Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Might he not think it just possible that he was finding a husband for one of his friend’s sisters?” speculated Christabel.

  “Nonsense, my dear! Leonard is not quite a fool. If he had a motive, it was something very different from any concern for the interests of Dop or Mop — I will call them Dop and Mop: they are so like it.”

  In spite of Mopsy and Dopsy, there were hours in which Angus Hamleigh was able to enjoy the society which had once been so sweet to him, almost as freely as in the happy days that were gone. Brazen as the two damsels were the feeling of self-respect was not altogether extinct in their natures. Their minds were like grass-plots which had been trodden into mere clay, but where a lingering green blade here and there shows that the soil had once been verdant. Before Mr. Hamleigh came to Mount Royal, it had been their habit to spend their evenings in the billiard-room with the gentlemen, albeit Mrs. Tregonell very rarely left the drawing-room after dinner, preferring the perfect tranquillity of that almost deserted apartment, the inexhaustible delight of her piano or her books, with Jessie for her sole companion — nay, sometimes, quite alone, while Jessie joined the revellers at pool or shell-out. Dopsy and Mopsy could not altogether alter their habits because Mr. Hamleigh spent his evenings in the drawing-room: the motive for such a change would have been too obvious. The boldest huntress would scarce thus openly pursue her prey. So the Miss Vandeleurs went regretfully with their brother and his host, and marked, or played an occasional four-game, and made themselves conversationally agreeable all the evening; while Angus Hamleigh sat by the piano, and gave himself up to dreamy thought, soothed by the music of the great composers, played with a level perfection which only years of careful study can achieve. Jessie Bridgeman never left the drawing-room now of an evening. Faithful and devoted to her duty of companion and friend, she seemed almost Christabel’s second self. There was no restraint, no embarrassment, caused by her presence. What she had been to these two in their day of joy, she was to them in their day of sorrow, wholly and completely one of themselves. She was no stony guardian of the proprieties; no bar between their souls and dangerous memories or allusions. She was their friend, reading and understanding the minds of both.

  It has been finely said by Matthew Arnold that there are times when a man feels, in this life, the sense of immortality; and that feeling must surely be strongest with him who knows that his race is nearly run — who feels the rosy light of life’s sunset warm upon his face — who knows himself near the lifting of the veil — the awful, fateful experiment called death. Angus Hamleigh knew that for him the end was not far off — it might be less than a year — more than a year — but he felt very sure that this time there would be no reprieve. Not again would the physician’s sentence be reversed — the physician’s theories gainsayed by facts. For the last four years he had lived as a man lives who has ceased to value his life. He had exposed himself to the hardships of mountain climbing — he had sat late in gaming saloons — not gambling himself, but interested in a cynical way, as Balzac might have been, in the hopes and fears of others — seeking amusement wherever and however it was to be found. At his worst he had never been a man utterly without religion; not a man who could willingly forego the hope in a future life — but that hope, until of late, had been clouded and dim, Rabelais’ great perhaps, rather than the Christian’s assured belief. As the cold shade of death drew nearer, the horizon cleared, and he was able to rest his hopes in a fair future beyond the grave — an existence in which a man’s happiness should not be dependent on the condition of his lungs, nor his career marred by an hereditary taint in the blood — an existence in which spirit should be divorced from clay, yet not become so entirely abstract as to be incapable of such pleasures as are sweetest and purest among the joys of humanity — a life in which friendship and love might still be known in fullest measure. And now, with the knowledge that for him there remained but a brief remnant of this earthly existence, that were the circumstances of his life ever so full of joy, that life itself could not be lengthened, it was very sweet to him to spend a few quiet hours with her who, for the last five years, had been the pole-star of his thoughts. For him there could be no arrière pensée — no tending towards forbidden hopes, forbidden dreams. Death had purified life. It was almost as if he were an immortal spirit, already belonging to another world, yet permitted to revisit the old dead-and-gone love below. For such a man, and perhaps for such a man only, was such a super-mundane love as poets and idealists have imagined, all satisfying and all sweet. He was not even jealous of his happier rival; his only regret was the too evident unworthiness of that rival.

