PLAYING WITH FIRE.
CAPTAIN STANDISH accepted Mrs. Piper’s invitation. He rode over to
answer her note in person; and to give her another lesson in archery.
This time Clementina was with her and shared in the lesson. Captain
Standish had no objection to teach two pretty girls instead of one, but
he preferred Mrs. Piper, as the prettier and more fascinating of the
two. She possessed a great superiority too, in his eyes, as a married
woman. It was the rule of this great man’s life, when he condescended
to flirtation, to flirt with a married woman. No harm could come of
it to himself. There was always the risk of the husband being made
uncomfortable; but that was a detail. Captain Standish was not afraid
of making a husband jealous, or even unhappy; but he was very much
afraid of compromising himself by flirtation with a single woman, who
might be absurd enough to expect him to marry her, and whose friends
might make themselves disagreeable if he declined to do so.
He was therefore the very last man to walk into the silken snare that
Mrs. Dulcimer had set for him. He was kind and courteous to Clementina,
who was ready to ‘worship him’ or to ‘rave about him’--in the Porkman
phraseology--at a moment’s notice; but he reserved his tender
attentions, his thrilling looks and lowered tones, for Bella, for whom
the sweet poison, the social deadly nightshade of an unprincipled
man’s flatteries had already too great a charm. Of the extent of the
captain’s influence over her mind Bella herself was not yet aware.
Indeed, she believed herself hardened against any such influence by
the counter poison of a previous love. She had loved once, and loved
unhappily, and therefore could never love again. This she firmly
believed, and, secure in this belief, walked blindfold into danger.
Her pleasure in the captain’s society she ascribed to the triumph of
parading him before the astonished eyes of Little Yafford, the delight
of lording it over the Porkmans, the fact that Captain Standish was the
fashion.
The dinner party was a success. It was made up of the _élite_ of Little
Yafford and the surrounding neighbourhood--people who had ‘places’ of
twenty to thirty acres, and who were altogether the next best thing
to county families--Mr. and Mrs. Dulcimer, Colonel O’Shaughnessy, and
Captain Standish. Clementina looked her prettiest, and was complimented
on her likeness to her sister.
‘Bella,’ said the Vicar’s wife in a confidential tone, when the ladies
were alone after dinner. ‘You are doing a noble thing for your sister.
In my opinion Captain Standish is struck with her already.’
‘You are sanguine, dear Mrs. Dulcimer,’ answered Bella, smiling. ‘I
have not seen him particularly attentive to her.’
‘Perhaps not, but he has been particularly attentive to you. He would
naturally begin in that way.’
Bella was not quite clear upon this point; she had little faith in Mrs.
Dulcimer’s judgment. Were not the most miserable hours of her life, her
one inexcusable sin, referable to that lady’s mistake? But she found
it rather agreeable to have Clementina as a companion. The girl was
grateful, and willing to be useful, and was not in the way.
Mrs. Dulcimer was so elated at the prospect of another brilliant
match, to be brought about by her agency, that, towards the end of the
evening, she took Mr. Piper into her confidence.
‘Charming man, Captain Standish, isn’t he?’ she asked.
‘I’ve ‘eard that remark made a good many times, mum,’ he answered,
candidly, ‘but as far as my individual opinion goes I don’t see
anything remarkable about the captain that should single him out from
the ruck of military men. Perhaps his hair is cropped a trifle closer,
and his whiskers neater trimmed. I don’t deny either that there’s a
_junny serquaw_, as my wife calls it, about the cut of his clothes, and
that he has a high way with him, as if we were all upon a lower level,
which I believe is uncommonly taking for some people, though I can’t
say I ever was took by that kind of thing myself. I like a man who is
my superior and yet takes care not to remind me of it. I can feel the
superiority of that kind of man. I don’t want it put before me.’
Mrs. Dulcimer looked disappointed.
‘He is of a very high family,’ she said, ‘and enormously rich.’
‘That’s always a satisfaction to one’s mind, mum.’
‘Now don’t you think it would be a very grand thing if he were to marry
your sister-in-law Clementina?’
Mr. Piper was not enthusiastic.
‘She might like it, Mrs. Dulcimer,’ he said. ‘That’s just according
to her feelings. But it’s no business of mine to find husbands for my
wife’s sisters.’
