Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 2 of 3

Christabel avoided the village as much as possible during this gay season. She would have avoided it just as much had it been the dull season: the people she shrank from meeting were not the strange tourists, but the old gaffers and goodies who had known her all their lives – the "uncles" and "aunts" – (in Cornwall uncle and aunt are a kind of patriarchal title given to honoured age) – and who might consider themselves privileged to ask why her wedding was deferred, and when it was to be.

She went with Jessie on long lonely expeditions by sea and land. She had half a dozen old sailors who were her slaves, always ready to take her out in good weather, deeming it their highest privilege to obey so fair a captain, and one who always paid them handsomely for their labour. They went often to Trebarwith Sands, and sat there in some sheltered nook, working and reading at peace, resigned to a life that had lost all its brightness and colour.

"Do you know, Jessie, that I feel like an old maid of fifty?" said Belle on one of those rare occasions when she spoke of her own feelings. "It seems to me as if it were ages since I made up my mind to live and die unmarried, and to make life, somehow or other, self-sufficing – as if Randie and I were both getting old and grey together. For he is ever so much greyer, the dear thing," she said, laying her hand lovingly on the honest black head and grey muzzle. "What a pity that dogs should grow old so soon, when we are so dependent on their love. Why are they not like elephants, in whose lives a decade hardly counts?"

"Oh, Belle, Belle, as if a beautiful woman of twenty could be dependent on a sheep-dog's affection – when she has all her life before her and all the world to choose from."

"Perhaps you think I could change my lover as some people change their dogs," said Belle, bitterly, "be deeply attached to a colley this year and next year be just as devoted to a spaniel. My affections are not so easily transferable."

Mrs. Tregonell had told her niece nothing of Angus Hamleigh's final letter to herself. He had given her freedom to communicate as much or as little of that letter as she liked to Christabel – and she had taken the utmost license, and had been altogether silent about it. What good could it do for Christabel to hear of his illness. The knowledge might inspire her to some wild quixotic act: she might insist upon devoting herself to him – to be his wife in order that she might be his nurse – and surely this would be to ruin her life without helping him to prolong his. The blow had fallen – the sharpest pain of this sudden sorrow had been suffered. Time and youth, and Leonard's faithful love would bring swift healing. "How I loved and grieved for his father," thought Mrs. Tregonell. "Yet I survived his loss, and had a peaceful happy life with the best and kindest of men."

A peaceful happy life, yes – the English matron's calm content in a handsome house and a well-organized household – a good stable – velvet gowns – family diamonds – the world's respect. But that first passionate love of youth – the love that is eager for self-sacrifice, that would welcome beggary – the love which sees a lover independent of all surrounding circumstances, worshipping and deifying the man himself – that sacred flame had been for ever extinguished in Diana Champernowne's heart before she met burly broad-shouldered Squire Tregonell at the county ball.

She wrote to Leonard telling him what had happened, and that he might now count on the fulfilment of that hope which they both had cherished years ago. She asked him to come home at once, but to be careful that he approached Christabel only in a friendly and cousinly character, until there had been ample time for these new wounds to heal.

"She bears her trouble beautifully, and is all goodness and devotion to me – for I have been weak and ailing ever since I came from London – but I know the trial is very hard for her. The house would be more cheerful if you were at home. You might ask one or two of your Oxford friends. No one goes into the billiard-room now. Mount Royal is as quiet as a prison. If you do not come soon, dear boy, I think we shall die of melancholy."

Mr. Tregonell did not put himself out of the way to comply with his loving mother's request. By the time the widow's letter reached him he had made his plans for the winter, and was not disposed to set them aside in order to oblige a lady who was only a necessary detail in his life. A man must needs have a mother; and, as mothers go, Mrs. Tregonell had been harmless and inoffensive; but she was not the kind of person for whom Leonard would throw over elaborate sporting arrangements, hired guides, horses, carts, and all the paraphernalia needful for Red River explorations. As for Christabel, Mr. Tregonell had not forgiven her for having set another man in the place which he, her cousin and boyish lover in a rough tyrannical way, had long made up his mind to occupy. The fact that she had broken with the man was a redeeming feature in the case; but he was not going into raptures about it; nor was he disposed to return to Mount Royal while she was still moping and regretting the discarded lover.

