“We played at Bondsman and at Queen,But as the days change—men change too;I find the grey seas’ notes of green,The green seas’ fervent flakes of blue,More fair than you.”
“We played at Bondsman and at Queen,But as the days change—men change too;I find the grey seas’ notes of green,The green seas’ fervent flakes of blue,More fair than you.”
“We played at Bondsman and at Queen,But as the days change—men change too;I find the grey seas’ notes of green,The green seas’ fervent flakes of blue,More fair than you.”
Allthe amber and purple and gold of the western sky has faded away, and only a faint rose glow lingers. The wind is dead, and soft and fragrant dusk lies like a mantle on the fair world, but the mantle of twilight is edged with the silver lustre of a tender young moon, and a shoal of inquisitive stars begin to peep at each other, when Gabrielle passes quickly upstairs and knocks at a door adjoining her own.
“Come in.”
Zai stands before her cheval-glass—a thing of beauty in a shimmering white silk, pore and virginal, a cluster of blushNoisetteroses nestle in her bosom, and there is a bright flush on her cheek that adds tenfold to her loveliness.
“You have come for Fanchette, Gabrielle, but the bird has flown; only five minutes sooner you would have caught her. Trixy and Baby wanted her, and though I had not quite finished with her, I let her go.”
“Trixy and Baby are the most selfish creatures I know,” Gabrielle answers captiously. “Why cannot they stick to Marie? I am sure they might teach her to dress them, without continually asking for Fanchette.Au diablewith those girls! Please don’t look so shocked, Zai. It is not half as bad as ‘Go to the Devil’ inEnglish, and yet it is quite as relieving to one’s feelings. How on earth am I to get my hair done properly?”
“For the Meredyths’ ‘At Home?’ ”
“Of course. Do you know, Zai, Lady Beranger has asked Sir Everard Aylmer to go with us, and expressly confided him to my tender mercies.”
Zai opens her eyes and laughs.
“You see, Sir Everard has singled me out lately as an object of attention, and has actually talked to me for five consecutive minutes, somewhere about five times during our acquaintance—a frail basis to anchor hope on. Nevertheless, the step-mother, who, in spite of her ultra refinement, is an inveterate match-maker, has hatched a matrimonial project in her prolific brain for my benefit. You know I am like a bad shilling, always on her hands,and she would gladly see the last of me; but there is of course, as you know, another arrangement. She is anxious to kill two birds with one stone.”
“What can you mean, Gabrielle? You have the most marvellous fertility of imagination that I have ever met with. If anyone drops a lash, you discover a reason for the action, and the most trivial word, lightly spoken, possesses a mountain of meaning to your mind. What motive can mamma have, but one?”
“Eh bien!”
“She knows Sir Everard Aylmer is rich and has an old baronetcy, and she wants you to make a good marriage. Sir Everard is quite an ‘eligible’ you know.”
“Lady Beranger’s scheme doesn’t concern Sir Everard or poor little me. We are a couple of noughts in her eyes, and she isnot going to trouble her brain with machinations about us. The head and the tail of the matter is—Lord Delaval!”
“Imustbe a simpleton or else you are too clever by half, Gabrielle. What on earth can you and Sir Everard and Lord Delaval have to do with one another?”
“Zai, you haven’t the tenth part of an inch the sharpness of Baby! the understanding ofthatchild is miraculous. Well, I’ll tell you all that is passing in Lady Beranger’s head. To-night Trixy makes her appearance in public as the future Honourable Mrs. Stubbs! Heavens! what a name! By the way, what a short matter they made of that. Only three days ago she hated the sight of him, and now her destiny isune affaire faite.”
“Well?”
“Then—but you surely see through it all?”
“Not a bit.”
“Youarea simpleton, Zai. Don’t you see that this is a splendid chance for you and Lord Delaval to be together. I shall be bear leader to Sir Everard, so you will have it all your own way.”
“If I thought Lord Delaval was to be my attraction to-night, I would throw over the Meredyths, and go to bed,” Zai says carelessly.
“But why? This is simply a little arrangement by which Lady Beranger hopes to allow poor Lord Delaval to insinuate himself in your good graces, Zai. For you know he admires you awfully, now don’t you?” she asks, with a fierce jealousy making her tone tremulous. “And I am sure if he does,Idon’t wishto be Mademoiselle de Trop,” she adds impatiently.
“Don’t talk nonsense, Gabrielle. Lord Delaval is in love with Baby, if he is in love with anyone but—himself.”
“In love with Baby!” echoes Gabrielle, scornfully. “I am sure he was never in love with her, and that he has a contempt for her fast, flirty ways.”
“Well, if he does not care for Baby, and wants a Beranger, he will have to marry you,” Zai says quietly.
“But it’snecessaryfor you all to marry rich men. Youmust.”
“Why?”
“Because, when your father and mother go over to the majority, you will be paupers.”
“Anyway, I am going to marry Carl,” Zai asserts positively. “And I would notgo to the Meredyths’ this evening, only he is staying at Elm Lodge.”
Gabrielle bursts out laughing.
“Good gracious, what afiascoit is! Lady Beranger will murder him, I believe. You won’t be allowed to speak to him.”
“Nobody could prevent——”
Zai pauses, for at this moment Fanchette trips into the room.
Gabrielle greets her effusively.
“Dieu merci, Fanchette! Now I may hope to get my hair done. Zai, don’t wait for me to go down. Have Miss Trixy and Miss Mirabelle gone down yet, Fanchette?”
“Just this moment, mademoiselle.”
“And how do they look?”
“Miss Trixy isravissante. She was verydifficile, nothing would please her. I tried coiffureà la Ninon, or ringletsà la Cascade, or the simple plaits English mees likes.”
“And which has she gone down as—Ninon or the Cascade?” Gabrielle asks with a smile.
“Not one or the other, mademoiselle. She would have her head done with the weeds of the waves, and alsodes petites bêtes, I don’t know what you call them, fastened into it like asyrène.
