Mount Royal Volume Iii Part 11

"Mrs. Tregonell is one of the finest horsewomen I ever saw," said de Cazalet. "It is a delight to ride by her side. Are not you coming with us?" he asked.

"Yes, I'll ride after you," said Leonard. "I forgot all about the harriers. n.o.body told me they were to begin work this morning."

The horses were brought round to the porch, the ladies put on their gloves, and adjusted themselves in those skimpy lop-sided petticoats which have replaced the flowing drapery of the dark ages when a horsewoman's legs and boots were in somewise a mystery to the outside world.

Leonard went out to look at the horses. A strange horse would have interested him even on his death bed, while one ray of consciousness yet remained to recognize the degrees of equine strength and quality. He overhauled the mare which Major Bree had chosen for Christabel a month ago--a magnificent three-quarter bred hunter, full of power.

"Do you think she can carry me?" asked Christabel.

"She could carry a house. Yes; you ought to be safe upon her. Is that big black brute the Baron's horse?"

"Yes."

"I thought so--a coa.r.s.e clumsy beast, all show," muttered Leonard; "like master, like man."

He turned away to examine Colonel Blathwayt's hunter, a good looking chestnut, and in that moment the Baron had taken up his ground by Christabel's mare, and was ready to lift her into the saddle. She went up as lightly as a shuttlec.o.c.k from a battledore, scarcely touching the corduroy shoulder--but Leonard felt angry with the Baron for usurping a function which should have been left for the husband.

"Is Betsy Baker in condition?" he asked the head groom, as the party rode away, de Cazalet on Mrs. Tregonell's right hand.

"Splendid, sir. She only wants work."

"Get her ready as quick as you can. I'll take it out of her."

Mr. Tregonell kept his word. Wherever de Cazalet and Christabel rode that day, Christabel's husband went with them. The Baron was a bold, bad rider--reckless of himself, brutal to his horse. Christabel rode superbly, and was superbly mounted. Those hills which seemed murderous to the stranger, were as nothing to her, who had galloped up and down them on her Shetland pony, and had seldom ridden over better ground from the time when Major Bree first took her out with a leading rein. The day was long, and there was plenty of fast going--but these three were always in the front. Yet even the husband's immediate neighbourhood in no wise lessened the Baron's marked attention to the wife, and Leonard rode homeward at dusk sorely troubled in spirit. What did it mean? Could it be that she, whose conduct last year had seemed without reproach; who had borne herself with matronly dignity; with virginal purity towards the lover of her girlhood--the refined and accomplished Angus Hamleigh--could it be that she had allowed herself to be involved in a flirtation with such a tinsel dandy as this de Cazalet?

"It would be sheer lunacy," he said to himself. "Perhaps she is carrying on like this to annoy me--punis.h.i.+ng me for----"

He rode home a little way behind those other two, full of vexation and bewilderment. Nothing had happened of which he could reasonably complain. He could scarcely kick this man out of his house because he inclined his head at a certain angle--because he dropped his voice to a lower key when he spoke to Christabel. Yet his very att.i.tude in the saddle as he rode on ahead--his hand on his horse's flank, his figure turned towards Christabel--was a provocation.

Opera bouffe duets--recitations--acted charades--_bouts rimes_--all the catalogue of grown-up playfulness--began again after dinner; but this evening Leonard did not stay in the drawing-room. He felt that he could not trust himself. His disgust must needs explode into some rudeness of speech, if he remained to witness these vagaries.

"I like the society of barmaids, and I can tolerate the company of ladies," he said to his bosom friend, Jack; "but a mixture of the two is unendurable: so we'll have a good smoke and half-crown pool, s.h.i.+lling lives."

This was as much as to say, that Leonard and his other friends were about to render their half-crowns and s.h.i.+llings as tribute to Captain Vandeleur's superior play; that gentleman having made pool his profession since he left the army.

They played till midnight, in an atmosphere which grew thick with tobacco smoke before the night was done. They played till Jack Vandeleur's pockets were full of loose silver, and till the other men had come to the conclusion that pool was a slow game, with an element of childishness in it, at the best--no real skill, only a mere mechanical knack, acquired by incessant practice in fusty public rooms, reeking with alcohol.

"Show me a man who plays like that, and I'll show you a scamp," muttered little Monty in a friendly aside to Leonard, as Jack Vandeleur swept up the last pool.

"I know he's a scamp," answered Leonard, "but he's a pleasant scamp, and a capital fellow to travel with--never ill--never out of temper--always ready for the day's work, whatever it is, and always able to make the best of things. Why don't you marry one of his sisters?--they're both jolly good fellows."

"No coin," said Monty, shaking his neat little flaxen head. "I can just contrive to keep myself--'still to be neat, still to be drest.' What in mercy's name should I do with a wife who would want food and gowns, and stalls at the theatres? I have been thinking that if those St. Aubyn girls have money--on the nail, you know, not in the form of expectations from that painfully healthy father--I might think seriously of one of them. They are horridly rustic--smell of clover and beans, and would be likely to disgrace one in London society--but they are not hideous."

"I don't think there's much ready money in that quarter, Monty,"

answered Leonard. "St. Aubyn has a good deal of land."

