“FAIRIES!”
Nearly three years had gone by since that fatal night in Venice. It was
mid-winter, only a few days after Christmas, and Mrs. Vansittart and
her son were spending their Christmas holidays within twenty miles of
Merewood.
Maud Vansittart had become Maud Hartley, but before bestowing herself
upon her adoring lover she had insisted that he should buy a place
within reasonable distance of the house in which she had been born and
reared, the home in which she could so vividly recall the image of a
beloved father, and where all her happy years of girlhood had been
spent with the mother she fondly loved. Sir Hubert had a fine place
in the wild Yorkshire hills, half an hour’s journey from Sheffield,
a solid red-brick manor house in the Georgian style, built by his
great-grandfather; but to that house as a home Maud would not consent
to go. Her lover being rich enough to buy a second country seat as
easily as some men buy a second horse, there had only remained the
trouble of choosing a home that Maud could approve.
A house was found, neither too old nor too new, upon the side of
Blackdown, in that rich and picturesque country between Petworth and
Haslemere--Redwold Towers, a roomy, well-built mansion, with just
land enough to satisfy Hubert Hartley’s idea of a home-farm, with out
diverting his capital from that wider domain of Hartley Manor, where
he had fields and pastures of a hundred acres each, and where he grew
prize oxen and cart-horses worth their weight in gold, as it seemed to
Maud, when she heard of six or seven hundred pounds being given for one
of these creatures.
Merewood, John Vansittart’s patrimonial estate, was near Liss, in
Hampshire, a long, low, capacious house, on a ridge of pineclad hill,
and fronting a wild valley, which grew very little of a profitable
nature for man or beast, but where the perfume of the pine woods and
the gold and purple of gorse and heather were worth all that the
fattest soils can produce. Fertile pastures and spacious cornfields
were not wanting to the estate, but those lay behind the crest of the
hill.
Maud had been married nearly two years, and there was a short-coated
baby in the nursery at Redwold, albeit Sir Hubert would rather the eyes
of his firstborn had opened upon the light that shone into the family
bed-chamber at Hartley Manor, the patriarchal bed-chamber with its
patriarchal bed, birth chamber and death chamber, room in which the
good old great-grandsire’s eyes had closed peacefully, verily “falling
on sleep,” after a life of ninety years, and after having enriched the
world with many useful inventions, and established a wealthy progeny.
Unhappily, Maud hated Hartley Manor House, and only went there for a
month in the shooting season as a concession to the best of husbands.
“Of course, I always meant to marry him,” she told her brother, “and
he is the only man for whom I ever cared a straw; but I wanted to have
my fling in London; and I liked being talked about as the pretty Miss
Vansittart. I was, you know, Jack. You needn’t laugh at me. And I liked
making other young men miserable, by leading them on a little, meaning
nothing all the time.”
“Had you many victims? Were there any suicides?”
“Don’t talk nonsense. You know how little young men care nowadays.
There were some of them who would have liked to marry me, had
everything been made easy, settlements, and all that. And,” with sudden
solemnity, “I might have had a coronet if I had made the most of my
chances.”
“A hard-up coronet, do you mean? A coronet that wanted regilding.”
“No, sir. All those go to America. My coronet was well provided
for--but it was not to be,” with a faint sigh. “I could not throw
Hubert over. He was so ridiculously fond of me.”
“Was? Is, I hope,” said Jack, this retrospective survey of a girl’s
career being made one afternoon in the snowy Christmas week, as Jack
and his sister tramped home with the shooters, after a day on the hills.
“Yes, he still adores me, poor fellow, though he has found me out ever
so long ago.”
“Found you out--how?”
“Oh, he has found that I am frivolous and selfish, and utterly
worthless, from the socialist’s point of view. He has found out that
although I am fond of pretty cottages and cottage gardens, I don’t care
much about the cottagers, and that I never know what to say to them.
He has found out that I haven’t the interests of the poor really at
heart. In short, he has found that I am a thorough-bred Tory instead
of a hot-headed Radical, as he is. I’m afraid we ought never to have
married. It is like trying to join fire and water.”
“Oh, but I think you manage to get on capitally together, in spite of
any difference in your political views. Indeed, I did not think you
knew much about politics.”
“I don’t. I know hardly anything. I never read the debates, and my mind
always wanders when people are talking politics; but my Conservatism
and Hubert’s Radicalism enter into everything--into our way with
servants, into our treatment of our friends, into our ideas about
dress, manners, church. I cannot even shake hands with a cottager as he
does. I have tried to imitate him, but I can’t achieve that unconscious
air of equality which comes so natural to him. And do what I will I
can’t help feeling ashamed of that great-grandfather of his who began
life in Sheffield as a poor lad, and who invented something--some quite
small thing, it seems to me--and so laid the foundations of the Hartley
wealth. That is a little bit of family history which I should so like
everybody to forget, while poor Hubert is quite proud of it. At Hartley
Manor he loves to show strangers the great-grandfather’s portrait in
his working clothes--just as he looked when he invented the thing,
whatever it was.”
“You would not have him ashamed of the founder of his fortune. I
have heard of a house in which the portrait of the good man who made
the family wealth has a looking-glass in front of it, so that the
will which ordained that that portrait should hang on one particular
panel in the dining-room as long as the family mansion stood may be
kept to the letter, while it is broken in the spirit. But this was a
particularly irksome case, for the good man had made his money out
of tallow, and had been painted with a pound of mould candles in each
hand. Think of that, Maud! Fustian and corduroy are paintable enough;
but not even Herkomer could make anything out of two bunches of tallow
candles.”
