Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 2 of 3

"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.