Kitobni o'qish: «Daughters of Belgravia; vol 1 of 3»

CHAPTER I.
A LEADER OF SOCIETY

 
“O Love! when Womanhood is in the flush,
And Man a pure unspotted thing,
His first breathed word, and her half-conscious blush,
Are fair as light in Heaven – or flowers in Spring!”
 

“Lady Beranger

at home

A 1, Belgrave Square. – June 20th.”

All the élite in London know these bits of pasteboard well, and all the élite like to avail themselves of Lady Beranger’s invitation, for Lady Beranger’s house is one of the swellest in town, and offers multifarious attractions.

Everything is en règle this fine June night, when myriads of stars keep high jubilee in the sky, and a round, yellow moon like a big blubber ball, promises to develop into yet greater brightness as the hours wear on.

The windows are ablaze from top to bottom of the Belgravian mansion. The floral decorations – banks of purple and white violets, straight from the glorious Riviera, are perfect and costly.

Achille, Lord Beranger’s famous French chef, has surpassed himself in dainty concoctions. Gunter has sent in buckets of his world-renowned ice, and Covent Garden has been ransacked for choicest fruits.

One little aside before we go any further. All this magnificence and lavishness is “on tic.” The Berangers, like a good many others of their class, are as poor as church mice; but “Society” – that English Juggernauth that crushes everything under its foot – demands that its votaries shall even ruin themselves to satisfy its claims – but revenons à nos moutons.

Everybody who is anybody is here. All the lords and the ladies, the honourables and dishonourables, the hangers on to aristocratic skirts, the nouveau riche, the pet parsons and actors, eligibles and detrimentals, and the black sheep, that go towards composing the “upper current.” The spacious rooms teem with handsome thoroughbred men, and lovely well-dressed? – women. And yet “they come! they come,” though the clocks are chiming midnight and Coote and Tinney’s Band has been pouring out its softest strains for two hours.

The host and hostess are still on duty near the entrance, all ready to be photographed; so we’ll just take them.

Lord Beranger is tall and thin. His hair is so fair that the silver threads thickly intersecting it are hardly visible. His eyes are blue – the very light blue that denotes either insincerity or imbecility – his smile is too bland to be genuine, his talk is measured to match his gait, and he lives the artificial life of so many of his brotherhood, to whom the opinion of “the world” is everything.

Lady Beranger is fair, fat and forty – and a hypocrite – as she awaits her tardy guests, so weary, that under the shelter of her long trailing blue velvet skirts and point de gaze, she indulges in the gallinacious tendency of standing first on one leg and then on the other – her expression is as sweet as if she delighted to be a martyr to these late votaries of fashion.

Only once she loses sight of worldliness, and permits the ghost of a frown to flit across her brow, as she whispers to her husband:

“Is Zai with Delaval? I don’t see that Conway anywhere!”

Lord Beranger shrugs his shoulders and answers nothing. Achille’s best efforts in Salmis de Gibier, sauce Chasseur and Baba au Rhum, are just ready, and he is evolving the momentous point of who he should take in. He would not make an error in such an important thing as precedence for all the world! a regular society man is always a stickler for absurd little trifles like these. Does the handsome Duchess of Allchester rank higher than the elegant and younger Duchess of Eastminster? He turns up his light blue eyes and puckers his forehead in the vain hope of calling up to mind the date of the dukedoms, but it is futile; this salient fact has entirely slipped from his memory. So he goes in search of the patrician lady who finds most favour in his sight.

Lady Beranger, still in statu quo, turns towards a girl who has paused near, in the middle of a waltz.

“Gabrielle, can you tell me where Zai is?” she asks in icy tones. The tone and the gleam in her eyes betoken dislike, and the girl addressed pays her back with interest. There is quite a ring of malicious pleasure in her voice as she answers her stepmother.

“Zai wanted some supper after three dances with Carlton Conway, so he took her in to have some.”

