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“You loved me, and you loved me notA little, much, and over much;Will you forget, as I forgot?Let all dead things lie dead—suchAre not soft to touch.”
“You loved me, and you loved me notA little, much, and over much;Will you forget, as I forgot?Let all dead things lie dead—suchAre not soft to touch.”
“You loved me, and you loved me notA little, much, and over much;Will you forget, as I forgot?Let all dead things lie dead—suchAre not soft to touch.”
Fanchette, having arrayed Trixy and Baby for the Duchess of Caryllon’s fancy ball, finally seeks Zai. Zai—who still lies dreaming her love’s young dream in the soft twilight, while a star or two peeps down inquisitively through the open window upon the increased loveliness that love has called up on her sweet face.
Regretfully she rises at Fanchette’s entrance, and certainly no fairer daughter of Belgravia ever tripped through Belgraviansalons. When her toilette is complete,Fanchette does wonders with her little artistic touches here and there, and Zai’s costume, though simple, is exquisitely picturesque.
The bodice is long-waisted; the stomacher thickly embroidered in pearls; the Vandyke corsage is low in front, with a high ruffle behind, and the whole makes a beau-ideal of the old time Maestros; ropes of glistening pearls go round the slim throat and are wreathed in the chestnut hair. The dress of Blanche of Navarre is marvellously becoming, and would be becoming to a plain woman. What, then, must it be to this daughter of Belgravia, to whom Nature has been lavish in seductive tints?—this girl with a beauty so very fair that
“If to her share some human errors fall,Look in her face and you’ll forget them all,”
“If to her share some human errors fall,Look in her face and you’ll forget them all,”
“If to her share some human errors fall,Look in her face and you’ll forget them all,”
and who is very proud of herself, as she thinks that Carlton Conway will be at Caryllon House to-night, and will see how “nice” she looks.
Let us own that a woman must be composed of very strange materials who does not feel that it is charming to be young and pretty, considering that youth and beauty are the recognised weapons for slaughtering men’s hearts.
Lady Beranger has always a fancy for “her own party” when she goes to a ball, and on this occasion the dinner in Belgrave Square has three additions to the family circle—Mr. Stubbs, Archibald Hamilton, and Percy Rayne—a connection of Lord Beranger’s—a clerk in the Foreign Office, good-looking, harum-scarum, a pauper, and a detrimental. Lord Delaval was asked, of course, but had anotherengagement. When all her brood is gathered together, Lady Beranger, in silvermoire, with the Beranger diamonds (but no! not the Beranger diamonds, for they are under safe lock and key and surveillance of one of the many Attenboroughs—but the duplicates in finished Parisian paste, which are quite as lovely and costly to the uninitiated eye), steps into the family landau.
They are late, and the crush of the room is uncomfortable beyond description, like all London crushes. But great as it is, Zai makes a decided sensation as she wades through the crowd on Percy Bayne’s arm. Gabrielle is a Spanish gipsy; Trixy, Fair Rosamond; Baby, with her pink and white skin, golden hair, and white short draperies showered with rosebuds—a delicious piece of “Dresden”—but Zai to-nightput every one into the shade. There is the usual quantum of sea-nymphs and flower-girls, characters from history and characters from fiction, of piquant costumes and of costumes which are chiefly remarkable for beingbizarre.
As she and Percy Rayne fall into the line which just now is promenading the long room in the interludes of dancing, the Foreign Office clerk is conscious of that pleasant thrill of complacency—a sort of moral and even physical inflation—which a man feels when escorting a woman whose beauty glorifies her escort.
Zai’s card is soon full—so full that only one waltz remains, which she guards pertinaciously. She is determined to valse it with Carl, even if the heavens fall. Several ask for it, but she laughingly says she is keeping it for a friend. That friend doesnot, however, seem in any haste to take advantage of her generosity.
She has been nearly an hour in the room before she even sees him, and then he is talking earnestly to Miss Crystal Meredyth, and only acknowledgesherby a formal bow; and to add to this, Crystal Meredyth makes a very lovely Ondine to-night. How strange it seems to her that he should bow like this, when only a week or two before he looked at her with all his soul in his eyes, at the Bagatelle Theatre!
Zai’s heart is full to bursting, and her red lips quiver a little; but while a weeping and gnashing of teeth is carried on inwardly, she returns his bow with one still more frigid.
And at this inopportune moment, Lord Delaval comes up to her.
“I think the next dance is mine?” he says, rather stiffly, offering his arm.
“You mistake,” Zai answers.
She does not wish to go off with one man when she can stand here, the centre of a group ofjeunesse dorée—all begging for “one turn,” and this within earshot of Carl.
She would give anything to pique him now that he is so engrossed with this girl who has money.
“The next dance is Mr. Bayne’s; at least his name is on my card,” she goes on.
Lord Delaval bows—not a bow like the one Carlton Conway has given her just now, but a bow on the Grandison model. His taste and tact are perfect; nothing would induce him to dispute a point of this kind; but a look steals over his handsomeface which is not common to it when Zai is its object—a look of cold hauteur, a look that has even asoupçonof dislike in it.
“I understood the dance was mine,” he says, and quietly turning on his heel, he walks away. There are visible surprise and satisfaction among the butterfly youths at this little rebuff to the best match in Town—for lords of the creation, noble animals though they be, are yet creatures of weak mould.
But Zai’s conscience smites her.
That the dance is Lord Delaval’s she knew quite well when she allowed Percy Bayne to write his name over his. At the moment she felt a sort of perverse defiance of displeasure on the part of any man. But now she regrets having sullied her lips by a white lie, and she feelsashamed—as one always feels ashamed—when one has taken shabby advantage of the immunity which is chivalrously permitted a woman to do or say uncivil things by Society. It is a retributive justice perhaps, which accords her nothing for her incivility, for Carlton Conway, who is standing not far off, and alone—Miss Meredyth having gone off to dance—presently moves off too, without even a glance in her direction. It is really too much!
Blanche of Navarre’s grey eyes sadly follow his retreating figure, and with a decidedly sinking heart, and forlorn spirit, she sees him a few moments after, careering “au grand galop” with his arm round Miss Meredyth’s supple waist. Always that Miss Meredyth!
