The Project Gutenberg eBook ofVivietteThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: VivietteAuthor: William John LockeRelease date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9924]Most recently updated: December 27, 2020Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, and the ProjectGutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIVIETTE ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: VivietteAuthor: William John LockeRelease date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9924]Most recently updated: December 27, 2020Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, and the ProjectGutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Title: Viviette
Author: William John Locke
Author: William John Locke
Release date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9924]Most recently updated: December 27, 2020
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, and the ProjectGutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIVIETTE ***
[Illustration: "No, don't, Viviette; forgive me"]
Copyright, 1916By AINSLER MAGAZINE COMPANY
Copyright, 1916By JOHN LANE COMPANY
"Dick," said Viviette, "ought to go about in skins like a primitive man."
Katherine Holroyd looked up from her needlework. She was a gentle, fair-haired woman of thirty, with demure blue eyes, which regarded the girl with a mingling of pity, protection, and amusement.
"My dear," she said, "whenever I see a pretty girl fooling about with a primitive man I always think of a sweet little monkey I once knew, who used to have great sport with a lyddite shell. Her master kept it on his table as a paper-weight, and no one knew it was loaded. One day she hit the shell in the wrong place--and they're still looking for the monkey. Don't think Dick is the empty shell."
Whereupon she resumed her work, and for a few moments the click of thimble and needle alone broke the summer stillness. Viviette lay idly on a long garden chair admiring the fit of a pair of dainty tan shoes, which she twiddled with graceful twists of the ankles some five feet from her nose. At Mrs. Holroyd's remark she laughed after the manner of one quite contented with herself--a low, musical laugh, in harmony with the blue June sky and the flowering chestnuts and the song of the thrushes.
"My intentions with regard to Dick are strictly honourable," she remarked. "We've been engaged for the last eleven years, and I still have his engagement ring. It cost three-and-sixpence."
"I only want to warn you, dear," said Mrs. Holroyd. "Anyone can see that Dick is in love with you, and if you don't take care you'll have Austin falling in love with you too."
Viviette laughed again. "But he has already fallen! I don't think he knows it yet; but he has. It's great fun being a woman, isn't it, dear?"
"I don't know that I've ever found it so," Katherine replied with a sigh. She was a widow, and had loved her husband, and her sky was still tinged with grey.
Viviette, quick to catch the sadness in the voice, made no reply, but renewed the contemplation of her shoe-tips.
"I'm afraid you're an arrant little coquette," said Katherine indulgently.
"Lord Banstead says I'm a little devil," she laughed.
If she was in some measure a coquette she may be forgiven. What woman can have suddenly revealed to her the thrilling sense of her sex's mastery over men without snatching now and then the fearful joy of using her power? She was one-and-twenty, her heart still unawakened, and she had returned to her childhood's home to find men who had danced her on their knees bending low before her, and proclaiming themselves her humble vassals. It was intoxicating. She had always looked up to Austin with awe, as one too remote and holy for girlish irreverence. And now! No wonder her sex laughed within her.
Until she had gone abroad to finish her education, she had lived in that old, grey manor-house, that dreamed in the sunshine of the terrace below which she was sitting, ever since they had brought her thither, an orphaned child of three. Mrs. Ware, her guardian, was her adopted mother; the sons, Dick and Austin Ware, her brothers--the engagement, when she was ten and Dick one-and-twenty, had hardly fluttered the fraternal relationship. She had left them a merry, kittenish child. She had returned a woman, slender, full-bosomed, graceful, alluring, with a maturity of fascination beyond her years. Enemies said she had gipsy blood in her veins. If so, the infusion must have taken place long, long ago, for her folks were as proud of their name as the Wares of Ware House. But, for all that, there was a suggestion of the exotic in the olive and cream complexion, and the oval face, pointing at the dimpled chin; something of the woodland in her lithe figure and free gestures; in her swimming, dark eyes one could imagine something fierce and untamable lying beneath her laughing idleness. Katherine Holroyd called her a coquette, Austin whatever the whim of a cultured fancy suggested, and Lord Banstead a little devil. As for Dick, he called her nothing. His love was too great; his vocabulary too small.
Lord Banstead was a neighbour who, in the course of three months, had proposed several times to Viviette.
"I'm not very much to look at," he remarked on the first of these occasions--he was a weedy, pallid youth of six-and-twenty--"and the title's not very old, I must admit. Governor only a scientific Johnnie, Margetson, the celebrated chemist, you know, who discovered some beastly gas or other and got made a peer--but I can sit with the other old rotters in the House of Lords, you know, if I want. And I've got enough to run the show, if you'll keep me from chucking it away as I'm doing. It'd be a godsend if you'd marry me, I give you my word."
"Before I have anything to do with you," replied Viviette, who had heard Dick express his opinion of Lord Banstead in forcible terms, "you'll have to forswear sack, and--and a very big AND--"
Lord Banstead, not being learned in literary allusions, looked bewildered. Viviette laughed.
"I'll translate if you like. You'll have to give up unlimited champagne and whiskey and lead an ostensibly respectable life."
Whereupon Lord Banstead called her a little devil and went off in dudgeon to London and took golden-haired ladies out to supper. When he returned to the country he again offered her his title, and being rejected a second time, again called her a little devil, and went back to the fashionable supper-room. A third and a fourth time he executed this complicated manoeuvre; and now news had reached Viviette that he was in residence at Farfield, where he was boring himself exceedingly in his father's scientific library.
"I suppose he'll be coming over to-day," said Viviette.
"Why do you encourage him?" asked Katherine.
"I don't," Viviette retorted. "I snub him unmercifully. If I am a coquette it's with real men, not with the by-product of a chemical experiment."
Katherine dropped her work and her underlip, and turned reproachful blue eyes on the girl.
