Isabel Clarendon, Vol. II (of II)

“You will bring them down afterwards?”

“If you would like it, Bernard.” She had dreaded lest he should find their presence displeasing.

He reassured her, and then they sat down to the meal. The rain had begun and was blowing against the windows. Kingcote ate little; his sister only drank a cup of tea.

“This is not the kind of food you need,” he said. “I must ask you to do as I wish for a time, and have care for yourself. Have you any servant?”

She shook her head. “But you can’t possibly do house-work at present.” There was something a little dictatorial in Kingcote’s way of speaking; a mere habit, but one which Mary knew of old, and which half accounted for her timorous regard of him.

“Mrs. Bolt has been so kind,” she said, “when I really wasn’t able to do things.”

“Yes; but we cannot trouble her. What, by-the-bye, are the terms on which you hold these rooms?”

“From quarter to quarter. We pay twenty-five pounds a year, and have to give a quarter’s notice.”

“Then it is impossible to remove till the end of June? I’m very sorry for that.”

“Mrs. Bolt might take things into account, and let us–”

“No, certainly not,” said her brother abruptly. “But I think I shall pay her the quarter and go as soon as I can find another place.”

(Mrs. Bolt, be it observed, had her ear to the keyhole, and lost not a word of the conversation.)

“Don’t you think you could find some girl to come and act as servant for a time?”

“Yes; I could. There’s a girl I used to have sometimes; I think she could come.”

“Then let her be summoned as soon as possible; and, by-the-bye, has Mrs. Bolt been at any expense, do you think?”

“I’m afraid she has for a few things.”

“Very well. If you happen to see her, will you ask her to let me have an account of all such expenses as soon as she can?”

After the meal, Mary went upstairs and fetched the children. They were boys of eight and seven respectively, thin and ill-fed little beings, poorly dressed. Both of them cried as their mother brought them forward; this uncle was in their eyes a most formidable person. Kingcote could not be affectionate with children, but he spoke to them with as much kindness as was at his command. Whilst he was talking with the elder, the other climbed to Mary’s lap and whispered something. Kingcote caught the words “bread and butter.”

“What’s that, Willy?” he asked. “You would like some bread and butter?”

His mother tried to hush it over, but with no effect.

“Mary,” said her brother, “if I go out, will you open the door to me yourself? I will give two raps.”

He went, and succeeded in finding a shop not very far off where he could purchase a large plain cake. Returning, he cut it on a plate and let the lads eat. Shortly after they were led away to bed. .

He would not let Mary remain with him very long, she was wearied out.

“I’ve put a fire in your room,” she said; “the house is a little damp, and I thought it was better.”

“In that case I will sit up there. You shall show me the way.”

She took him up to a room that could scarcely be called furnished—though she had stripped her own of everything she could possibly spare—where he found his boxes placed.

“Who brought those up?” he asked.

“Mr. Bolt and his son.”

He moved uneasily.

“I do hope you’ll be able to sleep here!” his sister said anxiously. “I wish I could have made more comfort for you.”

“Oh, it will do perfectly well. Now go and sleep, Mary.”

She embraced him, and her tears came again.

“I can’t thank you, Bernard,” she whispered, sobbing. “I can’t find any words. You’re very, very good to me.”…

He sat by the fire. A group of noisy lads had assembled in the street, and were urging two of their number to fight. They did not succeed, and their foul language passed into the distance. An organ played in front of the public-house, and there were laughing shrieks of girls. A man came along hoarsely crying baked potatoes.

He saw his bed-room in the cottage; he remembered the holy silence of night brooding over the woods and meadows. At this moment Isabel was sitting alone and thinking of him, sitting amid the graceful luxury of her refined home. Was that a dream of joy, or this a hideous vision?

