“They represent the world that is between you and me,” he said, moving away. “You cannot leave them—no, it is impossible. Think how strange it sounds. It would be as easy for you to do anything that is most disgraceful in the world’s eyes, as to leave those friends to themselves for my sake. I am not speaking harshly; I mean that it is in truth so, and it shows us how amazingly we are creatures of conventional habit.”

It was doubtful whether Isabel understood his meaning, her point of view was so different.

A thought which strikes one into speechless astonishment will leave another quite unmoved. It is a question of degree of culture—also of degree of emotion.

“Dear, if you had forewarned me of your coming. Don’t speak unkindly to me!”

“Rather I would never speak again. Go, and all blessings go with you! You have helped me to my calmer self. But, Isabel–”

“Bernard?”

“Are there often these friends about you?” he asked sadly.

“No, not often. I have told you how often I am by myself. And now, I must! Stay; do not leave the room when I do. Sit at the desk there and write me a letter. The drawer below is open; close the envelope, and put it in there; I will look for it. And you have not even breakfasted?”

“Oh, I will go to the ‘Coach and Horses.’ But no; I’m afraid of meeting Mr. Vissian somewhere. I will leave the park by the opposite road, and find some inn. Now I am well again. Good-bye, sweet!”

“Only a month, and I shall be in London!” She hurried away. The ladies were waiting for her. The servant stood by the door with wraps.

“Isn’t it too bad to keep you all like this? I give you leave to scold me all the way. Why didn’t you get in? Lily, you know what you were saying about unpunctual people; take me for your text next time.”

They passed out before her, and she said to the servant:

“Mr. Kingcote is writing in the library. Take him at once some biscuits and wine.”

They drove off, and Isabel was gay as the sunshine....

With her the month passed quickly enough. Through her solicitor she always obtained suitable rooms for the season, this time they were found in the neighbourhood of Portman Square. For some reason or other she did not to the end apprise Kingcote of the exact day on which she would be in town; after reaching her abode she let two days pass before summoning him to her. But this did not mean coldness, only—shopping. A host of things had as usual to be bought; the rooms had to be adorned in various ways; infinite—oh, infinite calls had to be made, or cards to be left. And one of the first houses she went to was that humble one in Chelsea. In her friendships Isabel was golden.

She went in the evening, that all might be at home. Before she could get from the door to the parlour Hilda’s arms were about her, and Rhoda was waiting with a flush of pleasure on her usually pale cheeks.

“I don’t think I shall as much as shake hands with that young lady,” Isabel said, designating the elder girl. “Her behaviour to me has been too shameful. Not one scrap of a letter for two months at least! Ah, how good it is to be with you again! Hilda, you are taller than I am; that is most disrespectful. And it seems yesterday that I used to lift you up on my lap.—Well?”

So kindly said it was, that one word; a greeting that warmed the heart. It was for Thomas Meres himself, who came into the room. He never made use of speech in meeting Mrs. Clarendon; simply shook hands with her and let his eyes rest a moment upon her face.

“And where is Ada?”

Ada was summoned, and shortly presented herself. She showed no pleasure, but came forward holding out her hand naturally; she and Isabel did not kiss each other, it had never been their habit.

“You, I should say, want a good deal more exercise, Ada. Mr. Meres, you are the worst possible person to take care of a young lady who is too fond of shutting herself up over books.”

“Oh, we have been rowing in Battersea Park,” cried Hilda. “Ada rows splendidly. We are going up the river before long, if we can persuade father to come with us. Mrs. Clarendon, do order him to come. Father will do anything that you tell him.”

Her father’s yellow face changed colour for an instant; he laughed.

“If Mrs. Clarendon will guarantee that the boats won’t capsize,” he said; “that is the only question.”

“Are you great at the oar, Rhoda?” Isabel asked, going over to a seat by the girl, and taking her hand affectionately. It was an impulse of pity; Rhoda looked so sad, though she smiled.

“My function is steering,” was the reply.

“What a wise girl! And how did you all enjoy yourselves at Eastbourne? You can’t think how tempted I was to join you. If only it hadn’t been such a long way.”

