Daughters of Belgravia; vol 2 of 3

“Oh my, isn’t he elegant, and so chatty! I felt just like talking to Cyrus Hercules Hopkins – that’s my cousin down Chicago way, you know. And the Princess! well, certainly, she isn’t proud! It was just like being at home in our English basement brown stone house, Maddison Avenue – at Buckingham Palace!”

Zai laughs, and he rattles on.

“That’s one of our big financier’s daughters. Ugly, isn’t she? I hate the type. The parure of brilliants isn’t bad, and those yards of lace —point D’ Alençon, isn’t it – that trail about her are worth more than my year’s salary. But they are so devilish stingy in the Offices. We work like slaves, and get neither tin nor kudös. And you would not believe it, Zai, but the Foreign Secretary hasn’t more responsibility on his back than I have on mine! See! there’s the famous wife of one of the Ministers – Count Schoen. She has been a celebrated beauty in her day, and cannot forget it. And they say she enamels and bakes her face in an oven. What do you think a cousin of mine – an ingénue from the country – did, at the Caledonian Ball? She went up to the end of the room, and after intently examining Count and Countess Schoen, said aloud,

“ ‘How funny that they have Madame Tussaud’s figures here.’

“Imagine the horror of her partner!”

Zai laughs again. But this time the laugh is forced, and she catches her breath hard.

Through the swaying crowd she espies Gabrielle among the bevy of beauties.

Gabrielle holds her own to-night. Her black lace dress becomes her white creamy skin admirably. Scarlet japonicas burn and gleam in her coal-black hair and on her bosom. On her cheeks, the bright pink flush lends increased lustre to her large dark eyes. As she sweeps along she has that supreme unconsciousness of manner which is never seen save in a woman who feels she is well dressed and able to defy the criticism of her own sex.

Gabrielle does not see Zai or Percy Rayne looking at her, for her eyes are mostly cast down on the fan she carries, neither does Lord Delaval, on whose arm she leans, observe them, for he is bending and speaking very low under the sweep of his long fair moustache, while his glance rests on the undeniably very handsome face near his shoulder.

“Don’t they make a good looking couple?” asks Rayne. “What a pity they don’t arrange to walk through life together – they look so well doing it through a ball-room.”

“They are both handsome,” Zai answers indifferently, but she is, spite of her, a little piqued.

This man – to whom her answer has to be given to-night – has not even deemed it worth his while to ask for it, though the evening is wearing on. His neglect hurts her more, sore and suffering so lately from Carlton Conway’s behaviour, and poor little Zai feels that she would like to hide her diminished head for ever.

“I am very tired,” she says to her partner; “Do you think I could get a seat somewhere?”

“Yes; but come out of this crowd. It’s awfully hot, and you look like the whitest lily, Zai – we’ll find a seat somewhere.”

So they go out, and he finds a chair for her in a vestibule, where a little cool air revives her.

“I must go. I have to dance this with Lady Vernon. Do you mind sitting here quietly till I come back?” he asks kindly, seeing how weary and wan she looks.

“I should like to stay quiet here very much,” Zai answers gratefully; “and don’t hurry back for me.”

She half closes her eyes, and fans herself slowly, and feels desolate – so desolate.

Her womanly triumph over Miss Meredyth has evidently fallen to the ground; Lord Delaval has either changed his mind, or else he was only laughing at her at Caryllon House – and as she thinks thus, Zai shivers with mortification and shame, and leaning her head against the wall, grows lost to external things.

She does not know how long she has sat here, and she does not care – all she yearns for is the solitude of her own room; but the ball is not half over, and hours – dreary hours – lie before her.

“Zai! is it to be – Yes?”

She starts up, flushing red as a rose – her heart beating wildly, her eyes with a dumb wonder in them.

She is but a bit of a girl, she has been cruelly jilted by the man she loves, and she craves for a little incense to her amour propre, even though it be dearly bought.

“It is – yes,” she almost whispers; then in a sort of mist she sees Lord Delaval’s face light up, and the colour creeps warmly over his blond skin.

“Thank you, my darling!” he says very low, bending over her, and she feels his lips touch her bare shoulder. Then she puts her hand on his arm, and without another word they walk back into the ball-room, and up to Lady Beranger.

