“Oh, I don’t know. We are always getting news, and there is so much more of bad than good. Mrs. Clarendon seems to be much better,” he added, slapping his leg with his gloves.

“Yes. You have heard from her?”

“Several times. I had a letter this morning.”

“What did she say?”

“She spoke of the necessary preparations for our marriage.”

Ada was silent. She had several times moved nervously on her chair, and now she seemed compelled by restlessness to change her position. A small ornament on a bracket had got out of position; she went and put it right.

“What preparations?55 she asked, walking to the window.

“I don’t exactly know. She wishes me to see her lawyer. Unfortunately,” he added in a joking tone, “you are not one of those girls whose marriage is a simple matter of the ceremony.”

She turned and came towards him, her hands hanging clasped before her.

“That is something I have to speak of. I cannot mention it to Mrs. Clarendon, and if I tell you now it will be done with. I desire that there shall be no kind of settlement. Nothing of the kind is enacted by the will, and I do not wish it. Will you please to see that my wish is respected?”

“Why is it your wish?”

“I can give no reason. I wish it.”

“I imagine there will be very strong opposition, and not only from Mrs. Clarendon. I expect the trustees will have something to say.”

Ada’s eyes flashed; her whole face showed agitation, passionate impatience.

“What does it matter what they say?” she exclaimed. “What are they to me? What is my future to them? If you refuse to give me an assurance that my one desire shall be respected I must turn to Mrs. Clarendon, and that will be hateful to me! I have asked nothing else; but this I wish.”

“You put as much persistence into it as another would in pleading for exactly the opposite,” remarked Lacour, his coolness contrasting strangely with her agitated vehemence. “You know that a wish of yours is a law to me, and I promise you to agree to nothing you would dislike; remember that they cannot do without my assent. But you see,” he added, “that it is not a very easy thing for me to urge. I have already been made to feel quite sufficiently–”

He interrupted himself. Ada waited for him to resume, still standing before him, but he kept silence.

“What have you been made to feel?” she asked, more quietly, her eyes searchingly fixed on him.

“Well, we won’t speak of that. Why do you stand? Come and let us talk of other things. You do indeed, Ada, look wretchedly ill.”

She averted her face impatiently. Though he had risen and was placing a chair for her, she moved to the window again.

“For my own part,” said Vincent, watching her, “I am grieved that you have set your mind on that. My own resolve was that everything should be settled on you. I hadn’t given the matter a thought till just lately, but well, that is what I had determined.”

Ada turned in his direction.

“You have been corresponding with Mrs. Clarendon?” she said, only half interruptedly. “Yes, you told me. I understand.”

What she understood was clear enough to Lacour, and his silence was filled with a rather vigorous inward debate. A protest of conscience—strengthened by prudential reasons—urged his next words.

“You mustn’t let me convey a false impression. Mrs. Clarendon is delicacy itself; I am quite sure she would not mean–”

He checked himself, naturally confirming the false impression. Conscience had still a voice, but the resolve with which he had come into Ada’s presence grew stronger as he talked with her.

Then she did a curious thing. Coming from the window, she seemed about to walk past him, but, instead of passing, paused just when her dress almost brushed his feet, and stood with her eyes fixed on the ground.

“Do sit down.” Lacour forced himself to say, rising again and laying his hand on the other chair.

He saw that she trembled; then, with a quick movement, she went to a chair at a greater distance.

“These things are horribly awkward to talk about,” he said, leaning forward at his ease. “Let’s put them aside, shall we? We shall have plenty of time to consider all that.”

Ada raised her face and looked at him.

“Plenty of time?”

“Surely. I have begged Mrs. Clarendon to remember how anxious we both are to do nothing hastily, to leave her ample time for the arrangements she will find necessary,—her own, I mean. I am sure I represented your wish?”

“Certainly,” was the scarcely audible reply.

“It will of course be some time before she is perfectly strong,” Vincent pursued, noting with much satisfaction what he deemed a proof of the strength of her passion for him; she was so clearly disappointed. “Such an illness must have pulled her down seriously. I should think by the summer she will be herself again. It is wretched that we are so utterly dependent on others, and are bound to act with such cautious regard.”

“You have fixed the summer, in your correspondence with her?”

“Oh no! I leave it quite open. But we cannot, of course, wait for ever.”

