The Master Craftsman

In that way began the companionship that has changed the whole of my life and Isabel’s life as well—you shall hear how.

I set myself to work, as I had done with Robert, systematically. I had to drag a girl out of a miserably narrow groove in which she had lived and moved for five years without any change, almost without fresh air; without society; without books; without friends or companions; a burying alive. It is wonderful to me, when I come to think of it, that her finer nature was not wholly destroyed; most girls after such an experience would have become a mere household drudge, or a mere clerk, with, as another natural result of such a life, a snappish temper and a bitter tongue. Perhaps the presence of her father kept Isabel from these evils; the old sailor was always cheerful, though fate had given him small cause for cheerfulness. However, Isabel passed through the time of prison with no lowering of her moral nature. The social side, of course, suffered. I had to show her how other girls dressed, and how they comported themselves. I had to lift her out of the submission and meekness so ill assorted with her beauty. I had also to give her the world of books and of art—an easy task, made easy by the adaptability of the girl and her quick perceptions; a pleasant task, as the charge of a pretty woman always must be; and a dangerous task, because the girl was surely the most lovable creature under the canopy of heaven. Of this danger I had no thought or suspicion. I declare that I was entirely loyal to Robert, until I discovered a fact which changed the whole situation. The fact once discovered, the rest was natural.

My lessons in the study of Nature and Humanity were continued during the months of June and July. On Saturdays we went afield—to Hampton, to Richmond, to Dulwich, to Sydenham, to Loughton, to Chigwell, to Theydon Bois, to Chingford, to St. Alban’s—wherever there are trees and gardens to be seen. Or we went up the river to Maidenhead, Bray, Windsor, Weybridge; or down the river to Greenwich. On Sunday morning I took her generally to Westminster, where she heard the silver voices of the choir ringing in the roof while we sat in a corner of the transept beside the tombs. At such a time I would watch her and mark how her spirit was rapt and carried away. When the music ceased we would get up and go out and seek the peaceful cloister, cool and shady, on the south side of the church, and there sit together, mostly in silence.

‘Yours are new thoughts, Isabel,’ I said one Sunday morning, while we sat in this quiet place.

‘They are all new thoughts now,’ she replied. ‘Thanks to you. What did I think about formerly? I don’t remember. Terrors, mostly.’

‘And now they are pleasant thoughts?’

‘Oh! what can they be but pleasant? You have taken me into another world. How could I live so long, and be so contented?’

‘It is a finer and a better world?’

‘It is far, far broader, to begin with; and far, far finer. Whether it is better, George, I do not know. I only see it from the outside. It is happier; of that I am quite sure.’

‘It may well be happier. As for its being better—I meant better in the sense of more comfortable; you mean more virtuous. Well, nobody knows, not even a Father Confessor, whether one part of the world is more virtuous than another part. You see, we never get to the real inside of any part—not even our own corner. And most of us can never get outside our own corner at all. Nobody else ever lived in such a corner as you; but you haven’t got outside that corner yet, and you never will. We only see little bits of the world. My own belief—but I may be wrong—is that we are all pretty much alike; all, as the children say, up and down, and round about—good, and bad, and middling. We are anxious, first of all, and above all, to get as much solid comfort for ourselves as we can.’

She sighed. ‘I confess,’ she said, ‘that I desire happiness more and more. But it is not altogether solid comfort that I look for.’

‘Your views of happiness have broadened, Isabel. What made your happiness two months ago?’

‘There was no happiness, nor much unhappiness. It seemed now as if I lived always in a sort of twilight. No trees even, except those in the burial-ground; no flowers, no fresh country, no books, no poetry, no Cathedral music.’

‘There is a pretty story, an old story, about a prisoner, and about a flower which sprang up, and grew, and blossomed between the chinks of the stones. You are that prisoner, Isabel, and the flower is your soul, which has grown up and blossomed in the dark and narrow prison. But we must not call Robert the gaoler.’

‘Oh no, I must not blame Robert; pray do not think that I do. He has been so full of work and thought that, of course, he could not tell; and why should he be dragged out of his way to think of me? And my father is growing old. No, no; there is no one to blame. Not Robert—oh no, never Robert.’

