CHAPTER IX.
Here are portions of two letters written by Bernard Kingcote to correspondents in London. The first is to his friend Gabriel, the artist.
“.... There is no doubt about its being a mistake, but what step that I have hitherto taken in my life of nine-and-twenty years has been anything else? Whether I act on impulse or after grave deliberation, is all one. You prophesied that I should be miserable in three months; it was a generous limit. I have been here three months, and have been miserable already for two. The idea of this kind of life for a permanency was as absurd as most other ideas which I embrace in splenetic moods. The serious thing is that circumstances seem conspiring to keep me here; I am considerably poorer than when I came, and the possibility of returning to live in London grows dubious. And why should I return? I have as little business there as here.
“I believe I had a thought in coming to this cottage, something more definite than the mere revolt of weariness with old conditions. It ran in my head something like this: If I was such a superlatively bilious and contumacious being, if life refused to present to me any feature by which I might clutch it, if eating my heart out appeared to be the sole occupation which I pursued unremittingly, surely there must be some discoverable reason of all this, must be some explanation of myself to be got at by diligent search. It struck me that in absolute solitude, in the remoteness of a corner of the world such as this, I might perchance have it out with myself, grip myself by the throat as it were, and force a confession of my own secret. There in London I was too closely guarded by habits, occupations, prejudices, conventional modes of thought; the truth would not be uncovered. Perhaps an utter change of conditions would make me clearer-brained, more capable of discerning the powers at work in me, of discovering whether there was not some compromise with life still possible. This was not unreasonable, it seems to me, and indeed I persuade myself that one or two points have come out where before was nothing but darkness. Unfortunately, to formulate my needs is not the same thing as to satisfy them, and satisfaction being as remote as ever, I fear I am not much advanced.
“I pass my days in a dream, which too often becomes a nightmare. It is very likely you are right, and that with every day thus spent I only grow more incapable of activity, instead of making advance by a perception of what I could and ought to do. I find myself regarding with a sort of dull amazement every species of active and creative work. A childish wonder at the commonest things besets me. For example, I fall a-thinking on this cottage in which I live, speculating as to who may have originally built it; and then it strikes me as curious that I dwell beneath its roof, waking and sleeping, with such complete confidence, taking for granted that the workmanship was good, the material sound, no flaw here or there which will some day bring the timbers down upon my head. It leads me on to architecture in general; I ponder on huge edifices, and stand aghast before the skill and energy embodied in them. In them, and in all the results of the world’s work. The sum of human endeavour weighs upon me, something monstrous, inexplicable. I try to realise the motive force which can have brought about such results, and come only to the despairing conclusion that I am not as other men, that I lack the primal energies of human life. You and your ceaseless striving come before me: I marvel. What is it that drives you on? What oestrus possesses you? What keeps your brain resolute and your hand firm?
“I buy a newspaper now and then. You cannot imagine how strangely those world-echoes impress me. The sage gravity of leading articles, the momentousness of this or that piece of news, the precision of reports, the advertisements,—is it I who am moonstruck, or the living puppets that play in this astonishing comedy? Once or twice I have been so overcome with a perception of ludicrousness as to fall back in my chair and make the roof ring with laughter.... A favourite walk is up to the old entrenchments on the Downs, six or seven miles away. They are of præ-Saxon times, I am told, points of desperate resistance by the aboriginal people against vaguely-named invaders, scenes of battle whereof no spear-clang echoes in the pages of history. I like to lie on the ground and dream myself into realisation of those old struggles, to make the fight a present fact, and hear the cries of victory and death. They were in earnest! If one could have lived in such times, when the conditions of life were frankly bestial, and every man’s work was clear before him, not a doubt to begin with, so no regret in the end! One would have been dead so long since, resting so long.
“.... I delight in the conditions of rustic life as it exists here about me. At times I talk with a farm-labourer, for my solace; to do so I have to divest myself of the last rag of civilisation, to strip my mind to its very kernel. Were oxen suddenly endowed with speech they would utter themselves even as these peasants do, so and no otherwise. The absence of any hint of townish Radicalism is a joy to me; I had not expected to find the old order so undisturbed. Squire and parson are still the objects of unshaken reverence. It is not beautiful, but how wholesome! If only the schoolmaster could be kept away; if only progress would work its evil will on the children of the slums, and leave these worthy clodhoppers in their ancient peace! They are happy; they look neither before nor after, for them the world has no history, the morrow no futile aspirations; their county is the cosmos, and around it still flow the streams of ocean. Local charity abounds; in the cottages there is no hunger, no lack of clothing. Oh, leave them alone, leave them alone! Would I had been born one of these, and had never learned the halfknowledge which turns life sour!
“But I have news for you. I have lunched at Knightswell, and in a manner have made acquaintance with Mrs. Clarendon. She astonished me by presenting herself at my cottage door, holding in her hand a book which I had left by chance out in a field, and which had been shown her by the finder. Here was condescension! However, she spoke to me with extreme friendliness, seemed anxious to know more of me, asked me at once to lunch. I went, and was alone for a couple of hours with her and Miss Warren. The latter is as cold and hard as I expected to find her; intellectual, I should fancy, but in the way one does not desire in a woman. She says disagreeably sharp things in precisely the most disagreeable manner. It puzzles me to imagine the kind of life those two lead together, or what may be the explanation of their living together at all. I fancy the Vissians know all about it, but their loyalty to the Lady of Knightswell is magnificent. I am sure they would not feel justified in uttering a word about her private concerns, in however harmless a fashion.
