Czytaj książkę: «Daughters of Belgravia; vol 1 of 3», strona 6
Zai is very young, and, though a daughter of Belgravia, so strangely ignorant of the tricks and wiles of her own and the opposite sex, that for a moment she gasps, and then loses the sense of dignity in anger.
“How dare you say such words to me?” she asks, unconsciously using Carlton Conway’s word “dare.” “You know they are false – false as – as you are! You know that if you have any love it should be given to Gabrielle or Baby. You ought to be ashamed to say such things to me, when you know how you have made Gabrielle love you!”
“Gabrielle!” he repeats, with a complacent smile. Why! Zai is jealous after all! “Is it possible that you think of her and of me in the same breath? You might accredit me with better taste, I think. Come, Zai! will you let me try and convince you of the sincerity of my love for you?” he says softly.
“No! No!” she cries hastily, thinking it is base treason to Carl, even to listen to all this. “No! it would be useless, a waste of time on your part, since I tell you frankly that I could never love you.”
“A good many women say that, and yet learn the lesson of love at last, learn it too well, to their cost,” he remarks with supreme conceit.
“It may be so, very likely it is, in fact,” she replies as she scans his face, and, in spite of Carl, is fain forced to confess to herself that to women who love physical attraction, this man with his fair languid beauty, his earnest ultramarine eyes, must be irresistible. “But I could never be one of them.”
“Do give me leave to try,” he whispers in a voice that is wonderfully seductive. “You shall be as free as a bird, only I – I shall be bound – and willingly.”
“No! No!” she says, almost sharply.
It is not that she fears temptation, but the very idea of love from anyone but Carl is odious to her.
“I could never care for you. I could never marry you.”
“Reconsider that, Zai!”
“If I reconsidered it for ever I should never change my mind!”
Lord Delaval shrugs his shoulders slightly, and fixes his eyes steadily, almost rudely, on her.
“I am not, as a rule, a betting man, or I should be willing to lay very heavy odds that you will live to regret those words, or to unsay them.”
Why is it that at this moment an ice cold hand seems to grasp the girl’s heart and hold it in a vice? She is really as free as air, no human being has power of compulsion over her, least of all this man who dares to threaten her. Yet she shivers a little in the soft, warm, June air, and without answering a word walks hastily into the house.
Lady Beranger and Gabrielle stand near the entrance of the ball-room, and beyond them Zai sees Carlton Conway, and on his arm, just emerging from the supper-room, Crystal Meredyth.
A faintness creeps over her and her hands grow chill as death, while her face blanches to the hue of a white rose.
It seems too hard, too hard! that he should flaunt his flagrant flirtation with this girl before her very eyes; but she is equal to the occasion. With her dainty head erect, her slender figure pulled up to its utmost height, she passes her mother and sister, Lord Delaval still at her side, and, as she nears her lover and her rival, she looks up, smiles in Lord Delaval’s face, and lays her hand on his arm.
“First some supper, and then ten waltzes at least,” she says in a bright ringing tone, “and après cela, le deluge.”
A little haughty bend to Carl – Carl, whom she is loving at this moment with every fibre of her being, and she is gone, while Lord Delaval shrugs his shoulders once more and presses the little, white-gloved hand to his side, and says to himself with a feeling of complacency:
“Femme souvent varie – folle qui s’y fie!”
CHAPTER VI.
MISS FLORA FITZALLAN
“Love in a hut – with water and a crust
Is, Love forgive us! Cinders – ashes – dust!”
A pretty little house, parfaitement bien monté, in Halfmoon Street. Plenty of marqueterie and rococo about, heaps of china monstrosities, heaps of nude statuary and glowing pictures, and shoals of devices in the shape of soft armchairs and cushions and sofas, to contribute to the well-being of man.
Altogether a charming little ménage, of which the presiding deity is Miss Fitzallan, leading lady at the Bagatelle Theatre.
They have been playing “Hearts versus Diamonds” at the theatre to-night, a comedy in three long acts, with a lot of emotional acting, which, when it goes on week after week, is, to say the least, a trifle fatiguing.
The Prince and Princess, accompanied by a party of foreign royalties, have been amongst the audience, and have been demonstrative in their approval. Altogether the evening has been exciting, and the actors are glad when it is over, and each one can drop down from his stilts of artificial feeling to the level of real life.
