CHAPTER V.
On specified occasions of assembly at Knightswell, Ada did not ordinarily present herself. Mrs. Clarendon made excuses for her on the plea of indifferent health; habitual visitors understood that Miss Warren suffered much from headaches, and that she could not with impunity expose herself to unusual excitement. The headaches were a fact, but it was probably not on their account that Ada preferred as a rule her own company. Her frequent caustic utterances on the subject of the persons whom society considers, and the things with which society occupies itself, were a sufficient index of her views; the views themselves being a natural outcome of her temperament and the circumstances of her life.
But on the present Monday she appeared. To the last moments Mrs. Clarendon had been in uncertainty as to the likelihood of her doing so, though she had laughingly prophesied the event to Rhoda Meres, and persisted in spite of the latter’s incredulity. Ada had made no great preparations, but was well and suitably dressed. Robert Asquith, to whom all the girl’s movements were of extreme interest, promised himself the pleasure of closely observing her throughout the afternoon.
“Tell me something of the people who are coming, will you?” he asked, as he met her in the hall. “The interesting people, I mean, of course.”
“That limitation will make the task an easy one,” Ada replied as she buttoned a glove. Her colour was rather higher than usual, and her tone was less dry; she looked almost cheerful.
“Then of the less uninteresting; that will leave a margin for conversation, surely?”
“It all depends, of course, on one’s point of view. I believe you have considerable powers of being interested, have you not?”
“Yes; I fear I boast of them. You see I find the gift valuable. In my sane moods I had rather have the dullest conversation than none at all.”
“Therefore you come to me, waiting for others to arrive.”
“Spare me, Miss Warren. You wouldn’t believe what toil it costs me to frame and polish a compliment. I am sure you are naturally humane.”
“You are sure of that? To dumb animals, I hope.”
“Alas! it brings us back to the animals who are gifted with speech. Shall we have any one who talks well, independently of the matter of discourse? Remember, I am new to English society. I enjoy the gossip of idle people, provided it be good of its kind.”
“I am no judge,” said Ada; “but I should think Mrs. Bruce Page will satisfy you. Her tongue is so trained in current forms of speech that it has come at last to save her all trouble of superintendence. As far as my experience goes, she is nearly all that the most exacting could require.”
“I must study that lady. And what of Miss Saltash, of whom I have heard?”
“Oh, she is interesting!” Ada exclaimed. “I have seen her grow red in the face in support of faith in eternal damnation. If that goes, she has nothing to live for.”
Robert was obliged to confess to himself that Miss Warren was yet a trifle crude; she amused him, but he took an early opportunity of refreshing his palate from a less acid source. His thoughts continued, however, to busy themselves with her; he awaited impatiently the arrival of the young man who was supposed to have tenderly impressed this singular heiress.
But the Bruce Pages were late. Before them came Mrs. Saltash of Dunsey Priors, accompanied by her daughter Irene, whom Ada had characterised, and Lady Florence Cootes. The latter was a daughter of the Earl of Winterset; she was a constant guest at Dunsey Priors, being united in bonds of the closest friendship with Irene Saltash. It was a union very greatly indebted to ecclesiastical cement, the young ladies both holding the most pronounced views on the constitution of the world to come, and seemingly desiring to compensate themselves for a gloomy future by enjoyment of a present fruitful in consolations. They seldom quitted each other, and their chatter was lively in the extreme. Other maidens there were, who, in company with two or three young men of unimpeachable dress and converse, speedily betook themselves to lawn-tennis. Mr. and Mrs. Vissian were shortly to be seen among the guests, the lady looking very young and very pretty; she and Rhoda Meres seemed to have a good deal to say to each other. Then, as Asquith walked about with his hands behind him, the wonted smile on his lips, he heard the bustle of a new arrival, and, turning, was aware of Mrs. Bruce Page. He felt sure of her identity before he had heard her name pronounced. She seemed about the same age as Mrs. Clarendon, and in some eyes probably excelled the latter in attractiveness. With rather too high a colour, she was still decidedly good-looking; not handsome, nor beautiful, but beyond dispute goodlooking. Her bodily activity was surprising; she walked with the grace and liveliness of a young girl, and, as she shortly showed at tennis, could even run without making herself in the least ridiculous. Her voice, though a note or two higher than it should have been, had yet musical quality. And the use she made of it! Her greeting of the hostess was one unbroken articulate trill, lasting two minutes and a half; it embodied inquiries, responses, information, comments, forecasts, and ejaculation. All who stood around came in one by one for a share of her exhaustless utterances. She was never at a loss for an instant. Robert was presented to her, and she at once talked to him as if they had been on a footing of intimacy for years. When she interrupted her speech, it was to laugh, and this laugh was perhaps a yet more wonderful phenomenon, so clear and fresh and buoyant was it, and yet so obviously a mere outcome of the automatic contrivance which performed this lady’s social vivacities. She laughed because it helped her to show her teeth, and in general became her features.
“How is it she doesn’t lose breath?” Robert whispered presently to Mrs. Clarendon, his face expressive of amazement.
“Hush, that is a secret!” was the reply.
Yet Mrs. Bruce Page was not (I use the conventional standard) vulgar; she never said (as far as one could follow her) a malicious thing, was guilty of no bad taste in choice of expressions, seemed to overflow with the milk of human kindness. A silly woman, but scarcely an offensive one; probably in intimacy capable of making herself delightful and something more. Society was to be credited with this public manner of hers, and society on the whole admired the fruit of its systems.
