‘Oh, I am cold and cramped, perhaps; I am frightened of things all of a sudden. Even you and I will have each to go alone into the Valley of the Shadow, Kingston. You will not be able to go with me there, not even if we are to meet again on the other side. I am dreadfully afraid of death and dying. Life has suddenly become more lovely than ever. I love it and worship it. Come with me into life. But, even with you, I don’t like passing out of this warmth down into the mists and cold damps below there.’
‘They will have disappeared by the time we get on to the lower flats,’ he answered. ‘Let us set off. They are thinning every minute.’
With a last look round the radiant plain of the hill-top, Isabel followed him over the edge, and down the first steep slope. Instantly they were out of the sunlight and the glow, in chill shadow as yet untouched by the influences of day. Down and down they plunged towards the mists beneath, while, far overhead now, the rosy beams of the day shot out across the world, cut off from them as they went by the intervening bulk of the mountain, sombre and stark. So they came at last to the pavement of white limestone below, and stood on its last, lowest ridge. Beneath them, grey, barren, inhospitable, lay suddenly revealed the topmost end of the little valley, hemmed in by its amphitheatre of cliffs. The mists were scattering now in desolate wisps of vapour, and the air was cold and dank in the shadow of the mountain behind. Through the torn veils of the white fog they could see clearly down upon every detail of the glen—the shape of each poor profitless field of brownish grass, enclosed by intersecting lines of stone wall, with here and there an ash-tree or a hawthorn, weird, tormented, witch-like, crouching eternally beneath the lash of the wind, and shivering in its sparse, blighted garment of leaves. Just below them rose the struggling stream, out of a stone slope thick with nettles that dropped away steeply from the foot of the cliff; it wandered homelessly through two or three grim meadows, where wiry herbage battled with the white outcrop of stone, then passed through a grated barrier into the domain of Ivescar. From the height of the cliff Ivescar itself, house and plantation, seemed more impudently vulgar than ever. The plantation filled the valley, glaringly artificial, glaringly unsuccessful, a serried army of wretched dwarfish little pines. And in the middle shone, steely and cold, the square expanse of the lake, and by its side, isolated on the desert of lawn, the house itself, dome, tower, pinnacles and all, raw, yellow, brutal in its contented ugliness.
Kingston and Isabel gazed down at it with distaste; then they turned from the mournful glen, filled with chill shadow and sterile discomfort, to look back at the mountain from which they had descended. Very high overhead towered the imperious western face of the Simonstone, and the whole mass was glowing now like a thing alive, flushed with pulsing blood and vitality. From crown to base it was kindled to an ardent and luminous crimson, at once sombre and gorgeous, at once brilliant and terrible. Kingston and Isabel looked up at it in silence for a moment, then plunged, without a word, down into the bleakness of the stony valley. Another moment, and the mountain had vanished from their sight. They were in the cold shade of the cliffs, and the upper glories were hidden. So, still silent, they made their way through the fields, through the elaborate iron gates of the park, and into the pretentious deserts of Ivescar.
Gundred had a quiet, practical spirit. When her husband and her cousin had failed to reappear in time for dinner, she wasted no energy in grief or anxiety, but came to the conclusion that they must have lost their way, and either found some other haven, or, at all events, taken the most prudent steps possible in the circumstances. It was never in her calm nature to be harassed without good cause; she always expected the best till she heard the worst, and gave everybody round her credit for coolness and imperturbable sagacity equal to her own. Accordingly on this occasion she made her husband’s apologies to Mrs. Mimburn, dined without agitation, and slept the night through in placid confidence that the wanderers would return with the morning. Her perfect trust in Kingston’s sense precluded all anxiety as to his welfare, and her perfect trust in his affection all anxiety as to his absence. When at last Kingston and Isabel returned, Gundred received them with a complete lack of fuss or excitement, but with proper attention suited to their state. Warmed, washed, fed, they soon fell again into the orderly course of the life that she had arranged. She condoled with them on the misadventure that had kept them prisoners on the hill-top, and troubled no more about the matter, as soon as she had made certain that neither of them had contracted chills or colds. Very tiresome she felt the misfortune to have been, but a thing that might have happened to anyone, of no real lasting importance.
