Mount Royal Volume Ii Part 15

"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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 bal.u.s.trades, 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 aesthetic 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 p.r.o.nunciation, 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 announced at this moment, and Mrs. Tregonell won Dopsy's grat.i.tude 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 G.o.dson," 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 p.r.o.nounce 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.

"She has forgotten me. She is happy in her married life," he said to himself, and then he looked to the other end of the table where Leonard sat, burly, florid, black-haired, mutton-chop whiskered, the very essence of Philistinism--"happy--with him."

"And I am sure you must adore Ellen Terry," said Dopsy, whose society-conversation was not a many-stringed instrument.

"Who could live and not worship her?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Hamleigh.

"Irving as Shylock!" sighed Dopsy.

"Miss Terry as Portia," retorted Angus.

"Unutterably sweet, was she not?"

"Her movements were like a sonata by Beethoven--her gowns were the essence of all that Rubens and Vandyck ever painted."

"I knew you would agree with me," exclaimed Dopsy. "And do you think her pretty?"

"Pretty is not the word. She is simply divine. Greuze might have painted her--there is no living painter whose palette holds the tint of those blue eyes."

Dopsy began to giggle softly to herself, and to flutter her fan with maiden modesty.

"I hardly like to mention it after what you have said," she murmured, "but----"

"Pray be explicit."

"I have been told that I am rather"--another faint giggle and another flutter--"like Miss Terry."

"I never met a fair-haired girl yet who had not been told as much,"

answered Mr. Hamleigh coolly.

Dopsy turned crimson, and felt that this particular arrow had missed the gold. Mr. Hamleigh was not quite so easy to get on with as her hopeful fancy had painted him.

After dinner there was some music, in which art neither of the Miss Vandeleurs excelled. Indeed, their time had been too closely absorbed by the ever pressing necessity for cutting and contriving to allow of the study of art and literature. They knew the names of writers, and the outsides of books, and they adored the opera, and enjoyed a ballad concert, if the singers were popular, and the audience well dressed; and this was the limit of their artistic proclivities. They sat stifling their yawns, and longing for an adjournment to the billiard room--whither Jack Vandeleur and Mr. Montagu had departed--while Christabel played a capriccio by Mendelssohn. Mr. Hamleigh sat by the piano listening to every note. Leonard and Major Bree lounged by the fireplace, Jessie Bridgeman sitting near them, absorbed in her crewel work.

It was what Mopsy and Dopsy called a very "slow" evening, despite the new interest afforded by Mr. Hamleigh's presence. He was very handsome, very elegant, with an inexpressible something in his style and air which Mopsy thought poetical. But it was weary work to sit and gaze at him as if he were a statue, and that long capriccio, with a little Beethoven to follow, and a good deal of Mozart after that, occupied the best part of the evening. To the ears of Mop and Dop it was all tweedledum and tweedledee. They would have been refreshed by one of those lively melodies in which Miss Farren so excels; they would have welcomed a familiar strain from Chilperic or Madame Angot. Yet they gushed and said, "too delicious--quite too utterly lovely," when Mrs. Tregonell rose from the piano.

"I only hope I have not wearied everybody," she said.

Leonard and Major Bree had been talking local politics all the time, and both expressed themselves much gratified by the music. Mr. Hamleigh murmured his thanks.

Christabel went to her room wondering that the evening had pa.s.sed so calmly--that her heart--though it had ached at the change in Angus Hamleigh's looks, had been in no wise tumultuously stirred by his presence. There had been a peaceful feeling in her mind rather than agitation. She had been soothed and made happy by his society. If love still lingered in her breast it was love purified of every earthly thought and hope. She told herself sorrowfully that for him the sand ran low in the gla.s.s of earthly time, and it was sweet to have him near her for a little while towards the end; to be able to talk to him of serious things--to inspire hope in a soul whose natural bent was despondency. It would be sadly, unutterably sweet to talk to him of that spiritual world whose unearthly light already shone in the too brilliant eye, and coloured the hollow cheek. She had found Mr. Hamleigh despondent and sceptical, but never indifferent to religion. He was not one of that eminently practical school which, in the words of Matthew Arnold, thinks it more important to learn how b.u.t.tons and _papier-mache_ are made than to search the depths of conscience, or fathom the mysteries of a Divine Providence.

Christabel's first sentiment when Leonard announced Mr. Hamleigh's intended visit had been horror. How could they two who had loved so deeply, parted so sadly, live together under the same roof as if they were every day friends? The thing seemed fraught with danger, impossible for peace. But when she remembered that calm, almost solemn look with which he had shaken hands with her among the graves at Tintagel, it seemed to her that friendship--calmest, purest, most unselfish attachment--was still possible between them. She thought so even more hopefully on the morning after Mr. Hamleigh's arrival, when he took her boy in his arms, and pressed his lips lovingly upon the bright baby brow.

"You are fond of children," exclaimed Mopsy, prepared to gush.