“At all events, we are both of us old enough to know our own minds,” said Gussy, hastily, trying to laugh off this impression. “If we choose to starve together, who should prevent us?”
Arthur Arden took them to their carriage, but Lady Augusta remarked that he did not go upstairs again. “There is something in all this more than meets the eye,” she said, oracularly.
Many people suspected this, after Lady Augusta, when Clare was gone, and when it came out that Mr. Arden was not with her, but passing most of his time in London, knocking about from club to club, through all the dreary winter. He made an effort to spend his time as virtuously as possible that first year; but the second year he was more restless and less virtuous, having fallen into despair. Then everybody talked of the breach between them, and a great deal crept out that they had thought buried in silence. Even the real facts of the case were guessed at, though never fully established, and the empty house became the subject of many a tale. People remarked that there were many strange stories about the Ardens; that they had behaved very strangely to the last proprietor before Arthur; that nobody had ever heard the rights of that story, and that Edgar had been badly used.
Whilst all this went on, Clare lived gloomy and retired by herself, in a little village on the Neapolitan coast. She saw nobody, avoiding the wandering English, and everybody who could have known her in better times; and I don’t know how long her reason could have stood the wear and tear, but for the illness and death of the poor little heir, whose hapless position had given the worst pang to her shame and horror. Little Arthur died, his mother scarcely believing it, refusing to think such a thing possible. Her husband had heard incidentally of the child’s illness, and had hurried to the neighbourhood, scarcely hoping to be admitted. But Clare neither welcomed him nor refused him admission, but permitted his presence, and ignored it. When the child was gone, however, it was Arthur’s vehement grief which first roused her out of her stupor.
“It is you who have done it!” she cried, turning upon him with eyes full of tearless passion. But she did not send him out of her house. She felt ill, worn out in body and mind, and left everything in his hands. And by-and-by, when she came to herself, Clare allowed herself to be taken home, and fled from her duties no longer.
This was the end of their story. They were more united in the later portion of their lives than in the beginning, but they have no heir to come after them. The history of the Ardens will end with them, for the heir-at-law is distant in blood, and has a different name.
As for the other personages mentioned in this story, Mr. Tottenham still governs his shop as if it were an empire, and still comes to a periodical crisis in the shape of an Entertainment, which threatens to fail up to the last moment, and then is turned into a great success. The last thing I have heard of Tottenham’s was, that it had set up a little daily newspaper of its own, written and printed on the establishment, which Mr. Tottenham thought very likely to bring forward some latent talent which otherwise might have been lost in dissertations on the prices of cotton, or the risings and fallings of silks. After Gussy’s departure, I hear the daily services fell off in the chapel; flowers were no longer placed fresh and fragrant on the temporary altar, there was no one to play the harmonium, and the attendance gradually decreased. It fell from a daily to a weekly service, and then came to an end altogether, for it was found that the young ladies and the gentlemen preferred to go out on Sunday, and to choose their own preachers after their differing tastes. How many of them strayed off to chapel instead of church, it would have broken Gussy’s heart to hear. I do not think, however, that this disturbed Mr. Tottenham much, who was too viewy not to be very tolerant, and who liked himself to hear what every new opinion had to say for itself. Lady Mary was very successful with her lectures, and I hope improved the feminine mind very much at Harbour Green. She thought she improved her own mind, which was of course a satisfaction; and did her best to transmit to little Molly very high ideas of intellectual training; but Molly was a dunce, as providentially happens often in the families of very clever people; and distinguished herself by a curious untractableness, which did not hinder her from being her mother’s pride, and the sweetest of all the cousins—or so at least Lady Mary thought.
The marriage of “the Grantons” took place in April, with the greatest éclat. It was at Easter, when everybody was in the country; and was one of the prettiest of weddings, as well as the most magnificent, which Thornleigh ever saw. Mary’s presents filled a large room to overflowing. She got everything possible and impossible that ever bride was blessed with; and the young couple went off with a maid, and a valet and a courier, and introductions to every personage in Europe. Their movements were chronicled in the newspapers; their letters went and came in ambassadorial despatch boxes. Short of royalty, there could have been nothing more splendid, more “perfectly satisfactory,” as Lady Augusta said. The only drawback was that Harry would not come to his sister’s wedding; but to make up for that everybody else came—all the great Hauteville connections, and Lady Augusta’s illustrious family, and all the Thornleighs, to the third and fourth generations. Not only Thornleigh itself, but every house within a radius of ten miles was crowded with fine people and their servants; and the bells were rung in half a dozen parish churches in honour of the wedding. It was described fully in the Morning Post, with details of all the dresses, and of the bride’s ornaments and coiffure.
“We shall have none of these fine things, I suppose,” Gussy said, when it was all over, turning to Edgar with a mock sigh.
“No, my dear; and I don’t see how you could expect them,” said Lady Augusta. “Instead of spending our money vainly on making a great show for you, we had much better save it, to buy some useful necessary things for your housekeeping. Mary is in quite a different case.”