CHAPTER XII.
AT HER CHARIOT WHEELS.
Captain Standishdid not wait to be asked to dinner. He made his appearance at Little Yafford Park within a few days of his first visit. This time he rode over, and his hack was a thing to wonder at.
‘I’m blest if he ain’t the first bit of horseflesh we’ve had inside these stables!’ exclaimed Mr. Piper’s coachman, who affected to despise the pair of bays for which his master had given three hundred guineas.
Mr. Piper was enjoying himself among his friends at Great Yafford. There was a club in that commercial town, at which Mr. Timperley and Mr. Porkman and their associates assembled daily to read the newspapers and discuss the money market. They were all strong politicians, and talked of politics as well as of the Stock Exchange, but they contemplated all public events from onestandpoint. What would be the effect on the money market? How would this crisis in France, or this artful move on the part of Russia, or this pretty piece of business at Vienna affect the demand for cotton? Would Palmerston’s last great speech steady the price of consols?
Mr. Piper went to his club oftener now-a-days than he had gone in the first Mrs. Piper’s time. Bella was making him a man of fashion, as he complained sometimes, with a fatuous delight in his young wife’s frivolities. She would drive him into Great Yafford in her pony carriage in the morning, do an hour’s shopping at Banbury’s, or get a new novel at the circulating library, and fetch him in the afternoon in her barouche, after making two or three calls on the commercial aristocracy; for what is the use of having fine clothes, if you cannot show them to somebody, or a carriage and pair if you cannot keep it standing before somebody’s door? Bella heartily despised the Porkmans, Timperleys, Wigzells, and all their set; but she was by nature an actress, and must have a stage and an audience of some kind.
Thus it happened that Mr. Piper was at his club, and that Bella received Captain Standish alone. It was a lovely afternoon, the lawn was steeped in sunshine, the flower-beds were almost too dazzling to be looked at, the roses were in their midsummer glory. Bella received her visitor in the garden. She was fond of sitting out of doors. She liked to see the width and grandeur of her domain, the fallow deer grouped gracefully in the distance, the cool shadows of beech and oak, the tall elms yonder where the rooks had built for the last century. Perhaps she knew that she looked her prettiest in the garden, sitting in a low basket chair, in the shade of spreading lime branches.
It was just the afternoon for archery. There was not a breath of wind to blow the arrows about. The noble old beeches shaded the long stretch of sward where the targets had been set up, and made it possible for an enthusiastic toxophilite to endure the midsummer heat. Bella made quite light of it.
‘I adore the summer,’ she said, when Captain Standish expressed his fear that she might findarchery too great an exertion, with the thermometer at seventy-five in the shade. ‘I think I must belong to the cat family, I so enjoy basking in the sun.’
‘So do I,’ said the captain, who looked as fresh and cool as if he had just come out of a water-cure establishment; ‘and I detest the people who go about the world mopping themselves and grumbling at the heat on every decent summer day.’
Bella blushed. Mr. Piper had an unpleasant way of mopping his face with a brown and yellow bandanna on warm afternoons. She felt that there must be many habits of his that would jar on Captain Standish’s nerves, if ever they came to be intimate.
The lesson was delightful. The captain was a first-rate master, and after about an hour’s hard work Bella’s arrows began to fly straight to the target, instead of taking a slanting direction and losing themselves under the beeches. This was something gained. Once she went within half an inch of the gold. And then, when her arm began to ache desperately and she was obliged to give up,Captain Standish took her bow, and in the easiest way in the world, just like that famous marksman who drew his bow at a venture, shot three arrows in the gold, in the neatest little triangle.
‘I could write my name on the target,’ he said. ‘It’s the simplest thing in life when you’re used to it.’
Bella looked at her watch. Half-past four o’clock. How the afternoon had flown! She had promised to call for her husband at his club, and the carriage had been ordered for four. She explained her engagement to Captain Standish, who apologized for having detained her so long.
‘I was so pleased with your progress that I forgot all about time,’ he said. ‘May I come to-morrow—a little earlier? I want you to beat the Miss Porkmans next Thursday. You will be shooting on Thursday, I suppose?’
‘Yes, I dare say, if they come. I find archery a great relief on my Thursday afternoons. It is something for people to do. There is so little to talk about in the country. You must find it very trying, Captain Standish.’
The captain shrugged his shoulders.
‘I’m used to country quarters,’ he said. ‘And then in the very depths of Bœotia there are always bright exceptions. But candidly, I don’t care much for what people call society. I like to choose my friends, and when I have chosen them I am an enthusiast in friendship. Now pray put on your bonnet, and don’t let Mr. Piper be kept waiting through my indiscretion in staying so long. I’ll go round to the stable for my horse. May I ride beside your carriage part of the way, if I don’t make too much dust?’
