Kitabı oku: «Daughters of Belgravia; vol 2 of 3», sayfa 2
Luckily for her she has been partially imbued with a respect for Lady Beranger’s beloved convenances and bienséances. Luckily for her, Belgravian morals, though they may be lax, are too worldly-wise not to know a limit.
Even while Lord Delaval’s kiss lingers on her mouth she pulls herself away from him, angry with herself that she has allowed that long passionate caress, and yet feeling that she would have been more than mortal if she had resisted it. But she resolves to sift him, au fond, to find out at once if in truth the man is only laughing at her or whether, oh blessed thought, she has caught his errant fancy or “love” as she calls it.
“Lord Delaval!” she says, in a voice in which pride and shame mingle strangely together, “because I am a woman, with a woman’s weak nature, do you believe me to be a fool? Do you think for a moment I deceive myself or let your words deceive me? Only last night you flirted horribly with Zai. Before, it was in Baby’s ear you whispered your soft nothings. It was Baby’s hand I have seen you furtively clasp. I know therefore that the love you profess for me is all stuff and nonsense! that playing with women’s feelings is delicious food for your vanity. But why you should pick me out, why I should be a butt for you, I am sure I can’t guess! I don’t care to believe that because I am what Lady Beranger thinks me, that you want to insult me!”
A look of pain crosses her brow, and an appeal for forbearance, dumb but very taking, goes up from her eyes. Lord Delaval seizes her hands and holds them fast while his gaze bears steadily down on her.
“You should not doubt, Gabrielle! I have told you the truth, upon my soul! No woman’s face can tempt me from you now. Whatever the past may have been, I swear I belong to you now and for ever! While I wait to claim you as my wife before the world, and I must wait, for reasons which will be satisfactory when I tell you them, you will go on doing as you do, draining men dry to the one drop of their souls that you can assimilate. But that is not love, though they may lay their lives and fortunes at your feet. Aylmer would never satisfy your heart, Gabrielle, but you may flirt with him if you like, and drive him mad by these sweet eyes, these soft red lips,” and he lifts up her face and studies it for a moment, “so long as when I want you, you come to me at once. It will be no sacrifice on your part, for you will only be obeying the law of your nature in loving me and I – I shall take you not as a gift, but as a right, my Gabrielle!”
Before she can answer him, he has taken her into his arms, and rained down kisses on her brow and cheeks and lips and is gone, with the conviction in his mind that, if he wishes it at any time, it will not require much pressing on his part to mould this girl’s future to his will.
True he does not care a snap of his fingers for her, but any woman, beautiful of face and form, is not an object to be disdained or rejected, and Lord Delaval is not the only voluptuary among the Upper Ten.
Alone with the gathering shadows, and still wrapped in the presence that has left her, Gabrielle sits for an hour undisturbed. In the latter days she has thought several times that Lord Delaval had begun to recognise her claims to admiration, in spite of his flirtations with Baby and Zai, and alas! for Belgravian nurturing, it is a truth that the consciousness that her attraction for the man is only a physical one, in which her brains and soul bear no perceptible part, is far from being an unpleasant sensation.
“How very shocking!” a few prim spinsters may exclaim, but it is nevertheless the truth and nothing but the truth. It may be that most women love to conquer with the legitimate weapon, beauty, of the sex.
Poor plain Madame de Staël would willingly have exchanged all the laurels men laid at her feet for the tiniest, meanest blossom offered in a spirit of “love” or “passion” by them to women whom she justly regarded as her inferiors.
Gabrielle forgets her cross, her mother’s low birth, Lady Beranger’s taunts and everything else unpleasant, as she positively revels in a sense of Lord Delaval’s admiration.
Rising from the lounge, she walks to the mantelpiece, and placing her elbows on it stares in a fixed, almost fierce way, into the mirror.
The shadows that flit over the room are broken here and there by a few last dying sunbeams, and her beauty is improved by the flickering light. The sweet eyes and soft red lips to which he had alluded, gain fresh merit since they are decoys to his erratic fancy, and have fanned the spark she has tried to ignite into a flame that has at last burst into words.
