That friend of Kingcote’s, Gabriel by name, of whom we have heard, had
his studio on the north side of Regent’s Park, in a house which also
supplied him with a bedroom, this double accommodation sufficing to
his needs. In regard to light the painting-room was badly contrived;
formerly two rooms, it had been made into one by the simple removal of
a partition, and of its three windows one looked south, the others west.
From the latter was visible the smug, plebeian slope of Primrose Hill;
the former faced a public-house. Gabriel would tell you impressively
that the air in this part of London was very good. He lived here, in
truth, because he could not afford to live in a better place.
He was the only friend Kingcote had retained from early years. Gabriel’s
father was a bookseller in Norwich, and the two boys had been companions
at their first school. That their intimacy had survived to the present
day was not easily accounted for, except perhaps by the fact that
neither was fond of seeking acquaintances; knowing each other well, and
continuing by the chances of life within reach of each other, they had
found in this intercourse enough mutual support to keep their human
needs from starving, and had been prevented by it from seeking
new associates; it happens occasionally that, with reticent men, a
friendship of this kind will terminate in a double isolation. In all
other essentials of character they were very unlike. Kingcote we know
pretty well by this time--his amiability, his dangerous passiveness, his
diffidence, his emotional excess. Not one of these qualities manifested
itself in Clement Gabriel. His temper was frankly sour; Kingcote had on
occasions visited him and found him indisposed to speak. “Talk to me as
much as you like,” he said, when at length there came a question, “but
don’t expect me to answer; I shall say bearish things, and I’d rather
not.” They sat together for an hour, and the artist did not open his
lips. It was his habit to declare that he loved idleness, that at times
it cost him unheard-of efforts to go on with his work; that it would
have been easier to cut off his hand than to take up the pencil. For
all that, no man in London worked more continuously or with fiercer
determination. He had not the physique of a robust man; at eighteen
he had been declared consumptive; but the will in him was Samson.
Ill-health was not allowed to affect his mind, and symptoms of positive
disease he appeared to have outgrown; he was in the habit of saying that
he could not afford the luxury of a delicate chest, any more than of
delicate food. An end he had set before himself, an ideal in art--it was
equivalent in his case to an ideal in life--and only the palsy of death
would check his progress. Emotions he seemed to have none, outside the
concerns of his pursuit. In friendship he made no pretence of warmth; he
carried to excess the reserve of an Englishman, and even handshaking he
would escape if he could. That he had ever been in love (he was thirty)
could not for a moment be supposed, and he spoke with contempt of men
who could not live without “women and brats” to hang about them and
weight them in the race. “You will never marry?” Kingcote asked him, and
the reply was: “Never! I have work to do.” Not a little of arrogance
he displayed now and then; as, for instance, in adding after a moment’s
pause, “What wife had Michael Angelo?”
His life had, since boyhood, been desperately hard. Till the age of
fourteen or fifteen, no bent towards drawing had marked, him; then it
exhibited itself suddenly and decisively. His father had no other son,
and had made up his mind that Clement should go into the book trade; the
lad begged to be allowed to study art. For answer, he was at once taken
from school, and put into the shop. He did not grumble, but spent every
moment of leisure time in drawing, and deprived himself of sleep for
the same purpose. When he was seventeen, and in appearance three years
older, he told his father that he must go to London; might he have a few
shillings a week to live upon? If not, he must still go; the shillings
would come somehow. His resolve was so evident that the father consented
to supply him with seven shillings a week for one year; after that, he
must shift for himself. Clement accepted the offer. His father expected
to see him back in Norwich very shortly; in effect, he had not set eyes
upon him to the present day. For the lad, when his year was at an end,
nourished such bitterness against the cruelty to which he had been
subjected, was so marked by the hungry memories of those twelve months,
that, in a letter home, he vowed that he would never meet his father
again. The parent responded angrily, and they held intercourse no more.
Gabriel passed his South Kensington examinations, in order to enable
himself to teach. During that first year he had also found miscellaneous
kinds of employment. He always protested that there was not a mean or
repulsive pursuit in London by which he had not at one time or another
earned a copper; which was his exaggerated way of stating that he had
been driven to strange expedients to keep himself alive and have time to
work up without assistance for the successive grades of examination.
