Isabel Clarendon, Vol. I (of II)

But Mr. Vissian insisted.

“I will give directions at once. It must be supper time too. Mrs. Vissian has thought me busy, I fear, and has let the usual hour go by. Pray come into the sitting-room. It’s a year since I had any one to chat with over these things. It does me good; it does me good.”

In the sitting-room supper was already spread—plain bread and cheese and draught ale. In an arm-chair, busy with sewing, sat the rector’s wife. She looked very youthful, and was indeed only five-and-twenty, having been married at seventeen. She was delicate, pretty, and a trifle troubled in face.

“A friend of mine, dear,” said the rector, with an affectionate courtesy which pleased Kingcote, “who will remain with us for the night.”

Mrs. Vissian looked just a little startled, but speedily put on pleasant smiles, and went away to make her necessary preparations. On her return the talk turned to the son of the house, Master Percy.

“What did he mean,” Kingcote asked, “by telling me that the water of the Knight’s Well was enchanted, and that you must not drink more than one cup?”

Father and mother broke into laughter.

“You thought it an interesting local legend, no doubt,” said Mr. Vissian. “I am sorry to disabuse you. That enchantment is merely a sanitary precaution of my own. It’s not good for the child to drink much of the water this hot weather, so I hit on a device which has proved more efficacious than anything more literal would have done.”

“But is there no legend connected with the well?” Kingcote asked.

“Oh yes. The spring has doubtless been used for centuries. I will show you the story, after supper, in the county history. The marble basin was built five years ago by Mrs. Clarendon, the lady who lives at the house over there, which is itself called Knightswell.”

“The lady,” Kingcote asked quickly, “whom I saw entering the gates?”

“No, no,” corrected Mr. Vissian, with a smile, “Mrs. Clarendon is in London. That was Miss Warren, a—a distant relation.”

“A very different person from Mrs. Clarendon,” put in Mrs. Vissian, in a low voice. The rector murmured assent.

“It was Miss Warren, then,” Kingcote pursued, “whom I saw sketching a charming cottage in the lane not far away. What an exquisite spot that is!”

“Wood End—yes. The trees there are all that remains of a forest.”

“The cottage is vacant, isn’t it?”

“Yes, has been for a year. A labourer and his family left and went to Canada; Mrs. Clarendon gave the poor people the means to emigrate, and we hear they are already doing well.”

“No one whom Mrs. Clarendon helps fails to do so,” remarked the rector’s wife.

“What maybe the rent of such a cottage?” Kingcote inquired carelessly, leaning back in his chair.

“Half-a-crown a week is what Yardley wants for that, I think,” replied the rector.

The guest sat upright.

“Half-a-crown? A delightful little place like that! Six pounds ten a year?”

“I believe so.”

They were rising from the table. King-cote stood in his place, meditating. Mrs. Vissian again left the room.

“Suppose,” began Kingcote at length, “one took a fancy to live in that cottage, would it be possible to find a labourer’s wife—or some person of that kind—to come and give one say an hour’s service daily?”

“Very possible, I should say,” returned the rector, with some surprise. “Do you contemplate such a step?”

“One might do worse, I fancy,” was King-cote’s only reply.

Mrs. Vissian returned, bringing with her a large volume, the county history of which her husband had spoken.

“Always thoughtful, and always helpful,” said the rector, with a smile which made his face look wonderfully good. “Thank you, Lucy. Now you shall read us the story yourself, if you will give us that pleasure.”

Mrs. Vissian consented with a pretty blush. The story told how, in the troublous times of King Stephen, there stood in this place the stronghold of a great baron, who, shortly after he had wedded a noble and beautiful lady, fell in combat with another lord, the origin of their quarrel being obscure, and, indeed, nothing to the point. The lady, thus widowed, shut herself up in her castle and refused to yield to the victor, who had been one of many rejected suitors for her hand in former days, and now saw his opportunity of forcing her to become his wife. The stronghold being closely beleaguered for many days, and the garrison, too weak to make an effective sortie, already nigh to starvation, by the interposition of Providence there appeared upon the scene a certain knight, who also had been one of the lady’s wooers, and who, in despair at her refusal of him, had betaken himself to fight in the Holy Land. Thence he was even now returned with a good band of tried followers. Learning how matters stood, he forthwith gave battle to the besiegers, hoping to rescue the lady he still loved, or, if that might not be, willing and glad to yield his life in her service. As indeed he did, for though victorious in the conflict, he was at the last moment mortally pierced by an arrow. In the ardour of pursuing the foe, his men lost sight of their leader; the wounded knight dragged himself to a spring hard by, and whilst endeavouring to slake his thirst, bled to faintness and so died. There his body was found by the lady of the castle when she came forth to give due thanks to her deliverer. In memory of his devotion, she built a basin of fair stone to gather the waters of the spring, and from that day forth it was known as the Knight’s Well.

“We always call Mrs. Clarendon ‘the lady of Knightswell,’” said Mrs. Vissian, when she had ceased to read.

“The name is a beautiful one,” said Kingcote.

“It suggests a fair and gracious and noble woman.”

“Exactly what it should suggest,” returned the lady, with a pleased laugh.

“And who is the lord of Knightswell?” asked the guest.

“There is none,” the rector made answer. “Mrs. Clarendon has been a widow for a long time. But what say you to a pipe before bedtime, and a look at one or two old books? My dear Lucy,” he exclaimed, turning to his wife, “our friend has just captured a first edition of the ‘Venice Preserved.’ And where, think you? In a miserable shop in Salcot East!—And what for, think you? One penny, by the Turk! One penny!”