“I hope you feel no permanent ill results of your accident?” Mr. Meres asked.

“None, I really think. But, oh dear! I’m growing old.”

Hilda broke into her cheery laugh; Rhoda and her father smiled; even Ada moved her lips incredulously.

“How dare you all make fun of me? Hilda, stop laughing at once.”

“Old, indeed, Mrs. Clarendon! That I don’t think you’ll ever be.”

It was Isabel’s delight to hear these words; she flushed with pleasure.

“I want you girls to come and lunch with me to-morrow—no, the day after; to-morrow I am engaged. But I forgot; can you come, Hilda?”

“Yes, on Saturday.”

“That’s just right, then. And can you dine with me on Sunday, Mr. Meres? I shall have some one you would like to know, I think. Mr. Kingcote, Ada; he is in London now. You must give Mr. Meres an account of him.”

She did not stay much longer, and went, as always, leaving kind thoughts behind her. Should we not value those who have this power of touching hearts to the nobler life of emotion as they pass?

CHAPTER VIII

That friend of Kingcote’s, Gabriel by name, of whom we have heard, had his studio on the north side of Regent’s Park, in a house which also supplied him with a bedroom, this double accommodation sufficing to his needs. In regard to light the painting-room was badly contrived; formerly two rooms, it had been made into one by the simple removal of a partition, and of its three windows one looked south, the others west. From the latter was visible the smug, plebeian slope of Primrose Hill; the former faced a public-house. Gabriel would tell you impressively that the air in this part of London was very good. He lived here, in truth, because he could not afford to live in a better place.

He was the only friend Kingcote had retained from early years. Gabriel’s father was a bookseller in Norwich, and the two boys had been companions at their first school. That their intimacy had survived to the present day was not easily accounted for, except perhaps by the fact that neither was fond of seeking acquaintances; knowing each other well, and continuing by the chances of life within reach of each other, they had found in this intercourse enough mutual support to keep their human needs from starving, and had been prevented by it from seeking new associates; it happens occasionally that, with reticent men, a friendship of this kind will terminate in a double isolation. In all other essentials of character they were very unlike. Kingcote we know pretty well by this time—his amiability, his dangerous passiveness, his diffidence, his emotional excess. Not one of these qualities manifested itself in Clement Gabriel. His temper was frankly sour; Kingcote had on occasions visited him and found him indisposed to speak. “Talk to me as much as you like,” he said, when at length there came a question, “but don’t expect me to answer; I shall say bearish things, and I’d rather not.” They sat together for an hour, and the artist did not open his lips. It was his habit to declare that he loved idleness, that at times it cost him unheard-of efforts to go on with his work; that it would have been easier to cut off his hand than to take up the pencil. For all that, no man in London worked more continuously or with fiercer determination. He had not the physique of a robust man; at eighteen he had been declared consumptive; but the will in him was Samson. Ill-health was not allowed to affect his mind, and symptoms of positive disease he appeared to have outgrown; he was in the habit of saying that he could not afford the luxury of a delicate chest, any more than of delicate food. An end he had set before himself, an ideal in art—it was equivalent in his case to an ideal in life—and only the palsy of death would check his progress. Emotions he seemed to have none, outside the concerns of his pursuit. In friendship he made no pretence of warmth; he carried to excess the reserve of an Englishman, and even handshaking he would escape if he could. That he had ever been in love (he was thirty) could not for a moment be supposed, and he spoke with contempt of men who could not live without “women and brats” to hang about them and weight them in the race. “You will never marry?” Kingcote asked him, and the reply was: “Never! I have work to do.” Not a little of arrogance he displayed now and then; as, for instance, in adding after a moment’s pause, “What wife had Michael Angelo?”

