Isabel and Ada were alone at Knightswell for a week. Though not in reality nearer to each other, their intercourse was easier than formerly, and chiefly owing to a change in Ada’s manner. Her character seemed to be losing some of its angularities, she was less given to remarks of brusque originality, and entertained common subjects without scornful impatience. She had grown much older in the past six months. The two did not unduly tax each others tolerance; during a great part of the day, indeed, they kept apart; but at meals and in the evenings they found topics for conversation. Ada was taking a holiday; she got as much fresh air as possible, and sketched a good deal.
“Ada, I don’t think you have ever given me one of your sketches,” Isabel said to her one evening, after praising a little water-colour drawn that day.
“Would you care for one?”
“Yes, I should.”
“Any one in particular?”
“Let me see. Yes; I should like the sketch you made of the cottage at Wood End. If you’ll give it me I’ll have it framed for the boudoir.”
Ada kept her eyes fixed on the drawing she held.
“Will you?”
She gazed directly at the speaker; Isabel met her look with steady countenance.
“You can have it; but it isn’t one of my best,” the girl said, still gazing.
“Never mind; it is the one I should like.”
Ada went from the room, and brought back the drawing with her. She was looking at some pencilling on the back.
“Midsummer Day of last year,” she said.
“I know,” was Isabel’s remark. “Thank you.”
As she spoke, she moved nearer, and, as if at an impulse, kissed the giver. Ada reddened deeply, and almost immediately left the room again; nor did she return that evening.
On the morrow they met just as before.
At the end of that week the Strattons came to stay until Mrs. Clarendon’s departure for Scotland, where she was to be the guest of friends. With the colonel and his wife came their eldest son, the young gentleman studying at Sandhurst. He had very much of his father’s shyness, curiously imposed on a disposition fond of display. He liked to show his knowledge of the world, especially of its seamy sides, and, though not a little afraid of her, sought Ada’s society for the purpose of talking in a way which he deemed would be impressive to a girl. There was no harm in his rather simple-minded bravado, and Ada found a malicious pleasure in drawing him out. In her own mind she compared conversation with him to prodding the shallowness of a very muddy stream. Here the stick hit on an unexpected stone; there it sank into ooze not easily fathomed; there again it came in contact with much unassimilated refuse, portions of which could be jerked up to the surface. With the others she seldom spoke, and Isabel also she had begun to avoid again. She took long walks, or read in the open air. Sketching for the present she seemed to have had enough of.
One morning in the second week, Robert Asquith joined the party. He came half-an-hour before luncheon. Isabel and Mrs. Stratton were on the lawn; after a little conversation, the latter moved towards the house.
“By-the-bye,” Robert said, when he was alone with Isabel, “have you heard of the death of Sir Miles Lacour?”
“The death!” exclaimed Isabel. “Indeed I have not.”
“He died last night, in London, after a week’s illness. I heard it by. chance at my club. They say it was the consequence of an accident on the ice last winter.”
Isabel became thoughtful.
“Probably Miss Warren will hear of it very shortly,” Asquith remarked.
“I don’t know, I’m sure. I can’t even say whether she is in communication with Mr. Lacour. But it does not concern us. You won’t, of course, mention the news.”
She spoke of it in private with Mrs. Stratton.
“Whatever the state of things may be,” said the latter, “I don’t see that this can alter it practically. The match becomes a respectable one, that’s all. And he can’t marry at once.”
“Ada, in any case, won’t marry till next June; I’m sure of that,” said Isabel.
Nothing was said openly, nor did Ada appear to receive any news which affected her.
The heat of the weather was excessive; only the mildest kinds of recreation could be indulged in. In the afternoon there was much seeking for cool corners, and a favourite spot was that embowered portion of the shrubbery in which we first saw Isabel. Tea was brought here. Colonel Stratton lay on the grass, deep-contemplative; his wife read a novel; Robert Asquith smoked cigarettes, and was the chief talker. Sandhurst Stratton was in the stables, a favourite haunt, and Ada sat by herself in the library.
Robert talked of Smyrna, and developed projects for settling there, causing Mrs. Stratton every now and then to look up from her book and view him askance.
“By-the-bye,” he said, “who knows a meritorious youth out of employment? An English friend of mine out there writes to ask me to find him a secretary, some one who knows French well, a man of good general education. Can you help me, colonel?”
“‘Fraid not,” murmured the one addressed, whose straw hat had slipped over his eyes.
“What salary does he offer?” inquired Isabel.
“A hundred and fifty pounds, and residence in his own house.”
“Would he take me?” she asked, turning it into a jest.
The subject dropped; but on the following morning, as she was riding with her cousin, Isabel referred to it again.
“Is it the kind of thing,” she asked, “that would suit Mr. Kingcote?”
“Kingcote?” He seemed to refresh his memory. “Does he want something of the sort?”
“A few weeks ago he did. I don’t know that he would care to leave England; but I think it might be suggested to him,” she added, patting her horse’s neck. “He has a sister, a widow, with her two children dependent on him.”
