Mount Royal Volume I Part 5

They dawdled accordingly. Strolling about upon the short sea-beaten gra.s.s, so treacherous and slippery a surface in summer time, when fierce Sol has been baking it. They stumbled against the foundations of long-vanished walls, they speculated upon fragments of cyclopean masonry, and talked a great deal about the traditions of the spot.

Christabel, who had all the old authorities--Leland, Carew, and Norden--at her fingers' ends, was delighted to expound the departed glories of this British fortress. She showed where the ancient dungeon keep had reared its stony walls upon that "high terrible crag, environed with the sea; and how there had once been a drawbridge uniting yonder cliff with the buildings on the mainland"--now divorced, as Carew says, "by the downfallen steep cliffs, on the farther side, which, though it shut out the sea from his wonted recourse, hath yet more strengthened the island; for in pa.s.sing thither you must first descend with a dangerous declining, and then make a worse ascent by a path, through his stickleness occasioning, and through his steepness threatening, the ruin of your life, with the falling of your foot." She told Mr. Hamleigh how, after the Conquest, the castle was the occasional residence of some of our Princes, and how Richard, King of the Romans, Earl of Cornwall, son of King John, entertained here his nephew David, Prince of Wales, how, in Richard the Second's time, this stronghold was made a State prison, and how a certain Lord Mayor of London was, for his unruly mayoralty, condemned thither as a perpetual penitentiary; which seems very hard upon the chief magistrate of the city, who thus did vicarious penance for the riot of his brief reign.

And then they talked of Tristan and Iseult, and the tender old love-story, which lends the glamour of old-world fancies to those bare ruins of a traditional past. Christabel knew the old chronicle through Matthew Arnold's poetical version, which gives only the purer and better side of the character of the Knight and Chatelaine, at the expense of some of the strongest features of the story. Who, that knew that romantic legend, could linger on that spot without thinking of King Marc's faithless queen! a.s.suredly not Mr. Hamleigh, who was a staunch believer in the inventor of "sweetness and light," and who knew Arnold's verses by heart.

"What have they done with the flowers and the terrace walks?" he said,--"the garden where Tristan and his Queen basked in the sunshine of their days; and where they parted for ever?--

"'All the spring time of their love Is already gone and past, And instead thereof is seen Its winter, which endureth still Tyntagel, on its surge-beat hill, The pleasaunce walks, the weeping queen, The flying leaves, the straining blast, And that long wild kiss--their last.'

And where--oh, where--are those graves in the King's chapel in which the tyrant Marc, touched with pity, ordered the fated lovers to be buried?

And, behold! out of the grave of Tristan there sprung a plant which went along the walls, and descended into the grave of the Queen, and though King Marc three several times ordered this magical creeper to be cut off root and branch, it was always found growing again next morning, as if it were the very spirit of the dead knight struggling to get free from the grave, and to be with his lady-love again! Show me those tombs, Miss Courtenay."

"You can take your choice," said Jessie Bridgeman, pointing to a green mound or two, overgrown with long rank gra.s.s, in that part of the hill which was said to be the kingly burial-place. "But as for your magical tree, there is not so much as a bramble to do duty for poor Tristan."

"If I were Duke of Cornwall and Lord of Tintagel Castle, I would put up a granite cross in memory of the lovers; though I fear there was very little Christianity in either of them," said Angus.

"And I would come once a year and hang a garland on it," said Christabel, smiling at him with

"Eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue-- Eyes too expressive to be blue, Too lovely to be grey."

He had recalled those lines more than once when he looked into Christabel's eyes.

Mr. Hamleigh had read so much as to make him an interesting talker upon any subject; but Christabel and Jessie noticed that of his own life, his ways and amus.e.m.e.nts, his friends, his surroundings, he spoke hardly at all. This fact Christabel noticed with wonder, Jessie with suspicion. If a man led a good wholesome life, he would surely be more frank and open--he would surely have more to say about himself and his a.s.sociates.

They dawdled, and dawdled, till past four o'clock, and to none of the three did the hours so spent seem long; but they found that it would make them too late in their return to Mount Royal were they to wait for sundown before they turned their faces homewards; so while the day was still bright, Mr. Hamleigh consented to be guided by steep and perilous paths to the base of the rocky citadel, and then they strolled back to the Wharncliffe Arms, where Felix had been enjoying himself in the stable, and was now desperately anxious to get home, rattling up and down hill at an alarming rate, and not hinting at anybody's alighting to walk.

This was only one of many days spent in the same fashion. They walked next day to Trebarwith sands, up and down hills, which Mr. Hamleigh declared were steeper than anything he had ever seen in Switzerland; but he survived the walk, and his spirits seemed to rise with the exertion.

