"TINTAGEL, HALF IN SEA, AND HALF ON LAND."
There was no sense of fear or trouble of any kind in the mind of anybody
next morning after breakfast, when Christabel, Miss Bridgeman, and Mr.
Hamleigh started, in the young lady's own particular pony carriage, for
an exploring day, attended by Randie, who was intensely excited, and
furnished with a picnic basket which made them independent of the inn at
Trevena, and afforded the opportunity of taking one's luncheon under
difficulties upon a windy height, rather than with the commonplace
comforts of an hotel parlour, guarded against wind and weather. They
were going to do an immense deal upon this first day. Christabel, in her
eagerness, wanted to exhibit all her lions at once.
"Of course, you must see Tintagel," she said; "everybody who comes to
this part of the world is in a tremendous hurry to see King Arthur's
castle. I have known people set out in the middle of the night."
"And have you ever known any one of them who was not just a little
disappointed with that stupendous monument of traditional royalty?"
asked Miss Bridgeman, with her most prosaic air. "They expect so
much--halls, and towers, and keep, and chapel--and find only ruined
walls, and the faint indication of a grave-yard. King Arthur is a name
to conjure with, and Tintagel is like Mont Blanc or the Pyramids. It can
never be so grand as the vision its very name has evoked."
"I blush to say that I have thought very little about Tintagel
hitherto," said Mr. Hamleigh; "it has not been an integral part of my
existence; so my expectations are more reasonable than those of the
enthusiastic tourist. I promise to be delighted with your ruins."
"Oh, but you will pretend," said Christabel, "and that will be hateful!
I would rather have to deal with one of those provoking people who look
about them blankly, and exclaim, 'Is this all?' and who stand in the
very centre of Arthur's Hall, and ask, 'And, pray, where is
Tintagel?--when are we to see the castle?' No! give me the man who can
take in the grandeur of that wild height at a glance, and whose fancy
can build up those ruined walls, re-create those vanished towers, fill
the halls with knights in shining armour, and lovely ladies--see
Guinevere herself upon her throne--clothed in white samite--mystic,
wonderful!"
"And with Lancelot in the background," said Mr. Hamleigh. "I think the
less we say about Guinevere the better, and your snaky Vivien, and your
senile Merlin, your prying Modred. What a disreputable set these Round
Table people seem to have been altogether--they need have been dead
thirteen hundred years for us to admire them!"
They were driving along the avenue by this time, the stout chestnut cob
going gaily in the fresh morning air--Mr. Hamleigh sitting face to face
with Christabel as she drove. What a fair face it was in the clear light
of day! How pure and delicate every tone, from the whiteness of the lily
to the bloom of the wild rose! How innocent the expression of the large
liquid eyes, which seemed to smile at him as he talked! He had known so
many pretty women--his memory was like a gallery of beautiful faces; but
he could recall no face so completely innocent, so divinely young. "It
is the youthfulness of an unsullied mind," he said to himself; "I have
known plenty of girls as young in years, but not one perfectly pure from
the taint of worldliness and vanity. The trail of the serpent was over
them all!"
They drove down hill into Boscastle, and then straightway began to
ascend still steeper hills upon the other side of the harbour.
"You ought to throw a viaduct across the valley," said Mr.
Hamleigh--"something like Brunel's bridge at Saltash; but perhaps you
have hardly traffic enough to make it pay."
They went winding up the new road to Trevena, avoiding the village
street, and leaving the Church of the Silent Tower on its windy height
on their right hand. The wide Atlantic lay far below them on the other
side of those green fields which bordered the road; the air they
breathed was keen with the soft breath of the sea. But autumn had
hardly plucked a leaf from the low storm-beaten trees, or a flower from
the tall hedgerows, where the red blossom of the Ragged Robin mixed with
the pale gold of the hawk-weed, and the fainter yellow of the wild
cistus. The ferns had hardly begun to wither, and Angus Hamleigh, whose
last experiences had been among the stone walls of Aberdeenshire,
wondered at the luxuriance of this western world, where the banks were
built up and fortified with boulders of marble-veined spar.
