Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3

"Unquestionably."

"Very well. Tell Vaudeleur what you mean, and let him settle the details. In the meantime we can take things quietly before the ladies. There is no need to scare any of them."

"I am not going to scare them. Down, Termagant," said Leonard to the Irish setter, as the low light branches of a neighbouring tree were suddenly stirred, and a few withered leaves drifted down from the rugged bank above the spot where the two men were standing.

"Well, I suppose you're a pretty good shot," said the Baron coolly, taking out his cigar-case, "so there'll be no disparity. By-the-by there was a man killed here last year, I heard – a former rival of yours."

"Yes, there was a man killed here," answered Leonard, walking slowly on.

"Perhaps you killed him?"

"I did," answered Leonard, turning upon him suddenly. "I killed him: as I hope to kill you: as I would kill any man who tried to come between me and the woman I loved. He was a gentleman, and I am sorry for him. He fired in the air, and made me feel like a murderer. He knew how to make that last score. I have never had a peaceful moment since I saw him fall, face downward, on that broad slab of rock on the other side of the bridge. You see I am not afraid of you, or I shouldn't tell you this."

"I suspected as much from the time I heard the story," said de Cazalet. "I rarely believe in those convenient accidents which so often dispose of inconvenient people. But don't you think it might be better for you if we were to choose a different spot for to-morrow's meeting? Two of your rivals settled in the same gully might look suspicious – for I dare say you intend to kill me."

"I shall try," answered Leonard.

"Then suppose we were to meet on those sands – Trebarwith Sands, I think you call the place. Not much fear of interruption there, I should think, at seven o'clock in the morning."

"You can settle that and everything else with Vandeleur," said Leonard, striding off with his dogs, and leaving the Baron to follow at his leisure.

De Cazalet walked slowly back to the farm, meditating deeply.

"It's devilish unlucky that this should have happened," he said to himself. "An hour ago everything was going on velvet. We might have got quietly away to-morrow – for I know she meant to go, cleverly as she fenced with me just now – and left my gentleman to his legal remedy, which would have secured the lady and her fortune to me, as soon as the Divorce Court business was over. He would have followed us with the idea of fighting, no doubt, but I should have known how to give him the slip. And then we should have started in life with a clean slate. Now there must be no end of a row. If I kill him it will be difficult to get away – and if I bolt, how am I to be sure of the lady? Will she come to my lure when I call her? Will she go away with me, to-morrow? Yes, that will be my only chance. I must get her to promise to meet me at Bodmin Road Station in time for the Plymouth train – there's one starts at eleven. I can drive from Trebarwith to Bodmin with a good horse, take her straight through to London, and from London by the first available express to Edinburgh. She shall know nothing of what has happened till we are in Scotland, and then I can tell her that she is a free woman, and my wife by the Scottish law, – a bond which she can make as secure as she likes by legal and religious ceremonies."

The Baron had enough insight into the feminine character to know that a woman who has leisure for deliberation upon the verge of ruin is not very likely to make the fatal plunge. The boldly, deliberately bad are the rare exceptions among womankind. The women who err are for the most part hustled and hurried into wrong-doing – hemmed round and beset by conflicting interests – bewildered and confused by false reasoning – whirled in the Maelstrom of passion, helpless as the hunted hare.

The Baron had pleaded his cause eloquently, as he thought – had won Christabel almost to consent to elope with him – but not quite. She had seemed so near yielding, yet had not yielded. She had asked for time – time to reflect upon the fatal step – and reflection was just that one privilege which must not be allowed to her. Strange, he thought, that not once had she spoken of her son, the wrong she must inflict upon him, her agony at having to part with him. Beautiful, fascinating although he deemed her – proud as he felt at having subjugated so lovely a victim, it seemed to de Cazalet that there was something hard and desperate about her – as of a woman who went wrong deliberately and of set purpose. Yet on the brink of ruin she drew back, and was not to be moved by any special pleading of his to consent to an immediate elopement. Vainly had he argued that the time had come – that people were beginning to look askance – that her husband's suspicions might be aroused at any moment. She had been rock in her resistance of these arguments. But her consent to an early flight must now be extorted from her. Delay or hesitation now might be fatal. If he killed his man – and he had little doubt in his own mind that he should kill him – it was essential that his flight should be instant. The days were past when juries were disposed to look leniently upon gentlemanly homicide. If he were caught red-handed, the penalty of his crime would be no light one.

