Gundred, however, was too good a wife to make useless difficulties. As
her husband had invited this young man, this young man must clearly
be endured. After all, the visit would soon be over, and she herself
need not put in more than a bare appearance. To tell the truth, she
was not quite easy as to her own attitude in the matter. It could not
be altogether right to conceive such violent antipathies, and she was
painfully surprised to find herself entertaining such a feeling. She
told herself that there could be no smoke without fire, and that sooner
or later her infallible female instinct would be found justified. But
until it should be so found justified, she was far too conscientiously
good a woman to be happy in the indulgence of an unreasonable hatred.
Accordingly, she deliberately suppressed her annoyance, and made it her
penance to receive Ivor Restormel on the morrow with her usual quiet
grace. The effort brought its own reward; dislike him mysteriously,
instinctively, she still did and always would, but there was no longer
the uncomfortable vehemence about the feeling. She could tolerate him,
though she could not make him welcome.
Ivor Restormel walked over in the afternoon. Gundred gave him tea
and then left him to her husband’s care, on the plea of a post to
catch. Kingston took his guest into the new wing that had been built
on the promontory after the fire, and proceeded to question him
and talk to him more exhaustively than had been possible the night
before amid the exigencies of a party, no matter how scandalously
disregarded. There was no beginning about their friendship, it seemed
to Kingston, no breaking of new ground. It was simply the picking up
of a dropped thread where it had fallen. The feeling was strange and
almost uncanny, the more so that it was evidently not shared by Ivor
Restormel. He received his host’s overtures with diffidence, seemed
ill at ease, at a loss to understand the warmth of his treatment. Mr.
Darnley was nothing more to him than a chance acquaintance of the night
before. As the dialogue went forward, too, the visitor’s uneasiness
became more and more marked. His face took on a strange look of strain
and anxiety; in his speech could be heard from time to time that note
of abstraction which can be heard in a voice whose owner is trying
hard to keep up a conversation, while his mind is fixed far away on
the contemplation of unpleasant private matters. Kingston watched
the expression of his guest’s eyes, the curious hunted fear that his
whole manner began to suggest, and again experienced more strongly
than ever the mysterious feeling of having seen that manner, that
strained expression, somewhere before. His memory must be playing him
the maddest tricks; for he could have sworn that this boy was well
known to him in every detail of face and disposition; yet by now it was
clearly proved--as clearly proved, at least, as anything in this world
could ever be--that the two had never met, and never even set eyes on
each other before. But Kingston still hoped against hope that a chance
discovery in the dialogue might reveal some hint or glimpse of a former
meeting, however brief, partial, trifling. Thus, and thus alone, could
his instinct be justified.
But, as the conversation went forward, the visitor’s uneasiness grew
keener and more unsettling. At last it could no longer be controlled.
‘I should awfully like to see some more of the Castle,’ he said. ‘You
said something last night about showing me the pictures.’
But the boy’s evident wish to move was too interesting to be gratified.
Kingston saw it, could not understand it, meant to understand it.
‘Oh, there will be heaps of time,’ he replied. ‘You must come over
again some afternoon. But it takes at least a day to see the Castle
thoroughly. We may just as well stay here peacefully. Really, these are
the most comfortable rooms in the whole building, although they are
quite modern.’
‘Modern, are they?’ answered young Restormel. It was a silly answer,
and betrayed the inattention of his mind. For the rooms were too
obviously modern for any comment on the fact to be other than fatuous.
‘Yes, they were only built about--yes, twenty years ago.’
Ivor Restormel leapt to his feet. His anxiety culminated, seemed
mysteriously confirmed. His eyes were filled with a horror he was
trying to conceal. ‘Surely,’ he stammered, ‘these are not the rooms
that were restored after the----’
‘After the fire? Yes. This was where the old wing stood.’
‘I thought so; I knew they must be,’ replied Ivor Restormel with forced
calm. ‘And they have not got rid of the smell yet. I noticed it as soon
as I got inside.’
‘The smell! What smell?’ asked his host, amused by this odd notion of
his visitor’s, and sniffing about for the aroma of dead rats.
‘The smell of fire,’ said Ivor Restormel, speaking in a low voice, as
of a thing too dreadful to be talked of in normal tones. ‘The whole
place is full of the smell of fire. Don’t you notice it, Mr. Darnley?