"Viviette!"
"Oh, she's shocked! Saint Nitouche is shocked!" Then, with a change of manner, she rose and, bending over Katherine's chair, kissed her. "I'm sorry, dear," she said, in pretty penitence. "I know it was an abominable and unladylike thing to say, but my tongue sometimes runs away with my thoughts. Forgive me."
At that moment a man dressed in rough tweeds and leggings, who had emerged from the stable side of the manor-house, crossed the terrace, and, descending the steps, walked over the lawn towards the two ladies. He had massive shoulders and a thick, strong neck, coarse reddish hair, and a moustache of a lighter shade. Blue eyes looked with a curious childish pathos out of a face tanned by sun and weather. He slouched slightly in his gait, like the heavy man accustomed to the saddle. This was Dick Ware, the elder of the brothers and heir to fallen fortunes, mortgaged house and lands, and he gave the impression of failure, of a man who, in spite of thews and sinews, had been unable to grapple with circumstance.
Viviette left Katherine to her needlework, and advanced to meet him. At her spontaneous act of welcome a light came into his eyes. He removed from his lips the short corn-cob pipe he was smoking.
"I've just been looking at the new mare. She's a beauty. I know I oughtn't to have got her, but she was going dirt cheap--and what can a man do when he's offered a horse at a quarter its value?"
"Nothing, my dear Dick, save pay four times as much as he can afford."
"But we had to get a new beast," he argued seriously. "We can't go about the country in a donkey-cart. If I hadn't bought one, Austin would, for the sake of the family dignity--and I do like to feel independent of Austin now and then."
"I wish you were entirely independent of Austin," said Viviette, walking with him up the lawn.
"I can't, so long as I stay here doing nothing. But if I went out to Canada or New Zealand, as I want to do, who would look after my mother? I'm tied by the leg."
"I'd look after mother," said Viviette. "And you'd write me nice long letters, saying how you were getting on, and I would send you nice little bulletins, and we should all be very happy."
"Do you want to get rid of me, Viviette?"
"I want you to have your heart's desire."
"You know what my heart's desire is," he said unsteadily.
"Why, to raise sheep or drive cattle, or chop down trees in the backwoods," she replied, lifting demure eyebrows. "Oh, Dick, don't be foolish. See--there's mother just come out."
With a light laugh she escaped and ran up the steps to meet an old lady, rather infirm, who, with the aid of a stick, was beginning to take her morning walk up and down the terrace. Dick followed her moodily.
"Good morning, mother," said he, bending down to kiss her.
Mrs. Ware put up her cheek, and received the salute with no great show of pleasure.
"Oh, how you smell of tobacco smoke, Dick. Where's Austin? Please go and find him. I want to hear what he has to say about the stables."
"What can he say, mother?"
"He can advise us and help us to put the muddle right," said Mrs. Ware.
These stables had been a subject of controversy for some time. The old ones having fallen into disgraceful disrepair, Dick had turned architect and erected new ones himself. As shelters for beasts, they were comparatively sound; as appanages to an Elizabethan manor-house, they were open to adverse criticism. Austin, who had come down from London a day or two before to spend his Whitsuntide holiday at home, had promised his mother to make inspection and report.
"But what does Austin know about stables?" Viviette asked, as soon as Dick had slouched away in search of his brother.
"Austin knows about everything, my dear," replied the old lady decisively. "Not only is Austin a brilliantly clever man, but he's a successful barrister, and a barrister's business is to know all about everything. Give me your arm, dear, and let us walk up and down a little till they come."
Presently Dick returned with Austin, whom he had found smoking a cigar in a very meditative manner in front of the stables. Dick's face was gloomy, but Austin's was bright, as he came briskly up and, cigar in hand, stooped to his mother. She put her arms round his neck, kissed him affectionately, and inquired after his sleep and his comfort and the quality of his breakfast.
"Doesn't Austin smell of tobacco smoke, mother?" asked Dick.
"Austin," replied Mrs. Ware, "has a way of smoking and not smelling of it."
Austin laughed gaily. "I believe if I fell into a pond you'd say I had a way of coming up dry."
Dick turned to Viviette, and muttered with some bitterness: "And if I fell into a dry ditch she'd say I came up slimy."
Viviette, touched by pity, raised a bewitching face. "Dry or slimy, you would be just the same dear old Dick," she whispered.
"And what about the stables?" asked Mrs. Ware.
"Oh, they're not bad. They're rather creditable; but," Austin added, turning with a laugh to his brother, "the mother will fidget, you know, and the somewhat--let us say rococo style of architecture has got on her nerves. I think the whole thing had better come down, don't you?"
"If you like," said Dick gruffly. He had given way to Austin all his life. What was the use of opposing him now?
"Good. I'll send young Rapson, the architect, along to make a design. Don't you worry, old chap, I'll see it through."
Young, brisk, debonair, flushed with success and the sense of the mastery of life, he did not notice the lowering of Dick's brows, which deepened into almost a scowl when he turned frankly admiring eyes on Viviette, and drew her into gay, laughing talk, nor did he catch the hopelessness in the drag of Dick's feet as he went off to gaze sorrowfully at the fallen pride of his heart, the condemned stables.
But Viviette who knew, as Austin did not, of Dick's disappointment, soon broke away and joined him in front of the amorphous shed of timber. She took him by the arm.
"Come for a stroll in the orchard."
He suffered himself to be led through the stable-yard gate. She talked to him of apple blossoms. He listened for some time in silence. Then he broke out.
"It's an infernal shame," said he.
"It is," said Viviette. "But you needn't put on such a glum face when I'm here especially to comfort you. If you're not glad to see me I'll go back to Austin. He's much more amusing than you."
