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COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
VOL. 1809.
VIXEN BY M. E. BRADDON
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
VIXEN
A NOVEL
BY
M. E. BRADDON,
AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," ETC. ETC.
_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
By the same Author,
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET 2 vols.
AURORA FLOYD 2 vols.
ELEANOR'S VICTORY 2 vols.
JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY 2 vols.
HENRY DUNBAR 2 vols.
THE DOCTOR'S WIFE 2 vols.
ONLY A CLOD 2 vols.
SIR JASPER'S TENANT 2 vols.
THE LADY'S MILE 2 vols.
RUPERT GODWIN 2 vols.
DEAD-SEA FRUIT 2 vols.
RUN TO EARTH 2 vols.
FENTON'S QUEST 2 vols.
THE LOVELS OF ARDEN 2 vols.
STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS 2 vols.
LUCIUS DAVOREN 3 vols.
TAKEN AT THE FLOOD 3 vols.
LOST FOR LOVE 2 vols.
A STRANGE WORLD 2 vols.
HOSTAGES TO FORTUNE 2 vols.
DEAD MEN'S SHOES 2 vols.
JOSHUA HAGGARD'S DAUGHTER 2 vols.
WEAVERS AND WEFT 1 vol.
IN GREAT WATERS & OTHER TALES 1 vol.
AN OPEN VERDICT 3 vols.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1879.
_The Right of Translation is reserved_.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
CHAPTER I. A Pretty Horsebreaker
CHAPTER II. Lady Jane Vawdrey
CHAPTER III. "I Want a Little Serious Talk with You"
CHAPTER IV. Rorie comes of Age
CHAPTER V. Rorie makes a Speech
CHAPTER VI. How She took the News
CHAPTER VII. Rorie has Plans of his own
CHAPTER VIII. Glas ist der Erde Stolz und Glück
CHAPTER IX. A House of Mourning
CHAPTER X. Captain Winstanley
CHAPTER XI. "It shall be Measure for Measure"
CHAPTER XII. "I have no Wrong, where I can claim no Right"
CHAPTER XIII. "He belongs to the Tame-Cat Species"
CHAPTER XIV. "He was worthy to be loved a Lifetime"
CHAPTER XV. Lady Southminster's Ball
CHAPTER XVI. Rorie asks a Question
CHAPTER XVII. Where the Red King was slain
VIXEN.
CHAPTER I.
A Pretty Horsebreaker.
The moon had newly risen, a late October moon, a pale almost
imperceptible crescent, above the dark pine spires in the thicket
through which Roderick Vawdrey came, gun in hand, after a long day's
rabbit-shooting. It was not his nearest way home, but he liked the
broad clearing in the pine wood, which had a ghostly look at dusk, and
was so still and lonely that the dart of a squirrel through the fallen
leaves was a startling event. Here and there a sturdy young oak that
had been newly stripped of its bark lay among the fern, like the naked
corpse of a giant. Here and there a tree had been cut down and slung
across the track, ready for barking. The ground was soft and spongy,
slippery with damp dead leaves, and inclined in a general way to
bogginess; but it was ground that Roderick Vawdrey had known all his
life, and it seemed more natural to him than any other spot upon mother
earth.
On the edge of this thicket there was a broad ditch, with more mud and
dead fern in it than water, a ditch strongly suspected of snakes, and
beyond the ditch the fence that enclosed Squire Tempest's domain--an
old manor house in the heart of the New Forest. It had been an abbey
before the Reformation, and was still best known as the Abbey House.
"I wonder whether I'm too late to catch her," speculated Roderick,
shifting his bag from one shoulder to the other; "she's no end of fun."
In front of the clearing there was a broad five-barred gate, and
beside the gate a keeper's cottage. The flame of a newly-lighted candle
flashed out suddenly upon the autumn dusk, while Roderick stood
looking at the gate.
"I'll ask at the lodge," he said; "I should like to say good-bye to the
little thing before I go back to Oxford."
He walked quickly on to the gate. The keeper's children were playing at
nothing particular just inside it.
"Has Miss Tempest gone for her ride this afternoon?" he asked.
"Ya-ase," drawled the eldest shock-headed youngster.
"And not come back yet?"
"Noa. If she doant take care her'll be bogged."
Roderick hitched his bag on to the top of the gate, and stood at ease
waiting. It was late for the little lady of Tempest Manor to be out on
her pony; but then it was an understood thing within a radius of ten
miles or so that she was a self-willed young person, and even at
fifteen years of age she had a knack of following her own inclination
with that noble disregard of consequences which characterises the
heaven-born ruler.
