Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 2 of 3

"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.

CHAPTER XI

"WHO KNOWS NOT CIRCE?"

The autumn days crept by, sometimes grey and sad of aspect, sometimes radiant and sunny, as if summer had risen from her grave amidst fallen leaves and faded heather. It was altogether a lovely autumn, like that beauteous season of five years ago, and Christabel and Angus wandered about the hills, and lingered by the trout stream in the warm green valley, almost as freely as they had done in the past. They were never alone – Jessie Bridgeman was always with them – very often Dopsy and Mopsy – and sometimes Mr. Tregonell with Captain Vandeleur and half a dozen dogs. One day they all went up the hill, and crossed the ploughed field to the path among the gorse and heather above Pentargon Bay – and Dopsy and Mopsy climbed crags and knolls, and screamed affrightedly, and made a large display of boots, and were generally fascinating after their manner.

"If any place could tempt me to smoke it would be this," said Dopsy, gazing seaward. All the men except Angus were smoking. "I think it must be utterly lovely to sit dreaming over a cigarette in such a place as this."

"What would you dream about," asked Angus. "A new bonnet?"

"Don't be cynical. You think I am awfully shallow, because I am not a perambulating bookshelf like Mrs. Tregonell, who seems to have read all the books that ever were printed."

"There you are wrong. She has read a few —non multa sed multum– but they are the very best, and she has read them well enough to remember them," answered Angus, quietly.

"And Mop and I often read three volumes in a day, and seldom remember a line of what we read," sighed Dopsy. "Indeed, we are awfully ignorant. Of course we learnt things at school – French and German – Italian – natural history – physical geography – geology – and all the onomies. Indeed, I shudder when I remember what a lot of learning was poured into our poor little heads, and how soon it all ran out again."

Dopsy gave her most fascinating giggle, and sat in an æsthetic attitude idly plucking up faded heather blossoms with a tightly gloved hand, and wondering whether Mr. Hamleigh noticed how small the hand was. She thought she was going straight to his heart with these naïve confessions; she had always heard that men hated learned women, and no doubt Mr. Hamleigh's habit of prosing about books with Mrs. Tregonell was merely the homage he payed to his hostess.

"You and Mrs. Tregonell are so dreadfully grave when you get together," pursued Dopsy, seeing that her companion held his peace. She had contrived to be by Mr. Hamleigh's side when he crossed the field, and had in a manner got possessed of him for the rest of the afternoon, barring some violent struggle for emancipation on his part. "I always wonder what you can find to say to each other."

"I don't think there is much cause for wonder. We have many tastes in common. We are both fond of music – of Nature – and of books. There is a wide field for conversation."

"Why won't you talk with me of books. There are some books I adore. Let us talk about Dickens."

"With all my heart. I admire every line he wrote – I think him the greatest genius of this age. We have had great writers – great thinkers – great masters of style – but Scott and Dickens were the Creators – they made new worlds and peopled them. I am quite ready to talk about Dickens."

"I don't think I could say a single word after that outburst of yours," said Dopsy; "you go too fast for me."

He had talked eagerly, willing to talk just now even to Miss Vandeleur, trying not too vividly to remember that other day – that unforgotten hour – in which, on this spot, face to face with that ever changing, ever changeless sea, he had submitted his fate to Christabel, not daring to ask for her love, warning her rather against the misery that might come to her from loving him. And misery had come, but not as he presaged. It had come from his youthful sin, that one fatal turn upon the road of life which he had taken so lightly, tripping with joyous companions along a path strewn with roses. He, like so many, had gathered his roses while he might, and had found that he had to bear the sting of their thorns when he must.

Leonard came up behind them as they talked, Mr. Hamleigh standing by Miss Vandeleur's side, digging his stick into the heather and staring idly at the sea.

"What are you two talking about so earnestly?" he asked; "you are always together. I begin to understand why Hamleigh is so indifferent to sport."

The remark struck Angus as strange, as well as underbred. Dopsy had contrived to inflict a good deal of her society upon him at odd times; but he had taken particular care that nothing in his bearing or discourse should compromise either himself or the young lady.

Dopsy giggled faintly, and looked modestly at the heather. It was still early in the afternoon, and the western light shone full upon a face which might have been pretty if Nature's bloom had not long given place to the poetic pallor of the powder-puff.

"We were talking about Dickens," said Dopsy, with an elaborate air of struggling with the tumult of her feelings. "Don't you adore him?"

"If you mean the man who wrote books, I never read 'em," answered Leonard; "life isn't long enough for books that don't teach you anything. I've read pretty nearly every book that was ever written upon horses and dogs and guns, and a good many on mechanics; that's enough for me. I don't care for books that only titillate one's imagination. Why should one read books to make oneself cry and to make oneself laugh? It's as idiotic a habit as taking snuff to make oneself sneeze."

"That's rather a severe way of looking at the subject," said Angus.

"It's a practical way, that's all. My wife surfeits herself with poetry. She is stuffed with Tennyson and Browning, loaded to the very muzzle with Byron and Shelley. She reads Shakespeare as devoutly as she reads her Bible. But I don't see that it helps to make her pleasant company for her husband or her friends. She is never so happy as when she has her nose in a book; give her a bundle of books and a candle and she would be happy in the little house on the top of Willapark."

