CHAPTER XIV.
|Mrs. Clarendon did not hunt the next winter.
Her sojourn with her friends in Scotland was to have been for six weeks, but the end of a little more than half that time saw her back at Knightswell. She returned in uncertain health, and a very dull, wet autumn aided in depressing her spirits. Throughout September she lived almost alone; then, at the impulse of a moment, she set off for Chislehurst, and presented herself quite unexpectedly at the Strattons’, where she dwelt till November was half spent. For a week after her arrival, she was so unwell that she had to keep her room.
It was the termination of a serious attempt to live by herself. Since receiving and answering Kingcote’s last letter (it came to her on the morning of her departure for Scotland, and in hurriedly opening the envelope she had not even noticed that the post-mark was not of London), she had been in ceaseless nervousness of anticipation; that Kingcote would maintain silence, she could not believe. By every post she expected a letter, in which he would once more overwhelm himself with reproaches, and implore the continuance of her love. She could not have said, she did not in truth know, whether she hoped for such a letter; that she feared it was no proof of the contrary. In Scotland, the feeling of her distance from London was a trouble, growing day by day. That she should seem to be enjoying herself at such a time was an injustice to herself; enjoyment she had none. Apprehensions lay upon her in the night-time. Was he not capable of doing rash things in such a crisis of his life? Not seldom she rose with her eyelids swollen; Isabel wept more in three days than in all her life before. Of mere woman’s resentment she felt nothing, for the accusation with which she visited herself was sincere and constant. At length she could not bear her remoteness, and, in her journey to the south, purposes the most various strove for the conduct of her mind. She reached Knightswell with a resolve to proceed on the following day to London.
It was not the anxiety and impatience of love; she knew it, and did not endeavour to deceive herself. But she suffered keenly in the thought of having inflicted pain. It was rather late, one may hint, to experience the reality of trouble on this score; but do not be unjust to her. When she went to London at the beginning of the season, it was in the full expectation that Kingcote would be part of her world; it had been her intention to introduce him to the more intimate of her friends, and little by little to allow people to surmise the situation. The dream of breaking wholly with her past was already forgotten; Isabel did not lack sincerity of thought, and she knew that the projects she had at first entertained were impossible. Their marriage must be planned in a more practical way; let details be left for the future, but an essential was that Kingcote should understand the kind of life which custom had made her second nature, and should adapt himself to it. She could see nothing unreasonable in this, nothing too exigent. Quite failing of insight into his modes of thought and the peculiarities of his character, she believed that it lay with her to draw him forth from his unwholesome retirement, and to accustom him to a measure of social activity which could not interfere with his favourite pursuits, and might very well lead to something—that vague something which she kept well away on the horizon of her speculations, the indispensable help which good fortune would provide. This plan had lamentably fallen through; Kingcote would not adapt himself to the situation. There followed in her mind some irritation; she thought him unjust to her. Conscious of her perfect faithfulness in word and deed, she could not understand his frantic jealousy. It was something, she said to herself, that would pass; both for his sake and her own she must hold on her way, and he would overcome his weakness. Oh, if he had not been so weak! Had he but been led by his jealousy to take a strong attitude; had he, when she gave him the chance, bidden her return to Knightswell; she could have subdued her will to his, and love would have been strengthened by the act of obedience. He would do neither one thing nor another; it was she who must be strong. The prolongation of her stay in London was partly due to her lingering hope that he would still take the rational view of things, though in part it arose from a slight perversity excited by his behaviour. He accused her daily, he put her in the wrong, and she felt that it was neither just nor generous in him to do so.
She went from London with an unsettled mind, but with a distinct sense of relief. She had come to dread his visits, and to fear the letters he wrote her. She promised herself to think it all over whilst in Scotland. The idea of frankly admitting to Mrs. Stratton the nature of her interest in Kingcote, that together with her some plan might be contrived for obtaining him a reputable position, was just now uppermost in her mind. Then came Asquith’s mention of the secretaryship in Smyrna. We have seen in what mood she wrote to Kingcote. His interpretation of her letter was unjust, for Isabel had not consciously the thought which he attributed to her. Yet she wrote it, and certainly would not have done so four months ago.
Now she suffered in the feeling that she had inflicted pain. She remembered his face when she parted with him—its worn and haggard look. With all her soul she tried to yearn towards him as she had in those winter days at Chislehurst, when the flame of her love was new-kindled, and each letter that came from him was fuel of passion. That was what made her weep—the misery of knowing that her heart did not live as for a short space it had done, the sadness of a death within her. Was he less lovable than when first she knew him? Tears came for an answer; they meant that she did indeed think him so. But the loss, the loss! She had let slip from her hand something which had been like a gift from heaven. The loss was one that would affect the whole of the life that lay before her.
The last of her youth was gone.
Coming from Scotland, she reached Knights-well late in the evening; she gave orders that preparations should be made for a journey to London the first thing next morning. At the last moment that journey was postponed. It rained heavily; she made it her excuse. Then, in her changing purposes, another plan seemed better. She would live at Knightswell in complete isolation. Solitude would make him an ever-present need; her heart would soften to the old tenderness; at the end of the year she would write to him, tell him how she had spent her time, bid him come to her. She began a diary, in which she would set down her thoughts of him daily; this she would send. But when a week had passed she no longer wrote in the pages of the book; on the last which her pen touched there were marks of tears....
