Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3

"How dreadfully dull you must be without him!" said the lady, sympathetically, and several other ladies – notably a baronet's widow, who had been a friend of Mrs. Tregonell's girlhood – a woman who never said a kind word of anybody, yet was invited everywhere, and who had the reputation of giving a better dinner, on a small scale, than any other lonely woman in London. The rest were young women, mostly of the gushing type, who were prepared to worship Christabel because she was pretty, an heiress, and engaged to a man of some distinction in their particular world. They had all clustered round Mrs. Tregonell and her niece, in the airy front drawing-room, while Miss Bridgeman poured out tea at a Japanese table in the middle room, waited upon sedulously by Major Bree, Mr. FitzPelham, and another youth, a Somerset House young man, who wrote for the Society papers – or believed that he did, on the strength of having had an essay on "Tame Cats" accepted in the big gooseberry season – and gave himself to the world as a person familiar with the undercurrents of literary and dramatic life. The ladies made a circle round Mrs. Tregonell, and these three gentlemen, circulating with tea-cups, sugar-basins, and cream-pots, joined spasmodically in the conversation.

Christabel owned to finding a certain emptiness in life without her lover. She did not parade her devotion to him, but was much too unaffected to pretend indifference.

"We went to the theatre on Tuesday night," she said.

"Oh, how could you!" cried the oldest and most gushing of the three young ladies. "Without Mr. Hamleigh?"

"That was our chief reason for going. We knew we should be dull without him. We went to the Kaleidoscope, and were delighted with Psyche."

All three young ladies gushed in chorus. Stella Mayne was quite too lovely – a poem, a revelation, and so on, and so on. Lady Cumberbridge, the baronet's widow, pursed her lips and elevated her eyebrows, which, on a somewhat modified form, resembled Lord Thurlow's, but said nothing. The Somerset House young man stole a glance at FitzPelham, and smiled meaningly; but the amiable FitzPelham was only vacuous.

"Of course you have seen this play," said Mrs. Tregonell, turning to Lady Cumberbridge. "You see everything, I know?"

"Yes; I make it my business to see everything – good, bad, and indifferent," answered the strong-minded dowager, in a voice which would hardly have shamed the Lord Chancellor's wig, which those Thurlow-like eyebrows so curiously suggested. "It is the sole condition upon which London life is worth living. If one only saw the good things, one would spend most of one's evening at home, and we don't leave our country places for that. I see a good deal that bores me, an immense deal that disgusts me, and a little – a very little – that I can honestly admire."

"Then I am sure you must admire 'Cupid and Psyche,'" said Christabel.

"My dear, that piece, which I am told has brought a fortune to the management, is just one of the things that I don't care to talk about before young people. I look upon it as the triumph of vice: and I wonder – yes, very much wonder – that you were allowed to see it."

There was an awfulness about the dowager's tone as she uttered these final sentences, which out-Thurlowed Thurlow. Christabel shivered, hardly knowing why, but heartily wishing there had been no such person as Lady Cumberbridge among her aunt's London acquaintance.

"But, surely there is nothing improper in the play, dear Lady Cumberbridge," exclaimed the eldest gusher, too long in society to shrink from sifting any question of that kind.

"There is a great deal that is improper," replied the dowager, sternly.

"Surely not in the language: that is too lovely?" urged the gusher. "I must be very dense, I'm afraid, for I really did not see anything objectionable."

"You must be very blind, as well as dense, if you didn't see Stella Mayne's diamonds," retorted the dowager.

"Oh, of course I saw the diamonds. One could not help seeing them."

"And do you think there is nothing improper in those diamonds, or their history?" demanded Lady Cumberbridge, glaring at the damsel from under those terrific eyebrows. "If so, you must be less experienced in the ways of the world than I gave you credit for being. But I think I said before that this is a question which I do not care to discuss before young people – even advanced as young people are in their ways and opinions now-a-days."