“Ah, oui!I understand. She is a mermaid to-night, with sea-weeds and shell-fish. I can well imagine Mademoiselle Trixydifficile; being an angel to men and an angel to one’sfemme-de-chambreare two different things. Fanchette, make me very beautiful to-night.”
“Mais, oui!Mademoiselle has the grand capability to be so.” And in a few moments her skilful fingers have gathered up Gabrielle’s lustrous tresses into a sort of crown, which becomes her well.
“How nice I should look in the Delaval coronet,” Gabrielle thinks, as she admires herself in the glass, with a truthfulness befitting a better cause.
Meanwhile Zai has descended the staircase, and, as she reaches the great square hall, Lord Beranger enters the house.
“Good evening, papa,” she says, lovingly twining her arm into his, “I was afraid I was late, but it seems it must be early, as you have only just come in.”
“Good evening, my pet,” says papa to this, his favourite daughter. “You are quite right in thinking it is late, but we have been taking our post-prandial cigar and coffee under the stars. Might I ask what you are so radiant for? Is there a big party on to-night?”
“The Meredyths’ ‘At Home,’ you know. Is it possible you have forgotten that Trixyis to make herdébûtto-night as an engaged young person?”
“Ugh!” Lord Beranger mutters to himself, half aloud. “Poor Trixy!” Then he remembers his wife’s admonition, and goes on blandly: “Stubbs isn’t a bad sort, Zai; a little too much flesh, and a little, too little, breeding; but we can’t have everything, child, and money makes the mare to go.”
“I hate money,” Zai answers in a low voice. “I would not marry Mr. Stubbs if he were ten times richer.”
“Tut, tut, my pet. You must get romantic notions out of your head—romance doesn’t pay now-a-days. Good hard cash down, that’s the thing, and when you have nailed that, it’s time enough to indulge in other fancies.”
“Papa, how wicked you are. That’s one of Mamma’s sentiments. I don’t liketo hear you say anything that is not right.”
“Don’t you? well, I won’t. Kiss me, little one, as a proof of forgiveness.”
Zai goes on tiptoe, and putting her arms round his neck, kisses him heartily, forgetful of the detriment to her bouquet ofNoisetteroses.
“Yes, Zai. It really quite escaped me that to-night Trixy makes herentréeinto Society as an affianced one. Poor Trixy! And yet she is no object for pity, since Stubbs can supply her with all the gew-gaws she loves. Trixy always puts me in mind of that infant-mind that is pleased with a rattle—tickled with a straw. There is a charming youthfulness in her tastes, and a curious indifference in the manner by which she can satisfy them, that always puzzles me. There were never two naturesso dissimilar as yours and hers. One could hardly believe you were children of the same parents. Trixy is so indolent and content, and you are just the reverse, my pet,” he goes on with a smile. “I suppose Delaval is back—he left us after luncheon at Kingsfold, saying he had something to do at Southampton—gloves to get, or something. And I am not surprised at his wanting to get back here, where he has such attractive metal, hasn’t he, Zai?”
“Idon’t know anything about it, papa; nor do I wish to,” Zai flashes rather impetuously. “I see nothing interesting in Lord Delaval.”
“Don’t you?” Lord Beranger says rather curtly. “Delaval seems to have faults in your eyes that no other woman appears to discover. Why, do you know, Zai, there is no man admired or run afterby the fair sex—from the Upper Ten downwards—as Lord Delaval?”
“Possibly,” is Zai’s reply. And she bites her lips to keep from saying more, and walks with her father into a small room in which coffee is going on, amidst lights and flowers and baskets of fruit.
Up at the far end Lady Beranger, and her son-in-law elect, Mr. Stubbs, are sitting. The millionaire has only just arrived, and, while he imbibes the scalding Mocha, out of egg-shell china, he looks anxiously at his pair of new primrose gloves, one of which has burst down the back, and at his lady-love, who sits some distance off.
As a matter of bodily comfort, Trixy would infinitely prefer her usual downy nest among the sky-blue cushions, but whatever may be her shortcomings inother respects, she always knows better than to allow her toilette and her surroundings tojurerat each other, as the French say.
An instinct, the artistic instinct, that seems to be born with some women, to whom art itself is quite a dead letter, serves to guide this daughter of Belgravia aright, and being cast for Sabrina to-night, in sea-green silk and misty lace, and coral and seaweed, and all the other concomitants that Gabrielle had yclept shell-fish—and Fanchetteles petites bêtes—she keeps clear of blue back-ground. Effect is a grand thing in her estimation, and it is the apparent study of her existence to attain it.
She converses languidly with Mr. Hamilton, never casting a glance at her “future,” whose red face grows redder and redder, as he remarks her indifference.
Within the embrasure of the big bay window that gives on to the lawn, lolls Baby.
She is sweet to-night, clouds of snowy tulle float round her lovely little figure, and she wears no ornament but one magnificent poinsettia that droops over her left shoulder. Her golden hair, her great innocent blue eyes, her exquisite flower of a mouth, are all bewitching in their way, and so a man seems to think, who lounges carelessly over the back of her chair, partially concealed by the velvet hangings, but who raises his face when Lord Beranger and Zai enter, disclosing the features of Lord Delaval.
Lord Delaval is—as Gabrielle has said—superbly handsome. He is tall and his figure is slender, almost to fragility, though not without certain signs of muscularstrength, that a pugilist’s eye would recognise at once.
There is quite an elegance about his figure, aje ne sais quoiof thoroughbred style that renders Eric, Lord Delaval, a marked man in any assemblage, and his undeniably picturesque face does him right good service as an excellent passport wherever he goes.
A very handsome face it is, and a fatally fascinating one for those women to whom it appeals, with its Saxon beauty of fair, almost colourless, skin, faultless features, hair almost tawny in hue, straight eyebrows, cleanly pencilled, and deep blue eyes of eminent softness, and yet a softness that no one would mistake for gentleness. In spite of his fairness, no one could call him effeminate—on the contrary, men looking at him feel at once that he is notto be trifled with, and that his keen, fearless, determined physiognomy, indicates a nature ready to meet any emergency, and not likely to quail before any obstacle.
