Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Why don’t you shoot, Mrs. Tregonell?” asked Mrs. Torrington; “it is just the one thing that makes life worth living in a country like this, where there is no great scope for hunting.”

  “I should like roaming about the hills, but I could never bring myself to hit a bird,” answered Christabel. “I am too fond of the feathered race. I don’t know why or what it is, but there is something in a bird which appeals intensely to one’s pity. I have been more sorry than I can say for a dying sparrow; and I can never teach myself to remember that birds are such wretchedly cruel and unprincipled creatures in their dealings with one another that they really deserve very little compassion from man.”

  “Except that man has the responsibility of knowing better,” said Mr. FitzJesse. “That infernal cruelty of the animal creation is one of the problems that must perplex the gentle optimist who sums up his religion in a phrase of Pope’s, and avows that whatever is, is right. Who, looking at the meek meditative countenance of a Jersey cow, those large stag-like eyes — Juno’s eyes — would believe that Mrs. Cow is capable of trampling a sick sister to death — nay, would look upon the operation as a matter of course — a thing to be done for the good of society.”

  “Is there not a little moral trampling done by stag-eyed creatures of a higher grade?” asked Mrs. Torrington. “Let a woman once fall down in the mud, and there are plenty of her own sex ready to grind her into the mire. Cows have a coarser, more practical way of treating their fallen sisters, but the principle is the same, don’t you know.”

  “I have always found man the more malignant animal,” said FitzJesse. “At her worst a woman generally has a motive for the evil she does — some wrong to avenge — some petty slight to retaliate. A man stabs for the mere pleasure of stabbing. With him slander is one of the fine arts. Depend upon it your Crabtree is a more malevolent creature than Mrs. Candour — and the Candours would not kill reputations if the Crabtrees did not admire and applaud the slaughter. For my own part I believe that if there were no men in the world, women would be almost kind to each other.”

  The Baron did not enter into this discussion. He had no taste for any subject out of his own line, which was art and beauty. With character or morals he had nothing to do. He did not even pretend to listen to the discourse of the others, but amused himself with petting Leo, who sturdily repulsed his endearments. When he spoke it was to reply to Christabel’s last remark.

  “If you are fonder of roaming on the hills than of shooting, Mrs. Tregonell, why should we not organize a rambling party? It is not too late for a picnic. Let us hold ourselves ready for the first bright day — perhaps, after this deluge, we shall have fine weather to-morrow — and organize a pilgrimage to Tintagel, with all the freedom of pedestrians, who can choose their own company, and are not obliged to sit opposite the person they least care about in the imprisonment of a barouche or a wagonette. Walking picnics are the only picnics worth having. You are a good walker, I know, Mrs. Tregonell; and you, Mrs. Torrington, you can walk I have no doubt.”

  The widow smiled and nodded. “Oh, yes, I am good for half-a-dozen miles, or so,” she said, wondering whether she possessed a pair of boots in which she could walk, most of her boots being made rather with a view to exhibition on a fender-stool or on the step of a carriage than to locomotion. “But I think as I am not quite so young as I was twenty years ago, I had better follow you in the pony-carriage.”

  “Pony-carriage, me no pony-carriages,” exclaimed de Cazalet. “Ours is to be a walking picnic and nothing else. If you like to meet us as we come home you can do so — but none but pedestrians shall drink our champagne or eat our salad — that salad which I shall have the honour to make for you with my own hands, Mrs. Tregonell.”

  Jessie Bridgeman looked at Christabel to see if any painful memory — any thought of that other picnic at Tintagel when Angus Hamleigh was still a stranger, and the world seemed made for gladness and laughter, would disturb her smiling serenity. But there was no trace of mournful recollection in that bright beaming face which was turned in all graciousness towards the Baron, who sat caressing Leo’s curls, while the boy wriggled his plump shoulders half out of his black velvet frock in palpable disgust at the caress.

  “Oh! it will be too lovely — too utterly ouftish,” exclaimed Dopsy, who had lately acquired this last flower of speech — a word which might be made to mean almost anything, from the motive power which impels a billiard cue to the money that pays the player’s losses at pool — a word which is a substantive or adjective according to the speaker’s pleasure.

