Vixen. Volume II

"What do you know about him?" asked Vixen laughing. "You have had more than half-an-hour for the study of his character."

"I know ever so much more than I want to know."

"Answered like a Greek oracle."

"What, have you taken to reading Greek?"

"No; but I know the oracles were a provoking set of creatures who answered every inquiry with an enigma. But I won't have you abuse Lord Mallow. He has been very kind to Bullfinch, and has promised me that he will never part with him. The dear old horse is to have a comfortable stable and kindly treatment to his dying day – not to be sent out to grass in his old age, to shiver in a dreary solitude, or to be scorched by the sun and tormented by the flies."

"He has promised all that, has he? He would promise a good deal more, I daresay," muttered Rorie, stooping over his rosebud. "Do you think him handsome? Do women admire a fresh complexion and black whiskers, and that unmistakable air of a hairdresser's wax model endowed with animation?"

"I see you consider him an idiot," said Vixen laughing. "But I assure you he is rather clever. He talks wonderfully about Ireland, and the reforms he is going to bring about for her."

"Of course. Burke, and Curran, and Castlereagh, and O'Connell, and fifty more have failed to steer that lumbering old vessel off the mudbank on which she stranded at some time in the dark ages; in fact, nobody except Oliver Cromwell ever did understand how to make Ireland prosperous and respectable, and he began by depopulating her. And here is a fresh-coloured young man, with whiskers à la côtelette de mouton, who thinks he was born to be her pilot, and to navigate her into a peaceful haven. He is the sort of man who will begin by being the idol of a happy tenantry, and end by being shot from behind one of his own hedges."

"I hope not," said Vixen, "for I am sure he means well. And I should like him to outlive Bullfinch."

Roderick had been very happy all dinner-time. From the soups to the ice-puddings the moments had flown for him. It seemed the briefest dinner he had ever been at; and yet when the ladies rose to depart the silvery chime of the clock struck the half-hour after nine. But Lord Mallow's hour came later, in the drawing-room, where he contrived to hover over Violet, and fence her round from all other admirers for the rest of the evening. They sang their favourite duets together, to the delight of everyone except Rorie, who felt curiously savage at "I would that my love," and icily disapproving at "Greeting;" but vindictive to the verge of homicidal mania at "Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast!"

"His 'plaidie,' indeed," he ejaculated inwardly. "The creature never possessed anything so comfortable or civilised. How preposterous it is to hear an Irishman sing Scotch songs. If an Irishman had a plaidie, he would pawn it for a dhrop o' the cratur."

Later Violet and Lord Mallow sang a little duet by Masini, "O, que la mer est belle!" the daintiest, most bewitching music – such a melody as the Loreley might have sung when the Rhine flowed peacefully onward below mountain-peaks shining in the evening light, luring foolish fishermen to their doom. Everybody was delighted. It was just the kind of music to please the unlearned in the art. Mrs. Carteret came to the piano to compliment Violet.

"I had no idea you could sing so sweetly," she said. "Why have you never sung to us before?"

"Nobody ever asked me," Vixen answered frankly. "But indeed I am no singer."

"You have one of the freshest, brightest voices I ever had the happiness of hearing," Lord Mallow exclaimed enthusiastically.

He would have liked to go on singing duets for an indefinite period. He felt lifted into some strange and delightful region – a sphere of love and harmony – while he was mingling his voice with Violet's. It made the popular idea of heaven, as a place where there is nothing but singing – an eternal, untiring choir – clearer and more possible to him than it had ever seemed before. Paradise would be quite endurable if he and Violet might stand side by side in the serried ranks of choristers. There was quite a little crowd round the piano, shutting in Violet and Lord Hallow, and Roderick Vawdrey was not in it. He felt himself excluded, and held himself gloomingly apart, talking hunting talk with a man for whom he did not care twopence. Directly his carriage was announced —sotto voce by the considerate Forbes, so as not to wound anybody's feelings by the suggestion that the festivity was on its last legs – Mr. Vawdrey went up to Mrs. Winstanley and took leave. He would not wait to say good-night to Violet. He only cast one glance in the direction of the piano, where the noble breadth of Mrs. Carteret's brocaded amber back obscured every remoter object, and then went away moodily, denouncing duet-singing as an abomination.

