The Bluebeard Chamber.
The day before the funeral Captain Winstanley received a letter from
his stepdaughter, offering to execute any deed he might choose to have
prepared, settling upon him the income which his wife was to have had
after Violet's majority.
"I know that you are a heavy loser by my mother's death," she wrote,
"and I shall be glad to do anything in my power to lessen that loss. I
know well that it was her earnest wish that your future should be
provided for. I told her a few days before she died that I should make
you this offer. I do it with all my heart; and I shall consider myself
obliged by your acceptance of it."
The Captain's reply was brief and firm.
"I thank you for your generous offer," he said, "which I feel assured
is made in good faith; but I think you ought to know that there are
reasons why it is impossible I should accept any benefit from your
hand. I shall not re-enter the Abbey House after my wife's funeral. You
will be sole and sovereign mistress of all things from that hour."
He kept his word. He was chief mourner at the quiet but stately burial
under the old yew-tree in Beechdale churchyard. When all was over he
got into a fly, and drove to the station at Lyndhurst Road, whence he
departed by the first train for London. He told no one anything about
his plans for the future; he left no address but his club. He was next
heard of six months later, in South America.
Violet had telegraphed to her old governess directly after Mrs.
Winstanley's death; and that good and homely person arrived on the day
after the funeral, to take up her abode with her old pupil, as
companion and chaperon, until Miss Tempest should have become Mrs.
Vawdrey, and would have but one companion henceforward in all the
journey of life. Rorie and Vixen were to be married in six months. Mrs.
Winstanley had made them promise that her death should delay their
marriage as little as possible.
"You can have a very quiet wedding, you know, dear," she said. "You can
be married in your travelling-dress--something pretty in gray silk and
terry velvet, or with chinchilla trimming, if it should be winter.
Chinchilla is so distinguished-looking. You will go abroad, I suppose,
for your honeymoon. Pau, or Monaco, or any of those places on the
Mediterranean."
It had pleased her to settle everything for the lovers. Violet
remembered all these speeches with a tender sorrow. There was comfort
in the thought that her mother had loved her, according to her lights.
It had been finally settled between the lovers that they were to live
at the Abbey House. Briarwood was to be let to any wealthy individual
who might desire a handsome house, surrounded by exquisitely arranged
gardens, and burdened with glass that would cost a small fortune
annually to maintain. Before Mr. Vawdrey could put his property into
the hands of the auctioneers, he received a private offer which was in
every respect satisfactory.
Lady Mallow wished to spend some part of every year near her father and
mother, who lived a good deal at Ashbourne, the Duke becoming yearly
more devoted to his Chillingham oxen and monster turnips. Lord Mallow,
who loved his native isle to distraction, but always found six weeks in
a year a sufficient period of residence there, was delighted to please
his bride, and agreed to take Briarwood, furnished, on a seven-years'
lease. The orchid-houses were an irresistible attraction, and by this
friendly arrangement Lady Mallow would profit by the alterations and
improvements her cousin had made for her gratification, when he
believed she was to be his wife.
Briarwood thus disposed of, Rorie was free to consider the Abbey House
his future home; and Violet had the happiness of knowing that the good
old house in which her childhood had been spent would be her habitation
always, till she too was carried to the family vault under the old
yew-tree. There are people who languish for change, for whom the newest
is ever the best; but it was not thus with Violet Tempest. The people
she had known all her life, the scenes amidst which she had played when
a child, were to her the dearest people and the loveliest scenes upon
earth. It would be pleasant to her to travel with her husband, and see
fair lands across the sea: but pleasanter still would be the
home-coming to the familiar hearth beside which her father had sat, the
old faces that had looked upon him, the hands that had served him, the
gardens he had planted and improved.
"I should like to show you Briarwood before it is let, Vixen," Mr.
Vawdrey said to his sweetheart, one November morning. "You may at least
pay my poor patrimony the compliment of looking at it before it becomes
the property of Lord and Lady Mallow. Suppose you and Miss McCroke
drive over and drink tea with me this afternoon? I believe my
housekeeper brews pretty good tea."
"Very well, Rorie, we'll come to tea. I should rather like to see the
improvements you made for Lady Mabel, before your misfortune. I think
Lord Mallow must consider it very good of you to let him have the
benefit of all the money you spent, instead of bringing an action for
breach of promise against his wife, as you might very well have done."
