MORE LESSONS.
In that way began the companionship that has changed the whole of my
life and Isabel’s life as well--you shall hear how.
I set myself to work, as I had done with Robert, systematically. I
had to drag a girl out of a miserably narrow groove in which she had
lived and moved for five years without any change, almost without fresh
air; without society; without books; without friends or companions; a
burying alive. It is wonderful to me, when I come to think of it, that
her finer nature was not wholly destroyed; most girls after such an
experience would have become a mere household drudge, or a mere clerk,
with, as another natural result of such a life, a snappish temper and
a bitter tongue. Perhaps the presence of her father kept Isabel from
these evils; the old sailor was always cheerful, though fate had given
him small cause for cheerfulness. However, Isabel passed through the
time of prison with no lowering of her moral nature. The social side,
of course, suffered. I had to show her how other girls dressed, and how
they comported themselves. I had to lift her out of the submission and
meekness so ill assorted with her beauty. I had also to give her the
world of books and of art--an easy task, made easy by the adaptability
of the girl and her quick perceptions; a pleasant task, as the charge
of a pretty woman always must be; and a dangerous task, because the
girl was surely the most lovable creature under the canopy of heaven.
Of this danger I had no thought or suspicion. I declare that I was
entirely loyal to Robert, until I discovered a fact which changed the
whole situation. The fact once discovered, the rest was natural.
My lessons in the study of Nature and Humanity were continued during
the months of June and July. On Saturdays we went afield--to Hampton,
to Richmond, to Dulwich, to Sydenham, to Loughton, to Chigwell, to
Theydon Bois, to Chingford, to St. Alban’s--wherever there are trees
and gardens to be seen. Or we went up the river to Maidenhead, Bray,
Windsor, Weybridge; or down the river to Greenwich. On Sunday morning I
took her generally to Westminster, where she heard the silver voices of
the choir ringing in the roof while we sat in a corner of the transept
beside the tombs. At such a time I would watch her and mark how her
spirit was rapt and carried away. When the music ceased we would get up
and go out and seek the peaceful cloister, cool and shady, on the south
side of the church, and there sit together, mostly in silence.
‘Yours are new thoughts, Isabel,’ I said one Sunday morning, while we
sat in this quiet place.
‘They are all new thoughts now,’ she replied. ‘Thanks to you. What did
I think about formerly? I don’t remember. Terrors, mostly.’
‘And now they are pleasant thoughts?’
‘Oh! what can they be but pleasant? You have taken me into another
world. How could I live so long, and be so contented?’
‘It is a finer and a better world?’
‘It is far, far broader, to begin with; and far, far finer. Whether it
is better, George, I do not know. I only see it from the outside. It is
happier; of that I am quite sure.’
‘It may well be happier. As for its being better--I meant better in the
sense of more comfortable; you mean more virtuous. Well, nobody knows,
not even a Father Confessor, whether one part of the world is more
virtuous than another part. You see, we never get to the real inside
of any part--not even our own corner. And most of us can never get
outside our own corner at all. Nobody else ever lived in such a corner
as you; but you haven’t got outside that corner yet, and you never
will. We only see little bits of the world. My own belief--but I may
be wrong--is that we are all pretty much alike; all, as the children
say, up and down, and round about--good, and bad, and middling. We are
anxious, first of all, and above all, to get as much solid comfort for
ourselves as we can.’
She sighed. ‘I confess,’ she said, ‘that I desire happiness more and
more. But it is not altogether solid comfort that I look for.’
‘Your views of happiness have broadened, Isabel. What made your
happiness two months ago?’
‘There was no happiness, nor much unhappiness. It seemed now as if I
lived always in a sort of twilight. No trees even, except those in the
burial-ground; no flowers, no fresh country, no books, no poetry, no
Cathedral music.’
‘There is a pretty story, an old story, about a prisoner, and about
a flower which sprang up, and grew, and blossomed between the chinks
of the stones. You are that prisoner, Isabel, and the flower is your
soul, which has grown up and blossomed in the dark and narrow prison.
But we must not call Robert the gaoler.’
‘Oh no, I must not blame Robert; pray do not think that I do. He has
been so full of work and thought that, of course, he could not tell;
and why should he be dragged out of his way to think of me? And my
father is growing old. No, no; there is no one to blame. Not Robert--oh
no, never Robert.’
