The rectory was at all times open to Kingcote. Mr. Vissian welcomed him
as the only man within reach who could talk on congenial topics; Mrs.
Vissian liked him personally, and for the sake of the romantic stories
which she wove about him in her imagination. To Percy Vissian he had
become an object of a child’s affectionate regard, as well as of the
reverence which attaches to men of mystery. Percy not infrequently made
his way to the cottage, but never outlived that fairy-tale sensation
with which he had first crossed its threshold. That Kingcote lived here
absolutely alone, that he passed nights in the dread solitude of this
ivy-wrapped cell, that he had nothing to do but to read the books which
contained such deep and wondrous things, invested him in the child’s
eyes with something of the unearthliness of a wizard. Anything but a
youngster of boisterous instincts, Percy moved about in the cottage with
the gravest gait; as he never went up the dim, narrow staircase, there
still remained a portion of the abode of which his fancy was free to
make what it would, and it often seemed to him that a strange light
footfall came to his ears from the floor above. He would not have
ventured to ask about this, which in truth was only the product of his
excited imagination. When he had tea with his friend everything tasted
to him quite differently from the flavours of home; the mere bread
became cake--he munched dry pieces with a strange relish, and the milk
did not come from ordinary cows. But his great delight was when, after
such a meal, he settled himself on his uncomfortable chair and saw
Kingcote preparing to read to him. Often the reading was of English
poetry, and that was enjoyable; but better still was when the wizard
took down one of those books of which the mere character suggested magic
lore--a German book, and, turning it into free English, read a tale of
Tieck, or Musàus, or Grimm, or Bechstein, or Hauff. Then did the child’s
face glow with attention, his features become elf-like with the stirring
of phantasy; and, when Kingcote ceased, he would move with a deep sigh
and peer curiously about the room. He would beg to be allowed to look
at these volumes for himself, touching the pages with delicate finger,
spelling here and there a word and asking its meaning. There was a book
of German ballads, plentifully illustrated, and over these pictures the
boy was never tired of musing. Percy Vissian owed not a little to his
friend for these afternoons at Wood End.
With the elder people Kingcote’s intimacy was not one of unrestrained
confidence, though it only fell short of it by that degree which marks
the superficiality of most friendships. For instance, he never felt
tempted to speak to Mrs. Vissian, even after months of familiar
intercourse, as he had spoken to Isabel Clarendon in their first
conversation. The bright little woman did not exercise a compelling
power upon his inner self, as Isabel had already done. There was much
mutual kindness between them, and, it might be, as nearly a genuine
friendship as is possible between man and woman; for such association
gains in completeness only at the loss of the characteristics which
justify it for friendship’s name. Mrs. Vissian showed this supreme
wisdom, of never offering sympathy. It was by no means always with a
conventionally smooth face that Kingcote came into her presence; at
times he sat in her parlour, a picture of wretchedness, and scarcely
answered when she spoke to him. For to Kingcote there came more of
misery than of consolation from the aspect of this gentle peaceful home;
often enough he was stirred to bitterness by the sight of this perfect
content, this ideal domesticity, this sweet assuagement of the evils of
life; the contrast with his own position was not fruitful of soothing.
When he sat with her in that state of mind Mrs. Vissian seemed not
to perceive it, or at most uttered a light word about low spirits.
Of course she thought a good deal about it, but the blessed wisdom
of content was strong in her, and not even by a look did she display
special interest.
Mr. Vissian himself was amusing. His bibliomania and kindred interests
never for an instant lost their hold upon him. When Kingcote once asked
whether he did not at times weary of such things, the rector stared in
amazement. The study was not the only room in which precious books were
stored; upstairs was a chamber packed almost solidly with volumes, old
and new. Mr. Vissian boasted that he knew every book in the mass, and
could at any time make his way to any he desired to consult; it was only
a matter of excavation. One slight anxiety his collection cost him; the
upper walls of the house had begun to show rather large cracks, and it
was possible that eventually the burden of literature would bring the
roof down. But that was a risk which must take its place in the ordinary
count of human contingencies. The rector subscribed to a considerable
number of literary societies: the “Shakspere,” the “Chaucer,” the “Early
English Text,” and others of the kind, receiving their publications
and having them duly bound for a place on shelves in some commodious
dwelling of the future. In the course of talk over such things, Kingcote
was by chance enlightened as to the meaning of that little incident
which had struck him in his very first interview with Mr. Vissian--the
latter’s momentary doubt, or seeming doubt, whether he could produce the
money which was requested. Kingcote discovered that his friend lived in
perpetual pecuniary embarrassment. Mrs. Vissian exercised control over
her husband’s expenditure to the point of preventing its exceeding their
income, but that was all. The quarterly cheque was invariably demanded
by outstanding liabilities as soon as it arrived, and unfortunately
the cheque was not a very large one. It often happened that neither the
rector nor his wife had half a sovereign in the world, a singular state
of things in so otherwise orderly a household. In lending Kingcote
that sovereign they had just then left themselves literally penniless.
