Mrs. Alexander Fraser

“ It is easier for an Ethiopian to change his skin and a leopard his spots than for a worldling to alter his nature.
Lord Delaval does not acknowledge to himself even, with that utter self-delusion that comes so easily to most men—that there was something in poor Gabrielle’s feverish passion that appealed to him, gratified him, soothed him. He does not guess himself how deliciously sweet to his heart are the voice of flattery and the yield of worship. There are men and men.
To some, the self-abnegatory passion of women is no doubt distasteful, even repellant. ”

“ Meanwhile, Zai has no wish ungratified, no desire unsatisfied. To her the world contains but one man, and this is—her husband. Now and then she remembers the existence of Carlton Conway, but only with wonder filling her that she ever could have exalted him into a creature to adore, when he is so different—personally, mentally, in every way—to Delaval. She is flung, as it were, on her husband entirely for all the pleasure, enjoyment, and amusement of life. Gabrielle is drowned; Baby is dead; her father and mother, left to themselves, live in the London world and for the London world. ”

“ As her sweet warm breath sweeps past him, he feels the sensuous delirium of a dream, he is intoxicated by the power of her beauty; and she, hard and cold as she really is, deadly in her revenge, cruel in her greed of love, relentless in her hate, her heart yearns to him with quite a real feeling, a feeling which, though wicked and worthless in itself, yet ennobles her to a certain extent, for it makes her feel her own utter unworthiness. ”

“ I cannot find any happiness in the way other women find it. I am only a pariah—an outcast.”
“You say that you have no chances of happiness like other women have, that there are none who would care to marry you! You will find out your mistake some day, Marguerite. You will find that such a face as yours can win, not only admiration and love, but a husband,” he answers. ”

“ But Silverlake stops short, for just at this moment the shouts and thunder of applause, the cries and calls for “Marguerite” grow terrific, and Delaval, raising his glass, curiously eyes a woman advancing slowly towards the footlights. It is Marguerite Ange, the woman who has turned the heads of all Paris.
She is beautiful, this Marguerite Ange, this singer at the Alcazar, this child of the people, beautiful with a regal beauty any queen might envy. ”

“ It takes not only a perfect man, but a strong one, to reject a pleading woman, especially if her prayer is for Love, and the lips with which she utters it are fresh and tempting; and Lord Delaval is an imperfect man, assuredly.
So he stoops; and while her flushed stormy face lies against his breast, he kisses her, but only on the cheek, with the comfortable conviction that he has preserved his loyalty to Zai intact by avoiding Gabrielle’s lips. Most men now a-days are so addicted to splitting hairs! ”

“ So Zai gives herself up to this delicious pastime, and, strangely enough, Carl does not appear as central figure. Possibly her earnest prayers for oblivion of him and his falsity have been answered; anyway it is a blond face with deep blue eyes and hair that shines up like gold under the sunbeams, that her mind’s eye sees, while her broad white lids are closed.
“Dreaming, my sweet! Is it of me?”
Some one bends over her. Some one’s hand drops softly on her shoulder, and when she looks up, some one’s handsome face is very close to her own. ”

“ Love is a theme you have heard so often that its name has an empty sound! You are an honourable man, Lord Delaval! Your conscience can never prick you. For you have never acted basely, cruelly, to anyone in your life! ”

“ Had she not lived long enough in her twenty-six years to know that man and fickleness are synonymous terms, and to be avoided?
Apparently not—for even while she groans and moans over his shortcomings, a mighty love fills her for the man whom she adores with a wild, unreasoning, selfish{7} passion, and whose happiness she would immolate unscrupulously, if it pleased her to have it so. It must be owned that Lord Delaval is both a flirt and a butterfly, and that he has played fast and loose with mostly all the pretty women he has come across. ”

“ As she sits here before him, her hands clasped loosely together, a sort of abandon in her lovely figure, the light throws up richer gold on her hair, the soft folds of her satin gown fall round her moulded form like the robes of an empress, and he almost groans as he realises how impossible it would be to choose a life for one gifted with such rare physical beauty, that would not be hedged round with ten thousand dangers. ”

“ What is the use of being good-looking if it can bring me none of the nice things I desire? I might as well be ugly and old and senseless, if I had to be shut up within the narrow limits of most women’s lives. How could I gain power, the appreciation which is my due, if the public do not see me and judge for themselves? I wanted to be rich and I am so; I wanted to ride in carriages like I have seen women do, whose beauty has paled beside mine. What women care to live always in insignificance, obscurity, and, worst of all, in poverty? ”

“ But he might as well plead to a marble pillar.
“I wish you would go and smoke, and not talk nonsense,” she says, almost in a whisper, with a flush of annoyance on her cheek. “I only wish I could smoke.”
“If that is your only ambition, do it; most things end in smoke,” he replies meaningly and savagely; and while all this is going on, Lord Delaval watches her covertly, and it is dear incense to his vanity when he marks that De Belcour moves away from the evident contest, foiled and angry. ”

“ All that the best Parisian modiste can do has been done for her, and she is exceptionally well got up this evening; for she has abandoned her usual preference for gorgeous hues and costly heavy materials, and her trailing skirts of purest white fall in cloud-like masses round her as she leans back with the mien of a young empress. Opals and brilliants fasten the laces on her{153} bosom, and a single tropical flower, with blood-red petals, gleams near her slender throat.
Suddenly a radiant light flashes in her restless eyes. The portière is held back, and Lord Delaval enters. ”

“ What were these baubles worth now, that she had lost the jewel of Lord Delaval’s heart?
Vanitas Vanitatum!{5}
Sackcloth and ashes are the garments she should wear, poor, passionate, reckless creature, a victim to a worldling’s fickleness. And Gabrielle, the cynical, the votary of Balzac and Georges Sand, the unbeliever in true feeling, wept bitterly over the wreck that had been made of her life “for one man’s pleasure only.” ”

