The water-colour portrait over the mantelpiece was that of a blond young man with hair parted in the middle and a thin moustache, made the most of by curling at the ends, the expression on the face a sufficiently fatuous smile. This work of art had been the result of an acquaintance struck up between young Jalland and an impecunious teacher of drawing in the bar parlour of a Norwich hotel; the likeness was faithful, for it had simply been copied from a photograph, to save the trouble of sittings, as the artist said. In those days Jalland was just beginning his career as a commercial traveller; that he should belong to a Volunteer corps was in the order of things. Also perfectly regular was his acquaintance with the Kingcote family; his father exercised a number of vocations, was auctioneer, commission agent, broker, etc., and he frequently did business for Dr. Kingcote, who had a fondness for dabbling in pecuniary speculations and but for this foible would have died a richer man. When Jalland obtained a position in a London warehouse, he at once asked Mary Kingcote to accompany him as his wife; she was then a girl of seventeen. Her parents held the match impossible; they forbade it. The result was that one day the girl disappeared, and remained undiscoverable till at length she wrote to announce the fact of her marriage.

She seemed the most unlikely girl to do such a thing. She was of a very quiet disposition, shy with strangers, submissive to a somewhat autocratic mother, feeble in health. Curiously, she only followed a family precedent in risking an elopement; her mother—though Mary did not know it—had married in the same way. Doubtless that was why Mrs. Kingcote remained unforgiving. Her father was not a man of strong character, though he possessed considerable ability in various directions; his temperament was impulsive, imaginative, affectionate; he was wholly ruled by his wife. The children of the house, Bernard and Mary, seemed to an observer to lack something of ordinary youthful happiness; they appeared to stand apart from their parents; to be thrown very much upon their own resources. Dr. Kingcote saw little of them, save on Sundays, when he was for the most part absorbed in reading; Mrs. Kingcote, though behaving to them with all motherly care, did not win their love, neither appeared to miss it. She was a woman to whom the external facts of life sufficed; details-of housekeeping occupied her all but exclusively; one would have conjectured that she made her runaway marriage solely out of a passion for having a house of her own, where she might rule and regulate. From the day when she heard that Mary had married the commercial traveller her daughter’s name never passed her lips.

As a medical student in London, Bernard Kingcote held communication with his sister. At her entreaty he made Jalland’s acquaintance; he had known him by sight in Norwich, but was away at his studies when the families had grown to terms of intimacy. Bernard went to his sister’s lodgings one Sunday, and passed the afternoon there, but he paid no second visit. In Kingcote there existed his father’s intellect and emotional qualities, together with a certain stiffness of moral attitude derived from his mother. His prejudices were intense, their character being determined by the refinement and idealism of his nature. An enemy would have called him offensively aristocratic; only malicious ignorance could have accused him of snobbishness. He went to meet Jalland with instinctive repugnance; the man’s pursuit was in his eyes contemptible, and he resented bitterly the influence such a person had been able to obtain over Mary. On Jalland’s side there was no particular good-will; he was prepared to stand on his rights and repel any hint of lofty patronage. Kingcote had no disposition whatever to behave patronisingly, but he found it beyond his power to make the least show of cordiality. He and the representative of the great civilising agent had not a point in common. They saw each other at the worst, and, very wisely, never saw each other again.

The evening that followed was one of suffering for Mary, the beginning of a martyrdom. She knew already that her hasty step had been a mistake; to-day the slow-gathering consciousness became a fixed centre of pain. She had looked from her brother to her husband and back again; she understood that the difference between the two men was the measure of the gulf set between herself and the world to which she rightly belonged. Her husband’s amiability became vulgar self-complacence; his features, his demeanour, his interests, all bore the ineffaceable stamp of vulgarity. She watched him as he moved impatiently about the room; she anticipated the words he would shortly speak. He had never yet behaved to her with deliberate unkindness, though honeymoon warmth had long since given place to working-day ease of manner; matrimonial familiarity, a snare to the most delicate of men, takes shapes one does not care to dwell upon in the uncultured. But now, when at length the words came, they were rough, rancorous, brutal. Mr. Jalland attempted irony, excogitated sarcasms; finding these insufficient to his needs, he relieved himself in the tongue of bar-parlours. Mary put in no plea of mitigation; she bowed her head and let the torrent fall upon her, humiliated to the core. The man understood very well what he had done, and knew the change in her from that day forth. But he was having his revenge.

