Viviette

Chapter II

The Conspirators

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.