"HIS LADY SMILES; DELIGHT IS IN HER FACE."
That benevolent advice of Mrs. St. Aubyn's was not without its influence
upon Leonard, lightly as he seemed to put aside the insinuation of evil.
The matron's speech helped to strengthen his own doubts and fears. Other
eyes than his had noted Christabel's manner of receiving the Baron's
attentions--other people had been impressed by the change in her. The
thing was not an evil of his own imagining. She was making herself the
talk of his friends and acquaintance. There was scandal--foul suspicion
in the very atmosphere she breathed. That mutual understanding, that
face to face arraignment, which he felt must come sooner or later, could
not be staved off much longer. The wife who defied him thus openly,
making light of him under his own roof, must be brought to book.
"To-morrow she and I must come to terms," Leonard said to himself.
No one had much leisure for thought that evening. The drawing-room was a
scene of babble and laughter, music, flirtation, frivolity, everybody
seeming to be blest with that happy-go-lucky temperament which can
extract mirth from the merest trifles. Jessie Bridgeman and Mr.
Tregonell were the only lookers-on--the only two people who in Jack
Vandeleur's favourite phrase were not "in it." Every one else was full
of the private theatricals. The idea had only been mooted after
luncheon, and now it seemed as if life could hardly have been bearable
yesterday without this thrilling prospect. Colonel Blathwayt, who had
been out shooting all the afternoon, entered vigorously into the
discussion. He was an experienced amateur actor, had helped to swell the
funds of half the charitable institutions of London and the provinces;
so he at once assumed the function of stage manager.
"De Cazalet can act," he said. "I have seen him at South Kensington; but
I don't think he knows the ropes as well as I do. You must let me
manage the whole business for you; write to the London people for stage
and scenery, lamps, costumes, wigs. And of course you will want me for
Alphonse."
Little Monty had been suggested for Alphonse. He was fair-haired and
effeminate, and had just that small namby-pamby air which would suit
Pauline's faint-hearted lover; but nobody dared to say anything about
him when Colonel Blathwayt made this generous offer.
"Will you really play Alphonse?" exclaimed Christabel, looking up from a
volume of engravings, illustrating the costumes of the Directory and
Empire, over which the young ladies of the party, notably Dopsy and
Mopsy, had been giggling and ejaculating. "We should not have ventured
to offer you a secondary part."
"You'll find it won't be a secondary character as I shall play it,"
answered the Colonel, calmly. "Alphonse will go better than any part in
the piece. And now as to the costumes. Do you want to be picturesque, or
do you want to be correct?"
"Picturesque by all means," cried Mopsy. "Dear Mrs. Tregonell would
look too lovely in powder and patches."
"Like Boucher's Pompadour," said the Colonel. "Do you know I think, now
fancy balls are the rage, the Louis Quinze costume is rather played out.
Every ponderous matron fancies herself in powder and brocade. The powder
is hired for the evening, and the brocade is easily convertible into a
dinner gown," added the Colonel, who spent the greater part of his life
among women, and prided himself upon knowing their ways. "For my part, I
should like to see Mrs. Tregonell dressed like Madame Tallien."
"Undressed like Madame Tallien, you mean," said Captain Vandeleur: and
thereupon followed a lively discussion as to the costume of the close of
the last century as compared with the costume of to-day, which ended in
somebody's assertion that the last years of a century are apt to expire
in social and political convulsions, and that there was every promise of
revolution as a wind-up for the present age.
