Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3

"In his nursery. Where should he be?" exclaimed Christabel, lightly.

"I thought he would have been with you. I thought he might have been here to bid me welcome home."

He had made a picture in his mind, almost involuntarily, of the mother and child – she, calm and lovely as one of Murillo's Madonnas, with the little one on her knee. There was no vein of poetry in his nature, yet unconsciously the memory of such pictures had associated itself with his wife's image. And instead of that holy embodiment of maternal love, there flashed and sparkled before him this brilliant woman, with fair fluffy hair, and Louis Quinze coat, all a glitter with cut-steel.

"Home!" echoed Christabel, mockingly; "how sentimental you have grown. I've no doubt the boy will be charmed to see you, especially if you have brought him some South American toys; but I thought it would bore you to see him before you had dined. He shall be on view in the drawing-room before dinner, if you would really like to see him so soon."

"Don't trouble," said Leonard, curtly; "I can find my way to the nursery."

He went upstairs without another word, leaving his friend Jack seated in the midst of the cheerful circle, drinking soda water and brandy, and talking of their adventures upon the backbone of South America.

"Delicious country!" said de Cazalet, who talked remarkably good English, with just the faintest Hibernian accent. "I have ridden over every inch of it. Ah, Mrs. Tregonell, that is the soil for poetry and adventure; a land of extinct volcanoes. If Byron had known the shores of the Amazon, he would have struck a deeper note of passion than any that was ever inspired by the Dardanelles or the Bosphorus. Sad that so grand a spirit should have pined in the prison-house of a worn-out world."

"I have always understood that Byron got some rather strong poetry out of Switzerland and Italy," murmured Mr. FitzJesse, meekly.

"Weak and thin to what he might have written had he known the Pampas," said the Baron.

"You have done the Pampas?" said Mr. FitzJesse.

"I have lived amongst wild horses, and wilder humanity, for months at a stretch."

"And you have published a volume of – verses?"

"Another of my youthful follies. But I do not place myself upon a level with Byron."

"I should if I were you," said Mr. FitzJesse. "It would be an original idea – and in an age marked by a total exhaustion of brain-power, an original idea is a pearl of price."

"What kind of dogs did you see in your travels?" asked Emily St. Aubyn, a well-grown upstanding young woman, in a severe tailor-gown of undyed homespun.

"Two or three very fine breeds of mongrels."

"I adore mongrels!" exclaimed Mopsy. "I think that kind of dog which belongs to no particular breed, which has been ill-used by London boys, and which follows one to one's doorstep, is the most faithful and intelligent of the whole canine race. Huxley may exalt Blenheim spaniels as the nearest thing to human nature; but my dog Tim, which is something between a lurcher, a collie, and a bull, is ever so much better than human nature."

"The Blenheim is greedy, luxurious, and lazy, and generally dies in middle life from the consequences of over-feeding," drawled Mr. FitzJesse. "I don't think Huxley is very far out."

"I would back a Cornish sheep-dog against any animal in creation," said Christabel, patting Randie, who was standing amiably on end, with his fore-paws on the cushioned elbow of her chair. "Do you know that these dogs smile when they are pleased, and cry when they are grieved – and they will mourn for a master with a fidelity unknown in humanity."

"Which as a rule does not mourn," said FitzJesse. "It only goes into mourning."

And so the talk went on, always running upon trivialities – glancing from theme to theme – a mere battledore and shuttlecock conversation – making a mock of most things and most people. Christabel joined in it all; and some of the bitterest speech that was spoken in that hour before the sounding of the seven o'clock gong, fell from her perfect lips.

"Did you ever see such a change in any one as in Mrs. Tregonell?" asked Dopsy of Mopsy, as they elbowed each other before the looking-glass, the first armed with a powder puff, the second with a little box containing the implements required for the production of piquant eyebrows.

"A wonderful improvement," answered Mopsy. "She's ever so much easier to get on with. I didn't think it was in her to be so thoroughly chic."

"Do you know, I really liked her better last year, when she was frumpy and dowdy," faltered Dopsy. "I wasn't able to get on with her, but I couldn't help looking up to her, and feeling that, after all, she was the right kind of woman. And now – "

"And now she condescends to be human – to be one of us – and the consequence is that her house is three times as nice as it was last year," said Mopsy, turning the corner of an eyebrow with a bold but careful hand, and sending a sharp elbow into Dopsy's face during the operation.

"I wish you'd be a little more careful," ejaculated Dopsy.

"I wish you'd contrive not to want the glass exactly when I do," retorted Mopsy.

"How do you like the French Baron?" asked Dopsy, when a brief silence had restored her equanimity.

"French, indeed! He is no more French than I am. Mr. FitzJesse told me that he was born and brought up in Jersey – that his father was an Irish Major on half-pay, and his mother a circus rider."

"But how does he come by his title – if it is a real title?"

"FitzJesse says the title is right enough. One of his father's ancestors came to the South of Ireland after the revocation of something – a treaty at Nancy – I think he said. He belonged to an old Huguenot family – those people who were massacred in the opera, don't you know – and the title had been allowed to go dead – till this man married a tremendously rich Sheffield cutler's daughter, and bought the old estate in Provence, and got himself enrolled in the French peerage. Romantic, isn't it?"