They drove through the village of Trevalga, in which there is never an
inn or public-house of any kind--not even a cottage licensed for the
sale of beer. There was the wheelwright, carpenter, builder,
Jack-of-all-trades, with his shed and his yard--the blacksmith, with his
forge going merrily--village school--steam threshing-machine at
work--church--chapel; but never a drop of beer--and yet the people at
Trevalga are healthy, and industrious, and decently clad, and altogether
comfortable looking.
"Some day we will take you to call at the Rectory," said Christabel,
pointing skywards with her whip.
"Do you mean that the Rector has gone to Heaven?" asked Angus, looking
up into the distant blue; "or is there any earthly habitation higher
than the road on which we are driving."
"Didn't you see the end of the lane, just now?" asked Christabel,
laughing; "it is rather steep--an uphill walk all the way; but the views
are lovely."
"We will walk to the Rectory to-morrow," said Miss Bridgeman; "this lazy
mode of transit must not be tolerated after to-day."
Even the drive to Trevena was not all idleness; for after they had
passed the entrance to the path leading to the beautiful waterfall of
St. Nectan's Kieve, hard by St. Piran's chapel and well--the former
degraded to a barn, and the latter, once of holy repute, now chiefly
useful as a cool repository for butter from the neighbouring dairy of
Trethevy Farm--they came to a hill, which had to be walked down; to the
lowest depth of the Rocky Valley, where a stone bridge spans the rapid
brawling stream that leaps as a waterfall into the gorge at St. Nectan's
Kieve, about a mile higher up the valley. And then they came to a
corresponding hill, which had to be walked up--because in either case
it was bad for the cob to have a weight behind him. Indeed, the cob was
so accustomed to consideration in this matter, that he made a point of
stopping politely for his people to alight at either end of anything
exceptional in the way of a hill.
"I'm afraid you spoil your pony," said Mr. Hamleigh, throwing the reins
over his arm, and resigning himself to a duty which made him feel very
much like a sea-side flyman, earning his day's wages toilsomely, and
saving his horse with a view to future fares.
"Better that than to spoil you," answered Miss Bridgeman, as she and
Christabel walked briskly beside him. "But if you fasten the reins to
the dashboard, you may trust Felix."
"Won't he run away?"
"Not he," answered Christabel. "He knows that he would never be so happy
with anybody else as he is with us."
"But mightn't he take a fancy for a short run; just far enough to allow
of his reducing that dainty little carriage to match-wood? A well-fed
underworked pony so thoroughly enjoys that kind of thing."
"Felix has no such diabolical suggestions. He is a conscientious person,
and knows his duty. Besides, he is not underworked. There is hardly a
day that he does not carry us somewhere."
Mr. Hamleigh surrendered the reins, and Felix showed himself worthy of
his mistress's confidence, following at her heels like a dog, with his
honest brown eyes fixed on the slim tall figure, as if it had been his
guiding star.
"I want you to admire the landscape," said Christabel, when they were on
the crest of the last hill; "is not that a lovely valley?"
Mr. Hamleigh willingly admitted the fact. The beauty of a pastoral
landscape, with just enough of rugged wildness for the picturesque,
could go no further.
"Creswick has immortalized yonder valley by his famous picture of the
mill," said Miss Bridgeman, "but the romantic old mill of the picture
has lately been replaced by that large ungainly building, quite out of
keeping with its surroundings."
"Have you ever been in Switzerland?" asked Angus of Christabel, when
they had stood for some moments in silent contemplation of the
landscape.
"Never."
"Nor in Italy?"
"No. I have never been out of England. Since I was five years old I have
hardly spent a year of my life out of Cornwall."
"Happy Cornwall, which can show so fair a product of its soil! Well,
Miss Courtenay, I know Italy and Switzerland by heart, and I like this
Cornish landscape better than either. It is not so beautiful--it would
not do as well for a painter or a poet; but it comes nearer an
Englishman's heart. What can one have better than the hills and the sea?
Switzerland can show you bigger hills, ghostly snow-shrouded pinnacles
that mock the eye, following each other like a line of phantoms, losing
themselves in the infinite; but Switzerland cannot show you that."
He pointed to the Atlantic: the long undulating line of the coast,
rocky, rugged, yet verdant, with many a curve and promontory, many a dip
and rise.
