"AND PALE FROM THE PAST WE DRAW NIGH THEE."
It was October, and the chestnut leaves were falling slowly and heavily
in the park at Mount Royal, the oaks upon the hill side were faintly
tinged with bronze and gold, while the purple bloom of the heather and
the yellow flower of the gorse were seen in rarer patches amidst the
sober tints of autumn. It was the time at which to some eyes this
Cornish coast was most lovely, with a subdued poetic loveliness--a
dreamy beauty touched with tender melancholy.
Mount Royal was delightful at this season. Liberal fires in all the
rooms filled the old oak panelled house with a glow of colour, and a
sense of ever-present warmth that was very comfortable after the
sharpness of October breezes. Those greenhouses and hot-house, which had
been for so many years Mrs. Tregonell's perpetual care, now disgorged
their choicest contents. Fragile white and yellow asters, fairy-like
ferns, Dijon roses, lilies of the valley, stephanotis, mignonette, and
Cape jasmine filled the rooms with perfume. Modern blinds of diapered
crimson and grey subdued the light of those heavily mullioned windows
which had been originally designed with a view to strength and
architectural effect, rather than to the admission of the greatest
possible amount of daylight. The house at this season of the year seemed
made for warmth, so thick the walls, so heavily curtained the windows;
just as in the height of summer it seemed made for coolness. Christabel
had respected all her aunt's ideas and prejudices: nothing had been
changed since Mrs. Tregonell's death--save for that one sad fact that
she was gone. The noble matronly figure, the handsome face, the kindly
smile were missing from the house where the widow had so long reigned,
an imperious but a beneficent mistress--having her own way in all
things, but always considerate of other people's happiness and comfort.
Mr. Tregonell was inclined to be angry with his wife sometimes for her
religious adherence to her aunt's principles and opinions in things
great and small.
"You are given over body and soul to my poor mother's fads," he said.
"If it had not been for you I should have turned the house out of
windows when she was gone--got rid of all the worm-eaten furniture,
broken out new windows, and let in more light. One feels half asleep in
a house where there is nothing but shadow and the scent of hot-house
flowers. I should have given _carte blanche_ to some London man--the
fellow who writes verses, and who invented the storks and sunflower
style of decoration--and have let him refurnish the saloon and
music-room, pitch out a library which nobody reads, and substitute half
a dozen dwarf book-cases in gold and ebony, filled with brightly bound
books, and with Japanese jars and bottles on the top of them to give
life and colour to the oak panelling. I hate a gloomy house."
"Oh, Leonard, you surely would not call Mount Royal gloomy!"
"But I do: I hate a house that smells of one's ancestors."
"Just now you objected to the scent of the flowers."
"You are always catching me up--there was never such a woman to
argue--but I mean what I say. The smell is a combination of stephanotis
and old bones. I wish you would let me build you a villa at Torquay or
Dartmouth. I think I should prefer Dartmouth: it's a better place for
yachting."
"You are very kind, but I would rather live at Mount Royal than anywhere
else. Remember I was brought up here."
"A reason for your being heartily sick of the house--as I am. But I
suppose in your case there are associations--sentimental associations."
"The house is filled with memories of my second mother!"
"Yes--and there are other memories--associations which you love to nurse
and brood upon. I think I know all about it--can read up your feelings
to a nicety."
"You can think and say what you please, Leonard," she answered, looking
at him with unaltered calmness, "but you will never make me disown my
love of this place, and its surroundings. You will never make me ashamed
of being fond of the home in which I have spent my life."
"I begin to think there is very little shame in you," Leonard muttered
to himself, as he walked away.
He had said many bitter words to his wife--had aimed many a venomed
arrow at her breast--but he had never made her blush, and he had never
made her cry. There were times when a dull hopeless anger consumed
him--anger against her--against Nature--against Fate--and when his only
relief was to be found in harsh and bitter speech, in dark and sullen
looks. It would have been a greater relief to him if his shots had gone
home--if his brutality had elicited any sign of distress. But in this
respect Christabel was heroic. She who had never harboured an ungenerous
thought was moved only to a cold calm scorn by the unjust and ungenerous
conduct of her husband. Her contempt was too thorough for the
possibility of resentment. Once, and once only, she attempted to reason
with a fool in his folly.
"Why do you make these unkind speeches, Leonard?" she asked, looking at
him with those calm eyes before which his were apt to waver and look
downward, hardly able to endure that steady gaze. "Why are you always
harping upon the past--as if it were an offence against you? Is there
anything that you have to complain of in my conduct--have I given you
any cause for anger?"
