Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 2 of 3

"Does that mean heart-disease?" faltered Christabel, with a despairing look.

"Well, my dear, it doesn't mean a healthy heart. It is not organic disease – nothing wrong with the valves – no fear of excruciating pains – but it's a rather risky condition of life, and needs care."

"I will be careful," murmured the girl, with white lips, as the awful shadow of a grief, hardly thought of till this moment, fell darkly across her joyless horizon.

Her aunt, her adopted mother – mother in all sweetest care and love and thoughtful culture – might too soon be taken from her. Then indeed, and then only, could she know what it was to be alone. Keenly, bitterly, she thought how little during the last dismal months she had valued that love – almost as old as her life – and how the loss of a newer love had made the world desolate for her, life without meaning or purpose. She remembered how little more than a year ago – before the coming of Angus Hamleigh – her aunt and she had been all the world to each other, that tender mother-love all sufficing to fill her life with interest and delight.

In the face of this new fear that sacred love resumed its old place in her mind. Not for an hour, not for a moment of the days to come, should her care or her affection slacken. Not for a moment should the image of him whom she had loved and renounced come between her and her duty to her aunt.

CHAPTER IV

"LOVE WILL HAVE HIS DAY."

From this time Christabel brightened and grew more like her old self. Mrs. Tregonell told herself that the sharp sorrow was gradually wearing itself out. No girl with such happy surroundings as Christabel's could go on being unhappy for ever. Her own spirits improved with Christabel's increasing brightness, and the old house began to lose its dismal air. Until now the widow's conscience had been ill at ease – she had been perpetually arguing with herself that she had done right – trying to stifle doubts that continually renewed themselves. But now she told herself that the time of sorrow was past, and that her wisdom would be justified by its fruits. She had no suspicion that her niece was striving of set purpose to be cheerful – that these smiles and this bright girlish talk were the result of painful effort, duty triumphing over sorrow.

Mount Royal that winter seemed one of the brightest, most hospitable houses in the neighbourhood. There were no parties; Mrs. Tregonell's delicate health was a reason against that. But there was generally some one staying in the house – some nice girl, whose vivacious talk and whose new music helped to beguile the mother from sad thoughts about her absent son – from wearying doubts as to the fulfilment of her plans for the future. There were people coming and going; old friends driving twenty miles to luncheon, and sometimes persuaded to stay to dinner; nearer neighbours walking three miles or so to afternoon tea. The cheery rector of Trevalga and his family, friends of twenty years' standing, were frequent guests. Mrs. Tregonell was not allowed to excite herself, but she was never allowed to be dull. Christabel and Jessie watched her with unwavering attention – anticipating every wish, preventing every fatigue. A weak and tired heart might hold out for a long time under such tender treatment.

But early in March there came an unexpected trial, in the shape of a sudden and great joy. Leonard, who had never learnt the rudiments of forethought and consideration for others, drove up to the house one afternoon in a hired chaise from Launceston, just as twilight was creeping over the hills, and dashed unannounced into the room where his mother and the two girls were sitting at tea.

"Who is this?" gasped Mrs. Tregonell, starting up from her low easy chair, as the tall broad-shouldered man, bearded, bronzed, clad in a thick grey coat and big white muffler, stood before her; and then with a shriek she cried, "My son! My son!" and fell upon his breast.

When he placed her in her chair a minute later she was almost fainting, and it was some moments before she recovered speech. Christabel and Jessie thought the shock would have killed her.

"Oh, Leonard! how could you?" murmured Christabel, reproachfully.

"How could I do what?"

"Come home without one word of notice, knowing your mother's delicate health."

"I thought it would be a pleasant surprise for her. Besides I hadn't made up my mind to come straight home till two o'clock to-day. I had half a mind to take a week in town first, before I came to this God-forsaken hole. You stare at me as if I had no right to be here at all, Belle."

"Leonard, my boy, my boy," faltered the mother, with pale lips, looking up adoringly at the bearded face, so weather-beaten, so hardened and altered from the fresh lines of youth. "If you knew how I have longed for this hour. I have had such fears. You have been in such perilous places – among savages – in all kinds of danger. Often and often I have dreamt that I saw you dead."

"Upon my soul, this is a lively welcome," said Leonard.

"My dearest, I don't want to be dismal," said Mrs. Tregonell, with a faint hysterical laugh. Her heart was beating tumultuously, the hands that clasped her son's were cold and damp. "My soul is full of joy. How changed you are, dear! You look as if you had gone through great hardships."

"Life in the Rockies isn't all child's play, mother, but we've had a jolly time of it, on the whole. America is a magnificent country. I feel deuced sorry to come home – except for the pleasure of seeing you and Belle. Let's have a look at you, Belle, and see if you are as much changed as I am. Step into the light, young lady."

He drew her into the full broad light of a heaped-up wood and coal fire. There was very little daylight in the room. The tapestry curtains fell low over the heavily mullioned Tudor windows, and inside the tapestry there was a screen of soft muslin.

"I have not been shooting moose and skunk, or living in a tent," said Christabel, with a forced laugh. She wanted to be amiable to her cousin – wished even to like him, but it went against the grain. She wondered if he had always been as hateful as this. "You can't expect to find much difference in me after three years' vegetation in Cornwall."

"But you've not been vegetating all the time," said Leonard, looking her over as coolly as if she had been a horse. "You have had a season in London. I saw your name in some of the gossiping journals, when I was last at Montreal. You wore a pink gown at Sandown. You were one of the prettiest girls at the Royal Fancy Fair. You wore white and tea roses at the Marlborough House garden party. You have been shining in high places, Mistress Belle. I hope it has not spoiled you for a country life."

