Tewkesbury has more than twelve thousand a year, represents an old county family, is a popular man, and not the kind of fellow to excite a romance. He is just the person whom Mr. Tintern would have chosen to dance with the heiress of Roydon. But he said, with a very amused chuckle:
“I’ll introduce you with pleasure. Certainly, if you wish it; but I’ve just done the same thing for Lord Hawkshawe, and she had not a dance. I don’t know. I’ll introduce you with pleasure.”
Perhaps Tom Tewkesbury thought that he could afford in this game to give Lord Hawkshawe, who was fifty, and had a couple of thousand a year less than he, some points, and was not very much daunted, by the report of the nobleman’s failure.
Did he succeed? Alas! no. She was again carried off by the victorious Captain Vivian; and she and he beheld Mr. Marston, who had seen this early enough to secure Miss Chevron, figuring in the next set to theirs. There he was chasséeing, for it was a quadrille, and setting to that young lady, and turning her about, looking the while black as thunder.
His eyes stole, in spite of his resolution, now and then, in the direction of Miss Vernon. Once he thought their eyes met; but he could not be certain, for hers betrayed not the slightest sign of consciousness, and no more shrank or turned aside than the gleam of her brilliants.
And now, the dance ended, Miss Vernon returned to the Tinterns, and said a word to Miss Max, and Captain Vivian led her away to the refreshment-room where people were sipping soup or eating ices.
There they loiter. The next dance has begun. She does not intend to dance it. She has refused it to half a dozen distinguished competitors. Every one is inquiring who that fellow with the yellow moustache is, and no one seems to know exactly. He is by no means popular among the aspiring youth of Wymering.
The dance is nearly over by the time they return to Miss Medwyn, and the shadow of Mr. Tintern’s protection.
The youth of the county, with here and there a sprinkling of middle age, are dancing number seven, and are pretty well on in it, when Miss Vernon resolves to take wing, and drive home to Roydon under the care of Maximilla Medwyn.
She has taken leave of the Tinterns and Lady Mardykes. The devoted Captain Vivian attends to put on her cloak and sees her into her carriage, with a last word, and a smile, and a goodnight to Miss Max.
Miss Max yawns, and leans back. Miss Vernon does not yawn, but she looks tired, and leans back also, no longer smiling listlessly in her corner.
“Home,” says the young lady to the footman at the window.
With the high-blooded trotters of Roydon, the carriage rolls swiftly through the High-street, and in a few minutes more is gliding through old hedgerows in the soft moonlight, among misty meadows and silent farmsteads.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THOUGH SOME PEOPLE GO HOME, THE BALL GOES ON.
For a time neither lady seemed disposed to talk.
Maud’s ruminations were exciting and unsatisfactory. She had acted a good deal from impulse, and, as she now, perhaps, secretly thought, neither very wisely nor very kindly. She expected a lecture from Maximilla. She would have preferred combat to her own solitary self-upbraidings. At all events, she quickly grew weary of her reflections, and, turning her eyes to her silent companion in the shadow of her own corner, she said:
“I quite forgot to ask Lady Mardykes who her solemn friend, with the black square beard, is. Did you?”
“Yes — if you mean did I forget; at least, I don’t think I had an opportunity. But, to tell you the truth,” here Miss Max yawned, “I don’t much care. He looks like a foreigner.”
“Yes. He has good eyes. There is something quiet and masterly in his air. I saw him afterwards talking to Doctor Malkin.”
“Yes, so did I. I can’t endure that man,” exclaimed Miss Max. “What on earth brings him to a ball, of all places?”
“I don’t know, unless he hopes some of the old squires may have an apoplexy at supper,” answered Maud Vernon.
“It might have been wiser if he had stayed at home. I dare say Barbara would have had him to tea if he had looked in, and he would have had the advantage of a tête-à-tête,” said Maximilla.
“The advantage — what do you mean?” asked Maud.
