"THE SILVER ANSWER RANG,—'NOT DEATH, BUT LOVE'"
Mrs. Tregonell and her niece were alone together in the library half-an-hour before afternoon tea, when the autumn light was just beginning to fade, and the autumn mist to rise ghostlike from the narrow little harbour of Boscastle. Miss Bridgeman had contrived that it should be so, just as she had contrived the visit to the seals that morning.
So Christabel, kneeling by her aunt's chair in the fire-glow, just as she had knelt upon the night before Mr. Hamleigh's coming, with faltering lips confessed her secret.
"My dearest, I have known it for ever so long," answered Mrs. Tregonell, gravely, laying her slender hand, sparkling with hereditary rings—never so gorgeous as the gems bought yesterday—on the girl's sunny hair. "I cannot say that I am glad. No, Christabel, I am selfish enough to be sorry, for Leonard's sake, that this should have happened. It was the dream of my life that you two should marry."
"Dear aunt, we could never have cared for each other—as lovers. We had been too much like brother and sister."
"Not too much for Leonard to love you, as I know he does. He was too confident—too secure of his power to win you. And I, his mother, have brought a rival here—a rival who has stolen your love from my son."
"Don't speak of him bitterly, dearest. Remember he is the son of the man you loved."
"But not my son! Leonard must always be first in my mind. I like Angus Hamleigh. He is all that his father was—yes—it is almost a painful likeness—painful to me, who loved and mourned his father. But I cannot help being sorry for Leonard."
"Leonard shall be my dear brother, always," said Christabel; yet even while she spoke it occurred to her that Leonard was not quite the kind of person to accept the fraternal position pleasantly, or, indeed, any secondary character whatever in the drama of life.
"And when are you to be married?" asked Mrs. Tregonell, looking at the fire.
"Oh, Auntie, do you suppose I have begun to think of that yet awhile?"
"Be sure that he has, if you have not! I hope he is not going to be in a hurry. You were only nineteen last birthday."
"I feel tremendously old," said Christabel. "We—we were talking a little about the future, this afternoon, in the billiard-room, and Angus talked about the wedding being at the beginning of the new year. But I told him I was sure you would not like that."
"No, indeed! I must have time to get reconciled to my loss," answered the dowager, with her arm drawn caressingly round Christabel's head, as the girl leaned against her aunt's chair. "What will this house seem to me without my daughter? Leonard far away, putting his life in peril for some foolish sport, and you living—Heaven knows where; for you would have to study your husband's taste, not mine, in the matter."
"Why shouldn't we live near you? Mr. Hamleigh might buy a place. There is generally something to be had if one watches one's opportunity."
"Do you think he would care to sink his fortune, or any part of it, in a Cornish estate, or to live amidst these wild hills?"
"He says he adores this place."
"He is in love, and would swear as much of a worse place. No, Belle, I am not foolish enough to suppose that you and Mr. Hamleigh are to settle for life at the end of the world. This house shall be your home whenever you choose to occupy it; and I hope you will come and stay with me sometimes, for I shall be very lonely without you."
"Dear Auntie, you know how I love you; you know how completely happy I have been with you—how impossible it is that anything can ever lessen my love."
"I believe that, dear girl; but it is rarely now-a-days that Ruth follows Naomi. Our modern Ruths go where their lovers go, and worship the same gods. But I don't want to be selfish or unjust, dear. I will try to rejoice in your happiness. And if Angus Hamleigh will only be a little patient; if he will give me time to grow used to the loss of you, he shall have you with your adopted mother's blessing."
"He shall not have me without it," said Christabel, looking up at her aunt with steadfast eyes.
She had said no word of that early doom of which Angus had told her. For worlds she could not have revealed that fatal truth. She had tried to put away every thought of it while she talked with her aunt. Angus had urged her beforehand to be perfectly frank, to tell Mrs. Tregonell what a mere wreck of a life it was which her lover offered her: but she had refused.
"Let that be our secret," she said, in her low sweet voice. "We want no one's pity. We will bear our sorrow together. And, oh, Angus! my faith is so strong. God, who has made me so happy by the gift of your love, will not take you from me. If—if your life is to be brief, mine will not be long."
"My dearest! if the gods will it so, we will know no parting, but be translated into some new kind of life together—a modern Baucis and Philemon. I think it would be wiser—better, to tell your aunt everything. But if you think otherwise——"
"I will tell her nothing, except that you love me, and that, with her consent, I am going to be your wife;" and with this determination Christabel had made her confession to her aunt.