Behind her came a young lady of seventeen, her daughter, and two young gentlemen, one her brother, the other Mr. Vincent Lacour. The girl was extremely shy, and had not a word to say for herself; having secured Mrs. Clarendon’s hand, she continued to hold it, shrinking, as it were, into the shadow of the dear lady whom all who needed a protector loved. The brother, Mr. Selwyn Parkes, was a pleasant-looking young fellow, of eight-and-twenty. It was in the quality of Mr. Parkes’s friend that Vincent Lacour resided at present with the Bruce Pages. Mr. Lacour himself was the last to shake Isabels hand; her greeting was that one gives to a favourite, of whom one yet entertains a certain amount of moral disapproval. That Vincent should be a favourite where ladies were concerned was natural enough. His personal advantages were striking. Tall, slim, with a handsome head poised on a delicate neck, he exhibited much of female grace and delicacy, without the possibility of being regarded as effeminate. Of a man’s health and muscle he had all that even women demand in their ideal. Black hair and a well-educated black moustache, fine, irresponsible eyes; these also were properties not to be resisted. If anything, he looked a trifle too intellectual, but this would be pardoned by those to whom it was merely suggestive of the mysterious. Of course Mr. Lacour was conscious enough of the attention he drew, and, to judge from his smile, not at all disposed to shrink from it. He might be a trifle fatuous, but he was very far from being a fool; his forehead suggested capacity for better things than those he was at present put to.
One of the first things he did was to draw Mrs. Clarendon a little aside, and speak to her in a hasty whisper.
“I beg of you to keep Mrs. Bruce Page occupied somehow or other. She’ll never let me go, and I’m bored unspeakably. Help me, and I am your slave for ever!”
Isabel subdued a smile, and made no direct answer. Just as Vincent made off into a cluster of people, the lady in question hastened to Isabel’s side.
“What has that boy been whispering to you?” she asked. “He’s in the most execrable temper; it was all we could do to persuade him to come. He vows that his liver is out of order, and that he is possessed by diabolical promptings. Pity me for what I suffer in discharging a mother’s duties to him. And, oh, Mrs. Clarendon! let him talk to your cousin—that really charming man! He’s got the Civil Service into his head, now, and I’m sure Mr. Asquith can give him useful advice—about offices, and that kind of thing, you know. What is to become of the poor boy, I can’t imagine! I’ve been at Sir Miles, in letters, for the last ten days, till at length he’s as good as told me to mind my own business. Surely, never were brothers so unlike! One satisfaction is that Sir Miles can’t possibly live long—if it isn’t wicked to say such a thing, and I suppose it must be. He has heart disease, my dear, and in an aggravated form; so Doctor Norman Rayner tells me. I fear I have increased it by my correspondence. Where is the boy gone to? I must take him to Mr. Asquith.”
“The boy” had found a pleasant seat by the side of Miss Rhoda Meres.
“You’re not going to play?” he asked, seeing a racket in her hand.
“I’m in the next set,” Rhoda answered. She had flushed a little as he took his place by her, and there was a sparkle in her eyes as she looked up at him.
“Can’t you throw it over? Do get Sophy Page to take your place.”
“Why shouldn’t I play?” she asked, examining the handle of the racket.
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Vincent languidly, leaning back and half-closing his eyes. “Do if you like, of course.”
“Have you a headache, Mr. Lacour?” Rhoda asked. “Don’t you feel well?”
“The fact is I don’t. I feel seedy and bored.”
“Pray don’t let me bore you——”
She half rose.
“You know very well you don’t bore me,” he said, looking directly at her. Then he added, “I——-I half supposed you would have left Knightswell.”
She had a quick reply on her lips, but checked it, and merely said:
“I have not.”
“When do you go back to London?” he inquired, throwing one leg over the other and clasping his hands behind his head.
“On Wednesday.”
“I suppose I shall be back there before very long,” said Vincent, looking meditatively at the sky. “Probably I shall get a clerkship at five-and-twenty shillings a week.”
“I’m afraid you don’t show much energy,” said Rhoda, in a voice which lacked something of the indifference she meant to put into it.
“I’ve told you often enough I have none, Miss Meres. I’m like a piece of sea-weed; my condition is dependent on the weather.”
“It’s fine enough now, at all events,” she said, with an attempt at a laugh.
“Oh, yes; but there’s the very deuce brewing,” returned Vincent, with characteristic freedom of expression. “I wish,” he added slowly, “I’d somebody to help me—somebody who has energy.”
“Doesn’t Mr. Parkes——”
“Pooh!”
There was silence. Cries came from the tennis players, who were just out of sight, and a hum of conversation from nearer groups.
“What are you going to do when you get back to town, Miss Meres?” Vincent asked, regarding her again.
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” she answered vaguely. “Live as usual, I suppose; unless I take some decided step.”
“Decided step? By Jove, how it refreshes me to hear you speak like that! What decided step?”
“I don’t know. I’m very much in your own position, you know; I shall have to earn a living somehow.”
She said it very simply, looking down, and making marks on the grass with the handle of the racket.
“A living? Women don’t make a living; that’s all done for them.”
“Is it?” said Rhoda, and, as soon as the words were spoken, she rose, averting her face.
“There’s our set called!” she exclaimed; “I must go.”
He made a slight gesture as if about to exert himself to detain her; but she was gone. His eyes followed her dreamily.
“Oh, here you are, Vincent!” cried Mrs. Bruce Page, close at hand. “Have you really a headache, now? Poor boy! you don’t look well. Come along with me, I want you to talk with Mr. Asquith, Mrs. Clarendon’s cousin, you know. He knows all about the Civil Service.”
Robert received the young man with a look critical indeed, but good-humouredly so. He did not seem to be able to take Mr. Lacour quite seriously, yet could not refuse a certain admiration.
“You are thinking of the Civil Service examinations?” he began.
“Well, I can’t say I’ve thought much about them,” Vincent replied, in his manner suggestive of easy achievement. “I suppose they’re very much a matter of form—the elements—and—and so on?”
“Not quite that. And competition, you remember.”
“Yes. The truth is, I haven’t looked into the thing. What do they expect you to know?”
Asquith gave an outline of the attainments looked for in a candidate for the higher clerkships.
“By Jove, that’s pretty strong!” was Vincent’s comment.
“The competition,” remarked Asquith, “makes it about the severest examination you can undergo.”
“Then that’s all up!” exclaimed the young “What would the screw be?”
“You would begin with a hundred a year, and by slow degrees rise to four,” said Robert, curling his moustache.
“The deuce you would! Then I may with honour withdraw from so ignoble a competition. You can’t suggest any way of making the four hundred at start? I dare say Mrs. Clarendon’s told you all about me. I don’t mind who knows. There’s a great deal of false shame in the world, it seems to me; don’t you think so? But I really think it’s time I turned to something, and what’s the good of one’s friends if they can’t suggest a plan? Of course the social structure is radically wrong. A man like myself—I have brains, I beg you to believe—oughtn’t to find himself thrown out of it in this way. I shall be infinitely obliged to any one who suggests something.”
