In the first week of February, Mrs. Clarendon spent a couple of days with the Bruce Pages at Hanford. Among a vast accumulation of county and general news which Mrs. Bruce Page emptied forth for Isabel’s benefit, there was mention of an accident that had befallen Sir Miles Lacour. Whenever, as had lately been the case, there was skating weather, Sir Miles assembled large parties of friends to enjoy this pastime on a fine piece of water that graced his grounds. One evening, when there was torchlight merriment on the ice, Sir Miles had somehow managed to catch a fall; it would have been nothing, but that unfortunately there came immediately behind him a sleigh in which a lady was being whirled along by a couple of skaters. The metal came in contact with the prostrate baronet’s head, and he had remained for an hour in unconsciousness. However, he appeared to be doing well, and probably there would be no further result.
“Do you know,” said Mrs. Bruce Page, “I ran up to town the other day, and took an opportunity of seeing the boy Vincent.”
“Did you?” said Isabel indifferently.
“Shall I tell you something that I found out? But perhaps you have already got at the explanation of that affair?”
“No, I know nothing about it. It really does not concern me.”
“Of course not,” the other lady remarked to herself. She continued aloud. “It was all Ada’s doing; so much is clear. She somehow came to hear of—-well, of things we won’t particularise. Vincent is open enough with me, and made no secret of it. I told him plainly that I was delighted; his behaviour had been simply disgraceful. Of course I can never have him here again, at all events not for a long time; whatever you do, don’t mention his name in Emily’s hearing,” her daughter, that was. “And he wasn’t aware that Ada was in town; of course I left him in his ignorance. It is to be hoped the poor girl won’t be so foolish as to give in. Naturally, one understands her—her temptations only too well. And, my dear, you know I always say just what I think—you won’t take it ill—I can’t help blaming you; it was so clearly your duty to refuse consent. You were actuated by the very highest and purest motives, that I am well aware. But you are too unworldly; to suffer ourselves to be led by our own higher instincts so often results in injustice to other people. I really don’t think principles were meant to be acted upon; they are ornaments of the mind. My set of Sèvres is exquisite, but I shouldn’t think of drinking tea out of them.”
On returning to Knightswell, Isabel was Informed that Mr. Robert Asquith had made a call that morning; hearing that she would be back before night he had written on his card that he should wait at the inn in Winstoke, as he wished to see her.
She took the card to the drawing-room, and stood bending it between her fingers, not yet having removed her bonnet. She was thinking very hard; her face had that expression which a woman never wears save when alone; the look of absolute occupation with thoughts in which her whole being is concerned. It ended in her passing to the boudoir, hastily writing a note, and ringing the bell.
“Let this be taken at once,” she said to the servant who appeared. “And tell Hopwood to bring tea upstairs.”
Robert Asquith was pleased to receive a summons to dine, with the information added that his cousin was alone.
At dinner the conversation busied itself with everything save the subject which was uppermost in the minds of both. Isabel was all the more delightful for having to exert herself a little to sustain her gaiety, and Asquith was in unfeigned good spirits. He gave an account of his progress in Anglicisation, related many drily humorous stories.
When the meal was over he said:
“You don’t demand of me that I shall sit in solitary dignity over the claret for-half-an-hour? Is it de rigueur in my quality of English gentleman?”
“Perhaps you would like to smoke?”
“No.”
“In that case come to the drawing-room.”
He held the door open, and she swept gently past; Robert smiled, so pleasantly did her grace of movement affect him. There are women who enter a room like the first notes of a sonata, and leave it like the sweet close of a nocturne; Isabel was of them.
“How long does Miss Warren intend to stay in London?” he inquired, as they seated themselves.
“Indefinitely.”
“Her friends there are congenial?”
“Entirely so. Mr. Meres is a clever man; he has more influence over her than any one else.”
“You give that as an illustration of his cleverness?”
“No; as the result of it. Ada wants intellectual society; she has no pleasure in talking of anything but books and art. And he has always been a sort of guide to her.”
“Then you have the prospect of being alone for some time?”
“I shall go up as usual in May. Have you read this account of Indian jugglers in the Cornhill?”
“No, I have not.”
“You really should; it is astonishing. Take it away with you; I have done with it.”
“Thanks. I will. You wish to be in London in May? Two clear months before then. Could you be ready in, say, three days to go southwards?”
Isabel was quite prepared for this, but not for the way in which it was put. A man whose character finds its natural expression in little turns of this kind has terrible advantages over a woman not entirely sure of her own purpose. She looked for a moment almost offended; it was the natural instinctive method of defence.
“To go southwards?” she repeated, rolling up the magazine she held.
“The yacht is at Marseilles,” Robert pursued, watching her with eyes half-closed. “The Calders have made every preparation, and some friends of theirs, Mr. and Mrs. Ackerton—very nice people—are to be of the party.”
She answered nothing. As he waited, coffee was brought in.
“I don’t think I know anything of the Ackertons,” Isabel said, naturally, as the servant held the tray.
“They are Somersetshire people, I believe. The lady was a Miss Harkle.”
“Not a daughter of Canon Harkle?”
“Can’t say, I’m sure.”
