PEACOCK'S FEATHERS.
That practised falsehood under saintly show,
Deep malice to conceal, couched with revenge.
Milton, "Paradise Lost."
Old Lady Kynaston arrived at Shadonake in the worst possible temper. Her butler and factotum, who always made every arrangement for her when she was about to travel, had for once been unequal to cope with Bradshaw; he had looked out the wrong train, and had sent off his lady and her maid half-an-hour too late from Walpole Lodge.
The consequence was that, instead of reaching Shadonake comfortably at half-past six in the afternoon, Lady Kynaston had to wait for the next train. She ate her dinner alone, in London, at the Midland Railway Hotel, and never reached her destination till half-past nine on the night of the ball.
Before she had half completed her toilette the guests were beginning to arrive.
"I am afraid I must go down and receive these people, dear Lady Kynaston," said Mrs. Miller, who had remained in her guest's room full of regret and sympathy at the contretemps of her journey.
"Oh, dear me! yes, Caroline—pray go down. I shall be all the quicker for being left alone. Not that cap, West; the one with the Spanish point, of course. Dear me, how I do hate all this hurry and confusion!"
"I am so afraid you will be tired," murmured Mrs. Miller, soothingly. "Would you like me to send Miss Nevill up to your room? It might be pleasanter for you than to meet her downstairs."
"Good gracious, no!" exclaimed the elder lady, testily. "What on earth should I be in such a hurry for! I shall see quite as much of her as I want by-and-by, I have no doubt."
Mrs. Miller retired, and the old lady was left undisturbed to finish her toilette, during which it may fairly be assumed that that dignified personage, Mrs. West, had a hard time of it.
When she issued forth from her room, dressed, like a little fairy godmother, in point lace and diamonds, the dancing downstairs was in full swing.
Lady Kynaston paused for a minute at the top of the broad staircase to look down upon the bright scene below. The hall was full of people. Girls in many-coloured dresses passed backwards and forwards from the ball-room to the refreshment-room, laughing and chatting to their partners; elderly people were congregated about the doorways gossiping and shaking hands with new-comers, or watching their daughters with pleased or anxious faces, according to the circumstances of their lot. Everybody was talking at once. There came up a pleasant confusion of sound—happy voices mingling with the measured strains of the dance-music. In a sheltered corner behind the staircase, Beatrice and Herbert Pryme had settled themselves down comfortably for a chat. Lady Kynaston saw them.
"Caroline is a fool!" she muttered to herself. "All the balls in the world won't get that girl married as she wishes. She has set her heart upon that briefless barrister. I saw it as plain as daylight last season. As to entertaining all this cohue of aborigines, Caroline might spare her trouble and her money, as far as the girl is concerned."
And then, coming slowly down the staircase, Lady Kynaston saw something which restored her to good temper at once.
The something was her younger son. She had caught sight of him through an open doorway in the conservatory. His back was turned to her, and he was bending over a lady who was sitting down, and whose face was concealed behind him.
Lady Kynaston stood still with that sudden serrement de coeur which comes to us all when we see the creature we love best on earth. He did not see her, and she could not see his face, because it was turned away from her; but she knew, by his very attitude, the way he bent down over his companion, by the eager manner in which he was talking to her, and by the way in which he was evidently entirely engrossed and absorbed in what he was saying—that he was enjoying himself, and that he was happy.
The mother's heart all went out towards him; the mother's eyes moistened as she looked.
The couple in the conservatory were alone. A Chinese lantern, swung high up above, shed down a soft radiance upon them. Tall camellia bushes, covered with waxen blossoms and cool shiny leaves, were behind them; banks of long-fronded, feathery ferns framed them in like a picture. Maurice's handsome figure stood up tall and strong amongst the greenery; the dress of the woman he was with lay in soft diaphanous folds upon the ground beyond him. One white arm rested on her lap, one tiny foot peeped out from below the laces of her skirt. But Lady Kynaston could not see her face.
"I wonder who she is," she said to herself. "It is not Helen. She has peacock's feathers on her dress—bad luck, I believe! Dear boy, he looks thoroughly happy. I will not disturb him now."
And she passed on through the hall into the large drawing-room, where the dancing was going on.
The first person she caught sight of there was her eldest son. He was dancing a quadrille, and his partner was a short young lady in a strawberry-coloured tulle dress, covered with trails of spinach-green fern leaves. This young person had a round, chubby face, with bright apple-hued cheeks, a dark, bullet-shaped head, and round, bead-like eyes that glanced about her rapidly like those of a frightened dickey-bird. Her dress was cut very low, and the charms she exhibited were not captivating. Her arms were very red, and her shoulders were mottled: the latter is considered to be a healthy sign in a baby, but is hardly a beautiful characteristic in a grown woman.
