Thesedays of mutual study had been very sweet to Clare. They had soothed her out of her agitation, without, however, stilling it altogether. She had acquired a new habit, and it was pleasant. While Arthur sat at the great table with the old MSS., which her father had partially arranged and prepared, she sat at the bureau, going over hosts of letters, which sometimes amused, sometimes interested her, but which were for the greater part quite unimportant—old bills and receipts and invitations, the broken fragments and relics of social life. If there had been any excitement in her mind to begin with—as it was natural there should be when she felt herself thus standing, as it were, on the edge of any secrets which her father might have had—it all died away on the first day. How innocent the life must have been of which only such harmless evidences remained! There were letters from some of his old friends—some with dead jokes in them, and dead pieces of news, embalmed andpreserved, as if they were worth preserving. Clare took a pleasure in these, because it was to her father they were addressed; and she would look up now and then, and read a few words aloud to her fellow-student, who, on his side, had many things to communicate to her out of his MSS. Sometimes Arthur was obliged to get up and bring them to her that she might help him with a difficult sentence. Sometimes it was she who had to call him. They were such near relations, their interest in the family was almost the same, and it was very natural that they should constantly refer to and consult each other. Sometimes a momentary compunction crossed Clare’s mind when she thought of her brother. Would he like it? Would not he prefer to go over these papers himself, and be the first to discover his father’s secrets—if there were any secrets? But he would not care for them, Clare thought to herself. He confessed openly that his interest in the Ardens was limited; whereas her own interest was without limits. If she felt sometimes a more lively compunction still at the thought that she was absolutely foiling all Edgar’s precautions, and making his unwilling absence from home ridiculous by receiving thus, if not secretly, still without avowal, the visits of her cousin, her natural pride arose and put the whisper down. “Why should I give in to Edgar?”she asked herself. “It is my life, not his, that is concerned. It is my happiness that is concerned. I took care of myself before Edgar came; and why do I need his guardianship now?”
This view of the matter made it almost a duty to balk him. Had she foreseen that Arthur was going to remain in the neighbourhood, of course she would have told her brother; but she did not know. Nobody could be more surprised than she was to find him with the Pimpernels; and it was no pleasure to her, but quite the reverse, that he should be with the Pimpernels. Besides, it might justify and strengthen Edgar in his democratic ways if he heard that his cousin, so much more true an Arden than himself, was staying at the Red House. Accordingly, she wrote to her brother less frequently than usual, and said nothing about Arthur, which was not perhaps quite what Edgar might have expected from his sister. Probably, if he heard of it, he would manage in some insidious way to get her carried off to town, which Clare detested; or he would return himself, which, in present circumstances, Clare did not desire. So she let the days run on, finding a subtle sweetness in them. There was nothing said between her kinsman and herself which all the world might not have heard—except, perhaps, by times, a tone, an inflection of voice, an almost imperceptibleinference. Arthur was skilful in such ways of making himself secretly understood; but he said nothing to agitate or alarm her. And thus they went on with their respective pursuits, side by side. What could be more sober, more grave, less like any sentiment or romance or nonsense? But Clarelivedin those hours, which were thus sensibly and seriously spent. All the evening she remembered, all the morning she looked for them. She had not been into the village for a week; she had not seen the Rector except at church, nor any of her old friends. She took her evening ramble through the park all alone, and happy to be alone. “It is just as it used to be,” she said to herself; but Clare knew very well that it was not as it used to be. Even now a dread of the arrival of some friendly visitor, bent upon taking care of her, would sometimes overcloud her mind. If they but knew how she detested being taken care of—if they but understood how happy she could be alone!
And thus it was with her on the morning of that day which Arthur spent playing croquet and telling stories to Alice Pimpernel. She had got safely over the post and her letters. There was not one from old Miss Arden at Escott, proposing a visit, such as, from day to day, she trembled to receive; neither did Clare’s old governess, Mrs. Seldon, throw herselfupon her pupil’s hospitality; and though Edgar begged her again to reconsider her decision, and join him for at least a week or two “to see the pictures,” there was no violence of urgency in his letter. She was safe for another day, and the sunny hours were drawing on, bringing the afternoon and its visitor. “I shall finish that first drawer to-day,” Clare said to herself, with a half-conscious exaggeration of the importance of her work. She went into the library more than once to see that all was ready—that the shutters were closed to keep out the noonday sun, and the waste-paper basket cleared of all the fragments that had been thrown into it. “It is odd how pleasant such an occupation can grow,” she said to herself; “I don’t so much wonder at the passion for old papers that some people have.” She liked to keep this thought well before her mind. Her new study was so curious and full of interest. Such a lesson, too, in life, the smallest details of which were so absorbing as long as it lasted, so sadly, amusingly insignificant now. “Some day or other some one will read my letters like that,” she would add, with an incredulous smile. It was impossible, and yet no doubt it would come to pass; but would any one ever know how full and strong the blood was running in her veins—how vigorous life was, and warm and intense? Never before inher life had she so felt the power of the present—the moment that was hers, whatever might be taken from her. The clock was about to strike, and by this time no doubt he was coming up the avenue—her fellow-student—and the pleasantest work she had ever tried was about to begin.