"My idea of the close of the nineteenth century is that it will be a
period of dire poverty," said the proprietor of the _Sling_; "an age of
pauperism already heralded by the sale of noble old mansions, the
breaking-up of great estates, the destruction of famous collections,
galleries, libraries, the pious hoards of generations of connoisseurs
and bookworms, scattered to the four winds by a stroke of the
auctioneer's hammer. The landed interest and the commercial classes are
going down the hill together. Suez has ruined our shipping interests; an
unreciprocated free trade is ruining our commerce. Coffee, tea,
cotton--our markets are narrowing for all. After a period of lavish
expenditure, reckless extravagance, or at any rate the affectation of
reckless extravagance, there will come an era of dearth. Those are
wisest who will foresee and anticipate the change, simplify their
habits, reduce their luxuries, put on a Quakerish sobriety in dress and
entertainments, which, if carried out nicely, may pass for high
art--train themselves to a kind of holy poverty outside the
cloister--and thus break their fall. Depend upon it, there will be a
fall, for every one of those men and women who at this present day are
living up to their incomes."
"The voice is the voice of FitzJesse, but the words are the words of
Cassandra," said Colonel Blathwayt. "For my part, I am like the Greeks,
and never listen to such gloomy vaticinations. I daresay the deluge
_will_ come--a deluge now and again is inevitable; but I think the dry
land will last our time. And in the meanwhile was there ever a
pleasanter world than that we live in--an entirely rebuilt and
revivified London--clubs, theatres, restaurants, without number--gaiety
and brightness everywhere? If our amusements are frivolous, at least
they are hearty. If our friendships are transient, they are very
pleasant while they last. We know people to-day, and cut them to-morrow;
that is one of the first conditions of good society. The people who are
cut understand the force of circumstances, and are just as ready to take
up the running a year or two hence, when we can afford to know them."
"Blessed are the poor in spirit," quoted little Monty, in a meek voice.
"Our women are getting every day more like the women of the Directory,
and the Consulate," continued the Colonel. "We have come to short
petticoats and gold anklets. All in good time we shall come to bare
feet. We have abolished sleeves, and we have brought bodices to a
_reductio ad absurdum_; but, although prudes and puritans may disapprove
our present form, I must say that women were never so intelligent or so
delightful. We have come back to the days of the _salon_ and the _petit
souper_. Our daughters are sirens and our wives are wits."
"Charming for Colonel Blathwayt, whose only experience is of other
people's wives and daughters," said little Monty. "But I don't feel sure
that the owners are quite so happy."
"When a man marries a pretty woman, he puts himself beyond the pale,"
said Mr. FitzJesse; "nobody sympathizes with him. I daresay there was
not a member of the Grecian League who did not long to kick Menelaus."
"There should be stringent laws for the repression of nice girls'
fathers," said little Monty. "Could there not be some kind of
institution like the Irish Land Court, to force parents to cash up, and
hand over daughter and dowry to any spirited young man who made a bid?
Here am I, a conspicuous martyr to parental despotism. I might have
married half a dozen heiresses, but for the intervention of
stony-hearted fathers. I have gone for them at all ages, from pinafores
to false fronts; but I have never been so lucky as to rise an orphan."
"Poor little Monty! But what a happy escape for the lady."
"Ah, I should have been very kind to her, even if her youth and beauty
dated before the Reform Bill," said Mr. Montagu. "I should not have gone
into society with her--one must draw the line somewhere. But I should
have been forbearing."
"Dear Mrs. Tregonell," said Mopsy, gushingly, "have you made up your
mind what to wear?"
Christabel had been turning the leaves of a folio abstractedly for the
last ten minutes.
"To wear? Oh, for the play! Well, I suppose I must be as true to the
period as I can, without imitating Madame Tallien. Baron, you draw
beautifully. Will you make a sketch for my costume? I know a little
woman in George Street, Hanover Square, who will carry out your idea
charmingly."
"I should have thought that you could have imagined a short-waisted gown
and a pair of long mittens without the help of an artist," said Jessie,
with some acidity. She had been sitting close to the lamp, poring over a
piece of point-lace work, a quiet and observant listener. It was a fixed
idea among the servants at Mount Royal that Miss Bridgeman's eyes were
constructed on the same principle as those of a horse, and that she
could see behind her. "There is nothing so very elaborate in the dress
of that period, is there?"
"I will try to realize the poetry of the costume."