"I suppose he is. Yes, go back to him. I'm a fool. I'm nobody. No, don't, Viviette; forgive me," he cried, catching her as she turned away somewhat haughtily. "I didn't mean it, but things are getting beyond my endurance."
Viviette seated herself on a bench beneath the apple blossoms.
"What things?"
"Everything. My position. Austin's airy ways."
"But that's what makes him so charming."
"Yes, confound him. My ways are about as airy as a hippopotamus's. Look here, Viviette. I'm fond of Austin, God knows--but all my life he has been put in front of me. He has had all the chances; I've had none. With my father when he was alive, with my mother, it has always been Austin this and Austin that. He was the head of the school when I, the elder, was a lout in the lower fourth. He had a brilliant University career and went into the world and is making a fortune. I'm only able to ride and shoot and do country things. I've stuck here with only this mortgaged house belonging to me and the hundred or so a year I get out of the tenants. I'm not even executor under my father's will. It's Austin. Austin pays mother the money under her marriage settlement. If things go wrong Austin is sent for to put them right. It never seems to occur to him that it's my house. Oh, of course I know he pays the interest on the mortgage and makes my mother an allowance--that's the humiliation of it."
He sat with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, staring at the grass.
"But surely you could find some work to do, Dick?"
He shrugged his great shoulders. "They stuck me once in an office in London. I suffocated and added up things wrong and told the wrong lies to the wrong people, and ended up by breaking the junior partner's head!"
"You had some satisfaction out of it, at any rate," laughed Viviette.
A faint reminiscent smile crossed his face. "I suppose I had. But it didn't qualify me for a successful business career. No. I might do something in a new country. I must get away from this. I can't stand it. But yet--as I've told you all along, I'm tied--hand and foot."
"And so you're very miserable, Dick."
"How can I help it?"
Viviette edged a little away from him, and said, rather resentfully:
"I don't call that polite, seeing that I have come back to live with you."
He turned on her with some fierceness. "Don't you see that your being here makes my life all the more impossible? How can I be with you day after day without loving you, hungering for you, wanting you, body and soul? I've never given a thought to another woman in my life. You're my heart's blood, dear. I want to hold you so tight in my arms that not the ghost of another man can ever come between us. You know it."
Viviette shredded an apple blossom that had fallen into her lap. The fingers that held the petal tingled, and a flush rose in her cheek.
"I do know it," she said in a low voice. "You're always telling me. But, Dick"--she flashed a mischievous glance at him--"while you're holding me--although it would be very nice--we should starve."
"Then let us starve," he cried vehemently.
"Oh, no. Oh, most decidedly no. Starvation would be so unbecoming. I should get to be a fright--a bundle of bones and a rundle of skin--and you'd be horrified--I couldn't bear it."
"If you would only say you cared a scrap for me it would be easier," he pleaded.
"I should have thought it would be harder."
"Anyhow, say it--say it this once--just this once."
She bent her head to hide a smile, and said in a voice adorably soft:
"Dick, shut your eyes."
"Viviette!" he cried, with sudden hope.
"No. Shut your eyes. Turn round. Now tell me," she continued, when he had turned obediently, "just what I've got on. No!" she held him by the shoulders, "you're not to move."
Now, she was wearing a white blouse and a blue skirt and tan shoes, and a yellow rose was pinned at her bosom.
"What dress am I wearing?"
"A light-coloured thing," said Dick.
"And what's it trimmed with?"
"Lace," said the unfortunate man. Lace indeed!
"And what coloured boots?"
"Black," said Dick, at a venture.
"And what flower?"
"I don't know--a pink rose, I think."
She started up. "Look," she cried gaily. "Oh, Dick! I'll never marry you till you have the common decency to look at me--never! never! never! I dressed myself this beautiful morning just to please you. Oh, Dick! Dick, you've lost such a chance."
She stood with her hands behind her back regarding him mockingly, as Eve in the first orchard must have regarded Adam when he was more dull and masculine than usual--when, for instance, she had attired herself in hybiscus flowers which he took for the hum-drum, everyday fig-leaves.
"I'm a born duffer," said Dick pathetically. "But your face is all that I see when I look at you."
"That's all very pretty," she retorted. "But you ought to see more. Now let us talk sense. Mind, if I sit on that bench again you're to talk sense."
Dick sighed. "Very well," said he.
That was the history of all his love-making. She drew him on to passionate utterance, and then, with a twist of her wit and a twirl of her skirts, she eluded him. When she had thus put herself out of his reach, he felt ashamed. What right had he, dull, useless, lumbering, squiredomless squire, to ask a woman like Viviette to marry him? How could he support a wife? As it was, he lived a pensioner on Austin's bounty. Could he ask Austin to feed his wife and family as well? This thought, which always came to him as soon as his passion was checked, filled him with deep humiliation. Viviette had reason on her side when she said, "Let us talk sense."
He glowered at his fate, and tugged his tawny moustache for some time in silence. Then Viviette began to talk to him prettily of things that made up his country interests, his dogs, the garden, the personalities of the country-side. Soon she had him laughing, which pleased and flattered her, as it proved her power over the primitive man. Indeed, at such moments, she felt very tenderly towards him, and would have liked to pat his cheeks and crown him with flowers, thus manifesting her favour by dainty caresses. But she refrained, knowing that primitive men are too dense to interpret such demonstrations rightly, and limited herself to less compromising words.
"I am going to tell you a secret," he said at last, in a shamefaced way. "You mustn't laugh at me--promise me you won't."
"I promise," said Viviette solemnly.
"I am thinking of going in for local politics--Rural District Council, you know."
Viviette nodded her head approvingly. "A village Hampden--in Tory clothing?"
"They're running things on party lines down here. The influence of Westhampton is Radical, and fills the Council with a lot of outsiders. So they've got together a Conservative Committee, and are going to run a good strong man for a vacancy. I've given them to understand that I'll be a candidate if they'll have me. I'd like to be one. It's a rubbishy thing, dear, but somehow it would give me a little interest in life."
