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Beyond the Rocks, A Love Story

<h2>IX</h2> "And what is your pleasure, fair queen?" Hector said, as they listened to the diminishing noise of the widow's Mercédès. "We are alone, and we have the world before us. Issue your commands." "No," said Theodora, and she pouted her red lips. "I want you to settle that. I want you to arrange for whatever you think would give me the greatest pleasure. Then I shall know if you understand me and guess what I would like." This was the most daring speech she had ever made, and she was surprised at her own temerity. "Very well," he said. "That means you belong to me until they return," and a thrill ran through him. "Has not your father, has not your hostess, given you into my charge? And, now you yourself have sealed the compact, we shall see if I can make you happy." As he said the words "you belong to me," Theodora thrilled too—a sensation as of an electric shock almost quivered through her. Belonged to him—ah!—what would that mean? He called his chauffeur, who started the automobile and drove under the covered porte cochère where they stood. Lord Bracondale had not spoken all the time he was helping her in and arranging rugs with the tenderest solicitude, but when they were settled and started—it was a coupé with a great deal of glass about it, so that they got plenty of air—he turned to her. "Now, do you know what I am going to do with you, madame? I shall only unfold my plans bit by bit, and watch your face to see if I have chosen well. I am going to take you first to the Petit Trianon, and we are going to walk leisurely through the rooms. I am not going to worry you with much sight-seeing and tourists and lessons of history, but I want you to glance at this setting of the life picture of poor Marie Antoinette, because it is full of sentiment and it will make you appreciate more the hameau and her playground afterwards. Something tells me you would rather see these things than all the fine pictures and salons of the stiff château." "Oh yes," said Theodora; "you have guessed well this time." "Then here we are, almost arrived," he said, presently. They had been going very fast, and could see the square, white house in front of them, and when they alighted at the gates she found the guardian was an old friend of Lord Bracondale's, and they were left free to wander alone in the rooms between the batches of tourists. But every one knows the Petit Trianon, and can surmise how its beauties appealed to Theodora. "Oh, the poor, poor queen!" she said, with a sad ring in her expressive voice, when they came to the large salon; "and she sat here and played on her harpsichord—and I wonder if she and Fersen were ever alone—and I wonder if she really loved him—" Then she stopped suddenly; she had told herself she must never talk about love to any one. It was a subject that she must have nothing to do with. It could never come her way, now she was married to Josiah Brown, and it would be unwise to discuss it, even in the abstract. The same beautiful, wild-rose tint tinged the white velvet as once before when she had spoken of Jean d'Agrève, and again Lord Bracondale experienced a sensation of satisfaction. But this time he would not let her talk about the weather. The subject of love interested him, too. "Yes, I am sure she did," he said, "and I always shall believe Fersen was her lover; no life, even a queen's, can escape one love." "I suppose not," said Theodora, very low, and she looked out of the window. "Love is not a passion which asks our leave if he may come or no, you see," Hector continued, trying to control his voice to sound dispassionate and discursive—he knew he must not frighten her. "Love comes in a thousand unknown, undreamed-of ways. And then he gilds the world and makes it into heaven." "Does he?" almost whispered Theodora. "And think what it must have been to a queen, married to a tiresome, unattractive Bourbon—and Fersen was young and gallant and thoughtful for her slightest good, and, from what one hears and has read, he must have understood her, and been her friend as well—and sometimes she must have forgotten about being a queen for a few moments—in his arms—" Theodora drew a long, long breath, but she did not speak. "And perhaps, if we knew, the remembrance of those moments may have been her glory and consolation in the last dark hours." "Oh! I hope so!" said Theodora. Then she walked on quickly into the quaint, little, low-ceilinged bedroom. Oh, she must get out into the air—or she must talk of furniture, or curtain stuffs, or where the bath had been! Love, love, love! And did it mean life after all?