"I was a fool to consent to such a wild plan," he told himself. "I ought to have insisted upon meeting him on the other side of the Channel. But to draw back now might look bad, and would lessen my chance with her. No; there is no alternative course. I must dispose of him, and get her away, without the loss of an hour."

The whole business had to be thought out carefully. His intent was deadly, and he planned this duel with as much wicked deliberation as if he had been planning a murder. He had lived among men who held all human life, except their own, lightly, and to whom duelling and assassination were among the possibilities of every-day existence. He thought how if he and the three other men could reach that lonely bend of the coast unobserved, they might leave the man who should fall lying on the sand, with never an indication to point how he fell.

De Cazalet felt that in Vandeleur there was a man to be trusted. He would not betray, even though his friend were left there, dead upon the low level sand-waste, for the tide to roll over him and hide him, and wrap the secret of his doom in eternal silence. There was something of the freebooter in Jack Vandeleur – an honour-among-thieves kind of spirit – which the soul of that other freebooter recognized and understood.

"We don't want little Montagu," thought de Cazalet. "One man will be second enough to see fair-play. The fuss and formality of the thing can be dispensed with. That little beggar's ideas are too insular – he might round upon me."

So meditating upon the details of to-morrow, the Baron went down the hill to the farm, where he found the Mount Royal party just setting out on their homeward journey under the shades of evening, stars shining faintly in the blue infinite above them. Leonard was not among his wife's guests – nor had he been seen by any of them since they met him at the field-gate, an hour ago.

"He has made tracks for home, no doubt," said Jack Vandeleur.

They went across the fields, and by the common beyond Trevalga – walking briskly, talking merrily, in the cool evening air; all except Mopsy, from whose high-heeled boots there was no surcease of pain. Alas! those Wurtemburg heels, and the boots just half a size too small for the wearer, for how many a bitter hour of woman's life have they to answer!

De Cazalet tried in vain during that homeward walk to get confidential speech with Christabel – he was eager to urge his new plan – the departure from Bodmin Road Station – but she was always surrounded. He fancied even that she made it her business to avoid him.

"Coquette," he muttered to himself savagely. "They are all alike. I thought she was a little better than the rest; but they are all ground in the same mill."

He could scarcely get a glimpse of her face in the twilight. She was always a little way ahead, or a little way behind him – now with Jessie Bridgeman, now with Emily St. Aubyn – skimming over the rough heathy ground, flitting from group to group. When they entered the house she disappeared almost instantly, leaving her guests lingering in the hall, too tired to repair at once to their own rooms, content to loiter in the glow and warmth of the wood fires. It was seven o'clock. They had been out nearly nine hours.

"What a dreadfully long day it has been!" exclaimed Emily St. Aubyn, with a stifled yawn.

"Isn't that the usual remark after a pleasure party?" demanded Mr. FitzJesse. "I have found the unfailing result of any elaborate arrangement for human felicity to be an abnormal lengthening of the hours; just as every strenuous endeavour to accomplish some good work for one's fellow-men infallibly provokes the enmity of the class to be benefited."

"Oh, it has all been awfully enjoyable, don't you know," said Miss St. Aubyn; "and it was very sweet of Mrs. Tregonell to give us such a delightful day; but I can't help feeling as if we had been out a week. And now we have to dress for dinner, which is rather a trial."

"Why not sit down as you are? Let us have a tailor-gown and shooting-jacket dinner, as a variety upon a calico ball," suggested little Monty.

"Impossible! We should feel dirty and horrid," said Miss St. Aubyn. "The freshness and purity of the dinner-table would make us ashamed of our grubbiness. Besides, however could we face the servants? No, the effort must be made. Come, mother, you really look as if you wanted to be carried upstairs."

"By voluntary contributions," murmured FitzJesse, aside to Miss Bridgeman. "Briareus himself could not do it single-handed, as one of our vivacious Home Rulers might say."

The Baron de Cazalet did not appear in the drawing-room an hour later when the house-party assembled for dinner. He sent his hostess a little note apologizing for his absence, on the ground of important business letters, which must be answered that night; though why a man should sit down at eight o'clock in the evening to write letters for a post which would not leave Boscastle till the following afternoon, was rather difficult for any one to understand.

