Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Tintagel’s surge-beat hill can never seem insignificant to me. National poetry has peopled it — while the Caucasus is only a desert.”

  “Are you touring?”

  “No, I am staying with the Vicar of Trevena. He is an old friend of my father’s: they were college chums; and Mr. Carlyon is always kind to me.”

  Mr. Carlyon was a new vicar, who had come to Trevena within the last two years.

  “Shall you stay long?” asked Christabel, in tones which had a curiously flat sound, as of a voice produced by mechanism.

  “I think not. It is a delicious place to stay at, but — —”

  “A little of it goes a long way,” said Jessie.

  “You have not quite anticipated my sentiments, Miss Bridgeman. I was going to say that unfortunately for me I have engagements in London which will prevent my staying here much longer.”

  “You are not looking over robust,” said Jessie, touched with pity by the sad forecast which she saw in his faded eyes, his hollow cheeks, faintly tinged with hectic bloom. “I’m afraid the Caucasus was rather too severe a training for you.”

  “A little harder than the ordeal to which you submitted my locomotive powers some years ago,” answered Angus, smiling; “but how can a man spend the strength of his manhood better than in beholding the wonders of creation? It is the best preparation for those still grander scenes which one faintly hopes to see by-and-by among the stars. According to the Platonic theory a man must train himself for immortality. He who goes straight from earthly feasts and junkettings will get a bad time in the under world, or may have to work out his purgation in some debased brute form.”

  “Poor fellow,” thought Jessie, with a sigh, “I suppose that kind of feeling is his nearest approach to religion.”

  Christabel sat very still, looking steadily towards Lundy, as if the only desire in her mind were to identify yonder vague streak of purplish brown or brownish purple with the level strip of land chiefly given over to rabbits. Yet her heart was aching and throbbing passionately all the while; and the face at which she dared scarce look was vividly before her mental sight — sorely altered from the day she had last seen it smile upon her in love and confidence. But mixed with the heartache there was joy. To see him again, to hear his voice again — what could that be but happiness?

  She knew that there was delight in being with him, and she told herself that she had no right to linger. She rose with an automatic air. “Come, Jessie,” she said: and then she turned with an effort to the man whose love she had renounced, whose heart she had broken.

  “Good-by!” she said, holding out her hand, and looking at him with calm, grave eyes. “I am very glad to have seen you again. I hope you always think of me as your friend?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Tregonell, I can afford now to think of you as a friend,” he answered, gravely, gently, holding her hand with a lingering grasp, and looking solemnly into the sweet pale face.

  He shook hands cordially with Jessie Bridgeman; and they left him standing amidst the low grass-hidden graves of the unknown dead — a lonely figure looking seaward.

  “Oh! Jessie, do you remember the day we first came here with him?” cried Christabel, as they went slowly down the steep winding path. The exclamation sounded almost like a cry of pain.

  “Am I ever likely to forget it — or anything connected with him? You have given me no chance of that,” retorted Miss Bridgeman, sharply.

  “How bitterly you say that!”

  “Can I help being bitter when I see you nursing morbid feelings? Am I to encourage you to dwell upon dangerous thoughts?”

  “They are not dangerous. I have taught myself to think of Angus as a friend — and a friend only. If I could see him now and then — even as briefly as we saw him to-day — I think it would make me quite happy.”

  “You don’t know what you are talking about!” said Jessie, angrily. “Certainly, you are not much like other women. You are a piece of icy propriety — your love is a kind of milk-and-watery sentiment, which would never lead you very far astray. I can fancy you behaving somewhat in the style of Werther’s Charlotte — who is, to my mind, one of the most detestable women in fiction. Yes! Goethe has created two women who are the opposite poles of feeling — Gretchen and Lottie — and I would stake my faith that Gretchen the fallen has a higher place in heaven than Lottie the impeccable. I hate such dull purity, which is always lined with selfishness. The lover may slay himself in his anguish — but she — yes — Thackeray has said it — she goes on cutting bread and butter!”

  Jessie gave a little hysterical laugh, which she accentuated by a leap from the narrow path where she had been walking to a boulder four or five feet below.

  “How madly you talk, Jessie. You remind me of Scott’s Fenella — and I believe you are almost as wild a creature,” said Christabel.

