Daughters of Belgravia; vol 3 of 3

She turns away her head, and answers not a word. What can she say? If he could see her face, it might bring him to a knowledge of the true and enduring love he has inspired in the soft, loving, girlish heart. But he doesn’t trouble to see it. Perhaps he thinks it is best to ignore reproach or pathos, rather than let them prove hindrances to his pleasure and amusement.

And Zai neither asks him to curtail his visit to London, nor to speak differently to her. For his indifferent words have cut her to the heart. And for the first time since her marriage, directly his back is turned, she sheds a perfect torrent of tears, and during his absence wanders like a little ghost about the big house, with white cheeks, and great pitiful eyes, and a load on her spirits that she cannot shake off.

Meanwhile, Lord Delaval, driving from Waterloo to his club, espies, standing at a shop, a brougham he knows; and stopping his hansom, walks up to it just as its occupant is getting in.

She is a lovely, golden-haired woman, but he scarcely recognises her. For all the old delicious pink colour has left her cheeks, and she looks wan and haggard, and years older than she did two months ago.

“How do you do, Trixy?” he says, startling her evidently, for she drops a tiny parcel on the pavement. “I wanted to see you. In fact, I came up to Town on purpose.”

“On purpose to see me, Delaval! What for?” she asks nervously. “I can’t stay now to talk, anyhow. Piccadilly isn’t exactly the place for a confab, you know. Especially as everyone doesn’t know you’re my handsome brother-in-law!”

“And you are so very particular as to what people think – eh, Trixy?” he asks, drily.

“Of course, I wish to adhere to the convenances!” she answers, rather sullenly.

“Well, we won’t talk now. When may I call and see you?”

She hesitates, evidently. It may be that her time is not her own. Then suddenly she changes her mind.

“Come with me now, Delaval! I am sure you were only going for a prowl down Regent Street, and I am rather curious to hear what you want to talk about – come in.”

He puts a foot on the step, then pauses.

“But how about the convenances? Everyone doesn’t know that I am not one of your lovers!”

“Bother the convenances,” she cries, impatiently, “and everyone knows I have no lovers.”

He enters the brougham, and a few in the crowd, who know the lovely golden-haired woman by sight as one of the London belles, begin to chatter about her. Different versions and interpretations of the matter fly from lip to lip, the favourite rendition being a modified version of “Auld Robin Gray.”

“She married old Peter Stubbs, the millionaire, against her will, you know,” Bevan, a man in the Coldstreams, tells a pretty coquettish little woman who stands beside him on the steps of the Burlington Arcade. “She was over head and ears in love with Conway, the actor.”

“I know Carlton Conway,” little Mrs. De Clifford answers. “I met him last night at Flora Fitzallan’s supper. He was quite the host there. Flora has loved him slavishly for years, and though he spends all her money, he tyrannises over her awfully. I suppose that wonderfully handsome fellow is another lover of Mrs. Stubbs’,” she adds, with a lingering look at Delaval’s undeniable beauty.

“It happens to be her brother-in-law, Lord Delaval, this time,” the man replies, in the tone that flings away a woman’s reputation in the twinkling of an eye.

“And is Lady Delaval alive?” Mrs. De Clifford asks carelessly, but with a mind to find out if Lord Delaval’s agreeability equals his good looks.

Bevan, who has rather a weakness for his companion, awakens at once to a suspicious condition.

“Very much alive, I hope! Lady Delaval is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and her husband adores her,” he says, with malice prepense.

Meanwhile the brougham, “dark green, very dark green, and by Peters,” as Trixy had ordained, has disgorged its occupants at a house which is as exquisite within as it is big and stately without, and even Lord Delaval, who is habituated to luxury, is struck forcibly by the judicious manner in which the ethereal inspiration of poets and painters, Trixy Stubbs, has so ably contrived to feather her nest.

“I am inclined to believe, after all, Trixy, that you made a very wise choice,” he remarks, a little sardonically, as he follows her into a dim, flower-scented, rose-hung, mirror-embellished room, which the Honourable Mrs. Stubbs calls her boudoir, and is told to sit down in a chair that might tempt an anchorite into a fondness for luxury and repose. “Love sometimes flies out of the window, my dear Trixy; but statues, and mirrors, and French furniture are not disturbed by any such freaks of passion. One’s heart might be in a fair way to break, but such a delicious chair as this would be a comfort all the same.”