Not always, nor altogether, a pleasant face, by any means, but one with an attractive force about it that it is impossible to deny, and sometimes very difficult to resist.
This is the man that Baby had once cared for in her wilful, childish way, and with whom she still loves to coquet, and this is the man that Gabrielle Beranger worships with all the fire and energy of her fierce, unsatisfied nature, while he only thinks of himself and his own interests. To him, women are but instruments to reach a wished-for goal, or toys to amuse and be broken—foolish fluttering butterflies on whom he looks with a good deal of contempt,and whom he carelessly crushes in his grasp.
Clever and self-sufficient, feminine brains are beneath his notice, feminine minds unworthy of deciphering.
So many beautiful women have laid the treasures of their heart at his feet that he has learnt to look on a “woman’s heart” as easy of access, and not especially valuable in possession; still, Lord Delaval likes to win them in a quiet, subtle way, if it is only for the feline gratification of playing with and torturing them by turns, till he is sick of them and throws them aside.
He is only a type of most of his sex, after all, especially the portion of his sex who wear the purple, feed on clover, and grow enervated in luxury.
He and Miss Mirabelle (who looks to-night too old for her appellation of Baby)make a pretty, lover-like tableau enough, as they sit close together in the embrasure of the window, ensconced in half shade, with the soft night, full of mystic stars, and the silent, fragrant flowers in the background.
Yet Lord Delaval’s face, when he raises it from whispering in Baby’s ear, wears anything but a lover-like expression. Stolid indifference is in his handsome eyes, and a cynical smile on his lips, but the moment Zai enters, he grows more animated, and rising, walks towards her.
“Don’t you think we shall be very late, Miss Zai? It is not a large affair, I hear, and we shall be disturbing Miss Crystal Meredyth in the middle of ‘Tais toi mon cœur!’ ”
Zai winces slightly at Crystal’s name, but recovers herself at once.
“May I not be allowed a cup of tea?” she asks, looking up at him with her big, grey eyes, in which he thinks there is something of the gleaming yet transparent lustre that water shows under a starlit sky. For a moment these eyes catch his fancy, and influence his imagination, but only for a moment.
Lord Delaval at heart is a rock, and a rock that no woman’s hand has as yet succeeded in making a cleft in.
“Yes, there’s time enough for that, and indeed, I will keep you company. Tea is a blessing to the race of mankind—and womankind, too,” he goes on languidly, as he sips. “But tea is a paradox; it calms one’s turbulent feelings, and yet it is a mighty stimulant and keeps one awake—and it is for this last of its properties that I indulge in it to-night.”
“To keep you awake!” cries Zai, eyeinghim rather contemptuously, as she listens to what she considers his soulless remarks. “Are you likely to fall asleep among the music and singing and chatter then, or are you so wrapped up in your noble self, that no one or nothing can interest you?”
He wanted to provoke her to speak to him, and he has succeeded. Her contempt does not touch him a bit, in fact, it makes her morepiquante, and gives a spice to society “twaddle.” There is an utter coldness in her towards him that frets hisamour propre; it is so different to other women; and he longs intensely to subdue her, as he has subdued scores of girls whom he has desired to subjugate and make mere puppets in his hand.
He draws his chair nearer to hers, and settles himself as if he has forgotten theflight of time and the disturbance of Crystal Meredyth’s favourite French ditty, and makes up his mind to try and draw Zai’s young heart into his net with the skill of an experienced fowler.
Just at this moment, Mr. Stubbs finishes his cup of coffee at a gulp, and rising up in a perfect steam, betakes himself and his primrose-coloured kids to the lovely Sabrina opposite.
“A man or a porpoise—which?” whispers Lord Delaval with a mocking smile, as he watches the millionaire’s progress across the room.
“At any rate, if he is a porpoise, we have an opportunity of studying a little zoology, and finding out that porpoises are by no means laggards in love,” laughs Zai. “Look how eagerly he goes, though there is nothing very encouraging in Trixy’s face.She forgets to beam on him as she does on other men!”
“And who can blame her? Don’t you think it must require a vast deal of gold to gild that creature’s bulky form, and a vast deal of avarice and interestedness in a woman to take him for better—for worse?” Lord Delaval asks, with a sneer.
“I should think you must be almost tired of sneering at everyone, Lord Delaval, or is it a chronic habit of yours?” Zai questions carelessly. “You see, if some men have the misfortune to lack beauty and refinement, there may be some as handsome and polished as yourself.”
“Are there many of the same nonpareils, Miss Zai, or do you think there is only—one?” he answers, with a lame attempt at jesting, but the most obtuse can see he is nettled.
“There may be many for aught I know. That there isone, Idoknow,” she returns quickly.
“Granting even so—pray does one swallow make a summer?”
“Not exactly, but you have a hateful habit of running people down, Lord Delaval, a habit that to my mind is not to be admired.”
“I know what you mean,” he answers flushing a little. “Just because I happened to say, during our last valse at your ball the other night, that a man, because he chooses to lower himself, cannot lift his newconfrèresto the grade which he has forfeited, but remains lost himself, to his family, and to Society. I could say a deal more on this subject.”
“Please don’t edify me with it,” cries Zai impatiently, “I do not care to hear anydissertations on it. You never lose an opportunity to sneer at Mr. Conway, and Mr. Conway’s profession, and it is hopeless to rebuke you for it, or even to notice your remarks.”
“Zai, I think you are giving your unruly member too much licence. Lord Delaval must be horrified at such unconventional talk,” Lady Beranger breaks in angrily from behind.
“Oh let little Zai prattle,” Paterfamilias says indulgently. “Delaval must be sick of conventional talk, and her unworldly wisdom must be quite refreshing. Besides, animation becomes her style of beauty.”
“I am sorry if I treated Lord Delaval to a lecture, mamma, it is a great waste of breath I know,” Zai replies wilfully, ignoring her mother’s warning glance,“but he seems to find no subject so interesting as abuse of Mr. Conway.”
