"LOVE WILL HAVE HIS DAY."
From this time Christabel brightened and grew more like her old self.
Mrs. Tregonell told herself that the sharp sorrow was gradually wearing
itself out. No girl with such happy surroundings as Christabel's could
go on being unhappy for ever. Her own spirits improved with Christabel's
increasing brightness, and the old house began to lose its dismal air.
Until now the widow's conscience had been ill at ease--she had been
perpetually arguing with herself that she had done right--trying to
stifle doubts that continually renewed themselves. But now she told
herself that the time of sorrow was past, and that her wisdom would be
justified by its fruits. She had no suspicion that her niece was
striving of set purpose to be cheerful--that these smiles and this
bright girlish talk were the result of painful effort, duty triumphing
over sorrow.
Mount Royal that winter seemed one of the brightest, most hospitable
houses in the neighbourhood. There were no parties; Mrs. Tregonell's
delicate health was a reason against that. But there was generally some
one staying in the house--some nice girl, whose vivacious talk and whose
new music helped to beguile the mother from sad thoughts about her
absent son--from wearying doubts as to the fulfilment of her plans for
the future. There were people coming and going; old friends driving
twenty miles to luncheon, and sometimes persuaded to stay to dinner;
nearer neighbours walking three miles or so to afternoon tea. The cheery
rector of Trevalga and his family, friends of twenty years' standing,
were frequent guests. Mrs. Tregonell was not allowed to excite herself,
but she was never allowed to be dull. Christabel and Jessie watched her
with unwavering attention--anticipating every wish, preventing every
fatigue. A weak and tired heart might hold out for a long time under
such tender treatment.
But early in March there came an unexpected trial, in the shape of a
sudden and great joy. Leonard, who had never learnt the rudiments of
forethought and consideration for others, drove up to the house one
afternoon in a hired chaise from Launceston, just as twilight was
creeping over the hills, and dashed unannounced into the room where his
mother and the two girls were sitting at tea.
"Who is this?" gasped Mrs. Tregonell, starting up from her low easy
chair, as the tall broad-shouldered man, bearded, bronzed, clad in a
thick grey coat and big white muffler, stood before her; and then with a
shriek she cried, "My son! My son!" and fell upon his breast.
When he placed her in her chair a minute later she was almost fainting,
and it was some moments before she recovered speech. Christabel and
Jessie thought the shock would have killed her.
"Oh, Leonard! how could you?" murmured Christabel, reproachfully.
"How could I do what?"
"Come home without one word of notice, knowing your mother's delicate
health."
"I thought it would be a pleasant surprise for her. Besides I hadn't
made up my mind to come straight home till two o'clock to-day. I had
half a mind to take a week in town first, before I came to this
God-forsaken hole. You stare at me as if I had no right to be here at
all, Belle."
"Leonard, my boy, my boy," faltered the mother, with pale lips, looking
up adoringly at the bearded face, so weather-beaten, so hardened and
altered from the fresh lines of youth. "If you knew how I have longed
for this hour. I have had such fears. You have been in such perilous
places--among savages--in all kinds of danger. Often and often I have
dreamt that I saw you dead."
"Upon my soul, this is a lively welcome," said Leonard.
"My dearest, I don't want to be dismal," said Mrs. Tregonell, with a
faint hysterical laugh. Her heart was beating tumultuously, the hands
that clasped her son's were cold and damp. "My soul is full of joy. How
changed you are, dear! You look as if you had gone through great
hardships."
"Life in the Rockies isn't all child's play, mother, but we've had a
jolly time of it, on the whole. America is a magnificent country. I
feel deuced sorry to come home--except for the pleasure of seeing you
and Belle. Let's have a look at you, Belle, and see if you are as much
changed as I am. Step into the light, young lady."
He drew her into the full broad light of a heaped-up wood and coal fire.
There was very little daylight in the room. The tapestry curtains fell
low over the heavily mullioned Tudor windows, and inside the tapestry
there was a screen of soft muslin.
"I have not been shooting moose and skunk, or living in a tent," said
Christabel, with a forced laugh. She wanted to be amiable to her
cousin--wished even to like him, but it went against the grain. She
wondered if he had always been as hateful as this. "You can't expect to
find much difference in me after three years' vegetation in Cornwall."