I suppose nothing can be on fire now? No; it is the stale old smell of
a fire that has been out for a long time--the sharp, beastly smell of
charred wood and burnt stone. I know it so well.’ He shivered against
his will.
Kingston was startled at this strange new development. He had heard
nothing of Ivor Restormel’s hidden horror. Gundred had disliked the
whole subject too much to tattle about it. Kingston was astounded
at the sudden fantastic anxiety of his guest, the perturbation of
his manners, his evident discomposure. So vivid was Ivor Restormel’s
apprehension that it even impressed itself on Kingston. The host
inhaled the air sharply. There was not the faintest suggestion of fire
or smoke. The room was sleepily fragrant with potpourri from the old
perforated jade censer on the corner table. Otherwise there was nothing
in the air. And yet it was evident that Ivor Restormel was dodging
some secret terror that was almost on the point of breaking covert and
declaring itself.
‘You have got a most wonderful imagination,’ said Kingston at last.
‘There is no smell of fire here. On my word, there isn’t. There
couldn’t be. The fire was put out twenty years ago, hang it all! The
smell of it could not very well be hanging about here still.’
‘No; I suppose not,’ answered the other, obviously quite unconvinced.
Then, lamely, hesitatingly, he explained the reasons why the memories
of the catastrophe at Brakelond had become so closely involved with his
own life, and what a troublesome legacy it had left him through the
shock that his mother had suffered. Kingston was more and more stirred.
‘I never heard anything more extraordinary,’ he replied. ‘Suggestion,
I suppose it must be. And this room makes you feel uncomfortable even
now, I can see, and you manage to smell fire where there has been no
fire for twenty years. And yet you have no more recollections?’
‘Recollections? I don’t quite know what there could be for me to
recollect.’
‘Well, to tell you the truth, when I first saw you on the road, I had
a vague and yet a very strong feeling that you and I have met before,
and known each other quite well. I imagine that was all a mistake? See
if you can’t remember any previous meeting between us, though. It would
be interesting if you could, for my instinct was quite extraordinarily
clear on the point, though my memory seems to say accurately and
definitely that I had never seen your face till I passed you in the car
yesterday afternoon.’
Ivor Restormel shook his head positively, and made haste to answer in
the negative. The question did not interest him in the least. The one
feeling of which he was conscious was his tyrannous need of getting
away from those serene and pleasant modern rooms, which, to his excited
fancy, seemed full of horrid ghosts.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I am pretty well certain we can never have met
before. I was brought up abroad, you see, by my mother, after they
sold Restormel. And the last two or three years I have been living
at Oxford. I have not been to London or anywhere where we could have
met. No--no.... I say, I am a most awful idiot to-day. I can’t imagine
what has come over me,’ he cried abruptly. ‘But this jolly room of
yours--well, it feels to me horribly uncanny. You say there is no fire,
and of course there isn’t; yet the smell is in my nostrils and my
throat all the time, choking and stifling me. Did you ever hear such
rot? Do you mind if we go out in the garden or somewhere? I’m not often
taken like this, please believe me. I have never felt anything like
this in my life. I told you how I hate and dread fire, though I have
never suffered from it; but nothing has ever given me such an awful
impression of fire as I feel here to-day.’
He had been standing ever since he rose from his chair, or walking
uneasily from end to end of the room. Now he stood in front of his
host, gazing at him with eyes which, for all his tongue’s pretence at
ease, were filled with a haunting dread. Kingston was deeply moved by
the spectacle of this fighting terror before him. The terror moved
his pity, the courage of its victim moved his admiration. And, behind
everything else lay the curiosity that this manifestation woke in him.
But he could no longer disregard his visitor’s eagerness to be gone
elsewhere. He rose from the window-seat.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I cannot understand it. Yes, let us go, if you
wish. We might take a turn in the garden. I would not have brought you
in here if I had had the slightest idea that you feel like this. But
I never could have believed that such a stretch of imagination was
possible.’ Kingston broke off, studying the controlled fear in the
young man’s face. Then he abruptly began again. ‘Look here,’ he said,
‘do tell me exactly what it is you see and feel that gets on your
nerves so. I cannot understand it.’
