Gabriel’s “Market Night” was well hung, and kept a crowd about it through the day. Prelates, plutocrats, and even the British baby appeared on the whole to be less attractive. Setting aside landscapes, which we paint with understanding, our Exhibition cannot often boast of more than a couple of pictures which invite to a second examination on disinterested grounds; this of the unknown painter addressed itself successfully both to the vulgar and to the cultured. Its technical qualities were held to be high. Some people made a sermon of it,—which the painter never intended.
It being Saturday afternoon, Kingcote found himself waiting in a great press at the hour that Isabel had mentioned. The face for which he looked at length shone upon him, and he discerned the two young ladies upon whose appearance he had speculated—Rhoda Meres, with her tall, graceful figure and melancholy prettiness; Hilda, greatly more interesting, of flower-like freshness and purity, her keen look anticipating the pleasure that was before her. Kingcote was conscious of missing some one; whilst he was joining the three, he sought for Ada Warren, but she seemed not to be of the party. He could not understand why her absence should occasion him anything like disappointment, yet it assuredly did. He was wondering whether she had changed at all since he saw her.
He was presented to the two girls, and did what he could in the way of amiable interrogation and remark. Hilda, constraining her sisters companionship, began to examine the pictures.
“I must keep them within view,” Mrs. Clarendon said to Kingcote, “but I have no intention of wearying myself by walking round each room. You have been here already; you can point out anything you would like me to see. Where are your friend’s?”
“Much further on.”
“What do you think of these girls?”
“The younger one is delightful.”
“You don’t care for Rhoda; yet she has always been my favourite. Poor things!” she added in a lower tone, “isn’t it hard that they should have nothing in life to look forward to?”
Hilda turned to draw Mrs. Clarendon’s attention to a picture.
“Miss Warren has not come with you?” Kingcote asked, when there was again opportunity.
“No; she kept at home. But the girls have just been surprising me. If you buy to-day’s Tattler you’ll find something that she has written—a description—something about the river.”
“Verse?”
“No, prose. They are all in great excitement about it. I must get the paper; I don’t suppose she’ll send it to me.”
Kingcote was much interested; he promised himself to read this contribution as soon as possible.
When at length they reached the “Market Night,” it was very difficult to get a view of the canvas. But for Isabel a few glances were enough.
“Oh, I don’t like that at all!” she exclaimed positively, moving away from the throng. “Those faces are disgusting. I should not like to have such a picture as that in my house.”
“In that I agree with you,” Kingcote said. Hilda had also come away and was listening. “But it is a wonderful picture for all that.”
“What a pity he paints such things! Why don’t you make him choose pleasant subjects?”
“I imagine Gabriel’s answer if I said such a thing to him,” said Kingcote, smiling. “I suppose the artist must paint what he can and will; our likes and dislikes will not much affect him. But don’t you admire the skill and power, at all events?”
Hilda went to look again, guided by this remark; she snapped up anything that seemed likely to instruct her taste with the eager voracity of a robin.
But Isabel only shook her head and shuddered a little.
“Is the other picture as bad?” she asked.
“It’s just opposite; come and look.”
This was the child in front of the shop-window.
“No, not quite as bad,” was Isabel’s judgment. “But he has such a taste for low subjects. Why doesn’t he paint decent people?”
“I’d rather keep clear of the gutter myself,” conceded her companion. “Still——”
He did not conclude, and they crossed to the girls again. Shortly, Mrs. Clarendon met with a party of friends, and Kingcote drew away. A tall, heavy man of a military type bent insinuatingly as he talked to her; King-cote fretted at the sight. To avoid and forget it he joined Hilda Meres. The bright intelligence which made way through her shyness charmed him; possibly the extreme respect with which she received every word of his utterance did not diminish his interest in her. Rhoda scarcely spoke, but her smile, too, was very sweet. How he wished that his sister could have companions such as these! And, as Mary came into his mind—she sitting alone in her widow’s weeds—he felt impatient with the bright mob crushing about him. He did not need to be reminded, yet it reminded him again, how heartless the world is....
Ada had made pretext of a headache to stay at home. Possibly she would not have done so, but for the fact of her first piece of writing having appeared to-day. She did not care to present herself before Mrs. Clarendon as if anxious to be congratulated. Yet it concerned her not a little to know that Mrs. Clarendon read what she had written; she had joy in the thought that at length she could prove herself not insignificant. Henceforth her position was far other than it had been, in her own eyes at all events. Formerly she was scarcely a person, rather a mere disagreeable fact, troubling and puzzling people; she had no rights, and no satisfaction save the illiberal one of feeling the brute power which circumstances had given her. Now she was a human being, and her heart was full.
This that The Tattler had printed was a little sketch called “River Twilight”; it occupied a column of the weekly paper, and was of course unsigned. Walking with Hilda along the Embankment a fortnight ago, when there was a finely dusky heaven, it had first of all struck her that she might find bits for her pencil about here; then came the suggestion to picture in words that which had so impressed her. She went home, and up to her own room, and by midnight had written her description. She resolved not to show this to Mr. Meres, but to try her luck at once with one of the papers which published similar things; it was despatched the first thing in the morning. In a day or two there came to her an envelope with which she hastened into privacy; she had seen the name of The Tattler stamped on the back. It contained a proof.