One source of income he unearthed was the sketching in water-colours of
pugilists and race-horses for a man who kept an open stall in Hampstead
Road. It became a partnership, in fact; the salesman allowed Gabriel a
certain percentage on the drawings sold; and they sold well, especially
on Saturday night. Better days began when he got his first private
pupil. He was admitted at length to study in the Academy schools, and
only just missed a Travelling Studentship--it was a bitter loss. Not a
penny did he receive in gift from any one (a prize at South Kensington
excepted) after the remittances from Norwich ceased. An offer from
Kingcote almost broke their friendship. Gabriel apologised for the
violent way in which he had received this offer.
“Can’t you see,” he said, “that if I had not trained myself to savage
independence, I should have broken down long since? I excite myself to
anger lest I should yield.”
Kingcote’s respect for this character was unbounded. He had an ideal
faith in Gabriel. To him he spoke with the utmost freedom of his own
affairs, and did not feel the lack of corresponding openness on the
other side. Gabriel would have found no relief in exhibiting his
sorrows; shut up in his breast, they acted as a motive force. He worked
at times in frenzy. Kingcote did not divine this; he regarded his
friend as above the ordinary passions and needs; he accepted literally
Gabriel’s declaration that work was enough for him. Kingcote had not
the power to maintain such reserve; sooner or later he had to find
a confidant, and pour forth in sympathetic ears the stream of his
miseries. His was essentially a feminine nature; in Gabriel masculine
energy found its climax.
The days of race-horses and pugilists had gone by; with increased
knowledge of his art, Gabriel had laid upon himself severe restrictions.
He would not even paint portraits in the ordinary way, though therein he
might easily have found a means of putting aside the teaching, which he
hated. He was capable of stopping a girl who sold matches in the street
and paying her to let him sketch her face, if it struck his peculiar
fancy; but he would not paint the simpering daughter of a retired draper
who sought him out. He said plainly that the head did not interest him;
it would be waste of time, and he indulged himself in one of his rare
laughs--a shockingly unmelodious cackle--as soon as the man had taken
off himself and his dudgeon. He held that, as long as he could keep
himself from starvation, the ideal exactions of art must be supreme
with him. He followed no recognised school, and his early pictures found
neither purchaser nor place of exhibition more dignified than a dealer’s
window. He was a realist, and could not expect his style to be popular.
Kingcote sought him out as soon as he had leisure after his arrival in
London. He had written to announce his departure from Wood End, but left
the causes to be explained subsequently. Going over to the studio in the
evening, he found the artist at work upon some drawings to illustrate a
novel. Gabriel did not leave his seat, merely nodded as his friend
came in; it was with a distinct look of annoyance that he found himself
obliged to shake hands. Let us see what manner of man he outwardly was.
Tall and excessively meagre to begin with; when regarding his work, he
thrust his elbows into his sides, and one wondered that he did not hurt
himself with the sharp bones. His face was hard set, the mouth somewhat
too prominent, the cheeks hollow, the eyes small and keen. His hair was
very light, his thin whiskers of the same colour. He had a very long
throat, and made it appear still longer by a habit of pushing forward
his chin defiantly. No one ever saw his teeth; he even laughed with his
mouth close shut. In speaking, his voice was high, often with a tendency
to querulousness. When he walked, it was at a great rate, with head
down, and cutting left and right with the stick he always carried. He
was not at all of a refined type, but energy personified.
“What is the book you are illustrating?” Kingcote inquired.
“Oh, it’s damned nonsense; but I manage to see some things the writer
couldn’t. It will be valued in future for the cuts.”
This was characteristic of Gabriel. He said it in the most natural way,
and seeing that he spoke truth there seemed no reason why he should not
express himself freely.
“What are you going to send to the Academy this year?”
He rose, after a touch or two at the drawing, and took up the lamp,
which was the only light in the room. (Though it was very cold he had
no fire.) On an easel stood a large picture, nearly finished; he
illuminated it. Kingcote started at the astonishing scene that was at
once before him. It was a portion of an East End market-street at night;
the chief group, a man at a stall selling quack-medicines to a thronging
cluster of people. The main light came from a naphtha-lamp on the stall,
but there was also the gleam from one of the ordinary lamps of the
street. The assembled men, women, and children were of the poorest and
vilest, and each face seemed a portrait. That of the medicine vendor was
marvellous, with its look of low brag and cunning; on it was the full
glare of the naphtha flame.