His life had, since boyhood, been desperately hard. Till the age of fourteen or fifteen, no bent towards drawing had marked, him; then it exhibited itself suddenly and decisively. His father had no other son, and had made up his mind that Clement should go into the book trade; the lad begged to be allowed to study art. For answer, he was at once taken from school, and put into the shop. He did not grumble, but spent every moment of leisure time in drawing, and deprived himself of sleep for the same purpose. When he was seventeen, and in appearance three years older, he told his father that he must go to London; might he have a few shillings a week to live upon? If not, he must still go; the shillings would come somehow. His resolve was so evident that the father consented to supply him with seven shillings a week for one year; after that, he must shift for himself. Clement accepted the offer. His father expected to see him back in Norwich very shortly; in effect, he had not set eyes upon him to the present day. For the lad, when his year was at an end, nourished such bitterness against the cruelty to which he had been subjected, was so marked by the hungry memories of those twelve months, that, in a letter home, he vowed that he would never meet his father again. The parent responded angrily, and they held intercourse no more.

Gabriel passed his South Kensington examinations, in order to enable himself to teach. During that first year he had also found miscellaneous kinds of employment. He always protested that there was not a mean or repulsive pursuit in London by which he had not at one time or another earned a copper; which was his exaggerated way of stating that he had been driven to strange expedients to keep himself alive and have time to work up without assistance for the successive grades of examination. One source of income he unearthed was the sketching in water-colours of pugilists and race-horses for a man who kept an open stall in Hampstead Road. It became a partnership, in fact; the salesman allowed Gabriel a certain percentage on the drawings sold; and they sold well, especially on Saturday night. Better days began when he got his first private pupil. He was admitted at length to study in the Academy schools, and only just missed a Travelling Studentship—it was a bitter loss. Not a penny did he receive in gift from any one (a prize at South Kensington excepted) after the remittances from Norwich ceased. An offer from Kingcote almost broke their friendship. Gabriel apologised for the violent way in which he had received this offer.

“Can’t you see,” he said, “that if I had not trained myself to savage independence, I should have broken down long since? I excite myself to anger lest I should yield.”

Kingcote’s respect for this character was unbounded. He had an ideal faith in Gabriel. To him he spoke with the utmost freedom of his own affairs, and did not feel the lack of corresponding openness on the other side. Gabriel would have found no relief in exhibiting his sorrows; shut up in his breast, they acted as a motive force. He worked at times in frenzy. Kingcote did not divine this; he regarded his friend as above the ordinary passions and needs; he accepted literally Gabriel’s declaration that work was enough for him. Kingcote had not the power to maintain such reserve; sooner or later he had to find a confidant, and pour forth in sympathetic ears the stream of his miseries. His was essentially a feminine nature; in Gabriel masculine energy found its climax.

The days of race-horses and pugilists had gone by; with increased knowledge of his art, Gabriel had laid upon himself severe restrictions. He would not even paint portraits in the ordinary way, though therein he might easily have found a means of putting aside the teaching, which he hated. He was capable of stopping a girl who sold matches in the street and paying her to let him sketch her face, if it struck his peculiar fancy; but he would not paint the simpering daughter of a retired draper who sought him out. He said plainly that the head did not interest him; it would be waste of time, and he indulged himself in one of his rare laughs—a shockingly unmelodious cackle—as soon as the man had taken off himself and his dudgeon. He held that, as long as he could keep himself from starvation, the ideal exactions of art must be supreme with him. He followed no recognised school, and his early pictures found neither purchaser nor place of exhibition more dignified than a dealer’s window. He was a realist, and could not expect his style to be popular.

Kingcote sought him out as soon as he had leisure after his arrival in London. He had written to announce his departure from Wood End, but left the causes to be explained subsequently. Going over to the studio in the evening, he found the artist at work upon some drawings to illustrate a novel. Gabriel did not leave his seat, merely nodded as his friend came in; it was with a distinct look of annoyance that he found himself obliged to shake hands. Let us see what manner of man he outwardly was. Tall and excessively meagre to begin with; when regarding his work, he thrust his elbows into his sides, and one wondered that he did not hurt himself with the sharp bones. His face was hard set, the mouth somewhat too prominent, the cheeks hollow, the eyes small and keen. His hair was very light, his thin whiskers of the same colour. He had a very long throat, and made it appear still longer by a habit of pushing forward his chin defiantly. No one ever saw his teeth; he even laughed with his mouth close shut. In speaking, his voice was high, often with a tendency to querulousness. When he walked, it was at a great rate, with head down, and cutting left and right with the stick he always carried. He was not at all of a refined type, but energy personified.