"Oh, but the poetry means the bare feet and ankles, doesn't it?" asked
Miss Bridgeman. "When you talk about poetry in costume, you generally
mean something that sets a whole roomful of people staring and
tittering."
"My Pauline will look a sylph!" said the Baron, with a languishing
glance at his hostess.
And thus, in the pursuit of the infinitely little, the evening wore
away. Songs and laughter, music of the lightest and most evanescent
character, games which touched the confines of idiocy, and set Leonard
wondering whether the evening amusements of Colney Hatch and Hanwell
could possibly savour of wilder lunacy than these sports which his wife
and her circle cultivated in the grave old reception-room, where a
council of Cavaliers, with George Trevelyan of Nettlecombe, Royalist
Colonel, at their head, had met and sworn fealty to Charles Stuart's
cause, at hazard of fortune and life.
Leonard stood with his back to the wide old fireplace, watching these
revellers, and speculating, in a troubled spirit, as to how much of this
juvenile friskiness was real; contemplating, with a cynical spirit, that
nice sense of class distinction which enabled the two St. Aubyn girls to
keep Mopsy and Dopsy at an impassable distance, even while engaged with
them in these familiar sports. Vain that in the Post Office game, Dopsy
as Montreal exchanged places with Emily St. Aubyn as Newmarket. Montreal
and Newmarket themselves are not farther apart geographically than the
two damsels were morally as they skipped into each other's chairs. Vain
that in the Spelling game, the South Belgravians caught up the
landowner's daughters with a surpassing sharpness and sometimes turned
the laugh against those tender scions of the landed aristocracy. The
very attitude of Clara St. Aubyn's chin--the way she talked apart with
Mrs. Tregonell, seemingly unconscious of the Vandeleur presence, marked
her inward sense of the gulf between them.
It was midnight before any one thought of going to bed, yet there was
unwonted animation at nine o'clock next morning in the dining-room,
where every one was talking of the day's expedition: always excepting
the master of the house, who sat at one end of the table, with
Termagant, his favourite Irish setter, crouched at his feet, and his
game-bag lying on a chair near at hand.
"Are you really going to desert us?" asked Mopsy, with her sweetest
smile.
"I am not going to desert you, for I never had the faintest intention of
joining you," answered Leonard bluntly; "whether my wife and her friends
made idiots of themselves by playing nursery games in her drawing-room,
or by skipping about a windy height on the edge of the sea, is their own
affair. I can take my pleasure elsewhere."
"Yes; but you take your pleasure very sadly, as somebody said of English
people generally," urged Mopsy, whose only knowledge of polite
literature was derived from the classical quotations and allusions in
the _Daily Telegraph_; "you will be all alone, for Jack and little Monty
have promised to come with us."
"I gave them perfect freedom of choice. They may like that kind of
thing. I don't."
Against so firm a resolve argument would have been vain. Mopsy gave a
little sigh, and went on with her breakfast. She was really sorry for
Leonard, who had been a kind and useful friend to Jack for the last six
years--who had been indeed the backbone of Jack's resources, without
which that gentleman's pecuniary position would have collapsed into
hopeless limpness. She was quite sharp-sighted enough to see that the
present aspect of affairs was obnoxious to Mr. Tregonell--that he was
savagely jealous, yet dared not remonstrate with his wife.
"I should have thought he was just the last man to put up with anything
of that kind," she said to Dopsy, in their bedchamber confidences; "I
mean her carrying on with the Baron."
"You needn't explain yourself," retorted Dopsy, "it's visible to the
naked eye. If you or I were to carry on like that in another woman's
house we should get turned out; but Mrs. Tregonell is in her own house,
and so long as her husband doesn't see fit to complain--"
"But when will he see fit? He stands by and watches his wife's open
flirtation with the Baron, and lets her go on from bad to worse. He must
see that her very nature is changed since last year, and yet he makes no
attempt to alter her conduct. He is an absolute worm."