Mr. Vawdrey had not waited more than ten minutes when there came the
thud of hoofs upon the soft track, a flash of gray in the distance,
something flying over those forky branches sprawling across the way,
then a half-sweet, half-shrill call, like a bird's, at which the
keeper's children scattered themselves like a brood of scared chickens,
and now a rush, and a gray pony shooting suddenly into the air and
coming down on the other side of the gate, as if he were a new kind of
skyrocket.
"What do you think of that, Rorie?" cried the shrill sweet voice of the
gray pony's rider!
"I'm ashamed of you, Vixen," said Roderick, "you'll come to a bad end
some of these days."
"I don't care if I do, as long as I get my fling first," replied Vixen,
tossing her tawny mane.
She was a slim young thing, in a short Lincoln-green habit. She had a
small pale face, brown eyes that sparkled with life and mischief, and a
rippling mass of reddish-auburn hair falling down her back under a
coquettish little felt hat.
"Hasn't your mamma forbidden jumping, Vixen?" remonstrated Roderick,
opening the gate and coming in.
"Yes, that she has, sir," said the old groom, riding up at a jog-trot
on his thickset brown cob. "It's quite against Mrs. Tempest's orders,
and it's a great responsibility to go out with Miss Violet. She will do
it."
"You mean the pony will do it, Bates," cried Vixen. "I don't jump. How
can I help it if papa has given me a jumping pony? If I didn't let
Titmouse take a gate when he was in the humour, he'd kick like old
boots, and pitch me a cropper. It's an instinct of self-preservation
that makes me let him jump. And as for poor dear, pretty little mamma,"
continued Vixen, addressing herself to Roderick, and changing her tone
to one of patronising tenderness, "if she had her way, I should be
brought up in a little box wrapped in jeweller's wool, to keep me safe.
But you see I take after papa, Rorie; and it comes as natural to me to
fly over gates as it does to you to get ploughed for smalls. There,
Bates," jumping off the pony, "you may take Titmouse home, and I'll
come presently and give him some apples, for he has been a dear,
darling, precious treasure of a ponykins."
She emphasised this commendation with a kiss on Titmouse's gray nose,
and handed the bridle to Bates.
"I'm going to walk home with Mr. Vawdrey," she said.
"But, Vixen, I can't, really," said Roderick; "I'm due at home at this
moment, only I couldn't leave without saying good-bye to little Vix."
"And you're over due at Oxford, too, aren't you?" cried Vixen,
laughing; "you're always due somewhere--never in the right place. But
whether you are due or not, you're coming up to the stables with me to
give Titmouse his apples, and then you're coming to dine with us on
your last night at home. I insist upon it; papa insists; mamma
insists--we all insist."
"My mother will be as angry as----"
"Old boots!" interjected Vixen. "That's the best comparison I know."
"Awfully vulgar for a young lady."
"You taught it me. How can I help being vulgar when I associate with
you? You should hear Miss McCroke preach at me sermons so long"--here
Vixen extended her arms to the utmost--"and I'm afraid they'd make as
much impression on Titmouse as they do upon me. But she's a dear old
thing, and I love her immensely."
This was Vixen's usual way, making up for all shortcomings with the
abundance of her love. The heart was always atoning for the errors of
the head.
"I wouldn't be Miss McCroke for anything. She must have a bad time of
it with you."
"She has," assented Vixen, with a remorseful sigh; "I fear I'm bringing
her sandy hairs with sorrow to the grave. That hair of hers never could
be gray, you know, it's too self-opinionated in its sandiness. Now come
along, Rorie, do. Titmouse will be stamping about his box like a maniac
if he doesn't get those apples."
She gave a little tug with both her small doeskin-covered hands at
Roderick's arm. He was still standing by the gate irresolute,
inclination drawing him to the Abbey House, duty calling him home to
Briarwood, five miles off, where his widowed mother was expecting his
return.
"My last night at home, Vix," he said remonstrantly; "I really ought to
dine with my mother."
"Of course you ought, and that's the very reason why you'll dine with
us. So 'kim over, now,' as Bates says to the horses; I don't know what
there is for dinner," she added confidentially, "but I feel sure it's
something nice. Dinner is papa's particular vanity, you know. He's very
weak about dinner."
"Not so weak as he is about you, Vixen."
