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.”