"That suit of chain-armour was worn by Sir Gilbert Tempest at Acre," said the widow. "The plate-armour belonged to Sir Percy, who was killed at Barnet. Each of them was knighted before he was five-and-twenty years old, for prowess in the field. The portrait over the chimneypiece is the celebrated Judge Tempest, who was famous for – Well, he did something wonderful, I know. Perhaps Mrs. Scobel remembers," concluded Mrs. Tempest, feebly.
"It was at the trial of the seven bishops," suggested the Vicar's wife.
"In the time of Queen Elizabeth," assented Mrs. Tempest. "That one with the lace cravat and steel breastplate was an admiral in Charles the Second's reign, and was made a baronet for his valiant behaviour when the Dutch fleet were at Chatham. The baronetcy died with his son, who left only daughters. The eldest married a Mr. Percival, who took the name of Tempest, and sat for the borough of – Perhaps Mrs. Scobel knows. I have such a bad memory for these things; though I have heard my dear husband talk about them often."
Captain Winstanley looked round the great oak-panelled hall dreamily, and heard very little of Mrs. Tempest's vague prattling about her husband's ancestors.
What a lovely old place, he was thinking. A house that would give a man importance in the land, supported, as it was, by an estate bringing in something between five and six thousand a year. How much military distinction, how many battles must a soldier win before he could make himself master of such a fortune?
"And it needed but for that girl to like me, and a little gold ring would have given me the freehold of it all," thought Conrad Winstanley bitterly.
How many penniless girls, or girls with fortunes so far beneath the measure of a fine gentleman's needs as to be useless, had been over head and ears in love with the elegant Captain; how many pretty girls had tempted him by their beauty and winsomeness to be false to his grand principle that marriage meant promotion. And here was an obstinate minx who would have realised all his aims, and whom he felt himself able to love to distraction into the bargain; and, behold, some adverse devil had entered into her mind, and made Conrad Winstanley hateful to her.
"It's like witchcraft," he said to himself. "Why should this one woman be different from all other women? Perhaps it's the colour. That ruddy auburn hair, the loveliest I ever saw, means temper. But I conquered the chestnut, and I'll conquer Miss Tempest – or make her smart for it."
"A handsome music-gallery, is it not?" said the widow. "The carved balustrade is generally admired."
Then they went into the dining-room, and looked cursorily at about a dozen large dingy pictures of the Italian school, which a man who knew anything about art would have condemned at a glance. Fine examples of brown varnish, all of them. Thence to the library, lined with its carved-oak dwarf bookcases, containing books which nobody had opened for a generation – Livy, Gibbon, Hume, Burke, Smollett, Plutarch, Thomson. These sages, clad in shiny brown leather and gilding, made as good a lining for the walls as anything else, and gave an air of snugness to the room in which the family dined when there was no company.
They came presently to the Squire's den, at the end of a corridor.
"That was my dear husband's study," sighed Mrs. Tempest. "It looks south, into the rose garden, and is one of the prettiest rooms in the house. But we keep it locked, and I think Violet has the key."
"Pray don't let Miss Tempest be disturbed," said Captain Winstanley. "I have seen quite enough to know what a delightful house you have – all the interest of days that are gone, all the luxuries of to-day. I think that blending of past and present is most fascinating. I should never be a severe restorer of antiquity, or refuse to sit in a chair that wasn't undeniably Gothic."
"Ah," sighed the Vicar's wife, who was an advanced disciple in the school of Eastlake, "but don't you think everything should be in harmony? If I were as rich as Mrs. Tempest, I wouldn't have so much as a teapot that was not strictly Tudor."
"Then I'm afraid you'd have to go without a teapot, and drink your tea out of a tankard," retorted Captain Winstanley.
"At any rate, I would be as Tudor as I could be."
"And not have a brass bedstead, a spring mattress, a moderator lamp, or a coal-scuttle in your house," said the captain. "My dear madam, it is all very well to be mediaeval in matters ecclesiastic, but home comforts must not be sacrificed in the pursuit of the aesthetic, or a modern luxury discarded because it looks like an anachronism."
Mrs. Scobel was delighted with Captain Winstanley. He was just the kind of man to succeed in a rustic community. His quiet self-assurance set other people at their ease. He carried with him an air of life and movement, as if he were the patentee of a new pleasure.
