Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3

"I am positively longing for tea," said Mrs. Torrington to FitzJesse, ignoring Mopsy.

"Then I'll ask the farm people to brew a special pot for you two," answered the journalist, ringing the bell. "Here comes Mr. Tregonell, game-bag, dogs, and all. This is more friendly than I expected."

Leonard strolled across the little quadrangular garden, and came in at the low door, as Mr. FitzJesse spoke.

"I thought I should find some of you here," he said; "where are the others?"

"Gone to the Kieve, most of them," answered Mrs. Torrington briskly. Her freshness contrasted cruelly with Mopsy's limp and exhausted condition. "At least I know your wife and de Cazalet were bent on going there. She had promised to show the waterfall. We were just debating whether we ought to wait tea for them."

"I wouldn't, if I were you," said Leonard. "No doubt they'll take their time."

He flung down his game-bag, took up his hat, whistled to his dogs, and went towards the door.

"Won't you stop and have some tea – just to keep us in countenance?" asked Mrs. Torrington.

"No, thanks. I'd rather have it later. I'll go and meet the others."

"If he ever intended to look after her it was certainly time he should begin," said the widow, when the door was shut upon her host. "Please ring again, Mr. FitzJesse. How slow these farm people are! Do they suppose we have come here to stare at cups and saucers?"

CHAPTER XI

"LOVE BORE SUCH BITTER AND SUCH DEADLY FRUIT."

Leonard Tregonell went slowly up the steep narrow lane with his dogs at his heels. It was a year since he had been this way. Good as the cover round about the waterfall was said to be for woodcock, he had carefully avoided the spot this season, and his friends had been constrained to defer to his superior wisdom as a son of the soil. He had gone farther afield for his sport, and, as there had been no lack of birds, his guests had no reason for complaint. Yet Jack Vandeleur had said more than once, "I wonder you don't try the Kieve. We shot a lot of birds there last year."

Now for the first time since that departed autumn he went up the hill to one of the happy hunting-grounds of his boyhood. The place where he had fished, and shot, and trapped birds, and hunted water-rats, and climbed and torn his clothes in the careless schoolboy days, when his conception of a perfectly blissful existence came as near as possible to the life of a North American Indian. He had always detested polite society and book-learning; but he had been shrewd enough and quick enough at learning the arts he loved: – gunnery – angling – veterinary surgery.

He met a group of people near the top of the hill – all the party except Christabel and the Baron. One glance showed him that these two were missing from the cluster of men and women crowding through the gate that opened into the lane.

"The waterfall is quite a shabby affair," said Miss St. Aubyn; "there has been so little rain lately, I felt ashamed to show Mr. Faddie such a poor little dribble."

"We are all going back to tea," explained her mother. "I don't know what has become of Mrs. Tregonell and the Baron, but I suppose they are loitering about somewhere. Perhaps you'll tell them we have all gone on to the farm."

"Yes, I'll send them after you. I told my wife I'd meet her at the Kieve, if I could."

He passed them and ran across the ploughed field, while the others went down the hill, talking and laughing. He heard the sound of their voices and that light laughter dying away on the still air as the distance widened between him and them; and he wondered if they were talking of his wife, and of his seeming indifference to her folly. The crisis had come. He had watched her in blank amazement, hardly able to believe his own senses, to realize the possibility of guilt on the part of one whose very perfection had galled him; and now he told himself there was no doubt of her folly, no doubt that this tinselly pretender had fascinated her, and that she was on the verge of destruction. No woman could outrage propriety as she had been doing of late, and yet escape danger. The business must be stopped somehow, even if he were forced to kick the Baron out of doors, in order to make an end of the entanglement. And then, what if she were to lift up her voice, and accuse him – if she were to turn that knowledge which he suspected her of possessing, against him? What then? He must face the situation, and pay the penalty of what he had done. That was all.

"It can't much matter what becomes of me," he said to himself. "I have never had an hour's real happiness since I married her. She warned me that it would be so – warned me against my own jealous temper – but I wouldn't listen to her. I had my own way."

Could she care for that man? Could she? In spite of the coarseness of his own nature, there was in Leonard's mind a deep-rooted conviction of his wife's purity, which was stronger even than the evidence of actual facts. Even now, although the time had come when he must act, he had a strange confused feeling, like a man whose brain is under the influence of some narcotic, which makes him see things that are not. He felt as in some hideous dream – long-involved – a maze of delusion and bedevilment, from which there was no escape.

He went down into the hollow. The high wooden gate stood wide open – evidence that there was some one lingering below. The leaves were still on the trees, the broad feathery ferns were still green. There was a low yellow light gleaming behind the ridge of rock and the steep earthy slope above. The rush of the water sounded loud and clear in the silence.

Leonard crept cautiously down the winding moss-grown track, holding his dogs behind him in a leash, and constraining those well-mannered brutes to perfect quiet. He looked down into the deep hollow, through which the water runs, and over which there is that narrow foot bridge, whence the waterfall is seen in all its beauty – an arc of silvery light cleaving the dark rock above, and flashing down to the dark rock below.

