IN THE BALCONY.
“But you!
If you saw with your soul what man am I,
You would praise me at least that my soul all through
Clove to you--loathing the lives that lie.
The souls and lips that are bought and sold,
The smiles of silver and the kisses of gold!”
Zai looks up hastily at her lover, and her eyes meet his.
It is not only at the touching of the lips that spirits rush together,
as many believe. Who has not seen the soul leap up into the eyes, and
utter there its immortal language far plainer than mortal speech can
interpret it--when pride, or honour, or duty, or interestedness has laid
an iron hand across the mouth.
At such a moment we seem to realise with startling force the existence
of the divine spark prisoned in its house of clay. The power of spirit
over matter, the subtle imagination which, without words, can lay bare
“All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame.”
Before Carl can utter a sentence, he half forgets everything in the
sweetness of the grey eyes, in the fairness of his young love’s face.
“My darling--my own darling,” he whispers, straining her again to his
heart, which, to do him justice, he verily believes is devoted to her.
“Why have you forgotten me for--Delaval, Zai?”
Zai starts and flushes.
“But I ought not to blame you,” he goes on; “after all, class should
mate with class, and I am not good enough for you--nor rich enough. I
have plenty of shortcomings, I know, Zai, but you must not think worse
of me than I deserve.”
Her heart flutters like a bird at this, and her eyes glisten through
unshed but irrepressible tears.
“Worse of you than you deserve, Carl!” she falters, while her arm clings
closer to his neck, and she feels that this man is a king among his
kind, and that she may well be forgiven if she worships him. “Why should
you imagine that I think any ill of you?”
“Because I merit it after the brutal way I treated you at the
Meredyths’, and even in the beginning of this evening, my Zai. I doubted
you, you see, and when one suffers one is apt to be unreasonable, and
wounded vanity is quick to come to the side of wounded love, and after
all what is more natural than that you should not love me?” he asks, but
clasping her even closer and kissing the bright chesnut hair that gleams
up so ruddy under the moonbeams. “What more natural than that you should
love--Delaval!”
But in his heart he does not for a moment believe that she or any other
woman could pause between any other man and _him_.
“Nothing more natural, I suppose,” Zai answers, nestling her hand into
his, and feeling her spirits rise and her courage rear its crest aloft
as she thinks Carl has only acted thus out of jealousy. “But natural
things do not always come to pass, do they? There are exceptions to all
rules, you know. I told you before, Carl, that I was the exception to
the rule in the Beranger family of being dazzled by Lord Delaval’s
fascinations. Have you forgotten this?”
“I thought _you_ had forgotten it!” Carlton Conway murmurs in his most
melodious and reproachful accents.
“Why should you have thought so?” she asks wistfully.
“It would be wiser to ask why I should have thought otherwise,” he
returns, a little drily. “Your sweet face has bewitched me until I have
had no sense left I think, but still I am not _quite_ mad. I know my
superiors, and am not surprised when fate and fortune compel me to bow
to them.”
“But Lord Delaval is _not_ your superior, Carl!” she cries earnestly,
“not in any respect--except that he is a little richer, perhaps.”
“I did not mean to imply that he is my superior because he is a swell,”
he observes rather haughtily, “but the very point of which you speak is
the very one that makes his superiority, probably, in _your_ eyes.”
“In my eyes!” she answers in amazement. “Oh, Carl, I am sorry you should
give me credit for such things. I don’t think that kind of superiority
worth anything--_anything_!” she goes on scornfully. “I don’t think that
money and position and all that sort of thing makes people really
happy!”
“Everyone in Town thinks you mean to make the experiment, anyhow!” he
replies.
“But _you_ didn’t. Surely you didn’t, Carl! You know I don’t care for
Lord Delaval--and that I love _you_!” she whispers, _les larmes au
voix_.
He looks down at her sweet downcast face. It is a face bathed in
blushes. For Zai always blushes when she tells him all that is in her
heart. But she need say nothing. He has only to look at her face, which
tells its story of love with exceeding clearness and sweetness to his
vain, incense-loving eyes.
“Zai! do you really love me so very much?”
He asks the question from sheer selfishness and a desire for incense to
his overweening vanity. He knows he has sought this opportunity to tell
her something which will break her heart. But no--hearts are tough
things, and do not break easily. But something which will surely wreck
her implicit child-like faith in the fidelity and sincerity of all men.
Never after to-night will Zai Beranger perhaps feel that loving words
and honest words are twins. Rather she will shrink from them, knowing
that they may be uttered only to betray.
