CHAPTER XVII.
VANESSA’S VISIT.
Erebuswas in due course shown to Mr. Piper, who knew so little about horses as to be scarcely worthy to be called a Yorkshireman. His own particular vanity in the way of horse-flesh was a fast pony that could trot between the shafts of a light carriage for any number of hours without rest or refreshment. Anything beyond that was out of his line. He contemplated the black with a cool survey, and thought that there was very little of him for the money.
‘Isn’t he lovely?’ asked Bella, patting the creature’s sleek neck.
Erebus was of a heavenly temper in his stable. It was only when conscious of humanity on his back that he was subject to fits of waywardness.
‘Well, he aren’t bad-looking,’ assented the unenthusiastic Piper; ‘but if I’d chose a horse for youI should have picked one with more timber and a better back for the saddle. I hope he’s quiet.’
‘Oh, he’s everything that’s nice,’ answered Bella, with a fluttering of her heart at the recollection of some of Erebus’s manœuvres that morning. ‘I shall feel as easy on him as in an arm-chair—when I get used to him.’
‘And Captain Standish gave you a riding lesson, did he?’ inquired Mr. Piper.
‘Yes, he went over the moor with me, just to show me how to manage Erebus.’
‘That was very civil of him. But you mustn’t be riding about with him often, you know, Bella. It wouldn’t do. You mean no harm, and he means no harm. I know that, my dear. But it would set people talking—and I’m as proud a man as Cæsar in my way. I won’t have my wife talked about.’
Bella buried her pale face in the black’s silky mane. She did not care to meet her husband’s honest eyes just at this particular moment.
‘I would not for the world do anything you dislike,’ she said, meekly; ‘but I want to learnhow to manage Erebus, and I don’t think any one could teach me so well as Captain Standish. And, by and by, when the foxhunting begins, if you did not mind, I should like very much to—to——’ Here Mr. Piper glared at her with a look so awful that she remodelled the end of her sentence—’ to see the hounds throw off.’
‘You could drive to the meet in your pony chay,’ said Mr. Piper. ‘Nobody could say there was harm in that.’
‘It would be much nicer to go on horseback,’ pleaded Bella, laying her little white hand caressingly on Mr. Piper’s velvet collar.
‘Why, what a baby you are, little woman!’ he exclaimed, mollified by that light touch, and the coaxing look in the Dresden china face. ‘Yon horse is a new toy. You’ll be wanting to ride him into the drawing-room, I shouldn’t wonder, or to have him lying on the hearth-rug of a winter evening, like a Newfoundland.’
This, in Bella’s idea, meant permission to go to the meet, and once at the meet it would be very easy to follow the hounds for half an hour or so,and to declare afterwards that it was Erebus’s doing, quite an involuntary bit of hunting on her own part. Bella was past mistress of those small arts by which an adroit unscrupulous woman manages to get her own way.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Mr. Piper presently, ‘if you want to have company when you’re out riding, you’d better ask one of Porkman’s girls to come and spend a week with you and bring her hoss. They’re first-rate horsewomen, both of ’em.’
‘I should be very glad to have Vanessa,’ said Bella. ‘I think she’s the nicest—or, at any rate, the least nasty,’ she added hastily.
Mrs. Porkman was a woman gifted with dim and uncultured aspirations after the beautiful. She had filled her drawing-room with heterogeneous bric-a-brac, including every variety of bad art, from Cleopatra’s needle in Cornish serpentine to the latest monstrosity in Bohemian glass, and she had called her two eldest daughters Stella and Vanessa, having read of two young women of that name once in a book. She had forgotten all about the book, and the young women, but the names had lingeredin her memory. She had her eldest daughter christened Stella, and in due time there appeared a Vanessa to complete the pair, and to take to Stella’s cast-off frocks.
