She wore a tight-fitting jacket, dark olive velvet, and a cloth skirt, both heavily trimmed with sable, a beaver hat, with an ostrich feather, which made a sweeping curve round the brim, and caressed the coil of golden-brown hair at the back of the small head. The costume, which was faintly suggestive of a hunting party at Fontainebleau or St. Germains, became the tall finely moulded figure to admiration. Nobody could doubt for an instant that Mrs. Tregonell was dressed for effect, and was determined to get full value out of her beauty. The neat tailor gown and simple little cloth toque of the past, had given way to a costly and elaborate costume, in which every detail marked the careful study of the coquette who lives only to be admired. Dopsy and Mopsy felt a natural pang of envy as they scrutinized the quality of the cloth and calculated the cost of the fur; but they consoled themselves with the conviction that there was a bewitching Kate Greenaway quaintness in their own flimsy garments which made up for the poverty of the stuff, and the doubtful finish of home dressmaking. A bunch of crimson poppies on Mopsy’s shoulder, a cornflower in Dopsy’s hat, made vivid gleams of colour upon their brown merino frocks, while the freshness of their saffron-tinted Toby frills was undeniable. Sleeves short and tight, and ten-buttoned Swedish gloves, made up a toilet which Dopsy and Mopsy had believed to be æsthetically perfect, until they compared it with Christabel’s rich and picturesque attire. The St. Aubyn girls were not less conscious of the superiority of Mrs. Tregonell’s appearance, but they were resigned to the inevitable. How could a meagre quarterly allowance, doled out by an unwilling father, stand against a wife’s unlimited power of running up bills. And here was a woman who had a fortune of her own to squander as she pleased, without anybody’s leave or license. Secure in the severity of slate-coloured serges made by a West-End tailor, with hats to match, and the best boots and gloves that money could buy, the St. Aubyn girls affected to despise Christabel’s olive velvet and sable tails.
“It’s the worst possible form to dress like that for a country ramble,” murmured Emily to Clara.
“Of course. But the country’s about the only place where she could venture to wear such clothes,” replied Clara: “she’d be laughed at in London.”
“Well, I don’t know: there were some rather loud get-ups in the Park last season,” said Emily. “It’s really absurd the way married women out-dress girls.”
Once clear of the avenue Mrs. Tregonell and her guests arranged themselves upon the Darwinian principle of natural selection.
That brilliant bird the Baron, whose velvet coat and knickerbockers were the astonishment of Boscastle, instinctively drew near to Christabel, whose velvet and sable, plumed hat, and point-lace necktie pointed her out as his proper mate — Little Monty, Bohemian and décousu, attached himself as naturally to one of the Vandeleur birds, shunning the iron-grey respectability of the St. Aubyn breed.
Mrs. St. Aubyn, who had made up her mind at the last to join the party, fastened herself upon St. Bernard Faddie, in the fond hope that he would be able to talk of parish matters, and advise her about her duties as Lady Bountiful; while he, on his part, only cared for rubric and ritual, and looked upon parish visitation as an inferior branch of duty, to be performed by newly-fledged curates. Mr. FitzJesse took up with Dopsy, who amused him as a marked specimen of nineteenth-century girlhood — a rare and wonderful bird of its kind, like a heavily wattled barb pigeonn, not beautiful, but infinitely curious. The two St. Aubyn girls, in a paucity of the male sex, had to put up with the escort of Captain Vandeleur, to whom they were extremely civil, although they studiously ignored his sisters. And so, by lane and field-path, by hill and vale, they went up to the broad, open heights above the sea — a sea that was very fair to look upon on this sunshiny autumn day, luminous with those translucent hues of amethyst and emerald, sapphire and garnet, which make the ever changeful glory of that Cornish strand.
Miss Bridgeman walked half the way with the St. Aubyn girls and Captain Vandeleur. The St. Aubyns had always been civil to her, not without a certain tone of patronage which would have wounded a more self-conscious person, but which Jessie endured with perfect good temper.
