Daughters of Belgravia; vol 2 of 3

CHAPTER I.

LAST NIGHT

“Allow me to congratulate you, Zai,” Gabrielle says with a sneer.

Zai leans against the casement, idly toying with a spray of deep red roses she has just plucked from the trails that cover the wall hard by. She is very pale, and dark shadows underline her pretty eyes, and her thoughts are evidently far away, for she starts visibly as Gabrielle’s voice falls on her ear.

“Congratulate me, and what for?” she answers rather bitterly.

Congratulations indeed! when her poor heart is so sore, her spirit so wounded by Carlton Conway’s apparent defection last night.

“On your conquest of Lord Delaval,” Gabrielle flashes out. “What a horrid little hypocrite you are, Zai! To think of how you spoke of him only yesterday morning and how you flung yourself at his head last night!”

“I don’t understand,” Zai murmurs, but her cheeks are quite flushed now and her grey eyes droop, for she remembers perfectly how, to pique Carl, she had flirted, as folks might think, with Lord Delaval.

“Zai! Zai! I thought you never told lies, and now you stand there in broad daylight uttering a monstrous falsehood.”

Upon this, Zai bursts into an uncontrolable passion of tears, and flinging herself on the sofa presses down her face on the cushions.

Gabrielle attempts neither soothing nor scolding. To her such emotion is a display of childishness for which her hard nature has no sympathy. She rests calm and unmoved in her chair, languidly inhaling Eau de Cologne and occasionally sprinkling herself with a fragrant shower while she waits for the tears to subside.

“It seems very foolish spoiling your eyes by crying, Zai,” she remarks at last contemptuously, when her not too great a stock of patience is, like the widow’s cruse of oil, exhausted. “Of course I don’t deny that Lord Delaval flirted with you as much as ever you could wish, and I suppose if you are engaged to him, it does not much matter if you did afficher yourself with him so shamefully.”

“Gabrielle, you know I would sooner die than engage myself to that man!” Zai exclaims impetuously, dashing away her tears and sitting bolt upright.

“Child, you must surely be joking,” answers Gabrielle, with a well-feigned accent of surprise, and with a quick uplifting in a curve of her dark brows.

Gabrielle is a rare actress by nature, and her vocation in life is the stage assuredly.

“Do you mean to tell me then that you are not engaged to him? If so you are certainly most indiscreet. All I know is, that if I descend to afficher myself before society with anyone, I shall take some man I like, and not one I was always professing to detest!”

“I do detest Lord Delaval!” cries Zai, in as shrill a tone as her bird-like voice can take. “I don’t profess to detest him, but I detest him with all my heart and soul, and you know it.”

“How on earth should I know it?” Gabrielle says sarcastically. “In fact I quite differ with you on this point; you may possibly fancy that you dislike him, but actions always speak so much louder than words that I am certainly sceptical.”

“And pray what action of mine has shown any liking for him?” persists Zai, her eyes blazing angrily.

“Did your proceedings last night show any dislike? Instead of staying in the ball-room with the rest of the world, you prefer to remain outside. It was desperately dangerous and sentimental work that, Zai – only the Chinese lanterns and Lord Delaval’s handsome eyes to keep you company, while you hung on his arm, and probably arrived at the conclusion that Lord Delaval is not worse looking than most of his sex!”

“Don’t!”

There is quite a ring of pain in Zai’s voice, and she gives a little shudder. The whole situation these last words bring so vividly before her is one she hates to realise, for she knows few would be charitable enough, and certainly not Carl, to give her credit for real dislike to such a rare-visaged Lothario as Lord Delaval, whose eyes, though their expression at times is hard and chilly as marble, can, when he desires, have an undeniable fascination in their sapphire depths, the bare outline of whose face is simply superb, and who looks what he is, an aristocrat all over.

The passionate looks Carlton Conway had given her have been her guiding star, and she believes that she would unhesitatingly follow their light into the deadly Styx itself, so it can be imagined how her very soul revolts as Gabrielle insinuates that she flung herself at Lord Delaval’s head.

“Oh, Gabrielle, do you really doubt in your heart I would give anything I possess never to see Lord Delaval again and to be all right with Carl?”