"Oh, no, none. You are simply perfect as a wife--everybody says so--and
in the multitude of counsellors, you know. But it is just possible for
perfection to be a trifle cold and unapproachable--to keep a man at
arm's length--and to have an ever-present air of living in the past
which is galling to a husband who would like--well--a little less
amiability, and a little more affection. By Heaven, I wouldn't mind my
wife being a devil, if I knew she was fond of me. A spitfire, who would
kiss me one minute and claw me the next, would be better than the calm
superiority which is always looking over my head."
"Leonard, I don't think I have been wanting in affection. You have done
a great deal to repel my liking--yes--since you force me to speak
plainly--you have made my duty as a wife more difficult than it need
have been. But, have I ever forgotten that you are my husband, and the
father of my child? Is there any act of my life which has denied or made
light of your authority? When you asked me to marry you I kept no
secrets from you: I was perfectly frank."
"Devilish frank," muttered Leonard.
"You knew that I could not feel for you as I had felt for another. These
things can come only once in a lifetime. You were content to accept my
affection--my obedience--knowing this. Why do you make what I told you
then a reproach against me now?"
He could not dispute the justice of this reproof.
"Well, Christabel, I was wrong, I suppose. It would have been more
gentlemanlike to hold my tongue. I ought to know that your first
girlish fancy is a thing of the past--altogether gone and done with. It
was idiotic to harp upon that worn-out string, wasn't it?" he asked,
laughing awkwardly; "but when a man feels savage he must hit out at some
one."
This was the only occasion on which husband and wife had ever spoken
plainly of the past; but Leonard let fly those venomed arrows of his on
the smallest provocation. He could not forget that his wife had loved
another man better than she had ever loved or even pretended to love
him. It was her candour which he felt most keenly. Had she been willing
to play the hypocrite, to pretend a little, he would have been ever so
much better pleased.
To the outside world, even to that narrow world which encircles an old
family seat in the depths of the country, Mr. and Mrs. Tregonell
appeared a happy couple, whose union was the most natural thing in the
world, yet not without a touch of that romance which elevates and
idealizes a marriage.
Were they not brought up under the same roof, boy and girl together,
like, and yet not like, brother and sister. How inevitable that they
must become devotedly attached. That little episode of Christabel's
engagement to another man counted for nothing. She was so young--had
never questioned her own heart. Her true love was away--and she was
flattered by the attention of a man of the world like Angus
Hamleigh--and so, and so--almost unawares, perhaps, she allowed herself
to be engaged to him, little knowing the real bent of his character and
the gulf into which she was about to plunge: for in the neighbourhood of
Mount Royal it was believed that a man who had once lived as Mr.
Hamleigh had lived was a soul lost for ever, a creature given over to
ruin in this world and the next. There was no hopefulness in the local
mind for the after career of such an offender.
At this autumn season, when Mount Royal was filled with visitors, all
intent upon taking life pleasantly, it would have been impossible for a
life to seem more prosperous and happy to the outward eye than that of
Christabel Tregonell. The centre of a friendly circle, the ornament of a
picturesque and perfectly appointed house, the mother of a lovely boy
whom she worshipped, with the overweening love of a young mother for her
firstborn--admired, beloved by all her little world, with a husband who
was proud of her and indulgent to her--who could deny that Mrs.
Tregonell was a person to be envied.
Mrs. Fairfax Torrington, a widow, with a troublesome son, and a limited
income--an income whose narrow boundary she was continually
over-stepping--told her hostess as much one morning when the men were
all out on the hills in the rain, and the women made a wide circle round
the library fire, some of them intent upon crewel work, others not even
pretending to be industrious, the faithful Randie lying at his
mistress's feet, as she sat in her favourite chair by the old carved
chimney-piece--the chair which had been her aunt Diana's for so many
peaceful years.