Ivor Restormel glanced round the room. Under Gundred’s supervision it
had been rebuilt in a cool and placid modern style. Everything in it
was pretty, graceful, harmonious. The walls were panelled in white;
flowers were standing about in tall blue glasses. The big windows
admitted shafts of soft afternoon light through their drawn white
blinds, and the whole impression was one of fragrant, comfortable peace.
But Ivor Restormel’s eyes saw something very different.
After a pause he answered, huskily, in broken, difficult tones:
‘You will think me more of an ass than you do already,’ he replied.
‘I suppose it must be my mother’s stories that account for it. But,
besides the awful smell of burning here, I seem to see a horrible
wreckage of charred ruins. Oh, I can see these walls and all the jolly
decorations. And yet, somehow, when I look again they are not there any
longer. There is only the shell of some other building, something all
fallen in and blistered and blackened with fire. Great heaps of ashes
and bleached rubbish are piled high between what is left of the walls.
The whole place is choking with the stale fumes of smoke. And the rooms
are open to the grey sky far overhead; and grey drifts of rain come
dashing in from time to time on the smouldering masses.’
Kingston watched his visitor’s face with an amazement that bereft him
of words.
‘By God!’ he said slowly, wondering where his thoughts would lead him
in the next few minutes. ‘By God! you describe it exactly as if you had
been here twenty years ago.’
Ivor Restormel shook his head fiercely, as if trying to shake off some
horrid, persistent memory.
‘I feel as if I had,’ he replied suddenly. ‘I feel just as if I had
been here twenty years ago, worse luck. The moment I came into the room
I saw it all. I felt--oh, well, I felt that I must have been here in
the ruins ever so long ago, and had the worst time here that anyone
ever had--as if I had been tied by the leg here, somehow, and pinned
down in damnable terror and pain.’
‘Come along out of it,’ said Kingston quietly, after a pause. He
dared not trust himself to say more. An idea had been born in his
brain--born, or called once more to life?--an idea so wild, so
fantastic, that he hardly dared to entertain it. And yet, in the
depths of his heart, he knew that it was the truth. In silence he led
the way towards the Castle, while his visitor tried to impress upon his
unheeding ears a dozen apologies for the gross and idiotic folly of
which his nerves had made him guilty.
As soon as he was out of the fateful room all his self-possession
seemed to have returned, and he could not account for the sudden
vertigo of terror that had haunted him there. What had come over him
he could not imagine. Mr. Darnley must certainly think him the most
confounded idiot. What must Mr. Darnley think of anyone who could
let himself be made such a rude, mannerless idiot of by a sort of
hysterical schoolgirl qualm? The whole thing was too asinine for words.
He had no excuse to make.
And all the time Mr. Darnley said nothing, heard nothing of his guest’s
protestations. This beautiful nervous boy had no interest for Kingston
Darnley; he did not care what he said or felt or looked like. But
the terror that haunted Ivor Restormel was not his; the mysterious
attraction that filled him was not his own. Somewhere, deep down in
his being, lived Something that had felt that terror, Something that
exercised that attraction over Kingston, Something that called to
Kingston as an old friend. And that Something, Kingston knew it, heard
it calling to him imperiously out of the eternal past. It was the
Something that had once carried the name and shape of Isabel. There was
no mistaking it. Now at last Kingston understood what it was that had
gripped him yesterday on the road, what inexplicable summons of old
friendship. The dead had come back to him after many years. But clothed
in alien flesh, forming part of a new personality, shut off from
recognition by the barriers of the body. For in this boy lived only
the one fragmentary recollection of the final catastrophe. Nothing
in Kingston’s soul, no call of ancient kinship, no appeal to bygone
pledges, could penetrate to the ears of that secret self. The dead had
come back, known to him, but incapable of knowing him again. How could
he wake memory in that changed thing which had returned, at once the
same, and yet so different, in its freedom from that bond which once
had made them one, and now, still as strong as ever in the hold it had
over himself, had broken and fallen away for ever from the other soul
it had gripped? Kingston looked at his visitor with a feeling that drew
near to hatred. This stranger held the thing he still loved. The body
and the shape of it was an irrelevant, a maddening accident; it was
the secret thing that Kingston called to, the secret thing that was
prevented from hearing by this new personality in which it had clothed
itself. Kingston felt a sharp grudge against Ivor Restormel, his body,
his brain, his beauty. That body, that brain, that beauty made the
locked casket that imprisoned the living dead. And yet, inasmuch as
Ivor Restormel was the shrine of that lost passion, he was, on the
other hand, ineffably precious and sacred. He could not be let go.
