Next morning was a calm bright summer Sunday, one of those days which
are real Sabbaths--moments of rest. It was like the “sweet day, so cool,
so calm, so bright,” of George Herbert’s tender fancy. Nothing that
jarred or was discordant was audible in the soft air. The voices
outside, the passing steps, were as harmonious as the birds and the bees
that murmured all about--everything that was harsh had died out of the
world. There was nothing in this Sunday but universal quiet and calm.
Except in Clare Arden’s face and voice. She came down stairs before her
brother, long before him, as if she had been unable to sleep. Her brow
was drawn in and contracted as if by some pressing uncertainty and
suspense. Her voice had a broken tone in it, a tone like a strained
string. With a restlessness which it was impossible to conceal, she
waited for Edgar’s appearance, gliding back and forward from the library
to the dining-room where breakfast was laid. The round table had been
placed for them in the window not by Clare’s care, but by Wilkins; a
great vase of late roses--red and white--stood in the centre. The roses
were all but over, for it was the second Sunday in July; but still the
lawns and rosebeds of Arden produced enough for this. How strange she
thought that he should be so late. Was it out of mere wantonness? Was it
because he had been sitting up late over the enclosures she had given
him; was it that he feared to meet her after---- She suggested all these
reasons to herself, but they did not still her restlessness nor bring
Edgar down a moment earlier. She could not control her excitement. How
was she to meet him for the first time after this discovery, if it was a
discovery? How would he look at her after such a revelation? And yet
Clare did not know what manner of revelation it was; or it might be no
revelation at all. It might be her fancy only which had put meaning into
the words she had seen. They might refer to something entirely
indifferent to her brother and herself. Clare said so in her own mind,
but she could not bring herself to believe it. The thought had seized
upon her with crushing bewildering force. It had left her no time to
think. She did not quite know what she fancied, but it was something
that would shake her life and his life to their foundations, and change
everything in heaven and earth.
Edgar came down at his usual hour, bright and light-hearted, as his
nature was. He went up to the breakfast table with its vase of roses,
and bent his face down over it. “How pleasant Sunday is,” he said, “and
how pleasant it is to be at home! I hope you are better this morning,
Clare. Could any one help being better in this sweet air and this lovely
place? I never thought Arden was half so beautiful. Fancy, there are
people in town just now wasting their lives away! I am sure you are
better, Clare----”
“I--think so,” she said, looking at him anxiously. Had he read them? Had
he not read them? That was the question. Her whole soul was bent upon
that and that alone.
“You are not looking well,” he said, with tender anxiety. “What have you
been doing to yourself? I would say I hoped you had missed me; but you
don’t look so very glad to see me now--not nearly so glad as I am to see
you. If you had come with me to town it might have done you good. And I
am sure it would have done me good. It is dreary work living alone--in
London above all----”
“Not for a man,” said Clare. Her voice was still constrained; but she
made a desperate effort, and put away from her as much as she could her
disinclination for talk. How unlike he was to other men--how strange
that he should not take pleasure in things that everybody else took
pleasure in; dreary work living alone, for a young man of his position,
in London--how ridiculous it was!
“Well, I assure you I found it so,” said Edgar; “if you had been with
me, I should have enjoyed it. As it was, I was only amused. The
Thornleighs are coming back to-morrow. I saw a great deal of them--more
than before they went to town----”
Here he paused, and a warmer colour, a certain air of pleasure and
content diffused itself over his face. A thrill of pain and apprehension
ran through Clare. The Thornleighs!--were they to be brought into the
matter too? She half rose from the seat she had taken at the table.
“Have you read those letters?” she asked, in a hasty, half-whispering,
yet almost stern voice.
“What letters? Oh, those you gave me last night! No, not yet. Do you
wish me to do it at once? You said it did not matter, I think; or, at
least, I understood there was no haste.”
“Oh, no haste!” said Clare, with a certain sense of desperation stealing
over her; and then she took courage. “I don’t mean that; they have
troubled me very much. The sooner you read them, the sooner I shall be
relieved, if I am to be relieved. If it would not trouble you too much
to go over them to-night?”
“My dear Clare, of course I will read them directly if you wish it,”
said Edgar, half-provoked. “You have but to say so. Of course, nothing
troubles me that you wish. I sent down to ask after poor little Jeanie
this morning,” he added, after a pause, falling into his usual tone;
“and the doctor says she has had a tolerably good night. I must go and
see Miss Somers after church. She will have learned all about it by this
time, and that story about Arthur Arden and the Pimpernels. Miss
Pimpernel, I told you, was thrown out of the carriage as well as
Jeanie----”
“I think you told me,” said Clare faintly. “I know so little about Miss
Pimpernel; and I do not like that other girl. It may be prejudice, but I
don’t like her. I wish you would not talk of her to me.”
Edgar looked up at his sister with grave wonder--“As you please,” he
said seriously, but his cheek flushed, half with anger, half with
disappointment. What could have happened to Clare? She was not like
herself. She scarcely looked at him even when she spoke. She was
constrained and cold as if he were the merest stranger. She had again
avoided his kiss, and never addressed him by his name. What could it
mean? Scarcely anything more was said at breakfast. Clare could not open
her lips, and Edgar was annoyed, and did not. It seemed so very
mysterious to him. He was indeed as nearly angry as it was in his nature
to be. It seemed to him a mere freak of temper--an ebullition of pride.
And he was so entirely innocent in respect to Jeanie! The child herself
was so innocent. Poor little Jeanie!--he thought of her with additional
tenderness as he looked at his sister’s unsympathetic face.
