"LOVE! THOU ART LEADING ME FROM WINTRY COLD."
After this came two or three dull and showery days, which afforded no
opportunity for long excursions or ramblings of any kind. It was only
during such rambles that Mr. Hamleigh and Miss Courtenay ever found
themselves alone. Mrs. Tregonell's ideas of propriety were of the
old-fashioned school, and when her niece was not under her own wing, she
expected Miss Bridgeman to perform all the duties of a duenna--in no
wise suspecting how very loosely her instructions upon this point were
being carried out. At Mount Royal there was no possibility of
confidential talk between Angus and Christabel. If they were in the
drawing-room or library, Mrs. Tregonell was with them; if they played
billiards, Miss Bridgeman was told off to mark for them; if they went
for a constitutional walk between the showers, or wasted half-an-hour
in the stables looking at horses and dogs, Miss Bridgeman was bidden to
accompany them; and though they had arrived at the point of minding her
very little, and being sentimental and sympathetic under her very nose,
still there are limits to the love-making that can be carried on before
a third person, and a man would hardly care to propose in the presence
of a witness. So for three days Christabel still remained in doubt as to
Mr. Hamleigh's real feelings. That manner of making tender little
speeches, and then, as it were, recalling them, was noticeable many
times during those three days of domesticity. There was a hesitancy--an
uncertainty in his attentions to Christabel which Jessie interpreted
ill.
"There is some entanglement, I daresay," she told herself; "it is the
evil of his past life which holds him in the toils. How do we know that
he has not a wife hidden away somewhere? He ought to declare himself, or
he ought to go away! If this kind of shillyshallying goes on much longer
he will break Christabel's heart."
Miss Bridgeman was determined that, if it were in her power to hasten
the crisis, the crisis should be hastened. The proprieties, as observed
by Mrs. Tregonell, might keep matters in abeyance till Christmas. Mr.
Hamleigh gave no hint of his departure. He might stay at Mount Royal for
months sentimentalizing with Christabel, and ride off at the last
uncompromised.
The fourth day was the Feast of St. Luke. The weather had brightened
considerably, but there was a high wind--a south-west wind, with
occasional showers.
"Of course, you are going to church this morning," said Jessie to
Christabel, as they rose from the breakfast-table.
"Church this morning?" repeated Christabel, vaguely.
For the first time since she had been old enough to understand the
services of her Church, she had forgotten a Saint's day.
"It is St. Luke's Day."
"Yes, I remember. And the service is at Minster. We can walk across the
hills."
"May I go with you?" asked Mr. Hamleigh.
"Do you like week-day services?" inquired Jessie, with rather a
mischievous sparkle in her keen grey eyes.
"I adore them," answered Angus, who had not been inside a church on a
week-day since he was best man at a friend's wedding.
"Then we will all go together," said Jessie. "May Brook bring the
pony-carriage to fetch us home, Mrs. Tregonell? I have an idea that Mr.
Hamleigh won't be equal to the walk home."
"More than equal to twenty such walks!" answered Angus, gaily. "You
under-estimate the severity of the training to which I have submitted
myself during the last three weeks."
"The pony-carriage may as well meet you in any case," said Mrs.
Tregonell. And the order was straightway given.
They started at ten o'clock, giving themselves ample leisure for a walk
of something over two miles--a walk by hill and valley, and rushing
stream, and picturesque wooden bridge--through a deep gorge where the
dark-red cattle were grouped against a background of gorse and
heather--a walk of which one could never grow weary--so lonely, so
beautiful, so perfect a blending of all that is wildest and all that is
most gracious in Nature--an Alpine ramble on a small scale.
Minster Church lies in a hollow of the hill, so shut in by the wooded
ridge which shelters its grey walls, that the stranger comes upon it as
an architectural surprise.
"How is it you have never managed to finish your tower?" asked Mr.
Hamleigh, surveying the rustic fane with a critical air, as he descended
to the churchyard by some rugged stone steps on the side of the grassy
hill. "You cannot be a particularly devout people, or you would hardly
have allowed your parish church to remain in this stunted and stinted
condition."
"There was a tower once," said Christabel, naïvely; "the stones are
still in the churchyard; but the monks used to burn a light in the tower
window--a light that shone through a cleft in the hills, and was seen
far out at sea."
"I believe that is geographically--or geometrically impossible," said
Angus laughing; "but pray go on."
"The light was often mistaken for a beacon, and the ships came ashore
and were wrecked on the rocks."
