AT HER CHARIOT WHEELS.
CAPTAIN STANDISH did not wait to be asked to dinner. He made his
appearance at Little Yafford Park within a few days of his first visit.
This time he rode over, and his hack was a thing to wonder at.
‘I’m blest if he ain’t the first bit of horseflesh we’ve had inside
these stables!’ exclaimed Mr. Piper’s coachman, who affected to despise
the pair of bays for which his master had given three hundred guineas.
Mr. Piper was enjoying himself among his friends at Great Yafford.
There was a club in that commercial town, at which Mr. Timperley and
Mr. Porkman and their associates assembled daily to read the newspapers
and discuss the money market. They were all strong politicians,
and talked of politics as well as of the Stock Exchange, but they
contemplated all public events from one standpoint. What would be the
effect on the money market? How would this crisis in France, or this
artful move on the part of Russia, or this pretty piece of business
at Vienna affect the demand for cotton? Would Palmerston’s last great
speech steady the price of consols?
Mr. Piper went to his club oftener now-a-days than he had gone in the
first Mrs. Piper’s time. Bella was making him a man of fashion, as
he complained sometimes, with a fatuous delight in his young wife’s
frivolities. She would drive him into Great Yafford in her pony
carriage in the morning, do an hour’s shopping at Banbury’s, or get a
new novel at the circulating library, and fetch him in the afternoon
in her barouche, after making two or three calls on the commercial
aristocracy; for what is the use of having fine clothes, if you cannot
show them to somebody, or a carriage and pair if you cannot keep it
standing before somebody’s door? Bella heartily despised the Porkmans,
Timperleys, Wigzells, and all their set; but she was by nature an
actress, and must have a stage and an audience of some kind.
Thus it happened that Mr. Piper was at his club, and that Bella
received Captain Standish alone. It was a lovely afternoon, the lawn
was steeped in sunshine, the flower-beds were almost too dazzling to be
looked at, the roses were in their midsummer glory. Bella received her
visitor in the garden. She was fond of sitting out of doors. She liked
to see the width and grandeur of her domain, the fallow deer grouped
gracefully in the distance, the cool shadows of beech and oak, the tall
elms yonder where the rooks had built for the last century. Perhaps
she knew that she looked her prettiest in the garden, sitting in a low
basket chair, in the shade of spreading lime branches.
It was just the afternoon for archery. There was not a breath of wind
to blow the arrows about. The noble old beeches shaded the long stretch
of sward where the targets had been set up, and made it possible for an
enthusiastic toxophilite to endure the midsummer heat. Bella made quite
light of it.
‘I adore the summer,’ she said, when Captain Standish expressed his
fear that she might find archery too great an exertion, with the
thermometer at seventy-five in the shade. ‘I think I must belong to the
cat family, I so enjoy basking in the sun.’
‘So do I,’ said the captain, who looked as fresh and cool as if he had
just come out of a water-cure establishment; ‘and I detest the people
who go about the world mopping themselves and grumbling at the heat on
every decent summer day.’
Bella blushed. Mr. Piper had an unpleasant way of mopping his face with
a brown and yellow bandanna on warm afternoons. She felt that there
must be many habits of his that would jar on Captain Standish’s nerves,
if ever they came to be intimate.
The lesson was delightful. The captain was a first-rate master, and
after about an hour’s hard work Bella’s arrows began to fly straight
to the target, instead of taking a slanting direction and losing
themselves under the beeches. This was something gained. Once she went
within half an inch of the gold. And then, when her arm began to ache
desperately and she was obliged to give up, Captain Standish took
her bow, and in the easiest way in the world, just like that famous
marksman who drew his bow at a venture, shot three arrows in the gold,
in the neatest little triangle.
‘I could write my name on the target,’ he said. ‘It’s the simplest
thing in life when you’re used to it.’
Bella looked at her watch. Half-past four o’clock. How the afternoon
had flown! She had promised to call for her husband at his club, and
the carriage had been ordered for four. She explained her engagement to
Captain Standish, who apologized for having detained her so long.
‘I was so pleased with your progress that I forgot all about time,’
he said. ‘May I come to-morrow--a little earlier? I want you to beat
the Miss Porkmans next Thursday. You will be shooting on Thursday, I
suppose?’
‘Yes, I dare say, if they come. I find archery a great relief on my
Thursday afternoons. It is something for people to do. There is so
little to talk about in the country. You must find it very trying,
Captain Standish.’
The captain shrugged his shoulders.
‘I’m used to country quarters,’ he said. ‘And then in the very depths
of Bœotia there are always bright exceptions. But candidly, I don’t
care much for what people call society. I like to choose my friends,
and when I have chosen them I am an enthusiast in friendship. Now pray
put on your bonnet, and don’t let Mr. Piper be kept waiting through my
indiscretion in staying so long. I’ll go round to the stable for my
horse. May I ride beside your carriage part of the way, if I don’t make
too much dust?’