Our modern knights of the road are subject to one grievous temptation. Living at places of public entertainment at other people’s expense, they acquire tastes and habits which are somewhat rudely interfered with when a sojourn in their homes necessitates a diet and accommodation materially differing from that of hotels. Mary had already had the recognition of this difficulty forced upon her; in future it was to constitute a more serious trouble. Mr. Jalland let no opportunity pass of finding fault with his wife’s housekeeping. The meals she prepared for him he regarded with lofty scorn, and only on being pressed condescended to satisfy his hunger. He would mention what he had recently partaken of at such and such a table-d’hôte, adding, “No doubt you often used to have that at home, before you married me,” his irony pointed with a grin. His journeys, fortunately, became more extended, and Mary had sometimes weeks of loneliness; but his return was each time a harder trial. She soon perceived that he was acquiring the habit of drinking more than was good for him; it improved neither his temper nor his manners. Presently he lost a place which he had long held, lost it in some unexplained way, and was for half a year without employment. It was then that Mary first had to appeal to her brother for aid. She did so without consulting her husband, but he of course knew whence came the money upon which he lived; he came ultimately to grumble that the supplies were so restricted. From that time onwards it was alternation of degrees of misery. Jalland’s proclivity to drink grew more pronounced, and his health suffered noticeably. He never sank to sheer ruffiandom; never got beyond the point of nagging at his wife; often Mary would rather he had beaten her.

She bore everything with tearful patience, but—it was a note of character—never once sought to soften him, never once appealed to memories. Her nature was not passionate; it cost her nothing to refrain from recrimination, and the mistaken impulse of her inexperienced years never bore fruit in hatred of the man to whom she had sacrificed her life. She was a devoted mother; her children helped her to endure. Her husband she regarded in a spirit which the institution of marriage makes common enough; he was an item in her existence, and had to be taken account of, even as had the necessity of daily meals. A human being became to her a piece of furniture, only differing from chairs and tables in that it exacted more attention and was apt to evince ingratitude. So it went on to the end, and, when the end came, it brought, after the perturbations of nature, a sighing of relief....

Kingcote rose on the morning after his arrival with a determination to quit this present abode at whatever cost. He had scarcely slept; the atmosphere brought him bodily unrest. He knew that it was the height of imprudence to waste money in such a juncture, but life was impossible for him under this roof, and he could not suffer his sister to dwell in the proximity of the woman he had seen the evening before. His first impulse of compassion spent, the spirit of almost fierce intolerance again took possession of him. Formerly, he had felt much in the same way towards the uneducated people with whom he had had to come in contact, but never with such violence of personal antipathy as Mrs. Bolt and all her belongings excited. He understood well enough the narrowness of this spirit; he knew that his culture should have endowed him with tolerant forbearance; but it was a matter of temperament. He dreaded to leave his room and descend, lest he should meet one of the Bolt family; he felt the impossibility of behaving with decent courtesy. Aristocracy of race cannot compare in pervasive intensity with aristocracy which comes only of the influence of intellect and temperament. Kingcote would have chosen death rather than an existence elbow to elbow with people such as these he found in the house.

There was the sound of the postman coming along the street; this changed the current of his thoughts. The knock came at the door below, and he could no longer hold back. Mrs. Bolt was just taking letters from the box.

“Good mornin’, Mr. Kingcut; ’ope you’ve slep’ well,” she said, pressing her hand to her side and panting as usual. “It take me just ’ere,” she explained; “comin’ up them stairs from the kitchen is too much for me. I’m allus hawful bad in the cold weather. Here’s a letter for you. And, Mr. Kingcut, I wanted to say that if there was anythink as me or my ’usband or my son could do–”

“I thank you,” Kingcote broke in. “I believe Mrs. Jalland will make all necessary arrangements. I really don’t think we shall need to trouble you.”

He was turning away, but checked himself to add:

“I hear, Mrs. Bolt, that my sister is in your debt for certain things you have supplied to her lately. Will you kindly let me have an account as soon as you are able?”

