"Don't be afraid that I shall forget my duty to your aunt or your aunt's guest, dear," she said suddenly, as if awaking from a reverie. "You and I will do all in our power to make him happy, and to shake him out of lazy London ways, and then, when we have patched up his health, and the moorland air has blown a little colour into his hollow cheeks, we will send him back to his clubs and his theatres, and forget all about him. And now, good-night, my Christabel," she said, looking at her watch; "see! it is close upon midnight—dreadful dissipation for Mount Royal, where half-past ten is the usual hour."
Christabel kissed her and departed, Randie following to the door of her chamber—such a pretty room, with old panelled walls painted pink and grey, old furniture, old china, snowy draperies, and books—a girl's daintily bound books, selected and purchased by herself—in every available corner; a neat cottage piano in a recess, a low easy-chair by the fire, with a five-o'clock tea-table in front of it; desks, portfolios, work-baskets—all the frivolities of a girl's life; but everything arranged with a womanly neatness which indicated industrious habits and a well-ordered mind. No scattered sheets of music—no fancy-work pitch-and-tossed about the room—no slovenliness claiming to be excused as artistic disorder.
Christabel said her prayers, and read her accustomed portion of Scripture, but not without some faint wrestlings with Satan, who on this occasion took the shape of Angus Hamleigh. Her mind was overcharged with wonder at this new phenomenon in daily life, a man so entirely different from any of the men she had ever met hitherto—so accomplished, so highly cultured; yet taking his accomplishments and culture as a thing of course, as if all men were so.
She thought of him as she lay awake for the first hour of the still night, watching the fire fade and die, and listening to the long roll of the waves, hardly audible at Mount Royal amidst all the commonplace noises of day, but heard in the solemn silence of night. She let her fancies shape a vision of her aunt's vanished youth—that one brief bright dream of happiness, so miserably broken!—and wondered and wondered how it was possible for any one to outlive such a grief. Still more incredible did it seem that any one who had so loved and so lost could ever listen to another lover; and yet the thing had been done, and Mrs. Tregonell's married life had been called happy. She always spoke of the Squire as the best of men—was never weary of praising him—loved to look up at his portrait on the wall—preserved every unpicturesque memorial of his unpicturesque life—heavy gold and silver snuff-boxes, clumsy hunting crops, spurs, guns, fishing-rods. The relics of his murderous pursuits would have filled an arsenal. And how fondly she loved the son who resembled that departed father—save in lacking some of his best qualities! How she doated on Leonard, the most commonplace and unattractive of young men! The thought of her cousin set Christabel on a new train of speculation. If Leonard had been at home when Mr. Hamleigh came to Mount Royal, how would they two have suited each other? Like fire and water, like oil and vinegar, like the wolf and the lamb, like any two creatures most antagonistic by nature. It was a happy accident that Leonard was away. She was still thinking when she fell asleep, with that uneasy sense of pain and trouble in the future which was always suggested to her by Leonard's image—a dim unshapen difficulty waiting for her somewhere along the untrodden road of her life—a lion in the path.
There was no sense of fear or trouble of any kind in the mind of anybody next morning after breakfast, when Christabel, Miss Bridgeman, and Mr. Hamleigh started, in the young lady's own particular pony carriage, for an exploring day, attended by Randie, who was intensely excited, and furnished with a picnic basket which made them independent of the inn at Trevena, and afforded the opportunity of taking one's luncheon under difficulties upon a windy height, rather than with the commonplace comforts of an hotel parlour, guarded against wind and weather. They were going to do an immense deal upon this first day. Christabel, in her eagerness, wanted to exhibit all her lions at once.
"Of course, you must see Tintagel," she said; "everybody who comes to this part of the world is in a tremendous hurry to see King Arthur's castle. I have known people set out in the middle of the night."
"And have you ever known any one of them who was not just a little disappointed with that stupendous monument of traditional royalty?" asked Miss Bridgeman, with her most prosaic air. "They expect so much—halls, and towers, and keep, and chapel—and find only ruined walls, and the faint indication of a grave-yard. King Arthur is a name to conjure with, and Tintagel is like Mont Blanc or the Pyramids. It can never be so grand as the vision its very name has evoked."