"Even the worm will turn at last. You may depend he will," said Dopsy
sententiously.
This was last night's conversation, and now in the bright fresh October
morning, with a delicious coolness in the clear air, a balmy warmth in
the sunshine, Dopsy and Mopsy were smiling at their hostess, for whose
kindness they could not help feeling deeply grateful, "whatever they
might think of her conduct. They recognized a divided duty--loyalty to
Leonard as their brother's patron, and the friend who had first
introduced them to this land of Beulah--gratitude to Mrs. Tregonell,
without whose good graces they could not long have made their abode
here.
"You are not going with us?" asked Christabel, carelessly scanning
Leonard's shooting gear, as she rose from the table and drew on her long
_mousquetaire_ gloves.
"No--I'm going to shoot."
"Shall you go to the Kieve? That's a good place for woodcock, don't you
know?" Jessie Bridgeman stared aghast at the speaker. "If you go that
way in the afternoon you may fall in with us: we are to drink tea at the
farm."
"Perhaps I may go that way."
"And now, if every one is ready, we had better start," said Christabel,
looking round at her party.
She wore a tight-fitting jacket, dark olive velvet, and a cloth skirt,
both heavily trimmed with sable, a beaver hat, with an ostrich feather,
which made a sweeping curve round the brim, and caressed the coil of
golden-brown hair at the back of the small head. The costume, which was
faintly suggestive of a hunting party at Fontainebleau or St. Germains,
became the tall finely moulded figure to admiration. Nobody could doubt
for an instant that Mrs. Tregonell was dressed for effect, and was
determined to get full value out of her beauty. The neat tailor gown and
simple little cloth toque of the past, had given way to a costly and
elaborate costume, in which every detail marked the careful study of the
coquette who lives only to be admired. Dopsy and Mopsy felt a natural
pang of envy as they scrutinized the quality of the cloth and calculated
the cost of the fur; but they consoled themselves with the conviction
that there was a bewitching Kate Greenaway quaintness in their own
flimsy garments which made up for the poverty of the stuff, and the
doubtful finish of home dressmaking. A bunch of crimson poppies on
Mopsy's shoulder, a cornflower in Dopsy's hat, made vivid gleams of
colour upon their brown merino frocks, while the freshness of their
saffron-tinted Toby frills was undeniable. Sleeves short and tight, and
ten-buttoned Swedish gloves, made up a toilet which Dopsy and Mopsy had
believed to be æsthetically perfect, until they compared it with
Christabel's rich and picturesque attire. The St. Aubyn girls were not
less conscious of the superiority of Mrs. Tregonell's appearance, but
they were resigned to the inevitable. How could a meagre quarterly
allowance, doled out by an unwilling father, stand against a wife's
unlimited power of running up bills. And here was a woman who had a
fortune of her own to squander as she pleased, without anybody's leave
or license. Secure in the severity of slate-coloured serges made by a
West-End tailor, with hats to match, and the best boots and gloves that
money could buy, the St. Aubyn girls affected to despise Christabel's
olive velvet and sable tails.
"It's the worst possible form to dress like that for a country ramble,"
murmured Emily to Clara.
"Of course. But the country's about the only place where she could
venture to wear such clothes," replied Clara: "she'd be laughed at in
London."
"Well, I don't know: there were some rather loud get-ups in the Park
last season," said Emily. "It's really absurd the way married women
out-dress girls."
Once clear of the avenue Mrs. Tregonell and her guests arranged
themselves upon the Darwinian principle of natural selection.
That brilliant bird the Baron, whose velvet coat and knickerbockers were
the astonishment of Boscastle, instinctively drew near to Christabel,
whose velvet and sable, plumed hat, and point-lace necktie pointed her
out as his proper mate--Little Monty, Bohemian and _décousu_, attached
himself as naturally to one of the Vandeleur birds, shunning the
iron-grey respectability of the St. Aubyn breed.
