ARTHUR ARDEN, Esq., of Arden, was a different man from the needy cousin of the Squire, the hanger-on of society, the fine gentleman out at elbows, whose position had bewildered yet touched the supposed legal proprietor of the estates, and head of the family, during Edgar’s brief reign. A poor man knocking about the world, when he has once lost his reputation, has no particular object to stimulate him to the effort necessary for regaining it. But when a man who sins by will, and not by weakness of nature, gains a position in which virtue is necessary and becoming, and where vice involves a certain loss of prestige, nothing is easier than moral reformation. Arthur Arden had been a strictly moral man for all these years; he had given up all vagabond vices, the peccadilloes of the Bohemian. He was rangé in every sense of the word. A more decorous, stately house was not in the county; a man more correct in all his duties never set an example to a parish. I do not know that the essential gain was very great. He took his vices in another way; he was hard as the nether millstone to all who came in his way, grasping and tyrannical. He did nothing that was not exacted from him, either by law, or public opinion, or personal vanity; on every other side he was in panoply of steel against all prayers, all intercessions, all complaints.
Mrs. Arden made him an excellent wife. She was as proud as he was, and held her head very high in the county. The Countess of Marchmont, Lord Newmarch’s mother, was nothing in comparison with Mrs. Arden of Arden. But people said she was too cold in her manners ever to be popular. When her husband stood for the county, and she had to show the ordinary gracious face to all the farmers and farm-men, Clare’s manners lost more votes than her beauty and her family might have gained. She could not be cordial to save her life. But then the Ardens were always cold and proud—it was the characteristic of the family—except the last poor fellow, who was everybody’s friend, and turned out to be no Arden at all, as anyone might have seen with half an eye.
Mr. Arden’s horse and his groom were waiting in the stableyard of the “Arden Arms.” He himself, looking more gloomy than usual, had gone upstairs to the best room, to meet the stranger, of whom all the “Arden Arms” people felt vaguely that they had seen him before. The landlady, passing the door, heard their voices raised high now and then, as if there was some quarrel between them; but she was too busy to listen, even had her curiosity carried her so far. When Mrs. Arden, driving past, stopped in front of the inn, to ask for some poor pensioner in the village, the good woman rushed out, garrulous and eager.
“The Squire is here, ma’am, with a gentleman. I heard him say as his horse was dead beat, and as he’d have to take the train home. What a good thing as you have come this way! Please now, as they’ve done their talk, will your ladyship step upstairs?”
“If Mr. Arden is occupied with some one on business—” said Clare, hesitating; but then it suddenly occurred to her that, as there had been a little domestic jar that morning, it might be well to show herself friendly, and offer to drive her husband home. “You are sure he is not busy?” she said, doubtfully, and went upstairs with somewhat hesitating steps. It was a strange thing for Mrs. Arden to do, but something impelled her unconscious feet, something which the ancients would have called fate, an impulse she could not resist. She knocked softly at the door, but received no reply; and there was no sound of voices within to make her pause. The “business,” whatever it was, must surely be over. Clare opened the door, not without a thrill at her heart, which she could scarcely explain to herself, for she knew of nothing to make this moment or this incident specially important. Her husband sat, with his back to her, at the table, his head buried in his hands; near him, fronting the door, his face very serious, his eyes shining with indignant fire, stood Edgar. Edgar! The sight of him, so unexpected as it was, touched her heart with a quick, unusual movement of warmth and tenderness. She gave a sudden cry, and rushed into the room.
Arthur Arden raised his head from his hands at the sound of her voice—he raised himself up, and glanced at her, half-stupefied.
“What has brought you here?” he cried, hoarsely.
But Clare had no eyes for him, for the moment. She went up to her brother, who stood, scarcely advancing to meet her, with no light of pleasure on his face at the sight of her. They had not met for three years.
“Edgar!” she said, with pleasure so sudden that she had not time to think whether it was right and becoming on the part of Mrs. Arden of Arden to express such a sentiment. But, before she had reached him, his pained and serious look, his want of all response to her warm exclamation, and the curious atmosphere of agitation in the room, impressed her in spite of herself. She stopped short, her tone changed, the revulsion of feeling which follows an overture repulsed, suddenly clouded over her face. “I see I am an intruder,” she said. “I did not mean to interfere with—business.” Then curiosity got the upper hand. She paused and looked at them—Edgar so determined and serious, her husband agitated, sullen—and as pale as if he had been dying. “But what business can there be between you two?” she asked, with a sharp tone of anxiety in her voice. The two men were like criminals before her. “What is it?—what is it?” she cried. “Something has happened. What brings you two together must concern me.”