“To the best of my knowledge, I did not mention his name even,” Lord Delaval says in a martyr-like tone, “but you always treat me cruelly, Miss Zai. I confess I do not care about actors being dragged into Society as they are. They ought to be kept in their places.”
“There are actors, andactors, I suppose,” Zai says flushing deeply, “and I don’t see that a gentleman is the least bit not a gentleman, no matter what profession he follows.”
“Then you would call a chimney-sweep a gentleman, Zai, if he happened to have beenbornone,” Lady Beranger asks in a suave voice.
“There is some difference between the calling of a sweep and an actor, mamma.You may all differ with me in my opinion on this subject, but I cannot help holding to my notions, and speaking them out truthfully.”
“Truth is not always to be told, my pet. Whatever the ancients thought on the subject of unerring veracity, it is an exploded error!Nous avons changé tout cela!” Lord Beranger ordains with the air of a modern Lycurgus.
“I shall never consider it an error to speak plain unvarnished truth, papa,” Zai says fearlessly.
“One would think you had been born in Arcadia, and not in Belgravia,” Lady Beranger remarks angrily. “I only hope that Lord Delaval may feel more indulgent towards suchbizarresentiments than I do.”
“Of course Delaval will be indulgent. Did you ever know any young fellow whowas not indulgent to a pretty girl’s fads and follies? There are men, andmen, as Zai says. You are a peer, Delaval, and Conway is an actor. I have remarked that the feminine element, now-a-days, inclines to a weakness for the stage. Thespian votaries, what with their shows, and their glitter, their stereotyped smiles, their parrot love-making, have a subtle charm,” Lord Beranger suggests, more for an emollient for Lord Delaval’s evidently wounded vanity than for any genuine faith in his own words.
“I think the difference in our callings is not the only distinction that Miss Zai makes between myself and Carlton Conway,” Lord Delaval says with a meaning glance that brings a scarlet flush to the girl’s face, and makes her lower her long curling lashes over her tell-tale eyes.
Then he leans his handsome head against the tall backed chair he occupies, and watches the flicker of the lovely colour, and the lashes, through his half-closed eyes, with a glance she could not help tofeel, although she studiously avoids meeting it.
Lord Beranger moves away a few paces, and his better-half follows him, then Lord Delaval bends forward again till his breath sweeps Zai’s cheek, and he asks in a low concentrated voice that is inaudible to others:
“There is another distinction between Carlton Conway and myself, is there not?”
“Yes!” she answers frankly, for she glories in her love and her lover. “There is a distinction between you, and you know what it is.”
“I do not know why you should think so well of him, and evidently so ill of me.”
“Don’t you? then I will tell you. I believe Mr. Conway to be as open as the day, to have no narrowness in his heart, no pettiness in his soul. He could no more shackle himself with the opinion of “society” than he could stoop to do a mean thing. In fact I know he has such a true gentleman-like nature, that if he were reduced to a blacksmith’s calling he would be a gentleman in the estimation of all those whose judgment is worth having.”
She says it all hastily, impetuously, taking up the cudgels for the man she adores with all her heart, a sweet pink flush on her face, fervour shining out of her grey eyes. Lord Delaval stares at herhard, with a sudden hot red spot on his usually pale cheek, and with a kindling glance, but his voice is languid and cold enough.
“Let us have the reverse picture,” he whispers in a mocking voice.
“No occasion, it is not an interesting topic,” she answers carelessly.
“Of course it is not! You have made me understand, perhaps too often, the opinion you have ofme, the atrocious number of faults you endow me with. I should be a thousand times blacker than the traditional blackness of the Devil, if I were all you think,” he says rather bitterly.
His tone vexes her, and the colour deepens while her eyes glow, and just at this moment Gabrielle enters, and takes in the whole situation. As she crosses thelong room towards them, Lord Delaval puts his head down low, and almost hisses out his words.
“You make mehateConway. I see he is the bar to every hope I have in life.”
Then he walks away, and in another moment is whispering into Baby’s ear while she laughs and coquets to her heart’s content.
“You should always talk to Lord Delaval if you wish to look well, Zai,” Gabrielle says angrily. “It is wonderful the colour he has evoked on your cheeks, and the light in your eyes.”
“Though matches are all made in Heaven, they say,Yet Hymen, who mischief oft hatches,Sometimes deals with the house t’other side of the way,And there they make lucifer matches.”
“Though matches are all made in Heaven, they say,Yet Hymen, who mischief oft hatches,Sometimes deals with the house t’other side of the way,And there they make lucifer matches.”
“Though matches are all made in Heaven, they say,Yet Hymen, who mischief oft hatches,Sometimes deals with the house t’other side of the way,And there they make lucifer matches.”
“I sawConway riding with Crystal Meredyth this afternoon, looking awfully spooney.” This is what Zai overhears Sir Everard Aylmer say in his inane drawl to Gabrielle, in the carriage, on the way to Elm Lodge.
A lump of ice seems to settle down on her heart, and two small, very cold, hands clasp one another under her white cloak; but she is a daughter of Belgravia, and to a certain extent true to her colours; sowhen she walks into Mrs. Meredyth’s not over-spacious, but unpleasantly crowded room, her face shows no emotion, and the only effect of Everard Aylmer’s words, is a lovely pink flush, that makes Carlton Conway’s affianced wife tenfold more attractive.
And it is fortunate that, young as she is, her breeding has taught her self-control; for the first thing her grey eyes fall on is her lover and Crystal Meredyth floating round the room, and very much enjoying their valse, to all appearances.
So Zai turns away from that which is dearest to her in the world, and turns towards Lord Delaval, who, either by chance or on purpose, stands at her side.
As Zai looks up in the peer’s face, she acknowledges, for the first time, that he is certainly a handsome man. And, indeed,there cannot be two opinions on this score. He is as handsome as the Apollo Belvedere—a fact of which he is quite as well aware as his neighbours.