Let me make a clean breast of it; not that I am penitent, but quite the contrary. I ought, I suppose, to have discontinued these little expeditions as soon as I learned what was coming out of them. That would be the line adopted by the sage of seventy springs. I had only five-and-twenty. Moreover, it is very difficult to say when friendship is transformed into love; the young man goes on; the companionship, always delightful, becomes too delightful to give up; the companion creeps into his heart and remains there until one day he awakes to the consciousness that life without that companion will henceforth be intolerable.

But we entered upon the thing loyally; we had no thought of any danger; then, no one interfered with us; we went where we pleased. I began with thinking about Isabel when I ought to have been considering the lines of a boat; I began to think how she looked, what she said; her face haunted me—her sweet, soft face, full of purity, grace, and every womanly virtue; her eyes—her deep and limpid eyes, wells of holy thoughts, charged with goodness; her voice—the tones of her voice, which had become to me the sweetest music in the world. I dreamed of these things at night, I thought of them all day, long before I understood what had happened to me, long before Isabel suspected anything. The last thing, indeed, which the maiden feared or suspected was the thing that happened. She was engaged to Robert; and I was Robert’s cousin, and by Robert’s permission I was showing her the world. Even a girl who knows the ways of the world, and especially the treacherous, villainous, deceptive ways of young men, and would be therefore suspicious in such a case, might have thought that there was some security in common loyalty and friendship. But Isabel had no knowledge of the world, and no experience of young men, and consequently no suspicion.

This very ignorance of danger made things more dangerous. Her ignorance encouraged her to be perfectly frank and confiding. She showed openly all the pleasure she felt in these little expeditions, and she manifested her innocent affection—I call it affection, not friendship—towards me so unreservedly that it was impossible even to tell her when the thing began, or even when the thing had grown until it became a very furnace of passion.

There you see—it happened so. It was quite natural—it was severely logical—I now understand that nothing else was possible—it was inevitable. No man going about day after day, with so sweet a companion, could fail to fall in love with her. I did fall head over heels, up to my neck, in love. That mattered nothing so long as neither Robert nor Isabel suspected it. As for myself, why, at that time, I did not ask myself what was going to happen, or what would in the end come of it. Enough for me just to enjoy the presence and the sight of her, the touch of her hand, the rustle of her dress. Why, since by marriage we are taught that the man must worship the woman, then was I married to Isabel long before she knew or suspected that I so much as held that form of faith or believed that teaching.

The end—I mean the end of unsuspecting confidence—arrived unexpectedly. It came one evening, about the middle of July, and at sunset. We were sitting in the place where I had taken Isabel first—the park near Rickmansworth. She sang hymns no more, nor did she faint at beholding the splendour and the glory of the world; but she sat in silence, gazing upon the western glow in the sky, and on the flowing river at her feet, where the glow was reflected.

Could this glorious creature be the pale and drooping maiden whom I brought here six weeks before? Now she sat upright, cheeks glowing, eyes uplifted, limpid and lovely eyes, with rounded figure and head erect—a girl full of life and of the joy of youth.

‘Of all the places that we have seen together, George,’ she said, ‘this is the one that I love best.’

‘It is where you first felt the beauty of the world, Isabel, and it was too much for you.’

‘How came you to think about taking me out? It has been so wonderfully good of you, George. I can never think enough about it.’

‘In my capacity of great Physician, I discovered that you were suffering from monotony, so I spoke to Robert, and we arranged it.’

A cloud passed over her face, but only for a moment.

‘If our little expeditions have put colour into your cheeks and light into your eyes—your very lovely eyes, Isabel——’

‘Please, George, no compliments.’

‘Well, then, if they have done you good—there is a nice homely way to put it—I ought to be quite contented and happy. You see, Isabel’—this was rather a risky thing to say; one could not meet her eyes—‘it has been so great a happiness to have you for a companion, that you must just think how good it has been of you to come with me.’

Still she did not suspect what was in my mind. When she began to talk about wonderful goodness it was impossible, of course, not to point out that on the other hand I was the one who should be really grateful and deeply obliged for days and evenings of pure and unmixed happiness, reading the soul—so high above my own—the sweet and lovely soul of this most sweet and lovely maiden. I believe I have said these words about her already. Never mind. I say, then, that I was constrained to put the case before her in its true light.

‘You say this,’ she replied, ‘out of your kindness. Of course, I can never believe that you really wanted the company of a girl so shamefully ignorant as myself. Why, I could talk about nothing. Besides, you have that other friend of whom you have told me—Lady Frances. Have you not neglected her?’