Perhaps it would be literally true to say that this was the first great pleasure that life had brought her. She sat and sobbed for joy; a vast gratitude possessed her whole being—gratitude to the Fates, as she would have said. She could not believe that in very truth her writing was going to be printed; nay, that it was printed, and lay before her! With eyes constantly blinded by a foolish rush of tears, she read through the composition—oh, how many times! One misprint there was, and one only; she laughed at the nonsense it made. Mr. Meres was not at home, or she could not have resisted showing him the proof; she could not delay the posting of it (“by return of post” was requested), and it was so much the better; she would astonish him with the paper on Saturday. She went out, dropped her envelope into the nearest pillar, and wandered along the Embankment, night-time though it was. The girls she had avoided—it was better to be alone. The blackness of the river was full of intense meaning; the stars above flashed and burned like beacons; the rush of the night air she drank like wine. Over to the south was a red glare; that was Lambeth—to her a mysterious region of toil and trouble. The fierceness of human conflict had all at once assumed for her the significance of kindred emotion. She, too—only a girl, and without that which in girls is prized—might perhaps find some work in the world. Would they pay her for this contribution? She stood still, as if her breath had been caught. The glare in the south became a mighty illumination of the heavens; it was like the rising of a new sun. She leaned upon the stone parapet, and strove to fix the idea which had shot so into birth. Would they pay her? Might she hope to earn by writing enough to live upon? Mr. Meres had always spoken of that aspect of literature very gloomily; he, indeed, had never ceased to find it the hardest struggle to earn a living. But then he had his children to support....
She turned to go home. On one of the seats which she passed, a wretched woman was huddling herself in her rags, as if preparing to sleep. Ada took out her purse and gave money.
“Who knows?” she said to herself, “my mother may be such an one....”
Thomas Meres was exultant when Ada showed him her achievement. He reminded himself just in time, and only just in time, that excess of laudation was not advisable, but he could not prevent his eyes from twinkling with delight. Hilda was less cautious, nothing less than enthusiasm could satisfy her. Rhoda gave approval, which surprised her sister and her father by its cool moderateness.
Ada had meant to send a copy of the paper to Mrs. Clarendon, but at the last she altered her mind; she could not bear the thought of being misinterpreted. One copy she did dispatch, and that was to Lacour, having pencilled her initials at the end of the article.
At dinner there was of course talk of Academy experiences. It was mentioned that Mr. Kingcote had been met with and introduced.
“There were two pictures by a friend of his, a Mr. Gabriel,” Hilda said, and described what they were. “Mrs. Clarendon couldn’t bear them, but Mr. Kingcote said they were very powerful, and so they seemed to me. I wish I could have looked at them longer and closer, but there was such a crowd.”
“I have seen mention of the ‘Market Night,’” observed her father. “I must manage to get a look at it. I am not surprised Mrs. Clarendon didn’t like it.”
“Oh, but she didn’t look at it from an artistic point of view,” Hilda went on to explain with much zeal. “Very likely it wasn’t a pretty subject, but that has nothing to do with its merits as a picture.”
“You are an advanced young lady,” jested Mr. Meres. “Art for art’s sake, eh? What’s your opinion Ada? Must a picture necessarily be pleasant to look at?”
“It depends what we call pleasant,” hazarded Ada. “I fancy people think very differently about that.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s the fact of the matter. What view did Mr. Kingcote take?”
Ada turned her eyes to Hilda and listened.
“I fancy,” said the girl, with a roguish smile, “he didn’t like to disagree with Mrs. Clarendon; but he thought the picture good for all that. I like Mr. Kingcote, don’t you, Ada?”
The question was unexpected, and Ada was not ready with an answer. She tried to say something natural and off-hand, and could not hit on the right words. To her extreme annoyance, she saw that her embarrassment was attracting attention. Mr. Meres glanced at her, and then showed artificial interest in something at the other end of the room.
“I can’t say that I have thought much about him,” she uttered at length, with exaggerated indifference. She was intensely angry with herself for her utterly groundless difficulty. If she had not thought of Kingcote before, she at all events did so now, and with not a little acrimony.
She and Mr. Meres passed each other by chance about an hour after dinner.
“Will you come and give me some help?” the latter asked.
“Certainly.”
He wanted her to read aloud several pages from a German book, the while he scanned an English translation which was under review. When this was done, he sat musing, and stroked his nose.
“You couldn’t have done better,” he exclaimed at length with abruptness. “That little thing is rounded and polished, complete in itself, an artistic bit of work. Stick to quite short pieces for awhile, and polish, polish! By-the-bye, you have been reading De Quincey of late?”
“How do you know?”
“A word or two, a turn in the style, that’s all,” he said, smiling.
“Will they pay me for it?” Ada brought herself to ask.
“Oh, yes; you’ll have your guinea for the column. The Tattler pays at the end of each month, I believe. You look as pleased,” he added, with a laugh, “as if your bread and cheese depended on it.”
“The labourer is worthy of his—or her—hire,” Ada remarked.
“Don’t, for heaven’s sake, don’t begin to look on it in that way! Happily you are under no such vile necessity. Rejoice in your freedom. No man can bid you write your worst, that the public may be caught.”
“Yet not long ago you made light of my efforts just because I was not dependent on literature.”
