Читать книгу Isabel Clarendon (Historical Novel) - George Gissing - Страница 9

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On specified occasions of assembly at Knightswell, Ada did not ordinarily present herself. Mrs. Clarendon made excuses for her on the plea of indifferent health; habitual visitors understood that Miss Warren suffered much from headaches, and that she could not with impunity expose herself to unusual excitement. The headaches were a fact, but it was probably not on their account that Ada preferred as a rule her own company. Her frequent caustic utterances on the subject of the persons whom society considers, and the things with which society occupies itself, were a sufficient index of her views; the views themselves being a natural outcome of her temperament and the circumstances of her life.

But on the present Monday she appeared. To the last moments Mrs. Clarendon had been in uncertainty as to the likelihood of her doing so, though she had laughingly prophesied the event to Rhoda Meres, and persisted in spite of the latter’s incredulity. Ada had made no great preparations, but was well and suitably dressed. Robert Asquith, to whom all the girl’s movements were of extreme interest, promised himself the pleasure of closely observing her throughout the afternoon.

“Tell me something of the people who are coming, will you?” he asked, as he met her in the hall. “The interesting people, I mean, of course.”

“That limitation will make the task an easy one,” Ada replied as she buttoned a glove. Her colour was rather higher than usual, and her tone was less dry; she looked almost cheerful.

“Then of the less uninteresting; that will leave a margin for conversation, surely?”

“It all depends, of course, on one’s point of view. I believe you have considerable powers of being interested, have you not?”

“Yes; I fear I boast of them. You see I find the gift valuable. In my sane moods I had rather have the dullest conversation than none at all.”

“Therefore you come to me, waiting for others to arrive.”

“Spare me, Miss Warren. You wouldn’t believe what toil it costs me to frame and polish a compliment. I am sure you are naturally humane.”

“You are sure of that? To dumb animals, I hope.”

“Alas! it brings us back to the animals who are gifted with speech. Shall we have any one who talks well, independently of the matter of discourse? Remember, I am new to English society. I enjoy the gossip of idle people, provided it be good of its kind.”

“I am no judge,” said Ada; “but I should think Mrs. Bruce Page will satisfy you. Her tongue is so trained in current forms of speech that it has come at last to save her all trouble of superintendence. As far as my experience goes, she is nearly all that the most exacting could require.”

“I must study that lady. And what of Miss Saltash, of whom I have heard?”

“Oh, she is interesting!” Ada exclaimed. “I have seen her grow red in the face in support of faith in eternal damnation. If that goes, she has nothing to live for.”

Robert was obliged to confess to himself that Miss Warren was yet a trifle crude; she amused him, but he took an early opportunity of refreshing his palate from a less acid source. His thoughts continued, however, to busy themselves with her; he awaited impatiently the arrival of the young man who was supposed to have tenderly impressed this singular heiress.

But the Bruce Pages were late. Before them came Mrs. Saltash of Dunsey Priors, accompanied by her daughter Irene, whom Ada had characterised, and Lady Florence Cootes. The latter was a daughter of the Earl of Winterset; she was a constant guest at Dunsey Priors, being united in bonds of the closest friendship with Irene Saltash. It was a union very greatly indebted to ecclesiastical cement, the young ladies both holding the most pronounced views on the constitution of the world to come, and seemingly desiring to compensate themselves for a gloomy future by enjoyment of a present fruitful in consolations. They seldom quitted each other, and their chatter was lively in the extreme. Other maidens there were, who, in company with two or three young men of unimpeachable dress and converse, speedily betook themselves to lawn-tennis. Mr. and Mrs. Vissian were shortly to be seen among the guests, the lady looking very young and very pretty; she and Rhoda Meres seemed to have a good deal to say to each other. Then, as Asquith walked about with his hands behind him, the wonted smile on his lips, he heard the bustle of a new arrival, and, turning, was aware of Mrs. Bruce Page. He felt sure of her identity before he had heard her name pronounced. She seemed about the same age as Mrs. Clarendon, and in some eyes probably excelled the latter in attractiveness. With rather too high a colour, she was still decidedly good-looking; not handsome, nor beautiful, but beyond dispute goodlooking. Her bodily activity was surprising; she walked with the grace and liveliness of a young girl, and, as she shortly showed at tennis, could even run without making herself in the least ridiculous. Her voice, though a note or two higher than it should have been, had yet musical quality. And the use she made of it! Her greeting of the hostess was one unbroken articulate trill, lasting two minutes and a half; it embodied inquiries, responses, information, comments, forecasts, and ejaculation. All who stood around came in one by one for a share of her exhaustless utterances. She was never at a loss for an instant. Robert was presented to her, and she at once talked to him as if they had been on a footing of intimacy for years. When she interrupted her speech, it was to laugh, and this laugh was perhaps a yet more wonderful phenomenon, so clear and fresh and buoyant was it, and yet so obviously a mere outcome of the automatic contrivance which performed this lady’s social vivacities. She laughed because it helped her to show her teeth, and in general became her features.

