Mrs. Clarendon did not hunt the next winter.
Her sojourn with her friends in Scotland was to have been for six
weeks, but the end of a little more than half that time saw her back
at Knightswell. She returned in uncertain health, and a very dull, wet
autumn aided in depressing her spirits. Throughout September she
lived almost alone; then, at the impulse of a moment, she set off for
Chislehurst, and presented herself quite unexpectedly at the Strattons’,
where she dwelt till November was half spent. For a week after her
arrival, she was so unwell that she had to keep her room.
It was the termination of a serious attempt to live by herself. Since
receiving and answering Kingcote’s last letter (it came to her on the
morning of her departure for Scotland, and in hurriedly opening the
envelope she had not even noticed that the post-mark was not of London),
she had been in ceaseless nervousness of anticipation; that Kingcote
would maintain silence, she could not believe. By every post she
expected a letter, in which he would once more overwhelm himself with
reproaches, and implore the continuance of her love. She could not have
said, she did not in truth know, whether she hoped for such a letter;
that she feared it was no proof of the contrary. In Scotland, the
feeling of her distance from London was a trouble, growing day by
day. That she should seem to be enjoying herself at such a time was an
injustice to herself; enjoyment she had none. Apprehensions lay upon
her in the night-time. Was he not capable of doing rash things in such a
crisis of his life? Not seldom she rose with her eyelids swollen; Isabel
wept more in three days than in all her life before. Of mere woman’s
resentment she felt nothing, for the accusation with which she visited
herself was sincere and constant. At length she could not bear her
remoteness, and, in her journey to the south, purposes the most various
strove for the conduct of her mind. She reached Knightswell with a
resolve to proceed on the following day to London.
It was not the anxiety and impatience of love; she knew it, and did not
endeavour to deceive herself. But she suffered keenly in the thought of
having inflicted pain. It was rather late, one may hint, to experience
the reality of trouble on this score; but do not be unjust to her. When
she went to London at the beginning of the season, it was in the full
expectation that Kingcote would be part of her world; it had been her
intention to introduce him to the more intimate of her friends, and
little by little to allow people to surmise the situation. The dream of
breaking wholly with her past was already forgotten; Isabel did not lack
sincerity of thought, and she knew that the projects she had at first
entertained were impossible. Their marriage must be planned in a more
practical way; let details be left for the future, but an essential was
that Kingcote should understand the kind of life which custom had made
her second nature, and should adapt himself to it. She could see nothing
unreasonable in this, nothing too exigent. Quite failing of insight
into his modes of thought and the peculiarities of his character, she
believed that it lay with her to draw him forth from his unwholesome
retirement, and to accustom him to a measure of social activity which
could not interfere with his favourite pursuits, and might very well
lead to something--that vague something which she kept well away on the
horizon of her speculations, the indispensable help which good fortune
would provide. This plan had lamentably fallen through; Kingcote would
not adapt himself to the situation. There followed in her mind some
irritation; she thought him unjust to her. Conscious of her perfect
faithfulness in word and deed, she could not understand his frantic
jealousy. It was something, she said to herself, that would pass; both
for his sake and her own she must hold on her way, and he would overcome
his weakness. Oh, if he had not been so weak! Had he but been led by
his jealousy to take a strong attitude; had he, when she gave him the
chance, bidden her return to Knightswell; she could have subdued
her will to his, and love would have been strengthened by the act of
obedience. He would do neither one thing nor another; it was she who
must be strong. The prolongation of her stay in London was partly due to
her lingering hope that he would still take the rational view of
things, though in part it arose from a slight perversity excited by his
behaviour. He accused her daily, he put her in the wrong, and she felt
that it was neither just nor generous in him to do so.
She went from London with an unsettled mind, but with a distinct sense
of relief. She had come to dread his visits, and to fear the letters he
wrote her. She promised herself to think it all over whilst in Scotland.
The idea of frankly admitting to Mrs. Stratton the nature of her
interest in Kingcote, that together with her some plan might be
contrived for obtaining him a reputable position, was just now uppermost
in her mind. Then came Asquith’s mention of the secretaryship in Smyrna.
We have seen in what mood she wrote to Kingcote. His interpretation of
her letter was unjust, for Isabel had not consciously the thought which
he attributed to her. Yet she wrote it, and certainly would not have
done so four months ago.
Now she suffered in the feeling that she had inflicted pain. She
remembered his face when she parted with him--its worn and haggard look.
With all her soul she tried to yearn towards him as she had in those
winter days at Chislehurst, when the flame of her love was new-kindled,
and each letter that came from him was fuel of passion. That was what
made her weep--the misery of knowing that her heart did not live as for
a short space it had done, the sadness of a death within her. Was he
less lovable than when first she knew him? Tears came for an answer;
they meant that she did indeed think him so. But the loss, the loss!
She had let slip from her hand something which had been like a gift from
heaven. The loss was one that would affect the whole of the life that
lay before her.
The last of her youth was gone.
Coming from Scotland, she reached Knights-well late in the evening; she
gave orders that preparations should be made for a journey to London the
first thing next morning. At the last moment that journey was postponed.
It rained heavily; she made it her excuse. Then, in her changing
purposes, another plan seemed better. She would live at Knightswell in
complete isolation. Solitude would make him an ever-present need; her
heart would soften to the old tenderness; at the end of the year she
would write to him, tell him how she had spent her time, bid him come to
her. She began a diary, in which she would set down her thoughts of him
daily; this she would send. But when a week had passed she no longer
wrote in the pages of the book; on the last which her pen touched there
were marks of tears....
The visit at Chislehurst restored her health, and shortly after her
return to Knightswell friends came to stay with her. Parties succeeded
each other through the winter; she would not hunt--she did not clearly
know why--but her stables were used by those who did. When, at the end
of February, she was a whole week without guests, an uneasy loneliness
possessed her.
Mr. Vissian visited her during that week. In September, that dread month
of solitude, she had asked him if he had news from Mr. Kingcote; but
the rector had then heard nothing. He was now, however, in a position
to answer more satisfactorily, when she again asked the question. It
was late in the afternoon; they were by the fire in the drawing-room,
drinking tea.
“Kingcote? Oh, yes!” said Mr. Vissian. “He has gone to live in Norwich.
I thought I should never hear from him again; but I find he has been
seriously ill.”
“Ill?” Isabel asked, not immediately. “Is that lately?”
“He speaks of the end of last year; a bad fever of some kind, which
nearly ended his days--those are his words.”
She murmured an “Indeed!” and looked at the fire.
“What is he doing in Norwich?” was her next question.
“Well, I was somewhat surprised to hear that he has turned bookseller,
has a shop there.”
Isabel looked at him without astonishment, but rather as if she were
reflecting on what he had told her.
“He writes in a melancholy way,” the rector pursued. “Circumstances have
urged him to this step, it seems. I fear he will find business, even
that of a bookseller, very uncongenial. He is a man of singular delicacy
of temperament; quite unfitted to face practical troubles, I should say.
Possibly you know that he has relatives dependent upon him.”
“Yes, I know,” Isabel answered mechanically.
When the rector went, she sat till dinnertime thinking. Whatever her
thoughts were, they only ended in a sigh.
More visitors, then the season once more at hand. At hand, too, the
month of June--but of that she had resolved not to think. Not till the
very day came would she turn a thought to the future.
Kingcote was not in London. She was glad of that; otherwise she would
have gone up with a troublesome nervousness.