"My husband would be so pleased to see you at the Vicarage, if you are staying any time in the neighbourhood," she said.
But after this little gush of friendliness, she reflected that there could not be much sympathy between the man of society and her Anglican parson; and that it was she, and not Ignatius Scobel, who would be glad to see Captain Winstanley at the Vicarage.
"I shall be charmed," he replied. "I never was so delighted with any place as your Forest. It is a new world to me. I hate myself for having lived in England so long without knowing this beautiful corner of the land. I am staying with my old chief, Colonel Pryke, at Warham Court, and I'm only here for a few days."
"But you are coming to my dinner-party?" said Mrs. Tempest.
"That is a pleasure I cannot deny myself."
"And you will come and see our church and schools?" said Mrs. Scobel.
"I shall be more than pleased. I passed your pretty little church, I think, on my way here. There was a tin tea-ket – a bell ringing – "
"For vespers," exclaimed Mrs. Scobel.
The exploration of the house took a long time, conducted in this somewhat desultory and dawdling manner; but the closing in of night and the sound of the dinner-gong gave the signal for Captain Winstanley's departure.
Mrs. Tempest would have liked to ask him to dinner; but she had an idea that Violet might make herself objectionable, and refrained from this exercise of hospitality. He was coming to the great dinner. He would see her dress with the feather trimming, which was really prettier than Worth's masterpiece, or, at any rate, newer; though it only came from Madame Theodore, of Bruton Street. Sustained by this comforting reflection, she parted with him quite cheerfully.
CHAPTER XIV
"He was worthy to be loved a Lifetime."
Conrad Winstanley had come to the New Forest with his mind resolved upon one of two things. He meant to marry Violet Tempest or her mother. If the case was quite hopeless with the daughter, he would content himself with winning the lesser prize; and though Vanity whispered that there was no woman living he might not win for himself if he chose to be sufficiently patient and persevering, instinct told him that Violet frankly detested him.
"After all," argued Worldly Wisdom, "the alternative is not to be despised. The widow is somewhat rococo; an old-fashioned jewel kept in cotton-wool, and brought out on occasions to shine with a factitious brilliancy, like old Dutch garnets backed with tinfoil; but she is still pretty. She is ductile, amiable, and weak to a degree that promises a husband the sovereign dominion. Why break your heart for this fair devil of a daughter, who looks capable, if offended, of anything in the way of revenge, from a horsewhip to slow poison? Are a pair of brown eyes and a coronal of red gold hair worth all this wasted passion?"
"But the daughter is the greater catch," urged Ambition. "The dowager's jointure is well enough, and she has the Abbey House and gardens for her life, but Violet will be sole mistress of the estate when she comes of age. As Violet's husband, your position would be infinitely better than it could be as her stepfather. Unhappily, the cantankerous minx has taken it into her head to dislike you."
"Stay," interjected the bland voice of Vanity; "may not this dislike be only an assumption, a mask for some deeper feeling? There are girls who show their love in that way. Do not be in a hurry to commit yourself to the mother until you have made yourself quite sure about the daughter."
Mrs. Tempest's dinner-party was a success. It introduced Captain Winstanley to all that was best in the surrounding society; for although in Switzerland he had seemed very familiar with the best people in the Forest, in Hampshire he appeared almost a stranger to them. It was generally admitted, however, that the Captain was an acquisition, and a person to be cultivated. He sang a French comic song almost as well as Monsieur de Roseau, recited a short Yankee poem, which none of his audience had ever heard before, with telling force. He was at home upon every subject, from orchids to steam-ploughs, from ordnance to light literature. A man who sang so well, talked so well, looked so well, and behaved so well, could not be otherwise than welcome in county society. Before the evening was over, Captain Winstanley had been offered three hunters for the next day's run, and had been asked to write in four birthday-books.
Violet did not honour him with so much as a look, after her one cold recognition of his first appearance in the drawing-room. It was a party of more than twenty people, and she was able to keep out of his way without obvious avoidance of him. He was stung, but had no right to be offended.
He took Mrs. Scobel in to dinner, and Mrs. Scobel played the accompaniment of his song, being a clever little woman, able to turn her hand to any thing. He would have preferred to be told off to some more important matron, but was not sorry to be taken under Mrs. Scobel's wing. She could give him the carte du pays, and would be useful to him, no doubt, in the future; a social Iris, to fetch and carry for him between Beechdale and the Abbey House.
