That benevolent advice of Mrs. St. Aubyn's was not without its influence upon Leonard, lightly as he seemed to put aside the insinuation of evil. The matron's speech helped to strengthen his own doubts and fears. Other eyes than his had noted Christabel's manner of receiving the Baron's attentions—other people had been impressed by the change in her. The thing was not an evil of his own imagining. She was making herself the talk of his friends and acquaintance. There was scandal—foul suspicion in the very atmosphere she breathed. That mutual understanding, that face to face arraignment, which he felt must come sooner or later, could not be staved off much longer. The wife who defied him thus openly, making light of him under his own roof, must be brought to book.
"To-morrow she and I must come to terms," Leonard said to himself.
No one had much leisure for thought that evening. The drawing-room was a scene of babble and laughter, music, flirtation, frivolity, everybody seeming to be blest with that happy-go-lucky temperament which can extract mirth from the merest trifles. Jessie Bridgeman and Mr. Tregonell were the only lookers-on—the only two people who in Jack Vandeleur's favourite phrase were not "in it." Every one else was full of the private theatricals. The idea had only been mooted after luncheon, and now it seemed as if life could hardly have been bearable yesterday without this thrilling prospect. Colonel Blathwayt, who had been out shooting all the afternoon, entered vigorously into the discussion. He was an experienced amateur actor, had helped to swell the funds of half the charitable institutions of London and the provinces; so he at once assumed the function of stage manager.
"De Cazalet can act," he said. "I have seen him at South Kensington; but I don't think he knows the ropes as well as I do. You must let me manage the whole business for you; write to the London people for stage and scenery, lamps, costumes, wigs. And of course you will want me for Alphonse."
Little Monty had been suggested for Alphonse. He was fair-haired and effeminate, and had just that small namby-pamby air which would suit Pauline's faint-hearted lover; but nobody dared to say anything about him when Colonel Blathwayt made this generous offer.
"Will you really play Alphonse?" exclaimed Christabel, looking up from a volume of engravings, illustrating the costumes of the Directory and Empire, over which the young ladies of the party, notably Dopsy and Mopsy, had been giggling and ejaculating. "We should not have ventured to offer you a secondary part."
"You'll find it won't be a secondary character as I shall play it," answered the Colonel, calmly. "Alphonse will go better than any part in the piece. And now as to the costumes. Do you want to be picturesque, or do you want to be correct?"
"Picturesque by all means," cried Mopsy. "Dear Mrs. Tregonell would look too lovely in powder and patches."
"Like Boucher's Pompadour," said the Colonel. "Do you know I think, now fancy balls are the rage, the Louis Quinze costume is rather played out. Every ponderous matron fancies herself in powder and brocade. The powder is hired for the evening, and the brocade is easily convertible into a dinner gown," added the Colonel, who spent the greater part of his life among women, and prided himself upon knowing their ways. "For my part, I should like to see Mrs. Tregonell dressed like Madame Tallien."
"Undressed like Madame Tallien, you mean," said Captain Vandeleur: and thereupon followed a lively discussion as to the costume of the close of the last century as compared with the costume of to-day, which ended in somebody's assertion that the last years of a century are apt to expire in social and political convulsions, and that there was every promise of revolution as a wind-up for the present age.
"My idea of the close of the nineteenth century is that it will be a period of dire poverty," said the proprietor of theSling; "an age of pauperism already heralded by the sale of noble old mansions, the breaking-up of great estates, the destruction of famous collections, galleries, libraries, the pious hoards of generations of connoisseurs and bookworms, scattered to the four winds by a stroke of the auctioneer's hammer. The landed interest and the commercial classes are going down the hill together. Suez has ruined our shipping interests; an unreciprocated free trade is ruining our commerce. Coffee, tea, cotton—our markets are narrowing for all. After a period of lavish expenditure, reckless extravagance, or at any rate the affectation of reckless extravagance, there will come an era of dearth. Those are wisest who will foresee and anticipate the change, simplify their habits, reduce their luxuries, put on a Quakerish sobriety in dress and entertainments, which, if carried out nicely, may pass for high art—train themselves to a kind of holy poverty outside the cloister—and thus break their fall. Depend upon it, there will be a fall, for every one of those men and women who at this present day are living up to their incomes."
"The voice is the voice of FitzJesse, but the words are the words of Cassandra," said Colonel Blathwayt. "For my part, I am like the Greeks, and never listen to such gloomy vaticinations. I daresay the delugewillcome—a deluge now and again is inevitable; but I think the dry land will last our time. And in the meanwhile was there ever a pleasanter world than that we live in—an entirely rebuilt and revivified London—clubs, theatres, restaurants, without number—gaiety and brightness everywhere? If our amusements are frivolous, at least they are hearty. If our friendships are transient, they are very pleasant while they last. We know people to-day, and cut them to-morrow; that is one of the first conditions of good society. The people who are cut understand the force of circumstances, and are just as ready to take up the running a year or two hence, when we can afford to know them."
"Blessed are the poor in spirit," quoted little Monty, in a meek voice.
"Our women are getting every day more like the women of the Directory, and the Consulate," continued the Colonel. "We have come to short petticoats and gold anklets. All in good time we shall come to bare feet. We have abolished sleeves, and we have brought bodices to areductio ad absurdum; but, although prudes and puritans may disapprove our present form, I must say that women were never so intelligent or so delightful. We have come back to the days of thesalonand thepetit souper. Our daughters are sirens and our wives are wits."
"Charming for Colonel Blathwayt, whose only experience is of other people's wives and daughters," said little Monty. "But I don't feel sure that the owners are quite so happy."
"When a man marries a pretty woman, he puts himself beyond the pale," said Mr. FitzJesse; "nobody sympathizes with him. I daresay there was not a member of the Grecian League who did not long to kick Menelaus."
"There should be stringent laws for the repression of nice girls' fathers," said little Monty. "Could there not be some kind of institution like the Irish Land Court, to force parents to cash up, and hand over daughter and dowry to any spirited young man who made a bid? Here am I, a conspicuous martyr to parental despotism. I might have married half a dozen heiresses, but for the intervention of stony-hearted fathers. I have gone for them at all ages, from pinafores to false fronts; but I have never been so lucky as to rise an orphan."