"Let her get over the doldrums, and then she and I may be friends again," said Leonard to his boon companion, Jack Vandeleur, not a friend of his University days, but an acquaintance picked up on board a Cunard steamer – son of a half-pay naval captain, a man who had begun life in a line regiment, fought in Afghanistan, sold out, and lived by his wits and upon his friends for the last five years. He had made himself so useful to Mr. Tregonell by his superior experience as a traveller, his pluck and knowledge of all kinds of sport, that he had been able to live at free quarters with that gentleman from an early stage of their acquaintance.

Thus it was that Christabel was allowed to end the year in quietness and peace. Every one was tender and gentle with her, knowing how keenly she must have suffered. There was much disappointment among her country friends at the sorry ending of her engagement; more especially among those who had been in London during the season, and had seen the lovely Cornish débutante in her brief day of gladness. No one hinted a question to Christabel herself. The subject of marrying and giving in marriage was judiciously avoided in her presence. But Mrs. Tregonell had been questioned, and had explained briefly that certain painful revelations concerning Mr. Hamleigh's antecedents had constrained Christabel to give him up. Every one said it was a pity. Poor Miss Courtenay looked ill and unhappy. Surely it would have been wiser to waive all question of antecedents, and to trust to that sweet girl's influence for keeping Mr. Hamleigh straight in the future. "Antecedents, indeed," exclaimed a strong-minded matron, with five marriageable daughters. "It is all very well for a young woman like Miss Courtenay – an only child, with fifteen hundred a year in her own right – to make a fuss about a young man's antecedents. But what would become of my five girls if I were to look at things so closely." Christabel looked at the first column of the Times supplement daily to see if there were the advertisement of Angus Hamleigh's marriage with Stella Mayne. She was quite prepared to read such an announcement. Surely, now that she had set him free, he would make this act of atonement, he, in all whose sentiments she had perceived so nice a sense of honour. But no such advertisement appeared. It was possible, however, that the marriage had taken place without any public notification. Mr. Hamleigh might not care to call the world to witness his reparation. She prayed for him daily and nightly, praying that he might be led to do that which was best for his soul's welfare – for his peace here and hereafter – praying that his days, whether few or many, should be made happy.

There were times when that delicate reticence which made Angus Hamleigh's name a forbidden sound upon the lips of her friends, was a source of keenest pain to Christabel. It would have been painful to her to hear that name lightly spoken, no doubt; but this dull dead silence was worse. One day it flashed upon her that if he were to die nobody would tell her of his death. Kindred and friends would conspire to keep her uninformed. After this she read the list of deaths in the Times as eagerly as she read the marriages, but with an agony of fear lest that name, as if written in fire, should leap out upon the page.

At last this painful sense of uncertainty as to the fate of one who, a few months ago, had been a part of her life, became unendurable. Pride withheld her from questioning her aunt or Jessie. She shrank from seeming small and mean in the sight of her own sex. She had made her sacrifice of her own accord, and there was a poverty of character in not being able to maintain the same Spartan courage to the end. But from Major Bree, the friend and playfellow of her childhood, the indulgent companion of her youth, she could better bear to accept pity – so, one mild afternoon in the beginning of October, when the Major dropped in at his usual hour for tea and gossip, she took him to see the chrysanthemums, in a house on the further side of the lawn; and here, having assured herself there was no gardener within hearing, she took courage to question him.

"Uncle Oliver," she began, falteringly, trifling with the fringed petals of a snowy blossom, "I want to ask you something."

"My dear, I think you must know that there is nothing in the world I would not do for you."

"I am sure of that: but this is not very difficult. It is only to answer one or two questions. Every one here is very good to me – but they make one mistake: they think because I have broken for ever – with – Mr. Hamleigh, that it can do me no good to know anything about him – that I can go on living and being happy, while I am as ignorant of his fate as if we were inhabitants of different planets. But they forget that after having been all the world to me he cannot all at once become nothing. I have still some faint interest in his fate. It hurts me like an actual pain not to know whether he is alive or dead," she said, with a sudden sob.

