Sir Austin Feverel had come to town with the serenity of a philosopher
who says, ’Tis now time; and the satisfaction of a man who has not
arrived thereat without a struggle. He had almost forgiven his son. His
deep love for him had well-nigh shaken loose from wounded pride and
more tenacious vanity. Stirrings of a remote sympathy for the creature
who had robbed him of his son and hewed at his System, were in his
heart of hearts. This he knew; and in his own mind he took credit for
his softness. But the world must not suppose him soft; the world must
think he was still acting on his System. Otherwise what would his long
absence signify?—Something highly unphilosophical. So, though love was
strong, and was moving him to a straightforward course, the last tug of
vanity drew him still aslant.
The Aphorist read himself so well, that to juggle with himself was a
necessity. As he wished the world to see him, he beheld himself: one
who entirely put aside mere personal feelings: one in whom parental
duty, based on the science of life, was paramount: a Scientific
Humanist, in short.
He was, therefore, rather surprised at a coldness in Lady Blandish’s
manner when he did appear. “At last!” said the lady, in a sad way that
sounded reproachfully. Now the Scientific Humanist had, of course,
nothing to reproach himself with.
But where was Richard?
Adrian positively averred he was not with his wife.
“If he had gone,” said the baronet, “he would have anticipated me by a
few hours.”
This, when repeated to Lady Blandish, should have propitiated her, and
shown his great forgiveness. She, however, sighed, and looked at him
wistfully.
Their converse was not happy and deeply intimate. Philosophy did not
seem to catch her mind; and fine phrases encountered a rueful assent,
more flattering to their grandeur than to their influence.
Days went by. Richard did not present himself. Sir Austin’s pitch of
self-command was to await the youth without signs of impatience.
Seeing this, the lady told him her fears for Richard, and mentioned the
rumour of him that was about.
“If,” said the baronet, “this person, his wife, is what you paint her,
I do not share your fears for him. I think too well of him. If she is
one to inspire the sacredness of that union, I think too well of him.
It is impossible.”
The lady saw one thing to be done.
“Call her to you,” she said. “Have her with you at Raynham. Recognize
her. It is the disunion and doubt that so confuses him and drives him
wild. I confess to you I hoped he had gone to her. It seems not. If she
is with you his way will be clear. Will you do that?”
Science is notoriously of slow movement. Lady Blandish’s proposition
was far too hasty for Sir Austin. Women, rapid by nature, have no idea
of science.
“We shall see her there in time, Emmeline. At present let it be between
me and my son.”
He spoke loftily. In truth it offended him to be asked to do anything,
when he had just brought himself to do so much.
A month elapsed, and Richard appeared on the scene.
The meeting between him and his father was not what his father had
expected and had crooned over in the Welsh mountains. Richard shook his
hand respectfully, and inquired after his health with the common social
solicitude. He then said: “During your absence, sir, I have taken the
liberty, without consulting you, to do something in which you are more
deeply concerned than myself. I have taken upon myself to find out my
mother and place her under my care. I trust you will not think I have
done wrong. I acted as I thought best.”
Sir Austin replied: “You are of an age, Richard, to judge for yourself
in such a case. I would have you simply beware of deceiving yourself in
imagining that you considered any one but yourself in acting as you
did.”
“I have not deceived myself, sir,” said Richard, and the interview was
over. Both hated an exposure of the feelings, and in that both were
satisfied: but the baronet, as one who loves, hoped and looked for
tones indicative of trouble and delight in the deep heart; and Richard
gave him none of those. The young man did not even face him as he
spoke: if their eyes met by chance, Richard’s were defiantly cold. His
whole bearing was changed.
“This rash marriage has altered him,” said the very just man of science
in life: and that meant: “it has debased him.”
He pursued his reflections. “I see in him the desperate maturity of a
suddenly-ripened nature: and but for my faith that good work is never
lost, what should I think of the toil of my years? Lost, perhaps to me!
lost to him! It may show itself in his children.”
The Philosopher, we may conceive, has contentment in benefiting
embryos: but it was a somewhat bitter prospect to Sir Austin. Bitterly
he felt the injury to himself.
One little incident spoke well of Richard. A poor woman called at the
hotel while he was missing. The baronet saw her, and she told him a
tale that threw Christian light on one part of Richard’s nature. But
this might gratify the father in Sir Austin; it did not touch the man
of science. A Feverel, his son, would not do less, he thought. He sat
down deliberately to study his son.
