"BUT IT SUFFICETH, THAT THE DAY WILL END."
Christabel said no word to her husband about that unexpected meeting
with Angus Hamleigh. She knew that the name was obnoxious to Leonard,
and she shrank from a statement which might provoke unpleasant speech on
his part. Mr. Hamleigh would doubtless have left Trevena in a few
days--there was no likelihood of any further meeting.
The next day was a blank day for the Miss Vandeleurs, who found
themselves reduced to the joyless society of their own sex.
The harriers met at Trevena at ten o'clock, and thither, after an early
breakfast, rode Mr. Tregonell, Captain Vandeleur, and three or four
other kindred spirits. The morning was showery and blustery, and it was
in vain that Dopsy and Mopsy hinted their desire to be driven to the
meet. They were not horsewomen--from no want of pluck or ardour for the
chase--but simply from the lack of that material part of the business,
horses. Many and many a weary summer day had they paced the path beside
Rotten Row, wistfully regarding the riders, and thinking what a seat and
what hands they would have had, if Providence had only given them a
mount. The people who do not ride are the keenest critics of
horsemanship.
Compelled to find their amusements within doors, Dopsy and Mopsy sat in
the morning-room for half an hour, as a sacrifice to good manners, paid
a duty visit to the nurseries to admire Christabel's baby-boy, and then
straggled off to the billiard-room, to play each other, and improve
their skill at that delightfully masculine game. Then came luncheon--at
which meal, the gentlemen being all away, and the party reduced to four,
the baby-boy was allowed to sit on his mother's lap, and make occasional
raids upon the table furniture, while the Miss Vandeleurs made believe
to worship him. He was a lovely boy, with big blue eyes, wide with
wonder at a world which was still full of delight and novelty.
After luncheon, Mopsy and Dopsy retired to their chamber, to concoct, by
an ingenious process of re-organization of the same atoms, a new costume
for the evening; and as they sat at their work, twisting and undoing
bows and lace, and straightening the leaves of artificial flowers, they
again discoursed somewhat dejectedly of their return to South Belgravia,
which could hardly be staved off much longer.
"We have had a quite too delicious time," sighed Mopsy, adjusting the
stalk of a sunflower; "but it's rather a pity that all the men staying
here have been detrimentals--not one worth catching."
"What does it matter!" ejaculated Dopsy. "If there had been one worth
catching, he wouldn't have consented to be caught. He would have behaved
like that big jack Mr. Tregonell was trying for the other morning; eaten
up all our bait and gone and sulked among the weeds."
"Well, I'd have had a try for him, anyhow," said Mopsy, defiantly,
leaning her elbow on the dressing-table, and contemplating herself
deliberately in the glass. "Oh, Dop, how old I'm getting. I almost hate
the daylight: it makes one look so hideous."
Yet neither Dopsy nor Mopsy thought herself hideous at afternoon
tea-time, when, with complexions improved by the powder puff, eyebrows
piquantly accentuated with Indian ink, and loose flowing tea-gowns of
old gold sateen, and older black silk, they descended to the library,
eager to do execution even on detrimentals. The men's voices sounded
loud in the hall, as the two girls came downstairs.
"Hope you have had a good time?" cried Mopsy, in cheerful soprano tones.
"Splendid. I'm afraid Tregonell has lamed a couple of his horses," said
Captain Vandeleur.
"And I've a shrewd suspicion that you've lamed a third," interjected
Leonard in his strident tones. "You galloped Betsy Baker at a murderous
rate."
"Nothing like taking them fast down hill," retorted Jack. "B. B. is as
sound as a roach--and quite as ugly."
"Never saw such break-neck work in my life," said Mr. Montagu, a small
dandified person who was always called "little Monty." "I'd rather ride
a horse with the Quorn for a week than in this country for a day."
"Our country is as God made it," answered Leonard.
"I think Satan must have split it about a bit afterwards," said Mr.
Montagu.
"Well, Mop," asked Leonard, "how did you and Dop get rid of your day
without us?"
"Oh, we were very happy. It was quite a relief to have a nice homey day
with dear Mrs. Tregonell," answered Mopsy, nothing offended by the free
and easy curtailment of her pet name. Leonard was her benefactor, and a
privileged person.
"I've got some glorious news for you two girls," said Mr. Tregonell, as
they all swarmed into the library, where Christabel was sitting in the
widow's old place, while Jessie Bridgeman filled her accustomed position
before the tea-table, the red glow of a liberal wood fire contending
with the pale light of one low moderator lamp, under a dark velvet
shade.