"That is my daughter-in-law," said Lady Kynaston to herself, and she almost groaned aloud. "She is worse even than I thought! Countrified and common to the last degree; there will be no licking that face or that figure into shape—they are hopeless! Elise and Worth combined could do nothing with her! John must be mad. No wonder she is good, poor thing," added the naughty little old lady, cynically. "A woman with that appearance can never be tempted to be anything else!"
The quadrille came to an end, and Sir John, after depositing his partner at the further side of the room, came up to his mother.
"My dear mother, how are you? I am so sorry about your journey; you must be dead beat. What a fool Bates was to make such a mistake." He was looking about the room as he spoke. "I must introduce you to Vera."
"Yes, introduce me to her at once," said his mother, in a resigned and depressed tone of voice. She would like to have added, "And pray get it over as soon as you can." What she did say was only, "Bring her up to me now. The young lady you have just been dancing with, I suppose!"
"What!" cried Sir John, and burst out laughing. "Good Heavens, mother! that was Miss Smiles, the daughter of the parson of Lutterton. You don't mean to say you thought a little ugly chit like that was my Vera!"
His mother suddenly laid her hand upon his arm.
"Who is that lovely woman who has just come in with Maurice?" she exclaimed.
Her son followed the direction of her eyes, and beheld Vera standing in the doorway that led from the conservatory by his brother's side.
Without a word he passed his mother's hand through his arm and led her across the room.
"Vera, this is my mother," he said. And Lady Kynaston owned afterwards that she never felt so taken aback and so utterly struck dumb with astonishment in her life.
Her two sons looked at her with amusement and some triumph. The little surprise had been so thoroughly carried out; the contrast of the truth to what they knew she had expected was too good a joke not to be enjoyed.
"Not much what you expected, little mother, is it?" said Maurice, laughingly. But to Vera, who knew nothing, it was no laughing matter.
She put both her hands out tremblingly and hesitatingly—with a pretty pleading look of deprecating deference in her eyes—and the little old lady, who valued beauty and grace and talent so much that she could barely tolerate goodness itself without them, was melted at once.
"My dear," she said, "you are beautiful, and I am going to love you; but these naughty boys made me think you were something like little Miss Smiles."
"Nay, mother, it was your own diseased imagination," laughed Maurice; "but come, Vera, I am not going to be cheated of this waltz—if John does not want you to dance with him, that is to say."
John nodded pleasantly to them, and the two whirled away together into the midst of the throng of dancers.
"Well, mother?"
"My dear, she is a very beautiful creature, and I have been a silly, prejudiced old woman."
"And you forgive her for being poor, and for living in a vicarage instead of a castle?"
"She would be a queen if she were a beggar and lived in a mud hovel!" answered his mother, heartily, and Sir John was satisfied.
Lady Kynaston's eyes were following the couple as they danced: for all her admiration and her enthusiasm, there was a little anxiety in their gaze. She had not forgotten the little picture she had caught a glimpse of in the conservatory, nor had her woman's eyes failed to notice that Vera's dress was trimmed with peacock's feathers.
Where was Helen? Lady Kynaston said to herself; and why was Maurice devoting himself to his future sister-in-law instead of to her?
Mrs. Romer, you may be sure, had not been far off. Her sharp eyes had seen Vera and Maurice disappear together into the conservatory. She could have told to a second how long they had remained there; and again, when they came out, she had watched the little family scene that had taken place at the door. She had seen the look of delighted surprise on Lady Kynaston's face; she had noted how pleased and how proud of Vera the brothers had looked, and then how happily Maurice and Vera had gone off again together.
"What does it mean?" Helen asked herself, bitterly. "Is Sir John a fool or blind that he does not see what is going on under his nose? She has got him, and his money, and his place; what does she want with Maurice too? Why can't she let him alone—she is taking him from me."
She watched them eagerly and feverishly. They stood still for a moment near her; she could not hear what they said, but she could see the look in Maurice's eyes as he bent towards his partner.
Can a woman who has known what love is ever be mistaken about that?
Vera, all wondering and puzzled, might be but dimly conscious of the meaning in the eyes that met hers; her own drooped, half troubled, half confused, before them. But to Helen, who knew what love's signals were, there was no mystery whatever in the passion in his down-bent glance.
"He loves her!" she said to herself, whilst a sharp pang, almost of physical pain, shot through her heart. "She shall never get him!—never! never! Not though one of us die for it! They are false, both of them. I swear they shall never be happy together!"