"I daresay. But you see I am of a forgiving temper. Well, I shall tell
my housekeeper to have tea and buns, and jam, and all the things
children--and young ladies--like, at four o'clock. We had better make
it four instead of five, as the afternoons are so short."
"If you are impertinent we won't come."
"Oh yes you will. Curiosity will bring you. Remember this will be your
last chance of seeing the Bluebeard chamber at Briarwood."
"Is there a Bluebeard chamber?"
"Of course. Did you ever know of a family mansion without one?"
Vixen was delighted at the idea of exploring her lover's domain, now
that he and it were her own property. How well she remembered going
with her father to the meet on Briarwood lawn. Yet it seemed a century
ago--the very beginning of her life--before she had known sorrow.
Miss McCroke, who was ready to do anything her pupil desired, was
really pleased at the idea of seeing the interior of Briarwood.
"I have never been inside the doors, you know, dear," she said, "often
as I have driven past the gates with your dear mamma. Lady Jane Vawdrey
was not the kind of person to invite a governess to go and see her. She
was a strict observer of the laws of caste. The Duchess has much less
pride."
"I don't think Lady Jane ever quite forgave herself for marrying a
commoner," said Vixen. "She revenged her own weakness upon other
people."
Violet had a new pair of ponies, which her lover had chosen for her,
after vain endeavours to trace and recover the long-lost Titmouse.
These she drove to Briarwood, Miss McCroke resigning herself to the
will of Providence with a blind submission worthy of a Moslem; feeling
that if it were written that she was to be flung head foremost out of a
pony-carriage, the thing would happen sooner or later. Staying at home
to-day would not ward off to-morrow's doom. So she took her place in
the cushioned valley by Violet's side, and sat calm and still, while
the ponies, warranted quiet to drive in single or double harness, stood
up on end and made as if they had a fixed intention of scaling the
rhododendron bank.
"They'll settle down directly I've taken the freshness out of them,"
said Vixen, blandly, as she administered a reproachful touch of the
whip.
"I hope they will," replied Miss McCroke; "but don't you think Bates
ought to have seen the freshness taken out of them before we started?"
They were soon tearing along the smooth Roman road at a splendid pace,
"the ponies going like clockwork," as Vixen remarked approvingly; but
poor Miss McCroke thought that any clock which went as fast as those
ponies would be deemed the maddest of timekeepers.
They found Roderick standing at his gates, waiting for them. There was
a glorious fire in the amber and white drawing-room, a dainty tea table
drawn in front of the hearth, the easiest of chairs arranged on each
side of the table, an urn hissing, Rorie's favourite pointer stretched
upon the hearth, everything cosy and homelike. Briarwood was not such a
bad place after all, Vixen thought. She could have contrived to be
happy with Roderick even here; but of course the Abbey House was, in
her mind, a hundred times better, being just the one perfect home in
the world.
They all three sat round the fire, drinking tea, poured out by Vixen,
who played the mistress of the house sweetly. They talked of old times,
sometimes sadly, sometimes sportively, glancing swiftly from one old
memory to another. All Rorie's tiresome ways, all Vixen's mischievous
tricks, were remembered.
"I think I led you a life in those days, didn't I, Rorie?" asked Vixen,
leaving the teatray, and stealing softly behind her lover's chair to
lean over his shoulder caressingly, and pull his thick brown beard.
"There is nothing so delightful as to torment the person one loves best
in the world. Oh, Rorie, I mean to lead you a life by-and-by!"
"Dearest, the life you lead me must needs be sweet, for it will be
spent with you."
After tea they set out upon a round of inspection, and admired the new
morning-room that had been devised for Lady Mabel, in the very latest
style of Dutch Renaissance--walls the colour of muddy water, glorified
ginger-jars, ebonised chairs and tables, and willow-pattern plates all
round the cornice; curtains mud-colour, with a mediaeval design in
dirty yellow, or, in upholsterer's language, "old gold."
"I should like to show you the stables before it is quite dark," said
Rorie presently. "I made a few slight improvements there while the
builders were about."
