It was not till the three had arrived in the oaken parlour of the old
chapel wing that Kingston could pause to take stock of the new-comer,
and revise his first impression. Revise it? It needed only to be
amplified, many new details to be added to the first rough sketch
of his dislike, fresh lines and shades to be stippled in on the
displeasing portrait.
Gundred was one of the comparatively few Englishwomen whose hat always
looks as if it had grown with her hair, and forms an integral part of
her head as Nature made it. Isabel, on the other hand, was one of the
vast majority whose hat sits on their hair awkwardly, like a stranger,
with no suggestion of anything more than an accidental and reluctant
relationship painfully achieved with pins. And it was a bad hat,
too--formless, flabby, large and slatternly in its lines. It made no
pretence at being straight, but flapped and floundered distressingly
as she walked. Clearly Isabel was one of those women who can never
keep a hat straight. Regiments of daggers and skewers cannot prevent
them from giving the impression of living perpetually in a gale. Their
headgear is aimless, uncongenial, offering a perpetual suggestion
of irrelevance. And, as the hat is symptomatic of the woman, the
rest of Isabel fulfilled the dire promise of her headgear--immense,
shapeless, foolishly waved and undulated, of limp, coarse black straw,
with the big bow of cheap satin that did not seem to belong to it,
but to be stuck on casually with one of the protrusive, jetty pins
that ironically pretended to keep it fixed, and, with it, sagged from
side to side in a futile and disconsolately impudent manner. Isabel,
throughout, was flimsy, loose, and flaccid in design. Nothing about
her seemed to be in any relationship to herself or to any other detail
of her dress: her attire was a mere careless aggregation of unsuitable
elements, as depressing in its feeble slovenliness as a party of
ill-assorted people. Her gown dragged and trailed around her here
and there, suggesting that she daily tied it on anew with tapes, and
secured the more salient points with safety-pins. It was not a gown--no
homogeneous creation of any sane mind. It had none of a real gown’s
individuality; it was a mere haphazard covering. Then her boots: again,
as she sat in the settle, the lamplight caught their toes: they were
both wrinkled and bulgy, an ingenious prodigy of the incorrect. As
Kingston watched them in the little oaken room, the lamplight seemed to
concentrate its efforts on their shapeless points: they held his gaze
as if by mesmerism, and seemed to swell monstrously and waver gigantic
in the gloom, till the world was swallowed up in those amorphous lumps.
It was some time before Kingston could turn his attention from the
clothes to the woman that they so disastrously symbolized. Here, too,
he met at every point with a violation of all his favourite canons.
Isabel Darrell was evidently as untidy as her garments. Her figure
was long and elastic. Only a certain arrogant untidiness of carriage
could save her from the reproach of lankiness. She walked with a free
unconventional swing from the hips, with a sort of bounding spring
that might have been more pleasantly noteworthy had it not set her hat
mopping and mowing afresh at every step. At every step it jauntily
jumped, up and down, and from right to left, until the attention was
concentrated on its antics rather than on any beauties that might have
been found in the gait which compelled them. Very different indeed was
the barbaric looseness of Isabel’s movement from the neat and civilized
precision of Gundred’s every motion. That she wore no stays was very
evident, and the flapping freedom of her legs suggested that her nature
had been built for breeches rather than for petticoats.
Her face, when you came to look at it, was not, perhaps, quite so
terrible as might have been expected. In fact, Kingston found it rather
disappointing in its possibilities. He consoled himself by noticing
that the mouth was ridiculously wide, revealing, too, a glimpse of
gold; but, still, it was an eager, mobile mouth, full of energetic
vitality. Gundred’s pretty, definite lips invariably preserved their
proper lines; but Isabel’s had smiles and flashes of feeling that
kept no limits and obeyed no conventions. Agile, too, and expressive
beyond due bounds, they had a gleaming redness that was put to shame
by the decent pallor of her cousin’s. Her face was irregular, uneven,
unconventional, yet not without a certain heady and unlawful charm.
