CHAPTER II
THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
In the drawing-room at Mildmay Park was seated, in her own particular easy-chair, Mrs. Henry Mildmay.
Mrs. Henry Mildmay was a lady of that good old sort of whom our modern demoiselles are rather tired of receiving as models for imitation. Herself ladylike and distingué in feature, dress and manner, slight of figure, delicate of hand and more delicate of nerve, she was deeply imbued with a love of good birth, elegant manners and a large income, all of which she possessed in a fair and comfortable degree.
Mrs. Mildmay was John Mildmay's only sister, and at his death she had undertaken the sole charge of his daughter Violet, whom she loved as a daughter, and by whom she was beloved in return as a mother, with just this difference, that, whereas, the dear old lady was rather afraid of her beautiful, high-spirited ward, the girl was as fearless as a lioness, and gave her love unalloyed and unshadowed.
Violet Mildmay had inherited the brave, simple nature of the merchant prince, and was a realization of that most glorious ideal – a pure-minded, tender-hearted English girl.
Mrs. Mildmay was knitting – a favorite amusement, or occupation, as she would have dignified it, for the results of her pastime were distributed among the Penruddie poor – and sinking into a comfortable doze, from which the sharp striking of an ormolu clock aroused her.
"Dear me!" she murmured, placidly smiling; "dear me, Violet, I was nearly asleep."
The remark finding no answer, the old lady turned in her chair, and found the handsomely furnished room was empty.
"Violet, where are you, my dear? What a restless girl it is. She was here five minutes ago, and now she has gone. Just like poor John, never still ten minutes together."
At that moment the conservatory door was thrown open with a suddenness that made the old lady drop her needle, and a sweet, but full, voice immediately behind her said:
"Whom am I like, auntie?"
"No one in particular, my dear," faltered the old lady, with a pleasant smile and a "Thank you" for the needle, which the owner of the voice had sprung forward to recover before the old lady could stoop.
"Where have you been, my dear? I did not know you had left the room."
"No? Only on the lawn. It was so hot in here, and you were falling so comfortably asleep that I thought I would creep away before it was too late, for I know I frighten you if I move when you are fast asleep, auntie mine. Am I not careful now? Am I not improving?"
"You are everything that is good and dear, Violet," said the old lady, stroking the girl's head, as it leaned itself to a level with her white hand. "But don't sit on the floor, my love, you will crease that pretty muslin."
"Shall I?" said the sweet voice, absently, and Violet sprang to her feet.
Her aunt, with another little start – she started on the average twice in every ten minutes when her niece was near – looked up with mild nervousness at the tall, graceful figure, her gaze gradually changing to one of affectionate admiration.
And who could withhold admiration?
There was beauty in the cleanly cut, oval face, with its clear, brunette skin and deep, brown eyes; there were youth, strength, grace in the undulating charm about the girl, her figure, voice, and gesture, which enthralled young and old of both sexes and demanded admiration rather than won it.
"My poor dress," she said, with a laughing pout. "He was – is a dress a he or a she, auntie? – I'll say 'it,' was so clean and stately only this morning, and now! Look, that is water. The fish leaped out of the fountain and Tray has pawed me with his wet feet. It's no use my trying to be good, you see, dear, circumstances are too strong for me," and, with a musical, rippling laugh, the light-hearted girl ran to the open piano.
The old lady sighed, but with a smile.
"I am almost beginning to think they are, Violet," she said, in her low-pitched voice, so great a contrast to the full, melodious one of the girl.
"No; you will never make me anything better than an untutored savage, auntie. You've tried so hard, so very hard, to teach me how to enter a room, steal from chair to chair, lower my voice, and smile properly. But all in vain, I can't be a model young lady, and I am always making you jump."
"Not jump, my dear."
"Well, start, then? It is all the same, auntie. Fancy you jumping! Now, I can jump. I jumped over the brook. No, not quite," and here the laugh rang out again, "but almost quite. Poor Marie, she has hard times with me. Do you know, I shouldn't like to be lady's-maid to Miss Violet Mildmay; no, not for all the mines of Peru – or is it Patagonia?"
Without waiting for an answer, she struck a chord, and dashed into a waltz.
That came to an end, however, as suddenly as it commenced, and the graceful figure was on its feet.