"What is it? Please, please tell."
"I give it you in ten--a thousand--a million!" cried Leonard, flinging
himself into the chair next his wife, and with his eyes upon her face.
"You'll never guess. I have found you an eligible bachelor--a swell of
the first water. He's a gentleman whom a good many girls have tried for
in their time, I've no doubt. Handsome, accomplished, plenty of coin. He
has had what the French call a stormy youth, I believe; but that doesn't
matter. He's getting on in years, and no doubt he's ready to sober down,
and take to domesticity. I've asked him here for a fortnight to shoot
woodcock, and to offer his own unconscious breast as a mark for the
arrows of Cupid; and I shall have a very poor opinion of you two girls
if you can't bring him to your feet in half the time."
"At any rate I'll try my hand at it," said Mopsy. "Not that I care a
straw for the gentleman, but just to show you what I can do," she added,
by way of maintaining her maidenly dignity.
"Of course you'll go in for the conquest as high art, without any
_arrière pensée_," said Jack Vandeleur. "There never were such audacious
flirts as my sisters; but there's no malice in them."
"You haven't told us your friend's name," said Dopsy.
"Mr. Hamleigh," answered Leonard, with his eyes still on his wife's
face.
Christabel gave a little start, and looked at him in undisguised
astonishment.
"Surely you have not asked him--here?" she exclaimed.
"Why not? He was out with us to-day. He is a jolly fellow; rides
uncommonly straight, though he doesn't look as if there were much life
in him. He tailed off early in the afternoon; but while he did go, he
went dooced well. He rode a dooced fine horse, too."
"I thought you were prejudiced against him," said Christabel, very
slowly.
"Why, so I was, till I saw him," answered Leonard, with the friendliest
air. "I fancied he was one of your sickly, sentimental twaddlers, with
long hair, and a taste for poetry; but I find he is a fine, manly
fellow, with no nonsense about him. So I asked him here, and insisted
upon his saying yes. He didn't seem to want to come, which is odd, for
he made himself very much at home here in my mother's time, I've heard.
However, he gave in when I pressed him; and he'll be here by dinner-time
to-morrow."
"By dinner-time," thought Mopsy, delighted. "Then he'll see us first by
candlelight, and first impressions may do so much."
"Isn't it almost like a fairy tale?" said Dopsy, as they were dressing
for dinner, with a vague recollection of having cultivated her
imagination in childhood. She had never done so since that juvenile age.
"Just as we were sighing for the prince he comes."
"True," said Mopsy; "and he will go, just as all the other fairy princes
have gone, leaving us alone upon the dreary high road, and riding off to
the fairy princesses who have good homes, and good clothes, and plenty
of money."
The high-art toilets were postponed for the following evening, so that
the panoply of woman's war might be fresh; and on that evening Mopsy and
Dopsy, their long limbs sheathed in sea-green velveteen, Toby-frills
round their necks, and sunflowers on their shoulders, were gracefully
grouped near the fireplace in the pink and white panelled drawing-room,
waiting for Mr. Hamleigh's arrival.
"I wonder why all the girls make themselves walking advertisements of
the Sun Fire Office," speculated Mr. Montagu, taking a prosaic view of
the Vandeleur sunflowers, as he sat by Miss Bridgeman's work-basket.
"Don't you know that sunflowers are so beautifully Greek?" asked Jessie.
"They have been the only flower in fashion since Alma Tadema took to
painting them--fountains, and marble balustrades, and Italian skies, and
beautiful women, and sunflowers."
"Yes; but we get only the sunflowers."
"Mr. Hamleigh!" said the butler at the open door, and Angus came in, and
went straight to Christabel, who was sitting opposite the group of
sea-green Vandeleurs, slowly fanning herself with a big black fan.
Nothing could be calmer than their meeting. This time there was no
surprise, no sudden shock, no dear familiar scene, no solemn grandeur
of Nature to make all effort at simulation unnatural. The atmosphere
to-night was as conventional as the men's swallowed-tailed coats and
white ties. Yet in Angus Hamleigh's mind there was the picture of his
first arrival at Mount Royal--the firelit room, Christabel's girlish
figure kneeling on the hearth. The figure was a shade more matronly now,
the carriage and manner were more dignified; but the face had lost none
of its beauty, or of its divine candour.
