"GRIEF A FIXED STAR, AND JOY A VANE THAT VEERS."
They went back to the Cornish moors, and the good old manor-house on the
hill above the sea; went back to the old life, just the same, in all
outward seeming, as it had been before that fatal visit which had
brought love and sorrow to Christabel. How lovely the hills looked in
the soft summer light; how unspeakably fair the sea in all its glory of
sapphire and emerald, and those deep garnet-coloured patches which show
where the red sea-weed lurks below, with its pinnacles of rock and
colonies of wild living creatures, gull and cormorant, basking in the
sun. Little Boscastle, too, gay with the coming and going of many
tourists, the merry music of the guard's horn, as the omnibus came
jolting down the hill from Bodmin, or the coach wound up the hill to
Bude; busy with the bustle of tremendous experiments with rockets and
life-saving apparatus in the soft July darkness; noisy with the lowing
of cattle and plaintive tremolo of sheep in the market-place, and all
the rude pleasures of a rural fair; alive with all manner of sound and
movement, and having a general air of making money too fast for the
capability of investment. The whole place was gorged with visitors--not
the inn only, but every available bedchamber at post-office, shop, and
cottage was filled with humanity; and the half-dozen or so available
pony-carriages were making the journey to Tintagel and back three times
a day; while the patient investigators who tramped to St. Nectan's
Kieve, without the faintest idea of who St. Nectan was, or what a kieve
was, or what manner of local curiosity they were going to see, were
legion; all coming back ravenous to the same cosy inn to elbow one
another in friendly contiguity at the homely _table d'hôte_, in the
yellow light of many candles.
Christabel avoided the village as much as possible during this gay
season. She would have avoided it just as much had it been the dull
season: the people she shrank from meeting were not the strange
tourists, but the old gaffers and goodies who had known her all their
lives--the "uncles" and "aunts"--(in Cornwall uncle and aunt are a kind
of patriarchal title given to honoured age)--and who might consider
themselves privileged to ask why her wedding was deferred, and when it
was to be.
She went with Jessie on long lonely expeditions by sea and land. She had
half a dozen old sailors who were her slaves, always ready to take her
out in good weather, deeming it their highest privilege to obey so fair
a captain, and one who always paid them handsomely for their labour.
They went often to Trebarwith Sands, and sat there in some sheltered
nook, working and reading at peace, resigned to a life that had lost all
its brightness and colour.
"Do you know, Jessie, that I feel like an old maid of fifty?" said Belle
on one of those rare occasions when she spoke of her own feelings. "It
seems to me as if it were ages since I made up my mind to live and die
unmarried, and to make life, somehow or other, self-sufficing--as if
Randie and I were both getting old and grey together. For he is ever so
much greyer, the dear thing," she said, laying her hand lovingly on the
honest black head and grey muzzle. "What a pity that dogs should grow
old so soon, when we are so dependent on their love. Why are they not
like elephants, in whose lives a decade hardly counts?"
"Oh, Belle, Belle, as if a beautiful woman of twenty could be dependent
on a sheep-dog's affection--when she has all her life before her and all
the world to choose from."
"Perhaps you think I could change my lover as some people change their
dogs," said Belle, bitterly, "be deeply attached to a colley this year
and next year be just as devoted to a spaniel. My affections are not so
easily transferable."
Mrs. Tregonell had told her niece nothing of Angus Hamleigh's final
letter to herself. He had given her freedom to communicate as much or as
little of that letter as she liked to Christabel--and she had taken the
utmost license, and had been altogether silent about it. What good could
it do for Christabel to hear of his illness. The knowledge might
inspire her to some wild quixotic act: she might insist upon devoting
herself to him--to be his wife in order that she might be his nurse--and
surely this would be to ruin her life without helping him to prolong
his. The blow had fallen--the sharpest pain of this sudden sorrow had
been suffered. Time and youth, and Leonard's faithful love would bring
swift healing. "How I loved and grieved for his father," thought Mrs.
Tregonell. "Yet I survived his loss, and had a peaceful happy life with
the best and kindest of men."