Miss Fitzallan is tired too; her rôle has been the most arduous of all, perhaps, save that of the jeune amoureux, who has had to play the handsome but rejected lover, with a passion he can simulate better than he can feel. So the leading lady sinks back into her luxurious little light blue brougham, with an enormous sensation of relief, and is driven quickly to her bijou house, where a small but exquisite supper is laid out.
The covers are for two.
Herself and the jeune amoureux.
Flora Fitzallan is past first youth, though she has never owned to more than twenty-three for the last ten years; but dress and the skilful touch of art completely conceal any ravages that time may have imprinted on her face.
On a primary glance, she is beautiful as a dream. On a second and more leisurely inspection, an acute and impartial observer may detect some undeniable flaws in her physiognomy.
Her eyes are a great deal too wide apart, although they are of a velvety brown, and melting in expression, and their brows and lashes are perfect. The nose is a little too retroussé or tip-tilted, according to Tennysonian phraseology, and her mouth is large, though the lips are red and tempting. She is a woman on a large scale, with a fulness of form which promises to develop into unromantic fat; but, supper finished, as she stands in a long, trailing white silk, with brilliants sparkling on her hair and neck, and ears and arms, there is really so much grace about her careless attitude, so much of imperial dignity about her, that it is impossible to stop and analyse her defects when her claims to admiration are so evident. She is clever, too, a sharp cleverness with nothing spirituelle about it, and, considering her birth and position in the social world, she is ladylike and even fastidious in her tastes. She is quite a woman of the people, with no mysterious aristocracy hanging over her advent into the world. Her father was a bookmaker, well known to every sporting man, and her mother had been one of the ballet at the Alhambra, until years and obesity had displaced her from that honourable berth.
A popular actress at one of the most fashionable London theatres, and a woman about whom several men, from Mayfair to High Holborn, have gone mad, she can have lovers at her feet every hour of the day, and enumerate them by legion; but though Miss Fitzallan is a professional, and attempts no display of prudery, and (this in an aside) very little of morality, she is a woman, with a woman’s natural tendency to love one man “de cœur” amongst the many aspirants to her favour. This man is – Carlton Conway.
He lies now, extended at full length on quite a sumptuous sofa, with a cigar between his lips, and his eyes closed. He has supped remarkably well, off dainty little dishes and the very best wine, and feels perfectly comfortable and satisfied physically, but his thoughts are not pleasant, and are wandering far away from his luxurious blue satin nest, within which he is enshrined as a deity, and installed in all the dignity of lover A 1.
He is not thinking of Miss Fitzallan, or of her good looks and success, although half the club men would willingly give some hundreds to fill his place with this charming Aspasia.
He is thinking how coolly Zai Beranger bowled him over for Lord Delaval at the Meredyths’ “At Home” two nights ago. He has loved Zai as much as such a nature as his can love, but it is a love that is subservient to amour propre. He had meant to seek her, to dance with her, to take her out on the lawn, to kiss her, and to believe that she was his, and his only.
And all these intentions were frustrated by his jealous ire at seeing Lord Delaval at her side. To pique her, he had devoted himself to Crystal Meredyth, and the tables had been turned on himself. The haughty little bend of Zai’s dainty head, as she passed him on the peer’s arm, had railed him more than he has ever been railed in all these years of unprecedented success amongst women, and, impassioned lover as he was of hers, the blow she has given his vanity has loosened her hold entirely upon him. He is not a man to waste his feelings on an unappreciative being. Crystal Meredyth likes him – he knows it, and she has money, lots of bank stock, and horses and diamonds – according to Lord Delaval – at her back, but somehow, Crystal, with all her prettiness, her innocent china-blue eyes, and her naïve conversation, has not caught his fancy, and as he lies here, he is making up his mind to throw Zai’s sweet image to the four winds, and to immolate himself and his handsome face and figure on the altar of Moloch. Miss Fitzallan stands patiently watching for a considerable length of time the reverie in which her lover – on and off the stage – is indulging, either forgetful, or else utterly regardless, of her very presence in the room.
She understands Carlton Conway’s light, fickle and selfish character, from the top of his head to the sole of his feet.
A man is never known so thoroughly in the domestic relations of life as he is by a woman like this, whose lover he has been since almost the first days of acting together.
With Miss Fitzallan, Carl throws off all restraint, and has no silence, such as he would have to preserve with a woman who was his – wife.
