Chiefly Financial.
Violet was gone. Her rooms were empty; her faithful little waiting-maid
was dismissed; her dog's deep-toned thunder no longer sounded through
the house, baying joyous welcome when his mistress came down for her
early morning ramble in the shrubberies. Arion had been sent to grass,
and was running wild in fertile pastures, shoeless and unfettered as
the South American mustang on his native prairie. Nothing associated
with the exiled heiress was left, except the rooms she had inhabited;
and even they looked blank and empty and strange without her. It was
almost as if a whole family had departed. Vixen's presence seemed to
have filled the house with youth and freshness, and free joyous life.
Without her all was silent as the grave.
Mrs. Winstanley missed her daughter sorely. She had been wont to
complain fretfully of the girl's exuberance; but the blank her absence
made struck a chill to the mother's heart. She had fancied that life
would be easier without Violet; that her union with her husband would
be more complete; and now she found herself looking wistfully towards
the door of her morning-room, listening vaguely for a footstep; and the
figure she looked for at the door, and the footsteps she listened for
in the corridor were not Conrad Winstanley's. It was the buoyant step
of her daughter she missed; it was the bright frank face of her
daughter she yearned for.
One day the captain surprised her in tears, and asked the reason of her
melancholy.
"I daresay it's very weak of me, Conrad," she said piteously, "but I
miss Violet more and more every day."
"It is uncommonly weak of you," answered the Captain with agreeable
candour, "but I suppose it's natural. People generally get attached to
their worries; and as your daughter was an incessant worry, you very
naturally lament her absence. I am honest enough to confess that I am
very glad she is gone. We had no domestic peace while she was with us."
"But she is not to stay away for ever, Conrad. I cannot be separated
from my only daughter for ever. That would be too dreadful."
"'For ever' is a long word," answered the Captain coolly. "She will
come back to us--of course."
"When, dear?"
"When she is older and wiser."
This was cold comfort. Mrs. Winstanley dried her tears, and resumed her
crewel-work. The interesting variety of shades in green which modern
art has discovered were a source of comfort to the mother's troubled
mind. Moved to emulation by the results that had been achieved in
artistic needle-work by the school at South Kensington and the Royal
Tapestry Manufactory at Windsor, Pamela found in her crewel-work an
all-absorbing labour. Matilda of Normandy could hardly have toiled more
industriously at the Bayeux tapestry than did Mrs. Winstanley, in the
effort to immortalise the fleeting glories of woodland blossom or
costly orchid upon kitchen towelling.
It was a dull and lonely life which the mistress of the Abbey House led
in these latter days of glowing summer weather; and perhaps it was only
the distractions of crewels and point-lace which preserved her from
melancholy madness. The Captain had been too long a bachelor to
renounce the agreeable habits of a bachelor's existence. His amusements
were all masculine, and more or less solitary. When there was no
hunting, he gave himself up to fishing, and found his chief delight in
the persecution of innocent salmon. He supplied the Abbey House larder
with fish, sent an occasional basket to a friend, and dispatched the
surplus produce of his rod to a fishmonger in London. He was an
enthusiast at billiards, and would play with innocent Mr. Scobel rather
than not play at all. He read every newspaper and periodical of mark
that was published. He rode a good deal, and drove not a little in a
high-wheeled dog-cart; quite an impossible vehicle for a lady. He
transacted all the business of house, stable, gardens, and home-farm,
and that in the most precise and punctual manner. He wrote a good many
letters, and he smoked six or seven cigars every day. It must be
obvious, therefore, that he had very little time to devote to his
pretty middle-aged wife, whose languid airs and vapourish graces were
likely to pall upon an ardent temper after a year of married life. Yet,
though she found her days lonely, Mrs. Winstanley had no ground for
complaint. What fault could a woman find in a husband who was always
courteous and complimentary in his speech, whose domestic tastes were
obvious, who thought it no trouble to supervise the smallest details of
the household, who could order a dinner, lay out a garden, stock a
conservatory, or amend the sanitary arrangements of a stable with equal
cleverness; who never neglected a duty towards wife or society?
Mrs. Winstanley could see no flaw in the perfection of her husband's
character; but it began about this time slowly to dawn upon her languid
soul that, as Captain Winstanley's wife, she was not so happy as she
had been as Squire Tempest's widow.
