Daughters of Belgravia; vol 2 of 3

“Florid carving you would like of course?”

“Florid! Horrid! Plain chairs, with shields at the back for the – ”

She stops suddenly, while a look of disappointment and dismay creeps over her face.

“But you haven’t a crest, have you?” she adds, with as much solemnity as if she were asking “Have you hopes of salvation?”

“A crest? – of course I have!” he replies jauntily, not a bit offended at her doubt on the subject. “A sweet little crest. It has a little turretted house on the top, with what they call in heraldry a martinet perched on it. I don’t understand much about birds, but in plain English, I expect it’s a swallow, or maybe a tom-tit. And the motto is a very nice one, and very applicable too —Fortes fortuna juvat,” and he smiles complacently.

Trixy has a horrible suspicion that he also winks.

“I don’t understand Latin,” she says scornfully. “You see, they don’t teach it at fashionable schools. It is a language that does very well for prescriptions and things, and is only fit for doctors.”

“I know a little Latin, and my motto in English is ‘Fortune favours the brave!’ ” he explains pleasantly, with another affable smile and meaning look, which are quite lost on Trixy, whose worst enemies cannot accuse her of any undue ’cuteness, as the Yankees have it. She has no more idea that the man is alluding to himself and herself than if he was speaking Greek, which is another of the languages she knows nothing of.

The only thing that strikes her is how funny he would look if his bravery was called into account, and how slowly his short stout legs would carry him, if he ever wanted to run away from an enemy.

“You say the crest has a castle with a bird on it. That will do I fancy on the furniture. People don’t trouble much about the subject, so long as there is a crest to make the things look more aristocratic. Can’t the Beranger motto be added to yours? It is French, and everybody knows French.”

“May I ask what it is?” he asks wondering how he can have overlooked it in his diligent researches into “Lodge” and “Burke “ and “De Brett,” works that, bound in velvet and gold, have prominent positions in his library.

“It is ‘Noblesse oblige,’ ‘Nobility forces,’ you know.”

Mr. Stubbs reddens as he thinks the addition she suggests will very likely provoke a smile from ill-natured people, who might fancy that the Hon. Trixy Beranger’s finances forced her to become the Hon. Mrs. Stubbs.

“I don’t see how it can be done,” he remarks. “It would be going against the rules of heraldry I am afraid.”

“What does that matter?” she cries captiously. “It would be very hard if I really set my heart on anything, to be done out of it just because some stupid sign-painter’s ideas did not coincide with mine.”

“Heraldry is not exactly sign-painting, it is a science,” he ventures to remonstrate, anxious to smooth down her ruffled feathers.

“Really, Mr. Stubbs, you seem to think my education has been dreadfully neglected! I was five years at Mrs. Washington de Montmorency’s élite establishment for daughters of the nobility only! Then I was at Madame Thalia de Lydekerke Beaudesert’s finishing academy for la crême de la crême only, and Lord and Lady Beranger have spared no expense in educating me! Signor il Conte Almaviva taught me Italian, Rubenstein considers me his show pupil, Patti was heard to say that she envied me my voice, and – and – of course I know that heraldry is a science, but science or no science, I cannot see why I should not have exactly what I want carved on the backs of my own chairs and sofas. However, it really isn’t worth the trouble of discussing,” and Trixy half-closes her eyes and falls into languor, a manner beneath which he invariably feels the social gulf widen between them.

He cannot, even if he tries, affect this supreme indifference, this delightful repose that sits so easily on Lady Beranger and her belongings.

Leaning back against the Prie Dieu chair, with half-closed eyes, Trixy looks like a marble effigy of Resignation, but she does not show the gentleness and patience with which the virtue of resignation is generally invested. She is rather a cold, hard martyr to untoward circumstances, with a big wall of ice raised up around her that seems to freeze up her companion.

Surreptitiously he glances at a monster watch, like a bed-warmer, with half-a-dozen gaudy seals and charms attached to it. He really is anxious to find that the three-quarters of an hour, which Lady Beranger had hinted to him was the proper term of a courtship, are up; but time has not flown on the wings of love, there are yet ten minutes wanting, so he settles himself in his seat, and just escapes the sight of Trixy’s pretty mouth elongated in a long yawn.

He commences a sort of auctioneer’s catalogue of the worldly goods and chattels she will possess directly she is mistress of Park Lane, divining that this is a subject which really interests her, and hoping to make her forget about the crests and mottoes.