The maiden blushed at this reproof; and the conversation, steered judiciously by Mrs. Tregonell, glided on to safer topics. Yet calmly as that lady bore herself, and carefully as she managed to keep the talk among pleasant ways for the next half-hour, her mind was troubled not a little by the things that had been said about Stella Mayne. There had been a curious significance in the dowager's tone when she expressed surprise at Christabel having been allowed to see this play. That significant tone, in conjunction with Major Bree's marked opposition to Belle's wish upon this one matter, argued that there was some special reason why Belle should not see this actress. Mrs. Tregonell, like all quiet people, very observant, had seen the Somerset House young man's meaning smile as the play was mentioned. What was this peculiar something which all these people had in their minds? and of which she, Christabel's aunt, to whom the girl's welfare and happiness were vital, knew nothing.

She determined to take the most immediate and direct way of knowing all that was to be known, by questioning that peripatetic chronicle of fashionable scandal, Lady Cumberbridge. This popular personage knew a great deal more than the Society papers, and was not constrained like those prints to disguise her knowledge in Delphic hints and dark sayings. Lady Cumberbridge, like John Knox, never feared the face of man, and could be as plain-spoken and as coarse as she pleased.

"I should so like to have a few words with you by-and-by, if you don't mind waiting till these girls are gone," murmured Mrs. Tregonell.

"Very well, my dear; get rid of them as soon as you can, for I've some people coming to dinner, and I want an hour's sleep before I put on my gown."

The little assembly dispersed within the next quarter of an hour, and Christabel joined Jessie in the smaller drawing-room.

"You can shut the folding-doors, Belle," said Mrs. Tregonell, carelessly. "You and Jessie are sure to be chattering; and I want a quiet talk with Lady Cumberbridge."

Christabel obeyed, wondering a little what the quiet talk would be about, and whether by any chance it would touch upon the play last night. She, too, had been struck by the significance of the dowager's tone; and then it was so rarely that she found herself excluded from any conversation in which her aunt had part.

"Now," said Mrs. Tregonell, directly the doors were shut, "I want to know why Christabel should not have been allowed to see that play the other night?"

"What!" cried Lady Cumberbridge, "don't you know why?"

"Indeed no. I did not go with them, so I had no opportunity of judging as to the play."

"My dear soul," exclaimed the deep voice of the dowager, "it is not the play – the play is well enough – it is the woman! And do you really mean to tell me that you don't know?"

"That I don't know what?"

"Stella Mayne's history?"

"What should I know of her more than of any other actress? They are all the same to me, like pictures, which I admire or not, from the outside. I am told that some are women of fashion who go everywhere, and that it is a privilege to know them; and that some one ought hardly to speak about, though one may go to see them; while there are others – "

"Who hover like stars between two worlds," said Lady Cumberbridge. "Yes, that's all true. And nobody has told you anything about Stella Mayne?"

"No one!"

"Then I'm very sorry I mentioned her name to you. I dare say you will hate me if I tell you the truth: people always do; because, in point of fact, truth is generally hateful. We can't afford to live up to it."

"I shall be grateful to you if you will tell me all that there is to be told about this actress, who seems in some way to be concerned – "

"In your niece's happiness? Well, no, my dear, we will hope not. It is all a thing of the past. Your friends have been remarkably discreet. It is really extraordinary that you should have heard nothing about it; but, on reflection, I think it is really better you should know the fact. Stella Mayne is the young woman for whom Mr. Hamleigh nearly ruined himself three years ago."

Mrs. Tregonell turned white as death.

Her mind had not been educated to the acceptance of sin and folly as a natural element in a young man's life. In her view of mankind the good men were all Bayards – fearless, stainless; the bad were a race apart, to be shunned by all good women. To be told that her niece's future husband – the man for whose sake her whole scheme of life had been set aside, the man whom Christabel and she had so implicitly trusted – was a fashionable libertine – the lover of an actress – the talk of the town – was a revelation that changed the whole colour of life.

"Are you sure that this is true?" she asked, falteringly.

"My dear creature, do I ever say anything that isn't true? There is no need to invent things. God knows the things people do are bad enough, and wild enough, to supply conversation for everybody. But this about Hamleigh and Stella Mayne is as well known as the Albert Memorial. He was positively infatuated about her; took her off the stage: she was in the back row of the ballet at Drury Lane, salary seventeen and sixpence a week. He lived with her in Italy for a year; then they came back to England, and he gave her a house in St. John's Wood; squandered his money upon her; had her educated; worshipped her, in fact; and, I am told, would have married her, if she had only behaved herself. Fortunately, these women never do behave themselves: they show the cloven-foot too soon; our people only go wrong after marriage. But I hope, my dear, you will not allow yourself to be worried by this business. It is all a thing of the past, and Hamleigh will make just as good a husband as if it had never happened; better, perhaps, for he will be all the more able to appreciate a pure-minded girl like your niece."