Lady Beranger flushes angrily, and vouchsafing no further notice of her “cross in life” – Gabrielle – walks away in her stately fashion, exchanging pleasant words or smiles as she goes, but throwing a hawk-like glance round the room all the time.

Chafing inwardly at her stepdaughter’s answer, especially as it was made before Lord Delaval, she does a tour of the capacious salon, then dives through the crowd at the door of the supper room, and finally subsides on to a seat next to a fair-haired, blue-eyed, good-looking miniature of Lord Beranger.

“Baby, have you seen Zai?” she questions, low but sharply.

Baby Beranger looks up into her mother’s face with wide-open innocent eyes. It would be hard to credit the owner of such eyes with deceit, or such pretty red lips with fibs. Baby has such a sweet little face, all milk and roses, surmounted by little hyacinthine golden curls like a cherub’s or a cupid in a valentine, and her mouth is like an opening pomegranate bud, but no matter what her face expresses, she is born and bred in Belgravia, and is Belgravian to the backbone.

“Zai, mamma!” she says innocently, “she is waltzing with Lord Delaval I think.”

It is a deliberate falsehood, but it comes quite glibly from the child-like lips, and Baby, though she is only seventeen, has almost forgotten to blush when she does wrong.

“Gabrielle is with Lord Delaval,” Lady Beranger snaps crossly. “She is not one to let the grass grow under her feet if she has an object in view.”

“What object has Gabrielle to gain, mamma?” As if Baby didn’t know! As if she had not slipped in of a night, with bare, noiseless feet, and a white wrapper, making her look like a delicious little ghost, behind the screen in her sister’s room, and heard Gabrielle tell Zai that she fully intends being Countess of Delaval in spite of Lady Beranger’s circumventions! But though Baby is only seventeen she takes in her mother, who flashes sotto voce:

“What object has Gabrielle? Why to make the best match in town. I don’t believe that girl would stickle at anything.”

Gabrielle’s propensities to go ahead in everything are not interesting to Baby, who has quite a multitude of affaires du cœur of her own, so she agrees with her mother by a mournful shake of her curly head, and is speedily engrossed with a young German attaché, who, deluded by the apparent wealth of the host, thinks the youngest Honble. Miss Beranger will be a prize worth gaining.

Once more Lady Beranger breaks in on the preliminaries of this Anglo-Prussian alliance.

“Where’s Trixy?” she asks.

“Gone off to bed. She said she was ill, but I think she was angry because Carlton Conway forgot his dance.”

“Why did he forget his dance with her?” Lady Beranger mutters sternly, with hydra-headed suspicion gnawing her mind.

“Why?” Baby is a little at fault. She is rather distraite after Count Von Niederwalluf’s last sweet nothing, and she has not an answer ready, so she speaks the truth once in a way:

“I think Carlton Conway was out on the balcony with Zai, mamma.”

“I wish you would not call him Carlton Conway. How often have I told you that it is very bad form for girls to speak familiarly of men,” Lady Beranger rejoins in a harsh whisper, then she moves off, much to Baby’s satisfaction.

“Miladi looks angry,” Von Niederwalluf murmurs softly. “She does not frown because —Ich liebe dich?”

Baby has never been good at languages, or at anything, in fact, that her numerous governesses have toiled to cram into her pretty little head, but

“Ich liebe dich!”

She understands these three little words quite well. She has seen them in a little book called “Useful English and German Phrases for Tourists.”

“Nein,” she coos tenderly, “and if she was angry it would make no difference, for —Ich liebe dich– too – you know.”

Meanwhile the moon has grown fuller and rounder and yellower, and is right prodigal of its beams – and no wonder – for its tender glances, satiated as they must be with mortal beauty, have seldom fallen on a fairer thing than this girl who, Belgravian born and bred, has braved that autocrat of her class, the convenances, and with a long dark cloak thrown over her snowy ball-dress, and a large hat hiding the glory of her hair, has stolen out amidst the fresh cool foliage of the square, to talk to her lover.

