CHAPTER VII
It was not till the three had arrived in the oaken parlour of the old chapel wing that Kingston could pause to take stock of the new-comer, and revise his first impression. Revise it? It needed only to be amplified, many new details to be added to the first rough sketch of his dislike, fresh lines and shades to be stippled in on the displeasing portrait.
Gundred was one of the comparatively few Englishwomen whose hat always looks as if it had grown with her hair, and forms an integral part of her head as Nature made it. Isabel, on the other hand, was one of the vast majority whose hat sits on their hair awkwardly, like a stranger, with no suggestion of anything more than an accidental and reluctant relationship painfully achieved with pins. And it was a bad hat, too—formless, flabby, large and slatternly in its lines. It made no pretence at being straight, but flapped and floundered distressingly as she walked. Clearly Isabel was one of those women who can never keep a hat straight. Regiments of daggers and skewers cannot prevent them from giving the impression of living perpetually in a gale. Their headgear is aimless, uncongenial, offering a perpetual suggestion of irrelevance. And, as the hat is symptomatic of the woman, the rest of Isabel fulfilled the dire promise of her headgear—immense, shapeless, foolishly waved and undulated, of limp, coarse black straw, with thebig bow of cheap satin that did not seem to belong to it, but to be stuck on casually with one of the protrusive, jetty pins that ironically pretended to keep it fixed, and, with it, sagged from side to side in a futile and disconsolately impudent manner. Isabel, throughout, was flimsy, loose, and flaccid in design. Nothing about her seemed to be in any relationship to herself or to any other detail of her dress: her attire was a mere careless aggregation of unsuitable elements, as depressing in its feeble slovenliness as a party of ill-assorted people. Her gown dragged and trailed around her here and there, suggesting that she daily tied it on anew with tapes, and secured the more salient points with safety-pins. It was not a gown—no homogeneous creation of any sane mind. It had none of a real gown’s individuality; it was a mere haphazard covering. Then her boots: again, as she sat in the settle, the lamplight caught their toes: they were both wrinkled and bulgy, an ingenious prodigy of the incorrect. As Kingston watched them in the little oaken room, the lamplight seemed to concentrate its efforts on their shapeless points: they held his gaze as if by mesmerism, and seemed to swell monstrously and waver gigantic in the gloom, till the world was swallowed up in those amorphous lumps.
It was some time before Kingston could turn his attention from the clothes to the woman that they so disastrously symbolized. Here, too, he met at every point with a violation of all his favourite canons. Isabel Darrell was evidently as untidy as her garments. Her figure was long and elastic. Only a certain arrogant untidiness of carriage could save her from the reproach of lankiness. She walked with a free unconventional swing from the hips, with a sort of bounding spring that might have been more pleasantly noteworthy had it not set her hat mopping and mowingafresh at every step. At every step it jauntily jumped, up and down, and from right to left, until the attention was concentrated on its antics rather than on any beauties that might have been found in the gait which compelled them. Very different indeed was the barbaric looseness of Isabel’s movement from the neat and civilized precision of Gundred’s every motion. That she wore no stays was very evident, and the flapping freedom of her legs suggested that her nature had been built for breeches rather than for petticoats.
Her face, when you came to look at it, was not, perhaps, quite so terrible as might have been expected. In fact, Kingston found it rather disappointing in its possibilities. He consoled himself by noticing that the mouth was ridiculously wide, revealing, too, a glimpse of gold; but, still, it was an eager, mobile mouth, full of energetic vitality. Gundred’s pretty, definite lips invariably preserved their proper lines; but Isabel’s had smiles and flashes of feeling that kept no limits and obeyed no conventions. Agile, too, and expressive beyond due bounds, they had a gleaming redness that was put to shame by the decent pallor of her cousin’s. Her face was irregular, uneven, unconventional, yet not without a certain heady and unlawful charm. Like her mouth, it was so very much alive. It did not seem, as did Gundred’s, to be a moulded mask, but to be the woman’s very own naked soul. The claim of her birth was clear in the strangely delicate beauty of her ears—the only part of her that could ever, by any possibility, be called neat or dainty—and in the firm, fine curves of her nose and upper lip. The nose especially, swift and decided in its line, carried high and defiant, had the long thin nostrils, sensitive, fierce, cruel in their lifted curve, that one sees in the conspicuous women of oldferocious days. Kingston and Gundred had seen them in the face of Isabel the Queen.