"I am very glad my husband persuaded you to alter your plans, and to
stay a little longer in the West," she said, with an unfaltering voice;
and then, seeing Mopsy and Dopsy looking at Mr. Hamleigh with admiring
expectant eyes, she added, "Let me introduce you to these young ladies
who are staying with us--Mr. Hamleigh, Miss Vandeleur, Miss Margaret
Vandeleur."
Dopsy and Mopsy smiled their sweetest smiles, and gave just the most
æsthetic inclination of each towzled head.
"I suppose you have not long come from London?" murmured Dopsy,
determined not to lose a moment. "Have you seen all the new things at
the theatres? I hope you are an Irvingite!"
"I regret to say that my religious opinions have not yet taken that
bent. It is a spiritual height which I feel myself too weak to climb. I
have never been able to believe in the unknown tongues."
"Ah, now you are going to criticize his pronunciation, instead of
admiring his genius," said Dopsy, who had never heard of Edward Irving
and the Latter Day Saints.
"If you mean Henry Irving the tragedian, I admire him immensely," said
Mr. Hamleigh.
"Then we are sure to get on. I felt that you must be _simpatica_,"
replied Dopsy, not particular as to a gender in a language which she
only knew by sight, as Bannister knew Greek.
Dinner was announced at this moment, and Mrs. Tregonell won Dopsy's
gratitude by asking Mr. Hamleigh to take her into dinner. Mr. Montagu
gave his arm to Miss Bridgeman, Leonard took Mopsy, and Christabel
followed with Major Bree, who felt for her keenly, wondering how she
managed to bear herself so bravely, reproaching the dead woman in his
mind for having parted two faithful hearts.
He was shocked by the change in Angus, obvious even to-night, albeit the
soft lamplight and evening dress were flattering to his appearance; but
he said no word of that change to Christabel.
"I have been having a romp with my godson," he said, when they were
seated, knowing that this was the one topic likely to cheer and interest
his hostess.
"I am so glad," she answered, lighting up at once, and unconscious that
Angus was trying to see her face under the low lamplight, which made it
necessary to bend one's head a little to see one's opposite neighbour.
"And do you think he is grown? It is nearly ten days since you saw him,
and he grows so fast."
"He is a young Hercules. If there were any snakes in Cornwall he would
be capable of strangling a brace of them. I suppose Leonard is
tremendously proud of him."
"Yes," she answered with a faint sigh. "I think Leonard is _proud_ of
him."
"But not quite so fond of him as you are," replied Major Bree,
interpreting her emphasis. "That is only natural. Infantolatry is a
feminine attribute. Wait till the boy is old enough to go out fishin'
and shootin'--" the Major was too much a gentleman to pronounce a final
g--"and then see if his father don't dote upon him."
"I dare say he will be very fond of him then. But I shall be miserable
every hour he is out."
"Of course. Women ought to have only girls for children. There should be
a race of man-mothers to rear the boys. I wonder Plato didn't suggest
that in his Republic."
Mr. Hamleigh, with his head gently bent over his soup-plate, had
contrived to watch Christabel's face while politely replying to a good
deal of gush on the part of the fair Dopsy. He saw that expressive face
light up with smiles, and then grow earnest. She was full of interest
and animation, and her candid look showed that the conversation was one
which all the world might have heard.
"She has forgotten me. She is happy in her married life," he said to
himself, and then he looked to the other end of the table where Leonard
sat, burly, florid, black-haired, mutton-chop whiskered, the very
essence of Philistinism--"happy--with him."
"And I am sure you must adore Ellen Terry," said Dopsy, whose
society-conversation was not a many-stringed instrument.
"Who could live and not worship her?" ejaculated Mr. Hamleigh.
"Irving as Shylock!" sighed Dopsy.
"Miss Terry as Portia," retorted Angus.
"Unutterably sweet, was she not?"
"Her movements were like a sonata by Beethoven--her gowns were the
essence of all that Rubens and Vandyck ever painted."
"I knew you would agree with me," exclaimed Dopsy. "And do you think her
pretty?"
"Pretty is not the word. She is simply divine. Greuze might have painted
her--there is no living painter whose palette holds the tint of those
blue eyes."
Dopsy began to giggle softly to herself, and to flutter her fan with
maiden modesty.
"I hardly like to mention it after what you have said," she murmured,
"but----"
"Pray be explicit."
