Vixen. Volume I

The March night was fine, but blustery, when Mrs. Tempest and her daughter started for the Southminster ball. The stars were shining in a windy sky, the tall forest trees were tossing their heads, the brambles were shivering, and a shrill shriek came up out of the woodland every now and then like a human cry for help.

Mrs Tempest had offered to take Mrs. Scobel and Captain Winstanley in her roomy carriage. Mr. Scobel was not going to the ball. All such entertainments were an abhorrence to him; but this particular ball, being given in Lent, was more especially abhorrent.

"I shouldn't think of going for my own amusement," Mrs. Scobel told her husband, "but I want to see Violet Tempest at her first local ball dance. I want to see the impression she makes. I believe she will be the belle of the ball."

"That would mean the belle of South Hants," said the parson. "She has a beautiful face for a painted window – there is such a glow of colour."

"She is absolutely lovely, when she likes," replied his wife; "but she has a curious temper; and there is something very repellent about her when she does not like people. Strange, is it not, that she should not like Captain Winstanley?"

"She would be a very noble girl under more spiritual influences," sighed the Reverend Ignatius. "Her present surroundings are appallingly earthly. Horses, dogs, a table loaded with meat in Lent and Advent, a total ignoring of daily matins and even-song. It is sad to see those we like treading the broad path so blindly. I feel sorry, my dear, that you should go to this ball."

"It is only on Violet's account," repeated Mrs. Scobel. "Mrs. Tempest will be thinking of nothing but her dress; there will be nobody interested in that poor girl."

Urged thus, on purely benevolent grounds, Mr. Scobel could not withhold his consent; more especially as he had acquired the habit of letting his wife do what she liked on most occasions – a marital custom not easily broken through. So Mrs. Scobel, who was an economical little woman, "did up" her silver-gray silk dinner-dress with ten shillings' worth of black tulle and pink rosebuds, and felt she had made a success that Madame Elise might have approved. Her faith in the silver-gray and the rosebuds was just a little shaken by her first view of Mrs. Tempest and Violet; the widow in black velvet, rose-point, and scarlet – Spanish as a portrait by Velasquez; Violet in black and gold, with white stephanotis in her hair.

The drive was a long one, well over ten miles, along one of those splendid straight roads which distinguish the New Forest. Mrs. Tempest and Mrs. Scobel were in high spirits, and prattled agreeably all the way, only giving Captain Winstanley time to get a word in edgeways now and then. Violet looked out of the window and held her peace. There was always a charm for her in that dark silent forest, those waving branches and flitting clouds, stars gleaming like lights on a stormy sea. She was not much elated at the idea of the ball, and "that small, small, imperceptibly small talk" of her mother's and Mrs. Scobel's was beyond measure wearisome to her.

"I hope we shall get there after the Ellangowans," said Mrs. Scobel, when they had driven through the little town of Ringwood, and were entering a land of level pastures and fertilising streams, which seemed wonderfully tame after the undulating forest; "it would be so much nicer for Violet to be in the Ellangowan set from the first."

"I beg to state that Miss Tempest has promised me the first waltz," said Captain Winstanley. "I am not going to be ousted by any offshoot of nobility in Lady Ellangowan's set."

"Oh, of course, if Violet has promised – What a lot of carriages! I am afraid there'll be a block presently."

There was every prospect of such a calamity. A confluence of vehicles had poured into a narrow lane bounded on one side by a treacherous water-meadow, on the other by a garden-wall. They all came to a standstill, as Mrs. Scobel had prophesied. For a quarter of an hour there was no progress whatever, and a good deal of recrimination among coachmen, and then the rest of the journey had to be done at a walking pace.

The reward was worth the labour when, at the end of a long winding drive, the carriage drew up before the Italian front of Southminster House; a white marble portico, long rows of tall windows brilliantly lighted, a vista of flowers, and statues, and lamps, and pictures, and velvet hangings, seen through the open doorway.

"Oh, it is too lovely!" cried Violet, fresh as a schoolgirl in this new delight; "first the dark forest and then a house like this – it is like Fairyland."

"And you are to be the queen of it – my queen," said Conrad Winstanley in a low voice. "I am to have the first waltz, remember that. If the Prince of Wales were my rival I would not give way."

He detained her hand in his as she alighted from the carriage. She snatched it from him angrily.

"I have a good mind not to dance at all," she said.

"Why not?"

"It is paying too dearly for the pleasure to be obliged to dance with you."

"In what school did you learn politeness, Miss Tempest?"

"If politeness means civility to people I despise, I have never learned it," answered Vixen.

There was no time for further skirmishing. He had taken her cloak from her, and handed it to the attendant nymph, and received a ticket; and now they were drifting into the tea-room, where a row of ministering footmen were looking at the guests across a barricade of urns and teapots, with countenances that seemed to say, "If you want anything, you must ask for it. We are here under protest, and we very much wonder how our people could ever have invited such rabble!"