“What is the book you are illustrating?” Kingcote inquired.

“Oh, it’s damned nonsense; but I manage to see some things the writer couldn’t. It will be valued in future for the cuts.”

This was characteristic of Gabriel. He said it in the most natural way, and seeing that he spoke truth there seemed no reason why he should not express himself freely.

“What are you going to send to the Academy this year?”

He rose, after a touch or two at the drawing, and took up the lamp, which was the only light in the room. (Though it was very cold he had no fire.) On an easel stood a large picture, nearly finished; he illuminated it. Kingcote started at the astonishing scene that was at once before him. It was a portion of an East End market-street at night; the chief group, a man at a stall selling quack-medicines to a thronging cluster of people. The main light came from a naphtha-lamp on the stall, but there was also the gleam from one of the ordinary lamps of the street. The assembled men, women, and children were of the poorest and vilest, and each face seemed a portrait. That of the medicine vendor was marvellous, with its look of low brag and cunning; on it was the full glare of the naphtha flame.

“Anything else?” Kingcote asked, looking at the painter.

“One or two small things, which they won’t hang. This they will.”

“There can be no doubt of that; it will be the picture of the year. But let me see the others.”

One of these filled Kingcote with delight; he uttered an “Ah!” of pleasure. It was a little girl standing before a shop-window, and looking at an open illustrated paper which was exposed there. The subject was nothing, the pose and character of the child everything. Poor and ragged, she had lost for the moment sense of everything, but the rich and comfortable little maiden displayed in the coloured page; her look was envious, but had more of involuntary admiration. This too was a night-piece; the light came from the front of the shop, above the picture.

“The face is exquisite!” Kingcote said; “you have made great strides this last halfyear.”

The artist uttered a “h’m,” and no more.

“So you got tired of your cottage,” he said, seating himself, and taking up his pencil again.

“You know I was that, long since. But a different reason brought me back to London.”

He explained his situation.

“And what shall you do?” Gabriel asked, simply.

“It is impossible to say. I must find work of some kind.”

“Well, this is good news! At last you’ll do something.”

“My dear fellow, it is the opposite of good news. I shall do something, no doubt; but it will be drudgery of some kind to earn a living. There is nothing more to come out of me than that.”

“Humbug! You are not as old as I am.”

“No, but old enough to have seen the end of my tether.”

“Why don’t you go in for writing?”

“Because I am unable to. I can enjoy other men’s work, but I can produce none of my own.”

“Of course not, if you take it for granted. You could if you made up your mind to.”

“Don’t forget that that making up of the mind is everything; it is the very ability which I lack. But literature is a vain thought. How is it for a moment to be imagined that I could earn a sufficient income by it? I have written verses at times; you don’t advise me to go into the market with those wares? Journalism I am utterly unfit for, as you must recognise. Equally unfit to write for magazines; I have neither knowledge nor versatility. There remains fiction, and for that I am vastly too subjective; I have no ‘shaping spirit of imagination’—at all events not of the commercially valuable kind. If I had lived in days when Undine and Sintram were the approved style, I should probably have been tempted to try my hand; but now–”

“Because,” he continued, “you are blessed with genius and will, you think all men should, can do great things by dint of mere exertion. I shall never do anything; do you understand? And why should I? There are other ways of enjoying life.”

“What other ways?” Gabriel asked, strangely.

“One can receive happiness, as well as be active in bestowing it.”

“Whence is your happiness to come?”

“Who knows? We must wait and see.” Such an attitude as this went near to excite Clement Gabriel’s contempt; he ceased to argue and plied his pencil. The respect which Kingcote entertained for his strenuous friend was now and then mingled with vexation that the latter should fall short in finer sympathies; and Gabriel, though he liked Kingcote’s company, could scarcely be said to respect him. He was conscious that the dreamer saw visions and heard voices of a sphere whence there came no message to himself, but he acknowledged the superiority grudgingly, and would have asked to what end the revelations were made if Kingcote could not translate them into one or other form of human art. With the least strain of self-conceit in Kingcote, their friendship would have been at an end long since.

