The friends who called on her and invited her now, were the same people among whom she had visited during her first season. People who had been enraptured at her engagement to Mr. Hamleigh were equally delighted at her marriage with her cousin, or at least said so; albeit, more than one astute matron drove away from Bolton Row sighing over the folly of marriage between first cousins, and marvelling that Christabel’s baby was not deaf, blind, or idiotic.
Among other old acquaintance, young Mrs. Tregonell met the Dowager Lady Cumberbridge, at a great dinner, more Medusa-like than ever, in a curly auburn wig after Madame de Montespan, and a diamond coronet. Christabel shrank from the too-well-remembered figure with a faint shudder; but Lady Cumberbridge swooped upon her like an elderly hawk, when the ladies were on their way back to the drawing-room, and insisted upon being friendly.
“My dear child, where have you been hiding yourself all these years?” she exclaimed, in her fine baritone. “I saw your marriage in the papers, and your poor aunt’s death; and I was expecting to meet you and your husband in society last season. You didn’t come to town? A baby, I suppose? Just so! Those horrid babies! In the coming century there will be some better arrangement for carrying on the species. How well you are looking, and your husband is positively charming. He sat next me at dinner, and we were friends in a moment. How proud he is of you! It is quite touching to see a man so devoted to his wife; and now” — they were in the subdued light of the drawing-room by this time, light judiciously tempered by ruby-coloured Venetian glass—”now tell me all about my poor friend. Was she long ill?”
And, with a ghoulish interest in horrors, the dowager prepared herself for a detailed narration of Mrs. Tregonell’s last illness; but Christabel could only falter out a few brief sentences. Even now she could hardly speak of her aunt without tears; and it was painful to talk of her to this worldly dowager, with keen eyes glittering under penthouse brows, and a hard, eager mouth.
In all that London season, Christabel only once heard her old lover’s name, carelessly mentioned at a dinner party. He was talked of as a guest at some diplomatic dinner at St. Petersburg, early in the year.
CHAPTER IX.
“AND PALE FROM THE PAST WE DRAW NIGH THEE.”
It was October, and the chestnut leaves were falling slowly and heavily in the park at Mount Royal, the oaks upon the hill side were faintly tinged with bronze and gold, while the purple bloom of the heather and the yellow flower of the gorse were seen in rarer patches amidst the sober tints of autumn. It was the time at which to some eyes this Cornish coast was most lovely, with a subdued poetic loveliness — a dreamy beauty touched with tender melancholy.
Mount Royal was delightful at this season. Liberal fires in all the rooms filled the old oak panelled house with a glow of colour, and a sense of ever-present warmth that was very comfortable after the sharpness of October breezes. Those greenhouses and hot-house, which had been for so many years Mrs. Tregonell’s perpetual care, now disgorged their choicest contents. Fragile white and yellow asters, fairy-like ferns, Dijon roses, lilies of the valley, stephanotis, mignonette, and Cape jasmine filled the rooms with perfume. Modern blinds of diapered crimson and grey subdued the light of those heavily mullioned windows which had been originally designed with a view to strength and architectural effect, rather than to the admission of the greatest possible amount of daylight. The house at this season of the year seemed made for warmth, so thick the walls, so heavily curtained the windows; just as in the height of summer it seemed made for coolness. Christabel had respected all her aunt’s ideas and prejudices: nothing had been changed since Mrs. Tregonell’s death — save for that one sad fact that she was gone. The noble matronly figure, the handsome face, the kindly smile were missing from the house where the widow had so long reigned, an imperious but a beneficent mistress — having her own way in all things, but always considerate of other people’s happiness and comfort.
Mr. Tregonell was inclined to be angry with his wife sometimes for her religious adherence to her aunt’s principles and opinions in things great and small.
“You are given over body and soul to my poor mother’s fads,” he said. “If it had not been for you I should have turned the house out of windows when she was gone — got rid of all the worm-eaten furniture, broken out new windows, and let in more light. One feels half asleep in a house where there is nothing but shadow and the scent of hot-house flowers. I should have given carte blanche to some London man — the fellow who writes verses, and who invented the storks and sunflower style of decoration — and have let him refurnish the saloon and music-room, pitch out a library which nobody reads, and substitute half a dozen dwarf book-cases in gold and ebony, filled with brightly bound books, and with Japanese jars and bottles on the top of them to give life and colour to the oak panelling. I hate a gloomy house.”