  “If I had seen her married to a man I could respect; if I could know that she was completely happy; that the life before her were secure from all pain and evil, I should have nothing to regret,” he told himself; but the thought of Leonard’s coarse nature was a perpetual grief. “When I am lying in the long peaceful sleep, she will be miserable with that man,” he thought.

  One day when Jessie and he were alone together, he spoke freely of Leonard.

  “I don’t want to malign a man who has treated me with exceptional kindness and cordiality,” he said, “above all a man whose mother I once loved, and always respected — yes, although she was hard and cruel to me — but I cannot help wishing that Christabel’s husband had a more sympathetic nature. Now that my own future is reduced to a very short span I find myself given to forecasting the future of those I —— love — and it grieves me to think of Christabel in the years to come — linked with a man who has no power to appreciate or understand her — tied to the mill-wheel of domestic duty.”

  “Yes, it is a hard case,” answered Jessie, bitterly, “one of those hard cases that so often come out of people acting for the best, as they call it. No doubt Mrs. Tregonell thought she acted for the best with regard to you and Christabel. She did not know how much selfishness — a selfish idolatry of her own cub — was at the bottom of her over-righteousness. She was a good woman — generous, benevolent — a true friend to me — yet there are times when I feel angry with her — even in her grave — for her treatment of you and Christabel. Yet she died happy in the belief in her own wisdom. She thought Christabel’s marriage with Leonard ought to mean bliss for both. Because she adored her Cornish gladiator, forsooth, she must needs think every body else ought to doat upon him.”

  “You don’t seem warmly attached to Mr. Tregonell,” said Angus.

  “I am not — and he knows that I am not. I never liked him, and he never liked me, and neither of us have ever pretended to like each other. We are quits, I assure you. Perhaps you think it rather horrid of me to live in a man’s house — eat his bread and drink his wine — one glass of claret every day at dinner — and dislike him openly all the time. But I am here because Christabel is here — just as I would be with her in the dominions of Orcus. She is — well — almost the only creature I love in this world, and it would take a good deal more than my dislike of her husband to part us. If she had married a galley-slave I would have taken my turn at the oar.”

  “You are as true as steel,” said Angus; “and I am glad to think Christabel has such a friend.”

  To all the rest of the world he spoke of her as Mrs. Tregonell, nor did he ever address her by any other name. But to Jessie Bridgeman, who had been with them in the halcyon days of their love-making, she was still Christabel. To Jessie, and to none other, could he speak of her with perfect freedom.

  CHAPTER XI.

  “WHO KNOWS NOT CIRCE?”

  The autumn days crept by, sometimes grey and sad of aspect, sometimes radiant and sunny, as if summer had risen from her grave amidst fallen leaves and faded heather. It was altogether a lovely autumn, like that beauteous season of five years ago, and Christabel and Angus wandered about the hills, and lingered by the trout stream in the warm green valley, almost as freely as they had done in the past. They were never alone — Jessie Bridgeman was always with them — very often Dopsy and Mopsy — and som
etimes Mr. Tregonell with Captain Vandeleur and half a dozen dogs. One day they all went up the hill, and crossed the ploughed field to the path among the gorse and heather above Pentargon Bay — and Dopsy and Mopsy climbed crags and knolls, and screamed affrightedly, and made a large display of boots, and were generally fascinating after their manner.

  “If any place could tempt me to smoke it would be this,” said Dopsy, gazing seaward. All the men except Angus were smoking. “I think it must be utterly lovely to sit dreaming over a cigarette in such a place as this.”

  “What would you dream about,” asked Angus. “A new bonnet?”

  “Don’t be cynical. You think I am awfully shallow, because I am not a perambulating bookshelf like Mrs. Tregonell, who seems to have read all the books that ever were printed.”

  “There you are wrong. She has read a few — non multa sed multum — but they are the very best, and she has read them well enough to remember them,” answered Angus, quietly.