  “Yes! I suspect there is a spice of gipsy blood in my veins. I am subject to these occasional outbreaks — these revolts against Philistinism. Life is so steeped in respectability — the dull level morality which prompts every man to do what his neighbour thinks he ought to do, rather than to be set in motion by the fire that burns within him. This dread of one’s neighbour — this slavish respect for public opinion — reduces life to mere mechanism — society to a stage play.”

  CHAPTER X.

  “BUT IT SUFFICETH, THAT THE DAY WILL END.”

  Christabel said no word to her husband about that unexpected meeting with Angus Hamleigh. She knew that the name was obnoxious to Leonard, and she shrank from a statement which might provoke unpleasant speech on his part. Mr. Hamleigh would doubtless have left Trevena in a few days — there was no likelihood of any further meeting.

  The next day was a blank day for the Miss Vandeleurs, who found themselves reduced to the joyless society of their own sex.

  The harriers met at Trevena at ten o’clock, and thither, after an early breakfast, rode Mr. Tregonell, Captain Vandeleur, and three or four other kindred spirits. The morning was showery and blustery, and it was in vain that Dopsy and Mopsy hinted their desire to be driven to the meet. They were not horsewomen — from no want of pluck or ardour for the chase — but simply from the lack of that material part of the business, horses. Many and many a weary summer day had they paced the path beside Rotten Row, wistfully regarding the riders, and thinking what a seat and what hands they would have had, if Providence had only given them a mount. The people who do not ride are the keenest critics of horsemanship.

  Compelled to find their amusements within doors, Dopsy and Mopsy sat in the morning-room for half an hour, as a sacrifice to good manners, paid a duty visit to the nurseries to admire Christabel’s baby-boy, and then straggled off to the billiard-room, to play each other, and improve their skill at that delightfully masculine game. Then came luncheon — at which meal, the gentlemen being all away, and the party reduced to four, the baby-boy was allowed to sit on his mother’s lap, and make occasional raids upon the table furniture, while the Miss Vandeleurs made believe to worship him. He was a lovely boy, with big blue eyes, wide with wonder at a world which was still full of delight and novelty.

  After luncheon, Mopsy and Dopsy retired to their chamber, to concoct, by an ingenious process of re-organization of the same atoms, a new costume for the evening; and as they sat at their work, twisting and undoing bows and lace, and straightening the leaves of artificial flowers, they again discoursed somewhat dejectedly of their return to South Belgravia, which could hardly be staved off much longer.

  “We have had a quite too delicious time,” sighed Mopsy, adjusting the stalk of a sunflower; “but it’s rather a pity that all the men staying here have been detrimentals — not one worth catching.”

  “What does it matter!” ejaculated Dopsy. “If there had been one worth catching, he wouldn’t have consented to be caught. He would have behaved like that big jack Mr. Tregonell was trying for the other morning; eaten up all our bait and gone and sulked among the weeds.”

  “Well
, I’d have had a try for him, anyhow,” said Mopsy, defiantly, leaning her elbow on the dressing-table, and contemplating herself deliberately in the glass. “Oh, Dop, how old I’m getting. I almost hate the daylight: it makes one look so hideous.”

  Yet neither Dopsy nor Mopsy thought herself hideous at afternoon tea-time, when, with complexions improved by the powder puff, eyebrows piquantly accentuated with Indian ink, and loose flowing tea-gowns of old gold sateen, and older black silk, they descended to the library, eager to do execution even on detrimentals. The men’s voices sounded loud in the hall, as the two girls came downstairs.

  “Hope you have had a good time?” cried Mopsy, in cheerful soprano tones.

  “Splendid. I’m afraid Tregonell has lamed a couple of his horses,” said Captain Vandeleur.

  “And I’ve a shrewd suspicion that you’ve lamed a third,” interjected Leonard in his strident tones. “You galloped Betsy Baker at a murderous rate.”

  “Nothing like taking them fast down hill,” retorted Jack. “B. B. is as sound as a roach — and quite as ugly.”

  “Never saw such break-neck work in my life,” said Mr. Montagu, a small dandified person who was always called “little Monty.” “I’d rather ride a horse with the Quorn for a week than in this country for a day.”

