Daughters of Belgravia; vol 3 of 3

“Marguerite Ange! I haven’t even heard of her!”

“Don’t say so, my dear fellow, unless you want to argue yourself unknown! Hi!”

This last ejaculation is to a pretty coquettish little Marchande des Fleurs, and Shropshire invests in a bouquet of Parma violets, as big as his own head.

“What a monster posy, who’s that for?” asks Delaval. “I pity its recipient, it will almost crush her I should think.”

“It’s for Mademoiselle Ange, of course,” Silverlake joins in, searching in his pocket for a five-franc piece to buy a bunch of camellias, but without success, “everyone throws the Ange a bouquet, it’s la mode.”

“Wonder she isn’t like the fellow, you remember? the Roman fellow, who was smothered by a shower of cloaks,” Delaval says, with a feeble reminiscence of some old story learnt long ago in his cramming days. “Eh, what?” Silverlake asks, “No! don’t know any Roman fellows, know plenty of Jews, I am sorry to say.”

“There’s an awful Jew fellow in that stage-box opposite,” whispers Shropshire, “fingers blazing with diamonds, and all that sort of thing. He’s after the Ange, comes here every night and ogles her. I wouldn’t touch him for all the world.”

“I shouldn’t mind touching his shekels of gold. I – ”

But Silverlake stops short, for just at this moment the shouts and thunder of applause, the cries and calls for “Marguerite” grow terrific, and Delaval, raising his glass, curiously eyes a woman advancing slowly towards the footlights. It is Marguerite Ange, the woman who has turned the heads of all Paris.

She is beautiful, this Marguerite Ange, this singer at the Alcazar, this child of the people, beautiful with a regal beauty any queen might envy.

The patrician carriage of her grand head, the pride of her bearing, her slow and stately step, the very swirl of her skirt as she sweeps forward, all strike Delaval, who gazes at her with a momentary astonishment that is not altogether born of her loveliness. “Is she an empress in disguise,” he wonders; but at the second glance, he takes in the whole splendid physique, the flesh and blood magnificence of Mademoiselle Ange, and decides that she is of the earth, earthy, that there is no semi-divine light in the slumbrous eyes over which droop heavy white lids, no purity about the make of the warm full blooded lips, no unfleshly refinement about her face and figure; but there is rare perfection of form, and tropical brilliance of colouring about her, and her vivid pink and white tints, her rich masses of golden hair form a strange and almost bizarre contrast to her immense eyes, black as midnight skies, and of a velvety softness.

Delaval remarks the peculiarity just as an inflammable French officer near him remarks with enormous enthusiasm:

“Elle est belle à faire peur, cette blonde aux yeux noir!”

Strangely enough, the more Delaval looks at her the more he is reminded of someone he has seen. To a certain extent her face appears really quite familiar to him – but only to a certain extent – beyond this he is quite in a fog, and searches vainly in the caverns of memory for an elucidation of the mystery.

Mademoiselle Ange stands for a moment or two perfectly motionless, with her eyes fixed on the ground, while the clapping of hands and yelling applause goes on, and the bright light falls full on a face of marvellous, almost weird beauty, on perfectly moulded round white limbs, revealed rather than hidden by clouds of diaphanous drapery, on a shapely arm supporting a much ornamented guitar – (which by the way she does not use).

Then amidst a hush, in which the fall of a pin could be heard, she begins her song in a deep rich contralto.

There is none of the noise, or clap-trap, or glitter of the Alcazar about her or her vocalisation.

She sings her two first verses, without the quiver of a long black lash, or the falter of a note, poetically, dreamily, entrancingly. Then she pauses a second, stretches out one arm tragically towards the audience, and commences the last verse in a soft, low, thrilling voice that appeals to the roughest man there, while her huge black eyes seem to burn and scintillate, firing the manly bosoms under broadcloth and blouse with irrepressible ardour.

“Je vis le lendemain non plus au bord de l’ondeMais assise au chemin la jeune fille blonde!Je vis qu’ils étaient deux – A! deux âmes sont joyeuse!Comme il était heureux! Comme elle était heureuse!Et moi, dans mon bonheur – de les voir si contentJe me mis a pleurer! Comme on pleure à vingt ans!Et moi! dans mon bonheur – de les voir si contentJe me mis a pleurer! Comme on pleure à vingt ans!”

