CHAPTER VII.
THE STATE BALL
“I have hidden my soul out of sight and said
Let none take pity upon thee. None
Comfort thy crying – for lo! thou art dead.
Lie still now, safe out of the sight of the sun;
Have I not built thee a grave, and wrought
Thy grave-clothes on thee of grievous thought?”
The June sun is full of pranks to-day. There it is, scorching up the leaves in the square, broiling the toilers on the white pavements, shining down on everything with a lurid glare that makes one wink and blink, and generally uncomfortable, and now it is peering into the windows of Baby’s schoolroom, showing up the short-comings of the faded carpet, the ink stains on the old table, and streaming full on to a corner where, before her easel, Zai stands, palette and brush in hand, but idle.
“Oh, it is hot! hot!” she cries impatiently, throwing down her painting apparatus and pushing her hair back from her forehead.
“Here’s something to cool you!” Gabrielle says, throwing across the Morning Post, and then she has the good feeling to pick up a book and pretend to be buried in its contents, while Zai reads what she considers her death warrant.
“A marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between Miss Meredyth, daughter of John Meredyth, Esq., of Eaton Place, and Carlton Conway, Esq.”
Three times Zai reads the announcement over – mechanically spelling each word – then she drops the paper on the floor, and going up to the open window, looks out.
She does not find the sun hot now, although it is dancing on her chesnut hair, and turning each tress to fire. Her heart lies so dreadfully cold within her breast that it seems to ice her whole frame, and though her eyes face the strong yellow beams, they do not shrink from them.
Since she read the words in to-day’s Post, she seems to be blind and deaf to everything, save the fact that Miss Meredyth has won from her that which she valued most in life.
“Well, Zai?”
Zai has been standing at the window perfectly motionless for half an hour, her slight figure almost rigid, her head a little thrown back, her face white as marble and almost as impassive, her two little hands clasped behind her as in a vice, and Gabrielle thinks it high time to recall her to a sense of everyday life with all its ills.
“Well, Gabrielle!”
The girl turns and faces her step-sister; her eyes look as if she were stunned, but her lips smile.
Gabrielle stares at her for a moment, then she bends over her volume again.
“There, child, don’t act with only me for an audience!” she says quietly, “You have had enough of acting and actors, goodness knows. What a brute the man has been!”
“Why?” Zai asks defiantly.
“Why? – because he pretended to love you, and he knew you loved him, and yet he has quietly bowled you over for that doll of a thing.”
“He cannot help himself, Gabrielle!”
“Why cannot he help himself, pray?”
“Because Carl is so poor. Oh, Gabrielle! Gabrielle!” and, the tension passed, Zai throws herself down on Baby’s favourite hearth-rug and sobs as if her heart would burst. “What an awful, awful thing money is!”
“The want of it, you mean! But that man Conway knew he was poor always. Why did he ever spoon you as he has done?”
“He loved me so – he could not help it!” Zai says tenderly, “And we love each other dreadfully —dreadfully– still, but he thinks I should suffer so if I did not have the luxury I have been accustomed to all my life!”
“And he does not think about himself, poor dear unselfish fellow!” Gabrielle says with a little sneer. “Zai, take my advice, and don’t waste another thought on him. He is going to marry Miss Meredyth for her money, let him, and don’t let Miss Meredyth have the pleasure of seeing that you envy her her husband!”
“I must try and forget Carl,” Zai murmurs feebly. “It would be a sin to love him when he is married, but I don’t know how to begin. He seems to run in my head and my heart so!”
“Let some other genus homo turn him out of them. There’s heaps of eligibles about. Lord Walsingham, for instance, he is young, good-looking and tolerably well off.”
“Why he squints, Gabrielle! and has red hair!” Zai protests mildly.
“Never mind. What does it matter whether one’s husband has red hair and a squint? All one wants is a nice house, and fine carriages and horses, plenty of diamonds etc. Is there no other man you know who could make you forget that actor fellow?”
“No one!”
Zai blushes crimson. There is meaning lurking in Gabrielle’s manner and eyes, although her words are simple enough, and she remembers that this step-sister of hers has resolved to win Lord Delaval for herself.
Let her, Zai thinks; she has never felt so much distaste to accepting Lord Delaval’s offer as she does at this moment, when her heart is so sore and her spirit so humiliated.
“I won’t cry any more!” she exclaims, feigning to be indifferent, but in reality anxious to change the subject. “I must look well before the Royalties to-night, you know! The Prince was very nice to me at Caryllon House, and said I was the belle of the room! What are you going to wear, Gabrielle?”
“Black lace – and you, I suppose, are going to wear sackcloth and ashes!”
