LORD DELAVAL.
“We played at Bondsman and at Queen,
But as the days change--men change too;
I find the grey seas’ notes of green,
The green seas’ fervent flakes of blue,
More fair than you.”
All the amber and purple and gold of the western sky has faded away, and
only a faint rose glow lingers. The wind is dead, and soft and fragrant
dusk lies like a mantle on the fair world, but the mantle of twilight is
edged with the silver lustre of a tender young moon, and a shoal of
inquisitive stars begin to peep at each other, when Gabrielle passes
quickly upstairs and knocks at a door adjoining her own.
“Come in.”
Zai stands before her cheval-glass--a thing of beauty in a shimmering
white silk, pore and virginal, a cluster of blush _Noisette_ roses
nestle in her bosom, and there is a bright flush on her cheek that adds
tenfold to her loveliness.
“You have come for Fanchette, Gabrielle, but the bird has flown; only
five minutes sooner you would have caught her. Trixy and Baby wanted
her, and though I had not quite finished with her, I let her go.”
“Trixy and Baby are the most selfish creatures I know,” Gabrielle
answers captiously. “Why cannot they stick to Marie? I am sure they
might teach her to dress them, without continually asking for Fanchette.
_Au diable_ with those girls! Please don’t look so shocked, Zai. It is
not half as bad as ‘Go to the Devil’ in English, and yet it is quite as
relieving to one’s feelings. How on earth am I to get my hair done
properly?”
“For the Meredyths’ ‘At Home?’”
“Of course. Do you know, Zai, Lady Beranger has asked Sir Everard Aylmer
to go with us, and expressly confided him to my tender mercies.”
Zai opens her eyes and laughs.
“You see, Sir Everard has singled me out lately as an object of
attention, and has actually talked to me for five consecutive minutes,
somewhere about five times during our acquaintance--a frail basis to
anchor hope on. Nevertheless, the step-mother, who, in spite of her
ultra refinement, is an inveterate match-maker, has hatched a
matrimonial project in her prolific brain for my benefit. You know I am
like a bad shilling, always on her hands, and she would gladly see the
last of me; but there is of course, as you know, another arrangement.
She is anxious to kill two birds with one stone.”
“What can you mean, Gabrielle? You have the most marvellous fertility of
imagination that I have ever met with. If anyone drops a lash, you
discover a reason for the action, and the most trivial word, lightly
spoken, possesses a mountain of meaning to your mind. What motive can
mamma have, but one?”
“_Eh bien!_”
“She knows Sir Everard Aylmer is rich and has an old baronetcy, and she
wants you to make a good marriage. Sir Everard is quite an ‘eligible’
you know.”
“Lady Beranger’s scheme doesn’t concern Sir Everard or poor little me.
We are a couple of noughts in her eyes, and she is not going to trouble
her brain with machinations about us. The head and the tail of the
matter is--_Lord Delaval_!”
“I _must_ be a simpleton or else you are too clever by half, Gabrielle.
What on earth can you and Sir Everard and Lord Delaval have to do with
one another?”
“Zai, you haven’t the tenth part of an inch the sharpness of Baby! the
understanding of _that_ child is miraculous. Well, I’ll tell you all
that is passing in Lady Beranger’s head. To-night Trixy makes her
appearance in public as the future Honourable Mrs. Stubbs! Heavens! what
a name! By the way, what a short matter they made of that. Only three
days ago she hated the sight of him, and now her destiny is _une affaire
faite_.”
“Well?”
“Then--but you surely see through it all?”
“Not a bit.”
“You _are_ a simpleton, Zai. Don’t you see that this is a splendid
chance for you and Lord Delaval to be together. I shall be bear leader
to Sir Everard, so you will have it all your own way.”
“If I thought Lord Delaval was to be my attraction to-night, I would
throw over the Meredyths, and go to bed,” Zai says carelessly.
“But why? This is simply a little arrangement by which Lady Beranger
hopes to allow poor Lord Delaval to insinuate himself in your good
graces, Zai. For you know he admires you awfully, now don’t you?” she
asks, with a fierce jealousy making her tone tremulous. “And I am sure
if he does, _I_ don’t wish to be Mademoiselle de Trop,” she adds
impatiently.
“Don’t talk nonsense, Gabrielle. Lord Delaval is in love with Baby, if
he is in love with anyone but--_himself_.”
“In love with Baby!” echoes Gabrielle, scornfully. “I am sure he was
never in love with her, and that he has a contempt for her fast, flirty
ways.”
“Well, if he does not care for Baby, and wants a Beranger, he will have
to marry you,” Zai says quietly.
“But it’s _necessary_ for you all to marry rich men. You _must_.”
“Why?”
“Because, when your father and mother go over to the majority, you will
be paupers.”
“Anyway, I am going to marry Carl,” Zai asserts positively. “And I would
not go to the Meredyths’ this evening, only he is staying at Elm
Lodge.”
Gabrielle bursts out laughing.
“Good gracious, what a _fiasco_ it is! Lady Beranger will murder him, I
believe. You won’t be allowed to speak to him.”
“Nobody could prevent----”
Zai pauses, for at this moment Fanchette trips into the room.
Gabrielle greets her effusively.
“_Dieu merci_, Fanchette! Now I may hope to get my hair done. Zai, don’t
wait for me to go down. Have Miss Trixy and Miss Mirabelle gone down
yet, Fanchette?”
“Just this moment, mademoiselle.”
“And how do they look?”
“Miss Trixy is _ravissante_. She was very _difficile_, nothing would
please her. I tried coiffure _à la Ninon_, or ringlets _à la Cascade_,
or the simple plaits English mees likes.”
“And which has she gone down as--Ninon or the Cascade?” Gabrielle asks
with a smile.
