CHAPTER XXI.
"AT GOVERNMENT HOUSE."
It was the last night but one of the Prince's stay, and the Birthnight Ball, long after date, had been fixed for that evening. The occasion was to be one of unusual splendour.
Mrs. Valliant, in her rather shiny black moiré and a feathered cap, had been persuaded to emerge from her retirement and to chaperon Elsie. Not that there had been any difficulty in persuading her. She had always made it a point of duty to attend the "Queen's Birthday" Ball. At the other balls she had allowed Ina and Elsie to be chaperoned by any obliging neighbour, but upon this occasion she felt that loyalty demanded an effort, and moreover it was her only opportunity of witnessing her pretty daughter's triumph. She was a good deal assisted in the effort by Lord Horace's present of a lace shawl, which, as she said, made her look fit to stand even beside Lady Waveryng in all her diamonds. To-night she was in a state of feverish excitement, almost as great as that of Elsie herself, and her delicate face, which had the remains of Elsie's beauty, was flushed like a girl's, as she put the last touches to Elsie's hair and dress. Elsie's dress had been a present, too, from Lord Horace. It was white, and floated about her in fleecy clouds, the little satin bodice moulded to her pretty, slight figure, and great bunches of Cloth of Gold and La France roses at her breast and on her shoulders. There was a bouquet of roses, too, on the table, which she had made herself. Oddly enough Frank Hallett had sent her no bouquet this time. Perhaps he thought she should wear Blake's or Trant's; perhaps he remembered that she had once before discarded his for one that Blake had sent her. But Blake had sent her none now, and Trant had been called suddenly to Baròlin, and was hardly expected to be down in time for the ball, and so Elsie had been obliged to go herself to the curator of the Public Gardens and beg for the roses, which were not as perfect as she would have liked. There were so many more important persons to be provided with flowers.
But while she was dressing, a special messenger arrived with a box. Peter, the Kanaka, brought it to Elsie's room. The messenger had said that he must take back an assurance that Miss Valliant had received it, and so Mrs. Valliant went to the door. The messenger was a suave gentlemanly person—Lord Astar's servant, and he had come from Government House.
The box contained another bouquet, wired as if it were straight from Covent Garden, and tied with pale pink streamers. It was composed entirely of the most exquisite La France and Maréchal Niel roses, and was in a silver holder. At the bottom of the box lay a little packet and a note. When Elsie opened the packet she gave a cry of surprise and delight. The light flashed from a star of pearls and diamonds. It was the temptation of Marguerite, and Elsie, notwithstanding her many Leichardt's Town seasons, her numerous flirtations, and her daring unconventionality, was in truth as innocently ignorant of evil intent to herself in the mind of man as was Marguerite when she opened Mephistopheles' casket. Elsie's lovers had always been chivalrous. The note was only a few lines:—
"If you will honour me by wearing the accompanying little trinket this evening, I shall interpret it as a sign that you accept my love, and that I may hope for the fulfilment of my most ardent wish. Devotedly yours,Astar."
Elsie drew a deep long breath. It was almost like a sigh of pain, but it was not pain or dismay or indignation which brought it forth. To her the note had but one meaning. It had never entered her mind that a man could approach a woman with words of love meaning anything but the one thing, marriage. Of course he wished to marry her. It was very strange, very sudden. That was all. To-night she must make up her mind whether or not she would accept this brilliant destiny, nay, she must decide now, this very moment, since her destiny depended upon the clasping round her neck of the jewel Lord Astar had sent her. Well, there was no great difficulty in deciding. Here was some balm for her poor torn heart and wounded pride. Now, at least she could prove to Blake that she had never loved him. She could show him that if he despised her there were others more highly placed than he who thought her worthy of being lifted to a rank far beyond any that he could offer her. And yet—the stab was agony—she loved him. She had never realized it so keenly as now.
Mrs. Valliant watched her in breathless interest. She, too, had seen the flash of the diamonds, and she had no doubt of what the note contained. She, too, was in her way as innocent as her daughter. She knew nothing of the wickedness of the world or the ways of men like Lord Astar.
