"LOVE! THOU ART LEADING ME FROM WINTRY COLD."
After this came two or three dull and showery days, which afforded no opportunity for long excursions or ramblings of any kind. It was only during such rambles that Mr. Hamleigh and Miss Courtenay ever found themselves alone. Mrs. Tregonell's ideas of propriety were of the old-fashioned school, and when her niece was not under her own wing, she expected Miss Bridgeman to perform all the duties of a duenna—in no wise suspecting how very loosely her instructions upon this point were being carried out. At Mount Royal there was no possibility of confidential talk between Angus and Christabel. If they were in the drawing-room or library, Mrs. Tregonell was with them; if they played billiards, Miss Bridgeman was told off to mark for them; if they went for a 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?—
"Let her have her youth again—
Let her be as she was then!
Let her have her proud dark eyes,
And her petulant, quick replies:
Let her sweep her dazzling hand,
With its gesture of command,
And shake back her raven hair
With the old imperious air.
I have an idea that the Hibernian Iseult must have been a tartar, though Matthew Arnold glosses over her peccadilloes so pleasantly. I wonder whether she had a strong brogue, and a sneaking fondness for usquebaugh."
"Please, don't make a joke of her," pleaded Christabel; "she is very real to me. I see her as a lovely lady—tall and royal-looking, dressed in long robes of flowered silk, fringed with gold. And Tristan——"
"What of Tristan? Is his image as clear in your mind? How do you depict the doomed knight, born to suffer and to sin, destined to sorrow from the time of his forest-birth—motherless, beset with enemies, consumed by hopeless passion. I hope you feel sorry for Tristan?"
"Who could help being sorry for him?"
"Albeit he was a sinner? I assure you, in the old romance which you have not read—which you would hardly care to read—neither Tristan nor Iseult are spotless."
"I have never thought of their wrong-doing. Their fate was so sad, and they loved each other so truly."
"And, again, you can believe, perhaps—you who are so innocent and confiding—that a man who has sinned may forsake the old evil ways and lead a good life, until every stain of that bygone sin is purified. You can believe, as the Greeks believed, in atonement and purification."
"I believe, as I hope all Christians do, that repentance can wash away sin."
"Even the accusing memory of wrong-doing, and make a man's soul white and fair again? That is a beautiful creed."
"I think the Gospel gives us warrant for believing as much—not as some of the Dissenters teach, that one effort of faith, an hour of prayer and ejaculation, can transform a murderer into a saint; but that earnest, sustained regret for wrong-doing, and a steady determination to live a better life——"
"Yes—that is real repentance," exclaimed Angus, interrupting her. "Common sense, even without Gospel light, tells one that it must be good. Christabel—may I call you Christabel?—just for this one isolated half-hour of life—here in Pentargon Bay? You shall be Miss Courtenay directly we leave this spot."
"Call me what you please. I don't think it matters very much," faltered Christabel, blushing deeply.
"But it makes all the difference to me. Christabel, I can't tell you how sweet it is to me just to pronounce your name. If—if—I could call you by that name always, or by a name still nearer and dearer. But you must judge. Give me half-an-hour—half-an-hour of heartfelt earnest truth on my side, and pitying patience on yours. Christabel, my past life has not been what a stainless Christian would call a good life. I have not been so bad as Tristan. I have violated no sacred charge—betrayed no kinsman. I suppose I have been hardly worse than the common run of young men, who have the means of leading an utterly useless life. I have lived selfishly, unthinkingly—caring for my own pleasure—with little thought of anything that was to come afterwards, either on earth or in heaven. But all that is past and done with. My wild oats are sown; I have had enough of youth and folly. When I came to Cornwall the other day I thought that I was on the threshold of middle age, and that middle age could give me nothing but a few years of pain and weariness. But—behold a miracle!—you have given me back my youth—youth and hope, and a desire for length of days, and a passionate yearning to lead a new, bright, stainless life. You have done all this, Christabel. I love you as I never thought it possible to love! I believe in you as I never before believed in woman—and yet—and yet——"
He paused, with a long heartbroken sigh, clasped the girl's hand, which had been straying idly among the faded heather, and pressed it to his lips.
"And yet I dare not ask you to be my wife. Shall I tell you why?"
"Yes, tell me," she faltered, her cheeks deadly pale, her lowered eyelids heavy with tears.
"I told you I was like Achilles, doomed to an early death. You remember with what pathetic tenderness Thetis speaks of her son,
'Few years are thine, and not a lengthened term;
At once to early death and sorrows doomed
Beyond the lot of man!'