As for the rest of her character, a student might have found traces of uncontrolled personality in her broad forehead, heavy along the supraciliary ridge, and in the deep set of her eyes. The eyes themselves were big and ardent, of that grey-green whose precise tone can never be actually discerned. Golden at one time, emerald at another, they are always vivid, blazing, inscrutable. And over all hung in a dense cloud the heavy obscurity of her hair. Black as darkness it was, long, straight, and utterly impatient of restraint. Its arrangement was of a piece with Miss Darrell’s whole accoutrement. Evidently she was content with twirling it into a rough lump, poking it here, pinning it inadequately there. At every point it burst its bonds: loose coils and ropes were dropping and trailing unreproved; each movement, each jump of the hat, set free a fresh strand. Miss Darrell clearly counted on the hat’s pressure to preserve at least some semblance of order; but that unhappy adornment was powerless to exert any influence; it jigged and jolted as the hair dictated, and the mass on the top of her head hopped happily in a unanimous heap as she went, carrying the hat unresisting to its sway.
Meanwhile Gundred was pouring forth a stream of pleasantness. Her gentle voice ran on in an orderly melody, expounding the joy that she and Kingston felt in welcoming a kinswoman to Brakelond. And, as she spoke, not a detail of her cousin’s untidiness escaped her eye. But the pitying disapproval that she felt found no hint of expression in her voice. Tone and manner remained calm, dispassionate, colourless as ever. Isabel, for her part, had no such nice polish, and made no attempt to conceal her excitement. Her eye roved, her head went eagerly from side to side,scanning her surroundings. When Gundred paused, she interposed some quick question, some keen remark on what she saw. But to her cousin’s formal little speeches she was evidently not attending. Her manners were careless as her dress.
Kingston, taking no part in the dialogue, devoted himself to watchful criticism of the enemy. He noticed how the smile flickered and flashed across her eager face, and how the fine nostrils thrilled and contracted now and again with enthusiasm. Those nostrils, he felt, were well known. Where had he seen them? He did not remember the face of the She-Wolf Queen, but, as he looked at that of Isabel, stronger and stronger grew his impression that it was no stranger. His hostile feelings grew and deepened. The face, the manner, the charm of Isabel made some vehement, inexplicable claim upon him; and in his resistance to so unreasonable a call, his attitude stiffened itself into a determined enmity. There could be nothing appealing or desirable about this sloppy, disorderly creature, yet he felt the beginning—was it the beginning or the renewal?—of a paradoxical fascination that contradicted his own most cherished sense of what was admirable. He looked again at Gundred, and strenuously admired her neat, cool beauty, the perfection of her appointments, her gestures, her inflections, her expressions. Nothing was wrong there; no criticism could be made: it was all just right; there was the admirable, incarnate.
Thence, his judgment reinforced, his gaze swept back to Isabel. There it was all just wrong: criticism could run riot; there, incarnate, was the second-rate. Second-rate? Blind instinct protested, and pointed the way to a discovery. Isabel was not second-rate. By every rule she should have been, but second-rate she was not. Strangely, unaccountably not. Therules in this case seemed to have collapsed. There, at all events, was everything that normally makes up the second-rate—cheapness, tawdriness, untidiness. But these items could not be added up to make the expected total. He hated his consciousness that in her was something—something that he recognised almost as an old friend—character, enthusiasm, whatever it was, that exempted her from ordinary rules. And, as he chafed against himself for not being able to pass the whole-hearted condemnation that his fastidiousness clamoured for, so he doubly chafed against the mystery in her that imposed so illogical, so unreasonable a limitation on his judgment, and forced him to feel, in what all the laws of taste denounced, a monstrous, fantastic fascination that defied analysis and resistance.