Fortunately the cheque was due. Mrs. Vissian dreaded the arrival of
a booksellers second-hand catalogue; whenever it was possible, she
intercepted all such, and mercilessly committed them to the flames.
Yet the subject never occasioned a moment’s trouble between husband and
wife; Mr. Vissian pursued his course in calmness. He was working (as a
volunteer, of course) for a great English dictionary, which a certain
society had it in view to produce. Also, he had taken up the new ideas
of textual criticism in Elizabethan literature, and spent hours in
counting the syllables in each line of a scene of this or the other
dramatist. Though such a placid little man, he revelled in literary
horrors. It delighted him to read aloud ghastly scenes from Webster,
dwelling with gusto on the forceful utterances. Withal his orthodoxy
was unimpeachable, it never occurred to him to carry his criticism into
Biblical spheres. To please him, Kingcote now and then attended his
services; naturally there was no further discussion on religious topics
between the two.
As October drew on, and evenings began to be dark and cold, the comfort
of Mr. Vissian’s study and of his wife’s sitting-room assuredly lost
nothing in the eyes of the hermit of Wood End, yet his visits became
less frequent. He presented himself, however, about nine o’clock one
night, and was received by Mrs. Vissian with the usual friendliness. The
rector was expected home every moment.
It had been raining all day, and the temperature justified the first
fire, which crackled merrily and made the bright little room look
cheerier than ever. The table was laid for supper (the Vissians dined at
one o’clock) and a pleasant odour as of toasted cheese took advantage
of the door being ajar to creep insidiously about the room. Mrs. Vissian
sat with her feet on a stool, mending a pair of Percy’s stockings.
“You look tired,” she said, as Kingcote sat in silence and watched her
out of half-closed eyes.
“I am, a little. I have been walking.”
“But in this dreadful rain?”
“Has it rained? I don’t think I noticed it.”
Mrs. Vissian regarded him for an instant with surprise, then laughed a
little, and bent over her work. Her left hand and arm were thrust into
the stocking, and she held her head sideways, observing the growth of
her darning with a kind of artistic earnestness and pleasure. A small
black cat, which had just come in licking its mouth, put its fore
feet on to the stool and looked up into its mistress’s face. The fire
crackled, and a sound of clattered plates came from the kitchen. Then
was heard another sound, that of the rector’s latch-key at the front
door. Mrs. Vissian quickly put down her work, and, with a bright look,
went from the room.
Kingcote gripped the arm of his chair and uttered a low moan.
“Ha, well met!” exclaimed the rector, as, after divesting himself of
a wet overcoat, he entered, flicking his black trousers with his
handkerchief and dubiously regarding his boots. His cheeks, as always,
were aglow with health and spirits; on his whiskers gleamed drops of
rain. He stood with his back to the fire, and passed his finger round
between collar and neck, a habit of his which always seemed to give him
ease. “I have a message for you----”
The servant entered with a tray of savoury viands. The rector broke off
in his speech to regard the goods which the gods were providing; he did
so with a critical, yet a satisfied, eye.
“A message for _me?_” Kingcote asked indifferently.
“Ha, yes!” Mr. Vissian had been led off into a different train of
thought, it seemed.
“Mrs. Clarendon wants you to go to see her.”
“Indeed!”
“Where did you meet her, dear?” Mrs. Vissian inquired, as she bundled
away her work in preparation for the meal.
“She’s going to sit through the night with Mrs. Stigard. I shall be
surprised if the poor old woman lives till morning; ten to one I
shall be sent for. Lucy,” he added, as if a semi-conscious process of
reflection had just come to clear issue in his mind, “that parcel
for the binder is still lying upstairs. I saw it this morning with
amazement; thought it had gone a week ago.”
