Mount Royal Volume Iii Part 17

She wore a tight-fitting jacket, dark olive velvet, and a cloth skirt, both heavily trimmed with sable, a beaver hat, with an ostrich feather, which made a sweeping curve round the brim, and caressed the coil of golden-brown hair at the back of the small head. The costume, which was faintly suggestive of a hunting party at Fontainebleau or St. Germains, became the tall finely moulded figure to admiration. n.o.body could doubt for an instant that Mrs. Tregonell was dressed for effect, and was determined to get full value out of her beauty. The neat tailor gown and simple little cloth toque of the past, had given way to a costly and elaborate costume, in which every detail marked the careful study of the coquette who lives only to be admired. Dopsy and Mopsy felt a natural pang of envy as they scrutinized the quality of the cloth and calculated the cost of the fur; but they consoled themselves with the conviction that there was a bewitching Kate Greenaway quaintness in their own flimsy garments which made up for the poverty of the stuff, and the doubtful finish of home dressmaking. A bunch of crimson poppies on Mopsy's shoulder, a cornflower in Dopsy's hat, made vivid gleams of colour upon their brown merino frocks, while the freshness of their saffron-tinted Toby frills was undeniable. Sleeves short and tight, and ten-b.u.t.toned Swedish gloves, made up a toilet which Dopsy and Mopsy had believed to be aesthetically perfect, until they compared it with Christabel's rich and picturesque attire. The St. Aubyn girls were not less conscious of the superiority of Mrs. Tregonell's appearance, but they were resigned to the inevitable. How could a meagre quarterly allowance, doled out by an unwilling father, stand against a wife's unlimited power of running up bills. And here was a woman who had a fortune of her own to squander as she pleased, without anybody's leave or license. Secure in the severity of slate-coloured serges made by a West-End tailor, with hats to match, and the best boots and gloves that money could buy, the St. Aubyn girls affected to despise Christabel's olive velvet and sable tails.

"It's the worst possible form to dress like that for a country ramble,"

murmured Emily to Clara.

"Of course. But the country's about the only place where she could venture to wear such clothes," replied Clara: "she'd be laughed at in London."

"Well, I don't know: there were some rather loud get-ups in the Park last season," said Emily. "It's really absurd the way married women out-dress girls."

Once clear of the avenue Mrs. Tregonell and her guests arranged themselves upon the Darwinian principle of natural selection.

That brilliant bird the Baron, whose velvet coat and knickerbockers were the astonishment of Boscastle, instinctively drew near to Christabel, whose velvet and sable, plumed hat, and point-lace necktie pointed her out as his proper mate--Little Monty, Bohemian and _decousu_, attached himself as naturally to one of the Vandeleur birds, shunning the iron-grey respectability of the St. Aubyn breed.

Mrs. St. Aubyn, who had made up her mind at the last to join the party, fastened herself upon St. Bernard Faddie, in the fond hope that he would be able to talk of parish matters, and advise her about her duties as Lady Bountiful; while he, on his part, only cared for rubric and ritual, and looked upon parish visitation as an inferior branch of duty, to be performed by newly-fledged curates. Mr. FitzJesse took up with Dopsy, who amused him as a marked specimen of nineteenth-century girlhood--a rare and wonderful bird of its kind, like a heavily wattled barb pigeonn, not beautiful, but infinitely curious. The two St. Aubyn girls, in a paucity of the male s.e.x, had to put up with the escort of Captain Vandeleur, to whom they were extremely civil, although they studiously ignored his sisters. And so, by lane and field-path, by hill and vale, they went up to the broad, open heights above the sea--a sea that was very fair to look upon on this sunshiny autumn day, luminous with those translucent hues of amethyst and emerald, sapphire and garnet, which make the ever changeful glory of that Cornish strand.

Miss Bridgeman walked half the way with the St. Aubyn girls and Captain Vandeleur. The St. Aubyns had always been civil to her, not without a certain tone of patronage which would have wounded a more self-conscious person, but which Jessie endured with perfect good temper.

"What does it matter if they have the air of bending down from a higher social level every time they talk to me," she said to Major Bree, lightly, when he made some rude remark about these young ladies. "If it pleases them to fancy themselves on a pinnacle, the fancy is a harmless one, and can't hurt me. I shouldn't care to occupy that kind of imaginary height myself. There must be a disagreeable sense of chilliness and remoteness; and then there is always the fear of a sudden drop; like that fall through infinite s.p.a.ce which startles one sometimes on the edge of sleep."

Armed with that calm philosophy which takes all small things lightly, Jessie was quite content that the Miss St. Aubyns should converse with her as if she were a creature of an inferior race--born with lesser hopes and narrower needs than theirs, and with no rights worth mention.

She was content that they should be sometimes familiar and sometimes distant--that they should talk to her freely when there was no one else with whom they could talk--and that they should ignore her presence when the room was full.

To-day, Emily St. Aubyn was complaisant even to friendliness. Her sister had completely appropriated Captain Vandeleur, so Emily gave herself up to feminine gossip. There were some subjects which she really wanted to discuss with Miss Bridgeman, and this seemed a golden opportunity.

