CHAPTER XIV.
|Mrs. Clarendon did not hunt the next winter.
Her sojourn with her friends in Scotland was to have been for six weeks, but the end of a little more than half that time saw her back at Knightswell. She returned in uncertain health, and a very dull, wet autumn aided in depressing her spirits. Throughout September she lived almost alone; then, at the impulse of a moment, she set off for Chislehurst, and presented herself quite unexpectedly at the Strattons’, where she dwelt till November was half spent. For a week after her arrival, she was so unwell that she had to keep her room.
It was the termination of a serious attempt to live by herself. Since receiving and answering Kingcote’s last letter (it came to her on the morning of her departure for Scotland, and in hurriedly opening the envelope she had not even noticed that the post-mark was not of London), she had been in ceaseless nervousness of anticipation; that Kingcote would maintain silence, she could not believe. By every post she expected a letter, in which he would once more overwhelm himself with reproaches, and implore the continuance of her love. She could not have said, she did not in truth know, whether she hoped for such a letter; that she feared it was no proof of the contrary. In Scotland, the feeling of her distance from London was a trouble, growing day by day. That she should seem to be enjoying herself at such a time was an injustice to herself; enjoyment she had none. Apprehensions lay upon her in the night-time. Was he not capable of doing rash things in such a crisis of his life? Not seldom she rose with her eyelids swollen; Isabel wept more in three days than in all her life before. Of mere woman’s resentment she felt nothing, for the accusation with which she visited herself was sincere and constant. At length she could not bear her remoteness, and, in her journey to the south, purposes the most various strove for the conduct of her mind. She reached Knightswell with a resolve to proceed on the following day to London.
It was not the anxiety and impatience of love; she knew it, and did not endeavour to deceive herself. But she suffered keenly in the thought of having inflicted pain. It was rather late, one may hint, to experience the reality of trouble on this score; but do not be unjust to her. When she went to London at the beginning of the season, it was in the full expectation that Kingcote would be part of her world; it had been her intention to introduce him to the more intimate of her friends, and little by little to allow people to surmise the situation. The dream of breaking wholly with her past was already forgotten; Isabel did not lack sincerity of thought, and she knew that the projects she had at first entertained were impossible. Their marriage must be planned in a more practical way; let details be left for the future, but an essential was that Kingcote should understand the kind of life which custom had made her second nature, and should adapt himself to it. She could see nothing unreasonable in this, nothing too exigent. Quite failing of insight into his modes of thought and the peculiarities of his character, she believed that it lay with her to draw him forth from his unwholesome retirement, and to accustom him to a measure of social activity which could not interfere with his favourite pursuits, and might very well lead to something—that vague something which she kept well away on the horizon of her speculations, the indispensable help which good fortune would provide. This plan had lamentably fallen through; Kingcote would not adapt himself to the situation. There followed in her mind some irritation; she thought him unjust to her. Conscious of her perfect faithfulness in word and deed, she could not understand his frantic jealousy. It was something, she said to herself, that would pass; both for his sake and her own she must hold on her way, and he would overcome his weakness. Oh, if he had not been so weak! Had he but been led by his jealousy to take a strong attitude; had he, when she gave him the chance, bidden her return to Knightswell; she could have subdued her will to his, and love would have been strengthened by the act of obedience. He would do neither one thing nor another; it was she who must be strong. The prolongation of her stay in London was partly due to her lingering hope that he would still take the rational view of things, though in part it arose from a slight perversity excited by his behaviour. He accused her daily, he put her in the wrong, and she felt that it was neither just nor generous in him to do so.
She went from London with an unsettled mind, but with a distinct sense of relief. She had come to dread his visits, and to fear the letters he wrote her. She promised herself to think it all over whilst in Scotland. The idea of frankly admitting to Mrs. Stratton the nature of her interest in Kingcote, that together with her some plan might be contrived for obtaining him a reputable position, was just now uppermost in her mind. Then came Asquith’s mention of the secretaryship in Smyrna. We have seen in what mood she wrote to Kingcote. His interpretation of her letter was unjust, for Isabel had not consciously the thought which he attributed to her. Yet she wrote it, and certainly would not have done so four months ago.
Now she suffered in the feeling that she had inflicted pain. She remembered his face when she parted with him—its worn and haggard look. With all her soul she tried to yearn towards him as she had in those winter days at Chislehurst, when the flame of her love was new-kindled, and each letter that came from him was fuel of passion. That was what made her weep—the misery of knowing that her heart did not live as for a short space it had done, the sadness of a death within her. Was he less lovable than when first she knew him? Tears came for an answer; they meant that she did indeed think him so. But the loss, the loss! She had let slip from her hand something which had been like a gift from heaven. The loss was one that would affect the whole of the life that lay before her.
The last of her youth was gone.
Coming from Scotland, she reached Knights-well late in the evening; she gave orders that preparations should be made for a journey to London the first thing next morning. At the last moment that journey was postponed. It rained heavily; she made it her excuse. Then, in her changing purposes, another plan seemed better. She would live at Knightswell in complete isolation. Solitude would make him an ever-present need; her heart would soften to the old tenderness; at the end of the year she would write to him, tell him how she had spent her time, bid him come to her. She began a diary, in which she would set down her thoughts of him daily; this she would send. But when a week had passed she no longer wrote in the pages of the book; on the last which her pen touched there were marks of tears....
The visit at Chislehurst restored her health, and shortly after her return to Knightswell friends came to stay with her. Parties succeeded each other through the winter; she would not hunt—she did not clearly know why—but her stables were used by those who did. When, at the end of February, she was a whole week without guests, an uneasy loneliness possessed her.
Mr. Vissian visited her during that week. In September, that dread month of solitude, she had asked him if he had news from Mr. Kingcote; but the rector had then heard nothing. He was now, however, in a position to answer more satisfactorily, when she again asked the question. It was late in the afternoon; they were by the fire in the drawing-room, drinking tea.
“Kingcote? Oh, yes!” said Mr. Vissian. “He has gone to live in Norwich. I thought I should never hear from him again; but I find he has been seriously ill.”
“Ill?” Isabel asked, not immediately. “Is that lately?”
“He speaks of the end of last year; a bad fever of some kind, which nearly ended his days—those are his words.”
She murmured an “Indeed!” and looked at the fire.
“What is he doing in Norwich?” was her next question.
“Well, I was somewhat surprised to hear that he has turned bookseller, has a shop there.”
Isabel looked at him without astonishment, but rather as if she were reflecting on what he had told her.
“He writes in a melancholy way,” the rector pursued. “Circumstances have urged him to this step, it seems. I fear he will find business, even that of a bookseller, very uncongenial. He is a man of singular delicacy of temperament; quite unfitted to face practical troubles, I should say. Possibly you know that he has relatives dependent upon him.”
“Yes, I know,” Isabel answered mechanically.
When the rector went, she sat till dinnertime thinking. Whatever her thoughts were, they only ended in a sigh.
More visitors, then the season once more at hand. At hand, too, the month of June—but of that she had resolved not to think. Not till the very day came would she turn a thought to the future.
Kingcote was not in London. She was glad of that; otherwise she would have gone up with a troublesome nervousness.