"ALAS FOR ME THEN, MY GOOD DAYS ARE DONE."
Angus Hamleigh's letter came upon Christabel like a torrent of cold
water, as if that bright silvery arc which pierces the rock at St.
Nectan's Kieve had struck upon her heart with its icy stream, and
chilled it into stone. All through that long summer day upon which her
letter must arrive at Hillside, she had lived in nervous expectation of
a telegram expressing indignation, remonstrance, pleading, anger--a
savage denial of her right to renounce her lover--to break her
engagement. She had made up her mind in all good faith. She meant to go
on to the bitter end, in the teeth of her lover's opposition, to
complete her renunciation in favour of that frail creature who had so
solemn a claim upon Angus Hamleigh's honour. She meant to fight this
good fight--but she expected that the struggle would be hard. Oh, how
long and dismal those summer hours seemed, which she spent in her own
room, trying to read, trying to comfort herself with saddest strains of
classic melody, and always and through all listening for the telegraph
boy's knock at the hall door, or for the sudden stopping of a hansom
against the kerb, bringing home her lover to remonstrate in person, in
defiance of all calculations of time and space.
There was no telegram. She had to wait nearly twenty-four hours for the
slow transit of the mails from the high latitude of Inverness. And when
she read Angus Hamleigh's letter--those few placid words which so
quietly left her free to take her own way--her heart sank with a dull
despair that was infinitely worse than the keen agonies of the last few
days. The finality of that brief letter--the willingness to surrender
her--the cold indifference, as it seemed, to her future fate--was the
hardest blow of all. Too surely it confirmed all those humiliating
doubts which had tortured her since her discovery of that wretched past.
He had never really cared for her. It was she who had forced him into an
avowal of affection by her unconscious revelation of love--she who,
unmaidenly in her ignorance of life and mankind, had been the wooer
rather than the wooed.
"Thank God that my pride and my duty helped me to decide," she said to
herself: "what should I have done if I had married him and found out
afterwards how weak a hold I had upon his heart--if he had told me one
day that he had married me out of pity."
Christabel told Mrs. Tregonell she had written to Mr. Hamleigh--she
spoke of him only as Mr. Hamleigh now--and had received his reply, and
that all was now over between them.
"I want you to return his presents for me, Auntie," she said. "They are
too valuable to be sent to his chambers while he is away--the diamond
necklace which he gave me on my birthday--just like that one I saw on
the stage--I suppose he thinks all women have exactly the same ideas and
fancies--the books too--I will put them all together for you to return."
"He has given you a small library," said Mrs. Tregonell. "I will take
the things in the carriage, and see that they are properly delivered.
Don't be afraid, darling. You shall have no trouble about them. My own
dear girl--how brave and good you are--how wise too. Yes, Belle, I am
convinced that you have chosen wisely," said the widow, with the glow of
honest conviction, for the woof of self-interest is so cunningly
interwoven with the warp of righteous feeling that very few of us can
tell where the threads cross.
She drew her niece to her heart, and kissed her, and cried with her a
little; and then said cheeringly, "And now tell me, darling, what you
would like to do? We have ever so many engagements for this week and the
next fortnight--but you know they have been made only for your sake, and
if you don't care about them----"
"Care about them! Oh, Auntie, do you think I could go into society with
this dull aching pain at my heart? I feel as if I should never care to
see my fellow-creatures again--except you and Jessie."
"And Leonard," said the mother. "Poor Leonard, who would go through fire
and water for you."
Christabel winced, feeling fretfully that she did not want any one to
go through fire and water; a kind of acrobatic performance continually
being volunteered by people who would hesitate at the loan of five
pounds.
"Where shall we go, dear? Would you not like to go abroad for the
autumn--Switzerland, or Italy, for instance?" suggested Mrs. Tregonell,
with an idea that three months on the Continent was a specific in such
cases.
"No," said Christabel, shudderingly, remembering how Angus and his frail
first love had been happy together in Italy--oh, those books, those
books, with their passionate record of past joys, those burning lines
from Byron and Heine, which expressed such a world of feeling in ten
syllables--"No, I would ever so much rather go back to Mount Royal."
"My poor child, the place is so associated with Mr. Hamleigh. You would
be thinking of him every hour of the day."
"I shall do that anywhere."
"Change of scene would be so much better for you--travelling--variety."
"Auntie, you are not strong enough to travel with comfort to yourself. I
am not going to drag you about for a fanciful alleviation of my sorrow.
The landscape may change but not the mind--I should think of--the
past--just as much on Mont Blanc as on Willapark. No, dearest, let us go
home; let me go back to the old, old life, as it was before I saw Mr.
Hamleigh. Oh, what a child I was in those dear days, how happy, how
happy."
She burst into tears, melted by the memory of those placid days, the
first tears she had shed since she received her lover's answer.
"And you will be happy again, dear. Don't you remember that passage I
read to you in 'The Caxtons' a few days ago, in which the wise
tender-hearted father tells his son how small a space one great sorrow
takes in a life, and how triumphantly the life soars on beyond it?"
"Yes, I remember; but I didn't believe him then, and I believe him still
less now," answered Christabel, doggedly.
Major Bree called that afternoon, and found Mrs. Tregonell alone in the
drawing-room.
"Where is Belle?" he asked.
"She has gone for a long country ride--I insisted upon it."
"You were quite right. She was looking as white as a ghost yesterday
when I just caught a glimpse of her in the next room. She ran away like
a guilty thing when she saw me. Well, has this cloud blown over? Is
Hamleigh back?"
"No; Christabel's engagement is broken off. It has been a great blow, a
severe trial; but now it is over I am glad: she never could have been
happy with him."
"How do you know that?" asked the Major, sharply.
"I judge him by his antecedents. What could be expected from a man who
had led that kind of life--a man who so grossly deceived her?"
"Deceived her? Did she ask him if he had ever been in love with an
actress? Did she or you ever interrogate him as to his past life? Why
you did not even question me, or I should have been obliged to tell you
all I knew of his relations with Miss Mayne."
"You ought to have told me of your own accord. You should not have
waited to be questioned," said Mrs. Tregonell, indignantly.
"Why should I stir dirty water? Do you suppose that every man who makes
a good husband and lives happily with his wife has been spotless up to
the hour of his marriage? There is a _Sturm und Drang_ period in every
man's life, depend upon it. Far better that the tempest should rage
before marriage than after."
"I can't accept your philosophy, nor could Christabel. She took the
business into her own hands, bravely, nobly. She has cancelled her
engagement, and left Mr. Hamleigh free to make some kind of reparation
to this actress person."
"Reparation!--to Stella Mayne? Why don't you know that she is the
mistress of Colonel Luscomb, who has ruined his social and professional
prospects for her sake. Do you mean to say that old harpy who gave you
your information about Angus did not give you the epilogue to the play?"
"Not a word," said Mrs. Tregonell, considerably dashed by this
intelligence. "But I don't see that this fact alters the case--much.
Christabel could never have been happy or at peace with a man who had
once been devoted to a creature of that class."
"Would you be surprised to hear that creatures of that class are flesh
and blood; and that they love us and leave us, and cleave to us and
forsake us, just like the women in society?" asked the Major, surveying
her with mild scorn.
She was a good woman, no doubt, and acted honestly according to her
lights; yet he was angry with her, believing that she had spoiled two
lives by her incapacity to take a wide and liberal view of the human
comedy.