“I don’t care about going into possibilities,” Gabrielle replies pettishly, “I prefer restraining myself to simple facts.”

“Perhaps you will be less sceptical of my feelings if I explain a little about last night, Gabrielle,” Zai murmurs deprecatingly. “You see I heard what Sir Everard said to you about Carl riding with Crystal Meredyth and looking ‘awful spoons.’ How those vulgar horrid words cut me through and through, Gabrielle! Then when we arrived, the first thing I saw was Carl waltzing with her, and – and – as if he really enjoyed it! I could not bear the sight of that, so when Lord Delaval proposed to go and see the illuminated grounds, I was thankful to go. After we had been out a little while I was anxious to come in, but he told me that Carl was engaged to Crystal – that he was obliged to marry some one who was rich, Gabrielle,” and Zai flings herself down at her sister’s feet and lifts up great pitiful eyes. “Instead of bullying me you ought to feel for me! I am heart-broken!”

“Heart-broken! You silly child, hearts are tough things and don’t break so easily, I don’t believe Carl Conway is going to marry that girl, but if he is, you must know he is a deceitful interested creature not worth thinking of. Well, what did you say to Lord Delaval in return for his information?”

“I only insisted on going round the garden by myself. I wanted to be alone with my wretchedness, and I wanted to call up courage to meet Carl face to face without betraying all I felt.”

“Well?”

“Lord Delaval would not let me go alone, but I swear I forgot his existence even!”

Gabrielle gives a short unpleasant laugh at this.

“It is true, Heaven knows. We returned and were just going into the house when you and Sir Everard spoke about us – we were not a stone’s throw from you, and of course every word you said fell out clear and distinct. I confess I was surprised at all I heard, as you know you did not speak the truth. However we won’t discuss that point now. What I did hear made me resolve on an explanation with Lord Delaval at once. So I just told him frankly that I did not care for him and would never marry him!”

“In other words, you were amiable enough to reject him before he had the trouble of offering himself,” Gabrielle says with a mocking smile.

“He had told me before that he loved me passionately, Gabrielle!” Zai murmurs with a hot deprecatory blush.

Her delicacy of character would not have let her reveal this except in defence of the seemingly fast conduct that has called down Gabrielle’s sneers. And Gabrielle is well punished for her sneers – for this revelation of Zai’s drives the colour from her cheek, and makes her writhe with jealousy.

“Very probably he did,” she answers sharply. “Lord Delaval is a would-be monopoliser of women’s hearts, and passionate love-making is one of the tricks of his trade. I don’t believe there was a bit of genuine sentiment in all he said.”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care if it was so. His protestations hadn’t a feather’s weight with me. And I never wish to see him again,” Zai says quietly and truthfully.

“It never appears to strike you what people will say of last night. Society hasn’t much romance in its composition. Society does not know, and would not credit that Zai Beranger wanders by day and night, blind to external influences, with a buckler girded on her heart on which is written ‘Carlton Conway.’ And if Belgravia cannot comprehend such high-flown sentiment, is it strange that I, born and bred amongst the canaille, with unlimited faith in the practical and matter-of-fact, and with a contempt for the foolish and the sickly romance of women, cannot help doubting and blaming you?”

“Blame has no effect on me,” Zai says rather defiantly, with her little head erect. She is astonished and irritated at the cool condemnatory way in which it pleases Gabrielle to speak. It strikes her that there is too much presumption in it, and her really sweet nature, trodden on, like the traditional worm, seems inclined to “turn.”

“But Lady Beranger is a slave to on dits, and she will lash herself into a fury if you don’t carry out her scheme of marrying you to Lord Delaval, after your curious behaviour last night.”

“It is mamma’s fault, and not mine that it happened; she is always throwing Lord Delaval and me together, and the whole thing is hateful to me.”

“Fiddlesticks! Mamma and lover being leagued, the odds are too much against you. You had better make up your mind to marry him; you will have to do so by-and-bye.”

Lord Delaval’s threat almost verbatim. Zai blanches with a sudden thrill of fear, and her heart gives a quick bound, but she says lightly:

“Nous verrons!”