This was disheartening, but Mrs. Dulcimer was not going to renounce her
project because Mr. Piper looked coldly upon it. Clementina stayed at
the Park, and Bella enriched her with a great many dresses and other
adornments of which she was beginning to be tired, or which were of a
fashion that had become too general for a fine lady’s wear. Generosity
in a person of Bella’s stamp is only another word for extravagance.
Bella would have as soon contemplated cutting off her right hand
as giving away anything she wanted herself. These gifts to Tina
necessitated the purchase of new things, and already the second Mrs.
Piper had begun to get into debt, and to feel that she had bills which
must be paid next year, or at some more definite period. The three
hundred a year which Mr. Piper had settled upon her in the fulness of
his heart, as an all-sufficing income for dress and pocket money, was
not nearly enough to supply the manifold wants of a young woman who had
been brought up in poverty. Bella wanted everything, for everything was
new to her. She ran riot in laces, and silks, and velvets, bric-à-brac
for her boudoir, dainty stationery, devotional books, which were seldom
read, but which looked well on her dressing-table, parasols, fans,
slippers, albums, everything of the costliest. She was surprised to
find how soon her ready money had melted away, and almost afraid to
calculate how deeply she was in debt. But the burden weighed lightly
upon her. It would be easy to get Mr. Piper to give her a cheque, when
things got desperate. He might be surprised, perhaps, that she had not
managed her allowance better; but he would not have the strength of
mind to refuse her the money.
One day poor Mrs. Scratchell ventured to ask her daughter for a little
help. The tax-gatherer was pressing, and ‘father’ had nothing put aside
for the taxes.
‘Oh, mamma,’ cried Bella, ‘what has he done with Mr. Harefield’s five
hundred pounds? That ought to have set him up for life.’
‘My dear child, you must remember, surely. Father acted with the
greatest prudence, and invested his legacy safely in railway shares. It
brings us twenty-seven pounds a year. It doesn’t make a large addition,
you see, and last year was so expensive. Bread was a penny dearer
than it has been for ten years, and potatoes were dreadfully scarce.
Altogether things have got behindhand with us----’
‘I never knew them to be beforehand,’ sighed Bella.
‘But it’s a great comfort to see you so splendidly established. I’m
sure I feel a thrill whenever I enter this house and think, “This is
my daughter’s. My child is the mistress of it all.” I feel almost as
Esther’s relations must have felt when they saw her sitting beside the
king. And now, dear, if you could let me have ten pounds----’
‘My dear mother, I haven’t ten shillings. Look, here’s my purse. You
can count the silver, if you like.’
She handed Mrs. Scratchell a toy of mother-o’-pearl and gold, lined
with rose-hued silk.
‘Oh, Bella, have you spent _all_ your last half-year’s income?’
‘Every sixpence, except what you see there.’
‘My love, you must have been very extravagant--after such a trousseau
as you had to start with.’
‘Why, mamma, there were lots of things forgotten in my trousseau. And
then the fashions are always changing, and I have given my sisters such
heaps of things. I dare say I have been extravagant in that particular.
I am sure I have dressed Tina from head to foot.’
‘You have been very good, dear; but I so counted on you for the taxes.
I thought a ten pound note would be nothing to you.’
‘That was a tremendous mistake. I assure you that for actual ready
money I have been worse off since I have been Mr. Piper’s wife than I
was as his governess. There are so many demands upon my purse. But if I
can do anything next Christmas----’
‘Thank you, dear. We must get on somehow, I suppose. We always have
struggled through our difficulties, and I suppose we always shall,
thanks to Providence; but it’s a wearing life.’
The young Pipers came home for their holidays, and ran riot amidst
the splendours and luxuries that Bella had introduced into the sober
old house. These young people liked Bella better as a stepmother than
they had liked her as a governess. She was very indulgent, so long as
they did not spoil the furniture, or annoy her with too much of their
society. She gave the girls fine dresses, and allowed them to share
all her gaieties. She let the boys ride her ponies, when she did not
want to use them. In a word she was a model stepmother, and everybody
praised her, except Miss Coyle, who never praised anybody, and Mr.
Chumney, who generally reserved his opinion as something too valuable
to be parted with except under strongest pressure.