No definite observations enlightened him. Richard ate and drank; joked
and laughed. He was generally before Adrian in calling for a fresh
bottle. He talked easily of current topics; his gaiety did not sound
forced. In all he did, nevertheless, there was not the air of a youth
who sees a future before him. Sir Austin put that down. It might be
carelessness, and wanton blood, for no one could say he had much on his
mind. The man of science was not reckoning that Richard also might have
learned to act and wear a mask. Dead subjects—this is to say, people
not on their guard—he could penetrate and dissect. It is by a rare
chance, as scientific men well know, that one has an opportunity of
examining the structure of the living.
However, that rare chance was granted to Sir Austin. They were engaged
to dine with Mrs. Doria at the Foreys’, and walked down to her in the
afternoon, father and son arm-in-arm, Adrian beside them. Previously
the offended father had condescended to inform his son that it would
shortly be time for him to return to his wife, indicating that
arrangements would ultimately be ordered to receive her at Raynham.
Richard had replied nothing; which might mean excess of gratitude, or
hypocrisy in concealing his pleasure, or any one of the thousand shifts
by which gratified human nature expresses itself when all is made to
run smooth with it. Now Mrs. Berry had her surprise ready charged for
the young husband. She had Lucy in her own house waiting for him. Every
day she expected him to call and be overcome by the rapturous surprise,
and every day, knowing his habit of frequenting the park, she marched
Lucy thither, under the plea that Master Richard, whom she had already
christened, should have an airing.
The round of the red winter sun was behind the bare Kensington
chestnuts, when these two parties met. Happily for Lucy and the hope
she bore in her bosom, she was perversely admiring a fair horsewoman
galloping by at the moment. Mrs. Berry plucked at her gown once or
twice, to prepare her eyes for the shock, but Lucy’s head was still
half averted, and thinks Mrs. Berry, “Twon’t hurt her if she go into
his arms head foremost.” They were close; Mrs. Berry performed the bob
preliminary. Richard held her silent with a terrible face; he grasped
her arm, and put her behind him. Other people intervened. Lucy saw
nothing to account for Berry’s excessive flutter. Berry threw it on the
air and some breakfast bacon, which, she said, she knew in the morning
while she ate it, was bad for the bile, and which probably was the
cause of her bursting into tears, much to Lucy’s astonishment.
“What you ate makes you cry, Mrs. Berry?”
“It’s all—” Mrs. Berry pressed at her heart and leaned sideways, “it’s
all stomach, my dear. Don’t ye mind,” and becoming aware of her
unfashionable behaviour, she trailed off to the shelter of the elms.
“You have a singular manner with old ladies,” said Sir Austin to his
son, after Berry had been swept aside. “Scarcely courteous. She behaved
like a mad woman, certainly.—Are you ill, my son?”
Richard was death-pale, his strong form smitten through with weakness.
The baronet sought Adrian’s eye. Adrian had seen Lucy as they passed,
and he had a glimpse of Richard’s countenance while disposing of Berry.
Had Lucy recognized them, he would have gone to her unhesitatingly. As
she did not, he thought it well, under the circumstances, to leave
matters as they were. He answered the baronet’s look with a shrug.
“Are you ill, Richard?” Sir Austin again asked his son.
“Come on, sir! come on!” cried Richard.
His father’s further meditations, as they stepped briskly to the
Foreys’, gave poor Berry a character which one who lectures on
matrimony, and has kissed but three men in her life, shrieks to hear
the very title of.
“Richard will go to his wife to-morrow,” Sir Austin said to Adrian some
time before they went in to dinner.
Adrian asked him if he had chanced to see a young fair-haired lady by
the side of the old one Richard had treated so peculiarly; and to the
baronet’s acknowledgment that he remembered to have observed such a
person, Adrian said: “That was his wife, sir.”
Sir Austin could not dissect the living subject. As if a bullet had
torn open the young man’s skull, and some blast of battle laid his
palpitating organization bare, he watched every motion of his brain and
his heart; and with the grief and terror of one whose mental habit was
ever to pierce to extremes. Not altogether conscious that he had
hitherto played with life, he felt that he was suddenly plunged into
the stormful reality of it. He projected to speak plainly to his son on
all points that night.
