Isabel Clarendon, Vol. II (of II)

“Am I not an ordinary young lady?” asked Ada, smiling.

“If you were, I should not feel the kind of interest in you that I do, and I should not advise you to read this novel of Tourguéneff, which I hereby do with great fervour. If you don’t rejoice in it, your taste is not what it ought to be.”

The talk went into other channels, for Thomas Meres could at all times overcome his private troubles when there was question of literature.

Having her own sitting-room, Ada was not obliged to mix with the family more than she saw good. Whilst Rhoda was recovering, Ada kept to herself, seeing her friends seldom save at meals; but when the order of the house was restored, Hilda, having once more her hours of leisure, was bold in demands for companionship. It seemed, indeed, as though in future the younger of the two sisters would be Ada’s intimate. Rhoda, who had formerly occupied that position, was much changed; she seldom talked with Ada privately, nor much at all with any one, shutting herself in her bedroom whenever her absence was not likely to be noticed. She always seemed weary, and had lost the pleasant spontaneity of manner which was generally her principal charm. There was no sulking in her diminished sociableness; she simply drooped. When she went to her room, it was to lie on the bed and cry, sometimes for an hour together. A weak and perhaps rather morbid nature, she apparently had not the vital energy to surmount this first disappointment. Her life was not favourable to a recovery of healthy tone, for she had no friends with whom to seek distractions. That was the inevitable result of the family’s circumstances; no position is harder than that of educated girls brought up in London in a poor household. A bachelor is not necessarily shut out of society on account of his poverty; but a family must give and take on equal terms, or be content to hold aloof. Mr. Meres saw very few people excepting half-a-dozen professional acquaintances; he had always shunned miscellaneous companies. When Mrs. Clarendon was in London, he had frequent invitations from her, and these now and then led to others; but then that was not his world, and he was not able to devote himself to a system of social toadyism in the way. that would have suggested itself to a mother with daughters for sale. If ever Rhoda and Hilda were to find husbands it must probably be by the irregular course upon which the former had already made her first essay. To be sure it was a course attended with not a few dangers, but Society intends this presumably; it is its method for keeping up the price of virtue.

Owing to her illness, Rhoda did not hear of the postponement of Ada’s marriage till some weeks had gone by. Mr. Meres had it announced to him in the letter from Mrs. Clarendon which just preceded Ada’s arrival, but he kept the news to himself, not caring to speak with Rhoda of these topics, and taking it for granted that it would come to be spoken of between the three girls sooner or later. Hilda was the first to elicit the fact. This young lady deserves rather more special description than we have yet had time to devote to her. She was delightful. Sixteen years old, already as tall as her sister, delicate in form, delicate in her manners and movements, in watching her you forgot that she was not exactly pretty. Her face, in fact, would not allow you to consider its features individually; together they made one bright, pure, girlish laugh. She crossed your path like a sunbeam; you stopped to gaze after the slim, winsome figure with its airy gait, to wonder at the grace with which she combined the springing lightness of a child and the decorous motions of womanhood. To see her on her way home from school, wishing, yet afraid, to run; books held up against her side, the quick twinkle of her feet and the fairy waft of her skirts—all so fresh, so dainty, so unconscious of things in the world less clean than herself. She met your gaze with delicious frankness; the gray eyes were alive with fun and friendliness and intelligence, they knew no reason why they should not look straight into yours as long as they chose, which, however, was not the same as rendering to you a mutual privilege. If gazed at too persistently she would move her shoulders with a pretty impatience, and ask you some surprising question likely to prove a test of intellectual readiness. Yet it was hard not to take a very long look; the face was puzzling, fascinating, suggestive; there was cleverness in every line of it. Already she had advanced in her studies beyond the point at which Rhoda ceased. How much she knew! She could render you an ode of Horace, could solve a quadratic equation, could explain to you the air-pump and the laws of chemical combination, could read a page of Ælfric’s “Homilies” as if it were modern English. And all the while the very essence of her charm lay in the fact that she knew nothing at all. She lived in a fantastic world, in which every occurrence was stateable in young lady’s language, every person was at heart well-meaning, even if sometimes mistaken, where every joy was refined, and every grief matter for an elegy. Her innocence was primordial. When she came into the room, there entered with her a breath of higher atmosphere; her touch on your hands cooled and delighted like a mountain stream in summer; her laughter was a tradition from the golden age. She was devoted to music, and would have a fine voice; at present she sang everything. When she came back from school in the evening, she would run up to Ada’s room, tap at the door, and look in like a frolicsome fairy.

“Well?” Ada would ask, good-naturedly.

“Come down and sing ‘Patience,’” was the whispered entreaty. “Just half-an-hour.”

The aesthetic opera was fresh then, and Hilda could not have enough of it; and she laughed, she laughed!

Thomas Meres often sat thinking gloomily of this his favourite child. It was well that she was so clever, for she would have to teach, or so he supposed. What else was there for a girl to do? He could not send her into a postoffice, or make her a dispenser of drugs. Poor Hilda!

But I was saying that it was she who first ventured to speak to Ada of the latter’s marriage. It was on a walk they took together, over the bridge and along the Park edge of the river, one windy evening at the end of February. It was dusking, and they had the Embankment to themselves, so ran a race from Chelsea Bridge to Battersea Park Pier, to reach it before a steamer coming from the City; having won the race, they stood to-see the boat move on towards the pier at Chelsea. The lights along the opposite bank were just being lit, and made a pretty effect.

“Ada,” said the younger girl, as they walked on.

“Yes.”

“When are you going to be married?”

A gust of wind excused silence for a moment; they both had to bend forward against it.