"Do you really think papa is as fond of me as he is of his dinner?"
"I'm sure of it!"
"Then he must be very fond of me," exclaimed Vixen, with conviction.
"Now, are you coming?"
Who could resist those little soft hands in doeskin? Certainly not
Rorie. He resigned himself to the endurance of his mother's anger in
the future as a price to be paid for the indulgence of his inclination
in the present, gave Vixen his arm, and turned his face towards the
Abbey House.
They walked through shrubberies that would have seemed a pathless
wilderness to a stranger, but every turn in which was familiar to these
two. The ground was undulating, and vast thickets of rhododendron and
azalea rose high above them, or sank in green valleys below their path.
Here and there a group of tall firs towered skyward above the dark
entanglement of shrubs, or a great beech spread its wide limbs over the
hollows; here and there a pool of water reflected the pale moonshine.
The house lay low, sheltered and shut in by those rhododendron
thickets, a long, rambling pile of building, which had been added to,
and altered, and taken away from, and added to again, like that
well-known puzzle in mental arithmetic which used to amuse us in our
childhood. It was all gables, and chimney-stacks, and odd angles, and
ivy-mantled wall, and richly-mullioned windows, or quaint little
diamond-paned lattices, peeping like a watchful eye from under the
shadow of a jutting cornice. The stables had been added in Queen
Elizabeth's time, after the monks had been routed from their snug
quarters, and the Abbey had been bestowed upon one of the Tudor
favourites. These Elizabethan stables formed the four sides of a
quadrangle, stone-paved, with an old marble basin in the centre--a
basin which the Vicar pronounced to be an early Saxon font, but which
Squire Tempest refused to have removed from the place it had occupied
ever since the stables were built. There were curious carvings upon the
six sides, but so covered with mosses and lichens that nobody could
tell what they meant; and the Squire forbade any scraping process by
officious antiquarians, which might lead to somebody's forcible
appropriation of the ancient basin.
The Squire was not so modern in his ideas as to set up his own
gasometer, so the stables were lighted by lanterns, with an oil-lamp
fixed here and there against the wall. Into this dim uncertain light
came Roderick and Vixen, through the deep stone archway which opened
from the shrubbery into the stable-yard, and which was solid enough for
the gate of a fortified town.
Titmouse's stable was lighted better then the rest. The door stood
open, and there was Titmouse, with the neat little quilted doeskin
saddle still on his back, waiting to be fed and petted by his young
mistress. It was a pretty picture, the old low-ceiled stable, with its
wide stalls and roomy loose-boxes and carpet of plaited straw, golden
against the deep brown of the woodwork.
Vixen ran into the box, and took off Titmouse's bridle, he holding down
his head, like a child submitting to be undressed. Then, with many
vigorous tugs at straps and buckles, and a good deal of screwing up of
her rosy lips in the course of the effort, Vixen took off her pony's
saddle.
"I like to do everything I can for him," she explained, as Rorie
watched her with an amused smile; "I'd wisp him down if they'd let me."
She left the leather panel on Titmouse's back, hung up saddle and
bridle, and skipped off to a corn-chest to hunt for apples. Of these
she brought half-a-dozen or so in the skirt of her habit, and then,
swinging herself lightly into a comfortable corner of the manger, began
to carry out her system of reward for good conduct, with much coquetry
on her part and Titmouse's, Rorie watching it all from the empty stall
adjoining, his folded arms resting on the top of the partition. He said
not another word about his mother, or the duty that called him home to
Briarwood, but stood and watched this pretty horsebreaker in a dreamy
contentment.
What was Violet Tempest, otherwise Vixen, like, this October evening,
just three months before her fifteenth birthday? She made a lovely
picture in this dim light, as she sat in the corner of the old manger,
holding a rosy-cheeked apple at a tantalising distance from Titmouse's
nose: yet she was perhaps not altogether lovely. She was brilliant
rather than absolutely beautiful. The white skin was powdered with
freckles. The rippling hair was too warm an auburn to escape an
occasional unfriendly remark from captious critics; but it was not red
hair for all that. The eyes were brownest of the brown, large, bright,
and full of expression. The mouth was a thought too wide, but it was a
lovely mouth notwithstanding. The lips were full and firmly
moulded--lips that could mean anything, from melting tenderness to
sternest resolve. Such lips, a little parted to show the whitest,
evenest teeth in Hampshire, seemed to Rorie lovely enough to please the
most critical connoisseur of feminine beauty. The nose was short and
straight, but had a trick of tilting itself upward with a little
impatient jerk that made it seem _retroussé;_ the chin was round and
full and dimpled; the throat was full and round also, a white column
supporting the tawny head, and indicated that Vixen was meant to be a
powerful woman, and not one of those ethereal nymphs who lend
themselves most readily to the decorative art of a court milliner.