Mrs. St. Aubyn, who had made up her mind at the last to join the party,
fastened herself upon St. Bernard Faddie, in the fond hope that he would
be able to talk of parish matters, and advise her about her duties as
Lady Bountiful; while he, on his part, only cared for rubric and ritual,
and looked upon parish visitation as an inferior branch of duty, to be
performed by newly-fledged curates. Mr. FitzJesse took up with Dopsy,
who amused him as a marked specimen of nineteenth-century girlhood--a
rare and wonderful bird of its kind, like a heavily wattled barb
pigeonn, not beautiful, but infinitely curious. The two St. Aubyn girls,
in a paucity of the male sex, had to put up with the escort of Captain
Vandeleur, to whom they were extremely civil, although they studiously
ignored his sisters. And so, by lane and field-path, by hill and vale,
they went up to the broad, open heights above the sea--a sea that was
very fair to look upon on this sunshiny autumn day, luminous with those
translucent hues of amethyst and emerald, sapphire and garnet, which
make the ever changeful glory of that Cornish strand.
Miss Bridgeman walked half the way with the St. Aubyn girls and Captain
Vandeleur. The St. Aubyns had always been civil to her, not without a
certain tone of patronage which would have wounded a more self-conscious
person, but which Jessie endured with perfect good temper.
"What does it matter if they have the air of bending down from a higher
social level every time they talk to me," she said to Major Bree,
lightly, when he made some rude remark about these young ladies. "If it
pleases them to fancy themselves on a pinnacle, the fancy is a harmless
one, and can't hurt me. I shouldn't care to occupy that kind of
imaginary height myself. There must be a disagreeable sense of
chilliness and remoteness; and then there is always the fear of a sudden
drop; like that fall through infinite space which startles one sometimes
on the edge of sleep."
Armed with that calm philosophy which takes all small things lightly,
Jessie was quite content that the Miss St. Aubyns should converse with
her as if she were a creature of an inferior race--born with lesser
hopes and narrower needs than theirs, and with no rights worth mention.
She was content that they should be sometimes familiar and sometimes
distant--that they should talk to her freely when there was no one else
with whom they could talk--and that they should ignore her presence when
the room was full.
To-day, Emily St. Aubyn was complaisant even to friendliness. Her sister
had completely appropriated Captain Vandeleur, so Emily gave herself up
to feminine gossip. There were some subjects which she really wanted to
discuss with Miss Bridgeman, and this seemed a golden opportunity.
"Are we really going to have tea at the farmhouse near St. Nectan's
Kieve?" she asked.
"Didn't you hear Mrs. Tregonell say so?" inquired Jessie, dryly.
"I did; but I could not help wondering a little. Was it not at the Kieve
that poor Mr. Hamleigh was killed?"
"Yes."
"Don't you think it just a little heartless of Mrs. Tregonell to choose
that spot for a pleasure party?"
"The farmhouse is not the Kieve: they are at least a mile apart."
"That's a mere quibble, Miss Bridgeman: the association is just the
same, and she ought to feel it."
"Mrs. Tregonell is my very dear friend," answered Jessie. "She and her
aunt are the only friends I have made in this world. You can't suppose
that I shall find fault with her conduct?"
"No, I suppose not. You would stand by her through thick and thin?"
"Through thick and thin."
"Even at the sacrifice of principle?"
"I should consider gratitude and friendship the governing principles of
my life where she is concerned."
"If she were to go ever so wrong, you would still stand by her?"
"Stand by her, and cleave to her--walk by her side till death, wherever
the path might lead. I should not encourage her in wrong-doing. I should
lift up my voice when there was need: but I should never forsake her."
"That is your idea of friendship?"
"Unquestionably. To my mind, friendship which implies anything less than
that is meaningless. However, there is no need for heroics: Mrs.
Tregonell is not going to put me to the test."
