"I HAVE PUT MY DAYS AND MY DREAMS OUT OF MIND."
It was the end of May, when Christabel and her husband went back to
England and to Mount Royal. Leonard wanted to stay in London for the
season, and to participate in the amusements and dissipation of that
golden time; but this his wife most steadfastly refused. She would be
guilty of no act which could imply want of respect for her beloved dead.
She would not make her curtsy to her sovereign in her new character of a
matron, or go into society, within the year of her aunt's death.
"You will be horribly moped in Cornwall," remonstrated Leonard.
"Everything about the place will remind you of my poor mother. We shall
be in the dolefuls all the year."
"I would rather grieve for her, than forget her," answered Christabel.
"It is too easy to forget."
"Well, you must have your own way, I suppose. You generally do,"
retorted Leonard, churlishly; "and, after having dragged me about a lot
of mouldy old French towns, and made me look at churches, and Roman
baths, and the sites of ancient circuses, until I hated the very name of
antiquity, you will expect me to vegetate at Mount Royal for the next
six months."
"I don't see any reason why a quiet life should be mere vegetation,"
said Christabel; "but if you would prefer to spend part of the year in
London I can stay at Mount Royal."
"And get on uncommonly well without me," cried Leonard. "I perfectly
comprehend your meaning. But I am not going in for that kind of thing.
You and I must not offer the world another example of the semi-attached
couple; or else people might begin to say you had married a man you did
not care for."
"I will try and make your life as agreeable as I can at the Manor,
Leonard," Christabel answered, with supreme equanimity--it was an
aggravation to her husband that she so rarely lost her temper--"so long
as you do not ask me to fill the house with visitors, or to do anything
that might look like want of reverence for your mother's memory."
"Look!" ejaculated Leonard. "What does it matter how things look? We
both know that we are sorry for having lost her--that we shall miss her
more or less every day of our lives--visitors or no visitors. However,
you needn't invite any people. I can rub on with a little fishin' and
boatin'."
They went back to Mount Royal, where all things had gone as if by
clockwork during their absence, under Miss Bridgeman's sage
administration. To relieve her loneliness, Christabel had invited two of
the younger sisters from Shepherd's Bush to spend the spring months at
the Manor House--and these damsels--tall, vigorous, active--had revelled
exceedingly in all the luxuries and pleasures of a rural life under the
most advantageous circumstances. They had scoured the hills--had rifled
the hedges of their abundant wild flowers--had made friends with all
Christabel's chosen families in the surrounding cottages--had fallen in
love with the curate who was doing duty at Minster and Forrabury--had
been buffeted by the winds and tossed by the waves in many a delightful
boating excursion--had climbed the rocky steeps of Tintagel so often
that they seemed to know every stone of that ruined citadel--and now had
gone home to Shepherd's Bush, their cheeks bright with country bloom,
and their meagre trunks overshadowed by a gigantic hamper of country
produce.
Christabel felt a bitter pang as the carriage drew up to the porch, and
she saw the neat little figure in a black gown waiting to receive
her--thinking of that tall and noble form which should have stood
there--the welcoming arms which should have received her, rewarding and
blessing her for her self-sacrifice. The sacrifice had been made, but
death had swallowed up the blessing and reward: and in that intermediate
land of slumber where the widow lay there could be no knowledge of
gain--no satisfaction in the thought of her son's happiness: even
granting that Leonard was supremely happy in his marriage, a fact which
Christabel deemed open to doubt. No, there had been nothing gained,
except that Diana Tregonell's last days had been full of peace--her one
cherished hope realized on the very threshold of the tomb. Christabel
tried to take comfort from this knowledge.
"If I had denied her to the last, if she had died with her wish
ungratified, I think I should be still more sorry for her loss," she
told herself.
There was bitter pain in the return to a home where that one familiar
figure had been the central point, the very axis of life. Jessie led the
new Mrs. Tregonell into the panelled parlour, where every object was
arranged just as in the old days; the tea-table on the left of the wide
fireplace, the large low armchair and the book-table on the right. The
room was bright with white and crimson may, azaleas, tea-roses.
"I thought it was best for you to get accustomed to the rooms without
her," said Jessie, in a low voice, as she placed Christabel in the
widow's old chair, and helped to take off her hat and mantle, "and I
thought you would not like anything changed."