Then between her and the mirror the superb face of her lover rises up, and the cheek that has just been pressed against his breast glows a lovely carmine, that is wasted on the unappreciative dusk, as she clenches her little fist, and swears in true and forcible Bohemian fashion to bring all her woman’s wit to aid in winning this man for her husband.
Just at this moment Lady Beranger walks in, and without noticing her stepdaughter by word or look, throws herself a little wearily into an arm-chair.
“What are you thinking of, belle mere?” Gabrielle asks after a little.
“Thinking of! There is plenty to think of I am sure,” Lady Beranger retorts curtly. “I shall never be at rest till the girls are safely off my hands; unmarried daughters are the greatest responsibility breathing.”
“I will try and lessen your burden,” Gabrielle says, in a bland voice, but with a curl of her lip which the dusk hides, “I’ll promise not to say ‘no’ if anyone asks me to marry him.”
Lady Beranger laughs a sharp unpleasant laugh.
“It is not likely you will lessen my burden!” she says sharply. “Everard Aylmer, who was my forlorn hope for you, told me he was off directly for a tour in India, so he is not going to ask you.”
“May be, but then you see, there are other fools beside Sir Everard Aylmer, in this world, Lady Beranger,” Gabrielle answers flippantly, as she saunters out of the room.
“Hateful girl!”
And having relieved herself of this, Lady Beranger settles herself more comfortably, and begins to build castles in which Zai and Lord Delaval, Trixy and the fascinating Stubbs, and Baby with her elderly inamorato figure.
“That actor fellow showed his cards well last night,” she soliloquises. “He is after the Meredyth filthy lucre of course, so now there’s every chance of Zai catching Delaval. Trixy is thrown away on that dreadful cub, but after all, it doesn’t much matter who one marries. After a month or so, now-a-days, the women think twice as much of other people’s husbands as of their own. Baby will be all right in Archibald Hamilton’s keeping. That child really frightens me by her defiance of everything, and I shall be truly thankful to wash my hands of her before she goes to the furthest end of her tether. As for Gabrielle,” a frown puckers her ladyship’s patrician brow, “I wonder who she has got running in her head? I hope it is not Delaval; a neck to neck race between her and Zai would end in her winning by several lengths. Zai, though she is my own child, is the biggest little fool, with the primitive notions of the year One, and I can’t alter her, worse luck!”
CHAPTER III.
“FROGGY WOULD A WOOING GO.”
“Gold, gold, gold, gold,
Bright and yellow, hard and cold;
Molten, graven, hammered and roll’d,
Heavy to get, and light to hold,
Price of many a crime untold.”
“Poor Mr. Stubbs,” sneers Gabrielle.
“Poor Mr. Stubbs,” says Zai.
“Poor Mr. Stubbs,” laughs Baby.
And with very good reason.
It is his eighth visit.
Trixy has deserted her downy nest among her cerulean cushions, and sits bolt upright on a tall-backed chair. To-day is devoted by her to the personification of “Mary Anderson.”
Her attire is of virgin white, not flowing in undulating waves of Indian muslin, or ornamented by tucks à l’enfant, but falling in severe satin-like folds round her beautifully moulded figure; her wealth of yellow hair is gathered at the back of her dainty head in a classical knot, traversed by a long gold arrow. She wears no bracelets or rings to mar the perfect whiteness of her arm and fingers, and while one hand toys lazily with a mother o’ pearl paper-knife, the other rests on a well-thumbed copy of “The Lady of Lyons.”
Opposite her, but at a discreet distance, her Claude perches nervously on the edge of his chair; his face has acquired more flesh and blood with his increased importance as the fiancé of the beautiful Miss Beranger, and his puffy cheeks glow like holly-berries under her glance.
Not that her glance by any means shows the odalisque softness, of which mention has been made; on the contrary, there is an incipient loathing in it, that she tries to conceal under the shelter of her long golden lashes.
But everything nearly has two sides, and the white drooping lids find favour in her adorer’s sight, for he attributes them to the delicate shyness peculiar to the china beings of the Upper Ten, and unknown to the coarse delf of his own class.
Once, and once only, has he ventured to lift the lissom white fingers to his hungry lips very respectfully, bien entendu.