“I have seen since that you mean serious things. Beggary is an aid to no one; if it impels to work, it embitters the result. With the flow of a hungry man’s inspiration there cannot but mingle something of the salt of tears. One’s daily bread at least must be provided—I don’t say one’s daily banquet. If the absence of need checks your creative impulse, it doesn’t greatly matter; in that case you would never have done anything worth speaking of. No, no; rejoice in your freedom. Thank heaven that you can live, as old Landor says, ‘Beyond the arrows, shouts, and views of men.’”
There was silence; then he asked:
“Have you sent the paper to Mrs. Clarendon?”
Ada replied with a negative.
He kept his eyes from her, and stirred in his seat.
“You think she would not care to see it?”
“I don’t think she would.”
“Do you remember,” he began, with uncertain voice, “that not long ago I was going to ask you to do something to please me.”
“I remember it.”
“Can you guess what that was?”
She did not answer at once. Her face showed inner movements of conflicting kinds; she seemed to struggle to banish that hardness of expression which fixed her features against an unwelcome thought.
“Had it,” she asked at length, “anything to do with Mrs. Clarendon?”
“Yes, Ada, it had. You do not like her. One’s likes and dislikes cannot easily be altered to suit another’s wish, but if by any means I could bring you to kind thoughts of her, I think I should be content to forget every other hope that life still nourishes in me.”
She did not speak.
“Can you be open enough with me to say why it is you dislike her?” He spoke very softly and kindly, and with a hint of things which could not but touch a listener.
Ada began with trembling:
“It seems to have grown with me. I shrank from her when, as a child, I was first brought into her presence. Her look was contemptuous, cruel; for all that I was such a poor, helpless creature, and should have moved her pity. Since I have known everything, she has seemed to me the more to be blamed I cannot sympathise with her, though I know others do. There is no motive in her life that seems to me noble or lovable. I think her selfish; I think she has brought upon herself all her troubles by her deliberate choice of lower things. I may miss the better points in her character; I am intensely prejudiced.”
Meres listened with pain which at length compelled him to turn his head away. Ada would not look at him. She knew what she was inflicting, but could not stay her tongue sooner. One of the million forms of jealousy fretted her, and jealousy is cruel.
“Did she ever tell you anything of my earlier life?” he asked, when he could command his voice.
“Nothing, except that you had—had not been happy in your marriage.”
It was a little strange for her to be speaking thus with a man so much her elder, but the subject of their emotions put them on equal ground.
“Do you know that I was once secretary to Mr. Clarendon?”
She gazed at him with agitated interest.
“I did not know that.”
“Yes, I was; all through the five years of his married life. I had many opportunities of understanding his private affairs, and I could not help seeing what the relations were between him and his wife. Mrs. Clarendon is to be forgiven everything.”
Ada heard, with bowed head.
“What her moral claims and standing may be—with that we have no concern. Such judgments have little to do with personal feeling, and I want, if it be possible, to soften your heart to her, that is all. I owe Mrs. Clarendon more than I owe any one, dead or living. At her husband’s death I was plunged into sufferings which I cannot speak of in detail—they would have been bad enough in any case, and were made all but intolerable by the completest poverty. If it had not been for the children, I should assuredly have killed myself. In my despair I wrote to her. I had never been on such terms with her as warranted me in doing this, but——” he waved his hand.
“It would have been natural enough if she had thrown aside my letter, as awakening disagreeable memories, and left it unanswered. Instead of that, she met me with such kindness as one human being seldom shows to another. She invited me to come to Knightswell, and insisted on my bringing the children—they had, happily, no mother. I was wretchedly ill, unable to exert myself in any way, only the workhouse was before me.”
His voice failed him for a moment.
“I remember your coming,” Ada said quietly.
“After that life was hard enough, but never what it had been. If I were to tell you all she has been to the girls since then——” He broke off. “Perhaps you would think there was shame in it; that I should have been too proud to accept so much help. It may be so. A man submits for the sake of his children to what would perhaps degrade him if he stood alone. Well, these are the things that I wanted you to know. And more; Mrs. Clarendon has never spoken to me of you in any but the justest and most generous way. She has recognised your talents, and has always accepted gladly any suggestion I made for your good. Think, Ada—that cannot have been easy to her.”
There was a long silence. Then the girl asked:
“Did you ever see my mother?”
“Your parents were unknown to me.”
“I did not say my parents—my mother.”
She corrected him with cold emphasis, looking into his face. Meres averted his eyes.
“No, I never saw her,” was his uneasy reply.
“Mr. Ledbury, one of the trustees, tells me that she was on the stage.”
He looked surprised.
“Mrs. Clarendon referred me to him,” Ada explained, “for information she herself could not, or did not wish to give. He says she was in the habit of applying to him for money up to about two years ago, and that he knows nothing of her at present.”
“My child, why should you make those inquiries?”
“Because I have a very natural desire to know whether my mother is suffering from want, and to help her if she is. It appears that nothing was left to her.”
“Ada, there is only one thing I can say on this subject. I think it very unlikely indeed that you will ever hear any more of your mother. Mr. Ledbury will say no more than he has done, be sure of that.”
“Then he should not have said so much.”
“I myself think so. Try to put all that out of your thoughts. You are impelled by a sense of duty, I know; but remember that in the case of parent and child duties are reciprocal, or they do not exist at all. I earnestly beg you to put your mother’s existence utterly from your mind; it can never be anything but a source of misery to you. I had hoped the subject would never give you trouble. Pray do not let it, Ada.”