“Why, Mr. Foljambe told us yesterday — you must have been thinking of something else — that your mamma will have in the course of the year, I think it was four medical appointments, virtually in her gift; including the supply of medicines to the county jail, which will be given to whatever candidate she supports. And they are altogether worth between eleven and twelve hundred a year, I think he said, and that’s the reason why Doctor Malkin is so frequent a visitor just now.”
“I should be very glad,” said Maud.
“I don’t care twopence who gets them,” said Maximilla, resignedly. “There is some Doctor Murchison — I think that was the name — who is a rather formidable competitor.”
“Did Ethel Tintern dance much tonight?” asked the young lady.
“Not a great deal. I don’t think she seemed to care for the ball.”
Here came a silence. And after two or three minutes Miss Max said suddenly:
“It strikes me you have been sowing the wind tonight, my dear.”
“Sowing the wind! How? What have I done?”
“Come, Maud, you know as well as I what you have been doing. You have treated Mr. Marston very ill; and you have prepared, you may be sure, an animated scene at home. I can tell you, Barbara will be extremely angry; and not without very good reason.”
“You mean about Captain Vivian?” said Maud, a little sulkily.
“Of course I mean about Captain Vivian,” replied Miss Max.
“Well there’s no good in talking about it now. It’s done, and I can’t help it, and, indeed, I could not have prevented it; and I don’t want to talk about it,” said Maud, pettishly.
“And what is Mr. Marston to think?”
“What he pleases,” Maud answered. “You know what mamma thinks of the Marstons. I think my chance of going to Lady Mardykes’ would have been pretty well ended if she heard that I gave Mr. Marston a great many dances, and she will know everything about this ball. It was not my fault, Captain Vivian asking for all those dances. I’m very glad he did. I hope people remarked it. I hope mamma will hear of it. If she does she will think of nothing else, I dare say.”
The young lady laughed, and then she sighed.
“Upon my word you are complicating the situation very prettily,” said Miss Max.
“I suppose I am doing everything that is wrong and foolish; yet I believe it is best as it is,” said the young lady. “I did not want to vex Mr. Marston; and if he has any sense he’ll understand perfectly that I did not; and what need I care whether old Lord Hawkshawe, or Mr. Pindles, or Mr. Wylder, or any of the people who intended I should stay all night, dancing with them in that hot room, are pleased or not?”
“Captain Vivian was determined certainly to make the most of his opportunity,” observed Miss Max.
And again the conversation flagged, and Miss Medwyn’s active mind was employed upon the problem, and busy in conjecturing Captain Vivian’s motive.
“Either he wishes to pique Barbara,” she thought, “or he means to try his chances of success, in good faith, with Maud. I can quite understand that. But he is not the kind of person Maud would ever like, and I do think she likes Mr. Marston.”
Then again she recalled Captain Vivian’s sayings and doings that night at Wymering, to try to discover new lights and hidden meanings, to guide her to a right reading of that little episode.
While these two ladies are driving along the moonlit roads towards Roydon Hall, the festivities of Wymering have lost nothing of their energy.
I shall ask you, therefore, to peep into the ball-room for a few minutes more, where you will find that Captain Vivian has just begged of old Mr. Tintern to introduce him to Miss Tintern. That young lady says to Mr. Tintern, hastily:
“Oh, don’t, please!”
“If you don’t mind, I should prefer not dancing this time. It is so crowded,” says Miss Tintern.
“I’m so glad,” says he. “There is a quadrille after this. You must come where we shall be quiet for two or three minutes.” In the recess outside the ball-room, on the lobby at the head of the great staircase, an oldfashioned sofa is placed.
Skirting the dancers, to this he led her. When she had sat down,
“Ethel,” he said, “you are very angry — that is to say, very unjust. What have I done?”
“What have you done?” she repeats. “You have placed me in the most miserable situation. How am I to look Maud Vernon in the face again? What will papa think of me? Is not concealment enough? Why should you practise positive deception? I don’t like it. I’m entirely against it. You make me utterly miserable.”