She feels wickedly vindictive againstthis girl—almost ghoulish, as though she would willingly scrunch her up, bones and all—this dollish beauty who has lured away her lover.
Zai grinds her to powder (mentally), under her high military heel, and turning to one of her adorers, asks for a pencil and deliberately writes down Lord Delaval’s name for the dance she has reserved for Carl.
It is some time, however, before this tardy reparation becomes known. Lord Delaval feels that he has borne as much as aristocratic flesh and blood can stand from this girl, who seems so little aware of the magnificent distinction he has conferred upon her, and that it is full time to assert his dignity.
He asserts it therefore in the ordinary fashion of men who areépris—by bestowinghis attention upon other women, of whom there are a multitude willing—and Gabrielle in particular—to accept everything or anything he chooses to offer, this Prince of Beauty, with his blond hair and ultramarine eyes.
Like so many poor boxes, they are ready to receive the smallest donation—a smile—a word—his arm for a promenade—or his hand for a dance. Yet even while apparently engrossed in wholesale flirtations with the fairest of the sex in the room, even while lavishing soft nothings, pressing fingers, he finds himself covertly looking again and again, and fervently admiring the slender figure in its old-fashioned quaint costume, the fair sweet face of the girl who he knows is over head and ears in love with “that actor fellow.” Despite himself and his angerhe cannot help secretly owning that never did woman exist more fitted to wear the purple, and to don the Delaval coronet than this one, and he resolves to win her—somehow.
Having “put down his foot” on this point, he feels that all flirtations with Carlton Conway, Rayne and all others must end, that he must clearly make it understood that such doings must stop.
Flirt though he has been himself ever since he dropped round jackets and donned thetoga virilis, and flirt though he probably intends to remain until the very end of the chapter, he has not the slightest idea of allowing his wife to indulge in the same amusement.
No! no! no! a thousand times no!
The woman of his choice must be an exceptional being, and a very differentstamp of woman to the puppets of the Belgraviansalons, with whom he has been in the habit of dallying and associating, and with whom he has passed so many hours of agreeable foolery.
Cæsar himself may of course do what he likes, but we all know what is expected from Cæsar’s wife.
It is an old, old story—carried down from generation to generation, and alas! for the honour of Society, a story infinitely more theoretical than practical.
The hours go on towards midnight—the crowd is suffocating, the heat intense, the gaiety at its height.
Since they entered the room, all the Beranger girls have been dancing, they are not the sort to personate wallflowers, none of them, and Zai in particular has not been five minutes under her mother’s ample wing.
Instead of looking worn out, however, she seems in higher beauty and gayer spirits then usual, when Lord Delaval again approaches her.
“You are only just in time,” she says, meeting his vexed eyes with a little laugh which he would think the most delicious in the world if he had not heard it bestowed upon any number of the golden youths during the last hour. “I have put your name down for this very waltz, and I was reflecting a moment ago whether I should have to send Percy to look you up, or whether I should give it to the multitude who are begging for it!”
Zai says all this with an air of delightful coquetry which is perfectly foreign to her. Poor child, she is of course only playing a part to hide her misery and mortification about Carl, but she plays it extremely well,and the coquettishness is remarkably becoming to her.
“I wonder you hesitated over the alternative, when there are so many to whom you could give the dance with satisfaction, no doubt, to both sides;” he answers a little sulkily.
“Yes! therearea good many,” Zai admits with ingenuous frankness. “But, then, you see, I thought you really wanted it! If you don’t—— ”
“You know I do!” he cries, quite unable to resist the pure, soft, sweet face uplifted to him.
All his mighty vexation is scattered to the four winds as he looks down on her.
In this world everything repeats itself.
Like the judges of old—whose fiat was stayed by fair Phryne’s face and form—so Zai’s pretty grey eyes, snowlidded andblacklashed, and her smile, even though it be forced, disperse this man’s anger in a trice.
As he speaks the band strikes up “Bitter Sweet,” and putting his arm around her elaborately whaleboned waist, yet a dainty lissom waist in spite of whalebone, he whirls her away.
It is a glorious waltz—the room is lengthy, the floor well waxed, the lights glitter, and the music peals out an exhilarating strain, and these two have danced often enough together to know well the other’s step and peculiarities.
It is also the end—though they don’t know it—of butterfly flirtation.
A very fitting end, too, for flirtations.
In the end of some serious love affairs, so much faith and hope go down for ever that we might well play over them thatMarche Funébreof Chopin—that charming old Listz called theMélopée, so funereal, so full of desolating woe.
But for the end of flirtations, what can, we ask, be more appropriate than the light, gay, and entrancing strains of the Bitter Sweet Waltz?
“You must be awfully tired! You had better let me take you somewhere to rest!” Lord Delaval says, rather tenderly. Zai is tired, and does not demur; and he takes her out of the ball-room into a long corridor, in which the waxlights are a little dim, and in which fewer flirting couples than usual are to be seen.
Like a huge maelstrom, thesalle de dansehas engulphed them, so there is not much difficulty in finding the quiet and secluded corner, free from interruption, of which Lord Delaval is in search.
He wheels a cosy velvet-cushioned chair near an open window, and when she has dropped into it he settles himself opposite her on the window sill.
Zai shuts her eyes, it may be from physical fatigue, or it may be that she does not care to meet the keen searching gaze—anyway, a short silence follows, during which she slowly fans herself, and he—well—he is considering how to plunge at once into the subject nearest his heart—for he hates to wait for anything.
“I don’t care to talk about myself,” he says, after a minute or two. “If there is an abomination in the world, it is an egotistical man; but I should like to know if you have ever heard things about me which have caused you to shun my society at times? I know I have a number of kind friends in Town ready totell you that I am a flirt, and worship myself only.”
“Yes,” she answers, truthfully. “I have certainly heard your friends say both things of you.”
“Perhaps in one thing they were right enough—I have flirted desperately in my life—every man who has never felt a strong exclusive attachment does flirt, you know, but never more! never more! I shall never flirt again—for—— ”
He bends forward until his face almost touches hers, and whispers low—
“The strong exclusive attachment has come to me!”
