It would be difficult to conceive anything more strangely lonely and
bleak than Arden seemed to Clare the day after her brother and cousin
left it. She wandered about the vacant rooms and out upon the terrace,
and kept thinking that she heard their voices and steps, and caught
glimpses of them turning the corners. But they were gone--Edgar to come
back again shortly, so that could scarcely be counted a calamity. But
Arthur--would he come at all? Would he be years of coming, as he had
been before? It seemed to Clare that it was years instead of weeks since
she had dwelt thus alone and tranquil, waiting for Edgar’s return. She
had been alone, but then her loneliness had seemed natural. She took it
as a matter of course, scarcely pausing to think that she was different
from others, or, if she ever did so, feeling her isolation almost as
much a sign of superiority as of anything less pleasant. She was the
Chatelaine--the one sole lady of the land, in her soft maidenly state;
and the visits of the kind friends who offered themselves on all sides
to come and stay with her, out of pity for her solitude, had been more a
trouble than a pleasure to her. But now it seemed to Clare that she
would be thankful for any companionship--anything that would free her
from her own thoughts. She felt like a boat which had drifted ashore,
like something which had been thrown out of the ordinary course of
existence. Life had gone away and left her; and yet she was more full of
life than she had ever been before, tingling to the very finger points,
expecting, hoping, looking for a thousand new things to come. Once it
had not occurred to her to look for anything new; but now every hour as
it came thrilled her with consciousness that her life might be changed
in it, that it might prove the supreme moment which should decide the
character and colour of all the rest.
And yet what hope, what chance, what possibility was there that this
auspicious moment should come now? Had not “everybody” been driven away?
This was how she phrased it to herself--not one person, but every one.
Who could approach her now in the solitude which was a more effectual
guard than twenty brothers? If “any one” wished to come, if any one had
anything to say, why, the visit must be postponed, and the words left
unsaid, until--how could she tell how long? Three years had passed
between Arthur Arden’s two last visits. What if three years should come
and go again before Chance or Fate brought him back? It could only be
Chance that had done it this time, not Providence; for if Providence had
been the agent, then the visit must have come to something, and not
ended without result. Thus Clare mused, as it were, in the depths of her
being, concealing even from herself what she was thinking. When Arthur
Arden’s name flitted across that part of her mind which lay, so to
speak, in the light, she blushed, and started with a sense of guilt; but
in the shadowy corners, where thought has no need of words, and where a
hundred aimless cogitations pass like breath, and no sense of
responsibility comes in, she put no bridle upon her dreaming fancy. And
it was all new to her; for dreams had never been much in Clare’s way.
Hers had been a practical intelligence, busied with many things to do
and think of--the village and her subjects in it; the legislation
necessary for them; the wants of the old women and the children--a
hundred matters of detail which deserved the consideration of a wise
ruler, and yet must be kept subordinate to greater principles. Even the
larger questions affecting the estate had come more or less into Clare’s
hands. She had been allowed no time to dream, and she had not dreamt;
but now idleness and loneliness fell upon her both together. She was
weary of the village and its concerns. She had nothing else to occupy
her. And, indeed, she had no desire for other occupations, but preferred
this new musing--this maze of fancies--to anything else in earth and
heaven.
