“Nothing but the bay and the hills, and the sunsets and the moonrises; the Riviera, which means Paradise—”
“And to be together—”
“Which has the same meaning,” he said. And then they stopped in this admirable fooling, and laughed the foolish laughter of mere happiness, which is not such a bad thing, when one can have it, once in a way.
“What a useless, idle, Sybarite life you have sketched out for us!” Gussy said at last. “I hope it is not a mere sunshiny sinecure. I hope there is something to do.”
“I am very good at doing nothing,” Edgar replied—too glad, at last, to return to homely reality and matter of fact; and until the others came home, these two talked as much nonsense as it is given to the best of us to talk; and got such good of it as no words can describe.
When Lady Augusta returned, she pretended to frown upon Edgar, and smiled; and then gave him her hand, and then inclined her cheek towards him. They had the paper out again, and she shook her head; then kissed Gussy, and told them that Spezzia was the most lovely place in all the world. Edgar stayed to dinner, as at last a recognised belonging of the household, and met Lord Granton, who was somewhat frightened of him, and respectful, having heard his praises celebrated by Mary as something more than flesh and blood; and for that evening “the Grantons” that were to be, were nobodies—not even redeemed from insignificance by the fact that their marriage was approaching, while the other marriage was still in the clouds.
“How nice it would be if they could be on the same day!” little Mary whispered, rather, I fear, with the thought of recovering something of her natural consequence as bride than for any other reason.
“As if the august ceremonial used at an Earl’s wedding would do for a Consul’s!” cried saucy Gussy, tossing her curls as of old. And notwithstanding Edgar’s memories, and the dark shadow of Clare’s troubles that stood by his side, and the fear that now and then overwhelmed them all about Harry’s movements—in spite of all this, I do not think a merrier evening was ever spent in Berkeley Square. Gussy had been in a cloud, in a veil, for all these years; she had not thought it right to laugh much, as the Associate of a Sisterhood—which is to say that Gussy was not happy enough to want to laugh, and founded that grey, or brown, or black restriction for herself, with the ingenuity of an unscrupulous young woman. But now sweet laughter had become again as natural to her as breath.
CHAPTER XXIII.
H.B.M.’s Consul.—Conclusion.
Clare carried out her intentions, unmoved by all the entreaties addressed to her. She heard everything that was said with perfect calm; either her capabilities of emotion were altogether exhausted, or her passionate sense of wrong was too deep to show at the surface, and she was calm as a marble statue; but she was equally inflexible. Edgar turned, in spite of himself, into Arthur Arden’s advocate; pleaded with her, setting forth every reason he could think of, partly against his own judgment—and failed. Her husband, against whom she did not absolutely close her door, threw himself at her feet, and entreated, for the children’s sake, for the sake of all that was most important to them both—the credit of their house, the good name of their boy. These were arguments which with Clare, in her natural mind, would have been unanswerable; but that had happened to Clare which warps the mind from its natural modes of thought. The idea of disgrace had got into her very soul, like a canker. She was unable to examine her reasons—unable to resist, even in herself, this overwhelming influence; it overcame her principles, and even her prejudices, which are more difficult to overcome. The fear of scandal, which those who knew Clare would have supposed sufficient to make her endure anything, failed totally here. She knew that her behaviour would make the world talk, and she even felt that, with this clue to some profound disagreement between her husband and herself, the whole story might be more easily revealed, and her boy’s heirship made impossible; but even with this argument she could not subdue herself, nor suffer herself to be subdued. The sense of outrage had taken possession of her; she could not forget it—could not realize the possibility of ever forgetting it. It was not that she had been brought within the reach of possible disgrace. She was disgraced; the very formality of the new marriage, though she consented to it without question, as a necessity, was a new outrage. In short, Clare, though she acted with a determination and steadiness which seemed to add force to her character, and showed her natural powers as nothing else had ever done, was not, for the first time in her life, a free agent. She had been taken possession of by a passionate sense of injury, which seized upon her as an evil spirit might seize upon its victim. In the very fierceness of her individual resentment, she ceased to be an individual, and became an abstraction, a woman wronged, capable of feeling, knowing, thinking of nothing but her wrong. This made all arguments powerless, all pleas foolish. She could not admit any alternative into her mind; her powers of reasoning failed her altogether on this subject; on all others she was sane and sensible, but on this had all the onesidedness, the narrowness of madness—or of the twin-sister of madness—irrepressible and irrepressed passion.