Zai

“ 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. ”

“ Zai’s lids droop, and her lips twitch as if fully aware of her shortcomings. She is desperately in love, and has a simple nature in spite of Belgravia’s training, and she is much too loyal to dream of denying the existence of a love that is part and parcel of her nature. Her passion for Carl Conway is like the air of Heaven to her, invisible, intangible, but yet it encircles her soul, and is just the Alpha and Omega of everything. ”

“ You know quite well that you are nothing to me—nothing—and of course I am nothing to you!”
“Zai—don’t start, I must call you Zai, for I think of you as such—there is no distance between us two in my thoughts. I can prove to you, too, that you are mistaken in what you say; the man who has learnt to love you with a love that is infinite, a passion that is uncontrollable, and the dearest desire of whose heart is to pass his life in proving that love, cannot possibly be nothing to you! while, believe it or not, you are simply everything to him!”
“Lord Delaval!” ”

“ There is in her none of the making of what we call a fast young lady. When time has fully opened the flower, it will be of a higher order than any of those gaudy blossoms. Only nineteen, she shows a grace and subtlety, and a savoir faire that astonishes Lord Delaval, and then, though beauty is only skin deep, Zai is so very beautiful. ”

“ She is thinking of him now under the arching elms. Athwart their fluttering leaves she can see his blond aristocratic face, and she longs to be back to hear his voice, the languid accents of which are harmony to her ears.
“Shall I go in now and say you prefer dreaming away the hours here to cotelettes soubise and cold chicken?” she asks, breaking in rather sharply on the long silence which has fallen, and during which she sees plainly enough that poor little love-sick Zai has entirely forgotten her proximity even. ”

“ Ever since she could toddle Zai has held her own. No one in the world is better able to paddle her own canoe than this beautiful little daughter of Belgravia, and from sheer feelings of pique, she is positively satisfied with the companion on whose arm she wanders through the flowery walks of Elm Lodge. There are plenty of other couples doing the same thing, so there is nothing against the convenances. And Zai knows that her mother is at this moment revelling in dreams of Lord Delaval for a son-in-law. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ You know it would kill us to part. Oh, Zai, you cannot surely be hesitating, you cannot be thinking of letting aught come between us two! You must feel that death would be better than separation!”
“Yes!” she whispers, and now, under the moonbeams, he sees a lovely pink colour steal over her face, and the sweetest, tenderest lovelight fill her big grey eyes. “Death would be a thousand times better, I could not live without you, Carl! ”

“ Do you care for Delaval the least bit in the world?” he asks earnestly, longing for her to deny the existence of any liking for his rival, to protest the enormous height and depth and width of her love for himself.
“Not yet—but,” Zai adds slowly and meditatively, “if I marry him I shall do my best to care for him, and even if I didn’t—what of it? Do people in our world deem it necessary to care for the man or the woman whom they marry?” ”

“ Zai whispers back, colouring vividly.
“C. C., but not before Gabrielle and Trixy.”
Zai blushes more deeply still as she bends over her drawing, and wonders if the{87} letters C. C. will always send the blood surging over her face and set her pulses throbbing.
In spite of his heartless conduct at Elm Lodge she loves him dearly still, and lives from day to day in the hope that the clouds will clear away, and give her back the sunshine of life—Carl’s love and presence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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{151} 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. ”

“ And all the men and women merely players.”
Reveries cannot last for ever, even with Carl Conway’s handsome face present in them, and Zai starts to find that the sun-god is making rapid tracks westward, and remembers that Sandilands is one of those clockwork houses where unpunctuality at meals is a cardinal sin.
It is hard; for Zai, like a good many other girls who are in love, has no appetite. She fed to repletion on soft words and softer caresses in Belgrave Square, the night of the ball. ”

“ Zai says, after a couple of months have elapsed since Trixy’s last hurried scrawl. “Did you hear of her, Delaval, yesterday in town?”
“Yes!” he answers rather gravely. Lax as he is in morals himself, he objects utterly to his wife’s ears being sullied with scandal. After all, though Zai’s innocence rather palls on him, he would not have it otherwise for all the world. But he has heard so much of Trixy from Percy Rayne that he feels it his bounden duty to do his best to keep the mire off the family he has married into. ”

