“Till November. This is not the first time Gabrielle has inconvenienced me, but I suppose we must delay the marriages for two months, or people will talk. All these sort of things entail so much expense too; no sooner has one gone into half-mourning for my dear lost Baby, but there’s the deep black for Gabrielle again. It really seems to me that she only thought of herself, and did not care a bit for the annoyance and inconvenience she caused to others!”
CHAPTER II.
CARLTON CONWAY
“But love so lightly plighted,
Our love with torch unlighted,
Paused near us unaffrighted,
Who found and left him free.
None seeing us cloven in sunder,
Will weep, or laugh, or wonder,
Light love stands clear of thunder,
And safe from winds at sea.”
November has set in with its yellow fogs and gloom, and the Berangers are back in Belgrave Square, for the dual weddings come off in another ten days, and the trousseau requires her ladyship’s taste and personal supervision in the finishing touches.
Trixy, whose nature is made up of frivolity and bagatelles, and to whom the colour of a dress or the shape of a bonnet are solemn subjects for reflection and consideration, is an enthusiastic shopper, but not so Zai.
It is seldom that she can call up courage enough to wade through Elise’s and Worth’s establishments, to devote her whole and sole attention to the important point as to whether her chemisette shall be edged with Valenciennes or Honiton.
Zai is studiously learning to care for the man she is going to marry in a few days, and this subject engrosses her to the expulsion of all extraneous matter.
Down on her knees beside her little white curtained bed she prays that the gift of “loving” Lord Delaval may be given her. Downstairs, while he sits beside her, the same prayer goes on in her heart, for, born and bred in Belgravia, Zai is the best little thing that ever tried to do her duty towards God and man.
This much has been vouchsafed her, that Carlton Conway, who has been the stumbling block in her path to reaching the goal she desires, has never turned up on the scene to open by his presence the old wound, which Zai firmly believes now is closed for always.
Once she has heard him mentioned at an afternoon tea, but it was only to the effect that his marriage with Miss Meredyth was put off for a while.
Zai has never forgotten, never will forget perhaps, the days when Carl was all in all to her. She lived an enchanted life during the time, for all the love her girl’s heart knew swept into one great channel and poured itself out at his feet. Paradise had opened for her out of the dull monotony of Belgravian life and moments – golden with the light of romance – had shone on her with a radiance like unto no other radiance of time. And she certainly had not stayed then to count the cost of the bitter desolation that followed.
After all Eve herself would hardly have surrendered the memory of Eden for all the joys to be found on earth, and she must have dreamed of it full many a time and waked to weep such tears of unavailing regret as have watered this sad planet of ours most plenteously.
The London world outside is full of fog and gloom, with a few feeble gas lamps struggling through it, but inside the drawing-room in Belgrave Square with its firelight and luxury is conducive enough to “dreaming.”
So Zai gives herself up to this delicious pastime, and, strangely enough, Carl does not appear as central figure. Possibly her earnest prayers for oblivion of him and his falsity have been answered; anyway it is a blond face with deep blue eyes and hair that shines up like gold under the sunbeams, that her mind’s eye sees, while her broad white lids are closed.
“Dreaming, my sweet! Is it of me?”
Some one bends over her. Some one’s hand drops softly on her shoulder, and when she looks up, some one’s handsome face is very close to her own. Suddenly – Zai blushed furiously afterwards when she thought of it – she slips her arm round his neck and draws down his head till his lips rest upon her own.
It is the first voluntary caress she has given him.
To say that Lord Delaval is amazed, bewildered, enchanted, all in the same moment, would be to say very little indeed. A great joy and wonder take possession of him, and for a second he is almost an unresponsive party, but in the next instant he has her in his arms, close against his heart, and to indemnify himself for loss of time, he rains down kisses on her charming face from brow to chin.
Kisses that come so fast – so fast, so eagerly, so fiercely even, that Zai stands almost stunned with all that her first demonstration of love for him has called down on her.
Then he sits down on the sofa beside her and, putting his arm round her, draws her near him.
He had felt that kiss she gave him go through him like an electric shock that sent the blood rushing through his veins, and made his pulses throb hard.
Scores of women had offered him kisses before, and he had accepted them or rejected them according to his mood, but this kiss, that the girl he is going to marry had volunteered of her own accord, seemed quite different to the rest. Then a sudden thought came like a stab.
“Zai,” he asks gravely, “are you sure —quite sure – that you are acting according to your feelings in marrying me?”
She looks up at him in surprise. His face is quite pale, but his eyes seem to burn strangely.