“I am not so sure of that,” says Trixy, in her “Mary Anderson” voice, full of pathos and tragedy, as she flings her dainty bonnet of pale blue velvet, with its high silver aigrette, on the marquetrie floor, and sinks into a corresponding chair, with a wealth of bright amber hair crowning her like the halo of a saint.

“Sometimes I should not care if it did all fly through the window,” she goes on, moodily. “Sometimes, Delaval, I cannot help thinking I have paid a little too dear for – for everything.”

“What do you mean?” he asks, bluntly. “Did you not choose to marry Stubbs? That being the case, what right have you to complain because your bargain may not be exactly to your taste? If you had not married of your own free will, of course no one could have forced you into it.”

“My own free will!” repeats Trixy, scornfully, curving down the corners of her red lips. “I wonder when a man – a man like you – ever comprehends that a woman’s free will, from her very cradle to her grave, means just nothing. No right to complain, haven’t I? Well, I am not complaining. My husband is kind and good to me, better and kinder by far than I deserve; but none the less I suffer more than you would believe I do, if I were fool enough to tell you everything.”

Tears rise up in her lovely blue eyes – hot, angry, scorching tears, but she chokes them back.

Life is beginning to teach even this little spoiled butterfly some self-control, and that wisdom which is learned only through sad experience. Lord Delaval, susceptible always, is touched even by the beauty and evident unhappiness of his sister-in-law. He leans forward, takes gently the white hand that has dashed away the rebellious tear drops.

“Don’t be vexed, Trixy, if I spoke a little roughly just now,” he says, in his pleasantest accents. “You used to like me years ago when you were a child, and although you have out-grown the fondness, I am sure you know that I like you awfully, if it is only for Zai’s sake.”

“Delaval, I want you to answer me a question – on your honour, you know. Does Zai love you?”

“Love me? My dear Trixy, your question makes me answer rather conceitedly, perhaps; but on my honour I don’t believe any woman loves her husband better than my wife loves me.”

“Thank God for that!” she exclaims passionately.

He stares at her in surprise. Trixy is not of a devout nature, and it seems to him a little strange also that she should trouble herself earnestly about a sister with whom she has nothing in common, or apparently much affection for. There must be an arriére pensèe in her ejaculation.

“Why should you be so thankful that Zai cares for me?” he asks, carelessly, amazed to see her colour come and go swiftly, and the hand he still holds tremble in his.

But Trixy drags away her fingers and shrinks back into the furthest corner of her fauteuil.

“Oh! I don’t know!” she says, nervously. “I just wanted to hear if she was happy and loved you only.”

“Loved me only! Why, who should she love else?” he demands, gravely.

“No one, of course. You always make me nervous, Delaval, when you turn inquisitor. As a child I hated your questioning propensities.”

“Yes; but you know you always found I was to be trusted; so tell me your troubles now. It will be a relief to you, and let us see – two heads, being better than one – if we cannot find a remedy for them.”

“Don’t bother me, Delaval, I cannot.”

“You mean that you cannot speak of your troubles?”

“Yes! I mean just that. I can’t talk of them, at least to you.”

“It would be better to talk of them to me, Trixy, than to Lady Smiles. She is a chattering, double-faced woman.”

“Lady Smiles! Why, what has she been saying? What dare she say of me?” Trixy asks feverishly, lifting up a flushed face.

“Only letting out a few foolish confidences. You see Lady Smiles may possibly fancy the same man as you may do; and women are horribly spiteful to one another when a man comes between them!”

“I don’t understand what you mean?” she stammers, growing quite white; “and as for my troubles, you must not think that I have any complaint to make against Mr. Stubbs,” she goes on with curious eagerness: “He is really devoted to me, anticipating my wants, lavishing costly things on me, caring for me ten times more than I merit, as I cannot help thinking when I recollect that I married him, hating and despising him!”

“But you care a little for him now, don’t you?”