  “And Mop and I often read three volumes in a day, and seldom remember a line of what we read,” sighed Dopsy. “Indeed, we are awfully ignorant. Of course we learnt things at school — French and German — Italian — natural history — physical geography — geology — and all the onomies. Indeed, I shudder when I remember what a lot of learning was poured into our poor little heads, and how soon it all ran out again.”

  Dopsy gave her most fascinating giggle, and sat in an æsthetic attitude idly plucking up faded heather blossoms with a tightly gloved hand, and wondering whether Mr. Hamleigh noticed how small the hand was. She thought she was going straight to his heart with these naïve confessions; she had always heard that men hated learned women, and no doubt Mr. Hamleigh’s habit of prosing about books with Mrs. Tregonell was merely the homage he payed to his hostess.

  “You and Mrs. Tregonell are so dreadfully grave when you get together,” pursued Dopsy, seeing that her companion held his peace. She had contrived to be by Mr. Hamleigh’s side when he crossed the field, and had in a manner got possessed of him for the rest of the afternoon, barring some violent struggle for emancipation on his part. “I always wonder what you can find to say to each other.”

  “I don’t think there is much cause for wonder. We have many tastes in common. We are both fond of music — of Nature — and of books. There is a wide field for conversation.”

  “Why won’t you talk with me of books. There are some books I adore. Let us talk about Dickens.”

  “With all my heart. I admire every line he wrote — I think him the greatest genius of this age. We have had great writers — great thinkers — great masters of style — but Scott and Dickens were the Creators — they made new worlds and peopled them. I am quite ready to talk about Dickens.”

  “I don’t think I could say a single word after that outburst of yours,” said Dopsy; “you go too fast for me.”

  He had talked eagerly, willing to talk just now even to Miss Vandeleur, trying not too vividly to remember that other day — that unforgotten hour — in which, on this spot, face to face with that ever changing, ever changeless sea, he had submitted his fate to Christabel, not daring to ask for her love, warning her rather against the misery that might come to her from loving him. And misery had come, but not as he presaged. It had come from his youthful sin, that one fatal turn upon the road of life which he had taken so lightly, tripping with joyous companions along a path strewn with roses. He, like so many, had gathered his roses while he might, and had found that he had to bear the sting of their thorns when he must.

  Leonard came up behind them as they talked, Mr. Hamleigh standing by Miss Vandeleur’s side, digging his stick into the heather and staring idly at the sea.

  “What are you two talking about so earnestly?” he asked; “you are always together. I begin to understand why Hamleigh is so indifferent to sport.”

  The remark struck Angus as strange, as well as underbred. Dopsy had contrived to inflict a good deal of her society upon him at odd times; but he had taken particular care that nothing in his bearing or discourse should compromise either himself or the young lady.

  Dopsy giggled faintly, and looked modestly at the heather. It was still early in the afternoon, and the western light shone full upon a face which might have been pretty if Nature’s bloom had not long given place to the poetic pallor of the powder-puff.

  “We were talking about Dickens,” said Dopsy, with an elaborate air of struggling with the tumult of her feelings. “Don’t you adore him?”

  “If you mean the man who wrote books, I never read ‘em,” answered Leonard; “life isn’t long enough for books that don’t teach you anything. I’ve read pretty nearly every book that was ever written upon horses and dogs and guns, and a good many on mechanics; that’s enough for me. I don’t care for books that only titillate one’s imagination. Why should one read books to make oneself cry and to make oneself laugh? It’s as idiotic a habit as taking snuff to make oneself sneeze.”

  “That’s rather a severe way of looking at the subject,” said Angus.

  “It’s a practical way, that’s all. My wife surfeits herself with poetry. She is stuffed with Tennyson and Browning, loaded to the very muzzle with Byron and Shelley. She reads Shakespeare as devoutly as she reads her Bible. But I don’t see that it helps to make her pleasant company for her husband or her friends. She is never so happy as when she has her nose in a book; give her a bundle of books and a candle and she would be happy in the little house on the top of Willapark.”

  “Not without you and her boy,” said Dopsy, gushingly. “She could never exist without you two.”