Ada sat motionless, her hands in her lap. Her features were fixed in hard, blank misery. No wonder the girl looked ill. Ever since the day on which she wrote to Lacour her acceptance of his offer, life had been to her a mere battle of passions. When time and the events which so rapidly succeeded had dulled the memory of that frenzy which drove her to the step, of set purpose she nursed all the dark and resentful instincts of her nature, that they might support her to the end. Pride was an ally; if it cost her her life she would betray by no sign the suffering she had brought upon herself. She blinded her feelings, strove to crush her heart when it revolted against her self-imposed deception that she loved this man who would become her husband. Had she not found a pleasure in his society? Did not his attentions flatter and even move her? And ever she heard a voice saying that he cared nothing for her, that she had a face which could attract no man, that her money alone drew him to her, and that voice was always Mrs. Clarendon’s. Hatred of Isabel was in moments almost madness. It seemed in some horribly unnatural way to be increased by the sight of the pale and suffering face; a wretched perversion poisoned the sympathy which showed itself in many an act of kindness. The struggle with her better nature brought her at times near to delirium. When Isabel’s convalescence began, Ada counted the days. She knew that Lacour would not postpone their marriage an hour later than necessity demanded; her strength would surely hold out a few more weeks. That he did not come to see her was at once a relief and a source of bitterness; his letters she read with a mixture of eagerness and cold criticism. She stirred herself to factitious passion, excited all the glowing instincts, all the dormant ardours, of her being—and shivered before the flame. Every motive that could render marriage desirable she dwelt upon till it should become part of her hourly consciousness. The life she would lead when marriage had given her freedom was her constant forethought. She was made for enjoyment, and would enjoy. For her should exist no petty social rules, no conventional hypocrisies. In London her house should be a gathering-place of Bohemians. She herself did not lack brains, and her wealth would bring people about her. She would be a patroness of art and letters, would make friends of actresses who needed helping to opportunities of success, of artists who were struggling against unmerited neglect. Reading had filled her mind with images of such a world; was it not better than that dull sphere which styled itself exclusive?.... When at length Mrs. Clarendon left Knightswell to go to the Strattons, Ada promised herself that any morning might bring a definite proposal of a day for her wedding. With difficulty she restrained herself from asking when it was to be. She had put aside every doubt, every fear, every regret; her life burned towards that day which would complete her purpose. And now....

“But we must see each other oftener,” Lacour was saying. “If Mrs. Clarendon will welcome me–”

She interrupted him harshly.

“Is Mrs. Clarendon the only person you consult henceforth?”

“My dear Ada, you mustn’t misunderstand a mere form of politeness.”

“Such forms have always been disagreeable to me.”

She rose and moved to the fire-place. Lacour watched her from under his eyebrows. It grew more and more evident how strong was his hold upon her; he asked himself whether a little innocent quarrel might not best serve his ends.

“I am wearying you,” he said, rising.

She could not let him go without plain question and answer; it seemed to her that she had reached the limit of endurance, that her strength would fail under the trial of another hour. Yet her lips would form no word.

“In what have I displeased you, Ada?” Vincent inquired, with an air of much surprise.

“Clearly I have done so. Pray tell me what I have said or done.”

She turned from the fire and faced him.

“When is it your intention for our marriage to take place?”

Lacour was suspicious again. This astounding eagerness must be the result of some information she had received; she dreaded to lose him. Did not her desire about the settlement somehow depend upon the same cause?

“Surely I have no interest in putting it off,” he said, his head a little on one side, his most delicate smile in full play.

“But you think it had better not be before the summer?”

“Is not that best? I have no will but yours, Ada.”

“I think,” she replied slowly, “that it shall be, not this summer, but the summer of next year.”

“A year and a half still? For whatever reason?” he cried.

“I shall come of age then,” she continued, looking past him with vague eyes. “I need consult no one then about my wishes.”

“My dear Ada, you surely do not think I hesitated–”

“No,” she said firmly, “but it will be better. Have I your consent to this?”

He walked away a few steps, desperately puzzled, exasperated, by the necessity of answering yes or no, when more than he could imagine might depend upon the choice.

“This is a joke, Ada!” he said, coming back with disturbed countenance.

“Nothing less. I ask you to postpone our marriage till I am twenty-one.”