The visit at Chislehurst restored her health, and shortly after her return to Knightswell friends came to stay with her. Parties succeeded each other through the winter; she would not hunt—she did not clearly know why—but her stables were used by those who did. When, at the end of February, she was a whole week without guests, an uneasy loneliness possessed her.
Mr. Vissian visited her during that week. In September, that dread month of solitude, she had asked him if he had news from Mr. Kingcote; but the rector had then heard nothing. He was now, however, in a position to answer more satisfactorily, when she again asked the question. It was late in the afternoon; they were by the fire in the drawing-room, drinking tea.
“Kingcote? Oh, yes!” said Mr. Vissian. “He has gone to live in Norwich. I thought I should never hear from him again; but I find he has been seriously ill.”
“Ill?” Isabel asked, not immediately. “Is that lately?”
“He speaks of the end of last year; a bad fever of some kind, which nearly ended his days—those are his words.”
She murmured an “Indeed!” and looked at the fire.
“What is he doing in Norwich?” was her next question.
“Well, I was somewhat surprised to hear that he has turned bookseller, has a shop there.”
Isabel looked at him without astonishment, but rather as if she were reflecting on what he had told her.
“He writes in a melancholy way,” the rector pursued. “Circumstances have urged him to this step, it seems. I fear he will find business, even that of a bookseller, very uncongenial. He is a man of singular delicacy of temperament; quite unfitted to face practical troubles, I should say. Possibly you know that he has relatives dependent upon him.”
“Yes, I know,” Isabel answered mechanically.
When the rector went, she sat till dinnertime thinking. Whatever her thoughts were, they only ended in a sigh.
More visitors, then the season once more at hand. At hand, too, the month of June—but of that she had resolved not to think. Not till the very day came would she turn a thought to the future.
Kingcote was not in London. She was glad of that; otherwise she would have gone up with a troublesome nervousness.
CHAPTER XV.
Vincent Lacour—now Sir Vincent—had a letter to answer. It was the end of May, and his time was much taken up. A young and handsome baronet, of manner which many people held fascinating, of curious originality in drawing-room conversation, possessed of a considerable fortune, and without encumbrances—it was natural that he should be in request when mornings were too short for the round of seasonable pleasures, and nights were melodious with the strains of Strauss and Waldteufel. For full four days he had postponed the answering of this particular letter, and mentally he characterised the neglect as disgraceful. However, a certain event had just come to pass, which made discharge of the duty imperative. He dined at his club, and there penned his reply. Afterwards he had a ball to go to.
It concerns us to know what he wrote:
“My dear Miss Warren,
“You will blame me for my delay in replying to your letter; I can only excuse myself by begging you to reflect how difficult it is to answer at all. I wrote to you for the last time five months ago, and you did not reply, or at all events no letter from you reached me. I put a certain interpretation upon your silence; that which, you must admit, your previous tone naturally suggested. I implore you not to misunderstand these words. I mean nothing less than an ungenerous reproach. No blame can possibly attach to you; circumstances alone have led us to the position we at present occupy with regard to each other. Circumstances have held us apart; must they part us finally?”
Vincent paused at this point: “I’m hanged if I couldn’t write a book,” he said to himself. “Well turned, those sentences, and they come so easy. I dare say the Amontillado has something to do with it.”
He proceeded:
“I can well understand a certain delicacy which has kept you silent so long; perhaps my last letter erred in the same direction, and you took for coldness what was merely an ill expression of my deep respect. You ask me now in what light I regard our relations to each other. Shall I answer that I have no will but yours, and that you have not mis-estimated me in conveying so delicately the wish you are too generous to express as a demand? Circumstances have treated us cruelly; to whom are not circumstances cruel at one time or another? Our misfortune is that they have declared themselves hostile in a matter of the gravest moment. Which of us could say what utterance on either side, what instant in our relations, had the influence we both feel to have been so fatal? My life has been an unhappy one; your letter makes it clear to me that I must go my way with one more sad, the saddest, memory. I cannot reproach myself; it is still less possible to reproach you. There is a fate in these things; you feel it yourself. I wish my loss were no heavier than your own. I never was worthy of you, and of that you must be conscious. I may have abilities, but they are very poor compared with yours, and, such as they are, I have made a poor use of them. That you should desire to be free from the bonds, which, you so nobly say, you still deem binding, is only natural; you deserve, and will win, devotion of a higher kind than my nature is capable of. In plain English, I am a sorry fellow. You know it. Let us say no more.”
At this point he made no internal comment, but hurried on to the end.
“Some day we shall, I trust, meet as friends; that is a privilege I shall covet. I am not incapable of appreciating high things, whether in character or in art. I think of you with reverence. Perhaps you will come to think, at all events, with tolerant kindness, of
“Yours very sincerely,
“Vincent Lacour.”
A couple of hours later he went to a ball given by his friends, the Hagworth Lewinsons, at their house in Cromwell Road. Mr. Lewin-son had formerly held a position in the Queensland Mint; he was now a member of Parliament, with a specialty in matters concerning currency, his own practical dealings therewith being on a substantial scale. He had one fair daughter and no more; Miss Lewinson was beautiful, and not more insipid than it generally falls to the lot of beautiful girls to be. To this young lady, Vincent Lacour had, a day or two ago, offered himself as a husband. To-night he appeared in the capacity of accepted suitor. Society inspected the two as they stood together, and discussed them with Society’s freedom; a coming marriage is so obviously a fit subject for light and frivolous chat. One circumstance was highly amusing; the bride-elect had a pronounced turn for jealousy, and did not conceal as well as she might have done, her anxiety to keep Sir Vincent well within view. There were not wanting ladies who remarked that Lady Lacour would have a busy time of it.
