It is comparatively easy to make a sudden and rapid decision which is
(one says to one’s self) final, and settles in a moment some great
question which affects a whole existence. As soon as the uncertainty is
over, and the decision absolutely made, everything will come easy, the
sufferer thinks. And such had been Clare’s feeling when she set out upon
that wretched ramble, with Barbara toiling after her. She would cut
herself off at once, and for ever, from all possibility of being
remonstrated with, talked over, moved by any argument. She would cut the
knot by one arbitrary action, and free herself. And when that was once
successfully done she could live without sympathy, without any desire to
cast herself upon the aid of others; she would be self-sufficing,
self-contained, self-restraining all the rest of her life. Had not she
already tried every relationship, and found it wanting? He who had made
himself most dear to her--he who had pretended to love her, had deceived
her. Every friend she had, in all probability, would disapprove of the
encouragement she had given to Arthur, and would equally disapprove of
the summary and insulting way in which she had cast him off. Her
father---- Clare’s whole being surged up into excitement as she thought
of him--excitement produced by two words which she had spied through a
torn envelope, and which, perhaps, meant nothing in the world. Her
brother---- Clare’s heart sank again into a sickness and miserable
failing of all strength and composure. She was alone, absolutely alone,
on the face of the earth. She had no one to fall back upon, to consult
on such a terrible dilemma as never surely woman was placed in before.
Walking under that blazing sun was fortunately of itself confusing and
exhausting enough; but when she reached the Three Beeches, and sat down
under their shadow, all the excitement in her mind seemed to meet and
clash, filling up her brain with a buzz and sound which almost drove her
mad. Not one great battle only, but two or three were raging within her,
exploding now from one quarter, now from another, like a network of
storms. The Three Beeches stood upon an elevated point, not very high in
itself, but possessing all the importance of a hill in that level
country. The trees were very fine old trees, with great gnarled trunks,
and such a wealth of shadow under them as made the traveller rejoice.
Seated on the thick mossy turf, Clare looked down and saw her home among
its trees, and the bright white street of the village, and the Red
House, burning in the sunshine. Even Thornleigh Church, which was seven
miles off, was visible in the sunny distance. Almost every individual
involved in the dim and confused drama which was weaving itself about
her was at present, could she but see under those roofs, within her
range of vision. She let her books, which she had brought with the
intention of working hard at a translation, and thus making thought
impossible, lie beside her, without so much as remembering their
existence. Thinking! How could she help thinking? As long as there is
nothing particular in your mind it is, of course, easy enough to occupy
it with external matters; but when it is full--full to overflowing----
So Clare thought and thought till her mind felt on the eve of giving
way. Arthur Arden had done her a great wrong--she thought he had done
her such a wrong as a woman can never forgive to a man--not only
preferred another to her, but made false pretences of love to her in
order to enjoy that other’s society. Injury and contempt could go no
further. He had wounded her heart, and struck a deadly blow at her
maidenly dignity and pride. It was the bitterest wrong, and as such she
had resented it.