“Oh, we ain’t a-goin’ to talk of that, Mr. Kingcut! A cup o’ tea, and a basin of broth. Of course I’ve kep’ a little account, but there’s no hurry about that.”

“If you please, I should like to settle the account immediately, as soon as you can conveniently let me have it.”

He went into the sitting-room, and closed the door. The two children were sitting before the fire, and the cloth was laid for breakfast; he nodded pleasantly to the youngsters, but did not speak. The letter he held was from Isabel; there were three sheets. He had just finished reading it when Mary came in with breakfast on a tray. He greeted her joyously.

“I suppose you young men go to school this morning?” he asked his nephews. “Come and eat a good breakfast, and prepare for your labours.”

To the astonishment of the children, he helped them to some of the fried bacon; they gazed at their mother before venturing to eat. Little by little this uncle gained upon them; they looked at him as if they liked him.

When they had left the house, he held a long talk with his sister, and told her of his intention to seek immediately another dwelling.

“We’ll go farther out, where you can get fresh air; I have an idea where I shall look for rooms. I’m afraid we must restrict ourselves in the matter of space, but that will be better borne where the sky is visible. You leave me free to choose?”

The same day he began his search, and was absent for several hours without hopeful result. No one would set forth gaily upon such an excursion, and to Kingcote the task was revolting; Mrs. Bolt was so often met with, and so seldom any one capable of inspiring human confidence. When he got back wearied, midway in the afternoon, Mary was out. On the sitting-room table he found a rather dirty envelope addressed to himself, but not closed; in it was a sheet of note-paper, folded awry, whereon was written the account of moneys due, which he had asked for. It was a remarkable document, alike in conception and execution; badly written, worse spelt, frequently difficult to decipher at all. However, the sum total at the end stood in plain enough figures: one pound, sixteen shillings, and eightpence three farthings. There was nothing alarming in this demand; the point which exacted attention was the way in which the total was constructed. Beginning with a lump sum, Mrs. Bolt debited her tenant in five days’ “attendance,” at three shillings a day; the remainder of the charge consisted of innumerable items of petty expenditure, each assigned to its day. It would be: “One cup tee, 3d.; one basern brorth, 5d.; fetchin docter, 3d.; bread and buter for childern, 3d.,” and so on. Kingcote at first regarded this bill with disgust, then he was able to see the humorous side of the situation, and broke into loud laughter. Mrs. Bolt, who had her ear at the door, heard the laughter, and, attributing it to the smallness of her demand, promised to “give it” her husband for having deemed further extortion unadvisable.

Mary came in shortly, bringing several parcels; the exertion of walking a very brief distance was too much for her strength, she sank on a chair in exhaustion. Kingcote held the bill behind his back.

“You told me, I think,” he said, with a natural smile, “that Mrs. Bolt had shown you great kindness the last few days, in doing little services for you, and so on?”

“She has, really; I was ashamed to ask for so much.”

“To ask? Ah, then you agreed with her to give you regular service?”

“Oh, no,” she professed in surprise. “It was all her kindness; she pressed it on me. She’s really kind-hearted when you’re in need.”

“Remarkably so,” said her brother, laughing again. “Pray glance your eye over that.”

(Mrs. Bolt had crept to the door when she heard Mary enter; not a word escaped her.)

Mary looked down each of the pages, her amazement increasing; at the end she raised her eyes in indignation. Women always take small extortion more seriously than men, and their sense of humour is generally defective.

“Bernard! How can she do such a thing? Oh, I should be ashamed!”

“No doubt you would, my dear sister; you and Mrs. Bolt are of somewhat different clay.”

She began to contest items.

“No, no, we wont talk about it,” Kingcote said, taking the dirty paper from her hands.

“You will pay it?”

“Oh, certainly; and I beg you will not speak of it again. Only, let it be a piece of experience, and remember that people of that class are a species of dirty object, much to be avoided. Whilst we are here, we will keep the doors of our rooms shut and the windows open. Morally speaking, that is; literally, the weather is too bad.”