  “Our country is as God made it,” answered Leonard.

  “I think Satan must have split it about a bit afterwards,” said Mr. Montagu.

  “Well, Mop,” asked Leonard, “how did you and Dop get rid of your day without us?”

  “Oh, we were very happy. It was quite a relief to have a nice homey day with dear Mrs. Tregonell,” answered Mopsy, nothing offended by the free and easy curtailment of her pet name. Leonard was her benefactor, and a privileged person.

  “I’ve got some glorious news for you two girls,” said Mr. Tregonell, as they all swarmed into the library, where Christabel was sitting in the widow’s old place, while Jessie Bridgeman filled her accustomed position before the tea-table, the red glow of a liberal wood fire contending with the pale light of one low moderator lamp, under a dark velvet shade.

  “What is it? Please, please tell.”

  “I give it you in ten — a thousand — a million!” cried Leonard, flinging himself into the chair next his wife, and with his eyes upon her face. “You’ll never guess. I have found you an eligible bachelor — a swell of the first water. He’s a gentleman whom a good many girls have tried for in their time, I’ve no doubt. Handsome, accomplished, plenty of coin. He has had what the French call a stormy youth, I believe; but that doesn’t matter. He’s getting on in years, and no doubt he’s ready to sober down, and take to domesticity. I’ve asked him here for a fortnight to shoot woodcock, and to offer his own unconscious breast as a mark for the arrows of Cupid; and I shall have a very poor opinion of you two girls if you can’t bring him to your feet in half the time.”

  “At any rate I’ll try my hand at it,” said Mopsy. “Not that I care a straw for the gentleman, but just to show you what I can do,” she added, by way of maintaining her maidenly dignity.

  “Of course you’ll go in for the conquest as high art, without any arrière pensée,” said Jack Vandeleur. “There never were such audacious flirts as my sisters; but there’s no malice in them.”

  “You haven’t told us your friend’s name,” said Dopsy.

  “Mr. Hamleigh,” answered Leonard, with his eyes still on his wife’s face.

  Christabel gave a little start, and looked at him in undisguised astonishment.

  “Surely you have not asked him — here?” she exclaimed.

  “Why not? He was out with us to-day. He is a jolly fellow; rides uncommonly straight, though he doesn’t look as if there were much life in him. He tailed off early in the afternoon; but while he did go, he went dooced well. He rode a dooced fine horse, too.”

  “I thought you were prejudiced against him,” said Christabel, very slowly.

  “Why, so I was, till I saw him,” answered Leonard, with the friendliest air. “I fancied he was one of your sickly, sentimental twaddlers, with long hair, and a taste for poetry; but I find he is a fine, manly fellow, with no nonsense about him. So I asked him here, and insisted upon his saying yes. He didn’t seem to want to come, which is odd, for he made himself very much at home here in my mother’s time, I’ve heard. However, he gave in when I pressed him; and he’ll be here by dinner-time to-morrow.”

  “By dinner-time,” thought Mopsy, delighted. “Then he’ll see us first by candlelight, and first impressions may do so much.”

  “Isn’t it almost like a fairy tale?” said Dopsy, as they were dressing for dinner, with a vague recollection of having cultivated her imagination in childhood. She had never done so since that juvenile age. “Just as we were sighing for the prince he comes.”

  “True,” said Mopsy; “and he will go, just as all the other fairy princes have gone, leaving us alone upon the dreary high road, and riding off to the fairy princesses who have good homes, and good clothes, and plenty of money.”

  The high-art toilets were postponed for the following evening, so that the panoply of woman’s war might be fresh; and on that evening Mopsy and Dopsy, their long limbs sheathed in sea-green velveteen, Toby-frills round their necks, and sunflowers on their shoulders, were gracefully grouped near the fireplace in the pink and white panelled drawing-room, waiting for Mr. Hamleigh’s arrival.

  “I wonder why all the girls make themselves walking advertisements of the Sun Fire Office,” speculated Mr. Montagu, taking a prosaic view of the Vandeleur sunflowers, as he sat by Miss Bridgeman’s work-basket.

