Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3

"Perhaps it is the good old lineage which makes the difference," he said to himself once, while his feelings were still sufficiently novel and so far under his control as to be subject to analysis. "The women I have cared for in days gone by have hardly got over their early affinity with the gutter; or when I have admired a woman of good family she has been steeped to the lips in worldliness and vanity."

Mr. Hamleigh, who had told himself that he was going to be intensely bored at Mount Royal, had been Mrs. Tregonell's guest for three weeks, and it seemed to him as if the time were brief and beautiful as one of those rare dreams of impossible bliss which haunt our waking memories, and make actual life dull and joyless by contrast with the glory of shadowland. No word had yet been spoken – nay, at the very thought of those words which most lovers in his position would have been eager to speak, his soul sickened and his cheek paled; for there would be no joyfulness in the revelation of his love – indeed, he doubted whether he had the right to reveal it – whether duty and honour did not alike constrain him to keep his converse within the strict limits of friendship, to bid Christabel good-bye, and turn his back upon Mount Royal, without having said one word more than a friend might speak. Happy as Christabel had been with him – tenderly as she loved him – she was far too innocent to have considered herself ill-treated in such a case. She would have blamed herself alone for the weakness of mind which had been unable to resist the fascination of his society – she would have blushed and wept in secret for her folly in having loved unwooed.

"Has the eventful question been asked?" Jessie inquired one night, as Christabel lingered, after her wont, by the fire in Miss Bridgeman's bedroom. "You two were so intensely earnest to-day as you walked ahead of the Major and me, that I said to myself, 'now is the time – the crisis has arrived!'"

"There was no crisis," answered Christabel, crimsoning; "he has never said one word to me that can imply that I am any more to him than the most indifferent acquaintance."

"What need of words when every look and tone cries 'I love you?' Why he idolizes you, and he lets all the world see it. I hope it may be well for you – both!"

Christabel was on her knees by the fire. She laid her cheek against Jessie's waistband, and drew Jessie's arm round her neck, holding her hand lovingly.

"Do you really think he – cares for me?" she faltered, with her face hidden.

"Do I really think that I have two eyes, and something which is at least an apology for a nose!" ejaculated Jessie, contemptuously. "Why, it has been patent to everybody for the last fortnight that you two are over head and ears in love with each other. There never was a more obvious case of mutual infatuation."

"Oh, Jessie! surely I have not betrayed myself. I know that I have been very weak – but I have tried so hard to hide – "

"And have been about as successful as the ostrich. While those drooping lashes have been lowered to hide the love-light in your eyes, your whole countenance has been an illuminated calendar of your folly. Poor Belle! to think that she has not betrayed herself, while all Boscastle is on tiptoe to know when the wedding is to take place. Why the parson could not see you two sitting in the same pew without knowing that he would be reading your banns before he was many Sundays older."

"And you – really – like him?" faltered Christabel, more shyly than before.

"Yes," answered Jessie, with a provoking lack of enthusiasm. "I really like him. I can't help feeling sorry for Mrs. Tregonell, for I know she wanted you to marry Leonard."

Christabel gave a little sigh, and a faint shiver.

"Poor dear Leonard! I wonder what traveller's hardships he is enduring while we are so snug and happy at Mount Royal?" she said, kindly. "He has an excellent heart – "

"Troublesome people always have, I believe," interjected Jessie. "It is their redeeming feature, the existence of which no one can absolutely disprove."

"And I am very much attached to him – as a cousin – or as an adopted brother; but as to our ever being married – that is quite out of the question. There never were two people less suited to each other."

"Those are the people who usually come together," said Jessie; "the Divorce Court could hardly be kept going if it were not so."

"Jessie, if you are going to be cynical I shall say good-night. I hope there is no foundation for what you said just now. I hope that Auntie has no foolish idea about Leonard and me."

"She has – or had – one prevailing idea, and I fear it will go hard with her when she has to relinquish it," answered Jessie, seriously. "I know that it has been her dearest hope to see you and Leonard married, and I should be a wretch if I were not sorry for her disappointment, when she has been so good to me. But she never ought to have invited Mr. Hamleigh to Mount Royal. That is one of those mistakes the consequences of which last for a lifetime."

"I hope he likes me – just a little," pursued Christabel, with dreamy eyes fixed on the low wood fire; "but sometimes I fancy there must be some mistake – that he does not really care a straw for me. More than once, when he has began to say something that sounded – "

"Business-like," suggested Jessie, as the girl hesitated.

"He has drawn back – seeming almost anxious to recall his words. Once he told me – quite seriously – that he had made up his mind never to marry. Now, that doesn't sound as if he meant to marry me."

"That is not an uncommon way of breaking ground," answered Jessie, with her matter-of-fact air. "A man tells a girl that he is going to die a bachelor – which makes it seem quite a favour on his part when he proposes. All women sigh for the unattainable; and a man who distinctly states that he is not in the market, is likely to make a better bargain when he surrenders."

"I should be sorry to think Mr. Hamleigh capable of such petty ideas," said Christabel. "He told me once that he was like Achilles. Why should he be like Achilles? He is not a soldier."

"Perhaps, it is because he has a Grecian nose," suggested Miss Bridgeman.