“What does it matter if they have the air of bending down from a higher social level every time they talk to me,” she said to Major Bree, lightly, when he made some rude remark about these young ladies. “If it pleases them to fancy themselves on a pinnacle, the fancy is a harmless one, and can’t hurt me. I shouldn’t care to occupy that kind of imaginary height myself. There must be a disagreeable sense of chilliness and remoteness; and then there is always the fear of a sudden drop; like that fall through infinite space which startles one sometimes on the edge of sleep.”
Armed with that calm philosophy which takes all small things lightly, Jessie was quite content that the Miss St. Aubyns should converse with her as if she were a creature of an inferior race — born with lesser hopes and narrower needs than theirs, and with no rights worth mention. She was content that they should be sometimes familiar and sometimes distant — that they should talk to her freely when there was no one else with whom they could talk — and that they should ignore her presence when the room was full.
To-day, Emily St. Aubyn was complaisant even to friendliness. Her sister had completely appropriated Captain Vandeleur, so Emily gave herself up to feminine gossip. There were some subjects which she really wanted to discuss with Miss Bridgeman, and this seemed a golden opportunity.
“Are we really going to have tea at the farmhouse near St. Nectan’s Kieve?” she asked.
“Didn’t you hear Mrs. Tregonell say so?” inquired Jessie, dryly.
“I did; but I could not help wondering a little. Was it not at the Kieve that poor Mr. Hamleigh was killed?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think it just a little heartless of Mrs. Tregonell to choose that spot for a pleasure party?”
“The farmhouse is not the Kieve: they are at least a mile apart.”
“That’s a mere quibble, Miss Bridgeman: the association is just the same, and she ought to feel it.”
“Mrs. Tregonell is my very dear friend,” answered Jessie. “She and her aunt are the only friends I have made in this world. You can’t suppose that I shall find fault with her conduct?”
“No, I suppose not. You would stand by her through thick and thin?”
“Through thick and thin.”
“Even at the sacrifice of principle?”
“I should consider gratitude and friendship the governing principles of my life where she is concerned.”
“If she were to go ever so wrong, you would still stand by her?”
“Stand by her, and cleave to her — walk by her side till death, wherever the path might lead. I should not encourage her in wrong-doing. I should lift up my voice when there was need: but I should never forsake her.”
“That is your idea of friendship?”
“Unquestionably. To my mind, friendship which implies anything less than that is meaningless. However, there is no need for heroics: Mrs. Tregonell is not going to put me to the test.”
“I hope not. She is very sweet. I should be deeply pained if she were to go wrong. But do you know that my mother does not at all like her manner with the Baron. My sister and I are much more liberal-minded, don’t you know; and we can understand that all she says and does is mere frivolity — high spirits which must find some outlet. But what surprises me is that she should be so gay and light-hearted after the dreadful events of her life. If such things had happened to me, I should inevitably have gone over to Rome, and buried myself in the severest conventual order that I could find.”
“Yes, there have been sad events in her life: but I think she chose the wiser course in doing her duty by the aunt who brought her up, than in self-immolation of that kind,” answered Jessie, with her thin lips drawn to the firmest line they were capable of assuming.
“But think what she must have suffered last year when that poor man was killed. I remember meeting him at dinner when they
were first engaged. Such an interesting face — the countenance of a poet. I could fancy Shelley or Keats exactly like him.”
“We have their portraits,” said Jessie, intolerant of gush. “There is no scope for fancy.”
“But I think he really was a little like Keats — consumptive looking, too, which carried out the idea. How utterly dreadful it must have been for Mrs. Tregonell when he met his death, so suddenly, so awfully, while he was a guest under her roof. How did she bear it?”
“Very quietly. She had borne the pain of breaking her engagement for a principle, a mistaken one, as I think. His death could hardly have given her worse pain.”
“But it was such an awful death.”
“Awful in its suddenness, that is all — not more awful than the death of any one of our English soldiers who fell in Zululand the other day. After all, the mode and manner of death is only a detail, and, so long as the physical pain is not severe, an insignificant detail. The one stupendous fact for the survivor remains always the same. We had a friend and he is gone — for ever, for all we know.”