"I blush to say that I have thought very little about Tintagel hitherto," said Mr. Hamleigh; "it has not been an integral part of my existence; so my expectations are more reasonable than those of the enthusiastic tourist. I promise to be delighted with your ruins."
"Oh, but you will pretend," said Christabel, "and that will be hateful! I would rather have to deal with one of those provoking people who look about them blankly, and exclaim, 'Is this all?' and who stand in the very centre of Arthur's Hall, and ask, 'And, pray, where is Tintagel?—when are we to see the castle?' No! give me the man who can take in the grandeur of that wild height at a glance, and whose fancy can build up those ruined walls, re-create those vanished towers, fill the halls with knights in shining armour, and lovely ladies—see Guinevere herself upon her throne—clothed in white samite—mystic, wonderful!"
"And with Lancelot in the background," said Mr. Hamleigh. "I think the less we say about Guinevere the better, and your snaky Vivien, and your senile Merlin, your prying Modred. What a disreputable set these Round Table people seem to have been altogether—they need have been dead thirteen hundred years for us to admire them!"
They were driving along the avenue by this time, the stout chestnut cob going gaily in the fresh morning air—Mr. Hamleigh sitting face to face with Christabel as she drove. What a fair face it was in the clear light of day! How pure and delicate every tone, from the whiteness of the lily to the bloom of the wild rose! How innocent the expression of the large liquid eyes, which seemed to smile at him as he talked! He had known so many pretty women—his memory was like a gallery of beautiful faces; but he could recall no face so completely innocent, so divinely young. "It is the youthfulness of an unsullied mind," he said to himself; "I have known plenty of girls as young in years, but not one perfectly pure from the taint of worldliness and vanity. The trail of the serpent was over them all!"
They drove down hill into Boscastle, and then straightway began to ascend still steeper hills upon the other side of the harbour.
"You ought to throw a viaduct across the valley," said Mr. Hamleigh—"something like Brunel's bridge at Saltash; but perhaps you have hardly traffic enough to make it pay."
They went winding up the new road to Trevena, avoiding the village street, and leaving the Church of the Silent Tower on its windy height on their right hand. The wide Atlantic lay far below them on the other side of those green fields which bordered the road; the air they breathed was keen with the soft breath of the sea. But autumn had hardly plucked a leaf from the low storm-beaten trees, or a flower from the tall hedgerows, where the red blossom of the Ragged Robin mixed with the pale gold of the hawk-weed, and the fainter yellow of the wild cistus. The ferns had hardly begun to wither, and Angus Hamleigh, whose last experiences had been among the stone walls of Aberdeenshire, wondered at the luxuriance of this western world, where the banks were built up and fortified with boulders of marble-veined spar.
They drove through the village of Trevalga, in which there is never an inn or public-house of any kind—not even a cottage licensed for the sale of beer. There was the wheelwright, carpenter, builder, Jack-of-all-trades, with his shed and his yard—the blacksmith, with his forge going merrily—village school—steam threshing-machine at work—church—chapel; but never a drop of beer—and yet the people at Trevalga are healthy, and industrious, and decently clad, and altogether comfortable looking.
"Some day we will take you to call at the Rectory," said Christabel, pointing skywards with her whip.
"Do you mean that the Rector has gone to Heaven?" asked Angus, looking up into the distant blue; "or is there any earthly habitation higher than the road on which we are driving."
"Didn't you see the end of the lane, just now?" asked Christabel, laughing; "it is rather steep—an uphill walk all the way; but the views are lovely."
"We will walk to the Rectory to-morrow," said Miss Bridgeman; "this lazy mode of transit must not be tolerated after to-day."
Even the drive to Trevena was not all idleness; for after they had passed the entrance to the path leading to the beautiful waterfall of St. Nectan's Kieve, hard by St. Piran's chapel and well—the former degraded to a barn, and the latter, once of holy repute, now chiefly useful as a cool repository for butter from the neighbouring dairy of Trethevy Farm—they came to a hill, which had to be walked down; to the lowest depth of the Rocky Valley, where a stone bridge spans the rapid brawling stream that leaps as a waterfall into the gorge at St. Nectan's Kieve, about a mile higher up the valley. And then they came to a corresponding hill, which had to be walked up—because in either case it was bad for the cob to have a weight behind him. Indeed, the cob was so accustomed to consideration in this matter, that he made a point of stopping politely for his people to alight at either end of anything exceptional in the way of a hill.