“Oh, Leonard, you surely would not call Mount Royal gloomy!”
“But I do: I hate a house that smells of one’s ancestors.”
“Just now you objected to the scent of the flowers.”
“You are always catching me up — there was never such a woman to argue — but I mean what I say. The smell is a combination of stephanotis and old bones. I wish you would let me build you a villa at Torquay or Dartmouth. I think I should prefer Dartmouth: it’s a better place for yachting.”
“You are very kind, but I would rather live at Mount Royal than anywhere else. Remember I was brought up here.”
“A reason for your being heartily sick of the house — as I am. But I suppose in your case there are associations — sentimental associations.”
“The house is filled with memories of my second mother!”
“Yes — and there are other memories — associations which you love to nurse and brood upon. I think I know all about it — can read up your feelings to a nicety.”
“You can think and say what you please, Leonard,” she answered, looking at him with unaltered calmness, “but you will never make me disown my love of this place, and its surroundings. You will never make me ashamed of being fond of the home in which I have spent my life.”
“I begin to think there is very little shame in you,” Leonard muttered to himself, as he walked away.
He had said many bitter words to his wife — had aimed many a venomed arrow at her breast — but he had never made her blush, and he had never made her cry. There were times when a dull hopeless anger consumed him — anger against her — against Nature — against Fate — and when his only relief was to be found in harsh and bitter speech, in dark and sullen looks. It would have been a greater relief to him if his shots had gone home — if his brutality had elicited any sign of distress. But in this respect Christabel was heroic. She who had never harboured an ungenerous thought was moved only to a cold calm scorn by the unjust and ungenerous conduct of her husband. Her contempt was too thorough for the possibility of resentment. Once, and once only, she attempted to reason with a fool in his folly.
“Why do you make these unkind speeches, Leonard?” she asked, looking at him with those calm eyes before which his were apt to waver and look downward, hardly able to endure that steady gaze. “Why are you always harping upon the past — as if it were an offence against you? Is there anything that you have to complain of in my conduct — have I given you any cause for anger?”
“Oh, no, none. You are simply perfect as a wife — everybody says so — and in the multitude of counsellors, you know. But it is just possible for perfection to be a trifle cold and unapproachable — to keep a man at arm’s length — and to have an ever-present air of living in the past which is galling to a husband who would like — well — a little less amiability, and a little more affection. By Heaven, I wouldn’t mind my wife being a devil, if I knew she was fond of me. A spitfire, who would kiss me one minute and claw me the next, would be better than the calm superiority which is always looking over my head.”
“Leonard, I don’t think I have been wanting in affection. You have don
e a great deal to repel my liking — yes — since you force me to speak plainly — you have made my duty as a wife more difficult than it need have been. But, have I ever forgotten that you are my husband, and the father of my child? Is there any act of my life which has denied or made light of your authority? When you asked me to marry you I kept no secrets from you: I was perfectly frank.”
“Devilish frank,” muttered Leonard.
“You knew that I could not feel for you as I had felt for another. These things can come only once in a lifetime. You were content to accept my affection — my obedience — knowing this. Why do you make what I told you then a reproach against me now?”
He could not dispute the justice of this reproof.
“Well, Christabel, I was wrong, I suppose. It would have been more gentlemanlike to hold my tongue. I ought to know that your first girlish fancy is a thing of the past — altogether gone and done with. It was idiotic to harp upon that worn-out string, wasn’t it?” he asked, laughing awkwardly; “but when a man feels savage he must hit out at some one.”
This was the only occasion on which husband and wife had ever spoken plainly of the past; but Leonard let fly those venomed arrows of his on the smallest provocation. He could not forget that his wife had loved another man better than she had ever loved or even pretended to love him. It was her candour which he felt most keenly. Had she been willing to play the hypocrite, to pretend a little, he would have been ever so much better pleased.