Her independence was gone utterly. She awoke slowly to the
comprehension of that fact. Her individuality was blotted out, or
absorbed into her husband's being. She had no more power or influence
in her own house, than the lowest scullion in her kitchen. She had
given up her banking account, and the receipt of her rents, which in
the days of her widowhood had been remitted to her half-yearly by the
solicitor who collected them. Captain Winstanley had taken upon himself
the stewardship of his wife's income. She had been inclined to cling to
her cheque-book and her banking account at Southampton; but the Captain
had persuaded her of the folly of such an arrangement.
"Why two balances and two accounts, when one will do?" he argued. "You
have only to ask me for a cheque when you want it, or to give me your
bills."
Whereupon the bride of six weeks had yielded graciously, and the
balance had been transferred from the Southampton bank to Captain
Winstanley's account at the Union.
But now, with Theodore's unsettled account of four years' standing
hanging over her head by the single hair of the penny post, and likely
to descend upon her any morning, Mrs. Winstanley regretted her
surrendered banking account, with its balance of eleven hundred pounds
or so. The Captain had managed everything with wondrous wisdom, no
doubt. He had done away with all long credits. He paid all his bills on
the first Saturday in the month, save such as could be paid weekly. He
had reduced the price of almost everything supplied to the Abbey House,
from the stable provender to the wax candles that lighted the faded
sea-green draperies and white panelling of the drawing-room. The only
expenditure over which he had no control was his wife's private
disbursement; but he had a habit of looking surprised when she asked
him for a cheque, and a business-like way of asking the amount
required, which prevented her applying to him often. Still, there was
that long-standing account of Madame Theodore's in the background, and
Mrs. Winstanley felt that it was an account which must be settled
sooner or later. Her disinclination to ask her husband for money had
tended to swell Theodore's bill. She had bought gloves, ribbons, shoes,
everything from that tasteful purveyor, and had even obtained the
somewhat expensive material for her fancy work through Madame Theodore;
a temporary convenience which she could hardly hope to enjoy gratis.
Like all weak women she had her occasional longings for independence,
her moments of inward revolt against the smooth tyrant. The income was
hers, she argued with herself sometimes, and she had a right to spend
her own money as she pleased. But then she recalled her husband's grave
warnings about the future and its insecurity. She had but a brief lease
of her present wealth, and he was labouring to lay by a provision for
the days to come.
"It would be wicked of me to thwart him in such a wise purpose," she
told herself.
The restriction of her charities pained the soft-hearted Pamela not a
little. To give to all who asked her had been the one unselfish
pleasure of her narrow soul. She had been imposed upon, of course; had
fed families whose fathers squandered their weekly wages in the cosy
taproom of a village inn; had in some wise encouraged idleness and
improvident living; but she had been the comforter of many a weary
heart, the benefactor of many a patient care-oppressed mother, the
raiser-up of many a sickly child drooping on its bed of pain.
Now, under the Captain's rule, she had the pleasure of seeing her name
honourably recorded in the subscription list of every local charity:
but her hand was no longer open to the surrounding poor, her good old
Saxon name of Lady had lost its ancient significance. She was no longer
the giver of bread to the hungry. She sighed and submitted,
acknowledging her husband's superior wisdom.
"You would not like to live in a semi-detached villa on the Southampton
Road, would you, my dear Pamela?" asked the Captain.
"I might die in a semi-detached house, Conrad. I'm sure I could not
live in one," she exclaimed piteously.
"Then, my love, we must make a tremendous effort and save all we can
before your daughter comes of age, or else we shall assuredly have to
leave the Abbey House. We might go abroad certainly, and live at Dinan,
or some quiet old French town where provisions are cheap."
"My dear Conrad, I could not exist in one of those old French towns,
smelling perpetually of cabbage-soup."
"Then, my dear love, we must exercise the strictest economy, or life
will be impossible six years hence."
Pamela sighed and assented, with a sinking of her heart. To her mind
this word economy was absolutely the most odious in the English
language. Her life was made up of trifles; and they were all expensive
trifles. She liked to be better dressed than any woman of her
acquaintance. She liked to surround herself with pretty things; and the
prettiness must take the most fashionable form, and be frequently
renewed. She had dim ideas which she considered aesthetic, and which
involved a good deal of shifting and improving of furniture.
