Beyond The Rocks, Elinor Glyn [reading e books .txt] 📗

him, Lady Mildred, do," said Hector; "we don't want him," and he laughed gayly. His beautiful, tender angel might be a match for these people after all. At any rate, he would be at her side to protect her from their claws.

Lord Wensleydown frowned. Mildred was being a damned nuisance, he said to himself, and he insisted upon accompanying Theodora to the bottom of the great staircase, which rose to magnificent galleries in the hall adjoining the saloon.

Sir Patrick had advanced and engaged Josiah in conversation.

He knew his guests' ways and how they would boycott him, and, with a serious question like those Australian shares on the tapis, he was not going to have Josiah insulted and ruffled just yet.

"Don't stay up-stairs all the time," Hector had managed to whisper, while Mildred and Lord Wensleydown stood arguing; "they are sure not to dine till nine; there are two hours before you need dress, and we can certainly find some nice sitting-room to talk in."

But Theodora, with immense self-denial, had answered: "No, I want to write a long letter to papa and my sisters. I won't come down again until dinner."

And he was forced to be content with the memory of her soft smile and the evident regret in her eyes.

XXIV

Theodora was greatly interested in Beechleigh. To her the home of her fathers was full of sentiment, and the thought that her grandfather had ruled there pleased her. How she would love and cherish it were it her home now! Every one of these fine things must have some memory.

Then the pictures of as far back as she could remember came to her, and she saw again their poor lodgings in the cheap foreign towns and their often scanty fare. And with a fresh burst of love and pride in him, she remembered her father's invariable cheerfulness—cheerfulness and gayety—in such poverty! And after he had been used to—this! For all the descriptions of Captain Fitzgerald had given her no idea of the reality.

Now she knew what love meant, and could realize her mother's story. Oh, she would have acted just in the same way, too.

Dominic had been forgiven by his brother after his first wife's death, and had come back to enjoy a short spell of peace and prosperity. And who could wonder that Lady Minnie Borringdon, in her first season, and full of romance, should fall headlong in love with his wonderfully handsome face, and be only too ready to run off with him from an angry and unreasonable parent! She was a spoiled and only child who had never been crossed. Then came that fatal Derby, and the final extinction of all sympathy with the scapegrace. The Fitzgeralds had done enough for him already, and Lord Borringdon had no intention of doing anything at all, so the married lovers crept away in high disgrace, and spent a few months of bliss in a southern town, where the sun shone and the food was cheap, and there poor, pretty Minnie died, leaving Theodora a few hours old.

And now at Beechleigh Theodora looked out of her window on the north side—the southern rooms were kept for greater than she—and from there she could see a vast stretch of park, with the deer cropping the fine turf, and the lions frowning while they supported the ducal coronet over the great gates at the end of the court-yard and colonnade.

It was truly a splendid inheritance, and she glowed with pride to think she was of this house.

So she wrote a long letter to her dear ones—her sisters at Dieppe, and papa, still in Paris, and even one to Mrs. McBride. And then she read until her maid came to dress her for dinner.

Her room was a large one, and numberless modern touches of comfort brought up-to-date the early Georgian furniture and the shabby silk hangings. A room stamped with that something which the most luxurious apartments of the wealthiest millionaire can never acquire.

Josiah looked in upon her as she finished dressing. He was, he said, most pleased with everything, and if they were a little unused to such company, still nothing could be more cordial than Sir Patrick's treatment of him.

Meanwhile, on their way up to dress, Mildred had gone in to Morella's room, and the two had agreed that Mrs. Brown should be suppressed.

It was with extra displeasure Miss Winmarleigh had learned of Theodora's relationship to Sir Patrick, and that after all she could not be called a common colonial.

There was no question about the Fitzgerald and Borringdon families, unfortunately, while Morella's grandfather had been merely a coal merchant.

"I don't think she is so wonderfully pretty, do you, Mildred?" she said.

But Mildred was a clever woman, and could see with her eyes.

"Yes, I do," she answered. "Don't be such a fool as to delude yourself about that, Morella. She is perfectly lovely, and she has the most deevie Paris clothes, and Lord Bracondale is wildly in love with her."

"And apparently Freddy Wensleydown, too," snapped Morella, who was now boiling with rage.

"Well, she is not likely to enjoy herself here," said Mildred, with her vicious laugh, which showed all her splendid, sharp teeth, as she went off to dress, her head full of plans for the interloper's suppression.

First she must have a few words with Barbara. There must be none of her partisanship. Poor, timid Barbara would not dare to disobey her, she knew. That settled, she did not fear that she would be able to make Theodora suffer considerably during the five days she would be at Beechleigh.