“I wish Hubert would let me hang a fine Venetian glass in front of his
worthy great-grandfather. However, since he himself is a gentleman, I
suppose I ought to be satisfied,” said Maud; “I don’t believe there is
a finer gentleman in England than my husband, Radical as he is.”
Vansittart’s sister was perfectly happy in her married life. She had a
husband who petted and indulged her, with inexhaustible good humour,
and who thought her the most enchanting of women, with infinite
capacities for soaring to a higher level than she had yet attained. She
had as much money as ever she cared to spend, and a house in which she
was allowed to do what she liked, so long as she did not trample on
the rights and privileges of the old servants from Hartley Manor, who
had been dominant there since Hubert’s infancy; servants whose proud
boast it was to have been associated with every circumstance of their
master’s life, from the cutting of his first tooth to the bringing
home of his bride. It is strange what Conservative ways these Radicals
sometimes have in the bosoms of their families.
Sir Hubert Hartley was not like David, ruddy and fair to see. He was a
small, dark man, who looked as if some of the original Sheffield smoke,
the smoke inhaled by the inventor day after day for half a century,
had given its hue to his complexion. He was wiry, and well built,
active, energetic, a good shot, a good horseman, a lover of field
sports and wild animals, loving, after the sportsman’s fashion, even
the creatures he destroyed, curious about their habits, keen in his
admiration of their strength and beauty. For the rest, he was a man of
widest beneficence, charitable, hospitable, and he was a man whom the
better-born Jack Vansittart loved and honoured.
They were about the same age, and had been at Eton and Oxford together,
and Jack knew his friend by heart. He could have chosen no better
husband for his sister; he could have chosen no man he would have
preferred to call his brother-in-law. It seemed to him sometimes that
he could have hardly liked a brother better than he liked Hubert
Hartley.
Vansittart was still a gentleman at leisure. He had coquetted with
politics, and had allowed himself to be spoken of as a young man who
might prove an acquisition to the Conservative party, but he had not
allowed himself to be nominated for any constituency. “The party is
strong enough to get on without me,” he said; “I’ll wait till the
General Election, and then I’ll go in for all I know, and try to gain
them a seat from the enemy. I should like to try my luck in Yorkshire,
and win an election against Hubert and all his merry men. I might stand
for Burtborough--attack Hartley in his own stronghold.”
Burtborough was the small market town that supplied the necessities
of Hartley Manor House. The Hartleys had represented Burtborough for
two generations, but Hubert had withdrawn from the political arena,
disgusted at the turn of events, and finding more pleasure in turnips
and prize cattle than in the art of legislation. He had never been
brilliant either as an orator or debater, and he thought he had done
his duty by country and party when he had secured the election of a
conscientious Liberal for Burtborough. Marriage had helped to make him
lazy. He loved his home; stable and gardens; farm and woods; his pretty
wife and cooing baby. His brother-in-law thought him the most enviable
among men.
“He has all the desires of his heart,” thought Vansittart. “He has
not an unsatisfied ambition. He has a clear conscience, can look his
fellow-men straight in the face and say, ‘I have injured no man:’ as I
cannot, God help me: as I never can so long as I live. At every turn of
the road I expect to meet some one whom I have injured--a mother who
may have loved that man as my mother loves me--a sister whose life has
been made desolate by his death, reprobate though he was. No man stands
alone in the world. Whoever he may be, when he falls, he will drag down
some one.”
And then he thought of Fiordelisa, with her sunny Italian eyes, and
her light-hearted acceptance of such good things as Fate threw in her
way--the lodgings on the Rialto, the mandoline lessons, the fine dress
and good food. She had taken these things as if they were manna from
heaven; and assuredly no rigid principle, no adherence to her Church
Catechism, would restrain her from seeking manna from new sources. What
had she become, he wondered, in the years that had made his crime an
old memory? An artist’s model, or something worse? In these days of
photography that beautiful face of hers would have less value than in
the golden age of Tintoret and Veronese.
He had done his best to forget that scene at Florian’s; but the image
of Fiordelisa returned to his memory very often, harden himself as
he might against the pangs of remorse, and the thought of her always
saddened him. He had the same kind of sorrow for having spoilt her life
as he might have felt had he been cruel to a child. Her ignorance,
her friendlessness appealed so strongly to his pity--and even the old
aunt, who so placidly accepted the situation, did not appear to him as
odious as a hard-headed Englishwoman would have appeared under the same
conditions.
Nearly three years had passed, and he knew no more about the man he
stabbed than he had known when the dagger dropped from his hand warm
with the stranger’s life-blood. The most watchful attention to the
newspapers had resulted in no further knowledge. There had been an
occasional paragraph about the fatal brawl in Venice. He was thankful
to observe that no one had written of his crime as murder. The fact
that the dagger had been bought within an hour of its fatal use--the
accidental nature of the encounter--and the brutality of the unknown’s
attack had been discussed at length, and there had been a good deal of
speculation as to his own character and social status. Had the event
happened a few years later some keen-witted special correspondent
would doubtless have contrived to interview Fiordelisa; and the girl’s
artless prattle and her Venetian environment would have furnished
material for a spirited article.
The interest in the death of a nameless Englishman soon died out,
and the newspapers found no more to say about the fatal brawl in the
Piazza, and as the years went by Vansittart told himself that this dark
chapter in his life was closed for ever, that the mother who loved him
would never know that his conscience was burdened with the death of a
fellow-creature.
