Part 10 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+ning 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 friends.h.i.+p.
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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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.”