He had his letter on Tuesday morning.
Feeling the envelope, he anticipated what he should find on opening it. There was Isabel’s portrait, a beautiful vignette photograph; it had been taken when she was last in London. Referring to it, she said:
“Look at it, and let it look at you, daily. And, if ever you wish to tell me that all is at an end between us, only send me the portrait back again.”
CHAPTER IV.
Kingcote reached Waterloo Station as dusk was gathering. He had not occupied himself on the journey, yet it had seemed short; from when he waved his hand at Winstoke to Mr. Vissian and Percy, who saw him depart, to his first glimpse of the grimy south-west end of London—including twenty minutes’ pacing of a platform when he had to change—a dull absentmindedness had possessed him, a sense of unreality in his progress, an indifference to the objects about him. At Waterloo he let the other occupants of the carriage all descend before he moved; when at last obliged to stir, it cost him an effort to overcome his inertia. He had not altered his position since seating himself; there was a printed notice opposite him, and he had been reading this mechanically for nearly an hour.
His luggage necessitated the hire of a cab; he found himself crossing the river, then struggling amid dense traffic in the Strand. More than half a year of life at Wood End had put a strange distance between him and the streets of London; he looked at objects with an eye of unfamiliarity, with unconcern, or with shrinking. In vain he tried to remind himself that he had come to do battle amid this roaring crowd; his consciousness refused belief. He had lived so long in a dream; the waking was so sudden, the reality so brutal, that he must needs fall back again and close his eyes for a time, letting his ears alone instruct him. The newsboys yelling the evening papers insisted most strongly on recognition; they embodied this civilisation into which he had been dragged back; with involuntary grotesqueness of fancy he saw in them the representatives of invisible editors, their cries were a translation, as it were, of editorial utterance, only more offensive because addressed to the outward sense and not to be escaped. He wished for deafness....
Where was Knightswell? Where was Isabel Clarendon? His heart sank....
The cab bore him on. He was in Tottenham Court Road, then in Hampstead Road, then entering that desolate region through which stagnates the Regent’s Canal, the north end of Camden Town. It was growing dark; the shops were revealing their many-coloured hideousness with shameless gas illumination; the air seemed heavy with impurity. The driver had to stop to make inquiries about his way, and sought a repetition of the address. Ultimately a gloomy street was entered, and after slow, uncertain advancing, they stopped. Kingcote had never visited his sister at this house, but the number on the door was right; he knocked.
He was standing in a short, sloping street of low two-storey dwelling-houses; they had areas, and steps ascending to the door. In the gloom he could see that the houses had the appearance of newness, and were the abodes of what one hears called “decent” working people—one would prefer some negative term. The top of the street was lost behind a sudden curve; at the lower end the flaring front of a public-house showed itself. Children were playing about in considerable numbers, for there was no regular traffic; before the public-house was an organ grinding “Ah, che la morte” in valse time. The air was bitterly cold, and the wind blew for rain.
He had leisure to observe all this, for it was a couple of minutes before any one answered his knock. Just as he was about to repeat it the door opened, and a woman with a lighted candle, which she held back to protect it against the wind, presented herself. She was fat, and had a prodigious dewlap; on one side of her many-folded chin was a large hairy wart; she wore a black dress, much strained above the waist, with a dirty white apron—a most unprepossessing portress.
“Is it Mr. Kingcut?” she asked in a thin, panting voice. “Why, an’ I was that moment sayin’ as it was time Mr. Kingcut come. I’m sure your sister’ll be glad to see you, poor thing! How’ll you get your luggidge in? She’s just lyin’ down a bit; I’ll go an’ tell her. The funeral’s been a bit too much for her; but I’ve got a nice ’addock down for her, an’ expectin’ your comin’. See, I’ll leave the candle on the banister, an’ you shall have a light in the front room in no time.”
A man who loafed by assisted to move the boxes into the house, and Kingcote dismissed the cab, paying twice the due fare because a word of argument would just now have cost him agony. He left the candle guttering at the foot of the stairs, and entered a room of which the door stood open immediately on his left hand. There was a low fire in the grate; the candle outside helped him to discern a sofa which stood before the window, and on this he sank. A hissing sound came from below stairs, and the house was full of the odour of frying fish.
There was asthmatic panting outside, and, with a lamp in her hand, the fat woman reappeared; she stood pressing one hand against her side, in the other holding the light so as to enable her to examine the new-comer. She talked, struggling with breathlessness.
“Poor thing! She’s that done! It was hawful suddin, in a way, though we’d been a-expectin’ of it for weeks as you may say. It’s been a trial for poor Mrs. Jalland, that it have! She couldn’t seem to take comfort, not even when she saw him laid out. He was a good deal wasted away, poor man, but he had a pleasant look like on his face; he alius was a pleasant-lookin’ man. An’ there’s some o’ the funeral beer left over, if you’d like——”
Kingcote could have raved. He rose and went to the fire; then, as soon as he dared trust his voice, assured her that he wanted nothing.
“It’s only about a arf-a-pint as is left. We’ve been most careful, knowin’ as there wasn’t no money to throw away, in a manner speakin,’ though of course, as both me an’ my ’usband said, we knew as Mr. Kingcut’ud like everythink done in a ’andsome way, though not bein’ able to be present pers’nally.”
“Can I see my sister?” he asked, driven to frenzy, and unable altogether to conceal it.
“She’s just puttin’ herself a bit in order,” was the rather startled reply. “She’ll be down in a minute, I dessay.”
After another scrutiny, the woman deposited the lamp on the table, and, seeing that King-cote had turned his back upon her, withdrew, looking an evil look.
The room was very small; the couch, a round table, a cupboard with ornamental top, and four chairs, scarcely left space to walk about. On the table was a green cloth, much stained; the hair of the sofa was in places worn through, and bits of the stuffing showed themselves. Over the mantelpiece was a large water-colour portrait of a man in Volunteer uniform, the late Mr. Jalland; elsewhere on the walls hung pictures such as are published at Christmas by the illustrated papers, several fine specimens of the British baby, framed in cheap gilding. But the crowning adornment of the room was the clock over the fireplace. The case was in the form of a very corpulent man, the dial-plate being set in the centre of his stomach.
Kingcote looked about him in despair. His nerves were so unstrung that he feared lest he should break into tears. Every sensitive chord of his frame was smitten into agony by the mingled sensations of this arrival; rage which put him beside himself still predominated, and the smell from the kitchen, the objects about him, the sound of the woman’s voice which would not leave his ears, stirred him to a passion of loathing. His very senses rebelled; he felt sick, faint.