"Elsie," she cried, "Oh, tell me, what is it?"
"It is from Lord Astar," replied Elsie dreamily.
"Yes, yes, I know. But show me—how beautiful!" She held the ornament to the light, and then away from her, and gazed at it in an ecstasy of pleasure. "It is magnificent—a present for a queen. Oh, Elsie, and it is settled! And you let Minnie Pryde go on with her chatter, and you never told me—me, your mother, and I have been so anxious! He proposed to you to-day. I knew it was coming. I saw that it was coming. No one could have watched him yesterday without seeing—he couldn't tear himself away, he couldn't keep his eyes from you. "Was it to-day, Elsie, that he proposed?"
"No, he hasn't proposed to me."
"But the letter?" said Mrs. Valliant bewildered. "What does he say? It can only mean that."
"Yes," said Elsie slowly, "I suppose it means that." She gave the note to her mother, who read it eagerly, and then looked at Elsie with an expression of bewildered joy, mixed with a certain vague terror. Then she read the note again aloud, and her expression became one of confident triumph.
"Yes, of course it means that. 'His dearest wish—that you will accept my love.' I think it is beautiful, so delicate, such a romantic way of putting things; and to send this! It's like what one reads in books—oh, Elsie, and he is so rich—Horace was telling me. Of course it's quite natural. Ina married to Horace and the Waveryngs so taken with her. The difference in position wouldn't strike him. Oh, what will the Garfits say now, and Mrs. Jem Hallett, who didn't think you good enough to be her sister-in-law? And now—Lady Astar! Oh, Elsie, it is so wonderful! I can't believe it."
The poor woman ran on in her delight, never for a moment doubting her daughter's good fortune. Elsie said not a word.
At last Mrs. Valliant exclaimed, "Elsie, how strange you are! Aren't you happy? Tell your mother, who is so proud of you."
"Yes, I am happy," Elsie said. "And so, mother, you wish me to wear Lord Astar's star?"
"Why, of course. He will understand, as he says, that you accept. his love."
"Accept his love," repeated Elsie. "And I have none to give him in return. But that doesn't matter, mother?"
"It will come," said Mrs. Valliant. "How can you love him, when you have only seen him about five times? Though it seems to me that it would be hard to help loving anyone so good-looking and fascinating as Lord Astar. I am not afraid of that."
She fastened the star round Elsie's throat, where it gleamed, as Mrs. Valliant said, like an electric light. They tried it in several positions—in her hair and in front of her dress, but decided that it looked best upon her neck.
Elsie was strangely silent. All the way to Government House she was silent too. It was a long drive, round by the South Side and across the bridge. Minnie Pryde and her father were with them, an arrangement by which Mrs. Valliant was spared half the price of the cab. They did not have a jingle this time. That was well enough for a club dance, or a private party, but for the Queen's Birthnight Ball—and the Prince there—and Lord Astar!—No! At the last moment Mrs. Valliant had done violence to her economic soul, and had countermanded the jingle, and had asked the Prydes if they would go halves in a closed landau.
"Oh, Elsie, look!" cried Miss Pryde as they drove in at the great gates.
The grounds had been turned into fairyland. The avenue of young bunyas was like an avenue of overgrown Christmas trees—pyramids of coloured lamps. And all the paths were outlined in coloured lamps, and Japanese lanterns were dotted about the trees and festooned the colonades, and over all the full moon shed a ghostly radiance. Within, it was even more like fairyland still. Canvas rooms had been thrown out—bowers of palm leaves, poinsettia, flowering yucca, and rich calladiums and all the rarest tropical plants. In one place a miniature fern tree gully with stuffed birds perched on the huge fronds as if about to take flight. Murmuring cascades, mossy grottoes, and banks of maidenhair and rock lilies. And further on, a mass of azaleas, and then a camellia tree, and here and there moss-bordered pools with fountains playing and water-lilies floating about. Of course Ina and Lord Horace were with the Waveryngs and the inmost circle of the Government House party. Lady Stukeley in the magnificence of crimson velvet, rose point, and diamonds that paled somewhat in glory beside Lady Waveryng's tiara, that was celebrated, but which were, nevertheless, finer than anything of the kind which the Leichardtstonians had ever seen. It was really an imposing sight, and Elsie wondered whether a Drawing-room could be much grander, the great ladies in their jewels, the Prince and his suite, with their decorations, and the uniforms and gold lace, and cocked hats, and swords that made up a background to the central figures. Everybody who had any sort of right to wear a uniform had put it on to-night, even to Minnie Pryde's father, who had once had some kind of appointment in a volunteer corps, and Mr, Torbolton, the Premier, who looked very uncomfortable, and nearly tumbled over his sword.
