"THE SILVER ANSWER RANG,--'NOT DEATH, BUT LOVE'"
Mrs. Tregonell and her niece were alone together in the library
half-an-hour before afternoon tea, when the autumn light was just
beginning to fade, and the autumn mist to rise ghostlike from the narrow
little harbour of Boscastle. Miss Bridgeman had contrived that it should
be so, just as she had contrived the visit to the seals that morning.
So Christabel, kneeling by her aunt's chair in the fire-glow, just as
she had knelt upon the night before Mr. Hamleigh's coming, with
faltering lips confessed her secret.
"My dearest, I have known it for ever so long," answered Mrs. Tregonell,
gravely, laying her slender hand, sparkling with hereditary rings--never
so gorgeous as the gems bought yesterday--on the girl's sunny hair. "I
cannot say that I am glad. No, Christabel, I am selfish enough to be
sorry, for Leonard's sake, that this should have happened. It was the
dream of my life that you two should marry."
"Dear aunt, we could never have cared for each other--as lovers. We had
been too much like brother and sister."
"Not too much for Leonard to love you, as I know he does. He was too
confident--too secure of his power to win you. And I, his mother, have
brought a rival here--a rival who has stolen your love from my son."
"Don't speak of him bitterly, dearest. Remember he is the son of the man
you loved."
"But not my son! Leonard must always be first in my mind. I like Angus
Hamleigh. He is all that his father was--yes--it is almost a painful
likeness--painful to me, who loved and mourned his father. But I cannot
help being sorry for Leonard."
"Leonard shall be my dear brother, always," said Christabel; yet even
while she spoke it occurred to her that Leonard was not quite the kind
of person to accept the fraternal position pleasantly, or, indeed, any
secondary character whatever in the drama of life.
"And when are you to be married?" asked Mrs. Tregonell, looking at the
fire.
"Oh, Auntie, do you suppose I have begun to think of that yet awhile?"
"Be sure that he has, if you have not! I hope he is not going to be in a
hurry. You were only nineteen last birthday."
"I feel tremendously old," said Christabel. "We--we were talking a
little about the future, this afternoon, in the billiard-room, and Angus
talked about the wedding being at the beginning of the new year. But I
told him I was sure you would not like that."
"No, indeed! I must have time to get reconciled to my loss," answered
the dowager, with her arm drawn caressingly round Christabel's head, as
the girl leaned against her aunt's chair. "What will this house seem to
me without my daughter? Leonard far away, putting his life in peril for
some foolish sport, and you living--Heaven knows where; for you would
have to study your husband's taste, not mine, in the matter."
"Why shouldn't we live near you? Mr. Hamleigh might buy a place. There
is generally something to be had if one watches one's opportunity."
"Do you think he would care to sink his fortune, or any part of it, in a
Cornish estate, or to live amidst these wild hills?"
"He says he adores this place."
"He is in love, and would swear as much of a worse place. No, Belle, I
am not foolish enough to suppose that you and Mr. Hamleigh are to settle
for life at the end of the world. This house shall be your home whenever
you choose to occupy it; and I hope you will come and stay with me
sometimes, for I shall be very lonely without you."
"Dear Auntie, you know how I love you; you know how completely happy I
have been with you--how impossible it is that anything can ever lessen
my love."
"I believe that, dear girl; but it is rarely now-a-days that Ruth
follows Naomi. Our modern Ruths go where their lovers go, and worship
the same gods. But I don't want to be selfish or unjust, dear. I will
try to rejoice in your happiness. And if Angus Hamleigh will only be a
little patient; if he will give me time to grow used to the loss of you,
he shall have you with your adopted mother's blessing."
"He shall not have me without it," said Christabel, looking up at her
aunt with steadfast eyes.
She had said no word of that early doom of which Angus had told her. For
worlds she could not have revealed that fatal truth. She had tried to
put away every thought of it while she talked with her aunt. Angus had
urged her beforehand to be perfectly frank, to tell Mrs. Tregonell what
a mere wreck of a life it was which her lover offered her: but she had
refused.
"Let that be our secret," she said, in her low sweet voice. "We want no
one's pity. We will bear our sorrow together. And, oh, Angus! my faith
is so strong. God, who has made me so happy by the gift of your love,
will not take you from me. If--if your life is to be brief, mine will
not be long."
"My dearest! if the gods will it so, we will know no parting, but be
translated into some new kind of life together--a modern Baucis and
Philemon. I think it would be wiser--better, to tell your aunt
everything. But if you think otherwise----"
"I will tell her nothing, except that you love me, and that, with her
consent, I am going to be your wife;" and with this determination
Christabel had made her confession to her aunt.