He spoke with extreme earnestness, and his words seemed to produce an effect. When, shortly afterwards, Ada shook hands and bade him good-night, she added:
“I will think much of all you have said tonight.” Then, in a lower voice, “I am not unprepared for what you would teach me.”
The listener attached no special meaning to the last words; they seemed to him only dictated by good-will to himself.
It was with a good deal of interest that Meres went to meet Kingcote at dinner on the following day. He had got one or two fancies about the young man, which made him anxious to gauge his character for himself. He was the first of the party to arrive, and Isabel’s talk to him was about the object of his thoughts.
“If you find him congenial,” she said, “it would be very good of you to ask him to come and see you now and then. You and Ada can talk about the things he cares for. Has Ada spoken of him?”
“She has told me about his singular rustication,” Mr. Meres replied, trying to meet her eye. But he did not succeed.
“He lives with his sister, a widow. Her I don’t know. I think—well, it seems she married somebody of an undesirable kind, and I don’t suppose she sees people. Will you make a note of his address? Pray, pray don’t let me put a burden upon you; it’s only that he has need of pleasant acquaintances——”
“I quite understand,” replied the other, smiling. And, in truth, he thought he did.
The lady who was the third guest was a genial and rather homely creature; she and Isabel talked women’s talk whilst the gentlemen became friendly after dinner. In the course of chat Mr. Meres did not fail to say that he and his family were always at home after three o’clock on Sunday, and would be pleased as often as Kingcote chose to look in. He mentioned Ada’s appearance in The Tattler, and was gratified to hear Kingcote’s praise. The two got on very well together. Mr. Meres felt surer than ever that he understood....
Kingcote did not look well to-night; he had the appearance of one who lacks sleep. The night before, Mary, after listening to his ceaseless footsteps till three o’clock, had gone up and knocked at his door. After a word or two he opened.
“Why are you up so late, Bernard?” she asked. “I heard you moving, and feared you might be unwell.”
“I have been reading,” he replied. “I quite forgot that you were underneath. It’s too bad to wake you.”
“I have not been asleep. I am anxious about you. Won’t you go to bed?”
“To be sure I will. It’s later than I thought. You shan’t hear another sound.”
“But it’s not that I care about,” she urged. “I would rather sit with you, if you can’t rest.”
“No, no; there’s nothing to be anxious about. We shall wake the children if we talk so much. Be off and sleep, Mary.”
She went, with a heavy heart. She was much disturbed on her brother’s account.
To-night it was misery to him to have to go away with the others, without one word for himself. After walking to the end of the street, he came back and stood looking at the lighted windows. Presently the drawing-room became dark. He set out on his long journey to Highgate.
“Has it been a pleasant evening?” Mary asked. She liked to look at her brother in his evening dress; it gave her all manner of thoughts. At his entrance she had closed a folio volume of Jeremy Taylor’s sermons, which, in impatience at some unwholesome little book she was bent over, Kingcote had put into her hands a few days ago. “At least read good English,” had been the accompanying remark.
In answer to her question he gave a weary, indifferent affirmative.
“How did you like Mr. Meres?”
“Oh, he’s a very decent fellow. He wants me to visit him next Sunday. I believe I promised, but it is scarcely likely that I shall go.”
“Why not? Certainly you ought to. Society is just what you want.”
“I can’t talk!” he exclaimed impatiently. “I should be a bore. It was only out of politeness that he asked me.”
“You wouldn’t find it too disagreeable to meet Miss Warren?”
“Why should I? Rather the contrary.” During the next days he was not often at home. He tried to make distractions for himself in picture galleries and museums, and for a little while half succeeded. But when the fourth day brought no letter from Isabel, impatience overcame him. In the afternoon he called to see her. He was conducted upstairs, and, as soon as the door opened for the announcement of his name, he heard the voices of people in conversation. It was too late to retreat, and, indeed, he had half expected this; he could not ask below whether Mrs. Clarendon was alone. He entered, and found half-a-dozen strangers; Isabel interrupted her vivacious talk, and received him.
It might have been five minutes or half-an-hour that he stayed; he could not have said which. He found himself introduced to some one, he said something, he drank tea. He was only conscious of living when at length in the street again. It was as if madness had got hold upon him; the tension of preserving a calm demeanour whilst he sat in the room made his blood rise to fever-heat. The voices of the polite triflers about him grew to the intolerable screaming and chattering of monkeys. Insensate jealousy frenzied him. He could not look at Isabel’s face, and when she spoke to him he felt a passion almost of hatred, so fiercely did he resent the friendly indifference of her tone....
He entered a stationer’s shop, and bought a sheet of note-paper and an envelope, then walked into the park, and, on the first seat he reached, sat down and began to write in pencil. He poured forth all the fury of his love and the bitterness of his misery, overwhelmed her with reproaches, bade her choose between him and this hateful world which was his curse. Only lack of paper brought him to a close. This astonishing effusion he deliberately—nay, he was incapable of deliberation—but with a savage determinedness posted at the first pillar. Then he walked on and on, heedless whitherwards—Oxford Street, Holborn, the City, round to Pentonville, to Highbury. He was chased by demons; thought had become a funeral pyre of reason and burned ceaselessly. The last three days had been a preparation for this, only a trivial occasion was needed to drive him out of brooding into delirium. Alas, it was only the beginning! May—June. Could he live to the end of that second month?
