BUT THEN CAME ONE, THE LOVELACE OF HIS DAY.
Although Angus Hamleigh came of a good old west country family, he had
never been in Cornwall, and he approached that remote part of the
country with a curious feeling that he was turning his back upon England
and English civilization, and entering a strange wild land where all
things would be different. He would meet with a half-barbarous people,
perhaps, rough, unkempt, ignorant, brutal, speaking to him in a strange
language--such men as inhabited Perthshire and Inverness before
civilization travelled northward. He had accepted Mrs. Tregonell's
invitation out of kindly feeling for the woman who had loved his father,
and who, but for that father's untimely death, might have been to him as
a second mother. There was a strong vein of sentiment in his character,
which responded to the sentiment betrayed unconsciously in every line of
Mrs. Tregonell's letter. His only knowledge of the father he had lost
in infancy had come to him from the lips of others, and it pleased him
to think that here was one whose memory must be fresher than that of any
other friend, in whose mind his father's image must needs be as a living
thing. He had all his life cherished a regretful fondness for that
unknown father, whose shadowy picture he had vainly tried to recall
among the first faint recollections of babyhood--the dim dreamland of
half-awakened consciousness.
He had frankly and promptly accepted Mrs. Tregonell's invitation; yet he
felt that in going to immure himself in an old manor house for a
fortnight--anything less than a fortnight would have been uncivil--he
was dooming himself to ineffable boredom. Beyond that pious pleasure in
parental reminiscences, there could be no possible gratification for a
man of the world, who was not an ardent sportsman, in such a place as
Mount Royal. Mr. Hamleigh's instincts were of the town, towny. His
pleasures were all of an intellectual kind. He had never degraded
himself by vulgar profligacy, but he liked a life of excitement and
variety; he had always lived at high pressure, and among people posted
up to the last moment of the world's history--people who drank the very
latest pleasure cup which the Spirit of the Age--a Spirit of passing
frivolity--had invented, were it only the newest brand of champagne; and
who, in their eagerness to gather the roses of life, outstripped old
Time himself, and grew old in advance of their age. He had been
contemplating a fortnight in Paris, as the first stage in his journey to
Monaco, when Mrs. Tregonell's letter altered his plans. This was not the
first time she had asked him to Mount Royal, but on previous occasions
his engagements had seemed to him too imperative to be foregone, and he
had regretfully declined her invitations. But now the flavour of life
had grown somewhat vapid for him, and he was grateful to any one who
would turn his thoughts and fancies into a new direction.
"I shall inevitably be bored there," he said to himself, when he had
littered the railway carriage with newspapers accumulated on the way,
"but I should be bored anywhere else. When a man begins to feel the
pressure of the chain upon his leg, it cannot much matter where his
walks lead him: the very act of walking is his punishment."
When a man comes to eight-and-twenty years of age--a man who has had
very little to do in this life, except take his pleasure--a great
weariness and sense of exhaustion is apt to close round him like a pall.
The same man will be ever so much fresher in mind, will have ever so
much more zest for life, when he comes to be forty--for then he will
have entered upon those calmer enjoyments of middle age which may last
him till he is eighty. But at eight-and-twenty there is a death-like
calmness of feeling. Youth is gone. He has consumed all the first fruits
of life--spring and summer, with their wealth of flowers, are over; only
the quiet autumn remains for him, with her warm browns and dull greys,
and cool, moist breath. The fires upon youth's altars have all died
out--youth is dead, and the man who was young only yesterday fancies
that he might as well be dead also. What is there left for him? Can
there be any charm in this life when the looker-on has grey hair and
wrinkles?
Having nothing in life to do except seek his own pleasure and spend his
ample income, Angus Hamleigh had naturally taken the time of life's
march _prestissimo_.
He had never paused in his rose-gathering to wonder whether there might
not be a few thorns among the flowers, and whether he might not find
them--afterwards. And now the blossoms were all withered, and he was
beginning to discover the lasting quality of the thorns. They were such
thorns as interfered somewhat with the serenity of his days, and he was
glad to turn his face westward, away from everybody he knew, or who knew
anything about him.