"But you've not been vegetating all the time," said Leonard, looking her
over as coolly as if she had been a horse. "You have had a season in
London. I saw your name in some of the gossiping journals, when I was
last at Montreal. You wore a pink gown at Sandown. You were one of the
prettiest girls at the Royal Fancy Fair. You wore white and tea roses at
the Marlborough House garden party. You have been shining in high
places, Mistress Belle. I hope it has not spoiled you for a country
life."
"I love the country better than ever. I can vouch for that."
"And you have grown ever so much handsomer since I saw you last. I can
vouch for that," answered her cousin with his free and easy air. "How
d'ye do, Miss Bridgeman?" he said, holding out two fingers to his
mother's companion, whose presence he had until this moment ignored.
Jessie remembered Thackeray's advice, and gave the squire one finger in
return for his two.
"_You're_ not altered," he said, looking at her with a steady stare.
"You're the hard-wearing sort, warranted fast colour."
"Give Leonard some tea, Jessie," said Mrs. Tregonell. "I'm sure you
would like some tea?" looking lovingly at the tall figure, the hard
handsome face.
"I'd rather have a brandy-and-soda," answered Leonard carelessly, "but I
don't mind a cup of tea presently, when I've been and had a look round
the stables and kennels."
"Oh, Leonard! surely not yet?" said Mrs. Tregonell.
"Not yet! Why I've been in the house ten minutes, and you may suppose I
want to know how my hunters have been getting on in the last three
years, and whether the colt Nicholls bred is good for anything. I'll
just take a hurried look round and be back again slick."
Mrs. Tregonell sighed and submitted. What could she do but submit to a
son who had had his own way and followed his own pleasure ever since he
could run alone; nay, had roared and protested loudly at every attack
upon his liberty when he was still in the invertebrate jelly-fish stage
of existence, carried at full-length in his nurse's arms, with his face
turned to the ceiling, perpetually contemplating that flat white view of
indoor existence which must needs have a depressing influence upon the
meditations of infancy. The mothers of spirited youths have to fulfil
their mission, which is for the most part submission.
"How well he looks!" she said, fondly, when the squire had hurried out
of the room; "and how he has broadened and filled out."
Jessie Bridgeman thought within herself that he was quite broad enough
before he went to America, and that this filling-out process had hardly
improved him, but she held her peace.
"He looks very strong," said Christabel. "I could fancy Hercules just
such a man. I wonder whether he has brought home any lions' hides, and
if he will have one made into a shooting jacket. Dear, dearest Auntie,"
she went on, kneeling by the widow's chair, "I hope you are quite happy
now. I hope your cup of bliss is full."
"I am very happy, sweet one; but the cup is not full yet. I hope it may
be before I die--full to overflowing, and that I shall be able to say,
'Lord, let me depart in peace,' with a glad and grateful heart."
Leonard came back from the stables in a rather gloomy mood. His hunters
did not look as well as he expected, and the new colt was weak and
weedy. "Nicholls ought to have known better than to breed such a thing,
but I suppose he'd say, like the man in Tristram Shandy, that it wasn't
his fault," grumbled Mr. Tregonell, as he seated himself in front of the
fire, with his feet on the brass fender. He wore clump-soled boots and a
rough heather-mixture shooting suit, with knickerbockers and coarse
stockings, and his whole aspect was "sporting." Christabel thought of
some one else who had sat before the same hearth in the peaceful
twilight hour, and wondered if the spiritual differences between these
two men were as wide as those of manner and outward seeming. She
recalled the exquisite refinement of that other man, the refinement of
the man who is a born dandy, who, under the most adverse circumstances,
compelled to wear old clothes and to defy fashion, would yet be always
elegant and refined of aspect. She remembered that outward grace which
seemed the natural indication of a poetical mind--a grace which never
degenerated into effeminacy, a refinement which never approached the
feeble or the lackadaisical.
Mr. Tregonell stretched his large limbs before the blaze, and made
himself comfortable in the spacious plush-covered chair, throwing back
his dark head upon a crewel anti-macassar, which was a work of art
almost as worthy of notice as a water-colour painting, so exquisitely
had the flowers been copied from Nature by the patient needlewoman.
