Perfitt went 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 was
unjust--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 bestow
everything 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 her
happiness, 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
own interests, 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
would punish 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 a word 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
face turned 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, and at 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?