“I’ll see to it, dear,” replied his wife, without looking up from the
bread she was cutting. “Pity it has been forgotten.”
“Forgotten! And you, who never forget anything!”
Then, turning to Kingcote, he declaimed, with humorous gesture and
emphasis:
“Brother Cosroe, I find myself aggrieved,
Yet insufficient to express the same,
For it requires a great and thundering speech!”
“By-the-bye,” he continued, as he poured out a glass of ale from the
foam-capped jug, “it’s beyond all doubt that Grubb is wrong in his
calculation. He says, you remember, that the proportion of unstopt
lines in the ‘Two Gentlemen’ is one in eleven. Now I make it one in nine
decimal fifteen, and I’ve been over it twice with the utmost care. This
is a point of considerable importance. Take that chair, Kingcote.”
“Thank you,” Kingcote said, “I shall not eat.”
“Why not? There’s pippins and cheese to come. Then, at least, as
Claudius said to the chickens, drink.”
Kingcote declined, in spite of much hospitable pressure, and kept
his arm-chair. Mr. Vissian applying himself to his supper, talked in
intervals of mastication.
“Mrs. Clarendon wishes you to call tomorrow or next day; pray do so. I
can’t quite make out that mistake of Grubb’s; he must have calculated
from an edition in which the lines are differently arranged. I shall
communicate with him. Lucy, my love, I beg of you to see that those
books are dispatched the first thing to-morrow; the dilatory scoundrel
always keeps me waiting, and there’s a ‘Cursor Mundi’ I want to work
at.”
Kingcote suddenly rose and stepped to Mrs. Vissian to bid her good
night.
“Going, what?” exclaimed the rector, turning round, with an end of his
napkin in each hand. “But I wanted to ask your opinion about---- You
don’t look well, my dear fellow; what is it?”
“Nothing, nothing. I’ve tired myself with walking. I’ll get home.”
“You have an umbrella? Then you must take one of mine. But, I tell you,
you must; it’s raining like a waterspout. Shall I walk with you?”
Kingcote had gone off into the darkness with inaudible replies.
“What is the matter with him?” asked the rector, standing in surprise.
“Is he going to be ill? An awkward look-out in that cottage, with not a
soul near.”
“He was very strange when he came,” Mrs. Vissian remarked. “He said he’d
been walking, and yet wasn’t aware that it had rained.”
“Wasn’t aware? Curious fellow, Kingcote.”
“Don’t you think, Walter, there’s something about him we don’t
understand--something in the circumstances of his life, I mean?”
“A good deal. But he’s a thoroughly good fellow; I must look in at Wood
End the first thing in the morning.”
They resumed their seats.
“Lucy,” observed the rector, “you are blooming to-night! Upon my word,
every year makes you younger and more beautiful.”
“What makes you think of such a thing just now?” asked the other,
laughing as she shook her head.
“I don’t know. I suppose half the joy of happiness comes of contrast
with others’ less fortunate lot.”
“Oh, I don’t like to think that, Walter,” protested the wife rather
sadly.
“Many things are true, my dear, which we don’t like to think.”
Lucy moved to reach something, and took the occasion to kiss her
husband’s forehead.
And Kingcote, plodding through the lane’s mud, reached his door. The
old oak-stump in front of the cottage stood like a night-fear; the copse
behind, all but stripped of leaves, gave forth dismal whisperings; rain
beat hard upon the roof-thatch. The tenant took the key from his pocket
and entered the cold room; he could not see his hands. Without seeking
any light he felt his way up the crazy stairs, and lay down to such rest
as he might find.
It rained till noon of the following day, then began to clear. When a
couple of hours of pale sunshine had half dried the hedges, Kingcote set
forth to walk to Knightswell. Mr. Vissian had been as good as his word
in calling.
“Oh, nothing; a headache,” was the answer he received to his anxious
inquiries. “I hope I wasn’t more than usually ill-mannered; pray ask
Mrs. Vissian to try and tolerate me.”
“You’re getting a little low, it strikes me; too much solitude.
By-the-bye, you’ll look in at Knightswell this afternoon?”
“I suppose Mrs. Clarendon feels obliged to ask me; I dare say she’d
rather I kept away.”