"You know I have a weakness for stables," answered Vixen. "How many a
lecture I used to get from poor mamma about my unfortunate tastes. But
can there be anything in the world nicer than a good old-fashioned
stable, smelling of clover and newly-cut hay?"
"Stables are very nice indeed, and very useful, in their proper place,"
remarked Miss McCroke sententiously.
"But one ought not to bring the stables into the drawing-room," said
Vixen gravely. "Come, Rorie, let us see your latest improvements in
stable-gear."
They all went out to the stone-paved quadrangle, which was as neatly
kept as a West-End livery-yard. Miss McCroke had an ever-present dread
of the ubiquitous hind-legs of strange horses: but she followed her
charge into the stable, with the same heroic fidelity with which she
would have followed her to the scaffold or the stake.
There were all Rorie's old favourites--Starlight Bess, with her shining
brown coat, and one white stocking; Blue Peter, broad-chested,
well-ribbed, and strong of limb; Pixie, the gray Arab mare, which Lady
Jane used to drive in a park-phaeton--quite an ancient lady; Donald,
the iron-sinewed hunter.
Vixen knew them all, and went up to them and patted their graceful
heads, and made herself at home with them.
"You are all coming to the Abbey House to live, you dear things," she
said delightedly.
There was a loose-box, shut off by a five-foot wainscot partition,
surmounted by a waved iron rail, at one end of the stable, and on
approaching this enclosure Vixen was saluted with sundry grunts and
snorting noises, which seemed curiously familiar.
At the sound of these she stopped short, turning red, and then pale,
and looked intently at Rorie, who was standing close by, smiling at her.
"That is my Bluebeard chamber," he said gaily. "There's something too
awful inside."
"What horse have you got there?" cried Vixen eagerly.
"A horse that I think will carry you nicely, when we hunt together."
"What horse? Have I ever seen him? Do I know him?"
The grunts and snortings were continued with a crescendo movement; an
eager nose was rattling the latch of the door that shut off the
loose-box.
"If you have a good memory for old friends, I think you will know this
one," said Rorie, withdrawing a bolt.
A head pushed open the door, and in another moment Vixen's arms were
round her old favourite's sleek neck, and the velvet nostrils were
sniffing her hair and cheek, in most loving recognition.
"You dear, dear old fellow!" cried Vixen; and then turning to Rorie:
"You told me he was sold at Tattersall's!" she exclaimed.
"So he was, and I bought him."
"Why did you not tell me that?"
"Because you did not ask me."
"I thought you so unkind, so indifferent about him."
"You were unkind when you could think it possible I should let your
favourite horse fall into strange hands. But perhaps you would rather
Lord Mallow had bought him?"
"To think that you should have kept the secret all this time!" said
Vixen.
"You see I am not a woman, and can keep a secret. I wanted to have one
little surprise for you, as a reward when you had been especially good.
"You are good," she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss him. "And though I
have loved you all my life, I don't think I have loved you the least
little bit too much."
EPILOGUE.
Vixen and Rorie were married in the spring, when the forest glades were
yellow with primroses, the mossy banks blue with violets, and the
cuckoo was heard with monotonous iteration from sunrise to sundown.
They were married in the little village church at Beechdale, and Mrs.
Scobel declared that Miss Tempest's wedding was the prettiest that ever
had been solemnised in that small Gothic temple. Never, perhaps, even
at Eastertide, had been seen such a wealth of spring blossoms, the
wildlings of the woods and hills. The Duchess had offered the contents
of her hot-houses, Lady Ellangowan had offered waggon-loads of azaleas
and camellias, but Vixen had refused them all. She would allow no
decorations but the wild flowers which the school-children could
gather. Primroses, violets, bluebells, the firstlings of the fern
tribe, cowslips, and all the tribe of innocent forest blossoms, with
their quaint rustic names, most of them as old as Shakespeare.
It was a very quiet wedding. Vixen would have no one present except the
Scobels, Miss McCroke, her two bridesmaids, and Sir Henry Tolmash, an
old friend of her father, who was to give her away. He was a
white-haired old man, who had given his latter days up to farming, and
had not a thought above turnips and top-dressing; but Violet honoured
him, because he had been her father's oldest friend. For bride-maids
she had Colonel Carteret's daughters, a brace of harmless young ladies,
whose conversation was as stereotyped as a French and English
vocabulary, but who dressed well and looked pretty.