Tall and slim, his hair a fair golden, his eyes ultramarine to their deepest depths, his features perfect, his mouth carved like a cameo, and almost as hard. Yet, however vain he may be, there is nothing really offensive in his vanity, nothing of that arrogant self-conceit, that overpowering self-complacency, that makes puppyism a mild epithet to apply to some men.
Lord Delaval is spoilt, of course—anenfant gâtéof the fair sex, and prone to that general masculine failing of fancying himself perfectly irresistible; but on the whole, women adore him, and men pronounce him “not a bad sort.”
At the present moment he suffers fromembarras des richesses; for he knows that Gabrielle and Baby are both delightfully disposed towards him and—wonder of wonders—Zai seems to have suddenly awakened to a proper appreciation of him as well.
But he is quite equal to any emergency of this kind. In his heart he admires Zai more than any of the Beranger family, and—he detests Carlton Conway.
“Shall we have a turn?” he asks.
She assents at once as she meets the ultramarine smiling eyes. And they too float round and round the room. They both waltz splendidly, and when Carl pauses a moment to give his partner breathing time, his eye falls at once on them, and in the same moment, someone remarks near him:
“What a handsome couple Delaval and Zai Beranger make.”
Before, however, he has time to recover his anger and jealousy, Zai and her escort have disappeared out on the lawn.
Ever since she could toddle Zai has held her own. No one in the world is better able to paddle her own canoe than this beautiful little daughter of Belgravia, and from sheer feelings of pique, she is positively satisfied with the companion on whose arm she wanders through the flowery walks of Elm Lodge. There are plenty of other couples doing the same thing, so there is nothing against the convenances. And Zai knows that her mother is at this moment revelling in dreams of Lord Delaval for a son-in-law.
“Let her revel if she likes,” Zai says toherself. “I shall marry Carl all the same.”
And even while she soliloquises thus, she teems with coquetry; but it is a coquettishness that is perfectly subordinate to good taste, and her instincts are all those which come from gentle breeding.
There is in her none of the making of what we call a fast young lady. When time has fully opened the flower, it will be of a higher order than any of those gaudy blossoms. Only nineteen, she shows a grace and subtlety, and asavoir fairethat astonishes Lord Delaval, and then, though beauty is only skin deep, Zai is so very beautiful. After all, this must be set down as her chief attraction.
There is a bewildering charm about her little face that words cannot describe—a deliciousness about her soft colouring, andher great, grey eyes are brimful of a liquid provoking light, as they look up at her cavalier and tell him, in mute but powerful language, that he finds favour in their sight, although it must be confessed it is for “this night only.” Her cheeks are still flushed, and smiles play on her pretty mouth, and, like all women, this bit of a girl is surely a born actress, for the man of the world, wary as he deems himself, and skilled in all the wiles of the sex, really believes that he has done her injustice in crediting her with agrande passionfor “that actor fellow,” and is satisfied that, like Julius Cæsar, he has conquered.
Presently the flowery paths are deserted as the sweet strains of “Dreamland” fall on them. Zai shivers a little as she remembers that to these she valsed last with Carl—Carl, who is so monopolised with Crystal Meredyth that he has evidently forgotten the existence of any other woman.
Pique and jealousy drive her to lingering on in these dim-lit grounds. Pique and jealousy make her little hand cling closer to Lord Delaval’s arm, and her manner and voice softer to him; but the convenances must be considered. She is too much Belgravian to forget them. So she says:
“Had we not better think of going back to the ball-room?”
“Why should we?” Lord Delaval murmurs softly.
Enchanted with his companion, he has no inclination to return to the beauties of whom he is sick and tired.
“I am sure the lawn is delicious;but if you wish to go in, of course, let us go.”
“No, I do not exactly wish to go in,” she answers hesitatingly. Just this particular night she does not desire to vex him. She wants, in fact, toafficherherself with him, only to show Carlton Conway that other men appreciate her fully, if he doesn’t. “But we have been out for some time. You see we are left sole monarchs of all we survey, and mamma may entertain a faint sensation of wonder as to what has become of me.”
He smiles under cover of his blond moustache; he knows Lady Beranger is perfectly aware with whom her daughter is “doing the illuminated lawns,” and that, as he happens to be an eligible, she does not trouble further.
“Let her wonder,” he answers languidly.“It is very good for her, don’t you know? Wondering developes the—the speculative faculties. Don’t go in just yet. It is so seldom I get a chance of talking to you quietly. There are always such a lot of bothering people about!”
“Do you mean Gabrielle or Baby?” she says with a laugh, though her heart is aching dreadfully, and even as she talks, she can in her mind’s eye see her Carl looking into Crystal Meredyth’s china blue eyes, as if those eyes were the stars of his existence.
“I mean—Conway—tell me, do you really care for him as—as much as you have made me think you do?”
A flutter of leaves in a neighbouring shrubbery makes her look round.
There, against the dense dark foliage, stands out in relief like a billow of the sea,the pale green diaphanous garments which Crystal Meredyth wears to-night, and close beside her a tall figure, that Zai knows too well.
Her heart beats fast and a blinding mist seems to rise before her vision, but she has not been tutored by Lady Beranger in vain.
“Have you yet to learn, Lord Delaval, that women do not exactly wear their hearts on their sleeves for daws to peck at?” she says with a low musical laugh, “or do you think Mr. Conway so irresistible that no one can resist him?”
As she almost whispers this, her conscience is troubled with a compunctious throb, her glance seeks the tiny, almost invisible, chain to which the locket containing Carl’s picture is attached, and out of the cloistered greenness and dimnessCarl Conway’s handsome face seems to look at her reproachfully for denying her love for him.
“Soglad to hear you speak like this!” Lord Delaval murmurs quite tenderly, and he slightly presses against him the little hand lying so snow-white on his arm, “especially as a little bird has told me something.”
“What has it told you?” Zai asks carelessly, while her eyes follow the two figures of her evidently inconstant lover and his companion, with a pathos and wistfulness in their depths that the dusk luckily hides from Lord Delaval.