Lord Delaval —fanatico per la musica– listens enthralled as the last sweet, sad, soft notes die away on his ear.

Once more shouts of “Marguerite la Blonde aux yeux noir!” fill the house with deafening roar, and coming closer to the footlights with a beaming smile on her scarlet lips, for the first time her eyes fall on the box where Delaval sits leaning forward.

Her glance rests an instant upon him. She utters a sharp cry, her face through its rouge turns ghastly white, and Marguerite Ange drops senseless on the floor.

In a moment, however, the curtain falling, hides her from view.

“What ails her?” cries Shropshire, as much concerned as if he had not his Countess – (for whom he has gone through a good deal) – demanding his allegiance and fidelity.

“It’s the infernal excitement of all the noise that’s done her up,” Silverlake says. “Isn’t she more like a witch than a woman? She’d take the heart out of a man whether he would or no!”

But Delaval answers nothing. His face is very pale, and there is a queer dazed look in his eyes which is foreign to them, and a shiver passes over his whole frame as the manager comes forward, announcing that Mademoiselle Ange having recovered her indisposition, will sing again.

After a few minutes she comes forward and sings a short but passionate love song, in which her voice falters, and tears glitter in her magnificent eyes.

The cheers and cries from the motley audience would have gladdened the ears of the greatest Diva that ever lived. And they bring triumph to the heart of this woman, a mighty triumph that gleams from her glance as she fixes one long look on Delaval’s face when she makes her final curtsey and retires.

“What sort of a woman is this Marguerite Ange?” Lord Delaval asks carelessly, though he is conscious that his heart throbs a little faster than usual as he awaits the answer. “She’s not over particular, is she?”

“Particular,” laughs Shropshire, “did you ever know an Alcazar songstress particular? You might as well expect prudery from Rose Stanley at the Holborn, or from little Kitty Mortimer at the Pavilion. Do you imagine her salary at the Alcazar pays for her charming au premier in the Rue Tronchet, her carriage and haute ecole cattle, the jewels and laces and velvets that are the very soul and essence of the beautiful Marguerite. Sapristi! You must have forgotten the world and its ways.”

“And the parable of the lamb and the wolves,” Silverlake adds. “I defy any woman making head against the current of lovers that Marguerite has.”

“I might have known it! They are all alike, these women,” Delaval mutters savagely through his set teeth.

“Understand, I don’t mean to hint a word against her morals, in fact, the Ange is extra proper. She always goes about with the most hideous of duennas. But she’s the very devil with men – twists them round her fingers – fools them to any extent – cleans them out and then throws them overboard. Young Valentin de Brissac blew his brains out about her last week, and not very long ago Jules de Grammont Charleville, a capital fellow, and one of the Faubourg St. Germain Charleville’s, went to the bad – took to drinking like a madman – tried to shoot her, and has got five years for it. The Ange is as hard as granite, as calculating as a Jew, and as vain as – well – I really can’t find anything to compare with her vanity.”

“Where did you say she lived, Shropshire?”

Shropshire looks at him and elevates his eyebrows, while Silverlake bursts out laughing.

This is the model Benedict all London has talked about!

“I thought you’d soon tire of domestic bliss and look out for pastures new,” Shropshire says. “Well – well – Marguerite won’t have anything to say to me, so I won’t be a dog in the manger, but wish you success. She lives at Number 17 Rue de Tronchet, just close to the Madelaine, you know.”

“Thanks.”

And Delaval, leaving his companions, saunters towards the Champs Elysèes instead of going home.

It is a lovely night. There is no moon, but myriads of stars cluster overhead, and somehow the quiet and the stillness of midnight are pleasant to him. He has quite made up his mind to see Marguerite Ange again.

It is not because he has fallen in love with her, far from it. The feeling she has inspired in him has at present, at any rate, no particle of love in it, but something draws him on to seeing her – to speaking to her – to saving her from a path that must lead to perdition.

And he smiles almost bitterly at such a feeling possessing him about a singing woman at the Alcazar!

By and by, when the air has cooled his hot temples a little, and the oppressive sort of spell this evening has brought him disperses somewhat, he goes back to the hotel and enters the room where Zai lies fast asleep. How pretty she looks to his feverish eyes! The purity and sweetness of her face come like a glimpse of blue sky after a storm. She is happy, too, for her red lips part in a smile as she clasps her child close to her heart.