“My dear sir, these are outcomes of the black humour; you are not
yourself. Mrs. Clarendon will be very glad indeed to see you; so she
assured me. I pray you, fight against this tendency to melancholia.”
It was difficult to reach the gates without having previously
collected considerably more mud than one cares to convey into a lady’s
drawing-room. Kingcote endeavoured to remove some of this superfluous
earth as he walked up the drive by rubbing his boots in the wet grass;
the result was not inspiriting.
“Pooh!” he exclaimed impatiently. “If she really cares to see me, she
won’t regard the state of my boots; any one who accepts such as I am,
must take mud and all.”
The thought appeared to amuse him, he walked on with a laugh.
As he entered the garden, he met the trap just driving away from the
house. A gentleman was seated in it. He had rather the look of a man of
business, and was reading a letter. He scanned Kingcote, then resumed
his reading.
Disturbed with the thought that there might be other visitors in the
house, Kingcote hesitated, doubted whether to go on. He made up his mind
to do so, however, not without sundry fresh communings with himself of
a bitter kind. On inquiry he found that Mrs. Clarendon was at home,
and, after a moment in the hall, he was led to the dining-room. Mrs.
Clarendon was writing letters at a table by the window; as she rose, he
thought he detected annoyance on her face.
“I fear I disturb you,” he said coldly.
“You don’t at all; or rather, you will not, if you’ll let me treat you
as a friend. I have just one letter I am obliged to write; I asked
the servant to bring you here, thinking you might like to look at the
pictures till I have done. One or two are thought good, I believe--that
Veronese, and that Ruysdael, and the Greuze yonder. May I?”
It was hard not to smile in reply to her voice and look as she spoke the
last two little words, the more so that it was clear she had something
just now to trouble her quite other than the inopportune arrival of a
visitor. Kingcote walked to the picture she had indicated as a Veronese,
and, affecting to view it, let his eyes wander to Isabel at the
writing-table. She was thinking, previous to commencing her letter. Her
left arm rested on the desk, and the thumb and middle finger of the hand
pressed her forehead; with the end of the penholder she tapped her chin.
He noticed how beautiful was the outline of her head, relieved against
the bright window; noticed, too, the grace of her neck when she bent
forward to write. The scratching of her pen--she wrote very rapidly--was
the only sound in the room.
Kingcote went from picture to picture, his mind not quite tuned to judge
and enjoy their merits. One, however, held him. When lunching here, he
had sat with his back to the wall of which this canvas was the central
ornament, so had not observed it. It was a portrait of Mrs. Clarendon,
painted probably at the time of her marriage, an excellent picture. As
he gazed at it, Isabel came forward.
“Do you recognise it?” she asked, tapping on one hand with the letter
she held in the other.
“Without doubt.”
“And moralise? But,” she added quickly, “I want you to look at this
child’s head. Isn’t it exquisitely sweet?”
His eyes wandered back to the portrait, and, on their way to the door,
he again paused before it.
“Did I show you my ferns the last time you were here?” Isabel asked.
“Will you walk so far?”
She led to the rear of the hall, thence, by a glass door, into a short
glass-roofed passage, the door at the end of which opened into the
conservatory. The first section was a small rotunda, twenty feet in
diameter and twelve feet high. The floor was of unglazed tiles, the
ceiling of ornamental stucco; round the wall was a broad cushioned seat,
above which, commencing at a height of some four feet from the ground,
were windows of richly coloured glass, pictured with leaves and flowers
and fruit. A stand for plants occupied the centre, but at present the
shelves were almost bare.
Mrs. Clarendon threw back one of the windows.
“There is a good view from here,” she said. “A tree used to intercept
it, but we had it cut down in the spring to clear a piece of ground for
tennis.”
From the hill, on which the house was built, a broad stretch of green
park led the eye to a considerable distance in the direction of Salcot.
The roof of the cottage at Wood End was just visible. Kingcote drew
attention to it.
“I don’t see any smoke from the chimney,” Mrs. Clarendon remarked, with
a pleasant glance. “It is to be hoped you keep good fires this damp
weather. Is the place rainproof? These last two days will have tested
it.”
“It seems to be sound.”
“And you still find it your ideal?”
“The cottage? I did not choose it as an ideal abode.”
“But the quietness, the retirement, I mean. In that, at all events, you
have not been disappointed.”
“Certainly not.”