Vincent managed to sit out during one dance in which Miss Lewinson was engaged. He was looking rather absently at the couples when Mrs. Bruce Page placed herself beside him.
“Ah, you here?” he exclaimed, with something less than his usual politeness.
“Aren’t we going to be friends again?” said the vivacious lady, casting her eyes about her.
“I didn’t know we were anything else,” said Lacour drily.
“You always take it for granted that you are forgiven. And is this true that I hear?”
“You must hear so many things.”
“I do,” was the pithy reply. “But of course you know what I mean. When, pray, did you get rid of poor A. W.?”
The music was loud, but there were people sitting very near, and Mrs. Bruce Page had a habit of referring to her acquaintances thus cautiously. She allowed herself the solecism, as she allowed herself sundry other freedoms which had got her a worse name than she deserved.
“I don’t think we need talk of such things,” said Vincent coolly. “You are abundantly gifted with imagination. It will supply your needs in conversation for the next few days.”
“You are monstrously unkind,” she said, in a lower voice, and with a manner which would imply to observers that she was saying the most indifferent things. “If I liked to talk, now—but I won’t betray you. You might tell me all about it in return.”
“There is nothing to tell. Engagements are broken off every day.”
“True. A pity the practice isn’t more extensive. I suppose she got tired of you? You were too conceited for her?”
“We’ll say so,” conceded Vincent, more good-humouredly.
“Then it was her doing?”
“You are impertinent, but I don’t mind telling you that it was.”
“Oh, what a frank boy! There was no reason on your side for—drawing back a little, eh? waiting to see what time would bring, eh?”
“Your insinuations are best not understood.”
“It didn’t by chance occur to you that—let us say, that A. W. might not in the end prove what she seemed?”
Vincent looked at her out of the corners of his eyes.
“There was nobody, I suppose, interested in hinting that perhaps the will——? You understand?”
“Look here, what do you mean?” he asked, thoroughly roused.
“Nothing. I only thought that perhaps some one might, in some way or other—let us say by an anonymous letter——”
She was off to another part of the room before he could detain her, though he even clutched at her dress; her mocking laughter was quite distinct through the music.
“That woman’s the very devil!” was Sir Vincent’s muttered exclamation....
From the ball-room to the gardens and sunny glades of Knightswell. Ada went thither the day after she received Lacour’s letter, purposing a week of solitude. Mrs. Clarendon was tasting the sweets of the season in her wonted way, and the girl had Knightswell to herself. She enjoyed it. Up but little later than the sun, she went to see the rabbits at their dewy breakfast in the park, and to hear the thrushes pipe their mornings rapture. And she, too, sang out loud in the joy of her youth, and health, and freedom, in the delight of things achieved, and in glorious anticipation of effort that lay before her. Her spirits were as the weather, sunny, fresh, unclouded. Dark moods had fled from the strong and gracious presence which thrived in her heart. She knew delight. The current of her blood was for the time cool and even-flowing. Life would not bring her many days like these, so free from regret and from desire; that she knew well, and ate the golden fruit of the present with unabated joy.
There were changes in her face. The harshness of her features was softening by some mysterious outward working of the soul within. If she lived another five years, that which had made her plain by over-emphasis of individuality would have become the principle of a noble type of beauty. She was not unconscious of it, and it contributed to her energy of hope. Face would ally itself with form a her body had strength and graceful ease of motion; the moulding of her limbs was ideal. Every drop of the blood in her veins was charged with health. The physical sufferings which had formerly assailed her, she seemed to have outgrown. Passion slept, but only to arrise with new force; the heart would not always lie in subjection to the mind.
A walk one day brought her back from Salcot by the old road. When she came to the Cottage at Wood End, she paused to view it. A labourer’s family lived there now, and there were two children playing by the oak trunk. As she stood the cottage-door opened, and Mr. Vissian came forth.
He raised his eyes and saw her; she met him half-way, and greeted him with a frank friendliness which he did not look for.
“Mrs. Vissian and myself were about to call on you,” the rector said, with a little embarrassment. “I am rejoiced to see you looking so well, Miss Warren.”
“You have been making a pastoral visit?” Ada remarked, as they walked on together.
“Yes. I dare say I come here rather oftener than I should in the natural course of things, owing to my associations with the place. My good friend Kingcote used to live here. I believe you met him once or twice at Knightswell?”
“Oh yes, and in London, at a friend’s house.”
“It was a loss to me when he went away, a serious loss. I am doing my utmost to persuade him to come over and spend a week with me, but he won’t promise. We had a surprising similarity of tastes. He enjoyed the old dramatists, who, I think, you know are my favourite study.”
“Does he live in London?”
“No. In Norwich. It is his native town.”
Mr. Vissian, ever discreet, made no mention of his friend’s pursuits.
“Really, Miss Warren,” he continued, “you must allow me to tell you what pleasure you have been giving me of late. That story of yours in Roper s Miscellany is one of the most delightful things I have read for a long time. I don’t read modern fiction as a rule, but it is my hope that I may not miss anything you publish henceforth. I should not have seen this, I fear, but for my friend Kingcote. He sent me a copy of the magazine, and with it words of such strong commendation that I fell to at the feast forthwith.”