Like her mouth, it was so very much alive. It did not seem, as did
Gundred’s, to be a moulded mask, but to be the woman’s very own naked
soul. The claim of her birth was clear in the strangely delicate beauty
of her ears--the only part of her that could ever, by any possibility,
be called neat or dainty--and in the firm, fine curves of her nose and
upper lip. The nose especially, swift and decided in its line, carried
high and defiant, had the long thin nostrils, sensitive, fierce, cruel
in their lifted curve, that one sees in the conspicuous women of old
ferocious days. Kingston and Gundred had seen them in the face of
Isabel the Queen.
As for the rest of her character, a student might have found traces
of uncontrolled personality in her broad forehead, heavy along
the supraciliary ridge, and in the deep set of her eyes. The eyes
themselves were big and ardent, of that grey-green whose precise
tone can never be actually discerned. Golden at one time, emerald
at another, they are always vivid, blazing, inscrutable. And over
all hung in a dense cloud the heavy obscurity of her hair. Black as
darkness it was, long, straight, and utterly impatient of restraint.
Its arrangement was of a piece with Miss Darrell’s whole accoutrement.
Evidently she was content with twirling it into a rough lump, poking
it here, pinning it inadequately there. At every point it burst its
bonds: loose coils and ropes were dropping and trailing unreproved;
each movement, each jump of the hat, set free a fresh strand. Miss
Darrell clearly counted on the hat’s pressure to preserve at least some
semblance of order; but that unhappy adornment was powerless to exert
any influence; it jigged and jolted as the hair dictated, and the mass
on the top of her head hopped happily in a unanimous heap as she went,
carrying the hat unresisting to its sway.
Meanwhile Gundred was pouring forth a stream of pleasantness. Her
gentle voice ran on in an orderly melody, expounding the joy that she
and Kingston felt in welcoming a kinswoman to Brakelond. And, as she
spoke, not a detail of her cousin’s untidiness escaped her eye. But
the pitying disapproval that she felt found no hint of expression in
her voice. Tone and manner remained calm, dispassionate, colourless
as ever. Isabel, for her part, had no such nice polish, and made no
attempt to conceal her excitement. Her eye roved, her head went eagerly
from side to side, scanning her surroundings. When Gundred paused, she
interposed some quick question, some keen remark on what she saw. But
to her cousin’s formal little speeches she was evidently not attending.
Her manners were careless as her dress.
Kingston, taking no part in the dialogue, devoted himself to watchful
criticism of the enemy. He noticed how the smile flickered and
flashed across her eager face, and how the fine nostrils thrilled
and contracted now and again with enthusiasm. Those nostrils, he
felt, were well known. Where had he seen them? He did not remember
the face of the She-Wolf Queen, but, as he looked at that of Isabel,
stronger and stronger grew his impression that it was no stranger. His
hostile feelings grew and deepened. The face, the manner, the charm
of Isabel made some vehement, inexplicable claim upon him; and in his
resistance to so unreasonable a call, his attitude stiffened itself
into a determined enmity. There could be nothing appealing or desirable
about this sloppy, disorderly creature, yet he felt the beginning--was
it the beginning or the renewal?--of a paradoxical fascination that
contradicted his own most cherished sense of what was admirable. He
looked again at Gundred, and strenuously admired her neat, cool beauty,
the perfection of her appointments, her gestures, her inflections, her
expressions. Nothing was wrong there; no criticism could be made: it
was all just right; there was the admirable, incarnate.
Thence, his judgment reinforced, his gaze swept back to Isabel. There
it was all just wrong: criticism could run riot; there, incarnate,
was the second-rate. Second-rate? Blind instinct protested, and
pointed the way to a discovery. Isabel was not second-rate. By every
rule she should have been, but second-rate she was not. Strangely,
unaccountably not. The rules in this case seemed to have collapsed.
There, at all events, was everything that normally makes up the
second-rate--cheapness, tawdriness, untidiness. But these items could
not be added up to make the expected total. He hated his consciousness
that in her was something--something that he recognised almost as an
old friend--character, enthusiasm, whatever it was, that exempted her
from ordinary rules. And, as he chafed against himself for not being
able to pass the whole-hearted condemnation that his fastidiousness
clamoured for, so he doubly chafed against the mystery in her that
imposed so illogical, so unreasonable a limitation on his judgment,
and forced him to feel, in what all the laws of taste denounced, a
monstrous, fantastic fascination that defied analysis and resistance.