  “I suppose we shall be allowed to join you,” said Mopsy, “we are splendid walkers.”

  “Of course — entry open to all weights and ages, with Mrs. Tregonell’s permission.”

  “Let it be your picnic, Baron, since it is your idea,” said Christabel; “my housekeeper shall take your orders about the luncheon, and we will all consider ourselves your guests.”

  “I shall expire if I am left out in the cold,” said Mrs. Torrington. “You really must allow age the privilege of a pony-carriage. That delightful cob of Mrs. Tregonell’s understands me perfectly.”

  “Well, on second thoughts, you shall have the carriage,” said de Cazalet, graciously. “The provisions can’t walk. It shall be your privilege to bring them. We will have no servants. Mr. Faddie, Mr. FitzJesse, and I will do all the fetching and carrying, cork-drawing and salad-making.”

  CHAPTER IX.

  “THOU SHOULDST COME LIKE A FURY CROWNED WITH SNAKES.”

  When the shooting party came home to afternoon tea, Dopsy and Mopsy were both full of the picnic. The sun was sinking in lurid splendour; there was every chance of a fine day to-morrow. De Cazalet had interviewed the housekeeper, and ordered luncheon. Mopsy went about among the men like a recruiting sergeant, telling them of the picnic, and begging them to join in that festivity.

  “It will be wretched for Dopsy and I” — her grammar was weak, and she had a fixed idea that “I” was a genteeler pronoun than “me,”—”if you don’t all come,” she said to Colonel Blathwayt. “Of course the Baron will devote himself exclusively to Mrs. Tregonell. FitzJesse will go in the pony-trap with Mrs. Torrington, and they’ll have vivisected everybody they know before they get there. And I can’t get on a little bit with Mr. Faddie, though he is awfully nice. I feel that if I were to let him talk to me an hour at a stretch I should be obliged to go and join some Protestant sisterhood and wear thick boots and too fearful bonnets for the rest of my days.”

  “And what would society do without Mopsy Vandeleur?” asked the Colonel, smiling at her. “I should enjoy a ramble with you above all things, but a picnic is such a confoundedly infantine business. I always feel a hundred years old when I attempt to be gay and frisky before dusk — feel as if I had been dead and come back to life again, as some of the savage tribes believe. However, if it will really please you, I’ll give up the birds to-morrow, and join your sports.”

  “How sweet of you,” exclaimed Mopsy, with a thrilling look from under her painted lashes. “The whole thing would be ghastly without you.”

  “What’s the row?” asked Leonard, turning his head upon the cushion of the easy chair in which he lolled at full length, to look up at the speakers as they stood a little way behind him.

  The master of Mount Royal was sitting by one fireplace, with a table and tea-tray all to himself; while Mrs. Tregonell and her circle were grouped about the hearth at the opposite end of the hall. Jack Vandeleur and little Monty stood in front of the fire near their host, faithful adherents to the friend who fed them; but all the rest of the party clustered round Christabel.

  Mopsy told Mr. Tregonell all about the intended picnic.

  “It is to be the Baron’s affair,” she said, gaily. “He organized it, and he is to play the host. There are to be no carriages — except the pony-trap for Mrs. Torrington, who pinches her feet and her waist to a degree that makes locomotion impossible. We are all to walk except her. And I bel
ieve we are to have tea at the farm by St. Piran’s well — a simple farmhouse tea in some dear old whitewashed room with a huge fireplace, hams and onions and things hanging from the rafters. Isn’t it a lovely idea?”

  “Very,” grumbled Leonard; “but I should say you could have your tea a great deal more comfortably here, without being under an obligation to the farm people.”

  “Oh, but we have our tea here every afternoon,” said Mopsy. “Think of the novelty of the thing.”

  “No doubt. And this picnic is the Baron’s idea?”

  “His and Mrs. Tregonell’s, they planned it all between them. And they are going to get up private theatricals for your birthday.”