“Richard is very gay,” Mrs. Doris, whispered her brother.
“All will be right with him to-morrow,” he replied; for the game had
been in his hands so long, so long had he been the God of the machine,
that having once resolved to speak plainly and to act, he was to a
certain extent secure, bad as the thing to mend might be.
“I notice he has rather a wild laugh—I don’t exactly like his eyes,”
said Mrs. Doria.
“You will see a change in him to-morrow,” the man of science remarked.
It was reserved for Mrs. Doria herself to experience that change. In
the middle of the dinner a telegraphic message from her son-in-law,
worthy John Todhunter, reached the house, stating that Clare was
alarmingly ill, bidding her come instantly. She cast about for some one
to accompany her, and fixed on Richard. Before he would give his
consent for Richard to go, Sir Austin desired to speak with him apart,
and in that interview he said to his son: “My dear Richard! it was my
intention that we should come to an understanding together this night.
But the time is short—poor Helen cannot spare many minutes. Let me then
say that you deceived me, and that I forgive you. We fix our seal on
the past. You will bring your wife to me when you return.” And very
cheerfully the baronet looked down on the generous future he thus
founded.
“Will you have her at Raynham at once, sir?” said Richard.
“Yes, my son, when you bring her.”
“Are you mocking me, sir?”
“Pray, what do you mean?”
“I ask you to receive her at once.”
“Well! the delay cannot be long. I do not apprehend that you will be
kept from your happiness many days.”
“I think it will be some time, sir!” said Richard, sighing deeply.
“And what mental freak is this that can induce you to postpone it and
play with your first duty?”
“What is my first duty, sir?”
“Since you are married, to be with your wife.”
“I have heard that from an old woman called Berry!” said Richard to
himself, not intending irony.
“Will you receive her at once?” he asked resolutely.
The baronet was clouded by his son’s reception of his graciousness. His
grateful prospect had formerly been Richard’s marriage—the culmination
of his System. Richard had destroyed his participation in that. He now
looked for a pretty scene in recompense:—Richard leading up his wife to
him, and both being welcomed by him paternally, and so held one
ostentatious minute in his embrace.
He said: “Before you return, I demur to receiving her.”
“Very well, sir,” replied his son, and stood as if he had spoken all.
“Really you tempt me to fancy you already regret your rash proceeding!”
the baronet exclaimed; and the next moment it pained him he had uttered
the words, Richard’s eyes were so sorrowfully fierce. It pained him,
but he divined in that look a history, and he could not refrain from
glancing acutely and asking: “Do you?”
“Regret it, sir?” The question aroused one of those struggles in the
young man’s breast which a passionate storm of tears may still, and
which sink like leaden death into the soul when tears come not.
Richard’s eyes had the light of the desert.
“Do you?” his father repeated. “You tempt me—I almost fear you do.” At
the thought—for he expressed his mind—the pity that he had for Richard
was not pure gold.
“Ask me what I think of her, sir! Ask me what she is! Ask me what it is
to have taken one of God’s precious angels and chained her to misery!
Ask me what it is to have plunged a sword into her heart, and to stand
over her and see such a creature bleeding! Do I regret that? Why, yes,
I do! Would you?”
His eyes flew hard at his father under the ridge of his eyebrows.
Sir Austin winced and reddened. Did he understand? There is ever in the
mind’s eye a certain wilfulness. We see and understand; we see and
won’t understand.
“Tell me why you passed by her as you did this afternoon,” he said
gravely: and in the same voice Richard answered: “I passed her because
I could not do otherwise.”
“Your wife, Richard?”
“Yes! my wife!”
“If she had seen you, Richard?”
“God spared her that!”
Mrs. Doria, bustling in practical haste, and bearing Richard’s hat and
greatcoat in her energetic hands, came between them at this juncture.
Dimples of commiseration were in her cheeks while she kissed her
brother’s perplexed forehead. She forgot her trouble about Clare,
deploring his fatuity.
Sir Austin was forced to let his son depart. As of old, he took counsel
with Adrian, and the wise youth was soothing. “Somebody has kissed him,
sir, and the chaste boy can’t get over it.” This absurd suggestion did
more to appease the baronet than if Adrian had given a veritable
reasonable key to Richard’s conduct. It set him thinking that it might
be a prudish strain in the young man’s mind, due to the System in
difficulties.