"Do you know that I am quite in love with your Forest?" he said to Mrs. Tempest, standing in front of the ottoman where that lady sat with two of her particular friends; "so much so, that I am actually in treaty for Captain Hawbuck's cottage, and mean to stay here till the end of the hunting."
Everybody knew Captain Hawbuck's cottage, a verandahed box of a house, on the slope of the hill above Beechdale.
"I'm afraid you'll find the drawing-room chimney smokes," said a matter-of-fact lady in sea-green; "poor Mrs. Hawbuck was a martyr to that chimney."
"What does a bachelor want with a drawing-room? If there is one sitting-room in which I can burn a good fire, I shall be satisfied. The stable is in very fair order."
"The Hawbucks kept a pony-carriage," assented the sea-green lady.
"If Mrs. Hawbuck accepts my offer, I shall send for my horses next week," said the Captain.
Mrs. Tempest blushed. Her life had flowed in so gentle and placid a current, that the freshness of her soul had not worn off, and at nine-and-thirty she was able to blush. There was something so significant in Captain Winstanley's desire to establish himself at Beechdale, that she could not help feeling fluttered by the fact. It might be on Violet's account, of course, that he came; yet Violet and he had never got on very well together.
"Poor fellow!" she thought blandly, "if he for a moment supposes that anything would tempt me to marry again, he is egregiously mistaken."
And then she looked round the lovely old room, brightened by a crowd of well-dressed people, and thought that next to being Edward Tempest's wife, the best thing in life was to be Edward Tempest's widow.
"Dear Edward!" she mused, "how strange that we should miss him so little to-night."
It had been with everyone as if the squire had never lived. Politeness exacted this ignoring of the past, no doubt; but the thing had been so easily done. The noble presence, the jovial laugh, the friendly smile were gone, and no one seemed conscious of the void – no one but Violet, who looked round the room once when conversation was liveliest, with a pale indignant face, resenting this forgetfulness.
"I wish papa's ghost would come in at that door and scare his hollow-hearted friends," she said to herself; and she felt as if it would hardly have been a surprise to her to see the door open slowly and that familiar figure appear.
"Well, Violet," Mrs. Temple said sweetly, when the guests were gone, "how do you think it all went off?"
"It," of course, meant the dinner-party.
"I suppose, according to the nature of such things, it was all right and proper," Vixen answered coldly; "but I should think it must have been intensely painful to you, mamma."
Mrs. Tempest sighed. She had always a large selection of sighs in stock, suitable to every occasion.
"I should have felt it much worse if I had sat in my old place at dinner," she said; "but sitting at the middle of the table instead of at the end made it less painful. And I really think it's better style. How did you like the new arrangement of the glasses?"
"I didn't notice anything new."
"My dear Violet, you are frightfully unobservant."
"No, I am not," answered Vixen quickly. "My eyes are keen enough, believe me."
Mrs. Tempest felt uncomfortable. She began to think that, after all, it might be a comfortable thing to have a companion – as a fender between herself and Violet. A perpetually present Miss Jones or Smith would ward off these unpleasantnesses.
There are occasions, however, on which a position must be faced boldly – in proverbial phrase, the bull must be taken by the horns. And here, Mrs. Tempest felt, was a bull which must be so encountered. She knew that her poor little hands were too feeble for the office; but she told herself that she must make the heroic attempt.
"Violet, why have you such a rooted dislike to Captain Winstanley?"
"Why is my hair the colour it is, mamma, or why are my eyes brown instead of blue? If you could answer my question, I might be able to answer yours. Nature made me what I am, and nature has implanted a hatred of Captain Winstanley in my mind."
"Do you not think it wrong to hate anyone – the very word hate was considered unladylike when I was a girl – without cause?"
"I have cause to hate him, good cause, sufficient cause. I hate all self-seekers and adventurers."
"You have no right to call him one or the other."
"Have I not? What brings him here, but the pursuit of his own interest? Why does he plant himself at our door as if he were come to besiege a town? Do you mean to say, mamma, that you can be so blind as not to see what he wants?"
"He has come for the hunting."
"Yes, but not to hunt our foxes or our stags. He wants a rich wife, mamma. And he thinks that you or I will be foolish enough to marry him."