Isabel shuddered.
“How you live there I can’t understand. But I suppose you find it best
for your studies.”
“I don’t study,” returned Kingcote, rather vacantly, looking at the
pictured glass of the window.
Isabel closed the window and passed to the next door.
“I am so sorry Miss Warren is not at home,” she said. “I quite thought
she would be, but at the last moment she decided to go to London to see
something in the South Kensington Museum--oh, Schliemann’s discoveries!”
“Does Miss Warren read Greek and Latin?”
“Latin she does, and is just beginning Greek. She’s a wonderfully clever
girl, but it’s difficult to get her to talk. I am sure you will find her
interesting when you have had opportunities of talking with her.”
They were now in an ordinary hot-house. Isabel pointed out the plants
which interested her.
“I have just had a visit from my lawyer,” she said, as she plucked away
some dead leaves. “What tedious people lawyers are, and so dreadfully
indispensable.”
“I suppose I passed him on the drive.”
“No doubt. But I mustn’t speak ill of the good man; he came all the way
from London to save me a journey.”
They moved about for a few moments in silence.
“There’s nothing here to look at, really,” Mrs. Clarendon said. “If
I could afford it I should have the place kept in good order; but I
can’t.”
She did not appear to notice the look of surprise which Kingcote was for
a moment unable to suppress. Leading the way back to the rotunda,
she placed a loose cushion and seated herself. The warmth here was
temperate, not more than the season required for comfort.
“So you don’t study?” she began, with friendly abruptness, when she had
pointed to a place for her companion. “What, then, do you do? I am rude,
you see, but--I wish to know.”
“I wish I could satisfactorily account for my days. I read a little,
walk a good deal, see the Vissians now and then----”
“And cultivate _ennui_---isn’t it so? A most unprofitable kind of
gardening. I believe you are thoroughly miserable; in fact, you are not
at much pains to hide it.”
“Scarcely as much as courtesy requires, you would say. I wish I could be
more amusing, Mrs. Clarendon.”
“I don’t ask you to be amusing--only to show yourself a little amused at
my impertinent curiosity. Why should you have so forgotten the habit of
cheerfulness?”
“The habit?”
“Certainly. Is it not a habit, as long as we are in health?”
“In people happily endowed, I suppose. Temperament and circumstances may
enable one to keep a bright view of life.”
“Rather, a reasonable effort of the will, I should say. I am often
tempted to be dreary, but I refuse to give way.”
Kingcote smiled, almost laughed.
“You think I have nothing to be dreary about?” she asked, gazing at him
as if trying to read his thoughts. “That is a mistake; I don’t speak
idly. It would be excusable enough if I lost my cheerfulness. But with
me it _is_ a habit. Under any circumstances there’s a great deal of
entertainment to be got out of life. Of course, if one puts oneself
under the most unfavourable conditions--goes to live in a remote
hermitage, shuts oneself from social comforts, reads doleful books about
funeral urns----”
She caught his eye, and broke off with bright laughter.
“You don’t care for Sir Thomas Browne?” he asked.
“I shouldn’t be honest if I said I did. I am afraid that kind of reading
is beyond me. Ada--Miss Warren--enjoys it; but she is intellectual, and
I cannot pretend to be.”
“What do you read, Mrs. Clarendon?”
“The newspapers, and now and then a novel--_voilà tout!_”
“There are better things than books,” observed Kingcote.
A footstep was heard in the inner house.
“Is that you, Reuben?” the lady called, causing the gardener to put his
head through the door with the admission, “It be me, ma’am.”
She exchanged words with him, then proposed to Kingcote that they should
go to the drawing-room for tea. On their way she paused in the hall,
with talk about the panelling. Pointing to a fox’s head:
“A trophy of last season. We killed, that day, a couple of fields behind
Wood End.”
Tea appeared in a few minutes. As Isabel poured out two cups, her guest
made a feint of closely examining a framed photograph of Knightswell,
which stood on the table. He was less at his ease than on the tiled
floor of the conservatory; the dried mud upon his boots showed brutally
against the dark carpet, disposing him to savage humorousness. He became
aware that the beverage was silently held out to him. Her own cup in
hand, Mrs. Clarendon reclined in her chair, and gradually her eyes fixed
themselves upon him. He was conscious of the look before he returned
it, and, speaking at length, did so as if in reply to a question, though
himself interrogative.