‘So nice,’ he heard Gundred saying; ‘and then you will go with us to Ivescar, I hope—our place in Yorkshire. I have never been there yet, of course, so you and I will have great fun exploring it—yes?’
‘Too glorious for words!’ cried Isabel irrelevantly, her eyes roaming eagerly from wall to wall of the little low room. ‘I have never dreamt of a fairy-palace like this. That panelling! Oh, it’s too precious. And the beautiful dim dustiness of it all! One feels as if one were trespassing on the domain of ghosts. These tiny, crazy, oaken parlours—they must be simply soaked with memories.’
‘Nice little rooms—yes?’ said Gundred complacently, contriving to reprove such undisciplined enthusiasm by the very gentleness with which she accepted it. ‘Dusty’ did not seem to her at all a fitting compliment to pay the oldest wing of Brakelond. She was certain that the housemaids discharged their duty perfectly.
‘Nice!’ cried Isabel ardently; ‘what a ridiculousword! They are the haunt of dead centuries. Don’t you feel either primeval or irreverent every time you drink a cup of tea here?’
‘Oh no,’ replied Gundred mildly. ‘I hope I should never have such dreadful feelings anywhere, and the rooms are really quite convenient. The only thing is that they are so cut off from the rest of the Castle. You’ll see to-morrow. This wing stands right away from the rest of the building, on a spur of rock that drops straight into the sea. They are all wood, these rooms—the oldest part of Brakelond.’
‘I know I thought I had walked miles before we got here,’ replied Isabel—‘miles, through the most fascinating dreadful dark halls and passages, just like the dim labyrinths in a Maeterlinck Castle.’
‘Yes,’ answered Gundred; ‘it takes the servants quite a time to answer the bell; and if one didn’t use hot irons in the urn it would be cold before it got to us. And what one would do if anybody fainted or anything I simply can’t imagine. There is just one long passage leading to these rooms, and all the servants are ever so far away in the Georgian part.’
‘Well,’ said Isabel, ‘you can make this your last resort. When the Castle is carried by invaders or catches fire, you can run out here, and shut yourselves up on your little promontory, and nobody will ever be able to get at you again.’
‘This wouldn’t be at all a good place if the Castle took fire,’ said Gundred—‘built of wood, and no other way out. But everything is very safe, I am truly thankful to say. Our great-uncle Henry saw to all that before he was taken poorly.’
For a moment she was the Mortimer, talking to a Mortimer, and leaving her husband outside the conversation. He, for his part, did not notice the recurrence of that little, proudly conscious yet unconsciousinflection in her voice. He was too much absorbed in watching Isabel. The returned colonial was even more obviously the daughter of Brakelond than was Gundred. The vividness of her personality was in full harmony with the stern old building to which Gundred’s nature only occasionally chimed in tune. Isabel was the contemporary of Brakelond. The contrast between the two women was that between a jungle and a Dutch garden—between a passionate, loose-petalled rose and a decorous, shapely lily. And, though the lily had its place in the pleasance of Brakelond, though the Dutch garden might be thrust into its vast scheme, yet the true frame of the Castle was the untamable wildness of the forest, its most inevitable ornament the glowing ardour of the rose. In the long list of all who had been March and Brakelond here and there a lily-life occurred, it is true; but the rose, flaming, riotous, red, must always stand for the fittest emblem of the Mortimers.
Suddenly Isabel turned upon Kingston, growing conscious of his attention.
‘Why do you stare at me?’ she asked. ‘Have we met each other before?’
Kingston doubted; a sense of renewed acquaintance was very strong upon him. ‘No,’ he replied; ‘we have never met before. I don’t see how we can ever have met before.’
‘Surely not, dear—no?’ added Gundred.