“But, in that case, so small a salary would be no use.”
“I believe he has some small means of his own. If he were disposed to offer himself, would you give him your recommendation?”
“Certainly. If you recommend him it is quite enough.”
“He lived some time on the Continent, and I am sure he would be suitable—unless any knowledge of business is required.”
“None at all; purely private affairs.”
“I should like to have a list,” he said, looking at her with admiration, “of the people you have befriended in your life. Did you ever let one opportunity slip by?”
Isabel reddened, and did not speak.
“Yes, one,” Robert added, bethinking himself.
“What do you refer to?” she asked, still in some confusion, variously caused.
“Myself. Shall we give them a canter?”
After luncheon, Isabel went to her boudoir and sat down at the little writing-table. The sun had been on the windows all the morning, and in spite of curtains the room was very hot; cut flowers surcharged the air with heavy sweetness. She put paper before her, but delayed the commencement of writing. A languor oppressed her; she played with the pen, and listened to the chirping of birds in the trees just outside the windows; there was no other sound.
“Dear Bernard,” she wrote; then paused, resting her head on her hands. Why should he not pass a year so? she was asking herself. The change would be the very thing for him in his deplorable state of mind. There was no harm in her mentioning it, at all events. His moods were impossible to be anticipated; he might be delighted with the chance of going to the East. And it might easily lead to something much better. He would never do anything whilst he remained in London—nothing but suffer. He looked so ill, poor fellow; he would fret himself to death if there came no change. Why not go to Smyrna for a year, until——
She took up her pen again, and at the same moment Mrs. Stratton entered the room.
“Oh, you are busy,” she said.
“Do you want me?” Isabel asked, without turning.
“I was going to read you an account of Fred’s last cricket-match; it’s at full length in a paper I got this morning.”
“Only five minutes; I have just to finish a note.”
She wrote on.
“Dear Bernard,
“I have just heard from Mr. Asquith, whom you know, that an English friend of his in Smyrna wants a secretary, an educated man who knows French. What do you think of going out there for a few months? The salary offered is £150 a year, with residence. Could you leave your sister? I should think so, as your lodgings are so comfortable. I am writing in a great hurry, and of course this is only a suggestion. It would be the best thing possible for your health; wouldn’t it? I leave the day after to-morrow; if you reply at once, I shall get your letter before I go. Mr. Asquith’s recommendation will be sufficient. Try and read this scrawl if you can, for it comes from your own
“Isabel.”
This letter went into the post-bag, and Isabel only thought of it from time to time. On the following afternoon she was again in the arbour, and alone with Asquith. She had found him here talking to Ada, and the latter had subsequently left them.
“Miss Warren is—what shall I say?—considerably humanised since I last talked with her,” Robert observed.
“I notice it.”
When they had exchanged a few words, Isabel spoke of seeking the other people, and rose from her seat.
“Will you stay a minute?” he said, quite composedly.
She did not resume her seat, and did not reply.
“I said something in a jesting way yesterday, which I meant in earnest,” Robert continued, leaning his elbow on a rustic table. “I thought of waiting another year before saying it, but a year after all is a good piece of life.”
“Robert, don’t say it!” she broke in. “I cannot answer as you wish me to, and—it is too painful. It was a jest, and nothing more.”
He took her hand, and she allowed him to hold it.
“Very much more,” he said, with earnestness which did not rob his voice of its pleasant tone. “I am disposed to think that everything has been a jest for a good many years, except that one hope. Do you mean that the hope must be vain?”
“My good, kind cousin! It is so hard to say it. I thought I had made it clear to you, that you understood.”
“What should I have understood, Isabel?”
“That I am not free. I have given my promise.”
He relinquished her hand, after pressing it, and said, with half a smile:
“Then I can only envy him, whoever he may be.”
There was a motion behind the bushes, a rustling as of some one moving away. Robert looked round, but could see no one. Isabel hastily quitted him.
For a couple of days Kingcote had been too unwell to leave the house. For the most part he sat in his own room, with the windows darkened; his head was racked with pain. Mary’s anxious pleading to be allowed to send for aid drove him to angry resistance. He could not talk with her, and could not bear to have her sitting by him in silence. He wished to be alone.
On the third morning he did not rise at the usual time; Mary went to his room and entered. Her coming woke him from a light slumber; he said he had been awake through the night, and felt as if now he could sleep. An hour later she returned, and again he woke.
“Has any letter come this morning?” he asked.
“Yes, there is one. I thought I had better leave it till——”
“Let me have it at once!” he exclaimed fretfully. “You should not have kept it.”
There was fever on his lips, and his eyes had an alarming brightness. When Mary returned, he was sitting in expectation, and took the letter eagerly. She left the room as he began to read it.
It could not have been a quarter of an hour before Mary, who was just about to take up such breakfast as she thought he might accept, saw her brother descend the stairs.