It seemed to Robert, as he listened, that this young man had a turn for affecting an imbecility which was not in truth part of his character; in the matter and manner of his talk, Lacour appeared rather to yield to physical inertness than to disclose natural vacuity. It might be that he was, as he professed, suffering in body; it seemed more probable that he found a luxury in abandoning his mind to sluggish promptings, even as he showed a pronounced disinclination for activity in the disposal of his limbs. His disastrous circumstances displayed their influence in the whole man. The rate at which he had lived for the past two years was no doubt telling upon him, and nothing tended to counteract, everything rather to foster, the languor which possessed him. His vanity, doubtless, was extreme; the temptation to indulge it no less so. Mrs. Bruce Page, with her semi-sentimental coddling, her pseudo-maternal familiarity, was alone enough to relax the springs of a stronger individuality than Vincent’s. Reflecting thus, Asquith maintained silence; when he raised his eyes again he saw that Ada Warren had drawn near.
Lacour gave the girl his hand, and, in a tone of almost ludicrous dolorousness, asked her how she was.
“I think I should rather ask you that,” she said, with a laugh; “you have a woful countenance.”
“You, at all events, are in excellent spirits,” he returned.
It was true, comparatively speaking. A sudden access of self-confidence had come to her, and her manner was at moments almost joyous.
“Have you observed Ada?” Isabel took an opportunity of saying to her cousin apart.
“I see now how wrong and selfish I have been.”
And to Ada herself she spoke, finding the girl standing aside whilst general attention was being given to tea and ices.
“You feel well to-day?” she said, with her kindest smile.
Ada murmured something unintelligible and turned away. Mrs. Clarendon reddened slightly and, passing on, met with Vincent Lacour, who was pacing with his hands behind his back.
“Won’t you have an ice?” she asked.
“Ice? Great heavens! I should die of dyspepsia. But, Mrs. Clarendon, what is it? Why do you speak and look at me in such an unfriendly way?”
“I am not conscious of doing so. Sit down, and tell me what you have been talking about with Mr. Asquith. Has he given you useful information?”
“Decidedly useful; he’s effectually knocked all those plans on the head.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. What is the difficulty?”
“There are just seventeen, one for every minute of our conversation. But very seriously, I want your advice. You know, Mrs. Clarendon, I think a good deal more of your advice than of any one else’s; pray don’t begin to be rusty just when I’ve most need of you.”
“Go on; I promise not to be rusty,” said Isabel, laughing.
“But you are a little rusty, for all that. You’re not so free and easy with me as you used to be. I suppose you’ve heard something new. I can’t get on with people—especially women—who won’t take me just as I am. You’re beginning to disapprove of me, I can see that.”
“My dear Mr. Lacour, I have always disapproved of you—in a measure.”
“Of course; but the measure is extending. There’s something in your tone I don’t like. I always say yours is the one woman’s voice I would walk a mile to hear, and to-day it has lost something of its quality for me.”
“I grieve exceedingly—except that henceforth you will be saved from the terrible temptation to over-exert yourself. But hadn’t we better talk seriously? What can I advise upon?”
“Well, it has come to this. Either I go on to the stage, or I go to Texas. Which do you recommend?”
“Of the two, Texas.”
“That is not complimentary, you know.”
“I only mean it to be sincere. And I think it not unlikely that you would do well in Texas. You need that kind of shaking up.”
“On the other hand, my advantages are thrown away,” remarked Vincent, stroking his chin. He spoke with the completest frankness; it was scarcely possible to call the speech conceited.
“I doubt whether you have any advantages for the stage,” said Isabel gravely.
“But, my dear Mrs. Clarendon————”
The talk was interrupted. Lady Florence Cootes came running up.
“Oh, Mrs. Clarendon, I had all but forgotten! I am charged with a message for you from my father. He bids me tell you that he has won his bet, and that it was Charibert won the Two Thousand the year before last. It seems you had an argument about it. Do tell me what you’ve lost?”
“I can’t, because I don’t know,” replied Isabel merrily.
“You don’t know? Have you forgotten what the bet was?”
“The stakes were kept secret. If I won I was to ask for anything I chose; if Lord Winterset won he was to do the same.”
“If Lord Winterset originated that,” observed Vincent, “he’s an uncommonly shrewd man. I shall introduce the idea forthwith to all my female acquaintances.”
Lady Florence turned away, with the face of an English virgin.
“Not with mention of the source, Mr. Lacour,” said Isabel, in a manner which he could not misunderstand.
And she moved away to mingle with other ladies, a slight shade of vexation on her countenance.
Lacour rose with rather a sour face, and strolled across the lawn, looking about him as if in search of some one. Apparently his search was unsuccessful. The sun was still warm, and he sought for a shady spot, eventually getting to the east side of the house, the opposite to that where the tennis-court lay. A yew-tree hedge divided this part of the garden from the front lawn, and it was free of people. Vincent found himself by the library window, which was low, not more than three feet from the ground. The window standing wide open, he glanced in, and no sooner had done so than he laid his hands upon the sill and neatly vaulted into the room.
Ada Warren was sitting alone. She looked, and was, in fact, a little tired, and had come there for the sake of quietness.
“I have been looking for you, Miss Warren,” was Vincent’s excuse for the intrusion. “You’ll let me sit here, won’t you?”
“I shall not be so rude as to tell you to go away,” she answered in a rather undecided tone.
“That’s good of you. Do you know I find it restful to talk to you? I do believe you’re the only person I ever spoke to quite seriously.—You don’t answer?”
“I was wondering how far that might be a compliment.”
“To the very tail of the last word.”
“And that was—ly, if you remember,” said Ada drily, giving the letter y its broader value. She looked confused as soon as she had spoken, feeling that the remark ought to have been made in a lighter tone to be quite within the limits of becoming repartee.
Vincent looked at first surprised, then leaned back and laughed.
“I’d no idea you were so witty.”