“Let me present to you the future Lady Delaval!” he says quietly, and Zai slips her ice-cold fingers into her mother’s clasp, and for the first time her mother looks at her with positive affection in her glance.

“Is it true, Zai!” she asks, eagerly.

“Quite true, Mamma,” Zai answers without a falter.

A little later the news has been told to the Royalties, and with kindly smiles and words they give their congratulations on her future happiness.

But though the Royalties know of the match in prospective, Zai pleads that it may be kept a secret from her sisters for the present. It may be that the death and burial of her first love is too recent to permit of matrimonial rejoicings just now, or it may be that she wants to realise what has come to pass, and to resign herself to the future before the others touch upon the subject, and probe not too quietly the still open wound made by Carlton Conway. Lord and Lady Beranger are too well pleased that matters have turned out so satisfactorily to refuse her request.

And, as for Lord Delaval himself, perhaps he feels a little uncomfortable at appearing on the scene as a devoted lover before Gabrielle – Gabrielle, who has told him, in the passionate words that rush unchecked to her scarlet lips, that the day of his marriage to any other woman will be the day of her death.

She is not one to kill herself; she is not romantic enough for folly of that kind; what she means is probably a social and moral death; but Lord Delaval – with the innate vanity of his sex – believes that Gabrielle’s handsome face and superb figure will be found floating on the turbid bosom of old Father Thames, and he shrinks more from the scandal of the thing than from the remorse likely to rise up in his breast. Zai’s desire, then, that the engagement shall be kept quiet for a while, meets with his approval. After all, he can find chances to gather honey (if not all the day) from his betrothed’s sweet lips – and stolen sweets have always been nicer to his thinking than any others.

When they say good-night, he contents himself by squeezing five very cold fingers, and slipping a magnificent brilliant on to the third one, which pledge of her bondage Zai does not even glance at before she drops it into her pocket.

“Did you like the ball, Zai?” Trixy asks, as they brush their hair before going to bed.

“I hated it,” Zai answers, giving her chesnut tresses an impatient pull. “I wish I had never gone to it!”

CHAPTER VIII.

“SIMPLE FAITH THAN NORMAN BLOOD.”

“You’ll look at least on love’s remains;A grave’s one violet!Your look? that soothes a thousand pains.What’s Death? You’ll love me yet!”

“Just be careful who mounts that chesnut to-day, Hargreaves,” Challen, the riding-master, says, pausing on his way at the door of the stable, and passing a keen glance over the horse in question. The chesnut is a big, good-looking hack, with a sleek satin coat, and just what would take a woman’s fancy, but there is a look about his eye that Challen does not like. “Put Miss Edwards on him, she has pluck enough to ride to the devil, but mind none of the new pupils go near him.”

Hargreaves assents, but he does not look content.

“She wants to ride the chesnut,” he says to himself. “She’s set her mind on it, and I hate to disappoint her! Bless her heart! Why, what’s the matter with you?” he continues aloud, going up to the chesnut, and passing his hand over the long, lean head. “I like you, because she likes you! You’d never think of hurting her, I’ll be bound, no more than anyone would, I know! My pretty one! I’d kill myself if any harm came to you – that I would!”

And Gladstone Beaconsfield Hargreaves, quasi village veterinary, but now assistant-master of the Belgravian riding-school, pulls out a tiny locket from his breast and kisses it a dozen times, then holds it up to the light reverentially as if it was the holiest thing to him on earth.

“Just like a bit of gold it is, for all the world! The same colour that angels’ hair is. Oh! my pretty one; my sweet one! There’s never a night I don’t go down on my knees and thank God that you don’t scorn me!”

It is the morning after the State Ball, and while the other Beranger girls take an extra hour or two of slumber, Baby, fresh as a lark, dons her dark-blue habit that fits her lovely little figure like wax – and is off for a riding lesson.

The weather is true summer, and the little lazy breeze that floats across the Serpentine is a boon to man and beast. Right away in the upper portion of Kensington Gardens, the trees throw down some grateful shade, and Challen’s riding-school wend their way down the broad walk at a snail’s pace, for the heat is awful.

Up above there is not even a cloudlet to temper the sun’s rays; the sky is as clear and as blue as Baby’s own eyes, and everything around looks as bright as her smiles.