“No I am not!” Zai answers lightly. “Mamma coaxed Swaebe out of another six months’ credit, and so Trixy and Baby and I have loves of pale blue faille and white illusion, and water lilies trailing all over us. I want to look beautiful to-night for a reason.
“What reason?” Gabrielle asks, suspiciously.
“Only because – But no; it’s a secret for the present.” And Zai, running out hastily, rushes up to her bedroom, and, double locking her door, cries to her heart’s content.
They are about the last tears dedicated to the memory of Carlton Conway; but, by-and-by, she bathes her eyes in cold water and smoothes her hair, and putting on her hat, goes out into the Square. But the Square is associated in her mind indelibly with that evening when she stole out from Lady Beranger’s ball to meet her faithless lover, and rising hastily from the bench, she walks home again.
“Go and lie down, Zai, and rest yourself; you look like a ghost!” Lady Beranger says harshly, meeting her on the stairs. “Or better still, put on your white chip hat with the pink roses, and come with me to the Park. The air will beautify you, perhaps.”
And Zai – who has learned by this time that Lady Beranger’s suggestions are really fiats – goes up and adorns herself, and is quite bewitching in the chip and roses by the time the Victoria is at the door.
Lady Beranger leans back, a trifle pale, and with the soupçon of a frown on her brow, and the carriage is just at Hyde Park Gate before she volunteers a remark.
“You have seen the Post to-day?” she says, carelessly.
“Yes, Mamma, and I am so glad to see Mr. Conway is going to be married; Crystal Meredyth is very nice, and awfully rich, you know.”
Lady Beranger turns round slowly and fixes her keen searching eyes on her daughter.
But Zai has not been born and bred in Belgravia for nothing.
Not a lash quivers – not a change of colour comes – under the scrutiny.
“I always said Carlton Conway was a cad!” her ladyship observes coldly; “and I am very glad you have found it out too.”
“But I haven’t, Mamma, not the least in the world. I think quite as well of Mr. Conway as ever.”
Zai’s self-possession amazes and almost annoys Lady Beranger. She is positively out-Heroding Herod! But she only says, in a cold, hard voice:
“Think as well of him as you like, Zai, so long as you keep it to yourself. His sort of people are all very nice in their proper places, but I have never advocated their being in Society. There is the individual in question!”
Zai looks eagerly round, and her cheeks glow crimson and then wax pale, and she bites her lips to stay their trembling, as the Meredyths’ high Barouche with stepping roans dashes by, having for its freight only Miss Meredyth and her fiancé! (Mrs. Meredyth, not so scrupulous as Lady Beranger about the bienséances, thinks there is no harm in an engaged couple being seen alone in the Park.)
Miss Meredyth, dressed in rose colour, with a sailor’s hat perched coquettishly on her fair hair, looks uncommonly pretty, and so Carlton Conway seems to think, for he is so engrossed in regarding her that the Berangers’ Victoria is passed unnoticed.
“I thought it was the Meredyth girl’s money the man was after, but he seems to be énormément épris,” Lady Beranger remarks indifferently, hoping the shaft will fly straight home and cure all remaining nonsense in her daughter’s head, or heart, or wherever it may be.
Zai answers nothing. With a sharp pang of misery and jealousy, she, too, has noticed how devoted Carl seems. Après cela le Déluge.
She is thankful when her mother orders “Home.” She is sick of bowing and smiling when she would like to lie down and die; but nevertheless she trips airily down to the dining-room, eats more dinner than is her habit, and after this goes into the conservatory and plucks a couple of the reddest roses she can find.
“Fanchette, make me awfully pretty to-night!” she coaxes, and the femme de chambre is nothing loth. Zai has every “possibility,” as she calls it, of being belle comme un ange, and more than satisfies her exquisite Parisian taste when her toilette is complete.
“She wants but two little wings to make her a veritable angel,” Fanchette says to the English maid who assists her in her duties. “Mees Zai is the flower of the house!”
“Flower of the flock, you mean,” Jane corrects.
“No, I do not,” Fanchette replies, offended. “I have never heard of flowers in a flock. I have heard of a flock of goose – and you are one of them.”
Meanwhile, Zai stands before her mirror. Her eyes are so sad – so sad, that they look too large for her small white face.
“Oh, Carl! Carl!” she says, half aloud, “you have forgotten me quite! And I love you – love you so much that my heart is broken, Carl!”
“Zai, the carriage is ready,” cries Baby, drumming her knuckles on the closed door.
Zai starts guiltily. What right has she to be murmuring love words to a man who will soon be another woman’s husband!
She clasps a pearl necklace round her throat, fastens a pearl star into her bonnie brown hair, then pauses one moment.