“Mrs. Clarendon is to me a new type of woman—new, that is, in actual observation.
“She is a woman of the world; perhaps even a worldly woman. I was never before on terms of friendly intercourse with her like, and she interests me extremely. She is beautiful, and has every external grace, I should think, wherewith woman can be endowed; but I am disposed to think her cold. I mean she does not seem to me capable of passion; probably she never loved any one. About her husband—dead for twelve years—I can learn nothing; her marriage with him was most likely one of convenience. At all events she lives in joyous widowhood; enough to show—all things considered—that her nature is very placid. The kind of woman, no doubt, who appreciates this freedom and realises no disadvantages attendant upon it. Another conclusion I have arrived at is, that her charm has gained in the course of years; she is more delightful now than she was in her girlhood, it may be, even more beautiful. This is mere assumption, of course; but warrantable, I think, It may come of my distaste for young girls. I never met one who did not seem to me artificial, shallow, illiberal, frivolous, radically selfish. A girl’s ignorance of the world is portentous, the natural result of her education; and it is only with knowledge of the world that sweetness and charity and steadfastness develop. Heaven preserve me from falling in love with a young girl who still has her first man’s heart to break!
“Her charm is, I think, largely unconscious. I mean, though she must know that she is charming—how many must have told her so!—she does not appear to use the quality as another would. What strikes one from the first is her frankness, her exquisite openness. She seems to speak to you from her heart, to conceal nothing. Of course it may very well be that there is nothing to conceal, that her life is on the surface, that she displays at once the whole of a being which has no complexity. Still, I do not rate her so poorly. Though she is anything but intellectual, her mind has delicacy and activity; her judgments of people are probably not wide of the mark. Then her tenderness, she shows it in every glance; and her bright, free gladness. A woman to the tips of her fingers, a womanly woman—everything that Miss Warren, for instance, is not. In fact, the latter’s presence throws Mrs. Clarendon’s womanliness into relief. Mrs. Clarendon will henceforth be to me the type of perfectly sweet womanhood.
“Of course, her interest in me is a mere freak. She is at a loss for entertainment now and then at Knightswell—for, alas! she does not read—and the discovery of a curious creature like myself is a source of amusement. I do not flatter myself that anything like friendship between us is possible; social distance would hinder that, if nothing else. She was kind in her manner, kinder than I can at all convey to you, and, I am sure, with complete sincerity; it is her nature to let her light shine on all, to be sweet and gracious to every one with whom she comes in contact. If, indeed, I thought friendship were attainable, I would pursue it as the main end of my existence. Her presence refreshes me, her talk is like the ripple of cool waters, her smile makes its healing way to all the hidden wounds of my wretched being. But I dare not hope for more than she gives to hundreds of others, calling them friends. She will exhaust my novelty, she will find my talk wearisome—great heavens! is it worse than that she listens to in her drawing-room in London?—she will pass on her way and leave me with a memory as of a cool, delicious summer day.
“Why should she enjoy life as she does? Why is there given to her this calm, this happy grace, the freedom from apprehension, regret, desire? I have written thus praisingly of her, and yet I could unpack my heart of a whole burden of fierce, and injurious, and reproachful words when I compare her existence with mine. Could not I, too, be gently gracious to all and sundry if I had wherewith to keep my soul from the bitterness of hunger? How easy to cultivate a charm of manner when every need is so waited upon with fruition! How easy to be sweetly placid when nature has spared you the abiding of a furious passion in your heart of hearts! I shall see as little of her as may be. She breaks my sleepy habit, and reminds me of things I want to forget.
“.... Oh! I am weary of this solitude, this daily sameness of empty life. My books are no comfort; I can no longer interest myself in what is really so precious to me; the chiming of sweet words is a burden to my ear. I have no will; mere whims make a plaything of me. When I have dragged my chain to the limit of the day, I lie down in miserable anticipation of what waits me on the morrow, whether I shall rise to an hour or two of resigned quiet, or in dull wretchedness, which makes me curse the return of the sun; the fate which tortures me will choose. If I had but something to distract my thoughts! What I would give for the feeblest novel in red or blue back which lies to-day on the library counter, smelling sweet from the press. Anything, so that it were new, so that it spoke to me of men and women who are at this moment looking into the eyes of destiny, even as I am. Those old writers, who have so long ago solved the problem and gone to their rest, burden me with their unconscious gravity; their time-tested wisdom goads me to peevishness. What to them the present anguish which makes my life a disease? Nay, what to any one, what to you, long-enduring friend, who go your way to join hands with the immortals?”
The other letter, written on the same day, is to his sister, Mrs. Jalland.
“I suffer in your distress, dear Mary, and would that I could do more to help you. We have drifted so far from each other that it is difficult for me to try to comfort you with words; to my own ear they sound inefficient, and to you they would come much like mockery. In truth, no one of us poor mortals has it in his power to heal another’s wounds; in our suffering we can only look forward to the end of all things.