"How can you imagine him so vain and foolish," cried Christabel, deeply offended. "I begin to think you detest him?"

"No, Belle, I think him charming, only too charming, and I had rather the man you loved were made of sterner metal – not such a man as Leonard, whose loftiest desires are centred in stable and gun-room; but a man of an altogether different type from Mr. Hamleigh. He has too much of the artistic temperament, without being an artist – he is too versatile, too soft-hearted and impressionable. I am afraid for you, Christabel, I am afraid; and if it were not too late – if your heart were not wholly given to him – "

"It is," answered Christabel, tearfully, with her face hidden; "I hate myself for being so foolish, but I have let myself love him. I know that I may never be his wife – I do not even think that he has any idea of marrying me – but I shall never marry any other man. Oh, Jessie! for pity's sake don't betray me; never let my aunt, or any one else in this world, learn what I have told you. I can't help trusting you – you wind yourself into my heart somehow, and find out all that is hidden there!"

"Because I love you truly and honestly, my dear," answered Jessie, tenderly; "and now, good-night; I feel sure that Mr. Hamleigh will ask you to be his wife, and I only wish he were a better man."

CHAPTER IV

"LOVE! THOU ART LEADING ME FROM WINTRY COLD."

After this came two or three dull and showery days, which afforded no opportunity for long excursions or ramblings of any kind. It was only during such rambles that Mr. Hamleigh and Miss Courtenay ever found themselves alone. Mrs. Tregonell's ideas of propriety were of the old-fashioned school, and when her niece was not under her own wing, she expected Miss Bridgeman to perform all the duties of a duenna – in no wise suspecting how very loosely her instructions upon this point were being carried out. At Mount Royal there was no possibility of confidential talk between Angus and Christabel. If they were in the drawing-room or library, Mrs. Tregonell was with them; if they played billiards, Miss Bridgeman was told off to mark for them; if they went for a constitutional walk between the showers, or wasted half-an-hour in the stables looking at horses and dogs, Miss Bridgeman was bidden to accompany them; and though they had arrived at the point of minding her very little, and being sentimental and sympathetic under her very nose, still there are limits to the love-making that can be carried on before a third person, and a man would hardly care to propose in the presence of a witness. So for three days Christabel still remained in doubt as to Mr. Hamleigh's real feelings. That manner of making tender little speeches, and then, as it were, recalling them, was noticeable many times during those three days of domesticity. There was a hesitancy – an uncertainty in his attentions to Christabel which Jessie interpreted ill.

"There is some entanglement, I daresay," she told herself; "it is the evil of his past life which holds him in the toils. How do we know that he has not a wife hidden away somewhere? He ought to declare himself, or he ought to go away! If this kind of shillyshallying goes on much longer he will break Christabel's heart."

Miss Bridgeman was determined that, if it were in her power to hasten the crisis, the crisis should be hastened. The proprieties, as observed by Mrs. Tregonell, might keep matters in abeyance till Christmas. Mr. Hamleigh gave no hint of his departure. He might stay at Mount Royal for months sentimentalizing with Christabel, and ride off at the last uncompromised.

The fourth day was the Feast of St. Luke. The weather had brightened considerably, but there was a high wind – a south-west wind, with occasional showers.

"Of course, you are going to church this morning," said Jessie to Christabel, as they rose from the breakfast-table.

"Church this morning?" repeated Christabel, vaguely.

For the first time since she had been old enough to understand the services of her Church, she had forgotten a Saint's day.

"It is St. Luke's Day."

"Yes, I remember. And the service is at Minster. We can walk across the hills."

"May I go with you?" asked Mr. Hamleigh.

"Do you like week-day services?" inquired Jessie, with rather a mischievous sparkle in her keen grey eyes.

"I adore them," answered Angus, who had not been inside a church on a week-day since he was best man at a friend's wedding.

"Then we will all go together," said Jessie. "May Brook bring the pony-carriage to fetch us home, Mrs. Tregonell? I have an idea that Mr. Hamleigh won't be equal to the walk home."

"More than equal to twenty such walks!" answered Angus, gaily. "You under-estimate the severity of the training to which I have submitted myself during the last three weeks."

"The pony-carriage may as well meet you in any case," said Mrs. Tregonell. And the order was straightway given.

They started at ten o'clock, giving themselves ample leisure for a walk of something over two miles – a walk by hill and valley, and rushing stream, and picturesque wooden bridge – through a deep gorge where the dark-red cattle were grouped against a background of gorse and heather – a walk of which one could never grow weary – so lonely, so beautiful, so perfect a blending of all that is wildest and all that is most gracious in Nature – an Alpine ramble on a small scale.

Minster Church lies in a hollow of the hill, so shut in by the wooded ridge which shelters its grey walls, that the stranger comes upon it as an architectural surprise.

"How is it you have never managed to finish your tower?" asked Mr. Hamleigh, surveying the rustic fane with a critical air, as he descended to the churchyard by some rugged stone steps on the side of the grassy hill. "You cannot be a particularly devout people, or you would hardly have allowed your parish church to remain in this stunted and stinted condition."

"There was a tower once," said Christabel, naïvely; "the stones are still in the churchyard; but the monks used to burn a light in the tower window – a light that shone through a cleft in the hills, and was seen far out at sea."