CHAPTER XXII.
Another Winding-up.
I HOPE it will not give the reader a poor idea of Edgar’s heart if I say that it was with a relief which it was impossible to exaggerate that he felt the last dreary day of darkness pass, and was liberated from his melancholy duties. This did not affect his sorrow for the noble old woman who had made him at once her confidant and her inheritor—inheritor not of land or wealth, but of something more subtle and less tangible. But indeed for her there was no sorrow needed. Out of perennial disappointments she had gone to her kind, to those with whom she could no longer be disappointed. Heaven had been “but a step” to her, which she took smiling. For her the hearse, the black funeral, the nodding plumes, were inappropriate enough; but they pleased the family, of whom it never could be said by any detractor that they had not paid to their mother “every respect.”
Edgar felt that his connection with them was over for ever when he took leave of them on the evening of the funeral. The only one over whom his heart yearned a little was Jeanie, who was the true mourner of the only mother she had ever known, but who, in the midst of her mourning, poor child, felt another pang, perhaps more exquisite, at the thought of seeing him, too, no more. All the confusion of sentiment and feeling, of misplaced loves and indifferences, which make up the world were in this one little family. Jeanie had given her visionary child’s heart to Edgar, who, half aware of, half disowning the gift, thought of her ever with tender sympathy and reverence, as of something sacred. Margaret, less exquisite in her sentiments, yet a loving soul in her way, had given hers to Willie, who was vain of her preference, and laughed at it—who felt himself a finer fellow, and she a smaller creature because she loved him. Dr. Charles, uneasy soul, would have given his head had he dared to marry Jeanie, yet would not, even had she cared for him, have ventured to burden his tottering gentility with a wife so homely.
Thus all were astray from the end which might have made each a nobler and certainly a happier creature. Edgar never put these thoughts into words, for he was too chivalrous a man even to allow to himself that a woman had given her heart to him unsought; but the complications of which he was conscious filled him with a vague pang—as the larger complications of the world—that clash of interests, those broken threads, that never meet, those fulnesses and needinesses, which never can be brought to bear upon each other—perplex and pain the spectator. He was glad, as we all are, to escape from them; and when he reached London, where his love was, and where, the first thing he found on his arrival was the announcement of his appointment, his heart rose with a sudden leap, spurning the troubles of the past, in elastic revulsion. He had his little fortune again, not much, at any time, but yet something, which Gussy could hang at her girdle, and his old mother’s watch for her, quaint, but precious possession. He was scarcely anxious as to his reception, though she had written him but one brief note since his absence; for Edgar was himself so absolutely true that it did not come into his heart that he could be doubted. But he could not go to Gussy at once, even on his arrival. Another and a less pleasant task remained for him. He had to meet his sister at the hotel she had gone to, and be present at the clandestine marriage—for it was no better—which was at last to unite legally the lives of Arthur Arden and Clare.
Clare had arrived in town the evening before. He found her waiting for him, in her black dress, her children by her, in black also. She was still as pale as when he left her at Arden, but she received him with more cordiality than she had shown when parting with him. There was something in her eyes which alarmed him—an occasional vagueness, almost wildness.
“We did wrong, Edgar,” she said, when the children were sent away, and they were left together—“we did wrong.”
“In what did we do wrong, Clare?”
“In ever thinking of those—those papers. We should have burnt them, you and I together. What was it to anyone what happened between us? We were the sole Ardens of the family—the only ones to be consulted.”
“Clare! Clare! I am no Arden at all. Would you have had me live on a lie all my life, and build my own comfort upon some one else’s wrong?”
“You were always too high-flown, Edgar,” she said, with the practical quiet of old. “Why did you come to me whenever you heard that trouble was coming? Because you were my brother. Instinct proves it. If you are my brother, then it is you who should be master at Arden, and not—anyone else.”
“It is true I am your brother,” he said, sitting down by her, and looking tenderly into her colourless face.
“Then we were wrong, Edgar—we were wrong—I know we were wrong; and now we must suffer for it,” she said, with a low moan. “My boy will be like you, the heir, and yet not the heir; but for him I will do more than I did for you. I will not stop for lying. What is a lie? A lie does not break you off from your life.”
“Does it not? Clare, if you would think a moment——”
“Oh! I think!” she cried—“I think!—I do nothing but think! Come, now, we must not talk any more; it is time to go.”
They drove together in a street cab to an obscure street in the city, where there was a church which few people ever entered. I doubt if this choice was so wise as they thought, but the incumbent was old, the clerk old, and everything in their favour, so far as secrecy was concerned. Arthur Arden met them there, pale, but eager as any bridegroom could be. Clare had her veil—a heavy veil of black lace—over her face; the very pew-opener shuddered at such a dismal wedding, and naturally all the three officials, clergyman, clerk, and old woman, exerted all their aged faculties to penetrate the mystery. The bridal party went back very silently in another cab to Clare’s hotel, where Arthur Arden saw his children, seizing upon them with hungry love and caresses. He did not suspect, as Edgar did, that the play was not yet played out.