“I have to go out,” he said. “Give me a cup of tea; I want nothing more.”
She turned into their sitting-room, and he followed her.
“But you mustn’t go out, Bernard,” she objected timidly, looking at him in distress. “You are not fit——”
“I have to go,” he repeated, in a dogged manner. “Is there tea here? If you won’t give me any I must go without it.”
“But you are so ill, dear! Bernard, do, do wait till you are better! I cannot let you go out like this!”
He looked at her, and spoke with perfect calmness.
“I am not ill. My head is much better. I am going into the country, and it will do me good.”
“Are you going to Knightswell?” she asked, laying a hand gently upon him.
“Yes, I am. She goes into Scotland tomorrow; I must see her before. I am dreadfully thirsty. Give me some tea, Mary, there’s a good girl.”
When she brought it from the kitchen, he had his hat in his hand. She in vain tried to persuade him to eat. He said he should have an appetite when he reached Winstoke. In a few minutes he was ready to start.
“I may be late back; don’t trouble yourself about me.”
“But I shall trouble dreadfully about you, Bernard; how can I help?”
But she was as helpless to prevent his going. He merely waved his hand, and hastened into the street.
He knew by heart all the trains by which he could reach Winstoke. One at twenty minutes to eleven he should not be able to catch, and the next was at five minutes past twelve; for that he had more than enough time. He loitered on till an omnibus should overtake him; fortunately the first that came was one which would carry him as far as Charing Cross. He sat through the journey with closed eyes; at every jolt of the vehicle it was as though a blow fell upon his aching brain. Alighting at Charing Cross, he proceeded to pass the river by the foot-bridge; the clock at Westminster told him that it was only half-past eleven. At one time he had never crossed this bridge without pausing to admire the fine view eastwards, the finest obtainable, from any point, of the City of London; the river winding on beneath many arches, the dome of St. Paul’s crowning the hilly mass of edifices, and beyond it the dark-drifting vapours of the region of toil. Even now he leaned upon the parapet, but only to look down into the dull, gross, heavy-flowing stream. He took from his pocket the letter which he had received from Isabel, and tore it mechanically into small fragments; they fell from his hands, wavered downwards in the still, hot air, and made specks upon the water. Thames knows many such offerings.
Yet he had to wait at Waterloo, and the last few minutes were the most impatient. Then it seemed to him that he travelled for hours and hours. Constantly he looked at his watch; when it assured him that but a few minutes had passed, he examined it in the belief that it had stopped. With his impatience his fever grew. His brain throbbed to agony; he could not bear to look at the sunlight on the meadows.
There were two young people, a man and a girl, travelling with him for some distance; they seemed a couple recently wedded. It was holiday with them; they talked over what they would do at the place to which they were going, talked and laughed right joyfully. The sick man who sat opposite, perforce hearing and seeing their happiness, hated them as he had never hated mortal.
The end came. With difficulty he descended from the carriage; then drew back for a few moments under the shed of the station, to recover from his dizziness and shield his eyes against the light. In walking towards Knightswell the sun was full in his face; he held his hands clasped upon his brows as a shelter. Quicker and quicker he paced on strangely, he could not feel the ground upon which he trod; he often stumbled.
It was not necessary to go round to the front gates. There was an entrance to the back of the park, and through this he passed. It led him into the garden by the rear of the shrubbery; to reach the house-door he would have to go past the arbour, where, at this moment, Isabel and her cousin were together. He came near, and, through the leaves, saw them.
Isabel stood looking down at Asquith, who, holding her hands, seemed to speak affectionately. Kingcote did not watch them. He turned, pushed between boughs, and, without consciousness of purpose, went from the garden into the park again....
He was standing by a great elm-tree, his arms hanging at his sides, his eyes fixed on the ground. He must have stood there long and unmoving, for a rabbit nibbled a few paces off. Presently the rabbit showed its white tail in flight. Kingcote saw a shadow move near to him; he looked up, and there was Ada Warren.
She uttered his name with surprise; then the sight of his face held her speechless. He seemed to recognise her, for a dreadful smile came to his lips; but, without speaking, he walked from the spot, shielding his eyes with one hand. Ada gazed after him for a moment, then hastened up to him again.
“Mr. Kingcote, are you ill?—can I help you?”
He smiled in the same way as before, and shook his head.
“No; you can’t help me,” he rather muttered than spoke, only half facing her.
“Are you going to London?”
“To London, yes,” was his answer.
And he pursued his way....
Ada went to the house. Mrs. Stratton was in the drawing-room.
“Can you tell me where Mrs. Clarendon is?” the girl asked of her.
“She has gone up to her room, Ada,” was the reply. “Do you want her? She has a little headache, and meant to lie down for an hour.”
“In that case I won’t trouble her; it is nothing.”
She wandered back into the park. King-cote was long since out of sight. She went as far as the gate leading out into the road, and stood by it for a long time....