There was no display of wedding gifts, no ceremonious wedding
breakfast. Vixen remembered the wedding feast at her mother's second
marriage, and what a dreary ceremonial it had been.
The bride wore her gray silk travelling-dress, with gray hat and
feather, and she and her husband went straight from the church to the
railway station, on their way to untrodden paths in the Engadine,
whence they were to return at no appointed time.
"We are coming back when we are tired of mountain scenery and of each
other," Violet told Mrs. Scobel in the church porch.
"That will be never!" exclaimed Rorie, looking ineffably happy, but not
very much like a bride-groom, in his comfortable gray suit. "You might
just as well say that we are going to live among the mountains as long
as Rip Van Winkle. No, Mrs. Scobel, we are not going to remain away
from you fifty years. We are coming back in time for the hunting."
Then came kissing and handshaking, a shower of violets and primroses
upon the narrow churchyard path, a hearty huzza from the assembled
village, all clustered about the oaken gate-posts. The envious
carriage-door shut in bride and bride-groom, the coachman touched his
horses, and they were gone up the hill, out of the peaceful valley, to
Lyndhurst and the railway.
"How dreadfully I shall miss them," said Mrs. Scobel, who had spent
much of her leisure with the lovers. "They are both so full of life and
brightness!"
"They are young and happy!" said her husband quietly. "Who would not
miss youth and happiness?"
When the first frosts had seared the beeches to a fiery red, and the
berries were bright on the hawthorns, and the latest bloom of the
heather had faded on hill and plain, and the happy pigs had devoured
all the beech-nuts, Mr. Vawdrey and his wife came back from their
exploration of Alpine snows and peaceful Swiss villages, to the good
old Abbey House. Their six months' honeymoon had been all gladness.
They were the veriest boy and girl husband and wife who had ever
trodden those beaten tracks. They teased each other, and quarrelled,
and made friends again like children, and were altogether happy. And
now they came back to the Forest, bronzed by many a long day's
sunshine, and glowing with health and high spirits. The glass of Time
seemed to be turned backwards at the Abbey House; for all the old
servants came back, and white-haired old Bates ruled in the well-filled
stables, and all things were as in the dead and gone Squire's time.
Among Roderick's wedding gifts was one from Lord Mallow: Bullfinch, the
best horse in that nobleman's stable.
"I know your wife would like you to have her father's favourite
hunter," wrote Lord Mallow. "Tell her that he has never been sick or
sorry since he has been in my stable, and that I have always taken
particular care of him, for her sake."
Among Violet's presents was a diamond bracelet from Lady Mallow,
accompanied by a very cordial letter; and almost the first visit that
the Vawdreys received after they came home was from Lord and Lady
Mallow. The first great dinner to which they were bidden was at
Briarwood, where it seemed a curious thing for Rorie to go as a guest.
Matrimony with the man of her choice had wondrously improved Mabel
Ashbourne. She was less self-sufficient and more conciliating. Her
ambition, hitherto confined to the desire to excel all other women in
her own person, had assumed a less selfish form. She was now only
ambitious for her husband; greedy of parliamentary fame for him; full
of large hopes about the future of Ireland. She looked forward
complacently to the day when she and Lord Mallow would be reigning at
Dublin Castle, and when Hibernian arts and industries would revive and
flourish under her fostering care. Pending that happy state of things
she wore Irish poplin, and Irish lace, Irish stockings, and Irish
linen. She attended Her Majesty's Drawing-room on St. Patrick's Day,
with a sprig of real shamrock--sent her by one of her husband's
tenantry--among the diamonds that sparkled on her bosom. She was more
intensely Irish than the children of the soil; just as converts to
Romanism are ever more severely Roman than those born and nurtured in
the faith.
Her husband was intensely proud of his wife, and of his alliance with
the house of Ashbourne. The Duke, at first inclined to resent the
scandal of an elopement and the slight offered to his favourite, Rorie,
speedily reconciled himself to a marriage which was more materially
advantageous than the cousinly alliance.
