“Don’t call me Mr. Arden; call me Edgar now; it is the only name I have a right to; and let me kiss you once before we part.”
She lifted up her face to him, with the tears still wet upon her cheeks. They loved each other more truly at that moment than they had ever done before; and Gussy’s heart, as she said, was breaking. She threw her arms round his neck, and clung to him. “O Edgar, dear! Good-bye, good-bye!” she sobbed. And his heart, too, thrilled with a poignant sweetness, ineffable misery, and consolation, and despair.
This was how they parted for ever and ever—not with any pretence between them that it could ever be otherwise, or anything that sounded like hope. Lady Augusta’s warning was unnecessary. They said not a word to each other of anything but that final severance. Perhaps in Gussy’s secret heart, when she felt herself placed in a chair, felt another sudden hot kiss on her forehead, and found herself alone, and everything over, there was a pang more secret and deep-lying still, which felt the absence of any suggestion for the future; perhaps there had flitted before her some phantom of romance, whispering what he might do to prove himself worthy of her—revealing some glimpse of a far-off hope. Gussy knew all through that this was impossible. She was sure as of her own existence that no such thing could be; and yet, with his kiss still warm on her forehead—a kiss which only parting could have justified—she would have been pleased had he said it, only said it. As it was, she sat and cried, with a sense that all was finished and over, in which there lay the very essence of despair.
Edgar returned to the library while Lady Augusta was still in the very midst of her interrogations. She stopped short at sight of him, making an abrupt conclusion. She saw his eyes full of tears, the traces of emotion in his face, and thanked God that it was over. At such a moment, in such a mood, it would have been so difficult, so impossible to resist him. If he were to ask her for permission to write to Gussy, to cherish a hope, she felt that even to herself it would have been hard, very hard, to say absolutely, No. And her very soul trembled to think of the effect of such a petition on Gussy’s warm, romantic, young heart. But he had not made any such prayer; he had accepted the unalterable necessity. She felt sure of that by the shortness of his absence, and the look which she dared scarcely contemplate—the expression of almost solemnity which was upon his face. She got up and went forward to meet him, once more holding out both her hands.
“Edgar,” she said, “God will reward you for being so good and so true. You have not thought of yourself, you have thought of others all through, and you will not be left to suffer alone. Oh, my dear boy! I can never be your mother now, and yet I feel as if I were your mother. Kiss me too, and God bless you! I would give half of everything I have to find out that this was only a delusion, and that all was as it used to be.”
Edgar shook his head with a faint smile. There passed over his mind, as in a dream, the under-thought—If she gave half of all she had to bring him back, how soon he would replace it; how easy, were such a thing possible, any secondary sacrifice would be! But notwithstanding this faint and misty reflection, it never occurred to him to think that it was because he was losing Arden that he was being thus absolutely taken farewell of. He himself was just the same—nay, he was better than he ever had been, for he had been weighed in the balance, and not found wanting. But because he had lost Arden, and his family and place in the world, therefore, with the deepest tenderness and feeling, these good women were taking leave of him. Edgar, fortunately, did not think of that aspect of the question. He kissed Lady Augusta, and received her blessing with a real overflowing of his heart. It touched him almost as much as his parting with Gussy. She was a good woman. She cried over him, as if he had been a boy of her own.
“Tell me anything I can do for you,” she said—“anything, whatever it is. Would you like me to take charge of Clare? I will take her, and we will comfort her as we best can, if she will come with me. She ought not to be here now, while the house is so much agitated, and everything in disorder; and if there is anything to be done about Mr. Arthur Arden—Clare ought not to be here.”
She had not the heart to say, though it was on her lips, that Clare ought not to be with the man who was no longer her brother. She caught his wistful look, and she could not say the words, though they were on her lips. But her offer was not one to be refused. Edgar—poor Edgar—who had everything to do—to sign his own death-warrant, as it were, and separate himself from everything that was near to him, had to go to Clare to negotiate. Would she go with Lady Augusta? He spoke to her at the door of her room, not entering, and she, with a flush of pain on her face, stood at the door also, not inviting him to go in. The division was growing between them in spite of themselves.
“Would you come to see me at Thorne?” said Clare. “Upon that must rest the whole matter whether I will go or not.”
Edgar reflected, with again that sense of profound weariness stealing over him, and desire to be done with everything. No; he could not go through these farewells again—he could not wear his heart out bit by bit. This must be final, or it was mere folly. “No,” he said; “it would be impossible. I could not go to see you at Thorne.”