“How is it she doesn’t lose breath?” Robert whispered presently to Mrs. Clarendon, his face expressive of amazement.

“Hush, that is a secret!” was the reply.

Yet Mrs. Bruce Page was not (I use the conventional standard) vulgar; she never said (as far as one could follow her) a malicious thing, was guilty of no bad taste in choice of expressions, seemed to overflow with the milk of human kindness. A silly woman, but scarcely an offensive one; probably in intimacy capable of making herself delightful and something more. Society was to be credited with this public manner of hers, and society on the whole admired the fruit of its systems.

Behind her came a young lady of seventeen, her daughter, and two young gentlemen, one her brother, the other Mr. Vincent Lacour. The girl was extremely shy, and had not a word to say for herself; having secured Mrs. Clarendon’s hand, she continued to hold it, shrinking, as it were, into the shadow of the dear lady whom all who needed a protector loved. The brother, Mr. Selwyn Parkes, was a pleasant-looking young fellow, of eight-and-twenty. It was in the quality of Mr. Parkes’s friend that Vincent Lacour resided at present with the Bruce Pages. Mr. Lacour himself was the last to shake Isabels hand; her greeting was that one gives to a favourite, of whom one yet entertains a certain amount of moral disapproval. That Vincent should be a favourite where ladies were concerned was natural enough. His personal advantages were striking. Tall, slim, with a handsome head poised on a delicate neck, he exhibited much of female grace and delicacy, without the possibility of being regarded as effeminate. Of a man’s health and muscle he had all that even women demand in their ideal. Black hair and a well-educated black moustache, fine, irresponsible eyes; these also were properties not to be resisted. If anything, he looked a trifle too intellectual, but this would be pardoned by those to whom it was merely suggestive of the mysterious. Of course Mr. Lacour was conscious enough of the attention he drew, and, to judge from his smile, not at all disposed to shrink from it. He might be a trifle fatuous, but he was very far from being a fool; his forehead suggested capacity for better things than those he was at present put to.

One of the first things he did was to draw Mrs. Clarendon a little aside, and speak to her in a hasty whisper.

“I beg of you to keep Mrs. Bruce Page occupied somehow or other. She’ll never let me go, and I’m bored unspeakably. Help me, and I am your slave for ever!”

Isabel subdued a smile, and made no direct answer. Just as Vincent made off into a cluster of people, the lady in question hastened to Isabel’s side.

“What has that boy been whispering to you?” she asked. “He’s in the most execrable temper; it was all we could do to persuade him to come. He vows that his liver is out of order, and that he is possessed by diabolical promptings. Pity me for what I suffer in discharging a mother’s duties to him. And, oh, Mrs. Clarendon! let him talk to your cousin—that really charming man! He’s got the Civil Service into his head, now, and I’m sure Mr. Asquith can give him useful advice—about offices, and that kind of thing, you know. What is to become of the poor boy, I can’t imagine! I’ve been at Sir Miles, in letters, for the last ten days, till at length he’s as good as told me to mind my own business. Surely, never were brothers so unlike! One satisfaction is that Sir Miles can’t possibly live long—if it isn’t wicked to say such a thing, and I suppose it must be. He has heart disease, my dear, and in an aggravated form; so Doctor Norman Rayner tells me. I fear I have increased it by my correspondence. Where is the boy gone to? I must take him to Mr. Asquith.”

“The boy” had found a pleasant seat by the side of Miss Rhoda Meres.