Zai does not answer, though she flushes in spite of herself.
“You cannot doubt that I love you, Zai!” he pleads, passionately, “and that I shall be the happiest man on earth if I canpersuade you to marry me. Zai, do you think you will ever care for me enough to do that?”
He catches hold of her hands, and holds them as in a vice, and though she draws them away, she does not rebuke him for calling her “Zai.” Perhaps she scarcely heeds that he does so. She is sore at heart about Carl. She would give a good deal to show him that if he does not appreciate her there are others who do; and what could be a greater triumph for her than to leave the Duchess of Caryllon’s ball the future Countess of Delaval. She would be more than the bright, gay, and rather spoilt girl Belgravia has made her if she did not hesitate before she rejects this triumph over Carl and “that Miss Meredyth,” who, of course, knows that she has usurped Carl’s heart. Zai has considered herself bound inhonour to Carl; but he himself, by his conduct in the latter days, has given her back the freedom she did not want. There is really nothing to prevent her accepting Lord Delaval except—and that is a great deal—her own wilful rebellious soul, that clings to Carl with a tenacity stronger than herself.
“You will not press me, Lord Delaval! for an answer, will you?” she asks, quietly. “I should like to think a little, to reflect. One can’t make up one’s mind in a minute you know,” she winds up more hastily.
“On condition that you won’t keep me too long in suspense. Will you let me know my fate at the State Ball on Friday? That is two whole days.”
“Yes,” she answers, gravely; then she jumps up from her chair.
“I have promised Percy Rayne, Number24,” she says, examining her ivory tablets, “and I hear it beginning. 24.Le Premier Baiser.It is such a delicious air that I never miss it.”
He rises and offers his arm in silence.
“It was Rayne who suggested your fancy dress, I suppose? I know he is great at such things,” he says, a trifle sullenly.
“Yes; do you like it?”
“No!”
“No! How very rude of you, Lord Delaval! I thought you were the pink of politeness,” she replies, laughing.
“I don’t like it because I feel as if you belonged to me, and I don’t care for you to wear what any other man suggests.”
“But I don’t belong to you,” she blurts out, on the spur of the moment. “Your feelings make a great mistake if they tell you I do.”
“They tell me that you will belong to me, however,” he answers, in a masterful tone, and Zai feels a thrill pass through her—a thrill of fear almost. It is not the first time she has felt it when this man has had a possessive ring in his voice.
Five minutes afterwards she has thrown off the feeling, and is dancing away as if her heart was as light as her feet; but when the waltz is over, she leans back against the wall, and wishes that she was dead.
“If you have one dance left, Miss Beranger, will you give it to me?” says a voice beside her.
Zai starts, the colour flames into her face, her limbs tremble, and her heart beats so that she places her hand unconsciously on it as if to stay the throbs.
“Yes, I have a dance—this one,” shesays hurriedly, almost incoherently, and unseen by her people or Lord Delaval, she passes through the swaying crowd on Carlton Conway’s arm.
“Come out of the room, Zai, we can’t talk here.”
Ah! how his voice seems to bring back life and hope and happiness to the love-sick girl. To think! to think! that after all Carl has not thrown her over—that she has been doubting him, doing him injustice all this time.
And as they reach the same corridor in which Lord Delaval has just asked her to be his wife, but passing out of it enter a deserted balcony, the moonbeams fall on her face uplifted to her lover’s.
“Once more,” Carl murmurs with genuine feeling. “Oh, my love, my own—own love! I have wearied for this!”
And clasping her in his arms, he kisses her—kisses her with the old, old passion—on her sweet lips, that smile and quiver with bliss at his touch.
“It was not true, Carl, what they told me?” she says very low, with her eyes so wistful and one white arm round his neck.
“What did they tell you, Zai?” he asks brokenly. For fickle and light of nature—he cannot look on these sweet wistful eyes—he cannot feel the clinging clasp of this white arm unnerved.
“They told me you were going to marry—Miss Meredyth, Carl.”
Her heart throbs so fast he can hear it, but though he knows suspense is a terrible thing, for a few moments Carlton Conway gives no answer.
“But you!If you saw with your soul what man am I,You would praise me at least that my soul all throughClove to you—loathing the lives that lie.The souls and lips that are bought and sold,The smiles of silver and the kisses of gold!”
“But you!If you saw with your soul what man am I,You would praise me at least that my soul all throughClove to you—loathing the lives that lie.The souls and lips that are bought and sold,The smiles of silver and the kisses of gold!”
“But you!If you saw with your soul what man am I,You would praise me at least that my soul all throughClove to you—loathing the lives that lie.The souls and lips that are bought and sold,The smiles of silver and the kisses of gold!”
Zailooks up hastily at her lover, and her eyes meet his.
It is not only at the touching of the lips that spirits rush together, as many believe. Who has not seen the soul leap up into the eyes, and utter there its immortal language far plainer than mortal speech can interpret it—when pride, or honour, or duty, or interestedness has laid an iron hand across the mouth.
At such a moment we seem to realise with startling force the existence of the divine spark prisoned in its house of clay. The power of spirit over matter, the subtle imagination which, without words, can lay bare
“All thoughts, all passions, all delights,Whatever stirs this mortal frame.”
“All thoughts, all passions, all delights,Whatever stirs this mortal frame.”
“All thoughts, all passions, all delights,Whatever stirs this mortal frame.”
Before Carl can utter a sentence, he half forgets everything in the sweetness of the grey eyes, in the fairness of his young love’s face.
“My darling—my own darling,” he whispers, straining her again to his heart, which, to do him justice, he verily believes is devoted to her. “Why have you forgotten me for—Delaval, Zai?”
Zai starts and flushes.
“But I ought not to blame you,” he goeson; “after all, class should mate with class, and I am not good enough for you—nor rich enough. I have plenty of shortcomings, I know, Zai, but you must not think worse of me than I deserve.”
Her heart flutters like a bird at this, and her eyes glisten through unshed but irrepressible tears.
“Worse of you than you deserve, Carl!” she falters, while her arm clings closer to his neck, and she feels that this man is a king among his kind, and that she may well be forgiven if she worships him. “Why should you imagine that I think any ill of you?”