"I'm afraid Violet will be a dreadfully large creature," Mrs. Tempest
murmured plaintively, as the girl grew and flourished; that lady
herself being ethereal, and considering her own appearance a strictly
correct standard of beauty. How could it be otherwise, when she had
been known before her marriage as "the pretty Miss Calthorpe?"
"This is very nice, you know, Vixen," said Roderick critically, as
Titmouse made a greedy snap at an apple, and was repulsed with a gentle
pat on his nose, "but it can't go on for ever. What'll you do when you
are grown up?"
"Have a horse instead of a pony," answered Vixen unhesitatingly.
"And will that be all the difference?"
"I don't see what other difference there can be. I shall always love
papa, I shall always love hunting, I shall always love mamma--as much
as she'll let me. I shall always have a corner in my heart for deal old
Crokey; and, perhaps," looking at him mischievously, "even an odd
corner for you. What difference can a few more birthdays make in me? I
shall be too big for Titmouse, that's the only misfortune; but I shall
always keep him for my pet, and I'll have a basket-carriage and drive
him when I go to see my poor people. Sitting behind a pony is an awful
bore when one's natural place is on his back, but I'd sooner endure it
than let Titmouse fancy himself superannuated."
"But when you're grown up you'll have to come out, Vixen. You'll be
obliged to go to London for a season, and be presented, and go to no
end of balls, and ride in the Row, and make a grand marriage, and have
a page all to yourself in the _Court Journal_."
"Catch me--going to London!" exclaimed Vixen, ignoring the latter part
of the sentence. "Papa hates London, and so do I. And as to riding in
Rotten Row, _je voudrais bien me voir faisant cela_," added Vixen,
whose study of the French language chiefly resulted in the endeavour to
translate English slang into that tongue. "No, when I grow up I shall
take papa the tour of Europe. We'll see all those places I'm worried
about at lessons--Marathon, Egypt, Naples, the Peloponnesus, _tout le
tremblement_--and I shall say to each of them, 'Oh, this is you, is it?
What a nuisance you've been to me on the map.' We shall go up Mount
Vesuvius, and the Pyramids, and do all sorts of wild things; and by the
time I come home I shall have forgotten the whole of my education."
"If Miss McCroke could hear you!"
"She does, often. You can't imagine the wild things I say to her. But I
love her--fondly."
A great bell clanged out with a vigorous peal, that seemed to shake the
old stable.
"There's the first bell. I must run and dress. Come to the drawing-room
and see mamma."
"But, Vixen, how can I sit down to dinner in such a costume,"
remonstrated Rorie, looking down at his brown shooting-suit, leather
gaiters, and tremendous boots--boots which, instead of being beautified
with blacking, were suppled with tallow; "I can't do it, really."
"Nonsense," cried Vixen, "what does it matter? Papa seldom dresses for
dinner. I believe he considers it a sacrifice to mamma's sense of
propriety when he washes his hands after coming in from the home farm.
And you are only a boy--I beg pardon--an undergraduate. So come along."
"But upon my word, Vixen, I feel too much ashamed of myself."
"I've asked you to dinner, and you've accepted," cried Vixen, pulling
him out of the stable by the lapel of his shooting-jacket.
He seemed to relish that mode of locomotion, for he allowed himself to
be pulled all the way to the hall-door, and into the glow of the great
beech-wood fire; a ruddy light which shone upon many a sporting trophy,
and reflected itself on many a gleaming pike and cuirass, belonging to
days of old, when gentlemanly sport for the most part meant man-hunting.
It was a fine old vaulted hall, a place to love and remember lovingly
when far away. The walls were all of darkly bright oak panelling, save
where here and there a square of tapestry hung before a door, or a
painted window let in the moonlight. At one end there was a great
arched fireplace, the arch surmounted with Squire Tempest's armorial
bearings, roughly cut in freestone. A mailed figure of the usual stumpy
build, in helm and hauberk, stood on each side of the hearth; a large
three-cornered chair covered with stamped and gilded leather was drawn
up to the fireside, the Squire's favourite seat on an autumn or winter
afternoon. The chair was empty now, but, stretched at full length
before the blazing logs, lay the Squire's chosen companion, Nip, a
powerful liver-coloured pointer; and beside him in equally luxurious
rest, reclined Argus, Vixen's mastiff. There was a story about Vixen
and the mastiff, involving the only incident in that young lady's life
the recollection whereof could make her blush.