“I suppose we may walk together to church as usual,” he said. It was the
only remark that had broken the silence for nearly half an hour.
“If you have no objection”--said Clare formally, with something of that
aggravating submission which wives sometimes show to their husbands,
driving them frantic, “I think I shall drive--but not if you object to
the horses being taken out.”
“Why should I object?” he said, restraining himself with an effort,
“except that I am very sorry not to have your company, Clare.”
Then she wavered once more, feeling the empire of old affection steal
over her. But he had turned away to the window, grieved and impatient.
It was like a conjugal quarrel, not like the frank differences between
brother and sister. And this was not how Clare’s temper had ever shown
itself before. Edgar left the table, with a sense of pain and
disappointment which it was very hard to bear. Why was it? What had he
done? His heart was so open to her, he was so full of confidence in her,
and admiration for her, that the check he had thus received was doubly
hard. His sister had always been to him the first among women. Gussy of
course was different--but Gussy had never taken the same place in his
respect and admiring enthusiasm. Clare had been to him, barring a few
faults which were but as specks on an angel’s wing, the first of created
things; and it hurt him that she should thus turn from him, and expel
him, as it were, from her sympathies. He stood uncertain at the window,
not knowing whether he should make another attempt to win her back; but
when he turned round he found, to his astonishment, that she was gone.
How strange--how very strange it was. As she had abandoned him, he saw
no advantage in waiting. He could go and ask for Jeanie, and see how
things were going on, at least, if he was not required here. He gave
Wilkins orders about the carriage with a sigh. “My sister proposes to
drive,” he said; and as he said it he looked out upon the lovely summer
Sunday morning, and the wonder of it struck him more than ever. She had
liked to walk with him down the leafy avenue, under the protecting
shadows, when he came home first, and now she changed her habits to
avoid him. What could it mean? Could this, too, be Arthur Arden’s fault?
Thus it was that Edgar left the house so early, ill at ease. His sister
thought that probably the effect of her constraint and withdrawal of
sympathy would be that, tracing her changed demeanour to its right
cause, he would hasten to read the packet she had given him. But Edgar
never thought of the packet. It did not occur to him that a parcel of
old letters could have anything to do with this most present and painful
estrangement. While he went out, poor fellow, with his heart full of
pain, Clare looked at him from the window with anger and astonishment.
What did he care? Perhaps he had known it all along--perhaps he was a
conscious---- But no, no. Not till the last moment--not till evidence was
before her which she could not resist--would she believe that. So the
carriage came round, and she was driven to church in solitary
state--sometimes excusing, sometimes condemning herself. It was a thing
which happened so rarely that the village folks were in a state of
commotion. Miss Arden was ill, they thought--nothing else could explain
it; and so thought the kind old Rector and even Dr. Somers, who knew, or
thought he knew, better than any of the others. As for Arthur Arden,
who had gone to church with the hope of being invited by Edgar to
accompany him home, he was in despair.
Edgar, for his part, walked down very gloomily through the village to
ask for Jeanie, and had his news confirmed that she had spent a
tolerably good night. “But in a dead faint all the time,” said Mrs.
Hesketh, who had taken the place of nurse. “She breathes, poor dear, and
her heart it do beat. But she don’t know none of us, nor open her eyes.
It’s awful to see one as is living, and yet dead. T’ou’d dame, she never
leaves her, not since she was a-talking to you, sir, last night.”
“Could I see her now?” said Edgar; but Mrs. Hesketh shook her head; and
he could not tell why he wanted to see her, except as some relief to the
painful dulness which had come over him. The next best thing he could do
seemed to be to walk to the Red House, and ask after Alice Pimpernel.
There he found no lack of response. Mr. Pimpernel himself came out, and
so did Mrs. Pimpernel, with profuse and eager thanks. “If it had not
been for you Mr. Arden, my child might have perished,” said the mother.
“No, no, not so bad as that,” Edgar could not but say with surprise.
“And the person who was most to blame never even gave himself the
trouble to inquire till all was over,” the lady added with a look of
rage. They wanted to detain him, to give him breakfast, to secure his
company for Mr. Pimpernel, who was going to drive to church with the
younger children. But Edgar did not desire to join this procession, and
suffer himself to be paraded as his cousin’s successor. Somehow the
village and everything in it seemed to have changed its aspect. He
thought the people looked coldly at him--he felt annoyed and
discouraged, he could not tell why. It seemed to him as if the
Thornleighs would not come, or coming, would hear bad accounts of him,
and that he would be abandoned by all his friends. And he did not know
why, that was the worst of it; there seemed no reason. He was just the
same as he had been when Clare received him as her dearest brother. What
had happened since to change her mind towards him he was totally unable
to tell. The _sourd_ and obscure atmosphere of family discord was quite
novel to Edgar. For most of his existence he had known nothing about
family life; and then it had seemed to him so warm, so sweet, so bright.
The domestic life, the warm sense of kindred about him had been his
chief attraction to Gussy. His heart was so full, he wanted sisters and
brothers and quantities of kinsfolk. And now the discovery that those
good things could bring pain as well as pleasure confused him utterly.
Clare! his only sister, the sole creature who belonged to him, whom
nature gave him to love, to think that without a cause she should be
estranged from him! When he fairly contemplated the idea, he gave
himself, as it were spiritually, a shake, and smiled. “It takes two to
make a quarrel,” he said to himself, and resolved that it was
impossible, and could not last another hour.