When Lady Mabel asked him next day what kind of an evening he had had at the Abbey House, in a tone which implied that any entertainment there must be on a distinctly lower level as compared with the hospitalities of Ashbourne, he told her that it had been uncommonly slow.

"How was that? You had some stupid person to take into dinner, perhaps?"

"No; I went in with Violet."

"And you and she are such old friends. You ought to get on very well together."

Rorie reddened furiously. Happily he was standing with his back to the light in one of the orchid-houses, enjoying the drowsy warmth of the atmosphere, and Mabel was engrossed with the contemplation of a fine zygopetalum, which was just making up its mind to bloom.

"Oh, yes, that was well enough; but the evening was disgustingly slow. There was too much music."

"Classical?"

"Lord knows. It was mostly French and German. I consider it an insult to people to ask them to your house, and then stick them down in their chairs, and say h – sh – h! every time they open their months. If people want to give amateur concerts, let them say so when they send out their invitations, and then one would know what one has to expect."

"I am afraid the music must have been very bad to make you so cross," said Lady Mabel, rather pleased that the evening at the Abbey House should have been a failure. "Who were the performers?"

"Violet, and an Irish friend of Captain Winstanley's – a man with a rosy complexion and black whiskers – Lord Mallow."

"Lord Mallow! I think I danced with him once or twice last season. He is rather distinguished as a politician, I believe, among the young Ireland party. Dreadfully radical."

"He looks it," answered Rorie. "He has a loud voice and a loud laugh, and they seem to be making a great deal of him at the Abbey House."

"'Tommy loves a lord,'" says Lady Mabel brightly. Rorie hadn't the faintest idea whence the quotation came. "I daresay the Winstanleys are rather glad to have Lord Mallow staying with them."

"The Squire would have kicked him out of doors," muttered Rorie savagely.

"But why? Is he so very objectionable? He waltzes beautifully, if I remember right; and I thought him rather a well-meaning young man."

"Oh, there's nothing serious against him that I know of; only I don't think Squire Tempest would have liked a singing man any more than he would have liked a singing mouse."

"I didn't know Miss Tempest sang," said Lady Mabel. "I thought she could do nothing but ride."

"Oh, she has a very pretty voice, but one may have too much of a good thing, you know. One doesn't go out to dinner to hear people sing duets."

"I'm afraid they must have given you a very bad dinner, or you would hardly be so cross. I know that is the way with papa. If the dinner is bad he abuses everything, and declares the ladies were all ugly."

"Oh, the dinner was excellent, I believe. I'm not a connoisseur, like my uncle. People might give me the most wonderful dinner in the world, and I would hardly be the wiser; or they might give me a wretched one, and I should not feel particularly angry with them."

The next day was Tuesday, and, as the Duchess and her daughter happened to be driving within a mile or so of the Abbey House, Lady Mabel suggested that they should call upon Mrs. Winstanley.

"I am rather anxious to see the wild Irishman they have captured lately – Lord Mallow. We met him at Lady Dumdrum's, if you remember, mamma. I danced with him twice."

"My dear Mabel, do you think I can remember all your partners?"

"But Lord Mallow is rather celebrated. He makes very good speeches. Papa read one of them to us the other day when there was a great debate going on upon the Irish land question."

The Duchess remembered being read to one evening after dinner, but the debates, as delivered by the Duke, had generally a somnolent effect upon his wife. She had a faint idea of the beginning, and struggled heroically to discover what the speakers were talking about; then came a soft confusion of sound, like the falling of waters; and the middle and end of the debate was dreamland. Lady Mabel was of a more energetic temper, and was interested in everything that could enlarge her sphere of knowledge, from a parliamentary debate to a Greek play.

The Duchess had never in her life refused compliance with any wish of her daughter's, so the horses' heads were turned towards the Abbey House, along a smooth hard road through a pine wood, then through a lodge-gate into a forest of rhododendrons.

"This is really a nicer place than Ashbourne, mamma," remarked Lady Mabel disapprovingly.

It appeared to her quite a mistake in the arrangement of the universe that Violet Tempest should be heiress to a more picturesque estate than that which she, the Duke of Dovedale's only daughter, was to inherit.

"My dear, Ashbourne is perfect. Everyone says so. The stables, the offices, the way the house is lighted and heated, the ventilation."