Looking backward he remembered an occasion in his boyhood when a
sudden impulse of fury had brought disgrace upon him, and had caused
his mother much distress of mind. It was at a time when he was reading
hard at home with a private tutor, shortly before he went to Oxford. A
groom had ill-used one of his horses, or Vansittart believed he had,
and the young man had attacked and belaboured him severely. The lad
had been able to defend himself, and the two had been fairly matched
as to weight and size, but Vansittart had all the science on his side,
and he felt afterwards that he had disgraced himself by the encounter.
His mother’s distress grieved him deeply; and he went so far as to
apologize to the vanquished hireling, which apology raised him to the
pinnacle of honour in the opinion of the stable generally.
“There’s plenty of young masters as would chuck a sovereign to a lad
he’d whacked, but it’s only a thoroughbred one that would say, ‘I beg
your pardon, Bates; I ought to have known better,’” said the old family
coachman, who had driven Master Jack to be christened.
The burden upon his conscience was an old burden by this time, and he
was able to carry his load so that no one suspected evil under that
pleasant, open-hearted aspect of a man who fulfilled all the social
duties. He was a good son, a kind and affectionate brother, a generous
landlord and master. As the world saw his life there was no flaw in
it. He had troops of friends, an honourable status, plenty of money,
everything that this world can give of good, in that moderate measure
which the poet-philosopher has taught us to esteem as life’s best.
“I suppose the sword is hanging by a hair somewhere, and will drop when
I least expect it,” he said to himself, in the hour of dark memories.
A chance allusion--some loving word of praise from his mother, the turn
of a conversation, the plot of a play or a novel--would sometimes stir
the dark waters of memory; but he did his best to forget, since there
was nothing that he could do to atone; and he tried to convince himself
that it was all the better for humanity at large that there was one
reprobate less in the world.
This had been his temper for the last year or so, as memory lost
something of its vivid colouring; and he had come to take that act of
his in Venice as part and parcel of his life and character.
He bore himself gaily enough in this Christmas holiday at Redwold
Towers, and Lady Hartley declared that he was the life and soul of her
house-party.
“You have not such a passion for field-sports as the rest of the
men,” she said. “One may hope to be favoured with your society for
an occasional hour between breakfast and dinner, while those other
wretches troop off in their horrid thick boots before I come downstairs
in the morning, and I hear no more of them till dinner, unless I go
with the luncheon cart.”
“I’m afraid my superiority must be put down to advancing years and
growing laziness. I never was so good a shot as Hubert, and I have
never been as keen a sportsman.”
“Perhaps that is because you have spent so much of your holiday life on
the Continent. Hubert would be miserable if he were asked to spend a
winter out of the British Isles, unless he were pig-sticking in India,
or fishing in Canada, or hunting lions in Africa. He cannot get on
without killing things. You are not like that. You have no thirst for
blood.”
“No,” answered Jack, with a laugh; “I am not great at killing things,
though I am just English enough to think poorly of the straightest run
if it doesn’t end in blood.”
“Oh, of course, I know you can ride, and that you have a proper English
love of hunting and shooting, but you don’t give your life up to sport
and farming as Hubert does. You have only to look at his boots, and
you can understand his life. Such an array of bluchers, tops, brogues,
waterproof fishing boots and dreadful hobnailed, broad-toed things,
that look like instruments of torture--as if they had been modelled
upon the boot that one reads of under the Plantagenets and Tudors.
People talk of writing as an index of character. I would rather see a
man’s boots than his penmanship if I wanted to know what kind of man he
was.”
“And you put me down as a single-soled, effeminate person?” said Jack;
whereat there was a laugh from the house-party, sitting cosily round
the morning-room fire, with the exception of one industrious matron
who sat by the window, toiling at an early English counterpane which
required to be worked upon a frame.
“No, no. I don’t consider you womanish. You would never sink into the
useful family friend, or the tame cat, even if you were to remain a
bachelor all your life. But your boots are more human than Hubert’s;
and you are fond of art, and books, and music, for which I fear he
cares very little.”
“He cares for something much better,” said Vansittart. “He cares for
humanity, and is always thinking how he can improve the condition of
the people who are dependent upon him. His cottages at Hartley are
models of all that cottages should be, and there is not a good point
about them that he has not thought out for himself.”
“Yes, he is always his own architect, and he has really some very good
notions, though he is not as picturesque as I should like him to be in
his ideas. The cottages about here may not be as commodious as ours in
Yorkshire, but they are ever so much prettier--dear old cottages, more
than half roof, and with the quaintest casements.”
“And very little light or air inside, I dare say; capital cottages for
the landscape, but not so agreeable for the folks inside.”
The party in the morning-room consisted of the three Miss
Champernownes, daughters of a Cornish baronet, all three handsome,
stylish, accomplished, everything in short that Mrs. Vansittart would
have approved in a daughter-in-law; Mrs. Baddington, the lady of the
counterpane, who was so completely absorbed in her needlework that she
might as well have stopped at her own fireside; but as her husband,
Major Baddington, was a good shot and a pleasant companion, the lady’s
inoffensive dulness was tolerated in country houses.
The other ladies present were Mrs. Vansittart and a Miss Green, a young
lady who gave herself airs on the strength of her people being _the_
Greens--the Greens of Peddlington--in whose particular case the name of
Green was supposed to rank with Guelph or Ghibelline. Miss Green was
plain, but clever, and was as boastful of her plainness as of her good
old name. Her people were rich, and she had inherited an independent
fortune from a bachelor uncle, who had bequeathed his wealth to her
with an embargo against marriage with any man--less than a Peer--who
should refuse to assume the name of Green. And even in the case of her
marriage with a Peer, it was ordained that her second son should be
called Green--by letters patent--and should inherit the Green wealth,
strictly tied up in the case of the heiress.