"There is a calmness--an assured tranquillity about your life which
makes me hideously envious," said Mrs. Fairfax Torrington, waving the
Society paper which she had been using as a screen against the fire,
after having read the raciest of its paragraphs aloud, and pretended to
be sorry for the dear friends at whom the censor's airy shafts were
aimed. "I have stayed with duchesses and with millionaires--but I never
envied either. The duchess is always dragged to death by the innumerable
claims upon her time, her money, and her attention. Her life is very
little better than the fate of that unfortunate person who stabbed one
of the French Kings--forty wild horses pulling forty different ways. It
doesn't make it much better because the horses are called by pretty
names, don't you know. Court, friends, flower-shows, balls, church,
opera, Ascot, fancy fairs, seat in Scotland, place in Yorkshire, Baden,
Monaco. It is the pull that wears one out, the dreadful longing to be
allowed to sit in one's own room by one's own fire, and rest. I know
what it is in my small way, so I have always rather pitied duchesses. At
a millionaire's house one is inevitably bored. There is an insufferable
glare and glitter of money in everything, unpleasantly accentuated by
an occasional blot of absolute meanness. No, Mrs. Tregonell," pursued
the agreeable rattle, "I don't envy duchesses or millionaires' wives:
but your existence seems to me utterly enviable, so tranquil and easy a
life, in such a perfect house, with the ability to take a plunge into
the London vortex whenever you like, or to stay at home if you prefer
it, a charming husband, an ideal baby, and above all that sweet equable
temperament of yours, which would make life easy under much harder
circumstances. Don't you agree with me, now, Miss Bridgeman?"
"I always agree with clever people," answered Jessie, calmly.
Christabel went on with her work, a quiet smile upon her beautiful lips.
Mrs. Torrington was one of those gushing persons to whom there was no
higher bliss, after eating and drinking, than the indulgence in that
lively monologue which she called conversation, and a happy facility for
which rendered her, in her own opinion, an acquisition in any
country-house.
"The general run of people are so dull," she would remark in her
confidential moments; "there are so few who can talk, without being
disgustingly egotistical. Most people's idea of conversation is
autobiography in instalments. I have always been liked for my high
spirits and flow of conversation."
High spirits at forty-five are apt to pall, unless accompanied by the
rare gift of wit. Mrs. Torrington was not witty, but she had read a good
deal of light literature, kept a commonplace book, and had gone through
life believing herself a Sheridan or a Sidney Smith, in petticoats.
"A woman's wit is like dancing in fetters," she complained sometimes:
"there are so many things one must not say!"
Christabel was more than content that her acquaintance should envy her.
She wished to be thought happy. She had never for a moment posed as
victim or martyr. In good faith, and with steady purpose of well-doing,
she had taken upon herself the duties of a wife, and she meant to fulfil
them to the uttermost.
"There shall be no shortcoming on my side," she said to herself. "If we
cannot live peaceably and happily together it shall not be my fault. If
Leonard will not let me respect him as a husband, I can still honour him
as my boy's father."
In these days of fashionable agnosticism and hysterical devotion--when
there is hardly any middle path between life spent in church and
church-work and the open avowal of unbelief--something must be said in
favour of that old-fashioned sober religious feeling which enabled
Christabel Tregonell to walk steadfastly along the difficult way, her
mind possessed with the ever-present belief in a Righteous Judge who saw
all her acts and knew all her thoughts.
She studied her husband's pleasure in all things--yielding to him upon
every point in which principle was not at stake. The house was filled
with friends of his choosing--not one among those guests, in spite of
their surface pleasantness, being congenial to a mind so simple and
unworldly, so straight and thorough, as that of Christabel Tregonell.
Without Jessie Bridgeman, Mrs. Tregonell would have been companionless
in a house full of people. The vivacious widow, the slangy young
ladies, with a marked taste for billiards and shooting parties, and an
undisguised preference for masculine society, thought their hostess
behind the age. It was obvious that she was better informed than they,
had been more carefully educated, played better, sang better, was more
elegant and refined in every thought, and look, and gesture; but, in
spite of all these advantages, or perhaps on account of them, she was
"slow:" not an easy person to get on with. Her gowns were simply
perfect--but she had no _chic_. _Nous autres_, with ever so much less
money to spend on our toilettes, look more striking--stand out better
from the ruck. An artificial rose here--a rag of old lace--a fan--a
vivid ribbon in the mazes of our hair--and the effect catches every
eye--while poor Mrs. Tregonell, with her lovely complexion, and a gown
that is obviously Parisian, is comparatively nowhere.