Bella blushed and sparkled at the idea. To have this fine flower of
the army, this glass of fashion and mould of form riding beside her
barouche was an honour to boast of when next she met the Porkmans.
He had never ridden at their chariot wheels. Cæsar’s triumph when he
brought home Vercingetorix was not grander than this.
Bella leaned back in her carriage, holding up the daintiest
lace-flounced parasol, just big enough to shelter the tip of her
nose, while the captain’s sleek bay trotted at her side, and arched
his neck, and sniffed the air, and gave himself resentful airs at
being forced to suit his pace to the jog-trot of the over-fed carriage
horses. They passed along the village street, under the cloudless
blue, and Bella felt that the eye of the world--her little world--was
upon them. Miss Coyle was clipping her solitary standard rose tree as
they went by, and stopped, scissors in hand, to stare at them. Cyril
Culverhouse was just coming out of his garden gate, with a black book
under his arm. Clementina and Flora Scratchell were flattening their
noses against the parlour window as usual. That vision of sisterly
noses always greeted Bella as she passed. This time she took care to be
looking another way. She did not want Captain Standish to know that her
‘people’ lived in the shabbiest house in the village.
The captain was far too good a horseman to keep up that ‘‘ammer,
‘ammer, on the ‘ard ‘igh road,’ of which the traditional cockney
complained. There were plenty of grassy bits by the wayside where he
was able to save his horse’s feet--stretches of open down on which
he could indulge himself with a gallop. Sometimes he dropped behind
and walked his horse for a mile or so, and then startled Bella by
descending upon her suddenly from some grassy height, fresh and cool,
and riding with a rein as light as a silken thread.
‘What a lovely horse that is!’ exclaimed Bella. ‘He seems able to do
anything.’
‘He was able to throw most of his riders before I got him,’ answered
the captain; ‘but he’s tame enough now.’
There was a roll in the animal’s eye, and a liberal display of white,
which went far to confirm this account of his antecedents.
Captain Standish was riding beside the carriage when they entered that
newly-built suburb where the plutocracy of Great Yafford had built
their habitations. They passed the Porkmans’ Grange, with its red
walls, Tudor casements, and impossible gables, the Timperley Manor
House, with its Norman sugar-loaf towers, and the Wigzells’ Italian
Gothic Villa, all white stucco, terraced walks and scarlet geraniums.
Bella, like Cæsar, felt that her triumph was complete. Captain Standish
only left her at the door of the club-house.
‘Well, little woman,’ cried Mr. Piper, when he came tumbling into the
barouche, with his white beaver hat at the back of his head, and his
brown and yellow bandanna on active service. ‘You haven’t kept me
waiting--no, not at all, neither.’
Bella told him all about Captain Standish’s visit. She was radiant with
this small social success.
‘Didn’t I tell you that I’d introduce you into tip-top society, old
woman?’ exclaimed Mr. Piper. ‘You shall hold your own with the best
of ’em. I’ll spare no expense till I see you at the top of the tree.
We must give a dinner party next week, and we’ll have Timperley, and
Wigzell, and the whole boiling.’
‘Captain Standish is always meeting them at Great Yafford. Don’t you
think we’d better ask the Dulcimers--and some of the Little Yafford
people?’ suggested Bella.
‘Well, have it your own way, my dear. I like to have the Vicar’s legs
under my mahogany. It looks respectable.’
Bella sent out her invitations for that day fortnight, carefully
excluding the manufacturing element. She impressed on Mr. Piper
that he was to give no accidental invitations. His impulsive
hospitality must not be allowed to spoil this particular party, as in
Bella’s opinion, at least, it had spoiled previous parties, by the
interpolation of ineligible guests.
‘Above all things let there be no Mr. Chumney,’ said Bella,
authoritatively.
‘Chumney’s enjoying himself at Whitby,’ replied Mr. Piper, ‘and don’t
want to be beholden to you for a dinner; but if you expect me to forget
that Chumney’s father was the first man that ever gave me a week’s
wages, you’ll find yourself disappointed. I’d take a knife and cut my
heart out, if I thought it was capable of such base ingratitude.’
‘You may remember Mr. Chumney’s father as much as you like, but you
needn’t always be talking of him, and of the time when you were glad to
earn twelve shillings a week,’ remonstrated Bella. ‘There’s no use in
harping upon such things.’
‘Yes, there is,’ answered Mr. Piper, ‘it shows that prosperity hasn’t
made me proud.’
Mrs. Piper called at the Vicarage next day to ensure the acceptance of
her invitation. Mrs. Dulcimer had seen Captain Standish riding by the
Vicarage gate, in attendance on Bella’s barouche, and had heard about
that ride of his from ever so many people already.