"I don't think it a rubbishy thing at all," said Viviette. "A country gentleman ought to have a hand in rural administration. I do hope you'll get in. When will you know that the committee have selected you?"
"There's a meeting this evening. I ought to know to-night or to-morrow morning."
"Are you very keen on it?"
"Very," said Dick. And he added proudly, "It was my own idea."
"But you're not as keen on that as on going abroad?"
"Ah, that!" said Dick. "That, bar one, is the dearest wish of my heart. And who knows--it might enable me to carry out the other."
The sound of a gong within the house floated through the still June air. Viviette rose. "I must tidy myself for lunch."
They walked to the house together. On parting she put out both her hands.
"Do be reasonable, Dick, and don't look for slights in what you call Austin's airy ways. He is awfully fond of you, and would not hurt you for the world."
At the luncheon table, however, Austin did hurt him, in utter unconsciousness, by his gay command of the situation, his eager talk with Viviette of things Dick did not understand, places he had not visited, books he had never read, pictures he had never seen. It was heartache rather than envy. He did not grudge Austin his scholarship and brilliance. But his soul sank at the sight of Austin and Viviette moving as familiars in a joyous world as remote from him as Neptune. Mrs. Ware kept Katherine Holroyd engaged in mild talk of cooks and curates, while the other two maintained their baffling conversation, half banter, half serious, on a bewildering number of topics, and poor Dick remained as dumb as the fish and cutlets he was eating. He sat at the head of the table, Mrs. Ware at the foot. On his right hand sat Katherine Holroyd, on his left Viviette, and between her and his mother was Austin. With Viviette talking to Austin and Mrs. Ware to Katherine, he felt lonely and disregarded in a kind of polar waste of snowy tablecloth. Once Katherine, escaping from Mrs. Ware's platitudinous ripple, took pity on him, and asked him when he was going to redeem his promise and show her his collection of armour and weapons. Dick brightened. This was the only keen interest he had in life outside things of earth and air and stream. He had inherited a good family collection, and had added to it occasionally, as far as his slender means allowed. He had read deeply, and understood his subject.
"Whenever you like, Katherine," he said.
"This afternoon?"
"I'm afraid they want polishing up and arranging. I've got some new things which I've not placed. I've rather neglected them lately. Let us say to-morrow afternoon. Then they'll all be spick and span for you."
Katherine assented. "I've been down here so often and never seen them," she said. "It seems odd, considering the years we've known each other."
"I only took it up after father's death," said Dick. "And since then, you know, you haven't been here so very often."
"It was only the last time that I discovered you took an interest an the collection. You hid your light under a bushel. Then I went to London and heard that you were a great authority on the subject."
Dick's tanned face reddened with pleasure.
"I do know something about it. You see, guns and swords and pistols are in my line. I'm good at killing things. I ought to have been a soldier, only I couldn't pass examinations, so I sort of interest myself in the old weapons and do my killing in imagination."
"You give a regular lecture, don't you?"
"Well, you know," said Dick modestly, "a lot of them are historical. There's a mace used by a bishop, an ancestor of ours. He couldn't wield a sword in battle, so he cottoned on to that, and in order to salve his conscience before using it he would cry out 'Gare! gare!'--and they say that's what our name comes from--see? 'Ware--Ware.' He was the founder of our family--though, of course, he oughtn't to have been. And then we have the duelling pistols my great-grandfather shot Lord Estcourt with. They're beautiful things--in the case just as he left it after the duel, with powder, balls, and caps, all complete. It's a romantic story--"
"My dear Dick," interposed Mrs. Ware, with fragile, uplifted hand, "please don't offend us with these horrible family scandals. Katharine, dear, are you going to the vicar's garden party this afternoon? If you are, will you take a message to Mrs. Cook?"
So Katherine being monopolized, Dick was silenced, and as Austin and Viviette were talking in a lively but unintelligible way about a thing, or a play, or a horse called Nietzsche, he relapsed into the heavy, full-blooded man's animal enjoyment of his food and the sensitive's consciousness of heartache.
When the ladies had left the table and the coffee had been brought in, and the men's cigars were lit, Austin said:
"What a magnificently beautiful creature she has grown into."
"Whom do you mean?" asked Dick.
"Why, Viviette, of course. She's the most fascinating thing I've come across for years."
"Do you think so?" said Dick shortly.
"Don't you?"
Dick shrugged his shoulders. Austin laughed.
"What a stolid old beggar you are. To you, she's just the same little girl that used to run about here in short frocks. If she were a horse you'd have a catalogue yards long of her points."
"But as she's a lady," said Dick, tugging his moustache, "I don't care to catalogue them."
Austin laughed again. "Fairly scored!" He raised his cup to his lips, took a sip, and set it down again.
"Why on earth," said he with some petulance, "can't mother give us decent coffee?"
Dick went heavy-hearted to bed that night, pronouncing himself to be the most abjectly miserable of God's creatures, and calling on Providence to remove him speedily from an unsympathetic world. He had said good night to the ladies at eleven o'clock when the three went upstairs to bed, and had forthwith gone to spend the rest of the evening in the friendly solitude of his armoury. Emerging thence an hour later into the hall, he had come upon a picturesque, but heart-rending, spectacle. There, on the third step of the grand staircase, stood Viviette, holding in one hand a candle, and extending the other regally downwards to Austin, who, with sleek head bent, was pressing it to his lips. In the candle-light her hair threw disconcerting shadows over her elfin face, and her great eyes seemed to glow with a magical intensity that poor Dick had never seen in them before. As soon as he had appeared she had broken into her low laugh, drawn away her hand from Austin, and, descending the steps, extended it in much the same regal manner to Dick.