This is what the Miss Vandeleurs--old campaigners--told each other as
they dressed for dinner, on the second day after their arrival at Mount
Royal. Captain Vandeleur--otherwise Poker Vandeleur, from a supposed
natural genius for that intellectual game--was Mr. Tregonell's old
friend and travelling companion. They had shared a good deal of sport,
and not a little hardship in the Rockies--had fished, and shot, and
toboggined in Canada--had played euchre in San Francisco, and monte in
Mexico--and, in a word, were bound together by memories and tastes in
common. Captain Vandeleur, like Byron's Corsair, had one virtue amidst
many shortcomings. He was an affectionate brother, always glad to do a
good turn to his sisters--who lived with a shabby old half-pay father,
in one of the shabbiest streets in the debatable land between Pimlico
and Chelsea--by courtesy, South Belgravia. Captain Vandeleur rarely had
it in his power to do much for his sisters himself--a five-pound note at
Christmas or a bonnet at Midsummer was perhaps the furthest stretch of
his personal benevolence--but he was piously fraternal in his readiness
to victimize his dearest friend for the benefit of Dopsy and
Mopsy--these being the poetic pet names devised to mitigate the dignity
of the baptismal Adolphine and Margaret. When Jack Vandeleur had a
pigeon to pluck, he always contrived that Dopsy and Mopsy should get a
few of the feathers. He did not take his friends home to the shabby
little ten-roomed house in South Belgravia--such a nest would have too
obviously indicated his affinity to the hawk tribe--but he devised some
means of bringing Mopsy and Dopsy and his married friends together. A
box at the Opera--stalls for the last burlesque--a drag for Epsom or
Ascot--or even afternoon tea at Hurlingham--and the thing was done. The
Miss Vandeleurs never failed to improve the occasion. They had a genius
for making their little wants known, and getting them supplied. The
number of their gloves--the only shop in London at which wearable gloves
could be bought--how naïvely these favourite themes for girlish converse
dropped from their cherry lips. Sunshades, fans, lace, flowers,
perfumery--all these luxuries of the toilet were for the most part
supplied to Dopsy and Mopsy from this fortuitous source.
Some pigeons lent themselves more kindly to the plucking than others;
and the Miss Vandeleurs had long ago discovered that it was not the
wealthiest men who were most lavish. Given a gentleman with a settled
estate of fourteen thousand a year, and the probabilities were that he
would not rise above a dozen gloves or a couple of bouquets. It was the
simple youth who had just come into five or ten thousand, and had
nothing but the workhouse ahead of him when that was gone, who spent his
money most freely. It is only the man who is steadfastly intent upon
ruining himself, who ever quite comes up to the feminine idea of
generosity. The spendthrift, during his brief season of fortune, leads a
charmed life. For him it is hardly a question whether gloves cost five
or ten shillings a pair--whether stephanotis is in or out of season. He
offers his tribute to beauty without any base scruples of economy. What
does it matter to him whether ruin comes a few months earlier by reason
of this lavish liberality, seeing that the ultimate result is
inevitable.
With the Miss Vandeleurs Leonard Tregonell ranked as an old friend. They
had met him at theatres and races; they had been invited to little
dinners at which he was host. Jack Vandeleur had a special genius for
ordering a dinner, and for acting as guide to a man who liked dining in
the highways and byways of London; it being an understood thing that
Captain Vandeleur's professional position as counsellor exempted him
from any share in the reckoning. Under his fraternal protection, Dopsy
and Mopsy had dined snugly in all manner of foreign restaurants, and had
eaten and drunk their fill at Mr. Tregonell's expense. They were both
gourmands, and they were not ashamed of enjoying the pleasures of the
table. It seemed to them that the class of men who could not endure to
see a woman eat had departed with Byron, and Bulwer, and D'Orsay, and De
Musset. A new race has arisen, which likes a "jolly" girl who can
appreciate a _recherché_ dinner, and knows the difference between good
and bad wine.
Mr. Tregonell did not yield himself up a victim to the fascinations of
either Dopsy or Mopsy. He had seen too much of that class of beauty
during his London experiences, to be caught by the auricomous tangles of
one or the flaxen fringe of the other. He talked of them to their
brother as nice girls, with no nonsense about them; he gave them gloves,
and dinners, and stalls for "Madame Angot;" but his appreciation took no
higher form.
"It would have been a fine thing for one of you if you could have hooked
him," said their brother, as he smoked a final pipe, between midnight
and morning, in the untidy little drawing-room in South Belgravia, after
an evening with Chaumont. "He's a heavy swell in Cornwall, I can tell
you. Plenty of money--fine old place. But there's a girl down there he's
sweet upon--a cousin. He's very close; but I caught him kissing and
crying over her photograph one night in the Rockies--when our rations
had run short, and two of our horses gone dead, and our best guide was
down with ague, and there was an idea that we'd lost our track, and
should never see England again. That's the only time I ever saw
Tregonell sentimental. 'I'm not afraid of death,' he said, 'but I should
like to live to see home again, for her sake;' and he showed me the
photo--a sweet, fresh, young face, smiling at us with a look of home and
home-affection, and we poor beggars not knowing if we should ever see a
woman's face again."
