Isabel Clarendon, Vol. II (of II)

“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!”

CHAPTER X

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.