"Poor little Monty! But what a happy escape for the lady."
"Ah, I should have been very kind to her, even if her youth and beauty dated before the Reform Bill," said Mr. Montagu. "I should not have gone into society with her—one must draw the line somewhere. But I should have been forbearing."
"Dear Mrs. Tregonell," said Mopsy, gushingly, "have you made up your mind what to wear?"
Christabel had been turning the leaves of a folio abstractedly for the last ten minutes.
"To wear? Oh, for the play! Well, I suppose I must be as true to the period as I can, without imitating Madame Tallien. Baron, you draw beautifully. Will you make a sketch for my costume? I know a little woman in George Street, Hanover Square, who will carry out your idea charmingly."
"I should have thought that you could have imagined a short-waisted gown and a pair of long mittens without the help of an artist," said Jessie, with some acidity. She had been sitting close to the lamp, poring over a piece of point-lace work, a quiet and observant listener. It was a fixed idea among the servants at Mount Royal that Miss Bridgeman's eyes were constructed on the same principle as those of a horse, and that she could see behind her. "There is nothing so very elaborate in the dress of that period, is there?"
"I will try to realize the poetry of the costume."
"Oh, but the poetry means the bare feet and ankles, doesn't it?" asked Miss Bridgeman. "When you talk about poetry in costume, you generally mean something that sets a whole roomful of people staring and tittering."
"My Pauline will look a sylph!" said the Baron, with a languishing glance at his hostess.
And thus, in the pursuit of the infinitely little, the evening wore away. Songs and laughter, music of the lightest and most evanescent character, games which touched the confines of idiocy, and set Leonard wondering whether the evening amusements of Colney Hatch and Hanwell could possibly savour of wilder lunacy than these sports which his wife and her circle cultivated in the grave old reception-room, where a council of Cavaliers, with George Trevelyan of Nettlecombe, Royalist Colonel, at their head, had met and sworn fealty to Charles Stuart's cause, at hazard of fortune and life.
Leonard stood with his back to the wide old fireplace, watching these revellers, and speculating, in a troubled spirit, as to how much of this juvenile friskiness was real; contemplating, with a cynical spirit, that nice sense of class distinction which enabled the two St. Aubyn girls to keep Mopsy and Dopsy at an impassable distance, even while engaged with them in these familiar sports. Vain that in the Post Office game, Dopsy as Montreal exchanged places with Emily St. Aubyn as Newmarket. Montreal and Newmarket themselves are not farther apart geographically than the two damsels were morally as they skipped into each other's chairs. Vain that in the Spelling game, the South Belgravians caught up the landowner's daughters with a surpassing sharpness and sometimes turned the laugh against those tender scions of the landed aristocracy. The very attitude of Clara St. Aubyn's chin—the way she talked apart with Mrs. Tregonell, seemingly unconscious of the Vandeleur presence, marked her inward sense of the gulf between them.
It was midnight before any one thought of going to bed, yet there was unwonted animation at nine o'clock next morning in the dining-room, where every one was talking of the day's expedition: always excepting the master of the house, who sat at one end of the table, with Termagant, his favourite Irish setter, crouched at his feet, and his game-bag lying on a chair near at hand.
"Are you really going to desert us?" asked Mopsy, with her sweetest smile.
"I am not going to desert you, for I never had the faintest intention of joining you," answered Leonard bluntly; "whether my wife and her friends made idiots of themselves by playing nursery games in her drawing-room, or by skipping about a windy height on the edge of the sea, is their own affair. I can take my pleasure elsewhere."
"Yes; but you take your pleasure very sadly, as somebody said of English people generally," urged Mopsy, whose only knowledge of polite literature was derived from the classical quotations and allusions in theDaily Telegraph; "you will be all alone, for Jack and little Monty have promised to come with us."
"I gave them perfect freedom of choice. They may like that kind of thing. I don't."
Against so firm a resolve argument would have been vain. Mopsy gave a little sigh, and went on with her breakfast. She was really sorry for Leonard, who had been a kind and useful friend to Jack for the last six years—who had been indeed the backbone of Jack's resources, without which that gentleman's pecuniary position would have collapsed into hopeless limpness. She was quite sharp-sighted enough to see that the present aspect of affairs was obnoxious to Mr. Tregonell—that he was savagely jealous, yet dared not remonstrate with his wife.
"I should have thought he was just the last man to put up with anything of that kind," she said to Dopsy, in their bedchamber confidences; "I mean her carrying on with the Baron."
"You needn't explain yourself," retorted Dopsy, "it's visible to the naked eye. If you or I were to carry on like that in another woman's house we should get turned out; but Mrs. Tregonell is in her own house, and so long as her husband doesn't see fit to complain—"
"But when will he see fit? He stands by and watches his wife's open flirtation with the Baron, and lets her go on from bad to worse. He must see that her very nature is changed since last year, and yet he makes no attempt to alter her conduct. He is an absolute worm."
"Even the worm will turn at last. You may depend he will," said Dopsy sententiously.
This was last night's conversation, and now in the bright fresh October morning, with a delicious coolness in the clear air, a balmy warmth in the sunshine, Dopsy and Mopsy were smiling at their hostess, for whose kindness they could not help feeling deeply grateful, "whatever they might think of her conduct. They recognized a divided duty—loyalty to Leonard as their brother's patron, and the friend who had first introduced them to this land of Beulah—gratitude to Mrs. Tregonell, without whose good graces they could not long have made their abode here.
"You are not going with us?" asked Christabel, carelessly scanning Leonard's shooting gear, as she rose from the table and drew on her longmousquetairegloves.
"No—I'm going to shoot."
"Shall you go to the Kieve? That's a good place for woodcock, don't you know?" Jessie Bridgeman stared aghast at the speaker. "If you go that way in the afternoon you may fall in with us: we are to drink tea at the farm."
"Perhaps I may go that way."