It seemed as if indeed Kingcote had determined to wait upon Providence. He had said to himself that he would vigorously turn to discovering an occupation in life, as soon as he should have settled his sister in the new home at Highgate; but the settlement was effected, and he did not appear to be exerting himself. He bought newspapers, it is true, and sickened his soul with the reading of advertisements, but it was seldom indeed that anything presented itself which seemed in the least likely to assist him. For it was not a temporary pursuit that he needed, but a fixed station of recognisable activity; work, in fact, which would enable him to stand before Isabel without shame when she was free to fulfil her promise. He was not in immediate need, nor likely to be; the capital which produced him sixty pounds a year would permit him to live and support his sister for some time to come, with economy such as they exercised. But it was idle to take comfort from that; practically he was a beggar.

A more admirable housekeeper than Mary could not have been found. Long experience of grinding poverty had taught her how to make a sovereign go very far indeed; King-cote was astonished at the accounts with which she regularly presented him. He would have had her increase her own comfort in many little ways, but she always refused; self-denial, formerly a harsh necessity, had now become a pleasure; a kind of asceticism was becoming her motive in life. This, a common enough phenomenon, allied itself with increased rigour in religious performances. Her brother’s indifference in such matters was a distress to her, but she would not have ventured to speak. Her gratitude to him was deep and fervent, but Mary felt what a distance there was between him and herself. She could love him as her heart desired, yet she was always hoping that time and use might make them more like brother and sister.

Before long there did happen something which resulted in a drawing nearer. Mary began to notice that her brother received frequent letters addressed in a female hand; she discovered, too, that they bore the Winstoke post-mark. Over this she mused much. It was clear to her that Bernard was anything but at rest in his mind, and that the source of his disquietude was something other than the mere difficulties of his position. His room was directly over that in which she slept, and she could hear him walking up and down sometimes half through the night; he would come down to breakfast looking ill and preoccupied. Now and then, when he had promised to sit with her in the evening and read aloud, which he often did, much to her joy, he would alter his mind at the last moment and leave the house. Then he was always very late in returning, and annoyed that she had sat up for him. She was obliged at length to leave supper on the table, and go to her room, though often she waited till she heard him enter the house before she hastened upstairs.

The morning that he went off to Knights-well, she had not noticed his early departure, and his absence throughout the day alarmed her. He reappeared about four in the afternoon. Looking anxiously at his face, she did not venture to question him. He took up a newspaper and glanced over it for a few moments.

“You wondered what had become of me?” he said at length, opening his lips for the first time, and trying to smile. “I went very early; I had to go out of London to see some one.”

“I began to be very uneasy,” Mary returned.

He sat down—not, to her surprise, going to his own room—and she began to lay the table for tea. He read the paper. In passing him she timidly touched his head with her fingers caressingly. Kingcote looked round; his face had the kindest smile.

“Do you know,” he said, laughing, “what was in my mind at that moment? I was thinking how admirable the relations are between a brother and sister, when she is a good sister like you, Mary. Suppose you had been my wife instead of my sister. When I came in just now you would have overwhelmed me with questions, with complaints, with frettings, and made me angry. As it is, you have no anxiety but to put me at my ease, and your quiet kindness is a blessing to me.”

“But all wives are surely not like that, Bernard?” she returned, with pleased protest. “Most, I’m afraid; but no—not all.”

The strangest speculations began to live in Mary’s brain. Was it possible that her brother–? Oh, that was nonsense.

He was kind with the children when they came in from school, and, after tea, took a book and read to himself. Mary sent the youngsters a little earlier than usual to bed. When he and she sat alone, she saw that he made several beginnings of speaking; her eyes apparently busy over sewing, missed no phase of his countenance. At length he laid the book open on his knees.

“You remember my mentioning to you a large house called Knightswell, not far from my cottage?”

He did not look at her, but his eyes had an absent glimmer, not quite a smile, as they fixed themselves on the work she had on her lap.

“Yes, I do.”

“I have been there to-day.”

“Been all that way, Bernard?”

“Yes.”

Mary did not fail to understand that it was now her turn to question.

“You have friends there?”

