DAUGHTERS OF BELGRAVIA.
DAUGHTERS OF BELGRAVIA
BY
MRS. ALEXANDER FRASER,
Author of
“THE LAST DRAWING-ROOM,” “A FATAL PASSION,”
“THE MATCH OF THE SEASON,” “A FASHIONABLE MARRIAGE,”
“A PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY,” etc., etc., etc.
“O! Daughters of dreams and of stories
That life is not wearied of yet!
Faustine! Fragoletta! Dolores!
Fèlise and Yolande, Juliette!”
_IN THREE VOLUMES._
VOLUME I.
LONDON:
F. V. WHITE & CO.,
31, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND.
1887.
PRINTED BY
KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS,
AND KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I.--A LEADER OF SOCIETY 1
II.--SANDILANDS 31
III.--AFTERNOON TEA 71
IV.--LORD DELAVAL 116
V.--CROSS PURPOSES 149
VI.--MISS FLORA FITZALLAN 189
* * * * *
“SELECT” NOVELS.
_Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. each._
AT ALL BOOKSELLERS’ AND BOOKSTALLS.
By FLORENCE MARRYAT.
THE HEIR PRESUMPTIVE.
THE HEART OF JANE WARNER.
UNDER THE LILIES AND ROSES.
MY OWN CHILD.
HER WORLD AGAINST A LIE.
PEERESS AND PLAYER.
FACING THE FOOTLIGHTS.
MY SISTER THE ACTRESS.
By ANNIE THOMAS (Mrs. Pender Cudlip).
HER SUCCESS.
KATE VALLIANT.
JENIFER.
FRIENDS AND LOVERS.
By LADY CONSTANCE HOWARD.
MATED WITH A CLOWN.
ONLY A VILLAGE MAIDEN.
MOLLIE DARLING.
=By MRS. HOUSTOUN=, Author of “Recommended to Mercy.”
BARBARA’S WARNING.
By MRS. ALEXANDER FRASER.
THE MATCH OF THE SEASON.
A FATAL PASSION.
A PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.
By IZA DUFFUS-HARDY.
ONLY A LOVE STORY.
NOT EASILY JEALOUS.
LOVE, HONOUR AND OBEY.
By JEAN MIDDLEMASS.
POISONED ARROWS.
By MRS. LOVETT CAMERON.
IN A GRASS COUNTRY.
A DEAD PAST.
A NORTH COUNTRY MAID.
By DORA RUSSELL. By LADY VIOLET GRENVILLE.
OUT OF EDEN.
KEITH’S WIFE.
By NELLIE FORTESCUE HARRISON,
Author of “So runs my Dream.”
FOR ONE MAN’S PLEASURE.
By EDMUND LEATHES.
THE ACTOR’S WIFE.
By HARRIETT JAY.
A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE.
* * * * *
DAUGHTERS OF BELGRAVIA.
CHAPTER I.
A LEADER OF SOCIETY.
“O Love! when Womanhood is in the flush,
And Man a pure unspotted thing,
His first breathed word, and her half-conscious blush,
Are fair as light in Heaven--or flowers in Spring!”
“LADY BERANGER
AT HOME.
A 1, Belgrave Square.--June 20th.”
All the _élite_ in London know these bits of pasteboard well, and all
the _élite_ like to avail themselves of Lady Beranger’s invitation, for
Lady Beranger’s house is one of the swellest in town, and offers
multifarious attractions.
Everything is _en règle_ this fine June night, when myriads of stars
keep high jubilee in the sky, and a round, yellow moon like a big
blubber ball, promises to develop into yet greater brightness as the
hours wear on.
The windows are ablaze from top to bottom of the Belgravian mansion. The
floral decorations--banks of purple and white violets, straight from the
glorious Riviera, are perfect and costly.
Achille, Lord Beranger’s famous French _chef_, has surpassed himself in
dainty concoctions. Gunter has sent in buckets of his world-renowned
ice, and Covent Garden has been ransacked for choicest fruits.
One little aside before we go any further. All this magnificence and
lavishness is “on tic.” The Berangers, like a good many others of their
class, are as poor as church mice; but “Society”--that English
Juggernauth that crushes everything under its foot--demands that its
votaries shall even ruin themselves to satisfy its claims--but _revenons
à nos moutons_.
Everybody who is anybody is here. All the lords and the ladies, the
honourables and dishonourables, the hangers on to aristocratic skirts,
the _nouveau riche_, the pet parsons and actors, eligibles and
detrimentals, and the black sheep, that go towards composing the “upper
current.” The spacious rooms teem with handsome thoroughbred men, and
lovely well-_dressed_?--women. And yet “they come! they come,” though
the clocks are chiming midnight and Coote and Tinney’s Band has been
pouring out its softest strains for two hours.