"I hope not. She is very sweet. I should be deeply pained if she were to
go wrong. But do you know that my mother does not at all like her manner
with the Baron. My sister and I are much more liberal-minded, don't you
know; and we can understand that all she says and does is mere
frivolity--high spirits which must find some outlet. But what surprises
me is that she should be so gay and light-hearted after the dreadful
events of her life. If such things had happened to me, I should
inevitably have gone over to Rome, and buried myself in the severest
conventual order that I could find."
"Yes, there have been sad events in her life: but I think she chose the
wiser course in doing her duty by the aunt who brought her up, than in
self-immolation of that kind," answered Jessie, with her thin lips drawn
to the firmest line they were capable of assuming.
"But think what she must have suffered last year when that poor man was
killed. I remember meeting him at dinner when they were first engaged.
Such an interesting face--the countenance of a poet. I could fancy
Shelley or Keats exactly like him."
"We have their portraits," said Jessie, intolerant of gush. "There is no
scope for fancy."
"But I think he really was a little like Keats--consumptive looking,
too, which carried out the idea. How utterly dreadful it must have been
for Mrs. Tregonell when he met his death, so suddenly, so awfully, while
he was a guest under her roof. How did she bear it?"
"Very quietly. She had borne the pain of breaking her engagement for a
principle, a mistaken one, as I think. His death could hardly have given
her worse pain."
"But it was such an awful death."
"Awful in its suddenness, that is all--not more awful than the death of
any one of our English soldiers who fell in Zululand the other day.
After all, the mode and manner of death is only a detail, and, so long
as the physical pain is not severe, an insignificant detail. The one
stupendous fact for the survivor remains always the same. We had a
friend and he is gone--for ever, for all we know."
There was the faint sound of a sob in her voice as she finished
speaking.
"Well, all I can say is that if I were Mrs. Tregonell, I could never
have been happy again," persisted Miss St. Aubyn.
They came to Trevena soon after this, and went down the hill to the base
of that lofty crag on which King Arthur's Castle stood. They found Mrs.
Fairfax and the pony-carriage in the Valley. The provisions had all been
carried up the ascent. Everything was ready for luncheon.
A quarter of a hour later they were all seated on the long grass and the
crumbling stones, on which Christabel and her lover had sat so often in
that happy season of her life when love was a new thought, and faith in
the beloved one as boundless as that far-reaching ocean, on which they
gazed in dreamy content. Now, instead of low talk about Arthur and
Guinevere, Tristan and Iseult, and all the legends of the dim poetic
past, there were loud voices and laughter, execrable puns, much
conversation of the order generally known as chaff, a great deal of mild
personality of that kind which, in the age of Miss Burney and Miss
Austin, was described as quizzing and roasting, and an all-pervading
flavour of lunacy. The Baron de Cazalet tried to take advantage of the
position, and to rise to poetry; but he was laughed down by the
majority, especially by Mr. FitzJesse, who hadn't a good word for Arthur
and his Court.
"Marc was a coward, and Tristan was a traitor and a knave," he said.
"While as for Iseult, the less said of her the better. The legends of
Arthur's birth are cleverly contrived to rehabilitate his mother's
character, but the lady's reputation still is open to doubt. Jack the
Giant Killer and Tom Thumb are quite the most respectable heroes
connected with this western world. You have no occasion to be proud of
the associations of the soil, Mrs. Tregonell."
"But I am proud of my country, and of its legends," answered Christabel.
"And you believe in Tristan and Iseult, and the constancy which was
personified by a bramble, as in the famous ballad of Lord Lovel."
"The constancy which proved itself by marrying somebody else, and
remaining true to the old love all the same," said Mrs. Fairfax
Torrington, in her society voice, trained to detonate sharp sentences
across the subdued buzz of a dinner-table.
"Poor Tristan," sighed Dopsy.
"Poor Iseult," murmured Mopsy.
They had never heard of either personage until this morning.