"This is rather more comfortable than the Rockies," he said, as he
stirred his tea, with big broad hands, scratched and scarred with hard
service. "Mount Royal isn't half a bad place for two or three months in
the year. But I suppose you mean to go to London after Easter? Now Belle
has tasted blood she'll be all agog for a second plunge. Sandown will be
uncommonly jolly this year."
"No, we are not going to town this season."
"Why not? Hard up--spent all the dollars?"
"No, but I don't think Belle would care about it."
"That's bosh. Come, now, Belle, you want to go of course," said Mr.
Tregonell, turning to his cousin.
"No, Leonard, that kind of thing is all very well for once in a
lifetime. I suppose every woman wants to know what the great world is
like--but one season must resemble another, I should think: just like
Boscastle Fair, which I used to fancy so lovely when I was a child, till
I began to understand that it was exactly the same every year, and that
it was just possible for one to outgrow the idea of its delightfulness."
"That isn't true about London though. There is always something new--new
clubs, new theatres, new actors, new race-meetings, new horses, new
people. I vote for May and June in Bolton Row."
"I don't think your dear mother's health would be equal to London, this
year, Leonard," said Christabel, gravely.
She was angry with this beloved and only son for not having seen the
change in his mother's appearance--for talking so loudly and so lightly,
as if there were nothing to be thought of in life except his own
pleasure.
"What, old lady, are you under the weather?" he asked, turning to survey
his mother with a critical air.
This was his American manner of inquiring after her health. Mrs.
Tregonell, when the meaning of the phrase had been explained to her,
confessed herself an invalid, for whom the placid monotony of rural life
was much safer than the dissipation of a London season.
"Oh, very well," said Leonard with a shrug; "then you and Belle must
stop at home and take care of each other--and I can have six weeks in
London _en garçon_. It won't be worth while to open the house in Bolton
Row--I'd rather stop at an hotel."
"But you won't leave me directly after your return, Leonard?"
"No, no, of course not. Not till after Easter. Easter's three weeks
ahead of us. You'll be tired enough of me by that time."
"Tired of you! After three years' absence?"
"Well, you must have got accustomed to doing without me, don't you
know," said Leonard, with charming frankness. "When a man has been three
years away he can't hurt his friend's feelings much if he dies abroad.
They've learnt how easy it is to get along without him."
"Leonard! how can you say such cruel things?" expostulated his mother,
with tears in her eyes. The very mention of death, as among the
possibilities of existence, scared her.
"There's nothing cruel in it, ma'am; it's only common sense," answered
Leonard. "Three years. Well, it's a jolly long time, isn't it? and I
dare say to you, in this sleepy hollow of a place, it seemed precious
long. But for fellows who are knocking about the world--as Poker
Vandeleur and I were--time spins by pretty fast, I can tell you. I'll
hoist in some more sap--another cup of tea, if you please, Miss
Bridgeman," added Leonard, handing in his empty cup. "It's uncommonly
good stuff. Oh! here's old Randie--come here, Randie."
Randie, clutched unceremoniously by the tail, and drawn over the
hearthrug, like any inanimate chattel, remonstrated with a growl and a
snap. He had never been over-fond of the master of Mount Royal, and
absence had not made his heart grow fonder.
"His temper hasn't improved," muttered Leonard, pushing the dog away
with his foot.
"His temper is always lovely when he's kindly treated," said Christabel,
making room for the dog in her low armchair, whereupon Randie insinuated
himself into that soft silken nest, and looked fondly up at his mistress
with his honest brown eyes.
"You should let me give you a Pomeranian instead of that ungainly
beast," said Leonard.
"No, thanks. Never any other dog while Randie lives. Randie is a person,
and he and I have a hundred ideas in common. I don't want a toy dog--a
dog that is only meant for show."
"Pomeranians are clever enough for anybody, and they are worth looking
at. I wouldn't waste my affection upon an ugly dog any more than I would
on an ugly woman."
"Randie is handsome in my eyes," said Christabel, caressing the
sheep-dog's grey muzzle.
"I'm through," said Mr. Tregonell, putting down his cup.
He affected Yankee phrases, and spoke with a Yankee twang. America and
the Americans had suited him, "down to the ground," as he called it.
