Daughters of Belgravia; vol 3 of 3 - Alexander Fraser

Mrs. Alexander Fraser

Daughters of Belgravia; vol 3 of 3

CHAPTER I.

ARE YOU GOING TO MARRY ZAI?

It is the truth that Gabrielle is desperately in love with Lord Delaval, and it is equally true that, thrusting all maidenly reserve to the four winds, she does not hesitate to let him know it.

Last night will she ever forget it? She was sitting in the twilight, shaded from view by the amber hangings of the music room. For an hour she had been singing the passionate French and Italian songs in which she could pour out her soul freely, but she had tired of it since he was not by for audience. So dashing her music aside she pulled a chair into the embrasure of the bay window, and with her chin resting on her hand, was soon lost in a waking dream, of which he, of course, was central figure.

How long she sat there she never knew. Anyway, the purple twilight had merged into grey gloom, through which myriads of twinkling stars peered down at her flushed cheeks and passionate black eyes, when suddenly a voice startled her, a voice whose accents bore such genuine feeling in them, that for a moment it seemed unfamiliar to her ears.

And this is what it said while Gabrielle listened with beating heart and bated breath, rent with jealousy and rage.

Tell me! when is my probation to end? Have you no mercy for me?

What for? and Zais tone, in comparison with his, was strangely hard and cold.

What for? Dont you know that I want to claim you before all the world? Dont you know that I am longing to take my darling in my arms and swear on her sweet lips how I love her?

Whether Zai answered this phantasy tenderly or no, Gabrielle never knew, for the two passed the open door and were out of hearing.

The two!

Her faithless lover and her step-sister!

Gabrielle flew upstairs noiselessly, and reaching her own room, locked the door.

She was alone now alone thank God! alone! Here there were no mocking eyes to note her horrible folly, to laugh at her awful, awful anguish, here she could grind her white teeth in impotent rage, or grovel on the floor in humiliation and a futile passion. She flung off the pretty dress she had put on for dinner to please his eyes, a delicious mélange of white lace and vivid scarlet, the colour that suited best her soft creamy skin and coal-black hair, and matched the hue of her perfect lips, and she thrust impatiently aside the glittering bracelets and rings with which she loved to deck her rounded arms and tapering fingers.

What were these baubles worth now, that she had lost the jewel of Lord Delavals heart?

Vanitas Vanitatum!

Sackcloth and ashes are the garments she should wear, poor, passionate, reckless creature, a victim to a worldlings fickleness. And Gabrielle, the cynical, the votary of Balzac and Georges Sand, the unbeliever in true feeling, wept bitterly over the wreck that had been made of her life for one mans pleasure only.

Her strictly worldly surroundings forbade her from giving way to an honest violent grief that would serve for sluice-gates to her heart. And she smothered back the sobs that broke from her with a rapidity of passion that she couldnt restrain.

Poor soul, that a sojourn in Belgravia had starved, it could find no balm in Gilead, no physician, now that the one human creature she had placed on a pedestal to worship had tumbled down ignominiously, to her thinking the veriest lump of clay. And she writhed as she remembered that not only by words and looks, but even by kisses on her red lips, he had betrayed her.

She positively wailed out her misery and her wrath in a low deep wail, weird enough to be a cry from one of Dantes lost souls. Yet

Had she not lived long enough in her twenty-six years to know that man and fickleness are synonymous terms, and to be avoided?

Apparently not for even while she groans and moans over his shortcomings, a mighty love fills her for the man whom she adores with a wild, unreasoning, selfish passion, and whose happiness she would immolate unscrupulously, if it pleased her to have it so. It must be owned that Lord Delaval is both a flirt and a butterfly, and that he has played fast and loose with mostly all the pretty women he has come across.

Flirting comes to him as to the manner born; it lurks in his ultramarine eyes, in the corners of his mouth, in his voice, in his manners, and in his actions, and he thinks nothing of it.

Some women regret his love, some resign themselves to his fickle ways, but Gabrielle Beranger is not of the common herd. She is a law unto herself in all things. She can love well (in her fashion) and she can hate well, with her great black gleaming orbs, her white passion-tossed features, her tumultuous, unscrupulous spirit. She regrets now, bitterly, but she does not dream of growing resigned.