"It is the most everlasting kind of beauty, is it not?" asked
Christabel, delighted at this little gush of warm feeling in one whose
usual manner was so equable. "One could never tire of the sea. And I am
always proud to remember that our sea is so big--stretching away and
away to the New World. I should have liked it still better before the
days of Columbus, when it led to the unknown!"
"Ah!" sighed Angus, "youth always yearns for the undiscovered. Middle
age knows that there is nothing worth discovering!"
On the top of the hill they paused for a minute or so to contemplate the
ancient Borough of Bossiney, which, until disfranchised in 1832,
returned two members to Parliament, with a constituency of little more
than a dozen, and which once had Sir Francis Drake for its
representative. Here Mr. Hamleigh beheld that modest mound called the
Castle Hill, on the top of which it was customary to read the writs
before the elections.
An hour later they were eating their luncheon on that windy height where
once stood the castle of the great king. To Christabel the whole story
of Arthur and his knights was as real as if it had been a part of her
own life. She had Tennyson's Arthur and Tennyson's Lancelot in her heart
of hearts, and knew just enough of Sir Thomas Mallory's prose to give
substance to the Laureate's poetic shadows. Angus amused himself a
little at her expense, as they ate their chicken and salad on the grassy
mounds which were supposed to be the graves of heroes who died before
Athelstane drove the Cornish across the Tamar, and made his victorious
progress through the country, even to the Scilly Isles, after defeating
Howel, the last King of Cornwall.
"Do you really think that gentlemanly creature in the Laureate's
epic--that most polished and perfect and most intensely modern English
gentleman, self-contained, considerate of others, always the right man
in the right place--is one whit like that half-naked sixth century
savage--the real Arthur--whose Court costume was a coat of blue paint,
and whose war-shriek was the yell of a Red Indian? What can be more
futile than our setting up any one Arthur, and bowing the knee before
him, in the face of the fact that Great Britain teems with monuments of
Arthurs--Arthur's Seat in Scotland, Arthur's Castle in Wales,
Arthur's Round Table here, there, and everywhere? Be sure that
Arthur--Ardheer--the highest chief--was a generic name for the princes
of those days, and that there were more Arthurs than ever there were
Cæsars."
"I don't believe one word you say," exclaimed Christabel, indignantly,
"there was only one Arthur, the son of Uther and Ygerne, who was born in
the castle that stood on this very cliff, on the first night of the
year, and carried away in secret by Merlin, and reared in secret by Sir
Anton's wife--the brave good Arthur--the Christian king--who was killed
at the battle of Camlan, near Slaughter Bridge, and was buried at
Glastonbury."
"And embalmed by Tennyson. The Laureate invented Arthur--he took out a
patent for the Round Table, and his invention is only a little less
popular than that other product of the age, the sewing-machine. How many
among modern tourists would care about Tintagel if Tennyson had not
revived the old legend?"
The butler had put up a bottle of champagne for Mr. Hamleigh--the two
ladies drinking nothing but sparkling water--and in this beverage he
drank hail to the spirit of the legendary prince.
"I am ready to believe anything now you have me up here," he said, "for
I have a shrewd idea that without your help I should never be able to
get down again. I should live and die on the top of this rocky
promontory--sweltering in the summer sun--buffeted by the winter
winds--an unwilling Simeon Stylites."
"Do you know that the very finest sheep in Cornwall are said to be grown
on that island," said Miss Bridgeman gravely, pointing to the grassy top
of the isolated crag in the foreground, whereon once stood the donjon
keep. "I don't know why it should be so, but it is a tradition."
"Among butchers?" said Angus. "I suppose even butchers have their
traditions. And the poor sheep who are condemned to exile on that lonely
rock--the St. Helena of their woolly race--do they know that they are
achieving a posthumous perfection--that they are straining towards the
ideal in butcher's meat? There is room for much thought in the
question."
"The tide is out," said Christabel, looking seaward; "I think we ought
to do Trebarwith sands to-day."
"Is Trebarwith another of your lions?" asked Angus, placidly.
"Yes."
