She threw back her head, half-closing her eyes in the ecstasy of her new experience. The dancing was in the picture-gallery, an immense room, in which there were many dark paintings of the old Italian and Spanish schools, besides the presentments of innumerable Arcots by the usual popular masters of the Dutch and English. The ceiling was of stone and vaulted, but set thick with electric lights, blazing down from their great height like the crystal stars of the tropics. It had seemed to Isabel that after entering the castle she had walked for ten minutes before reaching this room, where as brilliant a company was disporting itself as she was likely to look upon in England. The Duke of Arcot was an energetic Conservative and a member of the present cabinet, but his social attentions were ever directed to the prominent and interesting of whatever party or creed. As he found a particular zest in being surrounded by smart, bright and pretty women, the parties at the castle, and at Arcot House in London, were seldom surpa.s.sed in either brilliancy or interest. And as his rent-roll was abnormal, there was no sign of dilapidation within the gray walls and towers of the ancient castle, but much comfort and luxury against a background of countless treasures acc.u.mulated throughout the centuries. He had taken an immediate fancy to Isabel and promised to show her the lower rooms as soon as she tired of dancing.
Hexam watched her with an amused indulgence that in no wise tempered his mounting admiration. She was radiant. Her blue eyes were shining and almost black, her cheeks flooded with a delicate pink. She wore a gown of white tulle upon whose floating surface were a few dark-blue lilies.
The ma.s.ses of her black hair were piled on her head in the fashion of her Californian grandmothers, and confined by a high Spanish comb of gold and tortoise-sh.e.l.l. Her only other jewel was a long string of Baja California pearls that had glistened on warm white necks in many an old California ballroom before ever an American had crossed the threshold of Arcot Castle. They had been given by Concha Arguello, when she a.s.sumed the gray habit of the Third Order of the Franciscan nuns, to the wife of her brother Santiago and so had come down to Isabel.
And to-night this descendant of that powerful clan, unimaginable in her modern complexities to their simple minds, was receiving homage in the ballroom of one of the greatest houses in Europe. For there was no question, even in the minds of the young married women, who carry all before them in English society, that the American girl had created a furore among the men. Isabel had confided to the duke, who had lunched that day at Capheaton, and to Hexam, her haunting fear of being a wall-flower, and both had vowed that she should have no lack of partners at her first English ball. But to Hexam"s disgust, at least, their solicitude came to an untimely end, and he was able to secure but two waltzes and a square dance. The duke had spoken for the cotillon, which he had no intention of dancing. He was a most estimable person, but he never ignored an opportunity to talk with a new and interesting woman.
Isabel could hardly have failed to be a belle that night, for her spirit was pitched to a height of joy and triumph that charged her whole being with a powerful magnetism. Possibly with a presentiment that it was to be an isolated experience, she abandoned herself recklessly to the mere delight of living, her will imperious for the fulness of one of the dearest of girlhood"s ideals. She was one of those women, cast, as she well knew, for tragic and dramatic contacts with life, but Nature in compensation had granted her a certain wildness of spirit that sprang spontaneously to meet the pleasure, trifling or great, of the mere present; no matter for how long a period, or how hard, its wings had been smitten.
So she danced, and talked far more than was her wont, surpa.s.sing herself in every way, and no more interested in poor Hexam than in twenty others. He took her in to supper, however, and after three hours of dancing she was glad to rest and be sheltered by his determined bulk, planted squarely before her corner. She knew that she had a coronet very close to her footstool, and that this brilliant night might be but the prologue to a lifetime of the only society in the world worth while, but she was not conscious of any desire beyond the br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup of the moment. Moreover, she had never so thoroughly enjoyed being a girl, and love-making would have bored her grievously.
The duke claimed her, and after a desultory tour of the great reception-rooms and an infinite number of little cabinets, containing some of the most valuable of the j.a.panese and Indian treasures, he led her to the library, a luxurious room conducive to rapid friendship.