“I cannot grieve with you at your husband’s ill-health, that you know; but neither shall I speak words of him that would pain you. I hold no man responsible for his deeds in this world; we all act and refrain from acting as fate will have it, and to rail against fate will not, I fear, avail us much. It’s good, however, that the children are well and happy; they, I doubt not, are often a solace to you. I suppose they are much grown and changed since I saw them. Do not grieve, dear sister, that you are unable to give them the kind of education you would desire. Of no greater unkindness can parents be guilty than to train as if for a life of leisure children whose lot will inevitably be to earn a livelihood by day-long toil. It is to sow in them the seeds of despair. Do not heed the folly of those who say that culture is always a blessing; the truth is that, save under circumstances favourable to its enjoyment and extension, it is an unmitigated curse. Had I children, I would have them taught just enough to aid them in such craft or trade as a man without means could put them to. It is no reason for lament that you have not books to put into their hands, rather be glad that they are thus saved from drinking of a well which for them would be poisoned. I give you this counsel in saddest sincerity. What seems to you now cruelty, will hereafter prove to have been the best.
“And now for the only way in which I can aid you. I have written to R————, asking him to sell for me, as soon as possible, a certain number of my shares, and this money I will gladly send you as soon as it is in my hands. I suppose it is necessary to speak of the matter to your husband, though I wish that could be avoided. It will help you out of immediate embarrassments, and leave you at peace for a little while. But—— well, why should I hesitate to tell you frankly, Mary? I shall henceforth have an income of something less than sixty pounds a year. I do not mean that this involves hardship; for me, nothing of the kind. But I do not well see how I can draw further upon the principal and still be able to live. It is less probable than ever that I shall find a way of earning my own living, unless I bring myself to the point of abandoning civilisation, and going to work with my hands in some other part of the world. I have no doubt that would be the very best thing for me, the gulf once crossed. Yet it would be a hard thing to leave you alone, struggling in that inferno; in truth, I could not bring myself to do that. Imagine you left with your children, and not a friend to turn to! Poor girl! that would be more than I could bear to think of.
“I write to the address you have given me. Do you fear to receive my letters at home?”
CHAPTER X.
The rectory was at all times open to Kingcote. Mr. Vissian welcomed him as the only man within reach who could talk on congenial topics; Mrs. Vissian liked him personally, and for the sake of the romantic stories which she wove about him in her imagination. To Percy Vissian he had become an object of a child’s affectionate regard, as well as of the reverence which attaches to men of mystery. Percy not infrequently made his way to the cottage, but never outlived that fairy-tale sensation with which he had first crossed its threshold. That Kingcote lived here absolutely alone, that he passed nights in the dread solitude of this ivy-wrapped cell, that he had nothing to do but to read the books which contained such deep and wondrous things, invested him in the child’s eyes with something of the unearthliness of a wizard. Anything but a youngster of boisterous instincts, Percy moved about in the cottage with the gravest gait; as he never went up the dim, narrow staircase, there still remained a portion of the abode of which his fancy was free to make what it would, and it often seemed to him that a strange light footfall came to his ears from the floor above. He would not have ventured to ask about this, which in truth was only the product of his excited imagination. When he had tea with his friend everything tasted to him quite differently from the flavours of home; the mere bread became cake—he munched dry pieces with a strange relish, and the milk did not come from ordinary cows. But his great delight was when, after such a meal, he settled himself on his uncomfortable chair and saw Kingcote preparing to read to him. Often the reading was of English poetry, and that was enjoyable; but better still was when the wizard took down one of those books of which the mere character suggested magic lore—a German book, and, turning it into free English, read a tale of Tieck, or Musàus, or Grimm, or Bechstein, or Hauff. Then did the child’s face glow with attention, his features become elf-like with the stirring of phantasy; and, when Kingcote ceased, he would move with a deep sigh and peer curiously about the room. He would beg to be allowed to look at these volumes for himself, touching the pages with delicate finger, spelling here and there a word and asking its meaning. There was a book of German ballads, plentifully illustrated, and over these pictures the boy was never tired of musing. Percy Vissian owed not a little to his friend for these afternoons at Wood End.
With the elder people Kingcote’s intimacy was not one of unrestrained confidence, though it only fell short of it by that degree which marks the superficiality of most friendships. For instance, he never felt tempted to speak to Mrs. Vissian, even after months of familiar intercourse, as he had spoken to Isabel Clarendon in their first conversation. The bright little woman did not exercise a compelling power upon his inner self, as Isabel had already done. There was much mutual kindness between them, and, it might be, as nearly a genuine friendship as is possible between man and woman; for such association gains in completeness only at the loss of the characteristics which justify it for friendship’s name. Mrs. Vissian showed this supreme wisdom, of never offering sympathy. It was by no means always with a conventionally smooth face that Kingcote came into her presence; at times he sat in her parlour, a picture of wretchedness, and scarcely answered when she spoke to him. For to Kingcote there came more of misery than of consolation from the aspect of this gentle peaceful home; often enough he was stirred to bitterness by the sight of this perfect content, this ideal domesticity, this sweet assuagement of the evils of life; the contrast with his own position was not fruitful of soothing. When he sat with her in that state of mind Mrs. Vissian seemed not to perceive it, or at most uttered a light word about low spirits. Of course she thought a good deal about it, but the blessed wisdom of content was strong in her, and not even by a look did she display special interest.
