Crumpled Rose-Leaves.
Violet Tempest had been away from home nearly a year, and to the few
old servants remaining at the Abbey House, and to the villagers who had
known and loved her, it seemed as if a light had gone out.
"It's like it was after the Squire's death, when miss and her ma was
away," said one gossip to another; "the world seems empty."
Mrs. Winstanley and her husband had been living as became people of
some pretension to rank and fashion. They saw very little of each
other, but were seen together on all fitting occasions. The morning
service in the little church at Beechdale would not have seemed
complete without those two figures. The faded beauty in trailing silken
draperies and diaphanous bonnet, the slim, well-dressed Captain, with
his bronzed face and black whiskers. They were in everybody's idea the
happiest example of married bliss. If the lady's languid loveliness had
faded more within the last year or so than in the ten years that went
before it, if her slow step had grown slower, her white hand more
transparent, there were no keen loving eyes to mark the change.
"That affectation of valetudinarianism is growing on Mrs. Winstanley,"
Mrs. Scobel said one day to her husband. "It is a pity. I believe the
Captain encourages it."
"She has not looked so well since Violet went away," answered the
kindly parson. "It seems an unnatural thing for mother and daughter to
be separated."
"I don't know that, dear. The Bible says a man should leave mother and
father and cleave to his wife. Poor Violet was a discordant element in
that household. Mrs. Winstanley must feel much happier now she is away."
"I can't tell how she feels," answered the Vicar doubtfully; "but she
does not look so happy as she did when Violet was at home."
"The fact is she gives way too much," exclaimed active little Mrs.
Scobel, who had never given way in her life. "When she has a head-ache
she lies in bed, and has the venetian blinds kept down, just as if she
were dying. No wonder she looks pale and----"
"Etiolated," said the Vicar; "perishing for want of light. But I
believe it's moral sunshine that is wanted there, my dear Fanny, say
what you will."
Mr. Scobel was correct in his judgment. Pamela Winstanley was a most
unhappy woman--an unhappy woman without one tangible cause of
complaint. True that her daughter was banished; but she was banished
with the mother's full consent. Her personal extravagances had been
curtailed; but she was fain to admit that the curtailment was wise,
necessary, and for her own future benefit. Her husband was all
kindness; and surely she could not be angry with him if he seemed to
grow younger every day--rejuvenated by regular habits and rustic
life--while in her wan face the lines of care daily deepened, until it
would have needed art far beyond the power of any modern Medea to
conceal Time's ravages. Your modern Medeas are such poor
creatures--loathsome as Horace's Canidia, but without her genius or her
power.
"I am getting an old woman," sighed Mrs. Winstanley. "It is lucky I am
not without resources against solitude and age."
Her resources were a tepid appreciation of modern idyllic poetry, as
exemplified in the weaker poems of Tennyson, and the works of Adelaide
Proctor and Jean Ingelow, a talent for embroidering conventional
foliage and flowers on kitchen towelling, and for the laborious
conversion of Nottingham braid into Venetian point-lace.
She had taken it into her head of late to withdraw herself altogether
from society, save from such friends who liked her well enough, or were
sufficiently perplexed as to the disposal of their lives, to waste an
occasional hour over gossip and orange pekoe. She had now permanently
assumed that _rôle_ of an invalid which she had always somewhat
affected.
"I am really not well enough to go to dinner-parties, Conrad," she
said, when her husband politely argued against her refusal of an
invitation, with just that mild entreaty which too plainly means, "I
don't care a jot whether you go with me or stay at home."
"But, my dear Pamela, a little gaiety would give you a fillip."
"No, it would not, Conrad. It would worry me to go to Lady Ellangowan's
in one of last season's dresses; and I quite agree with you that I must
spend no more money with Theodore."
"Why not wear your black velvet?"
"Too obvious a _pis aller_. I have not enough diamonds to carry off
black velvet."
"But your fine old lace--rose-point, I think you call it--surely that
would carry off black velvet for once in a way."
"My dear Conrad, Lady Ellangowan knows my rose-point by heart. She
always compliments me about it--an artful way of letting me know often
she has seen it. 'Oh there is that rose-point of yours, dear Mrs.
Winstanley; it is too lovely.' I know her! No, Conrad; I will not go to
the Ellangowans in a dress made last year; or in any _réchauffé_ of
velvet and lace. I hope I have a proper pride that would always
preserve me from humiliation of that kind. Besides, I am not strong
enough to go to parties. You may not believe me, Conrad, but I am
really ill."
The Captain put on an unhappy look, and murmured something sympathetic:
but he did not believe in the reality of his wife's ailments. She had
played the invalid more or less ever since their marriage; and he had
grown accustomed to the assumption as a part of his wife's daily
existence--a mere idiosyncrasy, like her love of fine dress and strong
tea. If at dinner she ate hardly enough for a bird, he concluded that
she had spoiled her appetite at luncheon, or by the consumption of
sweet biscuits and pound-cake at five o'clock. Her refusal of all
invitations to dinners and garden-parties he attributed to her folly
about dress, and to that alone. Those other reasons which she put
forward--of weakness, languor, low spirits--were to Captain
Winstanley's mind mere disguises for temper. She had not, in her heart
of hearts, forgiven him for closing Madame Theodore's account.
Thus, wilfully blind to a truth which was soon to become obvious to all
the world, he let the insidious foe steal across his threshold, and
guessed not how soon that dark and hidden enemy was to drive him from
the hearth by which he sat, secure in self-approval and sagacious
schemes for the future.
Once a week, through all the long year, there had come a dutiful letter
from Violet to her mother. The letters were often brief--what could the
girl find to tell in her desert island?--but they were always kind, and
they were a source of comfort to the mother's empty heart. Mrs.
Winstanley answered unfailingly, and her Jersey letter was one of the
chief events of each week. She was fonder of her daughter at a distance
than she had ever been when they were together. "That will be something
to tell Violet," she would say of any inane bit of gossip that was
whispered across the afternoon tea-cups.