The host and hostess are still on duty near the entrance, all ready to
be photographed; so we’ll just take them.
Lord Beranger is tall and thin. His hair is so fair that the silver
threads thickly intersecting it are hardly visible. His eyes are
blue--the very light blue that denotes either insincerity or
imbecility--his smile is too bland to be genuine, his talk is measured
to match his gait, and he lives the artificial life of so many of his
brotherhood, to whom the opinion of “the world” is everything.
Lady Beranger is fair, fat and forty--and a hypocrite--as she awaits her
tardy guests, so weary, that under the shelter of her long trailing blue
velvet skirts and _point de gaze_, she indulges in the gallinacious
tendency of standing first on one leg and then on the other--her
expression is as sweet as if she delighted to be a martyr to these late
votaries of fashion.
Only once she loses sight of worldliness, and permits the ghost of a
frown to flit across her brow, as she whispers to her husband:
“Is Zai with Delaval? I don’t see that Conway anywhere!”
Lord Beranger shrugs his shoulders and answers nothing. Achille’s best
efforts in _Salmis de Gibier, sauce Chasseur and Baba au Rhum_, are just
ready, and he is evolving the momentous point of who he should take in.
He would not make an error in such an important thing as precedence for
all the world! a regular society man is always a stickler for absurd
little trifles like these. Does the handsome Duchess of Allchester rank
higher than the elegant and younger Duchess of Eastminster? He turns up
his light blue eyes and puckers his forehead in the vain hope of calling
up to mind the date of the dukedoms, but it is futile; this salient fact
has entirely slipped from his memory. So he goes in search of the
patrician lady who finds most favour in his sight.
Lady Beranger, still in _statu quo_, turns towards a girl who has paused
near, in the middle of a waltz.
“Gabrielle, can you tell me where Zai is?” she asks in icy tones. The
tone and the gleam in her eyes betoken dislike, and the girl addressed
pays her back with interest. There is quite a ring of malicious pleasure
in her voice as she answers her stepmother.
“Zai wanted some supper after three dances with Carlton Conway, so he
took her in to have some.”
Lady Beranger flushes angrily, and vouchsafing no further notice of her
“cross in life”--Gabrielle--walks away in her stately fashion,
exchanging pleasant words or smiles as she goes, but throwing a
hawk-like glance round the room all the time.
Chafing inwardly at her stepdaughter’s answer, especially as it was made
before Lord Delaval, she does a tour of the capacious _salon_, then
dives through the crowd at the door of the supper room, and finally
subsides on to a seat next to a fair-haired, blue-eyed, good-looking
miniature of Lord Beranger.
“Baby, have you seen Zai?” she questions, low but sharply.
Baby Beranger looks up into her mother’s face with wide-open innocent
eyes. It would be hard to credit the owner of such eyes with deceit, or
such pretty red lips with fibs. Baby has such a sweet little face, all
milk and roses, surmounted by little hyacinthine golden curls like a
cherub’s or a cupid in a valentine, and her mouth is like an opening
pomegranate bud, but no matter what her face expresses, she is born and
bred in Belgravia, and is Belgravian to the backbone.
“Zai, mamma!” she says innocently, “she is waltzing with Lord Delaval I
think.”
It is a deliberate falsehood, but it comes quite glibly from the
child-like lips, and Baby, though she is only seventeen, has almost
forgotten to blush when she does wrong.
“_Gabrielle_ is with Lord Delaval,” Lady Beranger snaps crossly. “_She_
is not one to let the grass grow under her feet if she has an object in
view.”
“What object has Gabrielle to gain, mamma?” As if Baby didn’t know! As
if she had not slipped in of a night, with bare, noiseless feet, and a
white wrapper, making her look like a delicious little ghost, behind the
screen in her sister’s room, and heard Gabrielle tell Zai that she fully
intends being Countess of Delaval in spite of Lady Beranger’s
circumventions! But though Baby is only seventeen she takes in her
mother, who flashes _sotto voce_:
“What object has Gabrielle? Why to make the best match in town. I don’t
believe that girl would stickle at anything.”
Gabrielle’s propensities to go ahead in everything are not interesting
to Baby, who has quite a multitude of _affaires du cœur_ of her own,
so she agrees with her mother by a mournful shake of her curly head, and
is speedily engrossed with a young German _attaché_, who, deluded by the
apparent wealth of the host, thinks the youngest Honble. Miss Beranger
will be a prize worth gaining.