“Nor, perhaps, so ill-mannered?”
It was a little piece of reparation, and probably carried her further than she intended. Vincent leaned forward on a chair which stood between them.
“You study here, don’t you?” he asked, with a glance at the books on the table.
“I read here sometimes.”
“I suppose you’re very clever and very learned, Miss Warren?”
She moved her head slightly, and seemed unable to find a ready answer.
“Your contempt for me,” he pursued, “must be unbounded.”
“I don’t allow myself to despise people with whom I am very slightly acquainted,” said Ada; again rather more positively than she had meant. She found such a difficulty in striking with her voice the note corresponding to that which she had in her mind—a difficulty common in people who talk little and think rapidly.
“Well, yes, I suppose there is only a slight acquaintance between us,” admitted Vincent. “Not so much, for instance, as would warrant my jumping in by the window just now. I do things on impulse a good deal.”
“So do I,” said Ada.
“You do? Why, then, there’s a point of contact—of sympathy—it would be better to say, I suppose. There are very few people whom I find sympathetic. Do you fare better?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
Lacour allowed a moment or two to this assertion before he continued:
“I’ve been trying to get Mrs. Clarendon’s help in my difficulties,” he said. “She’s generally pretty sympathetic, but I believe she’s giving me up. Have you heard her say anything rather savage about me of late?”
“It would be unusual energy in Mrs. Clarendon,” was the girl’s reply.
“Energy? Well, I don’t know; I always thought she had plenty of that. But I understand you. You mean that that kind of society life doesn’t conduce to activity of mind—to sincerity, shall we say?”
Ada had meant this, but it did not exactly please her to hear it from Lacour’s lips.
“I don’t think I ever heard Mrs. Clarendon speak evil of any one,” she said, with seemingly needless emphasis, measuring her words as if in scrupulous justice.
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” he observed; “and it’s just what I should have thought. I like Mrs. Clarendon very much, but—well, I can’t say that I find in her the moral support I am seeking.”
“You are seeking moral support?” Ada asked, looking at him in her direct way, with no irony in her expression.
“Well, that’s rather a grand way of putting it, after all, for one who isn’t accustomed to pose and use long words. I want help, there’s no doubt of that, at all events.”
“Help of what kind?”
“Moral help—it’s the only word, after all. Material help wouldn’t be out of place, but one doesn’t go round with one’s hat exactly—till, that is, one’s driven to it by what Homer calls a shameless stomach. Don’t think I know Homer, Miss Warren; it’s only a phrase out of a crib, which somehow has stuck in my mind.”
Ada laughed.
“Now, if you hadn’t told me that,” she said, “I might have been greatly impressed.”
“Pay tribute to my honesty then.”
He rose from his leaning attitude and walked a few paces.
“You’ve no idea,” he resumed, facing her, “how much better I feel since I’ve been talking to you; upon my word I do. As I said, there’s something so restful in your society. You give me ideas, too. I don’t feel sluggish as I do at other times.”
He paused again, and again resumed. This time with a rather pathetic resignation in his voice.
“I suppose Mrs. Clarendon’s advice is the best.”
“What was that?” Ada inquired, her tone colder.
“She said I’d better give up hope in England, and go to some other country. Texas was proposed.”
The girl kept silence. If Lacour gauged her rightly she was reflecting upon this advice as coming from Mrs. Clarendon. Her brows drew together, and there was the phantom of a bitter smile at her lips.
“Mrs. Clarendon thinks you would be better off in Texas?” she asked, with indifference not so skilfully assumed but that this shrewd young man could see through it.
“Yes; she seems to think I should be better off anywhere than in England. I dare say she’s right, you know. My friends are about getting tired of me; it’s time I made myself scarce.”
“And what would you do in Texas?”
“Oh, pretty much anything. The kind of work you see farm labourers doing here—rail-splitting, sheep-washing and driving, and so on.”
“You feel a call to such occupations?”
“Well, I have Mrs. Clarendon’s advice.”
“Mrs. Clarendon’s advice!” she repeated. “Is Mrs. Clarendon’s advice decisive with you?”
“I believe she has a friendly interest in me, and I shouldn’t wonder if she’s right. Other people have advised the same thing. They’ve given me up, you see, one and all.”
His voice was more pathetic still. He had reseated himself, and leaned back with his eyes closed. Mr. Lacour did this not unfrequently when speaking with persons whom he desired to interest.
She did not speak, and he rose, as if with an effort.
“Well, I’ll be off; I bore you. Will you permit me to make use of the window for exit?”
“Why not?” she replied mechanically.
He turned and faced her again.
“Of course fellows sometimes make a fortune out there. I might do that, you know, if only—well, if I only had something to work for.”
“A fortune,” Ada suggested.
“No, I don’t mean that,” he replied, with fine sadness. “That doesn’t appeal to me. If you can only believe it, I have other needs, other aspirations. The fortune would be all very well, but only as an adjunct. A man doesn’t live by bread alone.”
She smiled.
“Of course it’s absurd,” he resumed, making an impatient motion with his hand; “but if only I had a little more impudence I should like to tell you that—well, that it was never so hard for me to bring a talk to an end as this of ours, Miss Warren. You’ve given me what no one else ever did, but you’ve—you’ve taken something in exchange. I dare say I shan’t see you again; will you shake hands with me before I go?”
She stood looking straight into his face, her eyes larger than ever in their desperate effort to read him. Vincent approached to take her hand.
“Ah, there you are!” cried a voice from outside the window. “Vincent, I’ve been looking for you everywhere; you’re keeping us waiting. Miss Warren, I beg your pardon a thousand times; I was so taken up with the thought of that boy that I only saw him at first. I know I shall have your gratitude, however; poor Mr. Lacour is decidedly ennuyeux to-day.”
His face seemed to indicate a rather more positive state, but it was only for an instant. Then he shook hands hastily, without speaking, and vaulted out into the garden.
“Well!” exclaimed Mrs. Bruce Page, “that’s a nice way of leaving a lady’s presence. But I suppose he’s practising Texan habits. Good-bye, Miss Warren. Do so wish you’d come over and see us. May I shake hands with you through the window? Indeed, we are bound to be off this instant. Good-bye!”
