Kitabı oku: «Daughters of Belgravia; vol 2 of 3», sayfa 6
CHAPTER VIII.
“SIMPLE FAITH THAN NORMAN BLOOD.”
“You’ll look at least on love’s remains;
A grave’s one violet!
Your look? that soothes a thousand pains.
What’s Death? You’ll love me yet!”
“Just be careful who mounts that chesnut to-day, Hargreaves,” Challen, the riding-master, says, pausing on his way at the door of the stable, and passing a keen glance over the horse in question. The chesnut is a big, good-looking hack, with a sleek satin coat, and just what would take a woman’s fancy, but there is a look about his eye that Challen does not like. “Put Miss Edwards on him, she has pluck enough to ride to the devil, but mind none of the new pupils go near him.”
Hargreaves assents, but he does not look content.
“She wants to ride the chesnut,” he says to himself. “She’s set her mind on it, and I hate to disappoint her! Bless her heart! Why, what’s the matter with you?” he continues aloud, going up to the chesnut, and passing his hand over the long, lean head. “I like you, because she likes you! You’d never think of hurting her, I’ll be bound, no more than anyone would, I know! My pretty one! I’d kill myself if any harm came to you – that I would!”
And Gladstone Beaconsfield Hargreaves, quasi village veterinary, but now assistant-master of the Belgravian riding-school, pulls out a tiny locket from his breast and kisses it a dozen times, then holds it up to the light reverentially as if it was the holiest thing to him on earth.
“Just like a bit of gold it is, for all the world! The same colour that angels’ hair is. Oh! my pretty one; my sweet one! There’s never a night I don’t go down on my knees and thank God that you don’t scorn me!”
It is the morning after the State Ball, and while the other Beranger girls take an extra hour or two of slumber, Baby, fresh as a lark, dons her dark-blue habit that fits her lovely little figure like wax – and is off for a riding lesson.
The weather is true summer, and the little lazy breeze that floats across the Serpentine is a boon to man and beast. Right away in the upper portion of Kensington Gardens, the trees throw down some grateful shade, and Challen’s riding-school wend their way down the broad walk at a snail’s pace, for the heat is awful.
Up above there is not even a cloudlet to temper the sun’s rays; the sky is as clear and as blue as Baby’s own eyes, and everything around looks as bright as her smiles.
There are not as many aspirants to equestrian honours as usual to-day. The season is on the wane, and the Ball and Reception givers pile on the agony fast and strong, so that the young débutantes, fagged and worn out by nocturnal exertions, find the arms of Morpheus more to their liking than the caresses of Boreas.
Miss Juliana Edwards, a strong-minded, steel-nerved brunette, and Challen’s show pupil, is here, well to the front of the small cavalcade, but she does not ride the chesnut.
Her dare-devil propensities find but small play, for her mount is a dapple-grey gelding, who looks as if neither whip nor spur will rouse him out of riding-school jog-trot.
There are only eight riders in all, and the first lot go in threes, while some little distance in the rear Hargreaves keeps close to the chesnut, on whose back is Baby.
“You’ll kindly look to the other ladies, Miss Edwards, won’t you?” he had said on starting, with a deprecatory smile. “I think I had better keep an eye to Miss Mirabelle Beranger’s horse. She doesn’t ride like you do, you know!”
And Miss Juliana Edwards, to whom a compliment on her horsemanship is dearer than anything, smiles in return at the handsome assistant, and agrees to keep a sharp look-out.
The chesnut goes steadily enough – so steadily in fact, that Baby, who is an awful little coward, forgets all about him, and gives her whole attention to her teacher, who, in the neatest of grey tweed suits, and with an unimpeachable wide-a-wake perched jauntily on his curly head, looks quite the gentleman.
“I wish you had been at the State Ball last night!” she says, with a beaming smile, that almost takes the young fellow’s breath away.
“I! fancy me at a State Ball, Miss Mirabelle!”
“Why not? I am sure there was no one so good-looking as you there!” she cries, looking admiringly at the trim, slight figure, and the straight features and undeniably winsome eyes of her companion. “I wish you would not call me Miss Mirabelle!” she adds with a little pout of her charming red lips.