Not so, however, moved the keen mind of Minne-Adélaïde. That astute woman, ruffled by the inexplicable absence of her host, depressed by the barbarism of the view from her window, and at all times prone to the more passionate interpretation of life’s problems, set herself to the careful watching of Kingston in his relations with this strange new cousin of his wife’s. Mrs. Mimburn from the beginning was no friend to Gundred. She could not but suspect that Gundred disapproved of her. No persuasions could induce Gundred to call her ‘Minne.’ To Mrs. Mimburn’s complete disgust, the new niece persisted in calling her ‘Aunt Minna.’ Thus predisposed against her hostess, Minne-Adélaïde unfavourably noted all Gundred’s limitations, her apparent coldness, her lack of appetizing brilliancy, of appeal, of all the many attractions with which a wise wife arms herself against the inevitable satiety of marriage. In an evening’s space, Mrs. Mimburn became convinced that Kingston must be dreadfully bored by this unsalted wife of his, with her frigid little excellencies. She kept a sparkling eye wide open for complications. When she heard that Kingston was on the hills with a female cousin, she smiled in one corner of her mouth; when time went by, and he was discovered to be spending the night with her on a mountain, she smiled in both, and licked her lips with a delightful foreboding of catastrophe. She welcomed her nephew with perfunctory joy when he at last appeared, and devoted her keenest attention to the examination of Isabel. And at once her experienced glance discerned what it had taken Kingston weeks to discover, what Gundred was still a long way from discovering. She saw that Isabel was attractive—illogically, unreasonably so, but attractive all the same—even unusually so. And Minne-Adélaïde knew that it is just these illogically fascinating people who do the most harm, and establish the most devastating tyranny over men’s roving tastes. ‘Aha!’ thought Minne-Adélaïde. Time began to hang heavy on her hands, and she fell to scanning the future with a hopeful anticipation.
The days passed by in their usual lethargic orderliness. Nothing happened, nothing seemed likely to happen. Kingston and Isabel were rather better friends than before, perhaps, but Gundred was so clearly satisfied with the situation that no perils appeared to threaten. Minne-Adélaïde began to grow a little disappointed. Neither Kingston, Isabel, nor Gundred gave her anything to be interested in. Their behaviour continued merely amiable and ordinary. Perhaps Kingston had grown more ardent in his treatment of Gundred, but Mrs. Mimburn was not in a position to realize the fact. Certainly he grew daily more and more affectionate; he pulled her perforce into every conversation, he devoted himself to her comfort, he never allowed himself to be happy out of her sight.
As for Isabel, he and she had very little to say to each other in these few ensuing days. What had happened had happened; it had given them a blessed consciousness; there was no need to be putting it into words. Exhausted by emotions, they were content to let themselves drift. That the situation was terribly unsafe and precarious Kingston knew in his heart. He realized that it could not long be continued. But for the moment he acquiesced, and trusted that, before the strain broke in catastrophe, Fate might provide some solution; and, meanwhile, there was nothing for Minne-Adélaïde to get hold of.
Mrs. Mimburn had made herself into one of those women who belong to the town, and are quite out of place in the country. Her dress, her voice, her every movement suggested the perpetual neighbourhood of shops, and an habitual dependence on their resources. Paris and London spoke in her, and she looked garish and inappropriate whenever she carried her elaborate boots or her silk petticoats into the country. Her rustic clothes and hats were never genuine. They overdid their effects, and only succeeded in looking like those of an actress at a garden-party on the stage. Mrs. Mimburn’s soul was as urbane as her body and its appointments. She could not live or breathe for long in the country. A nice suburban corner like Surrey might be all very well for a week-end or so. It had a saving artificiality—motors and bridge-parties and all kinds of gaieties seemed quite in place. One could wear decent clothes, and yet be in the picture. A civilized landscape like that was nothing more than a good mise-en-scène for an added last act to the “Drama of the Season.” Mrs. Mimburn could tolerate such an atmosphere without beginning to sigh for Bond Street. But Ivescar, dumped in its desolation, was nothing short of appalling. Minne-Adélaïde withered and shrank. She bitterly regretted that curiosity had brought her there. Nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to say: only clouds and rocks to look at, and the rain for ever spotting one’s hat, and midges biting one awfully through the openwork of one’s stockings, if ever one went out on the lawn in a presentable shoe! Minne-Adélaïde looked restlessly round for any possibilities of amusement. She felt completely dépaysée, out of her world, an exile in a desert that made her most brilliant gowns seem blatant and tawdry. She grew homesick, feverish, overexcited by sheer weight of dullness. She would not go away till she had well spied out the land. But in the meantime she must have something to do—or die.
‘So fascinating, your cousin,’ said Minne-Adélaïde one afternoon, suddenly wearied of counting the raindrops on the window-pane.