The dog, apparently coiled in deepest slumber, heard the light
footsteps on the hall floor, pricked up his tawny ears, sprang to his
feet, and bounded over to his young mistress, whom he nearly knocked
down in the warmth of his welcome. Nip, the pointer, blinked at the
intruders, yawned desperately, stretched himself a trifle longer, and
relapsed into slumber.
"How fond that brute is of you," said Rorie; "but it's no wonder, when
one considers what you did for him."
"If you say another word I shall hate you," cried Vixen savagely.
"Well, but you know when a fellow fights another fellow's battles, the
other fellow's bound to be fond of him; and when a young lady pitches
into a bird-boy with her riding-whip to save a mastiff pup from
ill-usage, that mastiff pup is bound----"
"Mamma," cried Vixen, flinging aside a tapestry _portière_, and
bouncing into the drawing-room, "here's Roderick, and he's come to
dinner, and you must excuse his shooting-dress, please. I'm sure pa
will."
"Certainly, my dear Violet," replied a gentle, _traînante_ voice from
the fire-lit dimness near the velvet-curtained hearth. "Of course I am
always glad to see Mr. Vawdrey when your papa asks him. Where did you
meet the Squire, Roderick?"
"Upon my word, Mrs. Tempest," faltered Rorie, coming slowly forward
into the ruddy glow, "I feel quite awfully ashamed of myself; I've been
rabbit-shooting, and I'm a most horrid object. It wasn't the Squire
asked me to stay. It was Vixen."
Vixen made a ferocious grimace at him--he could just see her distorted
countenance in the fire-light--and further expressed her aggravation by
a smart crack of her whip.
"Violet, my love, you have such startling ways," exclaimed Mrs.
Tempest, with a long-suffering air. "Really, Miss McCroke, you ought to
try and correct her of those startling ways."
On this Roderick became aware of a stout figure in a tartan dress,
knitting industriously on the side of the hearth opposite Mrs.
Tempest's sofa. He could just see the flash of those active needles,
and could just hear Miss McCroke murmur placidly that she had corrected
Violet, and that it was no use.
Rorie remembered that plaid poplin dress when he was at Eton. It was a
royal Stuart, too brilliant to be forgotten. He used to wonder whether
it would ever wear out, or whether it was not made of some
indestructible tissue, like asbestos--a fabric that neither time nor
fire could destroy.
"It was Rorie's last night, you see, mamma," apologised Vixen, "and I
knew you and papa would like him to come, and that you wouldn't mind
his shooting-clothes a bit, though they do make him look like the
under-keeper, except that the under-keeper's better looking than Rorie,
and has finished growing his whiskers, instead of living in the
expectation of them."
And with this Parthian shot, Vixen made a pirouette on her neat little
morocco-shod toes, and whisked herself out of the room; leaving
Roderick Vawdrey to make the best of his existence for the next twenty
minutes with the two women he always found it most difficult to get on
with, Mrs. Tempest and Miss McCroke.
The logs broke into a crackling blaze just at this moment, and lighted
up that luxurious hearth and the two figures beside it.
It was the prettiest thing imaginable in the way of a drawing-room,
that spacious low-ceiled chamber in the Abbey House.
The oak panelling was painted white, a barbarity on the part of those
modern Goths the West End decorators, but a charming background for
quaint Venetian mirrors, hanging shelves of curious old china, dainty
little groups of richly-bound duodecimos, brackets, bronzes, freshest
flowers in majolica jars; water-colour sketches by Hunt, Prout,
Cattermole, and Edward Duncan; sage-green silk curtains; black and gold
furniture, and all the latest prettinesses of the new Jacobean school.
The mixture of real medievalism and modern quaintness was delightful.
One hardly knew where the rococo began or the mediaeval left off. The
good old square fireplace, with its projecting canopy, and columns in
white and coloured marbles, was as old as the days of Inigo Jones; but
the painted tiles, with their designs from the Iliad and Odyssey after
Dante Rossetti, were the newest thing from Minton's factory.
Even Rorie felt that the room was pretty, though he did above all
things abhor to be trapped in it, as he found himself this October
evening.
