"It shall be Measure for Measure."
The night of the ball came, and, in spite of her aversion for Captain
Winstanley, and general dislike of the whole thing, Violet Tempest
began the evening by enjoying herself. She was young and energetic, and
had an immense reserve of animal spirits after her two years of sadness
and mourning. She danced with the partners her friends brought
her--some of the most eligible men in the room--and was full of life
and gaiety; yet the festival seemed to her in somewise horrible all the
time.
"If papa could know that we are dancing and smiling at each other, as
if all life was made up of gladness, when he is lying in his cold
grave!" thought Vixen, after joining hands with her mother in the
ladies' chain.
The widow looked as if she had never known a care. She was conscious
that Worth's _chef-d'oeuvre_ was not thrown away. She saw herself in
the great mirrors which once reflected George and his lovely
Fitzherbert in their days of gladness--which reflected the same George
later, old, and sick, and weary.
"That French _grande dame_ was right," thought Mrs. Tempest, "who said,
'_Le noir est si flattant pour les blondes_.'"
Black was flattering for Vixen's auburn hair also. Though her
indifferent eye rarely glanced at the mirrored walls, she had never
looked lovelier. A tall graceful figure, in billowy black tulle,
wreathed with white chrysanthemums; a queen-like head, with a red-gold
coronal; a throat like an ivory pillar, spanned with a broad black
ribbon, fastened with a diamond clasp; diamond stars in her ears, and a
narrow belt of diamonds round each white arm.
"How many waltzes have you kept for me?" Captain Winstanley asked
presently, coming up to Vixen.
"I have not kept waltzes for anyone," she answered indifferently.
"But surely you were under a promise to keep some for me? I asked you a
week ago."
"Did you? I am sure I never promised anything of the kind."
"Here is only one little shabby waltz left," said the Captain, looking
at her programme. "May I put my name down for that?"
"If you like," answered Vixen indifferently; and then, with the
faintest suspicion of malice, she added, "as mamma does not dance round
dances."
She was standing up for the Lancers presently, and her partner had just
led her to her place, when she saw that she had her mother and Captain
Winstanley again for her _vis-à-vis_. She grew suddenly pale, and
turned away.
"Will you let me sit this out?" she said. "I feel awfully ill."
Her partner was full of concern, and carried her off at once to a
cooler room.
"It is too bad!" she muttered to herself. "The Lancers! To go romping
round with a lot of wild young men and women. It is as bad as the Queen
in Hamlet."
This was the last dance before supper. Vixen went in to the supper-room
presently with her attentive partner, who had kept by her side
devotedly while the lively scramble to good old English tunes was going
on in the dancing-room.
"Are you better?" he asked tenderly, fanning her with her big black
fan, painted with violets and white chrysanthemums. "The room is
abominably hot."
"Thanks. I'm quite well now. It was only a momentary faintness. But I
rather hate the Lancers, don't you?"
"Well, I don't know. I think, sometimes, you know, with a nice partner,
they're good fun. Only one can't help treading on the ladies' trains,
and they wind themselves round one's legs like snakes. I've seen
fellows come awful croppers, and the lady who has done it look so
sweetly unconcerned. But if one tears a lace flounce, you know, they
look daggers. It's something too dreadful to feel oneself walking into
honiton at ten guineas a yard, and the more one tries to extricate
oneself the more harm one does."
Vixen's supper was the merest pretence. Her mother sat opposite her,
with Captain Winstanley still in attendance. Vixen gave them one
scathing look, and then sat like an image of scorn. Her partner could
not get a word from her, and when he offered her the fringed end of a
cracker bonbon, she positively refused to have anything to do with it.
"Please don't," she said. "It's too inane. I couldn't possibly pretend
to be interested in the motto."
When she went back to the ball-room Captain Winstanley followed her and
claimed his waltz. The band was just striking up the latest love-sick
German melody, "_Weit von dir!_" a strain of drawling tenderness.
"You had better go and secure your supper," said Vixen coldly.
"I despise all ball-suppers. This one most particularly, if it were to
deprive me of my waltz."