CHAPTER V

The water-colour portrait over the mantelpiece was that of a blond young man with hair parted in the middle and a thin moustache, made the most of by curling at the ends, the expression on the face a sufficiently fatuous smile. This work of art had been the result of an acquaintance struck up between young Jalland and an impecunious teacher of drawing in the bar parlour of a Norwich hotel; the likeness was faithful, for it had simply been copied from a photograph, to save the trouble of sittings, as the artist said. In those days Jalland was just beginning his career as a commercial traveller; that he should belong to a Volunteer corps was in the order of things. Also perfectly regular was his acquaintance with the Kingcote family; his father exercised a number of vocations, was auctioneer, commission agent, broker, etc., and he frequently did business for Dr. Kingcote, who had a fondness for dabbling in pecuniary speculations and but for this foible would have died a richer man. When Jalland obtained a position in a London warehouse, he at once asked Mary Kingcote to accompany him as his wife; she was then a girl of seventeen. Her parents held the match impossible; they forbade it. The result was that one day the girl disappeared, and remained undiscoverable till at length she wrote to announce the fact of her marriage.

She seemed the most unlikely girl to do such a thing. She was of a very quiet disposition, shy with strangers, submissive to a somewhat autocratic mother, feeble in health. Curiously, she only followed a family precedent in risking an elopement; her mother—though Mary did not know it—had married in the same way. Doubtless that was why Mrs. Kingcote remained unforgiving. Her father was not a man of strong character, though he possessed considerable ability in various directions; his temperament was impulsive, imaginative, affectionate; he was wholly ruled by his wife. The children of the house, Bernard and Mary, seemed to an observer to lack something of ordinary youthful happiness; they appeared to stand apart from their parents; to be thrown very much upon their own resources. Dr. Kingcote saw little of them, save on Sundays, when he was for the most part absorbed in reading; Mrs. Kingcote, though behaving to them with all motherly care, did not win their love, neither appeared to miss it. She was a woman to whom the external facts of life sufficed; details-of housekeeping occupied her all but exclusively; one would have conjectured that she made her runaway marriage solely out of a passion for having a house of her own, where she might rule and regulate. From the day when she heard that Mary had married the commercial traveller her daughter’s name never passed her lips.

As a medical student in London, Bernard Kingcote held communication with his sister. At her entreaty he made Jalland’s acquaintance; he had known him by sight in Norwich, but was away at his studies when the families had grown to terms of intimacy. Bernard went to his sister’s lodgings one Sunday, and passed the afternoon there, but he paid no second visit. In Kingcote there existed his father’s intellect and emotional qualities, together with a certain stiffness of moral attitude derived from his mother. His prejudices were intense, their character being determined by the refinement and idealism of his nature. An enemy would have called him offensively aristocratic; only malicious ignorance could have accused him of snobbishness. He went to meet Jalland with instinctive repugnance; the man’s pursuit was in his eyes contemptible, and he resented bitterly the influence such a person had been able to obtain over Mary. On Jalland’s side there was no particular good-will; he was prepared to stand on his rights and repel any hint of lofty patronage. Kingcote had no disposition whatever to behave patronisingly, but he found it beyond his power to make the least show of cordiality. He and the representative of the great civilising agent had not a point in common. They saw each other at the worst, and, very wisely, never saw each other again.

The evening that followed was one of suffering for Mary, the beginning of a martyrdom. She knew already that her hasty step had been a mistake; to-day the slow-gathering consciousness became a fixed centre of pain. She had looked from her brother to her husband and back again; she understood that the difference between the two men was the measure of the gulf set between herself and the world to which she rightly belonged. Her husband’s amiability became vulgar self-complacence; his features, his demeanour, his interests, all bore the ineffaceable stamp of vulgarity. She watched him as he moved impatiently about the room; she anticipated the words he would shortly speak. He had never yet behaved to her with deliberate unkindness, though honeymoon warmth had long since given place to working-day ease of manner; matrimonial familiarity, a snare to the most delicate of men, takes shapes one does not care to dwell upon in the uncultured. But now, when at length the words came, they were rough, rancorous, brutal. Mr. Jalland attempted irony, excogitated sarcasms; finding these insufficient to his needs, he relieved himself in the tongue of bar-parlours. Mary put in no plea of mitigation; she bowed her head and let the torrent fall upon her, humiliated to the core. The man understood very well what he had done, and knew the change in her from that day forth. But he was having his revenge.

