Mount Royal Volume I Part 7

Mr. Hamleigh had scarcely concealed his delight at Miss Bridgeman's departure, yet, now that she was gone, he looked pa.s.sing sad. Never a word did he speak, as they two stood idly at the gate, listening to the dull thud of the earth which the gravedigger threw out of his shovel on to the gra.s.s, and the shrill sweet song of a robin, piping to himself on a ragged thornbush near at hand, as if in an ecstasy of gladness about things in general. One sound so fraught with melancholy, the other so full of joy! The contrast struck sharply on Christabel's nerves, to-day at their utmost tension, and brought sudden tears in her eyes.

They stood for perhaps five minutes in this dreamy silence, the robin piping all the while; and then Mr. Hamleigh roused himself, seemingly with an effort.

"Are you going to show me the seals at Pentargon?" he asked, smilingly.

"I don't know about seals--there is a local idea that seals are to be seen playing about in the bay; but one is not often so lucky as to find them there. People have been very cruel in killing them, and I'm afraid there are very few seals left on our coast now."

"At any rate, you can show me Pentargon, if you are not tired."

"Tired!" cried Christabel, laughing at such a ridiculous idea, being a damsel to whom ten miles were less than three to a town-bred young lady.

Embarra.s.sed though she felt by being left alone with Mr. Hamleigh, she could not even pretend that the proposed walk was too much for her.

"I shall be very glad to take you to Pentargon," she said, "it is hardly a mile out of our way; but I fear you'll be disappointed; there is really nothing particular to see."

"I shall not be disappointed--I shall be deeply grateful."

They walked along the narrow hill-side paths, where it was almost impossible for two to walk abreast; yet Angus contrived somehow to be at Christabel's side, guiding and guarding her by ways which were so much more familiar to her than to him, that there was a touch of humour in this pretence of protection. But Christabel did not see things in their humorous aspect to-day. Her little hand trembled as it touched Angus Hamleigh's, when he led her across a craggy bit of path, or over a tiny water-pool. At the stiles in the valley on the other side of the bridge, which are civilized stiles, and by no means difficult, Christabel was too quick and light of foot to give any opportunity for that a.s.sistance which her companion was so eager to afford. And now they were in the depths of the valley, and had to mount another hill, on the road to Bude, till they came to a field-gate, above which appeared a sign-board, and the mystic words, "To Pentargon."

"What is Pentargon, that they put up its name in such big letters?"

asked Mr. Hamleigh, staring at the board. "Is it a borough town--or a cattle market--or a cathedral city--or what? They seem tremendously proud of it."

"It is nothing--or only a shallow bay, with a waterfall and a wonderful cave, which I am always longing to explore. I believe it is nearly as beautiful as the cavern in Sh.e.l.ley's 'Alastor.' But you will see what Pentargon is like in less than five minutes."

They crossed a ploughed field, and then, by a big five-barred gate, entered the magic region which was said to be the paradise of seals. A narrow walk cut in a steep and rocky bank, where the gorse and heather grew luxuriantly above slate and spar, described a shallow semicircle round one of the loveliest bays in the world--a spot so exquisitely tranquil in this calm autumn weather, so guarded and fenced in by the ma.s.sive headlands that jutted out towards the main--a peaceful haven, seemingly so remote from that outer world to which belonged yonder white-winged ship on the verge of the blue--that Angus Hamleigh exclaimed involuntarily,--

"Here is peace! Surely this must be a bay in that Lotus land which Tennyson has painted for us!"

Hitherto their conversation had been desultory--mere fragmentary talk about the landscape and the loveliness of the autumn day, with its clear bright sky and soft west wind. They had been always in motion, and there had been a certain adventurousness in the way that seemed to give occupation to their thoughts. But now Mr. Hamleigh came to a dead stop, and stood looking at the rugged amphitheatre, and the low weedy rocks washed smooth by the sea.

"Would you mind sitting down for a few minutes?" he asked; "this Pentargon of yours is a lovely spot, and I don't want to leave it instantly. I have a very slow appreciation of Nature. It takes me a long time to grasp her beauties."