“Did you ever visit a London hospital?” Isabel manifested no surprise;
her face had even a quiet smile of satisfaction.
“Yes,” she answered. “I once went to see a servant in St. Thomas’s.”
“Ah, I was studying there--let me see, six years ago. My father was a
medical man, and determined that I should be the same. At his death I
gave it up; I hadn’t finished my course.”
“It was not to your taste?”
“I loathed it. My bad dreams are still of hospital wards and
dissecting-rooms. I cannot bear to see the word ‘hospital’ in print. The
experience of those years has poisoned my life, as thoroughly as a slip
of the lancet would have poisoned my blood.”
“Had you that dislike from the commencement?” Isabel asked, after
putting down her empty cup, and crossing her hands on her lap with an
air of attention.
“No, not in the same degree. I thought this profession would do as well
as another. I believe I even had philanthropic glows now and then, and
perhaps even a period of scientific interest. The latter did not survive
the steps from theory to practice; the former----”
He made a motion with his hand, and smiled.
“The very last thing I should ever have associated with you,” remarked
Isabel, with puzzled thoughtfulness.
“A philanthropic zeal?”
“I didn’t mean that, but I am not sure that I mayn’t include it. Please
go on.”
Kingcote was resting his forehead on his palm; he resumed without
raising his eyes.
“My father practised at Norwich--by-the-bye, our friend, Sir Thomas
Browne’s city. When he died, I went to live with my mother for a while;
my sister had just married and gone to London, and a sister of my
fathers shared our house. I thought of all sorts of things--law,
literature (of course), even commerce. For I had a small capital--some
shares in a joint-stock bank; they gave me a sufficient income, and I
could realise when I needed. For a year I made plans; then of a sudden I
found myself in Paris. You know the Continent?”
“I was in the Riviera for a month, some years ago,” Isabel answered,
without interest. “I can’t afford to go abroad now.”
It was the second time she had used this phrase. Kingcote watched her
countenance.
“What took you to Paris?” she inquired, ignoring the diversion.
“Nothing. I was turning over an old Bradshaw, and details of the journey
caught my eye. Next morning I left Norwich. I was abroad two years.”
“In France all the time?”
“No. France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy. Perhaps I saw the countries
all the better for the necessity I was under of travelling very
cheaply--so cheaply, indeed, I wonder how I did it. I walked oftener
than rode, and dispensed with hotel dinners whenever possible. I have a
diary of the two years’ travel.”
“You will let me read that?” Isabel asked quietly.
He hesitated; his eyes fixed absently on the windows.
“Yes, I will let you read it. It is foolish, boyish; I dare not read it
myself.”
“For what reason?”
“Because there is nothing I hold more in horror than the ghost of my
former self. I deny identity,” he added with sudden bitterness. “How can
one be held responsible for the thoughts and acts of the being who bore
his name years ago? The past is no part of our existing self; we are
free of it, it is buried. That release is the pay Time owes us for doing
his work.”
Isabel regarded him earnestly; her cheek gathered a warmer hue for a
moment.
“You may read it if you care to,” he resumed, falling back to calmness.
“There is no one else to whom I would show it.”
Isabel waited for him to continue. He sat, bent forward, his hands about
one knee.
“And you returned to England with plans?” she asked at length, finding
him persevere in silence.
“No, only with experience. I came back because I had news of my mothers
illness. She was dead and buried before I got home.”
“It strikes me as curious,” he resumed rapidly, “that my childhood,
boyhood in fact, has utterly gone from my memory. I suppose that is
why I have such slight sympathy with children. I have often tried
desperately to recover the consciousness of my young days: it has gone.
My father, my mother, I cannot, recall their relations to me, nor mine
to them. Nay, facts even have left my memory. I know scarcely anything
before the beginning of my student years, and even those are vanishing,
I find. I live only in the present.”
“But the future?”
“No, from looking forward I shrink as much as from looking back.”
There was another silence.
“But since you returned to England?” Isabel inquired, “have you never
thought of another profession?”
Kingcote laughed.
“I had crazy projects for studying art. Gabriel put that into my
head. But my zeal did not last. It is the same in everything; I lack
persistence.”
“And you have----”
“Done nothing, you would say,” Kingcote supplied in the pause she made.