“Quite sure,” she answers quietly, convinced in her own mind that she is sure – perfectly sure of the fact.
“Darling Zai! You have never given me a chance before to tell you how I love you – love you with all my heart! to tell you that I will strain every nerve to make you care for me as I care for you! But there is one thing you must confess to me. Loving you as I do I shall be a very lenient judge, my child. Do you love me enough to be true to me always?”
She knows she does not love him as she had loved Carl. That had been a mad phantom, possessing her heart and her brain. But she knows if she marries this man she will make him a good and true wife.
She is sure that, in deed and word, and even thought, she will be loyal and faithful to him always.
The fitful pink colour comes and goes on her cheek, the big grey eyes droop as they have a habit of doing, but a smile – a little ghost of a smile, hovers round her pretty red lips.
“I love you, and I shall be true to you always!” she says, and Lord Delaval, cynical as he is – sceptical of all things, feels that her words are genuine, and he starts and his face grows radiant.
“Zai!” he cries breathlessly.
And bending, he puts his hand under the rounded chin and lifts up the little drooping face towards him. Zai’s eyes are still downcast, but he manages to read their language pretty well, and he sees the lips part in something between a quiver and a laugh.
“Is it so – say?” he whispers passionately, throwing his arms round her and gathering her close until her face rests against his. “Zai, for God’s sake, is it so? Don’t —don’t take away my new-born hope, but tell me that you really love me and only me!”
“I love only you.”
And when she says this Zai feels that her prayers are answered, and the old love for Carlton Conway is conquered.
“Look at me, my darling child!”
She looks up, and in the soft grey eyes he reads honesty and truth, and on the impulse of the moment he stoops, and his lips cling feverishly, almost fiercely, to hers.
Zai starts away from him then, and for a second she seems scared, white, trembling.
His wild, fierce kiss has sent the blood back from her cheek to her heart, that throbs with a pain that makes her faint and sick. Then the pretty pink colour creeps slowly back, and of the passionate caress that has lingered on her mouth there is born a new feeling for her betrothed husband.
“Zai, you hated me once, I believe,” he says reproachfully. “I wonder why?”
“Never mind, since I love you now,” she replies.
“You hated me when you cared for Conway, Zai!”
He looks at her keenly as he deals what she thinks a random shot, but which is really a premeditated speech, for ever since Gabrielle’s words, Lord Delaval has been jealous for the very first time in his life.
Never before has he felt the pangs of the green-eyed monster. It may be because he has never before perhaps felt a true and pure love.
Zai laughs, but the laugh is a little forced.
“You see, Delaval, if you did not care about me you would not be jealous! The past belongs to me, you know, but the future is yours – won’t that content you?” she asks softly. “Shall I promise that it is only you that I shall love for the rest of my life?”
“Suppose you couldn’t keep your promise, Zai. Suppose an old influence was too strong for you – what then?”
“An old influence! No one could have any influence over me now but you, Delaval!”
“Will you swear that you will stick to me through thick and thin? Will you swear that no other man shall come between us ever?”
She does not answer.
A feeling a little rebellious creeps up in her heart. It is hard – so hard – to be doubted like this, when she has so bravely cast from her all sentiment for her old lover – when she is “really and earnestly caring” for this man.
“You can’t answer for yourself, Zai!” he exclaims angrily. “Or perhaps you won’t answer?”
Still she does not say a word, but hides her face against his arm.
So he moves away from her and faces her, his arms crossed over his chest, and speaks slowly and deliberately:
“Zai, when you know that a man is hungering and thirsting for a word of reassurance – when you must feel that it kills me to be in uncertainty of your real feeling you keep that word locked up in your bosom – you put a seal on your lips – you are thinking what a happier fate would have been yours as Conway’s wife.”
The suddenness of these last words sends a thrill through her, and involuntarily she starts.
“Delaval, Mr. Conway is probably a married man by this time, and I really think you forget that I am just going to be your wife.”
“Will you always remember you are my wife?” he asks.
“I am not likely ever to let the fact escape my notice,” she answers gravely. “Mr. Conway is nothing to me but an acquaintance; as far as love is concerned, he and I are as far removed from one another as if he or I were dead.”
“Bah!” he says roughly, “don’t think all that goody-goody sentiment is a safeguard for errant fancies. Morality now-a-days is at a very low ebb, and marital obligations go a precious little way against inclination – certainly where men are concerned. On your honour, Zai, if Conway was free and could marry you, would you still have me?”
“On my honour I would have you and no one else – if I may?” she asks with a deprecatory smile.
Whereupon he catches her once more in his arms.