Let me make a clean breast of it; not that I am penitent, but quite
the contrary. I ought, I suppose, to have discontinued these little
expeditions as soon as I learned what was coming out of them. That
would be the line adopted by the sage of seventy springs. I had only
five-and-twenty. Moreover, it is very difficult to say when friendship
is transformed into love; the young man goes on; the companionship,
always delightful, becomes too delightful to give up; the companion
creeps into his heart and remains there until one day he awakes to
the consciousness that life without that companion will henceforth be
intolerable.
But we entered upon the thing loyally; we had no thought of any danger;
then, no one interfered with us; we went where we pleased. I began
with thinking about Isabel when I ought to have been considering the
lines of a boat; I began to think how she looked, what she said; her
face haunted me--her sweet, soft face, full of purity, grace, and every
womanly virtue; her eyes--her deep and limpid eyes, wells of holy
thoughts, charged with goodness; her voice--the tones of her voice,
which had become to me the sweetest music in the world. I dreamed
of these things at night, I thought of them all day, long before I
understood what had happened to me, long before Isabel suspected
anything. The last thing, indeed, which the maiden feared or suspected
was the thing that happened. She was engaged to Robert; and I was
Robert’s cousin, and by Robert’s permission I was showing her the
world. Even a girl who knows the ways of the world, and especially
the treacherous, villainous, deceptive ways of young men, and would
be therefore suspicious in such a case, might have thought that
there was some security in common loyalty and friendship. But Isabel
had no knowledge of the world, and no experience of young men, and
consequently no suspicion.
This very ignorance of danger made things more dangerous. Her
ignorance encouraged her to be perfectly frank and confiding. She
showed openly all the pleasure she felt in these little expeditions,
and she manifested her innocent affection--I call it affection, not
friendship--towards me so unreservedly that it was impossible even to
tell her when the thing began, or even when the thing had grown until
it became a very furnace of passion.
There you see--it happened so. It was quite natural--it was severely
logical--I now understand that nothing else was possible--it was
inevitable. No man going about day after day, with so sweet a
companion, could fail to fall in love with her. I did fall head over
heels, up to my neck, in love. That mattered nothing so long as neither
Robert nor Isabel suspected it. As for myself, why, at that time, I did
not ask myself what was going to happen, or what would in the end come
of it. Enough for me just to enjoy the presence and the sight of her,
the touch of her hand, the rustle of her dress. Why, since by marriage
we are taught that the man must worship the woman, then was I married
to Isabel long before she knew or suspected that I so much as held that
form of faith or believed that teaching.
The end--I mean the end of unsuspecting confidence--arrived
unexpectedly. It came one evening, about the middle of July, and
at sunset. We were sitting in the place where I had taken Isabel
first--the park near Rickmansworth. She sang hymns no more, nor did she
faint at beholding the splendour and the glory of the world; but she
sat in silence, gazing upon the western glow in the sky, and on the
flowing river at her feet, where the glow was reflected.
Could this glorious creature be the pale and drooping maiden whom I
brought here six weeks before? Now she sat upright, cheeks glowing,
eyes uplifted, limpid and lovely eyes, with rounded figure and head
erect--a girl full of life and of the joy of youth.
‘Of all the places that we have seen together, George,’ she said, ‘this
is the one that I love best.’
‘It is where you first felt the beauty of the world, Isabel, and it was
too much for you.’
‘How came you to think about taking me out? It has been so wonderfully
good of you, George. I can never think enough about it.’
‘In my capacity of great Physician, I discovered that you were
suffering from monotony, so I spoke to Robert, and we arranged it.’
A cloud passed over her face, but only for a moment.
‘If our little expeditions have put colour into your cheeks and light
into your eyes--your very lovely eyes, Isabel----’
‘Please, George, no compliments.’
‘Well, then, if they have done you good--there is a nice homely
way to put it--I ought to be quite contented and happy. You see,
Isabel’--this was rather a risky thing to say; one could not meet her
eyes--‘it has been so great a happiness to have you for a companion,
that you must just think how good it has been of you to come with me.’
Still she did not suspect what was in my mind. When she began to talk
about wonderful goodness it was impossible, of course, not to point out
that on the other hand I was the one who should be really grateful and
deeply obliged for days and evenings of pure and unmixed happiness,
reading the soul--so high above my own--the sweet and lovely soul of
this most sweet and lovely maiden. I believe I have said these words
about her already. Never mind. I say, then, that I was constrained to
put the case before her in its true light.
‘You say this,’ she replied, ‘out of your kindness. Of course, I
can never believe that you really wanted the company of a girl so
shamefully ignorant as myself. Why, I could talk about nothing.
Besides, you have that other friend of whom you have told me--Lady
Frances. Have you not neglected her?’