The servant retired, and they sipped coffee in silence. Isabel presently put hers aside; Asquith then finished his cup at a draught, and walked to a table with it.
“I don’t think you have any excuse left, have you?” he said, leaning over the back of a chair.
“That is a decidedly Oriental way of putting an invitation, Robert.”
He was surprised at the amount of seriousness there was in her tone; she would not raise her face, and her cheeks were coloured.
“Let me be more English, then. Will you give us—give me—the great pleasure of your company, Isabel?”
“But I tell you so clearly that under no circumstances should I leave England just now. It is a little—unkind of you.”
“Unkind? It is not exactly a spirit of unkindness that actuates me. It would do you no end of good, and you will find the people delightful.”
Probably Isabel had by this time made up her mind, but disingenuousness was a mistake on Robert’s part. He only slipped into it because he began to fear that he had really offended her, and the feeling disturbed his self-possession for the moment.
“Thank you,” Isabel said. “I appreciate your kindness at its full, but you must not ask me again. I shall remain at Knightswell till I go to London.”
He made a slight motion of assent with his hand.
“Now to think,” Isabel said, with sudden recovery of good-humour—that sort of “well done, resolution!” which we utter to ourselves with cheering effect—“that you should have troubled to come all this way on what you might have known was an errand of disappointment!”
“Oh, I wanted, in any case, to see you before starting. I should have been very disappointed if I had missed you.”
He began at once to give a lively sketch of the expedition he had planned, and Isabel listened with much attention, though she interposed no remarks.
“You will bring me an account of it all when you come back,” she said on his ceasing to speak.
“It’s not very clear to me whether I shall come back,” Robert returned. “I have a friend in Smyrna whom I shall go to see, and I shouldn’t wonder if I am tempted to stay out there.”
“What, after all your perseverance in mastering English accomplishments?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t quite know what I shall do with myself if I stay here. Most probably I shall decide to go into harness again, one way or another. And that reminds me of the ‘Coach and Horses.’ I will wend my way to that respectable hostelry.”
“You’ll come and breakfast in the morning?”
“No; I must leave by the 8.15. I want to be early in London.”
“You are rather an unreasonable man, my cousin Robert,” said Isabel, as she stood at leave-taking. “Because I am forced, with every expression of regret, to decline an invitation to a yachting expedition, you are more than half angry with me. I thought you and I were beyond these follies.”
“Did you? But, you see, I am not a hardened giver of invitations. The occasion has a certain uniqueness for me.”
“Take courage. If one whom you invite declines, there is always a better one very ready to fill the place.”
Robert went his way, and before many days Isabel had a written “good-bye” from London:
“To-morrow we start. It would have been a different thing if you had been with us here to-night. There are mysteries about you, cousin Isabel, and I rather think I was more at my ease before I began to puzzle over such things. If I settle in Smyrna, I will send you muscatels. Here or there, I believe I am always yours, Robert Asquith.”
He never wrote a letter much longer than this.
The day after his visit, Isabel took up her pen to talk with Kingcote.
“What do you think I have just done? Refused an invitation to go with friends yachting in the Mediterranean—an invitation it would have been lovely to accept. And why did I refuse? Wholly and solely on your account, sir. Will you not thank me? No, there was no merit in it, after all. How could I have been happy on the coasts of Italy and Greece, whilst you, my dearest, were so far from happy in London? You must get over that depression, which is the result of sudden change, and of the gloomy things you find yourself amongst. Do not be so uneasy about the future. Try to write to me more cheerfully, for have not I also a few hard things to bear? Indeed, I want your help as much as you need mine. Yet in one thing I have the advantage—I look to the future with perfect trust. I laugh at your doubts and fears. Do you doubt of me? Do you fear lest I shall forget? I dare you to think such a thought! If I could but give you some of my good spirits. To me the new year makes a new world. I long for the bright skies and spring fields that I may enjoy them; they will have a meaning they never had before. It will soon be May, and then shall we not see each other?”
February passed, March all but passed. There were guests at Knightswell, and one fair spring morning, about eleven o’clock, Isabel was on the point of setting forth to drive with three ladies. The carriage was expected to come up to the door, and Isabel was just descending the stairs with one of her friends, when she saw the servant speaking with some one who had appeared at the entrance. A glance, and she perceived that it was Kingcote. She was startled, and had to make an effort before she could walk forward. She motioned to Kingcote to enter, and greeted him in the way of ordinary friendliness.
“We were on the very point of going out,” she said, her voice shaken in spite of all determination. “Will you come into the library?”
She turned and excused herself to her companion, promising to be back almost immediately.
“What has brought you?” was her hurried question, when the library door was closed behind them. “Has anything happened?”
“Nothing,” Kingcote answered, turning his eyes from her. “But I see you have no time to give me. I mustn’t keep you now. I thought perhaps I might find you alone.”
“And you have come——?”
“To see you—to see you—what else?” burst passionately from his lips. “I was dying with desire to see you. Last night it grew more than I could bear. I left the house before daylight, and I find myself here. I had no purpose of coming; I have done it all in a dream. My life had grown to a passion to see you!”