The ice once broken, everybody reconciled herself or himself to the new
aspect of affairs at Mount Royal. In less than a week it seemed the most
natural thing in life that Angus and Christabel should be engaged. There
was no marked change in their mode of life. They rambled upon the hills,
and went boating on fine mornings, exploring that wonderful coast where
the sea-birds congregate, on rocky isles and fortresses rising sheer out
of the sea--in mighty caves, the very tradition whereof sounds
terrible--caves that seem to have no ending, but to burrow into unknown,
unexplored regions, towards the earth's centre.
With Major Bree for their skipper, and a brace of sturdy boatmen, Angus,
Christabel, and Jessie Bridgeman spent several mild October mornings on
the sea--now towards Cambeak, anon towards Trebarwith. Tintagel from the
beach was infinitely grander than Tintagel in its landward aspect.
"Here," as Norden says, was "that rocky and winding way up the steep
sea-cliff, under which the sea-waves wallow, and so assail the
foundation of the isle, as may astonish an unstable brain to consider
the peril, for the least slip of the foot leads the whole body into the
devouring sea."
To climb these perilous paths, to spring from rock to rock upon the
slippery beach, landing on some long green slimy slab over which the sea
washes, was Christabel's delight--and Mr. Hamleigh showed no lack of
agility or daring. His health had improved marvellously in that
invigorating air. Christabel, noteful of every change of hue in the
beloved face, saw how much more healthy a tinge cheek and brow had taken
since Mr. Hamleigh came to Mount Royal. He had no longer the exhausted
look or the languid air of a man who had untimely squandered his stock
of life and health. His eye had brightened--with no hectic light, but
with the clear sunshine of a mind at ease. He was altered in every way
for the better.
And now the autumn evenings were putting on a wintry air--the lights
were twinkling early in the Alpine street of Boscastle. The little
harbour was dark at five o'clock. Mr. Hamleigh had been nearly two
months at Mount Royal, and he told himself that it was time for
leave-taking. Fain would he have stayed on--stayed until that blissful
morning when Christabel and he might kneel, side by side, before the
altar in Minster Church, and be made one for ever--one in life and
death--in a union as perfect as that which was symbolized by the plant
that grew out of Tristan's tomb and went down into the grave of his
mistress.
Unhappily, Mrs. Tregonell had made up her mind that her niece should not
be married until she was twenty years of age--and Christabel's twentieth
birthday would not arrive till the following Midsummer. To a lover's
impatience so long an interval seemed an eternity; but Mrs. Tregonell
had been very gracious in her consent to his betrothal, so he could not
disobey her.
"Christabel has seen so little of the world," said the dowager. "I
should like to give her one season in London before she marries--just to
rub off a little of the rusticity."
"She is perfect--I would not have her changed for worlds," protested
Angus.
"Nor I. But she ought to know a little more of society before she has to
enter it as your wife. I don't think a London season will spoil her--and
it will please me to chaperon her--though I have no doubt I shall seem
rather an old-fashioned chaperon."
"That is just possible," said Angus, smiling, as he thought how closely
his divinity was guarded. "The chaperons of the present day are very
easy-going people--or, perhaps I ought to say, that the young ladies of
the present day have a certain Yankee go-a-headishness which very much
lightens the chaperon's responsibility. In point of fact, the London
chaperon has dwindled into a formula, and no doubt she will soon be
improved off the face of society."
"So much the worse for society," answered the lady of the old school.
And then she continued, with a friendly air,--
"I dare say you know that I have a house in Bolton Row. I have not lived
in it since my husband's death--but it is mine, and I can have it made
comfortable between this and the early spring. I have been thinking that
it would be better for you and Christabel to be married in London. The
law business would be easier settled--and you may have relations and
friends who would like to be at your wedding, yet who would hardly care
to come to Boscastle."
"It _is_ a long way," admitted Angus. "And people are so inconsistent.
They think nothing of going to the Engadine, yet grumble consumedly at a
journey of a dozen hours in their native land--as if England were not
worth the exertion."
"Then I think we are agreed that London is the best place for the
wedding," said Mrs. Tregonell.
"I am perfectly content. But if you suggested Timbuctoo I should be just
as happy."
This being settled, Mrs. Tregonell wrote at once to her agent, with
instructions to set the old house in Bolton Row in order for the season
immediately after Easter, and Christabel and her lover had to reconcile
their minds to the idea of a long dreary winter of severance.