To the outside world, even to that narrow world which encircles an old family seat in the depths of the country, Mr. and Mrs. Tregonell appeared a happy couple, whose union was the most natural thing in the world, yet not without a touch of that romance which elevates and idealizes a marriage.
Were they not brought up under the same roof, boy and girl together, like, and yet not like, brother and sister. How inevitable that they must become devotedly attached. That little episode of Christabel’s engagement to another man counted for nothing. She was so young — had never questioned her own heart. Her true love was away — and she was flattered by the attention of a man of the world like Angus Hamleigh — and so, and so — almost unawares, perhaps, she allowed herself to be engaged to him, little knowing the real bent of his character and the gulf into which she was about to plunge: for in the neighbourhood of Mount Royal it was believed that a man who had once lived as Mr. Hamleigh had lived was a soul lost for ever, a creature given over to ruin in this world and the next. There was no hopefulness in the local mind for the after career of such an offender.
At this autumn season, when Mount Royal was filled with visitors, all intent upon taking life pleasantly, it would have been impossible for a life to seem more prosperous and happy to the outward eye than that of Christabel Tregonell. The centre of a friendly circle, the ornament of a picturesque and perfectly appointed house, the mother of a lovely boy whom she worshipped, with the overweening love of a young mother for her firstborn — admired, beloved by all her little world, with a husband who was proud of her and indulgent to her — who could deny that Mrs. Tregonell was a person to be envied.
Mrs. Fairfax Torrington, a widow, with a troublesome son, and a limited income — an income whose narrow boundary she was continually over-stepping — told her hostess as much one morning when the men were all out on the hills in the rain, and the women made a wide circle round the library fire, some of them intent upon crewel work, others not even pretending to be industrious, the faithful Randie lying at his mistress’s feet, as she sat in her favourite chair by the old carved chimney-piece — the chair which had been her aunt Diana’s for so many peaceful years.
“There is a calmness — an assured tranquillity about your life which makes me hideously envious,” said Mrs. Fairfax Torrington, waving the Society paper which she had been using as a screen against the fire, after having read the raciest of its paragraphs aloud, and pretended to be sorry for the dear friends at whom the censor’s airy shafts were aimed. “I have stayed with duchesses and with millionaires — but I never envied either. The duchess is always dragged to death by the innumerable claims upon her time, her money, and her attention. Her life is very little better than the fate of that unfortunate person who stabbed one of the French Kings — forty wild horses pulling forty different ways. It doesn’t make it much better because the horses are called by pretty names, don’t you know. Court, friends, flower-shows, balls, church, opera, Ascot, fancy fairs, seat in Scotland, place in Yorkshire, Baden, Monaco. It is the pull that wears one out, the dreadful longing to be allowed to sit in one’s own room by one’s own fire, and rest. I know what it is in my small way, so I have always rather pitied duchesses. At a millionaire’s house one is inevitably bored. There is an insufferable glare and glitter of money in everything, unpleasantly accentuated by an occasional blot of absolute meanness. No, Mrs. Tregonell,” pursued the agreeable rattle, “I don’t envy duchesses or millionaires’ wives: but your existence seems to me utterly enviable, so tranquil and easy a life, in such a perfect house, with the ability to take a plunge into the London vortex whenever you like, or to stay at home if you prefer it, a charming husband, an ideal baby, and above all that sweet equable temperament of yours, which would make life easy under much harder circumstances. Don’t you agree with me, now, Miss Bridgeman?”
“I always agree with clever people,” answered Jessie, calmly.
Christabel went on with her work, a quiet smile upon her beautiful lips.
Mrs. Torrington was one of those gushing persons to whom there was no higher bliss, after eating and drinking, than the indulgence in that lively monologue which she called conversation, and a happy facility for which rendered her, in her own opinion, an acquisition in any country-house.
“The general run of people are so dull,” she would remark in her confidential moments; “there are so few who can talk, without being disgustingly egotistical. Most people’s idea of conversation is autobiography in instalments. I have always been liked for my high spirits and flow of conversation.”
High spirits at forty-five are apt to pall, unless accompanied by the rare gift of wit. Mrs. Torrington was not witty, but she had read a good deal of light literature, kept a commonplace book, and had gone through life believing herself a Sheridan or a Sidney Smith, in petticoats.
