"If I say another word she will dissolve into tears again," thought Angus. "I shall have to leave Mount Royal: a man in weak health is no match for a young woman of this type. She will get me into a corner and declare I have proposed to her."
He got up and went over to the table, where Mr. Montagu was just finishing the game, with a break which had left Dopsy free for flirtation during the last ten minutes.
Mr. Hamleigh played in the next game, but this hardly bettered his condition, for Dopsy now took her sister"s place with the cue, and required to be instructed as to every stroke, and even to have her fingers placed in position, now and then by Angus, when the ball was under the cushion, and the stroke in any way difficult. This lengthened the game, and bored Angus exceedingly, besides making him ridiculous in the eyes of the other three men.
"I hate playing with lovers," muttered Leonard, under his breath, when Dopsy was especially worrying about the exact point at which she was to hit the ball for a particular cannon.
"Decidedly I must get away to-morrow," reflected Angus.
The game went on merrily enough, and was only just over when the stable clock struck eleven, at which hour the servants brought in a tray with a tankard of mulled claret for vice, and a siphon for virtue. The Miss Vandeleurs, after pretending to say good-night, were persuaded to sip a little of the hot spiced wine, and were half inclined to accept the cigarettes persuasively offered by Mr. Montagu; till, warned by a wink from Jack, they drew up suddenly, declared they had been quite too awfully dissipated, that they should be too late to wish Mrs. Tregonell good-night, and skipped away.
"Awfully jolly girls, those sisters of yours," said Montagu, as he closed the door which he had opened for the damsels" exit, and strolled back to the hearth, where Angus was sitting dreamily caressing Randie--her dog! How many a happy dog has received caresses charged with the love of his mistress, such mournful kisses as Dido lavished on the young Ascanias in the dead watches of the weary night.
Jack Vandeleur and his host had begun another game, delighted at having the table to themselves.
"Yes, they"re nice girls," answered Mr. Vandeleur, without looking off the table; "just the right kind of girls for a country-house: no starch, no prudishness, but as innocent as babies, and as true-hearted--well, they are all heart. I should be sorry to see anybody trifle with either of them. It would be a very serious thing for her--and it should be my business to make it serious for him."
"Great advantage for a girl to have a brother who enjoys the reputation of being a dead shot," said Mr. Montagu, "or it would be if duelling were not an exploded inst.i.tution--like trial for witchcraft, and hanging for petty larceny."
"Duelling is never out of fashion, among gentlemen," answered Jack, making a cannon and going in off the red. "That makes seventeen, Monty.
There are injuries which nothing but the pistol can redress, and I"m not sorry that my Red River experience has made me a pretty good shot. But I"m not half as good as Leonard. He could give me fifty in a hundred any day."
"When a man has to keep his party in butcher"s meat by the use of his rifle, he"d need be a decent marksman," answered Mr. Tregonell, carelessly. "I never knew the right use of a gun till I crossed the Rockies. By-the-way, who is for woodc.o.c.k shooting to-morrow? You"ll come, I suppose, Jack?"
"Not to-morrow, thanks. Monty and I are going over to Bodmin to see a man hanged. We"ve got an order to view, as the house-agents call it.
Monty is supposed to be on the _Times_. I go for the _Western Daily Mercury_."
"What a horrid ghoulish thing to do," said Leonard.
"It"s seeing life," answered Jack, shrugging his shoulders.
"I should call it the other thing. However, as crime is very rare in Cornwall, you may as well make the most of your opportunity. But it"s a pity to neglect the birds. This is one of the best seasons we"ve had since 1860, when there was a remarkable flight of birds in the second week in October. But even that year wasn"t as good as "55, when a farmer at St. Buryan killed close upon sixty birds in a week. You"ll go to-morrow, I hope, Mr. Hamleigh? There"s some very good ground about St.
Nectan"s Kieve, and it"s a picturesque sort of place, that will just hit your fancy."
"I have been to the Kieve, often--yes, it is a lovely spot," answered Angus, remembering his first visit to Mount Royal, and the golden afternoons which he had spent with Christabel among the rocks and the ferns, their low voices half drowned by the noise of the waterfall. "But I shan"t be able to shoot to-morrow. I have just been making up my mind to tear myself away from Mount Royal, and I was going to ask you to let one of your grooms drive me over to Launceston in time for the mid-day train. I can get up from Plymouth by the Limited Mail."
