Isabel Clarendon, Vol. II (of II)

“I have few ambitions, Isabel,” he continued. “Of things which men mostly seek, few are of any account to me; I could not stir myself to pursue what awakens others to frantic zeal. One ambition there is that has ruled my life; a high one. I have wished to win a woman’s love. To me that has always been the one, the only thing in the end worth living for. I thought my life would pass and I should never know that supreme blessing. Whatever comes after this, I have had your love, bright one!”

“And always will have.”

He raised his hand in playful warning.

“Life is full of tragedies. The tragedy, I have always thought, is not where two who love each other die for the sake of their love. That is glorious triumph. But where love itself dies, blown upon by the cold breath of the world, and those who loved live on with hearts made sepulchres—that is tragedy.”

“I shall always love you.” She repeated it under her breath, convincing herself.

“On Tuesday I go to London,” Kingcote said, seating himself by her. “So good-bye to my cottage. We shall not forget that poor little house? I hope sometimes to come and look at it, and see my dead self. Some family of working people will live there next. It will be well if they are not haunted.”

“Why haunted?”

“One feels that misery must cling to walls that have seen so much of it.”

“But brighter spirits have since then swept and garnished it, have they not?”

Kingcote was always thrilled with pleasure when her thoughts made for themselves a more imaginative kind of speech. It brought her out of the prose-talking world, and nearer to him.

“They have, dear. You must write to me often, it will be long before we see each other again.”

“But you do not go to-morrow; you will see me again before you go?”

“If you wish it; but won’t it only make the parting harder?”

“Come to me on Tuesday morning, if only for a few minutes. You will go by the 1.30 train? Oh, how shall I ever let you leave me?”

Kingcote rose. He had still words to say, but they would not easily be uttered.

“Isabel, will your life in future be quite the same as it has been?—no, not inwardly, but your outward, daily life?”

“No, it shall not be the same,” she replied earnestly. “How can it be the same? Have I not so much that is new and dear to fill my days?”

“If you had married me now,” he continued, “it would have been to leave the world with which you are familiar; you were ready to make that sacrifice for me. Can you promise me to draw a little apart—to try yourself—to see if you could really give it up, and live for yourself and for me?”

“I will—indeed I will, Bernard!—you shall know all I do every day; you shall see if I cannot live as you wish. You shall tell me of books to read; I will come into your world.”

“That will make my life full of joy, instead of an intolerable burden,” he exclaimed, glowing with delight. “I could not bear it otherwise! The distance between us would be too great. And—is it not better to confess it?—I am easily jealous. I feel that to go on my way there in London, whilst you were shining among people of wealth and leisure, all doing you homage, that would drive me mad.”

Isabel smiled as she reassured him. These words pleased her, but not in the nobler way. He had said what should never be said to a woman by one who will hold her love pure of meaner mixture.

“I shall come to London in the spring,” she said presently. “You know I always do so, but this time it will only be to be near you. I can’t afford a house; I shall take rooms, and you will often come to see me.”

He looked at her, but did not answer.

“But who knows what may happen before then?” she exclaimed, with sudden joyousness. “We can make no plans. Fate has brought us together, and fate will help us—have no fear!”

“Fate is not often benevolent,” said King-cote, smiling cheerlessly.

“But are not we the exceptions? I feel—I know—that there is happiness for us; I won’t listen to a single down-hearted word! You came to Winstoke because my love was waiting for you; you are going now to London because something is prepared which we cannot foresee. Look brighter, dear; it is all well.”

“Isabel, I will not see you again before I go.”

She hesitated.

“Then write me your good-bye, and you shall have one from me on Tuesday morning. Send me your London address in the letter. Shall you live where your sister is?”

“For the present, I believe.”

“And you will see your artist friend again. Shall you tell him? Have you told him?”

“I have not, and shall not. It is our secret.”

She gave a laugh of joy. Why did the laugh jar on him? He was so easily affected by subtleties of feeling which another man would not conceive.

They took leave of each other.

Kingcote walked about the lanes till some time after dark, then made his way to the rectory. Mr. Vissian himself opened the door—there was no evening service at the church in winter.

