her in the near future.

He was glad it was not between the acts--there was no excuse for conversation after their greeting, so he searched the house in peace with his glasses.

And although he was hoping to see Theodora, his heart gave a great bound of surprised joy when, on the pit tier, almost next the box he had just left, he discovered her. He supposed it was a box often let to strangers that season, as he could not remember whose the name was as he had passed. He got back into the shadow, that his gaze should not be too remarkable. She had not caught sight of him yet, or so it seemed.

There she sat with her husband and another woman, whom he recognized as one of those kind creatures who go everywhere in society and help strangers when suitably compensated for their trouble.

Where on earth could she have come across Mrs. Devlyn? he wondered. A poisonous woman, who would fill her ears with tales of all the world. Then he guessed, and rightly, the introduction had been effected by Captain Fitzgerald, who would probably have known her in his own day.

Theodora appeared wrapped in the music, and was an enthralling picture of loveliness; her fineness seemed to make all the women's faces who were near look coarse, and her whiteness turned them into gypsies. She wore a gown of black velvet with no relief whatever, only her dazzling skin and her great pearls. He feasted his eyes upon her--eyes hungry with a week's abstinence; for he had felt it more prudent to remain in Paris for some days after she had left.

He looked round the rest of the house, and understood all the other men could, and probably would, gaze too. And then he began to feel hot and jealous! This was different from Paris, where she was more or less a tourist; but here, how long would she be left in peace without siege being laid to her? He knew his world and the men it contained. Yes, at that moment the door at the back of the box opened and Delaval Stirling came in, Josiah Brown making way for him to sit in front. Delaval Stirling--this was too much!

And Theodora turned with her adorable smile and greeted him, so it showed they had met before--greeted him with pleasure. Good God! How much could happen in a week! Why had he stayed in Paris?

If Morella Winmarleigh had glanced round at his face, even her thick perceptions must have grasped the disturbance which was marked there, as he stood back in the shadow and gazed with angry eyes.

The moment she had seen him come into the box Mrs. Devlyn had said, "I want you to notice a man over there, Mrs. Brown, in the box exactly opposite; on the grand tier--do you see?"

"Yes," said Theodora, and she perceived him shaking hands with Miss Winmarleigh before he caught sight of her, so she was forearmed and turned to the stage.

"He is nice-looking, don't you think so?" continued Mrs. Devlyn, without a pause. "He is going to marry that girl in the box; she is one of the richest heiresses of the day--Miss Winmarleigh. I always point out Hector Bracondale to strangers or foreigners; he is quite a show Englishman."

"Bracondale? Lord Bracondale?" interrupted Josiah Brown. "We met him in Paris, did we not, my love?" turning to Theodora. "He dined with us our last evening. Where is he?"

"Oh, you know him, then!" said Mrs. Devlyn, disappointed. "I wanted to be the first to point him out to you. They will make a handsome pair, won't they--he and Miss Winmarleigh?"

"Very," said Theodora, listlessly, with an air of dragging her thoughts from the music with difficulty, while she suddenly felt sick and cold.

"And are they to be married soon?"

"I don't know exactly; but it has been going on for years, and we all look upon it as a settled thing. She is always about with his mother."

"Is that Lord Bracondale's mother--the lady with the coronet of plaits and the huge white aigrette with the diamond drops in it?" Theodora asked. Her voice was schooled, and had no special tones in it. But oh, how she was thrilling with interest and excitement underneath!

"Yes, that is Lady Bracondale. She is quite a type; always dresses in that old-fashioned way, and won't know a soul who is not of her own set. She is a cousin of one of my husband's aunts. I must introduce you to her."

"She looks pretty haughty," announced Josiah Brown. "I should not care to tread on her toes much." And then he remembered he had seen her years ago driving through the little town of Bracondale.

Theodora asked no more questions. She kept her eyes fixed on the stage, but she knew Hector had raised his glasses now and was scanning the box, and had probably seen her.

