Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 2 of 3

When he had finished his dinner, he took out his cigarette case, and went out on the balcony to smoke, leaving Christabel sitting alone at her little table.

The two Englishmen at the table in the next window were talking in a comfortable, genial kind of way, and in voices quite loud enough to be overheard by their immediate neighbours. The soldier-like man sat back to back with Christabel, and she could not avoid hearing the greater part of his conversation.

She heard with listless ears, neither understanding nor interested in understanding the drift of his talk – her mind far away in the home she had left, a desolate and ruined home, as it seemed to her, now that her aunt was dead. But by-and-by the sound of a too familiar name rivetted her attention.

"Angus Hamleigh, yes! I saw his name in the visitor's book. He was here last month – gone on to Italy," said the soldier.

"You knew him?" asked the other.

"Dans le temps. I saw a good deal of him when he was about town."

"Went a mucker, didn't he?"

"I believe he spent a good deal of money – but he never belonged to an out-and-out fast lot. Went in for art and literature, and that kind of thing, don't you know? Garrick Club, behind the scenes at the swell theatres – Richmond and Greenwich dinners – Maidenhead – Henley – lived in a houseboat one summer, men used to go down by the last train to moonlit suppers after the play. He had some very good ideas, and carried them out on a large scale – but he never dropped money on cards, or racing – rather looked down upon the amusements of the million. By-the-by I was at rather a curious wedding just before I left London."

"Whose?"

"Little Fishky's. The Colonel came up to time, at last."

"Fishky," interrogated the civilian vaguely.

"Don't you know Fishky, alias Psyche, the name by which Stella Mayne condescended to be known by her intimate friends, during the run of 'Cupid and Psyche.' Colonel Luscomb married her last week at St. George's, and I was at the wedding."

"Rather feeble of him, wasn't it?" asked the civilian.

"Well, you see, he could hardly sink himself lower than he had done already by his infatuation for the lady. He knew that all his chances at the Horseguards were gone; so if a plain gold ring could gratify a young person who had been surfeited with diamonds, why should our friend withhold that simple and inexpensive ornament? Whether the lady and gentleman will be any the happier for this rehabilitation of their domestic circumstances, is a question that can only be answered in the future. The wedding was decidedly queer."

"In what way?"

"It was a case of vaulting ambition which o'er-leaps itself. The Colonel wanted a quiet wedding. I think he would have preferred the registrar's office – no church-going, or fuss of any kind – but the lady, to whom matrimony was a new idea, willed otherwise. So she decided that the nest in St. John's Wood was not spacious enough to accommodate the wedding guests. She sent her invitations far and wide, and ordered a recherché breakfast at an hotel in Brook Street. Of the sixty people she expected about fifteen appeared, and there was a rowdy air about those select few, male and female, which was by no means congenial to the broad glare of day. Night birds, every one – painted cheeks – dyed moustachios – tremulous hands – a foreshadowing of del. trem. in the very way some of them swallowed their champagne. I was sorry for Fishky, who looked lovely in her white satin frock and orange-blossoms, but who had a piteous droop about the corners of her lips, like a child whose birthday feast has gone wrong. I felt still sorrier for the Colonel – a proud man debased by low surroundings."

"He will take her off the stage, I suppose," suggested the other.

"Naturally, he will try to do so. He'll make a good fight for it, I dare say; but whether he can keep Fishky from the footlights is an open question. I know he's in debt, and I don't very clearly see how they are to live."

"She is very fond of him, isn't she?"

"Yes, I believe so. She jilted Hamleigh, a man who worshipped her, to take up with Luscomb, so I suppose it was a case of real affection."

"I was told that she was in very bad health – consumptive?"

"That sort of little person is always dying," answered the other carelessly. "It is a part of the métier– the Marguerite Gauthier, drooping lily kind of young woman. But I believe this one is sickly."

Christabel heard every word of this conversation, heard and understood for the first time that her renunciation of her lover had been useless – that the reparation she had deemed it his duty to make, was past making – that the woman to whose wounded character she had sacrificed her own happiness was false and unworthy. She had been fooled – betrayed by her own generous instincts – her own emotional impulses. It would have been better for her and for Angus if she had been more worldly-minded – less innocent of the knowledge of evil. She had blighted her own life, and perhaps his, for an imaginary good. Nothing had been gained to any one living by her sacrifice.

"I thought I was doing my duty," she told herself helplessly, as she sat looking out at the dark water, above which the moon was rising in the cloudless purple of a southern night. "Oh! how wicked that woman was to hide the truth from me – to let me sacrifice my love and my lover – knowing her own falsehood all the time. And now she is the wife of another man! How she must have laughed at my folly! I thought it was Angus who had deserted her, and that if I gave him up, his own honourable feeling would lead him to atone for that past wrong. And now I know that no good has been done – only infinite evil."

She thought of Angus, a lonely wanderer on the face of the earth; jilted by the first woman he had loved, renounced by the second, with no close ties of kindred – uncared for and alone. It was hard for her to think of this, whose dearest hope had once been to devote her life to caring for him and cherishing him – prolonging that frail existence by the tender ministrations of a boundless love. She pictured him in his loneliness, careless of his health, wasting his brief remnant of life – reckless, hopeless, indifferent.

"God grant he may fall in love with some good woman, who will cherish him as I would have done," was her unselfish prayer; for she knew that domestic affection is the only spell that can prolong a fragile life.