There are not as many aspirants to equestrian honours as usual to-day. The season is on the wane, and the Ball and Reception givers pile on the agony fast and strong, so that the young débutantes, fagged and worn out by nocturnal exertions, find the arms of Morpheus more to their liking than the caresses of Boreas.

Miss Juliana Edwards, a strong-minded, steel-nerved brunette, and Challen’s show pupil, is here, well to the front of the small cavalcade, but she does not ride the chesnut.

Her dare-devil propensities find but small play, for her mount is a dapple-grey gelding, who looks as if neither whip nor spur will rouse him out of riding-school jog-trot.

There are only eight riders in all, and the first lot go in threes, while some little distance in the rear Hargreaves keeps close to the chesnut, on whose back is Baby.

“You’ll kindly look to the other ladies, Miss Edwards, won’t you?” he had said on starting, with a deprecatory smile. “I think I had better keep an eye to Miss Mirabelle Beranger’s horse. She doesn’t ride like you do, you know!”

And Miss Juliana Edwards, to whom a compliment on her horsemanship is dearer than anything, smiles in return at the handsome assistant, and agrees to keep a sharp look-out.

The chesnut goes steadily enough – so steadily in fact, that Baby, who is an awful little coward, forgets all about him, and gives her whole attention to her teacher, who, in the neatest of grey tweed suits, and with an unimpeachable wide-a-wake perched jauntily on his curly head, looks quite the gentleman.

“I wish you had been at the State Ball last night!” she says, with a beaming smile, that almost takes the young fellow’s breath away.

“I! fancy me at a State Ball, Miss Mirabelle!”

“Why not? I am sure there was no one so good-looking as you there!” she cries, looking admiringly at the trim, slight figure, and the straight features and undeniably winsome eyes of her companion. “I wish you would not call me Miss Mirabelle!” she adds with a little pout of her charming red lips.

He reddens visibly as he hearkens.

“I dare not call you anything else, Miss Mirabelle!” he almost whispers, his heart throbbing violently under his tweed waistcoat.

“There it is again! Miss Mirabelle! why can’t you say ‘Mirabelle,’ when – when – we are quite alone?” she asks impatiently, throwing a covert glance towards the other riders to see if they are out of earshot.

“Oh! I couldn’t!” he murmurs very low – shy of speech – but his large hazel eyes are eloquent enough. “I would as soon think of calling the angels by their names!” he goes on nervously.

“I have heard of Michael as the name of an archangel, but I don’t think the female angels have any names,” Baby says irreverently. “Do you think me an angel? because I’m not, not the very least bit in the world. The governor calls me a little devil, and I know my sisters don’t think me an angel!” she laughs.

“You are an angel to me, anyhow!”

A little pause, while she looks straight into his eyes, with the prettiest, faintest pink colour creeping over her cheeks.

“I say, Hargreaves, how long are we going on like this?” she asks abruptly.

He gazes at her amazed, and Baby laughs again, a little, low, musical laugh that entrances him.

“I mean that – that – as we care for one another, why should we pretend not to?” she asks in a hushed voice, putting her hand on her pommel, for the chesnut pricks up his ears and frightens her. Hargreaves’ hand is on hers in a second. He is really rather nervous about the horse after Challen’s warning, and besides, it is Heaven to him to feel the soft velvety skin of the dainty little hand that gleams up like a morsel of alabaster statuary under the sunlight.

“Miss Mirabelle, for God’s sake don’t go and make me forget what I am. I try night and day to remember the distance between us, and though I could go down on my knees and worship you all my life – though I could die for you willingly —willingly, I know I dare not live for you! I love you —there! Only God knows how I love you, but it isn’t a love like a fellow gives to his sweetheart! It’s a love like a faithful dog, that would lick your pretty hand and be content; that would watch over you so that no harm came near you; that would just lie down and die by the side of your grave.”

Baby listens with an involuntary tear twinkling in her eye. She is only seventeen, but she has been too long in a Belgravian world not to know that this young fellow loves her with a beautiful, unselfish, honest love – the like of which no Belgravian fine gentleman would feel. This primitive, self-abnegatory sort of courtship is so novel that it has a glamour for her, and Baby is – undoubtedly – a little fast.