Against all these expensive follies Captain Winstanley set his face
sternly, using pretty words to his wife at all times, but proving
himself as hard as rock when she tried to bend him to her will. He had
not yet interfered with her toilet, for he had yet to learn what that
cost.
This knowledge came upon him like a thunder-clap one sultry morning in
July--real thunder impending in the metallic-tinted sky--about a month
after Vixen's departure.
Theodore's long-expected bill was among the letters in the morning's
bag--a bulky envelope which the Captain handed to his wife with his
usual politeness. He never opened her letters, but he invariably asked
to see them, and she always handed her correspondence over to him with
a childlike meekness. To-day she was slow to hand the Captain her
letter. She sat looking at the long list of items with a clouded brow,
and forgot to pour out her husband's coffee in the abstraction of a
troubled mind.
"I'm afraid your letters of this morning are not of a very pleasant
character, my love," said the Captain, watchful of his wife's clouded
countenance. "Is that a bill you are examining? I thought we paid ready
money for everything."
"It is my dressmaker's bill," faltered Mrs. Winstanley.
"A dressmaker's bill! That can't be very alarming. You look as awful,
and the document looks as voluminous, as if it were a lawyer's bill,
including the costs of two or three unlucky Chancery suits, or
half-a-dozen conveyances. Let me have the account, dear, and I'll send
your dressmaker a cheque next Saturday."
He held out his hand for the paper, but Pamela did not give it to him.
"I'm afraid you'll think it awfully high, Conrad," she said, in a
deprecating tone. "You see it has been running a long time--since the
Christmas before dear Edward's death, in fact. I have paid Theodore
sums on account in the meanwhile, but those seem to go for very little
against the total of her bill. She is expensive, of course. All the
West End milliners are; but her style is undeniable, and she is in
direct association with Worth."
"My dear Pamela, I did not ask you for her biography, I asked only for
her bill. Pray let me see the total, and tell me if you have any
objections to make against the items."
"No," sighed Mrs. Winstanley, bending over the document with a
perplexed brow, "I believe--indeed, I am sure--I have had all the
things. Many of them are dearer than I expected; but there is no rule
as to the price of anything thoroughly Parisian, that has not been seen
in London. One has to pay for style and originality. I hope you won't
be vexed at having to write so large a cheque, Conrad, at a time when
you are so anxious to save money. Next year I shall try my best to
economise."
"My dearest Pamela, why beat about the bush? The bill must be paid,
whatever its amount. I suppose a hundred pounds will cover it?"
"Oh, Conrad, when many women give a hundred pounds for a single dress!"
"When they do I should say that Bedlam must be their natural and
fitting abode," retorted the Captain, with suppressed ire. "The bill is
more than a hundred then? Pray give it me, Pamela, and make an end of
this foolishness."
This time Captain Winstanley went over to his wife, and took the paper
out of her hand. He had not seen the total, but he was white with rage
already. He had made up his mind to squeeze a small fortune out of the
Abbey House estate during his brief lease of the property; and here was
this foolish wife of his squandering hundreds upon finery.
"Be kind enough to pour me out a cup of coffee," he said, resuming his
seat, and deliberately spreading out the bill.
"Great Heaven!" he cried, after a glance at the total. "This is too
preposterous. The woman must be mad."
The total was seventeen hundred and sixty-four pounds fourteen and
sixpence. Mrs. Winstanley's payments on account amounted to four
hundred pounds; leaving a balance of thirteen hundred and sixty-four
pounds for the Captain to liquidate.
"Indeed, dear Conrad, it is not such a very tremendous account,"
pleaded Pamela, appalled by the expression of her husband's face.
"Theodore has customers who spend two thousand a year with her."
"Very laudable extravagance, if they are wives of millionaires, and
have their silver-mines, or cotton-mills, or oil-wells to maintain
them. But that the widow of a Hampshire squire, a lady who six years
hence will have to exist upon a pittance, should run up such a bill as
this is to my mind an act of folly that is almost criminal. From this
moment I abandon all my ideas of nursing your estate, of providing
comfortably for our future. Henceforward we must drift towards
insolvency, like other people. It would be worse than useless for me to
go on racking my brains in the endeavour to secure a given result, when
behind my back your thoughtless extravagance is stultifying all my
efforts."