The boy himself was less than nothing; but what he held was more than
everything.
Ivor Restormel thought his host justifiably offended, and tried to
mitigate the effect of his own silly rudeness. But his pleasant chatter
fell on unheeding ears, and he began to think that he had alienated Mr.
Darnley beyond reconciliation. And no wonder. Who could be expected to
put up with a puling idiot like that? Ivor Restormel mentally kicked
himself, and felt that he would gladly have vindicated his character by
returning into those haunted rooms. Without having any special wish to
please either of the Darnleys, he was one of those people who always
like to be popular, and grow faintly unhappy when they fail to make a
favourable impression. He did all he could to mollify his host, and was
distressed, though not surprised, to find all his efforts fall flat.
In ordinary circumstances he would not have minded so much; but now he
felt that he really owed Mr. Darnley some extra pleasantness, if only
to make up for having just made so egregious an ass of himself. He
tried his level best to set matters right; but for a long time he got
no answer--or at most an absent-minded monosyllable. Kingston was not
yet equal to conversing with this tiresome young interloper who had
come between himself and the dead, while, at the same time, revealing
at last to him the return of the lost. They walked in silence up and
down the garden together, while Gundred watched them from an upper
window, disliking the visitor as much as ever, and wondering when in
the world he would begin to think about going.
‘Wanted to see the pictures, didn’t you?’ said Kingston abruptly at
last, cutting, regardless, into something that the other was saying.
Ivor Restormel felt more and more out of place. Evidently he would do
well to say good-bye. However, he could not escape from this civility
of his host, however perfunctory. So he followed Kingston as he
strode into the Castle, paying no attention to the boy at his heels.
Gradually Kingston was beginning to recover his composure and face the
inevitable. This wonderful secret certainty of his must be cherished
and acted on, though already he began to taste something of the pain
that had been foretold him, from incessant yearning knowledge of a
thing that could not recognise him in turn, and could never recognise
him again. The door between them was of locked iron--a vain agony to
beat against. And yet it was not an agony that he could spare himself,
for, though the door was of locked iron for ever, yet behind it dwelt
the thing he had sought for so long. He saw now the irony of his fate.
But nothing could divert its course. Ivor Restormel found his host
growing calmer and more courteous again. Soon he was even cordial,
and the tension of the situation seemed at an end. The two men passed
through the picture-gallery, giving a share of attention to every
picture, though each, in reality, was busy with his own thoughts, Ivor
feeling the satisfaction of successful effort, and Kingston foreboding
the anguish of an effort that could never be successful. At last they
had gone the length of the gallery, and stood before the old panel of
Queen Isabel.
‘Here is the She-wolf,’ said Kingston pleasantly. ‘Don’t you think she
looks her name? Isabel of France and England.’
The younger man laughed uneasily.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘An evil lady, I suppose? It is curious what a
horror I have of the very name. Isabel--it seems to stand to me for
everything I hate most in the world, fire included. I must have some
beastly memory somewhere connected with the name of Isabel, but I
cannot lay my hands upon it.’
The little artless admission roused Kingston to the highest point of
excitement. He must penetrate to the secret haunt of that soul which
had such clear flashes of recognition. The task _must_ not be hopeless.
He turned almost savagely upon his guest.
‘Restormel,’ he said, ‘what do you mean by that? For God’s sake,
think--think hard, and tell me what you mean by that. Think, man,
think.’
The vehemence of his attack, however, had no effect upon the younger
man. Kingston had hoped that by its sheer sudden intensity it must
inevitably strike a chord of memory, must inevitably rouse up the
sleeping soul with its cry of eagerness. But it failed--failed
utterly, and his mood fell back baffled.
‘I’d tell you if I could,’ protested Ivor. ‘But, upon my soul, I can’t.
It is just another of my idiotic crazes. I wish I had not told you now.
It only makes one seem more of an ass than one did before. Anyhow, I
think I must be getting back to Restormel, Mr. Darnley. Thanks so much
for letting me come over. I have awfully enjoyed seeing the Castle.
Will you say good-bye for me to Lady Gundred?’