“I would rather live and find out how much you do love me, Hargreaves,” she answers, with a tender smile; “do you think you love me to – to – the extent – of – marrying me?”

“Miss Mirabelle!” he gasps.

The veins swell on his forehead, his eyes fix on her with a bewildered look, and his breath comes quick and fast. Then he droops his head, and a forlorn expression sweeps over his white face.

“Don’t laugh at me, for my dead mother’s sake,” he whispers in a hoarse tone.

“I am not laughing,” she says slowly, “not laughing one little bit, Hargreaves. Would you think it very fast of me if I said something – something quite out of the way, you know?”

“I could not think ill of you, no matter what came,” he replies earnestly.

“Well then, here goes! I am ready to be Mrs. Hargreaves as soon as you like.”

He stares at her like a man in a dream, and as he lifts his eyes to her lovely little face, Baby’s snowy lids droop over her cerulean orbs, while her mouth twitches with something between a quiver and a smile.

He is not a gentleman born and bred, but he has a heart that can love. Blue blood may not flow in his veins, but honest, devoted, even chivalric feelings live in his breast, and he knows that this girl – in spite of the words she has just spoken – is a thing he dare not grasp.

No, if her love and her presence are Heaven, the loss of her undying misery and regret, he does not dream of hesitating between them for her dear sake.

She has offered herself to him – the sweetest, most precious gift he could have on earth – but sooner than take her, sooner than drag his dainty high-born darling down to his own level, he would shoot himself.

“No, no, Miss Mirabelle! I should be a rascal, a cur, if I thought you were in earnest. I have no right to love you; but love is a thing that comes alike to all, and I may feel it so long as I don’t let it harm you, Miss Mirabelle. God bless you for liking me, for speaking to me kindly; but I ask no more than that – only —only– may I just kiss your hand —once– Miss Mirabelle.”

He raises a white, stricken face as he speaks. He has made up his mind to throw up his situation this very night and to go away – to America – Australia – anywhere so that she may never see him again, and regret perhaps that she has spoken to him thus. He will pass right away out of her life, but he wants one kiss of her little white hand to take away with him; that kiss and the locket that holds a bit of her shining hair – his two priceless treasures.

Baby’s eyes are full of tears now. The young fellow’s voice has such a ring of pathos in it – a ring she has never heard in the voices of Belgravia – but she says nothing, only pulls off the gauntlet from her right hand and holds it towards him.

“Good-bye,” he whispers so incoherently that she doesn’t catch the word, and stooping, Hargreaves fastens his trembling lips on the soft white flesh, when—

The Chesnut has started forward, and, off her guard and terrified out of her senses, his hapless rider loses all presence of mind and clings on as the horse careers madly along.

The rest of the school have turned to the right and disappeared from view. Hargreaves, horror-struck, almost stunned, does not follow for a moment, and only the Chesnut with its helpless burden dashes on and on. Turning sharply to the left he gallops furiously – so furiously that all obstacles give way before him. On and on, on and on! till the gardens are left long behind, and the road by the Park is reached, while the poor pale little rider clings desperately on with all her might and main for dear life.

Suddenly the horse swerves to the right down a narrow street, and losing her hold, the girl falls off.

Pray God that the horror of her fate is over! but no!

The tiny foot is entangled in the stirrup, and for nearly thirty yards the brute drags her along, when all at once he stops dead short, frightened and quivering, and the jerk snaps the stirrup leather in two.

But it is a little too late!

They pick her up, a little white dainty thing. Her hat has fallen off, and her long hair – angels’ hair, as Hargreaves has called it – streams down in such long rich shining waves that it seems to envelop the small slender figure in an armour of burnished gold.

She is not dead – her blue eyes, blue as the sunny sky – are quite wide open, and some one, a slight young fellow, who has just ridden breathlessly up, falls down prone on his shaking knees and looks into them with the poor piteous look of a faithful hound.

“Miss Mirabelle, Miss Mirabelle!” he calls in wild despairing tones.

But she cannot rebuke him now for his formal address, poor little soul!

Presently her eyelids droop, and the long curling lashes rest close against cheeks that are almost ashy now.