"Good night again, Dick," she said sweetly. "Austin and I have been having a little talk."
But he had disregarded the hand, and, with a gruff "Good night," had returned to his armoury, slamming the door behind him. There he had nourished his wrath on more whiskey and soda than was good for him, and crawled upstairs in the small hours to miserable sleeplessness.
This was the beginning of Dick's undoing, the gods (abetted by Viviette) employing their customary procedure of first driving him mad. But Viviette was not altogether a guilty abettor. Indeed, all day long, she had entertained high notions of acting fairy godmother, and helping Dick along the road to fortune and content. He himself, she learned, had taken no steps to free himself from his present mode of life. He had not even confided in Austin. Viviette ran over the list of her influential friends. There was Lady Winsmere, a dowager countess of seventy, surrounded by notabilities, at whose house she stayed now and then in London. On the last occasion an Agent-General for one of the great Colonies had sat next her at dinner. Then there was her friend Mrs. Penderby, whose husband gathered enormous wealth in some mysterious way in Mark Lane. Why should she not go up to London and open a campaign on Dick's behalf, secure him an appointment, and come back flourishing it before his dazzled and delighted eyes? The prospect was enchanting. The fairy godmother romance of it fascinated her girlish mind. But first she must clear the ground at home. There must be no opposition from Austin. He must be her ally.
When a woman gets an idea like this into her head she must execute it, as the Americans say, right now. A man waits, counts up all the barriers, and speculates on the strength and courage of the lions in the path--but a woman goes straight forward, and does not worry about the lions till they bite her. Viviette resolved to speak to Austin at once; but, owing to a succession of the little ironies of circumstance, she found no opportunity of doing so all the afternoon or evening. It was only when, standing at the top of the stairs, she had seen Dick go off to the armoury, and Austin return to the drawing-room--for the men had bidden the ladies good night in the hall--that she saw her chance. She went downstairs and opened the drawing-room door.
"I don't want to go to bed after all. Do you think you can do with me a little longer?"
"A great deal longer," he said, drawing a chair for her, and arranging the shade of a lamp so that the light should not shine full in her eyes. "I was just thinking how dull the room looked without you--as if all the flowers had suddenly been taken away."
"I suppose I am decorative," she said blandly.
"You're bewitching. What instinct made you choose that shade of pale green for your frock? If I had seen it in the pattern I should have said it was impossible for your colouring. But now it seems to be the only perfect thing you could wear."
She laughed her little laugh of pleasure, and thanked him prettily for the compliment. They bandied gay words for a while.
"Oh, I'm so glad you have come down--even for this short visit," said Viviette at last. "I was pining for talk, for wit, for a breath of the great world beyond these sleepy meadows. You bring all that with you."
Austin leaned forward. "How do you know I'm not bringing even more?"
The girl's eyes drooped before his gaze. Then she fluttered a glance at him in which there was a gleam of mockery.
"You bring the most valuable gift of all--appreciation of my frocks. I love people to notice them. Now Dick is frock-blind. Why is that?"
"He's a dear old duffer," said Austin.
"I don't think he's happy," said Viviette, who, in her feminine way, had worked round to the subject of the interview.
"He did seem rather cut up about the stables," Austin admitted. "But the things are an eyesore, and mother was worrying herself to death about them."
"It isn't only the stables," said Viviette. "Dick is altogether discontented."
Austin looked at her in amazement. "Discontented?"
"He wants something to do."
"Nonsense," he laughed, with the air of a man certain of his facts. "He's as happy as a king here. He shoots and hunts--looks after the place--runs the garden and potters about in his armoury--in fact, does just what he likes all day long. He goes to bed without a care sharing his pillow, and, when he wakes up, gets into comfortable country clothes instead of a tight-fitting suit of responsibilities. For a man of his tastes he leads an ideal existence."
He threw away the end of the cigarette he was smoking, as though to say that the argument was finished. But Viviette regarded him with a smile--the smile of woman's superior wisdom. How astonishingly little he knew of Dick!
"Do you really think there is one contented being on earth?" she asked. "Even I know better than that."
Austin maintained that Dick ought to be contented.
"Dependent for practically all he has on you?"
"I've never let him feel it," he said quickly.
"He does, though. He wants to get away--to earn his own living--make a way for himself."
"That's the first I've heard of it," said Austin, genuinely surprised. "I really thought he was perfectly contented here. Of course, now and then he's grumpy--but he always has had fits of grumpiness. What kind of work does he want?"
"Something to do with sheep or cattle--in Arizona or New Zealand--the place doesn't matter--any open-air life."
Austin lit another cigarette and walked about the room. He was a man of well-regulated habits, and did not like being taken unawares. Dick ought to have told him. Then there was their mother. Who would look after her? Dick was a dispensation of Providence.
"Perhaps I might be a deputy dispensation, mightn't I?" said Viviette. "I don't think mother is so desperately attached to Dick as all that. It could be arranged somehow or other. And Dick is growing more and more wretched about it every day. Every day he pours out his woes to me till I can almost howl with misery."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Not to stand in his way if he gets a chance of going abroad."
"Of course I won't," cried Austin eagerly. "It never entered my head that he wanted to go away. I would do anything in the world for his happiness, poor old chap. I love Dick very deeply. In spite of his huge bulk and rough ways there's something of the woman in him that makes one love him."
They catalogued Dick's virtues, and then Viviette unfolded her scheme. One or other of the powerful personages whom, in her young confidence, she proposed to attack, would surely know of some opening abroad.
"Even humble I sometimes hear of things," said Austin. "Only a day or two ago old Lord Overton asked me if I knew of a man who could manage a timber forest he's got in Vancouver--"
Viviette jumped up and clapped her hands.