“A woman’s wit is like dancing in fetters,” she complained sometimes: “there are so many things one must not say!”
Christabel was more than content that her acquaintance should envy her. She wished to be thought happy. She had never for a moment posed as victim or martyr. In good faith, and with steady purpose of well-doing, she had taken upon herself the duties of a wife, and she meant to fulfil them to the uttermost.
“There shall be no shortcoming on my side,” she said to herself. “If we cannot live peaceably and happily together it shall not be my fault. If Leonard will not let me respect him as a husband, I can still honour him as my boy’s father.”
In these days of fashionable agnosticism and hysterical devotion — when there is hardly any middle path between life spent in church and church-work and the open avowal of unbelief — something must be said in favour of that old-fashioned sober religious feeling which enabled Christabel Tregonell to walk steadfastly along the difficult way, her mind possessed with the ever-present belief in a Righteous Judge who saw all her acts and knew all her thoughts.
She studied her husband’s pleasure in all things — yielding to him upon every point in which principle was not at stake. The house was filled with friends of his choosing — not one among those guests, in spite of their surface pleasantness, being congenial to a mind so simple and unworldly, so straight and thorough, as that of Christabel Tregonell. Without Jessie Bridgeman, Mrs. Tregonell would have been companionless in a house full of people. The vivacious widow, the slangy young ladies, with a marked taste for billiards and shooting parties, and an undisguised preference for masculine society, thought their hostess behind the age. It was obvious that she wa
s better informed than they, had been more carefully educated, played better, sang better, was more elegant and refined in every thought, and look, and gesture; but, in spite of all these advantages, or perhaps on account of them, she was “slow:” not an easy person to get on with. Her gowns were simply perfect — but she had no chic. Nous autres, with ever so much less money to spend on our toilettes, look more striking — stand out better from the ruck. An artificial rose here — a rag of old lace — a fan — a vivid ribbon in the mazes of our hair — and the effect catches every eye — while poor Mrs. Tregonell, with her lovely complexion, and a gown that is obviously Parisian, is comparatively nowhere.
This is what the Miss Vandeleurs — old campaigners — told each other as they dressed for dinner, on the second day after their arrival at Mount Royal. Captain Vandeleur — otherwise Poker Vandeleur, from a supposed natural genius for that intellectual game — was Mr. Tregonell’s old friend and travelling companion. They had shared a good deal of sport, and not a little hardship in the Rockies — had fished, and shot, and toboggined in Canada — had played euchre in San Francisco, and monte in Mexico — and, in a word, were bound together by memories and tastes in common. Captain Vandeleur, like Byron’s Corsair, had one virtue amidst many shortcomings. He was an affectionate brother, always glad to do a good turn to his sisters — who lived with a shabby old half-pay father, in one of the shabbiest streets in the debatable land between Pimlico and Chelsea — by courtesy, South Belgravia. Captain Vandeleur rarely had it in his power to do much for his sisters himself — a five-pound note at Christmas or a bonnet at Midsummer was perhaps the furthest stretch of his personal benevolence — but he was piously fraternal in his readiness to victimize his dearest friend for the benefit of Dopsy and Mopsy — these being the poetic pet names devised to mitigate the dignity of the baptismal Adolphine and Margaret. When Jack Vandeleur had a pigeon to pluck, he always contrived that Dopsy and Mopsy should get a few of the feathers. He did not take his friends home to the shabby little ten-roomed house in South Belgravia — such a nest would have too obviously indicated his affinity to the hawk tribe — but he devised some means of bringing Mopsy and Dopsy and his married friends together. A box at the Opera — stalls for the last burlesque — a drag for Epsom or Ascot — or even afternoon tea at Hurlingham — and the thing was done. The Miss Vandeleurs never failed to improve the occasion. They had a genius for making their little wants known, and getting them supplied. The number of their gloves — the only shop in London at which wearable gloves could be bought — how naïvely these favourite themes for girlish converse dropped from their cherry lips. Sunshades, fans, lace, flowers, perfumery — all these luxuries of the toilet were for the most part supplied to Dopsy and Mopsy from this fortuitous source.
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