“Nous verrons!” is the answer, and after a moment, Gabrielle goes on in studied accents: “I think it right to tell you, Zai, that I am resolved not to persuade you any more to marry Lord Delaval. I am a soldier of fortune, you know, and have to make my own way in the world; Lady Beranger deserves no tolerance from me, so I warn you, that I am going to try and serve myself, and if my interest clashes with anyone else’s I won’t yield an inch.”

“In other words, Gabrielle, you give me notice that you are going in for Lord Delaval, yourself! I am sure I wish you bon voyage in your undertaking. I hope you will find the result, if gained, a happy one.”

“I am not afraid, I never knew what fear was in my life. Cowardice in man or woman is the biggest crime in my eyes,” Gabrielle says with a dare-devil glance.

“But,” replies Zai, “why on earth should you consider it necessary to warn me of your project, I, who have no interest in the matter except to wish you happy?”

“Simply because I should wish the point made clear to you, so that you may not think me deceitful in the end. I owe the world —your world of Belgravia – nothing. But I have determined to take all I can gain from it by my woman’s wit.”

“Follow Trixy’s example, and sell yourself to the highest bidder you can find in my world, then!”

“No one has ever bid high enough for me,” Gabrielle cries bitterly, at the same time tossing her head with the proud air of a De Rohan. “Pariah, as I am, I have that which many of you Belgravians lack – the knowledge how to live. Mon Dieu! What a magnificent specimen of a grande dame I should make! Would that I were a peeress, and rich!”

Zai looks at her wonderingly, then she says quietly:

“I cannot think why people do not consider an inordinate desire for money sinful. It seems to me that money is at the bottom of every crime ever since our Lord Himself was betrayed for thirty pieces of silver.”

“Why don’t you preach all this to Trixy, then? She is practical in her greed for gold. You know all my rhapsodies may be purely theoretical.”

“It would be a waste of time and breath to preach to Trixy. She has not a tenth part of your common sense, Gabrielle, and she cannot be held so accountable for her actions. Of course, mamma has literally coerced her into this awful match. She will endure the existence she has in prospect better than I should do, however. She won’t think of Mr. Stubbs and his vulgarity while she has fine dresses and jewels. Sometimes I believe these things constitute her ideas of real happiness, do you know! But you, Gabrielle, are so different; if you pretend to lack a heart, at any rate you don’t lack brains.”

“No, I certainly don’t,” Gabrielle answers conceitedly.

Lack brains! Why it is on these very brains that she relies to bring honey and roses into her life, to get her luxury and ease, purple and fine linen, such as she loves actually quite as much as Trixy does: but has the savoir faire, or rather cunning, to keep her petty weaknesses locked up within the citadel of her own breast.

For a woman – and a young one – few could hanker more greedily after the flesh-pots and the silken attire of the children of Heth than this girl does.

To deck her ripe glowing beauty in the splendour of satins and velvets and soft bright hues, to see her long graceful throat encircled by the gleam of oriental pearls, her dusky braids crowned with a diadem of glittering brilliants, has been the dream of her life.

Ever since the old days when she loved to don a faded scarlet bow or a tarnished gilt brooch, to queen it over her sister gamins.

“By the way, Zai, I found out last night, that Baby has accepted old Archibald Hamilton! It was only by chance, as the little brat wants to keep the matter a secret from us for a while, I believe.”

“Baby!” cries Zai, in amazement. “And yet I ought not to be surprised, for I might have read the news in Lord Delaval’s face when he looked up from beside her at tea last night. I expect he likes embarrass des richesses, and is angry that even one of his worshippers should secede from her homage.”

“It is no reason, because Baby gives her fat, dimpled hand to old Hamilton, that she should consider it necessary to close her heart to the fascination of her quasi lover!” says Gabrielle, with her Balzacian ideas, ideas that find no response in the pure mind of Zai.

“I can’t stay chattering any longer, Gabrielle,” she says hurriedly, and in the twinkling of an eye she is gone; and, as Gabrielle looks up surprised at her summary departure, she sees the tall figure of Lord Delaval slowly crossing the lawn towards the house, and guesses at once why Zai has disappeared in such haste. She bends forward, and, with wildly beating heart and tightly clenched hands, eagerly watches him.