"It is too hot to play, is it not? How can you knit such weather as this? It makes me boil, yes, actually boil, to watch you!"
"Don't watch me, then, my dear," suggested the old lady, mildly. "Go and sit in the arbor. It will be cool there in the shade."
"Well, I will. But I warn you, auntie, I shan't sit long. I never can sit still long. I'll try the arbor, though," and, catching up her rustic hat, which for the nonce had fallen from her lovely young head to a little rest on the floor, the restless girl swept in a wave of muslin and tulle from the room.
Mrs. Mildmay rose, folded her knitting into a neat little ball, stored it away in a neat little basket, and was about to quit the room, but before she could open the door Violet had run through the conservatory again.
"Well, my dear?" said the old lady, patiently.
"Too hot in the arbor, auntie," said the girl, with a charming and decisive shake of her head. "The lawn is absolutely simmering. I shall go on the cliffs."
"My dear, you will be roasted! Come and sit in the shade here, in my chair."
"Oh! then I should be suffocated. No, I'll try the cliffs. What is the time? Just time for a quiet stroll. Good-by."
"Stop, my dear Violet. Pray don't go without your sunshade! You will be burned up!"
"Right. I'd forgotten that stupid old thing. Where is it? Let me see – where did I throw it?"
And she stood in the middle of the room, swinging her hat to and fro, and fanning herself.
"Is that it under the piano?" said Mrs. Mildmay, pointing to the sunshade where it lay, ignominiously entangled with the legs of the instrument.
"Yes, that is it. What dear, sharp eyes you have, auntie. Come along, sunshade! It's rather hard that you, being so much the weaker, should be burned to save me."
And with another happy nod and smile away she floated again, her long, diaphanous skirt whisking a current of cool air through the room and just escaping the overturning of a table of bric-a-brac by an inch.
The cliffs to which Miss Mildmay bent her steps were within five minutes' walk of the lawn, and were one of the young lady's favorite promenades.
From them, looking seaward, she could feast her eyes upon the ocean, ever restless and sportful, like herself; turning landward there jutted far a fair stretch of well-wooded scenery, with Mildmay House in the foreground, and the sparkling Tivor, where it ran in a semicircle toward the sea as a belt to inclose the whole.
On a part of this there stood another house, larger even and more pretentious than Mildmay's. This was the Cedars, a modern residence of yellow brick and stucco erected at enormous cost by a certain Jabez Dodson, who had amassed a large fortune by the melting and manufacturing of tallow.
The Cedars and its inhabitants were the objects of Mrs. Mildmay's supreme detestation. Loving good birth and high breeding as she did, it was only natural that tallow should be detestable to her, and that the large and altogether hideous house which the retired tradesman had erected should be a perpetual eyesore to her.
Often, as the sunset lit up the yellow edifice, bringing out all its ugly points with unmerciful distinctness, the good old lady had spoken from her heart, and, with a sigh that shook the bugles in her cap, she had regretted that Providence had not been kind or considerate enough to allure Mr. Dodson's fancy to a more distant spot.
"That house spoils the view and gives me the horrors, my dear," she would often say, but never meeting with any further sympathy from Violet than expressed by a laugh.
"It is ugly, I'll admit," she would remark, "but you need not look at it so often."
"I can't help it, my dear," the old lady would avow, "I am fascinated by it. I am so glad that the dreadful man did not build his monstrosity during your poor father's lifetime. It would have been a cruel blow to him. I can't think why he didn't secure all the land around. Then you would have been safe from such a visitation. Fancy a tallow chandler or melter, or whatever he calls himself, setting up a habitation within a stone's throw of your drawing-room window."
Violet would laugh again, with pleasant enjoyment of her aunt's pet aversion.
"It doesn't very much matter, that I can see, aunt, after all," she had once urged. "Of course, it would be better without the Cedars, but, to give Mr. Dodson his due, the family have never annoyed us. I have never seen them, even. I scarcely know how many there are of them; do you?"
Mrs. Mildmay shook her head in the negative, but a nod in the affirmative showed she was doubtful.
"I think there are only the father, mother, and one son. But I have never seen them, at least, I think not."
"Nor I," said Violet. "So, you see, they are not such dreadful characters, after all. Poor people, I dare say, they are as constantly deploring the nearness of the Park, and declaring that we spoil their view – which we certainly do."