Lord Delaval stoops down and kisses her so softly that she never stirs. He is a worshipper of female beauty, and here before him – within his grasp – lies as fair a woman as ever was made to please the eyes of man. His wife – his own! a legitimate object for love and passion and admiration.

But men’s hearts are perverse things.

Noiselessly as he entered he steals away again to the adjoining room, and without undressing, flings himself into an armchair.

Here the break of dawn finds him – still sleepless, but lost in a waking dream of “La Blonde aux yeux noir.”

CHAPTER V.

DRIFTING

“A year divides us – love from love,Though you love now, though I loved then,The gulf is straight, but deep enough,Who shall recross – who among menShall cross again?”

“You came in very late last night, darling,” Zai says, a little reproachfully, as she sits en peignoir– but a peignoir daintily got up, with Valenciennes and pink ribbons, and looks divinely fair at the head of the breakfast-table.

“There was a carriage accident on the Boulevard, and I helped the occupants to get out,” he answers.

It is the first falsehood he has uttered to his wife, and in spite of him a tinge of red sweeps across his fair skin, to hide which he buries his face in his coffee-cup.

“Were the occupants ladies?” Zai asks, with a sensation of incipient jealousy.

She has learned to think this husband of hers so superbly handsome and irresistible that she believes all other women must consider him so likewise.

“Yes, ladies —old ladies, going home from some concert. They were terribly frightened, poor old girls,” he says, coolly.

“And how did you amuse yourself, darling? – and did you talk to anyone?”

“Why, you’ve grown into the Grand Inquisitor, my pet! I went to the theatre and I talked to Shropshire and Silverlake.”

“Those men!” she says with a little moue. “They are dreadfully fast, are they not, Delaval?”

“So so!”

“Were Lady Shropshire and Lady Silverlake there?”

“Oh, no! – the husbands are doing Paris en garçon.”

“How very horrid!” she decides. “You wouldn’t care to go about en garçon, would you, my own?”

“Certainly not,” he answers fervently.

But he has made up his mind to go out en garçon all the same.

“And how’s baby?” he inquires unctuously, in the hope of turning the subject.

“He’s very well. I am sure he has grown half-an-inch in the last few days, and I really think he tried to say ‘pa – pa’ this morning, Delaval!”

“Did he really! Dear little chap!”

“Yes! and Madame Le Blanc tells me that she has been a monthly-nurse for thirty years, and that its the first time she has ever heard a child of two months-and-a-half pronounce so plainly!”

“Why the little chap must be the infant prodigy! Pity he’s so beastly red!”

“Red, Delaval! Why he’s exactly like Dresden China!” she replies, with intense mortification.

He gives a forced laugh. Then he pushes his plate away, with the devilled kidneys untouched, for he has no appetite. And leaning back in his chair, looks at his wife.

And he comes to the conclusion that he ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

There she is, facing him. Could any creature of mortal mould be sweeter, lovelier, purer, more adorable?

And yet!

These are two little words that carry more meaning in them than all the long, grandiose phrases in the Queen’s English. These two little words, indefinite as they seem, show exactly what a man’s mind is when it oscillates ’twixt right and wrong. Zai is undeniably charming, but she is not —la Blonde aux yeux noir!

She lacks the power to inflame the heart of the million. Her soft, dove-like eyes, cannot burn into men’s brains and souls like the dangerous but glorious black ones of Marguerite Ange!

“What piece did you see last night, Delaval?”

It is a poser. For one moment Lord Delaval, with the impatience and dislike of being catechised, which is natural to him, has a mind to speak the truth, and tell his wife that this morning he is not up to small talk. But he thinks better of it, and is equal to the occasion.

“A piece called La Tentation, darling! A thing in which there was a lot of love-making and smiling and bowing, and a woman, supposed to be an angel – but probably she is a devil,” he adds, almost sotto voce.

“Was she pretty?”

“Tol lol! You can’t tell what an actress is like on the stage, you know!”

“I hope you won’t find out what she is like off the stage!” Zai says earnestly. “Actresses are such bad, dangerous women, sometimes!”

“And how about actors?”

