CHAPTER XIII
The spreading of the news in private channels and by newspaper paragraphs brought numbers of people on missions of inquiry to Knightswell. For several days the life of little Winstoke had its central point of interest at the lodge, where the humbler of Mrs. Clarendons friends, the village people and the peasantry, who knew so much of her kindness, incessantly sought information as to her progress. For nearly a week it was all evil rumour, the sufferer could only be reported “Very much the same.” During that week Lord Winterset thrice made the journey from London to see Mrs. Stratton, and receive the fullest details. The people from Dunsey Priors, the Bruce Pages, and a procession of county families were, in one way or another, represented daily. Not least anxious of those who presented themselves was Robert Asquith, who came post haste from Paris, where he was spending a few weeks in fault of anything better to do. After remaining for a day at Knightswell, he presented himself at Winstoke Rectory, and got Mr. Vissian to promise him a daily bulletin.
But the point of danger was passed, and Isabel’s natural strength helped her through the suffering which preceded convalescence. The special prayer which Mr. Vissian had read forth on two Sundays, was, on the third, commenced with a phrase of thanksgiving. Robert Asquith, opening his Winstoke letter every morning with fingers which trembled in spite of all his efforts, smiled with satisfaction at length, and, though he disliked travelling, set off to make another call at Knightswell. Mrs. Stratton assured him that all was well, that Isabel had begun to sleep soundly through the night without artificial aids, and that she was capable of attending, for short periods, whilst Miss Warren read to her. At the mention of Ada’s name, Robert turned a sharp look on the lady.
“Ah, Miss Warren reads to her, does she?”
“Yes. She has been admirable all the time.”
These two had made acquaintance for the first time on the occasion of Asquith’s former visit, but already they met with an air of mutual understanding.
“I suppose you have heard my name from Mrs. Clarendon?” Robert had asked in the course of their first conversation; and the lady had given an affirmative, with a smile which might or might not have meaning.
“If Miss Warren has been admirable,” Robert remarked, “you, Mrs. Stratton, have been indispensable. What on earth should we have done without you?”
“Oh, I have done nothing, except keep guard. But I shall carry her off as soon as I can.”
“Whither?”
“First of all to my own home. I live at present at Chislehurst, and have a house much too big for me. Colonel Stratton will probably be home before Christmas, and we shall make a party. I wish you could make it convenient to join us for a few days.”
“It’s very good of you,” Robert replied with deliberate gratitude. “If all goes according to your expectation, I will come with pleasure.”
They parted the best of friends, looking mutual compliments.
“Now, why couldn’t Isabel be open with me?” mused Mrs. Stratton, after he had gone. “Several things begin to be a little clearer, I fancy.”
“A capital little woman,” meditated Robert, on his way to the station. “I shouldn’t wonder if her friendship prove valuable.”
And all three weeks it rained, rained with scarcely a day’s intermission. If the new road to Salcot was a mere mud-track, the state of the old road can be conjectured; its deep ruts had become watercourses, its erewhile grassy prominences were mere alluvial wastes. The piece of sward before the cottage gradually turned to swamp; the oak torso stood black with drenching moisture, its clinging parasite stems hung limp, every one of its million bark grainings was a channel for rain-drops. Behind, the copse was represented by the shivering nakedness of lithe twigs, set in a dark, oozy bed of decaying leaves and moss and fungi. Sometimes the rain fell straight from a gray sky without a rack feature from end to end, till all Nature seemed to grow of one colour, and the space between morning and evening was but a wan twilight of indistinguishable hours. Sometimes there glimmered at midday a faint yellowness, a glimpse of free heaven athwart thinning vapour, a smile too pale to hold forth promise. Sometimes there came towards nightfall a calling from the south-west, the sky thickened with rolling battalions overflashed at instants with an angry gleam, and blasts of fury drove the rain level with the reeking earth. Then there would be battle till dawn, followed, alas! by no glorious victory of the sun-god, but with more weeping of the heavens and sighing of the worn-out winds.
In spite of the fearful weather, Kingcote walked incessantly. The solitude of his cottage was hideous. Every little familiar sound—the rattling of a window or a door, the endless drip of rain, the wind moaning in the chimney—became to him the voice of a tormenting demon. He loathed the sight of every object around him; the damp odour which hung about the place and greeted him whenever he entered from the open air brought a feeling of sickness; he dreaded the hour of going upstairs to the bare bed-chamber, where the cold seized him as in a grip, and the darkness about his candle was full of floating ghosts. The sound of the rain, as he lay longing for the sleep that would not come, weighed upon his spirit to the point of tears; he wept in his gulf of wretchedness. He could not read; the hours of the day would have been interminable but for the regular walk, which killed a portion of time. And occasionally he could spend an evening at the rectory.