Their decisive rapidity, that go-ahead spirit which charged life with a
kind of mental electricity--made life ever so much better worth living
than in the dull sleepy old world where every one was content with the
existing condition of things, and only desired to retain present
advantages. Leonard loved sport and adventure, action, variety. He was a
tyrant, and yet a democrat. He was quite willing to live on familiar
term with grooms and game-keepers--but not on equal terms. He must
always be master. As much good fellowship as they pleased--but they must
all knuckle under to him. He had been the noisy young autocrat of the
stable-yard and the saddle-room when he was still in Eton jackets. He
lived on the easiest terms with the guides and assistants of his
American travels, but he took care to make them feel that he was their
employer and, in his own language, "the biggest boss they were ever
likely to have to deal with." He paid them lavishly, and gave himself
the airs of a Prince--Prince Henry in the wild Falstaffian days, before
the charge of a kingdom taught him to be grave, yet with but too little
of Henry's gallant spirit and generous instincts.
Three years' travel, in Australia and America, had not exercised a
refining influence upon Leonard Tregonell's character or manners. Blind
as the mother's love might be, she had insight enough to perceive this,
and she acknowledged the fact to herself sadly. There are travellers and
travellers: some in whom a wild free life awakens the very spirit of
poetry itself--whom unrestrained intercourse with Nature elevates to
Nature's grander level--some whose mental power deepens and widens in
the solitude of forest or mountain, whose noblest instincts are awakened
by loneliness that seems to bring them nearer God. But Leonard Tregonell
was not a traveller of this type. Away from the restraints of
civilization--the conventional refinements and smoothings down of a
rough character--his nature coarsened and hardened. His love of killing
wild and beautiful things grew into a passion. He lived chiefly to hunt
and to slay, and had no touch of pity for those gracious creatures which
looked at their slaughterer reproachfully, with dim pathetic eyes--wide
with a wild surprise at man's cruelty. Constant intercourse with men
coarser and more ignorant than himself dragged him down little by little
to a lower grade than he had been born to occupy. In all the time that
he had been away he had hardly ever opened a book. Great books had been
written. Poets, historians, philosophers, theologians had given the
fruits of their meditations and their researches to the world, but never
an hour had Mr. Tregonell devoted to the study of human progress, to the
onward march of human thought. When he was within reach of newspapers he
read them industriously, and learnt from a stray paragraph how some
great scientific discovery in science, some brilliant success in art,
had been the talk of the hour; but neither art nor science interested
him. The only papers which he cared about were the sporting papers.
His travels for the most part had been in wild lonely regions, but even
in the short intervals that he had spent in cities he had shunned all
intellectual amusements. He had heard neither concerts nor lectures, and
had only affected the lowest forms of dramatic art. Most of his nights
had been spent in bar-rooms or groceries, playing faro, monte, poker,
euchre, and falling in pleasantly with whatever might be the most
popular form of gambling in that particular city.
And now he had come back to Mount Royal, having sown his wild oats, and
improved himself mentally and physically, as it was supposed by the
outside world, by extensive travel; and he was henceforward to reign in
his father's place, a popular country gentleman, honourable and
honoured, useful in his generation, a friend to rich and poor.
Nobody had any cause for complaint against him during the first few
weeks after his return. If his manners were rough and coarse, his
language larded with American slang, his conduct was unobjectionable. He
was affectionate to his mother, attentive in his free and easy way to
Christabel, civil to the old servants, and friendly to old friends. He
made considerable alterations in the stables, bought and sold and
swopped horses, engaged new underlings, acted in all out-of-door
arrangements as if the place were entirely his own, albeit his mother's
life-interest in the estate gave her the custody of everything. But his
mother was too full of gladness at his return to object to anything
that he did. She opened her purse-strings freely, although his tour had
been a costly business. Her income had accumulated in the less expensive
period of his boyhood, and she could afford to indulge his fancies.