"If you knew he was in love with his cousin, what's the use of talking
about his marrying us?" asked Mopsy petulantly, speaking of herself and
her sister as if they were a firm.
"Oh, there's no knowing," answered Jack, coolly, as he puffed at his
meerschaum. "A man may change his mind. Girls with your experience ought
to be able to twist a fellow round your little finger. But though you're
deuced keen at getting things out of men, you're uncommonly slow at
bringing down your bird."
"Look at our surroundings," said Dopsy bitterly. "Could we ever dare to
bring a man here; and it is in her own home that a man gets fond of a
girl."
"Well, a fellow would have to be very far gone to stand this," Captain
Vandeleur admitted, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he glanced round
the room, with its blotchy paper, and smoky ceiling, its tawdry
chandelier, and dilapidated furniture, flabby faded covers to chairs and
sofa, side-table piled with shabby books and accumulated newspapers,
the half-pay father's canes and umbrellas in the corner, his ancient
slippers by the fender, his easy-chair, with its morocco cover indented
with the greasy imprint of his venerable shoulders, and over all the
rank odours of yesterday's dinner and stale tobacco-smoke.
"A man in the last stage of spooniness will stand anything--you remember
the opening chapter of 'Wilhelm Meister?'" said Captain Jack,
meditatively--"but he'd need be very far gone to stand _this_," he
repeated, with conviction.
Six months after this conversation, Mopsy read to Dopsy the announcement
of Mr. Tregonell's marriage with the Cornish cousin.
"We shall never see any more of him, you may depend," said Dopsy, with
the air of pronouncing an elegy on the ingratitude of man. But she was
wrong, for two years later Leonard Tregonell was knocking about town
again, in the height of the season, with Poker Vandeleur, and the course
of his diversions included a little dinner given to Dopsy and Mopsy at a
choice Italian restaurateur's not very far from South Belgravia.
They both made themselves as agreeable as in them lay. He was married.
All matrimonial hopes in that quarter were blighted. But marriage need
not prevent his giving them dinners and stalls for the play, or being a
serviceable friend to their brother.
"Poor Jack's friends are his only reliable income," said Mopsy. "He had
need hold them fast."
Mopsy put on her lively Madame Chaumont manner, and tried to amuse the
Benedict. Dopsy was graver, and talked to him about his wife.
"She must be very sweet," she said, "from Jack's account of her."
"Why, he's never seen her," exclaimed Mr. Tregonell, looking puzzled.
"No; but you showed him her photograph once in the Rockies. Jack never
forgot it."
Leonard was pleased at this tribute to his good taste.
"She's the loveliest woman I ever saw, though she is my wife," he said;
"and I'm not ashamed to say I think so."
"How I should like to know her," sighed Dopsy; "but I'm afraid she
seldom comes to London."
"That makes no difference," answered Leonard, warmed into exceptional
good humour by the soft influences of Italian cookery and Italian wines.
"Why should not you both come to Mount Royal? I want Jack to come for
the shooting. He can bring you, and you'll be able to amuse my wife,
while he and I are out on the hills."
"It would be quite too lovely, and we should like it of all things; but
do you think Mrs. Tregonell would be able to get on with us?" asked
Dopsy, diffidently.
It was not often she and her sister were asked to country houses. They
were both fluttered at the idea, and turned their thoughts inward for a
mental review of their wardrobes.
"We _could_ do it," decided Mopsy, "with a little help from Jack."
Nothing more was said about the visit that night, but a month later,
when Leonard had gone back to Mount Royal, a courteous letter from Mrs.
