Daughters of Belgravia; vol 1 of 3

There is quite an elegance about his figure, a je ne sais quoi of thoroughbred style that renders Eric, Lord Delaval, a marked man in any assemblage, and his undeniably picturesque face does him right good service as an excellent passport wherever he goes.

A very handsome face it is, and a fatally fascinating one for those women to whom it appeals, with its Saxon beauty of fair, almost colourless, skin, faultless features, hair almost tawny in hue, straight eyebrows, cleanly pencilled, and deep blue eyes of eminent softness, and yet a softness that no one would mistake for gentleness. In spite of his fairness, no one could call him effeminate – on the contrary, men looking at him feel at once that he is not to be trifled with, and that his keen, fearless, determined physiognomy, indicates a nature ready to meet any emergency, and not likely to quail before any obstacle.

Not always, nor altogether, a pleasant face, by any means, but one with an attractive force about it that it is impossible to deny, and sometimes very difficult to resist.

This is the man that Baby had once cared for in her wilful, childish way, and with whom she still loves to coquet, and this is the man that Gabrielle Beranger worships with all the fire and energy of her fierce, unsatisfied nature, while he only thinks of himself and his own interests. To him, women are but instruments to reach a wished-for goal, or toys to amuse and be broken – foolish fluttering butterflies on whom he looks with a good deal of contempt, and whom he carelessly crushes in his grasp.

Clever and self-sufficient, feminine brains are beneath his notice, feminine minds unworthy of deciphering.

So many beautiful women have laid the treasures of their heart at his feet that he has learnt to look on a “woman’s heart” as easy of access, and not especially valuable in possession; still, Lord Delaval likes to win them in a quiet, subtle way, if it is only for the feline gratification of playing with and torturing them by turns, till he is sick of them and throws them aside.

He is only a type of most of his sex, after all, especially the portion of his sex who wear the purple, feed on clover, and grow enervated in luxury.

He and Miss Mirabelle (who looks to-night too old for her appellation of Baby) make a pretty, lover-like tableau enough, as they sit close together in the embrasure of the window, ensconced in half shade, with the soft night, full of mystic stars, and the silent, fragrant flowers in the background.

Yet Lord Delaval’s face, when he raises it from whispering in Baby’s ear, wears anything but a lover-like expression. Stolid indifference is in his handsome eyes, and a cynical smile on his lips, but the moment Zai enters, he grows more animated, and rising, walks towards her.

“Don’t you think we shall be very late, Miss Zai? It is not a large affair, I hear, and we shall be disturbing Miss Crystal Meredyth in the middle of ‘Tais toi mon cœur!’ ”

Zai winces slightly at Crystal’s name, but recovers herself at once.

“May I not be allowed a cup of tea?” she asks, looking up at him with her big, grey eyes, in which he thinks there is something of the gleaming yet transparent lustre that water shows under a starlit sky. For a moment these eyes catch his fancy, and influence his imagination, but only for a moment.

Lord Delaval at heart is a rock, and a rock that no woman’s hand has as yet succeeded in making a cleft in.

“Yes, there’s time enough for that, and indeed, I will keep you company. Tea is a blessing to the race of mankind – and womankind, too,” he goes on languidly, as he sips. “But tea is a paradox; it calms one’s turbulent feelings, and yet it is a mighty stimulant and keeps one awake – and it is for this last of its properties that I indulge in it to-night.”

“To keep you awake!” cries Zai, eyeing him rather contemptuously, as she listens to what she considers his soulless remarks. “Are you likely to fall asleep among the music and singing and chatter then, or are you so wrapped up in your noble self, that no one or nothing can interest you?”

He wanted to provoke her to speak to him, and he has succeeded. Her contempt does not touch him a bit, in fact, it makes her more piquante, and gives a spice to society “twaddle.” There is an utter coldness in her towards him that frets his amour propre; it is so different to other women; and he longs intensely to subdue her, as he has subdued scores of girls whom he has desired to subjugate and make mere puppets in his hand.

He draws his chair nearer to hers, and settles himself as if he has forgotten the flight of time and the disturbance of Crystal Meredyth’s favourite French ditty, and makes up his mind to try and draw Zai’s young heart into his net with the skill of an experienced fowler.