He was rescued by his sister’s entrance. When he had last seen her, before leaving London, she was a rather world-worn woman of six-and-twenty, looking perhaps a few years older; now he gazed into her face and saw the haggard features of suffering middle age. Her appearance struck him with profound compassion, almost with fear. She was short in stature, and her small face had never been superficially attractive; its outlines made a strong resemblance to her brother, and lacked feminine softness; the tremulous small lips and feeble chin indicated at once a sweet and passive disposition. As she entered, she was endeavouring to command herself, to refrain from tears; she stood there in her plain black dress, holding her hands together at her breast, like one in pain and dread.
“Mary! My poor girl!”
He spoke with deep tenderness, and went towards her; then she put her arms round his neck and wept.
He reproached himself. Things might not, should not, have been so bad as this. In some way he might have helped her, if only by remaining near. Whilst he had dreamed at Wood End, this poor stricken soul had gone through the very valley of the shadow of death. He had not paid much heed to her letters; he had failed in sympathetic imagination; she had written so simply, so unemphatically. He reproached himself bitterly.
“How good of you, Bernard, to come to me!” she said, regarding him through her tears. “I do want some one to be near me; I feel so helpless. Death is so dreadful.”
She said it without stress of feeling, but the words were all the more powerful. Kingcote felt that they gave him a new understanding of pathos.
She would not speak more of the dead man, knowing how her brother had regarded him. At his bidding she sat on the sofa, and by degrees overcame her weakness; he comforted her.
“What shall I do, Bernard?” she asked, appealing to him with tearful eyes. “What is to become of the children? What is before us?”
“At first, rest,” was his kind answer. “Don’t let a thought of the future trouble you; that is my affair. You shall never want whilst I live, Mary.”
“Oh, it is hard to be a burden to you! I have burdened you for a long time. You have already done more for me than any brother could be asked to do. How can I let you?”
“We won’t talk of these things yet; time enough. All I want now is to be some comfort to you.”
“Oh, you are! It is so good to hold your hand. I feel you won’t desert me; I am so powerless myself.”
They talked a little longer, then she was reminded that he had come a journey and needed food.
“Who is that woman?” he asked, lowering his voice.
“Mrs. Bolt? She has, you know, the other half of the house. There are corresponding rooms on each side, and she lets us this half. She has been very good indeed to me through it all. I don’t know what I should have done these last days without her. She has made meals and seen to the children. I was ashamed to give her so much trouble.”
Kingcote did not reply to this. He merely said: “Then it won’t be necessary for her to come here?”
“Oh no.” She understood his desire to be alone. “I will get the tea myself; I can do it quite well. It’s all ready.”
She moved about and laid the table, letting her eyes rest upon her brother very often, trustfully and rather timidly. She had always regarded him with something of awe. He belonged to a higher social sphere than that which she had accepted. She attributed to him vast knowledge and ability. It was her fear lest she might do or say anything in his eyes censurable.
“Are the children upstairs?” Kingcote inquired.
“Yes; they have had their tea.”
“You will bring them down afterwards?”
“If you would like it, Bernard.” She had dreaded lest he should find their presence displeasing.
He reassured her, and then they sat down to the meal. The rain had begun and was blowing against the windows. Kingcote ate little; his sister only drank a cup of tea.
“This is not the kind of food you need,” he said. “I must ask you to do as I wish for a time, and have care for yourself. Have you any servant?”
She shook her head. “But you can’t possibly do house-work at present.” There was something a little dictatorial in Kingcote’s way of speaking; a mere habit, but one which Mary knew of old, and which half accounted for her timorous regard of him.
“Mrs. Bolt has been so kind,” she said, “when I really wasn’t able to do things.”
“Yes; but we cannot trouble her. What, by-the-bye, are the terms on which you hold these rooms?”
“From quarter to quarter. We pay twenty-five pounds a year, and have to give a quarter’s notice.”
“Then it is impossible to remove till the end of June? I’m very sorry for that.”
“Mrs. Bolt might take things into account, and let us——”
“No, certainly not,” said her brother abruptly. “But I think I shall pay her the quarter and go as soon as I can find another place.”
(Mrs. Bolt, be it observed, had her ear to the keyhole, and lost not a word of the conversation.)
“Don’t you think you could find some girl to come and act as servant for a time?”
“Yes; I could. There’s a girl I used to have sometimes; I think she could come.”
“Then let her be summoned as soon as possible; and, by-the-bye, has Mrs. Bolt been at any expense, do you think?”
“I’m afraid she has for a few things.”
“Very well. If you happen to see her, will you ask her to let me have an account of all such expenses as soon as she can?”
After the meal, Mary went upstairs and fetched the children. They were boys of eight and seven respectively, thin and ill-fed little beings, poorly dressed. Both of them cried as their mother brought them forward; this uncle was in their eyes a most formidable person. Kingcote could not be affectionate with children, but he spoke to them with as much kindness as was at his command. Whilst he was talking with the elder, the other climbed to Mary’s lap and whispered something. Kingcote caught the words “bread and butter.”
“What’s that, Willy?” he asked. “You would like some bread and butter?”
His mother tried to hush it over, but with no effect.
“Mary,” said her brother, “if I go out, will you open the door to me yourself? I will give two raps.”
He went, and succeeded in finding a shop not very far off where he could purchase a large plain cake. Returning, he cut it on a plate and let the lads eat. Shortly after they were led away to bed. .
He would not let Mary remain with him very long, she was wearied out.
“I’ve put a fire in your room,” she said; “the house is a little damp, and I thought it was better.”
“In that case I will sit up there. You shall show me the way.”
She took him up to a room that could scarcely be called furnished—though she had stripped her own of everything she could possibly spare—where he found his boxes placed.
“Who brought those up?” he asked.
“Mr. Bolt and his son.”
He moved uneasily.
“I do hope you’ll be able to sleep here!” his sister said anxiously. “I wish I could have made more comfort for you.”
“Oh, it will do perfectly well. Now go and sleep, Mary.”
She embraced him, and her tears came again.
“I can’t thank you, Bernard,” she whispered, sobbing. “I can’t find any words. You’re very, very good to me.”...
He sat by the fire. A group of noisy lads had assembled in the street, and were urging two of their number to fight. They did not succeed, and their foul language passed into the distance. An organ played in front of the public-house, and there were laughing shrieks of girls. A man came along hoarsely crying baked potatoes.