"Naturally--and no doubt the monks improved the occasion. Why should a
Cornish monk be better than his countrymen? 'One and all' is your
motto."
"They were not Cornish monks," answered Christabel, "but a brotherhood
of French monks from the monastery of St. Sergius, at Angers. They were
established in a Priory here by William de Bottreaux, in the reign of
Richard, Coeur de Lion; and, according to tradition, the townspeople
resented their having built the church so far from the town. I feel sure
the monks could have had no evil intention in burning a light; but one
night a crew of wild sailors attacked the tower, and pulled the greater
part of it down."
"And nobody in Boscastle has had public spirit enough to get it set up
again. Where is your respect for those early Christian martyrs, St.
Sergius and St. Bacchus, to whose memory your temple is dedicated?"
"I don't suppose it was so much want of respect for the martyrs as want
of money," suggested Miss Bridgeman. "We have too many chapel people in
Boscastle for our churches to be enriched or beautified. But Minster is
not a bad little church after all."
"It is the dearest, sweetest, most innocent little church I ever knelt
in," answered Angus; "and if I could but assist at one particular
service there----"
He checked himself with a sigh; but this unfinished speech amounted in
Miss Bridgeman's mind to a declaration. She stole a look at Christabel,
whose fair face crimsoned for a moment or so, only to grow more purely
pale afterwards.
They went into the church, and joined devoutly in the brief Saint's Day
service. The congregation was not numerous. Two or three village
goodies--the school children--a tourist, who had come to see the church,
and found himself, as it were, entangled in saintly meshes--the lady who
played the harmonium, and the incumbent who read prayers. These were
all, besides the party from Mount Royal. There are plenty of people in
country parishes who will be as pious as you please on Sunday, deeming
three services not too much for their devotion, but who can hardly be
persuaded to turn out of the beaten track of week-day life to offer
homage to the memory of Evangelist or Apostle.
The pony-carriage was waiting in the lane when Mr. Hamleigh and the two
ladies came out of the porch. Christabel and the gentleman looked at the
equipage doubtfully.
"You slandered me, Miss Bridgeman, by your suggestion that I should be
done up after a mile or so across the hills," said Mr. Hamleigh; "I
never felt fresher in my life. Have you a hankering for the ribbons?" to
Christabel; "or will you send your pony back to his stable and walk
home?"
"I would ever so much rather walk."
"And so would I."
"In that case, if you don't mind, I think I'll go home with Felix," said
Jessie Bridgeman, most unexpectedly. "I am not feeling quite myself
to-day, and the walk has tired me. You won't mind going home alone with
Mr. Hamleigh, will you, Christabel? You might show him the seals in
Pentargon Bay."
What could Christabel do? If there had been anything in the way of an
earthquake handy, she would have felt deeply grateful for a sudden rift
in the surface of the soil, which would have allowed her to slip into
the bosom of the hills, among the gnomes and the pixies. That Cornish
coast was undermined with caverns, yet there was not one for her to drop
into. Again, Jessie Bridgeman spoke in such an easy off-hand manner, as
if it were the most natural thing in the world for Christabel and Mr.
Hamleigh to be allowed a lonely ramble. To have refused, or even
hesitated, would have seemed affectation, mock-modesty,
self-consciousness. Yet Christabel almost involuntarily made a step
towards the carriage.
"I think I had better drive," she said; "Aunt Diana will be wanting me."
"No, she won't," replied Jessie, resolutely. "And you shall not make a
martyr of yourself for my sake. I know you love that walk over the
hill, and Mr. Hamleigh is dying to see Pentargon Bay----"
"Positively expiring by inches; only it is one of those easy deaths that
does not hurt one very much," said Angus, helping Miss Bridgeman into
her seat, giving her the reins, and arranging the rug over her knees
with absolute tenderness.
"Take care of Felix," pleaded Christabel; "and if you trot down the
hills trot fast."
"I shall walk him every inch of the way. The responsibility would be too
terrible otherwise."
But Felix had his own mind in the matter, and had no intention of
walking when the way he went carried him towards his stable. So he
trotted briskly up the lane, between tall, tangled blackberry hedges,
leaving Christabel and Angus standing at the churchyard gate. The rest
of the little congregation had dispersed; the church door had been
locked; there was a gravedigger at work in the garden-like churchyard,
amidst long grasses and fallen leaves, and the unchanged ferns and
mosses of the bygone summer.
