“Why did you bring him into your house?”
“Why? Can’t you guess? Because I wanted to know the utmost and the worst; to watch you two together; to see what venom was left in the old poison; to make sure, if I could, that you were staunch; to put you to the test.”
“God knows I never faltered, throughout that ordeal,” said Christabel, solemnly. “And yet you murdered him. You ask me how I know of that murder. Shall I tell you? You were at the Kieve that day; you did not go by the beaten track where the ploughmen must have seen you. No! you crept in by stealth the other way — clambered over the rocks — ah! you start. You wonder how I know that. You tore your coat in the scramble across the arch, and a fragment of the cloth was caught upon a bramble. I have that scrap of cloth, and I have the shooting-jacket from which it was torn, under lock and key in yonder wardrobe. Now, will you deny that you were at the Kieve that day?”
“No. I was there. Hamleigh met me there by appointment. You were right in your suspicion that night. We did quarrel — not about you — but about his treatment of that Vandeleur girl. I thought he had led her on — flirted with her — fooled her — —”
“You thought,” ejaculated Christabel, with ineffable scorn.
“Well, I told him so, at any rate; told him that he would not have dared to treat any woman so scurvily, with her brother and her brother’s friend standing by, if the good old wholesome code of honour had not gone out of fashion. I told him that forty years ago, in the duelling age, men had been shot for a smaller offence against good feeling; and then he rounded on me, and asked me if I wanted to shoot him; if I was trying to provoke a quarrel; and then — I hardly know how the thing came about — it was agreed that we should meet at the Kieve at nine o’clock next morning, both equipped as if for woodcock shooting — game-bag, dogs, and all, our guns loaded with swan-shot, and that we should settle our differences face to face, in that quiet hollow, without witnesses. If either of us dropped, the thing would seem an accident, and would entail no evil consequences upon the survivor. If one of us were only wounded, why — —”
“But you did not mean that,” interrupted Christabel, with flashing eyes, “you meant your shot to be fatal.”
“It was fatal,” muttered Leonard. “Never mind what I meant. God knows how I felt when it was over, and that man was lying dead on the other side of the bridge. I had seen many a noble beast, with something almost human in the look of him, go down before my gun; but I had never shot a man before. Who could have thought there would have been so much difference?”
Christabel clasped her hands over her face, and drew back with an involuntary recoil, as if all the horror of that dreadful scene were being at this moment enacted before her eyes. Never had the thought of Angus Hamleigh’s fate been out of her mind in all the year that was ended to-day — this day — the anniversary of his death. The image of that deed had been ever before her mental vision, beckoning her and guiding her along the pathway of revenge — a lurid light.
“You murdered him,” she said, in low, steadfast tones. “You brought him to this house with evil intent — yes, with your mind full of hatred and malice towards him. You acted the traitor’s base, hypocritical part, smiling at him and pretending friendship, while in your soul you meant murder. And then, under this pitiful mockery of a duel — a duel with a man who had never injured you, who had no resentment against you — a duel upon the shallowest, most preposterous pretence — you kill your friend and your guest — you kill him in a lonely place, with none of the safeguards of ordinary duelling; and you have not the manhood to stand up before your fellow-men, and say, ‘I did it.’”
“Shall I go and tell them now?” asked Leonard, his white lips tremulous with impotent rage. “They would hang me, most likely. Perhaps that is what you want.”
“No, I never wanted that,” answered Christabel. “For our boy’s sake, for the honour of your dead mother’s name, I would have saved you from a shameful death. But I wanted your life — a life for a life. That is why I tried to provoke your jealousy — why I planned that scene with the Baron yesterday. I knew that in a duel between you and him the chances were all in his favour. I had seen and heard of his skill. You fell easily into the trap I laid for you. I was behind the bushes when you challenged de Cazalet.”
“It was a plot then. You had been plotting my death all that time. Your songs and dances, and games and folly, all meant the same thing.”
“Yes, I plotted your death as you did Angus Hamleigh’s,” answered Christabel, slowly, deliberately, with steady eyes fixed on her husband’s face; “only I relented at the eleventh hour. You did not.”