Once more Lady Beranger breaks in on the preliminaries of this
Anglo-Prussian alliance.
“Where’s Trixy?” she asks.
“Gone off to bed. She said she was ill, but I think she was angry
because Carlton Conway forgot his dance.”
“Why did he forget his dance with her?” Lady Beranger mutters sternly,
with hydra-headed suspicion gnawing her mind.
“Why?” Baby is a little at fault. She is rather _distraite_ after Count
Von Niederwalluf’s last sweet nothing, and she has not an answer ready,
so she speaks the truth once in a way:
“I think Carlton Conway was out on the balcony with Zai, mamma.”
“I wish you would not call him _Carlton_ Conway. How often have I told
you that it is very bad form for girls to speak familiarly of men,” Lady
Beranger rejoins in a harsh whisper, then she moves off, much to Baby’s
satisfaction.
“Miladi looks angry,” Von Niederwalluf murmurs softly. “She does not
frown because--_Ich liebe dich?_”
Baby has never been good at languages, or at anything, in fact, that her
numerous governesses have toiled to cram into her pretty little head,
but
“_Ich liebe dich!_”
She understands these three little words quite well. She has seen them
in a little book called “Useful English and German Phrases for
Tourists.”
“_Nein_,” she coos tenderly, “and if she was angry it would make no
difference, for--_Ich liebe dich_--too--you know.”
Meanwhile the moon has grown fuller and rounder and yellower, and is
right prodigal of its beams--and no wonder--for its tender glances,
satiated as they must be with mortal beauty, have seldom fallen on a
fairer thing than this girl who, Belgravian born and bred, has braved
that autocrat of her class, the convenances, and with a long dark cloak
thrown over her snowy ball-dress, and a large hat hiding the glory of
her hair, has stolen out amidst the fresh cool foliage of the square, to
talk to her lover.
A fair young girl, with a pure soft face, that owns a magnificent pair
of eyes, big and grey and black lashed, a little straight nose, and a
mouth sweet to distraction. Her hat has fallen back, and her hair looks
all afire with ruddy gleam as the bright moonlight touches it, and even
through the long loose cloak the perfection of her tall, slender figure
is visible.
The man she has elected her lord and king for evermore is a man to whom
most women give a second glance.
Women like height and strength in man, and this one stands over six feet
two, and has broad shoulders, and carries his brown, cropped head as
haughtily as if he were a prince instead of a pauper, and what in social
parlance is too awful--a detrimental.
He has large brown eyes (sleepy as a rule but quite capable of suddenly
kindling into passion), set deeply under straight well defined brows,
aquiline thin-cut features, firmly moulded lips, a slight moustache, and
a sort of _debonnair_ style that suits him admirably.
Altogether Carlton Conway, “_jeune amoureux_” at the Bagatelle Theatre,
is very much worth looking at, and is just the sort a romantic girl
falls down before in abject adoration.
“We must take our lives into our own hands, Zai,” he says very
passionately, marking how sweet his love looks under the soft moonbeams.
“We must run away, my child!”
One arm is round her slim waist, her cheek, lovelier and whiter and
purer than a white rose, is against his breast, her small snowflake of a
hand lies restfully in his strong clasp.
Zaidie Beranger starts.
“Run away, Carl?” she asks in an awed voice. Such a frightful defiance
of the convenances has never been known in the annals of the Berangers,
and it sounds quite too awful in her tiny pink ears. Possibly, or rather
probably, she has passed hours, delightful fleeting hours, in her own
little sanctum sanctorum in Belgrave Square, picturing the pretty
wedding at St. George’s or St. Peter’s, with the organ pealing out “The
voice that breathed o’er Eden,” the bevy of aristocratic bridesmaids,
with Gabrielle and Trixy and Baby among them, attired in cream satin and
dainty lace, and overladen with baskets of Marshal Niel roses, the
central and most attractive figures on the scene her Carl and herself.
It is heartrending to think of the demolition of her lovely picture.
“Run away, Zai,” Carl Conway answers impetuously, for the moonbeams are
falling full on her face, deepening the lustre of the sweet grey eyes,
dancing and quivering on the wealth of fair hair and making her seem if
possible doubly desirable in his eyes. “If they won’t let us have our
way quietly and comfortably, of course we must run away. Shall we let
them part us for ever? Could you bear it, my Zai? Could you know that
for the rest of our natural existence (and we may both live to a
hundred) that we shall never see each other, speak to one another, kiss
each other again, and live?”
She listens rapt, as she always listens to each word and tone of the
beloved voice, and she fully realises the intense misery of the
situation.
Never to speak to Carl, never to see Carl, never to kiss Carl again!