He saw his bed-room in the cottage; he remembered the holy silence of night brooding over the woods and meadows. At this moment Isabel was sitting alone and thinking of him, sitting amid the graceful luxury of her refined home. Was that a dream of joy, or this a hideous vision?
CHAPTER V.
The water-colour portrait over the mantelpiece was that of a blond young man with hair parted in the middle and a thin moustache, made the most of by curling at the ends, the expression on the face a sufficiently fatuous smile. This work of art had been the result of an acquaintance struck up between young Jalland and an impecunious teacher of drawing in the bar parlour of a Norwich hotel; the likeness was faithful, for it had simply been copied from a photograph, to save the trouble of sittings, as the artist said. In those days Jalland was just beginning his career as a commercial traveller; that he should belong to a Volunteer corps was in the order of things. Also perfectly regular was his acquaintance with the Kingcote family; his father exercised a number of vocations, was auctioneer, commission agent, broker, etc., and he frequently did business for Dr. Kingcote, who had a fondness for dabbling in pecuniary speculations and but for this foible would have died a richer man. When Jalland obtained a position in a London warehouse, he at once asked Mary Kingcote to accompany him as his wife; she was then a girl of seventeen. Her parents held the match impossible; they forbade it. The result was that one day the girl disappeared, and remained undiscoverable till at length she wrote to announce the fact of her marriage.
She seemed the most unlikely girl to do such a thing. She was of a very quiet disposition, shy with strangers, submissive to a somewhat autocratic mother, feeble in health. Curiously, she only followed a family precedent in risking an elopement; her mother—though Mary did not know it—had married in the same way. Doubtless that was why Mrs. Kingcote remained unforgiving. Her father was not a man of strong character, though he possessed considerable ability in various directions; his temperament was impulsive, imaginative, affectionate; he was wholly ruled by his wife. The children of the house, Bernard and Mary, seemed to an observer to lack something of ordinary youthful happiness; they appeared to stand apart from their parents; to be thrown very much upon their own resources. Dr. Kingcote saw little of them, save on Sundays, when he was for the most part absorbed in reading; Mrs. Kingcote, though behaving to them with all motherly care, did not win their love, neither appeared to miss it. She was a woman to whom the external facts of life sufficed; details-of housekeeping occupied her all but exclusively; one would have conjectured that she made her runaway marriage solely out of a passion for having a house of her own, where she might rule and regulate. From the day when she heard that Mary had married the commercial traveller her daughter’s name never passed her lips.
As a medical student in London, Bernard Kingcote held communication with his sister. At her entreaty he made Jalland’s acquaintance; he had known him by sight in Norwich, but was away at his studies when the families had grown to terms of intimacy. Bernard went to his sister’s lodgings one Sunday, and passed the afternoon there, but he paid no second visit. In Kingcote there existed his father’s intellect and emotional qualities, together with a certain stiffness of moral attitude derived from his mother. His prejudices were intense, their character being determined by the refinement and idealism of his nature. An enemy would have called him offensively aristocratic; only malicious ignorance could have accused him of snobbishness. He went to meet Jalland with instinctive repugnance; the man’s pursuit was in his eyes contemptible, and he resented bitterly the influence such a person had been able to obtain over Mary. On Jalland’s side there was no particular good-will; he was prepared to stand on his rights and repel any hint of lofty patronage. Kingcote had no disposition whatever to behave patronisingly, but he found it beyond his power to make the least show of cordiality. He and the representative of the great civilising agent had not a point in common. They saw each other at the worst, and, very wisely, never saw each other again.
The evening that followed was one of suffering for Mary, the beginning of a martyrdom. She knew already that her hasty step had been a mistake; to-day the slow-gathering consciousness became a fixed centre of pain. She had looked from her brother to her husband and back again; she understood that the difference between the two men was the measure of the gulf set between herself and the world to which she rightly belonged. Her husband’s amiability became vulgar self-complacence; his features, his demeanour, his interests, all bore the ineffaceable stamp of vulgarity. She watched him as he moved impatiently about the room; she anticipated the words he would shortly speak. He had never yet behaved to her with deliberate unkindness, though honeymoon warmth had long since given place to working-day ease of manner; matrimonial familiarity, a snare to the most delicate of men, takes shapes one does not care to dwell upon in the uncultured. But now, when at length the words came, they were rough, rancorous, brutal. Mr. Jalland attempted irony, excogitated sarcasms; finding these insufficient to his needs, he relieved himself in the tongue of bar-parlours. Mary put in no plea of mitigation; she bowed her head and let the torrent fall upon her, humiliated to the core. The man understood very well what he had done, and knew the change in her from that day forth. But he was having his revenge.
Our modern knights of the road are subject to one grievous temptation. Living at places of public entertainment at other people’s expense, they acquire tastes and habits which are somewhat rudely interfered with when a sojourn in their homes necessitates a diet and accommodation materially differing from that of hotels. Mary had already had the recognition of this difficulty forced upon her; in future it was to constitute a more serious trouble. Mr. Jalland let no opportunity pass of finding fault with his wife’s housekeeping. The meals she prepared for him he regarded with lofty scorn, and only on being pressed condescended to satisfy his hunger. He would mention what he had recently partaken of at such and such a table-d’hôte, adding, “No doubt you often used to have that at home, before you married me,” his irony pointed with a grin. His journeys, fortunately, became more extended, and Mary had sometimes weeks of loneliness; but his return was each time a harder trial. She soon perceived that he was acquiring the habit of drinking more than was good for him; it improved neither his temper nor his manners. Presently he lost a place which he had long held, lost it in some unexplained way, and was for half a year without employment. It was then that Mary first had to appeal to her brother for aid. She did so without consulting her husband, but he of course knew whence came the money upon which he lived; he came ultimately to grumble that the supplies were so restricted. From that time onwards it was alternation of degrees of misery. Jalland’s proclivity to drink grew more pronounced, and his health suffered noticeably. He never sank to sheer ruffiandom; never got beyond the point of nagging at his wife; often Mary would rather he had beaten her.
She bore everything with tearful patience, but—it was a note of character—never once sought to soften him, never once appealed to memories. Her nature was not passionate; it cost her nothing to refrain from recrimination, and the mistaken impulse of her inexperienced years never bore fruit in hatred of the man to whom she had sacrificed her life. She was a devoted mother; her children helped her to endure. Her husband she regarded in a spirit which the institution of marriage makes common enough; he was an item in her existence, and had to be taken account of, even as had the necessity of daily meals. A human being became to her a piece of furniture, only differing from chairs and tables in that it exacted more attention and was apt to evince ingratitude. So it went on to the end, and, when the end came, it brought, after the perturbations of nature, a sighing of relief....