"Why, that's the very thing for Dick!" she cried exultingly.
"God bless my soul!" said Austin. "So it is. I never thought of it."
"If you get it for him I'll thank you in the sweetest way possible." She glanced at him swiftly, under her eyelids. "I promise you I will."
"Then I'll certainly get it," replied Austin.
Austin then went into details. Lord Overton wanted a man of education--a gentleman--one who could ride and shoot and make others work. He would have to superintend the planting and the cutting and the transportation of timber, and act as agent for the various farms Lord Overton possessed in the wide district. The salary would be £700 a year. The late superintendent had suddenly died, and Lord Overton wanted a man to go out at once and fill his place. If only he had thought of Dick!
"But you're thinking of him now. It can't be too late--men with such qualifications aren't picked up at every street corner."
"That's quite true," said Austin. "And as for my recommendation," he added in his confident way, "Lord Overton and I are on such terms that he would not hesitate to give the appointment to a brother of mine. I'll write at once."
"And we'll say nothing to Dick until we've got it all in black and white."
"Not a word," said he.
Then they burst out laughing like happy conspirators, and enjoyed beforehand the success of their plot.
"The old place will be very strange without him," said Austin.
A shadow passed over Viviette's bright face. The manor-house would indeed be very lonely. Her occupation as Dick's liege lady, confidante, and tormentor would be gone. Parting from him would be a wrench. There would be a dreadful scene at the last moment, in which he would want to hold her tight in his arms and make her promise to join him in Vancouver. She shivered a little; then tossed her head as if to throw off the disturbing thoughts.
"Don't let us look at the dismal side of things. It's selfish. All we want is Dick's happiness." She glanced at the clock and started up. "It's midnight. If Katherine knew I was here she would lecture me."
"It's nothing very dreadful," he laughed. "Nor is Katherine's lecture."
"I call her Saint Nitouche--but she's a great dear, isn't she? Good night."
He accompanied her to the foot of the stairs and lit her candle. On the third stair she paused.
"Remember--in all this it's I who am the fairy godmother."
"And I," said Austin, "am nothing but the fairy godmother's humble and devoted factotum." He took the hand which she extended and, bending over it, kissed it gallantly.
Then by unhappy chance out came Dick from the armoury, and beheld the spectacle which robbed him of his peace of mind.
The next morning, when Dick came down gloomily to breakfast, she was very gentle with him, and administered tactfully to his wants. She insisted on going to the sideboard and carving his cold ham, of which he ate prodigious quantities after a hot first course, and when she put the plate before him laid a caressing touch on his shoulder. She neglected Austin in a bare-faced manner, and drew Dick into reluctant and then animated talk on his prize roses and a setter pup just recovering from distemper. After the meal she went with him round the garden, inspected both roses and puppy, and manifested great interest in a trellis he was constructing for the accommodation later in the summer of some climbing cucumbers, at present only visible as modest leaves in flower-pots. Neither made any reference to the little scene of the night before. Morning had brought to Dick the conviction that in refusing her hand and slamming the door he had behaved in an unpardonably bearish manner; and he could not apologise for his behaviour unless he confessed his jealousy of Austin, which, in all probability, would have subjected him to the mocking ridicule of Viviette--a thing which, above all others, he dreaded, and against which he knew himself to be defenceless. Viviette, too, found silence golden. She knew perfectly well why Dick had slammed the door. An explanation would have been absurd. It would have interfered with her relations with Austin, which were beginning to be exciting. But she loved Dick in her heart for being a bear, and evinced both her compunction and her appreciation in peculiar graciousness.
"You've never asked me to try the new mare," she said. "I don't think it a bit kind of you."
"Would you care to?" he asked eagerly.
"Of course I should. I love to see you with horses. You and the trap and the horse seem to be as much one mechanism as a motor-car."
"I can make a horse do what I want," he said, delighted at the compliment. "We'll take the dog-cart. When will you come? This morning?"
"Yes--let us say eleven. It will be lovely."
"I'll have it round at eleven o'clock. You'll see. She's a flyer."
"So am I," she said with a laugh, and pointed to the front gate, which a garden lad had just run to open to admit a young man on horseback.
"Oh, lord! it's Banstead," said Dick with a groan.
"Au revoir--eleven o'clock," said Viviette, and she fled.
Lord Banstead dismounted, gave his horse to the lad, and came up to Dick. He was an unhealthy, dissipated-looking young man, with lustreless eyes, a characterless chin, and an underfed moustache. He wore a light blue hunting stock, fastened by a ruby fox in full gallop, and a round felt hat with a very narrow flat brim, beneath which protruded strands of Andrew aguecheek hair.
"Hallo, Banstead," said Dick, not very cordially.
"Hallo," said the other, halting before the rose-bed, where Dick was tying up some blooms with bast. He watched him for a moment or two. Conversation was not spontaneous.
"Where's Viviette?" he asked eventually.
"Who?" growled Dick.
"Rot. What's the good of frills? Miss Hastings."
"Busy. She'll be busy all the morning."
"I rather wanted to see her."
"I don't think you will. You might ring at the front door and send in your card."
"I might," said Banstead, lighting a cigar. He had tried this method of seeing Viviette before, but without success. There was another pause. Dick snipped off an end of bast.
"You're up very early," said he.
"Went to bed so bally sober I couldn't sleep," replied the misguided youth. "Not a soul in the house, I give you my word. So bored last night I took a gun and tried to shoot cats. Shot a damn cock pheasant by mistake, and had to bury the thing in my own covers. If I'm left to myself to-night I'll get drunk and go out shooting tenants. Come over and dine."
"Can't," said Dick.
"Do. I'll open a bottle of the governor's old port. Then we can play billiards, or piquet, or cat's-cradle, or any rotten thing you like."