Everyone who knew Gabrielle, sooner or later, asked themselves if she had a heart; and nobody amongst those most intimate with her, had yet been able to answer the question at all satisfactorily, excepting Lord Delaval.

But he did not seem to deem it worth his while to study her at all, though indirectly, and at all favourable opportunities, he let her be fully aware through the medium of his handsome eyes and his voice that he knew she had a heart, and that it was one he read like an open book and found remarkably interesting.

According to Dickens, there are chords in the human heart – strange varying strings which are only struck by accident, which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.

And so it is with Gabrielle.

She has reached over a quarter of a century.

Her nature is as passionate as that of a daughter of the south, and her early nurturing has been as wild and free as an Arab’s; but no man’s hand had struck the keynote of feeling until Lord Delaval put in an appearance on the scene.

He came, he saw, he conquered; and Gabrielle fell down at once, helplessly and hopelessly, to worship him.

CHAPTER II.

FLIRTATION

Gabrielle’s cheeks grow crimson and her eyes glitter with pleasure, that for a little while they two will be alone, with no stranger to intermeddle with their joy, as she watches Lord Delaval approach nearer and nearer and finally step over the sill of the casement.

There is always a peculiar directness, an odd sort of intimacy in his manner towards her, whenever they are thrown alone together, that produces at once a most unconventional effect.

Now, as he walks up towards the sofa where she sits, the orthodox smile of greeting is lacking on his handsome face, the ordinary hand-clasp is unoffered, and Gabrielle does not even attempt to rise from her nest of downy cushions, while her face droops away a little from his gaze.

There is just a softer gleam in the big black eyes, a quick, nervous pressure of the even white teeth on the full, red underlip, and these are the only signs that she recognises his presence on the scene.

But Lord Delaval – confident and complacent – requires no spoken welcome. He has come in not knowing who he may find in the room, but finding Gabrielle, is ready, faute de mieux, to make love to her in the underhand way that does not compromise a man, and passes away an hour.

Ever since Baby’s marriage to Archibald Hamilton had been hinted at by Lady Beranger, and he had suspected Zai’s weakness for the popular actor, he had insinuated a passion, if he had not one, for Gabrielle. It may be that her evident liking for him, and her undeniable personal attraction, had touched him; but – probably it was only a selfish gratification he is given to seeking.

“I am so glad to find you alone. I wanted to see you so much,” he says in a quiet outspoken fashion, that to a girl who hates what she terms the insincerity and shams of society is, in itself, fascinating.

“You wanted to see me, and you are glad to find me alone!” she repeats, then, to cover the nervousness his proximity always brings, she adds flippantly:

“Really, Lord Delaval, if Lady Beranger heard you she would drop at such a breach of the convenances.”

“Possibly,” he answers coolly, “but hang the convenances. Don’t you know that there are times in every fellow’s life when he comes into collision with the conventionalities, and either breaks them, or else risks being broken by keeping them? So long as I can run with my Juggurnauth, alias ‘Society,’ I am content, but I cannot throw myself before it and get mangled. Do you know I rather fancied I had a chance of finding you alone here, and so I determined to make chance a certainty?”

Gabrielle gives him a quick glance of surprise, while her heart throbs faster than it has ever done before in the six-and-twenty years she has lived.

Lord Delaval has often looked love at her – hinted at love, but he has never gone as far as this.

She has met him by appointment once or twice; still, nothing has been said to make her believe he really cared for her.

Now she reddens like a rose, and feels a nervous tremor run through her, and yet his manner is scarcely like a lover’s. There is, in fact, nothing in what he says that could not pass as the ordinary talk of Society, yet the conversation seems lifted out from an ordinary atmosphere. They two, Lord Delaval and herself, are alone, and he talks to her just as if they were disembodied spirits. There are men occasionally in this world who have the power of bringing a woman they approach into direct contact with their own natures. They have a special gift of penetration, and one feels that in whatever relation one meets them, it is sustained by one’s real self towards an equally real individuality on the other side.