Mr. Vissian himself was amusing. His bibliomania and kindred interests never for an instant lost their hold upon him. When Kingcote once asked whether he did not at times weary of such things, the rector stared in amazement. The study was not the only room in which precious books were stored; upstairs was a chamber packed almost solidly with volumes, old and new. Mr. Vissian boasted that he knew every book in the mass, and could at any time make his way to any he desired to consult; it was only a matter of excavation. One slight anxiety his collection cost him; the upper walls of the house had begun to show rather large cracks, and it was possible that eventually the burden of literature would bring the roof down. But that was a risk which must take its place in the ordinary count of human contingencies. The rector subscribed to a considerable number of literary societies: the “Shakspere,” the “Chaucer,” the “Early English Text,” and others of the kind, receiving their publications and having them duly bound for a place on shelves in some commodious dwelling of the future. In the course of talk over such things, Kingcote was by chance enlightened as to the meaning of that little incident which had struck him in his very first interview with Mr. Vissian—the latter’s momentary doubt, or seeming doubt, whether he could produce the money which was requested. Kingcote discovered that his friend lived in perpetual pecuniary embarrassment. Mrs. Vissian exercised control over her husband’s expenditure to the point of preventing its exceeding their income, but that was all. The quarterly cheque was invariably demanded by outstanding liabilities as soon as it arrived, and unfortunately the cheque was not a very large one. It often happened that neither the rector nor his wife had half a sovereign in the world, a singular state of things in so otherwise orderly a household. In lending Kingcote that sovereign they had just then left themselves literally penniless. Fortunately the cheque was due. Mrs. Vissian dreaded the arrival of a booksellers second-hand catalogue; whenever it was possible, she intercepted all such, and mercilessly committed them to the flames. Yet the subject never occasioned a moment’s trouble between husband and wife; Mr. Vissian pursued his course in calmness. He was working (as a volunteer, of course) for a great English dictionary, which a certain society had it in view to produce. Also, he had taken up the new ideas of textual criticism in Elizabethan literature, and spent hours in counting the syllables in each line of a scene of this or the other dramatist. Though such a placid little man, he revelled in literary horrors. It delighted him to read aloud ghastly scenes from Webster, dwelling with gusto on the forceful utterances. Withal his orthodoxy was unimpeachable, it never occurred to him to carry his criticism into Biblical spheres. To please him, Kingcote now and then attended his services; naturally there was no further discussion on religious topics between the two.
As October drew on, and evenings began to be dark and cold, the comfort of Mr. Vissian’s study and of his wife’s sitting-room assuredly lost nothing in the eyes of the hermit of Wood End, yet his visits became less frequent. He presented himself, however, about nine o’clock one night, and was received by Mrs. Vissian with the usual friendliness. The rector was expected home every moment.
It had been raining all day, and the temperature justified the first fire, which crackled merrily and made the bright little room look cheerier than ever. The table was laid for supper (the Vissians dined at one o’clock) and a pleasant odour as of toasted cheese took advantage of the door being ajar to creep insidiously about the room. Mrs. Vissian sat with her feet on a stool, mending a pair of Percy’s stockings.
“You look tired,” she said, as Kingcote sat in silence and watched her out of half-closed eyes.
“I am, a little. I have been walking.”
“But in this dreadful rain?”
“Has it rained? I don’t think I noticed it.”
Mrs. Vissian regarded him for an instant with surprise, then laughed a little, and bent over her work. Her left hand and arm were thrust into the stocking, and she held her head sideways, observing the growth of her darning with a kind of artistic earnestness and pleasure. A small black cat, which had just come in licking its mouth, put its fore feet on to the stool and looked up into its mistress’s face. The fire crackled, and a sound of clattered plates came from the kitchen. Then was heard another sound, that of the rector’s latch-key at the front door. Mrs. Vissian quickly put down her work, and, with a bright look, went from the room.
Kingcote gripped the arm of his chair and uttered a low moan.
“Ha, well met!” exclaimed the rector, as, after divesting himself of a wet overcoat, he entered, flicking his black trousers with his handkerchief and dubiously regarding his boots. His cheeks, as always, were aglow with health and spirits; on his whiskers gleamed drops of rain. He stood with his back to the fire, and passed his finger round between collar and neck, a habit of his which always seemed to give him ease. “I have a message for you——”
The servant entered with a tray of savoury viands. The rector broke off in his speech to regard the goods which the gods were providing; he did so with a critical, yet a satisfied, eye.
“A message for me?” Kingcote asked indifferently.
“Ha, yes!” Mr. Vissian had been led off into a different train of thought, it seemed.
“Mrs. Clarendon wants you to go to see her.”
“Indeed!”
“Where did you meet her, dear?” Mrs. Vissian inquired, as she bundled away her work in preparation for the meal.
“She’s going to sit through the night with Mrs. Stigard. I shall be surprised if the poor old woman lives till morning; ten to one I shall be sent for. Lucy,” he added, as if a semi-conscious process of reflection had just come to clear issue in his mind, “that parcel for the binder is still lying upstairs. I saw it this morning with amazement; thought it had gone a week ago.”