And yet perhaps Arthur Arden had been wronged as bitterly; perhaps he
had unconsciously suffered all his life, and Providence had thrown the
means of avenging him into her hands. Edgar, too, had been wronged, not
in the same way, but by being made an instrument of injury. But from the
thought of Edgar she shrank as if it hurt her. And her father, whom she
had held in such reverence, whom she had worshipped as the very
embodiment of all the Ardens, whom she had loved so much, and who had
loved her--Clare shrank as if a shower of blows were hailing upon her
head. She had thrust herself into his secrets, and now she must bear the
burden. If she had pried over his shoulder while he was living, how
poor, how dishonourable she would have felt herself; but she had done
worse than that. She had stolen a surreptitious glance at his secrets
after he was dead. Then she tried to calm herself down. Perhaps the
words she had read did not mean what they seemed to mean. Perhaps they
referred to something perfectly innocent, some piece of generosity on
her father’s part of which he had said nothing to any one. But Clare
felt that even were this the case she must bear the penalty of her
prying. She dared not examine further. Her half-secret, which perhaps
was no secret, must be the burden of her existence. Never would she
breathe it to any one, never allow she knew it; never, never escape from
its burning presence. If there was wrong involved, she must allow that
wrong to go on; she must not even permit herself to see or approach the
man who was the sufferer. And then, all at once, in the midst of her
rage and indignation against him, and while she still felt that no
punishment was too great to requite his treachery, there suddenly came
upon poor Clare, in her inexperience and ignorance, a fit of such
yearning for him as rent her very heart. What! with her injury so fresh,
with all that anger and bitterness in her mind? Dismayed, bewildered,
torn asunder, she thus found out that love will not go out of the heart
at any formal bidding. It turned and rent her, like the demon,
convulsing her very soul with pain. She opened her heavy eyes after the
struggle with a despairing amazement in them. Could it be? Was her
judgment to go for nothing, and the bitter wound which he had inflicted
to be no argument against him? Nothing but this sudden, appalling,
unlooked-for experience could have convinced her. She felt so weak and
miserable that she dropped her face into her hands, and wept, she who
had been so indignant and so strong.
“Miss Arden, I’m afraid you’re feeling poorly,” said Barbara. “Do now,
there’s a dear young lady, take this glass of wine. I made Mrs. Fillpot
give it me for you, and I’ve kept it cool in the bottom of the basket.
Do, Miss, there’s a dear.”
“I don’t want anything, Barbara,” said Clare; and in the greatness of
her misery, she who had made up her mind for the rest of her life to be
self-sufficing, to hide her secret in the depths of her being, and ask
no one for sympathy, had all the difficulty in the world to keep from
throwing her arms round Barbara’s neck, and weeping on her breast. She
restrained the impulse, however, and kept her head away, and preserved
her pride for the moment. This was, alas, how her heart treated Clare,
after she had made up her mind that one decision was all that was
necessary. She made her decision, expecting henceforward everlasting
sadness, but calm; whereas, on the contrary, she was a prey to shock
after shock, her heart melting, her resolution giving way, a hundred
struggles going on within her. Her very determination made everything
worse instead of better. “If you had not thrust everybody from you, if
you had not condemned unheard, if you had not come away, and insulted,
and abandoned him, all might yet have been well,” said the traitor
within. And thus poor Clare waded in the very deepest of waters all
that long miserable day.
It was nightfall when she returned to the house. Time had gone
imperceptibly, as it goes when there is nothing tangible in it. Long
threads of reverie linked themselves into each other, going on and on as
if they need never end, and coming back after all manner of digressions
to the same central subject. “Don’t you think it’s time to be going,
Miss?” the maid would say timidly from time to time. “Presently,” Clare
would reply, hopelessly opening or shutting the book she had taken into
her hands; but at length the sun began to sink, and it was evident they
must begin their walk if they were to reach Arden before night. Clare
swallowed Barbara’s glass of wine, and then set out upon the weary way.
“It has been a nice quiet day,” she said, mechanically, fibbing with the
instinct of good society, as she got up. “I hope it has done you good,
Miss,” said Barbara, doubtfully. “Oh, all the good in the world,” said
Clare. And with this forlorn fiction she walked home again; so much less
sure of her own constancy; so much more doubtful of the possibility of
shutting up secrets in a silence as of the grave, and living a perpetual
life of sacrifice, without hope or call for sympathy, than she had been
in the morning. She was very weary when she got home, weary in body and
mind, and could only answer with a faint smile to the message which
Wilkins gave her from her cousin. Jeanie had not kept him back to-day;
only one day had he been kept back by all the united influences which
could be brought to bear upon him. Had not she been hard upon him,
sending him summarily away from her for one offence, he who perhaps all
his life had been wronged so bitterly? Had he been wronged? Or was it a
dream? And had he wronged her--or was this but a cloud that might pass
away? When Clare had got rid of the servants, who worried her, and had
also got rid of the poor pretence of dining which she went through in
order not to reveal to them too clearly the commotion in her mind, she
had another struggle with herself. Whether he had wronged her or had
been wronged, surely it was best now to keep him at arm’s length. Better
not to see him again, never to attempt to lean her cares upon him, to
confide her difficulties to him. Oh, no, no! He must never come again.