"Not without you and her boy," said Dopsy, gushingly. "She could never exist without you two."

Mr. Tregonell lit himself another cigar, and strolled off without a word.

"He has not lovable manners, has he?" inquired Dopsy, with her childish air; "but he is so good-hearted."

"No doubt. You have known him some time, haven't you?" inquired Angus, who had been struggling with an uncomfortable yearning to kick the Squire into the Bay.

The scene offered such temptations. They were standing on the edge of the amphitheatre, the ground shelving steeply downward in front of them, rocks and water below. And to think that she – his dearest, she, all gentleness and refinement, was mated to this coarse clay! Was King Marc such an one as this he wondered, and if he were, who could be angry with Tristan – Tristan who died longing to see his lost love – struck to death by his wife's cruel lie – Tristan whose passionate soul passed by metempsychosis into briar and leaf, and crept across the arid rock to meet and mingle with the beloved dead. Oh, how sweet and sad the old legend seemed to Angus to-day, standing above the melancholy sea, where he and she had stood folded in each other's arms in the sweet triumphant moment of love's first avowal.

Dopsy did not allow him much leisure for mournful meditation. She prattled on in that sweetly girlish manner which was meant to be all spirit and sparkle – glancing from theme to theme, like the butterfly among the flowers, and showing a level ignorance on all. Mr. Hamleigh listened with Christian resignation, and even allowed himself to be her escort home – and to seem especially attentive to her at afternoon tea: for although it may take two to make a quarrel, assuredly one, if she be but brazen enough, may make a flirtation. Dopsy felt that time was short, and that strong measures were necessary. Mr. Hamleigh had been very polite – attentive even. Dopsy, accustomed to the free and easy manners of her brother's friends, mistook Mr. Hamleigh's natural courtesy to the sex for particular homage to the individual. But he had "said nothing," and she was no nearer the assurance of becoming Mrs. Hamleigh than she had been on the evening of his arrival. Dopsy had been fain to confess this to Mopsy in the confidence of sisterly discourse.

"It seems as if I might just as well have had a try for him myself, instead of standing out to give you a better chance," retorted Mopsy, somewhat scornfully.

"Go in and win, if you can," said Dopsy. "It won't be the first time you've tried to cut me out."

Dopsy, embittered by the sense of failure, determined on new tactics. Hitherto she had been all sparkle – now she melted into a touching sadness.

"What a delicious old room this is," she murmured, glancing round at the bookshelves and dark panelling, the high wide chimney piece with its coat-of-arms, in heraldic colours, flashing and gleaming against a background of brown oak. "I cannot help feeling wretched at the idea that next week I shall be far away from this dear place – in dingy, dreary London. Oh, Mr. Hamleigh," – detaining him while she selected one particular piece of sugar from the basin he was handing her – "don't you detest London?"

"Not absolutely. I have sometimes found it endurable."

"Ah, you have your clubs – just the one pleasantest street in all the great overgrown city – and that street lined with palaces, whose doors are always standing open for you. Libraries, smoking rooms, billiard-tables, perfect dinners, and all that is freshest and brightest in the way of society. I don't wonder men like London. But for women it has only two attractions – Mudie, and the shop-windows!"

"And the park – the theatres – the churches – the delight of looking at other women's gowns and bonnets. I thought that could never pall?"

"It does, though. There comes a time when one feels weary of everything," said Dopsy, pensively stirring her tea, and so fixing Mr. Hamleigh with her conversation that he was obliged to linger – yea, even to set down his own teacup on an adjacent table, and to seat himself by the charmer's side.

"I thought you so delighted in the theatres," he said. "You were full of enthusiasm about the drama the night I first dined here."

"Was I?" demanded Dopsy, naïvely. "And now I feel as if I did not care a straw about all the plays that were ever acted – all the actors who ever lived. Strange, is it not, that one can change so, in one little fortnight."

"The change is an hallucination. You are fascinated by the charms of a rural life, which you have not known long enough for satiety. You will be just as fond of plays and players when you get back to London."

"Never," exclaimed Dopsy. "It is not only my taste that is changed. It is myself. I feel as if I were a new creature."

"What a blessing for yourself and society if the change were radical," said Mr. Hamleigh, within himself; and then he answered, lightly.

"Perhaps you have been attending the little chapel at Boscastle, secretly imbibing the doctrines of advanced Methodism, and this is a spiritual awakening."

"No," sighed Dopsy, shaking her head, pensively, as she gazed at her teacup. "It is an utter change. I cannot make it out. I don't think I shall ever care for gaiety – parties – theatres – dress – again."

"Oh, this must be the influence of the Methodists."

"I hate Methodists! I never spoke to one in my life. I should like to go into a convent. I should like to belong to a Protestant sisterhood, and to nurse the poor in their own houses. It would be nasty; I should catch some dreadful complaint, and die, I daresay; but it would be better than what I feel now."

And Dopsy, taking advantage of the twilight, and the fact that she and Angus were at some distance from the rest of the party, burst into tears. They were very real tears – tears of vexation, disappointment, despair; and they made Angus very uncomfortable.

"My dear Miss Vandeleur, I am so sorry to see you distressed. Is there anything on your mind? Is there anything that I can do. Shall I fetch your sister."