"I have been told that I am rather"--another faint giggle and another
flutter--"like Miss Terry."
"I never met a fair-haired girl yet who had not been told as much,"
answered Mr. Hamleigh coolly.
Dopsy turned crimson, and felt that this particular arrow had missed the
gold. Mr. Hamleigh was not quite so easy to get on with as her hopeful
fancy had painted him.
After dinner there was some music, in which art neither of the Miss
Vandeleurs excelled. Indeed, their time had been too closely absorbed by
the ever pressing necessity for cutting and contriving to allow of the
study of art and literature. They knew the names of writers, and the
outsides of books, and they adored the opera, and enjoyed a ballad
concert, if the singers were popular, and the audience well dressed; and
this was the limit of their artistic proclivities. They sat stifling
their yawns, and longing for an adjournment to the billiard
room--whither Jack Vandeleur and Mr. Montagu had departed--while
Christabel played a capriccio by Mendelssohn. Mr. Hamleigh sat by the
piano listening to every note. Leonard and Major Bree lounged by the
fireplace, Jessie Bridgeman sitting near them, absorbed in her crewel
work.
It was what Mopsy and Dopsy called a very "slow" evening, despite the
new interest afforded by Mr. Hamleigh's presence. He was very handsome,
very elegant, with an inexpressible something in his style and air which
Mopsy thought poetical. But it was weary work to sit and gaze at him as
if he were a statue, and that long capriccio, with a little Beethoven to
follow, and a good deal of Mozart after that, occupied the best part of
the evening. To the ears of Mop and Dop it was all tweedledum and
tweedledee. They would have been refreshed by one of those lively
melodies in which Miss Farren so excels; they would have welcomed a
familiar strain from Chilperic or Madame Angot. Yet they gushed and
said, "too delicious--quite too utterly lovely," when Mrs. Tregonell
rose from the piano.
"I only hope I have not wearied everybody," she said.
Leonard and Major Bree had been talking local politics all the time, and
both expressed themselves much gratified by the music. Mr. Hamleigh
murmured his thanks.
Christabel went to her room wondering that the evening had passed so
calmly--that her heart--though it had ached at the change in Angus
Hamleigh's looks, had been in no wise tumultuously stirred by his
presence. There had been a peaceful feeling in her mind rather than
agitation. She had been soothed and made happy by his society. If love
still lingered in her breast it was love purified of every earthly
thought and hope. She told herself sorrowfully that for him the sand ran
low in the glass of earthly time, and it was sweet to have him near her
for a little while towards the end; to be able to talk to him of serious
things--to inspire hope in a soul whose natural bent was despondency. It
would be sadly, unutterably sweet to talk to him of that spiritual world
whose unearthly light already shone in the too brilliant eye, and
coloured the hollow cheek. She had found Mr. Hamleigh despondent and
sceptical, but never indifferent to religion. He was not one of that
eminently practical school which, in the words of Matthew Arnold, thinks
it more important to learn how buttons and _papier-mâché_ are made than
to search the depths of conscience, or fathom the mysteries of a Divine
Providence.
Christabel's first sentiment when Leonard announced Mr. Hamleigh's
intended visit had been horror. How could they two who had loved so
deeply, parted so sadly, live together under the same roof as if they
were every day friends? The thing seemed fraught with danger, impossible
for peace. But when she remembered that calm, almost solemn look with
which he had shaken hands with her among the graves at Tintagel, it
seemed to her that friendship--calmest, purest, most unselfish
attachment--was still possible between them. She thought so even more
hopefully on the morning after Mr. Hamleigh's arrival, when he took her
boy in his arms, and pressed his lips lovingly upon the bright baby
brow.
"You are fond of children," exclaimed Mopsy, prepared to gush.
"Very fond of some children," he answered gravely. "I shall be very fond
of this boy, if he will let me."
"Leo is such a darling--and he takes to you already," said Mopsy, seeing
that the child graciously accepted Mr. Hamleigh's attentions, and even
murmured an approving "gur"--followed by a simple one-part melody of
gurgling noises--but whether in approval of the gentlemen himself or of
his watch-chain, about which the pink flexible fingers had wound
themselves, was an open question.