He caught her hand and kissed it again and again, kissed the sleeve of her garments, pressed her palm against his eyes.
“You have made me mad, Isabel,” he whispered. “It is terrible not to be able to see you when that agony comes upon me. I neither rest nor employ myself; I can only pace my room, like an animal in his cage, with my heart on fire. Oh, I suffer—life is intolerable!”
“Bernard, let me go to that chair—to see you gave me a shock. For heaven’s sake do speak less wildly, dear! Why should you suffer so? Have I not written to you often? Do you doubt me? What is it that distresses you?”
He stood, and still held her hand.
“Don’t speak, but look at me very gently, softly, with all the assurance of tenderness that your eyes will utter. You have such power over me, that your gaze will soothe and make me a reasonable being again. No, not your lips! Only that still, smiling look, that I may worship you.”
Her bosom trembled.
“Do you know yourself?” Kingcote went on, under his breath. “Have you any consciousness of that fearful power which is in you? No more, I suppose, than the flower has of its sweetness. You have so drawn my life into the current of your own, that I have lost all existence apart from you. I have dreamed of loving, but that was all idle; I had no imagination for this spell you have cast upon me.”
“I am glad you came! I too was longing to touch your hand.”
She pressed it to her lips.
“Oh, if I could only stay with you, now!”
“Yes, I know I must not keep you. You have friends waiting. They have a better right.”
“A better right? That you know they have not, Bernard. But—I cannot——”
“They represent the world that is between you and me,” he said, moving away. “You cannot leave them—no, it is impossible. Think how strange it sounds. It would be as easy for you to do anything that is most disgraceful in the world’s eyes, as to leave those friends to themselves for my sake. I am not speaking harshly; I mean that it is in truth so, and it shows us how amazingly we are creatures of conventional habit.”
It was doubtful whether Isabel understood his meaning, her point of view was so different.
A thought which strikes one into speechless astonishment will leave another quite unmoved. It is a question of degree of culture—also of degree of emotion.
“Dear, if you had forewarned me of your coming. Don’t speak unkindly to me!”
“Rather I would never speak again. Go, and all blessings go with you! You have helped me to my calmer self. But, Isabel——”
“Bernard?”
“Are there often these friends about you?” he asked sadly.
“No, not often. I have told you how often I am by myself. And now, I must! Stay; do not leave the room when I do. Sit at the desk there and write me a letter. The drawer below is open; close the envelope, and put it in there; I will look for it. And you have not even breakfasted?”
“Oh, I will go to the ‘Coach and Horses.’ But no; I’m afraid of meeting Mr. Vissian somewhere. I will leave the park by the opposite road, and find some inn. Now I am well again. Good-bye, sweet!”
“Only a month, and I shall be in London!” She hurried away. The ladies were waiting for her. The servant stood by the door with wraps.
“Isn’t it too bad to keep you all like this? I give you leave to scold me all the way. Why didn’t you get in? Lily, you know what you were saying about unpunctual people; take me for your text next time.”
They passed out before her, and she said to the servant:
“Mr. Kingcote is writing in the library. Take him at once some biscuits and wine.”
They drove off, and Isabel was gay as the sunshine....
With her the month passed quickly enough. Through her solicitor she always obtained suitable rooms for the season, this time they were found in the neighbourhood of Portman Square. For some reason or other she did not to the end apprise Kingcote of the exact day on which she would be in town; after reaching her abode she let two days pass before summoning him to her. But this did not mean coldness, only—shopping. A host of things had as usual to be bought; the rooms had to be adorned in various ways; infinite—oh, infinite calls had to be made, or cards to be left. And one of the first houses she went to was that humble one in Chelsea. In her friendships Isabel was golden.
She went in the evening, that all might be at home. Before she could get from the door to the parlour Hilda’s arms were about her, and Rhoda was waiting with a flush of pleasure on her usually pale cheeks.
“I don’t think I shall as much as shake hands with that young lady,” Isabel said, designating the elder girl. “Her behaviour to me has been too shameful. Not one scrap of a letter for two months at least! Ah, how good it is to be with you again! Hilda, you are taller than I am; that is most disrespectful. And it seems yesterday that I used to lift you up on my lap.—Well?”
So kindly said it was, that one word; a greeting that warmed the heart. It was for Thomas Meres himself, who came into the room. He never made use of speech in meeting Mrs. Clarendon; simply shook hands with her and let his eyes rest a moment upon her face.
“And where is Ada?”
Ada was summoned, and shortly presented herself. She showed no pleasure, but came forward holding out her hand naturally; she and Isabel did not kiss each other, it had never been their habit.
“You, I should say, want a good deal more exercise, Ada. Mr. Meres, you are the worst possible person to take care of a young lady who is too fond of shutting herself up over books.”
“Oh, we have been rowing in Battersea Park,” cried Hilda. “Ada rows splendidly. We are going up the river before long, if we can persuade father to come with us. Mrs. Clarendon, do order him to come. Father will do anything that you tell him.”
Her father’s yellow face changed colour for an instant; he laughed.
“If Mrs. Clarendon will guarantee that the boats won’t capsize,” he said; “that is the only question.”
