Vixen Volume I Part 23

"I can never resist it. And perhaps after tea you will be so good as to give me the treat you talked about just now."

"To show you the house?" said Mrs. Tempest. "Do you think we shall have light enough?"

"Abundance. An old house like this is seen at its best in the twilight.

Don't you think so, Mrs. Scobel?"

"Oh, yes," exclaimed Mrs. Scobel, with a lively recollection of her alb.u.m. "'They who would see Melrose aright, should see it'--I think, by-the-bye, Sir Walter Scott says, 'by moonlight.'"

"Yes, for an ancient Gothic abbey; but twilight is better for a Tudor manor-house. Are you sure it will not fatigue you?" inquired the Captain, with an air of solicitude, as Mrs. Tempest rose languidly.

"No; I shall be very pleased to show you the dear old place. It is full of sad a.s.sociations, of course, out I do not allow my mind to dwell upon them more than I can help."

"No," cried Vixen bitterly. "We go to dinner-parties and kettledrums, and go into raptures about orchids and old china, and try to cure our broken hearts that way."

"Are you coming, Violet?" asked her mother sweetly.

"No, thanks, mamma. I am tired after my ride. Mrs. Scobel will help you to play cicerone."

Captain Winstanley left the room without so much as a look at Violet Tempest. Yet her rude reception had galled him more than any cross that fate had lately inflicted upon him. He had fancied that time would have softened her feeling towards him, that rural seclusion and the society of rustic n.o.bodies would have made him appear at an advantage, that she would have welcomed the brightness and culture of metropolitan life in his person. He had hoped a great deal from the lapse of time since their last meeting. But this sullen reception, this silent expression of dislike, told him that Violet Tempest's aversion was a plant of deep root.

"The first woman who ever disliked me," he thought. "No wonder that she interests me more than other women. She is like that chestnut mare that threw me six times before I got the better of her. Yet she proved the best horse I ever had, and I rode her till she hadn't a leg to stand upon, and than sold her for twice the money she cost me. There are two conquests a man can make over a woman, one to make her love him, the other----"

"That suit of chain-armour was worn by Sir Gilbert Tempest at Acre,"

said the widow. "The plate-armour belonged to Sir Percy, who was killed at Barnet. Each of them was knighted before he was five-and-twenty years old, for prowess in the field. The portrait over the chimneypiece is the celebrated Judge Tempest, who was famous for----Well, he did something wonderful, I know. Perhaps Mrs. Scobel remembers," concluded Mrs. Tempest, feebly.

"It was at the trial of the seven bishops," suggested the Vicar's wife.

"In the time of Queen Elizabeth," a.s.sented Mrs. Tempest. "That one with the lace cravat and steel breastplate was an admiral in Charles the Second's reign, and was made a baronet for his valiant behaviour when the Dutch fleet were at Chatham. The baronetcy died with his son, who left only daughters. The eldest married a Mr. Percival, who took the name of Tempest, and sat for the borough of----Perhaps Mrs. Scobel knows. I have such a bad memory for these things; though I have heard my dear husband talk about them often."

Captain Winstanley looked round the great oak-panelled hall dreamily, and heard very little of Mrs. Tempest's vague prattling about her husband's ancestors.

What a lovely old place, he was thinking. A house that would give a man importance in the land, supported, as it was, by an estate bringing in something between five and six thousand a year. How much military distinction, how many battles must a soldier win before he could make himself master of such a fortune?

"And it needed but for that girl to like me, and a little gold ring would have given me the freehold of it all," thought Conrad Winstanley bitterly.

How many penniless girls, or girls with fortunes so far beneath the measure of a fine gentleman's needs as to be useless, had been over head and ears in love with the elegant Captain; how many pretty girls had tempted him by their beauty and winsomeness to be false to his grand principle that marriage meant promotion. And here was an obstinate minx who would have realised all his aims, and whom he felt himself able to love to distraction into the bargain; and, behold, some adverse devil had entered into her mind, and made Conrad Winstanley hateful to her.

"It's like witchcraft," he said to himself. "Why should this one woman be different from all other women? Perhaps it's the colour. That ruddy auburn hair, the loveliest I ever saw, means temper. But I conquered the chestnut, and I'll conquer Miss Tempest--or make her smart for it."

"A handsome music-gallery, is it not?" said the widow. "The carved bal.u.s.trade is generally admired."

Then they went into the dining-room, and looked cursorily at about a dozen large dingy pictures of the Italian school, which a man who knew anything about art would have condemned at a glance. Fine examples of brown varnish, all of them. Thence to the library, lined with its carved-oak dwarf bookcases, containing books which n.o.body had opened for a generation--Livy, Gibbon, Hume, Burke, Smollett, Plutarch, Thomson. These sages, clad in s.h.i.+ny brown leather and gilding, made as good a lining for the walls as anything else, and gave an air of snugness to the room in which the family dined when there was no company.

They came presently to the Squire's den, at the end of a corridor.

"That was my dear husband's study," sighed Mrs. Tempest. "It looks south, into the rose garden, and is one of the prettiest rooms in the house. But we keep it locked, and I think Violet has the key."

