"A woman's wit is like dancing in fetters," she complained sometimes: "there are so many things one must not say!"
Christabel was more than content that her acquaintance should envy her. She wished to be thought happy. She had never for a moment posed as victim or martyr. In good faith, and with steady purpose of well-doing, she had taken upon herself the duties of a wife, and she meant to fulfil them to the uttermost.
"There shall be no shortcoming on my side," she said to herself. "If we cannot live peaceably and happily together it shall not be my fault. If Leonard will not let me respect him as a husband, I can still honour him as my boy's father."
In these days of fashionable agnosticism and hysterical devotion—when there is hardly any middle path between life spent in church and church-work and the open avowal of unbelief—something must be said in favour of that old-fashioned sober religious feeling which enabled Christabel Tregonell to walk steadfastly along the difficult way, her mind possessed with the ever-present belief in a Righteous Judge who saw all her acts and knew all her thoughts.
She studied her husband's pleasure in all things—yielding to him upon every point in which principle was not at stake. The house was filled with friends of his choosing—not one among those guests, in spite of their surface pleasantness, being congenial to a mind so simple and unworldly, so straight and thorough, as that of Christabel Tregonell. Without Jessie Bridgeman, Mrs. Tregonell would have been companionless in a house full of people. The vivacious widow, the slangy young ladies, with a marked taste for billiards and shooting parties, and an undisguised preference for masculine society, thought their hostess behind the age. It was obvious that she was better informed than they, had been more carefully educated, played better, sang better, was more elegant and refined in every thought, and look, and gesture; but, in spite of all these advantages, or perhaps on account of them, she was "slow:" not an easy person to get on with. Her gowns were simply perfect—but she had no chic. Nous autres, with ever so much less money to spend on our toilettes, look more striking—stand out better from the ruck. An artificial rose here—a rag of old lace—a fan—a vivid ribbon in the mazes of our hair—and the effect catches every eye—while poor Mrs. Tregonell, with her lovely complexion, and a gown that is obviously Parisian, is comparatively nowhere.
This is what the Miss Vandeleurs—old campaigners—told each other as they dressed for dinner, on the second day after their arrival at Mount Royal. Captain Vandeleur—otherwise Poker Vandeleur, from a supposed natural genius for that intellectual game—was Mr. Tregonell's old friend and travelling companion. They had shared a good deal of sport, and not a little hardship in the Rockies—had fished, and shot, and toboggined in Canada—had played euchre in San Francisco, and monte in Mexico—and, in a word, were bound together by memories and tastes in common. Captain Vandeleur, like Byron's Corsair, had one virtue amidst many shortcomings. He was an affectionate brother, always glad to do a good turn to his sisters—who lived with a shabby old half-pay father, in one of the shabbiest streets in the debatable land between Pimlico and Chelsea—by courtesy, South Belgravia. Captain Vandeleur rarely had it in his power to do much for his sisters himself—a five-pound note at Christmas or a bonnet at Midsummer was perhaps the furthest stretch of his personal benevolence—but he was piously fraternal in his readiness to victimize his dearest friend for the benefit of Dopsy and Mopsy—these being the poetic pet names devised to mitigate the dignity of the baptismal Adolphine and Margaret. When Jack Vandeleur had a pigeon to pluck, he always contrived that Dopsy and Mopsy should get a few of the feathers. He did not take his friends home to the shabby little ten-roomed house in South Belgravia—such a nest would have too obviously indicated his affinity to the hawk tribe—but he devised some means of bringing Mopsy and Dopsy and his married friends together. A box at the Opera—stalls for the last burlesque—a drag for Epsom or Ascot—or even afternoon tea at Hurlingham—and the thing was done. The Miss Vandeleurs never failed to improve the occasion. They had a genius for making their little wants known, and getting them supplied. The number of their gloves—the only shop in London at which wearable gloves could be bought—how naïvely these favourite themes for girlish converse dropped from their cherry lips. Sunshades, fans, lace, flowers, perfumery—all these luxuries of the toilet were for the most part supplied to Dopsy and Mopsy from this fortuitous source.
Some pigeons lent themselves more kindly to the plucking than others; and the Miss Vandeleurs had long ago discovered that it was not the wealthiest men who were most lavish. Given a gentleman with a settled estate of fourteen thousand a year, and the probabilities were that he would not rise above a dozen gloves or a couple of bouquets. It was the simple youth who had just come into five or ten thousand, and had nothing but the workhouse ahead of him when that was gone, who spent his money most freely. It is only the man who is steadfastly intent upon ruining himself, who ever quite comes up to the feminine idea of generosity. The spendthrift, during his brief season of fortune, leads a charmed life. For him it is hardly a question whether gloves cost five or ten shillings a pair—whether stephanotis is in or out of season. He offers his tribute to beauty without any base scruples of economy. What does it matter to him whether ruin comes a few months earlier by reason of this lavish liberality, seeing that the ultimate result is inevitable.
With the Miss Vandeleurs Leonard Tregonell ranked as an old friend. They had met him at theatres and races; they had been invited to little dinners at which he was host. Jack Vandeleur had a special genius for ordering a dinner, and for acting as guide to a man who liked dining in the highways and byways of London; it being an understood thing that Captain Vandeleur's professional position as counsellor exempted him from any share in the reckoning. Under his fraternal protection, Dopsy and Mopsy had dined snugly in all manner of foreign restaurants, and had eaten and drunk their fill at Mr. Tregonell's expense. They were both gourmands, and they were not ashamed of enjoying the pleasures of the table. It seemed to them that the class of men who could not endure to see a woman eat had departed with Byron, and Bulwer, and D'Orsay, and De Musset. A new race has arisen, which likes a "jolly" girl who can appreciate a recherché dinner, and knows the difference between good and bad wine.
Mr. Tregonell did not yield himself up a victim to the fascinations of either Dopsy or Mopsy. He had seen too much of that class of beauty during his London experiences, to be caught by the auricomous tangles of one or the flaxen fringe of the other. He talked of them to their brother as nice girls, with no nonsense about them; he gave them gloves, and dinners, and stalls for "Madame Angot;" but his appreciation took no higher form.
"It would have been a fine thing for one of you if you could have hooked him," said their brother, as he smoked a final pipe, between midnight and morning, in the untidy little drawing-room in South Belgravia, after an evening with Chaumont. "He's a heavy swell in Cornwall, I can tell you. Plenty of money—fine old place. But there's a girl down there he's sweet upon—a cousin. He's very close; but I caught him kissing and crying over her photograph one night in the Rockies—when our rations had run short, and two of our horses gone dead, and our best guide was down with ague, and there was an idea that we'd lost our track, and should never see England again. That's the only time I ever saw Tregonell sentimental. 'I'm not afraid of death,' he said, 'but I should like to live to see home again, for her sake;' and he showed me the photo—a sweet, fresh, young face, smiling at us with a look of home and home-affection, and we poor beggars not knowing if we should ever see a woman's face again."