"I'm afraid you spoil your pony," said Mr. Hamleigh, throwing the reins over his arm, and resigning himself to a duty which made him feel very much like a sea-side flyman, earning his day's wages toilsomely, and saving his horse with a view to future fares.
"Better that than to spoil you," answered Miss Bridgeman, as she and Christabel walked briskly beside him. "But if you fasten the reins to the dashboard, you may trust Felix."
"Won't he run away?"
"Not he," answered Christabel. "He knows that he would never be so happy with anybody else as he is with us."
"But mightn't he take a fancy for a short run; just far enough to allow of his reducing that dainty little carriage to match-wood? A well-fed underworked pony so thoroughly enjoys that kind of thing."
"Felix has no such diabolical suggestions. He is a conscientious person, and knows his duty. Besides, he is not underworked. There is hardly a day that he does not carry us somewhere."
Mr. Hamleigh surrendered the reins, and Felix showed himself worthy of his mistress's confidence, following at her heels like a dog, with his honest brown eyes fixed on the slim tall figure, as if it had been his guiding star.
"I want you to admire the landscape," said Christabel, when they were on the crest of the last hill; "is not that a lovely valley?"
Mr. Hamleigh willingly admitted the fact. The beauty of a pastoral landscape, with just enough of rugged wildness for the picturesque, could go no further.
"Creswick has immortalized yonder valley by his famous picture of the mill," said Miss Bridgeman, "but the romantic old mill of the picture has lately been replaced by that large ungainly building, quite out of keeping with its surroundings."
"Have you ever been in Switzerland?" asked Angus of Christabel, when they had stood for some moments in silent contemplation of the landscape.
"Never."
"Nor in Italy?"
"No. I have never been out of England. Since I was five years old I have hardly spent a year of my life out of Cornwall."
"Happy Cornwall, which can show so fair a product of its soil! Well, Miss Courtenay, I know Italy and Switzerland by heart, and I like this Cornish landscape better than either. It is not so beautiful—it would not do as well for a painter or a poet; but it comes nearer an Englishman's heart. What can one have better than the hills and the sea? Switzerland can show you bigger hills, ghostly snow-shrouded pinnacles that mock the eye, following each other like a line of phantoms, losing themselves in the infinite; but Switzerland cannot show you that."
He pointed to the Atlantic: the long undulating line of the coast, rocky, rugged, yet verdant, with many a curve and promontory, many a dip and rise.
"It is the most everlasting kind of beauty, is it not?" asked Christabel, delighted at this little gush of warm feeling in one whose usual manner was so equable. "One could never tire of the sea. And I am always proud to remember that our sea is so big—stretching away and away to the New World. I should have liked it still better before the days of Columbus, when it led to the unknown!"
"Ah!" sighed Angus, "youth always yearns for the undiscovered. Middle age knows that there is nothing worth discovering!"
On the top of the hill they paused for a minute or so to contemplate the ancient Borough of Bossiney, which, until disfranchised in 1832, returned two members to Parliament, with a constituency of little more than a dozen, and which once had Sir Francis Drake for its representative. Here Mr. Hamleigh beheld that modest mound called the Castle Hill, on the top of which it was customary to read the writs before the elections.
An hour later they were eating their luncheon on that windy height where once stood the castle of the great king. To Christabel the whole story of Arthur and his knights was as real as if it had been a part of her own life. She had Tennyson's Arthur and Tennyson's Lancelot in her heart of hearts, and knew just enough of Sir Thomas Mallory's prose to give substance to the Laureate's poetic shadows. Angus amused himself a little at her expense, as they ate their chicken and salad on the grassy mounds which were supposed to be the graves of heroes who died before Athelstane drove the Cornish across the Tamar, and made his victorious progress through the country, even to the Scilly Isles, after defeating Howel, the last King of Cornwall.
"Do you really think that gentlemanly creature in the Laureate's epic—that most polished and perfect and most intensely modern English gentleman, self-contained, considerate of others, always the right man in the right place—is one whit like that half-naked sixth century savage—the real Arthur—whose Court costume was a coat of blue paint, and whose war-shriek was the yell of a Red Indian? What can be more futile than our setting up any one Arthur, and bowing the knee before him, in the face of the fact that Great Britain teems with monuments of Arthurs—Arthur's Seat in Scotland, Arthur's Castle in Wales, Arthur's Round Table here, there, and everywhere? Be sure that Arthur—Ardheer—the highest chief—was a generic name for the princes of those days, and that there were more Arthurs than ever there were Cæsars."