“I may have been wrong in one thing,” he said, with an air of the
utmost doubt of it. “I, perhaps, was wrong in allowing him so much
liberty during his probation.”
Adrian pointed out to him that he had distinctly commanded it.
“Yes, yes; that is on me.”
His was an order of mind that would accept the most burdensome charges,
and by some species of moral usury make a profit out of them.
Clare was little talked of. Adrian attributed the employment of the
telegraph to John Todhunter’s uxorious distress at a toothache, or
possibly the first symptoms of an heir to his house.
“That child’s mind has disease in it... She is not sound,” said the
baronet.
On the door-step of the hotel, when they returned, stood Mrs. Berry.
Her wish to speak a few words with the baronet reverentially
communicated, she was ushered upstairs into his room.
Mrs. Berry compressed her person in the chair she was beckoned to
occupy.
“Well’ ma’am, you have something to say,” observed the baronet, for she
seemed loth to commence.
“Wishin’ I hadn’t—” Mrs. Berry took him up, and mindful of the good
rule to begin at the beginning, pursued: “I dare say, Sir Austin, you
don’t remember me, and I little thought when last we parted our meeting
’d be like this. Twenty year don’t go over one without showin’ it, no
more than twenty ox. It’s a might o’ time,—twenty year! Leastways not
quite twenty, it ain’t.”
“Round figures are best,” Adrian remarked.
“In them round figures a be-loved son have growed up, and got himself
married!” said Mrs. Berry, diving straight into the case.
Sir Austin then learnt that he had before him the culprit who had
assisted his son in that venture. It was a stretch of his patience to
hear himself addressed on a family matter; but he was naturally
courteous.
“He came to my house, Sir Austin, a stranger! If twenty year alters us
as have knowed each other on the earth, how must they alter they that
we parted with just come from heaven! And a heavenly babe he were! so
sweet! so strong! so fat!”
Adrian laughed aloud.
Mrs. Berry bumped a curtsey to him in her chair, continuing: “I wished
afore I spoke to say how thankful am I bound to be for my pension not
cut short, as have offended so, but that I know Sir Austin Feverel,
Raynham Abbey, ain’t one o’ them that likes to hear their good deeds
pumlished. And a pension to me now, it’s something more than it were.
For a pension and pretty rosy cheeks in a maid, which I was—that’s a
bait many a man’ll bite, that won’t so a forsaken wife!”
“If you will speak to the point, ma’am, I will listen to you,” the
baronet interrupted her.
“It’s the beginnin’ that’s the worst, and that’s over, thank the Lord!
So I’ll speak, Sir Austin, and say my say:—Lord speed me! Believin’ our
idees o’ matrimony to be sim’lar, then, I’ll say, once married—married
for life! Yes! I don’t even like widows. For I can’t stop at the grave.
Not at the tomb I can’t stop. My husband’s my husband, and if I’m a
body at the Resurrection, I say, speaking humbly, my Berry is the
husband o’ my body; and to think of two claimin’ of me then—it makes me
hot all over. Such is my notion of that state ’tween man and woman. No
givin’ in marriage, o’ course I know; and if so I’m single.”
The baronet suppressed a smile. “Really, my good woman, you wander very
much.”
“Beggin’ pardon, Sir Austin; but I has my point before me all the same,
and I’m comin’ to it. Ac-knowledgin’ our error, it’d done, and bein’
done, it’s writ aloft. Oh! if you ony knew what a sweet young creature
she be! Indeed; ’taint all of humble birth that’s unworthy, Sir Austin.
And she got her idees, too: She reads History! She talk that sensible
as would surprise ye. But for all that she’s a prey to the artful o’
men—unpertected. And it’s a young marriage—but there’s no fear for her,
as far as she go. The fear’s t’other way. There’s that in a man—at the
commencement—which make of him Lord knows what if you any way
interferes: whereas a woman bides quiet! It’s consolation catch her,
which is what we mean by seduein’. Whereas a man—he’s a savage!”
Sir Austin turned his face to Adrian, who was listening with huge
delight.
“Well, ma’am, I see you have something in your mind, if you would only
come to it quickly.”