“Are you great at the oar, Rhoda?” Isabel asked, going over to a seat by the girl, and taking her hand affectionately. It was an impulse of pity; Rhoda looked so sad, though she smiled.
“My function is steering,” was the reply.
“What a wise girl! And how did you all enjoy yourselves at Eastbourne? You can’t think how tempted I was to join you. If only it hadn’t been such a long way.”
“I hope you feel no permanent ill results of your accident?” Mr. Meres asked.
“None, I really think. But, oh dear! I’m growing old.”
Hilda broke into her cheery laugh; Rhoda and her father smiled; even Ada moved her lips incredulously.
“How dare you all make fun of me? Hilda, stop laughing at once.”
“Old, indeed, Mrs. Clarendon! That I don’t think you’ll ever be.”
It was Isabel’s delight to hear these words; she flushed with pleasure.
“I want you girls to come and lunch with me to-morrow—no, the day after; to-morrow I am engaged. But I forgot; can you come, Hilda?”
“Yes, on Saturday.”
“That’s just right, then. And can you dine with me on Sunday, Mr. Meres? I shall have some one you would like to know, I think. Mr. Kingcote, Ada; he is in London now. You must give Mr. Meres an account of him.”
She did not stay much longer, and went, as always, leaving kind thoughts behind her. Should we not value those who have this power of touching hearts to the nobler life of emotion as they pass?
That friend of Kingcote’s, Gabriel by name, of whom we have heard, had his studio on the north side of Regent’s Park, in a house which also supplied him with a bedroom, this double accommodation sufficing to his needs. In regard to light the painting-room was badly contrived; formerly two rooms, it had been made into one by the simple removal of a partition, and of its three windows one looked south, the others west. From the latter was visible the smug, plebeian slope of Primrose Hill; the former faced a public-house. Gabriel would tell you impressively that the air in this part of London was very good. He lived here, in truth, because he could not afford to live in a better place.
He was the only friend Kingcote had retained from early years. Gabriel’s father was a bookseller in Norwich, and the two boys had been companions at their first school. That their intimacy had survived to the present day was not easily accounted for, except perhaps by the fact that neither was fond of seeking acquaintances; knowing each other well, and continuing by the chances of life within reach of each other, they had found in this intercourse enough mutual support to keep their human needs from starving, and had been prevented by it from seeking new associates; it happens occasionally that, with reticent men, a friendship of this kind will terminate in a double isolation. In all other essentials of character they were very unlike. Kingcote we know pretty well by this time—his amiability, his dangerous passiveness, his diffidence, his emotional excess. Not one of these qualities manifested itself in Clement Gabriel. His temper was frankly sour; Kingcote had on occasions visited him and found him indisposed to speak. “Talk to me as much as you like,” he said, when at length there came a question, “but don’t expect me to answer; I shall say bearish things, and I’d rather not.” They sat together for an hour, and the artist did not open his lips. It was his habit to declare that he loved idleness, that at times it cost him unheard-of efforts to go on with his work; that it would have been easier to cut off his hand than to take up the pencil. For all that, no man in London worked more continuously or with fiercer determination. He had not the physique of a robust man; at eighteen he had been declared consumptive; but the will in him was Samson. Ill-health was not allowed to affect his mind, and symptoms of positive disease he appeared to have outgrown; he was in the habit of saying that he could not afford the luxury of a delicate chest, any more than of delicate food. An end he had set before himself, an ideal in art—it was equivalent in his case to an ideal in life—and only the palsy of death would check his progress. Emotions he seemed to have none, outside the concerns of his pursuit. In friendship he made no pretence of warmth; he carried to excess the reserve of an Englishman, and even handshaking he would escape if he could. That he had ever been in love (he was thirty) could not for a moment be supposed, and he spoke with contempt of men who could not live without “women and brats” to hang about them and weight them in the race. “You will never marry?” Kingcote asked him, and the reply was: “Never! I have work to do.” Not a little of arrogance he displayed now and then; as, for instance, in adding after a moment’s pause, “What wife had Michael Angelo?”
His life had, since boyhood, been desperately hard. Till the age of fourteen or fifteen, no bent towards drawing had marked, him; then it exhibited itself suddenly and decisively. His father had no other son, and had made up his mind that Clement should go into the book trade; the lad begged to be allowed to study art. For answer, he was at once taken from school, and put into the shop. He did not grumble, but spent every moment of leisure time in drawing, and deprived himself of sleep for the same purpose. When he was seventeen, and in appearance three years older, he told his father that he must go to London; might he have a few shillings a week to live upon? If not, he must still go; the shillings would come somehow. His resolve was so evident that the father consented to supply him with seven shillings a week for one year; after that, he must shift for himself. Clement accepted the offer. His father expected to see him back in Norwich very shortly; in effect, he had not set eyes upon him to the present day. For the lad, when his year was at an end, nourished such bitterness against the cruelty to which he had been subjected, was so marked by the hungry memories of those twelve months, that, in a letter home, he vowed that he would never meet his father again. The parent responded angrily, and they held intercourse no more.