So the briefly glorious summer hurried by, and Bella lived only for
pleasure, and to be flattered and followed by Captain Standish. She
went to a great many parties among the Wigzell, Timperley, and Porkman
section of society, and to a few among the professional classes and
landed gentry, which latter were not so splendid as the mercantile
entertainments, in the matter of eating and drinking, and were not
much more lively; for whereas the Porkmans and Timperleys talked of
nothing but money-making, the landed gentry had a language of their
own which Bella, clever as she was, had yet to learn. Captain Standish
was teaching her a great deal. Under his tuition she had learned to
look down upon her fellow-creatures as an inferior set of beings,
‘mostly fools,’ to regard mental culture as a process only valuable to
schoolmasters, college dons, clergymen, doctors, lawyers, and that
altogether subordinate race which has to earn its bread by the sweat of
its brains, to think of money as a stepping-stone to social importance,
the pleasure of the present moment as the one vital consideration, the
future as an unknown quantity, not worth serious thought.
This was the code of ethics which Bella learned from Captain Standish,
but before all and above all he taught her to despise her husband, her
husband’s children, and her husband’s surroundings, from the lordly
Timperley, swelling with the importance of the biggest mills in the
district, to the unpretending Chumney, living in modest retirement upon
an annuity of ninety pounds, the result of his laborious existence.
Of this gradual corruption of his wife’s mind honest Ebenezer Piper
had no suspicion. Her manner and conduct to him of late had been
unexceptionable. The deeper and stronger that feeling of contemptuous
aversion grew in the secret depths of her heart, the more carefully
did she regulate her outward seeming. She had never appeared sweeter,
fairer, or more guileless in her husband’s eyes than when she was most
inclined to betray him. Vivien herself, that supreme type of falsehood
in woman, employed no finer art against the enchanter Merlin than Bella
used to guard herself from the hazard of discovery.
She knew herself false to the core, not quite a subject for the divorce
court, but a creature whose good angel had long left her, shuddering
and abhorrent.
Mr. Piper had not forgotten Mrs. Dulcimer’s ideas about Captain
Standish and Clementina, and when he saw the captain and sister-in-law
together he was inclined to believe that there might be some foundation
for that inveterate matchmaker’s fancy. The captain had a knack of
being particularly attentive to Tina under Mr. Piper’s eye.
And now autumn was approaching, the russet corn was cut in the wide
shadowless fields, the ploughman’s white horses were seen moving slowly
along the upland ridges, against a cool gray sky.
Captain Standish went up into the wildest part of the moors for a
fortnight’s grouse-shooting, and to everybody’s surprise came back to
Great Yafford in three days.
He rode over to the Park on the afternoon of his return, and found
Bella alone, yawning over a novel. She started and dropped her book
when the footman announced him, and changed from pale to red, and red
to pale again.
‘You did not expect to see me so soon,’ said the captain, keeping her
little cold hand in his.
‘No,’ she faltered, unable to say more.
‘You thought I should be able to endure a fortnight’s life without you.
I was fool enough to think so too--and made all my arrangements for
staying away till the 27th. But three days were quite enough. How pale
and tired you look!’
‘I have had nothing to do, and I suppose that is the most tiring thing
in the world. Tina has gone home. I did not want Mr. Piper to think
that she was going to live here always.’
‘What does it matter what he thinks?’ said Captain Standish, with his
supercilious smile. ‘Mr. Piper was only created to be useful to you and
your relations. And so you have missed--Tina.’
‘I have been very dull.’
‘If you knew how desolate my life was in those three days you would
pity me,’ said the captain, tenderly. ‘Yes, Isabel, you would pity me
for being so weak that I cannot live without you, so miserably placed
that I am obliged to hide my love.’
And then Captain Standish went on to tell his story; the old, old
story, the familiar melody, subject to such endless variations, such
kaleidoscopic distinctions without difference, and always coming to the
same thing in the end. ‘We might have been happy had Providence willed
it. Let us defy Providence, fling honour to the winds, and be happy in
spite of fate.’
He talked and pleaded for a long time, and Bella listened with lowered
eyelids, and lowered head, and let her hand lie locked in his, and did
not answer his specious arguments by one straight outspoken denial. She
paltered with this tempter, as she had paltered with temptation all her
life, always choosing the road she liked best. She said neither yes nor
no. It was an awful thing that he was asking her to do. No more nor
less than to surrender honour, social status, everything for his sake,
to go to Italy with him, and live a gay, unfettered life there, among
people who, according to his showing, would be willing to accept her as
his wife. He painted the picture of that ideal Italian life so vividly
that all the hideousness of his proposal was lost sight of under that
bright colouring.