Here Mrs. Winstanley dissolved into tears.
"Oh Conrad! How can you say such cruel things?" she sobbed. "I go
behind your back! I stultify you! When I have allowed myself to be
ruled and governed in everything! When I have even parted with my only
child to please you!"
"Not till your only child had tried to set the house on fire."
"Indeed, Conrad, you are mistaken there. She never meant it."
"I know nothing about her meaning," said the Captain moodily. "She did
it."
"It is too cruel, after all my sacrifices, that I should be called
extravagant--and foolish--and criminal. I have only dressed as a lady
ought to dress--out of mere self-respect. Dear Edward always liked to
see me look nice. He never said an unkind word about my bills. It is a
sad--sad change for me."
"Your future will be a sadder change, if you go on in the way you are
going," retorted the Captain. "Let me see: your income, after Violet
comes of age, is to be fifteen hundred a year. You have been spending six
hundred a year upon millinery. That leaves nine hundred for everything
else--stable, garden, coals, taxes, servants' wages, wine--to say
nothing of such trifling claims as butcher and baker, and the rest of
it. You will have to manage with wonderful cleverness to make both ends
meet."
"I am sure I would sacrifice anything rather than live unhappily with
you, Conrad," Mrs. Winstanley murmured piteously, drinking much strong
tea in her agitation, the cup shaking in her poor little white weak
hand. "Nothing could be so dreadful to me as to live on bad terms with
you. I have surrendered so much for your love, Conrad. What would
become of me, if I lost that? I will give up dealing with Theodore, if
you like--though it will be a hard trial, after she has worked for me
so many years, and has studied my style and knows exactly what suits
me. I will dress ever so plainly, and even have my gowns made by a
Southampton dressmaker, though that will be too dreadful. You will
hardly recognise me. But I will do anything--anything, Conrad, rather
than hear you speak so cruelly."
She went over to him and laid her hand tremulously on his shoulder, and
looked down at him with piteous, pleading eyes. No Circassian slave,
afraid of bowstring and sack, could have entreated her master's
clemency with deeper self-abasement.
Even Conrad Winstanley's hard nature was touched by the piteousness of
her look and tone. He took the hand gently and raised it to his lips.
"I don't mean to be cruel, Pamela," he said. "I only want you to face
the truth, and to understand your future position. It is your own money
you are squandering, and you have a right to waste it, if it pleases
you to do so. But it is a little hard for a man who has laboured and
schemed for a given result, suddenly to find himself out in his
calculations by so much as thirteen hundred and sixty-four pounds. Let
us say no more about it, my dear. Here is the bill, and it must be
paid. We have only to consider the items, and see if the prices are
reasonable."
And then the Captain, with bent brow and serious aspect, began to read
the lengthy record of an English lady's folly. Most of the items he
passed over in silence, or with only a sigh, keeping his wife by his
side, looking over his shoulder.
"Point out anything that is wrong," he said; but as yet Mrs. Winstanley
had found no error in the bill.
Sometimes there came an item which moved the Captain to speech. "A
dinner-dress, _pain brûlé_ brocade, mixed _poult de soie_, _manteau de
cour_, lined ivory satin, trimmed with hand-worked embroidery of wild
flowers on Brussels net, sixty-three pounds."
"What in the name of all that's reasonable is _pain brûlé?_" asked the
Captain impatiently.
"It's the colour, Conrad. One of those delicate tertiaries that have
been so much worn lately."
"Sixty guineas for a dinner-dress! That's rather stiff. Do you know
that a suit of dress-clothes costs me nine pounds, and lasts almost as
many years?"
"My dear Conrad, for a man it is so different. No one looks at your
clothes. That dress was for Lady Ellangowan's dinner. You made me very
happy that night, for you told me I was the best-dressed woman in the
room."
"I should not have been very happy myself if I had known the cost of
your gown," answered the Captain grimly. "Fifteen guineas for a Honiton
_fichu!_" he cried presently. "What in mercy's name is a _fichu?_ It
sounds like a sneeze."
"It is a little half-handkerchief that I wear to brighten a dark silk
dress when we dine alone, Conrad. You know you have always said that
lace harmonises a woman's dress, and gives a softness to the complexion
and contour."
