Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  He watched the landscape with a critical eye, prepared for disappointment and disillusion. First a country road between tall ragged hedges and steep banks, a road where every now and then the branches of the trees hung low over the carriage and threatened to knock the coachman’s hat off. Then they came out upon the wide waste of moorland, a thousand feet above the sea level, and Mr. Hamleigh, acclimatized to the atmosphere of club-houses, buttoned his overcoat, drew the black fur rug closer about him, and shivered a little as the keen breath of the Atlantic, sweeping over far-reaching tracts of hill and heather, blew round him. Far and wide as his gaze could reach, he saw no sign of human habitation. Was the land utterly forsaken? No; a little farther on they passed a hamlet so insignificant, so isolated, that it seemed rather as if half a dozen cottages had dropped from the sky than that so lonely a settlement could be the result of deliberate human inclination. Never in Scotland or Ireland had Mr. Hamleigh seen a more barren landscape or a poorer soil; yet those wild wastes of heath, those distant tors were passing beautiful, and the air he breathed was more inspiring and exhilarating than the atmosphere of any vaunted health-resort which he had ever visited.

  “I think I might live to middle age if I were to pitch my tent on this Cornish plateau,” he thought; “but, then, there are so many things in this life that are worth more than mere length of days.”

  He asked the names of the hamlets they passed. This lonely church, dedicated to St. David — whence, oh! whence came the congregation — belonged to the parish of Davidstowe; and here there was a holy well; and here a Vicarage; and there — oh! crowning evidence of civilization — a post-office; and there a farmhouse; and that was the end of Davidstowe. A little later they came to cross roads, and the coachman touched his hat, and said, “This is Victoria,” as if he were naming a town or settlement of some kind. Mr. Hamleigh looked about him, and beheld a low-roofed cottage, which he assumed to be some kind of public-house, possibly capable of supplying beer and tobacco; but other vestige of human habitation there was none. He leant back in the carriage, looking across the hills, and saying to himself, “Why, Victoria?” Was that unpretentious and somewhat dilapidated hostelry the Victoria Hotel? or the Victoria Arms? or was Royalty’s honoured name given, in an arbitrary manner, to the cross roads and the granite finger-post? He never knew. The coachman said shortly, “Victoria,” and as “Victoria” he ever after heard that spot described. And now the journey was all downhill. They drove downward and downward, until Mr. Hamleigh began to feel as if they were travelling towards the centre of the earth — as if they had got altogether below the outer crust of this globe, and must be gradually nearing the unknown gulfs beneath. Yet, by some geographical mystery, when they turned out of the high road and went in at a lodge gate, and drove gently upward along an avenue of elms, in whose rugged tops the rooks were screaming, Mr. Hamleigh found that he was still high above the undulating edges of the cliffs that overtopped the Atlantic, while the great waste of waters lay far below, golden with the last rays of the setting sun.

  They drove, by a gentle ascent, to the stone porch of Mount Royal, and here Mrs. Tregonell stood, facing the sunset, with an Indian shawl wrapped round her, waiting for her guest.

  “I heard the carriage, Mr. Hamleigh,” she said, as Angus alighted; “I hope you do not think me too impatient to see what change twelve years have made in you?”

  “I’m afraid they have not been particularly advantageous to me,” he answered, lightly, as they shook hands. “How good of you to receive me on the threshold! and what a delightful place you have here! Before I got to Launceston, I began to be afraid that Cornwall was commonplace — and now I am enchanted with it. Your moors and hills are like fairy-land to me!”

  “It is a world of our own, and we are very fond of it,” said the widow; “I shall be sorry if ever a railway makes Boscastle open to everybody.”

  “And what a noble old house!” exclaimed Angus, as he followed his hostess across the oak-panelled hall, with its wide shallow staircase, curiously carved balustrades, and lantern roof. “Are you quite alone here?”

  “Oh, no; I have my niece, and a young lady who is a companion to both of us.”

  Angus Hamleigh shuddered.

