Captain Winstanley.
Two years later, and Vixen was sitting with the same faithful Argus
nestling beside her, by the fireside of a spacious Brighton
drawing-room, a large, lofty, commonplace room, with tall windows
facing seawards. Miss McCroke was there too, standing at one of the
windows taking up a dropped stitch in her knitting, while Mrs. Tempest
walked slowly up and down the expanse of Brussels carpet, stopping now
and then at a window to look idly out at the red sunset beyond the
low-lying roofs and spars of Shoreham. Those two years had changed
Violet Tempest from a slender girl to a nobly-formed woman; a woman
whom a sculptor would have worshipped as his dream of perfection, whom
a painter would have reverenced for her glow and splendour of
colouring; but about whose beauty the common run of mankind, and more
especially womankind, had not quite made up their minds. The pretty
little women with eighteen-inch waists opined that Miss Tempest was too
big.
"She's very handsome, you know, and all that," they said deprecatingly,
"and her figure is quite splendid; but she's on such a very large
scale. She ought to be painted in fresco, you know, on a high cornice.
As Autumn, or Plenty, or Ceres, or something of that kind, carrying a
cornucopia. But in a drawing-room she looks so very massive."
The amber-haired women--palpably indebted to auricomous fluids for the
colour of their tresses--objected to the dark burnished gold of Violet
Tempest's hair. There was too much red in the gold, they said, and a
colour so obviously natural was very unfashionable. That cream-white
skin of hers, too, found objectors, on the score of a slight powdering
of freckles; spots which the kindly sun leaves on the fruit he best
loves. In fact, there were many reservations made by Miss Tempest's
pretended admirers when they summed up her good looks; but when she
rode her pretty bay horse along the King's Road, strangers turned to
look at her admiringly; when she entered a crowded room she threw all
paler beauties in the shade. The cabbage-rose is a vulgar flower
perhaps, but she is queen of the garden notwithstanding.
Lest it should be supposed, after this, that Vixen was a giantess, it
may be as well to state that her height was five feet six, her waist
twenty-two inches at most, her shoulders broad but finely sloping, her
arms full and somewhat muscular, her hands not small, but exquisitely
tapering, her foot long and narrow, her instep arched like an Arab's,
and all her movements instinct with an untutored grace and dignity. She
held her head higher than is common to women, and on that score was
found guilty of pride.
"I think we ought to go back before Christmas, Violet," said Mrs.
Tempest, continuing a discussion that had been dragging itself slowly
along for the last half-hour.
"I am ready, mamma," answered Vixen submissively. "It will break our
hearts afresh when we go home, but I suppose we must go home some day."
"But you would like to see the dear old house again, surely, Violet?"
"Like to see the frame without the picture? No, no, no, mamma. The
frame was very dear while the picture was in it--but--yes," cried Vixen
passionately, "I should like to go back. I should like to see papa's
grave, and carry fresh flowers there every day. It has been too much
neglected."
"Neglected, Violet! How can you say such a thing? When Manotti's bill for
the monument was over nine hundred pounds."
"Oh, mamma, there is more love in a bunch of primroses that my own hand
gathers and carries to the grave than in all the marble or granite in
Westminster Abbey."
"My dear, for poor people wild flowers are very nice, and show good
feeling--but the rich must have monuments. There could be nothing too
splendid for your dear papa," added the widow tearfully.
She was always tearful when she spoke of her dear Edward, even now;
though she was beginning to find that life had some savour without him.
"No," said Vixen, "but I think papa will like the flowers best."
"Then if all is well, Miss McCroke," pursued Mrs. Tempest, "we will go
back at the end of November. It would be a pity to lose the season
here."
Vixen yawned despondently.
"What do we care about the season, mamma?" she exclaimed. "Can it
matter to us whether there are two or three thousand extra people in
the place? It only makes the King's Road a little more uncomfortable."
"My dear Violet, at your age gaiety is good for you," said Mrs. Tempest.
"Yes, and, like most other things that are good, it's very
disagreeable," retorted Vixen.
"And now, about this ball," pursued Mrs. Tempest, taking up a dropped
stitch in the previous argument; "I really think we ought to go, if it
were only on Violet's account. Don't you, Maria?"