The shot goes home, for she flinches and flushes a little, and he is rather sorry he has said this. It was snobbish, perhaps! But when a man wishes to stop his wife’s mouth, he must do it the best way he can. Zai will not pursue the subject of Theatres and Thespians after his cut, he thinks. But he is wrong. She flushed more from a wounded feeling at his manner and tone than from the reference to her old lover, for whom she has the most profound indifference now.

“Have you heard anything about Trixy, Delaval?” she asks, in a low, humble voice. She is very much ashamed of this sister of hers, and scarcely likes mentioning her name before the man she not only loves but honours.

“Yes. Stubbs has got a divorce. Poor old chap! It appears that he was awfully cut up; had a fit, and nearly died. He wanted her to go back to him, and promised never to breathe a word of recrimination; but when he found she wouldn’t, he got a divorce, and gave that scoundrel Conway a bill at six months for ten thousand pounds provided he married her! Of course, the money was too much for the fellow; so the marriage will come off by-and-by.”

“And where is Trixy now?”

“Living at Hammersmith; dining at Richmond and the Orleans with all the fast men; dressing to the nine, and making herself the talk of town. She has quite forgotten the word more familiar to her youth than her Bible —convenances; but what can be expected? If a girl is innately bad, no power on earth can keep her straight.”

“But Trixy was not innately bad,” Zai murmurs, deprecatingly. “She married a man she could not love, and then – she yielded to – ”

“The fascinations of Mr. Conway! Joy go with her! Men are not fair judges of their own sex, but if I was a woman, I should prefer old Stubbs to a dozen Conways!”

“And so should I —now,” Zai confesses meekly. “What a pity women have not the gift of clair-voyance!”

“Thank God, they haven’t!” he says to himself, as he rises, and walking up to the mirror on the mantel, looks at himself. “I wonder what Mademoiselle Ange saw in me to make her faint? It could not have been my ugliness!” he thinks, as the glass reflects back his handsome face – a face which he knows to be handsome and irresistible to most women.

Then he turns away carelessly – for he is not a vain man – and going up to his wife kisses her on her forehead.

But Zai is not satisfied with this.

“Won’t you kiss me properly, darling?” she says, holding up her fresh, red lips.

And her darling kisses her “properly,” though all the while he is wronging her in his heart, on the principle that sins of omission are as bad as sins of commission!

CHAPTER VI.

IN THE MESHES

“Take hands and part with laughter,Touch lips and part with tears,Once more, and no more after,Whatever comes with years.We twain shall not remeasureThe ways that left us twain,Nor crush the lees of pleasureFrom sanguine grapes of pain.”

Lord Delaval has never let a desire of his remain ungratified in his life, so now, haunted by the beauty of a woman for the space of twenty-four hours, he resolves to make her acquaintance.

“Her sort are not very particular about the convenances,” he says to himself as he approaches Numèro 17 Rue de Tronchet, but it must be confessed that his courage does not rear its crest much aloft as he rings the bell, and hears from the concierge that “Mademoiselle Ange est chez elle.”

Still, though his mind is perturbed, his pulses throb, and there is a mingling of expectation and trepidation in his breast, if his real feelings were finely analysed, it would be found that Mademoiselle’s beauty repels even while it attracts him to the point of looking on it closer.

Possibly the daylight may dissipate his delusion, he thinks. And he is conscious of a sort of half-hope, half-regret, that it may be so.

The apartment, into which he is ushered by Mademoiselle’s own smart soubrette, disappoints him at once.

The decorations are florid and over-done. The big mirrors gleam too brightly on the sea-green of the walls, the vivid scarlet of the ottomans, the chairs, the velvet cushions, the too heavily perfumed atmosphere, the curious medley of objets d’art, individually costly, but making a strange and heterogeneous whole, all seem to his fastidious eyes as redolent of the Alcazar.

The sunbeams that fall through the rose-tinted blinds are studiously toned down to a pale mystic light, fit for the languor of magnificent, heavy-lidded eyes – a Marie Antoinette fan with a jewelled handle, a flacon of esprit des millefleurs, a tiny handkerchief with a Chantilly border, a volume of De Musset’s poems, lie together, and bric-à-brac, rococo, ormolu, and Sèvres are heaped everywhere in picturesque confusion. If Mademoiselle Ange has ever desired to be grand, she has gained her desire.