“Good! I expected you,” he exclaimed. “Better late than never. Have you had tea?”

“No; I should be glad of a cup.”

They went into the sitting-room, where Mrs. Vissian and Percy still sat at table.

It was a rule with the rector to put all mundane literature aside on Sunday, but to-day he, had yielded to temptation. At the place where he had been sitting, a Shakspeare lay open, with a note-book beside it. Mr. Vissian stood with his back to the fire, fidgeting. Presently he could hold no longer; whilst Kingcote was still eating and drinking, he laid a hand on his shoulder, and put before him a page of the note-book.

“My friend,” he said gravely, “read that—carefully now; with no indecent haste. Read—perpend!”

It was the explanatory note on “The Lady of the Strachy.”

“That’s very interesting,” said Kingcote quietly.

“Interesting! By the Turk! It is epochmaking, as the Germans say. I have not a doubt remaining.”

Mrs. Vissian listened to the conversation with just a little evident uneasiness. It was troublesome to be more orthodox than the rector, but she could not forget that it was Sunday. Affectionate little women are quite capable of these weaknesses.

When Mr. Vissian’s excitement was somewhat allayed, Kingcote began in a matter-of-fact way, and told them of his approaching departure, explaining the circumstances which occasioned it. His hearers were genuinely distressed.

“This is evil following upon good with a vengeance,” said the rector. His wife looked sorrowfully at him, and half wondered in her foolish little mind whether this might be a reproval of his Sabbath-breaking—a mild one, suited to a first backsliding.

“I owe you more than I can thank you for,” said Kingcote, looking from husband to wife. “I shall think of the rectory as if it had been my home.”

“I hope,” said Mrs. Vissian, touched, “that you will make it a home as often as you possibly can. We shall always be very, very glad to see you here.”

“My dear Kingcote,” murmured the rector, in an uncertain voice, “this—this upsets me. It is so wholly unexpected. And we were to have gone through every play with scrutiny of metrical development. Your ear is so much more to be depended upon than mine in such matters. Dear me, dear me! This is excessively disturbing!”

“But, by-the-bye,” he added, when he could better trust his vocal organs, “I shall now have some one whom I can rely upon in immediate vicinity of the book-stalls. If you should ever come across anything in my line—you know the kind of thing I want–”

“Mr. Kingcote,” said his wife, raising her finger, “I’m sure you won’t put discord between me and my husband. You know that I dread the mention of book-stalls.”

There was of course to be a later leavetaking; in view of his domestic disturbances, Kingcote consented to breakfast and dine at the rectory on Tuesday. His sticks of furniture he would sell to a dealer in Winstoke on the morrow, and his packing would only be an affair of a couple of hours, books and all. Percy ardently desired to help in this process, and was permitted to come.

Kingcote woke in the middle of the night, with so distinct a voice in his ears that he sat and gazed nervously about him in the darkness. It was as though Isabel had spoken in his very presence, and after he had gained full consciousness; she said, “It is fate, dear,” and uttered the words with pain. Our dreams play these tricks with us. He rose and went to the window; there was a setting moon, and the old oak-trunk before the cottage threw a long, black shadow. The night-wind made its wonted sobbing sound. The sky was very dark in the direction of Knightswell.

He had his letter on Tuesday morning.

Feeling the envelope, he anticipated what he should find on opening it. There was Isabel’s portrait, a beautiful vignette photograph; it had been taken when she was last in London. Referring to it, she said:

“Look at it, and let it look at you, daily. And, if ever you wish to tell me that all is at an end between us, only send me the portrait back again.”

CHAPTER IV

Kingcote reached Waterloo Station as dusk was gathering. He had not occupied himself on the journey, yet it had seemed short; from when he waved his hand at Winstoke to Mr. Vissian and Percy, who saw him depart, to his first glimpse of the grimy south-west end of London—including twenty minutes’ pacing of a platform when he had to change—a dull absentmindedness had possessed him, a sense of unreality in his progress, an indifference to the objects about him. At Waterloo he let the other occupants of the carriage all descend before he moved; when at last obliged to stir, it cost him an effort to overcome his inertia. He had not altered his position since seating himself; there was a printed notice opposite him, and he had been reading this mechanically for nearly an hour.