This was in the hall after breakfast, on a bright sunshiny
morning--doors and windows open, and the gardens outside all abloom with
chrysanthemums and scarlet geraniums; the gentlemen of the party
standing about with their guns ready to start. Mopsy and Dopsy were
dressed in home-made gowns of dark brown serge which simulated the
masculine simplicity of tailor-made garments. They wore coquettish
little toques of the same dark brown stuff, also home-made--and surely,
if a virtuous man contending with calamity is a spectacle meet for the
gods to admire a needy young woman making her own raiment is at least
worthy of human approval.
"You are coming with us, aren't you, Hamleigh," asked Leonard, seeing
Angus still occupied with the child.
"No, thanks; I don't feel in good form for woodcock shooting. My cough
was rather troublesome last night."
Mopsy and Dopsy looked at each other despairingly. Here was a golden
opportunity lost. If it were only possible to sprain an ankle on the
instant.
Jack Vandeleur was a good brother--so long as fraternal kindness did not
cost money--and he saw that look of blank despair in poor Dopsy's eyes
and lips.
"I think Mr. Hamleigh is wise," he said. "This bright morning will end
in broken weather. Hadn't you two girls better stay at home? The rain
will spoil your gowns."
"Our gowns won't hurt," said Mopsy brightening. "But do you really
think there will be rain? We had so set our hearts on going with you;
but it is rather miserable to be out on those hills in a blinding rain.
One might walk over the edge of a cliff."
"Keep on the safe side and stay at home," said Leonard, with that air of
rough good nature which is such an excellent excuse for bad manners.
"Come Ponto, come Juno, hi Delia," this to the lovely lemon and white
spaniels, fawning upon him with mute affection.
"I think we may as well give it up," said Dopsy, "we shall be a nuisance
to the shooters if it rains."
So they stayed, and beguiled Mr. Hamleigh to the billiard room, where
they both played against him, and were beaten--after which Mopsy
entreated him to give her a lesson in the art, declaring that he played
divinely--in such a quite style--so very superior to Jack's or Mr.
Tregonell's, though both those gentlemen were good players. Angus
consented, kindly enough, and gave both ladies the most careful
instruction in the art of making pockets and cannons; but he was
wondering all the while how Christabel was spending her morning, and
thinking how sweet it would have been to have strolled with her across
the hills to the quiet little church in the dingle where he had once
dreamed they two might be married.
"I was a fool to submit to delay," he thought, remembering all the pain
and madness of the past. "If I had insisted on being married here--and
at once--how happy--oh God!--how happy we might have been. Well, it
matters little, now that the road is so near the end. I suppose the
dismal close would have come just as soon if my way of life had been
strewed with flowers."
It was luncheon-time before the Miss Vandeleurs consented to release
him. Once having got him in their clutch he was as firmly held as if he
had been caught by an octopus. Christabel wondered a little that Angus
Hamleigh should find amusement for his morning in the billiard room, and
in such society.
"Perhaps, after all, the Miss Vandeleurs are the kind of girls whom all
gentlemen admire," she said to Jessie. "I know I thought it odd that
Leonard should admire them; but you see Mr. Hamleigh is equally pleased
with them."
"Mr. Hamleigh is nothing of the kind," answered Jessie in her usual
decided way. "But Dop is setting her cap at him in a positively
disgraceful manner--even for Dop."
"Pray don't call her by that horrid name."
"Why not; it is what her brother and sister call her, and it expresses
her so exactly."
Mr. Hamleigh and the two damsels now appeared, summoned by the gong, and
they all went into the dining-room. It was quite a merry luncheon party.
Care seemed to have no part in that cheery circle. Angus had made up his
mind to be happy, and Christabel was as much at ease with him as she had
been in those innocent, unconscious days when he first came to Mount
Royal. Dopsy was in high spirits, thinking that she was fast advancing
towards victory. Mr. Hamleigh had been so kind, so attentive, had done
exactly what she had asked him to do, and how could she doubt that he
had consulted his own pleasure in so doing. Poor Dopsy was accustomed
to be treated with scant ceremony by her brother's acquaintance, and it
did not enter into her mind that a man might be bored by her society,
and not betray his weariness.
After luncheon Jessie, who was always energetic, suggested a walk.
The threatened bad weather had not come: it was a greyish afternoon,
sunless but mild.
"If we walk towards St. Nectan's Kieve, we may meet the shooters," said
Christabel. "That is a great place for woodcock."
"That will be delicious!" exclaimed Dopsy. "I worship St. Nectan's
Kieve. Such a lovely ferny, rocky, wild, watery spot." And away she and
her sister skipped, to put on the brown toques, and to refresh
themselves with a powder puff.
