Volume Two—Chapter Eighteen.
A Stormy Scene.
“I’ve never dared to write to you before, Clairy. Frank watches me so; but, though I don’t come, I think lots about you, and I shall never forget what a dear, good thing you were that night. Good-bye. We must be separate for a bit, till that bother’s all forgotten, but don’t you fidget; I’m going to be so good now.”
Claire was reading the note that had come to her, she knew not how, for the second time, wondering how a woman—her sister—could be so utterly heartless; and, after leaving her to bear the brunt of Sir Harry Payne’s shameless accusation, treat it all as such a mere trifle.
Claire held the letter in her hand, with her spirits very low, and a bitter, despairing look was in her eyes as she sat gazing before her, thinking that no greater trouble could come to her now.
Richard Linnell had just passed the house, and though ever since the night of the “At Home,” she had shrunk away and rigidly kept from noticing him, the one pleasure she had longed for was to see the grave, wistful look he was in the habit of directing at the window. Now, he had gone by without raising his eyes.
It was the most cruel pang of all. He might have had faith in her, even if she had rejected his suit, and told him that it was hopeless in the extreme.
Her cheeks burned as she thought of Cora Dean with her Juno-like face and her manifest liking for Richard Linnell.
“What is it to me?” she said to herself; and her tears fell fast upon the letter she held in her hand, and she did not hear her father enter the drawing-room, nor see him glance quickly from her in the flesh to the sweetly innocent face of his favourite child, smiling down upon him from the young Italian artist’s canvas.
Then he caught sight of the letter, and saw that she was weeping.
An angry flash came into his eyes; the mincing dandyism gave place to a sharp angular rigidity, and stepping quickly across the intervening space that separated him from his child, he was about to take the note from her hands.
Claire uttered a faint cry of alarm, started from the sofa, and hastily thrust the folded paper into her pocket.
“That letter,” he said, stamping his foot, “give me that letter.”
“No, no, I cannot, father,” she cried, with a look of terror at his worn and excited face.
“I insist,” he cried. “I will not allow these clandestine correspondences to be carried on. Give me the letter.”
“Father, I cannot,” she said firmly.
“Am I to take it from you by force?” he cried. “Am I, a gentleman who has struggled all these years to make himself the model from which society is to take its stand, who has striven so hard for his children, to be disgraced by you?”
No answer.
“Heaven knows how I have struggled, and it seems that two of my children must have been born with some base blood in their veins, and to be for ever my disgrace.”
Claire raised her eyes to his full of pitying wonder.
“See how your—no, God help me!” he cried wildly, “I dare not utter his name. See how you have disgraced your married sister—lowered me in the eyes of society. I am almost ruined, and just at a time when I had succeeded in placing your brother well. And now, see here—see here!”
He tore a note from his breast, and held it out rustling in his trembling hand.
“Here—I will not punish you more by reading it aloud,” he said; “but it is from my own son.”
“From Fred?”
“Silence, woman!” cried Denville, with a wild look of agony in his eyes, and a ghastly pallor taking the place of the two feverish spots that had stood in his cheeks. “I have no such son. He is an outcast. I forbid you to mention his name again.”
He stood quivering with a curious passion, his lips moving, his eyes staring wildly, and he beat one hand with the open letter he held in the other.
“Here!” he exclaimed at last, “from Morton—to say that, under the circumstances, he feels bound—for the sake of his own dignity and position in his regiment, to hold aloof from his home. The regiment will soon change quarters, and in time all this, he hopes, will be forgotten. Till then, all is to be at an end between us. This—from my own son.”
He began to pace the room nervously, thrusting back the letter; and then he turned upon Claire again.
“Not content, you still go on. Clandestine correspondence. Let me see who wrote that.”
“I cannot, father.”
“But I insist. Here, just when I had had your hand asked in marriage by one who is wealthy and noble, you disgrace us all by that shameless meeting. Give me the letter, I say.”
In his rage he caught her by the arms, and she struggled with him and fell upon her knees at his feet.
“Am I to use force?” he cried.
“For your own sake, no. Father, the letter is not what you think. For your own peace of mind, let it stay.”
His hands dropped to his sides at his daughter’s wild appeal, and the convulsed angry look once more gave place to the one of dread, as he drew back a step.
“Tell me,” he cried, still hesitating, “is it from that libertine, Sir Harry Payne?”
“No, no!”
“From Rockley?”
“No, father. How can you think me so degraded—so low!”
“Then—then—”
“Father, for pity’s sake!” she cried, as she crept to his knees and embraced them. “Can you not see how I am willing to bear everything to save you pain? Has there not been agony and suffering enough in this house? You cannot think—you cannot believe. Is it not better that we should let this rest?”
He raised his trembling hands to his lips in a nervous, excited way, looking searchingly and furtively by turns in his child’s piteous face. The rage in his own had died out, to give place to the look of terror; and, as Claire clung to him, he now and again glanced at the door, as if he would flee from her presence.
“No, no,” he said at last. “I was wrong. I will not see the letter. You have your secrets: I have mine. Claire, my child, there is a veil, drawn down by you, over that night’s work. I dare not lift it, I dare not look.”
“Once more, father,” she said, “had we not better let it rest? I am content; I make no murmur against my fate.”
“No,” he said, flashing out again into anger; “but—hush!—stop!—I must not,” he whispered hoarsely. “These strange fits. I cannot bear them.”
He threw back and shook his head excitedly.
“I should go mad—I should go mad.”
“Father!”
“There, I am calm again, my child. I am not myself sometimes. There—there—it is past.”
He bent over and raised her to his breast, where she laid her head, uttering a piteous sigh.
“Stricken,” he whispered; “stricken, my child. The workings of a terrible fate. Don’t reproach—don’t think ill of me, Claire. Some day the light may come—no, no,” he cried wildly; “better the darkness. I am so weak—so torn by the agony I have endured. So weak, so pitiful a man; but, with all this wretched vanity and struggle for place, my miserable heart has been so full of love for you all—for my little May.”
Claire shivered.
“No, no,” he cried excitedly. “Claire, my child, don’t speak. Hush! listen, my child. There have been cases where, in self-abnegation—the sins of others—have been borne—by the innocent—the innocent! Oh, my child, my child!”
His head dropped upon his daughter’s shoulder, and he burst into a fit of sobbing, the outpourings of a flood of anguish that he fought vainly to restrain.
“Father, dear father!” she whispered, as her arms tightened around him.
“Claire, my child—my child!”
“Yes,” she said, as she seemed to be growing stronger and more firm; “your child—not your judge. Father, I see my duty clearly now. Your help and comfort to the end.”