“ Still, though his mind is perturbed, his pulses throb, and there is a mingling of expectation and trepidation in his breast, if his real feelings were finely analysed, it would be found that Mademoiselle’s beauty repels even while it attracts him to the point of looking on it closer.
Possibly the daylight may dissipate his delusion, he thinks. And he is conscious of a sort of half-hope, half-regret, that it may be so.
The apartment, into which he is ushered by Mademoiselle’s own smart soubrette, disappoints him at once. ”

“ When the season is over, they come down to Delaval Court—a magnificent place in Hampshire—and here among the beautiful sylvan shades, Zai discovers that she has really fallen over head and ears in love with{56} her handsome husband, but with a graver, even tenderer, sentiment than mere being “in love.” She is grown so fragile that she looks as if a breath of wind would blow her away, but her heart beats stronger than ever with two feelings—love for the man she has married, and love for the child which is to perfect her life ”

“ So, when a human tread falls welcome on her ear, she forgets that it is not quite the thing for a countess to rush out on the landing of a hotel.
“Is that you, Delaval?” she cries in a bright ringing voice, for she is longing to see him again, longing with a great longing that will not allow her to study the convenances. But she draws back as the figure of a stranger, a tall, handsome man, with a face after Velasquez, confronts her. ”

“ But though the opera bouffe air runs in his head, in his mind there is an unpleasant conviction that Gabrielle will make a scandal of some sort.
“These hot-headed, hot-hearted women are the very devil,” he mutters angrily to himself; “and I should not be surprised if she goes and peaches to old Beranger and her Ladyship—but no matter—a coronet, and a good-looking fellow like myself, to say nothing of the tin my dear miserly old dad hoarded up, are proof against any back-biters, and I’ll marry Zai yet, dear little thing. I do believe she is beginning to love me!” ”

“ Lord Delaval is too much homme du monde to shrink from her when she says all this—{140}when she breathes a creed utterly antagonistic to the training of good women. He does not revolt even from the evidently hard realism of her nature; the manner in which she seems to appraise and value her own attractions, setting no store on the beauty which womanly women hold as a gift beyond price, but only as a means of winning money, makes him regard her with a curious feeling that has no repulsion in it. ”

“ It was only my senses, Zai!”{199}
She ponders a moment. It is dreadful to know that he has been caring for another woman; but still it is a great comfort—a very, very great comfort—to know that he has not kissed her. So she lifts up her face with a smile, half-piteous, half-glad, on her mouth, and her arm steals round his neck.
Poor fellow, he looks so thin and white and haggard, she could not be angry with him for the world. ”

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

“ Faint and dizzy with fear, she stretches out her trembling hands, like a blind woman, towards the form lying before her with the rigidity of death, but, before they reach it, she falls back and drops senseless on the floor. ”

“ Strong and practical of nature, animal in instinct and passion, savage and cruel in greed of love, is it likely that women possessing such qualifications can wage war and be beaten?
Cunning, craftiness, deceit and falsity, ranged against truth, innocence, purity and simple mindedness, form a very uneven contest, my readers. ”

“ So the summer flies quickly by, and autumn is waning, and Zai, as she opens her sweet grey eyes on a dull November morning, remembers that to-day is the anniversary of her marriage, and thanks God for the happiness He has granted her. But the autumnal days are dark and dreary, and the presence of outsiders, which would have seemed a terrible nuisance to Lord{60} Delaval a few weeks ago, would now be a blessing. He feels as if he would gladly welcome anybody, whose advent would put a little spice, a little zest into his daily routine. ”

“ These two little words, indefinite as they seem, show exactly what a man’s mind is when it oscillates ’twixt right and wrong. Zai is undeniably charming, but she is not—la Blonde aux yeux noir!
She lacks the power to inflame the heart of the million. Her soft, dove-like eyes, cannot burn into men’s brains and souls like the dangerous but glorious black ones of Marguerite Ange!
“What piece did you see last night, Delaval?” ”

“ He even forgets to wait for Zai, but walks out of the house, and down towards the far end of the grounds, before he breaks the seal.
“When you read this, Delaval, I shall be dead. ‘What folly!’ I hear you say. But folly or not, it is the truth. Oh, Delaval, I wonder I did not die yesterday! when you killed me with your hard words and looks. I cannot, I say, live and know that the love and caresses that are all the world to me are given to another woman. I have no home, no friends, no money. ”

“ But she knows if she marries this man she will make him a good and true wife.
She is sure that, in deed and word, and even thought, she will be loyal and faithful to him always.
The fitful pink colour comes and goes on her cheek, the big grey eyes droop as they{45} have a habit of doing, but a smile—a little ghost of a smile, hovers round her pretty red lips.
“I love you, and I shall be true to you always!” she says, and Lord Delaval, cynical as he is—sceptical of all things, feels that her words are genuine, and he starts and his face grows radiant.
“Zai!” he cries breathlessly. ”

“ Men love variety, you know! This Darby and Joan sort of life is very delightful, my pet, but ne quid nimis—translated in English, ‘Too much of a good thing is as bad as nothing!’ We must not let our happiness pall on us, Zai!”
She turns away her head, and answers not a word. What can she say? If he could see her face, it might bring him to a knowledge of the true and enduring love he has inspired in the soft, loving, girlish{67} heart. ”

“ Do I differ so much in my words and ways from your high-born{141} English misses—the women who live in what you call your May Fair, your Belgravia, who sell themselves for gold? I have heard that it is the trade, the profession, of those ladies very often to lay themselves out to win some man, no matter how old he is, how ugly he is, so that he is rich! ”