He reddens visibly as he hearkens.
“I dare not call you anything else, Miss Mirabelle!” he almost whispers, his heart throbbing violently under his tweed waistcoat.
“There it is again! Miss Mirabelle! why can’t you say ‘Mirabelle,’ when – when – we are quite alone?” she asks impatiently, throwing a covert glance towards the other riders to see if they are out of earshot.
“Oh! I couldn’t!” he murmurs very low – shy of speech – but his large hazel eyes are eloquent enough. “I would as soon think of calling the angels by their names!” he goes on nervously.
“I have heard of Michael as the name of an archangel, but I don’t think the female angels have any names,” Baby says irreverently. “Do you think me an angel? because I’m not, not the very least bit in the world. The governor calls me a little devil, and I know my sisters don’t think me an angel!” she laughs.
“You are an angel to me, anyhow!”
A little pause, while she looks straight into his eyes, with the prettiest, faintest pink colour creeping over her cheeks.
“I say, Hargreaves, how long are we going on like this?” she asks abruptly.
He gazes at her amazed, and Baby laughs again, a little, low, musical laugh that entrances him.
“I mean that – that – as we care for one another, why should we pretend not to?” she asks in a hushed voice, putting her hand on her pommel, for the chesnut pricks up his ears and frightens her. Hargreaves’ hand is on hers in a second. He is really rather nervous about the horse after Challen’s warning, and besides, it is Heaven to him to feel the soft velvety skin of the dainty little hand that gleams up like a morsel of alabaster statuary under the sunlight.
“Miss Mirabelle, for God’s sake don’t go and make me forget what I am. I try night and day to remember the distance between us, and though I could go down on my knees and worship you all my life – though I could die for you willingly —willingly, I know I dare not live for you! I love you —there! Only God knows how I love you, but it isn’t a love like a fellow gives to his sweetheart! It’s a love like a faithful dog, that would lick your pretty hand and be content; that would watch over you so that no harm came near you; that would just lie down and die by the side of your grave.”
Baby listens with an involuntary tear twinkling in her eye. She is only seventeen, but she has been too long in a Belgravian world not to know that this young fellow loves her with a beautiful, unselfish, honest love – the like of which no Belgravian fine gentleman would feel. This primitive, self-abnegatory sort of courtship is so novel that it has a glamour for her, and Baby is – undoubtedly – a little fast.
“I would rather live and find out how much you do love me, Hargreaves,” she answers, with a tender smile; “do you think you love me to – to – the extent – of – marrying me?”
“Miss Mirabelle!” he gasps.
The veins swell on his forehead, his eyes fix on her with a bewildered look, and his breath comes quick and fast. Then he droops his head, and a forlorn expression sweeps over his white face.
“Don’t laugh at me, for my dead mother’s sake,” he whispers in a hoarse tone.
“I am not laughing,” she says slowly, “not laughing one little bit, Hargreaves. Would you think it very fast of me if I said something – something quite out of the way, you know?”
“I could not think ill of you, no matter what came,” he replies earnestly.
“Well then, here goes! I am ready to be Mrs. Hargreaves as soon as you like.”
He stares at her like a man in a dream, and as he lifts his eyes to her lovely little face, Baby’s snowy lids droop over her cerulean orbs, while her mouth twitches with something between a quiver and a smile.
He is not a gentleman born and bred, but he has a heart that can love. Blue blood may not flow in his veins, but honest, devoted, even chivalric feelings live in his breast, and he knows that this girl – in spite of the words she has just spoken – is a thing he dare not grasp.
No, if her love and her presence are Heaven, the loss of her undying misery and regret, he does not dream of hesitating between them for her dear sake.
She has offered herself to him – the sweetest, most precious gift he could have on earth – but sooner than take her, sooner than drag his dainty high-born darling down to his own level, he would shoot himself.
“No, no, Miss Mirabelle! I should be a rascal, a cur, if I thought you were in earnest. I have no right to love you; but love is a thing that comes alike to all, and I may feel it so long as I don’t let it harm you, Miss Mirabelle. God bless you for liking me, for speaking to me kindly; but I ask no more than that – only —only– may I just kiss your hand —once– Miss Mirabelle.”