He did not walk towards Winstoke station, but turned into a lane which would bring him to Salcot East. Going slowly at first, even standing still at times, his pace at length quickened, and before long he was walking at his utmost speed. Even thus, it took him an hour and a half to reach Salcot. He went straight to the post-office, which was also a shop where stationery and very various things were sold. Having purchased paper and a large envelope, he wrote this:
“I cannot please you by leaving England, but there are much simpler ways of giving you what you wish. I send your portrait. It is a long time since I have dared to look at it, and I cannot do so now. May you be happy!”
He enclosed Isabel’s picture, without taking it from the envelope in which he always carried it about with him; then addressed the letter to her and posted it.
He walked towards the railway station. Ah, there was the inn at which he lost his purse; he stood and looked at it for a moment. He looked, too, towards the branching of the old and the new roads to Winstoke. He had chosen the old road that day; it was picturesque. Even so it looked now, descending into the hollows, leafy, grass-grown, peaceful. To what had it led him!
He found at the station that there would not be a train for nearly two hours. But he dreaded waiting; motion was imperative. He would walk back again to Winstoke station, by the way he had come, and catch the train there. His head did not ache so badly now. Though he had eaten nothing all day, hunger he felt none, but much thirst. He remembered a stream on the way, and hastened that he might reach it.
The stream he had in view ran across the lane; he made his way into the field, lay down, and drank at a convenient spot. The water had an ill taste, or seemed to have, but it refreshed him. Still, he found it hard to rise again; a heaviness tempted him to rest here. His head lay upon his arm, and for a time he dozed.
Then up and on again, or he would miss the train. The last half-mile he walked by the railway. He was not yet in sight of the station when the train he had hoped to take came along. He watched it with a strange sort of indifference, as if incapable of the effort of feeling annoyed. Nothing greatly mattered, it seemed as if nothing henceforth would greatly matter. Still more singular, he found himself confused with the idea of the future, unable to make it a subject of conscious speculation. His mind was occupied with a fixed idea that his life had been, as it were, broken off short, and had a ragged edge; no forward continuity seemed possible.
It was a possession; he could not think of the details of his present, scarcely suffered from the thought of what he had done; his trouble took the shape of an intellectual difficulty. Wrestling with it he walked straight on, past the station, and in a direction away from Winstoke. His mental distress was the same in kind as that we experience when striving with wearied faculties to see clearly into a mathematical problem, a dogged exertion of the brain, painful, acharné, but accompanied with a terrible desolation of the heart. He would half forget what had brought him to this pass, and set to work to review events. There were no passionate outbreaks; a dead weight lay upon his emotions, and vitality was in the brain alone. He did not even pity himself; the calamity which crushed him was too vast.
He was conscious again of a torturing thirst, and the object of his progress became to discover a wayside inn where he might drink. He came to one at last, and entered it very much as any pedestrian might have done. What could they give him to drink?—he asked. Beer; no, for beer he had no palate. They had spirits. He diluted two half-tumblers, and drank them off in quick succession. A couple of men were talking in the parlour, discussing politics. One of them jocularly appealed to him, and he replied energetically, laying down the law on a subject which never occupied his thoughts, or had not done for years. Again he set forth, with understanding that he must make for Winstoke station. His limbs were of iron, he had not a sensation of weariness. The sun was no longer shining; there were clouds in the west, and the evening was drawing on. Again with dogged mental effort he clung to the fact that his end was Winstoke station; he did not question but that he was on the right road. On and on, and it grew dusk about him. Presently something shot painfully into his eyes; it was a flash of summer lightning; no thunder followed. He pressed his hands against his head, and moaned a little. The flashes became frequent, and then, of a sudden, the strength of his limbs failed him. He would have to rest, and the grassy edge of the road gave an opportunity. He lay down at full length, and hid his face; the lightning pained him too much.
It was as if he slept, but always with the weight of shapeless woe burdening his heart and brain. He turned at times, and knew that he was lying by the road-side, knew, too, that night was coming on, but was powerless to rise. He talked much and loud, inveighed with forceful bitterness against some one who had done him a wrong, vast and vague. If he could but get one hours quiet sleep; and that cruel tormentor would not suffer him....
The summer lightning ceased, and it grew very dark. Over the meadows swept a warm wind, bearing mysterious voices, wafting sobs and sighs. Then a cloud broke, and rain began to fall....
That night Mary sat long after every one else in the house had gone to rest. Till eleven o’clock she was only in a vague uneasiness, an anxious expectation of her brother’s return; when midnight came her fears were excited. She constantly opened her window and looked up and down the street. It had rained since evening, and the street lamps shimmered drearily on the wet pavement. It grew too late to hope for his return.
It was easy to find plausible explanations of his absence, if only they could have given her genuine comfort. What more simple than that Bernard should have remained for the night either in Mrs. Clarendon’s house, or with his friend the rector, of whom she had heard so much? Possibly there might not be a telegraph-office near enough to allow of his relieving her by a message, as he assuredly would wish to do. Her reason listened, but she could not overcome the presage of evil which had lurked in her heart since he left home. He was utterly unfit to take such a journey; his condition, she knew, was graver than he had been willing to admit. If illness prostrated him somewhere, quite away from friends, what would become of him? She could not try to sleep. The misery of suspense was scarcely to be borne.
