Vyner

“ Vyner kept within the programme of Platonic love; and this she managed without exasperating Marmaduke beyond endurance. An adroit woman has a thousand ways of preserving herself, and Mrs. Vyner was exceedingly adroit.
Meanwhile, she indulged in her passion without troubling herself much about consequences. She was content with keeping Marmaduke her slave. The delight that gave her is indescribable. She was always inventing some new plan to assure herself of it. ”

“ He pictures the pleasant drawing-room with its cheerful fire, and the happy faces round the hearth; he fancies he hears the merry laugh, the melodious chords of the piano, the swell of some sweet voice, and then he bends his ear to the rugged plash of the breaking sea, or the whistling wind as it sweeps through some Alpine “crevasse.” If no sense of such dangers arose to Vyner’s mind, yet there was enough to make him feel how different was his present position from anything that his daily life exacted. The chances that we voluntarily confront have a wondrous fascination. ”

“ Vyner had often made that quotation to himself, and now launched it with great satisfaction, as was evident by the noisy pinch of snuff with which he closed it.
Mrs. Vyner shrugged her shoulders.
"You have spoken," he said, "of incompatibilities, and I fear they exist. But, Mrs. Vyner, if you have destroyed my domestic happiness, you shall not destroy my future comfort. I will not be made a laughing-stock abroad, and be made miserable at home. I say I will not. I am come, therefore, to offer you an alternative." ”

“ In spite of all the annoyance of the incident, Lady Vyner laughed immoderately, and so did Sir Within, and so, at last, did Miss Courtenay, and the mirth was kept up by all sorts of fanciful conceits as to what the lawyer must have thought, said, or done.
“He has driven away in a towering passion; he’s hot-tempered at times, I know,” said Lady Vyner. ”

“ No, none,” said Vyner, after a moment of straggle; and the words were not well uttered, when the fellow pushed off his boat, and struck out with all his vigour for the shore.
“What a suspicious creature your savage is; that man evidently believed you meant to bribe him to some deep treachery against his master,” said Grenfell.
“Do let the poor peasant escape,” cried Vyner, laughingly, while he hastened below to avoid any further display of the other’s malevolence, calling out to Mr. Crab to follow him. “Let us get under weigh with the land breeze this evening,” said he. ”

“ Vyner would sit down at the fire with him, and tell all the little family secrets that are usually reserved for the members themselves; and Georgina would join him in the garden, to explain how she long foresaw the infatuation of her brother-in-law, but was powerless to arrest it; and even Lady Vyner—the cold and distant Lady Vyner—informed him, in the strictest secresy, that her dear mother had latterly taken a fondness for Malaga, and actually drank two full glasses of it every day more than the doctor permitted. What may not the man do in the household who is thus accepted and trusted? ”

“ Vyner's comfort, and, accordingly, she from time to time addressed a question to Marmaduke, in the hope of bringing him into the general discourse; but he contented himself with a simple reply, and then resumed what he was saying to Violet.
Jealousy was tormenting Mrs. Vyner, and Marmaduke knew it. He had so studied every look and movement of her, that, actress as she was, she could not easily deceive him; and he felt a strange delight in thus penetrating beneath her mask, and there contemplating the agitated features. ”

“ The sarcasm implied in this avowal almost maddened Mrs. Vyner.
"Accept him, Miss Vyner," she said with a short, hollow, and hysterical laugh; "pray put him out of his misery; accept the offering of his deep reverence, for that offering is my leavings!"
Marmaduke and Violet both started as this poisoned sarcasm, issued from her lips, and their faces told her plainly she had struck deep.
"A reformed rake, you know, makes the best husband," she pursued; "so that one so inflammable as he is, will be sure to make a constant and adoring husband. You will be so happy with him! ”

“ She gave a saucy toss of her head, as though to show she agreed with him, and turned to the table where Vyner was at work with his chalks.
“That’s me,” said she, gravely.
“I like your own face better,” said Vyner.
“So would that little fellow with the pipe that you were telling us of,” said Grenfell.
“Let him say so,” said she, with a ringing laugh; and she bounded from the spot, and skipping from crag to crag flew down the rock, and hurried down the little path at speed.
“There’s a man coming up the road; don’t you see him waving his hat?” ”

