VANESSA’S VISIT.
EREBUS was in due course shown to Mr. Piper, who knew so little about
horses as to be scarcely worthy to be called a Yorkshireman. His own
particular vanity in the way of horse-flesh was a fast pony that could
trot between the shafts of a light carriage for any number of hours
without rest or refreshment. Anything beyond that was out of his line.
He contemplated the black with a cool survey, and thought that there
was very little of him for the money.
‘Isn’t he lovely?’ asked Bella, patting the creature’s sleek neck.
Erebus was of a heavenly temper in his stable. It was only when
conscious of humanity on his back that he was subject to fits of
waywardness.
‘Well, he aren’t bad-looking,’ assented the unenthusiastic Piper; ‘but
if I’d chose a horse for you I should have picked one with more timber
and a better back for the saddle. I hope he’s quiet.’
‘Oh, he’s everything that’s nice,’ answered Bella, with a fluttering
of her heart at the recollection of some of Erebus’s manœuvres that
morning. ‘I shall feel as easy on him as in an arm-chair--when I get
used to him.’
‘And Captain Standish gave you a riding lesson, did he?’ inquired Mr.
Piper.
‘Yes, he went over the moor with me, just to show me how to manage
Erebus.’
‘That was very civil of him. But you mustn’t be riding about with him
often, you know, Bella. It wouldn’t do. You mean no harm, and he means
no harm. I know that, my dear. But it would set people talking--and I’m
as proud a man as Cæsar in my way. I won’t have my wife talked about.’
Bella buried her pale face in the black’s silky mane. She did not care
to meet her husband’s honest eyes just at this particular moment.
‘I would not for the world do anything you dislike,’ she said, meekly;
‘but I want to learn how to manage Erebus, and I don’t think any
one could teach me so well as Captain Standish. And, by and by, when
the foxhunting begins, if you did not mind, I should like very much
to--to----’ Here Mr. Piper glared at her with a look so awful that she
remodelled the end of her sentence--’ to see the hounds throw off.’
‘You could drive to the meet in your pony chay,’ said Mr. Piper.
‘Nobody could say there was harm in that.’
‘It would be much nicer to go on horseback,’ pleaded Bella, laying her
little white hand caressingly on Mr. Piper’s velvet collar.
‘Why, what a baby you are, little woman!’ he exclaimed, mollified
by that light touch, and the coaxing look in the Dresden china
face. ‘Yon horse is a new toy. You’ll be wanting to ride him into
the drawing-room, I shouldn’t wonder, or to have him lying on the
hearth-rug of a winter evening, like a Newfoundland.’
This, in Bella’s idea, meant permission to go to the meet, and once at
the meet it would be very easy to follow the hounds for half an hour
or so, and to declare afterwards that it was Erebus’s doing, quite an
involuntary bit of hunting on her own part. Bella was past mistress of
those small arts by which an adroit unscrupulous woman manages to get
her own way.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Mr. Piper presently, ‘if you want to have
company when you’re out riding, you’d better ask one of Porkman’s
girls to come and spend a week with you and bring her hoss. They’re
first-rate horsewomen, both of ’em.’
‘I should be very glad to have Vanessa,’ said Bella. ‘I think she’s the
nicest--or, at any rate, the least nasty,’ she added hastily.
Mrs. Porkman was a woman gifted with dim and uncultured aspirations
after the beautiful. She had filled her drawing-room with heterogeneous
bric-a-brac, including every variety of bad art, from Cleopatra’s
needle in Cornish serpentine to the latest monstrosity in Bohemian
glass, and she had called her two eldest daughters Stella and Vanessa,
having read of two young women of that name once in a book. She had
forgotten all about the book, and the young women, but the names had
lingered in her memory. She had her eldest daughter christened Stella,
and in due time there appeared a Vanessa to complete the pair, and to
take to Stella’s cast-off frocks.
Bella thought it would not be altogether inconvenient--nay, it would
be very convenient--to have Vanessa Porkman for her companion. With
Vanessa riding on her left side, Captain Standish might ride on her
right, without giving occasion for scandal. She was not at all afraid
of Vanessa being scandalized by anything she saw or heard. The second
Miss Porkman was so far in advance of her age, that she had in a manner
anticipated all the feminine fastness of the nineteenth century.