And Clare said to herself that she must live and die alone.
When the servants had gone to bed she went into the library once more in
her dressing-gown with her candle, and unlocked all its fastenings, and
took out the bundle of papers to look at it. The words she had seen,
which had woke her out of one dream of pain into another, and which had
shaken her being so profoundly, were covered over now by the envelope
into which she had thrust them. She took it out and weighed it in her
hands--the neat harmless little packet, which looked as if it could harm
nobody! What right had she to think it would harm any one? Clare took it
out as if it had been something explosive, and weighed it, and gazed at
it. All the house was silent. There was not one creature in it who was
not sleeping or seeking sleep. Her own light and the dim one which
awaited her in her chamber upstairs were the only signs of life in the
great, silent, locked-up place. It was guarded without from every kind
of assault; but who could ward off the enemies who existed insidious
within?
Clare sat revolving this problem until the night was far gone. She did
not seem able to leave it; and yet her thoughts made no progress. Was
she the guardian of Arden, watching over that secret, unable to give it
up, keeping the house and the family from harm? She thought it was some
demon which kept tempting her to open the packet, and discover all. Most
likely it would be the best thing to do. Most likely what she would
find out on a closer examination would altogether clear up those words
which had thrilled her through and through as with an electric touch.
They were her father’s papers. Was it not her duty to find out what was
in them, to be ready to vindicate her father’s memory should anyone ever
assail it? She sat and weighed the papers in her hand, and listened to
all the mysterious sounds and mutterings of the night, till at last her
mind became incapable of any personal action, and she felt it grow into
a furious battle-field of the two opinions which charged and encountered
and were repulsed, and rallied again, and tore her in sunder. It was
more weariness than anything else which prompted her at last to the step
she took. She was reluctant to think of Edgar at all in the present
state of her mind, and yet it was he who was most deeply concerned.
After she had discussed it with herself for hours she rose up from the
bureau at the bidding of a sudden impulse, and sat down in her father’s
chair. It was a chair which nobody ever occupied, which the servants
were afraid of--and Clare could not but feel with involuntary
superstition that her father himself was somehow superintending this
action of hers. She drew towards her the blotting book he had used, and
which contained his paper--paper which no one had made any use of since
his death. Was it he who was dictating to her, holding her pen, guiding
her in this tardy justice? Her letter was very short, concise, and
restrained. Before she began to write she did not feel as if she could
address him again, or could know what to say; but old use and wont came
to her aid.
“DEAR EDGAR (this is what Clare wrote)--I have found something
among my father’s papers which seems to me very
important--important to everybody, and to you above all. I have not
read it--only just seen a word or two, which have made me very
unhappy. I thought I would try to keep it from you, but I find I
cannot. Come, then, and see what it means. It is of more importance
than anything you can be doing. Come immediately, if I may ask that
much of you. Come without any delay.
C. A.”
This was all the subscription she could bring herself to put. When she
had read it over and placed it in an envelope, she put it down on the
Squire’s blotting book in front of his seat. It was a kind of test which
she felt herself to be applying. If the letter disappeared before
morning she would accept it as a supernatural intimation that it ought
not to be sent. If not---- To such a pass her mind had come, which was
in general so free from any fear or consciousness of the supernatural.
When she had done this she took up her packet again and went upstairs,
and replaced it under her pillow. And thus worn out with all she had
gone through Clare slept. She had not expected it, but she fell asleep
like a child. Fatigue, excitement, and that long conflict had been of
use to her in this one way from which she could derive any help or
consolation. And then she had done something which must be decisive, and
settle the matter without any further action of her own.