“ To gain this end, what man would not have made himself a slave? If any man could resist such an attraction, Vyner was not that man; and he submitted to every caprice, in the deluded hope of seeing his submission crowned with its reward.
In effect, Mrs. Vyner's will was law; yet so dexterously did she contrive matters, that it always seemed as if Vyner was the sole ordainer of everything. He was the puppet, moving as she pulled the wires, and gaining all the odium for her acts.
Violet, as I said, was the only one who saw this. She read her stepmother's character aright ”

“ M’Kinlay,” said Vyner, as he shook him cordially by the hand. “Nothing but wind and rain for the last three days. Come in to my room here, I want to speak to you before you meet any one. I don’t think you know Grenfell,” said he, when they were alone, “and I should like to prepare you a little for a man who, with unquestionable abilities, has a number of oddities about him, and has a most intense pleasure in contradiction. This has been especially called out by a project of mine, which, perhaps, you will not fully approve, but, at all events, will accept as a pardonable caprice.” ”

“ She had a lively imagination, and was fond of the most imaginative poetry;—the less disposition he manifested towards it, the more she insinuated how necessary a part it was of all exalted minds. In her views of art, of life, and of religion, she was always exaggerated, and what the Germans call schwärmerisch. Vyner was as prosaic as prose, and owned his incapacity for "those higher raptures" which were said to result from "an exalted ideal." What we do not understand, we always admire or despise. Vyner admired. ”

“ Vyner took a huge pinch. That did not clear his ideas, and he sat silently brushing off the grains which had congregated in the wrinkles of his waistcoat, very much puzzled what to say.
"Papa, there is something on your mind. If it is anything against Cecil .... anything a wife ought not to hear, spare me, and do not utter it. If it is anything else, spare me the suspense, and tell me at once what it is."
"Blanche, my dearest child, I came here to save you from ruin, and I will save you. You must quit your husband." ”

“ Robert Vyner, in tones of grave annoyance, as he ranged alongside. "I came all this way to show your father a book on dahlias, and now I find I've left it at the office. What's a good thing for a bad memory?"
"Punish yourself by running all the way, I should think," replied Joan. "It might make you less forgetful next time."
Mr. Vyner became thoughtful, not to say grave. "I don't know so much about running," he said, slowly. "I've had an idea for some time past that my heart is a little bit affected." ”

“ As he spoke, Ada drew nigh her father, and clasped his hand in her own, while her tearful eyes turned alternately from her father to the child, the sense of her own happy lot, loved and cherished as she was, blending with a deep pity for one so desolate and friendless.
“That’s the way boys are made independent and bold-hearted,” said Vyner, hastily. “Men like their sons to be trained up in the free habits they enjoyed themselves. ”

“ Robert Vyner gazed at her admiringly.
"I am glad that you understand me," he murmured. "It makes things easier for me. I don't suppose that you have the faintest idea how shy and sensitive I really am."
Miss Hartley, without even troubling to look at him, said that she was quite sure she had not.
"Nobody has," said Robert, shaking his head, "but I am going to make a fight against it. I am going to begin now. In the first place I want you not to think too hardly of my father. He has been a very good father to me. We have never had a really nasty word in our lives." ”

“ No woman had ever loved him before, yet nothing less than idolatry, or the simulation of it, would content him. He could not understand how she should have any other thought than that of ministering to his exacting vanity.
Now, of all women, Mrs. Vyner was the last to be capable of such a passion; and certainly, under such circumstances, no woman could have given way to the passion, had she felt it. In constant terror and perpetual remorse, what time had she for the subtleties of love? ”