"I shall be very careful what I say in future," muttered the Captain,
as he went on with the bill. "French cambric _peignoir_, trimmed real
Valenciennes, turquoise ribbon, nineteen guineas," he read presently.
"Surely you would never give twenty pounds for a gown you wear when you
are having your hair dressed?"
"That is only the name, dear. It is really a breakfast-dress. You know
you always like to see me in white of a morning."
The Captain groaned and said nothing.
"Come," he said, by-and-by, "this surely must be a mistake. 'Shooting
dress, superfine silk corduroy, trimmed and lined with cardinal _poult
de soie_, oxydised silver buttons, engraved hunting subjects,
twenty-seven guineas.' Thank Heaven you are not one of those masculine
women who go out shooting, and jump over five-barred gates."
"The dress is quite right, dear, though I don't shoot. Theodore sent it
to me for a walking-dress, and I have worn it often when we have walked
in the Forest. You thought it very stylish and becoming, though just a
little fast."
"I see," said the Captain, with a weary air, "your not shooting does
not hinder your having shooting-dresses. Are there any
fishing-costumes, or riding-habits, in the bill?"
"No, dear. It was Theodore's own idea to send me the corduroy dress.
She thought it so new and _recherché_, and even the Duchess admired it.
Mine was the first she had ever seen."
"That was a triumph worth twenty-seven guineas, no doubt," sighed the
Captain. "Well, I suppose there is no more to be said. The bill to me
appears iniquitous. If you were a duchess or a millionaire's wife, of
course it would be different. Such women have a right to spend all they
can upon dress. They encourage trade. I am no Puritan. But when a woman
dresses beyond her means--above her social position--I regret the wise
old sumptuary laws which regulated these things in the days when a fur
coat was a sign of nobility. If you only knew, Pamela, how useless this
expensive finery is, how little it adds to your social status, how
little it enhances your beauty! Why, the finest gown this Madame
Theodore ever made cannot hide one of your wrinkles."
"My wrinkles!" cried Pamela, sorely wounded. "That is the first time I
ever heard of them. To think that my husband should be the first to
tell me I am getting an old woman! But I forgot, you are younger than
I, and I daresay in your eyes I seem quite old."
"My dear Pamela, be reasonable. Can a woman's forehead at forty be
quite as smooth as it was at twenty? However handsome a woman is at
that age--and to my mind it is almost the best age for beauty, just as
the ripe rich colouring of a peach is lovelier than the poor little
pale blossom that preceded it--however attractive a middle-aged woman
may be there must be some traces to show that she has lived half her
life; and to suppose that pain brûlé brocade, and hand-worked
embroidery, can obliterate those, is extreme folly. Dress in rich and
dark velvets, and old point-lace that has been twenty years in your
possession, and you will be as beautiful and as interesting as a
portrait by one of the old Venetian masters. Can Theodore's highest art
make you better than that? Remember that excellent advice of old
Polonius's,
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy.
It is the fancy that swells your milliner's bill, the newly-invented
trimmings, the complex and laborious combinations."
"I will be dreadfully economical in future, Conrad. For the last year I
have dressed to please you."
"But what becomes of all these gowns?" asked the Captain, folding up
the bill; "what do you do with them?"
"They go out."
"Out where? To the colonies?"
"No, dear; they go out of fashion; and I give them to Pauline."
"A sixty-guinea dress flung to your waiting-maid! The Duchess of
Dovedale could not do things in better style."
"I should be very sorry not to dress better than the Duchess," said
Mrs. Winstanley, "she is always hideously dowdy. But a duchess can
afford to dress as badly as she likes."
"I see. Then it is we only who occupy the border-land of society who
have to be careful. Well, my dear Pamela, I shall send Madame Theodore
her cheque, and with your permission close her account; and, unless you
receive some large accession of fortune I should recommend you not to
reopen it."
His wife gave a heart-breaking sigh.
"I would sacrifice anything for your sake, Conrad," she said, "but I
shall be a perfect horror, and you will hate me."
"I fell in love with you, my dear, not with your gown."
"But you fell in love with me in my gown, dear; and you don't know how
different your feelings might have been if you had seen me in a gown
cut by a country dressmaker."