Isabel Clarendon, Vol. II (of II)

She answered nothing. As he waited, coffee was brought in.

“I don’t think I know anything of the Ackertons,” Isabel said, naturally, as the servant held the tray.

“They are Somersetshire people, I believe. The lady was a Miss Harkle.”

“Not a daughter of Canon Harkle?”

“Can’t say, I’m sure.”

The servant retired, and they sipped coffee in silence. Isabel presently put hers aside; Asquith then finished his cup at a draught, and walked to a table with it.

“I don’t think you have any excuse left, have you?” he said, leaning over the back of a chair.

“That is a decidedly Oriental way of putting an invitation, Robert.”

He was surprised at the amount of seriousness there was in her tone; she would not raise her face, and her cheeks were coloured.

“Let me be more English, then. Will you give us—give me—the great pleasure of your company, Isabel?”

“But I tell you so clearly that under no circumstances should I leave England just now. It is a little—unkind of you.”

“Unkind? It is not exactly a spirit of unkindness that actuates me. It would do you no end of good, and you will find the people delightful.”

Probably Isabel had by this time made up her mind, but disingenuousness was a mistake on Robert’s part. He only slipped into it because he began to fear that he had really offended her, and the feeling disturbed his self-possession for the moment.

“Thank you,” Isabel said. “I appreciate your kindness at its full, but you must not ask me again. I shall remain at Knightswell till I go to London.”

He made a slight motion of assent with his hand.

“Now to think,” Isabel said, with sudden recovery of good-humour—that sort of “well done, resolution!” which we utter to ourselves with cheering effect—“that you should have troubled to come all this way on what you might have known was an errand of disappointment!”

“Oh, I wanted, in any case, to see you before starting. I should have been very disappointed if I had missed you.”

He began at once to give a lively sketch of the expedition he had planned, and Isabel listened with much attention, though she interposed no remarks.

“You will bring me an account of it all when you come back,” she said on his ceasing to speak.

“It’s not very clear to me whether I shall come back,” Robert returned. “I have a friend in Smyrna whom I shall go to see, and I shouldn’t wonder if I am tempted to stay out there.”

“What, after all your perseverance in mastering English accomplishments?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t quite know what I shall do with myself if I stay here. Most probably I shall decide to go into harness again, one way or another. And that reminds me of the ‘Coach and Horses.’ I will wend my way to that respectable hostelry.”

“You’ll come and breakfast in the morning?”

“No; I must leave by the 8.15. I want to be early in London.”

“You are rather an unreasonable man, my cousin Robert,” said Isabel, as she stood at leave-taking. “Because I am forced, with every expression of regret, to decline an invitation to a yachting expedition, you are more than half angry with me. I thought you and I were beyond these follies.”

“Did you? But, you see, I am not a hardened giver of invitations. The occasion has a certain uniqueness for me.”

“Take courage. If one whom you invite declines, there is always a better one very ready to fill the place.”

Robert went his way, and before many days Isabel had a written “good-bye” from London:

“To-morrow we start. It would have been a different thing if you had been with us here to-night. There are mysteries about you, cousin Isabel, and I rather think I was more at my ease before I began to puzzle over such things. If I settle in Smyrna, I will send you muscatels. Here or there, I believe I am always yours, Robert Asquith.”

He never wrote a letter much longer than this.

The day after his visit, Isabel took up her pen to talk with Kingcote.

“What do you think I have just done? Refused an invitation to go with friends yachting in the Mediterranean—an invitation it would have been lovely to accept. And why did I refuse? Wholly and solely on your account, sir. Will you not thank me? No, there was no merit in it, after all. How could I have been happy on the coasts of Italy and Greece, whilst you, my dearest, were so far from happy in London? You must get over that depression, which is the result of sudden change, and of the gloomy things you find yourself amongst. Do not be so uneasy about the future. Try to write to me more cheerfully, for have not I also a few hard things to bear? Indeed, I want your help as much as you need mine. Yet in one thing I have the advantage—I look to the future with perfect trust. I laugh at your doubts and fears. Do you doubt of me? Do you fear lest I shall forget? I dare you to think such a thought! If I could but give you some of my good spirits. To me the new year makes a new world. I long for the bright skies and spring fields that I may enjoy them; they will have a meaning they never had before. It will soon be May, and then shall we not see each other?”

February passed, March all but passed. There were guests at Knightswell, and one fair spring morning, about eleven o’clock, Isabel was on the point of setting forth to drive with three ladies. The carriage was expected to come up to the door, and Isabel was just descending the stairs with one of her friends, when she saw the servant speaking with some one who had appeared at the entrance. A glance, and she perceived that it was Kingcote. She was startled, and had to make an effort before she could walk forward. She motioned to Kingcote to enter, and greeted him in the way of ordinary friendliness.

“We were on the very point of going out,” she said, her voice shaken in spite of all determination. “Will you come into the library?”

She turned and excused herself to her companion, promising to be back almost immediately.

“What has brought you?” was her hurried question, when the library door was closed behind them. “Has anything happened?”

“Nothing,” Kingcote answered, turning his eyes from her. “But I see you have no time to give me. I mustn’t keep you now. I thought perhaps I might find you alone.”

“And you have come–?”

“To see you—to see you—what else?” burst passionately from his lips. “I was dying with desire to see you. Last night it grew more than I could bear. I left the house before daylight, and I find myself here. I had no purpose of coming; I have done it all in a dream. My life had grown to a passion to see you!”

He caught her hand and kissed it again and again, kissed the sleeve of her garments, pressed her palm against his eyes.

“You have made me mad, Isabel,” he whispered. “It is terrible not to be able to see you when that agony comes upon me. I neither rest nor employ myself; I can only pace my room, like an animal in his cage, with my heart on fire. Oh, I suffer—life is intolerable!”

“Bernard, let me go to that chair—to see you gave me a shock. For heaven’s sake do speak less wildly, dear! Why should you suffer so? Have I not written to you often? Do you doubt me? What is it that distresses you?”

He stood, and still held her hand.

“Don’t speak, but look at me very gently, softly, with all the assurance of tenderness that your eyes will utter. You have such power over me, that your gaze will soothe and make me a reasonable being again. No, not your lips! Only that still, smiling look, that I may worship you.”

Her bosom trembled.

“Do you know yourself?” Kingcote went on, under his breath. “Have you any consciousness of that fearful power which is in you? No more, I suppose, than the flower has of its sweetness. You have so drawn my life into the current of your own, that I have lost all existence apart from you. I have dreamed of loving, but that was all idle; I had no imagination for this spell you have cast upon me.”

“I am glad you came! I too was longing to touch your hand.”

She pressed it to her lips.

“Oh, if I could only stay with you, now!”

“Yes, I know I must not keep you. You have friends waiting. They have a better right.”