Now she believes in Carlton Conway with her whole soul. And when he
asks:
“Zai! do you really love me so very much?”
She lets both white arms form a circle for his neck, and woos him to
touch her red lips.
For one moment she forgets her maidenly reserve, and only remembers that
in her own eyes she is his wife--in heart, if not in name.
“Oh Carl! Carl! let us marry at once--dear! and then no one can come
between us two!”
“We cannot!” he says hastily.
Zai starts as if she were shot, and covers her face with her two little
hands, while a burning blush surges over it.
It comes to her suddenly, the terrible, terrible shame, of _her_ having
asked--of _his_ rejection--and then the colour leaves her cheek.
She leans against the balustrade, with the moonlight falling on a face
white as undriven snow. Her eyes have a dumb misery in their depths, and
her mouth quivers like a child’s.
“Oh Zai! forgive me if I hurt you by saying we cannot marry!” he
whispers brokenly, for her white face and trembling lips move him
strangely, worldling as he is. “You know very well how I am placed! I
have nothing but my salary, and that is dependent on health; and if I
don’t marry some girl with money, I don’t know what will become of me,
Zai!”
A deep silence ensues for a minute or two. Up above the glorious moon
sails serenely along, and a few feathery clouds float athwart the great
sapphire plain of sky. From within, the sound of music is carried out on
the fragrant night, but human eyes and human voices are nowhere near.
These two are alone, entirely alone, on this isolated balcony, and they
have for many months played at making love.
Listen then in what passionate words Belgravians and worldlings say
farewell, if farewell must be said by them.
We all know that Romeo and Juliet would not have said it, but they were
foolish inconsequent young people, who fortunately did not live to test
the agreeabilities of a narrow income.
“Then I suppose you are going to marry Miss Meredyth?” Zai asks in a low
voice, that has a hardness in it which no one has heard before.
“Zai! can you blame me? Can you think it possible for me to act
otherwise?”
“No! I don’t blame you!” and again bitterness mars the sweet voice.
“Of course you cannot blame me!” he answers, “for you know _you_ are
forbidden fruit, Zai. You have been reared in certain social conditions,
which of course it would be sheer wickedness on my part to ask you to
resign!”
This is a very different sentiment to what he has expressed before; and
even she, much as she loves him, feels indignant.
There is a sudden flash in her grey eyes as she lifts them to his.
“You know that you ought not to say this, Carl! It is not my interests
you are thinking of, but you have made up your mind not to marry anyone
who has no money!”
“Granted!” he replies quietly, though a crimson flush dyes his face, and
he bites his lip hard. “But though you seem to reproach me, you know why
it is so! You know that people in _your_ world cannot subsist on
sentiment, or on a few paltry hundreds a year. I am, I avow, one of
those miserable devils to whom the bitter irony of fate has given the
tastes and habits of a gentleman, without the means of supporting them.
You are the corresponding woman. Common sense--the commonest sense--will
tell you whether or not it would be sheer madness for us two to marry,
although we love each other so passionately, Zai!”
Zai does not answer. There cannot be the least doubt, she knows, but
that common sense _does_ tell her that marriage with her would not suit
Carl Conway; but it is none the less true that common sense is not what
she cares to listen to now. In the most vapid soul that sojourn in
Belgravia ever starved, there is still some small lodging left for that
divine folly that men call “Love.”
And Zai, born and bred in Belgravia, is as desperately and honestly in
love with this man, who has played fast and loose with her, as a
milk-maid could be.
She longs--how she longs--for just one crumb of comfort, just one little
word of sweetness from his lips.
Only a quarter of an hour ago he held her to him and kissed her with
apparently the old, old passion in his soul, and now he stands a little
apart, calm and cold as a statue.
Conway is a wonderfully handsome man, and Zai worships his beauty. The
more she looks at him the more she craves for a gleam of love in his
brown eyes--the stronger grows her desire to listen to love from his
well-cut lips; but she listens in vain.
“Yes, I know all that,” she says very wearily, with a dreadfully
heart-sick feeling of disappointment, “it was hardly worth while you
telling me. I have heard papa and mamma, and Gabrielle, and all the
others talk of ‘common sense,’ but one grows tired sometimes of hearing
the same thing.”
The tone of her voice tells more than her words; there is a betraying
quiver in it that makes him turn quickly and look at her.
The eyes that meet his own have great glittering tears in them. Never in
her life has Zai looked more lovely or more lovable than at this
moment, and Carl recognises fully all that he is sacrificing for money.