"There's a great lot of rubbish in it," he used to say of Mrs.
Tempest's drawing-room, "but it's rather nice altogether."
Mrs. Tempest, at five-and-thirty, still retained the good looks which
had distinguished Miss Calthorpe at nineteen. She was small and slim,
with a delicate complexion. She had large soft eyes of a limpid
innocent azure, regular features, rosebud lips, hands after Velasquez,
and an unexceptionable taste in dress, the selection of which formed
one of the most onerous occupations of her life. To attire herself
becomingly, and to give the Squire the dinners he best liked, in an
order of succession so dexterously arranged as never to provoke
satiety, were Mrs. Tempest's cardinal duties. In the intervals of her
life she read modern poetry, unobjectionable French novels, and
reviews. She did a little high-art needle-work, played Mendelssohn's
Lieder, sang three French _chansons_ which her husband liked, slept,
and drank orange pekoe. In the consumption of this last article Mrs.
Tempest was as bad as a dram-drinker. She declared her inability to
support life without that gentle stimulant, and required to be wound up
at various hours of her languid day with a dose of her favourite
beverage.
"I think I'll take a cup of tea," was Mrs. Tempest's inevitable remark
at every crisis of her existence.
"And so you are going back to Oxford, Roderick?" the lady began with a
languid kindness.
Mrs. Tempest had never been known to be unkind to anyone. She regarded
all her fellow-creatures with a gentle tolerance. They were there, a
necessary element of the universe, and she bore with them. But she had
never attached herself particularly to anybody except the Squire. Him
she adored. He took all the trouble of life off her hands, and gave her
all good things. She had been poor, and he had made her rich; nobody,
and he had elevated her into somebody. She loved him with a canine
fidelity, and felt towards him as a dog feels towards his master--that
in him this round world begins and ends.
"Yes," assented Rorie, with a sigh, "I'm going up to-morrow."
"Why up?" inquired Miss McCroke, without lifting her eyes from her
needles. "It isn't up on the map."
"I hope you are going to get a grand degree," continued Mrs. Tempest,
in that soft conciliatory voice of hers; "Senior Wrangler, or
something."
"That's the other shop," exclaimed Rorie; "they grow that sort of
timber at Cambridge. However, I hope to pull myself through somehow or
other this time, for my mother's sake. She attaches a good deal of
importance to it, though for my own part I can't see what good it can
do me. It won't make me farm my own land better, or ride straighter to
hounds, or do my duty better to my tenants."
"Education," said Miss McCroke sententiously, "is always a good, and we
cannot too highly estimate its influence upon----"
"Oh yes, I know," answered Rorie quickly, for he knew that when the
floodgates of Miss McCroke's eloquence were once loosened the tide ran
strong, "when house and lands are gone and spent a man may turn usher
in an academy, and earn fifty pounds a year and his laundress's bill by
grinding Caesar's Commentaries into small boys. But I shouldn't lay in
a stock of learning with that view. When my house and lands are gone
I'll go after them--emigrate, and go into the lumber trade in Canada."
"What a dreadful idea," said Mrs. Tempest; "but you are not going to
lose house and lands, Roderick--such a nice place as Briarwood."
"To my mind it's rather a commonplace hole," answered the young man
carelessly, "but the land is some of the best in the county."
It must be nearly seven by this time, he thought. He was getting
through this period of probation better than he had expected. Mrs.
Tempest gave a little stifled yawn behind her huge black fan, upon
which Cupids and Graces, lightly sketched in French gray, were depicted
dancing in the airiest attitudes, after Boucher. Roderick would have
liked to yawn in concert, but at this juncture a sudden ray of light
flashed upon him and showed him a way of escape.
"I think I'll go to the gentleman's room, and make myself decent before
the second bell rings," he said.
"Do," assented Mrs. Tempest, with another yawn; and the young man fled.
He had only time to scramble through a hurried toilet, and was still
feeling very doubtful as to the parting of his short crisp hair, when
the gong boomed out its friendly summons. The gentleman's room opened
from the hall, and Rorie heard the Squire's loud and jovial voice
uplifted as he raised the tapestry curtain.
Mr. Tempest was standing in front of the log fire, pulling Vixen's
auburn hair. The girl had put on a picturesque brown velvet frock. A
scarlet sash was tied loosely round her willowy waist, and a scarlet
ribbon held back the rippling masses of her bright hair.
"A study in red and brown," thought Rorie, as the fire-glow lit up the
picture of the Squire in his hunting-dress, and the girl in her warm
velvet gown.