He went about with Major Bree, looking up old acquaintances, riding over
every acre of the estate--lands which stretched far away towards
Launceston on one side, towards Bodmin on the other. He held forth
largely to the Major on the pettiness and narrowness of an English
landscape as compared with that vast continent in which the rivers are
as seas and the forests rank and gloomy wildernesses reaching to the
trackless and unknown. Sometimes Christabel was their companion in these
long rides, mounted on the thoroughbred which Mrs. Tregonell gave her on
that last too-happy birthday. The long rides in the sweet soft April air
brought health and brightness back to her pale cheeks. She was so
anxious to look well and happy for her aunt's sake, to cheer the widow's
fading life; but, oh! the unutterable sadness of that ever-present
thought of the aftertime, that unanswerable question as to what was to
become of her own empty days when this dear friend was gone.
Happy as Leonard seemed at Mount Royal in the society of his mother and
his cousin, he did not forego his idea of a month or so in London. He
went up to town soon after Easter, took rooms at an hotel near the
Haymarket, and gave himself up to a round of metropolitan pleasures
under the guidance of Captain Vandeleur, who had made the initiation of
provincial and inexperienced youth a kind of profession. He had a neat
way of finding out exactly how much money a young man had to dispose of,
present or contingent, and put him through it in the quickest possible
time and at the pleasantest pace; but he knew by experience that Leonard
had his own ideas about money, and was as keen as experience itself. He
would pay the current rate for his pleasures, and no more; and he had a
prudential horror of Jews, post-obits, and all engagements likely to
damage his future enjoyment of his estate. He was fond of play, but he
did not go in the way of losing large sums--"ponies" not "monkies" were
his favourite animals--and he did not care about playing against his
chosen friend.
"I like to have you on my side, Poker," he said amiably, when the
captain proposed a devilled bone and a hand at écarté after the play.
"You're a good deal too clever for a comfortable antagonist. You play
écarté with your other young friends, Poker, and I'll be your partner at
whist."
Captain Vandeleur, who by this time was tolerably familiar with the
workings of his friend's mind, never again suggested those quiet
encounters of skill which must inevitably have resulted to his
advantage, had Leonard been weak enough to accept the challenge. To have
pressed the question would have been to avow himself a sharper. He had
won money from his friend at blind hookey; but then at blind hookey all
men are equal--and Leonard had accepted the decree of fate; but he was
not the kind of man to let another man get the better of him in a series
of transactions. He was not brilliant, but he was shrewd and keen, and
had long ago made up his mind to get fair value for his money. If he
allowed Jack Vandeleur to travel at his expense, or dine and drink
daily at his hotel, it was not because Leonard was weakly generous, but
because Jack's company was worth the money. He would not have paid for a
pint of wine for a man who was dull, or a bore. At Mount Royal, of
course, he was obliged now and then to entertain bores. It was an
incident in his position as a leading man in the county--but here in
London he was free to please himself, and to give the cold shoulder to
uncongenial acquaintance.
Gay as town was, Mr. Tregonell soon tired of it upon this particular
occasion. After Epsom and Ascot his enjoyment began to wane. He had made
a round of the theatres--he had dined and supped, and played a good many
nights at those clubs which he and his friends most affected. He had
spent three evenings watching a great billiard match, and he found that
his thoughts went back to Mount Royal, and to those he had left
there--to Christabel, who had been very kind and sweet to him since his
home-coming; who had done much to make home delightful to him--riding
with him, playing and singing to him, playing billiards with him,
listening to his stories of travel--interested or seeming interested, in
every detail of that wild free life. Leonard did not know that
Christabel had done all this for her aunt's sake, in the endeavour to
keep the prodigal at home, knowing how the mother's peace and gladness
depended on the conduct of her son.
And now, in the midst of London dissipations, Leonard yearned for that
girlish companionship. It was dull enough, no doubt, that calm and
domestic life under the old roof-tree; but it had been pleasant to him,
and he had not wearied of it half so quickly as of this fret and fume,
and wear and tear of London amusements. Leonard began to think that his
natural bent was towards domesticity, and that, as Belle's
husband--there could be no doubt that she would accept him when the time
came for asking her--he would shine as a very estimable character, just
as his father had shone before him. He had questioned his mother
searchingly as to Belle's engagement to Mr. Angus Hamleigh, and was
inclined to be retrospectively jealous, and to hate that unknown rival
with a fierce hatred; nor did he fail to blame his mother for her folly
in bringing such a man to Mount Royal.
"How could I suppose that Belle would fall in love with him?" asked Mrs.