"There would be nothing unnatural in his entertaining some idea of that kind about you," replied Mrs. Tempest, with a sudden assertion of matronly dignity. "But for him to think of me in that light would be too absurd. I must be some years, perhaps four or five years, his senior, to begin with."
"Oh, he would forgive you that; he would not mind that."
"And he ought to know that I should never dream of marrying again."
"He ought, if he had any idea of what is right and noble in a woman," answered Vixen. "But he has not. He has no ideas that do not begin and end in himself and his own advantage. He sees you here with a handsome house, a good income, and he thinks that he can persuade you to marry him."
"Violet, you must know that I shall never marry."
"I hope I do know it. But the world ought to know it too. People ought not to be allowed to whisper, and smile, and look significant; as I saw some of them do to-night when Captain Winstanley was hanging over your chair. You ought not to encourage him, mamma. It is a treason against my father to have that man here."
Here was a bull that required prompt and severe handling, but Mrs. Tempest felt her powers inadequate to the effort.
"I am surprised at you, Violet!" she exclaimed; "as if I did not know, as well as you, what is due to my poor Edward; as if I should do anything to compromise my own dignity. Is it to encourage a man to ask him to a dinner-party, when he happens to be visiting in the neighbourhood? Can I forbid Captain Winstanley to take the Hawbucks' cottage?"
"No, you have gone too far already. You gave him too much encouragement in Switzerland, and at Brighton. He has attached himself to us, like a limpet to a rock. You will not easily get rid of him; unless you let him see that you understand and despise him."
"I see nothing despicable in him, and I am not going to insult him at your bidding," answered the widow, tremulous with anger. "I do not believe him to be a schemer or an adventurer. He is a gentleman by birth, education, profession. It is a supreme insolence on your part to speak of him as you do. What can you know of the world? How can you judge and measure a man like Captain Winstanley? A girl like you, hardly out of the nursery! It is too absurd. And understand at once and for ever, Violet, that I will not be hectored or lectured in this manner, that I will not be dictated to, or taught what is good taste, in my own house. This is to be my own house, you know, as long as I live."
"Yes; unless you give it a new master," said Violet gravely. "Forgive me if I have been too vehement, mamma. It is my love that is bold. Whom have I in this world to love now, except you? And when I see you in danger – when I see the softness of your nature – Dear mother, there are some instincts that are stronger than reason. There are some antipathies which are implanted in us for warnings. Remember what a happy life you led with my dear father – his goodness, his overflowing generosity, his noble heart. There is no man worthy to succeed him, to live in his house. Dear mother, for pity's sake – "
She was kneeling at her mother's feet, clinging to her hands, her voice half-choked with sobs. Mrs. Tempest began to cry too.
"My dearest Violet, how can you be so foolish? My love, don't cry. I tell you that I shall never marry again – never. Not if I were asked to become a countess. My heart is true to your dear father; it always will be. I am almost sorry that I consented to these scarlet bows on my dress, but the feather trimming looked so heavy without them, and Theodore's eye for colour is perfect. My dear child, be assured I shall carry his image with me to my grave."
"Dear mother, that is all I ask. Be as happy as you can; but be true to him. He was worthy to be loved for a lifetime; not to be put off with half a life, half a heart."
CHAPTER XV
Lady Southminster's Ball
Captain Winstanley closed with Mrs. Hawbuck for the pretty little verandah-surrounded cottage on the slope of the hill above Beechdale. Captain Hawbuck, a retired naval man, to whom the place had been very dear, was in his grave, and his wife was anxious to try if she and her hungry children could not live on less money in Belgium than they could in England. The good old post-captain had improved and beautified the place from a farm-labourer's cottage into a habitation which was the quintessence of picturesque inconvenience. Ceilings which you could touch with your hand; funny little fireplaces in angles of the rooms; a corkscrew staircase, which a stranger ascended or descended at peril of life or limb; no kitchen worth mentioning, and stuffy little bedrooms under the thatch. Seen from the outside the cottage was charming; and if the captain and his family could only have lived over the way, and looked at it, they would have had full value for the money invested in its improvement. Small as the rooms were, however, and despite that dark slander which hung over the chimneys, Captain Winstanley declared that the cottage would suit him admirably.
"I like the situation," he said, discussing his bargain in the coffee-room at The Crown, Lyndhurst.