There was a glow of pleasure on the girl’s face; she said nothing, and looked away over the sunny meadows.
“There is an energy in your style,” pursued the rector, “which I relish exceedingly. Clearly you have drunk of the pure wells of English. Doubtless you read your Chaucer devoutly? A line of him has been ringing in my head for the last two days; no doubt you remember it, in the ‘Legende of Goode Women’—
‘And sworen on the blosmes to be trewe.’
One of the sweetest lines in all English poetry.”
He repeated it enthusiastically several times.
“Ah, Kingcote and I used to hunt up lines like that and revel over them! I have no one now with whom to talk in that way. He had a fine taste, a wonderful palate for pure literary flavour. His ear was finer than my own, much finer. He showed me metrical effects in Marlowe which I am ashamed to say I had utterly missed. There was one sonnet of old Drummond’s—Drummond of Hawthornden—that we relished together. Of course you know it well; the one beginning—
‘Lamp of heaven’s crystal hall that brings the hours.’
In it comes that phrase, ‘Apelles of the flowers.’ A grievous loss to me, an irreparable loss! I am engaged at present on an edition of Twelfth Night, in which, by-the-bye”—his eye twinkled—“I explain ‘the lady of the Strachy,’ I constantly miss Kingcote’s comments.”
Ada listened with thoughtful countenance.
“He ought to do something himself,” Mr. Vissian added, “but I fear his health is very bad. Last autumn he had a severe illness——”
“Last autumn?”
She interrupted involuntarily, and at once dismissed the curiosity which had risen to her face.
“Yes; I didn’t hear from him for a long time. He told me afterwards that he had beea at the point of death.”
“I hope you will let me have your Twelfth Night when it appears,” Ada said, after a short silence.
“With pleasure; if only you will promise to keep me apprised of your own publications. Ah me! how delightful it is to talk literature! I with difficulty part from you, Miss Warren; I could gossip through the day. If I only durst invite you in Mrs. Vissian’s name to take a cup of tea at the rectory this afternoon. It would be a charity. You have never seen my books, I believe; I have one or two things you would not disdain to look at; one or two first editions, among them a ‘Venice Preserved,’ which Kingcote gave me.”
“I will gladly come,” said Ada.
“Ah, you rejoice me! I shall go about my parish with the delight of anticipation.”
The tea-drinking duly took place. Mrs. Vissian was a little alarmed at the prospect of such a visitor, but went through the ceremony very well. The change in Ada surprised both the rector and his wife.
“I suppose it is the thought of coming into possession,” Mrs. Vissian said, when alone with her husband. “But really I don’t envy her. It ought to be very painful to her to take everything from poor Mrs. Clarendon.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” remarked the rector, “if Mrs. Clarendon lives at Knightswell just as before. Miss Warren cannot but insist upon it.”
“I couldn’t do that!” exclaimed Mrs. Vissian, shaking her head. “No, I’m sure it won’t be so. No woman who respects herself could submit to that.”
“But, my dear——”
“But what?”
“Ah, I really forgot what I was going to say; something about Mrs. Clarendon. Never mind.”
Returning to London by the first of June, Ada brought all her high spirits with her. With Rhoda and Hilda she was an affectionate sister, and outdid them both in mirthfulness. Rhoda had got over her long depression; she was in the habit of looking forward with a very carefully-concealed expectation to the not infrequent visits of a certain friend of her father’s, a gentleman of something less than forty, who was a widower, with one little boy of his own. This youngster occasionally accompanied his father, and received much affectionate attention from Rhoda; Hilda looked askance at the exhibition of his graces. The house in Chelsea had certainly a brighter air than of old.
On the evening of the day after her return, Ada went to walk by herself along the river. Hilda wished to accompany her, and was surprised by her friends request to be alone.
“Oh, you are thinking out another story,” Hilda exclaimed.
“Yes, I am; a very interesting one.”
Her face was very bright, but grave. She walked till the sun had set, watching the changing clouds and the gold on the river. On her way home, she paused a moment before each of the historic houses close at hand, and stood to look at the face of Thomas Carlyle, who had just been set up in effigy on the Embankment. At ten o’clock, when the sisters went up to bed, Ada knocked in her usual way at the door of Mr. Meres’ study.
Mr. Meres was reading; he welcomed her with a smile.
“Have you got Drummond’s poems?” she began by asking.
“Drummond of Hawthornden? Alas, no!”
“No matter. Mr. Vissian happened to mention him to me with some fervour.”
She was silent for a little, seemingly thinking of another matter. Then she said:
“Mr. Meres, I shall be one-and-twenty a fortnight to-day.”
“I know it, Ada.”
He watched her under his brows; she was smiling, with tremor of the lips.
“I went down to look at my property,” were her next words.
Mr. Meres made no answer.
“You will never, I fear, be able to congratulate me.”
He shifted on his chair, but still said nothing.
“And if you do not, who will?” pursued the girl. “I am afraid I shall be very friendless. Do you think it will be worth while to have a London house as well as Knights-well?”
“You will scarcely need one,” said the other, tapping his knee with a paper-knife, and speaking in rather a gruff voice.
“Some people in my position,” Ada went on, “would half wish that such wealth had never come to trouble them. They might be tempted to say they would have nothing to do with it.”