“I’ll see to it, dear,” replied his wife, without looking up from the bread she was cutting. “Pity it has been forgotten.”
“Forgotten! And you, who never forget anything!”
Then, turning to Kingcote, he declaimed, with humorous gesture and emphasis:
“Brother Cosroe, I find myself aggrieved,
Yet insufficient to express the same,
For it requires a great and thundering speech!”
“By-the-bye,” he continued, as he poured out a glass of ale from the foam-capped jug, “it’s beyond all doubt that Grubb is wrong in his calculation. He says, you remember, that the proportion of unstopt lines in the ‘Two Gentlemen’ is one in eleven. Now I make it one in nine decimal fifteen, and I’ve been over it twice with the utmost care. This is a point of considerable importance. Take that chair, Kingcote.”
“Thank you,” Kingcote said, “I shall not eat.”
“Why not? There’s pippins and cheese to come. Then, at least, as Claudius said to the chickens, drink.”
Kingcote declined, in spite of much hospitable pressure, and kept his arm-chair. Mr. Vissian applying himself to his supper, talked in intervals of mastication.
“Mrs. Clarendon wishes you to call tomorrow or next day; pray do so. I can’t quite make out that mistake of Grubb’s; he must have calculated from an edition in which the lines are differently arranged. I shall communicate with him. Lucy, my love, I beg of you to see that those books are dispatched the first thing to-morrow; the dilatory scoundrel always keeps me waiting, and there’s a ‘Cursor Mundi’ I want to work at.”
Kingcote suddenly rose and stepped to Mrs. Vissian to bid her good night.
“Going, what?” exclaimed the rector, turning round, with an end of his napkin in each hand. “But I wanted to ask your opinion about—— You don’t look well, my dear fellow; what is it?”
“Nothing, nothing. I’ve tired myself with walking. I’ll get home.”
“You have an umbrella? Then you must take one of mine. But, I tell you, you must; it’s raining like a waterspout. Shall I walk with you?”
Kingcote had gone off into the darkness with inaudible replies.
“What is the matter with him?” asked the rector, standing in surprise. “Is he going to be ill? An awkward look-out in that cottage, with not a soul near.”
“He was very strange when he came,” Mrs. Vissian remarked. “He said he’d been walking, and yet wasn’t aware that it had rained.”
“Wasn’t aware? Curious fellow, Kingcote.”
“Don’t you think, Walter, there’s something about him we don’t understand—something in the circumstances of his life, I mean?”
“A good deal. But he’s a thoroughly good fellow; I must look in at Wood End the first thing in the morning.”
They resumed their seats.
“Lucy,” observed the rector, “you are blooming to-night! Upon my word, every year makes you younger and more beautiful.”
“What makes you think of such a thing just now?” asked the other, laughing as she shook her head.
“I don’t know. I suppose half the joy of happiness comes of contrast with others’ less fortunate lot.”
“Oh, I don’t like to think that, Walter,” protested the wife rather sadly.
“Many things are true, my dear, which we don’t like to think.”
Lucy moved to reach something, and took the occasion to kiss her husband’s forehead.
And Kingcote, plodding through the lane’s mud, reached his door. The old oak-stump in front of the cottage stood like a night-fear; the copse behind, all but stripped of leaves, gave forth dismal whisperings; rain beat hard upon the roof-thatch. The tenant took the key from his pocket and entered the cold room; he could not see his hands. Without seeking any light he felt his way up the crazy stairs, and lay down to such rest as he might find.
It rained till noon of the following day, then began to clear. When a couple of hours of pale sunshine had half dried the hedges, Kingcote set forth to walk to Knightswell. Mr. Vissian had been as good as his word in calling.
“Oh, nothing; a headache,” was the answer he received to his anxious inquiries. “I hope I wasn’t more than usually ill-mannered; pray ask Mrs. Vissian to try and tolerate me.”
“You’re getting a little low, it strikes me; too much solitude. By-the-bye, you’ll look in at Knightswell this afternoon?”
“I suppose Mrs. Clarendon feels obliged to ask me; I dare say she’d rather I kept away.”
“My dear sir, these are outcomes of the black humour; you are not yourself. Mrs. Clarendon will be very glad indeed to see you; so she assured me. I pray you, fight against this tendency to melancholia.”
It was difficult to reach the gates without having previously collected considerably more mud than one cares to convey into a lady’s drawing-room. Kingcote endeavoured to remove some of this superfluous earth as he walked up the drive by rubbing his boots in the wet grass; the result was not inspiriting.
“Pooh!” he exclaimed impatiently. “If she really cares to see me, she won’t regard the state of my boots; any one who accepts such as I am, must take mud and all.”
The thought appeared to amuse him, he walked on with a laugh.
As he entered the garden, he met the trap just driving away from the house. A gentleman was seated in it. He had rather the look of a man of business, and was reading a letter. He scanned Kingcote, then resumed his reading.
Disturbed with the thought that there might be other visitors in the house, Kingcote hesitated, doubted whether to go on. He made up his mind to do so, however, not without sundry fresh communings with himself of a bitter kind. On inquiry he found that Mrs. Clarendon was at home, and, after a moment in the hall, he was led to the dining-room. Mrs. Clarendon was writing letters at a table by the window; as she rose, he thought he detected annoyance on her face.