‘So nice,’ he heard Gundred saying; ‘and then you will go with us to
Ivescar, I hope--our place in Yorkshire. I have never been there yet,
of course, so you and I will have great fun exploring it--yes?’
‘Too glorious for words!’ cried Isabel irrelevantly, her eyes roaming
eagerly from wall to wall of the little low room. ‘I have never dreamt
of a fairy-palace like this. That panelling! Oh, it’s too precious.
And the beautiful dim dustiness of it all! One feels as if one
were trespassing on the domain of ghosts. These tiny, crazy, oaken
parlours--they must be simply soaked with memories.’
‘Nice little rooms--yes?’ said Gundred complacently, contriving to
reprove such undisciplined enthusiasm by the very gentleness with
which she accepted it. ‘Dusty’ did not seem to her at all a fitting
compliment to pay the oldest wing of Brakelond. She was certain that
the housemaids discharged their duty perfectly.
‘Nice!’ cried Isabel ardently; ‘what a ridiculous word! They are the
haunt of dead centuries. Don’t you feel either primeval or irreverent
every time you drink a cup of tea here?’
‘Oh no,’ replied Gundred mildly. ‘I hope I should never have such
dreadful feelings anywhere, and the rooms are really quite convenient.
The only thing is that they are so cut off from the rest of the Castle.
You’ll see to-morrow. This wing stands right away from the rest of the
building, on a spur of rock that drops straight into the sea. They are
all wood, these rooms--the oldest part of Brakelond.’
‘I know I thought I had walked miles before we got here,’ replied
Isabel--‘miles, through the most fascinating dreadful dark halls and
passages, just like the dim labyrinths in a Maeterlinck Castle.’
‘Yes,’ answered Gundred; ‘it takes the servants quite a time to answer
the bell; and if one didn’t use hot irons in the urn it would be cold
before it got to us. And what one would do if anybody fainted or
anything I simply can’t imagine. There is just one long passage leading
to these rooms, and all the servants are ever so far away in the
Georgian part.’
‘Well,’ said Isabel, ‘you can make this your last resort. When the
Castle is carried by invaders or catches fire, you can run out here,
and shut yourselves up on your little promontory, and nobody will ever
be able to get at you again.’
‘This wouldn’t be at all a good place if the Castle took fire,’ said
Gundred--‘built of wood, and no other way out. But everything is very
safe, I am truly thankful to say. Our great-uncle Henry saw to all that
before he was taken poorly.’
For a moment she was the Mortimer, talking to a Mortimer, and leaving
her husband outside the conversation. He, for his part, did not notice
the recurrence of that little, proudly conscious yet unconscious
inflection in her voice. He was too much absorbed in watching Isabel.
The returned colonial was even more obviously the daughter of Brakelond
than was Gundred. The vividness of her personality was in full
harmony with the stern old building to which Gundred’s nature only
occasionally chimed in tune. Isabel was the contemporary of Brakelond.
The contrast between the two women was that between a jungle and a
Dutch garden--between a passionate, loose-petalled rose and a decorous,
shapely lily. And, though the lily had its place in the pleasance
of Brakelond, though the Dutch garden might be thrust into its vast
scheme, yet the true frame of the Castle was the untamable wildness
of the forest, its most inevitable ornament the glowing ardour of the
rose. In the long list of all who had been March and Brakelond here and
there a lily-life occurred, it is true; but the rose, flaming, riotous,
red, must always stand for the fittest emblem of the Mortimers.
Suddenly Isabel turned upon Kingston, growing conscious of his
attention.
‘Why do you stare at me?’ she asked. ‘Have we met each other before?’
Kingston doubted; a sense of renewed acquaintance was very strong upon
him. ‘No,’ he replied; ‘we have never met before. I don’t see how we
can ever have met before.’
‘Surely not, dear--no?’ added Gundred.