Clare sat down to her tapestry to occupy the moment till he should arrive—he was very exact generally, punctual to his hour. It surprised her when the little French clock chimed a quarter-past. It was strange—it gave her a little chill in the midst of her expectation—but of course it could only be accidental. Another chime, and her heart began to beat—what if he should not be coming! Clare had known little of the vicissitudes to which such intercourse as this is specially subject. Except the few days of utter loneliness which she had passed after Edgar’s departure, none of the heats and chills of wooing had ever been hers. She had been mistress of the situation. It had been in her power to send him away, to discourage him, and remind him that he was utterly at her mercy; but it had never occurred to her that such power is mutual, and that she, too, was at his mercy. As she waited and listened and heard nothing, her heart began to beat high and loud. Not only or even in the first place was it mere disappointment.A certain angry amazement and wild pride sprang up along with it. What, slight her! neglect to come when she expected him! It was an enormity which startled Clare, and shook her mind to its foundations. She could not understand nor believe it, and yet she could not believe either the suggestions of accident which she tried to make to herself. Could it be intentional neglect, discourtesy—and to her! Then there came another chime, and then the hour; he was a whole hour behind time. Clare bent her head over her tapestry as she heard a footstep approaching, and laboured as if she were labouring for her daily bread. A hot steady flush of angry excitement came to her cheek. She would not raise her head to see who it was. Had he broken his leg it might have been some excuse; but if it was he who was walking into the room, as she supposed, of course he had not broken his leg. The first thing she saw, however, was Wilkins’ hand suddenly appearing before her, holding a silver tray with a letter upon it. She took it with a sense that some one had given her a blow. “Is this all?” she said mechanically. “Mr. Perfitt is waiting downstairs to see you, Miss Arden, if you will please to receive him,” said Wilkins. Perfitt! what could he have to dowith——“I hope nothing has happened,” said Clare, holding, as if it were a serpent, the letter in her hand.
“I don’t think so, Miss Arden; only he would like to speak a word to you if you are not too busy.”
“I am much too busy,” said Clare, in her anger. “I mean, let him come up in five minutes,” she added, waving her hand to the alarmed servant. Then she tore open Arthur’s note.
“My dear Cousin—A cursed chance (forgive the adjective, I can’t help it) keeps me from Arden to-day. I have been fighting and struggling all the morning, but I cannot get off. Imagine how I hate the day and everything round me! To have to stay and be bored to death, instead of going on with the work most interesting to me in the world! Please postpone yours till to-morrow. I shall go crazy if I think you are at it without me.—In the deepest wretchedness and devotion, ever yours,“A. A.”
“My dear Cousin—A cursed chance (forgive the adjective, I can’t help it) keeps me from Arden to-day. I have been fighting and struggling all the morning, but I cannot get off. Imagine how I hate the day and everything round me! To have to stay and be bored to death, instead of going on with the work most interesting to me in the world! Please postpone yours till to-morrow. I shall go crazy if I think you are at it without me.—In the deepest wretchedness and devotion, ever yours,
“A. A.”
Clare read it twice over, and then put it from her. She stopped herself for the first moment from all expression even in her own mind. She took up her needle, and went on again furiously. Ye know, ye youths and maidens, how the air all darkened round her, how the day became odious! “Does hethink it matters to me, I wonder?” she said at length aloud, and laughed; and then threw her work down, and covered her face, and burst into violent tears. They must have been lying very near the surface, they fell so hot and so suddenly, and were over so soon. When Mr. Perfitt was ushered in five minutes later, he found Miss Arden seated with her usual dignity, a little flushed, but showing no other traces of that sudden tumult. Mr. Perfitt himself was considerably disturbed; he crushed his hat in his hand, and seated himself, when she graciously invited him to be seated, on the very edge of his chair.
“Miss Arden,” he said, “I’ve come to make a bit complaint—tho’ indeed it’s no a complaint; it’s rather that you might maybe speak a warning word—— You’re young to meddle or trouble with such things; but you’re no like other young ladies. You aye were the grand authority in old Mr. Arden’s time; and so ye are with the present lad—I mean with the present Squire.”
“Would you please tell me what it is? I am very busy,” said Clare. “Has anything happened, Mr. Perfitt? Of course I am the only person to refer to in my brother’s absence, whatever it may be.”
“It’s no just that anything has happened,” saidPerfitt, crushing his hat, and then anxiously examining its wounds. “It’s a thing I would ask nobody about, but soon settle, if it was not a gentleman connected with the house. You see it’s me that brought Mr. Arthur Arden’s note; but I got it like by chance, turning in as I was passing to see little Jeanie Murray. You’ll see what I’m meaning now. He’s a gentleman that has always behaved gentlemanly to me; but a bit lassie, Miss Arden, and no just right in her mind—no mad, I’m no meaning that—but scarce wise enough to understand it’s a a’ nonsense that such a gentleman says.”
“Is Mr. Arthur Arden with Jeanie now?” said Clare, in her most distinct chill tones. She had been frozen suddenly where she sat—frozen to her very heart; but the shock had brought her back to perfect possession of herself.
“Na, na! trust me for that,” said Perfitt, with a laugh. “Before I left the house I saw my lord off the premises—ye may trust me for that. And there’s nae harm done, Miss Arden. I do not for a moment suppose there’s any harm. But Mr. Arthur was aye a thought wild, saving your presence——”
“I will take care,” said Clare, steadily, “that it does not occur again.” Her voice was frozen too. In the shadowy warmth of the room, in the heat ofthe summer afternoon, it went like a touch of ice through Perfitt’s bones. How will she manage that, I would like to know? he said to himself, but was so chilled that he only gasped audibly, and had no other answer to make.
