Vixen. Volume I

"And I have not a friend in the world," she thought. "Plenty of pleasant acquaintance, ready to simper at me and pay me compliments, because I am Miss Tempest of the Abbey House, but not one honest friend to stand by me, and turn that man out of doors. How dare he come here? I thought I spoke plainly enough that night at Brighton."

She rode slowly up to the house, slipped lightly out of her saddle, and led her horse round to the stables, just as she had led the pony in her happy childish days. The bright thoroughbred bay was as fond of her as if he had been a dog, and as tame. She stood by his manger caressing him while he ate his corn, and feeling very safe from Captain Winstanley's society in the warm clover-scented stable.

She dawdled away half-a-hour in this manner, before she went back to the house, and ran up to her dressing-room.

"If mamma sends for me now, I shan't be able to go down," she thought. "He can hardly stay more than an hour. Oh, horror! he is a tea-drinker; mamma will persuade him to stop till five o'clock."

Violet dawdled over her change of dress as she had dawdled in the stable. She had never been more particular about her hair.

"I'll have it all taken down, Phoebe," she told her Abigail; "I'm in no hurry."

"But really, miss, it's beautiful – "

"Nonsense after a windy ride; don't be lazy, Phoebe. You may give my hair a good brushing while I read."

A tap at the door came at this moment, and Phoebe ran to open it.

"Mrs. Tempest wishes Miss Tempest to come down to the drawing-room directly," said a voice in the corridor.

"There now, miss," cried Phoebe, "how lucky I didn't take your hair down. It never was nicer."

Violet put on her black dress, costly and simple as the attire Polonius recommended to his son. Mrs. Tempest might relieve her costume with what bright or delicate hues she liked. Violet had worn nothing but black since her father's death. Her sole ornaments were a pair of black earrings, and a large black enamel locket, with one big diamond shining in the middle of it, like an eye. This locket held the Squire's portrait, and his daughter wore it constantly.

The Louis Quatorze clock on the staircase struck five as Violet went down.

"Of course he is staying for tea," she thought, with an impatient shrug of her shoulders. "He belongs to the tame-cat species, and has an inexhaustible flow of gossip, spiced with mild malevolence. The kind of frivolous ill-nature which says: 'I would not do anyone harm for the world, but one may as well think the worst of everybody.'"

Yes, kettledrum was in full swing. Mrs. Scobel had come over from her tiny Vicarage for half-an-hour's chat, and was sitting opposite her hostess's fire, while Captain Winstanley lounged with his back to the canopied chimneypiece, and looked benignantly down upon the two ladies. The Queen Anne kettle was hissing merrily over its spirit-lamp, the perfume of the pekoe was delicious, the logs blazed cheerily in the low fireplace, with its shining brass andirons. Not a repulsive picture, assuredly; yet Vixen came slowly towards this charming circle, looking black as thunder.

Captain Winstanley hurried forward to receive her.

"How do you do?" she said, as stiffly as a child brought down to the drawing-room, bristling in newly-brushed hair and a best frock, and then turning to her mother, she asked curtly: "What did you want with me, mamma?"

"It was Captain Winstanley who asked to see you, my dear. Won't you have some tea?"

"Thanks, no," said Vixen, seating herself in a corner between Mrs. Scobel and the mantelpiece, and beginning to talk about the schools.

Conrad Winstanley gave her a curious look from under his dark brows, and then went on talking to her mother. He seemed hardly disconcerted by her rudeness.

"Yes, I assure you, if it hadn't been for the harriers, Brighton would have been unbearable after you left," he said. "I ran across to Paris directly the frost set in. But I don't wonder you were anxious to come back to such a lovely old place as this."

"I felt it a duty to come back," said Mrs. Tempest, with a pious air. "But it was very sad at first. I never felt so unhappy in my life. I am getting more reconciled now. Time softens all griefs."

"Yes," said the Captain, in a louder tone than before, "Time is a clever horse. There is nothing he won't beat if you know how to ride him."

"You'll take some tea?" insinuated Mrs. Tempest, her attention absorbed by the silver kettle, which was just now conducting itself as spitfireishly as any blackened block-tin on a kitchen hob.

"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 album. "'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 associations, of course, but 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 nobodies 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 then 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," assented 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 balustrade 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 nobody had opened for a generation – Livy, Gibbon, Hume, Burke, Smollett, Plutarch, Thomson. These sages, clad in shiny 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.