Tout vient a celui qui sait attendre, she mutters to herself.

Lord Delaval has laid a burthen on her which she cannot bear. She has but one stimulus left in life, but one object. It is to appeal to him to his honour to his love. If she fails but she does not dream of failing.

One thing, she will separate the man she loves, and the man who has loved her, after the fashion of some mens love, from her step-sister. If not now, she will some day, even if Zai marries him.

To her the words Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder, are but idle prattle. A mere formula of the Church, a creed which her blind unbelief in all good things makes her mock at and fling aside like the voice of the wind.

Gabrielle is one part Belgravian and three parts French, and has the faults of both. Honour and loyalty are dead letters to such women. Strong and practical of nature, animal in instinct and passion, savage and cruel in greed of love, is it likely that women possessing such qualifications can wage war and be beaten?

Cunning, craftiness, deceit and falsity, ranged against truth, innocence, purity and simple mindedness, form a very uneven contest, my readers.

And, in spite of the pleasant doctrine that goodness rears its head over badness, it is a fact that human creatures of the Gabrielle Beranger type have often a better time of it in this world than their purer sisterhood.

Gabrielle is not going to leave Lord Delaval in ignorance of her sufferings, for she is not of the nature of a violet, or likely to let concealment like a worm, &c., &c.

Are you going to marry Zai? she asks abruptly. She has come face to face with him accidentally on purpose in a walk that is out of sight of the windows at Sandilands.

Lord Delaval, Greek almost in indolence and love of rest and luxury, has one habit to which most of our golden youth are not given a habit of rising early and going out early.

So that Gabrielle has him all to herself this bright sunny morning, while the Beranger family are still enjoying their slumbers.

For an instant, surprise and it must be confessed irritation at meeting her keeps him silent, so she repeats

Are you going to marry Zai?

He looks at her to say that he quails would be perhaps going too far but he is unmistakably nervous. There is more moral cowardice in men than in women as a rule.

She stands like an image of Nemesis, right in the centre of the path immovable a trifle formidable, her tall figure pulled well up to its fullest height, her features rigid and white as a sheet, and only her big black eyes burning with quite a hungry ferocious look as they rest on the handsome blond face of the man who has made love to her.

How remarkably sorry he is for it now! But there is no denying it; he has certainly made love to her, under the cover of some incomprehensible doctrine all about affinities, in which he believes no whit himself; he has beguiled her affections, or rather her passions, by the sweet words that are as sweet now as when Adam whispered them to his Eve in Paradise; he has beguiled her by soft treacherous kisses, in which the beak of the cruel vulture is hid beneath the tender touch of the dove, until this woman has paid him back by an enduring but terrible love that is not only a nuisance but may be worse.

Why Lord Delaval has made love to her, really not caring for her, is not difficult to tell. He adores beauty, and Gabrielle has plenty of it; her other attraction to him has been her intense contrast to the other women of the London world, with whom his flirtations have been as numerous as stars in a southern sky.

With her big black gipsy eyes, her demonstrative manner, her bizarre words and ways, and with the very vehemence and intensity of the passion that has repelled him even while it attracted him, his erratic fancy has been caught, but never enchained. He rather dislikes her now; and, after this, what breath can fill and re-inspire a dead fancy?

Lord Delaval, is it true that you are going to marry Zai? she asks for the third time, in a quiet hushed voice, that yet teems with a keen concentrated scorn that she means to cut like a whipcord, and from which he recoils angrily, for he is a thorough Epicurean in his liking for pleasantness, and a mental tussle disturbs his equanimity.

It is quite true! he says, rather haughtily, but when he sees her turn whiter than before, and her mouth quiver with pain, he relents. I should have told you before, but Zai wished it kept quiet!

She did, did she? She knew she has acted a treacherous, deceitful part. Good Heavens! what are you marrying her for?

Because I love her! he answers coolly, and because she loves me!

Loves you you! Why all London knows of her love for Carlton Conway!

He shrinks a little from this, and the colour mounts hotly to his face, but soon recedes again, leaving him quite pallid.

All London knows a good deal that does not exist!

Il nya pas de fumée sans feu, she says sneeringly.