“You have never said that you forgive me, Clare,” he said, after, to his amazement, she had sent her boy and girl away.
“I cannot say what I do not mean,” she said, in a very low and tremulous voice. “I have said nothing all this time; now it is my turn to speak. Oh! don’t look at me so, Edgar!—don’t ask me to be merciful with your beseeching eyes! We were not merciful to you.”
“What does she mean?” said Arthur Arden, looking dully at him; and then he turned to his wife. “Well, Clare, you’ve had occasion to be angry—I don’t deny it. I don’t excuse myself. I ought to have looked deeper into that old affair. But the punishment has been as great on me as on you.”
“Oh, the punishment!” she cried. “What is the punishment in comparison? It is time I should tell you what I am going to do.”
“There, there now!” he said, half frightened, half coaxing. “We are going home. Things will come right, and time will mend everything. No one knows but Edgar, and we can trust Edgar. I will not press you for pardon. I will wait; I will be patient——”
“I am not going home any more. I have no home,” she said.
“Clare, Clare!”
“Listen to what I say. I am ill. There shall be no slander—no story for the world to talk of. I have told everybody that I am going to Italy for my health. It need not even be known that you don’t go with me. I have made all my arrangements. You go your way, and I go mine. It is all settled, and there is nothing more to say.”
She rose up and stood firm before them, very pale, very shadowy, a slight creature, but immovable, invincible. Arthur Arden knew his wife less than her brother did. He tried to overcome her by protestations, by entreaties, by threats, by violence. Nothing made any impression upon her; she had made her decision, and Heaven and earth could not turn her from it. Edgar had to hold what place he could between them—now seconding Arden’s arguments, now subduing his violence; but neither the one nor the other succeeded in their efforts. She consented to wait in London a day or two, and to allow Edgar to arrange her journey for her—a journey upon which she needed and would accept no escort—but that was all. Arden came away a broken man, on Edgar’s arm, almost sobbing in his despair.
“You won’t leave me, Edgar—you’ll speak for me—you’ll persuade her it is folly—worse than folly!” he cried.
It was long before Edgar could leave him, a little quieted by promises of all that could be done. Arden clung to him as to his last hope. Thus it was afternoon when at last he was able to turn his steps towards Berkeley Square.
Gussy knew he was to arrive in town that morning, and, torn by painful doubts as she was, every moment of delay naturally seemed to her a further evidence that Edgar had other thoughts in his mind more important to him than she was. She had said nothing to anyone about expecting him, but within herself had privately calculated that by eleven o’clock at least she might expect him to explain everything and make everything clear. Eleven o’clock came, and Gussy grew distraite, and counted unconsciously the beats of the clock, with a pulsation quicker and quite as loud going on in her heart. Twelve o’clock, and her heart grew sick with the deferred hope, and the explanation seemed to grow dim and recede further and further from her. He had never mentioned Margaret in his letters, which were very short, though frequent; and Gussy knew that her brother, in wild impatience, had gone off two days before to ascertain his fate. But she was a woman, and must wait till her fate came to her, counting the cruel moments, and feeling the time pass slowly, slowly dragging its weary course. One o’clock; then luncheon, which she had to make a pretence to eat, amid the chatter of the girls, who were so merry and so loud that she could not hear the steps without and the knocks at the door.
When they were all ready to go out after, Gussy excused herself. She had a headache, she said, and indeed she was pale enough for any headache. He deserved that she should go out as usual, and wait no longer to receive him; but she would not treat him as he deserved. When they were all gone she could watch at the window, in the shade of the curtains, to see if he was coming, going over a hundred theories to explain his conduct. That he had been mistaken in his feeling all along, and never had really cared for her; that Margaret’s beauty had been too much for him, and had carried him away; that he cared for her a little, enough to fulfil his engagements, and observe a kindly sort of duty towards her, but that he had other friends to see, and business to do, more important than she was. All these fancies surged through her head as she stood, the dark damask half hiding her light little figure at the window.
The days had lengthened, the sounds outside were sounds of spring, the trees in the square garden were coloured faintly with the first tender wash of green. Steps went and came along the pavement, carriages drew up, doors opened and shut, but no Edgar. She was just turning from the window, half blind and wholly sick with the strain, when the sound of a light, firm foot on the stair caught her ears, and Edgar made his appearance at last. There was a glow of pleasure on his face, but care and wrinkles on his forehead. Was the rush with which he came forward to her, and the warmth of his greeting, and the light on his face, fictitious? Gussy felt herself warm and brighten, too, involuntarily, but yet would have liked best to sit down in a corner and cry.
“How glad I am to find you alone!” he said. “What a relief it is to get here at last! I am tired, and dead beat, and sick and sorry, dear. Now I can breathe and rest.”