"Nothing in the life of either became them so well as the leaving it,"
said Mr. FitzJesse. "The crowning touch of poetry in Iseult's death
redeems her errors. You remember how she was led half senseless to
Tristan's death-chamber--_lors l'embrasse de ses bras, tant comme elle
peut, et gette ung souspir, et se pasme sur le corps, et le cueur lui
part, et l'âme s'en va._"
"If every woman who loses her lover could die like that," said Jessie,
with a curious glance at Christabel, who sat listening smilingly to the
conversation, with the Baron prostrate at her feet.
"Instead of making good her loss at the earliest opportunity, what a
dreary place this world would be," murmured little Monty. "I think
somebody in the poetic line has observed that nothing in Nature is
constant, so it would be hard lines upon women if they were to be
fettered for life by some early attachment that came to a bad end."
"Look at Juliet's constancy," said Miss St. Aubyn.
"Juliet was never put to the test," answered FitzJesse. "The whole
course of her love affair was something less than a week. If that potion
of hers had failed, and she had awakened safe and sound in her own
bedchamber next morning, who knows that she would not have submitted to
the force of circumstances, married County Paris, and lived happily with
him ever after. There is only one perfect example of constancy in the
whole realm of poetry, and that is the love of Paolo and Francesca, the
love which even the pains of hell could not dissever."
"They weren't married, don't you know," lisped Monty. "They hadn't had
the opportunity of getting tired of each other. And then, in the
underworld, a lady would be glad to take up with somebody she had known
on earth: just as in Australia one is delighted to fall in with a fellow
one wouldn't care twopence for in Bond Street."
"I believe you are right," said Mr. FitzJesse, "and that constancy is
only another name for convenience. Married people are constant to each
other, as a rule, because there is such an infernal row when they fall
out."
Lightly flew the moments in the balmy air, freshened by the salt sea,
warmed by the glory of a meridian sun--lightly and happily for that wise
majority of the revellers, whose philosophy is to get the most out of
to-day's fair summer-time, and to leave future winters and possible
calamities to Jove's discretion. Jessie watched the girl who had grown
up by her side, whose every thought she had once known, and wondered if
this beautiful artificial impersonation of society tones and society
graces could be verily the same flesh and blood. What had made this
wondrous transformation? Had Christabel's very soul undergone a change
during that dismal period of apathy last winter? She had awakened from
that catalepsy of despair a new woman--eager for frivolous
pleasures--courting admiration--studious of effect: the very opposite of
that high-souled and pure-minded girl whom Jessie had known and loved.
"It is the most awful moral wreck that was ever seen," thought Jessie;
"but if my love can save her from deeper degradation she shall be
saved."
Could she care for that showy impostor posed at her feet, gazing up at
her with passionate eyes--hanging on her accents--openly worshipping
her? She seemed to accept his idolatry, to sanction his insolence; and
all her friends looked on, half scornful, half amused.
"What can Tregonell be thinking about not to be here to-day?" said Jack
Vandeleur, close to Jessie's elbow.
"Why should he be here?" she asked.
"Because he's wanted. He's neglecting that silly woman shamefully."
"It is only his way," answered Jessie, scornfully. "Last year he invited
Mr. Hamleigh to Mount Royal, who had been engaged to his wife a few
years before. He is not given to jealousy."
"Evidently not," said Captain Vandeleur, waxing thoughtful, as he
lighted a cigarette, and strolled slowly off to stare at the sea, the
rocky pinnacles, and yonder cormorant skimming away from a sharp point,
to dip and vanish in the green water.
The pilgrimage from Trevena to Trevithy farm was somewhat less
straggling than the long walk by the cliffs. The way was along a high
road, which necessitated less meandering, but the party still divided
itself into twos and threes, and Christabel still allowed de Cazalet the
privilege of a _tête-à-tête_. She was a better walker than any of her
friends, and the Baron was a practised pedestrian; so those two kept
well ahead, leaving the rest of the party to follow as they pleased.
"I wonder they are not tired of each other by this time," said Mopsy,
whose Wurtemburg heels were beginning to tell upon her temper. "It has
been such a long day--and such a long walk. What can the Baron find to
talk about all this time?"