“Now, Ethel, don’t be unreasonable. You must not blame me, for that which neither you nor I can prevent. When the time comes I’ll speak out frankly enough. I could not help coming to Roydon. I could not refuse, without a risk of vexing Mr. Dawe very much, and that, for fifty reasons, would never do. I can’t tell you all I’ve suffered, being so near, and unable to contrive a meeting, with scarcely an opportunity even of writing. Don’t suppose that the vexation has been all yours; I have been positively miserable, and I knew very well all the ridiculous things that were said; and how they must have pained you. A little patience, a little time.”
“I know all that very well, and I have suffered from those strange rumours, and I have suffered tonight. I feel so treacherous and deceitful. I won’t be made an accomplice in such things. I hate myself, for hesitating to tell Maud how it really is.”
“My dear Ethel, you must not be foolish. Living down here so much in the country, you make too much of trifles. What can it signify my dancing a few dances, more or less, with Miss Vernon? Do you fancy she cares about me, or that any one seriously thinks there can be anything more than that she likes my dancing, and that I admire her diamonds? Why, dancing two or three dances at a ball means absolutely nothing. Every one knows that. There is nothing in it but this — that people won’t guess anything of the real state of things. They won’t see anything, for instance, in our quiet little talk here.”
Miss Buffins here passing by, with her hand on Captain Bamme’s arm, stops, her cheeks flushed and radiant with her triumphs, and remarks what a jolly hall it is, and how hot the room is, and how every one seems to be enjoying it so much, and so she gabbles on. Captain Bamme, smiling, with his mouth open, and his face hot and shining, is not able to get in a word, facetious or complimentary, and Miss Buffins, as she entertains Miss Tintern, is scanning her dress, and estimating its value in detail, while more slyly still, she inspects Captain Vivian.
At length, the crowd setting in a stronger current towards the supper-room, Captain Bamme and his fair charge are hurried away, smiling, towards chickens, tongue, lobster-salad, and those other comforts which the gallant captain loves with a secret, middle-aged affection that quite supersedes the sentimental vanities of earlier years. I think, with all his ostentatious gallantry, just then, the gay deceiver, who is jostling among elbows and shoulders, and bawling to waiters for cold salmon or lobster for this lady with a chivalric self-sacrifice, wishes her all the time, if the truth were known, at the bottom of the Red Sea. But he will return, after he has restored her to her mother, in quiet moments, when people, who know less of life, are busy dancing, and, with a shrewd gourmandise, will task the energies of the waiters, and strip chickens of their liver-wings, crunch lobster-salad, plunge into Strasbourg patés, drink champagne, and, with shining forehead and reckless enthusiasm, leave tomorrow’s headache to take care of itself.
CHAPTER XL.
LADY VERNON GROWS ANXIOUS.
The morning after the ball Mr. Tintern was prodigiously uncomfortable. He was now, indeed, quite easy about Lady Vernon’s fancied matrimonial designs; but relief at one point is too often accompanied by an acute pressure at another.
Captain Vivian had been audacious, nay, ostentatious, in his devotion to Miss Vernon at the Wymering ball. Whatever his reason, he seemed to wish that people should remark his attentions, and the young lady had certainly shown no unwillingness to permit them.
Next morning, before twelve o’clock, Mr. Tintern was at Roydon Hall, full of the occurrences of the night before.
Mr. Tintern has observed, with satisfaction, that for more than a year his relations with Lady Vernon have been growing in confidence, and even intimacy. Call when he may, Lady Vernon is never denied to him now.
“Her ladyship is in the library, sir.”
“Oh!”
And Mr. Tintern follows the tall footman through the silent, stately rooms, to the door he knows so well.
He is announced, and very graciously received.
“You have come to consult about your projected road, I suppose? And, oddly enough, I had just been looking over the map with Mr. Penrhyn.”