"My character will present itself to Mrs. Tregonell as a blank page," he
said to himself; "I wonder what she would think of me if one of my club
gossips had enjoyed a quiet evening's talk with her beforehand. A dear
friend's analysis of one's character and conduct is always so flattering
to both; and I have a pleasant knack of offending my dearest friends!"
Mr. Hamleigh began to look about him a little when the train had left
Plymouth. The landscape was wild and romantic, but had none of that
stern ruggedness which he expected to behold on the Cornish Border. Deep
glens, and wooded dells, with hill-sides steep and broken, but verdant
to their topmost crest, and the most wonderful oak coppices that he ever
remembered to have seen. Miles upon miles of oak, as it seemed to him,
now sinking into the depth of a valley, now mounting to the distant sky
line, while from that verdant undulating surface of young wood there
stood forth the giants of the grove--wide-spreading oak and towering
beech, the mighty growth of many centuries. Between Lidford and
Launceston the scenery grew tamer. He had fancied those deep ravines and
wooded heights the prelude to a vast and awful symphony, but Mary Tavy
and Lifton showed him only a pastoral landscape, with just so much wood
and water as would have served for a Creswick or a Constable, and with
none of those grand Salvatoresque effects which he had admired in the
country round Tavistock. At Launceston he found Mrs. Tregonell's landau
waiting for him, with a pair of powerful chestnuts, and a couple of
servants, whose neat brown liveries had nothing of that unsophisticated
semi-savagery which Mr. Hamleigh had expected in a place so remote.
"Do you drive that way?" he asked, pointing to the almost perpendicular
street.
"Yes, sir," replied the coachman.
"Then I think I'll stroll to the top of the hill while you are putting
in my portmanteaux," he said, and ascended the rustic street at a
leisurely pace, looking about him as he went.
The thoroughfare which leads from Launceston Station to the ruined
castle at the top of the hill is not an imposing promenade. Its
architectural features might perhaps be best described like the snakes
of Ireland as _nil_--but here and there an old-fashioned lattice with a
row of flower-pots, an ancient gable, or a bit of cottage garden hints
at the picturesque. Any late additions to the domestic architecture of
Launceston favour the unpretending usefulness of Camden Town rather than
the aspiring æstheticism of Chelsea or Bedford Park; but to Mr.
Hamleigh's eye the rugged old castle keep on the top of the hill made
amends. He was not an ardent archæologist, and he did not turn out of
his way to see Launceston Church, which might well have rewarded him for
his trouble. He was content to have spared those good-looking chestnuts
the labour of dragging him up the steep. Here they came springing up the
hill. He took his place in the carriage, pulled the fur rug over his
knees, and ensconced himself comfortably in the roomy back seat.
"This is a sybaritish luxury which I was not prepared for," he said to
himself. "I'm afraid I shall be rather more bored than I expected. I
thought Mrs. Tregonell and her surroundings would at least have the
merit of originality. But here is a carriage that must have been built
by Peters, and liveries that suggest the sartorial excellence of Conduit
Street or Savile Row."
He watched the landscape with a critical eye, prepared for
disappointment and disillusion. First a country road between tall ragged
hedges and steep banks, a road where every now and then the branches of
the trees hung low over the carriage and threatened to knock the
coachman's hat off. Then they came out upon the wide waste of moorland,
a thousand feet above the sea level, and Mr. Hamleigh, acclimatized to
the atmosphere of club-houses, buttoned his overcoat, drew the black fur
rug closer about him, and shivered a little as the keen breath of the
Atlantic, sweeping over far-reaching tracts of hill and heather, blew
round him. Far and wide as his gaze could reach, he saw no sign of human
habitation. Was the land utterly forsaken? No; a little farther on they
passed a hamlet so insignificant, so isolated, that it seemed rather as
if half a dozen cottages had dropped from the sky than that so lonely a
settlement could be the result of deliberate human inclination. Never in
Scotland or Ireland had Mr. Hamleigh seen a more barren landscape or a
poorer soil; yet those wild wastes of heath, those distant tors were
passing beautiful, and the air he breathed was more inspiring and
exhilarating than the atmosphere of any vaunted health-resort which he
had ever visited.