Kingcote rose on the morning after his arrival with a determination to quit this present abode at whatever cost. He had scarcely slept; the atmosphere brought him bodily unrest. He knew that it was the height of imprudence to waste money in such a juncture, but life was impossible for him under this roof, and he could not suffer his sister to dwell in the proximity of the woman he had seen the evening before. His first impulse of compassion spent, the spirit of almost fierce intolerance again took possession of him. Formerly, he had felt much in the same way towards the uneducated people with whom he had had to come in contact, but never with such violence of personal antipathy as Mrs. Bolt and all her belongings excited. He understood well enough the narrowness of this spirit; he knew that his culture should have endowed him with tolerant forbearance; but it was a matter of temperament. He dreaded to leave his room and descend, lest he should meet one of the Bolt family; he felt the impossibility of behaving with decent courtesy. Aristocracy of race cannot compare in pervasive intensity with aristocracy which comes only of the influence of intellect and temperament. Kingcote would have chosen death rather than an existence elbow to elbow with people such as these he found in the house.
There was the sound of the postman coming along the street; this changed the current of his thoughts. The knock came at the door below, and he could no longer hold back. Mrs. Bolt was just taking letters from the box.
“Good mornin’, Mr. Kingcut; ’ope you’ve slep’ well,” she said, pressing her hand to her side and panting as usual. “It take me just ’ere,” she explained; “comin’ up them stairs from the kitchen is too much for me. I’m allus hawful bad in the cold weather. Here’s a letter for you. And, Mr. Kingcut, I wanted to say that if there was anythink as me or my ’usband or my son could do——”
“I thank you,” Kingcote broke in. “I believe Mrs. Jalland will make all necessary arrangements. I really don’t think we shall need to trouble you.”
He was turning away, but checked himself to add:
“I hear, Mrs. Bolt, that my sister is in your debt for certain things you have supplied to her lately. Will you kindly let me have an account as soon as you are able?”
“Oh, we ain’t a-goin’ to talk of that, Mr. Kingcut! A cup o’ tea, and a basin of broth. Of course I’ve kep’ a little account, but there’s no hurry about that.”
“If you please, I should like to settle the account immediately, as soon as you can conveniently let me have it.”
He went into the sitting-room, and closed the door. The two children were sitting before the fire, and the cloth was laid for breakfast; he nodded pleasantly to the youngsters, but did not speak. The letter he held was from Isabel; there were three sheets. He had just finished reading it when Mary came in with breakfast on a tray. He greeted her joyously.
“I suppose you young men go to school this morning?” he asked his nephews. “Come and eat a good breakfast, and prepare for your labours.”
To the astonishment of the children, he helped them to some of the fried bacon; they gazed at their mother before venturing to eat. Little by little this uncle gained upon them; they looked at him as if they liked him.
When they had left the house, he held a long talk with his sister, and told her of his intention to seek immediately another dwelling.
“We’ll go farther out, where you can get fresh air; I have an idea where I shall look for rooms. I’m afraid we must restrict ourselves in the matter of space, but that will be better borne where the sky is visible. You leave me free to choose?”
The same day he began his search, and was absent for several hours without hopeful result. No one would set forth gaily upon such an excursion, and to Kingcote the task was revolting; Mrs. Bolt was so often met with, and so seldom any one capable of inspiring human confidence. When he got back wearied, midway in the afternoon, Mary was out. On the sitting-room table he found a rather dirty envelope addressed to himself, but not closed; in it was a sheet of note-paper, folded awry, whereon was written the account of moneys due, which he had asked for. It was a remarkable document, alike in conception and execution; badly written, worse spelt, frequently difficult to decipher at all. However, the sum total at the end stood in plain enough figures: one pound, sixteen shillings, and eightpence three farthings. There was nothing alarming in this demand; the point which exacted attention was the way in which the total was constructed. Beginning with a lump sum, Mrs. Bolt debited her tenant in five days’ “attendance,” at three shillings a day; the remainder of the charge consisted of innumerable items of petty expenditure, each assigned to its day. It would be: “One cup tee, 3d.; one basern brorth, 5d.; fetchin docter, 3d.; bread and buter for childern, 3d.,” and so on. Kingcote at first regarded this bill with disgust, then he was able to see the humorous side of the situation, and broke into loud laughter. Mrs. Bolt, who had her ear at the door, heard the laughter, and, attributing it to the smallness of her demand, promised to “give it” her husband for having deemed further extortion unadvisable.
Mary came in shortly, bringing several parcels; the exertion of walking a very brief distance was too much for her strength, she sank on a chair in exhaustion. Kingcote held the bill behind his back.
“You told me, I think,” he said, with a natural smile, “that Mrs. Bolt had shown you great kindness the last few days, in doing little services for you, and so on?”
“She has, really; I was ashamed to ask for so much.”
“To ask? Ah, then you agreed with her to give you regular service?”
“Oh, no,” she professed in surprise. “It was all her kindness; she pressed it on me. She’s really kind-hearted when you’re in need.”
“Remarkably so,” said her brother, laughing again. “Pray glance your eye over that.”
(Mrs. Bolt had crept to the door when she heard Mary enter; not a word escaped her.)
Mary looked down each of the pages, her amazement increasing; at the end she raised her eyes in indignation. Women always take small extortion more seriously than men, and their sense of humour is generally defective.
“Bernard! How can she do such a thing? Oh, I should be ashamed!”
“No doubt you would, my dear sister; you and Mrs. Bolt are of somewhat different clay.”
She began to contest items.
“No, no, we wont talk about it,” Kingcote said, taking the dirty paper from her hands.
“You will pay it?”
“Oh, certainly; and I beg you will not speak of it again. Only, let it be a piece of experience, and remember that people of that class are a species of dirty object, much to be avoided. Whilst we are here, we will keep the doors of our rooms shut and the windows open. Morally speaking, that is; literally, the weather is too bad.”