With that amiable desire, peculiar to the kindly Englishman, to gratify the ingenuous curiosity of the American, he produced a huge leather volume containing the various patents of n.o.bility that marked the upward evolution of his house from a barony in some remote period of the world"s history to the present dukedom, and the royal letters that had accompanied them. It was something he never would have dreamed of doing for a stranger of his own country, or of any state in Europe, but the English humor Americans that please them much as they would engaging children; and Isabel"s eyes sparkled with so lively an intelligence that the duke fancied she had literary intentions and might one day find such information useful. He even showed her his complicated coat-of-arms, which included a bend sinister, for he had royal blood in his veins; and this slanting rod interested Isabel as deeply as the moat under the window. She was even more interested in the duke"s att.i.tude; it was evident that he felt no more vanity in his royal descent than deprecation of its irregular cause and enduring emblem. It was, and that was the end of it; but he had quite enough imagination to appreciate the effect of so picturesque an incident in family history upon the mind of the young republican.
"The best we can do is to descend irrelevantly from Washington, Hamilton, or Jefferson," said Isabel. "Only we have not yet reached the stage where we dare to acknowledge it on our coat-of-arms. The illusions of the American youth must be preserved. Even the fact that one of our Presidents was a son of Aaron Burr is still to be read only in the great volume of unwritten history. My father was a sort of walking edition of that work."
"That is new to me!" The duke was quite famous as a student of history, and took a personal interest in America, having been over twice in search of big game. He asked her many questions; but his interest in the general subject was as nothing to the enthusiasm she aroused by a chance allusion to the chicken-ranch. The duke was agricultural above all things; he had a model estate bristling with scientific improvement. He was enchanted at Isabel"s picture of her wire-enclosed "runs" and yards containing industrious chickens of all ages, engaged, however innocently, in the pursuit of wealth. Isabel, when she chose, could invest any subject with glamour, and her account, delivered in tones notably accelerated, of the snow-white, red-crowned flocks, their aristocratic little white mansions, the luxurious nurseries for the "chicks," and the astonishing and costly banquets with which they were daily regaled, was so lively that the duke vowed he would raise Leghorns forthwith. He asked her so many practical questions, taking copious notes, and inevitably embracing California ranch life in its entirety, in his thirst for knowledge, that Isabel had no more dancing that night; but she made an enduring impression upon the eminently practical mind of her host.
It was quite two hours after supper, and Isabel was beginning to reflect with some humor upon the brevity of all illusions, when Hexam and Miss Thangue appeared simultaneously and announced that the Capheaton guests were leaving. Hexam looked sulky and suspicious. Flora was smiling.
"For the first time--" she murmured.
Isabel and the duke laughed outright, and then shook hands warmly.
"When I go home we can correspond," she said to him, "and I will tell you all the new kinks. We are always improving."
"The duke looked positively rejuvenated," said Hexam, spitefully, as they walked down the corridor. "Have you discovered the elixir of life in California, and promised him the prescription."
"No," said Isabel, demurely. "I have merely been initiating him into the mysteries of raising Leghorns."
Hexam looked stupefied, but Miss Thangue burst into a merry peal of laughter.
"Isabel!" she exclaimed. "I begin to suspect you are a minx!"
And Isabel laughed, too, in sheer excess of animal spirits and gratified vanity. She had excellent cause to remember the ebullition, for it was some time before she laughed again.
The d.u.c.h.ess, with her light sweet smile, her old-fashioned Book-of-Beauty style, a certain affectation of shabbiness in her black-and-silver gown, looked a more indispensable part of the picture than any of her guests, as she stood in the middle of the great drawing-room with a group of her more intimate friends. Among them was Lady Victoria, more normal of mood this evening, sufficiently gracious, superbly indifferent, although she had held her court as usual.
She tapped Isabel lightly on the cheek with her fan. "You were quite the rage," she said. "I never should have forgiven you if you had not been."
And Isabel had not the slightest doubt of her sincerity.
The d.u.c.h.ess, in the immensity of her castle, did not pretend to keep an eye on any one, and would have been the last to suspect that Miss Otis had inspired her husband with a sudden pa.s.sion for chickens. She shook hands approvingly with the young American and asked her to come over informally to luncheon on the morrow.
"Is your head turning?" asked Miss Thangue, as they drove home. "You must reap the results of your success; it would be a pity not to. After a few weeks here with Vicky you must go on a round of visits and then have a season in London."