Leonard stared at her in dumb amazement. This new aspect of his wife’s character paralyzed his thinking powers, which had never been vigorous. He felt as if, in the midst of a smooth summer sea, he had found himself suddenly face to face with that huge wave known on this wild northern coast, which, generated by some mysterious power in the wide Atlantic, rolls on its deadly course in overwhelming might; engulfing many a craft which but a minute before was riding gaily on a summer sea.
“Yes, you have cause to look at me with horror in your eyes,” said Christabel. “I have steeped my soul in sin; I have plotted your death. In the purpose and pursuit of my life I have been a murderer. It is God’s mercy that held me back from that black gulf. What gain would your death have been to your victim? Would he have slept more peacefully in his grave, or have awakened happier on the Judgment Day? If he had consciousness and knowledge in that dim mysterious world, he would have been sorry for the ruin of my soul — sorry for Satan’s power over the woman he once loved. Last night, kneeling on his grave, these thoughts came into my mind for the first time. I think it was the fact of being near him — almost as if there was some sympathy between the living and the dead. Leonard, I know how wicked I have been. God pity and pardon me, and make me a worthy mother for my boy. For you and me there can be nothing but lifelong parting.”
“Well, yes, I suppose there would not be much chance of comfort or union for us, after what has happened,” said Leonard, moodily; “ours is hardly a case in which to kiss again with tears, as your song says. I must be content to go my way, and let you go yours. It is a pity we ever married; but that was my fault, I suppose. Have you any particular views as to your future? I shall not molest you; but I should be glad to know that the lady who bears my name is leading a reputable life.”
“I shall live with my son — for my son. You need have no fear that I shall make myself a conspicuous person in the world. I have done with life, except for him. I care very little where I live: if you want Mount Royal for yourself, I can have the old house at Penlee made comfortable for Jessie Bridgeman and me. I daresay I can be as happy at Penlee as here.”
“I don’t want this house. I detest it. Do you suppose I am going to waste my life in England — or in Europe? Jack and I can start on our travels again. The world is wide enough; there are two continents on which I have never set foot. I shall start for Calcutta to-morrow, if I can, and explore the whole of India before I turn my face westwards again. I think we understand each other fully, now. Stay, there is one thing: I am to see my son when, and as often as I please, I suppose.”
“I will not interfere with your rights as a father.”
“I am glad of that. And now I suppose there is no more to be said. I leave your life, my honour, in your own keeping. Good-bye.”
“God be with you,” she answered solemnly, giving that parting salutation its fullest meaning.
And so, without touch of lip or hand, they parted for a lifetime.
CHAPTER XIII.
WE HAVE DONE WITH TEARS AND TREASONS.
“I wonder if there is any ancient crime in the Tregonell family that makes the twenty-fifth of October a fatal date,” Mopsy speculated, with a lachrymose air, on the afternoon which followed the Baron’s hasty departure. “This very day last year Mr. Hamleigh shot himself, and spoiled all our pleasure; and to-day, the Ba
ron de Cazalet rushes away as if the house was infected, Mrs. Tregonell keeps her own room with a nervous headache, and Mr. Tregonell is going to carry off Jack to be broiled alive in some sandy waste among prowling tigers, or to catch his death of cold upon more of those horrid mountains. One might just as well have no brother.”
“If he ever sent us anything from abroad we shouldn’t feel his loss so keenly,” said Dopsy, in a plaintive voice, “but he doesn’t. If he were to traverse the whole of Africa we shouldn’t be the richer by a single ostrich feather — and those undyed natural ostriches are such good style. South America teems with gold and jewels; Peru is a proverb; but what are we the better off?”
“It is rather bad form for the master of a house to start on his travels before his guests have cleared out,” remarked Mopsy.
“And an uncommonly broad hint for the guests to hasten the clearing-out process,” retorted Dopsy. “I thought we were good here for another month — till Christmas perhaps. Christmas at an old Cornish manor-house would have been too lovely — like one of the shilling annuals.”
“A great deal nicer,” said Mopsy, “for you never met with a country-house in a Christmas book that was not peopled with ghosts and all kind of ghastliness.”