"And now, if every one is ready, we had better start," said Christabel, looking round at her party.
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. Nobody 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-buttoned Swedish gloves, made up a toilet which Dopsy and Mopsy had believed to be æsthetically 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 anddécousu, 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 sex, 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 space 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 association 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 gratitude 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 assuming.
"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 Shelley 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 grass 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 associations 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.
"Nothing in the life of either became them so well as the leaving it," said Mr. FitzJesse. "The crowning touch of poetry in Iseult's death redeems her errors. You remember how she was led half senseless to Tristan's death-chamber—lors l'embrasse de ses bras, tant comme elle peut, et gette ung souspir, et se pasme sur le corps, et le cueur lui part, et l'âme s'en va."
"If every woman who loses her lover could die like that," said Jessie, with a curious glance at Christabel, who sat listening smilingly to the conversation, with the Baron prostrate at her feet.
"Instead of making good her loss at the earliest opportunity, what a dreary place this world would be," murmured little Monty. "I think somebody in the poetic line has observed that nothing in Nature is constant, so it would be hard lines upon women if they were to be fettered for life by some early attachment that came to a bad end."
"Look at Juliet's constancy," said Miss St. Aubyn.
"Juliet was never put to the test," answered FitzJesse. "The whole course of her love affair was something less than a week. If that potion of hers had failed, and she had awakened safe and sound in her own bedchamber next morning, who knows that she would not have submitted to the force of circumstances, married County Paris, and lived happily with him ever after. There is only one perfect example of constancy in the whole realm of poetry, and that is the love of Paolo and Francesca, the love which even the pains of hell could not dissever."
"They weren't married, don't you know," lisped Monty. "They hadn't had the opportunity of getting tired of each other. And then, in the underworld, a lady would be glad to take up with somebody she had known on earth: just as in Australia one is delighted to fall in with a fellow one wouldn't care twopence for in Bond Street."
"I believe you are right," said Mr. FitzJesse, "and that constancy is only another name for convenience. Married people are constant to each other, as a rule, because there is such an infernal row when they fall out."
Lightly flew the moments in the balmy air, freshened by the salt sea, warmed by the glory of a meridian sun—lightly and happily for that wise majority of the revellers, whose philosophy is to get the most out of to-day's fair summer-time, and to leave future winters and possible calamities to Jove's discretion. Jessie watched the girl who had grown up by her side, whose every thought she had once known, and wondered if this beautiful artificial impersonation of society tones and society graces could be verily the same flesh and blood. What had made this wondrous transformation? Had Christabel's very soul undergone a change during that dismal period of apathy last winter? She had awakened from that catalepsy of despair a new woman—eager for frivolous pleasures—courting admiration—studious of effect: the very opposite of that high-souled and pure-minded girl whom Jessie had known and loved.
"It is the most awful moral wreck that was ever seen," thought Jessie; "but if my love can save her from deeper degradation she shall be saved."
Could she care for that showy impostor posed at her feet, gazing up at her with passionate eyes—hanging on her accents—openly worshipping her? She seemed to accept his idolatry, to sanction his insolence; and all her friends looked on, half scornful, half amused.
"What can Tregonell be thinking about not to be here to-day?" said Jack Vandeleur, close to Jessie's elbow.
"Why should he be here?" she asked.
"Because he's wanted. He's neglecting that silly woman shamefully."
"It is only his way," answered Jessie, scornfully. "Last year he invited Mr. Hamleigh to Mount Royal, who had been engaged to his wife a few years before. He is not given to jealousy."
"Evidently not," said Captain Vandeleur, waxing thoughtful, as he lighted a cigarette, and strolled slowly off to stare at the sea, the rocky pinnacles, and yonder cormorant skimming away from a sharp point, to dip and vanish in the green water.
The pilgrimage from Trevena to Trevithy farm was somewhat less straggling than the long walk by the cliffs. The way was along a high road, which necessitated less meandering, but the party still divided itself into twos and threes, and Christabel still allowed de Cazalet the privilege of atête-à-tête. She was a better walker than any of her friends, and the Baron was a practised pedestrian; so those two kept well ahead, leaving the rest of the party to follow as they pleased.
"I wonder they are not tired of each other by this time," said Mopsy, whose Wurtemburg heels were beginning to tell upon her temper. "It has been such a long day—and such a long walk. What can the Baron find to talk about all this time?"
"Himself," answered FitzJesse, "an inexhaustible subject. Men can always talk. Listening is the art in which they fail. Are you a good listener, Miss Vandeleur?"
"I'm afraid not. If any one is prosy I begin to think of my frocks."
"Very bad. As a young woman, with the conquest of society before you, I most earnestly recommend you to cultivate the listener's art. Talk just enough to develop your companion's powers. If he has a hobby, let him ride it. Be interested, be sympathetic. Do not always agree, but differ only to be convinced, argue only to be converted. Never answer at random, or stifle a yawn. Be a perfect listener, and society is open to you. People will talk of you as the most intelligent girl they know."
Mopsy smiled a sickly smile. The agony of those ready-made boots, just a quarter of a size too small, though they had seemed so comfortable in the shoemaker's shop, was increasing momentarily. Here was a hill like the side of a house to be descended. Poor Mopsy felt as if she were balancing herself on the points of her toes. She leant feebly on her umbrella, while the editor of theSlingtrudged sturdily by her side admiring the landscape—stopping half-way down the hill to point out the grander features of the scene with his bamboo. Stopping was ever so much worse than going on. It was as if the fires consuming the martyr at the stake had suddenly gone out, and left him with an acuter consciousness of his pain.
"Too, too lovely," murmured Mopsy, heartily wishing herself in the King's Road, Chelsea, within hail of an omnibus.
She hobbled on somehow, pretending to listen to Mr. FitzJesse's conversation, but feeling that she was momentarily demonstrating her incompetence as a listener, till they came to the farm, where she was just able to totter into the sitting-room, and sink into the nearest chair.
"I'm afraid you're tired," said the journalist, a sturdy block of a man, who hardly knew the meaning of fatigue.