He raises a white, stricken face as he speaks. He has made up his mind to throw up his situation this very night and to go away – to America – Australia – anywhere so that she may never see him again, and regret perhaps that she has spoken to him thus. He will pass right away out of her life, but he wants one kiss of her little white hand to take away with him; that kiss and the locket that holds a bit of her shining hair – his two priceless treasures.
Baby’s eyes are full of tears now. The young fellow’s voice has such a ring of pathos in it – a ring she has never heard in the voices of Belgravia – but she says nothing, only pulls off the gauntlet from her right hand and holds it towards him.
“Good-bye,” he whispers so incoherently that she doesn’t catch the word, and stooping, Hargreaves fastens his trembling lips on the soft white flesh, when—
The Chesnut has started forward, and, off her guard and terrified out of her senses, his hapless rider loses all presence of mind and clings on as the horse careers madly along.
The rest of the school have turned to the right and disappeared from view. Hargreaves, horror-struck, almost stunned, does not follow for a moment, and only the Chesnut with its helpless burden dashes on and on. Turning sharply to the left he gallops furiously – so furiously that all obstacles give way before him. On and on, on and on! till the gardens are left long behind, and the road by the Park is reached, while the poor pale little rider clings desperately on with all her might and main for dear life.
Suddenly the horse swerves to the right down a narrow street, and losing her hold, the girl falls off.
Pray God that the horror of her fate is over! but no!
The tiny foot is entangled in the stirrup, and for nearly thirty yards the brute drags her along, when all at once he stops dead short, frightened and quivering, and the jerk snaps the stirrup leather in two.
But it is a little too late!
They pick her up, a little white dainty thing. Her hat has fallen off, and her long hair – angels’ hair, as Hargreaves has called it – streams down in such long rich shining waves that it seems to envelop the small slender figure in an armour of burnished gold.
She is not dead – her blue eyes, blue as the sunny sky – are quite wide open, and some one, a slight young fellow, who has just ridden breathlessly up, falls down prone on his shaking knees and looks into them with the poor piteous look of a faithful hound.
“Miss Mirabelle, Miss Mirabelle!” he calls in wild despairing tones.
But she cannot rebuke him now for his formal address, poor little soul!
Presently her eyelids droop, and the long curling lashes rest close against cheeks that are almost ashy now.
They lift her up gently and carry her – “Home,” the home she had left only two hours before gay and blithesome as a bird and so full of life, and when it is reached they take her straight into the library, the door of which is ajar, and laying her down on the couch, they leave her, all but one, and he does not enter the room that contains her, but stands trembling near the threshold.
Another moment and the awful thing that has happened is known to all in the house, and Hargreaves shrinks away still further as father, mother, sisters of the girl he loves pass him with scared faces and stricken hearts to find Baby —so!
Not a word is spoken. At such a moment what word can be said? Even Lady Beranger bows her proud head beneath the fiat of Heaven, while Lord Beranger sobs aloud over this little one – this brightest, merriest one of all the flock.
After a moment, revived by a stimulant, Baby opens her pretty blue eyes.
“Don’t cry, governor!” she says in a voice so faint —so faint!– that it seems to come already from that distant shore. “It serves me right! I was going to leave you – I was – ”
She stops, struggling for breath.
“Let me just see her, my lady! Oh, for God’s sake let me just go near her! I won’t dare to touch her – I won’t even dare to say good-bye!” a voice whispers so hoarsely, so brokenly, that my lady starts and turns round, but does not understand.
But Baby has heard, through the faint mists that are rising up around her; the voice of the man who loves her finds an echo in her heart.
“Let him come near, governor,” she says slowly, with an effort. “He isn’t a gentleman, but I loved him and asked him to marry me, but he wouldn’t, governor. He said he wouldn’t hurt me by doing it.”
“Quite right of him,” Lord Beranger falters through the tears that roll down his cheeks. “Hargreaves, come closer.”