“Then here’s my point, Sir Austin. I say you bred him so as there ain’t
another young gentleman like him in England, and proud he make me. And
as for her, I’ll risk sayin’—it’s done, and no harm—you might search
England through, and nowhere will ye find a maid that’s his match like
his own wife. Then there they be. Are they together as should be? O
Lord no! Months they been divided. Then she all lonely and exposed, I
went, and fetched her out of seducers’ ways—which they may say what
they like, but the inn’cent is most open to when they’re healthy and
confidin’—I fetch her, and—the liberty—boxed her safe in my own house.
So much for that sweet! That you may do with women. But it’s him—Mr.
Richard—I am bold, I know, but there—I’m in for it, and the Lord’ll
help me! It’s him, Sir Austin, in this great metropolis, warm from a
young marriage. It’s him, and—I say nothin’ of her, and how sweet she
bears it, and it’s eating her at a time when Natur’ should have no
other trouble but the one that’s goin’ on—it’s him, and I ask—so
bold—shall there—and a Christian gentlemen his father—shall there be a
tug ’tween him as a son and him as a husband—soon to be somethin’ else?
I speak bold out—I’d have sons obey their fathers, but a priest’s words
spoke over them, which they’re now in my ears, I say I ain’t a doubt on
earth—I’m sure there ain’t one in heaven—which dooty’s the holier of
the two.”
Sir Austin heard her to an end. Their views on the junction of the
sexes were undoubtedly akin. To be lectured on his prime subject,
however, was slightly disagreeable, and to be obliged mentally to
assent to this old lady’s doctrine was rather humiliating, when it
could not be averred that he had latterly followed it out. He sat
cross-legged and silent, a finger to his temple.
“One gets so addle-gated thinkin’ many things,” said Mrs. Berry,
simply. “That’s why we see wonder clever people goin’ wrong—to my mind.
I think it’s al’ays the plan in a dielemmer to pray God and walk
forward.”
The keen-witted soft woman was tracking the baronet’s thoughts, and she
had absolutely run him down and taken an explanation out of his mouth,
by which Mrs. Berry was to have been informed that he had acted from a
principle of his own, and devolved a wisdom she could not be expected
to comprehend.
Of course he became advised immediately that it would be waste of time
to direct such an explanation to her inferior capacity.
He gave her his hand, saying, “My son has gone out of town to see his
cousin, who is ill. He will return in two or three days, and then they
will both come to me at Raynham.”
Mrs. Berry took the tips of his fingers, and went half-way to the floor
perpendicularly. “He pass her like a stranger in the park this
evenin’,” she faltered.
“Ah?” said the baronet. “Yes, well! they will be at Raynham before the
week is over.”
Mrs. Berry was not quite satisfied. “Not of his own accord he pass that
sweet young wife of his like a stranger this day, Sir Austin!”
“I must beg you not to intrude further, ma’am.”
Mrs. Berry bobbed her bunch of a body out of the room.
“All’s well that ends well,” she said to herself. “It’s just bad
inquirin’ too close among men. We must take ’em somethin’ like
Providence—as they come. Thank heaven! I kep’ back the baby.”
In Mrs. Berry’s eyes the baby was the victorious reserve.
Adrian asked his chief what he thought of that specimen of woman.
“I think I have not met a better in my life,” said the baronet,
mingling praise and sarcasm.
Clare lies in her bed as placid as in the days when she breathed; her
white hands stretched their length along the sheets, at peace from head
to feet. She needs iron no more. Richard is face to face with death for
the first time. He sees the sculpture of clay—the spark gone.
Clare gave her mother the welcome of the dead. This child would have
spoken nothing but kind commonplaces had she been alive. She was dead,
and none knew her malady. On her fourth finger were two wedding-rings.
When hours of weeping had silenced the mother’s anguish, she, for some
comfort she saw in it, pointed out that strange thing to Richard,
speaking low in the chamber of the dead; and then he learnt that it was
his own lost ring Clare wore in the two worlds. He learnt from her
husband that Clare’s last request had been that neither of the rings
should be removed. She had written it; she would not speak it.
“I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have the care of me
between this and the grave, to bury me with my hands untouched.”
The tracing of the words showed the bodily torment she was suffering,
as she wrote them on a scrap of paper found beside her pillow.
