Isabel Clarendon, Vol. II (of II)

“Why, I had a letter from him just before I left, and he didn’t say anything about it. How came you to make such friends with him?”

“Oh, he took my fancy! And I thought it might be pleasant for you to meet here.”

“Certainly; I am delighted.”

“I’m so glad you like him,” she added, after a pause. “I had no idea you got on such good terms when he came down.”

“Why do you never speak of him?” Mrs. Stratton asked, smiling slightly.

“Don’t I? I really can’t say. I suppose I take Robert for granted. I dare say he speaks as little of me as I of him.”

“Perhaps so,” said the other, in an unusually absent way. Then she asked:

“He has never been married?”

“Oh no! Robert is a confirmed old bachelor.”

“Rather strange that, don’t you think? He is in easy circumstances, I think you told me?”

“Decidedly easy.”

“And good-looking.”

“You think so? Yes, I suppose he is,” mused Isabel.

“Suppose? You know very well he is, my dear. And what is he doing, pray?”

“I really can’t say. He has rooms, and lives, I suppose, a very idle life. I shouldn’t wonder if he goes back to the East some day.”

“Very much better for him to stay in England, it seems to me,” remarked Mrs. Stratton drily. Isabel changed the subject.

She went to her bedroom early, and, when her attendant had helped her into the easy costume of a dressing-gown, sat by the fire and let her eyes dream on the shapes of glowing coal. Presently she shook loose her hair, which was done up for the night, and spread it over her shoulders. She took a tress between the fingers of her left hand and stroked its smoothness, a smile growing upon her lips. Then she paced the length of the room several times, standing a moment before the mirror when she reached it. The dressing-gown became well the soft outlines of her form; the long, dark hair, rippling in its sweep from brow to shoulder, changed somewhat the ordinary appearance of her face, gave its sweetness a graver meaning, a more earnest cast of thought.

“If he saw me now he would tell me I was beautiful.”

She smiled at herself, sighed a little, and, before resuming her seat, took from a drawer three letters which she had received during her stay here. Each was of many pages, closely written; he who wrote them had much to say. Isabel had read them many, many times. No such letters had ever before come to her; her pride and joy in them was that of a young girl, touched, however, with the sadness and regret never absent from joy which comes late. She thought how different her life would have been if she had listened to words like these when the years spread out before her a limitless field of hope. It seemed too much as if these letters were addressed to some one else, and had only been given her to read. She had to bring herself with conscious effort to an understanding of all they implied, all they demanded. Yet they moved her to deepest tenderness.

And that was the most marked quality of the letters themselves. In them was sounded by turns every note of love. There was the grace of pure worship, the lyric rapture of passion and desire, the soft rhythm of resigned longing, the sweet sadness of apprehension; but the note of an exquisite tenderness was ever recurrent, with it the music began and ended. They were the love letters of a poet, one in whom melancholy mingled with every emotion, whose brightest visions of joy were shadowed by brooding mortality. There was nothing masterful, no exaction, no distinctly masculine fervour. If a dread fell upon him lest the happiness promised was too great, it found voice in passionate entreaty. He told her much of his past life, its inner secrets, its yearnings, its despair. Of her infinite pity she had chosen him; she would not let him fall again into utter darkness? Love did not stir in him vulgar ambitions; to dwell in the paradise of her presence was all that his soul desired; let the world go its idle way. Too soft, too tender; another would have read his outpourings with compassionate fear, dreading the future of such a love. He visioned a happiness which has no existence. Men win happiness, but not thus. To woo and win as pastime in the pauses of the world’s battle, to make hearth and home a retreat in ill-hap, a place of rest between the combats of day and day, to kindly regard a wife for her usefulness, and children for the pride they satisfy, thus, and not otherwise, do men come to content. Content that is not worth much, perhaps; but what is the price current of misery?