Only a man capable of settling at Wood End as Kingcote had done would have been capable of living thus through these late weeks of the year. It needed a peculiar nature to go through with such self-torment—a nature strangely devoid of energy, and morbidly contemplative. He would not admit to the Vissians that he suffered in any way; he even visited them less often than he otherwise would have done, that he might not appear to seek refuge in their house. Bodily ill-health had much to do with his singular state—ill-health induced by long mental suffering and the unwholesome conditions of his life; it aggravated his moral disorder and made him physically incapable of the step he would otherwise have been driven to. To quit the cottage and return, if only for a time, to London, he had persuaded himself was impossible; whilst Isabel Clarendon lay on her sick-bed he could not go away. During the first two weeks, he himself had fallen little short of grave illness; his nights were feverish: once he found himself standing at the gates of Knightswell, without being able to summon consciousness of his walk from home, the hour being just before dawn. Upon this had followed lassitude; he heard almost with indifference of Isabel’s improved condition, and for a few days did not care to move from his fireside. The fever left him, however, and mental disquietude took its place. A source of misery and exasperation was the number of people he knew to be calling at Knightswell; the multitude of her friends excited his jealousy; he himself was of no account among them, the very least of these people, who made their conventional visits and left their respectable cards, was more to her than he. Even if a voice assured him that it was not so, he refused to listen; the fascination of self-torture will not brook a moment’s consoling. He called twice, at long intervals, partly because it was not decent to neglect the duty, partly because a longing to draw near to her anguished him; but each time he came away maddened with jealous suspicions. The servant had stood across the door, as if to bar his possible entrance, and had replied to his question with supercilious negligence; the very windows of the house had looked upon him with the contemptuousness of a vacant stare. Of such nothings it was his fate to make hours of suffering. The most absurd thoughts possessed him. She would return to the world a changed woman; even if she cared ever to receive him again, it would be with the cold politeness of a slight acquaintance. She would associate him always with that day’s meet, and the thought of him would be always something to dismiss from her mind as painful. A thousand such fantastic webs did he spin in his brain, each an hour’s distress. Yet nothing could have taken him from the neighbourhood. To go now would be to have seen her for the last time, to make her henceforth only a name in his memory, and he felt that death would be preferable to that.
Time lost its reality. Sunday he knew, because of the church bells; of other days he kept no count, one was even as another. But it befel at length that the rain ceased, and the first sunlight which awoke him at his bedroom windows was like the touch of a soft, kind hand. It brought to his mind all pleasant and beautiful things: the sound of her voice, the clear vision of her countenance, the white waving of her’ hand as she rode away, the promise that was in one and all of these. Upon sunlight followed frost; at night-time a dark blue heaven with burnished stars, and the gleaming rime of early hours. The spirit of the healthful air breathed upon him, and gave his blood fresh impulse. He heard that she had left her bed, was all but able to sit up through the day. Might he not before long hope to see her?
One Sunday morning as he sat at breakfast—it was a strange-looking meal, laid out upon a bare deal table, much the kind of breakfast that the labouring men in other cottages sat down to—a shadow passed before the window, and there followed two sharp blows with a stick at his door. It was the postman’s knock; Kingcote started up eagerly to answer. There were only two probable correspondents, his sister and Gabriel, and it was some time since he had heard from either. But the letter which the man put into his hand had travelled a shorter distance; it bore only the Winstoke mark. The handwriting he did not know, but it was a woman’s, and, it seemed to him, written under some infirmity. In his agitation, he made scant reply to the postman’s remark about the weather; yet he noticed that it had just begun to snow, and that the light flakes were silver in sunlight. It was not a letter—a mere note of one side, but it ended with the name of Isabel Clarendon.
“Dear Mr. Kingcote,
“Why have you not been to see me? Several people who brought me nothing but their dulness have found their way here the last few days. Will you come to-morrow at eleven—if you can miss Mr. Vissian’s sermon for once?”
The snow fell, but from a rift of glory up above streamed one broad beam, which made the earth shimmer. Presently began the Winstoke bells; their music was carried off to the south by a shrewd wind, whose task it was to bake the ground that the snow might lie. Wind and snow had their way; the sun drew back and veiled itself; the white downfall thickened, chased and whirled into frenzy by the shrilling north. The turmoil made Kingcote laugh with pleasure. When he quitted the cottage, he had to leap over a high ridge of driven snow. The oak-stump had a white cloak on its back; the road was a smooth white surface, not a little treacherous whilst still unhardened. But there was life in the keen air, and the delight of change in the new face of each familiar thing.