“Anything else?” Kingcote asked, looking at the painter.
“One or two small things, which they won’t hang. This they will.”
“There can be no doubt of that; it will be the picture of the year. But
let me see the others.”
One of these filled Kingcote with delight; he uttered an “Ah!” of
pleasure. It was a little girl standing before a shop-window, and
looking at an open illustrated paper which was exposed there. The
subject was nothing, the pose and character of the child everything.
Poor and ragged, she had lost for the moment sense of everything, but
the rich and comfortable little maiden displayed in the coloured page;
her look was envious, but had more of involuntary admiration. This too
was a night-piece; the light came from the front of the shop, above the
picture.
“The face is exquisite!” Kingcote said; “you have made great strides
this last halfyear.”
The artist uttered a “h’m,” and no more.
“So you got tired of your cottage,” he said, seating himself, and taking
up his pencil again.
“You know I was that, long since. But a different reason brought me back
to London.”
He explained his situation.
“And what shall you do?” Gabriel asked, simply.
“It is impossible to say. I must find work of some kind.”
“Well, this is good news! At last you’ll do something.”
“My dear fellow, it is the opposite of good news. I shall do something,
no doubt; but it will be drudgery of some kind to earn a living. There
is nothing more to come out of me than that.”
“Humbug! You are not as old as I am.”
“No, but old enough to have seen the end of my tether.”
“Why don’t you go in for writing?”
“Because I am unable to. I can enjoy other men’s work, but I can produce
none of my own.”
“Of course not, if you take it for granted. You could if you made up
your mind to.”
“Don’t forget that that making up of the mind is everything; it is the
very ability which I lack. But literature is a vain thought. How is it
for a moment to be imagined that I could earn a sufficient income by
it? I have written verses at times; you don’t advise me to go into the
market with those wares? Journalism I am utterly unfit for, as you
must recognise. Equally unfit to write for magazines; I have neither
knowledge nor versatility. There remains fiction, and for that I am
vastly too subjective; I have no ‘shaping spirit of imagination’--at
all events not of the commercially valuable kind. If I had lived in days
when Undine and Sintram were the approved style, I should probably have
been tempted to try my hand; but now----”
“Because,” he continued, “you are blessed with genius and will, you
think all men should, can do great things by dint of mere exertion.
I shall _never_ do anything; do you understand? And why should I? There
are other ways of enjoying life.”
“What other ways?” Gabriel asked, strangely.
“One can receive happiness, as well as be active in bestowing it.”
“Whence is your happiness to come?”
“Who knows? We must wait and see.” Such an attitude as this went near
to excite Clement Gabriel’s contempt; he ceased to argue and plied his
pencil. The respect which Kingcote entertained for his strenuous friend
was now and then mingled with vexation that the latter should fall short
in finer sympathies; and Gabriel, though he liked Kingcote’s company,
could scarcely be said to respect him. He was conscious that the dreamer
saw visions and heard voices of a sphere whence there came no message to
himself, but he acknowledged the superiority grudgingly, and would
have asked to what end the revelations were made if Kingcote could
not translate them into one or other form of human art. With the least
strain of self-conceit in Kingcote, their friendship would have been at
an end long since.
It seemed as if indeed Kingcote had determined to wait upon Providence.
He had said to himself that he would vigorously turn to discovering an
occupation in life, as soon as he should have settled his sister in the
new home at Highgate; but the settlement was effected, and he did not
appear to be exerting himself. He bought newspapers, it is true, and
sickened his soul with the reading of advertisements, but it was seldom
indeed that anything presented itself which seemed in the least likely
to assist him. For it was not a temporary pursuit that he needed, but
a fixed station of recognisable activity; work, in fact, which would
enable him to stand before Isabel without shame when she was free to
fulfil her promise. He was not in immediate need, nor likely to be; the
capital which produced him sixty pounds a year would permit him to live
and support his sister for some time to come, with economy such as they
exercised. But it was idle to take comfort from that; practically he was
a beggar.