A peaceful happy life, yes--the English matron's calm content in a
handsome house and a well-organized household--a good stable--velvet
gowns--family diamonds--the world's respect. But that first passionate
love of youth--the love that is eager for self-sacrifice, that would
welcome beggary--the love which sees a lover independent of all
surrounding circumstances, worshipping and deifying the man
himself--that sacred flame had been for ever extinguished in Diana
Champernowne's heart before she met burly broad-shouldered Squire
Tregonell at the county ball.
She wrote to Leonard telling him what had happened, and that he might
now count on the fulfilment of that hope which they both had cherished
years ago. She asked him to come home at once, but to be careful that he
approached Christabel only in a friendly and cousinly character, until
there had been ample time for these new wounds to heal.
"She bears her trouble beautifully, and is all goodness and devotion to
me--for I have been weak and ailing ever since I came from London--but I
know the trial is very hard for her. The house would be more cheerful if
you were at home. You might ask one or two of your Oxford friends. No
one goes into the billiard-room now. Mount Royal is as quiet as a
prison. If you do not come soon, dear boy, I think we shall die of
melancholy."
Mr. Tregonell did not put himself out of the way to comply with his
loving mother's request. By the time the widow's letter reached him he
had made his plans for the winter, and was not disposed to set them
aside in order to oblige a lady who was only a necessary detail in his
life. A man must needs have a mother; and, as mothers go, Mrs.
Tregonell had been harmless and inoffensive; but she was not the kind of
person for whom Leonard would throw over elaborate sporting
arrangements, hired guides, horses, carts, and all the paraphernalia
needful for Red River explorations. As for Christabel, Mr. Tregonell had
not forgiven her for having set another man in the place which he, her
cousin and boyish lover in a rough tyrannical way, had long made up his
mind to occupy. The fact that she had broken with the man was a
redeeming feature in the case; but he was not going into raptures about
it; nor was he disposed to return to Mount Royal while she was still
moping and regretting the discarded lover.
"Let her get over the doldrums, and then she and I may be friends
again," said Leonard to his boon companion, Jack Vandeleur, not a friend
of his University days, but an acquaintance picked up on board a Cunard
steamer--son of a half-pay naval captain, a man who had begun life in a
line regiment, fought in Afghanistan, sold out, and lived by his wits
and upon his friends for the last five years. He had made himself so
useful to Mr. Tregonell by his superior experience as a traveller, his
pluck and knowledge of all kinds of sport, that he had been able to live
at free quarters with that gentleman from an early stage of their
acquaintance.
Thus it was that Christabel was allowed to end the year in quietness and
peace. Every one was tender and gentle with her, knowing how keenly she
must have suffered. There was much disappointment among her country
friends at the sorry ending of her engagement; more especially among
those who had been in London during the season, and had seen the lovely
Cornish _débutante_ in her brief day of gladness. No one hinted a
question to Christabel herself. The subject of marrying and giving in
marriage was judiciously avoided in her presence. But Mrs. Tregonell had
been questioned, and had explained briefly that certain painful
revelations concerning Mr. Hamleigh's antecedents had constrained
Christabel to give him up. Every one said it was a pity. Poor Miss
Courtenay looked ill and unhappy. Surely it would have been wiser to
waive all question of antecedents, and to trust to that sweet girl's
influence for keeping Mr. Hamleigh straight in the future. "Antecedents,
indeed," exclaimed a strong-minded matron, with five marriageable
daughters. "It is all very well for a young woman like Miss
Courtenay--an only child, with fifteen hundred a year in her own
right--to make a fuss about a young man's antecedents. But what would
become of my five girls if I were to look at things so closely."
Christabel looked at the first column of the _Times_ supplement daily to
see if there were the advertisement of Angus Hamleigh's marriage with
Stella Mayne. She was quite prepared to read such an announcement.
Surely, now that she had set him free, he would make this act of
atonement, he, in all whose sentiments she had perceived so nice a sense
of honour. But no such advertisement appeared. It was possible, however,
that the marriage had taken place without any public notification. Mr.
Hamleigh might not care to call the world to witness his reparation. She
prayed for him daily and nightly, praying that he might be led to do
that which was best for his soul's welfare--for his peace here and
hereafter--praying that his days, whether few or many, should be made
happy.