So he ended with a laugh, and went on to speak of his ill success during the day. They talked till the children came in from school. Kingcote was studying his sister, consciously inquiring into her character, which he had never understood, had scarcely had a chance of getting to understand. Though little things in her speech and way of thought now and then jarred on him, showing the influence of sordid circumstances, he was surprised at the extent to which she had preserved the tone and manner of a lady. Mary seemed to inherit her mother’s power of resistance to all that had no connection with the few and plain principles of her nature. Her mother’s individuality had exerted itself to active purpose; Mary had perhaps shown even more firmness in a passive way. She had, in truth, a considerable share of obstinacy, operative, her life being what it was, only for good. In the protection of her children from every kind of ill she exercised incessant care, never failing, for instance, to take them herself to school and fetch them home again. She held, moreover, with the utmost tenacity to the forms of religious faith and practice which she had known from childhood; they did not appear to aid her much morally, but still were of mechanical use in preserving the continuity of her life. It was only on the surface that she was weak; she was susceptible to every kind of suffering, but had a corresponding power of enduring. Few women could have lived as she had done, from seventeen to seven-and-twenty, and have preserved so much cleanliness of soul.
She could not pardon Mrs. Bolt, whose offence, in her eyes, consisted far more in the extortion practised on her brother than in a display of unabashed sordidness. To that good woman’s surprise, Mary refrained from intercourse with her throughout the fortnight that she remained in the house.
For it took so long to discover a new abode and have it prepared for tenants. After several days of search, Kingcote at length found rooms of which he determined to make a trial. They were in Highgate, not far from the pleasant road which leads across the valley to Hampstead; four rooms and an underground kitchen, the rest of the house being occupied by an engraver and his family, not intolerable beings. Of his own bedroom Kingcote would also make a study; that left a common sitting-room. He bought such additional furniture as was needed (the Jallands had long ago been obliged to sell much that they once possessed), and made the appearance of a modest home. The removal was happily accomplished, and our friend thanked Heaven in once more breathing unpolluted air.
He wished to exercise all delicacy in regard to his sister’s feelings, and so, after arranging the heavy furniture of her sitting-room, he said to her: “I will leave you to put up what ornaments you like.” It was more than generous, bearing in mind certain objects which had graced the former parlour. Mary did not fail to understand him. The dial-bellied man was never seen again, nor mentioned (it had been Jalland’s purchase), and the specimens of British infancy were hung in the boys’ bedroom.
“We can’t afford good pictures,” Kingcote said, looking round the bare walls, “so we will have none. Perhaps I may now and then pick up a print that will do.”
For some days he took it for granted that the water-colour portrait had been hung by Mary in her own bedroom; but, when he at length found an opportunity of peeping in, behold it was not there! she had only preserved an illuminated cross. He turned away with a deep feeling of gladness in his heart. The past was done with.
CHAPTER VI.
Thomas Meres and his two daughters occupied a house in Chelsea, a small house in a little square, between which and the river is a portion of Cheyne Walk. Three minutes’ walk brings you to the Albert Bridge, which leads over to Battersea Park. In that part of Cheyne Walk which is close at hand stands the house where for many years Rossetti painted and wrote; not many doors away is that in which George Eliot died; and that which was Carlyle’s home for half a century is scarcely more distant, in the shadow of old Chelsea Church. It is pleasant to breathe the air of this corner of London.
Literally the air is pleasant; the flowing breadth of stream and the green extent of the opposite Park, the spacious Embankment with its patches of tree-planted garden, make a perceptible freshness. On a sunny morning the river dances and gleams with wind-stirred wavelets, and the free expanse of sky gives the spirit soaring-room. Standing on the Suspension Bridge, one lets the eye rest on a scene far from unlovely; the old houses of Cheyne Walk are abundantly picturesque, so is Battersea Bridge, the last remaining (perhaps already gone) of the wooden bridges over the Thames. The great Queen Anne dwellings on the Embankment have their charm, and just beyond them one sees the gardens of Chelsea Hospital, adjoining those which were once called Ranelagh. Heavy-laden barges go up or down stream, as the tide may be, sometimes hoisting a ruddy sail; men toil at the long barge oars. Steamers fret their way from pier to pier, rather suggestive of pleasure than business. Very little traffic is within sight or hearing; when the church clock strikes it is not drowned by the uproar of streets, but comes clearly on the wind with old-world melody. There is peace to be found here in morning hours, with pleasant haunting thought of great names and days gone by.
Ada Warren, when at Knightswell, always thought with pleasure of Chelsea, often was drawn towards it with a great yearning. There are, for all of us, places which appeal to our sympathy with an air of home, even though they have for us no personal associations; many perforce dwell away from home all their lives. Ada had the ambition to live in Chelsea. She promised herself that, when the day of her freedom came, she would take one of the houses in Cheyne Walk. The desire was akin to another ambition, of which there will shortly be mention. At present she had to be content with a couple of rooms in Mr. Meres’ house. These rooms were always held at her disposal. Mrs. Clarendon had from the first insisted upon a clear understanding that the rooms should be paid for, and that Ada should live at her own expense. Thomas Meres had written to her: “My poverty, but not my will consents.” The house being so small, Rhoda and Hilda had to occupy one bedroom when Ada came.
Living here, the girl was at all times another being than at Knightswell. She allowed her animal spirits, which were not inexpansive, to have free play. In the company of Rhoda and Hilda she was a girl with girls; Isabel would have been astonished to see and hear her when the atmosphere of Chelsea had had time to exert its full influence. She could never quite give credence to Mr. Meres’ reports. Her present visit, however, began under less favourable auspices than usual. She came in a very still and reticent mood, and she found illness in the house. Rhoda Meres was just recovering from an alarming attack of fever. Ada feared she would be burdensome, wished to go back to Knightswell for a little, but Mr. Meres would not allow it.
“I wish you to stay for a particular reason,” he said gravely. “Pray do me this favour, Ada.” It was his habit, from of old, to call her by her Christian name and to treat her as a daughter.