A more admirable housekeeper than Mary could not have been found. Long
experience of grinding poverty had taught her how to make a sovereign go
very far indeed; King-cote was astonished at the accounts with which she
regularly presented him. He would have had her increase her own comfort
in many little ways, but she always refused; self-denial, formerly a
harsh necessity, had now become a pleasure; a kind of asceticism was
becoming her motive in life. This, a common enough phenomenon, allied
itself with increased rigour in religious performances. Her brother’s
indifference in such matters was a distress to her, but she would not
have ventured to speak. Her gratitude to him was deep and fervent, but
Mary felt what a distance there was between him and herself. She could
love him as her heart desired, yet she was always hoping that time and
use might make them more like brother and sister.
Before long there did happen something which resulted in a drawing
nearer. Mary began to notice that her brother received frequent letters
addressed in a female hand; she discovered, too, that they bore the
Winstoke post-mark. Over this she mused much. It was clear to her that
Bernard was anything but at rest in his mind, and that the source of
his disquietude was something other than the mere difficulties of his
position. His room was directly over that in which she slept, and she
could hear him walking up and down sometimes half through the night; he
would come down to breakfast looking ill and preoccupied. Now and then,
when he had promised to sit with her in the evening and read aloud,
which he often did, much to her joy, he would alter his mind at the last
moment and leave the house. Then he was always very late in returning,
and annoyed that she had sat up for him. She was obliged at length to
leave supper on the table, and go to her room, though often she waited
till she heard him enter the house before she hastened upstairs.
The morning that he went off to Knights-well, she had not noticed his
early departure, and his absence throughout the day alarmed her. He
reappeared about four in the afternoon. Looking anxiously at his face,
she did not venture to question him. He took up a newspaper and glanced
over it for a few moments.
“You wondered what had become of me?” he said at length, opening his
lips for the first time, and trying to smile. “I went very early; I had
to go out of London to see some one.”
“I began to be very uneasy,” Mary returned.
He sat down--not, to her surprise, going to his own room--and she began
to lay the table for tea. He read the paper. In passing him she timidly
touched his head with her fingers caressingly. Kingcote looked round;
his face had the kindest smile.
“Do you know,” he said, laughing, “what was in my mind at that moment?
I was thinking how admirable the relations are between a brother and
sister, when she is a good sister like you, Mary. Suppose you had been
my wife instead of my sister. When I came in just now you would have
overwhelmed me with questions, with complaints, with frettings, and made
me angry. As it is, you have no anxiety but to put me at my ease, and
your quiet kindness is a blessing to me.”
“But all wives are surely not like that, Bernard?” she returned, with
pleased protest. “Most, I’m afraid; but no--not all.”
The strangest speculations began to live in Mary’s brain. Was it
possible that her brother----? Oh, that was nonsense.
He was kind with the children when they came in from school, and, after
tea, took a book and read to himself. Mary sent the youngsters a little
earlier than usual to bed. When he and she sat alone, she saw that
he made several beginnings of speaking; her eyes apparently busy over
sewing, missed no phase of his countenance. At length he laid the book
open on his knees.
“You remember my mentioning to you a large house called Knightswell, not
far from my cottage?”
He did not look at her, but his eyes had an absent glimmer, not quite a
smile, as they fixed themselves on the work she had on her lap.
“Yes, I do.”
“I have been there to-day.”
“Been all that way, Bernard?”
“Yes.”
Mary did not fail to understand that it was now her turn to question.
“You have friends there?”
“A friend. If you will listen I will tell you a story.”
He related all that he knew of the history of Isabel Clarendon, as if it
had been told to him or he had read it somewhere, up to the time of
his first meeting with her; he described her exactly, and described Ada
Warren also, the latter, as far as his knowledge allowed, with perfect
justice.
“One of those, Mary, is my friend; which do you think?”
“You have made it too easy to guess,” his sister answered
good-naturedly. She had listened with the utmost attention, leaning
forward, her arms crossed upon her sewing. “_Not_ Miss Warren!”
“But I do not dislike her; you mustn’t think that.”
“Still, you would not go all the way to Knightswell to see her.”
He said nothing. Mary was nervously impatient.
“But what a strange, strange story! And she--Mrs. Clarendon--may be sent
from her home any day? Is Miss Warren likely to marry?”