Her eyes did not move from his face. If he had said, “We will be married next week,” she would have given him her hand in assent. Surely at that moment the air must have been full of invisible mocking spirits, waiting, waiting in delicious anticipation of human folly.

“If that is your wish,” Lacour said, “I cannot oppose it.” He had assumed dignity.

“My constancy, Ada, can bear a test of eighteen months.”

“I will let Mrs. Clarendon know,” Ada observed quietly. “It will relieve her mind.”

Should he leave her thus? He hesitated for a moment. Pooh! As if he could not whistle her back whenever it suited him to do so; women appreciate a display of dignity and firmness. He held his hand in silence, and, when she gave him hers, he just touched it with his lips. As he moved to the door he expected momently to hear his name uttered, to find himself recalled. No; she allowed him to disappear. He left the house rather hurriedly, and not in an entirely sweet temper, in spite of the fact that he had gained the very end he had in view, and which he had feared would be so difficult of attainment, would necessitate such a succession of hypocrisies and small conflicts.

How the imps in the air exploded as soon as he was gone!

CHAPTER II

Mrs. Stratton was summoned home by her husband’s arrival just before Christmas. Isabel preferred to delay yet a little, and reached Chislehurst a fortnight later, accomplishing the journey with the assistance of her maid only. It proved rather too much for her strength, and for a day or two she had to keep her room. Then she joined the family, very pale still, and not able to do much more than hold a kind of court throned by the fireside, but with the light of happiness on her face, listening with a bright smile to every one’s conversation, equally interested in Master Edgar’s latest exploit by flood or field, and in his mother’s rather trenchant comments on neighbouring families.

All the Strattons were at home. The four British youths had been keeping what may best be described by Coleridge’s phrase, “Devil’s Yule.” Colonel Stratton was by good luck a man of substance, and could maintain an establishment corresponding to the needs of such a household. Though Mrs. Stratton had spoken of her house as being too large, it would scarcely be deemed so by the guests of mature age who shared it with the two young Strattons already at Woolwich and Sandhurst, and the other two who were still mewing their mighty youth at scholastic institutions. There was a certain upper chamber in which were to be found appliances for the various kinds of recreation sought after by robust young Britons; here they put on “gloves,” and pummelled each other to their hearts’ satisfaction—thud—thud! Here they vied with one another at single-stick—thwack—thwack! Here they swung dumb-bells, and tumbled on improvised trapezes. And hence, when their noble minds yearned for variety, they rushed headlong, pell-mell into the lower regions of the house, to the delights of the billiard-room. They had the use of a couple of horses, and the frenzy of their over-full veins drove them in turns, like demon huntsmen, over the frozen or muddy country. They returned at the hour of dinner, and ate—ate in stolid silence, till they had appeased the gnawing of hunger, then flung themselves here and there about the drawing-room till their thoughts, released from the brief employment of digestion, could formulate remarks on such subjects as interest youth of their species.

Mrs. Stratton enjoyed it all. Her offspring were perfect in her eyes. Had they been less riotous she would have conceived anxiety about their health. When her third boy, Reginald, aged thirteen years, fell to fisticuffs with a youthful tramp in a lane hard by, and came home irrecognisable from blood and dirt, she viewed him with amused astonishment, and, after setting him to rights with sponge and sticking-plaster, laughingly recommended that in future he should fight only with his social equals. With the two eldest she was a sort of sister; they walked with her about the garden with their arms over her shoulders; the confidence between her and them was perfect, and certainly they were very fond of her. They were stalwart young ruffians, these two, with immaculate complexions and the smooth roundness of feature which entitles men to be called handsome by ladies who are addicted to the use of that word. Mrs. Stratton would rather have been their mother than have borne Shakespeare and Michael Angelo as twins.

Their father—one may be excused for almost forgetting him—was a man of not more than medium height, but very solidly built, and like all his boys, bullet-headed. His round chubby face was much bronzed, his auburn hair and bushy beard of the same colour preserved to him a youthful appearance, which was aided by the remarkably innocent and soft-tempered look of his eyes. He was a man of weak will and great bodily strength; his sons had a string of stories to illustrate the latter—the former would perhaps have been best discoursed upon by Mrs. Stratton. A man of extreme simplicity in his habits, and abnormally shy; with men he was by no means at his ease till they became very old acquaintances, and with women ease never came to him at all. The defect was the more painful owing to his very limited moyens in the matter of conversation; had it not been for the existence of weather, the colonel would, under ordinary circumstances, have preserved the silence for which nature intended him. Of Mrs. Clarendon in particular he had a kind of fear, though at the same time he was attracted to her by her unfailing charm; he knew she sought opportunities of teasing him, and, though it cost him much perspiration, he did not dislike the torment. With her he would have been brought to talk if with any one; a fearful fascination often drew him to her side, only to find, when he valorously opened his lips, that a roguish smile had robbed him of every conception of what he was going to say.

