Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Never,” exclaimed Dopsy. “It is not only my taste that is changed. It is myself. I feel as if I were a new creature.”

  “What a blessing for yourself and society if the change were radical,” said Mr. Hamleigh, within himself; and then he answered, lightly.

  “Perhaps you have been attending the little chapel at Boscastle, secretly imbibing the doctrines of advanced Methodism, and this is a spiritual awakening.”

  “No,” sighed Dopsy, shaking her head, pensively, as she gazed at her teacup. “It is an utter change. I cannot make it out. I don’t think I shall ever care for gaiety — parties — theatres — dress — again.”

  “Oh, this must be the influence of the Methodists.”

  “I hate Methodists! I never spoke to one in my life. I should like to go into a convent. I should like to belong to a Protestant sisterhood, and to nurse the poor in their own houses. It would be nasty; I should catch some dreadful complaint, and die, I daresay; but it would be better than what I feel now.”

  And Dopsy, taking advantage of the twilight, and the fact that she and Angus were at some distance from the rest of the party, burst into tears. They were very real tears — tears of vexation, disappointment, despair; and they made Angus very uncomfortable.

  “My dear Miss Vandeleur, I am so sorry to see you distressed. Is there anything on your mind? Is there anything that I can do. Shall I fetch your sister.”

  “No, no,” gasped Dopsy, in a choked voice. “Please don’t go away. I like you to be near me.”

  She put out her hand — a chilly, tremulous hand, with no passion in it save the passionate pain of despair, and touched his, timidly, entreatingly, as if she were calling upon him for pity and help. She was, indeed, in her inmost heart, asking him to rescue her from the great dismal swamp of poverty and disrepute: to take her to himself, and give her a place and status among well-bred people, and make her life worth living.

  This was dreadful. Angus Hamleigh, in all the variety of his experience of womankind, had never before found himself face to face with this kind of difficulty. He had not been blind to Miss Vandeleur’s strenuous endeavours to charm him. He had parried those light arrows lightly: but he was painfully embarrassed by this appeal to his compassion. It was a new thing for him to sit beside a weeping woman, whom he could neither love nor admire, but from whom he could not withhold his pity.

  “I daresay her life is dismal enough,” he thought, “with such a brother as Poker Vandeleur — and a father to match.”

  While he sat in silent embarrassment, and while Dopsy slowly dried her tears with a gaudy little coloured handkerchief, taken from a smart little breast-pocket in the tailor-gown, Mr. Tregonell sauntered across the room to the window where they sat — a Tudor window, with a deep embrasure.

  “What are you two talking about in the dark?” he asked, as Dopsy confusedly shuffled the handkerchief back into the breast-pocket. “Something very sentimental, I should think, from the look of you. Poetry, I suppose.”

  Dopsy said not a word. She believed that Leonard meant well by her — that, if his influence could bring Mr. Hamleigh’s nose to the grindstone, to the grindstone that nose would be brought. So she looked up at her brother’s friend with a watery smile, and remained mute.

  “We were talking about London and the theatres,” answered Angus. “Not a very sentimental topic;” and then he got up and walked away with his teacup, to the table near which Christabel was sitting, in the flickering firelight, and seated himself by her side, and began to talk to her about a box of books that had arrived from London that day — books that were familiar to him and new to her. Leonard looked after him with a scowl, safe in the shadow; while Dopsy, feeling that she had made a fool of herself, lapsed again into tears.

  “I am afraid he is behaving very badly to you,” said Leonard.

  “Oh, no, no. But he has such strange ways. He blows hot and cold.”

  “In plain words, he’s a heartless flirt,” answered Leonard, impatiently. “He has been fooled by a pack of women — pretends to be dying of consumption — gives himself no end of airs. He has flirted outrageously with you. Has he proposed?”

  “No —— not exactly,” faltered Dopsy.

  “Some one ought to bring him to the scratch. Your brother must tackle him.”

  “Don’t you think if — if — Jack were to say anything — were just to hint that I was being made very unhappy — that such marked attentions before all the world put me in a false position — don’t you think it might do harm?”