“You have been long, long of coming,” said Gussy, half wearily, half reproachfully.
“Haven’t I? It seems about a year since I arrived this morning, and not able to get near you till now. Gussy, tell me, first of all, did you see it?—do you know?”
“What?” Her heart was melting—all the pain and all the anger, quite unreasonably as they had risen, floating away.
“Our Consulship,” he said, opening up his newspaper with one hand, and spreading it out, to be held by the other hand, on the other side of her. The two heads bent close together to look at this blessed announcement. “Not much for you, my darling—for me everything,” said Edgar, with a voice in which bells of joy seemed to be ringing, dancing, jostling against each other for very gladness. “I was half afraid you would see it before I brought the news.”
“I had no heart to look at the paper this morning,” she said.
“No heart! Something has happened? Your father—Harry—what is it?” cried Edgar, in alarm.
“Oh! nothing,” cried Gussy, crying. “I was unhappy, that was all. I did not know what you would say to me. I thought you did not care for me. I had doubts, dreadful doubts! Don’t ask me any more.”
“Doubts—of me!” cried Edgar, with a surprised, frank laugh.
Never in her life had Gussy felt so much ashamed of herself. She did not venture to say another word about those doubts which, with such laughing, pleasant indifference, he had dismissed as impossible. She sat in a dream while he told her everything, hearing it all like a tale that she had read in a book. He brought out the old watch and gave it to her, and she kissed it and put it within her dress, and cried when he described to her the last words of his old mother. Loch Arroch and all its homely circumstances became as a scene of the Scriptures to Gussy; she seemed to see a glory of ideal hills and waters, and the moonlight filling the sky and earth, and the loveliness of the night which made it look “but a step” between earth and heaven. Her heart grew so full over those details that Edgar, unsuspicious, never discovered the compunction which mingled in that sympathetic grief. He told her about his journey; then paused, and looked her in the eyes.
“Last year it was you who travelled with me. You were the little sister?” he said. “Ah! yes, I know it was you. You came and kissed me in my sleep——”
“Indeed I did not, sir!” cried Gussy, in high indignation. “I would not have done such a thing for all the world.”
Edgar laughed, and held her so fast that she could not turn from him.
“You did in spirit,” he said; “and I had it in a dream. Ever since I have had a kind of hope in my life; I dreamt that you put the veil aside, and I saw you. When I woke I could not believe it, though I knew it; but the other sister, the real one, would not tell me your name.”
“Poor sister Susan!” cried Gussy, the tears disappearing, the sunshine bursting out over all her face; “she will not like me to go back into the world.”
“Nor to go out to Italy as a Consul,” said Edgar, gay as a boy in his new happiness, “to talk to all the ships’ captains, and find out about the harbour dues.”
“Foolish! there are no ship captains, nor ships either, nor dues of any kind—”
“Nothing but the bay and the hills, and the sunsets and the moonrises; the Riviera, which means Paradise—”
“And to be together—”
“Which has the same meaning,” he said. And then they stopped in this admirable fooling, and laughed the foolish laughter of mere happiness, which is not such a bad thing, when one can have it, once in a way.
“What a useless, idle, Sybarite life you have sketched out for us!” Gussy said at last. “I hope it is not a mere sunshiny sinecure. I hope there is something to do.”
“I am very good at doing nothing,” Edgar replied—too glad, at last, to return to homely reality and matter of fact; and until the others came home, these two talked as much nonsense as it is given to the best of us to talk; and got such good of it as no words can describe.
When Lady Augusta returned, she pretended to frown upon Edgar, and smiled; and then gave him her hand, and then inclined her cheek towards him. They had the paper out again, and she shook her head; then kissed Gussy, and told them that Spezzia was the most lovely place in all the world. Edgar stayed to dinner, as at last a recognised belonging of the household, and met Lord Granton, who was somewhat frightened of him, and respectful, having heard his praises celebrated by Mary as something more than flesh and blood; and for that evening “the Grantons” that were to be, were nobodies—not even redeemed from insignificance by the fact that their marriage was approaching, while the other marriage was still in the clouds.
“How nice it would be if they could be on the same day!” little Mary whispered, rather, I fear, with the thought of recovering something of her natural consequence as bride than for any other reason.
“As if the august ceremonial used at an Earl’s wedding would do for a Consul’s!” cried saucy Gussy, tossing her curls as of old. And notwithstanding Edgar’s memories, and the dark shadow of Clare’s troubles that stood by his side, and the fear that now and then overwhelmed them all about Harry’s movements—in spite of all this, I do not think a merrier evening was ever spent in Berkeley Square. Gussy had been in a cloud, in a veil, for all these years; she had not thought it right to laugh much, as the Associate of a Sisterhood—which is to say that Gussy was not happy enough to want to laugh, and founded that grey, or brown, or black restriction for herself, with the ingenuity of an unscrupulous young woman. But now sweet laughter had become again as natural to her as breath.