Gabriel passed his South Kensington examinations, in order to enable himself to teach. During that first year he had also found miscellaneous kinds of employment. He always protested that there was not a mean or repulsive pursuit in London by which he had not at one time or another earned a copper; which was his exaggerated way of stating that he had been driven to strange expedients to keep himself alive and have time to work up without assistance for the successive grades of examination. One source of income he unearthed was the sketching in water-colours of pugilists and race-horses for a man who kept an open stall in Hampstead Road. It became a partnership, in fact; the salesman allowed Gabriel a certain percentage on the drawings sold; and they sold well, especially on Saturday night. Better days began when he got his first private pupil. He was admitted at length to study in the Academy schools, and only just missed a Travelling Studentship—it was a bitter loss. Not a penny did he receive in gift from any one (a prize at South Kensington excepted) after the remittances from Norwich ceased. An offer from Kingcote almost broke their friendship. Gabriel apologised for the violent way in which he had received this offer.
“Can’t you see,” he said, “that if I had not trained myself to savage independence, I should have broken down long since? I excite myself to anger lest I should yield.”
Kingcote’s respect for this character was unbounded. He had an ideal faith in Gabriel. To him he spoke with the utmost freedom of his own affairs, and did not feel the lack of corresponding openness on the other side. Gabriel would have found no relief in exhibiting his sorrows; shut up in his breast, they acted as a motive force. He worked at times in frenzy. Kingcote did not divine this; he regarded his friend as above the ordinary passions and needs; he accepted literally Gabriel’s declaration that work was enough for him. Kingcote had not the power to maintain such reserve; sooner or later he had to find a confidant, and pour forth in sympathetic ears the stream of his miseries. His was essentially a feminine nature; in Gabriel masculine energy found its climax.
The days of race-horses and pugilists had gone by; with increased knowledge of his art, Gabriel had laid upon himself severe restrictions. He would not even paint portraits in the ordinary way, though therein he might easily have found a means of putting aside the teaching, which he hated. He was capable of stopping a girl who sold matches in the street and paying her to let him sketch her face, if it struck his peculiar fancy; but he would not paint the simpering daughter of a retired draper who sought him out. He said plainly that the head did not interest him; it would be waste of time, and he indulged himself in one of his rare laughs—a shockingly unmelodious cackle—as soon as the man had taken off himself and his dudgeon. He held that, as long as he could keep himself from starvation, the ideal exactions of art must be supreme with him. He followed no recognised school, and his early pictures found neither purchaser nor place of exhibition more dignified than a dealer’s window. He was a realist, and could not expect his style to be popular.
Kingcote sought him out as soon as he had leisure after his arrival in London. He had written to announce his departure from Wood End, but left the causes to be explained subsequently. Going over to the studio in the evening, he found the artist at work upon some drawings to illustrate a novel. Gabriel did not leave his seat, merely nodded as his friend came in; it was with a distinct look of annoyance that he found himself obliged to shake hands. Let us see what manner of man he outwardly was. Tall and excessively meagre to begin with; when regarding his work, he thrust his elbows into his sides, and one wondered that he did not hurt himself with the sharp bones. His face was hard set, the mouth somewhat too prominent, the cheeks hollow, the eyes small and keen. His hair was very light, his thin whiskers of the same colour. He had a very long throat, and made it appear still longer by a habit of pushing forward his chin defiantly. No one ever saw his teeth; he even laughed with his mouth close shut. In speaking, his voice was high, often with a tendency to querulousness. When he walked, it was at a great rate, with head down, and cutting left and right with the stick he always carried. He was not at all of a refined type, but energy personified.
“What is the book you are illustrating?” Kingcote inquired.
“Oh, it’s damned nonsense; but I manage to see some things the writer couldn’t. It will be valued in future for the cuts.”
This was characteristic of Gabriel. He said it in the most natural way, and seeing that he spoke truth there seemed no reason why he should not express himself freely.
“What are you going to send to the Academy this year?”
He rose, after a touch or two at the drawing, and took up the lamp, which was the only light in the room. (Though it was very cold he had no fire.) On an easel stood a large picture, nearly finished; he illuminated it. Kingcote started at the astonishing scene that was at once before him. It was a portion of an East End market-street at night; the chief group, a man at a stall selling quack-medicines to a thronging cluster of people. The main light came from a naphtha-lamp on the stall, but there was also the gleam from one of the ordinary lamps of the street. The assembled men, women, and children were of the poorest and vilest, and each face seemed a portrait. That of the medicine vendor was marvellous, with its look of low brag and cunning; on it was the full glare of the naphtha flame.
“Anything else?” Kingcote asked, looking at the painter.
“One or two small things, which they won’t hang. This they will.”
“There can be no doubt of that; it will be the picture of the year. But let me see the others.”
One of these filled Kingcote with delight; he uttered an “Ah!” of pleasure. It was a little girl standing before a shop-window, and looking at an open illustrated paper which was exposed there. The subject was nothing, the pose and character of the child everything. Poor and ragged, she had lost for the moment sense of everything, but the rich and comfortable little maiden displayed in the coloured page; her look was envious, but had more of involuntary admiration. This too was a night-piece; the light came from the front of the shop, above the picture.