“Yes, I care for him a little more now,” she replies very doubtfully. “It is true that I ought to care for him, for he is kindness itself, but – ”

Here the blue eyes fill with large tears again, and Lord Delaval frowns as he realises that Lady Smiles – Trixy’s bosom friend and confidante– has not been untruthful in her insinuations. Percy Rayne is one of her admirers, and it is to him, as a connection of the Berangers, that she has confided her fears that Trixy is a leetle imprudent in her conduct.

“Trixy! I know you once had a foolish fancy for – for – ” he hesitates at the name, he hates it so! struggles with himself, and at last wrenches the words out and almost flings them at her. “For – Carlton Conway! but it is of course impossible that you can still waste a thought or feeling on such an unmitigated scoundrel, a fellow who plays fast and loose with every woman he comes across – a hypocrite, a scoundrel!”

But Trixy springs up from her chair and faces him; two scarlet spots burn in her cheeks, her eyes blaze, and she looks like a beautiful virago.

“How dare you speak of my friend like this, Lord Delaval! I forbid you to do it; I forbid you to say behind Mr. Conway’s back what you would not presume to do before him! Presume, I say it again, for though he is an actor and you are an Earl, there is more to be respected in his little finger than in your whole body! He would not lower himself to abuse a man, just because that man had been loved better than himself!”

“What do you mean?” Lord Delaval demands sternly. He is standing too now, with anger in his eyes, and wounded vanity in his breast.

“I mean that your spite towards Mr. Conway only emanates from the knowledge that your wife loved him as she will never care for any other man in her life!” Trixy says defiantly, though her blue eyes quail a little as they meet his. “And you may tell her from me, that the sooner she forgets him the better, for he does not care for her —that,” and she snaps her finger scornfully.

“He cares for you, no doubt!” Lord Delaval answers quietly, though his whole frame trembles with outraged pride and mortification. “But mark my words, his love will drag you down to the lowest depths, and – ” he pauses, lays a hand on her shoulder, and speaks slowly and deliberately; “when he has got hold of the money poor old Stubbs was fool enough to settle on you, my dear Trixy, he will fling you to the devil!”

And without another word he leaves the room.

But Trixy’s words have raised up a feeling in his heart about his wife which cannot fail to build up a wall of reserve and suspicion.

It is in the dusk of the evening when he returns after two days’ absence, but the firelight is bright enough to show him the gladness in Zai’s face as he enters the room. Lavater himself could not find any guile in it, but jealousy and suspicion know no reason.

“My darling! my darling!” she cries, throwing herself into his arms, and holding up her sweet lips for his kiss, but he puts her aside quietly, and, amazed at his manner, she stands a little apart.

“What are you doing in the dark here?” he asks, in a cold, cutting voice. “Dreaming of the old days?”

“I don’t understand what ails you!” she falters. “I was sitting here, wondering when you would come back, for it has been so dull, so miserable without you! but now you have come back, you are so strange, Delaval!”

“Light those candles,” he orders abruptly.

She goes up to the mantel-piece and obeys him.

The tapers shine down full on her chesnut hair, her pure sweet face, her pathetic grey eyes.

“Now I can see you,” he says curtly, inwardly moved by her exceeding fairness, but outwardly cold and stern. “Well, why don’t you ask for news of Trixy?”

“I forgot about her,” she answers gently. “I was thinking about you.”

“About me! as if you ever gave me a thought!” he sneers. “I hate to be fooled.”

“Fooled!” she repeats. “Oh! Delaval, what have I done to make you say such things?”

“Done! why you have married me, loving that scoundrel Conway!” he blurts furiously. “Nice thing it is for a man to know every day and night of his life that his wife is eating her heart out for a fellow like that!”

She has slid down on the floor by this time, and looks up at him with a blanched, scared face, and piteous eyes.

It seems to her that in this moment the love she has learned to look upon as her dearest, dearest possession is gone out of her grasp.

Delaval must hate her, or he could not glare at her like this, he could not say such awful, awful things.

“Well?” he asks, “have you nothing to answer in self-defence? How dared you come to an honest man’s home with infidelity in your heart, lies on your lips. Don’t you know that you are a wicked – ”

“For God’s sake Delaval! For God’s sake! don’t say such things to me!” she interrupts hastily. “If you believe me to be so false – so bad – send me away from you, but I cannot live with you and learn that I have lost your love!”

“Poor little woman!” he says, half relenting; “we cannot control our affections, so why should I blame you after all?”