Mr. Meres raised his face.
“And so give much trouble,” he remarked, in a tone of suppressed agitation. “A state of things would follow equivalent to intestacy. Ten to one there would be law-suits. The property would be broken up.”
“Yes, I have thought of that,” Ada assented, looking up at the Madonna over the fireplace. “Still there would be a resource for such a person’s foolishness. There would be nothing to prevent him or her from giving it all away when once possessed of it.”
“Nothing in the world,” said Mr. Meres, scarcely above a whisper.
“Mr. Meres, will you help me to get that legally performed?”
He half rose, his hands trembling on the arms of his chair.
“Ada, you mean that?”
“Yes, I mean it.”
He caught her head between his hands, and kissed her several times on the forehead.
“That’s my brave girl!” was all he could say. Then he sat down again in the utmost perturbation. He was completely unnerved, and had to press his hands upon his brows to try and recover calm.
Ada kept her eyes upon Raphael’s Madonna. She could not see quite clearly, but the divine face was glowed around with halo, and seemed to smile.
“I cannot be quite independent, you know,” she said at length. “For the present I must ask Mrs. Clarendon to give me just what I need to live upon—that, and no more. I shall be glad to do that. I had rather have it from her as a gift than keep a sum for myself.”
“When did you first think of this?” Mr. Meres asked, when he could command his voice.
“I cannot tell you. I think the seed was in my mind long ago, and it has grown slowly.”
She spoke with much simplicity, and with natural earnestness.
“I never rejoiced in my future,” she continued, “unless, perhaps, in a few moments of misery. I never in earnest realised the possession of it. How could I? This wealth was not mine; a mere will could give me no right in it. I have often, in thinking over it, been brought to a kind of amazement at the unquestioning homage paid to arbitrary law. You know that mood in which simple, every-day matters are seen in their miraculous light. My whole self revolted against such laws. It seemed a kind of conjuring with human lives—something basely ludicrous. And the surrender costs me nothing; I assure you it costs me nothing! To say there was merit in it would be ridiculous. I simply could not accept what is offered me. Oh, how light I feel!”
Meres looked at her admiringly.
“And to consent to be the instrument of a dead mans malice!” Her scorn was passionate. “Isn’t it enough to think of that? What did he care for me, a wretched, parentless child, put out to nurse with working-people! It was baser cruelty to me than to Mrs. Clarendon. Oh, how did she consent to be rich on those terms?”
“Ada, you must try and think tenderly of her,” said Meres, with the softness which always marked his voice when he spoke of Isabel. “I have told you of her early poverty. She was a beautiful girl, and without the education which might have given her high aims; the pleasant things of the world tempted her, and frivolous society did its best to ruin her. It did not touch her heart; that has always been pure, and generous, and womanly. Try never to think of her failings.”
“I wish I were not a woman!” Ada exclaimed. “It is that which makes me judge her hardly. Men—all men—see her so differently.”
“Ada Warren!” he grasped the arm of his chair convulsively, speaking in sudden forgetfulness of everything but his passion, “if by my death I could save her from the most trifling pain I would gladly die this hour!”
She gazed at him with a daughters tenderness, and sighed:
“I shall never hear such words as those.”
“My child, your reward is in the future. Fate has given you nobility alike of heart and brain, and, if you live, you will lack no happiness that time has in its bestowal. Go, now, Ada, and leave me to myself. This hour has made me feel old. My quiet life does not fit me for these scenes. I am horribly shaken.”
She rose, and bent her head that again he might kiss her on the brows.
“You shall be my father,” she said, her voice faltering. “May I call you father from now?”
He turned from her, pressing her hand, and she left him.
CHAPTER XVI.
Kingcote’s abode was in one of the principal streets of Norwich. The shop was narrow but ran back some distance, and above it were two storeys for dwelling; to reach the house door you went up a yard, beneath an archway, the side entrance to a respectable public-house being opposite. The name of Gabriel had been left undisturbed along the top of the shopfront; above it, in fresh gilt letters, was the name of the present tradesman; a small “late” connected the two.
In the rear of the shop, a small dark room, with windows of which the lower half was in ground glass, served during the day-time as counting-house; after business hours it became the private sitting-room of Mr. Billimore. It was to Mr. Billimore that Gabriel referred, when he spoke in terms of confidence of the assistant who had so long been his father’s right-hand man. He was middle-aged, rather above six feet in stature, and entirely bald; not a hair remained upon his head. He had, however, a thin moustache, reddish mixed with gray, and a goat-beard beneath his chin; the chin itself, for some strange reason, he carefully shaved. His cheeks were marked with healthful ruddiness, and he had eyes which twinkled with a pleasant and kindly humour. When he met a customer, he stood with bowed head, performing the action of hand-washing; when discussing a matter with his employer, he invariably took his handkerchief from the breast-pocket of his coat, and polished his head with it, as if the act implied a seemly combination of self-respect and deference. Never was a worthier assistant, never a more capable. His knowledge of the outsides of books was considerable; his acquaintance with them as literature was such as might be gained by a complete perusal each Sunday morning of The Athenoum. In the pleasantest manner possible, he set to work from the first day to instruct Kingcote in the details of shopkeeping; without a smile of presumption he answered questions which Kingcote himself put with a half-ashamed laugh; his seriousness and honesty were beyond suspicion.