"I should rather think you did!" cried Mr. Bell, the local surgeon. "Suits you down to the ground, doesn't it?"
Whereby it will be seen that there was already a certain opinion in the neighbourhood as to the Captain's motive for planting himself at Beechdale – so acute is a quiet little community of this kind in divining the intentions of a stranger.
Captain Winstanley took up his quarters at Beechdale Cottage in less than a week after Mrs. Tempest's dinner-party. He sent for his horses, and began the business of hunting in real earnest. His two hunters were unanimously pronounced screws; but it is astonishing how well a good rider can get across country on a horse which other people call a screw. Nobody could deny Captain Winstanley's merits as a horseman. His costume and appointments had all the finish of Melton Mowbray, and he was always in the first flight.
Before he had occupied Captain Hawbuck's cottage a month the new-comer had made friends for himself in all directions. He was as much at home in the Forest as if he had been native and to the manner born. His straight riding, his good looks, and agreeable manners won him everybody's approval. There was nothing dissipated or Bohemian about him. His clothes never smelt of stale tobacco. He was as punctual at church every Sunday morning as if he had been a family man, bound to set a good example. He subscribed liberally to the hounds, and was always ready with those stray florins and half-crowns by which a man purchases a cheap popularity among the horse-holding and ragged-follower class.
Having distinctly asserted her intention of remaining a widow to Violet, Mrs. Tempest allowed herself the privilege of being civil to Captain Winstanley. He dropped in at afternoon tea at least twice a week; he dined at the Abbey House whenever the Scobels or any other intimate friends were there "in a quiet way." He generally escorted Mrs. Tempest and her daughter from church on Sunday morning, Violet persistently loitering twenty yards or so behind them on the narrow woodland path that led from Beechdale to the Abbey House.
After walking home from church with Mrs. Tempest, it was only natural that the Captain should stop to luncheon, and after luncheon – the Sabbath afternoon being, in a manner, a legitimate occasion for dawdling – it was equally natural for him to linger, looking at the gardens and greenhouses, or talking beside the drawing-room fire, till the appearance of the spitfire Queen Anne tea-kettle and Mrs. Tempest's infusion of orange pekoe.
Sometimes the Scobels were present at these Sunday luncheons, sometimes not. Violet was with her mother, of course, on these occasions; but, while bodily present, she contrived to maintain an attitude of aloofness which would have driven a less resolute man than Conrad Winstanley to absent himself. A man more sensitive to the opinions of others could hardly have existed in such an atmosphere of dislike; but Captain Winstanley meant to live down Miss Tempest's aversion, or to give her double cause for hating him.
"Why have you given up hunting, Miss Tempest?" he asked one Sunday afternoon, when they had gone the round of the stables, and Arion had been fondled and admired – a horse as gentle as an Italian greyhound in his stable, as fiery as a wild-cat out of it.
"Because I have no one I care to hunt with, now papa is gone."
"But here in the Forest, where everybody knows you, where you might have as many fathers as the Daughter of the Regiment – "
"Yes, I have many kind friends. But there is not one who could fill my father's place – for an hour."
"It is a pity," said the Captain sympathetically. "You were so fond of hunting, were you not?"
"Passionately."
"Then it is a shame you should forego the pleasure. And you must find it very dull, I should think, riding alone in the forest."
"Alone! I have my horse."
"Surely he does not count as a companion."
"Indeed he does. I wish for no better company than Arion, now papa is gone."
"Violet is so eccentric!" Mrs. Tempest murmured gently.
Captain Winstanley had taken Mrs. Hawbuck's cottage till the first of May. The end of April would see the last of the hunting, so this arrangement seemed natural enough. He hunted in good earnest. There was no pretence about him. It was only the extra knowing ones, the little knot of choice spirits at The Crown, who saw some deeper motive than a mere love of sport for his residence at Beechdale. These advanced minds had contrived to find out all about Captain Winstanley by this time – the date of his selling out, his ostensible and hidden reasons for leaving the army, the amount of his income, and the general complexion of his character. There was not much to be advanced against him. No dark stories; only a leading notion that he was a man who wanted to improve his fortunes, and would not be over-scrupulous as to the means. But as your over-scrupulous man is one in a thousand, this was ranking Captain Winstanley with the majority.
