The two friends ran up to London for the theatre that night, to see a famous actor in a popular play, but neither was much interested in the performance. Something had kindled in the heart of the man a reminiscent fire and the Boy was thinking his own thoughts and listening, ever listening.
"I"m several kinds of a fool," he thought, "but I"d like to hear that voice again and get a glimpse of the face that goes with it. I dare say she is anything but attractive in the flesh--if she is really in the flesh at all, which I am beginning to doubt--so I should be disenchanted if I were to see her, I suppose. But I"d like to _know_!" Yet, after all, he could not comprehend how such a voice could accompany an unattractive face. The spirit that animated those tones must needs light up the most ordinary countenance with character, if not with beauty, he thought; but he saw no face in the vast audience to which he cared to a.s.sign it. No, _she_ wasn"t there. He was sure of that.
But as they left the building and stood upon the pavement, awaiting their carriage, his blood mounted to his face, dyeing it crimson. In the sudden silence that mysteriously falls on even vast crowds, sometimes, he heard that voice again!
It was only a s.n.a.t.c.h of mischievous laughter from a brougham just being driven away from the curb, but it was unmistakably _the_ voice. Had the Boy been alone he would have followed the brougham and solved the mystery then and there.
The laugh rang out again on the summer evening air. It was like a lilt of fairies" merriment in the moonlit revels of Far Away! It was the note of a siren"s song, calling, calling the hearts and souls of men! It was--But the Boy stopped and shook himself free from the "sentimental rot" he was indulging in.
He turned with a question on his lips, but Verdane had noticed nothing and the Boy did not speak.
Still that laugh thrilled and mocked him all the way to Berkeley Square and lured him on and on through the night"s mysterious dreams.
CHAPTER III
In the drawing room of her mansion on Grosvenor Square, Lady Alice Mordaunt was pouring tea, and talking as usual the same trifling commonplaces that had on a previous occasion excited her cousin"s disdain. Opposite her sat her mother, Lady Fletcher, a perfect model of the well-bred English matron, while Opal Ledoux, in the daintiest and fluffiest of summer costumes, was curled up like a kitten in a corner of the window-seat, apparently engrossed in a book, but in reality watching the pa.s.sers-by.
From her childhood up she had lived in a Castle of Dreams, which she had peopled with the sort of men and women that suited her own fanciful romantic ideas, and where she herself was supposed to lie asleep until her ideal knight, the Prince Charming of the story, came across land and sea to storm the Castle and wake her with a kiss.
It was made up of moonbeams and rays of sunshine and rainbow-gleams--this dream--woven by fairy fingers into so fragile a cobweb that it seemed absurd to think it could stand the winds and torrents of Grown-Up Land; but Opal, in spite of her eighteen years, was still awaiting the coming of her ideal knight, though the stage setting of the drama, and her picture of just how the Prince Charming of her dreams was to look, and what he would say, had changed materially with the pa.s.sing of the years.
If sometimes she wove strange lines of tragedy throughout the dreams, out of the threads of shadow that flitted across the sunshine of her life, she did not reject them. She felt they belonged there and did not shrink, even when her young face paled at the curious self-pity the pa.s.sing of the thought invoked.
Hers was a strange mixture, made up of an unusual intermingling of many bloods. Born in New Orleans, of a father who was a direct descendant of the early French settlers of Louisiana, and of a Creole mother, who might have traced her ancestry back to one of the old grandees of Spain, she yet clung with a jealous affection to the land of her birth and called herself defiantly "a thorough-bred American!" Her mother had died in giving her birth, and her father, while she was still too young to remember, had married a fair Englishwoman who had tried hard to be a mother to the strange little creature whose blood leaped and danced within her veins with all the fire and romance of foreign suns. Gay and pleasure-mad as she usually appeared, there was always the shadow of a heartache in her eye, and one felt the possibility of a tragedy in her nature. In fact one felt intuitively sorry--almost afraid--for her lest her daring, adventurous spirit should lead her too close to the precipice along the rocky pathway of life.
She was thinking many strange thoughts as she sat looking out of the window. Her English cousins, related to her only through her stepmother, yet called kin for courtesy"s sake, had given up trying to understand her complexities, as she had likewise given up trying to explain herself. If they were pleased forever to consider her in the light of a conundrum, she thought, why--let them!
After a while the ladies at the tea-table began to chat in more confidential tones. Opal was not too oblivious to her surroundings to notice, nor to grasp the fact that they were discussing her, but that knowledge did not interest her. She was so used to being considered a curiosity that it had ceased to have any special concern for her. She only hoped that they would sometime succeed in understanding her better than she had yet learned to understand herself. It might have interested her, however, had she overheard this particular conversation, for it shed a great light upon certain shades of character she had discovered in herself and often wondered about, but had never had explained to her.
But she did not hear.