“Go home, Clare, go home,” said Arthur Arden, hoarsely. “We don’t want you here, to make things worse—go home.”
She looked at Edgar—he shook his head and turned his eyes from her. He had given her no welcome, no look even of the old affection. Clare’s blood was up.
“I have a right to know what has brought you together,” she said, drawing a chair to the table, and suddenly seating herself between them. “I will go home when you are ready to come with me, Arthur. What is it? for, whatever it is, I have a right to know.”
Edgar came to her side and took her hand, which she gave to him almost reluctantly, averting her face.
“Clare,” he said, almost in a whisper, “this is the only moment for all these years that I could not be happy to see you. Go home, for God’s sake, as he says——”
“I will not,” said Clare. “Some new misfortune has occurred to bring you two together. Why should I go home, to be wretched, wondering what has happened? For my children’s sake, I will know what it is.”
Neither of them made her any answer. There were several papers lying on the table between them—one a bulky packet, directed in what Clare knew to be his solicitor’s handwriting, to Arthur Arden. Miss Lockwood had played Edgar false, and, even while she urged him on, had already placed her papers in the lawyer’s hands. Arden had thus known the full dangers of the exposure before him, when, with some vague hopes of a compromise, he had met Edgar, whom he insisted on considering Miss Lockwood’s emissary. He had been bidding high for silence, for concealment, and had been compelled to stomach Edgar’s indignant refusal, which for the moment he dared not resent, when Clare thus burst upon the scene. They were suddenly arrested by her appearance, stopped in mid-career.
“Is it any renewal of the past?—any new discovery? Edgar, you have found something out—you are, after all——”
He shook his head.
“Dear Clare, it is nothing about me. Let me come and see you after, and tell you about myself. This is business-mere business,” said Edgar, anxiously. “Nothing,” his voice faltered, “to interest you.”
“You tell lies badly,” she said; “and he says nothing. What does it mean? What are these papers?—always papers—more papers—everything that is cruel is in them. Must I look for myself?” she continued, her voice breaking, with an agitation which she could not explain. She laid her hand upon some which lay strewed open upon the table. She saw Edgar watch the clutch of her fingers with a shudder, and that her husband kept his eyes upon her with a strange, horrified watchfulness. He seemed paralyzed, unable to interfere till she had secured them, when he suddenly grasped her hand roughly, and cried, “Come, give them up; there is nothing there for you!”
Clare was not dutiful or submissive by nature. At the best of times such an order would have irritated rather than subdued her.
“I will not,” she repeated, freeing her hand from the clutch that made it crimson. Only one of the papers she had picked up remained, a scrap that looked of no importance. She rose and hurried to the window with it, holding it up to the light.
“She must have known it one day or other,” said Edgar, speaking rather to himself than to either of his companions. It was the only sound that broke the silence. After an interval of two minutes or so, Clare came back, subdued, and rather pale.
“This is a marriage certificate, I suppose,” she said. “Yours, Arthur! You were married, then, before? You might have told me. Why didn’t you tell me? I should have had no right to be vexed if I had known before.”
“Clare!” he stammered, looking at her in consternation.
“Yes, I can’t help being vexed,” she said, her lip quivering a little, “to find out all of a sudden that I am not the first. I think you should have told me, Arthur, not left me to find it out. But, after all, it is only a shock and a mortification, not a crime, that you should look so frightened,” she added, forcing a faint smile. “I am not a termagant, to make your life miserable on account of the past.” Here Clare paused, looked from one to the other, and resumed, with a more anxious voice: “What do you mean, both of you, by looking at me? Is there more behind? Ay, I see!” her lip quivered more and more, her face grew paler, she restrained herself with a desperate effort. “Tell me the worst,” she said, hurriedly. “There are other children, older than mine! My boy will not be the heir?”
“Clare! Clare!” cried Edgar, putting his arm round her, forgetting all that lay between them, tears starting to his eyes, “my dear, come away! Don’t ask any more questions. If you ever looked upon me as your brother, or trusted me, come—come home, Clare.”