“Now,” he says, “while I hold you like this – heart to heart, hand in hand, and lip to lip – come, Zai! give me your lips – there! – I will put your love to a test! Zai, Zai! – for God’s sake – don’t you fail me now!”
“I shall never fail you,” she answers in a low voice.
“Not if I tell you that – ”
He pauses. He really dreads to see her start and shrink away from him perhaps – he dreads to see the sweet lovelight in her grey eyes fade into coldness or hardness – he dreads to lose the delicious guerdon of these soft, delicious lips.
“Not if you tell me anything.”
“Zai, Conway is a free man. His marriage with Miss Meredyth is broken off entirely. Her people found out something about Flora Fitzallan, of the Bagatelle Theatre. I know for a fact that he will never be allowed to marry her. Well?”
“I think,” she says, and putting her arms around his neck she lifts up a pair of sweet, soft eyes, “I think that it is a very bad thing for Mr. Conway to have lost a rich wife, and that his misfortune is my gain, for now you will believe that – ”
“That what?” he asks eagerly.
“That who he marries is no concern of mine so long as I – “
“Well?”
“Marry —you!” she says, and as she clings to this man who is to be her husband, she thanks God that she can go down on her knees beside him and swear to love, honour, and obey him so long as they both shall live.
“My darling! my own, own darling!” he whispers, in his most melodious voice, and his voice can be not only melodious but séduisante when he likes. “Listen, Zai. I have never been a good man; but I swear that the day of our marriage I’ll commence a new life. You will never regret that you have taken me, Zai. So help me Heaven!”
The recording angel carried up this oath, but the other angels blotted it out with tears.
CHAPTER III.
ANTEROS
“Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep?
Not we, though this be as it is;
For love awake or love asleep
Ends in a laugh, a dream, a kiss!”
Twelve months wedded, Lady Delaval yet leads a charmed life. Her cup of bliss overflows, and under its influence her lovely face is tenfold lovelier, with the sunshine of her soul illuminating it.
She has made her curtsey to the Queen on her marriage, and her train, her coiffure, and her beauty have been the talk of town. She looks so good and pure too, with no fast proclivities, and to the satiated eyes of town men these things have vast attraction.
Lord Delaval has shunned all his old haunts, turned the cold shoulder to his numerous loves, avoided even looking at the professional and other beauties, and evinced an utter devotion to one woman – his wife – a fact which has amazed Society, amongst whom his fickleness has been a by-word hitherto.
Prophecies as to the duration of such strange and praiseworthy conduct are rife.
Will he stick to it?
The “No’s” preponderate considerably over the “Yes’s,” but time will reveal which of the gossips are the best judges of human nature.
When the season is over, they come down to Delaval Court – a magnificent place in Hampshire – and here among the beautiful sylvan shades, Zai discovers that she has really fallen over head and ears in love with her handsome husband, but with a graver, even tenderer, sentiment than mere being “in love.” She is grown so fragile that she looks as if a breath of wind would blow her away, but her heart beats stronger than ever with two feelings – love for the man she has married, and love for the child which is to perfect her life; and Lord Delaval, about whom is a deal of indolent sybaritical self-indulgence, has his “mystic” summer too.
He really finds it quite delicious to talk of the future as he lies stretched at full length on the cool green velvety sward at his wife’s feet, in the twilight and the starlight, with the subtle fragrance of a myriad flowers pervading their senses, and the Channel sweeping before them like a great phantom sea.
Somehow the stars seem to shine with a holier, tenderer radiance; the roses sigh out greater sweetness; the waters murmur more gladly to him than they have ever done before in his life.
True, that in these charmed moments he talks principally of town topics; and she scarcely comprehends the gist of the gossip. Belgravian born and bred as she is, she has never in fact really comprehended the world of London well, but she likes to hear her husband tell about it, simply because it is the world in which he has lived so much.
But somehow, to Zai, the theatres, the balls, Hurlingham, the fashionable resorts, the feverish dissipation among which she passed nineteen years seem distant and even myths now. She cares nothing for town, save the Park, and even that cannot vie, in her eyes, with the delightful green shades and sunlit bits that Delaval Court owns.
She does not feel the least interested in the new professional beauties or the American stars that crop up, to make themselves nine days’ wonders at the risk of a life-long reputation. Zai has, in fact, a foolish horror of women being held up to public view and subjected to public admiration and criticism. Her notions are a little obsolete, perhaps, for neither Lord nor Lady Beranger are good, simple folk, and have plenty of the “go-ahead” sentiments of their fellow aristocrats, and their daughters have certainly not been brought up as quietly and carefully as they might have been.