"It would be glorious!" exclaimed Isabel, in whom problems were moribund. "I certainly believe I shall."
She was in the second of the carriages to reach Capheaton, and Gwynne, who was still standing on the steps, helped her down, and asked her pleasantly if she had enjoyed herself.
"I had such a good time I know I sha"n"t sleep a wink for twenty-four hours. I believe I"ll go to the library and get a book of yours I began on Sunday--only--" She hesitated. A talk with this enigmatical cousin would be a proper climax to the triumphs of the night. She raised her eyes, full of flattering appeal. "There are one or two points I did not quite understand--I have hesitated to go on--"
He too was wakeful, and rose to the bait promptly. "Suppose you give me an hour by the empty hearth. Will you? Well, go on ahead and I"ll follow in a moment--after I see that the men have all they want in the smoking-room."
In the depths of the most independent woman"s soul is a lingering taint of servility to the lordly male, and in Isabel it warmed into subtle life under the flattering response of this ill.u.s.trious specimen. She fairly sailed towards the library, wondering if any of the famous old-time California belles, Concha Arguello, Chonita Iturbe y Moncada, with their caballeros flinging gold and silver at their feet, Nina Randolph and Chonita Hathaway and Helena Belmont, with their pugnacious "courts," had ever felt as exultant as she. That last moment, as she stepped lightly over the threshold of the library, was a sort of climax to the intoxication of youth.
And then she stopped short, stifling a cry of terror. The library, except for the wandering moonshine, was unlit, but a ray fell directly across a shadowy figure in the depths of a chair, half-way down the room. It was a relaxed figure, the head fallen on the chest; the arms were hanging limply over the sides of the chair, the hands ghastly in the moonlight. At the rustle of skirts the figure slowly raised its head, and the eyes of a man, haunted rather than haunting, looked out of a drawn and livid face. But the movement was not followed by speech, and Isabel stood, stiff with horror, convinced that she was in the presence of the Capheaton ghost. Of course, like all old manor-houses, it had one, and she was too imaginative not to accept with her nerves if not with her intelligence this ugly proof of a restless domain beyond the grave. But her petrifaction was mercifully brief. There was a quick step behind her, and then an exclamation of horror as Gwynne shot past and caught the lugubrious visitant by the shoulder.
"Good G.o.d, Zeal!" he cried, and his voice shook. "What is it, old man?
You look--you look--"
The man in the chair rose slowly and drew a long breath, which seemed to infuse him with life again.
"I probably look much as I feel," he said, grimly. "I"m about to go on a journey, and if you can give me a few minutes--"
He paused and looked with cold politeness at Isabel. She waited for no further formalities, but shaken with the sure foreboding of calamity, turned and fled the room.
XIV
That night had also been one of triumph for Elton Gwynne. He had dined at the castle, and--his Julia having flitted to another country-house--spent the greater part of the evening in the smoking-room with half a score of the most eminent men in political England; and others whose recognition was not to be despised.
As there were many guests at the castle the dinner took place in the banquet-hall, but at six or eight round tables, and Gwynne had found himself distinguished above all the other young men present by being seated at that of the d.u.c.h.ess. The prime-minister, the chancellor of the exchequer, two other members of the cabinet, and an amba.s.sador were his companions. All the women were of exalted station, but for this fact Gwynne cared nothing, being entirely free of that sn.o.bbery which so often agitates even the best-born of the world; indeed, would have been resentful of the ripe age of the ladies--acc.u.mulated with their political values--had it not been for the tremendous compliment paid to his personal achievement.
He could not sit beside her grace in that nest of t.i.tles, but at the suggestion of the duke he had been placed as nearly opposite her as the round table permitted, and he soon forgot the broken circle of immemorial bosoms in the manifest disapproval of the Conservative premier towards himself, and in the att.i.tude of the other men, which, whether hostile or friendly, evinced a recognition of the rising star and a tolerance of his ideas.