Thoroughly mercenary himself, he quite understands how pleasant it must be for her to know all she will gain as his wife. Exchange and barter are household words to him. Ever since he was in knickerbockers and short pants he has been buying and selling, and he sees nothing at all extraordinary or revolting in this young person giving him her youth and beauty in exchange for his money.

Love! Well, love to his fancy is an excellent thing for boys and girls, but Mr. Stubbs has reached an age when passion ought to lose most of its fierceness and glamour, and a placid liking sound more comfortable.

He has given up business now, so he knows he will be usually at hand to guard his beautiful wife from the impudent swells – idle, good-for-nothing specimens of the genus homo– to whom morality is an unknown word, and whom he dislikes thoroughly, though he is deferential to their faces.

So that on the whole his matrimonial scheme bears a remarkably smooth aspect.

“There are one or two other little things on which I should like your opinion before I write my directions.”

Hearing which she brightens up at once into an attitude of interest.

“Did’nt you say the other day that you preferred a brougham to a clarence?”

“A brougham by all means, and it must be by Peters.”

“Have you a particular fancy for Peters?”

“Yes, yes. He is the only maker who is chic. Most of the others turn out heavy lumbering vehicles, with not the style about them that would suit me; but then you see, we have always been considered to be so very difficile in our tastes, and the brougham must be green.”

“With scarlet under carriage, and body well picked out with broad scarlet lines?”

“No, no! Picked out with black,” she says very decidedly, wondering at the awful taste of the man. And there is not a doubt but that his taste is showy, he wears at this identical moment a miniature yacht in full sail, in gold and enamel, as a scarf pin, and a tie of violet satin, with orange stripes; orange is in fact his pet colour, from rhubarb down to the primrose of his gloves.

“Yes,” she says, as if reflecting deeply, “the brougham must be green, a very dark green, and picked out with black, and brass mountings.”

“A little sombre, don’t you think?” he suggests timidly.

“Good heavens, Mr. Stubbs! Do you want me to drive out only on the ninth of November and look as if I was a part of the Lord Mayor’s show?” she asks excitedly, raising her voice and causing him to give a little jump on his chair.

It is the first time she has displayed any variation of feeling, and the spice of devilry in her eyes, though it does away with Mary Anderson, heightens her beauty. Usually Trixy Beranger resembles a large waxen doll, with yellow hair and pink and white cheeks.

But she recovers her temper directly. It strikes her that this glittering fish may prove a slippery one if she allows the stormy side of her character to burst out before the matrimonial noose is tied.

“But, of course, I know you were only joking about the colours for the brougham. I am sure your taste is similar to my own, and that you think nothing can be too quiet to be aristocratic. Mamma rather wants me at four o’clock, have you any idea what the time is?”

He glances once more at the leviathan timekeeper he carries, and discovers that he has outstayed his limit fifteen minutes, and that his regular constitutional before feeding time will have to be curtailed.

“I, too, have numerous letters to write, so I think I’ll say au revoir.”

Trixy sticks out five fingers carelessly, and he takes them in silence, but he is not bold enough to squeeze them ever so little, and he breathes more freely directly he is outside the big drawing-room door.

His broad back turned, Trixy steals out on tip-toe upon the landing, and when he is fairly out of the house, she opens the ivory and ebony box, takes out the two morocco cases, and walking up to the large mirror opposite, she leisurely puts the chain of brilliants and the band of rubies round her snowy throat. Rubies flash in her ears, and a huge bracelet of the same gems gleams blood-red on her rounded arm.

For a minute or two she gazes enraptured at herself, then she rushes up the stairs, two steps at a time, like a tomboy, and bursts like a whirlwind into what is called Baby’s school-room.

Baby has for some time given up instructive books for more refreshing waters of literature in the shape of French romances; but she still clings, with the small amount of tenacity there is in her nature, to the old ink-stained table and hard chairs, in whose company she tottled up four and four, and invariably made them nine, and wept bitter tears over the dry food provided for her mind by Miss Jenkinson, a staid sanctimonious old spinster that Lady Beranger had picked up out of the Guardian, and who, for twenty pounds a year and her laundress, agreed to the herculean task of bringing up the youngest Miss Beranger in the way she should go, so that when she was old she would not depart from it.