“ As she and Percy Rayne fall into the line which just now is promenading the long room in the interludes of dancing, the Foreign Office clerk is conscious of that pleasant thrill of complacency—a sort of moral and even physical inflation—which a man feels when escorting a woman whose beauty glorifies her escort.
Zai’s card is soon full—so full that only one waltz remains, which she guards pertinaciously. She is determined to valse it with Carl, even if the heavens fall. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Lady Beranger soliloquises, as she watches him covertly. “I do not believe he really presumes to think of Zai, but it won’t do to{30} have him interfering with Delaval. What a charming couple they make,” she adds with intense satisfaction, as Zai floats by with Lord Delaval, but she does not mark how distraite her daughter looks, and that the good-looking peer’s soft nothings fall on stoney ground, and neither does she know that when the ball is over, Zai goes to bed and cries bitterly as she remembers that Crystal Meredyth is lovely and that men always like pretty women. ”

“ Lord Beranger mutters to himself, half aloud. “Poor Trixy!” Then he remembers his wife’s admonition, and goes on blandly: “Stubbs isn’t a bad sort, Zai; a little too much flesh, and a little, too little, breeding; but we can’t have everything, child, and money makes the mare to go.”
“I hate money,” Zai answers in a low voice. “I would not marry Mr. Stubbs if he were ten times richer.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ Cowardice in man or woman is the biggest crime in my eyes,” Gabrielle says with a dare-devil glance.
“But,” replies Zai, “why on earth should you consider it necessary to warn me of your project, I, who have no{15} interest in the matter except to wish you happy?”
“Simply because I should wish the point made clear to you, so that you may not think me deceitful in the end. I owe the world—your world of Belgravia—nothing. But I have determined to take all I can gain from it by my woman’s wit.”
“Follow Trixy’s example, and sell yourself to the highest bidder you can find in my world, then!” ”

“ Zai does not answer. There cannot be the least doubt, she knows, but that common sense does tell her that marriage with her would not suit Carl Conway; but it is none{136} the less true that common sense is not what she cares to listen to now. In the most vapid soul that sojourn in Belgravia ever starved, there is still some small lodging left for that divine folly that men call “Love.” ”

“ 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!” ”

“ She has quite forgotten the word more familiar to her youth than her Bible—convenances; but what can be expected? If a girl is innately bad, no power on earth can keep her straight.”
“But Trixy was not innately bad,” Zai murmurs, deprecatingly. “She married a man she could not love, and then—she yielded to——”
“The fascinations of Mr. Conway! Joy{122} go with her! Men are not fair judges of their own sex, but if I was a woman, I should prefer old Stubbs to a dozen Conways!”
“And so should I—now,” Zai confesses meekly. “What a pity women have not the gift of clair-voyance!” ”

“ Zai answers, nestling her hand into his, and feeling her spirits rise and her courage rear its crest aloft as she thinks Carl has only acted thus out of jealousy. “But natural things do not always come to pass, do they? There are exceptions to all rules, you know. I told you before, Carl, that I was the exception{128} to the rule in the Beranger family of being dazzled by Lord Delaval’s fascinations. ”

“ She is thankful when her mother orders “Home.” She is sick of bowing and smiling when she would like to lie down{157} 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. ”

“ Zai has considered herself bound in{119} honour to Carl; but he himself, by his conduct in the latter days, has given her back the freedom she did not want. There is really nothing to prevent her accepting Lord Delaval except—and that is a great deal—her own wilful rebellious soul, that clings to Carl with a tenacity stronger than herself.
“You will not press me, Lord Delaval! for an answer, will you?” she asks, quietly. “I should like to think a little, to reflect. One can’t make up one’s mind in a minute you know,” she winds up more hastily. ”

“ I have heard papa and mamma, and Gabrielle, and all the others talk of ‘common sense,’ but one grows tired sometimes of hearing the same thing.”
The tone of her voice tells more than her words; there is a betraying quiver in it that makes him turn quickly and look at her.
The eyes that meet his own have great glittering tears in them. Never in her life has Zai looked more lovely or more lovable{138} than at this moment, and Carl recognises fully all that he is sacrificing for money. ”