  “Quite the contrary. It would do good. No man ought to trifle with a girl’s feelings in that way. No man shall be allowed to do it in my house. If Jack won’t speak to him, I will.”

  “Oh, Mr. Vandeleur, what a noble heart you have — what a true friend you have always been to us.”

  “You are my friend’s sister — my wife’s guest. I won’t see you trifled with.”

  “And you really think his attentions have been marked?”

  “Very much marked. He shall not be permitted to amuse himself at your expense. There he sits, talking sentiment to my wife — just as he has talked sentiment to you. Why doesn’t he keep on the safe side, and confine his attentions to married women?”

  “You are not jealous of him?” asked Dopsy, with some alarm.

  “Jealous! I! It would take a very extraordinary kind of wife, and a very extraordinary kind of admirer of that wife, to make me jealous.”

  Dopsy felt her hopes in somewise revived by Mr. Tregonell’s manner of looking at things. Up to this point she had mistrusted exceedingly that the flirting was all on her side: but now Leonard most distinctly averred that Angus Hamleigh had flirted, and in a manner obvious to every one. And if Mr. Hamleigh really admired her — if he were really blowing hot and cold — inclining one day to make her his wife, and on another day disposed to let her languish and fade in South Belgravia — might not a word or two from a judicious friend turn the scale, and make her happy for life.

  She went up to her room to dress in a flutter of hope and fear; so agitated, that she could scarcely manage the more delicate details of her toilet — the drapery of her skirt, the adjustment of the sunflower on her shoulder.

  “How flushed and shaky you are,” exclaimed Mopsy, pausing in the pencilling of an eyebrow to look at her sister. “Is the deed done? Has he popped?”

  “No, he has not popped. But I think he will.”

  “I wish I were of your opinion. I should like a rich sister. It would be the next best thing to being well off oneself.”

  “You only think of his money,” said Dopsy, who had really fallen in love — for only about the fifteenth time, so there was still freshness in the feeling—”I should care for him just as much if he were a pauper.”

  “No; you would not,” said Mopsy. “I daresay you think you would, but you wouldn’t. There is a glamour about money which nobody in our circumstances can resist. A man who dresses perfectly — who has never been hard up — who has always lived among elegant people — there is a style about him that goes straight to one’s heart. Don’t you remember how in “Peter Wilkins” there are different orders of beings — a superior class — born so, bred so — always apart and above the others. Mr. Hamleigh belongs to that higher order. If he were poor and shabby he would be a different person. You wouldn’t care twopence for him.”

  The Rector of Trevalga and his wife dined at Mount Royal that evening, so Dopsy fell to the lot of Mr. Hamleigh, and had plenty of opportunity of carrying on the siege during dinner, while Mrs. Tregonell and the Rector, who was an enthusiastic antiquarian, talked of the latest discoveries in Druidic remains.

  After dinner came the usual adjournment to billiards. The Rector and his wife stayed in the drawing-room with Christabel and Jessie. Mr. Hamleigh would have remained with them, but Leonard specially invited him to the billiard-room.

  “You must have had enough Mendelssohn and Beethoven to last you for the next six months,” he said. “
You had better come and have a smoke with us.”

  “I could never have too much good music,” answered Angus.

  “Well, I don’t suppose you’d get much to night. The Rector and my wife will talk about pots and pans all the evening, now they’ve once started. You may as well be sociable, for once-in-a-way, and come with us.”

  Such an invitation, given in heartiest tones, and with seeming frankness, could hardly be refused. So Angus went across the hall with the rest of the billiard players, to the fine old room, once a chapel, in which there was space enough for settees, and easy chairs, tea-tables, books, flowers, and dogs, without the slightest inconvenience to the players.

  “You’ll play, Hamleigh?” said Leonard.

  “No, thanks; I’d rather sit and smoke and watch you.”

  “Really! Then Monty and I will play Jack and one of the girls. Billiards is the only game at which one can afford to play against relations — they can’t cheat. Mopsy, will you play? Dopsy can mark.’”