"Yes, mamma; but those are details which nobody thinks about except an architect or a house-agent. Ashbourne is so revoltingly modern. It smells of stucco. It will take a century to tone it down. Now this fine old place is like a dream of the past; it is a poem in wood and stone. Ashbourne would be very well for a hunting-box for anyone who had three or four other places, as my father has; but when my time comes, and I have only Ashbourne, I'm afraid I shall hate it."

"But you will have a choice of places by-and-by," said the Duchess consolingly "You will have Briarwood."

"Briarwood is a degree uglier than Ashbourne," sighed Lady Mabel, leaning back in the carriage, wrapped to the chin in Russian sable, the image of discontent.

There are moments in every life, as in Solomon's, when all seems vanity. Lady Mabel Ashbourne's life had been cloudless – a continual summer, an unchangeable Italian sky; and yet there were times when she was weary of it, when some voice within her murmured, "This is not enough." She was pretty, she was graceful, accomplished, gifted with a self-confidence that generally passed for wit; all the blood in her veins was the bluest of the blue, everybody bowed down to her, more or less, and paid her homage; the man she liked best in the world, and had so preferred from her childhood, was to be her husband; nobody had ever contradicted her, or hinted that she was less than perfect; and yet that mysterious and rebellious voice sometimes repeated, "It is not enough." She was like the woman in the German fairy tale, who, beginning as the wife of a half-starved fisherman, came, by fairy power, to be king, and then emperor, and then pope: and still was not contented, but languished for something more, aye, even to have the ordering of the sun and moon.

The rebellious voice expostulated loudly this winter afternoon, as Lady Mabel's languid eyes scanned the dark shining rhododendron bushes, rising bank above bank, a veritable jungle, backed by tall beeches and towerlike Douglas firs. A blackbird was whistling joyously amongst the greenery, and a robin was singing on the other side of the drive. The sunlit sky was soft and pearly. It was one of those mild winters in which Christmas steals unawares upon the footprints of a lovely autumn. The legendary oak was doubtless in full bud at Cadenham, like its miraculous brother, the Glastonbury thorn.

"I don't think any of my father's places can compare with this," Lady Mabel said irritably.

She would not have minded the beauty of the grounds so much had they been the heritage of any other heiress than Violet Tempest.

The old hall was full of people and voices when the Duchess and her daughter were announced. There was a momentary hush at their entrance, as at the advent of someone of importance, and Mrs. Winstanley came smiling out of the firelight to welcome them, in Theodore's last invention, which was a kind of skirt that necessitated a peculiar gliding motion in the wearer, and was built upon the lines of a mermaid's tail.

"How good of you!" exclaimed Mrs. Winstanley.

"We were coming through Lyndhurst, and could not resist the temptation of coming in to see you," said the Duchess graciously. "How do you do, Miss Tempest? Were you out with the hounds this morning? We met some people riding home."

"I have never hunted since my father's death," Violet answered gravely; and the Duchess was charmed with the answer and the seriously tender look that accompanied it.

Lord Mallow was standing before the hearth, looking remarkably handsome in full hunting costume. The well-worn scarlet coat and high black boots became him. He had enjoyed his first day with the Forest hounds, had escaped the bogs, and had avoided making an Absalom of himself among the spreading beechen boughs. Bullfinch had behaved superbly over his old ground.

Mr. and Mrs. Scobel were among those dusky figures grouped around the wide firelit hearth, where the piled-up logs testified to the Tempest common of estovers. Mr. Scobel was talking about the last advance movement of the Ritualists, and expatiating learnedly upon the Ornaments Rubric of 1559, and its bearing upon the Advertisements of 1566, with a great deal more about King Edward's first Prayer-book, and the Act of Uniformity, to Colonel Carteret, who, from an antique conservative standpoint, regarded Ritualists, Spirit-rappers, and Shakers in about the same category; while Mrs. Scobel twittered cheerily about the parish and the schools to the Colonel's bulky wife, who was a liberal patroness of all philanthropic institutions in her neighbourhood.

Lord Mallow came eagerly forward to recall himself to the memories of Lady Mabel and her mother.

"I hope your grace has not forgotten me," he said; and the Duchess, who had not the faintest recollection of his face or figure, knew that this must be Lord Mallow. "I had the honour of being introduced to you at Lady Dumdrum's delightful ball."