‘I believe,’ said Isabel abruptly, ‘that one has met everyone in the
world before, and that every now and then one remembers something here
and there. Your husband and I have probably met in a dream, or--perhaps
we loved or hated each other thousands of years ago, or our ancestors
did, which is the same thing.’
‘Oh, I don’t believe that,’ answered Gundred, gentle, but shocked.
‘That’s evolution, isn’t it? A horrid idea--yes?’
Kingston, meanwhile, with stern loyalty, forced himself to compare the
neat and ladylike blankness of Gundred’s mind with the uncontrolled
wanderings of her cousin’s. He himself might have much the same ideas
as Isabel, but how much more restful and proper for a woman to abide by
conventional views. So he denied his own feelings, and disliked more
than ever the untidy apostle who seemed to have a mind as restless as
his own.
Isabel began developing her theme excitedly--talked of the innumerable
ghosts of Brakelond, of inherited memories, previous existences, and
the impossibility of supposing that life begins abruptly at birth
and ends at death. No friend, at the best of times, to abstract
discussions, Gundred had the orderly-minded wife’s intense dislike of
such a display in the mouth of another, and an unmarried, woman. In a
man it was permissible, if regrettable; in a wife it was reprehensible
and unwomanly, though not utterly unpardonable; but in a mere maiden it
was a dishonour to her sex, a brazen revolution, a discarding of that
spiritual chastity which makes the really nice girl’s mind a closed and
cloistered garden, impossible of access. Accordingly she made haste to
nip the conversation.
‘You must be so tired,’ said Gundred, rising suddenly from her chair.
‘I am sure you will be glad to go to bed--yes?’
Isabel was one of the people whom a long journey animates and inspires.
Quite careless as to smuts, dishevelled locks, and crooked hats, she
was at her best in that weary hour of arrival which makes other women
rush to looking-glasses. However, Gundred’s tones clearly conveyed
the impression that etiquette, if not common politeness, demanded
agreement with her statement. Isabel admitted that she was tired
accordingly, and allowed herself to be guided to her room.
Kingston and Gundred grew closer thenceforth. The warmth of their
first married days seemed to have returned. Kingston, in the ardour
with which he regarded his wife, was secretly indemnifying her for
that obstinate folly in his own heart which refused to condemn the
new-comer absolutely. He took countervailing pains to emphasize his
love and admiration for Gundred. And she, realizing that he loved her
more keenly, thanks to the comparison with Isabel, yielded to her own
heart’s desire, passed from acquiescence to reciprocation, and was
delighted to find how successfully she emerged from the comparison, and
shone by the side of ragged, reckless Isabel. If Kingston could not
divine, or dared not divine, the deep current of emotion that underlay
his actions, how much less could such a subtlety be expected of his
wife? She noticed with joy that Isabel was in every way the foil best
calculated to show off her own perfections. She rejoiced to find that
her husband was as keen-eyed as herself for the edifying contrast,
and, though already conceiving a disapproving distrust of Isabel,
believed so strongly that her presence would assure the continuation
of Kingston’s renewed warmth that she decided to prolong her cousin’s
visit to the uttermost.
Her motives in making the suggestion were also her husband’s in
accepting them. He was glad to find himself so appreciating that nice
precision of Gundred’s which he had been beginning to find monotonous;
and, when she suggested that Isabel should more or less make a home
with them till she married, he let himself believe that her presence
would perpetually fire his admiration for Gundred, and fell gladly in
with his wife’s benevolent design.
‘Poor darling,’ said Gundred; ‘she wants forming so. It will be
quite like training a child. I never saw anyone who was so--so--just
_any_how--yes?’
‘A bit all over the place, certainly. Well, she couldn’t do better than
copy you. And you might give her a hat or two. But not that one you
wore in the garden this afternoon.’
‘Did you like it, dear?’
‘Most awfully. It made one feel so cool and summery.’
‘How nice of you to notice my hats, dear! No other woman’s husband does
that.’
‘I always notice everything you wear. Every line of you, every bow and
ribbon. But I can’t always tell you what I think of you. You won’t
often let me. You hold one at arm’s length, and make one think one’s
self silly and childish. If you knew how much one loved every detail of
you, you wouldn’t make one feel such a violent ass every time one tries
to express what one feels.’