“Literally nothing; wasted my time, lost my best years. The necessary
consequence of being made up of _wants_, without the powers which could
satisfy them. At present I am engaged in the first work I have done for
years.”
“At last, then!” Isabel exclaimed.
“Yes, the work of resigning myself to being nothing, of casting off
the last foolish flattery of self-conceit, of resolutely bidding myself
understand that fate will bear any amount of idle fuming and remain
unchanged. It is a task which has its difficulties; rather harder, on
the whole, than the realisation of death. Did you ever force yourself to
realise death, not to admit it in idle words, but to----”
Isabel motioned him to silence; her face was darkened with a look of
pain, of fear.
“Forgive me,” he said in a lower voice; “to me it is such a familiar
thought. I talk so seldom that I forget the difference between
reflection and conversation.”
She spent a moment in clearing her mind of the disturbing thought--it
seemed strangely disturbing, and at length banished it with the laugh
occasioned by a new idea.
“I wonder,” she said, changing her attitude, “what you----”
“You were going to say----?”
“You spoke of having thought of commerce. Suppose you had become a man
of business, and had made your fortune, what would your views of life
be?”
“Who can say? To begin with, I should only have ruined myself; no
fortune would ever have come in that way. Conceiving that it had, why
I should not be the same person that I am. Circumstances are the mould
which give shape to such metal as we happen to be made of. The metal is
the same always, but it may be cast for mean or for noble uses.”
“I do not think,” Isabel said with gentle reassurance, “that Fate uses
the nobler metals, for mean service; it has abundance of the poorer
stuff at hand.”
“That is very well said; if I dared apply it to myself I might yet live
awhile in the old fools paradise. But there is one gain which saves my
past years from utter vanity--I have learnt to know myself.”
“Have you?”
Kingcote smiled.
“You say that sadly. Yes, you are quite right. Self-knowledge, in my
case, is equivalent to disillusion, loss of hope.”
“I meant nothing of the kind,” she rejoined, after reflecting a moment
on the intention of his words, which she had not at first quite caught.
“I doubt whether you do know yourself. If you did, you would have more
confidence.”
“That is the kindness natural to you. But,” he added, softening the
words by his tone, “you do not know me.”
“No--not yet. It is not easy to know you. I cannot judge you by other
people.” Kingcote rose and walked to the fireplace; Mrs. Clarendon
watched him, but kept her seat.
“You know many people,” he said, speaking with his peculiar abruptness,
which was quite different from the tone of mere familiarity, seemed
indeed rather to accentuate the distance between them.
“Many,” Isabel returned, “in a way.”
“It must be strange to have so many acquaintances. It gives you the
sense of belonging to the world; you do not stand on the outside and
look on.”
“In a theatre--watching from an uncomfortable back seat? The stage is
open to you.”
“And the parts? Even if I were cast, think of my poor memory. The words
are so hard, so artificial. At most I could play the walking gentleman,
and in truth I have no mind for that.”
Isabel smiled, as if involuntarily, and, after glancing round the room,
quitted her seat.
“A friend is coming in a day or two to stay with me,” she said; “not a
mere acquaintance, but really a friend. I should like you to meet her:
you won’t refuse?”
He looked at her and hesitated.
“You can’t help liking Mrs. Stratton. She has been my nearest friend for
years.”
“I may be gone,” Kingcote said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Gone? But you have no intention of leaving?”
“Yes, a half-intention.”
“To return to London?”
“I suppose so.”
She kept silence, and he added:
“My sister’s husband is ill. Circumstances might compel me to return.”
“But you are not summoned? You won’t leave your cottage unless there is
a necessity?”
“Perhaps not; yet I can’t be sure. I act very much on impulse.”
“That phrase reminds me of some one--a very foolish young man, whom you
don’t at all resemble.”
“Some one you know?”
“One of the many; never mind him. But you will not be gone before next
Wednesday; that we may take for granted; unless, of course, you have bad
news. You will come and lunch with us on Wednesday?”
“With yourself and Mrs. Stratton?”
“And Miss Warren. I want you to know her better.”
“Yes, I will come, if I am still at Wood End.”
He held his hand to take leave. Isabel retained it as she spoke.
“In any case you will not go without coming to say good-bye?”
“I could not easily do that, Mrs. Clarendon.” She went with him into the
hall, and, when he had left the house, watched him from the drawing-room
windows till the trees intervened.