"Then, please save him for to-morrow. Let me drink the cup of pleasure
to the dregs where we are. This champagne has a magical taste, like the
philter which Tristan and Iseult were so foolish as to drink while they
sailed across from Ireland to this Cornish shore. Don't be alarmed, Miss
Bridgeman, I am not going to empty the bottle. I am not an educated
tourist--have read neither Black nor Murray, and I am very slow about
taking in ideas. Even after all you have told me, I am not clear in my
mind as to which is the castle and which the chapel, and which the
burial-ground. Let us finish the afternoon dawdling about Tintagel. Let
us see the sun set from this spot, where Arthur must so often have
watched it, if the men of thirteen hundred years ago ever cared to
watch the sun setting, which I doubt. They belong to the night-time of
the world, when civilization was dead in Southern Europe, and was yet
unborn in the West. Let us dawdle about till it is time to drive back to
Mount Royal, and then I shall carry away an impression. I am very slow
at taking impressions."
"I think you want us to believe that you are stupid," said Christabel,
laughing at the earnestness with which he pleaded.
"Believe me, no. I should like you to think me ever so much better than
I am. Please, let us dawdle."
They dawdled accordingly. Strolling about upon the short sea-beaten
grass, so treacherous and slippery a surface in summer time, when fierce
Sol has been baking it. They stumbled against the foundations of
long-vanished walls, they speculated upon fragments of cyclopean
masonry, and talked a great deal about the traditions of the spot.
Christabel, who had all the old authorities--Leland, Carew, and
Norden--at her fingers' ends, was delighted to expound the departed
glories of this British fortress. She showed where the ancient dungeon
keep had reared its stony walls upon that "high terrible crag, environed
with the sea; and how there had once been a drawbridge uniting yonder
cliff with the buildings on the mainland"--now divorced, as Carew says,
"by the downfallen steep cliffs, on the farther side, which, though it
shut out the sea from his wonted recourse, hath yet more strengthened
the island; for in passing thither you must first descend with a
dangerous declining, and then make a worse ascent by a path, through his
stickleness occasioning, and through his steepness threatening, the ruin
of your life, with the falling of your foot." She told Mr. Hamleigh how,
after the Conquest, the castle was the occasional residence of some of
our Princes, and how Richard, King of the Romans, Earl of Cornwall, son
of King John, entertained here his nephew David, Prince of Wales, how,
in Richard the Second's time, this stronghold was made a State prison,
and how a certain Lord Mayor of London was, for his unruly mayoralty,
condemned thither as a perpetual penitentiary; which seems very hard
upon the chief magistrate of the city, who thus did vicarious penance
for the riot of his brief reign.
And then they talked of Tristan and Iseult, and the tender old
love-story, which lends the glamour of old-world fancies to those bare
ruins of a traditional past. Christabel knew the old chronicle through
Matthew Arnold's poetical version, which gives only the purer and better
side of the character of the Knight and Chatelaine, at the expense of
some of the strongest features of the story. Who, that knew that
romantic legend, could linger on that spot without thinking of King
Marc's faithless queen! Assuredly not Mr. Hamleigh, who was a staunch
believer in the inventor of "sweetness and light," and who knew Arnold's
verses by heart.
"What have they done with the flowers and the terrace walks?" he
said,--"the garden where Tristan and his Queen basked in the sunshine of
their days; and where they parted for ever?--
"'All the spring time of their love
Is already gone and past,
And instead thereof is seen
Its winter, which endureth still Tyntagel,
on its surge-beat hill,
The pleasaunce walks, the weeping queen,
The flying leaves, the straining blast,
And that long wild kiss--their last.'
And where--oh, where--are those graves in the King's chapel in which the
tyrant Marc, touched with pity, ordered the fated lovers to be buried?
And, behold! out of the grave of Tristan there sprung a plant which went
along the walls, and descended into the grave of the Queen, and though
King Marc three several times ordered this magical creeper to be cut off
root and branch, it was always found growing again next morning, as if
it were the very spirit of the dead knight struggling to get free from
the grave, and to be with his lady-love again! Show me those tombs, Miss
Courtenay."
"You can take your choice," said Jessie Bridgeman, pointing to a green
mound or two, overgrown with long rank grass, in that part of the hill
which was said to be the kingly burial-place. "But as for your magical
tree, there is not so much as a bramble to do duty for poor Tristan."