“I fear I disturb you,” he said coldly.
“You don’t at all; or rather, you will not, if you’ll let me treat you as a friend. I have just one letter I am obliged to write; I asked the servant to bring you here, thinking you might like to look at the pictures till I have done. One or two are thought good, I believe—that Veronese, and that Ruysdael, and the Greuze yonder. May I?”
It was hard not to smile in reply to her voice and look as she spoke the last two little words, the more so that it was clear she had something just now to trouble her quite other than the inopportune arrival of a visitor. Kingcote walked to the picture she had indicated as a Veronese, and, affecting to view it, let his eyes wander to Isabel at the writing-table. She was thinking, previous to commencing her letter. Her left arm rested on the desk, and the thumb and middle finger of the hand pressed her forehead; with the end of the penholder she tapped her chin. He noticed how beautiful was the outline of her head, relieved against the bright window; noticed, too, the grace of her neck when she bent forward to write. The scratching of her pen—she wrote very rapidly—was the only sound in the room.
Kingcote went from picture to picture, his mind not quite tuned to judge and enjoy their merits. One, however, held him. When lunching here, he had sat with his back to the wall of which this canvas was the central ornament, so had not observed it. It was a portrait of Mrs. Clarendon, painted probably at the time of her marriage, an excellent picture. As he gazed at it, Isabel came forward.
“Do you recognise it?” she asked, tapping on one hand with the letter she held in the other.
“Without doubt.”
“And moralise? But,” she added quickly, “I want you to look at this child’s head. Isn’t it exquisitely sweet?”
His eyes wandered back to the portrait, and, on their way to the door, he again paused before it.
“Did I show you my ferns the last time you were here?” Isabel asked. “Will you walk so far?”
She led to the rear of the hall, thence, by a glass door, into a short glass-roofed passage, the door at the end of which opened into the conservatory. The first section was a small rotunda, twenty feet in diameter and twelve feet high. The floor was of unglazed tiles, the ceiling of ornamental stucco; round the wall was a broad cushioned seat, above which, commencing at a height of some four feet from the ground, were windows of richly coloured glass, pictured with leaves and flowers and fruit. A stand for plants occupied the centre, but at present the shelves were almost bare.
Mrs. Clarendon threw back one of the windows.
“There is a good view from here,” she said. “A tree used to intercept it, but we had it cut down in the spring to clear a piece of ground for tennis.”
From the hill, on which the house was built, a broad stretch of green park led the eye to a considerable distance in the direction of Salcot. The roof of the cottage at Wood End was just visible. Kingcote drew attention to it.
“I don’t see any smoke from the chimney,” Mrs. Clarendon remarked, with a pleasant glance. “It is to be hoped you keep good fires this damp weather. Is the place rainproof? These last two days will have tested it.”
“It seems to be sound.”
“And you still find it your ideal?”
“The cottage? I did not choose it as an ideal abode.”
“But the quietness, the retirement, I mean. In that, at all events, you have not been disappointed.”
“Certainly not.”
Isabel shuddered.
“How you live there I can’t understand. But I suppose you find it best for your studies.”
“I don’t study,” returned Kingcote, rather vacantly, looking at the pictured glass of the window.
Isabel closed the window and passed to the next door.
“I am so sorry Miss Warren is not at home,” she said. “I quite thought she would be, but at the last moment she decided to go to London to see something in the South Kensington Museum—oh, Schliemann’s discoveries!”
“Does Miss Warren read Greek and Latin?”
“Latin she does, and is just beginning Greek. She’s a wonderfully clever girl, but it’s difficult to get her to talk. I am sure you will find her interesting when you have had opportunities of talking with her.”
They were now in an ordinary hot-house. Isabel pointed out the plants which interested her.
“I have just had a visit from my lawyer,” she said, as she plucked away some dead leaves. “What tedious people lawyers are, and so dreadfully indispensable.”
“I suppose I passed him on the drive.”
“No doubt. But I mustn’t speak ill of the good man; he came all the way from London to save me a journey.”
They moved about for a few moments in silence.
“There’s nothing here to look at, really,” Mrs. Clarendon said. “If I could afford it I should have the place kept in good order; but I can’t.”
She did not appear to notice the look of surprise which Kingcote was for a moment unable to suppress. Leading the way back to the rotunda, she placed a loose cushion and seated herself. The warmth here was temperate, not more than the season required for comfort.
“So you don’t study?” she began, with friendly abruptness, when she had pointed to a place for her companion. “What, then, do you do? I am rude, you see, but—I wish to know.”
“I wish I could satisfactorily account for my days. I read a little, walk a good deal, see the Vissians now and then——”
“And cultivate ennui—-isn’t it so? A most unprofitable kind of gardening. I believe you are thoroughly miserable; in fact, you are not at much pains to hide it.”
“Scarcely as much as courtesy requires, you would say. I wish I could be more amusing, Mrs. Clarendon.”
“I don’t ask you to be amusing—only to show yourself a little amused at my impertinent curiosity. Why should you have so forgotten the habit of cheerfulness?”
“The habit?”