Kingcote had often asked himself what was the purpose of his life—here it had declared itself at length. This was the fulfilment of his destiny—to suffer. He was born with the nerves of suffering developed as they are in few men. “Resist not, complain not!” Fate seemed whispering to him. “To this end was your frame cast. Your parents bequeathed you this nature, developing antecedents which were the preparation for it. Endure, endure, for the end is not yet.”
“I cannot endure! This anguish is more than humanity can bear.”
“Yes, you can and will endure it. Nature is cunning, and fits the fibre to the strain. Be proud of your finer sensibilities. Coarse men do not feel and suffer thus.”
“There is nothing high in my torment. It is of vanity and of the flesh. In agonising, I revile myself.”
“Do so. That also is the result of your compounding. Coarse natures never revile themselves.”
“And what will come of it, if I live?”
“That is of the future. Suffer!”....
He reached home when it was dark, he knew not at what time. Refusing the tea which Mary offered, he went to the solitude of his room. And there, in weariness, his frenzy passed. Wretchedness at what he had done took its place. He tried to remember all he wrote; a few phrases clung in his memory, and became his despair. How could he speak so to Isabel? And the letter would be delivered to-night.
He wrote another, explaining, imploring her forbearance, throwing himself at her feet. It was even now not nine o’clock, and she must not sleep with the other letter alone to think of. He went forth, took a hansom, and drove as far as Portman Square, then walked to the door of the house and rang the servant’s bell as he dropped his letter into the box.
He purposed to return on foot, but a very-short distance proved that his strength would not bear him half-way. By means of omnibuses he found himself at home again. This time he ate what his sister put for him, but scarcely spoke. Mary asked no questions, only looked at him with infinite sorrow and wonder. After eating he went to his bed and slept.
The postman brought him a letter in the morning.
“Bernard, Bernard, how can you be so foolish? Your first letter pained me dreadfully; your second makes all right again. Come and see me at eleven to-morrow morning; I promise you to be alone. I cannot write more now, as I must send my maid out to post this, and it is late. For ever yours, whether you believe it or not.”
It quieted him, but he said to himself that: it was cold, very cold; not one word of endearment. It would have pleased him better if she had resented his ill behaviour. She seemed to care little for those words of fire, to have already forgotten them.
He was with her at the hour named. Isabel met him with scarcely a sign of reproach, but he felt that her smile was not what he had once known. She had, too, a slight air of fatigue, and seated herself before she spoke to him.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he explained, referring to the previous afternoon, “but that it was so long since I had heard from you. Why didn’t you write?”
“I meant to, really; but all sorts of unexpected things have been taking up my time.”
“And it is a week since I saw you.”
“No; last Sunday.”
“Oh, that is not seeing you! It is mere misery to be in your presence with others. I avoid seeing your face, try not to hear you speaking.”
“But why? It is very hard to understand you, Bernard.”
“That is my fear. You don’t understand me. You can’t see what a difference there is for me between love and friendship. I cannot treat you as a friend. All the time that I am near you, I am shaken with passion; to play indifference is a sort of treachery. I must never again see you when others are by—I can’t bear it!”
She looked before her in a kind of perplexity, and did not move when he took her hand.
“You said very cruel things in your letter. I felt them more than you think.”
“Don’t speak of that, Isabel. I was mad when I wrote it. Try and bear with me, dear one; I am so wretchedly weak, but I love you more than you will ever know. Never tell me anything of what you do or whom you see; let me come to you when you have a spare halfhour, and that shall be enough. But write to me often. Give me constant assurance of your love. Promise that, for I suffer terribly!”
She was about to say something, but he went on.
“It is so hard that all these people can come and talk with you freely, and you can waste on them your smiles and your brightness, whilst I stand apart and am hungry for one little word. What is it that pleases you in their society? Are they better than I—those people who were about you yesterday? With a little trouble one might make a wax-work figure which would go through those forms every bit as well, even to the talking. Cannot you see how unworthy they are of you—you who are more beautiful than all women, whose heart can speak such true and tender and noble things! It is sacrilege that they should dare to touch your hands!”
Her lips trembled; as he came and knelt by her, she knew again an impulse of pure devotion.
“Bernard, do you wish me to go back again? Shall I go to Knightswell?”
“How can I say yes? It is your happiness to be here. You feel and enjoy your power.”
“Bid me leave London, and I will not remain another day.”
She feared his answer, yet longed to arouse in him the energy which should make her subject. A woman cannot be swayed against her instincts by mere entreaty, but she will bow beneath the hand that she loves. Had he adored her less completely, had the brute impulse of domination been stronger in him, his power and her constancy could have defied circumstances. But he would not lay upon her the yoke for which her neck was bowed in joyful trembling. He would not save her from herself by the exertion of a stronger selfishness. Neither his reverence nor his delicacy would allow him to constrain her. It is the difference between practice and theory; the latter is pure, abstract, ideal; the former must soil itself in the world’s conditions.
“I cannot make myself so selfish in your eyes,” he said. “If your love will not bear this test, how can it face those yet harder ones?”
“What have I done that you should doubt my love? Do you—do you doubt me?”
“Not when you look so into my eyes, bright angel!”