They started for their ramble with Randie, and a favourite Clumber
spaniel, degraded from his proud position as a sporting dog, to the
ignoble luxury of a house pet, on account of an incorrigible
desultoriness in his conduct with birds.
These affectionate creatures frisked round Christabel, while Miss
Vandeleur and her sister seemed almost as friskily to surround Mr.
Hamleigh with their South Belgravian blandishments.
"You look as if you were not very strong," hazarded Dopsy,
sympathetically. "Are you not afraid of a long walk?"
"Not at all; I never feel better than when walking on these hills,"
answered Angus. "It is almost my native air, you see. I came here to get
a stock of rude health before I go to winter in the South."
"And you are really going to be abroad all the winter?" sighed Dopsy, as
if she would have said, "How shall I bear my life in your absence."
"Yes, it is five years since I spent a winter in England. I hold my life
on that condition. I am never to know the luxury of a London fog, or see
a Drury Lane pantomime, or skate upon the Serpentine. A case of real
distress, is it not?"
"Very sad--for your friends," said Dopsy; "but I can quite imagine that
you love the sunny South. How I long to see the Mediterranean--the
mountains--the pine-trees--the border-land of Italy."
"No doubt you will go there some day--and be disappointed. People
generally are when they indulge in day-dreams about a place."
"My dreams will always be dreams," answered Dopsy, with a profound sigh:
"we are not rich enough to travel."
Christabel walked on in front with Jessie and the dogs. Mr. Hamleigh was
longing to be by her side--to talk as they had talked of old--of a
thousand things which could be safely discussed without any personal
feeling. They had so many sympathies, so many ideas in common. All the
world of sense and sentiment was theirs wherein to range at will. But
Dopsy and Mopsy stuck to him like burs; plying him with idle questions,
and stereotyped remarks, looking at him with languishing eyes.
He was too much a gentleman, had too much good feeling to be rude to
them--but he was bored excessively.
They went by the cliffs--a wild grand walk. The wide Atlantic spread its
dull leaden-coloured waves before them under the grey sky--touched with
none of those translucent azures and carmines which so often beautify
that western sea. They crossed a bit of hillocky common, and then went
down to look at a slate quarry under the cliff--a scene of uncanny
grandeur--grey and wild and desolate.
Dopsy and Mopsy gushed and laughed and declared it was just the scene
for a murder, or a duel, or something dreadful and dramatic. The dogs
ran into all manner of perilous places, and had to be called away from
the verge of instant death.
"Are you fond of aristocratic society. Miss Vandeleur?" asked Angus.
Mopsy pleaded guilty to a prejudice in favour of the Upper Ten.
"Then allow me to tell you that you were never in the company of so many
duchesses and countesses in your life as you are at this moment."
Mopsy looked mystified, until Miss Bridgeman explained that these were
the names given to slates of particular sizes, great stacks of which
stood on either side of them ready for shipment.
"How absurd," exclaimed Mopsy.
"Everything must have a name, even the slate that roofs your scullery."
From the quarry they strolled across the fields to the high road, and
the gate of the farm which contains within its boundary the wonderful
waterfall called St. Nectan's Kieve.
They met the sportsmen coming out of the hollow with well-filled
game-bags.
Leonard was in high spirits.
"So you've all come to meet us," he said, looking at his wife, and from
his wife to Angus Hamleigh, with a keen, quick glance, too swift to be
remarkable. "Uncommonly good of you. We are going to have a grand year
for woodcock, I believe--like the season of 1855, when a farmer at St.
Buryan shot fifty-four in one week."
"Poor dear little birds!" sighed Mopsy; "I feel so sorry for them."
"But that doesn't prevent your eating them, with breadcrumbs and gravy,"
said Leonard, laughing.
"When they are once roasted, it can make no difference who eats them,"
replied Mopsy; "but I am intensely sorry for them all the same."
They all went home together, a cheery procession, with the dogs at
their heels. Mr. Hamleigh's efforts to escape from the two damsels who
had marked him for their own, were futile: nothing less than sheer
brutality would have set him free. They trudged along gaily, one on each
side of him; they flattered him, they made much of him--a man must have
been stony-hearted to remain untouched by such attentions. Angus was
marble, but he could not be uncivil. It was his nature to be gentle to
women. Mop and Dop were the kind of girls he most detested--indeed, it
seemed to him that no other form of girlhood could be so detestable.