“It told me that Conway is going to marry Miss Meredyth.”
For half an instant Zai forgets her Belgravian training. Under the Chinese lanterns her cheeks grow white as death,and there is an unmistakable tremor in her voice as she says:
“Are they engaged? But it is not possible!” she adds more slowly.
“Why isn’t it possible?” asks Lord Delaval, rousing out of languor into a suspicious condition. “Is it because he has been trying to make you believe that Miss Meredyth’s bank stock and horses and diamonds are of no importance in his opinion?”
“Miss Meredyth’s money,” Zai says in a low voice. “I—I did not know she was very rich!” Then she cries impetuously:
“How contemptible it is for a man to be mercenary.”
“Some men cannot help being so,” he replies quietly. “For instance, what can fellows like Conway, who have no substantial means at all, do?”
“Do? Why—
‘To go and hang yourselves, for being yourselves.’ ”
‘To go and hang yourselves, for being yourselves.’ ”
‘To go and hang yourselves, for being yourselves.’ ”
quoths Zai flippantly, as she moves towards the house.
Suddenly she pauses, shecannotgo in just now into the crowded ball-room and look with calmness on her faithless—faithless lover.
Ah! how unutterably wretched she is. She feels as if life were over for her, now that Carl is going to marry Miss Meredyth.
“I have got such a headache,” she says wearily (she might say heartache), “and if I go into that suffocating room, it will be worse. Then to-morrow I shall make my appearance at breakfast with great haggard eyes, red-rimmed and underlined with bistre shades, and a horrid white facethat will draw downsucha scolding from mamma and Trixy!Youknow well enough all I shall have to endure.”
The trivial bond of sympathy which her stress on the “you” seems to indicate sounds strangely pleasant to his ears, but he preserves a silence, though he gazes at her fixedly.
For, under the flickering light, Zai is truly a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.
“Lord Delaval,willyou do me a very great favour?” she pleads prettily, glancing up at him.
“Of course!” he answers rather dreamily. He is a Society man, a scoffer at sentiment, an Atheist in love, but this little girl’s ways and proximity exercise a curious influence over him. They are in fact something like the opium trance, of which De Quinceygives so wonderful a description in the “Suspiria.”
He is conscious of an intense longing that the favour she asks will be to kiss her! He feels at this moment that he would willingly give up everything in the world, his successes of the past, his hopes for the future, his schemes in the present, just for the sake of touching this soft scarlet mouth once,
“To waste his whole soul in one kissUpon these perfect lips,”
“To waste his whole soul in one kissUpon these perfect lips,”
“To waste his whole soul in one kissUpon these perfect lips,”
in fact, but there is an inexplicable sensation of reverence for her that no other woman has ever raised in his breast.
And there is a purity in the face shewing up in the semi-light, that fills him,blaséas he is—satiated as he is, with a wonderment that no woman’s face has ever created in him before.
“I want to go right round the garden.”
The request is so simple, so childish, that it brings him down at once from the height to which imagination has raised him to practical every-day existence, and he laughs aloud at his own sentimental folly.
“But what will they say to our escapade? The garden is a large one, and it is close upon twelve o’clock now. You know how strict Lady Beranger’s notions are regarding thebienséances, and that such a nocturnal excursion will be in her eyes, flagrant. Unless indeed,” and he lowers his voice to the most harmonious key, “you were with a man you were engaged to!”
She does not seem to hear, or else she does not heed, the concluding words of his sentence, a deafness and indifference on her part that rails him considerably.
“If I were Gabrielle, I should answer,au diablewith anyone who wants to coerce me, especially when what I wish to do is innocent enough. As it is, those dreadful bogies of my life,convenancesandbienséances, must be infringed, the flagrancy of a nocturnal escapade braved, for Iwillgo round the garden, and you, Lord Delaval, you will surely be kind enough to stay here quietly under these lovely trees, until I come. Don’t let any one see you, for Heaven’s sake, that is, not mamma, or she will be suspecting I am flown, goodness knows where! I won’t tax your patience for more than ten minutes I promise.”
So after all she has not proposed a longer promenade for the sake ofhissociety, he thinks angrily. It is simply girlish nonsense that she wishes to indulge in, or—perhaps she wants to have a quiet cry over Carl Conway’s engagement to Crystal Meredyth.This suspicion ices his tone, and alters his manner strangely.
“I cannot possibly let you go by yourself, but if youwillgo, I will go with you!”
“No! No! Do let me go by myself. What I want so much is to be alone with night, with the silence—with myself,” she answers hastily, then she adds quietly:
“You see I havesucha headache, Lord Delaval.”
“I cannot let you go alone,” he replies, rather haughtily, dreadfully irritated at her evident reluctance to his company, when he fain would give ten years of his life to be able to catch the slight figure in his arms, and to rain down as many caresses as are his bent on her sweet face, and withal he yearns for the power of making her fold her lovely butterfly wings, to settle down athis feet, possibly to be spurned when sick of her.
“If I let you venture out of my sight at such an hour, what account should I be able to render to Lady Beranger? So you see I must accompany you.”
“Then I will go into the house at once,” she flashes.
“The most sensible thing for you to do,” he says, coldly, and his tone vexes her immensely, for she does not of course know that he is only too willing to stay here, in these quiet, deserted grounds, with myriads of stars overhead, and the great elms casting down cool shadows on them, while he can gaze his fill on what seems to him to-night the rarest loveliness he has looked on in his thirty years.
But Zai, though she fumes inwardly, thinks discretion is the better part of valourand says nothing. In truth, all she longs for is a few moments’ quiet, during which she can nerve herself to pass Carl Conway calmly, now that she has found out his duplicity.
And she would have staked her existence on his honour and fidelity!
Turning suddenly, she wanders down the first path and on and on, communing with her own heart, fighting with the love which is greater and stronger than herself, utterly forgetful that a tall, stately form stalks by her side in dignified silence.
Then, when more than ten minutes have elapsed, Lord Delaval’s voice rouses her into consciousness of her whereabouts and her supreme folly.