Tregonell to Miss Vandeleur confirmed the Squire's invitation, and the
two set out for the West of England under their brother's wing,
rejoicing at this stroke of good luck. Christabel had been told that
they were nice girls, just the kind of girls to be useful in a country
house--girls who had very few opportunities of enjoying life, and to
whom any kindness would be a charity--and she had done her husband's
bidding without an objection of any kind. But when the two damsels
appeared at Mount Royal tightly sheathed in sage-green merino, with limp
little capes on their shoulders, and picturesque hats upon picturesque
heads of hair, Mrs. Tregonell's heart failed her at the idea of a month
spent in such company. Without caring a straw for art, without knowing
more of modern poetry than the names of the poets and the covers of
their books, Mopsy and Dopsy had been shrewd enough to discover that for
young women with narrow means the æsthetic style of dress was by far the
safest fashion. Stuff might do duty for silk--a sunflower, if it were
only big enough, might make as startling an effect as a blaze of
diamonds--a rag of limp tulle or muslin serve instead of costly
lace--hair worn after the ideal suffice instead of expensive headgear,
and home dressmaking pass current for originality. Christabel speedily
found, however, that these damsels were not exacting in the matter of
attention from herself. So long as they were allowed to be with the men
they were happy. In the billiard-room, or the tennis-court, in the old
Tudor hall, which was Leonard's favourite _tabagie_, in the saddle-room,
or the stable-yard, on the hills, or on the sea, wherever the men would
suffer their presence, Dopsy and Mopsy were charmed to be. On those rare
occasions when the out-of-door party was made up without them they sat
about the drawing-room in hopeless, helpless idleness--turning over
yesterday's London papers, or stumbling through German waltzes on the
iron-framed Kirkman grand, which had been Leonard's birthday gift to his
wife. At their worst the Miss Vandeleurs gave Christabel very little
trouble, for they felt curiously shy in her society. She was not of
their world. They had not one thought or one taste in common. Mrs.
Torrington, who insisted upon taking her hostess under her wing, was a
much more troublesome person. The Vandeleur girls helped to amuse
Leonard, who laughed at their slang and their mannishness, and who
liked the sound of girlish voices in the house--albeit those voices were
loud and vulgar. They made themselves particularly agreeable to Jessie
Bridgeman, who declared that she took the keenest interest in them--as
natural curiosities.
"Why should we pore over moths and zoophytes, and puzzle our brains with
long Greek and Latin names," demanded Jessie, "when our own species
affords an inexhaustible variety of creatures, all infinitely
interesting. These Vandeleur girls are as new to me as if they had
dropped from Mars or Saturn."
Life, therefore, to all outward seeming, went very pleasantly at Mount
Royal. A perfectly appointed house in which money is spent lavishly can
hardly fail to be agreeable to those casual inmates who have nothing to
do with its maintenance. To Dopsy and Mopsy Mount Royal was a
terrestrial paradise. They had never imagined an existence so entirely
blissful. This perfumed atmosphere--this unfailing procession of
luxurious meals--no cold mutton to hang on hand--no beggarly mutation
from bacon to bloater and bloater to bacon at breakfast-time--no wolf at
the door.
"To think that money can make all this difference," exclaimed Mopsy, as
she sat with Dopsy on a heather-covered knoll waiting for the shooters
to join them at luncheon, while the servants grouped themselves
respectfully a little way off with the break and horses. "Won't it be
too dreadful to have to go home again?"
"Loathsome!" said Dopsy, whose conversational strength consisted in the
liberal use of about half a dozen vigorous epithets.
"I wish there were some rich young men staying here, that one might get
a chance of promotion."
"Rich men never marry poor girls," answered Mopsy, dejectedly, "unless
the girl is a famous beauty or a favourite actress. You and I are
nothing. Heaven only knows what is to become of us when the pater dies.
Jack will never be able to give us free quarters. We shall have to go
out as shop girls. We're a great deal too ignorant for governesses."
"I shall go on the stage," said Dopsy, with decision. "I may not be
handsome--but I can sing in tune, and my feet and ankles have always
been my strong point. All the rest is leather and prunella, as
Shakespeare says."
"I shall engage myself to Spiers and Pond," said Mopsy. "It must be a
more lively life, and doesn't require either voice or ankles--which
I"--rather vindictively--"do not possess. Of course Jack won't like
it--but I can't help that."
Thus, in the face of all that is loveliest and most poetical in
Nature--the dreamy moorland--the distant sea--the Lion-rock with the
afternoon sunshine on it--the blue boundless sky--and one far-away sail,
silvered with light, standing out against the low dark line of Lundy
Island--debated Mopsy and Dopsy, waiting with keen appetites for the
game pasty, and the welcome bottle or two of Moët, which they were to
share with the sportsmen.
While these damsels thus beguiled the autumn afternoon, Christabel and
Jessie had sallied out alone for one of their old rambles; such a
solitary walk as had been their delight in the careless long ago, before
ever passionate love, and sorrow, his handmaiden, came to Mount Royal.