Miss Green was economical to meanness--perhaps with some dim idea
of enriching that hypothetical scion of nobility--and was proud of
her economy. Her chief delight in the metropolis was to go long
distances--generally in an omnibus--in quest of cheapness; and she
was a scourge to all the young matrons of her acquaintance by her
keen interest in their housekeeping, her knowledge of prices, and her
outspoken condemnation of their extravagance. She had one original idea
which had achieved a kind of distinction for her from the housekeeping
point of view, and that was her non-belief in the Co-operative Stores.
Such was the feminine portion of the house-party at Redwold Towers,
and it was to this party that John Vansittart had succeeded in making
himself eminently agreeable. He had admired the artistic shading and
Tudoresque scroll-work of Mrs. Baddington’s counterpane, and had
surprised that lady by what seemed a profound knowledge of early
Florentine needlework. He had tramped Blackdown in the wind and the
weather with the Miss Champernownes, turn and turn about, and was no
nearer falling in love with any of the three than when he began these
rambles; he had discussed the art of dressing well upon fifty pounds
a year with Miss Green, and had allowed her to convince him that the
Greens of Peddlington were a purer race than the Plantagenets; and
to-day he had given himself up to idleness in the gynæceum, otherwise
morning-room, and had offered himself for two round dances apiece to
the four young ladies, at the hunt ball in the little rustic town, to
which they were all going that evening.
“It will be an awful drive,” said Maud Hartley; “think what the hills
will be like in this weather.”
There had been an “old-fashioned Christmas,” and the world outside the
windows was for the most part a white world.
“The horses have been roughed, and your coachman tells me he has no
fear of the hills,” said Vansittart. “He is going to take four horses.”
“I’m sure they’ll be wanted, poor things, with that big omnibus and a
herd of us to drag up those terrible hills,” said his sister.
“If you have any feeling for the brute creation you can get out and
walk up the hills,” said Jack.
“What, in our satin slippers? How very delightful!”
There was no one heroic enough to propose walking up the hills at
ten o’clock that evening, when the omnibus from Redwold went bowling
merrily over the frost-bound roads, uphill and downhill, at a splendid
even pace, and with a rhythmical jingle of bars and chains, as the
four upstanding browns laid themselves out for their work, going as if
it was a pleasure to go through the steel-blue night, with the quiet
fields and pastures stretching round them, silvery in the moonshine,
while in every dip and hollow the oak and chestnut copses lay wrapped
in shadow, darkly mysterious.
They skirted Bexley Hill, they passed by sleeping villages and
wind-swept commons.
“Are we nearly there?” asked Hilda Champernowne.
“Hardly halfway,” answered Lady Hartley. “I told you it was a long
drive.”
There was a bright lamp inside the omnibus, a lamp which lit up the
three Miss Champernownes in a cloud of gauze and satin, white as the
snow-drifts in the valleys, a lamp which shone on three heads of
glittering gold-brown hair, and three pairs of fine eyes, and three
cherry mouths, and three swanlike throats rising out of ostrich
plumage. It shone on Maud Hartley’s cloak of scarlet and gold and
blue-fox fur, and sparkled on the diamond solitaires in her ears, clear
and white as dewdrops on a sunny morning.
They were a very merry party. Major Baddington and Sir Hubert were
outside, wrapped to the ears in fur coats and caps, and enjoying their
smoke in the frosty air. Vansittart and two other young men rode inside
with the feminine contingent, who were glad of this leaven of masculine
society, though they pretended to be in alarm at the crushing of their
draperies.
“I feel a dark foreboding that all the dancing men will have engaged
themselves for the evening before we arrive,” said Claudia Champernowne.
“Not if they know the Miss Champernownes are going to be there,” said
Mr. Tivett, a young man with a small voice and a reputation for all the
social talents.
“Who cares anything about us?” cried Claudia. “We are strangers in the
land.”
“I think that some of the dancing men will wait for my party,” said
Maud. “I am famous for taking pretty girls to our local dances.”
They were steadily ascending the worst hill they had to climb; the
omnibus was on an inclined plane, and Hilda Champernowne in her place
at the back of the vehicle looked down upon Jack Vansittart seated in a
hollow by the door. They were near the top, when the brake was put on
suddenly, and the horses were pulled up. A ripple of silvery laughter
rang out upon the frosty air.
“Fairies!” cried Vansittart.
“Who can it be, and why are we stopping?” asked Miss Champernowne,
“when we are so late, too!”
There were voices, two or three feminine voices, all talking at once,
and then Hubert was heard answering. Anon more laughter. Sir Hubert and
a groom got off the ’bus, and the former came to the door.
“Can you make room for three girls?” he asked.
“Not for a mouse,” replied his wife. “We are hideously crushed already.
I believe all our gowns are spoilt.”
“Then a little more squeezing won’t hurt,” said Sir Hubert. “Look here,
you three men can come outside. It’ll be a tight pack, but we’ll manage
it, and the three ladies can have your places. It’s a lovely night.
You’re none of you bronchial, I hope.”
“A chronic sufferer, from my cradle,” said Mr. Tivett, in a meek,
little voice.
“Oh, Tivett can stay inside. He is the nearest approach I know to
Euclid’s definition of a line--length without breadth.”
Jack Vansittart was out by this time, and Reggie Hudson, a soldierly
young man, slipped out after him. The women drew themselves together
discontentedly. Each would have had an omnibus to herself if she could.