"I don't believe one word you say," exclaimed Christabel, indignantly, "there was only one Arthur, the son of Uther and Ygerne, who was born in the castle that stood on this very cliff, on the first night of the year, and carried away in secret by Merlin, and reared in secret by Sir Anton's wife—the brave good Arthur—the Christian king—who was killed at the battle of Camlan, near Slaughter Bridge, and was buried at Glastonbury."
"And embalmed by Tennyson. The Laureate invented Arthur—he took out a patent for the Round Table, and his invention is only a little less popular than that other product of the age, the sewing-machine. How many among modern tourists would care about Tintagel if Tennyson had not revived the old legend?"
The butler had put up a bottle of champagne for Mr. Hamleigh—the two ladies drinking nothing but sparkling water—and in this beverage he drank hail to the spirit of the legendary prince.
"I am ready to believe anything now you have me up here," he said, "for I have a shrewd idea that without your help I should never be able to get down again. I should live and die on the top of this rocky promontory—sweltering in the summer sun—buffeted by the winter winds—an unwilling Simeon Stylites."
"Do you know that the very finest sheep in Cornwall are said to be grown on that island," said Miss Bridgeman gravely, pointing to the grassy top of the isolated crag in the foreground, whereon once stood the donjon keep. "I don't know why it should be so, but it is a tradition."
"Among butchers?" said Angus. "I suppose even butchers have their traditions. And the poor sheep who are condemned to exile on that lonely rock—the St. Helena of their woolly race—do they know that they are achieving a posthumous perfection—that they are straining towards the ideal in butcher's meat? There is room for much thought in the question."
"The tide is out," said Christabel, looking seaward; "I think we ought to do Trebarwith sands to-day."
"Is Trebarwith another of your lions?" asked Angus, placidly.
"Yes."
"Then, please save him for to-morrow. Let me drink the cup of pleasure to the dregs where we are. This champagne has a magical taste, like the philter which Tristan and Iseult were so foolish as to drink while they sailed across from Ireland to this Cornish shore. Don't be alarmed, Miss Bridgeman, I am not going to empty the bottle. I am not an educated tourist—have read neither Black nor Murray, and I am very slow about taking in ideas. Even after all you have told me, I am not clear in my mind as to which is the castle and which the chapel, and which the burial-ground. Let us finish the afternoon dawdling about Tintagel. Let us see the sun set from this spot, where Arthur must so often have watched it, if the men of thirteen hundred years ago ever cared to watch the sun setting, which I doubt. They belong to the night-time of the world, when civilization was dead in Southern Europe, and was yet unborn in the West. Let us dawdle about till it is time to drive back to Mount Royal, and then I shall carry away an impression. I am very slow at taking impressions."
"I think you want us to believe that you are stupid," said Christabel, laughing at the earnestness with which he pleaded.
"Believe me, no. I should like you to think me ever so much better than I am. Please, let us dawdle."
They dawdled accordingly. Strolling about upon the short sea-beaten grass, 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 passing 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! Assuredly 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 loveIs already gone and past,And instead thereof is seenIts 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.'
"'All the spring time of their loveIs already gone and past,And instead thereof is seenIts 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 grass, 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."
"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 amusements, 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 associates.
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, archæologist, and geologist, to leaven the lump of other people's ignorance, without being obnoxiously scientific. Mr. Hamleigh was delighted with that noble 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 shags 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 multitudes, 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 passed 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 passionate 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 assisting 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 passion 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 passion 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 analysis. "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!" ejaculated 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 marryme."
"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?"
"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."
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 constitutional 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 grassy 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, naïvely; "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 ashore 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, Cœur 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 nobody 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 assist 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 incumbent 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 grasses and fallen leaves, and the unchanged ferns and mosses of the bygone summer.
Mr. Hamleigh had scarcely concealed his delight at Miss Bridgeman's departure, yet, now that she was gone, he looked passing 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 grass, 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. Embarrassed 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 assistance 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 Shelley'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 massive 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?—