Mrs. Torrington and three other guests had left that morning; the
Vandeleurs, and Reginald Montagu, a free and easy little war-office
clerk, were now the only visitors at Mount Royal, and Mrs. Tregonell was
free to lead her own life--so with Jessie and Randie for company, she
started at noontide for Tintagel. She could never weary of the walk by
the cliffs--or even of the quiet country road with its blossoming
hedgerows and boundless outlook. Every step of the way, every tint on
field or meadow, every change in sky and sea was familiar to her, but
she loved them all.
They had loitered in their ramble by the cliffs, talking a good deal of
the past, for Jessie was now the only listener to whom Christabel could
freely open her heart, and she loved to talk with her of the days that
were gone, and of her first lover. Of their love and of their parting
she never spoke--to talk of those things might have seemed treason in
the wedded wife--but she loved to talk of the man himself--of his
opinions, his ideas, the stories he had told them in their many
rambles--his creed, his dreams--speaking of him always as "Mr.
Hamleigh," and just as she might have spoken of any clever and intimate
friend, lost to her, through adverse circumstance, for ever. It is
hardly likely, since they talked of him so often when they were alone,
that they spoke of him more on this day than usual: but it seemed to
them afterwards as if they had done so--and as if their conversation in
somewise forecast that which was to happen before yonder sun had dipped
behind the wave.
They climbed the castle hill, and seated themselves on a low fragment of
wall with their faces seaward. There was a lovely light on the sea,
scarcely a breath of wind to curl the edges of the long waves which
rolled slowly in and slid over the dark rocks in shining slabs of
emerald-tinted water. Here and there deep purple patches showed where
the sea-weed grew thickest, and here and there the dark outline of a
convocation of shags stood out sharply above the crest of a rock.
"It was on just such a day that we first brought Mr. Hamleigh to this
place," said Christabel.
"Yes, our Cornish autumns are almost always lovely, and this year the
weather is particularly mild," answered Jessie, in her matter-of-fact
way. She always put on this air when she saw Christabel drifting into
dangerous feeling. "I shouldn't wonder if we were to have a second crop
of strawberries this year."
"Do you remember how we talked of Tristan and Iseult--poor Iseult?"
"Poor Marc, I think."
"Marc? One can't pity _him_. He was an ingrate, and a coward."
"He was a man and a husband," retorted Jessie; "and he seems to have
been badly treated all round."
"Whither does he wander now?" said Christabel, softly repeating lines
learnt long ago.
"Haply in his dreams the wind
Wafts him here and lets him find
The lovely orphan child again,
In her castle by the coast;
The youngest fairest chatelaine,
That this realm of France can boast,
Our snowdrop by the Atlantic sea,
Iseult of Brittany,"
"Poor Iseult of the White Hand," said a voice at Christabel's shoulder,
"after all was not her lot the saddest--had not she the best claim to
our pity?"
Christabel started, turned, and she and Angus Hamleigh looked in each
other's faces in the clear bright light. It was over four years since
they had parted, tenderly, fondly, as plighted husband and wife, locked
in each other's arms, promising each other speedy reunion, ineffably
happy in their assurance of a future to be spent together: and now they
met with pale cheeks, and lips dressed in a society smile--eyes--to
which tears would have been a glad relief--assuming a careless
astonishment.
"You here, Mr. Hamleigh!" cried Jessie, seeing Christabel's lips quiver
dumbly, as if in the vain attempt at words, and rushing to the rescue.
"We were told you were in Russia."
"I have been in Russia. I spent last winter at Petersburg--the only
place where caviare and Adelina Patti are to be enjoyed in
perfection--and I spent a good deal of this summer that is just gone in
the Caucasus."
"How nice!" exclaimed Jessie, as if he had been talking of Buxton or
Malvern. "And did you really enjoy it?"
"Immensely. All I ever saw in Switzerland is as nothing compared with
the gloomy grandeur of that mighty semicircle of mountain peaks, of
which Elburz, the shining mountain, the throne of Ormuzd, occupies the
centre."
"And how do you happen to be here--on this insignificant mound?" asked
Jessie.
"Tintagel's surge-beat hill can never seem insignificant to me. National
poetry has peopled it--while the Caucasus is only a desert."
"Are you touring?"
"No, I am staying with the Vicar of Trevena. He is an old friend of my
father's: they were college chums; and Mr. Carlyon is always kind to
me."