They lift her up gently and carry her – “Home,” the home she had left only two hours before gay and blithesome as a bird and so full of life, and when it is reached they take her straight into the library, the door of which is ajar, and laying her down on the couch, they leave her, all but one, and he does not enter the room that contains her, but stands trembling near the threshold.

Another moment and the awful thing that has happened is known to all in the house, and Hargreaves shrinks away still further as father, mother, sisters of the girl he loves pass him with scared faces and stricken hearts to find Baby —so!

Not a word is spoken. At such a moment what word can be said? Even Lady Beranger bows her proud head beneath the fiat of Heaven, while Lord Beranger sobs aloud over this little one – this brightest, merriest one of all the flock.

After a moment, revived by a stimulant, Baby opens her pretty blue eyes.

“Don’t cry, governor!” she says in a voice so faint —so faint!– that it seems to come already from that distant shore. “It serves me right! I was going to leave you – I was – ”

She stops, struggling for breath.

“Let me just see her, my lady! Oh, for God’s sake let me just go near her! I won’t dare to touch her – I won’t even dare to say good-bye!” a voice whispers so hoarsely, so brokenly, that my lady starts and turns round, but does not understand.

But Baby has heard, through the faint mists that are rising up around her; the voice of the man who loves her finds an echo in her heart.

“Let him come near, governor,” she says slowly, with an effort. “He isn’t a gentleman, but I loved him and asked him to marry me, but he wouldn’t, governor. He said he wouldn’t hurt me by doing it.”

“Quite right of him,” Lord Beranger falters through the tears that roll down his cheeks. “Hargreaves, come closer.”

He draws closer and kneels down beside the couch, and taking up one long, glittering tress, he puts his quivering lips to it.

“You may kiss me, Hargreaves,” Baby murmurs, with a half smile on her pale lips. “There are no convenances where I’m going!”

He rises from his knees and, bending over, kisses her for the first and the very last time.

“Good – bye – all!” she gasps. “I have – had – a – jolly – time – but – I’m – not sorry – to – go! Go – od – bye!”

Her eyes close, a grey hue runs round the pretty lips and the shadow of the Angel of Death falls on her little face.

Only a few hours more and Baby is gone! – gone with her smiles and her wiles, her coaxing ways and her naughty ways – gone to that land which only faith can pierce and where only love can follow.

There is not a dry eye in the household, when with awesome spirit and noiseless tread they go in to see the last of her.

She lies like an exquisite waxen image, her sweet voice silenced, her blithe laugh hushed, her slender white arms crossed on her stilled heart, and a snowy Eucharis lily resting upon her breast.

“Oh, my lord! put this somewhere near her from me!” poor Hargreaves had said through blinding tears.

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” and Lord Beranger, knowing with what a true, honest, unselfish love this young fellow had loved his lost child, places the lily on her breast with his own hands.

* * * * * * * *

The day after Baby is laid to rest, Hargreaves is found near the Beranger vault; one hand grasps a locket with a bit of golden hair in it, near the other hand is the revolver with which he has shot himself. It was true what he had said, that he loved her with the love of a dog, that would just lie down and die beside her grave.

But the matter is at once hushed up, for the convenances do not allow of canaille even killing themselves for the sake of daughters of Belgravia.

CHAPTER IX.

LET THE DEAD PAST BE BURIED

“Let this be said between us here,One love grows green when one turns grey,This year knows nothing of last year,To-morrow has no more to say to yesterday.”

“The pomps and vanities and sinful lusts of the flesh” being put a stop to by poor little Baby’s untimely death, Lady Beranger has elected to mourn in sackcloth and ashes among the sylvan shades of Sandilands. It would be dreadful to assert that this worldly mother does not lament to a certain degree the gap in the domestic circle, or that now and again the memory of Baby’s sweet pretty face and winsome, kittenish ways does not bring a mist into her fine eyes, but this much is true, that she leaves Belgravia with regret, especially as the season is not quite dead. And now that three months have nearly gone by since

“Mirabelle Beranger,Aged 17,”

went away to the angels, Lady Beranger, knowing that mitigated affliction in the shape of jet and bugles are always becoming, has “just one or two intimate friends” come down to share the quiet of the country and to sympathise with the family woe.

It need not be said that, with that worldly wisdom that looks sharp after its own interests, these intimate friends are Lord Delaval and Mr. Stubbs.