Tregonell, meekly. "I knew how attached she was to you."
"Attached? yes; but that kind of attachment means so little. She had
known me all her life. I was nobody in her estimation--no more than the
chairs and tables--and this man was a novelty; and again, what has a
girl to do in such an out-of-the-way place as this but fall in love with
the first comer; it is almost the only amusement open to her. You ought
to have known better than to have invited that fellow here, mother; you
knew that I meant to marry Belle. You ought to have guarded her for
me--kept off dangerous rivals. Instead of that you must needs go out of
your way to get that fellow here."
"You ought to have come home sooner, Leonard."
"That's nonsense. I was enjoying my life where I was. How could I
suppose you would be such a fool?"
"Don't say such hard things, Leonard. Think how lonely my life was. The
invitation to Mr. Hamleigh was not a new idea; I had asked him half a
dozen times before. I wanted to see him and know him for his father's
sake."
"His father's sake!--a man whom you loved better than ever you loved my
father, I dare say."
"No, Leonard, that is not true."
"You think not, perhaps, now my father is dead; but I dare say while he
was alive you were always regretting that other man. Nothing exalts a
man so much in a woman's mind as his dying. Look at the affection of
widows as compared with that of wives."
Mrs. Tregonell strove her hardest to convince her son that his cousin's
affections were now free--that it was his business to win her heart: but
Leonard complained that his mother had spoiled his chances--that all the
freshness of Christabel's feelings must have been worn off in an
engagement that had lasted nearly a year.
"She'll have me fast enough, I daresay," he said, with his easy,
confident air--that calm masculine consciousness of superiority, as of
one who talks of an altogether inferior creature; "all the faster,
perhaps, on account of having made a _fiasco_ of her first engagement. A
girl doesn't like to be pointed at as jilt or jilted. But I shall always
feel uncomfortable about this fellow, Hamleigh. I shall never be able
quite to believe in my wife."
"Leonard, how can you talk like that, you who know Christabel's high
principles."
"Yes, but I wanted to be sure that she had never cared for any one but
me; and you have spoiled my chances of that."
He stayed little more than a month in London, going back to Mount Royal
soon after Ascot, and while the June roses were still in their glory.
Brief as his absence had been, even his careless eye could see that his
mother had changed for the worse since their parting. The hollow cheek
had grown hollower, the languid eye more languid, the hand that clung so
fondly to his broad, brown palm, was thinner, and more waxen of hue.
His mother welcomed him with warmest love.
"My dearest one," she said, tenderly, "this is an unexpected delight.
It is so good of you to come back to me so soon. I want to have you with
me, dear, as much as possible--now."
"Why, mother?" he asked, kindly, for a dull pain in his breast seemed to
answer to these words of hers.
"Because I do not think it will be for long. I am very weak, dear. Life
seems to be slipping away from me; but there is no pain, no terror. I
feel as if I were being gently carried along a slow gliding stream to
some sheltered haven, which I can picture to myself, although I have
never seen it. I have only one care, Leonard, one anxiety, and that is
for your future happiness. I want your life to be full of joy, dearest,
and I want it to be a good life, like your father's."
"Yes, he was a good old buffer, wasn't he?" said Leonard. "Everybody
about here speaks well of him; but then, I daresay that's because he had
plenty of money, and wasn't afraid to spend it, and was an easy master,
and all that sort of thing, don't you know. That's a kind of goodness
which isn't very difficult for a man to practise."
"Your father was a Christian, Leonard--a sound, practical, Christian,
and he did his duty in every phase of life," answered the widow, half
proudly, half reproachfully.
"No doubt. All I say is, that it's uncommonly easy to be a Christian
under such circumstances."
"Your circumstances will be as easy, I trust, Leonard, and your
surroundings no less happy, if you win your cousin for your wife. And I
feel sure you will win her. Ask her soon, dear--ask her very soon--that
I may see you married to her before I die."
"You think she'll say yes, if I do? I don't want to precipitate matters,
and get snubbed for my pains."
"I think she will say yes. She must know how my heart is set upon this
marriage. It has been the dream of my life."