Bella blushed and sparkled at the idea. To have this fine flower of the army, this glass of fashion and mould of form riding beside her barouche was an honour to boast of when next she met the Porkmans. He had never ridden at their chariot wheels. Cæsar’s triumph when he brought home Vercingetorix was not grander than this.
Bella leaned back in her carriage, holding up the daintiest lace-flounced parasol, just big enough to shelter the tip of her nose, while the captain’s sleek bay trotted at her side, and arched his neck,and sniffed the air, and gave himself resentful airs at being forced to suit his pace to the jog-trot of the over-fed carriage horses. They passed along the village street, under the cloudless blue, and Bella felt that the eye of the world—her little world—was upon them. Miss Coyle was clipping her solitary standard rose tree as they went by, and stopped, scissors in hand, to stare at them. Cyril Culverhouse was just coming out of his garden gate, with a black book under his arm. Clementina and Flora Scratchell were flattening their noses against the parlour window as usual. That vision of sisterly noses always greeted Bella as she passed. This time she took care to be looking another way. She did not want Captain Standish to know that her ‘people’ lived in the shabbiest house in the village.
The captain was far too good a horseman to keep up that ‘‘ammer, ‘ammer, on the ‘ard ‘igh road,’ of which the traditional cockney complained. There were plenty of grassy bits by the wayside where he was able to save his horse’s feet—stretches of open down on which he could indulge himself with a gallop. Sometimes he dropped behindand walked his horse for a mile or so, and then startled Bella by descending upon her suddenly from some grassy height, fresh and cool, and riding with a rein as light as a silken thread.
‘What a lovely horse that is!’ exclaimed Bella. ‘He seems able to do anything.’
‘He was able to throw most of his riders before I got him,’ answered the captain; ‘but he’s tame enough now.’
There was a roll in the animal’s eye, and a liberal display of white, which went far to confirm this account of his antecedents.
Captain Standish was riding beside the carriage when they entered that newly-built suburb where the plutocracy of Great Yafford had built their habitations. They passed the Porkmans’ Grange, with its red walls, Tudor casements, and impossible gables, the Timperley Manor House, with its Norman sugar-loaf towers, and the Wigzells’ Italian Gothic Villa, all white stucco, terraced walks and scarlet geraniums. Bella, like Cæsar, felt that her triumph was complete. Captain Standish only left her at the door of the club-house.
‘Well, little woman,’ cried Mr. Piper, when he came tumbling into the barouche, with his white beaver hat at the back of his head, and his brown and yellow bandanna on active service. ‘You haven’t kept me waiting—no, not at all, neither.’
Bella told him all about Captain Standish’s visit. She was radiant with this small social success.
‘Didn’t I tell you that I’d introduce you into tip-top society, old woman?’ exclaimed Mr. Piper. ‘You shall hold your own with the best of ’em. I’ll spare no expense till I see you at the top of the tree. We must give a dinner party next week, and we’ll have Timperley, and Wigzell, and the whole boiling.’
‘Captain Standish is always meeting them at Great Yafford. Don’t you think we’d better ask the Dulcimers—and some of the Little Yafford people?’ suggested Bella.
‘Well, have it your own way, my dear. I like to have the Vicar’s legs under my mahogany. It looks respectable.’
Bella sent out her invitations for that day fortnight, carefully excluding the manufacturing element.She impressed on Mr. Piper that he was to give no accidental invitations. His impulsive hospitality must not be allowed to spoil this particular party, as in Bella’s opinion, at least, it had spoiled previous parties, by the interpolation of ineligible guests.
‘Above all things let there be no Mr. Chumney,’ said Bella, authoritatively.
‘Chumney’s enjoying himself at Whitby,’ replied Mr. Piper, ‘and don’t want to be beholden to you for a dinner; but if you expect me to forget that Chumney’s father was the first man that ever gave me a week’s wages, you’ll find yourself disappointed. I’d take a knife and cut my heart out, if I thought it was capable of such base ingratitude.’
‘You may remember Mr. Chumney’s father as much as you like, but you needn’t always be talking of him, and of the time when you were glad to earn twelve shillings a week,’ remonstrated Bella. ‘There’s no use in harping upon such things.’
‘Yes, there is,’ answered Mr. Piper, ‘it shows that prosperity hasn’t made me proud.’
Mrs. Piper called at the Vicarage next day to ensure the acceptance of her invitation. Mrs. Dulcimerhad seen Captain Standish riding by the Vicarage gate, in attendance on Bella’s barouche, and had heard about that ride of his from ever so many people already.
