Not hard, the heart of Isabel Clarendon, but very human, very womanly. It could not throw open its gates unreservedly to this child who had been forced upon her. The tears she shed at Ada’s side were bitter and choking; they brought no solace of moved tenderness.
It was the first and the last of such scenes. A couple of years later Ada looked back upon her part in it with that brain-scorching shame to which an intense nature is so subject in recalling immature impulsiveness. For a week or two at most it made anything of sensible difference in her own or Mrs. Clarendon’s behaviour, then the unconquerable coldness returned, with an appearance of finality. Their conversation limited itself to superficial matters, and even here occasions of difference not seldom offered, exacting self-control on both sides. Lacking conscious spiritual life, and all but void of intellectual interests, Isabel Clarendon could hardly be credited with principles, but for that reason her prejudices were the stronger. As Ada grew in mental stature, she found it difficult at all times to avoid involuntary collision with these prejudices, or even to refrain from impatient comment of a kind very irritating to Isabel. Small points of social observance first began to excite the girl’s indignant or ironical remark, then graver matters of tradition arose between them—stumbling-blocks for the one, to the other accepted sign-posts. Ada read much, and procured books from very various sources; even had Isabel been sufficiently familiar with the characteristics of authors to judge from their outsides the books she saw lying about, she did not feel strong enough to attempt to impose restrictions on her ward’s reading; such a step would assuredly have led to conflicts, and from this Isabel shrank. Ada’s tastes seemed to her deplorably masculine; it was very likely, she said to herself, that no positive harm would result to such a nature from literature poisonous to ordinary girls. Fortunately Mrs. Clarendon’s conception of responsibility was not that ever-besieging consciousness which leaves some women no rest in a position of superintendence. The instinct of procrastination was strong in her; a thought which troubled her she could, without much difficulty, set aside for entertainment on the morrow. Promising herself that some day she would have a long and very serious talk with Ada on the grave matters which she ordinarily shunned, for the present she allowed the girl to take her course, and the opportunity to which she often mentally referred never seemed to present itself.
Had Mrs. Clarendon understood the progress of Ada’s development she would have been greatly struck with the girl’s moderation and self-restraint, instead of being, to her own distress, repelled and hardened by each new manifestation of independence. Regarding Ada’s expressions of revolt as mere disconnected phenomena, she was puzzled to account for such evil features in a girl who had been well taught, held apart from the contamination of low associates, and trained in the habits of a refined and wealthy home. One explanation alone occurred to her—the base blood in the child’s veins manifested itself in spite of education to a different social sphere. Such a thought was natural and characteristic. Isabel called herself a Conservative in politics; in social matters she reconciled maxims of intolerance with practical virtues such as we are apt to call divine, because we find them so seldom in humanity. What is called the spirit of the times had access to her only in frivolous babble or inimical caricature. Living on the surface, she had never been instructed to think for herself in any matter of grave concern; the criminality of doubt and the obligation of social conformity were formulae which served her sufficiently for guidance whenever she might feel herself in danger of going astray. With pretty extensive knowledge of the world, her acquaintance with human nature was elementary; to be forced upon the study of a typical case of divergence from the broad characteristics of respectable upper-class mankind was to have demanded of her an exercise of intellectual charity of which she was incapable.
From one friend alone did she derive assistance in the practical details of her task. This friend was Mr. Thomas Meres, of whom we have already heard as Rhoda’s father. His acquaintance she had made in the earliest days of her married life; he acted as secretary to Mr. Clarendon. Thomas Meres was then a man of thirty; he had attempted literature, and failed to get a living by it, and had gladly accepted a position which for a time brought means of support for himself and others dependent upon him. These others—Isabel only discovered it after Mr. Clarendon’s death—were a wife and two children. One day, when Isabel had been six months a widow, she received from the late secretary a letter of appeal for aid in desperate circumstances; a letter which she answered by at once summoning to Knightswell the writer and his two children, girls of four and six respectively. She had always regarded Mr. Meres with favour; without information as to his private life, she felt that some hidden misery weighed upon him, and that he was a man of much capability and goodness sadly at odds with fortune. At Knightswell she won his confidence, and heard from him a dismal tale of domestic wretchedness. Happily, the main cause of his sufferings had at length abandoned the home she had made no home, and the only present difficulty was to find a means of livelihood. The man himself was starving; the children were sad-looking little creatures, victims of cruelty and a hard lot. The three remained at Knightswell for several weeks, being of course on the footing of visitors, and receiving kindness which put poor Tom Meres into spiritual bondage for life, bondage he would not have cast off for any luxurious freedom the world could offer him. Eventually a position was found for him, and he returned with his children to London.
Having made Ada’s acquaintance in those early days of her rescue from savagery, Meres continued to regard her with living interest, often prophesying to her guardian that she would grow into a remarkable woman. At least once a year he was at Knightswell, and he followed the course of the child’s education with attentive scrutiny. Ada came to like him; she displayed no childlike fondness for him, any more than for any one else, but she listened with pleasure to his talk, and in turn spoke to him of things of which to all others she kept silence. If Tom did not positively encourage her critical propensities, he was at all events at no pains to check them, and it was from his library that she received books which set her on the track of modern literature, which otherwise she would have discovered much later. Isabel, when her troubles of conscience began, taxed her friend with this.
“It is true,” Tom admitted, “I have advised her to read books which I shouldn’t give to ordinary girls. Ada is not an ordinary girl. Do not distress yourself, dear lady; no ill will come of it. It is only making smooth for her a path which would otherwise be intolerably rough.”
“But isn’t it leading her where she wouldn’t otherwise be tempted to go?” asked Isabel.
“I can assure you, no. Rough or smooth, she will take this direction. But would you rather I did no more? Your wish is supreme.”
“You are a vastly better judge in these matters than I am,” said Isabel modestly (meaning what she said, though not perhaps quite feeling it), “and I know you will be careful. I myself am helpless with Ada; my guardianship is nominal, I am sorry to say.”
To this friend it was that Ada had now of late been in the habit of going when she wished to have the change of London life, and now that she no longer accompanied Mrs. Clarendon during the season. The arrangement was a good one. Isabel had in the first place protested, trying to point out to the girl the advantage of making acquaintances in London other than those which Mr. Meres could offer her. Ada smiled in her least pleasant way, and Isabel surrendered the point, not in her heart sorry to be free when she took her own recreation.