“You’re not going to play?” he asked, seeing a racket in her hand.

“I’m in the next set,” Rhoda answered. She had flushed a little as he took his place by her, and there was a sparkle in her eyes as she looked up at him.

“Can’t you throw it over? Do get Sophy Page to take your place.”

“Why shouldn’t I play?” she asked, examining the handle of the racket.

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Vincent languidly, leaning back and half-closing his eyes. “Do if you like, of course.”

“Have you a headache, Mr. Lacour?” Rhoda asked. “Don’t you feel well?”

“The fact is I don’t. I feel seedy and bored.”

“Pray don’t let me bore you——”

She half rose.

“You know very well you don’t bore me,” he said, looking directly at her. Then he added, “I——I half supposed you would have left Knightswell.”

She had a quick reply on her lips, but checked it, and merely said:

“I have not.”

“When do you go back to London?” he inquired, throwing one leg over the other and clasping his hands behind his head.

“On Wednesday.”

“I suppose I shall be back there before very long,” said Vincent, looking meditatively at the sky. “Probably I shall get a clerkship at five-and-twenty shillings a week.”

“I’m afraid you don’t show much energy,” said Rhoda, in a voice which lacked something of the indifference she meant to put into it.

“I’ve told you often enough I have none, Miss Meres. I’m like a piece of sea-weed; my condition is dependent on the weather.”

“It’s fine enough now, at all events,” she said, with an attempt at a laugh.

“Oh, yes; but there’s the very deuce brewing,” returned Vincent, with characteristic freedom of expression. “I wish,” he added slowly, “I’d somebody to help me—somebody who has energy.”

“Doesn’t Mr. Parkes——”

“Pooh!”

There was silence. Cries came from the tennis players, who were just out of sight, and a hum of conversation from nearer groups.

“What are you going to do when you get back to town, Miss Meres?” Vincent asked, regarding her again.

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” she answered vaguely. “Live as usual, I suppose; unless I take some decided step.”

“Decided step? By Jove, how it refreshes me to hear you speak like that! What decided step?”

“I don’t know. I’m very much in your own position, you know; I shall have to earn a living somehow.”

She said it very simply, looking down, and making marks on the grass with the handle of the racket.

“A living? Women don’t make a living; that’s all done for them.”

“Is it?” said Rhoda, and, as soon as the words were spoken, she rose, averting her face.

“There’s our set called!” she exclaimed; “I must go.”

He made a slight gesture as if about to exert himself to detain her; but she was gone. His eyes followed her dreamily.

“Oh, here you are, Vincent!” cried Mrs. Bruce Page, close at hand. “Have you really a headache, now? Poor boy! you don’t look well. Come along with me, I want you to talk with Mr. Asquith, Mrs. Clarendon’s cousin, you know. He knows all about the Civil Service.”

Robert received the young man with a look critical indeed, but good-humouredly so. He did not seem to be able to take Mr. Lacour quite seriously, yet could not refuse a certain admiration.

“You are thinking of the Civil Service examinations?” he began.

“Well, I can’t say I’ve thought much about them,” Vincent replied, in his manner suggestive of easy achievement. “I suppose they’re very much a matter of form—the elements—and—and so on?”

“Not quite that. And competition, you remember.”

“Yes. The truth is, I haven’t looked into the thing. What do they expect you to know?”

Asquith gave an outline of the attainments looked for in a candidate for the higher clerkships.

“By Jove, that’s pretty strong!” was Vincent’s comment.

“The competition,” remarked Asquith, “makes it about the severest examination you can undergo.”

“Then that’s all up!” exclaimed the young “What would the screw be?”

“You would begin with a hundred a year, and by slow degrees rise to four,” said Robert, curling his moustache.

“The deuce you would! Then I may with honour withdraw from so ignoble a competition. You can’t suggest any way of making the four hundred at start? I dare say Mrs. Clarendon’s told you all about me. I don’t mind who knows. There’s a great deal of false shame in the world, it seems to me; don’t you think so? But I really think it’s time I turned to something, and what’s the good of one’s friends if they can’t suggest a plan? Of course the social structure is radically wrong. A man like myself—I have brains, I beg you to believe—oughtn’t to find himself thrown out of it in this way. I shall be infinitely obliged to any one who suggests something.”