"Such a run, Rorie," cried the Squire; "we dawdled about among the
furze from twelve till four doing nothing, and just as it was getting
dark started a stag up on the high ground this side of Pickett's Post,
and ran him nearly into Ringwood. Go in and fetch my wife, Rorie. Oh,
here she is"--as the _portière_ was lifted by a white hand, all
a-glitter with diamonds--"you must excuse me sitting down in pink
to-day, Pamela; I only got in as the gong began to sound, and I'm as
hungry as the proverbial hunter."
"You know I always think you handsomest in your scarlet coat, Edward,"
replied the submissive wife, "but I hope you're not very muddy."
"I won't answer for myself; but I haven't been actually up to my neck
in a bog."
Rorie offered his arm to Mrs. Tempest, and they all went in to dinner,
the squire still playing with his daughter's hair, and Miss McCroke
solemnly bringing up the rear.
The dining-room at the Abbey House was the ancient refectory, large
enough for a mess-room; so, when there were no visitors, the Tempests
dined in the library--a handsome square room, in which old family
portraits looked down from the oak panelling above the bookcases, and
where the literary element was not obtrusively conspicuous. You felt
that it was a room quite as well adapted for conviviality as for study.
There was a cottage piano in a snug corner by the fireplace. The
Squire's capacious arm-chair stood on the other side of the hearth,
Mrs. Tempest's low chair and gipsy table facing it. The old oak buffet
opposite the chimney-piece was a splendid specimen of Elizabethan
carving, and made a rich background for the Squire's racing-cups, and a
pair of Oliver Cromwell tankards, plain and unornamental as that
illustrious Roundhead himself.
It was a delightful room on a chill October evening like this: the logs
roaring up the wide chimney, a pair of bronze candelabra lighting
buffet and table, Mrs. Tempest smiling pleasantly at her unbidden
guest, and the squire stooping, red-faced and plethoric, over his
mulligatawny; while Vixen, who was at an age when dinner is a secondary
consideration, was amusing herself with the dogs, gentlemanly animals,
too wellbred to be importunate in their demands for an occasional
tid-bit, and content to lie in superb attitudes, looking up at the
eaters patiently, with supplication in their great pathetic brown eyes.
"Rorie is going up to-morrow--not in a balloon, but to Magdalen
College, Oxford--so, as this was his last night, I made him come to
dinner," explained Vixen presently. "I hope I didn't do wrong."
"Rorie knows he's always welcome. Have some more of that mulligatawny,
my lad, it's uncommonly good."
Rorie declined the mulligatawny, being at this moment deeply engaged in
watching Vixen and the dogs. Nip, the liver-coloured pointer, was
performing his celebrated statue feat. With his forelegs stiffly
extended, and his head proudly poised, he simulated a dog of marble;
and if it had not been for the occasional bumping of his tail upon the
Persian carpet, in an irresistible wag of self-approbation, the
simulation would have been perfect.
"Look, papa! isn't it beautiful? I went out of the room the other day,
while Nip was doing the statue, after I'd told him not to move a paw,
and I stayed away quite five minutes, and then stole quietly back; and
there he was, lying as still as if he'd been carved out of stone.
Wasn't that fidelity?"
"Nonsense!" cried the Squire. "How do you know that Nip didn't wind you
as you opened the door, and get himself into position? What are these?"
as the old silver _entrée_ dishes came round. "Stewed eels? You never
forget my tastes, Pamela."
"Stewed eels, sir; _sole maître d'hôtel_," said the butler, in the
usual suppressed and deferential tone.
Rorie helped himself automatically, and went on looking at Vixen.
Her praises of Nip had kindled jealous fires in the breast of Argus,
her own particular favourite; and the blunt black muzzle had been
thrust vehemently under her velvet sleeve.
"Argus is angry." said Rorie.
"He's a dear old foolish thing to be jealous," answered Vixen, "when he
knows I'd go through fire and water for him."
"Or even fight a big boy," cried the Squire, throwing himself back in
his chair with the unctuous laughter of a man who is dining well, and
knows it.
Vixen blushed rosiest red at the allusion.
"Papa, you oughtn't to say such things," she cried; "I was a little bit
of a child then."
"Yes, and flew at a great boy of fourteen and licked him," exclaimed
the Squire, rapturously. "You know the story, don't you, Rorie?"
Rorie had heard it twenty times, but looked the picture of ignorant
expectancy.