“Certainly. Is it not a habit, as long as we are in health?”
“In people happily endowed, I suppose. Temperament and circumstances may enable one to keep a bright view of life.”
“Rather, a reasonable effort of the will, I should say. I am often tempted to be dreary, but I refuse to give way.”
Kingcote smiled, almost laughed.
“You think I have nothing to be dreary about?” she asked, gazing at him as if trying to read his thoughts. “That is a mistake; I don’t speak idly. It would be excusable enough if I lost my cheerfulness. But with me it is a habit. Under any circumstances there’s a great deal of entertainment to be got out of life. Of course, if one puts oneself under the most unfavourable conditions—goes to live in a remote hermitage, shuts oneself from social comforts, reads doleful books about funeral urns——”
She caught his eye, and broke off with bright laughter.
“You don’t care for Sir Thomas Browne?” he asked.
“I shouldn’t be honest if I said I did. I am afraid that kind of reading is beyond me. Ada—Miss Warren—enjoys it; but she is intellectual, and I cannot pretend to be.”
“What do you read, Mrs. Clarendon?”
“The newspapers, and now and then a novel—voilà tout!”
“There are better things than books,” observed Kingcote.
A footstep was heard in the inner house.
“Is that you, Reuben?” the lady called, causing the gardener to put his head through the door with the admission, “It be me, ma’am.”
She exchanged words with him, then proposed to Kingcote that they should go to the drawing-room for tea. On their way she paused in the hall, with talk about the panelling. Pointing to a fox’s head:
“A trophy of last season. We killed, that day, a couple of fields behind Wood End.”
Tea appeared in a few minutes. As Isabel poured out two cups, her guest made a feint of closely examining a framed photograph of Knightswell, which stood on the table. He was less at his ease than on the tiled floor of the conservatory; the dried mud upon his boots showed brutally against the dark carpet, disposing him to savage humorousness. He became aware that the beverage was silently held out to him. Her own cup in hand, Mrs. Clarendon reclined in her chair, and gradually her eyes fixed themselves upon him. He was conscious of the look before he returned it, and, speaking at length, did so as if in reply to a question, though himself interrogative.
“Did you ever visit a London hospital?” Isabel manifested no surprise; her face had even a quiet smile of satisfaction.
“Yes,” she answered. “I once went to see a servant in St. Thomas’s.”
“Ah, I was studying there—let me see, six years ago. My father was a medical man, and determined that I should be the same. At his death I gave it up; I hadn’t finished my course.”
“It was not to your taste?”
“I loathed it. My bad dreams are still of hospital wards and dissecting-rooms. I cannot bear to see the word ‘hospital’ in print. The experience of those years has poisoned my life, as thoroughly as a slip of the lancet would have poisoned my blood.”
“Had you that dislike from the commencement?” Isabel asked, after putting down her empty cup, and crossing her hands on her lap with an air of attention.
“No, not in the same degree. I thought this profession would do as well as another. I believe I even had philanthropic glows now and then, and perhaps even a period of scientific interest. The latter did not survive the steps from theory to practice; the former——”
He made a motion with his hand, and smiled.
“The very last thing I should ever have associated with you,” remarked Isabel, with puzzled thoughtfulness.
“A philanthropic zeal?”
“I didn’t mean that, but I am not sure that I mayn’t include it. Please go on.”
Kingcote was resting his forehead on his palm; he resumed without raising his eyes.
“My father practised at Norwich—by-the-bye, our friend, Sir Thomas Browne’s city. When he died, I went to live with my mother for a while; my sister had just married and gone to London, and a sister of my fathers shared our house. I thought of all sorts of things—law, literature (of course), even commerce. For I had a small capital—some shares in a joint-stock bank; they gave me a sufficient income, and I could realise when I needed. For a year I made plans; then of a sudden I found myself in Paris. You know the Continent?”
“I was in the Riviera for a month, some years ago,” Isabel answered, without interest. “I can’t afford to go abroad now.”
It was the second time she had used this phrase. Kingcote watched her countenance.
“What took you to Paris?” she inquired, ignoring the diversion.
“Nothing. I was turning over an old Bradshaw, and details of the journey caught my eye. Next morning I left Norwich. I was abroad two years.”
“In France all the time?”
“No. France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy. Perhaps I saw the countries all the better for the necessity I was under of travelling very cheaply—so cheaply, indeed, I wonder how I did it. I walked oftener than rode, and dispensed with hotel dinners whenever possible. I have a diary of the two years’ travel.”
“You will let me read that?” Isabel asked quietly.
He hesitated; his eyes fixed absently on the windows.
“Yes, I will let you read it. It is foolish, boyish; I dare not read it myself.”
“For what reason?”
“Because there is nothing I hold more in horror than the ghost of my former self. I deny identity,” he added with sudden bitterness. “How can one be held responsible for the thoughts and acts of the being who bore his name years ago? The past is no part of our existing self; we are free of it, it is buried. That release is the pay Time owes us for doing his work.”
Isabel regarded him earnestly; her cheek gathered a warmer hue for a moment.
“You may read it if you care to,” he resumed, falling back to calmness. “There is no one else to whom I would show it.”
Isabel waited for him to continue. He sat, bent forward, his hands about one knee.