“I haven’t the faintest idea whom we are making room for,” grumbled
Maud.
“I know we shall be dreadfully late,” sighed Claudia.
“I say, you good folks out there, hurry up, please,” cried the gallant
Tivett. “It’s getting on for eleven, and this isn’t a picnic-party.”
He was talking to the empty air. A ripple of that elfin laughter from
the top of the hill was all that answered him. Sir Hubert, Vansittart,
and Major Baddington were all standing round a most melancholy specimen
of the genus fly, the very oldest and mouldiest of one-horse landaus,
which had broken down hopelessly on the top of the hill.
“We knew that the springs were weak,” said a silver-clear voice out of
a swansdown hood. “They’ve been getting weaker and weaker ever since
we’ve had anything to do with the fly; but we had no idea the shafts
were all wrong.”
“The shafts were right enough when we started, miss,” growled a voice
that was half muffled in a red comforter, such a comforter as denotes
the rustic fly-man. “It was your weight coming up the hill as did it.”
“My weight!” cried Swansdownhood, lifting herself up on her springy
feet like a feminine Mercury. “Do I look such a Daniel Lambert?”
Her hood fell off with that arch toss of the head, and looking at
her in the vivid moonlight it seemed to Jack Vansittart as if that
jocular exclamation of his had been well founded, and that the woman
who stood before him on the crest of the hill, her beauty and her
whiteness shining out against the steel-blue sky--“like a finer light
in light”--was enchanting enough to have stood for Titania.
She was very tall, but so slim and willowy of form that her height
made her no less sylph-like--a queen of sylphs, perhaps, but assuredly
of that aerial family. She was dazzlingly fair, and her small head
was crowned with a nimbus of pale gold hair, in which there sparkled
a galaxy of diamond starlets. Her small nose was tip-tilted, but with
a tilt so archly delicate as to be more beautiful than the purest
Grecian, or so Vansittart thought, seeing her thus for the first time
in the glamour of night and moonshine, and with all the piquancy of the
unexpected.
“The horse fell down, and the shafts went crash,” said another
young person, who presented to view only a nose and narrow slip of
face between the folds of a red plaid shawl, just such a shawl as a
well-to-do farmer’s wife might have worn driving to market. “I thought
we should all be killed.”
“And so you would have been, if I hadn’t put the brake on sharp, and
got down and sat on ’is ’ed,” said the fly-man. “That horse didn’t
ought to have been sent out on such roads as this, and if I’d been
master he wouldn’t have been.”
“We won’t trouble you for your opinions, my friend,” said Sir Hubert,
throwing a florin lightly into the man’s hand. “You’d better take your
beast home, and give yourself a hot drink. I’ll take care of Miss
Marchant and her sisters.”
“Oh, but really,” said Swansdownhood, “it is immensely good of
you--only they had better send a fly for us after the dance. We can’t
encroach upon you for the home journey.”
“Why not? Of course we shall take you home. Come along; I’m afraid
you’re catching cold while we’re talking.”
He marched the three girls--the spokeswoman and tallest all in white
from top to toe, the second with a black lace frock showing below
her Stuart shawl, the third muffled in a blue opera cloak and a blue
Shetland scarf, commonly called a cloud.
“Here are the Miss Marchants, come to claim your hospitality,” said Sir
Hubert to his wife; whereupon Maud replied, graciously--
“Oh, how do you do, you poor things? Pray come in. How cold you must
be! Did your carriage break down? How dreadful! I’m afraid there’s
not much heat left in our foot-warmers, but it is tolerably warm here
still”--the atmosphere inside the ’bus was tropical--“and I hope you’ll
be able to make yourselves comfortable.”
“Such a dreadful intrusion!”
“Such a herd of us!”
“How you must all detest us!” cried three fresh young voices all at
once.
The three Champernownes and the Green maintained a stolid silence.
Those four pairs of eyes were coldly appraising the intruders--their
faces, their dress, their social status, everything about them.
The fair tall girl in the swansdown hood was very pretty. That fact
the most unfriendly observer could not deny. Whether that dazzling
fairness was in some part artificial remained to be proved under a
more searching light than the omnibus lamp; but even if that alabaster
complexion were due to blanc de something the girl’s eyes were
real--lovely dancing blue-grey eyes, softened by dark brown lashes.
Her nose was the prettiest thing in that unrecognized order of noses;
mouth and chin were in perfect harmony; and she looked round at the
strange faces with the sweetest smile, as if she had never suffered
from prejudice or undeserved disdain.
The other two girls were of the same type, but not so pretty. The blue
girl was freckled and weather-beaten; the Stuart plaid girl was too
pale. Titania had taken the lion’s share of the family beauty.
But their dress--that at least afforded widest scope for the scorner.
The swansdown hood was of the year one, or perhaps might have been
fashionable in the historic winter of the Crimean war; the blue cloud
and tawdry blue opera cloak suggested all that is commonest in cheap
finery; and what manner of surroundings could a girl have whose people
allowed her to go to a hunt ball with her head and shoulders skewered
in a tartan shawl with a blanket pin?
“We are taking no chaperon,” said Titania, brightly. “Mrs. Ponto is to
chaperon us.”
Mrs. Ponto was the wife of a solicitor at Mandelford, the little town
where the ball was being given. It was the first hunt ball there had
been at Mandelford within the memory of Sussex, and the fact that this
ball was taking place at Mandelford was due to the enterprise of a
local cabinet-maker, who had built a public hall or assembly room at
the back of his shop, and had thus provided a place for festivity or
culture; music, amateur theatricals, Oxford or Cambridge lectures,
conjuring or Christy Minstrels.