  “What a thorough good fellow he is,” thought Dopsy, charmed with an arrangement which left her comparatively free for flirtation with Mr. Hamleigh, who had taken possession of Christabel’s favourite seat — a low capacious basket-chair — by the wide wood fire, and had Christabel’s table near him, loaded with her books, and work-basket — those books which were all his favourites as well as hers, and which made an indissoluble link between them. What is mere blood relationship compared with the subtler tie of mutual likings and dislikings?

  The men all lighted their cigarettes, and the game progressed with tolerably equal fortunes, Jack Vandeleur playing well enough to make amends for any lack of skill on the part of Mopsy, whose want of the scientific purpose and certainty which come from long experience, was as striking as her dashing and self-assured method of handling her cue, and her free use of all slang terms peculiar to the game. Dopsy oscillated between the marking-board and the fireplace — sometimes kneeling on the Persian rug to play with Randie and the other dogs, sometimes standing in a pensive attitude by the chimney-piece, talking to Angus. All traces of tears were gone. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes brightened by an artful touch of Indian ink under the lashes, her eyebrows accentuated by the same artistic treatment, her large fan held with the true Grosvenor Gallery air.

  “Do you believe that peacocks’ feathers are unlucky?” she asked, looking pensively at the fringe of green and azure plumage on her fan.

  “I am not altogether free from superstition, but my idea of the fates has never taken that particular form. Why should the peacock be a bird of evil omen? I can believe anything bad of the screech-owl or the raven — but the harmless ornamental peacock — surely he is innocent of our woes.”

  “I have known the most direful calamities follow the introduction of peacocks’ feathers into a drawing-room — yet they are so tempting, one can hardly live without them.”

  “Really! Do you know that I have found existence endurable without so much as a tuft of down from that unmelodious bird?”

  “Have you never longed for its plumage to give life and colour to your rooms? — such exquisite colour — such delicious harmony — I wonder that you, who have such artistic taste, can resist the fascination.”

  “I hope you have not found that pretty fan the cause of many woes?” said Mr. Hamleigh, smilingly, as the damsel posed herself in the early Italian manner, and slowly waved the bright-hued plumage.

  “I cannot say that I have been altogether happy since I possessed it,” answered Dopsy, with a shy downward glance, and a smothered sigh; “and yet I don’t know — I have been only too happy sometimes, perhaps, and at other times deeply wretched.”

  “Is not that kind of variableness common to our poor human nature — independent of peacocks’ feathers?”

  “Not to me. I used to be the most thoughtless happy-go-lucky creature.”

  “Until when?”

  “Till I came to Cornwall,” with a faint sigh, and a sudden upward glance of a pair of blue eyes which would have been pretty, had they been only innocent of all scheming.

  “Then I’m afraid this mixture of sea and mountain air does not agree with you. Too exciting for your nerves perhaps.”

  “I don’t think it is that,” with a still fainter sigh.

  “Then the peacocks’ feathers must be to blame. Why don’t you throw your fan into the fire?”

  “Not for worlds,” said Dopsy.

  “Why not?”

  “First, because it cost a guinea,” naïvely, “and then because it is associated with quite the happiest period of my life.”

  “You said just now you had been unhappy since you owned it.”

  “Only by fits and starts. Too utterly happy at other times.”

  “If I say another word she will dissolve into tears again,” thought Angus. “I shall have to leave Mount Royal: a man in weak health is no match for a young woman of this type. She will get me into a corner and declare I have proposed to her.”

  He got up and went over to the table, where Mr. Montagu was just finishing the game, with a break which had left Dopsy free for flirtation during the last ten minutes.

  Mr. Hamleigh played in the next game, but this hardly bettered his condition, for Dopsy now took her sister’s place with the cue, and required to be instructed as to every stroke, and even to have her fingers placed in position, now and then by Angus, when the ball was under the cushion, and the stroke in any way difficult. This lengthened the game, and bored Angus exceedingly, besides making him ridiculous in the eyes of the other three men.