She rose at a very early hour, and tried to occupy herself till the arrival of the post; if all were well, she could not but have a line of explanation. He had spoken of possibly being late, but not of remaining away all night; it would be cruelty most unlike him if he had not anticipated her anxiety. But the postman came and for her brought nothing. With difficulty she discharged her morning duties to the children. The trial was harder to bear because of her loneliness. The engraver and his wife from whom their rooms were rented, belonged to a decent class of people, but Kingcote had uniformly discouraged anything like intimacy with them. Mary could not relieve her mind with interchange of suggestion and encouragement. When the children had gone to school, she sat at the open window, watching the end of the street with painful intentness. Often she deceived herself into a belief that she had caught sight of him, but a moment undid her hope.
What should she do if he neither came nor sent news of himself? There was but one source of help; she must write to Mrs. Clarendon. Only the extremest need could justify that; but what point was to be the limit of her endurance? She dare not wait for day after day to pass. One day she must live through, with what strength she might be able to summon. If he still remained silent, evil had surely befallen him.
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, when, still looking from the window, she saw a policeman pause before the house, and ring the bell. Any unknown visitor would have filled her with apprehension; the sight of this one shook her with terror. She could not let any one else go to the door, it was so certain that the visit must be for her. It did not seem by her own strength that she reached the foot of the stairs; she opened, and stood for an instant in fearful waiting.
The constable made inquiry if any person of the name of Kingcote was known in the house.
“Yes. I am his sister.”
“We have received information,” the man continued, “that a Mr. B. Kingcote has been brought to the hospital at Lindow, in ———shire, in an insensible state, and lies there very ill.”
He showed her a telegram from the police-station in the town of Lindow. She looked at it, but could not read.
“May I keep this?” she asked.
He allowed her to do so, and, after naming the line of railway by which Lindow could be reached, took his departure with constabulary tramp.
Mary had to act, and she found the strength. She went to her landlady, communicated in part the news she had received, and begged that the children might be cared for in case she should have to be absent through the night. The charge was readily undertaken. Then she took a cab and drove to Gabriel’s lodgings. This was the only friend whose aid she could seek. Gabriel put himself at her disposal immediately, discovered the first train to Lindow, and, better still, offered to accompany her.
“Is it far?” Mary asked, moved to her first tears by the blessed relief of a friend’s helpful presence.
“A journey of two hours and a quarter,” Gabriel replied. “We shall be there a little after six.”
They had not too much time to reach Waterloo Station, even with the aid of a cab.
“What on earth does this mean?” Gabriel asked as they went along.
“He left home yesterday very ill,” she answered, “to go to—to Winstoke, to see friends.”
“What friends?” asked the artist, with his natural abruptness. “Why did he go when he was ill?”
Mary professed that she knew nothing certainly, and after that they scarcely exchanged half-a-dozen words all the way to their destination. Lindow is some ten miles nearer to London than Winstoke, a flourishing market-town. They had no difficulty in finding the hospital; it was a very new building in the centre of the town. The house-surgeon came to them in the waiting-room; a young-looking man, with an apparent difficulty in suppressing native high spirits; he seemed often on the point of chuckling as he talked with them. The information he had to give amounted to this: Kingcote had been found early in the morning lying by the road-side a mile out of the town, and found, as good luck would have it, by a doctor, who was driving past. The respectable attire of the prostrate man had naturally invited close inspection, with the result that he was discovered to be in a state of coma. The night-long rain had completely soaked his garments. Robbery with violence had at the first glance suggested itself; but, on examination, watch and purse was found untouched. He was carried straightway to the hospital. A letter in his pocket had disclosed his name and address, and the police had been communicated with. He lay at present in high fever; there had been as yet no return of consciousness.
The house-surgeon proceeded to interrogations, several of them so obviously needless that Gabriel made decisive interposal.
“The facts seem to be these,” he said at length: “Our friend, Mr. Kingcote, left London yesterday morning to see friends in Winstoke. The need being urgent, he set forth in an unfit state, having suffered for two or three days from severe headache and feverish symptoms. He had, Mrs. Jalland tells us, experienced a good deal of mental trouble for some time. I suppose we may take it for granted that he, for some reason or other, tried to walk to your town here, and failed by the way.”
The medical man gave a somewhat grudging assent to these propositions, as probably true. Mary, at her pressing wish, was then permitted to see her brother. The doctor could not tell her as yet whether or not the fever was infectious; mindful of her children, she kept at some distance from the bedside. Poor Kingcote lay in a sad state. There was no intelligence in his wide eyes; he muttered incessantly.