After that little apologetic remark about the chaperon, there followed
a silence, the Champernownes and Miss Green remaining figures of stone,
and Maud Hartley feeling that she had done her duty as hostess. The
carriage rolled merrily over the frost-bound road, and the hoofs of the
four horses sounded like an advance of cavalry in the winter stillness.
Perhaps the silence inside the omnibus would have lasted all the way to
Mandelford had it not been for little Mr. Tivett, who sat between two
Miss Champernownes, half hidden among billows of snowy gauze, peeping
out at the three pretty faces on the other side of the ’bus, with
bright, inquisitive eyes, like a squirrel out of his nest.
“I don’t know what I have done to offend you, Lady Hartley, that you
should not think me worthy to be introduced to these young ladies,”
said the good little man at last.
“My dear Mr. Tivett, it was an oversight on my part. I forgot that you
and the Miss Marchants had not met before. Of course, you are dying
to know them.--Miss Marchant, allow me to introduce Mr. Tivett, a
devoted admirer of your sex--a gentleman who knows more about a lady’s
dress, and a lady’s accomplishments and amusements, than one woman in a
hundred.”
“My dear Lady Hartley,” remonstrated Tivett, in his piping voice, “Miss
Marchant will run away with the idea that I am a horrible effeminate
little person.”
“She will very soon discover that you are the most obliging little
person, and I dare say she will end by being as fond of you as I am.”
“Dearest Lady Hartley, how delightful of you to say that!” exclaimed
Mr. Tivett, with a coquettish giggle, darting out his little suède
glove to give his hostess an affectionate pat on the shoulder; “and now
you have heard my character, Miss Marchant, please will you give me a
dance?”
“With pleasure,” replied Eve, wondering whether she would look very
ridiculous spinning round a public ball-room with this funny little
man, who was small enough to be almost hidden in the Champernowne
draperies; “which shall it be?”
“Oh, the first waltz after our arrival, and I hope your sisters will
each give me one of the extras.”
“I shall be very glad,” said the girl in the tartan shawl. “I don’t
suppose I shall have too many partners.”
Mr. Tivett looked at the three faces critically. The eldest girl was
much the prettiest, but there was a family likeness. The faces were all
of one type, and they were all pretty. It smote Mr. Tivett’s gentle
heart to think these nice girls should be so badly dressed, while the
Champernownes, who always snubbed him, and whom he hated, were glorious
in frocks fresh from Bond Street. Lady Hartley had not exaggerated
Mr. Tivett’s devotion to the fair sex. He loved the society of young
matrons and girls in their teens, was never happier than when making
himself useful to the ladies of the family, and especially rejoiced
when consulted upon any question of etiquette or costume. He was
reputed to have faultless taste in dress, and an exquisite tact in
all social matters; and when two matrons of his acquaintance happened
to quarrel, each was apt to impart the story of her wrongs to Mr.
Tivett, whose only difficulty was to be the adviser of both, without
seeming unfaithful to either. He was not a sportsman, and he pleaded
a weak chest as a reason for loving easy-chairs, and cosy corners in
boudoirs and morning-rooms, and a seat in a carriage when other men
were walking. His Christian name was Augustus; but he was always known
as Gus, or Gussie.
Having been introduced to the eldest sister, Mr. Tivett was on easy
terms with the three girls in about five minutes, and for the rest of
the journey the four were prattling gaily, Lady Hartley chiming in now
and then, just for civility’s sake, while the other women maintained
their unfriendly silence.
“I knew we should be late,” Claudia Champernowne exclaimed at last, as
the omnibus drew up at a lighted door, and she saw the long line of
carriages filling the rustic street from end to end.
Miss Green and the Champernownes marched at once to the cloak-room, an
upper room over the shop, whither Lady Hartley followed. The Marchant
girls fell back, and lingered in the vestibule--said vestibule being
neither more nor less than the cabinet-maker’s empty shop, transformed
by scarlet and white draperies and evergreens in pots. The Marchants
felt that Lady Hartley’s hospitality came to an end at the door of the
ball-room, and that they would do ill to attach themselves to her party.
“I think we had better wait here for our chaperon,” said Eve, as Maud
looked back at her from the stairs. “I’m sure we can never be too
grateful to you for bringing us, Lady Hartley.”
“Please don’t speak of such a trifle. I am to take you home, remember.
You must look out for us at three o’clock.”
“At three o’clock,” thought Jenny, of the tartan shawl; “that’s as much
as to say, ‘In the mean time we don’t know you.’”
They waited in a little group near the stairs, and saw the three
Champernownes come sweeping down, swanlike, beautiful, “in gloss
of satin and glimmer of pearls,” and Miss Green in a very severe,
tight-fitting yellow silk frock, with a shortish skirt, and round her
homely-complexioned throat a collet necklace of emeralds without flaw
or feather; and Lady Hartley in a fuss and flutter of palest blue,
which seemed just the most telling background for her diamonds. She had
diamonds everywhere, butterflies, stars, true lovers’ knots, hearts,
and horseshoes, dotted about bust and shoulders amongst the soft
fluffiness of azure gauze; diamonds in her hair, in her ears, on her
arms. And yet she did not look vulgarly fine. The slender elegance of
her form, the delicate colouring of her face and neck harmonized the
jewels.