But, after all, Zai’s goodness and purity to a certain extent is a disadvantage to her.
Men of the Lord Delaval type are not likely to be long attracted by rustic wax-work when passionate, demonstrative human nature comes in their way to appeal to their feelings or senses, and even in these palmy days, Lord Delaval, when he finds his wife uninterested in the talk that his lips are mostly accustomed to utter, feels rather injured and inclined to be silent or sullen. But he is quite enough enamoured of her still, not to seek for other audiences, at any rate, just yet. So the summer flies quickly by, and autumn is waning, and Zai, as she opens her sweet grey eyes on a dull November morning, remembers that to-day is the anniversary of her marriage, and thanks God for the happiness He has granted her. But the autumnal days are dark and dreary, and the presence of outsiders, which would have seemed a terrible nuisance to Lord Delaval a few weeks ago, would now be a blessing. He feels as if he would gladly welcome anybody, whose advent would put a little spice, a little zest into his daily routine. It is easier for an Ethiopian to change his skin and a leopard his spots than for a worldling to alter his nature.
Lord Delaval does not acknowledge to himself even, with that utter self-delusion that comes so easily to most men – that there was something in poor Gabrielle’s feverish passion that appealed to him, gratified him, soothed him. He does not guess himself how deliciously sweet to his heart are the voice of flattery and the yield of worship. There are men and men.
To some, the self-abnegatory passion of women is no doubt distasteful, even repellant. To others – to those of Lord Delaval’s temperament especially – it is a poisonous incense – intoxicating, subtle, pleasant, and nearly always irresistible.
Meanwhile, Zai has no wish ungratified, no desire unsatisfied. To her the world contains but one man, and this is – her husband. Now and then she remembers the existence of Carlton Conway, but only with wonder filling her that she ever could have exalted him into a creature to adore, when he is so different – personally, mentally, in every way – to Delaval. She is flung, as it were, on her husband entirely for all the pleasure, enjoyment, and amusement of life. Gabrielle is drowned; Baby is dead; her father and mother, left to themselves, live in the London world and for the London world. There is no one, then, of her people, save Trixy, from whom she can hear of the old life, the old haunts, the old faces, and Trixy, with her grand house in Park Lane, her dresses, her jewels, her millions, is strangely silent. “She has no time, amid the pomps and vanities, to think of me, I suppose,” Zai says, after a couple of months have elapsed since Trixy’s last hurried scrawl. “Did you hear of her, Delaval, yesterday in town?”
“Yes!” he answers rather gravely. Lax as he is in morals himself, he objects utterly to his wife’s ears being sullied with scandal. After all, though Zai’s innocence rather palls on him, he would not have it otherwise for all the world. But he has heard so much of Trixy from Percy Rayne that he feels it his bounden duty to do his best to keep the mire off the family he has married into.
“You did not tell me you had heard about her,” Zai says, rather reproachfully, “perhaps you even saw her!”
“No, I didn’t, my darling; but I am going to see her! and that to-morrow. Your sister is a giddy, frivolous little woman, and poor old Stubbs hasn’t much influence over her, I am afraid.”
“Why, what has Trixy been doing, Delaval?” Zai asks hastily, lifting up a pair of anxious grey eyes, that are so pretty that he draws their owner down on his knee and kisses her.
“Never mind what she has been doing, my own! I’m not going to tell you all the naughty things women do, or you will be following their bad example!”
“Delaval!”
Zai flings her arm round her husband’s neck, and kisses him in return. Like Cæsar’s wife, she renders unto Cæsar all that is his due – with interest.
“Well?”
“You don’t really believe I would ever do anything wrong, do you?” she whispers.
“I believe you are an angel!” he says truthfully, “and that is why I won’t let anything of the earth – earthy, come near you!”
But Zai, angel though she may be, has some of Eve’s curiosity in her.
“I know Trixy did not like Mr. Stubbs when she married him. But she always said she did not want love or affection so long as she had a fine house and lots of diamonds,” she says, after a moment, and he reads in her face a longing to hear more.
“Fishing!” he laughs. “No use, little one, to fish in shallow water, you know! I’m not going to tell you anything about Trixy’s shortcomings now, and I hope I shall not have anything to tell you later. Never mind about Trixy, darling. Think about your husband. Will you miss him? I shall be away three or four days, I am afraid, for I have a lot of business to do. I have been living in Dreamland here so long that I have neglected everything – but you!”
“Going to London for three or four days, Delaval?” she asks, with positive tears in her eyes. “Oh! I am so sorry.”