Just at this moment, Mr. Stubbs finishes his cup of coffee at a gulp, and rising up in a perfect steam, betakes himself and his primrose-coloured kids to the lovely Sabrina opposite.

“A man or a porpoise – which?” whispers Lord Delaval with a mocking smile, as he watches the millionaire’s progress across the room.

“At any rate, if he is a porpoise, we have an opportunity of studying a little zoology, and finding out that porpoises are by no means laggards in love,” laughs Zai. “Look how eagerly he goes, though there is nothing very encouraging in Trixy’s face. She forgets to beam on him as she does on other men!”

“And who can blame her? Don’t you think it must require a vast deal of gold to gild that creature’s bulky form, and a vast deal of avarice and interestedness in a woman to take him for better – for worse?” Lord Delaval asks, with a sneer.

“I should think you must be almost tired of sneering at everyone, Lord Delaval, or is it a chronic habit of yours?” Zai questions carelessly. “You see, if some men have the misfortune to lack beauty and refinement, there may be some as handsome and polished as yourself.”

“Are there many of the same nonpareils, Miss Zai, or do you think there is only – one?” he answers, with a lame attempt at jesting, but the most obtuse can see he is nettled.

“There may be many for aught I know. That there is one, I do know,” she returns quickly.

“Granting even so – pray does one swallow make a summer?”

“Not exactly, but you have a hateful habit of running people down, Lord Delaval, a habit that to my mind is not to be admired.”

“I know what you mean,” he answers flushing a little. “Just because I happened to say, during our last valse at your ball the other night, that a man, because he chooses to lower himself, cannot lift his new confrères to the grade which he has forfeited, but remains lost himself, to his family, and to Society. I could say a deal more on this subject.”

“Please don’t edify me with it,” cries Zai impatiently, “I do not care to hear any dissertations on it. You never lose an opportunity to sneer at Mr. Conway, and Mr. Conway’s profession, and it is hopeless to rebuke you for it, or even to notice your remarks.”

“Zai, I think you are giving your unruly member too much licence. Lord Delaval must be horrified at such unconventional talk,” Lady Beranger breaks in angrily from behind.

“Oh let little Zai prattle,” Paterfamilias says indulgently. “Delaval must be sick of conventional talk, and her unworldly wisdom must be quite refreshing. Besides, animation becomes her style of beauty.”

“I am sorry if I treated Lord Delaval to a lecture, mamma, it is a great waste of breath I know,” Zai replies wilfully, ignoring her mother’s warning glance, “but he seems to find no subject so interesting as abuse of Mr. Conway.”

“To the best of my knowledge, I did not mention his name even,” Lord Delaval says in a martyr-like tone, “but you always treat me cruelly, Miss Zai. I confess I do not care about actors being dragged into Society as they are. They ought to be kept in their places.”

“There are actors, and actors, I suppose,” Zai says flushing deeply, “and I don’t see that a gentleman is the least bit not a gentleman, no matter what profession he follows.”

“Then you would call a chimney-sweep a gentleman, Zai, if he happened to have been born one,” Lady Beranger asks in a suave voice.

“There is some difference between the calling of a sweep and an actor, mamma. You may all differ with me in my opinion on this subject, but I cannot help holding to my notions, and speaking them out truthfully.”

“Truth is not always to be told, my pet. Whatever the ancients thought on the subject of unerring veracity, it is an exploded error! Nous avons changé tout cela!” Lord Beranger ordains with the air of a modern Lycurgus.

“I shall never consider it an error to speak plain unvarnished truth, papa,” Zai says fearlessly.

“One would think you had been born in Arcadia, and not in Belgravia,” Lady Beranger remarks angrily. “I only hope that Lord Delaval may feel more indulgent towards such bizarre sentiments than I do.”

“Of course Delaval will be indulgent. Did you ever know any young fellow who was not indulgent to a pretty girl’s fads and follies? There are men, and men, as Zai says. You are a peer, Delaval, and Conway is an actor. I have remarked that the feminine element, now-a-days, inclines to a weakness for the stage. Thespian votaries, what with their shows, and their glitter, their stereotyped smiles, their parrot love-making, have a subtle charm,” Lord Beranger suggests, more for an emollient for Lord Delaval’s evidently wounded vanity than for any genuine faith in his own words.