She shook off his grasp impatiently, and turned to her husband.
“Arthur, I demand the truth from you,” she cried. “Let no one interfere between us. Is there—an older boy than mine? Let me hear the worst! Is not my boy your heir?”
Arthur Arden, though he was not soft-hearted, uttered at this moment a lamentable groan.
“I declare before God I never thought of it!” he cried. “I never meant it for a marriage at all!”
“Marriage!” said Clare, looking at him like one bewildered. “Marriage!—I am not talking of marriage! Is there—a boy—another heir?”
And then again there was a terrible silence. The man to whom Clare looked so confidently as her husband, demanding explanations from him, shrank away from her, cowering, with his face hidden by his hands.
“Will no one answer me?” she said. Her face was ghastly with suspense—every drop of blood seemed to have been drawn out of it. Her eyes went from her husband to Edgar, from Edgar back to her husband. “Tell me, yes or no—yes or no! I do not ask more!”
“Clare, it is not that! God forgive me! The woman is alive!” said Arthur Arden, with a groan that seemed to come from the bottom of his heart.
“The woman is alive!” she cried, impatiently. “I am not asking about any woman. What does he mean? The woman is alive!” She stopped short where she stood, holding fast by the back of her chair, making an effort to understand. “The woman! What woman? What does he mean?”
“His wife,” said Edgar, under his breath.
Clare turned upon him a furious, fiery glance. She did not understand him. She began to see strange glimpses of light through the darkness, but she could not make out what it was.
“Will not you speak?” she cried piteously, putting her hand upon her husband’s shoulder. “Arthur, I forgive you for keeping it from me; but why do you hide your face?—why do you turn away? All you can do for me now is to tell me everything. My boy!—is he disinherited? Stop,” she cried wildly; “let me sit down. There is more—still more! Edgar, come here, close beside me, and tell me in plain words. The woman! What does he mean?”
“Clare,” cried Edgar, taking her cold hands into his, “don’t let it kill you, for your children’s sake. They have no one but you. The woman—whom he married then—is living now.”
“The woman—whom he married then!” she repeated, with lips white and stammering. “The woman!” Then stopped, and cried out suddenly—“My God! my God!”
“Clare, before the Lord I swear to you I never meant it—I never thought of it!” exclaimed Arden, with a hoarse cry.
Clare took no notice; she sat with her hands clasped, staring blankly before her, murmuring, “My God! my God!” under her breath. Edgar held her hands, which were chill and trembled, but she did not see him. He stood watching her anxiously, fearing that she would faint or fall. But Clare was not the kind of woman who faints in a great emergency. She sat still, with the air of one stupefied; but the stupor was only a kind of external atmosphere surrounding her, within the dim circle of which—a feverish circle—thought sprang up, and began to whirl and twine. She thought of everything all in a moment—her children first, who were dishonoured; and Arden, her home, where she had been born; and her life, which would have to be wrenched up—plucked like a flower from the soil in which she had bloomed all her life. They could not get either sound or movement from her, as she sat there motionless. They thought she was dulled in mind by the shock, or in body, and that it was a merciful circumstance to deaden the pain, and enable them to get her home.
While she sat thus, her husband raised himself in terror, and consulted Edgar with his eyes.
“Take her home—take her home,” he whispered behind Clare’s back—“take her home as long as she’s quiet; and till she’s got over the shock, I’ll keep myself out of the way.”
Clare heard him, even through the mist that surrounded her, but she could not make any reply. She seemed to have forgotten all about him—to have lost him in those mists. When Edgar put his hand on her shoulder, and called her gently, she stirred at last, and looked up at him.
“What is it?—what do you want with me?” she asked.
“I want you to come home,” he said softly. “Come home with me; I will take care of you; it is not a long drive.”
Poor Edgar! he was driven almost out of his wits, and did not know what to say. She shuddered with a convulsive trembling in all her limbs.
“Home!—yes, I must go and get my children,” she said. “Yes, you are quite right. I want some one to take care of me. I must go and get my children; they are so young—so very young! If I take them at once, they may never know——”
“Clare,” cried her husband, moaning, “you won’t do anything rash? You won’t expose our misery to all the world?”
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.