In wonder, as the dim idea grew from the waving of Clare’s dead hand,
Richard paced the house, and hung about the awful room; dreading to
enter it, reluctant to quit it. The secret Clare had buried while she
lived, arose with her death. He saw it play like flame across her
marble features. The memory of her voice was like a knife at his
nerves. His coldness to her started up accusingly: her meekness was
bitter blame.
On the evening of the fourth day, her mother came to him in his
bedroom, with a face so white that he asked himself if aught worse
could happen to a mother than the loss of her child. Choking she said
to him, “Read this,” and thrust a leather-bound pocket-book trembling
in his hand. She would not breathe to him what it was. She entreated
him not to open it before her.
“Tell me,” she said, “tell me what you think. John must not hear of it.
I have nobody to consult but you O Richard!”
“My Diary” was written in the round hand of Clare’s childhood on the
first page. The first name his eye encountered was his own.
“Richard’s fourteenth birthday. I have worked him a purse and put it
under his pillow, because he is going to have plenty of money. He does
not notice me now because he has a friend now, and he is ugly, but
Richard is not, and never will be.”
The occurrences of that day were subsequently recorded, and a childish
prayer to God for him set down. Step by step he saw her growing mind in
his history. As she advanced in years she began to look back, and made
much of little trivial remembrances, all bearing upon him.
“We went into the fields and gathered cowslips together, and pelted
each other, and I told him he used to call them ‘coals-sleeps’ when he
was a baby, and he was angry at my telling him, for he does not like to
be told he was ever a baby.”
He remembered the incident, and remembered his stupid scorn of her meek
affection. Little Clare! how she lived before him in her white dress
and pink ribbons, and soft dark eyes! Upstairs she was lying dead. He
read on:
“Mama says there is no one in the world like Richard, and I am sure
there is not, not in the whole world. He says he is going to be a great
General and going to the wars. If he does I shall dress myself as a boy
and go after him, and he will not know me till I am wounded. Oh I pray
he will never, never be wounded. I wonder what I should feel if Richard
was ever to die.”
Upstairs Clare was lying dead.
“Lady Blandish said there was a likeness between Richard and me.
Richard said I hope I do not hang down my head as she does. He is angry
with me because I do not look people in the face and speak out, but I
know I am not looking after earthworms.”
Yes. He had told her that. A shiver seized him at the recollection.
Then it came to a period when the words: “Richard kissed me,” stood by
themselves, and marked a day in her life.
Afterwards it was solemnly discovered that Richard wrote poetry. He
read one of his old forgotten compositions penned when he had that
ambition.
“Thy truth to me is truer
Than horse, or dog, or blade;
Thy vows to me are fewer
Than ever maiden made.
Thou steppest from thy splendour
To make my life a song:
My bosom shall be tender
As thine has risen strong.”
All the verses were transcribed. “It is he who is the humble knight,”
Clare explained at the close, “and his lady, is a Queen. Any Queen
would throw her crown away for him.”
It came to that period when Clare left Raynham with her mother.
“Richard was not sorry to lose me. He only loves boys and men.
Something tells me I shall never see Raynham again. He was dressed in
blue. He said Good-bye, Clare, and kissed me on the cheek. Richard
never kisses me on the mouth. He did not know I went to his bed and
kissed him while he was asleep. He sleeps with one arm under his head,
and the other out on the bed. I moved away a bit of his hair that was
over his eyes. I wanted to cut it. I have one piece. I do not let
anybody see I am unhappy, not even mama. She says I want iron. I am
sure I do not. I like to write my name. Clare Doria Forey. Richard’s is
Richard Doria Feverel.”
His breast rose convulsively. Clare Doria Forey! He knew the music of
that name. He had heard it somewhere. It sounded faint and mellow now
behind the hills of death.
He could not read for tears. It was midnight. The hour seemed to belong
to her. The awful stillness and the darkness were Clare’s. Clare’s
voice clear and cold from the grave possessed it.
Painfully, with blinded eyes, he looked over the breathless pages. She
spoke of his marriage, and her finding the ring.
“I knew it was his. I knew he was going to be married that morning. I
saw him stand by the altar when they laughed at breakfast. His wife
must be so beautiful! Richard’s wife! Perhaps he will love me better
now he is married. Mama says they must be separated. That is shameful.