"I think I might live to middle age if I were to pitch my tent on this
Cornish plateau," he thought; "but, then, there are so many things in
this life that are worth more than mere length of days."
He asked the names of the hamlets they passed. This lonely
church, dedicated to St. David--whence, oh! whence came the
congregation--belonged to the parish of Davidstowe; and here there was a
holy well; and here a Vicarage; and there--oh! crowning evidence of
civilization--a post-office; and there a farmhouse; and that was the end
of Davidstowe. A little later they came to cross roads, and the coachman
touched his hat, and said, "This is Victoria," as if he were naming a
town or settlement of some kind. Mr. Hamleigh looked about him, and
beheld a low-roofed cottage, which he assumed to be some kind of
public-house, possibly capable of supplying beer and tobacco; but other
vestige of human habitation there was none. He leant back in the
carriage, looking across the hills, and saying to himself, "Why,
Victoria?" Was that unpretentious and somewhat dilapidated hostelry the
Victoria Hotel? or the Victoria Arms? or was Royalty's honoured name
given, in an arbitrary manner, to the cross roads and the granite
finger-post? He never knew. The coachman said shortly, "Victoria," and
as "Victoria" he ever after heard that spot described. And now the
journey was all downhill. They drove downward and downward, until Mr.
Hamleigh began to feel as if they were travelling towards the centre of
the earth--as if they had got altogether below the outer crust of this
globe, and must be gradually nearing the unknown gulfs beneath. Yet, by
some geographical mystery, when they turned out of the high road and
went in at a lodge gate, and drove gently upward along an avenue of
elms, in whose rugged tops the rooks were screaming, Mr. Hamleigh found
that he was still high above the undulating edges of the cliffs that
overtopped the Atlantic, while the great waste of waters lay far below,
golden with the last rays of the setting sun.
They drove, by a gentle ascent, to the stone porch of Mount Royal, and
here Mrs. Tregonell stood, facing the sunset, with an Indian shawl
wrapped round her, waiting for her guest.
"I heard the carriage, Mr. Hamleigh," she said, as Angus alighted; "I
hope you do not think me too impatient to see what change twelve years
have made in you?"
"I'm afraid they have not been particularly advantageous to me," he
answered, lightly, as they shook hands. "How good of you to receive me
on the threshold! and what a delightful place you have here! Before I
got to Launceston, I began to be afraid that Cornwall was
commonplace--and now I am enchanted with it. Your moors and hills are
like fairy-land to me!"
"It is a world of our own, and we are very fond of it," said the widow;
"I shall be sorry if ever a railway makes Boscastle open to everybody."
"And what a noble old house!" exclaimed Angus, as he followed his
hostess across the oak-panelled hall, with its wide shallow staircase,
curiously carved balustrades, and lantern roof. "Are you quite alone
here?"
"Oh, no; I have my niece, and a young lady who is a companion to both of
us."
Angus Hamleigh shuddered.
Three women! He was to exist for a fortnight in a house with three
solitary females. A niece and a companion! The niece, rustic and gawky;
the companion sour and frumpish. He began, hurriedly, to cast about in
his mind for a convenient friend, to whom he could telegraph to send him
a telegram, summoning him back to London on urgent business. He was
still meditating this, when the butler opened the door of a spacious
room, lined from floor to ceiling with books, and he followed Mrs.
Tregonell in, and found himself in the bosom of the family. The simple
picture of home-comfort, of restfulness and domestic peace, which met
his curious gaze as he entered, pleased him better than anything he had
seen of late. Club life--with its too studious indulgence of man's
native selfishness and love of ease--fashionable life, with its
insatiable craving for that latter-day form of display which calls
itself Culture, Art, or Beauty--had afforded him no vision so
enchanting as the wide hearth and high chimney of this sober,
book-lined room, with the fair and girlish form kneeling in front of the
old dogstove, framed in the glaring light of the fire.
The tea-table had been wheeled near the hearth, and Miss Bridgeman sat
before the bright red tea-tray, and old brass kettle, ready to
administer to the wants of the traveller, who would be hardly human if
he did not thirst for a cup of tea after driving across the moor.