“Because I merit it after the brutal way I treated you at the Meredyths’, and even in the beginning of this evening, my Zai. I doubted you, you see, and when one suffers one is apt to be unreasonable, and woundedvanity is quick to come to the side of wounded love, and after all what is more natural than that you should not love me?” he asks, but clasping her even closer and kissing the bright chesnut hair that gleams up so ruddy under the moonbeams. “What more natural than that you should love—Delaval!”
But in his heart he does not for a moment believe that she or any other woman could pause between any other man andhim.
“Nothing more natural, I suppose,” Zai answers, nestling her hand into his, and feeling her spirits rise and her courage rear its crest aloft as she thinks Carl has only acted thus out of jealousy. “But natural things do not always come to pass, do they? There are exceptions to all rules, you know. I told you before, Carl, that I was the exceptionto the rule in the Beranger family of being dazzled by Lord Delaval’s fascinations. Have you forgotten this?”
“I thoughtyouhad forgotten it!” Carlton Conway murmurs in his most melodious and reproachful accents.
“Why should you have thought so?” she asks wistfully.
“It would be wiser to ask why I should have thought otherwise,” he returns, a little drily. “Your sweet face has bewitched me until I have had no sense left I think, but still I am notquitemad. I know my superiors, and am not surprised when fate and fortune compel me to bow to them.”
“But Lord Delaval isnotyour superior, Carl!” she cries earnestly, “not in any respect—except that he is a little richer, perhaps.”
“I did not mean to imply that he is my superior because he is a swell,” he observes rather haughtily, “but the very point of which you speak is the very one that makes his superiority, probably, inyoureyes.”
“In my eyes!” she answers in amazement. “Oh, Carl, I am sorry you should give me credit for such things. I don’t think that kind of superiority worth anything—anything!” she goes on scornfully. “I don’t think that money and position and all that sort of thing makes people really happy!”
“Everyone in Town thinks you mean to make the experiment, anyhow!” he replies.
“Butyoudidn’t. Surely you didn’t, Carl! You know I don’t care for Lord Delaval—and that I loveyou!” she whispers,les larmes au voix.
He looks down at her sweet downcastface. It is a face bathed in blushes. For Zai always blushes when she tells him all that is in her heart. But she need say nothing. He has only to look at her face, which tells its story of love with exceeding clearness and sweetness to his vain, incense-loving eyes.
“Zai! do you really love me so very much?”
He asks the question from sheer selfishness and a desire for incense to his overweening vanity. He knows he has sought this opportunity to tell her something which will break her heart. But no—hearts are tough things, and do not break easily. But something which will surely wreck her implicit child-like faith in the fidelity and sincerity of all men. Never after to-night will Zai Beranger perhaps feel that loving words and honest words are twins. Rathershe will shrink from them, knowing that they may be uttered only to betray.
Now she believes in Carlton Conway with her whole soul. And when he asks:
“Zai! do you really love me so very much?”
She lets both white arms form a circle for his neck, and woos him to touch her red lips.
For one moment she forgets her maidenly reserve, and only remembers that in her own eyes she is his wife—in heart, if not in name.
“Oh Carl! Carl! let us marry at once—dear! and then no one can come between us two!”
“We cannot!” he says hastily.
Zai starts as if she were shot, and covers her face with her two little hands, while a burning blush surges over it.
It comes to her suddenly, the terrible, terrible shame, ofherhaving asked—ofhisrejection—and then the colour leaves her cheek.
She leans against the balustrade, with the moonlight falling on a face white as undriven snow. Her eyes have a dumb misery in their depths, and her mouth quivers like a child’s.
“Oh Zai! forgive me if I hurt you by saying we cannot marry!” he whispers brokenly, for her white face and trembling lips move him strangely, worldling as he is. “You know very well how I am placed! I have nothing but my salary, and that is dependent on health; and if I don’t marry some girl with money, I don’t know what will become of me, Zai!”
A deep silence ensues for a minute or two. Up above the glorious moon sailsserenely along, and a few feathery clouds float athwart the great sapphire plain of sky. From within, the sound of music is carried out on the fragrant night, but human eyes and human voices are nowhere near.
These two are alone, entirely alone, on this isolated balcony, and they have for many months played at making love.
Listen then in what passionate words Belgravians and worldlings say farewell, if farewell must be said by them.
We all know that Romeo and Juliet would not have said it, but they were foolish inconsequent young people, who fortunately did not live to test the agreeabilities of a narrow income.
“Then I suppose you are going to marry Miss Meredyth?” Zai asks in a low voice, that has a hardness in it which no one has heard before.
“Zai! can you blame me? Can you think it possible for me to act otherwise?”
“No! I don’t blame you!” and again bitterness mars the sweet voice.
“Of course you cannot blame me!” he answers, “for you knowyouare forbidden fruit, Zai. You have been reared in certain social conditions, which of course it would be sheer wickedness on my part to ask you to resign!”
This is a very different sentiment to what he has expressed before; and even she, much as she loves him, feels indignant.
There is a sudden flash in her grey eyes as she lifts them to his.
“You know that you ought not to say this, Carl! It is not my interests you are thinking of, but you have made up your mind not to marry anyone who has no money!”
“Granted!” he replies quietly, though a crimson flush dyes his face, and he bites his lip hard. “But though you seem to reproach me, you know why it is so! You know that people inyourworld cannot subsist on sentiment, or on a few paltry hundreds a year. I am, I avow, one of those miserable devils to whom the bitter irony of fate has given the tastes and habits of a gentleman, without the means of supporting them. You are the corresponding woman. Common sense—the commonest sense—will tell you whether or not it would be sheer madness for us two to marry, although we love each other so passionately, Zai!”
Zai does not answer. There cannot be the least doubt, she knows, but that common sensedoestell her that marriage with her would not suit Carl Conway; but it is nonethe less true that common sense is not what she cares to listen to now. In the most vapid soul that sojourn in Belgravia ever starved, there is still some small lodging left for that divine folly that men call “Love.”
And Zai, born and bred in Belgravia, is as desperately and honestly in love with this man, who has played fast and loose with her, as a milk-maid could be.