When Elsie had got over her entrance greeting, and the little bob to Royalty, to which a course of six days' state pageantry had already accustomed her, she found some amusement in watching the Leichardtstonians as they filed past and performed their obeisances. Frank Hallett came presently, and put his name down for some dances, and found Mrs. Valliant a seat, from which she could see the dancing when it began. He gave a startled look at Elsie's glittering decoration, the girl flushed crimson in contrast to his sudden paleness. It seemed to her that every eye in the room must be fixed on that star. Certainly the eyes of Blake were arrested by it, and he, too, turned a shade paler, and his own eyes gave out a flash as he noticed the ornament and guessed its history.
"I congratulate you, Miss Valliant," he said, very low, in a voice of concentrated fury and bitterness. "Lord Astar has excellent taste in jewellery."
"Lord Astar!" Frank Hallett caught the name, and turned to Elsie with a sudden passionate jealousy. "Come out with me," he said hoarsely, forgetting Blake's presence—forgetting everything but a sudden awful fear that seized him. "I want to say something to you."
"Not now," answered Elsie calmly. "Please forgive me, Mr. Hallett. I forgot when I let you put your name down for the first waltz that I cannot dance it with you."
"You are engaged to me for that waltz," said Blake.
She looked at him. His eyes never flinched from her face, but held hers with a compelling power. Elsie realized what a subject of hypnotism must feel in the presence of a master of that gift. She would have given worlds at that moment to have been able to assert her will and contradict Blake. It was impossible. She was spell-bound. She began to speak and the words died on her lips.
"You are engaged to me," Blake repeated. "In the meantime may I offer you my arm, till," he added as they turned away, "Lord Astar is at liberty to claim his property?"
Still Elsie was spell-bound. They walked on a few steps. At that moment the music began, and the formal reception ended. The first quadrille—a state business—was being formed. The knot of men behind the Prince broke up; the Prince was leading off Lady Stukeley. Lord Astar came hurrying to them. He was flushed and looked excited. There was the light of an evil triumph in his eyes.
"I have been watching you, and watching for you," he said to Elsie. "That abominable bowing and scraping seemed never ending, and of course I was tied. Miss Valliant, I'm tied still, you understand, for this quadrille, and I believe its Mrs. Torbolton—one of the wives of an official dignitary—sounds Mormonish, that speech, doesn't it? I'm on duty, you understand. Once this dance is over I'm free till supper time. I claim the first waltz—the dance after the quadrille."
Elsie looked at Blake. She stammered—"I think, I believe I am engaged."
"No," exclaimed Blake, making a profound and it seemed to Elsie an ironic bow. "I resign my claim. Lord Astar has an evident right."
"You are very good," said Lord Astar, coolly and somewhat superciliously, glancing at Blake. "But you needn't take the merit of the sacrifice, though I am much obliged all the same. Miss Valliant was engaged to me."
"The next waltz, and,"—he whispered to Elsie—"don't let too many fellows put their names down. It's to be mine—this evening; oh, if you knew how beautiful you look"
He hurried off to where Mrs. Torbolton was sitting; poor lady, she would much rather have danced with one of her husband's colleagues. Blake gave his arm again to Elsie; he had turned aside while Lord Astar had been speaking.
"Shall we dance? I will find a place among the lesser fry."