“Forgive me for having repeated anything then that wearies you,” he says
softly, clasping her cold white hand in his own, and Zai lets him. Even
now--even now! in spite of his falsity--his avariciousness--the touch of
his hand thrills her through and through, and her white lissom fingers
linger in his grasp. “Zai, my darling! you _must_ feel that it is as
hard--much more hard indeed--for me to utter than for you to hear. Good
Heavens! do you imagine I am thinking of myself? (For a moment, perhaps,
he really fancies he is not.) It is of you, my dearest, that I think.
How can I be so cruel--so selfish as to ask you to give up for me
everything that you have been taught all your life to consider worth
possessing? But if you really wish to do so, Zai, I can only say that
you will make me very happy. And, darling, you know I shall strive very
earnestly to keep you from regretting it!”
Brave words these are and bravely spoken, with not a single falter in
the tone--not a sign of what they cost, but a swift pallor sweeping
across his face.
Let us do this worldling credit--let us confess that it is very well
done for a man to whom nothing could be more ruinous than to be taken at
his word.
But frankly, Carlton Conway has not reckoned without his host. It is a
curious rather than an absurd sense of honour that forces him to risk
this declaration; but he knows the girl beside him too well not to be
_almost_ certain of her reply.
The event justifies the expectation. Zai loves him to distraction, and
the loss of him will create a void in her life which she believes no
one on this earth will fill up--not if she lives to be as old as Mount
Horeb.
Carl’s handsome captivating face tempts her--the most genuine love that
a woman can feel tempts her to keep him at any cost.
But it is only for a moment she wavers.
She knows that Mammon and Cupid have run a race in Carl’s heart and that
the former has beat by several lengths.
Young, ignorant of guile, and innocent, a sort of instinct teaches her
this.
“It is impossible!” she falters, with the sharp thrill in her soul
echoing in her voice. “You are perfectly right, Carl, in all you have
said, and I--I know it as well as you do. I have been reared under
certain conditions and for certain ends, and perhaps I could not put
them entirely aside. I am fit for nothing but Society, and Society would
not recognise me if I was poor and struggling, so we should simply mar
each other’s lives and render each other miserable. And, Carl,” she
tries to speak calmly but the effort is terrible, “I could not bear
poverty and neither can you, though----” She breaks down completely,
large tears chase one another down her cheeks, but she dashes them away,
wroth at herself for her weakness and want of pride. “Therefore we must
not think of marrying, of course!”
Another dead pause. Madam Diana sails along more brilliantly than
before, this time with an enormous court of glittering stars around her.
The cool night air passes quietly by, lifting up the chesnut tendrils of
hair that stray on to Zai’s brow and fanning her poor hot temples. The
time is flying by, and someone will be coming this way, but nevertheless
Carlton Conway cannot end this interview without a few more words.
“And you will of course let Lady Beranger persuade you into marrying
Delaval?” he asks, jealously--angrily.
Like the dog in the manger, he does not want the girl himself but he
grudges her to another man.
Jealousy is a passion that is often wonderfully independent of the
passion of true love.
Carl is very loth indeed that Lord Delaval, whom he has always hated,
shall have this lovely piece of nature’s handiwork for his.
“I don’t know,” Zai murmurs wearily. Then she calls up all the high
spirit she has in her and says quietly--“After all, the matter might be
worse--for Lord Delaval everyone says is charming, you know.”
“But you care nothing for him, Zai! You care for _me_!” he exclaims
passionately, with almost a mind to claim her sooner than she should
pass out of his life in this manner.
“I know--and yet----”
“And yet you _may_ become Countess of Delaval?”
“I may.”
Upon this Carl releases her hand pettishly and subsides into silence. He
is not of a nature to ponder deeply on social or any other kind of
evils, but just now the sordidness of this strikes him very forcibly,
and he wonders how such girls as the Berangers hold themselves even a
degree better than the Circassian and Eastern females who sell
themselves for filthy lucre.
“Zai, tell me the honest truth. Do you care for Delaval the least bit in
the world?” he asks earnestly, longing for her to deny the existence of
any liking for his rival, to protest the enormous height and depth and
width of her love for himself.
“Not yet--but,” Zai adds slowly and meditatively, “if I marry him I
shall do my best to care for him, and even if I didn’t--what of it? Do
people in our world deem it necessary to care for the man or the woman
whom they marry?”
And Carl Conway cannot honestly affirm that they do.