She longs—how she longs—for just one crumb of comfort, just one little word of sweetness from his lips.
Only a quarter of an hour ago he held her to him and kissed her with apparently the old, old passion in his soul, and now he stands a little apart, calm and cold as a statue.
Conway is a wonderfully handsome man, and Zai worships his beauty. The moreshe looks at him the more she craves for a gleam of love in his brown eyes—the stronger grows her desire to listen to love from his well-cut lips; but she listens in vain.
“Yes, I know all that,” she says very wearily, with a dreadfully heart-sick feeling of disappointment, “it was hardly worth while you telling me. I have heard papa and mamma, and Gabrielle, and all the others talk of ‘common sense,’ but one grows tired sometimes of hearing the same thing.”
The tone of her voice tells more than her words; there is a betraying quiver in it that makes him turn quickly and look at her.
The eyes that meet his own have great glittering tears in them. Never in her life has Zai looked more lovely or more lovablethan at this moment, and Carl recognises fully all that he is sacrificing for money.
“Forgive me for having repeated anything then that wearies you,” he says softly, clasping her cold white hand in his own, and Zai lets him. Even now—even now! in spite of his falsity—his avariciousness—the touch of his hand thrills her through and through, and her white lissom fingers linger in his grasp. “Zai, my darling! youmustfeel that it is as hard—much more hard indeed—for me to utter than for you to hear. Good Heavens! do you imagine I am thinking of myself? (For a moment, perhaps, he really fancies he is not.) It is of you, my dearest, that I think. How can I be so cruel—so selfish as to ask you to give up for me everything that you have been taught all your life to consider worth possessing? But if youreally wish to do so, Zai, I can only say that you will make me very happy. And, darling, you know I shall strive very earnestly to keep you from regretting it!”
Brave words these are and bravely spoken, with not a single falter in the tone—not a sign of what they cost, but a swift pallor sweeping across his face.
Let us do this worldling credit—let us confess that it is very well done for a man to whom nothing could be more ruinous than to be taken at his word.
But frankly, Carlton Conway has not reckoned without his host. It is a curious rather than an absurd sense of honour that forces him to risk this declaration; but he knows the girl beside him too well not to bealmostcertain of her reply.
The event justifies the expectation. Zai loves him to distraction, and the loss ofhim will create a void in her life which she believes no one on this earth will fill up—not if she lives to be as old as Mount Horeb.
Carl’s handsome captivating face tempts her—the most genuine love that a woman can feel tempts her to keep him at any cost.
But it is only for a moment she wavers.
She knows that Mammon and Cupid have run a race in Carl’s heart and that the former has beat by several lengths.
Young, ignorant of guile, and innocent, a sort of instinct teaches her this.
“It is impossible!” she falters, with the sharp thrill in her soul echoing in her voice. “You are perfectly right, Carl, in all you have said, and I—I know it as well as you do. I have been reared under certain conditions and for certain ends, andperhaps I could not put them entirely aside. I am fit for nothing but Society, and Society would not recognise me if I was poor and struggling, so we should simply mar each other’s lives and render each other miserable. And, Carl,” she tries to speak calmly but the effort is terrible, “I could not bear poverty and neither can you, though—— ” She breaks down completely, large tears chase one another down her cheeks, but she dashes them away, wroth at herself for her weakness and want of pride. “Therefore we must not think of marrying, of course!”
Another dead pause. Madam Diana sails along more brilliantly than before, this time with an enormous court of glittering stars around her. The cool night air passes quietly by, lifting up the chesnut tendrils of hair that stray on to Zai’sbrow and fanning her poor hot temples. The time is flying by, and someone will be coming this way, but nevertheless Carlton Conway cannot end this interview without a few more words.
“And you will of course let Lady Beranger persuade you into marrying Delaval?” he asks, jealously—angrily.
Like the dog in the manger, he does not want the girl himself but he grudges her to another man.
Jealousy is a passion that is often wonderfully independent of the passion of true love.
Carl is very loth indeed that Lord Delaval, whom he has always hated, shall have this lovely piece of nature’s handiwork for his.
“I don’t know,” Zai murmurs wearily. Then she calls up all the high spirit shehas in her and says quietly—“After all, the matter might be worse—for Lord Delaval everyone says is charming, you know.”
“But you care nothing for him, Zai! You care forme!” he exclaims passionately, with almost a mind to claim her sooner than she should pass out of his life in this manner.
“I know—and yet—— ”
“And yet youmaybecome Countess of Delaval?”
“I may.”
Upon this Carl releases her hand pettishly and subsides into silence. He is not of a nature to ponder deeply on social or any other kind of evils, but just now the sordidness of this strikes him very forcibly, and he wonders how such girls as the Berangers hold themselves even adegree better than the Circassian and Eastern females who sell themselves for filthy lucre.
“Zai, tell me the honest truth. Do you care for Delaval the least bit in the world?” he asks earnestly, longing for her to deny the existence of any liking for his rival, to protest the enormous height and depth and width of her love for himself.
“Not yet—but,” Zai adds slowly and meditatively, “if I marry him I shall do my best to care for him, and even if I didn’t—what of it? Do people in our world deem it necessary to care for the man or the woman whom they marry?”
And Carl Conway cannot honestly affirm that they do.
“I have hidden my soul out of sight and saidLet none take pity upon thee. NoneComfort thy crying—for lo! thou art dead.Lie still now, safe out of the sight of the sun;Have I not built thee a grave, and wroughtThy grave-clothes on thee of grievous thought?”
“I have hidden my soul out of sight and saidLet none take pity upon thee. NoneComfort thy crying—for lo! thou art dead.Lie still now, safe out of the sight of the sun;Have I not built thee a grave, and wroughtThy grave-clothes on thee of grievous thought?”
“I have hidden my soul out of sight and saidLet none take pity upon thee. NoneComfort thy crying—for lo! thou art dead.Lie still now, safe out of the sight of the sun;Have I not built thee a grave, and wroughtThy grave-clothes on thee of grievous thought?”