What ought it to matter to her that he should be going to marry Miss Winmarleigh? He could be nothing to her--only--only--but perhaps it was not true. This woman, Mrs. Devlyn, whom she began to feel she should dislike very much, had said it was looked upon as settled, not that it was a fact. How could a man be going to marry one woman and make desperate love to another at the same time? It was impossible--and yet--she would _not_ look in any case. She would not once raise her eyes that way.

And so in these two boxes green jealousy held sway, and while Hector glared across at Theodora she smiled at Delaval Stirling, and spoke softly of the music and the voices, though her heart was torn with pain.

"Do you see Hector Bracondale is back again, Delaval?" Mrs. Devlyn said. "Do you know why he stayed in Paris so long? I heard--" And she whispered low, so that Theodora only caught the name "Esclarmonde de Chartres" and their modulated mocking laughter.

How they jarred upon her! How she felt she should hate London among all these people whose ways she did not know! She turned a little, and Josiah's vulgar familiar face seemed a relief to her, and her tender eyes melted in kindliness as she looked at him.

"You are very pale to-night, my love," he said. "Would you like to go home?"

But this she would not agree to, and pulled herself together and tried to talk gayly when the curtain went down.

And Hector blamed his own folly for having come up to this box at all. Here he must be glued certainly for a few moments; now that they could talk, politeness could not permit him to fly off at once.

"The house is very full," Miss Winmarleigh said--it was a remark she always made on big nights--"and yet hardly any new faces about."

"Yes," said Hector.

"Does it compare with the Opera-House in Paris, Hector?" Miss Winmarleigh hardly ever went abroad.

"No," said Hector.--Not only had Delaval Stirling retained his seat, but Chris Harford, Mrs. Devlyn's brother, had entered the box now and was assiduously paying his court. "Damned impertinence of the woman, forcing her relations upon them like that," he thought.--"Oh--er--no--that is, I think the Paris Opera-House is a beastly place," he said, absently, "a dull, heavy drab brown and dirty gilding, and all the women look hideous in it."

"Really," said Morella. "I thought everything in Paris was lovely."

"You should go over and see for yourself," he said, "then you could judge. I think most things there are lovely, though."

Miss Winmarleigh raised her glasses now and examined the house. Her eyes lighted at last on Theodora.

"Dear Lady Bracondale," she said, "do look at that woman in black velvet. What splendid pearls! Do you think they are real? Who is it, I wonder, with Florence Devlyn?"

But Hector felt he could not stay and hear their remarks about his darling, so he got up, and, murmuring he must have a talk to his friends in the house, left the box.

He was thankful at least Theodora was sitting on the pit tier--he could walk along the gangway and talk to her from the front.

She saw him coming and was prepared, so no wild roses tinged her cheeks, and her greeting was gravely courteous, that was all.

An icy feeling crept over him. What was the change, this subtle change in voice and eyes? He suddenly had the agonizing sensation of being a great way off from her, shut out of paradise--a stranger. What had happened? What had he done?

Every one knows the Opera-House, and where he would be standing, and the impossibility of saying anything but the most banal commonplaces, looking up like that.

Then Josiah leaned forward, proud of his acquaintanceship with a peer, and said in a distinct voice:

"Won't you come into the box, Lord Bracondale? There is plenty of room." He had not taken to either Delaval Stirling or Chris Harford, and thought a change of company would not come amiss. They had ignored him, and should pay for it.

Hector made his way joyfully to the back, and, entering, was greeted affably by his host, so the other two men got up to leave to make room for him.

He sat down behind Theodora, and Mrs. Devlyn saw it would be wiser to conciliate Josiah by her interested conversation.

She hoped to make a good thing out of this millionaire and his unknown wife, and it would not do to ruffle him at this stage of the affair.

Theodora hardly turned, thus Hector was obliged to lean quite forward to speak to her.

"I have seen my sister to-night," he said, "and she wants so much to meet you. I said perhaps she would find you to-morrow. Will you be at home in the afternoon any time?"

"I expect so," replied Theodora. She was longing to face him, to ask him if it was true he was going to marry that large, pink-faced young woman opposite, who was now staring down upon them with fixed opera-glasses; but she felt frozen, and her voice was a frozen voice.