A fair young girl, with a pure soft face, that owns a magnificent pair of eyes, big and grey and black lashed, a little straight nose, and a mouth sweet to distraction. Her hat has fallen back, and her hair looks all afire with ruddy gleam as the bright moonlight touches it, and even through the long loose cloak the perfection of her tall, slender figure is visible.

The man she has elected her lord and king for evermore is a man to whom most women give a second glance.

Women like height and strength in man, and this one stands over six feet two, and has broad shoulders, and carries his brown, cropped head as haughtily as if he were a prince instead of a pauper, and what in social parlance is too awful – a detrimental.

He has large brown eyes (sleepy as a rule but quite capable of suddenly kindling into passion), set deeply under straight well defined brows, aquiline thin-cut features, firmly moulded lips, a slight moustache, and a sort of debonnair style that suits him admirably.

Altogether Carlton Conway, “jeune amoureux” at the Bagatelle Theatre, is very much worth looking at, and is just the sort a romantic girl falls down before in abject adoration.

“We must take our lives into our own hands, Zai,” he says very passionately, marking how sweet his love looks under the soft moonbeams. “We must run away, my child!”

One arm is round her slim waist, her cheek, lovelier and whiter and purer than a white rose, is against his breast, her small snowflake of a hand lies restfully in his strong clasp.

Zaidie Beranger starts.

“Run away, Carl?” she asks in an awed voice. Such a frightful defiance of the convenances has never been known in the annals of the Berangers, and it sounds quite too awful in her tiny pink ears. Possibly, or rather probably, she has passed hours, delightful fleeting hours, in her own little sanctum sanctorum in Belgrave Square, picturing the pretty wedding at St. George’s or St. Peter’s, with the organ pealing out “The voice that breathed o’er Eden,” the bevy of aristocratic bridesmaids, with Gabrielle and Trixy and Baby among them, attired in cream satin and dainty lace, and overladen with baskets of Marshal Niel roses, the central and most attractive figures on the scene her Carl and herself.

It is heartrending to think of the demolition of her lovely picture.

“Run away, Zai,” Carl Conway answers impetuously, for the moonbeams are falling full on her face, deepening the lustre of the sweet grey eyes, dancing and quivering on the wealth of fair hair and making her seem if possible doubly desirable in his eyes. “If they won’t let us have our way quietly and comfortably, of course we must run away. Shall we let them part us for ever? Could you bear it, my Zai? Could you know that for the rest of our natural existence (and we may both live to a hundred) that we shall never see each other, speak to one another, kiss each other again, and live?”

She listens rapt, as she always listens to each word and tone of the beloved voice, and she fully realises the intense misery of the situation.

Never to speak to Carl, never to see Carl, never to kiss Carl again!

Her cheek grows whiter, her spirit sinks, her courage to do right dies an ignominious death; and a lump rises up in her throat, and then seems to fall back on her heart like a great cold stone.

“Well, Zai?” he cries, not understanding her silence. “Of course you think as I do, my darling! You know it would kill us to part. Oh, Zai, you cannot surely be hesitating, you cannot be thinking of letting aught come between us two! You must feel that death would be better than separation!”

“Yes!” she whispers, and now, under the moonbeams, he sees a lovely pink colour steal over her face, and the sweetest, tenderest lovelight fill her big grey eyes. “Death would be a thousand times better, I could not live without you, Carl! I suppose it would be very wrong for us to go away, but it would be impossible to stay!”

“Of course it would, my child,” he says quietly, as if assured of the fact.

“If we could wait till I am twenty-one, Carl, perhaps – ”

“No, no!” he interrupts imperiously. “Why, Zai, you can’t know how I love you – how you are life of my life – or you would not dare to suggest such a thing. Two whole long, never-ending, wretched years of feverish anxiety and jealousy and longing. They would drive me clean mad! If you love me as I love you, you would not pause. You would have but one wish, one thought – one resolve in your heart – to bind yourself to me by a chain that no man could break, or woman either,” he adds, thinking of Lady Beranger; “but you don’t love me as I love you!”