TheJune sun is full of pranks to-day. There it is, scorching up the leaves in the square, broiling the toilers on the white pavements, shining down on everything with a lurid glare that makes one wink and blink, and generally uncomfortable, and now it is peering into the windows of Baby’s schoolroom, showing up the short-comings of the faded carpet, the ink stains on the old table, and streaming full on to acorner where, before her easel, Zai stands, palette and brush in hand, but idle.
“Oh, it is hot! hot!” she cries impatiently, throwing down her painting apparatus and pushing her hair back from her forehead.
“Here’s something to cool you!” Gabrielle says, throwing across theMorning Post, and then she has the good feeling to pick up a book and pretend to be buried in its contents, while Zai reads what she considers her death warrant.
“A marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between Miss Meredyth, daughter of John Meredyth, Esq., of Eaton Place, and Carlton Conway, Esq.”
Three times Zai reads the announcement over—mechanically spelling each word—then she drops the paper on the floor, and going up to the open window, looks out.
She does not find the sun hot now,although it is dancing on her chesnut hair, and turning each tress to fire. Her heart lies so dreadfully cold within her breast that it seems to ice her whole frame, and though her eyes face the strong yellow beams, they do not shrink from them.
Since she read the words in to-day’sPost, she seems to be blind and deaf to everything, save the fact that Miss Meredyth has won from her that which she valued most in life.
“Well, Zai?”
Zai has been standing at the window perfectly motionless for half an hour, her slight figure almost rigid, her head a little thrown back, her face white as marble and almost as impassive, her two little hands clasped behind her as in a vice, and Gabrielle thinks it high time to recall her to a sense of everyday life with all its ills.
“Well, Gabrielle!”
The girl turns and faces her step-sister; her eyes look as if she were stunned, but her lips smile.
Gabrielle stares at her for a moment, then she bends over her volume again.
“There, child, don’t act with only me for an audience!” she says quietly, “You have had enough of acting and actors, goodness knows. What a brute the man has been!”
“Why?” Zai asks defiantly.
“Why?—because he pretended to love you, and heknewyou loved him, and yet he has quietly bowled you over for that doll of a thing.”
“He cannot help himself, Gabrielle!”
“Why cannot he help himself, pray?”
“Because Carl is so poor. Oh, Gabrielle! Gabrielle!” and, the tension passed, Zai throws herself down on Baby’s favouritehearth-rug and sobs as if her heart would burst. “What an awful,awfulthing money is!”
“Thewantof it, you mean! But that man Conway knew he was poor always. Why did he ever spoon you as he has done?”
“He loved me so—he could not help it!” Zai says tenderly, “And we love each other dreadfully—dreadfully—still, but he thinks I should suffer so if I did not have the luxury I have been accustomed to all my life!”
“And he does not think about himself, poor dear unselfish fellow!” Gabrielle says with a little sneer. “Zai, take my advice, and don’t waste another thought on him. He is going to marry Miss Meredyth for her money, let him, and don’t let Miss Meredyth have the pleasure of seeing that you envy her her husband!”
“I must try and forget Carl,” Zai murmurs feebly. “It would be a sin to love him when he is married, but I don’t know how to begin. He seems to run in my head and my heart so!”
“Let some othergenus homoturn him out of them. There’s heaps of eligibles about. Lord Walsingham, for instance, he is young, good-looking and tolerably well off.”
“Why he squints, Gabrielle! and has red hair!” Zai protests mildly.
“Never mind. What does it matter whether one’s husband has red hair and a squint? All one wants is a nice house, and fine carriages and horses, plenty of diamonds etc. Is there no other man you know who could make you forget that actor fellow?”
“No one!”
Zai blushes crimson. There is meaninglurking in Gabrielle’s manner and eyes, although her words are simple enough, and she remembers that this step-sister of hers has resolved to win Lord Delaval for herself.
Let her, Zai thinks; she has never felt so much distaste to accepting Lord Delaval’s offer as she does at this moment, when her heart is so sore and her spirit so humiliated.
“I won’t cry any more!” she exclaims, feigning to be indifferent, but in reality anxious to change the subject. “I must look well before the Royalties to-night, you know! The Prince was very nice to me at Caryllon House, and said I was the belle of the room! What are you going to wear, Gabrielle?”
“Black lace—and you, I suppose, are going to wear sackcloth and ashes!”
“No I am not!” Zai answers lightly.“Mamma coaxed Swaebe out of another six months’ credit, and so Trixy and Baby and I have loves of pale blue faille and white illusion, and water lilies trailing all over us. I want to look beautiful to-night for a reason.
“What reason?” Gabrielle asks, suspiciously.
“Only because—— But no; it’s a secret for the present.” And Zai, running out hastily, rushes up to her bedroom, and, double locking her door, cries to her heart’s content.
They are about the last tears dedicated to the memory of Carlton Conway; but, by-and-by, she bathes her eyes in cold water and smoothes her hair, and putting on her hat, goes out into the Square. But the Square is associated in her mind indelibly with that evening when she stole out fromLady Beranger’s ball to meet her faithless lover, and rising hastily from the bench, she walks home again.
“Go and lie down, Zai, and rest yourself; you look like a ghost!” Lady Beranger says harshly, meeting her on the stairs. “Or better still, put on your white chip hat with the pink roses, and come with me to the Park. The air will beautify you, perhaps.”
And Zai—who has learned by this time that Lady Beranger’s suggestions are really fiats—goes up and adorns herself, and is quite bewitching in the chip and roses by the time the Victoria is at the door.
Lady Beranger leans back, a trifle pale, and with thesoupçonof a frown on her brow, and the carriage is just at Hyde Park Gate before she volunteers a remark.
“You have seen thePostto-day?” she says, carelessly.
“Yes, Mamma, and I am so glad to see Mr. Conway is going to be married; Crystal Meredyth is very nice, and awfully rich, you know.”
Lady Beranger turns round slowly and fixes her keen searching eyes on her daughter.
But Zai has not been born and bred in Belgravia for nothing.
Not a lash quivers—not a change of colour comes—under the scrutiny.
“I always said Carlton Conway was a cad!” her ladyship observes coldly; “and I am very glad you have found it out too.”
“But I haven’t, Mamma, not the least in the world. I think quite as well of Mr. Conway as ever.”