“Perhaps never,” was the reply at length. Ada would not have spoken thus at another time and place; just now she was enjoying the sense of full life, quickened in her veins by the run in keen air.

“Never? But I thought it was going to be very soon?—Am I rude?”

“Not at all; there’s no secret conspiracy. It was to have been soon, but that’s altered.”

“Really? And how long will you stay with us?”

“As long as you’ll have me. All the year perhaps.”

“You don’t mean that! Oh, that’s splendiferous!” The school-girl came out now and then. “Really, now that is jolly! Do you know, I find it just a little dull with Rhoda. She doesn’t seem to care to talk, or to sing, or to do anything. I suppose it’s because she hasn’t been feeling well for a long time. I do wish she’d get better; it makes everything rather miserable, doesn’t it?”

“We shall have to take her to the sea-side-at Easter,” Ada said.

“Yes, so father was saying the other day. When you are married, where shall you live, Ada?”

“One of those houses,” Ada replied, pointing to Cheyne Walk.

“That’s a splendid idea! And you’ll have musical parties, won’t you?”

“Certainly I will; and you shall sing.”

“No, that’s too good! Then we shall get more society; you’ll ask us sometimes to dinner in state, won’t you?”

“If you will honour me with your company.”

“Now you shouldn’t be ironical; you know very well the honour will all be on the other side. I mean in the case of us girls; father, of course, could go anywhere.”

It was an article of faith with Hilda that her father was a conspicuous man of letters, welcome at any table.

The same night Rhoda heard what had been imparted to her sister. She appeared to receive the news with indifference.

It was about this time that Ada received a letter, written on club note-paper, and in a scrawl difficult to decipher, from one of the trustees under Mr. Clarendon’s will, the gentleman whose address she had sought from Mrs. Clarendon.

“Dear Miss Warren,

“In reply to your letter of the 26th inst., asking me for information regarding Mrs. Warren, and saying that you had Mrs. C.‘s permission to apply to me, I am sorry to say that I cannot tell you anything of Mrs. W.‘s present whereabouts, and that I do not even know whether she is living. As you expressly state your desire for particulars, whatever may be their nature, I suppose I ought not to hesitate to inform you of such facts as have come under my notice, though I should myself have preferred to suggest that you should let Mrs. C.‘s information suffice; I can’t think that you will derive any satisfaction from pursuing these inquiries. However, I may say thus much: that up to about two years ago, Mrs. Warren was in the habit of making application to me for pecuniary assistance, her circumstances being very straitened, and such assistance I several times rendered. She had abandoned her profession, which was that of the stage, owing to ill-health. But for two years at least I have heard nothing of her. As you express yourself so very emphatically, I engage that I will send you any information about Mrs. W. which may come to my knowledge. I do not know any person that it would be of use to apply to, but you shall hear from me if I have anything to tell.

“Believe me, yours very truly,

“C. Ledbury.”

This letter irritated Ada; she was sorely tempted to write back in yet, plainer terms than she had used before, and to protest that she was not a child, but a woman who had all manner of difficult problems before her, and who sought definite information which she held was due to her. But she remembered that this gentleman would of course only think of her as a girl not yet twenty, and would no doubt persist in what he deemed his duty, of keeping from her disagreeable subjects. And, after all, perhaps his letter contained all she really wished to know.

She had kept closely to her own room for more than a week, when one day at lunch she requested Mr. Meres to let her speak with him for a moment before he left the house. She came to the study holding a roll which looked like manuscript.

“Do you think,” she asked, “that you could find time to look over something that I have been writing? It isn’t long.”

“By all means; I will make time.”

“No, don’t look at it now,” Ada exclaimed nervously, as he put his eyes near to the first page. “Afterwards, when you are at leisure.”

She stopped at the door.

“When shall I come and see you?”

“Say to-morrow morning, the first thing after breakfast,” replied Mr. Meres, smiling benevolently.

This interview accordingly followed. Ada was requested to seat herself, and her friend, half turning from his desk, stroked his nose for some moments in silence.

“Now, Miss Ada Warren,” he began, with a light tone, which rang kindly enough, yet was a little hard for the listener to bear, “I am not going to discourse vanity, and to prophesy smooth things, because I don’t want you to come to me at some future date and inform me that I was an old humbug. I am at present, you understand, the impartial critic, and I shall use purely professional language. What I have to say about this little story of yours is that it shows very considerable promise, and not a little power of expression, but that, for a work of art, it is too—you understand the word—too subjective. It reads too much like a personal experience, which the writer is not far enough away from to describe with regard to artistic proportion. I suspected what was going on upstairs, and, on the whole, I was pleased when you put this into my hands. But, one question. This is not the only story you have written?”

Ada admitted that it was only one of several.

“So I supposed. Now let me have them all, let me look through them. Time, pooh! I am going to help you if I can. I believe you are quite capable of helping yourself if left alone, and for that very reason, a hint or two out of my experience may prove useful. In a manner, you have always been my pupil, and I am proud of you; I will say so much. There are several things in this sketch which I think uncommonly well put; and—a great thing—the style is not feminine. But—it isn’t a piece of artistic workmanship. You haven’t got outside of the subject, and looked at it all round. It is an extempore, in short, and that you mustn’t allow yourself. Will you do something for me?”

“What is it?”

“Will you write a story in which every detail, every person, shall be purely a product of your imagination—nothing suggested by events within your own experience? That is, of course, directly suggested; you must work upon your knowledge of the world. Write me such a story in about a dozen of these pages—will you? Perhaps you have one already written?”

Ada reflected, and, with an abashed smile, thought not.