Alexander Fraser - Daughters of Belgravia; vol 2 of 3

She makes a slight gesture of assent, but she doesn’t in the slightest comprehend what he is driving at. No matter, he is close besides her. If she likes, she can touch him, and this is enough to put this impassioned child of Eve into a fever of delight.

“I don’t believe that anyone can give another anything that does not belong to that other. He may withhold it to a certain degree, but it must be given in the end. Perfect love is when one meets someone to whom one can give all, and from whom one desires all.”

“Imperfect affinities are all that most people in our world know of love, and, Gabrielle, Belgravia is horribly ignorant, do you know? Being so, they call a part of such and such a thing the whole, and demand allegiance of one’s whole nature to a feeling that belongs to, and feeds but a small part of it! Now, Gabrielle – my beautiful, tempting Gabrielle! you and I have this in common, that we hate sham, and never pretend to fine sentimental feelings unless we possess them. Isn’t it true?”

Lord Delaval bends over her till his face nearly touches hers, and he smiles conceitedly as he notices how rosy red the cheek near him grows by his proximity.

“I knew when I first saw you that you and I were exactly alike in our ideas and feelings. Somehow I felt it directly we spoke. I knew that you would never give to any man that which was not his – for you are dreadfully proud and cold and hard at the core, and when I found out, a day or two ago, that unconsciously I had learned to love you – do you hear me? – to love you with my whole being – when I found out that nothing short of an entire surrender of your soul — of yourself – would satisfy me, I trembled at the vision of bliss or torture that possibly lies before me – look at me, Gabrielle!”

There is a quiet command in his voice which she never attempts to resist. To everyone else sharp, caustic, cold, and full of sneers, to this man she is the humblest of slaves; his, to do with as he wills. A daughter of Belgravia, with Lady Beranger’s worldly-wise notions dinned into her ears, and with worldly, ambitious women examples for her in daily life – of this man she wants nothing, only himself ; to gain his love, and above all, to be let to love him, she would fling all other considerations to the four winds without a murmur or a regret.

In a sort of maze, she lifts up a pair of big, incredulous black eyes to him now – eyes so soft and wistful – so filled with newborn light that no one would believe they belonged to Gabrielle Beranger.

She forgets everything but him and the giant fact that he is hers. In spite of her peculiar nature and practical turn, she has pictured, like most of her sex, a paradise of love about this man, and lost in the golden vision of Love’s paradise gained, she lets her usual scepticism slip out of her mind, and only knows that Lord Delaval, whom she has worshipped for three years with the feverish fierceness of her Bedouin nature, is wooing her – strangely and abruptly, but in the sweetest, subtlest way that a man can woo. Gabrielle is sharp as a needle, yet it never crosses her brain in her lovesick frenzy that real feeling is not eloquent in expression, and that when a man really craves anything and trembles lest he should not grasp it, flowers of rhetoric are usually denied to his tongue.

She sits spellbound, with drooping lids. Literally nothing seems to live in her, save a vivid sense of his words, and the intensity of their meaning. Her keen intelligence is lulled to sleep, her habit of doubting is dead, pro tem . She does not try to subject his protestations to any analytical process; they only seem to float through her mind in a kind of soft mist, and she sits white now and silent, and feeling, as she thinks she can never feel again, content, almost in a dream, and yet full, awfully full, of an intensified vitality.

“I want to tell you, Gabrielle,” Lord Delaval says very low, while his audacious arm steals round her magnificent shoulders and her crimson cheek is pillowed on his breast, “that I love you as no one has ever loved you, and that I am determined to win from you all that I wish! I have never been baulked yet, if I determined to reach anything. If I preserve my will intact, I shall not accept anything but the whole from you, the whole , sweetheart – do you hear? Of your heart and soul and body I will have all — all! or die unsatisfied. My hope to gain all this is by knowledge of your nature. It is you — you that I love, not a part of you, not an ideal being of you, not what you represent to other men’s eyes, but what you are with your thousand imperfections, even blots. Nothing, Gabrielle, will change me towards you, for I have only given you what is yours by the law of affinity, and you, Gabrielle – well, I defy you to say that you are not wholly and solely mine .”

It is masterful wooing this, insolent in fact, and it would revolt most women. Zai and even Baby, with her fast proclivities, would not understand it, and it would jar on their thoroughbred natures, but Gabrielle likes it.

The whole thing fascinates her – a visible shiver runs over her. Lord Delaval feels the shiver, and his arm draws her more closely to him, while the ghost of a cynical smile crosses his mouth. He stoops his head and looks full into her eyes, and then his lips rest upon hers, long and passionately, while her heart beats as wildly as a bird in the grasp of a fowler.

Luckily for her she has been partially imbued with a respect for Lady Beranger’s beloved convenances and bienséances . Luckily for her, Belgravian morals, though they may be lax, are too worldly-wise not to know a limit.

Even while Lord Delaval’s kiss lingers on her mouth she pulls herself away from him, angry with herself that she has allowed that long passionate caress, and yet feeling that she would have been more than mortal if she had resisted it. But she resolves to sift him, au fond , to find out at once if in truth the man is only laughing at her or whether, oh blessed thought, she has caught his errant fancy or “love” as she calls it.

“Lord Delaval!” she says, in a voice in which pride and shame mingle strangely together, “because I am a woman, with a woman’s weak nature, do you believe me to be a fool? Do you think for a moment I deceive myself or let your words deceive me? 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!”

A look of pain crosses her brow, and an appeal for forbearance, dumb but very taking, goes up from her eyes. Lord Delaval seizes her hands and holds them fast while his gaze bears steadily down on her.

“You should not doubt, Gabrielle! I have told you the truth, upon my soul! No woman’s face can tempt me from you now. Whatever the past may have been, I swear I belong to you now and for ever! While I wait to claim you as my wife before the world, and I must wait, for reasons which will be satisfactory when I tell you them, you will go on doing as you do, draining men dry to the one drop of their souls that you can assimilate. But that is not love, though they may lay their lives and fortunes at your feet. Aylmer would never satisfy your heart, Gabrielle, but you may flirt with him if you like, and drive him mad by these sweet eyes, these soft red lips,” and he lifts up her face and studies it for a moment, “so long as when I want you, you come to me at once. It will be no sacrifice on your part, for you will only be obeying the law of your nature in loving me and I – I shall take you not as a gift, but as a right, my Gabrielle!”