Part 28 (1/2)
They said a great deal, notwithstanding this warning. The house altogether was excited on the subject, and even Mr. Derwent.w.a.ter took part in the speculations. He looked upon the Contessa as one of those inscrutable women of the stage, the Sirens who beguile everybody. She had some design upon Montjoie, he felt, and it was only the youth's impertinence which prevented Mr. Derwent.w.a.ter from interfering. He watched with the natural instinct of his profession and a strong impulse to write to the lad's parents and have him taken away. But Montjoie had no parents. He had attained his majority, and was supposed by the law capable of taking care of himself. What did that woman mean to do with the boy? She had some designs upon him. But there was n.o.body to whom Mr. Derwent.w.a.ter could confide his suspicions, or whom he could ask what the Contessa meant. MTutor had not on the whole a pleasant visit. He was disappointed in that which had been his chief object--his favourite pupil was detached from him, he knew not how--and this other boy, whom, though he did not love him, he could not help feeling a sort of responsibility for, was in danger from a designing woman, a woman out of a French play, _L'Aventuriere_, something of that sort. Mr.
Derwent.w.a.ter felt that he could not drag himself away, the attractions were so strong. He wanted to see the _denouement_; still more he wanted to see Bice. No drama in the world had so powerful an interest. But though it was so impossible to go away, it was not pleasant to stay.
Jock did not want him. Lucy, though she was always sweet and friendly, had a look of haste and over-occupation; her eyes wandered when she talked to him; her mind was occupied with other things. Most of the men of the party were more than indifferent; were disagreeable to him. He thought they were a danger for Jock. And Bice never was visible; that moment on the balcony--those few minutes in the park--the half dozen words which had been so ”suggestive,” he thought, which had woke so many echoes in his mind--these were all he had had of her. Had she intended them to awaken echoes? He asked himself this question a thousand times.
Had she willingly cast this seed of thought into his mind to germinate--to produce--what result? If it was so, then, indeed, all the little annoyances of his stay would be a cheap price to pay. It did not occur to this judicious person, whose influence over his pupils was so great, and who had studied so deeply the mind of youth, that a girl of sixteen was but little likely to be consciously suggestive--to sow, with any intention in her mind, seeds of meaning to develop in his. To do him justice, he was as unconscious of the limits of sixteen in Bice's case as we all are in the case of Juliet. She was of no age. She was the ideal woman capable of comprehensions and intentions as far above anything possible to the genus boy as heaven was above earth. It would have been a profanation, a sacrilege too dreadful to be thought of, to compare that ethereal creature with the other things of her age with which he was so familiar. Of her age! Her age was the age of romance, of love, of poetry, of all ineffable things.
”I say, Countess,” said Montjoie, ”I hope you're not forgetting. This is the night, don't you know. And here we are all ready for dinner and nothing has happened. When is it coming? You are so awfully mysterious; it ain't fair upon a fellow.”
”Is every one in the room?” said the Contessa, with an indulgent smile at the young man's eagerness. They all looked round, for everybody was curious. And all were there--the lady who wrote for the Press, and the lady with the two daughters, the girls in blue; and Sir Tom's parliamentary friends standing up against the mantelpiece, and Mr.
Derwent.w.a.ter by himself, more curious than any one, keeping one eye on Montjoie, as if he would have liked to send him to the pupil-room to do a _poena_; and Jock indifferent, with his back to the door. All the rest were expectant except Jock, who took no notice. The Contessa's special friends were about her chair, rubbing their hands, and ready to back the Forno-Populo for a new sensation. The Contessa looked round, her eye dwelling for a moment upon Lucy, who looked a little fluttered and uncomfortable, and upon Sir Tom, who evidently knew nothing, and was looking on with a smile.
”Now you shall see,” she said, ”why I abdicate,” and made a sign, clapping softly her beautiful hands.
There was a momentary pause. Montjoie, who was standing out in the clear s.p.a.ce in the centre of the room, turned round at the Contessa's call. He turned towards the open door, which was less lighted than the inner room. It was he who saw first what was coming. ”Oh, by Jove!” the young Marquis said.
CHAPTER x.x.xV.
THE DeBUT.
The door was open. The long drawing-room afforded a sort of processional path for the newcomer. Her dress was not white like that of the ordinary _debutante_. It had a yellow golden glow of colour, warm yet soft. She walked not with the confused air of a novice perceiving herself observed, but with a slow and serene gait like a young queen. She was not alarmed by the consciousness that everybody was looking at her. Not to have been looked at would have been more likely to embarra.s.s Bice.
