Isabel Clarendon, Vol. I (of II)

One evening, a week after Mr. Kingcote’s visit, she returned only just in time for dinner at seven o’clock, and, after sitting in silence through the meal—she was alone with Mrs. Clarendon, who was likewise indisposed for talking, and had a look of trouble seldom seen on her face—went to the library to read or otherwise occupy herself. A servant brought a lighted reading-lamp, lowered the blinds, and drew the heavy red curtains across the window recesses.

Left alone, Ada consulted her watch, and, stepping to the window which looked from the end of the house on to a shrubbery, put aside one of the curtains. She had scarcely done so when she heard a light tap on the outside of the pane. The sound made her start and draw a little away; she looked nervously to the door, then ran across the room and, with precaution, turned the key in the lock. Her face was slightly flushed and her manner nervous. After the lapse of a minute there came a repetition of the tapping from without. She quickly raised the blind and lifted the lower sash of the window, then again drew back. A man forthwith vaulted into the room. He looked about him, closed the window, drew down the blind, and, turning once more, presented the familiar figure of Mr. Vincent Lacour.

“This is really awfully kind of you, Miss Warren,” were his words, as he came forward to shake hands. He spoke with subdued voice, and his demeanour was not quite as self-possessed as usual. “I was beset with doubts—whether you had my note safely, whether you could manage to be here alone, whether you would admit me at all. I know it is an unwarrantable step on my part, but I was bound to see you once more, and see you alone. I’m leaving England in a few days, so I’m not likely to annoy you after this.”

He had expressive eyes, and put much into them, as he gazed at the girl after speaking thus. Ada’s hands hung before her, nervously clasped, with the backs together.

“I of course ought not to consent to an interview of this kind,” she said coldly. “Mrs. Clarendon would be much displeased—would altogether misunderstand it. I hope you will say what you wish to very quickly.”

“Are we safe from disturbance?” he asked. “Do people come in?”

“No one will come in.”

He uttered a sound of satisfaction.

“I discovered,” he said, “that you and Mrs. Clarendon were alone, or of course I couldn’t have ventured. If you knew what I’ve gone through in the last month, since I was talking with you in this room! And not an hour but your voice has been present with me. Do you know that your voice is unique? I have heard voices more musical—don’t think I’m talking mere nonsensical flattery—but never one that dwelt with me for long after, as yours does. I suppose it is half your manner of expressing yourself—your frank directness.”

Whether he was sincere or not, it was impossible at least to gather evidence of insincerity from his words and the way in which they were uttered. There was no touch of a wheedling note, not an accent which jarred on the sufficiently discriminating ear of the listener. He seemed more than half regardless of the effect his speech might produce; the last sentence came forth in a rather absent way, whilst his eyes were apparently occupying themselves with a picture hanging near him.

“What was it you wished to say to me, Mr. Lacour?” Ada asked, when she had let a moment of silence pass. She still stood in the same attitude, but was now looking at him, her hard features studiously impassive.

“To say good-bye to you, and—and to thank you.”

It was uttered with an effort, as if the tone of mere frankness had been rather hard to hit, and might easily have slid to one of softer meaning.

“To thank me for what, pray?”

She was smiling slightly, perhaps to ease her features.

“For having shown me my ideal woman, the woman in whose existence I believed, though I never hoped to see her. I was tired of the women who cared for and studied nothing but the art of fooling men; I wanted a new type, the woman of sincerity. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed it—I’m something of an artist in my way. I can’t paint, and I can’t write, but I believe I have the artist’s way of looking at things. I live on refinements of sensation—you know what I mean? There’s nothing good or valuable in me; I’ve no moral force; I’m just as selfish as I can be; but I have a sort of delicacy of perception, I discriminate in my likings. Now you’ve heard all sorts of ill of me, of course; you’ve been told I pitched away ten thousand pounds in less than a couple of years; that I’ve– Well, never mind. But, Miss Warren, I haven’t lived a life of vulgar dissipation; I have not debased myself. My senses are finer-edged than they were, instead of being dulled and coarsened. I’ve led the life a man ought to lead who is going to be a great poet—though, as far as I know, I haven’t it in me to be that. But at least I understand the poetical temperament. I couldn’t help my extravagance. I was purchasing experience; the kind of experience my nature needed. Others feed their senses grossly; that would have cost less money, but my tendencies are not to grossness. I had certain capacities to develop, and I obeyed the need without looking very far ahead. Capacities of enjoyment, I admit; entirely egoistic. An egoist; I pretend to be nothing better. But believe me when I tell you that the admiration of a frank egoist is worth more than that of people who pretend to all the virtues. It is of necessity sincere.”