Mr. Billimore had a bedroom at the top of the house; breakfast, mid-day dinner, and tea, he took with the family; his supper, consisting of bread and cheese and a pint of beer, was, in accordance with immemorial usage, laid for him in the counting-house at nine o’clock. Kingcote wondered much what his assistant did with himself during his free hours, for no acquaintance ever came to see him, and his excursions were limited to a walk before breakfast on Sunday morning, and another after supper on the same day. If Kingcote went by chance through the counting-house after the shop was closed, he found Mr. Billimore sitting with a glass of beer at his elbow, a churchwarden pipe between his lips, either musing or reading some periodical. The pipe and glass were invariable; the assistant had the habit at Sunday dinner of pouring out his second tumbler of ale just before the meal ended, and carrying it with him into his own quarters, that the afternoon tobacco might not be unmoistened. That he suffered no ennui was demonstrable, for it was no uncommon thing to hear him laughing by himself, a remarkable laugh, half a crow and half a scream. When Kingcote heard the sound for the first time, he had apprehensions that Mr. Billimore was unwell; discovering the truth, he was annoyed by the thought that it was himself and his inaptitude that occasioned the assistant’s mirth. This, however, he was soon convinced was equally a mistake, and he and Mary derived not a little amusement from these grotesque outbursts of solitary mirth; occasionally they could hear them even when seated in their drawing-room, which was immediately above the shop. It only remained to suppose that Mr. Billimore was a philosopher of the school of Democritus, a conclusion not perhaps wide of the mark.
By the end of his first three months, King-cote was acquiescent in his life, even contented with it. The customers who had been in the habit of using the shop still came, for Mr. Billimore’s continued presence was reassuring, and the little that was seen of the new proprietor was not repellent; there was every likelihood that the business would still be what it had been. It was a week or two before Kingcote broke himself to the habit of remaining at the counter when a purchaser entered, but even this grew to be very simple, and quite in the order of things. With the bookselling proper was joined a stationery business, and perhaps on the whole it was a little harder to sell a newspaper or a quire of note, or a bottle of gum, than to take an order for a volume or part with one from the shelves; still, no mortal is above satisfaction in receiving cash payment, part whereof is calculable profit, and the very till soon began to be more than endurable in our friend’s eyes.
The trial was when acquaintances of old time presented themselves to claim recognition. There were not more than half-a-dozen who did so, and two or three of these were not, in the end, unwelcome. They were worthy people of the middle-class provincial sort, full of natural curiosity, but also not lacking kindliness. Their curiosity Kingcote satisfied only in broad terms, and perhaps the fixed melancholy of his face prevented the grosser kind of inquisitiveness. He let it be known that his sister kept house for him, and that she was a widow, but it was some time before any one called to see Mary. The circumstances of her marriage were remembered, and created prejudice; there had not been wanting those who, at the time, hinted at worse things than a mere elopement, and now such points were rediscussed with the relish of a provincial appetite which has only limited diet. Still, even Mary was in the end accepted. The first lady who called upon her no doubt suppressed a hesitation for the sake of getting a glimpse of the domestic interior; one or two others justified themselves by the precedent. There followed invitations to heavy tea, and it was made known to Kingcote that he would be welcome here or there at supper. For his sisters sake he obliged himself to go wherever he was sought. He might not enjoy the conversation at these houses, but in future he must have that or none, and to keep up pretences would savour of the ludicrous. He was a shopkeeper, and likely to remain one to the end of his days. Nor did he in truth repine.
He rested. From his illness there had remained a good deal of physical weakness; it was more apparent now than it had been during the late months of the past year. He had no longer a desire to take walks, and indeed seldom left the house for such a purpose; when at leisure, he sat with a book, and it was a trouble to stir from his chair. His appearance was that of a man ten years beyond his own age; always grave, he had only to sit in silence for a quarter of an hour to fall into a dreamy state of absent-mindedness; as often as not he turned the pages of his book without knowledge of what he seemed to be reading. This was not the same thing as unhappiness; his mood was emphatically one of contentment. He interested himself in the details of his business, and was in nothing neglectful. Only it was all done without active pleasure; his life remained joyless.
“What are those lines you are repeating, Bernard?” his sister asked him one evening, when he had turned from the finished supper, to take up a magazine.
“Did I say them aloud?” he asked. Then he quoted:
For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it, were
more
Than to walk all day like the Sultan of old in a garden of
spice.
“I am not far from that end,” he added then went on with his reading.
There was truth in what he said, and he would not have exchanged his state for one more active, even though it had been an activity that promised happiness. For in happiness he had no faith. It did exist on earth—in the form of sleep; all other bliss he held to be illusion. Heights to which he had once looked up with envious eyes, he did not now contemplate; if a glimpse of them arrested him, he hurriedly turned away, pained by a sudden sense of unrest. The thought of exertion was intolerable. His reading was no longer study, but mere pastime in idle pages; books which demanded thought or suggested a high and energetic ideal, he put aside. This habit of mind, at first involuntary, he was beginning to take consciously for his direction; it preserved to him an even calm, which was now the most desirable of things.