Luncheon was lively enough, albeit de Cazalet was gone, and Mrs. Tregonell was absent, and Mr. Tregonell painfully silent. The chorus of the passionless, the people for whom life means only dressing and sleeping and four meals a day, found plenty to talk about.
Jack Vandeleur was in high spirits. He rejoiced heartily at the turn which affairs had taken that morning, having from the first moment looked upon the projected meeting on Trebarwith sands as likely to be fatal to his friend, and full of peril for all concerned in the business.
He was too thorough a free-lance, prided himself too much on his personal courage and his recklessness of consequences, to offer strenuous opposition to any scheme of the kind; but he had not faced the situation without being fully aware of its danger, and he was very glad the thing had blown over without bloodshed or law-breaking. He was glad also on Mrs. Tregonell’s account, very glad to know that this one woman in whose purity and honesty of purpose he had believed, had not proved herself a simulacrum, a mere phantasmagoric image of goodness and virtue. Still more did he exult at the idea of re-visiting the happy hunting-grounds of his youth, that ancient romantic world in which the youngest and most blameless years of his life had been spent. Pleasant to go back under such easy circumstances, with Leonard’s purse to draw upon, to be the rich man’s guide, philosopher, and friend, in a country which he knew thoroughly.
“Pray what is the cause of this abrupt departure of de Cazalet, and this sudden freak of our host’s?” inquired Mrs. Torrington of her next neighbour, Mr. FitzJesse, who was calmly discussing a cutlet à la Maintenon, unmoved by the shrill chatter of the adjacent Dopsy. “I hope it is nothing wrong with the drains.”
“No, I am told the drainage is simply perfect.”
“People always declare as much, till typhoid fever breaks out; and then it is discovered that there is an abandoned cesspool in direct communication with one of the spare bedrooms, or a forgotten drainpipe under the drawing-room floor. I never believe people when they tell me their houses are wholesome. If I smell an unpleasant smell I go,” said Mrs. Torrington.
“There is often wisdom in flight,” replied the journalist; “but I do not think this is a case of bad drainage.”
“No more do I,” returned Mrs. Torrington, dropping her voice and becoming confidential; “of course we both perfectly understand what it all means. There has been a row between Mr. and Mrs. Tregonell, and de Cazalet has got his congé from the husband.”
“I should have introduced him to the outside of my house three weeks ago, had I been the Squire,” said FitzJesse. “But I believe the flirtation was harmless enough, and I have a shrewd idea it was what the thieves call a ‘put up’ thing — done on purpose to provoke the husband.”
“Why should she want to provoke him?”
“Ah, why? That is the mystery. You know her better than I do, and must be better able to understand her motives.”
“But I don’t understand her in the least,” protested Mrs. Torrington. “She is quite a different person this year from the woman I knew last year. I thought her the most devoted wife and mother. The house was not half so nice to stay at; but it was ever so much more respectable. I had arranged with my next people — Lodway Court, near Bristol — to be with them at the end of the week; but I suppose the best thing we can all do is to go at once. There is an air of general break-up in Mr. Tregonell’s hasty arrangements for an Indian tour.”
“Rather like the supper-party in Macbeth, is it not?” said FitzJesse, “except that her ladyship is not to the fore.”
“I call it altogether uncomfortable,” exclaimed Mrs. Torrington, pettishly. “How do I know that the Lodway Court people will be able to receive me. I may be obliged to go to an hotel.”
“Heaven avert such a catastrophe.”
“It would be very inconvenient — with a maid, and no end of luggage. One is not prepared for that kind of thing when one starts on a round of visits.”
For Dopsy and Mopsy there was no such agreeable prospect as a change of scene from one “well-found” country-house to another. To be tumbled out of this lap of luxury meant a fall into the dreariness of South Belgravia and the King’s Road — long, monotonous, arid streets, with all the dust that had been ground under the feet of happy people in the London season blown about in dense clouds, for the discomfiture of the outcasts who must stay in town when the season is over; sparse dinners, coals measured by the scuttle, smoky fires, worn carpets, flat beer, and the whole gamut of existence equally flat, stale, and unprofitable.