Mrs. Tempest always called her governess Maria when she was anxious to
conciliate her.
"Violet is old enough to enter society, certainly," said Miss McCroke,
with some deliberation; "but whether a public ball----"
"If it's on my account, mamma, pray don't think of going," protested
Vixen earnestly. "I hate the idea of a ball--I hate----"
"Captain Winstanley," announced Forbes, in the dusky end of the
drawing-room by the door.
"He has saved me the trouble of finishing my sentence," muttered Vixen.
The visitor came smiling though the dusk into the friendly glow of the
fire. He shook hands with Mrs. Tempest with the air of an old friend,
went over to the window to shake hands with Miss McCroke, and then came
back to Vixen, who gave him a limp cold hand, with an indifference that
was almost insolent, while Argus lifted his head an inch or so from the
carpet and saluted him with a suppressed growl. Whether this arose from
a wise instinct in the animal, or from a knowledge that his mistress
disliked the gentleman, would be too nice a point to decide.
"I was that moment thinking of you, Captain Winstanley," said the widow.
"An honour and a happiness for me," murmured the Captain.
Mrs. Tempest seated herself in her own particular chair, beside which
was her own particular table with one of those pretty tea-services
which were her chief delight--a miniature silver tea-kettle with a
spirit-lamp, a cosy little ball-shaped teapot, cups and saucers of old
Battersea.
"You'll take a cup of tea?" she said insinuatingly.
"I shall be delighted. I feel as if I ought to go home and write verses
or smart paragraphs for the society papers after drinking your tea, it
is so inspiring. Addison ought to have drunk just such tea before
writing one of his Spectators, but unfortunately his muse required old
port."
"If the Spectator came out nowadays I'm afraid we should think it
stupid." suggested Mrs. Tempest.
"Simply because the slipshod writers of the present day have spoiled
our taste for fine English," interjected Miss McCroke severely.
"Well, I fear we should find Addison a little thin," said Captain
Winstanley; "I can't imagine London society existing for a week on such
literary pabulum as 'The Vision of Mirza.' We want something stronger
than that. A little scandal about our neighbours, a racy article on
field sports, some sharpish hits at the City, a libel or two upon men
we know, a social article sailing very near the wind, and one of
Addison's papers on cherry-coloured hoods, or breast-knots, patches or
powder, thrown in by the way of padding. Our dear Joseph is too purely
literary for the present age."
"What monsters newspapers have grown," remarked Mrs. Tempest. "It's
almost impossible to get through them."
"Not if you read anything else," answered the captain. "The majority do
not."
"We were talking about the ball just as you came in," said Mrs.
Tempest. "I really think Vixen ought to go."
"I am sure she ought," said the Captain.
Vixen sat looking at the fire and patting Argus. She did not favour the
Captain with so much as a glance; and yet he was a man upon whom the
eyes of women were apt to dwell favourably. He was not essentially
handsome. The most attractive men rarely are. He was tall and thin,
with a waist as small as a woman's, small hands, small feet--a general
delicacy of mould that was accounted thoroughbred. He had a long nose,
a darkly-pale complexion, keen gray eyes under dark brows, dark hair,
cropped close to his small head; thin lips, white teeth, a neat black
moustache, and a strictly military appearance, though he had sold out
of a line regiment three years ago, and was now a gentleman at large,
doing nothing, and living in a gentleman-like manner on a very small
income. He was not in debt, and was altogether respectable. Nothing
could be said against him, unless it were some dark hint of a gambling
transaction at a fast and furious club, some vague whisper about the
mysterious appearance of a king at écarté--the kind of a rumour which
is apt to pursue a man who, like Bulwer's Dudley Smooth, does not cheat
but always wins.
Despite those vague slanders, which are generally baseless--the mere
expression of society's floating malice, the scum of ill-nature on the
ocean of talk--Captain Winstanley was a universal favourite. He went
everywhere, and was liked wherever he went. He was gifted with that
adaptability and hardiness which is, of all cleverness, most valuable
in polite society. Of him, as of Goldsmith, it might be said that he
touched nothing he did not adorn. True, that the things he touched were
for the most part small things, but they were things that kept him
before the eye of society, and found favour in that eye.