“Won’t you believe me if I swear, Delaval?”

“I thought you never took an oath,” he says harshly.

“I do not like to swear, but I will now, now that all I hold most precious on earth is in the balance!” she sobs through her tears.

“Swear then! Say ‘I love you and you only, so help me God!’ ”

“I love you, Delaval, and only you, so help me God!” she says solemnly. “Oh! you believe me now, don’t you?”

He looks at her. As has been said before in the olden days Phryne’s face and form moved her judges to mercy – so this fair face and form move him to belief.

It is not possible that deceit can lurk behind her candid brow, her limpid eyes!

“Come to me, little one!”

In a moment she is in his arms, her white face pillowed on his breast, her lips smiling. “Ah! you believe me, Delaval, or you would not take me in your arms! you know I love you – darling – my own, own darling! – love you with all my heart. I never, never think of any one else.”

“Not even of – Conway?”

But she does not shrink or blush at the name.

“I do – sometimes,” she whispers, “but only to wonder how I could ever have cared about him at all.”

Truth is stamped on every feature of her face. Truth shines in her glance. He would be more the man if he could resist this evidence.

So, though he will not humiliate himself to his wife by acknowledging himself in the wrong, he gathers her closer to him and kisses her with the ardour of their honeymoon days.

And she is content, she wants no more than this.

“You have not asked about Trixy?” he says presently; “and I have something to tell you that will grieve you, my pet.”

But she is nestling in his clasp, and it seems to her that nothing can grieve her very much now.

“Is Trixy ill?”

“No!”

“Is she – but no – Delaval! it can’t be that Trixy is – dead!” she cries.

“Dead to you– Zai – but not really dead, unfortunately for herself. Trixy left her husband yesterday and has gone away,” – he hesitates.

“Where?”

“With —Carlton Conway!”

Gone away with Carlton Conway!

For a second Zai looks at her husband as if she was stunned, and does not even realise the fact that he is watching her face with a keen searching glance.

“Poor Trixy!” she says at last, but beyond an expression of pity on her mobile features, Lord Delaval fails to discover any regret. Still he remarks perversely, “Lucky Trixy! you mean!”

“Oh! Delaval! isn’t it terrible!” Zai says, as if his last words had fallen unheard. “Trixy must awake some day to the consciousness of her conduct to her husband. He isn’t loveable or lovely of course, but he was awfully kind to her, you know. What will become of her, for I am afraid Mr. Conway is not a good man, and unless she had money, he wouldn’t care to be tied to her, I think!”

“She has money, old Stubbs settled £40,000 on her, and so long as it lasts Conway will stick to her like a leech, you may be sure; but when it’s gone, then Trixy will be sent to the devil!”

“But he’ll marry her of course, directly the divorce is given! I hope and pray he will! for after all she has given up for him, it will be dreadful for Trixy to find out what he is! Papa can make him marry her, can’t he, Delaval!”

“No one can make him marry her – except his conscience – but I doubt his having one. I say Zai, don’t you feel a little sorry that he has gone over to your sister? Women hate defection in men you know!”

“I am sorry for Trixy! I don’t understand what you mean by women hating defection in men, but if you think that it matters to me who Mr. Conway runs away with, you are quite wrong! I would rather it was anyone though but my sister, for of course I wish her to be happy.”

“Which Mr. Conway’s noble presence ought to make her.”

“Which it won’t make her. If I thought you would not call me spiteful – Delaval – I would tell you what I think!”

“Tell away – child.”

“Well, mamma said he was a cad, and though I don’t quite know the exact meaning of the word, I am afraid he is something of the sort!”

CHAPTER IV.

LA BLONDE AUX YEUX NOIR

“Your lithe hands draw me – your face burns through me,I am swift to follow you, keen to see,But love lacks might to redeem or undo me,As I have been – I shall surely be.”

So, while all London talks of Trixy’s elopement with Carlton Conway, Lord Delaval carries his wife off to Paris, and, in sumptuous apartments at the Bristol, little Lord Vernon makes his appearance on the arena of life.

Zai adores her first-born to absurd adoration, but she has not the very faintest idea how to take care of him, or the smallest conception what to do with him.