"I am greatly concerned about Opal," Lady Alice was saying. "She is the most difficult creature, Mamma--you"ve no idea how peculiar--with the most dangerous, positively _immoral_ ideas. I do wish she were safely married, for then--well, there is really no knowing what might happen to a girl who thinks and talks as she does. I used to think it might be a sort of American pose--put on for startling effect, you know--but I begin to think she actually means it!"
"Yes, she means it," replied Lady Fletcher, lowering her voice discreetly, till it was little more than a whisper. "She has always had just such notions. It gives Amy a great deal of trouble and worry to keep her straight. You know--or perhaps you didn"t know, for we don"t talk of these things often, especially when they are in one"s family--but there is a bad strain in her blood and they are always looking for it to crop out somewhere. Her mother married happily--and escaped the curse--but for several generations back the women of her family have been of peculiar temperament and--they"ve usually gone wrong sometime in their lives. It seems to be in the blood. They can"t help it. Mr. Ledoux told Amy all about it at the time of their marriage, and that is the reason they have tried to keep Opal as secluded as possible from the usual free-and-easy a.s.sociations of American girls, and are so anxious to marry her off wisely."
"And speedily," put in Alice--"the sooner the better!"
"Yes, yes--speedily!"
Lady Fletcher gave an uneasy glance in Opal"s direction before she continued.
"You are too young to have heard the story, Alice, but her grandmother--a black-eyed Spanish lady of high rank--was made quite unpleasantly notorious by her a.s.sociations with a brother of Lady Henrietta Verdayne. He was an unprincipled roue--this Lord Hubert Aldringham--a libertine who openly boasted of the conquests he had made abroad. Being appointed to many foreign posts in the diplomatic service, he was naturally on intimate terms with people of rank and royalty. They say he was very fascinating, with the devil"s own eye, and ten times as devilish a heart--"
"Why, Mamma!"
Alice was shocked.
"I am only repeating what they said, child," apologized the elder woman meekly. "Women will be fools, you know, over a handsome face and a tender voice--some women, I mean--and that"s what Opal has to fight against."
"Poor Opal," murmured Alice, "I did not know!"
"Some even go so far as to say--"
Again Lady Fletcher looked up apprehensively, but Opal was still absorbed in her dreams.
"To say--what, Mother?"
"Well, of course it"s only talk--n.o.body can actually _know,_ I suppose, and I wouldn"t, of course, be quoted as saying anything for the world, dear knows; but they say that it is more than probable that Opal"s mother was ... _Lord Hubert"s own daughter!"_
"Oh, Mother! If it is true--if it _could_ be true--what a fight for her!"
"Yes, and the worst of it is with Opal, she won"t fight. She has been rigidly trained in the principles of virtue and propriety from her very birth, and yet she horrifies every one at times by shocking ideas--that no one knows where she gets, nor, worse yet, where they may lead!"
"But she is good, Mother. She has the n.o.blest ideas of charity and kindness and altruism, of the advancement of all that"s good and true in the world, of the attainment of knowledge, of the beauties and consolation of religion. It"s fine to hear her talk when she"s inspired--not a bit preachy, you know--she"s certainly far enough from that--but more like reading some beautiful poem you can but half understand, or listening to music that makes you wish you were better, whether you take in its full meaning or not."
This was a long speech for Lady Alice. Her mother looked at her in amazement. There certainly must be something out of the ordinary in this peculiar American cousin to wake Alice from her customary languor.
Alice smiled at her mother"s surprise.
"Strange, isn"t it, Mother?" she asked, half ashamed of her unusual enthusiasm. "But it"s true. She"d help some good man to be a power in the world. I feel it so often when she talks. I didn"t know women ever thought such things as she does. I-I-I believe we can trust her, Mother, to steer clear of everything!"
"I hope so, Alice; I am sure I hope so, but--I don"t know. I am afraid it was a mistake to keep her so much alone. It gives her more unreal ideas of life than actual contact with the world would have done."
Opal Ledoux left the window and sauntered down the long drawing-room toward the table where the speakers were sitting.
"What are you talking about?--me?"
The cousins were surprised and showed it by blushing guiltily.
Opal laughed merrily.
"Dreary subject for a dreary day! I hope you found it more interesting than I have!" And she stretched her small figure to its utmost height, which was not a bit above five foot, and shrugged her shoulders lazily.
"What are you reading, Opal?" asked Lady Fletcher, in an effort to change the subject, looking with some interest at the volume that the girl carried.
"Don"t ask me--all twaddle and moonshine! I ought not to waste my valuable time with such trash. There isn"t a real character in the book, not one. When I write a book, and I presume I shall some time, if I live long enough, I shall put people into it who have real flesh and blood in them and who do startling things. But I"ll have to live it all first!"
"Live the startling things, Opal? G.o.d forbid!"
"Surely! Why not?"
And Opal dropped listlessly into a chair, tossed the offending book on a table, and taking a cup of tea from the hand of her cousin, began to sip it with an air of languid indifference, which sat strangely on her youthful, almost childlike figure.