Our modern knights of the road are subject to one grievous temptation. Living at places of public entertainment at other people’s expense, they acquire tastes and habits which are somewhat rudely interfered with when a sojourn in their homes necessitates a diet and accommodation materially differing from that of hotels. Mary had already had the recognition of this difficulty forced upon her; in future it was to constitute a more serious trouble. Mr. Jalland let no opportunity pass of finding fault with his wife’s housekeeping. The meals she prepared for him he regarded with lofty scorn, and only on being pressed condescended to satisfy his hunger. He would mention what he had recently partaken of at such and such a table-d’hôte, adding, “No doubt you often used to have that at home, before you married me,” his irony pointed with a grin. His journeys, fortunately, became more extended, and Mary had sometimes weeks of loneliness; but his return was each time a harder trial. She soon perceived that he was acquiring the habit of drinking more than was good for him; it improved neither his temper nor his manners. Presently he lost a place which he had long held, lost it in some unexplained way, and was for half a year without employment. It was then that Mary first had to appeal to her brother for aid. She did so without consulting her husband, but he of course knew whence came the money upon which he lived; he came ultimately to grumble that the supplies were so restricted. From that time onwards it was alternation of degrees of misery. Jalland’s proclivity to drink grew more pronounced, and his health suffered noticeably. He never sank to sheer ruffiandom; never got beyond the point of nagging at his wife; often Mary would rather he had beaten her.

She bore everything with tearful patience, but—it was a note of character—never once sought to soften him, never once appealed to memories. Her nature was not passionate; it cost her nothing to refrain from recrimination, and the mistaken impulse of her inexperienced years never bore fruit in hatred of the man to whom she had sacrificed her life. She was a devoted mother; her children helped her to endure. Her husband she regarded in a spirit which the institution of marriage makes common enough; he was an item in her existence, and had to be taken account of, even as had the necessity of daily meals. A human being became to her a piece of furniture, only differing from chairs and tables in that it exacted more attention and was apt to evince ingratitude. So it went on to the end, and, when the end came, it brought, after the perturbations of nature, a sighing of relief....

Kingcote rose on the morning after his arrival with a determination to quit this present abode at whatever cost. He had scarcely slept; the atmosphere brought him bodily unrest. He knew that it was the height of imprudence to waste money in such a juncture, but life was impossible for him under this roof, and he could not suffer his sister to dwell in the proximity of the woman he had seen the evening before. His first impulse of compassion spent, the spirit of almost fierce intolerance again took possession of him. Formerly, he had felt much in the same way towards the uneducated people with whom he had had to come in contact, but never with such violence of personal antipathy as Mrs. Bolt and all her belongings excited. He understood well enough the narrowness of this spirit; he knew that his culture should have endowed him with tolerant forbearance; but it was a matter of temperament. He dreaded to leave his room and descend, lest he should meet one of the Bolt family; he felt the impossibility of behaving with decent courtesy. Aristocracy of race cannot compare in pervasive intensity with aristocracy which comes only of the influence of intellect and temperament. Kingcote would have chosen death rather than an existence elbow to elbow with people such as these he found in the house.

There was the sound of the postman coming along the street; this changed the current of his thoughts. The knock came at the door below, and he could no longer hold back. Mrs. Bolt was just taking letters from the box.

“Good mornin’, Mr. Kingcut; ’ope you’ve slep’ well,” she said, pressing her hand to her side and panting as usual. “It take me just ’ere,” she explained; “comin’ up them stairs from the kitchen is too much for me. I’m allus hawful bad in the cold weather. Here’s a letter for you. And, Mr. Kingcut, I wanted to say that if there was anythink as me or my ’usband or my son could do–”

“I thank you,” Kingcote broke in. “I believe Mrs. Jalland will make all necessary arrangements. I really don’t think we shall need to trouble you.”

He was turning away, but checked himself to add:

“I hear, Mrs. Bolt, that my sister is in your debt for certain things you have supplied to her lately. Will you kindly let me have an account as soon as you are able?”

“Oh, we ain’t a-goin’ to talk of that, Mr. Kingcut! A cup o’ tea, and a basin of broth. Of course I’ve kep’ a little account, but there’s no hurry about that.”

“If you please, I should like to settle the account immediately, as soon as you can conveniently let me have it.”