The skating rink, the ladies’ club of the future, contained nothing
calculated to shock Vanessa.
Miss Porkman accepted Mrs. Piper’s invitation gladly. She owned with a
charming candour that she was always glad to get away from home. She
was quite open-minded in her contempt for her own family, and never
even pretended to think them refined or well-bred. ‘Papa is simply
dreadful,’ she would declare frankly. ‘I quite wonder how any of us
put up with him. I suppose it is only because he is the family banker.
If he wasn’t, we should put him in the gardener’s barrow and wheel him
down to the edge of the river, and topple him comfortably in, and get
rid of him as quietly as the gentle Hindoos do of their parents when
they’ve lived long enough.’
Miss Porkman came. She was a florid young woman, with bold brown eyes,
an affectation of short sight, an eye-glass, and an insatiable thirst
for masculine society. Contemplated from an abstract ethnological
point of view, she was a remarkably interesting example of the depth
of deterioration to which the womanly character can descend among the
well-to-do classes; but she was an excruciating young woman to live
with.
In her mind the business of a woman’s life was flirtation. To be
admired, to agitate the hearts of men, to lure the luckless Strephon
from his legitimate Chloe, these things, in Miss Porkman’s mind,
constituted woman’s mission. She was not strong-minded, she was no
eager reformer, she didn’t care twopence about universal suffrage; but
she wanted to be the Cleopatra of her small world, to have Cæsar, and
Pompey, and Antonius, and the young Augustus, and every man of them
subjugated and adoring. She had unlimited confidence in her own good
looks, and a scornful pity for plain women, with whom nobody cared to
flirt.
The fair Vanessa had tried her hardest to entangle Captain Standish in
those flowery chains which she kept in stock for all eligible victims,
but the captain had not allowed himself to be bound. She had seen with
disgust that he was a constant guest at the Park, and that he lavished
upon Bella those attentions which she had herself unsuccessfully
invited. To flirt with a married woman was in Miss Porkman’s eyes
not so much immoral as it was cowardly. She would have excused the
immorality, but she could not forgive the cowardice. Here was evidently
a man who feared to trust himself within the range of her charms, lest
he should be caught unawares and meshed in the matrimonial net, and
who amused himself with a vapid flirtation in a quarter where he felt
himself ignobly safe.
‘He can’t care for such a little waxen image as Mrs. Piper,’ said Miss
Porkman, contemplating her Juno-like figure in her cheval-glass, ‘but
he doesn’t want to marry into the commercial classes, and he’s afraid
to trust himself with _me_.’
Vanessa came to Little Yafford Park, resolved to leave it a conqueror.
She brought her prettiest dresses. She brought her horse, and she
believed herself invincible on horseback. If Captain Standish was as
much at the Park as report said he was, Vanessa felt sure of victory.
She was not disappointed. Captain Standish came every day, and rode
every day on the moor with Bella and Miss Porkman. He taught Bella how
to manage the black, and he was sufficiently attentive to Vanessa to
keep that young lady in perpetual good humour with herself and him.
Bella’s pluck, which was undeniable, made up in a great measure for her
want of experience. In a week she was mistress of Erebus, and seemed
well able to cope with his whims and uncertainties, his disposition to
take fright at shadows, and to bolt on every inconvenient occasion.
‘I never knew any one learn to ride so quickly,’ said the captain, ‘for
upon my word, you know, frankly, you knew very little about it when you
first rode Erebus.’
Bella blushed, remembering how little she had known, how much less even
than the captain gave her credit for knowing.
Mr. Piper saw them start for their ride sometimes, and was pleased to
see his little woman happy. He could see no harm in her accepting the
captain’s escort while she had Vanessa Porkman with her, an expensively
educated, well brought up young woman, who knew what was what, and
would be sure to keep Captain Standish in his place. He praised the
black, and thanked the captain for buying that accomplished animal.