“Well!” he says, “do you think we have had enough of this garden? The dew isfalling fast, and I am unsentimental enough to be liable to rheumatism.”
Zai stops short and faces him.
“I beg your pardon, Lord Delaval. I—I really forgot you were with me. Let us go back at once, of course.”
She has braced up her courage to meet the grand ordeal—the ordeal which she believes will lay her young life in ashes.
It is to look Carl Conway in the face, like Tennyson’s Lady Clara Vere de Vere, to slay her unfaithful lover with a glance.
Thinking of this, she hurries on, oblivious again of Lord Delaval’s proximity, until they reach the house.
Just as they are on the point of entering, a hand pushes back the lace curtains of the long French casement that gives out on this portion of the lawn, and lies diagonally, as it were, with the path leading up to theentrance, and without any reason the two pause side by side a moment. Two figures—a man and a woman, stand well relieved against the background of brilliant light. The woman is very tall and slender, and clad in amber flowing drapery, with a blood red pomegranate flower burning vividly against her massive coronet of black hair. The man is also tall, and wears a fair, boyish appearance.
The two voices float out distinctly enough on the stillness outside.
“It is growing very late, and Delaval and your sister, or Beatrice and Benedick, as you call them, have not put in an appearance yet,” Sir Everard Aylmer remarks presently, glancing at a tiny enamelled watch he wears.
“Doubtless they have lagged on the lawn for a sociable quarrel. Beatrice andBenedick had a weakness that way, you know,” and Gabrielle Beranger laughs somewhat artificially. “According to the hackneyed old proverb, ‘the quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love.’ ”
“Delaval and your sister must be a most interesting pair of lovers,” drawls the Baronet with a smile. “Can you tell me, Miss Beranger, why quarrelling should be considered an incipient sign of love?”
“Dieu, how should I know? I never take the trouble to quarrel with anyone, and certainly was never in love.”
Gabrielle speaks out sharply, and at this moment she believes completely in her assertion, for the knowledge that Lord Delaval is wandering about a dew-lit lawn, with Zai’s lovely face at his side, and a white hand laid on his arm, makes her feel as if she positively hates him with allthe force with which she is capable of hating as well as loving. That hydra-headed monster, yclept Jealousy, just tears her in twain, and it is with the utmost difficulty she keeps up a calm appearance and a desultory conversation with the man whom Lady Beranger has consigned to her kind devices with a—
“Now don’t forget, Gabrielle, that Sir Everard Aylmer is the sixteenth baronet, that he has a purse as long as his pedigree, and is an impressionable fool—you’ll never have such a chance again.”
“You never take the trouble to quarrel with anyone, and you certainly were never in love?” Sir Everard repeats after her, pretty nearly verbatim, like a parrot. “My dear Miss Beranger, how very dreadful! or rather, how very charming it would be for someone to try to vex you, so that havinggone through the first exertion, you may, perchance, fall into the second state.”
“Ahem! Hardly probable, I think,” she answers carelessly, averting her head, and peering out into the fragrant shadows. But like Sister Anne, she sees no one, and all she hears is the leaf shaken by the wind; not a sign of the absentees meets her sight, and all her pictured enjoyment at Mrs. Meredyth’s “At Home” turns into the veriest Dead Sea fruit.
“Will you give me leave to try, Miss Beranger?” pleads a voice that, though drawling in tone, sounds more genuine than the plupart of voices in Tophet.
“To make me quarrel with you? Why, certainly! as the Yankees say; but I warn you that you will not be able to renew the combat a second time.”
“Why?”
“Oh, because quarrelling is such a nuisance, and it is so seldom worth making it up again, that I always eschew the acquaintance of the belligerent party, you know,” she says flippantly.
At this moment she is not only indifferent to, but she detests the very vision of the position and wealth Lady Beranger has put before her in such glowing terms, and which the “impressionable fool” beside her has it in his power to offer. Gabrielle’s heart—if what she has of heart is worthy of the name—is being sorely lacerated by the absence of the only face she loves to look upon, and she recollects fiercely that her sister’s grey eyes can gaze their fill on it, while her own glaring black ones are denied.
So she clenches her small fist and in her Bohemian fashion swears inwardly at thecruelty of fate that divides her from Lord Delaval, and barely hears the words of this evidently struck “sixteenth baronet.”
“But why should you make that a rule?” he persists.
He is not given to talking, but to-night he seems positively garrulous.
“Beatrice is a most delicious creature, why should you repudiate being like her, Miss Beranger?”
“Because I have no fancy for a Benedick.”
“Would you like to be Katherine, then? Is there a Petruchio living at whose bidding you could grow tame?”
Is there? she knows there is, and a bright flush suffuses her face while she acknowledges to herself that at his bidding she would be the veriest slave that ever trodthe earth, and she answers all the more impetuously, with her eyes flashing.
“No! no! no! a hundred times no,” and Sir Everard cannot doubt that she answers truly.
She is so handsome, though, in her wild gipsy beauty, that he rouses out of his insular quiet ways of thinking, and decides that it would be a pity to tame her defiant spirit, or to hush the ringing tones of her voice.
“Would a Romeo suit you?” he questions, in such soft womanish accents that her scarlet lips curl as she listens.
“To smother me in sweets, do you mean? oh, no, Sir Everard!Aucun chemin des fleurs ne conduit à la gloire, you know, and I have lived such a work-a-day life, before I was brought into the sacred precincts of Belgravia, that to me, loveand glory and ambition are synonymous words.”
“I have it!” he cries gleefully, like a schoolboy who has succeeded in unravelling a problem of Euclid. “After running through this list of celebrities, I have pitched on the right one to please you; now, ’pon honour, isn’t it a Marc Antony you like best?”
“Perhaps he touches me nearer, only I am of such a horrible avaricious nature, and my ambition is so insatiable, that I should prefer some one who would gain a world for me, instead of losing one.”