“I think the difference in our callings is not the only distinction that Miss Zai makes between myself and Carlton Conway,” Lord Delaval says with a meaning glance that brings a scarlet flush to the girl’s face, and makes her lower her long curling lashes over her tell-tale eyes.

Then he leans his handsome head against the tall backed chair he occupies, and watches the flicker of the lovely colour, and the lashes, through his half-closed eyes, with a glance she could not help to feel, although she studiously avoids meeting it.

Lord Beranger moves away a few paces, and his better-half follows him, then Lord Delaval bends forward again till his breath sweeps Zai’s cheek, and he asks in a low concentrated voice that is inaudible to others:

“There is another distinction between Carlton Conway and myself, is there not?”

“Yes!” she answers frankly, for she glories in her love and her lover. “There is a distinction between you, and you know what it is.”

“I do not know why you should think so well of him, and evidently so ill of me.”

“Don’t you? then I will tell you. I believe Mr. Conway to be as open as the day, to have no narrowness in his heart, no pettiness in his soul. He could no more shackle himself with the opinion of “society” than he could stoop to do a mean thing. In fact I know he has such a true gentleman-like nature, that if he were reduced to a blacksmith’s calling he would be a gentleman in the estimation of all those whose judgment is worth having.”

She says it all hastily, impetuously, taking up the cudgels for the man she adores with all her heart, a sweet pink flush on her face, fervour shining out of her grey eyes. Lord Delaval stares at her hard, with a sudden hot red spot on his usually pale cheek, and with a kindling glance, but his voice is languid and cold enough.

“Let us have the reverse picture,” he whispers in a mocking voice.

“No occasion, it is not an interesting topic,” she answers carelessly.

“Of course it is not! You have made me understand, perhaps too often, the opinion you have of me, the atrocious number of faults you endow me with. I should be a thousand times blacker than the traditional blackness of the Devil, if I were all you think,” he says rather bitterly.

His tone vexes her, and the colour deepens while her eyes glow, and just at this moment Gabrielle enters, and takes in the whole situation. As she crosses the long room towards them, Lord Delaval puts his head down low, and almost hisses out his words.

“You make me hate Conway. I see he is the bar to every hope I have in life.”

Then he walks away, and in another moment is whispering into Baby’s ear while she laughs and coquets to her heart’s content.

“You should always talk to Lord Delaval if you wish to look well, Zai,” Gabrielle says angrily. “It is wonderful the colour he has evoked on your cheeks, and the light in your eyes.”

CHAPTER V.

CROSS PURPOSES

“Though matches are all made in Heaven, they say,Yet Hymen, who mischief oft hatches,Sometimes deals with the house t’other side of the way,And there they make lucifer matches.”

“I saw Conway riding with Crystal Meredyth this afternoon, looking awfully spooney.” This is what Zai overhears Sir Everard Aylmer say in his inane drawl to Gabrielle, in the carriage, on the way to Elm Lodge.

A lump of ice seems to settle down on her heart, and two small, very cold, hands clasp one another under her white cloak; but she is a daughter of Belgravia, and to a certain extent true to her colours; so when she walks into Mrs. Meredyth’s not over-spacious, but unpleasantly crowded room, her face shows no emotion, and the only effect of Everard Aylmer’s words, is a lovely pink flush, that makes Carlton Conway’s affianced wife tenfold more attractive.

And it is fortunate that, young as she is, her breeding has taught her self-control; for the first thing her grey eyes fall on is her lover and Crystal Meredyth floating round the room, and very much enjoying their valse, to all appearances.

So Zai turns away from that which is dearest to her in the world, and turns towards Lord Delaval, who, either by chance or on purpose, stands at her side.

As Zai looks up in the peer’s face, she acknowledges, for the first time, that he is certainly a handsome man. And, indeed, there cannot be two opinions on this score. He is as handsome as the Apollo Belvedere – a fact of which he is quite as well aware as his neighbours.

Tall and slim, his hair a fair golden, his eyes ultramarine to their deepest depths, his features perfect, his mouth carved like a cameo, and almost as hard. Yet, however vain he may be, there is nothing really offensive in his vanity, nothing of that arrogant self-conceit, that overpowering self-complacency, that makes puppyism a mild epithet to apply to some men.