Her beautiful throat and shoulders were uncovered, her hair dressed more elaborately than that of English girls in general. English girls--the two innocents in blue, who were nice girls enough, and stood with their mouths and eyes open in speechless wonder and admiration--seemed of an entirely different species from this dazzling creature. She made a momentary pause on the threshold, while all the beholders held their breath. Montjoie, for one, was struck dumb. His commonplace countenance changed altogether. He looked at her with his face growing longer, his jaw dropping. It was more than a sensation, it was such a climax of excitement and surprise as does not happen above once or twice in a lifetime. The whole company were moved by similar feelings, all except the Contessa, lying back in her chair, and Lucy, who stood rather troubled, moving from one foot to another, clasping and unclasping her hands. Jock, roused by the murmur, turned round with a start, and eyed her too with looks of wild astonishment. She stood for a moment looking at them all--with a smile which was half mischievous, half appealing--on the threshold, as Bice felt it, not only of Lady Randolph's drawing-room, but of the world.
Sir Tom had started at the sight of her as much as any one. He had not been in the secret. He cried out, ”By Jove!” like Montjoie. But he had those instincts which are, perhaps, rather old-fas.h.i.+oned, of protection and service to women. He belonged to the school which thinks a girl should not walk across a room without some man's arm to sustain her, or open a door for herself. He started forward with a little sense of being to blame, and offered her his arm. ”Why didn't you send for me to bring you in if you were late?” he cried, with a tone in which there was some tremor and vexation. The effectiveness of her appearance was terrible to Sir Tom. She looked up at him with a look of pleasure and kindness, and said, ”I was not late,” with a smile. She looked taller, more developed in a single day. But for that little pucker of vexation on Sir Tom's forehead they would have looked like a father and daughter, the father proudly bringing his young princess into the circle of her adorers. Bice swept him towards Lucy, and made a low obeisance to Lady Randolph, and took her hand and kissed it. ”I must come to you first,” she said.
”Well?” said the Contessa, turning round to her retainers with a quick movement. They were all gazing at the _debutante_ so intently that they had no eyes for her. One of them at length replied, with something like solemnity: ”Oh, I understand what you mean, Contessa; anybody but you would have to abdicate.” ”But not you,” said another, who had some kindness in his heart. The Contessa rose up with an air of triumph. ”I do not want to be compelled,” she said, ”I told you. I give up. I will take your arm Mr. St. John, as a private person, having relinquished my claims, and leave milord to the new _regime_.”
This was how it came about, in the slight scuffle caused by the sudden change of programme, that Bice, in all her splendour, found herself going in to the dining-room on Lord Montjoie's arm. Notwithstanding that he had been struck dumb by her beauty, little Montjoie was by no means happy when this wonderful good fortune fell upon him. He would have preferred to gaze at her from the other side of the table: on the whole, he would have been a great deal more at his ease with the Contessa. He would have asked her a hundred questions about this wonderful beauty; but the beauty herself rather frightened the young man. Presently, however, he regained his courage, and as lack of boldness was not his weak point, soon began to lose the sense of awe which had been so strong upon him. She smiled; she was as ready to talk as he was, as the overwhelming impression she had made upon him began to be modified by familiarity. ”I suppose,” he said, when he had reached this point, ”that you arrived to-day?” And then, after a pause, ”You speak English?” he added, in a hesitating tone. She received this question with so merry a laugh that he was quite encouraged.
”Always,” she said, ”since I was a child. Was that why you were afraid of me?”
”Afraid?” he said; and then he looked at her almost with a recurrence of his first fright, till her laugh rea.s.sured him. ”Yes I was frightened,”
Lord Montjoie said; ”you looked so--so--don't you know? I was struck all of a heap. I suppose you came to-day? We were all on the outlook from something the Contessa said. You must be clever to get in without anybody seeing you.”
”I was far more clever than that,” said Bice; ”you don't know how clever I am.”
”I dare say,” said Lord Montjoie, admiringly, ”because you don't want it. That's always the way.”
”I am so clever that I have been here all the time,” said Bice, with another laugh so joyous,--”so jolly,” Montjoie said, that his terrors died away. But his surprise took another development at this extraordinary information.
”By Jove!” he cried, ”you don't mean that, Miss--Mademoiselle--I am so awfully stupid I never heard--that is to say I ain't at all clever at foreign names.”
”Oh, never mind,” cried Bice; ”neither am I. But yours is delightful; it is so easy, Milord. Ought I to say Milord?”
”Oh,” cried Montjoie, a little confused. ”No; I don't think so--people don't as a rule.”
”Lord Montjoie, that is right? I like always to know----”
”So do I,” said Montjoie; ”it's always best to ask, ain't it, and then there can be no mistakes? But you don't mean to say _that_? You here yesterday and all the time? I shouldn't think you could have been hid.
Not the kind of person, don't you know.”