“The face is exquisite!” Kingcote said; “you have made great strides this last halfyear.”
The artist uttered a “h’m,” and no more.
“So you got tired of your cottage,” he said, seating himself, and taking up his pencil again.
“You know I was that, long since. But a different reason brought me back to London.”
He explained his situation.
“And what shall you do?” Gabriel asked, simply.
“It is impossible to say. I must find work of some kind.”
“Well, this is good news! At last you’ll do something.”
“My dear fellow, it is the opposite of good news. I shall do something, no doubt; but it will be drudgery of some kind to earn a living. There is nothing more to come out of me than that.”
“Humbug! You are not as old as I am.”
“No, but old enough to have seen the end of my tether.”
“Why don’t you go in for writing?”
“Because I am unable to. I can enjoy other men’s work, but I can produce none of my own.”
“Of course not, if you take it for granted. You could if you made up your mind to.”
“Don’t forget that that making up of the mind is everything; it is the very ability which I lack. But literature is a vain thought. How is it for a moment to be imagined that I could earn a sufficient income by it? I have written verses at times; you don’t advise me to go into the market with those wares? Journalism I am utterly unfit for, as you must recognise. Equally unfit to write for magazines; I have neither knowledge nor versatility. There remains fiction, and for that I am vastly too subjective; I have no ‘shaping spirit of imagination’—at all events not of the commercially valuable kind. If I had lived in days when Undine and Sintram were the approved style, I should probably have been tempted to try my hand; but now——”
“Because,” he continued, “you are blessed with genius and will, you think all men should, can do great things by dint of mere exertion. I shall never do anything; do you understand? And why should I? There are other ways of enjoying life.”
“What other ways?” Gabriel asked, strangely.
“One can receive happiness, as well as be active in bestowing it.”
“Whence is your happiness to come?”
“Who knows? We must wait and see.” Such an attitude as this went near to excite Clement Gabriel’s contempt; he ceased to argue and plied his pencil. The respect which Kingcote entertained for his strenuous friend was now and then mingled with vexation that the latter should fall short in finer sympathies; and Gabriel, though he liked Kingcote’s company, could scarcely be said to respect him. He was conscious that the dreamer saw visions and heard voices of a sphere whence there came no message to himself, but he acknowledged the superiority grudgingly, and would have asked to what end the revelations were made if Kingcote could not translate them into one or other form of human art. With the least strain of self-conceit in Kingcote, their friendship would have been at an end long since.
It seemed as if indeed Kingcote had determined to wait upon Providence. He had said to himself that he would vigorously turn to discovering an occupation in life, as soon as he should have settled his sister in the new home at Highgate; but the settlement was effected, and he did not appear to be exerting himself. He bought newspapers, it is true, and sickened his soul with the reading of advertisements, but it was seldom indeed that anything presented itself which seemed in the least likely to assist him. For it was not a temporary pursuit that he needed, but a fixed station of recognisable activity; work, in fact, which would enable him to stand before Isabel without shame when she was free to fulfil her promise. He was not in immediate need, nor likely to be; the capital which produced him sixty pounds a year would permit him to live and support his sister for some time to come, with economy such as they exercised. But it was idle to take comfort from that; practically he was a beggar.
A more admirable housekeeper than Mary could not have been found. Long experience of grinding poverty had taught her how to make a sovereign go very far indeed; King-cote was astonished at the accounts with which she regularly presented him. He would have had her increase her own comfort in many little ways, but she always refused; self-denial, formerly a harsh necessity, had now become a pleasure; a kind of asceticism was becoming her motive in life. This, a common enough phenomenon, allied itself with increased rigour in religious performances. Her brother’s indifference in such matters was a distress to her, but she would not have ventured to speak. Her gratitude to him was deep and fervent, but Mary felt what a distance there was between him and herself. She could love him as her heart desired, yet she was always hoping that time and use might make them more like brother and sister.
Before long there did happen something which resulted in a drawing nearer. Mary began to notice that her brother received frequent letters addressed in a female hand; she discovered, too, that they bore the Winstoke post-mark. Over this she mused much. It was clear to her that Bernard was anything but at rest in his mind, and that the source of his disquietude was something other than the mere difficulties of his position. His room was directly over that in which she slept, and she could hear him walking up and down sometimes half through the night; he would come down to breakfast looking ill and preoccupied. Now and then, when he had promised to sit with her in the evening and read aloud, which he often did, much to her joy, he would alter his mind at the last moment and leave the house. Then he was always very late in returning, and annoyed that she had sat up for him. She was obliged at length to leave supper on the table, and go to her room, though often she waited till she heard him enter the house before she hastened upstairs.
The morning that he went off to Knights-well, she had not noticed his early departure, and his absence throughout the day alarmed her. He reappeared about four in the afternoon. Looking anxiously at his face, she did not venture to question him. He took up a newspaper and glanced over it for a few moments.
“You wondered what had become of me?” he said at length, opening his lips for the first time, and trying to smile. “I went very early; I had to go out of London to see some one.”
“I began to be very uneasy,” Mary returned.