The ice once broken, everybody reconciled herself or himself to the new aspect of affairs at Mount Royal. In less than a week it seemed the most natural thing in life that Angus and Christabel should be engaged. There was no marked change in their mode of life. They rambled upon the hills, and went boating on fine mornings, exploring that wonderful coast where the sea-birds congregate, on rocky isles and fortresses rising sheer out of the sea—in mighty caves, the very tradition whereof sounds terrible—caves that seem to have no ending, but to burrow into unknown, unexplored regions, towards the earth's centre.
With Major Bree for their skipper, and a brace of sturdy boatmen, Angus, Christabel, and Jessie Bridgeman spent several mild October mornings on the sea—now towards Cambeak, anon towards Trebarwith. Tintagel from the beach was infinitely grander than Tintagel in its landward aspect. "Here," as Norden says, was "that rocky and winding way up the steep sea-cliff, under which the sea-waves wallow, and so assail the foundation of the isle, as may astonish an unstable brain to consider the peril, for the least slip of the foot leads the whole body into the devouring sea."
To climb these perilous paths, to spring from rock to rock upon the slippery beach, landing on some long green slimy slab over which the sea washes, was Christabel's delight—and Mr. Hamleigh showed no lack of agility or daring. His health had improved marvellously in that invigorating air. Christabel, noteful of every change of hue in the beloved face, saw how much more healthy a tinge cheek and brow had taken since Mr. Hamleigh came to Mount Royal. He had no longer the exhausted look or the languid air of a man who had untimely squandered his stock of life and health. His eye had brightened—with no hectic light, but with the clear sunshine of a mind at ease. He was altered in every way for the better.
And now the autumn evenings were putting on a wintry air—the lights were twinkling early in the Alpine street of Boscastle. The little harbour was dark at five o'clock. Mr. Hamleigh had been nearly two months at Mount Royal, and he told himself that it was time for leave-taking. Fain would he have stayed on—stayed until that blissful morning when Christabel and he might kneel, side by side, before the altar in Minster Church, and be made one for ever—one in life and death—in a union as perfect as that which was symbolized by the plant that grew out of Tristan's tomb and went down into the grave of his mistress.
Unhappily, Mrs. Tregonell had made up her mind that her niece should not be married until she was twenty years of age—and Christabel's twentieth birthday would not arrive till the following Midsummer. To a lover's impatience so long an interval seemed an eternity; but Mrs. Tregonell had been very gracious in her consent to his betrothal, so he could not disobey her.
"Christabel has seen so little of the world," said the dowager. "I should like to give her one season in London before she marries—just to rub off a little of the rusticity."
"She is perfect—I would not have her changed for worlds," protested Angus.
"Nor I. But she ought to know a little more of society before she has to enter it as your wife. I don't think a London season will spoil her—and it will please me to chaperon her—though I have no doubt I shall seem rather an old-fashioned chaperon."
"That is just possible," said Angus, smiling, as he thought how closely his divinity was guarded. "The chaperons of the present day are very easy-going people—or, perhaps I ought to say, that the young ladies of the present day have a certain Yankee go-a-headishness which very much lightens the chaperon's responsibility. In point of fact, the London chaperon has dwindled into a formula, and no doubt she will soon be improved off the face of society."
"So much the worse for society," answered the lady of the old school. And then she continued, with a friendly air,—
"I dare say you know that I have a house in Bolton Row. I have not lived in it since my husband's death—but it is mine, and I can have it made comfortable between this and the early spring. I have been thinking that it would be better for you and Christabel to be married in London. The law business would be easier settled—and you may have relations and friends who would like to be at your wedding, yet who would hardly care to come to Boscastle."
"It is a long way," admitted Angus. "And people are so inconsistent. They think nothing of going to the Engadine, yet grumble consumedly at a journey of a dozen hours in their native land—as if England were not worth the exertion."
"Then I think we are agreed that London is the best place for the wedding," said Mrs. Tregonell.
"I am perfectly content. But if you suggested Timbuctoo I should be just as happy."
This being settled, Mrs. Tregonell wrote at once to her agent, with instructions to set the old house in Bolton Row in order for the season immediately after Easter, and Christabel and her lover had to reconcile their minds to the idea of a long dreary winter of severance.