"All humbug about those letters, you may depend," said little Monty, who looked as fresh as a daisy in his smooth expanse of shirt-front, with a single diamond stud in the middle of it, like a lighthouse in a calm sea. "The Baron was fairly done – athlete as he pretends to be – hadn't a leg to stand upon – came in limping. I wouldn't mind giving long odds that he won't show till to-morrow afternoon. It's a case of gruel and bandages for the next twenty-four hours."

Leonard came into the drawing-room just in time to give his arm to Mrs. St. Aubyn. He made himself more agreeable than usual at dinner, as it seemed to that worthy matron – talked more – laughed louder – and certainly drank more than his wont. The dinner was remarkably lively, in spite of the Baron's absence; indeed, the conversation took a new and livelier turn upon that account, for everybody had something more or less amusing to say about the absent one, stimulated and egged on with quiet malice by Mr. FitzJesse. Anecdotes were told of his self-assurance, his vanity, his pretentiousness. His pedigree was discussed, and settled for – his antecedents – his married life, were all submitted to the process of conversational vivisection.

"Rather rough on Mrs. Tregonell, isn't it?" murmured little Monty to the fair Dopsy.

"Do you think she really cares?" Dopsy asked, incredulously.

"Don't you?"

"Not a straw. She could not care for such a man as that, after being engaged to Mr. Hamleigh."

"Hamleigh was better form, I admit – and I used to think Mrs. T. as straight as an arrow. But I confess I've been staggered lately."

"Did you see what a calm queenly look she had all the time people were laughing at de Cazalet?" asked Dopsy. "A woman who cared one little bit for a man could not have taken it so quietly."

"You think she must have flamed out – said something in defence of her admirer. You forget your Tennyson, and how Guinevere 'marred her friend's point with pale tranquillity.' Women are so deuced deep."

"Dear Tennyson," murmured Dopsy, whose knowledge of the Laureate's works had not gone very far beyond "The May Queen," and "The Charge of the Six Hundred."

It was growing late in the evening when de Cazalet showed himself. The drawing-room party had been in very fair spirits without him, but it was a smaller and a quieter party than usual; for Leonard had taken Captain Vandeleur off to his own den after dinner, and Mr. Montagu had offered to play a fifty game, left-handed, against the combined strength of Dopsy and Mopsy. Christabel had been at the piano almost all the evening, playing with a breadth and grandeur which seemed to rise above her usual style. The ladies made a circle in front of the fire, with Mr. Faddie and Mr. FitzJesse, talking and laughing in a subdued tone, while those grand harmonies of Beethoven's rose and fell upon their half indifferent, half admiring ears.

Christabel played the closing chords of the Funeral March of a Hero as de Cazalet entered the room. He went straight to the piano, and seated himself in the empty chair by her side. She glided into the melancholy arpeggios of the Moonlight Sonata, without looking up from the keys. They were a long way from the group at the fire – all the length of the room lay in deep shadow between the lamps on the mantelpiece and neighbouring tables, and the candles upon the piano. Pianissimo music seemed to invite conversation.

"You have written your letters?" she asked lightly.

"My letters were a fiction – I did not want to sit face to face with your husband at dinner, after our conversation this afternoon at the waterfall; you can understand that, can't you Christabel. Don't – don't do that."

"What?" she asked, still looking down at the keys.

"Don't shudder when I call you by your Christian name – as you did just now. Christabel, I want your answer to my question of to-day. I told you then that the crisis of our fate had come. I tell you so again to-night – more earnestly, if it is possible to be more in earnest than I was to-day. I am obliged to speak to you here – almost within earshot of those people – because time is short, and I must take the first chance that offers. It has been my accursed luck never to be with you alone – I think this afternoon was the first time that you and I have been together alone since I came here. You don't know how hard it has been for me to keep every word and look within check – always to remember that we were before an audience."

"Yes, there has been a good deal of acting," she answered quietly.

"But there must be no more acting – no more falsehood. We have both made up our minds, have we not, my beloved? I think you love me – yes, Christabel, I feel secure of your love. You did not deny it to-day, when I asked that thrilling question – those hidden eyes, the conscious droop of that proud head, were more eloquent than words. And for my love, Christabel – no words can speak that. It shall be told by-and-by in language that all the world can understand – told by my deeds. The time has come for decision; I have had news to-day that renders instant action necessary. If you and I do not leave Cornwall together to-morrow, we may be parted for ever. Have you made up your mind?"