If I can help him I will. I pray so that he may be happy. I hope God
hears poor sinners’ prayers. I am very sinful. Nobody knows it as I do.
They say I am good, but I know. When I look on the ground I am not
looking after earthworms, as he said. Oh, do forgive me, God!”
Then she spoke of her own marriage, and that it was her duty to obey
her mother. A blank in the Diary ensued.
“I have seen Richard. Richard despises me,” was the next entry.
But now as he read his eyes were fixed, and the delicate feminine
handwriting like a black thread drew on his soul to one terrible
conclusion.
“I cannot live. Richard despises me. I cannot bear the touch of my
fingers or the sight of my face. Oh! I understand him now. He should
not have kissed me so that last time. I wished to die while his mouth
was on mine.”
Further: “I have no escape. Richard said he would die rather than
endure it. I know he would. Why should I be afraid to do what he would
do? I think if my husband whipped me I could bear it better. He is so
kind, and tries to make me cheerful. He will soon be very unhappy. I
pray to God half the night. I seem to be losing sight of my God the
more I pray.”
Richard laid the book open on the table. Phantom surges seemed to be
mounting and travelling for his brain. Had Clare taken his wild words
in earnest? Did she lie there dead—he shrouded the thought.
He wrapped the thoughts in shrouds, but he was again reading.
“A quarter to one o’clock. I shall not be alive this time to-morrow. I
shall never see Richard now. I dreamed last night we were in the fields
together, and he walked with his arm round my waist. We were children,
but I thought we were married, and I showed him I wore his ring, and he
said—if you always wear it, Clare, you are as good as my wife. Then I
made a vow to wear it for ever and ever... It is not mama’s fault. She
does not think as Richard and I do of these things. He is not a coward,
nor am I. He hates cowards.
“I have written to his father to make him happy. Perhaps when I am dead
he will hear what I say.
“I heard just now Richard call distinctly—Clare, come out to me. Surely
he has not gone. I am going I know not where. I cannot think. I am very
cold.”
The words were written larger, and staggered towards the close, as if
her hand had lost mastery over the pen.
“I can only remember Richard now a boy. A little boy and a big boy. I
am not sure now of his voice. I can only remember certain words.
‘Clari,’ and ‘Don Ricardo,’ and his laugh. He used to be full of fun.
Once we laughed all day together tumbling in the hay. Then he had a
friend, and began to write poetry, and be proud. If I had married a
young man he would have forgiven me, but I should not have been
happier. I must have died. God never looks on me.
“It is past two o’clock. The sheep are bleating outside. It must be
very cold in the ground. Good-bye, Richard.”
With his name it began and ended. Even to herself Clare was not
over-communicative. The book was slender, yet her nineteen years of
existence left half the number of pages white.
Those last words drew him irresistibly to gaze on her. There she lay,
the same impassive Clare. For a moment he wondered she had not moved—to
him she had become so different. She who had just filled his ears with
strange tidings—it was not possible to think her dead! She seemed to
have been speaking to him all through his life. His image was on that
still heart.
He dismissed the night-watchers from the room, and remained with her
alone, till the sense of death oppressed him, and then the shock sent
him to the window to look for sky and stars. Behind a low broad pine,
hung with frosty mist, he heard a bell-wether of the flock in the
silent fold. Death in life it sounded.
The mother found him praying at the foot of Clare’s bed. She knelt by
his side, and they prayed, and their joint sobs shook their bodies, but
neither of them shed many tears. They held a dark unspoken secret in
common. They prayed God to forgive her.
Clare was buried in the family vault of the Todhunters. Her mother
breathed no wish to have her lying at Lobourne.
After the funeral, what they alone upon earth knew brought them
together.
“Richard,” she said, “the worst is over for me. I have no one to love
but you, dear. We have all been fighting against God, and this...
Richard! you will come with me, and be united to your wife, and spare
my brother what I suffer.”
He answered the broken spirit: “I have killed one. She sees me as I am.
I cannot go with you to my wife, because I am not worthy to touch her
hand, and were I to go, I should do this to silence my self-contempt.
Go you to her, and when she asks of me, say I have a death upon my head
that—No! say that I am abroad, seeking for that which shall cleanse me.
If I find it I shall come to claim her. If not, God help us all!”
She had no strength to contest his solemn words, or stay him, and he
went forth.