Lord Delaval is spoilt, of course – an enfant gâté of the fair sex, and prone to that general masculine failing of fancying himself perfectly irresistible; but on the whole, women adore him, and men pronounce him “not a bad sort.”

At the present moment he suffers from embarras des richesses; for he knows that Gabrielle and Baby are both delightfully disposed towards him and – wonder of wonders – Zai seems to have suddenly awakened to a proper appreciation of him as well.

But he is quite equal to any emergency of this kind. In his heart he admires Zai more than any of the Beranger family, and – he detests Carlton Conway.

“Shall we have a turn?” he asks.

She assents at once as she meets the ultramarine smiling eyes. And they too float round and round the room. They both waltz splendidly, and when Carl pauses a moment to give his partner breathing time, his eye falls at once on them, and in the same moment, someone remarks near him:

“What a handsome couple Delaval and Zai Beranger make.”

Before, however, he has time to recover his anger and jealousy, Zai and her escort have disappeared out on the lawn.

Ever since she could toddle Zai has held her own. No one in the world is better able to paddle her own canoe than this beautiful little daughter of Belgravia, and from sheer feelings of pique, she is positively satisfied with the companion on whose arm she wanders through the flowery walks of Elm Lodge. There are plenty of other couples doing the same thing, so there is nothing against the convenances. And Zai knows that her mother is at this moment revelling in dreams of Lord Delaval for a son-in-law.

“Let her revel if she likes,” Zai says to herself. “I shall marry Carl all the same.”

And even while she soliloquises thus, she teems with coquetry; but it is a coquettishness that is perfectly subordinate to good taste, and her instincts are all those which come from gentle breeding.

There is in her none of the making of what we call a fast young lady. When time has fully opened the flower, it will be of a higher order than any of those gaudy blossoms. Only nineteen, she shows a grace and subtlety, and a savoir faire that astonishes Lord Delaval, and then, though beauty is only skin deep, Zai is so very beautiful. After all, this must be set down as her chief attraction.

There is a bewildering charm about her little face that words cannot describe – a deliciousness about her soft colouring, and her great, grey eyes are brimful of a liquid provoking light, as they look up at her cavalier and tell him, in mute but powerful language, that he finds favour in their sight, although it must be confessed it is for “this night only.” Her cheeks are still flushed, and smiles play on her pretty mouth, and, like all women, this bit of a girl is surely a born actress, for the man of the world, wary as he deems himself, and skilled in all the wiles of the sex, really believes that he has done her injustice in crediting her with a grande passion for “that actor fellow,” and is satisfied that, like Julius Cæsar, he has conquered.

Presently the flowery paths are deserted as the sweet strains of “Dreamland” fall on them. Zai shivers a little as she remembers that to these she valsed last with Carl – Carl, who is so monopolised with Crystal Meredyth that he has evidently forgotten the existence of any other woman.

Pique and jealousy drive her to lingering on in these dim-lit grounds. Pique and jealousy make her little hand cling closer to Lord Delaval’s arm, and her manner and voice softer to him; but the convenances must be considered. She is too much Belgravian to forget them. So she says:

“Had we not better think of going back to the ball-room?”

“Why should we?” Lord Delaval murmurs softly.

Enchanted with his companion, he has no inclination to return to the beauties of whom he is sick and tired.

“I am sure the lawn is delicious; but if you wish to go in, of course, let us go.”

“No, I do not exactly wish to go in,” she answers hesitatingly. Just this particular night she does not desire to vex him. She wants, in fact, to afficher herself with him, only to show Carlton Conway that other men appreciate her fully, if he doesn’t. “But we have been out for some time. You see we are left sole monarchs of all we survey, and mamma may entertain a faint sensation of wonder as to what has become of me.”

He smiles under cover of his blond moustache; he knows Lady Beranger is perfectly aware with whom her daughter is “doing the illuminated lawns,” and that, as he happens to be an eligible, she does not trouble further.

“Let her wonder,” he answers languidly. “It is very good for her, don’t you know? Wondering developes the – the speculative faculties. Don’t go in just yet. It is so seldom I get a chance of talking to you quietly. There are always such a lot of bothering people about!”