‘I don’t wonder people talk about him,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘He sits
his horse splendidly, and there’s a wonderful style about him. One can
see at a glance that he has always mixed in the best society.’
‘I hope you and Mr. Dulcimer can come to meet him on Wednesday week,’
said Bella.
‘Is he really coming to you?’
‘I’ve asked him.’
‘Oh, but he is so very exclusive. I hear he is quite difficult to get.
He is not at all fond of visiting. He shoots and hunts a great deal,
they say, but doesn’t care for balls or parties.’
‘I think he will come,’ said Bella. ‘Colonel O’Shaughnessy brought him
to us last Thursday, and he seemed quite to take to--Mr. Piper.’
‘And he was giving you a lesson in archery, Miss Coyle told me. You
must be very careful, my dear. I thought you were just a little
imprudent to let him ride by your carriage yesterday. A man of that
kind would get you talked about in no time.’
‘My dear Mrs. Dulcimer, I don’t the least mind being talked about.’
‘Bella!’
‘In fact, I rather like it.’
‘Bella! I don’t think I could endure my existence if I thought that
people talked about me,’ cried Mrs. Dulcimer, solemnly. ‘Of course, in
my case it would be particularly awful. A vicar’s wife is like Cæsar’s.’
‘Cæsar had so many wives,’ said Bella. ‘He could hardly expect all of
them to be respectable.’
‘My dear,’ exclaimed Mrs. Dulcimer, her whole countenance suddenly
illuminated, ‘I have such a splendid idea.’
Bella looked anything but delighted.
‘What is it, dear Mrs. Dulcimer?’
‘What a husband Captain Standish would make for your sister Clementina!
My dear, he is the very man for her. A man of high family--rolling in
money--young--handsome. WHAT a chance for that poor girl!’
‘My dear Mrs. Dulcimer, do you imagine that any man of high family
would choose a wife out of my father’s house?’
‘But he need not see her in her father’s house--at any rate not till he
is so deeply in love that he will not care a straw whether her family
are rich or poor. He will see her at the Park--elegantly dressed--with
you. He will only think of her as your sister. And if he were to
propose I feel sure that Mr. Piper would do something handsome for her.
He is the soul of generosity. You know that, Bella.’
‘He is very generous, but I cannot expect him to give all my sisters
fortunes.’
‘Not all of them, dear. No, of course not;--but he would give
Clementina something, if she were going to make such a match as that. A
man in his position would willingly make some sacrifice to have Captain
Standish for his brother-in-law. Only think, Lady Emmeline Standish
would be your--something-in-law. It would be so nice for you to have
people of high family belonging to you. It would give you the _entrée_
to county society.’
‘It would be very nice, I dare say,’ said Bella, not elated by this
brilliant perspective, ‘but it is just the most unlikely thing to come
to pass. A man so run after as Captain Standish has been is not likely
to fall in love with Clementina.’
‘I am not so sure of that,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer, sagely. ‘More wonderful
things have happened within my knowledge. Clementina is a very pretty
girl, almost as pretty as you, Bella. She has your complexion. I hope
you’ve invited her for Wednesday week.’
‘No, indeed I have not. It doesn’t do to be overrun by one’s family
always. You see I could scarcely ask Tina without asking papa and
mamma; and that is quite out of the question.’
‘You might have her to stay with you,’ suggested Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘She
would help to amuse your step-daughters.’
Elizabeth Fry and Mary Wolstencroft were coming home for their summer
vacation in a few days, a return acutely dreaded by Bella.
‘Well, dear Mrs. Dulcimer, perhaps you are right. It might be as well
to have Clementina.’
She could not be more in the way than those two troublesome
step-daughters, Bella thought.
‘If you have your sister with you it will prevent people making
disagreeable remarks when Captain Standish calls on you,’ said Mrs.
Dulcimer. ‘It must be so awkward for a young woman like you to receive
a gentleman, when your husband is out.’
‘Captain Standish is not quite a dragon,’ replied Bella, laughing. ‘I
am not afraid of him.’
‘My dear, I am told he is a very fascinating man,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer,
‘and that is the worst kind of dragon for a young married woman. He
certainly ought to marry Clementina, and if you and I exercise a little
diplomacy I believe he will do it. Look at your position. I feel proud
of that. If it hadn’t been for me you might have never been Mrs.
Piper. Poor Mr. Piper might never have repeated his offer if I had not
encouraged him.’
‘You are all that is kind and good,’ said Bella, inwardly rebelling
against this patronage and interference.
‘Now go and invite your sister to stay with you, dear. And see that
she is becomingly dressed. And you can polish her up a little in the
next fortnight. Clementina sadly wants polish. She has never had your
opportunities, you know.’