Mr. Carlyon was a new vicar, who had come to Trevena within the last two
years.
"Shall you stay long?" asked Christabel, in tones which had a curiously
flat sound, as of a voice produced by mechanism.
"I think not. It is a delicious place to stay at, but----"
"A little of it goes a long way," said Jessie.
"You have not quite anticipated my sentiments, Miss Bridgeman. I was
going to say that unfortunately for me I have engagements in London
which will prevent my staying here much longer."
"You are not looking over robust," said Jessie, touched with pity by the
sad forecast which she saw in his faded eyes, his hollow cheeks, faintly
tinged with hectic bloom. "I'm afraid the Caucasus was rather too severe
a training for you."
"A little harder than the ordeal to which you submitted my locomotive
powers some years ago," answered Angus, smiling; "but how can a man
spend the strength of his manhood better than in beholding the wonders
of creation? It is the best preparation for those still grander scenes
which one faintly hopes to see by-and-by among the stars. According to
the Platonic theory a man must train himself for immortality. He who
goes straight from earthly feasts and junkettings will get a bad time in
the under world, or may have to work out his purgation in some debased
brute form."
"Poor fellow," thought Jessie, with a sigh, "I suppose that kind of
feeling is his nearest approach to religion."
Christabel sat very still, looking steadily towards Lundy, as if the
only desire in her mind were to identify yonder vague streak of purplish
brown or brownish purple with the level strip of land chiefly given over
to rabbits. Yet her heart was aching and throbbing passionately all the
while; and the face at which she dared scarce look was vividly before
her mental sight--sorely altered from the day she had last seen it smile
upon her in love and confidence. But mixed with the heartache there was
joy. To see him again, to hear his voice again--what could that be but
happiness?
She knew that there was delight in being with him, and she told herself
that she had no right to linger. She rose with an automatic air. "Come,
Jessie," she said: and then she turned with an effort to the man whose
love she had renounced, whose heart she had broken.
"Good-by!" she said, holding out her hand, and looking at him with calm,
grave eyes. "I am very glad to have seen you again. I hope you always
think of me as your friend?"
"Yes, Mrs. Tregonell, I can afford now to think of you as a friend," he
answered, gravely, gently, holding her hand with a lingering grasp, and
looking solemnly into the sweet pale face.
He shook hands cordially with Jessie Bridgeman; and they left him
standing amidst the low grass-hidden graves of the unknown dead--a
lonely figure looking seaward.
"Oh! Jessie, do you remember the day we first came here with him?" cried
Christabel, as they went slowly down the steep winding path. The
exclamation sounded almost like a cry of pain.
"Am I ever likely to forget it--or anything connected with him? You have
given me no chance of that," retorted Miss Bridgeman, sharply.
"How bitterly you say that!"
"Can I help being bitter when I see you nursing morbid feelings? Am I to
encourage you to dwell upon dangerous thoughts?"
"They are not dangerous. I have taught myself to think of Angus as a
friend--and a friend only. If I could see him now and then--even as
briefly as we saw him to-day--I think it would make me quite happy."
"You don't know what you are talking about!" said Jessie, angrily.
"Certainly, you are not much like other women. You are a piece of icy
propriety--your love is a kind of milk-and-watery sentiment, which would
never lead you very far astray. I can fancy you behaving somewhat in the
style of Werther's Charlotte--who is, to my mind, one of the most
detestable women in fiction. Yes! Goethe has created two women who are
the opposite poles of feeling--Gretchen and Lottie--and I would stake my
faith that Gretchen the fallen has a higher place in heaven than Lottie
the impeccable. I hate such dull purity, which is always lined with
selfishness. The lover may slay himself in his anguish--but
she--yes--Thackeray has said it--she goes on cutting bread and butter!"
Jessie gave a little hysterical laugh, which she accentuated by a leap
from the narrow path where she had been walking to a boulder four or
five feet below.
"How madly you talk, Jessie. You remind me of Scott's Fenella--and I
believe you are almost as wild a creature," said Christabel.
"Yes! I suspect there is a spice of gipsy blood in my veins. I am
subject to these occasional outbreaks--these revolts against
Philistinism. Life is so steeped in respectability--the dull level
morality which prompts every man to do what his neighbour thinks he
ought to do, rather than to be set in motion by the fire that burns
within him. This dread of one's neighbour--this slavish respect for
public opinion--reduces life to mere mechanism--society to a stage
play."