“I will take care it does not occur again,” said Clare. “You were quite right to tell me. If there is anything else you want to say, pray go on.”
“Nothing else—nothing else, Miss Arden,” said Perfitt, stumbling to his feet; and then he stood awkwardly clasping his hat for a minute more. “And I have no fear on my mind that any harm’s been done,” he added. “There’s no harm done, Miss Arden. I wouldna give you a wrong idea. But only Mr. Arthur——”
“I have told you,” repeated Clare, still more and more coldly, “that it shall not occur again.”
Perfittwent away from Arden, as, indeed, he had gone to the house, in a very perplexed and uncomfortable state of mind. “I have great doubts in my mind if I should have spoken,” he said to himself as he went away; and then all at once there flashed upon him a report he had once heard which connected Arthur Arden’s name with that of Clare. When he recalled this, he slapped himself upon the thigh with supreme self-contempt. “My man, you’ve gone and put your foot in it now,” he thought; “could you no have taken care of your ain flesh and blood yourself, without bothering that poor lassie? Dash ye! and dash him, the ne’er-do-weel!” This was how Mr. Perfitt contemplated his own conduct as he went away; but it was a very different kind of self-discussion that he left behind.
Clare was absolutely stunned by the blow which had just fallen upon her. Had she taken time to think, no doubt she would have seen that she wasunjust—but she did not take any time to think. It was the first great slight she had ever received in her life—a slight greater than any other kind of disrespect that could be shown to a woman. A man who had been devoting himself to her, who had caught at every opportunity for showing his devotion since the moment he reappeared at Arden—that he should venture to go and excuse himself to her on the ground of inevitable engagements, and then be discovered hanging about a village girl, recommending himself so potently that her friends interfered! Oh, how glad she was, how grateful to Perfitt for bringing that complaint to her! She might never have known; she might have believed that he was worthy, and that he loved her, but for that revelation. She was grateful to Perfitt, and yet how she hated him! But for him she might still have been partially happy. She would have received the excuse, and to-morrow all might have been well; that was to say, she would have allowed herself to be deceived, which, of all fates, was surely the meanest and most humiliating. And then to think how much good she had intended to her cousin! In this moment of bitter humiliation Clare ceased to trifle with herself. She tore off the veil which she had wrapt so willingly over her eyes, and admitted to herself that she had meant to bestoweverything upon her kinsman. She had even gone the length of being quite content to despoil her brother for his sake. She had made up her mind that Old Arden should be his, and that if she could not make him the head of the family she would at least secure to him its oldest possessions. All this she admitted to herself in the tumult of rage and shame which filled her mind. She was ready to do all this, and he—— He could not sacrifice to her a passing fancy for the pretty face of a girl; for there could be nothing more than that in it. And where was the mother who should have taken charge of the girl? Clare tried hard to persuade herself that it was Jeanie’s fault, or that the grandmother had some artful design upon Arthur. She tried very hard to believe that she believed this, but it was a difficult attempt. The thought came back to her with renewed bitterness that it was he—he only—who was in fault, he to whom she would have given everything! Then her mind took a sudden leap, as the mind will sometimes do at its own will and pleasure, and pictured to her what might have happened had she actually done what she had been willing to do. The future, which had been so likely an hour ago, which was so impossible now, opened up upon her with a great flash and glow. She saw herself his wife, dependent upon him for all herhappiness, pledged to him for ever and ever; his honour hers, his credit hers; the burden of any scandal, of any shame that might come upon him, to be borne by her equally; and it seemed to her as if she were gazing into a mirror, in which she saw herself seated alone and neglected in the house which she had bestowed upon him, while he himself roamed about the world, finding at every turn some facile love—some Jeanie, she said to herself—and yet was so just that she paused and blushed, knowing she did an innocent creature wrong.
This extraordinary revulsion of feeling shook Clare to the very depths of her being. She had been floating so smoothly down the stream that she was not aware how very fast she had been going; and now this sudden and terrible obstacle seized her and maddened her, and enveloped her in a whirlwind of wild thoughts, as a sudden Niagara might seize and rend a pleasure-boat. She had been prepared for some dangers. He might have got “involved,” as people say, with Alice Pimpernel, and been compelled by honour to marry her for her money’s sake. Such a catastrophe, Clare thought, she could have borne. And he might have been a treacherous enemy to her brother; for that she had been afraid, and had prepared herself. But for this she was unprepared. False to her, false to his owninterests, wooing ruin instead of prosperity, giving up his reputation and his life, as well as slighting the true love she had waiting for him. Oh, how miserable, how mean, how wretched it was! Was it possible that he could hold life so cheap as to spend it thus? And he not a boy—no longer a boy who might be tempted and led astray. She made an effort to calm the wild misery in her own breast, by forgetting herself, and making believe that pity for him was the only sentiment that moved her. He was a fool, he was mad, she said to herself; and then the something that burned within her, the terrible pain that gnawed and gnawed at her heart, came uppermost. It was the first slight she had ever received—and such a slight! The Princess had found that a beggar might be preferred to her. The proud, upright, spotless Clare had discovered an attempt to deceive her. The thought made her writhe, as any poor living creature might writhe against the spear that pinned it to the earth. Oh, if she could but escape it, forget, throw Arthur Arden out of her thoughts! But that was impossible. She had to bear it, and get the better of it if she could.