Christabel knelt in front of the fire, worshipping, and being worshipped
by, a sleek black-and-white sheep-dog, native to the soil, and of a rare
intelligence--a creature by no means approaching the Scotch colley in
physical beauty, but of a fond and faithful nature, born to be the
friend of man. As Christabel rose and turned to greet the stranger, Mr.
Hamleigh was agreeably reminded of an old picture--a Lely or a Kneller,
perhaps. This was not in any wise the rustic image which had flashed
across his mind at the mention of Mrs. Tregonell's niece. He had
expected to see a bouncing, countryfied maiden--rosy, buxom, the picture
of commonplace health and vigour. The girl he saw was nearer akin to
the lily than the rose--tall, slender, dazzlingly fair--not fragile or
sickly in anywise--for the erect figure was finely moulded, the
swan-like throat was round and full. He was prepared for the florid
beauty of a milkmaid, and he found himself face to face with the
elegance of an ideal duchess, the picturesque loveliness of an old
Venetian portrait.
Christabel's dark brown velvet gown and square point lace collar, the
bright hair falling in shadowy curls over her forehead, and rolled into
a loose knot at the back of her head, sinned in no wise against Mr.
Hamleigh's notions of good taste. There was a picturesqueness about the
style which indicated that Miss Courtenay belonged to that advanced
section of womankind which takes its ideas less from modern
fashion-plates than from old pictures. So long as her archaism went no
further back than Vandyke or Moroni he would admire and approve; but he
shuddered at the thought that to-morrow she might burst upon him in a
mediæval morning-gown, with high-shouldered sleeves, a ruff, and a
satchel. The picturesque idea was good, within limits; but one never
knew how far it might go.
There was nothing picturesque about the lady sitting before the
tea-tray, who looked up brightly, and gave him a gracious bend
of her small neat head, in acknowledgment of Mrs. Tregonell's
introduction--"Mr. Hamleigh, Miss Bridgeman!" This was the
companion--and the companion was plain: not unpleasantly plain, not in
any manner repulsive, but a lady about whose looks there could be hardly
any compromise. Her complexion was of a sallow darkness, unrelieved by
any glow of colour; her eyes were grey, acute, honest, friendly, but not
beautiful; her nose was sharp and pointed--not at all a bad nose; but
there was a hardness about nose and mouth and chin, as of features cut
out of bone with a very sharp knife. Her teeth were good, and in a
lovelier mouth might have been the object of much admiration. Her hair
was of that nondescript monotonous brown which has been unkindly called
bottle-green, but it was arranged with admirable neatness, and offended
less than many a tangled pate, upon whose locks of spurious gold the
owner has wasted much time and money. There was nothing unpardonable in
Miss Bridgeman's plainness, as Angus Hamleigh said of her later. Her
small figure was neatly made, and her dark-grey gown fitted to
perfection.
"I hope you like the little bit of Cornwall that you have seen this
afternoon, Mr. Hamleigh," said Christabel, seating herself in a low
chair in the shadow of the tall chimney-piece, fenced in by her aunt's
larger chair.
"I am enraptured with it! I came here with the desire to be intensely
Cornish. I am prepared to believe in witches--warlocks----"
"We have no warlocks," said Christabel. "They belong to the North."
"Well, then, wise women--wicked young men who play football on Sunday,
and get themselves turned into granite--rocking stones--magic
wells--Druids--and King Arthur. I believe the principal point is to be
open to conviction about Arthur. Now, I am prepared to swallow
everything--his castle--the river where his crown was found after the
fight--was it his crown, by-the-by, or somebody else's? which _he_
found--his hair-brushes--his boots--anything you please to show me."
"We will show you his quoit to-morrow, on the road to Tintagel," said
Miss Bridgeman. "I don't think you would like to swallow that actually.
He hurled it from Tintagel to Trevalga in one of his sportive moods. We
shall be able to give you plenty of amusement if you are a good walker,
and are fond of hills."
