"G.o.d be with you," she answered solemnly, giving that parting salutation its fullest meaning.
And so, without touch of lip or hand, they parted for a lifetime.
CHAPTER XIII.
WE HAVE DONE WITH TEARS AND TREASONS.
"I wonder if there is any ancient crime in the Tregonell family that makes the twenty-fifth of October a fatal date," Mopsy speculated, with a lachrymose air, on the afternoon which followed the Baron"s hasty departure. "This very day last year Mr. Hamleigh shot himself, and spoiled all our pleasure; and to-day, the Baron de Cazalet rushes away as if the house was infected, Mrs. Tregonell keeps her own room with a nervous headache, and Mr. Tregonell is going to carry off Jack to be broiled alive in some sandy waste among prowling tigers, or to catch his death of cold upon more of those horrid mountains. One might just as well have no brother."
"If he ever sent us anything from abroad we shouldn"t feel his loss so keenly," said Dopsy, in a plaintive voice, "but he doesn"t. If he were to traverse the whole of Africa we shouldn"t be the richer by a single ostrich feather--and those undyed natural ostriches are such good style.
South America teems with gold and jewels; Peru is a proverb; but what are _we_ the better off?"
"It is rather bad form for the master of a house to start on his travels before his guests have cleared out," remarked Mopsy.
"And an uncommonly broad hint for the guests to hasten the clearing-out process," retorted Dopsy. "I thought we were good here for another month--till Christmas perhaps. Christmas at an old Cornish manor-house would have been too lovely--like one of the shilling annuals."
"A great deal nicer," said Mopsy, "for you never met with a country-house in a Christmas book that was not peopled with ghosts and all kind of ghastliness."
Luncheon was lively enough, albeit de Cazalet was gone, and Mrs.
Tregonell was absent, and Mr. Tregonell painfully silent. The chorus of the pa.s.sionless, the people for whom life means only dressing and sleeping and four meals a day, found plenty to talk about.
Jack Vandeleur was in high spirits. He rejoiced heartily at the turn which affairs had taken that morning, having from the first moment looked upon the projected meeting on Trebarwith sands as likely to be fatal to his friend, and full of peril for all concerned in the business.
He was too thorough a free-lance, prided himself too much on his personal courage and his recklessness of consequences, to offer strenuous opposition to any scheme of the kind; but he had not faced the situation without being fully aware of its danger, and he was very glad the thing had blown over without bloodshed or law-breaking. He was glad also on Mrs. Tregonell"s account, very glad to know that this one woman in whose purity and honesty of purpose he had believed, had not proved herself a simulacrum, a mere phantasmagoric image of goodness and virtue. Still more did he exult at the idea of re-visiting the happy hunting-grounds of his youth, that ancient romantic world in which the youngest and most blameless years of his life had been spent. Pleasant to go back under such easy circ.u.mstances, with Leonard"s purse to draw upon, to be the rich man"s guide, philosopher, and friend, in a country which he knew thoroughly.
"Pray what is the cause of this abrupt departure of de Cazalet, and this sudden freak of our host"s?" inquired Mrs. Torrington of her next neighbour, Mr. FitzJesse, who was calmly discussing a cutlet _a la Maintenon_, unmoved by the shrill chatter of the adjacent Dopsy. "I hope it is nothing wrong with the drains."
"No, I am told the drainage is simply perfect."
"People always declare as much, till typhoid fever breaks out; and then it is discovered that there is an abandoned cesspool in direct communication with one of the spare bedrooms, or a forgotten drainpipe under the drawing-room floor. I never believe people when they tell me their houses are wholesome. If I smell an unpleasant smell I go," said Mrs. Torrington.
"There is often wisdom in flight," replied the journalist; "but I do not think this is a case of bad drainage."
"No more do I," returned Mrs. Torrington, dropping her voice and becoming confidential; "of course we both perfectly understand what it all means. There has been a row between Mr. and Mrs. Tregonell, and de Cazalet has got his _conge_ from the husband."
"I should have introduced him to the outside of my house three weeks ago, had I been the Squire," said FitzJesse. "But I believe the flirtation was harmless enough, and I have a shrewd idea it was what the thieves call a "put up" thing--done on purpose to provoke the husband."
"Why should she want to provoke him?"
"Ah, why? That is the mystery. You know her better than I do, and must be better able to understand her motives."
"But I don"t understand her in the least," protested Mrs. Torrington.
"She is quite a different person this year from the woman I knew last year. I thought her the most devoted wife and mother. The house was not half so nice to stay at; but it was ever so much more respectable. I had arranged with my next people--Lodway Court, near Bristol--to be with them at the end of the week; but I suppose the best thing we can all do is to go at once. There is an air of general break-up in Mr. Tregonell"s hasty arrangements for an Indian tour."
"Rather like the supper-party in Macbeth, is it not?" said FitzJesse, "except that her ladyship is not to the fore."
"I call it altogether uncomfortable," exclaimed Mrs. Torrington, pettishly. "How do I know that the Lodway Court people will be able to receive me. I may be obliged to go to an hotel."
"Heaven avert such a catastrophe."
"It would be very inconvenient--with a maid, and no end of luggage. One is not prepared for that kind of thing when one starts on a round of visits."