The winter was over; there were primroses peeping out of the moss and brambles, and a shy little dog-violet shining like a blue eye here and there. The flaunting daffodils were yellow in every glade, and the gummy chestnut buds were beginning to swell. It was mid-March, and as yet there had been no announcement of home-coming from Roderick Vawdrey or the Dovedales. The Duke was said to have taken a fancy to the Roman style of fox-hunting; Lady Mabel was studying art; the Duchess was suspected of a leaning to Romanism; and Roderick was dancing attendance upon the family generally.
"Why should he not stay there with them?" said Mr. Scobel, sipping his pekoe in a comfortable little circle of gossipers round Mrs. Tempest's gipsy table. "He has very little else to do with his life. He is a young man utterly without views or purpose. He is one of our many Gallios. You could not rouse him to an interest in those stirring questions that are agitating the Catholic Church to her very foundation. He has no mission. I have sounded him, and found him full of a shallow good-nature. He would build a church if people asked him, and hardly know, when it was finished, whether he meant it for Jews or Gentiles."
Vixen sat in her corner and said nothing. It amused her – rather with a half-bitter sense of amusement – to hear them talk about Roderick. He had quite gone out of her life. It interested her to know what people thought of him in his new world.
"If the Duke doesn't bring them all home very soon the Duchess will go over to Rome," said Mrs. Scobel, with conviction. "She has been drifting that way for ever so long. Ignatius isn't high enough for her."
The Reverend Ignatius sighed. He hardly saw his way to ascending any higher. He had already, acting always in perfect good faith and conscientious desire for the right, made his pretty little church obnoxious to many of the simple old Foresters, to whom a pair of brazen candlesticks on an altar were among the abominations of Baal, and a crucifix as hateful as the image of Ashtaroth; obstinate old people of limited vision, who wanted Mr. Scobel to stick to what they called the old ways, and read the Liturgy as they had heard it when they were children. In the minds of these people, Mr. Scobel's self-devotion and hard service were as nothing, while he cut off the ten commandments from the Sunday morning service, and lighted his altar candles at the early celebration.
It was in this month of March that an event impended which caused a considerable flutter among the dancing population of the Forest. Lord Southminster's eldest daughter, Lady Almira Ringwood, was to marry Sir Ponto Jones, the rich ironmaster – an alliance of ancient aristocracy and modern wealth which was considered one of the grandest achievements of the age, like the discovery of steam or the electric telegraph; and after the marriage, which was to be quietly performed in the presence of about a hundred and fifty blood relations, there was to be a ball, to which all the county families were bidden, with very little more distinction or favouritism than in the good old fairy-tale times, when the king's herald went through the streets of the city to invite everybody, and only some stray Cinderella, cleaning boots and knives in a back kitchen, found herself unintentionally excluded. Lady Southminster drew the line at county families, naturally, but her kindly feelings allowed a wide margin for parsons, doctors, and military men – and among these last Captain Winstanley received a card.
Mrs. Scobel declared that this ball would be a grand thing for Violet. "You have never properly come out, you know, dear," she said; "but at Southminster you will be seen by everybody; and, as I daresay Lady Ellangowan will take you under her wing, you'll be seen to the best advantage."
"Do you think Lady Ellangowan's wing will make any difference – in me?" inquired Vixen.
"It will make a great deal of difference in the Southminster set," replied Mrs. Scobel, who considered herself an authority upon all social matters.
She was a busy good-natured little woman, the chosen confidante of all her female friends. People were always appealing to her on small social questions, what they ought to do or to wear on such and such an occasion. She knew the wardrobes of her friends as well as she knew her own. "I suppose you'll wear that lovely pink," she would say when discussing an impending dinner-party. She gave judicious assistance in the composition of a menu. "My love, everyone has pheasants at this time of year. Ask your poulterer to send you guinea-fowls, they are more distingué," she would suggest. Or: "If you have dessert ices, let me recommend you coffee-cream. We had it last week at Ellangowan Park."
Vixen made no objection to the Southminster ball. She was young, and fond of waltzing. Whirling easily round to the swing of some German melody, in a great room garlanded with flowers, was a temporary cessation of all earthly care, the idea of which was in no wise unpleasant to her. She had enjoyed her waltzes even at that charity-ball at the Pavilion, to which she had gone so unwillingly.