This time Major Bree went with them--a capital companion for a country ramble, being just enough of a botanist, archaeologist, and geologist, to leaven the lump of other people's ignorance, without being obnoxiously scientific. Mr. Hamleigh was delighted with that n.o.ble stretch of level sand, with the long rollers of the Atlantic tumbling in across the low rocks, and the bold headlands behind--spot beloved of marine painters--spot where the gulls and the s.h.a.gs hold their revels, and where man feels himself but a poor creature face to face with the lonely grandeur of sea, and cliff, and sky.

So rarely is that long stretch of yellow sand vulgarized by the feet of earth's mult.i.tudes, that one half expects to see a procession of frolicsome sea-nymphs come dancing out of yonder cave, and wind in circling measures towards the crested wavelets, gliding in so softly under the calm clear day.

These were halcyon days--an Indian summer--balmy western zephyrs--sunny noontides--splendid sunsets--altogether the most beautiful autumn season that Angus Hamleigh had known, or at least, so it seemed to him--nay, even more than this, surely the most beautiful season of his life.

As the days went on, and day after day was spent in Christabel's company--almost as it were alone with her, for Miss Bridgeman and Major Bree were but as figures in the background--Angus felt as if he were at the beginning of a new life--a life filled with fresh interests, thoughts, hopes, desires, unknown and undreamed of in the former stages of his being. Never before had he lived a life so uneventful--never before had he been so happy. It surprised him to discover how simple are the elements of real content--how deep the charm of a placid existence among thoroughly loveable people! Christabel Courtenay was not the loveliest woman he had ever known, nor the most elegant, nor the most accomplished, nor the most fascinating; but she was entirely different from all other women with whom his lot had been cast. Her innocence, her unsophisticated enjoyment of all earth's purest joys, her transparent purity, her perfect trustfulness--these were to him as a revelation of a new order of beings. If he had been told of such a woman he would have shrugged his shoulders misbelievingly, or would have declared that she must be an idiot. But Christabel was quite as clever as those brilliant creatures whose easy manners had enchanted him in days gone by. She was better educated than many a woman he knew who pa.s.sed for a wit of the first order. She had read more, thought more, was more sympathetic, more companionable, and she was delightfully free from self-consciousness or vanity.

He found himself talking to Christabel as he had never talked to any one else since those early days at the University, the bright dawn of manhood, when he confided freely in that second self, the chosen friend of the hour, and believed that all men lived and moved according to his own boyish standard of honour. He talked to her, not of the actualities of his life, but of his thoughts and feelings--his dreamy speculations upon the gravest problems which hedge round the secret of man's final destiny. He talked freely of his doubts and difficulties, and the half-belief which came so near unbelief--the wide love of all creation--the vague yet pa.s.sionate yearning for immortality which fell so far short of the Gospel's sublime certainty. He revealed to her all the complexities of a many-sided mind, and she never failed him in sympathy and understanding. This was in their graver moods, when by some accidental turn of the conversation they fell into the discussion of those solemn questions which are always at the bottom of every man and woman's thoughts, like the unknown depths of a dark water-pool. For the most part their talk was bright and light as those sunny autumn days, varied as the glorious and ever-changing hues of sky and sea at sunset.

Jessie was a delightful companion. She was so thoroughly easy herself that it was impossible to feel ill at ease with her. She played her part of confidante so pleasantly, seeming to think it the most natural thing in the world that those two should be absorbed in each other, and should occasionally lapse into complete forgetfulness of her existence. Major Bree when he joined in their rambles was obviously devoted to Jessie Bridgeman. It was her neatly gloved little hand which he was eager to clasp at the crossing of a stile, and where the steepness of the hill-side path gave him an excuse for a.s.sisting her. It was her stout little boot which he guided so tenderly, where the ways were ruggedest.

Never had a plain woman a more respectful admirer--never was beauty in her peerless zenith more devoutly worshipped!

And so the autumn days sped by, pleasantly for all: with deepest joy--joy ever waxing, never waning--for those two who had found the secret of perfect sympathy in thought and feeling. It was not for Angus Hamleigh the first pa.s.sion of a spotless manhood; and yet the glamour and the delight were as new as if he had never loved before. He had never so purely, so reverently loved. The pa.s.sion was of a new quality.

It seemed to him as if he had ascended into a higher sphere in the universe, and had given his heart to a creature of a loftier race.

"Perhaps it is the good old lineage which makes the difference," he said to himself once, while his feelings were still sufficiently novel and so far under his control as to be subject to a.n.a.lysis. "The women I have cared for in days gone by have hardly got over their early affinity with the gutter; or when I have admired a woman of good family she has been steeped to the lips in worldliness and vanity."