  “How kind,” growled Leonard, scowling at his teacup.

  “Isn’t it sweet of them? They are going to play ‘Delicate Ground.’ He is to be Citizen Sangfroid and she Pauline — the husband and wife who quarrel and pretend to separate and are desperately fond of each other all the time, don’t you know? It’s a powder piece.”

  “A what?”

  “A play in which the people wear powdered wigs and patches, and all that kind of thing. How dense you are.”

  “I was born so, I believe. And in this powder piece Mrs. Tregonell and Baron de Cazalet are to be husband and wife, and quarrel and make friends again — eh?”

  “Yes. The reconciliation is awfully fetching. But you are not jealous, are you?”

  “Jealous? Not the least bit.”

  “That’s so nice of you; and you will come to our picnic, to-morrow?”

  “I think not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the woodcock season is a short one, and I want to make the best use of my time.”

  “What a barbarian, to prefer any sport to our society,” exclaimed Mopsy coquettishly. “For my part, I hate the very name of woodcock.”

  “Why?” asked Leonard, looking at her keenly, with his dark, bright eyes; eyes which had that hard, glassy brightness that has always a cruel look.

  “Because it reminds me of that dreadful day last year when poor Mr. Hamleigh was killed. If he had not gone out woodcock shooting he would not have been killed.”

  “No; a man’s death generally hinges upon something,” answered Leonard, with a chilling sneer; “no effect without a cause. But I don’t think you need waste your lamentations upon Mr. Hamleigh; he did not treat your sister particularly well.”

  Mopsy sighed, and was thoughtful for a moment or two. Captain Vandeleur and Mr. Montagu had strolled off to change their clothes. The master of the house and Miss Vandeleur were alone at their end of the old hall. Ripples of silvery laughter, and the sound of mirthful voices came from the group about the other fireplace, where the blaze of piled-up logs went roaring up the wide windy chimney, making the most magical changeful light in which beauty or its opposite can be seen.

  “No, he hardly acted fairly to poor Dopsy: he led her on, don’t you know, and we both thought he meant to propose. It would have been such a splendid match for her — and I could have stayed with them sometimes.”

  “Of course you could. Sometimes in your case would have meant all the year round.”

  “And he was so fascinating, so handsome, ill as he looked, poor darling,” sighed Mopsy. “I know Dop hadn’t one mercenary feeling about him. It was a genuine case of spoons — she would have died for him.”

  “If he had wished it; but men have not yet gone in for collecting corpses,” sneered Leonard. “However poor the specimen of your sex may be, they prefer the living subject — even the surgeons are all coming round to that.”

  “Don’t be nasty,” protested Mopsy. “I only meant to say that Dopsy really adored Angus Hamleigh for his own sake. I know how kindly you felt upon the subject — and that you wanted it to be a match.”

  “Yes, I did my best,” answered Leonard. “I brought him here, and gave you both your chance.”

  “And Jack said that you spoke very sharply to Mr. Hamleigh that last night.”

  “Yes, I gave him a piece of my mind. I told him that he had no right to come into my house and play fast and loose with my friend’s sister.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “Pretty quietly.”

  “You did not quarrel with him?”

  “No, it could hardly be called a quarrel. We were both too reasonable — understood each other too thoroughly,” answered Leonard, as he got up and went off to his dressing-room, leaving Mopsy sorely perplexed by an indescribable something in his tone and manner. Surely there must be some fatal meaning in that dark evil smile, which changed to so black a frown, and that deep sigh which seemed wrung from the very heart of the man: a man whom Mopsy had hitherto believed to be somewhat poorly furnished with that organ, taken in its poetical significance as a thing that throbs with love and pity.