"If I were Duke of Cornwall and Lord of Tintagel Castle, I would put up
a granite cross in memory of the lovers; though I fear there was very
little Christianity in either of them," said Angus.
"And I would come once a year and hang a garland on it," said
Christabel, smiling at him with
"Eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue--
Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be grey."
He had recalled those lines more than once when he looked into
Christabel's eyes.
Mr. Hamleigh had read so much as to make him an interesting talker upon
any subject; but Christabel and Jessie noticed that of his own life, his
ways and amusements, his friends, his surroundings, he spoke hardly at
all. This fact Christabel noticed with wonder, Jessie with suspicion. If
a man led a good wholesome life, he would surely be more frank and
open--he would surely have more to say about himself and his associates.
They dawdled, and dawdled, till past four o'clock, and to none of the
three did the hours so spent seem long; but they found that it would
make them too late in their return to Mount Royal were they to wait for
sundown before they turned their faces homewards; so while the day was
still bright, Mr. Hamleigh consented to be guided by steep and perilous
paths to the base of the rocky citadel, and then they strolled back to
the Wharncliffe Arms, where Felix had been enjoying himself in the
stable, and was now desperately anxious to get home, rattling up and
down hill at an alarming rate, and not hinting at anybody's alighting to
walk.
This was only one of many days spent in the same fashion. They walked
next day to Trebarwith sands, up and down hills, which Mr. Hamleigh
declared were steeper than anything he had ever seen in Switzerland; but
he survived the walk, and his spirits seemed to rise with the exertion.
This time Major Bree went with them--a capital companion for a country
ramble, being just enough of a botanist, archæologist, and geologist, to
leaven the lump of other people's ignorance, without being obnoxiously
scientific. Mr. Hamleigh was delighted with that noble stretch of level
sand, with the long rollers of the Atlantic tumbling in across the low
rocks, and the bold headlands behind--spot beloved of marine
painters--spot where the gulls and the shags hold their revels, and
where man feels himself but a poor creature face to face with the lonely
grandeur of sea, and cliff, and sky.
So rarely is that long stretch of yellow sand vulgarized by the feet of
earth's multitudes, that one half expects to see a procession of
frolicsome sea-nymphs come dancing out of yonder cave, and wind in
circling measures towards the crested wavelets, gliding in so softly
under the calm clear day.
These were halcyon days--an Indian summer--balmy western zephyrs--sunny
noontides--splendid sunsets--altogether the most beautiful autumn season
that Angus Hamleigh had known, or at least, so it seemed to him--nay,
even more than this, surely the most beautiful season of his life.
As the days went on, and day after day was spent in Christabel's
company--almost as it were alone with her, for Miss Bridgeman and Major
Bree were but as figures in the background--Angus felt as if he were at
the beginning of a new life--a life filled with fresh interests,
thoughts, hopes, desires, unknown and undreamed of in the former stages
of his being. Never before had he lived a life so uneventful--never
before had he been so happy. It surprised him to discover how simple are
the elements of real content--how deep the charm of a placid existence
among thoroughly loveable people! Christabel Courtenay was not the
loveliest woman he had ever known, nor the most elegant, nor the most
accomplished, nor the most fascinating; but she was entirely different
from all other women with whom his lot had been cast. Her innocence, her
unsophisticated enjoyment of all earth's purest joys, her transparent
purity, her perfect trustfulness--these were to him as a revelation of a
new order of beings. If he had been told of such a woman he would have
shrugged his shoulders misbelievingly, or would have declared that she
must be an idiot. But Christabel was quite as clever as those brilliant
creatures whose easy manners had enchanted him in days gone by. She was
better educated than many a woman he knew who passed for a wit of the
first order. She had read more, thought more, was more sympathetic, more
companionable, and she was delightfully free from self-consciousness or
vanity.