"My poor pet!" murmured the Major, taking her hand in both his own. "Have you heard nothing about him since you left London?"

"Not one word. People make believe that there was never any such person in this world."

"They think it wiser to do so, in the hope you will forget him."

"They might as well hope that I shall become a blackamoor," said Christabel, scornfully. "You have more knowledge of the human heart, Uncle Oliver – and you must know that I shall always – remember him. Tell me the truth about him just this once, and I will not mention his name again for a long, long time. He is not dead, is he?"

"Dead! – no, Belle. What put such a notion into your head?"

"Silence always seems like death; and every one has kept silence about him."

"He was ill while he was in Scotland – a touch of the old complaint. I heard of him at Plymouth the other day, from a yachting man who met him in the Isle of Arran, after his illness – he was all right then, I believe."

"Ill – and I never knew of it – dangerously ill, perhaps."

"I don't suppose it was anything very bad. He had been yachting when my Plymouth acquaintance met him."

"He has not married – that person," faltered Christabel.

"What person?"

"Miss Mayne."

"Good heavens, no, my dear – nor ever will."

"But he ought – it is his duty."

"My dear child, that is a question which I can hardly discuss with you. But I may tell you, at least, that there is an all-sufficient reason why Angus Hamleigh would never make such an idiot of himself."

"Do you mean that she could never be worthy of him – that she is irredeemably wicked?" asked Christabel.

"She is not good enough to be any honest man's wife."

"And yet she did not seem wicked: she spoke of him with such intense feeling."

"She seemed – she spoke!" repeated the Major aghast. "Do you mean to tell me that you have seen – that you have conversed with her?"

"Yes: when my aunt told me the story which she heard from Lady Cumberbridge I could not bring myself to believe it until it was confirmed by Miss Mayne's own lips. I made up my mind that I would go and see her – and I went. Was that wrong?"

"Very wrong. You ought not to have gone near her. If you wanted to know more than common rumour could tell you, you should have sent me – your friend. It was a most unwise act."

"I thought I was doing my duty. I think so still," said Christabel, looking at him with frank steadfast eyes. "We are both women. If we stand far apart it is because Providence has given me many blessings which were withheld from her. It is Mr. Hamleigh's duty to repair the wrong he has done. If he does not he must be answerable to his Maker for the eternal ruin of a soul."

"I tell you again, my dear, that you do not understand the circumstances, and cannot fairly judge the case. You would have done better to take an old soldier's advice before you let the venomous gossip of that malevolent harridan spoil two lives."

"I did not allow myself to be governed by Lady Cumberbridge's gossip, Uncle Oliver. I took nothing for granted. It was not till I had heard the truth from Miss Mayne's lips that I took any decisive step. Mr. Hamleigh accepted my resolve so readily that I can but think it was a welcome release."

"My dear, you went to a queer shop for truth. If you had only known your way about town a little better you would have thought twice before you sacrificed your own happiness in the hope of making Miss Mayne a respectable member of society. But what's done cannot be undone. There's no use in crying over spilt milk. I daresay you and Mr. Hamleigh will meet again and make up your quarrel before we are a year older. In the meantime don't fret, Belle – and don't be afraid that he will ever marry any one but you. I'll be answerable for his constancy."

The anniversary of Christabel's betrothal came round, St. Luke's Day – a grey October day – with a drizzling West-country rain. She went to church alone, for her aunt was far from well, and Miss Bridgeman stayed at home to keep the invalid company – to read to her and cheer her through the long dull morning. Perhaps they both felt that Christabel would rather be alone on this day. She put on her waterproof coat, took her dog with her, and started upon that wild lonely walk to the church in the hollow of the hills. Randie was a beast of perfect manners, and would lie quietly in the porch all through the service, waiting for his mistress.