He placed her opposite Minnie Pryde and Mr. Anderson. Minnie's eyebrows went up in astonishment at the sight of Elsie's star. "My goodness!" she exclaimed, "to think of my not noticing it when you took off your cloak in the dressing room! Who is it? Not" and she gave a significant flash in Blake's direction.
Elsie held herself haughtily erect and vouchsafed no sign. Miss Pryde was not to be rebuked. "It's not His Respectability of Tunimba. That I'll swear. I always said he had no chance. Oh, Elsie," and Miss Pryde's voice sank to an awestruck whisper, "it's not, it can't be the Prince."
"How do you know it isn't paste?" whispered Elsie back—as they parted hands. It was in the contact of the ladies' chain that Miss Pryde had jerked out her interrogatories.
"Tell your grandmother," replied Miss Pryde with more pertinency than elegance.
Lord Astar claimed Elsie directly the dance was over. He had found no difficulty in depositing Mrs. Torbolton on a chair, for the good lady was scant of breath, and glad to secure a permanent position till supper time. His dance had not been unprofitable. He had taken advantage of the pauses in the quadrille to lead the conversation to the subject of Elsie. Miss Valliant, he soon discovered, was not a favourite in Leichardt's Town. Mrs. Torbolton thought it was really her duty to warn the young men—he was quite young, and no doubt he had a mother who would be sorry to see him fall a victim to the most designing flirt in Leichardt's Town. Elsie, it may at once be said, had refused Mrs. Torbolton 's son, and the young man had gone to the diggings, and had lost his money and taken to evil ways, a second instance of the fatal effect of Elsie's charms. Mrs. Torbolton hated Elsie, and perhaps it was not unnatural that she should. "Yes, she was certainly very pretty," Mrs. Torbolton grudgingly admitted. But then everybody knew that Elsie painted, and made herself up in a way that was not respectable. And she took presents from gentlemen, and went to lengths that really would astonish Lord Astar if he knew. In proof of it there was the fact that in spite of her undoubted beauty she was not yet married. Mr. Frank Hallett was supposed to be in love with her, but Mrs. Jem herself had declared quite lately that Mr. Hallett was evidently doubtful about tying himself to a girl so talked of—now that he was likely to take a prominent position in politics, and when it is so important that the wife of a public man should be above suspicion—"Caesar's wife, you know," added Mrs. Torbolton—and she had gone on to a highly-coloured relation of some of poor Elsie's escapades, the Jensen episode among them. Lord Astar was not at all ill-pleased at Mrs. Torbolton's confidences. He had often been just a little uneasy on the score of the Horace Gages and the Waveryng connectionship, but clearly it counted for very little. Lady Horace was a harmless little creature, utterly ignorant of the world, and not likely to assert claims of any sort. Lord Horace, as every one knew, was the scapegrace of the family; the half-witted scapegrace, which was a far less dangerous person than the clever black sheep, and but for Lady Waveryng's infatuation for him, and consequently the help that Lord Waveryng gave him, no one would ever trouble their heads about Lord Horace's personal or family dignity; no, that would not matter at all when the Waveryngs left Australia, which would be very shortly. It was unlucky that they should be on the scene just now, but with a little management things could be kept dark. And as for Elsie, the penniless daughter of a defunct scab inspector, and a pretty dressmaker—Lord Astar had informed himself on the subject of Elsie's parentage, and he smiled in amused appreciation of the hereditary instinct which aided her in the concoction of those very tasteful costumes to which she so frankly owned—the girl who "made up" and accepted presents from her admirers; the girl of whom the Leichardt's Town matrons fought shy, and of whom the Leichardt's Town young ladies were jealous; the girl who was a sort of Pariah among her kind, and who loved dress, and luxury, and jewels, and who was devoured with a curiosity about life, about the world, who wanted to travel, who wanted "experience; she did not mind what kind of experience"—so poor Elsie had stated, as long as it was experience; ah, well, was not this the natural and fitting conclusion? And he would give her experience, and of a not very unpleasant kind. The battle would be even; the bargain would be a fair one; after all she deserved her fate. For Lord Astar was quick enough to see that the girl was not in love with him, and that it was only the glamour of rank, wealth, and perhaps a glamour of the senses which had intoxicated her.