Dopsy and Mopsy listened with doleful countenances to Jack’s talk about the big things he and his friend were going to do in Bengal, the tigers, the wild pigs, and wild peacocks they were going to slay. Why had not Destiny made them young men, that they too might prey upon their species, and enjoy life at somebody else’s expense?
“I’ll tell you what,” said their brother, in the most cheerful manner. “Of course you won’t be staying here after I leave. Mrs. Tregonell will want to be alone when her husband goes. You had better go with the Squire and me as far as Southampton. He’ll frank you. We can all stop at the ‘Duke of Cornwall’ to-morrow night, and start for Southampton by an early train next morning. You can lunch with us at the ‘Dolphin,’ see us off by steamer, and go on to London afterwards.”
“That will be a ray of jollity to gild the last hour of our happiness,” said Mopsy. “Oh, how I loathe the idea of going back to those lodgings — and pa!”
“The governor is a trial, I must admit,” said Jack. “But you see the European idea is that an ancient parent can’t hang on hand too long. There’s no wheeling him down to the Ganges, and leaving him to settle his account with the birds and the fishes; and even in India that kind of thing is getting out of date.”
“I wouldn’t so much mind him,” said Dopsy, plaintively, “if his habits were more human; but there are so many traits in his character — especially his winter cough — which remind one of the lower animals.”
“Poor old Pater,” sighed Jack, with a touch of feeling. He was not often at home. “Would you believe it, that he was once almost a gentleman? Yes, I remember, an early period in my life when I was not ashamed to own him. But when a fellow has been travelling steadily down hill for fifteen years, his ultimate level must be uncommonly low.”
“True,” sighed Mopsy, “we have always tried to rise superior to our surroundings; but it has been a terrible struggle.”
“There have been summer evenings, when that wretched slavey has been out with her young man, that I have been sorely tempted to fetch the beer with my own hands — there is a jug and bottle entrance at the place where we deal — but I have suffered agonies of thirst rather than so lower myself,” said Dopsy, with the complacence of
conscious heroism.
“Right you are,” said Jack, who would sooner have fetched beer in the very eye of society than gone without it; “one must draw the line somewhere.”
“And to go from a paradise like this to such a den as that,” exclaimed Dopsy, still harping on the unloveliness of the Pimlico lodging.
“Cheer up, old girl. I daresay Mrs. T. will ask you again. She’s very good-natured.”
“She has behaved like an angel to us,” answered Dopsy, “but I can’t make her out. There’s a mystery somewhere.”
“There’s always a skeleton in the cupboard. Don’t you try to haul old Bony out,” said the philosophical Captain.
This was after luncheon, when Jack and his sisters had the billiard-room to themselves. Mr. Tregonell was in his study, making things straight with his bailiff, coachman, butler, in his usual business-like and decisive manner. Mr. FitzJesse was packing his portmanteau, meaning to sleep that night at Penzance. He was quite shrewd enough to be conscious of the tempest in the air, and was not disposed to inflict himself upon his friends in the hour of trouble, or to be bored by having to sympathize with them in their affliction.
He had studied Mrs. Tregonell closely, and he had made up his mind that conduct which was out of harmony with her character must needs be inspired by some powerful motive. He had heard the account of her first engagement — knew all about little Fishky — and he had been told the particulars of her first lover’s death. It was not difficult for so astute an observer of human nature to make out the rest of the story.
Little Monty had been invited to go as far as Southampton with the travellers. The St. Aubyns declared that home-duties had long been demanding their attention, and that they must positively leave next day.
Mr. Faddie accepted an invitation to accompany them, and spend a week at their fine old place on the other side of the county — thus, without any trouble on Christabel’s part, her house was cleared for her. When she came down to luncheon next day, two or three hours after the departure of Leonard and his party, who were to spend that night at Plymouth, with some idea of an evening at the theatre on the part of Mop and Dop, she had only the St. Aubyns and Mr. Faddie to entertain. Even they were on the wing, as the carriage which was to convey them to Bodmin Road Station was ordered for three o’clock in the afternoon.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 733