Alas! Miss Jenkinson’s counsels have fallen on stony ground, for Baby is the biggest young reprobate that ever danced through life in kittenish glee and kittenish mischief.

The school-room, now that Miss Jenkinson is gone, probably through worry, to a premature grave, is used as a sort of omnium gatherum for all the Miss Berangers, and here they gather usually when not en toilette and en evidence.

“Look at me,” cries Trixy in a shrill voice, “and admire me.”

And jumping on to the centre of the table she stands with a half-conscious, half-comical expression on her face that elicits a burst of laughter from the other three.

“How can old Stubbs make such a fool of himself? He must know you are only marrying him for those things!” Gabrielle says contemptuously.

Trixy takes no notice. Gabrielle is not a pet or a pal of hers, and Gabrielle’s wits are too sharp for her.

“I say, Zai, what wouldn’t you give for such beauties as these?”

“Nothing! I don’t care a bit for jewels, and I wouldn’t accept such costly gifts from a man I did not care about for anything,” Zai answers quietly, going on with her drawing.

“Grapes are sour, my lass. The man you did care for might not be able to give you them,” Trixy says spitefully.

“I would accept them fast enough if I had the chance,” Baby confesses ruefully, climbing on to the table as well, and enviously examining the brilliants and rubies. “Just fancy, that old Hamilton has never offered a thing but that!” and she sticks out her third finger, on which reposes an old-fashioned ring, with a bit of Archibald Hamilton’s sandy hair shining through the crystal. “Scotch are such screws, I hate them. Do you know, girls, that I have nearly made up my mind to give the old gentleman the slip, and to elope with Gladstone Beaconsfield Hargreaves.”

“Heavens! what a name for a common village Veterinary,” Gabrielle says, with a curl of her scarlet lip. “And to think of his awful people having the audacity to mention Beaconsfield in the same breath with Gladstone!”

“Rather mentioning Gladstone in the same breath as Beaconsfield!” cries Zai, horror-struck. She is a thorough little Conservative to the back-bone, and even goes to sleep in her dainty white-curtained bed with a badge of the Primrose League upon her bosom.

“A very good name it is!” flashes Baby, taking up the cudgels in defence of her rustic admirer. “I think his godfather and godmother were sensible people, and had no narrow-minded party-feeling and that sort of rubbish in their heads. Real Liberal-Conservatives they were, of course. I can’t stand politics, Trixy, can you?”

“Can’t abide them,” Trixy murmurs lazily. “I hate everything it gives one trouble to understand.”

“Politics make me quite ill,” Baby goes on, as she jumps off the table and flings herself full-length on the hearth-rug. “When the governor and Lord Delaval begin at them, I always feel inclined to roar. The governor shuts up one eye, and tries to look so awfully clever, you know.

“ ‘Dolly Churchill, my dear fellow, is the man —the man! Our only hope in these days of misguided, dangerous democrats. Our only stay! The Liberal Government have been the very devil – they have played ducks and drakes with everybody and everything, and if they had lasted one day longer —one day longer! mark my words!– we should have been at – at – well, not where we are now!’

“And Delaval, who is a red-hot Republican at heart, just smiles that beautiful cynical smile of his, and thinks the governor a regular jackass, and so do I.”

“You shouldn’t speak so of Papa, you irreverent monkey,” Zai says gravely.

“Shouldn’t I really!” Baby replies, mimicking her voice. “Well, then, I will. I love my Papsey. He is a dear old boy, but all the same, I don’t think he will ever set the Thames on fire with his brilliancy. Why, ever since he has been in the House he has never said anything but ‘hear, hear!’ or joined in the ironical cheers.”

“Lord Salisbury thinks a lot of the governor. I heard him say to Count Karoly the other night that Beranger was one of the most reliable men in the House, and so very cautious,” Zai says quietly.

“No wonder, as he never opens his mouth,” Baby laughs. “What do they have a lot of dummies for in Parliament?”

“Oh, just to make the whole thing look more imposing than it is, I suppose,” Trixy drawls languidly. “Very likely they prefer most of the members not speaking, as the stupid ones might let out the secrets to the Opposition.”