‘But I don’t want to make you feel an idiot, Kingston darling. It is
sweet to hear you say how much you--care about me. It seems to make
my whole life seem warm and comfortable. Never leave off feeling as
you do. I think I am always glad to know you feel like that, and
I--well, I do enjoy hearing you tell me so from time to time. But in
the daylight, somehow, it seems undignified and--a little common, to
exchange rhapsodies. And yet I love to think the rhapsodies are there.
And--don’t you find it makes them more precious to keep them rare--yes?’
To Kingston a feeling unexpressed was apt, sooner or later, to
degenerate into atrophy. But in the warmth of the moment he entered
into Gundred’s point of view. Her reserves seemed beautiful and well
bred by the side of his deliberate recollection of Isabel and her
leaping, uncontrolled enthusiasms.
‘Perhaps you are right, you exquisite thing,’ he answered. ‘But now and
then you ought to let me speak. I must tell you now and then, in word
as well as in deed, that you are the most exquisite thing in the world,
the most dainty, the most well-finished, the most adorable thing in
the whole world. Altogether without a fault or a blemish you are, like
a clear polished jewel; one is for ever seeing a fresh facet of your
perfection.’
‘Oh, Kingston, you really mustn’t say such things. It can’t be right. I
am sure you are flattering me.’
‘Ah, that is your usual answer. You always cut me short whenever I try
to tell you what I feel for you. You make love seem silly and indecent.
You are always trying to nip it in the bud.’
Gundred hesitated. Then she smiled. ‘Well, Kingston dear,’ she said,
‘I have not had to nip it in the bud so often lately--no? You have not
given me the chance so very often.’
‘One gets tired of being rebuffed and chilled and made to feel a
demonstrative, tiresome fool.’
‘Not tiresome, darling. And, Kingston, whatever I say, you--you--well,
you need not always pay _quite_ so much attention to it, need you? One
sometimes says a thing because one ought to, not because one means
it--yes? I don’t think I am always quite such a chilly fish as you seem
to imagine. You must not always judge by what one says. I--well, I love
everything you say and do, dear. Don’t ever leave off because you think
I don’t approve. I do, Kingston, whatever I may say--I approve, because
it is you. Only you must not expect me to say so in the daytime, with
the sun showing up everything, and servants all over the place. I
hardly like to say it, even here in the dark, with nobody to see. It
seems to put me into your power too much.’
‘Into my power! Well, I am in yours. That is what marriage is. I am
between your hands--between those wonderful little cool hands of yours,
Gundred. What will you do with me? Crumple me up and throw me away, or
drop me on the rocks, as if I were a toad? That is what your civilized
daytime manner seems to threaten every now and then. Or will you keep
me safe, and stroke my fur the right way, and keep me warm?’
‘I like to hear that my stupid hands can do such wonderful things. Do
you really admire my hands, Kingston dear?’
‘They are just carved ivory fresh from the hands of God. There is
nothing human or hot or earthly about them. They are fresh and calm,
and without spot or frailty. They are the most lovely hands that ever
woman had.’
‘Prettier than poor Isabel’s--no?’
‘Poor Isabel? With her hands like a pair of boxing-gloves? Don’t let
us talk about great floppy Isabel now. It is only you I want to talk
about. You are the only person in the world.’
‘Oh, you mustn’t be so unkind about poor Cousin Isabel,’ protested
Gundred, purring with unconscious pleasure. ‘You must remember she did
not make herself. And think how tiresome it would be if there were
nobody different from me in the whole world. It takes all sorts to make
a world, dear, yes?’
‘No, it doesn’t, wonder-lady. The whole world is nothing but a huge
infinite room of mirrors, reflecting you, always and everywhere.
Hundreds, thousands, millions of you, that is what I see in the world.
How can I make you believe me?’
To make one’s self believe one’s own statements is, unfortunately,
a far easier task than to make other people believe them. However,
Gundred’s mind asked nothing better than to be convinced, and the
roseate state of her rapture was far above analysis and metaphysics.