The Fates have spoken about me quite as plainly as ever the sea-nymph foretold the doom of her son. He was given the choice of length of days or glory, and he deemed fame better than long life. But my life has been as inglorious as it must be brief. Three months ago, one of the wisest of physicians pronounced my doom. The hereditary malady which for the last fifty years has been the curse of my family shows itself by the clearest indications in my case. I could have told the doctor this just as well as he told me; but it is best to have official information. I may die before I am a year older; I may crawl on for the next ten years—a fragile hot-house plant, sent to winter under southern skies."
"And you may recover, and be strong and well again!" cried Christabel, in a voice choked with sobs. She made no pretence of hiding her pity or her love. "Who can tell? God is so good. What prayer will He not grant us if we only believe in Him? Faith will remove mountains."
"I have never seen it done," said Angus. "I'm afraid that no effort of faith in this degenerate age will give a man a new lung. No, Christabel, there is no chance of long life for me. If hope—if love could give length of days, my new hopes, born of you—my new love felt for you, might work that miracle. But I am the child of my century: I only believe in the possible. And knowing that my years are so few, and that during that poor remnant of life I may be a chronic invalid, how can I—how dare I be so selfish as to ask any girl—young, fresh, and bright, with all the joys of life untasted—to be the companion of my decline? The better she loved me, the sadder would be her life—the keener would be the anguish of watching my decay!"
"But it would be a life spent with you, her days would be devoted to you; if she really loved you, she would not hesitate," pursued Christabel, her hands clasped passionately, tears streaming down her pale cheeks, for this moment to her was the supreme crisis of fate. "She would be unhappy, but there would be sweetness even in her sorrow if she could believe that she was a comfort to you!"
"Christabel, don't tempt me! Ah, my darling! you don't know how selfish a man's love is, how sweet it would be to me to snatch such bliss, even on the brink of the dark gulf—on the threshold of the eternal night, the eternal silence! Consider what you would take upon yourself—you who perhaps have never known what sickness means—have never seen the horrors of mortal disease."
"Yes, I have sat with some of our poor people when they were dying. I have seen how painful disease is, how cruel Nature seems, and how hard it is for a poor creature racked with pain to believe in God's beneficence; but even then there has been comfort in being able to help them and cheer them a little. I have thought more of that than of the actual misery of the scene."
"But to give all your young life—all your days and thoughts and hopes to a doomed man! Think of that, Christabel! When you are happy with him to see Death grinning behind his shoulder—to watch that spectacle which is of all Nature's miseries the most awful—the slow decay of human life—a man dying by inches—not death, but dissolution! If my malady were heart-disease, and you knew that at some moment—undreamt of—unlooked for—death would come, swift as an arrow from Hecate's bow, brief, with no loathsome or revolting detail—then I might say, 'Let us spend my remnant of life together.' But consumption, you cannot tell what a painful ending that is! Poets and novelists have described it as a kind of euthanasia; but the poetical mind is rarely strong in scientific knowledge. I want you to understand all the horror of a life spent with a chronic sufferer, about whom the cleverest physician in London has made up his mind."
"Answer me one question," said Christabel, drying her tears, and trying to steady her voice. "Would your life be any happier if we were together—till the end?"
"Happier? It would be a life spent in Paradise. Pain and sickness could hardly touch me with their sting."
"Then let me be your wife."
"Christabel, are you in earnest? have you considered?"
"I consider nothing, except that it may be in my power to make your life a little happier than it would be without me. I want only to be sure of that. If the doom were more dreadful than it is—if there were but a few short months of life left for you, I would ask you to let me share them; I would ask to nurse you and watch you in sickness. There would be no other fate on earth so full of sweetness for me. Yes, even with death and everlasting mourning waiting for me at the end."
"My Christabel, my beloved! my angel, my comforter! I begin to believe in miracles. I almost feel as if you could give me length of years, as well as bliss beyond all thought or hope of mine. Christabel, Christabel, God forgive me if I am asking you to wed sorrow; but you have made this hour of my life an unspeakable ecstasy. Yet I will not take you quite at your word, love. You shall have time to consider what you are going to do—time to talk to your aunt."
"I want no time for consideration. I will be guided by no one. I think God meant me to love you—and cure you."
"I will believe anything you say; yes, even if you promise me a new lung. God bless you, my beloved! You belong to those whom He does everlastingly bless, who are so angelic upon this earth that they teach us to believe in heaven. My Christabel, my own! I promised to call you Miss Courtenay when we left Pentargon, but I suppose now you are to be Christabel for the rest of my life!"
"Yes, always."
"And all this time we have not seen a single seal," exclaimed Angus, gaily.
His delicate features were radiant with happiness. Who could at such a moment remember death and doom? All painful words which need be said had been spoken.