“She is engaged, but will not be married till she is of age. That will
be in rather more than a year.”
“And what will Mrs. Clarendon do then?”
He paused a moment before answering. But at length:
“She has promised to be my wife.”
“Bernard!”
Mary threw her work down, and came and kissed his forehead. She could
say nothing; stricken with wonder and confused emotions of pleasure, she
strove to realise the truth of what he had told her. Then Kingcote took
from his pocket the case in which he kept Isabel’s portrait. Mary gazed
at it in long silence.
“But how strange!” she murmured, when she turned her eyes away to dream
absently.
“You think she might have made a better choice.”
“I have no such thought, Bernard, as you know well. Is it known to her
friends?”
“No,” he replied, shortly.
“I wonder what Miss Warren would think?”
He mused, wondering himself.
They talked for a long time. To Kingcote the relief of having told his
secret was so great, that he had become cheerful, hopeful. His sister
did not show exuberant delight; she continued preoccupied, now and then,
as if in result of her meditations, putting a question, and musing
again upon the answer. A woman mentally occupied with woman possesses
a lucidity of reasoning, a swiftness of apprehension, a shrewdness
of inference, which may well render her a trifle contemptuous of male
conclusions on the same subject. A very few details are enough for
her to work upon; she has the categories by heart, and classifies with
relentless acumen. It is the acme of the contradictions of her nature.
Instinctively revolting against materialist views when held by the other
sex; passionately, fiercely tenacious of spiritual interpretations where
her own affections are concerned; the fountain of all purity that
the world knows; she yet has in her heart that secret chamber for the
arraignment of her sisters, where spiritual pleas are scoffed at, where
the code administered is based on the most cynical naturalism. She will
not acknowledge it; she will die rather than admit the fact as a working
element of her own consciousness; but she betrays herself too often.
The countenance of a woman whose curiosity has been aroused concerning
another is vaguely disturbing. She smiles, but the smile excites
disagreeable thoughts, suspicions such as we would gladly put away.
Happily she does most of such thinking when out of sight.
Kingcote said nothing of Isabel’s pecuniary difficulties, and left the
question of Ada’s parentage as it was represented in the will. He laid
stress all through, on the pathetic aspect of Isabel’s position. Mary
listened, questioned innocently, gathered data, and made her deduction.
On the day after Isabel’s visit to Chelsea, Kingcote came and lunched
with her. Her rooms, as he noticed, were sufficiently luxurious; a
trouble weighed upon him as he talked with her. With a new dress--which
of course became her perfectly--she seemed to him to have put on an air
somewhat different from that which characterised her in the country. She
was impulsively affectionate, but there was an absence in her manner,
a shade of intermittence in her attention, a personal restlessness,
an almost flippancy in her talk at times, which kept him uneasy. The
atmosphere of town and of the season was about her; she seemed to be
experiencing a vast relief, to have a reaction of buoyancy. It was
natural that she should speak of indifferent things whilst servants were
waiting at table, but Kingcote was none the less irritated and hurt in
his sensibilities. He lacked the virtue of hypocrisy. The passion which
had hold upon him felt itself wronged even by harmless compliance with
the exactions of every-day artificial life. Something gnawed within his
breast all the time that he was speaking as a mere acquaintance; he had
a difficulty in overcoming a sullenness of temper which rose within him.
The end of the meal was all but the limit of his patience.
“Don’t ask me to come in this formal way again,” he said, when they were
alone in the drawing-room.
“Why not?” Isabel asked, in surprise.
“Because I am absurdly sensitive. It is pain to me to hear you speak as
you would to any one whom you had asked out of mere politeness. I think
I had rather not see you at all than in that way.”
She laughed lightly.
“But isn’t it enough to know what there is beneath my outward manner?”
“I know it, but----”
“But--your faith in me is so weak. Why cannot you trust me more?”
He was silent.
“You must get rid of these weaknesses. It all comes of your living so
much alone. Besides, I want you particularly to come and dine with me
on Sunday. Mr. Meres will be here, and I should like you to know him. I
shouldn’t wonder if he can be useful to you.”
Kingcote made a gesture of impatience.