Vixen shrugged her shoulders, and submitted to take those few
preliminary steps which are like the strong swimmer's shiverings on the
bank ere he plunges in the stream. And then she was whirling round to
the legato strains, "_Weit von dir! Weit von dir! Wo ist mein Lebens
Lust?--Weit von dir--Weit von dir!_"
Captain Winstanley's waltzing was simple perfection. It was not the
Liverpool Lurch, or the Scarborough Scramble, the Bermondsey Bounce, or
the Whitechapel Wiggle; it was waltzing pure and simple, unaffected,
graceful; the waltzing of a man with a musical ear, and an athlete's
mastery of the art of motion. Vixen hated the Captain, but she enjoyed
the waltz. They danced till the last bar died away in a tender
diminuendo.
"You look pale," said the Captain, "let us go into the garden." He
brought her cloak and wrapped it round her, and she took his offered
arm without a word. It was one of those rare nights in late October,
when the wind is not cold. There was hardly the flutter of a leaf in
the Pavilion garden. The neighbouring sea made the gentlest music--a
melancholy ebb and flow of sound, like the murmuring of some great
imprisoned spirit.
In the searching light of day, when its adjacent cab-stands and
commonnesses are visible, and its gravelled walks are peopled with
nursemaids and small children, the Pavilion garden can hardly be called
romantic. But by this tender moonlight, in this cool stillness of a
placid autumn midnight, even the Pavilion garden had its air of romance
and mystery. The various roofs and chimneys stood up against the sky,
picturesque as a city of old time. And, after all, this part of
Brighton has a peculiar charm which all the rest of Brighton lacks. It
speaks of the past, it tells its story of the dead. They were not great
or heroic, perhaps, those departed figures, whose ghosts haunt us in
the red and yellow rooms, and in the stiff town garden; but they had
their histories. They lived, and loved, and suffered; and, being dead
so long, come back to us in the softened light of vanished days, and
take hold of our fancy with their quaint garments and antique
head-gear, their powder, and court-swords, and diamond shoe-buckles,
and little loves and little sorrows.
Vixen walked slowly along the shining gravel-path with her black and
gold mantle folded round her, looking altogether statuesque and
unapproachable. They took one turn in absolute silence, and then
Captain Winstanley, who was not inclined to beat about the bush when he
had something particular to say, and a good opportunity for saying it,
broke the spell.
This was perhaps the first time, in an acquaintance of more than six
months, that he had ever found himself alone with Violet Tempest,
without hazard of immediate interruption.
"Miss Tempest," he began, with a firmness of tone that startled her, "I
want to know why you are so unkind to me."
"I hardly know what you mean by unkindness. I hope I have never said
anything uncivil?"
"No; but you have let me see very plainly that you dislike me."
"I am sorry nature has given me an unpleasantly candid disposition."
Those keen gray eyes of the Captain's were watching her intently. An
angry look shot at her from under the straight dark brows--swift as an
arrow.
"You admit then that you do not like me?" he said.
Vixen paused before replying. The position was embarrassing.
"I suppose if I were ladylike and proper, I should protest that I like
you immensely; that there is no one in the world, my mother excepted,
whom I like better. But I never was particularly proper or polite,
Captain Winstanley, and I must confess there are very few people I do
like, and----"
"And I am not one of them," said the Captain.
"You have finished the sentence for me."
"That is hard upon me--no, Violet, you can never know how hard. Why
should you dislike me? You are the first woman who ever told me so"
(flushing with an indignant recollection of all his victories). "I have
done nothing to offend you. I have not been obtrusive. I have
worshipped at a distance--but the Persian's homage of the sun is not
more reverent----"
"Oh, pray don't talk about Persians and the sun," cried Violet. "I am
not worthy that you should be so concerned about my likes and dislikes.
Please think of me as an untaught inexperienced girl. Two years ago I
was a spoiled child. You don't know how my dearest father spoiled me.
It is no wonder I am rude. Remember this, and forgive me if I am too
truthful."
"You are all that is lovely," he exclaimed passionately, stung by her
scorn and fired by her beauty, almost beside himself as they stood
there in the magical moonlight--for once in his life forgetting to
calculate every move on life's chessboard. "You are too lovely for me.
From the very first, in Switzerland, when I was so happy----no, I will
not tell you. I will not lay down my heart to be trampled under your
feet."