Christabel seated herself on the bank which he had selected for her accommodation, and Mr. Hamleigh placed himself a little lower, almost at her feet, her face turned seaward, his half towards her, as if that lily face, with its wild rose bloom, were even lovelier than the sunlit ocean in all its variety of colour.

"It is a delicious spot," said Angus, "I wonder whether Tristan and Iseult ever came here! I can fancy the queen stealing away from the Court and Court foolery, and walking across the sunlit hills with her lover. It would be rather a long walk, and there might be a difficulty about getting back in time for supper; but one can picture them wandering by flowery fields, or by the cliffs above that everlasting sea, and coming here to rest and talk of their sorrow and their love.

Can you not fancy her as Matthew Arnold paints her?--

"Let her have her youth again-- Let her be as she was then!

Let her have her proud dark eyes, And her petulant, quick replies: Let her sweep her dazzling hand, With its gesture of command, And shake back her raven hair With the old imperious air.

I have an idea that the Hibernian Iseult must have been a tartar, though Matthew Arnold glosses over her peccadilloes so pleasantly. I wonder whether she had a strong brogue, and a sneaking fondness for usquebaugh."

"Please, don't make a joke of her," pleaded Christabel; "she is very real to me. I see her as a lovely lady--tall and royal-looking, dressed in long robes of flowered silk, fringed with gold. And Tristan----"

"What of Tristan? Is his image as clear in your mind? How do you depict the doomed knight, born to suffer and to sin, destined to sorrow from the time of his forest-birth--motherless, beset with enemies, consumed by hopeless pa.s.sion. I hope you feel sorry for Tristan?"

"Who could help being sorry for him?"

"Albeit he was a sinner? I a.s.sure you, in the old romance which you have not read--which you would hardly care to read--neither Tristan nor Iseult are spotless."

"I have never thought of their wrong-doing. Their fate was so sad, and they loved each other so truly."

"And, again, you can believe, perhaps--you who are so innocent and confiding--that a man who has sinned may forsake the old evil ways and lead a good life, until every stain of that bygone sin is purified. You can believe, as the Greeks believed, in atonement and purification."

"I believe, as I hope all Christians do, that repentance can wash away sin."

"Even the accusing memory of wrong-doing, and make a man's soul white and fair again? That is a beautiful creed."

"I think the Gospel gives us warrant for believing as much--not as some of the Dissenters teach, that one effort of faith, an hour of prayer and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, can transform a murderer into a saint; but that earnest, sustained regret for wrong-doing, and a steady determination to live a better life----"

"Yes--that is real repentance," exclaimed Angus, interrupting her.

"Common sense, even without Gospel light, tells one that it must be good. Christabel--may I call you Christabel?--just for this one isolated half-hour of life--here in Pentargon Bay? You shall be Miss Courtenay directly we leave this spot."

"Call me what you please. I don't think it matters very much," faltered Christabel, blushing deeply.

"But it makes all the difference to me. Christabel, I can't tell you how sweet it is to me just to p.r.o.nounce your name. If--if--I could call you by that name always, or by a name still nearer and dearer. But you must judge. Give me half-an-hour--half-an-hour of heartfelt earnest truth on my side, and pitying patience on yours. Christabel, my past life has not been what a stainless Christian would call a good life. I have not been so bad as Tristan. I have violated no sacred charge--betrayed no kinsman. I suppose I have been hardly worse than the common run of young men, who have the means of leading an utterly useless life. I have lived selfishly, unthinkingly--caring for my own pleasure--with little thought of anything that was to come afterwards, either on earth or in heaven. But all that is past and done with. My wild oats are sown; I have had enough of youth and folly. When I came to Cornwall the other day I thought that I was on the threshold of middle age, and that middle age could give me nothing but a few years of pain and weariness.

But--behold a miracle!--you have given me back my youth--youth and hope, and a desire for length of days, and a pa.s.sionate yearning to lead a new, bright, stainless life. You have done all this, Christabel. I love you as I never thought it possible to love! I believe in you as I never before believed in woman--and yet--and yet----"

He paused, with a long heartbroken sigh, clasped the girl's hand, which had been straying idly among the faded heather, and pressed it to his lips.