Miss Courtenay had grown curiously grave and thoughtful since her engagement—a change which Jessie, who watched her closely, observed with some surprise. It seemed as if she had passed from girlhood into womanhood in the hour in which she pledged herself to Angus Hamleigh. She had for ever done with the thoughtless gaiety of youth that knows not care. She had taken upon herself the burden of an anxious, self-sacrificing love. To no one had she spoken of her lover's precarious hold upon life; but the thought of by how frail a tenure she held her happiness was ever present with her. "How can I be good enough to him?—how can I do enough to make his life happy?" she thought, "when it may be for so short a time."
With this ever-present consciousness of a fatal future, went the desire to make her lover forget his doom, and the ardent hope that the sentence might be revoked—that the doom pronounced by human judgment might yet be reversed. Indeed, Angus had himself begun to make light of his malady. Who could tell that the famous physician was not a false prophet, after all? The same dire announcement of untimely death had been made to Leigh Hunt, who contrived somehow—not always in the smoothest waters—to steer his frail bark into the haven of old age. Angus spoke of this, hopefully, to Christabel, as they loitered within the roofless crumbling walls of the ancient oratory above St. Nectan's Kieve, one sunny November morning, Miss Bridgeman rambling on the crest of the hill, with the black sheep-dog, Randie, under the polite fiction of blackberry hunting, among hedges which had long been shorn of their last berry, though the freshness of the lichens and ferns still lingered in this sheltered nook.
"Yes, I know that cruel doctor was mistaken!" said Christabel, her lips quivering a little, her eyes wide and grave, but tearless, as they gazed at her lover. "I know it, I know it!"
"I know that I am twice as strong and well as I was when he saw me," answered Angus; "you have worked as great a miracle for me as ever was wrought at the grave of St. Mertheriana in Minster Churchyard. You have made me happy, and what can cure a man better than perfect bliss. But, oh, my darling! what is to become of me when I leave you, when I return to the beaten ways of London life, and, looking back at these delicious days, ask myself if this sweet life with you is not some dream which I have dreamed, and which can never come again?"
"You will not think anything of the kind," said Christabel, with a pretty little air of authority which charmed him—as all her looks and ways charmed him. "You know that I am sober reality, and that our lives are to be spent together. And you are not going back to London—at least not to stop there. You are going to the South of France."
"Indeed? this is the first I have heard of any such intention."
"Did not that doctor say you were to winter in the South?"
"He did. But I thought we had agreed to despise that doctor?"
"We will despise him, yet be warned by him. Why should any one, who has liberty and plenty of money, spend his winter in a smoky city, where the fog blinds and stifles him, and the frost pinches him, and the damp makes him miserable, when he can have blue skies, and sunshine and flowers, and ever so much brighter stars, a few hundred miles away? We are bound to obey each other, are we not, Angus? Is not that among our marriage vows?"
"I believe there is something about obedience—on the lady's side—but I waive that technicality. I am prepared to become an awful example of a henpecked husband. If you say I am to go southward, with the swallows, I will go—yea, verily, to Algeria or Tunis, if you insist: though I would rather be on the Riviera, whence a telegram, with the single word 'Come' would bring me to your side in forty-eight hours."
"Yes, you will go to that lovely land on the shores of the Mediterranean, and there you will be very careful of your health, so that when we meet in London, after Easter, your every look will gainsay that pitiless doctor. Will you do this, for my sake, Angus?" she pleaded, lovingly, nestling at his side, as they stood together on a narrow path that wound down to the entrance of the Kieve. They could hear the rush of the waterfall in the deep green hollow below them, and the faint flutter of loosely hanging leaves, stirred lightly by the light wind, and far away the joyous bark of a sheep-dog. No human voices, save their own, disturbed the autumnal stillness.
"This, and much more, would I do to please you, love. Indeed, if I am not to be here, I might just as well be in the South; nay, much better than in London, or Paris, both of which cities I know by heart. But don't you think we could make a compromise, and that I might spend the winter at Torquay, running over to Mount Royal for a few days occasionally?"
"No; Torquay will not do, delightful as it would be to have you so near. I have been reading about the climate in the South of France, and I am sure, if you are careful, a winter there will do you worlds of good. Next year——"
"Next year we can go there together, and you will take care of me. Was that what you were going to say, Belle?"
"Something like that."
"Yes" he said, slowly, after a thoughtful pause, "I shall be glad to be away from London, and all old associations. My past life is a worthless husk that I have done with for ever."