So he ended with a laugh, and went on to speak of his ill success during the day. They talked till the children came in from school. Kingcote was studying his sister, consciously inquiring into her character, which he had never understood, had scarcely had a chance of getting to understand. Though little things in her speech and way of thought now and then jarred on him, showing the influence of sordid circumstances, he was surprised at the extent to which she had preserved the tone and manner of a lady. Mary seemed to inherit her mother’s power of resistance to all that had no connection with the few and plain principles of her nature. Her mother’s individuality had exerted itself to active purpose; Mary had perhaps shown even more firmness in a passive way. She had, in truth, a considerable share of obstinacy, operative, her life being what it was, only for good. In the protection of her children from every kind of ill she exercised incessant care, never failing, for instance, to take them herself to school and fetch them home again. She held, moreover, with the utmost tenacity to the forms of religious faith and practice which she had known from childhood; they did not appear to aid her much morally, but still were of mechanical use in preserving the continuity of her life. It was only on the surface that she was weak; she was susceptible to every kind of suffering, but had a corresponding power of enduring. Few women could have lived as she had done, from seventeen to seven-and-twenty, and have preserved so much cleanliness of soul.

She could not pardon Mrs. Bolt, whose offence, in her eyes, consisted far more in the extortion practised on her brother than in a display of unabashed sordidness. To that good woman’s surprise, Mary refrained from intercourse with her throughout the fortnight that she remained in the house.

For it took so long to discover a new abode and have it prepared for tenants. After several days of search, Kingcote at length found rooms of which he determined to make a trial. They were in Highgate, not far from the pleasant road which leads across the valley to Hampstead; four rooms and an underground kitchen, the rest of the house being occupied by an engraver and his family, not intolerable beings. Of his own bedroom Kingcote would also make a study; that left a common sitting-room. He bought such additional furniture as was needed (the Jallands had long ago been obliged to sell much that they once possessed), and made the appearance of a modest home. The removal was happily accomplished, and our friend thanked Heaven in once more breathing unpolluted air.

He wished to exercise all delicacy in regard to his sister’s feelings, and so, after arranging the heavy furniture of her sitting-room, he said to her: “I will leave you to put up what ornaments you like.” It was more than generous, bearing in mind certain objects which had graced the former parlour. Mary did not fail to understand him. The dial-bellied man was never seen again, nor mentioned (it had been Jalland’s purchase), and the specimens of British infancy were hung in the boys’ bedroom.

“We can’t afford good pictures,” Kingcote said, looking round the bare walls, “so we will have none. Perhaps I may now and then pick up a print that will do.”

For some days he took it for granted that the water-colour portrait had been hung by Mary in her own bedroom; but, when he at length found an opportunity of peeping in, behold it was not there! she had only preserved an illuminated cross. He turned away with a deep feeling of gladness in his heart. The past was done with.

CHAPTER VI

Thomas Meres and his two daughters occupied a house in Chelsea, a small house in a little square, between which and the river is a portion of Cheyne Walk. Three minutes’ walk brings you to the Albert Bridge, which leads over to Battersea Park. In that part of Cheyne Walk which is close at hand stands the house where for many years Rossetti painted and wrote; not many doors away is that in which George Eliot died; and that which was Carlyle’s home for half a century is scarcely more distant, in the shadow of old Chelsea Church. It is pleasant to breathe the air of this corner of London.

Literally the air is pleasant; the flowing breadth of stream and the green extent of the opposite Park, the spacious Embankment with its patches of tree-planted garden, make a perceptible freshness. On a sunny morning the river dances and gleams with wind-stirred wavelets, and the free expanse of sky gives the spirit soaring-room. Standing on the Suspension Bridge, one lets the eye rest on a scene far from unlovely; the old houses of Cheyne Walk are abundantly picturesque, so is Battersea Bridge, the last remaining (perhaps already gone) of the wooden bridges over the Thames. The great Queen Anne dwellings on the Embankment have their charm, and just beyond them one sees the gardens of Chelsea Hospital, adjoining those which were once called Ranelagh. Heavy-laden barges go up or down stream, as the tide may be, sometimes hoisting a ruddy sail; men toil at the long barge oars. Steamers fret their way from pier to pier, rather suggestive of pleasure than business. Very little traffic is within sight or hearing; when the church clock strikes it is not drowned by the uproar of streets, but comes clearly on the wind with old-world melody. There is peace to be found here in morning hours, with pleasant haunting thought of great names and days gone by.