He draws closer and kneels down beside the couch, and taking up one long, glittering tress, he puts his quivering lips to it.
“You may kiss me, Hargreaves,” Baby murmurs, with a half smile on her pale lips. “There are no convenances where I’m going!”
He rises from his knees and, bending over, kisses her for the first and the very last time.
“Good – bye – all!” she gasps. “I have – had – a – jolly – time – but – I’m – not sorry – to – go! Go – od – bye!”
Her eyes close, a grey hue runs round the pretty lips and the shadow of the Angel of Death falls on her little face.
Only a few hours more and Baby is gone! – gone with her smiles and her wiles, her coaxing ways and her naughty ways – gone to that land which only faith can pierce and where only love can follow.
There is not a dry eye in the household, when with awesome spirit and noiseless tread they go in to see the last of her.
She lies like an exquisite waxen image, her sweet voice silenced, her blithe laugh hushed, her slender white arms crossed on her stilled heart, and a snowy Eucharis lily resting upon her breast.
“Oh, my lord! put this somewhere near her from me!” poor Hargreaves had said through blinding tears.
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” and Lord Beranger, knowing with what a true, honest, unselfish love this young fellow had loved his lost child, places the lily on her breast with his own hands.
* * * * * * * *
The day after Baby is laid to rest, Hargreaves is found near the Beranger vault; one hand grasps a locket with a bit of golden hair in it, near the other hand is the revolver with which he has shot himself. It was true what he had said, that he loved her with the love of a dog, that would just lie down and die beside her grave.
But the matter is at once hushed up, for the convenances do not allow of canaille even killing themselves for the sake of daughters of Belgravia.
CHAPTER IX.
LET THE DEAD PAST BE BURIED
“Let this be said between us here,
One love grows green when one turns grey,
This year knows nothing of last year,
To-morrow has no more to say to yesterday.”
“The pomps and vanities and sinful lusts of the flesh” being put a stop to by poor little Baby’s untimely death, Lady Beranger has elected to mourn in sackcloth and ashes among the sylvan shades of Sandilands. It would be dreadful to assert that this worldly mother does not lament to a certain degree the gap in the domestic circle, or that now and again the memory of Baby’s sweet pretty face and winsome, kittenish ways does not bring a mist into her fine eyes, but this much is true, that she leaves Belgravia with regret, especially as the season is not quite dead. And now that three months have nearly gone by since
“Mirabelle Beranger,Aged 17,”
went away to the angels, Lady Beranger, knowing that mitigated affliction in the shape of jet and bugles are always becoming, has “just one or two intimate friends” come down to share the quiet of the country and to sympathise with the family woe.
It need not be said that, with that worldly wisdom that looks sharp after its own interests, these intimate friends are Lord Delaval and Mr. Stubbs.
Of course such glittering fish must not be lost sight of before they are safely landed.
It is not unusual in the Upper Ten, as has recently been proved, for the noblesse to rise from the funeral baked-meats to sit down to wedding-cake.
Anyway, as the convenances are not rigid on this score, it is on the cards that before Trixy’s crape grows rusty she will don the orange and myrtle.
And now that Sandilands offers no flirting material with which she can keep her hand in and show off her power, save “poor Mr. Stubbs,” she goes with less reluctant feet towards the altar of Moloch than she did in Town, where her “future” cut such a comical appearance among the golden youths that she really hated the very sight of him.
“It’s rather a bore that one can’t go and get married respectably at St. Peter’s,” she remarks pettishly to Zai. “I might as well be a housemaid, to walk across the garden path to that paltry little church, and hear old Boresome gabble a few words by which Stubbs and I shall be made —one! Ugh! Do you know, Zai, I expect we shall be very much two! We haven’t a single idea in common, and only one pleasure – contradicting one another.”
“Don’t marry him, then, for goodness sake, Trixy! You’ll be a wretched girl if you do. If you can’t love a man, you must at any rate respect him, or look up to him as having a superior intellect to your own,” Zai replies, thinking of Lord Delaval; then she frowns and chases away the thought of him as fast as she can.