It is the first time in her life that she has ever had recourse to the foreign aid of ornament, and it seems quite an awful thing to her. But no one must guess at her feelings from her wan face to-night. She had not been proud with Carl because she loved him so, but she must be proud with the world, and not wear her poor desolate heart on her sleeve for daws to peck at.
She takes the two roses she plucked, pulls off their petals mercilessly, then rubs them on her cheeks, and flinging on her cloak she runs downstairs.
Lady Beranger is putting the finishing touches to her elaborate dress of primrose satin and point de Flandre, in which she looks like an empress, and only the three girls are assembled in the hall when Zai appears.
“How do I look?” she asks, throwing off her wrap. “Fanchette says I look belle comme un ange, and I want to be especially beautiful to-night!”
“What for?” three voices ask at once. “It’s only a State Ball, on the pattern of all the others we have been to. The Queen won’t be there to make anything different. So what on earth does it signify how you look?”
“I’ll tell you!” Zai says slowly and deliberately and unflinchingly. The rose petals hide the pallor on her cheeks, and the smile on her lips does away with the sadness in her eyes. “But, girls, you must keep it a secret from the Governor and Mamma. I want to look my very best to-night, because I intend to make my bow before the Princess as a future Peeress!”
Lady Beranger enters at this moment.
The State Ball is worth seeing after all, though the Beranger girls had said that it was exactly on the same pattern as its predecessors, and that Her Gracious Majesty was not going to shed the light of her august presence to make it any different.
Seldom within four walls has more beauty been gathered than to-night. Of course everyone admires the Princess most, but of feminine loveliness there is every possible variety to suit every possible taste.
There is also a good deal of the feminine element which is not lovely. But, as if to atone for Dame Nature’s shortcomings, it is generally expensively dressed.
Zai soon has cause to forget or despise Fanchette’s soothing doctrine of the fitness of things, and to feel that her pale blue faille and white illusion, garnished with water lilies, are chiefly remarkable for their fresh simplicity, as she views the superb silks and satins and laces that do honour to Royalty.
She dances away with half-a-dozen of the Household Brigade, with the Duke of Shortland, Lord Walsingham, and several Belgravian habitués, and then she walks through the room with Percy Rayne.
He is quite as good as a catalogue in a ball-room. Ever since he was a small boy Fate has hung him about the Court of St. James’. He has the names of the upper current, and all the social celebrities, on the tips of his well-shaped nails, and faces he never forgets. Added to these, he has all the fashionable gossip on his tongue, for in the interludes of “business” at the F.O., as well as at the other “O’s,” they enjoy a dish of scandal as much as the softer sex do.
He points out the Beauties now to Zai, who, in spite of her heart-broken condition, regards them with admiring interest.
“There!” he says, “is an American, Mrs. Washington Ulysses Trotter, called the Destroying Angel, because she kills everyone dead, from Princes downward, by a glance of her beautiful eyes; but, unfortunately for her, her triumphal car will be probably stopped in its career. The Yankees are going out of fashion, you know. Royalty has decreed it. For Royalty, like common flesh, is liable to get bothered with being run after and accosted as if it were Jack or Tom or Harry. But Mrs. Washington Ulysses Trotter does not mind much. She knows her little outing at Buckingham Palace is quite enough to get her the entrée into all the Fifth Avenue houses. She will talk about the Prince —
“Oh my, isn’t he elegant, and so chatty! I felt just like talking to Cyrus Hercules Hopkins – that’s my cousin down Chicago way, you know. And the Princess! well, certainly, she isn’t proud! It was just like being at home in our English basement brown stone house, Maddison Avenue – at Buckingham Palace!”
Zai laughs, and he rattles on.
“That’s one of our big financier’s daughters. Ugly, isn’t she? I hate the type. The parure of brilliants isn’t bad, and those yards of lace —point D’ Alençon, isn’t it – that trail about her are worth more than my year’s salary. But they are so devilish stingy in the Offices. We work like slaves, and get neither tin nor kudös. And you would not believe it, Zai, but the Foreign Secretary hasn’t more responsibility on his back than I have on mine! See! there’s the famous wife of one of the Ministers – Count Schoen. She has been a celebrated beauty in her day, and cannot forget it. And they say she enamels and bakes her face in an oven. What do you think a cousin of mine – an ingénue from the country – did, at the Caledonian Ball? She went up to the end of the room, and after intently examining Count and Countess Schoen, said aloud,
“ ‘How funny that they have Madame Tussaud’s figures here.’
“Imagine the horror of her partner!”
Zai laughs again. But this time the laugh is forced, and she catches her breath hard.
Through the swaying crowd she espies Gabrielle among the bevy of beauties.
