Mount Royal Volume Iii Part 20

No; there is no alternative course. I must dispose of him, and get her away, without the loss of an hour."

The whole business had to be thought out carefully. His intent was deadly, and he planned this duel with as much wicked deliberation as if he had been planning a murder. He had lived among men who held all human life, except their own, lightly, and to whom duelling and a.s.sa.s.sination were among the possibilities of every-day existence. He thought how if he and the three other men could reach that lonely bend of the coast un.o.bserved, they might leave the man who should fall lying on the sand, with never an indication to point how he fell.

De Cazalet felt that in Vandeleur there was a man to be trusted. He would not betray, even though his friend were left there, dead upon the low level sand-waste, for the tide to roll over him and hide him, and wrap the secret of his doom in eternal silence. There was something of the freebooter in Jack Vandeleur--an honour-among-thieves kind of spirit--which the soul of that other freebooter recognized and understood.

"We don't want little Montagu," thought de Cazalet. "One man will be second enough to see fair-play. The fuss and formality of the thing can be dispensed with. That little beggar's ideas are too insular--he might round upon me."

So meditating upon the details of to-morrow, the Baron went down the hill to the farm, where he found the Mount Royal party just setting out on their homeward journey under the shades of evening, stars s.h.i.+ning faintly in the blue infinite above them. Leonard was not among his wife's guests--nor had he been seen by any of them since they met him at the field-gate, an hour ago.

"He has made tracks for home, no doubt," said Jack Vandeleur.

They went across the fields, and by the common beyond Trevalga--walking briskly, talking merrily, in the cool evening air; all except Mopsy, from whose high-heeled boots there was no surcease of pain. Alas! those Wurtemburg heels, and the boots just half a size too small for the wearer, for how many a bitter hour of woman's life have they to answer!

De Cazalet tried in vain during that homeward walk to get confidential speech with Christabel--he was eager to urge his new plan--the departure from Bodmin Road Station--but she was always surrounded. He fancied even that she made it her business to avoid him.

"Coquette," he muttered to himself savagely. "They are all alike. I thought she was a little better than the rest; but they are all ground in the same mill."

He could scarcely get a glimpse of her face in the twilight. She was always a little way ahead, or a little way behind him--now with Jessie Bridgeman, now with Emily St. Aubyn--skimming over the rough heathy ground, flitting from group to group. When they entered the house she disappeared almost instantly, leaving her guests lingering in the hall, too tired to repair at once to their own rooms, content to loiter in the glow and warmth of the wood fires. It was seven o'clock. They had been out nearly nine hours.

"What a dreadfully long day it has been!" exclaimed Emily St. Aubyn, with a stifled yawn.

"Isn't that the usual remark after a pleasure party?" demanded Mr.

FitzJesse. "I have found the unfailing result of any elaborate arrangement for human felicity to be an abnormal lengthening of the hours; just as every strenuous endeavour to accomplish some good work for one's fellow-men infallibly provokes the enmity of the cla.s.s to be benefited."

"Oh, it has all been awfully enjoyable, don't you know," said Miss St.

Aubyn; "and it was very sweet of Mrs. Tregonell to give us such a delightful day; but I can't help feeling as if we had been out a week.

And now we have to dress for dinner, which is rather a trial."

"Why not sit down as you are? Let us have a tailor-gown and shooting-jacket dinner, as a variety upon a calico ball," suggested little Monty.

"Impossible! We should feel dirty and horrid," said Miss St. Aubyn. "The freshness and purity of the dinner-table would make us ashamed of our grubbiness. Besides, however could we face the servants? No, the effort must be made. Come, mother, you really look as if you wanted to be carried upstairs."

"By voluntary contributions," murmured FitzJesse, aside to Miss Bridgeman. "Briareus himself could not do it single-handed, as one of our vivacious Home Rulers might say."

The Baron de Cazalet did not appear in the drawing-room an hour later when the house-party a.s.sembled for dinner. He sent his hostess a little note apologizing for his absence, on the ground of important business letters, which must be answered that night; though why a man should sit down at eight o'clock in the evening to write letters for a post which would not leave Boscastle till the following afternoon, was rather difficult for any one to understand.

"All humbug about those letters, you may depend," said little Monty, who looked as fresh as a daisy in his smooth expanse of s.h.i.+rt-front, with a single diamond stud in the middle of it, like a lighthouse in a calm sea. "The Baron was fairly done--athlete as he pretends to be--hadn't a leg to stand upon--came in limping. I wouldn't mind giving long odds that he won't show till to-morrow afternoon. It's a case of gruel and bandages for the next twenty-four hours."

Leonard came into the drawing-room just in time to give his arm to Mrs.