‘I don’t wonder people talk about him,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘He sits his horse splendidly, and there’s a wonderful style about him. One can see at a glance that he has always mixed in the best society.’
‘I hope you and Mr. Dulcimer can come to meet him on Wednesday week,’ said Bella.
‘Is he really coming to you?’
‘I’ve asked him.’
‘Oh, but he is so very exclusive. I hear he is quite difficult to get. He is not at all fond of visiting. He shoots and hunts a great deal, they say, but doesn’t care for balls or parties.’
‘I think he will come,’ said Bella. ‘Colonel O’Shaughnessy brought him to us last Thursday, and he seemed quite to take to—Mr. Piper.’
‘And he was giving you a lesson in archery, Miss Coyle told me. You must be very careful, my dear. I thought you were just a little imprudent tolet him ride by your carriage yesterday. A man of that kind would get you talked about in no time.’
‘My dear Mrs. Dulcimer, I don’t the least mind being talked about.’
‘Bella!’
‘In fact, I rather like it.’
‘Bella! I don’t think I could endure my existence if I thought that people talked about me,’ cried Mrs. Dulcimer, solemnly. ‘Of course, in my case it would be particularly awful. A vicar’s wife is like Cæsar’s.’
‘Cæsar had so many wives,’ said Bella. ‘He could hardly expect all of them to be respectable.’
‘My dear,’ exclaimed Mrs. Dulcimer, her whole countenance suddenly illuminated, ‘I have such a splendid idea.’
Bella looked anything but delighted.
‘What is it, dear Mrs. Dulcimer?’
‘What a husband Captain Standish would make for your sister Clementina! My dear, he is the very man for her. A man of high family—rolling in money—young—handsome.Whata chance for that poor girl!’
‘My dear Mrs. Dulcimer, do you imagine thatany man of high family would choose a wife out of my father’s house?’
‘But he need not see her in her father’s house—at any rate not till he is so deeply in love that he will not care a straw whether her family are rich or poor. He will see her at the Park—elegantly dressed—with you. He will only think of her as your sister. And if he were to propose I feel sure that Mr. Piper would do something handsome for her. He is the soul of generosity. You know that, Bella.’
‘He is very generous, but I cannot expect him to give all my sisters fortunes.’
‘Not all of them, dear. No, of course not;—but he would give Clementina something, if she were going to make such a match as that. A man in his position would willingly make some sacrifice to have Captain Standish for his brother-in-law. Only think, Lady Emmeline Standish would be your—something-in-law. It would be so nice for you to have people of high family belonging to you. It would give you theentréeto county society.’
‘It would be very nice, I dare say,’ said Bella, not elated by this brilliant perspective, ‘but it isjust the most unlikely thing to come to pass. A man so run after as Captain Standish has been is not likely to fall in love with Clementina.’
‘I am not so sure of that,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer, sagely. ‘More wonderful things have happened within my knowledge. Clementina is a very pretty girl, almost as pretty as you, Bella. She has your complexion. I hope you’ve invited her for Wednesday week.’
‘No, indeed I have not. It doesn’t do to be overrun by one’s family always. You see I could scarcely ask Tina without asking papa and mamma; and that is quite out of the question.’
‘You might have her to stay with you,’ suggested Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘She would help to amuse your step-daughters.’
Elizabeth Fry and Mary Wolstencroft were coming home for their summer vacation in a few days, a return acutely dreaded by Bella.
‘Well, dear Mrs. Dulcimer, perhaps you are right. It might be as well to have Clementina.’
She could not be more in the way than those two troublesome step-daughters, Bella thought.
‘If you have your sister with you it will preventpeople making disagreeable remarks when Captain Standish calls on you,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘It must be so awkward for a young woman like you to receive a gentleman, when your husband is out.’
‘Captain Standish is not quite a dragon,’ replied Bella, laughing. ‘I am not afraid of him.’
‘My dear, I am told he is a very fascinating man,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer, ‘and that is the worst kind of dragon for a young married woman. He certainly ought to marry Clementina, and if you and I exercise a little diplomacy I believe he will do it. Look at your position. I feel proud of that. If it hadn’t been for me you might have never been Mrs. Piper. Poor Mr. Piper might never have repeated his offer if I had not encouraged him.’
‘You are all that is kind and good,’ said Bella, inwardly rebelling against this patronage and interference.
‘Now go and invite your sister to stay with you, dear. And see that she is becomingly dressed. And you can polish her up a little in the next fortnight. Clementina sadly wants polish. She has never had your opportunities, you know.’