Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Vixen made no objection to the Southminster ball. She was young, and fond of waltzing. Whirling easily round to the swing of some German melody, in a great room garlanded with flowers, was a temporary cessation of all earthly care, the idea of which was in no wise unpleasant to her. She had enjoyed her waltzes even at that charity-ball at the Pavilion, to which she had gone so unwillingly.

  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.

  “Then we will all go together.”

  They found the two matrons side by side on a settee, under a lovely girlish head by Greuze. They were both delighted at the idea of seeing the presents. It was something to do. Mrs. Tempest had made up her mind to abjure even square dances this evening. There was something incongruous in widowhood and the Lancers; especially in one’s own neighbourhood.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  Rorie asks a Question.

  The library was one of the finest rooms at Southminster. It was not like the library at Althorpe — a collection for a nation to be proud of. There was no priceless Decameron, no Caxton Bible, no inestimable “Book of Hours,” or early Venetian Virgil; but as a library of reference, a library for all purposes of culture or enjoyment, it left nothing to be desired. It was a spacious and lofty room, lined from floor to ceiling with exquisitely bound books; for, if not a collector of rare editions, Lord Southminster was at least a connoisseur of bindings. Creamy vellum, flowered with gold, antique brown calf, and russia in every shade of crimson and brown, gave brightness to the shelves, while the sombre darkness of carved oak made a background for this variety of colour.

  Not a mortal in the crowded library this evening thought of looking at the books. The room had been transformed into a bazaar. Two long tables were loaded with the wedding gifts which rejoicing friends and aspiring acquaintances had lavished upon Lady Almira. Each gift was labelled with the name of the giver; the exhibition was full of an intensely personal interest. Everybody wanted to see what everybody had given. Most of the people looking at the show had made their offerings, and were anxious to see if their own particular contribution appeared to advantage.

  Here Mrs. Scobel was in her element. She explained everything, expatiated upon the beauty and usefulness of everything. If she had assisted at the purchase of all these gifts, or had actually chosen them, she could not have been more familiar with their uses and merits.

  “You must look at the silver candelabra presented by Sir Ponto’s workpeople, so much more sensible than a bracelet. I don’t think Garrard — yes, it is Garrard — ever did anything better; so sweetly mythological — a goat and a dear little chubby boy, and ever so many savage-looking persons with cymbals.”

  “The education of Jupiter, perhaps,” suggested Captain Winstanley.

  “Of course. The savage persons must be teaching him music. Have you seen this liqueur cabinet, dear Mrs. Tempest? The most exquisite thing, from the servants at Southminster. Could anything be nicer?”

  “Looks rather like a suggestion that Lady Almira may be given to curaçoa on the quiet,” said the Captain.

  “And this lovely, lovely screen in crewels, by the Ladies Ringwood, after a picture by Alma Tadema,” continued Mrs. Scobel. “Was there ever anything so perfect? And to think that our poor mothers worked staring roses and gigantic lilies in Berlin wool and glass beads, and imagined themselves artistic!”

  The ladies went the round of the tables, in a crush of other ladies, all rapturous. The Louis Quatorze fans, the carved ivory, the Brussels point, the oxydised silver glove-boxes, and malachite blotting-books, the pearls, opals, ormolu; the antique tankards and candlesticks, Queen-Anne teapots; diamond stars, combs, tiaras; prayer-books, and “Christian Years.” The special presents which stood out from this chaos of common place were — a rivière of diamonds from the Earl of Southminster, a cashmere shawl from Her Majesty, a basket of orchids, valued at five hundred guineas, from Lady Ellangowan, a pair of priceless crackle jars, a Sèvres dinner-service of the old bleu-du-roi, a set of knives of which the handles had all been taken from stags slaughtered by the Southminster hounds.

  “This is all very well for the wallflowers,” said Captain Winstanley to Violet, “but you and I are losing our dances.”

  “I don’t much care about dancing,” answered Vixen wearily.

  She had been looking at this gorgeous display of bracelets and teacups, silver-gilt dressing-cases, and ivory hairbrushes, without seeing anything. She was thinking of Roderick Vawdrey, and how odd a thing it was that he should seem so utter a stranger to her.

  “He has gone up into the ducal circle,” she said to herself. “He is translated. It is almost as if he had wings. He is certainly as far away from me as if he were a bishop.”

  They struggled back to the picture-gallery, and here Lady Ellangowan took possession of Violet, and got her distinguished partners for all the dances till supper-time. She found herself receiving a gracious little nod from Lady Mabel Ashbourne in the ladies’ chain. Neither the lapse of two years nor the experience of foreign travel had made any change in the hope of the Dovedales. She was still the same sylph-like being, dressed in palest green, the colour of a duck’s egg, with diamonds in strictest moderation, and pearls that would have done honour to a princess.

  “Do
you think Lady Mabel Ashbourne very beautiful?” Vixen asked Lady Ellangowan, curious to hear the opinion of experience and authority.

  “No; she’s too shadowy for my taste,” replied her ladyship, who was the reverse of sylph-like. “Wasn’t there someone in Greek mythology who fell in love with a cloud? Lady Mabel would just suit that sort of person. And then she is over-educated and conceited; sets up for a modern Lady Jane Grey, quotes Greek plays, I believe, and looks astounded if people don’t understand her. She’ll end by establishing a female college, like Tennyson’s princess.”

  “Oh, but she is engaged to be married to Mr. Vawdrey.”

  “Her cousin? Very foolish! That may go off by-and-by. First engagements seldom come to anything.”

  Violet thought herself a hateful creature for being inwardly grateful to Lady Ellangowan for this speech.

  She had seen Roderick spinning round with his cousin. He was a good waltzer, but not a graceful one. He steered his way well, and went with a strong swing that covered a great deal of ground; but there was a want of finish. Lady Mabel looked as if she were being carried away by a maelstrom. And now people began to move towards the supper-rooms, of which there were two, luxuriously arranged with numerous round tables in the way that was still a novelty when “Lothair” was written. This gave more room for the dancers. The people for whom a ball meant a surfeit of perigord pie, truffled turkey, salmon mayonnaise, and early strawberries, went for their first innings, meaning to return to that happy hunting-ground as often as proved practicable. Violet was carried off by a partner who was so anxious to take her to supper that she felt sure he was dying to get some for himself.