It seemed to Robert, as he listened, that this young man had a turn for affecting an imbecility which was not in truth part of his character; in the matter and manner of his talk, Lacour appeared rather to yield to physical inertness than to disclose natural vacuity. It might be that he was, as he professed, suffering in body; it seemed more probable that he found a luxury in abandoning his mind to sluggish promptings, even as he showed a pronounced disinclination for activity in the disposal of his limbs. His disastrous circumstances displayed their influence in the whole man. The rate at which he had lived for the past two years was no doubt telling upon him, and nothing tended to counteract, everything rather to foster, the languor which possessed him. His vanity, doubtless, was extreme; the temptation to indulge it no less so. Mrs. Bruce Page, with her semi-sentimental coddling, her pseudo-maternal familiarity, was alone enough to relax the springs of a stronger individuality than Vincent’s. Reflecting thus, Asquith maintained silence; when he raised his eyes again he saw that Ada Warren had drawn near.

Lacour gave the girl his hand, and, in a tone of almost ludicrous dolorousness, asked her how she was.

“I think I should rather ask you that,” she said, with a laugh; “you have a woful countenance.”

“You, at all events, are in excellent spirits,” he returned.

It was true, comparatively speaking. A sudden access of self-confidence had come to her, and her manner was at moments almost joyous.

“Have you observed Ada?” Isabel took an opportunity of saying to her cousin apart.

“I see now how wrong and selfish I have been.”

And to Ada herself she spoke, finding the girl standing aside whilst general attention was being given to tea and ices.

“You feel well to-day?” she said, with her kindest smile.

Ada murmured something unintelligible and turned away. Mrs. Clarendon reddened slightly and, passing on, met with Vincent Lacour, who was pacing with his hands behind his back.

“Won’t you have an ice?” she asked.

“Ice? Great heavens! I should die of dyspepsia. But, Mrs. Clarendon, what is it? Why do you speak and look at me in such an unfriendly way?”

“I am not conscious of doing so. Sit down, and tell me what you have been talking about with Mr. Asquith. Has he given you useful information?”

“Decidedly useful; he’s effectually knocked all those plans on the head.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. What is the difficulty?”

“There are just seventeen, one for every minute of our conversation. But very seriously, I want your advice. You know, Mrs. Clarendon, I think a good deal more of your advice than of any one else’s; pray don’t begin to be rusty just when I’ve most need of you.”

“Go on; I promise not to be rusty,” said Isabel, laughing.

“But you are a little rusty, for all that. You’re not so free and easy with me as you used to be. I suppose you’ve heard something new. I can’t get on with people—especially women—who won’t take me just as I am. You’re beginning to disapprove of me, I can see that.”

“My dear Mr. Lacour, I have always disapproved of you—in a measure.”

“Of course; but the measure is extending. There’s something in your tone I don’t like. I always say yours is the one woman’s voice I would walk a mile to hear, and to-day it has lost something of its quality for me.”

“I grieve exceedingly—except that henceforth you will be saved from the terrible temptation to over-exert yourself. But hadn’t we better talk seriously? What can I advise upon?”

“Well, it has come to this. Either I go on to the stage, or I go to Texas. Which do you recommend?”

“Of the two, Texas.”

“That is not complimentary, you know.”

“I only mean it to be sincere. And I think it not unlikely that you would do well in Texas. You need that kind of shaking up.”

“On the other hand, my advantages are thrown away,” remarked Vincent, stroking his chin. He spoke with the completest frankness; it was scarcely possible to call the speech conceited.

“I doubt whether you have any advantages for the stage,” said Isabel gravely.

“But, my dear Mrs. Clarendon————”

The talk was interrupted. Lady Florence Cootes came running up.

“Oh, Mrs. Clarendon, I had all but forgotten! I am charged with a message for you from my father. He bids me tell you that he has won his bet, and that it was Charibert won the Two Thousand the year before last. It seems you had an argument about it. Do tell me what you’ve lost?”

“I can’t, because I don’t know,” replied Isabel merrily.

“You don’t know? Have you forgotten what the bet was?”

“The stakes were kept secret. If I won I was to ask for anything I chose; if Lord Winterset won he was to do the same.”