Bella thought it would not be altogether inconvenient—nay, it would be very convenient—to have Vanessa Porkman for her companion. With Vanessa riding on her left side, Captain Standish might ride on her right, without giving occasion for scandal. She was not at all afraid of Vanessa being scandalized by anything she saw or heard. The second Miss Porkman was so far in advance of her age, that she had in a manner anticipated all the feminine fastness of the nineteenth century. The skating rink, the ladies’ club of the future, contained nothing calculated to shock Vanessa.
Miss Porkman accepted Mrs. Piper’s invitation gladly. She owned with a charming candour that she was always glad to get away from home. She was quite open-minded in her contempt for her own family, and never even pretended to think them refined or well-bred. ‘Papa is simply dreadful,’ she would declare frankly. ‘I quitewonder how any of us put up with him. I suppose it is only because he is the family banker. If he wasn’t, we should put him in the gardener’s barrow and wheel him down to the edge of the river, and topple him comfortably in, and get rid of him as quietly as the gentle Hindoos do of their parents when they’ve lived long enough.’
Miss Porkman came. She was a florid young woman, with bold brown eyes, an affectation of short sight, an eye-glass, and an insatiable thirst for masculine society. Contemplated from an abstract ethnological point of view, she was a remarkably interesting example of the depth of deterioration to which the womanly character can descend among the well-to-do classes; but she was an excruciating young woman to live with.
In her mind the business of a woman’s life was flirtation. To be admired, to agitate the hearts of men, to lure the luckless Strephon from his legitimate Chloe, these things, in Miss Porkman’s mind, constituted woman’s mission. She was not strong-minded, she was no eager reformer, she didn’t care twopence about universal suffrage; but she wantedto be the Cleopatra of her small world, to have Cæsar, and Pompey, and Antonius, and the young Augustus, and every man of them subjugated and adoring. She had unlimited confidence in her own good looks, and a scornful pity for plain women, with whom nobody cared to flirt.
The fair Vanessa had tried her hardest to entangle Captain Standish in those flowery chains which she kept in stock for all eligible victims, but the captain had not allowed himself to be bound. She had seen with disgust that he was a constant guest at the Park, and that he lavished upon Bella those attentions which she had herself unsuccessfully invited. To flirt with a married woman was in Miss Porkman’s eyes not so much immoral as it was cowardly. She would have excused the immorality, but she could not forgive the cowardice. Here was evidently a man who feared to trust himself within the range of her charms, lest he should be caught unawares and meshed in the matrimonial net, and who amused himself with a vapid flirtation in a quarter where he felt himself ignobly safe.
‘He can’t care for such a little waxen image as Mrs. Piper,’ said Miss Porkman, contemplating her Juno-like figure in her cheval-glass, ‘but he doesn’t want to marry into the commercial classes, and he’s afraid to trust himself withme.’
Vanessa came to Little Yafford Park, resolved to leave it a conqueror. She brought her prettiest dresses. She brought her horse, and she believed herself invincible on horseback. If Captain Standish was as much at the Park as report said he was, Vanessa felt sure of victory.
She was not disappointed. Captain Standish came every day, and rode every day on the moor with Bella and Miss Porkman. He taught Bella how to manage the black, and he was sufficiently attentive to Vanessa to keep that young lady in perpetual good humour with herself and him.
Bella’s pluck, which was undeniable, made up in a great measure for her want of experience. In a week she was mistress of Erebus, and seemed well able to cope with his whims and uncertainties, his disposition to take fright at shadows, and to bolt on every inconvenient occasion.
‘I never knew any one learn to ride so quickly,’ said the captain, ‘for upon my word, you know, frankly, you knew very little about it when you first rode Erebus.’
Bella blushed, remembering how little she had known, how much less even than the captain gave her credit for knowing.
Mr. Piper saw them start for their ride sometimes, and was pleased to see his little woman happy. He could see no harm in her accepting the captain’s escort while she had Vanessa Porkman with her, an expensively educated, well brought up young woman, who knew what was what, and would be sure to keep Captain Standish in his place. He praised the black, and thanked the captain for buying that accomplished animal.