Her cheek grows whiter, her spirit sinks, her courage to do right dies
an ignominious death; and a lump rises up in her throat, and then seems
to fall back on her heart like a great cold stone.
“Well, Zai?” he cries, not understanding her silence. “Of course you
think as I do, my darling! You know it would kill us to part. Oh, Zai,
you cannot surely be hesitating, you cannot be thinking of letting aught
come between us two! You _must_ feel that death would be better than
separation!”
“Yes!” she whispers, and now, under the moonbeams, he sees a lovely pink
colour steal over her face, and the sweetest, tenderest lovelight fill
her big grey eyes. “Death would be a thousand times better, I could not
live without you, Carl! I suppose it would be very wrong for us to go
away, but it would be impossible to stay!”
“Of course it would, my child,” he says quietly, as if assured of the
fact.
“If we could wait till I am twenty-one, Carl, perhaps----”
“No, no!” he interrupts imperiously. “Why, Zai, you can’t know how I
love you--how you are life of my life--or you would not _dare_ to
suggest such a thing. Two whole long, never-ending, wretched years of
feverish anxiety and jealousy and longing. They would drive me clean
mad! If you love me as I love you, you would not pause. You would have
but one wish, one thought--one resolve in your heart--to bind yourself
to me by a chain that no man could break, or woman either,” he adds,
thinking of Lady Beranger; “but you don’t love me as I love you!”
The wish, the thought, the resolve are in her heart of hearts now. She
looks up at his handsome face, meets the fervour in his brown eyes, and
her pretty white arms, bare almost to the shoulder and with ropes of
pearls glistening on them, steal round his neck, and her red lips plead
wistfully.
“Not love you as you love me, Carl!” she says, with her sweet mouth
twitching like a child’s.
Venus Victrix--as is always the case.
If she had said she hated him, and yet looked as beautiful as she does,
he would probably have adored her all the same, but now the clinging
clasp, the loving grey eyes, the tremulous lips, and, above all, the
abandon that love lends her, conquers completely, and the big strong man
is the veriest baby, malleable as wax, in the circle of these dimpled
arms and within earshot of the throb of his love’s true heart.
“My own, my sweet!” he cries, stooping and kissing her from brow to
chin. “I know you will come when I bid you, my Zai!”
“When you bid me, Carl,” she says, her head against his shoulder, her
eyes fixed on his face.
Silence for a minute or two. The fresh night air sweeps over them, the
leaves rustle gently overhead, and they are as virtually alone as Adam
and Eve in Eden. Suddenly the strains of a band fall faintly on the
quiet square, and they both start from dreamland into reality.
She listens a moment.
“_Estudiantina!_ It’s the eighteenth dance, Carl,” she says, nervously,
for Zai has a much more wholesome fear of her august mother than her
sisters have. “How long we have been absent!”
He glances at his watch.
“Half-past one o’clock!--nearly one hour and a-half. Who would believe
it, little one? Nearly an hour and a half, that has flown like this
because you and I are alone together. Just so our lives will pass like a
delicious dream, my Zai. I don’t think any two people in this world ever
loved one another as we do. The very first time I saw you--do you
remember? It was at Lady Derringham’s. I have been devoted to fat, fussy
Lady Derringham ever since! I knew it was all over with me. No more
flirtations, no more bachelor ways for me. I knew it was my wife
standing before me, in a sweet little blue dress, with a bunch as big as
herself of lilies of the valley in her bosom. Zai, did you feel any
instinct of the kind?”
“Yes,” she whispers, nestling into his arms and kissing his coat-sleeve
surreptitiously.
The strains of the Estudiantina Waltz are still floating on the still
air. The moon has hidden her face behind a bank of greyish cloud, and
already the first pink tinge of dawn peeps down on earth.
“Tell me what you felt?” he says, forgetful of time, of the convenances,
of Lady Beranger’s wrath, and clasping her nearer, he tenderly draws the
long dark cloak closer round her slender throat.
“In the first moment I saw you, Carl, it seemed to me as if God had
chosen me out for such delicious--delicious happiness as no other girl
ever had in the world. I loved you in that moment as much as I love you
now, Carl! And that is--oh! how can I tell you? I don’t believe that
_was_ the beginning of my love, for it was so great, and full, and
perfect, that it _must_ have been growing a long, long time. I love
you!--I love you! I could say it every hour of my life, until you tired
of hearing me. But you will never, _never_ tire of hearing me say it,
Carl, will you?” she asks wistfully.