‘I believe,’ said Isabel abruptly, ‘that one has met everyone in the world before, and that every now and then one remembers something here and there. Your husband and I have probably met in a dream, or—perhaps we loved or hated each other thousands of years ago, or our ancestors did, which is the same thing.’
‘Oh, I don’t believe that,’ answered Gundred,gentle, but shocked. ‘That’s evolution, isn’t it? A horrid idea—yes?’
Kingston, meanwhile, with stern loyalty, forced himself to compare the neat and ladylike blankness of Gundred’s mind with the uncontrolled wanderings of her cousin’s. He himself might have much the same ideas as Isabel, but how much more restful and proper for a woman to abide by conventional views. So he denied his own feelings, and disliked more than ever the untidy apostle who seemed to have a mind as restless as his own.
Isabel began developing her theme excitedly—talked of the innumerable ghosts of Brakelond, of inherited memories, previous existences, and the impossibility of supposing that life begins abruptly at birth and ends at death. No friend, at the best of times, to abstract discussions, Gundred had the orderly-minded wife’s intense dislike of such a display in the mouth of another, and an unmarried, woman. In a man it was permissible, if regrettable; in a wife it was reprehensible and unwomanly, though not utterly unpardonable; but in a mere maiden it was a dishonour to her sex, a brazen revolution, a discarding of that spiritual chastity which makes the really nice girl’s mind a closed and cloistered garden, impossible of access. Accordingly she made haste to nip the conversation.
‘You must be so tired,’ said Gundred, rising suddenly from her chair. ‘I am sure you will be glad to go to bed—yes?’
Isabel was one of the people whom a long journey animates and inspires. Quite careless as to smuts, dishevelled locks, and crooked hats, she was at her best in that weary hour of arrival which makes other women rush to looking-glasses. However, Gundred’s tones clearly conveyed the impression that etiquette,if not common politeness, demanded agreement with her statement. Isabel admitted that she was tired accordingly, and allowed herself to be guided to her room.
Kingston and Gundred grew closer thenceforth. The warmth of their first married days seemed to have returned. Kingston, in the ardour with which he regarded his wife, was secretly indemnifying her for that obstinate folly in his own heart which refused to condemn the new-comer absolutely. He took countervailing pains to emphasize his love and admiration for Gundred. And she, realizing that he loved her more keenly, thanks to the comparison with Isabel, yielded to her own heart’s desire, passed from acquiescence to reciprocation, and was delighted to find how successfully she emerged from the comparison, and shone by the side of ragged, reckless Isabel. If Kingston could not divine, or dared not divine, the deep current of emotion that underlay his actions, how much less could such a subtlety be expected of his wife? She noticed with joy that Isabel was in every way the foil best calculated to show off her own perfections. She rejoiced to find that her husband was as keen-eyed as herself for the edifying contrast, and, though already conceiving a disapproving distrust of Isabel, believed so strongly that her presence would assure the continuation of Kingston’s renewed warmth that she decided to prolong her cousin’s visit to the uttermost.
Her motives in making the suggestion were also her husband’s in accepting them. He was glad to find himself so appreciating that nice precision of Gundred’s which he had been beginning to find monotonous; and, when she suggested that Isabel should more or less make a home with them till she married, he let himself believe that her presence would perpetuallyfire his admiration for Gundred, and fell gladly in with his wife’s benevolent design.
‘Poor darling,’ said Gundred; ‘she wants forming so. It will be quite like training a child. I never saw anyone who was so—so—justanyhow—yes?’
‘A bit all over the place, certainly. Well, she couldn’t do better than copy you. And you might give her a hat or two. But not that one you wore in the garden this afternoon.’
‘Did you like it, dear?’
‘Most awfully. It made one feel so cool and summery.’
‘How nice of you to notice my hats, dear! No other woman’s husband does that.’
‘I always notice everything you wear. Every line of you, every bow and ribbon. But I can’t always tell you what I think of you. You won’t often let me. You hold one at arm’s length, and make one think one’s self silly and childish. If you knew how much one loved every detail of you, you wouldn’t make one feel such a violent ass every time one tries to express what one feels.’