While the Hartley party were composing themselves for their entrance
to the dancing-room, a stout matron in red satin and black lace came
sailing in, wrapped to the eyes in a white Shetland shawl, and at once
made for the Marchants, whom she deliberately kissed, one after the
other.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting long, dears,” she said, in a fat,
good-natured voice. “Ponto had a business appointment at Haslemere, and
didn’t get back to his dinner till nine o’clock.”
Mr. Ponto was grinning in the background, very red and puffy, as
from a hurried toilet, and with a scarlet camelia in his button-hole;
scarlet out of compliment to the hunt.
“Oh no, we have only just come,” answered Eve, troubled by the
supercilious stare of the youngest Miss Champernowne, who was looking
back from the threshold of the ball-room while the others went in,
looking at Mrs. Ponto as at some natural curiosity; and indeed to a
young lady whose evening frock had been produced new and immaculate
from a Bond Street carton Mrs. Ponto’s crimson satin, lately “done
up” with Nottingham lace, and obviously “let out” to accommodate Mrs.
Ponto’s increasing bulk, was a thing to wonder at.
The three Marchants and their chaperon entered the ball-room in a
cluster. The Redwold Towers party was absorbed in the brilliant throng,
had gone straight into the zenith, where the two local peeresses were
holding a kind of court, a court splendid with family diamonds and
hereditary _point d’Alençon_. Mrs. Ponto made a dash for a corner of
the raised bench that went round the room, and established herself and
her charges in this coign of vantage.
“If we don’t get seats at once we mightn’t have a chance of sitting
down for an hour,” said Mrs. Ponto. “Ain’t the room full? Now, dears, I
shall stay here till some one takes me in to supper, so you can leave
your fans with me, and feel you’ve got some one to come to between your
dances. I had my cup of tea before I came, so I shan’t trouble about
the tea-room. It’s a pretty sight, ain’t it?”
A waltz was just ending. The room was very full, but there was the
usual surplus of nice-looking girls sitting down, with the usual
sprinkling of men who wouldn’t dance, and who were quite satisfied to
stand about and get in the way of the dancers.
The peeresses and their court were on the opposite side of the room, in
a central position, which commanded dancers, band, and the festooned
archway leading to the tea-room. Lady Hartley had seated herself
next old Lady Mandelford, a dowager with white hair, whose son was
the well-known Lord Mandelford, a man of prodigious wealth and local
importance, a rustic Royalty.
Eve had shaken out her well-worn white frock. It was made of some soft
woollen stuff, which her old servant Nancy had washed, so it had at
least the merit of purity. On that tall and perfectly balanced figure
the cheap, simple gown looked exquisite, and the fair fluffy head,
with its glitter of starlets, could not have looked more enchanting
had the starlets been old Brazilian diamonds, like Lady Mandelford’s,
instead of cut glass mounted at Birmingham. The younger sisters had
aimed higher than Eve. One in blue, the other in red, straining
after Parisian fashion, in cheap silk and satin, had only achieved
tawdriness. Eve, in her white frock, might challenge criticism.
There was some one on the other side of the room who thought her
lovely as a dream, the same man whose eyes had gazed on her beauty in
the moonlight an hour ago, and who had told himself that such a face
belonged to fairyland rather than to this dull, everyday earth. He
stood looking at her now, across the dancers and the crowd, as she
sat demurely in her corner, her alabaster fairness set off by the
scarlet background. He put his arm through Sir Hubert’s. “When you’ve
done talking to Miss Champernowne I want you to introduce me to Miss
Marchant,” he said.
“With all my heart. But there are three Miss Marchants. Which of the
three are you dying to know?”
“The fair girl, in white.”
“Oh, she’s the eldest. They are all fair, but I suppose she’s the
fairest. Come along, then. I’m to dance the Lancers, Maud tells me,” he
added, lowering his voice, “and with Lady Mandelford. I’m to steer the
dowager through that complicated performance.”
Sir Hubert wore the hunt colours, a scarlet coat with black velvet
collar and white satin facings, and he felt that it behoved him to make
some sacrifice in honour of a dance that was called the hunt ball.
“Don’t forget that you have engaged yourself to us, Mr. Vansittart,”
said Miss Green, severely. “You are bespoken for eight dances out of
eighteen. Three of the eighteen are gone already. You will have to make
the most of the seven that remain to you after you have done your duty
to us.”
He had forgotten all about those pledges given in the morning-room.
Eight dances with young women for whom he cared not a straw, about
whom familiarity had bred something not very far from contempt. Eight
dances, a veritable bondage; while Eve Marchant was sitting meekly in
her corner, partnerless. No, not partnerless; even as he looked little
Mr. Tivett marched up to her with an all-conquering air, and led her in
among the dancers, just beginning a waltz.
Vansittart took Miss Green’s programme out of her hand with a desperate
air.
“Let’s begin at once--if you are disengaged,” he said.
“That makes one off,” she answered, laughing, as she rose and took his
arm. “How dreadfully sorry for yourself you look!”
“Then my looks belie me. I was never gladder for myself. I see you have
ever so many engagements already. Shall I put myself down for number
eighteen?”
“Certainly. You are sure we shall have left before that number arrives.”
They were moving slowly among the dancers by this time, and a minute
later they spun off with a fine rhythmical swing. Miss Green was what
the hunting men called a splendid mover. She had taken trouble to
excel in her paces, knowing that her appearance was against ball-room
triumphs. Men liked to dance with her--for three reasons. She was rich;
she waltzed well; and she had a malevolent tongue, which amused her
partners.
It was her delight to criticize her fairer sisters--the flaws in
their beauty; the tricks which helped them to be beautiful; their
affectations; their vanities; their bad taste.