“Almost a fool could do that,” he murmurs naïvely, and she, remembering Lady Beranger’s opinion of him, bites her lips to control a laugh. “I am sure I could aim at anything if you were not such a bright and particular star, and I couldhope to reach you,” he goes onpêle-mêle, mixing up prose and poetry in a helplessly dismembered fashion.
Gabrielle laughs out freely at this, a laugh that is a perfect death-blow to sentiment although it is harmonious.
“Now, that’s a charmingly turned speech,” she replies, “I might almost fancy you a Frenchman. I am sure you have nothing to improve on it in your quiver, so on the principle of abonne bouchewe’ll go in and report to Lady Beranger that the others have not come in yet. I am afraid she will be angry at such a defiance of thebienséances,” she adds, but she thinks:
“Not that she will mind a bit, she will only think Lord Delaval is having it all his own way with the aid of his handsome face and that oily tongue of his.”
The two move off, and the lace curtains fall back into their place.
Then in a hard sort of voice, Zai turns to her companion:
“I hope you won’t be surprised at my speaking to you plainly, Lord Delaval, and don’t be shocked if I ignore the convenances in my words.”
He is feeling rather irritated against her. The evening had begun as he thought so sweetly, and now a latent suspicion is in his mind that Zai’s willingness to be with him so much to-night has proceeded from somearrière penséewhich he cannot quite divine.
“Continue, and do not mind about shocking me I beg of you; I am capable of standing a good deal, you know,” and he gives a curt laugh.
“You heard, of course, all thatGabrielle and Sir Everard Aylmer said about us?”
He bows his head.
“Of course, Lord Delaval, you don’t require me to tell you how ridiculous all they said was, and since they were so ridiculous and never would be anything else, imagine how distasteful they are to me.”
“Which part of their conversation was distasteful?”
Zai blushes under the starlit sky.
“Youmustknow which part,” she answers half shyly.
“That part about you and I beinglovers?”
“Eh,bien!”
“Well, we are not, you know.”
“Admitted, but that is no reason we should not be.”
“Lord Delaval!” she flashes, “whatcan you be thinking of? You know quite well that you are nothing to me—nothing—and of course I am nothing to you!”
“Zai—don’t start, I must call you Zai, for I think of you as such—there is no distance between us two in my thoughts. I can prove to you, too, that you are mistaken in what you say; the man who has learnt to love you with a love that is infinite, a passion that is uncontrollable, and the dearest desire of whose heart is to pass his life in proving that love, cannot possibly benothingto you! while, believe it or not, you are simplyeverythingto him!”
“Lord Delaval!”
Carl had asked her whether she would ever allow other men to dare to make love to her, and she had answered that shewould sooner die! and here she stands, alone with the starlit sky, the silence and the shadowy trees, herself and a man who not only dares to make love to her but absolutely does it in a possessive positive fashion that takes her breath away in sheer indignation and amazement.
Zai is very young, and, though a daughter of Belgravia, so strangely ignorant of the tricks and wiles of her own and the opposite sex, that for a moment she gasps, and then loses the sense of dignity in anger.
“Howdareyou say such words to me?” she asks, unconsciously using Carlton Conway’s word “dare.” “You know they are false—false as—asyouare! You know that if you have any love it should be given to Gabrielle or Baby. You ought to be ashamed to say suchthings to me, when you know how you have made Gabrielle love you!”
“Gabrielle!” he repeats, with a complacent smile. Why! Zai is jealous after all! “Is it possible that you think of her and of me in the same breath? You might accredit me with better taste, I think. Come, Zai! will you let me try and convince you of the sincerity of my love foryou?” he says softly.
“No! No!” she cries hastily, thinking it is base treason to Carl, even to listen to all this. “No! it would be useless, a waste of time on your part, since I tell you frankly thatIcould never loveyou.”
“A good many women say that, and yet learn the lesson of love at last, learn it too well, to their cost,” he remarks with supreme conceit.
“It may be so, very likely it is, in fact,” she replies as she scans his face, and, in spite of Carl, is fain forced to confess to herself that to women who love physical attraction, this man with his fair languid beauty, his earnest ultramarine eyes, must be irresistible. “But I could never be one of them.”
“Do give me leave to try,” he whispers in a voice that is wonderfully seductive. “You shall be as free as a bird, only I—I shall be bound—and willingly.”
“No! No!” she says, almost sharply.
It is not that she fears temptation, but the very idea of love from anyone but Carl is odious to her.
“I could never care for you. I could never marry you.”
“Reconsider that, Zai!”
“If I reconsidered it for ever I should never change my mind!”
Lord Delaval shrugs his shoulders slightly, and fixes his eyes steadily, almost rudely, on her.
“I am not, as a rule, a betting man, or I should be willing to lay very heavy odds that you will live to regret those words, or to unsay them.”
Why is it that at this moment an ice cold hand seems to grasp the girl’s heart and hold it in a vice? She is really as free as air, no human being has power of compulsion over her, least of all this man who dares to threaten her. Yet she shivers a little in the soft, warm, June air, and without answering a word walks hastily into the house.
Lady Beranger and Gabrielle stand near the entrance of the ball-room, and beyond them Zai sees Carlton Conway, and on hisarm, just emerging from the supper-room, Crystal Meredyth.
A faintness creeps over her and her hands grow chill as death, while her face blanches to the hue of a white rose.
It seems too hard, too hard! that he should flaunt his flagrant flirtation with this girl before her very eyes; but she is equal to the occasion. With her dainty head erect, her slender figure pulled up to its utmost height, she passes her mother and sister, Lord Delaval still at her side, and, as she nears her lover and her rival, she looks up, smiles in Lord Delaval’s face, and lays her hand on his arm.
“First some supper, and then ten waltzes at least,” she says in a bright ringing tone, “andaprès cela, le deluge.”
A little haughty bend to Carl—Carl, whom she is loving at this moment withevery fibre of her being, and she is gone, while Lord Delaval shrugs his shoulders once more and presses the little, white-gloved hand to his side, and says to himself with a feeling of complacency:
“Femme souvent varie—folle qui s’y fie!”