Ada Warren, when at Knightswell, always thought with pleasure of Chelsea, often was drawn towards it with a great yearning. There are, for all of us, places which appeal to our sympathy with an air of home, even though they have for us no personal associations; many perforce dwell away from home all their lives. Ada had the ambition to live in Chelsea. She promised herself that, when the day of her freedom came, she would take one of the houses in Cheyne Walk. The desire was akin to another ambition, of which there will shortly be mention. At present she had to be content with a couple of rooms in Mr. Meres’ house. These rooms were always held at her disposal. Mrs. Clarendon had from the first insisted upon a clear understanding that the rooms should be paid for, and that Ada should live at her own expense. Thomas Meres had written to her: “My poverty, but not my will consents.” The house being so small, Rhoda and Hilda had to occupy one bedroom when Ada came.

Living here, the girl was at all times another being than at Knightswell. She allowed her animal spirits, which were not inexpansive, to have free play. In the company of Rhoda and Hilda she was a girl with girls; Isabel would have been astonished to see and hear her when the atmosphere of Chelsea had had time to exert its full influence. She could never quite give credence to Mr. Meres’ reports. Her present visit, however, began under less favourable auspices than usual. She came in a very still and reticent mood, and she found illness in the house. Rhoda Meres was just recovering from an alarming attack of fever. Ada feared she would be burdensome, wished to go back to Knightswell for a little, but Mr. Meres would not allow it.

“I wish you to stay for a particular reason,” he said gravely. “Pray do me this favour, Ada.” It was his habit, from of old, to call her by her Christian name and to treat her as a daughter.

We must look for a moment at Thomas Meres. A man of good stature, but bent in the shoulders, and only not slovenly in appearance because of the perfect personal cleanliness which accompanied utter disregard of the quality and sitting of his clothes. He had the fine features which generally go with delicate instincts and intellectual tendencies. His face was all of one colour, yellowish, and much lined. Beneath his eyes the skin hung loose, giving him a sad look; his full beard was grizzled, but his hair still unaffected by time and very thick at the back of his head. To pass to details of his attire, he invariably wore coloured shirts, blue by preference, with a blue necktie miserably knotted; this tie being the despair of his daughter Hilda, who often insisted on arranging it skilfully with her own delicate little fingers. In the house he wore an old gray jacket, on which he wiped his pen. At leisure, he always had his hands in the side pockets, so that they had come to bulge exorbitantly. On going out, he changed this for a black frock coat. His trousers, unhappily, he did not change when business led him forth. These garments disgraced him in the eyes of Christendom. Possibly they had been of due length when new, whenever that was; but, by dint of constant sitting, the knees had grown abnormally, with the result that the bottoms of the trousers just touched the tops of their wearers boots. To a literary man of small means there is probably no graver question than this of his trouser knees. I have known unhappy geniuses whose ardour in composition was grievously impaired by the consciousness that, when writing their best, their legs would tuck up under them, with results most disastrous to their nether garments. Thomas Meres cared not for these things, and alas! it is so difficult for young girls to approach their father on the subject of his trousers. Hilda once procured a tailor’s advertisement sheet, and, folding it so that the particulars concerning trousers were uppermost, placed it conspicuously on his study table. Mr. Meres saw it, and, with an impatient, “What’s this? What’s this?” crumpled it into his waste-paper basket. Poor fellow! the days had gone by when he might have considered the effect he produced on observers; it would never matter now.

Thomas Meres was a literary man, and of the romance of authorship knew as little—as do most authors. He got a living by his pen, and that was all; for any pleasure which his daily task brought him he might as well have lived by tailoring. Once he had hoped to shine by means of his talents. In those days authorship meant glory. Now it meant unremitting toil, often of the dullest and dreariest kind, scarcely ever on subjects for which he cared. He had published books, and had the satisfaction of seeing them mildly praised by the reviewers, then forgotten; now he wrote books no longer, but—eheu!—himself criticised those of others, or penned the interminable “article.” At times he felt that he must stop, that his hand would work no longer; but its exercise had in truth become almost automatic, and it was well for himself and his children that it had. When he received the editorship of Ropers Miscellany he was at first delighted, not only on account of the most acceptable salary, but also because he felt that it was an accession of dignity. Formerly he had dreamed with trembling of the possibility that he might one day be an editor. But this, too, took on its true proportions when he had grown used to the chair. The toil of reading manuscript was all but as bad as that of producing it. One pleasure which had been wont to come from his literary work had in the course of time failed him. It had been his habit to send the best things of his writing to Mrs. Clarendon; and at first she had seemed glad to have and to read them. But he had discovered that her interest was failing, that she did not always even glance at what he sent. Then he sent no more. Yet, by keeping up that interest, Isabel could have put joy into a life which sadly needed it, could have smoothed a road which was very rough to travel.

