CHAPTER VIII.

"TIME TURNS THE OLD DAYS TO DERISION."

If Leonard Tregonell was troubled and perplexed by the change in his wife's character, there was one other person at Mount Royal, Christabel's nearest and dearest friend, to whom that change was even a greater mystification. Jessie Bridgeman, who had been with her in the dark hours of her grief--who had seen her sunk in the apathy of despair--who had comforted and watched her, and sympathized and wept with her, looked on now in blank wonderment at a phase of character which was altogether enigmatical. She had been with Mrs. Tregonell at Zermatt, when de Cazalet had obtruded himself on their notice by his officious attentions during a pilgrimage to the Riffel, and she had been bewildered at Christabel's civility to a man of such obvious bad style.

He had stayed at the same hotel with them for three or four days, and had given them as much of his society as he could without being absolutely intrusive, taking advantage of having met Christabel five seasons ago, at two or three _quasi_ literary a.s.semblies; and at parting Christabel had invited him to Mount Royal. "Mr. Tregonell will be at home in the autumn," she said, "and if you should find yourself in Cornwall"--he had talked of exploring the West of England--"I know he would be glad to see you at Mount Royal."

When Jessie hinted at the unwisdom of an invitation to a man of whom they knew so little, Christabel answered carelessly that "Leonard liked to have his house full of lively people, and would no doubt be pleased with the Baron de Cazalet."

"You used to leave him to choose his own visitors."

"I know; but I mean to take a more active part in the arrangement of things in future. I am tired of being a cipher."

"Did you hear those people talking of the Baron at _table d'hote_ yesterday?"

"I heard a little--I was not particularly attentive."

"Then perhaps you did not hear that he is a thorough Bohemian--that he led a very wild life in South America, and was a notorious duellist."

"What can that matter to us, even if it is true?"

It seemed to Jessie that Christabel's whole nature underwent a change, and that the transformation dated from her acquaintance with this man.

They were at the end of their tour at the time of this meeting, and they came straight through to Paris, where Mrs. Tregonell abandoned herself to frivolity--going to all the theatres--buying all the newest and lightest music, spending long mornings with milliners and dressmakers--squandering money upon fine clothes, which a year ago she would have scorned to wear. Hitherto her taste had tended to simplicity of attire--not without richness--for she was too much of an artist not to value the artistic effects of costly fabrics, the beauty of warm colouring. But she now pursued that Will o' the Wisp fashion from Worth to Pingat, and bought any number of gowns, some of which, to Miss Bridgeman's severe taste, seemed simply odious.

"Do you intend spending next season in May Fair, and do you expect to be asked to a good many fancy b.a.l.l.s?" asked Jessie, as Mrs. Tregonell's maid exhibited the gowns in the s.p.a.cious bedroom at the Bristol.

"Nonsense, Jessie. These are all dinner gowns. The infinite variety of modern fashion is its chief merit. The style of to-day embraces three centuries of the past, from Catherine de Medicis to Madame Recamier."

At one of the Boulevard theatres Mrs. Tregonell and Miss Bridgeman met Mr. FitzJesse, who was also returning from a summer holiday. He was Angus Hamleigh's friend, and had known Christabel during the happy days of her first London season. It seemed hardly strange that she should be glad to meet him, and that she should ask him to Mount Royal.

"And now I must have some women to meet these men," she said, when she and Jessie were at home again, and the travelled infant had gone back to his nursery, and had inquired why the hills he saw from his windows were no longer white, and why the sea was so much bigger than the lakes he had seen lately. "I mean to make the house as pleasant as possible for Leonard when he comes home."

She and Jessie were alone in the oak panelled parlour--the room with the alcove overlooking the hills and the sea. They were seated at a little table in this recess--Christabel's desk open before her--Jessie knitting.

"How gaily you speak. Have you----"

She was going to say, "Have you forgiven him for what was done at St.

Nectan's Kieve?" but she checked herself when the words were on her lips. What if Leonard's crime was not forgiven, but forgotten? In that long dreary winter they had never spoken of the manner of Angus Hamleigh's death. Christabel's despair had been silent. Jessie had comforted her with vague words which never touched upon the cruel details of her grief. How if the mind had been affected by that long interval of sorrow, and the memory of Leonard's deed blotted out?

Christabel's new delight in frivolous things--her sudden fancy for filling her house with lively people--might be the awakening of new life and vigour in a mind that had trembled on the confines of madness.

Was it for her to recall bitter facts--to reopen the fountain of tears?

She gave one little sigh for the untimely dead--and then addressed herself to the duty of pleasing Christabel, just as in days gone by her every effort had been devoted to making the elder Mrs. Tregonell happy.

"I suppose you had better ask Mrs. Fairfax Torrington," she suggested.

"Yes, Leonard and she are great chums. We must have Mrs. Torrington. And there are the St. Aubyns, nice lively girls and an inoffensive father and mother. I believe Leonard rather likes them. And then it will be a charity to have Dopsy and Mopsy."

"I thought you detested them."

"No, poor foolish things--I was once sorry for Dopsy." The tears rushed to her eyes. She rose suddenly from her chair, and went to the window.

"Then she has not forgotten," thought Jessie.

So it was that the autumn party was planned. Mr. Faddie was doing duty at the little church in the glen, and thus happened to be in the way of an invitation. Mr. Montagu was asked as a person of general usefulness.

The St. Aubyn party brought horses, and men and maids, and contributed much to the liveliness of the establishment, so far as noise means gaiety. They were all a.s.sembled when Baron de Cazalet telegraphed from a yacht off the Lizard to ask if he might come, and, receiving a favourable reply, landed at Penzance, and posted over with his valet; his horse and gun cases were brought from London by another servant.