There is always a glamour about a very young man who has given c.u.mulative evidence of genius and compelled the attention of the world, always distrustful of youth. His enemies had long since--and he was but thirty--admitted his gift for letters, fiercely as they might scoff at his conclusions; and his rewards for bravery in the field had aroused no adverse comment. But while his most persistent critics had never discovered him truthless and corruptible, his political sincerity had been called into question even by his colleagues, and almost unanimously by the opposition. His principles were by no means so rigidly outlined as those of the great Whig families, nor of the men who belonged to the Liberal party as a natural result of their more modest station and protesting spirit. He was strong on the fundamental principles of the party, and far more energetic in his advocacy of the rights and needs of the working-man than any Liberal of his own cla.s.s, but he rarely, if ever, alluded to the question of Home Rule; a question somnolent but by no means dead; and the omission savored of Unionism, in spite of his avowed scorn of all compromises.
These facts, taken in connection with the pride and arrogance of the young scion of the house of Strathland and Zeal, generated the suspicion that he had allied himself with the Liberal party for two reasons only: its weakness in first-cla.s.s men, and his pa.s.sion for self-advertising.
No one disputed his pre-eminence in this branch of industrial art, for although he never descended to commonplace methods, and the interviewer, far from being sought, rather dreaded him than otherwise, there was no man in England who was such a mine for "copy," nor of a perennially greener growth in the select front lawn of "news." When he attacked the government he was eminently quotable, and this endeared him to both reporters and editors. When he was interviewed, fearsome in manner as he was, he sent the worm away packed with ideas and phrases. But although he was almost continuously on the tongue, and the object of more acrimonious discussion than any young man in England, distrust of him had grown to such proportions that he had been dropped after one brief sojourn in the House; and to regain his seat had taken two years of the hardest and most brilliant fighting Great Britain had seen since the Conservative majority of 1874 permitted Disraeli to rest on his p.r.i.c.kly laurels. But this memorable battle of one young man against a mighty phalanx of enemies and doubting friends had battered down the prejudices of his own party, and won a meed of applause from even those of stout old Tory principles. The humbler cla.s.s, upon whom the election largely depended, were captivated by his eloquence, his insidious manipulation of the best in their natures, filling them with a judicious mixture of ideals and self-approval; while the phenomenon he invariably presented on the platform of the gradual awakening into life of a warm-blooded generous magnetic and earnest inner man, so effectually concealed at other times within a repellent exterior, never failed to induce in them the belief that something responsive in their own personalities awakened that rare spirit from its stifled sleep. That the glamour of his birth and condescension to their plane had aught to do with the dazzling quality of his charm, they might have admitted had their minds been driven by the enemy into the regions of self-a.n.a.lysis, but in any case he was the theme of two-thirds of the "pubs" and reading-rooms in England. He had achieved a sweeping victory that loomed portentously as a forerunner of greater triumphs in the future; for the personal popularity he had achieved, the gift for leadership he had demonstrated, the self-control he showed at all times, and the fatally adhesive quality of his biting wit, had strengthened the Liberal party and caused the Conservative to wish that he had never been born.
And flushed with self-love and the conquest of the woman of his desire, he had never talked better than on that night at Arcot; nor less offensively, for his arrogance and a.s.sertiveness were tempered by the warm high tide of his emotions. It was a magnificent room, the banquet-hall at Arcot, as large as that of many royal palaces, hung with old Gobelins and frescoed by a pupil of Giotto. It was a fit setting for the triumphant hour of the "most remarkable young man since the younger Pitt," a phrase which, if not notably suave, at least possessed an astonishing vigor, and was almost as familiar in American and continental newspapers as in his own proud nation; a nation always so keen to possess the first in all departments of excellence--creating them out of second-cla.s.s material when the first is lacking--that the wonder was she had been so long accepting Elton Gwynne. Nothing, perhaps, but a n.o.ble desire for a really great man restrained her.
Opposite Gwynne, the d.u.c.h.ess, sweet and tactful, if little more than an ornamental husk in which the juices of her race possibly recuperated to invigorate the future generations, was as fair and stately as her castle demanded; and if her gown was shabby her jewels were not. On either side of her table, which occupied the central position in the great room, were some of the most beautiful women in England, the smartest, the most politically important; all, without exception, of an inherited status that brought them once a year as a matter of course within the sternly guarded portals of Arcot. Gwynne did not know that Mrs. Kaye had knocked at these sacred portals in vain; for such gossip, if by chance he heard it, made no impression upon him whatever. But he was by no means insensible to the salient fact that he was one among the chosen of Earth to-night, and that it was good to be the hero of such an a.s.sembly.