"I adore them in the abstract, contemplated from one's windows, or in a
picture; but there is an incompatibility between the human anatomy and a
road set on end, like a ladder, which I have never yet overcome. Apart
from the outside question of my legs--which are obvious failures when
tested by an angle of forty-five degrees--I'm afraid my internal
machinery is not quite so tough as it ought to be for a thorough
enjoyment of mountaineering."
Mrs. Tregonell sighed, ever so faintly, in the twilight. She was
thinking of her first lover, and how that fragility, which meant early
death, had showed itself in his inability to enjoy the moorland walks
which were the delight of her girlhood.
"The natural result of bad habits," said Miss Bridgeman, briskly. "How
can you expect to be strong or active, when I dare say you have spent
the better part of your life in hansom cabs and express trains! I don't
mean to be impertinent, but I know that is the general way with
gentlemen out of the shooting and hunting season."
"And as I am no sportsman, I am a somewhat exaggerated example of the
vice of laziness fostered by congenial circumstances, acting on a
lymphatic temperament. If you write books, as I believe most ladies do
now-a-days, you should put me into one of them, as an awful warning."
"I don't write books, and, if I did, I would not flatter your vanity by
making you my model sinner," retorted Jessie; "but I'll do something
better for you, if Christabel will help me. I'll reform you."
"A million thanks for the mere thought! I hope the process will be
pleasant."
"I hope so, too. We shall begin by walking you off your legs."
"They are so indifferent as a means of locomotion that I could very well
afford to lose them, if you could hold out any hope of my getting a
better pair."
"A week hence, if you submit to my treatment, you will be as active as
the chamois hunter in 'Manfred.'"
"Enchanting--always provided that you and Miss Courtenay will follow the
chase with me."
"Depend upon it, we shall not trust you to take your walks alone, unless
you have a pedometer which will bear witness to the distance you have
done, and which you will be content to submit to our inspection on your
return," replied Jessie, sternly.
"I am afraid you are a terribly severe high priestess of this new form
of culture," said Mr. Hamleigh, looking up from his teacup with a lazy
smile, "almost as bad as the Dweller on the Threshold, in Bulwer's
'Zanoni.'"
"There is a dweller on the threshold of every science and every
admirable mode of life, and his name is Idleness," answered Miss
Bridgeman.
"The _vis inertiæ_, the force of letting things alone," said Angus;
"yes, that is a tremendous power, nobly exemplified by vestries and
boards of works--to say nothing of Cabinets, Bishops, and the High Court
of Chancery! I delight in that verse of Scripture, 'Their strength is to
sit still.'"
"There shall be very little sitting still for you if you submit yourself
to Christabel and me," replied Miss Bridgeman.
"I have never tried the water-cure--the descriptions I have heard from
adepts have been too repellent; but I have an idea that this system of
yours must be rather worse than hydropathy," said Angus,
musingly--evidently very much entertained at the way in which Miss
Bridgeman had taken him in hand.
"I was not going to let him pose after Lamartine's _poëte mourant_, just
because his father died of lung disease," said Jessie, ten minutes
afterwards, when the warning gong had sounded, and Mr. Hamleigh had gone
to his room to dress for dinner, and the two young women were whispering
together before the fire, while Mrs. Tregonell indulged in a placid
doze.
"Do you think he is consumptive, like his father?" asked Christabel,
with a compassionate look; "he has a very delicate appearance."
"Hollow-cheeked, and prematurely old, like a man who has lived on
tobacco and brandy-and-soda, and has spent his nights in club-house
card-rooms."
"We have no right to suppose that," said Christabel, "since we know
really nothing about him."
"Major Bree told me he has lived a racketty life, and that if he were
not to pull up very soon he would be ruined both in health and fortune."
"What can the Major know about him?" exclaimed Christabel,
contemptuously.
This Major Bree was a great friend of Christabel's; but there are times
when one's nearest and dearest are too provoking for endurances.
"Major Bree has been buried alive in Cornwall for the last twenty years.
He is at least a quarter of a century behind the age," she said,
impatiently.
"He spent a fortnight in London the year before last," said Jessie; "it
was then that he heard such a bad account of Mr. Hamleigh."