"Not for worlds. The house is a part of her, in my mind. It was she who
planned everything as it now is--just adding as many new things as were
needful to brighten the old. I will never alter a detail unless I am
absolutely obliged."
"I am so thankful to hear you say that. Major Bree is coming to dinner.
He wanted to be among the first to welcome you. I hope you don't mind my
having told him he might come."
"I shall be very glad to see him: he is a part of my old life here. I
hope he is very well."
"Splendid--the soul of activity and good temper. I can't tell you how
good he was to my sisters--taking them about everywhere. I believe they
both went away deeply in love with him; or at least, with their
affections divided between him and Mr. Ponsonby."
Mr. Ponsonby was the curate, a bachelor, and of pleasing appearance.
Leonard had submitted reluctantly to the continued residence of Miss
Bridgeman at Mount Royal. He had been for dismissing her, as a natural
consequence of his mother's death; but here again Christabel had been
firm.
"Jessie is my only intimate friend," she said, "and she is associated
with every year of my girlhood. She shall be no trouble to you, Leonard,
and she will help me to save your money."
This last argument had a softening effect. Mr. Tregonell knew that
Jessie Bridgeman was a good manager. He had affected to despise her
economies while it was his mother's purse which was spared; but now that
the supplies were drawn from his own resources he was less disposed to
be contemptuous of care in the administrator of his household.
Major Bree was in the drawing-room when Christabel came down dressed for
dinner, looking delicately lovely in her flowing gown of soft dull
black, with white flowers and white crape about her neck. The Major's
cheerful presence did much to help Mr. Tregonell and his wife through
that first dinner at Mount Royal. He had so many small local events to
tell them about, news too insignificant to be recorded in Jessie's
letters, but not without interest for Christabel, who loved place and
people. Then after dinner he begged his hostess to play, declaring that
he had not heard any good music during her absence, and Christabel, who
had cultivated her musical talents assiduously in every interval of
loneliness and leisure which had occurred in the course of her bridal
tour, was delighted to play to a listener who could understand and
appreciate the loftiest flights in harmony.
The Major was struck with the improvement in her style. She had always
played sweetly, but not with this breadth and power.
"You must have worked very hard in these last few months," he said.
"Yes, I made the best use of every opportunity. I had some lessons from
a very clever German professor at Nice. Music kept me from brooding on
my loss," she added, in a low voice.
"I hope you will not grow less industrious now you have come home," said
the Major. "Most women give Mozart and Beethoven to the winds when they
marry, shut up their piano altogether, or at most aspire to play a waltz
for their children's dancing."
"I shall not be one of those. Music will be my chief pursuit--now."
The Major felt that although this was a very proper state of things
from an artistic point of view, it argued hardly so well for the chances
of matrimonial bliss. That need of a pursuit after marriage indicated a
certain emptiness in the existence of the wife. A life closed and
rounded in the narrow circle of a wedding ring hardly leaves room for
the assiduous study of art.
And now began for Christabel a life which seemed to her to be in some
wise a piece of mechanism, an automatic performance of daily recurring
duties, an hourly submission to society which had no charm for her--a
life which would have hung as heavily upon her spirit as the joyless
monotony of a convict prison, had it not been for the richness of her
own mental resources, and her love of the country in which she lived.
She could not be altogether unhappy roaming with her old friend Jessie
over those wild romantic hills, or facing the might of that tremendous
ocean, grand and somewhat awful even in its calmest aspect. Nor was she
unhappy seated in her own snug morning-room among the books she
loved--books which were always opening new worlds of thought and wonder,
books of such inexhaustible interest that she was often inclined to
give way to absolute despair at the idea of how much of this world's
wisdom must remain unexplored even at the end of a long life. De Quincey
has shown by figures that not the hardest reader can read half the good
old books that are worth reading; to say nothing of those new books
daily claiming to be read.
No, for a thoroughly intellectual woman, loving music, loving the
country, tender and benevolent to the poor, such a life as Christabel
was called upon to lead in this first year of marriage could not be
altogether unhappy. Here were two people joined by the strongest of all
human ties, and yet utterly unsympathetic; but they were not always in
each other's company, and when they were together the wife did her best
to appear contented with her lot, and to make life agreeable to her
husband. She was more punctilious in the performance of every duty she
owed him than she would have been had she loved him better. She never
forgot that his welfare was a charge which she had taken upon herself to
please the kinswoman to whom she owed so much. The debt was all the
more sacred since she to whom it was due had passed away to the land
where there is no knowledge of earthly conduct.