Rhoda Meres was standing by Mrs. Clarendon in front of the house when Mrs. Bruce Page came round with her captive.
“You’d never believe where I found him!” cried the voluble lady. “Having exhausted the patience of every one else, he’d positively tracked poor Miss Warren—who I’m sure isn’t looking very well—to the library, and was boring her shockingly.”
Lacour did his bowing and hand-shaking with the minimum of speech. When he touched Rhoda’s hand there was something so curious in its effect upon his sense of touch that he involuntarily looked at her face. She was very pale.
CHAPTER VI.
On the following morning Robert Asquith returned to London, to make ready for his grouse-shooting expedition on Wednesday. Rhoda Meres remained at Knightswell one more day. On Tuesday she was not at all well. Between Ada and her very fair relations existed; the girls were not intimate, but they generally discovered a common ground for companionship, which was more than could be said of Ada’s attitude towards any other female acquaintance. When Rhoda kept her room in the morning it was natural that Ada should go to her, and seek to be of comfort. She could be of none, it proved; after a few efforts, Rhoda plainly begged to be left alone with her headache.
At midday Mrs. Clarendon herself entered the room, bringing in her hand a little tray. Rhoda was by this time sitting in a deep chair, and professed herself better. She had not slept during the night, she said, and was feeling the effects; doubtless the unwonted excitement of the party had been too much for her. Isabel talked to her quietly, and saw that she ate something, then sat by her, holding the girl’s hands.
“I have a letter from your father this morning,” she said. “He seems to miss you sadly. But for that, I should keep you longer.”
“I’m afraid he must get used to it,” was Rhoda’s reply, cheerlessly uttered.
“Why, dear?”
“I shall not stay at home.”
“What shall you do?” Isabel asked quietly.
“Go somewhere—go anywhere—go and find work and earn a living!”
“But I think you have work enough at home.”
“I am not indispensable.”
“I believe you are. I don’t think your father can do without you.”
“Why can’t he? Hilda is at home quite enough to look after the servant. What else does he want with me?”
“Much else, dear Rhoda. Your sympathy, your aid in his work, your child’s love. Remember that your father’s life is not a very happy one. You are old enough to understand that. You know, I think, that it never has been very happy. Can’t you find work enough in cheering him?”
For reply the girl burst into tears.
“Cheer him!” she sobbed. “How can I cheer any one? How can I give comfort to others when my own life is bare of it? It’s easy for you to show me my duty, Mrs. Clarendon. Tell me how I am to do it!”
Isabel put her arm about the shaken form, and there was soothing in the warm current of her blood.
“I cannot tell you how to do it, Rhoda,” she said, when the sobs had half stilled themselves. “My own is too much for me. But I can—with such force of love as is in me—implore you to guard against mistakes, beseech you not to heap up trouble for yourself through want of experience, want of knowledge of the world, through refusal to let older ones see and judge for you. My own life has been full of lessons, though I dare say I have not suffered as much as others would have done in my place, for I have a temperament which easily—only too easily—throws aside care. If only I could live it over again with all my experience to guide me!”
“You don’t understand me,” said the girl, with a fretfulness she tried to subdue. “You don’t know what my trials are. No amount of experience could help me.”
“Not against suffering; no. I won’t talk nonsense, however well it may sound. But you speak of taking active steps, Rhoda. There experience can give very real aid.”
“Mrs. Clarendon,” said Rhoda, after a short silence, “I’m afraid I haven’t a very good disposition. I don’t feel to my father as I ought; I don’t care as much for anybody as I ought—for any of my relations, my friends. I’m not happy, and that seems to absorb me.”
“You don’t care for me, Rhoda?—not for me, a little bit of sincere affection?”
The voice melted the girl’s heart, so wonderful was the power it had.
“I love you with all my heart!” she cried, throwing her arms about Isabel. “You make me feel it!”
“Dear, and that is what I cannot live without,” said Isabel. “I must have friends who love me—simple, pure, unselfish love. I have spent my life in trying to make such friends. I haven’t always succeeded, you know, just because I have my faults—oh, heaps of them! and often I’m as selfish as any one could be. But a good many do love me, I think and trust. Love has a different meaning for you, hasn’t it, Rhoda? I don’t think I have ever known that other kind, and now I certainly never shall. It asks too much, I think; mine is not a passionate nature. But if you could know how happy I have often been in the simple affection of young girls who come and tell me their troubles. If I had had children, I should have spoilt them dreadfully.”
Her eyes wandered, the speech died for a moment on her lips.
“Rhoda,” she continued, taking both the girl’s hands, “some day, and before long, I shall want your love and that of all my dear friends more than ever. Something—never mind, I shall want it, and I have tried so hard to earn it, because I looked forward and knew. All selfish calculation, you see,” she added, with a nervous laugh, “but then it’s only kindness I ask for. You won’t take yours away? You won’t do anything that will put a distance between us? Nothing foolish? Nothing ill-considered? You see, I’ll put it all on my own account. I can’t spare you, I can’t spare one who loves me!”
Mrs. Clarendon accompanied Rhoda next day to Winstoke station. On her way back she drove to several cottages where it was her custom to call, and where the dwellers had good cause to welcome her. Of sundry things which occurred to her in the course of these visits, she desired to speak with Mr. Vissian, and accordingly stopped at the rectory before driving through her own gates. The front door stood open, and with the freedom of intimacy, she walked straight in and tapped at the parlour door, which was ajar. That room proving empty, she passed to the next, which was the rectors study, and here too tapped. A voice bade her enter—to her surprise an unfamiliar voice. She turned the handle, however, and looked in.
A young man was sitting in the rector’s easy-chair, a book in his hand. He rose on seeing an unknown lady. They looked at each other for a moment, with a little natural embarrassment on both sides. Each rapidly arrived at a conclusion as to the other’s identity, and the smile in both cases expressed a certain interest.
“Pardon me,” Mrs. Clarendon said; “I am seeking the rector, or Mrs. Vissian; Can you tell me if either is at home?”
“The rector, I believe, is still away,” was the reply, “but Mrs. Vissian is in the garden. I will tell her.”