Mrs. Tregonell listened with a stony visage. She was thinking of Leonard – Leonard who had never done wrong, in this way, within his mother's knowledge – who had been cheated out of his future wife by a flashy trickster – a man who talked like a poet, and who yet had given his first passionate love, and the best and brightest years of his life to a stage-dancer.

"How long is it since Mr. Hamleigh has ceased to be devoted to Miss Mayne?" she asked, in a cold, dull voice.

"I cannot say exactly: one hears so many different stories; there were paragraphs in the Society papers last season: 'A certain young sprig of fashion, a general favourite, whose infatuation for a well-known actress has been a matter of regret among the haute volée, is said to have broken his bonds. The lady keeps her diamonds, and threatens to publish his letters,' and so on, and so forth. You know the kind of thing?"

"I do not," said Mrs. Tregonell. "I have never taken any interest in such paragraphs."

"Ah! that is the consequence of vegetating at the fag-end of England: all the pungency is taken out of life for you."

Mrs. Tregonell asked no further questions. She had made up her mind that any more detailed information, which she might require, must be obtained from another channel. She did not want this battered woman of the world to know how hard she was hit. Yes – albeit there was a far-off gleam of light amidst this darkness – she was profoundly hurt by the knowledge of Angus Hamleigh's wrong-doing. He had made himself very dear to her – dear from the tender association of the past – dear for his own sake. She had believed him a man of scrupulous honour, of pure and spotless life. Perhaps she had taken all this for granted, in her rustic simplicity, seeing that all his ideas and instincts were those of a gentleman. She had made no allowance for the fact that the will-o'-the-wisp, passionate love, may lure even a gentleman into swampy ground; and that his sole superiority over profligates of coarser clay will be to behave himself like a gentleman in those morasses whither an errant fancy has beguiled him.

"I hope you will not let this influence your feelings towards Mr. Hamleigh," said Lady Cumberbridge; "if you did so, I should really feel sorry for having told you. But you must inevitably have heard the story from somebody else before long."

"No doubt. I suppose everybody knows it."

"Why yes, it was tolerably notorious. They used to be seen everywhere together. Mr. Hamleigh seemed proud of his infatuation, and there were plenty of men in his own set to encourage him. Modern society has adopted Danton's motto, don't you know? —de l'audace, encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace! And now I must go and get my siesta, or I shall be as stupid as an owl all the evening. Good-bye."

Mrs. Tregonell sat like a statue, absorbed in thought, for a considerable time after Lady Cumberbridge's departure. What was she to do? This horrid story was true, no doubt. Major Bree would be able to confirm it presently, when he came back to dinner, as he had promised to come. What was she to do? Allow the engagement to go on? – allow an innocent and pure-minded girl to marry a man whose infatuation for an actress had been town talk; who had come to Mount Royal fresh from that evil association – wounded to the core, perhaps, by the base creature's infidelity – and seeking consolation wherever it might offer; bringing his second-hand feelings, with all the bloom worn off them, to the shrine of innocent young beauty! – dedicating the mere ashes of burned-out fires to the woman who was to be his wife; perhaps even making scornful comparisons between her simple rustic charms and the educated fascinations of the actress; bringing her the leavings of a life – the mere dregs of youth's wine-cup! Was Christabel to be permitted to continue under this shameful delusion – to believe that she was receiving all when she was getting nothing? No! – ten thousand times, no! It was womanhood's stern duty to come to the rescue of guileless, too-trusting girlhood. Bitter as the ordeal must needs be for both, Christabel must be told the whole cruel truth. Then it would be for her own heart to decide. She would still be a free agent. But surely her own purity of feeling would teach her to decide rightly – to renounce the lover who had so fooled and cheated her – and, perhaps, later to reward the devotion of that other adorer who had loved her from boyhood upwards with a steady unwavering affection – chiefly demonstrated by the calm self-assured manner in which he had written of Christabel – in his letters to his mother – as his future wife, the possibility of her rejection of that honour never having occurred to his rustic intelligence.