Vixen, Volume III, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [best romantic novels to read TXT] 📗

asked her had been the one unselfish pleasure of her narrow soul. She had been imposed upon, of course; had fed families whose fathers squandered their weekly wages in the cosy taproom of a village inn; had in some wise encouraged idleness and improvident living; but she had been the comforter of many a weary heart, the benefactor of many a patient care-oppressed mother, the raiser-up of many a sickly child drooping on its bed of pain.

Now, under the Captain's rule, she had the pleasure of seeing her name honourably recorded in the subscription list of every local charity: but her hand was no longer open to the surrounding poor, her good old Saxon name of Lady had lost its ancient significance. She was no longer the giver of bread to the hungry. She sighed and submitted, acknowledging her husband's superior wisdom.

"You would not like to live in a semi-detached villa on the Southampton Road, would you, my dear Pamela?" asked the Captain.

"I might die in a semi-detached house, Conrad. I'm sure I could not live in one," she exclaimed piteously.

"Then, my love, we must make a tremendous effort and save all we can before your daughter comes of age, or else we shall assuredly have to leave the Abbey House. We might go abroad certainly, and live at Dinan, or some quiet old French town where provisions are cheap."

"My dear Conrad, I could not exist in one of those old French towns, smelling perpetually of cabbage-soup."

"Then, my dear love, we must exercise the strictest economy, or life will be impossible six years hence."

Pamela sighed and assented, with a sinking of her heart. To her mind this word economy was absolutely the most odious in the English language. Her life was made up of trifles; and they were all expensive trifles. She liked to be better dressed than any woman of her acquaintance. She liked to surround herself with pretty things; and the prettiness must take the most fashionable form, and be frequently renewed. She had dim ideas which she considered aesthetic, and which involved a good deal of shifting and improving of furniture.

Against all these expensive follies Captain Winstanley set his face sternly, using pretty words to his wife at all times, but proving himself as hard as rock when she tried to bend him to her will. He had not yet interfered with her toilet, for he had yet to learn what that cost.

This knowledge came upon him like a thunder-clap one sultry morning in July--real thunder impending in the metallic-tinted sky--about a month after Vixen's departure.

Theodore's long-expected bill was among the letters in the morning's bag--a bulky envelope which the Captain handed to his wife with his usual politeness. He never opened her letters, but he invariably asked to see them, and she always handed her correspondence over to him with a childlike meekness. To-day she was slow to hand the Captain her letter. She sat looking at the long list of items with a clouded brow, and forgot to pour out her husband's coffee in the abstraction of a troubled mind.

"I'm afraid your letters of this morning are not of a very pleasant character, my love," said the Captain, watchful of his wife's clouded countenance. "Is that a bill you are examining? I thought we paid ready money for everything."

"It is my dressmaker's bill," faltered Mrs. Winstanley.

"A dressmaker's bill! That can't be very alarming. You look as awful, and the document looks as voluminous, as if it were a lawyer's bill, including the costs of two or three unlucky Chancery suits, or half-a-dozen conveyances. Let me have the account, dear, and I'll send your dressmaker a cheque next Saturday."

He held out his hand for the paper, but Pamela did not give it to him.

"I'm afraid you'll think it awfully high, Conrad," she said, in a deprecating tone. "You see it has been running a long time--since the Christmas before dear Edward's death, in fact. I have paid Theodore sums on account in the meanwhile, but those seem to go for very little against the total of her bill. She is expensive, of course. All the West End milliners are; but her style is undeniable, and she is in direct association with Worth."

"My dear Pamela, I did not ask you for her biography, I asked only for her bill. Pray let me see the total, and tell me if you have any objections to make against the items."

"No," sighed Mrs. Winstanley, bending over the document with a perplexed brow, "I believe--indeed, I am sure--I have had all the things. Many of them are dearer than I expected; but there is no rule as to the price of anything thoroughly Parisian, that has not been seen in London. One has to pay for style and originality. I hope you won't be vexed at having to write so large a cheque, Conrad, at a time when you are so anxious to save money. Next year I shall try my best to economise."

"My dearest Pamela, why beat about the bush? The bill must be paid, whatever its amount. I suppose a hundred pounds will cover it?"

"Oh, Conrad, when many women give a hundred pounds for a single dress!"

"When they do I should say that Bedlam must be their natural and fitting abode," retorted the Captain, with suppressed ire. "The bill is more than a hundred then? Pray give it me, Pamela, and make an end of this foolishness."

This time Captain Winstanley went over to his wife, and took the paper out of her hand. He had not seen the total, but he was white with rage already. He had made up his mind to squeeze a small fortune out of the Abbey House estate during his brief lease of the property; and here was this foolish wife of his squandering hundreds upon finery.