"I always feel small in a tea-room when there are only men in attendance," whispered Mr. Scobel, "they are so haughty. I would sooner ask Gladstone or Disraeli to pour me out a cup of tea than one of those supercilious creatures."

Lady Southminster was stationed in the Teniers room – a small apartment at the beginning of the suite which ended in the picture-gallery or ball-room. She was what Joe Gargery called a "fine figure of a woman," in ruby velvet and diamonds, and received her guests with an indiscriminating cordiality which went far to heal the gaping wounds of county politics.

The Ellangowans had arrived, and Lady Ellangowan, who was full of good-nature, was quite ready to take Violet under her wing when Mrs. Scobel suggested that operation.

"I can find her any number of partners," she said. "Oh, there she goes – off – already with Captain Winstanley."

The Captain had lost no time in exacting his waltz. It was the third on the programme, and the band were beginning to warm to their work. They were playing a waltz by Offenbach – "Les Traîneaux" – with an accompaniment of jingling sleigh-bells – music that had an almost maddening effect on spirits already exhilarated.

The long lofty picture-gallery made a magnificent ball-room – a polished floor of dark wood – a narrow line of light under the projecting cornice, the famous Paul Veronese, the world-renowned Rubens, the adorable Titian – ideal beauty looking down with art's eternal tranquillity upon the whisk and whirl of actual life – here a calm Madonna, contemplating, with deep unfathomable eyes, these brief ephemera of a night – there Judith with a white muscular arm holding the tyrant's head aloft above the dancers – yonder Philip of Spain frowning on this Lenten festival.

Violet and Captain Winstanley waltzed in a stern silence. She was vexed with herself for her loss of temper just now. In his breast there was a deeper anger. "When would my day come?" he asked himself. "When shall I be able to bow this proud head, to bend this stubborn will?" It must be soon – he was tired of playing his submissive part – tired of holding his cards hidden.

They held on to the end of the waltz – the last clash of the sleigh-bells.

"Who's that girl in black and gold?" asked a Guardsman of Lady Ellangowan; "those two are the best dancers in the room – it's a thousand to nothing on them."

That final clash of the bells brought the Captain and his partner to anchor at the end of the gallery, which opened through an archway into a spacious palm-house with a lofty dome. In the middle of this archway, looking at the dancers, stood a figure at sight of which Violet Tempest's heart gave a great leap, and then stood still.

It was Roderick Vawdrey. He was standing alone, listlessly contemplating the ball-room, with much less life and expression in his face than there was in the pictured faces on the walls.

"That was a very nice waltz thanks," said Vixen, giving the captain a little curtsey.

"Shall I take you back to Mrs. Tempest?"

Roderick had seen her by this time, and was coming towards her with a singularly grave and distant countenance, she thought; not at all like the Rorie of old times. But of course that was over and done with. She must never call him Rorie any more, not even in her own thoughts. A sharp sudden memory thrilled her, as they stood face to face in that brilliant gallery – the memory of their last meeting in the darkened room on the day of her father's funeral.

"How do you do?" said Roderick, with a gush of originality. "Your mamma is here, I suppose."

"Haven't you seen her?"

"No; we've only just come."

"We," no doubt, meant the Dovedale party, of which Mr. Vawdrey was henceforth a part.

"I did not know you were to be here," said Vixen, "or then that you were in England."

"We only came home yesterday, or I should have called at the Abbey House. We have been coming home, or talking about it, for the last three weeks. A few days ago the Duchess took it into her head that she ought to be at Lady Almira's wedding – there's some kind of relationship, you know, between the Ashbournes and the Southminsters – so we put on a spurt, and here we are."

"I am very glad," said Vixen, not knowing very well what to say; and then seeing Captain Winstanley standing stiffly at her side, with an aggrieved expression of countenance, she faltered: "I beg your pardon; I don't think you have ever met Mr. Vawdrey. Captain Winstanley – Mr. Vawdrey."

Both gentlemen acknowledged the introduction with the stiffest and chilliest of bows; and then the Captain offered Violet his arm, and she, having no excuse for refusing it, submitted quietly to be taken away from her old friend. Roderick made no attempt to detain her.

The change in him could hardly have been more marked, Vixen thought. Yes, the old Rorie – playfellow, scapegoat, friend of the dear old childish days – was verily dead and gone.

"Shall we go and look at the presents?" asked Captain Winstanley.

"What presents?"

"Lady Almira's wedding presents. They are all laid out in the library. I hear they are very splendid. Everybody is crowding to see them."

"I daresay mamma would like to go, and Mrs. Scobel," suggested Vixen.