Zai’s self-possession amazes and almost annoys Lady Beranger. She is positively out-Heroding Herod! But she only says, in a cold, hard voice:
“Think as well of him as you like, Zai, so long as you keep it to yourself. His sort of people are all very nice in their proper places, but I have never advocated their being in Society. Thereisthe individual in question!”
Zai looks eagerly round, and her cheeks glow crimson and then wax pale, and she bites her lips to stay their trembling, as the Meredyths’ high Barouche with stepping roans dashes by, having for its freight only Miss Meredyth and herfiancé! (Mrs. Meredyth, not so scrupulous as Lady Beranger about thebienséances, thinks there is no harm in an engaged couple being seen alone in the Park.)
Miss Meredyth, dressed in rose colour, with a sailor’s hat perched coquettishly on her fair hair, looks uncommonly pretty, and so Carlton Conway seems to think, for he is so engrossed in regarding her that the Berangers’ Victoria is passed unnoticed.
“I thought it was the Meredyth girl’s money the man was after, but he seems to beénormément épris,” Lady Beranger remarks indifferently, hoping the shaft will fly straight home and cure all remaining nonsense in her daughter’s head, or heart, or wherever it may be.
Zai answers nothing. With a sharp pang of misery and jealousy, she, too, has noticed how devoted Carl seems.Après cela le Déluge.
She is thankful when her mother orders “Home.” She is sick of bowing and smiling when she would like to lie downand die; but nevertheless she trips airily down to the dining-room, eats more dinner than is her habit, and after this goes into the conservatory and plucks a couple of the reddest roses she can find.
“Fanchette, make me awfully pretty to-night!” she coaxes, and thefemme de chambreis nothing loth. Zai has every “possibility,” as she calls it, of beingbelle comme un ange, and more than satisfies her exquisite Parisian taste when her toilette is complete.
“She wants but two little wings to make her a veritable angel,” Fanchette says to the English maid who assists her in her duties. “Mees Zai is the flower of the house!”
“Flower of theflock, you mean,” Jane corrects.
“No, I do not,” Fanchette replies, offended. “I haveneverheard of flowersin a flock. I have heard of a flock of goose—andyouare one of them.”
Meanwhile, Zai stands before her mirror. Her eyes are so sad—so sad, that they look too large for her small white face.
“Oh, Carl! Carl!” she says, half aloud, “you have forgotten me quite! And I love you—love you so much that my heart is broken, Carl!”
“Zai, the carriage is ready,” cries Baby, drumming her knuckles on the closed door.
Zai starts guiltily. What right has she to be murmuring love words to a man who will soon be another woman’s husband!
She clasps a pearl necklace round her throat, fastens a pearl star into her bonnie brown hair, then pauses one moment.
It is the first time in her life that she has ever had recourse to the foreign aid ofornament, and it seems quite an awful thing to her. But no one must guess at her feelings from her wan face to-night. She had not been proud with Carl because she loved him so, but she must be proud with the world, and not wear her poor desolate heart on her sleeve for daws to peck at.
She takes the two roses she plucked, pulls off their petals mercilessly, then rubs them on her cheeks, and flinging on her cloak she runs downstairs.
Lady Beranger is putting the finishing touches to her elaborate dress of primrose satin andpoint de Flandre, in which she looks like an empress, and only the three girls are assembled in the hall when Zai appears.
“How do I look?” she asks, throwing off her wrap. “Fanchette says I lookbellecomme un ange, and I want to be especially beautiful to-night!”
“What for?” three voices ask at once. “It’s only a State Ball, on the pattern of all the others we have been to. The Queen won’t be there to make anything different. So what on earth does it signify how you look?”
“I’ll tell you!” Zai says slowly and deliberately and unflinchingly. The rose petals hide the pallor on her cheeks, and the smile on her lips does away with the sadness in her eyes. “But, girls, you must keep it a secret from the Governor and Mamma. I want to look my very best to-night, because I intend to make my bow before the Princess as a futurePeeress!”
Lady Beranger enters at this moment.
The State Ball is worth seeing after all, though the Beranger girls had said thatit was exactly on the same pattern as its predecessors, and that Her Gracious Majesty was not going to shed the light of her august presence to make it any different.
Seldom within four walls has more beauty been gathered than to-night. Of course everyone admires the Princess most, but of feminine loveliness there is every possible variety to suit every possible taste.
There is also a good deal of the feminine element which is not lovely. But, as if to atone for Dame Nature’s shortcomings, it is generally expensively dressed.
Zai soon has cause to forget or despise Fanchette’s soothing doctrine of the fitness of things, and to feel that her pale bluefailleand white illusion, garnished with water lilies, are chiefly remarkable for their fresh simplicity, as she views the superbsilks and satins and laces that do honour to Royalty.
She dances away with half-a-dozen of the Household Brigade, with the Duke of Shortland, Lord Walsingham, and several Belgravianhabitués, and then she walks through the room with Percy Rayne.
He is quite as good as a catalogue in a ball-room. Ever since he was a small boy Fate has hung him about the Court of St. James’. He has the names of the upper current, and all the social celebrities, on the tips of his well-shaped nails, and faces he never forgets. Added to these, he has all the fashionable gossip on his tongue, for in the interludes of “business” at the F.O., as well as at the other “O’s,” they enjoy a dish of scandal as much as the softer sex do.
He points out the Beauties now to Zai,who, in spite of her heart-broken condition, regards them with admiring interest.
“There!” he says, “is an American, Mrs. Washington Ulysses Trotter, called the Destroying Angel, because she kills everyone dead, from Princes downward, by a glance of her beautiful eyes; but, unfortunately for her, her triumphal car will be probably stopped in its career. The Yankees are going out of fashion, you know. Royalty has decreed it. For Royalty, like common flesh, is liable to get bothered with being run after and accosted as if it were Jack or Tom or Harry. But Mrs. Washington Ulysses Trotter does not mind much. She knows her little outing at Buckingham Palace is quite enough to get her theentréeinto all the Fifth Avenue houses. She will talk about the Prince—
“Oh my, isn’t he elegant, and so chatty!I felt just like talking to Cyrus Hercules Hopkins—that’s my cousin down Chicago way, you know. And the Princess! well, certainly,sheisn’t proud! It was just like being at home in our English basement brown stone house, Maddison Avenue—at Buckingham Palace!”