We must look for a moment at Thomas Meres. A man of good stature, but bent in the shoulders, and only not slovenly in appearance because of the perfect personal cleanliness which accompanied utter disregard of the quality and sitting of his clothes. He had the fine features which generally go with delicate instincts and intellectual tendencies. His face was all of one colour, yellowish, and much lined. Beneath his eyes the skin hung loose, giving him a sad look; his full beard was grizzled, but his hair still unaffected by time and very thick at the back of his head. To pass to details of his attire, he invariably wore coloured shirts, blue by preference, with a blue necktie miserably knotted; this tie being the despair of his daughter Hilda, who often insisted on arranging it skilfully with her own delicate little fingers. In the house he wore an old gray jacket, on which he wiped his pen. At leisure, he always had his hands in the side pockets, so that they had come to bulge exorbitantly. On going out, he changed this for a black frock coat. His trousers, unhappily, he did not change when business led him forth. These garments disgraced him in the eyes of Christendom. Possibly they had been of due length when new, whenever that was; but, by dint of constant sitting, the knees had grown abnormally, with the result that the bottoms of the trousers just touched the tops of their wearers boots. To a literary man of small means there is probably no graver question than this of his trouser knees. I have known unhappy geniuses whose ardour in composition was grievously impaired by the consciousness that, when writing their best, their legs would tuck up under them, with results most disastrous to their nether garments. Thomas Meres cared not for these things, and alas! it is so difficult for young girls to approach their father on the subject of his trousers. Hilda once procured a tailor’s advertisement sheet, and, folding it so that the particulars concerning trousers were uppermost, placed it conspicuously on his study table. Mr. Meres saw it, and, with an impatient, “What’s this? What’s this?” crumpled it into his waste-paper basket. Poor fellow! the days had gone by when he might have considered the effect he produced on observers; it would never matter now.
Thomas Meres was a literary man, and of the romance of authorship knew as little—as do most authors. He got a living by his pen, and that was all; for any pleasure which his daily task brought him he might as well have lived by tailoring. Once he had hoped to shine by means of his talents. In those days authorship meant glory. Now it meant unremitting toil, often of the dullest and dreariest kind, scarcely ever on subjects for which he cared. He had published books, and had the satisfaction of seeing them mildly praised by the reviewers, then forgotten; now he wrote books no longer, but—eheu!—himself criticised those of others, or penned the interminable “article.” At times he felt that he must stop, that his hand would work no longer; but its exercise had in truth become almost automatic, and it was well for himself and his children that it had. When he received the editorship of Ropers Miscellany he was at first delighted, not only on account of the most acceptable salary, but also because he felt that it was an accession of dignity. Formerly he had dreamed with trembling of the possibility that he might one day be an editor. But this, too, took on its true proportions when he had grown used to the chair. The toil of reading manuscript was all but as bad as that of producing it. One pleasure which had been wont to come from his literary work had in the course of time failed him. It had been his habit to send the best things of his writing to Mrs. Clarendon; and at first she had seemed glad to have and to read them. But he had discovered that her interest was failing, that she did not always even glance at what he sent. Then he sent no more. Yet, by keeping up that interest, Isabel could have put joy into a life which sadly needed it, could have smoothed a road which was very rough to travel.
The difficulties of a man in Mr. Meres’ position, with two girls to bring up, were naturally considerable. Mrs. Clarendon had constantly advised him to marry again; at which he always shook his head and maintained silence. The woman who may with safety be taken in marriage by a poor man given to intellectual pursuits is so extremely difficult of discovery that Thomas Meres might well shrink from beginning the search, if only on the plea of lack of leisure; and there were other reasons withholding him. When the children were young, he had the assistance of the wife of a friend, whose house he shared; only when Rhoda was sixteen, her sister being two years younger, did he take the house in Chelsea, having found a decent woman to act as housekeeper. In a year or two Rhoda had felt able to spare him this latter expense. Rhoda’s talents were not exactly of a domestic order, but she was a very good-hearted and intelligent girl, and was beginning then to understand something of the hardships of her fathers life. This present illness of hers had brought serious disturbance into the home; a professional nurse had been summoned, and Hilda—now a girl of sixteen—had to intermit her school to look after the house; the one servant they kept was of course an irresponsible creature.
On the evening of her arrival, Mr. Meres asked Ada to come and sit with him in his study—a very small room, book-thronged, with one or two busts of poets, and, over the fireplace, a fine photograph of the Sistine Madonna. The choice of the picture had a pathetic significance; no supersensual mystery did it embody in Meres’ eyes, but it stood there as an ideal of womanhood and of maternity, the everpresent suggestion of an earthly paradise whereof the gates were closed against him—wifely love, that which he had never known, the conception of which had for long years been besmirched in his mind with foul associations for the loss of this his children’s affection could not compensate him. Nay, the children had till quite late years been to him a fear and a perpetual cause of anxious observation. Would they not grow up with their mother’s character? Was there not impurity in their blood? By a kind fate it was the father that predominated in them. Yet even now his dread would often be excited, and especially had that been the case in Rhoda’s illness. It was to speak of his elder girl that he took Ada apart this evening.
When he spoke on any subject which puzzled or embarrassed him, it was Mr. Meres’ habit to stroke the length of his nose with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, perhaps because this relieved him of the necessity of looking at the person to whom he addressed himself. He began by doing so now.
“You find Rhoda sadly pulled down?” he said.
“Yes, she must have suffered very much.”’
Ada always spoke in a very direct way, with few words. Strangers attributed this partly to shyness, partly to a character lacking amenity. It was due to neither in fact, but was one of the results of her ambiguous position which made her at once reticent and heedless of conventional mannerisms.
“She has, I fear. The truth is, she hasn’t been herself ever since she came back from Knightswell last summer. She has always been either depressed or unnaturally excited. It makes me very uneasy.”
Ada made no comment.
“Do you find her—communicative?” he proceeded to ask.
“The opposite. She would scarcely speak to me.”
“You don’t say so? Now I wonder whether I may ask you to be of—of assistance to me; whether you will not accuse me of indelicacy if I tell you freely what it is that troubles me? You know that I always think of you as vastly older and maturer than my own girls—pass the words, you understand them—and that I have several times been led to speak to you of things I should not yet touch upon with them. Well, the fact is this. From the child’s talk while she was delirious, I am obliged to conclude that she—in fact, that she has been so unfortunate as to fall in love with some one who has behaved rather badly to her. Who this can be, I have not a notion; she kept repeating the name Vincent, and I am acquainted with no one so called. I could only gather the vaguest impressions, but she was perpetually deploring her poverty, and speaking of marriages made for money, and so on. Now, you will see that this is very alarming; I cannot conceive what it means, or how such things can have come about. Can you—this is my blunt question—can you, out of your knowledge of Rhoda, help me to an understanding of it?”
Ada’s eyes had fallen, and her face had taken its hardest expression. Her hands were on her lap, the one clutching over the back of the other. When she answered it was in a distant tone.
“I can offer no explanation. I know nothing of Rhoda’s affairs.”
“Now—I have offended you,” said Mr. Meres, with vexation. “Surely, Ada, you see that it was very natural in me to speak to you of this. Rhoda herself will, I am convinced, refuse to give me her confidence, even if I can bring myself to ask it. The difficulty is most serious; how can I tell——? Never mind, we’ll speak no more of it. Tell me what you have been reading.”
