Mount Royal Volume Ii Part 17

"But that doesn't prevent your eating them, with breadcrumbs and gravy,"

said Leonard, laughing.

"When they are once roasted, it can make no difference who eats them,"

replied Mopsy; "but I am intensely sorry for them all the same."

They all went home together, a cheery procession, with the dogs at their heels. Mr. Hamleigh's efforts to escape from the two damsels who had marked him for their own, were futile: nothing less than sheer brutality would have set him free. They trudged along gaily, one on each side of him; they flattered him, they made much of him--a man must have been stony-hearted to remain, untouched by such attentions. Angus was marble, but he could not be uncivil. It was his nature to be gentle to women. Mop and Dop were the kind of girls he most detested--indeed, it seemed to him that no other form of girlhood could be so detestable.

They had all the pertness of Bohemia without any of its wit--they had all the audacity of the _demi-monde_, with far inferior attractions.

Everything about them was spurious and second-hand--every air and look and tone was put on, like a ribbon or a flower, to attract attention.

And could it be that one of these meretricious creatures was angling for him--for him, the Lauzun, the d'Eckmuhl, the Prince de Belgioso, of his day--the born dandy, with whom fastidiousness was a sixth sense?

Intolerable as the idea of being so pursued was to him, Angus Hamleigh could not bring himself to be rude to a woman.

It happened, therefore, that from the beginning to the end of that long ramble, he was never in Mrs. Tregonell's society. She and Jessie walked steadily ahead with their dogs, while the sportsmen tramped slowly behind Mr. Hamleigh and the two girls.

"Our friend seems to be very much taken by your sisters," said Leonard to Captain Vandeleur.

"My sisters are deuced taking girls," answered Jack, puffing at his seventeenth cigarette; "though I suppose it isn't my business to say so.

There's nothing of the professional beauty about either of 'em."

"Distinctly not!" said Leonard.

"But they've plenty of _chic_--plenty of go--_savoir faire_--and all that kind of thing, don't you know. They're the most companionable girls I ever met with!"

"They're uncommonly jolly little buffers!" said Leonard, kindly, meaning it for the highest praise.

"They've no fool's flesh about them," said Jack; "and they can make a fiver go further than any one I know. A man might do worse than marry one of them."

"Hardly!" thought Leonard, "unless he married both."

"It would be a fine thing for Dop if Mr. Hamleigh were to come to the scratch," mused Jack.

"I wonder what was Leonard's motive in asking Mr. Hamleigh to stay at Mount Royal?" said Christabel, suddenly, after she and Jessie had been talking of indifferent subjects.

"I hope he had not any motive, but that the invitation was the impulse of the moment, without rhyme or reason," answered Miss Bridgeman.

"Why?"

"Because if he had a motive, I don't think it could be a good one."

"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 gra.s.s-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 sh.e.l.l-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 embarra.s.sment, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sured 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 circ.u.mstances 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 _arriere pensee_--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 coa.r.s.e 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 a.s.sure you. Perhaps you think it rather horrid of me to live in a man's house--eat his bread and drink his wine--one gla.s.s 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 sometimes 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 aesthetic att.i.tude 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 nave 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 d.i.c.kens."

"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 d.i.c.kens were the Creators--they made new worlds and peopled them. I am quite ready to talk about d.i.c.kens."

"I don't think I could say a single word after that outburst of yours,"