"Why are you in such a hurry?" asked Leonard. "I thought you were rather enjoying yourself with us."
"So much so that as far as my own inclination goes there is no reason why I should not stay here for the rest of my life--only you would get tired of me--and I have promised my doctor to go southward before the frosty weather begins."
"A day or two can"t make much difference."
"Not much--only when there is a disagreeable effort to be made the sooner one gets it over the better."
"I am sorry you are off so suddenly," said Leonard, going on with the game, and looking rather oddly across the table at Captain Vandeleur.
"I am more than sorry," said that gentleman, "I am surprised. But perhaps I am not altogether in the secret of your movements."
"There is no secret," said Angus.
"Isn"t there? Then I"m considerably mistaken. It has looked very much lately as if there were a particular understanding between you and my elder sister; and I think, as her brother, I have some right to be let into the secret before you leave Mount Royal."
"I am sorry that either my manner, or Miss Vandeleur"s, should have so far misled you," answered Angus, with freezing gravity. He pitied the sister, but felt only cold contempt for the brother. "The young lady and I have never interchanged a word which might not have been heard by everybody at Mount Royal."
"And you have had no serious intentions--you have never pretended to any serious feeling about her."
"Never. Charming as the young lady may be, I have been, and am, adamant against all such fascinations. A man who has been told that he may not live a year is hardly in a position to make an offer of marriage.
Good-night, Tregonell. I shall rely on your letting one of your men drive me to the station."
He nodded good-night to the other two men, and left the room. Randie, who loved him for the sake of old times, followed at his heels.
"There goes a cur who deserves a dose of cold lead," said Jack, looking vindictively towards the door.
"What, Randie, my wife"s favourite?"
"No, the two-legged cur. Come, you two men know how outrageously that puppy has flirted with my sister."
"I know there has been--some kind of flirtation," answered Mr. Montagu, luxuriously buried in a large armchair, with his legs hanging over the arm, "and I suppose it"s the man who"s to blame. Of course it always is the man."
"Did you ever hear such a sneaking evasion?" demanded Jack. "Not a year to live forsooth. Why if he can"t make her his wife he is bound as a gentleman to make her his widow."
"He has plenty of coin, hasn"t he?" asked Montagu. "Your sister has never gone for me--and I"m dreadfully soft under such treatment. When I think of the number of girls I"ve proposed to, and how gracefully I"ve always backed out of it afterwards, I really wonder at my own audacity.
I never refuse to marry the lady--_pas si bete_: "I adore you, and we"ll be married to-morrow if you like," I say. "But you"ll have to live with your papa and mamma for the first ten years. Perhaps by that time I might be able to take second-floor lodgings in Bloomsbury, and we could begin housekeeping.""
"You"re a privileged pauper," said Captain Vandeleur; "Mr. Hamleigh is quite another kind of individual--and I say that he has behaved in a dastardly manner to my elder sister. Everybody in this house thought that he was in love with her."
"You have told us so several times," answered Montagu, coolly, "and we"re bound to believe you, don"t you know."
"I should have thought you"d have had too much s.p.u.n.k to see an old friend"s sister jilted in such a barefaced way, Tregonell," said Jack Vandeleur, who had drunk just enough to make him quarrelsome.
"You don"t mean to say that I"m accountable for his actions, do you?"
retorted Leonard. "That"s rather a large order."
"I mean to say that you asked him here--and you puffed him off as a great catch--and half turned poor little Dop"s head by your talk about him. If you knew what an arrant flirt he was you oughtn"t to have brought him inside your doors."
"Perhaps I didn"t know anything about it," answered Leonard, with his most exasperating air.
"Then I can only say that if half I"ve heard is true you ought to have known all about it."
"As how?"
"Because it"s common club-talk that he flirted with your wife--was engaged to her--and was thrown off by her on account of his extremely disreputable antecedents. Your mother has the sole credit of the throwing off, by-the-by."
"You had better leave my mother"s name and my wife"s name out of your conversation. That"s twenty-eight to me, Monty. Poker has spoiled a capital break by his d----d personality."
"I beg your pardon--Mrs. Tregonell is simply perfect, and there is no woman I more deeply honour. But still you must allow me to wonder that you ever let that man cross your threshold."
"You are welcome to go on wondering. It"s a wholesome exercise for a sluggish brain."