Ada had seated herself whilst these remarkable utterances were falling upon her ear. Lacour knelt upon a chair near her, leaning over the back.

“You are leaving England?” she said, quietly reminding him of the professed object of his visit.

“A place has been offered me in a house of business in Calcutta; I have no choice but to take it. Or, rather, there is an alternative; one I can’t accept.”

“Will you tell me what that is?”

She looked up, and he smiled sadly at her. His face just then had all that a man’s face can possess of melancholy beauty. The fineness of its lineaments contrasted remarkably with Ada’s over-prominence of feature. Hers was the individual countenance, his the vague alluring type.

“My brother,” he replied, “had been persuaded to offer me an allowance of two hundred a year, on condition that I do what I originally intended, read for the Bar.”

“And that you can’t accept? Why not?”

“For the simple reason that I should not read. I should take the money, get into debt, do nothing. I am past the possibility of voluntary work. In a house of business I suppose I shall be made to work, and perhaps it may lead to a competence sooner or later. But for reading here at home I have no motive. I lack an impulse. Life would be intolerable.”

Ada did not raise her eyes. He was still leaning forward on the back of the chair, but now at length held himself upright, passed his fingers through his hair, and uttered an exclamation of weariness.

“So I go to India!” he said. “The climate is of course impossible for me; I suffer enough here. Well, it can’t be helped.”

He sat down opposite the girl, bent forward, and let his face fall upon his hands.

“Other men of my age,” he murmured, “are beginning the work of their life. My life is as good as over. I have capabilities; I might do something if I had an impulse.”

He looked at her. Her face was as impassible as stone, her eyes closed. Lacour reached forward and touched her hand, making her start into consciousness.

“Will you lend me your hand one moment?” he asked in an irresistible voice, a low, tired breathing.

Ada did not resist. She had to bend forward a little; he put her palm against his forehead. The man was not merely acting; not purely and simply inventing poses; if so, how came his brow so terribly hot? Yet at this moment the question uppermost in his brain was—whether Ada knew the contents of Mr. Clarendon’s will. He had no means of ascertaining whether or not she had been enlightened. He could scarcely ask her directly.

The girl drew her hand away, and rose from her chair. She breathed with difficulty.

“How cool that was!” he said. Perhaps he had not noticed that her palm was like fire. “That is again something I never yet felt.” Then, with sudden energy: “Miss Warren, what on earth do you think of me? Do you think I am unconscious of the supremely bad taste I show in coming here and talking to you in this way? I have kept away as long as ever I could—a whole month. I was absurd that last time I talked to you. I don’t charge myself with iniquities; in fact, I don’t know that I recognise any sin except sins against good taste. This present behaviour of mine is in the very worst. You understand me as well as if I had spoken out the whole monstrous truth; you judge me. Well, you shall do it in my absence. Good-bye.”

She let him take her hand again. He looked at the palm, appeared to be following the lines.

“That is the line of the heart; that of the head. Both strong and fine. If I were a man of means, or even a man with a future, I would ask you to let this hand lie a little longer in mine, now and afterwards–”

He looked once more into her face; she saw that his eyes were moist.

“Mr. Lacour, please to leave me!” Ada suddenly exclaimed, rousing herself from a kind of heaviness which had held her inactive and irresponsive. Then she added: “I cannot aid you. We all have our lives to live; yours is no harder than mine. Try your best to be happy; I know nothing else to live for.”

“Will—you—help me?” he asked, plainly enough at last. “It has come, you see, in spite of everything. Will you help me?”

“I cannot. You mean, of course, will I promise to be your wife. I shall make that promise to no one till I am one-and-twenty.”