St. Aubyn. He made himself more agreeable than usual at dinner, as it seemed to that worthy matron--talked more--laughed louder--and certainly drank more than his wont. The dinner was remarkably lively, in spite of the Baron's absence; indeed, the conversation took a new and livelier turn upon that account, for everybody had something more or less amusing to say about the absent one, stimulated and egged on with quiet malice by Mr. FitzJesse. Anecdotes were told of his self-a.s.surance, his vanity, his pretentiousness. His pedigree was discussed, and settled for--his antecedents--his married life, were all submitted to the process of conversational vivisection.

"Rather rough on Mrs. Tregonell, isn't it?" murmured little Monty to the fair Dopsy.

"Do you think she really cares?" Dopsy asked, incredulously.

"Don't you?"

"Not a straw. She could not care for such a man as that, after being engaged to Mr. Hamleigh."

"Hamleigh was better form, I admit--and I used to think Mrs. T. as straight as an arrow. But I confess I've been staggered lately."

"Did you see what a calm queenly look she had all the time people were laughing at de Cazalet?" asked Dopsy. "A woman who cared one little bit for a man could not have taken it so quietly."

"You think she must have flamed out--said something in defence of her admirer. You forget your Tennyson, and how Guinevere 'marred her friend's point with pale tranquillity.' Women are so deuced deep."

"Dear Tennyson," murmured Dopsy, whose knowledge of the Laureate's works had not gone very far beyond "The May Queen," and "The Charge of the Six Hundred."

It was growing late in the evening when de Cazalet showed himself. The drawing-room party had been in very fair spirits without him, but it was a smaller and a quieter party than usual; for Leonard had taken Captain Vandeleur off to his own den after dinner, and Mr. Montagu had offered to play a fifty game, left-handed, against the combined strength of Dopsy and Mopsy. Christabel had been at the piano almost all the evening, playing with a breadth and grandeur which seemed to rise above her usual style. The ladies made a circle in front of the fire, with Mr.

Faddie and Mr. FitzJesse, talking and laughing in a subdued tone, while those grand harmonies of Beethoven's rose and fell upon their half indifferent, half admiring ears.

Christabel played the closing chords of the Funeral March of a Hero as de Cazalet entered the room. He went straight to the piano, and seated himself in the empty chair by her side. She glided into the melancholy arpeggios of the Moonlight Sonata, without looking up from the keys.

They were a long way from the group at the fire--all the length of the room lay in deep shadow between the lamps on the mantelpiece and neighbouring tables, and the candles upon the piano. Pianissimo music seemed to invite conversation.

"You have written your letters?" she asked lightly.

"My letters were a fiction--I did not want to sit face to face with your husband at dinner, after our conversation this afternoon at the waterfall; you can understand that, can't you Christabel. Don't--don't do that."

"What?" she asked, still looking down at the keys.

"Don't shudder when I call you by your Christian name--as you did just now. Christabel, I want your answer to my question of to-day. I told you then that the crisis of our fate had come. I tell you so again to-night--more earnestly, if it is possible to be more in earnest than I was to-day. I am obliged to speak to you here--almost within earshot of those people--because time is short, and I must take the first chance that offers. It has been my accursed luck never to be with you alone--I think this afternoon was the first time that you and I have been together alone since I came here. You don't know how hard it has been for me to keep every word and look within check--always to remember that we were before an audience."

"Yes, there has been a good deal of acting," she answered quietly.

"But there must be no more acting--no more falsehood. We have both made up our minds, have we not, my beloved? I think you love me--yes, Christabel, I feel secure of your love. You did not deny it to-day, when I asked that thrilling question--those hidden eyes, the conscious droop of that proud head, were more eloquent than words. And for my love, Christabel--no words can speak that. It shall be told by-and-by in language that all the world can understand--told by my deeds. The time has come for decision; I have had news to-day that renders instant action necessary. If you and I do not leave Cornwall together to-morrow, we may be parted for ever. Have you made up your mind?"

"Hardly," she answered, her fingers still slowly moving over the keys in those plaintive arpeggios.

"What is your difficulty, dearest? Do you fear to face the future with me?"

"I have not thought of the future."

"Is it the idea of leaving your child that distresses you?"

"I have not thought of him."

"Then it is my truth--my devotion which you doubt?"

"Give me a little more time for thought," she said, still playing the same _sotto voce_ accompaniment to their speech.

"I dare not; everything must be planned to-night. I must leave this house early to-morrow morning. There are imperative reasons which oblige me to do so. You must meet me at Bodmin Road Station at eleven--you must, Christabel, if our lives are to be free and happy and spent together. Vacillation on your part will ruin all my plans. Trust yourself to me, dearest--trust my power to secure a bright and happy future. If you do not want to be parted from your boy, take him with you. He shall be my son. I will hold him for you against all the world."

"You must leave this house early to-morrow morning," she said, looking up at him for the first time. "Why?"

"For a reason which I cannot tell you. It is a business in which some one else is involved, and I am not free to disclose it yet. You shall know all later."

"You will tell me, when we meet at Bodmin Road."

"Yes. Ah, then you have made up your mind--you will be there. My best and dearest, Heaven bless you for that sweet consent."