  Alone in his dressing-room the lord of the Manor sat down in front of the fire with his boots on the hob, to muse upon the incongruity of his present position in his own house. A year ago he had ruled supreme, sovereign master of the domestic circle, obeyed and ministered to in all humility by a lovely and pure-minded wife. Now he was a cipher in his own house, the husband of a woman who was almost as strange to him as if he had seen her face for the first time on his return from South America. This beautiful brilliant creature, who held him at arm’s length, defied him openly with looks and tones in which his guilty soul recognized a terrible meaning — looks and tones which he dare not challenge — this woman who lived only for pleasure, fine dress, frivolity, who had given his house the free-and-easy air of a mess-room, or a club — could this be indeed the woman he had loved in her girlhood, the fair and simple-minded wife whom his mother had trained for him, teaching her all good things, withholding all knowledge of evil.

  “I’m not going to stand it much longer,” he said to himself, with an oath, as he kicked the logs about upon his fire, and then got up to dress for the feast at which he always felt himself just the one guest who was not wanted.

  He had been at home three weeks — it seemed an age — an age of disillusion and discontent — and he had not yet sought any explanation with Christabel. Not yet had he dared to claim his right to be obeyed as a husband, to be treated as a friend and adviser. With a strange reluctance he put off the explanation from day to day, and in the meanwhile the aspect of life at Mount Royal was growing daily less agreeable to him. Could it be that this wife of his, whose purity and faith he had tried by the hardest test — the test of daily companionship with her first and only lover — was inclined to waver now — to play him false for so shallow a coxcomb, so tawdry a fine gentleman as Oliver de Cazalet. Not once, but many times within the past week he had asked himself that question. Could it be? He had heard strange stories — had known of queer cases of the falling away of good women from the path of virtue. He had heard of sober matrons — mothers of fair children, wives of many years — the Cornelias of their circle, staking home, husband, children, honour, good name, and troops of friends against the wild delirium of some new-born fancy, sudden, demoniac as the dance of death. The women who go wrong are not always the most likely women. It is not the trampled slave, the neglected and forlorn wife of a bad husband — but the pearl and treasure of a happy circle who takes the fatal plunge into the mire. The forlorn slave-wife stays in the dreary home and nurses her children, battles with her husband’s creditors, consoles herself with church going and many prayers, fondly hoping for a future day in which Tom will find out that she is fairer and dearer than any of his false goddesses, and come home repentant to the domestic hearth: while the good husband’s idol, sated with legitimate worship, gives herself up all at once to the intoxication of unholy incense, and topples off her shrine. Leonard Tregonell knew that the world was full of such psychological mysteries; and yet he could hardly bring himself to believe that Christabel was of the stuff that makes false wives, or that she could be won by such a third-rate Don Juan as the Baron de Cazalet.

  The dinner was a little nois
ier and gayer than usual to-night. Every one talked, laughed, told anecdotes, let off puns, more or less atrocious — except the host, who sat in his place an image of gloom. Happily Mrs. St. Aubyn was one of those stout, healthy, contented people who enjoy their dinner, and only talk about as much as is required for the assistance of digestion. She told prosy stories about her pigs and poultry — which were altogether superior, intellectually and physically, to other people’s pigs and poultry — and only paused once or twice to exclaim, “You are looking awfully tired, Mr. Tregonell. You must have overdone it to-day. Don’t you take curaçoa? I always do after ice pudding. It’s so comforting. Do you know at the last dinner I was at before I came here the curaçoa was ginger brandy. Wasn’t that horrid? People ought not to do such things.”

  Leonard suggested in a bored voice that this might have been the butler’s mistake.

  “I don’t think so. I believe it was actual meanness — but I shall never take liqueur at that house again,” said Mrs. St. Aubyn, in an injured tone.

  “Are you going to this picnic to-morrow?”

  “I think not. I’m afraid the walk would be too much for me — and I am not fond enough of Mrs. Torrington to enjoy two hours’ tête-à-tête in a pony-carriage. My girls will go, of course. And I suppose you will be there,” added Mrs. St. Aubyn, with intention.

  “No, Vandeleur, Monty, and I are going shooting.”

  “Well, if I were in your shoes and had such a pretty wife I should not leave her to go picnicking about the world with such an attractive man as the Baron.”

  Leonard gave an uneasy little laugh, meant to convey the idea of supreme security.

  “I’m not jealous of de Cazalet,” he said. “Surely you don’t call him an attractive man.”