Despite his self-assurance--his fixed opinion as to his own personal and
social value--Leonard Tregonell hesitated a little at asking that
question which must certainly be one of the most solemn inquiries of a
man's life. His cousin had been all kindness and sweetness to him since
his return; yet in his inmost heart he knew that her regard for him was
at best of a calm, cousinly quality. He knew this, but he told himself
that if she were only willing to accept him as her husband, the rest
must follow. It would be his business to see that she was a good wife,
and in time she would grow fonder of him, no doubt. He meant to be an
indulgent husband. He would be very proud of her beauty, grace,
accomplishments. There was no man among his acquaintance who could boast
of such a charming wife. She should have her own way in everything: of
course, so long as her way did not run counter to his. She would be
mistress of one of the finest places in Cornwall, the house in which she
had been reared, and which she loved with that foolish affection which
cats, women, and other inferior animals feel for familiar habitations.
Altogether, as Mr. Tregonell told himself, in his simple and expressive
language, she would have a very good time, and it would be hard lines if
she were not grateful, and did not take kindly to him. Yet he hesitated
considerably before putting the crucial question; and at last took the
leap hurriedly, and not too judiciously, one lovely June morning, when
he and Christabel had gone for a long ride alone. They were not in the
habit of riding alone, and Major Bree was to have been their companion
upon this particular morning, but he had sent at the last moment to
excuse himself, on account of a touch of sciatica. They rode early,
leaving Mount Royal soon after eight, so as to escape the meridian sun.
The world was still fresh and dewy as they rode slowly up the hill, and
then down again into the lanes leading towards Camelford; and there was
that exquisite feeling of purity in the atmosphere which wears off as
the day grows older.
"My mother is looking rather seedy, Belle, don't you think," he began.
"She is looking very ill, Leonard. She has been ill for a long time. God
grant we may keep her with us a few years yet, but I am full of fear
about her. I go to her room every morning with an aching heart, dreading
what the night may have brought. Thank God, you came home when you did.
It would have been cruel to stay away longer."
"That's very good in you, Belle--uncommonly good--to talk about cruelty,
when you must know that it was your fault I stayed away so long."
"My fault? What had I to do with it?"
"Everything. I should have been home a year and a half ago--home last
Christmas twelvemonth. I had made all my plans with that intention, for
I was slightly home-sick in those days--didn't relish the idea of three
thousand miles of everlasting wet between me and those I loved--and I
was coming across the Big Drink as fast as a Cunard could bring me, when
I got mother's letter telling me of your engagement. Then I coiled up,
and made up my mind to stay in America till I'd done some big licks in
the sporting line."
"Why should that have influenced you?" Christabel asked, coldly.
"Why? Confound it! Belle, you know that without asking. You must know
that it wouldn't be over-pleasant for me to be living at Mount Royal
while you and your lover were spooning about the place. You don't
suppose I could quite have stomached that, do you--to see another man
making love to the girl I always meant to marry?--for you know, Belle,
I always did mean it. When you were in pinafores I made up my mind that
you were the future Mrs. Tregonell."
"You did me a great honour," said Belle, with an icy smile, "and I
suppose I ought to be very proud to hear it--now. Perhaps, if you had
told me your intention while I was in pinafores I might have grown up
with a due appreciation of your goodness. But you see, as you never said
anything about it, my life took another bent."
"Don't chaff, Belle," exclaimed Leonard, "I'm in earnest. I was
hideously savage when I heard that you had got yourself engaged to a man
whom you'd only known a week or two--a man who had led a racketty life
in London and Paris----"
"Stop," cried Christabel, turning upon him with flashing eyes, "I forbid
you to speak of him. What right have you to mention his name to me? I
have suffered enough, but that is an impertinence I will not endure. If
you are going to say another word about him I'll ride back to Mount
Royal as fast as my horse can carry me."
"And get spilt on the way. Why, what a spitfire you are, Belle. I had no
idea there was such a spice of the devil in you," said Leonard, somewhat
abashed by this rebuff. "Well I'll hold my tongue about him in future.
I'd much rather talk about you and me, and our prospects. What is to
become of you, Belle, when the poor mother goes? You and the doctor have
both made up your minds that she's not long for this world. For my own
part, I'm not such a croaker, and I've known many a creaking door
hanging a precious long time on its hinges. Still, it's well to be
prepared for the worst. Where is your life to be spent, Belle, when the
mater has sent in her checks?"
