“She is not in the garden,” said Wilkins, with a solemn enjoyment of the other’s disappointment. Arthur Arden was not liked by the servants; and Wilkins lingered over every word by way of tantalising him more. “Miss Arden has gone out, sir, for the day. For the day—them were her very words. ‘Wilkins,’ she says, ‘if any one calls, I have gone out for the day.’ Nothing, sir, could be more exact than Miss Arden was.”
Arthur was so completely taken aback that he stood aghast for a moment gazing at the man who confronted him with the ghost of a smile on his face, blocking up the door. Wilkins stood like one who felt his own supremacy, in an easy attitude upon the threshold, forbidding all comers as effectually as if he had been a squadron of cavalry. “Them were the very words,” he said, rubbing his hands; and Arthur stood below, expelled as it were from Paradise. The catastrophe was so sudden and so unlooked for that he did not in the least know how to meet it. He could not even for the moment hide his own discomfiture and dismay.
“I suppose Miss Arden intends me to go on with my work and await her coming,” he said at length. “I am very sorry to miss her, but I suppose that is what I must do.”
“She didn’t say nothing about it, sir,” said Wilkins; “and what is more, she’s been and locked the library door.”
Then Arthur perceived that things were really going against him. He would not betray himself to the servant’s all-penetrating eyes. “Ah, I suppose something must have happened,” he said, with as light a tone as he could summon up. “Tell Miss Arden I was very sorry to find her gone. I suppose she has changed her mind about the papers. Tell her if she wishes me to go on with them that she must send me word to the Red House. I shall be there for some days longer. I shall pay my respects to her whether I hear from her or not before I leave; but if I am to do any more work ask her to let me know.”
“I’ll give her your message, sir,” said Wilkins, with ill-concealed satisfaction; and then, before he was conscious what it meant, before he could half realise the position, Arthur found himself with his back to the house, making his way once more down the avenue. Could it be possible? Was he dreaming? He was so completely taken by surprise that he had lost all his readiness of reason and promptitude in an emergency. Nothing so overwhelming, so sudden, so mysterious, had ever happened to him before. It was not only a disappointment, it was an insult. Dismissed by a servant; turned away from the door which, it might be, was legally his; sent off without a word of explanation! Arthur paused when he had gone half-way down the avenue to say to himself that he must be dreaming, that he must go back and laugh at the hoax that had been played upon him, and find Clare, in the full satisfaction of a successful trick, laughing too. But then there came in the chill thought that Clare was not at all the sort of person to perform a trick of any kind, and that what she did was generally in deadly earnest, relieved by no practical jokes. His amazement was so profound that he scarcely said a word to himself all the way down. Had she found out anything? Was there anything to find out? His meaning in that raid upon the papers was known to no one but himself. Nobody could say a word against his motives; nobody could be offended with him because he had a zeal for his family. To write a book about them even was a perfectly justifiable, not to say laudable, idea. What could she have had to find fault with? Arthur was as much surprised as dismayed. He went home feeling as if he had been beaten corporeally as well as mentally—feeling more absolutely small, and mean, and contemptible than he had ever done in his life—humiliated before Wilkins, even—made the laughing-stock of the servants. This was the manner in which he was sent away from Arden on the day which he had selected to decide his fate.
CHAPTER XIX.