Dick excused himself curtly. Austin had come down for Whitsuntide, and a lady was staying in the house. Lord Banstead pushed his hat to the back of his head.
"Then what the devil am I to do in this hole of a place?"
"Don't know," said Dick.
"You fellows in the country are so unfriendly. In town I never need dine alone. Anyone's glad to see me. Feeding all by myself in that dining-room fairly gives me the pip."
"Then come and dine here," said Dick, unable to refuse a neighbour hospitality.
"Right," said Banstead. "That is really like the Samaritan Johnnie. I'll come with pleasure."
"Quarter to eight."
Banstead hesitated. "Couldn't you make it a quarter past?"
Dick stared. "Alter our dinner hour? You've rather a nerve, haven't you, Banstead?"
"I wouldn't suggest it, if we weren't pals," replied the other, grinning somewhat shamefacedly. "But the fact is I've got an appointment late this afternoon." The fatuity of vicious and coroneted youth outstripped his discretion. "There's a devilish pretty girl, you know, at 'The Green Man' at Little Barton; I don't know whether I can get away in time."
Dick stuffed his bast in his pocket, and muttered things uncomplimentary to Banstead.
"Dinner's at a quarter to eight. You can take it or leave it," said he.
"I suppose I've jolly well got to take it," said Banstead, unruffled. "Anything's better than going through dinner from soup to dessert all alone under the fishy eye of that butling image of a Jenkins. He was thirty years in my governor's service, and doesn't understand my ways. I guess I'll have to chuck him."
A perspiring, straw-hatted postman lurched along the gravel drive with the morning's post. He touched his hat to Dick, delivered the Manor House bag into his hands, and departed.
"I'll sort these in the morning-room," said Dick, moving in the direction of the house, and Lord Banstead, hoping to see Viviette, followed at his heels. The control of the family post was one of the few privileges Dick retained as master of the house. His simple mind still regarded the receipt and despatch of letters as a solemn affair of life, and every morning he went through the process of distribution with ceremonial observance. In the morning-room they found Austin and Viviette, the former writing in a corner, the latter reading a novel by the French window that opened on to the terrace. Dick went up to a table, and, opening the mail-bag, began to sort the letters into various heaps. Austin greeted Lord Banstead none too warmly, and, with scarcely an apology, went back to his writing. He disapproved of Banstead, who was of a type particularly antagonistic to the young, clean, and successful barrister. When Viviette had informed him of the youth's presence in the garden, he had exclaimed impatiently:
"It ought to be somebody's business to go round the world occasionally with a broom and sweep away spiders like that."
Viviette, mindful of the invective, received Lord Banstead with a smile of amusement. As she had two protectors against a fifth proposal of marriage, she stood her ground.
"I expected you to come over yesterday," she said.
"No, did you really?" he exclaimed, a flush rising to his pale cheeks. "If I had thought that I should have come."
"You've made up for it by arriving early to-day, at any rate," said Viviette.
"And I'm making up for it further by coming to dinner to-night. Dick asked me," he added, seeing the polite questioning in her eyes.
"That will be very nice," she said. "You can talk to mother. You see, Dick talks to Mrs. Holroyd, who is staying with us, Austin talks to me, so poor mother is left out in the cold. She'll enjoy a nice long talk with you."
When Banstead took the chorus out to supper he had the ready repartee of his kind. In such a case he would have told the lady not to pull his leg. But the delicate mockery in Viviette's face seemed to forbid the use of this figure of speech, and as his vocabulary did not readily allow him to formulate the idea in other terms he said nothing, but settled his stock, and looked at her adoringly. At last he bent forward, after a glance at the protectors, and said in a low tone:
"Come out into the garden. I've something to say to you."
"Why not say it here?" she replied in her ordinary voice.
Banstead bit his lip. He would have liked to call her a little devil. But he reflected that if he did she would be quite capable of repeating the phrase aloud, somewhat to the astonishment of Dick and Austin, who might ask for embarrassing explanations. Instead he bent still nearer, and whispered:
"I can only say it to you alone. I've been awake all night thinking of it--give you my word."
"Wait till to-morrow morning, and by then you may have slept upon it," she counselled.
"You'll drive me to drink!" he murmured.
She rose with a laugh. "In that case I must go. I ought to be labelled 'dangerous.' Don't you think so, Dick? Besides, I'm going for a drive, and must put on my things. These my letters? Au revoir." And, with a wave of her hand she left them.
Banstead lingered by the threshold and took up an illustrated paper. The maid, in response to Dick's summons, bore away the letters for the rest of the household. Austin and Dick concerned themselves with their correspondence, Dick's chiefly consisting of gardeners' catalogues.
For a while there was silence. It was broken by a loud laugh from Austin.
"Dick! I say, Dick! What do you think these village idiots have asked me to do? To accept their nomination and stand as a Rural District Councillor! Me!"
Dick quickly crossed to the table where his brother was sitting.
"That's my letter, old chap. I must here put it in your heap by mistake. The invitation is meant for me."
"You?" laughed Austin. "Why, what do you want to fool about with village politics for? No. The letter is meant for me right enough."
"I can't understand it," said Dick.
Lord Banstead looked up from his paper.
"That the Rural District Council? I'm on the committee. Had a meeting yesterday. I'm chairman of the silly rotters."
"Then your silly rotter of an honorary secretary," cried Dick angrily, "has sent Austin the letter of invitation that was meant for me."
"Oh, no, he didn't," said Banstead. "It's all right. They chucked you, old son. Now I remember. I promised to explain."
Dick turned aside. "Oh, you needn't explain," he said bitterly.
