Mount Royal Volume I Part 6

"No, Belle, I think him charming, only too charming, and I had rather the man you loved were made of sterner metal--not such a man as Leonard, whose loftiest desires are centred in stable and gun-room; but a man of an altogether different type from Mr. Hamleigh. He has too much of the artistic temperament, without being an artist--he is too versatile, too soft-hearted and impressionable. I am afraid for you, Christabel, I am afraid; and if it were not too late--if your heart were not wholly given to him----"

"It is," answered Christabel, tearfully, with her face hidden; "I hate myself for being so foolish, but I have let myself love him. I know that I may never be his wife--I do not even think that he has any idea of marrying me--but I shall never marry any other man. Oh, Jessie! for pity's sake don't betray me; never let my aunt, or any one else in this world, learn what I have told you. I can't help trusting you--you wind yourself into my heart somehow, and find out all that is hidden there!"

"Because I love you truly and honestly, my dear," answered Jessie, tenderly; "and now, good-night; I feel sure that Mr. Hamleigh will ask you to be his wife, and I only wish he were a better man."

CHAPTER IV.

"LOVE! THOU ART LEADING ME FROM WINTRY COLD."

After this came two or three dull and showery days, which afforded no opportunity for long excursions or ramblings of any kind. It was only during such rambles that Mr. Hamleigh and Miss Courtenay ever found themselves alone. Mrs. Tregonell's ideas of propriety were of the old-fashioned school, and when her niece was not under her own wing, she expected Miss Bridgeman to perform all the duties of a duenna--in no wise suspecting how very loosely her instructions upon this point were being carried out. At Mount Royal there was no possibility of confidential talk between Angus and Christabel. If they were in the drawing-room or library, Mrs. Tregonell was with them; if they played billiards, Miss Bridgeman was told off to mark for them; if they went for a const.i.tutional walk between the showers, or wasted half-an-hour in the stables looking at horses and dogs, Miss Bridgeman was bidden to accompany them; and though they had arrived at the point of minding her very little, and being sentimental and sympathetic under her very nose, still there are limits to the love-making that can be carried on before a third person, and a man would hardly care to propose in the presence of a witness. So for three days Christabel still remained in doubt as to Mr. Hamleigh's real feelings. That manner of making tender little speeches, and then, as it were, recalling them, was noticeable many times during those three days of domesticity. There was a hesitancy--an uncertainty in his attentions to Christabel which Jessie interpreted ill.

"There is some entanglement, I daresay," she told herself; "it is the evil of his past life which holds him in the toils. How do we know that he has not a wife hidden away somewhere? He ought to declare himself, or he ought to go away! If this kind of shillyshallying goes on much longer he will break Christabel's heart."

Miss Bridgeman was determined that, if it were in her power to hasten the crisis, the crisis should be hastened. The proprieties, as observed by Mrs. Tregonell, might keep matters in abeyance till Christmas. Mr.

Hamleigh gave no hint of his departure. He might stay at Mount Royal for months sentimentalizing with Christabel, and ride off at the last uncompromised.

The fourth day was the Feast of St. Luke. The weather had brightened considerably, but there was a high wind--a south-west wind, with occasional showers.

"Of course, you are going to church this morning," said Jessie to Christabel, as they rose from the breakfast-table.

"Church this morning?" repeated Christabel, vaguely.

For the first time since she had been old enough to understand the services of her Church, she had forgotten a Saint's day.

"It is St. Luke's Day."

"Yes, I remember. And the service is at Minster. We can walk across the hills."

"May I go with you?" asked Mr. Hamleigh.

"Do you like week-day services?" inquired Jessie, with rather a mischievous sparkle in her keen grey eyes.

"I adore them," answered Angus, who had not been inside a church on a week-day since he was best man at a friend's wedding.

"Then we will all go together," said Jessie. "May Brook bring the pony-carriage to fetch us home, Mrs. Tregonell? I have an idea that Mr.

Hamleigh won't be equal to the walk home."

"More than equal to twenty such walks!" answered Angus, gaily. "You under-estimate the severity of the training to which I have submitted myself during the last three weeks."

"The pony-carriage may as well meet you in any case," said Mrs.

Tregonell. And the order was straightway given.

They started at ten o'clock, giving themselves ample leisure for a walk of something over two miles--a walk by hill and valley, and rushing stream, and picturesque wooden bridge--through a deep gorge where the dark-red cattle were grouped against a background of gorse and heather--a walk of which one could never grow weary--so lonely, so beautiful, so perfect a blending of all that is wildest and all that is most gracious in Nature--an Alpine ramble on a small scale.

Minster Church lies in a hollow of the hill, so shut in by the wooded ridge which shelters its grey walls, that the stranger comes upon it as an architectural surprise.

"How is it you have never managed to finish your tower?" asked Mr.