It cost some stamping of the feet and shaking of upper garments before he could pass from the threshold of Knightswell into the hall. The footman seemed prepared for his arrival, and bade him follow him up the stairs. The chief rooms of the house were all on the ground floor; Kingcote had never yet ascended. The room into which he was ushered was Isabel’s boudoir, small, with only one window, daintily furnished. It caught his senses with a faint pervading perfume, a soft harmony of clear colours, a witchery of light broken by curtains and tinged with hues from gleaming surfaces; his foot was flattered by the yielding carpet. He did not at first see where she sat, for her chair was in a dim corner; besides, the fireplace intervened with its great blaze.
“I never thought you would face this terrible weather!”
“The weather? What of that? Was I not to see you at eleven?”
She might not stand yet, but both her hands were held out to him. There was a low chair not far from her; he drew it nearer and sat looking into her face. It was of an exquisite pallor, just touched on either cheek with present emotion; thinner, but only—at all events to his eyes—the more beautiful. There was an indescribable freshness in her appearance—her white neck caressed by soft lace, the lines which her hair made on the purity of her brow, her bright, just-moistened eye, the graceful repose of her still feeble frame.
“You find me changed?” she asked, in a voice which trembled in trying to be merely mirthful.
“I see no change. You are pale, but your face is what it always was.”
“You are growing stronger?” he asked, when she kept silence. “Danger is past?”
“Oh, long past!”
He hesitated for the next words.
“Wasn’t it strange?” Isabel went on, regarding him with wide-eyed intimacy, which thrilled his nerves. “You remember the things I said that morning? What did you think when you heard of the accident?”
“They told me you were dead—that was the first news.”
Her eyes fell before his steady look.
“I half wished it,” she said. “In the moment when I knew what was coming, I had a strange hope that my words might have brought it in reality; I closed my eyes, and tried to think it would be like sleep.”
“Why should you have such thoughts? What has life ever brought you but joy?”
“A few things not quite joyful, and which most women would find rather hard to bear. You know nothing of my story? No? Not by chance in talking about me of late? I suppose there has been much talk about me?”
“Will you not tell me what it is you speak of? Remember that I talk to no one.”
“To be sure. You are so unlike all other men. You are apart in my thoughts—you seem to be in a wholly different world from that I know. Your judgment of me will be sterner than that of mere men of the world, who take self-seeking and dishonour for granted. Yes, it will, it will!”
Her breath was caught, and nervous agitation so gained upon her weakness as almost to make her hysterical. Kingcote bent forward and imprisoned one of her hands.
“Speak calmly,” he urged, in a voice just above a whisper. “Why do you agitate yourself so? Why should you tell me anything that it is painful to speak of?”
His own emotion all but overcame his power of utterance. She did not try to draw away her hand; holding it in one of his, with the other he caressed it soothingly. Isabel smiled at him.
“You are deceived in me,” she pursued, becoming quieter by self-yielding. “You see only appearances. This house and all it represents is not mine; I am only allowed to use it and to make a show till the owner claims it: everything belongs to Miss Warren.”
A minor emotion like surprise could not affect Kingcote in his present mood.
“And I am to judge you sternly for not having told me that?” he asked, his veins on fire from the touch of the hand he held.
“Listen to me. When she marries I lose everything, all but an annuity of three hundred pounds. And that will be in a few weeks, as soon as I am strong enough to go in search of a new home.”
“Yes? Does that call for my judgment?”
She trembled.
“I want to show you something, but I cannot rise to get it. Will you go for me? You see the small writing-desk on the further table?”
Kingcote rose, but with her hand still in his. He could not release it. She, with eyes turned upwards to regard him, her face flushed, her throat quivering, was as loth to be severed from his grasp. Instead of moving away, he bent and put his lips to her forehead. Then the rose-hue clothed her with maidenhood, her head fell, and he felt the pulse at her wrist leap like flame.
“Will you fetch me the desk?” she asked, without meeting his look.
He fetched it, and with a key from her pocket Isabel opened it. Below other papers she found an envelope, and from this took a photograph.
“Will you look at that?” she said, holding it to him.
Kingcote’s face expressed recognition.