—since even this far-off love of this poor dead queen had such power to move her. And perhaps Fersen was like—but this last thought caused her heart to beat too wildly. There were no roses now, she was very pale as she said: "It saddens me, this. Let us go out into the sun." They descended the staircase again almost in silence, and on through the little door in the court-yard wall into the beautiful garden beyond. "Show me where she was happy, where you know she was happy before any troubles came. I want to be gay again," said Theodora. So they walked down the path towards the hameau. "What have I done?" Lord Bracondale wondered. "Her adorable face went quite white. Her soul is no longer the open book I have found it. There are depths and depths, but I must fathom them all." "Oh, how I love the spring-time!" exclaimed Theodora, and her voice was full of relief. "Look at those greens, so tender and young, and that peep of the sky! Oh, and those dear, pretty little dolls' houses! Let us hasten; I want to go and play there, and make butter, too! Don't you?" "Ah, this is good," he said; "and I want just what you want." Her face was all sweet and joyous as she turned it to him. "Let's pretend we lived then," she said, "and I am the miller's daughter of this dear little mill, and you are the bailiff's son who lives opposite, and you have come with your corn to be ground. Oh, and I shall make a bargain, and charge you dear!" and she laughed and swung her parasol back, while the sun glorified her hair into burnished silver. "What bargain could you make that I would not agree to willingly?" he asked. "Perhaps some day I shall make one with you—or want to—that you will not like," she said, "and then I shall remind you of this day and your gallant speech." "And I shall say then as I say now. I will make any bargain with you, so long as it is a bargain which benefits us both." "Ah, you are a Normand, you hedge!" she laughed, but he was serious. They walked all around the laiterie, and all the time she was gay and whimsical, and to herself she was saying, "I am unutterably happy, but we must not talk of love." "Now you have had enough of this," Lord Bracondale said, when they were again in view of the house, "and I am going to take you into a forest like the babes in the woods, and we shall go and lose ourselves and forget the world altogether. The very sight of these harmless tourists in the distance jars upon me to-day. I want you alone and no one else. Come." And she went. "I have never been here before," said Theodora, as they turned into the Forest of Marly. "And you have been wise in your choice so far. I love trees." "You see how I study and care for the things which belong to me," said Hector. It gave him ridiculous pleasure to announce that sentence again—ridiculous, unwarrantable pleasure. Theodora turned her head away a little. She would like to have continued the subject, but she did not dare. Presently they came to a side allée, and after going up it about a mile the automobile stopped, and they got out and walked down a green glade to the right. Oh, and I wonder if any of you who read know the Forest of Marly, and this one green glade that leads down to the centre of a star where five avenues meet? It is all soft grass and splendid trees, and may have been a rendezvous de chasse in the good old days, when life—for the great—was fair in France. It is very lonely now, and if you want to spend some hours in peace you can almost count upon solitude there. "Now, is not this beautiful?" he asked her, as they neared the centre, "and soon you will see why I carry this rug over my arm. I am going to take you right to the middle of the star until you see five paths for you to choose from, all green and full of glancing sunlight, and when you have selected one we will penetrate down it and sit under a tree. Is it good—my idea?" "Very good," said Theodora. Then she was silent until they reached the rond-point. There was that wonderful sense of aloofness and silence—hardly even the noise of a bird. Only the green, green trees, and here and there a shaft of sunlight turning them into the shade of a lizard's back. An ideal spot for—poets and dreamers—and lovers—Theodora thought. "Now we are here! Look this way and that! Five paths for us to choose from!" Then something made Theodora say, "Oh, let us stay in the centre, in this one round place, where we can see them all and their possibilities." "And do you think uncertain possibilities are more agreeable perhaps than certain ends?" he asked. "I never speculate," said Theodora. "As you will, then," he said, while he looked into her eyes, and he placed the rug up against a giant tree between two avenues, so that their view really only extended down three others now. "We have turned our backs on the road we came," he said, "and on another road that leads in a roundabout way to the Grande Avenue again. So now we must look into the unknown and the future." "It seems all very green and fair," said Theodora, and she leaned back against the tree and half closed her eyes. He lay on the grass at her feet, his hat thrown off beside him, and in a desert island they could not have been more alone and