On Sunday the Meres dined early. It was very seldon that any one came to see them in the afternoon, which was generally much taken up with music. Mr. Meres had the habit of dozing over a book in his study. In theory he set apart Sunday for those great authors who are more talked about than read, for whom so little time is left amid the manifold demands of necessary labour and the literature of the day, yet for lack of whose sustaining companionship we are apt to fail so in the ways of plain living and high thinking. But between two and five o’clock the spell of drowsiness lay heavy upon our well-intentioned friend. On Sunday most people find it hard to exert themselves to much purpose. The atmosphere is soporific.
To-day there was expectation of Kingcote’s visit. Mr. Meres had made up his mind that if he just showed himself, and then left the young ladies to entertain their visitor, he would be exercising commendable discretion. After dinner he went to his study as usual; Ada and the two sisters remained in the sitting-room. There was no mention of the subject which occupied the minds of all; other things were talked of, but in an artificial way. Hilda presently began to play upon the piano. An hour passed, and there was a knock at the front door.
Kingcote had had a long letter from Isabel the evening before, and his mind was not ill-tuned for the visit. He was pleased with the aspect of the small house; here at all events there would be what he longed for, domestic peace and simplicity. He was conducted to the study, and found Mr. Meres with a Shakespeare open before him. He smiled, reminded of the rector of Winstoke.
“Which is your favourite play?” asked Mr. Meres by way of greeting, taking it for granted that Kingcote would know to what author he referred.
“Antony and Cleopatra,” was the unhesitating reply.
“Ha! I think my weakness is for the Winter s Tale. Perhaps it is because I grow old.”
They talked awhile. Kingcote listened to notes of music from an adjoining room. Mr. Meres presently proposed that they should invade what he called the gynæceum.
The little front room looked very bright and pleasant; its occupants were each one interesting, and in different ways. Kingcote’s eyes sought Ada first of all. It surprised him that she did not suffer so much by comparison with the other girls as he had anticipated. Perhaps it was familiarity with her face which enabled him to see it in a more favourable light than formerly. She was perfectly grave and, as usual, distant, but somehow she seemed more feminine than at Knightswell.
There was miscellaneous gossip, chiefly about the Academy. The old question of the artistic and the merely pleasing was rung upon in all its changes. Ada spoke very little, but Rhoda was unusually cheerful—perhaps she thought it became her to represent the hostess; perhaps also there were other reasons—and Hilda could not be other than charming. Only to look at her fresh, dainty youthfulness rested the eye like the hue of spring verdure. She was asked at length to sing.
“I have no sacred songs,” she remarked with a dubious glance.
“You have many that are not exactly profane,” returned her father, smiling.
Whilst she sang, Mr. Meres quietly left the room. There followed an hour or two of such pleasant animation as Kingcote had never known. Wholly at his ease, and forgetful of everything but the present, he surprised himself by the natural flow of his talk. The music stirred his faculties; the unwonted companionship soothed him. All he said was received with a certain deference anything but disagreeable; even Ada gave him respectful attention, and made not a single caustic remark. The girls’ conversation was of a very pleasing kind, remarkably intelligent, as different as possible from that of girls of corresponding age who are trained in the paces of society. In Rhoda and Hilda the influence of their father and of Ada Warren was evident; they appeared absolutely free from unreasoning kinds of prejudice, and were strong in the faith of the beautiful, which is woman’s salvation.
This visit Kingcote repeated twice before the end of July, not oftener, though he had invitations to do so. In the days through which he now began to live, it was seldom that he could regain the mood in which it was possible to mingle with society of any kind, even though the process might have relieved him. It was nothing less than an illness which fell upon him, an illness of the nerves and the imagination. There were intermissions of suffering, mostly the results of exhaustion; his torment rose to the point at which a mental catastrophe seemed imminent, then came a period of languor, in which he resumed strength to suffer again. Later, these three months became all but a blank in his memory, the details of the time, with the exception of one or two moments, forgotten.
He waited several days into the new week without hearing from Isabel, and at last had a very brief note from her, asking him to call before three o’clock. It was in his mind to write a refusal, saying that he was sure she had no time to give him, but this he could not carry out. He found her just leaving the dining-room; she had lunched alone. Her spirits were extravagant; he had never seen her so gay. The contrast with his own gloomy state did not tend to brighten him.
“What has happened to excite you so?” he asked.
“Happened? Nothing at all. Only I am well, and happy, and the sun shines; isn’t that enough to put one in good spirits?”
“Happy?” he repeated, rather bitterly.
“Did you wish me to be miserable?” she exclaimed merrily. “It is you who make my happiness; why don’t you keep some for yourself?”
“There you mistake. I have nothing whatever to do with it.”
“No, the mistake is yours, Bernard. I tell you the truth, but you will not, will not believe me. I can’t help it; I only know that you will believe me some day. Time will be on my side.”
He sat mute and downcast.
“Oh, why do you take life so hard?” she asked him. “It is full of good things to make the time pass, if you will only see them. Tell me now, what have you been doing since I saw you?”
“Nothing—waiting to hear from you.”
“Ah, that is not true! Who was it that went to Chelsea on Sunday, and made himself very agreeable indeed, charmingly agreeable, so that young ladies speak most flatteringly of him? I know, you see. Indeed I was just a little jealous, or should have been, if jealousy were not such a foolish thing.”
“That I don’t think you would ever feel.”
“Perhaps not. I certainly should not without cause, and, if I had cause, that would be a better reason still for resisting it.”