"I should like Rorie to have had Ashbourne," he said mournfully. "I
think he would have kept up my breed of Chillingham cattle. Mallow's a
good fellow, but he knows nothing about farming. He'll never spend
enough money on manure to maintain the soil at its present producing
power. The grasp of his mind isn't large enough to allow him to sink
his money in manuring his land. He would be wanting to see an immediate
result."
As time went on the Duke became more and more devoted to his farm. His
Scottish castle delighted him not, nor the grand old place in the
Midlands. Ashbourne, which was the pleasure-dome he had built for
himself, contained all he cared about. Too heavy and too lazy to hunt,
he was able to jog about his farm, and supervise the work that was
going on, to the smallest detail. There was not a foot of drain-pipe or
a bit of thatch renewed on the whole estate, without the Duke having a
finger in the pie. He bred fat oxen and prize cart-horses, and made a
great figure at all the cattle-shows, and was happy. The Duchess, who
had never believed her paragon capable of wrong-doing, had been
infinitely shocked by Lady Mabel's desperate course; but it was not in
her nature to be angry with that idolised daughter. She very soon came
back to her original idea, that whatever Mabel Ashbourne did was right.
And then the marriage was so thoroughly happy; and the world gladly
forgives a scandal that ends so pleasantly.
So Lord and Lady Mallow go their way--honoured, beloved, very active in
good works--and the pleasant valleys around Mallow are dotted with red
brick school-houses, and the old stone hovels are giving place to model
cottages, and native industries receive all possible encouragement from
the owner of the soil; and, afar off, in the coming years, the glories
of Dublin Castle shine like the Pole Star that guides the wanderer on
his way.
In one thing only has Lady Mallow been false to the promise of her
girlhood. She has not achieved success as a poet. The Duchess wonders
vaguely at this, for though she had often found it difficult to keep
awake during the rehearsal of her daughter's verses, she had a fixed
belief in the excellence of those efforts of genius. The secret of Lady
Mallow's silence rests between her husband and herself; and it is just
possible that some too candid avowal of Lord Mallow's may be the reason
of her poetic sterility. It is one thing to call the lady of one's
choice a tenth muse before marriage, and another thing to foster a
self-delusion in one's wife which can hardly fail to become a
discordant element in domestic life. "If your genius had developed, and
you had won popularity as a poet, I should have lost a perfect wife,"
Lord Mallow told Mabel, when he wanted to put things pleasantly.
"Literature has lost a star; but I have gained the noblest and sweetest
companion Providence ever bestowed upon man." Lady Mallow has not
degenerated into feminine humdrum. She assists in the composition of
her husband's political pamphlets, which bristle with lines from
Euripides, and noble thoughts from the German poets. She writes a good
many of his letters, and is altogether his second self.
While the Irishman and his wife pursue their distinguished career,
Rorie and Vixen live the life they love, in the Forest where they were
born, dispensing happiness within a narrow circle, but dearly loved
wheresoever they are known; and the old men and women in the scattered
villages round about the Abbey House rejoice in the good old times that
have come again; just as hearty pleasure-loving England was glad when
the stern rule of the Protector and his crop-headed saints gave place
to the reign of the Merry King.
From afar there comes news of Captain Winstanley, who has married a
Jewish lady at Frankfort, only daughter and heiress of a well-known
money-lender. The bride is reported ugly and illiterate; but there is
no doubt as to her fortune. The Captain has bought a villa at Monaco--a
villa in the midst of orange-groves, the abandoned plaything of an
Austrian princess; and he has hired an apartment in one of the new
avenues, just outside the Arc de Triomphe, where, as his friends
anticipate, he will live in grand style, and receive the pleasantest
people in Paris. He, too, is happy after his kind, and has won the
twenty-thousand-pound prize in the lottery of life; but it is
altogether a different kind of happiness from the simple and unalloyed
delight of Rorie and Vixen, in their home among the beechen woods whose
foliage sheltered them when they were children.
THE END.
PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER.
Transcriber's note: Typographical errors silently corrected:
volume 3 chapter 1: =an instant's delay?= replaced by
=an instant's delay,=
chapter 1: =latest fashion?= replaced by =latest fashion.=
chapter 3: =like the Squires= replaced by =like the Squire's=
epilogue: =young and happy!= replaced by =young and happy!"=