"I love the country better than ever. I can vouch for that."

"And you have grown ever so much handsomer since I saw you last. I can vouch for that," answered her cousin with his free and easy air. "How d'ye do, Miss Bridgeman?" he said, holding out two fingers to his mother's companion, whose presence he had until this moment ignored.

Jessie remembered Thackeray's advice, and gave the squire one finger in return for his two.

"You're not altered," he said, looking at her with a steady stare. "You're the hard-wearing sort, warranted fast colour."

"Give Leonard some tea, Jessie," said Mrs. Tregonell. "I'm sure you would like some tea?" looking lovingly at the tall figure, the hard handsome face.

"I'd rather have a brandy-and-soda," answered Leonard carelessly, "but I don't mind a cup of tea presently, when I've been and had a look round the stables and kennels."

"Oh, Leonard! surely not yet?" said Mrs. Tregonell.

"Not yet! Why I've been in the house ten minutes, and you may suppose I want to know how my hunters have been getting on in the last three years, and whether the colt Nicholls bred is good for anything. I'll just take a hurried look round and be back again slick."

Mrs. Tregonell sighed and submitted. What could she do but submit to a son who had had his own way and followed his own pleasure ever since he could run alone; nay, had roared and protested loudly at every attack upon his liberty when he was still in the invertebrate jelly-fish stage of existence, carried at full-length in his nurse's arms, with his face turned to the ceiling, perpetually contemplating that flat white view of indoor existence which must needs have a depressing influence upon the meditations of infancy. The mothers of spirited youths have to fulfil their mission, which is for the most part submission.

"How well he looks!" she said, fondly, when the squire had hurried out of the room; "and how he has broadened and filled out."

Jessie Bridgeman thought within herself that he was quite broad enough before he went to America, and that this filling-out process had hardly improved him, but she held her peace.

"He looks very strong," said Christabel. "I could fancy Hercules just such a man. I wonder whether he has brought home any lions' hides, and if he will have one made into a shooting jacket. Dear, dearest Auntie," she went on, kneeling by the widow's chair, "I hope you are quite happy now. I hope your cup of bliss is full."

"I am very happy, sweet one; but the cup is not full yet. I hope it may be before I die – full to overflowing, and that I shall be able to say, 'Lord, let me depart in peace,' with a glad and grateful heart."

Leonard came back from the stables in a rather gloomy mood. His hunters did not look as well as he expected, and the new colt was weak and weedy. "Nicholls ought to have known better than to breed such a thing, but I suppose he'd say, like the man in Tristram Shandy, that it wasn't his fault," grumbled Mr. Tregonell, as he seated himself in front of the fire, with his feet on the brass fender. He wore clump-soled boots and a rough heather-mixture shooting suit, with knickerbockers and coarse stockings, and his whole aspect was "sporting." Christabel thought of some one else who had sat before the same hearth in the peaceful twilight hour, and wondered if the spiritual differences between these two men were as wide as those of manner and outward seeming. She recalled the exquisite refinement of that other man, the refinement of the man who is a born dandy, who, under the most adverse circumstances, compelled to wear old clothes and to defy fashion, would yet be always elegant and refined of aspect. She remembered that outward grace which seemed the natural indication of a poetical mind – a grace which never degenerated into effeminacy, a refinement which never approached the feeble or the lackadaisical.

Mr. Tregonell stretched his large limbs before the blaze, and made himself comfortable in the spacious plush-covered chair, throwing back his dark head upon a crewel anti-macassar, which was a work of art almost as worthy of notice as a water-colour painting, so exquisitely had the flowers been copied from Nature by the patient needlewoman.

"This is rather more comfortable than the Rockies," he said, as he stirred his tea, with big broad hands, scratched and scarred with hard service. "Mount Royal isn't half a bad place for two or three months in the year. But I suppose you mean to go to London after Easter? Now Belle has tasted blood she'll be all agog for a second plunge. Sandown will be uncommonly jolly this year."

"No, we are not going to town this season."

"Why not? Hard up – spent all the dollars?"

"No, but I don't think Belle would care about it."

"That's bosh. Come, now, Belle, you want to go of course," said Mr. Tregonell, turning to his cousin.

"No, Leonard, that kind of thing is all very well for once in a lifetime. I suppose every woman wants to know what the great world is like – but one season must resemble another, I should think: just like Boscastle Fair, which I used to fancy so lovely when I was a child, till I began to understand that it was exactly the same every year, and that it was just possible for one to outgrow the idea of its delightfulness."

"That isn't true about London though. There is always something new – new clubs, new theatres, new actors, new race-meetings, new horses, new people. I vote for May and June in Bolton Row."

"I don't think your dear mother's health would be equal to London, this year, Leonard," said Christabel, gravely.

She was angry with this beloved and only son for not having seen the change in his mother's appearance – for talking so loudly and so lightly, as if there were nothing to be thought of in life except his own pleasure.

"What, old lady, are you under the weather?" he asked, turning to survey his mother with a critical air.

This was his American manner of inquiring after her health. Mrs. Tregonell, when the meaning of the phrase had been explained to her, confessed herself an invalid, for whom the placid monotony of rural life was much safer than the dissipation of a London season.

"Oh, very well," said Leonard with a shrug; "then you and Belle must stop at home and take care of each other – and I can have six weeks in London en garçon. It won't be worth while to open the house in Bolton Row – I'd rather stop at an hotel."