"Don't," cried Violet, transfixing him with the angry fire of her eyes,
"for I'm afraid I should trample on it. I am not one of those gentle
creatures who go out of their way to avoid treading on worms--or other
reptiles."
"You are as cruel as you are lovely," he said, "and your cruelty is
sweeter than another woman's kindness. Violet, I laugh at your dislike.
Yes, such aversion as that is often the beginning of closest liking. I
will not be disheartened. I will not be put off by your scornful
candour. What if I were to tell you that you are the only woman I ever
loved?"
"Pray do not. It would transform passive dislike into active hatred. I
should be sorry for that, because," looking at him deliberately, with a
slow scorn, "I think my mother likes you."
"She has honoured me with her confidence, and I hope I shall not prove
unworthy of the trust. I rarely fail to repay any benefit that is
bestowed upon me."
"October nights are treacherous," said Vixen, drawing her cloak closer
around her. "I think we had better go back to the ball-room."
She was shivering a little with agitated feeling, in spite of that
mantle of scorn in which she had wrapped herself. This was the first
man who had ever called her lovely, who had ever talked to her of love
with manhood's strong passion.
The Captain gave her his arm, and they went back to the glare and heat
of the yellow dragons and scarlet griffins. Another Lancer scramble was
in full progress, to the old-fashioned jigging tunes, but Mrs. Tempest
was sitting among the matrons in a corner by an open window.
"Are we ever going home any more, mamma?" inquired Vixen.
"My dear Violet, I have been waiting for you ever so long."
"Why should you leave so early?" exclaimed Captain Winstanley. "There
are half-a-dozen more dances, and you are engaged for them all, I
believe, Miss Tempest."
"Then I will show mercy to my partners by going away," said Violet.
"Are all balls as long as this? We seem to have been here ages; I
expect to find my hair gray to-morrow morning."
"I really think we had better go," said Mrs. Tempest, in her undecided
way.
She was a person who never quite made up her mind about anything, but
balanced every question gently, letting somebody else turn the scale
for her--her maid, her governess, her daughter; she was always trying
to have her own way, but never quite knew what her own way was, and
just managed things skillfully enough to prevent other people having
theirs.
"If you are determined, I will see you to your carriage, and then the
ball is over for me," said the Captain gallantly.
He offered Mrs. Tempest his arm, and they went put into the vestibule,
where the Captain left them for a few minutes, while he went into the
porch to hasten the arrival of the carriage.
"Where were you and Captain Winstanley all that time, Violet?" asked
Mrs. Tempest.
"In the garden."
"How imprudent!"
"Indeed, dear mamma, it wasn't cold."
"But you were out there so long. What could you find to talk about all
that time?"
"We were not talking all the time, only enjoying the cool air and the
moonlight."
"Mrs. Tempest's carriage!" roared one of the door-keepers, as if it had
been his doing that the carriage had appeared so quickly.
Captain Winstanley was ready to hand them to their brougham.
"Come and take a cup of tea to-morrow afternoon, and let as talk over
the ball," said the widow.
"With infinite pleasure."
"Shall we drop you at your house?"
"A thousand thanks--no--my lodgings are so close, I'll walk home."
He went back for his overcoat, and then walked slowly away, without
another glance at the crowded ball-room, or the corridors where the
ladies who were waiting for their carriages were contriving to improve
the time by a good deal of quiet, or even noisy, flirtation. His
lodgings were on the Old Steine, close by. But he did not go home
immediately. There are times in a man's life when four walls are to
small too hold the bigness of his thoughts. Captain Winstanley paced
the Marine Parade for half-an-hour or so before he went home.
"_Va pour la mère_," he said to himself, at the close of that half
hour's meditations; "she is really very nice, and the position
altogether advantageous, perhaps as much as one has the right to expect
in the general decadence of things. But, good heavens, how lovely that
girl is! She is the first woman who ever looked me in the face and told
me she disliked me; the first woman who ever gave me contemptuous looks
and scornful words. And yet--for that very reason, perhaps--I----"
The dark brows contracted over the keen eyes, which seemed closer than
usual to the hawk nose.
"Look to yourself, my queen, in the time to come," he said, as he
turned his back on the silvery sea and moonlight sky. "You have been
hard to me and I will be hard to you. It shall be measure for measure."