It was a flash of illumination for Lacour. “Not even,” he inquired, with a smile of quiet humour, “when Mrs. Clarendon marries?”

“When Mrs. Clarendon marries?” Ada repeated, not exactly with surprise, but questioningly.

“You know that she is going to marry Lord Winterset, and very soon? Why, there is another terrible mistake; I ought not to have mentioned it if you do not know it. I thought it was understood.”

“Perhaps it is,” returned Ada, a curious expression in her eyes. “It does not matter; it does not affect me. I beg you not to stay longer. Indeed, we have no more to say to each other.”

“May I write to you from India?”

“If you still have the slightest interest in me; I shall be glad to hear you have got there safely. I must leave you now.”

He had retained her hand for the last few moments, and now she felt herself being softly drawn towards him.

“My hand!” she exclaimed almost hysterically. “Release it! I order you to leave me!”

She tore it away and fell back several paces; then, as he still remained motionless, she went to the door and opened it. Lacour turned away; it was to hide the smile which rose when he heard the lock. In another moment he was once more in the garden.

There was moonlight by this time; the lawn was unshadowed, and he had to pass before the house in order to get into the park, and thence by a track he had in mind which would bring him into the high road. Close at hand, however, was the impenetrable gloom of the shrubbery, and, just as he was moving away from the end of the house to make a bold start across the open, there issued from the trees the form of a lady, who stepped quickly up to him.

“Mr. Lacour,” she said, recognising him without difficulty, “will you have the goodness to explain this to me?”

He had never yet heard Mrs. Clarendon’s voice speaking thus; it impressed him.

“What is the meaning of your presence in my house, and your very unusual way of leaving it?”

Vincent owed it to himself to make the most of this present experience. He was not likely again to see such an embodiment of splendid indignation, nor hear a voice so self-governed in rich anger. It was a pity that he had for the moment lost his calmer faculties; it cost him no little effort to speak the first few words of reply.

“I can only ask you to forgive me, Mrs. Clarendon–”

He was interrupted.

“Kindly follow me,” Isabel said. She led the way along the edge of the bushes and out of sight of the house. Then she again faced him.

“It is all grievously irregular,” Lacour pleaded, or rather explained, for the brief walk had helped him to self-command. “I need not say that I was alone in devising the plan. I wanted to speak with Miss Warren, and I knew her habit of sitting alone in the library. The window stood open; I entered.”

“May I ask for what purpose you wished to speak with Miss Warren?”

“I fear, Mrs. Clarendon, I am not at liberty to answer that question.”

“Your behaviour is most extraordinary.”

“I know it; it is wholly irregular. I owe you an apology for so entering your house.”

“An apology, it seems to me, is rather trivial under the circumstances. I don’t know that I need pick and choose my words with you, Mr. Lacour. Doesn’t it occur to you that, all things considered, you have been behaving in a thoroughly dishonourable way—doing what no gentleman could think of? If I am not mistaken, you were lately in the habit of professing a desire for my good opinion; how do you reconcile that with this utter disregard of my claims to respect?”

“Mrs. Clarendon, it is dreadful to hear you speaking to me in this way. You have every right to be angry with me; I reproach myself more than you reproach me. I did not think of you in connection with Miss Warren. I could not distress or injure you wittingly.”

“I don’t know that you have it in your power to injure me,” was the cold reply. “I am distressed on your own account, for I fully believed you incapable of dishonour.”

“Good God! Do you wish me to throw myself at your feet and pray you to spare me? I cannot bear those words from you; they flay me. Think what you like of me, but don’t say it! You cannot amend me, but you can gash me to the quick, if it delights you to do that. I won’t ask you to pardon me; I am lower than you can stoop. The opinion of other people is nothing to me; I didn’t know till this moment that any one could lash me as you have done.”

Isabel was frightened at the violence of his words; they must have calmed a harsher nature than hers. His earnestness was all the more terrible from its contrast with his ordinary habit of speech, and his professed modes of thinking. His voice choked. Perhaps for the first time in her life Isabel recognised the fulness of her power over men.

“Mr. Lacour,” she said with grave gentleness, “is this the first of your visits to Miss Warren?”

“It is the first.”