Christabel was standing on the bridge, with de Cazalet at her side. They were not looking up at the waterfall. Their faces were turned the other way, to the rocky river bed, fringed with fern and wild rank growth of briar and weed. The Baron was talking earnestly, his head bent over Christabel, till it seemed to those furious eyes staring between the leafage, as if his lips must be touching her face. His hand clasped hers. That was plain enough.

Just then the spaniel stirred, and rustled the dank dead leaves – Christabel started, and looked up towards the trees that screened her husband's figure. A guilty start, a guilty look, Leonard thought. But those eyes of hers could not pierce the leafy screen, and they drooped again, looking downward at the water beneath her feet. She stood in a listening attitude, as if her whole being hung upon de Cazalet's words.

What was he pleading so intensely? What was that honeyed speech, to which the false wife listened, unresistingly, motionless as the bird spell-bound by the snake. So might Eve have listened to the first tempter. In just such an attitude, with just such an expression, every muscle relaxed, the head gently drooping, the eyelids lowered, a tender smile curving the lips – the first tempted wife might have hearkened to the silver-sweet tones of her seducer.

"Devil!" muttered Leonard between his clenched teeth.

Even in the agony of his rage – rage at finding that this open folly, which he had pretended not to see, had been but the light and airy prelude to the dark theme of secret guilt – that wrong which he felt most deeply was his wife's falsehood to herself – her wilful debasement of her own noble character. He had known her, and believed in her as perfect and pure among women, and now he saw her deliberately renouncing all claim to man's respect, lowering herself to the level of the women who can be tempted. He had believed her invulnerable. It was as if Diana herself had gone astray – as if the very ideal and archetype of purity among women had become perverted.

He stood, breathless almost, holding back his dogs, gazing, listening with as much intensity as if only the senses of hearing and sight lived in him – and all the rest were extinct. He saw the Baron draw nearer and nearer as he urged his prayer – who could doubt the nature of that prayer – until the two figures were posed in one perfect harmonious whole, and then his arm stole gently round the slender waist.

Christabel sprang away from him with a coy laugh.

"Not now," she said, in a clear voice, so distinct as to reach that listener's ears. "I can answer nothing now. To-morrow."

"But, my soul, why delay?"

"To-morrow," she repeated; and then she cried suddenly, "hark! there is some one close by. Did you not hear?"

There had been no sound but the waterfall – not even the faintest rustle of a leaf. The two dogs crouched submissively at their master's feet, while that master himself stood motionless as a stone figure.

"I must go," cried Christabel. "Think how long we have stayed behind the others. We shall set people wondering."

She sprang lightly from the bridge to the bank, and came quickly up the rocky path, a narrow winding track, which closely skirted the spot where Leonard stood concealed by the broad leaves of a chestnut. She might almost have heard his hurried breathing, she might almost have seen the lurid eyes of his dogs, gleaming athwart the rank undergrowth; but she stepped lightly past, and vanished from the watcher's sight.

De Cazalet followed.

"Christabel, stop," he exclaimed; "I must have your answer now. My fate hangs upon your words. You cannot mean to throw me over. I have planned everything. In three days we shall be at Pesth – secure from all pursuit."

He was following in Christabel's track, but he was not swift enough to overtake her, being at some disadvantage upon that slippery way, where the moss-grown slabs of rock offered a very insecure footing. As he spoke the last words, Christabel's figure disappeared among the trees upon the higher ground above him, and a broad herculean hand shot out of the leafy background, and pinioned him.

"Scoundrel – profligate – impostor!" hissed a voice in his ear, and Leonard Tregonell stood before him – white, panting, with flecks of foam upon his livid lips. "Devil! you have corrupted and seduced the purest woman that ever lived. You shall answer to me – her husband – for your infamy."

"Oh! is that your tune?" exclaimed the Baron, wrenching his arm from that iron grip. They were both powerful men – fairly matched in physical force, cool, hardened by rough living. "Is that your game? I thought you didn't mind."

"You dastardly villain, what did you take me for?"

"A common product of nineteenth-century civilization," answered the other, coolly. "One of those liberal-minded husbands who allow their wives as wide a license as they claim for themselves."

"Liar," cried Leonard, rushing at him with his clenched fist raised to strike.

The Baron caught him by the wrist – held him with fingers of iron.

"Take care," he said. "Two can play at that game. If it comes to knocking a man's front teeth down his throat I may as well tell you that I have given the 'Frisco dentists a good bit of work in my time. You forget that there's no experience of a rough-and-ready life that you have had which I have not gone through twice over. If I had you in Colorado we'd soon wipe off this little score with a brace of revolvers."

"Let Cornwall be Colorado for the nonce. We could meet here as easily as we could meet in any quiet nook across the Channel, or in the wilds of America. No time like the present – no spot better than this."

"If we had only the barkers," said de Cazalet, "but unluckily we haven't."

"I'll meet you here to-morrow at daybreak – say, sharp seven. We can arrange about the pistols to-night. Vandeleur will come with me – he'd run any risk to serve me – and I daresay you could get little Monty to do as much for you. He's a good plucked one."

"Do you mean it?"