It is at Miss Fitzallan’s house that he feels himself completely at home – where he can fling himself sans cérémonie with dusty boots on satin sofas, smoke unrebuked the cigar interdicted in other drawing-rooms, and order the dainty dishes he prefers. He has suffered ennui covertly in the presence of the grande dames, in whose salons he had been gratified to find himself, but he yawns unreservedly in the very face of the Aspasia who belongs to him pro tem.
To Miss Fitzallan he speaks openly – thinks audibly – and is exactly the same before her as he is by himself. It is Balzac who says that if the mirror of truth be found anywhere, it is probably within the boudoir of Venus.
“Tell me, Carl, what you are thinking of? Is it of that doll of a thing I saw you go and speak to the other night, between the acts? Is it the money I hear she has or her silly face that runs in your head? And yet – no, I don’t care to hear it is her face, for then I should be jealous – jealous as a tiger-cat, Carl! and jealousy is an ugly sensation to which I have not been subject, thanks to the goodness of an appreciative public!”
And as she speaks, she walks up to the sofa, and bends over him with a steady, keen look, adding in her tenderest, softest tone:
“Surely, Carl, you are not going to bowl me over for another woman?”
Carl gives a final puff to his nearly consumed cigar, and deliberately removing it from his mouth, throws it negligently into a superb Dresden casket that stands near him on a marble slab. Then he does not rise, but quietly turns over to his side and faces her.
Not a gleam of liking for her could be traced on his handsome aquiline features by the most adept of physiognomists. His eyes have a cold and callous light in them as they meet the fine melting brown orbs that search for a reciprocal look, and the tone of his voice is hard and utterly passionless as he answers her.
“Whatever heart I have is, of course, yours, Flora, but one cannot subsist on love, you see. No one knows this better than you do, judging by all this splendour. You have said you were in love with me – and I believe you are, but nevertheless, that love hasn’t been enough for you, and the Duke of Beaudesert, Lord Lennerdale, etc., etc., have all been tolerated when Cupid came, laden with marqueterie and Chelsea, and so on. The ‘doll of a thing,’ as you are pleased to call Miss Meredyth, is not such a magnificent piece of flesh and blood as yourself – but she is very respectable!”
The colour flames up into the leading lady’s cheek, her eyes shoot angrily, and for an instant she looks quite plain. His words sting like nettles.
“Very respectable! Did you say that to insult me, Carl? For you know I am not what prudes and fools call very respectable, and I don’t want to be! Don’t you dare to taunt me, Carl! You will try to marry that Miss Meredyth,” she goes on in a sharp voice, her rather ponderous foot beating a tattoo on the velvet pile; “but it will be only for her money. Oh, you cannot deceive me! I, who know each turn of your mind, who read you like an open book! And for an excuse for your paltry, interested motives, you lie there, and talk to me of her —respectability. Good heavens! I begin to feel contempt for you – a contempt all fellows deserve when they are ready to sell themselves to the highest bidder!”
A flush slowly mounts into the man’s pale cheeks, and he bites his lips hard as he listens to her insolent tone, but he is too lazy by nature to be roused quickly into recrimination, and he cares too little for her to take much heed of her words or contemptuous gestures.
“Flora, you are going too far,” he says very quietly, with a callousness that goes far to irritate her more. “You forget whom you are speaking to. Your noble admirers may bow down to your tempers, but I won’t. I am too proud to subject myself to them, and too indolent to retort, so, as you are not too amiable, I will wish you good-night, and when we meet again, I hope you will be more pleasant to look at, and to speak to.”
“You shan’t go, Carl! you and I have been together for three years, and I won’t have you marry that girl. I’ll forbid the banns, and make such a scandal in the church that all London will ring with it.”
Carlton Conway looks up at her, and taps his well varnished boot with his silver-headed cane.
“Pshaw, and why?” he asks with an accent of surprise.
Miss Fitzallan regards him fixedly and passionately, then throws herself down tragically on her knees by his side.
“Because I love you, Carl.”