But the evenings were dreary, dreary, when darkness fell, and the
wistful shadows of the summer night gathered about her, and no one came
to break the silence. She tried to follow her brother in imagination,
and to picture to herself what he might be doing--hanging about Gussy
Thornleigh, perhaps--letting himself drift into the channel indicated by
Lady Augusta. Ah!--and then, while she thought she was still thinking of
Edgar and Gussy, Clare’s fancies would take their flight in another
direction to another hero. When this, however, had gone on for a few
days and nights, she was seized with a sense that it must not
continue--that such a way of passing her time was fatal. It was much too
like the girls whom Clare had read of in novels, whom she had
indignantly denied to be true representatives of womankind, and whom she
had scorned and blushed for in her heart. Was she to become one of that
maudlin, sentimental band, to whom love, as novel-writers and essayists
said, was everything, and to whom the inclinations of one man in this
world conveyed life or death? Clare’s modesty, and her pride, and her
good sense, all rose in arms. She had given up all her former pursuits
for these first dreamy days; but now she woke up, and tied on her hat,
and forced herself down the avenue to the village. There something was
sure to be found to do--whatever might be the state of her own mind or
its fancies. She walked straight to Sarah’s cottage, where Mary Smith
and Ellen Jones were still busy with their needlework and their
clear-starching. Sarah was sitting out in her cottage doorway, enjoying
the evening calm. The sun had not yet set, but it had fallen below the
line of the trees; and Sarah’s doorway was shadowy and cool. The old
woman had many grumbles bottled up for Clare’s private enjoyment, which
had been aggravated by keeping. Mary was “the thoughtlessest lass.” She
had burned a big hole in Miss Somers’ muslin dressing-gown with an iron
that was too hot. She had torn Mrs Pimpernel’s lace; and then, instead
of trying to do her best for the future, she had cried her eyes out, and
become hysterical, and could do nothing at all. Nor was Ellen a great
deal better. Sally, next door, had got a piece of work clean spoiled in
her hands; and some things as she was making for Mrs Solms, the Rector’s
housekeeper, had just got to be unpicked on the spot. “The back was put
to the front, and the wrong side to the right side--as if she had
tried!” said old Sarah. “It couldn’t be accident, Miss Clare; and the
sleeves put in bottom up. It’s enough to break a body’s heart, after all
the trouble I’ve took.” The two culprits stood curtseying with their
aprons to their eyes while this dreadful picture was being drawn; and
Clare put on her most solemn face, and told them she was very sorry. “I
hope I shall never hear anything of the kind again,” she said, in her
most serious tones; and then stopped, and sighed with a weariness which
had never before moved her. “Am I to go on all my life,” she said to
herself, “looking after Mary’s clear-starching and Ellen’s sewing? Is
this all I am to have out of the existence which is so rich and full to
some people?” And for the moment Clare thought she understood Helena
Thornleigh and the rest of the young women who wanted something to do.
But this, the reader will perceive, was not really because she wanted
anything to do, or was dissatisfied with the conditions of her own life,
but only because she was in that state of suspense which turns existence
all awry, and demands excitement of some kind outside to neutralise the
excitement within.
Clare’s mind, however, was suddenly diverted from herself when she
looked into old Sarah’s living-room, and saw another figure, which she
had not before remarked, seated in the background. When Sarah perceived
her keen look inside, she approached Clare with nods and significant
glances. “Yes, Miss,” she said in a whisper, “she’s there, and as
sensible as you or me, and the sweetest little thing that ever was,
though she’s Scotch, and I don’t hold with Scotch, not in general. Just
you go in and say a word to her, Miss Clare.”
“I don’t think she ought to be left by herself,” said Clare, drawing
back with a certain repugnance. Jeanie was seated in a low chair, and
looked like a child--her pretty head, with its golden hair closely
braided about it, bent over her work. She looked so serious, so absorbed
in her occupation, so far removed from the feverish regions in which
Clare felt herself to be wandering, that the dislike she had felt for
this mysterious child suddenly warmed into a certain curiosity and
interest. She paused on the threshold, looking in, feeling as if the
step she was about to take was much more important than an innocent
every-day entrance into Sarah’s cottage; but after that momentary
hesitation she went in, causing the little recluse to raise her head.
When she saw who it was Jeanie rose, and gave Miss Arden a chair--not as
Mary or Ellen would have done, but with simple courtesy. She stood until
her visitor was seated, and then sat down again. But still she did not
give to Clare that curtsey which she felt to be her due.
“I am glad to see you are better,” Clare said, with a little stiffness;
and then she was melted in spite of herself by the soft wistful look in
little Jeanie’s eyes. “Has your mother left you alone?” she said. “It
must be strange to you to be left alone in such a place as this.”