  Three women! He was to exist for a fortnight in a house with three solitary females. A niece and a companion! The niece, rustic and gawky; the companion sour and frumpish. He began, hurriedly, to cast about in his mind for a convenient friend, to whom he could telegraph to send him a telegram, summoning him back to London on urgent business. He was still meditating this, when the butler opened the door of a spacious room, lined from floor to ceiling with books, and he followed Mrs. Tregonell in, and found himself in the bosom of the family. The simple picture of home-comfort, of restfulness and domestic peace, which met his curious gaze as he entered, pleased him better than anything he had seen of late. Club life — with its too studious indulgence of man’s native selfishness and love of ease — fashionable life, with its insatiable craving for that latter-day form of display which calls itself Culture, Art, or Beauty — had afforded him no vision so enchanting as the wide hearth and high chimney of this sober, book-lined room, with the fair and girlish form kneeling in front of the old dogstove, framed in the glaring light of the fire.

  The tea-table had been wheeled near the hearth, and Miss Bridgeman sat before the bright red tea-tray, and old brass kettle, ready to administer to the wants of the traveller, who would be hardly human if he did not thirst for a cup of tea after driving across the moor. Christabel knelt in front of the fire, worshipping, and being worshipped by, a sleek black-and-white sheep-dog, native to the soil, and of a rare intelligence — a creature by no means approaching the Scotch colley in physical beauty, but of a fond and faithful nature, born to be the friend of man. As Christabel rose and turned to greet the stranger, Mr. Hamleigh was agreeably reminded of an old picture — a Lely or a Kneller, perhaps. This was not in any wise the rustic image which had flashed across his mind at the mention of Mrs. Tregonell’s niece. He had expected to see a bouncing, countryfied maiden — rosy, buxom, the picture of commonplace health and vigour. The girl he saw was nearer akin to the lily than the rose — tall, slender, dazzlingly fair — not fragile or sickly in anywise — for the erect figure was finely moulded, the swan-like throat was round and full. He was prepared for the florid beauty of a milkmaid, and he found himself face to face with the elegance of an ideal duchess, the picturesque loveliness of an old Venetian portrait.

  Christabel’s dark brown velvet gown and square point lace collar, the bright hair falling in shadowy curls over her forehead, and rolled into a loose knot at the back of her head, sinned in no wise against Mr. Hamleigh’s notions of good taste. There was a picturesqueness about the style which indicated that Miss Courtenay belonged to that advanced section of womankind which takes its ideas less from modern fashion-plates than from old pictures. So long as her archaism went no further back than Vandyke or Moroni he would admire and approve; but he shuddered at the thought that to-morrow she might burst upon him in a mediæval morning-gown, with high-shouldered sleeves, a ruff, and a satchel. The picturesque idea was good, within limits; but one never knew how far it might go.

  There was nothing picturesque about the lady sitting before the tea-tray, who looked up brightly, and gave him a gracious bend of her small neat head, in acknowledgment of Mrs. Tregonell’s introduction—”Mr. Hamleigh, Miss Bridgeman!” This was the companion — and the companion was plain: not unpleasantly plain, not in any manner repulsive, but a lady about whose looks there could be hardly any compromise. Her complexion was of a sallow darkness, unrelieved by any glow of colour; her eyes were grey, acute, honest, friendly, but not beautiful; her nose was sharp and pointed — not at all a bad nose; but there was a hardness about nose and mouth and chin, as of features cut out of bone with a very sharp knife. Her teeth were good, and in a lovelier mouth might have been the object of much admiration. Her hair was of that nondescript monotonous brown wh
ich has been unkindly called bottle-green, but it was arranged with admirable neatness, and offended less than many a tangled pate, upon whose locks of spurious gold the owner has wasted much time and money. There was nothing unpardonable in Miss Bridgeman’s plainness, as Angus Hamleigh said of her later. Her small figure was neatly made, and her dark-grey gown fitted to perfection.

  “I hope you like the little bit of Cornwall that you have seen this afternoon, Mr. Hamleigh,” said Christabel, seating herself in a low chair in the shadow of the tall chimney-piece, fenced in by her aunt’s larger chair.

  “I am enraptured with it! I came here with the desire to be intensely Cornish. I am prepared to believe in witches — warlocks — —”

  “We have no warlocks,” said Christabel. “They belong to the North.”