“You are far too hasty, and unjust to me,” said Ada, looking up quietly. “I am not at all offended. It is only that I have nothing to say which can help you. On such a subject Rhoda is as little likely to speak with me as with you. She is a reserved girl.”
“Yes, she is, though strangely frank at times; that is my view of her character. Well, I can only ask you to put the matter out of your head. Really, you troubled me; I felt so sure of you, and to see you all at once put on the unintelligent coldness of an ordinary young lady——”
“Am I not an ordinary young lady?” asked Ada, smiling.
“If you were, I should not feel the kind of interest in you that I do, and I should not advise you to read this novel of Tourguéneff, which I hereby do with great fervour. If you don’t rejoice in it, your taste is not what it ought to be.”
The talk went into other channels, for Thomas Meres could at all times overcome his private troubles when there was question of literature.
Having her own sitting-room, Ada was not obliged to mix with the family more than she saw good. Whilst Rhoda was recovering, Ada kept to herself, seeing her friends seldom save at meals; but when the order of the house was restored, Hilda, having once more her hours of leisure, was bold in demands for companionship. It seemed, indeed, as though in future the younger of the two sisters would be Ada’s intimate. Rhoda, who had formerly occupied that position, was much changed; she seldom talked with Ada privately, nor much at all with any one, shutting herself in her bedroom whenever her absence was not likely to be noticed. She always seemed weary, and had lost the pleasant spontaneity of manner which was generally her principal charm. There was no sulking in her diminished sociableness; she simply drooped. When she went to her room, it was to lie on the bed and cry, sometimes for an hour together. A weak and perhaps rather morbid nature, she apparently had not the vital energy to surmount this first disappointment. Her life was not favourable to a recovery of healthy tone, for she had no friends with whom to seek distractions. That was the inevitable result of the family’s circumstances; no position is harder than that of educated girls brought up in London in a poor household. A bachelor is not necessarily shut out of society on account of his poverty; but a family must give and take on equal terms, or be content to hold aloof. Mr. Meres saw very few people excepting half-a-dozen professional acquaintances; he had always shunned miscellaneous companies. When Mrs. Clarendon was in London, he had frequent invitations from her, and these now and then led to others; but then that was not his world, and he was not able to devote himself to a system of social toadyism in the way. that would have suggested itself to a mother with daughters for sale. If ever Rhoda and Hilda were to find husbands it must probably be by the irregular course upon which the former had already made her first essay. To be sure it was a course attended with not a few dangers, but Society intends this presumably; it is its method for keeping up the price of virtue.
Owing to her illness, Rhoda did not hear of the postponement of Ada’s marriage till some weeks had gone by. Mr. Meres had it announced to him in the letter from Mrs. Clarendon which just preceded Ada’s arrival, but he kept the news to himself, not caring to speak with Rhoda of these topics, and taking it for granted that it would come to be spoken of between the three girls sooner or later. Hilda was the first to elicit the fact. This young lady deserves rather more special description than we have yet had time to devote to her. She was delightful. Sixteen years old, already as tall as her sister, delicate in form, delicate in her manners and movements, in watching her you forgot that she was not exactly pretty. Her face, in fact, would not allow you to consider its features individually; together they made one bright, pure, girlish laugh. She crossed your path like a sunbeam; you stopped to gaze after the slim, winsome figure with its airy gait, to wonder at the grace with which she combined the springing lightness of a child and the decorous motions of womanhood. To see her on her way home from school, wishing, yet afraid, to run; books held up against her side, the quick twinkle of her feet and the fairy waft of her skirts—all so fresh, so dainty, so unconscious of things in the world less clean than herself. She met your gaze with delicious frankness; the gray eyes were alive with fun and friendliness and intelligence, they knew no reason why they should not look straight into yours as long as they chose, which, however, was not the same as rendering to you a mutual privilege. If gazed at too persistently she would move her shoulders with a pretty impatience, and ask you some surprising question likely to prove a test of intellectual readiness. Yet it was hard not to take a very long look; the face was puzzling, fascinating, suggestive; there was cleverness in every line of it. Already she had advanced in her studies beyond the point at which Rhoda ceased. How much she knew! She could render you an ode of Horace, could solve a quadratic equation, could explain to you the air-pump and the laws of chemical combination, could read a page of Ælfric’s “Homilies” as if it were modern English. And all the while the very essence of her charm lay in the fact that she knew nothing at all. She lived in a fantastic world, in which every occurrence was stateable in young lady’s language, every person was at heart well-meaning, even if sometimes mistaken, where every joy was refined, and every grief matter for an elegy. Her innocence was primordial. When she came into the room, there entered with her a breath of higher atmosphere; her touch on your hands cooled and delighted like a mountain stream in summer; her laughter was a tradition from the golden age. She was devoted to music, and would have a fine voice; at present she sang everything. When she came back from school in the evening, she would run up to Ada’s room, tap at the door, and look in like a frolicsome fairy.
“Well?” Ada would ask, good-naturedly.
“Come down and sing ‘Patience,’” was the whispered entreaty. “Just half-an-hour.”
The aesthetic opera was fresh then, and Hilda could not have enough of it; and she laughed, she laughed!
Thomas Meres often sat thinking gloomily of this his favourite child. It was well that she was so clever, for she would have to teach, or so he supposed. What else was there for a girl to do? He could not send her into a postoffice, or make her a dispenser of drugs. Poor Hilda!
But I was saying that it was she who first ventured to speak to Ada of the latter’s marriage. It was on a walk they took together, over the bridge and along the Park edge of the river, one windy evening at the end of February. It was dusking, and they had the Embankment to themselves, so ran a race from Chelsea Bridge to Battersea Park Pier, to reach it before a steamer coming from the City; having won the race, they stood to-see the boat move on towards the pier at Chelsea. The lights along the opposite bank were just being lit, and made a pretty effect.
“Ada,” said the younger girl, as they walked on.
“Yes.”
“When are you going to be married?”
A gust of wind excused silence for a moment; they both had to bend forward against it.
“Perhaps never,” was the reply at length. Ada would not have spoken thus at another time and place; just now she was enjoying the sense of full life, quickened in her veins by the run in keen air.
“Never? But I thought it was going to be very soon?—Am I rude?”
“Not at all; there’s no secret conspiracy. It was to have been soon, but that’s altered.”
“Really? And how long will you stay with us?”
“As long as you’ll have me. All the year perhaps.”