"I am just a little tired," she faltered hypocritically, "but it has been a lovely walk."
They were the last to arrive. The tea things were ready upon a table covered with snowy damask—a substantial tea, including home-made loaves, saffron-coloured cakes, jam, marmalade, and cream. But there was no one in the room except Mrs. Fairfax Torrington, who had enthroned herself in the most comfortable chair, by the side of the cheerful fire.
"All the rest of our people have gone straggling off to look at things," she said, "some to the Kieve—and as that is a mile off we shall have ever so long to wait for our tea."
"Do you think we need wait very long?" asked Mopsy, whose head was aching from the effects of mid-day champagne; "would it be so very bad if we were to ask for a cup of tea."
"I am positively longing for tea," said Mrs. Torrington to FitzJesse, ignoring Mopsy.
"Then I'll ask the farm people to brew a special pot for you two," answered the journalist, ringing the bell. "Here comes Mr. Tregonell, game-bag, dogs, and all. This is more friendly than I expected."
Leonard strolled across the little quadrangular garden, and came in at the low door, as Mr. FitzJesse spoke.
"I thought I should find some of you here," he said; "where are the others?"
"Gone to the Kieve, most of them," answered Mrs. Torrington briskly. Her freshness contrasted cruelly with Mopsy's limp and exhausted condition. "At least I know your wife and de Cazalet were bent on going there. She had promised to show the waterfall. We were just debating whether we ought to wait tea for them."
"I wouldn't, if I were you," said Leonard. "No doubt they'll take their time."
He flung down his game-bag, took up his hat, whistled to his dogs, and went towards the door.
"Won't you stop and have some tea—just to keep us in countenance?" asked Mrs. Torrington.
"No, thanks. I'd rather have it later. I'll go and meet the others."
"If he ever intended to look after her it was certainly time he should begin," said the widow, when the door was shut upon her host. "Please ring again, Mr. FitzJesse. How slow these farm people are! Do they suppose we have come here to stare at cups and saucers?"
Leonard Tregonell went slowly up the steep narrow lane with his dogs at his heels. It was a year since he had been this way. Good as the cover round about the waterfall was said to be for woodcock, he had carefully avoided the spot this season, and his friends had been constrained to defer to his superior wisdom as a son of the soil. He had gone farther afield for his sport, and, as there had been no lack of birds, his guests had no reason for complaint. Yet Jack Vandeleur had said more than once, "I wonder you don't try the Kieve. We shot a lot of birds there last year."
Now for the first time since that departed autumn he went up the hill to one of the happy hunting-grounds of his boyhood. The place where he had fished, and shot, and trapped birds, and hunted water-rats, and climbed and torn his clothes in the careless schoolboy days, when his conception of a perfectly blissful existence came as near as possible to the life of a North American Indian. He had always detested polite society and book-learning; but he had been shrewd enough and quick enough at learning the arts he loved:—gunnery—angling—veterinary surgery.
He met a group of people near the top of the hill—all the party except Christabel and the Baron. One glance showed him that these two were missing from the cluster of men and women crowding through the gate that opened into the lane.
"The waterfall is quite a shabby affair," said Miss St. Aubyn; "there has been so little rain lately, I felt ashamed to show Mr. Faddie such a poor little dribble."
"We are all going back to tea," explained her mother. "I don't know what has become of Mrs. Tregonell and the Baron, but I suppose they are loitering about somewhere. Perhaps you'll tell them we have all gone on to the farm."
"Yes, I'll send them after you. I told my wife I'd meet her at the Kieve, if I could."
He passed them and ran across the ploughed field, while the others went down the hill, talking and laughing. He heard the sound of their voices and that light laughter dying away on the still air as the distance widened between him and them; and he wondered if they were talking of his wife, and of his seeming indifference to her folly. The crisis had come. He had watched her in blank amazement, hardly able to believe his own senses, to realize the possibility of guilt on the part of one whose very perfection had galled him; and now he told himself there was no doubt of her folly, no doubt that this tinselly pretender had fascinated her, and that she was on the verge of destruction. No woman could outrage propriety as she had been doing of late, and yet escape danger. The business must be stopped somehow, even if he were forced to kick the Baron out of doors, in order to make an end of the entanglement. And then, what if she were to lift up her voice, and accuse him—if she were to turn that knowledge which he suspected her of possessing, against him? What then? He must face the situation, and pay the penalty of what he had done. That was all.
"It can't much matter what becomes of me," he said to himself. "I have never had an hour's real happiness since I married her. She warned me that it would be so—warned me against my own jealous temper—but I wouldn't listen to her. I had my own way."
Could she care for that man? Could she? In spite of the coarseness of his own nature, there was in Leonard's mind a deep-rooted conviction of his wife's purity, which was stronger even than the evidence of actual facts. Even now, although the time had come when he must act, he had a strange confused feeling, like a man whose brain is under the influence of some narcotic, which makes him see things that are not. He felt as in some hideous dream—long-involved—a maze of delusion and bedevilment, from which there was no escape.
He went down into the hollow. The high wooden gate stood wide open—evidence that there was some one lingering below. The leaves were still on the trees, the broad feathery ferns were still green. There was a low yellow light gleaming behind the ridge of rock and the steep earthy slope above. The rush of the water sounded loud and clear in the silence.
Leonard crept cautiously down the winding moss-grown track, holding his dogs behind him in a leash, and constraining those well-mannered brutes to perfect quiet. He looked down into the deep hollow, through which the water runs, and over which there is that narrow foot bridge, whence the waterfall is seen in all its beauty—an arc of silvery light cleaving the dark rock above, and flashing down to the dark rock below.
Christabel was standing on the bridge, with de Cazalet at her side. They were not looking up at the waterfall. Their faces were turned the other way, to the rocky river bed, fringed with fern and wild rank growth of briar and weed. The Baron was talking earnestly, his head bent over Christabel, till it seemed to those furious eyes staring between the leafage, as if his lips must be touching her face. His hand clasped hers. That was plain enough.