“Nonsense, Zai. We can’t always be tied together, or we may get tired of one another, you know!” he replies, with a careless smile. The little change to Town is quite an event to him, and he would not give it up for the world.
“Tired of one another?” she says, with a little quiver of her lip. “You may be tired of me, but I shall never be tired of you —never, so long as I live!”
And he believes her. For loads of women have never tired of him, although he has treated them cruelly, and flung them aside, like old gloves or withered flowers.
“My little darling!” he murmurs, quite softly, pleased at her open adoration of his irresistible self, “I shall never be tired of you, as far as I can see. But you must not tax me too much. Men love variety, you know! This Darby and Joan sort of life is very delightful, my pet, but ne quid nimis– translated in English, ‘Too much of a good thing is as bad as nothing!’ We must not let our happiness pall on us, Zai!”
She turns away her head, and answers not a word. What can she say? If he could see her face, it might bring him to a knowledge of the true and enduring love he has inspired in the soft, loving, girlish heart. But he doesn’t trouble to see it. Perhaps he thinks it is best to ignore reproach or pathos, rather than let them prove hindrances to his pleasure and amusement.
And Zai neither asks him to curtail his visit to London, nor to speak differently to her. For his indifferent words have cut her to the heart. And for the first time since her marriage, directly his back is turned, she sheds a perfect torrent of tears, and during his absence wanders like a little ghost about the big house, with white cheeks, and great pitiful eyes, and a load on her spirits that she cannot shake off.
Meanwhile, Lord Delaval, driving from Waterloo to his club, espies, standing at a shop, a brougham he knows; and stopping his hansom, walks up to it just as its occupant is getting in.
She is a lovely, golden-haired woman, but he scarcely recognises her. For all the old delicious pink colour has left her cheeks, and she looks wan and haggard, and years older than she did two months ago.
“How do you do, Trixy?” he says, startling her evidently, for she drops a tiny parcel on the pavement. “I wanted to see you. In fact, I came up to Town on purpose.”
“On purpose to see me, Delaval! What for?” she asks nervously. “I can’t stay now to talk, anyhow. Piccadilly isn’t exactly the place for a confab, you know. Especially as everyone doesn’t know you’re my handsome brother-in-law!”
“And you are so very particular as to what people think – eh, Trixy?” he asks, drily.
“Of course, I wish to adhere to the convenances!” she answers, rather sullenly.
“Well, we won’t talk now. When may I call and see you?”
She hesitates, evidently. It may be that her time is not her own. Then suddenly she changes her mind.
“Come with me now, Delaval! I am sure you were only going for a prowl down Regent Street, and I am rather curious to hear what you want to talk about – come in.”
He puts a foot on the step, then pauses.
“But how about the convenances? Everyone doesn’t know that I am not one of your lovers!”
“Bother the convenances,” she cries, impatiently, “and everyone knows I have no lovers.”
He enters the brougham, and a few in the crowd, who know the lovely golden-haired woman by sight as one of the London belles, begin to chatter about her. Different versions and interpretations of the matter fly from lip to lip, the favourite rendition being a modified version of “Auld Robin Gray.”
“She married old Peter Stubbs, the millionaire, against her will, you know,” Bevan, a man in the Coldstreams, tells a pretty coquettish little woman who stands beside him on the steps of the Burlington Arcade. “She was over head and ears in love with Conway, the actor.”
“I know Carlton Conway,” little Mrs. De Clifford answers. “I met him last night at Flora Fitzallan’s supper. He was quite the host there. Flora has loved him slavishly for years, and though he spends all her money, he tyrannises over her awfully. I suppose that wonderfully handsome fellow is another lover of Mrs. Stubbs’,” she adds, with a lingering look at Delaval’s undeniable beauty.
“It happens to be her brother-in-law, Lord Delaval, this time,” the man replies, in the tone that flings away a woman’s reputation in the twinkling of an eye.
“And is Lady Delaval alive?” Mrs. De Clifford asks carelessly, but with a mind to find out if Lord Delaval’s agreeability equals his good looks.
Bevan, who has rather a weakness for his companion, awakens at once to a suspicious condition.
“Very much alive, I hope! Lady Delaval is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and her husband adores her,” he says, with malice prepense.
Meanwhile the brougham, “dark green, very dark green, and by Peters,” as Trixy had ordained, has disgorged its occupants at a house which is as exquisite within as it is big and stately without, and even Lord Delaval, who is habituated to luxury, is struck forcibly by the judicious manner in which the ethereal inspiration of poets and painters, Trixy Stubbs, has so ably contrived to feather her nest.