Mr. Hamleigh, who had told himself that he was going to be intensely bored at Mount Royal, had been Mrs. Tregonell's guest for three weeks, and it seemed to him as if the time were brief and beautiful as one of those rare dreams of impossible bliss which haunt our waking memories, and make actual life dull and joyless by contrast with the glory of shadowland. No word had yet been spoken--nay, at the very thought of those words which most lovers in his position would have been eager to speak, his soul sickened and his cheek paled; for there would be no joyfulness in the revelation of his love--indeed, he doubted whether he had the right to reveal it--whether duty and honour did not alike constrain him to keep his converse within the strict limits of friendship, to bid Christabel good-bye, and turn his back upon Mount Royal, without having said one word more than a friend might speak.

Happy as Christabel had been with him--tenderly as she loved him--she was far too innocent to have considered herself ill-treated in such a case. She would have blamed herself alone for the weakness of mind which had been unable to resist the fascination of his society--she would have blushed and wept in secret for her folly in having loved unwooed.

"Has the eventful question been asked?" Jessie inquired one night, as Christabel lingered, after her wont, by the fire in Miss Bridgeman's bedroom. "You two were so intensely earnest to-day as you walked ahead of the Major and me, that I said to myself, 'now is the time--the crisis has arrived!'"

"There was no crisis," answered Christabel, crimsoning; "he has never said one word to me that can imply that I am any more to him than the most indifferent acquaintance."

"What need of words when every look and tone cries 'I love you?' Why he idolizes you, and he lets all the world see it. I hope it may be well for you--both!"

Christabel was on her knees by the fire. She laid her cheek against Jessie's waistband, and drew Jessie's arm round her neck, holding her hand lovingly.

"Do you really think he--cares for me?" she faltered, with her face hidden.

"Do I really think that I have two eyes, and something which is at least an apology for a nose!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Jessie, contemptuously. "Why, it has been patent to everybody for the last fortnight that you two are over head and ears in love with each other. There never was a more obvious case of mutual infatuation."

"Oh, Jessie! surely I have not betrayed myself. I know that I have been very weak--but I have tried so hard to hide----"

"And have been about as successful as the ostrich. While those drooping lashes have been lowered to hide the love-light in your eyes, your whole countenance has been an illuminated calendar of your folly. Poor Belle!

to think that she has not betrayed herself, while all Boscastle is on tiptoe to know when the wedding is to take place. Why the parson could not see you two sitting in the same pew without knowing that he would be reading your banns before he was many Sundays older."

"And you--really--like him?" faltered Christabel, more shyly than before.

"Yes," answered Jessie, with a provoking lack of enthusiasm. "I really like him. I can't help feeling sorry for Mrs. Tregonell, for I know she wanted you to marry Leonard."

Christabel gave a little sigh, and a faint shiver.

"Poor dear Leonard! I wonder what traveller's hardships he is enduring while we are so snug and happy at Mount Royal?" she said, kindly. "He has an excellent heart----"

"Troublesome people always have, I believe," interjected Jessie. "It is their redeeming feature, the existence of which no one can absolutely disprove."

"And I am very much attached to him--as a cousin--or as an adopted brother; but as to our ever being married--that is quite out of the question. There never were two people less suited to each other."

"Those are the people who usually come together," said Jessie; "the Divorce Court could hardly be kept going if it were not so."

"Jessie, if you are going to be cynical I shall say good-night. I hope there is no foundation for what you said just now. I hope that Auntie has no foolish idea about Leonard and me."

"She has--or had--one prevailing idea, and I fear it will go hard with her when she has to relinquish it," answered Jessie, seriously. "I know that it has been her dearest hope to see you and Leonard married, and I should be a wretch if I were not sorry for her disappointment, when she has been so good to me. But she never ought to have invited Mr. Hamleigh to Mount Royal. That is one of those mistakes the consequences of which last for a lifetime."

"I hope he likes me--just a little," pursued Christabel, with dreamy eyes fixed on the low wood fire; "but sometimes I fancy there must be some mistake--that he does not really care a straw for me. More than once, when he has began to say something that sounded----"

"Business-like," suggested Jessie, as the girl hesitated.

"He has drawn back--seeming almost anxious to recall his words. Once he told me--quite seriously--that he had made up his mind never to marry.

Now, that doesn't sound as if he meant to marry _me_."

"That is not an uncommon way of breaking ground," answered Jessie, with her matter-of-fact air. "A man tells a girl that he is going to die a bachelor--which makes it seem quite a favour on his part when he proposes. All women sigh for the unattainable; and a man who distinctly states that he is not in the market, is likely to make a better bargain when he surrenders."

"I should be sorry to think Mr. Hamleigh capable of such petty ideas,"

said Christabel. "He told me once that he was like Achilles. Why should he be like Achilles? He is not a soldier."

"Perhaps, it is because he has a Grecian nose," suggested Miss Bridgeman.

"How can you imagine him so vain and foolish," cried Christabel, deeply offended. "I begin to think you detest him?"