There were times when that delicate reticence which made Angus
Hamleigh's name a forbidden sound upon the lips of her friends, was a
source of keenest pain to Christabel. It would have been painful to her
to hear that name lightly spoken, no doubt; but this dull dead silence
was worse. One day it flashed upon her that if he were to die nobody
would tell her of his death. Kindred and friends would conspire to keep
her uninformed. After this she read the list of deaths in the _Times_ as
eagerly as she read the marriages, but with an agony of fear lest that
name, as if written in fire, should leap out upon the page.
At last this painful sense of uncertainty as to the fate of one who, a
few months ago, had been a part of her life, became unendurable. Pride
withheld her from questioning her aunt or Jessie. She shrank from
seeming small and mean in the sight of her own sex. She had made her
sacrifice of her own accord, and there was a poverty of character in not
being able to maintain the same Spartan courage to the end. But from
Major Bree, the friend and playfellow of her childhood, the indulgent
companion of her youth, she could better bear to accept pity--so, one
mild afternoon in the beginning of October, when the Major dropped in at
his usual hour for tea and gossip, she took him to see the
chrysanthemums, in a house on the further side of the lawn; and here,
having assured herself there was no gardener within hearing, she took
courage to question him.
"Uncle Oliver," she began, falteringly, trifling with the fringed petals
of a snowy blossom, "I want to ask you something."
"My dear, I think you must know that there is nothing in the world I
would not do for you."
"I am sure of that: but this is not very difficult. It is only to answer
one or two questions. Every one here is very good to me--but they make
one mistake: they think because I have broken for ever--with--Mr.
Hamleigh, that it can do me no good to know anything about him--that I
can go on living and being happy, while I am as ignorant of his fate as
if we were inhabitants of different planets. But they forget that after
having been all the world to me he cannot all at once become nothing. I
have still some faint interest in his fate. It hurts me like an actual
pain not to know whether he is alive or dead," she said, with a sudden
sob.
"My poor pet!" murmured the Major, taking her hand in both his own.
"Have you heard nothing about him since you left London?"
"Not one word. People make believe that there was never any such person
in this world."
"They think it wiser to do so, in the hope you will forget him."
"They might as well hope that I shall become a blackamoor," said
Christabel, scornfully. "You have more knowledge of the human heart,
Uncle Oliver--and you must know that I shall always--remember him. Tell
me the truth about him just this once, and I will not mention his name
again for a long, long time. He is not dead, is he?"
"Dead!--no, Belle. What put such a notion into your head?"
"Silence always seems like death; and every one has kept silence about
him."
"He was ill while he was in Scotland--a touch of the old complaint. I
heard of him at Plymouth the other day, from a yachting man who met him
in the Isle of Arran, after his illness--he was all right then, I
believe."
"Ill--and I never knew of it--dangerously ill, perhaps."
"I don't suppose it was anything very bad. He had been yachting when my
Plymouth acquaintance met him."
"He has not married--that person," faltered Christabel.
"What person?"
"Miss Mayne."
"Good heavens, no, my dear--nor ever will."
"But he ought--it is his duty."
"My dear child, that is a question which I can hardly discuss with you.
But I may tell you, at least, that there is an all-sufficient reason why
Angus Hamleigh would never make such an idiot of himself."
"Do you mean that she could never be worthy of him--that she is
irredeemably wicked?" asked Christabel.
"She is not good enough to be any honest man's wife."
"And yet she did not seem wicked: she spoke of him with such intense
feeling."
"She seemed--she spoke!" repeated the Major aghast. "Do you mean to tell
me that you have seen--that you have conversed with her?"
"Yes: when my aunt told me the story which she heard from Lady
Cumberbridge I could not bring myself to believe it until it was
confirmed by Miss Mayne's own lips. I made up my mind that I would go
and see her--and I went. Was that wrong?"
"Very wrong. You ought not to have gone near her. If you wanted to know
more than common rumour could tell you, you should have sent me--your
friend. It was a most unwise act."
"I thought I was doing my duty. I think so still," said Christabel,
looking at him with frank steadfast eyes. "We are both women. If we
stand far apart it is because Providence has given me many blessings
which were withheld from her. It is Mr. Hamleigh's duty to repair the
wrong he has done. If he does not he must be answerable to his Maker
for the eternal ruin of a soul."