While he waits, he wonders if the woman is really content, and whether these things are worth possessing at the price she has to pay for them.

“Gratified vanity goes a precious long way, so I suppose she is happy and satisfied,” he thinks with a sneer, and a sort of savage sensation in his heart, that he has not found her in a barely furnished room, devoid of luxury, and indicative of high moral worth.

It certainly is not marvellous that La Blonde aux Yeux Noir has created a regular furore in Paris.

As the heavy red velvet portières are pushed aside, and she comes into the room, the sneer dies right away from his mouth, and he confesses that this woman is a thing to wonder at.

If she had struck him as beautiful in her diaphanous robes, in her semi-nudity, with manacles of gold on her neck and arms, fit for an Eastern Satrap’s love, she strikes him as ten times more attractive in her day attire.

She wears a deep wine-coloured satin, covered with a profusion of lace; the bodice is cut square and the sleeves are open and hanging. Her throat and slender wrists gleam like the purest alabaster under the delicious rose-tinted light, and wine-coloured bands, studded with small but rare brilliants, go round them. Her hair, perfectly golden, falls in light bright curls above her dark straight brows, and is knotted carelessly, but artistically, in thick glossy coils at the back of her well-shaped head.

She is thoroughly well got up, she has made the most of herself in every particular, and yet she has the art of letting her magnificence seem part and parcel of herself, as if it belonged to her and was not a studied effect.

And one of Marguerite Ange’s attractions is that she looks so young; she cannot have reached one score to judge by her flawless face and her slender figure, which is all bends and curves without an angle in it.

“I scarcely dared to hope that you would come and see me,” she says in French that is true Parisian, though Delaval has heard that she comes from Arles, the birth-place of beauty; and she holds out, rather deprecatingly, a slim white hand, which, of course, he clasps eagerly, a sharp thrill going through him as he does so.

“Why not?” he asks in as excellent French as her own. “Could I be the only man to resist the Queen of —Hearts?”

And his voice has certainly a fervour and a ring of truth about it, which perhaps gratifies her, for a little smile, savouring of triumph, crosses her lips.

She throws herself back among her vivid scarlet cushions, and makes a gesture to him to sit down beside her.

Then, for the first time, he grows conscious of the presence of a third person, an old woman, hideous as Hecuba, who has seated herself close to the portière.

“That’s the sheep-dog Shropshire spoke of,” he thinks.

“Madame Perchard, you can go for a walk if you like. It is a charming day, and it will do you good. Stay! you might call at the costumier’s, and desire them to send the domino and mask for the Bal de l’Opera to-morrow.”

Madame Perchard, who looks as if she were well paid and well fed, smiles feebly and goes on her way, and the others are left tête-à-tête.

If anyone had suggested two months ago that he would be seated in a dimly-lit room, side by side with a music-hall singer, Lord Delaval would probably have scouted the notion, and resented the speaker’s impertinence; but now it seems to him as if it is the most natural thing in the world that he should be here, at Marguerite Ange’s feet (mentally).

He turns, and looks into her beautiful eyes long and steadfastly, without speaking, until she, who has grown hardened to the boldest stare, reddens a little.

“Eh bien?” she says smiling, and her voice startles him out of a reverie. He is not only thinking how exquisitely lovely she is, but taxing his brain once more to find out who she resembles.

“I was dreaming, I believe, Mademoiselle Ange! Will you forgive me for coming here like this? My only excuse is that my heart was stronger than myself,” he says, in a low, passionate voice.

“I forgive you!” she answers. “Ah! you don’t know what I felt the other night when I first saw you. You are very like someone I once knew – someone I loved as women only love once in their lives! – someone who is dead to me, and when I saw you I fainted.”

So, this is why she fainted at sight of him – simply because he happens to resemble some sweetheart of other days. The idea is not flattering, and irritates him. Somehow, he had fancied that his own irresistible attractions had had an effect on her; but he cannot gaze on her and not soften at once.

“Mademoiselle Ange, why do you live this life?” he says abruptly.

“What harm is there in my life?” she asks. “It suits me!”

“It suits no woman to forfeit respect for admiration – modest life for public display; but what right have I to talk to you so? To what good can I talk? For, is it not a little too late?”

“You are very hard on me,” she falters. “Ah! I see you will never like me – for you are prejudiced!”