"Himself," answered FitzJesse, "an inexhaustible subject. Men can always
talk. Listening is the art in which they fail. Are you a good listener,
Miss Vandeleur?"
"I'm afraid not. If any one is prosy I begin to think of my frocks."
"Very bad. As a young woman, with the conquest of society before you, I
most earnestly recommend you to cultivate the listener's art. Talk just
enough to develop your companion's powers. If he has a hobby, let him
ride it. Be interested, be sympathetic. Do not always agree, but differ
only to be convinced, argue only to be converted. Never answer at
random, or stifle a yawn. Be a perfect listener, and society is open to
you. People will talk of you as the most intelligent girl they know."
Mopsy smiled a sickly smile. The agony of those ready-made boots, just a
quarter of a size too small, though they had seemed so comfortable in
the shoemaker's shop, was increasing momentarily. Here was a hill like
the side of a house to be descended. Poor Mopsy felt as if she were
balancing herself on the points of her toes. She leant feebly on her
umbrella, while the editor of the _Sling_ trudged sturdily by her side
admiring the landscape--stopping half-way down the hill to point out the
grander features of the scene with his bamboo. Stopping was ever so much
worse than going on. It was as if the fires consuming the martyr at the
stake had suddenly gone out, and left him with an acuter consciousness
of his pain.
"Too, too lovely," murmured Mopsy, heartily wishing herself in the
King's Road, Chelsea, within hail of an omnibus.
She hobbled on somehow, pretending to listen to Mr. FitzJesse's
conversation, but feeling that she was momentarily demonstrating her
incompetence as a listener, till they came to the farm, where she was
just able to totter into the sitting-room, and sink into the nearest
chair.
"I'm afraid you're tired," said the journalist, a sturdy block of a man,
who hardly knew the meaning of fatigue.
"I am just a little tired," she faltered hypocritically, "but it has
been a lovely walk."
They were the last to arrive. The tea things were ready upon a table
covered with snowy damask--a substantial tea, including home-made
loaves, saffron-coloured cakes, jam, marmalade, and cream. But there was
no one in the room except Mrs. Fairfax Torrington, who had enthroned
herself in the most comfortable chair, by the side of the cheerful
fire.
"All the rest of our people have gone straggling off to look at things,"
she said, "some to the Kieve--and as that is a mile off we shall have
ever so long to wait for our tea."
"Do you think we need wait very long?" asked Mopsy, whose head was
aching from the effects of mid-day champagne; "would it be so very bad
if we were to ask for a cup of tea."
"I am positively longing for tea," said Mrs. Torrington to FitzJesse,
ignoring Mopsy.
"Then I'll ask the farm people to brew a special pot for you two,"
answered the journalist, ringing the bell. "Here comes Mr. Tregonell,
game-bag, dogs, and all. This is more friendly than I expected."
Leonard strolled across the little quadrangular garden, and came in at
the low door, as Mr. FitzJesse spoke.
"I thought I should find some of you here," he said; "where are the
others?"
"Gone to the Kieve, most of them," answered Mrs. Torrington briskly. Her
freshness contrasted cruelly with Mopsy's limp and exhausted condition.
"At least I know your wife and de Cazalet were bent on going there. She
had promised to show the waterfall. We were just debating whether we
ought to wait tea for them."
"I wouldn't, if I were you," said Leonard. "No doubt they'll take their
time."
He flung down his game-bag, took up his hat, whistled to his dogs, and
went towards the door.
"Won't you stop and have some tea--just to keep us in countenance?"
asked Mrs. Torrington.
"No, thanks. I'd rather have it later. I'll go and meet the others."
"If he ever intended to look after her it was certainly time he should
begin," said the widow, when the door was shut upon her host. "Please
ring again, Mr. FitzJesse. How slow these farm people are! Do they
suppose we have come here to stare at cups and saucers?"