  “Well, then, wise women — wicked young men who play football on Sunday, and get themselves turned into granite — rocking stones — magic wells — Druids — and King Arthur. I believe the principal point is to be open to conviction about Arthur. Now, I am prepared to swallow everything — his castle — the river where his crown was found after the fight — was it his crown, by-the-by, or somebody else’s? which he found — his hair-brushes — his boots — anything you please to show me.”

  “We will show you his quoit to-morrow, on the road to Tintagel,” said Miss Bridgeman. “I don’t think you would like to swallow that actually. He hurled it from Tintagel to Trevalga in one of his sportive moods. We shall be able to give you plenty of amusement if you are a good walker, and are fond of hills.”

  “I adore them in the abstract, contemplated from one’s windows, or in a picture; but there is an incompatibility between the human anatomy and a road set on end, like a ladder, which I have never yet overcome. Apart from the outside question of my legs — which are obvious failures when tested by an angle of forty-five degrees — I’m afraid my internal machinery is not quite so tough as it ought to be for a thorough enjoyment of mountaineering.”

  Mrs. Tregonell sighed, ever so faintly, in the twilight. She was thinking of her first lover, and how that fragility, which meant early death, had showed itself in his inability to enjoy the moorland walks which were the delight of her girlhood.

  “The natural result of bad habits,” said Miss Bridgeman, briskly. “How can you expect to be strong or active, when I dare say you have spent the better part of your life in hansom cabs and express trains! I don’t mean to be impertinent, but I know that is the general way with gentlemen out of the shooting and hunting season.”

  “And as I am no sportsman, I am a somewhat exaggerated example of the vice of laziness fostered by congenial circumstances, acting on a lymphatic temperament. If you write books, as I believe most ladies do now-a-days, you should put me into one of them, as an awful warning.”

  “I don’t write books, and, if I did, I would not flatter your vanity by making you my model sinner,” retorted Jessie; “but I’ll do something better for you, if Christabel will help me. I’ll reform you.”

  “A million thanks for the mere thought! I hope the process will be pleasant.”

  “I hope so, too. We shall begin by walking you off your legs.”

  “They are so indifferent as a means of locomotion that I could very well afford to lose them, if you could hold out any hope of my getting a better pair.”

  “A week hence, if you submit to my treatment, you will be as active as the chamois hunter in ‘Manfred.’”

  “Enchanting — always provided that you and Miss Courtenay will follow the chase with me.”

  “Depend upon it, we shall not trust you to take your walks alone, unless you have a pedometer which will bear witness to the distance you have done, and which you will be content to submit to our inspection on your return,” replied Jessie, sternly.

  “I am afraid you are a terribly severe high priestess of this new form of culture,” said Mr. Hamleigh, looking up from his teacup with a lazy smile, “almost as bad as the Dweller on the Threshold, in Bulwer’s ‘Zanoni.’”

  “There is a dweller on the threshold of every science and every admirable mode of life, and his name is Idleness,” answered Miss Bridgeman.

  “The vis inertiæ, the force of letting things alone,” said Angus; “yes, that is a tremendous power, nobly exemplified by vestries and boards of works — to say nothing of Cabinets, Bishops, and the High Court of Chancery! I delight in that verse of Scripture, ‘Their strength is to sit still.’”

  “There shall be very little sitting still for you if you submit yourself to Christabel and me,” replied Miss Bridgeman.

  “I have never tried the water-cure — the descriptions I have heard from adepts have been too repellent; but I have an idea that this system of yours must be rather worse than hydropathy,” said Angus, musingly — evidently very much entertained at the way in which Miss Bridgeman had taken him in hand.

  “I was not going to let him pose after Lamartine’s poëte mourant, just because his father died of lung disease,” said Jessie, ten minutes afterwards, when the warning gong had sounded, and Mr. Hamleigh had gone to his room to dress for dinner, and the two young women were whispering together before the fire, while Mrs. Tregonell indulged in a placid doze.

  “Do you think he is consumptive, like his father?” asked Christabel, with a compassionate look; “he has a very delicate appearance.”

  “Hollow-cheeked, and prematurely old, like a man who has lived on tobacco and brandy-and-soda, and has spent his nights in club-house card-rooms.”

  “We have no right to suppose that,” said Christabel, “since we know really nothing about him.”

  “Major Bree told me he has lived a racketty life, and that if he were not to pull up very soon he would be ruined both in health and fortune.”