His luggage necessitated the hire of a cab; he found himself crossing the river, then struggling amid dense traffic in the Strand. More than half a year of life at Wood End had put a strange distance between him and the streets of London; he looked at objects with an eye of unfamiliarity, with unconcern, or with shrinking. In vain he tried to remind himself that he had come to do battle amid this roaring crowd; his consciousness refused belief. He had lived so long in a dream; the waking was so sudden, the reality so brutal, that he must needs fall back again and close his eyes for a time, letting his ears alone instruct him. The newsboys yelling the evening papers insisted most strongly on recognition; they embodied this civilisation into which he had been dragged back; with involuntary grotesqueness of fancy he saw in them the representatives of invisible editors, their cries were a translation, as it were, of editorial utterance, only more offensive because addressed to the outward sense and not to be escaped. He wished for deafness....

Where was Knightswell? Where was Isabel Clarendon? His heart sank....

The cab bore him on. He was in Tottenham Court Road, then in Hampstead Road, then entering that desolate region through which stagnates the Regent’s Canal, the north end of Camden Town. It was growing dark; the shops were revealing their many-coloured hideousness with shameless gas illumination; the air seemed heavy with impurity. The driver had to stop to make inquiries about his way, and sought a repetition of the address. Ultimately a gloomy street was entered, and after slow, uncertain advancing, they stopped. Kingcote had never visited his sister at this house, but the number on the door was right; he knocked.

He was standing in a short, sloping street of low two-storey dwelling-houses; they had areas, and steps ascending to the door. In the gloom he could see that the houses had the appearance of newness, and were the abodes of what one hears called “decent” working people—one would prefer some negative term. The top of the street was lost behind a sudden curve; at the lower end the flaring front of a public-house showed itself. Children were playing about in considerable numbers, for there was no regular traffic; before the public-house was an organ grinding “Ah, che la morte” in valse time. The air was bitterly cold, and the wind blew for rain.

He had leisure to observe all this, for it was a couple of minutes before any one answered his knock. Just as he was about to repeat it the door opened, and a woman with a lighted candle, which she held back to protect it against the wind, presented herself. She was fat, and had a prodigious dewlap; on one side of her many-folded chin was a large hairy wart; she wore a black dress, much strained above the waist, with a dirty white apron—a most unprepossessing portress.

“Is it Mr. Kingcut?” she asked in a thin, panting voice. “Why, an’ I was that moment sayin’ as it was time Mr. Kingcut come. I’m sure your sister’ll be glad to see you, poor thing! How’ll you get your luggidge in? She’s just lyin’ down a bit; I’ll go an’ tell her. The funeral’s been a bit too much for her; but I’ve got a nice ’addock down for her, an’ expectin’ your comin’. See, I’ll leave the candle on the banister, an’ you shall have a light in the front room in no time.”

A man who loafed by assisted to move the boxes into the house, and Kingcote dismissed the cab, paying twice the due fare because a word of argument would just now have cost him agony. He left the candle guttering at the foot of the stairs, and entered a room of which the door stood open immediately on his left hand. There was a low fire in the grate; the candle outside helped him to discern a sofa which stood before the window, and on this he sank. A hissing sound came from below stairs, and the house was full of the odour of frying fish.

There was asthmatic panting outside, and, with a lamp in her hand, the fat woman reappeared; she stood pressing one hand against her side, in the other holding the light so as to enable her to examine the new-comer. She talked, struggling with breathlessness.

“Poor thing! She’s that done! It was hawful suddin, in a way, though we’d been a-expectin’ of it for weeks as you may say. It’s been a trial for poor Mrs. Jalland, that it have! She couldn’t seem to take comfort, not even when she saw him laid out. He was a good deal wasted away, poor man, but he had a pleasant look like on his face; he alius was a pleasant-lookin’ man. An’ there’s some o’ the funeral beer left over, if you’d like–”

Kingcote could have raved. He rose and went to the fire; then, as soon as he dared trust his voice, assured her that he wanted nothing.