"Pray don't let Miss Tempest be disturbed," said Captain Winstanley. "I have seen quite enough to know what a delightful house you have--all the interest of days that are gone, all the luxuries of to-day. I think that blending of past and present is most fascinating. I should never be a severe restorer of antiquity, or refuse to sit in a chair that wasn't undeniably Gothic."

"Ah," sighed the Vicar's wife, who was an advanced disciple in the school of Eastlake, "but don't you think everything should be in harmony? If I were as rich as Mrs. Tempest, I wouldn't have so much as a teapot that was not strictly Tudor."

"Then I'm afraid you'd have to go without a teapot, and drink your tea out of a tankard," retorted Captain Winstanley.

"At any rate, I would be as Tudor as I could be."

"And not have a bra.s.s bedstead, a spring mattress, a moderator lamp, or a coal-scuttle in your house," said the captain. "My dear madam, it is all very well to be mediaeval in matters ecclesiastic, but home comforts must not be sacrificed in the pursuit of the aesthetic, or a modern luxury discarded because it looks like an anachronism."

Mrs. Scobel was delighted with Captain Winstanley. He was just the kind of man to succeed in a rustic community. His quiet self-a.s.surance set other people at their ease. He carried with him an air of life and movement, as if he were the patentee of a new pleasure.

"My husband would be so pleased to see you at the Vicarage, if you are staying any time in the neighbourhood," she said.

But after this little gush of friendliness, she reflected that there could not be much sympathy between the man of society and her Anglican parson; and that it was she, and not Ignatius Scobel, who would be glad to see Captain Winstanley at the Vicarage.

"I shall be charmed," he replied. "I never was so delighted with any place as your Forest. It is a new world to me. I hate myself for having lived in England so long without knowing this beautiful corner of the land. I am staying with my old chief, Colonel Pryke, at Warham Court, and I'm only here for a few days."

"But you are coming to my dinner-party?" said Mrs. Tempest.

"That is a pleasure I cannot deny myself."

"And you will come and see our church and schools?" said Mrs. Scobel.

"I shall be more than pleased. I pa.s.sed your pretty little church, I think, on my way here. There was a tin tea-ket--a bell ringing----"

"For vespers," exclaimed Mrs. Scobel.

The exploration of the house took a long time, conducted in this somewhat desultory and dawdling manner; but the closing in of night and the sound of the dinner-gong gave the signal for Captain Winstanley's departure.

Mrs. Tempest would have liked to ask him to dinner; but she had an idea that Violet might make herself objectionable, and refrained from this exercise of hospitality. He was coming to the great dinner. He would see her dress with the feather tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, which was really prettier than Worth's masterpiece, or, at any rate, newer; though it only came from Madame Theodore, of Bruton Street. Sustained by this comforting reflection, she parted with him quite cheerfully.

CHAPTER XIV.

"He was worthy to be loved a Lifetime."

Conrad Winstanley had come to the New Forest with his mind resolved upon one of two things. He meant to marry Violet Tempest or her mother.

If the case was quite hopeless with the daughter, he would content himself with winning the lesser prize; and though Vanity whispered that there was no woman living he might not win for himself if he chose to be sufficiently patient and persevering, instinct told him that Violet frankly detested him.

"After all," argued Worldly Wisdom, "the alternative is not to be despised. The widow is somewhat rococo; an old-fas.h.i.+oned jewel kept in cotton-wool, and brought out on occasions to s.h.i.+ne with a fact.i.tious brilliancy, like old Dutch garnets backed with tinfoil; but she is still pretty. She is ductile, amiable, and weak to a degree that promises a husband the sovereign dominion. Why break your heart for this fair devil of a daughter, who looks capable, if offended, of anything in the way of revenge, from a horsewhip to slow poison? Are a pair of brown eyes and a coronal of red gold hair worth all this wasted pa.s.sion?"

"But the daughter is the greater catch," urged Ambition. "The dowager's jointure is well enough, and she has the Abbey House and gardens for her life, but Violet will be sole mistress of the estate when she comes of age. As Violet's husband, your position would be infinitely better than it could be as her stepfather. Unhappily, the cantankerous minx has taken it into her head to dislike you."

"Stay," interjected the bland voice of Vanity; "may not this dislike be only an a.s.sumption, a mask for some deeper feeling? There are girls who show their love in that way. Do not be in a hurry to commit yourself to the mother until you have made yourself quite sure about the daughter."

Mrs. Tempest's dinner-party was a success. It introduced Captain Winstanley to all that was best in the surrounding society; for although in Switzerland he had seemed very familiar with the best people in the Forest, in Hamps.h.i.+re he appeared almost a stranger to them. It was generally admitted, however, that the Captain was an acquisition, and a person to be cultivated. He sang a French comic song almost as well as Monsieur de Roseau, recited a short Yankee poem, which none of his audience had ever heard before, with telling force.

He was at home upon every subject, from orchids to steam-ploughs, from ordnance to light literature. A man who sang so well, talked so well, looked so well, and behaved so well, could not be otherwise than welcome in county society. Before the evening was over, Captain Winstanley had been offered three hunters for the next day's run, and had been asked to write in four birthday-books.

Violet did not honour him with so much as a look, after her one cold recognition of his first appearance in the drawing-room. It was a party of more than twenty people, and she was able to keep out of his way without obvious avoidance of him. He was stung, but had no right to be offended.