The difficulties of a man in Mr. Meres’ position, with two girls to bring up, were naturally considerable. Mrs. Clarendon had constantly advised him to marry again; at which he always shook his head and maintained silence. The woman who may with safety be taken in marriage by a poor man given to intellectual pursuits is so extremely difficult of discovery that Thomas Meres might well shrink from beginning the search, if only on the plea of lack of leisure; and there were other reasons withholding him. When the children were young, he had the assistance of the wife of a friend, whose house he shared; only when Rhoda was sixteen, her sister being two years younger, did he take the house in Chelsea, having found a decent woman to act as housekeeper. In a year or two Rhoda had felt able to spare him this latter expense. Rhoda’s talents were not exactly of a domestic order, but she was a very good-hearted and intelligent girl, and was beginning then to understand something of the hardships of her fathers life. This present illness of hers had brought serious disturbance into the home; a professional nurse had been summoned, and Hilda—now a girl of sixteen—had to intermit her school to look after the house; the one servant they kept was of course an irresponsible creature.

On the evening of her arrival, Mr. Meres asked Ada to come and sit with him in his study—a very small room, book-thronged, with one or two busts of poets, and, over the fireplace, a fine photograph of the Sistine Madonna. The choice of the picture had a pathetic significance; no supersensual mystery did it embody in Meres’ eyes, but it stood there as an ideal of womanhood and of maternity, the everpresent suggestion of an earthly paradise whereof the gates were closed against him—wifely love, that which he had never known, the conception of which had for long years been besmirched in his mind with foul associations for the loss of this his children’s affection could not compensate him. Nay, the children had till quite late years been to him a fear and a perpetual cause of anxious observation. Would they not grow up with their mother’s character? Was there not impurity in their blood? By a kind fate it was the father that predominated in them. Yet even now his dread would often be excited, and especially had that been the case in Rhoda’s illness. It was to speak of his elder girl that he took Ada apart this evening.

When he spoke on any subject which puzzled or embarrassed him, it was Mr. Meres’ habit to stroke the length of his nose with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, perhaps because this relieved him of the necessity of looking at the person to whom he addressed himself. He began by doing so now.

“You find Rhoda sadly pulled down?” he said.

“Yes, she must have suffered very much.”’

Ada always spoke in a very direct way, with few words. Strangers attributed this partly to shyness, partly to a character lacking amenity. It was due to neither in fact, but was one of the results of her ambiguous position which made her at once reticent and heedless of conventional mannerisms.

“She has, I fear. The truth is, she hasn’t been herself ever since she came back from Knightswell last summer. She has always been either depressed or unnaturally excited. It makes me very uneasy.”

Ada made no comment.

“Do you find her—communicative?” he proceeded to ask.

“The opposite. She would scarcely speak to me.”

“You don’t say so? Now I wonder whether I may ask you to be of—of assistance to me; whether you will not accuse me of indelicacy if I tell you freely what it is that troubles me? You know that I always think of you as vastly older and maturer than my own girls—pass the words, you understand them—and that I have several times been led to speak to you of things I should not yet touch upon with them. Well, the fact is this. From the child’s talk while she was delirious, I am obliged to conclude that she—in fact, that she has been so unfortunate as to fall in love with some one who has behaved rather badly to her. Who this can be, I have not a notion; she kept repeating the name Vincent, and I am acquainted with no one so called. I could only gather the vaguest impressions, but she was perpetually deploring her poverty, and speaking of marriages made for money, and so on. Now, you will see that this is very alarming; I cannot conceive what it means, or how such things can have come about. Can you—this is my blunt question—can you, out of your knowledge of Rhoda, help me to an understanding of it?”