The wish, the thought, the resolve are in her heart of hearts now. She looks up at his handsome face, meets the fervour in his brown eyes, and her pretty white arms, bare almost to the shoulder and with ropes of pearls glistening on them, steal round his neck, and her red lips plead wistfully.

“Not love you as you love me, Carl!” she says, with her sweet mouth twitching like a child’s.

Venus Victrix – as is always the case.

If she had said she hated him, and yet looked as beautiful as she does, he would probably have adored her all the same, but now the clinging clasp, the loving grey eyes, the tremulous lips, and, above all, the abandon that love lends her, conquers completely, and the big strong man is the veriest baby, malleable as wax, in the circle of these dimpled arms and within earshot of the throb of his love’s true heart.

“My own, my sweet!” he cries, stooping and kissing her from brow to chin. “I know you will come when I bid you, my Zai!”

“When you bid me, Carl,” she says, her head against his shoulder, her eyes fixed on his face.

Silence for a minute or two. The fresh night air sweeps over them, the leaves rustle gently overhead, and they are as virtually alone as Adam and Eve in Eden. Suddenly the strains of a band fall faintly on the quiet square, and they both start from dreamland into reality.

She listens a moment.

“Estudiantina! It’s the eighteenth dance, Carl,” she says, nervously, for Zai has a much more wholesome fear of her august mother than her sisters have. “How long we have been absent!”

He glances at his watch.

“Half-past one o’clock! – nearly one hour and a-half. Who would believe it, little one? Nearly an hour and a half, that has flown like this because you and I are alone together. Just so our lives will pass like a delicious dream, my Zai. I don’t think any two people in this world ever loved one another as we do. The very first time I saw you – do you remember? It was at Lady Derringham’s. I have been devoted to fat, fussy Lady Derringham ever since! I knew it was all over with me. No more flirtations, no more bachelor ways for me. I knew it was my wife standing before me, in a sweet little blue dress, with a bunch as big as herself of lilies of the valley in her bosom. Zai, did you feel any instinct of the kind?”

“Yes,” she whispers, nestling into his arms and kissing his coat-sleeve surreptitiously.

The strains of the Estudiantina Waltz are still floating on the still air. The moon has hidden her face behind a bank of greyish cloud, and already the first pink tinge of dawn peeps down on earth.

“Tell me what you felt?” he says, forgetful of time, of the convenances, of Lady Beranger’s wrath, and clasping her nearer, he tenderly draws the long dark cloak closer round her slender throat.

“In the first moment I saw you, Carl, it seemed to me as if God had chosen me out for such delicious – delicious happiness as no other girl ever had in the world. I loved you in that moment as much as I love you now, Carl! And that is – oh! how can I tell you? I don’t believe that was the beginning of my love, for it was so great, and full, and perfect, that it must have been growing a long, long time. I love you! – I love you! I could say it every hour of my life, until you tired of hearing me. But you will never, never tire of hearing me say it, Carl, will you?” she asks wistfully.

Carlton Conway laughs as he listens, but it is scarcely a laugh that denotes mirth. Eight-and-twenty – he has never found a true woman yet to his thinking, until this one came and sat down in blind adoration at his feet, and gave all her pure and loving heart and soul into his keeping – unreservedly – unquestioningly – and brought a sense of happiness with her which he had never pictured even in his dreams.

Tired of hearing that she loves him! When her love is the one thing in all the world to him. It is these words of hers that make him laugh. They seem so strange and absurd, when he knows that his whole being is full of her. So he answers her by wrapping his arms round her, and pressing fond, fervent kisses on her brow and lids and sweet tempting lips – the lips that are his, and that no other man has touched like this. He has culled their perfume and fragrance, and as he feels this to be true, each kiss that he gives and takes seems to be a link in the chain of love that binds them together.