Gabrielle holds her own to-night. Her black lace dress becomes her white creamy skin admirably. Scarlet japonicas burn and gleam in her coal-black hair and on her bosom. On her cheeks, the bright pink flush lends increased lustre to her large dark eyes. As she sweeps along she has that supreme unconsciousness of manner which is never seen save in a woman who feels she is well dressed and able to defy the criticism of her own sex.
Gabrielle does not see Zai or Percy Rayne looking at her, for her eyes are mostly cast down on the fan she carries, neither does Lord Delaval, on whose arm she leans, observe them, for he is bending and speaking very low under the sweep of his long fair moustache, while his glance rests on the undeniably very handsome face near his shoulder.
“Don’t they make a good looking couple?” asks Rayne. “What a pity they don’t arrange to walk through life together – they look so well doing it through a ball-room.”
“They are both handsome,” Zai answers indifferently, but she is, spite of her, a little piqued.
This man – to whom her answer has to be given to-night – has not even deemed it worth his while to ask for it, though the evening is wearing on. His neglect hurts her more, sore and suffering so lately from Carlton Conway’s behaviour, and poor little Zai feels that she would like to hide her diminished head for ever.
“I am very tired,” she says to her partner; “Do you think I could get a seat somewhere?”
“Yes; but come out of this crowd. It’s awfully hot, and you look like the whitest lily, Zai – we’ll find a seat somewhere.”
So they go out, and he finds a chair for her in a vestibule, where a little cool air revives her.
“I must go. I have to dance this with Lady Vernon. Do you mind sitting here quietly till I come back?” he asks kindly, seeing how weary and wan she looks.
“I should like to stay quiet here very much,” Zai answers gratefully; “and don’t hurry back for me.”
She half closes her eyes, and fans herself slowly, and feels desolate – so desolate.
Her womanly triumph over Miss Meredyth has evidently fallen to the ground; Lord Delaval has either changed his mind, or else he was only laughing at her at Caryllon House – and as she thinks thus, Zai shivers with mortification and shame, and leaning her head against the wall, grows lost to external things.
She does not know how long she has sat here, and she does not care – all she yearns for is the solitude of her own room; but the ball is not half over, and hours – dreary hours – lie before her.
“Zai! is it to be – Yes?”
She starts up, flushing red as a rose – her heart beating wildly, her eyes with a dumb wonder in them.
She is but a bit of a girl, she has been cruelly jilted by the man she loves, and she craves for a little incense to her amour propre, even though it be dearly bought.
“It is – yes,” she almost whispers; then in a sort of mist she sees Lord Delaval’s face light up, and the colour creeps warmly over his blond skin.
“Thank you, my darling!” he says very low, bending over her, and she feels his lips touch her bare shoulder. Then she puts her hand on his arm, and without another word they walk back into the ball-room, and up to Lady Beranger.
“Let me present to you the future Lady Delaval!” he says quietly, and Zai slips her ice-cold fingers into her mother’s clasp, and for the first time her mother looks at her with positive affection in her glance.
“Is it true, Zai!” she asks, eagerly.
“Quite true, Mamma,” Zai answers without a falter.
A little later the news has been told to the Royalties, and with kindly smiles and words they give their congratulations on her future happiness.
But though the Royalties know of the match in prospective, Zai pleads that it may be kept a secret from her sisters for the present. It may be that the death and burial of her first love is too recent to permit of matrimonial rejoicings just now, or it may be that she wants to realise what has come to pass, and to resign herself to the future before the others touch upon the subject, and probe not too quietly the still open wound made by Carlton Conway. Lord and Lady Beranger are too well pleased that matters have turned out so satisfactorily to refuse her request.
And, as for Lord Delaval himself, perhaps he feels a little uncomfortable at appearing on the scene as a devoted lover before Gabrielle – Gabrielle, who has told him, in the passionate words that rush unchecked to her scarlet lips, that the day of his marriage to any other woman will be the day of her death.
She is not one to kill herself; she is not romantic enough for folly of that kind; what she means is probably a social and moral death; but Lord Delaval – with the innate vanity of his sex – believes that Gabrielle’s handsome face and superb figure will be found floating on the turbid bosom of old Father Thames, and he shrinks more from the scandal of the thing than from the remorse likely to rise up in his breast. Zai’s desire, then, that the engagement shall be kept quiet for a while, meets with his approval. After all, he can find chances to gather honey (if not all the day) from his betrothed’s sweet lips – and stolen sweets have always been nicer to his thinking than any others.
When they say good-night, he contents himself by squeezing five very cold fingers, and slipping a magnificent brilliant on to the third one, which pledge of her bondage Zai does not even glance at before she drops it into her pocket.
“Did you like the ball, Zai?” Trixy asks, as they brush their hair before going to bed.
“I hated it,” Zai answers, giving her chesnut tresses an impatient pull. “I wish I had never gone to it!”