Mr. Hamleigh had scarcely concealed his delight at Miss Bridgeman's
departure, yet, now that she was gone, he looked passing sad. Never a
word did he speak, as they two stood idly at the gate, listening to the
dull thud of the earth which the gravedigger threw out of his shovel on
to the grass, and the shrill sweet song of a robin, piping to himself on
a ragged thornbush near at hand, as if in an ecstasy of gladness about
things in general. One sound so fraught with melancholy, the other so
full of joy! The contrast struck sharply on Christabel's nerves, to-day
at their utmost tension, and brought sudden tears in her eyes.
They stood for perhaps five minutes in this dreamy silence, the robin
piping all the while; and then Mr. Hamleigh roused himself, seemingly
with an effort.
"Are you going to show me the seals at Pentargon?" he asked, smilingly.
"I don't know about seals--there is a local idea that seals are to be
seen playing about in the bay; but one is not often so lucky as to find
them there. People have been very cruel in killing them, and I'm afraid
there are very few seals left on our coast now."
"At any rate, you can show me Pentargon, if you are not tired."
"Tired!" cried Christabel, laughing at such a ridiculous idea, being a
damsel to whom ten miles were less than three to a town-bred young lady.
Embarrassed though she felt by being left alone with Mr. Hamleigh, she
could not even pretend that the proposed walk was too much for her.
"I shall be very glad to take you to Pentargon," she said, "it is hardly
a mile out of our way; but I fear you'll be disappointed; there is
really nothing particular to see."
"I shall not be disappointed--I shall be deeply grateful."
They walked along the narrow hill-side paths, where it was almost
impossible for two to walk abreast; yet Angus contrived somehow to be at
Christabel's side, guiding and guarding her by ways which were so much
more familiar to her than to him, that there was a touch of humour in
this pretence of protection. But Christabel did not see things in their
humorous aspect to-day. Her little hand trembled as it touched Angus
Hamleigh's, when he led her across a craggy bit of path, or over a tiny
water-pool. At the stiles in the valley on the other side of the bridge,
which are civilized stiles, and by no means difficult, Christabel was
too quick and light of foot to give any opportunity for that assistance
which her companion was so eager to afford. And now they were in the
depths of the valley, and had to mount another hill, on the road to
Bude, till they came to a field-gate, above which appeared a sign-board,
and the mystic words, "To Pentargon."
"What is Pentargon, that they put up its name in such big letters?"
asked Mr. Hamleigh, staring at the board. "Is it a borough town--or a
cattle market--or a cathedral city--or what? They seem tremendously
proud of it."
"It is nothing--or only a shallow bay, with a waterfall and a wonderful
cave, which I am always longing to explore. I believe it is nearly as
beautiful as the cavern in Shelley's 'Alastor.' But you will see what
Pentargon is like in less than five minutes."
They crossed a ploughed field, and then, by a big five-barred gate,
entered the magic region which was said to be the paradise of seals. A
narrow walk cut in a steep and rocky bank, where the gorse and heather
grew luxuriantly above slate and spar, described a shallow semicircle
round one of the loveliest bays in the world--a spot so exquisitely
tranquil in this calm autumn weather, so guarded and fenced in by the
massive headlands that jutted out towards the main--a peaceful haven,
seemingly so remote from that outer world to which belonged yonder
white-winged ship on the verge of the blue--that Angus Hamleigh
exclaimed involuntarily,--
"Here is peace! Surely this must be a bay in that Lotus land which
Tennyson has painted for us!"
Hitherto their conversation had been desultory--mere fragmentary talk
about the landscape and the loveliness of the autumn day, with its clear
bright sky and soft west wind. They had been always in motion, and there
had been a certain adventurousness in the way that seemed to give
occupation to their thoughts. But now Mr. Hamleigh came to a dead stop,
and stood looking at the rugged amphitheatre, and the low weedy rocks
washed smooth by the sea.
"Would you mind sitting down for a few minutes?" he asked; "this
Pentargon of yours is a lovely spot, and I don't want to leave it
instantly. I have a very slow appreciation of Nature. It takes me a long
time to grasp her beauties."
Christabel seated herself on the bank which he had selected for her
accommodation, and Mr. Hamleigh placed himself a little lower, almost at
her feet, her face turned seaward, his half towards her, as if that lily
face, with its wild rose bloom, were even lovelier than the sunlit ocean
in all its variety of colour.
"It is a delicious spot," said Angus, "I wonder whether Tristan and
Iseult ever came here! I can fancy the queen stealing away from the
Court and Court foolery, and walking across the sunlit hills with her
lover. It would be rather a long walk, and there might be a difficulty
about getting back in time for supper; but one can picture them
wandering by flowery fields, or by the cliffs above that everlasting
sea, and coming here to rest and talk of their sorrow and their love.