There was in his manner a certain familiarity, a certain freedom, when he came to claim her, which jarred on Elsie, and roused in her the first faint feeling of alarm. But this had vanished when he piloted her into the dance, and guided her swiftly, surely, and with a perfection of finish of style and movement which was very delightful to Elsie. She herself was one of Nature's dancers. She loved the exercise, and she danced as few women can who have not made it a profession. When the dance was over, he took her out into one of the canvas conservatories. "I have been all round," he said, "I know the quiet nooks. Here is one you'd never suspect." He pulled back a corner of the canvas, which was flapping loosely under an overhanging branch of palm leaves, and drew her through. They were in a little vine trellis, naked now, and with the moon shining through the interlacing boughs of an old Isabella grave vine, and at the end of the trellis was a small summer house, unlighted, except by one Japanese lantern. He led the girl, half shrinking, half wretched, half glad, to a bench in the summer house. Then he took her two hands, and drew her to him, leaning a little back himself, while he looked at her with bold admiring eyes.
"My own darling! You are so beautiful; and I love you so! If you knew how I watched the door this evening, and how my heart jumped when I saw the flash of those!" He placed a sacrilegious hand upon the girl's warm soft neck.
She shrank a little from his touch.
"You were glad that I wore them?"
"Glad! I told you what it meant—my dearest wish! Darling, you didn't hesitate. You knew what it meant?"
"I asked my mother if I should wear them," said Elsie, simply.
"You asked your mother! By Jove!" Lord Astar stroked his moustache. And then he laughed, and put his arm round Elsie's waist, and would have kissed her, but she eluded the caress.
"What a shy little thing we are! Not one kiss?"
"Not—not yet," she said, still shrinking.
He bent down and kissed her neck, and then her arms, and then her gloved hands, and back again to her dimpled shoulder. She put up her bouquet to shield herself from the rain of kisses. She had kept her lips—but these scorched and hurt her.
"No, let us talk."
"Kissing is better than talking, when one has such a delicious soft thing as you to kiss. Haven't plenty of other men found that out, and told you so?"
"I don't know whether they have found it out. They have not told me so."
"Not, really? Am I the first?" he asked jestingly, incredulously.
"Almost the first. Yes, the first." She made a mental reservation—the first man whom she had freely allowed to kiss her, and whom she intended to marry. Blake had kissed her, but that had been a theft, an outrage.
"You all say that," he said laughing. "But the ladies of Leichardt's Town tell a different tale."
"Ah!" she gave a little wounded exclamation. "Please don't tell me what they said. I know it was something cruel. Tell me"
"Tell you what?"
"Anything that is not too hard for me. Tell me what made you first think of this?"
"If I had a looking glass I'd put it in front of you and ask you to read the answer to that question in your own face. I love my love with an E, because she is—hang it, there's not an adjective for Elsie, except elegant, and that does not express you. I love my love because she is the loveliest woman I've ever seen. Will that do?"
"And you will give up everything for me—only because I am pretty?"
"Give up everything!" he repeated. "Gain everything, you mean."
"It is giving up—when you don't know a girl, and when it's a girl like me, with no connections—or—or anything to speak of, only a little Australian savage, and when even"
"When—what?"
"When she doesn't even love you as much as she ought."
He turned himself to her and looked into her face with a curious surprise. She was looking out into the night, and her expression puzzled and her indifference piqued him into still wilder admiration. He laughed in a strange way. "I think I could make you love me—quite as much as you ought, if you will trust yourself to me."
Now she turned to him seriously. "Very well," she said, "I will trust myself to you. If I had not thought that you would make me love you, and if I hadn't wanted to try, I would not have worn this." She touched the diamonds at her neck.
He threw his arm round her. She knew that he wanted to kiss her, and something in his eyes made her shrink. She got up hastily. "Not now," she said. "I think I should like to go back to the dancing."
"No, no," he pleaded. But she was firm. Nor would she let him kiss even her hand. He thought this was coquetry, and told her he bided his time.