It was a weak thing no doubt next morning, when she was passing through the hall of the hotel, to stop at the desk on which the visitors' book was kept, and to look back through the signatures of the last three weeks for that one familiar autograph which she had such faint chance of ever seeing again in the future. How boldly that one name seemed to stand out from the page; and even coming upon it after a deliberate search, what a thrill it sent through her veins! The signature was as firm as of old. She tried to think that this was an indication of health and strength – but later in the same day, when she was alone in her sitting-room, and her tea was brought to her by a German waiter – one of those superior men whom it is hard to think of as a menial – she ventured to ask a question.

"There was an English gentleman staying here about three weeks ago: a Mr. Hamleigh. Do you remember him?" she asked.

The waiter interrogated himself silently for half a minute, and then replied in the affirmative.

"Was he an invalid?"

"Not quite an invalid, Madame. He went out a little – but he did not seem robust. He never went to the opera – or to any public entertainment. He rode a little – and drove a little – and read a great deal. He was much fonder of books than most English gentlemen."

"Do you know where he went when he left here?"

"He was going to the Italian lakes."

Christabel asked no further question. It seemed to her a great privilege to have heard even so much as this. There was very little hope that in her road of life she would often come so nearly on her lost lover's footsteps. She was too wise to desire that they should ever meet face to face – that she, Leonard's wife, should ever again be moved by the magic of that voice, thrilled by the pathos of those dreamy eyes; but it was a privilege to hear something about him she had lost, to know what spot of earth held him, what skies looked down upon him.

CHAPTER VIII

"I HAVE PUT MY DAYS AND MY DREAMS OUT OF MIND."

It was the end of May, when Christabel and her husband went back to England and to Mount Royal. Leonard wanted to stay in London for the season, and to participate in the amusements and dissipation of that golden time; but this his wife most steadfastly refused. She would be guilty of no act which could imply want of respect for her beloved dead. She would not make her curtsy to her sovereign in her new character of a matron, or go into society, within the year of her aunt's death.

"You will be horribly moped in Cornwall," remonstrated Leonard. "Everything about the place will remind you of my poor mother. We shall be in the dolefuls all the year."

"I would rather grieve for her, than forget her," answered Christabel. "It is too easy to forget."

"Well, you must have your own way, I suppose. You generally do," retorted Leonard, churlishly; "and, after having dragged me about a lot of mouldy old French towns, and made me look at churches, and Roman baths, and the sites of ancient circuses, until I hated the very name of antiquity, you will expect me to vegetate at Mount Royal for the next six months."

"I don't see any reason why a quiet life should be mere vegetation," said Christabel; "but if you would prefer to spend part of the year in London I can stay at Mount Royal."

"And get on uncommonly well without me," cried Leonard. "I perfectly comprehend your meaning. But I am not going in for that kind of thing. You and I must not offer the world another example of the semi-attached couple; or else people might begin to say you had married a man you did not care for."

"I will try and make your life as agreeable as I can at the Manor, Leonard," Christabel answered, with supreme equanimity – it was an aggravation to her husband that she so rarely lost her temper – "so long as you do not ask me to fill the house with visitors, or to do anything that might look like want of reverence for your mother's memory."

"Look!" ejaculated Leonard. "What does it matter how things look? We both know that we are sorry for having lost her – that we shall miss her more or less every day of our lives – visitors or no visitors. However, you needn't invite any people. I can rub on with a little fishin' and boatin'."

They went back to Mount Royal, where all things had gone as if by clockwork during their absence, under Miss Bridgeman's sage administration. To relieve her loneliness, Christabel had invited two of the younger sisters from Shepherd's Bush to spend the spring months at the Manor House – and these damsels – tall, vigorous, active – had revelled exceedingly in all the luxuries and pleasures of a rural life under the most advantageous circumstances. They had scoured the hills – had rifled the hedges of their abundant wild flowers – had made friends with all Christabel's chosen families in the surrounding cottages – had fallen in love with the curate who was doing duty at Minster and Forrabury – had been buffeted by the winds and tossed by the waves in many a delightful boating excursion – had climbed the rocky steeps of Tintagel so often that they seemed to know every stone of that ruined citadel – and now had gone home to Shepherd's Bush, their cheeks bright with country bloom, and their meagre trunks overshadowed by a gigantic hamper of country produce.

Christabel felt a bitter pang as the carriage drew up to the porch, and she saw the neat little figure in a black gown waiting to receive her – thinking of that tall and noble form which should have stood there – the welcoming arms which should have received her, rewarding and blessing her for her self-sacrifice. The sacrifice had been made, but death had swallowed up the blessing and reward: and in that intermediate land of slumber where the widow lay there could be no knowledge of gain – no satisfaction in the thought of her son's happiness: even granting that Leonard was supremely happy in his marriage, a fact which Christabel deemed open to doubt. No, there had been nothing gained, except that Diana Tregonell's last days had been full of peace – her one cherished hope realized on the very threshold of the tomb. Christabel tried to take comfort from this knowledge.

"If I had denied her to the last, if she had died with her wish ungratified, I think I should be still more sorry for her loss," she told herself.

There was bitter pain in the return to a home where that one familiar figure had been the central point, the very axis of life. Jessie led the new Mrs. Tregonell into the panelled parlour, where every object was arranged just as in the old days; the tea-table on the left of the wide fireplace, the large low armchair and the book-table on the right. The room was bright with white and crimson may, azaleas, tea-roses.

"I thought it was best for you to get accustomed to the rooms without her," said Jessie, in a low voice, as she placed Christabel in the widow's old chair, and helped to take off her hat and mantle, "and I thought you would not like anything changed."

"Not for worlds. The house is a part of her, in my mind. It was she who planned everything as it now is – just adding as many new things as were needful to brighten the old. I will never alter a detail unless I am absolutely obliged."