“Gladstone speaks!” Gabrielle announces solemnly, as if it is not a remarkably well-known fact. “He has been known to speak for three days and three nights without pausing to take breath even, and his eloquence has so overwhelmed the House – ”

“With sleep, that no one ever got at the real meaning of his speeches,” interrupts incorrigible Baby. “Any way, the Irish didn’t. My Hargreaves is an Irishman (that is why he was christened Gladstone Beaconsfield I dare say. The Irish muddle up politics so, you know), and he told me that in Paddy land Gladstone is the new name for Blarney-stone.”

“I wish you would not regale us with the imbecile witticisms of your Vet, Mirabelle,” Gabrielle mutters crossly, for she worships the G.O.M., and feels a slash at him acutely. And Baby knows she is wroth, for it is in ire only that she calls her Mirabelle, but Baby cares for nothing or nobody.

“My Hargreaves is not a vet, now. He is assistant riding-master to the great Challen.”

“Baby, is this why you coaxed the governor into letting you have riding-lessons?” Zai questions anxiously.

Baby springs up from the hearth-rug, and turning a pirouette, pauses beside her pet sister.

Leaning over she whispers in her ear:

“It is, but if you promise not to peach, Zai, I’ll tell you something about – ”

“Who?” Zai whispers back, colouring vividly.

“C. C., but not before Gabrielle and Trixy.”

Zai blushes more deeply still as she bends over her drawing, and wonders if the letters C. C. will always send the blood surging over her face and set her pulses throbbing.

In spite of his heartless conduct at Elm Lodge she loves him dearly still, and lives from day to day in the hope that the clouds will clear away, and give her back the sunshine of life – Carl’s love and presence.

And as she sits and drops off into a sweet waking dream, Gabrielle’s voice startles her, and drags her back into everyday existence.

“Seven o’clock! We must be off and dress for dinner. There goes the first bell. Zai, there’s a treat in store for you to-night.”

Zai looks up, the dreamy expression still lingering in her eyes. A treat! For one moment she really fancies “he” is going to appear somewhere or somehow, but the next instant she fully awakens to her folly.

“Lord Delaval dines with us to-night, and afterwards we are all going to the theatre.”

“What theatre?” Zai asks quickly.

“The Bagatelle, to see ‘Hearts versus Diamonds.’ ”

“And ‘him!’ ” Zai thinks to herself, waxing white as a lily at such an ordeal with Lord Delaval’s mocking smile before her, and Lord Delaval’s cold, keen gaze watching her face.

“Who sent the box for to-night?” she asks, for she knows Lady Beranger never spends her money on such things.

“Lord Delaval.”

Zai colours again, and stoops down on pretence of picking up her pencil. She feels that Gabrielle is looking at her.

“That man has sent it on purpose to vex me,” she thinks. “I detest him.”

CHAPTER IV.

AT THE BAGATELLE THEATRE

“Why did she love him? Curious fool, be still,Is human love the growth of human will?”

When Lady Beranger and her party enter a large stage-box and settle themselves noiselessly in their seats, the first act of ‘Hearts versus Diamonds’ has begun, and the big bass is booming out a lugubrious overture to Ferdinand – the deserted lover’s reproaches to his faithless and diamond-worshipping Lady Yolande.

On the whole Carlton Conway looks superbly handsome and effective, when, as Ferdinand, he takes up a highly picturesque pose right in the centre of the stage. His head erect, his chest well thrown out, a little after Kyrle Bellew; his shirt-front ample; his tail-coat, and waistcoat and trousers, his patent leather boots, unimpeachable; and a gardenia from Hooper’s, in Oxford Street, although he can ill-afford the half-a-crown paid for it, fresh and snowy and fragrant, reposing on his broad breast.

With one white hand uplifted, the forefinger pointing in scorn; the third finger sparkling with a tiny but pure brilliant (Zai’s gift), he hurls:

“Oh, cursed hunger of pernicious gold,What bands of faith can impious lucre hold?”

in a deep, impassioned voice, that fairly electrifies his audience, but makes very little impression apparently on the Lady Yolande, who has quite made up her mind to give up love and poverty for a comfortable mansion in Mayfair and plenty of diamonds and money.

Miss Flora Fitzallan, as the Lady Yolande, is at her best to-night. She looks, in fact, as if a whole page of “Debrett” was devoted to her ancestry, thereby proving that we are not what we seem, and often seem what we are not.

In the palest of blue brocades, heavily embroidered with silver, and a tuft of pale blue ostrich tips placed jauntily a little on one side of her head, and a long Court train, edged with the very best imitation ermine, she looks quite good enough for a leader of Society.