Leonard had been home nearly a fortnight, and had begun to accept this new mode of life without further wonder, and to fall into his old ways, and find some degree of pleasure in his old occupations--hunting, shooting.

The Vandeleur girls were draining the cup of pleasure to the dregs.

Dopsy forgot her failure and grief of last year. One cannot waste all one's life in mourning for a lover who was never in love with one.

"I wore bugles for him all last winter, and if I had been able to buy a new black gown I would have kept in mourning for six mouths," she told her sister apologetically, as if ashamed of her good spirits, "but I can't help enjoying myself in such a house as this. Is not Mrs.

Tregonell changed for the better?"

"Everything's changed for the better," a.s.sented Mopsy. "If we had only horses and could hunt, like those stuck up St. Aubyn girls, life would be perfect."

"They ride well, I suppose," said Dopsy, "but they are dreadfully _arrierees_. They haven't an aesthetic idea. When I told them we had thoughts of belonging to the Browning Society, that eldest one asked me if it was like the Birkbeck, and if we should be able to buy a house rent-free by monthly instalments. And the youngest said that sunflowers were only fit for cottage gardens."

"And the narrow-minded mother declared she could see no beauty in single dahlias," added Dopsy, with ineffable disgust.

The day was hopelessly wet, and the visitors at Mount Royal were spending the morning in that somewhat straggling manner common to people who are in somebody else's house--impressed with a feeling that it is useless to settle oneself even to the interesting labour of art needlework when one is not by one's own fireside. The sportsmen were all out; but de Cazalet, the Rev. St. Bernard, and Mr. FitzJesse preferred the shelter of a well-warmed Jacobean mansion to the wild sweep of the wind across the moor, or the dash of the billows.

"I have had plenty of wild life on the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific," said de Cazalet, luxuriating in a large sage green plush arm chair, one of the anachronisms of the grave old library. "At home I revel in civilization--I cannot have too much of warmth and comfort--velvetty nests like this to lounge in, downy cushions to lean against, hot-house flowers, and French cookery. Delicious to hear the rain beating against the gla.s.s, and the wind howling in the chimney. Put another log on, Faddie, like the best of fellows."

The Reverend St. Bernard, not much appreciating this familiarity, daintily picked a log from the big brazen basket and dropped it in a gingerly manner upon the hearth, carefully dusting his fingers afterwards with a cambric handkerchief which sent forth odours of Marechale.

Mr. FitzJesse was sitting at a distant table, with a large despatch box and a pile of open letters before him, writing at railway speed, in order to be in time for the one o'clock post.

"He is making up his paper," said de Cazalet, lazily contemplating the worker's bowed shoulders. "I wonder if he is saying anything about us."

"I am happy to say that he does not often discuss church matters," said Mr. Faddie. "He shows his good sense by a careful avoidance of opinion upon our difficulties and our differences."

"Perhaps he doesn't think them worth discussing--of no more consequence than the shades of difference between tweedledum and tweedledee," yawned de Cazalet, whereupon Mr. Faddie gave him a look of contemptuous anger, and left the room.

Mr. FitzJesse went away soon afterwards with his batch of letters for the post-bag in the hall, and the Baron was left alone, in listless contemplation of the fire. He had been in the drawing-room, but had found that apartment uninteresting by reason of Mrs. Tregonell's absence. He did not care to sit and watch the two Miss St. Aubyns playing chess--nor to hear Mrs. Fairfax Torrington dribbling out stray paragraphs from the "society journals" for the benefit of n.o.body in particular--nor to listen to Mrs. St. Aubyn's disquisitions upon the merits of Alderney cows, with which Jessie Bridgeman made believe to be interested, while deep in the intricacies of a crewel-work daffodil. For him the s.p.a.cious pink and white panelled room without one particular person was more desolate than the wild expanse of the Pampas, with its low undulations, growing rougher towards the base of the mountains. He had come to the library--an apartment chiefly used by the men--to bask in the light of the fire, and to brood upon agreeable thoughts. The meditations of a man who has a very high opinion of his own merits are generally pleasant, and just now Oliver de Cazalet's ideas about himself were unusually exalted, for had he not obviously made the conquest of one of the most charming women he had ever met.

"A pity she has a husband," he thought. "It would have suited me remarkably well to drop into such a luxurious nest as this. The boy is not three years old--by the time he came of age--well--I should have lived my life, I suppose, and could afford to subside into comfortable obscurity," sighed de Cazalet, conscious of his forty years. "The husband looks uncommonly tough; but even Hercules was mortal. One never knows how or when a man of that stamp may go off the hooks."

These pleasing reflections were disturbed by the entrance of Mopsy, who, after prowling all over the house in quest of masculine society, came yawning into the library in search of anything readable in the way of a newspaper--a readable paper with Mopsy meaning theatres, fashions, or scandal.

She gave a little start at sight of de Cazalet, whose stalwart form and florid good looks were by no means obnoxious to her taste. If he had not been so evidently devoted to Mrs. Tregonell, Mopsy would have perchance essayed his subjugation; but, remembering Dopsy's bitter experience of last year, the sadder and wiser Miss Vandeleur had made up her mind not to "go for" any marriageable man in too distinct a manner. She would play that fluking game which she most affected at billiards--sending her ball spinning all over the table with the hope that some successful result must come of a vigorous stroke.

She fluttered about the room, then stopped in a Fra Angelico pose over a table strewed with papers.

"Baron, have you seen the _Queen_?" she asked presently.

"Often. I had the honour of making my bow to her last April. She is one of the dearest women I know, and she was good enough to feel interested in my somewhat romantic career."