Miss Courtenay had grown curiously grave and thoughtful since her
engagement--a change which Jessie, who watched her closely, observed
with some surprise. It seemed as if she had passed from girlhood into
womanhood in the hour in which she pledged herself to Angus Hamleigh.
She had for ever done with the thoughtless gaiety of youth that knows
not care. She had taken upon herself the burden of an anxious,
self-sacrificing love. To no one had she spoken of her lover's
precarious hold upon life; but the thought of by how frail a tenure she
held her happiness was ever present with her. "How can I be good enough
to him?--how can I do enough to make his life happy?" she thought, "when
it may be for so short a time."
With this ever-present consciousness of a fatal future, went the desire
to make her lover forget his doom, and the ardent hope that the sentence
might be revoked--that the doom pronounced by human judgment might yet
be reversed. Indeed, Angus had himself begun to make light of his
malady. Who could tell that the famous physician was not a false
prophet, after all? The same dire announcement of untimely death had
been made to Leigh Hunt, who contrived somehow--not always in the
smoothest waters--to steer his frail bark into the haven of old age.
Angus spoke of this, hopefully, to Christabel, as they loitered within
the roofless crumbling walls of the ancient oratory above St. Nectan's
Kieve, one sunny November morning, Miss Bridgeman rambling on the crest
of the hill, with the black sheep-dog, Randie, under the polite fiction
of blackberry hunting, among hedges which had long been shorn of their
last berry, though the freshness of the lichens and ferns still lingered
in this sheltered nook.
"Yes, I know that cruel doctor was mistaken!" said Christabel, her lips
quivering a little, her eyes wide and grave, but tearless, as they gazed
at her lover. "I know it, I know it!"
"I know that I am twice as strong and well as I was when he saw me,"
answered Angus; "you have worked as great a miracle for me as ever was
wrought at the grave of St. Mertheriana in Minster Churchyard. You have
made me happy, and what can cure a man better than perfect bliss. But,
oh, my darling! what is to become of me when I leave you, when I return
to the beaten ways of London life, and, looking back at these delicious
days, ask myself if this sweet life with you is not some dream which I
have dreamed, and which can never come again?"
"You will not think anything of the kind," said Christabel, with a
pretty little air of authority which charmed him--as all her looks and
ways charmed him. "You know that I am sober reality, and that our lives
are to be spent together. And you are not going back to London--at least
not to stop there. You are going to the South of France."
"Indeed? this is the first I have heard of any such intention."
"Did not that doctor say you were to winter in the South?"
"He did. But I thought we had agreed to despise that doctor?"
"We will despise him, yet be warned by him. Why should any one, who has
liberty and plenty of money, spend his winter in a smoky city, where the
fog blinds and stifles him, and the frost pinches him, and the damp
makes him miserable, when he can have blue skies, and sunshine and
flowers, and ever so much brighter stars, a few hundred miles away? We
are bound to obey each other, are we not, Angus? Is not that among our
marriage vows?"
"I believe there is something about obedience--on the lady's side--but I
waive that technicality. I am prepared to become an awful example of a
henpecked husband. If you say I am to go southward, with the swallows, I
will go--yea, verily, to Algeria or Tunis, if you insist: though I would
rather be on the Riviera, whence a telegram, with the single word 'Come'
would bring me to your side in forty-eight hours."
"Yes, you will go to that lovely land on the shores of the
Mediterranean, and there you will be very careful of your health, so
that when we meet in London, after Easter, your every look will gainsay
that pitiless doctor. Will you do this, for my sake, Angus?" she
pleaded, lovingly, nestling at his side, as they stood together on a
narrow path that wound down to the entrance of the Kieve. They could
hear the rush of the waterfall in the deep green hollow below them, and
the faint flutter of loosely hanging leaves, stirred lightly by the
light wind, and far away the joyous bark of a sheep-dog. No human
voices, save their own, disturbed the autumnal stillness.
"This, and much more, would I do to please you, love. Indeed, if I am
not to be here, I might just as well be in the South; nay, much better
than in London, or Paris, both of which cities I know by heart. But
don't you think we could make a compromise, and that I might spend the
winter at Torquay, running over to Mount Royal for a few days
occasionally?"
"No; Torquay will not do, delightful as it would be to have you so near.
I have been reading about the climate in the South of France, and I am
sure, if you are careful, a winter there will do you worlds of good.
Next year----"
"Next year we can go there together, and you will take care of me. Was
that what you were going to say, Belle?"
"Something like that."
"Yes" he said, slowly, after a thoughtful pause, "I shall be glad to be
away from London, and all old associations. My past life is a worthless
husk that I have done with for ever."