‘Lady Frances does not mind,’ I said. ‘And I have not neglected her, and I do assure you, Isabel, that I am perfectly in earnest when I speak about the happiness of your companionship. I wanted, at first, I confess, only to clear away the clouds from your face and from your mind by a change of place and some kind of amusement. I cannot bear to see any girl unhappy. That was all I thought about at first, when we began to go about together. Afterwards——’ And here I stopped.

‘The clouds are gone,’ she replied, ‘so there is no more need for any more evenings abroad. Now, I suppose, I must make up my mind to go back to Wapping, and to stay there. Well, I have a very happy time to remember.’

‘Indeed, you shall not, Isabel, if I can help it. Go back to the old life? Not if I have any voice in the matter. Besides, the clouds are not all gone. There is one that falls on you quite suddenly, and sometimes lies upon you for an hour or more. Why, it has fallen now. You cloud over suddenly, Isabel. It is some thought that comes to you uninvited. Your face must be all sunshine or all cloud. Never was such a tell-tale face.’

She blushed; but the cloud lay there still.

‘What is it, Isabel? What is this cloud? Is it anything that I can remove?’

‘No one can remove it,’ she said.

‘Is it anything—but I have no right to ask. Only, Isabel, if you like to tell me, I might advise.’

She remained silent, but the tears gathered in her eyes.

‘Tell me, Isabel,’ I pressed her. ‘I asked you once before, in the old burial-ground.’

‘I do not dare. I am ashamed. You will think me the most ungrateful of women if I tell you.’

‘Then tell me, and let me scold you.’

‘It is—it is’—she hung her head—‘it is Robert.’

‘What has Robert done?’

‘It is because he has promised to marry me.’

Then the scales fell from my eyes, and I understood the cloud. I ought to have known. She told me as much before.’

‘Oh, he has been so good! I have told you—we owe everything to him—I am bound to him by chains—and yet—yet—— Oh, George, I am telling you everything. I am ashamed—yet I must tell someone, because sometimes I think I shall go mad; it weighs me down night and day. He has promised to marry me; his promises are sacred, and it is the thought of marrying him, never to be away from him; to be with him always; always to be his servant and to do what he orders; and never a single kind word, or one look of interest even, not to speak of—of affection. I am as disregarded as his office-boy; I am nothing more than a machine. How can I do anything but tremble at the thought of marrying such a man?’

‘Then you must yourself break off your engagement.’

‘No, no. I cannot. You forget, George, that we are his dependents, my father and I, both of us. I must do what Robert wishes—all that Robert wishes.’

I groaned.

‘And now you know the meaning of the cloud. I am only happy when I can forget my own future. And all your kindness is thrown away, because the thought of my own future never leaves me altogether—even with you.’

And then it was that I quite lost my self-control.

‘Oh, Isabel!’ I cried. ‘You shall not marry him. Oh, my love! my love! you shall not marry him.’

I took her hands. She cried out and sprang to her feet. I threw my arms round her and kissed her, being carried quite beyond my own control. And I told her, in words that I cannot, dare not, set down here for all the world to see, all that was lying in my heart.

She pushed me from her, and sank back upon the fallen tree on which she had been sitting, and buried her face in her hands.

‘Isabel!’ I whispered. ‘Isabel! if you can love me!’

She gave me her hand. ‘Let me hear it once—and say it once, for the first time and the last. Oh, George—and I did not know it!’

I kissed her again and again. It makes my heart leap up still only to think of that moment.

Then she stood up. ‘It is the first time and the last, George,’ she said. ‘I am engaged to your cousin Robert.’

‘Yes, Isabel.’

‘Now we will go home. We will not forget this evening, George. I thank God—yes, I thank God we have told each other. Now I shall feel, whatever happens, that I have been loved—even I, whose promised husband scorns me.’ Her voice broke into a sob. ‘But we must never, never again speak of it. Never, never. You have loved me for a little, and that is enough for me—to gladden all my life. Even I have been loved—even I——’

I made no reply, because I was fully resolved, you see, somehow to speak of it again. In fact, I felt that it was impossible to consider any other future than one in which the subject would always form the chief topic of conversation.

‘Give me your promise, George,’ she went on. ‘Promise that you will never speak to me of love again.’

‘I promise, Isabel, that I will never again speak to you of love until Robert himself has set you free. Will that do?’

How I proposed at that moment to persuade Robert I do not know. How I did actually and afterwards persuade him you shall presently learn.