"Are we really going to have tea at the farmhouse near St. Nectan's Kieve?" she asked.

"Didn't you hear Mrs. Tregonell say so?" inquired Jessie, dryly.

"I did; but I could not help wondering a little. Was it not at the Kieve that poor Mr. Hamleigh was killed?"

"Yes."

"Don't you think it just a little heartless of Mrs. Tregonell to choose that spot for a pleasure party?"

"The farmhouse is not the Kieve: they are at least a mile apart."

"That's a mere quibble, Miss Bridgeman: the a.s.sociation is just the same, and she ought to feel it."

"Mrs. Tregonell is my very dear friend," answered Jessie. "She and her aunt are the only friends I have made in this world. You can't suppose that I shall find fault with her conduct?"

"No, I suppose not. You would stand by her through thick and thin?"

"Through thick and thin."

"Even at the sacrifice of principle?"

"I should consider grat.i.tude and friendship the governing principles of my life where she is concerned."

"If she were to go ever so wrong, you would still stand by her?"

"Stand by her, and cleave to her--walk by her side till death, wherever the path might lead. I should not encourage her in wrong-doing. I should lift up my voice when there was need: but I should never forsake her."

"That is your idea of friendship?"

"Unquestionably. To my mind, friendship which implies anything less than that is meaningless. However, there is no need for heroics: Mrs.

Tregonell is not going to put me to the test."

"I hope not. She is very sweet. I should be deeply pained if she were to go wrong. But do you know that my mother does not at all like her manner with the Baron. My sister and I are much more liberal-minded, don't you know; and we can understand that all she says and does is mere frivolity--high spirits which must find some outlet. But what surprises me is that she should be so gay and light-hearted after the dreadful events of her life. If such things had happened to me, I should inevitably have gone over to Rome, and buried myself in the severest conventual order that I could find."

"Yes, there have been sad events in her life: but I think she chose the wiser course in doing her duty by the aunt who brought her up, than in self-immolation of that kind," answered Jessie, with her thin lips drawn to the firmest line they were capable of a.s.suming.

"But think what she must have suffered last year when that poor man was killed. I remember meeting him at dinner when they were first engaged.

Such an interesting face--the countenance of a poet. I could fancy Sh.e.l.ley or Keats exactly like him."

"We have their portraits," said Jessie, intolerant of gush. "There is no scope for fancy."

"But I think he really was a little like Keats--consumptive looking, too, which carried out the idea. How utterly dreadful it must have been for Mrs. Tregonell when he met his death, so suddenly, so awfully, while he was a guest under her roof. How did she bear it?"

"Very quietly. She had borne the pain of breaking her engagement for a principle, a mistaken one, as I think. His death could hardly have given her worse pain."

"But it was such an awful death."

"Awful in its suddenness, that is all--not more awful than the death of any one of our English soldiers who fell in Zululand the other day.

After all, the mode and manner of death is only a detail, and, so long as the physical pain is not severe, an insignificant detail. The one stupendous fact for the survivor remains always the same. We had a friend and he is gone--for ever, for all we know."

There was the faint sound of a sob in her voice as she finished speaking.

"Well, all I can say is that if I were Mrs. Tregonell, I could never have been happy again," persisted Miss St. Aubyn.

They came to Trevena soon after this, and went down the hill to the base of that lofty crag on which King Arthur's Castle stood. They found Mrs.

Fairfax and the pony-carriage in the Valley. The provisions had all been carried up the ascent. Everything was ready for luncheon.

A quarter of a hour later they were all seated on the long gra.s.s and the crumbling stones, on which Christabel and her lover had sat so often in that happy season of her life when love was a new thought, and faith in the beloved one as boundless as that far-reaching ocean, on which they gazed in dreamy content. Now, instead of low talk about Arthur and Guinevere, Tristan and Iseult, and all the legends of the dim poetic past, there were loud voices and laughter, execrable puns, much conversation of the order generally known as chaff, a great deal of mild personality of that kind which, in the age of Miss Burney and Miss Austin, was described as quizzing and roasting, and an all-pervading flavour of lunacy. The Baron de Cazalet tried to take advantage of the position, and to rise to poetry; but he was laughed down by the majority, especially by Mr. FitzJesse, who hadn't a good word for Arthur and his Court.

"Marc was a coward, and Tristan was a traitor and a knave," he said.

"While as for Iseult, the less said of her the better. The legends of Arthur's birth are cleverly contrived to rehabilitate his mother's character, but the lady's reputation still is open to doubt. Jack the Giant Killer and Tom Thumb are quite the most respectable heroes connected with this western world. You have no occasion to be proud of the a.s.sociations of the soil, Mrs. Tregonell."

"But I am proud of my country, and of its legends," answered Christabel.

"And you believe in Tristan and Iseult, and the constancy which was personified by a bramble, as in the famous ballad of Lord Lovel."

"The constancy which proved itself by marrying somebody else, and remaining true to the old love all the same," said Mrs. Fairfax Torrington, in her society voice, trained to detonate sharp sentences across the subdued buzz of a dinner-table.

"Poor Tristan," sighed Dopsy.

"Poor Iseult," murmured Mopsy.

They had never heard of either personage until this morning.