But in the same moment Mrs. Vissian appeared, carrying a basket of fruit. She had garden gloves on her hands. Behind her came Master Percy. There was exchange of greetings; then, in response to a look from Mrs. Clarendon, the youthful matron went through a ceremony of introduction. Mrs. Clarendon and Mr. Kingcote were requested henceforth to know each other, society sanctioning the acquaintance.
“Your name is already familiar to me,” said Isabel; “I have been looking forward to the pleasure of meeting you some day. It was in fear and trembling that I knocked at the sanctuary; Mr. Vissian will congratulate himself on having left a guardian. Those precious volumes; who knows, if there had been no one here——?”
“And how are you, Percy?” she asked, turning to the child, who had come into the library, and holding to him her hand. Percy, instead of merely giving his own, solemnly knelt upon one knee, and raised the gloved fingers to his lips. His mother broke into a merry laugh; Mrs. Clarendon smiled, glanced at Kingcote, and looked back at the boy with surprise.
“That is most chivalrous behaviour, Percy,” she said.
Mrs. Vissian still laughed. Percy, who had gone red, eyed her reproachfully.
“You know I am a page to-day, mother,” he said, “that’s how a page ought to behave. Isn’t it, Mr. Kingcote?”
Isabel drew him to her and kissed him; a glow of pleasure showed through her smiling.
“Percy is a great many different people in a week,” explained Mrs. Vissian. “To-morrow he’ll be a pirate, and then I’m afraid he wouldn’t show such politeness.”
“That shows you don’t understand, mother,” remarked the boy. “Pirates are always polite to beautiful ladies.”
There was more laughter at this. Kingcote stood leaning against the mantelpiece, smiling gravely. Percy caught his eye, and, still confused and rather indignant, went to his side.
“Percy still has ideals,” Kingcote observed, laying his hand on the child’s head.
“Ah, they’re so hard to preserve!” sighed Isabel. Then, turning to Mrs. Vissian, “I want a word or two with you about things that are painfully real. Shall we go into the sitting-room?”
She bowed and said a word of adieu to Kingcote, who stood looking at the doorway through which she had disappeared.
Two days later fresh guests arrived at Knightswell, and for a week there was much riding and driving, lawn-tennis, and straying about the garden and park by moonlight. Then the house of a sudden emptied itself of all its occupants save Ada Warren. Mrs. Clarendon herself went to stay at two country places in succession. She was back again about the middle of September. Ada and she found themselves once more alone together.
Early on the day after her arrival Isabel took a turn of several miles on horseback. She had risen in the morning with somewhat less than her customary flow of spirits, and the exercise would no doubt help her to become herself again. It was a very soft and balmy autumn day; the sky was cloudy, but not with presage of immediate rain, and the distance was wonderfully clear, the rolling downs pencilled on sky of bluish gray. Sounds seemed unnaturally’ audible; she often stayed her horse to listen, finding something very consonant with her mood in the voices of the resting year. When she trotted on again, the sound of the hoofs on the moist road affected her with its melancholy monotony.
“Am I growing old?” she said to herself.
“It is a bad sign when riding fails to put me into good spirits. Perhaps I shall not care to hunt; a good thing, if it prove so. I lose less.”
She was returning to Winstoke by the old road from Salcot East, and presently rode past the cottage at Wood End. A window on the ground floor was open, and, as she went by, Kingcote himself came to it, having no doubt heard the approaching horse. Isabel bowed.
“Why didn’t I stop and speak?” she questioned herself. “It would have been kind. Indeed, I meant to, but my hands somehow wouldn’t obey me at the moment.”
A hundred yards farther she met a village lad, carrying a very unusual burden, nothing less than a book, an octavo volume. Isabel drew rein.
“What have you got there, Johnny Nancarrow?” she asked.
The youngster turned the book over, regarding it much as if it were a live thing.
“Fayther picked un oop corner o’ Short’s Aacre,” he replied. “He says it b’longs to the stranger at Wood End, and I’ve got to taake it there.”
“Let me look.”
It was a volume of the works of Sir Thomas Browne. Turning to the fly-leaf, Isabel saw the name, “Bernard Kingcote,” written there.
“How did it come at the corner of Short’s Acre, I wonder?”
“Fayther says the stranger ligs aboot, spellin’ over his books, and he’ll have left this behind un by hap.”
She turned over the leaves, absently; then her face brightened.
“Don’t trouble to go any farther, Johnny,” she said. “I’ll take the book to its owner myself; I know him. And here’s something for your good intention.”
She turned her horse. The boy stood watching her, a gape of pleasure on his face, and still gazed, cap in hand, till a turn of the road hid her; then he jogged back home, whistling. The sixpence had something to do with it, no doubt; yet more, perhaps, the smile from the Lady of Knightswell.
Isabel rode at a very gentle pace; once she seemed on the point of checking her horse. But she was already within sight of the cottage, and she went at walking pace up to the door. The window still stood open, and she could see into the room, but it was empty. Its appearance surprised her. The flagged floor had no kind of covering; in the middle stood a plain deal table, with a writing desk and books upon it, and against the opposite wall was a bookcase full of volumes. A less luxurious abode it would not have been easy to construct. The sides of the room had no papering, only whitewash; one did not look for pictures or ornaments, and there were none. A scent of tobacco, however, came from within.
“One comfort, at all events, poor fellow,” passed through her mind. “He must have been smoking there a minute or two ago. Where is he now?”
She knocked at the door with the handle of her whip. At once she heard a step approaching, and the door was opened. Kingcote stood gazing at her in surprise; he did not smile, and did not speak. He had the face of one who has been in reverie, and is with difficulty collecting himself.
“How do you do, Mr. Kingcote?” began Isabel. “I am come to restore to you a book which has been found somewhere in the fields. I fear it has suffered a little, though not so much as it might have done.”
He took the volume, and reflected for an instant before replying.
“I thank you very much, Mrs. Clarendon. Yes; I had quite forgotten that I left it behind me. It was yesterday. I should have been sorry to have lost him.”
“The book is evidently a favourite; you handle it with affection.”
“Yes, I value Sir Thomas. You know him?”