“If Lord Winterset originated that,” observed Vincent, “he’s an uncommonly shrewd man. I shall introduce the idea forthwith to all my female acquaintances.”

Lady Florence turned away, with the face of an English virgin.

“Not with mention of the source, Mr. Lacour,” said Isabel, in a manner which he could not misunderstand.

And she moved away to mingle with other ladies, a slight shade of vexation on her countenance.

Lacour rose with rather a sour face, and strolled across the lawn, looking about him as if in search of some one. Apparently his search was unsuccessful. The sun was still warm, and he sought for a shady spot, eventually getting to the east side of the house, the opposite to that where the tennis-court lay. A yew-tree hedge divided this part of the garden from the front lawn, and it was free of people. Vincent found himself by the library window, which was low, not more than three feet from the ground. The window standing wide open, he glanced in, and no sooner had done so than he laid his hands upon the sill and neatly vaulted into the room.

Ada Warren was sitting alone. She looked, and was, in fact, a little tired, and had come there for the sake of quietness.

“I have been looking for you, Miss Warren,” was Vincent’s excuse for the intrusion. “You’ll let me sit here, won’t you?”

“I shall not be so rude as to tell you to go away,” she answered in a rather undecided tone.

“That’s good of you. Do you know I find it restful to talk to you? I do believe you’re the only person I ever spoke to quite seriously.—You don’t answer?”

“I was wondering how far that might be a compliment.”

“To the very tail of the last word.”

“And that was—ly, if you remember,” said Ada drily, giving the letter y its broader value. She looked confused as soon as she had spoken, feeling that the remark ought to have been made in a lighter tone to be quite within the limits of becoming repartee.

Vincent looked at first surprised, then leaned back and laughed.

“I’d no idea you were so witty.”

“Nor, perhaps, so ill-mannered?”

It was a little piece of reparation, and probably carried her further than she intended. Vincent leaned forward on a chair which stood between them.

“You study here, don’t you?” he asked, with a glance at the books on the table.

“I read here sometimes.”

“I suppose you’re very clever and very learned, Miss Warren?”

She moved her head slightly, and seemed unable to find a ready answer.

“Your contempt for me,” he pursued, “must be unbounded.”

“I don’t allow myself to despise people with whom I am very slightly acquainted,” said Ada; again rather more positively than she had meant. She found such a difficulty in striking with her voice the note corresponding to that which she had in her mind—a difficulty common in people who talk little and think rapidly.

“Well, yes, I suppose there is only a slight acquaintance between us,” admitted Vincent. “Not so much, for instance, as would warrant my jumping in by the window just now. I do things on impulse a good deal.”

“So do I,” said Ada.

“You do? Why, then, there’s a point of contact—of sympathy—it would be better to say, I suppose. There are very few people whom I find sympathetic. Do you fare better?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

Lacour allowed a moment or two to this assertion before he continued:

“I’ve been trying to get Mrs. Clarendon’s help in my difficulties,” he said. “She’s generally pretty sympathetic, but I believe she’s giving me up. Have you heard her say anything rather savage about me of late?”

“It would be unusual energy in Mrs. Clarendon,” was the girl’s reply.

“Energy? Well, I don’t know; I always thought she had plenty of that. But I understand you. You mean that that kind of society life doesn’t conduce to activity of mind—to sincerity, shall we say?”

Ada had meant this, but it did not exactly please her to hear it from Lacour’s lips.

“I don’t think I ever heard Mrs. Clarendon speak evil of any one,” she said, with seemingly needless emphasis, measuring her words as if in scrupulous justice.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” he observed; “and it’s just what I should have thought. I like Mrs. Clarendon very much, but—well, I can’t say that I find in her the moral support I am seeking.”

“You are seeking moral support?” Ada asked, looking at him in her direct way, with no irony in her expression.

“Well, that’s rather a grand way of putting it, after all, for one who isn’t accustomed to pose and use long words. I want help, there’s no doubt of that, at all events.”

“Help of what kind?”

“Moral help—it’s the only word, after all. Material help wouldn’t be out of place, but one doesn’t go round with one’s hat exactly—till, that is, one’s driven to it by what Homer calls a shameless stomach. Don’t think I know Homer, Miss Warren; it’s only a phrase out of a crib, which somehow has stuck in my mind.”