  “What can the Major know about him?” exclaimed Christabel, contemptuously.

  This Major Bree was a great friend of Christabel’s; but there are times when one’s nearest and dearest are too provoking for endurances.

  “Major Bree has been buried alive in Cornwall for the last twenty years. He is at least a quarter of a century behind the age,” she said, impatiently.

  “He spent a fortnight in London the year before last,” said Jessie; “it was then that he heard such a bad account of Mr. Hamleigh.”

  “Did he go about to clubs and places making inquiries, like a private detective?” said Christabel, still contemptuous; “I hate such fetching and carrying!”

  “Here he comes to answer for himself,” replied Jessie, as the door opened, and a servant announced Major Bree.

  Mrs. Tregonell started from her slumbers at the opening of the door, and rose to greet her guest. He was a very frequent visitor, so frequent that he might be said to live at Mount Royal, although his nominal abode was a cottage on the outskirts of Boscastle — a stone cottage on the crest of a steep hill-side, with a delightful little garden, perched, as it were, on the edge of a verdant abyss. He was tall, stout, elderly, grey, and florid — altogether a comfortable-looking man, clean-shaved, save for a thin grey moustache with the genuine cavalry droop, iron grey eyebrows, which looked like a repetition of the moustache on a somewhat smaller scale, keen grey eyes, a pleasant smile, and a well set-up figure. He dressed well, with a sobriety becoming his years, and was always the pink of neatness. A man welcome everywhere, on account of an inborn pleasantness, which prompted him always to say and do the right thing; but most of all welcome at Mount Royal, as a first cousin of the late Squire’s, and Mrs. Tregonell’s guide, philosopher, and friend in all matters relating to the outside world, of which, despite his twenty years’ hybernation at Boscastle, the widow supposed him to be an acute observer and an infallible judge. Was he not one of the few inhabitants of that western village who took in the Times newspaper?

  “Well!” exclaimed Major Bree, addressing himself generally to the three ladies, “he has come — what do you think of him?”

  “He is painfully like his poor father,” said Mrs. Tregonel
l.

  “He has a most interesting face and winning manner, and I’m afraid we shall all get ridiculously fond of him,” said Miss Bridgeman, decisively.

  Christabel said nothing. She knelt on the hearthrug, playing with Randie, the black-and-white sheep-dog.

  “And what have you to say about him, Christabel?” asked the Major.

  “Nothing. I have not had time to form an opinion,” replied the girl; and then lifting her clear blue eyes to the Major’s friendly face, she said, gravely, “but I think, Uncle Oliver, it was very unkind and unfair of you to prejudice Jessie against him before he came here.”

  “Unkind! — unfair! Here’s a shower of abuse! I prejudice! Oh! I remember. Mrs. Tregonell asked me what people thought of him in London, and I was obliged to acknowledge that his reputation was — well — no better than that of the majority of young men who have more money than common sense. But that was two years ago — Nous avons changé tout cela!”

  “If he was wicked then, he must be wicked now,” said Christabel.

  “Wicked is a monstrously strong word!” said the Major. “Besides, that does not follow. A man may have a few wild oats to sow, and yet become a very estimable person afterwards. Miss Bridgeman is tremendously sharp — she’ll be able to find out all about Mr. Hamleigh from personal observation before he has been here a week. I defy him to hide his weak points from her.”

  “What is the use of being plain and insignificant if one has not some advantage over one’s superior fellow-creatures?” asked Jessie.

  “Miss Bridgeman has too much expression to be plain, and she is far too clever to be insignificant,” said Major Bree, with a stately bow. He always put on a stately manner when he addressed himself to Jessie Bridgeman, and treated her in all things with as much respect as if she had been a queen. He explained to Christabel that this was the homage which he paid to the royalty of intellect; but Christabel had a shrewd suspicion that the Major cherished a secret passion for Miss Bridgeman, as exalted and as hopeless as the love that Chastelard bore for Mary Stuart. He had only a small pittance besides his half-pay, and he had a very poor opinion of his own merits; so it was but natural that, at fifty-five, he should hesitate to offer himself to a young lady of six-and-twenty, of whose sharp tongue he had a wholesome awe.