‘Look here,’ said Kingston, suddenly kindled to anxiety by this threat
of departure--‘look here. What are you going to do, Restormel, when you
leave the Hoope-Arkwrights? I mean, what are your plans in life?’
‘Mine? Oh, well, I hardly know. I have got to make some money somehow.
There isn’t a penny-piece for us to live on. I shall have to be a
clerk, or something of the kind, I imagine. My mother sent me to Oxford
because she wanted me to make my living by teaching. But it does not
seem that there is much chance of that nowadays. The world swarms with
tutors and masters.’
Kingston saw his chance. It was unthinkable that this recovered joy of
his life should be allowed to pass away again immediately, leaving him
in the darkness that he had endured for twenty years. He could not bear
the thought of parting with Ivor Restormel. The very notion was a pain.
‘But look here,’ he said abruptly, ‘why not come to us and be my
secretary, and do tutor to my son Jim, perhaps, in the holidays? I am
sure we should all get on capitally together, and, honestly, I don’t
think that you could easily pick up anything much better. And we’d do
our best for you. What do you say?’
Ivor, confounded at this sudden proposition, the last thing that
he had expected after his behaviour of that afternoon, lost himself
in thanks and self-depreciation. Kingston would hear of no such
hesitations.
‘We might just as well settle it now,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to
consider much, or think over--that is, if you really care to try this
kind of work. You know about us, and we know about you; and, so far as
we are concerned, I don’t see that anything could possibly have fallen
out more conveniently.’
‘But I--do you think I should be able to do what you want?’ asked Ivor
Restormel. ‘Remember, please, I have never attempted anything of the
sort before. You may not find me what you like, after all.’
‘One knows that sort of thing as well at the end of five minutes, very
often, as at the end of five years. I am quite certain that you are
exactly the sort of fellow we want. I knew it the first moment we met.
So don’t make any more difficulties or apologies, but just say that you
will come to us.’
‘But of course, if you really think--well, I shall be delighted, of
course.’
‘That’s right. And there’s no particular reason for putting things
off, is there? So come to us as soon as you can. To-morrow, or the day
after. You won’t want to stay much longer with those Hoope-Arkwright
people. And I should like you to get accustomed to us and the place
before we go off to my place in Yorkshire and our son Jim comes home.’
And so, after a few more faint demurrings, Ivor Restormel, bewildered
and dazed by the rapid development of events, found himself pledged
to take up his residence at Brakelond with the least possible delay.
Matters being thus settled to Kingston’s satisfaction, he allowed his
visitor to depart, and then began to brace himself to the task of
breaking his latest plan to Gundred.
The good wife neither raves nor flouts. But, if she be good enough,
she has the power of being quite wonderfully disagreeable in a mild
and dutiful manner. Gundred had never countered Kingston with any
ill-bred vehemence, but by now he knew that on occasions she could don
a pious resignation inexpressibly hard to bear. Some such display, he
was afraid, might greet his announcement, for, to his experienced eye,
it was already plain that she did not approve of Ivor Restormel. Her
sweetness to him had had a certain glacial tone which Kingston well
knew. He anticipated that she might make difficulties.
But events were moving too rapidly for Gundred’s orderly habit of mind.
She was too much taken aback when she heard the arrangement that her
husband had made to offer any coherent or valid opposition. A vague
passion of wrath possessed her, and her anger lost half its efficacy
with all its usual crushing calm. For Gundred, the imperturbably
gentle and correct, so far forgot herself as to combat Kingston’s
plan with violent obloquy. Never before had he seen her unreasonable,
or hysterically bellicose; and the unusual spectacle, so far from
compelling his sympathy, only hardened his decision by its contrast
with her usual well-regulated temper. Had a glimpse of the past been
vouchsafed to him, after all these years, that he should now forego the
agonizing joy of it, simply because his wife chose to abandon herself
to a groundless antipathy against a young man, a perfect stranger,
in whom she, of all people, could certainly not discern that inmost
inhabitant whose presence gave him so strong a claim on Kingston? No,
her foolishness justified him in disregarding her opposition.