“Well, I don’t love Stubbs – (he asked me this morning to call him Peter, but I couldn’t, I really couldn’t) – and I don’t respect him particularly, and I certainly don’t consider his intellect superior to mine, but I intend to marry him all the same. Love and respect! Good heavens, Zai! Such things are all very well in their way, but you don’t suppose that I should think of balancing them with that lovely suite from Jackson and Graham’s? Why, those white and gold chairs, with the crests carved on the backs, are ten times more worth having than all that fiddle-faddle of love and respect!”
Zai does not answer. She knows, perhaps, that some of Trixy’s notions are unanswerable, and is simply conscious of the fact that she rather envies her her sentiments.
“And what’s the good of having point de Venise on my dress for the gardeners and stable boys to gape at?” Trixy goes on, peevishly. “I think it is too bad to be done out of everything like this! I had made up my mind to have a fine wedding, all the good-looking men in town, a lot of bridesmaids, and – why, what’s the matter, Zai?”
The matter is that Zai has allowed a sob to break in on her talk.
“Nothing,” she says, in a low voice; “only your speaking of bridesmaids made me think of Baby!”
“You were always a wet blanket, Zai. Whenever one is trying to look on the bright side of things, you are sure to say something horrible,” Trixy replies, in a tone of martyrdom. “I think of Baby too; but I drive away the thought because it is my bounden duty. Mamma says I’m not to make myself ugly with crying and fretting, and, Zai, do you know, I don’t think there’s much to grieve about Baby. She’s escaped marrying a – Mr. Stubbs!”
It strikes Zai again that Trixy’s ideas are a little out of the way, and wiping her tears, she takes up a book.
“I say Zai! I want to tell you something,” Trixy announces suddenly, in a half whisper. “It’s a secret, a dead secret, and you will have to swear you will keep it.”
“I promise,” Zai answers quietly, wondering what important thing is to be divulged, as Trixy crosses the room and comes close up to her.
“No, no! you must swear.”
“I never swear; but my promise holds as good.”
“Well, then, listen. Gabrielle told me this morning that there is something between you and Lord Delaval.”
“Well, if there is, what of it?”
“Only that Gabrielle went down on her knees on the damp grass, and swore (she swears awfully, you know) that if he married you, she would destroy herself, body and soul!”
“I am sure she is welcome to him if she wants him so very much,” Zai flashes impetuously; “but I must say that if Gabrielle really fancies he is going to be her brother-in-law, she ought to curb her feelings for him!”
Trixy opens her big blue eyes wide with amazement.
“You don’t mean to tell me, Zai, that there is the very least bit of foundation for Gabrielle’s fancies?”
“Yes, I do,” Zai blurts out, “a very great deal of foundation. I have been engaged to Lord Delaval ever since the State Ball, and I suppose I shall marry him some day.”
“And you really accepted him in cold blood, although you have always said you disliked him so?”
Zai reddens to the roots of her chesnut hair.
“Women are allowed to change their minds, I suppose?”
“You didn’t change your mind, Zai. You have only accepted Lord Delaval out of pique. It’s all because that dishonourable fellow, Conway, pitched you over for Crystal Meredyth. Oh! Zai! cannot you arrange to be married the same day as I am? It would make me so much jollier to know I had a fellow-sufferer! It is quite a month to it – lots of time to gallop through the trousseau – and then people won’t say that you only married Lord Delaval when Carl had put a Mrs. Conway between you and him.”
Zai looks up at her sister rather piteously; her grey eyes are dimmed with tears, her face is very pale, and there is a falter in her voice as she asks:
“When is Mr. Conway’s wedding to be?”
“Just six weeks hence.”
A pause. The September sun shines down hot and glary, but under its broiling rays Zai shivers. Her heart is cold, her hands are cold, and it seems to her that life altogether is awfully cold. Still in this moment she makes up her mind.
“All right, Trixy!” she cries, in ringing accents, just as if she was as blithe as the sunbeams and the birds; “the same day shall make us both – wives – on two conditions. One is that you will not tell Gabrielle a word about our little arrangements until I give you permission. The other condition is – ” She pauses a second and turns away her face, and when she speaks again her voice is so husky that Trixy wonders – “that you will never mention Mr. Conway’s name to me again! Before I marry Lord Delaval, I should like to bury my dead past for ever and for ever out of sight.”