There was the faint sound of a sob in her voice as she finished speaking.
“Well, all I can say is that if I were Mrs. Tregonell, I could never have been happy again,” persisted Miss St. Aubyn.
They came to Trevena soon after this, and went down the hill to the base of that lofty crag on which King Arthur’s Castle stood. They found Mrs. Fairfax and the pony-carriage in the Valley. The provisions had all been carried up the ascent. Everything was ready for luncheon.
A quarter of a hour later they were all seated on the long grass and the crumbling stones, on which Christabel and her lover had sat so often in that happy season of her life when love was a new thought, and faith in the beloved one as boundless as that far-reaching ocean, on which they gazed in dreamy content. Now, instead of low talk about Arthur and Guinevere, Tristan and Iseult, and all the legends of the dim poetic past, there were loud voices and laughter, execrable puns, much conversation of the order generally known as chaff, a great deal of mild personality of that kind which, in the age of Miss Burney and Miss Austin, was described as quizzing and roasting, and an all-pervading flavour of lunacy. The Baron de Cazalet tried to take advantage of the position, and to rise to poetry; but he was laughed down by the majority, especially by Mr. FitzJesse, who hadn’t a good word for Arthur and his Court.
“Marc was a coward, and Tristan was a traitor and a knave,” he said. “While as for Iseult, the less said of her the better. The legends of Arthur’s birth are cleverly contrived to rehabilitate his mother’s character, but the lady’s reputation still is open to doubt. Jack the Giant Killer and Tom Thumb are quite the most respectable heroes connected with this western world. You have no occasion to be proud of the associations of the soil, Mrs. Tregonell.”
“But I am proud of my country, and of its legends,” answered Christabel.
“And you believe in Tristan and Iseult, and the constancy which was personified by a bramble, as in the famous ballad of Lord Lovel.”
“The constancy which proved itself by marrying somebody else, and remaining true to the old love all the same,” said Mrs. Fairfax Torrington, in her society voice, trained to detonate sharp sentences across the subdued buzz of a dinner-table.
“Poor Tristan,” sighed Dopsy.
“Poor Iseult,” murmured Mopsy.
They had never heard of either personage until this morning.
“Nothing in the life of either became them so well as the leaving it,” said Mr. FitzJesse. “The crowning touch of poetry in Iseult’s death redeems her errors. You remember how she was led half senseless to Tristan’s death-chamber — lors l’embrasse de ses bras, tant comme elle peut, et gette ung souspir, et se pasme sur le corps, et le cueur lui part, et l’âme s’en va.”
“If every woman who loses her lover could die like that,” said Jessie, with a curious glance at Christabel, who sat listening smilingly to the conversation, with the Baron prostrate at her feet.
“Instead of making good her loss at the earliest opportunity, what a dreary place this world would be,” murmured little Monty. “I think somebody in the poetic line has observed that nothing in Nature is constant, so it would be hard lines upon women if they were to be fettered for life by some early attachment that came to a bad end.”
“Look at Juliet’s constancy,” said Miss St. Aubyn.
“Juliet was never put to the test,” answered FitzJesse. “The whole course of her love affair was something less than a week. If that potion of hers had failed, and she had awakened safe and sound in her own bedchamber next morning, who knows that she would not have submitted to the force of circumstances, married County Paris, and lived happily with him ever after. There is only one perfect example of constancy in the whole realm of poetry, and that is the love of Paolo and Francesca, the love which even the pains of hell could not dissever.”
“They weren’t married, don’t you know,” lisped Monty. “They hadn’t had the opportunity of getting tired of each other. And then, in the underworld, a lady would be glad to take up with somebody she had known on earth: just as in Australia one is delighted to fall in with a fellow one wouldn’t care twopence for in Bond Street.”
“I believe you are right,” said Mr. FitzJesse, “and that constancy is only another name for convenience. Married people are constant to each other, as a rule, because there is such an infernal row when they fall out.”