It was the day when, Lady Beranger standing by, Trixy agreed to barter her youth and beauty for:
“Gold, gold, gold, gold,
Bright and yellow, hard and cold;
Molten, graven, hammered and roll’d,
Heavy to get, and light to hold,
Price of many a crime untold.”
But she had drawn back her fingers before they arrived at his desired goal, with a sudden hauteur that almost petrified him into a stone.
It was the first time he had been thrown in such close contact with “high life,” and when it bristled up in aggrieved delicacy it appalled him; but the next moment, he awoke to a profound admiration for the maidenly reserve that was, of course, part and parcel of a refined nature.
Poor Mr. Stubbs! well may the Beranger girls pity him. He little dreams of the melting glances Trixy’s sweet blue eyes have given to Carlton Conway, or how eagerly the hand like a snowdrift has gone out to nestle in Carlton Conway’s clasp, and how the faint blush rose on her cheek has deepened into damask bloom when in the old days Carlton Conway whispered in her ear, nor how, tell it not in Gath! her pretty mouth had even pouted for Carlton Conway’s caress.
But we all know that where ignorance is bliss, etc., etc. Ever since Mr. Stubbs has been duly installed in the dignified position of “future,” to Lady Beranger’s eldest daughter, he makes periodical visits to Belgrave Square.
As it has been told, to day is his eighth visit, but he approaches no whit nearer to his divinity as regards heart – in fact he has decidedly made a retrograde movement in her opinion.
Trixy fully realises the truth of the old saw, “distance lends enchantment to the view,” and the nearer she sees him the more difficult it seems to her to swallow this big bitter pill, although it is heavily gilded. Still, she is determined to marry him somehow, for as regards more substantial things their hearts and such obsolete absurdities – she has fully realised the advantages and benefits this horrible sacrifice of herself, as she styles it, is likely to bestow.
What daughter of Belgravia hesitates long between love and ambition? That is, if she has been properly brought up? and how often are the marriages solemnised at St. George’s or St. Peter’s – marriages du cœur? A popular author writes of modern love —
“Though Cupid may seek for sweet faces,
From ugliness fly as a curse,
May sacrifice much for the Graces,
He’ll sacrifice more for the —purse.
The priest, if inclined for truth’s rigour,
Might write on each conjugal docket,
‘When a lover’s in love with the figure,
The figure must be in – the pocket!’ ”
And he is very nearly right.
Trixy has on a table that stands beside her two open morocco cases. In one, a magnificent necklet of diamonds sparkles and scintillates in the daylight, flashing back glances at a set of pigeon-blood hued rubies that repose alongside.
When her eyes rest on these the odalisque softness steals back to her limpid glance.
“Do you approve of the ornaments?” the millionaire asks nervously of his “liege ladye.” He would not have ventured to say “Do you like me?” for all the world.
He is brimming over with gratification at his sumptuous gift being accepted, although Trixy has not had the grace to say even “thank you.”
But then she is so sure of him that she does not trouble about common politeness.
“I have not yet learnt your exact taste, you know,” he mumbles a little sheepishly, reddening to the roots of his more than auburn hair, possibly with the pleasurable vision of the time when he will know Trixy’s taste better.
Poor Mr. Stubbs!
At present she is still “doing” Mary Anderson, and may be a statue of Galatea for aught he can find in her of warmth, or learn of her tastes and feelings.
“The ornaments are very well,” answers this often-to-be-met-with type of Belgravian daughters, with an insolent indifference which is quite assumed, for such costly baubles are her heart’s delight. “I should certainly have preferred sapphires to rubies. They suit blondes so very much better.”
Poor Mr. Stubbs feels and looks extremely disappointed, and crestfallen. He has paid such a very large sum for the rubies. He has ransacked all the leading jewellers’ shops that the stones may be large, and flawless, and the exact colour of pigeon’s blood, and here is his reward.
For a moment it seems to him that there is something a little disheartening and depressing in aristocratic coldness and ingratitude, and that some of the gushing thanks of little Imogene of the Vivacity, or pretty Vi Decameron of the Can-Can Theatre would not be amiss, but only for one moment does his tuft-hunting soul turn traitor to the high life it adores, and he quickly brightens up.