They had all the pertness of Bohemia without any of its wit--they had
all the audacity of the _demi-monde_, with far inferior attractions.
Everything about them was spurious and second-hand--every air and look
and tone was put on, like a ribbon or a flower, to attract attention.
And could it be that one of these meretricious creatures was angling for
him--for him, the Lauzun, the d'Eckmühl, the Prince de Belgioso, of his
day--the born dandy, with whom fastidiousness was a sixth sense?
Intolerable as the idea of being so pursued was to him, Angus Hamleigh
could not bring himself to be rude to a woman.
It happened, therefore, that from the beginning to the end of that long
ramble, he was never in Mrs. Tregonell's society. She and Jessie walked
steadily ahead with their dogs, while the sportsmen tramped slowly
behind Mr. Hamleigh and the two girls.
"Our friend seems to be very much taken by your sisters," said Leonard
to Captain Vandeleur.
"My sisters are deuced taking girls," answered Jack, puffing at his
seventeenth cigarette; "though I suppose it isn't my business to say so.
There's nothing of the professional beauty about either of 'em."
"Distinctly not!" said Leonard.
"But they've plenty of _chic_--plenty of go--_savoir faire_--and all
that kind of thing, don't you know. They're the most companionable girls
I ever met with!"
"They're uncommonly jolly little buffers!" said Leonard, kindly, meaning
it for the highest praise.
"They've no fool's flesh about them," said Jack; "and they can make a
fiver go further than any one I know. A man might do worse than marry
one of them."
"Hardly!" thought Leonard, "unless he married both."
"It would be a fine thing for Dop if Mr. Hamleigh were to come to the
scratch," mused Jack.
* * * * *
"I wonder what was Leonard's motive in asking Mr. Hamleigh to stay at
Mount Royal?" said Christabel, suddenly, after she and Jessie had been
talking of indifferent subjects.
"I hope he had not any motive, but that the invitation was the impulse
of the moment, without rhyme or reason," answered Miss Bridgeman.
"Why?"
"Because if he had a motive, I don't think it could be a good one."
"Might he not think it just possible that he was finding a husband for
one of his friend's sisters?" speculated Christabel.
"Nonsense, my dear! Leonard is not quite a fool. If he had a motive, it
was something very different from any concern for the interests of Dop
or Mop--I will call them Dop and Mop: they are so like it."
In spite of Mopsy and Dopsy, there were hours in which Angus Hamleigh
was able to enjoy the society which had once been so sweet to him,
almost as freely as in the happy days that were gone. Brazen as the two
damsels were the feeling of self-respect was not altogether extinct in
their natures. Their minds were like grass-plots which had been trodden
into mere clay, but where a lingering green blade here and there shows
that the soil had once been verdant. Before Mr. Hamleigh came to Mount
Royal, it had been their habit to spend their evenings in the
billiard-room with the gentlemen, albeit Mrs. Tregonell very rarely left
the drawing-room after dinner, preferring the perfect tranquillity of
that almost deserted apartment, the inexhaustible delight of her piano
or her books, with Jessie for her sole companion--nay, sometimes, quite
alone, while Jessie joined the revellers at pool or shell-out. Dopsy and
Mopsy could not altogether alter their habits because Mr. Hamleigh spent
his evenings in the drawing-room: the motive for such a change would
have been too obvious. The boldest huntress would scarce thus openly
pursue her prey. So the Miss Vandeleurs went regretfully with their
brother and his host, and marked, or played an occasional four-game, and
made themselves conversationally agreeable all the evening; while Angus
Hamleigh sat by the piano, and gave himself up to dreamy thought,
soothed by the music of the great composers, played with a level
perfection which only years of careful study can achieve. Jessie
Bridgeman never left the drawing-room now of an evening. Faithful and
devoted to her duty of companion and friend, she seemed almost
Christabel's second self. There was no restraint, no embarrassment,
caused by her presence. What she had been to these two in their day of
joy, she was to them in their day of sorrow, wholly and completely one
of themselves. She was no stony guardian of the proprieties; no bar
between their souls and dangerous memories or allusions. She was their
friend, reading and understanding the minds of both.