Isabel wrote in reply to each letter; King-cote would have liked to pay in gold the village postman who brought her writing to his door. She, too, spoke with love’s poetry, and her passion rang true. How strange to pen such words! She had always thought of such forms of expression with raillery, perhaps with a little contempt. Boys and girls of course wrote to each other in this way; it was excusable as long as one did not know the world. For all her knowledge of the world she would not now have surrendered the high privilege of language born of the heart. And in all that she wrote—in her thoughts too—it was her effort to place him in that station of mastery which he would not claim for himself. Was there already self-distrust, and was it only woman’s instinct of subjection? She would have had him more assured of his lordship, would have desired that he should worship with less humility. If a man have not strength, love alone will not suffice to bind a woman to him; she will pardon brutality, but weakness inspires her with fear. Isabel had no such thoughts as these, but perchance had his letters contained one sentence of hard practical planning at the end of all their tenderness she would have found that something which unconsciously she lacked. She had bridged the gulf between him and herself; she was ready to make good words by deed, and, in spite of every obstacle, become his wife; it must be his to bear her manfully from one threshold to the other. Once done, she felt in her soul that she should regret nothing; she loved him with the first love of her life. But his hand must uphold her, guide her, for she would close her eyes when the moment came....

She was alone in Mrs. Stratton’s boudoir next morning, when the door was pushed open; turning, she saw her cousin.

“I was told that I might come here in search of you,” said Robert, with his genial smile. “How do you do?”

“Very well, thank you. How are you?—as the children answer. But I needn’t ask that; you have a wonderful faculty for looking healthy.”

“I don’t think there’s often much amiss with me. Setting aside the chance of breaking my neck over a fence, I think I may promise myself a few more years.”

“And the risk of fences you are wise enough to avoid.”

“Nothing of the kind. I was hunting in Leicestershire only yesterday.”

“Impossible, Robert!”

“Indisputable fact–” He had it on his lips to call her “Isabel,” but for some reason checked himself. “A friend of mine took me down and mounted me. I enjoyed it thoroughly.”

“But you are becoming an Englishman.”

“Was I ever anything else?”

“I believe I generally think of you in an Oriental light. At all events, you smoke a hookah, and very much prefer lying on a rug to sitting on a chair.”

“The hookah I have abandoned; the rug comes of your imagination.”

“Oh dear no; it was one of the first things you said to me when you came to see me last spring in town. It stamped you in my mind for ever.”

They laughed.

“But I want to know how you are?” Robert resumed, leaning to her, with his hands on his knees. “Mrs. Stratton’s account is too vaguely ladylike. How, in truth, are you?”

A ripple of laughter replied to him.

“You show me that you can be mirthful; that is much, no doubt. But you must have a change.”

“Am I not having one?”

“Oh, I don’t call this a change. You must get fresh air.”

Asquith’s way of speaking with her was not quite what it had formerly been. He assumed more of—was it cousinship?—than he had done, Possibly the man himself had undergone certain changes during the last few months. Oriental he had been to a certain extent; something of over-leisureliness had marked his bearing; there had been an aloofness in his way of remarking upon things and people, a kind of mild fatalism in his modes of speech. An English autumn with its moor-sport and the life of country houses; an English winter with growth of acquaintances at hospitable firesides had doubtless not been without their modifying influence; but other reasons were also discoverable for the change in his manner towards Isabel. For one thing, he had heard of her refusal of Lord Winterset; for another, he knew of Ada’s approaching marriage.

She made no reply to his advice, and he continued.

“You know Henry Calder?”

“Well.”

“You know that he has been absolutely ruined by a bank failure?”

“You don’t say so?”

“Indeed. The poor fellow is in a wretched state—utterly broken down; they feared a few weeks ago that he was going crazy. You know that he was great at yachting; of course he has had to sell his yacht, and I have bought it.”

“What will you tell me next?”

“Why, this. It is essential that poor Calder should get away to the South, and nothing would do him half as much good as a sail among the islands. Now I propose to ask him to accompany me on such a cruise, say at the beginning of next month. He and I have been on the best of terms since we were lads, and there’s no kind of awkwardness in the arrangement; he goes to put me up to the art of seamanship. Of course his wife accompanies him, and probably their eldest girl.”

“That’s the kindest thing I have heard for a long time, Robert,” said Isabel, giving him a look of admiration.