As for Gundred, she lost her head, lost it completely, in the complete
surprise that overwhelmed her. Imagining that a meal or so at Brakelond
would mark the extent of her husband’s ridiculous fancy for the boy
against whom her instinct so urgently warned her, she had been content
to allow matters their course, considering resistance unnecessary. And
now, while she acquiesced, matters had suddenly grown to such a pitch
that resistance was no longer possible. The situation had passed beyond
her control. At first she could hardly believe that Kingston really
meant to disregard her hostility. Hitherto, through all their married
life, husband and wife had never seriously clashed. A quiet tolerance
towards each other’s plans had marked their relations. In fact, neither
had really been sufficiently excited over the other’s actions ever
to make a fuss. They trusted each other, and lived in the amity of
confident indifference. Ideal as their union had been, though, it had
been the union of two parts, not fused, but cemented; now at last,
after twenty years, surged up the hot water of opposition, and in the
moment of trial the cement revealed itself by melting. At a touch the
two lives fell apart, and were separate once more. The revelation was a
shock to Gundred.
‘Kingston,’ she cried, ‘I tell you, I distrust that young man. I cannot
think what you mean by proposing to have him in the house. The very
moment I set eyes on him I felt that there was something wrong about
him. A woman’s instinct is never mistaken, Kingston.’
‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous, Gundred,’ answered her husband. ‘Have you
anything definite to say? If so, say it, by all means, and we’ll think
no more of the matter. But if you have not, don’t dishonour yourself by
making scenes and abusing a young fellow of whom you know nothing but
what is perfectly good.’
‘And Jim?’ replied Gundred, taken at a disadvantage, and stripped in
an instant of the lovely calm that usually clothed her like a Paquin
frock--‘my Jim? Am I to see my only child, Kingston, handed over to
the company of a man against whom I have the very strongest feelings
of fear and horror? Kingston, I tell you I look on that young man with
positive fear and horror. Have I ever said anything like this before
about anyone else? Do you think I am mad enough and unchristian enough
to take prejudices like this without a reason? But it is stronger than
I am, this feeling. It is so strong that I feel it would be wicked to
disregard it. It is Heaven’s warning to us all. I know that it speaks
the truth, Kingston; don’t be so obstinate.’
Knowing in his secret heart what secret tie it was that bound him to
the occupant of Ivor Restormel’s personality, Kingston could not but
feel it strange and impressive that Gundred should have conceived so
violent and instinctive animosity against the young fellow. Could it
be a blind feeling of jealousy, recrudescent from the past? Anyhow,
it was the very devil and all of an inconvenience. And, as no sort
of wrong was meditated to Gundred, as no sort of wrong was possible,
Kingston saw clearly that her unreasonableness not only allowed him,
but enjoined him, in her own interests, to take a firm way of dealing
with these hysterical passions. Had she been cool and staid as usual,
he would have found the situation much more difficult to cope with; as
it was, her dishevelled zeal gave him the advantage, and enabled him to
assume the high position of one who has right and reason on his side.
‘Hang it all, Gundred,’ he protested. ‘What a piece of work to make
about nothing! One would have thought you would have been only too
glad to help an old neighbour’s son. You are generally so keen to do
what you can for people. Do try and get over these absurd fancies.
Do you suppose I am not just as anxious as you are that Jim shall be
kept out of undesirable hands? Come, you don’t think me a fool, I hope?
You don’t imagine that I should pick out a scoundrel for a whim? I
tell you, I like this young fellow; I like him more than I can say. He
attracts me strongly; I am sure we shall find him a great addition.’
Gundred looked up at him with righteous wrath in her eyes. ‘He must
have bewitched you,’ she said, devoutly and sincerely. ‘The Forces of
Evil sometimes have the most awful power. Oh, Kingston, listen to me.
Be wise, and repent in time. Oh, I never thought it would come to this.
Why, _why_ did we ever dine with those dreadful people?’
‘Gundred, you are either hysterical or medieval. And in either case,
really one cannot argue with you. I have never seen you like this
before. Poor boy! can you soberly think him an emissary of the devil?’
Kingston laughed.
But Gundred, among many other antiquated notions in which she took
pride, retained a most steadfast belief in the bodily existence of
Satan. To be old-fashioned in manners, mind, morals--in everything
but clothes--was her especial glory. In London she claimed to be
conspicuous by her old-world excellencies. When she met, or heard--for
they did not frequent her set--of other Dukes’ wives and daughters
who were frivolous and freethinking and modern, Gundred took pride in
asserting the obvious fact that she was not as they, that she continued
to give a rare and beautiful example of pristine decorum to her order.