Just then the spaniel stirred, and rustled the dank dead leaves—Christabel started, and looked up towards the trees that screened her husband's figure. A guilty start, a guilty look, Leonard thought. But those eyes of hers could not pierce the leafy screen, and they drooped again, looking downward at the water beneath her feet. She stood in a listening attitude, as if her whole being hung upon de Cazalet's words.
What was he pleading so intensely? What was that honeyed speech, to which the false wife listened, unresistingly, motionless as the bird spell-bound by the snake. So might Eve have listened to the first tempter. In just such an attitude, with just such an expression, every muscle relaxed, the head gently drooping, the eyelids lowered, a tender smile curving the lips—the first tempted wife might have hearkened to the silver-sweet tones of her seducer.
"Devil!" muttered Leonard between his clenched teeth.
Even in the agony of his rage—rage at finding that this open folly, which he had pretended not to see, had been but the light and airy prelude to the dark theme of secret guilt—that wrong which he felt most deeply was his wife's falsehood to herself—her wilful debasement of her own noble character. He had known her, and believed in her as perfect and pure among women, and now he saw her deliberately renouncing all claim to man's respect, lowering herself to the level of the women who can be tempted. He had believed her invulnerable. It was as if Diana herself had gone astray—as if the very ideal and archetype of purity among women had become perverted.
He stood, breathless almost, holding back his dogs, gazing, listening with as much intensity as if only the senses of hearing and sight lived in him—and all the rest were extinct. He saw the Baron draw nearer and nearer as he urged his prayer—who could doubt the nature of that prayer—until the two figures were posed in one perfect harmonious whole, and then his arm stole gently round the slender waist.
Christabel sprang away from him with a coy laugh.
"Not now," she said, in a clear voice, so distinct as to reach that listener's ears. "I can answer nothing now. To-morrow."
"But, my soul, why delay?"
"To-morrow," she repeated; and then she cried suddenly, "hark! there is some one close by. Did you not hear?"
There had been no sound but the waterfall—not even the faintest rustle of a leaf. The two dogs crouched submissively at their master's feet, while that master himself stood motionless as a stone figure.
"I must go," cried Christabel. "Think how long we have stayed behind the others. We shall set people wondering."
She sprang lightly from the bridge to the bank, and came quickly up the rocky path, a narrow winding track, which closely skirted the spot where Leonard stood concealed by the broad leaves of a chestnut. She might almost have heard his hurried breathing, she might almost have seen the lurid eyes of his dogs, gleaming athwart the rank undergrowth; but she stepped lightly past, and vanished from the watcher's sight.
De Cazalet followed.
"Christabel, stop," he exclaimed; "I must have your answer now. My fate hangs upon your words. You cannot mean to throw me over. I have planned everything. In three days we shall be at Pesth—secure from all pursuit."
He was following in Christabel's track, but he was not swift enough to overtake her, being at some disadvantage upon that slippery way, where the moss-grown slabs of rock offered a very insecure footing. As he spoke the last words, Christabel's figure disappeared among the trees upon the higher ground above him, and a broad herculean hand shot out of the leafy background, and pinioned him.
"Scoundrel—profligate—impostor!" hissed a voice in his ear, and Leonard Tregonell stood before him—white, panting, with flecks of foam upon his livid lips. "Devil! you have corrupted and seduced the purest woman that ever lived. You shall answer to me—her husband—for your infamy."
"Oh! is that your tune?" exclaimed the Baron, wrenching his arm from that iron grip. They were both powerful men—fairly matched in physical force, cool, hardened by rough living. "Is that your game? I thought you didn't mind."
"You dastardly villain, what did you take me for?"
"A common product of nineteenth-century civilization," answered the other, coolly. "One of those liberal-minded husbands who allow their wives as wide a license as they claim for themselves."
"Liar," cried Leonard, rushing at him with his clenched fist raised to strike.
The Baron caught him by the wrist—held him with fingers of iron.
"Take care," he said. "Two can play at that game. If it comes to knocking a man's front teeth down his throat I may as well tell you that I have given the 'Frisco dentists a good bit of work in my time. You forget that there's no experience of a rough-and-ready life that you have had which I have not gone through twice over. If I had you in Colorado we'd soon wipe off this little score with a brace of revolvers."
"Let Cornwall be Colorado for the nonce. We could meet here as easily as we could meet in any quiet nook across the Channel, or in the wilds of America. No time like the present—no spot better than this."
"If we had only the barkers," said de Cazalet, "but unluckily we haven't."
"I'll meet you here to-morrow at daybreak—say, sharp seven. We can arrange about the pistols to-night. Vandeleur will come with me—he'd run any risk to serve me—and I daresay you could get little Monty to do as much for you. He's a good plucked one."
"Do you mean it?"
"Unquestionably."
"Very well. Tell Vaudeleur what you mean, and let him settle the details. In the meantime we can take things quietly before the ladies. There is no need to scare any of them."
"I am not going to scare them. Down, Termagant," said Leonard to the Irish setter, as the low light branches of a neighbouring tree were suddenly stirred, and a few withered leaves drifted down from the rugged bank above the spot where the two men were standing.
"Well, I suppose you're a pretty good shot," said the Baron coolly, taking out his cigar-case, "so there'll be no disparity. By-the-by there was a man killed here last year, I heard—a former rival of yours."
"Yes, there was a man killed here," answered Leonard, walking slowly on.
"Perhaps you killed him?"
"I did," answered Leonard, turning upon him suddenly. "I killed him: as I hope to kill you: as I would kill any man who tried to come between me and the woman I loved. He was a gentleman, and I am sorry for him. He fired in the air, and made me feel like a murderer. He knew how to make that last score. I have never had a peaceful moment since I saw him fall, face downward, on that broad slab of rock on the other side of the bridge. You see I am not afraid of you, or I shouldn't tell you this."
"I suspected as much from the time I heard the story," said de Cazalet. "I rarely believe in those convenient accidents which so often dispose of inconvenient people. But don't you think it might be better for you if we were to choose a different spot for to-morrow's meeting? Two of your rivals settled in the same gully might look suspicious—for I dare say you intend to kill me."