The Duchess said something gracious, and left Lord Mallow free to talk to Lady Mabel. He reminded her of that never to be, by him, forgotten waltz, and talked, in his low-pitched Irish voice, as if he had lived upon nothing but the recollection of it ever since.

It was idiosyncratic of Lord Mallow that he could not talk to any young woman without seeming to adore her. At this very moment he thought Violet Tempest the one lovable and soul-entrancing woman the world held for him; yet at sight of Lady Mabel he behaved as if she and no other was his one particular star.

"It was a nice dance, wasn't it? but there were too many people for the rooms," said Lady Mabel easily; "and I don't think the flowers were so prettily arranged as the year before. Do you?"

"I was not there the year before."

"No? I must confess to having been at three balls at Lady Dumdrum's. That makes me seem very old, does it not? Some young ladies in London make believe to be always in their first season. They put on a hoydenish freshness, and pretend to be delighted with everything, as if they were just out of the nursery."

"That's a very good idea up to thirty," said Lord Mallow. "I should think it would hardly answer after."

"Oh, after thirty they begin to be fond of horses and take to betting. I believe young ladies after thirty are the most desperate – what is that dreadful slang word? – plungers in society. How do you like our hunting?"

"I like riding about the Forest amazingly; but I should hardly call it hunting, after Leicestershire. Of course that depends in a measure upon what you mean by hunting. If you only mean hounds pottering about after a fox, this might pass muster; but if your idea of hunting includes hard riding and five-barred gates, I should call the kind of thing you do here by another name."

"Was my cousin, Mr. Vawdrey, out to-day?"

"The M. F. H.? In the first flight. May I get you some tea?"

"If you please. Mrs. Winstanley's tea is always so good."

Mrs. Winstanley was supremely happy in officiating at her gipsy table, where the silver tea-kettle of Queen Anne's time was going through its usual sputtering performances. To sit in a fashionable gown – however difficult the gown might be to sit in – and dispense tea to a local duchess, was Mrs. Winstanley's loftiest idea of earthly happiness. Of course there might be a superior kind of happiness beyond earth; but to appreciate that the weak human soul would have to go through a troublesome ordeal in the way of preparation, as the gray cloth at Hoyle's printing-works is dashed about in gigantic vats, and whirled round upon mighty wheels, before it is ready for the reception of particular patterns and dyes.

Lady Mabel and Lord Mallow had a longish chat in the deep-set window where Vixen watched for Rorie on his twenty-first birthday. The conversation came round to Irish politics somehow, and Lord Mallow was enraptured at discovering that Lady Mabel had read his speeches, or had heard them read. He had met many young ladies who professed to be interested in his Irish politics; but never before had he encountered one who seemed to know what she was talking about. Lord Mallow was enchanted. He had found his host's lively step-daughter stonily indifferent to the Hibernian cause. She had said "Poor things" once or twice, when he dilated on the wrongs of an oppressed people; but her ideas upon all Hibernian subjects were narrow. She seemed to imagine Ireland a vast expanse of bog chiefly inhabited by pigs.

"There are mountains, are there not?" she remarked once; "and tourists go there? But people don't live there, do they?'

"My dear Miss Tempest, there are charming country seats; if you were to see the outskirts of Waterford, or the hills above Cork, you would find almost as many fine mansions as in England."

"Really?" exclaimed Vixen, with most bewitching incredulity; "but people don't live in them? Now I'm sure you cannot tell me honestly that anyone lives in Ireland. You, for instance, you talk most enthusiastically about your beautiful country, but you don't live in it."

"I go there every year for the fishing."

"Yes; but gentlemen will go to the most uncomfortable places for fishing – Norway, for example. You go to Ireland just as you go to Norway."

"I admit that the fishing in Connemara is rather remote from civilisation – "

"Of course. It is at the other end of everything. And then you go into the House of Commons, and rave about Ireland, just as if you loved her as I love the Forest, where I hope to live and die. I think all this wild enthusiasm about Ireland is the silliest thing in the world when it comes from the lips of landowners who won't pay their beloved country the compliment of six months' residence out of the twelve."