"Heaven knows," answered Christabel, tears welling up in her eyes, as
she turned her head from the questioner. "My life will be little worth
living when she is gone--but I daresay I shall go on living, all the
same. Sorrow takes such a long time to kill any one. I suppose Jessie
and I will go on the Continent, and travel from place to place, trying
to forget the old dear life among new scenes and new people."
"And nicely you will get yourself talked about," said Leonard, with that
unhesitating brutality which his friends called frankness--"a young and
handsome woman, without any male relative, wandering about the
Continent."
"I shall have Jessie."
"A paid companion--a vast protection she would be to you--about as much
as a Pomeranian dog, or a poll parrot."
"Then I can stay in England," answered Christabel, indifferently. "It
will matter very little where I live."
"Come, Belle," said Leonard, in a friendly, comfortable tone, laying his
broad strong hand on her horse's neck, as they rode slowly side by side
up the narrow road, between hedges filled with honeysuckle and
eglantine, "this is flying in the face of Providence, which has made you
young and handsome, and an heiress, in order that you might get the most
out of life. Is a young woman's life to come to an end all at once
because an elderly woman dies? That's rank nonsense. That's the kind of
way widows talk in their first edition of crape and caps. But they
don't mean it, my dear; or, say they think they mean it, they never hold
by it. That kind of widow is always a wife again before the second year
of her widowhood is over. And to hear you--not quite one-and-twenty, and
as fit as a fid--in the very zenith of your beauty," said Leonard,
hastily correcting the horsey turn of his compliment,--"to hear you talk
in that despairing way is too provoking. Come, Belle, be rational. Why
should you go wandering about Switzerland and Italy with a shrewish
little old maid like Jessie Bridgeman--when--when you can stay at Mount
Royal and be its mistress. I always meant you to be my wife, Belle, and
I still mean it--in spite of bygones."
"You are very good--very forgiving," said Christabel, with most
irritating placidity, "but unfortunately I never meant to be your wife
then--and I don't mean it now."
"In plain words, you reject me?"
"If you intend this for an offer, most decidedly," answered Christabel,
as firm as a rock. "Come, Leonard, don't look so angry; let us be
friends and cousins--almost brother and sister--as we have been in all
the years that are gone. Let us unite in the endeavour to make your dear
mother's life happy--so happy, that she may grow strong and well
again--restored by perfect freedom from care. If you and I were to
quarrel she would be miserable. We must be good friends always--if it
were only for her sake."
"That's all very well, Christabel, but a man's feelings are not so
entirely within his control as you seem to suppose. Do you think I shall
ever forget how you threw me over for a fellow you had only known a week
or so--and now, when I tell you how, from my boyhood, I have relied upon
your being my wife--always kept you in my mind as the one only woman who
was to bear my name, and sit at the head of my table, you coolly inform
me that it can never be? You would rather go wandering about the world
with a hired companion----"
"Jessie is not a hired companion--she is my very dear friend."
"You choose to call her so--but she came to Mount Royal in answer to an
advertisement, and my mother pays her wages, just like the housemaids.
You would rather roam about with Jessie Bridgeman, getting yourself
talked about at every table d'hôte in Europe--a prey for every Captain
Deuceace, or Loosefish, on the Continent--than you would be my wife, and
mistress of Mount Royal."
"Because nearly a year ago I made up my mind never to be any man's wife,
Leonard," answered Christabel, gravely. "I should hate myself if I were
to depart from that resolve."
"You mean that when you broke with Mr. Hamleigh you did not think there
was any one in the world good enough to stand in his shoes," said
Leonard, savagely. "And for the sake of a man who turned out so badly
that you were obliged to chuck him up, you refuse a fellow who has loved
you all his life."
Christabel turned her horse's head, and went homewards at a sharp trot,
leaving Leonard, discomfited, in the middle of the lane. He had nothing
to do but to trot meekly after her, afraid to go too fast, lest he
should urge her horse to a bolt, and managing at last to overtake her at
the bottom of a hill.
"Do find some grass somewhere, so that we may get a canter," she said;
and her cousin knew that there was to be no more conversation that
morning.