And underneath there existed a still deeper feeling, at which Clare almost trembled. She would be avenged on him one way or other. She wouldpunish him for his inconstancy and, for what was worse, his deception. This incident should not, could not, must not pass over as if it had happened to any common milk-and-water girl. The intensity of her passion dismayed even herself. She would bear it, so that no man should ever have it in his power to say he had broken Clare Arden’s heart; and she would not bear it, so that no man should dare believe it was possible to slight her or treat her as a nobody. She took up his letter, crushing it as if it were a real enemy, and her eye caught the entreaty that she would postpone her work, as he was obliged to postpone his. It was a satisfaction to her to be able to contradict him practically and at once. She tore his letter up into little pieces, and then she went with a rapid step to the library. To do instantly and energetically what he had begged her not to do, was in its way a consolation to Clare.
She had but just entered the library when a timid knock came to the door. It was repeated again, even after she had said languidly, “Come in——” “Come in,” she repeated, with that impatient irritability which is natural to a disturbed and excited mind. Then, after a little pause, the head of Mrs. Fillpot, the housekeeper, appeared timidly at the half-opened door. “May I speak aword with you, Miss Clare?” said Mrs. Fillpot in a tone of fright. “Come in!” repeated Clare, this time imperiously. The housekeeper at Arden was an old servant. She had been supreme in the house ever since Clare was born. And though Miss Arden’s decided character had quietly shorn her of all transferable authority, yet Clare herself had sufficient sense of the woman’s value to be respectful of Mrs. Fillpot’s opinions. The housekeeper had not given in without a struggle, and she had a great awe of Clare: but at the same time she was conscientious, and had an opinion of her own; so that there was now and then a little skirmishing between the two, always ending in a victory for Clare, but yet never without a certain effect upon her. Mrs. Fillpot came in with the air of a woman who had made up her mind to something desperate. She gave a frightened glance round the room, and then approached her young mistress. “I beg your pardon, Miss Clare,” she said, “for disturbing you; but I thought Mr. Arthur Arden was here——”
“Mr. Arthur Arden is not here, you perceive,” said Clare, feeling as if his name choked her; “and I should be very glad to know what you want at once, for I am busy. It can wait till to-morrow if it is anything about the house.”
“It is nothing about the house,” said Mrs. Fillpot, breathing hard with alarm and excitement; and then she made another pause, which drove Clare wild with impatience.
“For heaven’s sake say what it is,” she cried, “and leave me; don’t you see I have something to do?”
“Miss Clare,” said Mrs. Fillpot, solemnly, “I’ve been about you since you were a baby. When your poor dear mamma died, though it was Sarah as took you from the month, I had all the responsibility. When you was a little girl with governesses and that sort, it was always me as was referred to——”
“Please to tell me what all this is about,” said Clare, coldly. “You see I am engaged; I have a great many things to think of. I don’t want to go over all my childish days now——”
“Miss Clare, it’s not my wish to make myself disagreeable—it never was,” said Mrs. Fillpot, growing breathless, “but when I see things going on as are not what they should be, and gentlemen’s visits which it’s not nice for a young lady to be known as one that would put up with them, and going on day after day, and the Squire not here, nor no lady companion, nor even a servant a-setting in the room——”
“What do you mean?” said Clare sharply, stopping her in the midst of this harangue.
“I mean just what I am saying, Miss,” said Mrs. Fillpot, in her excitement; “it’s not nice for no young lady—it’s a thing as no young lady should do, Miss. I’ve held my tongue as long as I could, and I won’t no longer. I’ll write to Master, Miss—I’ll speak to Mr. Arthur—I must do something. Not so much as a maid a-setting in the room and ne’er a lady in the house—and him coming and coming. I will say of Mr. Arthur as I thought he had more sense.”
Clare had chilled and hardened into stone as she was thus addressed. A deep blush had covered her face at first, but that had faded, leaving her more pale than usual; and her blue eyes shot glances that were like arrows of ice into the good woman’s heart. Those blue eyes, which were sometimes so sweet, how cold, how blighting, how withering they could be! She pointed her hand to the door before she could speak. She made a spasmodic effort to retain her composure and dignity. “Do precisely what you please,” she said, “but do not let me see you again.”
“Miss Clare!” said the woman. “Oh, Miss Clare, it’s your good I am thinking of. What could I want but your good?—me that has nursed you, and loved you, and took an interest——”
“Go away, please,” said Clare, with a choked voice. “Go away; I don’t wish to see you again.”
“Oh, Miss Clare!——”
“Go. Don’t you see I am—— occupied? Can’t you see? Good heavens! are you a woman, and have no more sense than to stand and drive me frantic there?”