“They are all kind, kind,” said Jeanie. “I’m no lonely, as if it was new
to me; and then I have something to do. My head has been so strange, I
have never had a seam for so long. And now it is as if I was coming
back----”
“Poor child!” said Clare, “does it make you suffer much? Do you feel ill
when---- I mean when--your head has been strange, as you say----?”
“I canna think about it,” said Jeanie, softly; “I mustna think about it;
the world begins to swim and swim, and the light to go out of my
eyes---- I will sew my seam, if ye please.”
And then there was a little pause, and everything was still. Old Sarah
and her pupils stayed outside, and the murmur of their voices sounded
softly in the summer air; but within the clock ticked, and the white
ashes from the half-dead fire fell now and then faintly on the hearth,
and Jeanie’s “seam” rustled as she worked; that was all. Though there
was that ghost of a fire, the room, with its tiny window and thick
walls, was cooler than many a much better ventilated house; and the
light was cool and green and shadowy, coming through the tall woody
branches of a geranium trained upon a fanshaped framework, which
answered instead of a curtain to the little window. Clare sat
embarrassed, not knowing how to address this creature, who was so unlike
anything she had known or encountered before.
“Do you remember your home? I suppose it is a place very different from
Arden?” she said at last.
“Home! oh it’s bonnie, bonnie!--bonnier than Arden,” cried Jeanie, and
then she paused with instinctive courtesy. “But Arden is beautiful,” she
said. “It’s a’ so beautiful that God has made. I canna’ bide towns and
streets and places that are built--but Arden---- and the green grass and
the bonnie trees----”
Where had the child learned to think of other people’s sentiments--was
it natural to her nation--or only to her individual character? Clare
felt that the Marys and Ellens of the village would not have thought of
any such refinement. “Do you live among the hills?” she said.
“On Loch Arroch side. The trees are very bonnie, and so are all the
parks and pleasant fields,” said Jeanie; “but if you were to see the
hills up among the clouds, and the bonnie water at their feet! and then
when you live always there, and your heart gets full----”
“Poor child!” said Clare again, growing more and more interested in
spite of herself. “You are too young to have felt your heart grow full
as you say.”
“I am seventeen,” said Jeanie. “Plenty folk have learned trouble before
that. Granny says she had nobody to take care of her when she was
seventeen--neither father nor mother, nor---- And I have always her----
Oh, if you had seen my Willie!” she said suddenly, “he was aye so bright
and so kind. Miss Arden, you have a brother too----”
“My poor child!” cried Clare. “Jeanie, Jeanie, if that is your name,
don’t think of that. For your poor grandmother’s sake don’t do anything
to bring it on.”
“I cannot bring it on,” said Jeanie; “it comes when I am not thinking of
Willie, if there is ever a time I am not thinking of him. It’s best to
let me cry. Oh my bonnie boy! and in the sea, Miss Arden; think of that!
no a grave under the sod, where I could go and greet, but in yon great,
great, wild stormy sea--it is that I cannot bear.”
“Let us talk of something else,” said Clare, trembling. “Do you like old
Sarah? I hope she is very attentive to you and does everything you want.
You must come to the hall some day and see me; I am all alone in the
hall.”
“Where has he gone that you are your lane?” said Jeanie; and she raised
her head with a look of anxiety which startled Clare.
“He! whom?” cried Miss Arden; she drew herself up and looked at Jeanie
from her altitude, feeling all her prejudices reawaken. Jeanie, for her
part, put down her work in her lap, and crossed her hands softly with a
smile and a sigh.
“I am meaning your bonnie brother, Miss Arden. Oh, I wish he was my
brother! We dinna know him, but we’re awfu’ fond of him, both grannie
and me.”
“Fond of him!” exclaimed Clare, more and more bewildered. “Do you know
what you say?”
“Oh aye, real fond,” said innocent Jeanie; “he has such a bonnie light
in his eyes.”
And while Clare sat in a state of partial stupefaction wondering what
this might mean, there was a little stir at the door, and Mrs. Murray
came in, as it were to the rescue, before her child could commit herself
more.