“It’s only about a arf-a-pint as is left. We’ve been most careful, knowin’ as there wasn’t no money to throw away, in a manner speakin,’ though of course, as both me an’ my ’usband said, we knew as Mr. Kingcut’ud like everythink done in a ’andsome way, though not bein’ able to be present pers’nally.”

“Can I see my sister?” he asked, driven to frenzy, and unable altogether to conceal it.

“She’s just puttin’ herself a bit in order,” was the rather startled reply. “She’ll be down in a minute, I dessay.”

After another scrutiny, the woman deposited the lamp on the table, and, seeing that King-cote had turned his back upon her, withdrew, looking an evil look.

The room was very small; the couch, a round table, a cupboard with ornamental top, and four chairs, scarcely left space to walk about. On the table was a green cloth, much stained; the hair of the sofa was in places worn through, and bits of the stuffing showed themselves. Over the mantelpiece was a large water-colour portrait of a man in Volunteer uniform, the late Mr. Jalland; elsewhere on the walls hung pictures such as are published at Christmas by the illustrated papers, several fine specimens of the British baby, framed in cheap gilding. But the crowning adornment of the room was the clock over the fireplace. The case was in the form of a very corpulent man, the dial-plate being set in the centre of his stomach.

Kingcote looked about him in despair. His nerves were so unstrung that he feared lest he should break into tears. Every sensitive chord of his frame was smitten into agony by the mingled sensations of this arrival; rage which put him beside himself still predominated, and the smell from the kitchen, the objects about him, the sound of the woman’s voice which would not leave his ears, stirred him to a passion of loathing. His very senses rebelled; he felt sick, faint.

He was rescued by his sister’s entrance. When he had last seen her, before leaving London, she was a rather world-worn woman of six-and-twenty, looking perhaps a few years older; now he gazed into her face and saw the haggard features of suffering middle age. Her appearance struck him with profound compassion, almost with fear. She was short in stature, and her small face had never been superficially attractive; its outlines made a strong resemblance to her brother, and lacked feminine softness; the tremulous small lips and feeble chin indicated at once a sweet and passive disposition. As she entered, she was endeavouring to command herself, to refrain from tears; she stood there in her plain black dress, holding her hands together at her breast, like one in pain and dread.

“Mary! My poor girl!”

He spoke with deep tenderness, and went towards her; then she put her arms round his neck and wept.

He reproached himself. Things might not, should not, have been so bad as this. In some way he might have helped her, if only by remaining near. Whilst he had dreamed at Wood End, this poor stricken soul had gone through the very valley of the shadow of death. He had not paid much heed to her letters; he had failed in sympathetic imagination; she had written so simply, so unemphatically. He reproached himself bitterly.

“How good of you, Bernard, to come to me!” she said, regarding him through her tears. “I do want some one to be near me; I feel so helpless. Death is so dreadful.”

She said it without stress of feeling, but the words were all the more powerful. Kingcote felt that they gave him a new understanding of pathos.

She would not speak more of the dead man, knowing how her brother had regarded him. At his bidding she sat on the sofa, and by degrees overcame her weakness; he comforted her.

“What shall I do, Bernard?” she asked, appealing to him with tearful eyes. “What is to become of the children? What is before us?”

“At first, rest,” was his kind answer. “Don’t let a thought of the future trouble you; that is my affair. You shall never want whilst I live, Mary.”

“Oh, it is hard to be a burden to you! I have burdened you for a long time. You have already done more for me than any brother could be asked to do. How can I let you?”

“We won’t talk of these things yet; time enough. All I want now is to be some comfort to you.”

“Oh, you are! It is so good to hold your hand. I feel you won’t desert me; I am so powerless myself.”

They talked a little longer, then she was reminded that he had come a journey and needed food.

“Who is that woman?” he asked, lowering his voice.

“Mrs. Bolt? She has, you know, the other half of the house. There are corresponding rooms on each side, and she lets us this half. She has been very good indeed to me through it all. I don’t know what I should have done these last days without her. She has made meals and seen to the children. I was ashamed to give her so much trouble.”

Kingcote did not reply to this. He merely said: “Then it won’t be necessary for her to come here?”