"And yet I dare not ask you to be my wife. Shall I tell you why?"

"Yes, tell me," she faltered, her cheeks deadly pale, her lowered eyelids heavy with tears.

"I told you I was like Achilles, doomed to an early death. You remember with what pathetic tenderness Thetis speaks of her son,

'Few years are thine, and not a lengthened term; At once to early death and sorrows doomed Beyond the lot of man!'

The Fates have spoken about me quite as plainly as ever the sea-nymph foretold the doom of her son. He was given the choice of length of days or glory, and he deemed fame better than long life. But my life has been as inglorious as it must be brief. Three months ago, one of the wisest of physicians p.r.o.nounced my doom. The hereditary malady which for the last fifty years has been the curse of my family shows itself by the clearest indications in my case. I could have told the doctor this just as well as he told me; but it is best to have official information. I may die before I am a year older; I may crawl on for the next ten years--a fragile hot-house plant, sent to winter under southern skies."

"And you may recover, and be strong and well again!" cried Christabel, in a voice choked with sobs. She made no pretence of hiding her pity or her love. "Who can tell? G.o.d is so good. What prayer will He not grant us if we only believe in Him? Faith will remove mountains."

"I have never seen it done," said Angus. "I'm afraid that no effort of faith in this degenerate age will give a man a new lung. No, Christabel, there is no chance of long life for me. If hope--if love could give length of days, my new hopes, born of you--my new love felt for you, might work that miracle. But I am the child of my century: I only believe in the possible. And knowing that my years are so few, and that during that poor remnant of life I may be a chronic invalid, how can I--how dare I be so selfish as to ask any girl--young, fresh, and bright, with all the joys of life untasted--to be the companion of my decline? The better she loved me, the sadder would be her life--the keener would be the anguish of watching my decay!"

"But it would be a life spent with you, her days would be devoted to you; if she really loved you, she would not hesitate," pursued Christabel, her hands clasped pa.s.sionately, tears streaming down her pale cheeks, for this moment to her was the supreme crisis of fate. "She would be unhappy, but there would be sweetness even in her sorrow if she could believe that she was a comfort to you!"

"Christabel, don't tempt me! Ah, my darling! you don't know how selfish a man's love is, how sweet it would be to me to s.n.a.t.c.h such bliss, even on the brink of the dark gulf--on the threshold of the eternal night, the eternal silence! Consider what you would take upon yourself--you who perhaps have never known what sickness means--have never seen the horrors of mortal disease."

"Yes, I have sat with some of our poor people when they were dying. I have seen how painful disease is, how cruel Nature seems, and how hard it is for a poor creature racked with pain to believe in G.o.d's beneficence; but even then there has been comfort in being able to help them and cheer them a little. I have thought more of that than of the actual misery of the scene."

"But to give all your young life--all your days and thoughts and hopes to a doomed man! Think of that, Christabel! When you are happy with him to see Death grinning behind his shoulder--to watch that spectacle which is of all Nature's miseries the most awful--the slow decay of human life--a man dying by inches--not death, but dissolution! If my malady were heart-disease, and you knew that at some moment--undreamt of--unlooked for--death would come, swift as an arrow from Hecate's bow, brief, with no loathsome or revolting detail--then I might say, 'Let us spend my remnant of life together.' But consumption, you cannot tell what a painful ending that is! Poets and novelists have described it as a kind of euthanasia; but the poetical mind is rarely strong in scientific knowledge. I want you to understand all the horror of a life spent with a chronic sufferer, about whom the cleverest physician in London has made up his mind."

"Answer me one question," said Christabel, drying her tears, and trying to steady her voice. "Would your life be any happier if we were together--till the end?"

"Happier? It would be a life spent in Paradise. Pain and sickness could hardly touch me with their sting."

"Then let me be your wife."

"Christabel, are you in earnest? have you considered?"