Mary Braddon - Mount Royal - A Novel. Volume 1 of 3

"I don't think you can help liking him, Jessie," said Christabel, as the two girls went upstairs to bed. The younger lingered a little in Miss Bridgeman's room for the discussion of their latest ideas. There was a cheerful fire burning in the large basket grate, for autumn nights were chill upon that wild coast. Christabel assumed her favourite attitude in front of the fire, with her faithful Randie winking and blinking at her and the fire alternately. He was a privileged dog – allowed to sleep on a sheepskin mat in the gallery outside his mistress's door, and to go into her room every morning, in company with the maid who carried her early cup of tea; when, after the exchange of a few remarks, in baby language on her part, and expressed on his by a series of curious grins and much wagging of his insignificant apology for a tail, he would dash out of the room, and out of the house, for his morning constitutional among the sheep upon some distant hill – coming home with an invigorated appetite, in time for the family breakfast at nine o'clock.

"I don't think you can help liking him – as – as a casual acquaintance!" repeated Christabel, finding that Jessie stood in a dreamy silence, twisting her one diamond ring – a birthday gift from Miss Courtenay – round and round upon her slender finger.

"I don't suppose any of us can help liking him," Jessie answered at last, with her eyes on the fire. "All I hope is, that some of us will not like him too much. He has brought a new element into our lives – a new interest – which may end by being a painful one. I feel distrustful of him."

"Why distrustful? Why, Jessie, you who are generally the very essence of flippancy – who make light of almost everything in life – except religion – thank God, you have not come to that yet! – you to be so serious about such a trifling matter as a visit from a man who will most likely be gone back to London in a fortnight – gone out of our lives altogether, perhaps: for I don't suppose he will care to repeat his experiences in a lonely country-house."

"He may be gone, perhaps – yes – and it is quite possible that he may never return – but shall we be quite the same after he has left us? Will nobody regret him – wish for his return – yearn for it – sigh for it – die for it – feeling life worthless – a burthen, without him?"

"Why, Jessie, you look like a Pythoness."

"Belle, Belle, my darling, my innocent one, you do not know what it is to care – for a bright particular star – and know how remote it is from your life – never to be brought any nearer! I felt afraid to-night when I saw you and Mr. Hamleigh at the piano – you playing, he leaning over you as you played – both seeming so happy, so united by the sympathy of the moment! If he is not a good man – if – "

"But we have no reason to think ill of him. You remember what Uncle Oliver said – he had only been – a – a little racketty, like other young men," said Christabel, eagerly; and then, with a sudden embarrassment, reddening and laughing shyly, she added, "and indeed, Jessie, if it is any idea of danger to me that is troubling your wise head, there is no need for alarm. I am not made of such inflammable stuff – I am not the kind of girl to fall in love with the first comer."

"With the first comer no! But when the Prince comes in a fairy tale, it matters little whether he come first or last. Fate has settled the whole story beforehand."

"Fate has had nothing to say about me and Mr. Hamleigh. No, Jessie, believe me, there is no danger for me – and I don't suppose that you are going to fall in love with him?"

"Because I am so old?" said Miss Bridgeman, still looking at the fire; "no, it would be rather ridiculous in a person of my age, plain and passée , to fall in love with your Alcibiades."

"No, Jessie, but because you are too wise ever to be carried away by a sentimental fancy. But why do you speak of him so contemptuously? One would think you had taken a dislike to him. We ought at least to remember that he is my aunt's friend, and the son of some one she once dearly loved."

"Once," repeated Jessie, softly; "does not once in that case mean always?"

She was thinking of the Squire's commonplace good looks and portly figure, as represented in the big picture in the dining-room – the picture of a man in a red coat, leaning against the shoulder of a big bay horse, and with a pack of harriers fawning round him – and wondering whether the image of that dead man, whose son was in the house to-night, had not sometimes obtruded itself upon the calm plenitude of Mrs. Tregonell's domestic joys.

"Don't be afraid that I shall forget my duty to your aunt or your aunt's guest, dear," she said suddenly, as if awaking from a reverie. "You and I will do all in our power to make him happy, and to shake him out of lazy London ways, and then, when we have patched up his health, and the moorland air has blown a little colour into his hollow cheeks, we will send him back to his clubs and his theatres, and forget all about him. And now, good-night, my Christabel," she said, looking at her watch; "see! it is close upon midnight – dreadful dissipation for Mount Royal, where half-past ten is the usual hour."

Christabel kissed her and departed, Randie following to the door of her chamber – such a pretty room, with old panelled walls painted pink and grey, old furniture, old china, snowy draperies, and books – a girl's daintily bound books, selected and purchased by herself – in every available corner; a neat cottage piano in a recess, a low easy-chair by the fire, with a five-o'clock tea-table in front of it; desks, portfolios, work-baskets – all the frivolities of a girl's life; but everything arranged with a womanly neatness which indicated industrious habits and a well-ordered mind. No scattered sheets of music – no fancy-work pitch-and-tossed about the room – no slovenliness claiming to be excused as artistic disorder.

Christabel said her prayers, and read her accustomed portion of Scripture, but not without some faint wrestlings with Satan, who on this occasion took the shape of Angus Hamleigh. Her mind was overcharged with wonder at this new phenomenon in daily life, a man so entirely different from any of the men she had ever met hitherto – so accomplished, so highly cultured; yet taking his accomplishments and culture as a thing of course, as if all men were so.

She thought of him as she lay awake for the first hour of the still night, watching the fire fade and die, and listening to the long roll of the waves, hardly audible at Mount Royal amidst all the commonplace noises of day, but heard in the solemn silence of night. She let her fancies shape a vision of her aunt's vanished youth – that one brief bright dream of happiness, so miserably broken! – and wondered and wondered how it was possible for any one to outlive such a grief. Still more incredible did it seem that any one who had so loved and so lost could ever listen to another lover; and yet the thing had been done, and Mrs. Tregonell's married life had been called happy. She always spoke of the Squire as the best of men – was never weary of praising him – loved to look up at his portrait on the wall – preserved every unpicturesque memorial of his unpicturesque life – heavy gold and silver snuff-boxes, clumsy hunting crops, spurs, guns, fishing-rods. The relics of his murderous pursuits would have filled an arsenal. And how fondly she loved the son who resembled that departed father – save in lacking some of his best qualities! How she doated on Leonard, the most commonplace and unattractive of young men! The thought of her cousin set Christabel on a new train of speculation. If Leonard had been at home when Mr. Hamleigh came to Mount Royal, how would they two have suited each other? Like fire and water, like oil and vinegar, like the wolf and the lamb, like any two creatures most antagonistic by nature. It was a happy accident that Leonard was away. She was still thinking when she fell asleep, with that uneasy sense of pain and trouble in the future which was always suggested to her by Leonard's image – a dim unshapen difficulty waiting for her somewhere along the untrodden road of her life – a lion in the path.