He was a good horseman, a good oarsman, a good swimmer, a good
cricketer. He played and sang; he was a first-rate amateur actor; he
was great at billiards and all games of skill; he could talk any
language society wanted him to talk--society not requiring a man to
excel in Coptic or Chinese, or calling upon him suddenly for Japanese
or Persian; he dressed with perfect taste, and without the slightest
pretence of dandyism; he could write a first-rate letter, and
caricature his dearest friends of last year in pen and ink for the
entertainment of his dearest friends of this year; he was known to have
contributed occasionally to fashionable periodicals, and was supposed
to have a reserve of wit and satire which would quite have annihilated
the hack writers of the day had he cared to devote himself to
literature.
Mrs. Tempest and her daughter had met the Captain early in the previous
spring among the Swiss mountains. He knew some of Mrs. Tempest's
Hampshire friends, and with no other credentials had contrived to win
her friendship. Vixen took it into her obstinate young head to detest
him. But then, Vixen, at seventeen and a half, was full of ridiculous
dislikes and irrational caprices. Mrs. Tempest, in her lonely and
somewhat depressed condition, considered the Captain a particularly
useful acquaintance. Miss McCroke was dubious, but finding any
expression of her doubts ungraciously received, took the safer line of
silence.
The ball in question was a charity ball at the Pavilion, a perfectly
unobjectionable ball. The list of patronesses bristled with noble
names. There was nothing to be said against Vixen's appearance there,
except Miss McCroke's objection that Squire Tempest's daughter and
heiress ought not to make her _début_ in society at any public ball
whatever; ought, in a manner, hardly to be seen by the human eye as a
grown-up young lady, until she had been presented to her gracious
sovereign. But Mrs. Tempest had set her heart upon Vixen's going to the
ball; or, in other words, she had set her heart upon going herself. On
her way through Paris, in September, she had gone to Worth's--out of
curiosity, just to see what the great man's salons were like--and there
she had been tempted into the purchase of an artistic arrangement in
black silk and jet, velvet and passementerie. She did not require the
costume, but the thing in itself was so beautiful that she could not
help buying it. And having spent a hundred guineas on this masterpiece,
there arose in her mind a natural craving to exhibit it; to feel that
she was being pointed out as one of the best-dressed women in the
crowded room; to know that women were whispering to each other
significantly, "Worth," as the nocturn in velvet and silk and
glimmering jet swept by them.
There was a good deal more discussion, and it was ultimately settled
that Vixen should go to the ball. She had no positive objection. She
would have liked the idea of the ball well enough perhaps, if it had
not been for Captain Winstanley. It was his advocacy that made the
subject odious.
"How very rudely you behaved to Captain Winstanley, Violet," said Mrs.
Tempest, when her visitor had departed.
"Did I, mamma?" inquired Vixen listlessly. "I thought I was
extraordinarily civil. If you knew how I should have liked to behave to
him, you would think so too."
"I can not imagine why you are so prejudiced against him," pursued Mrs.
Tempest fretfully.
"It is not prejudice, mamma, but instinct, like Argus's. That man is
destined to do us some great wrong, if we do not escape out of his
clutches."
"It is shameful of you to say such things," cried the widow, pale with
anger. "What have you to say against him? What fault can you find with
him? You cannot deny that he is most gentlemanlike."
"No, mamma; he is a little too gentlemanlike. He makes a trade of his
gentlemanliness. He is too highly polished for me."
"You prefer a rough young fellow, like Roderick Vawdrey, who talks
slang, and smells of the stables."
"I prefer anyone who is good and true," retorted Vixen. "Roderick is a
man, and not to be named in the same breath with your fine gentleman."
"I admit that the comparison would be vastly to his disadvantage," said
the widow. "But it's time to dress for dinner."
"And we are to dine with the Mortimers," yawned Vixen. "What a bore!"
This young lady had not that natural bent for society which is
symptomatic of her age. The wound that pierced her young heart two
years ago had not healed so completely that she could find pleasure in
inane conversation across a primeval forest of sixpenny ferns, and the
factitious liveliness of a fashionable dinner-table.