Having nothing in life to do except seek his own pleasure and spend his ample income, Angus Hamleigh had naturally taken the time of life's march _prestissimo_.

He had never paused in his rose-gathering to wonder whether there might not be a few thorns among the flowers, and whether he might not find them--afterwards. And now the blossoms were all withered, and he was beginning to discover the lasting quality of the thorns. They were such thorns as interfered somewhat with the serenity of his days, and he was glad to turn his face westward, away from everybody he knew, or who knew anything about him.

"My character will present itself to Mrs. Tregonell as a blank page," he said to himself; "I wonder what she would think of me if one of my club gossips had enjoyed a quiet evening's talk with her beforehand. A dear friend's a.n.a.lysis of one's character and conduct is always so flattering to both; and I have a pleasant knack of offending my dearest friends!"

Mr. Hamleigh began to look about him a little when the train had left Plymouth. The landscape was wild and romantic, but had none of that stern ruggedness which he expected to behold on the Cornish Border. Deep glens, and wooded dells, with hill-sides steep and broken, but verdant to their topmost crest, and the most wonderful oak coppices that he ever remembered to have seen. Miles upon miles of oak, as it seemed to him, now sinking into the depth of a valley, now mounting to the distant sky line, while from that verdant undulating surface of young wood there stood forth the giants of the grove--wide-spreading oak and towering beech, the mighty growth of many centuries. Between Lidford and Launceston the scenery grew tamer. He had fancied those deep ravines and wooded heights the prelude to a vast and awful symphony, but Mary Tavy and Lifton showed him only a pastoral landscape, with just so much wood and water as would have served for a Creswick or a Constable, and with none of those grand Salvatoresque effects which he had admired in the country round Tavistock. At Launceston he found Mrs. Tregonell's landau waiting for him, with a pair of powerful chestnuts, and a couple of servants, whose neat brown liveries had nothing of that unsophisticated semi-savagery which Mr. Hamleigh had expected in a place so remote.

"Do you drive that way?" he asked, pointing to the almost perpendicular street.

"Yes, sir," replied the coachman.

"Then I think I'll stroll to the top of the hill while you are putting in my portmanteaux," he said, and ascended the rustic street at a leisurely pace, looking about him as he went.

The thoroughfare which leads from Launceston Station to the ruined castle at the top of the hill is not an imposing promenade. Its architectural features might perhaps be best described like the snakes of Ireland as _nil_--but here and there an old-fashioned lattice with a row of flower-pots, an ancient gable, or a bit of cottage garden hints at the picturesque. Any late additions to the domestic architecture of Launceston favour the unpretending usefulness of Camden Town rather than the aspiring aestheticism of Chelsea or Bedford Park; but to Mr.

Hamleigh's eye the rugged old castle keep on the top of the hill made amends. He was not an ardent archaeologist, and he did not turn out of his way to see Launceston Church, which might well have rewarded him for his trouble. He was content to have spared those good-looking chestnuts the labour of dragging him up the steep. Here they came springing up the hill. He took his place in the carriage, pulled the fur rug over his knees, and ensconced himself comfortably in the roomy back seat.

"This is a sybaritish luxury which I was not prepared for," he said to himself. "I'm afraid I shall be rather more bored than I expected. I thought Mrs. Tregonell and her surroundings would at least have the merit of originality. But here is a carriage that must have been built by Peters, and liveries that suggest the sartorial excellence of Conduit Street or Savile Row."

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, b.u.t.toned 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed. 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 a.s.sumed 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 n.o.ble old house!" exclaimed Angus, as he followed his hostess across the oak-panelled hall, with its wide shallow staircase, curiously carved bal.u.s.trades, 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 s.p.a.cious 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 bra.s.s 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 Vand.y.k.e or Moroni he would admire and approve; but he shuddered at the thought that to-morrow she might burst upon him in a mediaeval 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 which 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 princ.i.p.al 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 inertiae_, the force of letting things alone," said Angus; "yes, that is a tremendous power, n.o.bly 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 _poete 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 compa.s.sionate look; "he has a very delicate appearance."