“You don’t mean that! Oh, that’s splendiferous!” The school-girl came out now and then. “Really, now that is jolly! Do you know, I find it just a little dull with Rhoda. She doesn’t seem to care to talk, or to sing, or to do anything. I suppose it’s because she hasn’t been feeling well for a long time. I do wish she’d get better; it makes everything rather miserable, doesn’t it?”
“We shall have to take her to the sea-side-at Easter,” Ada said.
“Yes, so father was saying the other day. When you are married, where shall you live, Ada?”
“One of those houses,” Ada replied, pointing to Cheyne Walk.
“That’s a splendid idea! And you’ll have musical parties, won’t you?”
“Certainly I will; and you shall sing.”
“No, that’s too good! Then we shall get more society; you’ll ask us sometimes to dinner in state, won’t you?”
“If you will honour me with your company.”
“Now you shouldn’t be ironical; you know very well the honour will all be on the other side. I mean in the case of us girls; father, of course, could go anywhere.”
It was an article of faith with Hilda that her father was a conspicuous man of letters, welcome at any table.
The same night Rhoda heard what had been imparted to her sister. She appeared to receive the news with indifference.
It was about this time that Ada received a letter, written on club note-paper, and in a scrawl difficult to decipher, from one of the trustees under Mr. Clarendon’s will, the gentleman whose address she had sought from Mrs. Clarendon.
“Dear Miss Warren,
“In reply to your letter of the 26th inst., asking me for information regarding Mrs. Warren, and saying that you had Mrs. C.‘s permission to apply to me, I am sorry to say that I cannot tell you anything of Mrs. W.‘s present whereabouts, and that I do not even know whether she is living. As you expressly state your desire for particulars, whatever may be their nature, I suppose I ought not to hesitate to inform you of such facts as have come under my notice, though I should myself have preferred to suggest that you should let Mrs. C.‘s information suffice; I can’t think that you will derive any satisfaction from pursuing these inquiries. However, I may say thus much: that up to about two years ago, Mrs. Warren was in the habit of making application to me for pecuniary assistance, her circumstances being very straitened, and such assistance I several times rendered. She had abandoned her profession, which was that of the stage, owing to ill-health. But for two years at least I have heard nothing of her. As you express yourself so very emphatically, I engage that I will send you any information about Mrs. W. which may come to my knowledge. I do not know any person that it would be of use to apply to, but you shall hear from me if I have anything to tell.
“Believe me, yours very truly,
“C. Ledbury.”
This letter irritated Ada; she was sorely tempted to write back in yet, plainer terms than she had used before, and to protest that she was not a child, but a woman who had all manner of difficult problems before her, and who sought definite information which she held was due to her. But she remembered that this gentleman would of course only think of her as a girl not yet twenty, and would no doubt persist in what he deemed his duty, of keeping from her disagreeable subjects. And, after all, perhaps his letter contained all she really wished to know.
She had kept closely to her own room for more than a week, when one day at lunch she requested Mr. Meres to let her speak with him for a moment before he left the house. She came to the study holding a roll which looked like manuscript.
“Do you think,” she asked, “that you could find time to look over something that I have been writing? It isn’t long.”
“By all means; I will make time.”
“No, don’t look at it now,” Ada exclaimed nervously, as he put his eyes near to the first page. “Afterwards, when you are at leisure.”
She stopped at the door.
“When shall I come and see you?”
“Say to-morrow morning, the first thing after breakfast,” replied Mr. Meres, smiling benevolently.
This interview accordingly followed. Ada was requested to seat herself, and her friend, half turning from his desk, stroked his nose for some moments in silence.
“Now, Miss Ada Warren,” he began, with a light tone, which rang kindly enough, yet was a little hard for the listener to bear, “I am not going to discourse vanity, and to prophesy smooth things, because I don’t want you to come to me at some future date and inform me that I was an old humbug. I am at present, you understand, the impartial critic, and I shall use purely professional language. What I have to say about this little story of yours is that it shows very considerable promise, and not a little power of expression, but that, for a work of art, it is too—you understand the word—too subjective. It reads too much like a personal experience, which the writer is not far enough away from to describe with regard to artistic proportion. I suspected what was going on upstairs, and, on the whole, I was pleased when you put this into my hands. But, one question. This is not the only story you have written?”
Ada admitted that it was only one of several.
“So I supposed. Now let me have them all, let me look through them. Time, pooh! I am going to help you if I can. I believe you are quite capable of helping yourself if left alone, and for that very reason, a hint or two out of my experience may prove useful. In a manner, you have always been my pupil, and I am proud of you; I will say so much. There are several things in this sketch which I think uncommonly well put; and—a great thing—the style is not feminine. But—it isn’t a piece of artistic workmanship. You haven’t got outside of the subject, and looked at it all round. It is an extempore, in short, and that you mustn’t allow yourself. Will you do something for me?”
“What is it?”
“Will you write a story in which every detail, every person, shall be purely a product of your imagination—nothing suggested by events within your own experience? That is, of course, directly suggested; you must work upon your knowledge of the world. Write me such a story in about a dozen of these pages—will you? Perhaps you have one already written?”
Ada reflected, and, with an abashed smile, thought not.
“Well, let me have all the others, and set to work upon the new one. Mind, I don’t regard this impulse of yours at all in a trivial light. I say get to work; and I mean it. Write with as determined endeavour as if your bread and cheese depended upon it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.”
“Unfortunately?”
“Well, let that pass. I have no right to speak in that way of the priceless blessing of independence—the gift of Heaven——”
“If it be the gift of Heaven,” remarked Ada, with meaning.
“Oh, it always is; though not always used to celestial ends.”
“You meant, though, that you doubted my power of perseverance, when there was temptation to idleness.”
“Something of that, perhaps. But it’s clear you haven’t been idle of late. Did you write any of those stories at Knightswell?”
“One.”
“Did you show it to Mrs. Clarendon?”
She shook her head.
Mr. Meres drummed upon his desk; there was an expression of pain on his forehead. But he dismissed it with a sigh.
“By-the-bye, this is a first manuscript?”
“Yes.”
“Never dare to show me one again! You are to copy the new story twice,—you understand?”
“Copying is terrible work.”
“So is every effort that leads to anything. You are beginning an apprenticeship; don’t think you can carve masterpieces straight from the block, or dash on frescoes without cartoon. Now shake hands with me and go. And Ada, if you can find it in your heart to do me a great kindness——-”
“Would I not?”
“Well, I can’t ask it now. Some evening when we have talked the fire low, and our tongues are loosened. To work! To work!”