“What did you say? But enough of this, let us finish this folly at once, Flora! You appear strangely to misunderstand the nature of our relations to one another. If so, you had better rectify your ideas on the subject as soon as possible. The relations that may have existed between us yesterday are not forced to exist to-day. It is the old story, my dear Flora, acted in every part of the world, in every phase of society from the Royalties down to the costermongers, and yet you, sharp as you are, don’t seem to comprehend it. It is that in this world there are two sorts of women – one sort, charming like you, lawless like you, to whom a man gives either an hour or a year of his life, according to his own free will – a sort that please him one day, and disgust him the next, who ought not to expect from him anything, but attention sometimes, caprice and changeability always. A sort he takes up without any reality of feeling, and puts down without compunction or remorse. The other sort is like Miss Meredyth, brought up properly, with decent notions and respectable ways. To them a fellow naturally gives his life, his love, his respect, his name, and for these he abandons such as – Flora Fitzallan. You were born to be a plaything for a time; Miss Meredyth was born to be a guardian angel. You have insulted me, my dear Flora, you have credited me with vile interested motives, and forced me to place the above truisms before you, and now, perhaps, you will let me go.”
He rises slowly, takes his hat, and drawing on his gloves lounges to the door.
Miss Fitzallan looks round, and tries to find in his face some signs of indecision, but fails, and she notices that there is no perceptible lingering in his step.
Frantic jealousy and anger, mingled with love for him, possess her. He is really the only man she has loved, and whose companionship has given her any genuine happiness in her tinsel existence of stage spangles and hypocrisy; without him she thoroughly believes she cannot live.
“Carl, come back, don’t leave me like this,” she cries pitifully. “If my love for you has made me say one word to vex you, see, I ask your pardon on my knees, for Carl, you know how I love you, worship you, that there is nothing in the whole world that I would not sacrifice for you and your good except the sight of you, Carl, and that I must have or die! Come back, and give me a kiss of forgiveness, and if you say anything horrid I will be mum.”
Miss Fitzallan has assumed a pose that would bring down the house if she were on the stage at this moment. It is so fine, so artistic, and she has called up all the emotional fire she knows into her big brown eyes, exerting herself as much to chain and enchant this man as though she was the cynosure of all London. It seems to her at this moment that there is but only one thing worth striving for, or existing for, and that is Carlton Conway’s devotion.
Her nature is perverse like other women’s, coveting what seems difficult to gain, undervaluing what is willingly offered.
“My dear Flora, now you are yourself again,” he says carelessly, just sweeping his moustache across her brow, and then sinking into the arms of a capacious fauteuil, “and I don’t mind confiding to you the lamentable fact that I am deuced hard up. What with garments for the stage, and off the stage, button-holes for the Park and the balls (Hooper in Oxford Street had the impudence to charge me three-and-sixpence for a gardenia the other day), I am just at the end of my tether. I want a new hat, new gloves, a new kit altogether, and devil a bit do I know who to squeeze the tin out of. I must sacrifice myself to a fortune, you see.”
“Oh, Carl, but it’s hateful the thought of your marrying anyone else. If it wasn’t for some silly prejudice you might marry me; I have got heaps of money you know.”
Yes, he does know, and that how the money was got is a fact that it is better not to enquire into. Marry her? marry the leading lady of the Bagatelle Theatre? when he is a regular swell himself, in spite of his being an actor! The shade of his uncle, the Marquis of Eversleigh, forbid it!
He stares at her incredulously, and seeing she is in earnest bursts into a loud laugh.
The next moment he asks her pardon for his rudeness, for Carl is a gentleman born.
“You are cruel to me, very cruel,” she sobs, always with a due regard to the artistic, “but you will promise me one thing, won’t you, Carl? It is that, once married, and the fortune secured, I shall see you again as often as I do now.”
“All right, Flora, but that will be on one condition. It is that you won’t bother me with letters or anything. Letters are so deuced dangerous, you know, especially if one’s wife gets hold of them, and grows close-fisted with the pocket-money. If I marry Crystal Meredyth,” he adds to himself, “she’ll have to fork out pretty considerably to make up for the amount of insipid talk that falls from her lips. Now if it was Zai! Ah! I’d take her with nothing, and work like a slave to keep my dainty little girl clothed like a princess, but she has thrown me over for that lardy-dardy swell, and joy go with her.”
“Good-night, Flora,” he says, rising lazily, “and mind and keep my counsel. If father and mother Meredyth, who are the properest couple alive, were to hear one whisper about you, they would send me flying.”
“I’ll keep your counsel, Carl; I wouldn’t injure a hair of your head, not to save my life.”
“Well, perhaps you wouldn’t, little woman, or perhaps you would, cela selon. I never had much faith in mankind, or womankind either to say the truth, and I am too old in worldly wisdom to begin now – ta-ta.”
