Volume I Part 25 (1/2)
CHAPTER XV.
Lady Southminster's Ball.
Captain Winstanley closed with Mrs. Hawbuck for the pretty little verandah-surrounded cottage on the slope of the hill above Beechdale.
Captain Hawbuck, a retired naval man, to whom the place had been very dear, was in his grave, and his wife was anxious to try if she and her hungry children could not live on less money in Belgium than they could in England. The good old post-captain had improved and beautified the place from a farm-labourer's cottage into a habitation which was the quintessence of picturesque inconvenience. Ceilings which you could touch with your hand; funny little fireplaces in angles of the rooms; a corkscrew staircase, which a stranger ascended or descended at peril of life or limb; no kitchen worth mentioning, and stuffy little bedrooms under the thatch. Seen from the outside the cottage was charming; and if the captain and his family could only have lived over the way, and looked at it, they would have had full value for the money invested in its improvement. Small as the rooms were, however, and despite that dark slander which hung over the chimneys, Captain Winstanley declared that the cottage would suit him admirably.
”I like the situation,” he said, discussing his bargain in the coffee-room at The Crown, Lyndhurst.
”I should rather think you did!” cried Mr. Bell, the local surgeon.
”Suits you down to the ground, doesn't it?”
Whereby it will be seen that there was already a certain opinion in the neighbourhood as to the Captain's motive for planting himself at Beechdale--so acute is a quiet little community of this kind in divining the intentions of a stranger.
Captain Winstanley took up his quarters at Beechdale Cottage in less than a week after Mrs. Tempest's dinner-party. He sent for his horses, and began the business of hunting in real earnest. His two hunters were unanimously p.r.o.nounced screws; but it is astonis.h.i.+ng how well a good rider can get across country on a horse which other people call a screw.
n.o.body could deny Captain Winstanley's merits as a horseman. His costume and appointments had all the finish of Melton Mowbray, and he was always in the first flight.
Before he had occupied Captain Hawbuck's cottage a month the new-comer had made friends for himself in all directions. He was as much at home in the Forest as if he had been native and to the manner born. His straight riding, his good looks, and agreeable manners won him everybody's approval. There was nothing dissipated or Bohemian about him. His clothes never smelt of stale tobacco. He was as punctual at church every Sunday morning as if he had been a family man, bound to set a good example. He subscribed liberally to the hounds, and was always ready with those stray florins and half-crowns by which a man purchases a cheap popularity among the horse-holding and ragged-follower cla.s.s.
Having distinctly a.s.serted her intention of remaining a widow to Violet, Mrs. Tempest allowed herself the privilege of being civil to Captain Winstanley. He dropped in at afternoon tea at least twice a week; he dined at the Abbey House whenever the Scobels or any other intimate friends were there ”in a quiet way.” He generally escorted Mrs. Tempest and her daughter from church on Sunday morning, Violet persistently loitering twenty yards or so behind them on the narrow woodland path that led from Beechdale to the Abbey House.
After walking home from church with Mrs. Tempest, it was only natural that the Captain should stop to luncheon, and after luncheon--the Sabbath afternoon being, in a manner, a legitimate occasion for dawdling--it was equally natural for him to linger, looking at the gardens and greenhouses, or talking beside the drawing-room fire, till the appearance of the spitfire Queen Anne tea-kettle and Mrs. Tempest's infusion of orange pekoe.
Sometimes the Scobels were present at these Sunday luncheons, sometimes not. Violet was with her mother, of course, on these occasions; but, while bodily present, she contrived to maintain an att.i.tude of aloofness which would have driven a less resolute man than Conrad Winstanley to absent himself. A man more sensitive to the opinions of others could hardly have existed in such an atmosphere of dislike; but Captain Winstanley meant to live down Miss Tempest's aversion, or to give her double cause for hating him.
”Why have you given up hunting, Miss Tempest?” he asked one Sunday afternoon, when they had gone the round of the stables, and Arion had been fondled and admired--a horse as gentle as an Italian greyhound in his stable, as fiery as a wild-cat out of it.
”Because I have no one I care to hunt with, now papa is gone.”
”But here in the Forest, where everybody knows you, where you might have as many fathers as the Daughter of the Regiment----”
”Yes, I have many kind friends. But there is not one who could fill my father's place--for an hour.”
”It is a pity,” said the Captain sympathetically. ”You were so fond of hunting, were you not?”
”Pa.s.sionately.”
”Then it is a shame you should forego the pleasure. And you must find it very dull, I should think, riding alone in the forest.”
”Alone! I have my horse.”
”Surely he does not count as a companion.”
”Indeed he does. I wish for no better company than Arion, now papa is gone.”
”Violet is so eccentric!” Mrs. Tempest murmured gently.
Captain Winstanley had taken Mrs. Hawbuck's cottage till the first of May. The end of April would see the last of the hunting, so this arrangement seemed natural enough. He hunted in good earnest. There was no pretence about him. It was only the extra knowing ones, the little knot of choice spirits at The Crown, who saw some deeper motive than a mere love of sport for his residence at Beechdale. These advanced minds had contrived to find out all about Captain Winstanley by this time--the date of his selling out, his ostensible and hidden reasons for leaving the army, the amount of his income, and the general complexion of his character. There was not much to be advanced against him. No dark stories; only a leading notion that he was a man who wanted to improve his fortunes, and would not be over-scrupulous as to the means. But as your over-scrupulous man is one in a thousand, this was ranking Captain Winstanley with the majority.
The winter was over; there were primroses peeping out of the moss and brambles, and a shy little dog-violet s.h.i.+ning like a blue eye here and there. The flaunting daffodils were yellow in every glade, and the gummy chestnut buds were beginning to swell. It was mid-March, and as yet there had been no announcement of home-coming from Roderick Vawdrey or the Dovedales. The Duke was said to have taken a fancy to the Roman style of fox-hunting; Lady Mabel was studying art; the d.u.c.h.ess was suspected of a leaning to Romanism; and Roderick was dancing attendance upon the family generally.
”Why should he not stay there with them?” said Mr. Scobel, sipping his pekoe in a comfortable little circle of gossipers round Mrs. Tempest's gipsy table. ”He has very little else to do with his life. He is a young man utterly without views or purpose. He is one of our many Gallios. You could not rouse him to an interest in those stirring questions that are agitating the Catholic Church to her very foundation. He has no mission. I have sounded him, and found him full of a shallow good-nature. He would build a church if people asked him, and hardly know, when it was finished, whether he meant it for Jews or Gentiles.”