“But Miss Clare——”
“I have no more to say to you. Go, please,” said Clare, falling back into her seat. She leaned her head against the old bureau, which had been her father’s. He had sat there a thousand times bending over it as she was doing now. Would he have been any aid to her in this terrible emergency! Shame, too, as well as everything else! She had been no better than Jeanie—less maidenly than Alice Pimpernel. She had cared too much for him to remember the maidenly decorums in which she had been brought up. She had laid herself open to the comments of this woman, and probably of every servant in the house. No doubt they had found her out, and laughed to see how she, too, indulged herself when her own feelings were touched, indifferent to all proprieties—she who had made so many indignant remonstrances on that very subject, and so often bidden the village girls to have a due respect for themselves. She sat with her faceturned away, pretending to search among the drawers of the bureau, while Mrs. Fillpot stood explaining and protesting behind. Clare did not even know when the housekeeper retired, weeping and wondering. She sat absorbed in her own misery, drawing to herself such pictures of her own conduct as the most guilty could scarcely have exceeded. She did not know how long she sat opening and shutting mechanically the drawers of the bureau, idly examining, without seeing what she was doing, its inner corners. Half in abstraction, half in determination to prove to herself that she was pursuing the researches which Arthur had begged her not to pursue, she had opened a little door which was locked, and which shut in a nest of smaller drawers which had not as yet been examined. It was these she was now playing with unconsciously, not thinking or seeing what she did. One of them, however, was very stiff, and the little material obstacle roused her up almost against her will. She pulled at it in her confusion of mind, growing angry over the difficulty. Was everything to resist her, even such a thing as this? Then she perceived there was a bundle of papers within which kept it from opening. Clare woke up, and took pains when she felt herself, as it were, held at bay. She took a great deal of trouble over it, andat last succeeded in opening the drawer. That was all she wanted—her interest failed as soon as the bundle fell out. It was a packet of letters enclosed in a piece of paper sealed at the ends and endorsed. She had found twenty such already, all of the most ordinary description—“Poor Howard’s letters,” “Applications for leases,” “Papers about the woods.” This was the sort of endorsing she had generally found. The new packet, doubtless, was no more important than the others. She took it into her hand and threw it down again into the open pigeon-hole which was nearest to her. And then only for the first time she perceived that it was growing dark, and that the day was almost over. The shutters had never been opened which she had closed in the morning to keep out the sun. To keep out the sun! would the sunshine ever come in again? She locked up the bureau slowly, and went wandering out, not knowing where she went. Sunshine and light had departed from Arden. Was it for evermore?
Clare’scondemnation of her cousin was, of course, unjust. He had not done anything to deserve so harsh a judgment. At least, what he had really done to deserve it was unknown to her. He had not attempted to deceive her in that special point. His note was true to the letter: the fault he had committed was but of two minutes’ duration, and was simply the result of a sudden temptation, which probably he would have avoided had he been at all prepared for it—avoided, be it understood, not out of any distaste for the pleasant folly, but for prudential motives. But he had not been prepared for it; and he had seen a pretty, defenceless creature in his way, poor enough and of sufficiently small consideration to have violent pseudo-love made to her, and an attempt at least at familiarity; and he had not been able to resist the opportunity. Arthur Arden would not have ventured to address Jeanie so had she been even Perfitt’s daughter. He was not cowardly in the ordinary sense of the word; but there was somuch of the craven in him, as in most men moved by similar impulses, that his passions were only irrestrainable when the object of them could be safely assailed. Even with all this, and allowing that could he have done it he would have tried his best to make a victim of Jeanie, still there had not been time enough, nor opportunity enough, to raise any such purpose seriously in his mind. When he spoke to her, he only half meant, or perhaps did not mean at all, what he said. It was mere levity and spontaneous, instinctive, not intentional, wickedness. How far this would have mended matters with a really just critic I will not pretend to ask; but it would have mended matters with Clare. She, however, had formed a very different opinion of the whole transaction. It was most serious, and full of elaborate plan and purpose in her eyes—the basest purpose of which man could be guilty, and the most mortifying to herself. She made the fact which Perfitt had disclosed to her into a whole drama of evil intention. She did not know in what self-denial her kinsman had spent the morning, in what self-sacrifice he was about to spend the afternoon. She did not know how much he was suffering in order chiefly to prolong his stay in her neighbourhood. It is true that his other sins richly deserved the condemnation she had pronounced. He was employingher as a shield, while he attempted to do the greatest possible injury to her brother. He was plotting secretly under her protection and in her very shadow against the honour and good fame of the family, and even against herself personally; for her own fortune was involved in Edgar’s, so far, at least, as Old Arden was concerned. For all this she could have better pardoned him than for the supposed deception he had just practised upon her. Thus his doom was just, but it was not given on just grounds.