“But you won’t refuse, if I wish it? He is the most delightful man, and
such an old friend of mine.”
“The less reason why I should like him.”
“Now, Bernard, this is foolish. Are you going to be jealous of every one
I know? Oh, what a terrible time is before you!”
She said the words with mirthful mockery, and to Kingcote they were like
a sudden stab. It was as though a future of dreadful things had suddenly
been opened before his eyes, black, yawning, thronged with the shapes of
midnight agonies. Her laugh had a taunting cruelty; her very eyes looked
relentless. In this moment he feared her.
She was sitting some little distance away, and could not let him feel
the touch of her hand which would have soothed.
“Have you told your sister?” she asked, after regarding him for a
moment.
He found it difficult to answer truthfully, but could not do otherwise.
He admitted that he had.
“I knew you would,” she returned, with a nod and an ambiguous smile.
“And your friend, Gabriel?”
“No. I told you I should not. My sister is different.”
“Yes. Why should you not tell her? And you showed her my portrait?”
“I did.”
“What did she say?”
“Many kind and pleasant things--things you would have liked to hear.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“You don’t dislike to be praised.”
“No, on the whole I think not. But I could do with the praises of just
one person--they would be enough.”
“I may repeat your question--are you sure of that?”
“Very sure. But you will come on Sunday?”
“At what time? I thought you went to church.”
“Only in the morning. We shall dine at eight o’clock.”
“And will there only be Mr. Meres?”
“Only one other--a lady.”
Kingcote looked about him restlessly.
“How long shall you stay in London?” was his next question.
“Not more than two months, I think.”
“Two months--May, June. It will seem long.”
“Long? Seem long to you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you not glad that I am nearer to you?”
“Very glad. But I wish it were November, with no one else in town, I
suppose you will be surrounded with people all the time.”
“No, I shall see very few,” she answered, rather coldly. “I should wish,
if I can, to please you.”
There was a struggle in him between obstinate jealousy and self-denial.
She looked at him, with a half-suppressed smile about her lips, and the
nobler feeling for the moment had its way.
“You will best please me,” he said, with the old tenderness, “by
pleasing yourself. You shall see nothing of my foolishness, even if I
can’t altogether overcome it; and I will try my hardest to do that, for
my own peace indeed. I will bury myself in books.”
Isabel was seeking for words to express what was in her mind.
“You see,” she began at length, “I can’t entirely isolate myself, even
if I would. People find out that I am in town, and I cannot forbid
them to come and see me. If they come, then I am bound to make calls in
return, or to accept invitations.”
“Yes, I understand it perfectly well,” he assented, with a little
too much of readiness. “It would be monstrous to ask you to live in
solitude. Indeed, I will accept it all without murmuring.”
“All that I can do I will. I promise you not to seek new acquaintances,
and I will see no more of the old than I am absolutely obliged. You can
trust me so far? It is rather hard to feel that you have not complete
confidence in me. I have in you.”
“Forgive me, and let us forget that I ever talked so unkindly. I ought
to be proud of your successes in society. It would all be easier, I
suppose, if----”
“If what?”
“Only if I valued myself more highly than I can. It is so hard to
believe that you can compare me with others and not grow very cold.”
“I should never think of comparing you with any one. Why should I? You
are apart from all others; I should as soon think of asking whether the
sun did really give more light than one or other of the stars.”
She would not have used such a comparison in the days before his letters
had revealed to her a gospel of passion. His pleasure in hearing the
words was mitigated by a critical sense that she had the turn of thought
from himself, that it did not come from the fountains of her heart. Few
men surpassed Bernard Kingcote in ingenious refinement of self-torture.
His faculty in that respect grew daily.
“Is any one likely to call this afternoon?” he asked, when they had sat
together a little longer.
“I don’t expect any one in particular, but it is quite possible.”
“Then I will leave you now.”
Isabel did not oppose his going.
“Oh,” she said, as a thought struck her, “Rhoda and Hilda Meres are
going to lunch with me to-morrow, and perhaps Ada, though I don’t know
whether she will come. In the afternoon I dare say we shall go to the
Academy. Will you be there, and show us Gabriel’s pictures?”
He gave a hesitating “Yes.”
“Not unless you would like to. Be in the first room about half-past
three.”