“My proposal is this,” said Gabriel, when she returned to him in the waiting-room, “you had better take a lodging in the town, and I will fetch the children to you. Can they be left where they are over night?”
They could; so Gabriel would bring them in the morning. The house-surgeon was able to suggest a likely quarter for finding lodgings, and Mary rested at the hospital—subject to much interrogation—whilst her friend sought and discovered a suitable abode.
He saw her installed, said what he could in the way of encouragement, and took train back to London.
Mary continued to live in the town of Lindow for several weeks. The night of exposure had brought upon Kingcote a complication of ills; his life was in the balance. It was something for Mary to have her children with her, yet as often as not the sight of them was an added misery. What would become of her and of them if Bernard died? Kingcote was a frail reed to represent the support in life of any mortal. It was anything but clear how, if he lived, the responsibilities which had come upon him would be discharged. But his sister had all the shrinking from the world’s demands which marked Kingcote himself, heightened by the sensibilities and incapacity of a gently-nurtured woman. He was her only stay. Her gratitude to him was very deep, and it had grown of late to a sisterly love which she had not known in earlier days.
Gabriel came from London once a week, after bringing the children. That morning he also brought a letter which had arrived for Kingcote. Mary saw that it was from Mrs. Clarendon; she put it away. At first she was much troubled with doubt whether it was her duty to send Mrs. Clarendon news of what had happened; she determined ultimately to wait and see if other letters came for her brother. But that which she kept had no successor. The fact strengthened a suspicion she had conceived, and she sent no news to Knightswell....
The return to London was scarcely a cheerful home-coming. Kingcote, still feeble, very seldom spoke; after the first natural questions, when he entered upon convalescence, he was possessed by muteness; no interests reawoke in him; he watched his fraction of the world without curiosity, and, beyond a pressure given to Mary’s hand from time to time, gave no sign that others’ presence had significance for him. His catastrophe he briefly explained exactly as Gabriel had done. Already they had reached home, and he had not as much as asked if letters awaited him.
Mary determined to wait a few days before she gave him the letter which, was in her possession; she feared for the result it might have upon him. Yet, on the other hand, it might be that to withhold it was an unwise thing. The contents of this letter she felt that she knew; what she could not know was how far her brother was prepared for them. But his very silence was significant; he expected nothing from Knightswell.
His health established itself day by day; of that there was, happily, every assurance. Yet he could not interest himself in anything. His mind was much like that of a child when it is weary. He would sit in his chair and watch what went on about him; even to read demanded too much exertion. She read to him for several hours daily, and he listened, or seemed to. At length Mary persuaded herself that to speak with him freely might perchance be the best course. She began to do so one day when she had been reading aloud.
“Bernard, can you remember all that happened on the day when you went to Winstoke?”
“Remember? Certainly; everything, till I lost my senses in walking along the roads.”
“Did you go to Knightswell?”
He replied in the affirmative, without constraint.
“And did you see Isabel?”
“I saw Mrs. Clarendon.”
It was a correction, but with no remarkable emphasis.
“Have you not expected to hear from her?”
He looked at her with more interest, but replied without emotion:
“No, I have not.”
Then he asked calmly: “Is there any letter?”
“Yes, there is one. It came the second day after you left London.”
“I will have it, please.”
Mary had the letter by her in readiness, and, having given it him, left the room.
Kingcote examined the envelope deliberately, and opened it with equal deliberation. He read this:
“Bernard,
“You have often wronged me so that it seemed to me that you did it wilfully. Surely there can be no real love without trust, and you have never trusted me. As you wish to free yourself, it shall be as if all was at an end between us. But I am not free, for I still love you, and I shall hold myself yours till you have rejected me a second time. Till then I will keep silence; I cannot help it if you misinterpret that, as you have misinterpreted my words.
“Isabel.”
He sat for a while musing, then went up to his own room. He walked up and down with the letter in his hands; at length, as if unwillingly, he destroyed it. When he had done so, he unlocked a drawer, and took out a collection of letters, all from Isabel. One of them he held to the paper still burning in the fireplace, then threw the others, one by one, upon the flame. As he watched the last sparks flicker, he was overcome with a rush of tears. He covered his face with his hands, and stood weeping.
There was a change in him after that day. He walked for several hours each morning, and the rest of his time gave to new books, which he got from a library. His own volumes did not attract him; he read simply with the pleasure in novelty, which is as far as most people ever get to in the matter of reading. His mind appeared to be quite calm, and in the evenings he spoke freely with his sister. By degrees the question of what he should do for a living actively occupied him. He answered advertisements persistently, and received no replies; that, circumstances considered, was in the order of things. The world has no place for a man who is possessed merely of general intelligence and a fair amount of reading. No one will take him on trust or on trial.
There must be specific capacity, estimable in terms of the ledger. Lacking this, and lacking the aid of influential friends, a man may starve—or there is the workhouse. What would you have? We are civilised, and enjoy the blessings of a social order.