But it happens often enough, as many women could testify, that the doom pronounced by virtue upon vice, by the true upon the false, bears very often much more heavily upon the judge than upon the condemned. The culprit bears up under the blow, while she who sits on the throne of Justice is shaken to pieces by the reverberation. Clare, who felt herself both judge and executioner in one, and whose mind was full of wild plans of vengeance, was herself at the same time the immediate victim. Drearily, more dreary than ever before, the day closed upon her, leaving her all alone in the solitude of those stately rooms, dimly lighted and all so silent. Night was coming—night which, if it brought forgetfulness, would be her best comforter; but it seemed utterly impossible that it could bringforgetfulness, or that sleep should ever come again to her burning, weary, yet wakeful eyelids. She could not read, she could not work; she could think but of one subject, and that was not one which she could exercise any free will about, discussing it reasonably with herself; but one which pursued her, forcing itself into supremacy, driving her thoughts wildly into one channel, whether she would or not. She sat by the table, with her head supported in her two hands, and gazed into the white flame of the lamp till her eyes were almost scorched, while a thousand wild fancies pursued each other through her mind. The moths circled about and about the light, and so did her thoughts about the fatal centre which they had formed for themselves; until the flimsy suicides wove themselves in with her imaginations, and became somehow a part of her and them. She had not energy enough left to save them. “There is another,” she would say to herself; “are they all mad, I wonder? Can’t they feel that it kills them? I wonder where he is now. Oh, I hope he is beginning to feel what a false step he has taken! There is many a woman that will put up with being deceived, but not me—never me. To think he should have known me so little, and he an Arden! I wonder what Edgar will say when he knows: he shall never know. Ihate him, but I will never, never betray to any one—— And yet I promised I would interfere. I said it should never occur again. There is another, and another. I wonder why they like it so much. It can’t be for the warmth, for it is warm everywhere to-night. I said it should never occur again—— I was a fool to take any part; what have I to do with—with—that girl? She is not even a village girl, to have a claim upon me. If she likes to be ruined and shamed, that is not my affair. Perhaps she thinks he—loves her, forsooth! Oh, what fools, what fools people are—people and moths! The lamp is choked up with them; what strange, strange, silly creatures! I can’t stop them; and how can I stop her? And why should I!—it is her business, it is not mine. If she had been a girl in the village—— But then I said it should not occur again.”
Thus Clare mused: and as the slow moments went on, her musing grew into a kind of rhythm of broken fancies, all bound together by the continued burden—“I said it should not occur again.” It was like a song which she thus murmured to herself, or rather which murmured in her ears without any will of hers, rising and falling, with its refrain—“I said it should not occur again.” At length the refrain gained upon the rest, and repeatedand repeated itself till her brain grew dizzy. At all events she had to keep her word—and what should she do? Should she interpose authoritatively, as was her right as the natural protectress of every girl in Arden? Should she write to him herself, and warn him that his evil designs were known, and she, the champion and shield of her maidens, in arms against him? Should she act imperiously and with a high hand, by sending Jeanie and her grandmother out of her territory? She was so used to think as well as acten princessethat neither of those plans seemed quite impracticable to Clare. They were, on the contrary, quite natural, things which had she been less concerned she would not have hesitated to do. But, alas, she was intimately concerned, and her arm seemed paralysed. She gave forth the sentence without hesitation, but as for the manner of executing it, she seemed only capable of thrusting the sword into herself.
Then a sudden thought struck her. As it came to her all at once, so she executed it all at once, with the impatient and irritable haste of suffering. Half the mad things that people do when they are in trouble are done in this way. Their brain grows dizzy over deep-laid plans and long-nursed impossible conceptions, and then a sudden suggestioncomes across them and they obey it on the moment. She started up and brought her blotting-book from the writing-desk where it was, to the ring of light round the lamp. And she wrote the following note hastily, without even pausing to draw breath:—
“Dear Mr. Fielding,—I have just heard, to my great pain, that your little friend Jeanie has been annoyed by my cousin Arthur Arden. There are difficulties in the way of my direct interference which I need not explain. One ought to be above all secondary motives, but unfortunately one is not. I do not know who is most to blame, if she has been trying to attract him, thinking, perhaps, he was less experienced in such matters than he is, or if it is entirely his fault. He is staying at the Red House with the Pimpernels, which of itself, of course, is a reason why I do not desire to have more intercourse with him than I can help; and, of course, this affair is a double reason. I do not advise you to communicate with him, for gentlemen, I believe, do not like to be called to account for their actions; but I think you should do something at once in respect to the girl. You might put her on her guard, that he is not at all the sort of man to be made a victim of, or taken in in any way. He must either be simply amusing himself, or hisobject cannot be a good one. I speak freely, because you know I have always felt that in my position false delicacy would be a crime. I have always considered myself responsible for the girls in the village, and my motive is, I think, quite enough to justify me. I think if I were in your place—not being able to act in my own—that I should have the girl removed at once from Arden. There seems no reason why she and her grandmother should have chosen this place to live in. And there is nothing particular that ever I heard of in Arden air. Any other fresh country air would, no doubt, do quite as well.“I should be glad if you would let me know what you do, and as soon as possible. Edgar being away makes one feel it all the more.“Yours affectionately,“Clare Arden.”
“Dear Mr. Fielding,—I have just heard, to my great pain, that your little friend Jeanie has been annoyed by my cousin Arthur Arden. There are difficulties in the way of my direct interference which I need not explain. One ought to be above all secondary motives, but unfortunately one is not. I do not know who is most to blame, if she has been trying to attract him, thinking, perhaps, he was less experienced in such matters than he is, or if it is entirely his fault. He is staying at the Red House with the Pimpernels, which of itself, of course, is a reason why I do not desire to have more intercourse with him than I can help; and, of course, this affair is a double reason. I do not advise you to communicate with him, for gentlemen, I believe, do not like to be called to account for their actions; but I think you should do something at once in respect to the girl. You might put her on her guard, that he is not at all the sort of man to be made a victim of, or taken in in any way. He must either be simply amusing himself, or hisobject cannot be a good one. I speak freely, because you know I have always felt that in my position false delicacy would be a crime. I have always considered myself responsible for the girls in the village, and my motive is, I think, quite enough to justify me. I think if I were in your place—not being able to act in my own—that I should have the girl removed at once from Arden. There seems no reason why she and her grandmother should have chosen this place to live in. And there is nothing particular that ever I heard of in Arden air. Any other fresh country air would, no doubt, do quite as well.