“Well, thanks. Yes, any time, you know, that suits you, Lady Vernon, would do for that; but I happened to be passing this way, and I thought I might as well look in and tell you one or two things that struck me last night at the ball. You’ll not be surprised, perhaps, but I was, a good deal: it is so unaccountable, except, indeed, on one supposition. I know how you feel about it, but, certainly, it does confirm my very high ideas, Lady Vernon, of your penetration. Only think, I’m going to tell you what I heard from the man himself! Miss Vernon obtained from old Lomax, the keeper of the Old Hall Inn, you know, an order of admission to the gallery of the town-hall for Miss Medwyn and her maid. And with this order Miss Medwyn went; and who do you think with her? Not her maid; by no means; no. It was Miss Vernon, and dressed in some old stuff — such a dress, I’m told, I suppose a lady’s-maid would not be seen in it; and Miss Medwyn, I’m assured, tried to dissuade her, and they had a little dispute about it. But it would not do, and so Miss Vernon of Roydon carried her point, and presented herself as Miss Medwyn’s servant!”
“It is a continuation of the same vein — nothing new. It only shows how persistent it is,” says Lady Vernon, closing her eyes with a little frown, and running one finger tip meditatively to and fro over her finely pencilled black eyebrow.
“Only think,” repeats Mr. Tintern, with a little shrug, lowering his voice eagerly, and expanding his hands like a man making a painful exposition, “without the slightest temptation, nothing on earth to make it intelligible.”
“I am afraid, Mr. Tintern, it is not very easy to account for all this; upon any pleasant theory I mean.”
“I thought it my duty, Lady Vernon, considering the terms of, I may say, confidence to which you have been so good as to admit me, to mention this; and, also, perhaps another circumstance which excited, I may say, very general observation last night at the ball, and I fancy you would prefer my being quite straight and above board in giving you my opinion and the result of my observation.”
“Certainly, I shall thank you very much,” said the lady, raising her eyes suddenly, and fixing them upon him with a rather stern expectation.
“Well, I believe it is but right to tell you that your guest, Captain Vivian, devoted himself in, I may say, an extraordinary way to Miss Vernon, your daughter. Now, I don’t know what that young man’s position or expectations may be; but it is of course quite possible he may be in many respects an eligible parti for Miss Vernon. But if he be, perhaps considering all you have been so good as to tell me, don’t you think, a — eh? he ought to be a — a — warned, don’t you think?”
“Captain Vivian,” she answered, with the fire that comes with excitement in each cheek, “Mr. Dawe tells me, has scarcely four hundred a year, and has no chance of succeeding to anything, unless, indeed, Mr. Dawe should leave him something, which, of course, may never happen. I need not tell you that nothing could be more amazi
ng than any such pretensions. Pray let me know why you suppose them possible.”
“The evidence,” replied Mr. Tintern, “was patent to every one at Wymering last night. Nothing could be more marked, and I am bound to say, speaking to you, Lady Vernon, what I should hesitate to say to any one else, I say he was received as favourably as he could have hoped. In fact, if he were the greatest muff in England, and he is far from being anything of the kind, he could not have failed to see it, and see it he did.”
Lady Vernon was looking down upon the table, following with her pencil’s point the lines of her monogram engraved upon the gold plate on the side of her blotting-book, and continuing to do so, with a very black countenance, smiling sourly on the interlacing initials, she said:
“There has been a great deal of duplicity then; I fancied one evening I did see something, but it seemed quite to have died out by next day, and never was renewed — great duplicity; it is morbid, it is not an amiable trait, not attractive, but, of course, we must view it with charity.”
“I hope I have done right in telling you, Lady Vernon?” said Mr. Tintern, who was in no haste to see Miss Vernon married, no more indeed than Lady Vernon was.
“Of course, you know, we should all be glad, the whole county I mean, to see her suitably married,” he continued, “and suitably in her case would, of course, mean splendidly; and less than that would not, I think, satisfy expectation. But a creature — a — a whipper-snapper like that,” he said, with his head on one side, and his hands expanded, and a little shrug in plaintive expostulation, “an adventurer, and I — really for the life of me, I can’t see anything to make up for it.”
“People see with different eyes, Mr. Tintern,” she said, looking on the rings that covered the fingers of her finely formed hand; “and you saw this yourself?”
“I saw it, and you may trust my report. I say there is — I don’t say a romance — but a great deal more than a romance, established in that quarter — and — you know, it would amount to this, that the young lady would be simply sacrificed!”
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 588