It has been finely said by Matthew Arnold that there are times when a
man feels, in this life, the sense of immortality; and that feeling must
surely be strongest with him who knows that his race is nearly run--who
feels the rosy light of life's sunset warm upon his face--who knows
himself near the lifting of the veil--the awful, fateful experiment
called death. Angus Hamleigh knew that for him the end was not far
off--it might be less than a year--more than a year--but he felt very
sure that this time there would be no reprieve. Not again would the
physician's sentence be reversed--the physician's theories gainsayed by
facts. For the last four years he had lived as a man lives who has
ceased to value his life. He had exposed himself to the hardships of
mountain climbing--he had sat late in gaming saloons--not gambling
himself, but interested in a cynical way, as Balzac might have been, in
the hopes and fears of others--seeking amusement wherever and however it
was to be found. At his worst he had never been a man utterly without
religion; not a man who could willingly forego the hope in a future
life--but that hope, until of late, had been clouded and dim, Rabelais'
great perhaps, rather than the Christian's assured belief. As the cold
shade of death drew nearer, the horizon cleared, and he was able to rest
his hopes in a fair future beyond the grave--an existence in which a
man's happiness should not be dependent on the condition of his lungs,
nor his career marred by an hereditary taint in the blood--an existence
in which spirit should be divorced from clay, yet not become so entirely
abstract as to be incapable of such pleasures as are sweetest and purest
among the joys of humanity--a life in which friendship and love might
still be known in fullest measure. And now, with the knowledge that for
him there remained but a brief remnant of this earthly existence, that
were the circumstances of his life ever so full of joy, that life itself
could not be lengthened, it was very sweet to him to spend a few quiet
hours with her who, for the last five years, had been the pole-star of
his thoughts. For him there could be no _arrière pensée_--no tending
towards forbidden hopes, forbidden dreams. Death had purified life. It
was almost as if he were an immortal spirit, already belonging to
another world, yet permitted to revisit the old dead-and-gone love
below. For such a man, and perhaps for such a man only, was such a
super-mundane love as poets and idealists have imagined, all satisfying
and all sweet. He was not even jealous of his happier rival; his only
regret was the too evident unworthiness of that rival.
"If I had seen her married to a man I could respect; if I could know
that she was completely happy; that the life before her were secure from
all pain and evil, I should have nothing to regret," he told himself;
but the thought of Leonard's coarse nature was a perpetual grief. "When
I am lying in the long peaceful sleep, she will be miserable with that
man," he thought.
One day when Jessie and he were alone together, he spoke freely of
Leonard.
"I don't want to malign a man who has treated me with exceptional
kindness and cordiality," he said, "above all a man whose mother I once
loved, and always respected--yes, although she was hard and cruel to
me--but I cannot help wishing that Christabel's husband had a more
sympathetic nature. Now that my own future is reduced to a very short
span I find myself given to forecasting the future of those
I----love--and it grieves me to think of Christabel in the years to
come--linked with a man who has no power to appreciate or understand
her--tied to the mill-wheel of domestic duty."
"Yes, it is a hard case," answered Jessie, bitterly, "one of those hard
cases that so often come out of people acting for the best, as they call
it. No doubt Mrs. Tregonell thought she acted for the best with regard
to you and Christabel. She did not know how much selfishness--a selfish
idolatry of her own cub--was at the bottom of her over-righteousness.
She was a good woman--generous, benevolent--a true friend to me--yet
there are times when I feel angry with her--even in her grave--for her
treatment of you and Christabel. Yet she died happy in the belief in her
own wisdom. She thought Christabel's marriage with Leonard ought to mean
bliss for both. Because she adored her Cornish gladiator, forsooth, she
must needs think every body else ought to doat upon him."
"You don't seem warmly attached to Mr. Tregonell," said Angus.
"I am not--and he knows that I am not. I never liked him, and he never
liked me, and neither of us have ever pretended to like each other. We
are quits, I assure you. Perhaps you think it rather horrid of me to
live in a man's house--eat his bread and drink his wine--one glass of
claret every day at dinner--and dislike him openly all the time. But I
am here because Christabel is here--just as I would be with her in the
dominions of Orcus. She is--well--almost the only creature I love in
this world, and it would take a good deal more than my dislike of her
husband to part us. If she had married a galley-slave I would have taken
my turn at the oar."
"You are as true as steel," said Angus; "and I am glad to think
Christabel has such a friend."
To all the rest of the world he spoke of her as Mrs. Tregonell, nor did
he ever address her by any other name. But to Jessie Bridgeman, who had
been with them in the halcyon days of their love-making, she was still
Christabel. To Jessie, and to none other, could he speak of her with
perfect freedom.