She cast a quick glance at him—a glance full of dislike and horror.
“Take me away,” she said to Edgar—“take me away! I must go and fetch the children before it is dark.” This with a pause and a strange little laugh. “I speak as if they had been out at some baby-party,” she said. “Give me your arm. I don’t see quite clear.”
Arden watched them as they went out of the room—she tottering, as she leant on Edgar’s arm, moving as he moved, like one blind. Arthur Arden was left behind with his papers, and with the thought of that other woman, who had claimed him for her husband. How clearly he remembered her—her impertinence, her rude carelessness, her manners, that were of the shop, and knew no better training! Their short life together came back to him like a picture. How soon his foolish passion for her (as he described it to himself) had blown over!—how weary of her he had grown! And now, what was to become of him? If Clare did anything desperate—if she went and blazoned it about, and removed the children, and took the whole matter in a passionate way, it would not be she alone who would be the sufferer. The woman is the sufferer, people say, in such cases; but this man groaned when he thought, if he could not do something to avert it, what ruin must overtake him. If Clare left his house, all honour, character, position would go with her; he could never hold up his head again. He would retain everything he had before, yet he would lose everything—not only her and his children, of whom he was as fond as it was possible to be of any but himself, but every scrap of popular regard, society, the support of his fellows. All would go from him if this devil could not be silenced—if Clare could not be conciliated.
He rose to his feet, feeling sick and giddy, and from a corner, behind the shadow of the window-curtains, saw his wife—that is, the woman who was no longer his wife—drive away from the door. He was so wretched that he could not even relieve his mind by swearing at Edgar. He had not energy enough to think of Edgar, or any one else. Sometimes, indeed, with a sharp pang, there would gleam across him a sudden vision of his little boy, Clare’s son, the beautiful child he had been so proud of, but who—even if Clare should make it up, and brave the shame and wrong—was ruined and disgraced, and no more the heir of Arden than any beggar on the road. Poor wretch! when that thought came across him, I think all the wrongs that Arthur Arden had done in this world were avenged. He writhed under the sudden thought. He burst out in sudden crying and sobbing for one miserable moment. It was intolerable—he could not bear it; yet had to bear it, as we all have, whether our errors are of our own making or not.
And Clare drove back over the peaceful country, beginning to green over faintly under the first impulse of Spring—between lines of ploughed and grateful fields, and soft furrows of soft green corn. She did not even put her veil down, but with her white face set, and her eyes gazing blankly before her, went on with her own thoughts, saying nothing, seeing nothing. All her faculties had suddenly been concentrated within her—her mind was like a shaded lamp for the moment, throwing intense light upon one spot, and leaving all others in darkness. Edgar held her hand, to which she did not object, and watched her with a pity which swelled his heart almost to bursting. He could take care of her tenderly in little things—lift her out of the carriage, give her the support of his arm, throw off the superabundant wraps that covered her. But this was all; into the inner world, where she was fighting her battle, neither he nor any man could enter—there she had to fight it out alone.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Old Home.
Clare went to her own room, and shut herself up there. She permitted Edgar to go with her to the door, and there dismissed him, almost without a word. What Edgar’s feelings were on entering the house where he had once been master, and with which so many early associations both of pleasure and pain were connected, I need not say; he was excited painfully and strangely by everything he saw. It seemed inconceivable to him that he should be there; and every step in the staircase, every turn in the corridor, reminded him of something that had happened in that brief bit of the past in which his history was concentrated, which had lasted so short a time, yet had been of more effect than many years. The one thing, however, that kept him calm, and restrained his excitement, was the utter absorption of Clare in her own troubles, which were more absorbing than anything that had ever happened to him. She showed no consciousness that it was anything to him to enter this house, to lead her through its familiar passages. She ignored it so completely that Edgar, always impressionable, felt half ashamed of himself for recollecting, and tried to make believe, even to himself, that he ignored it too. He took her to the door of her room, his head throbbing with the sense that he was here again, where he had never thought to be; and then went downstairs, to wait in the room which had once been his own library, for Arthur Arden’s return. Fortunately the old servants were all gone, and if any of the present household recognised Edgar at all, their faces were unfamiliar to him. How strange to look round the room, and note with instinctive readiness all the changes which another man’s taste had made! The old cabinet, in which the papers had been found which proved him no Arden, stood still against the wall, as it had always done. The books looked neglected in their shelves, as though no one ever touched them. It was more of a business room than it once was, less of a library, nothing at all of the domestic place, dear to man and woman alike, which it had been when Edgar never was so happy as with his sister beside him. How strange it was to be there—how dismal to be there on such an errand. In this room Clare had given him the papers which were his ruin; here she had entreated him to destroy them; here he had made the discovery public; and now to think the day should have come when he was here as a stranger, caring nothing for Arden, thinking only how to remove her of whom he seemed to have become the sole brother and protector, from the house she had been born in!
He walked about and about the rooms, till the freshness of these associations was over, and he began to grow impatient of the stillness and suspense. He had told Clare that he would wait, and that she should find him there when he was wanted. He had begged her to do nothing that night—to wait and consider what was best; but he did not even know whether she was able to understand him, or if he spoke to deaf ears. Everything had happened so quickly that a sense of confusion was in Edgar’s mind, confusion of the moral as well as the mental functions; for he was not at all sure whether the link of sympathetic horror and wonder between Arden and himself, as to what Clare would do, did not approach him closer, rather than separate him further from this man, who hated him, to begin with, and who was yet not his sister’s husband. Somehow these two, who, since they first met, had been at opposite poles from each other, seemed to be drawn together by one common misfortune, rather than placed in a doubly hostile position, as became the injurer and the defender of the injured.
When Arden came in some time after, this feeling obliterated on both sides the enmity which, under any other circumstances, must have blazed forth. Edgar, as he looked at the dull misery in Arthur’s face, felt a strange pity for him soften his heart. This man, who had done so well for himself, who had got Arden, who had married Clare, who had received all the gifts that heaven could give, what a miserable failure he was after all, cast down from all that made his eminence tenable or good to hold. He was the cause of the most terrible misfortune to Clare and her children, and yet Edgar felt no impulse to take him by the throat, but was sorry for him in his downfall and misery. As for Arthur Arden, his old dislike seemed exorcised by the same spirit. In any other circumstances he would have resented Edgar’s interference deeply—but now a gloomy indifference to everything that could happen, except one thing, had got possession of him.
“What does she mean to do?” he said, throwing himself into a chair. All power of self-assertion had failed in him. It seemed even right and natural to him that Edgar should know this better than he himself did, and give him information what her decision was.