Kingcote believed that Mr. Meres might have helped him, but in that quarter he could not apply. Gabriel was his only friend; Mr. Vissian, though correspondence with him continued, could scarcely be counted. But neither had Gabriel any practical suggestions to offer. He always talked of literary work, and literary work Kingcote could not undertake; it was perhaps his one note of actual wisdom, that he recognised his unfitness for earning money by the pen, and did not waste time in efforts that way. He was prepared, he said, to do anything that promised an income whereon he and his sister could live. Were it manual labour, well and good; were it the basest of clerkships, equally well.
“I have a need of work,” he said to Gabriel, one day about Christmas time. “It is getting to be a physical need. I must do something which calls for exertion. Do you know that I am at present exactly in the state which leads men to any kind of dissipation, which tests their character. If I had not my home and my sister, I should fall into the gulf by the edge of which walk such men as I am. And, if I fell, there would be no ascent to the light.”
“In other words, you are nursing your weakness,” said Gabriel unsympathetically. He was seldom sympathetic. It may have been as a tonic that Kingcote relished his society. “I perfectly believe what you say; you are capable of going to the devil. But remember that other people cannot devote themselves to hanging on at your coat-tails; you must put the drag on yourself.”
Gabriel always worked during their sittings together; idleness was abhorrent to him.
“I,” he went on, throwing himself back in his chair, “should have had as natural an alacrity in going to the devil as any man. I was made for it. I am by nature the most indolent fellow alive. I fight it, and I shall go on fighting.”
It was stimulating, but without practical direction; nor was the artist to blame for this. Kingcote was not adapted for any one of the plain categories of money-earning labour. Only the benevolence of fate could come to his aid.
He was a sad man to regard in these days. Seldom or never came a smile to his face; the springs of his natural vivacity seemed broken. He was not consciously melancholy, but then he did not give himself opportunities of brooding. The character of his countenance was a complete hopelessness; there was no forward-looking, no gleam of the joy of living. Anxiety gained upon him as the months succeeded each other, and when he was actively anxious his face had a look of age, which was more painful to observe than the passionate misery of youth. He often said that he felt he had lived his life, and that was indeed the impression his habitual look conveyed. When he turned back to the past, he saw hills and valleys; henceforth his path was on a dull plain, with the latter darkness upon the horizon. Formerly, when he said in conversation that he had come to know himself, and that he acquiesced in his inefficiency, it was always with the pleasurable expectation of being contradicted; there was a youthful insincerity in his confession. At present he made no such statements, as a general thing, and for the melancholy reason that they would no longer have been insincere; he believed in truth that his character was an inefficient one. He had not an ambition left. He had no passion left, which was worse.
He did at times think of Isabel, and with strange coldness. He had lost the power of realising her to his mind’s eye; she was more of an abstraction than a living woman. In certain moods there came to him the temptation to dwell upon those tenderest memories, to try and hear the voice which had once haunted him only too persistently, to see her face as a living thing. He could not; her very features escaped him, when he closed his eyes to fix them on the darkness. It was all so remote, that happiness and suffering; it affected him only as would the poet’s telling of a sweet and sad story. Anger he felt himself still capable of, had he allowed himself to indulge in it. What he had seen in the arbour at Knightswell could still be a source of indignation. That last letter she wrote in ignorance of his having seen her then; and it was a false letter. He accused her of paltry insincerity. That was why he had at once burnt all her other letters; and the tears he had shed were not so much on his own account as of regret for the vanished image of her nobleness and truth. Noble he had tried to think her, in the face of all he knew about her past; but it was all illusion, wrought in him by her beauty. Her love was her vanity. She liked to make slaves of men, and her coldness would preserve her independence to the end. That letter, she thought, would bring him back to her feet; so noble it seems to forgive. It was her better self that dictated the attempt to send him abroad; having won her rich cousin, who freed her from fear of the future. She meant for a moment to act honourably, and dismiss the lover who had nothing to give her. When he took her at her word, the woman’s instinct overcame her; she could not wholly lose her plaything. Nay, she was piqued that he broke so easily; she would have had a passionate scene, reproaches, entreaties—such as he, poor wretch, excelled in. There should be punishment for his literalness....
It was in this way that he reasoned of Isabel. He entertained no doubt of his interpretations. This view of her character became fixed; and it made his heart as cold and heavy as a stone within his breast.
There was more truth in the words he spoke to his sister as they sat together late on New Year’s Eve. Mary had not mentioned Isabel or Knightswell since she gave him the last letter, and he himself only now broke silence. He had closed his book, and was thoughtful for some minutes, then said:
“Mary, we will never speak of the things that have happened in this past year. I dare say you feel as if I were your debtor for a story, but the story is too simple to tell; you must have gathered it for yourself from what you have seen and heard.”
“I would not ask you to speak of what pains you, Bernard,” she replied.