"Did he go about to clubs and places making inquiries, like a private
detective?" said Christabel, still contemptuous; "I hate such fetching
and carrying!"
"Here he comes to answer for himself," replied Jessie, as the door
opened, and a servant announced Major Bree.
Mrs. Tregonell started from her slumbers at the opening of the door, and
rose to greet her guest. He was a very frequent visitor, so frequent
that he might be said to live at Mount Royal, although his nominal abode
was a cottage on the outskirts of Boscastle--a stone cottage on the
crest of a steep hill-side, with a delightful little garden, perched, as
it were, on the edge of a verdant abyss. He was tall, stout, elderly,
grey, and florid--altogether a comfortable-looking man, clean-shaved,
save for a thin grey moustache with the genuine cavalry droop, iron grey
eyebrows, which looked like a repetition of the moustache on a somewhat
smaller scale, keen grey eyes, a pleasant smile, and a well set-up
figure. He dressed well, with a sobriety becoming his years, and was
always the pink of neatness. A man welcome everywhere, on account of an
inborn pleasantness, which prompted him always to say and do the right
thing; but most of all welcome at Mount Royal, as a first cousin of the
late Squire's, and Mrs. Tregonell's guide, philosopher, and friend in
all matters relating to the outside world, of which, despite his twenty
years' hybernation at Boscastle, the widow supposed him to be an acute
observer and an infallible judge. Was he not one of the few inhabitants
of that western village who took in the _Times_ newspaper?
"Well!" exclaimed Major Bree, addressing himself generally to the three
ladies, "he has come--what do you think of him?"
"He is painfully like his poor father," said Mrs. Tregonell.
"He has a most interesting face and winning manner, and I'm afraid we
shall all get ridiculously fond of him," said Miss Bridgeman,
decisively.
Christabel said nothing. She knelt on the hearthrug, playing with
Randie, the black-and-white sheep-dog.
"And what have you to say about him, Christabel?" asked the Major.
"Nothing. I have not had time to form an opinion," replied the girl; and
then lifting her clear blue eyes to the Major's friendly face, she said,
gravely, "but I think, Uncle Oliver, it was very unkind and unfair of
you to prejudice Jessie against him before he came here."
"Unkind!--unfair! Here's a shower of abuse! I prejudice! Oh! I remember.
Mrs. Tregonell asked me what people thought of him in London, and I was
obliged to acknowledge that his reputation was--well--no better than
that of the majority of young men who have more money than common sense.
But that was two years ago--_Nous avons changé tout cela!_"
"If he was wicked then, he must be wicked now," said Christabel.
"Wicked is a monstrously strong word!" said the Major. "Besides, that
does not follow. A man may have a few wild oats to sow, and yet become a
very estimable person afterwards. Miss Bridgeman is tremendously
sharp--she'll be able to find out all about Mr. Hamleigh from personal
observation before he has been here a week. I defy him to hide his weak
points from her."
"What is the use of being plain and insignificant if one has not some
advantage over one's superior fellow-creatures?" asked Jessie.
"Miss Bridgeman has too much expression to be plain, and she is far too
clever to be insignificant," said Major Bree, with a stately bow. He
always put on a stately manner when he addressed himself to Jessie
Bridgeman, and treated her in all things with as much respect as if she
had been a queen. He explained to Christabel that this was the homage
which he paid to the royalty of intellect; but Christabel had a shrewd
suspicion that the Major cherished a secret passion for Miss Bridgeman,
as exalted and as hopeless as the love that Chastelard bore for Mary
Stuart. He had only a small pittance besides his half-pay, and he had a
very poor opinion of his own merits; so it was but natural that, at
fifty-five, he should hesitate to offer himself to a young lady of
six-and-twenty, of whose sharp tongue he had a wholesome awe.
Mr. Hamleigh came back before much more could be said about him, and a
few minutes afterwards they all went in to dinner, and in the brighter
lamplight of the dining-room Major Bree and the three ladies had a
better opportunity of forming their opinion as to the external graces of
their guest.