"How absurd!" said Mrs. Mildmay. "Violet, I really believe you do not dislike them half so much as one would expect."
"Wicked as I am, I can't hate people I have never seen," Violet here laughingly replied.
And in like manner she always turned her aunt's disparagement of the Cedars aside, and contrived to say a word for the obnoxious individuals whom she had never seen.
This morning as she stood on the edge of the cliff, looking first out to sea and then at the sweet landscape, a smile rested for a moment upon her face, and her lips murmured:
"Poor auntie, if she could see the Cedars now! It looks as if the tallow which built it had caught fire. It makes me hotter than ever to look at it!"
And, with a little flutter of her dainty handkerchief, she seated herself upon the dried-up grass and turned her eyes seaward again.
As she sat thus she formed a picture beautiful enough to gladden the eyes of a Veronese in her glorious youth and loveliness, standing out in its cloud of airy muslin against the vividness of the summer sky.
Perhaps an individual slowly climbing the steep path behind her was of the same opinion, for he stopped in his laborious ascent, and, baring his well-shaped head to the slight breeze, stood, lost in an admiring reverie.
How long he would have indulged in his admiring observations it would be difficult to say, but his reverie was suddenly disturbed and his fixed regard turned aside in some confusion by the movement of Violet's head.
She had been watching a seagull, and following the bird's progress with her eyes, and had suddenly become aware of the proximity of the stranger and of the fixed and admiring regard of his two dark eyes.
Almost too suddenly, for, with something that nearly approached a start, she half rose.
Regretting the movement before it was complete, she reseated herself, and in so doing loosened her hold of the sunshade, which, with the perversity of such things, instantly took advantage of its freedom to sail over the cliff.
Violet sprang to her feet, and thoughtlessly was about to peer over the precipice in search of it, but before she had reached the extreme edge she felt a strong hand upon her arm, and, turning with some astonishment, found herself face to face with the observant stranger.
For a moment they regarded each other in silence. It is worthy of notice how much and how acutely the eye can comprehend in so short a time.
Violet saw a handsome face, tanned and mustached, a tall, lithe figure, to whose strength the grasp upon her arm bore witness, a pair of earnest, fearless eyes, and a mouth which might have been grave but for the smile which made it remarkably pleasant.
"Pray, forgive me!" said the gentleman, removing his hat with his disengaged hand. "But have you fully considered the danger which attends a downward glance from this height?"
The tone was respectful, almost reverently so, but there was a dignity and a nameless music in it also that carried it even further in one's liking.
Violet blushed like a schoolgirl, as she would have expressed it and, without a word, stepped back from the danger which she certainly had not considered, and which, by the light of the gentleman's question, was now fully revealed.
"I thank you very much," she said, as his strong hand dropped from her arm, and the stranger's face allowed itself to relax into a smile. "It was foolish and thoughtless, I," and she shuddered, "I might have fallen over. People have been known to, have they not?"
"Yes, a great many," he replied. "The strongest brain might be excused a sudden dizziness on the edge of such a precipice as this."
"Of course," assented Violet, laughing, but very quietly. "I am so much obliged; I thought only of my stupid sunshade."
"Ah!" he said, quietly, "I had forgotten that. Perhaps it has lodged on one of the jutting bushes; if it has, I may recover it for you," and he approached the edge.
Violet, who had not quite recovered from the shock which the sudden sense of her peril had produced, uttered a slight cry of warning and rebuke.
"Oh, please do not look over! It is of no consequence, not the slightest in the world."
The gentleman looked back at her alarmed face, then up at the blazing sun, and smiled significantly.
"It is of great consequence," he said, and before Violet could say another word to prevent him, he had gained the edge and was upon his knees, looking over.
"I can see it," he said, "and I think I can get it. The danger was not so great, after all; there are one or two ledges here which will bear a man's weight, I should think, and below them is your sunshade."
While he was speaking, he was cautiously, but fearlessly, lowering himself onto one of the ledges of which he had spoken, and Violet's horrified eyes lost first his legs, then his body, and last of all his good-looking face, as it disappeared below the edge.
Rooted to the spot with terror which she in vain struggled to suppress, Violet grew white as death and almost as cold.
At last her terror found utterance in a deep-drawn moan.
"Oh! come back! Please come back! I am sure you will be killed! It is horrible! Do come back!"
