CHAPTER XXVI.
THE AYLMER PARK HASHED CHICKEN
COMES TO AN END.
Easter in this year fell about the middle of April, and it still wanted three weeks of that time when Captain Aylmer started for London. Clara was quite alive to the fact that the next three weeks would not be a happy time for her. She looked forward, indeed, to so much wretchedness during this period, that the days as they came were not quite so bad as she had expected them to be. At first Lady Aylmer said little or nothing to her. It seemed to be agreed between them that there was to be war, but that there was no necessity for any of the actual operations of war during the absence of Captain Aylmer. Clara had become Miss Amedroz again; and though an offer to be driven out in the carriage was made to her every day, she was in general able to escape the infliction;—so that at last it came to be understood that Miss Amedroz did not like carriage exercise. "She has never been used to it," said Lady Aylmer to her daughter. "I suppose not," said Belinda; "but if she wasn't so very cross she'd enjoy it just for that reason." Clara sometimes walked about the grounds with Belinda, but on such occasions there was hardly anything that could be called conversation between them, and Frederic Aylmer's name was never mentioned.
Captain Aylmer had not been gone many days before she received a letter from her cousin, in which he spoke with absolute certainty of his intention of giving up the estate. He had, he said, consulted Mr. Green, and the thing was to be done. "But it will be better, I think," he went on to say, "that I should manage it for you till after your marriage. I simply mean what I say. You are not to suppose that I shall interfere in any way afterwards. Of course there will be a settlement, as to which I hope you will allow me to see Mr. Green on your behalf." In the first draught of his letter he had inserted a sentence in which he expressed a wish that the property should be so settled that it might at last all come to some one bearing the name of Belton. But as he read this over, the condition,—for coming from him it would be a condition,—seemed to him to be ungenerous, and he expunged it. "What does it matter who has it," he said to himself bitterly, "or what he is called? I will never set my eyes upon his children, nor yet upon the place when he has become the master of it." Clara wrote both to her cousin and to the lawyer, repeating her assurance,—with great violence, as Lady Aylmer would have said,—that she would have nothing to do with the Belton estate. She told Mr. Green that it would be useless for him to draw up any deeds. "It can't be made mine unless I choose to have it," she said, "and I don't choose to have it." Then there came upon her a terrible fear. What if she should marry Captain Aylmer after all; and what if he, when he should be her husband, should take the property on her behalf! Something must be done before her marriage to prevent the possibility of such results,—something as to the efficacy of which for such prevention she could feel altogether certain.
But could she marry Captain Aylmer at all in her present mood? During these three weeks she was unconsciously teaching herself to hope that she might be relieved from her engagement. She did not love him. She was becoming aware that she did not love him. She was beginning to doubt whether, in truth, she had ever loved him. But yet she felt that she could not escape from her engagement if he should show himself to be really actuated by any fixed purpose to carry it out; nor could she bring herself to be so weak before Lady Aylmer as to seem to yield. The necessity of not striking her colours was forced upon her by the warfare to which she was subjected. She was unhappy, feeling that her present position in life was bad, and unworthy of her. She could have brought herself almost to run away from Aylmer Park, as a boy runs away from school, were it not that she had no place to which to run. She could not very well make her appearance at Plaistow Hall, and say that she had come there for shelter and succour. She could, indeed, go to Mrs. Askerton's cottage for awhile; and the more she thought of the state of her affairs, the more did she feel sure that that would, before long, be her destiny. It must be her destiny,—unless Captain Aylmer should return at Easter with purposes so firmly fixed that even his mother should not be able to prevail against them.
And now, in these days, circumstances gave her a new friend,—or perhaps, rather, a new acquaintance, where she certainly had looked neither for the one or for the other. Lady Aylmer and Belinda and the carriage and the horses used, as I have said, to go off without her. This would take place soon after luncheon. Most of us know how the events of the day drag themselves on tediously in such a country house as Aylmer Park,—a country house in which people neither read, nor flirt, nor gamble, nor smoke, nor have resort to the excitement of any special amusement. Lunch was on the table at half-past one, and the carriage was at the door at three. Eating and drinking and the putting on of bonnets occupied the hour and a half. From breakfast to lunch Lady Aylmer, with her old "front," would occupy herself with her household accounts. For some days after Clara's arrival she put on her new "front" before lunch; but of late,—since the long conversation in the carriage,—the new "front" did not appear till she came down for the carriage. According to the theory of her life, she was never to be seen by any but her own family in her old "front." At breakfast she would appear with head so mysteriously enveloped,—with such a bewilderment of morning caps, that old "front" or new "front" was all the same. When Sir Anthony perceived this change,—when he saw that Clara was treated as though she belonged to Aylmer Park, then he told himself that his son's marriage with Miss Amedroz was to be; and, as Miss Amedroz seemed to him to be a very pleasant young woman, he would creep out of his own quarters when the carriage was gone and have a little chat with her,—being careful to creep away again before her ladyship's return. This was Clara's new friend.
"Have you heard from Fred since he has been gone?" the old man asked one day, when he had come upon Clara still seated in the parlour in which they had lunched. He had been out, at the front of the house, scolding the under-gardener; but the man had taken away his barrow and left him, and Sir Anthony had found himself without employment.
"Only a line to say that he is to be here on the sixteenth."
"I don't think people write so many love-letters as they did when I was young," said Sir Anthony.
"To judge from the novels, I should think not. The old novels used to be full of love-letters."