Her friends might find the spectacle dull, but they could never deny
that it was edifying. And among the old-fashioned adornments with
which she persisted in decking her habit of mind, her belief in the
Powers of evil, of witchcraft and possession, were given not the least
important place. She described herself complacently as an old-fashioned
Christian, and never passed a palmist’s placard in Bond Street without
feeling that the law ought to have more scruples about allowing a witch
to live. Now, accordingly, she primmed her lips fiercely at Kingston’s
scepticism.
‘All I know is,’ she answered, ‘that these warnings are sent us for our
good, and that the Powers of Evil are for ever round us, seeking whom
they may devour. Kingston, will you, or will you not, pay attention to
what I say?’
By this time her truculent attitude had dissipated her husband’s last
lingering scruples. Looked at very minutely, very casuistically,
perhaps it was not perfectly fair to force upon Gundred someone
she disliked, simply because he himself desired to keep watch and
communion with the precious personality that dwelt within the object
of her hostility, and probably was the unknown cause of it. But
nothing of all this could Gundred possibly know, for one thing; and,
for another, her attitude had become so grotesquely exaggerated and
defiant that no husband of any sense or spirit could be justified in
giving way to it. Why, the situation was preposterous and transpontine
to an intolerable degree. His own sudden fantastic instinct had been
strange and grotesque enough, in all conscience; but Gundred’s fury of
opposition lent yet a further touch of grotesqueness which removed the
whole episode into the domain of mystical melodrama. Why, they might be
living in a novel of Lytton or Mortimer Collins, instead of in a very
comfortable and orderly present into which had suddenly flashed a gleam
of romance out of an equally comfortable and orderly past. Kingston
would not recognise his own instinct as anything abnormal, and was bent
on keeping all suggestion of the abnormal out of his human relations.
The prenatal memory, he knew, was not only a fact, but a fact--at any
rate, in the East, where memory and its training are better understood
than over here--of no uncommon occurrence. There was nothing strange
in the fact that in this boy of twenty, there should still be lurking
some fragmentary elements of the woman whose martyrdom and courage
he reincarnated. Kingston would not decorate the situation with any
romantic glamour; it was a plain, indisputable occurrence, and his
whole life should insist on treating it as a matter of course. In his
violent resolve to keep the young fellow close at hand there was no
sentiment, no idiotic feeling of attachment for the young man himself,
or any objectionable nonsense of that kind. The young fellow was of no
account at all. Kingston’s wish to secure his continued presence must
be put down simply prosaically, solely, to his recognition of the fact
that in the boy’s personality the lost Isabel sometimes spoke again,
and therefore his company was doubly and trebly desirable; but only for
what it conveyed, not in the least for what it was. And, all this being
so, Kingston was the more irritated by the instinctive knowledge of the
truth that Gundred’s absurd behaviour seemed to hint at, the more bent
on resenting it, ignoring it, and, by determination in his own way,
crushing out the signs of resistance that she was so vehemently showing.
‘Oh, let’s have no more of this, Gundred,’ he exclaimed. ‘You do not
know what you are saying. I am exceedingly sorry to annoy you, but you
know you would despise yourself and me if I gave way to such ridiculous
nightmares. You will see things quite differently to-morrow. Do try and
look at the matter more sensibly.’
‘Man sends sense,’ cried Gundred, ‘and God sends instincts. Listen to
God, Kingston, or you will be sorry for it.’
He shrugged his shoulders cruelly.
‘There is no coping with religious exaltation,’ he answered coldly,
with a weary feeling that this woman at his side was quite alien to him
in all her thoughts and ways.
Gundred rose. ‘If that is what you call it,’ she replied, with more of
her habitual dignity, ‘I think there is no more to be said.’
‘I agree with you. There is nothing more to be said.’
‘And this young man, Ivor Restormel, he is to come here in a day or
two?’
‘Yes,’ answered Kingston. ‘I settled it all up with him this afternoon.’
‘And you absolutely refuse to give me what I ask for?’ went on Gundred,
returning now, after the heat of the conflict, to the impressive calm
of her usual manner. She was preparing a new attack.