‘He’s rather too weedy for my style,’ said Mr. Piper, ‘but he looks
well-bred, and he carries my little woman beautifully.’
Captain Standish dined at the Park twice during the week, at Mr.
Piper’s particular invitation.
‘Do you know, Bella,’ said Ebenezer, one night, after Miss Porkman had
lighted her candle and left them, ‘I think Standish is smitten with
Vanessa. I shouldn’t wonder if it was to be a match. She’s an uncommon
fine girl, and old Porkman could give her twenty thousand and feel none
the poorer for it. She wouldn’t be a bad catch for the captain.’
‘Catch!’ echoed Bella, contemptuously. ‘Do you suppose Captain Standish
wants what you call a catch? Do you think he would care to take Mr.
Porkman’s twenty thousand pounds, and go down to the grave associated
with provisions? Captain Standish could not afford to marry Vanessa if
he loved her to distraction. Whenever he marries he must marry rank.
You forget that his mother is Lady Emmeline Standish.’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Mr. Piper. ‘But I can’t see that his mother’s
having a handle to her name need make Porkman’s money less acceptable.
Money can buy land, can’t it? and, in England, land means aristocracy.
Put your money into the soil, and you’re an aristocrat. That’s how I
take it. I should never have bought this place, to pay me two and a
half per cent., if I hadn’t felt that I was hooking myself on to the
landed gentry. I say,’ concluded Mr. Piper, spreading his coat tails
as he stood with his portly back to the fire, ‘I say that Vanessa
Porkman would be a capital match for Standish, and he’s a fool if he
can’t see it.’
‘Pray don’t take up Mrs. Dulcimer’s craze of match-making,’ said Bella,
scornfully.
She was indignant at the idea that any one could suppose Captain
Standish in love with Vanessa--that large middle-class Juno.
Poor Mrs. Dulcimer’s good-natured soul was perturbed by Vanessa’s
visit. She went to the Park on Thursday afternoon, and remonstrated
with Bella for her short-sightedness and want of sisterly feeling.
‘My dear, you are letting that horrid Miss Porkman cut out poor
Clementina,’ she complained. ‘This visit of hers will quite spoil
Clementina’s chance with Captain Standish.’
‘Indeed, Mrs. Dulcimer, Tina never had any chance with Captain
Standish. He is not a marrying man. I have heard him say as much.’
‘Oh, my dear, they all say that, and even think it until they are
caught. It doesn’t make the slightest difference. I am sure he admired
your sister, and it would have been such a splendid match for her,
and so nice for you to have had such aristocratic connections. Lady
Emmeline would have been your--something in-law. And now you have
spoiled it all by inviting Miss Porkman.’
‘I wanted some one to ride with me,’ said Bella. ‘Clementina can’t
ride, and hasn’t a horse.’
‘Well, it is a great pity. Everybody says that Captain Standish is in
love with Miss Porkman.’
Bella knew that Mrs. Dulcimer’s everybody usually meant herself and
Rebecca.
And now the time drew near for Bella to try her fortune in the
hunting-field. She sounded Miss Porkman, and found that young lady
eager for anything fast and furious. Vanessa had never hunted--Mr.
Porkman objecting to ladies in the field just as strongly as Mr. Piper.
But she was quite ready to hazard the paternal anger, supposing it
impossible to have a day’s sport without her father coming to hear of
it.
‘He has never actually forbidden us to hunt,’ said Vanessa, ‘but I know
he doesn’t like ladies riding to hounds. I’ve heard him say so very
often. However, he won’t know anything about it till it’s all over, and
when he does hear of it I must weather the storm somehow.’
Vanessa had weathered a good many paternal tempests since she had
emerged from the nursery, stormy winds blown up by milliner’s bills,
hurricanes provoked by too reckless flirtations, and divers other
meteorological disturbances of a domestic nature. A storm, more or
less, in Vanessa’s opinion made no difference.
Captain Standish rode the black to hounds, and pronounced him perfect.
‘There’s to be a grand meet next Thursday morning at Milvey Bridge, and
we must all go,’ he said, to Bella. ‘You can tell Piper you are going
to see the hounds throw off.’