Hamleigh, surveying the rustic fane with a critical air, as he descended to the churchyard by some rugged stone steps on the side of the gra.s.sy hill. "You cannot be a particularly devout people, or you would hardly have allowed your parish church to remain in this stunted and stinted condition."

"There was a tower once," said Christabel, navely; "the stones are still in the churchyard; but the monks used to burn a light in the tower window--a light that shone through a cleft in the hills, and was seen far out at sea."

"I believe that is geographically--or geometrically impossible," said Angus laughing; "but pray go on."

"The light was often mistaken for a beacon, and the ships came ash.o.r.e and were wrecked on the rocks."

"Naturally--and no doubt the monks improved the occasion. Why should a Cornish monk be better than his countrymen? 'One and all' is your motto."

"They were not Cornish monks," answered Christabel, "but a brotherhood of French monks from the monastery of St. Sergius, at Angers. They were established in a Priory here by William de Bottreaux, in the reign of Richard, Coeur de Lion; and, according to tradition, the townspeople resented their having built the church so far from the town. I feel sure the monks could have had no evil intention in burning a light; but one night a crew of wild sailors attacked the tower, and pulled the greater part of it down."

"And n.o.body in Boscastle has had public spirit enough to get it set up again. Where is your respect for those early Christian martyrs, St.

Sergius and St. Bacchus, to whose memory your temple is dedicated?"

"I don't suppose it was so much want of respect for the martyrs as want of money," suggested Miss Bridgeman. "We have too many chapel people in Boscastle for our churches to be enriched or beautified. But Minster is not a bad little church after all."

"It is the dearest, sweetest, most innocent little church I ever knelt in," answered Angus; "and if I could but a.s.sist at one particular service there----"

He checked himself with a sigh; but this unfinished speech amounted in Miss Bridgeman's mind to a declaration. She stole a look at Christabel, whose fair face crimsoned for a moment or so, only to grow more purely pale afterwards.

They went into the church, and joined devoutly in the brief Saint's Day service. The congregation was not numerous. Two or three village goodies--the school children--a tourist, who had come to see the church, and found himself, as it were, entangled in saintly meshes--the lady who played the harmonium, and the inc.u.mbent who read prayers. These were all, besides the party from Mount Royal. There are plenty of people in country parishes who will be as pious as you please on Sunday, deeming three services not too much for their devotion, but who can hardly be persuaded to turn out of the beaten track of week-day life to offer homage to the memory of Evangelist or Apostle.

The pony-carriage was waiting in the lane when Mr. Hamleigh and the two ladies came out of the porch. Christabel and the gentleman looked at the equipage doubtfully.

"You slandered me, Miss Bridgeman, by your suggestion that I should be done up after a mile or so across the hills," said Mr. Hamleigh; "I never felt fresher in my life. Have you a hankering for the ribbons?" to Christabel; "or will you send your pony back to his stable and walk home?"

"I would ever so much rather walk."

"And so would I."

"In that case, if you don't mind, I think I'll go home with Felix," said Jessie Bridgeman, most unexpectedly. "I am not feeling quite myself to-day, and the walk has tired me. You won't mind going home alone with Mr. Hamleigh, will you, Christabel? You might show him the seals in Pentargon Bay."

What could Christabel do? If there had been anything in the way of an earthquake handy, she would have felt deeply grateful for a sudden rift in the surface of the soil, which would have allowed her to slip into the bosom of the hills, among the gnomes and the pixies. That Cornish coast was undermined with caverns, yet there was not one for her to drop into. Again, Jessie Bridgeman spoke in such an easy off-hand manner, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for Christabel and Mr.

Hamleigh to be allowed a lonely ramble. To have refused, or even hesitated, would have seemed affectation, mock-modesty, self-consciousness. Yet Christabel almost involuntarily made a step towards the carriage.

"I think I had better drive," she said; "Aunt Diana will be wanting me."

"No, she won't," replied Jessie, resolutely. "And you shall not make a martyr of yourself for my sake. I know you love that walk over the hill, and Mr. Hamleigh is dying to see Pentargon Bay----"

"Positively expiring by inches; only it is one of those easy deaths that does not hurt one very much," said Angus, helping Miss Bridgeman into her seat, giving her the reins, and arranging the rug over her knees with absolute tenderness.

"Take care of Felix," pleaded Christabel; "and if you trot down the hills trot fast."

"I shall walk him every inch of the way. The responsibility would be too terrible otherwise."

But Felix had his own mind in the matter, and had no intention of walking when the way he went carried him towards his stable. So he trotted briskly up the lane, between tall, tangled blackberry hedges, leaving Christabel and Angus standing at the churchyard gate. The rest of the little congregation had dispersed; the church door had been locked; there was a gravedigger at work in the garden-like churchyard, amidst long gra.s.ses and fallen leaves, and the unchanged ferns and mosses of the bygone summer.