On the finger of scorn being pointed at her, the Lady Yolande laughs tragically, and with an artistic twirl of her skirt swoops down close to the foot-lights, and while her glance roves over the jeunesse dorée gathered in the stalls, cries in a contralto voice:

My name is Blue-blood! In the House of LordsMy father sits and has his say;My mother was a Mistress of the Robes,Before those awful Tories had their sway!Thou forgettest, Ferdinand, that sangre azul flowsThrough all my veins; that in my faceNot only love, but high ambition glows,With which, alas! thou never canst keep pace!Lapped in soft luxury, born in marble halls,Vassals and serfs to answer to my calls,I could not brave the humiliating woeOf in this world coming down so low.Ferdinand, forgive me! and let me go!Without my purse full, I should surely pine,I love good dinners, and I love good wine;My beauty decked in velvets, satins, lace,A jewelled diadem to crown my face.Ferdinand, I leave thee! heart-broken, with a sigh,But without gold and diamonds I should die! – die!

Upon this confession Ferdinand shows the laceration of his feelings by striking another attitude, an attitude of giant but picturesque despair. He folds his arms tightly across his chest, strides heavily towards her, and wears generally a depressed appearance.

“Oh!” he exclaims, lifting up his fine eyes to the gods in the gallery. “Lend me, I pray, strength to bear her perfidy.”

As his glance slowly travels earthwards he espies Zai, and starts slightly, but the sight of her sweet face gives real pathos and eloquence to his voice as he murmurs tenderly:

“Yolande! Beloved Yolande! Thou knowest not the vulture that gnaws my heart, or thou would’st pause in thy fiendish work. False Yolande! Thou hast never known what heart is, but —

“ ‘I will tell thee what it is to love.

It is to build with human thoughts a shrine,Where Hope sits brooding like a beauteous dove,Where life seems young and like a thing divine.All tastes, all pleasures, all desires combine,To consecrate this sanctuary of bliss.Above, the stars in cloudless beauty shine.Around, the streams their flowery margins kiss,And if there’s Heaven on earth – that Heaven is surely this!’ ”

Carl Conway is really a very fair actor, and his voice is both musical and entrainante, and he spouts these lines with a wonderful passion and softness that appeal to all the women present, and as he speaks them, ever and anon his handsome brown eyes rest a second on the stage-box where poor little Zai sits well back in her corner.

Her eyes fixed on the beloved face, she forgets the existence of anyone else, her cheeks are flushed with excitement, her heart throbs fast, and a suspicion of a tear shines on her long lashes. Not a word does she utter, not a word does she hear; engrossed in this, the first love of her life, the play itself goes on without her taking in the gist of it. All she sees is Carl – Carl, with his superb face, and with his eyes full of the old, old passion as they linger on her and seem loth to turn away.

The curtain falls and rises twice over, and she thanks Providence that for once her people leave her alone so that she may gaze her fill. Who knows when they two will meet again – and how?

The girl’s poor heart grows cold as ice when the dénouement of the play comes, and Ferdinand, praying for the boon of a last kiss, the Lady Yolande yields her proud lips to him.

Yields them con amore, too, it seems to Zai, as she shrinks back from the sight with a jealous pang that makes her shiver and clasp her little hands desperately together.

Then the curtain falls for the last time, and she looks up and catches Lord Delaval’s eye.

It seems to be searching her very soul with a fixed, keen gaze that has something regretful about it, though his lips have a half-mocking smile.

“That fellow, Conway, really acts tolerably,” he says aloud to Gabrielle. “Did you notice the ring of pathos and truth in his voice? And yet those sort of chaps lead such a hollow life of shams and tricks, that they can’t possibly have a genuine feeling in them. What do you think of Flora Fitzallan, Miss Beranger?”

“Just what one thinks of such creatures,” Gabrielle answers contemptuously, “outside all paint and powder. Inside – ”

“Pray don’t give your opinion on people like Miss Fitzallan, Gabrielle. They are not fit subjects for your discussion; at any rate before me and my daughters!” Lady Beranger remarks severely.

Gabrielle elevates her brows and shrugs her shoulders. Then, as her stepmother sweeps away, she says:

“I think one thing about Miss Fitzallan, Lord Delaval. I think she has a grande passion for Carl Conway, and I expect she does not try to hide it —off the stage!”