Sir Patrick was busy with some new arrivals who had come while they were dressing, so not a soul spoke to Theodora or Josiah when they got down to the great, white drawing-room, from which immensely high mahogany doors opened into an anteroom hung with priceless tapestry and containing cabinets of rare china. From thence another set of splendid carved doors gave access to the dining-room.

Neither Lord Wensleydown or Hector was in the room at first, so there was no man even to talk to them. Lady Ada had not introduced them to any one. And there they stood: Josiah ill at ease and uncomfortable, and Theodora quite apparently unconscious of neglect, while she looked at a picture.

All the younger women were thinking to themselves: "Who are these people? We don't want any strangers here—poaching on our preserves. And what perfect clothes! and what pearls! Why on earth did Ada ask them?"

And soon the party was complete, and Theodora found herself going in to dinner with her cousin Pat, who arrived upon the scene at the very last minute, having come from Oxford by a late train.

Mildred had taken care that neither Lord Wensleydown or Hector should be anywhere near Theodora. She had secured Lord Bracondale for herself, and did her best all through the repast to fascinate him.

And while he answered gallantly and paid her the grossest compliments, she knew he was laughing in his sleeve all the time, and it made her venom rise higher and higher.

Patrick Fitzgerald, the younger, was a dissipated, vicious youth, with his mother's faded coloring and none of the Fitzgerald charm. How infinitely her father surpassed any of the family she had seen yet, Theodora thought.

She did not enjoy her dinner. The youth's conversation was not interesting. But it was not until the ladies left the dining-room that her real penance began.

It seemed as if all the women crowded to one end of the drawing-room round Lady Harrowfield, and talked and whispered to one another, not one making way for Theodora or showing any knowledge of her presence. Barbara had gone off up to her room. She was too frightened of Mildred to disobey her, and she felt she would rather not be there to see their hateful ways to the dear, little, gentle cousin whom she thought she could love so much.

Theodora subsided on a sofa, wondering to herself if these were the manners of the great world in general. She hoped not; but although no human creature could be quite happy under the circumstances, she was not greatly distressed until she distinctly caught the name of "Mr. Brown" from the woman Josiah had taken in amid a burst of laughter, and saw Mildred, with a glance at her, ostentatiously suppress the speaker, who then continued her narration in almost a whisper, amid mocking titters of mirth.

Then anger burned in Theodora's gentle soul. They were talking about Josiah, of course, and turning him into ridicule.

She wondered, what would be the best to do. She was too far away to attempt to join in the conversation, or to be even able to swear she had heard aright, although there was no doubt in her own mind about it.

So she sat perfectly still on her great sofa, her hands folded in her lap, while two bright spots of wild rose flushed her cheeks.

She did not even pick up a book. There she sat like an alabaster statue, and most of the women were conscious of the exquisitely beautiful picture she made.

They could not stand in this packed group all the time, the whole dozen or more of them, and they gradually broke up into twos and threes about the large room.

They were delightfully friendly with one another, and all seemed in the best of spirits and tempers.

Most of them had no ulterior motive in their behavior to Theodora; it was merely the feeling that they were not the hostess and responsible. It was none of their business if Ada neglected her guests, and they all knew plenty of people and did not care to enlarge their acquaintance gratuitously.

So when they came in from the dining-room more than one of the men understood the picture they saw, of the beautiful, little, strange lady seated alone, while the other women chatted together in groups.

Hector was feeling irritated and excited, and longing to get near Theodora. He guessed Lord Wensleydown would have the same desire, and had no intention of being interfered with. He felt he could not bear to spend an evening watching the little brute daring to lean over her. He should kill him, or commit some violence, he knew.

Thus prudence, which at another time would have held him—would have made him remember what was best for her among this crowd of hostile women—flew to the winds. He must go to her—must show her he loved and would protect her, and, above all, that he would permit no other man to usurp his place.

And Theodora, who had been suffering silently a miserable feeling of loneliness and neglect, felt her heart bound with joy at the sight of his loved, familiar face, and she welcomed him more warmly than she had ever done before.

"Have these demons of women been odious to you, darling?" he whispered, hardly conscious of the term of endearment he had used. "Do not mind them; it is only jealousy because you are so beautiful and young."

"They have not been anything at all," she said, softly; "they have just left me alone and kept to themselves, and—and laughed at Josiah, and that has made me very angry, because—what has he done to them?"

"I loathe them all!" said Hector. "They are hardly fit to be in the same room with you, dear queen—and if you really belonged to me I would take you away from them now—to-night."

His voice was a caress, and that sentence, "belonged to me," always made her heart beat with its pictured possibilities. Oh, how she loved him! Could anything else in the world really matter while he could sit there and she could feel his presence and hear his tender words?

And so they talked awhile, and then they looked up and surveyed the scene. Josiah had been joined by Sir Patrick, and they were earnestly conversing by the fireplace. One or two pairs sat about on the sofas; but the general