"You know how Vixen came by Argus? What, you don't? Well, I'll tell
you. This little yellow-haired lass of mine was barely nine years old,
and she was riding through the village on her pony, with young Stubbs
behind her on the sorrel mare--and, you know, to her dying day, that
sorrel would never let anyone dismount her quietly. Now what does Vixen
spy but a lubberly lad and a lot of small children ill-using a mastiff
pup. They'd tied a tin-kettle to the brute's tail, and were doing their
best to drown him. There's a pond just beyond Mrs. Farley's cottage,
you know, and into that pond they'd pelted the puppy, and wouldn't let
him get out of it. As fast as the poor little brute scrambled up the
muddy bank they drove him back into the water."
"Papa darling," pleaded Vixen despairingly, "Rorie has heard it all a
thousand times before. Haven't you now, Rorie?"
"It's as new to me as to-morrow's _Times_," said Roderick with
effrontery.
"Vixen was off the pony before you could say 'Jack Robinson.' She flew
into the midst of the dirty little ragamuffins, seized the biggest
ruffian by the collar, and trundled him backwards into the pond. Then
she laid about her right and left with her whip till the wretches
scampered off, leaving Vixen and the puppy masters of the situation;
and by this time the sorrel mare had allowed Stubbs to get off her, and
Stubbs rushed to the rescue. The young ringleader had been too much
surprised by his ducking to pull himself together again before this,
but he came up to time now, and had it out with Stubbs, while the
sorrel was doing as much damage as she conveniently could to Mrs.
Farley's palings. 'Don't quite kill him, please, Stubbs,' cried Vixen,
'although he richly deserves it;' and then she took the muddy little
beast up in her arms and ran home, leaving her pony to fate and Stubbs.
Stubbs told me the whole story, with tears in his eyes. 'Who'd ha'
thought, Squire, the little lady would ha' been such a game 'un?' said
Stubbs."
"It's very horrid of you, papa, to tell such silly old stories,"
remonstrated Vixen. "That was nearly seven years ago, and Dr. Dewsnap
told us the other day that everybody undergoes a complete change
of--what is it?--all the tissues--in seven years. I'm not the same
Vixen that pushed the boy into the pond. There's not a bit of her left
in me."
And so the dinner went on and ended, with a good deal of distraction,
caused by the dogs, and a mild little remark now and then from Mrs.
Tempest, or an occasional wise interjection from Miss McCroke, who in a
manner represented the Goddess of Wisdom in this somewhat frivolous
family, and came in with a corrective and severely rational observation
when the talk was drifting towards idiocy.
The filberts, bloomy purple grapes, and ruddy pippins, and yellow
William pears had gone their rounds--all home produce--and had been
admired and praised, and the Squire's full voice was mellowing after
his second glass of port, when the butler came in with a letter on a
salver, and carried it, with muffled footfall and solemn visage, as of
one who entrusted with the delivery of a death-warrant, straight to
Roderick Vawdrey.
The young man looked at it as if he had encountered an unexpected
visitor of the adder tribe.
"My mother," he faltered.
It was a large and handsome letter with a big red seal.
"May I?" asked Rorie, with a troubled visage, and having received his
host and hostess's assent, broke the seal.
"Dear Roderick,--Is it quite kind of you to absent yourself on this
your last night at home? I feel very sure that this will find you at
the Abbey House, and I send the brougham at a venture. Be good enough
to come home at once. The Dovedales arrived at Ashbourne quite
unexpectedly this afternoon, and are dining with me on purpose to see
you before you go back to Oxford. If your own good feeling did not urge
you to spend this last evening with me, I wonder that Mr. and Mrs.
Tempest were not kind enough to suggest to you which way your duty
lay.--Yours anxiously,
"JANE VAWDREY."
Roderick crumpled the letter with an angry look. That fling at the
Tempests hit him hard. Why was it that his mother was always so ready
to find fault with these chosen friends of his?
"Anything wrong, Rorie?" asked the Squire.
"Nothing; except that the Dovedales are dining with my mother; and I'm
to go home directly."
"If you please, ma'am, Master Vawdrey's servant has come for him," said
Vixen, mimicking the style of announcement at a juvenile party. "It's
quite too bad, Rorie," she went on, "I had made up my mind to beat you
at pyramids. However I daresay you're very glad to have the chance of
seeing your pretty cousin before you leave Hampshire."
But Rorie shook his head dolefully, made his adieux, and departed.