She loves to hear, as well as to know, that God has given her a living child, and little Vernon does not disappoint her, for he screams away the first weeks with a pertinacity which is fortunately rather rare.

He seems to have not only the germ of a lachrymose disposition, but is in actual fright at the new world in which he finds himself.

According to the tenets of ideality and poetry, he ought to be like his father, a large, fair, serene-eyed boy, born out of mystic hours and moonlight dreaming. In reality he is the antipodes of serene, and is acutely organised. He is tiny, and timid, and tearful too, but Zai, after the fashion of most young mothers, considers him a cherub, a lump of perfection.

Whether he screams or whether he crows, she fancies they are warblings of the angelic choir, but notwithstanding half the time she does not know what to do for him. Long before she can manage to hold him tight in her slender arms, without letting him drop on the floor, her big, wistful grey eyes follow the obese proportions of the French nurse from hour to hour to learn what she does to keep “Baby” quiet. And when at last nature overpowers her prudence and she rashly insists on taking charge of him herself, her fear lest he should come to grief gives him a feeling of insecurity which makes him scream louder than ever.

Nevertheless mother and child make such a charming Madonna-like picture that Lord Delaval, who has always gone in for lust of the eye, likes to look upon it. Nothing, in fact, can exceed his devotion for the first six weeks of paternal experience. He may have been fickle and unstable, but he now spends his whole time with his wife, his strong arms carry her about, he reads to her, and gazes on her with eyes through which the passionate fervour of the honeymoon shines out.

Never has Zai had him so completely to herself. Never has he been so gentle, so unselfish, so loving. And no matter what happens, she has this period to look back upon with unmarred sensations of content. Maybe if wrong or trouble come to her, these hours will be green oases in life’s desert, landmarks in memory, which will soften resentment into regret. But when a couple of months have gone by, Paris has begun her season, and it is at Zai’s own solicitation that her husband begins to go and look about him a little.

“You’ll get quite ill, darling, unless you have a little distraction,” she says, tenderly, as her white hand, smaller and thinner than ever, plays with his fair hair. “And you need not mind leaving me, for I shan’t be dull now I’ve got Baby.” Yes, she has got Baby to keep her company and to take up all her attention, and he is not at all loth for a little distraction, especially as she urges it.

The next evening, sauntering down the Boulevard des Italiens, he runs against old London pals, men of the same rank, and something of the same calibre as himself, Shropshire and Silverlake, men who have formed mésalliances, and whose morals are not too strict for a “spree.”

“Hallo, Delaval, come over on French leave?” Shropshire asks. “There are a lot of pretty women at the theatres now. Silverlake and I are off to the Alcazar presently, and you might as well join us.” He hesitates – the Alcazar – it does not sound so respectable as the Folies Dramatiques, or the Opera Lyrique. Delaval has a dim sense that music-halls in London are not quite the thing for newly married men, but he salves his conscience by the thought that in Paris these kind of places are on a more respectable footing.

So after an excellent dinner at Bignon’s, washed down by Röederer, the trio stroll to the Alcazar.

“It’s a long time since I’ve been at a place like this,” Delaval says, “but I suppose I must try and do some of the Parisian things, unless I want to be taken for a regular savage.”

“Things are rather changed since you were here, eh,” Silverlake asks.

“Well, yes. It’s incredible how a year or so changes all the people and places in Paris. I have scarcely seen one of the faces that used to be familiar in the Bois two winters ago.”

“Paris isn’t as bad as London for change,” Silverlake remarks. “In town there’s a lot of cads who suddenly appear – no one knows whence – make a great flare up with carriages, horses, opera boxes, powdered footmen, and as suddenly disappear, goodness knows where, and sink into utter oblivion. Cads who speculate, you know, make fortunes by some species of swindling, and then lose them again.”

“People who are not cads manage to get through their money pretty well,” drawls Shropshire.

At which Delaval laughs.

“Does it hit home, Silverlake?”

“Well, it’s a consolation he and I are in the same coach!”

And then the three men enter a box, the next but one to the stage.

The Alcazar is crowded to suffocation, there is no moving in the body of the house, where they sit at the little tables smoking and drinking, and as Delaval looks round, he says —

“What on earth do the people flock here for like this?”

“For Marguerite Ange. Her singing has made this place an unheard of success, you know.”