Carlton Conway laughs as he listens, but it is scarcely a laugh that
denotes mirth. Eight-and-twenty--he has never found a true woman yet to
his thinking, until this one came and sat down in blind adoration at his
feet, and gave all her pure and loving heart and soul into his
keeping--unreservedly--unquestioningly--and brought a sense of happiness
with her which he had never pictured even in his dreams.
Tired of hearing that she loves him! When her love is the one thing in
all the world to him. It is these words of hers that make him laugh.
They seem so strange and absurd, when he knows that his whole being is
full of her. So he answers her by wrapping his arms round her, and
pressing fond, fervent kisses on her brow and lids and sweet tempting
lips--the lips that are his, and that no other man has touched like
this. He has culled their perfume and fragrance, and as he feels this to
be true, each kiss that he gives and takes seems to be a link in the
chain of love that binds them together.
“When do your people leave town, Zai?” he asks her, “and for how long?”
“The day after to-morrow, Carl,” she answers, stifling back a sob, for
Hampshire seems to be the world’s end from London, “but we shall be
back in a week.”
“And who has Lady Beranger invited down to Sandilands?”
“Mr. Hamilton and Lord Delaval.”
Carlton Conway grinds his heel into the ground with impotent rage.
“So,” he mutters, “both are eligible men. How well Lady Beranger knows
what she’s about. I wonder for which of her lovely daughters she is
trying to hook old Hamilton?”
“For Trixy I think, Trixy always gets on with elderly men. I believe she
is really in love with someone, and is therefore indifferent if her
companions are old or young.”
Carl Conway reddens. Of course everybody knows that Trixy Beranger, who
used to be the biggest flirt in town when she came out two years ago,
has sobered down strangely, and everybody puts down the change to the
influence of Carl Conway.
“And Delaval is asked for _you_,” he cries jealously.
“Oh, Gabrielle will take care of _him_,” Zai laughs brightly. “Gabrielle
is more fitted for a coronet than either of us. She is so tall and
stately, and has so much of what mamma calls worldly guile.”
“Which, thank God, _you_ haven’t, my own Zai. I have got an invitation
for the day after to-morrow to Elm Lodge.”
“Ah!” she cries, with a happy smile, “that is only a mile from
Sandilands.”
“Yes, but you know Crystal Meredyth is rather fond of me, and Mrs.
Meredyth doesn’t object to followers, even if they are artists or
actors.”
Zai shivers from head to foot in the warm June night, and grows white to
her quivering lips as she draws herself away gently from his clasp.
“What is it, darling?” he asks anxiously.
No answer.
Zai’s head droops so that he cannot see her eyes, so he puts his hand
under her chin and lifts up her face, and as he gazes down at it he
thinks that God never made so beautiful a thing as she who has been made
for him. The red lips quiver, her sweet eyes tell him such a wondrous
tale of love, that he forgets everything but himself and her.
How he longs to carry her away in his stalwart arms. His darling, his
little sweetheart!
“Come, Zai, my own, own Zai! Speak to me, tell me once more that you
love me, that no one will ever make you forget me. It drives me wild to
think that those fellows at Sandilands will be near you, and I away.”
“You will have--Crystal Meredyth!” she whispers tremulously, then she
breaks into a passion of tears, each of which stab him to the heart.
He kisses them off, and holds her to him fondly, and what with caresses
and love words, draws the smiles back to her mouth, and the pink colour
to her cheek.
“Zai, will you swear to be as true to me as I shall be true to you?”
“I swear,” she replies unhesitatingly.
“And you won’t let those fellows, Delaval and Hamilton, dare to make
love to you?”
“I would rather _die_, Carl.”
“I believe you would, my child,” he answers in a trustful voice, “and
now let us say good-night here, though I am going back to the house to
show myself.”
“Good-night!”
And, like Romeo and Juliet, they find parting is such sweet sorrow that
it is some moments before it takes place.
And when Zai leaves him, he murmurs to himself, truthfully, honestly:
“My God, how I love her!”
Ten minutes afterwards, he is valsing to the strain of “Love’s
Dreamland” with Crystal Meredyth, and whispering low to her, and
Crystal, who has set him up as a hero to worship, blushes and smiles
with intense satisfaction.
“What a flirt that Conway is,” Lady Beranger soliloquises, as she
watches him covertly. “I do not believe he really presumes to think of
Zai, but it won’t do to have him interfering with Delaval. What a
charming couple they make,” she adds with intense satisfaction, as Zai
floats by with Lord Delaval, but she does not mark how _distraite_ her
daughter looks, and that the good-looking peer’s soft nothings fall on
stoney ground, and neither does she know that when the ball is over, Zai
goes to bed and cries bitterly as she remembers that Crystal Meredyth is
lovely and that men always like pretty women.
[Illustration]