“If you will allow me, I will take back the rubies, and desire sapphires to be sent instead.”
“Oh, no, no! it would scarcely be worth the trouble of changing them, these will do very well,” she answers in a tone of languor, but she remembers the vulgar old adage of “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush,” and to put a bar on any chance of losing the disparaged rubies, she quietly clasps the morocco cases, and locks them into an ivory and ebony Indian box.
The big drawing-room in Belgrave Square is very dull. From outside comes the rush of vehicles, and the June sunshine tries to peer through the closed jalousies that fine ladies love. The clock ticks rather obtrusively, but Trixy likes to hear it, for it tells of the flight of time; a prospect she has at heart at this moment, and a short silence falls upon as ill-assorted a pair as ever a longing for the world’s vanities has brought together. Looking at them, the story of Beauty and the Beast presents itself, excepting that the Beast is not likely to turn out anything else, save as far as riches are concerned. From the day Mr. Stubbs popped the question, as Baby has it, and Trixy accepted him, Lady Beranger has thankfully thrown off the onus of chaperonage, which a rigid adherence to her beloved convenances insisted on before, and long tête-à-têtes are vouchsafed to the “happy young couple,” as she calls them (Extract from the Stubbs’ family bible – Peter Robinson Stubbs, born July 12th, 1820, rather upsets the word young), but her ladyship cannot stand the man in spite of his youth and happiness, and slips out of the way whenever his loud knock resounds through the mansion. She has no fear that Trixy will prove refractory now that the die is cast, and the match has been announced formally in the columns of the Court Journal and other Society papers. Besides, a dissolution of the contract would involve a return of very expensive presents, including the despised rubies, and Lady Beranger’s insight into human nature, or rather into her eldest daughter’s nature, leads her to think rightly. Trixy is her mother’s child to the backbone.
In spite of her utter loathing for the man to whom she is going to swear glibly love and eternal fealty, she has received too heavy substantial tokens of his regard to allow her golden calf to drift away. She has thoroughly made up her mind – such as it is – to cast away all romantic nonsense, i. e., her adoration of Carlton Conway, for the sake of worldly benefits, and now it is ten to one, that if the all-conquering C. C. came in his noble person to woo her, she would deliberately weigh against his undeniable fascination the prospect of being a leader of Society, with magnificent diggings in Park Lane, and the very comfortable sensation of a heavy balance at Coutts’.
“You think you really would prefer Park Lane to Carlton Gardens?” Mr. Stubbs inquires deferentially.
Under the powerful glamour of Trixy’s beauty he feels as if he could buy up the Fiji Isles, or even that very uncomfortable residence, Bulgaria, if she wills it. Of course, she likes the big house in Park Lane. What woman, especially a daughter of Belgravia, would not? with its superb array of balconies, and galleries, and conservatories, and its vast reception rooms, where Trixy fully intends to queen it over other leaders of Society, but she just bends her pretty little yellow-crowned head in assent.
One may have a dancing bear, but one is not forced to converse with him, she thinks, and she gives him a long, level look, wondering what animal he is really like. Gabrielle had likened him to a frog, but he is too bulky for that; a bear or a buffalo, she decides, and while she does so, he has come to the decision that no cage can be too gorgeous for his radiant Bird of Paradise, and he glances, but covertly, at her in a sort of maze at the curious freak of fortune that is going to bestow on him such a rara avis.
He looks sideways at her sweet scarlet lips, and marvels what he has ever done in his prosy money-making life to make him worthy of their being yielded to him – not yet, no, certainly– not yet, he is aware of that, but perhaps, some day! He gloats with an elderly gentleman’s gloating on the supple young form and perfect face, and quite a delightful awe creeps over him at the very idea of the future presence of this flesh and blood divinity at his hearth and board.
Nature has not been munificent to him in the way of looks. He has a broad, florid, rather flaccid physiognomy, and his proportions are not symmetrical, but taking him all round, he is not a bad sort, and he has a good heart.
True it beats beneath a huge mountain of flesh, but, never mind, it beats all the same with a good deal of honest warmth. His feelings towards his fair autocrat are a mixture of profound admiration and profound gratitude – the last sentiment being born of the first.