“Well, colonel?” she began, on a typical occasion, one morning when they were alone together for a few minutes.

The colonel turned his eyes to the windows, coughed, and, looking uneasily round, observed that it was astonishingly warm for the season.

“It is,” assented Isabel gravely. Whereupon, as if struck by the similarity of their sentiments, he looked into her face, and repeated his assertion with more emphasis.

“Astonishingly warm for January. You find it so? So do I. Yes, you really notice it?”

“I have been thinking over it since I got up,” said Isabel. “I wonder how many degrees we have in this room?”

With the delight of a shy man who has found something definite to speak of, Colonel Stratton at once started up to go to the thermometer which hung in the window; a half-suppressed laugh made him stop and turn round.

“You don’t really care to know,” he said, flushing up to the eyes. “That’s one of your jokes, Mrs. Clarendon. Ha, ha! Good!”

He stood before her, desperately nibbling both ends of his moustache—he had acquired much skill in the habit of getting them both into his mouth at the same time.

“Well, colonel?”

“You are in a—a frisky mood this morning, Mrs. Clarendon,” he burst forth, laughing painfully.

“A what kind of mood?”

“I beg your pardon. I should have chosen a better word,” he exclaimed, in much confusion. “It really is wonderfully warm for the season—you notice it?”

“Colonel, I assure you I notice it.”

Fear at length overcame fascination.

“I must go and have a look at that new bay,” he murmured. “You—you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Clarendon? Ah, here’s Rose! Don’t you notice how very warm it is, my dear?”

“Rose,” said Mrs. Clarendon, when the colonel had made his escape at quick time, “come here and answer me a rude question. Don’t be shocked; it’s something I do so want to know. How did the colonel”—she lowered her voice, her eyes were gleaming with fun—“how did the colonel propose to you?”

“My dear,” was the reply, given in a humorous whisper, “I did it myself.”

On another occasion, Colonel Stratton came into the room when Isabel was reading. She just noticed his presence, but did not seem inclined to talk, had, in fact, a shadow on her brow. The colonel observed this, by side glances. He moved about a little, and somehow managed to get behind her chair. Then, tapping her on the shoulder—it was his habit with male acquaintances, and he was probably unconscious of the act—he said, in a low voice but with much energy:

“It’s a damned shame! A damned shame!” He had disappeared when Isabel turned to look at him.

She was not quite well that day, or something troubled her. After lunch she went to her own room, and, when she had sat for some time unoccupied, took from her writing-case a letter which she had written the day before. It was to Ada. As she glanced over it, some painful emotion possessed her.

“I can’t send it! I am ashamed!” Her lips uttered the words which she had spoken only to herself.

She crumpled the sheet, and threw it into the fire.

She dined alone, and, a little later, Mrs. Stratton came to sit with her. After various talk, Mrs. Stratton said:

“A couple of friends are coming from town to-morrow—one of them a friend of yours.”

“Who?”

“Rather more than a friend; a relative, I suppose.”

“Robert Asquith?” said Isabel, surprised.

“Yes; I invited him some time ago, at Knightswell.”

“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.

“Oh dear no; nothing could be simpler. And now—I want you to come with them.” Isabel shook her head.

“But what is your objection?”

“I cannot leave England at present.”

“I don’t ask you to. We are at the middle of January; it will be time enough in three weeks.”

“Out of the question.”

She still shook her head, smiling. Robert reflected for a moment.

“When does this marriage take place?” he asked abruptly.

“Very shortly, I suppose. I have written to Mr. Lacour to request him to make arrangements as soon as he likes. I shall meet him in London on Monday.”

“Good. Then you are absolutely free.”

“I am not free.”

He glanced at her inquiringly.

“I am not free,” Isabel repeated, looking straight before her.