For that he was the hero there was no manner of doubt, and when the dinner was over he spent but half an hour in the drawing-room, preferring the conversation of the heads of state, who so seldom gratified the vanity of a man of his years, but whom he had the power to interest whether they approved of him or not. He had many friends among women, some conquered by the magic of notoriety, others, like Flora Thangue, sensible of his finer side, or tolerant of him through life-long intimacy; and there were times when he was as alive to the pleasures of their society as any young sprig about town; but to-night their admiration was too illogical to administer to the self-love which in the last few days had palpitated with so exquisite a sense of fruition. Moreover, it gave him the keenest satisfaction to read in the manner of these older and long-tried men the grudging belief in his own sincerity.
In reality his motives for joining a party at war with every tradition of his house had been, primarily, as mixed as are all motives that bring about great voluntary changes in a man"s life. It was quite true that he was inordinately ambitious, that he had a distinct preference for the sensational method, as productive of speedier results; for he had no intention of waiting until middle-age for the activities and honors he craved in his insatiable youth; and it was also true that he was even more of an aristocrat than many of his cla.s.s, with whom a simpler att.i.tude had become the fashion, even if it were not marrow-deep. But the ruling motive had been his pa.s.sionate love of battle, a trait inherited perhaps from his pioneer ancestors, whose roots were in the soil. This desire to prove his mettle and fill his life with the only excitement worthy of his gifts, would alone have made him turn from the broad ancestral paths, but, like a lawyer fascinated by his brief, he had long since been heart and soul with the party he had chosen, and, with the exercise of his faculties, become possessed of a mounting desire not only to be of genuine use to his country, but to lift the family name from the comparative obscurity where it had rested during the half of a century.
The present head of the family had been an invalid in his early life, and Italy had withered whatever ambitions may have p.r.i.c.ked him in his youth. When he finally found himself able to live the year round in England he saw no fault in a nation so superior to any of his exile, and he had settled down to the life of a country squire, devoted to sport, and supremely satisfied with himself. His eldest son, an estimable young man, who had worked at Christ Church as if he had been qualifying for a statesman or a don, died of typhoid-fever before the birth of his boy.
The present heir, brilliant, weak, cynical, absolutely selfish, had rioted to such an extent that he had fatally injured his health and incurred the detestation of his grandfather; Lord Strathland was not only a virtuous old gentleman but was also inclined to be miserly. The subjects upon which they did not quarrel bitterly every time they met were those relating to Elton Gwynne, whom both loved, in so far as they loved any one but themselves. Deeply as they disapproved of his politics, they respected his independence and were inordinately proud of him. Zeal"s daughters, who bored him inexpressibly, were parcelled out among relatives, and he led a roving life in search of beneficent air for his weary lungs. All women had become hateful to him since he had been forced to sit in the ashes of repentance, but he had consented to enter upon a second marriage through the most disinterested sentiment of his life, his love of his cousin, whose haunting fear of being shelved in his youth had been poured into his ears many times. That he also enraged his grandfather, who wanted nothing so much as the a.s.surance that his favorite should inherit the territorial honors of his house, may have given zest to his act of renunciation. Not that he had the least intention of giving his cousin a solid basis for despair for many years to come, for no mother ever nursed her babe more tenderly than he his weak but by no means exhausted chest. During his last interview with Elton in London he had a.s.sured his anxious relative that he was taking the best of care of himself, and that, in spite of blood-shot eyes and haggard cheeks, his disease was quiescent; although he had decided to start for Davos or some other popular climate before the advent of harsh weather. Davos is a word of hideous portent in English ears, but Gwynne had expelled it with all other cares from his mind, and on this night when he returned from Arcot feeling a far greater man than any of his house had ever dreamed of being, and with a song in his heart, the awful face of his cousin, whom in the shock of the moment he thought stricken with death, gave him the first stab of terror and doubt that he had experienced in his triumphant life.
XV