“A friend. If you will listen I will tell you a story.”

He related all that he knew of the history of Isabel Clarendon, as if it had been told to him or he had read it somewhere, up to the time of his first meeting with her; he described her exactly, and described Ada Warren also, the latter, as far as his knowledge allowed, with perfect justice.

“One of those, Mary, is my friend; which do you think?”

“You have made it too easy to guess,” his sister answered good-naturedly. She had listened with the utmost attention, leaning forward, her arms crossed upon her sewing. “Not Miss Warren!”

“But I do not dislike her; you mustn’t think that.”

“Still, you would not go all the way to Knightswell to see her.”

He said nothing. Mary was nervously impatient.

“But what a strange, strange story! And she—Mrs. Clarendon—may be sent from her home any day? Is Miss Warren likely to marry?”

“She is engaged, but will not be married till she is of age. That will be in rather more than a year.”

“And what will Mrs. Clarendon do then?”

He paused a moment before answering. But at length:

“She has promised to be my wife.”

“Bernard!”

Mary threw her work down, and came and kissed his forehead. She could say nothing; stricken with wonder and confused emotions of pleasure, she strove to realise the truth of what he had told her. Then Kingcote took from his pocket the case in which he kept Isabel’s portrait. Mary gazed at it in long silence.

“But how strange!” she murmured, when she turned her eyes away to dream absently.

“You think she might have made a better choice.”

“I have no such thought, Bernard, as you know well. Is it known to her friends?”

“No,” he replied, shortly.

“I wonder what Miss Warren would think?”

He mused, wondering himself.

They talked for a long time. To Kingcote the relief of having told his secret was so great, that he had become cheerful, hopeful. His sister did not show exuberant delight; she continued preoccupied, now and then, as if in result of her meditations, putting a question, and musing again upon the answer. A woman mentally occupied with woman possesses a lucidity of reasoning, a swiftness of apprehension, a shrewdness of inference, which may well render her a trifle contemptuous of male conclusions on the same subject. A very few details are enough for her to work upon; she has the categories by heart, and classifies with relentless acumen. It is the acme of the contradictions of her nature. Instinctively revolting against materialist views when held by the other sex; passionately, fiercely tenacious of spiritual interpretations where her own affections are concerned; the fountain of all purity that the world knows; she yet has in her heart that secret chamber for the arraignment of her sisters, where spiritual pleas are scoffed at, where the code administered is based on the most cynical naturalism. She will not acknowledge it; she will die rather than admit the fact as a working element of her own consciousness; but she betrays herself too often. The countenance of a woman whose curiosity has been aroused concerning another is vaguely disturbing. She smiles, but the smile excites disagreeable thoughts, suspicions such as we would gladly put away. Happily she does most of such thinking when out of sight.

Kingcote said nothing of Isabel’s pecuniary difficulties, and left the question of Ada’s parentage as it was represented in the will. He laid stress all through, on the pathetic aspect of Isabel’s position. Mary listened, questioned innocently, gathered data, and made her deduction.

On the day after Isabel’s visit to Chelsea, Kingcote came and lunched with her. Her rooms, as he noticed, were sufficiently luxurious; a trouble weighed upon him as he talked with her. With a new dress—which of course became her perfectly—she seemed to him to have put on an air somewhat different from that which characterised her in the country. She was impulsively affectionate, but there was an absence in her manner, a shade of intermittence in her attention, a personal restlessness, an almost flippancy in her talk at times, which kept him uneasy. The atmosphere of town and of the season was about her; she seemed to be experiencing a vast relief, to have a reaction of buoyancy. It was natural that she should speak of indifferent things whilst servants were waiting at table, but Kingcote was none the less irritated and hurt in his sensibilities. He lacked the virtue of hypocrisy. The passion which had hold upon him felt itself wronged even by harmless compliance with the exactions of every-day artificial life. Something gnawed within his breast all the time that he was speaking as a mere acquaintance; he had a difficulty in overcoming a sullenness of temper which rose within him. The end of the meal was all but the limit of his patience.

“Don’t ask me to come in this formal way again,” he said, when they were alone in the drawing-room.