‘Lady Frances does not mind,’ I said. ‘And I have not neglected her,
and I do assure you, Isabel, that I am perfectly in earnest when I
speak about the happiness of your companionship. I wanted, at first,
I confess, only to clear away the clouds from your face and from your
mind by a change of place and some kind of amusement. I cannot bear to
see any girl unhappy. That was all I thought about at first, when we
began to go about together. Afterwards----’ And here I stopped.
‘The clouds are gone,’ she replied, ‘so there is no more need for any
more evenings abroad. Now, I suppose, I must make up my mind to go
back to Wapping, and to stay there. Well, I have a very happy time to
remember.’
‘Indeed, you shall not, Isabel, if I can help it. Go back to the old
life? Not if I have any voice in the matter. Besides, the clouds are
not all gone. There is one that falls on you quite suddenly, and
sometimes lies upon you for an hour or more. Why, it has fallen now.
You cloud over suddenly, Isabel. It is some thought that comes to you
uninvited. Your face must be all sunshine or all cloud. Never was such
a tell-tale face.’
She blushed; but the cloud lay there still.
‘What is it, Isabel? What is this cloud? Is it anything that I can
remove?’
‘No one can remove it,’ she said.
‘Is it anything--but I have no right to ask. Only, Isabel, if you like
to tell me, I might advise.’
She remained silent, but the tears gathered in her eyes.
‘Tell me, Isabel,’ I pressed her. ‘I asked you once before, in the old
burial-ground.’
‘I do not dare. I am ashamed. You will think me the most ungrateful of
women if I tell you.’
‘Then tell me, and let me scold you.’
‘It is--it is’--she hung her head--‘it is Robert.’
‘What has Robert done?’
‘It is because he has promised to marry me.’
Then the scales fell from my eyes, and I understood the cloud. I ought
to have known. She told me as much before.’
‘Oh, he has been so good! I have told you--we owe everything to
him--I am bound to him by chains--and yet--yet---- Oh, George, I am
telling you everything. I am ashamed--yet I must tell someone, because
sometimes I think I shall go mad; it weighs me down night and day.
He has promised to marry me; his promises are sacred, and it is the
thought of marrying him, never to be away from him; to be with him
always; always to be his servant and to do what he orders; and never
a single kind word, or one look of interest even, not to speak of--of
affection. I am as disregarded as his office-boy; I am nothing more
than a machine. How can I do anything but tremble at the thought of
marrying such a man?’
‘Then you must yourself break off your engagement.’
‘No, no. I cannot. You forget, George, that we are his dependents, my
father and I, both of us. I must do what Robert wishes--all that Robert
wishes.’
I groaned.
‘And now you know the meaning of the cloud. I am only happy when I can
forget my own future. And all your kindness is thrown away, because the
thought of my own future never leaves me altogether--even with you.’
And then it was that I quite lost my self-control.
‘Oh, Isabel!’ I cried. ‘You shall not marry him. Oh, my love! my love!
you shall not marry him.’
I took her hands. She cried out and sprang to her feet. I threw my arms
round her and kissed her, being carried quite beyond my own control.
And I told her, in words that I cannot, dare not, set down here for all
the world to see, all that was lying in my heart.
She pushed me from her, and sank back upon the fallen tree on which she
had been sitting, and buried her face in her hands.
‘Isabel!’ I whispered. ‘Isabel! if you can love me!’
She gave me her hand. ‘Let me hear it once--and say it once, for the
first time and the last. Oh, George--and I did not know it!’
I kissed her again and again. It makes my heart leap up still only to
think of that moment.
Then she stood up. ‘It is the first time and the last, George,’ she
said. ‘I am engaged to your cousin Robert.’
‘Yes, Isabel.’
‘Now we will go home. We will not forget this evening, George. I thank
God--yes, I thank God we have told each other. Now I shall feel,
whatever happens, that I have been loved--even I, whose promised
husband scorns me.’ Her voice broke into a sob. ‘But we must never,
never again speak of it. Never, never. You have loved me for a little,
and that is enough for me--to gladden all my life. Even I have been
loved--even I----’
I made no reply, because I was fully resolved, you see, somehow to
speak of it again. In fact, I felt that it was impossible to consider
any other future than one in which the subject would always form the
chief topic of conversation.
‘Give me your promise, George,’ she went on. ‘Promise that you will
never speak to me of love again.’
‘I promise, Isabel, that I will never again speak to you of love until
Robert himself has set you free. Will that do?’
How I proposed at that moment to persuade Robert I do not know. How I
did actually and afterwards persuade him you shall presently learn.