“I scarcely think it does any longer pain me. There are some things,” he added, after a pause, “which, however possible in themselves, the world agrees to make impossible in practice. My story is one of these cases. We forgot the world, or thought we were strong enough to overcome it. But”—he laughed—“it is the latter end of the nineteenth century.” Mary was not satisfied, naturally; but she only sighed, saying: “You have suffered so much, dear!”
“Yes, but what else are we born for?”
This evening they were to have had Gabriel with them, but the day before he had been called away to Norwich. A telegram came to him, saying that his father was dead; the old man had been killed in a couple of days by bronchitis. For the past half-year there had been communication between father and son. The bookseller was alone in his old age; a sister who had kept his house for many years was dead, and he had no near relatives to take her place. He wished to see his son, and the artist had promised to go to Norwich early in the new year. The journey had to be taken sooner.
Within a week Kingcote received a note, asking him to go to his friend’s studio. Gabriel was at work as usual. There was no need for hypocritical words on one side or the other; Gabriel pointed in silence to a chair, and talked for five minutes of an artist whose works were then on exhibition at Burlington House.
Then: “My father seems to have left no will. But his affairs are in order, and I shall be a good deal better off than I was. In fact, the business has been profitable. No doubt his successor will continue to find it so.”
“Who succeeds him?”
“I don’t know.”
He mixed colours on his pallet.
“The shop, and the house above it, were his freehold property; they belong, of course, to me. There is a good deal of stock, and there is an assistant who has been in the shop nine years. The immediate capital required to carry on the business will be next to nothing.”
Kingcote was silent, and moved uneasily on his chair. The artist worked for a few minutes, then, turning suddenly round: “Well, what do you say?”
“You surely don’t mean——?”
“Certainly not, if it disagrees with you. Let us talk of something else.”
Kingcote’s face was gloomy, but at length he broke into a laugh.
“The idea is amazing!” he exclaimed. “And it really occurred to you that I should be capable of conducting a business?”
“Yes, it occurred to me,” admitted Gabriel, in his unsmiling way. “There are many more disagreeable ways of getting a living. I went so far as to think that the chance savoured of the providential.”
“But, my good friend, supposing for a moment that I were at all fitted for such things”—the touch of depreciation was involuntary—“how would it be possible for me to take over your father’s business? What securities can I give you? What——”
Gabriel checked him with a peculiar look, very nearly a smile.
“You are giving yourself a testimonial. I scarcely credited you with such business faculty.”
“Any man is aware that he cannot take a flourishing concern as a gift,” said Kingcote, with a little annoyance.
“Please to remember,” Gabriel remarked, “that I am an artist, and that you have certain pretensions to culture. I did not imagine that we ever talked on any other basis.”
He painted on.
“Is that man in the shop to be depended on?” was Kingcote’s next question. He had thrust his hands into his trouser-pockets, and was swaying one foot up and down, looking at the ground.
“Entirely. A first-rate man of business, and on the whole a gentleman; I have been at much trouble to get to know him.”
Kingcote rose, and walked about the studio. He smiled frequently, though there was a twitching in his lips to show that his thoughts had their prickly points.
“If I am to be a man of business,” he said at length, “I must accept the responsibilities of one from the first. Let me be bound by conditions you would lay upon a stranger, whom for some reason you were trusting rather liberally, and—I will go to Norwich.”
The artist smiled, but did not look from his canvas.
“Your sister would have no objection?”
“I can foresee none. Rather the contrary, I should say.”
“In that case, will you go down with me to-morrow?”
“I will.”
“Good.”
Kingcote walked home in a singular mood. He was glad, but without rejoicing; he was mortified, but without pain. It was done. His life had fallen from insubstantial cloud-heights to the lower level, to which fate had foredoomed it. To this end he had been travelling by how indirect a way! He began with thoughts of glory; he would finish his career as a shop-keeper. The sting was in the fact that he acknowledged the justice of Gabriel’s estimate of him. Of himself he could never have taken this step, however ready for it he might declare himself to be; a push by a friendly hand, and he yielded with a sense of relief. Behind the counter at Norwich, he would not be out of his place. He could not make books, but he might very well sell them; he could foresee a pleasure in the pursuit. The life would be restful. To dwell once more in his native town would make a continuity between his boyhood and his maturity; all between was air-building and moonshine. A few of those people whom he used to know would still be living; perhaps it would cost him a twinge or two to put up his name over the shop, and invite the attention of all who remembered it; but a week of custom—in both senses of the word—would put an end to sentimental difficulties. And at length he would rest. His business would probably continue to flourish; in a few years he might achieve independence. He might marry, children would sit upon his knee....
Mary listened with wonder, in the end with extreme happiness. He told her in the quietest way; it was not a future to excite enthusiasm, even had he been capable of it in any cause. To her, poor woman, it was admission to Elysian fields. This terrible London would be left behind, and with it her unceasing fears. Her children would be brought up in comfort, and enter naturally upon decent walks of life. The thought that it was the end of all her brother’s hopes could not long dwell with her; he and she were safe. What more can one ask, when the world is over-full, and every day the internecine war grows deadlier?