Soon after this, a ridiculous thing occurred, the consequences of which
were grave enough. The summer and autumn after that weary drought were
rather wet and stormy. One night towards the end of October, it blew a
heavy gale after torrents of rain. Going to the churchyard next day, I
found, as I had expected, that the flowers so carefully kept through the
summer were shattered and strewn by the tempest; and so I returned to
the garden for others to plant in their stead. My cousin Clement (as he
was told to call himself) came sauntering towards me among the beds.
His usual look of shallow brightness and empty self-esteem had failed
him for the moment, and he looked like a fan-tailed pigeon who has
tumbled down the horse-rack. He followed me to and fro, with a sort of
stuttering walk, as I chose the plants I liked best; but I took little
notice of him, for such had been my course since I first discovered
their scheme.
At last, as I stooped to dig up a white verbena, he came behind me, and
began his errand with more than his usual lisp. This I shall not copy,
as it is not worth the trouble.
"Oh, Clara," he said, "I want to tell you something, if you'll only be
good-natured!"
"Don't you see I am busy now?" I replied, without turning to look.
"Won't it do when you have taken your curl-papers off?"
"Now, Clara, you know that I never use curl-papers. My hair doesn't want
it. You know it's much prettier than your long waving black stuff, and
it curls of its own accord, if mamma only brushes it. But I want to
tell you something particular."
"Well, then, be quick, for I am going away." And with that I stood up
and confronted him. He was scarcely so tall as myself, and his light
showy dress and pink rose of a face, which seemed made to be worn in the
hair, were thrown into brighter relief by my sombre apparel and earnest
twilight look. Some lurking sense of this contrast seemed to add to his
hesitation. At last he began again:
"You know, Cousin Clara, you must not be angry with me, because it isn't
my fault."
"What is not your fault?"
"Why, that I should fall--what do they call it?--fall in love, I
suppose."
"You fall in love, you dissolute doll! How dare you fall in love, sir,
without my leave?"
"Well, I was afraid to ask you, Clara. I couldn't tell what you would
say."
"Oh, that must depend, of course, on who Mrs. Doll is to be! If it's a
good little thing with blue satin arms, and a sash and a slip, and
pretty blue eyes that go with a string, perhaps I'll forgive you, poor
child, and set you up with a house, and a tea-set, and a mother-of-pearl
perambulator."
"Now, don't talk nonsense," he answered. "Before long I shall be a man,
and then you'll be afraid of me, and put up your hands, and shriek, and
want me to kiss you."
I had indulged him too much, and his tongue was taking liberties. I
soon stopped him.
"How dare you bark at me, you wretched little white-woolled nursery
dog?"
I left him, and went with my basket of flowers along the path to the
churchyard. For a while he stood there frightened, till his mother
looked forth from the drawing-room window. Between the two fears he
chose the less, and followed me to my father's grave. I stood there and
angrily waved him back, but he still persisted, though trembling.
"Cousin Clara," he said--and his lisp was quite gone, and he tried to be
in a passion--"Cousin Clara, you shall hear what I have got to say. You
have lived with me now a long time, and I'm sure we have agreed very
well, and I--I--no, I don't see why we should not be married."
"Don't you indeed, sir?"
"Perhaps," he continued, "you are afraid that I don't care about you.
Really now, I often think that you would be very good-looking, if you
would only laugh now and then, and leave off those nasty black gowns;
and then if you would only leave off being so grand, and mysterious, and
stately, and getting up so early, I would let you do as you liked, and
you might paint me and have a lock of my hair."
"Clement Daldy," I asked, "do you see that lake?"
"Yes," he replied, turning pale, and inclined to fly.
"There's water enough there now. If you ever dare again to say one word
like this to me, or even to show by your looks that you think it, I'll
take you and drown you there, as sure as my father lies here."
He slunk away quickly without a word, and could eat no lunch that day.
In the afternoon, as I sat in my favourite bow-window seat, Mrs. Daldy
glided in. She had put on with care her clinging smile, as she would an
Indian shawl. I thought how much better her face would have looked with
its natural, bold, haughty gaze.
"My dear Clara," began this pious tidewaiter, "what have you done to vex
so your poor cousin Clement?"
"Only this, Mrs. Daldy: he was foolish or mad, and I gave him advice in
a truly Christian spirit, entirely for his own good."
"I hope, my dear, that some day it may be his duty as well as his
privilege to advise you. But, of course, you need not take his advice.
My Clara loves her own way as much as any girl I ever knew; and with
poor Clement she will be safe to have it."
"No doubt of that," I replied.
"And then, my pet, you will be in a far better position than you could
attain as an unmarried girl to pursue the great aim of your life; so
far, I mean, as is not inconsistent with the spirit of Christian
forgiveness. Your guardian has thought of that, in effecting this
arrangement; and I trust that I was not wrong in allowing so fair a
prospect, under Providence, of your ultimate peace of mind to influence
me considerably when he sought my consent."
"I am sure I am much obliged to you."