"I tell you again, my dear, that you do not understand the
circumstances, and cannot fairly judge the case. You would have done
better to take an old soldier's advice before you let the venomous
gossip of that malevolent harridan spoil two lives."
"I did not allow myself to be governed by Lady Cumberbridge's gossip,
Uncle Oliver. I took nothing for granted. It was not till I had heard
the truth from Miss Mayne's lips that I took any decisive step. Mr.
Hamleigh accepted my resolve so readily that I can but think it was a
welcome release."
"My dear, you went to a queer shop for truth. If you had only known your
way about town a little better you would have thought twice before you
sacrificed your own happiness in the hope of making Miss Mayne a
respectable member of society. But what's done cannot be undone. There's
no use in crying over spilt milk. I daresay you and Mr. Hamleigh will
meet again and make up your quarrel before we are a year older. In the
meantime don't fret, Belle--and don't be afraid that he will ever marry
any one but you. I'll be answerable for his constancy."
The anniversary of Christabel's betrothal came round, St. Luke's Day--a
grey October day--with a drizzling West-country rain. She went to church
alone, for her aunt was far from well, and Miss Bridgeman stayed at home
to keep the invalid company--to read to her and cheer her through the
long dull morning. Perhaps they both felt that Christabel would rather
be alone on this day. She put on her waterproof coat, took her dog with
her, and started upon that wild lonely walk to the church in the hollow
of the hills. Randie was a beast of perfect manners, and would lie
quietly in the porch all through the service, waiting for his mistress.
She knelt alone just where they two had knelt together. There was the
humble altar before which they were to have been married; the rustic
shrine of which they had so often spoken as the fittest place for a
loving union--fuller of tender meaning than splendid St. George's, with
its fine oaken panelling, painted windows, and Hogarthian architecture.
Never at that altar, nor at any other, were they two to kneel. A little
year had held all--her hopes and fears--her triumphant love--joy beyond
expression--and sadness too deep for tears. She went over the record as
she knelt in the familiar pew--her lips moving automatically, repeating
the responses--her eyes fixed and tearless.
Then when the service was over she went slowly wandering in and out
among the graves, looking at the grey slate tablets, with the names of
those whom she had known in life--all at rest now--old people who had
suffered long and patiently before they died--a fair young girl who had
died of consumption, and whose sufferings had been sharper than those of
age--a sailor who had gone out to a ship with a rope one desperate
night, and had given his life to save others--all at rest now.
There was no grave being dug to-day. She remembered how, as she and
Angus lingered at the gate, the dull sound of the earth thrown from the
gravedigger's spade had mixed with the joyous song of the robin perched
on the gate. To-day there was neither gravedigger nor robin--only the
soft drip, drip of the rain on dock and thistle, fern and briony. She
had the churchyard all to herself, the dog following her about
meekly--crawling over grassy mounds, winding in and out among the long
wet grass.
"When I die, if you have the ordering of my funeral, be sure I am buried
in Minster Churchyard."
That is what Angus had said to her one summer morning, when they were
sitting on the Maidenhead coach--and even West-End London, and a London
Park, looked lovely in the clear June light. Little chance now that she
would be called upon to choose his resting-place--that her hands would
fold his in their last meek attitude of submission to the universal
conqueror.
"Perhaps he will spend his life in Italy, where no one will know his
wife's history," thought Christabel, always believing, in spite of Major
Bree's protest, that her old lover would sooner or later make the one
possible atonement for an old sin. Nobody except the Major had told her
how little the lady deserved that such atonement should be made. It was
Mrs. Tregonell's theory that a well-brought up young woman should be
left in darkest ignorance of the darker problems of life.
Christabel walked across the hill, and down by narrow winding ways into
the valley, where the river, swollen and turbid after the late rains,
tumbled noisily over rock and root and bent the long reeds upon its
margin. She crossed the narrow footbridge, and went slowly through the
level fields between two long lines of hills--a gorge through which, in
bleak weather, the winds blew fiercely. There was another hill to ascend
before she reached the field that led to Pentargon Bay--half a mile or
so of high road between steep banks and tall unkempt hedges. How short
and easy to climb that hill had seemed to her in Angus Hamleigh's
company! Now she walked wearily and slowly under the softly falling
rain, wondering where he was, and whether he remembered this day.