‘But I don’t want to make you feel an idiot, Kingston darling. It is sweet to hear you say how much you—care about me. It seems to make my whole life seem warm and comfortable. Never leave off feeling as you do. I think I am always glad to know you feel like that, and I—well, I do enjoy hearing you tell me so from time to time. But in the daylight, somehow, it seems undignified and—a little common, to exchange rhapsodies. And yet I love to think the rhapsodies are there. And—don’t you find it makes them more precious to keep them rare—yes?’
To Kingston a feeling unexpressed was apt, sooner or later, to degenerate into atrophy. But in the warmth of the moment he entered into Gundred’spoint of view. Her reserves seemed beautiful and well bred by the side of his deliberate recollection of Isabel and her leaping, uncontrolled enthusiasms.
‘Perhaps you are right, you exquisite thing,’ he answered. ‘But now and then you ought to let me speak. I must tell you now and then, in word as well as in deed, that you are the most exquisite thing in the world, the most dainty, the most well-finished, the most adorable thing in the whole world. Altogether without a fault or a blemish you are, like a clear polished jewel; one is for ever seeing a fresh facet of your perfection.’
‘Oh, Kingston, you really mustn’t say such things. It can’t be right. I am sure you are flattering me.’
‘Ah, that is your usual answer. You always cut me short whenever I try to tell you what I feel for you. You make love seem silly and indecent. You are always trying to nip it in the bud.’
Gundred hesitated. Then she smiled. ‘Well, Kingston dear,’ she said, ‘I have not had to nip it in the bud so often lately—no? You have not given me the chance so very often.’
‘One gets tired of being rebuffed and chilled and made to feel a demonstrative, tiresome fool.’
‘Not tiresome, darling. And, Kingston, whatever I say, you—you—well, you need not always payquiteso much attention to it, need you? One sometimes says a thing because one ought to, not because one means it—yes? I don’t think I am always quite such a chilly fish as you seem to imagine. You must not always judge by what one says. I—well, I love everything you say and do, dear. Don’t ever leave off because you think I don’t approve. I do, Kingston, whatever I may say—I approve, because it is you. Only you must not expect me to say so in the daytime, with the sun showing up everything, and servantsall over the place. I hardly like to say it, even here in the dark, with nobody to see. It seems to put me into your power too much.’
‘Into my power! Well, I am in yours. That is what marriage is. I am between your hands—between those wonderful little cool hands of yours, Gundred. What will you do with me? Crumple me up and throw me away, or drop me on the rocks, as if I were a toad? That is what your civilized daytime manner seems to threaten every now and then. Or will you keep me safe, and stroke my fur the right way, and keep me warm?’
‘I like to hear that my stupid hands can do such wonderful things. Do you really admire my hands, Kingston dear?’
‘They are just carved ivory fresh from the hands of God. There is nothing human or hot or earthly about them. They are fresh and calm, and without spot or frailty. They are the most lovely hands that ever woman had.’
‘Prettier than poor Isabel’s—no?’
‘Poor Isabel? With her hands like a pair of boxing-gloves? Don’t let us talk about great floppy Isabel now. It is only you I want to talk about. You are the only person in the world.’
‘Oh, you mustn’t be so unkind about poor Cousin Isabel,’ protested Gundred, purring with unconscious pleasure. ‘You must remember she did not make herself. And think how tiresome it would be if there were nobody different from me in the whole world. It takes all sorts to make a world, dear, yes?’
‘No, it doesn’t, wonder-lady. The whole world is nothing but a huge infinite room of mirrors, reflecting you, always and everywhere. Hundreds, thousands, millions of you, that is what I see in the world. How can I make you believe me?’
To make one’s self believe one’s own statements is, unfortunately, a far easier task than to make other people believe them. However, Gundred’s mind asked nothing better than to be convinced, and the roseate state of her rapture was far above analysis and metaphysics.