“And you returned to England with plans?” she asked at length, finding him persevere in silence.
“No, only with experience. I came back because I had news of my mothers illness. She was dead and buried before I got home.”
“It strikes me as curious,” he resumed rapidly, “that my childhood, boyhood in fact, has utterly gone from my memory. I suppose that is why I have such slight sympathy with children. I have often tried desperately to recover the consciousness of my young days: it has gone. My father, my mother, I cannot, recall their relations to me, nor mine to them. Nay, facts even have left my memory. I know scarcely anything before the beginning of my student years, and even those are vanishing, I find. I live only in the present.”
“But the future?”
“No, from looking forward I shrink as much as from looking back.”
There was another silence.
“But since you returned to England?” Isabel inquired, “have you never thought of another profession?”
Kingcote laughed.
“I had crazy projects for studying art. Gabriel put that into my head. But my zeal did not last. It is the same in everything; I lack persistence.”
“And you have——”
“Done nothing, you would say,” Kingcote supplied in the pause she made. “Literally nothing; wasted my time, lost my best years. The necessary consequence of being made up of wants, without the powers which could satisfy them. At present I am engaged in the first work I have done for years.”
“At last, then!” Isabel exclaimed.
“Yes, the work of resigning myself to being nothing, of casting off the last foolish flattery of self-conceit, of resolutely bidding myself understand that fate will bear any amount of idle fuming and remain unchanged. It is a task which has its difficulties; rather harder, on the whole, than the realisation of death. Did you ever force yourself to realise death, not to admit it in idle words, but to——”
Isabel motioned him to silence; her face was darkened with a look of pain, of fear.
“Forgive me,” he said in a lower voice; “to me it is such a familiar thought. I talk so seldom that I forget the difference between reflection and conversation.”
She spent a moment in clearing her mind of the disturbing thought—it seemed strangely disturbing, and at length banished it with the laugh occasioned by a new idea.
“I wonder,” she said, changing her attitude, “what you——”
“You were going to say——?”
“You spoke of having thought of commerce. Suppose you had become a man of business, and had made your fortune, what would your views of life be?”
“Who can say? To begin with, I should only have ruined myself; no fortune would ever have come in that way. Conceiving that it had, why I should not be the same person that I am. Circumstances are the mould which give shape to such metal as we happen to be made of. The metal is the same always, but it may be cast for mean or for noble uses.”
“I do not think,” Isabel said with gentle reassurance, “that Fate uses the nobler metals, for mean service; it has abundance of the poorer stuff at hand.”
“That is very well said; if I dared apply it to myself I might yet live awhile in the old fools paradise. But there is one gain which saves my past years from utter vanity—I have learnt to know myself.”
“Have you?”
Kingcote smiled.
“You say that sadly. Yes, you are quite right. Self-knowledge, in my case, is equivalent to disillusion, loss of hope.”
“I meant nothing of the kind,” she rejoined, after reflecting a moment on the intention of his words, which she had not at first quite caught. “I doubt whether you do know yourself. If you did, you would have more confidence.”
“That is the kindness natural to you. But,” he added, softening the words by his tone, “you do not know me.”
“No—not yet. It is not easy to know you. I cannot judge you by other people.” Kingcote rose and walked to the fireplace; Mrs. Clarendon watched him, but kept her seat.
“You know many people,” he said, speaking with his peculiar abruptness, which was quite different from the tone of mere familiarity, seemed indeed rather to accentuate the distance between them.
“Many,” Isabel returned, “in a way.”
“It must be strange to have so many acquaintances. It gives you the sense of belonging to the world; you do not stand on the outside and look on.”
“In a theatre—watching from an uncomfortable back seat? The stage is open to you.”
“And the parts? Even if I were cast, think of my poor memory. The words are so hard, so artificial. At most I could play the walking gentleman, and in truth I have no mind for that.”
Isabel smiled, as if involuntarily, and, after glancing round the room, quitted her seat.
“A friend is coming in a day or two to stay with me,” she said; “not a mere acquaintance, but really a friend. I should like you to meet her: you won’t refuse?”
He looked at her and hesitated.
“You can’t help liking Mrs. Stratton. She has been my nearest friend for years.”
“I may be gone,” Kingcote said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Gone? But you have no intention of leaving?”
“Yes, a half-intention.”
“To return to London?”
“I suppose so.”
She kept silence, and he added:
“My sister’s husband is ill. Circumstances might compel me to return.”
“But you are not summoned? You won’t leave your cottage unless there is a necessity?”
“Perhaps not; yet I can’t be sure. I act very much on impulse.”
“That phrase reminds me of some one—a very foolish young man, whom you don’t at all resemble.”
“Some one you know?”
“One of the many; never mind him. But you will not be gone before next Wednesday; that we may take for granted; unless, of course, you have bad news. You will come and lunch with us on Wednesday?”
“With yourself and Mrs. Stratton?”
“And Miss Warren. I want you to know her better.”
“Yes, I will come, if I am still at Wood End.”
He held his hand to take leave. Isabel retained it as she spoke.
“In any case you will not go without coming to say good-bye?”
“I could not easily do that, Mrs. Clarendon.” She went with him into the hall, and, when he had left the house, watched him from the drawing-room windows till the trees intervened.