He was good-looking--that fact even malice could hardly dispute. Not so
handsome as the absent Leonard, Mrs. Tregonell told herself
complacently; but she was constrained at the same time to acknowledge
that her son's broadly moulded features and florid complexion lacked the
charm and interest which a woman's eye found in the delicate chiselling
and subdued tones of Angus Hamleigh's countenance. His eyes were darkest
grey, his complexion was fair and somewhat pallid, his hair brown, with
a natural curl which neither fashion nor the barber could altogether
suppress. His cheeks were more sunken than they should have been at
eight-and-twenty, and the large dark eyes were unnaturally bright. All
this the three ladies and Major Bree had ample time for observing,
during the leisurely course of dinner. There was no flagging in the
conversation, from the beginning to the end of the repast. Mr. Hamleigh
was ready to talk about anything and everything, and his interest in the
most trifling local subjects, whether real or assumed, made him a
delightful companion. In the drawing-room, after dinner, he proved even
more admirable; for he discovered a taste for, and knowledge of, the
best music, which delighted Jessie and Christabel, who were both
enthusiasts. He had read every book they cared for--and a wide world of
books besides--and was able to add to their stock of information upon
all their favourite subjects, without the faintest touch of arrogance.
"I don't think you can help liking him, Jessie," said Christabel, as the
two girls went upstairs to bed. The younger lingered a little in Miss
Bridgeman's room for the discussion of their latest ideas. There was a
cheerful fire burning in the large basket grate, for autumn nights were
chill upon that wild coast. Christabel assumed her favourite attitude in
front of the fire, with her faithful Randie winking and blinking at her
and the fire alternately. He was a privileged dog--allowed to sleep on a
sheepskin mat in the gallery outside his mistress's door, and to go
into her room every morning, in company with the maid who carried her
early cup of tea; when, after the exchange of a few remarks, in baby
language on her part, and expressed on his by a series of curious grins
and much wagging of his insignificant apology for a tail, he would dash
out of the room, and out of the house, for his morning constitutional
among the sheep upon some distant hill--coming home with an invigorated
appetite, in time for the family breakfast at nine o'clock.
"I don't think you can help liking him--as--as a casual acquaintance!"
repeated Christabel, finding that Jessie stood in a dreamy silence,
twisting her one diamond ring--a birthday gift from Miss
Courtenay--round and round upon her slender finger.
"I don't suppose any of us can help liking him," Jessie answered at
last, with her eyes on the fire. "All I hope is, that some of us will
not like him too much. He has brought a new element into our lives--a
new interest--which may end by being a painful one. I feel distrustful
of him."
"Why distrustful? Why, Jessie, you who are generally the very essence of
flippancy--who make light of almost everything in life--except
religion--thank God, you have not come to that yet!--you to be so
serious about such a trifling matter as a visit from a man who will most
likely be gone back to London in a fortnight--gone out of our lives
altogether, perhaps: for I don't suppose he will care to repeat his
experiences in a lonely country-house."
"He may be gone, perhaps--yes--and it is quite possible that he may
never return--but shall we be quite the same after he has left us? Will
nobody regret him--wish for his return--yearn for it--sigh for it--die
for it--feeling life worthless--a burthen, without him?"
"Why, Jessie, you look like a Pythoness."
"Belle, Belle, my darling, my innocent one, you do not know what it is
to care--for a bright particular star--and know how remote it is from
your life--never to be brought any nearer! I felt afraid to-night when I
saw you and Mr. Hamleigh at the piano--you playing, he leaning over you
as you played--both seeming so happy, so united by the sympathy of the
moment! If he is not a good man--if----"
"But we have no reason to think ill of him. You remember what Uncle
Oliver said--he had only been--a--a little racketty, like other young
men," said Christabel, eagerly; and then, with a sudden embarrassment,
reddening and laughing shyly, she added, "and indeed, Jessie, if it is
any idea of danger to me that is troubling your wise head, there is no
need for alarm. I am not made of such inflammable stuff--I am not the
kind of girl to fall in love with the first comer."
"With the first comer no! But when the Prince comes in a fairy tale, it
matters little whether he come first or last. Fate has settled the whole
story beforehand."
"Fate has had nothing to say about me and Mr. Hamleigh. No, Jessie,
believe me, there is no danger for _me_--and I don't suppose that you
are going to fall in love with him?"