"Why are you not dancing, Mrs. Romer?" said a voice at her elbow.
"I will dance with you, Sir John, if you will ask me," answers Helen, smiling.
Sir John responds, as in duty bound, by passing his arm around her waist.
"When are you going to be married, Sir John?" she asks him, when the first pause in the dance gives her the opportunity of speech.
Sir John looks rather confused. "Well, to tell you the truth, I have not spoken to Vera yet. I have not liked to hurry her—I thought, perhaps——"
"Why don't you speak to her? A woman never thinks any better of a man for being diffident in such matters."
"You think not? But you see Vera is——"
"Vera is very much like all other women, I suppose; and you are not versed in the ways of the sex."
Sir John demurred in his own mind as to the first part of her speech. Vera was certainly not like other women; but then he acknowledged the truth of Mrs. Romer's last remark thoroughly.
"No, I dare say I don't know much about women's ways," he admitted; "and you think——"
"I think that Vera would be glad enough to be married as soon as she can. An engagement is a trying ordeal. One is glad enough to get settled down. What is the use of waiting when once everything is arranged?"
Sir John flushed a little. The prospect of a speedy marriage was pleasant to him. It was what he had been secretly longing for—only that, in his slow way, he had not yet been able to suggest it.
"Do you really think she would like it?" he asked, earnestly.
"Of course she would; any woman would."
"And how long do you think the preparations would take?"
"Oh, a month or three weeks is ample time to get clothes in."
His pulses beat hotly at the bare possibility of such a thing. To possess his Vera in so short a time seemed something too great and too wonderful to be true.
"Do not lose any more time," continued Helen, following up the impression she saw she had made upon him. "Speak to her this evening; get her to fix your wedding-day within the month; believe me, a man gets no advantage by putting things off too long; and there are dangers, too, in your case."
"Dangers! How do you mean?" he said, quickly.
"Oh, nothing particular—only she is very handsome, and she is young, and not accustomed, I dare say, to admiration. Other men may admire her as well as you."
"If they did, it could do her no harm," he answered, stiffly.
"Oh, no, of course not; but you can't keep other men from looking at her. When once she is your wife you will have her more completely to yourself."
Sir John made no particular answer to this; but when he had done dancing with Mrs. Romer, he led her back to her seat and thanked her gravely and courteously for her suggestions.
"You have done me a great service, Mrs. Romer, and I am infinitely obliged to you," he said, and then went his way to find Vera.
He was not jealous; but there was a certain uneasiness in his mind. It might be, indeed, true that others would admire and love Vera; others more worthy of her, more equally mated with her youth and loveliness; and he, he said to himself in his humility with regard to her, he had so little to offer her—nothing but his love. He knew himself to be grave and quiet; there was nothing about him to enchain her to him. He lacked brilliancy in manner and conversation; he was dull; he was, perhaps, even prosy. He knew it very well himself; but suppose Vera should find it out, and find that she had made a mistake! The bare thought of it was enough to make him shudder.
No; Mrs. Romer was a clever, well-intentioned little woman. She had meant to give him a hint in all kindness, and he would not be slow to take it. What she had meant to say was, "Take her yourself quickly, or some one else will take her from you."
And Sir John said to himself that he would so take her, and that as quickly as possible.
Standing talking to her younger son, later on that evening, Lady Kynaston said to him, suddenly,
"Why does Vera wear peacock's feathers?"
"Why should she not?"
"They are bad luck."
Maurice laughed. "I never knew you to be superstitious before, mother."
"I am not so really; but from choice I would avoid anything that bears an unlucky interpretation. I saw her with you in the conservatory as I came downstairs."
Maurice turned suddenly red. "Did you?" he asked, a little anxiously.
"Yes. I did not know it was her, of course. I did not see her face, only her dress, and I noticed that it was trimmed with peacock's feathers; that was what made me recognize her afterwards."
"That was bad luck, at all events," said Maurice, almost involuntarily.
"Why?" asked Lady Kynaston, looking up at him sharply. But Maurice would not tell her why.
Lady Kynaston asked no more questions; but she pondered, and she watched. Captain Kynaston did not dance again with Vera that night, and he did dance several times with Mrs. Romer; it did not escape her notice, however, that he seemed absent and abstracted, and that his face bore its hardest and sternest aspect throughout the remainder of the evening.
So the ball at Shadonake came to an end, as balls do, with the first gleams of daylight; and nothing was left of all the gay crowd who had so lately filled the brilliant rooms but several sleepy people creeping up slowly to bed, and a great chiffonade of tattered laces, and flowers, and coloured scraps littered all over the polished floor of the ball-room.