Isabel Clarendon, Vol. I (of II)

“I suppose Mrs. Clarendon feels obliged to ask me; I dare say she’d rather I kept away.”

“My dear sir, these are outcomes of the black humour; you are not yourself. Mrs. Clarendon will be very glad indeed to see you; so she assured me. I pray you, fight against this tendency to melancholia.”

It was difficult to reach the gates without having previously collected considerably more mud than one cares to convey into a lady’s drawing-room. Kingcote endeavoured to remove some of this superfluous earth as he walked up the drive by rubbing his boots in the wet grass; the result was not inspiriting.

“Pooh!” he exclaimed impatiently. “If she really cares to see me, she won’t regard the state of my boots; any one who accepts such as I am, must take mud and all.”

The thought appeared to amuse him, he walked on with a laugh.

As he entered the garden, he met the trap just driving away from the house. A gentleman was seated in it. He had rather the look of a man of business, and was reading a letter. He scanned Kingcote, then resumed his reading.

Disturbed with the thought that there might be other visitors in the house, Kingcote hesitated, doubted whether to go on. He made up his mind to do so, however, not without sundry fresh communings with himself of a bitter kind. On inquiry he found that Mrs. Clarendon was at home, and, after a moment in the hall, he was led to the dining-room. Mrs. Clarendon was writing letters at a table by the window; as she rose, he thought he detected annoyance on her face.

“I fear I disturb you,” he said coldly.

“You don’t at all; or rather, you will not, if you’ll let me treat you as a friend. I have just one letter I am obliged to write; I asked the servant to bring you here, thinking you might like to look at the pictures till I have done. One or two are thought good, I believe—that Veronese, and that Ruysdael, and the Greuze yonder. May I?”

It was hard not to smile in reply to her voice and look as she spoke the last two little words, the more so that it was clear she had something just now to trouble her quite other than the inopportune arrival of a visitor. Kingcote walked to the picture she had indicated as a Veronese, and, affecting to view it, let his eyes wander to Isabel at the writing-table. She was thinking, previous to commencing her letter. Her left arm rested on the desk, and the thumb and middle finger of the hand pressed her forehead; with the end of the penholder she tapped her chin. He noticed how beautiful was the outline of her head, relieved against the bright window; noticed, too, the grace of her neck when she bent forward to write. The scratching of her pen—she wrote very rapidly—was the only sound in the room.

Kingcote went from picture to picture, his mind not quite tuned to judge and enjoy their merits. One, however, held him. When lunching here, he had sat with his back to the wall of which this canvas was the central ornament, so had not observed it. It was a portrait of Mrs. Clarendon, painted probably at the time of her marriage, an excellent picture. As he gazed at it, Isabel came forward.

“Do you recognise it?” she asked, tapping on one hand with the letter she held in the other.

“Without doubt.”

“And moralise? But,” she added quickly, “I want you to look at this child’s head. Isn’t it exquisitely sweet?”

His eyes wandered back to the portrait, and, on their way to the door, he again paused before it.

“Did I show you my ferns the last time you were here?” Isabel asked. “Will you walk so far?”

She led to the rear of the hall, thence, by a glass door, into a short glass-roofed passage, the door at the end of which opened into the conservatory. The first section was a small rotunda, twenty feet in diameter and twelve feet high. The floor was of unglazed tiles, the ceiling of ornamental stucco; round the wall was a broad cushioned seat, above which, commencing at a height of some four feet from the ground, were windows of richly coloured glass, pictured with leaves and flowers and fruit. A stand for plants occupied the centre, but at present the shelves were almost bare.

Mrs. Clarendon threw back one of the windows.

“There is a good view from here,” she said. “A tree used to intercept it, but we had it cut down in the spring to clear a piece of ground for tennis.”

From the hill, on which the house was built, a broad stretch of green park led the eye to a considerable distance in the direction of Salcot. The roof of the cottage at Wood End was just visible. Kingcote drew attention to it.

“I don’t see any smoke from the chimney,” Mrs. Clarendon remarked, with a pleasant glance. “It is to be hoped you keep good fires this damp weather. Is the place rainproof? These last two days will have tested it.”

“It seems to be sound.”

“And you still find it your ideal?”

“The cottage? I did not choose it as an ideal abode.”

“But the quietness, the retirement, I mean. In that, at all events, you have not been disappointed.”

“Certainly not.”

Isabel shuddered.

“How you live there I can’t understand. But I suppose you find it best for your studies.”

“I don’t study,” returned Kingcote, rather vacantly, looking at the pictured glass of the window.

Isabel closed the window and passed to the next door.

“I am so sorry Miss Warren is not at home,” she said. “I quite thought she would be, but at the last moment she decided to go to London to see something in the South Kensington Museum—oh, Schliemann’s discoveries!”

“Does Miss Warren read Greek and Latin?”

“Latin she does, and is just beginning Greek. She’s a wonderfully clever girl, but it’s difficult to get her to talk. I am sure you will find her interesting when you have had opportunities of talking with her.”

They were now in an ordinary hot-house. Isabel pointed out the plants which interested her.

“I have just had a visit from my lawyer,” she said, as she plucked away some dead leaves. “What tedious people lawyers are, and so dreadfully indispensable.”

“I suppose I passed him on the drive.”

“No doubt. But I mustn’t speak ill of the good man; he came all the way from London to save me a journey.”

They moved about for a few moments in silence.

“There’s nothing here to look at, really,” Mrs. Clarendon said. “If I could afford it I should have the place kept in good order; but I can’t.”

She did not appear to notice the look of surprise which Kingcote was for a moment unable to suppress. Leading the way back to the rotunda, she placed a loose cushion and seated herself. The warmth here was temperate, not more than the season required for comfort.

“So you don’t study?” she began, with friendly abruptness, when she had pointed to a place for her companion. “What, then, do you do? I am rude, you see, but—I wish to know.”

“I wish I could satisfactorily account for my days. I read a little, walk a good deal, see the Vissians now and then–”

“And cultivate ennui—-isn’t it so? A most unprofitable kind of gardening. I believe you are thoroughly miserable; in fact, you are not at much pains to hide it.”

“Scarcely as much as courtesy requires, you would say. I wish I could be more amusing, Mrs. Clarendon.”

“I don’t ask you to be amusing—only to show yourself a little amused at my impertinent curiosity. Why should you have so forgotten the habit of cheerfulness?”

“The habit?”

“Certainly. Is it not a habit, as long as we are in health?”

“In people happily endowed, I suppose. Temperament and circumstances may enable one to keep a bright view of life.”

“Rather, a reasonable effort of the will, I should say. I am often tempted to be dreary, but I refuse to give way.”

Kingcote smiled, almost laughed.