It is comparatively easy to make a sudden and rapid decision which is (one says to one’s self) final, and settles in a moment some great question which affects a whole existence. As soon as the uncertainty is over, and the decision absolutely made, everything will come easy, the sufferer thinks. And such had been Clare’s feeling when she set out upon that wretched ramble, with Barbara toiling after her. She would cut herself off at once, and for ever, from all possibility of being remonstrated with, talked over, moved by any argument. She would cut the knot by one arbitrary action, and free herself. And when that was once successfully done she could live without sympathy, without any desire to cast herself upon the aid of others; she would be self-sufficing, self-contained, self-restraining all the rest of her life. Had not she already tried every relationship, and found it wanting? He who had made himself most dear to her—he who had pretended to love her, had deceived her. Every friend she had, in all probability, would disapprove of the encouragement she had given to Arthur, and would equally disapprove of the summary and insulting way in which she had cast him off. Her father—— Clare’s whole being surged up into excitement as she thought of him—excitement produced by two words which she had spied through a torn envelope, and which, perhaps, meant nothing in the world. Her brother—— Clare’s heart sank again into a sickness and miserable failing of all strength and composure. She was alone, absolutely alone, on the face of the earth. She had no one to fall back upon, to consult on such a terrible dilemma as never surely woman was placed in before. Walking under that blazing sun was fortunately of itself confusing and exhausting enough; but when she reached the Three Beeches, and sat down under their shadow, all the excitement in her mind seemed to meet and clash, filling up her brain with a buzz and sound which almost drove her mad. Not one great battle only, but two or three were raging within her, exploding now from one quarter, now from another, like a network of storms. The Three Beeches stood upon an elevated point, not very high in itself, but possessing all the importance of a hill in that level country. The trees were very fine old trees, with great gnarled trunks, and such a wealth of shadow under them as made the traveller rejoice. Seated on the thick mossy turf, Clare looked down and saw her home among its trees, and the bright white street of the village, and the Red House, burning in the sunshine. Even Thornleigh Church, which was seven miles off, was visible in the sunny distance. Almost every individual involved in the dim and confused drama which was weaving itself about her was at present, could she but see under those roofs, within her range of vision. She let her books, which she had brought with the intention of working hard at a translation, and thus making thought impossible, lie beside her, without so much as remembering their existence. Thinking! How could she help thinking? As long as there is nothing particular in your mind it is, of course, easy enough to occupy it with external matters; but when it is full—full to overflowing—— So Clare thought and thought till her mind felt on the eve of giving way. Arthur Arden had done her a great wrong—she thought he had done her such a wrong as a woman can never forgive to a man—not only preferred another to her, but made false pretences of love to her in order to enjoy that other’s society. Injury and contempt could go no further. He had wounded her heart, and struck a deadly blow at her maidenly dignity and pride. It was the bitterest wrong, and as such she had resented it.
And yet perhaps Arthur Arden had been wronged as bitterly; perhaps he had unconsciously suffered all his life, and Providence had thrown the means of avenging him into her hands. Edgar, too, had been wronged, not in the same way, but by being made an instrument of injury. But from the thought of Edgar she shrank as if it hurt her. And her father, whom she had held in such reverence, whom she had worshipped as the very embodiment of all the Ardens, whom she had loved so much, and who had loved her—Clare shrank as if a shower of blows were hailing upon her head. She had thrust herself into his secrets, and now she must bear the burden. If she had pried over his shoulder while he was living, how poor, how dishonourable she would have felt herself; but she had done worse than that. She had stolen a surreptitious glance at his secrets after he was dead. Then she tried to calm herself down. Perhaps the words she had read did not mean what they seemed to mean. Perhaps they referred to something perfectly innocent, some piece of generosity on her father’s part of which he had said nothing to any one. But Clare felt that even were this the case she must bear the penalty of her prying. She dared not examine further. Her half-secret, which perhaps was no secret, must be the burden of her existence. Never would she breathe it to any one, never allow she knew it; never, never escape from its burning presence. If there was wrong involved, she must allow that wrong to go on; she must not even permit herself to see or approach the man who was the sufferer. And then, all at once, in the midst of her rage and indignation against him, and while she still felt that no punishment was too great to requite his treachery, there suddenly came upon poor Clare, in her inexperience and ignorance, a fit of such yearning for him as rent her very heart. What! with her injury so fresh, with all that anger and bitterness in her mind? Dismayed, bewildered, torn asunder, she thus found out that love will not go out of the heart at any formal bidding. It turned and rent her, like the demon, convulsing her very soul with pain. She opened her heavy eyes after the struggle with a despairing amazement in them. Could it be? Was her judgment to go for nothing, and the bitter wound which he had inflicted to be no argument against him? Nothing but this sudden, appalling, unlooked-for experience could have convinced her. She felt so weak and miserable that she dropped her face into her hands, and wept, she who had been so indignant and so strong.
“Miss Arden, I’m afraid you’re feeling poorly,” said Barbara. “Do now, there’s a dear young lady, take this glass of wine. I made Mrs. Fillpot give it me for you, and I’ve kept it cool in the bottom of the basket. Do, Miss, there’s a dear.”