Mrs. Vissian smiled, but at the same time shook her head; and Kingcote wondered why.

An hour later he was alone in a little bedchamber which looked out from the front of the house. The sun had been so strong upon the roof all day that this upper room was overheated; he extinguished the light as soon as possible, and sat down to get a breath of fresh air at the open window. His eyes turned in the direction of Knightswell. The east lay over there, and already it seemed as though a new day were beginning to touch the heavens; there was a broad region of delicate dusky pink above the dark tops of trees, and outlined against it was visible the roof of Mrs. Clarendon’s house. There was no shining of the moon, and but few stars anywhere in the sky; the night throbbed with a passion of silence. Just as Kingcote’s eyes perceived the gables of Knightswell, somewhere in the park broke forth the song of a nightingale. For many minutes an unbroken stream of melody flooded the darkness; he all but sobbed in listening. Pain of the past and anguish of longing to the years which waited with unknown gifts of fate made his heart tumultuous. The kindness he had met with touched him; he had tender thoughts of the good rector and his sweet-faced, girlish wife. He loved this place; Knightswell was musical in his ears; he longed to see that gentle lady whose title has such a pleasant and stately sound of romance, and of whom such good things were spoken. As the nightingale sang he kept repeating to himself her name, “the Lady of Knightswell.” She had been a widow for a long time, said the rector; yet they had not spoken of her as of one who was old. He pictured to himself the fair, sweet, queenly woman whom that name would become.

The bird ceased. Over the country passed a leafy murmur, a hushed whisper of the tall dark trees, growing to a sigh, almost to a low wail, dying over Knightswell. Then an owl hooted thrice. The night had turned cold.

CHAPTER II

When Isabel Maddison married Mr. Clarendon she was generally esteemed, among such as had any interest in the matter, a highly fortunate young woman. Handsome, penniless, but nineteen years old, at a step she had achieved social apotheosis. Six months prior to the event Isabel had been on the point of accepting an engagement as a governess at a salary of twenty-six pounds a year. By agreeing to the alternative proposal she became wife of a county member, mistress of a mansion in Mayfair and of a delightful estate in –shire, presumptive possessor, before many years should have passed, of a fortune solidly correspondent with such show of dignity. Whatever might be the drawbacks, there was much to be said for the bargain.

The event was not as entirely romantic as it might have been; she was not positively discovered with ink-stained fingers among schoolgirls’ copy-books, and carried off by a masterful passion to grace a London season. The kindly interposition of a certain Lady Kent, an old friend of her mother’s, bridged the gulf between social impossibility and that respectable limbo where every aspiration is sanctioned and a dutiful waiting upon Providence is taught to ally itself with the graces of self-assertion. Isabel was the daughter of a country solicitor, who, dying before middle age, left a widow and two children, a freehold worth about thirty-five pounds a year, and a policy of life insurance for two thousand pounds. Mrs. Maddison thus found herself not particularly well provided for, and, but for the assistance of a brother who farmed some three hundred acres in the same county, would have been at a loss how to educate her boy of ten and bring up (we do not speak of education in the case of girls) her little Bella of seven. With all the aid that others were able or disposed to render, the first years of widowhood saw a good deal of pinching and struggling in the home, which had to be kept on a footing of gentility with firm resistance of that terrible temptation, encroachment upon capital. The boy Richard eventually went to learn farming with his uncle, and, at the latter’s death, being then nearly twenty, made use of a legacy of a hundred pounds to transport himself to Australia, where he flourished among sheep. Isabel was then seventeen. Her mother also received a small legacy at the uncle’s decease, and it was decided to use this in “finishing off” Isabel, that is to say, in giving her a year or so of that kind of training which would enable her to earn her living as a governess.

Already there was an alternative. The gentleman who had succeeded to Mr. Maddison’s practice, or rather, who had managed to establish one where only a shadow had existed, had kept an eye on Isabel through these past ten years, and, now that the girl was to be sent away from home, astonished both her and her mother by a proposal of marriage. He was a young Irishman, blessed with much self-confidence, and holding it for a certainty that he was destined to become Attorney-General. When Isabel reported the proposal to her mother she could scarcely speak for laughter. Mrs. Maddison was grave, and wanted time to think. But Isabel looked in the mirror over the mantelpiece, laughed yet more, and there was an end of the matter.

She went away to school, and remained there for a year and a half. Then it was that Lady Kent, now for two years a widow, her husband having died after a weary invalid vegetation at German baths, came to pay visits in her native county, and renewed a long-interrupted friendship with Mrs. Maddison. The two had been neighbours as children, had married about the same time—the one her luckless solicitor, the other a baronet who promised to live a year and lingered nearly twenty—and now, in spite of social differences, found that they still had a kindness for each other. Isabel was at home, advertising and answering advertisements. The first glance at this young lady satisfied Lady Kent that the projects in hand were not promising.

“I doubt whether any one will have her,” she said to Mrs. Maddison. “I’m sure I wouldn’t.”

The poor lady looked up in astonishment at so unkind a speech.

“My dear,” explained the woman of the world, “she is far too good-looking, has too much blood, doesn’t at all belong to the governess breed. I would say, don’t let her be thrown away, if I were not sure better things were in store for her.”

What these better things might be it was not difficult to imagine; but the chance of their attainment seemed so remote that Mrs. Maddison was half disposed to resent such remarks as gratuitous cruelty. Lady Kent went away and reflected. She paid another visit in a day or two, and brought forth a startling proposal.

“I have no children of my own,” she said, “and I shan’t marry again—had enough of it. Let me take Bella to London and give her a season.”

“But how will that–”