undisturbed. The greatest temptation that Hector Bracondale had ever yet had in his life came to him then. To make love to her, to tell her of all the new thoughts she had planted in his soul, of the windows she had opened wide to the sunlight. To tell her that he loved her, that he longed to touch even the tips of her fingers, that the thought of caressing her lips and her eyes and her hair drove the blood coursing madly through his veins. That to dream of what life could be like, if she were really his own, was a dream of intoxicating bliss. And something of all this gleamed in his eyes as he gazed up at her—and Theodora, all unused to the turbulence of emotion, was troubled and moved and yet wildly happy. She looked away down the centre avenue, and she began to speak fast with a little catch in her breath, and Hector clinched his hands together and gazed at a beetle in the grass, or otherwise he would have taken her in his arms. "Tell me the story of all these avenues," she said; "tell me a fairy story suitable to the day." And he fell in with her mood. So he began: <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus3.png" width-obs="347" height-obs="545" alt=""Once Upon a Time There Was a Fairy Prince and Princess."" title=""Once Upon a Time There Was a Fairy Prince and Princess."" /> "Once Upon a Time There Was a Fairy Prince and Princess."</div> "Once upon a time there was a fairy prince and princess, and a witch had enchanted them and put them in a green forest, but had set a watch-dog over Love—so that the poor Cupid with his bow and arrows might not shoot at them, and they were told they might live and enjoy the green wood and find what they could of sport and joy. But Cupid laughed. 'As if,' he said, 'there is anything in a green wood of good without me—and my shafts!' So while the watch-dog slept—it was a warm, warm day in May, just such as this—he shot an arrow at the prince and it entered his heart. Then he ran off laughing. 'That is enough for one day,' he said. And the poor prince suffered and suffered because he was wounded and the princess had not received a dart, too—and could not feel for him." "Was she not even sympathetic?" asked Theodora, and again there was that catch in her breath. "Yes, she was sympathetic," he continued, "but this was not enough for the prince; he wanted her to be wounded, too." "How very, very cruel of him," said Theodora. "But men are cruel, and the prince was only a man, you know, although he was in a green forest with a lovely princess." "And what happened?" asked Theodora. "Well, the watch-dog slept on, so that a friendly zephyr could come, and it whispered to the prince: 'At the end of all these allées, which lead into the future, there is only one thing, and that is Love; he bars their gates. As soon as you start down one, no matter which, you will find him, and when he sees your princess he will shoot an arrow at her, too.'" "Oh, then the princess of course never went down an allée," said Theodora—and she smiled radiantly to hide how her heart was beating—"did she?" "The end of the story I do not know," said Lord Bracondale; "the fairy who told it to me would not say what happened to them, only that the prince was wounded, deeply wounded, with Love's arrow. Aren't you sorry for the prince, beautiful princess?" Theodora opened her blue parasol, although no ray of sunshine fell upon her there. She was going through the first moment of this sort in her life. She was quite unaccustomed to fencing, or to any intercourse with men—especially men of his world. She understood this story had himself and herself for hero and heroine; she felt she must continue the badinage—anything to keep the tone as light as it could be, with all these new emotions flooding her being and making her heart beat. It was almost pain she experienced, the sensation was so intense, and Hector read of these things in her eyes and was content. So he let his voice grow softer still, and almost whispered again: "And aren't you sorry for the prince—beautiful princess?" "I am sorry for any one who suffers," said Theodora, gently, "even in a fairy story." And as he looked at her he thought to himself, here was a rare thing, a beautiful woman with a tender heart. He knew she would be gentle and kind to the meanest of God's creatures. And again the vision of her at Bracondale came to him—his mother would grow to love her perhaps even more than Morella Winmarleigh! How she would glorify everything commonplace with those tender ways of hers! To look at her was like looking up into the vast, pure sky, with the light of heaven beyond. And yet he lay on the grass at her feet with his mind full of thoughts and plans and desires to drag this angel down from her high heaven—into his arms! Because he was a man, you see, and the time of his awakening was not yet. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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