  Mr. Tregonell lit himself another cigar, and strolled off without a word.

  “He has not lovable manners, has he?” inquired Dopsy, with her childish air; “but he is so good-hearted.”

  “No doubt. You have known him some time, haven’t you?” inquired Angus, who had been struggling with an uncomfortable yearning to kick the Squire into the Bay.

  The scene offered such temptations. They were standing on the edge of the amphitheatre, the ground shelving steeply downward in front of them, rocks and water below. And to think that she — his dearest, she, all gentleness and refinement, was mated to this coarse clay! Was King Marc such an one as this he wondered, and if he were, who could be angry with Tristan — Tristan who died longing to see his lost love — struck to death by his wife’s cruel lie — Tristan whose passionate soul passed by metempsychosis into briar and leaf, and crept across the arid rock to meet and mingle with the beloved dead. Oh, how sweet and sad the old legend seemed to Angus to-day, standing above the melancholy sea, where he and she had stood folded in each other’s arms in the sweet triumphant moment of love’s first avowal.

  Dopsy did not allow him much leisure for mournful meditation. She prattled on in that sweetly girlish manner which was meant to be all spirit and sparkle — glancing from theme to theme, like the butterfly among the flowers, and showing a level ignorance on all. Mr. Hamleigh listened with Christian resignation, and even allowed himself to be her escort home — and to seem especially attentive to her at afternoon tea: for although it may take two to make a quarrel, assuredly one, if she be but brazen enough, may make a flirtation. Dopsy felt that time was short, and that strong measures were necessary. Mr. Hamleigh had been very polite — attentive even. Dopsy, accustomed to the free and easy manners of her brother’s friends, mistook Mr. Hamleigh’s natural courtesy to the sex for particular homage to the individual. But he had “said nothing,” and she was no nearer the assurance of becoming Mrs. Hamleigh than she had been on the evening of his arrival. Dopsy had been fain to confess this to Mopsy in the confidence of sisterly discourse.

  “It seems as if I might just as well have had a try for him myself, instead of standing out to give you a better chance,” retorted Mopsy, somewhat scornfully.

  “Go in and win, if you can,” said Dopsy. “It won’t be the first time you’ve tried to cut me out.”

  Dopsy, embittered by the se
nse of failure, determined on new tactics. Hitherto she had been all sparkle — now she melted into a touching sadness.

  “What a delicious old room this is,” she murmured, glancing round at the bookshelves and dark panelling, the high wide chimney piece with its coat-of-arms, in heraldic colours, flashing and gleaming against a background of brown oak. “I cannot help feeling wretched at the idea that next week I shall be far away from this dear place — in dingy, dreary London. Oh, Mr. Hamleigh,” — detaining him while she selected one particular piece of sugar from the basin he was handing her—”don’t you detest London?”

  “Not absolutely. I have sometimes found it endurable.”

  “Ah, you have your clubs — just the one pleasantest street in all the great overgrown city — and that street lined with palaces, whose doors are always standing open for you. Libraries, smoking rooms, billiard-tables, perfect dinners, and all that is freshest and brightest in the way of society. I don’t wonder men like London. But for women it has only two attractions — Mudie, and the shop-windows!”

  “And the park — the theatres — the churches — the delight of looking at other women’s gowns and bonnets. I thought that could never pall?”

  “It does, though. There comes a time when one feels weary of everything,” said Dopsy, pensively stirring her tea, and so fixing Mr. Hamleigh with her conversation that he was obliged to linger — yea, even to set down his own teacup on an adjacent table, and to seat himself by the charmer’s side.

  “I thought you so delighted in the theatres,” he said. “You were full of enthusiasm about the drama the night I first dined here.”

  “Was I?” demanded Dopsy, naïvely. “And now I feel as if I did not care a straw about all the plays that were ever acted — all the actors who ever lived. Strange, is it not, that one can change so, in one little fortnight.”

  “The change is an hallucination. You are fascinated by the charms of a rural life, which you have not known long enough for satiety. You will be just as fond of plays and players when you get back to London.”