Ada laughed.

“Now, if you hadn’t told me that,” she said, “I might have been greatly impressed.”

“Pay tribute to my honesty then.”

He rose from his leaning attitude and walked a few paces.

“You’ve no idea,” he resumed, facing her, “how much better I feel since I’ve been talking to you; upon my word I do. As I said, there’s something so restful in your society. You give me ideas, too. I don’t feel sluggish as I do at other times.”

He paused again, and again resumed. This time with a rather pathetic resignation in his voice.

“I suppose Mrs. Clarendon’s advice is the best.”

“What was that?” Ada inquired, her tone colder.

“She said I’d better give up hope in England, and go to some other country. Texas was proposed.”

The girl kept silence. If Lacour gauged her rightly she was reflecting upon this advice as coming from Mrs. Clarendon. Her brows drew together, and there was the phantom of a bitter smile at her lips.

“Mrs. Clarendon thinks you would be better off in Texas?” she asked, with indifference not so skilfully assumed but that this shrewd young man could see through it.

“Yes; she seems to think I should be better off anywhere than in England. I dare say she’s right, you know. My friends are about getting tired of me; it’s time I made myself scarce.”

“And what would you do in Texas?”

“Oh, pretty much anything. The kind of work you see farm labourers doing here—rail-splitting, sheep-washing and driving, and so on.”

“You feel a call to such occupations?”

“Well, I have Mrs. Clarendon’s advice.”

“Mrs. Clarendon’s advice!” she repeated. “Is Mrs. Clarendon’s advice decisive with you?”

“I believe she has a friendly interest in me, and I shouldn’t wonder if she’s right. Other people have advised the same thing. They’ve given me up, you see, one and all.”

His voice was more pathetic still. He had reseated himself, and leaned back with his eyes closed. Mr. Lacour did this not unfrequently when speaking with persons whom he desired to interest.

She did not speak, and he rose, as if with an effort.

“Well, I’ll be off; I bore you. Will you permit me to make use of the window for exit?”

“Why not?” she replied mechanically.

He turned and faced her again.

“Of course fellows sometimes make a fortune out there. I might do that, you know, if only—well, if I only had something to work for.”

“A fortune,” Ada suggested.

“No, I don’t mean that,” he replied, with fine sadness. “That doesn’t appeal to me. If you can only believe it, I have other needs, other aspirations. The fortune would be all very well, but only as an adjunct. A man doesn’t live by bread alone.”

She smiled.

“Of course it’s absurd,” he resumed, making an impatient motion with his hand; “but if only I had a little more impudence I should like to tell you that—well, that it was never so hard for me to bring a talk to an end as this of ours, Miss Warren. You’ve given me what no one else ever did, but you’ve—you’ve taken something in exchange. I dare say I shan’t see you again; will you shake hands with me before I go?”

She stood looking straight into his face, her eyes larger than ever in their desperate effort to read him. Vincent approached to take her hand.

“Ah, there you are!” cried a voice from outside the window. “Vincent, I’ve been looking for you everywhere; you’re keeping us waiting. Miss Warren, I beg your pardon a thousand times; I was so taken up with the thought of that boy that I only saw him at first. I know I shall have your gratitude, however; poor Mr. Lacour is decidedly ennuyeux to-day.”

His face seemed to indicate a rather more positive state, but it was only for an instant. Then he shook hands hastily, without speaking, and vaulted out into the garden.

“Well!” exclaimed Mrs. Bruce Page, “that’s a nice way of leaving a lady’s presence. But I suppose he’s practising Texan habits. Good-bye, Miss Warren. Do so wish you’d come over and see us. May I shake hands with you through the window? Indeed, we are bound to be off this instant. Good-bye!”

Rhoda Meres was standing by Mrs. Clarendon in front of the house when Mrs. Bruce Page came round with her captive.

“You’d never believe where I found him!” cried the voluble lady. “Having exhausted the patience of every one else, he’d positively tracked poor Miss Warren—who I’m sure isn’t looking very well—to the library, and was boring her shockingly.”

Lacour did his bowing and hand-shaking with the minimum of speech. When he touched Rhoda’s hand there was something so curious in its effect upon his sense of touch that he involuntarily looked at her face. She was very pale.