“I should be glad if you would let me know what you do, and as soon as possible. Edgar being away makes one feel it all the more.
“Yours affectionately,“Clare Arden.”
Poor Clare! she wrote this at a stretch, scarcely lifting her head from the paper, with a philosophy which surprised herself, and which was not in the least philosophy, but only the very highest strain of excitement. But she could not help hanging up that one little flag of distress at the end—“Edgar being away makes one feel it all the more.” She had not said a word about feeling it till then; butnow her head fell upon her clasped hands, and she wept a few very bitter, very scalding tears, hiding them even from herself, so to speak, in the handkerchief which she crushed against her hot, scorched eyes. And then she rose up and put her note in an envelope, and sent it off—for it was only about nine o’clock still, though it felt to Clare as if it must have been the middle of the night.
Immediately after she went upstairs, and went to bed, to the great amazement of her maid, for Clare did not usually keep early hours. She wanted the darkness, the stillness, the quiet, she said to herself; but the fact was, she wanted a change—anything that would be different from what she had been before doing. She could not sleep, of course; and when she had borne that as long as it was possible to bear it, she got up and partially dressed herself, and went down in her dressing-gown to the library, to see if some novelty or distraction could be found there. By this time the whole house was asleep—dark, motionless, and silent, like a house of the dead. Her candle was ghostly beyond description in the great, dim library. It even occurred to Clare’s mind, as a kind of hope, that she might see something unearthly, and thus be driven legitimately mad, and a reason given to herself and others for the change in her, which nodoubt others would see. But nothing unearthly was to be seen—nothing but a vast expanse of darkness—her father’s chair standing by the table—the walls clothed with books, glimmering faintly in the corner nearest the light, from out the tarnished brass of the lattice-work which enclosed them. Nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing but herself—the one thing of which no change could rid her. Clare sat down at the bureau in her misery, and opened it with the key which she had left in it. The little inner door which she had unlocked in the morning, and which now it suddenly occurred to her she had never seen unlocked before, swung in her face as she opened the outer enclosure. In mere sickness of heart she thrust her hand into the corner where that afternoon she had thrown the bundle of letters which had prevented one of the drawers from opening. Indifferently she had thrown it down; indifferently she took it up. One end of it was singed and brown, as if it had been thrown into the fire, and the outside corner was slightly torn, with a black mark on it of something by which it had evidently been fished out again. Somebody’s letters which her father had almost made up his mind to burn, and then had repented. This did her a little good. A languid interest—too languid almost to be calledinterest—came into her mind—a faint wonder breathed across her why he who burned nothing should have thought of burning that. She turned it over indifferently to read the endorsing. And even after she had read it, it was some time before the words produced any effect upon Clare’s mind. “Papers concerning the boy.” Papers concerning the boy! “Who is the boy? What does it mean? she said to herself. Then she came, as it were, to life, as she gazed at it. Through the broken envelope two or three words caught her eye. She raised herself quite upright, seized it tremulously, and put her hand upon the seals. But even while she did so her mind changed. Instead of breaking open the packet, she snatched up another piece of paper, and hastily re-covered it, then taking her handkerchief, which was the first thing she could find, tied it round the parcel. Then she sat for half the night stupefied, with a new subject for her thoughts.
Clare’sproceedings next day were the cause of absolute consternation to everybody concerned. In the morning she was very restless, roaming about from floor to floor—from the library to the dining room, and then to her bed-chamber, carrying with her something tied up in her handkerchief. “Can I carry it for you, Miss Arden?” her maid had asked, meeting her suddenly on the stair. “Carry it! what?” Clare had answered, sharply, dropping her hand, with the little bundle in it, among the folds of her dress. Had it been perceived how often she changed the place in which she had this parcel locked up the wonder of the household would have been still further roused. She had sat up half the night at least doing nothing, staring into the candle; and when finally she went up stairs, she had carried her mysterious bundle with her, placing it under her pillow. When she came down, weary and pale, in the morning, she had carried it to the library, and locked it into the bureau. Then, prompted bysome sudden change of mind, she had transferred it from the bureau to a drawer in the writing table in the morning room, where she chiefly sat; then she carried it off to her wardrobe; and, finally, about noon, restored it to its original place in the bureau. She put it back into its own original drawer, which would scarcely contain it—locked the inner door, and hung the key round her neck on a ribbon; and then locking the outer part of the bureau, shut up the key of that in her desk. She was very pale, and yet now and then would grow hot and flushed without any reason. She employed herself all the morning in feverish movement from one place to another. At twelve she called her maid Barbara and told her to make ready to go out. “I am going up to the Three Beeches,” she said; “take something with you to eat, for it may be late before we get home again.” “Shall I take any luncheon for you, Miss Arden?” said the girl, “and shall I order the carriage?” “I don’t want anything to eat, and I prefer to walk,” Clare said abruptly; and, accordingly, at twelve o’clock of a blazing summer morning, she set out for a three miles’ walk, attended by her unwilling maid with a parcel of books. “If any one calls you can say I have gone out for the day,” she said to Wilkins, who was no less amazed. She had not gone a hundred yards from the house whenBarbara interrupted her progress. “Please, Miss Arden, I see the Rector coming up the avenue.” “Never mind,” said Clare, with an impatient gesture, and hurried on.