“Not if you——”
He interrupted himself, and turned away impatiently.
“You were going to say something very unkind, and you thought better of it. But you sadden me; it is dreadful to see you so low-spirited. Have you thought,” she asked, with a little hesitation, “of finding some occupation for your time?”
“Yes, I have thought constantly, but of course without result. You think I should not trouble you so often if my time were taken up?”
He could not help it. Almost everything she said converted itself in his seething mind to a bitter significance. This was the first reference she had made to the necessity under which he stood. It was natural enough that the subject should occupy her thoughts; he had several times wondered, indeed, that she kept silence about it. Now that she spoke, he attributed to her unkind motives.
They talked on in this fruitless way. He saw her look at the clock, and endeavoured to leave his seat; no doubt she was going somewhere, or expected visitors. Minute after minute he said to himself that he would go, yet still remained. The door opened, and Mr. Asquith was announced.
Robert had been long back from his yachting; at present he was entering with heartiness into the pleasures of the London season. His mode of life seemed to agree with him; there was ruddy health on his cheeks, and his whole appearance bespoke the man who found life one with enjoyment. Kingcote had heard his name in former times from the Vissians, but Isabel had never mentioned her cousin to him. He regarded him with involuntary dislike; the placid good-humour, the genial contentment of Asquith’s look and voice were enough to excite this feeling under the circumstances, and the frank kindness with which Isabel received him naturally increased it.
“Colonel Stratton,” Robert remarked, more suo, as he seated himself. “I met him at the top of Park Lane, and he was most anxious to discover my exact opinion of the atmospheric conditions of the day; seemed delighted when I agreed with him that there was moisture in the air.”
Isabel laughed heartily.
“Was that all that passed between you?” she inquired.
“Not quite. He wanted me to go with him to Barnet—was it Barnet? on a coach driven by a friend of his, a Captain Cullen—Hullen——”
“Captain Mullen,” Isabel corrected, much amused. “He is a first-rate whip. Why didn’t you go? It would have been delightful.”
“I’m afraid the company would have been rather too military for my tastes. Besides, I told him I was coming to see you. He begged me to——”
“To do what?”
“Nay, he himself paused at the ‘to’; the rest I was doubtless to understand. I presume from his manner that I was to present his respects to you.”
“Our friend Colonel Stratton,” Isabel explained to Kingcote, “is habitually at a loss for words. He really is the shyest man I ever knew. I tease him dreadfully, and I don’t think he minds it a bit.”
“Coach-driving,” remarked Robert. “Singular taste that. One is disposed to suggest hereditary influences.”
Kingcote rose.
“Must you go?” Isabel asked.
“I must,” was the brief reply.
“I don’t think you ever met Mr. Kingcote at Knightswell?” Isabel said, when the door had closed.
“I remember your speaking of him. Is he in London permanently?”
“I believe so.”
A purpose, which Isabel had had in mentioning him, passed, and she spoke of other things....
Kingcote was walking about the streets. He avoided home nowadays as much as possible; his madness seemed harder to bear in his own room, or with Mary watching him; it was always best to walk himself into fatigue, that there might be a chance of sleep in the night. Why had he not obeyed her hint, and left before visitors could arrive? And there again was the sting; she wished him to leave. Did she expect this cousin of hers, this prosperous, well-fed, easy-mannered gentleman? That mattered little; the one certainty was that her love grew less and less. She had not even the outward affectionateness which had once marked her when she spoke with him alone. Knowing perfectly the power of help and soothing that lay in her lightest loving word, she would not trouble to find one, not one. She was gay in the face of his misery. Love would be affected by subtle sympathies; yet she slept peacefully through those nights when he wrestled with anguish; when he called upon her, she was deaf to the voice she should have heard. So many other voices claimed her ear; those that murmured graceful things in bright drawing-rooms, those that flattered insidiously when she was enjoying her triumphs. It had been a mistake; to her an occasion, perhaps, for regrets and annoyances, to him a source of unutterable woe. Even if she really loved him at first, how could she continue to, now that every day brought something to lower him in her estimation? The worst of his suffering was in the thought that he himself was his own ruin. Could he from the first have borne himself like a man, have been affectionate without excess, have taken some firm, direct course in his difficulties, above all have seemed to be independent of her, then he might have held her his own. But that was requiring of him to be another than he was. Out of weakness strength could not come. His passion was that of a woman. Could he even now put on a consistent show of independence, it might not be too late. Why had he not taken her at her word when she offered to return to Knights well? Was it too late?
Too late; for in love that which is undone never can be made good. He was not worthy of her love; the consciousness was burnt in upon his brain. Had she met him now for the first time, and seen him as now he was, would she have loved him? Never; to think it was to rob her of woman’s excellence. He had no one but himself to blame. He must bear it; go lower in her sight day after day, see her impatience grow, feel friendship wholly supplanting love, and fatigued endurance take the place of friendship. It was his fate; he was himself, and could not become another....
Ah, he had indeed drunk too deeply of that magic water of the Knights Well, the spring at her gates! One draught, and it would have sent him on his way refreshed. But the water was so insidiously sweet....