“Not one or the other, mademoiselle. She would have her head done with
the weeds of the waves, and also _des petites bêtes_, I don’t know what
you call them, fastened into it like a _syrène_.
“_Ah, oui!_ I understand. She is a mermaid to-night, with sea-weeds and
shell-fish. I can well imagine Mademoiselle Trixy _difficile_; being an
angel to men and an angel to one’s _femme-de-chambre_ are two different
things. Fanchette, make me very beautiful to-night.”
“_Mais, oui!_ Mademoiselle has the grand capability to be so.” And in a
few moments her skilful fingers have gathered up Gabrielle’s lustrous
tresses into a sort of crown, which becomes her well.
“How nice I should look in the Delaval coronet,” Gabrielle thinks, as
she admires herself in the glass, with a truthfulness befitting a better
cause.
Meanwhile Zai has descended the staircase, and, as she reaches the great
square hall, Lord Beranger enters the house.
“Good evening, papa,” she says, lovingly twining her arm into his, “I
was afraid I was late, but it seems it must be early, as you have only
just come in.”
“Good evening, my pet,” says papa to this, his favourite daughter. “You
are quite right in thinking it is late, but we have been taking our
post-prandial cigar and coffee under the stars. Might I ask what you are
so radiant for? Is there a big party on to-night?”
“The Meredyths’ ‘At Home,’ you know. Is it possible you have forgotten
that Trixy is to make her _débût_ to-night as an engaged young person?”
“Ugh!” Lord Beranger mutters to himself, half aloud. “Poor Trixy!” Then
he remembers his wife’s admonition, and goes on blandly: “Stubbs isn’t a
bad sort, Zai; a little too much flesh, and a little, too little,
breeding; but we can’t have everything, child, and money makes the mare
to go.”
“I hate money,” Zai answers in a low voice. “I would not marry Mr.
Stubbs if he were ten times richer.”
“Tut, tut, my pet. You must get romantic notions out of your
head--romance doesn’t pay now-a-days. Good hard cash down, that’s the
thing, and when you have nailed that, it’s time enough to indulge in
other fancies.”
“Papa, how wicked you are. That’s one of Mamma’s sentiments. I don’t
like to hear you say anything that is not right.”
“Don’t you? well, I won’t. Kiss me, little one, as a proof of
forgiveness.”
Zai goes on tiptoe, and putting her arms round his neck, kisses him
heartily, forgetful of the detriment to her bouquet of _Noisette_ roses.
“Yes, Zai. It really quite escaped me that to-night Trixy makes her
_entrée_ into Society as an affianced one. Poor Trixy! And yet she is no
object for pity, since Stubbs can supply her with all the gew-gaws she
loves. Trixy always puts me in mind of that infant-mind that is pleased
with a rattle--tickled with a straw. There is a charming youthfulness in
her tastes, and a curious indifference in the manner by which she can
satisfy them, that always puzzles me. There were never two natures so
dissimilar as yours and hers. One could hardly believe you were children
of the same parents. Trixy is so indolent and content, and you are just
the reverse, my pet,” he goes on with a smile. “I suppose Delaval is
back--he left us after luncheon at Kingsfold, saying he had something to
do at Southampton--gloves to get, or something. And I am not surprised
at his wanting to get back here, where he has such attractive metal,
hasn’t he, Zai?”
“_I_ don’t know anything about it, papa; nor do I wish to,” Zai flashes
rather impetuously. “I see nothing interesting in Lord Delaval.”
“Don’t you?” Lord Beranger says rather curtly. “Delaval seems to have
faults in your eyes that no other woman appears to discover. Why, do you
know, Zai, there is no man admired or run after by the fair sex--from
the Upper Ten downwards--as Lord Delaval?”
“Possibly,” is Zai’s reply. And she bites her lips to keep from saying
more, and walks with her father into a small room in which coffee is
going on, amidst lights and flowers and baskets of fruit.
Up at the far end Lady Beranger, and her son-in-law elect, Mr. Stubbs,
are sitting. The millionaire has only just arrived, and, while he
imbibes the scalding Mocha, out of egg-shell china, he looks anxiously
at his pair of new primrose gloves, one of which has burst down the
back, and at his lady-love, who sits some distance off.
As a matter of bodily comfort, Trixy would infinitely prefer her usual
downy nest among the sky-blue cushions, but whatever may be her
shortcomings in other respects, she always knows better than to allow
her toilette and her surroundings to _jurer_ at each other, as the
French say.
An instinct, the artistic instinct, that seems to be born with some
women, to whom art itself is quite a dead letter, serves to guide this
daughter of Belgravia aright, and being cast for Sabrina to-night, in
sea-green silk and misty lace, and coral and seaweed, and all the other
concomitants that Gabrielle had yclept shell-fish--and Fanchette _les
petites bêtes_--she keeps clear of blue back-ground. Effect is a grand
thing in her estimation, and it is the apparent study of her existence
to attain it.
She converses languidly with Mr. Hamilton, never casting a glance at her
“future,” whose red face grows redder and redder, as he remarks her
indifference.
Within the embrasure of the big bay window that gives on to the lawn,
lolls Baby.
She is sweet to-night, clouds of snowy tulle float round her lovely
little figure, and she wears no ornament but one magnificent poinsettia
that droops over her left shoulder. Her golden hair, her great innocent
blue eyes, her exquisite flower of a mouth, are all bewitching in their
way, and so a man seems to think, who lounges carelessly over the back
of her chair, partially concealed by the velvet hangings, but who raises
his face when Lord Beranger and Zai enter, disclosing the features of
Lord Delaval.
Lord Delaval is--as Gabrielle has said--superbly handsome. He is tall
and his figure is slender, almost to fragility, though not without
certain signs of muscular strength, that a pugilist’s eye would
recognise at once.
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.”