She could recall every word that he had spoken, and the memory was full
of pain; for in the light of her new knowledge it seemed to her that all
he had said about his early doom had been an argument intended to
demonstrate to her why he dared not and must not ask her to be his
wife--an apology and an explanation as it were--and this apology, this
explanation had been made necessary by her own foolishness--by that
fatal forgetfulness of self-respect which had allowed her love to reveal
itself. And yet, surely that look of rapture which had shone in his eyes
as he clasped her to his heart, as he accepted the dedication of her
young life, those tender tones, and all the love that had come
afterwards could not have been entirely falsehood.
"I cannot believe that he was a hypocrite," she said, standing where
they two had sat side by side in the sunlight of that lovely day, gazing
at the grey sea, smooth as a lake under the low grey sky. "I think he
must have loved me--unwillingly, perhaps--but it was true love while it
lasted. He gave his first and best love to that other--but he loved me
too. If I had dared to believe him--to trust in my power to keep him.
But no; that would have been to confirm him in wrong-doing. It was his
duty to marry the girl he wronged."
The thought that her sacrifice had been made to principle rather than to
feeling sustained her in this hour as nothing else could have done. If
she could only know where he was, and how he fared, and what he meant to
do with his future life, she could be happier, she thought.
Luncheon was over when Christabel went back to Mount Royal; but as Mrs.
Tregonell was too ill to take anything beyond a cup of beef-tea in her
own room this fact was of no consequence. The mistress of Mount Royal
had been declining visibly since her return to Cornwall; Mr. Treherne,
the family doctor, told Christabel there was no cause for alarm, but he
hinted also that her aunt was not likely to be a long-lived woman.
"I'm afraid she worries herself," he said; "she is too anxious about
that scapegrace son of hers."
"Leonard is very cruel," answered Christabel; "he lets weeks and even
months go by without writing, and that makes his poor mother miserable.
She is perpetually worrying herself about imaginary evils--storm and
shipwreck, runaway horses, explosions on steamboats."
"If she would but remember a vulgar adage, that 'Nought is never in
danger,'" muttered the doctor, with whom Leonard had been no favourite.
"And then she has frightful dreams about him," said Christabel.
"My dear Miss Courtenay, I know all about it," answered Mr. Treherne;
"your dear aunt is just in that comfortable position of life in which a
woman must worry herself about something or other. 'Man was born to
trouble,' don't you know, my dear? The people who haven't real cares are
constrained to invent sham ones. Look at King Solomon--did you ever read
any book that breathes such intense melancholy in every line as that
little work of his called Ecclesiastes. Solomon was living in the lap of
luxury when he wrote that little book, and very likely hadn't a trouble
in this world. However, imaginary cares can kill as well as the hardest
realities, so you must try to keep up your aunt's spirits, and at the
same time be sure that she doesn't over-exert herself. She has a weak
heart--what we call a tired heart."
"Does that mean heart-disease?" faltered Christabel, with a despairing
look.
"Well, my dear, it doesn't mean a healthy heart. It is not organic
disease--nothing wrong with the valves--no fear of excruciating
pains--but it's a rather risky condition of life, and needs care."
"I will be careful," murmured the girl, with white lips, as the awful
shadow of a grief, hardly thought of till this moment, fell darkly
across her joyless horizon.
Her aunt, her adopted mother--mother in all sweetest care and love and
thoughtful culture--might too soon be taken from her. Then indeed, and
then only, could she know what it was to be alone. Keenly, bitterly, she
thought how little during the last dismal months she had valued that
love--almost as old as her life--and how the loss of a newer love had
made the world desolate for her, life without meaning or purpose. She
remembered how little more than a year ago--before the coming of Angus
Hamleigh--her aunt and she had been all the world to each other, that
tender mother-love all sufficing to fill her life with interest and
delight.
In the face of this new fear that sacred love resumed its old place in
her mind. Not for an hour, not for a moment of the days to come, should
her care or her affection slacken. Not for a moment should the image of
him whom she had loved and renounced come between her and her duty to
her aunt.