The Rector had come up in a state of great trouble and excitement—first, to remonstrate with Clare for her injurious suspicions in regard to poor little Jeanie; secondly, to warn herself against Arthur Arden; and, thirdly, to ask her advice what he should say to Mrs. Murray on the subject, which was a part of the business which frightened him much. He was not an early man at any time, and Clare’s note had much discomposed him, and the parish business had taken him up for at least an hour. When he was turned back from the door of Arden his astonishment knew no bounds. “Gone out!” he said, “gone out for the day! What is the meaning of that, Wilkins? Has she gone to pay a visit! But I did not meet her in the avenue, and she has not passed through the village this morning, so far as I could hear.”
“No, sir; she has not gone upon a visit,” said Wilkins; “she’s about somewhere in the park, I do believe. Not as I knows that o’ my own knowledge,” he added, hurriedly. “Miss Clare may have gone—bless you, she might have gone anywhere—to Lady Augusta’s, maybe, only they’re all away, orto Miss Somers’s, or to the village. Miss Clare is the independentest young lady, as you know——”
“Yes, yes, she may be independent, but she does not rush out like this without any reason. Has she had any letters about Business—anything to call her abroad——”
“I don’t know, sir, no more than Adam,” said Wilkins, shaking his head; and then he sank into mystery. “If you’ll step in for a moment, sir, I’ll call Mrs. Fillpot. I think she’d like to say a word; and she has a kind of a notion she knows why.”
Mr. Fielding went into the hall, shaking his head, and then he passed into Clare’s morning room, where everything was painfully tidy, and there was no appearance of any occupation about. The Rector shook his head still as he peered into the corners with his short-sighted eyes. “She has taken it to heart; she has taken it to heart!” he said to himself, and shook his head more and more.
Then Mrs. Fillpot came in, with a white apron, the corner of which she held in one hand, ready for instant action. Wilkins lingered near the door, with the view of being one of the party, but the Rector promptly closed it upon him. “You have something to tell me from Miss Clare?” he said; for to be sure he was jealous of being thought to come and ask questions of the servants at the Hall.
“Nothing from Miss Clare, sir; worse luck,” said Mrs. Fillpot; “but I come to tell you what’s to do with her this morning. Mr. Arthur, sir, has been a-coming day after day. He’s been here, has Mr. Arthur, since last Monday, every afternoon of his life; and Miss Clare and he a-sitting in the library, as none of us likes to go in no more nor we can help, a-working with their papers. It’s hurt me to see it, Mr. Fielding, like as if she had been my own child. A young lady and no mother, and the Squire away as should take care of his sister. So I up and told her yesterday. It took a deal of screwing up to give me the courage; but bless you, sir, if a woman hasn’t that courage for one as she’s brought up—— So I up and told her. I said—‘It ain’t right, Miss, and it ain’t nice, nor what your poor dear mamma, if she’d have lived, would have approved.’ I said it plain out as I’m saying it to you, though I was all of a tremble. Bless you, thinking of it, I’m all of a tremble now.”
“And what did she say?” asked Mr. Fielding.
“She didn’t say much, sir. Miss Clare was never one to say much. She waved me to go, and I went, without even a ‘Thank you, Mrs. Fillpot,’ or ‘I know you means well,’ nor nothing. But when Barbara came to me this morning asking for a bit of lunch, and saying as her young lady wasa-going out to spend the day, bless you, I saw it all in a moment. She didn’t say nothing, but she’s acted upon it, has Miss Clare.”
“And did nothing else happen besides what you tell me?” said Mr. Fielding, still shaking his head.
“Nothing as I can think on. Well, Mr. Arthur he didn’t come yesterday, and Mr. Perfitt he brought a bit of a letter, and he went in and saw her for five minutes or so, did Perfitt; but that’s all.”
“Oh, Perfitt saw her, did he?” said the Rector.
“Yes, sir. But I don’t see what difference that could make,” said Mrs. Fillpot, jealous of her power.
“No, no, I don’t suppose so,” said Mr. Fielding; but in his mind he allowed that it might make a great deal of difference, and went away very thoughtfully, shaking his head. “She has taken it to heart, poor child; she has taken it to heart,” he said to himself as he went home, shaking his head with that mingled pity and sense of superiority which an affectionate bystander feels in such a case. Better that she should suffer a little now than afterwards, when it would be too late, was Mr. Fielding’s thought, and in his aged mind this “suffer a little” was all that was comprehensible of Clare’s passion and agony. She would get over it after a while, of course, and no particular harm would bedone. Such was his conception of the state of affairs.
There was, however, another visitor to Arden, whose consternation was still greater. Arthur came at his usual hour in the afternoon, with all his energies refreshed by his temporary absence, and with a determination in his mind to know his fate at once, so far as Clare was concerned. He loved her, he said to himself. It was true that he was quite capable of being momentarily drawn aside from his allegiance, and that his recent pursuit of her had been complicated by other motives. But yet he loved her. If Edgar were unmasked to-morrow, and himself in Edgar’s place, it would still be his cousin Clare whom he would prefer to all others to sit upon his throne with him. And why should he delay speaking to her on the subject? If things remained as they were—which was probable—then she would share what she had with him; and if he could make any discovery and better his own position, why then of course he would share everything with her.