Can you not fancy her as Matthew Arnold paints her?--
"Let her have her youth again--
Let her be as she was then!
Let her have her proud dark eyes,
And her petulant, quick replies:
Let her sweep her dazzling hand,
With its gesture of command,
And shake back her raven hair
With the old imperious air.
I have an idea that the Hibernian Iseult must have been a tartar, though
Matthew Arnold glosses over her peccadilloes so pleasantly. I wonder
whether she had a strong brogue, and a sneaking fondness for
usquebaugh."
"Please, don't make a joke of her," pleaded Christabel; "she is very
real to me. I see her as a lovely lady--tall and royal-looking, dressed
in long robes of flowered silk, fringed with gold. And Tristan----"
"What of Tristan? Is his image as clear in your mind? How do you depict
the doomed knight, born to suffer and to sin, destined to sorrow from
the time of his forest-birth--motherless, beset with enemies, consumed
by hopeless passion. I hope you feel sorry for Tristan?"
"Who could help being sorry for him?"
"Albeit he was a sinner? I assure you, in the old romance which you have
not read--which you would hardly care to read--neither Tristan nor
Iseult are spotless."
"I have never thought of their wrong-doing. Their fate was so sad, and
they loved each other so truly."
"And, again, you can believe, perhaps--you who are so innocent and
confiding--that a man who has sinned may forsake the old evil ways and
lead a good life, until every stain of that bygone sin is purified. You
can believe, as the Greeks believed, in atonement and purification."
"I believe, as I hope all Christians do, that repentance can wash away
sin."
"Even the accusing memory of wrong-doing, and make a man's soul white
and fair again? That is a beautiful creed."
"I think the Gospel gives us warrant for believing as much--not as some
of the Dissenters teach, that one effort of faith, an hour of prayer and
ejaculation, can transform a murderer into a saint; but that earnest,
sustained regret for wrong-doing, and a steady determination to live a
better life----"
"Yes--that is real repentance," exclaimed Angus, interrupting her.
"Common sense, even without Gospel light, tells one that it must be
good. Christabel--may I call you Christabel?--just for this one isolated
half-hour of life--here in Pentargon Bay? You shall be Miss Courtenay
directly we leave this spot."
"Call me what you please. I don't think it matters very much," faltered
Christabel, blushing deeply.
"But it makes all the difference to me. Christabel, I can't tell you how
sweet it is to me just to pronounce your name. If--if--I could call you
by that name always, or by a name still nearer and dearer. But you must
judge. Give me half-an-hour--half-an-hour of heartfelt earnest truth on
my side, and pitying patience on yours. Christabel, my past life has not
been what a stainless Christian would call a good life. I have not been
so bad as Tristan. I have violated no sacred charge--betrayed no
kinsman. I suppose I have been hardly worse than the common run of
young men, who have the means of leading an utterly useless life. I have
lived selfishly, unthinkingly--caring for my own pleasure--with little
thought of anything that was to come afterwards, either on earth or in
heaven. But all that is past and done with. My wild oats are sown; I
have had enough of youth and folly. When I came to Cornwall the other
day I thought that I was on the threshold of middle age, and that middle
age could give me nothing but a few years of pain and weariness.
But--behold a miracle!--you have given me back my youth--youth and hope,
and a desire for length of days, and a passionate yearning to lead a
new, bright, stainless life. You have done all this, Christabel. I love
you as I never thought it possible to love! I believe in you as I never
before believed in woman--and yet--and yet----"
He paused, with a long heartbroken sigh, clasped the girl's hand, which
had been straying idly among the faded heather, and pressed it to his
lips.
"And yet I dare not ask you to be my wife. Shall I tell you why?"
"Yes, tell me," she faltered, her cheeks deadly pale, her lowered
eyelids heavy with tears.
"I told you I was like Achilles, doomed to an early death. You remember
with what pathetic tenderness Thetis speaks of her son,
'Few years are thine, and not a lengthened term;
At once to early death and sorrows doomed
Beyond the lot of man!'
The Fates have spoken about me quite as plainly as ever the sea-nymph
foretold the doom of her son. He was given the choice of length of days
or glory, and he deemed fame better than long life. But my life has been
as inglorious as it must be brief. Three months ago, one of the wisest
of physicians pronounced my doom. The hereditary malady which for the
last fifty years has been the curse of my family shows itself by the
clearest indications in my case. I could have told the doctor this just
as well as he told me; but it is best to have official information. I
may die before I am a year older; I may crawl on for the next ten
years--a fragile hot-house plant, sent to winter under southern skies."