“When do your people leave town, Zai?” he asks her, “and for how long?”

“The day after to-morrow, Carl,” she answers, stifling back a sob, for Hampshire seems to be the world’s end from London, “but we shall be back in a week.”

“And who has Lady Beranger invited down to Sandilands?”

“Mr. Hamilton and Lord Delaval.”

Carlton Conway grinds his heel into the ground with impotent rage.

“So,” he mutters, “both are eligible men. How well Lady Beranger knows what she’s about. I wonder for which of her lovely daughters she is trying to hook old Hamilton?”

“For Trixy I think, Trixy always gets on with elderly men. I believe she is really in love with someone, and is therefore indifferent if her companions are old or young.”

Carl Conway reddens. Of course everybody knows that Trixy Beranger, who used to be the biggest flirt in town when she came out two years ago, has sobered down strangely, and everybody puts down the change to the influence of Carl Conway.

“And Delaval is asked for you,” he cries jealously.

“Oh, Gabrielle will take care of him,” Zai laughs brightly. “Gabrielle is more fitted for a coronet than either of us. She is so tall and stately, and has so much of what mamma calls worldly guile.”

“Which, thank God, you haven’t, my own Zai. I have got an invitation for the day after to-morrow to Elm Lodge.”

“Ah!” she cries, with a happy smile, “that is only a mile from Sandilands.”

“Yes, but you know Crystal Meredyth is rather fond of me, and Mrs. Meredyth doesn’t object to followers, even if they are artists or actors.”

Zai shivers from head to foot in the warm June night, and grows white to her quivering lips as she draws herself away gently from his clasp.

“What is it, darling?” he asks anxiously.

No answer.

Zai’s head droops so that he cannot see her eyes, so he puts his hand under her chin and lifts up her face, and as he gazes down at it he thinks that God never made so beautiful a thing as she who has been made for him. The red lips quiver, her sweet eyes tell him such a wondrous tale of love, that he forgets everything but himself and her.

How he longs to carry her away in his stalwart arms. His darling, his little sweetheart!

“Come, Zai, my own, own Zai! Speak to me, tell me once more that you love me, that no one will ever make you forget me. It drives me wild to think that those fellows at Sandilands will be near you, and I away.”

“You will have – Crystal Meredyth!” she whispers tremulously, then she breaks into a passion of tears, each of which stab him to the heart.

He kisses them off, and holds her to him fondly, and what with caresses and love words, draws the smiles back to her mouth, and the pink colour to her cheek.

“Zai, will you swear to be as true to me as I shall be true to you?”

“I swear,” she replies unhesitatingly.

“And you won’t let those fellows, Delaval and Hamilton, dare to make love to you?”

“I would rather die, Carl.”

“I believe you would, my child,” he answers in a trustful voice, “and now let us say good-night here, though I am going back to the house to show myself.”

“Good-night!”

And, like Romeo and Juliet, they find parting is such sweet sorrow that it is some moments before it takes place.

And when Zai leaves him, he murmurs to himself, truthfully, honestly:

“My God, how I love her!”

Ten minutes afterwards, he is valsing to the strain of “Love’s Dreamland” with Crystal Meredyth, and whispering low to her, and Crystal, who has set him up as a hero to worship, blushes and smiles with intense satisfaction.

“What a flirt that Conway is,” Lady Beranger soliloquises, as she watches him covertly. “I do not believe he really presumes to think of Zai, but it won’t do to have him interfering with Delaval. What a charming couple they make,” she adds with intense satisfaction, as Zai floats by with Lord Delaval, but she does not mark how distraite her daughter looks, and that the good-looking peer’s soft nothings fall on stoney ground, and neither does she know that when the ball is over, Zai goes to bed and cries bitterly as she remembers that Crystal Meredyth is lovely and that men always like pretty women.