"Be kind enough to pour me out a cup of coffee," he said, resuming his seat, and deliberately spreading out the bill.

"Great Heaven!" he cried, after a glance at the total. "This is too preposterous. The woman must be mad."

The total was seventeen hundred and sixty-four pounds fourteen and sixpence. Mrs. Winstanley's payments on account amounted to four hundred pounds; leaving a balance of thirteen hundred and sixty-four pounds for the Captain to liquidate.

"Indeed, dear Conrad, it is not such a very tremendous account," pleaded Pamela, appalled by the expression of her husband's face. "Theodore has customers who spend two thousand a year with her."

"Very laudable extravagance, if they are wives of millionaires, and have their silver-mines, or cotton-mills, or oil-wells to maintain them. But that the widow of a Hampshire squire, a lady who six years hence will have to exist upon a pittance, should run up such a bill as this is to my mind an act of folly that is almost criminal. From this moment I abandon all my ideas of nursing your estate, of providing comfortably for our future. Henceforward we must drift towards insolvency, like other people. It would be worse than useless for me to go on racking my brains in the endeavour to secure a given result, when behind my back your thoughtless extravagance is stultifying all my efforts."

Here Mrs. Winstanley dissolved into tears.

"Oh Conrad! How can you say such cruel things?" she sobbed. "I go behind your back! I stultify you! When I have allowed myself to be ruled and governed in everything! When I have even parted with my only child to please you!"

"Not till your only child had tried to set the house on fire."

"Indeed, Conrad, you are mistaken there. She never meant it."

"I know nothing about her meaning," said the Captain moodily. "She did it."

"It is too cruel, after all my sacrifices, that I should be called extravagant--and foolish--and criminal. I have only dressed as a lady ought to dress--out of mere self-respect. Dear Edward always liked to see me look nice. He never said an unkind word about my bills. It is a sad--sad change for me."

"Your future will be a sadder change, if you go on in the way you are going," retorted the Captain. "Let me see: your income, after Violet comes of age, is to fifteen hundred a year. You have been spending six hundred a year upon millinery. That leaves nine hundred for everything else--stable, garden, coals, taxes, servants' wages, wine--to say nothing of such trifling claims as butcher and baker, and the rest of it. You will have to manage with wonderful cleverness to make both ends meet."

"I am sure I would sacrifice anything rather than live unhappily with you, Conrad," Mrs. Winstanley murmured piteously, drinking much strong tea in her agitation, the cup shaking in her poor little white weak hand. "Nothing could be so dreadful to me as to live on bad terms with you. I have surrendered so much for your love, Conrad. What would become of me, if I lost that? I will give up dealing with Theodore, if you like--though it will be a hard trial, after she has worked for me so many years, and has studied my style and knows exactly what suits me. I will dress ever so plainly, and even have my gowns made by a Southampton dressmaker, though that will be too dreadful. You will hardly recognise me. But I will do anything--anything, Conrad, rather than hear you speak so cruelly."

She went over to him and laid her hand tremulously on his shoulder, and looked down at him with piteous, pleading eyes. No Circassian slave, afraid of bowstring and sack, could have entreated her master's clemency with deeper self-abasement.

Even Conrad Winstanley's hard nature was touched by the piteousness of her look and tone. He took the hand gently and raised it to his lips.

"I don't mean to be cruel, Pamela," he said. "I only want you to face the truth, and to understand your future position. It is your own money you are squandering, and you have a right to waste it, if it pleases you to do so. But it is a little hard for a man who has laboured and schemed for a given result, suddenly to find himself out in his calculations by so much as thirteen hundred and sixty-four pounds. Let us say no more about it, my dear. Here is the bill, and it must be paid. We have only to consider the items, and see if the prices are reasonable."

And then the Captain, with bent brow and serious aspect, began to read the lengthy record of an English lady's folly. Most of the items he passed over in silence, or with only a sigh, keeping his wife by his side, looking over his shoulder.

"Point out anything that is wrong," he said; but as yet Mrs. Winstanley had found no error in the bill.

Sometimes there came an item which moved the Captain to speech. "A dinner-dress, _pain brûlé_ brocade, mixed _poult de soie_, _manteau de cour_, lined ivory satin, trimmed with hand-worked embroidery of wild flowers on Brussels net, sixty-three pounds."

"What in the name of all that's reasonable is _pain brûlé?_" asked the Captain impatiently.

"It's the colour, Conrad. One of those delicate tertiaries that have been so much worn lately."

"Sixty guineas for a dinner-dress! That's rather stiff. Do you know that a suit of dress-clothes costs me nine pounds, and lasts almost as many years?"

"My dear Conrad, for a man it is so different. No one looks at your clothes. That dress was for Lady Ellangowan's dinner. You