He found himself talking to Christabel as he had never talked to any
one else since those early days at the University, the bright dawn of
manhood, when he confided freely in that second self, the chosen friend
of the hour, and believed that all men lived and moved according to his
own boyish standard of honour. He talked to her, not of the actualities
of his life, but of his thoughts and feelings--his dreamy speculations
upon the gravest problems which hedge round the secret of man's final
destiny. He talked freely of his doubts and difficulties, and the
half-belief which came so near unbelief--the wide love of all
creation--the vague yet passionate yearning for immortality which fell
so far short of the Gospel's sublime certainty. He revealed to her all
the complexities of a many-sided mind, and she never failed him in
sympathy and understanding. This was in their graver moods, when by some
accidental turn of the conversation they fell into the discussion of
those solemn questions which are always at the bottom of every man and
woman's thoughts, like the unknown depths of a dark water-pool. For the
most part their talk was bright and light as those sunny autumn days,
varied as the glorious and ever-changing hues of sky and sea at sunset.
Jessie was a delightful companion. She was so thoroughly easy herself
that it was impossible to feel ill at ease with her. She played her part
of confidante so pleasantly, seeming to think it the most natural thing
in the world that those two should be absorbed in each other, and should
occasionally lapse into complete forgetfulness of her existence. Major
Bree when he joined in their rambles was obviously devoted to Jessie
Bridgeman. It was her neatly gloved little hand which he was eager to
clasp at the crossing of a stile, and where the steepness of the
hill-side path gave him an excuse for assisting her. It was her stout
little boot which he guided so tenderly, where the ways were ruggedest.
Never had a plain woman a more respectful admirer--never was beauty in
her peerless zenith more devoutly worshipped!
And so the autumn days sped by, pleasantly for all: with deepest
joy--joy ever waxing, never waning--for those two who had found the
secret of perfect sympathy in thought and feeling. It was not for Angus
Hamleigh the first passion of a spotless manhood; and yet the glamour
and the delight were as new as if he had never loved before. He had
never so purely, so reverently loved. The passion was of a new quality.
It seemed to him as if he had ascended into a higher sphere in the
universe, and had given his heart to a creature of a loftier race.
"Perhaps it is the good old lineage which makes the difference," he said
to himself once, while his feelings were still sufficiently novel and so
far under his control as to be subject to analysis. "The women I have
cared for in days gone by have hardly got over their early affinity with
the gutter; or when I have admired a woman of good family she has been
steeped to the lips in worldliness and vanity."
Mr. Hamleigh, who had told himself that he was going to be intensely
bored at Mount Royal, had been Mrs. Tregonell's guest for three weeks,
and it seemed to him as if the time were brief and beautiful as one of
those rare dreams of impossible bliss which haunt our waking memories,
and make actual life dull and joyless by contrast with the glory of
shadowland. No word had yet been spoken--nay, at the very thought of
those words which most lovers in his position would have been eager to
speak, his soul sickened and his cheek paled; for there would be no
joyfulness in the revelation of his love--indeed, he doubted whether he
had the right to reveal it--whether duty and honour did not alike
constrain him to keep his converse within the strict limits of
friendship, to bid Christabel good-bye, and turn his back upon Mount
Royal, without having said one word more than a friend might speak.
Happy as Christabel had been with him--tenderly as she loved him--she
was far too innocent to have considered herself ill-treated in such a
case. She would have blamed herself alone for the weakness of mind which
had been unable to resist the fascination of his society--she would have
blushed and wept in secret for her folly in having loved unwooed.
"Has the eventful question been asked?" Jessie inquired one night, as
Christabel lingered, after her wont, by the fire in Miss Bridgeman's
bedroom. "You two were so intensely earnest to-day as you walked ahead
of the Major and me, that I said to myself, 'now is the time--the
crisis has arrived!'"
"There was no crisis," answered Christabel, crimsoning; "he has never
said one word to me that can imply that I am any more to him than the
most indifferent acquaintance."
"What need of words when every look and tone cries 'I love you?' Why he
idolizes you, and he lets all the world see it. I hope it may be well
for you--both!"
Christabel was on her knees by the fire. She laid her cheek against
Jessie's waistband, and drew Jessie's arm round her neck, holding her
hand lovingly.
"Do you really think he--cares for me?" she faltered, with her face
hidden.
"Do I really think that I have two eyes, and something which is at least
an apology for a nose!" ejaculated Jessie, contemptuously. "Why, it has
been patent to everybody for the last fortnight that you two are over
head and ears in love with each other. There never was a more obvious
case of mutual infatuation."