"Very. What became of the Sheffield cutler's daughter?"

"She drank herself to death two years after her marriage. FitzJesse says they both lived upon brandy, but she hadn't been educated up to it, and it killed her."

"A curious kind of man for Mrs. Tregonell to invite here. Not quite good style."

"Perhaps not – but he's very amusing."

Leonard spent half an hour with his son. The child had escaped from babyhood in the year that had gone. He was now a bright sentient creature, eager to express his thoughts – to gather knowledge – an active, vivacious being, full of health and energy. Whatever duties Christabel had neglected during her husband's absence, the boy had, at least, suffered no neglect. Never had childhood developed under happier conditions. The father could find no fault in the nursery, though there was a vague feeling in his mind that everything was wrong at Mount Royal.

"Why the deuce did she fill the house with people while I was away," he muttered to himself, in the solitude of his dressing-room, where his clothes had been put ready for him, and candles lighted by his Swiss valet. The dressing-room was at that end of the corridor most remote from Christabel's apartments. It communicated with the room Leonard had slept in during his boyhood – and that opened again into his gun-room.

The fact that these rooms had been prepared for him told him plainly enough that he and his wife were henceforth to lead divided lives. The event of last October, his year of absence, had built up a wall between them which he, for the time being at least, felt himself powerless to knock down.

"Can she suspect – can she know" – he asked himself, pausing in his dressing to stand staring at the fire, with moody brow and troubled eyes. "No, that's hardly possible. And yet her whole manner is changed. She holds me at a distance. Every look, every tone just now was a defiance. Of course I know that she loved that man – loved him first – last – always; never caring a straw for me. She was too careful of herself – had been brought up too well to go wrong, like other women – but she loved him. I would never have brought him inside these doors if I had not known that she could take care of herself. I tested and tried her to the uttermost – and – well – I took my change out of him."

Mr. Tregonell dressed himself a little more carefully than he was wont to dress – thinking for the most part that anything which suited him was good enough for his friends – and went down to the drawing-room, feeling like a visitor in a strange house, half inclined to wonder how he would be received by his wife and his wife's guests. He who had always ruled supreme in that house, choosing his visitors for his own pleasure – subjugating all tastes and habits of other people to his own convenience, now felt as if he were only there on sufferance.

It was early when he entered the drawing-room, and the Baron de Cazalet was the only occupant of that apartment. He was standing in a lounging attitude, with his back against the mantelpiece, and his handsome person set off by evening dress. That regulation costume does not afford much scope to the latent love of finery which still lurks in the civilized man, as if to prove his near relationship to the bead and feather-wearing savage – but de Cazalet had made himself as gorgeous as he could with jewelled studs, embroidered shirt, satin under-waistcoat, amber silk stockings, and Queen Ann shoes. He was assuredly handsome – but he had just that style of beauty which to the fastidious mind is more revolting than positive ugliness. Dark-brown eyes, strongly arched eyebrows, an aquiline nose, a sensual mouth, a heavy jaw, a faultless complexion of the French plum-box order, large regular teeth of glittering whiteness, a small delicately trained moustache with waxed ends, and hair of oily sheen, odorous of pommade divine, made up the catalogue of his charms. Leonard stood looking at him doubtfully, as if he were a hitherto unknown animal.

"Where did my wife pick him up, and why?" he asked himself. "I should have thought he was just the kind of man she would detest."

"How glad you must be to get back to your Lares and Penates," said the Baron, smiling blandly.

"I'm uncommonly glad to get back to my horses and dogs," answered Leonard, flinging himself into a large armchair by the fire, and taking up a newspaper. "Have you been long in the West?"

"About a fortnight, but I have been only three days at Mount Royal. I had the honour to renew my acquaintance with Mrs. Tregonell last August at Zermatt, and she was good enough to say that if I ever found myself in this part of the country she would be pleased to receive me in her house. I needn't tell you that with such a temptation in view I was very glad to bend my steps westward. I spent ten days on board a friend's yacht, between Dartmouth and the Lizard, landed at Penzance last Tuesday, and posted here, where I received a more than hospitable welcome."

"You are a great traveller, I understand?"

"I doubt if I have done as much as you have in that way. I have seldom travelled for the sake of travelling. I have lived in the tents of the Arabs. I have bivouacked on the Pampas – and enjoyed life in all the cities of the South, from Valparaiso to Carthagena; but I can boast no mountaineering exploits or scientific discoveries – and I never read a paper at the Geographical."

"You look a little too fond of yourself for mountaineering," said Leonard, smiling grimly at the Baron's portly figure, and all-pervading sleekness.

"Well – yes – I like a wild life – but I have no relish for absolute hardship – the thermometer below zero, a doubtful supply of provisions, pemmican, roasted skunk for supper, without any currant jelly – no, I love mine ease at mine Inn."

He threw out his fine expanse of padded chest and shoulders, and surveyed the spacious lamp-lit room with an approving smile. This no doubt was the kind of Inn at which he loved to take his ease – a house full of silly women, ready to be subjugated by his florid good looks and shallow accomplishments.