“This,” he said, “is, I suppose, Miss Warren’s father? The resemblance is very strong.”
“It is a portrait of Mr. Clarendon,” was her answer, given in a tone of such cold self-command that Kingcote turned to look at her with a movement of surprise.
“Mr. Clarendon?”
“I will put it away again, if you please.”
He let her do so, and removed the case. When he drew near her, Isabel regarded him with a passionless face, and pointed to the chair he had risen from.
“He knew me well,” she said, with a bitterness which made all her words clear-cut and her voice unshaken. “He calculated my weakness, and devised my punishment skilfully. That I should take the child and rear it to inherit his property, or else lose everything at once. With a woman of self-respect, such a scheme would have been empty; she would have turned away in scorn. But he knew me well; he knew I had not the courage to go back to poverty; that I would rather suffer through years, be the talk and pity and contempt of every one, face at last the confession to her,—all that rather than be poor again!”
Kingcote once more held her hand, and, when she paused, he kissed it passionately.
“You were poor once?” he asked gently, tenderly.
“That is my only excuse. We were wretchedly poor, my mother, my brother, and myself. I have been hungry often and often. We had to keep up a respectable appearance; we starved ourselves to buy clothing and to avoid being indebted to people. I have often gone to bed—when I was a strong, growing girl—and cried because I was so hungry; though I had just before been pretending I could eat no more, as we all of us did, poor mother as well. I was to be a governess; but then a lady took me to London, was wonderfully kind to me, treated me as her daughter. She said”—Isabel half laughed, half cried—“she said I was too good-looking to be a governess.”
“Wasn’t it true? Are you not now so beautiful that my heart faints when I look at you?”
“If I were not so contemptible—if I deserved any recompense for what I have suffered—it would be a priceless one to hear you say so.”
“Tell me more.”
“I married at the end of my first season; made what was called a wonderful marriage. I hadn’t a farthing, and became all at once wealthy. I caught at the best that offered; the best in the world’s sense. I was old enough; I understood what I was doing. No one was to blame but myself. You saw that hard, strong, coarse face? He often looked at me as if he were coldly calculating the risks of murder; but as he got to know me better, he found better punishments. I did not disobey him. I never gave him cause for anger by word or deed; could I help it that I—that I hated him?”
The excitement was again overpowering her strength. She sobbed tearlessly.
“You shall speak no more of that,” King-cote said; “leave it all in the past; forget it, dearest.”
“Am I dearest to you?” she asked, looking into his eyes with yearning tenderness. “Oh, I have never felt till now what it would be to lose wealth and the power of bestowing it!
“May I tell you, only to justify myself—to make myself better in your sight? I might so often have married, and freed myself, men to whom wealth was nothing, who would have taken me for myself: but I could not, not even to gain an honourable position. I had always the hope that I might know what love meant. I have gone through the world and enjoyed it. I have had, I suppose, something of what is called success; it left me cold. Only when you came into my life then it began to be all different. I felt that you were come to save me; you were so unlike others, you interested and attracted me as no one else ever did. You remember our first meeting in Mr. Vissian’s study? I went away and could think of nothing but you; wondered what your story was, tried to understand what it was in you that affected me so strangely.”
“My sovereign lady!”
“If you knew the foolish tricks I played myself! I would not face the truth; I invented all sorts of explanations and excuses when I longed to see you. It occurred to me that you might perhaps come to care for Ada. I persuaded myself that it would make me happy if you married her and became rich. And I can give you nothing!”
“You give me nothing, Isabel? Yesterday I was the poorest creature in this world, without strength, without hope, sunk in misery; now every pulse of my heart is happiness.” She sighed with pleasure.
“Turn your face to me, Isabel; let me try to read it there, to believe it, to make it part of my life. Let me hear you say those three words—I do not know their sound—those three words I hunger for!”
“Three? Have I not said them? Was it only in my thought? I love you, dearest.”
“Four! And from your lips, whose music came to me from another sphere, so far you seemed! You, the throned lady, the queen with the crown of loveliness; so gracious, so good, so noble–”
“Hush! you may not praise me. Dear, you know those words do not describe me, you know how unworthy I am.”
“I will praise you whilst I have breath for speech! What are our paltry conventional judgments? In that I love you, you are to me a peerless woman. Have you not stooped to me from the circle of your glory? Are you not to me embodied goodness, purity, truth? What am I that you should love me, my soul’s worship? Yet your eyes say it, your smile says it, your lips make golden music of the words.”
She sighed again, drinking in his rapturous adoration with closed eyes.