Zai laughs, and he rattles on.
“That’s one of our big financier’s daughters. Ugly, isn’t she? I hate the type. Theparureof brilliants isn’t bad, and those yards of lace—point D’ Alençon, isn’t it—that trail about her are worth more than my year’s salary. But they are so devilish stingy in the Offices. We work like slaves, and get neither tin norkudös. And you would not believe it, Zai, but the Foreign Secretary hasn’t more responsibility on his back than I have on mine! See! there’s the famous wife of one ofthe Ministers—Count Schoen. She has been a celebrated beauty in her day, and cannot forget it. And they say she enamels and bakes her face in an oven. What do you think a cousin of mine—aningénuefrom the country—did, at the Caledonian Ball? She went up to the end of the room, and after intently examining Count and Countess Schoen, said aloud,
“ ‘How funny that they have Madame Tussaud’s figures here.’
“Imagine the horror of her partner!”
Zai laughs again. But this time the laugh is forced, and she catches her breath hard.
Through the swaying crowd she espies Gabrielle among the bevy of beauties.
Gabrielle holds her own to-night. Her black lace dress becomes her white creamy skin admirably. Scarlet japonicas burnand gleam in her coal-black hair and on her bosom. On her cheeks, the bright pink flush lends increased lustre to her large dark eyes. As she sweeps along she has that supreme unconsciousness of manner which is never seen save in a woman who feels she is well dressed and able to defy the criticism of her own sex.
Gabrielle does not see Zai or Percy Rayne looking at her, for her eyes are mostly cast down on the fan she carries, neither does Lord Delaval, on whose arm she leans, observe them, for he is bending and speaking very low under the sweep of his long fair moustache, while his glance rests on the undeniably very handsome face near his shoulder.
“Don’t they make a good looking couple?” asks Rayne. “What a pity they don’t arrange to walk through life together—they look so well doing it through a ball-room.”
“They are both handsome,” Zai answers indifferently, but she is, spite of her, a little piqued.
This man—to whom her answer has to be given to-night—has not even deemed it worth his while to ask for it, though the evening is wearing on. His neglect hurts her more, sore and suffering so lately from Carlton Conway’s behaviour, and poor little Zai feels that she would like to hide her diminished head for ever.
“I am very tired,” she says to her partner; “Do you think I could get a seat somewhere?”
“Yes; but come out of this crowd. It’s awfully hot, and you look like the whitest lily, Zai—we’ll find a seat somewhere.”
So they go out, and he finds a chair forher in a vestibule, where a little cool air revives her.
“Imustgo. I have to dance this with Lady Vernon. Do you mind sitting here quietly till I come back?” he asks kindly, seeing how weary and wan she looks.
“I should like to stay quiet here very much,” Zai answers gratefully; “and don’t hurry back for me.”
She half closes her eyes, and fans herself slowly, and feels desolate—so desolate.
Her womanly triumph over Miss Meredyth has evidently fallen to the ground; Lord Delaval has either changed his mind, or else he was only laughing at her at Caryllon House—and as she thinks thus, Zai shivers with mortification and shame, and leaning her head against the wall, grows lost to external things.
She does not know how long she has sathere, and she does not care—all she yearns for is the solitude of her own room; but the ball is not half over, and hours—dreary hours—lie before her.
“Zai! is it to be—Yes?”
She starts up, flushing red as a rose—her heart beating wildly, her eyes with a dumb wonder in them.
She is but a bit of a girl, she has been cruelly jilted by the man she loves, and she craves for a little incense to heramour propre, even though it be dearly bought.
“It is—yes,” she almost whispers; then in a sort of mist she sees Lord Delaval’s face light up, and the colour creeps warmly over his blond skin.
“Thank you, my darling!” he says very low, bending over her, and she feels his lips touch her bare shoulder. Then she puts her hand on his arm, and withoutanother word they walk back into the ball-room, and up to Lady Beranger.
“Let me present to you the future Lady Delaval!” he says quietly, and Zai slips her ice-cold fingers into her mother’s clasp, and for the first time her mother looks at her with positive affection in her glance.
“Is it true, Zai!” she asks, eagerly.
“Quite true, Mamma,” Zai answers without a falter.
A little later the news has been told to the Royalties, and with kindly smiles and words they give their congratulations on her future happiness.
But though the Royalties know of the match in prospective, Zai pleads that it may be kept a secret from her sisters for the present. It may be that the death and burial of her first love is too recent to permit of matrimonial rejoicings just now, orit may be that she wants to realise what has come to pass, and to resign herself to the future before the others touch upon the subject, and probe not too quietly the still open wound made by Carlton Conway. Lord and Lady Beranger are too well pleased that matters have turned out so satisfactorily to refuse her request.
And, as for Lord Delaval himself, perhaps he feels a little uncomfortable at appearing on the scene as a devoted lover before Gabrielle—Gabrielle, who has told him, in the passionate words that rush unchecked to her scarlet lips, that the day of his marriage to any other woman will be the day of her death.
She is not one to kill herself; she is not romantic enough for folly of that kind; what she means is probably a social and moral death; but Lord Delaval—with theinnate vanity of his sex—believes that Gabrielle’s handsome face and superb figure will be found floating on the turbid bosom of old Father Thames, and he shrinks more from the scandal of the thing than from the remorse likely to rise up in his breast. Zai’s desire, then, that the engagement shall be kept quiet for a while, meets with his approval. After all, he can find chances to gather honey (if not all the day) from his betrothed’s sweet lips—and stolen sweets have always been nicer to his thinking than any others.
When they say good-night, he contents himself by squeezing five very cold fingers, and slipping a magnificent brilliant on to the third one, which pledge of her bondage Zai does not even glance at before she drops it into her pocket.
“Did you like the ball, Zai?” Trixyasks, as they brush their hair before going to bed.
“I hated it,” Zai answers, giving her chesnut tresses an impatient pull. “I wish I had never gone to it!”