For Dopsy and Mopsy there was no such agreeable prospect as a change of scene from one "well-found" country-house to another. To be tumbled out of this lap of luxury meant a fall into the dreariness of South Belgravia and the King"s Road--long, monotonous, arid streets, with all the dust that had been ground under the feet of happy people in the London season blown about in dense clouds, for the discomfiture of the outcasts who must stay in town when the season is over; spa.r.s.e dinners, coals measured by the scuttle, smoky fires, worn carpets, flat beer, and the whole gamut of existence equally flat, stale, and unprofitable.
Dopsy and Mopsy listened with doleful countenances to Jack"s talk about the big things he and his friend were going to do in Bengal, the tigers, the wild pigs, and wild peac.o.c.ks they were going to slay. Why had not Destiny made them young men, that they too might prey upon their species, and enjoy life at somebody else"s expense?
"I"ll tell you what," said their brother, in the most cheerful manner.
"Of course you won"t be staying here after I leave. Mrs. Tregonell will want to be alone when her husband goes. You had better go with the Squire and me as far as Southampton. He"ll frank you. We can all stop at the "Duke of Cornwall" to-morrow night, and start for Southampton by an early train next morning. You can lunch with us at the "Dolphin," see us off by steamer, and go on to London afterwards."
"That will be a ray of jollity to gild the last hour of our happiness,"
said Mopsy. "Oh, how I loathe the idea of going back to those lodgings--and pa!"
"The governor is a trial, I must admit," said Jack. "But you see the European idea is that an ancient parent can"t hang on hand too long.
There"s no wheeling him down to the Ganges, and leaving him to settle his account with the birds and the fishes; and even in India that kind of thing is getting out of date."
"I wouldn"t so much mind him," said Dopsy, plaintively, "if his habits were more human; but there are so many traits in his character--especially his winter cough--which remind one of the lower animals."
"Poor old Pater," sighed Jack, with a touch of feeling. _He_ was not often at home. "Would you believe it, that he was once almost a gentleman? Yes, I remember, an early period in my life when I was not ashamed to own him. But when a fellow has been travelling steadily down hill for fifteen years, his ultimate level must be uncommonly low."
"True," sighed Mopsy, "_we_ have always tried to rise superior to our surroundings; but it has been a terrible struggle."
"There have been summer evenings, when that wretched slavey has been out with her young man, that I have been sorely tempted to fetch the beer with my own hands--there is a jug and bottle entrance at the place where we deal--but I have suffered agonies of thirst rather than so lower myself," said Dopsy, with the complacence of conscious heroism.
"Right you are," said Jack, who would sooner have fetched beer in the very eye of society than gone without it; "one must draw the line somewhere."
"And to go from a paradise like this to such a den as that," exclaimed Dopsy, still harping on the unloveliness of the Pimlico lodging.
"Cheer up, old girl. I daresay Mrs. T. will ask you again. She"s very good-natured."
"She has behaved like an angel to us," answered Dopsy, "but I can"t make her out. There"s a mystery somewhere."
"There"s always a skeleton in the cupboard. Don"t you try to haul old Bony out," said the philosophical Captain.
This was after luncheon, when Jack and his sisters had the billiard-room to themselves. Mr. Tregonell was in his study, making things straight with his bailiff, coachman, butler, in his usual business-like and decisive manner. Mr. FitzJesse was packing his portmanteau, meaning to sleep that night at Penzance. He was quite shrewd enough to be conscious of the tempest in the air, and was not disposed to inflict himself upon his friends in the hour of trouble, or to be bored by having to sympathize with them in their affliction.
He had studied Mrs. Tregonell closely, and he had made up his mind that conduct which was out of harmony with her character must needs be inspired by some powerful motive. He had heard the account of her first engagement--knew all about little Fishky--and he had been told the particulars of her first lover"s death. It was not difficult for so astute an observer of human nature to make out the rest of the story.
Little Monty had been invited to go as far as Southampton with the travellers. The St. Aubyns declared that home-duties had long been demanding their attention, and that they must positively leave next day.
Mr. Faddie accepted an invitation to accompany them, and spend a week at their fine old place on the other side of the county--thus, without any trouble on Christabel"s part, her house was cleared for her. When she came down to luncheon next day, two or three hours after the departure of Leonard and his party, who were to spend that night at Plymouth, with some idea of an evening at the theatre on the part of Mop and Dop, she had only the St. Aubyns and Mr. Faddie to entertain. Even they were on the wing, as the carriage which was to convey them to Bodmin Road Station was ordered for three o"clock in the afternoon.
Christabel"s pale calm face showed no sign of the mental strain of the last twenty-four hours. There was such a relief in having done with the false life which she had been leading in the past month; such an infinite comfort in being able to fall back into her old self; such an unspeakable relief, too, in the sense of having saved herself on the very brink of the black gulf of sin, that it was almost as if peace and gladness had returned to her soul. Once again she had sought for comfort at the one Divine source of consolation; once more she had dared to pray; and this tardy resumption of the old sweet habit of girlhood seemed like a return to some dear home from which she had been long banished. Even those who knew so little of her real character were able to see the change in her countenance.
"What a lovely expression Mrs. Tregonell has to-day!" murmured Mr.
Faddie to his neighbour, Mrs. St. Aubyn, tenderly replenishing her hock gla.s.s, as a polite preliminary to filling his own. "So soft; so Madonna-like!"