“Will you promise me that it shall be the last—I mean of secret visits?”

“I will never see her again.”

“I exact no such promise as that; it is beyond my right. What I do regard as my right is the assurance that my ward has fair play. Her position is difficult beyond that of most girls. I have confidence in Ada Warren; I believe she respects me—perhaps I should say she recognises my claims as her guardian. My house is open to you when you come on the same footing as other gentlemen.”

“I cannot face you again.”

“Where do you intend to pass the night?” Isabel inquired, letting a brief silence reply to his last words.

“I have got a room at the inn in Winstoke.”

“And to-morrow morning you return to London?”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Bruce Page tells me your brother is making you an allowance. I am glad to hear that, and I hope you will heartily accept his conditions.”

“I shall try to read, but there’s small chance of it ever coming to anything. I’m one of those men who inevitably go to the dogs. A longer or shorter time, but the dogs eventually.”

“That is in your own hands. Shall I tell you what I think? Just one piece of my mind which perhaps you will rate cheaply enough. I think that a man who respects himself will make his own standing in life, and won’t be willing to be lifted on to smooth ground by any one, least of all by a woman’s weak hands. And now, good night to you.”

She left him and entered the house by the front door.

After breakfast next morning, Ada was in the library, walking from window to window, watching the course of clouds which threatened rain, at a loss, it seemed, how to employ herself. She was surprised by Mrs. Clarendon’s entrance.

“You haven’t settled to work yet?” Isabel said, looking at her rather timidly.

Ada merely shook her head and came towards the table. Mrs. Clarendon took up a book and glanced at it.

“What are you busy with now?” she asked lightly.

“Nothing in particular. I’ve just finished a novel that interests me.”

“A novel? Frivolous young woman! Oh, I know that book. It’s very nice, all but the ending, and that I don’t believe in. That extravagant self-sacrifice is unnatural; no man ever yet made such a sacrifice.”

“It doesn’t seem to me impossible,” said Ada. “No? It will some day.”

Isabel’s way of speaking was not altogether like herself; it was rather too direct and abrupt.

“Of a man, you think?”

Isabel laughed.

“Oh, of a woman much more! We are not so self-sacrificing as they make us out, Ada.” She took a seat on a chair which stood edgewise to the table, and rested her head against her hand.

“Will you sit down?” she asked invitingly, when the girl still kept her position at a distance.

“You wish to speak to me?”

Ada became seated where she was.

“You wish the distance to represent that which is always between us?” Isabel remarked, half sadly, half jestingly.

Ada seemed about to rise, but turned it off in an arrangement of her dress.

“When Mr. Asquith told you something from me a month ago,” Isabel continued, “did it occur to you that I had any motive in—in choosing just that time, in letting you know those things just when I did?”

Ada had fixed a keen and curious look on the speaker, a look which was troublesome in its intensity.

“I supposed,” was her measured reply, “that you thought I had come to the age when I ought to know something of the future that was before me.”

“Yes, that is true. You will credit me, will you not, with a desire to save you from being at a disadvantage?”

“Certainly.”

The word was rather ironically spoken.

“You perhaps think I ought to have told you sooner?”

“I have had that thought.”

“On the other hand, you do not forget that nothing obliged me to tell you for another year and a half.”

“Nothing obliged you.”

Isabel suffered from the keen annoyance which this dry manner of the girl’s always occasioned her. She did not speak again till she felt able to do so with a voice as quiet as before.

“When I spoke of your being at a disadvantage, I meant, of course, that it was hardly right for others to be aware of facts about you which you yourself did not know.”

“I gathered that from your words.”

“Ada, I wish I had more of your confidence. I am not very good at this stagey sort of talk; it is not natural to me; it brings me into a tone which is the very last I wish to use to you. I asked my cousin to relieve me of the duty of telling you about the will because I did not feel quite able to do it myself; I was rather afraid of myself—of being led to say things I should be sorry for. As you know very well, I’m quick-tempered, and not quite as wise a woman as I might be. I feared, too, lest you might say things I couldn’t bear to hear. Well, what I want to ask you is this: Do you understand how difficult my position is with regard to you? Do you see how we differ from ordinary guardian and ward, and how all but impossible it is for me to give you those pieces of advice, those warnings which, as an older woman, I should be justified in offering?”