Gratitude is in fact an intensely tame word to express what he feels for Trixy’s munificent gift to him of herself. With all these feelings rife in his very broad breast, feelings that would gush forth eloquently in most men, Mr. Stubbs remains strictly practical and common-place, and fortunately his wife elect is better able to sympathise with him as he is than if Cupid spoke from his lips in flowers of rhetoric.
“And the furniture? From Jackson and Graham’s, I suppose?” he asks deprecatingly, as if it was her money and not his that was to pay for it.
“From Jackson and Graham’s of course! You surely are not thinking of going to Tottenham Court Road, Mr. Stubbs?” Trixy says raspily, with a little sniff of her Greek nose.
“No, no! of course not!” he murmurs alarmed.
“Remember, I cannot have any hangings but blue– blue suits my complexion, you know; not dark blue, mind, but bleu de ciel!”
“Blue, certainly,” he answers humbly, much more humbly probably than Jackson and Graham’s foreman would.
“And Mr. Stubbs, pray don’t forget that I hate anything modern. I like everything old, in furniture I mean!” she says, warming up with her subject. “Chippendale and all that sort of thing.”
“Florid carving you would like of course?”
“Florid! Horrid! Plain chairs, with shields at the back for the – ”
She stops suddenly, while a look of disappointment and dismay creeps over her face.
“But you haven’t a crest, have you?” she adds, with as much solemnity as if she were asking “Have you hopes of salvation?”
“A crest? – of course I have!” he replies jauntily, not a bit offended at her doubt on the subject. “A sweet little crest. It has a little turretted house on the top, with what they call in heraldry a martinet perched on it. I don’t understand much about birds, but in plain English, I expect it’s a swallow, or maybe a tom-tit. And the motto is a very nice one, and very applicable too —Fortes fortuna juvat,” and he smiles complacently.
Trixy has a horrible suspicion that he also winks.
“I don’t understand Latin,” she says scornfully. “You see, they don’t teach it at fashionable schools. It is a language that does very well for prescriptions and things, and is only fit for doctors.”
“I know a little Latin, and my motto in English is ‘Fortune favours the brave!’ ” he explains pleasantly, with another affable smile and meaning look, which are quite lost on Trixy, whose worst enemies cannot accuse her of any undue ’cuteness, as the Yankees have it. She has no more idea that the man is alluding to himself and herself than if he was speaking Greek, which is another of the languages she knows nothing of.
The only thing that strikes her is how funny he would look if his bravery was called into account, and how slowly his short stout legs would carry him, if he ever wanted to run away from an enemy.
“You say the crest has a castle with a bird on it. That will do I fancy on the furniture. People don’t trouble much about the subject, so long as there is a crest to make the things look more aristocratic. Can’t the Beranger motto be added to yours? It is French, and everybody knows French.”
“May I ask what it is?” he asks wondering how he can have overlooked it in his diligent researches into “Lodge” and “Burke “ and “De Brett,” works that, bound in velvet and gold, have prominent positions in his library.
“It is ‘Noblesse oblige,’ ‘Nobility forces,’ you know.”
Mr. Stubbs reddens as he thinks the addition she suggests will very likely provoke a smile from ill-natured people, who might fancy that the Hon. Trixy Beranger’s finances forced her to become the Hon. Mrs. Stubbs.
“I don’t see how it can be done,” he remarks. “It would be going against the rules of heraldry I am afraid.”
“What does that matter?” she cries captiously. “It would be very hard if I really set my heart on anything, to be done out of it just because some stupid sign-painter’s ideas did not coincide with mine.”
“Heraldry is not exactly sign-painting, it is a science,” he ventures to remonstrate, anxious to smooth down her ruffled feathers.
“Really, Mr. Stubbs, you seem to think my education has been dreadfully neglected! I was five years at Mrs. Washington de Montmorency’s élite establishment for daughters of the nobility only! Then I was at Madame Thalia de Lydekerke Beaudesert’s finishing academy for la crême de la crême only, and Lord and Lady Beranger have spared no expense in educating me! Signor il Conte Almaviva taught me Italian, Rubenstein considers me his show pupil, Patti was heard to say that she envied me my voice, and – and – of course I know that heraldry is a science, but science or no science, I cannot see why I should not have exactly what I want carved on the backs of my own chairs and sofas. However, it really isn’t worth the trouble of discussing,” and Trixy half-closes her eyes and falls into languor, a manner beneath which he invariably feels the social gulf widen between them.