She knelt alone just where they two had knelt together. There was the humble altar before which they were to have been married; the rustic shrine of which they had so often spoken as the fittest place for a loving union – fuller of tender meaning than splendid St. George's, with its fine oaken panelling, painted windows, and Hogarthian architecture. Never at that altar, nor at any other, were they two to kneel. A little year had held all – her hopes and fears – her triumphant love – joy beyond expression – and sadness too deep for tears. She went over the record as she knelt in the familiar pew – her lips moving automatically, repeating the responses – her eyes fixed and tearless.

Then when the service was over she went slowly wandering in and out among the graves, looking at the grey slate tablets, with the names of those whom she had known in life – all at rest now – old people who had suffered long and patiently before they died – a fair young girl who had died of consumption, and whose sufferings had been sharper than those of age – a sailor who had gone out to a ship with a rope one desperate night, and had given his life to save others – all at rest now.

There was no grave being dug to-day. She remembered how, as she and Angus lingered at the gate, the dull sound of the earth thrown from the gravedigger's spade had mixed with the joyous song of the robin perched on the gate. To-day there was neither gravedigger nor robin – only the soft drip, drip of the rain on dock and thistle, fern and briony. She had the churchyard all to herself, the dog following her about meekly – crawling over grassy mounds, winding in and out among the long wet grass.

"When I die, if you have the ordering of my funeral, be sure I am buried in Minster Churchyard."

That is what Angus had said to her one summer morning, when they were sitting on the Maidenhead coach – and even West-End London, and a London Park, looked lovely in the clear June light. Little chance now that she would be called upon to choose his resting-place – that her hands would fold his in their last meek attitude of submission to the universal conqueror.

"Perhaps he will spend his life in Italy, where no one will know his wife's history," thought Christabel, always believing, in spite of Major Bree's protest, that her old lover would sooner or later make the one possible atonement for an old sin. Nobody except the Major had told her how little the lady deserved that such atonement should be made. It was Mrs. Tregonell's theory that a well-brought up young woman should be left in darkest ignorance of the darker problems of life.

Christabel walked across the hill, and down by narrow winding ways into the valley, where the river, swollen and turbid after the late rains, tumbled noisily over rock and root and bent the long reeds upon its margin. She crossed the narrow footbridge, and went slowly through the level fields between two long lines of hills – a gorge through which, in bleak weather, the winds blew fiercely. There was another hill to ascend before she reached the field that led to Pentargon Bay – half a mile or so of high road between steep banks and tall unkempt hedges. How short and easy to climb that hill had seemed to her in Angus Hamleigh's company! Now she walked wearily and slowly under the softly falling rain, wondering where he was, and whether he remembered this day.

She could recall every word that he had spoken, and the memory was full of pain; for in the light of her new knowledge it seemed to her that all he had said about his early doom had been an argument intended to demonstrate to her why he dared not and must not ask her to be his wife – an apology and an explanation as it were – and this apology, this explanation had been made necessary by her own foolishness – by that fatal forgetfulness of self-respect which had allowed her love to reveal itself. And yet, surely that look of rapture which had shone in his eyes as he clasped her to his heart, as he accepted the dedication of her young life, those tender tones, and all the love that had come afterwards could not have been entirely falsehood.

"I cannot believe that he was a hypocrite," she said, standing where they two had sat side by side in the sunlight of that lovely day, gazing at the grey sea, smooth as a lake under the low grey sky. "I think he must have loved me – unwillingly, perhaps – but it was true love while it lasted. He gave his first and best love to that other – but he loved me too. If I had dared to believe him – to trust in my power to keep him. But no; that would have been to confirm him in wrong-doing. It was his duty to marry the girl he wronged."

The thought that her sacrifice had been made to principle rather than to feeling sustained her in this hour as nothing else could have done. If she could only know where he was, and how he fared, and what he meant to do with his future life, she could be happier, she thought.

Luncheon was over when Christabel went back to Mount Royal; but as Mrs. Tregonell was too ill to take anything beyond a cup of beef-tea in her own room this fact was of no consequence. The mistress of Mount Royal had been declining visibly since her return to Cornwall; Mr. Treherne, the family doctor, told Christabel there was no cause for alarm, but he hinted also that her aunt was not likely to be a long-lived woman.