“And you?” she asked. “When did you first love me? Did I not seem to you a very silly, empty, frivolous woman?”
“I loved your name long before I saw you. They talked to me at the rectory, and called you the Lady of Knightswell. I pictured you, and indeed not far unlike yourself; just so gracious, so bright, so gloriously a woman. I looked over to Knightswell from my window, and wondered if ever we should meet. What kindness of fate that brought me that day past the cottage!”
She was still musing over the growth of this flower in her heart.
“I knew it when the pain was over, and I could lie and think. It was all so clear to me then. I had escaped a terrible danger; but for the fall”—her voice sank—“I might never have known this happiness. I was in ceaseless fear lest you should have gone. I asked often if you had called; if you had known how I longed for your name among those who called! There was no need of occupation for me. It was quite enough to lie and think of our talks together, to call back your voice and your look. Oh, I longed to send a word to you; you were so lonely, so unhappy. All that is over now, dearest? You will never again be comfortless?”
“Dare I think that, Isabel?”
“When I love you?”
“That again!” He covered his face with his hands. “Once more!”
“With my soul I love you!”
“If I could but hear that for ever! Shall I hear it when this hour has become part of our memory, in days after this? Dare I think of it as music that I may hear at will?”
“It shall never fail you, if your ear does not weary.”
“If my eyes weary of the light of heaven?”
There was silence before Isabel spoke.
“Ada’s marriage has been postponed on account of my illness; it would have taken place before this. When it is over, and I have discharged my duty to the end, then–”
She paused, not avoiding his gaze, but meeting it with simplest truth, her lips trembling a little.
“I shall have my three hundred a year,” she added, almost pleadingly. “Can we not make it enough? Do you know that the Vissians live on less than that?”
Kingcote dropped his eyes, and spoke with embarrassment.
“To me it is wealth. For you, even alone, it would be miserable poverty. How can I accept such a sacrifice?”
“A sacrifice? Is that your measure of my love?”
He kissed her hand, then asked laughingly: “What do you think my own income is? You dare not guess. I am richer than Goldsmith’s country parson; I have full sixty pounds.”
“Why, then, are we not wealthy? That is the rent of a delightful house, somewhere far away. Might we not go abroad? Would you,” she added anxiously, “go abroad with me?”
“Dear, can you so change your life?”
“It is changed. There is no effort asked of me. I live only for you.”
“Your friends?”
“My friends? One, two, three at most; those I need not lose. My acquaintances, three hundred at least; ah! let them go! It shall be a new world. What need have I of friends? You are my friend, my one, sole friend! I will have no other. Oh, you will not weary of me? I bring you so little—my ignorance, my foolish habits of thought. You will be patient with me, and help me to become more the kind of woman suitable for—for your wife?”
The flush in her cheeks had become steadfast; her eyes gleamed unnaturally. Each word she spoke heightened the fever which was gaining upon her. He noticed this.
“I have been wrong to let you talk so much,” he said gravely. “You are tired; you will suffer.”
“No, I shall sleep, and with such peace in my heart as I have never known.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, and murmured words that he did not hear.
“Is Mrs. Stratton still with you?” he asked.
“At church; it must be nearly time for her to return.”
“And Miss Warren?”
“She is reading, I suppose; she always prefers to be alone.”
“Dear, you are suffering.”
“No, indeed no. Is my face worn? Do I look—old?”
“What was that word? You are as beautiful as day.”
“You will come very soon again? I will write and tell you when.”
“I dare not let you speak more.”
“I am still weak,” she said with a smile. Her voice was failing.
He knelt by her side, and she, bending forward with modest grace, gave him the sweetness of her lips.
The storm still raged; nothing was to be seen beyond a few yards through the white whirl. As Kingcote struggled against it with bent head, a carriage passed him, moving, silently over the snow; it was bringing Mrs.. Stratton from church. This made him fear lest he should meet the Vissians near the rectory; he could speak with no one now; there was a voice in his ears which for his life he would not have silenced. He turned off into the trackless park, and walked in a direction which would bring him out at a lonely part of the new road. With a boy’s delight he leapt through the deep snow, and fought his way against the whirlwind. He lost his bearing; the white outlines of the country were irrecognisable; there was nothing for it but to push on, and come out where, he might. It was two hours at least before he at length got into a track that he knew, and which led him homewards. He reached the cottage in complete exhaustion, chilled, feeble with hunger. Unable even to cast off his wet clothing before he had rested, he threw himself into a chair. He laughed; it would be something to tell her when they met again.