  “I hate playing with lovers,” muttered Leonard, under his breath, when Dopsy was especially worrying about the exact point at which she was to hit the ball for a particular cannon.

  “Decidedly I must get away to-morrow,” reflected Angus.

  The game went on merrily enough, and was only just over when the stable clock struck eleven, at which hour the servants brought in a tray with a tankard of mulled claret for vice, and a siphon for virtue. The Miss Vandeleurs, after pretending to say good-night, were persuaded to sip a little of the hot spiced wine, and were half inclined to accept the cigarettes persuasively offered by Mr. Montagu; till, warned by a wink from Jack, they drew up suddenly, declared they had been quite too awfully dissipated, that they should be too late to wish Mrs. Tregonell good-night, and skipped away.

  “Awfully jolly girls, those sisters of yours,” said Montagu, as he closed the door which he had opened for the damsels’ exit, and strolled back to the hearth, where Angus was sitting dreamily caressing Randie — her dog! How many a happy dog has received caresses charged with the love of his mistress, such mournful kisses as Dido lavished on the young Ascanias in the dead watches of the weary night.

  Jack Vandeleur and his host had begun another game, delighted at having the table to themselves.

  “Yes, they’re nice girls,” answered Mr. Vandeleur, without looking off the table; “just the right kind of girls for a country-house: no starch, no prudishness, but as innocent as babies, and as true-hearted — well, they are all heart. I should be sorry to see anybody trifle with either of them. It would be a very serious thing for her — and it should be my business to make it serious for him.”

  “Great advantage for a girl to have a brother who enjoys the reputation of being a dead shot,” said Mr. Montagu, “or it would be if duelling were not an exploded institution — like trial for witchcraft, and hanging for petty larceny.”

  “Duelling is never out of fashion, among gentlemen,” answered Jack, making a cannon and going in off the red. “That makes seventeen, Monty. There are injuries which nothing but the pistol can redress, and I’m not sorry that my Red River experience has made me a pretty good shot. But I’m not half as good as Leonard. He could give me fifty in a hundred any day.”

  “When a man has to keep his party in butcher’s meat by the use of his rifle, he’d need be a decent marksman,” answered Mr. Tregonell, carelessly. “I never knew the right use of
a gun till I crossed the Rockies. By-the-way, who is for woodcock shooting to-morrow? You’ll come, I suppose, Jack?”

  “Not to-morrow, thanks. Monty and I are going over to Bodmin to see a man hanged. We’ve got an order to view, as the house-agents call it. Monty is supposed to be on the Times. I go for the Western Daily Mercury.”

  “What a horrid ghoulish thing to do,” said Leonard.

  “It’s seeing life,” answered Jack, shrugging his shoulders.

  “I should call it the other thing. However, as crime is very rare in Cornwall, you may as well make the most of your opportunity. But it’s a pity to neglect the birds. This is one of the best seasons we’ve had since 1860, when there was a remarkable flight of birds in the second week in October. But even that year wasn’t as good as ‘55, when a farmer at St. Buryan killed close upon sixty birds in a week. You’ll go to-morrow, I hope, Mr. Hamleigh? There’s some very good ground about St. Nectan’s Kieve, and it’s a picturesque sort of place, that will just hit your fancy.”

  “I have been to the Kieve, often — yes, it is a lovely spot,” answered Angus, remembering his first visit to Mount Royal, and the golden afternoons which he had spent with Christabel among the rocks and the ferns, their low voices half drowned by the noise of the waterfall. “But I shan’t be able to shoot to-morrow. I have just been making up my mind to tear myself away from Mount Royal, and I was going to ask you to let one of your grooms drive me over to Launceston in time for the mid-day train. I can get up from Plymouth by the Limited Mail.”

  “Why are you in such a hurry?” asked Leonard. “I thought you were rather enjoying yourself with us.”

  “So much so that as far as my own inclination goes there is no reason why I should not stay here for the rest of my life — only you would get tired of me — and I have promised my doctor to go southward before the frosty weather begins.”

  “A day or two can’t make much difference.”