‘My dear Gundred,’ answered her husband, more gently now that he saw
her more amenable, and therefore more worthy of consideration, ‘I will
gladly spend the rest of my life doing what you wish, as long as you
ask me for things I can in decency do.’
‘Ah,’ replied Gundred, ‘that is what people always say. They will do
everything in the world to please one, except the only thing one asks
them for. _That_ is never reasonable or right.’
‘Well, it certainly was not in this case, now, was it,
Gundred--honestly, now, was it? You asked me to throw this wretched
young man over, to break my promise to him, to upset all his plans, to
cast him adrift again after I had offered him our help. And why? All
simply because you had been bored at the Hoope-Arkwrights’ tedious
dinner, and eaten something which disagreed with you, and made you look
on all the world with a bilious, peevish eye, and on your luckless
dinner-neighbour in particular. For that is what it all comes to, you
know; that is what your wonderful edifice of instincts and suspicions
and righteous qualms is founded on.’
‘Yes; you may sneer,’ answered Gundred coolly, regaining her supremacy
with her self-control. ‘It is always very easy to sneer. Well, I see
that you must have your way; you will not listen to me. Somehow, I feel
that there is something in the boy that stands between us--something
that has been between us, somehow, for a long time, though we did not
know it, and has now come to life again, or wakened up and set to work
moving us apart. That may be my fancy, perhaps. I know I am upset. I
am surprised and shocked. I expected better, happier things of you,
Kingston. But this I will say, that if you won’t listen to what you
call my foolish instincts, you will be very sorry for it some day. God
will certainly punish you for disregarding the clear message that He
sent you through me. And this obstinacy of yours will bring its own
penalty in time. I know it. I know what you are doing is altogether
wrong. And, as your wife, I shall put up with it. But day and night I
shall pray God to remove this dreadful thing from our home. I shall
pray that something may open your eyes.’
Kingston smiled uneasily, to disguise the impression that her appeal
was making on his mood. ‘My dear Gundred,’ he said. ‘Pray by all means.
The prayers of a good woman can never bring harm or pain.’
‘Not even if you love the harm? Not even if you are wedded to the
harm?’ asked Gundred. ‘Perhaps they might divorce you from the harm,
and then that separation might be painful.’
‘Oh, don’t talk as if you meant to put poison in poor Ivor Restormel’s
soup,’ cried Kingston, to relieve the tension of the situation. He did
not, however, in his own conscience feel altogether easy. The more bent
was he, therefore, on laughing down his wife’s denunciations.
‘God chooses His own instruments for His own purposes,’ answered
Gundred earnestly. Then she rose, her demeanour filled with tranquil
decision, with a stern majesty of protest that stirred again a twinge
of remorse in her husband’s heart. Was it she that was foolish, or was
it he that was selfish? After all, no sort of harm was planned against
her, no disloyalty of any kind, no cooling of affection. If here and
there a boy’s chance words contained the spirit of a long-dead woman,
well, what was that to Gundred--especially as she could never know it?
And his indulgence in the secret pleasure of those words could give no
reasonable pain to her. And yet, so long as they did give her pain, did
it very much matter whether the pain were reasonable or not, as far as
the inflictor’s innocence or guilt was concerned? For what pain in the
world is reasonable, if one looks far into the causes and the future
of things? Kingston made haste to conclude that his actions could
not possibly be expected to have reference to any silly feelings of
Gundred’s that might engender pain in her, as the result of their own
incalculable developments. Perhaps he made himself too many excuses,
defended himself too vehemently, was in too great haste to declare
himself convinced by his own arguments. He accepted Gundred’s last
words without any symptom of yielding.
And she who, up to the last moment, had never thought that her big guns
could be fired without effect, was left helpless, defeated, plunged in
the bathos of the situation.
‘Good-night,’ she said, quietly disguising the black bruise that her
heart had sustained.
Had Kingston suspected it, he might, perhaps, have softened. But
Gundred by now was once more the cool, self-righteous little faultless
person he had always known. Her serene rectitude of voice and manner
annoyed him.
‘Good-night,’ he answered with equal coolness. Husband and wife
went to their several rooms, after the first real quarrel of their
married life. Innocently, ignorantly, Ivor Restormel had come between
them--or, rather, the Thing that lived again in him had stirred again,
as Gundred had divined, to intervene, as once before, between the two
stranger-souls who, in the flesh, were contented husband and wife.