"I cannot conceal from you, so clear-sighted as you are--and if I could,
I object to concealment of any kind, on principle--that there are also
certain worldly advantages, which are not without weight, however the
heart be weaned by trials and chastened from transient things. And your
guardian has this arrangement so very much at heart. My own dear child,
I have felt for you so long that I love you as a daughter. How thankful
I ought to be to the Giver of all good things to have you really my own
dear child."
"Be thankful, madam, when you have got it. This is a good thing which
under Providence you must learn to do without."
It was coarse of me to hint at my riches. But what could I do with her?
"Why, Clara," she asked, in great amazement, "you cannot be so foolish
and wilful as to throw away this chance of revenge? If only for your
dear mother's sake, as well as your father's, it is the path of duty.
Let me tell you, both she and yourself are very much more in your
guardian's power than you have any idea. And what would be your poor
father's wish, who has left you so entirely to his brother's care and
discretion? Will you put off for ever the discovery of his murderer?"
"My father," I said, proudly, "would scorn me for doing a thing below
him and myself. The last of the Vaughans to be plotted away to a
grocer's doll!"
It had been a trial of temper; and contempt was too much for hypocrisy.
Through the rouge of the world, and the pearl-powder of religion, nature
flushed forth on her cheek; for she really loved her son. She knew
where to wound me the deepest.
"Is it no condescension in us that my beautiful boy should stoop to the
maniac-child of a man who was stabbed--stabbed in his midnight bed--to
atone, no doubt, for some low act of his own?"
I sprang up, and rang the bell. Thomas Kenwood, who made a point of
attending me, came at once. I said to him, calmly and slowly:
"Allow this person one hour to pack her things. Get a fly from the
Walnut Tree Inn, and see her beyond the Lodge."
If I had told him to drag her away by the hair, I believe that man would
have done it. She shrunk away from me; for the moment her spirit was
quelled, and she trembled into a chair.
"I assure you, Clara, I did not mean what I said. You provoked me so."
"Not one word more. Leave the room and the house."
"Miss Vaughan, I will not leave this house until your guardian returns."
"Thomas," I said, without looking towards her, "if Mrs. Daldy is not
gone in an hour, you quit my service."
How Thomas Kenwood managed it, I never asked. He was a resolute man, and
all the servants obeyed him. She turned round once, as she crossed the
threshold, and gave me a look which I shall never forget. Was such the
look that had glared on my father before the blow? She lifted the white
arm of which she was proud, and threw back her head, like the Fecial
hurling his dart.
"Clara Vaughan, you shall bitterly grieve for this. It shall throw you
and your mother at the feet of your father's murderer, and you shall
crave meat worse than your enemy's blood."
Until she had quitted the house, I could not sit down; but went to my
father's bedroom, where I often took refuge when strongly excited and
unable to fly to his grave. The thoughts and the memories hovering and
sighing around that fatal chamber were enough to calm and allay the
sensations of trivial wrong.
But now this was not the case. The outrage offered had been, not to me,
but to him who seemed present there. The suggestion, too, of an injury
done by my father, though scorned at first, was working and ruffling
within me, as children put bearded corn-ears in another's sleeve, which
by-and-by work their own way to the breast. Till now, I had always
believed that some worldly advantage or gain had impelled my foe to the
deed which left me an orphan. But that woman's dark words had started a
new train of reasoning, whose very first motion was doubt of the man I
worshipped. Among all I had ever met, there existed but one opinion as
to what he had been--a true gentleman, who had injured not one of God's
creatures, whose life had been guided mainly by the wishes and welfare
of others. Moreover, I had my own clear recollections--his voice, his
eyes, and his smile, his manner and whole expression; these, it is true,
were but outward things, yet a child's intuition is strong and hard to
refute.
Again, during my remembrance, he had never been absent from us, except
for a day or two, now and then, among his county neighbours; and any ill
will which he might have incurred from them must, from his position,
have become notorious.
And yet, in the teeth of this reasoning, and in spite of my own warm
feeling, that horrible suspicion clave to my heart and chilled it like
the black spot of mildew. And what if the charge were true? In that
case, how was I better than he who had always been to my mind a fiend in
special commission? His was vengeance, and mine revenge; he had
suffered perhaps a wanton wrong, as deep to his honour as mine to my
love.
While I was brooding thus miserably, my eyes fell upon the bed. There
were the red streaks, grained and fibred like the cross-cut of a
fern-stalk; framed and looking down on me, the sampler of my life.
Drawing near, I trembled with an unknown awe, to find myself in that
lonely presence, not indeed thinking, but inkling such things of my
father, my own darling father, whose blood was looking at me. In a
storm of self-loathing and sorrow, I knelt there and sobbed my
atonement; but never thenceforth could I wholly bar out the idea. Foul
ideas when once admitted will ever return on their track, as the cholera
walks in the trail of its former pall.
But instead of abating my dogged pursuit, I now had a new incentive--to
dispel the aspersions cast on my father's shadow.