“Advice, warning?” repeated Ada, without much curiosity.

“Both. You have had very slight opportunities of getting to know the world. You prefer your books to society, and perhaps rightly; but that must not bring you to forget that you are heiress to a large fortune, and—and that other people—our friends—are well aware of it.”

Ada laughed silently.

“You wish, Mrs. Clarendon, to put me on my guard?”

“I do.”

The silent laugh had covered a distortion of features, as if by bodily pain. The girl’s eyes began to take on that wide, dangerous look which Isabel knew well and feared; there was a motion of her shoulders also, like a result of physical uneasiness.

“Wishing me,” Ada pursued, in a higher note, “at the same time to understand that no one is at all likely to seek me out for my own sake.”

“Ada, I did not say that, and I did not mean it; you might at least spare to charge me with malice which is not in my nature. Let us speak freely to each other now that we have begun.” Isabel’s colour had heightened, and her words lost their deliberateness. “I know too well what your opinion of me is. You think me a vain, superficial, worldly woman, ready to make any sacrifice of my pride—the poor pride that every creature has—just for the sake of keeping my place and the means to support it, and overflowing with bitterness against the one who will some day take everything from me. It is natural; you have never exerted yourself to know me better. It is natural, too, because I have, in fact, made an extraordinary sacrifice of my pride, have eaten my own shame with every mouthful under this roof since my widowhood—oh, since my marriage! For all that, I am not evil-natured; it is not in my heart to cherish malice. I do not feel hardly to you. Put it down to my poor spirit if you like, but the resentment I once had I have quite got over, and I wish you nothing but good. Why do I say all this? Only because I want to convince you that, if you ever take me into your confidence, I shall not advise you with selfish motives. And there was no selfishness in what I said to you just now. It was my duty to say it, misunderstand my words how you may.”

The silence which followed seemed a long one. Isabel had hidden her face. Ada was making marks on the table with a pencil.

“I don’t think,” replied the latter at length, “that I have ever charged you in my mind with this kind of selfishness; you are quite mistaken in what you say of my opinion of you. Please to remember, Mrs. Clarendon, that I too have my difficulties. I have not reached this age without questioning myself about many things. I have long ceased to be a child; the world is not so simple to me as it was then. Many things require explanation which as a child I scarcely troubled about or explained as a child does.”

Isabel uncovered her face and regarded the girl gravely. Ada returned the look.

“I once asked you,” the latter continued, in a lower voice, and with hurried utterance, “to tell me something about myself—how I came to be living with you. You only tell me that I was an orphan. Am I ever to know more?”

“I cannot tell you more than was told to me,” Isabel replied coldly. “When I myself sought an explanation of Mr. Clarendon’s will, Mr. Ledbury, one of the trustees, for answer put into my hands two papers. One was a formal letter addressed to Mr. Clarendon, and signed ‘Marian Warren,’ in which the writer said that she consented to her child Ada being given into Mr. Clarendon’s care, and renounced all authority over the child henceforth. The other was a certificate of the same child’s birth; the parents’ names, Henry and Marian Warren. That, as you know, is how you are described in the will. My solicitor made inquiries for me. Your mother was found to be a widow; her husband had been dead not quite a year.”

She paused, then added in the same distant way, but with a softer voice:

“I know nothing more, Ada.”

“Not whether my mother still lives or not?”

“No. If you wish to seek further, it is to Mr. Ledbury, I suppose, that you must apply. I am not in personal communication with him, but I can give you his address.”

“Will you kindly do so now, then we shall not need to speak of this again.”

Ada wrote it as it was spoken. Then they both sat in silence, Ada playing with her pencil. When Mrs. Clarendon rose the girl did not at once seem to notice it; but Isabel remained standing before her, and Ada, rising at length, stood with averted face. Isabel spoke:

“Only one word more, Ada. We will not speak again of my duties, but I think you will admit that I have certain rights. Will you promise me that I shall not be left in ignorance of any—any step of importance that you may take—anything you may do that—selfishly speaking—could affect my own position?”