Lord Delaval always makes Gabrielle feel this, and his intense manner adds to the feeling, but, with the supreme wilfulness of her nature, she refuses to yield to the magnetic influence he has over her without, at any rate, a struggle.

“You can have nothing to say to me, Lord Delaval, that all the world and the world’s wife cannot hear. Are you mistaking me by chance for Zai?” she asks, carelessly, but she has no control over her features, and the excitement of his presence lends them a flashing, bewildering beauty, that positively dazzles him —pro tem.!

He fixes his deep blue eyes on her with an expression of fervid admiration, and her lids fall beneath the passion of his glance, but she lifts them bravely, and meets his gaze full.

“You really look as if you thought I did not mean what I say!”

“And no more you do, ma belle,” he answers quietly. Outside the sun shines down furiously; the air is warm as an Indian summer. Up and down, up and down, the butterflies skim over the flowers, and a lazy rose-twig gives an inert tap on the window pane. Gabrielle does not reply. She feels shy, and as shyness is foreign to her, it is not only an uncomfortable, but a painful sensation.

“You snubbed Aylmer last evening,” he says.

“Yes!” she answers laconically.

“But why? Did you forget how many good things he has to offer you? Most women would jump at such a match.”

“Soit! but I don’t,” she answers indifferently.

“Of course not,” he tells her. “I know you better than you know yourself – no one will ever know you as well as I do – and, still more, Gabrielle, no one will ever love you as I love you! No, don’t start!”

For she rises from her seat, feelings of various kinds surge over her, and she clasps her fingers tightly together.

“Gabrielle, I have been longing to tell you this,” he goes on, in a concentrated voice, which has a deal of suppressed passion in it; “I see no reason for denying myself the expression of what is strong within me. I don’t want you to tell me that you love me, for I should hate to evoke from your sweet lips words that your heart doesn’t force through them, in spite of convenances! I only want you to listen to me when, instead of dilating on the beauty of the weather, and so forth, I lay bare my heart to you.”

Gabrielle believes he is laughing at her, and the belief lashes her into fury.

“Please, Lord Delaval, reserve your amusement for some one else. I am not of sufficiently elevated position for you to waste your breath on. Do you forget that Lady Beranger looks on me as a sort of social pariah, and almost a gutter-girl!” she flares out scornfully, her lips trembling, and looking doubly tempting in their wrath.

Perhaps Lord Delaval, with his worship for pretty things, feels their increased attraction, for as his eyes fall on them, his manner grows really more impassioned. He moves closer to her side on the sofa, but she averts her head, and piques him by a feigned coldness.

“I can’t see your face, Gabrielle! And I want to see it while I talk to you,” he pleads quite tenderly.

The tone touches her, not because she credits its sincerity, but because she has never dreamed that he could ever speak to her thus.

“Gabrielle, do you believe in affinities?”

“I believe in sympathy,” she answers, wondering what he is going to say now.

“I am a firm believer in affinities, and don’t believe in the possibility of love existing between two persons devoid of affinity. Tell me, Gabrielle! do you follow me at all?”

She makes a slight gesture of assent, but she doesn’t in the slightest comprehend what he is driving at. No matter, he is close besides her. If she likes, she can touch him, and this is enough to put this impassioned child of Eve into a fever of delight.

“I don’t believe that anyone can give another anything that does not belong to that other. He may withhold it to a certain degree, but it must be given in the end. Perfect love is when one meets someone to whom one can give all, and from whom one desires all.”

“Imperfect affinities are all that most people in our world know of love, and, Gabrielle, Belgravia is horribly ignorant, do you know? Being so, they call a part of such and such a thing the whole, and demand allegiance of one’s whole nature to a feeling that belongs to, and feeds but a small part of it! Now, Gabrielle – my beautiful, tempting Gabrielle! you and I have this in common, that we hate sham, and never pretend to fine sentimental feelings unless we possess them. Isn’t it true?”

Lord Delaval bends over her till his face nearly touches hers, and he smiles conceitedly as he notices how rosy red the cheek near him grows by his proximity.