  “Don’t you know that sunflowers are so beautifully Greek?” asked Jessie. “They have been the only flower in fashion since Alma Tadema took to painting them — fountains, and marble balustrades, and Italian skies, and beautiful women, and sunflowers.”

  “Yes; but we get only the sunflowers.”

  “Mr. Hamleigh!” said the butler at the open door, and Angus came in, and went straight to Christabel, who was sitting opposite the group of sea-green Vandeleurs, slowly fanning herself with a big black fan.

  Nothing could be calmer than their meeting. This time there was no surprise, no sudden shock, no dear familiar scene, no solemn grandeur of Nature to make all effort at simulation unnatural. The atmosphere to-night was as conventional as the men’s swallowed-tailed coats and white ties. Yet in Angus Hamleigh’s mind there was the picture of his first arrival at Mount Royal — the firelit room, Christabel’s girlish figure kneeling on the hearth. The figure was a shade more matronly now, the carriage and manner were more dignified; but the face had lost none of its beauty, or of its divine candour.

  “I am very glad my husband persuaded you to alter your plans, and to stay a little longer in the West,” she said, with an unfaltering voice; and then, seeing Mopsy and Dopsy looking at Mr. Hamleigh with admiring expectant eyes, she added, “Let me introduce you to these young ladies who are staying with us — Mr. Hamleigh, Miss Vandeleur, Miss Margaret Vandeleur.”

  Dopsy and Mopsy smiled their sweetest smiles, and gave just the most æsthetic inclination of each towzled head.

  “I suppose you have not long come from London?” murmured Dopsy, determined not to lose a moment. “Have you seen all the new things at the theatres? I hope you are an Irvingite!”

  “I regret to say that my religious opinions have not yet taken that bent. It is a spiritual height which I feel myself too weak to climb. I have never been able to believe in the unknown tongues.”

  “Ah, now you are going to criticize his pronunciation, instead of admiring his genius,” said Dopsy, who had never heard of Edward Irving and the Latter Day Saints.

  “If you mean Henry Irving the tragedian, I admire him immensely,” said Mr. Hamleigh.

  “Then we are sure to get on. I felt that you must be simpatica,” replied Dopsy, not particular as to a gender in a language which she only knew by sight, as Bannister knew Greek.

  Dinner was anno
unced at this moment, and Mrs. Tregonell won Dopsy’s gratitude by asking Mr. Hamleigh to take her into dinner. Mr. Montagu gave his arm to Miss Bridgeman, Leonard took Mopsy, and Christabel followed with Major Bree, who felt for her keenly, wondering how she managed to bear herself so bravely, reproaching the dead woman in his mind for having parted two faithful hearts.

  He was shocked by the change in Angus, obvious even to-night, albeit the soft lamplight and evening dress were flattering to his appearance; but he said no word of that change to Christabel.

  “I have been having a romp with my godson,” he said, when they were seated, knowing that this was the one topic likely to cheer and interest his hostess.

  “I am so glad,” she answered, lighting up at once, and unconscious that Angus was trying to see her face under the low lamplight, which made it necessary to bend one’s head a little to see one’s opposite neighbour. “And do you think he is grown? It is nearly ten days since you saw him, and he grows so fast.”

  “He is a young Hercules. If there were any snakes in Cornwall he would be capable of strangling a brace of them. I suppose Leonard is tremendously proud of him.”

  “Yes,” she answered with a faint sigh. “I think Leonard is proud of him.”

  “But not quite so fond of him as you are,” replied Major Bree, interpreting her emphasis. “That is only natural. Infantolatry is a feminine attribute. Wait till the boy is old enough to go out fishin’ and shootin’—” the Major was too much a gentleman to pronounce a final g—”and then see if his father don’t dote upon him.”

  “I dare say he will be very fond of him then. But I shall be miserable every hour he is out.”

  “Of course. Women ought to have only girls for children. There should be a race of man-mothers to rear the boys. I wonder Plato didn’t suggest that in his Republic.”

  Mr. Hamleigh, with his head gently bent over his soup-plate, had contrived to watch Christabel’s face while politely replying to a good deal of gush on the part of the fair Dopsy. He saw that expressive face light up with smiles, and then grow earnest. She was full of interest and animation, and her candid look showed that the conversation was one which all the world might have heard.