The glory of summer grew and faded, the everlasting hills changed with
all the varying lights and shadows of autumn and winter; and in the
tender early spring, when all the trees were budding, and the hawthorn
hedges were unfolding crinkly green leaves among the brown, Christabel's
heart melted with the new strange emotion of maternal love. A son was
born to the lord of the manor; and while all Boscastle rejoiced at this
important addition to the population, Christabel's pale face shone with
a new radiance, as the baby-face looked up at her from the pillow by her
side--eyes clear and star-like, with a dreamy, far-away gaze, which was
almost more lovely than the recognizing looks of older eyes--a being
hardly sentient of the things of earth, but bright with memories of the
spirit world.
The advent of this baby-boy gave a new impulse to Christabel's life. She
gave herself up to these new cares and duties with intense devotion;
and for the next six months of her life was so entirely engrossed by her
child that Leonard considered himself neglected. She deferred her
presentation at Court till the next season, and Leonard was compelled to
be satisfied with an occasional brief holiday in London, during which he
naturally relapsed into the habits of his bachelor days--dined and gamed
at the old clubs, and went about everywhere with his friend and ally,
Jack Vandeleur.
Christabel had been married two years, and her boy was a year old, when
she went back to the old house in Bolton Row with her husband, to enjoy
her second season of fashionable pleasures. How hard it was to return,
under such altered circumstances, to the rooms in which she had been so
happy--to see everything unchanged except her own life. The very chairs
and tables seemed to be associated with old joys, old griefs. All the
sharp agony of that bitter day on which she had made up her mind to
renounce Angus Hamleigh came back to her as she looked round the room in
which the pain had been suffered. The flavour of old memories was mixed
with all the enjoyments of the present. The music she heard this year
was the same music they two had heard together. And here was this
smiling Park, all green leaves and sunlight, filled with this seeming
frivolous crowd; in almost every detail the scene they two had
contemplated, amused and philosophical, four years ago.
The friends who called on her and invited her now, were the same people
among whom she had visited during her first season. People who had been
enraptured at her engagement to Mr. Hamleigh were equally delighted at
her marriage with her cousin, or at least said so; albeit, more than one
astute matron drove away from Bolton Row sighing over the folly of
marriage between first cousins, and marvelling that Christabel's baby
was not deaf, blind, or idiotic.
Among other old acquaintance, young Mrs. Tregonell met the Dowager Lady
Cumberbridge, at a great dinner, more Medusa-like than ever, in a curly
auburn wig after Madame de Montespan, and a diamond coronet. Christabel
shrank from the too-well-remembered figure with a faint shudder; but
Lady Cumberbridge swooped upon her like an elderly hawk, when the ladies
were on their way back to the drawing-room, and insisted upon being
friendly.
"My dear child, where have you been hiding yourself all these years?"
she exclaimed, in her fine baritone. "I saw your marriage in the papers,
and your poor aunt's death; and I was expecting to meet you and your
husband in society last season. You didn't come to town? A baby, I
suppose? Just so! Those horrid babies! In the coming century there will
be some better arrangement for carrying on the species. How well you are
looking, and your husband is positively charming. He sat next me at
dinner, and we were friends in a moment. How proud he is of you! It is
quite touching to see a man so devoted to his wife; and now"--they were
in the subdued light of the drawing-room by this time, light judiciously
tempered by ruby-coloured Venetian glass--"now tell me all about my poor
friend. Was she long ill?"
And, with a ghoulish interest in horrors, the dowager prepared herself
for a detailed narration of Mrs. Tregonell's last illness; but
Christabel could only falter out a few brief sentences. Even now she
could hardly speak of her aunt without tears; and it was painful to talk
of her to this worldly dowager, with keen eyes glittering under
penthouse brows, and a hard, eager mouth.
* * * * *
In all that London season, Christabel only once heard her old lover's
name, carelessly mentioned at a dinner party. He was talked of as a
guest at some diplomatic dinner at St. Petersburg, early in the year.