‘He’s rather too weedy for my style,’ said Mr. Piper, ‘but he looks well-bred, and he carries my little woman beautifully.’
Captain Standish dined at the Park twice during the week, at Mr. Piper’s particular invitation.
‘Do you know, Bella,’ said Ebenezer, one night, after Miss Porkman had lighted her candle and leftthem, ‘I think Standish is smitten with Vanessa. I shouldn’t wonder if it was to be a match. She’s an uncommon fine girl, and old Porkman could give her twenty thousand and feel none the poorer for it. She wouldn’t be a bad catch for the captain.’
‘Catch!’ echoed Bella, contemptuously. ‘Do you suppose Captain Standish wants what you call a catch? Do you think he would care to take Mr. Porkman’s twenty thousand pounds, and go down to the grave associated with provisions? Captain Standish could not afford to marry Vanessa if he loved her to distraction. Whenever he marries he must marry rank. You forget that his mother is Lady Emmeline Standish.’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Mr. Piper. ‘But I can’t see that his mother’s having a handle to her name need make Porkman’s money less acceptable. Money can buy land, can’t it? and, in England, land means aristocracy. Put your money into the soil, and you’re an aristocrat. That’s how I take it. I should never have bought this place, to pay me two and a half per cent., if I hadn’t felt that I was hooking myself on to the landed gentry. I say,’ concludedMr. Piper, spreading his coat tails as he stood with his portly back to the fire, ‘I say that Vanessa Porkman would be a capital match for Standish, and he’s a fool if he can’t see it.’
‘Pray don’t take up Mrs. Dulcimer’s craze of match-making,’ said Bella, scornfully.
She was indignant at the idea that any one could suppose Captain Standish in love with Vanessa—that large middle-class Juno.
Poor Mrs. Dulcimer’s good-natured soul was perturbed by Vanessa’s visit. She went to the Park on Thursday afternoon, and remonstrated with Bella for her short-sightedness and want of sisterly feeling.
‘My dear, you are letting that horrid Miss Porkman cut out poor Clementina,’ she complained. ‘This visit of hers will quite spoil Clementina’s chance with Captain Standish.’
‘Indeed, Mrs. Dulcimer, Tina never had any chance with Captain Standish. He is not a marrying man. I have heard him say as much.’
‘Oh, my dear, they all say that, and even think it until they are caught. It doesn’t make theslightest difference. I am sure he admired your sister, and it would have been such a splendid match for her, and so nice for you to have had such aristocratic connections. Lady Emmeline would have been your—something in-law. And now you have spoiled it all by inviting Miss Porkman.’
‘I wanted some one to ride with me,’ said Bella. ‘Clementina can’t ride, and hasn’t a horse.’
‘Well, it is a great pity. Everybody says that Captain Standish is in love with Miss Porkman.’
Bella knew that Mrs. Dulcimer’s everybody usually meant herself and Rebecca.
And now the time drew near for Bella to try her fortune in the hunting-field. She sounded Miss Porkman, and found that young lady eager for anything fast and furious. Vanessa had never hunted—Mr. Porkman objecting to ladies in the field just as strongly as Mr. Piper. But she was quite ready to hazard the paternal anger, supposing it impossible to have a day’s sport without her father coming to hear of it.
‘He has never actually forbidden us to hunt,’ said Vanessa, ‘but I know he doesn’t like ladiesriding to hounds. I’ve heard him say so very often. However, he won’t know anything about it till it’s all over, and when he does hear of it I must weather the storm somehow.’
Vanessa had weathered a good many paternal tempests since she had emerged from the nursery, stormy winds blown up by milliner’s bills, hurricanes provoked by too reckless flirtations, and divers other meteorological disturbances of a domestic nature. A storm, more or less, in Vanessa’s opinion made no difference.
Captain Standish rode the black to hounds, and pronounced him perfect.
‘There’s to be a grand meet next Thursday morning at Milvey Bridge, and we must all go,’ he said, to Bella. ‘You can tell Piper you are going to see the hounds throw off.’