“Arden is going to stay with us a little, Clare, if you can take him in,” Edgar said, with that voluble candour which a man always exhibits when he is about to do something which will be disagreeable to the mistress of his house—be she mother, sister, or wife. “He has no engagements for the moment, and neither have we. It is a transition time—too late for town, too early for the country—so he naturally turned his eyes this way.”
“That is a flattering account to give of it,” said Arthur, for Clare only bowed in reply. “The fact is, Miss Arden, I was turned out by my late hostess. May I tell you the story? I think it is rather funny.” And, though Clare’s response was of the coldest, he told it to her, giving a clever sketch of the Pimpernels. He was very brilliant about their worship of Arden, and how their hospitality to himself was solely on account of his name. “But I have not a word to say against them. My own object was simply self-interest,” he said. He was talking two languages, as it were, at the same moment—one which Edgar could understand, and one which was addressed to Clare.
And there could be no doubt that his presence made the day pass more easily to the other two—one of whom was so excited, and the other so exceedingly calm. They strolled about the park in the afternoon, and got through its weary hours somehow. They dined—Clare in her fever eating nothing; a fact, however, which neither of her companions perceived. They took their meal both with the most perfect self-possession, hurrying over nothing, and giving it that importance which always belongs to a Sunday dinner. Dinner on other days is but a meal, but on Sunday it is the business of the day; and as such the two cousins took it, doing full justice to its importance, while the tide rose higher and higher in Clare’s veins. When she left them to their wine, she went to her own room, and walked about and about it like a caged lioness. It was not Clare’s way, who was above all demonstration of the kind; but now she could not restrain herself. She clenched her two hands together, and swept about the room, and moaned to herself in her impatience. “Oh, will it never be night? Will they never have done talking? Can one go on and go on and bear it?” she cried to herself in the silence. But after all she had to put on her chains again, and bathe her flushed face, and go down to the drawing-room. How like a wild creature she felt, straining and chafing at her fetters! She sat down and poured out tea for them, with her hand trembling, her head burning, her feet as cold as ice, her head as hot as fire. She said to herself it was unlady-like, unwomanly, unlike her, to be so wild and self-indulgent, but she had no power to control herself. All this time, however, the two men made no very particular remark. Edgar, who thought she was still angry, only grieved and wondered. Arthur knew that she was dissatisfied with himself, and was excited but not surprised. He gave her now and then pathetic looks. He wove in subtle phrases of self-vindication—a hundred little allusions, which were nothing to Edgar but full of significance to her—into all he said. But he could not have believed, what was the case, that Clare was far past hearing them—that she did not take up the drift of his observations at all—that she hardly understood what was being said, her whole soul being one whirl of excitement, expectation, awful heartrending fear and hope. It was Edgar at last who perceived that her strength was getting worn out. He noticed that she did not hear what was said—that her face usually so expressive, was getting set in its extremity of emotion. Was it emotion, was it mania? Whatever it was, it had passed all ordinary bounds of endurance. He rose hastily when he perceived this, and going up to his sister laid his hand softly on her shoulder. She started and shivered as if his hand had been ice, and looked up at him with two dilated, unfathomable eyes. If he had been going to kill her she could not have been more tragically still—more aghast with passion and horror. A profound compassion and pity took possession of him. “Clare,” he said, bending over her as if she were deaf, and putting his lips close to her ear, “Clare, you are over-exhausted. Go to bed. Let me take you up stairs—and if that will be a comfort to you, dear, I will go and read them now.”
“Yes,” she said, articulating with difficulty—“Yes.” He had to take her hand to help her to rise; but when he stooped and kissed her forehead Clare shivered again. She passed Arthur without noticing him, then returned and with formal courtesy bade him good-night; and so disappeared with her candle in her hand, throwing a faint upward ray upon her white woe-begone face. She was dressed in white, with black ribbons and ornaments, and her utter pallor seemed to bring out the darkness of her hair and darken the blue in her eyes, till everything about her seemed black and white. Arthur Arden had risen too and stood wondering, watching her as she went away. “What is the matter?” he said abruptly to Edgar, who was no better informed than himself.
“I don’t know. She must be ill. She is unhappy about something,” said Edgar. For the first time the bundle of old letters acquired importance in his eyes. “I want to look at something she has given me,” he added simply. “You will not think me rude when you see how much concerned my sister is? You know your room and all that. I must go and satisfy Clare.”
“What has she given you?” asked Arthur, with a certain precipitation. Edgar was not disposed to answer any further questions, and this was one which his cousin had no right to ask.
“I must go now,” he said. “Good-night. I trust you will be comfortable. In short, I trust we shall all be more comfortable to-morrow. Clare’s face makes me anxious to-night.”
And then Arthur found himself master of the great drawing-room, with all its silent space and breadth. What did they mean? Could it be that Clare had found this something for which he had sought, and instead of giving it to himself had given it to her brother, the person most concerned, who would, of course, destroy it and cut off Arthur’s hopes for ever. The very thought set the blood boiling in his veins. He paced about as Clare had done in her room, and could only calm himself by means of a cigar which he went out to the terrace to smoke. There his eyes were attracted to Clare’s window and to another not far off in which lights were burning. That must be Edgar’s, he concluded; and there in the seclusion of his chamber, not in any place more accessible, was he studying the something Clare had given him? Something! What could it be?
CHAPTER VII
More than one strange incident happened at Arden that soft July night. Mr. Fielding was seated in his library in the evening, after all the Sunday work was over. He did not work very hard either on Sundays or on any other occasions—the good, gentle old man. But yet he liked to sit, as he had been wont to do in his youth when he had really exerted himself, on those tranquil Sunday nights. His curate had dined with him, but was gone, knowing the Rector’s habit; and Mr. Fielding was seated in the twilight, with both his windows open, sipping a glass of wine tenderly, as if he loved it, and musing in the stillness. The lamp was never lighted on Sunday evenings till it was time for prayers. Some devout people in the parish were of opinion that at such moments the Rector was asking a blessing upon his labours, and “interceding” with God for his people—and so, no doubt, he was. But yet other thoughts were in his mind. Long, long ago, when Mr. Fielding had been young, and had a young wife by his side, this had been their sacred hour, when they would sit side by side and talk to each other of all that was in their hearts. It was “Milly’s hour,” the time when she had told him all the little troubles that beset a girl-wife in the beginning of her career; and he had laughed at her, and been sorry for her, and comforted her as young husbands can. It was Milly’s hour still, though Milly had gone out of all the cares of life and housekeeping for thirty years. How the old man remembered those little cares—how he would go over them with a soft smile on his lip, and—no, not a tear—a glistening of the eye, which was not weeping. How frightened she had been for big Susan, the cook; how bravely she had struggled about the cooking of the cutlets, to have them as her husband liked them—not as Susan pleased! And then all those speculations as to whether Lady Augusta would call, and about Letty Somers, and her foolish, little kind-hearted ways. The old man remembered every one of those small troubles. How small they were, how dear, how sacred—Milly’s troubles. Thank Heaven, she had never found out that the world held pangs more bitter. The first real sorrow she had ever had was to die—and was that a sorrow? to leave him;