"Because I am so old?" said Miss Bridgeman, still looking at the fire;
"no, it would be rather ridiculous in a person of my age, plain and
_passée_, to fall in love with your Alcibiades."
"No, Jessie, but because you are too wise ever to be carried away by a
sentimental fancy. But why do you speak of him so contemptuously? One
would think you had taken a dislike to him. We ought at least to
remember that he is my aunt's friend, and the son of some one she once
dearly loved."
"Once," repeated Jessie, softly; "does not once in that case mean
always?"
She was thinking of the Squire's commonplace good looks and portly
figure, as represented in the big picture in the dining-room--the
picture of a man in a red coat, leaning against the shoulder of a big
bay horse, and with a pack of harriers fawning round him--and wondering
whether the image of that dead man, whose son was in the house to-night,
had not sometimes obtruded itself upon the calm plenitude of Mrs.
Tregonell's domestic joys.
"Don't be afraid that I shall forget my duty to your aunt or your aunt's
guest, dear," she said suddenly, as if awaking from a reverie. "You and
I will do all in our power to make him happy, and to shake him out of
lazy London ways, and then, when we have patched up his health, and the
moorland air has blown a little colour into his hollow cheeks, we will
send him back to his clubs and his theatres, and forget all about him.
And now, good-night, my Christabel," she said, looking at her watch;
"see! it is close upon midnight--dreadful dissipation for Mount Royal,
where half-past ten is the usual hour."
Christabel kissed her and departed, Randie following to the door of her
chamber--such a pretty room, with old panelled walls painted pink and
grey, old furniture, old china, snowy draperies, and books--a girl's
daintily bound books, selected and purchased by herself--in every
available corner; a neat cottage piano in a recess, a low easy-chair by
the fire, with a five-o'clock tea-table in front of it; desks,
portfolios, work-baskets--all the frivolities of a girl's life; but
everything arranged with a womanly neatness which indicated industrious
habits and a well-ordered mind. No scattered sheets of music--no
fancy-work pitch-and-tossed about the room--no slovenliness claiming to
be excused as artistic disorder.
Christabel said her prayers, and read her accustomed portion of
Scripture, but not without some faint wrestlings with Satan, who on this
occasion took the shape of Angus Hamleigh. Her mind was overcharged with
wonder at this new phenomenon in daily life, a man so entirely different
from any of the men she had ever met hitherto--so accomplished, so
highly cultured; yet taking his accomplishments and culture as a thing
of course, as if all men were so.
She thought of him as she lay awake for the first hour of the still
night, watching the fire fade and die, and listening to the long roll of
the waves, hardly audible at Mount Royal amidst all the commonplace
noises of day, but heard in the solemn silence of night. She let her
fancies shape a vision of her aunt's vanished youth--that one brief
bright dream of happiness, so miserably broken!--and wondered and
wondered how it was possible for any one to outlive such a grief. Still
more incredible did it seem that any one who had so loved and so lost
could ever listen to another lover; and yet the thing had been done, and
Mrs. Tregonell's married life had been called happy. She always spoke of
the Squire as the best of men--was never weary of praising him--loved to
look up at his portrait on the wall--preserved every unpicturesque
memorial of his unpicturesque life--heavy gold and silver snuff-boxes,
clumsy hunting crops, spurs, guns, fishing-rods. The relics of his
murderous pursuits would have filled an arsenal. And how fondly she
loved the son who resembled that departed father--save in lacking some
of his best qualities! How she doated on Leonard, the most commonplace
and unattractive of young men! The thought of her cousin set Christabel
on a new train of speculation. If Leonard had been at home when Mr.
Hamleigh came to Mount Royal, how would they two have suited each other?
Like fire and water, like oil and vinegar, like the wolf and the lamb,
like any two creatures most antagonistic by nature. It was a happy
accident that Leonard was away. She was still thinking when she fell
asleep, with that uneasy sense of pain and trouble in the future which
was always suggested to her by Leonard's image--a dim unshapen
difficulty waiting for her somewhere along the untrodden road of her
life--a lion in the path.