"I shall try," answered Leonard.
"Then suppose we were to meet on those sands—Trebarwith Sands, I think you call the place. Not much fear of interruption there, I should think, at seven o'clock in the morning."
"You can settle that and everything else with Vandeleur," said Leonard, striding off with his dogs, and leaving the Baron to follow at his leisure.
De Cazalet walked slowly back to the farm, meditating deeply.
"It's devilish unlucky that this should have happened," he said to himself. "An hour ago everything was going on velvet. We might have got quietly away to-morrow—for I know she meant to go, cleverly as she fenced with me just now—and left my gentleman to his legal remedy, which would have secured the lady and her fortune to me, as soon as the Divorce Court business was over. He would have followed us with the idea of fighting, no doubt, but I should have known how to give him the slip. And then we should have started in life with a clean slate. Now there must be no end of a row. If I kill him it will be difficult to get away—and if I bolt, how am I to be sure of the lady? Will she come to my lure when I call her? Will she go away with me, to-morrow? Yes, that will be my only chance. I must get her to promise to meet me at Bodmin Road Station in time for the Plymouth train—there's one starts at eleven. I can drive from Trebarwith to Bodmin with a good horse, take her straight through to London, and from London by the first available express to Edinburgh. She shall know nothing of what has happened till we are in Scotland, and then I can tell her that she is a free woman, and my wife by the Scottish law,—a bond which she can make as secure as she likes by legal and religious ceremonies."
The Baron had enough insight into the feminine character to know that a woman who has leisure for deliberation upon the verge of ruin is not very likely to make the fatal plunge. The boldly, deliberately bad are the rare exceptions among womankind. The women who err are for the most part hustled and hurried into wrong-doing—hemmed round and beset by conflicting interests—bewildered and confused by false reasoning—whirled in the Maelstrom of passion, helpless as the hunted hare.
The Baron had pleaded his cause eloquently, as he thought—had won Christabel almost to consent to elope with him—but not quite. She had seemed so near yielding, yet had not yielded. She had asked for time—time to reflect upon the fatal step—and reflection was just that one privilege which must not be allowed to her. Strange, he thought, that not once had she spoken of her son, the wrong she must inflict upon him, her agony at having to part with him. Beautiful, fascinating although he deemed her—proud as he felt at having subjugated so lovely a victim, it seemed to de Cazalet that there was something hard and desperate about her—as of a woman who went wrong deliberately and of set purpose. Yet on the brink of ruin she drew back, and was not to be moved by any special pleading of his to consent to an immediate elopement. Vainly had he argued that the time had come—that people were beginning to look askance—that her husband's suspicions might be aroused at any moment. She had been rock in her resistance of these arguments. But her consent to an early flight must now be extorted from her. Delay or hesitation now might be fatal. If he killed his man—and he had little doubt in his own mind that he should kill him—it was essential that his flight should be instant. The days were past when juries were disposed to look leniently upon gentlemanly homicide. If he were caught red-handed, the penalty of his crime would be no light one.
"I was a fool to consent to such a wild plan," he told himself. "I ought to have insisted upon meeting him on the other side of the Channel. But to draw back now might look bad, and would lessen my chance with her. No; there is no alternative course. I must dispose of him, and get her away, without the loss of an hour."
The whole business had to be thought out carefully. His intent was deadly, and he planned this duel with as much wicked deliberation as if he had been planning a murder. He had lived among men who held all human life, except their own, lightly, and to whom duelling and assassination were among the possibilities of every-day existence. He thought how if he and the three other men could reach that lonely bend of the coast unobserved, they might leave the man who should fall lying on the sand, with never an indication to point how he fell.
De Cazalet felt that in Vandeleur there was a man to be trusted. He would not betray, even though his friend were left there, dead upon the low level sand-waste, for the tide to roll over him and hide him, and wrap the secret of his doom in eternal silence. There was something of the freebooter in Jack Vandeleur—an honour-among-thieves kind of spirit—which the soul of that other freebooter recognized and understood.
"We don't want little Montagu," thought de Cazalet. "One man will be second enough to see fair-play. The fuss and formality of the thing can be dispensed with. That little beggar's ideas are too insular—he might round upon me."
So meditating upon the details of to-morrow, the Baron went down the hill to the farm, where he found the Mount Royal party just setting out on their homeward journey under the shades of evening, stars shining faintly in the blue infinite above them. Leonard was not among his wife's guests—nor had he been seen by any of them since they met him at the field-gate, an hour ago.
"He has made tracks for home, no doubt," said Jack Vandeleur.
They went across the fields, and by the common beyond Trevalga—walking briskly, talking merrily, in the cool evening air; all except Mopsy, from whose high-heeled boots there was no surcease of pain. Alas! those Wurtemburg heels, and the boots just half a size too small for the wearer, for how many a bitter hour of woman's life have they to answer!
De Cazalet tried in vain during that homeward walk to get confidential speech with Christabel—he was eager to urge his new plan—the departure from Bodmin Road Station—but she was always surrounded. He fancied even that she made it her business to avoid him.
"Coquette," he muttered to himself savagely. "They are all alike. I thought she was a little better than the rest; but they are all ground in the same mill."
He could scarcely get a glimpse of her face in the twilight. She was always a little way ahead, or a little way behind him—now with Jessie Bridgeman, now with Emily St. Aubyn—skimming over the rough heathy ground, flitting from group to group. When they entered the house she disappeared almost instantly, leaving her guests lingering in the hall, too tired to repair at once to their own rooms, content to loiter in the glow and warmth of the wood fires. It was seven o'clock. They had been out nearly nine hours.
"What a dreadfully long day it has been!" exclaimed Emily St. Aubyn, with a stifled yawn.
"Isn't that the usual remark after a pleasure party?" demanded Mr. FitzJesse. "I have found the unfailing result of any elaborate arrangement for human felicity to be an abnormal lengthening of the hours; just as every strenuous endeavour to accomplish some good work for one's fellow-men infallibly provokes the enmity of the class to be benefited."