“Do not tell me of your work,” he wrote to Gabriel in London. “It will seem unfriendly that I should not wish to Hear of it, but your progress and achievements I take for granted; they are the essence of the distinction between your world and my own. When you say you have done this, and are planning that, it disturbs me, I know not how; I neither act nor plan, and hope never again to do either. Formerly, when I should gladly have heard these details, you kept them from me; pray do so now. The change in yourself which this new habit implies, I believe I understand. There is a joyful tone in all you write, formerly never to be found. You are less severe, more human. Naturally so; success is before you, and the anxious toil of your years of poverty is at an end. I, too, have ceased to fear poverty—thanks to you—but I dread the more anything that can give a shock to my placid materialism. I dread awakenings of sympathy, I dread discontent, I dread the ideal.”
Whereto Clement Gabriel took occasion to reply:
“My friend, you are in a bad way. Fortunately you are young; there is hope for you in the years that bring the philosophic mind. Allow me to suggest that your present mind contains as little of the philosophic as it well could. I will not for the present trouble you about my doings. We will talk over them when you have recovered your interest in the things which alone are worth living for.”
So the days moved on. Towards the end of the first week in June, Kingcote exhibited a slight return of restlessness; he complained, when Mary questioned him, that he could not sleep; it was nothing, it would pass. It did not, however, pass immediately. For ten days the trouble of mind or body rather grew than diminished; the old dislike of society showed itself, and at length he seemed to be shrinking from his daily occupations. Mr. Billimore, who was observant, noticed that he displayed much anxiety to take the letters from the postman, when the latter came into the shop each morning, and that an examination of the batch seemed always to occasion him some disappointment. But the trouble did in the end prove transitory. A day or two of headache, which kept him to his room, led back to the ordinary routine of life. Business received attention in the usual way, and his impassive countenance was restored....
A week later, there came to the shop a messenger from a hotel, with a note addressed to Mr. Kingcote. He was at that moment in the house; knowing he would appear speedily, Mr. Billimore laid the note on his master’s desk in the counting-house. Within a few minutes Kingcote entered, and took up the envelope carelessly. He dropped it again as if it had burnt him.
Mr. Billimore was advancing to explain by whom the note had been left. Kingcote’s face struck him as so singular, that he retired into the shop without having spoken.
Had he still power to feel this? That terrible sinking at the heart which had once been so common an experience had again come upon him. He had to sit down; his limbs would not support him. His face was hot, his mouth all at once parched; his hands shook as if they never could regain their steadiness.
When he opened the envelope, he found two lines:
“If you could come to see me here before five o’clock, I should be glad. I have a private room; ask for me by name.
“Isabel Clarendon.”
It was now two in the afternoon. Kingcote, after consulting his watch, went upstairs to his bedroom. There he paced up and down for half-an-hour. On recovering from the shock of agitation which was incompatible with thought of any kind, his first sentiment was one of anger. He had thought that the time for this was gone by; the assurance of it had been a new beginning of calm. What right had she to disturb him? As she was in the town, she doubtless knew what his position was; probably she had heard that from Mr. Vissian long ago. What inspiration save of woman’s cruelty could have led to this summons? He had forgotten her; she had gone from his life; was he never to be secure from a renewal of that intolerable anguish, anguish even physical, which she had it in her power to inflict upon him?
Nay, she had worse power than that. From the long-sealed chambers of his heart came a low cry as of reawakening life, life which would fain be free again. The sweat stood on his forehead as he crushed down the tenderness, the passion which he had thought dead. The sight of her handwriting, after so long, had given back to him the dreadful power of seeing herself, her features, her beautiful form. He flung himself by the bedside, and smothered his face; the striving of the old spirit drew groans from him.
What, what was he to her, or she to him? What conceivable circumstances could render possible the realisation of that mad dream, of which he had well-nigh died? It was imbecility to flatter himself with the fancy that she loved him; but, if he could believe it, if she proved it to him——. Had all his suffering been mere frantic jealousy? Had he misunderstood? Had time proved to her that his love was worth more than the pleasures the world could give her? Had it grown within her soul, whilst he had sunk to brutish indifference?
At first it had seemed possible to refuse to see her; would it not be fair reprisal for all that he had borne at her hands? Would it not gratify his pride to coldly tell her that he saw no good end to be gained by a personal interview? It needed another than himself to act upon such a thought. Already he was preparing to go and see her. He threw water upon his face to cool its burning. The fear now had become lest his delay in answering her summons should have led her to conclude that he would not answer it. With haste which only heightened his nervousness, he completed his preparations, and went downstairs. Fortunately he met no one; he could take his hat and leave by the house-door unobserved.
The walk to the hotel was short. On reaching the entrance he had to turn aside and go a little further on, that he might be able to use his voice and present any appearance but that of a man under stress of violent emotion. Between the door of the hotel and the private room to which he was conducted, he knew nothing but the pain which came from the throbbing at his temples and the rush of blood in his ears.
She stood at the farther end of the room, a dark object to him. She wore a summer travelling dress, but of that he could take no note; her face alone came out of the confused mist, and he saw that it was pale and agitated. There was no joy in it; that he knew at once. None of the old sweetness dwelt in her eyes and about her lips. She was austere, fear-stricken.
“You have kept me long,” were her first words, and as she spoke them her hand pressed upon her bosom. “I thought you would come at once.”
The sound of her speaking had the effect of a cold hand upon his forehead. He saw with clear vision; the throbbing at his temples allayed itself.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “Why have you sent for me?”
With perfect consciousness he made his tone as gentle as he could. His words did not seem to himself spontaneous; these were prompted to him from within, and she repeated them as if playing a part.