‘I am sure you would not say such a thing if you did not mean it,
dear,’ she said. ‘It is a beautiful thought of yours. But you must
not grudge poor Isabel a home with us until she marries. After all,
whatever her shortcomings, poor darling, she _is_ my cousin. And so it
won’t be long before she marries. It’s not as if she were just nobody
in particular.’
Kingston, convinced that the presence of Isabel reinforced his
admiration for Gundred, made no opposition.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose it will make much difference to us.
She is not the kind of woman who is likely to come between husband and
wife.’ He laughed.
‘I am certain she is not, poor darling!’ assented Gundred. ‘We must
try to pull her into shape and teach her better,’ she added, with
meditative earnestness, as if coming between husband and wife were the
especial object of a woman’s life and training. ‘And yet, I believe
there are men who admire that sort of girl, Kingston. I never can
understand a man liking a woman who cannot put on a hat properly, but
everybody says they do. I remember Mary Capplethwaite; she was neater
than a new pin, with her hair most beautifully done, and the sweetest
little face. But that did not prevent her husband from running away
with Mildred Gunston, who always looked as if she had been left out
all night in the wind and the rain. Of course, dear Mary may have got
a little monotonous, but, still, I do think it is a great thing to be
tidy and nice--yes?’
‘That is all a man asks of a woman,’ answered Kingston. ‘And one might
ask it for ever of your cousin Isabel, and never get it, I imagine. One
knows that type of woman so well. The idea is that inferior clothes
show a superior soul. The poor things believe that they reveal the
beauty, and the freedom, and the preciousness of their individuality
by neglecting everything that makes the ordinary woman desirable. They
think they are above using the means that no really clever woman ever
disdains. They are the half-baked, the half-clever, the weak, feeble
copies of the strong-minded, strong-souled creatures they imitate and
think they are. One meets them at Oxford; the place swarms with them.
They sham genius by means of untidiness. Half of them are tailor-made
and half of them are æsthetic--in blue plush sleeves and moulting
terra-cotta-coloured plumes, or in short skirts and boat-shaped hats
with a cock’s feather on one side. How well I know it; and that is your
Cousin Isabel.’
‘You really mustn’t dislike the poor darling so dreadfully, dear. We
must make her happy with us. But I am so glad that you agree with me
about that kind of woman. I never can see why one’s hair should not be
properly done, however clever one is--yes? _I_ have never wanted to be
dishevelled or slovenly. We must gradually get poor Isabel into the way
of thinking about her appearance a little more. After all, she ought
to look at least well-bred, dear, and even now she has one or two good
features.’
But Kingston would not agree. He grew forcible on the new-comer’s
imperfections, and would allow her no saving grace of line or carriage.
She was all wrong. He insisted on the fact, proved it again and again,
revelled in it, and turned it to the glorification of his wife.
Gundred, for her part, made a weak defence; without quite knowing
it, she drew joy and sustenance from her husband’s condemnation of
her cousin. It seemed an earnest of his love’s ardour. So she merely
palliated Isabel’s faults, and was more glad to challenge admiration
for herself by their discovery than sorry that such blemishes should be
brought to light. Sweetly and lovingly did she encourage her husband’s
criticisms with her mild protests. Her line was to admit her cousin’s
shortcomings, but to declare that she loved her notwithstanding. Thus
she preserved the full delight of the comparison, while at the same
time preserving also the proper loyalty of a Mortimer for a Mortimer.
But her daylight dignity had melted; the loyalty of a Mortimer was felt
to be now subordinate to that of a wife. Gundred had the happy power of
making a virtue of everything she did, no matter what inconsistencies
her actions might seem to involve. Husband and wife continued to make
love over the faults of their cousin, and it was decided with joy
that the woman whose weaknesses could be turned to such delectable
account must on no account be allowed to deprive them of her company.
Isabel was to live with them, to go with them to Ivescar, to serve as
a perpetual whetstone for Kingston’s admiration of Gundred. Some day
she would undoubtedly marry, but meanwhile Gundred’s kindness should
achieve the double end of giving her cousin a home and turning her
cousin’s existence to a profitable purpose.