“Did you ever see three young women ‘fagotées’ like those Marchant
girls?” she murmured, in a low, clear voice, which she had cultivated
for speaking evil of people near at hand. “That blue girl--that red
girl! I don’t know which is worse! The blue frock is an inch and a half
shorter on one side than on the other--an advantage, as it shows off
the blue slipper, which doesn’t match the frock, and the blue stocking,
which doesn’t match the slipper. But the red girl! Please notice the
lacing of the red bodice. I assure you the girl isn’t humpbacked,
though that bodice certainly suggests deformity.”
“How observant you are, Miss Green; and with what a keen eye for the
infinitesimal!”
“I am looking at their chaperon now--the enormous person in dyed
crimson satin. It must have been her wedding-gown ages ago--a sweet
silver-grey. You don’t call that lady infinitesimal, I hope?”
“Physically large, perhaps--but, from your mental standpoint,
microscopic. Now, confess, Miss Green, don’t you think these people
infinitely insignificant, simply because they happen not to be rich?”
“I think them immensely amusing. One sees such people only at public
balls in the heart of the country. That is why public balls are such
fun. Do look at the glass stars in the tallest Miss Marchant’s hair!
Did you ever see anything so absurd?”
“What does it matter whether they are glass or diamonds of the purest
water? All the gems that were ever ground at Amsterdam could not make
her more like a beautiful sylph--Undine--Titania--what you will.”
“Your comparisons are not flattering to the young lady’s intellect.
Undine was mindless and soulless; Titania--if Shakespeare knew anything
about her--was a silly little person who fell desperately in love with
a donkey.”
Their waltz was over, but Miss Green wanted tea, or an ice, or a change
of atmosphere--anything which would retain Vansittart in attendance
upon her as long as possible. She kept him sitting by her side while
she sipped her tea, and ridiculed the people who came in and out of
the tea-room. She kept him in bondage while Mr. Tivett conducted Eve
Marchant to the buffet, and talked and laughed with her gaily as she
ate her ice. How prettily she ate that pink ice--with such a graceful
turn of the delicate wrist! Vansittart had leisure to study every line
of head and figure, while Miss Green prattled in his ear. He gave a
little automatic laugh now and then, feeling that the lady meant him
to be amused. Miss Marchant was a long time eating her ice, and was
evidently interested in Mr. Tivett’s conversation. Vansittart watched
her dreamily, not more jealous of Tivett than if he had seen her a few
years earlier, playing with her doll; but just as she had resigned
the empty ice-plate, and was moving towards the door, a man in a hunt
coat met and stopped her with a semi-authoritative air that made
Vansittart’s blood rush angrily to his brow, almost as if the man had
insulted him.
“You are saving some dances for me, I hope, Miss Marchant?” said the
unknown, with an easy, off-hand manner.
“I don’t know,” faltered Eve. “I mean I think I am engaged for a good
many waltzes--as many as I shall care to dance.”
“Let me see,” taking her programme out of her hand. “Oh, you fair
deceiver! Why, you might answer about this programme as Olivia did
about her history--‘A blank, my Lord.’ I shall write myself against
number seven--the dear old Manola--and eleven--a Waldteufel waltz--and,
let me see, shall we say fifteen?”
The man was good-looking, dark-haired and dark-eyed, well set up,
showing to advantage in the hunt coat--a man likely to be in request at
a dance; yet it was evident that Eve Marchant wanted to avoid him. She
looked pained and even angry at his persistence.
“My engagements are not upon that card,” she said; “and I am sure you
must have a great many people with whom you ought to dance--sooner than
with me.”
“That’s my business. I have set my heart upon at least three dances
with you.”
“Then I am sorry to disappoint you; I am engaged for all those numbers.”
“But you are free for others? Tell me which.”
“That is Mr. Sefton, of Chadleigh,” said Miss Green, confidentially.
“Rather handsome, ain’t he? But not good form. He is not a favourite in
his own neighbourhood; but he and Miss Marchant are evidently upon very
friendly terms.”
Eve had left the tea-room with Mr. Tivett, closely followed by Mr.
Sefton, and Vansittart sat looking after the three retreating figures
till they were absorbed in the crowd that filled the dancing-room.
“Did you think so?” he said coldly. “It seemed to me that the gentleman
was not a favourite with the young lady.”
“If you had seen them on Christmas Eve on the ice you would have a
very different opinion. He was teaching her the outside edge. He was
devoted, and she seemed delighted. He would be a great catch for her;
but I’m afraid he’s too much a man of the world to be trapped by a
pretty face. He will look higher than Miss Marchant.”
“What and who is he?”
“Oh, he belongs to an old Sussex family, and has a fine place on the
other side of Blackdown. I am told he is clever; but he is not nice,
somehow. People don’t seem to trust him. And there are ugly stories
about him, I believe, stories that are not told to ladies, but which
have made him unpopular in his own neighbourhood, especially among
his own tenant-farmers and cottagers. There are the Lancers, and I am
engaged to a callow youth who came with the Mandelford party.”
She rose hurriedly, relinquishing her teacup, which Vansittart had
been wearily waiting for, with an air of having been detained by his
assiduity. The callow youth, looking very fair and pretty in his
brand-new pink coat, appeared in the doorway.
“Oh, Mith Gween, I have been looking for you evewywha’,” he murmured;
and they went off to take their places.
Their vis-à-vis were Mr. Sefton and Miss Marchant.
“So she is dancing with him, after all,” thought Vansittart, curiously
vexed. “Varium et mutabile semper femina!”