Isabel came nearer, and held to him the photograph he had returned her. Since sending the note, she had stood there with it in her hand; it was bent.
“Will you take it back again?” she asked. He saw her throat swell; she seemed to swallow something before she spoke.
He did not move to take it.
“You wish,” he replied, “to be a shopkeeper’s wife?”
With no smile he said it; yet it cost him an effort. Again it was the repetition of prompted words.
“I thought you had perhaps heard,” Isabel said, letting her hand fall again, and speaking quickly, still with that swelling of the throat. “Ada refuses to take what is hers by law. She has given it back to me.”
Kingcote’s eyes held themselves fixed upon her face. The silence seemed to be long; he was conscious of prolonging it purposely. He saw her put her hand upon the table and lean heavily on it.
“Will you answer me?” she uttered in an agitated whisper.
“Surely it is needless to answer in words,” he said at length. “Why have you come to offer me that which you know I cannot accept?”
The evil spirit stirred in his breast, and, with scarcely a pause, he continued vehemently:
“Why did you not spare both of us this? Do you think so basely of me? Cannot I read in your face that you believed it to be your duty to make this offer to me, at whatever cost to yourself? You are conscious that your unkindness drove me to part from you in frenzy, and what has happened seemed to impose a necessity of restoring to me a piece of good fortune which I had thrown away. And you have feared lest I should take you at your word! If you had ever loved me you would know me better.”
Her head bowed itself before his violence; he could scarcely catch the words when she said:
“I did love you.”
“For a day—for an hour; I believe it. You gave me your love in recklessness. It was a fatal gift.”
“I think you should not reproach me,” she said, in the same faint voice. “I gave you the one love of my life. I would have married you then. It would have been truer kindness to take me—to have given me something to live for. My love would not have failed you.”
For an instant he could have implored what fate had written unattainable. He knew the unreality of the vision that tempted him, and could not have uttered the words his tongue half-formed. But the mood showed itself in gentler speech.
“I have no right to speak so harshly. The last words we shall ever say to each other must not be unkind. If I did not still love you it would be easier to speak smooth things.”
Her tears were falling.
“If you still love me,” she said brokenly, “it is your right to take me, whatever seems to hinder.” She held forth her hands, but without looking up. “Your voice is the highest leading that I know. Oh, are you not strong enough? Can you not bend me to your will?”
A sob stayed her, but there came another cry:
“If I were young!”
Kingcote quivered, then fell to his knees, holding the hands she had outstretched.
“Say good-bye to me in the kind voice I once knew!” He spoke in hoarse, choked accents. “Say it kindly, that it may be a sacred memory whilst I live, and a hope in death!”
She did utter the word, but in such a passion of weeping that it fell upon his ears like a moan. Then he kissed both her hands, and broke away....
“The tragedy,” Kingcote had once said, “is not where two who love each other die for the sake of their love; but where love itself dies, blown upon by the cold breath of the world, and those who loved live on with hearts made sepulchres.”...
Here is a letter which came to Kingcote from Mr. Vissian some six months later:
“Methinks, my friend, I have grounds of complaint against you. Though I have submitted to your judgment three conjectural emendations which, in my poor thinking, do not lack propriety, you fail even to acknowledge the receipt of them. I trust this does not signify any incapacity to write; for you are of those whom I would rather challenge for unkindness than pity for mischance. I should—taking the more probable view of the case—scarcely have written again thus soon, but that I have sundry items of news to communicate, one of which concerns me nearly. Learn, then, that at the end of the year I surrender my present living, on the ground that another and a better has been offered me. When I say ‘better,’ I mean in the worldly sense; that, I fear, my usual way of speaking will have made you too ready to take for granted. I shall in future be nearer to you by a matter of fifty miles, my new parish being that of S—————.
“There will be a necessity for keeping a curate, as the work is much more considerable than what has here been my share. It is in no spirit of levity that I express my hope of being able to adapt my energies to the larger sphere. It is possible that I have occasionally been remiss, owing to the manifold temptations of pursuits which my graver judgment often condemns as incompatible with my duties.
“I should hardly have consented to leave Winstoke were it not for an event which has weakened the tie which bound me to the spot. I refer to the final departure from Knightswell of that gracious lady whom I have so long regarded with affectionate reverence, and whom my wife truly loves. Mrs. Clarendon is Mrs. Clarendon no longer; she has just married a wealthy and, I doubt not, worthy gentleman, her cousin Mr. Asquith, who takes her to live in another part of England. Knightswell is to be sold. The marriage was celebrated privately in London. I am glad I was not asked to officiate; it would have been painful to me. The old name has come to mean so much in my ears; I should but grudgingly have aided in its casting off.
“Now here be news. Moreover, I have it in charge from Mrs. Vissian to say unto you, that, as a final test of your good will to us, we invite you to visit us in our new home not later than the end of January. That you can come, I am convinced, and in very truth we want to see you.
“I must not forget to add that I have just received from Miss Warren a weekly paper containing a poem by herself, and, it seems to me, one of striking merit. After the unprecedented act of generosity which this young lady has performed, I am disposed to regard everything she writes as the outcome of a very noble nature, and to study it in a serious spirit. I am very anxious to know her better, personally, for I have always grievously misjudged her. I do not think she will refuse to come and spend a few days with us in the spring. Would it not be agreeable to you to renew your acquaintance with her at some time?”