Volume I Part 26 (1/2)
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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 skirmis.h.i.+ng. 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 met 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 in discriminating 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 Traineaux_”--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 t.i.tian--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 s.p.a.cious 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.