“ If this were a reflection that had more than once occurred to his mind, it usually ended by impressing the conviction that he, Vyner, must have rare qualities of head and heart, not merely to endure, but actually to almost like, a companionship for which none other would have had taste or temper but himself. Now, however—not easy is it to say why—a doubt flashed across him that his doubting, distrustful, scoffing nature might prove in the end an evil, just as a certain malaria, not strong enough to give fever, will ultimately impregnate the blood and undermine the constitution. ”

“ It is a great annoyance. I hate the journey, and I hate the duty; but to refuse would, in all probability, offend Vyner. It is just the time men are unreasonably thin-skinned, fancying that all the world has turned its back on them, because they have sent off their French cook. Vulgar nonsense! Perhaps Vyner would not take that view; but his women would, I’m certain!”
Now, Mr. Grenfell knew nothing whatever of “the women” in question, and that was the precise reason that he included them in his spiteful censure.
“And then to fancy that his money-seeking was philanthropy! ”

“ Vyner.
"All of 'em," said the captain.
"Twins, as well?" said Mr. Vyner, raising his voice.
"She likes them best of all," was the reply.
Mr. Vyner rose slowly from his chair. "She is a woman in a million," he said impressively. "I wonder why—"
"They're very good girls," said the captain hastily. "Old Sellers thinks there is nobody like them."
"I expect you'll be making a home for them soon," said Robert, thoughtfully; "although it will be rather hard on Mrs. Chinnery to part with them. Won't it?"
"We are all in the hands of fate," said the captain gazing suddenly at his tumbler. ”

“ John shook her head.
"Mrs. St. John demurs," said Rose.
"I do, indeed. I look with suspicion on those opinions. When I see a woman disdaining the ordinary notions of society, I expect to see her follow out her own opinions, and disdain the ordinary practices of society."
Meredith Vyner joined them.
"We are discussing the old subject, Hester Mason," said Mrs. St. John.
"And giving her all the virtues under the sun, poetry included," said Vyner. "Well, you have chosen a good subject. We don't often meet with such a paragon. ”

“ Vyner glanced at him in mystification.
"Hartley is a great gardener," explained the other with a satisfied smile. "What is the result? He can go there when he likes, so to speak. No awkwardness or anything of that sort. He can turn up there bold as brass to borrow a trowel, and take three or four hours doing it."
"You're a danger to society," said Robert, shaking his head.
"People ought to marry while they're young," said the captain. "If they don't, like as not they're crazy to marry in their old age. ”

“ Vyner.
"You know what it all means," he said, savagely, as Hartley finished.
"I—I think so," was the reply.
"It means," said the captain, biting his words—"it means that unless Joan is married within three months, so as to be out of Robert Vyner's way, you will be dismissed the firm. It saves the old man's pride a bit putting it that way, and it's safer, too. And if Robert Vyner marries her he will have to earn his own living. With luck he might get thirty shillings a week." ”

“ It was all-essential—indeed indispensable—that she should be a person of family and connexions; one, in fact, that might be able to keep open the door of society—even half ajar—but still enough to let him slip in and mingle with those inside. Vyner’s sister-in-law was pretty much what he wanted. She was no longer young, and consequently her market-value placed her nearer to his hopes; and although Sir Gervais had never yet made him known to Lady Vyner or Georgina, things were constantly done abroad that could not have occurred at home. ”

“ Now for my companions, Vyner himself promises to be more of a bore than I anticipated. His wife is very charming, and seems to agree wonderfully in all my views, which I, of course, regard as a sign of excellent taste and judgment. The daughters I have already spoken of. Captain Heath is handsome, gentlemanly, but confoundedly "sensible," and, though a guardsman, has no idea of "life." ”

“ You see, Sir,” said he, turning down the corner of Vyner’s letter, and handing it to him to read, “this is what he says: ‘Tell Sir Within from me, that I will accept any trouble he shall take with Miss O’H. as a direct personal favour.’”
Sir Within bowed. It was not the first time he had been shown a “strictly confidential despatch” that meant nothing.
“I think—that is, I suspect—I apprehend the situation,” said he. “The Vyners want to stand in the ‘statu quo ante;’ they have made a mistake, and they see it. Now, what does Mr. M’Kinlay suggest?” ”