He cannot, even if he tries, affect this supreme indifference, this delightful repose that sits so easily on Lady Beranger and her belongings.
Leaning back against the Prie Dieu chair, with half-closed eyes, Trixy looks like a marble effigy of Resignation, but she does not show the gentleness and patience with which the virtue of resignation is generally invested. She is rather a cold, hard martyr to untoward circumstances, with a big wall of ice raised up around her that seems to freeze up her companion.
Surreptitiously he glances at a monster watch, like a bed-warmer, with half-a-dozen gaudy seals and charms attached to it. He really is anxious to find that the three-quarters of an hour, which Lady Beranger had hinted to him was the proper term of a courtship, are up; but time has not flown on the wings of love, there are yet ten minutes wanting, so he settles himself in his seat, and just escapes the sight of Trixy’s pretty mouth elongated in a long yawn.
He commences a sort of auctioneer’s catalogue of the worldly goods and chattels she will possess directly she is mistress of Park Lane, divining that this is a subject which really interests her, and hoping to make her forget about the crests and mottoes.
Thoroughly mercenary himself, he quite understands how pleasant it must be for her to know all she will gain as his wife. Exchange and barter are household words to him. Ever since he was in knickerbockers and short pants he has been buying and selling, and he sees nothing at all extraordinary or revolting in this young person giving him her youth and beauty in exchange for his money.
Love! Well, love to his fancy is an excellent thing for boys and girls, but Mr. Stubbs has reached an age when passion ought to lose most of its fierceness and glamour, and a placid liking sound more comfortable.
He has given up business now, so he knows he will be usually at hand to guard his beautiful wife from the impudent swells – idle, good-for-nothing specimens of the genus homo– to whom morality is an unknown word, and whom he dislikes thoroughly, though he is deferential to their faces.
So that on the whole his matrimonial scheme bears a remarkably smooth aspect.
“There are one or two other little things on which I should like your opinion before I write my directions.”
Hearing which she brightens up at once into an attitude of interest.
“Did’nt you say the other day that you preferred a brougham to a clarence?”
“A brougham by all means, and it must be by Peters.”
“Have you a particular fancy for Peters?”
“Yes, yes. He is the only maker who is chic. Most of the others turn out heavy lumbering vehicles, with not the style about them that would suit me; but then you see, we have always been considered to be so very difficile in our tastes, and the brougham must be green.”
“With scarlet under carriage, and body well picked out with broad scarlet lines?”
“No, no! Picked out with black,” she says very decidedly, wondering at the awful taste of the man. And there is not a doubt but that his taste is showy, he wears at this identical moment a miniature yacht in full sail, in gold and enamel, as a scarf pin, and a tie of violet satin, with orange stripes; orange is in fact his pet colour, from rhubarb down to the primrose of his gloves.
“Yes,” she says, as if reflecting deeply, “the brougham must be green, a very dark green, and picked out with black, and brass mountings.”
“A little sombre, don’t you think?” he suggests timidly.
“Good heavens, Mr. Stubbs! Do you want me to drive out only on the ninth of November and look as if I was a part of the Lord Mayor’s show?” she asks excitedly, raising her voice and causing him to give a little jump on his chair.
It is the first time she has displayed any variation of feeling, and the spice of devilry in her eyes, though it does away with Mary Anderson, heightens her beauty. Usually Trixy Beranger resembles a large waxen doll, with yellow hair and pink and white cheeks.
But she recovers her temper directly. It strikes her that this glittering fish may prove a slippery one if she allows the stormy side of her character to burst out before the matrimonial noose is tied.
“But, of course, I know you were only joking about the colours for the brougham. I am sure your taste is similar to my own, and that you think nothing can be too quiet to be aristocratic. Mamma rather wants me at four o’clock, have you any idea what the time is?”