He wrote her letters again, in which he spared neither reproach nor charge of cruelty. Isabel replied to him very shortly, but in pitying forbearance. At length she begged him earnestly to seek employment. He was undermining his health; it was imperative that he should apply his mind to some regular pursuit. Her he was making grievously unhappy; she would have to leave London. “Why, then, does she not?” he exclaimed angrily when he read this. “She knows it would be better for me.” Another cause of complaint had grown up in his thoughts; why had she never offered to come and see his sister? It would have been graceful, it would have been kind. But it would have been to commit herself too far, he reasoned. She was doing her best to show him in the gentlest way that the past must not be remembered too seriously. She never spoke now, never, of the day when she would become his wife. That was in any case at a year’s distance. Another year! He laughed scornfully. In a year it would be as if they had never met.
“Isabel,” he wrote to her one day, when memories had touched him, “I have given you all the love of which my soul is capable, and the soul of man never gave birth to more. I am weak and contemptible in your sight; it is because I faint for love of you. Oh, why have you stripped from my life every leaf and blossom, leaving only that red flower of passion which burns itself away? Every interest I once cherished has died in feeding this love. I cannot see the world around me; wherever I look there is your face, in thousandfold repetition, with every difference of expression I have ever beheld upon it. I see the first smile with which you greeted me—the first of all; I see the look in which your love dawned, the flush of rapture with which you listened to my earliest words of gratitude and devotion.
“I see you in your careless merriment, and in your pained coldness; I see you when you smile on others. I shall never know again that heaven of your unspoken tenderness, never, never! It was well that you made no vows to me; how well it is that you have seen my unworthiness before it was too lates of gratitude and devotion. I see you in your careless merriment, and in your pained coldness; I see you when you smile on others. I shall never know again that heaven of your unspoken tenderness, never, never! It was well that you made no vows to me; how well it is that you have seen my unworthiness before it was too late!”
She found that letter waiting for her when she reached home long after midnight, coming from a crowded scene, with laughter and music still ringing in her ears. Till her maid had left her she did not open it; it was with fear—as always of late—that she at length broke the envelope. She read, and tears filled her eyes. They came rushing, irresistible; she ceased from her endeavour to check them, and wept as she had not wept for long years. Through the dark hours she lay, with the letter in her hand, and only slept when morning was at her window.
She wrote, but did not ask him to come to her....
Two occasions marked themselves afterwards in his memory. To lose himself for an hour he went one night to the theatre. It was now early in July; Isabel was staying in town longer than she had purposed. He reached a seat in the pit, and sat through a farce which he in vain tried to follow. Then he watched the people who were beginning to fill the stalls. Two ladies came forward; he thought he knew the first, and remembered Mrs. Stratton; behind her was Isabel, then a gentleman—Colonel Stratton, he supposed. She was exquisitely beautiful, dressed as he had never seen her; the lights flashed upon her; her face had its own radiance. He forced his way out of the crowd, and into the street....
He called and asked for her, early one afternoon, and was told that she was not at home. Half-an-hour’s wandering brought him, scarcely with purpose, back into the same street. From a distance he saw that her carriage was waiting before the door, and immediately she came out and entered it. He turned away with blackness before his eyes....
He wrote and told her of that. “It is true, dear,” she answered, “and you must not blame me. I was obliged to leave home early, and I knew that if I saw you for a moment it would only cause you worse trouble than to believe I was away. You oblige me to do such things as this; I dare not be quite frank with you as I wish to be; you often frighten me. There is nothing that I wish to hide from you on my own account. What should there be?”
And so the time wore on to the end of July. Poor Mary’s existence had become one of ceaseless grief. Only two or three times had she ventured to entreat her brother to take her into his confidence, and let her share his trouble. He could not tell her the truth; it would have shamed him to open his heart even to her.
He put it all on the troubles which were in the future, the impossibility of marrying whilst he remained penniless.
“And I am the cause of that,” Mary said, in deep sorrow.
“You the cause? You misunderstand me entirely. It would have been precisely the same if the old state of things had remained unaltered. In any case I was penniless—from her point of view.”
Mary could gather from the last words a sense he did not consciously put into them. She had her own explanation of her brother’s dreadful state. Dreadful it was, no less. His face was wasted as if by consumption. He scarcely ate enough to support life. His sleeplessness had become a disease. He never smiled, and spoke for the most part in a weary, listless tone. Mary believed that there was death in his hands.
There came the day for leave-taking; he was to go to her—Isabel wrote—in the afternoon, and she would be at home to no one else.
“You are glad that I am going?” she said.
“Yes, I am glad. I had rather think of you among the fields.”
“Ada is going with me, to stay for a week or two. She proposed it herself; I was surprised.”
“But she had not left you finally?”
“I quite believed she had.”
They talked without any kind of emotion, but each avoided the other’s eyes. Kingcote had his usual look of illness and fatigue; Isabel was not without signs that the season had been a little too much for her strength.
“I am going to Scotland in a fortnight,” she mentioned. “Of course you shall have my address. Then in October you will come down some day and see me, will you not?”
“It is better that I should promise nothing. I can’t say where I may be in October.”
“Always distrusting the future! I dare not do that. The future is my best friend.”
“Doubtless!” he replied.
“And are not our futures one and the same, Bernard?”
“Let us say so, and think so if we can. But I know you have many things to occupy you. Let us say good-bye.”
“I don’t like that word. Au revoir is better.”
“Why not good-bye? It only means ‘God be with you.’”
“Does it? Then, good-bye!”
She offered her lips and he just touched them. Otherwise his self-torment would not have been complete.