Daughters of Belgravia; vol 1 of 3 - Alexander Fraser

Mrs. Alexander Fraser

Daughters of Belgravia; vol 1 of 3

CHAPTER I.

A LEADER OF SOCIETY

All the élite in London know these bits of pasteboard well, and all the élite like to avail themselves of Lady Berangers invitation, for Lady Berangers 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 Berangers 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 Tinneys 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 well 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 dont see that Conway anywhere!

Lord Beranger shrugs his shoulders and answers nothing. Achilles 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 stepdaughters 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 mothers 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 cherubs 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 didnt 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 sisters room, and heard Gabrielle tell Zai that she fully intends being Countess of Delaval in spite of Lady Berangers 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 dont believe that girl would stickle at anything.

Gabrielles 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.

Wheres 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 Niederwallufs 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 Babys 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. Georges or St. Peters, with the organ pealing out The voice that breathed oer 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 wont 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 cant 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 dont 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 childs.

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 loves 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.