"I'm afraid she worries herself," he said; "she is too anxious about that scapegrace son of hers."

"Leonard is very cruel," answered Christabel; "he lets weeks and even months go by without writing, and that makes his poor mother miserable. She is perpetually worrying herself about imaginary evils – storm and shipwreck, runaway horses, explosions on steamboats."

"If she would but remember a vulgar adage, that 'Nought is never in danger,'" muttered the doctor, with whom Leonard had been no favourite.

"And then she has frightful dreams about him," said Christabel.

"My dear Miss Courtenay, I know all about it," answered Mr. Treherne; "your dear aunt is just in that comfortable position of life in which a woman must worry herself about something or other. 'Man was born to trouble,' don't you know, my dear? The people who haven't real cares are constrained to invent sham ones. Look at King Solomon – did you ever read any book that breathes such intense melancholy in every line as that little work of his called Ecclesiastes. Solomon was living in the lap of luxury when he wrote that little book, and very likely hadn't a trouble in this world. However, imaginary cares can kill as well as the hardest realities, so you must try to keep up your aunt's spirits, and at the same time be sure that she doesn't over-exert herself. She has a weak heart – what we call a tired heart."

"Does that mean heart-disease?" faltered Christabel, with a despairing look.

"Well, my dear, it doesn't mean a healthy heart. It is not organic disease – nothing wrong with the valves – no fear of excruciating pains – but it's a rather risky condition of life, and needs care."

"I will be careful," murmured the girl, with white lips, as the awful shadow of a grief, hardly thought of till this moment, fell darkly across her joyless horizon.

Her aunt, her adopted mother – mother in all sweetest care and love and thoughtful culture – might too soon be taken from her. Then indeed, and then only, could she know what it was to be alone. Keenly, bitterly, she thought how little during the last dismal months she had valued that love – almost as old as her life – and how the loss of a newer love had made the world desolate for her, life without meaning or purpose. She remembered how little more than a year ago – before the coming of Angus Hamleigh – her aunt and she had been all the world to each other, that tender mother-love all sufficing to fill her life with interest and delight.

In the face of this new fear that sacred love resumed its old place in her mind. Not for an hour, not for a moment of the days to come, should her care or her affection slacken. Not for a moment should the image of him whom she had loved and renounced come between her and her duty to her aunt.

CHAPTER IV

"LOVE WILL HAVE HIS DAY."

From this time Christabel brightened and grew more like her old self. Mrs. Tregonell told herself that the sharp sorrow was gradually wearing itself out. No girl with such happy surroundings as Christabel's could go on being unhappy for ever. Her own spirits improved with Christabel's increasing brightness, and the old house began to lose its dismal air. Until now the widow's conscience had been ill at ease – she had been perpetually arguing with herself that she had done right – trying to stifle doubts that continually renewed themselves. But now she told herself that the time of sorrow was past, and that her wisdom would be justified by its fruits. She had no suspicion that her niece was striving of set purpose to be cheerful – that these smiles and this bright girlish talk were the result of painful effort, duty triumphing over sorrow.

Mount Royal that winter seemed one of the brightest, most hospitable houses in the neighbourhood. There were no parties; Mrs. Tregonell's delicate health was a reason against that. But there was generally some one staying in the house – some nice girl, whose vivacious talk and whose new music helped to beguile the mother from sad thoughts about her absent son – from wearying doubts as to the fulfilment of her plans for the future. There were people coming and going; old friends driving twenty miles to luncheon, and sometimes persuaded to stay to dinner; nearer neighbours walking three miles or so to afternoon tea. The cheery rector of Trevalga and his family, friends of twenty years' standing, were frequent guests. Mrs. Tregonell was not allowed to excite herself, but she was never allowed to be dull. Christabel and Jessie watched her with unwavering attention – anticipating every wish, preventing every fatigue. A weak and tired heart might hold out for a long time under such tender treatment.