While she was still entreating and commanding the handsome, careless face arose above the surface again, and, with slow, cautious movements, the stranger, with the recovered sunshade in his hand, was beside her.
Violet drew a long breath of relief, and then, with a smile that was better than all the thanks in the world, said:
"I won't thank you, for I think you were more foolish than even I. You said it was dangerous to look over, and you actually went over! And all for this stupid, worthless thing." And she shook the sunshade with annoyance.
"Not altogether for the sunshade," said the gentleman, smiling again. "But I am glad I have got it for you, and I assure you the danger was less than I at first imagined it; indeed, for me there was no danger. I am blessed with a steady nerve, and have had some experience in mountaineering."
Violet looked down, and then up at his calm face.
"It was very good and kind of you," she said, "and I will thank you, after all, I think." Then she made a movement, which he took in intimation that he might say good-day, and, accordingly, he raised his hat – or, rather, would have done so, had not the wind saved him the trouble.
"How provoking!" said Violet, looking after the hat, as it sailed over the cliff, in imitation of the sunshade. "I am afraid there is a fatality about this spot. I do hope you will not go down after it, too!"
"No, indeed!" he said, with a light, pleasant laugh; "my hat is really of no consequence – "
"Oh! but of more than my parasol! You have nothing to protect your head, and the sun is quite as hot as it was five minutes ago." And she smiled naïvely.
"True," he said. "But my head is used to scorching; in fact, rather likes it."
"You must take my sunshade," said Violet, with provoking gravity.
"No, thank you," he said, imitating the gravity and suppressing the smile. "I do not dread the sunstroke, and I have but a few steps to go," nodding to the blazing Cedars.
Violet was guilty of an unmistakable start.
"The Cedars!" she exclaimed, extending her beautiful eyes to their widest, "but you are not – " and she paused as if absolutely too astonished to conclude the sentence.
"My name is Leicester Dodson," said the gentleman, a slight, but not imperceptible reserve showing upon his face, and in the tone of his voice as he spoke.
"Mr. Dodson's son!" said Violet, slowly, as if the intelligence were too astonishing to be taken in instanter.
The gentleman bowed.
"Mr. Dodson's and Mrs. Dodson's son," he said, with a smile.
For a moment Violet stood still; then her face lit up with its delicious smile, and, with a frank gesture, she held out her hand.
"Then we are neighbors," she said, as Mr. Leicester Dodson, with as much surprise as his courtesy would allow his face to express, took the well-shaped, little hand. "I am Miss Mildmay."
Mr. Leicester dropped her hand as if it had grown red-hot and had burned him. Violet colored then, but understood his gesture of repudiation instantly. "He knows how aunt dislikes his people, and is sorry he rescued my sunshade," she thought.
"I am happy to have been of some slight service to you, Miss Mildmay," he said, coldly, with a careless but distant bow; then he turned and walked slowly down the steep path.
Violet, looking down after him until his bare head had dropped slowly out of sight, then said, audibly:
"Well, that is pride now; but it is proper pride, I think," smiled rather sadly, and returned homeward.
"Aunt!" she said, coming into the drawing-room just before dinner was served, and more quietly than was her wont, "I've had an adventure on the cliffs, startling and melodramatic. My sunshade blew over, and a gentleman was polite enough to go after it."
"My dear!" exclaimed the old lady, thinking it one of her darling's jokes.
"It's true, aunt. A stranger risked his neck – precious, no doubt, to himself and family – for a fifteen-and-six-penny sunshade. Imprudent, but heroic, was it not?"
"Very good and kind, but imprudent, as you say, my dear. Young men are so rash!"
"This one was not," said Violet, picking at the costly fringe on her dress; "he was as calm and cool as – as – a cucumber."
"A stranger," said Mrs. Mildmay, smiling. "Whom can it be, I wonder? Somebody staying at the Wenningfords, no doubt."
"Aunt!" said Violet; then suddenly changing the subject, "do not the vicar and his wife dine with us on Saturday?"
"Yes, my dear, and I have asked Mr. and Mrs. Giles. The vicar is a dear, good man, but – "
"Rather a bore," put in Violet, decidedly.
Mrs. Mildmay looked shocked, but Violet, without waiting for a reprimand, went on, with slow and most unusual gravity:
"Do you know, aunt, I should like to ask this heroic gentleman of mine?"