“Oh no.” She understood his desire to be alone. “I will get the tea myself; I can do it quite well. It’s all ready.”

She moved about and laid the table, letting her eyes rest upon her brother very often, trustfully and rather timidly. She had always regarded him with something of awe. He belonged to a higher social sphere than that which she had accepted. She attributed to him vast knowledge and ability. It was her fear lest she might do or say anything in his eyes censurable.

“Are the children upstairs?” Kingcote inquired.

“Yes; they have had their tea.”

“You will bring them down afterwards?”

“If you would like it, Bernard.” She had dreaded lest he should find their presence displeasing.

He reassured her, and then they sat down to the meal. The rain had begun and was blowing against the windows. Kingcote ate little; his sister only drank a cup of tea.

“This is not the kind of food you need,” he said. “I must ask you to do as I wish for a time, and have care for yourself. Have you any servant?”

She shook her head. “But you can’t possibly do house-work at present.” There was something a little dictatorial in Kingcote’s way of speaking; a mere habit, but one which Mary knew of old, and which half accounted for her timorous regard of him.

“Mrs. Bolt has been so kind,” she said, “when I really wasn’t able to do things.”

“Yes; but we cannot trouble her. What, by-the-bye, are the terms on which you hold these rooms?”

“From quarter to quarter. We pay twenty-five pounds a year, and have to give a quarter’s notice.”

“Then it is impossible to remove till the end of June? I’m very sorry for that.”

“Mrs. Bolt might take things into account, and let us–”

“No, certainly not,” said her brother abruptly. “But I think I shall pay her the quarter and go as soon as I can find another place.”

(Mrs. Bolt, be it observed, had her ear to the keyhole, and lost not a word of the conversation.)

“Don’t you think you could find some girl to come and act as servant for a time?”

“Yes; I could. There’s a girl I used to have sometimes; I think she could come.”

“Then let her be summoned as soon as possible; and, by-the-bye, has Mrs. Bolt been at any expense, do you think?”

“I’m afraid she has for a few things.”

“Very well. If you happen to see her, will you ask her to let me have an account of all such expenses as soon as she can?”

After the meal, Mary went upstairs and fetched the children. They were boys of eight and seven respectively, thin and ill-fed little beings, poorly dressed. Both of them cried as their mother brought them forward; this uncle was in their eyes a most formidable person. Kingcote could not be affectionate with children, but he spoke to them with as much kindness as was at his command. Whilst he was talking with the elder, the other climbed to Mary’s lap and whispered something. Kingcote caught the words “bread and butter.”

“What’s that, Willy?” he asked. “You would like some bread and butter?”

His mother tried to hush it over, but with no effect.

“Mary,” said her brother, “if I go out, will you open the door to me yourself? I will give two raps.”

He went, and succeeded in finding a shop not very far off where he could purchase a large plain cake. Returning, he cut it on a plate and let the lads eat. Shortly after they were led away to bed. .

He would not let Mary remain with him very long, she was wearied out.

“I’ve put a fire in your room,” she said; “the house is a little damp, and I thought it was better.”

“In that case I will sit up there. You shall show me the way.”

She took him up to a room that could scarcely be called furnished—though she had stripped her own of everything she could possibly spare—where he found his boxes placed.

“Who brought those up?” he asked.

“Mr. Bolt and his son.”

He moved uneasily.

“I do hope you’ll be able to sleep here!” his sister said anxiously. “I wish I could have made more comfort for you.”

“Oh, it will do perfectly well. Now go and sleep, Mary.”

She embraced him, and her tears came again.

“I can’t thank you, Bernard,” she whispered, sobbing. “I can’t find any words. You’re very, very good to me.”…

He sat by the fire. A group of noisy lads had assembled in the street, and were urging two of their number to fight. They did not succeed, and their foul language passed into the distance. An organ played in front of the public-house, and there were laughing shrieks of girls. A man came along hoarsely crying baked potatoes.

He saw his bed-room in the cottage; he remembered the holy silence of night brooding over the woods and meadows. At this moment Isabel was sitting alone and thinking of him, sitting amid the graceful luxury of her refined home. Was that a dream of joy, or this a hideous vision?