"And you may recover, and be strong and well again!" cried Christabel,
in a voice choked with sobs. She made no pretence of hiding her pity or
her love. "Who can tell? God is so good. What prayer will He not grant
us if we only believe in Him? Faith will remove mountains."
"I have never seen it done," said Angus. "I'm afraid that no effort of
faith in this degenerate age will give a man a new lung. No, Christabel,
there is no chance of long life for me. If hope--if love could give
length of days, my new hopes, born of you--my new love felt for you,
might work that miracle. But I am the child of my century: I only
believe in the possible. And knowing that my years are so few, and that
during that poor remnant of life I may be a chronic invalid, how can
I--how dare I be so selfish as to ask any girl--young, fresh, and
bright, with all the joys of life untasted--to be the companion of my
decline? The better she loved me, the sadder would be her life--the
keener would be the anguish of watching my decay!"
"But it would be a life spent with you, her days would be devoted to
you; if she really loved you, she would not hesitate," pursued
Christabel, her hands clasped passionately, tears streaming down her
pale cheeks, for this moment to her was the supreme crisis of fate. "She
would be unhappy, but there would be sweetness even in her sorrow if she
could believe that she was a comfort to you!"
"Christabel, don't tempt me! Ah, my darling! you don't know how selfish
a man's love is, how sweet it would be to me to snatch such bliss, even
on the brink of the dark gulf--on the threshold of the eternal night,
the eternal silence! Consider what you would take upon yourself--you who
perhaps have never known what sickness means--have never seen the
horrors of mortal disease."
"Yes, I have sat with some of our poor people when they were dying. I
have seen how painful disease is, how cruel Nature seems, and how hard
it is for a poor creature racked with pain to believe in God's
beneficence; but even then there has been comfort in being able to help
them and cheer them a little. I have thought more of that than of the
actual misery of the scene."
"But to give all your young life--all your days and thoughts and hopes
to a doomed man! Think of that, Christabel! When you are happy with him
to see Death grinning behind his shoulder--to watch that spectacle which
is of all Nature's miseries the most awful--the slow decay of human
life--a man dying by inches--not death, but dissolution! If my malady
were heart-disease, and you knew that at some moment--undreamt
of--unlooked for--death would come, swift as an arrow from Hecate's bow,
brief, with no loathsome or revolting detail--then I might say, 'Let us
spend my remnant of life together.' But consumption, you cannot tell
what a painful ending that is! Poets and novelists have described it as
a kind of euthanasia; but the poetical mind is rarely strong in
scientific knowledge. I want you to understand all the horror of a life
spent with a chronic sufferer, about whom the cleverest physician in
London has made up his mind."
"Answer me one question," said Christabel, drying her tears, and trying
to steady her voice. "Would your life be any happier if we were
together--till the end?"
"Happier? It would be a life spent in Paradise. Pain and sickness could
hardly touch me with their sting."
"Then let me be your wife."
"Christabel, are you in earnest? have you considered?"
"I consider nothing, except that it may be in my power to make your life
a little happier than it would be without me. I want only to be sure of
that. If the doom were more dreadful than it is--if there were but a few
short months of life left for you, I would ask you to let me share them;
I would ask to nurse you and watch you in sickness. There would be no
other fate on earth so full of sweetness for me. Yes, even with death
and everlasting mourning waiting for me at the end."
"My Christabel, my beloved! my angel, my comforter! I begin to believe
in miracles. I almost feel as if you could give me length of years, as
well as bliss beyond all thought or hope of mine. Christabel,
Christabel, God forgive me if I am asking you to wed sorrow; but you
have made this hour of my life an unspeakable ecstasy. Yet I will not
take you quite at your word, love. You shall have time to consider what
you are going to do--time to talk to your aunt."
"I want no time for consideration. I will be guided by no one. I think
God meant me to love you--and cure you."
"I will believe anything you say; yes, even if you promise me a new
lung. God bless you, my beloved! You belong to those whom He does
everlastingly bless, who are so angelic upon this earth that they teach
us to believe in heaven. My Christabel, my own! I promised to call you
Miss Courtenay when we left Pentargon, but I suppose now you are to be
Christabel for the rest of my life!"
"Yes, always."
"And all this time we have not seen a single seal," exclaimed Angus,
gaily.
His delicate features were radiant with happiness. Who could at such a
moment remember death and doom? All painful words which need be said had
been spoken.