"Oh, Jessie! surely I have not betrayed myself. I know that I have been
very weak--but I have tried so hard to hide----"
"And have been about as successful as the ostrich. While those drooping
lashes have been lowered to hide the love-light in your eyes, your whole
countenance has been an illuminated calendar of your folly. Poor Belle!
to think that she has not betrayed herself, while all Boscastle is on
tiptoe to know when the wedding is to take place. Why the parson could
not see you two sitting in the same pew without knowing that he would be
reading your banns before he was many Sundays older."
"And you--really--like him?" faltered Christabel, more shyly than
before.
"Yes," answered Jessie, with a provoking lack of enthusiasm. "I really
like him. I can't help feeling sorry for Mrs. Tregonell, for I know she
wanted you to marry Leonard."
Christabel gave a little sigh, and a faint shiver.
"Poor dear Leonard! I wonder what traveller's hardships he is enduring
while we are so snug and happy at Mount Royal?" she said, kindly. "He
has an excellent heart----"
"Troublesome people always have, I believe," interjected Jessie. "It is
their redeeming feature, the existence of which no one can absolutely
disprove."
"And I am very much attached to him--as a cousin--or as an adopted
brother; but as to our ever being married--that is quite out of the
question. There never were two people less suited to each other."
"Those are the people who usually come together," said Jessie; "the
Divorce Court could hardly be kept going if it were not so."
"Jessie, if you are going to be cynical I shall say good-night. I hope
there is no foundation for what you said just now. I hope that Auntie
has no foolish idea about Leonard and me."
"She has--or had--one prevailing idea, and I fear it will go hard with
her when she has to relinquish it," answered Jessie, seriously. "I know
that it has been her dearest hope to see you and Leonard married, and I
should be a wretch if I were not sorry for her disappointment, when she
has been so good to me. But she never ought to have invited Mr. Hamleigh
to Mount Royal. That is one of those mistakes the consequences of which
last for a lifetime."
"I hope he likes me--just a little," pursued Christabel, with dreamy
eyes fixed on the low wood fire; "but sometimes I fancy there must be
some mistake--that he does not really care a straw for me. More than
once, when he has began to say something that sounded----"
"Business-like," suggested Jessie, as the girl hesitated.
"He has drawn back--seeming almost anxious to recall his words. Once he
told me--quite seriously--that he had made up his mind never to marry.
Now, that doesn't sound as if he meant to marry _me_."
"That is not an uncommon way of breaking ground," answered Jessie, with
her matter-of-fact air. "A man tells a girl that he is going to die a
bachelor--which makes it seem quite a favour on his part when he
proposes. All women sigh for the unattainable; and a man who distinctly
states that he is not in the market, is likely to make a better bargain
when he surrenders."
"I should be sorry to think Mr. Hamleigh capable of such petty ideas,"
said Christabel. "He told me once that he was like Achilles. Why should
he be like Achilles? He is not a soldier."
"Perhaps, it is because he has a Grecian nose," suggested Miss
Bridgeman.
"How can you imagine him so vain and foolish," cried Christabel, deeply
offended. "I begin to think you detest him?"
"No, Belle, I think him charming, only too charming, and I had rather
the man you loved were made of sterner metal--not such a man as Leonard,
whose loftiest desires are centred in stable and gun-room; but a man of
an altogether different type from Mr. Hamleigh. He has too much of the
artistic temperament, without being an artist--he is too versatile, too
soft-hearted and impressionable. I am afraid for you, Christabel, I am
afraid; and if it were not too late--if your heart were not wholly given
to him----"
"It is," answered Christabel, tearfully, with her face hidden; "I hate
myself for being so foolish, but I have let myself love him. I know that
I may never be his wife--I do not even think that he has any idea of
marrying me--but I shall never marry any other man. Oh, Jessie! for
pity's sake don't betray me; never let my aunt, or any one else in this
world, learn what I have told you. I can't help trusting you--you wind
yourself into my heart somehow, and find out all that is hidden there!"
"Because I love you truly and honestly, my dear," answered Jessie,
tenderly; "and now, good-night; I feel sure that Mr. Hamleigh will ask
you to be his wife, and I only wish he were a better man."