Zai is too good, too pure, to deceive any man, he answers quietly, but the remark about Carl rankles in his mind. You dont understand your sister, Miss Beranger, or you would not depreciate your own judgment of human nature by believing her capable of deceit, or falsity, or evil of any kind! If all women were like her the world would be a paradise!

Fools paradise! she cries contemptuously. I certainly never gave you credit for being hoodwinked by a few babyish ways and innocent smiles! a man of your mind! she goes on frankly a frankness which is the very essence of consummate flattery but he is not to be taken in.

Thanks for the pretty compliment! it would turn my head if I was younger, coming from such fresh scarlet lips, he replies with a Jesuitical smile; but I am getting quite old, and as hard as adamant; not even your approbation can make my mind rise to the height of folly which would discover flaws in angels or paint a lily black.

I really think you have begun to hate me! she says passionately, with tears welling up in her eyes; Have you?

He looks at her for a moment steadily. He has thought her face, in spite of its beauty, false, wicked, and meretricious. He sees it now lovely in its creamy tints, its superb eyes, its chiselled features, and its waves of dusky hair, and withal a soft and tender expression leavening the whole.

No! he answers slowly. I dont hate you at all. It depends on yourself, Gabrielle, if I hate you later!

She marks at once the relenting in his features, and, like the busy bee, improves the shining hour.

Youll never hate me, for pitys sake! she cries, and flinging herself down on the path she wreathes her arms round his knees, while her fierce black eyes, with a good deal of the tiger-cat in their depths, seem to devour greedily his handsome face. Delaval! who will love you as I do? who will hunger and thirst for your every word and look like me? Oh if you were ever so poor and humble, but still yourself, I would slave for you, die for you! only only I could not bear that any other woman should cling to you like this! and with a sudden spring she throws herself on his breast, panting, breathless, quivering from head to foot. Delaval, you have pretended to love me. You have kissed me, and you have made me love you, till I am mad with misery, till I lose sight of all that women hold dear pride reserve delicacy! For mercys sake dont give me up, and place an insuperable bar between us two!

But he coolly puts her aside not roughly, but very determinedly.

So! she says, standing tall and erect before him. So! words are of no avail. Love is a theme you have heard so often that its name has an empty sound! You are an honourable man, Lord Delaval! Your conscience can never prick you. For you have never acted basely, cruelly, to anyone in your life! she cries, with a sneer.

He feels quite an aversion to her as he answers: Men may be dishonourable towards women, perhaps. But rely upon it, it is the womans fault if they are so! Men may act cruelly, basely, but Ill be sworn baseness and cruelty have been forced from them in order to check a womans undisciplined feelings, in order to recall a woman to the decorum which belongs to her sex! I think, Miss Beranger, since I am not honoured by your good opinion, my best move will be to say Good-bye!

She feels that she has played her game wretchedly. The man is a vain man; and instead of reaching his heart through fair means, she has lost her temper, wounded his amour propre, and placed a further barrier betwixt them. Once more she is down on her knees, her clasped hands lifted, her face quivering with emotion. Gabrielle is a born actress; but now her acting is supremely good, for there is a deal of genuine feeling in it.

Delaval! Forgive! forgive! I was mad to speak as I did! Oh I could kill myself for it! Say you forgive me, Delaval!

But he stands motionless and impassive still.

You wont? Have you grown utterly hard and cold and strange then to me? Have you no mercy, no pity, no compunction? Can you face me like a stock or a stone, and trample on my heart like this? Dont you know that you gave me the right to love you by your kisses, by the specious words that have fallen from your lips? And I believed in them! I believed that some day I should be your wife! Oh Delaval! if I have showed an undisciplined mind, a want of decorum, it is your fault. You are a man, I but a poor weak loving woman. You are the stronger, I but the weaker vessel. It is you who should have saved me from myself. It is you who should have placed a dam against the sluice-gates of a love that is going to wreck my whole life! Delaval, dearest, say, have you never cared for me? Has it all been untrue, a hideous delusion, a chimera of my own brain?  a device of the Devil to lull me in a slumber of Paradise only to awake to a full sense of his tortures? Oh, if I could die! If I could die! For I have nothing to live for now nothing! I shall die; for I could not live and see another come between my Heaven and me! I could curse her!