Alexander Fraser - Daughters of Belgravia; vol 3 of 3

When he has read it all, his first thought is, “What a very unpleasant state of affairs.”

He cannot show the letter to his future wife or her people. He cannot give a hint that Gabrielle may have committed the atrocious folly of putting an end to herself. True, the uncertainty of her fate does not conduce to his comfort or his equanimity of mind, but it is not to be thought of that he should cut his own throat by showing her letter.

“Here goes!” he says, at last, with a sigh of relief, as the torn fragments of Gabrielle’s last words scatter to the four winds, and he turns with a tender smile to meet his betrothed, who comes slowly and sadly, as it seems to him, up the garden walk.

“I thought you were never coming, darling,” he whispers in his softest voice, while his ultramarine eyes look into her own longingly, yearningly.

But Zai’s grey eyes do not respond, and her face is very grave as she falters:

“Gabrielle! oh, how shall I tell you Gabrielle – ?”

“Yes,” he questions feverishly, staring at her in his bewilderment.

“ Poor Gabrielle is dead! ”

“Dead?”

“Yes! We thought she had gone to Southampton, but she hasn’t – for – oh! what could have made her do it?” she cries, looking up with piteous eyes into his white face. “She has drowned herself in the river! What could have made her do such a terrible thing?”

“God knows!” he says.

It is quite true what Zai has told him.

Close to the brink of the Urling river that runs through the Sandilands estate they have found Gabrielle’s hat. How well they know it, the dainty hat with its pompon of vivid scarlet and black!

For five days they drag the river without success, but on the sixth day a human form is brought and laid on the silvery bed of sand.

A woman’s form, tall and slender like Gabrielle’s, yet so unlike, for it is terrible to look upon. The light summer dress she wore is tattered and draggled and discoloured beyond recognition, and the face, – but none who have known her can look twice on the fearful lineaments that the water have so cruelly caressed and changed.

Not even her own father can believe that this awful thing lying at his feet can be all that is left of his beautiful daughter, Gabrielle Beranger.

Again Lady Beranger has to mourn like her fellow “quality” in “deep kilts” – procured on credit – but this time she has a certain satisfaction in it, which she salves down her conscience with by saying:

“Gabrielle was such a queer girl that she must have come to an out-of-the-way end. She was so fast, so bizarre , so dreadfully indifferent to the bienséances and the convenances , you know, and, dear Marchioness, is it not far better to have drowned herself than to have gone to the bad?”

The Marchioness, who has had a jeunesse orageuse herself, shakes her dyed curls solemnly and virtuously.

“Very true, dear Lady Beranger. Once a girl has got the bit between her teeth, she is sure to ride to the Devil, and poor dear Gabrielle always struck me as the sort that go the fastest. Well! well! we must console ourselves by the hope that the best thing possible has happened to her. And how long are the weddings put off for?”

“Till November. This is not the first time Gabrielle has inconvenienced me, but I suppose we must delay the marriages for two months, or people will talk. All these sort of things entail so much expense too; no sooner has one gone into half-mourning for my dear lost Baby, but there’s the deep black for Gabrielle again. It really seems to me that she only thought of herself, and did not care a bit for the annoyance and inconvenience she caused to others!”

November has set in with its yellow fogs and gloom, and the Berangers are back in Belgrave Square, for the dual weddings come off in another ten days, and the trousseau requires her ladyship’s taste and personal supervision in the finishing touches.

Trixy, whose nature is made up of frivolity and bagatelles, and to whom the colour of a dress or the shape of a bonnet are solemn subjects for reflection and consideration, is an enthusiastic shopper, but not so Zai.

It is seldom that she can call up courage enough to wade through Elise’s and Worth’s establishments, to devote her whole and sole attention to the important point as to whether her chemisette shall be edged with Valenciennes or Honiton.

Zai is studiously learning to care for the man she is going to marry in a few days, and this subject engrosses her to the expulsion of all extraneous matter.

Down on her knees beside her little white curtained bed she prays that the gift of “loving” Lord Delaval may be given her. Downstairs, while he sits beside her, the same prayer goes on in her heart, for, born and bred in Belgravia, Zai is the best little thing that ever tried to do her duty towards God and man.

This much has been vouchsafed her, that Carlton Conway, who has been the stumbling block in her path to reaching the goal she desires, has never turned up on the scene to open by his presence the old wound, which Zai firmly believes now is closed for always.

Once she has heard him mentioned at an afternoon tea, but it was only to the effect that his marriage with Miss Meredyth was put off for a while.

Zai has never forgotten, never will forget perhaps, the days when Carl was all in all to her. She lived an enchanted life during the time, for all the love her girl’s heart knew swept into one great channel and poured itself out at his feet. Paradise had opened for her out of the dull monotony of Belgravian life and moments – golden with the light of romance – had shone on her with a radiance like unto no other radiance of time. And she certainly had not stayed then to count the cost of the bitter desolation that followed.

After all Eve herself would hardly have surrendered the memory of Eden for all the joys to be found on earth, and she must have dreamed of it full many a time and waked to weep such tears of unavailing regret as have watered this sad planet of ours most plenteously.

The London world outside is full of fog and gloom, with a few feeble gas lamps struggling through it, but inside the drawing-room in Belgrave Square with its firelight and luxury is conducive enough to “dreaming.”

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. Suddenly – Zai blushed furiously afterwards when she thought of it – she slips her arm round his neck and draws down his head till his lips rest upon her own.

It is the first voluntary caress she has given him.

To say that Lord Delaval is amazed, bewildered, enchanted, all in the same moment, would be to say very little indeed. A great joy and wonder take possession of him, and for a second he is almost an unresponsive party, but in the next instant he has her in his arms, close against his heart, and to indemnify himself for loss of time, he rains down kisses on her charming face from brow to chin.