‘Remember, dearest, I shall have my sacrifice to make too,’ he said. ‘I
must leave the army. And I shall almost break my poor mother’s heart,
for she has plans for my marriage which she has cherished ever since I
was at Eton. But I could sacrifice a great deal more than that for your
sake.’
‘Do not talk of it any more,’ said Bella, in a frightened voice. ‘It
is too awful. I like you--yes,’ as he drew her face round to him
so that her eyes reluctantly met his,--‘yes, very much. I hardly
think’--falteringly and in tears--‘I could go on living if you went
away, and I were not to see you any more; but what you are asking is
horrible--to defy everybody--to give up everything--to be pointed at
and spoken of as something utterly lost and wretched--a thing to be
spurned by other women--women who are my inferior in everything--except
that one wicked act. Why, my very housemaids would look down upon me.
No, I could not be so degraded. I could not sink so low.’
‘I see,’ said Captain Standish. ‘You love yourself and your good
name better than you love me. You were not ashamed to sell yourself
to Piper. The world applauds that kind of bargain. But you are not
generous enough to give yourself to the man you love.’
He had let go her hand, and was walking with long quick steps backwards
and forwards across the deep bay, like a lion in a cage. Bella thought
there was something grand and noble about him in this lofty rage. She
loved him all the more for the hard things he said to her, since his
hard speeches proved the intensity of his love.
‘You are very cruel,’ she said, piteously.
‘I am very much in earnest. I thought to find in you something better
and grander than the shallow conventional woman of society who only
plays with hearts, who wants to walk through the deep waters of passion
without wetting her feet. You talk of sinking very low--of degradation.
Where is the degradation in the life I offer you--the fair sweet
unfettered life that poets have loved ever since the world began?’
‘You would be tired of an idle life in Italy,’ said Bella.
‘With you, no. But we could wander about. We should not be tied to one
spot. I would take you to Algiers--Morocco. We could ride over that
strange land together--and when we had used up the Old World we would
be off to the New. I would take you across the Rocky Mountains. I would
make you my comrade and companion--a hardy traveller--a dead shot. You
should be no slavish English wife, sitting at home while your husband
enjoyed his life. No, love, you should share every sport I had, hunt
with me--shoot--fish--row--ride with me. I would not have a pleasure in
life that you could not share.’
The picture was full of charm for a woman who, in her eagerness to
enjoy life, had already almost exhausted the pleasures of humdrum
existence. Bella felt that this would indeed be the beginning of a
new life; this would be to drain to the dregs the cup of youth and
gladness. And then worldly pride for once took the shape of a good
angel, and pointed to the view from that wide bay-window, the Park and
deer, the avenue of goodly elms, the grandeur and importance of her
position as Mrs. Piper. Was she to surrender all this, and give up
her name to be a byeword and a reproach into the bargain? No, she had
hearkened too long to the tempter, but she was not weak enough for this.
‘You must never speak to me of this again,’ she exclaimed. ‘I will try
to think there has been no serious meaning in what you have said. Let
us both forget it.’
‘I shall not forget it,’ said the captain, ‘but if you tell me to keep
silence I will obey. I would do anything rather than live out of your
society.’
‘If you ever repeat what you have said this afternoon, our friendship
will be ended.’
‘Anything sooner than that.’
He took the little hand again and kissed it tenderly. So there was a
kind of compact between them. He was to go on adoring her, but was to
say nothing about it.
Captain Standish rode back to Great Yafford in excellent humour. He had
considerably embellished the fact of his return, in his conversation
with Mrs. Piper. He had come back because the weather had been
abominable, and the birds hardly visible behind a dense curtain of
driving rain. Three days of such uncomfortable sport had been quite
enough for the captain.
‘Poor little thing,’ he mused, as he walked his horse, after a swinging
galop over a grassy waste, ‘how very weak she is! I am glad she doesn’t
want me to run away with her. It would be uncommonly inconvenient. But
when a man has flirted as desperately as I have a woman expects him
to say something serious. She’s really very pretty--quite the most
fascinating little thing I’ve met for a long time. And if she were
single--all things being equal--I don’t think I should object to marry
her.’