"Oh, it has all been awfully enjoyable, don't you know," said Miss St. Aubyn; "and it was very sweet of Mrs. Tregonell to give us such a delightful day; but I can't help feeling as if we had been out a week. And now we have to dress for dinner, which is rather a trial."
"Why not sit down as you are? Let us have a tailor-gown and shooting-jacket dinner, as a variety upon a calico ball," suggested little Monty.
"Impossible! We should feel dirty and horrid," said Miss St. Aubyn. "The freshness and purity of the dinner-table would make us ashamed of our grubbiness. Besides, however could we face the servants? No, the effort must be made. Come, mother, you really look as if you wanted to be carried upstairs."
"By voluntary contributions," murmured FitzJesse, aside to Miss Bridgeman. "Briareus himself could not do it single-handed, as one of our vivacious Home Rulers might say."
The Baron de Cazalet did not appear in the drawing-room an hour later when the house-party assembled for dinner. He sent his hostess a little note apologizing for his absence, on the ground of important business letters, which must be answered that night; though why a man should sit down at eight o'clock in the evening to write letters for a post which would not leave Boscastle till the following afternoon, was rather difficult for any one to understand.
"All humbug about those letters, you may depend," said little Monty, who looked as fresh as a daisy in his smooth expanse of shirt-front, with a single diamond stud in the middle of it, like a lighthouse in a calm sea. "The Baron was fairly done—athlete as he pretends to be—hadn't a leg to stand upon—came in limping. I wouldn't mind giving long odds that he won't show till to-morrow afternoon. It's a case of gruel and bandages for the next twenty-four hours."
Leonard came into the drawing-room just in time to give his arm to Mrs. St. Aubyn. He made himself more agreeable than usual at dinner, as it seemed to that worthy matron—talked more—laughed louder—and certainly drank more than his wont. The dinner was remarkably lively, in spite of the Baron's absence; indeed, the conversation took a new and livelier turn upon that account, for everybody had something more or less amusing to say about the absent one, stimulated and egged on with quiet malice by Mr. FitzJesse. Anecdotes were told of his self-assurance, his vanity, his pretentiousness. His pedigree was discussed, and settled for—his antecedents—his married life, were all submitted to the process of conversational vivisection.
"Rather rough on Mrs. Tregonell, isn't it?" murmured little Monty to the fair Dopsy.
"Do you think she really cares?" Dopsy asked, incredulously.
"Don't you?"
"Not a straw. She could not care for such a man as that, after being engaged to Mr. Hamleigh."
"Hamleigh was better form, I admit—and I used to think Mrs. T. as straight as an arrow. But I confess I've been staggered lately."
"Did you see what a calm queenly look she had all the time people were laughing at de Cazalet?" asked Dopsy. "A woman who cared one little bit for a man could not have taken it so quietly."
"You think she must have flamed out—said something in defence of her admirer. You forget your Tennyson, and how Guinevere 'marred her friend's point with pale tranquillity.' Women are so deuced deep."
"Dear Tennyson," murmured Dopsy, whose knowledge of the Laureate's works had not gone very far beyond "The May Queen," and "The Charge of the Six Hundred."
It was growing late in the evening when de Cazalet showed himself. The drawing-room party had been in very fair spirits without him, but it was a smaller and a quieter party than usual; for Leonard had taken Captain Vandeleur off to his own den after dinner, and Mr. Montagu had offered to play a fifty game, left-handed, against the combined strength of Dopsy and Mopsy. Christabel had been at the piano almost all the evening, playing with a breadth and grandeur which seemed to rise above her usual style. The ladies made a circle in front of the fire, with Mr. Faddie and Mr. FitzJesse, talking and laughing in a subdued tone, while those grand harmonies of Beethoven's rose and fell upon their half indifferent, half admiring ears.
Christabel played the closing chords of the Funeral March of a Hero as de Cazalet entered the room. He went straight to the piano, and seated himself in the empty chair by her side. She glided into the melancholy arpeggios of the Moonlight Sonata, without looking up from the keys. They were a long way from the group at the fire—all the length of the room lay in deep shadow between the lamps on the mantelpiece and neighbouring tables, and the candles upon the piano. Pianissimo music seemed to invite conversation.
"You have written your letters?" she asked lightly.
"My letters were a fiction—I did not want to sit face to face with your husband at dinner, after our conversation this afternoon at the waterfall; you can understand that, can't you Christabel. Don't—don't do that."
"What?" she asked, still looking down at the keys.
"Don't shudder when I call you by your Christian name—as you did just now. Christabel, I want your answer to my question of to-day. I told you then that the crisis of our fate had come. I tell you so again to-night—more earnestly, if it is possible to be more in earnest than I was to-day. I am obliged to speak to you here—almost within earshot of those people—because time is short, and I must take the first chance that offers. It has been my accursed luck never to be with you alone—I think this afternoon was the first time that you and I have been together alone since I came here. You don't know how hard it has been for me to keep every word and look within check—always to remember that we were before an audience."
"Yes, there has been a good deal of acting," she answered quietly.
"But there must be no more acting—no more falsehood. We have both made up our minds, have we not, my beloved? I think you love me—yes, Christabel, I feel secure of your love. You did not deny it to-day, when I asked that thrilling question—those hidden eyes, the conscious droop of that proud head, were more eloquent than words. And for my love, Christabel—no words can speak that. It shall be told by-and-by in language that all the world can understand—told by my deeds. The time has come for decision; I have had news to-day that renders instant action necessary. If you and I do not leave Cornwall together to-morrow, we may be parted for ever. Have you made up your mind?"
"Hardly," she answered, her fingers still slowly moving over the keys in those plaintive arpeggios.
"What is your difficulty, dearest? Do you fear to face the future with me?"
"I have not thought of the future."
"Is it the idea of leaving your child that distresses you?"
"I have not thought of him."
"Then it is my truth—my devotion which you doubt?"
"Give me a little more time for thought," she said, still playing the samesotto voceaccompaniment to their speech.