‘I am sure you would not say such a thing if you did not mean it, dear,’ she said. ‘It is a beautiful thought of yours. But you must not grudge poor Isabel a home with us until she marries. After all, whatever her shortcomings, poor darling, sheismy cousin. And so it won’t be long before she marries. It’s not as if she were just nobody in particular.’
Kingston, convinced that the presence of Isabel reinforced his admiration for Gundred, made no opposition.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose it will make much difference to us. She is not the kind of woman who is likely to come between husband and wife.’ He laughed.
‘I am certain she is not, poor darling!’ assented Gundred. ‘We must try to pull her into shape and teach her better,’ she added, with meditative earnestness, as if coming between husband and wife were the especial object of a woman’s life and training. ‘And yet, I believe there are men who admire that sort of girl, Kingston. I never can understand a man liking a woman who cannot put on a hat properly, but everybody says they do. I remember Mary Capplethwaite; she was neater than a new pin, with her hair most beautifully done, and the sweetest little face. But that did not prevent her husband from running away with Mildred Gunston, who always looked as if she had been left out all night in the wind and the rain. Of course, dear Mary may have got a little monotonous, but, still, I do think it is a great thing to be tidy and nice—yes?’
‘That is all a man asks of a woman,’ answered Kingston. ‘And one might ask it for ever of your cousin Isabel, and never get it, I imagine. One knows that type of woman so well. The idea is that inferior clothes show a superior soul. The poor things believe that they reveal the beauty, and the freedom, and the preciousness of their individuality by neglecting everything that makes the ordinary woman desirable. They think they are above using the means that no really clever woman ever disdains. They are the half-baked, the half-clever, the weak, feeble copies of the strong-minded, strong-souled creatures they imitate and think they are. One meets them at Oxford; the place swarms with them. They sham genius by means of untidiness. Half of them are tailor-made and half of them are æsthetic—in blue plush sleeves and moulting terra-cotta-coloured plumes, or in short skirts and boat-shaped hats with a cock’s feather on one side. How well I know it; and that is your Cousin Isabel.’
‘You really mustn’t dislike the poor darling so dreadfully, dear. We must make her happy with us. But I am so glad that you agree with me about that kind of woman. I never can see why one’s hair should not be properly done, however clever one is—yes?Ihave never wanted to be dishevelled or slovenly. We must gradually get poor Isabel into the way of thinking about her appearance a little more. After all, she ought to look at least well-bred, dear, and even now she has one or two good features.’
But Kingston would not agree. He grew forcible on the new-comer’s imperfections, and would allow her no saving grace of line or carriage. She was all wrong. He insisted on the fact, proved it again and again, revelled in it, and turned it to the glorification of his wife. Gundred, for her part, made a weakdefence; without quite knowing it, she drew joy and sustenance from her husband’s condemnation of her cousin. It seemed an earnest of his love’s ardour. So she merely palliated Isabel’s faults, and was more glad to challenge admiration for herself by their discovery than sorry that such blemishes should be brought to light. Sweetly and lovingly did she encourage her husband’s criticisms with her mild protests. Her line was to admit her cousin’s shortcomings, but to declare that she loved her notwithstanding. Thus she preserved the full delight of the comparison, while at the same time preserving also the proper loyalty of a Mortimer for a Mortimer. But her daylight dignity had melted; the loyalty of a Mortimer was felt to be now subordinate to that of a wife. Gundred had the happy power of making a virtue of everything she did, no matter what inconsistencies her actions might seem to involve. Husband and wife continued to make love over the faults of their cousin, and it was decided with joy that the woman whose weaknesses could be turned to such delectable account must on no account be allowed to deprive them of her company. Isabel was to live with them, to go with them to Ivescar, to serve as a perpetual whetstone for Kingston’s admiration of Gundred. Some day she would undoubtedly marry, but meanwhile Gundred’s kindness should achieve the double end of giving her cousin a home and turning her cousin’s existence to a profitable purpose.