Volume II Part 4 (1/2)
”Good-morning, Miss Tempest. Petting that pretty little bay of yours?
I'm afraid you'll spoil him. You ought to hunt him next October.”
”I shall never hunt again.”
”Pshaw! At your age there's no such word as never. He's the neatest little hunter in the Forest. And on his by-days you might ride one of mine.”
”Thanks,” said Vixen, with a supercilious glance at the most leggy of the two hunters, ”I shouldn't care to be up there. I should feel myself out of everything.”
”Oh, by-the-way,” said Captain Winstanley, opening the door of another loose-box, ”what are we to do with this fellow?”
”This fellow” was a grand-looking bay, with herculean quarters, short legs, and a head like a war-horse. He snorted indignantly as the Captain slapped his flank, and reared his splendid crest, and seemed as if he said ”Ha, ha!”
”I don't quite know of whom you are speaking when you say 'we,'” said Vixen, with an unsmiling countenance.
”Naturally of your mother and myself. I should like to include you in all our family arrangements, present or future; but you seem to prefer being left outside.”
”Yes,” replied Vixen, ”I prefer to stand alone.”
”Very well then. I repeat my question--though, as you decline to have any voice in our arrangements, it's hardly worth while to trouble you about it--what are we to do with this fellow?”
”Do with him? My father's horse!” exclaimed Vixen; ”the horse he rode to his dying day! Why, keep him, of course!”
”Don't you think that is rather foolish? n.o.body rides or drives him. It takes all one man's time to groom him and exercise him. You might just as well keep a white elephant in the stables.”
”He was my father's favourite horse,” said Vixen, with indignant tears clouding the bright hazel of her eyes; ”I cannot imagine mamma capable of parting with him. Yet I ought not to say that, after my experience of the last few months,” she added in an undertone.
”Well, my dear Miss Tempest, family affection is a very charming sentiment, and I can quite understand that you and your mamma would be anxious to secure your father's horse a good home and a kind master; but I cannot comprehend your mamma being so foolish as to keep a horse which is of no use to any member of her family. If the brute were of a little lighter build, I wouldn't mind riding him myself, and selling one of mine. But he's too much of a weight-carrier for me.”
Vixen gave Arion a final hug, drying her angry tears upon his soft neck, and left the stable without another word. She went straight to her mother's morning-room, where the widow was sitting at a table covered with handkerchiefs-cases and glove-boxes, deeply absorbed in the study of their contents, a.s.sisted by the faithful Pauline, otherwise Polly, who had been wearing smarter gowns and caps ever since her mistress's engagement, and who was getting up a _trousseau_ on her own account, in order to enter upon her new phase of existence with due dignity.
”We shall keep more company, I make no doubt, with such a gay young master as the Captain,” she had observed in the confidences of Mrs.
Trimmer's comfortable parlour.
”I can never bring myself to think Swedish gloves pretty,” said Mrs.
Tempest, as Vixen burst into the room, ”but they are the fas.h.i.+on, and one must wear them.”
”Mamma,” cried Vixen, ”Captain Winstanley wants you to sell Bullfinch.
If you let him be sold, you will be the meanest of women.”
And with this startling address Vixen left the room as suddenly as she had entered it, banging the door behind her.
Time, which brings all things, brought the eve of Mrs. Tempest's wedding. The small but perfect _trousseau_, subject of such anxious thoughts, so much study, was completed. The travelling-dresses were packed in two large oilskin-covered baskets, ready for the Scottish tour. The new travelling-bag, with monograms in pink coral on silver-gilt, a wedding present from Captain Winstanley, occupied the place of honour in Mrs. Tempest's dressing-room. The wedding-dress, of cream-coloured brocade and old point-lace, with a bonnet of lace and water-lilies, was spread upon the sofa. Everything in Mrs. Tempest's apartment bore witness to the impending change in the lady's life. Most of all, the swollen eyelids and pale cheeks of the lady, who, on this vigil of her wedding-day, had given herself up to weeping.
”Oh mum, your eyes will be so red to-morrow,” remonstrated Pauline, coming into the room with another dainty little box, newly-arrived from the nearest railway-station, and surprising her mistress in tears. ”Do have some red lavender. Or let me make you a cup of tea.”
Mrs. Tempest had been sustaining nature with cups of tea all through the agitating day. It was a kind of drama drinking, and she was as much a slave of the teapot as the forlorn drunken drab of St. Giles's is a slave of the gin-bottle.
”Yes, you may get me another cup of tea, Pauline. I feel awfully low to-night.”