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, buttoned 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 passed 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 passing 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 passed. 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 assumed 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 noble old house!" exclaimed Angus, as he followed his hostess across the oak-panelled hall, with its wide shallow staircase, curiously carved balustrades, 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 spacious 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 brass 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 duchess, 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 Vandyke or Moroni he would admire and approve; but he shuddered at the thought that to-morrow she might burst upon him in a mediæval 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,