"A perfect stranger, my dear!" said Mrs. Mildmay, with a smile.
"Yes, a perfect stranger, but a gentleman. Perfect strangers who are gentlemen, and heroic enough to risk their lives for one's sunshade, are people worth knowing. Aunt, ask him. He is tall, rather dark, goldeny-brown, you know, nice eyes, a yellow mustache and – I think that's all I remember – I was going to mention the smile but, of course, he may not always wear that."
"I don't remember him, my dear," said Mrs. Mildmay. "But if you really want to know him I'll try and find out who he is from the servants."
"And ask him to dinner?" urged Violet.
Mrs. Mildmay looked bewildered and puzzled.
"Yes, my dear, if you wish it, and he really belongs to the Wenningfords."
"I do wish it, aunt," said Violet. "But he doesn't belong to the Wenningfords. He belongs to the Cedars, and is no other than Mr. Leicester Dodson, the tallow melter's son!"
It is Saturday evening, and Mrs. Mildmay's little dinner is in progress.
There are the vicar and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Giles from the Ferns, and, wonderful to say, the Dodsons from the Cedars.
Miss Violet had, as usual, had her way with her aristocratic aunt, and the Dodsons are here.
For a whole day Mrs. Mildmay, with tears in her eyes, declared that she would not call at the Cedars; and it was not until Violet had, with greater firmness, vowed that she would go to the Cedars by herself rather than not at all, that the good old lady had given in.
And when they had called, and Mrs. Dodson had accepted the invitation for herself and two menfolk, Violet had still further worried her aunt by declaring that the Dodsons, though they were tallow melters, were not snobs, and that for her part she saw nothing to find fault with in Mrs. Dodson save, perhaps, rather a redundancy of color in her morning cap.
"Which, my dear aunt," Violet said, in conclusion, "is an error in taste not confined to tallow chandlers."
So there they are. Mr. Dodson, the father, a quiet, mild-eyed old gentleman, with a partiality for clear soup; Mrs. Dodson, a smiling, homely looking lady, with a devouring admiration for her son; and the son, Mr. Leicester himself, with no particularly prominent virtues or vices save that of silence.
He had scarcely spoken a word during the soup and the fish, and Violet had almost made up her mind that he was too proud and unforgiving, and was prepared to dislike him, when suddenly he, looking across the table, met her questioning glance, and with a smile dispelled his gravity or ill humor as a mist evaporates before the midday sun, broke out into conversation.
Then Violet understands that he is not only heroic but amusing, that he is handsomer even than she had thought him, and that, above all, his manner, speech, and bearing are those of a perfect gentleman.
The entrées are passed round and partaken of.
Mr. Leicester is describing the Vicani Pass to Miss Mildmay, and interesting her deeply therein.
Mrs. Dodson is comparing notes with Mrs. Mildmay, and Mr. Dodson is lost in the beauties of a curried fowl, when the butler, a model of solemn propriety, is approached by a footman, with whom he confers in stately, but rather disturbed asides.
"What is it, James?" asks Mrs. Mildmay, who has noticed the conference.
"If you please, ma'am, a gentleman – "
But all explanation is rendered unnecessary by the opening of the door, and the entrance of another servant, who says, with that clear sing-song, proper for the occasion:
"Captain Howard Murpoint!" and, stepping aside, allows a tall, dark gentleman to pass through the doorway.
Conversation immediately ceases.
Dumbly, hostess and guests regard the newcomer; dumbly still, Mrs. Mildmay rises from her chair.
"Captain Murpoint!" she repeats.
"Captain Murpoint!" suddenly echoes Violet, whose quick, thoughtful eyes have been scanning every feature of the dark, pale face from its piercing, black eye to the scar on its left cheek, and its black mustache.
"Captain Murpoint!" she repeats, "my father's dearest friend!"
Captain Murpoint came forward, with a smile evidently struggling against some emotion, and met her halfway, taking her outstretched hands, and, looking with what may well pass for tear-dimmed eyes into her pure, youthful face.
"And you are John Mildmay's daughter!" he exclaims, in a tremulous voice. "Poor Jack, poor Jack!" and evidently overcome by the likeness or some memory of the past, Captain Murpoint, after wringing the girl's slight hand, conveys his own to his eyes and – weeps!