Lightly flew the moments in the balmy air, freshened by the salt sea, warmed by the glory of a meridian sun — lightly and happily for that wise majority of the revellers, whose philosophy is to get the most out of to-day’s fair summer-time, and to leave future winters and possible calamities to Jove’s discretion. Jessie watched the girl who had grown up by her side, whose every thought she had once known, and wondered if this beautiful artificial impersonation of society tones and society graces could be verily the same flesh and blood. What had made this wondrous transformation? Had Christabel’s very soul undergone a change during that dismal period of apathy last winter? She had awakened from that catalepsy of despair a new woman — eager for frivolous pleasures — courting admiration — studious of effect: the very opposite of that high-souled and pure-minded girl whom Jessie had known and loved.
“It is the most awful moral wreck that was ever seen,” thought Jessie; “but if my love can save her from deeper degradation she shall be saved.”
Could she care for that showy impostor posed at her feet, gazing up at her with passionate eyes — hanging on her accents — openly worshipping her? She seemed to accept his idolatry, to sanction his insolence; and all her friends looked on, half scornful, half amused.
“What can Tregonell be thinking about not to be here to-day?” said Jack Vandeleur, close to Jessie’s elbow.
“Why should he be here?” she asked.
“Because he’s wanted. He’s neglecting that silly woman shamefully.”
“It is only his way,” answered Jessie, scornfully. “Last year he invited Mr. Hamleigh to Mount Royal, who had been engaged to his wife a few years before. He is not given to jealousy.”
“Evidently not,” said Captain Vandeleur, waxing thoughtful, as he lighted a cigarette, and strolled slowly off to stare at the sea, the rocky pinnacles, and yonder cormorant skimming away from a sharp point, to dip and vanish in the green water.
The pilgrimage from Trevena to Trevithy farm was somewhat less straggling than the long walk by the cliffs. The way was along a high road, which necessitated less meandering, but the party still divided itself into twos and threes, and Christabel still allowed de Cazalet the privilege of a tête-à-tête. She was a better walker than any of her friends, and the Baron was a practised pedestrian; so those two kept well ahead, leaving the rest of the party to follow as they pleased.
“I wonder they are not tired of each other by this time,” said Mopsy, whose Wurtemburg heels were beginning to tell upon her temper. “It has been such a long day �
�� and such a long walk. What can the Baron find to talk about all this time?”
“Himself,” answered FitzJesse, “an inexhaustible subject. Men can always talk. Listening is the art in which they fail. Are you a good listener, Miss Vandeleur?”
“I’m afraid not. If any one is prosy I begin to think of my frocks.”
“Very bad. As a young woman, with the conquest of society before you, I most earnestly recommend you to cultivate the listener’s art. Talk just enough to develop your companion’s powers. If he has a hobby, let him ride it. Be interested, be sympathetic. Do not always agree, but differ only to be convinced, argue only to be converted. Never answer at random, or stifle a yawn. Be a perfect listener, and society is open to you. People will talk of you as the most intelligent girl they know.”
Mopsy smiled a sickly smile. The agony of those ready-made boots, just a quarter of a size too small, though they had seemed so comfortable in the shoemaker’s shop, was increasing momentarily. Here was a hill like the side of a house to be descended. Poor Mopsy felt as if she were balancing herself on the points of her toes. She leant feebly on her umbrella, while the editor of the Sling trudged sturdily by her side admiring the landscape — stopping half-way down the hill to point out the grander features of the scene with his bamboo. Stopping was ever so much worse than going on. It was as if the fires consuming the martyr at the stake had suddenly gone out, and left him with an acuter consciousness of his pain.
“Too, too lovely,” murmured Mopsy, heartily wishing herself in the King’s Road, Chelsea, within hail of an omnibus.
She hobbled on somehow, pretending to listen to Mr. FitzJesse’s conversation, but feeling that she was momentarily demonstrating her incompetence as a listener, till they came to the farm, where she was just able to totter into the sitting-room, and sink into the nearest chair.
“I’m afraid you’re tired,” said the journalist, a sturdy block of a man, who hardly knew the meaning of fatigue.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 728