“I grieve to say that I hear his name for the first time.”
“Oh, you would like him; at least, I think you would. He is one of the masters of prose. I wish I could read you one or two things.”
“I’m sure I should be very glad. Will you come and lunch with us to-day, and bring the book with you?”
Kingcote had his eyes fixed upon her; a smile gathered in them.
“I’m afraid——” he began; then, raising his eyebrows with a humorous expression, “I am in no way prepared for the ceremony of visiting, Mrs. Clarendon.”
“Oh, but it will be in no way a ceremony!” Isabel exclaimed. “You will do me a great pleasure if you come wholly at your ease, just as you would visit Mr. Vissian. Why not?” she added quickly. “I am alone, except for the presence of Miss Warren, who always lives with me.”
“Thank you,” said Kingcote, “with pleasure I will come.”
“We lunch at half-past one. And you will bring Sir Thomas? And let me keep him a little, to remove the reproach of my ignorance?”
Kingcote smiled, but made no other reply. She leaned down from her horse and gave him her hand; he touched it very gently, feeling that little Percy Vissian’s fashion of courtesy would have been far more becoming than the mere grasp one gives to equals. Then she rode away. Isabel was, as we know, a perfect horsewoman, and her figure showed well in the habit. Kingcote fell back into his reverie.
He had but one change of garments at all better than those he wore; not having donned them for more than two months, he found himself very presentable, by comparison, when he had completed his toilet before the square foot of looking-glass which hung against the wall in his bedroom. His hair had grown a trifle long, it is true, but that rather became him, and happily he had not finally abandoned the razor. His boots were indifferently blacked by the woman who came each day to straighten things, so he took a turn with the brushes himself.
“After all,” he reflected, “it is a ceremony. I lack the courage of the natural man. But I would not have her accuse me of boorishness.”
And again: “So this is the Lady of Knightswell? The water of the well is enchanted, Percy told me. Have I already drunk the one cup which is allowed?”
He reached the house-door just before the hour appointed for luncheon. With heartbeats sensibly quickened he followed the servant who led him to the drawing-room. Mrs. Clarendon and Ada were sitting here together. Isabel presented him to Miss Warren, then took the volume from his hands and looked into it.
“You know Sir Thomas Browne, no doubt, Ada,” she said.
“I know the ‘Urn-burial,’” Ada replied, calmly examining the visitor.
“Ah me, you put me to shame! There’s the kind of thing that I read,” she continued, pointing to a “Society” journal which lay on the table. “By-the-bye, what was it that Mr. Asquith said in defence of such literature? I really mustn’t forget that word. Oh, yes, he said it was concrete, that it dealt with the concrete. Mr. Kingcote looks contemptuous.”
“On the whole I think it’s rather more entertaining than Sir Thomas Browne,” remarked Ada. “At all events, it’s modern.”
“Another argument!” exclaimed Isabel. “You an ally, Ada! But don’t defend me at the expense of Mr. Kingcote’s respect.”
“Mr. Kingcote would probably respect me just as much, or as little, for the one taste as for the other.”
“Miss Warren would imply,” said Kingcote in a rather measured way, due to his habits of solitude, “that after all sincerity is the chief thing.”
“And a genuine delight in the Newgate Calendar,” added the girl, “vastly preferable to an affected reverence for Shakespeare.”
Kingcote looked at her sharply. One had clearly to take this young lady into account.
“You sketch from nature, I believe, Miss Warren?” he asked, to get the relief of a new subject.
“To please myself, yes.”
“And to please a good many other people as well,” said Mrs. Clarendon. “Ada’s drawings are remarkably good.”
“I should so much like to see your drawing of the cottage at Wood End,” said Kingcote.
“When was that made?” Isabel inquired, with a look of surprise.
Luncheon was announced. As they went to the dining-room, Kingcote explained that he had passed Miss Warren when she was engaged on the sketch, before ever he had thought of living in the cottage.
“Was it that which gave you the idea?” Isabel asked.
“Perhaps it kept the spot in my mind. I was on a walking tour at the time.”
“Not thinking of such a step?”
“No; the idea came subsequently.”
During the meal, conversation occupied itself with subjects such as the picturesque spots to be found about Winstoke, the interesting houses in that part of the county, Mr. Vissian and his bibliomania, the precocity of Percy Vissian. Ada contented herself with a two-edged utterance now and then, not given however in a disagreeable way; on the whole she seemed to like their guest’s talk. Kingcote several times found her open gaze turned upon himself, and was reminded of the evening when she parted from Mr. Vissian at the gates of Knightswell.
The drawing-room had French windows, opening upon the lawn. When they had repaired thither after lunch, Ada, after sitting in silence for a few moments, rose and went out into the open air. Mrs. Clarendon followed her with her eyes, and seemed about to speak, but in the end let her pass unaddressed.
Kingcote was examining the caryatides on either side of the fireplace. He turned, saw that his hostess was alone, and came to a seat near her.
“Are you not very lonely in your cottage?” Isabel asked.
“Sometimes, yes. But then I went there for the sake of loneliness.”
“It isn’t rude to ask you? You are doing literary work, no doubt?”
“No; I am doing no work at all.”
“But however do you spend your time in that dreadful place?”
“Dreadful? Does it show to you in that light?”
“Picturesque, I admit; but——”
She paused, with her head just on one side. “I can well understand the horror with which you regard such a mode of life,” said Kingcote, laughing. “But I have never had the habit of luxury, and, so long as I am free, nothing else matters much.”
“Free from what?”
“From sights and sounds which disgust me, from the contiguity of mean and hateful people, from suggestions which make life hideous; free to live with my fancies, and in the thoughts of men I love.”
Isabel regarded him with a half-puzzled smile, and reflected before she spoke again.
“What and where are all these things which revolt you?” she asked.
“Wherever men are gathered together; wherever there is what is called Society, and, along with it, what is called a social question.”
“But you are not a misanthropist?” Kingcote was half amused to perceive the difficulty she had in understanding him. Suggestions of this kind were evidently quite new to her; probably she did not even know what he meant by the phrase “social question.”
“I am not, I believe, a misanthropist, as you understand the word. But I had rather live alone than mix with men in general.”