“But Mamma must know of our arrangement, and she will tell Gabrielle, of course.”
“Oh, no, she won’t; not if I ask her. Look here, Trixy. We are a set of paupers! Even our mourning for Baby – ” in spite of her she falters – “is all on credit. I heard May’s man say ‘Crape’s a very dear article, my lady; and the deeper the affliction the more it costs, in course! So it’s only the quality, my lady, as can really indulge in mourning; the commonality mourn usually in narrow frills or small pleats, but the quality, to be fashionable, must mourn in deep kilts. Sorrow cannot be better shown than by as little silk as possible, and full crape draperies, the buttons to be covered in crape, in course, and crape collars and cuffs, and jabot on the bodice.’ ‘The mourning must be deep, of course. I suppose, in your very large way of business, you do not trouble to make up the account but once in a year or so, do you?’ Mamma asked, in her most benign voice. ‘The mourning must be sent home with as little delay as possible, and of course if it inconveniences you to wait, I will give you a cheque in advance.’ ”
“Good gracious!” cries Trixy, “what a state of funk the mater must have been in for fear he’d take her at her word!”
“Yes; but he didn’t. ‘No, no, my lady. We can afford to wait quite well. We are in no hurry whatever; in fact, we shall be only too pleased and honoured by having your ladyship’s name on our books, so long as your ladyship will allow us;’ and it was only in this way that we got this outward and visible sign of our grief for Baby, and it is only in this way that we get our bread and butter, you know. The Governor and Mamma are delighted at your marrying Mr. Stubbs, and the idea of my catching Lord Delaval has filled their cup of bliss to the brim; so they won’t do anything to make us turn rusty. Besides, Mamma knows better than to tell Gabrielle anything, in case she should put a spoke in my wheel of matrimony. She is so much in love with my fiancé.”
“And does he care for her?”
“What a question!” cries Zai, flushing a little. “Now is it likely that he should want to marry me if he cares for my step-sister?”
“Cela selon!” Trixy replies carelessly, “Men don’t much mind that sort of thing. I heard Charlie Wentwaite only made love to Virginia South because he admired her mother!”
“You shouldn’t listen to such things, Trixy. Lord Delaval may have talked nonsense to Gabrielle, because she encouraged him, but I am sure he only cares for me!”
“And you – are you in love with him?” Trixy asks in a solemn voice, putting her hand on her sister’s shoulder, and staring at her fixedly.
But Zai cannot or will not meet this enquiring gaze.
She springs up from her chair and throwing up the window sash looks out on the fair world, the glowing fragrant roses and the clear blue sky overhead. There isn’t a fleecy cloud on the azure surface. Somehow all these things have a subtle charm of their own, and bring her an impetus to bury her dead past as fast as she can, and to begin a new era. So instead of answering Trixy, she plucks a rose with a deep blood-red heart and flings it deliberately at somebody who is lying his full length of six feet two inches on the sward, his straw hat thrown aside, and the daylight falling full on his very handsome blond face. His lids are closed, and he looks the picture of laziness – but a picture that most women would take the trouble to look at several times. As the rose falls full on the tip of his aquiline nose, he slowly opens his ultramarine eyes, and looks up at the face at the window with a depth of admiration and tenderness in the look that makes Zai blush and hastily withdraw her head.
“Yes Trixy!” she cries with quite a beaming smile. “I believe I am in love with him, anyway I intend to be directly I am Countess of Delaval!” And five minutes afterwards Trixy sees her on a rustic bench under a big elm tree, and Lord Delaval lying at her feet. Trixy watches them a moment. What a handsome couple they make. She sighs as she looks at them, and rather envies Zai the good looks of her lover. Then she turns away and murmurs in a tone of resignation:
“A handsome man always wants worshipping, while I like to be worshipped myself, and another thing, poor old Stubbs won’t ever make me jealous!”