“Do you mean Gabrielle or Baby?” she says with a laugh, though her heart is aching dreadfully, and even as she talks, she can in her mind’s eye see her Carl looking into Crystal Meredyth’s china blue eyes, as if those eyes were the stars of his existence.

“I mean —Conway– tell me, do you really care for him as – as much as you have made me think you do?”

A flutter of leaves in a neighbouring shrubbery makes her look round.

There, against the dense dark foliage, stands out in relief like a billow of the sea, the pale green diaphanous garments which Crystal Meredyth wears to-night, and close beside her a tall figure, that Zai knows too well.

Her heart beats fast and a blinding mist seems to rise before her vision, but she has not been tutored by Lady Beranger in vain.

“Have you yet to learn, Lord Delaval, that women do not exactly wear their hearts on their sleeves for daws to peck at?” she says with a low musical laugh, “or do you think Mr. Conway so irresistible that no one can resist him?”

As she almost whispers this, her conscience is troubled with a compunctious throb, her glance seeks the tiny, almost invisible, chain to which the locket containing Carl’s picture is attached, and out of the cloistered greenness and dimness Carl Conway’s handsome face seems to look at her reproachfully for denying her love for him.

“So glad to hear you speak like this!” Lord Delaval murmurs quite tenderly, and he slightly presses against him the little hand lying so snow-white on his arm, “especially as a little bird has told me something.”

“What has it told you?” Zai asks carelessly, while her eyes follow the two figures of her evidently inconstant lover and his companion, with a pathos and wistfulness in their depths that the dusk luckily hides from Lord Delaval.

“It told me that Conway is going to marry Miss Meredyth.”

For half an instant Zai forgets her Belgravian training. Under the Chinese lanterns her cheeks grow white as death, and there is an unmistakable tremor in her voice as she says:

“Are they engaged? But it is not possible!” she adds more slowly.

“Why isn’t it possible?” asks Lord Delaval, rousing out of languor into a suspicious condition. “Is it because he has been trying to make you believe that Miss Meredyth’s bank stock and horses and diamonds are of no importance in his opinion?”

“Miss Meredyth’s money,” Zai says in a low voice. “I – I did not know she was very rich!” Then she cries impetuously:

“How contemptible it is for a man to be mercenary.”

“Some men cannot help being so,” he replies quietly. “For instance, what can fellows like Conway, who have no substantial means at all, do?”

“Do? Why —

‘To go and hang yourselves, for being yourselves.’ ”

quoths Zai flippantly, as she moves towards the house.

Suddenly she pauses, she cannot go in just now into the crowded ball-room and look with calmness on her faithless – faithless lover.

Ah! how unutterably wretched she is. She feels as if life were over for her, now that Carl is going to marry Miss Meredyth.

“I have got such a headache,” she says wearily (she might say heartache), “and if I go into that suffocating room, it will be worse. Then to-morrow I shall make my appearance at breakfast with great haggard eyes, red-rimmed and underlined with bistre shades, and a horrid white face that will draw down such a scolding from mamma and Trixy! You know well enough all I shall have to endure.”

The trivial bond of sympathy which her stress on the “you” seems to indicate sounds strangely pleasant to his ears, but he preserves a silence, though he gazes at her fixedly.

For, under the flickering light, Zai is truly a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.

“Lord Delaval, will you do me a very great favour?” she pleads prettily, glancing up at him.

“Of course!” he answers rather dreamily. He is a Society man, a scoffer at sentiment, an Atheist in love, but this little girl’s ways and proximity exercise a curious influence over him. They are in fact something like the opium trance, of which De Quincey gives so wonderful a description in the “Suspiria.”

He is conscious of an intense longing that the favour she asks will be to kiss her! He feels at this moment that he would willingly give up everything in the world, his successes of the past, his hopes for the future, his schemes in the present, just for the sake of touching this soft scarlet mouth once,

“To waste his whole soul in one kissUpon these perfect lips,”

in fact, but there is an inexplicable sensation of reverence for her that no other woman has ever raised in his breast.

And there is a purity in the face shewing up in the semi-light, that fills him, blasé as he is – satiated as he is, with a wonderment that no woman’s face has ever created in him before.

“I want to go right round the garden.”

The request is so simple, so childish, that it brings him down at once from the height to which imagination has raised him to practical every-day existence, and he laughs aloud at his own sentimental folly.