“To me it would be dreadful,” said Isabel, after a moment’s thought. “I cannot bear solitude.”
“The society of refined and cultured people is the habit of your life.”
“Refined—in a sense. Cultured?—I am not so sure of that. You would not call them cultured, the people I live amongst. I am not a clever woman, Mr. Kingcote. My set is not literary nor artistic, nor anything of that kind. I am disposed to think we should come into the category of ‘mean and hateful people’—though of course you wouldn’t like to tell me so.”
“I was thinking of quite other phases of life. My own experience has not been, on the whole, among people who belong to what is called society. I have lived—in a haphazard way—with the classes that have no social standing, so, you see, I have no right to comment upon your circles.”
Isabel glanced at him, and turned her eyes away. A fan was lying on the table close by her; she reached it, and played with the folds.
“But at all events,” she resumed, as if to slightly change the tone, “you have had the Vissians. Don’t you find them delightful? I do so like Mr. Vissian, with his queer bookhunting, and Mrs. Vissian is charm itself. These are congenial associates, no doubt?”
“Very; I like them extremely. Has Mr. Vissian told you how my acquaintance with him began?”
“Nothing, except that you met somehow in connection with the cottage.”
“The good rector is wonderfully discreet,” said Kingcote, with a smile. And he related the story of the Midsummer Day on which he walked from Salcot to Winstoke.
“It really was an act of unexampled generosity on Mr. Vissians part, to trust a stranger, with so dubious a story. But the first edition of ‘Venice Preserved’ no doubt seemed to him a guarantee of respectability. I had the book bound during the few days that I spent in London, and made him a present of it when I returned.”
“You have friends in London?” Isabel asked. “Relations?”
“A sister—married. My parents are not living.”
“But of friends, companions?”
“One, an artist. Did you visit the Academy this year? There was a picture of his—his name is Gabriel—a London street scene; perhaps you didn’t notice it. You would scarcely have liked it. The hanging committee must have accepted it in a moment of strangely lucid liberality. By which, Mrs. Clarendon, I don’t mean to reflect upon your taste. I don’t like the picture myself, but it has great technical merits.”
“Is he young, like yourself?”
“Like myself?” Kingcote repeated, as if struck by the expression.
“Certainly. Are you not young?”
“I suppose so,” said the other, smiling rather grimly. “At all events, I am not thirty in years. But it sounded curious to hear the word applied to myself.”
Isabel laughed, opening and closing the fan. “But Gabriel is a fine fellow,” Kingcote exclaimed. “I wish I possessed a tenth part of his energy. There he works, day after day and week after week, no break, no failing of force or purpose, no holiday even—says he hasn’t time to take one. He will make his way, of course; such a man is bound to. Resolutely he has put away from himself every temptation to idleness. He sees no friends, he cares for no amusement. His power of working is glorious.”
“He is not, of course, married?”
Kingcote shook his head.
“That singleness of purpose—how splendid it is! He and I are opposite poles. I do not know what it is to have the same mind for two days together. My enthusiasm of to-day will be my disgust of to-morrow. I am always seeking, and never finding; I haven’t the force to pursue a search to the end. My moods are tyrannous; my moods make my whole life. Others have intellect; I have only temperament.”
There was no excitement in his way of uttering these confessions, but he began reflectively and ended in a grave bitterness.
“I think I know something of that,” Isabel said in return. “I, too, am much subject to moods.”
“But they do not affect the even tenor of your life,” said Kingcote. “They do not drive you to take one day an irrevocable step which you will repent the next. They have not made your life a failure.”
“Have they done so in your case?” Isabel asked, with a look of serious sympathy. “Pray remember your admission that you have not yet thirty years.”
“The tale of my years is of small account. I shall not change. I know myself, and I know my future.”
“That you cannot. And, from what you have told me, I think your present mode of life most unfortunate, most ill-chosen.”
There was a shadow at the window, and Ada re-entered the room.
“Won’t you let us see the sketch that was spoken of?” asked Mrs. Clarendon, turning to her.
“I don’t know where to find it at present,” Ada replied, moving to a seat in a remote part of the room.
“Do you think of living in that cottage through the winter?” Isabel asked of Kingcote, when there had been silence for a moment.
“Probably through many winters.”
“You remember that there is a considerable difference between our climate at present and what it will be in a couple of months or less.”
“I shall lay in a stock of fuel. And it will interest me. I have never spent a winter in the country; I want to study the effects.”
“The effects, I fear,” said Isabel, smiling, “are more likely to be of interest to our good friend Doctor Grayling.”
“Or even to the respectable undertaker, whose shop is in the High Street?” added Kingcote, with a laugh. “It doesn’t greatly matter.”
He rose and walked to the window.
“Do you remain here through the winter?” he asked.
“I believe so; though I cannot say with certainty. I like to be here for the meets.”
“The meets?”
“The hunting, you know.”
“Ah, you hunt?”
“Mr. Kingcote is shocked, Ada. He thinks that at my age I should have abandoned all such vanities.”
“Or perhaps wonders more,” remarked the girl, “that you ever indulged in them.”
Kingcote looked from one to the other, but kept silence.
“Oh, but we have altogether forgotten Sir Thomas!” Isabel exclaimed. “Where is he? Do read us something, Mr. Kingcote.”
Kingcote hesitated.
“There are many passages marked in the book,” he said. “Will you let me leave it with you, that you may glance through it? Perhaps it is better suited for reading to oneself.”
“Very well; but I will do more than glance. I once knew what it was even to study, Mr. Kingcote, though you will have a difficulty in believing it.”
“The idea is not so incongruous,” he said, half seriously.
“Though passably so. You are not going?”
“I will, if you please.”
A heaviness seemed to have fallen upon him during the last few minutes; a smile was summoned only with difficulty, and his eyes had a weary look.
“But now that we know each other by more than hearsay,” said Isabel, “you will come and see us again?”
“Yourself and Miss Warren, gladly; but if I am remiss in visiting you will not misunderstand the reason that keeps me away?”
“It shall be as you wish. Ada and I will let you know when we are alone.”
Kingcote made his way back to Wood End.