He sat down—not, to her surprise, going to his own room—and she began to lay the table for tea. He read the paper. In passing him she timidly touched his head with her fingers caressingly. Kingcote looked round; his face had the kindest smile.
“Do you know,” he said, laughing, “what was in my mind at that moment? I was thinking how admirable the relations are between a brother and sister, when she is a good sister like you, Mary. Suppose you had been my wife instead of my sister. When I came in just now you would have overwhelmed me with questions, with complaints, with frettings, and made me angry. As it is, you have no anxiety but to put me at my ease, and your quiet kindness is a blessing to me.”
“But all wives are surely not like that, Bernard?” she returned, with pleased protest. “Most, I’m afraid; but no—not all.”
The strangest speculations began to live in Mary’s brain. Was it possible that her brother——? Oh, that was nonsense.
He was kind with the children when they came in from school, and, after tea, took a book and read to himself. Mary sent the youngsters a little earlier than usual to bed. When he and she sat alone, she saw that he made several beginnings of speaking; her eyes apparently busy over sewing, missed no phase of his countenance. At length he laid the book open on his knees.
“You remember my mentioning to you a large house called Knightswell, not far from my cottage?”
He did not look at her, but his eyes had an absent glimmer, not quite a smile, as they fixed themselves on the work she had on her lap.
“Yes, I do.”
“I have been there to-day.”
“Been all that way, Bernard?”
“Yes.”
Mary did not fail to understand that it was now her turn to question.
“You have friends there?”
“A friend. If you will listen I will tell you a story.”
He related all that he knew of the history of Isabel Clarendon, as if it had been told to him or he had read it somewhere, up to the time of his first meeting with her; he described her exactly, and described Ada Warren also, the latter, as far as his knowledge allowed, with perfect justice.
“One of those, Mary, is my friend; which do you think?”
“You have made it too easy to guess,” his sister answered good-naturedly. She had listened with the utmost attention, leaning forward, her arms crossed upon her sewing. “Not Miss Warren!”
“But I do not dislike her; you mustn’t think that.”
“Still, you would not go all the way to Knightswell to see her.”
He said nothing. Mary was nervously impatient.
“But what a strange, strange story! And she—Mrs. Clarendon—may be sent from her home any day? Is Miss Warren likely to marry?”
“She is engaged, but will not be married till she is of age. That will be in rather more than a year.”
“And what will Mrs. Clarendon do then?”
He paused a moment before answering. But at length:
“She has promised to be my wife.”
“Bernard!”
Mary threw her work down, and came and kissed his forehead. She could say nothing; stricken with wonder and confused emotions of pleasure, she strove to realise the truth of what he had told her. Then Kingcote took from his pocket the case in which he kept Isabel’s portrait. Mary gazed at it in long silence.
“But how strange!” she murmured, when she turned her eyes away to dream absently.
“You think she might have made a better choice.”
“I have no such thought, Bernard, as you know well. Is it known to her friends?”
“No,” he replied, shortly.
“I wonder what Miss Warren would think?”
He mused, wondering himself.
They talked for a long time. To Kingcote the relief of having told his secret was so great, that he had become cheerful, hopeful. His sister did not show exuberant delight; she continued preoccupied, now and then, as if in result of her meditations, putting a question, and musing again upon the answer. A woman mentally occupied with woman possesses a lucidity of reasoning, a swiftness of apprehension, a shrewdness of inference, which may well render her a trifle contemptuous of male conclusions on the same subject. A very few details are enough for her to work upon; she has the categories by heart, and classifies with relentless acumen. It is the acme of the contradictions of her nature. Instinctively revolting against materialist views when held by the other sex; passionately, fiercely tenacious of spiritual interpretations where her own affections are concerned; the fountain of all purity that the world knows; she yet has in her heart that secret chamber for the arraignment of her sisters, where spiritual pleas are scoffed at, where the code administered is based on the most cynical naturalism. She will not acknowledge it; she will die rather than admit the fact as a working element of her own consciousness; but she betrays herself too often. The countenance of a woman whose curiosity has been aroused concerning another is vaguely disturbing. She smiles, but the smile excites disagreeable thoughts, suspicions such as we would gladly put away. Happily she does most of such thinking when out of sight.
Kingcote said nothing of Isabel’s pecuniary difficulties, and left the question of Ada’s parentage as it was represented in the will. He laid stress all through, on the pathetic aspect of Isabel’s position. Mary listened, questioned innocently, gathered data, and made her deduction.
On the day after Isabel’s visit to Chelsea, Kingcote came and lunched with her. Her rooms, as he noticed, were sufficiently luxurious; a trouble weighed upon him as he talked with her. With a new dress—which of course became her perfectly—she seemed to him to have put on an air somewhat different from that which characterised her in the country. She was impulsively affectionate, but there was an absence in her manner, a shade of intermittence in her attention, a personal restlessness, an almost flippancy in her talk at times, which kept him uneasy. The atmosphere of town and of the season was about her; she seemed to be experiencing a vast relief, to have a reaction of buoyancy. It was natural that she should speak of indifferent things whilst servants were waiting at table, but Kingcote was none the less irritated and hurt in his sensibilities. He lacked the virtue of hypocrisy. The passion which had hold upon him felt itself wronged even by harmless compliance with the exactions of every-day artificial life. Something gnawed within his breast all the time that he was speaking as a mere acquaintance; he had a difficulty in overcoming a sullenness of temper which rose within him. The end of the meal was all but the limit of his patience.