"But I must. They had their reasons, you know. They thought they'd rather have a brainy nobleman like your brother than a good old rotter like you. You're--"
"Oh, hold your tongue, Banstead," cried Austin, rising and putting his hand on Dick's shoulder. "Really, my dear old Dick, you're the right person to stand. They only thought a lawyer could help them--but I'm far too busy--of course I decline. I'm deeply pained, Dick, at having hurt you. I'll write to the committee and point out how much fitter, as a country gentleman, you are for the duties than I am. They're bound to ask you."
Dick swung away passionately, his lips quivering with anger and mortification beneath his great moustache.
"Do you think I would accept? I'm damned if I would. Do you expect me to pick up everything you've thrown in the mud and feel grateful? I'm damned if I will!"
He flung out of the room on to the terrace and strode away in a rage.
"Seems to take it badly," remarked Banstead, looking at his disappearing figure. "I had better say good-bye."
"Good-bye," said Austin. And he added, as he accompanied him with grim politeness to the front gate, "if you exercise the same tact in the chair as you've done here, your meetings must be a huge success."
He returned with a shrug of the shoulders to his table in the morning-room. He was deeply attached to Dick, but a lifelong habit of regarding him as a good-natured, stupid, and contented giant blinded him to the storm that was beginning to rage in the other's soul. The occurrence was unfortunate. It wounded the poor old fellow's vanity. Banstead's blatant folly had been enough to set any man in a rage. But, after all, Dick was a common-sense creature, and, recognising that Austin was in no way to blame, he would soon get over it. Meanwhile, there was awaiting him the joyful surprise of Vancouver, which would soon put such petty mortifications out of his head. Thus Austin consoled himself, and settled down to the serious matters of his correspondence.
Viviette, coming in later in hat and jacket, found him busily writing. He looked up at her admiringly as she stood against the background of light framed by the great French window.
"Am I presentable?" she asked, with a smile, interpreting his glance.
"Each modification of your dress makes you seem more bewitching than the last."
"I trimmed this hat myself," she said, coming into the room, and looking at herself in a Queen Anne mirror on the wall.
"That's why it's so becoming," said Austin.
She wheeled round on him with a laugh. "You really ought to say something cleverer than that!"
"How can I," he replied, "when you drive my wits away?"
"Poor me," she said. And then, suddenly, "Where's Dick?"
"What do you want Dick for?"
"He promised to take me for a drive." She consulted the watch on her wrist. "It's past eleven now."
"I'm afraid poor Dick is rather upset. He seems to have been counting on being nominated to stand for the Rural District Council, and the imbeciles invited me instead."
"Oh, how could they?" she cried, smitten with a great pity. "How could they be so stupid and cruel? I know all about it. He told me yesterday. He must be bitterly disappointed."
Austin did not tell her of Lord Banstead's tactful explanation of the committee's action. He was a fastidious man, and did not care to soil his mind with the memory of Banstead's existence. If he had described the scene, the young man's vulgarity, his own attempt at conciliation, and Dick's passionate outburst--the course of the drama that was shaping itself might have been altered. But the stars in their courses were fighting against Dick. Austin only said:
"If we get him this appointment, it will be ample compensation, anyhow."
"Please don't say 'if,'" exclaimed Viviette, "we must get it."
"Unless Lord Overton has already found a man, which is unlikely, owing to the general suspension of business at Whitsuntide, it's practically a certainty."
"When shall we know?"
"My letter's written and is waiting for the post. If he replies by return we shall hear the day after to-morrow."
"That is such a long time to wait. Do you know what to-morrow is?"
"Wednesday," said Austin.
"It's Dick's birthday." She clapped her hands at a happy inspiration, and hung on his arm. "Oh, Austin! If we could only give him the appointment as a birthday present!"
Her touch, her fresh charm, the eagerness in her eyes roused him to unwonted enthusiasm. In his sane moments he did not care a fig for anybody's birthday. What man ever does? He proclaimed the splendour of her idea. But how was it to be realised?
"Send a long prepaid telegram to Lord Overton, of course," said Viviette triumphantly. (How unresourceful are men!) "Then we can get an answer to-day."
"You forget the nearest telegraph office is at Witherby, seven miles off."
"But Dick and I are going for a drive. I'll make him go to Witherby and I'll send the telegram. Write it."
She drew him in her caressing way to the table, seated him in the chair, and laid the block of telegram forms before him. He scribbled industriously, and when he had finished handed her the sheets.
"There!"
He fished in his pockets for money, but Viviette checked him. She was the fairy godmother in this fairy tale, and fairy godmothers always held the purse. She glanced again at her watch. It was ten minutes past eleven.
"Perhaps he's waiting with the trap for me all the time. Au revoir."
"I'll see you off," said Austin.
They went together into the hall and opened the front door. The new mare and the dog-cart in charge of the stable lad were there, but no Dick.
"Where's Mr. Ware?"
"Don't know, miss."
Then the Devil entered into Viviette. There is no other explanation. The Devil entered into her.
"We must get to Witherby and back before lunch. You drive me over instead of Dick."
They exchanged glances. Austin was young. He was in love with her. Dick had committed the unpardonable offence of being late. It would serve him right.
"I'll come," said he, disappearing in search of cap and gloves.
Viviette went into the hall and scribbled a note.
"Dear Dick,--You're late. Austin and I have the most important business to transact at Witherby, so he's driving me over. We're preparing a great surprise for you.--Viviette."
"Give this to Mr. Ware," she said to the stable boy as she prepared to get into the dog-cart.
The boy touched his cap and ran to open the gate. Viviette lightly mounted by Austin's side. They had just turned into the road when Dick came racing through the hall and saw them disappear. He walked up the drive, and met the boy coming down, who handed him the note, with some words, which he did not hear. He watched the boy out of sight. Then he tore the note unread into tiny fragments, stamped them furiously into the mould of the nearest bed, and, flying into his armoury, threw himself into a chair and cursed the day that ever Austin was born.