"Land," screamed Monty. "I wouldn't touch it with a pair of tongs! The workhouses of the next century will be peopled by the offspring of the landed gentry. I shudder when I think of the country squire and his prospects."

"Hard lines," said Jack, who had made that remark two or three times before in the course of the evening.

They were sitting round the fire by this time--smoking and drinking mulled Burgundy, and the conversation had become general.

This night was as many other nights. Sometimes Mr. Tregonell tried to live through the evening in the drawing-room--enduring the society games--the Boulevard music--the recitations and tableaux and general frivolity--but he found these amus.e.m.e.nts hang upon his spirits like a nightmare. He watched his wife, but could discover nothing actually reprehensible in her conduct--nothing upon which he could take his stand as an outraged husband, and say "This shall not be." If the Baron's devotion to her was marked enough for every one to see, and if her acceptance of his attentions was gracious in the extreme, his devotion and her graciousness were no more than he had seen everywhere accepted as the small change of society, meaning nothing, tending towards nothing but gradual satiety; except in those few exceptional cases which ended in open scandal and took society by surprise. That which impressed Leonard was the utter change in his wife's character. It seemed as if her very nature were altered. Womanly tenderness, a gentle and subdued manner, had given place to a hard brilliancy. It was as if he had lost a pearl, and found a diamond in its place--one all softness and purity, the other all sparkle and light.

He was too proud to sue to her for any renewal of old confidences--to claim from her any of the duties of a wife. If she could live and be happy without him--and he knew but too surely that his presence, his affection, had never contributed to her happiness--he would let her see that he could live without her--that he was content to accept the position she had chosen--union which was no union--marriage that had ceased to be marriage--a chain drawn out to its furthest length, yet held so lightly that neither need feel the bondage.

Everybody at Mount Royal was loud in praise of Christabel. She was so brilliant, so versatile, she made her house so utterly charming. This was the verdict of her new friends--but her old friends were less enthusiastic. Major Bree came to the Manor House very seldom now, and frankly owned himself a fish out of water in Mrs. Tregonell's new circle.

"Everybody is so laboriously lively," he said; "there is an air of forced hilarity. I sigh for the house as it was in your mother's time, Leonard. 'A haunt of ancient peace.'"

"There's not much peace about it now, by Jove," said Leonard. "Why did you put it into my wife's head to ride to hounds?"

"I had nothing to do with it. She asked me to choose her a hunter, and I chose her something good and safe, that's all. But I don't think you ought to object to her hunting, Leonard, or to her doing anything else that may help to keep her in good spirits. She was in a very bad way all the winter."

"Do you mean that she was seriously ill? Their letters to me were so d----d short. I hardly know anything that went on while I was away."

"Yes. She was very ill--given over to melancholy. It was only natural that she should be affected by Angus Hamleigh's death, when you remember what they had been to each other before you came home. A woman may break an engagement of that kind, and may be very happy in her union with another man, but she can't forget her first lover, if it were only because he _is_ the first. It was an unlucky thing your bringing him to Mount Royal. One of your impulsive follies."

"Yes, one of my follies. So you say that Christabel was out of health and spirits all the winter."

"Yes, she would see no one--not even me--or the Rector. No one but the doctor ever crossed the threshold. But surely Miss Bridgeman has told you all about it. Miss Bridgeman was devoted to her."

"Miss Bridgeman is as close as the grave; and I am not going to demean myself by questioning her."

"Well, there is no need to be unhappy about the past. Christabel is herself again, thank G.o.d--brighter, prettier than ever. That Swiss tour with Miss Bridgeman and the boy did her worlds of good. I thought you made a mistake in leaving her at Mount Royal after that melancholy event. You should have taken her with you."

"Perhaps I ought to have done so," a.s.sented Leonard, thinking bitterly how very improbable it was that she would have consented to go with him.

He tried to make the best of his position, painful as it was. He bl.u.s.tered and hectored as of old--gave his days to field sports--his evenings for the most part to billiards and tobacco. He drank more than he had been accustomed to drink, sat up late of nights. His nerves were not benefited by these latter habits.

"Your hand is as shaky as an old woman's," exclaimed Jack, upon his opponent missing an easy cannon. "Why, you might have done that with a boot-jack. If you're not careful you'll be in for an attack of del.

trem., and that will chaw you up in a very short time. A man of your stamina is the worst kind of subject for nervous diseases. We shall have you catching flies, and seeing imaginary snow-storms before long."

Leonard received this friendly warning with a scornful laugh.

"De Cazalet drinks more brandy in a day than I do in a week," he said.

"Ah, but look at his advantages--brought up in Jersey, where cognac is duty-free. None of us have had his fine training. Wonderful const.i.tution he must have--hand as steady as a rock. You saw him this morning knock off a particular acorn from the oak in the stable yard with a bullet."

"Yes, the fellow can shoot; he's less of an impostor than I expected."

"Wonderful eye and hand. He must have spent years of his life in a shooting gallery. You're a dooced good shot, Tregonell; but, compared with him, you're not in it."

"That's very likely, though I have had to live by my gun in the Rockies.

FitzJesse told me that in South America de Cazalet was known as a professed duellist."

"And you have only shot four-footed beasts--never gone for a fellow creature," answered Jack lightly.