“Don’t ask me to come in this formal way again,” he said, when they were alone in the drawing-room.
“Why not?” Isabel asked, in surprise.
“Because I am absurdly sensitive. It is pain to me to hear you speak as you would to any one whom you had asked out of mere politeness. I think I had rather not see you at all than in that way.”
She laughed lightly.
“But isn’t it enough to know what there is beneath my outward manner?”
“I know it, but——”
“But—your faith in me is so weak. Why cannot you trust me more?”
He was silent.
“You must get rid of these weaknesses. It all comes of your living so much alone. Besides, I want you particularly to come and dine with me on Sunday. Mr. Meres will be here, and I should like you to know him. I shouldn’t wonder if he can be useful to you.”
Kingcote made a gesture of impatience.
“But you won’t refuse, if I wish it? He is the most delightful man, and such an old friend of mine.”
“The less reason why I should like him.”
“Now, Bernard, this is foolish. Are you going to be jealous of every one I know? Oh, what a terrible time is before you!”
She said the words with mirthful mockery, and to Kingcote they were like a sudden stab. It was as though a future of dreadful things had suddenly been opened before his eyes, black, yawning, thronged with the shapes of midnight agonies. Her laugh had a taunting cruelty; her very eyes looked relentless. In this moment he feared her.
She was sitting some little distance away, and could not let him feel the touch of her hand which would have soothed.
“Have you told your sister?” she asked, after regarding him for a moment.
He found it difficult to answer truthfully, but could not do otherwise. He admitted that he had.
“I knew you would,” she returned, with a nod and an ambiguous smile. “And your friend, Gabriel?”
“No. I told you I should not. My sister is different.”
“Yes. Why should you not tell her? And you showed her my portrait?”
“I did.”
“What did she say?”
“Many kind and pleasant things—things you would have liked to hear.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“You don’t dislike to be praised.”
“No, on the whole I think not. But I could do with the praises of just one person—they would be enough.”
“I may repeat your question—are you sure of that?”
“Very sure. But you will come on Sunday?”
“At what time? I thought you went to church.”
“Only in the morning. We shall dine at eight o’clock.”
“And will there only be Mr. Meres?”
“Only one other—a lady.”
Kingcote looked about him restlessly.
“How long shall you stay in London?” was his next question.
“Not more than two months, I think.”
“Two months—May, June. It will seem long.”
“Long? Seem long to you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you not glad that I am nearer to you?”
“Very glad. But I wish it were November, with no one else in town, I suppose you will be surrounded with people all the time.”
“No, I shall see very few,” she answered, rather coldly. “I should wish, if I can, to please you.”
There was a struggle in him between obstinate jealousy and self-denial. She looked at him, with a half-suppressed smile about her lips, and the nobler feeling for the moment had its way.
“You will best please me,” he said, with the old tenderness, “by pleasing yourself. You shall see nothing of my foolishness, even if I can’t altogether overcome it; and I will try my hardest to do that, for my own peace indeed. I will bury myself in books.”
Isabel was seeking for words to express what was in her mind.
“You see,” she began at length, “I can’t entirely isolate myself, even if I would. People find out that I am in town, and I cannot forbid them to come and see me. If they come, then I am bound to make calls in return, or to accept invitations.”
“Yes, I understand it perfectly well,” he assented, with a little too much of readiness. “It would be monstrous to ask you to live in solitude. Indeed, I will accept it all without murmuring.”
“All that I can do I will. I promise you not to seek new acquaintances, and I will see no more of the old than I am absolutely obliged. You can trust me so far? It is rather hard to feel that you have not complete confidence in me. I have in you.”
“Forgive me, and let us forget that I ever talked so unkindly. I ought to be proud of your successes in society. It would all be easier, I suppose, if——”
“If what?”
“Only if I valued myself more highly than I can. It is so hard to believe that you can compare me with others and not grow very cold.”
“I should never think of comparing you with any one. Why should I? You are apart from all others; I should as soon think of asking whether the sun did really give more light than one or other of the stars.”
She would not have used such a comparison in the days before his letters had revealed to her a gospel of passion. His pleasure in hearing the words was mitigated by a critical sense that she had the turn of thought from himself, that it did not come from the fountains of her heart. Few men surpassed Bernard Kingcote in ingenious refinement of self-torture. His faculty in that respect grew daily.
“Is any one likely to call this afternoon?” he asked, when they had sat together a little longer.
“I don’t expect any one in particular, but it is quite possible.”
“Then I will leave you now.”
Isabel did not oppose his going.
“Oh,” she said, as a thought struck her, “Rhoda and Hilda Meres are going to lunch with me to-morrow, and perhaps Ada, though I don’t know whether she will come. In the afternoon I dare say we shall go to the Academy. Will you be there, and show us Gabriel’s pictures?”
He gave a hesitating “Yes.”
“Not unless you would like to. Be in the first room about half-past three.”