After this Lord Mallow gave up all hope of sympathy from Miss Tempest. What could be expected from a young lady who could not understand patriotism in the abstract, but wanted to pin a man down for life to the spot of ground for which his soul burned with the ardour of an orator and a poet? Imagine Tom Moore compelled to live in a humble cot in the Vale of Avoca! He infinitely preferred his humdrum cottage in Wiltshire. Indeed, I believe it has been proved against him that he had never seen the Meeting of the Waters, and wrote about that famous scene from hearsay. Ireland has never had a poet as Irish as Burns and Scott were Scottish. Her whole-hearted, single-minded national bard has yet to be born.

It was a relief, therefore, to Lord Mallow's active mind to find himself in conversation with a young lady who really cared for his subject and understood him. He could have talked to Lady Mabel for ever. The limits of five-o'clock tea were far too narrow. He was delighted when the Duchess paused as she was going away, and said:

"I hope you will come and see us at Ashbourne, Lord Mallow; the Duke will be very pleased to know you."

Lord Mallow murmured something expressive of a mild ecstasy, and the Duchess swept onward, like an Australian clipper with all sails set, Lady Mabel gliding like a neat little pinnace in her wake.

Lord Mallow was glad when the next day's post brought him a card of invitation to the ducal dinner on December the 31st. He fancied that he was indebted to Lady Mabel for this civility.

"You are going, of course," he said to Violet, twisting the card between his fingers meditatively.

"I believe I am asked."

"She is," answered Mrs. Winstanley, from her seat behind the urn; "and I consider, under the circumstances, it is extremely kind of the Duchess to invite her."

"Why?" asked Lord Mallow, intensely mystified.

"Why, the truth is, my dear Lord Mallow, that Violet is in an anomalous position. She has been to Lady Southminster's ball, and a great many parties about here. She is out and yet not out, if you understand."

Lord Mallow looked as if he was very far from understanding.

"She has never been presented," explained Mrs. Winstanley. "It is too dreadful to think of. People would call me the most neglectful of mothers. But the season before last seemed too soon alter dear Edward's death, and last season, well" – blushing and hesitating a little – "my mind was so much occupied, and Violet herself was so indifferent about it, that somehow or other the time slipped by and the thing was not done. I feel myself awfully to blame – almost as much so as if I had neglected her confirmation. But early next season – at the very first drawing-room, if possible – she must be presented, and then I shall feel a great deal more comfortable in my mind."

"I don't think it matters one little bit," said Lord Mallow, with appalling recklessness.

"It would matter immensely if we were travelling. Violet could not be presented at any foreign court, or invited to any court ball. She would be an outcast. I shall have to be presented myself, on my marriage with Captain Winstanley. We shall go to London early in the spring. Conrad will take a small house in Mayfair."

"If I can get one," said the captain doubtfully. "Small houses in Mayfair are as hard to get nowadays as black pearls – and as dear."

"I am charmed to think you will be in town," exclaimed Lord Mallow; "and, perhaps, some night when there is an Irish question on, you and Miss Tempest might be induced to come to the Ladies' Gallery. Some ladies rather enjoy a spirited debate."

"I should like it amazingly," cried Violet. "You are awfully rude to one another, are you not? And you imitate cocks and hens; and do all manner of dreadful things. It must be capital fun."

This was not at all the kind of appreciation Lord Mallow desired.

"Oh, yes; we are excruciatingly funny sometimes, I daresay, without knowing it," he said, with a mortified air.

He was getting on the friendliest terms with Violet. He was almost as much at home with her as Rorie was, except that she never called him by his christian-name, nor flashed at him those lovely mirth-provoking glances which he surprised sometimes on their way to Mr. Vawdrey. Those two had a hundred small jokes and secrets that dated back to Vixen's childhood. How could a new-comer hope to be on such delightful terms with her? Lord Mallow felt this, and hated Roderick Vawdrey as intensely as it was possible for a nature radically good and generous to hate even a favoured rival. That Roderick was his rival, and was favoured, were two ideas of which Lord Mallow could not dispossess himself, notwithstanding the established fact of Mr. Vawdrey's engagement to his cousin.

"A good many men begin life by being engaged to their cousins," reflected Lord Mallow. "A man's relations take it into their heads to keep an estate in the family, and he is forthwith set at his cousin like an unwilling terrier at a rat. I don't at all feel as if this young man were permanently disposed of, in spite of all their talk; and I'm very sure Miss Tempest likes him better than I should approve of were I the cousin."