"I dare not; everything must be planned to-night. I must leave this house early to-morrow morning. There are imperative reasons which oblige me to do so. You must meet me at Bodmin Road Station at eleven—you must, Christabel, if our lives are to be free and happy and spent together. Vacillation on your part will ruin all my plans. Trust yourself to me, dearest—trust my power to secure a bright and happy future. If you do not want to be parted from your boy, take him with you. He shall be my son. I will hold him for you against all the world."
"You must leave this house early to-morrow morning," she said, looking up at him for the first time. "Why?"
"For a reason which I cannot tell you. It is a business in which some one else is involved, and I am not free to disclose it yet. You shall know all later."
"You will tell me, when we meet at Bodmin Road."
"Yes. Ah, then you have made up your mind—you will be there. My best and dearest, Heaven bless you for that sweet consent."
"Had we not better leave Heaven out of the question?" she said with a mocking smile; and then slowly, gravely, deliberately, she said, "Yes, I will meet you at eleven o'clock to-morrow, at Bodmin Road Station—and you will tell me all that has happened."
"What secret can I withhold from you, love—my second self—the fairer half of my soul?"
Urgently as he had pleaded his cause, certain as he had been of ultimate success, he was almost overcome by her yielding. It seemed as if a fortress which a moment before had stood up between him and the sky—massive—invincible—the very type of the impregnable and everlasting, had suddenly crumbled into ruin at his feet. His belief in woman's pride and purity had never been very strong: yet he had believed that here and there, in this sinful world, invincible purity was to be found. But now he could never believe in any woman again. He had believed in this one to the last, although he had set himself to win her. Even when he had been breathing the poison of his florid eloquence into her ear—even when she had smiled at him, a willing listener—there had been something in her look, some sublime inexpressible air of stainless womanhood which had made an impassable distance between them. And now she had consented to run away with him: she had sunk in one moment to the level of all disloyal wives. His breast thrilled with pride and triumph at the thought of his conquest: and yet there was a touch of shame, shame that she could so fall.
Emily St. Aubyn came over to the piano, and made an end of all confidential talk.
"Now you are both here, do give us that delicious little duet of Lecocq's," she said: "we want something cheerful before we disperse. Good gracious Mrs. Tregonell, how bad you look," cried the young lady, suddenly, "as white as a ghost."
"I am tired to death," answered Christabel, "I could not sing a note for the world."
"Really, then we mustn't worry you. Thanks so much for that lovely Beethoven music—the 'Andante'—or the 'Pastorale'—or the 'Pathétique,' was it not? So sweet."
"Good-night," said Christabel. "You won't think me rude if I am the first to go?"
"Not at all. We are all going. Pack up your wools, mother. I know you have only been pretending to knit. We are all half asleep. I believe we have hardly strength to crawl upstairs."
Candles were lighted, and Mrs. Tregonell and her guests dispersed, the party from the billiard-room meeting them in the hall.
These lighter-minded people, the drama of whose existence was just now in the comedy stage, went noisily up to their rooms; but the Baron, who was usually among the most loquacious, retired almost in silence. Nor did Christabel do more than bid her guests a brief good-night. Neither Leonard nor his friend Jack Vandeleur had shown themselves since dinner. Whether they were still in the Squire's den, or whether they had retired to their own rooms no one knew.
The Baron's servant was waiting to attend his master. He was a man who had been with de Cazalet in California, Mexico, and South America—who had lived with him in his bachelorhood and in his married life—knew all the details of his domestic career, had been faithful to him in wealth and in poverty, knew all that there was to be known about him—the best and the worst—and had made up his mind to hold by an employment which had been adventurous, profitable, and tolerably easy, not entirely free from danger, or from the prospect of adversity—yet always hopeful. So thorough a scamp as the Baron must always find some chance open to him—thus, at least, argued Henri le Mescam, his unscrupulous ally. The man was quick, clever—able to turn his hand to anything—valet, groom, cook, courier—as necessity demanded.
"Is Salathiel pretty fresh?" asked the Baron.
"Fit as a fiddle: he hasn't been out since you hunted him four days ago."
"That's lucky. He will be able to go the pace to-morrow morning. Have him harnessed to that American buggy of Mr. Tregonell's at six o'clock."
"I suppose you know that it's hardly light at six."
"There will be quite enough light for me. Pack my smallest portmanteau with linen for a week, and a second suit—no dress-clothes—and have the trap ready in the stable-yard when the clock strikes six. I have to catch a train at Launceston at 7.45. You will follow in the afternoon with the luggage."
"To your London rooms, Sir?"
"Yes. If you don't find me there you will wait for further instructions. You may have to join me on the other side of the channel."
"I hope so, Sir."
"Sick of England already?"
"Never cared much for it, Sir. I began to think I should die of the dulness of this place."
"Rather more luxurious than our old quarters at St. Heliers ten years ago, when you were marker at Jewson's, while I was teaching drawing and French at the fashionable academies of the island."
"That was bad, Sir; but luxury isn't everything in life. A man's mind goes to rust in a place of this kind."
"Well, there will not be much rust for you in future, I believe. How would you like it if I were to take you back to the shores of the Pacific?"
"That's just what I should like, Sir. You were a king there, and I was your prime minister."
"And I may be a king again—perhaps this time with a queen—a proud and beautiful queen."
Le Mescam smiled, and shrugged his shoulders.
"The queenly element was not quite wanting in the past, Sir," he said.
"Pshaw, Henri, the ephemeral fancy of the hour. Such chance entanglements as those do not rule a man's life."
"Perhaps not, Sir; but I know one of those chance entanglements made Lima unpleasantly warm for us; and if, after you winged Don Silvio, there hadn't been a pair of good horses waiting for us, you might never have seen the outside of Peru."
"And if a duel was dangerous in Lima, it would be ten times more dangerous in Cornwall, would it not, Henri?"
"Of course it would, Sir. But you are not thinking of anything like a duel here—you can't be so mad as to think of it."
"Certainly not. And now you can pack that small portmanteau, while I take a stretch. I sha'n't take off my clothes: a man who has to be up before six should never trifle with his feelings by making believe to go to bed."